http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3&start=0#p27
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: "Distress" Source Code
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-09 13:10:18

This has been announced already, but the source code for "Distress" is available at my website:

[url]http://www.sidneymerk.com/zips/dist_src.zip[/url]

I'd like to also release some library extensions, when I get a chance. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3&start=0#p28
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: "Distress" Source Code
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-09 13:49:47

I noticed on the sources for both Distress and Trading Punches that you normally set a routine up just for printing really large blocks of text - then access it later by running the routine with the appropriate, ah, argument values (I don't know if that's the right term).

Is it better to code in Hugo that way and save memory, by using the "print" statement more than just leaving the blocks of text in quotation marks? I read somewhere in the manual that text blocks without the "print" statement are the ones saved in the game's file.

Thanks!

EDIT: I've taken the italics off the game titles.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3&start=0#p29
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: "Distress" Source Code
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-09 16:18:45

I'd have to check the manual to know for sure. I *think* that anything printed with the "print" statement is functionally the same as just doing text. In other words:

print "This is a test."

and

"This is a test."

will both store "This is a test." as a dictionary entry. In fact, if you used that exact quoted string 50 times elsewhere in the program, it's still only going to take up one spot in the dictionary. Everywhere you print it, it'll just "print" the value of that dictionary entry.

The thing is, if "This is a test." is part of a larger print statement (in other words, what's in quotes isn't *exactly* that), then it's going to count as another dictionary entry. If you look hard enough in the Hugo library, you can even see where Kent will break apart long strings just so that the "bits" of it hit on phrases already used.

In other words, if you have already used "This is" and "a test." in other places (alone, so as to be self-contained as dictionary entries), then the following bit would be more efficient space-wise:

print "This is"; " "; "a test."

Remember that *everything* enclosed in quotes ends up as a dictionary entry. At compile-time, I *think* multi-line text such as this...

"This is
a test of
something."

...ends up as a single dictionary entry, formatted with a space between the lines. Kent could probably say for sure.

As for why I use a PrintMessage() routine in my games, it's not really to save memory. Well, I do re-use some messages, but if I just cut and pasted the exact same thing in multiple spots, it's still just going to use one dictionary entry (as long as they're identical). I do it more so that I only need to change the text in one place and all routines that "print" the message will then use the updated version. It's also so I can skim through the text all at once, in one place (eventually I export it out to spell-check, but this helps until then). In my current WIP, I'm putting practially *all* text in PrintMessage() blocks, even if it's simple.

Argument values, parameters, same thing. I'm starting to get a little better at this, in my current WIP. I'm using objects as parameters (well, the object "number" is the parameter), so that I can have one single "long_desc" handler that just checks to see what object we're describing. That type of thing. Well, I don't do that in all cases, but since I've started putting little headers on each one, it's easier for me to figure out later what each of the messages was intended for. [emote]Smile[/emote]

I'm also figuring out things I did in Distress, and *especially* in Trading Punches, that could have been done much easier. Like, making custom properties/attributes where needed, calling more routines that are already in the library instead of re-inventing them, etc. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4&start=0#p30
Forum: Feedback / Subject: The Forum
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-09 16:26:19

I see that the sub-forums for T3 and I7 are now gone. I guess if they get busy, we could always add them back, or have two boards for each (even without a sub-category).

I'm seeing something quirky with italics though. Like [i]this[/i] -- anybody else see formatting codes, instead of italic text? Looks like maybe a bug in this version of the phpBB beta to me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=5&start=0#p31
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Mystic Force - Worst Game Ever?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-09 16:35:13

Well, I suppose this is *sort of* an announcement, and *sort of* a request for beta-testers.

Long ago, I wrote a DOS-based adventure game called Mystic Force:
[url]http://www.sidneymerk.com/mystic.shtml[/url]

I wrote others, later, but this was one of the first and is definitely one of the worst. I tried to beat it a while back, when I first uploaded it to my site. I was pretty sure it was winnable, but even cheating by looking at the .DAT files (plain text) didn't help. There are some notes about it here:

[url]http://www.sidneymerk.com/mystic.txt[/url]

These kind of explain how the map is layed out, what to do and where (at least, as much as I could figure out), etc. One of these days, I'll see if I can figure out the rest of it -- or maybe it really is unwinnable at the point mentioned in the notes above. I'm not sure.

Anyway, if anybody is interesting in playing a clasically bad adventure game, there you go. If by chance you do solve it, I'd love to know how. Heh.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3&start=0#p32
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: "Distress" Source Code
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-09 16:40:52

[quote="Merk"]
I'd have to check the manual to know for sure. I *think* that anything printed with the "print" statement is functionally the same as just doing text. In other words:

print "This is a test."

and

"This is a test."

will both store "This is a test." as a dictionary entry. In fact, if you used that exact quoted string 50 times elsewhere in the program, it's still only going to take up one spot in the dictionary. Everywhere you print it, it'll just "print" the value of that dictionary entry.
[i](snipped rest of quote)[/i]
[/quote]    
Thanks for explaining that. I'll probably have to re-read that section of the Hugo manual.

[quote="Merk"]
As for why I use a PrintMessage() routine in my games, it's not really to save memory. Well, I do re-use some messages, but if I just cut and pasted the exact same thing in multiple spots, it's still just going to use one dictionary entry (as long as they're identical). I do it more so that I only need to change the text in one place and all routines that "print" the message will then use the updated version. It's also so I can skim through the text all at once, in one place (eventually I export it out to spell-check, but this helps until then).
[/quote]    
I was thinking you were trying to put it all in one place for easier reference *and* save memory. But that wasn't the actual purpose as you've explained...

Thanks again. Let's just hope the things inside square brackets work this time. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4&start=0#p33
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: The Forum
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-09 16:45:00

[quote="Merk"]
I'm seeing something quirky with italics though. Like [i]this[/i] -- anybody else see formatting codes, instead of italic text? Looks like maybe a bug in this version of the phpBB beta to me.
[/quote] 

When I initially posted my question to you on the Hugo section, I got the same reaction on the italics, so I removed it. After replying to you now, the italics are working again. Weird.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3&start=0#p34
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: "Distress" Source Code
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-09 16:47:01

Yeah, unless I'm way off the mark, the Hugo compiler builds a dictionary of all the quote-enclosed strings in the game. Each time it parses the source code to another quoted string, it compares it to all the existing dictionary entries. In essence, everything printed becomes just a call to print a certain dictionary entry. If you print the same thing in multiple places, the .HEX file ends up with a "print" to the same dictionary entry on all of them. I'm *pretty* sure that's how it works.

It'd probably be easy to test. Write a simple program where you print "This is a test 1111" a hundred times in a row (using 100 different print statements). See how big the compiled .HEX file is. Then, change it so that the number on each line is different. The .HEX file ought to get a lot bigger.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4&start=0#p35
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: The Forum
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-09 16:56:16

It shows up right in the quoted section, but not in the text I originally typed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=6&start=0#p36
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Advice for IFComp Entrants
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-09 20:06:10

This was originally posted to rec.games.int-fiction.
---------------------------------

These are some tips for entering the competition in general. I have plenty 
more I could say about actually *writing* the game, but I'm even less an 
expert there. :)

1) When you get your game beta tested (and it's a given that you intend to), 
have them run transcripts. Not everything that can go wrong in your game is 
going to *look* wrong to players. Or they'll forgot to mention it.

2) When you get yoru game beta tested, try to pick up a couple testers that 
are familiar with Interactive Fiction. In the past, I've recruited testers 
who like text adventures, but aren't really familiar with what most players 
are going to expect. Newbie testers will let a lot of things slide that comp 
judges won't, and having experienced people help you is a great asset.

3) Remember that people are *judging* your game. The seven hundred hours you 
spent writing it will only count for something to a very small number of 
them. Even the winners get criticized by some. Brace yourself for the worst.

4) If you're in a crunch, aim smaller. What I've found is that judges tend 
to *like* games that push or exceed the two-hour rule, but they look more 
favorably on a well-written short game than on a sparse one that's longer. 
Writing a well-implemented longer game is by no means trivial. If you intend 
to do so, and you haven't already started, then either (a) it's already too 
late, or (b) you better be working on it twelve hours a day until the end of 
September.

5) Entering your game into the IFComp can be the greatest way for a new 
author (perhaps even an established one) to get exposure. What I've seen is 
that your game is likely to get far more play in six weeks than it would 
otherwise get it six years. But, see tip #3.

6) Some people win or rank really highly (and I mean, like top 5) in their 
first time out. Most don't. Many are probably discouraged from ever writing 
IF again, because the feedback you get can be brutal. Consider any ranking 
in the top half great, and in the top 10 amazing.

7) Play games from prior competitions. I'd suggest playing the winner, 
another game or two from the top ten, and a couple from the bottom half, 
just to see what works and what doesn't. You might consider playing the 
*competition* version of games that have been updated, if you really want to 
see that product that people were judging.

8) Don't write your game in a programming language that isn't specificially 
structured for Interactive Fiction. Judges -- especially those already 
familiar with IF -- will be biased against them before they even start. I've 
done it both ways now. It's worth planning ahead and learning an IF 
language, than to spend that much effort trying to home-brew an engine that 
will probably only serve to cripple your game anyway.

9) Play the other entries, when voting begins. You can't vote, but you can 
review and share the experience with your peers. Plus, it might take your 
mind off the dreadful 6-week wait, where nothing is being said publicly 
about your own game.

10) Calculate your risks. Judges -- especially the ones trying to beat the 
deadline and play all entries -- are likely to get cranky and burnt out 
toward the end. Your game may be played toward the end. If you don't have to 
make things difficult for players, then don't. Two hours isn't much time to 
solve a difficult game. Experimental games *can* work in the IFComp, but 
they can just as easily fall flat. 

11) In addition to playing prior games, read the reviews from prior years. A 
large number of last year's reviews have been collected at the IF Wiki here: 
<a href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/11th_Annual_Interactive_Fiction_Competition#Reviews.">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/11th_An ... n#Reviews.</a> 
Often, what advice the reviewers give can help you spot pitfalls in your own 
WIP, especially if you see a recurring complaint about a particular game.

12) Be original. A generic setting can work if it has a point, and if the 
story is interesting and well-told. A familiar theme can work if it's 
unexpected or uncommon *to* interactive fiction. If your setting seems 
generic, isn't told in an entertaining way, and is of a theme that's 
overused already, consider it three strikes against you.

13) Have a story, not just a collection of arbitrary puzzles. In keeping 
with that, try to make the puzzles as non-arbitrary as you can (assuming 
your "game" will even have puzzles, which isn't absolutely necessary).

14) Avoid long text dumps. And if your cutscenes can be interactive, they 
might be better off to be. You can't make everything interactive, but believe 
me, judges tend to frown on a "text dump" that is more than a couple long 
paragraphs.

Jason Devlin, last year's winner, also added:

> 1) When you get your game beta tested (and it's a given that you intend 
> to), have them run transcripts. Not everything that can go wrong in your 
> game is going to *look* wrong to players. Or they'll forgot to mention it.

Transcripts are great, but annotated transcripts are even better.  If your 
betatesters don't mind, ask them to put specific points in as they play the 
game. Usually it works to just type the comments as a command prefaced by 
"@@" (or some other suitably rare combination) for easy searching.  This 
let's them make simple notes as they're going and also let's you see exactly 
what the problem is.

and...

15)

Have a clear focus throughout your game.  You don't have to set up the 
complete plot in the introduction, but you should give the player a clear 
idea of what they should be doing. Set an immediate goal, and when that's 
done, set another.  They don't have to be major, just clear.  It's one thing 
as a player to know what you want to do, but be unable to do it.  It's 
another thing entirely to have no idea.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=7&start=0#p37
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: How does ADRIFT's parsing work?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-10 07:07:27

When I've played ADRIFT games in the past, my chief complaint has been the parser. It seems to pick keywords from inside a command line, and act on those. From observation, it seems like the grammar rules must go something like "If [command] contains [cut] and [command] contains [paper] then perform [action]" -- something like that.

This can easily lead to the misinterpretation of what the player really intended. Ordinarily, it's no problem at all. Commands are generally simple enough that they're unlikely to be ambiguous. But, when you're trying to put comments in a transcript, it really goes wonky. ADRIFT starts acting on multiple commands within the comment line.

I don't mean this as a slam to ADRIFT -- I ask, because I'm curious if anybody can explain to me exactly *how* ADRIFT's parsing works? How does it go about figuring out what the player intended? Is it really just looking for keywords? Would typing "make paper cut on finger" be interpreted as "cut paper" ?

---- Mike.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=5&start=0#p38
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Mystic Force - Worst Game Ever?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-10 11:38:04

Beta test a game that even the author doesn't know how to win?  That doesn't sound too fun.  [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=5&start=0#p39
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Mystic Force - Worst Game Ever?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-10 12:12:16

Yeah... it'd be a different *kind* of fun, I suppose. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=6&start=0#p40
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Advice for IFComp Entrants
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-10 13:01:09

Thanks for re-posting it here.  [emote]Very Happy[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=6&start=0#p41
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Advice for IFComp Entrants
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-10 14:56:46

No problem!

One of the hardest things to get accustomed to is that some judges will completely miss the point of your game. They won't find a humorous game funny, or they won't take a serious story seriously. Some will complain about things that aren't actually broken. Some will try exactly the things you didn't anticipate, yet miss out on all the good stuff you did. The sad thing is, nobody's wrong when judging is so subjective. If somebody says your game sucked, then it did -- for that person.

The reviews can range from high praise, to helpful advice, to luke-warm criticism, to almost brutal and flippant comments... sometimes, all for the same game. It was pointed out, in the newsgroup when I first posted all this, that just writing a "safe" game doesn't necessarily mean it's a "good" game. That's true. Different people consider different things "good", but hopefully this is a recipe for pleasing a larger number of judges. It's written, though, assuming that you're entering a game you hope will win or place highly. If you're going for dead least, the rules necessarily change. [emote]Smile[/emote] Or, if you just want to try out an experiment in an arena that assures you of a lot of feedback, that's a different goal as well. For that, risks are a lot easier to justify.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=6&start=0#p42
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Advice for IFComp Entrants
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-10 15:42:54

After reading the somewhat brutal reviews from last year, I know that when they finally roll in this year, I will get brutalized.  However, since this will be my first game ever, I know they will all contain helpful information.

Also, I know there are those out there who do respectfully review every attempt, and since my spelling and grammar is decent, I won't get savaged TOO badly.

Anyway, I'm just interested in seeing what people think about my IF, and this is the best way to get feedback.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=6&start=0#p43
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Advice for IFComp Entrants
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-10 15:47:20

I love IFComp season -- from working on an entry (when time permits), to playing all the others, to reviewing and discussing after the results are announced. It's always fun, even though some of the feedback is negative.

I always try to be helpful when I review IFComp games -- even the ones I don't like. Usually, I find something good in all of them. At least, I try to. I've written reviews for every game, for the past two years: [url=http://www.sidneymerk.com/ifcomp04.shtml]2004[/url] and [url=http://www.sidneymerk.com/ifcomp05.shtml]2005[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=6&start=0#p44
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Advice for IFComp Entrants
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-10 15:55:35

I read your reviews, and they are all helpful to the authors, I'm sure.  I also enjoyed Distress, I rated it the best game of last year's comp [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8&start=0#p45
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Authoring Tips
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-10 16:08:36

This is kind of similar to the IFComp tips, except it's more particular to game development. I just wanted to throw out a couple things here, and see how well others may agree or disagree.

You have to be really careful with what you say to players, during the course of the game. It's *really* easy to send them down the wrong path, without even realizing it's possible. Part of this is in really thinking about how players might interpret what you've said. For example, if you have a table, and you describe it has having "four legs -- the cheap kind that screw on and off", then some players are going to try interacting with the legs -- either by merely looking at them, or by trying to "remove" or "unscrew" them. If your intent was just to give a good description of the table, then you may be misleading players.

The rule of thumb I've started following (or, at least *trying* to follow) is to either (a) not mention the individual pieces of an object at all, and don't phrase things in a way that implies an action, or (b) mention the pieces but also implement them, including whatever action I might have implied in the text. It may be something as simple as:

"You twist and turn one leg, then another, only to discover that that they're too tightly attached."

The trap here is that this may just firm up the player's resolve to find a way to remove those darned legs. You could follow up with something like "Oh well. It wasn't important anyway" or "Oh well. You don't need to mess with the table, anyway."

And that brings up another point. Be careful when saying "it's not important." I think it's fine to say that sometimes, but some players are going to get frustrated if *nothing* in your game is important, or if they've made up their mind that a thing is somehow important and you tell them it's not. It's even worse if you say "that's not important" in response to a particular action, when there actually *is* something important about it (maybe a different action).

And, be careful telling players "that's not here" or "you don't see that." Usually, that'll happen for nouns that just aren't implemented as objects (or "extra_scenery", as is the case in Hugo). For simplicity, say "you don't need to refer to that" (or something) instead. Ideally, they player *will* be able to refer to it, but if not, at least don't tell them it's not here.

Also, be careful telling players "you can't do that." Players want to know why, because it might be something they *could* do, in that situation. As an example, if the default response for "hit" is "you can't do that", then they're going to be told "you can't do that" when trying to hit anything you haven't trapped. This may be (like the "you don't see that here" messages), a throw-back to the earlier days. What's more likely -- and probably more acceptible to players, it something like "venting your frustrations on that won't help anything." It's the same result (nothing happens, nothing is done), but at the very least, it doesn't tell the player that they "can't" do something that they can. The "you can't do that" is probably fine for totally impossible things -- hitting the sky, eating a car, etc. Even there, you'd be better of coming up with a custom message, if you can.

If your IF language supports grammar extensions, pay close attention to them. Setting up the right grammar can be the difference between a robust, playable game, and one that's a nightmare of guess-the-command. In the example about unscrewing the table legs -- assuming perhaps that your game *needs* the player to do this, you might expect players to do it in a number of ways:

remove legs
remove legs from table
take off legs
take legs off
take legs off table
unscrew legs
twist legs
twist legs off
twist legs off table
twist off legs
twist off legs from table
pull legs off table
.... and it just goes on and on.

You shouldn't have to catch every single possibility, if you've grouped synonymous verbs together, and if your grammar definitions are correct for each one. It might seem like overkill, but it can make the difference between good game flow, and bogging the player down (even if for a little while) trying to figure out how to do an action. For simple things, it's less important. Still important, yeah, but less important. But, when you're requiring more complicated and non-traditional actions, you need more complicated handling.

Anyway, just some random thoughts. When (and *if*, at this rate), I finish my next game, it'll probably be full of things that completely contradict my advice. It's really hard to guess how everything you tell a player might be interpreted. I guess that's where beta testing -- and lots of it -- can be really helpful!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=6&start=0#p46
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Advice for IFComp Entrants
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-10 16:24:35

Really? Thanks!! I saw the same thing from at least one other reviewer, [url=http://www.the-wabe.com/if-comp-2005/]Rob Menke[/url]. It's always cool when people enjoy what you've written. I'm only just now getting to a point where I'm writing competent IF. Some of my stuff from years past was all but unplayable. [emote]:)[/emote]

You say this will be your first year in the IFComp? It's cool that the comp always draws in new people, year after year. Some of the best talent surfaces that way. Take Jason Devlin -- an amazing 4th place showing the first time out (two years ago) and a well-deserved win last year. This glut of short games is one of my favorite parts of the year. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=6&start=0#p47
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Advice for IFComp Entrants
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-10 16:33:36

I can only dream that my game will live up to Jason's or anyone else's for that matter, but I'm doing my best on it.

I was going to enter last year with a different game but Inform 6 was just kicking my butt and I didn't feel like screwing with it anymore.  With Inform 7, I feel much more able to actually DO what I want to do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8&start=0#p48
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Authoring Tips
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-10 16:36:24

This is the point that I'm getting to in my game...I hope I can get it right.  I'm sure any beta testers I have will be able to run my game through the wringer so I can get any problems sorted out though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8&start=0#p49
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Authoring Tips
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-10 18:49:01

Late in development, it can really become a chore. You might try to clarify something at one spot, only to accidentally open up false clueing to something else. Even in beta, one tester might get stuck on something, and you make changes to the text, only to introduce something that's equally misleading.

Better, more experienced IF authors probably build a solid framework to minimize the chances of things going wrong. I remember how happy I was that there weren't enough bug reports to necessitate a new version of Distress after the comp. I was worried that too much tinkering with the balance of things would bring the whole house of cards crumbling down!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8&start=0#p50
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Authoring Tips
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2006-08-10 19:27:48

I've been reading through a lot IF reviews (including yours, Merk - great stuff !), and I really like a phrase I came across about object descriptions - "salient features". This includes:

(1) Overall impression - the obvious things about the object. It's big, white, blocking the door, just like the one in the previous room, etc.

(2) Anything exceptional about the object (eg. a wine glass being out of place).

(3) Things that contribute to the atmosphere, backstory, etc. (eg. objects in a house that reveal something about the person who lives there).

(4) Things that are relevant to the PC - something they would notice because of their personality / background (eg. a thief might notice the roughness of a climbable wall), or because of their current goal / state of mind (eg. a broken twig when the PC is tracking someone).

(5) Things that the author specially wants the player to notice - clues that the object may be useful for a particular thing, merits closer investigation, etc.

Emily Short pointed out that one reason she doesn't like big text dumps is because when she is playing IF, she is looking for the "relevant stuff" ... too much text makes this a bit overwhelming and hard to continue doing for several hours in a row.

I guess the trick is to balance (5) with the other four so that the important features of an object are obvious, but not too obvious ...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8&start=0#p51
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Authoring Tips
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-10 20:51:15

Thanks!

It's pretty easy to get wrapped up in writing the text, and forgot that players will have to *interact* with what's there. A game that comes to mind in last year's IFComp is "Xen: The Contest". There was so much story, but not enough implementation. My "Trading Punches" had these same sorts of problems.

It's harder to think of an example where the game text was misleading -- descriptive, but offering false clues and prompts. I may skim my reviews and see if something jogs my memory.

I find some things interesting when comparing interactive fiction to static fiction. I wonder how some of my favorite books would work as IF. Initially, this really awesome story idea seems ideal, but then I realize how difficult (or impossible) it would be to turn that into a game -- an *interactive* game. Yet, IF can be enjoyable even if the story wouldn't make passable static fiction. I guess the key is good writing.

Most of us aren't great writers -- given exceptions like Adam Cadre, whose book(s) I've never read, but just being published is impressive. When it comes to IF, it's best to write well *and* code well. Often, though, writing and story are weak in a technically impressive game, and well "written" games are buggy and sparsely implemented. The competition winners always seem to get both sides right.

I guess I'm rambling.

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Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: I give up (Dreadwine)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-10 21:08:46

How the heck do I SPOILERS

[color=#FFBFFF]get sandra to get in the boat?[/color]

END SPOILERS

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Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: I give up (Dreadwine)
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-10 21:13:42

This isn't one I've heard of.

For spoiler space, you could always just put a bunch of single dots on lines by themselves.
.
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like
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this
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for
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a
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ways.
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.

[emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8&start=0#p54
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Authoring Tips
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2006-08-10 21:14:57

So how do you write descriptions (and responses to actions, etc.) in a way that gives players an idea of what to do next and moves the story forward?

On a related note, have you had much success monitoring what the player is doing and prompting them after a certain time if they seem in need of a hint?

[quote]
I guess I'm rambling.
[/quote]  
Your rambles are most interesting ... [emote]:-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=9&start=0#p55
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: I give up (Dreadwine)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-10 21:16:26

Yeah, I was trying to get the color to match the gray background, but failed.  So now it's unreadable either way, highlighted or unhighlighted. :/

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=9&start=0#p56
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: I give up (Dreadwine)
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-10 21:25:19

It works fine highlighted for me -- dark blue on white. You must be using a browser that does its highlighting differently. If needed, you can always edit your message and change it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8&start=0#p57
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Authoring Tips
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-10 21:55:56

[quote="DFisher"]
So how do you write descriptions (and responses to actions, etc.) in a way that gives players an idea of what to do next and moves the story forward?
[/quote]          

Keep in mind that I'm only recently starting to figure out how to write better IF. So this is somewhat theory, somewhat things I'm doing for future projects, and somewhat things I've observed in other IF. One of the most important things is to handle the likely (or even not-so-likely) *wrong* actions, and direct the player back that way. Here's an example, just off the top of my head. Also, I think it's important to "imply" things wherever appropriate -- and especially when the action can only be taken one way. Don't make the player spell it all out for the parser, if your grammar can be built to handle this. But, be careful not to imply *too* much. You might force a solution to a puzzle the player hadn't actually solved.

[color=#800000]> E
You come upon a large hole in the ground. The bird you've followed this far swoops down, and disappears into the depths of the earth. You caught one fleeting glance of the golden key, still held in its tightly-clenched beak.

> JUMP IN HOLE
Unlike the bird, you're unable to fly.

> LOOK IN HOLE
It seems like a long way down. You can't see the bottom, and it's quite dark in there.

> ENTER HOLE
And fall to your death? If the rough walls don't kill you, the abrupt landing will.

> X HOLE
It's wide and deep. The walls seems rough and irregular, and... something else?

> CLIMB DOWN
(the hole)
With just the muddy, crumbling dirt to provide purchase? There must be a better way.

> X WALLS
or
> X DIRT
You notice, now, that thick vines snake in and through the hole's interior walls, going downward.

> CLIMB VINES
or
> CLIMB DOWN VINES
or
> CLIMB DOWN ON VINES
or
> CLIMB DOWN USING VINES
or
> CLIMB DOWN WITH VINES
or
> CLIMB DOWN HOLDING VINES[/color]

At this point, the player has solved it. But, in addition to "climb down" (and other similar commands, synonyms for "climb", etc, which don't come readily to mind) you may also want to handle:

[color=#800000]> GET VINES
They're thick, solid, and they won't come loose. Easy to grip, though.

> GRIP VINES
or
> HOLD VINES
or
> GRIP VINE <--- singular
You take hold of one thick vine. Yes, it will definitely hold your weight.

> ENTER HOLE
or
> CLIMB DOWN
(the hole)
or
> JUMP IN
(the hole)[/color]

... should all work now. Just remember, if the player leaves the room, say something like "you let go of the vine first." And if you're really being fair to the player, GET VINES should imply a "grip" or "hold" anyway. In this example, you'd also want to handle attempts to drop or throw inventory items into the hole, jump over the hole, and anything else that seems likely for players to try, on the road to discovering that there are vines to climb down. In the example, I don't mention the vines just by looking at the hole. But I mention the walls and/or dirt a couple *other* times (including a pretty obvious prompt when looking at the hole), and with luck, a player is going to catch on and examine the walls.

For an easier puzzle, you just mention the vines in the hole's description, and (perhaps even just by noticing them), allow actions like "CLIMB DOWN" to imply "(using the vines)" instead of being just one more step in the solving process. You run the risk of implying something the player hadn't already realized, but as risks go, that's a small one. It just depends on whether you want the puzzle to be a little harder (but still fair), or pretty easy.

[quote="DFisher"]
On a related note, have you had much success monitoring what the player is doing and prompting them after a certain time if they seem in need of a hint?
[/quote]          

Well, I've *tried* it, but not necessarily with success. In what I felt to be the sticky parts of Trading Punches, I would often count the number of turns lapsed, and just start prompting the player to take an action (asking Ruhne about things in the cutscenes, kissing Elora, etc). I sort of did this in Distress, with daemons that would remind the player about things every so often. I also built a big logic tree in Distress (a bunch of if/else conditions, mainly) so that the "hint" feature would try to figure out exactly what the player needed to do next. It wasn't automatic, but something like that in another simple, linear game could work well sd a deamon (provided the hints were unobtrusive and accurate).

As for *really* knowing what the player is up to, that seems trickier. It probably comes down to focusing the player back to the things and areas of interest. How? Dunno. Lock the doors leading out of an area, and let the player find the key along with whetever other goal has drawn him/her here. Mention important items (or goals in general) just in the course of looking at things or doing other commands (if appropriate).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=9&start=0#p58
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: I give up (Dreadwine)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-10 22:22:50

I got my answer on the IF mud....this game is an example of a misleading clue.  However it's partly my fault for attempting the wrong solution for such a long time.

I recommend this game though. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Mystic Force - Worst Game Ever?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-10 23:01:54

I just got around to looking closer at the Mystic Force portion of your website...it does look hilariously bad, but at the same time, something I would've certainly played had it been on a BBS back in the early 90's (in between Trade Wars 2002, Legend of the Red Dragon, and MajorMUD).

The insulting parser messages are pretty funny, too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8&start=0#p60
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Authoring Tips
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2006-08-11 01:13:47

Merk wrote:
[quote]
I find some things interesting when comparing interactive fiction to static fiction. I wonder how some of my favorite books would work as IF. Initially, this really awesome story idea seems ideal, but then I realize how difficult (or impossible) it would be to turn that into a game -- an *interactive* game.
[/quote]  
Is that because the plot depends on the character doing a certain action (maybe at a certain time), which you can't force the player to do?

The appeal for me about turning a book or movie into an IF game is that the characters, setting, etc. are firmly established, and it sounds like a lot of fun to be in that world or to be those characters for a while ... is that what appeals to you, too?

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Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Authoring Tips
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-11 07:14:30

I probably shouldn't have said "impossible". I guess it's possible to turn anything into IF, be it a book, a movie, whatever. I've never tried, though. 

Part of it would just be making the story interactive, in an entertaining way. I think the author would have to take a lot of liberties with the story -- for working in puzzles, filling in the "gaps" where IF will have to present things interactively that the movie or book didn't.

I guess it happens all the time, in video games. It seems like most mainstream action moves (and even some that aren't) get officially-licensed video game adaptations. Most are bad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=5&start=0#p62
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Mystic Force - Worst Game Ever?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-11 07:20:47

I went on to write a few *real* BBS games after that. Mystic Force just sat around until I decided to zip it up and put it on my website. When I wrote it, though, I didn't realize how bad it was. Most of the IF I'd played to then was kind of similar, so I probably just thought that's how it should be. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8&start=0#p63
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Authoring Tips
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-11 09:21:10

There are a couple other possible pitfalls, I would think, in adapting static fiction to interactive fiction.

One is that you may assume the player knows the source material, and forget to include details that would make the game impossible to solve otherwise. Suppose you're adapting Superman, or writing a game featuring Superman. If a puzzle requires x-ray vision or heat-vision, it would probably be good to work this in earlier, just in case a player isn't familiar with Superman, or doesn't know his powers beyond flying and super-strength. Granted, that's probably a poor example -- everybody knows Superman -- but that's the idea.

Another is that you may assume the player won't try to stray from the storyline at all. This is probably what you were getting at. I think it would be hard to adapt a book or movie and *not* have it seem railroaded. You'd have to decide just how rigidly you want to channel the player's actions. Should out-of-character actions be stopped entirely, with an appropriate response? Or should you allow players to stray, but lead to an early (and less than ideal) ending?

My next couple projects are purely fiction -- fantasy, sci-fi -- just "invented" stuff. I'm not sure I'd want to adapt a book or movie (even my issues with IP infringement aside), but I think I'd like to work on one or more games in an historical setting. I'd like to do research, study up on some historical period, event, setting, whatever, and work a fictional game into it. I think those kinds of games could have an appeal for people, because it's not just fantasy.

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Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Authoring Tips
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-11 09:30:01

I agree that adapting a work poses problems, but it could be fun.

Of course, I really would much rather create my own worlds and stories to tell, because it would feel so much more satisfying to complete.

I hate licensed video games, and almost never play them, unless they are unusually good.  Most of my favorite games are original series, like Silent Hill or Shenmue or Castlevania.

And with these games, the developers aren't lazy in creating the story, just like Merk said, they don't have the luxury of the public's general knowledge of a character or setting.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=10&start=0#p65
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: IF Archive Hugo Downloads
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-11 09:40:57

Kent Tessman posted an interesting bit of trivia about the top downloads at the Interactive Fiction Archive ([url]http://www.ifarchive.org/[/url]). The post, which some may already have seen, is here:

[url]http://www.joltcountry.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4003&sid=abd4ea178d4095cfd98f795227025e18[/url]

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Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Advice for IFComp Entrants
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-11 09:52:33

One of these days, I'd like to broaden my knowledge of other IF languages. I've peeked at TADS briefly. Inform 7 might be interesting.

Good luck with your IFComp entry!!!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=7&start=0#p67
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: How does ADRIFT's parsing work?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-11 10:46:25

Well, I use Adrift, and have done for years, but I've always steered well clear of discussions regarding the parsers. I'm more interested in what Adrift can do than the nitty-gritty of its makeup.

[quote]
Would typing "make paper cut on finger" be interpreted as "cut paper" 
[/quote] 

Not as far as I know. Commands in Adrift are entered in the task panel in the Generator, pretty much as they appear in the game. So you could have two different tasks "make paper cut on finger" and "cut paper" and it would interpret them as two entirely different commands. As far as I know anyway.

Wildcards can be used to get rid of the necessity for words like "the", "a", "an" and the like, so you could have a task "make * paper cut on * finger" which would be interpreted as "make paper cut on finger" or "make a paper cut on the finger" or, indeed, as "make a really big paper cut on my little finger".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=6&start=0#p68
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Advice for IFComp Entrants
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-11 10:52:28

[quote="Merk"]
One of these days, I'd like to broaden my knowledge of other IF languages. I've peeked at TADS briefly. Inform 7 might be interesting.
[/quote] 

Cool! I've been studying Hugo on and off since Kent released version 3, even though I'd likely use TADS 2 to write something for the Comp. I hope to release something in Hugo someday, even if it's not for the IF Comp.(That's partly the reason why I'm working on that CHM manual for Hugo.)

Good luck on your IF Comp entry as well, Wanaselja!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=7&start=0#p69
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: How does ADRIFT's parsing work?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-11 11:02:30

I've always found that the more I know about how Hugo works (down to the nuts and bolts of its libraries and parsing -- I still have a lot more to learn), the better I'm able to construct the game itself. I've been thinking about writing something in Adrift, just to see what it's like (one of these days, I mean -- not right now). Because I've seen Adrift games misinterpret what I meant (carrying out the wrong action by mistake), I've wondered just how its parsing works. [emote]Smile[/emote]

When you're setting up those rules, are you setting them up for each object, and for each variation of how an object may be referenced? In other words, If you want to support "jump" as a general verb, do you code a "jump" rule giving the nouns that are recognized for that object? In the paper cut example, would an alternate "cut * finger with paper" be a different rule from "cut * finger using paper", or would it just be written as "cut * finger * paper"? What about cutting other things with the paper? Would there be a similar rule set up for other things? Is this done globally, or as an aspect of the "paper" object? Would "finger" be a real object in the game, or just a keyword?

It probably sounds like I'm a rank newbie -- it's just that it sounds like Adrift games are designed in a way that's far different from what I'm used to.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=7&start=0#p70
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: How does ADRIFT's parsing work?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-11 11:20:00

"Jump" is supported by default in Adrift, but as it produces a silly message that has never fit in a single game I've written with it (something like “wheee-boing!”), I've always override it. Generally I'll just do a "jump*" task which will cover every command the player types which starts with "jump" - usually something like "You jump up and down for a bit”. Or if you wanted a more specific one, “jump %theobject%” could produce “You’ve no need to go jumping over %theobject%”.

[quote]
In other words, If you want to support "jump" as a general verb, do you code a "jump" rule giving the nouns that are recognized for that object?
[/quote] 

You don't have rules in Adrift. At least not of the kind I think you're getting it. Every command is either built into the system (i.e. directional commands, things like get, drop, inventory, look, etc) or created via a custom task or, sometimes, interaction with an object. There are generally several different ways of doing most things. If, say, you wanted a door, you could either create an object and give it locked or unlocked properties (or custom properties if you like), or create a task and use that to determine whether the door is locked or unlocked. It's all down to choice over which you use, although most times tasks give you move control over what you want to do.

[quote]
In the paper cut example, would an alternate "cut * finger with paper" be a different rule from "cut * finger using paper", or would it just be written as "cut * finger * paper"? 
[/quote] 

Personally I'd word it as "cut *finger* *paper*" (with "cut *paper* *finger* on the next line), but some people would have it as "cut {your/a/the/an/my} {small/left/right} finger {with/using/on} {the} paper", which is essentially the same command but a lot longer and more trouble. The first way allows for the player to type pretty much anything that includes the words “cut” and “finger” and “paper” in that order (or “cut” and “paper” and “finger”), whereas the second needs more precise wording. I always go with the first way as while it allows someone to type “cut lots of things with the finger but most of all the paper”, it’s easier to use and covers the bases far better than the other way.

[quote]
What about cutting other things with the paper? Would there be a similar rule set up for other things? Is this done globally, or as an aspect of the "paper" object? Would "finger" be a real object in the game, or just a keyword?
[/quote] 

You could have "cut %theobject% *paper*" with a restriction that the referenced object must be visible to the player, and then either say "You can't cut %theobject%" or maybe "You cut %theobject%. It is destroyed." and then move the referenced object to room hidden (i.e. effectively remove it from the game).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=7&start=0#p71
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: How does ADRIFT's parsing work?
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-11 11:36:58

[quote="David Whyld"]
Well, I use Adrift, and have done for years, but I've always steered well clear of discussions regarding the parsers. I'm more interested in what Adrift can do than the nitty-gritty of its makeup.
[/quote] 

Any worthwhile threads on the ADRIFT forums we could browse for those? The discussion got my interest piqued as well.

Thanks!

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Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Size of the map
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-11 11:41:28

When designing your game, do you usually have a few rooms that the player can explore, but have no real raison d' etre for the plot itself?

What's a good relevant room: irrelevant room ratio?  I have a number of rooms that do nothing but add atmosphere - while they aren't relevant to the actual GAME, they are full of scenery items and description.

My map is pretty small, anyway, and that's another problem I'm having.  I think my game will be pretty short, probably allowing 3-4 play throughs in 2 hours, depending on skill level and how well I actually lead the players along to the solution.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=7&start=0#p73
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: How does ADRIFT's parsing work?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-11 12:46:37

I don't recall any specific threads overall, but parser discussion pops up there quite a few times. Searching for "parser" brings up a list of several dozens threads.

I know Adrift's parser has received a lot of criticism in the past, generally from people don't use Adrift that often, but it's never seemed like such a big deal to me personally. Maybe it's because I grew up using the two word parsers that games back in the 80's had - when YOU CAN'T DO THAT was considered a perfectly reasonable response - or just that I've never considered the parser to be [i]that[/i] important. Okay, yes, it [i]is[/i] important, but a game can have a decidedly average parser and still be a great game, and a bad game isn't necessarily any better because it has a brilliant parser.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=11&start=0#p74
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Size of the map
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-11 13:05:59

What I'd suggest is having no unnecessary rooms that are dead-ends (unless being at a dead-end is somehow import, and then the room is no longer unnecessary). Unnecessary bridge rooms are usually okay, in my opinion -- especially if they connect one "area" to the next. For example, putting an open walkway between the West Tower and the East Tower makes perfect sense, even if nothing happens on the walkway.

Whether it's a conscious process or not, I think we as players look for a purpose to everything in a game -- objects and rooms alike. When I play IF, I sometimes wonder things like "okay, what am I supposed to do in the Music Room?" If the room exists only because this old mansion has a spooky old music room, then as the author, it probably wouldn't hurt to give it *some* sort of purpose. Maybe there is a letter with an additional clue to a later puzzle. Maybe you can even work a puzzle into the room. That's sort of what I try to do. If I really want a room in a game -- and it's not just meant to connect two areas -- I'll try to come up with a purpose that fits the game.

The Silent Hill series is a good example -- sort of. Doors abound, but most are locked or damaged. If you can enter a room, there is almost always a reason for you to do so -- whether it's just to pick up more health and ammo, to save your game, or to encounter a puzzle or cutscene. Imagine if Silent Hill let you go inside every room everywhere, and put a few token pieces of furniture around. You'd quickly start to wonder just where you were supposed to be, and what the next goal is. Silent Hill games may take this *too* far in places, but I always found it easier to understand the world logic that way. If there is a locked door that isn't blocked entirely, you know to come back to it.

I used to really like map-making, when playing IF. I'm less a fan now. I'd rather have a really small play area that I can comprehend and track mentally.

I'm curious what other people think about this!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=11&start=0#p75
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Size of the map
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-11 14:05:09

The old joke that goes with Silent Hill is that in the next game you'll play a locksmith, since you encounter so many locked and doors with broken locks. [emote]Smile[/emote]

I don't mind it, I actually love Silent Hill and it influenced my IF somewhat.

My game has several dead ends, actually.  The game world isn't interconnected, meaning you can't just go in a circle and arrive back at the same spot.  However, I think there are only 17 rooms, so hopefully that won't cause too big of a problem.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=11&start=0#p76
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Size of the map
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-11 14:07:27

Yeah, 17 rooms is no big deal.

If you're entering the IFComp, though, you might want to avoid listing specifics about your game. It's against the rules to talk about your own entry before judging ends... which, I assume, includes saying much about it before the competition starts. But I'm not for sure. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: How does ADRIFT's parsing work?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-11 14:30:34

Hey, Rioshin! Where are you? Is there a new phpBB beta that fixes the italics ubb code bug, by chance? [emote]:)[/emote]

What happens in Hugo -- and I *think* in Tads and Inform as well -- is that a minimal number of words are discarded. "a", "an", and "the" are always optional, and maybe a few others. But everything else *has* to match a grammar rule, else it's not a valid command. In a review of my first IFComp game (Lunatix), back in 1999, Paul Obrian said:

[quote]
"Parsers must not pretend to understand more than they do."
   ---- <a class="postlink" href="http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~obrian/99rev7.html">http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~obrian/99rev7.html</a>
[/quote] 

Essentially, the grammar in Lunatix was such that it looked for a command to start with a certain word, and contain other keywords -- sort of like how Adrift grammar would be if you did wildcards like described -- essentially something like INSERT * CARD * SLOT. If the player types "Insert greeting card under mail slot" and the game assumes "Insert key card into door slot" because that's the thing you anticipated, then it may really confuse a player.

What's encouraging, though, is that you describe Adrift grammar rules in a way that makes me think an Adrift game *could* do a good job of mimicing the type of parsing done with other platforms. The trick would be to go very sparingly on the wildcard tags, and define specific grammar rules as needed. I'd really like to experiment with this some day, even if only to get a better feel for it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=11&start=0#p78
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Size of the map
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-11 14:31:57

Well, everything I said was hypothetical [emote]Wink[/emote] and nothing is set in stone.  SO I'll clam up now, and let the beta testers let me know what they think when that time comes.

Although if Panks can enter Ninja II and not get disqualified, I don't see how some general talk about a game can get anyone removed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=7&start=0#p79
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: How does ADRIFT's parsing work?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-11 15:05:35

I guess if you were to construct every task in the game along the lines of

"cut {your/a/the/an/my} {small/left/right} finger {with/using/on} {the} paper"

you'd get the parser working exactly the way you want it to, but I'd shudder at the very idea of writing a game with 1,000+ tasks along the lines of the one above. Something like

"cut *finger* *paper*"

I can type in my sleep but

"cut {your/a/the/an/my} {small/left/right} finger {with/using/on} {the} paper"

I'd probably need to check over several times to make sure I wasn't missing something out.

Hopefully when Adrift 5 comes out (sooner rather than later), the parser problems will be fixed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=7&start=0#p80
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: How does ADRIFT's parsing work?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-11 15:38:02

It doesn't sound like the parser is "broken" per se. It just works in a much different way than other systems. Any idea when it's coming out, and what features are being added or changed?

I see where you're coming from now, with all the extra definitions you'd have to create. In Hugo (probably others too -- I wish I could speak from experience there), the grammar definition just uses placeholders for the objects. The objects then carry their own nouns and adjectives. You'd never have to write different versions of the "cut" verb (for instance) to accomdate different objects, as long as the grammar def is something like "[cut] object "with"/"using" held" and you have the proper nouns and adjectives associated with a screen door (object) and a knife (held). The parser handles checking all in-scope objects to figure out which one you're talking about. It looks at the command line, tests to see if the words meet noun and adjectives for objects in scope, and goes from there. If later, you want to tell the player that the knife is sharp, you only need to add "sharp" as an addtional adjective for the knife, so that any references to a "sharp knife" will work.

I really like Adrift's auto-mapping. Doesn't it have multimedia features, too? Have there been any Adrift graphic adventures?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=7&start=0#p81
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: How does ADRIFT's parsing work?
User: Ken Franklin / DateTime: 2006-08-11 15:46:56

From what I know of ADRIFT 5 there are two changes that will be important for the parser.

First is that rather than things being hardwired into the runner much of the game logic will be in a standard library that can be changed.

Second is that tasks will change so that you can create a general task for a command and then from it create a specific task for a specific exception. You might make a general "bounce %object% task and then create specific tasks for where the task was a ball, and another for where the object was breakable.

For more ainformation on what Campbell Wild is planning you should look [url=http://www.adrift.org.uk/cgi/new/adrift.cgi?page=adrift5]HERE[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=12&start=0#p82
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Good luck with the forum
User: Ken Franklin / DateTime: 2006-08-11 15:51:03

Just thought I'd post to wish these forums well and hope that they can become established as a part of the wider IF community.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=12&start=0#p83
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Good luck with the forum
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-11 15:58:47

Thanks Ken!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=7&start=10#p84
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: How does ADRIFT's parsing work?
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2006-08-11 16:16:31

One other weird thing about the ADRIFT parser: commands not matching any override will match verbs / nouns in any order; if the player types "dress the drop" while holding a dress, it will be interpreted as an attempt to drop that dress; don't even think about creating a "lemon drop" object.  The jAsea standard parser was noticably more strict on this point, as was SCARE when last I checked.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=13&start=0#p85
Forum: Competitions / Subject: InsideADRIFT Game of the Year Competition 2006
User: Ken Franklin / DateTime: 2006-08-11 16:20:24

Full details of this competition can be found [url=http://insideadrift.org.uk/mwiki/index.php?title=InsideADRIFT_Game_of_the_Year_Competition_2006#Event_background]HERE[/url].

This is a competition for any ADRIFT game released during 2006. The winners of a manistream ADRIFT competition will automatically be entered and on top of that authors can each enter one more game. Entries must reach the organiser by 1500hrs GMT on Sunday 10th December 2006. Voting will then take place over the next 3 weeks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=13&start=0#p86
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: InsideADRIFT Game of the Year Competition 2006
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-11 16:23:02

This is the biggest of the Adrift competitions then, right?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=13&start=0#p87
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: InsideADRIFT Game of the Year Competition 2006
User: Ken Franklin / DateTime: 2006-08-11 16:31:17

I would say it is the biggest comp on the ADRIFT scene, then again I organise it!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=7&start=10#p88
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: How does ADRIFT's parsing work?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-11 16:33:49

[quote="Merk"]
It doesn't sound like the parser is "broken" per se. It just works in a much different way than other systems. Any idea when it's coming out, and what features are being added or changed?
[/quote] 

No idea when it's out yet, but I gathered the features that have been mentioned on the foum in the last issue of the newsletter: [url]http://www.insideadrift.org.uk/e107/download.php?view.45[/url]

[quote]
I really like Adrift's auto-mapping. Doesn't it have multimedia features, too? Have there been any Adrift graphic adventures?
[/quote] 

It can handle sound and graphics, although most games don't use either. I know "The PK Girl" had multimedia, though I found the sound distracting and turned it off about a minute into the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=7&start=10#p89
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: How does ADRIFT's parsing work?
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-11 16:45:01

[quote="Merk"]
Doesn't it have multimedia features, too? Have there been any Adrift graphic adventures?
[/quote] 

Some adult IF works written with ADRIFT are able to play background sounds, with the pictures showing up on a separate window (something like an ADRIFT picture viewer).

Not sure though if ADRIFT can show pictures within the same window like Hugo or HTML TADS does. It's probably safe to say I haven't seen anything that serves as a good example.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=7&start=10#p90
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: How does ADRIFT's parsing work?
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-11 16:51:52

[quote="Ken Franklin"]
From what I know of ADRIFT 5 there are two changes that will be important for the parser.

First is that rather than things being hardwired into the runner much of the game logic will be in a standard library that can be changed.
[/quote]   
I guess it wasn't clear from Campbell's announcement, but will part of the ADRIFT parser itself be included in that standard library?

The changes he's planning certainly sounds ADRIFT will become more customizable than it currently is. This is probably better for experienced ADRIFT users in the long run.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=7&start=10#p91
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: How does ADRIFT's parsing work?
User: Ken Franklin / DateTime: 2006-08-11 16:54:01

[quote="Arnel Legaspi"]
Not sure though if ADRIFT can show pictures within the same window like Hugo or HTML TADS does. It's probably safe to say I haven't seen anything that serves as a good example.
[/quote] 

ADRIFT can display images in a number of ways, which the player is allowed to decide. If you go to the Options menu and select [b]Display & Media[/b] then you can change how ADRIFT handles the screen display. Picking the Media and Layout tabs allows you to choose where images and the map show up. I normally use inline display of images.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=7&start=10#p92
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: How does ADRIFT's parsing work?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-11 17:02:49

I guess "The PK Girl" is probably the best example of an ADRIFT game with multimedia:

[img]http://www.shadowvault.net/pkgirl.jpg[/img]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=11&start=0#p93
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Size of the map
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-11 17:04:36

I think Panks is a special case.

"Special" in both senses of the word unfortunately.  [emote]Confused[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=14&start=0#p94
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: ADRIFT links
User: Ken Franklin / DateTime: 2006-08-11 17:07:32

These are a few of the sites that can be of help if you are new to the ADRIFT world and are in need of inspiration or assistance.

[url=http://www.adrift.org.uk/]Main ADRIFT Site[/url] |[url=http://www.adrift.org.uk/forum]Forum[/url]
The home of ADRIFT is run by Campbell Wild, the creator of the programs. From here you can download the latest versions as well as the latest games. The forum is a lively place where many topics are discussed and questions can often find a quick answer.

[url=http://insideadrift.org.uk]InsideADRIFT newsletter site[/url]
This site is the home of the newsletter of the ADRIFT community. It has a forum that acts as a backup for anytime the site is down.

[url=http://www.shadowvault.net]Shadow Vault[/url]
 David Whyld's site is a very comprehensive reference site for anyone looking at ADRIFT games. It includes various statistics on virtually every released game and a large collection of game walkthroughs and game reviews.

[url=http://adrift.sitesled.com/]Reviews Exchange[/url]
Reviews Exchange is a publication, currently edited by Robert Street (rafgon) filled with ADRIFT (and other IF) game reviews.

[url=http://www.delron.org.uk/]DELRON[/url]
A fairly comprehensive ADRIFT site from Richard Otter (rotter).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=14&start=0#p95
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT links
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-11 17:12:10

[quote="Ken Franklin"]
[url=http://www.shadowvault.net]Shadow Vault[/url]
 David Whyld's site is a very comprehensive reference site for anyone looking at ADRIFT games. It includes various statistics on virtually every released game and a large collection of game walkthroughs and game reviews. In addition it is the home of the Reviews Exchange, a publication filled with ADRIFT game reviews.
[/quote] 

Former home of the Reviews Exchange actually. Robert Street now runs it from [url]http://adrift.sitesled.com/[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=14&start=0#p96
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT links
User: Ken Franklin / DateTime: 2006-08-11 17:21:08

[quote="David Whyld"]
Former home of the Reviews Exchange actually. Robert Street now runs it from [url]http://adrift.sitesled.com/[/url]
[/quote]  
Updated

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=14&start=0#p97
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT links
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-11 17:38:03

Ah, good! Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=10&start=0#p98
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: IF Archive Hugo Downloads
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-11 22:02:43

[quote]
Kent Tessman posted an interesting bit of trivia about the top downloads at the Interactive Fiction Archive (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifarchive.org/">http://www.ifarchive.org/</a>). The post, which some may already have seen, is here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.joltcountry.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4003&sid=abd4ea178d4095cfd98f795227025e18">http://www.joltcountry.com/phpBB2/viewt ... 5227025e18</a>
[/quote]   
That's pretty interesting.  I think the only Hugo game I've played so far is "Distress," and the only game on the top downloads list that I've played is "Curses" (both of which I liked a lot).  What are "Fallacy of Dawn," "Guilty Bastards," and "LASH" about?  Which ones are Hugo?  What are your recommendations?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=10&start=0#p99
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: IF Archive Hugo Downloads
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-11 22:09:29

[quote="Gayla"]
What are "Fallacy of Dawn," "Guilty Bastards," and "LASH" about? Which ones are Hugo? What are your recommendations?
[/quote]  

"Fallacy of Dawn" is a game by Robb Sherwin. I'm embarassed to admit I haven't played it either. "Guilty Bastards" is a mystery by Kent Tessman (creator of Hugo itself). Both feature graphics. Both were written in Hugo. LASH, I'm even less familiar with. It stands for "Local Asynchronous Satellite Hookup" (so says the IF Wiki), and was written by Paul O'Brian. It's supposed to be really good.

I really ought to play some of these games myself. Generally, I stick to console games (XBox, GC, PS2, DS, whatever), and play IF only around competition time. I'm probably missing a lot of good, classic IF that way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=7&start=10#p100
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: How does ADRIFT's parsing work?
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2006-08-12 02:16:37

[quote="Merk"]
It doesn't sound like the parser is "broken" per se. It just works in a much different way than other systems. Any idea when it's coming out, and what features are being added or changed?
[/quote] 

Well, looking at the ADRIFT 5 page, it looks like the current estimate for release is in Q4 of this year.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=15&start=0#p101
Forum: Competitions / Subject: [ADRIFT] Hourglass Competition enters judging phase
User: Ken Franklin / DateTime: 2006-08-12 07:38:12

Woodfish has now posted a zip file containing the 13 entries to this minicomp on the ADRIFT website [url=http://www.adrift.org.uk/cgi/new/download.cgi?947]HERE[/url]. The judging period ends on 26 August 2006 (more competition details [url=http://insideadrift.org.uk/mwiki/index.php?title=Hourglass_Competition_2006]HERE[/url].)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=10&start=0#p102
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: IF Archive Hugo Downloads
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-12 09:26:20

I find that with so many games to choose from, it's hard to pick one out to play.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=10&start=0#p103
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: IF Archive Hugo Downloads
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-12 09:42:32

There are various "must play" lists out there. I may hunt around and post a list of them, when I get a chance.

One thing seems a little discouraging, though -- and this is a little off the topic. Most of the "highly recommended" IF, or the IF that gets discussed and mentioned frequently, is the older stuff, from IF's "revival" (mid to late 90's -- maybe 2000 and 2001). It seems more difficult for new authors to really make a mark now, or write a classic game, because there are bodies of work and certain authors that seem to have the market cornered on what's considered important and relevent today. [emote]Sad[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=10&start=0#p104
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: IF Archive Hugo Downloads
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-12 12:20:36

Is "Fallacy Of Dawn" an adult game? I'm sure I heard someone say that the "fallacy" in the title actually referred to, um, a sexual organ [emote]Smile[/emote] . Or am I thinking of a completely different game?

I've played "Guilty Bastards" - one of the first IF games I played after getting on the internet about five years ago. Damn good game. Never played "LASH" but I've heard good things about it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=10&start=0#p105
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: IF Archive Hugo Downloads
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2006-08-12 15:48:55

Fallacy is not AIF.  (There is a sex scene, but not really.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=16&start=0#p106
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Redirect to Essell's Forum?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-13 10:52:33

Would anybody be opposed to me just setting up this intfiction.org/forum URL as a redirect to Essell's forum? I appreciate the time and effort Rioshin put into installing and configuring this one, but we really don't need two of them, do we?

Besides, the continued criticism by the IF community is just really wearing thin with me. They're likely to wake up one day to find that their staunch resistance to change -- moreover, their unwillingness to embrace new ideas that aren't suggested or endorsed by those few already recognized as trend-setters -- has sapped all relevance from a form of entertainment that could have been carried to a wider audience. If you aren't a trend-setter, you're either a follower or a boat-rocker.

I can accept that that's just the way things are, but for my peace of mind, I think it will do me good to just drop out for a while. I'm not one of the trend-setters, I don't care to be a boat-rocker, and I need a break before I'm ready to toe the line again. I think I'll get more accomplished writing IF in a vaccuum for a while, than in discussing why things should or shouldn't change.

So, would anybody care one way or the other if I auto-redirect this URL over to Essell's forum instead?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=16&start=0#p107
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Redirect to Essell's Forum?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-13 11:38:23

I don't mind.

I've actually grown to like the look of this forum, though. At first Essel's seemed quite a bit stylish, but now, well, I find myself liking this one more.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=16&start=0#p108
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Redirect to Essell's Forum?
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-13 12:45:44

[quote="David Whyld"]
I've actually grown to like the look of this forum, though. At first Essel's seemed quite a bit stylish, but now, well, I find myself liking this one more.
[/quote] 

Probably because of the more polished look and functionality of the whole forum. Of course, Rioshin didn't alter much of the phpBB forum design as Essell did with the forum software he obtained.

I guess I wouldn't mind as well.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=16&start=0#p109
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Redirect to Essell's Forum?
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2006-08-13 14:59:59

[quote="Arnel Legaspi"]
Of course, Rioshin didn't alter much of the phpBB forum design as Essell did with the forum software he obtained.
[/quote] 

Actually, I didn't alter anything in the phpBB style - except to add the folding stuff into it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=16&start=0#p110
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Redirect to Essell's Forum?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-13 15:37:17

Mike:

Sorry you're feeling that way.  I don't think it's any secret that the IF community is made up of a bunch of people who are similar in manner and set in their ways.  Most of them have written nothing of value (if they've even written ANYTHING) and contribute nothing but comments on a newsgroup.  Not that it's a bad thing, but it really does do a lot to discourage new players and authors, more than they probably realize.

I won't mind a redirect.  I just hope that new people will come in and be able to break into a community that really, desperately needs changing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=16&start=0#p111
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Redirect to Essell's Forum?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-13 16:19:25

Might it be an idea to keep [i]this[/i] as the main forum? Like I said before, Essell's forum is stylish, but this is more the kind of forum that people are going to be familiar with. Newcomers are more likely to use a forum like this than one like Essell's.

EDIT: of course, getting the italics fixed would be nice.  8O

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=16&start=0#p112
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Redirect to Essell's Forum?
User: Ken Franklin / DateTime: 2006-08-13 16:58:36

It would be a shame if this forum was the one to go as it has more functionality. The other forum is trying hard to pretend it isn't a forum, which rather negates the whole reason for being there.

I do believe that one forum is the way to go and should be given a decent chance to build up some momentum. The IF community is very stuck in its ways with respect to RAIF and RGIF, they would be hard to shift en masse, but a slow drip could occur if the forum provided something extra.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=16&start=0#p113
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Redirect to Essell's Forum?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-13 19:53:16

I don't mind at all to keep hosting. I'm just afraid if I back away from participating publicly -- as one of the people who really argued in favor of getting a forum set up -- I'd only be helping it fail. If Rioshin is willing to keep it going, you guys are willing to post, and maybe a few moderators and/or more admin are added, then it probably won't matter if I'm very involved or not. So, I guess we can wait and see what happens. If the other forum is more active, I can always redirect when the need arises. We could archive any posts from here, so as not to lose anything if that ever happens.

I just sat here this morning, getting more frustrated by the short-sightedness of the IF community and what seems to be a complete unwillingness to support this idea, and realized I'd rather be *writing* interactive fiction anyway. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=16&start=0#p114
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Redirect to Essell's Forum?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-14 02:51:48

[quote="Merk"]
I just sat here this morning, getting more frustrated by the short-sightedness of the IF community and what seems to be a complete unwillingness to support this idea, and realized I'd rather be *writing* interactive fiction anyway. [emote]:)[/emote]
[/quote] 

That's where you and most of the RAIF crowd differ. They're quite happy to debate the idea of game writing for months or even years at a time, but actually write a game? Perish the thought!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=16&start=0#p115
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Redirect to Essell's Forum?
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-14 05:57:10

I say let's keep this going for now. Sooner or later the functionality of web forums will be seen as a *good* reason to move on to. Wanaselja's correct - most people on RAIF and RGIF are set in their ways, and getting them to move on to something like this will most likely be a very slow process.

But [b]not impossible[/b].

The better way to go about this, IMO, is to refrain from more flaming and bashing. The less we speak against newsgroups users (whether they make actual games or not), the better it'll be for the whole community.

I'll keep posting. If anyone needs help for any IF language that I'm familiar with, I'll post a reply. But I don't mind switching between Google Groups and here. It's just an additional tab on my browser, anyway  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=16&start=10#p116
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Redirect to Essell's Forum?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-14 06:07:11

Okay, no more bashing the RAIF chaps for sticking with their hideously outdated antiquated poorly designed and ultimately flawed fifth rate newsgroup.

 [emote]Razz[/emote] 

Now, on with some game discussions.


What we need to do, ideally, is to fill this place up with content and *then* we might attract some of the RAIF crowd over here. At the moment, we only have a handful of active threads, a handful of members, and not much in the way of content. RAIF has a huge amount of content. To make this the place to be, there needs to be something here that doesn't exist on RAIF.

A section reviewing new game releases might be a start. They can sit in their own special part of the forum and be there pretty much forever; on RAIF (or RGIf) they'd disappear in a week and be unlikely to be seen again. Can anyone name the last five games that were reviewed on RGIF? No, didn't think so.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=17&start=0#p117
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: [HUGO] Pantomime
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-14 06:33:50

"Pantomime" by Robb Sherwin


This was the third of Robb Sherwin's Hugo games that I've played but the first that I actually managed to finish (albeit with a little help). The previous two I didn't give up with because of their difficulty but because the subject matter didn't really interest me. Pantomime I decided I'd stick with through thick and thin because it was one of only two new games in the Spring Thing 2006 (one of the others was mine and another I had helped test) so I figured getting through two games prior to the Comp deadline wouldn't be too much of a struggle.

Pantomime is a strange game, made stranger by the gameplay device of not showing the whole story from start to finish but often dropping lengthy cut scenes in which serve to explain little but confuse even more. The main character is called Raif, a resident of the Martian moon, Phobos, who has a companion called Chmod with him for part of the game. Chmod is a robot who resembles a shop vac. The setting is the future, yet it's the kind of Blade Runner style future where most of the world seems to have changed little from the modern day (aside from it being set on one of Mars' moons, of course). Old time humans are cloned and referred to as 'mimes', some suffering apparent brain damage from the cloning process and needing help in adjusting to modern society. One popular pastime is throwing rocks at the mimes of politicians who were probably dead before you even were born. Oh yes, a strange game indeed.

Pantomime frequently did a great job of annoying me. Hiding exits from rooms is never a good idea, nor is events not running until something else, seemingly unrelated, has occurred first. A few times I seemed to be revisiting earlier parts of the game for no other reason than to try and find the trigger needed to progress the game to the next stage.

There were no real bugs that I encountered in the early part of the game (a few missing item descriptions but nothing terrible and an exit moving itself) but a couple of oddities later on. One involved meeting Cinnamon at a restaurant, experiencing a cut scene outside, being dumped outside the bar… and then having the cut scene run again. Another time, my robotic companion Chmod disappeared from a room with only one exit, then when I left the room myself and returned, I found him there waiting for me. At first I assumed he was still there and just missing from the room description, but as attempts to speak with him didn't work I guess he was gone after all. There was also an amusing moment towards the end of the game when the room description first of all told me that Chmod was giggling to himself and then that he was knocked out. Clever things these robotic sidekicks.

An interesting twist at the end indicates the player has a mime himself which explained a few of the more confusing pieces that had occurred before, but still left a number of holes in the main plot of the game. The motivations for the villain seemed strange - acquiring body parts for no other reason than to have them? The fact that such a person could hardly pass in public looking like that was never raised. Or was he simply so deranged that he had never stopped to wonder about that?

I was left with mixed feelings at the end of the game over whether I actually liked it or not. What I did like was the writing (very accomplished and showing a lot of polish. Even when the game was at its most confusing, the writing was enough to gloss over the rough edges). What I didn't like was… quite a few different things actually. The fact that I couldn't really get my head around the storyline didn't help. Then, too, there's the fact that a good name for the main villain of the piece is not Mr Kangaroo. It's kind of hard to take a character seriously when he carries a name like that.

5 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=18&start=0#p118
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: [INFORM] Damnatio Memoriae
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-14 06:34:51

"Damnatio Memoriae" by Emily Short


This was an interesting little game that I wasn't really sure what to make of. Playable for nothing more than a few minutes, and with an event kicking in after a dozen moves and abruptly killing you off, it's unfortunately not the sort of game that is likely to hold much lasting appeal.

You play the part of Agrippa Postumus, the magic-using grandson of Caesar Augustus. Augustus is dead and your life is in danger. Act quickly or it's all over for you.

I was actually looking forward to this game. The previous game I played by the author, City Of Secrets, was one of the best games I've played over the past few years. Five minutes into playing Damnatio Memoriae and I had been killed three times. My enthusiasm began to wane quite swiftly after this. I think one of the issues I had with the game was that I never realised just how short it was until I'd completed it. I had the idea that the two locations available at the start of the game were just a small part of what was on offer, and that if I could figure out how I needed to solve the puzzle that ultimately left me dead, I'd be free to explore the rest of the game. Unfortunately, when I figured out what needed doing, after dying roughly a dozen times, the game ended anyway.

The game has a few neat custom commands, but it's over with so quickly that there's not much chance to make use of them. Like reading the intro to a superhero novel where the hero's powers are listed in great detail to whet the appetite… and then THE END is promptly displayed. The THINK command came in handy for hiding the evidence of my 'crimes' as it revealed what still needed to be done, and I found a use for LINK as well (quite an inspired command actually, even if there wasn't enough time to make proper use of it), but REVERSE LINK I never got to use and ENSLAVE only ended in my slave getting killed instead of me and then me being imprisoned (and thus the game ending anyway).

It took several runs through the game before I figured out everything that needed doing to avoid being killed and then, just as I expected the game to really open up and start properly, it ended. Yes, it's a short game. Two rooms in total, although as one of them doesn't need to be entered (as far as I could tell) and is a dead end, what you're left with is essentially a one room game that can be completed in a dozen moves and no more than a minute's playing time. Nicely done all the same, but I couldn't help thinking this wasn't an actual game so much as the introduction to one.

There were a few annoyances at play, although I'm not sure if this was down to the game itself or Inform 7 in general. The help menu, for instance, was a pain to navigate, requiring N to move down to the next help item and B to move back to the previous one. The arrow keys didn't work for some reason, although they did in Inform 6 help menus. Other than that, I found myself amused by Inform's default response whenever I tried to move certain items: THAT'S FIXED IN PLACE. One of the items was a vase which, while large, was hardly fixed in place. Another was some hay. The last was a stool. A stool! Fixed in place! I think the kind of responses I used to get back on the two word parsers that plagued text adventures in the 80's would have been preferable: YOU CAN'T DO THAT.

6 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=19&start=0#p119
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: [ADRIFT] The Potter & The Mould
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-14 06:35:48

"The Potter & The Mould" by Robert Street


Superhero games have always been a favourite of mine since I was a kid so I warmed to this one immediately. Although, saying that, none of the heroes or the villains presented here, particularly the title characters, were really that super. The Potter was a remarkably poor supervillain and the Mould's sole power is to change his body into different shapes. The main character is even worse off. Bearing the unflattering superhero moniker of Handmade, he can only transform his hand into different shapes. As far as competing with comic book superheroes and villains like Spiderman or Doctor Octopus, the Potter, the Mould and Handmade come off as a poor substitute.

You play the part of a helpless bystander, rescued by the Mould from drowning and gifted with a portion of his powers in the process. You assume the name Handmade (not quite the new Magneto or Wolverine unfortunately) and join forces with the Mould to fight crime. (Although what use a guy who can only change his hand into different shapes is going to be in a fight with genuine supervillains is debatable.) You're joined along the way by a superheroine called Waterfall who can transform her body into water at will and use it to combat crime.

Some of the game is told in flash back, detailing the events which led to Handmade becoming a superhero (the aforementioned drowning) and the death of his parents at the hands of the Potter (the supervillain of the piece), culminating in present day events and eventually heading to the Potter's lair to do battle with the evil tyrant.

While Handmade himself isn't much of a superhero, his nifty trick of changing his hand into different items is a nice one and allows for quite a bit of variety in gameplay. Type MOULD and you're offered a choice of things you might like to mould your hand into. While I'd have preferred a choice to mould my hand into anything I felt like (a machine gun would have been useful in some of the situations), there's a fair bit of choice on offer, sometimes you'll even find yourself with several possibilities for mould shapes, all of which seem equally viable at the time.

Difficulty-wise, The Potter & The Mould is a fairly straightforward game with a few puzzles scattered along the way, but little that should stop people in their tracks for any length of time. There's only one bit I had trouble with - a fight with a shape-shifting imp - that took a while to get past due to the random nature of the imp's attacks. Just as you can change a part of your body into different weapons during the fight, so can the imp (or its whole body actually), thus getting the better of it is often a case of bashing in one command after another and hoping something works. On the plus side, the imp's attacks seem to cause me precious little damage so the fight itself wasn't life-threatening, just a lengthy one to get past.

My main criticism of the game, aside from the weakness of the superhero and -villain characters, was that for the most part, Handmade never really gets to perform much in the way of superhero actions. His one power isn't up to much and most of the time he seems to make his way through the game doing little more than the average guy in the street could do. Even when fighting a couple of supervillains attacking a mall, he defeats them by more mundane means and seldom has to use his powers. For that matter, use of the items you can mould you hand into is sometimes buggy. During the fight with the supervillains at the mall, I was given the option of moulding my hand into a number of weapons, a bat and a whip being two of them, yet trying to hit my enemies with these items never got me anywhere.

The only other negative aspect of the game was that it was a little too linear for my liking. I would have preferred to explore a bit and maybe work my way through the various aspects that make up the game. Still, there's a fair amount of freedom in the areas you can explore so it's hard to claim the game is too linear.

Overall I liked this game and rated it as my favourite in the Spring Thing 2006. I'd look forward to a similar one but, preferably with a superhero who is really super.

7 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=20&start=0#p120
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: [INFORM] The Reliques Of Tolti-Aph
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-14 06:36:59

"The Reliques Of Tolti-Aph" by Graham Nelson


The Reliques Of Tolti-Aph is a strange game, particularly considering who wrote it (the famed Graham Nelson, creator of the Inform language) and that it was one of the games meant to herald the forthcoming Inform 7. I remember starting to play it expecting to be blown away by its sheer magnificence, and then, barely two minutes later when I found myself in a generic RPG with randomised combat and two of the most basic functions of IF games bizarrely disabled, I began to wonder just what was going on. Was this some kind of joke game? Had Nelson been 'hacked' by Paul Panks? Or, the hardest to believe, did he actually think this kind of thing was what people wanted to play? It even made me think of an hilarious sketch on Alas Smith & Jones from years ago when an ageing and highly respected singer comes out of retirement to make his comeback… and does so with a song that's so mind-numbingly cheesy and awful that everyone, even former fans of his and people who admire him, have to struggle to contain their dismay over just how bad it is.

The introduction did a good job of making me want to quit the game. It seemed to be slightly mocking the whole RPG genre with references to 'retiring at level 3' with 'most of your experience points intact' - hardly a positive start. As far as introductions go, this one was bad.

The combat system that is at the heart of the game is pretty cringe worthy. I'm a big fan of RPG on the whole - Baldur's Game II and Diablo II and Morrowind - but the combat system here is lame. There's not even a proper combat system as such because all that seems to happen is that someone attacks you and you just bang the RETURN key a few times until the combat is over. Exciting it isn't. During the first combat in the game, between myself and a harpy, I tried doing things like ATTACK HARPY or KILL HARPY only to be told that I couldn't because I was already in combat. Ho hum. My opinion of the game, already low, sunk a bit further.

The combat ended, incidentally, with the harpy killing me. As it did the second time I played the game. And the third time. The fourth time, however, I beat the SOB. Not, I should add, through me improving my tactics or anything like that, but purely because of the randomised nature of the combat. I let out a disgruntled "about damn time!" at this stage, progressed a bit further, got into another fight, died… and as UNDO was disabled, and I hadn't yet reached a part where I could save the game, that was it. I'd have to go through the entire combat with the harpy again if I wanted to see what else the game had to offer. As it happened, I didn't want to see what else the game had to offer as I was more eager to quit this than any game I've played for… oh, a long, long, long time. A quick click on the delete key and The Reliques Of Tolti-Aph was consigned to that special part of my recycle bin that I affectionately call the "What The Hell Were You Thinking?" section.

No doubt it would have kept Ninja and Ninja II company there for the rest of my hard drive's days, but then Inform 7 emerged in beta, the source code to the game was available, and I decided I'd have a bash at fixing the game's annoyances and see if there was actually a decent game hidden behind the horror that is a disabled SAVE and UNDO system.

Was there…?

Hmmm… let's mention something about the game I actually liked. The writing. It was nicely written, well polished and far, far better than anything else in the game. It's got the kind of wry humour built into it that I'm especially fond of, hinting at someone who knows exactly what he's doing and knows how to do it best. Unfortunately, the writing is the only thing this game has going for it.

Gameplay wise there are a veritable horde of annoyances. From the plain terrible (like the aforementioned decision to disable SAVE and UNDO) to the mimesis-breaking (combat information and describing items as "The dagger is a weapon with a 1d3 attack") to the seriously unpopular (mazes). Even when I'd figured out how to enable SAVE and UNDO, I still found it hard to get any kind of enjoyment out of The Reliques Of Tolti-Aph. It's just not a good game. The combat system bored me before I was at the end of the first combat. I cheated with this game more than I've done with any other IF game I've ever played (giving myself 14,000 Strength to make me invincible and increasing the dagger to a 10d10 weapon so I could instantly kill just about every enemy I came across with a single blow) and still found myself unable to like it. And when I stumbled across the maze, I just hung my head in despair.

Back to the "What The Hell Were You Thinking?" section of my recycle bin, I'm afraid.



Addendum: in a way, this game, despite its many faults, is a game that everyone should play as it does an excellent job of including just about every unpopular aspect of game design:

* SAVE is disabled (or at least restricted).
* UNDO is disabled.
* It's got randomised combat.
* It breaks mimesis to such a degree that even I, who break mimesis regularly in my own games and generally don't give two hoots about, found it annoying.
* It's got a maze.
* It's got a wyvern (which is a kind of dragon).

Write a game which includes none of the above and you're well on your way to a masterpiece.

1 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=21&start=0#p121
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: [INFORM] The Ghost Train
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-14 06:38:02

"The Ghost Train" by Paul Johnson


I've played a couple of other games by the same author recently - House Of The Midnight Sun, which was very good but also flawed, and Jet Blue, which was okay but also flawed and probably contained one of the highest number of typos I've ever seen in a game. The Ghost Train actually comes between the other two but I missed it out at the time because, like HOTMS, it's a horror and I felt like a change of pace. But while looking around for a game to play recently, I remembered this one and decided to give it a whirl. 



First Impressions

My first impression of The Ghost Train was that it was a bit too linear for my liking. It begins in a train compartment, with you and your fiancé, Ingrid, travelling home to see your family for Christmas. Nothing seems to happen for several moves, after which the train crashes and you, perhaps unsurprisingly, are the train's only survivor. You awaken at the side of the wrecked train, wander around for a bit, and then return to the scene of the crash… only to find the wreckage missing. All very eerie. 



Stranger things follow. Your fiancé's necklace, which she was wearing on the train, shows up nearby, and you even hear her voice on an old phone. This is all very atmospheric and well written and bodes well for the rest of the game. 



Unfortunately, the start of the game seems to be most polished and things seem to go quickly downhill. Later parts have a rushed feel to them, as well as making precious little sense. While I could get my head around the idea of the game to begin with, later on it just seemed to lose its way. 



Problems

The most noticeable problems with the game are the constant grammatical errors which seem to litter almost every location. Frequently the game will put two different parts of a conversation on the same line whereas other times they are separated by a couple of lines space, or put apostrophes in the wrong place or just format the text in such a way that it often looks out of place on the screen. None of these are major problems and a few would be easily forgivable, but a decent proofread through the text could have picked up 99% of them. 



One problem I came across was due to the unhelpful way the game described a creature that was trying to kill me. He was referred to alternatively as "ticket collector", "corpse" and "skeleton" yet examining any of those or trying to interact with them just hit me with one error message after another. I figured out what I needed to do, yet it wasn't until I checked the walkthrough and realised I actually need to refer to him as "ghost" (which he clearly wasn't) that I was able to deal with him. 



A previous game I played by the same author - House Of The Midnight Sun - showed a high standard of testing for the most part. This game doesn't. There are strange errors popping up all over the place, not the least of which is a list of deaths I found in the chapel which I couldn't seem to figure out anything to do with. Examining it hit me with the strange error message I ONLY UNDERSTOOD YOU AS FAR AS WANTING TO EXAMINE THE LIST OF DEATHS, with EXAMINE being replaced with READ or GET if that's what you try instead. Perhaps strangest of all is the fact that I wasn't even aware a list of deaths existed in the chapel until I tried, following a prompt in the game, to locate some information on my fiancé and in response to SEARCH INGRID I was told "In the bookcase is a list of deaths". 



One particularly frustrating thing the game does part of the way through is put some of the location descriptions in poetry (very bad poetry, and often riddled with spelling mistakes). The first time I saw this I assumed it was just some quote from a poem that the author had decided, for whatever reason, to include in his game… and I promptly ignored them afterwards. It wasn't till later in the game, when I'd exhausted just about every other option and was struggling to find some way forward, that I realised the poems weren't just there for decoration and actually served a purpose. Annoying? Oh yes. 



Problems

Again and again while playing The Ghost Train I was forced back to the walkthrough. A couple of times it was a case of me not trying hard enough or simply missing a clue that was presented to me (nothing new there!); other times it was down to some very definite faults in the game design. Aside from the ghost being referred to as different names during the game, there was an error in the name of a church I had to research information on. The church is down as 'Gorgan' in the inscription I found, yet 'Gorgon' is what you need to type to find out any information on it. Whatever positive things the game has going for it, and it does have a few despite the largely negative tone of this review so far, they get lost amidst the sheer number of problems. 



Some of the game's puzzles are easy to figure out. Some are difficult but well clued. Some are so vague as to be almost impossible. Even after seeing the walkthrough, I'm still not sure about some of them. Obviously someone managed to solve them so they're not as impossible as you might think, but it's hard to imagine many people having the patience to reason them out. Towards the end of the game in particular, the puzzles become generally less well clued as if the author either got bored or was simply trying to finish the game as quickly as possible. A conversation option towards the end of the game, involving Satan (or Salan as he's wrongly referred to on occasion), requires the player to ask a question about a subject that there's no reason to ask about. 



Clearly whatever kind of testing this game went through prior to release was poor at best. 



Overall

Despite the many, many problems with the game, I found myself enjoying playing The Ghost Train for the most part, but every time I thought it was going to turn into a really good game, I ran into another error, or another impossible to figure out puzzle, or a whole mass of typos one after one, and my favourable opinion of it dropped a notch. Any game that has me consulting the walkthrough on a regular basis isn't necessarily a bad game in itself, but when the puzzles I'm stuck on are down to guess the noun issues (like with the ghost/ticket collector/skeleton/ corpse) or misspellings (Gorgan instead of Gorgon), I start to wish I'd played something else instead. Fix the errors, a mammoth task in itself, and this would be a well above average horror game. As it stands, it's still good enough in its own right but definitely not anywhere as good as it could have been. 



This is the third game by the same author I've played recently, and while I've enjoyed them all to one degree or another, they've all been particularly prone to bugs and guess the verb. Each has contained more than a few of each, this game being the worst of the three, and indicates an author too eager to properly test his games out before releasing them or one who simply doesn't think that bugs and guess the verb are a problem. Now if this was some talentless hack who couldn't write worth a damn, I'd just make a point of avoiding any future games he releases and decide I wasn't really missing anything, but the writing in the games is generally good, the storylines interesting, and my overall feeling is that the games are well above average. So it's a crying shame that he just can't pay a little more attention to detail and maybe even take the time to proofread his text. None of the games have been masterpieces, but the potential is certainly there… if the problems can be fixed.



4 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=22&start=0#p122
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: [ADRIFT] The Quest For More Hair
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-14 06:38:54

"The Quest For More Hair" by Matt (Dark Baron)


Background: you're an adventurer called Liqid who is bald and has decided to go on a quest for more hair.



What the…?



Yep. You read that right. An adventurer called Liqid. Who is bald. Who is going on a quest for more hair. No wonder I don’t remember much about the game from when it first came out. I probably took one look at the introduction (littered with spelling mistakes as it happens) and quit it five seconds later. The fact that it was credited to someone with the bizarre name of Matt (Dark Baron) didn’t help matters much either.



There are so many things wrong with the game that making any kind of progress is a constant guess the verb battle. Or, more appropriately, ‘guess what the heck the writer was thinking’. Want an example? Well… one room has a rusty bell in it that needs to be rung. But does RING BELL work? Nope. RING RUSTY BELL? Nope. Seems you need to put RING *THE* BELL in order to get the game to understand what you want. Grrrr.



The game also makes use of ADRIFT’s built in combat system which is every bit as bad here as it is in every other game I've played that has used it. Most of the time, it’s simply a case of typing KILL DRUNK WITH SWORD until either you or the drunk fall down dead and seeing such wonderful messages as this



You HIT Drunk with the Sword.  Drunk hits you.



You HIT Drunk with the Sword.  Drunk hits you.



You HIT Drunk with the Sword.  Drunk hits you.



You HIT Drunk with the Sword.  Drunk hits you.



displayed on the screen. Anyone who thinks that combat systems have no place in a text adventure would certainly be speaking from a stronger footing if they played this game.



What else is there to say about the game? There are numerous spelling mistakes – a few in almost every sentence – as well as more grammatical errors than you'd see if you attended the Grammatical Errors Convention; there are descriptions for very few of the items mentioned in room descriptions (and the ones that have descriptions are seriously lacking (the key carries the wonderful description IT IS A SMALL BRONZE KEY)); item names begin with capital letters (Sword and Cabinet) for no apparent reason; a location with a pit that kills you a turn after you enter it (some kind of event runs that moves you over the pit and then plunges you downwards to your doom, whether or not you actually wanted to do that or not); a ferry man armed with a (sic) Schmitar; and unhelpful and often sarcastic responses to reasonable commands.



All in all, this is one terrible game.



1 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=23&start=0#p123
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: [ADRIFT] The Plague: Redux
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-14 06:40:50

"The Plague: Redux" by Cannibal


The idea of zombies attacking the living seems a popular theme for the past few years, what with the remake of Dawn Of The Dead, a pastiche Shaun Of The Dead and then George A. Romero’s (very disappointing) Land Of The Dead, and here the idea makes its way into a text adventure. With pretty impressive results, too.

You play the part of Stacie, out for the night with some of the girls, who gets caught up in all the chaos at a subway station when the undead start turning on the living. Your friends become lost and you are trapped in the subway station, weaponless. It’s just you…and a horde of ravening zombies.

The bulk of The Plague: Redux takes place in the subway station as Stacie, the aforementioned damsel in distress, struggles to get out in one piece. Along the way, she encounters a few other survivors (including some pleasant chap who tries to rape her (not a game for kids clearly)) and, yes, zombies galore. The writing is excellent for the most part and does a good job of evoking the scene of a terrified young woman in mortal danger of being killed by zombies.

Unfortunately there are some serious errors that let things down. I found some zombies feasting on a corpse in a cubicle and options were displayed on screen to either [F] Fight or [E] Escape. Neither worked. Nor did attacking the zombies work. In fact, I wasn’t able to do anything at all about the zombies, and worst still, when I typed LOOK, I was alone in the cubicle without the zombies. Worse was the fact that when I left the cubicle and re-entered, the zombies were back. This time, however, I wasn’t given the option of [F] Fight or [E] Escape, but just killed them straight off with a weapon I was carrying.

Elsewhere I found a woman who had been mauled by zombies. Even though I didn’t know her name, the game helpfully referred to her as Kate. After some struggling to help her, I figured out what needed doing but ran into a problem in that the game wouldn’t accept my GIVE [OBJECT] TO KATE but only GIVE [OBJECT] TO WOMAN.

If there are any faults with The Plague: Redux (gameplay faults, that is, and not outright errors or bugs like those mentioned above), it’s that the early parts are far too linear. The intro seems to take an age to get through and involves little more than the main character and her friends fleeing from a horde of zombies. There's also the problem that, despite zombies running around and killing people all over the place, it’s possible for the player to take as long as they want in getting anywhere. And the threat of the zombies themselves is somewhat weakened by the fact that the player – a young woman armed with a metal pole – is able to kill them without too much difficulty. How has the zombie threat progressed this far if they're so easy to kill? (Then again, it never made much sense in the films that unarmed, shambling corpses who can’t think for themselves could overpower soldiers armed with machine guys…)

A large portion of the game has the player wandering around the subway station trying to find some money for a bottle of water from a dispensing machine. Why? Because she’s thirsty. This struck me as a pretty flimsy excuse for what is – due to the way the money is actually found in half a dozen or so different places, some of them not very obvious – a very lengthy and time consuming puzzle. I must have spent a good hour wandering around the subway station searching for a few extra coins for the water… all the time wondering just why I didn’t simply go into one of the many shops scattered around the place and help myself to some. Unfortunately, the water is required for an event later in the game and without it you won’t get anywhere, so it’s not a case of you being able to miss it out if you don’t want to.

Examining items and looking under and behind them is often a different thing entirely in this game. Something that I discovered after examining just about every item in the subway station, not finding much, and then realising I had to go over the whole place again to find what I needed. A little README file indicating that examining items was different from looking under and behind them would have been a good idea.

But the problems with the game (aside from the errors with the disappearing zombies in the cubicle) are relatively minor ones and, with a bit of perseverance, can be overcome. Overall, The Plague: Redux is a great text adventure, and certainly the best ADRIFT game I've played this year.

8 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=16&start=10#p124
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Redirect to Essell's Forum?
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2006-08-14 07:19:29

[quote="David Whyld"]
A section reviewing new game releases might be a start. They can sit in their own special part of the forum and be there pretty much forever; on RAIF (or RGIf) they'd disappear in a week and be unlikely to be seen again. Can anyone name the last five games that were reviewed on RGIF? No, didn't think so.
[/quote] 

Lol. I'd guess that'd be the IntroComp entries - but as you so aptly put it, who remembers their names? Not I, at least.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=20&start=0#p125
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: [INFORM] The Reliques Of Tolti-Aph
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-14 08:14:14

Ouch!  That was pretty harsh.

Can't say I disagree, though.  Why anyone would bother making an example game out of a randomized-combat RPG, I don't know.  There are plenty of MUDs out there that do it better and let you do it with other people.

And, Dr. Nelson breaks his own rules for game design.  Strike two.

Although, I must say, you made it farther than I did.  I never killed the harpy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=20&start=0#p126
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: [INFORM] The Reliques Of Tolti-Aph
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-14 08:32:00

I only killed the harpy by cheating (i.e. editing the game to make me invincible). It still didn't make it a better game, though.

I still can't decide what Graham Nelson was thinking when he brought this game out. Emily Short wrote a couple of fine examples of what Inform 7 is capable of, and then Graham goes and shoots himself in the foot with this one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=24&start=0#p127
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Interpreters!
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-14 08:43:58

Getting started playing IF, it's a given you're going to need an interpreter (at least until there's a way to make executable files for every platform in your authoring system of choice!)

There are several options here, but the ones I use are as follows:

Gargoyle, for Windows.  Found at <a href="http://ccxvii.net/gargoyle/">http://ccxvii.net/gargoyle/</a>

Gargoyle is an interpreter that has included the following interpreters in it's package: Agility 1.1.1, Alan 2.8.6 and 3.0a1, Frotz 2.43 (glk port), Glulxe 0.3.5, Hugo 3.1, Level 9 4.0, Magnetic 2.2, Scare 1.3.3, Tads 2.5.9 and 3.0.8.  That means it will play any of the games those interpreters run.

Spatterlight, for Macintosh.  Found at <a href="http://ccxvii.net/spatterlight/">http://ccxvii.net/spatterlight/</a>

Spatterlight is an interpreter, similar to Gargoyle, that can run AGT, Adrift, AdvSys, Alan, Glulx, Hugo, Level 9, Magnetic Scrolls, TADS (text-only), Quill, and Z-code (except v6) games.

Those two interpreters will play most of the games you'll encounter (although sometimes without the included graphics, if they have any.)  Usually around competition time, I'll use more full-featured interpreters so I can see and hear everything the authors included in their games.

There are plenty more out there, so let's hear what you use.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=24&start=0#p128
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Interpreters!
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-14 09:12:21

How is Cugel? It's for Macintosh too, right? I think it's by the same author (Tor) as Gargoyle.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=24&start=0#p129
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Interpreters!
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-14 09:20:40

Might be best to have a "sticky" topic here for this, along with the appropriate links for downloading them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=24&start=0#p130
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Interpreters!
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-14 09:26:57

Cugel turned into Spatterlight.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=24&start=0#p131
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Interpreters!
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-14 10:11:54

Yeah, I could see doing a "sticky" topic that has several sections -- the "multi-purpose" ones (Gargoyle and Spatterlight), followed by platform-specific interpreters for each system (Tads 2/3, etc).

I have a page with download links for Hugo interepreters:
[url]http://www.sidneymerk.com/hugofree.shtml[/url]

I think it's up to date.

As cool as I think Gargoyle is, I'd recommend a native Hugo interepreter to anybody wanting to run Hugo games. Because it's a GLK implementation, graphics and windows don't work correctly. It *does* support graphics inline, but I've really had to do things differently to keep from crashing Gargoyle (things like printing text and then clearing the screen *before* attempting to calculate the screen width for graphics sizing). I chased a quirk for two hours the other day, before I figured out the work-around (otherwise Gargoyle would crash running my WIP).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=24&start=0#p133
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Interpreters!
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-14 12:47:18

I just noticed that Tor is a member of the forum already. Maybe I could send you an example .HEX program showing how Gargoyle crashes if you try to calculate the screen with before you've printed anything?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=26&start=0#p134
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Quirkiness with "read" topics
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-14 12:49:17

I've noticed something else in this version of phpBB that doesn't seem to work quite right. When you post a new message (a new topic), it will show that the message is unread, until you go back in and read what you just wrote. Also, it seems unreliable on marking topics as read anyway. I've looked at the most recent post in some topics, gone back to the list, and noticed that it still shows the topic as unread. I don't know if they're already aware of this (and the italics bug), or if a new version is out yet?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=27&start=0#p135
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Quest - Prize in IFComp
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-14 12:57:00

[url]http://www.ifcomp.org/comp06/prizes.php[/url]

The creator of the Quest development system is giving away Quest plus $100 as a prize in the IFcomp this year. What's the "QuestNet Server" though? Does Quest do multiplayer IF?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=20&start=0#p136
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: [INFORM] The Reliques Of Tolti-Aph
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-14 13:18:39

I'm guessing the thinking was something along the lines of "lets show off how flexible Inform 7 is by doing something that'd be tricky in other languages" - and as an example of how easy it is to change the rule base to do something out of the ordinary, then yes, it's a good example.

It's just such a bad game. And I can't imagine any other game using the same rule-base would be any more satisfying. But I imagine we'll get to see at least a couple of examples based on it entered into the competition this year...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=27&start=0#p137
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Quest - Prize in IFComp
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-14 13:40:09

I think* (though don't quote me on this) that QuestNet Server allows people to create multiplayer IF games with Quest that are playable over the internet. Probably similar to a MUD.

* As far as I know, despite the years the software's been out, no one has ever gone ahead and actually done this so how Questnet Server is to use I couldn't say. I wrote a small game in Quest a few years ago but never had any great desire to write anything else.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=27&start=0#p138
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Quest - Prize in IFComp
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-14 13:40:51

Yes, Quest does do Multiplayer games.

Judging by the general opinion of Quest though, I'm not surprised he's including $100 bucks in that package.  It's doubtful anyone would pick it otherwise.

Haven't tried it myself, but I definitely would if I picked that prize.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=27&start=0#p139
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Quest - Prize in IFComp
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-14 13:59:30

[quote="Wanaselja"]
Haven't tried it myself, but I definitely would if I picked that prize.
[/quote]     
I'd give it a shot, provided I can run it on a Linux server. Right now, it's the 2nd best prize cash-wise. If that remains true and nothing else makes up the difference in value, I'd assume the 2nd place winner will pick it. But the 2nd place winner is probably going to be really comfortable with the system they're already using, if they've written a game good enough for 2nd place.

It's still really cool of him to donate, though. I've been thinking about making a cash prize donation, or gift certificates or something. When I donated those two sets of used games last year, I didn't realize I'd be throwing in over $30 per set for overseas shipping!  [emote]:cry:[/emote]  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=27&start=0#p140
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Quest - Prize in IFComp
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-14 14:22:03

Ha!  30 bucks for overseas shipping?!  You should've used the USPS! (Assuming you live in the US.)

I *might* donate something simple.  Depends on my cash situation in the next month or so.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=27&start=0#p141
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Quest - Prize in IFComp
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-14 14:33:21

Yeah, I used USPS. It was something like $35 or $36 each, due to the destinations and the weight of the packages (six boxed games add up, I suppose). I even had to fill out customs forms, if I recall correctly. I'd hate to donate something and say "US winners only please", but no way can I donote prizes that probably aren't even worth the cost of shipping again! [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=27&start=0#p142
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Quest - Prize in IFComp
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-14 14:37:31

That's strange.  I've sent things overseas before (granted, it was like a Game Boy Advance game or something) but I only spent like 4-5 bucks on shipping.  I think I declared the value as like 5-10 dollars though, so I didn't have to spend any customs fees.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=20&start=0#p143
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: [INFORM] The Reliques Of Tolti-Aph
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-14 14:54:35

[quote="David Whyld"]
I still can't decide what Graham Nelson was thinking when he brought this game out.
[/quote] 
I'm thinking along the lines of _Balances_ for Inform 7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=27&start=0#p144
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Quest - Prize in IFComp
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-14 14:57:45

Yes, you can put those things in a priority envelope, they're very light, and the base rate is about $10 to most countries. When I sent out IFComp 2005 T-Shirts, even the most expensive of them came to about $10. But when you've boxed up something heavier, it's really expensive.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=20&start=0#p145
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: [INFORM] The Reliques Of Tolti-Aph
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-14 15:14:58

I've never heard of "Balances". Was that some kind of test game for Inform 6?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=27&start=0#p146
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Quest - Prize in IFComp
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-14 15:16:28

[quote="Merk"]
Yeah, I used USPS. It was something like $35 or $36 each, due to the destinations and the weight of the packages (six boxed games add up, I suppose). I even had to fill out customs forms, if I recall correctly. I'd hate to donate something and say "US winners only please", but no way can I donote prizes that probably aren't even worth the cost of shipping again! [emote]:)[/emote]
[/quote] 

Stil, I appreciated them.  8)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=27&start=0#p147
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Quest - Prize in IFComp
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-14 15:18:16

[quote="Merk"]
I'd give it a shot, provided I can run it on a Linux server. 
[/quote] 

Quest is strictly Windows-only from what I know of it, although someone on the Quest forum (one of the moderators called Tron) managed to get it working on Linux. I don't know how well it runs on Linux - I don't use Linux myself so I didn't follow the discussion very closely - but it's a start at least.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=20&start=0#p148
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: [INFORM] The Reliques Of Tolti-Aph
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-14 15:36:01

[quote="David Whyld"]
I've never heard of "Balances". Was that some kind of test game for Inform 6?
[/quote] 

It was mostly a demonstration game of some of Inform 6's advanced features, and was tentatively an Enchanter sequel (not having played the original in any depth, I can't say how closely it followed that game). It had a bunch of blocks you could write stuff on, and a bunch of indistinguishable object handling. It also had an implementation of the Enchanter spellcasting system.

Much like Reliques, it was a "show off the system" example, without being much of a classic story. It was slightly more playable that Reliques though!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=0#p149
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Spring Thing 2007
User: Ken Franklin / DateTime: 2006-08-14 17:01:02

The announcement for this all formats competition has just been made and you can find the competition website at [url]http://www.springthing.net/2007/[/url].

Last year there were only four entries and some pretty large prizes to be had.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=0#p150
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-14 17:03:38

I'm entering. Anyone else feel like it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=0#p151
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-14 17:16:18

Ah, I missed it (I removed the news server section from Outlook Express -- I'm not really following the newsgroups now). Thanks for posting! Usually, it's not announced until after the IFComp voting begins (I thought).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=0#p152
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-14 17:40:58

Probably hoping to get more publicity early on and, as a result, more people entering. It's disappointing that it got so few entries the last two years, but hopefully next year all that will change.

I wonder how many people are put off by the $7 entry fee? A really trivial amount, but I remember the fuss it kicked up on RAIF a few years back.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=0#p153
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-14 17:47:11

I submitted intent last year, but of course, I6 brought me to my knees and I didn't end up entering (or paying.)

I think I'll give it a go this year.  Plenty of time to get started and develop a good game once I'm finished with my IF Comp entry.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=0#p154
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-14 17:49:46

I think $7 is fine. It wouldn't matter if it was $1 or $20 (go much higher, though, and it'd probably start to bother people). The idea is to encourage people to enter seriously.

I think if there was no fee, and the competition was for short (2-hour) games like the annual IFComp, it'd get a lot more entries. Then again, I get the feeling that the annual IFComp is really the only competition most people take seriously. So it might not matter that much.

I paid the fee for the 2005 comp, but I ended up not sending a game. I've thought about it for 2007, but I was really discouraged by the near-total lack of enthusiasm expressed by the community in this year's competition. I guess there's only so much that can be said about only four games. I also wonder if players/judges are turned away by the "medium to long sized" rule? I know I was worried that I'd be spending hours and hours playing even just four entries (didn't turn out that way), which was an initial concern.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=0#p155
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-14 17:59:40

To be honest, I would have thought that the small amount of entries in the Spring Thing would have worked to its advantage. Ample time to play and replay (if necessary) each of the games, without the feeling that you have to get through each one as quickly as possible in order to get them all played by the deadline.

The IFComp I always find a little daunting due to the sheer number of games submitted to it. Even when you've weeded out the troll games and the ones by people who just plain don't have a clue (of which there seem to be more and more every year unfortunately), you're still left with between 20 and 30 games. All of which you need to get through in the space of something like 6 weeks. Roughly a game every 2 - 3 days! Normally I might play half a dozen games in that time frame, yet now I'm trying to get 20 - 30 games played *and* get reviews written of them. If half the people planning to enter the IFComp entered the Spring Thing instead, it would help matters immensely.

Of course, I don't see that happening. As you said, most people don't seem to rate the Spring Thing that highly and only a handful of people wrote reviews or even commented on the games. Maybe one day that will all change but I'd be surprised if next year's Spring Thing hit 10 entries.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=0#p156
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-14 18:06:00

The fact that there were only four games is probably why I went ahead and started playing/reviewing, even though I expected to spend a lot longer on each one. I'm not sure why there weren't more judges, though. There were what... 17 total voters? I remember it was a really low number. For all the effort that the four of you who *did* enter put into your games, that's a pathetic return on the investment.

I will say, though, that competition is about the only thing that really spurs me to get my games done. And, it's possible that those 17 voters in the Spring Thing are *more* people than would have played the same games just released out into the open, non-comp style.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8&start=10#p157
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Authoring Tips
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2006-08-14 23:43:37

Merk wrote:
[quote]
Another [issue with adapting static fiction] is that you may assume the player won't try to stray from the storyline at all ...
You'd have to decide just how rigidly you want to channel the player's actions. Should out-of-character actions be stopped entirely, with an appropriate response? Or should you allow players to stray, but lead to an early (and less than ideal) ending?
[/quote]   
Just for fun, I had a think about what kind of IF you could make from "Star Wars" (Episode IV, ie. the original one) - this is from Luke's point of view.

[b]Droid Cleanup Shed[/b]
While you are cleaning up the smaller droid - R2D2 - a beam shoots out from one side and projects a hologram recording. A beautiful looking woman in a white robe appears. "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope." The recording replays over and over; it seems to be stuck.

> ask r2d2 about recording
R2D2 bleeps unintelligibly. C3PO replies, "What is what? He asked you a question. What is that?" After some more bleeps and whistles, C3PO says, "Oh, he says it's nothing, sir. Merely a malfunction, old data. Pay it no mind."

Some more beeping follows. C3P0 interprets: "He says that he is the property of Obi-Wan Kenobi, a resident of these parts and it's a private message for him. Quite frankly, sir, I don't know what he's talking about. Our last master was Captain Antilles. But with all we've been through, this little R2 unit has become a bit eccentric."

The recording continues to play.

> who is kenobi
You don't know anyone named Obi-Wan, but a strange old hermit called Ben Kenobi lives out beyond the Dune sea; too far away to walk, but you could get there quite easily by speeder.

> r2d2, play recording
"Play back the whole thing", you tell R2D2. He beeps and whistles, and C3PO interprets: "He say's the restraining bolt has short-circuited his recording system. He suggests that if you remove the bolt, he might be able to play back the entire recording."

The recording continues to play.

> what is restraining bolt
A restraining bolt is a small attachment that prevents a droid from wandering too far away. It is easily removed.

> remove bolt
Which do you mean, R2D2's restraining bolt or C3P0's restraining bolt?

> R2D2's
You remove the restraining bolt from R2D2, and the recording stops playing.

> r2d2, play recording
"R2D2, play back the entire message."

The small droid whistles. C3PO says, "'What message?' The one you've just been playing! The one you're carrying inside your rusty innards."

Turning to address you, he says, "I'm sorry, sir but he seams to have picked up a slight flutter."

Your uncle's voice carries across the moisture farm, "Luke!"

--------------------

There are several ways the plot could go from here:

(a) If Luke goes to have dinner now (without replacing the restraining bolt), R2D2 wanders off, and Luke needs to go and find him (thus meeting Kenobi and not being around when the Storm Troopers come). This is the way the original story goes.

If Luke puts back the restraining bolt (or doesn't take it off in the first place), then:

(b) He could go and find Kenobi anyway, but without the droids. Luke would be alive, but the droids' capture would wreck the rest of the story.

(c) He could stay home instead, in which case he is killed and the droids are captured by the Storm Troopers.

To keep the story "interactive", I guess you would need a way to allow (b) or (c) (which are both reasonable things to do, given no foreknowledge of the future) and make them non-fatal in some way ...

Maybe Kenobi is compelled by the force to come and visit? Maybe someone else tries cleaning up the droids and leaves off the restraining bolt? Maybe Luke didn't re-attach it properly, or it just falls off? All pretty implausible ...

Static fiction is full of coincidences, minor choices which turn out to have major consequences, character flaws (or strengths) leading to one action rather than another, etc. - to me this seems like the hardest kind of thing to handle in an IF version of a story.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=0#p158
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-15 07:38:11

It’s always disappointing when you enter a comp and get so little feedback, but then neither of the games I entered in the last two Spring Things were games I’d written specifically for the comps. A comp was looming, I had a game ready, and so I entered. If the comp had never happened, the games would still have been written and released. While feedback was pretty sparse, my game *did* get 4 reviews in total (2 positively glowing, 2 less so) which was more than it would have got if I’d never entered it in the comp and simply released it. So in that respect, entering the comp made more sense for me than not entering. And the prizes are an added incentive, of course. [emote]Smile[/emote]

Unfortunately the problem seems to be that more people these days are interested in writing games than playing them (as evidenced by how much more active RAIF is than RGIF). Sometimes, it even seems like the majority of RAIFers would much sooner debate the aspects of game writing rather than the games themselves. How often does a genuine game discussion take place on either RAIF or RGIF that is more than simply a hint request? (Of course, it’s not just limited to RAIF and RGIF. The Adrift forum sees a proper game discussion only a couple of times a year, generally straight after a notable game has been released. The discussion will last a few days, or a week at the outside, then die down. Nice when it happens, but I can’t help thinking that it should be happening *all the time* and not just once every blue moon.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=0#p159
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-15 08:56:51

I don't intend to enter the Spring Thing 2007, my gam will hopefully be ready earlier. Also, it's rather short, so the Spring Thing might not be the best place for it. 

[quote="David Whyld"]
Unfortunately the problem seems to be that more people these days are interested in writing games than playing them (as evidenced by how much more active RAIF is than RGIF). Sometimes, it even seems like the majority of RAIFers would much sooner debate the aspects of game writing rather than the games themselves. How often does a genuine game discussion take place on either RAIF or RGIF that is more than simply a hint request? (Of course, it’s not just limited to RAIF and RGIF. The Adrift forum sees a proper game discussion only a couple of times a year, generally straight after a notable game has been released. The discussion will last a few days, or a week at the outside, then die down. Nice when it happens, but I can’t help thinking that it should be happening *all the time* and not just once every blue moon.)
[/quote]  

Maybe we could start something like a 'game of the month circle'? Eg. recommend a game, give everyone two (or three) weeks to finish it and then start an open discussion about it during the following week(s)? There's not much incentive to digg up a three year old game, just to find out nobody else knows or cares about it. 

However, if we could make sure enough people play a certain game, a decent discussion is far more likely. As an added bonus, this could also help getting to know more games, eg. older games, overlooked gems as well as games from other IF systems. 

For example, I mostly play ADRIFT games (plus some competition games, ususally in Inform), so every opportunity at discovering other games and systems would be very much welcomed by me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=10#p160
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-15 09:14:41

I'd certainly be in favour of a game of the month idea. The majority of what I play tend to be either Adrift games (as it's system I use to write games with) and then occasional games entered in competitions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=10#p161
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-15 09:17:43

[quote="Shuarian"]
Maybe we could start something like a 'game of the month circle'? Eg. recommend a game, give everyone two (or three) weeks to finish it and then start an open discussion about it during the following week(s)?
[/quote]  
I can think of two times something like this was started in the past (probably more, but two come to mind). It always seems like a good idea, but for whatever reasons, it never takes off. I don't know if people just forget, lose interest, aren't interested to begin with, don't have time, or what. I've never participated myself, and then later I complain that there isn't enough game discussion. [emote]:)[/emote]

Timing might be an issue, too. Usually when I'm in an IF mood, I'm writing instead of playing. If enough people would do it and stick to it, it would probably be fun. Maybe it needs a few twists. Like, a name is drawn from everybody who participated the last round, and that person gets to pick the next game. Or the best/longest review gets to pick (although that might end up being dominated by the same people time after time if you're not careful). Or... I don't know. Something to make it fun, and something to get a lot of different opinions on games of different types, on different platforms.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8&start=10#p162
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Authoring Tips
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-15 09:36:46

Star Wars would be hard. The people most interested in the game would probably be very familiar with the movie. They'd either take things for granted and not even think to "try" it in the game, or they'd constantly test the boundaries, just to see how far they can stray. Plus, I think they'd be more critical of the game. I know I would be. I've always had a hang-up about people who presume to take an established work I like and make it their own. But that's a whole 'nother matter. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=10#p163
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-15 09:37:18

I like that game of the month idea.  Sounds like it'd be a good way to get some discussion going here, and also play some games and get some reviews done.  Certainly it would be helpful to the community at large, reviewing older games that other people may not have paid attention to.

And picking a random person to choose the next month's game would be a good way to make sure we're not always playing the same type of games written with the same system over and over.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=10#p164
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-15 09:45:41

I'd be interested in talking about the design and technical aspects of the game, but also the writing and story. It would be interesting to really explore and discuss it all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=10#p165
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-15 09:59:58

Does someone want to pick a game then? A game from the past few years that we can then all discuss and write reviews of?

Only probably not in this thread as it was supposed to be about the Spring Thing next year. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=10#p166
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-15 10:40:51

It'd probably be good in the "Game Discussion" forum (which currently has no posts). It's mid-way through the month now, but I could probably find the time to play and review something by the end of the month. Well, I shouldn't say [i]probably[/i] -- I [i]might[/i]. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=29&start=0#p167
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Game of the Month: August 06: The Baron by Victor Gijsbers
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-15 12:01:40

Given that the idea for the Game of the Month (GM) started in the thread about the upcoming Spring Thing 2007, I feel it's only fair to pick the winning entry from this year's Spring Thing: [b]The Baron by Victor Gijsbers[/b].

So, what's this all about? The idea is to pick a new game every month, give everyone some time to play it through and then review and discuss the game. This way we can ensure that (hopefully) enough people actually play the game to have an interesting   discussion going on, open to all aspects of the game - story, technical implementation, etc. As the Game of the Month is open to all Interactive Fiction games, it is also a good starting point for discovering overlooked gems, as well as games from systems you maybe wouldn't normally play. 

For this month's game, I ask everyone who's interested to play and finish the above mentioned game [b]by 31 August 2006[/b]. You can download [i]The Baron[/i] by Victor Gijsbers from [url]http://www.springthing.net/2006/files/baron.zip[/url].

Starting September 1st, 2006, this thread can be used for discussions and reviews. If you write a review, please consider posting it not only here (either to this thread or in the designated [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=21]Reviews section[/url]) but also to some of the following sites: [url=http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/]SPAG[/url], [url=http://www.ifreviews.org/]Interactive Fiction Reviews[/url] and [url=http://baf.wurb.com/if/]Baf's guide[/url]. Also worth mentioning are the [url=http://www.insideadrift.org.uk/e107/news.php]InsideADRIFT[/url] newsletter (esp. for ADRIFT games) as well as the Spanish [url=http://usuarios.lycos.es/SPAC/]SPAC[/url] e-zine. Shorter reviews may also be placed at [url=http://www.carouselchain.com/if/]Interactive Fiction Ratings[/url].

Also, feel free to ask for help in this thread if you get stuck, but please mark your post with an appropriate spoiler warning. 
Games for next month's discussion can be suggested in [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=30&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a]this thread[/url].


[i]Edit 15-08-2006: Added links to some review sites, reformatting of the text. [/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=29&start=0#p168
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Game of the Month: August 06: The Baron by Victor Gijsbe
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-15 12:08:07

I've started this thread to keep the idea going on... 
Is [b]the Baron[/b] fine by everyone? What about the time frame? Any other suggestions? 

Regarding on how we decide on the next game, I thought of an extra thread at the beginning of September, where everyone (can suggest a game, which then gets voted upon in a poll.

Also, in my opinion, an open discussion is fine. Or do you want some kind of moderation, eg. recommended talking points for each game?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=10#p169
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-15 12:09:43

I was so free to start a new thread in the Game Discussion forum: [url]http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=29&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a[/url]. Feedback and suggestions are highly welcome.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=29&start=0#p170
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Game of the Month: August 06: The Baron by Victor Gijsbe
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-15 12:25:26

"The Baron" is fine by me. It's one I already played and reviewed, so there's absolutely no reason I can't join in the discussion at the beginning of September.

Here are some things I'd suggest.

At the beginning of the new month, post your reviews to the "reviews" group (in a new topic, in reply to other reviews for the same game, or whatever). By waiting, it gives others a chance to play before seeing those reviews. If willing, also send your review to the one or two review archive sites out there (anybody have links?)

Also at the beginning of the month, we decide on the new month's game (to be discussed the following month). This could be one person picking, voting, or whatever. Doesn't matter to me. The important thing would to be decide within a few days.

Once the next game is decided, make an official announcement on this forum. We can make it "sticky" the rest of the month.

Even before deciding on the new month's game, we should "unsticky" the one from the prior month. Reviews and discussion will begin anyway, and it might confuse people for the original game announce to stay stick-posted.

Other than that, I don't think there needs to be any formal guidelines for discussion, except maybe put "[spoilers]" in any topic heading you start which will or can contain spoilers. Even that might not be necessary, since we're assuming the discussion is going on from people who've played last month's game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=29&start=0#p171
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Game of the Month: August 06: The Baron by Victor Gijsbe
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-15 12:40:19

I don't have a problem with "The Baron". In fact, I even started to write a review of it once around the time of the Spring Thing, but for some reason never got round to finishing it (the review, that is, not the game). I'll have to play it again to refresh my memory.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=29&start=0#p172
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Game of the Month: August 06: The Baron by Victor Gijsbe
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-15 12:57:21

Sounds good to me!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=29&start=0#p173
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: IF Review sites links
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-15 14:28:28

[quote="Merk"]
If willing, also send your review to the one or two review archive sites out there (anybody have links?)
[/quote] 
Here's a couple of links for everyone to get started:

Mark Musante's IF Reviews site: [url]http://www.ministryofpeace.com/if-review/[/url]

The ever reliable Baf's Guide: [url]http://baf.wurb.com/if/[/url]

SPAG: [url]http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/[/url]

The IF Reviews Organization: [url]http://www.ifreviews.org/[/url]

Spanish IF review zine SPAC: [url]http://usuarios.lycos.es/SPAC/[/url] (for those who can read/write Spanish)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=30&start=0#p174
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Suggestions for the Game of the Month: September 06
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-15 14:31:08

Please use this thread to suggest any Interactive Fiction game for the September's Game of the Month discussion. 

Every forum member can suggest one game per month. It is encouraged to describe the reasoning for one's choice and to give a small description of the game, so the other forum members have enough information to base their votes upon. Please note that there's a maximum of ten suggestions per month. As there's no selection, the '[i]first come, first served[/i]' principle applies. 

Suggestions may be posted here up to the [b]31 August 2006[/b], with voting taking place in a new thread running between September 1st and 7th.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=30&start=0#p175
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Suggestions for the Game of the Month: September 06
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-15 14:53:54

Well, I've been meaning to play Emily Short's "Savoire Faire" for a while now so I'll nominate that. Give me an excuse to finally get it played.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=10#p176
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-15 14:58:30

[quote="Merk"]
I can think of two times something like this was started in the past (probably more, but two come to mind). It always seems like a good idea, but for whatever reasons, it never takes off. I don't know if people just forget, lose interest, aren't interested to begin with, don't have time, or what.
[/quote] 

People play games, but never discuss them most likely (I think) because they're not really into that kind of "meta" discussion. They probably think they haven't played enough IF to say anything of merit.

It's easier to just sit back and play through the game, if they can manage going through the puzzles and get to the end. Eventually, if they don't like any aspect of the game, well, they can push it to the backburner for a while - or worse, to the Recycle Bin  [emote]:)[/emote]

I admit, I don't get involved too much in discussions like these in RAIF mostly because I haven't played enough games to make good comparisons or impressions. I toyed with the idea (back in 2001) about writing some IF reviews but gave it up because of that particular reason.

Or maybe it's like what David Whyld said - more people are interested in writing games than playing them.

This is probably better discussed in another thread than here, but that's my 2 cents  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=29&start=0#p177
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Game of the Month: August 06: The Baron by Victor Gijsbe
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-15 15:11:41

Thanks everyone, I've added a couple of links and made a new thread for making suggestions for next month's discussion. I'm happy with the way the main post currently looks, so I've removed its draft label, although I'm still open for any suggestions. 

And now let's hope this will lead to some interesting reviews and discussions :-)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=29&start=0#p178
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Game of the Month: August 06: The Baron by Victor Gijsbe
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-15 15:19:57

You might change "September 1th" to "September 1st". I kept reading it as the 11th. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=31&start=0#p179
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Writing vs Playing
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-15 15:40:01

A few comments in another thread got me wondering about the ratio of time spent writing games vs playing them.

Now for me, I generally spend at least some time of every day writing a game (I've actually got my latest game open right now), but only play a game probably once or twice a week. Unless there's a game out that I'm really eager to play, or a competition on, that's pretty average for me. One game a week, maybe two on a busy week, but seldom any more.

What about other people here? Do you tend to find that you spend more time writing games (whether or not you ever finish and/or release them) than you do playing them?

Basically: are you first and foremost a writer or a player?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=29&start=0#p180
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Game of the Month: August 06: The Baron by Victor Gijsbe
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-15 15:47:39

[quote="Merk"]
You might change "September 1th" to "September 1st". I kept reading it as the 11th. [emote]:)[/emote]
[/quote]  

Well spotted and duly corrected. Good thing this forum has an 'edit' option [emote]:-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=31&start=0#p181
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Writing vs Playing
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-15 16:01:07

I guess I'm mainly a writer, although I've played far more IF than I've written. [emote]Smile[/emote]

I seem to only play IF when it's for a competition, or when I've agreed to beta-test for somebody. I can usually write IF or play other kinds of games even with some distractions, but when it comes to *playing* IF, I like to be left alone. With a one-year-old little girl, I'm almost never without distractions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=30&start=0#p182
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Suggestions for the Game of the Month: September 06
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-15 16:04:09

I'm going to give this some thought, and post later in the month. There are some pretty old "classics" I'd personally like to motivate myself to play, so I may end up suggesting one of those.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=32&start=0#p183
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Editing posts and making stickies.
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-15 16:06:53

Rioshin, I seem to be unable to edit any posts other than my own, even with admin access. I also can't figure out how to make an existing topic "sticky". Any hints? [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=31&start=0#p184
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Writing vs Playing
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-15 16:16:14

At the moment, I probably count as neither a frequent player nor a frequent writer. I guess real life (work and eduction) is taking its toll since about the beginning of this year. This has the added downside of making me less patient with any game I try; meaning I play even fewer games and also become a bit less savvy as far as puzzles are concerned, because I'm more likely to give up playing once it gets too difficult. 

Concerning your main question, I probably play more than I write. Even though I try to work on my own game in Adrift frequently, I mostly do so only for short periods, while I usually set more time aside for playing a game once I have the opportunity and stamina.

This makes me wonder how much time everyone spends on playing and writing? It's hard to estimate, but I'd say over the last few months I usually spent about one or two hours a week on playing games, and only something like 10 to 20 minutes on actually working on my own project (and most of that time I go back and forth over some design decision).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=31&start=0#p185
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Writing vs Playing
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-15 16:24:14

I tend to work on my games when the mood strikes me. I'll be doing something else entirely - playing a (non-IF) game, downloading something off the internet, even just surfing the web - then I'll flip back over to my game and write something more. I tend to find it easy to remember my last place in any game I write so I can pick up pretty much straight where I left off each time; when playing games I never seem to be able to remember exactly what I was doing on my last go so I don't tend to flip back and forth between playing and doing anything else.

Today I worked on my game during my dinner hour* and a bit this evening, just typing bits here and there between doing other things. Actual time spent on it today? Probably around an hour and a half to two hours.

* I get an hour for dinner but as I've generally finished my dinner after quarter an hour, and the words "flexi time" don't mean anything to my employers, I just sit at my desk and doodle on my game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8&start=10#p186
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Authoring Tips
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2006-08-15 18:51:20

If you had to (in some theoretical other universe, where you were forced as a slave to write IF), how would you solve the "restraining bolt" problem mentioned in the last post?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8&start=10#p187
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Authoring Tips
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-15 19:08:13

[quote="DFisher"]
If you had to (in some theoretical other universe, where you were forced as a slave to write IF), how would you solve the "restraining bolt" problem mentioned in the last post?
[/quote] 
Well, if I were doing the adaptation, I would try to stay as faithful to the original story as possible. So, I'd come up with ways to be sure the restraining bolt wasn't replaced, so that R2D2 does wander off.

First, I'd stop the story at the point where C3PO relays R2D2's advice. I'd probably prompt the player, via C3PO, until the restraining bolt is removed, and trap attempts to leave by saying something like "Not until you've heard the rest of the message. You can't shake the sense of urgency you heard in that woman's voice." Then, if Like tries to put it back on, I'd have R2D2 roll out of the way. If the player tries again, I'd have R2D2 roll again (different text this time, though). On the third attempt, I'd have R2D2 snag it using an attachment, and hide it away in a compartment.

It's railroading, but I'd prefer this to any course of action that disrupts the story. I'd limit the puzzles (and the impact of players' choices) to each scene. Let them stray within a scene, but require that each segment end in a way that won't break the story.

If I wanted to let the player have more freedom, I'd probably not play from Luke's perspective. Maybe I'd write a shorter game about Han Solo, covering the same time period (up until the meeting with Luke at Mos Eisley). I'd invent a story that fits in, but can't easily be contradicted by Star Wars canon.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8&start=10#p188
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Authoring Tips
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-15 19:35:04

That's the whole reason I'd stay away from adaptations.  Piss off the purists if you veer off course, and limit your players so much that they'd be better off watching the movie if you try to make it faithful.

Not saying it can't be done, but really, if you're going to put so much energy into creating something, you might as well make it your own.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=31&start=0#p189
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Writing vs Playing
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-15 20:23:14

I try to play a game every once in a while, and I'm writing my first game, so I guess I can honestly say that I've played more than I've written.  However, I'm enjoying writing my game, so I'll probably end up writing more than playing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8&start=10#p190
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Authoring Tips
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2006-08-15 21:44:05

Merk said:
[quote]
Well, if I were doing the adaptation, I would try to stay as faithful to the original story as possible. So, I'd come up with ways to be sure the restraining bolt wasn't replaced, so that R2D2 does wander off.
[/quote]     
As a player, I'd prefer the plot to be a bit more flexible, myself - so I could try out things and see what interesting variations to the original I could come up with, as well as trying to "break" the game and see what excuses the author thought up to make sure the main events still happen. I would get a bit bored with an exact replay of the original story, I think.

I have loved Star Wars since I was 6 years old, but I don't think I would ever try adapting it to IF (even apart from copyright issues) - it would be more fun to make than to play.

Do you know of any adaptations that turned out to be really good? Did they vary the plot line at all?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8&start=10#p191
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Authoring Tips
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-16 07:21:09

In the realm of IF, I haven't played any. Well, I did try playing either the "Ambar" game (based on the Roger Zelazny books) or the "Plan 9 from Outer Space" game -- maybe both -- without getting very far. I think the "Plan 9" game was more about the movie itself (not the story), so I don't really have an answer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8&start=10#p192
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Authoring Tips
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-16 07:42:19

I remember playing several games on my good old Spectrum years ago that were based on famous characters and/or ideas. "Sherlock" was good, if unfairly hard; "The Hobbit" was a favourite of mine, although most people these days regard it as *too* retro for their tastes. I'm sure I played quite a few others as well but I don't remember their names now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=31&start=0#p193
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Writing vs Playing
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-16 14:35:03

It usually depends where I am. If I'm in the office, I play IF during breaktimes. When it's time for lunch, I sneak in reading the I7 docs and experiment a bit, or I try to finish off a transcript for a possible game. (Programming editors are too conspicuous, even if I change the menu colors in Windows  [emote]Razz[/emote] )

At home, I'll do what comes into mind - finish a non-IF game, write more on the WIPs (take your pick), or surf the web.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=30&start=0#p194
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Suggestions for the Game of the Month: September 06
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-16 14:48:13

Has anyone given any more thought to it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=26&start=0#p195
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Quirkiness with "read" topics
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2006-08-16 15:21:02

[quote="Merk"]
I've noticed something else in this version of phpBB that doesn't seem to work quite right. When you post a new message (a new topic), it will show that the message is unread, until you go back in and read what you just wrote. Also, it seems unreliable on marking topics as read anyway. I've looked at the most recent post in some topics, gone back to the list, and noticed that it still shows the topic as unread. I don't know if they're already aware of this (and the italics bug), or if a new version is out yet?
[/quote] 

Yes, the post read noting has been changed compared to phpBB2. The new "feature" is much less load-heavy on the database, which is why the change was made. But they've lately been working on improving it.

As far as the italics bug, I don't know if it's fixed in the latest version. I'm currently working on updating the codebase to the CVS version of August 14, but it'll take a few more days - I can get nice diffs, but for some reason, my patching software complains because I have to patch directories. Guess I'll have to reinstall linux someday soon - although I intended to wait until Fedora 6.

Of course, we could simply create a new database and transfer everything over, and start with a clean phpBB3 - but there's a not so slight change in the DB where the bitfields have been changed from integers to varchars, and are base64-encoded. That'll need a small script done to fix.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=30&start=0#p196
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Suggestions for the Game of the Month: September 06
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-16 15:36:15

Yeah, I've been thinking about it. For September, I want to suggest something I haven't already played. Curses. Worlds Apart. Something like that. Although, if most people *have* played those, we might be better off picking something obscure.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=30&start=0#p197
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Suggestions for the Game of the Month: September 06
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-16 15:49:22

Most people clearly doesn't include me.  [emote]Cool[/emote]  I'm fine with either. Or both.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=31&start=0#p198
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Writing vs Playing
User: Ken Franklin / DateTime: 2006-08-16 16:47:38

The other thing is that, when you are writing a game, you also will tend to be playing it quite a bit as you test it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=30&start=0#p199
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Suggestions for the Game of the Month: September 06
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-16 17:00:23

How about those games that was made with a relatively obscure IF authoring system, like say, AGT? Those usually never gets played a lot. 

"Shades of Gray" might be a good start. It's a collaboration between several authors, something that appears to be gaining some appeal with IF people these days.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=30&start=0#p200
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Suggestions for the Game of the Month: September 06
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-16 18:04:28

Does AGT work okay on modern computers? I remember someone once commenting that modern computers run too fast for it and it needs to be slowed down in some way to allow it to run properly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=20&start=0#p201
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: [INFORM] The Reliques Of Tolti-Aph
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2006-08-16 18:12:48

Actually, Balances was written well before Inform 6; I have a printout of the I5 source; it may have been earlier.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=30&start=0#p202
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Suggestions for the Game of the Month: September 06
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2006-08-16 18:13:33

The original AGT interpreters won't run on modern computers; AGiliTy works just fine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=20&start=0#p203
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: [INFORM] The Reliques Of Tolti-Aph
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2006-08-17 08:26:28

[quote]
Why anyone would bother making an example game out of a randomized-combat RPG, I don't know.
[/quote] 

Graham stated that he did it as an exercise to see how well I7 would handle calculation-intensive works.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=20&start=0#p204
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: [INFORM] The Reliques Of Tolti-Aph
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-17 08:48:18

It might have been a slightly less unpopular decision if he hadn't chosen to disable SAVE and UNDO as well. That's the bit that really confuses me about it. Was it his intention to make the game as irritating as possible?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=31&start=0#p205
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Writing vs Playing
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-17 11:10:31

[quote="Ken Franklin"]
The other thing is that, when you are writing a game, you also will tend to be playing it quite a bit as you test it.
[/quote] 
I don't get much enjoyment from playing my own games while I wrote them, though. It's more like work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=20&start=10#p206
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: [INFORM] The Reliques Of Tolti-Aph
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-17 11:11:11

This would be an interesting one for a future month's discussion. I haven't played it yet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=20&start=10#p207
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: [INFORM] The Reliques Of Tolti-Aph
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-17 12:57:25

Maybe. Just so long as I don't have to play it again.  [emote]Sad[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=31&start=0#p208
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Writing vs Playing
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-17 12:59:03

I get a certain sense of satisfaction when playing my games and finding them bug free and full of inspired ideas.
.
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.
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Which hasn't happened yet, of course, but I'm an eternal optimist. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=33&start=0#p209
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: [INFORM] The Awakening
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-17 15:47:03

[b][u]The Awakening[/u][/b] - by Dennis Matheson


You start The Awakening at the bottom of a muddy pit. Hardly the most enthralling of locations to begin a game in you might think, and with precious little to do here aside from move out of the mud perhaps not the best start the author could have gone for. But, after this, things begin to pick up quite nicely.

Leaving the muddy pit (fairly easily done but it had me stumped at first as climbing out of the pit - surely the first thing anyone is going to type? - didn't work), you find yourself in a graveyard. A quick glance round shows there's precious little to see in the graveyard. Aside from, naturally, a church. Move towards the church and the game begins to open up a little.

The Awakening takes place in little more than a dozen locations. Attempting to leave the graveyard faces you with the default message of "You feel that you are unable to. Some force on you increases as you try to leave the area." No such restriction affects your entering of the church and so the game inevitably moves you inside.

Puzzles await you in most locations. At their best - leading the dog around the church until it chokes on the chain and the one involving the bell - they're excellent. Others - placing the railing below the trap door ("drop railing" doesn't work) - left me wanting to punch the monitor. Actually, most tasks involving the railing/ladder were awkward to say the least. Whereas a simple "drop" command would have sufficed, the writer instead went for a far more confusing system of allowing the player to put the ladder wherever he wanted. So whereas you could drop the ladder directly below the trap door, you would be unable to climb it because you hadn't used the "put" command. Confusing. Another puzzle that got the better of me, and one I doubt I would ever have figured out if I hadn't cheated and resorted to the walkthrough, was rubbing ashes onto the pages of a book in order to read what was written there. Even afterwards, I was a little baffled that the writer expected anyone to figure that out. Or maybe I'm just getting worse at these games in my old age… [emote]:)[/emote]

Descriptions were particularly good - lengthy and atmospheric - and added considerable depth to the game. The graveyard is presented as a creepy place, not one I would really want to visit in real place. The church itself, larger inside than it appears from the outside, has few locations but the ones it does have are well described.

What the storyline behind The Awakening is all about is a difficult question. The background, two lines at the start of the game, gives nothing away, and as you progress around first the graveyard and then the church, brief glimpses into your past are revealed. Alas, these are seldom conclusive enough for you to gain any real idea of the events that led you to the bottom of the pit. Some conclusions can be drawn from the old man you encounter in the upper reaches of the church, by examining the eyes of the Christ portrait in the sanctuary and studying the mirror, but even after finishing the game I was left at a loss as to say exactly what had occurred. Maybe this was deliberate, in order to leave the player able to make his own mind up about what the game was about, but I would have liked it if things were a little clearer.

My own interpretation, although I could well be wrong, was that the player had made some kind of pact with the Devil that had gone badly wrong. Whether this is right or not I couldn't say but from the old man's words near the end of the game I suspect I might well be heading in the right direction.

Character interaction in The Awakening is at a minimum. A pity. The only character you can speak to is the old man in the church but I found it difficult to get much out of him. Most of what he said was unhelpful, although eliciting a response from him was a task in itself. I found this a tad disappointing as I had been hoping, now that an NPC had finally shown up, that I might be able to question him about a whole array of subjects and get the answers I was seeking. Unfortunately not. Then again, it could be that the old man had a few dozen programmed responses and I was just unable to hit upon the correct words. It's often difficult to tell.

Summing up:

Good and bad points, but the good far outweighed the bad in the end. The Awakening is a very well written game that certainly kept my interest until I had finished it, even if I spent most of the time wondering just what was going on [emote]:)[/emote] The puzzles were a little too hard but the game came with an excellent hints system which proved invaluable.

[b]7 out of 10 [/b]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=34&start=0#p210
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: [TADS] The Backlot
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-17 15:47:58

[u][b]The Backlot[/b][/u] by A. Bomire

[i]Adult Interactive Fiction Game[/i]


I have to admit that I shied away from AIF for quite some time. Not so much because of the shady reputation it has among most of the IF world but because the few games I had tried (one with lots of underage sex and another written by someone who grasp of the English language would have embarrassed a five year old) had left me feeling that AIF games were every bit as bad as I had been led to believe. But then I stumbled across The Backlot and all that changed.

Or changed eventually anyway. I didn't even play the game when I first saw it because a) it was a TADS game and I generally avoided TADS games because I couldn't be bothered to learn how to use the system to write my own games and b) it was AIF and my previous experiences with AIF games hadn't impressed me a whole lot.

But when I finally did get around to playing it, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was good. Very good. Better, in fact, than most of the non-AIF games I had been playing in the meantime.

The Backlot has a strange storyline: you're a writer of AIF games yourself but seem to have run into the problem which beleaguers every writer sooner or later - writer's block. You want to write something but just can't for the life of you figure out how. So you take a break, head down to your local bookstore for some inspiration (maybe they have a large AIF section or something) - and then things start getting decidedly weird. In the back of the bookstore you find a box containing some old books. Also inside is a tome and a parchment which, when read, transports you a fantasy world made up of several different fantasy worlds which have appeared in text adventures throughout the years. Quite a few of the characters you encounter in this world are from those games as well and part of the fun of playing The Backlot is remembering just where you came across them first. I recognised the axe-throwing dwarf from Adventure (even though I didn't play the game until years after it first came out) and the building at the end of the road (also from Adventure) but a lot of the others didn't mean a lot to me until I checked the rather handy 'Info' section in the game.

The idea behind The Backlot is to find your way home although just how you go about this isn't at first obvious. A lot of effort has been expended on making the game amusing and easy to play but for the most part you tend to wander around from one location to another without a clue as to what is going on. And there are a lot of locations besides, more than enough to become lost in if you're not careful. Fortunately the game comes with a handy map which you can check from time to time and this helps tremendously with keeping track of where you are in relation to everything else. Eventually you will inevitably reach the stage of having visited every location you can reach and amassed several items but have no real idea what you're going to do next. Or maybe that was just me missing the obvious things.

Hints are provided by way of the tome you pick up in the bookstore at the start of the game and use of this is pretty much vital to making any progress. Even so, a few times having to rely on the tome to move matters on is a tad annoying. In one location I found a wand but wasn't able to use it until I had looked it up in the tome, although what the tome told me wasn't especially helpful.

Guess the verb problems struck in a few places. Most of the time, "get" and "take" mean exactly the same thing (as they should do) yet in one location I was unable to "get" a light bulb. As the light bulb was clearly visible to me and there was nothing to stop me taking it, I couldn't for the life of me figure out what was wrong. I even went as far as wondering if perhaps there was a major bug in the game which prevented me picking up the light bulb, or maybe this was one of those strange puzzles you tend to find in games every now and then which make no sense whatsoever. But then I typed "take light bulb" and got it. In another location I found a button which I couldn't "push" but which I was able to "press".

One thing I liked about The Backlot was the fact that it was more a "regular" IF game than most of the other AIF games I have played. The emphasis here is on exploration of the game world, puzzle solving, interacting with other characters and less, thankfully, on guess the verb issues relating to which part of the anatomy you grope/fondle/kiss first. Which is a good thing, funnily enough. A game feels a little on the cheap and tacky side to me when the whole point behind it is to have sex and although I'm sure 90% of an AIF game's core audience play the games purely for that reason, it's also nice when you come across a proper game amidst all the porn-disguised-as-games. That doesn't mean there isn't sex in The Backlot - there is - but that here it's handled in a more interesting manner than a straight "see a girl, shag her" scenario. For an amusing look at what constitutes bad AIF, take a look at the script you find in the room with the fairy. Scarily enough, I'm sure quite a few of the 'ideas' within have been used for AIF games in the past.

There are a fair few puzzles in The Backlot ranging from the fairly easy (getting the hose off the shelf in the garage) to the complicated-but-easy-to-see-in-hindsight-how-logical-it-was (figuring out a way to get the disc in the director's office without him stopping you). Most can be figured out with use of the ol' grey matter but there were a few that completely stumped me until the trusty walkthrough came along. Although as with the director puzzle, most of them you can see afterwards how logical they were and often find that you're kicking yourself for not figuring them out sooner.


Summing up

Certainly the best AIF game I've played and a healthy benchmark against which future games should be judged.

[b]7 out of 10 [/b]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=35&start=0#p211
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: [ALAN] The HeBGB Horror
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-17 15:49:12

[u][b]The HeBGB Horror[/b][/u] by Eric Mayer


Just to try something different, I thought I'd have a go at this little game - an ALAN game from a previous IFComp (it came 16th) which I'd meant to play a while ago but, for some reason, never did.

You play a musician (or, the game informs you, you at least know how to play a few guitar chords) called Phil Howard who has arrived in New York to follow in the footsteps of his idols, groups like the Ramones, the Stranglers and so on. Only things haven't gone quite according to plan and you haven't managed to get a single gig. All you can do right now is attend one last show at the HeBGB, your favourite rock club.

All well and good so far. Nicely atmospheric start with a few touches of humour (the zombie-like hordes clogging up the streets made me smile). The game begins with you standing outside a record store - The Land of 10,000 Disks - wondering how you're going to find enough money for a ticket to the HeBGB. One of the first things you notice is a poster being taped to the window announcing that a group called the Laughing Kats are going to be performing their new single at the HeBGB. The aim of the game seems pretty obvious: get some cash together and then head to the club. (Actually, you can't go to the club straight off anyway as the game informs you that you cannot leave the area of the shop until you have found what you need. The first time I saw this it threw me a bit because at that stage I hadn't bothered examining the poster and didn't know what my next move should be. I thought I needed to get to the HeBGB as soon as possible and being hit with a message telling me that I couldn't leave until I had found what I needed (whatever that was!) left me a little baffled.)

"Getting what you need" actually turns out to be a mini-game in its own right. Very little here is straightforward, although most of the puzzles are fairly easy and none should really give you problems. In fact, I seemed to spend most of my time discovering something I hadn't previously known, trying it out, and then being presented with another problem to solve. Example: there's a tall, cadaverous fellow outside the shop who won't speak to you until you know his name. Figuring that, as this is a text adventure, his name will be found somewhere nearby, I conducted a pretty thorough search of the shop. And found his name. And told it to him. He then offers to sign something for me. Unfortunately I don't have anything he can sign so I go back into the shop to find something. Which I do. Only then he can't sign it because neither of us have a pen. Off I go to find a pen…

Logic took a backseat here for a while. Okay, neither of us have got a pen but in real life wouldn't I just have nipped down the street to another shop and bought one? I certainly wouldn't have practically turned the record shop upside down searching for one. (As it happens, the pen you find isn't what's required to get an autograph but that's not something I found out until I tried giving it to the tall, cadaverous fellow and being advised it wasn't working. At that point I fell back to the tried-and-tested method of "giving every item in the game to the NPC and hoping one of them works". One of them did thankfully.)

The game opens up a little more after you leave the vicinity of The Land of 10,000 Disks (successfully having found what you needed) and you then make your way to the HeBGB club itself. Here I felt the game went downhill a bit. Getting inside the club involves an awkward series of commands, none of which seemed very obvious to me at the time and at this point I found myself looking hopefully at the helpful walkthrough file which accompanied the game. In hindsight, I can see how the commands fall into place and with enough time and effort it's probably not that difficult getting inside although one of the commands - "push pin through cheek" - wouldn't have occurred to me in a million years. Maybe I just don't have enough punk in me for something like that…

Inside the club, things get strange indeed. I bought a drink (after first being forced to leave the club and scrounge some money up to pay for it) and then proceeded into some kind of drugs/drink haze where I appeared on stage, played a guitar and then spoke to a punkette who promptly disappeared in a puff of smoke. (Told you it was strange.) There's not much beyond this point to the end of the game which is perhaps even stranger than anything else that has gone before.

Overall I found myself liking the game. A lot. But I also felt that the earlier part - around The Land of 10,000 Disks - was a lot better than the later parts. Once inside the HeBGB club itself, the game becomes decidedly weird and little of it makes any kind of sense. It also becomes a lot harder - while I was able to complete the first part easily enough, I became completely unstuck as far as getting inside the club was concerned and once I was in there I didn't have a clue how I was supposed to proceed any further. The sequence of events right before the end - the alien creature in the room beneath the commode and dropping peanuts and a pretzel to distract rats - just baffled me altogether.

Problems? I'd put down quite a few to the system but none of them really affected my overall enjoyment of the game. ALAN's scrollback window seems very limited in that no more than a few screens of text can be stored at any one time, meaning that if you want to read over something more than a few screens back you're out of luck. There's also no transcript ability, at least not that I found. And the cursor seems to move remarkably slowly, often being several characters behind the one I'm actually typing. But those are problems with the system and not the game itself. The only problem I encountered with the game came when Billy attacked me and the obvious command - "kill Billy" (I'm assuming the Quentin Tarantino film of almost-the-same-name wasn't based on this) - told me that violence wasn't the answer to that one. The next moment, I stabbed him with a record called Stab Stab Stab Stab so, clearly, violence was the answer after all.

The HeBGB Horror left me with the feeling that there was a very decent game here but one that I didn't fully warm to due to the downright strangeness once the first part was taken care of. At times I wasn't sure what I should be doing or how the game should proceed; while the first part had defined goals, the later parts didn't. One thing I liked was that most of the puzzles have multiple solutions to them and the idea of stealing the single from the record shop by hiding it about your person was one I really wished I'd though of trying at the time.

All in all, above average but could have been better.

[b]6 out of 10 [/b]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=35&start=0#p212
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: [ALAN] The HeBGB Horror
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-17 15:55:54

This was one of the first games I played after I "rediscovered" IF, years back. I think it was the 1999 competition. I have fond memories of this one, although I don't remember the specifics. Thanks for the review!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=35&start=0#p213
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: [ALAN] The HeBGB Horror
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-17 16:12:40

I think the name was what attracted me to it originally - the HeBGB Horror. It seemed like the kind of game I just [i]had[/i] to play to see what it was all about. And, too, the author had written a couple of Adrift games I liked so I was curious to see what his Alan game was like.

(As an aside, nice to see the [b]bold[/b] and [i]italics[/i] are working properly. [emote]:)[/emote] )

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=33&start=0#p214
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: [INFORM] The Awakening
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2006-08-18 09:45:09

I've heard the game draws heavily from Lovecraftian themes, and makes a bit more sense if the player is familiar with HPL.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=33&start=0#p215
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: [INFORM] The Awakening
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-18 10:11:24

I know *of* Lovecraft, though I've never actually read anything by him. A couple of horror writers that I *have* read - Brian Lumley and Ramsey Campbell - draw heavily on Lovecraftian lore in some of their novels, so I'm familiar with who Lovecraft is and the general style of things he wrote about, although I wrote this review a while back and I can't remember whether I found it *Lovecraftian* or not.


EDIT: hmm... italics formatting seems to be messed up again. [emote]Sad[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=33&start=0#p216
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: [INFORM] The Awakening
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-18 13:17:10

Out of curiosity, have you ever rated a game higher than 8? If so, which one(s), if any come to mind. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=33&start=0#p217
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: [INFORM] The Awakening
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-18 13:55:25

Not a vast amount of games, but some. There's a list at:

[url]http://www.shadowvault.net/scorecard.htm[/url]

It's not a definitive list by any means, as it just lists the games I've written reviews for. I've played plenty of others that I'd say were worth 9:

Retro games: [b]Sherlock[/b] (incredibly hard and unfair detective game, but lots of fun); [b]The Boggit[/b] (spoof of [b]The Hobbit[/b]).

More recent ones: [b]Invasion[/b] (comedy space invasion game); [b]Guilty Bastards[/b] (the first IF game I played after getting on the internet five years ago); [b]Gateway 2: Homeworld[/b] (huge IF game from the end of the commercial era).

Quite a few others besides but I don't remember the names of them offhand.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=36&start=0#p218
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Understand the base libraries!
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-19 23:09:27

I think a good tip to any new Hugo programmer is to become familiar with the Hugo library files. I always learn something new every time I look at the code, whether it's the specifics on how certain processing works, or the fact that there are basic verb implementations that most players probably won't even try (like "wait for NPC" to spend turns until a roving NPC enters the room, or "i/inv tall" and "i/inv wide" to change the inventory listng style).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=37&start=0#p219
Forum: Competitions / Subject: IFComp 2006 Intents
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-20 08:37:24

I'm sure everybody already knows, but if you intend to submit a game to this year's IFComp, you have to sign up at the website ([url]http://www.ifcomp.org[/url]) by September 1st - a mere 12 days away.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=37&start=0#p220
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2006 Intents
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-20 08:45:11

I've been signed up a while now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=38&start=0#p221
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Howard Sherman article at Adventure Classic Gaming
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-20 09:20:54

Has everybody already seen this article?

[url]http://www.adventureclassicgaming.com/index.php/site/features/219/[/url]

I had thought about buying a couple of his games, just so I *could* post reviews. But man, this guy is [i]arrogant[/i]. I found myself unable to resist posting feedback of my own, in the comments section. I probably should have left well enough alone. [emote]:)[/emote]

Edit: ARGH, the URL and ITALICS tags seem to be broken again. Let's see if it can auto-parse:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.adventureclassicgaming.com/index.php/site/features/219/">http://www.adventureclassicgaming.com/i ... tures/219/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=38&start=0#p222
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Howard Sherman article at Adventure Classic Gaming
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-20 10:00:35

I saw that. The guy's a real piece of work. Deluded, full of himself, and - "150,000 copies of Malinche games sold!" - an out and out liar to boot.

I'd love to know where his 150,000 customers are (they sure keep themselves quiet), or why he feels the need to spout this kind of gibberish. He doesn't seriously think anyone believes him, does he?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=38&start=0#p223
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Howard Sherman article at Adventure Classic Gaming
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-20 10:09:43

It doesn't bother me that he sells his games. It doesn't even matter to me if they're bad (never played, so I can't say). But what bugs the hell out of me is that he pretends to be the only one still writing IF, and when called out on it, he pretends to be the only one still writing IF that *matters*. That really irks me. He justifies calling himself the "last implementor of Interactive Fiction" by likening it to the commercial days of Infocom. In other words, he is the only one writing and selling *new* IF (others may have done so, but aren't currently working on anything new, so says Howard). This is purposely misleading. Howards narrow interpretation isn't what comes to mind. People will believe he's the only person *writing* IF. And he likes it that way.

No, I don't believe he has sold 150,000 copies of his games. I did pretty well with my BBS games, a decade ago, and only sold maybe 1,000 copies (less of the Worldgroup version, but it was a lot more expensive). Even with exposure in numerous spots for my online games, subscriptions for eight years wouldn't equal 150,000 full-priced Malinche games. So no, I don't buy it. I think it's more wordplay. He has "moved" that many copies. I.e., he's including demo download statistics (or something) in those totals. Who knows? I just wish he'd be more honest about what he's doing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=38&start=0#p224
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Howard Sherman article at Adventure Classic Gaming
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-20 10:22:37

I once had an e-mail off him after I posted a review of "Future Boy!" on RGIF. He suggested I check out some of his games for "examples of truly great commercial games". I pointed out to him that someone had sent me their copy a while back and he practically hit the roof. First of all, he insisted on me telling him the name of the person who had sent me their game "without Malinche's express permission" (I think he was going to take them to court or something), then he threatened legal action against me for receiving goods I hadn't purchased. His e-mails ran for pages and pages. My own response to him was a little shorter. Two words. The second being "off". 

I think he has serious control issues. Most of the time he acts like a little kid and throws tantrums when he doesn't feel he's getting his own way, and the rest of the time he's just an obnoxious piece of work.

I hate to think of the damage he causes to the IF community on the whole. One of the few times IF gets a mention in the wider world and this is what people see. Hardly going to encourage them to check out anyone else's game, is it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=38&start=0#p225
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Howard Sherman article at Adventure Classic Gaming
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-20 10:28:08

I wonder what stipulations are in the 60-day money-back guarantee? [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=38&start=0#p226
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Howard Sherman article at Adventure Classic Gaming
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-20 11:39:54

Jimmy Maher makes a valid point in his post at RAIF. Check out this link (so it can auto-parse URLs, from Merk's post):

<a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/msg/1accca8cf9999665?hl=en&">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts ... 665?hl=en&</a>

Sherman is not lazy, and he is, to a point, helping to promote IF to the world. The problem is he's trying to narrow down the field to his particular company only. His article at the adventure gaming site comes off more as a publicity stunt for Malinche Entertainment than an article about playing and writing IF. Never mind if he doesn't give credit where it's due - that's been his prerogative ever since he sold those games, though it doesn't reflect well on his personality.

If he had, as other journalists, written more about IF *in general* (putting into light all the current efforts towards IF whether commercial or not, whether "amateur" or not), then he might not get the same violent reactions as he is getting now.

There's nothing wrong about self-promotion. Peter Nepstad wrote about his experiences before with selling his game in RAIF; if I'm not mistaken, Aaron Reed also did a lot of promotion during the Slamdance competition. Sherman's brand of self-promotion goes [i]beyond[/i] what's necessary for Malinche Entertainment to flourish.

It's best to keep everything civil. [b]Ignore him[/b]. Or better yet, study and learn from what he does well (for commercial IF) and leave out the bad. We've probably all had enough bad news for the day, don't you think? 8)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=38&start=0#p227
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Howard Sherman article at Adventure Classic Gaming
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-20 12:37:40

I don't doubt his dedication or relentlessness, but I've come to see that there is a reason Tessman and Nepstad are favored by the community, while Sherman is not. I don't think it's strictly the quality of their respective games. Howard Sherman is telling people that he's the only one writing Interactive Fiction. If he mentions the wider community, it's to say that we are inconsequential wannabes.

There is nothing wrong with self-promotion, no. This particular article, though, is too narcissistic to be taken seriously. It also seems more appropriate [i]as[/i] an advertisement -- not as an adventure gaming site's feature article. Even if his intent was strictly to describe his experiences writing and selling interactive fiction (which seems to be the case), he does it in a really sleazy way. He focuses on how great he believes himself to be, instead of focusing on his achievements and letting the world decide whether or not he's great.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=31&start=0#p228
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Writing vs Playing
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-20 12:38:43

I suppose it depends. I'll play games out of a sense of duty; if a friend writes one, or if they need rating for a competition; whereas I'll write for my own enjoyment. So it varies.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=16&start=10#p229
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Redirect to Essell's Forum?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-20 12:40:45

I'm feeling the whole "unity in IF" vibe. Very nice. I don't mind, but again, I do prefer the look of this one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=23&start=0#p230
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: [ADRIFT] The Plague: Redux
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-20 12:42:33

I liked that one a lot; very atmospheric.

Trust you, David! The second you see an empty reviews forum, you're in like a shot with your red pen.  [emote]Laughing[/emote] bless.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=23&start=0#p231
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: [ADRIFT] The Plague: Redux
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-20 13:43:08

Never!

It's more grey actually.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=16&start=10#p232
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Redirect to Essell's Forum?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-20 13:55:20

Of the two forums, I think this has more going for it, and is a little more active. Though only a little unfortunately.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=24&start=0#p233
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Interpreters!
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-20 17:39:44

You are right in recommending other interpreters than Gargoyle for Hugo games,
since it as you say uses Glk which doesn't always work that well.

Spatterlight does NOT use Glk. It implements graphics and windows more accurately compared with the original hugo interpreters. It's not perfect, there are occasional glitches. Sometimes the window background colors are off, sometimes you have to push space an extra time between splash screens. That's the price of window resizing and scrollback (which none of the original hugo interpreters have, and the display model of hugo was never designed for).

Merk, please send me anything that bugs out either Gargoyle or Spatterlight.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=31&start=10#p234
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Writing vs Playing
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-21 07:58:46

Don't you ever play games thinking "This'll be brilliant! I can't wait to play it!" ?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=38&start=0#p235
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Howard Sherman article at Adventure Classic Gaming
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-21 08:38:08

I really wish that article would've been less about "This is me, look at me, look how great I am" and more about "here's what my games are like and how I write them."

It would've done far more to improve the way he looks, and possibly help his business more than an egotistical self-praise article.

Frankly, I'm surprised that ACG even published something like that.  I wonder if Howard paid them for ad space or something...because that's what it reads as.

I'd prefer to see an interview, with someone asking controlled questions to him, and see how he responds.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=37&start=0#p236
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2006 Intents
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-21 08:40:11

I've signed up already, hopefully my game will be ready by the deadline....actually I need to get it done sooner so I can get it beta-tested.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=38&start=0#p237
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Howard Sherman article at Adventure Classic Gaming
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-21 09:17:56

Then you're in luck! They actually did interview him, back in 2003:
<a href="http://www.adventureclassicgaming.com/index.php/site/interviews/176/">http://www.adventureclassicgaming.com/i ... views/176/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=38&start=0#p238
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Howard Sherman article at Adventure Classic Gaming
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-21 09:52:56

At least in that interview he doesn't come across as so egotistical.  The interview is actually pretty good, at least, it's what I'd expect to read from any publication doing an interview of a game designer.

Just went to the Malinche website.  Just reading the screenshots from his games gives a good indication of their quality.  Some tidbits:

[quote]
The Iranian frigate launches some sort of missile which is ripped apart by a Phalanx gun well before it could threaten your ship.

Commander Lockhart walks over to the chart table and studies a detailed map of North Korea.

(From "Endgame")
[/quote] 
We're near Iran and my XO is looking at a map of North Korea?

[quote]
Jones starts shouting for security and within a few seconds three burly orders rush into the room.

(From "Greystone")
[/quote] 
Great proofreading, that.

There are others but it's just too much to type.  Although, some of his games have attractive boxes with feelies, which could be cool.

If I have spare cash I might buy one of his games and do a write-up for SPAG.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4&start=0#p239
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: The Forum
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-21 10:18:55

[quote="Merk"]
It shows up right in the quoted section, but not in the text I originally typed.
[/quote] 

It looks like both the bold and italics work right if you highlight the text first [i]then[/i] click on the Bold and Italics buttons on the reply screen. Otherwise, if you just type in the tags manually, the tags don't get parsed correctly.

Still weird, but at least there's a workaround. [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=38&start=10#p240
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Howard Sherman article at Adventure Classic Gaming
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-21 10:48:20

I thought the same -- maybe buying a couple of his games, and sending reviews to SPAG. What would be even cooler would be to buy the commercial version of Future Boy, buy the World's Fair Mystery, and one of the Malinche games, and write a review package for SPAG.

I'd also love to partner up with some other IF authors, and try to come up with some really good commercial IF. I'd say, sell it at the token price of $5 per game. Perhaps get four authors to write a game each, spend $1 on the shipping/media, and split the other $4 per game sold. Something like that. Then, call ourselves "Implementors" and see how Malinche responds. [emote]Smile[/emote] Edit: Or even better, maybe sell 5 games in a $10 bundle. If they were really good, original games, maybe even part of a set or series or sharing a theme, I think that would attract people.

But, that's a whole different discussion, and I'm knee-deep in too much stuff at the moment anyway. Maybe in 2007. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4&start=0#p241
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: The Forum
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-21 10:50:58

Interesting. I'll [i]try[/i] that.

Edit: Nope. Still didn't work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=37&start=0#p242
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2006 Intents
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-21 11:11:48

You certainly like deadlines, don't you? My game was finished a while back and has been going through testing for the past few weeks. It's frightening the amount of bugs people have come across in a game that I was convinced might have a few typos in it but would be "bug free". [emote]Sad[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=38&start=10#p243
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Howard Sherman article at Adventure Classic Gaming
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-21 11:11:52

I think that'd be extremely cool.  If you want a hand shoot me an email.

Of course, I'm not too hot to trot on the coding side yet, but I have some interesting story ideas, and I think I can write. [emote]Wink[/emote]  Guess the IFComp will be the final judge of that, anyway.

Anyway, $5 per game is far more reasonable than the $19.95 digital download price for Malinche's games, or the princely sum of $29.95 for the boxed versions.

I wonder how many hours of play his games have?  I can't imagine they are as detailed or lengthy as something like Anchorhead.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4&start=0#p244
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: The Forum
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-21 11:12:56

Little [i]italics[/i] test.

Darn. No joy. [i]Italics[/i] don't seem to be my friend here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=38&start=10#p245
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Howard Sherman article at Adventure Classic Gaming
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-21 11:21:07

[quote="Merk"]
I thought the same -- maybe buying a couple of his games, and sending reviews to SPAG. What would be even cooler would be to buy the commercial version of Future Boy, buy the World's Fair Mystery, and one of the Malinche games, and write a review package for SPAG.
[/quote]   

I have all three. "Future Boy!" I reviewed a while back and I'm playing "1893: A World's Fair Mystery" now. One of these days I'll get around to writing a review of it. "Pentari First Light", one of the Malinche 'classics' I've had for a while since some kind chap sent me his copy but I gave up with it after a while because, well, it's just not very good. I thank my lucky stars I didn't buy it because it would have been a serious waste of money.

Just out of curiosity, has anyone *ever* seen a decent review of a Malinche game? Anyone that isn't Howard Sherman in disguise, that is?

[quote="Merk"]
I'd also love to partner up with some other IF authors, and try to come up with some really good commercial IF. I'd say, sell it at the token price of $5 per game. Perhaps get four authors to write a game each, spend $1 on the shipping/media, and split the other $4 per game sold. Something like that. Then, call ourselves "Implementors" and see how Malinche responds. [emote]:)[/emote] Edit: Or even better, maybe sell 5 games in a $10 bundle. If they were really good, original games, maybe even part of a set or series or sharing a theme, I think that would attract people.
[/quote]   

I'd love that kind of thing. Even if it didn't generate much in the way of cash, it'd be nice to do something commercial just for the sheer heck of it. And who knows? We might even sell 150,000 copies. [emote]:)[/emote]


[b]EDIT:[/b] of course, bit above when I said 'has anyone "wrote" a decent review' should have actually been 'has anyone "seen" a decent review'. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=37&start=0#p246
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2006 Intents
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-21 11:46:57

[quote="David Whyld"]
You certainly like deadlines, don't you? My game was finished a while back and has been going through testing for the past few weeks. It's frightening the amount of bugs people have come across in a game that I was convinced might have a few typos in it but would be "bug free". [emote]:([/emote]
[/quote] 

Well considering I started writing it seriously around August 1st, I didn't have all the time in the world to get started.  And I'm also learning I7 as I go.  So a few days of serious work will get me finished, I'm almost done.

Just hope that the beta-testers don't come up with anything that takes me 2 weeks to fix.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=38&start=10#p247
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Howard Sherman article at Adventure Classic Gaming
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-21 12:09:23

[quote="Wanaselja"]
I wonder how many hours of play his games have?  I can't imagine they are as detailed or lengthy as something like Anchorhead.
[/quote] 
My guess is that he designs tall, instead of wide. What I mean by that is, you implement just what's necessary to support the puzzles, and you make the puzzles such that the player's time is spent trying to figure out what to do next. It's a far harder thing to design wide. This means deeper implementation, multiple options and paths, unnecessary but rewarding verbs/actions, and a more thought-provoking story. A wide game is long not by overly difficult puzzles, but by more content.

[quote="David Whyld"]
I'd love that kind of thing. Even if it didn't generate much in the way of cash, it'd be nice to do something commercial just for the sheer heck of it. And who knows? We might even sell 150,000 copies. [emote]:)[/emote]
[/quote] 
I'm at a point in my life now where even excellent sales (I'm thinking a couple thousand copies over two or three years) of a $5 game wouldn't make a huge difference to me. It's "for the heck of it" that I'm most interested in. If I'm going to write something to sell, I'll necessarily put more time into it, make sure it's more polished, and take the entire effort more seriously. Even at $5, I would be responsible for the quality of the game. Just like the IFComp in years past, it's the kind of motivation I need to actually *produce* something instead of just dreaming up interesting concepts.

I just hope the IF community would realize that this wasn't some silly (and naive) get-rich-quick scheme. I wouldn't expect to sell a hundred copies, let alone two thousand. But, it might be fun. If the games were good -- and I mean *really* good -- we might cut in on some of the exposure that Sherman seems to garner. I could even see doing downloadable demos, but putting boxed feelies and stuff in with the full version. I think it would be fun. I used to do this kind of thing in high school with some friends, and it was always a blast.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=37&start=0#p248
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2006 Intents
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-21 12:13:16

Toward the end of September, I might have a spare day or two to beta-test IFComp games. No promises. The last game I tested was Nothing But Mazes (Greg Boettcher, for the IntroComp), and I feel like I let him down by only making it through one play-through. I usually try to be a lot more thorough, and a lot more... er.... experimental when it comes to really prodding at things. I'm not the ideal person to try out a real-life test run, but I'm pretty good finding the technical flaws.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4&start=0#p249
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: The Forum
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-21 12:14:37

I can't figure out *why* it's trying to put in markup code. What's with the colon and the number? What does it really add to the tag, anyway? It's weird.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=38&start=10#p250
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Howard Sherman article at Adventure Classic Gaming
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2006-08-21 12:47:46

From [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/tree/browse_frm/thread/15f9ee7a612248b4/943308d21bf61bf7?rnum=21&q=malinche+review&_done=%2Fgroup%2Frec.arts.int-fiction%2Fbrowse_frm%2Fthread%2F15f9ee7a612248b4%2Fd8b884cea93d8af6%3Flnk%3Dst%26q%3Dmalinche+review%26rnum%3D2%26#doc_4639273e4dcb9542]here[/url]
SPAG was going to review a Malinche game; Sherman found out about it and threatened SPAG if they ran it.  (note: without having seen the review)

Also see [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_frm/thread/15f9ee7a612248b4/d8b884cea93d8af6?lnk=st&q=malinche+review&rnum=2#d8b884cea93d8af6]this quote[/url]
[quote]
Poor Mr. Panks has almost gone into seizures trying to convince all of
you his work is good.  OUTSIDE of Bizaro world his works are quite
good.  In the twisted little universe in here, his work is trash. The
poor man must be on the verge of a breakdown.  I hope this message
reaches him in time. 
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=38&start=10#p251
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Howard Sherman article at Adventure Classic Gaming
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-21 13:00:25

I've sent off an email to Jimmy Maher to see if the policy still holds true, now that Paul O'Brian has handed it off.

Also, through your links, I found this series of brief comments/reviews:
<a href="http://www.carouselchain.com/if/comments.php?rategame=1294">http://www.carouselchain.com/if/comment ... egame=1294</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4&start=0#p252
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: The Forum
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-21 13:09:58

[i]Italics[/i]

Strangely enough, when I previewed this post, the italics bit above was actualy in italics, but when I submitted it, it shows up with the weird coding instead.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=38&start=10#p253
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Howard Sherman article at Adventure Classic Gaming
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-21 13:18:32

I actually have the feeling that the only person who rates Howard's games highly is Howard himself.

PC Zone (or maybe PC Format) magazine reviewed one of his games last year and basically slated it. I wonder how many threatening e-mails they got off him as a result?

The threatening to sue SPAG thing *is* pretty hilarious, though. It really says something about your belief in your own work when you're threatening to sue someone for publishing a review of your game *before* you even know what the review is like.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=15&start=0#p254
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: [ADRIFT] Hourglass Competition enters judging phase
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-21 14:32:37

Just FYI, you don't have to be registered to the Adrift forum or anything to vote.

And the judging deadline has been pushed back to the 31st, so there's still plenty of time to play the games. (They're all pretty small and I went through about half the entries in an hour.) There's also a temporary hint and spoiler forum over on the Adrift site, which might be kind of necessary since three hours doesn't allow much time to work out GTV problems. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4&start=0#p255
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: The Forum
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-21 14:35:23

Could this be a browser issue? I'm using Firefox 1.5.0.1 and this bit of [i]italics[/i] and [b]boldness[/b] worked.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=15&start=0#p256
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: [ADRIFT] Hourglass Competition enters judging phase
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-21 14:47:29

Speak for yourself. I'd have never finished one game without asking the author about it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4&start=0#p257
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: The Forum
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-21 14:48:26

I'm using Firefox 1.0.5.6 and I'm betting this word here - [i]italics[/i] - doesn't display properly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4&start=10#p258
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: The Forum
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-21 14:49:32

And here's some [i]italics[/i] in good ol' Internet Explorer to see what it looks like.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=31&start=10#p259
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Writing vs Playing
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-21 14:53:08

I tend to play more than I write (and a *whole* more than I actually *finish* writing...).

I also tend to go through 'cycles' with what I do in my freetime. I'll play IF awhile, browse the Adrift forum constantly and work on my games a little, and then something else will come along and I'll obsess on that for awhile. For instance, as far as gaming goes, after realizing that Oblivion was kind of shallow and closer to an action game than a real RPG I got back into Morrowind and was having a blast with that every night, and then along came a roguelike/city sim called Dwarf Fortress that completely consumed my life for about a week, and I'm *just* now coming down off of that and cycling back around to IF again. Sometimes I'll even (gasp!) get involved with something that doesn't require a computer, like last month's brief love affair with polymer clay.  [emote]Surprised[/emote]       

But playing IF, or even just browsing the Adrift forum can be a big inspiration to my writing, so it's unfortunate that I don't see as many games that I can really get into anymore. I don't know if it's that my standards are a little higher now, or that I've just gone through all the 'classics' already.

I know when I first started playing, all I had to do was go to BAF and download something with five stars. (Where I first discovered Anchorhead, and no game since has been able to top it...)

Then it was down to four stars, then I started picking through the threes, and now I just play comp games.

EDIT: Whoa. Hey mods, something freaky going on with italics...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=15&start=0#p260
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: [ADRIFT] Hourglass Competition enters judging phase
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-21 15:06:58

Which is why I said the hint forum was necessary. Though as far as I know you're not even technically required to complete a game before vopting for it. (Er...that one hour playthrough I mentioned didn't actually include *finishing* all of the games, though it might be possible to do it in that amount of time now with the hint forum...)

Edit: GAh! Again with the italics! Why does the internet hate me? [emote]Sad[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=31&start=10#p261
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Writing vs Playing
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-21 15:08:04

The italics issue is an ongoing problem Hopefully one that'll be fixed soon.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=7&start=10#p262
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: How does ADRIFT's parsing work?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-21 15:12:33

[quote]
I guess it wasn't clear from Campbell's announcement, but will part of the ADRIFT parser itself be included in that standard library?
[/quote]   
Yes, ADRIFT 5 will come with a standard library that should mimic the functionality of ADRIFT 4.  The parser itself will be defined by the tasks, therefore there will be no conflict between the in-built "system tasks" and the user defined tasks.  In some ways, this actually makes the parser more flexible than, say, Inform, as it doesn't necessarily have to start with a verb (ok, I'm simplifying), but can still be nailed down as tightly as required.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=15&start=0#p263
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: [ADRIFT] Hourglass Competition enters judging phase
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-21 15:12:47

Oops! I thought you said "unnecessary". [emote]Sad[/emote]

That'll teach me to surf the internet with my eyes closed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=38&start=10#p264
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Howard Sherman article at Adventure Classic Gaming
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-21 15:18:28

I don't really have anything to add to the Malinche issue (uncontrollable laughter doesn't translate very well into text...) but since the issue of selling games has come up I thought I'd link to a fairly recent thread on the Adrift forum about the same thing. <a href="http://www.adrift.org.uk/cgi/iB/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=1;t=5356">http://www.adrift.org.uk/cgi/iB/ikonboa ... f=1;t=5356</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=38&start=10#p265
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Howard Sherman article at Adventure Classic Gaming
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-21 15:24:08

Here's the complete reply from Jimmy Maher. In short, he's not actively seeking reviews of Malinche games, but would publish them if they're as objective as any other review.

[quote]
Mike,

[quote]
Mike Snyder wrote:
Paul O'Brian previously had this to say about reviewing Malinche games:
<a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/msg/4639273e4dcb9542">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts ... 3e4dcb9542</a>
 
Does the policy still hold true under the new management? There is absolutely no way Howard Sherman could launch a successful lawsuit over a game review. He would be foolish to try.
[/quote]   

In short, no.  To elaborate...

I am not actively seeking reviews of Malinche games.  You will never see them on the most wanted list, etc., just because there are others works of IF that I am more interested in covering.  However, if someone should choose to write a review and send it to me, I am willing to publish it, and, no, I am not the least bit concerned about any law suit Mr. Sherman might intend to launch.  The key here, though, is that it must be a review just like all of the other reviews I publish.  This means the reviewer must play it to completion and offer a balanced take on the game.  I know Mr. Sherman has few friends in the modern IF community, and I certainly don't think much of him personally or professionally, but I am not interested in publishing anti-Sherman hatchet jobs.

Now, referencing the discussion in question... a review of 1893 I would really love to see.  I've been trying to get one for the last year, and Paul O'Brian was trying for about two years before that.
 
[quote]
Also, could I post your answer to the Interactive Fiction Forum, here?
<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=38&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=10">viewtopic.php?f=4&t=38&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=10</a>
[/quote]   
 
Certainly.  I would prefer it if you could directly paste in the my full response, though, so everyone understands my perspective on this completely.

Regards,
Jimmy
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=16&start=10#p266
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Redirect to Essell's Forum?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-21 15:41:01

After having had a look at both I think I prefer this one as well. Ideally I'd like to see them both succeed, but I agree that having two around might do more harm then good. There are two Adrift forums as well, and what usually happens is one sits completely empty unless the main site goes down for a little while and then everyone rushes over to the backup to be miserable together. [emote]Smile[/emote] 

I say give it a month, and one or the other will naturally come out on top.

Or you and Essell could always have a no holds barred fight to the death, that would be fun too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=38&start=10#p267
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Howard Sherman article at Adventure Classic Gaming
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-21 15:43:21

I'm guessing SPAG's policy of completing games before reviewing them still holds true? If so, I doubt I'll ever be sending a review of "Pentari: First Light". I'm not sure I could bear to play it again, let alone struggle through it right to the end.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=16&start=10#p268
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Redirect to Essell's Forum?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-21 15:45:23

Custard pies at dawn!

Essell's forum seems to be dying out unfortunately. I liked the look of it initially, but it's too lacking in the kinds of things people expect from a forum so I don't see many people using it in preference to this one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=38&start=20#p269
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Howard Sherman article at Adventure Classic Gaming
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-21 15:46:04

[quote="Lumin"]
I don't really have anything to add to the Malinche issue (uncontrollable laughter doesn't translate very well into text...) but since the issue of selling games has come up I thought I'd link to a fairly recent thread on the Adrift forum about the same thing. <a class="postlink" href="http://www.adrift.org.uk/cgi/iB/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=1;t=5356">http://www.adrift.org.uk/cgi/iB/ikonboa ... f=1;t=5356</a>
[/quote] 

I think it will only ever work on a small scale, but I see nothing wrong with that. Several things would have to happen, though.

1) The game(s) would need to be excellent, entertaining, and of pretty good length.
2) They would need to be cheap. $5 each, or maybe $10 for a set of three.
3) The support of the community would be necessary. Look what happens without it.
4) The author(s) would need to build a following. People buy what they already like.
5) It would need to be taken seriously. No half-assed order fulfillment.

#3 and #4 are the hard parts, because it seems so difficult to get the community to support *anything* that strays from established norms. They can be downright brutal and vindictive, from the looks of things. Also, the IF authors who have the best chance of writing IF that would garner name recognition aren't going to charge for their games anyway.

I'd do it just to force myself to write better IF. I'd do it just so I could stay motivated. I have a sick feeling, though, that the community would be against the idea no matter how much effort is put into it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=0#p270
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-21 16:10:47

Thought I'd start a new thread for this seeing as it's drifted away from Malinche and his games.

[quote="Merk"]
I think it will only ever work on a small scale, but I see nothing wrong with that. Several things would have to happen, though.

1) The game(s) would need to be excellent, entertaining, and of pretty good length.
2) They would need to be cheap. $5 each, or maybe $10 for a set of three.
3) The support of the community would be necessary. Look what happens without it.
4) The author(s) would need to build a following. People buy what they already like.
5) It would need to be taken seriously. No half-assed order fulfillment.

#3 and #4 are the hard parts, because it seems so difficult to get the community to support *anything* that strays from established norms. They can be downright brutal and vindictive, from the looks of things. Also, the IF authors who have the best chance of writing IF that would garner name recognition aren't going to charge for their games anyway.

I'd do it just to force myself to write better IF. I'd do it just so I could stay motivated. I have a sick feeling, though, that the community would be against the idea no matter how much effort is put into it.
[/quote] 

How important would RAIF's approval of the whole thing be, though? They might be the biggest collection of IF fans in the world but, as someone (I think it was Jimmy Maher) pointed out, 95% of the world probably doesn't even know that newsgroups exist.

If you were going to do a commercial game, you'd advertise it on RAIF of course, but your main audience wouldn't be the people who browse an obscure newsgroup, it'd be from the more mainstream game sites. Submit a demo to some of them*, include a note about the full game being available from X site, mention a trivial fee of something like $5, and see who bites. At such a small amount, it wouldn't be unreasonable to think that *someone* would decide to give it a try. Now you aren't going to become an overnight millionaire from that sort of thing, but it'd be nice to make *something*.

* I'm using 'them' because I don't know offhand who 'they' are, but I'm sure 'they' exist.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=0#p271
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-21 16:31:52

Oh, I definitely think more sales would come from outside the community than from within it. But, without community support, the project is likely to be torpedoed at every turn. Look at what came of the simple notion that newsgroups might not be the best way to conduct IF discussions, now that using them correctly and to their full potential has become such an esoteric endeavor. I mean, the kinds of nonsense I saw as a result of that was nothing short of astounding. So much non sequitur rubbish over a single topic...

But let me start over. Without community support, any public exposure this hypothetical commercial IF might get would result in a backlash. Howard Sherman seems to deserve it. Kent Tessman and Peter Nepstad, for their respective games, are favored. We'd need to do it like they do: good games, community participation, and honesty. To some degree, I feel like the forum debate that was raging not long ago may have burned a few bridges already. I got a real feeling for just how petty people can be, when it comes to challenging their comfort zones. That makes it that much harder for any of us who *are* using forums to get the kind of support and acceptance we would need from the rest of the community. I guess what it boils down to is, don't piss people off.  [emote]Confused[/emote] 

Even without community support, the lack of community ill-will would help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=0#p272
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-21 17:15:41

I'd like to think that the more open-minded folk on RAIF would be all in favour of a commercial project as, hopefully, it would be a step towards the idea of an actual commercial base for IF. And the more open-minded folk probably *would* be in favour of it. Unfortunately, as the recent thread on there highlighted only too well, the open-minded ones are in a definite minority, and are far less vocal than the rest. I get the impression that some of them would openly criticise *any* commercial IF game, even if you charged an absolute pittance for it, even if you gave away your proceeds to charity, because that's just the way they are.

But, saying that, I'm also sure there are enough people out there who *would* like the idea of commercial IF and *would* be willing to give it a try.

It's just a case of finding out who those people are.

A commercial IF game wouldn't even have to be the best thing around. I liked both "Future Boy!" and "1893" yet while there are better free games out there, people still bought the commercial ones. Find the right audience and they'll buy something, even if something similar is available elsewhere. (Why do we buy books, after all, when they're free of charge from the local library?)

The first thing to do, ideally, would be to make a demo version of the game (maybe 5% - 10% of the overall thing), test it to heaven and back to make sure it's totally bug free and you've covered every possible sensible response someone might think to type. Make the demo long enough to give people a genuine feel for what the finished product would be like, end it at a cliffhanger moment... *then* worry about getting the final product done.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4&start=10#p273
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: The Forum
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-21 18:46:09

[quote="David Whyld"]
And here's some [i]italics[/i] in good ol' Internet Explorer to see what it looks like.
[/quote]  
Thanks. I'm trying it out on my Firefox 1.5.0.6 now, and here's [b]bold[/b], and here's [i]italics[/i]. I won't do a preview - I'll just directly hit Submit, so let's see what happens.

EDIT: I even edited David's comment to make the italics work. And it does.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=0#p274
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-21 19:03:08

[quote="David Whyld"]
I'd like to think that the more open-minded folk on RAIF would be all in favour of a commercial project as, hopefully, it would be a step towards the idea of an actual commercial base for IF.
[/quote] 
Maybe, but I'd be surprised if more than a half-dozen IF enthusiasts hold any hopes for a commercial comeback. That would take some serious resources. If established authors of static fiction partnered with skilled programmers (who were willing to use an IF authoring language) and co-wrote something, and if a publisher with the right know-how could put it in Barnes & Noble, Borders, Waldenbooks, Hastings, or wherever, with some PR and marketing to go along with it, maybe. I think those people could reach a market that would be very much receptive to buying interactive fiction. I believe the games would need to be more story-driven, and less puzzle-driven though, to really capture this market.

[quote="David Whyld"]
But, saying that, I'm also sure there are enough people out there who *would* like the idea of commercial IF and *would* be willing to give it a try.
[/quote] 
Yeah, I think so. Reaching them is the trick.

[quote="David Whyld"]
It's just a case of finding out who those people are.
[/quote] 
I think it's that segment of the public where "frequent reading of fiction" and "frequent but general computer use" intersect. Even then, it would be just a fraction of those people. Still, I can't help but think that if you put a great and accessible work of interactive fiction in professional packaging and sold it in a bookstore, it would do well. Market it not as a game, but *as* interactive fiction.

[quote="David Whyld"]
A commercial IF game wouldn't even have to be the best thing around. I liked both "Future Boy!" and "1893" yet while there are better free games out there, people still bought the commercial ones. Find the right audience and they'll buy something, even if something similar is available elsewhere. (Why do we buy books, after all, when they're free of charge from the local library?)
[/quote] 
Well, I buy books because I collect (and often read). I have shelves full of sci-fi. In the case of commercial IF, though, the closer it is to "the best thing around", the easier it would be to attract customers via favorable press and reviews, right? Besides, I wouldn't want to charge if it wasn't something unique and good.

[quote="David Whyld"]
The first thing to do, ideally, would be to make a demo version of the game (maybe 5% - 10% of the overall thing), test it to heaven and back to make sure it's totally bug free and you've covered every possible sensible response someone might think to type. Make the demo long enough to give people a genuine feel for what the finished product would be like, end it at a cliffhanger moment... *then* worry about getting the final product done.
[/quote] 
Yeah, if the intent is to attract a publisher. I think, though, that publishers of novels wouldn't have the first clue about (nor an interest in) publishing and distributing software, and software publishers wouldn't be inclined to distributed a text-based game. If the intent is to get a grass roots type of customer base built up before the finished product is released, I'm not sure that's a good idea either. If you show 10% while the other 90% is unfinished, that's a world of time for people to completely lose interest in the finished product. I'd rather complete the product, test and polish, and then release a demo at the same time the full package is available. Maybe later, after there is an existing base of products, having "preview" versions might work out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=0#p275
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-21 19:13:45

I don't know if Barnes and Noble or an actual publisher is the way to go. Like I said in the thread I linked to in the Malinche discussion, I've always thought the way to sell IF would be through a website. People pay a few bucks via Paypal or whatever, and then download the game, and...you know what, I don't really feel like retyping everything, so I'll just be lazy and quote it here for anyone who didn't read the thread. [emote]:)[/emote] 

[quote]
I don't really have time to get into a long post here, but I've always thought IF games could be sold. The problem is that everytime I see people seriously discussing it on RAIF or whatever they wind up getting bogged down in unnecessary details like CDs and packaging, when really, what they need to do is go in the opposite direction.

All you need is a professional looking website to host them on, Paypal, and an open review system a la Amazon.

You pay something around five to ten dollars for a game (above that and it gets out of the 'impulse' range) and then download it. Simple. 
[/quote]  

And later: 

[quote]
I actually prefer downloading a game over buying one in a store. Carrying home that pretty box is nice and all, but the contents of it usually aren't anything to write home about it. Manuals are usually thin and printed on cheap paper, and you hardly ever get cool feelies like cloth maps, etc. anymore unless you're willing to shell out $60 or more for the collector's edition.    

These days I tend to pay more indie games then mainstream ones. Major reasons for this are that it's more convenient - no messing around with draconian copy protection that punish legitimate buyers, and if I ever uninstall it and then feel like playing again later, all I have to do is hang onto the email they send and can redownload it whenever I want.

Indie games also tend to be cheaper, and at the same time deliver fun and original gameplay...all the stuff that mainstream games sacrifice more and more now for the sake of the shiny graphics that drive the costs higher every year.

Anyway, back on topic, if there was ever a pay site for IF games, it stands to reason that besides the actual game, it would become more common for authors to try and get an edge on the competition by including virtual 'feelies'...PDFs, original art, wallpapers, short stories, etc.

Of course, all of this is going to take up space, and that costs money, so there would have to be something in it for whoever ran the site. Maybe every time there was a sale a percentage of the money would go to the site? Or maybe you would have to pay a small fee for putting your game up in the first place?

Seriously though, I think the main barrier to selling IF would be the IF community itself. Everyone says they want to reach a bigger audience and to see IF taken more seriously, but at the same time they seem to have this mentality that charging money for your work is bad, and won't even take simple steps like moving away from an outdated newsgroup to a website and forum somewhere new people might actually have a chance of finding them.

But in the long run, I think a nice, sleek-looking website to sell IF on would be great for the community. Authors would finally have a real incentive to break out of the snack-sized IFComp mold, and longer, more professional games would become more common. (IMHO something along the lines of the Bulldog series is easilly sellable).

But of course setting up and running the actual site would be the biggest obstacle. I know absolutely nothing about things like that, but I imagine it's harder than it looks.
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=0#p276
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-21 19:38:25

I need to read those posts, I guess. [emote]Smile[/emote]

A website and online distribution would be the most cost-effective, yes. It's just so hard to be seen. There are what... millions and millions of websites out there, right? Thousands and thousands of home businesses with something "unique" to sell, if only the visiting masses will take notice. For IF to *really* be commercially viable, it needs an outlet. Bookstore distribution is something I think would work.

It's also something that's out of reach. People buy books even though (as David said) there are public libraries (and let's not forget the free amateur stuff readily available online) for a reason. Professional authors, professional binding, professional presentation, and retail visibility. If commercial IF can really make a mark, I believe that's how. I also find it very very unlikely that circumstances are ever going to see to that. I would imagine professional authors are comfortable and satisfied with static fiction, and I would imagine publishers have defined and refined their methods. Nobody's going to take a chance on retail IF.

So, not being a professional author and having no "ins" in the publishing industry, a website and online distribution (possibly with mail-order options for "boxed" versions) would be the route I'd necessarily take. I doubt it meet with huge success, but I wouldn't go into it with high expectations anyway. I think it would be something fun to do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4&start=10#p277
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: The Forum
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-21 19:47:36

Well, I could probably dig in and find out what's going on. I've been a web developer for eight years, and I've been using PHP for the last couple. There's probably a good reason for it, but everything points to "bug".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=0#p278
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-21 20:11:00

<a href="http://www.shrapnelgames.com/,">http://www.shrapnelgames.com/,</a> or someone like them might be a good publisher to try. Even though they're still a website, they're pretty well established. (In particular you might want to check out Stormcloud's game Coliseum; it's not IF, but it's text-based just the same and is selling for $20.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=40&start=0#p279
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Using MUDs to introduce people to IF?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-21 20:14:15

There's been some talk about ways to reach a wider audience (this forum being kind of an experiment in that itself) and it's gotten me thinking of other ways too. 

I've kind of gotten the impression that MUDs are looked down on by the IF community (I don't know why; I mean, what's not to love about a game that has mazes and dragons and hack 'n slash combat and deathtraps and undescribed objects and hunger daemons, right? [emote]Very Happy[/emote])

But despite that, I still think they'd be an excellent way to introduce people to IF, for several reasons.

1.) I started off playing MUDs. Thanks to this, when I finally discovered IF, there was almost zero learning curve and I was able to get into it right away. 

2.) Lots and lots of people play MUDs. Way more than the number of people playing IF, anyway. Why doesn't anyone ever advertise IF on their forums? <a href="http://www.mudconnect.com/">http://www.mudconnect.com/</a>

3.) Most MUDs have an area called a newbie school, which is annoying as hell for veteran players, but essential in teaching new players the basics. You learn how to move around, examine things, unlock doors, talk to NPCs, manipulate objects, etc. (And of course you learn about combat, but that's not really relevant here.) Obviously including this in an IF game would break the hallowed memesis, but I've always thought the newbie school was better than tossing someone into a game (which may or may not be *completely* unsuitable for newbies), and making them reading through a dry and non-interactive help file about basic commands, assuming the game even includes one.  

4.) Using one of the global chat systems there are always helpful people around to answer questions about anything the newbie school didn't cover.

5.) It's a heck of a lot easier to describe IF to a MUD player than to someone who's never played a text game. "It's sort of like a single player MUD, but it's got a detailed plot that you're the star of and mostly focuses on puzzles and exploration." versus, "Well, everything is described with text. It's like, you have a description of a room, like the main character's living room, and if there's a couch mentioned in the description you can type 'look couch' to examine it more closely, or you could type 'north' to go to the kitchen, ...and hey, where are you going?!" 

6.) MUD players understand the parser, and the limitations of the parser. It can't be stressed enough how important this is. I've tried showing IF to a few people, and assuming they actually get past the first room they generally wind up phrasing an action in some bizarre way and then get pissed off when the game doesn't understand them. (This is assuming they even get past the stage where they stare blankly at the starting room. Another nice thing about MUD players is that in order to play MUDs they have to have this little thing called "reading comprehension.")        

So, it's all well and good to target people who like reading books or whatever, but with MUDs you've got a nice cross section of people who consider reading fun, people who are capable of using their imaginations, people who are computer savvy, people who are into obscure hobbies, *and* people who are into gaming in general.

For those last four reasons I think we should be making more effort to get the word out to communities that are into roguelikes and abandonware too. (The Underdogs has always been great about listing and reviewing IF and other indie games, but we could be hitting the forums a little more aggressively too.)
       
Also, one idea I posted about on the Adrift forums was fanfic. IF based on Harry Potter, or Buffy or anime or some other godawful trendy thing and then advertised on a couple of fansites would probably bring in hordes of new players. (Maybe not the *highest quality* of new players, but wanting IF to be appeal to a wider audience and then being really picky about that audience is a conflict of interests.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=41&start=0#p280
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: The Warlord, the Princess, and the Bulldog
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-21 20:22:05

I've never been a big fan of puzzle-heavy games, both because I find myself more drawn in when the 'F' part of IF is the most prominent, and because I'm just no good at solving the things unless I've got a walkthrough handy. But David Whyld's The Warlord, the Princess, and the Bulldog is, simply put, the best Adrift game I've ever played. It's also one some the best IF I've ever played, taking a place in my mental 'Top Five' list that until now has never been graced by a single pure puzzler. Poor David may well have shot himself in the foot with this one, because any of his future games are inevitably going to be compared to it.

While technically the sequel to A Spot of Bother, a game I had played previously and had been rather underwhelmed by, WPB can (and probably should) be enjoyed with no knowledge of the original, and when you start it up it's evident almost from the very first room that it's lightyears ahead of its predecessor.

In fact, David's done so many things right with this one that I hardly know where to start. The game was an entry in the Spring Thing and thus is quite a bit larger than average, but despite the size the writing is solid throughout, and except in a few minor cases mercifully bug and typo free. I can't even imagine the work that went into testing this one, let alone writing it in the first place.

To begin with, let's talk about aesthetics. The game just looks GOOD. In fact I never realized how blah the default look of Adrift was until I played this one and saw how much of an effect taking a little care with the fonts and presentation could have. There are also little touches like clearing the screen for every new room, an oldschool convention I've never really cared for, that somehow work here and add to the overall impression of professionalism.

But okay, I know, real IF aficionados couldn't care less about APPEARANCE; it's all about the gameplay, right? Well, I'm happy to say that WPB delivers in that area, too.

You play the part of Stavros 'the Bulldog' McGrogan, in the author's words "the hardest man the SAS ever produced" though it soon becomes clear that that's a hell of an understatement. The main character rarely has much of a personality in the more puzzle focused games, usually serving as a mere cipher, but that's definitely not the case here. The Bulldog alone contributes a hefty chunk of entertainment value to an already entertaining game, and despite the brilliance of most of the puzzles it just wouldn't be the same without him.

Oh, and there are lots and lots of those puzzles, but thankfully they really ARE brilliant, that rare mix of challenging but fun. Two of the things I dislike about puzzles in general is how just for the sake of having puzzles, they're often crammed in where they don't belong and stick out like a sore thumb, and how they can ruin your enjoyment of an otherwise great game by forcing you to bang your head against a brick wall for hours and hours, making not one iota of progress.

WPB circumvents both of those problems. First of all, the plot is a simple one, mostly involving infiltrating a fortress, and all of the puzzles feel like a natural part of infiltrating that fortress. Some are fairly straightforward, some are more complicated, and ALL of them are fun. I never once felt like Action A was just a tedious and unrelated chore to get to Room B.

Secondly, David made some unique design decisions that keeps players from running into the other problem I mentioned. It really does seem like it would be difficult to get stuck, even for 'solution-challenged' people like myself, as just about every major puzzle has an alternate solution, sometimes several, and you don't even need to solve every one of them, as there is plenty of bonus material and multiple paths to the end. (Though only the more difficult one may lead to the the optimal ending, I still managed to accomplish two out of three of the main goals my first time through, and only needed to consult the hints twice.)

Then, of course, there's the fact that many of the 'alternate solutions' might be as simple as bashing your way on through the opposition. The Bulldog starts off with a certain number of 'life points', which I know isn't a term generally associated with IF, but it works so well here I wonder why more games don't use it. Every time you take the easy way out and solve a puzzle with brawn instead of brains, there are painful (and usually amusing) consequences for the Bulldog, which eat up a number of life points. All life points gone = game over, but by making good use of the Undo command (which can be accidentally disabled in the most hilariously cruel way ever, though it's through a command I always try in the first room, so no big loss there...) I never even came close to dying until the final confrontation at the end.

Compared to the rest of the game the epilogue seemed slightly weak, or at least disjointed, but it's not really an issue, and the only reason I mention it is so that I can have SOMETHING in this review that qualifies as criticism. Needless to say, I am eagerly awaiting the sequel.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=40&start=0#p281
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Using MUDs to introduce people to IF?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-21 20:56:20

I too was a player of MUDs, and got way too addicted for my own good....

These days, IF is more my thing, since I can take it in doses and reach a definite end.

I agree though, the MUD community is screaming to be introduced to IF, at least as something to do when their MUD server is down. [emote]Smile[/emote]

Not so sure about the fanfic type community though.  It might not be worth the trouble to write a "Naruto" IF fanfic-game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=42&start=0#p282
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: I love it when things start to come together.
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-21 21:57:42

I finally got past some sticky bits of coding that were stumping me in I7, thanks to some help from RAIF and also some reading and experimenting on my own part.

My game is really coming together now!  I'm really getting quite optimistic that I'll actually complete this one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=0#p283
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-21 22:15:21

[quote="Merk"]
I believe the games would need to be more story-driven, and less puzzle-driven though, to really capture this market.
[/quote]  
A balance between puzzle- and story-driven games might do the trick. From what I've been scouring off Sherman's website (yes, yes, wrong thread [emote]:D[/emote]) and other sites related to adventures, most people tend to stick to their idea of what "interactive fiction" is - or was, which is more of a [i]game[/i] than a [i]story[/i]. Something that's fun and accessible, not too punishing, though they'd still welcome a real challenge or two. What matters is, there's something for everyone.

Having a slew of testers would also help in further polishing the game and making it ready for both veteran and newbie IF players.

[url=http://brasslantern.org/community/interviews/moriarty.html]Brian Moriarty's thoughts on commercial IF[/url] is something to read about as well, though he did not elaborate much.

I guess I'm delving more on design here than the actual publishing, but I think that's where it should all start.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=42&start=0#p284
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: I love it when things start to come together.
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-21 22:15:35

What's it about?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=0#p285
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2006-08-22 02:02:59

One thing that I think may be needed for commerical IF would be much broader parsers.

It is a big shock to the system to be told things like "you can't see any such thing" when an object is obviously there in the room with you, or for the parser not to understand unnecessary commands like "go to shelves" or "turn around". These were the biggest problems for me when I was getting started. It takes quite a while to get used to the unspoken conventions of IF ...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=0#p286
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-22 02:58:21

[quote="Lumin"]
I don't know if Barnes and Noble or an actual publisher is the way to go. Like I said in the thread I linked to in the Malinche discussion, I've always thought the way to sell IF would be through a website.
[/quote] 

That's more the sort of thing I had in mind. Now I don't know the realities of setting up something like that, but I'm going to hazard a guess that it'll be a lot easier than persuading the likes of Barnes & Noble to display your game in their store, particularly as you'd be asking them to display your game instead of something like a novel that is a guaranteed sale.

Also, if you go along the route of having the game in a high street store, you need an attractive cover for it, a little booklet explaining what it is, etc. Cost-wise, you'd be lucky to do something like that and make any kind of profit if you were selling your game for $5 or even $10. Make it available as a download, and you'd just need the game itself.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=10#p287
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-22 03:00:57

[quote="DFisher"]
One thing that I think may be needed for commerical IF would be much broader parsers.

It is a big shock to the system to be told things like "you can't see any such thing" when an object is obviously there in the room with you, or for the parser not to understand unnecessary commands like "go to shelves" or "turn around". These were the biggest problems for me when I was getting started. It takes quite a while to get used to the unspoken conventions of IF ...
[/quote] 

I guess that would be a necessity. While you're never going to be able to cover *every* response people could come up with, with enough time and patience, and enough people to test the game for you, you'd come close.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=42&start=0#p288
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: I love it when things start to come together.
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-22 03:01:20

Is this your IFComp entry?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=41&start=0#p289
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Warlord, the Princess, and the Bulldog
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-22 07:48:50

Thanks for the rather nice review. [emote]:)[/emote]

A sequel is planned - provisionally titled [b]Twiddles' Terrible Twin[/b] - but I don't know when. Certainly not this year, though hopefully sometime early next year.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=10#p290
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2006-08-22 08:08:26

One thing to note about making commercial IF cheap: as you lower the price point you'll reach a point where people are [i]less[/i] likely to purchase your games, because of the perceived cheapness.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=16&start=10#p291
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Redirect to Essell's Forum?
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2006-08-22 08:09:33

[quote]
A section reviewing new game releases might be a start. They can sit in their own special part of the forum and be there pretty much forever; on RAIF (or RGIf) they'd disappear in a week and be unlikely to be seen again.
[/quote]  

Except that they're archived on Brass Lantern at <a class="postlink" href="http://brasslantern.org/reviews/text/">http://brasslantern.org/reviews/text/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=42&start=0#p292
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: I love it when things start to come together.
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-22 08:16:53

It is indeed my comp entry.  My post for help on RAIF was changed to hide the true nature of my storyline/plot/etc., so nothing was revealed.

[emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=10#p293
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-22 08:52:59

I've read a few articles in computer magazines about that sort of thing with regard to open source software. People tend to be reluctant to use it because it's free and the assumption is that something free can't be as good as something you pay for.

But hopefully that won't apply here. After all, the majority of IF is free and no one assumes that it's of poor quality solely *because* it's free. So maybe a price tag of $5 or $10 might even give the impression that the product is better than the free software.

Of course, Howard Sherman charges $19.95 for his games and no one thinks they're any better because of the price tag, but I'd like to think that the average game writer is capable of producing better work than Howard Sherman.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=16&start=10#p294
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Redirect to Essell's Forum?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-22 08:55:26

Which is nice, but a section of the forum which is there every time people visit the forum is more accessible than a completely different site.

I wasn't actually aware of the collected reviews on Brass Lantern until I saw your post on RAIF, yet anyone taking a quick glance at this forum would be immediately aware of the reviews sections.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=10#p295
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-22 09:19:19

There are probably two sides to it. The existing community, being happy with plenty of free IF, would see any charge as "more". I think if the game was good, the author was respected, and perhaps if people just wanted to show support, they'd buy. On the other side, people unfamiliar with IF but attracted to the idea might see a low charge as "less" -- less than some other forms of entertainment, anyway. This is probably where too low a price becomes a bad thing.

I wonder how cheap is *too* cheap? Maybe $5 for a single game would appeal to thrifty IF enthusiasts, but seem trivial and not worth the bother to everyone else. Would $10 be overpriced for the IF community, but just right for the rest of the (hypothetical) market?

I'm the kind of person who likes to get "something" when I purchase a game. I'd like it to come on CD/DVD, with a box and manual and all that. If I'm paying the same price for a download, I feel like I don't really "own" anything. Most of my purchases are retail. I've been known to buy and download games to my Sprint phone, but even that feels a little awkward to me. I wish I had something tangible as a result.

I'm not saying a commercial IF project *shouldn't* or *can't* be strictly an online and download thing. I just wonder if that would cheapen it? After all, if you're paying and downloading -- not really "getting" anything -- how is that better than just browsing BAF's and downloading good stuff for free? Still, I can also see the impulse buyer wanting the game *now* -- instant gratification and all that. I just wonder if more professional packaging may be the edge that would make a commercial game seem more worthwhile.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=16&start=10#p296
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Redirect to Essell's Forum?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-22 09:23:18

[quote="Sargent"]
Except that they're archived on Brass Lantern at <a class="postlink" href="http://brasslantern.org/reviews/text/">http://brasslantern.org/reviews/text/</a>
[/quote] 
I may have asked this before, but if so, it was long enough ago that I've forgotten the answer.  [emote]:oops:[/emote]

Are these just the reviews that were posted to the newsgroups?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=10#p297
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-22 10:17:42

The problem with a printed manual and a CD ("feelies" if you will) is that they drive the cost up. I don't know how much they cost to manufacture, but you wouldn't have a lot of change left from $5 if you went down that route. You'd also have to put up a fair chunk of money before you even sell a single game - is that the kind of thing you want to do?

Given the choice between buying something physical and downloading it, I'd go with the physical thing. But given the choice between a $5 download that I can play *now* and a $10 CD that I need to wait to be posted to me, I think I'd probably go with the download.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=10#p298
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-22 10:47:29

Well, my own goal in such a project would be to just cover the expenses. I've ran an online games business for several years now, and while it has never been exceedingly profitable, it pays for itself and ends up being a pretty good tax write-off. I make my living at my day job, so I wouldn't really be depending on sales of IF to add anything to that. It would just be something fun. It might launch something more profitable, but I wouldn't be starting out with that expectation.

For commercial IF to be really successful beyond just a few meager sales, I really believe a retail outlet is the way to go. It would also need to be written by more professional authors. Barring those things, I'd be happy for a small-time, online effort. I just wouldn't be real worried about the profit, personally. I'd probably pour it back into the business anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=10#p299
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-22 10:52:10

I think the best thing would be to have it both ways: a physical copy that can be purchased and a download only copy (perhaps with an attached PDF manual and all the feelies that come as part of the physical copy). But while a download only copy would be a reasonably straightforward process, I'm not sure the other option would.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=10#p300
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-22 11:07:53

Getting professional CD printing done isn't that hard (although, if I'm correct, it's cheaper in bulk). It could even be semi-professional (I even have a CD printer that works with white-faced CDs). The bad thing about home-made CDs, though, is that they're not supposed to last as long. The data is stored by tainting the magnetic ink on "writable" CDs (or something like that -- somebody more in-the-know could probably explain how it really works), while "pressed" CDs have the data printed directly to the upper layer (if I'm not mistaken). Then there's the production cost of the manual, any feelies, and the box itself (unless you don't use a printed box for the package, which I wouldn't be too concerned with if it's strictly mail-order anyway).

You're probably right. It wouldn't be cost-effective for self-publishing. But, if all you wanted to do was break even, $10 or $15 would probably cover the media, the shipping, and any printed inserts.

Now, if we're talking about a small-time outfit actually making a profit (even if a small profit ) on commercial IF, I guess the rules do change. But what would the "edge" be? What could be done to attract customers to paying for an IF download? Officially licensed/authorized IP might be a good idea, if such an agreement could be arranged. Something in collaboration with a well-known author of static fiction? I know none personally, and they probably won't be attracted by a small-time offer. Good, appropriate, and original illustrations done by someone with actual artistic talent?

If it's just us amateurs trying to do our best, we need an edge -- because I don't think *my* best is quite good enough yet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=10#p301
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-22 12:55:42

Marketing is probably the key to it. If there's one thing Howard Sherman's good at (and it certainly isn't writing interactive fiction), it's promoting himself. Now that kind of thing, backed up with a decent game, would be admirable indeed. If someone did what Howard did, and they knew a thing or two about writing games, *and* they didn't act like such an unpleasant individual over it, they might well succeed.

As far as the cash side of things is concerned, I'm not under any illusions that this would ever turn into a profitable cash cow which would allow me to quit my job and pursue my dream of writing IF for a living. Breaking even would be nice. But I think I'd be reluctant to invest money in it if that wasn't guaranteed (and it wouldn't be) - I don't want to spend a lot of money to put commercial IF out there if it's going to get me nothing back financially. I might as well just continued releasing free games and entering them in comps. The download-able only aspect would be easier than the physical aspect, *and* cheaper, and so would be the one I'd be more willing to try out... at least until such a time as at least breaking even was a distinct possibility.

Turning to the actual logistics side of things:

* A demo would be a necessity as people would be reluctant to spend money (even a few dollars) on an IF game if they didn't have at least some indication it was going to be good.

* The full game would have to be large. And by large, I mean large in terms of the amount of time it takes to complete. The IFComp caters to 2 hour games and some of them are damn good (the best game I've played for years won the IFComp in 2004), but as the majority of them are short, people would feel that they hadn't really got their money's worth. I remember one of the criticisms levelled at, say, [b]Doom 3[/b] was that it could be finished in 15 hours, which wasn't a lot of gameplay considering the price of it. An IF game, to be considered decent value for money at, say, $10 would need to last a good 10+ hours, and, preferably, have a lot of replay value.

* The game would need to be deliberately easy to begin with, or contain a very, very good hints system, to ease newbies into it. One thing I disliked about both [b]1893[/b] and [b]Future Boy![/b] was that neither were very easy to begin with. I imagine quite a few people played the demo of [b]Future Boy![/b], got stuck, and didn't buy the full game as a result.

* Deciding on a system. For me that would be a simple choice. I only know Adrift and Quest, and I wouldn't even consider writing a commercial game in Quest. Adrift's parser often takes a pounding from the RAIF crowd but I'm not sure anyone outside of the immediate IF community would bother so much.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=10#p302
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-22 13:17:14

Adrift would be the easy choice for me, too, but for people who can actually program I think something like Glulxe has a lot of potential. It's the best I've seen so far for making slightly 'flashier', more professional looking games.  (City of Secrets, etc.) 

Inform 7 might be able to do this too, but I haven't played any major games with it yet so I'm just guessing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=20#p303
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-22 13:57:12

Hugo is very good for creating multimedia IF. I wish I had a *little* more control over its windowing and positioning ability, but it does fine (the limits are due to cross-platform considerations). It's also very powerful when it comes to parsing, and when it comes to customizing things. If I ever write commercial IF, it'll probably be in Hugo.

There isn't any reason multiple people or groups can't start commercial IF projects independently of each other. Even with collaboration, there isn't necessarily a reason the same organization can't sell IF made in different ways.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=20#p304
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-22 14:00:14

I always liked the general look of [b]City Of Secrets[/b]. It looked like a professional game and stood out from most of the other IF. I'm sure Hugo can do a similar thing, though, or it did in [b]Future Boy![/b] anyway, but then I haven't played enough Hugo games to say for sure.

I'm pretty sure neither Tads or Inform 6 can do anything similar. Inform 7 I don't know.

Adrift 4 can't but hopefully Adrift 5 will be able to, but it'll be several months at least before we find out.

But for me, it's not so much a case of which system would be the best one to try and write a commercial game in. I only know two systems and I only write games in Adrift. So Adrift it is for me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=43&start=0#p305
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Dwarf Fortress and some other ramblings
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-22 14:18:16

Anyone heard of this game? It's a roguelike/city sim/rpg where you control a group of dwarves, design their fortress by hand, and eventually build up a huge city (at least until you delve 'too greedily and too deep' and run into some new friends... [emote]Twisted Evil[/emote]) and it's been generating a huge amount of discussion on the Something Awful and Penny Arcade forums. (And I think Gamespy and probably lots of other sites too.)

<a href="http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/">http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/</a>

I'm plugging it partly because it's a great game that manages to be an insane amount of fun despite still being in the alpha stage, and the developer seems to be a great guy as well, but also because I was wondering if it would be possible to do something like that with IF?

Obviously an IF game would be nowhere near it in *scale*, but I'm just talking about the concept in general. I know with most interpreters it's possible to do a lot of things besides your typical 'text adventurer', but besides CYOAs I could probably count on one hand the number of games that break out of the typical mold of you as the PC going around examining things, talking to NPCs, solving puzzles, and generally being the only one that gets anything important done.  (Actually, right now I can just think of *one*, and that would be Lock & Key. And even that still had you as the main character solving a puzzle, though the snazzy interface made it really stand out as something different.)

Would it be possible/plausible to make an IF game that was more of a simulation than an adventure? Say, a functioning castle or space station or whatever, with NPCs running around on schedules you could either directly or indirectly influence. You wouldn't even *need* a main plot for a game like that, just enough freedom and interesting things going on so the player could create their own.) 

Now, I could see this being done on two levels; either with the player being a 'manager' type figure who gives orders and is distanced from the action, sort of like with Lock & Key, (but a lot more complex obviously) or with the player being your typical PC who's turned lose in this world and can directly interact with it.

I don't know if I'm making much sense here, and at any rate I can't picture anything like this that wouldn't be a nightmare to implement, but as a person who loves games that include a 'sandbox mode' I guess one of the things that's always frustrated me about IF is how inherently linear it is. IF is all *about* restrictions, leading the player along and trying to keep them from wanting to try anything too weird, and even a game that tries for multiple endings and multiple solutions to puzzles is still railroading players down a handful of set paths, no matter how hard the author tries to disguise it. Even something like a hugely simplified Nethack-type game would be incredibly hard to pull off, just because of the way all the different elements interact with each other.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=20#p306
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-22 15:33:58

I can get really excited about some new project like this, until I realize just how long it would take to write a sale-worthy game. In 1999, I started working on a massively multiplayer sci-fi browser-based game (at <a href="http://www.starlock.com/">http://www.starlock.com/</a> if anybody cares to play -- it's free). Last year, after six years of development and less than 20% of the total project completed, I gave up. This was going to be a commercial (but self-published) game -- the next big thing from Prowler Productions. Granted, this was far more ambitious than even a well-implemented and lengthy work of IF would be, but it drives home my fear that I could spend the next year or two working on a single IF game to market. If I could do it full-time -- cash in my 401k, max out my credit cards, or something -- It wouldn't take so long. [emote]Smile[/emote] But, considering that commercial IF is likely to be only moderately successful without a publishing deal (I know -- some disagree -- this is just my take on it), anything like that would be foolish.

About how long do the rest of you think it would take to write a great "commercial" work of IF?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=20#p307
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-22 15:47:05

To a large degree, it depends obviously on the size of the game. The game would have to be big so people feel they've got their money's worth - say 10 hours worth at a minimum. I seem to remember someone (it might even have been, Merk) said my Spring Thing entry took roughly 8 hours to finish. So a game about 20% bigger than that would be a reasonable starting point, though tested a lot more thoroughly beforehand. That game took about 3-4 months to write, not counting a few other games I worked on at the same time.

Of course, a commercial game would be tested a lot more than my Spring Thing game was so double the time it took to write.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=20#p308
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-22 16:00:42

Yeah, it took me right at eight hours. I'm not even sure a ten-hour game would be long enough. How long was Future Boy!? I've only played the demo version. I'm thinking maybe 20 hours would be a better "commercial" target. But again, that's 20 *productive* hours -- not just a bunch of roaming around with nothing to do, trying to solve a single puzzle by random trial and error.

A good example -- and a game I played recently with my wife -- is Dreamfall (sequel to The Longest Journey) on XBox. It's an adventure game, but it has great pacing. The length comes from the story and content, not from stumping the player in certain areas. It really feels like everything you do makes progress. We spent hours and hours to complete it, and aside from some parts that required us to run back and forth between places, it really does move ever forward. We're now playing the original (The Longest Journey) on PC, and while it's a great game (and highly acclaimed when it was released, I think), it's easier to get stuck. It has more "real" adventure game puzzles, where Dreamfall really didn't.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, except that I guess it all depends on what in the game is going to cause it to be longer -- more content, or more stumping the player.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=20#p309
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-22 16:10:13

20 hours of gameplay would require a huge game. Really huge. To write and test and bug fix something like that, you'd be talking at the very least a year. The longest I've ever worked on a game was 6 months and by the time I finished that game, I was wishing I'd cut it short so I could have finished it sooner. Of course, big is better in terms of value for money. A short game, no matter how good, would just never be considered value for money because it would be over with too quickly.

It's something to think on, I guess. Ideally, this is the kind of project best attempted by a group of people. One coming up with the ideas, one writing it, one testing it, one fixing the bugs/errors. But you'd need to be lucky indeed to find enough people willing to work on a game for a full year.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=43&start=0#p310
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Dwarf Fortress and some other ramblings
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-22 16:21:19

Annnd, no one's replied. I figured this would be confusing. (I just read over it and I had no idea what I was talking about myself! [emote]Very Happy[/emote])

That's what I get for trying to type a long post in a rush. Oh well, just disregard everything I said past the first paragraph and I'll try to say something a little more coherent later. I need some time to think of some examples or something.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=20#p311
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-22 16:22:04

Yeah, a year of solid work is about what I was thinking, too.

But maybe that's the wrong approach entirely. How about subscription-IF? Every three months, release an "issue" that contains several smaller games. This would make collaboration a lot easier. Instead of five people working on one 10- or 20-hour game each (which would be hard to coordinate anyway), how about five people writing a single 2- or 4-hour game? Although it becomes an ongoing commitment, maybe people would be more likely to pay a low "subscription" price, knowing they would get future games too. Think about having a trilogy split out over three issues, making people want more. Or, having the back issues available for sell (at a little over what a single issue would cost with a subscription). Subscription IF is an idea a friend of mine shared with me a couple years (if not longer) ago, and I forgot about it until now.

Anyway, it's another way of approaching the commercial IF business model. And a little variety might make it more appealing to customers.

Edit: Another advantage would be publishing submitted works. They would need to be thoroughly reviewed, fixes recommended, re-reviewed, etc, but with the right publishing agreement, the issues could become even bigger and better. This would give other IF authors an outlet for selling and distributing their own games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=20#p312
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-22 16:28:15

The only really successful 'team effort' game I can think of right off would be Slouching Towards Bedlam.

I don't think IF lends itself very well to 'team efforts'. The plot and the descriptions and programming are all tied too closely together. It's not like a more typical type of game where one person can do the art, one the music, one the writing, etc.

Edit: Oh, and as for existing games that I, personally wouldn't have minded paying money for, what comes to mind are Anchorhead, City of Secrets, The Warrior, the Princess, and the Bulldog, Max Blaster and Doris de Lightning Against the Parrot Creatures of Venus, (now say that ten times fast! [emote]Razz[/emote]) and the Earth and Sky series.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=20#p313
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-22 16:30:27

[quote="Lumin"]
The only really successful 'team effort' game I can think of right off would be Slouching Towards Bedlam. I don't think IF lends itself very well to 'team efforts'. The plot and the descriptions and programming are all tied too closely together. It's not like a more typical type of game where one person can do the art, one the music, one the writing, etc.
[/quote] 

Yeah, and that's where Subscription-IF would really shine. Instead of one huge game, sell multiple smaller ones. Collaboration is moved to the top level, yet the resulting combined effort can be put together into one product. I really think something like that would have potential.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=43&start=0#p314
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Dwarf Fortress and some other ramblings
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-22 16:45:44

I actually downloaded and tried to run it, but it seemed to be taking so long I quit. How long does it take to run on average?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=20#p315
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-22 17:00:40

Commercial IF used to be written by teams of people, back in the 80's. Some of the bigger games had dozens of people working on them. Of course, that was in IF's commercial heyday when you could actually be guaranteed making money from it. Writing IF then was approached from the business point of view and companies might spend as much on testing a text adventure as they would on testing or writing a graphical one. I even remember reading somewhere (probably in the Inform manual) that Infocom hired a professional proofreader from a publishing company to proofread their games.

A group project would only work out if there was some agreement beforehand about who was doing what. I've been part of a couple of group projects with Adrift and both failed miserably. The "Pass The Taf" project died out because it was too disorganised: one person started the game, e-mailed it to someone else, they wrote their bit, e-mailed it to the next person, and so on. Before long, no one really knew what direction the game was taking, there were loose ends here, there and everywhere, and people started dropping out. Disorganisation killed it. The other project, I don't think it even had a name, died out even quicker than that. Lots of debate over ideas, lots of people arguing that their idea was best and that should definitely be the one everyone went with... a definitely case of too many cooks spoiling the broth.

But an organised project might well work. If someone were to, say, draft out the entire game in as much detail as is needed to show people what they intended to do, and then carefully noted down what everyone else needed to be doing, it might work. The bulk of the work would be down to the implementor (for want of a better title) who would write the actual game. You could have someone else testing it as it was written, fixing bugs and whatever, proofreading, offering suggestions, and so on. Or, if you were really organised, you could split the game into several large chunks and have someone working on each chunk at the same time. It'd be a nightmare of a job to go through in the end and tie all the chunks together, and marry them up in style and content, but it might be possible.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=30#p316
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-22 17:03:43

[quote="Merk"]
[quote="Lumin"]
The only really successful 'team effort' game I can think of right off would be Slouching Towards Bedlam. I don't think IF lends itself very well to 'team efforts'. The plot and the descriptions and programming are all tied too closely together. It's not like a more typical type of game where one person can do the art, one the music, one the writing, etc.
[/quote]  

Yeah, and that's where Subscription-IF would really shine. Instead of one huge game, sell multiple smaller ones. Collaboration is moved to the top level, yet the resulting combined effort can be put together into one product. I really think something like that would have potential.
[/quote] 

That's actually an interesting idea. Put out a game every few months, charge $5 for it, and make it part of a long-running serial. The games themselves would still have to be sizeable efforts - maybe 5 hours playing times - otherwise people would grumble that they weren't getting their money's worth. But I think serial IF could work. And, even better, it's the kind of thing that would be doable. A huge project taking a year or more to complete is daunting; a smaller project, or series of projects, appeals to me a lot more.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=44&start=0#p317
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Which authoring tool?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-22 17:13:14

Hey guys, 

I'm just planning my first IF game (as in sitting and writing the settings, storyline and interactions in notepad before starting to code) and was wondering which of the authoring tools I should explore in order to create the game - does anyone have any pros and cons for each of the ones available?

I've downloaded and played with TADS, which doesn't look too difficult for the simplistic things such as moving from room to room and interacting with basic objects but I think this may get trickier as I try to do more complicated things.

I haven't tried any of the others but would be interested in your views, with an easy to use interface and coding structure being rather appealing to me.

Cheers

Mxx

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=30#p318
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-22 17:42:40

Not just serial IF -- subscription IF. Put multiple games on the same issue. They could be anywhere from one to three hours long (IFComp length), with maybe one "featured" game (longer) each issue. Collaboration then means each participant just needs to get their game done by the issue's deadline.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=43&start=0#p319
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Dwarf Fortress and some other ramblings
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-22 17:50:40

I didn't initially reply, because I didn't have anything to say. Still don't, really. I guess the short answer to the initial question is no, I hadn't heard of it. I'm not a bit of a hurry at the moment, but I'll try to say more later, when I'm back. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=44&start=0#p320
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which authoring tool?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-22 17:52:16

I'm in a bit of a hurry, but maybe somebody else will give an answer between now and when I get back. I will say, more people should give Hugo a chance. Almost nobody does. It's very much a programming language, though. At the other end is Adrift, which is reportedly very easy with no programming required.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=10#p321
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-22 18:25:10

I'm not going to guess why there were fewer voters last year, but I do think we're due for a rebound -- unless something weird happens, like there being only two games or something. 

This is the first time I announced the comp without yet having any donated prizes. We'll see what happens with that. I probably won't donate, since hosting and domain registration cost me enough already. But if anybody here feels like donating, give me a shout.

Thanks to David Whyld for announcing the comp in the Adrift group, by the way. I always mean to do that, but I don't always get around to it.

Greg

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=44&start=0#p322
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which authoring tool?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-22 18:41:36

I'm a novice, with no programming experience, and I'm finding Inform 7 manageable.  Much better than Inform 6 was, anyway, and I also gave Tads3 a shot and although that was better than Inform 6, I wasn't able to do much with it either.

Anyway, my game in Inform 7 is coming along nicely, so I'd suggest going with that, as a free option.

ADRIFT is apparently easier than even Inform 7, but does have a cost involved.  You can give it a try for free though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=43&start=0#p323
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Dwarf Fortress and some other ramblings
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-22 18:42:56

This game looks incredibly awesome, and I'm downloading and trying it now.  Thanks for the link!

As for an IF that does what this does...I imagine it'd be VERY hard to do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=43&start=0#p324
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Dwarf Fortress and some other ramblings
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-22 21:26:34

[quote="David Whyld"]
I actually downloaded and tried to run it, but it seemed to be taking so long I quit. How long does it take to run on average?
[/quote]  

The first time you play you have to generate a world, and unless you get really lucky and there aren't many rejections that can take awhile. If you don't want to mess with that I'd recommend just grabbing one of the ready to go worlds off the site. (Oh, and [i]after[/i] the world is generated and you go to play you get a little message that says 'Importing World' or whatever, and that takes a couple of minutes too. Just be patient, it's worth it. [emote]:)[/emote] )    

Oh, and also, you'll likely be overwhelmed at first but there's a good starter guide here, just a couple of posts down: <a class="postlink" href="http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?s=9899f369d648e4546afc78b7f440b971&threadid=2011668">http://forums.somethingawful.com/showth ... id=2011668</a>

[quote="Wanaselja"]

As for an IF that does what this does...I imagine it'd be VERY hard to do.
[/quote]  

Yeah, I imagine so! I don't even think it would be possible, but a more simplified strategy/sim/IF hybrid would be a lot of fun. (Though probably still a serious PITA to program.) 

To elaborate on my castle example, let's say that in the starting room you've got a chest with a small amount of gold, and a desk with some scrolls that explain about the people you're in charge of, and all the orders you can give and how much each one costs. You can wander around exploring the castle and the surrounding area just like any IF game, but the puzzles are more abstract than tricking the scullery maid to reveal the location of the key that unlocks the room containing the mysterious gewgaw or anything like that. 

All the NPCs are on schedules. (Either they start off that way or you assign them.) Every morning a handful of farmers harvest wheat right outside the walls, then carry it to the miller, who grinds it into flour and takes it to the baker. The baker makes bread, which gets distributed back to the whole castle. Only, let's say that due to a group of bandits and an inept (or sadistic) PC the farmers are killed off. Suddenly there's no food, and after a few days people are refusing to work and leaving in droves. It's your job to stabilize the situation by arranging another source of food; either buying it, or hiring more peasants, or butchering some horses if you *really* get desperate. 

Then to keep the same thing from happening again let's say you decide to hire a guard and order him to patrol the fields. All of this costs gold, of course, and you only start out with a finite amount, so in order to produce more you have raise taxes (which can lead to unpleasant results if you go overboard) or keep all your craftsmen supplied so they can make neat things to sell to merchants. (which is a complete rip off of Dwarf Fortress, but I like it. [emote]:)[/emote])

And to steal another idea, maybe besides keeping the castle running like clockwork there's also an annoying PITA noble hanging around making constant demands - this could actually lead to some more traditional IF elements, with puzzles involving keeping them happy, or finding something they lost, etc.

Anyway, I'm fixing to leave so I've got to cut this short, but I think you could see how with enough different elements interacting together this could get really interesting...and really complicated, of course, but the fun of wishful thinking and armchair programming is you don't actually have to worry about things like that. [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=30#p325
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-22 21:32:42

The only problem I see with a subscription is that deadlines could mean having to rush and miss a few bugs, or force the author to cut out some cool thing they don't have time to program, or something else that could disappoint/piss off a paying customer.

With a game that only has to be finished "when it's finished", you have as much time as you need for polishing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=30#p326
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-22 21:39:15

True -- but you could always push the release back a few days, or release early on a good cycle. Judging by the unpredictable delivery times for my game magazine subscriptions, I gather this happens a lot.

Something else that might be a good idea, especially if doing a subscription plan, would be to release the games as freeware after a period of time - say, a year or two. As long as there was always new content to sell, and older ones were "given back" to the community, it might satisfy everyone.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=10#p327
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 03:04:13

Well, I'm planning to enter the Spring Thing, so I wanted it to get the maximum publicity possible. I haven't heard that anyone on the Adrift forum is planning to enter the comp but at least they're aware of it and the possibility's there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=30#p328
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2006-08-23 03:49:13

I'm writing just to hijack this thread a bit. [emote]Twisted Evil[/emote] 

Since we're talking about Commercial IF... I'd be happy to participate in such a project; however, it would need to be a collaboration with someone who can write and design. I'm a programmer first and foremost, and know my limitations - I'm not good at design and writing.

Occasionally, I do get ideas for games, but that's where it stays: as an idea. No matter what, I can't seem to flesh them out. [emote]Sad[/emote] That's my weak point.

Writing IF as part of a team would be nice, especially IF of a commercial length and quality.

However, I digress a bit. Let me get onto the subject I was intending to write about.

I'm all for someone or someones from the community teaming up to create commercial-quality IF. And I'm not afraid of a failure in it, if the game is sold online, which doesn't cause too much of an expense. However, I'm afraid it will fail, not because of it being a "text adventure", but because of a failure to market it properly. Marketing the game is probably the most important part if going commercial.

Without marketing, who will hear of your game? With marketing, how many will be turned away because the game doesn't have flashy graphics with a point'n'click interface? How many percent of those who hear of the game will be willing to part with money for it? These are just a few of the questions needing an answer before a commercial venture with a true business model could be considered.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=44&start=0#p329
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which authoring tool?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 05:21:59

There *is* a free version of Adrift available (version 3.9), though it lacks a lot of the better features of the paid-for version. Saying that, you can still write a perfectly acceptable game with it and the AIF community mainly use it in preference to version 4. 

In terms of ease of use the list probably goes (from easiest to hardest):

Adrift
Inform 7
Alan
Tads 2/Inform 6
Tads 3/Hugo

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=30#p330
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 05:25:08

[quote="Merk"]
True -- but you could always push the release back a few days, or release early on a good cycle. Judging by the unpredictable delivery times for my game magazine subscriptions, I gather this happens a lot.
[/quote] 

You're assuming that it would be possible to get together a group of people who can not only produce games of decent enough quality to sell, but also do it on a regular basis. It might well be possible, but I doubt it would be easy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=30#p331
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 05:30:30

[quote="rioshin"]
I'm all for someone or someones from the community teaming up to create commercial-quality IF. And I'm not afraid of a failure in it, if the game is sold online, which doesn't cause too much of an expense. However, I'm afraid it will fail, not because of it being a "text adventure", but because of a failure to market it properly. Marketing the game is probably the most important part if going commercial.

Without marketing, who will hear of your game? With marketing, how many will be turned away because the game doesn't have flashy graphics with a point'n'click interface? How many percent of those who hear of the game will be willing to part with money for it? These are just a few of the questions needing an answer before a commercial venture with a true business model could be considered.
[/quote] 

I think marketing *is* the key to it. Whatever Howard Sherman's faults as a writer of IF, he's very good at getting his games "out there" (i.e. in the public awareness). Even if no one likes them, and he's regarded as the black sheep of the IF community, he's still succeeded to some degree if people know who he is.

Setting up a website for the games would be a move in the right direction. Putting up a demo on the site to give people an indication of what the full version is like. Maybe even submitting the full version to a few online games sites to see what they think of it, and, hopefully, if they'll consider reviewing it.

Of course, all the marketing in the world would come to nothing if we haven't got a game to market.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=44&start=0#p332
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which authoring tool?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 06:09:36

Hugo as a language looks like one of the nicer languages out there. I would probably use it myself if the display model and interpreters were nicer. As it is, I'm writing my WIP in Inform 7; I like the language, and the I7 application itself is invaluable for testing as you go.

In fact (this should probably be a separate thread) I don't see why it wouldn't be possible for the I7 app to use any of the source-text based IF languages (Alan, Hugo, TADS).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=30#p333
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2006-08-23 06:19:27

[quote="David Whyld"]
I think marketing *is* the key to it. Whatever Howard Sherman's faults as a writer of IF, he's very good at getting his games "out there" (i.e. in the public awareness). Even if no one likes them, and he's regarded as the black sheep of the IF community, he's still succeeded to some degree if people know who he is.
[/quote] 

True, Howard Sherman knows his marketing. Too bad he doesn't know his implementing or writing as well.

[quote="David Whyld"]
Setting up a website for the games would be a move in the right direction. Putting up a demo on the site to give people an indication of what the full version is like. Maybe even submitting the full version to a few online games sites to see what they think of it, and, hopefully, if they'll consider reviewing it.
[/quote] 

This would definitely be a step in the right direction. In addition, it would be a good idea to send the complete game to some of the gaming magazines for reviews - IIRC, one of Sherman's games has been reviewed in a magazine (getting a real bad score).

[quote="David Whyld"]
Of course, all the marketing in the world would come to nothing if we haven't got a game to market.
[/quote] 

How true. And that's where I'd fall short - since I can't get an idea to gestate into a design for a game. The technical skills I'd have for writing one, but not the design or writing skills to make a good story with good text.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=30#p334
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2006-08-23 06:38:08

[quote="David Whyld"]
I always liked the general look of [b]City Of Secrets[/b]. It looked like a professional game and stood out from most of the other IF. I'm sure Hugo can do a similar thing, though, or it did in [b]Future Boy![/b] anyway, but then I haven't played enough Hugo games to say for sure.

I'm pretty sure neither Tads or Inform 6 can do anything similar.
[/quote] 

I'm fairly sure City of Secrets was written in Inform 6.  (Though doing that takes quite a bit of work.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=44&start=0#p335
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which authoring tool?
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2006-08-23 06:39:51

ADRIFT is certainly easier to get started; I disagree that it's easier to write a polished game with ADRIFT.  There are a number of pitfalls which TADS and Inform are designed to avoid which are very easy to make with ADRIFT.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=7&start=10#p336
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: How does ADRIFT's parsing work?
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2006-08-23 06:40:08

If you want to handle commands that don't start with a verb in Inform, you can use the "LanguageToInformese" or "UnknownVerb" entry point routines.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=30#p337
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 06:49:22

I think you might be right there. For some reason, I can never get all the various types of Inform 6 together in my mind. [b]City Of Secrets[/b] was written in Glulxe which is some kind of variation of Inform 6 that allows larger games, right?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=0#p338
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Introducing Ourselves
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 06:59:59

On the Adrift forum, we have a little topic stickied at the top of the General Discussion section where people can come along and introduce themselves to the forum. Any chance of something similar here so that everyone can get to know everyone else? (Edited by Rioshin: Post stickied)

Assuming it’s okay…


I'm David Whyld, 30 *and a bit* years old, way too much free time on my hands and an obsessive drifter (that’s in the sense that I use Adrift, btw [emote]Smile[/emote] ). I've alternatively wanted to be a world famous novelist and just got hold back by the fact that I can’t write a novel worth a damn. Thus I turned my hand to interactive fiction. So, book publishers of the world, it’s *your* fault I'm here…

Currently working on a huge detective game for the Spring Thing 2007 and I'm in the process of getting my IFComp 2006 finished, excited at the prospect (even if it doesn’t happen) of commercial IF and hoping this forum turns out to be the runaway success it deserves to be.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=44&start=0#p339
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which authoring tool?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 07:24:38

Thank you all for your comments so far, keep them coming [emote]Smile[/emote]

I've now tried a few things in TADS (2 and 3), ADRIFT and Inform7 and certainly feel the most comfortable with I7. I like the interface and the help guide featured inside the software. 

As with all of them, I think I need a concrete plan for my story before going further than initial testing of the software, but am impressed by I7 so far after creating a few rooms, and the ease of using scenes.

Mxx

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=0#p340
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 07:31:01

How do.  Mike Murphy, age 27 and living in London UK. 

I played my first text adventure on the BBC Acorn back in the early 90s and have liked them, along with 'point and click' adventures since, although not many games I play hold my interest for that long...regardless of how much I like the genre. 

A few years ago some members on my forum, which was then primary based on riddles, liked the idea of creating a game based on the background story of my forum.  Although we had kicked around the idea of writing our own software for a text adventure, and then with creating our own 'point and click' game, they never really got past the early planning stage.  Now the interest lies with creating an RPG, perhaps using Ruby on Rails, but I still like the idea of creating a short IF game as originally planned - so I'll be doing that myself. 

The game will be based in a mansion and the player will be required to rescue local children who are being held in a basement by a recluse lion who has now lost control of the mansion to a group of monkeys (um...like I say, it's kindof relevant to the forum background and so doesn't sound like it makes any sense [emote]Wink[/emote])

Mxx

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=43&start=0#p341
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Dwarf Fortress and some other ramblings
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 08:20:42

I can't figure out how to do anything at all in this game.  All the textual graphics are boggling my mind.

Maybe I'll read that starter's guide at work today [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=0#p342
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 08:30:30

Hi, I'm David.  I live in Indianapolis, USA.  I'm 27, and have a degree in English which I'm sadly not using in any professional capacity.

I started playing adventure games in 1986 on my Tandy 1000EX.  I never played much text adventures, mostly graphical adventures like Space Quest and King's Quest.

I discovered IF around 2003 or so, and liked what I saw.  And here I am.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=29&start=0#p343
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Game of the Month: August 06: The Baron by Victor Gijsbe
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 08:36:42

I must say i'm glad I got around to playing this one.  Can't wait for the discussion!

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Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-23 08:44:09

Two Davids and two Mikes so far... Mike Snyder, 34, from Wichita Kansas (grew up in Oklahoma, but moved back to Wichita in 1995).

My first experience with Interactive Fiction was "The Arconiax Assignment", around 1987. It was a "scratch-and-sniff" adventure game published by Rainbow Magazine for the TRS80/CoCo. That got me hooked. I had been piddling with BASIC for a year or two (TI-99/4a, Apple II, and by then, the CoCo 2). The first text adventure I ever wrote was called "Antartic Adventure" (yes, Antartic -- poor spelling in the title is a good indication of the quality of the rest of that one). I wrote quite a few after that, and submitted them to a subscription software distributor called T&D. For the next three years or so, many of my games (including many that weren't text adventures) were distributed on these issues of T&D (it worked well for them -- which is another reason I think subscription IF might work -- but I digress). I have most of my old CoCo adventure games (and the rest) at [u][url]http://www.cocoquest.com/[/url][/u] but I lack that first one I wrote (it was never published -- and for good reason), and the last (a self-published game called "The Entity" that is probably lost forever -- a shame, since it might be worth rewriting now).

I've written lots of games and done lots of programming since then: BBS and Worldgroup BBS games, browser-based games, DOS and Windows games, interactive fiction. I'm a programmer by profession, though, so after a full day of work it sometimes feels like *more* work to come home and work on a game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=0#p345
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2006-08-23 08:53:21

Well, I guess it's time I wrote a short introduction about myself...

Name's Mikael, age 31. After a few years working, back in school studying software engineering - to finally get the degree for what I've been doing for ages.

I started playing IF, or text adventures as they were called back then, in the mid-80's, and started out writing my own parsers on the trusty C64 (I still like to write parsers on it, in basic, for some weird reason).

A few years ago I stumbled upon the IF community, and ever since I've had the itch to create a game... but as I've mentioned in other posts, I'm not much of a designer or writer - I'm the workhorse that can get the game programmed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=29&start=10#p346
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Game of the Month: August 06: The Baron by Victor Gijsbe
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-23 08:55:45

I don't think Shaurian has been back since the post was first started, but I assume it's still a go.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=44&start=0#p347
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which authoring tool?
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2006-08-23 08:58:06

I wrote this before the advent of I7, but it may be useful to you anyway: [url=http://brasslantern.org/writers/howto/chooselang.html]Choosing a Text Adventure Language[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=40#p348
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2006-08-23 09:00:42

[quote]
I'm pretty sure neither Tads or Inform 6 can do anything similar.
[/quote] 

Just to clear things up: City of Secrets was written in Inform 6. Inform 6 (and now 7) can compile to one of two virtual machines: the z-machine, which is the format Infocom used, and Glulx. You actually can do graphics in either (through version 6 of the z-machine), but Glulx allows for a lot larger game size and doing graphics in it is tremendously easier.

Both TADS 2 and 3 have the graphics and sound capabilities to do a multi-window approach like City of Secrets.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=29&start=10#p349
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Game of the Month: August 06: The Baron by Victor Gijsbe
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 09:01:36

I'm still all for it.

(Note to self: playing the game would be handy. [emote]Smile[/emote] )

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=16&start=10#p350
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Redirect to Essell's Forum?
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2006-08-23 09:03:36

[quote="Merk"]
[quote="Sargent"]
Except that they're archived on Brass Lantern at <a class="postlink" href="http://brasslantern.org/reviews/text/">http://brasslantern.org/reviews/text/</a>
[/quote]  
I may have asked this before, but if so, it was long enough ago that I've forgotten the answer.  [emote]:oops:[/emote]

Are these just the reviews that were posted to the newsgroups?
[/quote] 

Mostly, though I occasionally get permission to "reprint" reviews that are elsewhere. For example, Dan Shiovitz often gives me permission to add his reviews to the page (like with his most recent IntroComp reviews). The big thing I'm interested in archiving at BL are the various competition reviews, as it's useful to authors and players to be able to see all of the reviews in one location.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=16&start=20#p351
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Redirect to Essell's Forum?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-23 09:07:39

[quote="Sargent"]
Mostly, though I occasionally get permission to "reprint" reviews that are elsewhere. For example, Dan Shiovitz often gives me permission to add his reviews to the page (like with his most recent IntroComp reviews). The big thing I'm interested in archiving at BL are the various competition reviews, as it's useful to authors and players to be able to see all of the reviews in one location.
[/quote]   

The IFWiki also linked to a pretty large set of 2005 IFComp reviews, and I looked again a day or two ago (probably as this topic came up) and saw similar links for 2004 (edit: looks like review lists extend to even more prior years now). It's a little different deal, since the links branch out to the reviews elsewhere, but any archival or centralized collection of links is a great idea. I'll often go back to hunt for and re-read reviews of my past games, and that makes it a lot easier. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=46&start=0#p352
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Past IFComp Reviews
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-23 09:18:10

I noticed that the IFWiki now has extensive links to past competition reviews, starting with 1998. Go [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/The_Annual_IF_Competition]here[/url], click the year at the top, and then just scroll down to the review links. Also, Brass Lantern has archived many reviews [url=http://www.brasslantern.org/reviews/reviewlist.html]here[/url].

One of my all-time favorites -- each IFComp 1999 game reviewed by one of the other games -- is [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/msg/f035706a4c502fd6]here[/url]. I remember really getting a big kick out of this the first time I read through it. The author, Dave Coleman, did a great job of capturing the essence of the "reviewing" and the "reviewed" game both. This was attempted by somebody else at least once in a future year, but it didn't really work the way this one did.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=44&start=0#p353
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which authoring tool?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 09:18:33

Any plans to update that now that Inform 7 is out? I also notice there's mention of SUDS there but does anyone use SUDS these days? I certainly can't remember any new SUDS games in the last few years.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=46&start=0#p354
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Past IFComp Reviews
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 09:19:47

Thanks. It's always interesting reading reviews of your past games, particularly when you come across one that you never noticed at the time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=44&start=0#p355
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which authoring tool?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-23 09:27:13

Oh, I had forgotten all about SUDS. I kind of dropped out of the scene around the time it was released, if I recall correctly.

Also, it seems like I heard something about ALAN 3 being different from 2, much the way TADS 2 and TADS 3 differ. I'm not sure though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=0#p356
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Ken Franklin / DateTime: 2006-08-23 09:34:04

Hi, Ken Franklin here!

I am 45, from Surrey, England, UK, Europe, World, and have been part of the ADRIFT community for just on six years.

My first introduction to text adventures came in the early 1980's with "Philosopher's Quest" from Acornsoft for the BBC Micro Model B. Like many I drifted away from adventure games for a number of years, though I dabbled a bit with "GTAC: Graphic Text Adventure Creator"
by Andrea Gallo on the Acorn Archimedes/Risc Machine in the nineties.

Since finding interactive fiction, and particularly ADRIFT, I have attempted largely unsuccessfully to actually create something that I could be proud to let others play. I have spent a lot of time as Admin on the [url=http://www.adrift.org.uk/forum]ADRIFT Forum[/url], edited the [url=http://insideadrift.org.uk/]InsideADRIFT newsletter[/url] for about 20 issues, created [url=http://insideadrift.org.uk/mwiki/]Drift On: the ADRIFT Wiki[/url] and have organised many ADRIFT competitions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4&start=10#p357
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: The Forum
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-23 09:35:24

In case anybody cares, the server uses mirrored RAID-1, so I think the posts here are pretty safe. It's unlikely both drives would fail at the same time. But that reminds me, I intended to add a database backup to my nightly event, and I keep forgetting. I'll have to do that soon, just in case both drives ever *do* fail, or the database ever gets corrupted somehow.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=0#p358
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 09:44:14

Hi, I'm Gayla.  I'm twice as old as most of the other folks involved with IF, so in a metaphoric sense you can think of me as a little old lady with an umbrella and a very large handbag.  I live in Las Vegas and spend my days working at a fairly boring job in the accounting department of a small company.

I played Zork back in the 80's and loved it.  So did my children.  Then I forgot all about text games until my son Erik came home from college for a visit and installed Winfrotz and Curses on my computer.  He said, "Play this, Mom. You'll like it!"   He was right.  And then he recommended "So Far," "Metamorphoses," and "Savoir Faire."

After that he said, "Why don't you try writing one of these games?"

"Sounds like fun," I said.  "How do I do that?"  So he gave me the URL of the TADS site.  A year and a half later I finished writing "Finding Martin," and then I asked him, "Now how do I get people to play it?"   Erik told me about the IF newsgroups, and I found out about all the things I did wrong with "Finding Martin."

I'm in the planning stages for a second project, but I haven't started coding yet.  I have too many ideas, and none of them are meshing together cohesively yet.  I'm not sure if I'll ever get anything started with a second project.  But I had so much fun writing the first game that I don't want to give up trying to put something together.

--Gayla

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4&start=10#p359
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: The Forum
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2006-08-23 09:46:51

[quote="Merk"]
In case anybody cares, the server uses mirrored RAID-1, so I think the posts here are pretty safe. It's unlikely both drives would fail at the same time. But that reminds me, I intended to add a database backup to my nightly event, and I keep forgetting. I'll have to do that soon, just in case both drives ever *do* fail, or the database ever gets corrupted somehow.
[/quote] 

And since we're using Beta software, it might happen.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=44&start=10#p360
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which authoring tool?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 09:57:22

I forgot about Alan 3. It seems to be similar to Hugo in that it's a true programming language yet gets overlooked in favour of Tads and Inform.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=40&start=0#p361
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Using MUDs to introduce people to IF?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 10:15:36

Which ones did you play? I was addicted to Medievia until I realized Michael Krause was the Devil. Then I bounced around for awhile until I settled on 4 Dimensions, but I eventually got so busy with school and work that I had to pretty much give them up.

I still occasionally play 4D with a new character though, and not too long ago a friend introduced me to Carrion Fields. (Which is great up until I hit level 11 and get reduced to a red smear on the ground...PK is not something I've ever been good at. [emote]Sad[/emote])

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=47&start=0#p362
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Good games for beginners?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 10:27:26

I was just thinking, maybe we ought to try and compile a list of 'newbie-friendly' games, so that anyone coming here will have an idea of where to start.

I believe the first IF game I played was HGttG, which in hindsight I would *not* recommend to someone just starting out. (That babelfish puzzle is murder, though luckily I stumbled across the rest of the IF Community while looking for a solution. [emote]Smile[/emote])

Off the top of my head, I can think of Dreamhold and City of Secrets as being good for newbies, but of course not everyone likes fantasy, so, what else? Maybe Photopia? Any other ideas?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=44&start=10#p363
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which authoring tool?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 10:30:14

[quote="David Whyld"]
There *is* a free version of Adrift available (version 3.9), though it lacks a lot of the better features of the paid-for version. Saying that, you can still write a perfectly acceptable game with it and the AIF community mainly use it in preference to version 4. 
[/quote] 

And I'm not 100% sure, but with Adrift 5 coming out soon, I assume version 4 will be free to download before long?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=47&start=0#p364
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good games for beginners?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 10:38:30

Normally I'd go with somehting like [b]Luminous Horizon[/b], my fave game of the past few years, but as it's the third and final game in a trilogy, it's probably not a good one to *start* with.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=40&start=0#p365
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Using MUDs to introduce people to IF?
User: Ken Franklin / DateTime: 2006-08-23 10:39:25

There is always [url=http://ifmud.port4000.com:4001/]IF MUD[/url] it is a rather weird world. I did a bit of building in it a couple of years ago, but probably couldn't find it again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=44&start=10#p366
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which authoring tool?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 10:41:23

I haven't heard anything along those lines, although I don't think anyone has actually asked the question on the Adrift forum yet.

I'd hazard a guess that the answer would be: no.

Although it might be an idea to half the price or something seeing as the shiny new Adrift 5 will be out and there won't be much incentive for any newcomers to buy 4 when 5 is out. However, if 4 was half price, you might encourage people to give it a go.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=0#p367
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 10:43:18

[quote="Gayla"]
Hi, I'm Gayla.  I'm twice as old as most of the other folks involved with IF, so in a metaphoric sense you can think of me as a little old lady with an umbrella and a very large handbag.  I live in Las Vegas and spend my days working at a fairly boring job in the accounting department of a small company.
[/quote] 

I think it's amusing that you live in the exciting world of Las Vegas - casinos! casinos! casinos! - and yet your job sounds every bit as unexciting as mine (from here in unexciting little England).  [emote]:?[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=43&start=0#p368
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Dwarf Fortress and some other ramblings
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 10:45:40

we actually have a really big thread about this on rec.games.roguelike.development opinions are... divided on this to say the least....

( <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.roguelike.development/browse_frm/thread/fabfb0e355e29c9d/#">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... 55e29c9d/#</a> )

I dont really see how you could 'IF'-ify it or relate it back to IF. The game just happens to be in text mode / text graphics.
The author even admits it barely has any functionality yet, but there is groundwork to build a lot of the features.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=44&start=10#p369
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which authoring tool?
User: Ken Franklin / DateTime: 2006-08-23 11:00:21

Problem I could see is that upgrading ADRIFT 4 to ADRIFT 5 will be free so, if ADRIFT 4 was half price then wouldn't you just buy ADRIFT 4 and upgrade it. Guess we will have to see which way Campbell jumps.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=20#p370
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Ken Franklin / DateTime: 2006-08-23 11:02:43

It is fairly early given the IF Comp is still just around the corner. Maybe when people miss the deadline for the IF Comp then the Spring Thing will come into view as an alternative.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=43&start=0#p371
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Dwarf Fortress and some other ramblings
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-23 11:16:17

Isn't [url=http://www.skotos.net/]Skotos[/url] doing something like this already?

From what I've read off their Eternal City and Castle Marrach games, they're doing multiplayer IF (calling them "prose games").

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=47&start=0#p372
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good games for beginners?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 11:45:55

I'd go with The Baron.  It's impossible to render it unwinnable, and has a lot of room for replay.  You don't exactly *have* to interact with anything to even complete the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=0#p373
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-23 12:11:07

I'm Isxek, a 27-year-old games enthusiast from Manila.

I wasn't really able to get into the "text adventure scene" in the early 80's though I've had brushes with it when I was a kid. It was already late in college when I discovered the site that featured old DOS games which I liked also had a section on Interactive Fiction. Played a couple of games, Googled for more "interactive fiction," and the rest is history.

Writing and playing IF became a more serious hobby after we were able to acquire our own PC. That's when I started downloading the authoring tools and the 'terps. Then Google Groups opened the way to reach RAIF and RGIF. Experimenting with the tools (including one called "Computer Novel Construction Set") led me to using those which required more programming, and there it goes.

Then there was Inform 7...  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=47&start=0#p374
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good games for beginners?
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-23 12:27:32

Four games I usually recommend:

[list][i]Wearing The Claw[/i] by Paul O'Brian
[i]Photopia[/i] by Adam Cadre
[i]Aayela[/i] by Magnus Olsson
[i]My Angel[/i] by Jon Ingold
[/list:u]

Story driven games with easy puzzles to work on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=47&start=0#p375
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good games for beginners?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-23 12:43:46

[quote="Wanaselja"]
I'd go with The Baron.  It's impossible to render it unwinnable, and has a lot of room for replay.  You don't exactly *have* to interact with anything to even complete the game.
[/quote] 

We'll probably get into this more in September, when the "official" discussion begins, but I wouldn't recommend "The Baron" to an IF beginner. Granted, it's easy to win with so many choices covered, but the subject matter is kind of dark as an initiation for first-timers. It's more the kind of thing you'd recommend to somebody who's already familiar with the various forms of IF and stories that can be told.

On a tangent, I was thinking the other day about a "puzzle gauge" type of game. Something with difficult puzzles that initially require things like "search" or "look under table", but get gradually easier the longer it takes to solve. I have *no* idea how to design something like this, but in theory, it could be a benchmark as to how "skilled" a player's puzzle-solving is. Somebody could play the game, and then get a score (or ranking) as to their puzzle-solving ability, perhaps ranging from "able to read the author's mind" at the high end, to "able to solve difficult puzzles", to "able to solve well-clued puzzles", to maybe "totally incapable of solving puzzles" at the low end.

I guess it would still be hard toclassify existing games based on the "level" of player it's intended for, even if you could identify the player's skill level.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=44&start=10#p376
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which authoring tool?
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-23 12:44:23

[quote="David Whyld"]
In terms of ease of use the list probably goes (from easiest to hardest):

Adrift
Inform 7
Alan
Tads 2/Inform 6
Tads 3/Hugo
[/quote] 
I'd personally re-arrange that to this (from easiest to hardest):

[list]Adrift
Inform 7
Alan
TADS 2/Inform 6/Hugo
TADS 3[/list:u]

I've been using Hugo every now and then in some projects, and even from v2.5 to v3.1, I've never really seen it as difficult to learn as TADS 3. To me, it's been like Inform 6 with a different twist.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=47&start=0#p377
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good games for beginners?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 12:46:35

[quote="Arnel Legaspi"]
Four games I usually recommend:

[list][i]Wearing The Claw[/i] by Paul O'Brian
[i]Photopia[/i] by Adam Cadre
[i]Aayela[/i] by Magnus Olsson
[i]My Angel[/i] by Jon Ingold
[/list:u]

Story driven games with easy puzzles to work on.
[/quote]  

I must be missing out on the IF scene. I've only played one of those and didn't like it much.

[b]EDIT:[/b] just noticed the italics are working in that post. [i]Have they been fixed then?[/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=44&start=10#p378
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which authoring tool?
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-23 12:47:59

[quote="Tor"]
In fact (this should probably be a separate thread) I don't see why it wouldn't be possible for the I7 app to use any of the source-text based IF languages (Alan, Hugo, TADS).
[/quote] 

Do you mean the application front-end?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=47&start=0#p379
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good games for beginners?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 12:49:14

I think a good beginner game would be "The Oracle" located in the IF archive to introduce the community, or they could dive right into Zork with the help from a walkthru.  Everyone knows you can't solve Zork without one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=47&start=0#p380
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good games for beginners?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-23 12:52:24

To this day, I've played maybe the first screen of Zork. Perhaps not even that much -- I might have just seen the initial text someplace. And here I call myself an IF enthusiast. Pshaa!!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=48&start=0#p381
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Santoonie in the IFComp
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-23 12:53:11

So, will we be seeing a new Santoonie game show up in this year's IFComp?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=48&start=0#p382
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Santoonie in the IFComp
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 13:05:01

I think this was confirmed on RAIF, wasn't it?

Sure to be [i]the[/i] highlight of the comp, unless we see a surprise collaboration from Paul Panks and Howard Sherman.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=43&start=0#p383
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Dwarf Fortress and some other ramblings
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 13:06:12

isnt skotos.net just wrapping a mud with a java client? one review of castle marrach stated 'the system does understand some 1500 verbs and 1800 adverbs'..  obviously counting synonyms.

the whole mud/mush/muck/moo <-> if  thing never worked for me. One of the reasons I disliked panks stuff.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=47&start=0#p384
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good games for beginners?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 13:06:23

I missed the whole [b]Zork[/b] thing back in the days when it was first released and in fact never played it until a few years ago. Never liked it much either. Maybe it was a product of its time (i.e. you had to be there to appreciate its genius) but I just never warmed to it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=48&start=0#p385
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Santoonie in the IFComp
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-23 13:36:37

Well, I was asking A.P. Hill since he was online at the time. If it was announced in the newsgroups recently, I haven't read it.

Amissville II was a dismal disappointment, but I thought Zero was decent enough. There's just something unique about those games. It's like an IFComp wouldn't be complete without one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=48&start=0#p386
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Santoonie in the IFComp
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 14:57:26

Disappointment? I didn't think there was anybody who played Amissville and then thought its sequel was worse than expected.

Greg

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=48&start=0#p387
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Santoonie in the IFComp
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 15:06:40

I remember playing [b]Zero[/b], but aside from the nice intro graphic thought it was pretty dire. I made a point of not playing the sequel as a result.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=44&start=10#p388
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which authoring tool?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 15:07:54

Is there a Hugo manual along the same lines as the Inform one? Not that I'm really intending to learn Hugo right now, but it might be interesting to see how it handles certain things.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=20#p389
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 15:08:49

I announce the Spring Thing early on purpose. If there's any author who has his heart set on entering a comp, but no longer has time before the IF Comp to make his game good, then it's good to let him know he has other alternatives.

Greg

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=29&start=10#p390
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Game of the Month: August 06: The Baron by Victor Gijsbe
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 15:38:28

[quote="Merk"]
I don't think Shaurian has been back since the post was first started, but I assume it's still a go.
[/quote]  

Don't worry, I'm still alive! I usually don't login unless I have something to post. And given my current workload, this means I'm more or less a sunday-only forum member [emote]:-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=44&start=10#p391
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which authoring tool?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-23 15:39:20

Yep. It's available as a free PDF [url=http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/programming/hugo/manuals/hugo_book.pdf]here[/url], or a book you can buy [url=http://www.cafepress.com/futureboy/379929]here[/url]. I bought the book, and love it. It has been a great resource, although it's useful more as a programming reference than as a step-by-step tutorial. The free PDF version is the exact same document -- just not as convenient to use.

I think the chief thing working against Hugo is that nobody (myself included) releases extensions. What I've found is that the base libraries cover so much already -- things that may have required extensions in the other languages (attachables, object "plural" collections, vehicles, etc). If the libraries lack something, it's easy to add and extend. It's powerful, and as programming languages go, it's a pretty easy one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=44&start=10#p392
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which authoring tool?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 15:50:59

Of course, "pretty easy" from the viewpoint of a programmer is a lot different than "pretty easy" from the viewpoint of a non-programmer.  [emote]Cool[/emote] 

But I'll have a little look at the manual all the same. Who knows? I might even have a go at writing a Hugo game one day.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=44&start=10#p393
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which authoring tool?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-23 16:22:22

[quote="David Whyld"]
Of course, "pretty easy" from the viewpoint of a programmer is a lot different than "pretty easy" from the viewpoint of a non-programmer.  8)
[/quote]   
Certainly. That's why I say "as programming languages go". [emote]:)[/emote] The hard thing about Hugo, if you do come from a programming background, isn't the syntax. It's very C-like, and structures are familiar. It simplifies OOP, because there really is no concept of a "constructor" in Hugo (every object defined, by definition, exists -- even things that are "classes" are in essence an instance of an object), and multiple inheritence is built in. I really like it for this kind of development. No, what's hard is figuring out everything that happens in the libraries. It's sort of like learning what classes are available in C# and what they do, except the library code in Hugo is all inter-related. For a non-programmer, though, the whole thing would require learning to program. There aren't really any shortcuts to that.

[quote="David Whyld"]
But I'll have a little look at the manual all the same. Who knows? I might even have a go at writing a Hugo game one day.
[/quote]   
Yeah, it wouldn't hurt to look. Kind of like me wanting to look at Adrift (and maybe write a game using it) some day. If you really don't have any experience programming, though, there are some basic concepts that may just not make sense at first.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=20#p394
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 16:37:28

If you don't mind me asking, what was the motivation behind the $7 entry fee? I'm guessing as a means of weeding out the people who are serious about entering the comp from the ones who, if there was no fee, would enter the comp purely for a laugh with a joke entry. Or was there some other reason?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=20#p395
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Ken Franklin / DateTime: 2006-08-23 16:41:35

You're right, it is useful to plan ahead, so I have posted the details of the [url=http://www.insideadrift.org.uk/mwiki/index.php?title=InsideADRIFT_Summer_Competition_2007]InsideADRIFT Summer Competition 2007[/url] for the middle of next year.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=49&start=0#p396
Forum: Competitions / Subject: InsideADRIFT Spring Competition 2007
User: Ken Franklin / DateTime: 2006-08-23 16:44:15

I have just posted up the details for next years ADRIFT Summer Comp, entries in by midnight 30 June 2007.

Full details  [url=http://www.insideadrift.org.uk/mwiki/index.php?title=InsideADRIFT_Summer_Competition_2007]HERE[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=20#p397
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 17:06:14

That certainly *is* planning ahead considering the last Summer Comp only finished recently. [emote]Smile[/emote]

Still, at least this way people can't use the excuse that they didn't have enough time to get their game done.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=44&start=20#p398
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which authoring tool?
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-23 17:16:08

Here's a [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/msg/3bc2307dadfa8491]relatively funny post[/url] from Dave Cornelson about TADS, Inform, and Hugo way back 2001. 

I remember someone from RAIF saying that Hugo is a cleaner version of Inform, but I can't seem to find the post now even as I google through it.

[quote="Merk"]
No, what's hard is figuring out everything that happens in the libraries.
[/quote] 

Same goes for TADS 2/3, and Inform 6.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=20#p399
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 17:19:14

[quote="David Whyld"]
If you don't mind me asking, what was the motivation behind the $7 entry fee? I'm guessing as a means of weeding out the people who are serious about entering the comp from the ones who, if there was no fee, would enter the comp purely for a laugh with a joke entry. Or was there some other reason?
[/quote] 

This is something I myself didn't even know at one point. Remember, the $7 entry fee was started by Adam Cadre. At one point, back when I was just thinking about re-starting the ST, it struck me that if the only purpose of the entry fee was to generate prize funds, then I could easily get rid of the entry fee, as I figured it would be easier to get prize funds elsewhere. But then it struck me that maybe, as you say, the point of the entry fee was more to weed out the people who weren't so serious about entering. Then, during a discussion with Adam Cadre, I found out that this was correct.

So, the entry fee has stayed, and I do think it's a good way for the ST to differentiate itself from the IF Comp.

Greg

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=47&start=0#p400
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good games for beginners?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-23 19:09:57

Yeah I was there for Zork, whereas Adventure was ahead of me by a moons throw.  But even during Zork years, I was spending more time playing Wizardry and Karateka on a Franklin Ace.

My very first text adventure was "High School Adventure" which I solved which was very rewarding to me at the time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=47&start=10#p401
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good games for beginners?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-24 05:10:37

I don't remember the first text adventure I played but one of my early ones was [b]The Hobbit[/b]. I'd like to recommend that... but it's not a game for beginners, even if they're fans of the retro scene. There are a few retro games I can recommend like [b]The Big Sleaze[/b] and [b]Mordon's Quest[/b] as being relatively newbie-friendly, but again they're retro games and what was considered perfectly acceptable in a retro game isn't these days.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=50&start=0#p402
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Centering text on the status line
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-24 06:32:39

How does one go about centering text on the status line? I've looked at the relevant routine for it (can't remember if it's Draw- or PrintStatusLine) in HUGOLIB.H but I can't seem to add anything to it that will automatically put the text in the middle of the status line.

Any advice is appreciated. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=50&start=0#p403
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Centering text on the status line
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-24 07:17:26

There are a few things you have to do. First, as you guessed, you have to change how "PrintStatusLine" works. Cut and paste the whole routine into the new game, and use "replace" instead of "routine" to begin.

Next, declare a string array big enough to hold the longest dictionary entry you're going to be printing:

[code]array tempbuf[100][/code]
Inside the PrintStatusLine routine, you will convert the dictionary entry (it can be location.name, something sent as a parameter, or whatever):

[code]local a, l, x
l = display.linelength
len = string(tempbuf,location.name,100)[/code]
Then, all that's left to do is figure out how much is half of the remaining space, and print that at the appropriate spot in PrintStatusLine:

[code]x = (l - a) / 2
print to x;
StringPrint(tempbuf)[/code]
And that should work! If you need, I can write the changed version of PrintStatusLine. Let me know.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=50&start=0#p404
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Centering text on the status line
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-24 07:26:34

[quote="Merk"]
Next, declare a string array big enough to hold the longest dictionary entry you're going to be printing
[/quote] 

So that was it.  [emote]:o[/emote] I had to declare a string array first, then do the calculations from there. Geez. I didn't think declaring an array like that was needed.

Thanks for the tip, Merk. I'll just post a reply here if I need the whole code, but what you said should work already.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=51&start=0#p405
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: A model for starting
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-24 07:54:36

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that it's not impossible to start creating a text adventure from the very first room referred to as the startroom.

Traditional IF calls for you to usually construct a well planned map and idea on paper before even reaching for the white space to begin coding.

I dare to differ by having the white space call out ideas to you.  After you have created an intro and your first room.  Sit back and think what should happen next.  What would be logical?  What would be interesting?  Let things develop and enjoy the ride of imagination.  Then, as ideas flow in, and become more intricate, then you can go offline and construct solid concepts and perhaps maps.  

I believe this formula is good for beginners because you will spend alot of time learning to code.  It wouldn't be good for morale if you created this vast world on paper and then couldn't get it down on code.  

Give it a shot. [emote]Razz[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=50&start=0#p406
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Centering text on the status line
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-24 08:04:04

Well, you really just need it to determine the length of the string. You could change StringPrint(tempbuf) to a normal print of the dictionary entry (location.name or whatever), and it would do the same thing.

If there is a direct way to get the length of a dictionary entry without using the string() conversion's return value, I'm not sure what it is. Maybe I've overlooked something.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=51&start=0#p407
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: A model for starting
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-24 08:04:08

[quote="A.P. Hill"]
I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that it's not impossible to start creating a text adventure from the very first room referred to as the startroom.
[/quote] 

That's generally how I write my games anyway. [emote]:)[/emote]

I don't think I've written a game yet where I had the whole thing planned, or even mapped, out before I started it. Being spontaneous is good sometimes as it allows you to start writing the game "now" and not "in 3 or 4 weeks when you've got the thing planned out down to the most minute detail".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=51&start=0#p408
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: A model for starting
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-24 08:09:06

I do that to some extent, but I really try not to. When I'm working on something that's going to take weeks, I'll forget what my original idea was if it's not all planned out. I mean, if I'm setting something up at the beginning that's supposed to come into play at the end, and I haven't thought out what's going to happen in the middle yet, I might not even remember how everything fits together.

As a learning excercise, or maybe if the game is going to be *really* linear, it might work. But then it'd be tougher to spot and prevent mistakes in the design. I usually start with something rough -- the concept, and a few key points I need to happen along the way. Then I'll fill in more detail, figure out the geography, the objects players will need, etc. I try to get that done (or mostly done) ahead of time, but I generally add the extra scenery stuff as I write the game, unless it was integral to the game by design.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=52&start=0#p409
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Doorbell
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-24 08:13:33

I'm playing around with the basics of inform, and have a query:

I have a doorbell which is part of a door and you can push the doorbell. You can't take or get the bell, which is fine. 

I have told inform to understand 'bell' and 'door bell' as doorbell, so "push bell/door bell" is understood. 

Some people, however, would say "ring bell" - and Inform 7 doesn't yet understand ring as push. 
The following does not work:
[code]Understand "ring" as push[/code]

I guess some people may say "Chime bell" as well. 

What should I use in order to have "ring bell" act as "push bell"?

Cheers

Mxx

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=50&start=0#p410
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Centering text on the status line
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-24 08:22:35

Hi again -

Here's my PrintStatusLine routine, with the changes you had suggested (I filled some of the blanks in):

[code]array tempbuf[100]

replace PrintStatusline
{
	local a, l, x, len
	l = display.linelength
	len = string(tempbuf,location.name,100)
	a = StringLength(len)
	x = (l - a) / 2
	
	if display.linelength < 80
		display.statusline_height = 2
	else
		display.statusline_height = 1

	Font(BOLD_OFF | ITALIC_OFF | UNDERLINE_OFF | PROP_OFF)
	window display.statusline_height
	{
		color SL_TEXTCOLOR, SL_BGCOLOR
		cls
		locate 1, 1
		if not location
			print "\\_";
		elseif not light_source
			print "In the dark";
		else
		{
			! if FORMAT & DESCFORM_F:  print "\\_";
			
			print to x;
			StringPrint(tempbuf)
		}

		!\\if display.statusline_height = 1
			print to 65;
		else
		{
			locate 1, 2
			if FORMAT & DESCFORM_F:  print "\\_";
		}

		if STATUSTYPE = 1
			print number score; " / "; number counter;
		elseif STATUSTYPE = 2
			print HoursMinutes(counter);\\!
	}
	color TEXTCOLOR, BGCOLOR
	Font(DEFAULT_FONT)
}[/code]

I used SAMPLE.HUG as my test file for this. When I tried it, the location name was placed way off-center (I don't have the screenshot for this, unfortunately) and the text was in small letters.

I suspect the small-letters issue could be fixed by putting in "capital" but how about the other one? Is it something inherent in the Hugo display?

Thanks again!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=52&start=0#p411
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Doorbell
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-24 08:25:54

How about changing it to something like:

[code]Understand "ring [something]" or "chime [something]" as pushing.[/code]

Hope that helps!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=52&start=0#p412
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Doorbell
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-24 08:33:35

ah...of course...so simple  [emote]Embarassed[/emote] 

That makes perfect sense, and works like a charm.  Thanks

Mxx

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=50&start=0#p413
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Centering text on the status line
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-24 08:40:50

[quote]
local a, l, x, len
l = display.linelength
len = string(tempbuf,location.name,100)
a = StringLength(len)
x = (l - a) / 2
[/quote]  
The problem looks to be in this bit. You're using a = StringLength(len), but len is already the length of the string. So yeah, it'd be way off center. You probably meant to do a = StringLength(tempbuf), but even that isn't necessary since you get the length just by doing the string() conversion.

It's my fault, because in my original example, I put len = string().... but then used "a" in the calculation. **DOH**

Try this:

[code]local a, l, x
l = display.linelength
a = string(tempbuf,location.name,100)
x = (l - a) / 2[/code]
Or simplified/clarified like this:

[code]local len, x
len = string(tempbuf,location.name,100)
x = (display.linelength - len) / 2[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=50&start=0#p414
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Centering text on the status line
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-24 08:46:21

Also, I guess you could simplify this:

[quote]
print to x;
StringPrint(tempbuf)
[/quote] 
as just this:

[code]print to x; location.name[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=51&start=0#p415
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: A model for starting
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-24 09:01:35

Sometimes I think too much planning can kill a game even more efficiently than too little planning. I know some people who spend weeks and weeks planning their game out before doing any coding or actual game writing. They write the entire plot out, they draw a map, they list the location of every single object and NPC, they work out their puzzles and which objects are needed for them, they detail every little minute aspect… and then, months later when they get around to the game writing side of things, they found they’ve lost all interest in it.

At least if you start writing a game spontaneously, you can generally be quite a way into it before the initial burst of enthusiasm dies out. And it’s easier to find renewed enthusiasm for a game that you’ve already completed part of then a game you haven’t even started.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=50&start=0#p416
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Centering text on the status line
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-24 09:28:16

[quote="Merk"]
The problem looks to be in this bit. You're using a = StringLength(len), but len is already the length of the string. So yeah, it'd be way off center. You probably meant to do a = StringLength(tempbuf), but even that isn't necessary since you get the length just by doing the string() conversion.
[/quote]  
You're right - the variable name gave it away already but I didn't see it. The "a" just surprised me, so I thought you had mean for that to get the length of the string.
[quote="Merk"]

It's my fault, because in my original example, I put len = string().... but then used "a" in the calculation. **DOH**
[/quote]  
That's ok. Happens to the best of us [emote];)[/emote]

It's working now. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=51&start=0#p417
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: A model for starting
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-24 09:29:12

[quote="David Whyld"]
At least if you start writing a game spontaneously, you can generally be quite a way into it before the initial burst of enthusiasm dies out. And it’s easier to find renewed enthusiasm for a game that you’ve already completed part of then a game you haven’t even started.
[/quote]  
Well, I usually [i]start[/i] games spontaneously. I'll take the title and concept, build the frame and maybe add some verbs I think I'll need, bring in utilities from prior games, etc. But as for actually coding rooms and objects and relationships between things, I like to get that designed ahead of time. It can go in stages, though. A game like Trading Punches -- which had different "chapters" -- I could just have a top-level concept for each chapter, and then design the next chapter after coding the prior one.

It's probably the software engineer in me. I'm just conditioned to documenting and planning. At my job, we're working on a huge new project with multiple developers. We had multiple design meetings, I wrote the scope document for my part (which took weeks), the use case diagrams, class diagrams, and database/relational diagrams. It was four months later before I wrote a single line of code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=50&start=0#p418
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Centering text on the status line
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-24 09:31:22

Happy to help! If you're interested, check out "utils.hug" from the Trading Punches and/or Distress source code. I actually have a "PrintCenter" routine there, among other things.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=51&start=0#p419
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: A model for starting
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-24 11:00:07

[quote="A.P. Hill"]
I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that it's not impossible to start creating a text adventure from the very first room referred to as the startroom.

Traditional IF calls for you to usually construct a well planned map and idea on paper before even reaching for the white space to begin coding.

I dare to differ by having the white space call out ideas to you.  After you have created an intro and your first room.  Sit back and think what should happen next.
[/quote] 

For me, this would have to depend on the tools I'm using. If it's as accessible as, say, Inform 7, where compiling and running the game is handy.

That's why I stuck with TADS 2 before - it's easy to just change the source code using a separate editor, run the HTML TADS Debugger to compile the source code, and test-drive the output. (Same goes for TADS 3.)

Well, of course, one can set up a batch file that can run the compiler, but... [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=30&start=0#p420
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Suggestions for the Game of the Month: September 06
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-24 11:24:48

So far we seem to have

[b]Savoire Faire
Shades Of Gray
Curses
Worlds Apart[/b]

Any other suggestions? I'm fine with any of those four because I haven't played them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=30&start=10#p421
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Suggestions for the Game of the Month: September 06
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-24 12:01:22

I'd go for "Worlds Apart" because what I've read about it sounds really interesting. I bet, though, that if I Googled it, I'd find plenty of discussion already. Should we pick something else -- maybe something new -- that hasn't already had its share of discussion?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=51&start=0#p422
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: A model for starting
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-24 12:04:00

[quote="A.P. Hill"]
I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that it's not impossible to start creating a text adventure from the very first room referred to as the startroom.

Traditional IF calls for you to usually construct a well planned map and idea on paper before even reaching for the white space to begin coding.

I dare to differ by having the white space call out ideas to you.  After you have created an intro and your first room.  Sit back and think what should happen next.  What would be logical?  What would be interesting?  Let things develop and enjoy the ride of imagination.  Then, as ideas flow in, and become more intricate, then you can go offline and construct solid concepts and perhaps maps.  

I believe this formula is good for beginners because you will spend alot of time learning to code.  It wouldn't be good for morale if you created this vast world on paper and then couldn't get it down on code.  

Give it a shot. [emote]:P[/emote]
[/quote] 


This is how I started my game.  I agree that it forced me to learn more coding as I went along, and encountered things that I wanted to do.  As I learned, I became more confident, and kept writing.  Now all my rooms are done, and my whole game is almost finished as well!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4&start=10#p423
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: The Forum
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-24 12:08:04

I saw that "Googlebot" visited us today.  Guess we'll be appearing in the Google searches eventually.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=30&start=10#p424
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Suggestions for the Game of the Month: September 06
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-24 12:13:27

I'm going to suggest "The Ghost Train" by Paul Johnson.  It was released outside of a comp in 2003.  It may have gotten reviewed on IF-Reviews but I haven't checked.

<a class="postlink" href="http://wurb.com/if/game/2129">http://wurb.com/if/game/2129</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=30&start=10#p425
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Suggestions for the Game of the Month: September 06
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-24 12:44:34

I reviewed [b]The Ghost Train[/b] earlier this year

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.adrift.org.uk/cgi/iB/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST&f=7&t=4620&st=&&#entry59757">http://www.adrift.org.uk/cgi/iB/ikonboa ... entry59757</a>

(Probably shouldn't click on the link if you haven't played the game as the review contains a number of spoilers.)

Not a bad game overall, and he can certainly write, but he definitely needs to test and proofread things a lot more carefully.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4&start=10#p426
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: The Forum
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-24 12:51:59

[quote="Wanaselja"]
I saw that "Googlebot" visited us today.  Guess we'll be appearing in the Google searches eventually.
[/quote] 

Yeah, the forum must be built to support that somehow. I've never seen that in older versions of phpBB.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=40#p427
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-24 16:06:40

Ah, thanks. That's cleared a few things up anyway. I knew that Glulx (or Glulxe as I always seem to spell it) was something to do with Inform, but I was never sure what exactly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=40#p428
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-24 16:14:53

So... the commercial side of things.

Is anyone willing to give it a go? I am, but I'm kind of reluctant to be the only one. Which probably stems from the fact that

a)  a group project has a better chance of success than one guy going it alone
b)  there's less pressure on the individual if other people are involved
c)  if it all goes nowhere, at least I'm not the only one with egg on my face  [emote]Wink[/emote] 

I like the idea of both serial IF (one commercial game released every few months, or as often as can be if not every few months) and I also like the idea of subscription IF (several games per 'issue' with the issues coming out pretty much whenever there are enough games to fill one); I think both have a better chance of success than the huge 20+ hour game that was discussed earlier.

Anyone think either are workable ideas?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=40#p429
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-24 16:47:43

Serial IF could be part of the subscription IF. The only real different between the two is that in the former, you'd be releasing segments of a game periodically, whereas with the latter you'd be releasing several small (but complete) games in each issue.

I prefer the latter, for several reasons. One, I think I'd rather a write a bite-sized but complete game, as opposed to one chapter of a larger epic. That's not to say such a segmented game couldn't span several issues, if somebody wanted to do it. Also, I have different ideas. I'd want to write as many of them as possible, instead of working on parts of the same one issue after issue.

Two, If multiple developers could all provide short games -- and I mean maybe not even IFComp sized -- there could be a lot of variety *and* a lot of content for each issue. Plus, it would be easier to meet each deadline. The more I think about it, the more I think that a minimum of 5 games per issue (more, if possible) would really be necessary to sell people on the idea that it's an issue in a subscription.

Three, back issues can be sold for a little more than the subscription rate. Suppose a one year (four-issue) subscription is $20. Well, that'd be $5 per issue. Sell back issues for $7 each. I'm not saying $20 is the right price -- I'm just throwing it out there. That'd be a $1 per game, per issue, per subscriber. I'd rather go for 6 issues a year. Small games are doable in a couple months, and if there were enough authors on board, it wouldn't necessarily require every single participant to provide a game every single issue.

Four, we could accept submissions from other people, and perhaps either pay outright for the right to publish, or offer a royalty type of agreement. I prefer paying a one-time fee for the right to publish, as it avoids all the paperwork and tracking necessary to track royalties. Well, I guess that would still kind of be necessary just for the people involved in the business, but hopefully not as much. Bad thing about a one-time payment, though, is that somebody has to have the cash to pay it up front, and a new business might not.

Five, if you market a single huge game, it could take months before the business actually has a product to sell. With short games written by mutliple participants, we could be ready.... possibly Januray 1st, with content and a "grand opening" issue. By then, there might even be a couple games "in reserve" for the next issue.

Six, if anybody *did* want to write and sell a single large game, it could still be done through the business. In fact, we should probably plan on doing that within the first year or two, to give the project more credibility and something "big" to show.

I'm all for it, but -- and this *might* be a big but -- I have ideas of what works and what doesn't, from running my online game business all these years. I don't know if my experiences would conflict with how other people want to run the business -- too many chefs and all that. The whole business plan would need to be hashed out and agreed upon. My partner always handles the paperwork for our business, and the tax preparation. Somebody would need to handle that for this business.

Also, I would want to release the games as freeware after a period of time -- say, two or three years. Back issues remain on sale until then, and then they're uploaded to the archive for free distribution. If commercial IF *can* be successful in the realm of free IF, then I don't think this would hurt the business much. There would still be two or three years of back issues at any given time to sell, and nobody could say that they'll "never" be able to play the games. Also, we could release maybe one game per issue for free, as a promo/incentive to new subscribers.

Plus, each issue could include other stuff too. I don't know exactly "what" kind of other stuff. Maybe walkthroughs for one or more games on prior issues. Maybe editorial content. Maybe sneak peeks of upcoming games. Maybe subscriber mail/feedback. I don't know. I just think the "subscription" idea has a lot of possibilities, even beyond just releasing several short games on each issue.

I would want high quality. My fear is that after half a dozen issues (if not sooner), the quality would get worse and worse and participants just slap together any piece of crap to meet the needs of the issue. I don't know what kind of quality assurance would need to be in place, by I would want each and every game on each and every issue to be better than good.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=0#p430
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2006-08-24 18:01:25

I am David Fisher, from Sydney, Australia ...

I had a brief encounter with IF as a teenager (The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy - the infamous Babel fish was OK, but I got stuck on the Heart of Gold), but not much other than that.

Last February I discovered the rec.arts.int-fiction newsgroup, and was fascinated ... I spent a while doing "catch up" work and researching the group archives, which ended up in <a href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Past_raif_topics">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Past_raif_topics</a> (maybe a strange way to do things, but that's just me !)

I tend to be very ambitious in creating games, so I haven't officially released anything yet (other than an Inform 7 extension) ... I have two main things in progress, one of which will appear in a few more months and the other in another year or so (probably [emote]Very Happy[/emote] ).

Currently running CreatureComp, a mini-comp for creature-oriented people.

Oh, and I'm a computer programmer too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=40#p431
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-24 18:08:40

The more the idea of serial IF is mentioned, the more appealing it seems. And the more doable. Of course, a lot of things seem doable in theory. It’s only in practice that you find out whether it really *is* going to work or not.

The obvious problems that occur to me right now:

[b]1)[/b]  Finding not only enough people to write the games to fill each other, but the kind of people who can a) write games of a decent enough quality to be sold (even for a very small amount) and b) can write games of that quality regularly. One thing I've noticed from several years of observing the IF scene is that the majority of people don’t tend to write a lot of games. Most write one a year. Some of the more prolific ones might write two. Quite a few write a game every other year. Serial IF would require a couple of games a year from most of the people participating. Possible, but I'm not sure how likely it would be to happen.

Of course, when you’ve got an incentive to finish a game, writing one becomes easier. I've heard quite a few people say they only ever find the incentive to finish a game when they have a deadline like a comp to aim for. This might give them a similar incentive. The fact that there's a (hopefully) guaranteed sale at the end would perhaps give them an even larger incentive. Nothing motivates someone to put pen to paper (so to speak) as cash at the end of it. [emote]:)[/emote]

[b]2)[/b]  Ensuring the games are of a high enough quality to be included. I can imagine this might lead to a few arguments along the way if A writes a game and submits it to the serial, B says it’s not good enough and asks for A to either rewrite it or just plain scrap it, and A throws a fit and storms off. Bad press like that could kill the project. Saying that, including a bad game so as not to hurt someone’s feelings would kill it even quicker.

So whoever (maybe a group of people, like a voting panel) is in charge of the decision of what stays and what goes would need to be firm. Approach it like the business deal it is. If you're the boss and a worker submits a substandard piece of work, politely inform him it’s not good enough and ask him to improve on it.

[b]3)[/b]  Meeting the deadline. Probably the biggest problem. Getting together five IF games of decent enough quality to be sold, not just once, but four or more times a year, isn’t going to be easy. I’d guess that the first issue would either be the easiest (due to the fact that it’s a new idea and lots of people would be enthusiast enough to give it a try) or the hardest (due to the fact that it’s a new, and untested, idea and while people might be enthusiast enough to give it a try, they might also be a little reluctant to write a game that is going to be put under such scrutiny).

Keeping the standards high would be difficult over a number of issues. As you say, it might be the case that, after a few issues have been done, quality begins to slide so as to ensure that deadlines are met.


__________________

I think as far as actual problems, those are the main ones that occur to me right now. Of course, you'd also have to weed out the enthusiast types who can’t write to save themselves and the ones willing to promise you five games an issue… but who mysteriously go quiet the moment they're asked to deliver the goods.

As far as making the games free after X amount of time, I wouldn’t have a problem with that. If the serial idea takes off in such a way that it’s still running after two years, and the games are popular enough that people want to play them, then I’d be quite happy to let old issues go for free.

If this idea goes ahead, some private place would be needed for all the people involved to work out ideas and sort things out. A separate section of the forum perhaps only accessible by people who are part of the project?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=53&start=0#p432
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: To die or not to die...
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-24 18:10:20

I'm in the bad habit of not saving stuff, be it games or work, unless I finish playing for a session.

So if it crashes (work or game), I lose whatever I've done.

If I die (only games so far...but my office isn't that exciting so I should be okay) it means I start from the beginning, or the end of the last session.

Dying, therefore, annoys me. 

Do you prefer playing games where the player dies, or do you prefer games where death is not possible?

Mxx

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=53&start=0#p433
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: To die or not to die...
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-24 19:09:41

If I die in a game I almost always type undo, unless of course I've already screwed up so much that an undo isn't going to get me anywhere (usually in a time-limited scenario.)

I don't mind dying in a game, as long as there's a good reason for it, I've been warned that it's probably going to happen, and I can prevent it with a reasonable command.

That being said, I prefer not having to worry about it.  I mostly play IF for the stories, not for the puzzles, so dying really doesn't do much for me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=40#p434
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-24 22:14:58

I'd love to help, but I'm afraid that at the moment at least I'm anywhere near good enough to write a commercial game. (And then there's that teensy little problem I have with actually *finishing* games...)

But at the very least I could help out with beta testing, and maybe I could provide some of that 'editorial content' Merk was talking about. And I think David's suggestion of a seperate part of the forum is a good idea. 

I really hope it goes somewhere...even if the whole thing doesn't turn out to be commercially viable, I've seen so many discussions where everyone just talks and talks and then nothing is ever done that even the prospect of *trying* is enough to get me excited.

EDIT: Damn you italics! *shakes fist*

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=30&start=10#p435
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Suggestions for the Game of the Month: September 06
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-24 22:25:22

I'll throw in a vote for Savoire Faire, and I'll also suggest All Hope Abandon, seeing as except for The Baron it's the most recent non-Adrift game I've played. (And maybe this will encourage me to actually get around to writing a review...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=47&start=10#p436
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good games for beginners?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-24 22:30:58

[quote="Merk"]
[quote="Wanaselja"]
I'd go with The Baron.  It's impossible to render it unwinnable, and has a lot of room for replay.  You don't exactly *have* to interact with anything to even complete the game.
[/quote]  

We'll probably get into this more in September, when the "official" discussion begins, but I wouldn't recommend "The Baron" to an IF beginner. Granted, it's easy to win with so many choices covered, but the subject matter is kind of dark as an initiation for first-timers. It's more the kind of thing you'd recommend to somebody who's already familiar with the various forms of IF and stories that can be told.
[/quote] 

Ditto on that. The Baron might be easy to finish but I seriously doubt it would make for a good 'first impression' of IF. (I'll wait to elaborate until the discussion in September too.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=53&start=0#p437
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: To die or not to die...
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-24 22:56:03

I don't mind death on general principle, but nothing gets me typing >QUIT faster than a game that kills the player with no warning or for no reason. If going east results in my death, at the very least there had *better* be a mention of the cliff with the unstable looking rock ledge in that direction.   

If I do something really obviously stupid, or am maybe just not fast enough during the big showdown with the villain, than I don't mind getting a bad ending and having to type 'undo', but I know that a lot of people *do* find it annoying, so it shouldn't be something the author does lightly. 

Though the other end of the spectrum, where you refuse to kill off the player at all, could actually be *harmful* to the game. Let's say the villain has caught you snooping around in his house, and now he's going after you with a butcher knife.

[quote]
Bad Guy's eyes gleam as he snatches a long knife out of the rack.

>x fridge
The refrigerator is black with stainless steel doors and looks rather expensive. The refrigerator is closed.

Bad Guy charges at you with the knife, his face twisted in fury!

>open fridge
You open the fridge.

He'll be on you at any moment!

>x fridge
The refrigerator is black with stainless steel doors and looks rather expensive. The refrigerator is open. There is a can of soda and a wedge of moldy cheese in he refrigerator.

He'll be on you at any moment!

>get soda
You take the can of soda.

He'll be on you at any moment!

>x soda 
Looks like a Pepsi.

He'll be on you at any moment!  

>drink pepsi
The bubbles tickle your nose as you drink the can of soda. It's cold and refreshing.

He'll be on you at any moment!
[/quote]  

Kind of kills the tension, doesn't it? [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=40#p438
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2006-08-25 03:27:53

[quote="David Whyld"]
Is anyone willing to give it a go? I am, but I'm kind of reluctant to be the only one. Which probably stems from the fact that

a)  a group project has a better chance of success than one guy going it alone
b)  there's less pressure on the individual if other people are involved
c)  if it all goes nowhere, at least I'm not the only one with egg on my face  [emote];)[/emote] 
[/quote] 

I'd be willing to give it a shot - collaborating with someone to create a commercial game or two or three...

As far as everyone writing a game by their own, you'd end up waiting ages for mine to show up. But if I have someone to work with on the game, who knows his writing and design better than I do, it's chances for getting out would be quite good. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=40#p439
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-25 05:22:47

One other problem that just occurred to me is the fact that we’re not all using the same system, meaning a joint effort to produce a game has another hurdle to overcome. I use Adrift, as does Lumin, Merk uses Hugo. I'm not too sure about the others but I'm guessing a mixture between Tads and Inform. This isn't an insurmountable hurdle because while I don’t know a thing about programming in Hugo (or Tads or Inform for that matter), I can still test games written in those languages, and vice versa.

Turning to the idea of the games themselves, what size are we talking about in terms of time to finish them? IFComp size (2 hours or so)? Bigger? Smaller? Should there be a rating for the games based on content*? Should they be rated in terms of difficulty**? Should a decision be made at the beginning about the genre for games in a specific issue to ensure we don’t end up with five horror games or five comedies?

* Including a strictly adult game would be a bad idea I think. It would give the project the wrong kind of publicity and be another reason for anyone opposed to it to give it a wide berth.

** Assuming it’s even possible to judge the difficulty a game in such a way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=53&start=0#p440
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: To die or not to die...
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-25 06:00:20

I don't mind death in games provided it's not done too much. If I'm getting killed every few moves, even if it's logical and makes perfect sense, I find my enthusiasm waning. It's nice to be able to UNDO the move that led to you getting killed, but sometimes you'll find yourself with a timed event (like an hunger daemon) that kills you off after X amount of time. UNDO doesn't help you there.

There was a game in the IFComp a few years ago that killed me off after X amount of time, yet never gave me any indication beforehand it was going to happen. I was just wandering along, taking my time, exploring, and then without any warning whatsoever the game just killed me off. My opinion of it dropped sharply after that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=40#p441
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-25 07:02:09

For genre, I don't think it would matter. If there are two or three of the same kind of game, we just theme it "the horror issue" and make a point not to write more of them for a while.

I'd say, if we could do an issue every couple of months, then five games *smaller* than IFComp size would be best. Maybe an hour long, or a little longer. Even with 5 games every 3 months, that's 20 games in a year. People would be getting 20 hours of entertainment, the same as if they bought one 20-hour game, but there would be a lot more variety and a lot more flexibility to it. Plus, with added content (walkthroughs, previews, whatever), it could be worth it.

As for the different systems, I thought about that. I'd suggest we work a deal with Tor, if he's agreeable, to distribute Gargoyle as part of the package. The free license may already allow for it, I don't know. It would give a standard and consistent look to all games. People could always run them with other interpreters, but for customers not already familiar with the workings of IF, it would probably give the whole package a cleaner, consistent feel.

Yeah, I wouldn't want to be involved with AIF. Nothing against in personally (never played), but for a commercial project I'd like to introduce to a wider audience, you'd either want to do *all* AIF, or none.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=53&start=0#p442
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: To die or not to die...
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-25 07:13:41

There was some discussion on RGIF (maybe RAIF) a few weeks ago, about this. It might have even been after last IFComp. I don't know why it's not such a big deal in video games (I'm about 2/3 of the way through Halo 2 presently, and I've died repeatedly). Maybe because you don't usually lose all your progress (Halo and Halo 2 are both really good about giving frequent checkpoints -- at least on "easy" mode).

Death in IF usually means a single "undo". If you're a newbie, and you don't really know about "undo" (and if it's not an option in the end text), then it could be a problem. In The Orion Agenda, from IFComp 2004, there were some interesting sudden-death situations, but a single undo resolves it. I remember having mixed feelings about that, but overall thinking it was no harm done, and even a nice twist to the story.

After Distress, it may be a while before I write another where the player can lose. Death in Distress isn't always resolved by a single "undo", because the creature has its own agenda. If Huchess and Covegn have already been taken and it's coming after you, there is no way to avoid it. You have to reload an earlier save, or start over. An "undo" will usually work if either of the other two are still around, provided you were killed simply for attacking it. From reviews, its high placement in the IFComp results, and the "best puzzles" XYZZY, I think this all worked for the majority of players. It gave credibility to the dangerous, urgent tone of the setting. But, I think it worked because the game was short, and because it *was* about survival. Throwing death into a longer or more relaxed game probably wouldn't be looked on as favorably.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=44&start=20#p443
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which authoring tool?
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2006-08-25 09:57:03

[quote="David Whyld"]
Any plans to update that now that Inform 7 is out? I also notice there's mention of SUDS there but does anyone use SUDS these days? I certainly can't remember any new SUDS games in the last few years.
[/quote] 

Yeah, I'm planning on updating it once I7 calms down a bit.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=40&start=0#p444
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Using MUDs to introduce people to IF?
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2006-08-25 10:03:18

Yeah, ifMUD at this point is much more of a place for people to hang out and chat rather than do LP-style MUD hacking and slashing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=37&start=0#p445
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2006 Intents
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-25 10:29:46

[quote="Merk"]
The last game I tested was Nothing But Mazes (Greg Boettcher, for the IntroComp), and I feel like I let him down by only making it through one play-through.
[/quote] 

Whoa, don't feel that way. Sure, some of my testers spent more time playing than you did, but then I had a lot of testers. In retrospect I may have had more testers than I needed for just an intro. If the final game had anything wrong with it, it wasn't for lack of enough feedback from testers.

Greg

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=40&start=0#p446
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Using MUDs to introduce people to IF?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-25 11:06:17

I don't know if a MUD would be the best way to introduct people. My thinking is that MUDs are geared toward multiplayer and combat, where IF is geared toward neither. Also, unless they've improved, MUD command parsing isn't close to the sophistication of IF command parsing. About the only thing shared between MUDs and IF -- from what I've seen -- is that both are text-based.

Granted, I haven't played a MUD in a long time, and wasn't a big fan even then. Maybe I'm missing the appeal.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=40&start=0#p447
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Using MUDs to introduce people to IF?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-25 11:19:38

I tried a couple of MUDs a few years ago but never really warmed to them. The idea seemed amazing - an IF world containing thousands of locations with NPCs who are actually other people - but the reality didn't seem anywhere near as exciting.

Maybe I just picked some of the bad ones and missed out on the real classics.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=54&start=0#p448
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: substituting one object over another
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-25 11:36:27

I have a skeleton object that I'm using to describe 3 other bone objects in one single initial appearance and description. For purposes of demonstration, let's name the 3 other objects "skull," "pelvis," and "femur." The effects I'd like to achieve include:

1. allowing the player to examine the whole skeleton, then when taking it he would obtain the 3 bone objects;
2. being able to examine each of the bone objects and change the skeleton's initial appearance and description to match what's left on the ground, for instance;
3. any action on the skeleton (other than examining) would apply to all 3 bone objects, but doing them on, say, the pelvis, would only apply to the pelvis.

#1 and #3 should be doable on my own, but how about #2?

I'm thinking about implementing a "ground" object that's both a supporter and scenery (is that possible?) so the bones on it could be listed off as a token of some sort. However, this might include the skeleton object as well...

Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=40#p449
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-25 13:05:13

Smaller games would be easier to write and polish, but I still think a larger game now and then would be a good selling point. (Maybe once a year?) There's plenty of great, tiny games out there for free, but since even this year's Spring Thing had mostly short games it seems like longer, more involved ones are getting rarer and rarer. 

I can't be the only one who gets a little tired of nothing but 'snack-sized' games, and if paying is the only way to get something different, then people might be more willing to do it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=50#p450
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-25 13:15:40

[quote="Lumin"]
I can't be the only one who gets a little tired of nothing but 'snack-sized' games, and if paying is the only way to get something different, then people might be more willing to do it.
[/quote] 
Maybe so, but I think we would need to establish a market first. I would hate to spend twelve months hard at work on a large game, only to find that poor sales made the entire effort a waste. Selling issues of multiple smaller games seems like something more manageable for a small start-up company, especially if there will be multiple participants. It means the business could get off the ground sooner, test the waters, maybe make some connections and build a customer base, all leading up to something larger later.

I admit that it would become harder to write a long game then. If we're working on small content for each issue, somebody would have to step away from that to get a large game done. That's time not spent working on the one- or two-hour games for the next issue...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=50#p451
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-25 13:16:31

I get tired of small games myself. Sometimes you just feel the need for something a little more substantive.

I can see the advantage of smaller games in that they don't require a huge amount of your time to finish, they're generally easier, less likely to be buggy (the smaller the game, the easier it is to test), and can be every bit as good as the larger games. Saying that, I've played more than a few really good short games that I felt would have been so much better if they'd just been larger. My favourite game of the last few years - [b]Luminous Horizon[/b] - was an amazing game in itself, yet I finished it in less than two hours, had seen pretty much all it had to offer, and haven't touched it since. A larger game of the same quality, with different paths through it allowing for replay value, would have had me going back to it time and again. I replayed my favourite Adrift game - [b]The PK Girl[/b] - at *least* a dozen times trying to see what else it had to offer. Four years after it first came out and I still feel the urge to play it from time to time.

Which is all a long and somewhat rambling way of saying that yes, larger games would be a good idea in the IF serial.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=50#p452
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-25 13:20:06

[quote="Merk"]
 I would hate to spend twelve months hard at work on a large game, only to find that poor sales made the entire effort a waste. 
[/quote] 

True, but there's nothing to stop you, assuming the serial goes belly up after the first issue, just finishing the large game and entering it in the Spring Thing or another competition.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=40&start=0#p453
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Using MUDs to introduce people to IF?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-25 13:24:15

[quote="Merk"]
About the only thing shared between MUDs and IF -- from what I've seen -- is that both are text-based.
[/quote]   

Well, from what I've seen, the 'text-based' thing is one of the biggest hurdles to introducing new people to IF. [emote]:)[/emote] 

And I wouldn't say MUDs aren't sophisticated, just different. MUDs can actually be *very* complex, except most of the creativity is poured into the combat system. Take a look at this: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.carrionfields.com/Help/Classes/Ranger.html">http://www.carrionfields.com/Help/Classes/Ranger.html</a>

Those are just the unique skills and spells for rangers. Can you imagine making IF where the PC has that many abilities? Now multiply that by twenty, to include the other classes, add in some more unique things for the eighteen races, and program in ways for all of those spells and skills to interact with each other, and you start getting pretty sophisticated.
 
Anyway, MUDs use the same VERB NOUN type of commands, as well as several a basic IF parser does; look, look in/under/behind, examine, search, get, drop, climb, push, pull, say/tell/ask about, unlock, wear, remove, eat, drink, read, n, e, s, w, etc. It also teaches players that they have to pay close attention to room descriptions. (And if you think thinking in terms of compass directions and figuring out what to do from lines like 'the road continues to the east and west' and 'something metal glitters in the grass' is no big deal, it's because it's been awhile since you tried showing a complete newb how to play, assuming you could get them to stay in the computer chair once they realized you weren't kidding about there being no graphics. [emote]:)[/emote])           

And while the vast majority of MUDs are mainly about combat and roleplaying, there are quite a few that have areas devoted to puzzles and quests, though they're generally not as complex as the ones expected in a good IF game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=50#p454
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-25 16:17:57

Well, I've decided to go ahead and write a short game for the project. If it goes well, I'll consider a larger game for a future issue.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=50#p455
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-25 16:56:01

I probably won't get a chance until... hmm.... maybe November, after the IFComp games are released and I've played and reviewed them all. I could have a short game done by the end of December, probably, if January 1st for the "grand opening" sounds like a good target.

There are several things that need done. One is deciding on a name (I don't want to post the new domain(s) I registered publicly, but it's an option -- whatever is decided would need to work with an available .com, I think). Two is deciding who all will participate at the ground level. Three is figuring out a business plan, distribution plan (purely online, by mail, etc). Four is deciding on a price per issue, or per subscription period. Five would be deciding on content (how many games, what extras will be included, etc). Six is... I don't know. Just lots of things. We really do need a private area to discuss such matters, after #2 is established (or during the process).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=50#p456
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-25 17:10:29

I think the first thing to do is get enough games together to make the initial issue. After all, all the planning in the world won't do any good if no one gets any games written.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=43&start=10#p457
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Dwarf Fortress and some other ramblings
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-25 17:54:42

CURSE YOU FOR INTRODUCING ME TO THIS GAME!

I can't get enough.  It's so addicting...and designing my fort brings out my creative side.

I can't wait until it hits version 1.0....or even the beta version.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=43&start=10#p458
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Dwarf Fortress and some other ramblings
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-25 18:36:44

Oh all right, I guess you're onto me. It was all a clever trick to get you distracted so you wouldn't finish your game in time for the IFComp and I'd have one less competitor. And HA! IT WORKED! [emote]Razz[/emote] 

(Unfortunately David didn't seem to fall for it... [emote]Sad[/emote])

Anyway, I love playing around with the architecture too. In my last game I finally settled on what I think is the perfect fortress design. It's nice and small so it won't attract so many immigrants, and all the workshops are laid out for maximum efficiency; the gem cutter and metalsmith are on the east side of the river, for instance, because that's where all the good stuff is and I got tired of having to wait for it all to get hauled across the bridge. (MAybe this won't be necessary if/when mining carts are added.)

I've also got traps laid out all *over* the place, and a beautiful dining room that I'm currently filling with masterwork statues and furniture. (Which is sure to attract a *lot* of immigrants, but too bad! There's only twenty bedrooms, and I don't intend to mess up my nice symmetrical design by building any more. Anybody over the quota goes to the Drowning Room, which coincidentally enough also holds beds that can be assigned to nobles... [emote]Twisted Evil[/emote])

I'm thinking of moving my tradepost there too and ending this immigration problem once and for all, actually, but that seems a little cheap.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=43&start=10#p459
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Dwarf Fortress and some other ramblings
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-25 18:43:25

I'm apparently not good enough to even GET immigrants yet.  I always end up restarting due to some catastrophe or another.  But each time I improve upon something else that I screwed up the last time, so hopefully soon I'll reap the benefits.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=43&start=10#p460
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Dwarf Fortress and some other ramblings
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-25 18:59:11

What sort of map are you playing on? Calm or Peaceful with plenty of trees is probably the best way to start.

And don't send any dwarves off hunting. Hunters are a little st00pid right now, and tend to get slaughtered and/or lead an angry pack of animals back to the fortress. (There's also the problem of how a tiny scratch on the arm can lead to tantrums, insanity and death...until a better health care system is added I'd recommend just locking any injured dwarves in their rooms until their bodies rot away.  

For food, build a fishery near the outside river and set one of your dwarves to fishing outside until you can break through to the cave river and start farming. You can also slaughter the horses and mules you start off with. (I try to save enough points to start off with a few war dogs, too. They're great for protecting the fortress until I can get traps and a military set up, and their puppies are good eatin'. [emote]Very Happy[/emote]) 

Anything specific you need help with? I could give you suggestions for how to spend your points in the beginning, for instance.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=10#p461
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: rotter / DateTime: 2006-08-25 19:04:54

I'm Richard Otter from the UK (or England if you prefer).

My interest in IF dates back to the adventure games of the 80s. I must have played all the old ZX Spectrum classics such as "Sherlock", "Hobbit", "Lords of Time", "Snowball" and "Subsunk". I even had a go at writing my own stuff in those days using the dear old Quill by Gilsoft.

A couple of years ago I stumbled onto Adrift and so started my life in the modern world of IF. As I'm no programmer I have stayed with Adrift and have a few games of varying quality under my belt.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=43&start=10#p463
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Dwarf Fortress and some other ramblings
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-25 19:08:48

I've got two war dogs, and I've started with 2 miners and one carpenter.  Things are fine at that point.  It's just getting everything set up that annoys me.  I always screw up the farms when I hit the cave river.  Either I don't build it right, or my dwarves refuse to place the floodgates, and they sit at the workshop unused.

And as I speak, my miner hits the river, and drowns immediately. [emote]Sad[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=30&start=10#p464
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Suggestions for the Game of the Month: September 06
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-25 19:12:09

Oh, and also I'm nominating Rematch!

(Um...I could think of *lots* of games that would be fun to discuss, actually. There should probably be some kind of limit or criteria to keep these nominations from getting out of hand...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=43&start=10#p465
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Dwarf Fortress and some other ramblings
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-25 19:18:24

That's weird, I've heard of this happening to other people, but I've never actually had the river flood when I hit it. Usually I just dig out a farming room, put a door in between it in the fortress, and then wait till spring for the flood to come. (I never screw around with floodgates except for the room I use to drown immigrants in...that one's connected to the outside river via a line of channels, and it's completely seperated from the rest of my fortress in case something goes wrong.)

You might be doing this already, but one thing I've seen suggested is putting in several (non pet-passable) doors on the way to the river, so that even if you lose your miner in a flash flood when you hit it the rest of the fortress is safe.

(Also, even if you lose your miner, don't restart. You have another one, and if you survive until the first wave of immigrants arrive there's usually a couple of new miners with them.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=43&start=10#p466
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Dwarf Fortress and some other ramblings
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-25 19:22:46

Well what happened was my miners were building a rather large meeting hall.  I had dug out a single spaced hallway, and hadn't hit water yet, so I decided to build my meeting hall before that point.  As I dug to the north, I hit the river (which obviously angled past my furthest point dug) and it flooded into the whole mined area to that point, even reaching to the FRONT of the fortress itself.

I didn't have any doors at that point, and I had just started that game, so it wasn't a big deal.  Just annoying.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=43&start=10#p467
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Dwarf Fortress and some other ramblings
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-25 19:26:22

Interesting...

The version I have is several days old already. I wonder if in the newer ones Toady might have made good on his promise to randomize the inside of the mountain a little more? The river has *always* been a ways to the east, as far as I know.

Maybe I'll ask about that on the forums later.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=47&start=10#p468
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good games for beginners?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-25 19:52:22

I think I'm going to go ahead and recommend 'Gourmet' here. There are puzzles, but none of them are exactly hard, (I didn't once have to resort to hints, and that's almost unheard of for me...) and it's just a fun game all around.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=54&start=0#p469
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: substituting one object over another
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-25 23:11:20

Finally got it working. Case closed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=43&start=10#p470
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Dwarf Fortress and some other ramblings
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-25 23:37:07

I cannot get farming to work, no matter what I do.  Do I need to build a channel with two floodgates?  I tried a channel with one floodgate, but all it does is move water onto the channel, doesn't move the water into the actual room.  I've followed all the FAQs out there for farming, and still can't get it to work right.  It's frustrating.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=43&start=10#p471
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Dwarf Fortress and some other ramblings
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-26 00:32:59

I use ordinary Nile style farming myself, but I've had no trouble flooding rooms for drowning people. 

Here's what the special suite for the nobles looks like:


R................|
R................|
R................|_____
RccccccccccccccF____..|
R................|.....|.| 
R................|..._|.|______
R................|...|.............|
R................|...|.............|
R................|...|.............|
R................|...|_____... _|
R................|........._|D|_
..................|____|........|  
.................. ____ ...L....|
..................|......|_____|   

R is the outside river, the c's are the channel, F is the floodgate, D is the door, and the L is the lever. 

All you should have to do is lock the door to the farm, then have someone with the Mechanic job enabled go and pull the lever to flood the room, then pull it again to get the water out.

Oh, and when building the channels to begin with, save the one that actually connects to the river for last. Since you can't control which bit they work on first, don't even give the order for it until everything else is set up.

Edit: Formatting's still kind of screwy, but I think you get the general idea. Ignore all the periods, they're just to keep everything (sort of) in the right shape.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=54&start=0#p474
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: substituting one object over another
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-26 04:44:54

Glad you got it working; I'm still in the process of going through the documentation from start to finish in an attempt to get a clear idea of what will be possible to implement and what won't be - so I'm not going to be of much use to anyone at the moment.

I don't expect to see your code, but can you give an indication of what you managed to do to achieve the desired result and, if using parts of the documentation, which sections were of the most help to you for this?

Cheers

Mxx

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=56&start=0#p475
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Unlocking doors
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-26 05:38:26

Just taking a look at 3.13 Locks and keys, and example 21: Disappointment Bay 6

I've copied the following as a new project:

[code]The Cabin is a room. Description is "The cabin looks splendid."

The Cabin contains a glass case. In the glass case is a collection of fishing rods. The case is closed, transparent, openable, lockable, and locked. The case is scenery. The small silver key unlocks the case.

The small silver key is carried by the player.

The Den is south of the cabin. Description is "This room is splendid too."[/code]

When I start the game, I have the key, and 'Unlock case' results in:

[quote]
>unlock case
(with the small silver key)
You unlock the glass case.
[/quote]  

However, if I move south, drop the key so it is in another room, and return to the cabin, I then get the following when attempting to unlock the case:

[quote]
>unlock case
(with the glass case)
(first taking the glass case)
That's hardly portable.
[/quote]  

Of course if I had dropped the key in the Cabin, I would have picked up the key before unlocking.

Shouldn't the software really state "you need a key to unlock this case" if the key is not carried or in the same room?

I understand this could be worked around using Example 22: Neighborhood Watch, but seems that it should be a default.  Am I missing something?

Cheers

Mxx

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=56&start=0#p476
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unlocking doors
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-26 06:26:30

It looks like a bug, but I can't say for certain.

Does the code include the extension Locksmith?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=56&start=0#p477
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unlocking doors
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-26 06:31:55

Does now...

[quote]
>unlock case
You lack a key that fits the glass case.
[/quote] 

Shiny  [emote]:D[/emote] 

I see you can 'rekey' too, which will help for the future.

Thanks again.

(note to self: must read all documentation before asking more questions)

Mxx

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=54&start=0#p479
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: substituting one object over another
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-26 10:01:17

[quote="murphyz"]
I don't expect to see your code, but can you give an indication of what you managed to do to achieve the desired result and, if using parts of the documentation, which sections were of the most help to you for this?
[/quote]   

For #2, Jason Orendorff from RAIF pointed me to section 16.19. "Writing a paragraph about."

For #1 and #3, well, I just hit a snag again when I ran the test script. Let me check on this first.

[b]EDIT[/b]:
Nah, I still can't make part of it work. Here's the source text in question (spoilery bits snipped):
[code]Jail Cell is a room.

The ground is scenery in the Jail Cell.

The skeleton is a thing on the ground with the printed name "pile of bones". The description of the skeleton is "All that's left of the remains is [the list of things that are a part of the skeleton], with some parts covered in what appears to be moist earth and caked blood." Understand "bones" or "skeleton" or "pile of bones" or "pile" as the skeleton.

A bone_obj is a kind of thing. A bone_obj can be a part of the skeleton. A bone_obj is usually a part of the skeleton.

The skull is a bone_obj. 
The pelvis is a bone_obj. 
The femur is a bone_obj. 

Before taking the skull:
   now the skull is not a part of the skeleton;
   move the skull to the player.

Before taking the femur:
   now the femur is not a part of the skeleton;
   move the femur to the player.

Instead of taking the ribcage:
   say "The ribcage seems to be stuck to the floor."

Instead of taking the skeleton:
   now the skull is not a part of the skeleton;
   now the humerus is not a part of the skeleton;
   try taking the skull;
   try taking the ribcage;
   try taking the humerus;
   remove the skeleton from play.[/code]
What happens is, I can take the skeleton, and obtain the femur and the skull without problems. When taking either the skull or the femur, I get the "You can't see any such thing." message instead.

I looked at the Index and saw all three bones (skull, pelvis, femur)
were initially out of play. How come I'm able to get them when I take
the skeleton, and yet not get them individually?

Any help here is appreciated. Thanks again!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=43&start=20#p480
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Dwarf Fortress and some other ramblings
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-26 10:17:02

Thanks, that's helpful.  I'll give it a go today.

Oh, and I am DEFINITELY still finishing my comp entry. [emote]Wink[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=57&start=0#p481
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: The rat and the rice
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-26 10:39:47

After working through the Disappointment Bay 12 example I wanted to practice handling things more (the example showed that you can't pick up ice without first holding a net).

In my example I wanted to expand on the requirements for certain things, and for different things to happen depending on what is held and where.

Scenario.
You're in a pantry. There is a sack currently containing a rat. The sack also has a hole in it. There is a 'plug' and there is rice. 

The rice cannot be held in your hand. 
The rice cannot be scooped into the sack whilst the rat is in the there.
The rice cannot be scooped into the sack when the sack is empty (due to the hole in the sack).
The rice can be scooped into the sack when the plug is in the sack.
When the rice is in the sack, you should not be allowed to take the plug (otherwise the rice would fall out of the bag).
When the sack contains the rice and the plug you should not be able to take the rice (resulting in another scooping action).

I have a semi-working example, in that I can seem to get it so that you are required to remove the rat from the sack, and place the plug into the sack before you can scoop up the rice. Also, it appears the scoop is still tried (unsuccessfully) when the rat is in the sack.

However, you are then able to 'take plug' which leaves the rice in the sack and the plug in hand.
Also, 'take rice' results in you scooping, even though it's already in the sack.

Any clues as to the fine tuning I can use to fix the last parts...again, sorry if this is covered later on in the book. I like making examples as I go through it and trying to figure out how to use things.

Is there a specific order the commands (below) should be written in?

[code]The Pantry is a room. Description is "a food pantry, but without any food."

The sack is a container in the pantry.  Description is "sturdy." The sack contains a rat. The sack has a carrying capacity 2. The sack is not wearable. 

A plug is in the pantry. The description is "small and plug like"

A quantity of rice is in the pantry. The rice is not edible.  The player cannot carry the rice. The description is "It's rice...what more do you want from me?"  The printed name of the quantity is "some rice".

Instead of taking the quantity of rice when the player is not carrying the sack and the plug is not in the sack: if the quantity of rice is handled, continue the action; say "You are having a hard time picking up the rice with your bare hands."

Instead of taking the quantity of rice when the player is not carrying the sack and the plug is in the sack: if the quantity of rice is handled, continue the action; say "You are having a hard time picking up the rice with your bare hands."

Instead of taking the quantity of rice when the player is carrying the sack containing the rat:
            say "You attempt to use the sack to take the rice, but you can't whilst a rat is inside."

Instead of taking the quantity of rice when the player is carrying the sack and the plug is not in the sack:
            say "you scoop up the rice in the sack but it immediately falls out of a hole in the bottom and back onto the ground."

After taking the quantity of rice when the player is carrying the sack containing the plug:
move the rice to the sack;
	say "You scoop up the rice in the sack, the plug firmly plugging a hole in the bottom."

Instead of taking the plug when the player is carrying the sack containing the plug and the rice:
            say "you can't take the plug out of the sack whilst the rice is in there."

Instead of taking the quantity of rice when the player is carrying the sack containing the rice and the plug:
            say "You already have the rice in the sack."[/code]

Cheers

Mxx

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=57&start=0#p482
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The rat and the rice
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-26 11:24:53

[quote]
However, you are then able to 'take plug' which leaves the rice in the sack and the plug in hand.
[/quote] 

I find that if you put

[quote]
Instead of taking the plug when the plug and the rice are in the sack:
            say "But if you did that, the rice would fall out of the hole."
[/quote] 

it prevents you taking the plug out of the sack when the rice is in there.

[quote]
Also, 'take rice' results in you scooping, even though it's already in the sack.
[/quote] 

And

[quote]
Instead of taking the rice when the rice is in the sack:
            say "But you went to all the trouble of getting the rice in there - why take it out?"
[/quote] 

stops it.

Hope this helps.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=30&start=10#p483
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Suggestions for the Game of the Month: September 06
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-26 11:25:42

[quote="Lumin"]
(Um...I could think of *lots* of games that would be fun to discuss, actually. There should probably be some kind of limit or criteria to keep these nominations from getting out of hand...)
[/quote]   

You mean something like this?

[quote="Shuarian"]
Every forum member can suggest one game per month. It is encouraged to describe the reasoning for one's choice and to give a small description of the game, so the other forum members have enough information to base their votes upon. Please note that there's a maximum of ten suggestions per month. As there's no selection, the '[i]first come, first served[/i]' principle applies. 
[/quote]   

[emote]:-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=50#p484
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-26 11:27:59

[quote="David Whyld"]
Well, I've decided to go ahead and write a short game for the project. If it goes well, I'll consider a larger game for a future issue.
[/quote]  

*pokes David* Are you finished yet?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=30&start=10#p485
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Suggestions for the Game of the Month: September 06
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-26 11:28:36

So going by first choices:

David Whyld: [b]Savoire Faire[/b]
Merk: [b]Worlds Apart[/b]
Arnel Legaspi: [b]Shades of Gray[/b]
Wanaselja: [b]The Ghost Train[/b]
Lumin: [b]Savoire Faire[/b]

Looks like a clear winner so far for [b]Savoire Faire[/b].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=50#p486
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-26 11:29:17

How about now? [emote]Very Happy[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=50#p487
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-26 11:30:12

Oi, stop pokin' me!

I haven't even started yet. I'm just at the moment kicking around ideas. A few possibles here and there. As well, I could do with a break from my biggie WIP so this might be just what I need.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=30&start=10#p488
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Suggestions for the Game of the Month: September 06
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-26 12:11:53

I've actually meant this thread to be for suggestions only, with voting taking place in a new voting thread. My impression from the Adrift forum is that a separate poll usually attracts more people.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=54&start=0#p489
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: substituting one object over another
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-26 14:07:53

Finally got it working the way it should.

I don't have the code with me, but essentially, the relation between the skeleton and the 3 bone parts had to be established. I changed the skeleton into a container, and put all 3 bone parts in it.

I thought players were allowed to detach parts; after checking section 3.23 ("Parts of things") in the I7 manual, it can't be done.

Now even if I take 1 or 2 bone parts, the listing in the skeleton's description is more consistent.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=31&start=10#p490
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Writing vs Playing
User: rotter / DateTime: 2006-08-26 15:05:17

As I got into adventure games years ago I’m still a player at heart but I do love to write.  I set myself the goal of trying to play all the Adrift games released during the year, it is my way of supporting Adrift and the forum.

I tend to play in my lunch hour and write in the evening.  Usually I will swap about from writing to doing something else and then back again.  I tend to keep detailed ‘whathastobedone.txt’ file so picking up again is fairly easy.

I’ve just managed to get through the Hourglass Comp entries, but it wasn’t easy finding the time. In the last month or so it has been a real struggle to play anything as I’m trying to get  my IFComp entry ready.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=54&start=0#p491
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: substituting one object over another
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-26 15:22:27

Here's [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/msg/27513a312e3d3c68]Emily's much more elegant solution[/url]:

[code]Jail Cell is a room.

The ground is scenery in the Jail Cell.

The skeleton is a thing on the ground with the printed name "pile of
bones". The description of the skeleton is "All that's left of the
remains is [the list of things that are part of the skeleton], with
some parts covered in what appears to be moist earth and caked blood."
Understand "bones" or "skeleton" or "pile of bones" or "pile" as the
skeleton.

A bone_obj is a kind of thing. Every bone_obj is part of the skeleton.

The skull is a bone_obj.
The pelvis is a bone_obj.
The femur is a bone_obj.

Procedural rule when taking a bone_obj:
        ignore the can't take component parts rule.

Instead of taking the pelvis:
   say "The pelvis seems to be stuck to the floor."

Instead of taking the skeleton:
   try taking the skull;
   try taking the pelvis;
   try taking the femur;
   remove the skeleton from play.

Report taking a bone_obj:
        say "You collect [the noun].";
        rule succeeds.[/code]

EDIT: I added the "rule succeeds" line as it was showing this when I put into my WIP:

[quote]
>get skeleton
You collect the skull.

Taken.

You collect the humerus.

Taken.
[/quote] 
With "rule succeeds" present, the "Taken" message does not appear.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=30&start=10#p492
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Suggestions for the Game of the Month: September 06
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-26 16:44:29

[quote="Shuarian"]

You mean something like this?

[quote="Shuarian"]
Every forum member can suggest one game per month. It is encouraged to describe the reasoning for one's choice and to give a small description of the game, so the other forum members have enough information to base their votes upon. Please note that there's a maximum of ten suggestions per month. As there's no selection, the '[i]first come, first served[/i]' principle applies. 
[/quote]     

[emote]:-)[/emote]
[/quote]  

Oops! How'd I miss that? [emote]:oops:[/emote] 

Well, since Savoire Faire has already been suggested, I might as well use nominate something else. At least I still have a couple of days to think about it...

[quote="Shuarian"]
I've actually meant this thread to be for suggestions only, with voting taking place in a new voting thread. My impression from the Adrift forum is that a separate poll usually attracts more people.
[/quote] 

Good idea. I can't speak for anyone else, but I have this compulsive urge to vote in polls, even if it's about something I don't even have a real opinion on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=57&start=0#p493
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The rat and the rice
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-26 18:55:14

That does indeed help, and works wonderfully.  I also replaced a bit about when the rat was in the sack, as taking the rice whilst the rat was in there still tried to scoop it up instead of saying 'the rat's in there'.

Thanks very much, pleased that this one is working okay now [emote]Very Happy[/emote]

Mxx

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=57&start=0#p494
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The rat and the rice
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-27 03:24:41

Glad I could help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=58&start=0#p495
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Clashing Code
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-27 09:46:09

The following code is taken from example 24: Down Below and works fine as a standalone.

[code]Master Bedroom is a room. "You are in what appears to be the master bedroom." The light switch is a switched on device in the Master Bedroom. It is fixed in place.

Carry out switching off the light switch: now the Master Bedroom is dark.

Carry out switching on the light switch: now the Master Bedroom is lighted.

After deciding the scope of the player:
	place the light switch in scope.[/code]

However, when I place the exact same code into my game, it doesn't work:

[quote]
[b]Master Bedroom[/b]
You are in what appears to be the master bedroom.

You can see a light switch here.

>turn off light
You switch the light switch off.

It is now pitch dark in here!

>turn on light
You can't see any such thing.
[/quote]  

I haven't used light anywhere else in the game, nor have I used 'scope' or anything else I can see as clashing. 

Is there any reason why this would not be implemented in a game when it works fine as an example?

I have only used the locksmith extension, and no other 'device'.

Thank ye

Mxx

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=58&start=0#p496
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Clashing Code
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-27 10:04:54

No reason I can see why this shouldn't work; I've checked with Locksmith and there's no obvious incompatibility there, either. (I am able to assemble an example that includes this code and Locksmith, and seems to run fine.) Some ways to troubleshoot this kind of problem:

-- look through your Indices. Make sure that the Kinds Index and World Index both show that you've created all the objects you wanted (and only the objects you wanted) and that you haven't accidentally made two things with quite similar names where you meant to make one;
-- try inserting some say phrase into your scope rule to see whether it is actually happening, which may help indicate where the problem is.

One (unrelated) caveat: if you have more than one room, you probably want

After deciding the scope of the player when the player is in the Master Bedroom:
   place the light switch in scope.

or else when you get this working again the light switch will be accessible from everywhere. (I've actually amended this in the example for the next version of Inform, but of course it is not out yet.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=58&start=0#p497
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Clashing Code
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-27 10:17:58

Thank you very much.

Looking through the Indices I saw that there were two similar instances that I7 didn't like. 

I had in my text

"The player cannot carry the (item 1)"
and
"The player cannot carry the (item 2)"

The Index showed it as 'player cannot' under 'people'.

I have removed both instances of 'The player cannot carry the X' and the light switch now works. 

I've amended the scope for the lightswitch to only be in the bedroom as per your suggestion.

Thank you [emote]:D[/emote]

Mxx

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=59&start=0#p498
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Works In Progress
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-27 11:52:55

So what's everyone writing at the mo, and when do they expect to have their latest masterpieces (or not as the case may be) completed?

Give us some info on your games (assuming, of course, you're not planning to enter them into any comps, in which case talking them too much wouldn't be a good idea).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=59&start=0#p500
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works In Progress
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-27 12:06:51

I'm busy working on (obsessing over) my first attempt at writing IF, which will be called 'murphyzBasement'. 

The idea came up a few years ago on my forum, and never really went anywhere. I had the last week off work and so started work on it.  The forum catered to a riddling community for a few years, and is now just random rubbish. My avatar online is a lion and this has been adopted as the forum mascot, a background story of which my artist is locked in my basement which in turn is overrun by monkeys. Somewhere along the line it also happened that local children went missing and are also in the basement.

The game will be aimed at my forum members and will feature them getting into murphyz Manor and rescuing the missing children from the basement. 

I aim to have a back story released for my members before the launch of the game, and there will be certain things within the game that the player can collect which are forum related (vChipz, our forum currency and trophies to name a few). When the game ends in victory I aim to have a code generated depending on the items the player has and these awards (trophies and vChipz) will be given to the member when they provide the code. 

meet murphyz (the lion) - he's actually a bit dumb and very inept (and a cheat).  
[img]http://www.murphyz.co.uk/forum/images/murphyzmascot/bingo_lion_small.gif[/img] [img]http://www.murphyz.co.uk/forum/images/chesslogo.gif[/img]

example of a trophy: 
[img]http://www.murphyz.co.uk/forum/images/trophies/award_murphyz_gold.gif[/img]

The cover for the game will be:
[img]http://murphyz.co.uk/forum/images/photoshop/image001.jpg[/img]

Long way to go yet though, but progressing nicely.  The game won't be huge, and I hope to release at New Year or so.

Mxx

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=59&start=0#p501
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works In Progress
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-27 12:10:21

Nice cover for the game. [emote]Smile[/emote]

Is this an IF game or more of a graphical one?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=59&start=0#p502
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works In Progress
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-27 12:16:27

Completely IF, created in I7, the only image being the cover. 

In the game the player can, for example, pick up vChipz they find, or a number of trophies which will be hidden.

If they have 400 vChipz and an 'outstanding member' trophy when they exit the game, this will result in a specific code being given to them. Entering the code at the website will then add those vChipz and trophy to the member online. 

If they collect 1000 vChipz and two different trophies, a different code would be given.

This will, of course, require them to actually register the code they get.  A code will only be valid once as well, with the first three finishers being awarded a medal for completion. The trophies on the website are graphics.

If there were a way to add images then I would do so infrequently, and only to aid the storyline.  We had contemplated creating a point and click game but have opted not to at this time, due to a lack of expertise and time in what would be needed to create something original.

The IF is easier, and means I can create it on my own.

Mxx

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=61&start=0#p503
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: [INFORM] Varicella
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-27 12:20:30

[b]Varicella[/b] by Adam Cadre

*WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS*

Okay, confession time. I've never been a big fan of Adam Cadre's work and have spent the last few years wondering if he's heavily into bribing people to say nice things about his games because I could never see what the fuss was. Photopia left me cold; Lock & Key confused me so much I don't think I managed to do a single thing right; I gave up with Narcolepsy five minutes into it despite telling myself I'd at least give it a fair go before passing judgement. So when I was looking around for a game to play and chanced upon Varicella I wasn't, despite its reputation, really expecting much. I figured that at best it would be a well written mess that had been heralded as a masterpiece for reasons which I would never understand (which is pretty much my opinion of Photopia). So imagine my surprise when not only did it turn out to be very good, but also one of the best text adventures I've ever played.

[b]What's it about?[/b]
The complicated goings-on at the Palazzo del Piedmonte where you, one Primo Varicella, are the Palace Minister. Despite the rather grand title, you wield little actual power and your duties generally include those of a glorified butler. But you're a schemer and eager to seize every opportunity that comes along to better yourself. And if this comes at the expense of others, well… too bad.

And now such an opportunity has presented itself. The King has just died and his son, Prince Charles, is five years old. Soon there's going to be a power struggle for the position of regent (who will officially rule the land in the Prince's stead but unofficially can do pretty much what he likes) and you intend to come out on top. Of course, that means dealing with your rivals as quickly as possible but you have few qualms about that sort of thing. "Dealing" in the case being a polite term for murder.

The introduction is good. Very good. Primo Varicella at once becomes a real and believable character, although it's easy to see why he's held in such poor esteem by everyone he meets in the game. He's a fussy little man, obsessed with manicures and interior design who considers himself the only genuinely sophisticated person at the palace. He's also quite happy to murder anyone who stands in his way, hardly a quality likely to endear him to other people. On top of that, he has an over-inflated opinion of himself and his own abilities, as demonstrated so well during the introduction:

Piedmont, it seems, will be requiring the services of a regent for the foreseeable future. And you can think of no better candidate than yourself.

There you have the introduction which does an excellent job of setting the scene.

[b]Difficult game?[/b]
Oh yes. I've played some difficult games before but none that come close to Varicella in terms of sheer, downright impossibility*.

* Okay, maybe an exaggeration. After all, I've finished the game so I have firsthand knowledge that it's not impossible, but play it a few times and see how far you get. If you're like me, you'll spend your first four or five plays through the game not having a clue how to finish it.

My first time through the game I actually felt like I was making some pretty good progress. I wandered around the palace, chatted to people, discovered a few things, got a good feel for how I felt everything was likely to pan out - and then I got killed. Yep, soldiers stormed the palace, grabbed me and a moment later one of my rivals, clearly better at this sort of thing than I was, proceeded to shoot me in the head. Exit one fussy little man. Hitting UNDO didn't undo my problems unfortunately as the event with the soldiers and the subsequent untimely demise is on a timer and the program only allows one UNDO in a row. So all UNDO did for me was allow me to relive the moment of my death. Over and over again. Oh joy.

Undeterred, I restarted the game and tried to do better this time. I didn't succeed. Before long, I found myself replaying the final events of the previous game and getting steadily more annoyed at what I felt was an unfair and somewhat premature ending. I'd have probably quit then if not for the slight problem that Varicella was just so damn good that I couldn't bear to quit.

Part of its difficulty stems from the sheer shortness of the game. There is an incredible amount to do to reach an ending which doesn't involve one of your rivals killing you before you kill them and a lot of what needs to be accomplished to steer the game along the path you're after isn't at all straightforward or obvious. A lot, in fact, is the sort of thing you're unlikely to stumble across through sheer luck and instead needs to be plotted out very carefully over a period of many, many games. It's possible to make a few wrong moves here and there, waste a bit of time, but the shortness of the game and the available time you have to complete everything you need to do means that time-wasting just isn't an option. If anyone tells you they finished this game on their first play through they're either a) lying, b) lying, c) lying or d) relying on a walkthrough. Even knowing roughly the sequence of events that you need to go through in order to win, it's still far from easy to actually get there in one piece.

Saving your game regularly - the sort of thing anyone who has played more than a few text adventures knows to do instinctively - is less effective in Varicella due to the game's shortness. Several times after dying I reverted to a previous save only to find myself in another no-win situation because I hadn't performed a certain action by a certain time. In a lesser game this sort of thing would have driven me to distraction (and sent the game off to the recycle bin) but here it's almost forgivable considering the game's other strengths. Almost. When you've just died for the tenth time in a row because you missed something not particularly obvious right at the start of the game, it gets increasingly harder to keep feeling positive.

Persistence seems to be the best way to get anywhere. A couple of times I didn't even try to finish the game, I just explored different avenues that were open to me and if one avenue didn't seem to lead anywhere I restarted and tried something else. One entire game I sat by my surveillance equipment and watched everything I could through it, seeing what I could discover about my rivals that they might not want me to know. In the end, persistence does pay off in that you finally manage to put everything together but you might be forgiven for thinking that you're getting nowhere.

[b]Any characters?[/b]
Lots, and very good the are, too. They're a pretty despicable bunch for the most part and at times I was reminded of films like Pulp Fiction where every character, no matter who he or she is, is a nasty piece of work. You might find it hard to sympathise with them - they are, after all, a bunch of back-stabbing, conniving, evil little hellions who would throttle an old woman for her last coin - but it's possible to relate to them all the same. They're all interesting characters with a fully fleshed out background and while none are as well detailed as Varicella himself, they nevertheless perform their duties admirably in giving the player some worthy adversaries to pit himself against.

Not that everyone is against you. With a little bribery, you can find one ally and some detective work and inspired questioning will get you another. Asking as many questions as you can of the characters is a good way to learn things but this is best done in a session when you're not planning to finish the game as the sequence of events that trigger after a set amount of time are likely are come around long before you've exhausted every conversation piece you can think of.

Charlotte is perhaps the only character in the game who doesn't fall into the despicable category, although she has more than a few despicable acts done to her. She spends the majority of the game locked up in the asylum atop one of the palace towers following a mental breakdown after her husband was shot on their wedding day. Several of your rivals regularly rape her (an option, fortunately, you're not able to pursue yourself).

[b]Not a game for kids[/b]
There are several dark threads running through Varicella. Charlotte's rape is one of them. Spend enough time checking your surveillance equipment and you'll find an unpleasant scene (mercifully interrupted before its conclusion) with another of your rivals about to molest the young Prince Charles.

Now I started the game thinking that Primo Varicella himself was the lowest of the low due to his plotting to wipe out his enemies, but it quickly becomes apparent from playing through even a portion of the game that he's actually quite a lot less despicable than of his rivals. While more than happy to indulge in power-grabbing games and murder of people who haven't actually done anything to him, he's certainly more tolerable than his rivals. It's probably true to say that he's bad but not half as bad as anyone else.

[b]The tale of the unsatisfying ending[/b]

The ending was the game's weak point for me. Is there more than one ending? I'm not sure. I finished the game a couple of times and the ending I got was the same each time so I'm assuming it was the only one. If so, well… what a poor way to finish the game.

You win, defeat your adversaries, become regent for the land… and then the Prince grows up, turns into a real terror, stages an uprising, overthrows you and has you tortured to death. Hmmm….

While this certainly made a change from the usual run-of-the-mill game endings where you live happily after ever or find the big treasure chest or slay the evil dark lord and save the world, it's the kind of ending that makes me wonder what the whole point of the game was. Surely there must be a better reward for all that hard work than being tortured to death? Even the endings where I failed and got shot were more satisfying.

Of course, it's altogether possible that there are other endings that offer a more fulfilling conclusion to the game. But I finished it twice - once on my own (and slightly aided by the walkthrough) and once solely with the walkthrough - and both led me to the death-by-torture ending.

[b]Better than Photopia?[/b]
Definitely. Now if people spoke about Varicella in the same kind of hero-worship tones that they do Photopia, I could understand where they were coming from. But whereas I finished Photopia and was left wondering just what the big fuss was, when I finished Varicella I immediately played it again several more times just to see what else I had missed. Recommended.

[b]9 out of 10 [/b]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=59&start=0#p510
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works In Progress
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-27 14:35:45

Is that original artwork, or is it something copyrighted?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=63&start=0#p511
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Examples of X and Y
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-27 14:37:23

I was thinking about [b]Cloak of Darkness[/b] just now - a very simple game designed to show how different systems handle different things - and was wondering about the idea of doing something similar here.

Now [b]Cloak of Darkness[/b] does a fine job of showing how X system does this and how Y system does that, but it's only a very, very short game. What if someone new to the IF scene was trying to figure out which system was best for a conversation-led game? Or for giving items to NPCs and receiving items back in turn? Or for changing room descriptions based on various actions which have happened elsewhere (i.e. you've turned on the air conditioning in the basement so the studio is chilled)?

What about a few examples in each of the major systems - Alan, Adrift, Hugo, Inform, Tads - to show how each could be done? I could do the Adrift ones myself, but that's the only one of the five that I'm familiar with. Does anyone think something like this might be a good idea as a way of attractive newcomers to the IF scene?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=63&start=0#p514
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Examples of X and Y
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-27 14:42:18

I could handle things in Hugo, especially if the examples are still short and meant to cover a very particilar feature (or set of features). All example games would need to be functionally the same, as in [b]Cloak of Darkness[/b].

I don't know that it would bring in new people, though, or really help them get a feel for one language over the other. It's possible, I guess. I think the point of [b]Cloak[/b] is to be basic enough to get an idea of the construction and syntax of the language, not necessarily the various features that might be called upon.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=63&start=0#p515
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Examples of X and Y
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-27 14:44:37

Even if it doesn't bring in any new members, it might be interesting for current ones to see how the other systems handle things. I solely use Adrift but I've always been curious as to how much easier or harder certain things are in othe systems.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=59&start=0#p517
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works In Progress
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-27 15:02:23

[quote="Merk"]
Is that original artwork, or is it something copyrighted?
[/quote] 

All original. 

Although my artist isn't locked up in a basement, she is over in Canada. 

Mxx

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4&start=10#p519
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: The Forum
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-27 16:33:10

[quote="Wanaselja"]
I saw that "Googlebot" visited us today.  Guess we'll be appearing in the Google searches eventually.
[/quote]  
Ditto for today. And to think Rioshin was also logged in...

I can't help thinking Rioshin is giving the G-bot a tour guide  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=63&start=0#p520
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Examples of X and Y
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-27 16:44:16

[quote="David Whyld"]
Even if it doesn't bring in any new members, it might be interesting for current ones to see how the other systems handle things. I solely use Adrift but I've always been curious as to how much easier or harder certain things are in othe systems.
[/quote] 

Not to demean ADRIFT, but how exactly would the ADRIFT way be presented? Alan, TADS, Inform, Hugo - they're all text-based. (Or maybe I should take a look at Roger Firth's site...)

Another point I'd like to raise are library/header files. David proposed comparing certain functionalities such as a conversation framework between systems. I'm not sure about Alan, but the other 3 do have either built in libraries or extensions from contributors that are useful for these. Will those come into the picture as well?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=59&start=0#p521
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works In Progress
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-27 16:44:39

Whoever your artist is is great!

The game itself sounds like it's aimed pretty specifically at the people on your forum (Where is it, by the way? And anyone else there into IF?) but at the same time the plot sounds just crazy enough to make me give it a try. [emote]Smile[/emote]

As for myself, I'm mainly freaking out at the realization of how close the IFComp deadline has suddenly gotten and feverishly trying to finish my game. And of course you know how popular straightforward fantasy adventure is with the folks on RAIF - combine it with Adrift and I'm bound to win! [emote]Very Happy[/emote] 

And assuming I make some *serious* progress over the next few days, I'll try to squeeze in an entry for the Creature Comp too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=50#p522
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-27 17:48:53

Telltale Games are doing the serial snack-sized game (4-5 hours) idea,
but for graphical adventure games. I don't know if they're successful or
not, but when I read about it, it was a definite "d'uh!" moment. Of course
that's how you want to do it [emote]Smile[/emote]

<a href="http://www.telltalegames.com/">http://www.telltalegames.com/</a>

If it helps, I am willing to help out with my multi-terps Gargoyle and
Spatterlight for any project you cook up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=59&start=0#p523
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works In Progress
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-27 17:59:16

Just my comp entry.  I've given up on Dwarf Fortress for now, and focusing full time on my comp entry, so it should be ready for beta-testing within the next week or two.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=60#p524
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-27 18:34:41

Thanks Tor! We're still in the planning stages, but I definitely think having a distributable interpreter to give a unified feel to all the games would be a good idea. It would be easier for newbies, I think, and it would probably make installing and running the games easier.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=63&start=0#p527
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Examples of X and Y
User: Ken Franklin / DateTime: 2006-08-28 01:18:08

With ADRIFT you can certainly create a sample file that can be played in the runner and examined in the generator (subject to limitations of the unregistered v4 generator). It can also output a module file that provides a text version of the game and can be imported into the generator.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=20#p528
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: rotter / DateTime: 2006-08-28 03:09:07

I would love to enter a game into the Spring Thing.  The problem I have is time.  I’m struggling to get my IFComp ready at the moment, so the thought of creating a much longer/bigger game is a really scary thought.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=63&start=0#p529
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Examples of X and Y
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-28 03:45:07

While you can get at the source code in Adrift if you really want, it's never usually a good idea. Things aren't listed by their name, but usually by what they are followed by a number, so you might have item1, item2, item3, etc, and you'd then have to check further down in the source code to see what item1, item2, item3 are. I'd hate to write a game from the source code side of things. But source code *can* be generated in Adrift and it would give an idea of how Adrift handles things.

What I had in mind from the Adrift point of view was, instead of the source code being displayed (although that could be done as well I guess), would be a set of instructions on how you get certain things done. Like:

* Create a room called [b]House[/b].
* Create a variable called [b]conversation[/b].
* Create an NPV called Bob who begins in the room [b]House[/b].

And so on... (but in more detail).

Step by step instructions that guide people along.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=20#p530
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-28 03:46:59

The games don't have to be longer, it's just that they *can* be. The winner of this year's Spring Thing, [b]The Baron[/b], wasn't really a long game. I think I finished it in about 45 minutes so it was less than half the length of some of the IFComp entries I've played.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=20#p533
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Ken Franklin / DateTime: 2006-08-28 05:09:53

Sometimes I think that people get sucked in to the idea of comp = big game and get worried by it. I think that most people judging would love to play a small and beautifully finished game rather than a massive sprawling effort. You could produce a great game in very few rooms, but with a large amount of interaction, and could beat a good bigger game.

The gameplay is the thing and size really doesn't matter  [emote]Laughing[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=20#p572
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: rotter / DateTime: 2006-08-28 11:39:14

[quote="Ken Franklin"]
Sometimes I think that people get sucked in to the idea of comp = big game and get worried by it.
[/quote]  

Do you know I played this years games and hadn't spotted that some of them could be played through fairly quickly.  Hmmm, might consider having a go in that case.  Although, I'm not going to commit at the moment. I've got my Adrift End of Year and Summer Comp entries to think about, so I'm not sure I can fit in another game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=76&start=0#p586
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Walkthroughs
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-28 13:17:41

Question about writing a walkthrough for a game.

If you have more than one ending, do you write a walkthrough for all endings?  Or do you choose the ending you want the audience to see, while hinting that there is another way?

Obviously beta-testers should see everything, so a walkthrough for them would have all paths, but for a larger audience?

I'm not keen on the idea of a walkthrough at all, but I know that comp games would get marked down by those who can't finish without one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=76&start=0#p587
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Walkthroughs
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-28 13:21:42

For IFComp, it depends on whether or not you think the other paths are going to help your score. At a minimum, provide a walkthrough for the path you most want players to see -- whether that's the optimal ending or not is up to you. It wouldn't hurt to hint at other paths, though, because people are in a hurry. They may not realize there is anything but one way, if you don't hint to them. Even so, unless somebody is really fascinated by your game, they're going to beat it and move on to the next. You might get more post-comp buzz by releasing alternate walkthroughs or hints later on, especially if your game ranks highly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=76&start=0#p592
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Walkthroughs
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-28 13:35:50

I'm not intending to include a walkthrough for my IFComp entry, but then it doesn't really need one. It's puzzle free so I doubt anyone will have any real issues with finishing it.

Saying that, if my game were harder I'd include a walkthrough. If only for the reason that people will complain if they can't finish your game and mark it down as a result.

As far as multiple path game are concerned, I'd include a walkthrough for the main path with a mention at the end of the game that other paths exist. Most likely, people will finish the game once and move on to something else, but if they like it, the fact that they know there are other ways through it, might encourage them to have another go.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=76&start=0#p598
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Walkthroughs
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-28 14:07:12

If I remember right, Vespers, last year's comp winner, included a walkthrough for only one of three possible paths.

Greg

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=60#p612
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-28 15:34:29

Just FYI to all, we're in the planning stages of this project now. I know we're going to need more help, so if you're interested in the idea of a quarterly IF subscription, featuring a few short (1 or 2 hour) games, feel free to let me know! I don't mean to jump the gun, but hopefully soon we'll be able to post an official request for submissions, and kind of lay out the plan to anybody who's curious about the whole thing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=60#p613
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-28 15:39:51

I'm interested.  I'd withold asking me to participate until you can judge my writing ability (from my comp entry.)

However, I will enthusiastically offer my talents as a proofreader, editor, and beta-tester.  I am confident in my abilities in those areas, since I basically majored in the first two. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=60#p614
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2006-08-28 15:59:45

[quote="Merk"]
Just FYI to all, we're in the planning stages of this project now. I know we're going to need more help, so if you're interested in the idea of a quarterly IF subscription, featuring a few short (1 or 2 hour) games, feel free to let me know! I don't mean to jump the gun, but hopefully soon we'll be able to post an official request for submissions, and kind of lay out the plan to anybody who's curious about the whole thing.
[/quote] 

As soon as Merk, David Whyld and I have this planned out in enough detail to start to ask for submissions, you'll see a post. Anybody who is interested, will be considered - we are creating guidelines on evaluating proposed games for inclusion, what kind of payment authors will receive, etc. There's quite a bit of details to be worked out, but most are well underway.

I'll give a little tidbit of information up front - before Merk gets the chance! [emote];)[/emote]

We're setting up a team of editors, consisting of those who have chosen to be partners in this venture. The editors have final say on what games will be included in the issues, and will perform quite a few of the duties editors have at a publishing house. Besides this, editors will also write games for the project. Other people participating with an occasional game here or there will get some reward for doing it; but for what the reward is, you will just have to wait. [emote]:twisted:[/emote] 

Look out for a future announcement with more details coming shortly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=60#p626
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2006-08-29 02:28:54

The idea of basing a game on a popular TV series came up before ... could someone refresh me on the issues of copyright ? Is it just the obvious thing (written permission required from the author / owner of the copyright ?)

... and are there any series / movies, etc. for which permission has already been given ? (Just me being hopeful [emote]Smile[/emote] )

(Reason for asking -- my thoughts wander every so often to the idea of a game set in the Stargate universe. Plenty of scope for adventurous adventures).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=76&start=0#p633
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Walkthroughs
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2006-08-29 10:50:00

[quote="David Whyld"]
I'm not intending to include a walkthrough for my IFComp entry, but then it doesn't really need one. It's puzzle free so I doubt anyone will have any real issues with finishing it.
[/quote] 

It's been my experience that someone [i]always[/i] has trouble with a game, regardless of how puzzle-free it is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=60#p635
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-29 11:02:23

I don't know of any that have said, to the point, that they don't mind it. That's possbile -- I'm just not in those circles. I think most "fanfic" gets away with it just because nobody really cares. There is a misconception that "not charging" makes it legal. It's more that not charging makes it an even less attractive target to the copyright holder, unless its mere existence is felt to damage or dilute the original IP. Charging can also affect legal damages awarded in court. I've been fortunate never to have sued anybody over copyright infringement, so my knowledge of it is all theoretical -- just what I've read about.

I usually refer people to this page, for one guy's explanation of copyright myths:
<a href="http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html">http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html</a>

For a commercial project like this, I wouldn't want to take chances. Having authorized/licensed games based on existing IP like StarGate *would* be pretty darned cool, but I haven't really considered investigating the possibility. None of us are expecting much (if any) profit, so working a licensing deal would probably prove impossible. I definitely wouldn't want to publish games derived from copyright material, but what many people fail to realize is you can write a very similar story without infringing. You could make up a story about a network of gates connected by wormholes, and it could just as easily be like Hyperion as StarGate. But most people don't want to do that. Piggy-backing off an established franchise means people will recognize the name, the character and settings, and be much more interested than if you had come up with something original.

But that's big business. I mean, games that are movie tie-ins are common, surfing on the exposure the movie already gets. Lord of the Rings was a great movie trilogy, and it would stand alone in its own right, but Peter Jackson (and all involved) really had a leg up by being able to *make* Lord of the Rings, something people already know and like. When it comes to hobbyists, though, it's more akin to leeching. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=60#p651
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2006-08-29 15:27:28

[quote="Merk"]
You could make up a story about a network of gates connected by wormholes, and it could just as easily be like Hyperion as StarGate.
[/quote] 

Hey! You've read your Dan Simmons, too. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=60#p652
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-29 15:52:05

Well, I've read the Hyperion and Endymion duologies. I have "Hollow Man" but I haven't read it. Recently purchased "Ilium" and "Olympos" (now that both are in mass market paperback), but haven't read those either. Hyperion is one of my all-time favorite books. I also really like "A Fire Upon the Deep" by Vernor Vinge, and to a little lesser extent, "A Deepness in the Sky" (same author). My favorite, author, though is Jack Vance -- Tales of the Dying Earth (especially Eyes of the Overworld and Cugel's Saga), and the five Demon Princes books I especially like). My collection includes most of what Vance has published (except for his mystery novels) -- just missing a couple books, I think.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=60#p654
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2006-08-29 18:54:53

[quote="Merk"]
I usually refer people to this page, for one guy's explanation of copyright myths:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html">http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html</a>
[/quote]  
Hmm. So you can probably set a game in someone else's "universe", but not use existing characters ... and parodies are allowed. This kind of limits things.

(*Sigh*) oh, well ...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=60#p655
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-29 19:14:27

[quote="DFisher"]
Hmm. So you can probably set a game in someone else's "universe", but not use existing characters ... and parodies are allowed. This kind of limits things.
[/quote] 
Well, I'm nobody to say what a person can or can't do. [emote]:)[/emote] This kind of ties into the same topic from a few days ago. It's probably not something I'd want to do unauthorized, but if I was ever in a position to do licensed work, it might be fun. Original stories in an existing world would be easier (to me) than faithfully adapting an existing story to IF.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=80&start=0#p656
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: xyzzy
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-29 20:39:37

[emote]Question[/emote] I was given the responsibility of creating a XYZZY response in this year's IF comp entry and I can't for the life of me, come up with anything witty.

I think last year's "HJK6 Complete." scared a hellava lot of people thinking it was a virus or something.  Anyone who plays Command & Conquer Red Alert knows that HJK6 is only the most famous mod map created along side V3 Rashadown.  TSk Tsk! 
I couldv'e used the most famous Stormtrooper alive, TK421..."TK421! Why are you away from your post?" 

And then I don't think people 'got' the wierd numbers :
38°40'17\\"N 77°59'45\\"W
in Zero.  Those numbers being the lattitude longitude of ...yes you guessed it..Amissville Va.

Anyone have a bank of ideas for something witty? [emote]Mr. Green[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=80&start=0#p657
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: xyzzy
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2006-08-29 23:06:38

> xyzzy

What do you want to examine? That was a rhetorical question. Time passes. Time passes. That was a rhetorical question.

(Half witty ?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=70#p658
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2006-08-30 02:45:05

[quote="Merk"]
Well, I've read the Hyperion and Endymion duologies. I have "Hollow Man" but I haven't read it. Recently purchased "Ilium" and "Olympos" (now that both are in mass market paperback), but haven't read those either. Hyperion is one of my all-time favorite books. I also really like "A Fire Upon the Deep" by Vernor Vinge, and to a little lesser extent, "A Deepness in the Sky" (same author). My favorite, author, though is Jack Vance -- Tales of the Dying Earth (especially Eyes of the Overworld and Cugel's Saga), and the five Demon Princes books I especially like). My collection includes most of what Vance has published (except for his mystery novels) -- just missing a couple books, I think.
[/quote] 

I've read the Hyperion end Endymion duologies a couple of times by now - haven't found other books by Simmons at the local library.

So you've read Vinge, as well? I liked A Deepness in the Sky more than A Fire upon the Deep (if I can remember which one is which... Deepness is the one where they explore that one planet while Fire is the one which starts out of the slow zone?).

Never got around to reading Jack Vance, thought... although I can spot a couple of his books in the library - The Moon Moth and The Dying Earth.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=80&start=0#p660
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: xyzzy
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-30 07:39:23

I had [b]xyzzy[/b] disable the UNDO command in my Spring Thing entry this year. Probably not witty as such, but it made me grin.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=59&start=0#p661
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works In Progress
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-30 07:44:27

Hmmm... can't believe I started this thread and then forgot to say the games *I'm* working on.

My main WIP at the moment is [b]Without A Clue[/b], a huge detective game for the Spring Thing 2007. As it's a comp entry, I can't really say anything else about it.

I'm also going through bug reports and transcripts for [b]Requiem[/b], my IFComp entry. Which I also can't tell much about with it being a comp game.

And then there's the game I'm writing for the commercial idea. Which again I can't really go into any detail of.

So three games but no details.  [emote]:cry:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=76&start=0#p662
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Walkthroughs
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-30 07:49:03

That's unfortunately true. I should know as well because I'm generally one of the people who gets stuck at games everyone else breezes through.

So one walkthrough coming up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=70#p665
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-30 08:22:21

[quote="rioshin"]
I've read the Hyperion end Endymion duologies a couple of times by now - haven't found other books by Simmons at the local library.
[/quote] 
I've been through them only once. I have sooooo many books. I mean.... like thousands. I have tons more I need to read. [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote="rioshin"]
So you've read Vinge, as well? I liked A Deepness in the Sky more than A Fire upon the Deep (if I can remember which one is which... Deepness is the one where they explore that one planet while Fire is the one which starts out of the slow zone?).
[/quote] 
Yep, that's right. In A Fire Upon the Deep, they have galaxy-wide text newsgroups. [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote="rioshin"]
Never got around to reading Jack Vance, thought... although I can spot a couple of his books in the library - The Moon Moth and The Dying Earth.
[/quote] 
Vance isn't for everybody, but everybody I've recommended him to, really like what they've read. The Demon Princes books are great. Tales of the Dying Earth too (although the first book, just called "The Dying Earth" is a collection of 6 stories and can be a little hard to get into at first). The Moon Moth is good. You'll get an idea of what happens in The Demon Princes that way. It's more a short story though. There are four books in the Planet of Adventure series that are pretty good. Let's see. I've read The Blue World, Galactic Effectuator, The Languages of Pao... I'm not sure what else. They're all good. I have several others I haven't even read yet. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=81&start=0#p666
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Text Editors for IF
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-30 08:39:03

Since.... well, since DOS was new, I suppose... I've used EDIT.COM for all my text editing needs. Okay, not *all* of them. I use Word for most everything other than source code... and I use Visual Studio for my .NET development at work... but yeah, if I'm writing HTML, Javascript, Perl, Hugo, others, where I don't have an IDE and Word isn't well suited for the task, I use EDIT. I especially liked when EDIT with Windows started allowing ATL+# to have nine documents open.

Last night, I downloaded EditPad Pro (from download.com). It's amazing. I feel like a goon for not looking into this (or another like it) earlier. I'll probably end up paying, even at $50, so I can edit syntax rules for Hugo. I've configured it with light gray on blue (like EDIT.COM) and larger text, and I can have access to dozens of files in one click.

So, what text editor do the rest of you use, when writing your interactive fiction?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=81&start=0#p667
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Text Editors for IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-30 09:58:33

For the longest time I used to use the builtin editor
in Norton Commander.

My favorite editor is Wily (a clone of the plan9 acme editor).
The way it handles navigation and uses mouse-chording
make it a bliss to use for heavy editing and reading
other people's code. Too bad it requires a real three
button mouse with a proper middle button (not one of
those scrolling wheel thingies) and is suffering from
severe bit rot.

Mostly I use vi. I tried emacs but it hurts my hands
by requiring too many and too long key combos.

Vim has some nice features, but with every new version
that is released, it becomes harder and harder to turn off
all the stuff I don't want, like syntax highlighting, auto
indenting, etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=81&start=0#p670
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Text Editors for IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-30 11:01:33

I use the I7 IDE, works great, and allows me easy access to the manual at the same time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=59&start=0#p671
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works In Progress
User: Ken Franklin / DateTime: 2006-08-30 11:17:25

David has a thing about starting threads like this, every month or two up one pops on the Adrift Forum. Which is fine for someone like him who actually does write 50 games a year. He will later turn up and remind people of the games they said they were writing which have long been gathering dust in a long forgotten part of their hard drive.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=82&start=0#p672
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Rules precedence
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-30 12:47:07

Is there any section on the current I7 manual where it discusses how rules actually precede each other? The section on Advanced Actions pretty much sums up how the Before/Instead/After rules work out with the Check/Carry out/Report ones. How about those that are tied to, say, kinds of things? How about those that are labeled as "procedural rules" and the rulebooks that have been just made for the game?

I'm asking this because I spent a couple of nights just tweaking the WIP I asked help on before, just to fit the responses I was looking for with the test script. An understanding of how those other rules work should help put the chips where they should be, so to speak.

Any nudge towards the correct chapter or section on the online manual would be fine. If anyone can elaborate on it or simplify it further, that'll be better.

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=81&start=0#p673
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Text Editors for IF
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-30 12:54:25

Depends. If I'm working with Inform 7, then it's the built-in IDE. If it's TADS 2 or Hugo or Inform 6, then it's [url=http://crimsoneditor.com/]Crimson Editor[/url] (which, unfortunately, doesn't seem to be in active development anymore). Previously it was just old PFE, but I've used Crimson Editor ever since I got into the whole "syntax highlighting" feature.

I'm looking for something that is still being actively developed, and free as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=59&start=10#p674
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works In Progress
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-30 13:04:11

Bah, that's a lie and you know it.

BTW, what happened to that game you were writing...?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=80&start=0#p675
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: xyzzy
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-08-30 13:35:39

[quote="David Whyld"]
I had [b]xyzzy[/b] disable the UNDO command in my Spring Thing entry this year. Probably not witty as such, but it made me grin.
[/quote] 

You're evil!  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=59&start=10#p676
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works In Progress
User: Ken Franklin / DateTime: 2006-08-30 13:41:35

As you know David, I always have some work or other on the go, but always something I just started. At that stage I probably haven't decided how awful it would be.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=80&start=0#p677
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: xyzzy
User: Ken Franklin / DateTime: 2006-08-30 13:44:06

I like it

> xyzzy
Now why did you go and type something stupid like that in . . . . you'll be sorry!

> undo

Shan't, that's what you get for typing xyzzy at me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=81&start=0#p678
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Text Editors for IF
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-30 14:30:57

Well, if anybody is using plain old EDIT or NOTEPAD or something, I'd highly recommend EditPad Pro. Once I get it registered and create Hugo syntax rules (however that works), I'll see if it can be exported.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=81&start=0#p679
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Text Editors for IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-30 14:59:04

I use Crimson Editor for both Inform and TADS stuff. It doesn't work perfectly for strings-within-strings in TADS 3, but otherwise it's great. It allows up to ten custom macros, which are real life-savers for me. And it seems to handle customized font and color settings better than other editors I've looked at.

It's also 100% free.  [emote]Cool[/emote]

Greg

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=59&start=10#p681
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works In Progress
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2006-08-30 16:47:26

[quote="murphyz"]
Example of a trophy: 
[img]http://www.murphyz.co.uk/forum/images/trophies/award_murphyz_gold.gif[/img]
[/quote]   
Could I ask permission to use the above image for the "Creature Comp" (as a logo / award) ?

Good luck with the game !

(Edit: Oops, I should have made this a private message ... always learning [emote]:)[/emote] )

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=81&start=0#p685
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Text Editors for IF
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2006-08-31 01:42:51

For some reason, I've never liked using Crimson Editor... so I've shopped around testing various editors, finally settling upon EditPlus.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=84&start=0#p686
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: ADRIFT site currently down
User: Ken Franklin / DateTime: 2006-08-31 02:31:44

There appears to be a problem with the <a href="http://adrift.org.uk">http://adrift.org.uk</a> domain which covers the main downloads site as well as the ADRIFT Forum. It had bee down since yesterday and an email to Campbell Wild was returned as undeliverable.

If people are needing to download the ADRIFT program files they should be able to locate them at <a href="http://www.insideadrift.org.uk">http://www.insideadrift.org.uk</a> OR <a href="http://www.shadowvault.net">http://www.shadowvault.net</a> or from <a href="http://ifarchive.org">http://ifarchive.org</a>

Most game files can be found on <a href="http://www.shadowvault.net">http://www.shadowvault.net</a> or <a href="http://www.delron.org.uk/">http://www.delron.org.uk/</a>

Hopefully this will not last for too long.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=84&start=0#p687
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT site currently down
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-31 02:58:43

His cat's probably been gnawing on the Adrift cable again. [emote]Sad[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=84&start=0#p688
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT site currently down
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-31 04:03:34

Yes, very annoying.  Unfortunately I'm not at home so can't see what's wrong with the server, but it looks as though there may have been a power outage as I cannot connect to any machines on my network.  I'm back on Saturday, so looks like it might be down until then.  [emote]Sad[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=84&start=0#p689
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT site currently down
User: Ken Franklin / DateTime: 2006-08-31 04:06:07

Guess we'll just have to cope till then, but it will be a strain stopping the reflex action to click on the link.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=84&start=0#p690
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT site currently down
User: ~Ren~ / DateTime: 2006-08-31 07:03:03

Well, at least it's coming back. Though this means a whole extra day to wait for the Hourglass results announcements. 

On the plus side, maybe that bonus day will give folks a chance to add to the vote total.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=84&start=0#p692
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT site currently down
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-31 09:18:06

Ok, the site should be back now.  [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=84&start=0#p693
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT site currently down
User: Ken Franklin / DateTime: 2006-08-31 09:33:21

Thank you, that's the magic of Campbell!

Now all you have to do is complete Adrift 5.  [emote]Laughing[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=59&start=10#p694
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works In Progress
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-31 09:57:47

Is it just me or does that trophy bear a striking resemblance to Mufasa?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=85&start=0#p695
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: TADS and Commercial IF
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-31 13:34:21

By chance, are there any TADS authors here, who are interested in commercial IF? We'll post more info soon, but we're still looking for another person who thinks it would be fun (and has a little ongoing spare time) to write a short one-hour game once every three to six months, who could come on board as a founding partner.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=80&start=0#p697
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: xyzzy
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-31 13:41:52

[b]>XYZZY[/b]
This useless reply was brought to you by the folks at Santoonie Corp.
[i]Santoonie Corp: Making all your wildest dreams come true.[/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=80&start=0#p699
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: xyzzy
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-31 14:54:30

[b]> xyzzy
As you say the word, a man appears and hands you a large charm, smelling faintly of horse dung and feeling clammy to the touch. "Keep this," he says. "You'll find a use for it later on and believe me, you don't want to be without it." Then he disappears in a puff of smoke.[/b]



Of course, the charm doesn't do *anything*, but it'd be amusing to see how many people kept it with them for the duration of the game and struggled to find a use for it. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=29&start=10#p700
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Game of the Month: August 06: The Baron by Victor Gijsbe
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-31 15:12:10

As we're now at the end of August, is it okay to post my review of the game or shall I wait for tomorrow till we can kick off the discussion?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=29&start=10#p701
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Game of the Month: August 06: The Baron by Victor Gijsbe
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-08-31 15:15:13

It probably doesn't matter. I'll post mine tomorrow, even though it has been up on my website for some time now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=86&start=0#p702
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Review: The Baron
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-08-31 15:51:59

[b][u]The Baron[/u][/b] – by Victor Gijsbers

“The Baron”, winner of the Spring Thing in 2006, started off strangely with an intro that seemed to hark back to the retro age of interactive fiction:

THE BRONZE DOORS FALL CLOSED BEHIND YOU, AND YOU HEAR BOLTS BEING DRAWN ACROSS THE DOOR. THERE IS NO WAY BACK; IT IS YOU, OR THE DRAGON. GRIPPING THE AXE IN A GAUNTLETTED HAND, YOU STEP FORWARD, INTO THE HEAT.

But after the retro beginning, this turned into quite a different game than the swords ‘n’ sorcery setting I had been expecting.

The MENU command indicates this isn’t a game at all, but ‘interactive fiction’, and that there is no way of putting the game into an unfinishable position (always nice to hear as I have an unfortunate tendency to put games into an unfinishable position). One thing a claim like that does, for me anyway, is give me extra incentive to try and put the game into an unfinishable position for no other reason than to disprove the author’s claim. With “The Baron”, I’m pleased to say I failed miserably. The MENU command also points out that this isn’t a game for children, though the introduction (with its hero off to fight a fearsome dragon) does an excellent job of making you think otherwise. More of that later.

It’s difficult to write a review of a game without including *some* spoilers, but I’m probably not giving too much by saying that “The Baron” isn’t really a game about a heroic adventurer going off to kill a fearsome dragon. No, the game itself, what “The Baron” is all about, starts the moment you die…

The actual plot of the game. You're not “The Baron” of the title as I’d first assumed (the hulking retro fellow with the battle axe off to the kill the dragon could have done with a name like “The Baron”) but instead a lumberjack whose nine year old daughter, Maartje, has been kidnapped by the evil baron. Why? Because he’s in love with her. So, armed with your axe, you set off to rescue her.

Only, of course, there's a lot more to the storyline than that, including a somewhat disturbing twist at the end.

As said before, “The Baron” purports to be not a game but interactive fiction instead. A story in interactive format is what I thought when reading that. To a degree, it succeeds. There are no real puzzles, but at certain points during the game I came across… not ‘puzzles’, let’s call them ‘obstacles’… which I could either bypass in a number of ways or, simply, avoid altogether. The way I dealt with them affected later parts of the game in quite an interesting manner, leading me to replay certain parts early on to see what later parts I could change as a result.

[b]Flaws[/b]
I'm happy to say I didn’t encounter any actual bugs in the game. Nothing that brought things to a crashing halt, corrupted my saved game position or otherwise came across as hideously wrong. There were a few typos here and there (including “gauntletted” in the intro itself, which normally would have had the alarm bells ringing out loud considering the intro is the first thing in the game you see (but in fact I never even noticed the misspelling until later)) but nothing particularly terrible. English isn’t the writer’s first language, after all, and the game was translated from his native tongue, so a few typos are acceptable.

I didn’t find a single bug when playing through for the first time, and even on subsequent plays when I was actively trying to *break* the game to see how thoroughly it had been implemented, I came across only a few (although I *did* manage to twice drop the battle axe I was carrying at the very start of the game without picking it up in between). An encounter in a forest left me victorious over a dead wolf with another wolf moping around its corpse, yet when I tried to take the young wolf (I think I had an idea about saving it after I’d brutally massacred its mother) the game seemed to think I was still referring to the dead wolf and wouldn’t let me do anything to the still living one. When I tried to KILL WOLF, with the mother wolf dead and the younger wolf alive, the game told me I’d be better off saving my strength for the main villain of the piece, yet KILL YOUNG WOLF allowed me to deal with it anyway.

The only other problem I noticed was with the end game text which advises me I can LOAD a previously saved game position if I wish and have another go. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t recognise LOAD (only RESTORE) and I spent a few annoyed moments trying different combinations of LOAD, LOAD GAME, LOAD SAVED GAME before I figured out what I was doing wrong.

Inform’s parser annoyed me on occasion, though this is hardly a complaint against the game itself. When trying a time saving command like GET ALL, I’d often be faced with

>GET ALL
PINE NIGHT TABLE: IN THIS STORY, THE PINE NIGHT TABLE HAS NO ROLE TO PLAY.
DOOR TO THE LANDING: THAT'S HARDLY PORTABLE.
HILLS: THAT IS NOT IMPORTANT IN THIS STORY.
WOODS: THAT IS NOT IMPORTANT IN THIS STORY.
MOON: THAT IS NOT IMPORTANT IN THIS STORY.
STARS: THAT IS NOT IMPORTANT IN THIS STORY.
CHURCH: THAT IS NOT IMPORTANT IN THIS STORY.
SNOW: THAT IS NOT IMPORTANT IN THIS STORY.
VILLAGE: THAT IS NOT IMPORTANT IN THIS STORY.
BARENTOPF: THAT IS NOT IMPORTANT IN THIS STORY.
BED: THE BED IS TOO HEAVY.
CHAIR: IN THIS STORY, THE CHAIR HAS NO ROLE TO PLAY.
WARDROBE: THE WARDROBE IS TOO HEAVY.
CARVINGS: THAT IS NOT IMPORTANT IN THIS STORY.
CARVED HEARTS: THAT IS NOT IMPORTANT IN THIS STORY.
CARVED BIRDS: THAT IS NOT IMPORTANT IN THIS STORY.
CARVED FLOWERS: THAT IS NOT IMPORTANT IN THIS STORY.
WINDOW: THAT'S HARDLY PORTABLE.

which is kind of extreme, especially when you consider that there wasn’t a single item in the location that I *could* pick up (the command had actually been typed in case there were any items there that I’d missed at first glance). Surely THERE'S NOTHING HERE THAT YOU CAN CARRY would have been better?

[b]Conclusion[/b]
Upon replaying “The Baron” for the purpose of writing this review, I found it to be a far deeper and more meaningful game than I had felt at the time I played it during the Spring Thing 2006 voting period. The different paths through the game, mainly changing the end dialogue between the player and Maartje in small but significant ways, added greatly to the replay value. Several times, in fact, I actually returned to previous saved game positions and replayed it through to the end to see how differently the ending would be if I did X instead of Y. While the final scene in the game remains the final scene no matter what you do, it can be affected in various ways depending on how you played earlier parts. There's also a certain degree of satisfaction from replaying a game you’ve finished several times already and seeing new things about it that you never noticed on previous occasions.

The only real weakness with “The Baron” seems to be in the opening sequence, where the generic fantasy hero goes off to combat the generic fantasy monster. It seemed, even as a dream, to be out of context with the rest of the game. Is there a deeper meaning here? Is the dragon actually the monster the player has become and the hero his conscience come to rid him of his evil nature? Or am I simply reading too much into a scene that, after all, is over with after just a few short minutes?

“The Baron” won’t appeal to everyone. The end sequence especially won’t. While it’s possible, as I discovered after numerous runs through the game, to reach an ending that doesn’t involve the player having to carry out some pretty distasteful actions, it’s still a little disturbing that such actions *are* possible in the game. Maybe I'm just perverse, but the first action I tried when discovering Maartje in her room was one I felt would either not be recognised, or I’d be told off for even attempting such a thing, but the game did neither. It went ahead with what I’d typed, and then did all the other unpleasant and distasteful things as well. I suppose it’s my own fault for typing the commands in the first place, and I can hardly get indignant over it considering it was my option to type those things, but at the same time part of me wonders how necessary this unpleasant aspect of the game was. I’d reasoned out there was more to the game than simply a case of the lumberjack going to rescue his daughter from the evil baron sometime before I actually encountered the baron himself, and had an inkling or two in the cottage where the game starts proper that something wasn’t quite right with my character’s motivations, so in a way the explicit action that can take place at the end was a little superfluous. Sometimes unpleasant scenes are just as chilling when told “off camera”. Still, as I said before, I didn’t have to type the commands, so I can’t really complain over what happened as a result.

From start to finish, it probably took me around 40 minutes to finish “The Baron”, yet with the added replay value due to the different paths through the game, and attempting to see if I could change the ending, the actual time I spent on the game was a couple of hours. So it isn't a large game by any means, but the relative shortness of it means it’s an easy one to replay time and again.

Overall I wouldn’t rate “The Baron” as a classic, and I wouldn’t recommend it to a newcomer to the IF scene, but it tells a first rate tale (a first rate *adult* tale, that is) and there's enough positive about it for me to recommend to anyone wanting something a little edgier than the norm.

[b]6 out of 10[/b]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=87&start=0#p711
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: The Baron
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-01 07:00:11

[color=#4040BF][i](Reposted from <a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/spring06/baron.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/spring06/baron.shtml</a>)[/i][/color]

    The Baron deserves a spoiler-free review.

     The difficulty is it's a game that can barely be discussed at any length without spoilers. I think this one is as spoiler-free as you'll find, but anything said about The Baron might be too much. In other words, reader beware.

     The author's introductory text describes the story's theme as disturbing, shocking, and tragic. On the surface, it's about a missing girl and the father determined to save her from her captor, the evil Baron. I use the word "evil" because the game does ("x photo" in your bedroom, near the beginning). After that, it's left up to the reader. What kind of monster is the Baron? Can he be redeemed, or should he die? Is he a monster at all?

     The story (if ever a work of Interactive Fiction wasn't a game, this is it) begins in a cave. You must slay the dragon, because nobody else will. I found no way to achieve this, but later events make it clear that you don't have to. After this, the main quest begins. Along the way - and it's a journey that feels much longer than it actually is - you encounter three obstacles. These are decision points, not puzzles. Each obstacle can be overcome in numerous ways. Not every way is obvious in a first play-through, and some of the multiple-choice decisions won't even make sense the first time. It should really be played at least twice. The second time, your decisions are likely to be wildly different - not because you're poking around for changes to the story, but because you will understand the story in an entirely different way.

     Before setting out toward the Baron's castle, look around the house first. At the Baron's castle, it also pays to poke around. Even though the story lacks puzzles, it features bonus material for the observant reader. A torture chamber, found through a hatch under a rock at the castle, hints that things aren't exactly as they seem. Well, not so much that, but it's a good indication that the author is relying on symbolism to enhance the story.

     In relating what has happened at the end of the story, the PC mentions nothing of a dragon. It stands to reason that the story's first scene was someone else's experience. If this is the case, it might have made more sense for the dragon to approach from a southern lair, while the PC stands firm. When it ends, the story offers no congratulations. You haven't won. You haven't lost. The final choices allow the player to affirm his or her convictions. The story doesn't tell you what's right and what isn't. You tell the story.

     What I expected from The Baron wasn't what I got. In his introductory text, Gijsbers does a good job of preparing the player. Actions should be taken because they're meaningful in the situation, not because they "solve a puzzle". My first reaction was "sure - I've heard this before." I can't help but treat IF as a game - even when the author tells me not to - because every decision affects the outcome. In The Baron, that's not the case. Some decisions affect the PC's dialogue at the end, but none of it affects the experience of the reader except to the extent that the decisions themselves are part of the experience. So, even though the author warned me that it wasn't a game, I tried to play it like a game. I expected something dark and sinister. I expected torture, helplessness, suffering, and perhaps victory in the end. The story delivers these things, but in an unconventional way... in a disturbing, shocking, and tragic way.

     If all of this leaves you wondering just what you might be getting into if you try The Baron, by all means read a spoilery review. Even though this could soften the punch of experiencing it for yourself, you might be doing yourself a favor. You may say to yourself "bah - I can handle blood and gore and text- rendered pain." If that's what The Baron actually had in store for you, a disclaimer would be unnecessary.

     It's difficult to say if The Baron hits the mark, without knowing what the mark was. The final choices in the walkthrough included with the Spring Thing version (available from the HELP menu) might be how the author imagines it. Most of us won't be able to feel compassion or empathy for the Baron, though - let alone identify (thank goodness) with the story itself. So, are these final decisions meaningful to us, as readers?

     With precious little else to be said without delving into spoilers, some discussion of the design and craft is fitting. The story file is in .Z8 format, written in Inform. The English translation of the Dutch original (also included) is surprisingly good. Aside from a few typos, not much in the translation detracts from the experience. Even with a second play-through (or read-through) of some of the story, I found it easy to complete in an hour and a half. Certain bits - especially the dialogue - are presented in multiple choice lists. The rest of it, however, manages to maintain the traditional IF- style command system. You move around a map. You get, drop, and examine things. You open doors. You take an active part, just as IF is meant to be.

     It's hard to describe The Baron as a good story, in the way a game can be a good game. It's an effective story. Appreciating it doesn't mean liking it. Even so, I can imagine the opinions of various readers will vary wildly. Some may say it was emotional. Some may say it wasn't. Some may say it was purposely manipulative. Some may say it was an honest and heart-rending story. Some may resent becoming an unwitting participant as the story unfolds. Some may describe it as grim. Some may feel entirely detached from it. Some may say it will receive accolades it doesn't deserve, while others may believe it to be unfairly criticized. Some may even say it's a story that didn't need telling.

     I say... nothing, except that it was an interesting experiment. In the context of the Spring Thing competition, it's far too short (even adding a replay or two). I was moved (I'm a parent - how could I not be moved?), but this alone doesn't make it a clear winner when this year's competition features three other very good games. Scoring it is even harder than reviewing it. After some thought, I have settled on a middle-of-the-road score. It succeeds as Interactive Fiction, and it doesn't pretend to be a game. It fails as entertainment (for me), even though it's more like art for the sake of emotion. In another context, it might be a "9" or a "10". It should prove to be one of the most memorable works of 2006, regardless.

     My Spring Thing Score: [b]6[/b]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=84&start=0#p712
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT site currently down
User: ~Ren~ / DateTime: 2006-09-01 07:14:36

Whoo-hoo!

No . . . wait . . . it's broken again.

Stupid internet. Making me do work at work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=84&start=0#p713
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT site currently down
User: Ken Franklin / DateTime: 2006-09-01 07:27:13

Oh well, looks like we have to hope it does sort out when Campbell gets back tomorrow.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=88&start=0#p717
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: The Baron - Discussion Thread *SPOILERS*
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-01 08:08:29

This thread is to be used for discussion of the August game of the month, The Baron by Victor Gijsbers.

This is for discussion of the story, the plot, the design, the parser....whatever you feel like talking about in relation to this game.  Hopefully we'll get some good insight on the game and what everyone thought of it.

Since this is for discussion of the game, be forewarned that SPOILERS will abound.

I didn't write a review but I'll post my thoughts shortly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=88&start=0#p718
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Baron - Discussion Thread *SPOILERS*
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-01 08:29:27

The Baron is probably the best game I've played that makes use of symbolism.  It's not really surreal, so you don't have a lot of "What the heck did I just witness" moments.  However, it is laden with things that make you stop and think....and these things are all related.

Honestly, it took me about 2 or 3 playthroughs before I realized what the story was about.  The man who goes in search of his daughter, who's been kidnapped by an evil baron that has sequestered her in his castle.  However, the man turns out to be the Baron.

In the first playthrough, I cleaved my way through the castle.  I killed the wolf, slew the gargoyle, I hacked up the Baron, and then apologized profusely to my daughter at the end (although i didn't know exactly why I was doing so.)

The next time through, I threw my daughter's toy bear to the wolves.  When the gargoyle told me I had been here before, i tried to remember it.  And I engaged the Baron in conversation.  When I got back to the house, I looked in the mirror, and the Baron stared back at me...that's when I realized what was going on.

From here, I decided to explore every nook and cranny of the game.  I realized that the man was somehow molesting or abusing his daughter, and suddenly, he didn't seem too likable.  I found a hidden trap door with a doll family inside...I rescued the father and daughter from their traps, but was unable to free the mother....perhaps some foreshadowing of events to come? (I probably just didn't look hard enough for the key to her cage.)

Each time, I tried something new...and each time, when I looked in the mirror, the Baron stared back at me.  It was inescapable.

I killed my daughter, I killed myself, I forced myself upon her, I fled the town, I allowed myself to be executed, I apologized.

This is where my problem with the game comes in.  In the early stages, when conversing with the Gargoyle and the Baron, your choices give you real, solid feedback.  In the end though, when you choose how to end the saga, you don't get any explanation, just a "game over" message.  While this allows you to make up your own ending in your mind, I would've liked to have read an "end cutscene" that would reveal the results of my final decision.  However, this may have been intentional, as each time you replay the game, it is like the man reliving the night over and over again...meaning he has slipped back into his sin.  Only when you stop playing do you release him from his misery.

Overall, I have to say that I enjoyed the Baron immensely and would highly recommend anyone to play it.

So, how did everyone else play the game?  Did you enjoy the ending sequence?  What did you think of the man when you found out what he really was?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=88&start=0#p719
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Baron - Discussion Thread *SPOILERS*
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-01 08:54:39

The twist made sense on my first playthrough. I don't think I completed a second playthrough -- I just revisited earlier parts to try different decisions. It definitely seems like you figured out more to do than I did. I found the doll versions at the Baron's castle, but I don't remember if I was able to rescue any of them (I should have re-played specifically to prepare for this discussion). I think I'll have more to say when I look over my original transcripts, this weekend (again, something I should have already done... heh).

What's interesting is that the first time through, I played in a certain way. I was cautious. I answered questions in a certain way, wondering why the other choices were even given. It didn't occur to me that these other choices would be more applicable on a *future* play-through. This actually worked pretty well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=37&start=0#p727
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2006 Intents
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-01 13:40:41

I wonder how many are signed up this year? I also wonder if, after all these years, there is any ratio of "number of intents" to "actual games in comp" that holds true?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=88&start=0#p728
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Baron - Discussion Thread *SPOILERS*
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-01 13:41:45

I missed most of what the game was about on my first play through. I killed the wolf, killed the baron and then killed my daughter (yes, I'm a bloodthirsty SOB at times [emote]Smile[/emote] ), but at the same time I realised there was something else going on than was immediately apparent. It wasn't till my second play through that I discovered the truth about the hero of the piece, who is anything *but* a hero considering what is later revealed about him, and after that my opinion of him dropped quite a bit and I wondered if maybe I'd missed something and that my character had turned out to be such a despicable fellow because of the way I'd played the game. Subsequent plays through set my mind at ease in one respect - the character is a despicable piece of work no matter what action you take... but there I think was one of the game's failings. I don't *want* to play a game where the main character ultimately turns out to be abusing his daughter; I *want* to be able to make decisions throughout the game that change his motivation and turn him into the hero I had originally perceived him to be.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=37&start=0#p729
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2006 Intents
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-01 13:43:40

Didn't someone somewhere (might have been on RAIF) say that the ratio of actual entries to intents was about a third?

Anyway, best of luck to everyone who enters!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=84&start=0#p730
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT site currently down
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-01 13:45:01

At least it gives me an extra day or so to think about the September Writing Challenge.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=88&start=0#p731
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Baron - Discussion Thread *SPOILERS*
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-01 13:49:05

What strikes me as interesting (and something I probably couldn't pull off myself) is that the tone remains neutral. Even at the end, it's all for the player to decide. There doesn't seem to be a moral or a "this is right and that is wrong" kind of thing going on. If anything, I think it tries to explore how this situation would affect the PC himself, mentally and emotionally. Given the subject matter, I tend to not *care* how it affects the PC, but I think that was the point of it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=37&start=0#p732
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2006 Intents
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-01 13:56:40

Maybe. It seems like last year, it wasn't even that high. If I recall correctly, there was something like 120 intents, and just 36 games entered. Oh wait. That's roughly 1/3rd. Nevermind.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=88&start=0#p733
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Baron - Discussion Thread *SPOILERS*
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-01 14:07:45

[quote="David Whyld"]
I don't *want* to play a game where the main character ultimately turns out to be abusing his daughter; I *want* to be able to make decisions throughout the game that change his motivation and turn him into the hero I had originally perceived him to be.
[/quote] 

Arguably, you can make that decision at the end of the game, when you destroy yourself, flee town, or force yourself to stop the cycle and get your daughter to forgive you.

[quote="Merk"]
What strikes me as interesting (and something I probably couldn't pull off myself) is that the tone remains neutral. Even at the end, it's all for the player to decide. There doesn't seem to be a moral or a "this is right and that is wrong" kind of thing going on. If anything, I think it tries to explore how this situation would affect the PC himself, mentally and emotionally. Given the subject matter, I tend to not *care* how it affects the PC, but I think that was the point of it.
[/quote] 

The point of view is definitely neutral, which tends to let you make your own decisions.  I liked that, as I didn't feel as if I was being led in any particular way.

I agree that the subject matter is a bit coarse for most, but really, if it handled a subject that was less taboo, could it have been just as effective and powerful a story?  I think not.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=37&start=10#p734
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2006 Intents
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-01 14:12:03

If as many people entered as intended to, they'd have to significantly extend the voting period.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=30&start=10#p736
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Suggestions for the Game of the Month: September 06
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-01 14:37:56

Please consider this thread closed now. You may vote for your favourite game on the Game of the Month [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=92]Voting Thread for September[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=92&start=0#p740
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Voting Thread for the Game of the Month: September 06
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-01 14:45:03

Now that everyone had a chance to make a nomination, it's time to choose the game of the month for September.
The voting will run for one week, and close on [b]7 September 2006[/b].

I tried to collect a few links with information about these games.

[url=http://baf.wurb.com/if/game/1821]Savoir-Fair (Baf's Guide)[/url]
[url=http://baf.wurb.com/if/game/195]Shades of Gray (Baf's Guide)[/url]
[url=http://baf.wurb.com/if/game/403]Worlds Apart (Baf's Guide)[/url]
[url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Ghost_Train]The Ghost Train (IF Wiki)[/url]
[url=http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/a.html#abandon]All Hope Abandon (SPAG)[/url]

Feel free to discuss your preferences below, but be aware that only your vote on the poll counts.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=81&start=0#p744
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Text Editors for IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-01 15:00:51

I mostly use [url=http://red0.sourceforge.net/]Red0[/url], which is a fairly baisc editor developed by a friend of mine. I'm very happy with it, even though it has still some bugs and unfortunately isn't under active development anymore. Still, it has some nice features, and is quite configurable (adding special syntax should be straightforward, although I never tested it myself).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=92&start=0#p746
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Voting Thread for the Game of the Month: September 06
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-01 15:21:22

Well, I was the one (or one of two actually) who suggested [b]Savoir-Faire[/b] so that'll be my choice.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=92&start=0#p749
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Voting Thread for the Game of the Month: September 06
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-01 15:32:13

Which game is the shortest? [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=92&start=0#p750
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Voting Thread for the Game of the Month: September 06
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2006-09-01 15:33:51

[quote="Merk"]
Which game is the shortest? [emote]:)[/emote]
[/quote] 

At least I breezed through All Hope Abandon quite quickly... some of these games I haven't even played, so if any of those is picked, guess I'll have to sit down in front of the computer and actually play it. [emote]:oops:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=92&start=0#p752
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Voting Thread for the Game of the Month: September 06
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-01 15:54:55

I voted for The Ghost Train, but now I'm kind of changing my mind.

I'm sick of playing and seeing people talk about the games written by the big name people, like Short and O'Brian.

Yeah they write good games, and they are probably actually worth discussing more than something by a lesser known author, but since they've already received so much attention, it would probably be more rewarding to play and talk about something else.

Assuming we talk about it....judging by this month's discussion thread, I doubt that there will be a lot to talk about!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=92&start=0#p753
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Voting Thread for the Game of the Month: September 06
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-01 15:56:05

I don't know of a Paul T. Johnson. Is that somebody's pseudonym?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=92&start=0#p754
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Voting Thread for the Game of the Month: September 06
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-01 15:57:11

Not as far as I know. He has a website at

<a href="http://www.wolfman.co.uk/">http://www.wolfman.co.uk/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=92&start=0#p756
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Voting Thread for the Game of the Month: September 06
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-01 16:03:59

[quote="Merk"]
Which game is the shortest? [emote]:)[/emote]
[/quote] 

I've only played one of them - [b]The Ghost Train[/b] - but that's a fairly sizeable game. A lot bigger than standard IFComp size (although a good deal of the time is working around bugs unfortunately).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=92&start=0#p758
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Voting Thread for the Game of the Month: September 06
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-01 16:05:30

[quote="Wanaselja"]
I'm sick of playing and seeing people talk about the games written by the big name people, like Short and O'Brian.

Yeah they write good games, and they are probably actually worth discussing more than something by a lesser known author, but since they've already received so much attention, it would probably be more rewarding to play and talk about something else.
[/quote]  

I can agree with that to some degree, but then I've only ever been involved in one Emily Short game discussion before (about [b]City Of Secrets[/b]) so I don't feel that *I've* debated her games too much.

Maybe for next month, we should deliberately pick lesser known games by lesser known authors, just to ensure we're discussing a game that's new to all of us.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=85&start=0#p772
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: TADS and Commercial IF
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-09-01 20:33:41

I'm interested in the project - it's actually good to see you guys getting into it after, well, so much discussion - but I probably won't make it to any deadline (commercial or otherwise) at the moment.

I have a lot of WIPs laying about my PC (mostly TADS 2, some with Hugo, some with Inform 6) that I still haven't gotten back to even now that I'm out of college.

Sorry if that's not the response you're seeking, Merk. "The spirit is willing, but the code is not as complete..."  [emote]Wink[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=92&start=0#p773
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Voting Thread for the Game of the Month: September 06
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-09-01 20:46:00

[quote="David Whyld"]
(snipped part of reply)
Maybe for next month, we should deliberately pick lesser known games by lesser known authors, just to ensure we're discussing a game that's new to all of us.
[/quote] 
That's precisely the reason why I nominated [b]Shades of Gray[/b]. I thought it might be a good chance to try something older. And, no, it's not because I feel "retro"  [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=85&start=0#p774
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: TADS and Commercial IF
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-01 20:50:09

Well, our goal for the first issue is still four months away, so I think anybody would have time at this point. I think that's do-able for a 1-hour game. [emote]Smile[/emote]

We'd really like to see this succeed. Issues will be cheap, and we're going work up the plans to include 3rd-party submissions with a royalty agreement (after QA by the editors involved). So even if you don't think being a founding partner is a good idea right now, you might consider submitting something later, once those plans are worked out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=85&start=0#p775
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: TADS and Commercial IF
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-09-01 20:59:53

[quote="Merk"]
Well, our goal for the first issue is still four months away, so I think anybody would have time at this point. I think that's do-able for a 1-hour game. [emote]:)[/emote]
[/quote] 
Thanks for the encouragement! I'm not saying anything final yet, but given the time span... I might just be able to pull something up.

[quote="Merk"]
We'd really like to see this succeed. Issues will be cheap, and we're going work up the plans to include 3rd-party submissions with a royalty agreement (after QA by the editors involved). So even if you don't think being a founding partner is a good idea right now, you might consider submitting something later, once those plans are worked out.
[/quote] 
Any plans on where/how to get possible testers?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=85&start=0#p776
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: TADS and Commercial IF
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-01 21:12:21

Everyone involved will be a tester for each other's work. I guess if we need more (possibly if some longer games crop up), we can see about bringing in people who don't want to write, but would want to test (maybe for free issues or something). There is quite a bit of discussion going on about the project, but we haven't drafted up anything official to show people yet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=85&start=0#p777
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: TADS and Commercial IF
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2006-09-02 02:31:42

[quote="Merk"]
Everyone involved will be a tester for each other's work. I guess if we need more (possibly if some longer games crop up), we can see about bringing in people who don't want to write, but would want to test (maybe for free issues or something). There is quite a bit of discussion going on about the project, but we haven't drafted up anything official to show people yet.
[/quote] 

As we who are founding this have to agree on just what the policies of this project will be! There are quite a bit of details that need working out, but we're getting close to the point of being able to put up a website and officially announce a request for submissions. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=92&start=10#p787
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Voting Thread for the Game of the Month: September 06
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-02 11:52:18

Myself, I favour Shades of Gray at the moment, because I've never played an AGT game before, and I'm also interested in how a collaborative game may look like. 

However, I think I first should try to write a review of The Baron and join the discussion...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=88&start=0#p790
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Baron - Discussion Thread *SPOILERS*
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2006-09-02 15:20:52

[b]Thoughts on The Baron[/b]

Although the player gets to help write the story (eg. in choosing future events at the end), I still developed a picture of the kind of man the PC is in this story ... maybe because when a list of alternative answers was presented, it seemed as though all of them passed through his mind as real options (and he wasn't just thinking of the answer I entered). So here is my view of the PC in this story.

The protagonist has a mess of conflicting images of himself, which makes sense for someone who is molesting their child. He is in deep denial of his guilt, but at one level he is aware of the kind of person he is and is in deep distress.

1) The struggling human
2) The victim
3) The virtuous hero
4) The guilty one


[b]1) The struggling human[/b]
-----------------------

The picture is a mixture of hopelessness - "I cannot change" - and a struggle against it - "I hope that one day I will find the strength to act."

Quotes from the conversation with the gargoyle:

"Again you come here, to fail once more. Do you still believe that it will once end differently?"
(4) "No, I cannot change. I have tried, as you well know. But the circle of fate is too strong: I am doomed to walk for eternity, and with each circuit I paint my soul a blacker shade."

"But is it true that there is always another chance? How do you know that you haven't been condemned to the eternal recurrence of suffering, like me?"
(1) "I know nothing, but I keep on hoping. Only when I have lost all hope will I have become a true prisoner of my deeds."

"Then keep on to your hope. But remember that hope alone is not enough. At the hardest moment, you will also have to act."
(2) "That is the problem--at the crucial moment I am not strong enough to act. But I hope that one day I will be able to find the strength to act."

After the gargoyle describes his own actions:

(2) "Horrible! How can you do something like that?"
"Truly, it is terrible, and I have no excuse. All I can say is that I am too weak to resist my lust.

(This is not just the gargoyle's opinion of himself - it is the PC's).

[b]Mistaking "lust" for "life"[/b]
---------------------------

The gargoyle expresses the protagonist's own experience in a metaphor about "coming alive." There is a deep confusion in the PC's mind between "life" - freedom, casting off restraints, enjoying the pleasures life offers - and "lust", which promises the same thing, but has different results (as seen in the story).

"I am made of cold hard stone, and I should be passive, immobile and without feeling ...
I love life too much to remain as rigid as a statue ... each night I have to make the choice between suppressing the life in me and remaining a statue, or spreading my wings and flying away ...

"First I simply enjoy the wind past my wings, the rain on my face, the ability to think and experience, the opportunity of moving my muscles. In ecstasy I fly above the world. The forests go by below me, and in the distance I see hills and mountains. It is delightful!

"But soon I remember what I have to do ...

"And as I do my deed a deep, deep hatred rises inside me, hatred for who I am and what I do. All my own joy withers and dies, and what remains is pure loathing for the monster that I am. I decide never to do it again, to resist the impulse the next night and remain a statue."

The PC believes he only has the choice of either "remaining a statue" or "embracing life" (lust) - which doesn't result in a lasting pleasure at all, but instead drains all of his own joy away (not to mention the self loathing and guilt).

Faced with only these two options, he justifies his actions ...

[b]2) The victim[/b]
-------------

Part of the protagonist tells himself that he is not to blame for his actions against his daughter, any more than a wild animal could be condemned for eating its prey - he was "made that way", so it can't be his fault.

(Gargoyle) "But even if I can change, can my deeds ever been forgiven?"
(5) "There is nothing to be forgiven, because there is no such thing as guilt. You have done what you had to do, to only thing you could do. It makes no sense to reproach yourself for that."

(As the Baron) "Do you know that I, you, we both are quite guiltless, and should not be condemned for what we have done and what we will do?"

[b]3) The virtuous hero[/b]
--------------------

The part of the protagonist in the deepest denial is the "hero" who fights to save his daughter from the evil baron. This image of himself also includes a sense of invincibility, a mighty warrior who can sweep aside his enemy (the dragon / lust, or the baron / his own darkness) with ease.

>x me
You look heroic in your heavy suit of armour; furthermore, you are strong, quick and fearless. If anyone can defeat the dragon, it is you.

>x mirror
You gaze at yourself from the mirror, heroism shining in your eyes ... A grim smile plays around the corners of your mouth when you think of the fear the baron will feel when you enter his castle to pound him into pulp with your strong fists.

This persona is faultless in his bravery and virtue - a fantasy constructed to compensate for the self-loathing that threatens to undo him:

>attack dragon [second time]
... even if you have to pay for it with your own life, the monster must die.

There is also a measure of self-righteousness:

... Slowly you become angry at all your neighbours and fellow villagers. Where are they when you need them? Why is there not a single one among them with the guts to free Maartje? A lack of love--that is what enables people to ignore the problems of others. Everybody knows what has happened--but nobody does anything, because nobody feels responsible.

Self-righteousness is a tool for deflecting guilt; condemning others for what you are aware of and hate in yourself. He is angry that none of his neighbours have helped his daughter, but is the very one who is doing the evil act.

[b]4) The guilty one[/b]
-----------------

>x mirror
The face of the baron stares at you from the mirror.

This is the most realistic part of the protagonist - he admits that he is "the baron":

Against his will, apparently, the baron rises from his throne and starts walking towards you. You open your arms to embrace ho,; he does the same, even though his face is a mask of pure terror. When the two of you fall into each others arms, you feel how his body, his spirit, his essence merges with yours...after a few moments you are alone in the room. The baron has returned to where he came from: your soul.

The pain of this reality is ever-present, but the protagonist is not always in touch with it:

[After killing the wolf]
(4) Howl a lament for his lost mother.
You lift your head and howl and howl, and it sounds exactly like the lament of a wolf. You never knew that so much pain and sorrow were hidden in your heart

But he sees the abuse of his daughter for what it is after each time:

(Gargoyle): "And as I do my deed a deep, deep hatred rises inside me, hatred for who I am and what I do. All my own joy withers and dies, and what remains is pure loathing for the monster that I am."

[b]Choices[/b]
-------

From this place of realisation, he has several choices:

(a) Retreat into fantasy - "the virtuous hero" above
(b) Deny all guilt - "the victim"
(c) Keep on trying to change - "the struggling human"

A few other options are also presented:

[b](d) Stop by strength of will alone[/b]
----------------------------------

Why do you walk to the landing?
(1) I have succeeded at restraining myself. I have conquered my lust.

Has the circle of lust been broken forever?
(1) Yes. This was the last night I had to undertake this journey.

I have a problem with this option ... it doesn't seem to fit the struggle in the rest of the story. There are issues that the PC has to deal with that won't just go away because he has decided he has "conquered his lust".

Maybe it would have been best for the future part ("this was the last time") to be left out ?

[b](e) Punish (or sacrifice) himself through suicide[/b]
-------------------------------------------------

If the PC kills himself, the question is asked:

Was this the easy way out?
(1) Yes. I could not continue living with this guilt.
(2) No. It was the hardest sacrifice I ever made.

[b](f) Find forgiveness[/b]
--------------------

"But even if I can change, can my deeds ever been forgiven?"
(4) "Yes. I understand you. I know you have tried to fight against it. I forgive you all your crimes."
The stone man walks towards you and, to your astonishment, embraces you. "Friend," he sobs, "you do not know how much this means to me."

This is a deep desire of the PC's heart - he hopes against hope that he can be forgiven for what he has done. (Pity there was no option saying "God will freely forgive you").

He has the tiniest hope that his daughter might also forgive him:

Will Maartje ever be able to forgive you for what you have done?
(2) Yes ... perhaps there will be a day when she will understand me, just a little, and when she will feel just a very tiny amount of pity--or perhaps, even of love.

[b]Afterthoughts[/b]
-------------

In some ways it is hard to identify with the protagonist in this story, but there are also lots of themes that are "common to man" (and woman). I think overall it was very well done, and it was a good choice to let the player choose how the PC reacted rather than just saying which response was the right one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=94&start=0#p791
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Request for one more board.
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-03 06:28:31

A "Beta testing" board would be nice to have. Both for discussing and posting requests for beta-testing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=94&start=0#p792
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Request for one more board.
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-03 07:44:53

It looks like the Game Announcements forum was also meant for beta testing discussions. Right now, the only post there is an early one, from me. It could probably be rename to "Game Announcements & Testing" ?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=94&start=0#p796
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Request for one more board.
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-03 09:00:47

I don't think there needs to be a separate forum for betatesting because there wouldn't be much to be posted in it. Ask for a tester, someone replies, end of discussion. You could hardly discuss the game you were testing after all.

Just make a thread asking for testers in the General & Off Topic Talk section.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=80&start=0#p798
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: xyzzy
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-03 19:57:42

Thanks for replies,
...and if you're following the newsgroups, apparently I must or should code something for cheese and cows now.  And fish.  I should make a game of wierd responses, then you type xyzzy to play the game.

No, I enjoy easter eggs and stuff, just poking fun.  Ever since Atari's 'the dot' in Adventure.  Can't get enough of em.

AP

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=95&start=0#p799
Forum: Competitions / Subject: IFComp 2006
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-04 17:09:44

Apparently there have been 118 intents to enter the IFComp this year, so if the average of about a third of those actually making it holds true there ought to be around 40 games in the Comp this time around.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=37&start=10#p800
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2006 Intents
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-04 17:14:12

I really wanted to enter. Then around Aug. 30th I had to stop kidding myself. Sadly, writing IF is one of those things that always winds up shoved to the bottom of my 'to do' list, and with the new semester starting on top of everything else there was no way I would have finished it on time.

So now it's time to try and get serious about the Adrift End of the Year comp and the Spring Thing and hope I actually manage to finish on time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=88&start=0#p802
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Baron - Discussion Thread *SPOILERS*
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-04 22:33:26

Great analysis!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=37&start=10#p803
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2006 Intents
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-04 22:37:26

I know what you mean. During the summer, I really hoped to get the second Convergence Saga game done for the comp, but I gave up weeks ago. It would probably be a little too big for the IFComp anyway. Hopefully I'll have a chance to get back to it. Writing short games for the commercial project could make it more difficult, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=95&start=0#p804
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2006
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-04 22:39:54

I always have a blast playing the IFComp games, but I'm also going to be really busy at my job these next few months. That always leaves me kind of drained. If there are 40 games, I'll be lucky to get through them all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=80&start=0#p805
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: xyzzy
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-04 22:41:06

Cows, cheese, and fish? Weird.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=88&start=0#p806
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Baron - Discussion Thread *SPOILERS*
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2006-09-04 23:29:21

[quote="Merk"]
Great analysis!
[/quote]  
Thanks !

Coming soon ... psychological profiles of the thief in Zork, the vase in Constraints and the chicken in The Chicken Under The Window.

[emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=96&start=0#p818
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Gateway and Gateway 2
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-05 13:54:44

Has anyone ever played Frederick Pohl's Gateway or its sequel, Gateway 2: Homeworld? They were published by Legend Entertainment, the last big commercial publisher of IF games. In fact, as I understand, Gateway 2 was the last work of IF to be widely distributed in stores. The interaction was entirely through a parser, but the games also had excellent graphics, animation, and music -- especially for their time, since they were published in 1991-1993 if I recall. I don't know what I liked best about them -- the great gameplay (with puzzles at just the right difficulty for me), the atmosphere (I found it immensely fun to explore Heecheetown and the various alien worlds of Gateway 1), the pacing (Gateway 2 has two great opening segments), the story (just enough to keep me passionately involved with the game, while not so much as to be unwieldy), or the multimedia elements (described above). But in any case, I barely ever hear people in the IF community talk about these games nowadays. Has anybody played them?

Greg

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=96&start=0#p819
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Gateway and Gateway 2
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-05 13:58:54

I have a "Gateway" book or two by Pohl (haven't read them yet), but I've neard heard of the games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=96&start=0#p820
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Gateway and Gateway 2
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-05 14:50:11

I haven't played the first one but I've played [b]Gateway 2: Homeworld[/b] and it's definitely one of the best games I've ever played. I think I got it as part of a "5 games for £10" deal a few years ago and it reminded me just why I liked text adventures back in their heyday. The sheer scope of it's pretty mind-bogglingly. If it isn't the biggest text adventure ever written, it must be close to it.

Definitely recommended if anyone can find a copy of it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=96&start=0#p822
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Gateway and Gateway 2
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-05 16:42:25

If anyone's curious, there's a copy of it on the Home of the Underdogs website.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=96&start=0#p823
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Gateway and Gateway 2
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-05 17:28:56

Yeah, both games are at Underdogs. That's where I first found out about them. If you download them from there, it's worth playing them with DosBox even if you have Windows, because then the music is more likely to play correctly. I was going to mention that before, but I didn't want to start a copyright flame war.

Greg

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=82&start=0#p824
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Rules precedence
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2006-09-06 10:06:40

The general guideline is that the most specific rule takes precedence. That is, if you have a rule about jumping and one about jumping in the trampoline room, then in the trampoline room the latter rule takes precedence.

I've found it useful to peruse the Rules section of the Index, which lists all of your rules grouped by their types in order of precedence. If you're not getting quite the order you expect, then you may see why in the Index pane. You can fiddle rule order as you need to by naming the rules. For instance:

[code]The new extended banner rule is listed before the extended banner rule in the for printing the banner text rules.[/code]

See section 17.3 of the docs for more information.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=97&start=0#p825
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Game books?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-06 10:40:10

It's not technically IF, but if this whole 'commercial' project goes anywhere (fingers crossed!) in the future there might actually be a website that sells IF, so what about offering gamebooks and good old fashioned CYOAs there as well? 

I just thought of this because on the Adrift forum David mentioned a new Fighting Fantasy being released, with the followup comment that it was 'pretty dire'. 

Even if it was awful, it proves that gamebooks are still publishable; I know there's a lot of talent here, so the question is, could we do better? 

Now, I may be an eternal procrastinator when it comes to IF (and then there's the fact that even with something as user friendly as Adrift, variables still frighten and confuse me...), but I think I'm pretty good with static fiction, try to write a couple of hours a day and all that, and as a matter of fact have a couple of html CYOAs in the works. 

If we were ever to try this I assume a downloadable PDF would be the way to go (even though I hate hate hate PDFs and want them to die), though I can still dream about an actual physical book. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=88&start=0#p826
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Baron - Discussion Thread *SPOILERS*
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-06 10:59:33

Obviously I'm in the minority here, but I didn't really care for this game at all. Not because of the subject matter, but because, well, once you get past the shock factor (and I figured out what was going on by the end of the first playthrough, so it didn't take long) it was [i]boring[/i]. 

Not that it's a bad game, but after seeing that it won the Spring Thing and hearing so much praise for it I expected a lot more.

I dutifully played through a few more times, explored the other buildings, tried doing different things and choosing different overwrought dialogue options to see what would change and tried to get the best and worst possible endings, but eventually lost interest. I remember thinking that it really hurt the game that there [i]was[/i] no ending...nothing I did seemed to matter.

[quote]
In the end though, when you choose how to end the saga, you don't get any explanation, just a "game over" message. While this allows you to make up your own ending in your mind, I would've liked to have read an "end cutscene" that would reveal the results of my final decision.
[/quote]  

Exactly. Out of the whole game, I probably found the section with the gargoyle the most compelling, since at least there I could make a difference and see the results.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=96&start=0#p827
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Gateway and Gateway 2
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-06 11:01:53

I've had both of them sitting on my hard drive for awhile but haven't gotten around to playing them yet. I always meant to finish reading the books first.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=97&start=0#p828
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Game books?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-06 12:52:38

There's certainly a market for gamebooks, but I'm not sure how big a market it is. With the Fighting Fantasy series, it might seem like a success considering the second series has now hit 26 books... but 24 of those are reissues of books from the first series. Of the two actual "new" books, one ([b]Eye of the Dragon[/b]) is an expanded version of a gamebook that was originally written years ago (so not really "new" at all), and the other was written circa 1996 and has been lying around ever since (so not "new" either). Both are dire. Whether there are any plans to release any new books, i.e. actually *pay* to have new books written, I don't know. The fact that the series has now reached 26 books and there hasn't been a genuine honest to god new book tends to indicate otherwise. But who knows? Maybe when they run out of old ones to reissue with a new cover, they'll get around to commissioning some new ones. We can always hope. Unfortunately at the rate they're reissuing them, it'll be another 10 years or so before it reaches that stage.

I've had a few stabs at writing gamebooks over the years but never really finished any of them, unless you count the CYOA-style games I've written. There's a very limited market for them at the moment which is probably one of the reasons why I never get round to writing one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=92&start=10#p829
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Voting Thread for the Game of the Month: September 06
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-06 13:57:00

So I guess it's [b]All Hope Abandon[/b] for this month then?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=97&start=0#p830
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Game books?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-06 18:06:06

I loved game books when I was in my pre-teens. I've still got a bunch of old fighting fantasy books lying around that I intend to re-read one of these days, but I think I'll have more fun if I cheat when I play them this time [emote]:)[/emote] I always kept dying and having to start over...

[quote="Lumin"]
If we were ever to try this I assume a downloadable PDF would be the way to go (even though I hate hate hate PDFs and want them to die), though I can still dream about an actual physical book. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Do you hate PDFs or do you hate Acrobat Reader?

If it is the latter, there are many alternatives; all of which are much better.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=82&start=0#p831
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Rules precedence
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-09-07 07:48:38

Thanks! I'm going through the I7 docs for it. It's still a bit too complex to take in, but I'm getting there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=98&start=0#p832
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Looking for Beta Testers
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-08 11:46:43

Hi all.

I am looking for beta testers for my IFComp 2006 entry.

My game is a sword & sorcery (as per 1930, before D&D and Tolkien took over the genre). It's written in I7 and focuses more on story and conversation than puzzles. If you want to help me out by testing it, please drop me an email or private message or reply here.

Tor

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=99&start=0#p833
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Suggestions for the Game of the Month: November 06
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-08 12:47:07

Please use this thread to suggest any Interactive Fiction game for the November's Game of the Month discussion. 

Every forum member can suggest one game per month. It is encouraged to describe the reasoning for one's choice and to give a small description of the game, so the other forum members have enough information to base their votes upon. Please note that there's a maximum of ten suggestions per month. As there's no selection, the 'first come, first served' principle applies. 

Suggestions may be posted here up to the 30 September 2006, with voting taking place in a new thread running between October 1st and 7th.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=100&start=0#p834
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Game of the Month: October 06: All Hope Abandon by E. Eve
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-08 12:48:32

As the voting period is now over, I'm glad to announce 'All Hope Abandon' by Eric Eve as the next game of the month. I ask everyone who's interested to play and finish the above mentioned game by 30 September 2006. You can download the game from [url]http://ifarchive.giga.or.at/if-archive/games/tads/AllHope.zip[/url]. 

All Hope Abandon is written in TADS 3. You can find information on how to play TADS games on [url=http://www.tads.org/t3dl.htm#downloads]the official TADS site[/url].

Starting October 1st, 2006, this thread can be used for discussions and reviews. If you write a review, please consider posting it not only here (either to this thread or in the designated Reviews section) but also to some of the following sites: SPAG, Interactive Fiction Reviews and Baf's guide. Also worth mentioning are the InsideADRIFT newsletter (esp. for ADRIFT games) as well as the Spanish SPAC e-zine. Shorter reviews may also be placed at Interactive Fiction Ratings.

Also, feel free to ask for help in this thread if you get stuck, but please mark your post with an appropriate spoiler warning. 
Games for the next discussion can be suggested in [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=99]this thread[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=92&start=10#p835
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Voting Thread for the Game of the Month: September 06
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-08 12:50:33

Thanks to everyone who voted. Yes, 'All Hope Abandon' it is [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=100]indeed[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=100&start=0#p836
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Game of the Month: October 06: All Hope Abandon by E. Ev
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-08 12:51:51

Some clarification: I've changed the naming style to represent the month a game actually gets discussed. This seems to make more sense to me than the old system. The planned process for all Game of the Month discussions is as follows:

Voting: First seven days of every month (eg. September). As soon as the voting is over, suggestions for new games can be made until the end of the month.
Playing: Until end of corresponding month (eg. September)
Discussion: During the whole subsequent month (eg. October)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=100&start=0#p837
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Game of the Month: October 06: All Hope Abandon by E. Ev
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-08 15:11:56

I meant to play [b]All Hope Abandon[/b] when it came out but for some reason it just passed me by. Time to give it a go now, I guess.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=99&start=0#p838
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Suggestions for the Game of the Month: November 06
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-08 17:31:17

Shouldn't we wait until October to start suggesting November games? [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=99&start=0#p839
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Suggestions for the Game of the Month: November 06
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-09 12:36:10

Well I don't know about November, but for OCTOBER I'm going to take the fangirl approach and recommend my favoritest game of all time, Anchorhead!

I haven't played it in a long, long time so it'll be nice to see how it holds up now that I'm not such a newbie to IF, and it seems fitting to do this around Halloween. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=99&start=0#p840
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Suggestions for the Game of the Month: November 06
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-09 15:11:05

I've always been curious what [b]Worlds Apart[/b] is like so I'll nominate that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=99&start=0#p841
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Suggestions for the Game of the Month: November 06
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-09-09 18:19:24

[quote="David Whyld"]
I've always been curious what [b]Worlds Apart[/b] is like so I'll nominate that.
[/quote] 

[b]Worlds Apart[/b] is large, I can tell you that.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=99&start=0#p842
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Suggestions for the Game of the Month: November 06
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-09 21:31:56

[quote="Shuarian"]
Please use this thread to suggest any Interactive Fiction game for the November's Game of the Month discussion. [...] Suggestions may be posted here up to the 30 September 2006, with voting taking place in a new thread running between October 1st and 7th.
[/quote]  

This may have been discussed already, but if so I missed it. Anyway...

Why is there such a long time between the voting period and the discussion period? It seems like some people might vote on a game, and the voting might psych them up to discuss the game, but this enthusiasm would probably fade during the following three weeks.

Sure, people need a chance to play the game if they haven't already, but I'd have thought that that could be done during the discussion month itself.

Greg

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=99&start=0#p843
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Suggestions for the Game of the Month: November 06
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-11 15:35:06

[quote="Merk"]
Shouldn't we wait until October to start suggesting November games? [emote]:)[/emote]
[/quote]    
I've [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=100]changed[/url] the naming system so the title now refers to the month a game actually gets discussed.


[quote="GregB"]
This may have been discussed already, but if so I missed it. Anyway...

Why is there such a long time between the voting period and the discussion period? It seems like some people might vote on a game, and the voting might psych them up to discuss the game, but this enthusiasm would probably fade during the following three weeks.

Sure, people need a chance to play the game if they haven't already, but I'd have thought that that could be done during the discussion month itself.
[/quote]   
The reason behind this has been that it gives everyone enough time to play the game in advance, without other people spoiling the game for them. People who didn't have enough time to play a game immediately could feel discouraged to join ongoing or settled discussions; two weeks should be enough time to play through most IF games. 

However, these rules are not set in stone (see the naming change), so I'm open to changes. 
Any other thoughts on this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=99&start=0#p844
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Suggestions for the Game of the Month: November 06
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-11 16:22:56

My only thought is that playing (and reviewing, and then discussing) IFComp games is going to make October and November pretty difficult for me to work in a GotM title... [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=101&start=0#p845
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Searchable?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-12 06:59:15

Robb Sherwin noticed that there is no search link (although I can see it when I'm logged in). In the admin panel, I see an area for "search" settings, but nothing that turns it off for guests. In fact, there is a setting for guest search flood limits, which isn't even set.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=95&start=0#p846
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2006
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-12 14:11:13

In case anybody missed it, the September 30th (Saturday) deadline is now September 29th (Friday). Anybody hoping to finish and polish their game while off work a whole day before the deadline will have to make other plans...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=101&start=0#p847
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Searchable?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-12 15:24:25

I would assume it's disabled for guests so that it saves bandwidth.  

Items such as that and the members list look to be placed within tags that toggle what's displayed depending on whether a user is logged in or a guest.

Similar to this is the 'logout' option which is viewable if logged in. If not logged in, this is hidden, but login/register are both displayed instead.

These are all coded into the php pages themselves, and not available to switch on or off in the admin panel.

Mxx

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=95&start=0#p848
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2006
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-12 16:55:14

I admire the bravery (for bravery read foolishess) of anyone who finishes their game off the day of the deadline. [emote]Smile[/emote]

(Ignoring, of course, that I did just this in 2003...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=95&start=0#p849
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2006
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-12 17:41:23

[quote="David Whyld"]
I admire the bravery (for bravery read foolishess) of anyone who finishes their game off the day of the deadline. [emote]:)[/emote]
[/quote]  For the years I entered, I've worked on every game I've ever submitted up to the final minutes, and I never ranked lower than 12th. The important thing is probably to be done before then, allowing those last couple of days just to reaffirm that everything works as intended. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=5&start=0#p850
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Mystic Force - Worst Game Ever?
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-09-12 23:01:48

This is probably off-topic, but I've tried playing [b]Breath Pirates[/b] and it seems to be pretty decent.

Colored text in text adventure games seemed to be the "in" thing those days.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=5&start=0#p851
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Mystic Force - Worst Game Ever?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-12 23:39:04

[quote="Arnel Legaspi"]
This is probably off-topic, but I've tried playing [b]Breath Pirates[/b] and it seems to be pretty decent. Colored text in text adventure games seemed to be the "in" thing those days.
[/quote] That was 1998, if I recall correctly. That style of game was definitely on the way out. Even then, I got some flack for using QB instead of TADS or Inform (although not so much as with The Insanity Circle). It's pretty decent if you stick to what works. None of my QB adventures had anything close to a real world model, so every command is specifically handled based on keywords. Each one works a little differently, and without any kind of real relationship between objects.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=95&start=0#p852
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2006
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2006-09-13 09:43:50

Thanks, Merk, for rebroadcasting the announcement here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=95&start=0#p853
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2006
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-13 15:01:31

No problem!

Does this mean all the games will come out a day sooner? [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=95&start=0#p854
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2006
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2006-09-14 09:47:28

Quite possibly, yes, though I make no promises.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=95&start=0#p855
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2006
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-14 17:38:32

I still have the IFComp '05 file mirror up. If you need somebody with bandwidth to spare as a mirror for '06, just let me know. After the games are released, I can get it set up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=95&start=0#p856
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2006
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2006-09-15 11:17:39

You're hired. Would you also be willing to help seed the games through bittorrent?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=95&start=10#p857
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2006
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-15 12:09:12

Is seeding different from sharing p2p? I admit an ignorance when it comes to that. If this is a server-side thing and it'll work on Linux (Fedora Core 3), then certainly! If I need to get a service installed ahead of time, I'll check into it. Otherwise, if you just mean staying online (client-side), I can do that too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=102&start=0#p858
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Decline in forum usage?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-15 12:19:30

it looks like the "new" has worn off already. [emote]Smile[/emote]

I haven't had much to post lately, and that seems to be true of everybody else, too. I even find myself checking for new posts a lot less often, now that there aren't many new posts.

So, what's everybody up to these days? I've been swamped with work, personally.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=95&start=10#p859
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2006
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2006-09-15 12:26:11

Seeding with bittorrent means being connected when you have the whole file.  (Ordinary downloaders become seeders once the download finishes.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=95&start=10#p860
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2006
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-15 12:30:27

I'd definitely want to set up a client on the server. I leave my home computer online all the time, but the server would have *way* more bandwidth and far faster speeds. [emote]Smile[/emote] I peeked at the Wikipedia article. Looks like I can install something for Linux. I'll just have to find the right repos (assuming a YUM install) or an FC3 RPM. I'll try to get it ready before the games are released.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=102&start=0#p861
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Decline in forum usage?
User: rotter / DateTime: 2006-09-16 04:40:41

I've not been a frequent poster here or even over at the Adrift forum.  Been far too busy trying to get my IFComp entry ready.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=103&start=0#p862
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: TADS 3 General Release
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-09-16 06:34:24

[b]TADS 3 is finally out of beta![/b]

From [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/1ccdededc24a17bb/3670e965127a64d1#3670e965127a64d1]Mike Roberts' announcement[/url] (some parts snipped):
[quote]
I'm pleased to announce the first TADS 3 General Release, and also a TADS 2 maintenance update.

This release includes a bundle of documentation, organized into several (virtual) books: Eric Eve's [i]Getting Started in TADS 3[/i], a tutorial introduction; Eric's [i]TADS 3 Tour Guide[/i], an in-depth survey of the library, with practical examples of how to use most of the classes; the [i]System Manual[/i], a reference covering the language, run-time system, and compiler and other tools; the [i]Technical Manual[/i], a collection of mostly task-oriented "how to" articles that go into depth on topics of interest to many authors; and the [i]Library Reference Manual[/i], with details on virtually everything in the library and extensive cross-references.
[/quote]    
The latest release, v3.0.12, can be downloaded from

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.tads.org/tads3.htm">http://www.tads.org/tads3.htm</a>

This set include versions for Windows, Linux, and good old MS-DOS. The Windows version may be downloaded either with the documentation included (11 MB) or without (4.2 MB). The documentation may be obtained as a separate package also from the same website.

Along with this, the latest TADS 2 and 3 Player's Kit has also been released, and IF players are encouraged to download this new version.

A maintenance release of TADS 2 (v2.5.10) has also been announced, and may be downloaded from the [url=http://www.tads.org/t2_patch.htm]TADS 2 Patch Page[/url].

Congrats to Mike Roberts and the rest of the T3 team!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=102&start=0#p863
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Decline in forum usage?
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-09-16 07:04:58

[quote="Merk"]
it looks like the "new" has worn off already. [emote]:)[/emote]
[/quote]  
Everybody's probably just busy working on each of their projects. It's like the Christmas rush, I guess. [emote];)[/emote]

[quote="Merk"]
So, what's everybody up to these days? I've been swamped with work, personally.
[/quote]  
Still working on non-IF Comp projects, futzing with CSS to make the Hugo CHM look [b]better[/b] than it does currently. I'm also transitioning into a different line of work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=27&start=10#p864
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Quest - Prize in IFComp
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2006-09-16 08:03:26

I've been working on a clone of the Quest runner.  I've got most of the groundwork laid out (cas disassembler, qsg analyzer, preprocessor, asl reader), and the more I analyze it, the lower my opinion.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=102&start=0#p865
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Decline in forum usage?
User: Ken Franklin / DateTime: 2006-09-16 09:43:49

I've had a period of total disinterest, in terms of having no incentive to open a game file. This was a shame as I have had a two week break from work that should have given me an excuse to do something, and I won't have so much time for months now.

It is also true that the lack of activity on a forum tends to be self-fulfilling as there is nothing to inspire a reply, so nothing for others to reply to.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=102&start=0#p866
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Decline in forum usage?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-16 13:33:10

I keep meaning to get round to posting loads of topics, but most of the time I can never find anything to post about. I suppose I could flood the board with "what games are you writing now?" topics like I tend to do on the Adrift forum [emote]Smile[/emote] but with so few people here, I don't think the topic would last very long.

What have I been doing? Fixing my IFComp entry of yet more bugs. Writing the huge game that's been in my siggie. Trying to get a game together for the commercial idea. Waiting with a high level of anticipation for the IFComp, though also a slight dread at just how many people will have entered an Inform 7 game without bothering to learn Inform 7 beyond the basics first.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=27&start=10#p867
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Quest - Prize in IFComp
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-16 13:34:41

Are you planning to update it when the new version of Quest comes out?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=103&start=0#p868
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 General Release
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-16 13:37:11

Nice to see it finally out, even if I'm not planning to use it myself.

I have to wonder about the timing, though. The IFComp kicks off in a couple of weeks and now changes have come about in the two versions of one of the major programming languages. No doubt this is going to have a knock on effect when it turns out certain things that worked in an older version don't work in a new one... and certain Tads 2 and 3 games in the comp are going to come off worse as a result. I can't help thinking it might have been better to have at least waited until after the Comp.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=103&start=0#p869
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 General Release
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-09-16 17:11:05

[quote="David Whyld"]
No doubt this is going to have a knock on effect when it turns out certain things that worked in an older version don't work in a new one...
[/quote] 
AFAIK about the TADS 2/3 Player Kit, it's fairly backward-compatible so it should present no problem for TADS 2 games. I haven't used TADS 3 that far, so I can't say the same for it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=102&start=0#p870
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Decline in forum usage?
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-09-16 17:19:46

As long as there's no game like the one from "FutureGame Corporation" again, it should be okay. (I hope.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=102&start=0#p871
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Decline in forum usage?
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2006-09-16 18:24:44

I personally don't share the hate towards Future Game.

(Then again, I see it more as Sycamora Tree, reduced to the essentials, rather than RPG, reduced to the essentials.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=102&start=0#p872
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Decline in forum usage?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-16 19:04:35

I haven't been by here in awhile, but then I haven't had time to hang out at the ADrift forum either, so don't feel bad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=104&start=0#p873
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Superman is a dick. [OT]
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-16 19:07:57

Was linked to this site today and just had to share. [emote]:)[/emote]

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.superdickery.com">http://www.superdickery.com</a>

My personal favorite so far: 

[img]http://www.superdickery.com/images/dick/1027_4_030.jpg[/img]

Or maybe: 

[img]http://www.superdickery.com/images/dick/1296_4_040.jpg[/img]

All the times he's tried to kill Lois Lane are pretty funny too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=102&start=0#p874
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Decline in forum usage?
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-09-16 20:46:32

[quote="ralphmerridew"]
I personally don't share the hate towards Future Game.
[/quote]  
I don't hate the game - I just don't like its brevity. Maybe if it included a couple more steps before winning, I might've liked it  [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=102&start=0#p875
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Decline in forum usage?
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2006-09-16 21:29:30

I don't think Future Game was meant to be worthwhile as a game; I took it as commentary on computer game advertising.

Reread the opening text to the game, and compare it to a few ads.  FutureGame lists several features, similar to those seen in advertisements, all of which it satisifies, but it has no merit as a game.

Adding a few extra choices would have ruined the point.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=27&start=10#p876
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Quest - Prize in IFComp
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2006-09-17 08:30:41

It depends on how much he changes with the new version of Quest.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=102&start=10#p877
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Decline in forum usage?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-17 11:47:21

I saw Future Game as a satire. It failed to meet my criterions for being a good IF comp game indeed, but because I enjoyed its statement I still awared it a four.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=63&start=0#p878
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Examples of X and Y
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2006-09-17 20:12:07

The Cloak of Darkness page for ADRIFT shows screenshots for the various windows.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=102&start=10#p879
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Decline in forum usage?
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-09-18 09:34:00

[quote="ralphmerridew"]
Then again, I see it more as Sycamora Tree, reduced to the essentials, rather than RPG, reduced to the essentials.
[/quote] I just played Sycamora Tree. You're right. It's satire indeed.

Thanks!  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=102&start=10#p880
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Decline in forum usage?
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2006-09-18 21:33:58

[quote="David Whyld"]
Waiting with a high level of anticipation for the IFComp, though also a slight dread at just how many people will have entered an Inform 7 game without bothering to learn Inform 7 beyond the basics first.
[/quote]  
[emote]:lol:[/emote] I relate !

I'm also interested in what kinds of games get submitted for CreatureComp. It is kind of aimed at first-timers, so I am planning to be a bit relaxed about the judging ...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=63&start=0#p881
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Examples of X and Y
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2006-09-18 21:37:46

[quote="David Whyld"]
What about a few examples in each of the major systems - Alan, Adrift, Hugo, Inform, Tads - to show how each could be done?
[/quote] 
I never replied when this was first posted, but I think this is a great idea. I assume this thread is where the examples would go ?

Pick an X and I'll try an Inform 6 (and maybe 7) example.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=105&start=0#p882
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Merk's IFComp Predictions
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-19 12:21:33

It's a little known fact that I'm highly psychic.

Not really.

In past years, somebody would post IFComp predictions to the newsgroups. Luc French, I think. Here are my own silly predictions, for this year's IFComp, just for fun. I'm beta-testing one IFComp game at the moment, but none of these predictions are based on that knowledge. Well, maybe one. We'll see.

At least 60% of all entries will be Zcode. At least 60% of these will be written in Inform 7.
This latter number will include the next incarnation in the PTBAD series.

Paul Panks will enter a record *3* games in the competition, but one will be anonymous.

Two of the games this year will easily be classified as CYOA.

Exactly 7 Adrift games will be entered this year.

Despite renewed excitement, there will be fewer than 36 entries this year.

Only one author from a prior top-10 will appear this year.
However, several will surface as psuedonyms, at the end.

Three games will feature an animal as the protagonist.
One of these will be very, very good.

Two games will be sequels to prior games.

One game will be disqualified due to possible copyright issues.

Each of the top five games this year will score higher than each of last year's top five.

Each of the bottom five games will score lower than each of last year's bottom five.

Two games will feature real mazes, of at least 10x10 in size.

Puzzle-less games are on the rise. Four will have no "puzzles" whatsoever.
One of these will require the player to just press enter until the end, more or less.

This year's "Golden Banana" winner will rank higher than any prior winner of that award.
(I believe this would have to be higher than 9, which was Gamlet -- anybody know?)

One entry will prominently feature ASCII art.

Only one entry this year will have graphic illustrations, beyond mere titles or icons.

A different entry will have music and/or sound effects, but no graphics.

One game will involve a hubcap, a magician's cap, and a talking duck.
Each of these elements will also appear in other individual games.

A whopping seventeen games will have colors or numbers in the title.

One game will involve rescuing a celebrity from the evil clutches of another celebrity.

Two games will be very community in-jokey, and I won't "get" any of it. [emote]Sad[/emote]

One game will involve fingerprint scanning technology *and* retinal scanning.

This year's 10th-place entry will have a title like "[verb]-ing the [adjective] [noun]".

This year's 20th-place entry will have a title like "[noun] and [noun]"

This year's 30th-place entry will be a one-word title. The word is a verb.

Two games by different authors will feature very similar plots.
So similar, that it almost seems one person wrote the same game twice.
Surprisingly, the titles will be nothing alike.

The protagonist in one game will be a postal worker.

The protagonist in another will be a magician.

Yet another protagonist will be a clown, fighting against a magician.

In another game, a postal worker will meet a clown and a magician.

Three games will feature NPCs who are computer programmers.

The plot of one game will be finding a set of lost car keys.

One game will be told in the past tense, in third person.

One game will feature a particularly tricky puzzle involving wire, a thimble, a window, and a clock.

Two serious games will be unintentionally funny.
Two funny games will be unintentionally serious.

The winning game will share several key plot points with the 15th placer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=105&start=0#p883
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp Predictions
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2006-09-19 12:51:18

I thought Blue Chairs got the Banana and placed second.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=105&start=0#p884
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp Predictions
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-19 12:54:41

No, that would have been 2004, and Gamlet (9th) got the banana. Blue Chairs had the 2nd or 3rd highest Std. Dev.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=105&start=0#p885
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp Predictions
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2006-09-19 12:59:59

Nope, I was wrong; Blue Chairs was from the same year as Gamlet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=105&start=0#p886
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp Predictions
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-19 13:06:44

It would be really hard to rank that high and get a big std dev, because those low votes would necessarily drag your score down. It *would* be interesting, though, if a top-3 game did get the banana!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=105&start=0#p887
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp Predictions
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-19 14:43:02

[quote]
Exactly 7 Adrift games will be entered this year.
[/quote] 

Let's hope. I know of three definite entries but there might be a few surprises.

[quote]
Despite renewed excitement, there will be fewer than 36 entries this year.
[/quote] 

I figured there'd be more, mostly as a result of Inform 7. Which doesn't mean they'll be *good* games, but anyway...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=105&start=0#p888
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp Predictions
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-19 17:38:35

Well, some (most?) of the predictions are pretty outrageous. It'll make me seem all the more psychic if they're right!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=24&start=0#p889
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Interpreters!
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-19 23:25:05

I just installed the latest version of Gargoyle. I notice that it no longer does green text on the input line.

(edit) It seems to be a setting in garglk.ini, which doesn't exist in the latest version. I copied the one from the prior version over, and now it's showing green text.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=24&start=0#p890
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Interpreters!
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-20 07:37:42

Yeah. I botched the installer test for not overwriting an existing garglk.ini.
Fixed now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=105&start=0#p891
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp Predictions
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-09-20 11:33:41

[quote="Merk"]
Three games will feature an animal as the protagonist.
One of these will be very, very good.
[/quote] I can't help thinking this might be inspired by David's CreatureComp. More likely one of them might not make it to the deadline, so the author decided to enter it into the annual comp instead.

But that's just my 2 cents.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=105&start=0#p892
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp Predictions
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-20 13:10:03

[quote="Arnel Legaspi"]
I can't help thinking this might be inspired by David's CreatureComp. More likely one of them might not make it to the deadline, so the author decided to enter it into the annual comp instead.
[/quote] Hmmm... maybe. The prediction just came to me, without any specific inspiration. But that would make sense.

Still, the author would only have one more week to finish, and if they haven't already signed up for the IFComp, it's too late now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=24&start=0#p893
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Interpreters!
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-20 14:26:13

Does a Gargoyle game .INI work the same in Spatterlight? Or are they completely different?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=24&start=10#p894
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Interpreters!
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-20 14:56:22

No, Gargoyle and Spatterlight are completely different beasts.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=106&start=0#p895
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: What is IF-Babel, and how does it work?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-21 09:02:45

I gather it's some kind of system for providing information about specific games, but how is this information included in a game? Is it meta-data inside the game, and if so, does this mean the compiler must support the inclusion of this meta-data? Is it an external informational file?

Anybody know?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=106&start=0#p896
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What is IF-Babel, and how does it work?
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2006-09-21 10:46:07

The Treaty of Babel defines a set of meta-data, like the ID3 tags that you can fill in with MP3s. Different games include it in different ways. In Inform, it gets bundled up as part of the Blorb file. In TADS, it is a data block within the .gam file. In both of those cases, the compiler takes care of generating it and bundling it with the game, but it doesn't have to be that way. For instance, there are ways of generating the IFID (the identifier number) for games that don't have the IFID specifically encoded in the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=106&start=0#p897
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What is IF-Babel, and how does it work?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-21 11:06:51

[quote="Sargent"]
For instance, there are ways of generating the IFID (the identifier number) for games that don't have the IFID specifically encoded in the game.
[/quote]  I know of no such feature in Hugo, so something external would have to be used. Is this IFID a file of some type? Where can I find more information about its?

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=106&start=0#p898
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What is IF-Babel, and how does it work?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-21 16:51:51

The "spec" is archived here:

<a href="http://babel.ifarchive.org/">http://babel.ifarchive.org/</a>

In summary:

1) Treaty of Babel details a method for assigning an IFID to each and every IF work that exists (past and present). There are special methods for the big formats, and a generic fallback of taking the MD5 sum of the game file. The IFID is analog of ISBN numbers for books.

2) It also specifies a format for bibliographic information about games, as a tiny subset of XML.

3) There is a library to get the bibliographic information for a game, that uses plugins for all the supported systems. Inform 7 embeds the XML in the blorb it generates. For TADS, the library generates XML on the fly from the GameInfo.txt resource. Other systems have similar mechanisms. As a last resort, you can have the metadata in an external iFiction file.

Spatterlight makes use of all this for its game library browser, to automatically show the title, author, genre, &c of games that are loaded.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=107&start=0#p899
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Scare and items worn by NPC
User: rotter / DateTime: 2006-09-23 04:15:00

In one of my games running using Scare it does the following - 
 
[quote]
Joe is wearing a circular id badge.
, and is carrying a lump of lava, a small boulder and a synthetic crystal.
[/quote]  

Have anyone come across this issue with Scare (1.3.3) or is it something in my game Scare doesn't like?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=106&start=0#p900
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What is IF-Babel, and how does it work?
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-09-23 06:43:00

[quote="Merk"]
I know of no such feature in Hugo, so something external would have to be used.
[/quote] IIRC, L. Ross Raszewski created both a Perl script and a Windows executable that will allow you to extract the IFID number for Hugo/Z-code/TADS game files.

As to how iFiction data (which contains the rest of the bibliographic data) can or will be bundled up with future Hugo games, that would be Kent's call.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=108&start=0#p901
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Am I too late?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-23 10:45:41

For Beta-testers?  I'm about a day or so away from completing my game.  I need beta-testers.  My game should hopefully take no more than 30 - 60 minutes to play through.

written in inform 7
horror/mystery
my first game

If you want to beta test You can respond to my email - Wanaselja at gmail dot com

otherwise general condescending answers about how i waited too long are appreciated. [emote]Wink[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=108&start=0#p902
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Am I too late?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-23 11:33:42

Serves you right for waiting too long...

You'll never get testers at this stage...

What - asking the testers the week before the comp deadline - are you mad...?

There you go. Three condescending answers.  [emote]Smile[/emote] But I'll test if you like:

dwhyld at gmail dot com

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=108&start=0#p903
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Am I too late?
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-09-23 13:28:59

[quote="Wanaselja"]
If you want to beta test You can respond to my email - Wanaselja at gmail dot com

otherwise general condescending answers about how i waited too long are appreciated. [emote];)[/emote]
[/quote] At least your game will get some testing. That shouldn't be too bad  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=107&start=0#p904
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Scare and items worn by NPC
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-23 17:41:52

It's the first time I've ever seen anything like that, but then my testing with SCARE tends to be just ensuring the game is finishable - checking whether the inventory displays properly isn't something I cover.

You haven't put anything in the ALR about Joe wearing the circular ID badge have you?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=107&start=0#p905
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Scare and items worn by NPC
User: rotter / DateTime: 2006-09-24 10:11:17

[quote="David Whyld"]
You haven't put anything in the ALR about Joe wearing the circular ID badge have you?
[/quote] 

No, and it runs fine with the Adrift Runner. I would not have spotted it but for the fact I changed the badge from being held to being worn.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=102&start=10#p906
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Decline in forum usage?
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2006-09-28 14:00:32

Maybe the site would be more successful if <a href="http://intfiction.org/">http://intfiction.org/</a> didn't look dead.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=102&start=10#p907
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Decline in forum usage?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-28 16:37:06

Yeah, that's something.

The main URL could (and probably should) point directly to the forum.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=109&start=0#p908
Forum: Competitions / Subject: The IFComp Games
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-30 21:03:32

Not much longer to wait, I would think... ! [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=110&start=0#p909
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: IFComp interview (& beginning of coverage)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-09-30 22:06:59

Hey. I write for etoychest.org, and I'll be doing some coverage of the IFComp over the next two months.

The first [url=http://etoychest.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5180&Itemid=43]interview[/url]'s up, in which I talk with Stephen Granade about the state of the art and future of the community (as well as linking here.) I'd appreciate any comments you might have.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=110&start=0#p910
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IFComp interview (& beginning of coverage)
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-30 22:28:06

Thanks! I for one look forward to your IFComp coverage!!!

I read through the article. I hope you keep it up, and thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=105&start=0#p911
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp Predictions
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-09-30 22:43:29

I'm already off on at least 2 predictions. 44 games (not less than last year) and 5 Adrift games (not 7).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=40&start=0#p912
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Using MUDs to introduce people to IF?
User: George / DateTime: 2006-09-30 23:41:52

[quote="Lumin"]
Well, from what I've seen, the 'text-based' thing is one of the biggest hurdles to introducing new people to IF. [emote]:)[/emote] 
[/quote] 

Notwithstanding that there's no reason you shouldn't promote IF in a mud forum, still there's less crossover between IF and mudding than you might think. Most IF is a solitary, fiddly, non-networked narrative experience that defies many of the conventions of most muds, the big one being that most muds are multiplayer, highly social, community-intensive grindfests.

However, I am a long time mudder (play Carrion Fields too) that 'discovered' IF for the first time in the last year, so like some of the others that wrote in this thread I'm an example of someone who could be successfully advertised to. Undoubtedly there are many players like me.

Just as a little background I [i]have[/i] posted on mud forums about IF, to what you might call a deafening silence. Here's one post:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.mudconnector.com/discuss/discuss.cgi?mode=MSG&area=general&message=15160#15160">http://www.mudconnector.com/discuss/dis ... 5160#15160</a>

Here's another:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.electricsoup.net/?q=node/171">http://www.electricsoup.net/?q=node/171</a>

Though Electric Soup doesn't get a lot of traffic, the MudConnector does. Frankly I was surprised that more people didn't respond. From conversations with other mudders I think there are a few older players who have played the classic games, but not many who play modern IF. Similarly there is a subset of mudders who enjoy exploring (cf. Bartle's test), but you could just as easily say there's a subset of IF-readers that enjoy exploring (e.g. a game such as Zork). 

Multi-player IF (a la an IF mud, not IFmud as it currently stands, but a mud where you can play IF) would be great, but of the multi-player systems I've looked at (there doesn't seem to be many) I haven't found any that really appear to have got off the ground. Also there has been much discussion of multiplayer IF on Usenet so perhaps a diligent team could put all the good ideas together and figure out a good design for the first quality multiplayer IF. My point being that a multiplayer game would be a good first step for mudders toward an appreciation of the breadth and depth of modern IF. 

Anyway, apologies for jumping on an old thread, but it touched a couple of my interests all at once.

best, GO

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=105&start=10#p913
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp Predictions
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-01 04:37:46

You were half right about Panks. He *has* entered three games but they're all anonymous (although as he uses the same fake name as he does every year you have to wonder why he bothered).

I see over half the Comp games are written with Inform. Haven't played any yet (still downloading) but I wonder how many are proper finished games and how many are peoples' experiments with learning Inform 7.

Good luck to everyone who entered!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=111&start=0#p914
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Changing the colours and fonts in Alan 3
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-01 05:17:19

I'm just trying to change the colours and fonts in the Alan 3 IF game but they're not working. The colour won't change at all (it's stuck on black text on a white background and I don't want that). The fonts *will* change but the moment I exit out of the game and go back in they've reverted back to their old style, which I also don't want.

Is there an option I'm missing to change the colours and permanently change the fonts?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=105&start=10#p915
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp Predictions
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-01 08:26:07

It looks like no game's title meets the template I predicted for the 10th placer, so that's out. I'll have to go over it with more scrutiny after the results, and after I've played them all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=111&start=0#p916
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Changing the colours and fonts in Alan 3
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-01 11:03:01

Will it run in Gargoyle?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=111&start=0#p917
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Changing the colours and fonts in Alan 3
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-01 11:19:56

I haven't tried yet. I generally steer clear of Gargoyle because it requires me to edit text files to change the settings and I find that a pain, but I guess it's something to fall back on if nothing else works.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=109&start=0#p918
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The IFComp Games
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-01 19:29:44

Good luck to everybody who entered a game in this year's competition!

Let the playing begin! [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=112&start=0#p919
Forum: Competitions / Subject: New interpreter, seeking testers
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2006-10-02 08:25:09

My interpreter "geas" for Quest games is close to ready.

Current program is C++ with Gtk-- toolkit and is compiled for Linux.

I'm really look for
- anybody who can compile C++ / Gtk-- for Mac or Windows
- anybody willing to test Geas against the Quest runner on Beam

There is a possible Glk port of the interface in the works for
Spatterlight / Gargogyle.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=112&start=0#p920
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: New interpreter, seeking testers
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-02 11:12:05

Does it require a particular version of C++ for Windows? I have access to Microsoft VC++ 1.52, 2.0, 5.0, and maybe 6.0.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=112&start=0#p921
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: New interpreter, seeking testers
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2006-10-02 11:28:03

I've been using g++.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=112&start=0#p922
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: New interpreter, seeking testers
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-02 12:12:50

I know CC and GCC for Linux, but I've never used G++. If you're doing standard stuff, I suppose it would compile in Visual C++. I can give it a shot, if you send me what I need.

--- Mike.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=112&start=0#p923
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: New interpreter, seeking testers
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2006-10-02 12:41:07

g++ is the c++ compiler for gcc.

I emailed the source to sm@h.  You'll also need gtk-- from <a href="http://gtkmm.org/download.shtml">http://gtkmm.org/download.shtml</a> ( I think the Windows implementation is at <a href="http://www.pcpm.ucl.ac.be/~gustin/win32_ports/">http://www.pcpm.ucl.ac.be/~gustin/win32_ports/</a> )

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=112&start=0#p924
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: New interpreter, seeking testers
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-02 15:47:49

Okay. I hadn't checked it today. I'll download it, and let you know how it goes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=105&start=10#p925
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp Predictions
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-10-03 14:09:43

[quote="David Whyld"]
You were half right about Panks. He *has* entered three games but they're all anonymous (although as he uses the same fake name as he does every year you have to wonder why he bothered).
[/quote] Is it possible he read Merk's post from before and decided to rush one other game into the IFComp?  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=105&start=10#p926
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp Predictions
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-03 14:49:33

I might be right on a few others, at a glance. I'll know more after November 15th.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=113&start=0#p927
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Strange font displays in Gargoyle
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-03 15:51:00

I'm trying to change the default look of Gargoyle to use bigger fonts but for some reason it keeps chopping off the top off each letter. Any idea how I go about stopping this happening?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=113&start=0#p928
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Strange font displays in Gargoyle
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-03 16:23:57

Ignore this. I messed around some more and realised it was the leading and baseline values I needed to change.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=114&start=0#p929
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: More Gargoyle questions
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-03 16:39:21

Okay, another couple of Gargoyle posers:

* Is there is a transcript?

* Is there a way of turning verbose on permanently?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=114&start=0#p930
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: More Gargoyle questions
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-04 04:45:59

Transcript depends on the game and base VM. Usually the "script" command will work. Likewise for verbose. These are usually part of either the game code or the base VM (not the gargoyle UI shell).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=114&start=0#p931
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: More Gargoyle questions
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-04 05:21:44

Thanks. I was playing the ALan IFComp entry and couldn't seem to find a command to enable either. I guess I'll have to check the Alan manual.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=88&start=10#p932
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Baron - Discussion Thread *SPOILERS*
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-04 07:13:42

DFisher, that is a singularly perceptive anatomy of the game! About option (d), which you regard as less satisfactory: I agree that it is hard to believe that this could be the end of the story, and it may therefore appear to be a too easy way out. But consider: the judgement that overcoming oneself by an act of will alone is possible and in this case happened, can be made by either the protagonist or the player. If by the protagonist, there is no reason to believe that he hasn't experienced this countless times before; that it is merely a part of his overconfident heroic fantasy. If by the player, well - is it not the player who has fallen in this same psychological trap?

The last question is [i]not[/i] rhetorical. I have no wish to look down on a player who makes a certain decision, or laugh at him from behind the scenes and exclaim "you walked into the trap I so cunningly set up for you!" If the player decides, in all honesty and after careful thought, that (d) makes for a convincing ending of the story, then he may have an insight I lack. Which, as far as I'm concerned, is great.

By the way - people, someone should have emailed me about this thread! I'm sure the authors of "games of the month" would love to know about the discussions. [emote]:)[/emote] Might be a good idea for the next installments.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=10#p933
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-04 07:28:16

I'm Victor Gijsbers from the Netherlands, 24 years old and working on a PhD in philosophy.

My first experience with interactive fiction must have been when I was, oh, 8 or 9 or so, with a Dutch game called "Korenvliet". Although I did play some adventure games with parsers (the early King's Quests, Space Quests and so on), it was only a few years ago that I discovered modern IF. My love, I have to admit, is also restricted to recent, not too puzzly IF: I never finished an Infocom game, and in fact find them nearly unplayable - the experience of "getting stuck" is exactly 0% enjoyable for me, and most often a reason to quit the game and never start it up again.

A related interest of mine is recent, independent roleplaying games, about which I write far too long posts on my blog.

To date I authored one IF game, [i]The Baron[/i].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=88&start=10#p934
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Baron - Discussion Thread *SPOILERS*
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-04 13:03:29

Hmmm... that *might* have been a good idea actually.

Unfortunately, I think the game of the month idea has died out. I started playing [b]All Hope Abandon[/b] but didn't finish it, and now the IFComp is upon us I probably won't get chance to have a play in the next month or so.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=88&start=10#p935
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Baron - Discussion Thread *SPOILERS*
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-04 15:32:43

Playing IFComp games is going to be a big distraction for all of us (I would think) these next six weeks. After that, I'd probably be up for participating again, even though I came in kind of weak for the first discussion.

It might be better to just play a game, post lengthy thoughts, and let others join in if they like. If we had a lot more members, the Game-of-the-Month would probably sustain itself. A chunk of non-participation wouldn't be noticed, the way it is with only a few of us.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=88&start=10#p936
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Baron - Discussion Thread *SPOILERS*
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-04 15:40:05

I'll probably do that then.

Actually, thinking about it, I'm probably going to be through the IFComp games quicker than I originally thought. I'm halfway through playing them now and the state of some of the games has got me reluctant to play them all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=88&start=10#p937
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Baron - Discussion Thread *SPOILERS*
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-04 15:53:11

ACK! I always start out assuming every game will be wonderful, so please say no more!! [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=88&start=10#p938
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Baron - Discussion Thread *SPOILERS*
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-04 16:27:56

I'm like a little kid at Christmas right before the IFComp kicks off.

Then it kicks off.

And afterwards I'm wondering why my parents bought me such crappy gifts.  [emote]Confused[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=88&start=10#p939
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Baron - Discussion Thread *SPOILERS*
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2006-10-04 19:50:29

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]
DFisher, that is a singularly perceptive anatomy of the game!
[/quote]   
Thanks ! It's nice to hear that from the author ...

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]
About option (d), which you regard as less satisfactory ... (snip)
[/quote]   
Fair enough. The player can decide if they believe option (d) is truly possible.

A question ... the help text says:

[quote]
I have decided not to incorporate a treatise on the design philosophy of "The Baron" in the competition version of the work.
[/quote]   
I was wondering if there is an updated version of the game that includes this (or if you wanted to discuss it here) ?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=88&start=10#p940
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Baron - Discussion Thread *SPOILERS*
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-05 04:59:27

[quote="DFisher"]
I was wondering if there is an updated version of the game that includes this (or if you wanted to discuss it here) ?
[/quote] 
You make me blush with shame. I really have to finish that updated version. There is, however, no reason for me not to post the design philosophy here first, so I'll do that. I'll have to write it first, but I should be able to do that soon.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=115&start=0#p941
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Reasons for the silence
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-05 09:33:58

So, the IF Competition has begun. Like most (all?) other IF competition, there is a policy of silence: authors and judges alike are not supposed to talk about the games in public.

Supposedly there is a good reason for this policy, but I can't see any. Surely, people would like to discuss the games as they are playing them, or just after completing them? And surely, you can make a better informed judgement when you have discussed a game with other than when you have played it alone, locked in your room?

So my question is: why is there a policy of silence? Does anyone know?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=88&start=10#p942
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Baron - Discussion Thread *SPOILERS*
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-05 09:43:47

What strikes me as especially interesting is this:

[quote]
Although the player gets to help write the story (eg. in choosing future events at the end), I still developed a picture of the kind of man the PC is in this story ... maybe because when a list of alternative answers was presented, it seemed as though all of them passed through his mind as real options (and he wasn't just thinking of the answer I entered).
[/quote] 

Did other people have this as well? Because if this is general phenomenon, there is a vast difference between conversation menus like I used in this game and the more traditional (in IF at least) "ask X about P" syntax. It is not merely the case that the former restricts the choices that the player can make (or rather, restricts the choices he can attempt to make); in addition, conversation menus are a powerful tool for constructing a player-independent psychological portrait of the protagonist. "Ask X about P" syntax ensures that the thoughts that go through the character's mind are a subset of the thoughts that go through the player's mind, whereas conversation menus allow the author to depict internal struggles and deliberations of the character.

I can imagine a conversation menu like this:

1. Let's kill the wolf!
2. Wait, no, cruelty to others is a bad thing.
3. On the other hand, these wolves are dangerous creatures. I might save someone's life by killing a wolf now.
4. But I can't know for sure. Pre-emptive killing is surely wrong.
5. Oh, to hell with morality, killing this half-starved wolf will be fun! And I can show off to Jude by presenting her the skin.

Where the player chooses at which point of the possible mental process the character will stop. This technique has potential.

Of course, the above only points to a difference between two ways of organising conversations, not to an intrinsic superiority of one over the other.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=116&start=0#p943
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Roleplaying games
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-05 09:59:56

Given that (1) I have a passion for roleplaying games - and I'm primarily talking about the kind you play face-to-face with friends, not the computerised ones, and (2) believe that IF and RPG are closely related media that could learn from one another, I would really like to know what the IF-community's relation with RPGs is.

More than once I have read a review of a piece of IF which accused the piece of "being an RPG', which apparently meant "characters have numerical statistics used for fighting monsters, gain experience which turns them into better fighters, and die random deaths". This is obviously an unproductive charicature, but among other things I wonder whether it is prevalent in the community.

So this is a question to all of you: what is your experience with roleplaying games? And what is your idea about the relationship between IF and RPGs?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=115&start=0#p944
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reasons for the silence
User: George / DateTime: 2006-10-05 10:03:16

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]
Supposedly there is a good reason for this policy, but I can't see any.
[/quote] 

One good reason is that most discussion will center around extremes, games that people love or hate. I think a lot of people talking about X game would influence people to play X game, and if they don't play all the games, those in the middle of the curve will receive less attention. 

You could potentially get around this by including a 'download period' in the comp, where people choose their number of downloads and get them all in one shot without capability for downloading more until the judging is over, but I see so many problems with this it probably wouldn't work very well. 

Anyway, I think we're stuck with it, like Victor I would [i]prefer[/i] to have open discussion, but how to get around the problem of influence of the masses?

On a few side notes, who like me will play all the games?

Do you have a formal scoring system? I'm averaging scores in three categories for each game. It's likely I'll fudge the final score. 

I've played some very, very good games so far and a couple of clunkers. One thing I thought about is that what restricts people, or perhaps a small group of people, from discussing the games among themselves? My impression is that the rules say don't discuss the games in public forums, such as the newsgroups or blogs. Surely some people have been discussing the games among themselves. This is the first comp I've judged and I'm curious to know.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=115&start=0#p945
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reasons for the silence
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-05 10:08:02

I don't really understand your point about downloading the games. They're all in one file, aren't they? It's not like IF-games are heavy downloads. [emote]Smile[/emote]

I can see how open discussion might make people play some games more and others less, and how this might be a problem. On the other hand: if we are trusting people to be impartial, informed judges, surely we can trust them not to restrict themselvs to playing only the few games that receive most attention? I am not convinced that there is a real problem here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=115&start=0#p946
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reasons for the silence
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-05 10:32:48

Part of me thinks an open discussion of the IFComp games would be a great idea. Another part of me disagrees.

For the first part, I like to have discussions about games while they're still fresh in my mind. Waiting till mid-November to discuss a game I played in early October means that I’ll probably have forgotten half the details and won’t be remembering the game as clearly as I’d like to.

For the second part, I've entered a game into the IFComp. I’d love to see people coming onto forums and saying “great game!” but at the same time, it wouldn’t be nice if someone said “bad game!” It might not have a knock on effect with people reading negative comments about my game and deciding to either avoid playing it and marking it down in the Comp voting, but it also might have. I imagine if there was a lengthy forum discussion about how bad one of the Comp entries was, if I hadn’t played that entry I’d probably avoid it as a result.

Carrying on from the second part, I've also noticed a kind of sheep mentality where some games are concerned. One person says a game is great and then everyone else agrees with them. Likewise, someone says a game is bad and suddenly lots of people are agreeing with them and also giving it a hard time. A number of them might not even have played the game.

So while I’d like to have a discussion about the Comp games now, an open forum probably isn’t the best place.

Of course, if you have access to a private forum anywhere, you can discuss ‘em to your heart’s content… [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=115&start=0#p947
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reasons for the silence
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-05 10:39:38

[quote="George"]
On a few side notes, who like me will play all the games?
[/quote] 

I'm fully intending to this year. Then again, I fully intended to in 2003, 2004 and 2005 and never got through them all in the time period, and with there being more games this year... At the same time, I've been harsher in deciding which games to avoid this year. I had a quick look at the start of every game in the Comp and right off got rid of half a dozen games based on how poorly written the intros were or, in a few cases, the games were in a language I couldn't understand or wouldn't work at all.

[quote="George"]
I've played some very, very good games so far and a couple of clunkers. One thing I thought about is that what restricts people, or perhaps a small group of people, from discussing the games among themselves? My impression is that the rules say don't discuss the games in public forums, such as the newsgroups or blogs. Surely some people have been discussing the games among themselves. This is the first comp I've judged and I'm curious to know.
[/quote] 

If you register yourself an account on IFMud, you'll find a place called the Spoilers Lounge. It's pretty empty at the moment, but last year it quickly filled up with Comp reviews and comments. Why it's considered acceptable to have Comp reviews on IFMud and not a forum during the judging period I'm not sure, but it's one place to go if want to discuss the games and not fall foul of the rest of the community.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=115&start=0#p948
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reasons for the silence
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-05 10:49:58

It's way too easy to get an opinion about a game, even from a simple comment somebody else makes. What I like most about the IFComp (and other such competitions) is that it's about the only time people have a chance to *truly* make up their own minds. If you haven't read anything about a particular game, you start without a bias. You won't skip it because somebody else said it's difficult or poorly written, and you won't jump to it right away because somebody recommended it. It's a chance to see what people really think of the game, before everybody else weighs in.

It's always interesting in past competitions, especially on entries entered with an alias. You can see people write a poor review of a game that ends up placing highly, or praise a game that ranks much lower. If you play an entry afterwards, you're going to have expectations (good or bad) that wouldn't be there if you judged it completely uninformed.

I *really* like that about the competition.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=116&start=0#p949
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Roleplaying games
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-05 10:53:21

If by RPG, you mean pen and paper games then my experience is limited. About, oh, fifteen years ago I got together with a group of friends to play an RPG but they spent so long arguing over the rules that it put me off them for years. Apparently someone had read an article in a magazine which superseded one of the official rules, but the DM (or is it GM? I forget which) hadn’t seen this and so refused to let him use it. The two spent the rest of the session arguing the toss over this point, and in the end we didn’t get much in the way of roleplaying done at all.

If you mean computer RPGs, then I'm a huge fan. I rank [b]Baldur’s Gate 2[/b] as the best game I've ever played and [b]Baldur’s Gate 1[/b] as a close second. I even started a thread on the Adrift forum a while ago about the idea of turning one or both of them into an IF game, but the sheer scale of the games daunted me so much I never got beyond the “wouldn’t it be a cool idea if…” stage. 

I’d love to see an IF RPG one day, but the few times such a thing has emerged – the notoriously bad [b]Westfront PC[/b] or even Graham Nelson’s [b]Reliques of Tolti-Aph[/b] – leave me cringing in dismay.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=116&start=0#p950
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Roleplaying games
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-05 10:56:52

I've played a number of CRPGs, ranging from turn-based to real-time. I have quite a few I haven't played yet, but in recent memory I enjoyed "Summoner: A Goddess Reborn" or Gamecube and "Sudeki" on XBox.

I'm in a D&D group that meets every once in a while (although not so often, now). It's all pen-and-paper, although the DM is tracking stats on his laptop. After a very brief introduction *many* years ago (I was in 5th grade), I'm kind of a late bloomer, playing this character for only a couple of years now.

We also took a few weeks off, maybe a year ago, and played through a brief campaign in Call of Cthulhu (using D20 rules with "insanity" points). It was pretty fun, but I think I prefer the fantasy setting of D&D instead.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=115&start=0#p951
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reasons for the silence
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2006-10-05 11:11:11

People are welcome to email authors with responses.  (In one year, the mod forwarded an email to the author of an anonymous entry.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=115&start=0#p952
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reasons for the silence
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-05 11:53:18

I really enjoyed getting feedback about Trading Punches and Distress, even though it was mixed. I emailed some authors during the prior two comps, and they always seemed to appreciate the feedback.

I think a lot of judges don't realize that it's okay to email the authors, or else they'd rather not get into a discussion about a particular game until after they've casted their votes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=115&start=0#p953
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reasons for the silence
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2006-10-05 12:51:41

<a href="http://brasslantern.org/community/comps/howwhycomp-b.html">http://brasslantern.org/community/comps ... omp-b.html</a>

And yes, you absolutely can and should email authors.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=115&start=0#p954
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reasons for the silence
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2006-10-05 13:07:44

The rules mention the Compxx.z5, which is no longer used.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=115&start=10#p955
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reasons for the silence
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-05 14:32:32

[quote]
The rules mention the Compxx.z5, which is no longer used.
[/quote] The IFComp page on the WIKI has a download for that. It's in the links section at the bottom of <a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/IF_Comp_2006">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/IF_Comp_2006</a> .

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=115&start=10#p956
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reasons for the silence
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-05 18:10:38

[quote="Sargent"]
<a class="postlink" href="http://brasslantern.org/community/comps/howwhycomp-b.html">http://brasslantern.org/community/comps ... omp-b.html</a>

And yes, you absolutely can and should email authors.
[/quote] 

Yes, please do [emote]:D[/emote] . This period is very tense indeed. As it's my first competiton, I didn't realise I was letting myself in for such an anxious period of waiting. Positively nail-biting - the fact that I can discuss things with the co-author of our game (the only person I know who plays IF these days) is the only thing keeping me going (ok, perhaps it's not quite that bad, but it's getting there).

CP

PS, There was a subtle hint there - if you've played our game, it'd be great to hear from you. Good or bad. Really.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=88&start=10#p957
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Baron - Discussion Thread *SPOILERS*
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2006-10-05 21:30:42

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]
I can imagine a conversation menu like this:

1. Let's kill the wolf!
2. Wait, no, cruelty to others is a bad thing.
3. On the other hand, these wolves are dangerous creatures. I might save someone's life by killing a wolf now.
4. But I can't know for sure. Pre-emptive killing is surely wrong.
5. Oh, to hell with morality, killing this half-starved wolf will be fun! And I can show off to Jude by presenting her the skin.
[/quote]         
When I was playing The Baron, the thoughts expressed by the different menu options seemed more "parallel" than sequential - a struggle between the different alternatives.

If I came across the above menu options in a game, they wouldn't quite feel right to me ... maybe if there were no direct references to the other alternatives it would feel more natural.

[Edit: on reflection, maybe it would work OK - but it would make the PC seem very indecisive].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=115&start=10#p958
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reasons for the silence
User: George / DateTime: 2006-10-05 22:21:34

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]
I don't really understand your point about downloading the games. They're all in one file, aren't they? It's not like IF-games are heavy downloads. [emote]:)[/emote] 
[/quote]   

Yes, though I meant in a case where you didn't want open discussion to influence the choice of what game to play within the judging period, you could have people choose which games they want to judge at the beginning of the contest and receive those games in one download. Like I said, many problems with that approach. 

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]
I can see how open discussion might make people play some games more and others less, and how this might be a problem. On the other hand: if we are trusting people to be impartial, informed judges, surely we can trust them not to restrict themselvs to playing only the few games that receive most attention? I am not convinced that there is a real problem here.
[/quote]  

We are trusting them and we are not trusting them. For example, I learned about IF only this year (I had what you could call a cultural knowledge of Zork, but never played it through). I haven't played that many games and am familiar with only a few more. While I try to judge a game based on its own merits and flaws, taking it for what it is, I like certain games and dislike others really just on principle. So the 'silence' provides a measure of impartiality that I otherwise lack. I admit it also makes me less informed. Which of the two is more important to judging is an interesting question, but I favor the former.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=116&start=0#p959
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Roleplaying games
User: George / DateTime: 2006-10-05 22:59:26

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]
So this is a question to all of you: what is your experience with roleplaying games? And what is your idea about the relationship between IF and RPGs?
[/quote]  

Traditional IF is more closely related to CRPGs than RPGs, don't you think? And CRPGs draw most heavily on classic RPGs such D&D. However I think you favor the 'new' RPGs, and since nearly everything I have learned about the new RPGs is from reading, that is to say, lurking on, your blog and sites like <a class="postlink" href="http://www.story-games.com">http://www.story-games.com</a> I don't know what I can tell you that you don't already know! Nonetheless I have a few ideas about the relationship between IF and RPGs.

IF and RPGs are not closely related. Most RPGs are multi-player and collaborative. Most IF is single-player and solitary. You could say that the IF player collaborates with the author, but this is not true collaboration, rather the author guides the player. Here is where IF is more similar to classic RPGs, where the game master guides the players. Also both IF and classic RPGs are essentially linear. You can talk about the non-linearity of IF, but most of the time I find IF to be essentially linear enterprises with little regard for real non-linearity. Most RPGs deal heavily in game mechanics, where IF usually has little purchase. Players inhabit roles in RPGs for extended periods of time, in multiple sessions, and not only that, in most RPGs players [i]intend[/i] to develop their character over a long period of time. There are very few, if any, IF works with such an emphasis. So here you have some similarity but mostly difference between IF and RPGs.

This is something I personally would like to change, and I see great potential in writing IF that is more collaborative, game-like, and serialized, that seizes some of the concepts of the new RPGs and transforms these concepts into elements of interactive fiction. However my perspective may be skewed from all those years reading game books in elementary school, writing D&D campaigns instead of doing my homework in junior high school, making RPGs instead of writing term papers in high school, and playing muds instead of writing my thesis in college...you know, there's some pattern here that I can't quite put my finger on. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that having played RPGs and recently IF, I think the potential for the relationship is rich, but at present the reality is not much. One thing though, I haven't actually played a table-top RPG in years. Recently I got interested in RPGs again and I went to a local game shop. It seemed heavily into D&D, I should say D20 I suppose, and its derivatives. As is de rigueur, there were some gamers there. Frankly the vibe scared me off. So these days I don't think I'm cut out for D&D. Kind of sad, really.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=117&start=0#p960
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Collaboration
User: George / DateTime: 2006-10-05 23:11:45

Are there places where IF authors can meet specifically to ask for or offer help in writing games?

The only site I had bookmarked -- <a href="http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/7442/if/assistlist.html">http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/ ... tlist.html</a> -- looks out-of-date, and the other site linked from there is dead.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=88&start=20#p961
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Baron - Discussion Thread *SPOILERS*
User: George / DateTime: 2006-10-05 23:54:23

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]
I can imagine a conversation menu like this:
[/quote] 

Do you mean where all the options are presented at once, or one after another as the character 'deliberates'? The former is what you would normally see, is it not? But perhaps you could handle it the latter way by weighting each choice with a value that corresponds to a variable or set of variables on the character, so they are presented with choices in a sequence dictated by the actions they took up to that point where the conversation initiates. Or for certain values maybe they never see certain choices, based on prior actions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=117&start=0#p962
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Collaboration
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-06 01:41:36

No specific places, but you could always post a message on the forum asking about it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=115&start=10#p963
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reasons for the silence
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-06 01:46:18

I suppose one possibility might be to have a hidden part of the forum where IFComp discussion can take place. It'd be a 'private' forum that isn't accessible to guests or normal members but is only given out upon request and with the condition that nothing discussed inside is mentioned anywhere else on the forum. There's a space on IFMud for Comp game discussion and reviews so I don't see why it'd be wrong to have Comp discussion on a hidden part of the forum.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=117&start=0#p964
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Collaboration
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-06 04:53:47

[quote="George"]
Are there places where IF authors can meet specifically to ask for or offer help in writing games? 
[/quote]  

There's this: [url]http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/IFCollab[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=115&start=10#p965
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reasons for the silence
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-06 05:14:29

[quote="David Whyld"]
I suppose one possibility might be to have a hidden part of the forum where IFComp discussion can take place. It'd be a 'private' forum that isn't accessible to guests or normal members but is only given out upon request and with the condition that nothing discussed inside is mentioned anywhere else on the forum. There's a space on IFMud for Comp game discussion and reviews so I don't see why it'd be wrong to have Comp discussion on a hidden part of the forum.
[/quote] 

The way it's set up on ifMUD is pretty carefully engineered to keep people safe from any spoilers, even "gee, there's a lot of discussion of game X": there are game-specific channels, and if you're not on those channels, you don't necessarily know they're even being used; people are discouraged from reading reviews until they've already submitted their own votes, and reviews are not posted in such a way that people could stumble over them accidentally.

Anyway, if you do want to do something, running the idea by Stephen Granade would probably be a good idea.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=116&start=0#p966
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Roleplaying games
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-06 05:55:51

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]
So this is a question to all of you: what is your experience with roleplaying games? And what is your idea about the relationship between IF and RPGs?
[/quote] 

I've played a little classic D&D, some Nobilis, and several campaigns of Seventh Sea. I enjoyed all of these, but I'm not sure I found as much direct applicability to IF as one might expect. For one thing, many of my favorite moments in RPGs tend to come from some creative inspiration, where a player comes up with an innovative way to use a skill or ability, and the GM improvises around it. It's hard to program a computer game to improvise around an idea that the author didn't anticipate -- sure, you can build a simulation of a specific mechanic that might turn out to allow some unexpected exploits, but it's hard to build in the same kind of flexibility.

The other thing I enjoy in live RPGs is the banter with other characters -- you're partly performing for their benefit, partly riffing off their input. There's no audience in an IF game; if you come up with a witty remark on the action, or do something with startling dramatic repercussions, there's no one there to react to it. 

If you strip out the GM improvisation and the by-play with other players, what you're left with is pure mechanics (I think -- I'm not nearly as up on RPG formats as you are, so I may be missing something). The mechanics don't always translate very well to IF, especially ones that involve dice-rolling. I tend to dislike random elements that affect gameplay significantly; it's usually possible to UNDO around them, unless the author turns off UNDO entirely, which produces frustrations of another kind. (For that matter, I don't enjoy very dice-heavy parts of standard RPGs either; too much waiting for things to resolve.)

All that said, I get the impression that RPG theorists are wrestling with some ideas that are useful to IF designers as well. I just don't see any easy or obvious lessons we could be taking from RPGs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=117&start=0#p967
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Collaboration
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-06 07:52:34

[quote="emshort"]
There's this: [url]http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/IFCollab[/url]
[/quote] 

This is the only semi-official page I know of (I'm the current maintainer, although I don't do much maintaining). It just doesn't seem to get much use, even after announcements (the last of which was a long time ago). I think collaboration is more likely to evolve from discussions, rather than a posting to the IFCollab list.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=88&start=20#p968
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Baron - Discussion Thread *SPOILERS*
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-10-06 09:03:27

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]
I can imagine a conversation menu like this:

1. Let's kill the wolf!
2. Wait, no, cruelty to others is a bad thing.
3. On the other hand, these wolves are dangerous creatures. I might save someone's life by killing a wolf now.
4. But I can't know for sure. Pre-emptive killing is surely wrong.
5. Oh, to hell with morality, killing this half-starved wolf will be fun! And I can show off to Jude by presenting her the skin.
[/quote] Remember those episodes when Homer Simpson needs to decide on things, and each "decision" gets to parts of his head? This sounds like that. j/k  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=47&start=10#p969
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good games for beginners?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-06 09:13:25

There are in fact at least three people for whom [i]The Baron[/i] was the first piece of IF they ever played, and they all appreciated it. In general, I foresee no problems with the piece if the reader is a person who is acquainted with and appreciates dark/shocking narratives. Having played a lot of IF has little to do with it, being able to watch [i]Requiem for a Dream[/i] to the very end perhaps more.

The reason that the piece may nevertheless not be a good starting point for beginners is that it is not much of a starting point. I [i]could[/i] make a list of games that you may like if you like [i]The Baron[/i], but it will not be a very long list. (It would contain pieces like [i]Shade[/i] and [i]Slouching towards Bedlam[/i].) The piece is, after all, rather atypical.


(My italics seem not to work?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=117&start=0#p970
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Collaboration
User: George / DateTime: 2006-10-06 09:37:07

Thanks for the link to the wiki. I know I'm a little dense at times, but I had looked there the other day for just such a list but didn't find one. Where is the link off the main page?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=47&start=10#p971
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good games for beginners?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-06 09:38:33

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]
(My italics seem not to work?)
[/quote] Not just yours. I don't know what it is about this version, but it does that to everybody. Sometimes it will work, but I don't know why. This is a beta version. I don't know if Rioshin has checked into updating it yet, or if there even is an update.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=117&start=0#p972
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Collaboration
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-06 09:42:38

[quote="George"]
Thanks for the link to the wiki. I know I'm a little dense at times, but I had looked there the other day for just such a list but didn't find one. Where is the link off the main page?
[/quote]  I don't think there is a link off the main page, but it's on the community portal page.

Wait, no. I thought it used to be. Hmm... I don't know where I saw it, now.

I should probably post more about it, and more often. I just kind of hate to say "hey, come use the collaborator's list, even though it doesn't seem to be all that great at getting collaborations started..."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=116&start=0#p973
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Roleplaying games
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-06 09:43:02

Thanks for the responses! The questions from the first post still stand, but I'm going to react to some of you and tell you how I think that we may be able to be inspired by RPGs.

[b]Emily[/b]: those are very good observations: part of the fun of RPGs is improvisation and having an audience. Improvisation is hard to achieve on IF, and presumably not worth the trouble. I wouldn't underestimate how much the game itself is the audience when you play IF, though. As an example, "Losing your head" is famous for the part where you can kick a head around. I believe that this has no positive impact on the story, doesn't solve any puzzle, or whatever. So why do people find it cool that the game recognises "KICK HEAD" and reacts appropriately? Because the game (the author of the game) becomes an appreciative audience to what you thought was a funny idea.

However, there is more to RPGs, and what the 'more' is depends on the RPG. It is probably not so useful, as you indicate, to look at specific mechanics. You don't really want to implement the combat system of D&D in a work of IF, for instance. But you might learn something else from it: say, resource management. If I remember correctly, David Whyld used hit points in his Spring Thing 2006 entry as a resource that allowed you to get past puzzles that you were unable to solve. His mechanics were different from how D&D implements hit points, but the underlying game idea is basically the same - there is a resource that dwindles whenever you act suboptimally.

As another example, consider the modest indie-hit "Dogs in the Vineyard". The central dice mechanic of this game is rather complicated, involving dice of several different sizes that are used in a kind of bidding contest. Implementing this in a piece of IF would be impractical, to say the least. But let's consider what the point of the mechanic is. It is constructed to lead to the following two situations:

(1) Sometimes, you can only win a conflict by putting your own health and possibly even life on the line. This raises the question: what are you willing to risk for this cause?
(2) Sometimes, you can only win a conflict by escalating to fighting or shooting, which involves the risk of hurting or killing your opponent. This raises the question: are you willing to kill for this cause?

Are you willing to beat up your nephew to make sure he stops drinking? Are you willing to shoot at your own father to make sure he doesn't lynch the escaped slave?

Those questions could be implemented in IF, though you would have to device a different mechanical way of doing so. (In this case, you may not need new mechanics at all. You just have to make sure that the player clearly sees the two possibilities that lie before her and knows that the choice is really, really hers.)

Just thinking aloud. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=115&start=10#p974
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reasons for the silence
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2006-10-06 11:25:22

[quote="ralphmerridew"]
The rules mention the Compxx.z5, which is no longer used.
[/quote] 

Really? I just checked the competition site for this year and found no reference to it at all. In fact, the page that discusses how to judge the games says:

[quote]
Full information about the games is available to all judges through the game information and voting page. If you are unable to play all of the games, you are encouraged to play the games in random order, to help insure that you vote on a random sample of games. The game information and voting page will list the games in random order for you.
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=116&start=0#p975
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Roleplaying games
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-07 12:17:47

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]
(1) Sometimes, you can only win a conflict by putting your own health and possibly even life on the line. This raises the question: what are you willing to risk for this cause?
(2) Sometimes, you can only win a conflict by escalating to fighting or shooting, which involves the risk of hurting or killing your opponent. This raises the question: are you willing to kill for this cause?

Are you willing to beat up your nephew to make sure he stops drinking? Are you willing to shoot at your own father to make sure he doesn't lynch the escaped slave?

Those questions could be implemented in IF, though you would have to device a different mechanical way of doing so. (In this case, you may not need new mechanics at all. You just have to make sure that the player clearly sees the two possibilities that lie before her and knows that the choice is really, really hers.)
[/quote] 

I agree -- figuring out how to articulate choices for the player is a major part of developing interesting and effective story-oriented IF. And I think it's often a mechanics problem for IF too, though of a different sort: whatever choice you have in mind, it has to be something that the player can express with command-line actions. That doesn't *have* to mean that the critical choice must be represented by a physical activity; it could take the form of conversation or a magic system or using abstract actions of some kind. But you do have to have designed some such mechanic and taught the player what it is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=43&start=20#p976
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Dwarf Fortress and some other ramblings
User: George / DateTime: 2006-10-07 14:09:19

[quote="Lumin"]
I'm plugging it partly because it's a great game that manages to be an insane amount of fun despite still being in the alpha stage, and the developer seems to be a great guy as well, but also because I was wondering if it would be possible to do something like that with IF?
[/quote] 

Actually this is quite a coincidence Lumin, I basically have the exact same idea for an IF game in the works, only with prose instead of a graphical display. Also I didn't choose dwarves. In fact the working title is 'Troll Tribes'.

So yes, I do think it's possible. 


best, George

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=116&start=0#p977
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Roleplaying games
User: George / DateTime: 2006-10-07 22:58:29

I had been thinking about this thread when I ran across this:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.manifestogames.com/node/2348">http://www.manifestogames.com/node/2348</a>

I'm going to pull a long quote from it:

[quote]
All other artistic media are either static and unchanging, like a painting--or change over time, like film or music. What's different about games is that they change over time, but not in a fashion planned by the creator; instead, they change in reaction to the actions of the players. Games are interactive at their core, and this is as true of Chess as it is of anything you play on a computer. Indeed, the reason games took to computers like ducks to water is because computers, being interactive by nature, are naturally suited to providing games, which are likewise interactive.

How does a game change state in response to players' actions? Through the use of algorithms. This is obviously so in the case of digital games, but equally so for non-digital ones; "rules" are in fact algorithms.

The very "gameness" of a game, the very thing that distinguishes games from other forms, is their use of process. Indeed, designing a game means specifying the processes that will be used in play--determining the rules, in other words.

The graphics, pieces, sounds, et al. are used to provide a representation of the game state to the players, but in a sense, they are the mere surface of the game. The heart of the game, and its meat, is in its processes.

Now, I do not wish to suggest that the nature of this representation is irrelevant to a game's appeal; the aesthetics of a game's imagery, components, etc. greatly affect the experience and the enjoyment of play. I suspect you could build a client for Quake that used 2D sprites, and play against someone using the original client, and have pretty much the same experience of play--but it wouldn't be anywhere near as interesting, or as much fun.

Nonetheless, what game developers have spent most of their effort on to date, and where most of the money is spent today, is on improving the surface expression of games--not on exploring the possibilities of new gameplay through the exploration of new processes, and combinations of processes.

To put it another way, we've been doing precious little actual game design; we've mostly been implementing new versions of existing game styles, but with prettier graphics.

But as I've argued, we've come to the point of diminishing returns along that road. In future, we have to do something else. And the something else we have to do is to start thinking about process--about how different algorithms can be combined to create challenges and gameplay that people haven't seen before; about experimenting with different approaches to gameplay; about how rules shape player behavior.
[/quote] 

Notwithstanding that a piece of IF and [i]Quake[/i] are very different beasts, and that Costikyan isn't saying anything exactly [i]new[/i], I think he makes an excellent point that applies very well to what Victor and Emily are saying in their posts. In the context of IF this is not so much about algorithmically generating story content, though it  could be, as it is about setting up the rules of the IF. One caveat is that I presuppose a more game-oriented IF, though again perhaps this wouldn't be a necessary presupposition. 

The rules do not have to be extensive, in fact there could be one rule. But in defining the rule you allow the player to come to deeper terms with the IF, not only reading the story, the 'surface words' as it were, but also wrestling with the underlying and fundamental raison d'etre of the IF itself. 

One thing I wonder is if the presence of rules (which of course eventually could be well understood and predicted by the player) would make the game not as interesting as something defined aprocedurally by the author, who will incorporate random, illogical 'tricks' into the story. On the other hand, no doubt this is not a zero-sum game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=118&start=0#p978
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: What's your review philosophy?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-09 13:10:52

Each year (this being the third) that I review IFComp games, I start out by writing a page or so of introductory text. I revised this more for 2006 than I did last year, and at one point, I realized part of it was more "rant" than "rational". I have actually enclosed that bit in fake "rant" tags, because I recognize how preachy if may sound. I considered omitting it entirely, but it really should be part of the introduction.

Verbatim:

[color=#0040FF][RANT] I play interactive fiction because it’s fun. Playing and reviewing this many games may seem like a chore at times, but it really shouldn’t. These are the creations of real people, not emotionless robots. The feedback (especially when it’s brutally negative and lacks tact) can be a major slam to hopeful entrants. Let the score we assign be our stamp of approval (or disapproval). In reviews of amateur, hobbyist games, we need not be so callous and cavalier. Perhaps a review can be honest and critical without merely slapping the faces of these authors. This is the philosophy I try to use when I review interactive fiction. [/RANT][/color]

This was before I started browsing old IFComp reviews this morning. At the opposite end are these:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.plover.net/~bonds/comp04.html">http://www.plover.net/~bonds/comp04.html</a> and <a class="postlink" href="http://www.plover.net/~bonds/comp05.html">http://www.plover.net/~bonds/comp05.html</a>

So this got me thinking... what is your review philosophy? Do you offer advice to the author within a review, or do you stick to the merits of the game as it was written? Do you hold anything back when you criticize a game? Do you consider the effort put into a game when reviewing it, or merely the end result? Is my approach too coddling? Is Bond's approach too disparaging? Should the authors of bad games be discouraged from ever trying again, or do you think reviews (good or bad) sway their future plans at all? Does a brutally critical review show a deeper level of descernment, while a more polite and encouraging review is merely naive?

What's your review philosophy?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=118&start=0#p979
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: What's your review philosophy?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-09 14:58:54

I think I have a tendency to go for the jugular with reviews, mainly when I come across a game that's so obviously bad and so buggy that even the writer doesn't think it's much cop. There's recently been a game uploaded to the main Adrift site (please spare yourself the agony of playing it) of which the author has *this* to say about it:

[quote]
WOW. I feel stupid. Don’t download this its unbeatable. I’ll fix it. I’m such a retard. Sorry. 
[/quote] 

Really makes you want to play it, doesn't it? If I ever decide to write a review of that game, I'm going to hammer it like never before. If even the author can't think of anything better to say about his game than what I've quoted above, then he deserves every bit of criticism he gets.

For my IFComp reviews this year, I've actually written quite a lengthy intro (1361 words and counting) about my general thoughts on the IFComp, the domination of Inform over all the other systems and how no one seems to like writing games in Hugo, Alan and Quest (the first two surprising, the third not surprising). Then I've gone on to list all the games I'm not planning to review and why I'm not reviewing them.

For the reviews, I've tried to avoid being *too* disparaging, but there are some games that it's hard to hold back on. One game starts without me being able to examine almost anything I can see and I needed to make progress by referring to an NPC who isn't even there (and who I only discovered the existence of due to the walkthrough). A game like that bugs me because I wasted my time playing it when I could have been playing a game that had actually been tested instead. 

With all that in mind, I realise that quite a few of the games entered in the Comp are by newcomers who probably haven't played that many IF games and don't realise what's required. Part of me is tempted to give them a break and try to point out in my reviews what they've done wrong and the things they ought to look out for; another part of me wonders why people enter the IFComp with a game that even they realise isn't up to much, hasn't been tested properly and probably hasn't even been proofread. After considering all that, I find it easier to bash the obvious errors in their games because even newcomers to the scene should know enough to use a spellcheck.

Still, this year I think I've been less critical of the majority of the games than in previous years. Mainly on account of the fact that the really atrocious games I gave up with after two minutes and didn't bother reviewing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=118&start=0#p980
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: What's your review philosophy?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-09 16:58:07

[quote]
[color=#0040FF][RANT] I play interactive fiction because it’s fun. Playing and reviewing this many games may seem like a chore at times, but it really shouldn’t. These are the creations of real people, not emotionless robots. The feedback (especially when it’s brutally negative and lacks tact) can be a major slam to hopeful entrants. Let the score we assign be our stamp of approval (or disapproval). In reviews of amateur, hobbyist games, we need not be so callous and cavalier. Perhaps a review can be honest and critical without merely slapping the faces of these authors. This is the philosophy I try to use when I review interactive fiction. [/RANT][/color]
[/quote]     You'll notice one thing about my reviews (two, if you notice that I spend much time doing them)-  that I don't look for anything in particular. For most games, I'll just read the introduction. If I like what I see, I play the game, if I don't, I just close it (without giving a score) and try something else. Games that don't work to begin with don't get a score either, for similar reasons. If I start a game with high expectations and it disappoints me in some way, I'll usually be critical. This might not sound fair, but I'll give more credit to a game that tries something simple and suceeds than something complicated that fails. Also, I'll usually be critical of games that required me to be psychic for whatever reason, make unreasonable demands on me, or fail to take me into consideration altogether. 


[quote]
This was before I started browsing old IFComp reviews this morning. At the opposite end are these:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.plover.net/~bonds/comp04.html">http://www.plover.net/~bonds/comp04.html</a> and <a class="postlink" href="http://www.plover.net/~bonds/comp05.html">http://www.plover.net/~bonds/comp05.html</a> 
[/quote]      
I've spoken to Stephen Bond in the past and he's admitted that he writes his reviews primarily for entertainment value, although I'll admit that I do find myself agreeing with him about a great many things. It depends on who you're writing the reviews for, I suppose.

[quote]
So this got me thinking... what is your review philosophy? Do you offer advice to the author within a review, or do you stick to the merits of the game as it was written? Do you hold anything back when you criticize a game?
[/quote]      
It depends on the problems I find. Some things annoy me more than others, especially if I encounter them at the beginning. It's not difficult to tell if care has been taken with the implementation, which is why, if I encounter errors which I think could have been spotted with cursory beta testing, I tend to penalise such games heavily. I tend to go easy on the occasional spelling error or grammatical error if it doesn't ruin the flow of the text, especially if the author in question doesn't speak English as a first language (and providing the errors aren't pervasive, of course). I tend to lay off the personal attacks when reviewing, although I've seen some people write reviews that contain so much mendacity that they practically amount to a personal attack. Another thing that annoys me, (and I'm guilty of this at times), is "psychologising"- guessing the character of the author from the contents of their game (Bond's review of Kurusu City is an extreme example of this), It's possible that you're right, but I recommend everyone avoid it; if you're wrong, it can be embarrasing for you and insulting to the author.

[quote]
Should the authors of bad games be discouraged from ever trying again, or do you think reviews (good or bad) sway their future plans at all?
[/quote]      
Unfortunately, if bad reviews do discourage, they're not discouraging the right people as some of them don't seem to have any interest in improving. I'm pretty sure you know who I'm talking about. It's hard to say if anyone was encouraged by positive reviews or not, but there's bound to have been one or two over the years.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=118&start=0#p981
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: What's your review philosophy?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-09 17:06:11

I tend to spend the most time in reviews discussing the flaws of the games I did like (or, if they were *really* good, why I thought they worked). My longest reviews are usually for games in the 6-8 range, where I thought the author made a sincere effort and had some good ideas but didn't quite achieve greatness, because I find it interesting to analyze what failed and why. Things that just weren't to my taste at all, I don't talk about much. 

I try not to be mean to any author who seemed to be making a genuine effort; the couple of times I've really ripped into something it has been because I felt my time was wasted intentionally or I was given a deliberately unpleasant experience by someone who could have done better. And that does annoy me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=118&start=0#p982
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: What's your review philosophy?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-09 17:13:55

[quote="Yuki"]
Unfortunately, if bad reviews do discourage, they're not discouraging the right people as some of them don't seem to have any interest in improving. I'm pretty sure you know who I'm talking about.
[/quote] 

The problem with the guy you're talking about is that *he* thinks his games are masterpieces and isn't willing to listen to anyone tell him otherwise. No matter how often it's pointed out to him that people don't like this games, he just can't see it. All he sees are people making personal attacks and then he reacts in the worst possible way and before you know it it's all gone to hell. I'm expecting some longwinded rant on RAIF come the end of the IFComp when he falls foul of everyone who writes a bad review of his entries.

[quote="Yuki"]
 It's hard to say if anyone was encouraged by positive reviews or not, but there's bound to have been one or two over the years.
[/quote] 

Nice reviews always encourage me. And let's face it, you don't get paid for your game writing (aside from any prizes you might pick up in one competition or another), so feedback and reviews are pretty much the only incentive you get to finish a game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=118&start=0#p983
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: What's your review philosophy?
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2006-10-09 22:15:13

[quote="Merk"]
What is your review philosophy? Do you offer advice to the author within a review, or do you stick to the merits of the game as it was written? Do you hold anything back when you criticize a game? Do you consider the effort put into a game when reviewing it, or merely the end result? ...
[/quote]  
To answer a slightly different question ...

I love reading reviews that contain insightful comments, helpful suggestions, clear analyses of what went wrong and why, etc. - things I can learn from. One of the most helpful reviewers in this respect I have found is Paul O'Brian (<a class="postlink" href="http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~obrian/IF.htm">http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~obrian/IF.htm</a>).

So, you reviewer-type-people ... thank you for all of your insights and comments. Even if the authors are neither corrected nor encouraged (though I'm sure they would be), others are learning good stuff from your writing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=118&start=0#p984
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: What's your review philosophy?
User: George / DateTime: 2006-10-09 23:19:51

There's a difference between reviews of competition entries and, say, reviewing work in a workshop or critique group. I've never reviewed competition entries before now, but when reviewing crit group work I have gone out of my way to be a little more friendly and positive. I don't feel that's necessary for comp reviews. 

On the other hand there is a method of critique where you don't say something is good or bad, but describe it in more objective terms and leave it up to the reader to make their own judgement. You'll see this a lot in art critiques and art history texts. In any case it allows you to dig a little deeper into the differences between works and maybe reach a new understanding of what the artists' intentions were.

Of course it's easier to do that looking at a Picasso and a De Kooning than a couple of suck-a-riffic comp entries.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=118&start=0#p985
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: What's your review philosophy?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-10 10:19:27

My review philosophy:

I don't see IF criticism as a subservient art form to IF; I see it as an 
art form in its own right. What I look for in an IF review is what I would 
look for in any piece of art -- I look for something that moves, entertains, 
provokes, stimulates, or in some other way makes life a little more 
beautiful, for a while. (And I have to say, I find that IF reviews tend to hit 
these marks more often than IF games.)

Not that I'm saying that any of *my* reviews do any such thing -- but 
that is what I aim for. And I think such didactic notions as 
"being helpful to the game author" and "writing a playing guide for 
potential players" are entirely orthogonal to the purposes of IF 
criticism as art. I'd rather read a brief, witty, "unfairly" dismissive 
review -- and I'd believe such a review is a better piece of art --
than a long, tedious review which politely points out all the flaws in 
a game, mediated with a few paragraphs of faint praise so that its 
author won't feel so bad.

In fact, the most annoying review of my own work I've seen is not one 
of the (many) sarcastic dismissals, but a polite, mildly positive and 
entirely witless review some guy mailed me privately, prefaced by a note 
about how I should read his review for my own good, how he was going 
out of his way to do me a favour, how he would make me understand where 
I was going wrong and learn how to write better IF games....

I see your point about discouraging first-time authors; but at the same time,
I care more about producing the kind of criticism I like than I care about 
the feelings of Random. T. Hackwriter, which will no doubt recover in time.
And besides, I think if someone is so easily discouraged by criticism that 
a bad review would make him give up entirely, then he probably doesn't have 
much artistic impulse in the first place. If you really have the urge to 
express yourself in IF, then you'll express yourself in IF, no matter what 
people say about your work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=118&start=0#p986
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: What's your review philosophy?
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2006-10-10 11:00:17

It really does depend on who you're writing for. Are you writing your reviews as reviews? That is, are you writing for potential players of the game? Are you writing a true critique? If so, it's easier to strive for that other Stephen's goal of reviews as art. Are you writing to guide authors, both the one who wrote the game and others? Then you're moving into a more didactic role. Any and all of these goals are good ones, but you have to decide what you want out of what you're writing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=118&start=0#p987
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: What's your review philosophy?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-11 09:27:16

Good replies, all.

On a slight tangent, I may completely rethink my scoring system so that it's a composite of story, writing, technical implementation, etc. At soonest, I'd do it for next year's competition. I think I'd like to get more analytical. What I use now does well enough, but it attempts to describe these things in combinations. When they're out of balance (really great on a couple points, really bad on a couple others), my definitions don't exactly cover it. I end up picking an in-between score, which is probably *right*, but may not carry an accurate description.

Anyway, thanks for the replies!!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=117&start=0#p988
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Collaboration
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-11 10:45:34

Maybe a more reasonable suggestion is to chat with people on ifMUD and see whether there's someone else interested in your project, or to contact individual people you know from the community who seem like they might want to work with you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=117&start=0#p989
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Collaboration
User: George / DateTime: 2006-10-11 21:25:45

OK, I just logged on to IFMud for the first time and checked out the channels. Nothing strictly for collaboration leaped out at me, so, what's the general protocol, do people ask on the language-specific channels? Or is there a better channel to ask on?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=117&start=0#p990
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Collaboration
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-11 22:49:09

There's not a collaboration channel, but you could try chatting with people and seeing whether anyone seemed interested in doing the kind of game you want to do. (You could do this on a language-specific channel if you have strong preferences, but just talking in the lounge or on #craft or #wip would work too.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=118&start=10#p991
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: What's your review philosophy?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-12 05:34:05

[quote]
I end up picking an in-between score, which is probably *right*, but may not carry an accurate description.
[/quote] 
Surely it is impossible to accurately describe a piece by any score whatsoever?  [emote]:)[/emote] 

(Which is why I prefer to write reviews without scores, because a score always gives a false impression of sumarising the review, when in fact it does nothing of the sort.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=119&start=0#p992
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: NaNoWriMo...worst acronym ever?
User: George / DateTime: 2006-10-13 01:24:55

Just kidding about the subject, sort of. Is anyone here going to throw their hat in next month, has anyone participated before? How did it go for you?

<a href="http://www.nanowrimo.org">http://www.nanowrimo.org</a>

Surely everyone wants to write a novel after playing and reviewing IFComp, no?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=119&start=0#p993
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: NaNoWriMo...worst acronym ever?
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-10-13 08:40:29

[quote="George"]
Surely everyone wants to write a novel after playing and reviewing IFComp, no?
[/quote] Not so much as wanting to finish an entry for the next IFComp  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=119&start=0#p994
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: NaNoWriMo...worst acronym ever?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-13 10:14:49

I've heard of this before, and it seems to be getting bigger.

Since I was a kid in 5th grade, I wanted to be a writer. Once I started programming, that kind of fell to the side (maybe that's why I like how IF blends writing and programming). I was even featured in the first two editions of Market Guide for Young Writers (Kathy Henderson -- I think the name of it may have changed after the first few publications).

I get in moods where I want to write a book. I sometimes get the motivation to start, but it rarely goes far. I wrote some stupid novels of 200+ pages when I was in middle school -- basically corny Star Wars rip-offs which have long since been lost. I've thought about entering some short story contests (the Hubbard "Writers of the Future" or the Star Trek "Strange New Worlds" competition), but I never do.

I kind of consider it a pipe-dream. I still struggle with spelling, grammar, and (equally important) vocabulary. I keep thinking I'll read more, create more IF, and then one of these years when I'm 40 or 50 or 60 I'll have the experience and expertise to write something that might be worthy of publication.

Or maybe not.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=118&start=10#p995
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: What's your review philosophy?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-13 21:18:24

I have yet to see a scoring-breakdown system that I don't find artificial. Some games turn on their puzzles, others on the NPCs, others on other things; so I find it most interesting to ask how well a given piece did at what it was trying to accomplish (and whether I thought that was a worthy goal).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=118&start=10#p996
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: What's your review philosophy?
User: George / DateTime: 2006-10-13 22:52:50

Now that you mention it, how does everyone score the games? Do people really divide scores between NPC, PC, puzzles, descriptions, bugs, etc.?

I'm just giving three scores, for creativity, execution (i.e. implementation), and WTF.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=118&start=10#p997
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: What's your review philosophy?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-13 23:50:41

I'll use something similar to my ranking system from last year:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp05/scoring.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp05/scoring.shtml</a>

I've revised and summarized these as:

10) Incredible
9) Outstanding
8) Very Good
7) Good
6) Average
5) Below Average
4) Poor
3) Very Bad
2) Horrible
1) Unplayable

I may do a composite of different scores in different categories next year. My current rankings assume that all aspects of a game are at a certain level (i.e., "very good" writing, puzzles, story, coding, etc). When these are out of balance, it gets hard to assign a score.

Even a composite may seem artificial, but I can't think of any other way I can play 40+ games over 6 weeks and be reasonably sure that my scores aren't schizophenic.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=118&start=10#p998
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: What's your review philosophy?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-14 05:07:17

[quote="George"]
Now that you mention it, how does everyone score the games? Do people really divide scores between NPC, PC, puzzles, descriptions, bugs, etc.?
[/quote] 

I used to do that a while ago with reviews but it often left me with an overall score that wasn't an accurate reflection of the game. A game could have poor NPCs, not very interesting puzzles, minor bugs and yet *still* be a good game. Likewise, you could have a game which had NPCs with real depth, interesting puzzles and no bugs but isn't much fun to play.

So I scrapped the dividing idea and just use a system similar to Merk's, although I've never given a 10 because no matter how good a game is something better could come along and then what would I rate that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=118&start=10#p999
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: What's your review philosophy?
User: George / DateTime: 2006-10-14 13:34:50

I'm guessing a few of you have read this thread at RAIF:

[url]http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/tree/browse_frm/thread/8c4cdabde14fbf8b/91ec08fa36c8feac?rnum=1&_done=%2Fgroup%2Frec.arts.int-fiction%2Fbrowse_frm%2Fthread%2F8c4cdabde14fbf8b%2F91ec08fa36c8feac%3F#doc_91ec08fa36c8feac[/url]

Does anyone have interest in planning a discussion schedule here? Or are there few benefits to doing something that formal?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=118&start=10#p1000
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: What's your review philosophy?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-14 13:44:26

I kind of prefer the all-out glut of uncoordinated discussion.

And as they say, you can't herd cats.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=118&start=10#p1001
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: What's your review philosophy?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-14 13:53:20

I've seen that thread. Can't see it working myself. Getting people to stagger their reviews in order to prompt discussion isn't likely to succeed unless *everyone* takes part. If even one person, and I suspect there'll be quite a few, decides to post their reviews early, the idea fails. And since when have the RAIF crowd been able to agree on anything? Not to mention that I don't think it's fair for the authors of games that came in X position to have to wait a month to see the reviews for their games. I certainly wouldn't want to wait.

Mine will be posted in one bit lump as soon as the Comp is over.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=43&start=20#p1002
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Dwarf Fortress and some other ramblings
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-14 17:36:13

There is a small bit about this game on page 152 of the November [color=#800080]Game Informer[/color] magazine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=24&start=10#p1003
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Interpreters!
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-15 06:23:22

I'm creating my game in Inform 7, and using the Frotz interpreter at the present time.  If possible I will be including graphics in a limited number of parts of the game so will need an interpreter that allows me to call graphics. 

However, I was also hoping to find an interpreter that will allow the player to highlight and copy text from the game (Upon completion of the game a code is generated that the player is then to enter somewhere online and rather than give them the option to mistype it, it would be very handy for them to be able to copy/paste it).

Is there an interpreter that will allow this?

Cheers

Mxx

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=24&start=10#p1004
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Interpreters!
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-10-15 15:32:37

[quote="murphyz"]
I'm creating my game in Inform 7, and using the Frotz interpreter at the present time.  If possible I will be including graphics in a limited number of parts of the game so will need an interpreter that allows me to call graphics.

However, I was also hoping to find an interpreter that will allow the player to highlight and copy text from the game (Upon completion of the game a code is generated that the player is then to enter somewhere online and rather than give them the option to mistype it, it would be very handy for them to be able to copy/paste it).
[/quote]  From the discussions I've been seeing, you might be better off switching your game to Glulx-format so you can call up graphics in your game. AFAIK, both the Git or the Glulxe 'terps have a "scrollback" function so the player can highlight selected text and copy/paste it somewhere.

When switched over to Glulx, ensure the story file has the extension .GLORB or .GLB, or even .BLB, so it will be picked up easily by the Glulxe/Git terps.

Hope that helps!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=120&start=0#p1005
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: I did it! My AI is alive!
User: George / DateTime: 2006-10-18 02:34:56

OK, just kidding. But a thread over in RAIF (partly) about Chris Crawford's Storytron engine got the wheels churning over NPC AI. 

There have been many discussions about AI on RAIF, searchable on the newsgroup or starting with this page:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Past_raif_topics:_NPCs_and_AI">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Past_ra ... PCs_and_AI</a>

And as for games, a starting reference:

<a class="postlink" href="http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/Site/Characters%20and%20Conversation.html">http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/Site ... ation.html</a>

Is anyone here familiar with these additional links?

<a class="postlink" href="http://tale-of-tales.com/DramaPrincess/index.html">http://tale-of-tales.com/DramaPrincess/index.html</a>

And as an aside in context of Crawford, this blog post by Chris Bateman:

<a class="postlink" href="http://onlyagame.typepad.com/only_a_game/2006/05/freespeak_remem.html">http://onlyagame.typepad.com/only_a_gam ... remem.html</a>

The Drama Princess journal is especially interesting to me in that the developers are concerned with creating the [i]appearance[/i] of intelligent NPCs, and model the behaviours based on this concern, rather than the concerns of other simulationist architectures. 

The reason why I'm posting this is that I'm planning to create a framework for engaging NPCs (I hope) bit by bit over several games, such that by the third or fourth game I could have something really good. Who knows of other good games to reference other than those on Short's literacy page? Other current projects? What are the relative potentials of state machines versus emergence from simulation rules?

In these fuzzy beginnings I don't [i]think[/i] I want to make a chatbot to pass the turing test. Conversation is a valuable element of IF but it's only a sub-element of engaging NPCs -- it's the engaging part I want to focus on. 

In any case I'm pretty much a novice in all these subjects so any pointers would be helpful. It would be great to aggregate all these sites into the ultimate IF NPC resource page too. Maybe the wiki is a good place for that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=120&start=0#p1006
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I did it! My AI is alive!
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-18 07:29:50

You might want to look for information on character AI not limited to Interactive Fiction, too. I have links (I think), but I'm running late for work and can't hunt for them at the moment (maybe tonight).

I've never written games where I wanted/needed the NPCs to have even a rudimentary AI. I've thought about it (especially for a larger game I'd like to write), but when I do, it seems that the pacing and flow would be disturbed by it. If players are able to interact with NPCs in bigger and better ways, but the point of the game isn't just these interactions or conversations, then it seems like a whole lot of work most players will either skip (and never see) or *not* skip (and get bogged down, not making progress in the story).

Maybe later, I'll change my mind (I do that a lot). At present, it seems that if you want well-implemented NPCs in a game, anything labeled "AI" is overkill. Code an ability for them to recognize things a player might do or say, and react in what appears to be a realistic way. I guess I lean more toward "fiction", where characters just need to be realistic enough to tell the story you want to tell, without necessarily needing a life of their own.

So... hmmm. I know you're looking for resources, not opinions. I'll shut up now. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=120&start=0#p1007
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I did it! My AI is alive!
User: George / DateTime: 2006-10-18 09:10:12

[quote="Merk"]
At present, it seems that if you want well-implemented NPCs in a game, anything labeled "AI" is overkill. Code an ability for them to recognize things a player might do or say, and react in what appears to be a realistic way. I guess I lean more toward "fiction", where characters just need to be realistic enough to tell the story you want to tell, without necessarily needing a life of their own.
[/quote] 

No, I agree with you Merk, I suppose I say AI because I don't know of another all-purpose term to describe it. AI does imply something very specifc though, doesn't it. We could call them reactive agents, say AGI (artificial general intelligence, not much better than saying AI), perhaps 'narrative intelligence' instead?

However to extend your example, I think not only should NPCs recognize and react, but that they can have their own goals, agendas, and so on to support the reaction -- which is nothing new, there seems to be at least a few coded games and extensions in this direction. I guess this gives them a life of their own in a certain sense, but I think it makes the game fiction more interesting. I'm not so interested in simulation for the sake of simulation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=120&start=0#p1008
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I did it! My AI is alive!
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-18 14:12:24

[quote]
No, I agree with you Merk, I suppose I say AI because I don't know of another all-purpose term to describe it. AI does imply something very specifc though, doesn't it. We could call them reactive agents, say AGI (artificial general intelligence, not much better than saying AI), perhaps 'narrative intelligence' instead?
[/quote] 
The term "AI" does get tossed around quite a lot. Good "AI" in a video game probably means the enemies are programmed to react to your movements, sounds, maybe try to anticipate your likely attack. Newer games are taking it further, so that NPCs will communicate this information to each other, manipulate the environment to reach their own goals, behave differently if they "feel" scared, brave, trapped, cavalier, etc.

In this sense, I think the concept of AI is dumbed down. These NPCs are still confined to their own narrow world view -- whether it's being a guard, or a soldier, etc. It's no benefit for the game if an NPC has knowleged about anything else. You don't need an NPC that (for instance) appreciates and can comment on art, in a typical first-person shooter. It will suffice to stuff them full of a few random bits of dialogue, without giving them detailed histories that are *actually* used to shape their character. So, AI becomes a matter of reaction and behavior, while the NPC itself is far less intelligent than my cat.

[quote]
However to extend your example, I think not only should NPCs recognize and react, but that they can have their own goals, agendas, and so on to support the reaction -- which is nothing new, there seems to be at least a few coded games and extensions in this direction. I guess this gives them a life of their own in a certain sense, but I think it makes the game fiction more interesting. I'm not so interested in simulation for the sake of simulation.
[/quote] 
I probably didn't say exactly what I meant, either. My first reply wasn't so much to say that "real" AI in a game is overkill. We're talking about the same kind of "lesser" AI, I think. I've just never envisioned a work of IF in which I *wanted* an NPC to have the ability to mess up the story. I guess that in itself would *make* an interesting story. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=88&start=20#p1009
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Baron - Discussion Thread *SPOILERS*
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-18 16:23:01

[quote="David Whyld"]
Hmmm... that *might* have been a good idea actually.

Unfortunately, I think the game of the month idea has died out. I started playing [b]All Hope Abandon[/b] but didn't finish it, and now the IFComp is upon us I probably won't get chance to have a play in the next month or so.
[/quote]   

I actually intended to always contact the authors of the games, but I missed it. Which is a shame, since it really would have been a great opportunity. My apologies to all participants, and especially to Victor Gijsbers.

And yes, the IF Comp seems to have subdued the game of the month. If anyone wants to carry on with it afterwards, please feel free. It's unfortune, but I won't/don't have any time for it :-/

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=30#p1010
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-18 16:25:52

The Spring Thing now accepts intents to enter: [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/d66d15cc3e075d4b/d7f537760c714392#d7f537760c714392]Google Groups[/url] or [url=http://www.springthing.net/2007/]springthing.net[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=120&start=0#p1011
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I did it! My AI is alive!
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-18 21:37:15

Here are some links I found in my bookmarks:

<a href="http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~amitp/gameprog.html#ai">http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~am ... og.html#ai</a>
<a href="http://www.gamedev.net/reference/list.asp?categoryid=18">http://www.gamedev.net/reference/list.asp?categoryid=18</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=24&start=10#p1012
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Interpreters!
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-21 05:02:54

Thanks for the advice.  When I attempt to run the game in Glulx I get an error, which I understand is known about and will be fixed in the next release of I7...so I will wait until then to switch over and add the images. 

Cheers

Mxx

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=24&start=10#p1013
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Interpreters!
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-10-21 11:49:42

[quote="murphyz"]
Thanks for the advice.  When I attempt to run the game in Glulx I get an error, which I understand is known about and will be fixed in the next release of I7...so I will wait until then to switch over and add the images.
[/quote] No problem. It's too bad there hasn't been a lot of work made from the V6 part of the Z-machine, but that's usually the advice given in the newsgroups for authors wanting to use graphics in something like Inform.

Good luck!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=0#p1014
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: An IF Hype Website
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-26 09:32:37

I have an idea.

There are a lot of IF sites out there -- personal blogs, the IF-Wiki, review sites, forums, the archive, BAF's guide, Parsifal, XYZZY News, SPAG.... I mean, lots. Each one kind of has its own purpose and focus.

There aren't really any IF hype sites, though, unless I've overlooked them. What I mean is, a news/reporting site for promoting works in progress, general IF news and announcements, etc. A place where the admin (or editors) could post interviews, inside info about upcoming games, authoring systems, interpreters, etc. Basically, everything that hypes up Interactive Fiction. There are a lot of sites like this for other kinds of games.

I've gone so far as to register a domain name for this (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifhype.org">http://www.ifhype.org</a>" target="_blank -- correct DNS routing in the works). I guess I didn't really need a whole new domain -- it could have become the intfiction.org main page.

So, would any of you be interested in (a) visiting a site that strives to cover IF hype (news, announcements, interviews, etc), and possibly (b) participating as a poster/reporter? The site probably either needs a blog program or a news program, to make it easy to maintain by multiple people.

Ideas? Opinions? Volunteers? Which would be better for the site -- [color=#BF0000]ifhype.org[/color] or [color=#BF0000]intfiction.org[/color]? Would "hype" give negative connotations?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=0#p1015
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-10-26 11:14:38

I'd prefer the "www.intfiction.org" one. Something about "hype" doesn't sit well with me.

Besides, that would make identifying this forum much better with a site like what you're proposing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=0#p1016
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2006-10-26 12:16:12

It is not as active as it once was, but that's what I have done in the past with Brass Lantern (<a href="http://brasslantern.org/">http://brasslantern.org/</a>)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=0#p1017
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-26 13:11:57

[quote="Sargent"]
It is not as active as it once was, but that's what I have done in the past with Brass Lantern ([url]http://brasslantern.org/[/url])
[/quote]   Why do I keep getting brasslantern.org confused with <a href="mailto:IntFiction@About.com">IntFiction@About.com</a> ? You ran that, but it's gone now, right? Maybe that's why. Did brasslantern.org come about after your page on about.com was removed? Or something along those lines?

This is already a lot like what I mean. There are times, especially this time of the year, when I'm really interested in lots of IF news. I search for IF websites, read articles and interviews, etc.

What I'd like to see is news with a few volunteers to coordinate articles, interviews, posts, etc. Info about upcoming games. Maybe even rumors about upcoming games. Something more than the main/important headlines -- stuff that most might not even care about, like interviews with lower-placing IFComp authors. The headlines, sure (Inform 7 public beta, IFComp begins, etc), but also a hodgepodge of IF hype. News submitted by readers. Features and editorials. Previews. A lot of the same stuff brasslantern already does (with similar categories for each post), but with the date/time posted (like a news/blog feed), and with articles/announcements of lesser importance, too.

What I like about one gaming website I visit ([url]http://www.mpogd.com[/url]) is that they cover independent MPOGs as well. Big gaming sites don't care about browser-based games, and the forums never discuss them. Something like an ifhype.org would (I hope) be a little like that. If the 20th-place entrant from a prior IFComp is working on a new non-comp game and can provide a little preview, it could be posted.

In a way, though, all of that can be done here in the forum already. Even though I think it would be cool to have a more official "news" page for articles and interviews and news and so forth, maybe it's not even something we really need. Trying to cover everything on a news page could be a little overwhelming if most of the articles are updates on the progress of the next PA Panks game, or worthless interviews with IF author newbies who have little more to say than "woo! IF rules!"

Am I talking myself out of the idea already? [emote]:([/emote]

I guess the worst that could happen is some content gets added, everybody loses interest, and it goes dormant. The content would still be there for posterity.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=0#p1018
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-26 15:06:22

Sounds like an interesting idea and I wouldn't mind contributing some reviews to it, or even an article or two if I could think of what to write.

But I agree that IFHype might not be the best name for it. When I think of 'hype', I generally picture something that isn't much good but which is being promoted incessantly with the idea of conning people into buying it before they realise how bad it really is. This is a totally different idea but at the same time, I don't see IFHype working well as a name.

But other than that, it seems like a great idea.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=0#p1019
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-26 15:19:32

Anybody recommend good (free?) linux-based server software that'll work with Apache 2, for handling this kind of website? I doubt there's a need to write something from scratch. A blog program might be good enough, but maybe something more news-oriented would be better. Any suggestions?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=0#p1020
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-10-26 16:39:40

[quote="Merk"]
A blog program might be good enough, but maybe something more news-oriented would be better. Any suggestions?
[/quote] Something like what Slashdot uses, perhaps? Not sure if it's Linux-based or if it's even [i]that[/i] free, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=0#p1021
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-26 18:03:07

That sounds like a fantastic idea, but it's one that will either be brilliant or really rubbish. It all depends on how much effort people put into making it work, how organised it is and how often it gets updated. This idea works in some communities and not others: we have to work out whether this community is one it will work for.

If it's updated regularly (at least every day) with fun and quirky articles, I think it'd make a great site that everyone in the community could gather round and want to be a part of. I'd certainly want to read and contribute.

Another possible concern I can think of at the moment is whether there's enough content to make this vibrant and regular. There are only so many games released, only so many authors, only so many events. I'm not sure, but I'm pretty new to the IF community, so I don't have the best perspective in terms of feasibility.

Thanks!
CP

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=0#p1022
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: George / DateTime: 2006-10-26 21:05:42

[quote="Celestianpower"]
Another possible concern I can think of at the moment is whether there's enough content to make this vibrant and regular. There are only so many games released, only so many authors, only so many events. I'm not sure, but I'm pretty new to the IF community, so I don't have the best perspective in terms of feasibility.
[/quote] 

I think many of the game hype sites work well because there is a steady stream of commercial as well as hobby content. [url]Http://www.adventuregamers.com[/url] is a good example. 

However there are other mostly hobby sites that see a lot of action, though forums have a lot to do with that. For example the mudding community (not without its commercial side but strongly hobbyist) has at least three major 'hype' sites that stay active. Though I admit these sites mainly exist on commercial banner ads. Nevertheless these sites thrive on (1) forums, and (2) game ranking/voting. 

I like the Brass Lantern site a lot. Sargent, do you have any interest in incorporating Merk's ideas into your site? Merk, do you specifically want to start with a clean slate to build the kind of site you're talking about?
XYZZY isn't active these days too. 

The IF scene lacks the 'real-time' action of commercial banner ads and current game rankings. However I think there's no lack of content as Merk said. Perhaps this site could do two things:

1) add its own fresh content in articles, interviews, reviews, editorials. 

2) act as a portal, site aggregator, and community site by alerting people to the fresh content on [i]other[/i] sites. So you would have 'reporters' who don't really report new content but provide links to sites. Or you could use RSS feeds and reporters in combination. 

And it goes without saying, in the future such a site could potentially provide a space for commercial ads. Perhaps this would rule out Brass Lantern. 

So yeah, I think this is a good idea and I would help. 

Also here's a good site that lets you play with open source CMSs:

[url]http://opensourcecms.com[/url]

Can someone think of another site that would be a good analogue for a site like Merk describes? All the sites I can think of, like the big writing portals, craft portals, whatever, have too many dissimilarities to the IF community to be a good example in my mind (the dissimilarities being amount of content and the commercial content).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=0#p1023
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-26 22:21:39

It doesn't have to be a clean slate. I'd join up with an existing site. I just figured it would be more palatable to start something new, rather than convince somebody else to change how they're already doing things.

I wouldn't really want to run commercial ads. I've done some targeted banner ads on MPOGD.COM with good results, but I advertised an online game on a site where people go when they want to search for online games. It's a good fit. Probably nobody is going to pay to run an IF ad on an IF site, and anything else would be silly. The whole "visit our sponsor" shtick has always seemed like a scam to me. Back when it was profitable, advertisers were paying lots for no real results, and now to earn anything you have to offer up so many ads that it really -- to me -- ruins a site's credibility. I mean this as no offense to anybody running ad-funded websites. It probably makes sense for the top dogs. It's just not something I'd want to do on a site of my own. I run personal sites on the server that's used for my online games, and the online games pay for it. So everybody wins. [emote]Smile[/emote]

That's not to say we couldn't run *fake* ads. Well, not fake really -- but ads that are funded by participation. Contribute good articles, interviews, etc, and get advertising space for your own game or IF-related website. That type of deal. But something IF-related. Like a banner for your game. Not a banner for something other than IF.

It would need to be updated frequently. I can already see the forum visitation dropping off. It's kind of interesting to watch. People return, see nothing new, and the more they see nothing new, the less frequently they return. An IF hype site would definitely need daily content (links to IF announcements, etc), with frequent "feature" content. It's something that would only work, I think, with several active volunteers (so... thanks in advance!).

I've had a busy work schedule (working Saturdays, even), but I might be able to get something set up on Sunday. If nobody is in favor of <a href="http://www.ifhype.org">http://www.ifhype.org</a> (which I personally kinda like), then it could fit in well at the <a href="http://www.intfiction.org/">http://www.intfiction.org/</a> main page. I'd need to come up with a logo, a style, install blog/news software (and learn how to customize a theme), get manager accounts set up... hmm, might take longer than a day. [emote]Smile[/emote] I can do emails @intfiction.org pretty easy, to legitimize the editors/contributors.

Then it would evolve, as it struggles for the right balance of content.

One thing I don't like to see on sites I visit -- but it happens -- is the same game mentioned frequently. I don't fault those guys for getting as much exposure as they can, but when there are 12 front-page news topics and four of them are about the same thing (Game X just had a birthday, then Game X is offering a new-player incentive. then Game X adds a new module, then... yeah) it starts to look like there just isn't enough news to go around. Those examples may not apply to IF, but I could see the possiblity of monopolies if any single contributor becomes the dominant contributor. I'd like to see diversity.

I really like the layout of the AdventureGamers website. At first it seems a little overwhelming, but they have an area for features, an area for news, a "hype-o-meter" area, links to the latest reviews, and even links to the latest active forum topics. I like the pic/screenshot beside the features, although that'd be a little hard when most IF features would be about text-based games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=10#p1024
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: George / DateTime: 2006-10-27 02:51:47

That's a cool idea about trading banner ad space for contributions to the site. Also when I talk about commercial ads I do mean for IF related content. Really what I meant was in the case of some hypothetical IF publisher, they could run ads. Or maybe someone like Tessman or Nepstead would want to work out a deal of some kind. 

Which begs the question: do you sell ad space to Malinche? [emote];)[/emote]

I've thought a little bit about what content you could refresh daily. This is the sticking point. Could you:

o  Pull topic headlines from raif?
o  RSS feeds from blogs?
o  Aggregate download statistics from ifarchive? Also top download?
o  Polls?
o  A daily contest of some kind -- perhaps a puzzle?

Especially curious about the third one. 

Another thing to think about is how much interactivity you want to fold into the site. Are there user accounts? A full-fledged social network with private messaging, friends lists, etc.? How could you create a history for each member and make their experience unique? A favorite games list? Recommended games -- a games library shelf? In a way some of this interactivity [i]could[/i] stand in for a proportionate lack of much fresh daily content, i.e. instead of going to the site every day to read the news, you go to add another game to your library shelf.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=10#p1025
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-27 05:03:50

I think all of that is good, but we, in my opinion, definitely need daily news content if it's going to work. It doesn't matter how small or quirky it is, just so long as it's fresh.

CP

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=10#p1026
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-27 06:14:59

It could have more interactivity -- the right software would allow for that (although we might be getting out of the realm of free packages). With the forum integrated the way it is on AdventureGamers, that might be enough for starters.

I could just write something of my own to do exactly what we need -- starting simple, and then adding features over time. At a minimum, it would need a way for reporters to classify a story (review, intereview, news, feature, preview/hype, etc) and post it. It would need to roll older topics to the archive (or just display the most recent -- everything else is inherently archived). It would need reporter username and password checking (even if the accounts are added manually by me, at first).

It probably wouldn't take long to get something simple up and going. Later (although maybe not *much* later), it could maybe share sign-ups with the forum (so I wouldn't have to re-invent that), allowing for customized top-10 lists and personal links, etc. It might be fun to work on a project like this, even if it means it wouldn't be ready this Sunday. [emote]Smile[/emote]

I'm going to try to line up an interview or two, ahead of time. We'll probably want a reporters-only board here (hidden/private) for talking about feature stories, etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=10#p1027
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-27 07:35:14

[quote="Merk"]
It could have more interactivity -- the right software would allow for that (although we might be getting out of the realm of free packages). With the forum integrated the way it is on AdventureGamers, that might be enough for starters.

I could just write something of my own to do exactly what we need -- starting simple, and then adding features over time. At a minimum, it would need a way for reporters to classify a story (review, intereview, news, feature, preview/hype, etc) and post it. It would need to roll older topics to the archive (or just display the most recent -- everything else is inherently archived). It would need reporter username and password checking (even if the accounts are added manually by me, at first).

It probably wouldn't take long to get something simple up and going.
[/quote] 

Sounds fabulous! It's always good to see how the thing will work, before committing loads of time to it. I'll look forward to it!

CP

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=10#p1028
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-27 07:41:00

[quote="George"]
o  Pull topic headlines from raif?
o  RSS feeds from blogs?
o  Aggregate download statistics from ifarchive? Also top download?
o  Polls?
o  A daily contest of some kind -- perhaps a puzzle?
[/quote] 
I wrote a CGI poll program -- still distribute it, although it's kind of behind the times now. It wouldn't be hard to add something like that.

I've never done an RSS feed. I'd have to research that.

Getting topic headlines from newsgroups is possible. It's also something I'd have to research.

A contest or puzzle would be fun, but if it's unique/original for IntFiction, it would probably be an effort to come up with something every day.

I think the download statistics of the IF Archive are in a plain-text file that's updated periodically. It would be possible to run a cron that grabs it, parses it, and "does something" with the results. It seems like the last time I went looking for that file, I couldn't find it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=10#p1029
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-10-27 11:49:01

Updates on the IF Archive (like what David Kinder does every now and then) could also be added on the news content. If the Babel Treaty becomes more-or-less a standard for most IF pieces out there, the game description and/or "About" screens could also be a nice addition, so both newbies and veterans could check the new games available.

News about the Archive itself (moving to a new server, etc.) could also be posted there, though this happens rarely.

Articles on the Archive about IF systems (comparison, etc.) could also use some updating, and it could probably be posted here. A general feature article on, say, TADS 3, that provides links to other related articles on the Web (the TADS site, on IF Wiki). People like Eric Eve or Emily Short might be the best ones to provide insight on this, since they're the ones who usually provide help (but I'm not necessarily volunteering them [emote]Smile[/emote]).

Maybe we could also get that guy from the newsgroups who usually posts about new IF-related thingies from the Web [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=10#p1030
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2006-10-27 13:41:50

[quote="Merk"]
[quote="Sargent"]
It is not as active as it once was, but that's what I have done in the past with Brass Lantern ([url]http://brasslantern.org/[/url])
[/quote]    Why do I keep getting brasslantern.org confused with <a href="mailto:IntFiction@About.com">IntFiction@About.com</a> ? You ran that, but it's gone now, right? Maybe that's why. Did brasslantern.org come about after your page on about.com was removed? Or something along those lines?
[/quote] 

You've got it. After About pulled the plug on my IF page there, I moved the content to Brass Lantern and kept going.

If people would like to contribute, I'd be happy to let them do so. I use a simple news form to enter news and generate the RSS feed. If you'd like to enter news, let me know and I can give you access to it. Ditto any articles. I used to write all of the articles on BL, but these days I don't have the time for it that I used to.

The benefit of building off of BL is that it's already got a high Google ranking and is linked to from various other IF sites.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=10#p1031
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Ken Franklin / DateTime: 2006-10-27 13:44:33

You could try [url=http://www.e107.org/]E107[/url] which is a fairly good CMS that I have used for a couple of years now.  It is fairly simple to set up and run. There is a way of integrating phpbb with a [url=http://e107coders.org/download.php?view.1405]plugin[/url], though it appears not to allow import of users from phpbb (and e107 does have it's own forum).

I have tried a few other CMS, but keep returning to E107 because it dows what I want.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=10#p1032
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-27 20:12:29

[quote="Sargent"]
The benefit of building off of BL is that it's already got a high Google ranking and is linked to from various other IF sites.
[/quote] 
I'd be worried that a lot of what I'd want to post would be too trivial, or that it would just be too much too often. Not that my idea calls for something disorganized, but.... hard to explain. I'd kind of feel like a squatter. [emote]:)[/emote]

Then again, it'd be easier than managing a new site myself.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=88&start=20#p1033
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Baron - Discussion Thread *SPOILERS*
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-28 11:46:39

Well... this was a notable piece of IF... I personally didn't find it very compelling or interesting AT FIRST, though it more or less redeemed itself in the end. 

There's a persistent theme of shock-value and a dependency on the novelty of the plot to the reader throughout the whole work that is really distracting and actually ends up making everything more shallow than it could be.

The thing about writing for the shock value is that you are guaranteed to get a strong response .... out of readers who have never encountered the shocking theme in writing before. Certainly, the first time I read a piece about a little girl being abused I was rocked to my core. And the second. And even the third, a little bit; after that, not so much. As a reader who is familiar with the setup-followthrough in this type of story, I knew it the second I opened the album in the closet (on my first playthrough) and read the picture descriptions. My thoughts were along the line of, 'Ok, there's going to be some abuse on that girl going on ... let's see what he does with it'. But the game never actually does anything with it, it just keeps sort of waving it around in front of your face going 'oooohhh child abuuusseee scaryy! aren't you disturbed?? ooohh' etc. I would have liked to see the theme incorporated intelligently into some story with some real meaning. As it is, the game is so fascinated with itself that it just kind of forgets to actually go anywhere.

I'm reminded of the IF game M.U.L.E., where at the beginning of the game, you end up thinking, 'Oh cool, there's going to be some dealing with the concepts of slavery through the game, let's see what happens', and later on you realize, nothing really happens, the game just keeps showing you slavery over and over in hopes of just shocking you senseless with it.

Another theme that struck me was the 'What is evil really?' theme. Again, another theme that compels people who have never come across it before, yet bores people who have already dealt with it. For example, a roleplayer who enjoys D&D from time to time will sooner or later, inevitably, end up asking themselves that question. 'Dude, but what if I steal bread to feed my family, would that really be evil? But what if I'm insane and I think that people are really demons and I'm working for good by killing them is that evil? What if I'm under a spell or what if I can't help myself from resisting the temptation and I'm just weak, is it really evil?' etc. I found myself going through the dialogs thinking, yeah, I get it, people who do evil sometimes can't help it, you can repent what you did, to know all is to forgive all, it's all shades of gray... what else? Well.. nothing else. That's it.

Yet another theme I found trite was the '...and the villain is YOU' theme. Man. If ever there was an overplayed theme in writing, that's it. Just to show how overwritten it really is, I'll quote a piece from someone else's review of a completely different game, one in this year's IFComp even, though obviously I won't give away which one: "The ending is of a type seen in just about every creative writing class ever given since the dawn of time - with every author believing themselves the first to do it.  Not since Agatha Christie wrote a first-person murder mystery where the narrator was also the villain has this sort of twist been original by any stretch of the word." Yep.

So, the one theme which I found interesting was a more subtle question which the game poses, which is basically, what if nothing is resolved by the time you finish the game? Can a story really be a story without resolving the conflict that drives it? What about a story where the characters *don't* learn, where they *don't* grow, where they just keep going like they always have, will it work? That is a theme not commonly posed or dealt with, in what I've come across.

I'm reminded of a scene in the movie, Adaptation, where Nicholas Cage poses the exact same question to a writing coach, and the coach goes into a very passionate monologue where he answers that basically, yes you can have a story like that, and it can be compelling and interesting in your head, as a kind of intellectual excercise, BUT ultimately it has no bearing on the real world where people live and suffer and learn every single day of their lives, and how DARE he try to disconnect himself from the world like that in such an act of arrogance and selfishness, etc.

This is where the game actually does something interesting, I think. It uses interactive fiction's very nature to give the player a choice in whether the conflict will have a resolution or not. Thus you can choose: will you have a story in which the character learns and grows, or a story in which there IS no learning, and where everything stays the same and everyone continues to suffer without overcoming it? In giving that choice, even though the choice may seem superficial and arbitrary on the part of the player ('Yeap I conquered my lust, yessir..') it still makes you think, 'why am I choosing this? Is it because I believe it can happen or solely because I want a resolution? Am I cheating myself here?' And in doing so, I think the game ultimately succeeds in what it set out to do, though it took a dry and trying road to get there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=88&start=20#p1034
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Baron - Discussion Thread *SPOILERS*
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-28 20:31:35

[quote="Tropico"]
This is where the game actually does something interesting, I think. It uses interactive fiction's very nature to give the player a choice in whether the conflict will have a resolution or not. Thus you can choose: will you have a story in which the character learns and grows, or a story in which there IS no learning, and where everything stays the same and everyone continues to suffer without overcoming it? In giving that choice, even though the choice may seem superficial and arbitrary on the part of the player ('Yeap I conquered my lust, yessir..') it still makes you think, 'why am I choosing this? Is it because I believe it can happen or solely because I want a resolution? Am I cheating myself here?' And in doing so, I think the game ultimately succeeds in what it set out to do, though it took a dry and trying road to get there.
[/quote] 

Interesting point. I found the "what's your motivation?" type questions to be most interesting when they affected the outcome that was described (as in the midgame decisions about why to kill the animal in the woods), and the ones at the end of the game a bit more disappointing. But your remarks are making me reconsider this. In our own lives, we never reach a point where we know for certain that we've reached a happy ending or resolved something permanently. Sometimes we think we've conquered a problem and later turn out to be wrong; that's especially true when the problem is some kind of addiction or habitual behavior we're trying to get rid of. 

So perhaps this ending -- where we're allowed to determine what we think has happened, but the game doesn't offer any feedback or affirmation that it definitely *worked* -- is more appropriate than I originally thought.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=88&start=20#p1035
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Baron - Discussion Thread *SPOILERS*
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-28 22:52:51

[quote="emshort"]
In our own lives, we never reach a point where we know for certain that we've reached a happy ending or resolved something permanently. Sometimes we think we've conquered a problem and later turn out to be wrong; that's especially true when the problem is some kind of addiction or habitual behavior we're trying to get rid of.
[/quote]   

Exactly. As game critics (and really, you can't *not* turn into a critic after playing a few pieces of IF - there's just something about the medium..) we want the player's choices to have a consequence and ending D reached by making choices A, B and C. Even as in our own lives we stumble from day to day mostly repeating the same patterns and habits, we reach for that lacking finality in these stories and games... only in this particular one, the author holds up a hand, and goes, 'Maybe not my friend... maybe not.' Which I found a bit thought-provoking.

Also, even though it was not significant enough to include in my original review, I'd like to add that I found the Dragon-as-Lust analogy extremely apt, and the whole metaphor of its lair to be very well done.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=47&start=10#p1037
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good games for beginners?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-28 23:33:11

Even though this is not a recent thread I'd like to add mine:

A Bear's Night Out
Glowgrass
Winter Wonderland
The 'Earth & Sky' games
Heroes
Metamorphoses
My Angel
The 'Frenetic Five' games
Babel

These are all fun, straightforward, enjoyable adventure games, with some puzzles, some story, high quality writing, and satisfying endings. If I had to pick one and only one out of all of those, I'd go with Earth & Sky for sure.

To me, just because we're talking about newcomers to IF doesn't mean you need to go puzzle-less. People are smart. I would rather go with middle-of-the-road, fun games which show the possibilities of the medium in both story and gameplay without getting hung up on experimentation and pushing the envelope too much.

I would hesitate to introduce someone with Baron, Shade, Bedlam, Vespers, Kaged, Roads, or any of the philosophical / heavy games -unless- I already know that they enjoy that kind of reading.

There are exceptions of course (Hey, I learned IF on Infocom's 'Suspect' and 'StarCross' which my dad misguidedly bought me, they are pretty much the most hopelessly difficult pieces of IF you will -ever- find -anywhere-, I have never solved one single puzzle in either one, but I still had a blast and turned out alright IF-wise [emote]Smile[/emote] ) In the end it comes down similar to recommending a book to a friend: you have to know what they like. But if in doubt, these games are representative of typical -good- pieces of IF.

--Edit: Also, all these games have something which is critical for newcomers, I think: Pacing and goal-orientation. From the very beginning you are told, 'This is your goal. That's where you gotta go do it. Go.' Instead of, 'You wake up in your room.  ... Now what?' Which can be really frustrating for a first-time player. Not to say some of the 'heavy' games don't have good pacing, but in general.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=122&start=0#p1038
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: A Crimson Spring
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-29 13:31:30

[b]A Crimson Spring[/b] by Robb Sherwin

A Hugo game.

[b]A Crimson Spring[/b] was entered in the IFComp 2000 where it came 23rd out of 53 entries, hardly an impressive showing for what is otherwise a reasonably decent superhero caper. I'm guessing the adult tone put some people off, or maybe the judges of the IFComp in 2000 just weren’t fond of the superhero genre.

You're the star of the piece, the superhero known as Holy Defender, boyfriend of Red Cloud who, as the game begins, has been brutally murdered by persons unknown. Being a superhero, you're not the type to sit back and let the police catch her killers, so off you go to find them.

[b]A Crimson Spring[/b] is a very linear game. Normally I'm not too fond of linear games as I don’t like being forced along a set path and not being able to choose where I go and what I do, but here the linearity is handled much better than usual. I was a good halfway through the game before I realised how linear it was; a positive thing. Most of the actions I took seemed perfectly reasonable at the time so there was seldom a feeling that I was being forced to do things and didn’t have the freedom to take other actions if I decided to, and even when I became aware that that was precisely the case, it didn’t ruin my enjoyment of the game. Saying that, I *would* have preferred a bit more freedom to roam around and pick and choose what I could do. After a particularly large fight in a nightclub with several supervillains, I was quite looking forward to being able to track them down and finish them off once and for all. Unfortunately, the game had other ideas and most of them I never laid eyes on again. A pity really, as the ones who never put in another appearance were the more interesting ones.

The game comes with sound and graphics. The sound I can’t speak of because I always play IF games with the volume off (sorry, it’s just plain distracting), the graphics were okay-ish in a comic book drawing kind of way. The drawings of the locations were quite cool, but the drawings of the superheroes and supervillains left a lot to be desired and often looked to be the kind of thing I might have drawn myself back in my nursery school days. Still, they weren’t *that* bad and at least gave me something to look at. They also, despite their amateurish appearance, gave the game a more professional feeling. Don’t ask me why amateurish drawings should make a game seem more professional, but they do.

As for the main character, the Holy Avenger, the main problem I had with him is that for a superhero he’s not very super. Or super at all. His co-superheroes have amazing powers that let them fly, make themselves invulnerable to harm and the like. The supervillains likewise have powers that set them aside from the average guy in the street [Some of the powers are kind of unusual and not really superhero/supervillain powers as such (the AIDS Archer just has a bow and some special arrows) but at least they're a bit better than what our main character gets.] What does our hero, the main character of the piece, have?

A steel pipe.

Yep, that’s it. He can’t fly, he can’t leap over tall buildings with a single bound, he doesn’t have x-ray vision and cool webs don’t shoot from his wrists at will. He doesn’t even have any cool gadgets like Batman. He is, basically, just a guy in a silly outfit who carries around a steel pipe and hits people with it. Not very super at all. In fact, the Holy Avenger doesn’t really act like a superhero for most of the time. Early in the game, I had to get access to a nightclub where several supervillains were hanging out. Despite trying several different ways, the only thing I could thing to do that worked was to beat the bouncer on the door unconscious (thus making use of the steel pipe which, after all, isn't entirely useless). I'm sure Captain America never acted like this. 

At times, the game seems to go into auto-pilot mode with huge swathes of text scrolling past while the player takes no action. When trying to get into the apartment of one of the supervillains, I got captured. There followed a lengthy sequence of events with the supervillains debating what they were going to do with me, interrupted by the timely arrival of one of my superhero accomplices who promptly beat the living daylights out of them and rescued me… all without me doing anything except occasionally tapping a key to move on to the next block of text. While having the action taken out of my hands saved me figuring out what to do, I’d have preferred the option to at least try and escape on my own. Taking the interactive side out of interactive fiction kind of defeats the point. Perhaps the game was written to a tight deadline, which would explain huge blocks of easy-to-write-and-program text filling the screen instead of a more interactive piece.

Content-wise, [b]A Crimson Spring[/b] is more adult than most superhero games I've played. Which is to say that while the superheroes and villains all have silly names and wear silly outfits, they're a little more down to earth and believable than the likes of Superman and the Hulk. I'm not sure whether that’s a good or a bad thing, though. Part of me likes the idea of superheroes being larger than life. When they're shown to be the same as you or me, they don’t seem half as interesting. But while the game itself might be more adult in content than your average superhero yarn, it’s no more realistic or plausible. One of the strangest parts was when I found several supervillains calmly hanging out in a nightclub.

Supervillains? Hanging out? In a nightclub?

These are people generally involved in schemes that could leave hundreds of thousands of people dead and dying, who are wanted by every law enforcement agency there is, who are often plotting to blow the world up for one reason or another, and yet here they are hanging around in a nightclub as if they haven’t got a care in the world. Even more strange is the fact that no one else in the nightclub seems at all concerned over this – and the supervillains, let’s face it, don’t exactly blend into a crowd. One of them is called the AIDS Archer and carries around a bow and arrows loaded with life-threatening diseases, yet none of the partygoers in the nightclub were bothered by this. Perhaps even stranger still, when the big fight in the nightclub ensues, with superhero and –villain powers being thrown all over the place and people being knocked unconscious at a rapid rate, none of the passersby even bother fleeing the club. 

I finished the game with a little help from an online forum (the snot cage puzzle* really had me flummoxed) but failed to reach a decent ending. After checking the walkthrough, I discovered one of the commands required to reach a decent ending is SEARCH ROOM. Hardly the most intuitive command in the world of IF gaming and one I'm not surprised I didn’t figure out for myself. Still, it’s possible to get to *an* ending without use of the SEARCH ROOM command so I'm complaining too loudly about it.

* Yes, a snot cage puzzle. Created by a supervillain called Mucous Man. I kid you not.

Overall, I like [b]A Crimson Spring[/b]. It had its fair share of flaws, and there were enough things I could point out about it that needed fixing and/or improving, but it had a certain charm that appealed to me. While not a perfect game by any means, it certainly deserved to fare better then 23rd in the IFComp 2000.

[b]6 out of 10[/b]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=10#p1039
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-29 14:45:14

*BUMP*

Is this idea going ahead then? It seems like a good one, and could well work, but discussion seems to have dwindled a little over the past few days.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=20#p1040
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-29 14:50:55

Yeah, I've been working on the layout today, and I might have a fake home page online later tonight. I doubt I'll have the news-posting script or the "most active forum topics" script done by then, but I'm trying. [emote]Smile[/emote]

I'm designing to make the most use of 1024x768 resolution. I'm torn though, because I should *probably* target 800x600. In the past, I've written sites that auto-resize (the main contents area fills up the rest of the space, while the sidebar(s) are fixed). I'm not doing that with this site, due to the way I've done the title header, but... I don't know. I guess I'll get this done and see how it looks first.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=122&start=0#p1041
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Crimson Spring
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-29 19:12:44

[quote="David Whyld"]
[b]A Crimson Spring[/b] was entered in the IFComp 2000 where it came 23rd out of 53 entries, hardly an impressive showing for what is otherwise a reasonably decent superhero caper. I'm guessing the adult tone put some people off, or maybe the judges of the IFComp in 2000 just weren’t fond of the superhero genre.
[/quote]  

I can't speak for anyone else, and I didn't even vote in that comp because I'd entered myself. But I did have a bunch of trouble with the mechanical design of the game: the SEARCH ROOM thing you mentioned got me stuck for quite a while, and I was annoyed when I found out that that was what I was supposed to do next, because it was underhinted. I also found the handling of combat confusing and irritating. Puzzles weren't clued very well, there were points where the game felt buggy, the text output sometimes didn't give me a clear understanding of what was happening, and so on. I found it hard to appreciate the content of the game because the play experience was so rocky. 

If other people felt the same way, that might explain it. I do like Robb's writing, but I think the IF mechanics are stronger in his later work, and strongest of all where he's collaborated with another programmer.

I also was playing on a system that didn't display the sound or graphics, so I had only the text to work with. Possibly the images would have helped to some degree.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=122&start=0#p1042
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Crimson Spring
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-29 20:02:05

I don't know why but I remember I found the whole steel pipe thing hilarious. The whole thing had an atmosphere of 'Don't think about it too much' which I liked. The Search Room did not get me stuck but that was only because I am used to typing that specifically when I get stuck... I don't remember exactly what taught me that but, pretty sure it was a commonly (but wrongly of course) used thing 8-10 years ago in IF.

Also remember a bunch of times when characters would speak to me as if I was supposed to know some things which clearly had never happened to me in the game.

In the end I agree that it's a fine game that entertains and deserves to be played, if you can get past the awkwardness, especially if you don't need a lot of meaning form a game but just a well-done dark atmoshpere and grittyness.

I don't know about it deserving to be placed any higher in the 2000 Comp though, that comp was filled with a BUNCH of excellent games, so it was tough competition, and this game stumbled in enough places that there was no way it was going to be up there in the top spots.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=20#p1043
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-29 20:40:53

Here's the beginnings of my IntFiction site template:

<a href="http://www.intfiction.org/test/">http://www.intfiction.org/test/</a>

I want to put some kind of little graphic in the upper right-hand corner. I also need to figure out what all is going to go on the left-hand side bar. I need to write a simple CMS for allowing reporters to post news, auto-archive, etc. I'll need to write a script to grab the most recent forum topics too.

For the "features", I might come up with some kind of icon, or maybe we'll do a custom picture for each feature (kind of like at <a href="http://www.adventuregamers.com">http://www.adventuregamers.com</a>). I have separated features from the news/hype section, since features will take some time and planning where news posts come and go more frequently.

The "...More" link for news posts would either go to an IntFiction.org page will the full story, or if the news is just a reference to something elsewhere, a link to that other site.

Have I missed anything obvious? How's the layout? Totally hate it? (if so, please be prepared to show me an alternative [emote]Smile[/emote]).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=20#p1044
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: George / DateTime: 2006-10-29 22:11:10

hey, nice job Merk. 

I agree that it's good to give the whole page a small border to accomodate smaller browser windows or whatever. You'll notice that the Adventure Gamers site (not to use them for [i]every[/i] example, but anyway) maintains a narrow border around the page. On the other hand even my small screen ancient laptop has a good enough resolution to see the whole site. I don't know if you're concerned about mobile devices or what not; I don't know a lot about designing for accessibility standards. 

You could move the site menu bar to the left hand sidebar. Include a different icon to mark each type of feature as you said. If the feature has an obvious related graphic or art to go along with it, you could replace the icon with that. A search box definitely. 

On the top banner I would reduce the title banner to just a logo and smaller site title, and then use the rest of the space for an ad banner or some other cycled content. But hey, easy for me to say  [emote]Smile[/emote] . 

I had a few other ideas for content. Could you pull the WHO list from IFMud? Also in the left hand bar you could have a featured site of the day/week with a small graphic. And occasionally a featured thread from r.a.if, the ADRIFT forums, and so on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=20#p1045
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-29 23:05:02

I can use the area to the right of the logo to put a graphic -- even stretching from the cones over to the reddish area at the right. I hadn't really intended to start out with any kind of advertising banner, though. Maybe a little later, if it's something that links to other IF sites.

The border around the page is basically the rest of the document beyond the "table" that contains the site contents. On really high resolutions, you'll see a bigger empty area to both sides.

On the left, I'll probably put the site search, links to other IF sites (BrassLantern, the IFWiki, the review sites (there are at least two of them), the archive, the newsgroups, etc). There should probably be some links to pages for "what is IF" and "how to play IF" and that type of thing, even though I'm not really targeting this to newcomers. I think the site will be more useful to people already familiar with IF, kind of as an outlet for news and announcements.

Aside from features like interviews and previews, the rest of it will probably be things that are available elsewhere already -- news and announcements are just as likely be be posted to the newsgroups or the forum, or linked to the originating sites. For day-to-day news, I think a website like this isn't even needed.

I think some kind of statistics for the IFMud and/or the IF Archive could go on the right-hand side, under the active forum topics list (I can show fewer forum topics, so as not to bury other things too far down). This will take some reasearch, though. I would need to ask the MUD gurus if (a) it's okay to show a "who's on" list, and (b) it's even *possible* to do that. When I log in, there are usually a couple dozen others logged in, but everybody's usually idle or maybe talking on channels I'm not subscribed to. I don't know how relevant a "who's on" list would be.

A "who's on" for the forum might be good. The forum itself shows that at the bottom of the main page, so I can steal the query from there.

As for the IF Archive, I'll have to see if I can find that statistics file, grab it, and parse it. I'm not sure what kind of statistics would be the most interesting and/or useful. The "top downloads" might be interesting, if it could be tracked for the current day, or week, or month. It might prove to be the same ones over and over.

There is a lot the page could do, once the basic version is up. Maybe it could randomly pick a "game of the day" with a link to the archive. I know there are some areas lacking right now. The white space under the "features" section (to the right of the news list) might contain a chart or statistics for something. I kind of like the AdventureGamer's "Hype-o-Meter" but I don't know how that would really apply to IF. There would be room after 4 or 5 feature headings to do something there, though, if there is always a longer news list to the left.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=20#p1046
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-30 14:44:22

Looks nice.

So... when do we start adding content?  [emote]Shocked[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=122&start=0#p1047
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Crimson Spring
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-30 14:50:16

I never actually played the rest of the IFComp 2000 entries - I didn't get back into the IF scene until 2001 and it was 2002 before I was really aware of anything like the IFComp - but I felt the game deserved better than 23rd, which isn't a very good placing for what was otherwise a pretty decent game. Then again, maybe there's something about the number 23 and superhero games. My superhero entry from 2004 came 23rd. 

Emshort:
[quote]
I also was playing on a system that didn't display the sound or graphics, so I had only the text to work with. Possibly the images would have helped to some degree.
[/quote] 

I don't know if the images really helped. They *were* pretty bad images, after all, but at the same time they *seemed* to fit in with the game. I can't really explain it any better. Maybe they reminded me of all the superhero comics I used to read as a kid in which a good deal of the illustrations looked like they'd been done by a kid. Seeing amateurish pictures in the game made me think "ah, it's like that old Spider Man comic I used to read years ago" so perhaps I ended up liking the game more than I would have because of nostalgia clouding my better judgement.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=122&start=0#p1048
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Crimson Spring
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-30 15:25:51

[quote="David Whyld"]
I never actually played the rest of the IFComp 2000 entries - I didn't get back into the IF scene until 2001 and it was 2002 before I was really aware of anything like the IFComp - but I felt the game deserved better than 23rd, which isn't a very good placing for what was otherwise a pretty decent game.
[/quote] 

Possibly, but these rankings don't really mean the same thing every year. That comp had the most entries we've ever gotten. I also really liked Rameses (13th) and Dinner With Andre (18th), and I'd say most of the first thirty entries were at least competent.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=20#p1049
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-30 16:23:39

Heh!

Well, I'm going to try to work on the basic back-end tonight. It would be functional once that's done. What I want, though, is to not write my own account and login system. I want to piggyback off what the forum already does. That way, I could create a private "reporters" board here (for discussing upcoming features, etc) and allow anybody who is granted access to this private board the ability to use the news-posting script off the main page.

I figure the "active topics list" will be easy. I'll just have to make sure it's only including the public forums.

My work schedule is crazy right now. I'm doing overtime and Saturdays, leaving me without a lot of time to work on the site. Actually, I find myself with little time to do much of anything. To put it in perspective, I've played a whopping 9 IFComp games. Merk's reviews might not see the light of day this year.

I hope I can get something functional over the next two to four nights, so if you're going to volunteer as a reporter, you could always start getting news stuff ready now. [emote]Smile[/emote]

I have one interview lined up. I just need to figure out what kinds of questions to ask!

As for news, that takes a lot less planning. We'll just post about links to interesting IF news elsewhere (as we come across it), and post about whatever readers send in too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=20#p1050
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-10-30 16:39:22

Yeah, I have to second the others. Looks great [emote]Very Happy[/emote]

If I may add to the "game of the day" concept, I wonder if it's possible to pull off game information from something like IFWiki to introduce the game. Something like a precis should do very well, then a "Read More..." link could be set up to point to the game info on IFWiki.org.

Then again, there isn't a lot of game content on there yet. I should add some first [emote]Wink[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=20#p1051
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-30 16:45:47

It might be easier to get the info from BAF's guide, but I'd have to figure out how.

I can get download statistics for the archive easy enough. It seems to be uploaded monthly. The trick would be having it automatically figure out what's a game and what's some other kind of file.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=20#p1052
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-30 17:14:15

[quote="Merk"]
I hope I can get something functional over the next two to four nights, so if you're going to volunteer as a reporter, you could always start getting news stuff ready now. [emote]:)[/emote]
[/quote] 

I was actually volunteering as a reviewer and *maybe* part time reporter... what would reporting mean exactly? Just grabbing a few articles of interest in an IF fashion from around the internet and posting them on the site? Or something more in depth?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=20#p1053
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-30 17:35:33

[quote="David Whyld"]
I was actually volunteering as a reviewer and *maybe* part time reporter... what would reporting mean exactly? Just grabbing a few articles of interest in an IF fashion from around the internet and posting them on the site? Or something more in depth?
[/quote] 
Good question!

The answer is, I haven't thought that far ahead. [emote]:)[/emote] Initially, I figured everybody who volunteers would be a reporter. There wouldn't be an obligation -- basically, you'd be given the ability to post stuff (be it a news item, or a feature article, a review, or whatever). If you post nothing, then no harm done.

It probably *should* be organized fairly early on, though. We probably need some guidelines on what to post and not post, although anybody abusing it could be removed easily enough.

What might work is to find a few people who want to do different things. People to do reviews, people to write features, people to line up and handle interviews, and people to just keep an eye out on the IF world at large (and post news and links to news elsewhere).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=30#p1054
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-30 21:07:09

Update: I worked on the database and the posting script (a little) tonight. Not as much progress as I would have liked.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=30#p1055
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: George / DateTime: 2006-10-30 21:55:30

Well, it's a wonder to me you're moving at even this rate. I get home and after this and that wonder where all the time went. 

Anyway I'm up for volunteering as the roving web scout, collecting links to news and new content in the IF and IF-related community. That is, until you write a bot to spider across all the sites and collate the information automatically [emote]Wink[/emote]. Also I wouldn't mind doing some interviews. I don't feel like I have the best grasp of IF to write a full-fledged article yet, give me a few months.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=30#p1056
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-31 12:42:09

Cool. Thanks.

I probably won't get anything done tonight. After work, I'll be going to the inlaw's house for halloween festivities.

I'm kind of torn on this project, though. On the one hand, I think it's going to be cool once it's up and going. On the other, I'm lazy.  [emote]Mr. Green[/emote] I feel like I should be playing and reviewing more IFComp entries, at least for the next couple of weeks. But if I stop for that long, I'll probably lose my motivation for this project afterwards.

What's most interesting to me right now is probably the idea of writing features. That's something I (we all?) could do, and submit to Brass Lantern, without really needing this site. The current events page on the IFWiki already covers a good deal of IF news: <a href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Current_events">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Current_events</a>

I'm just thinking out loud, though. I'm not giving up. Getting it all working won't be hard -- just a little time-consuming. I hope that it thrives and lasts a long time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=30#p1057
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-10-31 15:27:21

Oh no! Down with the negativity and the old "kind of torn on the project". At least save the negativity until *after* the site officially goes live.  [emote]Shocked[/emote] 

I think the site could well work: have a daily (or weekly if there isn't enough content to justify daily) updates section; a reviews of current releases section; an archive of older reviews; interviews; features; articles... be a bit like a version of SPAG that updates itself regularly and not just every few months.

Sections I'd like to see (whether practical or not):

* Hints for current games that I'll never finish otherwise because a) I'm really bad at figuring them out and b) I'm eager to play but never bother e-mailing the author about.

* Previews. Got a game you're working on and want to tell everyone about it? Add it to the previews section. There could even be a section where people say what they think of the idea. Heck, it might even encourage people to finish a game if they know enough people out there want to play it.

* Technical corner. How to do this, that and the other in this language, that language and the other language.

* In-detail reviews of games. Getting down into the real nitty-gritty of games, spoilers included and tearing apart every aspect of the games. SPAG sometimes features spoiler specifics (I think that's the phrase) for games where a reviewer going into great detail about certain games. I'd like to see something similar.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=30#p1058
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-10-31 15:44:38

In addition to what David suggested, perhaps a "collaboration invitation" corner? Or should this be relegated to the forums/newsgroups instead?

(Given that this happens rarely, that might be a better idea...  [emote]Wink[/emote] )

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=30#p1059
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-10-31 15:59:35

I think the news page will probably serve as a good gateway to the forum, especially with the recent topics list on the right-hand side. I don't want to start a new topic as an option for every single news post, though. Maybe as part of the "post something" page for reporters, I could have a dropdown where you pick the most applicable of the current boards, and that gets added as a link to the bottom of the story ("click here to discuss this in the Reviews forum" for instance).

Should we have detailed catagories and sub-categories?. So far, what I've come up with will be a system of "groups" and "types" like this:

News - General
News - New Games
(etc)

Feature - IF Theory
Feature - IF Programming
(etc)

Interview - All

Really, I haven't even made the subtypes yet -- just the general groups, which are "News" and "Hype" (and we may not actually *need* a "Hype" group, since IF news kind of *is* hype), "Reviews", "Interviews", "Previews", and "Features". If somebody wants to post a series of article and have them archived together (and separate from others in the same group), it would require a new type. For instance "Interviews - Merk's Interview Series". Although maybe we need subtypes too, for something like "Reviews - IFComp Reviews - 2006".

Do we even need that level of detail in the groups/types? The bad thing about *not* doing it is it would make it harder to present articles on very similar topics together. For instance, parts of an ongoing series of articles would be mixed together with other articles on the archive page, if there is no way to link them together.

I was trying to keep it simple to start, but I'm already starting to see ways to complicate it. Heh. For instance, I probably need to have the news/feature posting page allow multiple pages for an article, for ones that are longer or would make sense spread across multiple pages. And I probably need a way to upload pictures (screenshots or whatever), for some articles. I probably need something tag-based so that reporters don't have to be HTML experts to post an article that formats right and looks good.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=30#p1060
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-01 18:50:24

I'm going to work some more on the posting script tonight (FYI to anybody following this project).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=30#p1061
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-02 22:52:21

A little more progress tonight. I have part of the news posting form done, and I have a basic working version of the "active forum topics list" done. Now, when you view the test page, the forum links on the right-hand side should be accurate and working. When you reload the page, you can even see that the "time" since the last post for each topic actually changes (most noticable for very recent ones, where it's still displaying the seconds).

<a href="http://www.intfiction.org/test/">http://www.intfiction.org/test/</a>

I think that's about all for tonight. It's going to take a few more days than I originally thought to get all the back-end stuff done, but so far so good.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=30#p1062
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-04 11:15:00

Nothing last night, and I'm at work today. Hopefully I'll have a chance to do more tonight and tomorrow. It shouldn't take [i]too[/i] long to get the news posting script done, but I think I need to work out some formatting tags (similar or identical to UBB code, maybe) and allow uploads of icons and screenshots.

I'm also trying to play and review a few more IFComp games, in which I'm still negligently behind.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=30#p1063
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: George / DateTime: 2006-11-04 12:43:42

Looking forward to it, Merk. 

I have about ten games left to play in the comp, but I don't know if I'll get to them now that NaNoWriMo is on. 

Writing 2,000 words a day is a lot harder than I thought it would be.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=40#p1064
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-04 15:34:09

I thought it was 1,667 words a day with NaNoWriMo?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=40#p1065
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: George / DateTime: 2006-11-04 21:03:00

Of course, that's [i]technically[/i] correct.  But I realized it's inevitable I would miss some days, want to just edit other days. Like today, for example.  [emote]:)[/emote] 

Initially I had the idea, silly now I realize, I could write 2,000 words in one hour. It's more like 1000 for me. 

OK, sorry to go off-topic on y'all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=123&start=0#p1066
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: ACG Interview with "The Longest Journey" creator
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-04 23:28:42

This is of particular interest to me because my wife and I finished "Dreamfall" a few weeks ago, and have since backed up to play "The Longest Journey" (we're in Chapter 8, on the the island of Alais).

It's an interview with TLJ and Dreamfall creator Ragnar Tornquist.

<a href="http://www.adventureclassicgaming.com/index.php/site/interviews/231/">http://www.adventureclassicgaming.com/i ... views/231/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=123&start=0#p1067
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: ACG Interview with "The Longest Journey" creator
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-05 17:14:46

I picked [b]Dreamfall[/b] up last week but my graphics card seems to be incompatible with it because all I get are blurred images and an unplayable game. I've heard good things about it, though, so I'll probably keep it to one side till I get round to buying myself a new graphics card.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=124&start=0#p1068
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Peasant's Quest
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-05 17:38:48

Here's a fun little graphic adventure I played a few weeks ago:
<a href="http://homestarrunner.com/disk4of12.html">http://homestarrunner.com/disk4of12.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=123&start=0#p1069
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: ACG Interview with "The Longest Journey" creator
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-05 17:39:28

Ah. I'd probably have problems with it on my PC too. I bought the XBox version instead. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=40#p1070
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-08 12:51:30

Is this idea a definite go ahead then? I've just finished playing a game and have a review of it ready for inclusion on the site.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=40#p1071
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-08 13:30:38

I haven't worked on it in the past couple of days, but yeah, I think so. I'd say don't hold onto the review just for the new site. I've decided I kind of *do* want to review more IFComp games before next Wednesday, so I'll probably not do much on the site until next weekend. Hopefully, once I get a few solid hours to work on it, I can get the basic stuff done enough that the site is usable even while I (we?) work on more features.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=125&start=0#p1072
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: IF Search Engine
User: Ken Franklin / DateTime: 2006-11-09 15:50:45

Well, not a new engine, just using the new Google co-op technology which allows you to create a custom search engine covering a subjetc that interests you. Put in a list of sites and hey presto.

My little effort is [url=http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=011689308877074057979%3Aztiqmhfdgs4]HERE[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=125&start=0#p1073
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Search Engine
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-09 20:01:30

Cool!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=126&start=0#p1074
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: The Alvane Connection -- Dreamfall & The Longest Journey
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-09 22:10:22

Maybe I noticed this because I've played them out of order.

(BIG SPOILERS)
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In Chapter 10 of The Longest Journey, April Ryan goes through a mysterious door and has a conversation with old Madam Alvane. She knows pretty much everything about April's journey, and my first guess was that this was somehow a much older April Ryan -- the future, or what have you. She tells April something along the lines of "I now go by the name Alvane" -- which must mean she didn't always.

April seemingly dies at or near the end of Dreamfall, at the hands of Kian Alvane (it's been a few weeks, but I think that's right). So.... this seems like a clear connection. In the 3rd game, she lives? She later marries Kian, maybe?

Supposedly, the next game will wrap up the journeys of the main characters. Maybe all will be revealed then.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=40#p1075
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-10 06:44:30

[quote="George"]
I had a few other ideas for content. Could you pull the WHO list from IFMud?
[/quote] 

As it happens, yes. I found a Perl module called "ICE" last night, written by Ryan Freebern, which is easy to use and seems to work pretty well. It hasn't been updated since 2001, but hopefully most of it is still compatible with the the ifMUD. It's written specifically for use with the ifMUD. I can create a bot that does whatever we want -- Does a WHO list, etc. I could even have it show lounge chat or something (although I don't know if they'd really want me to -- I should probably check first).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=40#p1076
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2006-11-10 07:34:57

If it needs updating, you can talk to Ryan since he's still on ifMUD. I wouldn't publish lounge chatter on a webpage, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=40#p1077
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-10 08:50:17

[quote="Sargent"]
If it needs updating, you can talk to Ryan since he's still on ifMUD. I wouldn't publish lounge chatter on a webpage, though.
[/quote]  I'm not sure even a Who's On list would be all that useful, since I think the MUD regulars hang out online regardless of who's there. But, this ICE module does open up a lot of possibilities.

I haven't done much with it yet -- just ran the "random number" test, and took a peek at some of what the ICE module can do. It may not need any updating. I didn't know he was still around, since I've never heard the name anywhere else (not that I can remember, anyway). I think there is a "Ryan" on once in a while. That's him, maybe?

If it's not going to show Lounge chat (which was just a random idea anyway), it could probably sit off in an unused room (so as to be unobtrusive) and maybe monitor the latest posts to certain message boards -- like the D&D board, or the main board, etc. I'd probably have it update only once every five minutes or so -- not a constant thing.

Or would even that be unwelcomed? I get the feeling that some (most?) of the MUD users like that it's isolated. I think it'd be cool to mirror some of the message board posts (read-only) on a web page, but I don't want to overstep any boundaries.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=127&start=0#p1078
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Problem in TADS3... is the verb "pick" reserved by tads?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-10 23:48:56

Okay..... I have a game written in TADS3 which is nearly done, but have been vexed by a problem I can't resolve.  I have a bunch of flowers.  when you pick 3 of them (each "pick" creates a random instance) they become a bouquet.  so far so good... but only if I'm using the verb "take."  When I define "pick" to perform the same actions as "take" using the function dobjFor(Pick) asDobjFor(Take), the first flower picks just find, but at the second I get a stack overflow.   
 
Now, I had originally tried the procedure for creating the verb 'pick', but it errored out saying I was redefining it, which I assume means tads has predefined it somewhere.   But as what?  whatever this action is inheriting from its original class must be causing the problem, but I can find no information on "pick" anywhere in the documentation.  It isn't the same as "pick up", because that would make it act like "take" anyway so I wouldn't have to do anything. 
 
Does anyone have any clue what the mysterious "pick" action is, and how to override it?  If not, I'm having a really hard time finding help forums on TADS, so if someone could shove me in the right direction I'd appreciate it.  Thanks! Oh, and nice to meet you all. ^_^

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=127&start=0#p1079
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Problem in TADS3... is the verb "pick" reserved by tads?
User: George / DateTime: 2006-11-11 12:48:32

[quote="Rrilltrae"]
Does anyone have any clue what the mysterious "pick" action is, and how to override it?  If not, I'm having a really hard time finding help forums on TADS, so if someone could shove me in the right direction I'd appreciate it. 
[/quote] 

You might get some more help from rec.arts.int-fiction, 

<a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction</a>

Or subscribe with your newsgroup reader. There are a few experienced TADS3 users there who, as far as I know, don't read the forum here. 

Also there is a development mailing list archived at 

<a class="postlink" href="http://lists.v-space.org/archive/tads3/">http://lists.v-space.org/archive/tads3/</a>

Now that I think about it I've never seen how you would subscribe to that list, I just read the archive, but I'm sure you could email Mike to find out. 

That said, I'm curious what your actual code is for this function. I browsed through the TADS3 library a moment ago, in actions.t and en_us.t, and didn't find a pick verb, as you hinted. So I suspect the runaway routine is in how you defined your function. Hope that helps.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=127&start=0#p1080
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Problem in TADS3... is the verb "pick" reserved by tads?
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-11-11 19:38:09

[quote="George"]
Also there is a development mailing list archived at <a class="postlink" href="http://lists.v-space.org/archive/tads3/">http://lists.v-space.org/archive/tads3/</a>
[/quote] I second George's recommendation on going to the newsgroups for this. I'm not sure if Eric Eve and the others are members here, so I'd also suggest asking the question on RAIF first.

There's probably no need to get into the mailing list for your question (as it's mostly made up of more experienced users of TADS 3), but it's up to you. [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=127&start=0#p1081
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Problem in TADS3... is the verb "pick" reserved by tads?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-12 15:49:58

It seems it paid to take a long break from this problem before coming back to it...  somehow, if this makes sense... the source of my problems was that the room had no floor.  I have absoutely *no* idea why this would have any bearing on my verb.  Its action coding was identical to that of take, as the only way it was implemented was "dobjFor(Pick) asDobjFor(Take)"  

My professor back when I first began this game couldn't find anything wrong with the code that would make the action for these two verbs vary.  Anyways, I made the grass in my room into a floor, and at least half of my problem was fixed.  The rest needed to be juryrigged because the pick action was unable to realize that it couldn't pick the flower that was already in my inventory, and try as I might I can't find the code that tells TADS to ignore inventory before running the take action.

Anyways, thanks for your suggestions, I appreciate the info on places where I might find help in the future.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=126&start=0#p1082
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Alvane Connection -- Dreamfall & The Longest Journey
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-12 21:43:15

Er.... nevermind. Epilogue. I got it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=40#p1083
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2006-11-13 08:28:52

Board posts would certainly be a lot less troublesome. I'd run this past inky as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=40#p1084
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: George / DateTime: 2006-11-13 09:14:28

[quote="Merk"]
I'm not sure even a Who's On list would be all that useful, since I think the MUD regulars hang out online regardless of who's there. But, this ICE module does open up a lot of possibilities.
[/quote] 

Just to throw in my .02, I don't think it's too important that all the information on the front page be useful in the conventional sense; some of it is useful only because it updates frequently. It's the sizzle instead of the steak.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=40#p1085
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-13 09:17:11

Eventually, the main IntFiction.org page could maybe customize what content is shown based on user preferences. Somebody who wanted to see a "who's on the MUD" list could see that. People who didn't want to see the forum posts could turn that off, etc.

I've done almost nothing on the back-end code over the past week. Very little, anyway.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=88&start=20#p1086
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Baron - Discussion Thread *SPOILERS*
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-13 10:57:49

Tropico, thanks for writing that extensively about my piece. I am sorry that it was only able to convince you to the rather limited extent that it did.

I would like to comment on some of your observations.

[u]Shock value[/u]

The piece certainly has a shock potential which was always in my mind when I wrote it. Some people only understood what was going on near the end, and were greatly moved by that discovery. However, from the very start I considered [i]The Baron[/i] to be a piece that should be played more than once, and I have everywhere (except in the final scene, back at your own house) tried to write [i]both[/i] for those who had not yet discovered what was going on [i]and[/i] for those who were already 'in the know'. I fully considered the possibility that people would understand what was going on right from the start; from the gargoyle's scene on, at the latest, many of the possible actions you can choose have a meaning only if you already know what is going on.

So I don't think I really [i]relied[/i] on shock potential. Could you perhaps elaborate on your dissatisfact in this respect?

[u]What is evil?[/u]

The question was perhaps not What is evil?, but rather, Is evil the right concept to think about men?

I am somewhat concerned that you think the entire theme "bores people who have already dealt with it". It seems to me as topical and alive as ever; particularly when we are talking about child abuse. I don't know where you are from and how the situation is there, but here in the Netherlands, it has become quite fashionable to speak about child abusers as monsters that are no longer to be seen as truly human; who are to be excised from civilised society, rather than to be understood and helped. (Even pedophiles who have never had sex with a child are sometimes talked about in this way.)

As a part of my research for [i]The Baron[/i], I searched the internet for websites with the intent of helping abusive adults to stop their abuse. I could not find a single one. This, to me, is perplexing. Child abuse is very widespread, alarmingly so, and I simply cannot believe that the abusers do not struggle with their actions. They cannot be happy with them. Among other policies, getting abusers to seek help seems a necessary part of any effective strategy of dealing with child abuse. But this policy apperently does not exist, and this surely hangs together with the too excessive moral condemnation of the abuser: a monster cannot be helped. Only a human being can.

Is evil the right concept to think about men? Is a man who rapes his daughter a monster beyond help and redemption? This question is not only relevant because it will partly determine our whole way of dealing with criminals, but it is even pratically relevant in combatting child abuse, as the wrong answer will lead to less succesful policy.

I am not an expert, but I would say that such less succesful policy is a current reality all over the world.

I don't think you have the right to be bored by it; but I mostly condemn myself for not having been able to make it interest you.

[u]The villain is YOU![/u]

I wouldn't call that a theme, it's a motif. The piece isn't [i]about[/i] it; it is (among other things) about self-deception. The identification of the protagonist and the villain is merely a way of presenting this theme; a theme which is wholly absent from Christie's... which book was it, [i]The Murder of Roger Ackroyd[/i]? With Christie, it is merely a cheap surprise; a gimmick; something which can startle once and becomes trite thereafter. You will not find the protagonist-murderer reviling the murderer, setting out to confront him, or having any thoughts whatever about him: he is lucid, and merely attempts to deceive the reader until the end.

In [i]The Baron[/i], on the other hand, the you-who-is-the-villain has a definite and hostile attitude towards the villain, and the whole story of the concerned father and the evil baron becomes an expressionist metaphor for the moral self-deception of the abusive parent. Now, I may have failed in presenting this theme with enough skill and strength - it is what I should be judged by; but I surely haven't fallen into the trap of imitating Christie in order to get a cheap surprise!

[u]Closure[/u]

It is very interesting to me that the one theme you did find convincing is one which remained largely unconscious in my mind. Reading your analysis of it actually gives me more insight the piece. Thanks!  [emote]:)[/emote] The question of closure is - important, I guess. In real life, a tragedy such as the one described in [i]The Baron[/i] never has a clear ending.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=127&start=0#p1087
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Problem in TADS3... is the verb "pick" reserved by tads?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-13 12:10:30

[quote="Rrilltrae"]
somehow, if this makes sense... the source of my problems was that the room had no floor.  I have absoutely *no* idea why this would have any bearing on my verb.
[/quote]   

That's odd, but in a way it's not surprising that removing the floor would produce unexpected problems. The TADS 3 library needs to know what kind of floor/ground each room has, unless the room belongs to class FloorlessRoom.

[quote="Rrilltrae"]
The rest needed to be juryrigged because the pick action was unable to realize that it couldn't pick the flower that was already in my inventory, and try as I might I can't find the code that tells TADS to ignore inventory before running the take action.
[/quote]   

That's odd. Did you monkey with verify() in dobjFor(Take) of your flower? If you look in thing.t, you'll find the dobjFor(Take) handling pasted below. Your flower should inherit that handling unless you overrode it.

[code]
Thing
    dobjFor(Take)
    {
        verify()
        {
            if (isDirectlyIn(gActor))
            {
                /* I'm already holding it, so this is not logical */
                illogicalAlready(&alreadyHoldingMsg);
            }
            [...]
        }
    }
;
[/code]

Greg

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=50#p1088
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Ken Franklin / DateTime: 2006-11-13 14:38:54

If you want to add in the IF Search you are welcome to.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=50#p1089
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-13 16:12:44

That would be cool. Can you post a search form to Google from a different website?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=50#p1090
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Ken Franklin / DateTime: 2006-11-13 16:46:44

It seems to work with the following code.

[code]
  <form id="searchbox_011689308877074057979:ztiqmhfdgs4" action="http://www.google.com/cse">
    <input type="hidden" name="cx" value="011689308877074057979:ztiqmhfdgs4" />
    <input name="q" type="text" size="40" />
    <input type="submit" name="sa" value="Search" />
    <input type="hidden" name="cof" value="FORID:0" />
  </form>
  <script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/coop/cse/brand?form=searchbox_011689308877074057979%3Aztiqmhfdgs4"></script>

      [/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=50#p1091
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-13 18:39:21

Cool. Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=127&start=0#p1092
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Problem in TADS3... is the verb "pick" reserved by tads?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-13 19:37:51

Yeah, but I don't know why it wouldn't have left the default floor in place, as it has in the past.

And nope, I didn't change the verify at all.  For whatever reason the routine checking for which flower I wanted to pick ran before the verify statement.  When I did try to add a different verify statement to pick, it didn't even make it to the verify code I added.  When I tried to pick the flower in my inventory, it returned "You can't do that."   This return isn't what is defined by default for take, or what I had defined specifically for pick.

Anyways, thanks for the insights, progress  seems to have picked up again, so hopefully I'll be all set for my portfolio submission.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=128&start=0#p1093
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Rinkworks
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-15 15:32:02

Has anyone played any of the Rinkworks' games?

[url]http://www.rinkworks.com/adventure/index.cgi[/url]

They're online point 'n' click text adventures, pretty retro in style, but quite likeable once you get over the limitations of the interface. I'm currently playing one called [b]The Mystery Of Brackly Hall[/b] which is a nice enough game in its own right but can also be amazingly frustratingly to make progress with.

Anyone here tried any Rinkworks' games?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=128&start=0#p1094
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Rinkworks
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-15 16:15:42

I think I've seen that site before, but I can't remember if I played any of the games. Does it require a sign-up? If so, I might have passed on it for a later time, and just never came back.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=128&start=0#p1095
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Rinkworks
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-15 16:25:13

You just need to enter a username and a password each time you visit the site. That's it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=128&start=0#p1096
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Rinkworks
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-11-15 18:11:11

Tried it twice, but I passed up on it since most of them were (IIRC) in CYOA and I am on dial-up.

If any game's going to be browser-based, I'd rather have a local copy.  [emote]Cool[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=129&start=0#p1097
Forum: Competitions / Subject: IFComp 2006 Results
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-16 07:54:48

1 Floatpoint, by Emily Short
2 The Primrose Path, by Nolan Bonvouloir
3 The Elysium Enigma, by Eric Eve
4 The Traveling Swordsman, by Mike Snyder (writing as Anonymous)
5 Moon-Shaped, by Jason Ermer
6 Delightful Wallpaper, by Andrew Plotkin (writing as Edgar O. Weyrd)
7 Legion, by Jason Devlin (writing as Ian Anderson)
8 Madam Spider's Web, by Sara Dee
9 Mobius, by John Clemens (writing as J.D. Clemens)
10 Unauthorized Termination, by Richard Otter
11 Game Producer!, by jason bergman
12 The Sisters, by revgiblet
13 Star City, by Mark Sachs
14 Strange Geometries, by Phillip Chambers
15 The Tower of the Elephant, by Tor Andersson
16 Aunts and Butlers, by Robin Johnson
17 Xen: The Hunt, by Ian Shlasko
18 Labyrinth, by Samantha Casanova Preuninger
19 Requiem, by david whyld
20 Carmen Devine: Supernatural Troubleshooter, by Rob Myall
21 The Bible Retold, by Justin Morgan and "Celestianpower"
22 Another Goddamn Escape the Locked Room Game, by Riff Conner
23 Fight or Flight, by Sean Krauss (writing as geelpete)
24 MANALIVE, A Mystery of Madness - I, by Bill Powell
25 Hedge, by Steven Richards
26 A Broken Man, by Geoff Fortytwo
27 Polendina, by Christopher Lewis
28 The Initial State, by Matt Barton
29 MANALIVE, A Mystery of Madness - II, by Bill Powell
30 Pathfinder, by Tony Woods
31 The Apolcalypse Clock, by GlorbWare
32 Wumpus Run, by Elfindor
33 Ballymun Adventure, by Brendan Cribbin
34 Tentellian Island, by Zack Wood (writing as Waru)
35 Lawn of Love, by Santoonie Corporation
36 Beam, by Madrone Eddy
37 Enter the Dark, by Peter R. Shushmaruk
38 Green Falls, by Paul Panks (writing as Dunric)
39 Sisyphus, by Theo Koutz
40 Visocica, by Thorben Bürgel
41 Simple Adventure, by Paul Panks (writing as dunric)
42 Fetter's Grim, by Paul Panks (writing as Dunric)
43 PTGOOD 8*10^23, by Sartre Malvolio 

And well done to everyone who entered.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=130&start=0#p1099
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Mike Snyder's IFComp 2006 Reviews
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-16 11:14:43

[color=#4040FF](Originally posted to REC.GAMES.INT-FICTION)[/color]

Wow.... just six "short" weeks ago the judging started, and just... er... several weeks before that, I started on my entry. It's over already?

Once again I *just* missed a placing in the top 3 (The Traveling Swordsman). [emote]:)[/emote] With such outstanding competition, it's no surprise. I was braced for
something lower. I'll have lots more to say later, when it's not 3:00 AM (and I do work tomorrow). To save the newsgroup from my unfocused ramblings,
I'll probably just post those thoughts to my website.

I felt that this was an incredibly good competition. Great games. Memorable games. I only played around half of them (a lack of time this year), but it
was mostly a great half. Admittedly, I started skipping and picking from the list, partway through.

But what you're after are the reviews, right? [emote]:)[/emote]

Here they are, in order by the score I'd have given if I had voted. I changed my ranking system a little this year to use plus/minus instead of
half-points.

My IFComp 2006 Reviews page is here:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/ifcomp06.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/ifcomp06.shtml</a>

The full scoring explanation is at:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/scoring.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/scoring.shtml</a>

You can view all of this on a single (very long) page:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/journal.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/journal.shtml</a>

Or individually:

Delightful Wallpaper: 10-
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/wallpaper.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/wallpaper.shtml</a>

The Elysium Enigma: 9+
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/elysium.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/elysium.shtml</a>

Legion: 9
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/legion.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/legion.shtml</a>

Floatpoint: 9
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/float.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/float.shtml</a>

The Primrose Path: 9
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/primrose.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/primrose.shtml</a>

Madam Spider's Web: 9-
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/spider.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/spider.shtml</a>

Moon-Shaped: 8+
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/moon.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/moon.shtml</a>

Game Producer!: 8
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/game.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/game.shtml</a>

Aunts and Butlers: 8
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/aunts.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/aunts.shtml</a>

Star City: 8-
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/starcity.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/starcity.shtml</a>

Unauthorized Termination: 7+
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/unauth.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/unauth.shtml</a>

Mobius: 7
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/mobius.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/mobius.shtml</a>

The Bible Retold: 7
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/bible.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/bible.shtml</a>

The Initial State: 7-
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/initial.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/initial.shtml</a>

MANALIVE Part 2: 6+
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/manalive2.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/manalive2.shtml</a>

MANALIVE Part 1: 5
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/manalive1.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/manalive1.shtml</a>

Lawn of Love: 4+
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/lawn.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/lawn.shtml</a>

Labyrinth: 4
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/labyrinth.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/labyrinth.shtml</a>

Tetellian Island: 3+
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/island.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/island.shtml</a>

Sisyphus: 3
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/sisyphus.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/sisyphus.shtml</a>

Simple Adventure: 2
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/simple.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/simple.shtml</a>

PTGOOD 8*10^23: 2-
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/ptgood.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/ptgood.shtml</a>

I regret that I was unable to play every game this year. The reviews I did, though, are fairly lengthy (if a bit rambly and off-topic at times).

Thanks to everybody who made this a great IFComp -- the organizers, the other reviewers, judges, and the other authors. Thanks!

---- Mike.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=131&start=0#p1100
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: IFComp 2006 Review Sets
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-16 11:22:05

These will probably appear on the '06 IFComp page at the [url=http://www.ifwiki.org]IFWiki[/url] and the newsgroup ones to [url=http://www.brasslantern.org]BrassLantern[/url], but I'm going to use this post (and probably edit it as I find more) to house a list of links in the meanwhile.

Rob Menke -- <a class="postlink" href="http://the-wabe.com/if-comp-2006/">http://the-wabe.com/if-comp-2006/</a>
Jota -- <a class="postlink" href="http://grunk.org/comments06.txt">http://grunk.org/comments06.txt</a>
Michael Martin -- <a class="postlink" href="http://www.stanford.edu/~mcmartin/if/review06.html">http://www.stanford.edu/~mcmartin/if/review06.html</a>
Jimmy Maher -- <a class="postlink" href="http://home.grandecom.net/~maher/if/comp06.html">http://home.grandecom.net/~maher/if/comp06.html</a>
ralphmerridew -- <a class="postlink" href="http://ralphmerridew.livejournal.com/323.html">http://ralphmerridew.livejournal.com/323.html</a>
Stephen Bond -- <a class="postlink" href="http://www.plover.net/~bonds/comp06.html">http://www.plover.net/~bonds/comp06.html</a>
Miseri -- <a class="postlink" href="http://users.openface.ca/~odd1out/others/ifcomp06.htm">http://users.openface.ca/~odd1out/others/ifcomp06.htm</a>
Celestianpower -- <a class="postlink" href="http://www.clematis.plus.com/Reviews.txt">http://www.clematis.plus.com/Reviews.txt</a>
Matt Carey -- <a class="postlink" href="http://openfonttag.blogspot.com/2006/11/interactive-fiction-competition-06.html">http://openfonttag.blogspot.com/2006/11 ... on-06.html</a>
Dan Shiovitz -- <a class="postlink" href="http://www.drizzle.com/~dans/if/comp06.html">http://www.drizzle.com/~dans/if/comp06.html</a>
Mike Snyder (me) -- <a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/ifcomp06.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/ifcomp06.shtml</a>
Rifflesby -- <a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/msg/0708dc744fd7b650">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... 744fd7b650</a>
N B Horvath -- <a class="postlink" href="http://nbhorvath.blogspot.com/2006/11/reviews-of-some-if-comp-games-2006.html">http://nbhorvath.blogspot.com/2006/11/r ... -2006.html</a>
Yuki -- <a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/msg/98fe841e68c42cd6">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... 1e68c42cd6</a>
Rob Myall -- <a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/msg/74448ad3abc56a57">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... d3abc56a57</a>
Niz -- <a class="postlink" href="http://snowblood.blogspot.com/2006/11/interactive-fiction-competition-2006.html">http://snowblood.blogspot.com/2006/11/i ... -2006.html</a>
Justin Morgan (Baryon) -- <a class="postlink" href="http://www.corfizz.com/IFCompReviews.rtf">http://www.corfizz.com/IFCompReviews.rtf</a>
James Mitchelhill -- [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/msg/3184b0743b516e55]1-6[/url], [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/msg/70750c107fa6091f]7-12[/url], [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/msg/e4138def4560b166]13-18[/url], [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/msg/3aa1840fcde33d6d]19-24[/url], [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/msg/fd8c2d629816f52d]the rest[/url]
Joshua Houk -- <a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/msg/0d1c14a23211314b">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... a23211314b</a>
Jason Devlin and Me (emails) -- <a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/msg/b95eb38c1ec81b36">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... 8c1ec81b36</a>
JDC -- <a class="postlink" href="http://www.math.psu.edu/clemens/IF/Reviews/Comp06.html">http://www.math.psu.edu/clemens/IF/Reviews/Comp06.html</a>
Hipolito -- <a class="postlink" href="http://www.octopusoverlords.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=39750">http://www.octopusoverlords.com/phpBB2/ ... hp?t=39750</a>
Robin Johnson -- <a class="postlink" href="http://www.versificator.co.uk:80/comp06.txt">http://www.versificator.co.uk:80/comp06.txt</a>
David Whyld -- <a class="postlink" href="http://www.shadowvault.net/ifcomp2006.htm">http://www.shadowvault.net/ifcomp2006.htm</a>
David Fletcher -- <a class="postlink" href="http://www.zen27881.zen.co.uk/djf/ifcomp2006/">http://www.zen27881.zen.co.uk/djf/ifcomp2006/</a>
crowheart -- <a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/msg/766a5d24e0c61c98">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... 24e0c61c98</a>
Emily Short -- <a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/msg/0ca745cff09bcfb0">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... cff09bcfb0</a>
Jerome West -- <a class="postlink" href="http://www.intfiction.org/misc/jcw_comp06.txt">http://www.intfiction.org/misc/jcw_comp06.txt</a>
quickfur -- <a class="postlink" href="http://www.intfiction.org/misc/qf_comp06.txt">http://www.intfiction.org/misc/qf_comp06.txt</a>
A. P. Hill (3 games) -- <a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/msg/1ac910235a633ca3">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... 235a633ca3</a>
Bob -- <a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/msg/611139e0ab28ee3e">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... e0ab28ee3e</a>
Valentine -- <a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/msg/cefa9e0cde9cf798">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... 0cde9cf798</a>
Maureen -- <a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.ch/group/rec.games.int-fiction/msg/0df17a00da48f3e2">http://groups.google.ch/group/rec.games ... 00da48f3e2</a>
Urbatain -- <a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/msg/bfcd90732833371f">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... 732833371f</a>
Federico Gobbo -- <a class="postlink" href="http://goberiko.blogspot.com/2006/11/if-comp-2006-end.html">http://goberiko.blogspot.com/2006/11/if ... 6-end.html</a>
Arnel Legaspi -- <a class="postlink" href="http://occplayer.wordpress.com/2006/10/16/some-2006-if-comp-reviews/">http://occplayer.wordpress.com/2006/10/ ... p-reviews/</a>
Marc Valhara -- <a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/msg/2bab2f4d32d11fc7">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... 4d32d11fc7</a>
Reiko -- <a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/msg/0dbb5d929c879533">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... 929c879533</a>
Richard Bos -- <a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/msg/67e4173ff6247644">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... 3ff6247644</a>
Andre Philips -- <a class="postlink" href="http://videogames.suite101.com/article.cfm/if_competition_2006_results">http://videogames.suite101.com/article. ... 06_results</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=128&start=0#p1101
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Rinkworks
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2006-11-16 12:37:19

Are you enjoying it more than Escape from Saint Mary's?

(I enjoyed that game, but I'd played some of their games before and had the intended mindset.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=128&start=0#p1102
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Rinkworks
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-16 12:58:52

Well, I played it to the bitter end so I guess the answer would be "yes". Saying that, I found the game to be an incredibly trying experience due to the maze (the curse of all things IF) and the limitations of the interface. But overall, it wasn't bad and it gave me a break from some of the buggy IFComp games. Just out of curiosity, how many moves did it take you to finish it? I made it in 1,779.

As it happens, I've written quite a lengthy review of it which I'll add to Merk's new IF Hype site when he finishes it...*

* That was a subtle hint there, BTW. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=128&start=0#p1103
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Rinkworks
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2006-11-16 13:29:41

<a href="http://www.rinkworks.com/adventure/hall.cgi?name=ralphmerridew">http://www.rinkworks.com/adventure/hall ... phmerridew</a>

Are you doogleman?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=128&start=0#p1104
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Rinkworks
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-16 13:37:06

Yep, that's me. I see you beat me by quite a way with [b]The Mystery Of Brackly Hall[/b].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=129&start=0#p1105
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2006 Results
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-11-16 14:52:41

Congrats to Merk for earning 4th place! Somehow I had a inkling you were the one behind The Traveling Swordsman. The included README.TXT file somehow looked too familiar [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=129&start=0#p1106
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2006 Results
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-16 15:08:27

Thanks!

I figured most people would know (not many Hugo authors to choose from), but nobody ever came right out and asked me. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=129&start=0#p1107
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2006 Results
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2006-11-16 16:30:41

Nobody asked you, but I said it flat out.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=132&start=0#p1108
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Inheritance TADS
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-16 16:33:04

[emote]Rolling Eyes[/emote] Is there anyone out there who has a walk-through or hint sheet for this game. I've just started it and I hate to get too far into it and then get stuck. I would rather have clues but, I'll take anything you've got. Thanks.  GEES

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=129&start=0#p1109
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2006 Results
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-16 16:47:43

Oh, that's right! I assume others knew or suspected, but they didn't ask or tell. [emote]Smile[/emote]

I ended up telling a few of the other IFComp authors, towards the end. I'm no good with secrets.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=132&start=0#p1110
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Inheritance TADS
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-16 16:50:17

At first I thought you meant a game named "GEES" -- you mean a game named Inheritence (the subject line) right? Not one I've heard of (which isn't a shock -- I don't get out much). Anybody else know?

(admin note -- I moved this post from the TADS-3 development board, into the Hints & Tips board.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=132&start=0#p1111
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Inheritance TADS
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-16 16:58:12

Hi Admin! I'm new to this forum. How do I find TADS 3 development? Thanks for your help. I'll get the Knack sooner or later.  [emote]Embarassed[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=47&start=10#p1112
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good games for beginners?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-16 17:26:46

[emote]Question[/emote] I dowloaded and installed gargoyle for windows. I think I did I right. I played wearing the claw a few years back. I absolutely loved it. I am so addicted to these types of games. How do I get them- Where? And, I need for you to be specific. I'm somewhat computer eliterate. Not totally but somewhat. I'd appreciate any help you could give me. I am presently playing TADS. I'd like to branch out. Thanks [emote]Mr. Green[/emote]  GEES

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=47&start=10#p1113
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good games for beginners?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-16 17:32:28

Your best bet's to check out Baf's Guide:

[url]http://wurb.com/if/game[/url]

All the games in the IFArchive are neatly catalogued on there, and they're a lot easier to find than trying to navigate your way through the Archive itself.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=132&start=0#p1114
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Inheritance TADS
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-16 17:38:34

I've never heard of [b]Inheritance[/b] before but there's a solution for it on Baf's Guide:

[url]http://ifarchive.smallwhitehouse.org/if-archive/solutions/inherit.sol[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=132&start=0#p1115
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Inheritance TADS
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-16 18:08:42

Thanks. I needed that. 
 [emote]Very Happy[/emote] GEES

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=133&start=0#p1116
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Using WinGeas
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-11-17 06:56:48

Is there a way to use WinGeas without having to install anything else? I've read the [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/015010f07061841a/26e4f970389e526b?hl=en#26e4f970389e526b]related discussion over at RGIF[/url] and from the looks of it, there doesn't seem to be anyway of avoiding having to install the necessary GTK runtime files.

Of course, I could revert back to using the Quest 'terp, but I like to try out new software every now and then. 8)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=133&start=0#p1117
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Using WinGeas
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-17 07:41:32

Is there an issue with regards installing the GTK files?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=133&start=0#p1118
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Using WinGeas
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2006-11-17 10:36:32

Not at present; I don't know how to compile at statically linked executable, or how to distribute it with an installer that includes the appropriate binaries.

(Anybody got a suggestion about InstallShield or the like?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=133&start=0#p1119
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Using WinGeas
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-11-17 12:34:37

From what I've been seeing on the Net, you can try either Inno Setup or NSIS.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=50#p1120
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-17 13:47:16

Any idea of a timescale for the site going live?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=50#p1121
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-17 18:40:40

The honest truth is that it may unfortunately be a while. I know I keep blaming my work (my job) on this, but it's becoming more and more true. I have a no-fooling deadline that's less than four weeks away now, and so much to do that I'm going to be working nights and sundays (I was already working saturdays) to have a shot at being done on time.

I hate that I didn't get the whole thing done sooner, and that several people have just been waiting for me to finish it up. Sorry everybody. [emote]Sad[/emote] I will -- I'm just going to have to postpone it. I'm going to work on one more IF-related project (it'll be announced soon, I think), but it's something that won't take a lot of time, and afterwards, I'll probably be a ghost around here for a while.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=134&start=0#p1122
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Which unpopular IFComp '06 game did you really like?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-18 11:18:54

For me, it was [url=http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/initial.shtml]The Initial State[/url]. It was the 14th on my list by score (my list being only half the eligible games anyway) and 28th in the competition, but it's one I still really enjoyed. I think the low score is more for the crudeness of the custom engine (not so much that it *is* a custom engine), and the bugs/problems in the code. The writing is strained at times, but I really got into the exploration and the story. I suppose my review explains it best

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=134&start=0#p1123
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Which unpopular IFComp '06 game did you really like?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-18 12:01:24

None of them, which is very unusual for me. Several times in the past, my favourite game of the comp (or games I've rated very highly) have come a long way down the listings, but this year I can safely say that all of the games that came to 21-43 that I played, I disliked.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=105&start=10#p1124
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp Predictions
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-18 16:30:18

So, Mike, what's your assessment of your predictions? My girlfriend and I got together (she played more games than I did) and came to a few conclusions.


-----------------------------


[b]MAY HAVE BEEN TRUE:[/b]

[quote="Merk"]
Two games will be sequels to prior games.
[/quote]  

Yes, looks like it. There's Xen: The Hunt, and Manalive II.

[quote="Merk"]
Each of the top five games this year will score higher than each of last year's top five.
[/quote]  

Yes, I think so, if you mean this year's 1st place scored higher than last year's 1st place, etc.

[quote="Merk"]
Two games will feature real mazes, of at least 10x10 in size.
[/quote]  

Yes, I think so... Labyrinth and Wumpus Run.


-----------------------------


[b]CAME WITHIN A CLOSE MARGIN OF BEING TRUE:[/b]

[quote="Merk"]
Paul Panks will enter a record *3* games in the competition, but one will be anonymous.
[/quote]  

First sentence is true, of course. Second sentence is only true if "one" means "at least one."

[quote="Merk"]
At least 60% of all entries will be Zcode. At least 60% of these will be written in Inform 7.
This latter number will include the next incarnation in the PTBAD series.
[/quote]  

Nope, only 50% are zcode. Of those, 55% are I7.

[quote="Merk"]
Exactly 7 Adrift games will be entered this year.
[/quote]  

Nope, 5.

[quote="Merk"]
Only one author from a prior top-10 will appear this year.
However, several will surface as psuedonyms, at the end.
[/quote]  

The first sentence is wrong -- Emily Short, Eric Eve, and Sara Dee were both previous top-10ers, and didn't use pseudonyms. But the second sentence is true.

[quote="Merk"]
Two games will be very community in-jokey, and I won't "get" any of it. [emote]:([/emote]
[/quote]  

Uh... I dunno, you tell me.

[quote="Merk"]
Two games by different authors will feature very similar plots.
So similar, that it almost seems one person wrote the same game twice.
Surprisingly, the titles will be nothing alike.
[/quote]  

Uh... Floatpoint and The Elysium Enigma? Not quite, but sort of.

[quote="Merk"]
Three games will feature NPCs who are computer programmers.
[/quote]  

Polendina and Game Producer do. But my girlfriend says that she doesn't count three such games.

[quote="Merk"]
Two serious games will be unintentionally funny.
Two funny games will be unintentionally serious.
[/quote]  

Debatable, I suppose.


-----------------------------


Did I miss anything?

Greg

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=105&start=10#p1125
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp Predictions
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-18 16:34:24

I had actually thought about coming back to this post and trying to figure it out. The hard part for me is that I *didn't* play them all, so it's a little tough. At a glance, I think Labyrinth doesn't qualify for the maze prediction, since it's only 2x2x2 (8 rooms) instead of 10x10 (100 rooms). But, Star City *might* qualify. The city isn't so much a maze as it is a grid of like rooms, though. I'll read the rest and reply again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=105&start=10#p1126
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp Predictions
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-18 16:42:27

Well, my private prediction that Panks would have the lowest ranking game in the IFComp for the third year in a year was wrong (42nd out of 43 entries), but he managed 3 of the lowest 6 games. A remarkable achievement even by his standards.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=134&start=0#p1127
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Which unpopular IFComp '06 game did you really like?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2006-11-18 17:07:52

None that were really unpopular. I liked The Tower of the Elephant (15th) and Labyrinth (18th). I'm a logic-puzzle-aholic, so I had a lot of fun with Labyrinth, but I'd be the first to admit it isn't exactly interactive [i]fiction[/i]. In fact, it might have been more fun without the attempt at a plot. It definitely would not have suffered from losing that convoluted cipher. (I'm so glad to find I'm not the only person who, when told "it's a keyword cipher", went, "Huh?")

As for Tower of the Elephant, it wasn't as well implemented as it might have been, but I think there's a lot of potential there. I'd love to see it tidied up and re-released. (Bear in mind, however, that this was one of the first comp games I played, so I was still in the sunny land of Comp Optimism.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=134&start=0#p1128
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Which unpopular IFComp '06 game did you really like?
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2006-11-18 22:33:46

None really.  The closest I can give is Pathfinder.  While I didn't like the game as it was (it's one of the four games I didn't finish), I thought the core ideas had possibilities, and it could be rewritten to a decent game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=135&start=0#p1129
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Gargoyle problem
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 06:29:55

I've just been experimenting with Gargoyle to see if it plays a game I'm writing the same as the Adrift Runner and I've run into a slight problem:

[quote]
>x pendant
[x -> examine]
[x pendant]
Encrusted with jewels, the pendant twinkles as you turn it over. There is a feeling of weight to it, far more than you would expect for such a small and apparently light object. Strangely, it also feels slightly warm to the touch.
   Part of the pendant is broken, making it an impossible to wear.  The jewels is on the pendant.

>wear it
(the pendant)
You put on the pendant.

>remove it
(the pendant)
You remove the pendant.

>wear pendant
It is broken so cannot be worn.
[/quote] 

The pendant cannot be worn (fixing it to be worn is part of a game puzzle later on) but "wear it" allows the player to wear the pendant. Why does referring to the pendant as "it" makes it wearable yet referring to it as "pendant" produce the correct response?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=135&start=0#p1130
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Gargoyle problem
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2006-11-19 06:50:53

That's probably a SCARE problem, so you should forward it to Simon, but I'd guess:

1)  Your code uses a task "wear pendant" to prevent the player from wearing the broken pendant, as opposed to making two separate objects.
2)  ADRIFT substitutes "it" and the like immediately.
3)  SCARE compares against "it" only during the library part of the parse.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=135&start=0#p1131
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Gargoyle problem
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 08:36:52

So two separate items looks to be the way to go about it then? Okay, easy enough to do.

One thing I've only just noticed now, though, is that Gargoyle is putting "The jewels is on the pendant." on the end of the description. I used the ALR to get rid of that line but Gargoyle seems to have put it in anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=135&start=0#p1132
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Gargoyle problem
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2006-11-19 08:51:06

The correct thing to do would be to call this a SCARE bug, and to send a bug report to Simon.  (He's going for full compatability, so avoiding the problem isn't doing any favors.)  Only use a workaround if you need to release short term and can't wait for a fix to get into the general release.

It would also probably be better to post such messages on the Adrift Development section of this board.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=135&start=0#p1133
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Gargoyle problem
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 10:46:45

I'll e-mail him about it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=136&start=0#p1134
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: The Apocalypse Clock
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 10:48:23

[b]The Apocalypse Clock[/b] by GlorbWare (Inform)


This one started off bad. You're in a bedroom with wallpaper that can’t be examined, carpet that can’t be examined, clothes that can’t be examined. Impressive stuff.

It’s a timed game. Another non-favourite idea of mine. It’s a weird timer as well because it counts down even when you make a typo. In another room there was a front door which couldn’t be examined or even opened. Was this game tested? At all?

As is often the case, rather than struggle with a game that didn’t even have the basics covered, I went to the walkthrough and cheated something awful. Just as well, too. I see one of the first commands needed to be entered refers to an NPC who isn't mentioned in the room description and who I was unaware even existed until I saw her mentioned in the walkthrough. 

That was about all I could take. It’s a depressing thing when an IFComp entry appears to have bypassed the testing process altogether.

1 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=137&start=0#p1135
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Aunts & Butlers
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 10:49:04

[b]Aunts & Butlers[/b] by Robin Johnson (Web)


I initially passed this one by as it was a web-based game and my past experience with them hasn’t tended to be favourable. At best, I'm left with the opinion that the game was okay (for a web-based game) but would have been a lot better if it had been written with a proper IF system. But after a conversation (well, dialogue on IFMUD) with the author, I decided I’d at least give it a try.

Normally I don’t bother commenting on the system itself when reviewing a game, but I’ll make an exception here. For some of the time, the system works well and it’s occasionally possible to forget that you're playing a web-based game and not one written in a standard interpreter. But only some of the time. On the positive side of thing, the game understands the UNDO (although only one UNDO at a time is allowed) and SAVE commands, which is certainly refreshing as most web-based games don’t. On the down side, there is no transcript command and the scrollback window only allows about a screen and a half of text, so while I usually make a transcript of the game during play and base my review off that transcript, here I'm writing part of this review whilst playing the game and the other part from memory. I *could*, if I was so minded, simply copy and paste every screen of text into a Word document or something similar, but this isn't much fun and seems entirely too much trouble to bother with.

The parser is better than average, going on my limited experience with web-based games, but seems pretty temperamental. Sometimes I’m able to refer to an item by its name and then afterwards as ‘it’, like:

> X BOTTLE
A CONICAL BOTTLE FOR SUPERIOR-GRADE BALSAMIC VINAIGRETTE. IT IS EMPTY.

> DRINK IT
(A VINAIGRETTE BOTTLE)
YOU HAVE ALREADY DONE SO. THE BOTTLE IS EMPTY.

But at times it doesn’t work properly:

> X PIANO
A HUGE, THREE-LEGGED BEAST THAT BELONGED TO YOUR FATHER, BUILT FROM WOOD DREDGED FROM THE SMOKING REMAINS OF ENDANGERED RAINFORESTS AND IVORY HACKED FROM THE BLEEDING CARCASSES OF MAJESTIC AFRICAN ANIMALS. YOU KEEP IT FOR THE AIR OF CULTURE IT LENDS TO THE ROOM.

> PLAY IT
SORRY, YOU CAN'T DO THAT.

> PLAY PIANO
*PLINK* *PLUNK* *PLONK* *PER-LUNK!*

You're also limited to just one command per line. No big deal really as it’s seldom I ever enter more than one command, but most interpreters can handle this sort of thing. I'm also not able to repeat the previous command by using the up arrow. And the time-saving GET ALL command doesn’t work.

But what of the game itself?

Most of the time, it’s well-implemented and shows a fairly high level of testing. But at others, little bugs/errors have crept in. Examining me showed I was wearing a suit, but attempts to examine the suit had the game think I was referring to a suitcase. There are also items frequently mentioned in room descriptions that can’t be examined, or which carry descriptions that look like they're meant for another item:

> X DRESSING TABLE
A CONICAL BOTTLE FOR SUPERIOR-GRADE BALSAMIC VINAIGRETTE. IT IS EMPTY.

The storyline is nicely comical, with the kind of over-the-top, tongue-in-cheek humour that I've always found appealing. Aunt Cedilla’s nephew, the gun-toting Jirgule, could have stepped right out of a Monty Python sketch.

The game is easy enough to begin with but seems to become harder very quickly. Some of the tasks I'm required to perform – the hat for one – weren’t obvious and doing them seemed to be a case of doing them for the sake of it or because there was nothing else to do than because I found a genuine reason for it. Saying that, I managed to get a decent way into the game before dying and then resorting to the accompanying walkthrough. This was the unfair moment involving Jirgule, his gun and an unfortunate case of mistaken identity that left me dead a moment later and the UNDO command didn’t undo anything. I suppose it’s my own fault for not saving, but in modern IF, with the wonderful UNDO command at my disposal, I seldom remember to save most of the time anyway. When you're limited to an UNDO command which only works with a single command, and then only seems to work patchily, you find yourself wishing for a proper IF system.

So in summing up, I'm left with the feeling that, while this is definitely a step up from any other web-based game I've ever played, it still suffers from not being written in a standard interpreter. There were errors in the game but it’s difficult with some of them to know whether these were errors with the game itself or errors with the system. In the end I'm left thinking what I thought at the start of this review: the game was okay (for a web-based game) but would have been a lot better if it had been written with a proper IF system. One of the best games in the Comp? Maybe… if written in a standard interpreter.

6 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=138&start=0#p1136
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Ballymun Adventure
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 10:49:25

[b]Ballymun Adventure[/b] by Brendan Cribb (TADS)


Well, it’s certainly gaudy. The instructions are in blue text on a yellow background (my eyes are still throwing a wobbly over it) and there are horrid bits of coloured text interspersed within the main body of the text. Room descriptions and objects are green, exits are blue – it’s quite nauseous.

But what about the game? Apparently it’s set in a school and you have to find four items because your teacher, Mr Byrne, has set you a competition. So off you traipse to find said items.

Playing the game for a few minutes doesn’t give me anything favourable to say about it. I head east into the girls yard and see this wonderful description:

GIRLS YARD
YOU ARE STANDING IN THE GIRLS YARD. THERE IS NOTHING OF INTEREST FOR YOU HERE. YOU SHOULD GO BACK.

As room descriptions go, this one isn't up to much.

Upon returning to the first location, the same text as before – Mr Byrne telling me he wants some items finding – is still displayed on screen. It seems Mr Byrne likes repeating himself. I did try to ask him about this at one point but the game informs me that it doesn’t know the word “byrne”, which is kind of disappointing considering he’s the first NPC I encountered. I can’t examine him either. Nor, in fact, can I examine hardly anything. The school assembly hall is described as being full of students but X STUDENTS hits me with I DON'T SEE ANY STUDENTS HERE. Even worse, X HALL reveals that I DON’T SEE ANY HALL HERE.

Aside from strange errors like the ones mentioned in the previous paragraph, there are oddities like examining the library door (one of the few things I found that can be examined), being told it’s closed and then walking through it without any indication of opening it. Then there’s the bizarre description of Miss Campbell: THE DOOR IS CLOSED. Yes, that’s what she looks like. Poor Miss Campbell. Talking to her is even worse: I DON'T KNOW HOW TO TALK TO THE MISS CAMPBELL'S DOOR..

Okay, it’s probably pretty obvious I didn’t much care for this game and didn’t see any reason to keep on playing it. It’s been through minimal testing at best and has a huge number of errors that even a casual amount of testing should have picked up on.

2 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=139&start=0#p1137
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Polendina
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 10:49:53

[b]Polendina[/b] by Christopher Lewis (Inform)


So EXAMINE and SEARCH mean different things? Damn, I hate games that do that to me. You EXAMINE every item, find a few things, then later on realise you have to go back through the game and SEARCH every item. +1 on the Considering Quitting Table.

Another +1 on the CQT: I've been playing the game for ten minutes and don’t have a clue what it’s about. Most of the actions I'm carrying out I'm doing not because I see any point to them, but purely because there's nothing else to do, so it’s a case of me going into the playground then the pet shop because they're there instead of me seeing any purpose in performing these actions.

There's an oddity uncovered while I was walking through the sewers* and the ring I was wearing mysteriously appeared before me on the ground without me ever removing it. I never did discover if this was purposeful or a bug. According to the walkthrough (which I followed because it seemed better clued into the game than I was), there ought to be my dad’s ID card here** but it wasn’t here at all. Just the ring I had on my finger. Quite why my dad’s ID card would be down in the sewers isn't mentioned in the walkthrough, although glancing further on indicates I need it to enter my dad’s workshop. Only, of course, as the ID card wasn’t there, I can’t do that.

* Why was I in the sewers? Er… dunno. Because it’s there?

** Is there a reason for my dad’s ID card to be down in the sewers? Particularly as I found it at home and left it there?

Well… uninspired game, no clue what I was doing, bugged me with SEARCH and EXAMINE being different things, and a distinct lack of direction. All in all, not one of the better IFComp entries.

3 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=140&start=0#p1138
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Beam
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 10:50:15

[b]Beam[/b] by Madrone Eddy (Quest)


Room descriptions are painfully brief – YOU ARE ON A GRASS HILL UNDER A TREE – was the first one in the game. The second wasn’t much better – YOU ARE IN THE LOWER BRANCHES OF THE TREE. LOOKING OUT YOU SEE A SORT OF HAZY REFLECTION. Exits aren’t mentioned in the room description, but instead displayed in the panel on the right hand side of the screen, so if you're one of those few people who occasionally play Quest games and turn the panels off because you don’t like them, you won’t have a clue where you can go.

It’s a difficult game to make any kind of progress with, although my initial lack of enthusiasm, which took a hit by reading the poorly written intro and never really recovered, didn’t help. As a game, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. You wake up under a tree having fallen asleep and find you can’t actually go anywhere because every time you try you keep bumping into invisible objects. What…? So you climb the tree – only CLIMB TREE doesn’t work (another of the many, many basic commands Quest doesn’t understand) – and find yourself in the location with the hazy reflection. What to do then is anyone’s guess. There are hints but none of them helped much as they all referred to different parts and there was no walkthrough available that I could find. I couldn’t get to more than a total of three locations, I didn’t have any items, I couldn’t find much to do that didn’t result in Quest hitting me with its ever-present I DON’T UNDERSTAND YOUR COMMAND. TYPE HELP FOR A LIST OF VALID COMMANDS* and, in the end, quitting seemed like an acceptable thing to do.

* Which it does with a frequency that makes you wonder just how many commands Quest *does* understand.

On the positive side of things, there were very, very few typos which is worth mentioning because it makes this game almost unique among Quest games. But as that’s the only positive thing I could find to say about it, it’s still not a good game.

2 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=141&start=0#p1139
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: A Broken Man
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 10:50:41

[b]A Broken Man[/b] by Geoff Forty-Two (Inform)


(Contains spoilers. You’ve been warned.)

This was a likeable enough game in its own right, but let down by some serious bugs, guess-what-the-heck-the-writer-was-thinking and a general carelessness in the writing.

It seems you're a guy out to avenge his family who have been killed by a terrorist. So you're intending to break into his mansion and exact a little revenge on him. ‘An eye for an eye’ kind of thing.

The guess-what-the-heck-the-writer-was-thinking was a pain at times. One of the earliest commands in the game – needed to get inside the mansion of the terrorist by a window – required me to use an item that I doubt I would ever have thought of using in those circumstances. Later on, in order to actually defeat the terrorist himself, I'm required to lure him from where he originally is to another location then trap him there by covering the toilet seat with glue. Yes, seriously. God only knows how I was expected to figure that out.

Certain things in the game need to be done in a certain order. I found myself dead at the hands of the terrorist a couple of times because I’d wandered into his bedroom at the wrong time; at others, I was able to wander in and out of his bedroom to my heart’s content and he never batted an eyelid.

I remember quite a few retro games from the 80’s that used a similar idea to what is used here, i.e. you start the game carrying nothing important but then, by some astounding stroke of luck, you manage to find every single item you need to finish the game. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear someone had actually gone round and left these items for me to find. Pity they didn’t just leave me something useful like a gun…

The worst aspect of the game, though, was the deaths. Not the deaths that are down to the player making a mistake, or the deaths that occur as a result of a series of events that you have set in motion, but the times the game tells you that you’ve died but doesn’t give any reason as to why whatsoever. This always occurred in the bathroom. For example:

>PUT GLUE ON SEAT
YOU PUT A THIN LAYER OF GLUE ON THE TOILET SEAT.

>PUT GLUE ON RAILS
YOU PUT A THIN LAYER OF GLUE ON THE RAILS.

*** YOU DIED. ***

IN 134 MOVES, YOU HAVE SCORED 9 OF A POSSIBLE 24 POINTS. THIS MAKES YOU A SLY FOX.

Did I die from the glue fumes? Did the toilet seat flip up and crack me one on the noggin? Or did I suffer a sudden, albeit very quiet, heart attack? Whatever happened, it would have been nice to have been told. This bizarre, unexplained death was also on a timer meaning that even with an UNDO command to hand, I wasn’t able to escape it.

I didn’t finish the game. A couple of times I died while trying to kill the terrorist – who, even while sleeping and unarmed is more than a match for an awake guy with a knife – and several other times in the bathroom when the game would tell me *** YOU DIED. *** but not why. My enthusiasm to keep playing after that just took a distinct nosedive.

One part of the game was mildly amusing. A sex scene with the maid. No, not for *that* reason but because of the way it was handled. A pity the rest of the game wasn’t as good.

3 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=142&start=0#p1140
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Carmen Devine: Supernatural Troubleshooter
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 10:51:05

[b]Carmen Devine: Supernatural Troubleshooter[/b] by Rob Myall (Inform)


Hmmm… had to laugh at the title. In terms of kewl, it’s right up there with naming a TV show “Buffy The Vampire Slayer”. But, well, I kind of liked Buffy so I’ll try not to let the name of the game put me off.

I wasn’t too keen on the start of the game, which basically involved me sitting in a jeep and being driven along. I figured that after X amount of moves, the jeep ride would end and I’d get out. But after typing WAIT over and over again and finding the jeep ride still going on (we were going a long way apparently), it seems I was wrong. So I read the one item I had – a file folder – and still the ride went on. It seems repetition is the answer here. I keep on reading the file folder, even though there’s no indication that I should need to read it more than once, and the jeep arrives at its destination.

Another thing I didn’t like: the directions for most rooms not being listed in the body of the text but instead in an unattractive white band at the top of the screen. A nice touch is the way it lists directions you haven’t been yet in a different colour from ones you have been to, but I still prefer having the directions in the body of the text. Having to glance at the top of the screen to see where you can go when your attention is focused on the bottom of the screen is a pain.

I didn’t get very far with the game before going to the walkthrough. Well, I say walkthrough but it’s actually just a series of not very clear hints. Apparently I'm a werewolf and at some point I need to change into my wolf form, yet nowhere does it say I'm a werewolf and have this ability. Trying to figure out what to do when you haven’t been told the entire story isn't nice.

I suppose I should finish this largely negative review with one thing about the game I liked. It was well written. I liked the flow of the text, even though I didn’t really get most of the game was about. Actually, on the whole I didn’t mind the game. Cheating and using the walkthrough whenever I got stuck allowed me to get further than I otherwise would have and as a result I didn’t find myself hating “Carmen Devine: Supernatural Troubleshooter” as much as the rest of the review might indicate.

But I didn’t like it *that* much, either.

4 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=143&start=0#p1141
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Delightful Wallpaper
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 10:51:25

[b]Delightful Wallpaper [/b]by Andrew Plotkin (Inform)


Normally weird arty games that dump me in the first location without any indication what I'm supposed to be doing there get swiftly deleted. But something about this one – perhaps its weirdness and its artiness – managed to grab my attention before I could fire it off to the recycle bin along with all the weird arty games currently in residence there. It was the writing style that appealed to me first – the way I could wander from location to location and see these wonderful descriptions of otherwise ordinary and not very interesting rooms – and then the downright strangeness of it. I wasn’t able to pick up items or open doors and got told MANIPULATION OF GROSS MATERIAL SUBSTANCE IS NOT YOUR FORTE when I tried. Oh yes, weird and arty alright.

Unfortunately, even the appeal of wandering around and seeing nice descriptions pales after a while and I started yearning for a bit of actual gameplay. A bit of storyline. Both seemed strangely absent. As a guide to exploring a large mansion, “Delightful Wallpaper” worked well. As a game, it had more than a few flaws. Namely, that there didn’t seem to be anything to do. When opening doors and picking up items is out (I'm carrying a notepad but not able to pick up anything else), there aren’t NPCs and there don’t seem to be any real puzzles, what you have left is… not much actually.

So to the walkthrough I went.

It seems the game is split into two parts. The first part is unusual in that every command in it (bar one) involves simply moving from one location to another. The walkthrough frequently has the player going one way and then returning, though if there's a reason for all this backtracking I wasn’t sure what it might be. It *could* have something to do with the only puzzle in the first part of the game – manipulating a bridge allowing access from one part of the mansion to the other – but as I was blindly keying in commands one after another from the walkthrough by this stage, I couldn’t say for certain.

The second part of the game, where I was able to pick a few items and move them to different places (although why I was doing this, other than it was in the walkthrough, I don’t know) was a little more interesting. There was still a distinct lack of gameplay and the only thing I could find to do was the moving about of certain items. The walkthrough told me what I needed to do with them, but never went into any explanation for why I was doing them.

As a weird and arty game, this was better than some I've played. At least it was well written, so I’ll bump its score up a point for that. But ultimately I was left wandering around with not much to do and actually wishing I was playing something else instead.

5 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=144&start=0#p1142
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: The Elysium Enigma
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 10:51:48

[b]The Elysium Enigma[/b] by Eric Eve (TADS)


There was clearly a lot more going on with “The Elysium Enigma” than I discovered on my first play through, considering my score at the end was an unimpressive 3 out of 30. The game even went on to wryly inform me *** YOU HAVEN'T ACHIEVED MUCH *** and I think this must be the first game I've played that I managed to finish with a score as low as 10%. Admittedly I was playing the game in a jokey manner for most of the time – when a half-naked woman asked me for food, I refused her a couple of times then wandered off and left her to starve – so really it’s my own fault that I finished with such a dismal score.

You're playing the part of a space age ambassador-type who has to visit the planet of Enigma and convince them that the Federation *does* care about them and *does* listen to them. To do this, you need to hoist a flag on the roof of the main building in Enigma’s main city and then sweet talk the populace, who are pretty much of the opinion that the Federations *doesn’t* care about them and *doesn’t* listen to them.

“The Elysium Enigma” was the 20th game in the Comp I played, about halfway through, and the most polished of the entries I'd come across so far. There's a nice back story to the game, enough information to set the scene without overloading the player. I played a previous IFComp entry by the same author a couple of years back and liked it a lot to begin with, but felt it lost its way somewhere as soon as the introductory scene and the background was out of the way. Thankfully, “The Elysium Enigma” remained entertaining throughout.

The difficulty level was set just right (for me anyway) and I managed to progress at quite a nice pace. The first puzzle that I ran into any problems with – dealing with a dog who resisted my best efforts to strangle/kill/kick/choke – was solved when I stopped to more carefully examine what I had with me and found a very useful item amongst my possessions. Yes, this is a game where it’s necessary to pay very close attention to things. There was one slightly unfair part around that time, with EXAMINE and SEARCH meaning different things when finding an item needed elsewhere (never a favourite of mine as it’s twice as much work for no real gain), but I don’t think this was along the critical path to finish the game and is one of the IF scenes more common problems.

The actual game itself is a simple enough one to finish, but there's a lot more to figure out to reach the true ending. Most of the puzzles seem to be fairly simple and straightforward, with the required items to solve them lying around and it’s just left to you to locate them. Normally I'm not a huge fan of this kind of thing as it always seems kind of unrealistic that the items needed to solve the puzzles in a game would be lying around in such a convenient way, but here it’s handled a lot better. Yes, the items *are* just lying around, but their location seems perfectly logical; i.e. they're where they are because it’s where you'd expect to find them in real life, not because they're required to solve the puzzles.

Conversation is handled in the ASK PERSON ABOUT SUBJECT and TELL PERSON ABOUT SUBJECT ways which don’t usually score points with me as I spend most of the time desperately trying to figure out just what it is I need to be asking NPCs about or telling them. But here, as soon as you speak to an NPC, a list of possible conversation topics pops up afterwards so you can see at a glance what you might want to ask them. Nice. I suppose you could argue that it takes a good deal of the challenge out of the conversations by listing the topics this way, but it’s certainly a huge improvement on keying in ASK PERSON ABOUT ???? over and over again until you manage to find a subject the NPC responds to.

Minor quibbles aside, this was my favourite game of the IFComp 2006.

8 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=145&start=0#p1143
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Floatpoint
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 10:52:08

[b]Floatpoint[/b] by Emily Short (Glulx)


This was one of the first games I played during the IFComp, yet it took me almost a month before I got round to writing my review of it. In some ways it’s a trying game, but ultimately a very good one.

In the game, you are David Moskin, Earth’s ambassador to the Aleheart Colony, a planet on the verge of being destroyed. It’s your job to make arrangements to bring them home before disaster strikes. (Although as the planet’s population is a rather daunting two hundred and thirty-seven million, that’s going to take one heck of an effort to pull off.)

The setting of the colony is a wonderful one, and part of the fun in playing the game is just wandering around and soaking up the atmosphere of the place. There's an amazing amount of depth in the descriptions of many of the locations, although unfortunately most of the game takes place within the Aleheart Colony itself so the beautiful scenery that makes up the rest of the world is only seen briefly.

While the setting is impressive, the actual gameplay doesn’t quite hold up. While there's nothing especially bad about it, it’s just that it seems more time and effort went into making the setting interesting, and less into the gameplay itself. Which isn't to say that the gameplay side of things is bad in any way, shape or form, just that I found exploring the game world interested me more than trying to finish the game itself.

I had a few interpreter problems with “Floatpoint”. Gargoyle kept crashing at certain points in the game so I ended up playing it in Glulx where the colour scheme seemed a little buggy. I like playing games in white text on a black background but here the text I entered as commands was surrounded by a black block and at some points in the game, I’d be faced with an entire screen of text like this. Certainly made reading it a pain. However, as I don’t know whether this is a problem with Glulx or a problem with the game, I won’t mark it down.

There are a few nice touches in the game which deserve mention, the best being the THINK command which will list the things you still need to do and is handy for keeping track of your goals. Really, it’s no more functional than taking notes as you go along but it saves time and is a welcome feature.

Even if you don’t manage to finish “Floatpoint” without the walkthrough (guilty as charged), it’s still worth playing for the evocative setting if nothing else. Highly recommended.

7 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=146&start=0#p1144
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Game Producer!
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 10:52:29

[b]Game Producer![/b] by Jason Bergman (Inform)


The first game in the Comp I played through to completion, though only with a little aid from the attached walkthrough (sorry, but USE OBJECT ON OBJECT was never a command I’d have thought to try). The guide that came with the game informed me there were three different difficulty settings, as well as different choices available if I chose to be male or female at the start. A nice choice but as I’d seen (I think) pretty much everything on my first place through, one play was all I did.

As the title might suggest, you play the part of a game producer. I got to work on a first person shooter called “Regicide”, though apparently there are different games available (the game changes at random each time you play), and it was my job to ensure that it got finished, tested properly for bugs and got a decent review from the press. As I finished with a score of 93.3% and was told my game would sell an estimated 2,000,000 copies, I think I did pretty well. Of course, I cheated by looking at the walkthrough but, as I said before, the only part I really needed help with was the guess-the-verb USE OBJECT ON OBJECT. Other than that, it was plain sailing.

Most of the scenery is implemented nicely, with the unfortunate exception of the Demo Room where the game is tested out. I amused myself by trying to examine various pieces of scenery but none of them seemed to be there as the game wouldn’t acknowledge a single one of them. Was this deliberate? I can’t help but wonder if a location called Demo Room which doesn’t contain any examinable items is some kind of in joke.

For the most part, this is a nice and straightforward game. A good number of the puzzles are easy to figure out and just require a little thought. I wasn’t too sure about one of them – involving pouring something into a fellow worker’s coffee – because it seemed a tad unlikely that he wouldn’t have noticed me doing it seeing as he was sitting right there at the time, but no one ever said the game was realistic.

All in all, a fairly decent game. It took about an hour and a quarter from start to finish and even though it was a timed game and needed to be completed in a certain number of moves, I didn’t find this bothered me one bit. In fact, the only aspect of “Game Producer!” that I disliked was the introduction which didn’t seem to make any sense at the time and only later on, when I’d read the game guide, did I realise what was going on.

6 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=147&start=0#p1145
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Hedge
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 10:52:47

[b]Hedge[/b] by Steven Richards (Inform)


One of many games in the IFComp I played for the most part with the walkthrough to one side of me. Maybe I'm just getting worse at these kinds of games, but when I'm faced with trying to get inside a nightclub and the bouncer won’t let me in, asking him about proof isn't something I'm likely to try. (Yes, that’s a spoiler there but if you get any further in the game than its first location, it’s likely you looked at the walkthrough so I'm not really giving much away.) Then again, even with the walkthrough I'm not guaranteed an easy ride. The second command listed doesn’t work.

A puzzle later on, getting through a gate in some kind of war zone (how I got from the inside of a nightclub to a war zone, I'm not entirely sure) seemed to involve waiting a specified number of moves in a different location then rushing back to the gate before it closes… although how I'm supposed to figure that out I can’t imagine. This is the kind of game that makes me think looking at the walkthrough isn't cheating as such, but a necessity.

Unfortunately, keying in commands one by one with the walkthrough to one side of me isn't a lot of fun. I persevered to the end of the game just to see if things improved, but as the ending, where I was moved from the nightclub to a highway for no apparent reason, just confused me more I decided I’d have been better off not bothering.

2 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=148&start=0#p1146
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Lawn Of Love
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 10:53:11

[b]Lawn Of Love [/b]by The Santoonie Corporation (TADS)


I generally shy away from the offerings of the Santoonie Corporation for a couple of reasons. One for their constant trolling on RAIF; two because I played one of their previous IFComp entries – “Zero” – and found it to be pretty dire. But I thought in the interests of fairness, I’d give them another go and see if they had improved any.

Had they?

Hell no. “Lawn Of Love” is a poorly written game where little effort has been made to cover anything but the bare basics. Items descriptions frequently are more than a few words long, there are bugs where directional commands will often yield no response at all (not even a YOU CANNOT GO THAT WAY message) and I'm damned if I could find the pants in the first location despite the fact that the GET PANTS command worked fine. If they were in that woefully brief location I don’t know where because I looked everywhere, tried everything and they just weren’t to be found.

The aim of the is… well, I'm not sure really. The game doesn’t really so, but indicates it’s some kind of ‘romance’. It starts with YOU'VE KNOWN US, YOU'VE LOVED US, NOW LET US LOVE YOU. Unfortunately the command PASS THE VOMIT BAG didn’t work. A definite oversight.

Basic commands that the player might type aren't covered. There's a desk in the first location but OPEN DESK doesn’t get you anything more than I DON’T KNOW HOW TO OPEN THE DESK. Location descriptions are painfully brief and no attempt has been made to inject any life into them. Then there are the bugs. While none of them are crippling in their own right, they add up to more than enough to make the game seem not like a finished game at all but instead one that hasn’t gone through even the most basic testing. Doesn’t the Santoonie Corporation have testers? As the game frequently slips between first and second person when referring to the player, I'm guessing not.

“Lawn Of Love” was a slight step up from the previous Santoonie game I played, but it still wasn’t enough to make me think any more highly of them as a whole.

3 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=149&start=0#p1147
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Madam Spider's Web
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 10:53:31

[b]Madam Spider's Web[/b] by Sara Dee (Inform)


Sara Dee’s entry in the IFComp 2005 was my second favourite game of the Comp but I wasn’t half as keen on this one. It started off quite well – with me being addressed by a spider. Literally a spider. The Madam Spider of the title in fact. But after that, I didn’t find myself enjoying it as much as I felt I should.

The aim of the game is to put Madam Spider’s house into some kind of order. There’s a snake in the bath, something living inside the wardrobe and a distinct lack of music coming from the music room. Sort them out, warns Madam Spider, or else. The last serving girl was quite tasty…

The setup of the game was interesting and while I was playing the early stages of it, I got quite involved in it. But at the same time, I didn’t find myself enjoying as much as I thought be. Weird. Maybe the problem stemmed from some of the guess the verb problems I was running into – seriously, I’d have never got into the attic without the walkthrough – or the non-obvious puzzle with what keys to play on the piano (was it clued in some way that I missed or just as non-obvious as it seemed to be? I suppose through trial and error, mixed with a good dose of dogged persistence, I might have figured it out eventually, but even so…)

On the plus side, I liked the style of writing. I liked the way some of the puzzles were handled. I liked the general creepy feeling of the game. But like I said before, I didn’t like it as much as I kept feeling I should.

The ending was… unsettling. I wasn’t too sure what to make of it, although I’d guessed early on that the events in Madam Spider’s house might well not be happening the way I was imagining them. Apparently there are five different endings, some better than others. The ending I reached was definitely a bad one, although as I followed the walkthrough as closely as I could (unless I missed something vital along the way), I'm not sure how I could have improved on things. Maybe I was just doomed no matter what.

So… mixed feelings overall. Good parts, bad parts. I’ll call it an average game and score it 5.

5 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=150&start=0#p1148
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Man Alive - Part 1
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 10:53:56

[b]Man Alive - Part 1[/b] by Bill Powell (Inform)


Damn, but this annoyed one me before I was even out of the first location. It won’t let me climb over the wall while I'm carrying items. So I remove and drop the items (one at a time as the REMOVE command can only handle one item at a time). Then it won’t let me climb over the wall and leave my items behind. So I have to throw them over the wall (again one at a time) and *then* climb over. Making the start of a game, particularly an IFComp game, so pointlessly frustrating isn't going to win you favours from the judges.

There were a few oddities in the game that didn’t really affect the game too much but were certainly a pain. I spent a while chasing my hat around the garden after the wind blew it off, despite the fact that the WEAR HAT command told me

>WEAR HAT
(FIRST TAKING THE WHITE PANAMA HAT)

Strangely, the hat wasn’t taken. Another oddity I encountered with a simple movement command:

>SE
(FIRST TAKING THE SOUTHEAST)
THAT ISN'T AVAILABLE.

Bizarre. Was the southeast direction coded as an item or is that unusual bit of code something I'm not familiar with in Inform?

But for the game itself? For the most part, I didn’t have a clue what I was supposed to be doing. This is the unrevealing intro:

THE SHRUNKEN OLD PROFESSOR TALKS AGAIN. TALKING AND TALKING AND TALKING.

YOUR HAND SLIPS TO YOUR POCKET. YOUR FINGERS CLOSE AROUND COLD METAL...

BUT THAT WAS MANY YEARS AGO. YOU ARE NO LONGER THAT MAN.

NOW YOU ARE THE MAN WHO WILL NOT DIE...

Which doesn’t tell me a thing. The game begins with me climbing over a wall, having my hat blown off by the wind, and then going to extremes trying to get it back. If the hat blows away, the game ends (although why the hat is considered so important as to end the game like this I couldn’t say). After the game ended prematurely on me three times because my hat-catching skills were somewhat limited, I went to the walkthrough and keyed in the commands one after another. This wasn’t helped by the strange format of the walkthrough which seemed to intersperse random bits of text between the required commands (why?) but at least I was able to figure out what I needed to do this way.

While I'm at it, I might as well point out the oddness of the walkthrough which frequently leads me to dying and then undoing the command. Is there a reason for this or simply just flaws in the walkthrough? (It’s also quite amusing that the man who will not die seems to die so easily…)

The writing was better than the rest of the game might indicate and if the game itself had been less of a chore to play, I might well have enjoyed it. As it was, I just got more and more confused about what I was supposed to be doing, not helped by the strange, and totally unrelated to the current goings on, the player can say. After being shown to my room, I was given the following list of possible conversation options:

[1] FAIR PLAY, FAIR PLAY...SPORT OF KINGS...CHASE THEIR CROWNS... QUITE HUMANE...TRAMONTANA...CARDINALS CHASE RED HATS...OLD ENGLISH HUNTING...
[2] CAN'T NAB IT...FEELING FAINT...DEHYDRATED...SOMEONE GRAB...BLASTED THING...
[3] ...DEAR OLD HAT...WHITE...LIKE HORSE...

Er… come again?

If you have a fondness for oddball games that don’t make any sense, you might have a blast with this one. Unfortunately I don’t, so after struggling for a while, and shaking my head in dismay that the garbled mess that was the walkthrough, I was only too eager to play something else.

3 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=151&start=0#p1149
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Man Alive - Part 2
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 10:54:18

[b]Man Alive - Part 2[/b] by Bill Powell (Inform)


“Man Alive – Part 1” confused the heck out of me. Part 2 was even worse. Maybe it made sense to the writer but it sure didn’t to this poor player.

What’s it about? Well, I don’t really know. It begins with you in an unofficial court of law awaiting trial for attempted murder. I didn’t finish the previous game – even with a walkthrough to hand I felt it was too much of a chore – so I started this one not really understanding what was going on. Then again, as neither Part 1 nor Part 2 really made any sense as far as I could tell, it’s unlikely that if I *had* finished Part 1, I’d have been any the wiser.

The first few moves in the game annoyed me. They were different than the moves required to begin Part 1, but equally frustrating and I ended up consulting the walkthrough (which, like Part 1, has the proper commands interspersed with random snippets of text) and finding out that in order to get anywhere I had to TOUCH an item. As I was already carrying this item in my hands at the time, touching it to make it do anything struck me as kind of unusual. But not half as unusual as the rest of the game.

From the court room, I find myself stepping back in time to a garden where I need to perform a lot of non-obvious commands that didn’t make any sense to me. For some reason, I need to find a rake. The rake turns out to be in the tree but the game doesn’t think much will be achieved by my climbing the tree. So I take the rake. Only I can’t use it to rake the garden or, indeed, do anything with it. Instead I speak to my wife, tell her some meaningless babble about having another wife and children somewhere else, throw the rake in the air, and run off…

You can probably gather from the tone of this review so far that I wasn’t impressed with the game, can’t you? I’ll admit I liked the bizarre style of writing but that’s about it. The rest of it… well, it didn’t make a blind bit of sense and I ended up just keying in commands from the walkthrough because it beat trying to understand what was going on.

Aside from the fact that the game made no sense at all, there were some annoying gameplay flaws that would have let down even a good game. There's a boat that can’t be entered, there's a fellow called Polar Bear who attacks me yet who I’m unable to attack back because the game won’t even accept that he’s there, there are lots of other things.

I’ll settle for giving this the first score as Part 1 and just hope that the writer tries to make his next game a little more straightforward.

3 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=152&start=0#p1150
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Mobius
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 10:54:36

[b]Mobius[/b] by J. D. Clemens (Inform)


Unfortunately, this one didn’t impress me much at the start. For some reason, it decided to list the room directions as port and starboard instead of the more normal compass directions, so I spent a while having to familiarise myself with where I was. Why did it do this? Beats me.

The idea behind the game seems to be that you're some kind of futuristic soldier who has been sent to some kind of research station where a crisis has occurred. When you get there, there are a couple of badly injured people lying on the floor but the rest of your team haven’t arrived for some reason. A few moments later, the reactor explodes and it’s curtains…

Or is it? Apparently not as I didn’t die then, but seem to have been turned into some kind of ghost. I say ‘some kind of’ ghost because while I'm able to see my living self standing at the side of me, I can’t communicate with him or attack him, yet at the same time I'm able to manipulate other items.

Making progress was a pain. I was stuck in a single room and every action I performed seemed to achieve nothing. And then every dozen or so moves, the reactor would explode and the sequence begin once more. Done differently, this might have been a decent enough game, but as I couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to be doing, and was more and more annoyed at not being able to make the slightest bit of progress, I was soon looking around for the ever-helpful walkthrough file. Good job as well because I see some of the commands listed here are ones I never would have thought to try. OPEN REACTOR WITH COAT? Hmmm…

One nice feature that the game had was the way, after the first explosion of the reactor, the other you (i.e. the one still alive) seemed to mimic the commands you'd carried out previously. I don’t know whether this affected the way the game was played – if actions you performed then need to be mimicked by your previous self – but it was a cool touch. (Not an altogether successful one, alas, as it sometimes displayed strange things like YOUR PREVIOUS SELF LOOKS CLOSELY AT NOW HE.)

Another game I gave up with before reaching the end I'm afraid. Not a terrible, terrible game by any means, but I couldn’t seem to make any progress with it and couldn’t find much enthusiasm to keep on playing.

3 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=153&start=0#p1151
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Moon-Shaped
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 10:54:53

[b]Moon-Shaped[/b] by Jason Ermer (Inform)


(spoilers within)

“Moon-Shaped” is a take on Little Red Riding Hood, but with a difference. The more I played the game, the more I began to suspect that the identity of the wolf might be someone a little closer to home than in the usual telling of the tale.

This was one of the games in the IFComp that I liked for the most part but never managed to finish. Partly this was because I played it later in the comp, at a time when I was getting too close to the deadline and still had more than a few games to get played and reviewed and so didn’t have enough time to spend on it as I’d have liked, but mainly because some parts of it were (in my opinion anyway) pretty much impossible to figure out without the walkthrough. And the walkthrough, alas, is broken. I suppose some of the commands needed aren’t *too* reliant on the player being psychic, but would I ever have tried to catch the fireflies in the jar if I hadn’t seen that it said I had to in the walkthrough? I don’t think so. That strikes me as one of those puzzles that the writer thought was particularly clever, but which the poor player, lacking the writer’s way of thinking, is very unlikely to guess.

By the time in the comp I found myself playing “Moon-Shaped”, I was going to the accompanying walkthroughs for games as soon as I ran into trouble. Which didn’t take my long with this one I'm sorry to say. Here, one of the key commands required didn’t produce the necessary response. LOOK UNDER BED? Tried it. Didn’t work. I'm guessing this was crucial to the completing of the game because later on I was required to use an item I didn’t have and that really finished the game off for me. Then again, there are directional commands in the walkthrough which cannot be carried out in the game itself (due to the locations lacking the exits the walkthrough thinks they should have), so it’s altogether possible that I was in the wrong location. Either way, I didn’t have the item needed and didn’t have a clue where I needed to get it from. Unless, of course, it was under the bed after all but the game didn’t seem to think so.

But despite the bugs and the difficulty factor of some of the puzzles, I found myself liking “Moon-Shaped”. I’d have liked it a lot more if the walkthrough had worked, though…

6 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=154&start=0#p1152
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Pathfinder
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 10:55:11

[b]Pathfinder[/b] by Tony Woods (Inform)


“Pathfinder” – another of the many games entered in the IFComp 2006 that didn’t make any sense. I started off outside my house, shivering from cold and unable to get inside because I’d left my keys at the office. A few moments later, a sedan pulls up, driven by a total stranger and, for reasons that I can’t quite explain, I get inside. (Actually, I can explain them. There's nothing else to do and the game doesn’t move on till you get inside so you're forced to either go along with it or just sit there and stare at the screen for a while.) The sedan drives me across town, drops me off at an apartment block and then I go inside and, for another totally baffling reason, kill some poor chap that I work with. Why? The game gives the excuse that he’s received a text message from a friend, referred to me as a loser in it and has said he’s going to give me a beer or two and then get me out of there. And for this I decide to kill him? After showing up at his apartment and thumping on his door in the middle of the night? And, for that matter, where did I get the knife from that I stabbed him to death with? I certainly wasn’t carrying it beforehand (and my knife-free inventory verifies this), so where did it come from?

Setting aside the fact that the motivations of my character didn’t make a bit of sense to me, I also wasn’t too keen on the game as a whole. I got stuck at a steel door at one point because I kept typing PRESS on the keypad at the side of it whereas the game expected TYPE. Funnily enough, the first thing I typed – PRESS 1 – yielded a proper response so it was even more annoying when PRESS 2, PRESS 3, etc, just yielded error messages. Then there was the weird knocking on the door puzzle. KNOCK ON BROWN DOOR doesn’t work. Nor does KNOCK ON DOOR. (Both command responses make mention of a button, even though you never actually refer to a button.) But KNOCK BROWN DOOR does work. Strange.

Part of me feels I should have played the game further than I did but even with the walkthrough to hand, I couldn’t seem to find any enthusiasm to play it any longer.

3 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=155&start=0#p1153
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: The Primrose Path
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 10:55:30

[b]The Primrose Path[/b] by Nolan Bonvouloir (Inform)


The first game in the Comp I played and thought “ah, this one’s not bad”. Considering it was around the tenth or the eleventh game I played, that’s kind of depressing. But, finally, a decent game.

A confusing one, though. I have to admit I didn’t understand most of what happened in the game and even after finishing it (which I did with liberal use of the walkthrough), I still didn’t understand it. But do you have to understand what a game is about to enjoy it? Obviously not.

The game starts with you, Matilda (definitely not a good game for the main player methinks), discovering that her neighbour, Leo, has been shot by his mother. Quite why he’s been shot is a bit of a mystery at first and he also seems reluctant to let you call help for him. Then he disappears and his pocketwatch turns out to be used for a lot more than telling the time.

The game was way above average for the most part, both in the style of writing, gameplay itself and lack of bugs. However, there were a few oddities which I've seen before in Inform games involving attempts to open locked doors:

>SE
(FIRST OPENING LEO'S TOILET DOOR)
(FIRST UNLOCKING LEO'S TOILET DOOR)
LOCKED. ISN'T THAT ALWAYS THE WAY?

Here you're told you'd open the door, unlocked it (despite just keying in a directional command and not even being aware at the time that the door was locked) but then immediately told that the door is locked. Apparently you didn’t open and unlock it at all, though it’s certainly confusing when the game tells you that you did.

Early parts of the game were easy, later parts less so. One particular command, involving a music box that needs to be manipulated, I doubt I would ever have got. Whether that’s just me struggling with a puzzle that everyone else figured out in five seconds flat, or a puzzle not clued very well, I don’t know.

Use of the pendulum is quite inspired (even though I didn’t realise what needed doing till I’d seen the walkthrough) and I wish this idea had some more uses throughout the game than the ones I found.

All in all, best game of the comp bar none. Saying that, I can’t help but feel that it wasn’t a patch on my fave games from the past two comps.

7 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=156&start=0#p1154
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: The Sisters
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 10:55:46

[b]The Sisters[/b] by Revgiblet (ADRIFT)


(NOTE: I was a tester for this game, a fact that complicated this review as I found when I’d written it that I’d commented on several things that were in the first version of the game but which had been removed or changed in the finished IFComp version. Thankfully, the removals/changes were largely positive so I shouldn’t grumble.)

“The Sisters” is a horror/mystery game which starts with the player running his car off the road after narrowly missing hitting a young girl. With the car too damaged to be driven any further, it’s up to you to make your way out of there and make sense of what has happened.

Leaving the car and exploring a bit, you find yourself in a wood. You’ve got a bleeding gash on your head but, as lucky chance would have it, a first aid box just so happens to be lying on the ground. What are the odds…? Good job it was there, too, otherwise you'd have been in a bit of a predicament due to bleeding to death from the gash.

There's an annoying bug while descending a steep decline. If you have a penknife with you with the blade open, you fall down the decline, land on the blade and die. Funnily enough, if you drop the penknife before trying to descend, you *still* land on the blade and die. Clever penknife. Why this puzzle was included in the game at all I don’t know. There's no way of knowing beforehand that trying to climb down the decline with the penknife open would result in you dying and no reason to assume you'd need to close the penknife at this stage (it can’t be used when it’s closed after all) so it’s a fair bet that you'll end up dying here before realising what you need to do.

The game uses ADRIFT’s built in end game sequence which doesn’t allow UNDO and instead makes you restart the game when you die so you have to reload from your previous saved game position. Definitely a point against it. Hopefully this will be fixed when the new version of ADRIFT comes out.

The majority of the game takes place in a large mansion which you stumble on after leaving the woods. This has the usual prerequisite of locked doors which you need to find keys for (what large mansion doesn’t?) as well as a number of other puzzles to figure out. Some I managed on my own, some I only got to with the aid of the walkthrough. Even the ones that stumped me – getting open the urn being one that springs to mind – were fairly obvious and I'm annoyed I didn’t solve them on my own.

There is an interesting twist at the end of the game which wasn’t quite what I had expected. As I explorer the mansion which makes up the bulk of the game’s locations, I found myself coming up with the theory that I was actually a ghost of some kind and that the girl I had seen was perhaps my ghostly daughter. As it happened, I was wrong and the ending quite surprised me. It also left me feeling slightly confused about certain things in the game. How much of what happened had *really* happened and how much was in the mind of the player? Actually, part of me felt that the twist in the ending where some things were explained was left interesting than the ghost story idea that had seemed to be the theme before then.

Overall, I found “The Sisters” to be one of the better ADRIFT games I've played recently and, despite a few rough edges (and deaths by penknife notwithstanding), well worth playing.

6 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=157&start=0#p1155
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Star City
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 10:56:04

[b]Star City[/b] by Mark Sachs (Inform)


I'm not going to pretend I understood most of what was going on in “Star City”. Or, indeed, any of it. It, well, didn’t seem to make any sense. At all.

The storyline is right out of a sci-fi pulp novel from long ago: the Earth has just survived a war with the Gloss (who must be *the* most unscary sounding aliens I've ever heard of) and now you’ve discovered that there is an object orbiting the Earth. Deciding this might be a good time to fly up there and see what’s what, and maybe help yourself to some interstellar loot in the process, you swipe yourself a Gloss spaceship and head off to the object to take a look.

Most of the game involves your exploration of the object, which actually turns out to be a large space station-type vessel complete with monorails, avenues named after (of all people) Lenin, and a city that looks the same in every location you visit. The basic idea is to find something valuable from here to make your fortune with once you get back to Earth.

“Star City” is a frustrating game to play. Nothing happens for half a dozen or so turns at the beginning of the game as your stolen spaceship approaches the orbiting vessel and you can’t do much other than sit back and admire the (lack of) view – wouldn’t it have made more sense to start the game after you’ve arrived? There are many more instances of the game requiring you to hang about for something to happen. You can enter the airlock once the spaceship has landed on the orbiting vessel, but the airlock itself won’t open and let you out of the spaceship until X amount of moves have gone by. If you re-enter the spaceship later, you'll have to go through a lengthy and ultimately tedious process of waiting for the airlock to close, heading into the spaceship, heading back to the airlock and waiting again for the airlock to open before you can exit the ship once more. Elsewhere there’s a solar furnace which you have to operate by pushing a switch, but this again takes several turns and does nothing that couldn’t have been improved upon by taking one. Then there's the monorail call button which, you guessed it, calls a monorail… but only after several turns have gone by. And don’t even get me started on how many times I had to wait until the film finished playing.

While I can understand the need for realism, I can also understand the need to not bog the game down with meaningless wait times. If I need to press the button to call the monorail, have the monorail arrive immediately. If I need to watch the entire film, just let it run in one go. There's no fun in typing WAIT again and again.

A large portion of the game was played with the walkthrough to hand. I seemed to do that a lot with the games in the IFComp this year, more so than in previous years, though in my defence I’ll say that certain aspects of “Star City” (as mentioned in the previous two paragraphs) were the kind of thing that made me loose all patience in playing the game the proper way and just wanted to get to the next part. The part that tuned me to the walkthrough here was when I needed to press a button to turn the lights on. I found a box and tried to EXAMINE IT but the game just told me I couldn’t see it. I tried several more commands, got nowhere, got very frustrated, and then tried EXAMINE BOX and, lo and behold, it worked! Now, is there any good reason to make EXAMINE BOX work and EXAMINE IT not work? If there is, I’d sure like to hear it. It’s not even a case that the game didn’t understand EXAMINE IT. It did. It just required me to enter a different command to achieve what needed doing.

The game ended with my untimely death when the spacecraft I was travelling in unexpectedly crashed into the ground. I say unexpectedly because there was no warning. I was just travelling along, banging out WAIT as usual because the game doesn’t like to do anything in a hurry, and then a message flashed up on screen telling me one of my wingtips had hit the ground and that I was dead. A little unfair, I thought, particularly as there hadn’t been any indication that I was in any danger up to that point. Also unfair was the fact that the game won’t let me UNDO twice in a row so that effectively screwed things up for me.

There were certain parts of the game I liked – the idea of a space station orbiting the Earth which seemed to be part of either Lenin or Stalin’s (I was never sure which) plan to destroy the rest of the world and stay safe – but other parts that just annoyed me. The continual need to wait X amount of times just to progress things was a pain. As was the sudden death at the end. And I never understand what the point of the Gloss occupation of the Earth mentioned in the intro was – did it bear relevance to the rest of the game or was it just there for some unnecessary background info?

4 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=158&start=0#p1156
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Sysyphus
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 10:56:19

[b]Sysyphus[/b] by Theo Koutz (Inform)


I don’t know whether this is a joke game or not, but I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt and assume it isn't. Either way, it’s not up to much.

Apparently you're Sysyphus, the Greek king who has been punished by the Gods to continually push a boulder up a hill for all eternity. Sound like a good idea for an IF game to you? Nope, me neither.

Like I said before, I'm not sure whether this is a joke game or not. The only command the game seemed to understand was PUSH BOULDER and that didn’t achieve anything. I couldn’t walk away, I couldn’t interact with anyone, I didn’t have any items. There was, literally, nothing to do. The author didn’t even bother to include hints or a walkthrough for those people who didn’t think that endlessly typing PUSH BOULDER was enough fun in itself. So while I’d have liked to have written a review of the full game (assuming there is one), I'm instead just going to write a review based on what bit of it I saw.

In conclusion: it’s not much good.

1 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=159&start=0#p1157
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Tales Of The Travelling Swordsman
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 10:56:53

[b]Tales Of The Travelling Swordsman[/b] by Mike Snyder (Hugo)


One thing a game should never do by default is override the colours I've specified previously. If I've specified the colours, it’s a fair bet those are the colours I want to use when playing the game. Changing them is just going to annoy people. Fortunately this game, unlike one of the others in the IFComp (“Legion”), allows me to change them back to what I want. Which probably explains why I'm reviewing this one and not the other.

The game itself is actually three small games in one, each of them different enough that they could have been released separately and worked well in their own right. The first involves you, the travelling swordsman of the title, arriving at a farm house where a few things need sorting out. The second part has you aboard a flying boat, fighting off overly large spiders and helping the captain to keep things shipshape. In the third part, you come to an abandoned fishing village and have to overcome a tyrant. (There's also the epilogue as well, in which certain things about the game are explained, but as this takes only a few minutes to play through, and can be completed in a handful of moves, it doesn’t really count as a part in the same way that the others do.)

Of the three parts, I found myself liking the one with the flying boat the most, with the abandoned village a close second and the farm house a distant third. While the flying boat and the abandoned village had bizarre elements about them that I liked, the farm house didn’t. It seems quite plain and ordinary compared to the strangeness of the later parts. A pity the game started here. I think the travelling swordsman coming across a flying boat or a village terrorised by a tyrant would have been a better start to the game than a farm house where he’s required to harness a bull, find a way to bar a door and other not very exciting actions.

There seemed to be a few references within the game to the player being deaf (a girl screaming which the player is aware of but cannot hear, and then later on the same thing happening with the tyrant) but this was never resolved at the end of the game so maybe I simply misunderstood the references.

If there are parts of the game I wasn’t keen on, it’s the puzzles and solving them. Some were pretty easy and even I managed to figure them out (which shows they must have been *really* easy) whereas most just had me scratching my head and referring to the walkthrough for a clue as to what I was supposed to be doing. In particular, the fight with the tyrant at the end of the game was one part I’d have never figured out if I hadn’t cheated as it used several commands that it would never have occurred to me try otherwise.

All in all, though, I definitely preferred this to the author’s previous two games even if most of the game was spent with the walkthrough to one side of me.

6 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=160&start=0#p1158
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Tower Of The Elephant
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 10:57:11

[b]Tower Of The Elephant[/b] by Tor Andersson (Inform)


I was always a fan of Conan, Robert E. Howard’s barbarian hero so this was one of the first games I tackled during the IFComp. It’s a pretty good one, too.

You, as Conan, have taken it upon yourself to break into the Tower of the Elephant of the game’s title. Therein, you're planning to steal a jewel known as the Elephant’s Heart, the source of power for a priest known as Yara.

Making progress to begin with is fairly easy, with my rugged barbarian hero massacring everyone he came across (whether they needed massacring or not is another question…) but I ran into a few problems with dealing with the giant spider and came completely unstuck when it came to Yara himself. A conversation with an idol also threw me and had me peeking at the accompanying walkthrough for a hint as to what I needed to do next. The necessary conversation topic wasn’t really an obvious one (at least not in my humble opinion) so it’s not really surprising I didn’t figure it out myself.

The ending was kind of unusual in that a message flashed on screen telling me I’d won, yet I hadn’t achieved the one thing I had set out to do: get the Elephant’s Heart. I had had it at one point, yet been forced to get rid of it in order to kill Yara. Several times I went back to a previous saved game and tried things differently, yet every time the end result was the same: if I kept hold of the jewel, I died if I sacrificed it, I could defeat Yara and win the game. So maybe I misunderstood the intro and the aim of the game was actually a spot of priest-butchering instead. (As it happens, Yara is a black-hearted scoundrel so butchering him is all for the good.)

All in all, a pretty decent game. Nicely paced, nicely written.

6 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=161&start=0#p1159
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Unauthorised Termination
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 10:57:30

[b]Unauthorised Termination[/b] by Richard Otter (ADRIFT)


I’ll start with a disclaimer that I was a tester for this game so reviewing it was complicated by the fact that I had already seen what it had to offer, yet had to play it through again just to see what had changed. I won’t list the changes I noticed between the first version I played and the finished IFComp version (that wouldn’t be fair), except to mention that they improve the game play side of things quite significantly. A number of annoyances I noticed have been fixed and another aspect of the game changed entirely for the better.

In “Unauthorised Termination”, you play the part of Epsilon-Beta, a senior examiner at the Centre of Examination on the planet of Morbian. A senior examiner seems to be some kind of investigator/executioner for those who break the law and need to be punished. And this is in a society where almost every crime is punished by termination. The ‘unauthorised’ termination of the game’s title involves the death of one Gamma-Sigma which you are assigned to look into. Only when you start to investigate the death, you find there's more to it than meets the eye.

Where the game excels is in its depiction of the aliens who, for a change, actually seem genuinely alien and not just thinly-disguised humans with silly names. In appearance they are robotic and have little warmth and personality, but rather than hinder them it made them seem all the more believable. Their strange liking of simple personal belongings, appropriate to their level of achievement, is another nice touch. In a world where even the powerful seem to make do with nothing more lavish than a single, barely furnished room, I guess a pebble or rock seems like something to aim for.

Travel is via teleporters for the most part, as the game is broken up into many smaller parts making conventional travel only possible in a limited number of locations. Using the teleporters is easy, though can sometimes be frustrating as, for example, the teleporter from one location will only allow access to certain other locations, and the teleporters from there only allow access to certain others, and so on… So it’s sometimes a pain finding the teleporter you need to reach location X when you're at location Y and quite often you'll need to visit A, B, C, D, etc, before finding the teleporter which leads to where you want to go.

I preferred the setting of this game to that of the writer’s IFComp entry of 2005 – “Escape To New York” – and found myself preferring the main character as well, even though I was playing the part of an emotionless robot. Uncovering what has happened to Gamma-Sigma, and the larger conspiracy that you stumble on during the investigation, is quite straightforward to begin with, though gets difficult further on in the game. The more of the game that opens up via the teleporters, the harder it is to find your way around. I wasted more than a few moves at one point in the game going back and forth from one teleporter to another trying to figure out what I needed to do next. Fortunately, help is provided and this gives you just enough information to get past the harder parts.

“Unauthorised Termination” wasn’t my favourite game of the IFComp, but it was a nice enough game in its own right and the setting was certainly a refreshing one after the rather mundane settings of so many of the other entries.

6 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=162&start=0#p1160
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: The Wumpus Run
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 10:57:49

[b]The Wumpus Run[/b] by Cheryl Howard (ADRIFT)


I never played the original Wumpus game but I have a vague idea what it was about: hunting for some creature called the Wumpus through a cavern system, killing it and getting out in one piece. This is the author’s interpretation of the idea.

Unfortunately, I can’t much say I cared for it. The introduction is nice, but the game goes downhill quickly from there. ADRIFT’s built in map is disabled – never a popular decision with me, particularly in a game set within a maze – which means I had to figure out my way with constant glimpses at the map contained in the game package as I couldn’t be bothered to map it out myself. I should probably say that I dislike mazes intensely and while I have many fond memories of retro text adventures, of which this most definitely aspires to be, that fondness doesn’t extend as far as mazes. Especially mazes that kill the player off without warning merely by going the wrong way (one location has a hole in the middle which you fall into the moment you enter the room).

There were some strange errors in the game, like when I tried to throw my starblade at the Wumpus:

HMMM ... THE DARK IS STARTING TO GET TO YOU ... WHAT %CHARACTER% WHERE?

THE SOUND OF A STARBLADE SHATTERING ON THE WALLS OF THE CAVERN ECHOES THROUGHOUT THE CAVERNS. SO MUCH FOR SNEAKING UP ON THE WUMPUS ... DO YOU THINK YOU HAVE MANAGED TO WAKE IT UP YET?

YOU SLUMP TO THE GROUND EMOTIONALLY AND PHYSICALLY SPENT FOR A FEW MOMENTS ... COULD THIS BE THE END OF YOUR ONE AND ONLY CHANCE OF BEING SOMEBODY?

UH-OH! YOU ARE ONE LUCKY ADVENTURER ... YOU MUST HAVE MASKED MOST OF THE LIGHT WHEN YOU PASSED OUT, ALLOWING THE WUMPUS TO SETTLE BACK TO SLEEP.

Aside from the obvious mistake of %character% popping up in the text (I'm assuming that should be the name of some NPC), there seem to be four totally unrelated paragraphs there. At another point, I tried throwing the starblade at the Wumpus only to be told that I couldn’t do that with the starblade – despite the fact that this is what the game’s intro specifically tells me to do! – and when attempting to kill the Wumpus, I was told that that wasn’t very nice (ADRIFT’s default response when trying to kill an NPC that the writer has forgotten to program a response in for. When the very idea of the game – killing the Wumpus – isn't even covered, you really have to wonder just what kind of testing this game went through). While I'm sure the game *can* be finished, I just couldn’t summon up any willpower to keep on playing it. Take a maze, a disabled mapping facility and the most obvious commands not working properly and you have one remarkably poor game.

2 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=142&start=0#p1161
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Carmen Devine: Supernatural Troubleshooter
User: George / DateTime: 2006-11-19 12:06:00

[quote="David Whyld"]
I suppose I should finish this largely negative review with one thing about the game I liked. It was well written.
[/quote] 

That was my impression too. It reminded me of above-average fan fiction. However one other real problem I had with the game that torpedoed the experience for me was that it maps a fairly open geography, with few obstacles or gates in the path. So I ended up wandering around with a lack of focus and things to do. And after a couple of turns that fox spirit was just too annoying to be a mass murderer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=150&start=0#p1162
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Man Alive - Part 1
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2006-11-19 12:10:04

What happened immediately before the "southeast" incident?  (Did your command trigger a disambiguation question?)

(Inform does handle directions as objects.  It makes it easier to handle commands like "PUSH CRATE SOUTH" or to modify the compass.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=159&start=0#p1163
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Tales Of The Travelling Swordsman
User: George / DateTime: 2006-11-19 12:30:10

[quote="David Whyld"]
There seemed to be a few references within the game to the player being deaf (a girl screaming which the player is aware of but cannot hear, and then later on the same thing happening with the tyrant) but this was never resolved at the end of the game so maybe I simply misunderstood the references.
[/quote] 

I'm a bit puzzled by the many reviews I've read that are confused about that (the deaf PC). Yes, it was weird at first when the PC couldn't really talk to anyone in the story, but after a while I just rolled with it and the epilogue explained it neatly enough. I found it quite touching, really. 

I liked the first part at the farm house the best. It had the most enchanting fairy-tale quality, like this part:

[quote]
The girl stands here, completely still until she notices your approach. She spreads her arms at an upward angle, tilts her head back, and opens her mouth impossibly wide. In moments, the swarm comes back through gaps in the wall. The bees target her, rushng and flowing like water around her. Like a living cloak, the swarm is at her command.
[/quote] 

The second part felt fantastic and cool, but also a little jumbled and off-pace, particularly in the battle with the spiders. I noticed this too in [i]Tower of the Elephant[/i], it's difficult to coordinate IF turn-based action. 

I'm curious about what your preferred color scheme is and why you're so set on it. [i]Tales[/i] instantly struck me by its excellent presentation. Shouldn't some games have license to present themselves in the uniqueness of the author's vision?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=150&start=0#p1164
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Man Alive - Part 1
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 12:32:51

I'm not sure exactly. It's a month since I played the game and I didn't keep any of my transcripts.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=159&start=0#p1165
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Tales Of The Travelling Swordsman
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 12:36:30

I like white text on a black background as I always find a white background painfully bright. It's one of those things that never fails to annoy me: when I've set the colour scheme to something I want, I start a new game and it gets changed. At least this game let me change it back so I went ahead and played it; [b]Legion[/b] wouldn't let me change it so I quit right there and then.

Yes, ultimately it's the author's decision on what colour scheme they use; but it's the player's decision on whether they play the game or not.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=160&start=0#p1166
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Tower Of The Elephant
User: George / DateTime: 2006-11-19 12:51:44

[quote="David Whyld"]
All in all, a pretty decent game. Nicely paced [...]
[/quote]  

Sadly I disagree. Sadly because REH was one of my favorite authors growing up, I think I've read most of his stories and nearly all of the Conan stories. So when I saw this game I got excited. 

I think the pacing in [i]Towers[/i] is flawed, perhaps irredeemably so. Conversation topics not in scope are still accessible, often illogically; for example, you can talk with the thief about the dead guard, when you're both on top of the tower, as if the dead guard is right beside you. On second thought maybe that's not a pacing problem, but it did ruin the conversation. In the combat with the spider the pacing of what the spider is doing and what you're doing become so out of step that when you do deliver the coup de grace it doesn't feel so much like a heart-pounding combat, but as if you found the electrical bill underneath a pile of papers on your desk while a fly is buzzing round your head. 

I'm interested to know if this (pacing action) is a structural problem in IF. The nearest analogues I can think of, muds, handle action by spamming your screen, and you reply with triggers and macros that catch the text spewing out at you. Not an acceptable solution for IF. I've heard that the Final Fantasy PC games are (or were?) turn-based in combat, I wonder how that's handled?

As I recall from the original story, Conan does not leave the tower with the heart, so the ending makes sense as far as that goes. Perhaps given more time to put into it Tor would have developed an alternate victory conclusion, put more of the I into the F; I liked how he gives you a choice with how to interact with the thief, for example.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=163&start=0#p1167
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Delightful Wallpaper Mullings (SPOILERS)
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-19 12:55:18

I've wondered a couple things about Delightful Wallpaper. Maybe they've been answered on the newsgroup, but if so, I missed it.

1) Why'd he name the game Delightful Wallpaper?

It's quirky and catchy, but when I read the list of entered games before playing it (even several times), it was one I nearly dismissed.

Maybe it's because the PC has to do some difficult, distasteful things, but they're no bother to him/her at all. The quality of the wallpaper is mentioned in several rooms. Does the title reflect the PC's attitude? It's all in a day's work, and the most interesting thing about his job is the wallpaper?

2) Who *is* the PC?

I thought it was fate -- or death, predetermination, luck -- some such concept embodied. Stephen Bond's review points to the PC as a writer of Goreyesque verse. I like that explanation, but does it fit in with the first half? I'm not familiar with Gorey, so perhaps it does. For the PC to be a writer and the game to be his imagination (which if true would be another "it was all a fantasy" twist that so many people have been really down on this year), would the first half be setting up the story framework and the second half be detailing the plot?

What do you all think about these things? I could ask in the newsgroup, but I'm kind of fond of brainstorming about it here first. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=143&start=0#p1168
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Delightful Wallpaper
User: George / DateTime: 2006-11-19 13:05:38

[quote="David Whyld"]
 The first part is unusual in that every command in it (bar one) involves simply moving from one location to another. The walkthrough frequently has the player going one way and then returning, though if there's a reason for all this backtracking I wasn’t sure what it might be.
[/quote] 

Has anyone read a review where the author claims to have compeleted the first part of [i]Wallpaper[/i] without a walkthrough? I felt like I got 2/3 of the way to the solution, but when I looked at the walkthrough I realized I wasn't even close, more like 1/2 way, unless there are multiple paths (which does seem to be the case -- even in the walkthrough you can get the first intent before the walkthrough tells you to pick it up). The first part seems impossibly difficult. 

Here was a game where reading other people's comments about it definitely persuaded me to give it more time than I had at first.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=159&start=0#p1169
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Tales Of The Travelling Swordsman
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-19 13:08:10

[quote="George"]
I'm a bit puzzled by the many reviews I've read that are confused about that (the deaf PC). Yes, it was weird at first when the PC couldn't really talk to anyone in the story, but after a while I just rolled with it and the epilogue explained it neatly enough. I found it quite touching, really.
[/quote]     
Thanks!

I was puzzled at first, until I found out what (I think) is going on. One player didn't take the signing to be a clue to deafness (I think that if you *can't* sign -- like I can't -- then it's probably easier to make the connection). Others didn't like the rest of the game, so they weren't really interested in doing much but skimming the ending. Others liked the game (or liked it well enough), but balked at the main twist and just didn't notice the signing at all. I think the last group are those that didn't get to the end (ran out of time or just didn't like it enough to play to the end).

[quote="George"]
I liked the first part at the farm house the best. It had the most enchanting fairy-tale quality, like this part:

[quote]
The girl stands here, completely still until she notices your approach. She spreads her arms at an upward angle, tilts her head back, and opens her mouth impossibly wide. In moments, the swarm comes back through gaps in the wall. The bees target her, rushng and flowing like water around her. Like a living cloak, the swarm is at her command.
[/quote]      
[/quote]     
Yikes, is "rushng" my typo, or yours? If mine, I'm going to kick myself. I did notice a handful after the comp version, but I don't remember that being one. [emote]:([/emote]

But anyway, thanks! The pattern I'm seeing is that most people preferred the 2nd chapter. You're the first (maybe second) I've seen who preferred Part 1, and nobody seems overly thrilled with Part 3. [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote="David Whyld"]
I like white text on a black background as I always find a white background painfully bright.
[/quote]   
I've never been bothered either way. DOS was white-on-black (or light gray-on-black, at any rate) and I used it for years (still do, sometimes). When I remote into my Linux servers, it's the same. Windows is black-on-white (email, text editors, etc). I think if I had to pick, I'd stick with the black-on-white. It's the Gargoyle default, and the HTML TADS default (unless I changed it a long time ago and just forget).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=143&start=0#p1170
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Delightful Wallpaper
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 13:13:10

I know I played the first part not really understanding what was going on. I thought at one time I must be a ghost because I couldn't pick up anything or open any doors, but I was carrying a notebook so clearly the ghost angle was out. Unless it was a ghostly notebook...?

I don't know if I'd have *never* figured out the first part without the walkthrough, but in all honesty I didn't try that hard. I was making an effort to get through all the Comp games before the deadline (which I nearly did), so after I'd been wandering around the game for a while and didn't have a clue what I was supposed to be doing, I went to the walkthrough.

I think this was definitely one game where having the walkthrough included helped a lot. I certainly wouldn't have got very far with it otherwise; indeed, I'd have probably got frustrated with it and quit.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=143&start=0#p1171
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Delightful Wallpaper
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-19 13:14:45

[quote="George"]
Has anyone read a review where the author claims to have compeleted the first part of [i]Wallpaper[/i] without a walkthrough?
[/quote] 
It seems like somebody did, but what I may be thinking of are reviewers who liked the first part better than the second.

I kind of wish I'd played it (a) outside the competition on a more leisurely schedule, (b) without knowing who wrote, and (c) without knowing what other people thought of it. "B" and "C" are my own fault for getting spoilers to other games in my "need" to see reviews of TTS. The first part is the kind of thing I could see myself keeping more detailed notes about (partially done while playing), and going through it over the course of several nights for the thrill of solving it on my own. It would have taken me quite a while longer, I think.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=142&start=0#p1172
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Carmen Devine: Supernatural Troubleshooter
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-19 13:17:17

ARGH!!!

This is nothing about CD:ST. It's my frustration at not being able to play more than half the competition games this year, and being too swamped with work (in fact, I should be working right now -- and it's Sunday afternoon) to play them now. Too many spoilers, though. There are games like this I think I might have liked.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=160&start=0#p1173
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Tower Of The Elephant
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 13:21:41

Interact with the thief? I didn't do that. Being this hulking great barbarian fighter type, I just lopped his head off the moment I saw him  [emote]Wink[/emote]  so I missed out on the conversation flaws about the guard.

I read the Robert E. Howard short story a while back (I think I've read all the Conan stories at some point), but I couldn't remember enough about it to say how accurately the game mirrored it. I just felt that, as the aim of the game was stated clearly at the beginning - to steal the Heart - it seemed a little unusual that I had to give it up in order to finish the game. I even went back a time or two and replayed it different ways to see if I could get out of the tower with the Heart, but if there's a way then I never found it.

As for the combat angle... well, I don't think IF is really suited to combat. I've always fancied the idea of an IF game with combat in it, but whenever I play one I find myself going off the idea a little more each time. Maybe there just isn't a good way to do it; at least, no one has found a way yet that works effectively.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=142&start=0#p1175
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Carmen Devine: Supernatural Troubleshooter
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 13:24:10

One advantage to not having played all the games at the time is that you can now have a look at what did well and what didn't and pick the best ones to play. The rest of us poor sods had to wade through the bad to get to the good. [emote]Sad[/emote]

But working on a Sunday afternoon? Is that some kind of custom they have in America (and which makes me glad I'm British if it is) ?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=142&start=0#p1176
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Carmen Devine: Supernatural Troubleshooter
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-19 13:38:05

[quote="David Whyld"]
One advantage to not having played all the games at the time is that you can now have a look at what did well and what didn't and pick the best ones to play. The rest of us poor sods had to wade through the bad to get to the good. [emote]:([/emote]
[/quote] 
I played the first 11 games during the competition, which is my dilemma. I liked games that rated lower, so I'd probably like the ones I didn't play too -- but with the results out and all, I've lost the motivation (for now -- maybe I'll go back later) to play them.

When I realized I couldn't play them all, I made a list of the ones I wanted to finish before the deadline. That's not to say I didn't *want* to play the others, but there were several in particular I just didn't want to miss. I got through most of the list, except for three:

1) Requiem. Although I've only played three of your games, I seem to like each one better than the one before. Your Spring Thing entry was particularly good.

2) Xen: The Hunt. I had a few concerns with Xen: The Contest, but overall I liked it. It was memorable, and I was looking forward to the sequel. I actually did play about ten minutes of it -- too early to tell if it was going to be better. The ten minutes I played were fine.

3) Tower of the Elephant. Tor has done such an outstanding job with his all-in-one interpreters, that I was anxious to try out his game. Plus, there's the whole commercial IF idea we all started that's still looming (looming or dead -- I can't be sure), so I really wanted to try this game.

[quote="David Whyld"]
But working on a Sunday afternoon? Is that some kind of custom they have in America (and which makes me glad I'm British if it is) ?
[/quote] 
No, it's definitely out of the ordinary in many jobs. If you consider businesses that are open daily and nightly (such as some fast food places, convenience stores and gas stations, etc) and all the places open during the day (restaurants, etc), it's not so odd. As a programmer, I'm used to a clean 8:00-5:00 Monday-Friday with 1 hour for lunch schedule.

We have this major project that has to be done before December 14th -- done to show the national sales reps who'll be here for the company conference, and done to install at a live beta test school.

Realistically, it's about 3 months worth of work. But, as this is a no-fooling deadline, I'll be making up the extra two months during nights and weekends.

Hence, the intfiction.org news page is on hold -- for now. So are all my other projects... a post-comp release of Swordsman, work on my next game, the TTS post-mortem page, etc. I took time to update sidneymerk.com with brief news and a download page for TTS, and I'll be doing one other IF-related projected (I did it last year too, if anybody is inclined to guess), but that's it.

The amont of time I've spent already today posting and reading makes me cringe. I have a 4-week schedule that I'm two days behind on already. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=142&start=0#p1177
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Carmen Devine: Supernatural Troubleshooter
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 13:43:10

I think you need a job you enjoy more. Then again, so do I but at least mine's a nice simple 9.00am - 5.30pm and then I can go home and forget about it all for another day.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=163&start=0#p1178
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Delightful Wallpaper Mullings (SPOILERS)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 13:49:03

Point 1: I never actually thought about it. It was one of those "oh, he's called it a silly name. Hmmm..." and I figured if there was a reason for it, it'd be explained at the end (which I didn't get to).

Point 2: A ghost? That was my initial reaction based on the fact that I couldn't pick up any items and couldn't open any doors... or do pretty much anything that required physical action. But as I was carrying a notebook, maybe not. It wouldn't surprise me if the origins of the PC had been left deliberately vague in order to allow the player the option of deciding things for themselves.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=159&start=0#p1179
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Tales Of The Travelling Swordsman
User: George / DateTime: 2006-11-19 13:58:11

[quote="Merk"]
Yikes, is "rushng" my typo, or yours? If mine, I'm going to kick myself. I did notice a handful after the comp version, but I don't remember that being one. [emote]:([/emote]
[/quote] 

Without replaying the game I would say that's my typo; perhaps I'm just too thick to figure it out but I've never been able to use cut and paste with Gargoyle.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=142&start=0#p1180
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Carmen Devine: Supernatural Troubleshooter
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-19 14:05:05

That's *usually* how it is for my job. This current project and schedule is just crazy. I'm planning to ride it out (because it's a hassle to go interview, start over on sick/personal time, stop retirement investing temporarily, etc) and see what happens *after* December 14th.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=159&start=0#p1181
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Tales Of The Travelling Swordsman
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 14:10:34

Is it possible to cut and paste out of Gargoyle? I've never been able to myself. When I needed to copy some text from it, I had to start a transcript to do it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=143&start=0#p1182
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Delightful Wallpaper
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2006-11-19 14:14:36

I played through the first part of Wallpaper without a walkthrough.  (It helps if you think of it more as a textual description of something off <a class="postlink" href="http://logicmazes.com/">http://logicmazes.com/</a> than as traditional IF.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=163&start=0#p1183
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Delightful Wallpaper Mullings (SPOILERS)
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2006-11-19 14:22:57

For a sample of Gorey, see <a href="http://web.mit.edu/adorai/www/gashlycrumb_tinies/">http://web.mit.edu/adorai/www/gashlycrumb_tinies/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=163&start=0#p1184
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Delightful Wallpaper Mullings (SPOILERS)
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-19 14:31:29

Wow - I can totally see the influence. No wonder people who *are* familiar made the connection right away.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=139&start=0#p1185
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Polendina
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-19 17:47:21

I believe your dad's ID card gets into the sewers because somewhat earlier in the game you are supposed to have flushed it down the toilet.

This is something I only gleaned from studying the walkthrough, because it doesn't correspond to the behavior of real ID cards and toilets I have known. (Even if you managed to get it to flush, wouldn't it likely get caught in one of the plumbing bends and never make it to the sewer at all? Not to mention that I don't think I'd want to retrieve ID from a river of raw sewage. Mercifully, the game doesn't really describe that aspect.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=139&start=0#p1186
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Polendina
User: George / DateTime: 2006-11-19 18:05:25

Speaking from experience, I would say it [i]is[/i] possible for an id card to end up in a sewer. 

Did no one else try repeatedly to open the white door in the starting room? I thought that was brilliant.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=139&start=0#p1187
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Polendina
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-19 18:08:40

Hey.... Rioshin... you around? Is there an updated to this UBB beta version? I'd love to see italics start working. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=159&start=0#p1188
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Tales Of The Travelling Swordsman
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2006-11-20 03:38:10

Don't think so. Hopefully Tor will add that soon - it's a little annoying.

[quote="George"]
[i]Tales[/i] instantly struck me by its excellent presentation.
[/quote] 
Me too. I was very impressed by the lengths the author went to make sure it looked beautiful - not just in Hugo, but also in Gargoyle.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=159&start=0#p1189
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Tales Of The Travelling Swordsman
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-20 11:22:25

I loved this game. I found it charming, relaxed, and effortless.

Some (most) games make the author's work and effort all too apparent, and you can practically see a little author-entity running around, struggling between each thing, trying to make it all work, and pointing at random stuff going 'look at this, look at it, isn't it clever?!' Not this game; Swordsman felt like I really WAS reading a fairy tale that I could control. The author's influence was entirely invisible. This factor is what *really* makes a quality game for me; only Swordsman and Floatpoint achieved it for me in this comp. For Swordsman the effect may have been broken a tiny little bit during the chase scene, but after that it recovers beautifully.

I also liked that it didn't consciously throw itself into some controversial sci-fi conundrum, or a sappy romantic arc, or an overtly shocking theme. Not that there's anything wrong with any of those - it's just nice to see an author who is confident enough in his writing and his medium that he can just relax and tell an entertaining story. That factor reminded me of Winter Wonderland from a previous comp, another game in this vein that I really enjoyed.

As for the twist with the deafness, it was a minor 'aha' moment at the end for me. I had noticed that nobody talked, and I had considered it briefly, and chalked it up to the author's storytelling style (and really, to do anything else would be to actively and artificially find faults with the game, in my opinion. There's no reason a game HAS GOT TO have dialogue. If you can communicate an idea by having a character point at something and not talking, then to do so is perfectly acceptable, and in fact, better, I think). When I got to the signing at the end I went, 'oh, so that's why..' And left with a nice feeling of having been a part of a little boy's pretend games.

I'm not sure if the game itself would have improved by letting the reader in on the 'It's a pretend game' from the very beginning, but I think it would have. I mean, why not? What's wrong with saying to the reader 'You're gong to be playing in a little boy's imagination today' instead of 'You're a strong swordsman in a medieval land... ...naahh just kidding you're just a little boy!!' So that would be the one suggestion I would make to the author... you didn't need to make it a 'twist', the story was fine as it was.

Anyway, well done and certainly one of my two favorite games in the entire comp.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=149&start=0#p1190
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Madam Spider's Web
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-20 11:55:57

The piano puzzle was clued with the porcelain figures on the cabinet. You had to have the piano make the sounds that the figurines would themselves make (like for the dog driving the firetruck, a wailing siren, like a firetruck), in the order they were on the mantel.

Personally I had no trouble with the game aside from the ending 'twist'... The writing and the setting were both nice and dream-like, and it would have been nice if it had been kept in the dream-scape. Instead we get somehting to the tune of 'You're a little girl in a fantasy fairy tale who's trying to find her way free... Naahh just kidding you're actually a woman who's been in a horrific car accident and is having coma-hallucinations!!! Did I get ya did I huh?' Which is the same gripe I had with Swordsman only this game takes it to another level, moving it from 'oh that's nice' to '...o...kaay...'

What is so horrible about having a straight well-written enjoyable story without a twist in an IF game is and will remain beyond me, and I've seen this so often in 12 years of IFComps that I know it's not going away.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=152&start=0#p1191
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Mobius
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-20 12:08:35

Hm, I would point out that the game *did* provide progressively helpful clues at the start of each iteration if it saw that you weren't making any progress. I actually found myself making good progress by just chilling out and following what was suggested at the start of each round.

However, even after figuring out everything and fixing the reactor in both ways and in both loops, it wouldn't get fixed. After a long while a look at the walkthrough and what I saw was the exact same thing I'd been doing. I tried it all again, tried following the walkthrough step by step even, and still everything would explode and send me back once again. In the end I quit with a very notable amount of frustration. So I would say you did indeed do the right thing by quitting early.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=159&start=0#p1192
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Tales Of The Travelling Swordsman
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-20 12:36:46

I've been too fixated on the complaints lately to stop and think that people *did* like the game. I realize it -- I just have this odd urge to dig into the how's and why's of the more critical feedback. It just wasn't to everyone taste. So I guess what I'm saying is... thank you all!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=149&start=0#p1193
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Madam Spider's Web
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-20 12:39:28

Yes, I felt the ending was a bit of an unnecessarily unpleasant one. I think I'd have liked the game more if it had ended all sugary sweet or, at least, not with the PC dying and the whole game turning out to be some kind of hallucination. I'm all in favour of 'edgy' games in their own time and place, but I don't think the ending suited this game at all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=149&start=0#p1194
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Madam Spider's Web
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-20 12:51:36

[quote="Tropico"]
What is so horrible about having a straight well-written enjoyable story without a twist in an IF game is and will remain beyond me, and I've seen this so often in 12 years of IFComps that I know it's not going away.
[/quote]  
This would be a great topic to discuss all on its own, but this is probably as good a place as any.

I think what we're all doing, in offering these kinds of twist endings, is an attempt to do something that's been done, but *better*. I can only speak for myself, but I think it's probably true of the others. As I was considering the ending for TTS, my first thought *was* that it might be seen as a cliche. That I considered it something others might think probably should have clued me into the fact that *I* might have thought the same thing.

I don't think I even thought about the "it was just a dream" ending that's so prevelent in all forms of storytelling (if I did, I don't remember -- I'd have to consult my design notes to say for sure). It could have just been my narrowmindedness. I wasn't thinking about twist endings where everything was a dream, but rather twist endings where the way things are imagined (consciously by the PC) is the way the story is told. With that more narrow view, I couldn't think of any examples. There are -- they've been brought to my attention. In hindsight, I should probably have considered *all* such twists, instead of thinking my way was an original way.

Also, I couldn't think of any IFComp games in the past two years (the years I've been involved the most) that had a twist like this (somebody can correct me if I've missed one). So, I kind of thought it would be fresh, even if a *few* thought it felt like a cliche. I think I deceived myself there. [emote]:)[/emote] It's interesting that there were 2 -- or 3 or 4? -- this year.

In short, I think when we as IF authors do this, it's because we *think* we're doing it in an original way -- and that the journey will justify the destination. It's easy to think this when writing the game -- harder when you see it done by others.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=152&start=0#p1195
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Mobius
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-20 13:02:03

I kind of had the same experience with it. From the walkthrough, it *looked* like I had done everything. I had to make sure I was on a fresh loop and then follow it exactly from an earlier point, for it to work. Also, the hints at the beginning of each loop worked at first, but eventually it started telling me to do something that I thought I'd already done, not really understanding that I'd missed a small step.

I scored it a "7", which is "good" on my scale. It's a game I still like, even though I started to feel the frustration. I think it's very clever how it all works, and I really wish I *had* solved it without help. If it had been a *little* more polished, and maybe the new-loop hint had given me a *little* more help, I think it could have been one of my favorites this year. Skimming my review now, I wonder if I judged it too harshly. I seem to have hit on more bugs than the average reviewer, and I think I was giving more weight to technical competency than usual this year.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=158&start=0#p1196
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Sysyphus
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-20 13:18:41

I really really *REALLY* wanted there to be more to Sisyphus. I played well beyond the point when most people probably gave up.

I have a theory that it was written as a "screw you" to the IF Community. Or maybe not so much that -- maybe as ironic punishment. If that's true (which it probably isn't), I didn't feel like the target. I don't remember being frustrated by the game at all. I just hoped for more *beyond* the boulder.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=161&start=0#p1197
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Unauthorised Termination
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-20 13:27:21

Did anybody else have problems with getting the game to disambiguate badges? I know it's a minor complaint, but it was an ongoing problem for me, whenever I tried to examine badges. Even though the game would ask me which I meant, I couldn't just enter the word (the shape, I think) that in other games would have done the trick to tell them apart. It would work as long as I entered the full description. Anybody else notice that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=148&start=0#p1199
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Lawn Of Love
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-20 13:38:25

[quote="David Whyld"]
...and I'm damned if I could find the pants in the first location despite the fact that the GET PANTS command worked fine. If they were in that woefully brief location I don’t know where because I looked everywhere, tried everything and they just weren’t to be found.
[/quote] 
I didn't have a problem with this part. I'd have to look at my transcript to know for sure, but I *think* here's how it worked for me. In the initial text -- one of the three intro bits, perhaps -- I had read that yesterday's dirty pants had been hung over the back of a chair. So, when I needed to get dressed, the first thing that occurred to me was to take and wear the pants. I didn't even try searching, so I probably didn't realize that the pants weren't otherwise mentioned in the room.

[quote="David Whyld"]
The aim of the is… well, I'm not sure really. The game doesn’t really so, but indicates it’s some kind of ‘romance’. It starts with YOU'VE KNOWN US, YOU'VE LOVED US, NOW LET US LOVE YOU. Unfortunately the command PASS THE VOMIT BAG didn’t work. A definite oversight.
[/quote] 
Heh. I just kind of wondered *how* much of a romance it would turn out to be, and how they (he? Tilli?) would pull it off.

[quote="David Whyld"]
“Lawn Of Love” was a slight step up from the previous Santoonie game I played, but it still wasn’t enough to make me think any more highly of them as a whole.
[/quote] 
On the whole I'd agree -- but there is just *something* about Santoonie games that makes me appreciate them more than the typical bad game. It's the style, maybe. Or the offhand jokes that make it clear Santoonie isn't trying for high quality. I'd take a Santoonie game like this one over another PTBAD/PTGOOD or Panks game (which is a shame, because I've been such a big fan of Paul's *determination* if not his *implementation*).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=145&start=0#p1200
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Floatpoint
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-20 13:41:06

I guess I can count myself lucky that I decided to go with Glulxe from the very beginning and also I received none of the errors other people received. The game pretty much enchanted me from the moment I 'saw' the piece of the iceberg fall into the water (and I can still see it in my mind's eye) right up until the end where I happily spent the better part of an hour trying out all the different combinations of dress/gifts I could.

That the setting itself would take major precedence over the actual gameplay is, for me, a hallmark of Emily Short's games, almost her personal signature; so I came in expecting it, and it didn't mar the experience for me. I actually wrote the author telling her I was disappointed I couldn't do *even more* that wasn't related to the story but simply to exploring the world itself (like for example, a mini Galatea-like sequence with the scientist-girl character in the lab would have been fantastic, if completely irrelevant to the gameplay), she replied something to the effect of the Competition boundaries affecting the size and possibly making a post-competition version along those lines (which I would enjoy immensely).

In the end any gameplay or mechanical faux-pas that I could come up with, while certainly there (like there's really no clue that you left a black sweater in your shuttle), ends up feeling petty and trivial compared to the immersion and fantasy that the story and the world as a whole provided me with. And I think that's a defining factor of a winning game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=153&start=0#p1201
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Moon-Shaped
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-20 13:44:31

I was pleased that this ranked 5th in the competition. It was the first one I played, and that's when I'm generally more critical. I always score conservatively at first, because I don't *expect* the first game I play (as unfair as that seems, now that I think about it) to be the best. You know -- it's probably not so much that. I just need to play several games to start getting a feel for IF again (since I play none during most of the year, and then limit my experience to my own entry before the competition). I should probably play a few, make notes, and then go back and score them later.

Anyway, my biggest complaint about the puzzles was the walking stick one. It's mentioned briefly in one flashback, but then it's gone. Unless I missed another clue, or overlooked a way of seeing the flashback again, I don't know how it ever would have occurred to me to do what needed to be done, to gain entry into the cave. That was a big disappointment to me, because I thought most of the other puzzles were just fine. There were some -- like the moonlit boat ride -- that seemed just perfect.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=145&start=0#p1202
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Floatpoint
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-20 13:54:04

[quote="Tropico"]
In the end any gameplay or mechanical faux-pas that I could come up with, while certainly there (like there's really no clue that you left a black sweater in your shuttle), ends up feeling petty and trivial compared to the immersion and fantasy that the story and the world as a whole provided me with. And I think that's a defining factor of a winning game.
[/quote] 
You receive an email telling you that you left the black sweater in the shuttle (because, of course, the PC hadn't realized it). You reply back, and make arrangements to go pick it up.

The problem here, for me, wasn't that the clue was lacking (since I'm pretty sure that *is* the clue) -- but rather, that I hadn't realized I could/should check my email. If I recall correctly, I only did that after I reached an ending, and wanted to collect the others. I liked that it didn't matter if you missed a few things, because you could still get an ending. It's only noticeable when you look for more.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=149&start=0#p1203
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Madam Spider's Web
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-20 14:19:21

Hm, to me it's not so much an 'It was all a dream' kind of thing, but more of a 'Right before ending the game, we reveal that everything is totally different than what you thought it was' Jeffrey-Archer-esque kind of thing, which would actually encompass several recent games and a few in this very Comp.

But I totally agree with you that it's a very tough call to make. It possibly comes from the 'spoiler-effect' where nobody actually wants to openly talk about twists in games because nobody wants to spill the secret, so on the outside it seems like it's rarely done, and meanwhile you, as a player, are going 'OK, and now here comes the twist at the end...' in your head at every well-written game.

Everyone's going to have a different take on twists depending on how much fiction and int-fiction they've gone through. It's an absolutely relative thing, ranging from 'Wow I cant believe that happened!!' to 'I thought this particular twist was a little less needed than other twists I've come across' to 'Seriously, does every single story HAVE to have a twist..??!' So in the end the decision is less about deciding whether something is in fact a cliche and more about calibrating what your target audience of if-readers are expecting, and giving them something different; which as we've said is very difficult to do. All you can do is to go with your gut and see what happens.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=145&start=0#p1204
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Floatpoint
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-20 14:22:00

Oh really? woops!  [emote]Laughing[/emote]  I must've skimmed right over that. Im my defense that email-scene *is* pretty text-heavy  [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=139&start=0#p1205
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Polendina
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-20 14:23:28

[quote="George"]
Speaking from experience, I would say it [i]is[/i] possible for an id card to end up in a sewer. 
[/quote] 

Oh dear.

[quote="George"]
Did no one else try repeatedly to open the white door in the starting room? I thought that was brilliant.
[/quote] 

I thought it was really annoying. Justified later, yeah, but at the time I mostly resented being yelled at by this game designer, who otherwise hadn't impressed me with his competence yet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=145&start=0#p1206
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Floatpoint
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-20 14:24:22

[quote="Tropico"]
In the end any gameplay or mechanical faux-pas that I could come up with, while certainly there (like there's really no clue that you left a black sweater in your shuttle), ends up feeling petty and trivial compared to the immersion and fantasy that the story and the world as a whole provided me with. And I think that's a defining factor of a winning game.
[/quote] 

The sweater also gets mentioned when you interact with the suitcase (or should -- I suppose it's possible this is buggy under some circumstances).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=158&start=0#p1207
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Sysyphus
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-20 14:29:56

Man, I dont know how, but I knew what this game was before I ever typed the first command into it.

And yet I still kept at it for twenty minutes, just to prove to myself that it was what I thought it was. In the end I went 'yep' and quit.

As to why anyone would do this I have no idea, I'd guess probably to sit back and watch the reactions on the forum / newsgroups after the comp was over. As is common with this type of pranks, the response was probably much less dramatic than what the author was going for.

...and come on, no answer to DRINK REDBULL? that's just unclever. At least if the author is in the States.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=145&start=0#p1208
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Floatpoint
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-20 14:33:09

[quote="emshort"]
The sweater also gets mentioned when you interact with the suitcase (or should -- I suppose it's possible this is buggy under some circumstances).
[/quote] 
I might have seen that too, actually. I should really consult my transcripts before saying these things. Now, I'm not sure if I reached an ending and *then* found out about email, or used email earlier but didn't realize I could reply.

I do remember, though, that all the puzzles seemed perfectly fine. It's done in a way that I didn't realize I had missed anything (the knife and drill, the sweater, etc) until I started trying to look for new endings and consulting the walkthrough.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=145&start=0#p1209
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Floatpoint
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-20 14:34:21

Right, well, that was really just an off-hand anti-example to my other point, so no big deal really. Just insert whatever miscellaneous little gripe you read on some other review  [emote]Wink[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=158&start=0#p1210
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Sysyphus
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-20 14:36:49

Sounds like your experience with it was pretty much the same as mine. I've even seen that Redbull commercial, but I didn't think to try that. Twenty minutes is about what I spent as well, and this was well into the "it has to be a joke, but *if* it's not then I'll have judged it unfairly" phase. By the end, I thought it almost had to be. What *is* there was written well enough, and it seemed unlikely that anybody would make the solution so obscure and *not* at least give clues.

It's been decompiled (or something) by a few people, and that really is all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=142&start=0#p1211
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Carmen Devine: Supernatural Troubleshooter
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-20 14:45:41

I really *wanted* to like Carmen Devine... it had that 'interesting story with an interesting setting delivered well' feeling that I like from the beginning. Investigating the town was very cool. But it just kept feeling more and more unraveled as it went on.

Basically there was a point where I went, 'You mean that fox-thing that keeps following me around and trying to hit me and doing nothing like some antagonistic Floyd, *that's* what all this is about?' and the game lost it for me. I didn't finish it. I did like the writing and the setting both, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=153&start=0#p1212
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Moon-Shaped
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-20 14:45:59

Did you get the LOOK UNDER BED command to work? I'm pretty sure I followed the walkthrough correctly but I didn't find anything under there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=148&start=0#p1213
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Lawn Of Love
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-20 14:54:53

I think Santoonie are easier to forgive for their joke games because it's obvious joke game is just what they are and they make no effort to claim otherwise. And despite the rough edges, most of which I'm sure are intentional, the games are still just about playable. The PTGOOD/PTBAD games are just a mess and no effort whatsoever has been made to make them even slightly playable. They ought to be disqualified from the IFComp so people can play proper games and not have their time wasted.

Panks' problem, aside from being a terrible, terrible game writer, is his insistence on writing his game with a custom system which clearly isn't up to the job and his inability to see just how flawed it is. No matter how many times it's pointed out to him, and no matter how many different people point it out, he can't accept that other people don't like this kind of thing.

Does he remind anyone of Ferous Cranus [url]http://redwing.hutman.net/%7Emreed/warriorshtm/ferouscranus.htm[/url] from the Flame Warriors' Roster?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=148&start=0#p1214
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Lawn Of Love
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-20 14:59:29

Heh -- I always got a kick out of the Flame Warriors. Some *do* remind me of online personas I've crossed a time or two.

I think most of us are probably a little bit of many of them. I can see things in myself that are aspects of several different ones, but hopefully I'm not any single Flame Warrior. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=153&start=0#p1215
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Moon-Shaped
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-20 15:02:05

[quote="David Whyld"]
Did you get the LOOK UNDER BED command to work? I'm pretty sure I followed the walkthrough correctly but I didn't find anything under there.
[/quote] 
That doesn't ring a bell. Was something under there? Was this at the beginning, or in grandmother's house? Being the first one I played, I just don't remember. And I don't have the transcript on this computer. I don't remember anything from the walkthrough *not* working, though. So either this wasn't something I needed to do, or else it worked. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=153&start=0#p1216
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Moon-Shaped
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-20 15:18:43

I think it was in grandma's house. It was the right location as well - at least it was the only room in which I found a bed - yet the command from the walkthrough didn't work.

As no one else has pointed this out, though, I'm guessing the problem doesn't stop you finishing the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=153&start=0#p1217
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Moon-Shaped
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-20 15:27:57

You know, I *do* remember something about the bed in grandmother's house. But I don't remember *why* I remember it. I'll check my transcript tonight and see what's up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=148&start=0#p1218
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Lawn Of Love
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-20 16:09:03

[quote="David Whyld"]
The aim of the is… well, I'm not sure really. The game doesn’t really so, but indicates it’s some kind of ‘romance’. 
[/quote] 

I've just read that over again and... ouch... damn... I really need a betatester not just for my games, but for my reviews as well!  8O

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=158&start=0#p1219
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Sysyphus
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-20 16:12:12

I'd actually assumed there was a proper game here, but the command required to get any further was either incredibly vague or there was some huge bug preventing me getting anywhere. If I'd known it was a deliberate joke entry, I'd have deleted it in straight off and not even spent the ten or so minutes on it that I did.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=139&start=0#p1220
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Polendina
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-20 16:17:04

[quote="emshort"]
I believe your dad's ID card gets into the sewers because somewhat earlier in the game you are supposed to have flushed it down the toilet.
[/quote] 

Someone else mentioned that to me but it seemed like one of those puzzles that no one is ever going to figure out without the walkthrough to guide them. Seriously, is anyone ever going to flush an ID card down the toilet just on the off chance that it'll show up in the sewers later on?

Reminds me a bit of [b]Neon Nirvana[/b] from the IFComp 2005 which that this as a puzzle:

[quote]
It turns out you need to find a glass in another location, find the bouncer’s car (only, of course, you don’t know it’s the bouncer’s car because it doesn’t say so anywhere in the game), shoot his tire (why would I do that? I'm a cop for crying out loud!), smash the glass, put the glass on the ruined tire (again, why?) and then go and tell the bouncer about his car.
[/quote] 

Psychic powers are definitely a requirement when playing some of the IFComp games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=140&start=0#p1221
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Beam
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-20 16:29:45

While I was searching for "IFComp 2006" reviews, I found a heated argument between you and a Quest author, on the Quest forums. Is this the same author?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=140&start=0#p1222
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Beam
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-20 17:06:43

No. Completely different person as far as I know. The guy I was arguing with is some stressed teen who thinks the whole world is out to get him and continually acts all macho to try and impress people. Watch out for him if you're entering the IFComp next year, though. Apparently he's gonna to win 'cos his game's so much better than all the other crap out there an' everyone who disses him is gonna eat crow when he wins.

[emote]Smile[/emote]

Always good for a laugh the Quest forum is, providing you don't go there expecting any kind of Quest discussion.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=153&start=0#p1223
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Moon-Shaped
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2006-11-20 19:22:58

I had no trouble with that puzzle.  If you do that, you get a pair of gloves.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=153&start=0#p1224
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Moon-Shaped
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-20 20:46:49

My transcript shows it worked for me too. And as far as I can tell, it occurred to me right off (I don't think I saw it in the walkthrough):

[quote]
Grandmother's bed is empty, and the window is smashed.

>move bed
There's no need to move Grandmother's bed.

>look under bed
Against the wall under the bed you see Grandmother's white gloves. You reach
under and pick them up.

>x gloves
Grandmother often carried these gloves, with her. Looking at them makes you
think that you've seen a pair like them in your own home... among father's old
tools. "That's silly," you think, "What would father ever have done with a
delicate pair of white gloves like these?"

>wear gloves
You put on the white gloves.
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=153&start=0#p1225
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Moon-Shaped
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-21 06:38:08

Strange. I'm really going to have to keep my transcripts because I know I had a problem with a bed somewhere.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=153&start=0#p1226
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Moon-Shaped
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-21 07:05:05

I wonder if it was "search" you tried? I don't know if that works or not.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=164&start=0#p1227
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Adrift Forum Down?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-21 15:46:16

Or is it just me?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=164&start=0#p1228
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Adrift Forum Down?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-21 16:07:41

The whole site's not coming up when I try it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=161&start=0#p1229
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Unauthorised Termination
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-21 16:12:37

I didn't notice it myself but I know several people have commented on it since then.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=153&start=10#p1230
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Moon-Shaped
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-21 16:13:46

No, definitely LOOK UNDER BED. I remember it clearly. I even wrote a bit of my review of the game at the same time and put that in because it seemed like an error.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=164&start=0#p1231
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Adrift Forum Down?
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2006-11-21 16:53:08

It seems to be up again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=151&start=0#p1232
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Man Alive - Part 2
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-23 08:49:22

My only problem in MA2 was the very beginning. I didn't know I needed to touch the paper figures, and it annoys the heck out of me when games aren't implemented to trap for *any* physical contact as a touch (there was a game in last year's competition, involving the escape from a prison cell, that did this same thing). Once I got through that, though, I like Part 2 a lot more than Part 2, because I felt like things kept moving forward. It wasn't as complicated, and the story had a good pace.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=165&start=0#p1233
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Create new commands - beginner question
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-23 19:11:07

Hi. So I've been reading the manual and I want to create an object, a radio (walkietalkie/CB radio) the player can use to call police. I wanted to catch commands like "call police" or "call police on radio".

I tried modifying an example in the manual for telephones, but couldn't get it to work for me. (At all.)

My beginner's question is: what is the usual way to add/define new commands the player can use? Is there a simple example somewhere I've missed?

The only thing I saw in the manual that looked good was the Activities: Reading a Command part. I could use a "After reading a command: if the player's command includes "call police";" but that seems clumsy?

thanks for any help...!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=165&start=0#p1234
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Create new commands - beginner question
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-23 19:57:02

[quote="sparkler"]
Hi. So I've been reading the manual and I want to create an object, a radio (walkietalkie/CB radio) the player can use to call police. I wanted to catch commands like "call police" or "call police on radio".

I tried modifying an example in the manual for telephones, but couldn't get it to work for me. (At all.)

My beginner's question is: what is the usual way to add/define new commands the player can use? Is there a simple example somewhere I've missed?

The only thing I saw in the manual that looked good was the Activities: Reading a Command part. I could use a "After reading a command: if the player's command includes "call police";" but that seems clumsy?
[/quote] 

Yes, that's not the way you want to go.

See the first section of the Understanding chapter (16.1) for several examples of how to create a new command for the player.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=166&start=0#p1235
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: The Mystery Of Brackly Hall
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-24 17:39:10

[b]The Mystery Of Brackly Hall[/b] by C. Patrick
[i]Web-based point and click[/i]
Available:	<a class="postlink" href="http://www.rinkworks.com/adventure/index.cgi">http://www.rinkworks.com/adventure/index.cgi</a>

Blurb:	“Lord Brackly's dead, but no one can find his secret vault, rumored to contain the bulk of his very wealthy estate. His will leaves it all to the one who can find it. Can you?”

“The Mystery Of Brackly Hall” is an online point ‘n’ click text adventure featured on the Rinkworks site. The last Rinkworks game I played – “Escape From St Mary’s” – I wasn’t too impressed with, mainly due to the command lag the game suffered from and its annoying habit of making me repeat commands for no apparent reason. But the Rinkworks’ games seem surprisingly popular – at least, there are several hundred people who have finished each of them, according to the site’s Hall of Fame – so I decided I’d try another of their games. This time I’d pick one of the easier games. “The Mystery Of Brackly Hall” was the one I chose.

The game playing interface is split, with text telling the player which action he has just carried out on the left hand side of the screen and the location description on the right. Below this are a number of options – two to six seems about standard – detailing what you can do in the location, although some of these options will only become available if you happen to be carrying a certain item (i.e. if you come to a locked door and need a specific key to open it, no option to open it will be displayed unless you're carrying the key in question). The options are preceded by a clickable link which performs the command for you, thus making it possible to play the entire game with nothing more than a few mouse gestures and button clicks. Finally, at the bottom of the interface we have the items the player the carrying. (I'm guessing they're displayed like this because there's no inventory command.)

Customisation is minimal, which is a shame. I’d have liked to change the colours of the game (black text on a white background has never been a favourite of mine) and while the option is there to override the colour settings in my browser, it’s rather more trouble than it’s worth so I left it as it was. The option buttons can be changed, from a single click to a box which needs to be filled in and then a further button clicked to carry out the command. But as this doesn’t add any real functionality to the game, and instead just doubles the amount of clicks required to perform a command, I left it as it was.

If there's one problem with only a limited numbered of options being presented each time, it’s that more often than not the one thing you want to try isn't covered. Here, the writer has done a pretty decent job of anticipating what the player will type but, inevitably, there are times when you really want to try something and just find you can’t. Now in a regular text adventure, if you typed something the writer hadn’t covered you'd get a default message which varied depending on the system you were using. Here you don’t even get the option to try.

Mostly when this occurs, it’s when you come across an item you'd like to take with you, but find you can’t. I discovered a room full of interesting items – spears, swords, carvings, etc. – yet while I had the option to examine them to my heart’s content, I couldn’t pick any of them up. There were also a few locked doors I found which I’d have liked to have tried smashing down but, unfortunately, it wasn’t to be.

At the other end of the scale, there are the times when an option is presented to you that you might never have considered trying otherwise. In a text adventure, this would be the dreaded guess the verb. Here it’s just strange to say the least. While crossing the lawn outside Brackly Hall, I was presented with an option to take off my shoes and enjoy the grass between my toes. This I did. And received an item for my trouble. Would this have ever occurred to me to try in a regular text adventure? Nope. For one thing, it’s the kind of command that you're unlikely as heck to try. For another, I never even knew I was wearing shoes because they're not listed anywhere in my inventory. (Granted, it’s a fair bet I wouldn’t have gone to this Brackly place barefoot, but generally when items aren’t listed in an inventory which is displayed permanently on screen, it’s easy to assume you don’t have them.) Another location had me putting an item I’d found elsewhere on a mat*, which is something I never would have thought to try in a million years.

* I don’t really consider this a spoiler as the option to put the item on the mat doesn’t show itself unless you have the item, so it’s not likely you're going to visit the location with the mat, see that it’s possible to put an item on it, then go hunting for that item.

There is no load game facility here, just a save game facility for when you quit (and which over writes itself each time). Hopefully this means that the game is impossible to put into an unfinishable situation; if it is possible, then you'd end up having to replay the entire thing from start to finish every time you got stuck. Different save slots, to allow the player to jump back and forth between different parts of the game at ease, would have been a nice touch. As would a hints option. The game also suffers from the lack of an UNDO command, the basic staple of almost every text adventure system out there. There's a part in the game when you find a machine that will teleport you right back to the maze (more of this later) if you mess up with it – twenty or so locations away! This can happen quite a few times, at least it did with me, and the time it takes to backtrack from the maze to the room with the machine in seems longer each time. An UNDO command would also have been a godsend.

And a transcript command would have been nice. Of course, I could always copy the text off the screen and paste it into a Word document or something similar, but this is hardly practical. So my normal method of making a transcript while I play and then writing a review of the game based on the transcript couldn’t be done this time.

While you're able to pick up items, a great deal of items as it happens, you're not able to drop them – unless this is specifically listed in the text as an option, but that only happens if dropping the item is a requirement of the game and not just because you feel dropping it. Using items tends to be pretty much hit and miss: sometimes an option in the text will indicate you can use a certain item in a certain location (whether this had previously occurred to you or not is another question), yet if there's something you'd like to try out with an item that isn't covered, you're out of luck. In a way, this kind of game is an uneasy cross between roleplaying gamebooks like Fighting Fantasy and proper text adventures; it offers more variety and choice than a gamebook ever could, as well as the text changing depending on things you’ve done and extra options appearing if you're carrying a certain item, but lacks the true freedom that a text adventure offers. (Admittedly, text adventures don’t offer true freedom at all, but good ones can offer the ‘illusion’ of freedom, i.e. when you're able to type in pretty much any command you want and have the game give you a proper response to it, which is the next best thing.) Here, you're constrained by the limits of the system, and while it’s a clever system itself, its limitations become more apparent the longer you use it.

The game itself is a standard treasure hunt-type game, the kind of thing that has been done to death in the past but, if done well, can still be a decent game in its own right. You wander from location to location, pick up items, open doors (as is usually the case with games like this, there are a number of locked doors around the place but, fortunately, the keys to them are always conveniently around the place, too) and solve puzzles. Few of the puzzles you solve will ever seem by themselves to lead you closer towards the goal of the game, but bit by bit, if you solve every puzzle to come across, and use every item, and unlock every door, you'll get there in the end. 

Repeated text seemed to be a problem at times, often repeated for things that really should only have happened once. A few times this happened in location descriptions, other times in commands I carried out. I found a knife in one location and then happened across a door and noticed an option presented itself to me to try picking the lock with the knife (this hadn’t even occurred to me to try, but anyway…). I tried picking the lock with the knife and got:

“You insert the knife into the keyhole. There is a tinkling noise as something falls out of the lock on the other side of the door. Uh, great. That was really helpful.”

When I tried this again, I got the same response. Apparently there are lots of somethings on the other side of the door which continually fall out of the door. A flaw in the system? Or just sloppy game writing? I'm guessing the latter because other locations showed me that the system can certainly display different text for repeated commands.

By far the most frustrating aspect in the game is its maze. Yes, a maze. The curse of all things text adventure finds its way in here and, if anything, is even more irritating and annoying than usual. What makes the situation worse, from my point of view, is the game’s constant comments that the maze is frustrating and how you don’t like mazes. It’s like the writer sat down one day and wondered what he could possibly include in his game that would be guaranteed to make as many people as possible quit. The answer was, naturally, a maze. “And,” he decided, “even more annoying than a simple maze, I’ll keep making reference in the text to how annoying it is. That’s sure to get lots of people quitting and ensure any review written of my game is far more negative than it might otherwise have been.” Now, if this had been a game by someone who clearly didn’t know what a terrible, terrible thing mazes were, it might just about be acceptable. But a maze by someone who knows how frustrating mazes are? And even makes a point of mentioning it again and again? You have to wonder at people sometimes. (As it happens, I’d be curious to know how many people quit playing this game when they came to the maze.)

But, anyway, I solved the maze. With a pen and graph paper and a lot of muttering and curses. As mazes go, on one hand it’s less of a pain to solve than some I've been through as the locations are different enough so that, if you keep careful notes of which location has which bit of scenery in, you ought to be through it without too much trouble; on the other hand, this not being a regular text adventure, the maze is made harder due to the tried and tested technique of not being able to drop items in certain locations to enable you to map it out more easily. But like I said, the locations differ enough that this doesn’t become too much of a problem. Of course, the maze doesn’t play fair. Paths through it wind around each other so if you head east then back west, you don’t necessarily find yourself back at the same location. Reading the text carefully in each location certainly pays off.

On the Rinkworks site, the game’s difficulty is given as 2 out of 10 which I assume is meant to be incredibly easy. Is the game incredibly easy? I wouldn’t have said so. There are no overly difficult puzzles to get stuck with, but the way the game is set up means that you'll spend a lot of time trekking back and forth and it’s very easy to miss significant things. Not to mention the fact that the maze is a pain to solve and even when you solve it, it takes a while to get from one side to another when you need to try something new out. Myself, I’d have gone more for 6 or 7 out of 10 for difficulty. Or is the 2 out of 10 difficulty rating meant to be in comparison to other Rinkworks’ games? If so, I’d hate to see what a 10 looks like…

Part of the difficulty is down to the fact that some of the game’s puzzles can only be completed after a certain amount of time has passed. Likewise, new items will appear in locations in later stages of the game, though there's little indication this will happen so most of the time it’s simply a case of backtracking over the same locations time and time again until you find that something has changed. A good example of this is the spade which isn't available to begin with but which shows up later on. I passed through the location in which it eventually appears several times, didn’t discover anything worthwhile, and so never thought there was any reason to return there later on. It was only as I was making my way to another location that I happened to pass through this one… and there, lo and behold, was the spade. The previous half a dozen times I’d passed through there, the spade wasn’t to be seen and yet now it was. (It was actually dropped by a gardener who had previously been using it to dig a hole so it’s not like it mysteriously appeared out of thin air but, even so, how was anyone ever expected to figure that out?)

The design of some of the puzzles, coupled with the game’s habit of only making options available when you're carrying certain items, adds another level of difficulty. Another level of frustration, too. Yes, I'm probably overusing the word ‘frustration’ when writing this review, but there are parts of the game (the maze can take a bow here, as well as the machine which teleports you back to the maze without any warning) that seem designed solely to frustrate the poor player. I got past the majority of the puzzles not by managing to figure out what I needed to do with them (although in my defence, a few I did actually manage to figure out… no, really) but by sheer repetition. A good number of puzzles I solved by the tried and tested technique of trying everything. When that didn’t work, I tried everything again. And again. And again… In the end, with there only being a limited number of options available, I got the better of the game.

There are some red herrings in the game which further crank up the frustration level. There's a chapel in Brackly Hall and several mentions by various NPCs that the vault you're looking for, in which rests the fabled treasure of Lord Brackly, is actually somewhere in this chapel. So I spent quite a while examining things, moving the cross one way or another, messing around with the candles (even receiving a hint that I needed some matches to light it), and in the end not being able to figure anything out. As it happens, you can’t do anything in the chapel and it’s there just to get you to waste your time on. Hmm…

There was less lag with this game than the previous Rinkworks’ game I play – “Escape From St Mary’s” – but the lag was definitely a constant factor the entire time I was playing. Sometimes it didn’t seem too bad – a brief flicker of the screen and the command was processed – whereas other times the delay was a second or two. That might not seem like much overall (after all, quite a few text adventures that I remember playing on my Spectrum and Commodore computers years ago had a similar delay due to their lowly processing powers), but it seems to slow the game down in places and, particularly when you're retracing your steps in order to try out a new idea, or navigating your way through the maze, it can often taken what seems like an age to get from A to B. A modern text adventure system would allow you to zoom from A to B a lot faster, and standard SAVE and LOAD commands would speed things up even more.

Despite the largely negative tone of the review, I actually found myself liking “The Mystery Of Brackly Hall”. Frustrating game though it frequently was, there was also a certain feeling of satisfaction from managing to solve a puzzle (even if the solving was either accidental or done through sheer dogged persistence as opposed to actually reasoning things out) and an even greater feeling when I finally solved the game. It took me a whopping 1,779 moves (Rinkworks has a neat Hall of Fame on its site which records how many commands you entered in order to complete its games), of which I suspect half was me wandering around that damn maze. Still, the maze aside and the game’s other frustrations with it, this wasn’t a bad game at all. I'm not sure I’d have the patience to play another game of this size, and certainly not one that was larger, but it was a likeable enough game in its own right.

[b]6 out of 10[/b]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=166&start=0#p1236
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Mystery Of Brackly Hall
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2006-11-25 09:20:36

1)  It saves after each move, not just when you quit.
2)  The Rinkworks games are designed so that it is impossible to get into an unwinnable state.
3)  The lag you experienced with EFSM was a bug they corrected shortly after your review of that game.  (I think they found it because of your review.)

I think the rating of 2 is a representation of the game's small size and that puzzles are relatively contained.
(That is, most of them can be solved by just moving around whenever you get a new item, looking to see if anything new has popped up; each step along the way gives some visible advance; you won't accidentally go backwards.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=167&start=0#p1237
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: The Amazing TV Caper
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-25 15:14:19

[b]The Amazing TV Caper[/b] by Bryan Peterson
Platform: ADRIFT 3.9

Another game from a newcomer to the ADRIFT scene and another that, unfortunately, I'm going to be writing a largely negative review about. The game actually sparked off quite a debate on the ADRIFT forum when it was released; not for anything positive alas but for some of the decidedly non-obvious commands it requires to complete. Now guess the verb is something anyone who has played a few IF games will be familiar with; it’s the sort of thing that anyone who has written an IF game of their own has probably incorporated into said game without realising. It’s one of those things that seems to pop up from time to time and never go away and even the most careful writer can find themselves falling foul of it. But I think I can honestly say that I've never encountered guess the verb quite on a level with that found in this game.

The premise of the game is simple: someone has stolen your TV and you need to get it back. How you go about this is… well, the way you go about it is to open up the game in the ADRIFT Generator (i.e. cheat) because there's no way you'll make any progress with it otherwise.

One of the earliest things the player needs to do is go to the toilet. This is about a minute into the game and was as far as I got without opening up the game in the Generator and cheating. The required command is (and I'm not spoiling a puzzle for anyone by telling you this because I’d bet money no one would ever figure it out on their own) is MAKE PITSTOP. Huh…? Why not USE TOILET? Why not PEE? Why not a dozen and one other commands? But MAKE PITSTOP? How is anyone ever expected to figure out something like that? I’d grudgingly admit I've heard of the phrase before but I’d never think to type it in a game. It’s akin to OPEN DOOR not working but PLACE HANDS ON THE DOOR AND CAUSE IT TO OPEN being required instead.

Unfortunately, it gets worse. I see later commands required in the game are EMBRACE EMILY, ASK SHANNON TO ELABORATE and (my favourite) ASK LEO IF HE’S SEEN EMILY. Now at no point in the game is it hinted, even vaguely, that commands like this might be necessary and none of them (with the very slight exception of EMBRACE EMILY) are things anyone is likely to try. Even relatively straightforward commands are impossible to figure out due to the game’s strange wording of them: GIVE RING TO Shannon won’t work but PRESENT SHANNON WITH RING will. By the look of things, no other commands apart from those absolutely required to finish the game have been included so it’s not like the game is even going to steer you towards the right command if you persevere. It’s hard to imagine just what the writer was thinking when he included commands like this without even a brief note to indicate to the player that they'd be needed. If his intention was to write a game that was impossible to finish without cheating, he’s certainly succeeded.

Unfortunately, guess the verb isn't the only problem with the game. Numerous items and people mentioned in room descriptions aren't implemented; items have to be referred to by their full name to be referenced so if you see Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance, you'll need to refer to it as that (including the apostrophe and colon) before the game will understand what you mean; there are frequent spelling and grammatical errors.

Then there are the directional problems. Most of the directional commands are IN and OUT, which makes movement kind of strange. Moving IN from your living room takes you to the Java Joint coffee house, which I'm guessing isn't actually inside your living room. Funnily enough, moving IN again from the coffee house takes you back to your living room. An impossibility surely? At other times, exits appear only after certain actions have been carried out, though there is never any kind of logic to the way this happens or any indication that it will happen. Wondering where the stairs from your bedroom to the front room have gone? Simple. You haven't made your pitstop yet.

Then there are the truly bizarre “guess what to do next” problems. The ASK SHANNON TO ELABORATE command is expected without any kind of prompting and responds with the player asking Shannon what kind of payment she expects in return for her help. What help? Elsewhere, the command GET RING FROM SQUIRT has me attacking Squirt, yet nothing like KILL SQUIRT, ATTACK SQUIRT, HIT SQUIRT or similar commands will work. 

Playing the game with the Generator open to get you past the many problems isn't a fun way to play a game unfortunately. I keyed in commands one after another for a while but in the end it just wasn’t worth it to keep on playing. Even allowing for the fact that this was a first game by a newcomer, it would need a huge amount of work to raise it above a dismal rating of 1 out of 10.

[b]1 out of 10
[/b]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=168&start=0#p1238
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Locked Out
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-25 15:15:03

[b]Locked Out[/b] by Loner_Games
Platform: ADRIFT 3.9


Blurb:	“Today was supposed to be a great day. Until you locked yourself out of your house... “


There are times when I dread games by newcomers to the IF scene. On one hand, it’s nice to see some fresh blood and there's always the lingering hope that this one might be someone who actually knows how to write, has a decent idea for a game, has tested it thoroughly beforehand, has checked his spelling and grammar, has made a genuine effort to make his debut game the best he possibly can… unfortunately, there are those newcomers who seem to throw together a game in half an hour and upload it the moment it’s done without even testing it first. Which category does this game fall into? Well…

There were problems right from the start which indicates that if the game was tested, it wasn’t very thorough testing. There's a door but EXAMINE DOOR doesn’t work. You can’t OPEN the door, either, and, best of all, attempts to UNLOCK it result in the game telling you off for not using proper English. Apparently the word UNLOCK isn't considered good English. There are also some wooden swings here that, likewise, can’t be examined. On the plus side, there's a wooden box that can be examined. And opened. Inside are some emgerancy supplies and a baseball.

Emgerancy supplies? Yep, that’s what it said on screen. Unfortunately, attempts to take them either by typing the word correctly, incorrectly or just trying to get the supplies doesn’t work.

Italicised text in another location advises me that I can WALK DOWN THE ROAD to a neighbour’s house, but while the text might think this, the game itself has other ideas because the command doesn’t work. DOWN doesn’t work either.

An event seems to trigger in a few locations but it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense:

BLUEJAY FLUTTERS IN .
YOU POINT OUT SOMETHING TO TIGER YOU THOUGH WAS A BLUEJAY, BUT IT TURNS OUT IT WAS JUST YOUR EYES PLAYING TRICKS.

Aside from the obvious spelling and grammar errors, who is Tiger? An actual tiger? A pet? A bizarrely named best friend? Whoever he/she is, they're also invisible because attempts to examine or talk to them don’t work.

Several locations list exits that don’t exist so making your way around is unnecessarily complicated. One location tells me there is lawn to the east and west, but I can only go to the west. Another has a forest to the south but won’t let me enter it.

I wasn’t intending this review to read like a shopping list of the game’s faults, but there are so many things wrong with it, and virtually nothing right, that that’s just what it turned out to be. Total time spent playing was around fifteen minutes (which was pretty much all I could take of the game) and then I was yearning for something else. I know ADRIFT is easy to use, but it’s not easy to write a decent game in… and this game is an excellent example of that.

[b]1 out of 10
[/b]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=169&start=0#p1239
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Winter Wonderland
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-25 15:15:54

[b]Winter Wonderland[/b] by Laura A. Knauth
Platform: Inform 6


I think I picked this game for the title more than anything. And the fact that it had a 5 star rating on Baf’s Guide. But mainly for the title which, for some reason I can’t quite put my finger on, just oozed cuteness.

The setting is simplistic but charming. The ‘winter wonderland’ of the title brings to mind a cheerful little Christmassy game complete with singing elves, fairies and the like. While I didn’t encounter singing elves, I did find several fairies. In one location they're playing a game; at other times they'd pop up seemingly at random and pelt me with snowballs. All very twee but, at the same time, charming in its own right.

The aim of the game isn't revealed at first. The game begins with you, a young girl, at the side of your sick brother. A quick conversation with your mother and you're sent off to the village tavern to get some pudding. Nearby there's a toy shop which might prove a decent place for you to buy your poorly brother a nice present assuming, of course, you can find some money to buy it with.

There was only one part here, in the prologue of the game, that gave me any real trouble. I'm used to trying the TALK TO CHARACTER style of conversation first when encountering an NPC who can be spoken to, but when using it here in the tavern, I got a response that:

ONE OF THE VILLAGERS WAVES AT HANNA-MAE FROM ACROSS THE ROOM. AS SHE STARTS ACROSS THE TAVERN FLOOR, SHE CALLS BACK TO YOU, "SORRY, GRETCHEN! BACK IN A MOMENT!"

I tried this a few more times, in case the ‘moment’ was a literal one, but unfortunately not. Hanna-Mae seemed to be continually distracted by other customers in the tavern and had no time for me. In fact, the solution was a pretty easy and simple one – using a slightly different style of conversation – but confusing because of the fact that one style worked fine whereas another gave me a misleading message. 

“Winter Wonderland” doesn’t have graphics as such but it includes a few pieces of ASCII art. Normally I'm not too fond of this kind of thing, but here it worked a treat:

Simple yet nice. Quite nostalgic, too, as the title ‘graphic’ reminded me of the graphics in retro games from years ago (this being back in the day when ASCII graphics would have been considered pretty much state of the art as far as graphics in computer games went).

Another effective use of ASCII art is the little compass at the top right hand corner of the screen which provides a handy way of telling at a glance where you are. Of course, the exits are always listed in the text but I found myself frequently glancing at the top of the screen to familiarise myself with the exits from my current location than reading the text to see which way I could go. While in other games I've played, it’s seemed distracting having to glance from the text at the bottom of the screen to the top to see where I am, here it seemed perfectly normal. The compass also aids in making a map; while not necessary, I found the map useful to keep track of things and ensure I hadn’t missed anything. The game takes place over a good few locations – over seventy in total – and a couple of times I seemed to miss key exits that I didn’t discover until making a map later on. Which isn't to say that the layout of the game’s locations is confusing – it isn't (aside from the maze, of course) – just that in a game which features more than X amount of locations, keeping track of them all, and your location in them, is harder than it might at first seem.

While most of the puzzles were well clued, I found a few that seemed a little unfair. Without the hints – excellent hints for the most part, generally giving you a nudge in the right direction though seldom spoiling the puzzle by telling you its solution outright – I doubt I would have got very far in the game at all… and as a result, missed out on a very, very good game indeed.

A few of the puzzles that confused me, and which had me using the hints to get past, were the one in the cottage involving the rings on the glass dome. I couldn’t seem to figure it out no matter how hard I tried. Maybe there were clues to tell me what I was expected to do, but if so I never came across them. The other puzzle I struggled with was the one relating to the maze… although considering my general dislike of mazes and my eagerness to get through them as quick as possible and with as little trouble as possible, it’s highly likely the puzzle wasn’t really that hard and my difficulty with it more down to the fact that I Just Don’t Like Mazes. 

Yes, there's a maze in the game, generally one of my least favourite aspects of IF games and high on my list of “things to quit over”. Fortunately, this maze was encountered quite late on in the game, by which time I was really enjoying the game. So when I saw the maze I didn’t immediately quit, fire the game off to the recycle bin and go hunting for something a little less maze-orientated (my usual reaction upon encountering a maze), but instead gritted my teeth, muttered a bit and then went and entered it anyway. In all honesty, as far as mazes go, this one is fairly tame. The exits are cleared labelled (in the main text as well as the helpful compass arrow at the top of the screen), there are none of those hideous occasions when you go east and then go back west and find yourself in a totally different location, and the few times when the maze warps and returns you to an earlier location it’s right at the start of the maze so you can easily get your bearings again. I'm still not fond of mazes at all, and would have preferred this game to have been maze-free, but at least this maze bugged me far less than any other maze I've encountered for quite a while.

If there’s one thing “Winter Wonderland” suffers from once the prologue (the part in the village involving the pudding and the shoes) is over with is its lack of direction. You know what the basic aim of therefore game is – to get home – but many of the actions you need to carry out in order for that to happen aren't obvious. Most of my time was spent wandering around looking for the next puzzle that needed solving but never really sure just why I was trying to solve the puzzles. Other than, of course, the fact that they were there and it seemed I wasn’t going to be able to progress with the game if I didn’t solve them. 

There's also a slight annoyance with the way certain of the puzzles have to be completed in a certain order, yet there's seldom any indication that this is the case or what that order might be. Generally it’s a case of you trying a puzzle, find you're unable to figure out how to solve it (even though it might seem perfectly straightforward), and then discover afterwards that you need to have solved another puzzle somewhere else before getting the crucial item you need to solve this one. I certainly spent more than enough time struggling with the puzzle in the ice floes area, going back and forth again and again trying to work out what I had to do, before abandoning it to try again later… and then discovered the item I needed for it was in an entirely different location. Navigating my way over the ice floes each time I thought I had the solution to the puzzle figured out, only to discover that I hadn’t, was a frustrating experience.

But it’s hard to mark the game down for things like that. True, the constant trekking back and forth was frustrating, and some of the puzzles were mind-boggling, but the game itself was a joy to play. The setting was captivating, the writing really made it come alive, and the use of ASCII art a very nice touch indeed; what problems the game has are relatively minor and easy to forgive. Suffice to say, the pros outweigh the cons by a sizeable margin.

[b]9 out of 10[/b]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=170&start=0#p1240
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: "SCREAM" Graphic Adventure Engine
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-27 20:00:03

I found this on another site. Looks cool!!

<a href="http://www.adventuredevelopers.com/forum/index.php?topic=1083">http://www.adventuredevelopers.com/foru ... topic=1083</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=165&start=0#p1241
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Create new commands - beginner question
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-11-30 00:05:55

Thanks for the quick reply - solved my problem. For anyone who is interested/for the sake of completeness here is the solution that worked. I am sure it is ugly, ugly code but it produced the result I needed. Thanks again!

[code][ITEM - radio]

The radio is a device. It is carried by Dan. The description is "This is a small two-way police radio, like a cellphone. When it is switched on, you can call police with it."

Understand "call police on [something]" or "call police with [something]" or "call the police on [something]" or "call the police with [something]" or "call police car on [something]" or "call police car with [something]" or "call the police car on [something]" or "call the police car with [something]" as calling police.

Calling police is an action applying to one thing.

Check calling police:
    if the noun is not the radio, say "It's certainly an interesting concept; but you can't really call anyone on [a noun]." instead;
    if Dan is carrying the radio, say "You don't have a radio. Maybe someone else has one you could borrow?" instead;
    if the radio is not carried, say "You don't have the radio right now." instead;
    if the radio is switched off, say "You try to use the radio, but it doesn't seem to be working. You give it a shake. 'Hm,' says Dan, peering over your shoulder. 'Maybe you need to switch it on, first?'" instead;
    if the Jogger Capture is not happening, say "The police radio is for emergencies only. Try something else." instead.

Carry out calling police:
    move Police Car to Smith Street;
    move Jogger to Smith Street;
    move Officer Jackson to Smith Street.

Report calling police:
    say "You shout commands into the radio. 'All units, all units! A suspect is fleeing along North Street!'".
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=171&start=0#p1242
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Indigo Prophecy
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-11-30 22:55:50

(possible -- but mild -- spoilers)

Anybody here played this? It's not so much an adventure game as... I guess it's an interactive movie. I could have done without the L+R trigger sequences (XBOX version). It was shorter than I expected it to be. I'm not sure exactly how much time it took my wife and I to finish it, but we only play an hour or two a night, and it only took us about a week. It seems like the first two-thirds of the game lead up to a bigger story that isn't really fully explored. A lot gets revealed near the end, but it seemed a little sudden. The worldwide freeze only came up near the end.

Some bits of the story didn't make sense -- particularly what happens to Lucas near the end (i.e. the reason he's cold). Does this "condition" somehow get "undone" at the end? I've looked at walkthroughs after we finished, but I didn't see an answer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=165&start=0#p1243
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Create new commands - beginner question
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-01 10:54:07

[quote="sparkler"]
Thanks for the quick reply - solved my problem. For anyone who is interested/for the sake of completeness here is the solution that worked. I am sure it is ugly, ugly code but it produced the result I needed. Thanks again!
[/quote] 

Not so bad! The main thing I'd point out is that you can combine some of those lines by writing, e.g., "call police on/with [something]", since a slash will tell Inform that two words are equivalent and either should be matched.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=165&start=0#p1244
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Create new commands - beginner question
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-01 22:27:16

Thanks again and done (was wondering about that). I also found out how to solve the the issue. Here is the new more coherent version, for any fellow beginners about.

[code][ITEM - radio]

After reading a command:
    while player's command includes "the", cut the matched text.

The radio is a device. It is carried by Dan. The description is "This is a small two-way police radio, like a cellphone. When it is switched on, you can call police with it."

Understand "call police on/with [something]" or "call police car with/on [something]" as calling police.

Calling police is an action applying to one thing.

Check calling police:
    if the noun is not the radio, say "It's certainly an interesting concept; but you can't really call anyone on [a noun]." instead;
    if Dan is carrying the radio, say "You don't have a radio. Maybe someone else has one you could borrow?" instead;
    if the radio is not carried, say "You don't have the radio right now." instead;
    if the radio is switched off, say "You try to use the radio, but it doesn't seem to be working. You give it a shake. 'Hm,' says Dan, peering over your shoulder. 'Maybe you need to switch it on, first?'" instead;
    if the Jogger Capture is not happening, say "The police radio is for emergencies only. Try something else." instead.

Carry out calling police:
    award 15 points;
    say "## 15 points! ##";
    move Police Car to Smith Street;
    move Jogger to Smith Street;
    move Officer Jackson to Smith Street.

Report calling police:
    say "You shout commands into the radio. 'All units, all units! A suspect is fleeing along North Street! A white male, a jogger! Catch him, quickly!' A police car soon answers: 'This is Officer Jackson, ma'am. We can see him. We will catch him! Meet us in Smith Street.'".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=172&start=0#p1245
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: A bunch o' I7 games
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-12-02 16:57:46

I found this in "current events" on the IF Wiki:
<a href="http://www.engin.umd.umich.edu/CIS/course.des/cis487/z5/index.php">http://www.engin.umd.umich.edu/CIS/cour ... /index.php</a>

They all look to be simple and short (judging by a few random source downloads, which is available with each game). The page has Z5 downloads as well as being Java online playable. Looks like this class has been going on for the past few years. I think I remember somebody from the newsgroup talking about instructing a college-level programming class that focuses on interactive fiction, but I can't remember who.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=172&start=0#p1246
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A bunch o' I7 games
User: George / DateTime: 2006-12-02 20:00:12

This old thread is about these games too:

<a href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/browse_frm/thread/41be0243db0dc9a6/90c4f27233035575?lnk=gst&q=%22bruce+maxim%22&rnum=1#90c4f27233035575">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... 7233035575</a>

I wonder if any of these students still play or write IF.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=10#p1247
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-02 22:36:24

I'm Kent, and I'm 17 from California, USA.

I'm very new to the IF community. I first ran into IF back in Summer 2005, but didn't actually seriously consider the gaming form until August 2006 when I ran into a beauty called Inform 7. Curious about it's natural language processor, I downloaded the tool. I didn't really know what to do, so I started familiarizing myself with Interactive Fiction. Before long, my slight interest became a somewhat obsession. But I became rather busy and couldn't actually get into the genre until last month, when I finished my transition to fandom of IF. I finished writing my first game, A Dream Too Real, a few days ago. I did upload it to the net and shared it with a few friends, but it was more of the first-time-using-a-system game that some authors use to better understand the language. Now I've started my second game, one of a more ambitious scale, one that I hope to be able to use as my debut game to the public. I came across this site through SPAG e-zine, and registered up and came here.

I use Inform 7 and am currently working on the tentatively named IF game, Spacecraft Project.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=50#p1248
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-02 23:29:21

I would definately be interested in contributing, but the IF community is very small and spread-out. There just isn't enough stuff for daily content. IF games really just pop-up around IF Comp time, and then falls away for a while.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=50#p1249
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-12-03 09:18:34

With enough contributors, there would at least be a few news items (and maybe a feature) each week. I worked a little more on the back-end scripts, to the point where news headings can be posted. I still haven't gotten it to where you can add "pages" to the news item, due completely to a lack of free time.

The deadline for my project at work is December 14th, followed by a 2-day sales meeting with all the company's distributors. I'm hoping that after *that* I'll be able to finish the basics.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=172&start=0#p1250
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A bunch o' I6 games
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-12-03 10:56:29

They're all made with Inform 6, and judging from the source code alone, might not be that much material for an actual review. They look more like I6 programming exercises to me, at least.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=172&start=0#p1251
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A bunch o' I7 games
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-12-03 13:40:24

Really? When I peeked at a couple of the .inf source code files, they looked like the "natural language" of I7 (not the "coding" of I6). They're all Inform 6? Sorry about that. [emote]Sad[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=134&start=0#p1252
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Which unpopular IFComp '06 game did you really like?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-03 14:55:13

I liked GP! which only came in at 11. I know it wasn't an amazing game or anything with a huge original plot or brilliantly designed puzzles, but it was very pleasant to play.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=134&start=0#p1253
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Which unpopular IFComp '06 game did you really like?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-12-03 15:12:18

Yeah, it was pretty fun. I don't think I saw the bugs that some reported, and I thought of "use" right away (which was also a complaint -- maybe it's because I'd played The Initial State earlier, where "use" is mandatory).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=70#p1256
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-03 16:05:11

So I assume that, like most ambitious projects such as, all this went nowhere?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=70#p1257
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-12-03 16:24:17

A lot has been discussed in a private board, including a name for the company/project, pricing, distribution, frequency, etc. Most of us involved were working on IFComp entries during the discussion, and this kind of died away after a while. Well, I shouldn't say "died" -- I still think it's a good idea -- just we didn't take it to the next step.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=172&start=0#p1258
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A bunch o' I7 games
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-03 17:48:48

It should be rather obvious when you see an I7 game. It won't look anything like the others.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=172&start=0#p1259
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A bunch o' I7 games
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-12-03 21:50:08

Yeah I know. And I've seen the I7 code snippets posted to the newsgroup. Hmmm. I guess I must have just glanced, without making sure. Sorry for the misinformation, all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=30#p1260
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-03 23:29:19

I was excited about ST, but I really don't want to give them seven dollars to prove that I'm serious about the competition. It's an ongoing debate in my mind, but do I really need that much attention, to have read and reviewed? Shouldn't the fact that you spent the time making an over 2 hour beast be enough to show that you're serious?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=30#p1261
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-04 04:35:50

Is $7 really worth debating over? I spent more on my bus fare to work today and I'll probably spend about the same on my dinner.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=172&start=0#p1262
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A bunch o' I7 games
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-12-04 05:36:20

That's okay. I've seen those games before, and like I said, most of the games there appear more like programming exercises to me than, say, something done for a Speed-IF comp.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=172&start=0#p1263
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A bunch o' I7 games
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-04 05:41:13

Actually, at least a couple *are* I7 games; it's just that for some reason they've posted the .inf file of the I6 generated by I7. For instance, if you look at 

<a href="http://www.engin.umd.umich.edu/CIS/course.des/cis487/z5/f06/beehler.inf">http://www.engin.umd.umich.edu/CIS/cour ... eehler.inf</a>

there are bunches of I7 globals declared, arrays representing rulebooks, etc. 

Not sure why they didn't post the I7 source text, but hey.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=30#p1264
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-12-04 06:36:08

The $7 is supposed to discourage joke games, so that better, more serious games are submitted. The fee could be a lot higher, and I'd still enter -- but I never seem to have time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=30#p1265
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-04 07:57:23

[quote="topgun227"]
Shouldn't the fact that you spent the time making an over 2 hour beast be enough to show that you're serious?
[/quote] 

The game doesn't *have* to be big, it could be a very, very small game. I'm sure if you paid the entry fee and submitted a game that could be finished in 10 minutes, you'd still qualify.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=30#p1266
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-12-04 08:50:45

I think that's the real reason right there. Writing a long game says you're serious, but joke games wouldn't have to be long. $7 seems like a tiny, trivial amount to me. It requires a little effort on the part of the participant, but it's not unreasonable. For the 2005 competition, I paid the fee but ended up not submitting a game after all.

I think the comp was originally intended to promote longer games (since the annual competition still promotes shorter ones) with the hopes of becoming equally important to the community. It just hasn't seemed to work out that way. It seems to get little more attention -- maybe less -- than some of the mini-comps. I think people must see it *as* just another mini-comp, but I've always thought it was intended to be something more -- an equal to the fall competition.

This could spawn a whole new topic, but these days, expectations are just higher. It takes as long today to write a good two-hour game as it probably used to require for a ten-hour game, because we're no longer satisfied with sparse implementation, lots of "that's not important" responses, the lack of many alternate noun (and especially verb) phrasings, poor puzzle design, etc. I wouldn't want to enter a two-hour game in the Spring Thing, but I wouldn't want to enter a poorly-implemented ten-hour game, either. As a result, I haven't entered anything. Lack of time and motivation is also why I've never written anything "epic" like that at all. It would take a couple years to write a long game that's of the same quality as a great IFComp entry.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=30#p1267
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: George / DateTime: 2006-12-04 10:04:52

Normally I would be put off by an entry fee as well, but I think originally the comp organizer played all the entries (with a transcript that is) and he didn't want to waste his time slogging through a 2+ hour game that wasn't finished. Quantity is not always quality, or even passable, though it may be serious. 

Wow, over three dollars one-way for bus fare? Is that in the UK?

'I have an intent' to enter the comp, but we'll see if I complete a game. I think I'll wait until February to submit the intent. I have a few ideas but nothing even half-way done. 

I would like to collaborate on a long game, but at this point it may not be the best idea for me.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=174&start=0#p1268
Forum: Competitions / Subject: IF Competition T-Shirts
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2006-12-04 10:29:03

Thanks to Mike Snyder, we have t-shirts! [url=http://www.intfiction.org/tshirt06/]Head on over to the order page[/url] and pick up one today. You have until December 17th to order.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=30#p1269
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-04 10:40:16

My bus fare works out at £29 per 13 trips, so roughly £2.20 per trip which works out at £4.40 a day, so roughly $7 - $8 per day on bus fare. Just think, I could take a week off work and save up enough money to enter the Spring Thing five times. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=174&start=0#p1270
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IF Competition T-Shirts
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-12-04 10:58:51

A year without an IFComp T-Shirt would be like a year without sunshine. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=30#p1271
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-04 11:12:50

[quote="topgun227"]
I was excited about ST, but I really don't want to give them seven dollars to prove that I'm serious about the competition. It's an ongoing debate in my mind, but do I really need that much attention, to have read and reviewed? Shouldn't the fact that you spent the time making an over 2 hour beast be enough to show that you're serious?
[/quote]  

I can see the reluctance to pay a $7 entry fee under the old rule system, back when the only prizes were the entry fees themselves. Thus in 2003, as I understand, the prizes were:

1st place: $14.00
2nd place: $7.00
3rd place: $3.50
4th place: $3.50

But the prizes were substantially different during the last two years, and I personally wouldn't find the $7 a deterrent anymore.

I could get rid of the entry fee, but that would defeat one of the purposes that Adam Cadre had when he started the Spring Thing, namely to provide a better playing experience for judges, and avoid the following scenario:

"The 2001 comp featured 52 games, many of them half-baked at best; discussion was limited, with a brief flurry of reviews and then not much conversation about the games, possibly because most judges only had time to play a small fraction of them." -- Adam Cadre, in describing the reasons he started the Spring Thing

Judging from what people have written on rgif, I gather that some players like the fact that the Spring Thing is a smaller competition without very many of the kind of bad games that dominate the bottom half of the IF Comp every year. 

Anyway, this just adds to the diversity of stuff available for the IF community. I think we'd be losing something if I made it so that the ST was just like the IF Comp except that it's in the spring, and there's no two-hour rule.

I've probably rambled on long enough -- I hope that's a good enough answer.

Greg

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=30#p1272
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-04 11:16:19

[quote="David Whyld"]
My bus fare works out at £29 per 13 trips, so roughly £2.20 per trip which works out at £4.40 a day, so roughly $7 - $8 per day on bus fare. Just think, I could take a week off work and save up enough money to enter the Spring Thing five times. [emote]:)[/emote]
[/quote]  

It's time to retire, man! If taking a week off work is a money-making strategy, why work?

Probably a bad joke. Oh well.

Greg

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=40#p1273
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-04 12:50:15

Well, if I took a week off work I wouldn't get paid. Which would work out at a bit more of a loss than five Spring Thing entry fees.

But only just...  [emote]Laughing[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=40#p1274
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-04 12:51:40

Re the Spring Thing entry fee: I like the fact that it's there. Why? It keeps the same kind of crap that clogs up the IFComp from ruining another competition. Can you imagine the likes of Panks or Slan Xorox or the other joke entry writers stumping up the fee?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=40#p1275
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-12-04 13:18:23

Well, they *could* -- the idea is that they probably won't bother. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=172&start=0#p1276
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A bunch o' I7 games
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-04 18:00:13

Maybe it was supposed to be I6 and so they cheated and wrote it in I7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=40#p1277
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-04 18:04:16

Whyld, what's it with you and Panks? It's like your out to kill the guy. I know he trolls IF Comp, but...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=172&start=0#p1278
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A bunch o' I7 games
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-12-04 18:48:08

David Welbourn has played through several of them, and added pages to the IFWiki. The "notable features" are pretty revealing! [emote]:)[/emote]

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php?title=Merlin%27s_Treasure_%28by_Crabtree%29">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php?title=M ... rabtree%29</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php?title=Lost_Space_Colony:_Infestation">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php?title=L ... nfestation</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php?title=Sneaky_Game">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php?title=Sneaky_Game</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php?title=Project_Seed">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php?title=Project_Seed</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php?title=Old_Man_Simmons">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php?title=Old_Man_Simmons</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php?title=Ogre_Woes">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php?title=Ogre_Woes</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php?title=Neighbor_from_Hell">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php?title=N ... _from_Hell</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php?title=Master_Thief">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php?title=Master_Thief</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Halloween_Beer_Party">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Halloween_Beer_Party</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Grounded">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Grounded</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php?title=Escape_from_the_CIS_Building">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php?title=E ... S_Building</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php?title=Disaster_at_the_Acme_Tower">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php?title=D ... Acme_Tower</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Death_at_Sea">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Death_at_Sea</a>

But they're all class assignments, right? Some (most?) have probably never played IF, let alone written it (unless maybe playing a few games was an earlier assignment). It's really cool that they're *learning* this in class. I think that's wonderful.

[color=#BF0000](Edit)[/color]

David also has a solutions, maps, and mini-reviews page for them here:
<a class="postlink" href="http://webhome.idirect.com/~dswxyz/sol/umd2006.html">http://webhome.idirect.com/~dswxyz/sol/umd2006.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=172&start=10#p1279
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A bunch o' I7 games
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-04 19:16:48

It's probably a computer class assignment to get used to coding.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=134&start=0#p1280
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Which unpopular IFComp '06 game did you really like?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-04 19:18:04

Meh. It's always sad when the IF Comp ends.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=40#p1281
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: George / DateTime: 2006-12-04 19:37:35

Well it's a little known fact that David Whyld actually is Paul Panks.

Or is it that old saying, you know, men and women are from earth, and Paul Panks is from Alpha Psi 12A-45921.

Actually I quite enjoyed "Fetter's Grim" this year for a little while. 

I've wondered what would happen if one of the IF comps had a major prize, say several thousand dollars. 

Or if that was a separate annual prize, like the National Book Award for IF.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=134&start=0#p1282
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Which unpopular IFComp '06 game did you really like?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-12-04 19:38:09

I wish I had been around the first couple of years.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=40#p1283
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-12-04 19:40:24

I think several thousand dollars would make people want to cheat the vote.

It'd be interesting, though. If there was a $20k grand prize in the IFComp, I'd feign sickness or cash in all my vacation time to devote to my entry. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=40#p1284
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-04 20:10:55

Oh, God, just imagine all the crap entries there would be of people trying to cash in for the money!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=40#p1285
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: George / DateTime: 2006-12-04 20:16:05

Likely as not you would have to form a panel of judges and run it as more of a contest along the lines of [url=http://www.writersofthefuture.org]Writers of the Future[/url]. It does get away from the spirit of the IF community.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=40#p1286
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-04 20:17:00

What, the whole "everything should be free" mentality? I don't see how that really means anything...? Or the hobbyist mentality?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=40#p1287
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: George / DateTime: 2006-12-04 20:23:56

Yes, the hobbyist mentality fits somewhat, but I mean that the best IF games are decided by the individual votes of all the readers and writers of the IF community at large, in a more democratic, cooperative spirit. At least those that choose to participate.

Contrast this with a contest decided by a small exclusive panel of judges, with its result (the winners) consumed by a mass audience.

On one hand you have indy, diy, co-op, small press, and on the other mainstream, corporate, mass media. Just throwing some terms around.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=50#p1288
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-04 20:48:54

Oh. I guess I read that wrong.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=50#p1289
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-05 03:53:10

I can imagine if the first prize in the IFComp was $20,000, you'd have a lot of vote rigging and cheating going on. You could have someone write a game and then set up a thousand false accounts to sway the voting in his favour; you'd have people bribing other voters to vote for him; you'd have people actively spamming newsgroups and forums to bring attention to their games...

But $20,000 for writing a game? Oh yes, that'd be nice.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=134&start=0#p1290
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Which unpopular IFComp '06 game did you really like?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-05 03:53:41

I didn't even know it existed till 2002. [emote]Sad[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=172&start=10#p1291
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A bunch o' I7 games
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-05 03:57:08

I wonder how old some of the students who wrote those games were. And clearly they spend way too long writing games and not enough time in English class [emote]Smile[/emote]

Had to laugh at the Wiki page for [b]Merlin's Treasure[/b]:

[quote]
You are a Knight of the Round Table. Your quest is to obtain King Author's [sic] sword Excalabor [sic], which is right here in the usual Large Stone, right beside the Large Podiom [sic] and Two Golden Torches.
[/quote] 

And:

[quote]
>x podiom
A rased platform... as you look at it Merlin apears and saies "Welcome ye Knight of the Round Table. Your quest for Author's sword is almost compleated. Yet only those who possess wise mindes and truth of spirit may clame it." then he vanashes.
[/quote] 

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=172&start=10#p1292
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A bunch o' I7 games
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-12-05 05:31:34

[quote]
&gt;x podiom
A rased platform... as you look at it Merlin apears and saies "Welcome ye Knight of the Round Table. Your quest for Author's sword is almost compleated. Yet only those who possess wise mindes and truth of spirit may clame it." then he vanashes.
[/quote] I think that's what you call using ye Olde English  [emote]Laughing[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=172&start=10#p1293
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A bunch o' I7 games
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-05 06:29:16

"Rased" and "vanashes" are just bad English. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=50#p1294
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-12-05 07:01:11

I've made well over $20k writing and selling games, but it hasn't been just one lump sum. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=174&start=0#p1295
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IF Competition T-Shirts
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-12-05 13:04:58

Update:

I found out last year that I can ship flat-rate domestic for about $5 and international for about $10. These oversized padded envelopes will hold up to three shirts, so I added some additional options to the orders page. For anybody buying extra shirts, it's now set up to not charge the extra shipping amount on those (the only order for more than one shirt so far has been refunded the extra shipping amount).

<a href="http://www.intfiction.org/tshirt06/">http://www.intfiction.org/tshirt06/</a>

Thanks,

---- Mike.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=50#p1296
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-05 15:34:05

[quote="Merk"]
I've made well over $20k writing and selling games, but it hasn't been just one lump sum. [emote]:)[/emote]
[/quote] 

Is this a joke? Please explain.

Greg

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=50#p1297
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-05 17:48:03

Doesn't Merk sell non-IF games?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=50#p1298
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-12-05 18:12:39

[quote="GregB"]
Is this a joke? Please explain.
[/quote]     
No joke, although it goes way back to the late 80's. I'd really have to do some research to get exact amounts, so I'm going to try to make conservative guesses here.

1987-1991 - I sold the copyright to simple CoCo (TRS-80) games to T&D Software, for around $45 per game. 66 games (that I'm aware of) = $2970.

1989-1990 - I did royalties sales through SportsWare (four different CoCo games). One didn't sell at all, one sold about 6 copies, the other maybe 4 copies. So I'm not counting this.

1991-1995 - Miscellaneous shareware. I don't even remember what I sold. Very little. I'm not counting this either.

1995-1998 (and a few stragglers even now) - Lunatix 1.xx-4.xx for DOS-based BBS, and some Lunatix add-ons. I have folders crammed full of old registration forms in the basement. Conservately, I'll say 800 copies (I'm pretty sure it sold more than a thousand copies, but I wouldn't swear it without looking) at $15 each is $12,000. The add-ons would make it a little more, but the last few years it has all been available for $10 as a package, so $12k is probably about right.

1997-1999 (and a few stragglers now) - Lunatix 5.xx for MajorBBS/Worldgroup for $300 per copy ($150 for a 2-user version). At one time, I thought we'd sold around 100 copies, but I think that's a bit too much. I'm sure we sold at least 50 copies, and the cheaper version wasn't originally available. Supposing it was half and half, I'll count it as $225 per copy, and that's $11,250. I was partnered with a local BBS for distribution and they got half, so say my cut was $5,625. That actually seems way too low, though. There was also Mystic Messages and the Distant Places T-Lord Add-on, which sold several. Hmmm. I'm going to say $8,000 in all. That's a wild guess, but it seems more right. I think there must have been more $300 copies than $150 copies, or maybe more sales of the other modules.

1999-2006 (and ongoing) - Lunatix Online, which is $5 for a 1-month subscription, or $25 for six months (i.e., one month free). The subscriber base was over 100 at any given moment in the first year, around 350 in the 2nd or 3rd year, floated around 200 for a year or two, and is kind of dying down a little over 100 again now. I'll average low and say 175 average subscribers for the entire period. That's running for 8 years, and if I say everybody got the discounted rate (although some did pay monthly), that'd be $50 per subscriber per year, coming to $70,000. That's probably about right. Since this has been more organized, I could check for sure on past tax returns or have my partner look it up. I think it's right. The Prowler Productions paperwork I have to file is between 8k and 12k per year.

1999-2006 (although this has pretty much died out) - CGI Chat and CGI Poll. Not big sellers, and not really "games" as such. I think we've sold around 25 JabberChat licenses at $25 each and maybe 15 ProwlerPoll licenses at $15 each (funny how that worked). That's what... $850 I think?

$2,970 + $12,000 + $8,000 + $70,000 + $850 = $93,820.

Here's the catch. Most of what we've made on Lunatix Online has gone back in to pay for prizes, the server charges and internet fees (around $300 per month -- for a year, we were running two servers), etc. I'm not sure how much *profit* has came out of that. Only a fraction. I did better on the other things - the BBS and Worldgroup games - because there weren't really any expenses. Also, this is all spread out over MANY years. Chop it all up, and it's not nearly enough to live on.

I hope that answers the question. [emote]:)[/emote]

And no, none of it was interactive fiction, but it's pretty much all text-based games.

(edit) correction. Several of the CoCo games were interactive fiction -- but when I look at them now, $45 outright was probably way too generous. [emote]:)[/emote] They're really bad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=50#p1299
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: George / DateTime: 2006-12-05 21:23:34

Whoa, I had never heard of Lunatix, it looks cool. Merk, did you create all the content for that game? 

If you don't mind my asking, do you keep it as a sideline and not something full time due to the time you want to spend on it, or because of its perceived potential market share?

And to try to stay somewhat OT: I've browsed the last five years of the IF Comp, and I was surprised by the number of new authors every year. I started with the assumption that it's the same old people writing and entering games every year, and this explains why the Spring Thing doesn't get as much attention, because the same authors historically focus on the Fall competition.

But a first approximation says repeat authors make up only about 1/5 or less of all the comp authors in any year. So why shouldn't some of these new authors gravitate to Spring Thing? Why do they choose IF Comp? After 4+ years it seems like ST should be better established. Do the newsgroups and IF sites put too much emphasis on the Fall competition? Do people naturally start projects early in the year, or in the summer, and finish them late in the year? Is it the extra difficulty of making longer games, as Merk mentioned? Does ST need more exposure?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=50#p1300
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-12-05 22:36:37

[quote="George"]
Whoa, I had never heard of Lunatix, it looks cool. Merk, did you create all the content for that game?
[/quote]  
I wrote the game from scratch, yeah. The graphics were done by my partner, Anna, and are various pieces of altered web- and clip-art. The monsters, for instance, are morphed versions of some halloween mask photos. I've been told that the Mean Li'l Birdie is an FF chocobo, but as to this I couldn't say. I've never found the image elsewhere, so either she altered it a lot, or I'm looking at the wrong chocobos. The game is based on the older BBS version, which was inspired by the Legend of the Red Dragon BBS game (with Lunatix having the same basic play mechanics, set in an insane asylum).

My bigger achievement is StarLock, at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.starlock.com">http://www.starlock.com</a> -- six years in the making, but just way too big/ambitious for one part-time developer. It's a big world with thousands of original graphics (simple ones, but at least they're original work). I don't advertise or publicize it much at all, so almost nobody plays. It's kind of a hybrid browser-based MUD with elements of IF/puzzles. Unfinished, but enough quests/content for a few weeks of play, and free.

[quote="George"]
If you don't mind my asking, do you keep it as a sideline and not something full time due to the time you want to spend on it, or because of its perceived potential market share?
[/quote]  
We had big plans for Lunatix, StarLock, and another (not yet written) multiplayer game to form a kind of community site with a shared subscription. I used to be really optimistic about the market, but Lunatix Online came out when there were only a small number of browser-based multiplayer game -- and nothing major to speak of in Java or Flash. Now there are hundreds of free browser-based games which, while not of the same style as Lunatix, are seemingly more fun and more addictive -- and you have games like Funeral Quest (Flash) and Runescape (Java) that make *true* browser-based seem behind the times. And now there are fancy internet-ready mobile devices, services like gametap, the "casual gamer" market that goes for flash-based portal sites, etc. I'm not sure it would be worth spending time on HTML-based games at this point.

What I'd like to do is work on something with TrueVision 3D, or learn Direct-X or something, team up with a small number of other developers, and write something that might be worth selling or attracting a publisher. The problem is just a lack of time. I have to work a full-time job to support my wife and kiddo, and I couldn't just quit to crank out a new game (and I'm not about to cash out my retirement plan or take out a loan or something on pure speculation). So I'm left to work on it in my free time, which is how I end up wasting six years off and on, on StarLock. It's a matter of time and motivation, learning new tools that'd let me write more marketable games, and just... doing something. I've kind of been in this hobby mode where I just want to write games (interactive fiction, at present) for the fun of it -- no pressure to sell it. Then again, the commerical/periodical IF idea is still out there. I guess that's the blending of both.

Heh. I'm just rambling now.

[quote="George"]
And to try to stay somewhat OT: I've browsed the last five years of the IF Comp, and I was surprised by the number of new authors every year. I started with the assumption that it's the same old people writing and entering games every year, and this explains why the Spring Thing doesn't get as much attention, because the same authors historically focus on the Fall competition.

But a first approximation says repeat authors make up only about 1/5 or less of all the comp authors in any year. So why shouldn't some of these new authors gravitate to Spring Thing? Why do they choose IF Comp? After 4+ years it seems like ST should be better established. Do the newsgroups and IF sites put too much emphasis on the Fall competition? Do people naturally start projects early in the year, or in the summer, and finish them late in the year? Is it the extra difficulty of making longer games, as Merk mentioned? Does ST need more exposure?
[/quote]  
I think the annual IFComp gets a lot more exposure, and it's the one new players find out about. Plus, since it's for shorter games, it's probably easier for a new author to manage than the ST, which asks for medium to long-sized games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=50#p1301
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-05 23:10:04

I really wish Spring Thing would become a bigger comp, though. I think that a lot of people read the 2+ hour thing and thing it's just way too long.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=50#p1302
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-12-06 07:13:12

That's one reason I didn't play and review the games in 2005. I was busy. In 2006 there were only four games, and I started thinking it wouldn't be a problem if each one took two or three long evenings to complete (I was less busy than the prior year, I think). It turned out that they weren't as long as I expected.

I wonder if that's why the competition doesn't get more judges, too? People will look at 43 games and be willing to invest up to 2 hours in each, but if they look at 4 games, maybe it's the thought of spending a lot of time on each one that's the problem.

This thread goes back several weeks... I get the feeling maybe I've already said all this....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=175&start=0#p1303
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Syberia on XBox - First Impressions
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-12-06 07:54:16

My wife and I started playing Syberia last night (the XBox version). I expect it to get better, but my first impressions are a little disappointing.

1) The writing seems somehow sub-standard. I'm not sure yet why. Maybe it's the word choice, and the way the NPC's are expressing things (especially in written-letter form). Was it translated from French, maybe?

2) This is made worse by wooden voice-acting. The last three games we played were Indigo Prophecy, The Longest Journey, and Dreamfall (TLJ 2). Maybe my expectations for voice-acting are just too high now. Thinking back to prior games -- Monkey Island 4, Still Life, Broken Sword 3 -- the actors in Syberia just don't seem very enthusastic.

3) I know this first part is setting up the story and mood, but it seems kind of... still and boring. I don't expect big action right away, but there are times when it'd be nice if it was all more immersive... okay, example. When I first called "my boss" on Kate's cell phone, she was just standing in the hotel, with nothing happening around her. She didn't go sit down or anything. When it rang later -- two calls, actually -- she was just walking down the street. She stops (in the middle of the street), with absolutely nothing happening around her, and has a conversation. I'm just looking at a screen with her standing still. If this was Dreamfall, there would be things going on in the background, she'd sit or lean, she'd at least *move* and give some sign of life.

4) I have to think the PC version was better in the graphics department, too. It's not that the graphics are *bad* -- they're just... lifeless, somehow. And the XBox resolution just doesn't seem good enough to handle the tiny text on the faxes Kate receives. I had to walk over to the TV -- and it's a fairly new 32" one -- to try to make out the blurry gibberish on the pages.

So far, we met with the Notary and have entered the gate to the factory. We're just getting started. These disappointments aren't enough to deter us, but I hope it gets better.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=176&start=0#p1304
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Moments out of Time 2
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-06 12:40:43

My apologies for not announcing here straight away. Busy week.

 At 865741.3 UDC, StreamDiver Alpha Tango-678 performed a routine
StreamDive to the middle of the twenty-first century.

He did not travel alone...

An agent of the Temporal Sciences Commission has gone rogue.
Now you, Captain Remington of the Streamdive Investigation
Division, must follow him back into the past to set right
what he has set wrong before all of history is unravelled in
his wake.

Explore six detailed environments for the clues you'll need
to unlock a mystery woven into humanity's past -- a secret so
powerful that it drove one of your own to commit the ultimate
crime against history.

Fully illustrated and with a complete musical score, Moments Out
of Time (Adventure Type) explodes the story begun 2001's
Interactive Fiction Competition second place winner.

Available now at <a href="http://streamdive.trenchcoatsoft.com,">http://streamdive.trenchcoatsoft.com,</a> Download.com, and shortly at the if-archive.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=60#p1305
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-06 18:09:01

The poor save feature. With the longer games getting ignored, it's becoming second to the undo feature.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=177&start=0#p1306
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Emily Short Reviews Pantomime
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-12-08 09:46:30

I saw this on the newsgroup. Robb Sherwin's Pantomime on IF-Review:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ministryofpeace.com/if-review/reviews/20061208.html">http://www.ministryofpeace.com/if-revie ... 61208.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=178&start=0#p1307
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: NaIfProMo?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-08 19:19:01

National Interactive Fiction Programming Month.

This is an idea that I've thought about quite a bit. Sure, someone in the newsgroups beat me to posting it, but I refuse to accept defeat. Maybe I have a long time ago, just never saw the topic.

Anyways, what would your guy's thoughts be on a NaIfProMo? I personally think that it would be a casual way to get people making games. Whereas on IFComp everyone wants to be a winner, in NaIfProMo the whole point is to make a game in one month, how ever short it would be.

Of course, we would need a different system of counting the length of games as apposed to NaNoWriMo. In that competition you need to write a 50,000 word story, but in NaIfProMo, for example, you would have to have x amount of commands to beat the game.

Thoughts?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=178&start=0#p1308
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: NaIfProMo?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-12-08 21:11:54

When I saw this discussed in the newsgroup, I didn't really see how it would work. It's not so much with the "goal" set for each participant, but with the results. But maybe I'm thinking about it wrong. My first reaction was that we really don't need a hundred more shoddy, rushed, poorly-written works of IF. But I guess that's what NaNoWriMo is all about. I figure most of what gets cranked out in novel form is pretty bad, so it sounds like something you'd do just for yourself.

So... hmmm. I don't know who'd write IF just for themselves. I suppose there would be a website where the games could be downloaded? Would any of them be worth fixing afterwards, let alone playing as-is? I don't know. Would this make people better IF authors, or is that even the point?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=178&start=0#p1309
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: NaIfProMo?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-08 21:52:27

The point is to get people programming IF games. I've heard a lot of people say that the only time they ever finish a game is when IFComp rolls around or something. It's just to get them working, get people programming, coming up with ideas. Of course, a central website would be established where the games could be downloaded (all the ones long enough and in on time, of course). Sure, it could produce a lot of shoddy games, but it'll get the brain working, and perhaps a lot of people will take what they learned and make better games. Maybe like a time when people could practice and see what they should improve on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=178&start=0#p1310
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: NaIfProMo?
User: George / DateTime: 2006-12-08 23:44:10

It's interesting to me that talking about NaNoWriMo vs. NaIFWriMo really shows some of the differences between interactive and non-interactive text. The question of what we measure. The importance of a work being made for someone else, not just yourself. 

I think it would be cool to do this twice a year, once in say June and once in January. November might not be the best month simply because of IF Comp. I see it too as mostly a fun way to encourage production. Maybe there could be a 'play round' every weekend where authors upload what there is of their games so far and people play them as far as they are able, and then judge somehow the progress the author has made. At the end of the month you could tabulate the judging and if a particular game has enough 'votes' it 'wins'. Hard to make it objective and practical, I know. 

Another thing I have been curious about is if there are any IF writer workshops. The cup of conventional fiction overflows with workshops and writer's groups, but I've never heard of anything similar for IF authors. Is the reason for this another fundamental difference between the media or just that the IF community is so much smaller and informal?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=178&start=0#p1311
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: NaIfProMo?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-09 01:04:07

George gets the idea, apparently.

What I think this should be is just a way for people to get motivation to make games. A lot of us just need that extra push, and this could equate that.

As for the time of year, I was thinking about May. First off, I don't want it to be anywhere close to the IFComp, because people have just made games and the last thing they want to do is go and make another. Secondly, it's probably best if it's on a month with thirty-one days. That leaves May. Then you have June-October to make IFComp games. Maybe we could move it to April.

Replying to the whole voting thing, I think that's kind of destroying the whole purpose of a "just get out there and do it" thing that this would be. Sure, I wouldn't mind where people could rate their favorite ones and write reviews or whatever, but there definately wouldn't be any sort of winner, except maybe some awards for "Best Setting" or "Most Creative Puzzle" or whatever, sort of a long the lines of the XYZZY Awards, except strictly to the NaIfProMo.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=178&start=0#p1312
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: NaIfProMo?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2006-12-09 03:42:38

[quote="topgun227"]
Replying to the whole voting thing, I think that's kind of destroying the whole purpose of a "just get out there and do it" thing that this would be. Sure, I wouldn't mind where people could rate their favorite ones and write reviews or whatever, but there definately wouldn't be any sort of winner, except maybe some awards for "Best Setting" or "Most Creative Puzzle" or whatever, sort of a long the lines of the XYZZY Awards, except strictly to the NaIfProMo.
[/quote] 
I don't think it's a good idea to push for the games to be uploaded and made public during/directly after the month. I just did NaNoWriMo for the first time this year (and won - just) and there's no way I'm showing anyone the horrendous mess of text I finished up with until I've done a LOT of editing.

Given, a short IF work can be written fairly well in a month (wasn't that how long J Robinson Wheeler took over Being Andrew Plotkin?). All the same, I wouldn't be keen on uploading my game anywhere until I had finished and had some beta-testing done. I certainly wouldn't want anyone giving me feedback in the middle of the month - the temptation to go back and edit instead of pushing on and finishing first would be overwhelming.

One of the reasons NaNoWriMo is so successful is simply that everyone who gives it a go is a winner. Even if you don't get to 50,000 words and don't get your nice winner's certificate and icons, it's still really cool that you gave it a go and wrote something instead of continuing to say, "One day, I'll write a novel..." Introducing the idea of awards would turn it into just another comp, with the addition of a weird rule that your game must be written in a month.

Don't get me wrong, I do think NaIfProMo is a cool idea. I'd definitely be interested in doing it. May sounds like a pretty good month - it gives some space after Spring Thing (not much, but you can't push it back too far - most people don't do ST anyway) and plenty of time before the IFcomp. (People might even want to enter their NaIfProMo games into the IFcomp - they'd have plenty of time to tidy them up. Another reason not to push people to make their NaIfProMo games public if they don't want to.)

The main question is - how do you establish the IF equivalent of 50,000 words? I admit to having no real ideas. I'm a little dubious about the idea of a minimum-length walkthrough. It would, of course, be possible for an author to implement one path through a game and nothing that deviates from this path. Though I suppose this would be the NaIfProMo equivalent of padding - doing whatever you can within the rules, no matter how dishonourable, in order to make your target. (Yes, I padded my novel too. Majorly.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=178&start=0#p1313
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: NaIfProMo?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2006-12-09 04:47:26

I've read the r.a.i-f thread, and came back with some more thoughts.

Someone suggested counting words within double quotes, and then pointed out that this might be diffcult with TADS 3, which uses single quotes a fair bit. What about counting words between either double quotes or single quotes? Would this give strange results with I6, Hugo, or any other language? I'm really only familiar with TADS and I7. In any case, I suppose the validator could be programmed to count differently depending on the syntax of the language in use. (This assumes that the validation would be automated, not manual.)

Of course, this wouldn't take into account certain situations where a great deal of programming resulted in very little text. But I don't believe there's any objective way of measuring programming effort - unless the project was restricted to one language, which would only alienate people.

I prefer NaIfWriMo to NaIfProMo. The programming part of creating IF is only a means to an end - the text is the important part. Also, NaIfProMo sounds too much like National IF Promotional Month.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=70#p1314
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-12-09 08:09:01

David Cornelson is giving commercial IF a go:
<a href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/msg/64f6c4748d1c9165">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... 748d1c9165</a>

Sounds kind of similar to what we'd been discussing, in our ideas for serial-IF. Sounds like he's getting pretty organized about it, too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=178&start=0#p1315
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: NaIfProMo?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-09 11:50:14

I can see your concerns there. I was saying that only those who wanted to make a public release of their games would be put into the awards. Just for a fun extra thing.

As for the other part, the programming part IS means to an end. And the point of the month is to reach that end. It's like an exercise. Just like NaNoWriMo inspires many people who otherwise wouldn't get around to it, NaIfProMo would do the same. Instead of "One day I'll make a game..." it'll be "I need to make a game for NaIfProMo!" or stuff like that.

In the end, it's a month to inspire people to program games. Otherwise it's just "Make a game for IFComp and sleep for the rest of the year."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=70#p1316
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: George / DateTime: 2006-12-09 12:39:38

Even though a few people have given a commercial IF venture a try in the last ten years, I think it's not a coincidence that we're seeing multiple discussions about commercial IF today. I know it makes me sound like a online marketing hack to say it, but currently the technologies of creation, delivery, and play (I hate to use the words 'production and consumption') are converging fast enough that, like with sales of CDs by indy bands and POD books by authors unpublished by mainstream press, a commercial IF venture is becoming more and more practicable. Looking at the new casual game and indy game portals (like [url=http://"http://www.manifestogames.com"]Manifesto[/url] for example) that have started recently, I'm actually a little surprised it hasn't happened sooner. 

Granted, the hurdles of creating a business structure, website, delivery tools, media player(s), etc. for a new start-up are high, but once a couple of ventures get off the ground and establish the infrastructure, I think there might be a rapid increase in IF games for sale.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=178&start=0#p1317
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: NaIfProMo?
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-12-10 12:59:54

[quote="topgun227"]
National Interactive Fiction Programming Month.
(snipped)
Thoughts?
[/quote]  Isn't this what the IF Dreams competition is supposed to do? Of course, there's no actual prize, but it does help set a good deadline for some newbie authors to finish a game for.

EDIT: And, yes, the NaIFWriMo is not limited in terms of themes. [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=179&start=0#p1318
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Remebering login details?
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2006-12-10 17:03:12

Firefox / Linux remembers my details; Firefox 1.5.0.8 / Windows requires me to relogin each time.  (It does hold by username & password, when I get to the login page, though.)  Any idea why?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=179&start=0#p1319
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Remebering login details?
User: George / DateTime: 2006-12-10 19:28:04

Not sure, but FF 1.5.0.8 on w2k works fine for me. Your post reminds me that I should upgrade to 2.0 though.  [emote]Very Happy[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=179&start=0#p1320
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Remebering login details?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-12-10 20:54:15

Windows FireFox 1.5.0.6 is working for me. Maybe it's a bug in 1.5.0.8? The only versions I have installed are 1.0.7, 1.5.0.6, 2.0 beta 2, and 2.0 released. Sounds like a cookie problem to me, like it's not remembering the "automatically log me in" checkbox. You're checking that box, right?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=178&start=0#p1321
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: NaIfProMo?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2006-12-11 02:40:25

It's not just the deadline. It's the community involvement - because there's a whole group of people working toward the same deadline, facing the same obstacles, sharing the same joys. With NaNoWriMo, the forums are very important - the participants encourage each other, share their experiences, suggest ways around difficulties, create informal competitions for extra motivation.

It's easier to push yourself to finally write that novel/game when you know there are other people doing the same thing alongside you. I don't know why, but it is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=178&start=10#p1322
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: NaIfProMo?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-12-11 06:55:52

It sounds like all that remains is to come up with the target/goal and make a website. Maybe this will become a yearly tradition.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=179&start=0#p1323
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Remebering login details?
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2006-12-11 06:57:20

Yep.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=179&start=0#p1324
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Remebering login details?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-12-11 07:11:05

Well, you should try deleting the cookies that say intfiction.org. If the url you're coming in on is different, that might cause it (cookie is set for intfiction.org, so if you use int-fiction.org or a different capitalization, that might cause it).

[color=#BF0000](update #1)[/color]

Yes, I have reproduced your problem. The cookie domain is <a class="postlink" href="http://www.intfiction.org">http://www.intfiction.org</a>, so if you use any domain other than that, it won't work. The reason it remembers your username and password is because Firefox remembers (you might have clicked "remember password" the first time -- which is what I did in testing this).

You can see it by typing this in your URL:

javascript:window.alert(document.cookie);

If you go to <a class="postlink" href="http://www.intfiction.org">http://www.intfiction.org</a> and log in, you'll see the cookie. If you go to <a class="postlink" href="http://www.int-fiction.org">http://www.int-fiction.org</a> (or any variation of intfiction.org that doesn't include the www, has different capitalization, etc), you'll have the problem.

I can see about removing the domain entirely. It should be optional, and save for the current domain, but I'll have to check.

[color=#800000](update #2)[/color]

I've changed the cookie domain to blank, so it should save for whatever domain you've entered into your browser. It should work now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=70#p1325
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-12-11 13:30:30

As I think more about this from time to time, I think free IF is what will ultimately hold commercial IF back. I'd like to think that great games will sell, and there's a market outside the community, but there are just some obstacles posed by the wealth of free IF that it would probably end up being a hard sell.

I'm not suggesting free IF go away by any means. Just thinking out loud here.

If the creation of Interactive Fiction was still restricted to commercial development, I think there certainly *would* be a market, even today. Not everybody who plays free IF today would pay for IF if free IF didn't exist, but I think some would. It would be the only way to get it. Technology today is such that anybody can create IF now, and distribution is electronic. Back then, even dial-up BBS's were uncommon (if available at all).

Plus, I'm starting to wonder if commercial IF can be written better than the best free IF. I realize it wouldn't have to be -- it just has to be something people want, which isn't available for free -- but would people *want* commercial IF when they're looking at it as "game versus game" rather than "free games in general versus specific commercial games"?

The idea that commercial IF can reach a different market is great at first. If it takes off, though, I would expect free IF to begin cutting into that. To keep the market interested -- a market of people who hadn't known of IF before but will undoubtedly find the free stuff now -- I think the content would really have to be special.

Then again, not everybody would download and play free IF anyway. If there are distribution connections (man, if you could sell IF at bookstores, I bet you'd strike gold), maybe the people who'd pay wouldn't care if there was a free community or not. It'd be convenient to pick up the latest game and install it -- less convenient to learn the in's and out's of the community, download an interpreter, find a good game in the archive, etc. It's easy to forget that not everybody is computer savvy, or even inclined to work at it.

The Westfield Chandler thing is interesting. I think serial IF is a good idea, but I'm not completely convinced that having "world designers" is the way to go. He's going about it more as a publisher might, contracting out to have specific games written. To me, that's no fun. I'd rather write in my own worlds and develop my own scenarios -- and partner with others who are doing the same, like we talked about here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=70#p1326
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-11 14:37:44

Something I posted on the Adrift forum today on the same subject:

[quote]
Speaking for myself, one reason I’d welcome a commercial revival (aside from the thrill of actually selling one of my own games, assuming I ever write one good enough to be sold (but that’s another matter entirely)), is the fact that if a company with a decent reputation is selling games, you know you're going to get a game of high quality. Sure, there are hundreds, even thousands, of free games out there, but a good deal of them are buggy, haven't been proofread, are prone to crash, and suffer from a lack of testing. Mainly because they're games written by a single person doing it in his spare time – who probably holds down a full time job and so has limited free time – and tested by people doing the testing as a favour and who most likely have full time jobs themselves.

A commercial effort would be different because it would be written by a group of people and tested by a group of people. However good a solo effort is, it’s not likely to be half as good as a game written by a group. You're also unlikely to find the commercial game you're playing is actually a joke game written for a laugh.

So I think the main reason to buy a commercial game would be: you're 99% guaranteed better games. Which is reason enough for me. 
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=70#p1327
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-11 14:45:01

[quote="Merk"]
As I think more about this from time to time, I think free IF is what will ultimately hold commercial IF back. I'd like to think that great games will sell, and there's a market outside the community, but there are just some obstacles posed by the wealth of free IF that it would probably end up being a hard sell.
[/quote] 

That's probably going to be the major sticking point: "if I can get free IF games, why should I pay for them?" No doubt if software companies gave away games like [b]Half Life 2[/b] and [b]Oblivion[/b] completely free of charge, any other companies trying to sell similar games wouldn't be in with a chance.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=70#p1328
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-12-11 15:08:19

[quote="David Whyld"]
That's probably going to be the major sticking point: "if I can get free IF games, why should I pay for them?" No doubt if software companies gave away games like [b]Half Life 2[/b] and [b]Oblivion[/b] completely free of charge, any other companies trying to sell similar games wouldn't be in with a chance.
[/quote]  Yep, that's the dilemma. People buy video games because the kinds of video games they want aren't free. Those kinds of video games rarely *can* be free, due to the expense involved to create them.

IF is still something that can be free because the expense to write a game is nothing (i.e., when I write IF, I'm donating my own time to the project). I think your example is exactly right. If "free" was the norm in video games, and HL2 or Oblivion were pretty much the same as some existing free games, then it wouldn't matter to most people (I would think) that the free games aren't *the specific same games* as HL2 or Oblivion. The free ones -- although not HL2 or Oblivion -- would be just fine. It would be the difference between paying $0 or paying $50, when the games are "the same" on a general level.

But how can we innovate commercial IF when very little (if anything) we do couldn't be cloned in the free community anyway? It seems like a lost cause trying to write games that are *better* than free games, because the nay-sayers will find fault in them regardless. Even if the nay-sayers were wrong, it'd only take a couple free games to come out that offer the same innovations, and that's likely to happen.

As for pleasing the nay-sayers, I think that if a person is set against an idea, they're going to justify disliking the result. I rarely ever see "I expected this to be bad, and wow was I wrong." It's always like "I expected this to be bad, and sure enough, it was."

So.... hmmm. I don't think my latest thoughts contradict the idea we had for short "multi-game" or "serial" IF. I never thought it would be a huge success -- just something that might be fun and lead into more. It's the "leading into more" part that seems more doubtful, as I think about it. I wouldn't want to go the Malinche route with slight-of-hand to hide the free community, yet I'd like to keep viable whatever commercial market we *could* reach.

Maybe David C. has exactly the right idea, going for professional packaging (right?) and distribution (right?) and advisors and contracted development. Maybe the trick would be in getting commercial IF out there, promoting it, building the market. The world is made up of many kinds of people. Some may buy IF, but wouldn't be bothered to find or care about free IF. Maybe that's the market he's going for.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=180&start=0#p1329
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: IF Chat
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-11 17:48:01

I have been a little unconvinced by the various arguments in favor of a web forum as opposed to Google Groups ... but I think it would be cool if there was a place for IF-related chat outside of ifMUD. I would enjoy chatting with people about IF, but it is not worth it to me to do the equivalent of learning UNIX from scratch. 

Learning Inform is fun. Learning ifMUD syntax is not. My opinion.

Greg

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=178&start=10#p1330
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: NaIfProMo?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-11 18:52:14

Wait, so you like the idea?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=178&start=10#p1331
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: NaIfProMo?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-12-11 20:07:48

I think it's an interesting idea that could work. I don't know when/if I'd participate myself.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=180&start=0#p1332
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Chat
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-12-11 20:13:58

I wrote my own browser-based chat a few years ago. I could set it up here. It probably needs updated, though. It would run smoother with Ajax, and a MySQL back-end.

I'm becoming more and more convinced that Usenet *isn't* the way to go -- Google Groups or not. I hate not being able to edit mistakes in my posts. I hate *missing* posts because my news server flakes out (recently, it has become pretty spotty). I hate that each PC I connect with has its own version of the read/unread status, and I'm not going to jump through hoops to move it to a flash drive or something -- too much hassle. I've never liked Google Groups, and I still don't. It's good for linking to usenet posts, and for searching.

I keep reading and posting to the newsgroups because that's what everybody insists on using. Where some won't visit the forum because they don't like forums, at least I'm willing to visit usenet even though I'm more and more convinced that it's an outdated, obsolete way to communicate.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=181&start=0#p1333
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Another Annoying Error
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-11 20:37:03

[code]North of Mission Control Hall North is Mission Control Main Area. The description of Mission Control Main Area is "You're standing on a raised platform behind a glass wall. Below you is the Mission Control Center where many different scientists check their computers and run simulations or whatever they do on those fancy computers of theirs. Probably playing Minesweeper, too. To the east, you can go to the Equipment Room and to the west is the Astronaut Special Area. And back south is the Mission Control Hall." Director Aaron Stamven is a person in Mission Control Main Area. "The director of the space mission is the famed Aaron Stamven, who is currently standing here, looking important." Instead of going west in Mission Control Main Area when the player is not wearing Astronaut Suit, say "You need to head into the Equipment Room first before you head that way." The description of Aaron Stamven is "You've never particularly liked Stamven, but he is definately good at his job. He's your boss and he makes sure you know it, too." Instead of going east in Mission Control Main Area when Director Aaron Stamven is not carrying Important Math Paper, say "The door requires yet another key." Instead of giving the Important Math Paper to Director Aaron Stamven: say "'Um, sir...' you say, getting his attention. 'I have a delivery for you.' Aaron snatches the paper from your hands and reads it carefully. 'Excellent,' he muses. 'Good job, Fermen.'

'It's Flemend, sir.'

'Right, Fermen. Look, we're getting ready for the liftoff. You should get suited up in the Equipment Room.'

He hands you a key of which you take. You unlock the Equipment Room and give him back the key."; now Director Aaron Stamven has Important Math Paper. Instead of asking Director Aaron Stamven about "liftoff", say "'Liftoff is soon.' He says, bluntly. Apparently he's not too talkative right now." Instead of asking Director Aaron Stamven about "key", say "'Yes, the key is to concentrate.' He says. What was that about?"[/code]

Brings up this error:

[quote]
You wrote 'Mission Control Main Area'  , but in another sentence 'The description of Mission Control Main Area is "You're standing on a raised platfo [...] south is the Mission Control Hall."'  : but this looks like a contradiction, which might be because I have misunderstood what was meant to be the subject of one or both of those sentences.
[/quote] 

What's the meaning of this? I don't get it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=80#p1334
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: George / DateTime: 2006-12-11 21:03:23

If commercial IF was to be successful, undoubtedly there would be a transition period where the best commercial games would not seriously outnumber the best free games. Right now we have a situation where for almost 15 years there has not been a significant text adventure market, so anyone who did have the inclination and the ability to write text adventures well has been writing them for free, with a few exceptions (of course not counting all the game developers who naturally went into graphical games). 

So the transition period will be crucial. Can commercial IF achieve a foothold? It seems to me there are several routes up the big wall so to speak that commercial ventures can have a go at. 

First is direct marketing to gamers. Simply selling the game off your site. Perhaps the most difficult but a little word of mouth always can do wonders. 

Second I see the casual game portals and indy game umbrella sites. Suppose you could lump in sites like Amazon. Hard to say if your game would stand out from the crowd of casual games, but a new and cool text game might generate some buzz. Also as more and more people use mobile devices this could take off. 

Third is the education market that David has talked about on raif, including schools and parents buying games for their kids. I don't know a lot about the possibilities here but it seems like it might be a ripe market. 

Next are media tie-ins. I was browsing the Malinche site the other day and supposedly he's under contract to write a tie-in game for a TV show, something like Battlestar Galactica (I might be getting that wrong). Now I don't know how accurate that information is, but we've seen a couple of games come out lately tied in to new novels and so on. Those games weren't very good, and they might have been done for free, but I think tie-ins might be a promising road to go down. 

Last is selling the game off of 'shelving', whether it's a bookstore, game store, museum shop, whatever. 

I'm sure I missed a few, but my point is that it seems wise to explore all of these avenues if you're trying to get a venture off the ground. If the work sells, it seems to me that after several years the best authors will move away from the free community toward the commercial side of things, unless they are writing works that are not interesting to the majority of the public.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=181&start=0#p1335
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Another Annoying Error
User: George / DateTime: 2006-12-11 22:30:55

That's strange, because compiling your code gave me many errors but -not- the one you mentioned. I'm using windows build 4B91. Have you figured this out already?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=181&start=0#p1336
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Another Annoying Error
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-11 23:51:33

No. I have no clue what is going on. It's kind of annoying because I can't make any more progress until I can fix it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=80#p1337
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-12 00:31:05

Here are my three cents on those.

1. Yes, but will people talking about your game generate sales? Look at Snakes on a Plane. Tons of talk about that movie, yet it did mediocrely at the box office. A lot of talk can just be that: talk.

2. Amazon? That's an interesting challenge. But if you market ot Amazon, you need actual physical stuff, such as a cover and the now-nearly-required feelies. Way too expensive for a company that doesn't even know the boundaries of it's profit.

3. Education market? [quote]
You are sitting in a classroom. A pencil and a paper are on your desk. The teacher marks the blackboard at the front of the class.
> x paper
Math equasions. What's 5+5 =?
[/quote] 

4. First you have to find tie-ins, and people will be hesitent with something as experimental as the market of a hobbyist medium.

5. Far too expensive for a small business venture.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=80#p1338
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-12 01:42:25

[quote="David Whyld"]
[quote="Merk"]
As I think more about this from time to time, I think free IF is what will ultimately hold commercial IF back. I'd like to think that great games will sell, and there's a market outside the community, but there are just some obstacles posed by the wealth of free IF that it would probably end up being a hard sell.
[/quote]  

That's probably going to be the major sticking point: "if I can get free IF games, why should I pay for them?" No doubt if software companies gave away games like [b]Half Life 2[/b] and [b]Oblivion[/b] completely free of charge, any other companies trying to sell similar games wouldn't be in with a chance.
[/quote] 

Saying that, there have been a few games I've heard of that have expansion packs written by fans that people have bought, even though there are vast amounts of free ones. [b]Neverwinter Nights[/b] had a toolset that people could use to create their own modules that could then be played by other people; some of these were better than the original game and, if marketed properly, could well have been sold for a profit. And don't people sell [b]Oblivion[/b] add-ons, even though there are dozens of free ones readily available?

Of course, that's a whole different area - graphical games written with a pre-buillt toolset as opposed to text adventures - but it's worth noting that, sometimes, people are prepared to pay for something they can obtain free.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=181&start=0#p1339
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Another Annoying Error
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-12 05:20:48

I compiled it and got a different error message:

[quote]
Problem. You wrote 'Instead of going west in Mission Control Main Area when the player is not wearing Astronaut Suit'  , which seems to introduce a rule, but the circumstances for the rule to apply ('going west in Mission Control Main Area when the player is not wearing Astronaut Suit') did not make sense.
[/quote] 

This is part of the reason why I gave up trying to write an Inform 7 game. The ‘natural language’ is about as natural as machine code and the error messages are bewilderingly vague.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=180&start=0#p1340
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Chat
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-12 05:27:43

I've never been very fond of Usenet full stop. Even if the system was as amazing as most of the RAIF crowd seem to think, it’s still got its problem with trolls like Pudlo and Breslin who have the knack of turning almost every thread into an argument. For once it'd be nice to read a whole thread on there without someone flaming someone else.

The Adrift forum has had a few chats up and running over the years (there's one now in fact), but the community isn't really big enough to support an active chat. Most of the times I go there, I find I'm the only one on. And talking to yourself isn't half as much fun as it’s cracked up to be…

Something similar to IFMud, but with a better interface, would be nice.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=181&start=0#p1341
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Another Annoying Error
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2006-12-12 07:33:10

Since the code snippet

[code]North of Mission Control Hall North is Mission Control Main Area. The description of Mission Control Main Area is "You're standing on a raised platform behind a glass wall. Below you is the Mission Control Center where many different scientists check their computers and run simulations or whatever they do on those fancy computers of theirs. Probably playing Minesweeper, too. To the east, you can go to the Equipment Room and to the west is the Astronaut Special Area. And back south is the Mission Control Hall." Director Aaron Stamven is a person in Mission Control Main Area. "The director of the space mission is the famed Aaron Stamven, who is currently standing here, looking important."[/code]

compiles on its own, I'm guessing I7 thinks you've already defined "Mission Control Main Area" somewhere else in your game. Is there any other part of your code where you use that phrase? If, in the snippet you posted, you (for now) change "Mission Control Main Area" to "Mission-Control-Main-Area", does it compile properly?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=80#p1342
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2006-12-12 07:35:42

[quote="David Whyld"]
[quote="Merk"]
As I think more about this from time to time, I think free IF is what will ultimately hold commercial IF back. I'd like to think that great games will sell, and there's a market outside the community, but there are just some obstacles posed by the wealth of free IF that it would probably end up being a hard sell.
[/quote]  

That's probably going to be the major sticking point: "if I can get free IF games, why should I pay for them?"
[/quote] 

What may overcome that is that games aren't interchangeable. For instance, there are free FPSes available, but if what I really want to do is play Half-Life 2, it doesn't matter that other games are free. Similarly, if WCP or some other commercial company put out a game that sounded great and that I really wanted to play, it wouldn't matter that other games are available free.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=80#p1343
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-12-12 08:22:26

[quote="Sargent"]
What may overcome that is that games aren't interchangeable. For instance, there are free FPSes available, but if what I really want to do is play Half-Life 2, it doesn't matter that other games are free. Similarly, if WCP or some other commercial company put out a game that sounded great and that I really wanted to play, it wouldn't matter that other games are available free.
[/quote]      
That's the key, yeah. I'm just not sure most people would consider them non-interchangeable. If a free game was *like* Half-Life 2 -- of the same quality and same gameplay -- would it matter to most consumers that the free game wasn't Half-Life 2? If picking only one, the free game would be just as good. I think it's hard to put into perspective, because there is a technology gap between most commercial video games and most free video games. There really is no free equivalent to Half-Life 2, so it's not apples to apples. There are great free games, yes -- free games better than some commercial games, of course. But at the high end of each, the commercial games win.

In IF, we lack the technology gap unless you focus on what typical free IF can't or doesn't do -- multimedia, professional writing, whatever. And maybe this is what David has in mind. Example: Future Boy! *looks* like a commercial-quality game, with music, video, graphics, maybe even some voices (I forget). Is that what it will take to be commercially viable? Can commercial all-text IF stand apart as non-interchangeable?

If so, I think it will have to be better than the bulk of free games produced each year. It will have to be professionally presented. If selling a single game, it will have to be of good size to make it "worth the money". The writing will have to be top-notch -- certainly without errors. Basically, a technology gap has to be created. Or, not so much a technology gap (I think I'm misusing the phrase), but an *implementation* gap. It has to be such that a line can be drawn between commercial IF and most free IF, so that customers can see the difference; so that customers will consider the games non-interchangeable; so that the wealth of free games doesn't devalue the IF that's for sale. All of this is assuming a larger market (and larger goal) than I had perceived for the serial- or subscription-IF for shorter games we'd been discussing before.

I hope Westfield Chandler succeeds, especially if it paves the way for competitors. [emote]:)[/emote]

One last note on this. I'd personally be more likely to buy IF if it came in a box, or a DVD case or something. I collect games. I collect what I intend to play, but I've gone through only a fraction of the hundreds of games I own. I especially like the footprint of DVD-sized games (XBox, PS2, and GameCube). Put IF in that packaging, make it worth playing, sell it affordably, and I'd buy. I'm less likely to buy a download, because then it doesn't adorn my game shelf. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=80#p1344
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2006-12-12 11:13:10

[quote="Merk"]
In IF, we lack the technology gap unless you focus on what typical free IF can't or doesn't do -- multimedia, professional writing, whatever.
[/quote] 

Then technology isn't what you want to use as a differentiator -- you want the [i]writing[/i] to do that. There is a lot of free writing available, and people write and release books all the time, some of it of a quality equal to or greater than traditionally published books. Yet I will still pay money for a new Charlie Stross book.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=80#p1345
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-12-12 14:15:40

[quote="Sargent"]
Then technology isn't what you want to use as a differentiator -- you want the [i]writing[/i] to do that. There is a lot of free writing available, and people write and release books all the time, some of it of a quality equal to or greater than traditionally published books. Yet I will still pay money for a new Charlie Stross book.
[/quote]    
Then it would have to be about building brands, be it a brand name author or a brand name series. This was mentioned before, but it's probably buried in the prior 8 pages (or maybe in the commercial discussion board, which isn't marked as public). If the game isn't non-interchangeable due to content and implementation, then it has to be in the brand.

So, what's best in building an IF brand name? A commercial game written by an IF (or traditional) author who is already known for his or her free games (or traditional work)? A commercial game licensed in an existing setting (a movie or book or something, but without the flaws found in tie-ins that have cropped up recently)? A series in which the first part is given away for free, a la classic shareware marketing? Media exposure?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=181&start=0#p1348
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Another Annoying Error
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-12 22:33:59

Unfortunately, no. I've tried everything. I'm starting to believe that only Emily Short and Graham Nelson know what's wrong.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=80#p1349
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: George / DateTime: 2006-12-12 22:39:40

Perhaps I'm stating the obvious (wouldn't be the first time) but if you want to build a brand in short order I see two choices: either hijack an existing author's reputation (and that author doesn't have to write the stuff, look at Tom Clancy, but in general I think they would), or an existing world such as Star Trek or Star Wars (two obvious examples, but probably not what IF would aim for, at first). 

While a 'known IF' author might write the IF well, they are not going to be well known outside of those people who have read IF. So if I was running an IF business I would go for a perhaps a second-tier novelist, probably fantasy and/or science fiction. As for what worlds I would aim high and get as popular a setting as possible. You might get the short side of the profits over a short-term contract but the exposure would be worth it. Of course you want to focus on the world; you don't have to hire and re-hire worlds, after all, once you get the ball rolling.

On second thought the name recognition of the author probably isn't that important.

A good demo -- or 'trailer', even -- is essential. But that's all I would give away for free.  [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=181&start=0#p1350
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Another Annoying Error
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-13 00:13:51

Updated I7, everything will work as soon as I can fix out the dialogue code for the new version.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=80#p1351
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-15 22:55:45

I love the idea. I don't really know why, but I think the world would be a better place if IF was as well-known an entertainment medium as TV or Video Gaming.
I think it would catch on pretty quick, too. The trick would be getting it published in bookstores and getting writers of "static-fiction" (as you've been calling it. I've never heard that term before but it does seem to fit) to write the IF. This kind of IF would probably mainly consist of the author and the programmer, but I think it would be better if writing IF was way easier. There would have to be something like ADRIFT, except way more flexible.

Anyway, I have a feeling it would get pretty popular.

Good luck with the subscription IF thing.

But really, I don't think it's the commercial IF idea that makes it interesting, I think it's just the idea of IF getting more popular.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=180&start=0#p1352
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Chat
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-16 00:52:51

IRC is the best way to chat on the internet. Some people don't like it because the advanced features are slightly tricky (chanserv, memoserv, ect) but it's seriously the most accessible and flexible way to chat there is.

We could set up an IRC channel somewhere for IF. It's easier to get into then a MUD (why the hell do they use that anyway, I play MUDs from time to time, but ifMUD is insane).

I also think that it's kind of hipocrytical (according to the spell checker, that's the wrong spelling. It won't tell me the right spelling apparently.) that they want to expand the IF community but use usenet. If you post on 99% of forums about usenet, you're either going to here:
"What's usenet LOL"
or
"More like nobodyusesnet LOL"

Usenet was fine when it was all there was, but it has no redeeming qualities anymore. It works, that's about it.
It wouldn't hurt to set up an IRC channel anyway, so it will be there when/if the community decides to embrace modern (internet)conveniences.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=183&start=0#p1353
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Logging In
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-12-17 08:47:52

Hi all.

After upgrading and then downgrading, it looks like there might have been quirks with the cookies that were set. If you log in and it automatically logs you out, you will have to delete browser cookies for "intfiction.org" or "www.intfiction.org" or any other variations. That should clear things out, and you can log in and stay logged in. At least, that's what worked for me.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=180&start=0#p1354
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Chat
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2006-12-17 14:15:13

I have to say, I'm enjoying you talking about modern conveniences and setting strawmen alight while trumpeting IRC.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=122&start=0#p1355
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Crimson Spring
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-17 14:26:35

Hey, thanks everyone, for chatting about ACS. It's much appreciated and as an author the thing I dig most. 

I've been re-doing the pictures for that game the last couple of months and hope to put a new version on the archive before too long. When I originally made the game I didn't know anything about getting drawings into a computer and looking nice. I had a scanner, and I was okay with Photoshop, but it really helps to have six years of tutorials on the net telling you how to get your pencils in usable shape, how to get colors inside those lines, how to do shading. I was coloring the images before scanning and I know now that doing so creates a mess. The new art isn't comic book worthy, but it should at least stop people from trying to gouge their eyes out with the up arrow key (the pointiest of the cursor manipulators). 

(The process would go faster, except it's tough to get the motivation to fix the old games when one can work on the new games, which I would guess is a common feeling.)

[url=http://img186.imageshack.us/my.php?image=acs10501du2.jpg][img]http://img186.imageshack.us/img186/6386/acs10501du2.th.jpg[/img][/url]

I'm also going to take the oppotunity to fix that [b]>search room[/b] debacle. I don't know what I was thinking. That's like the fundamental thing to avoid in IF, except for [b]>use key[/b]. To replace that >search, well, I've heard some great things about insta-room deaths and I really think that will be a huge improvement. (Kidding.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=80#p1356
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-17 15:16:46

There is a mechanism used by people making games in the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vectrex]Vectrex[/url] community that is interesting, and possibly applicable to IF. 

What a few Vec authors have done is put together a run of about 80 physical cartridges. They get the code all set, tested and debugged and take pre-orders. Armed with that money, they are able to produce the carts, the boxes, the overlays and instruction manuals. The authors usually keep a couple games to themselves to auction on eBay, and those auctions usually do pretty well. If they are getting $40 for a cart normally, the eBay auctions have done up to $200. 

Some authors later release their games for free, others don't. But the purchaser gets all the good "feelie" vibe coming from a professional-looking box and overlay and so forth. (Due to the Vec emulators out there, you don't necessarily need a cart and Vectrex to play if the author releases his ROM file.)

I know I personally love the DVD slipcase + game on a disc setup. I am quite jealous of Europeans, as I understand that by default your PC games come that way. I wouldn't mind paying for a limited edition-type deal from an IF author I know I like. $40, like in the Vectrex world is probably too much, but half that would be reasonable.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=122&start=0#p1357
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Crimson Spring
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-17 17:22:50

I certainly like the new graphic compared to the old one (although I should probably point out that either are far better than anything I could do myself).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=180&start=0#p1358
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Chat
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-17 17:24:33

Obviously I know the answer to this ( [emote]Smile[/emote] ) but I'm just asking for the benefit of all those reading this thread that don't know:

What's IRC?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=90#p1359
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-17 17:26:00

Speaking of Ebay...

Has anyone considered this as a possible way of selling IF games?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=90#p1360
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-18 00:11:30

I did it once. I had a couple Drift packages left from Feelies.org that weren't going anywhere. I put an auction up with a buy it now for $10 and a guy purchased it. I got another e-mail from someone asking if I had any others and I did a non-eBay sale to him, which saved me the listing hassles for the second one. SCORE!

Old games (text and otherwise) from Infocom's hey day seem to do pretty well, especially if complete. I've been trying to get a copy of Wasteland for a while now (because it has one of the best boxes ever) and the ones I watch usually hit well over $20. My guess is that there are many people on eBay who run auction searches on Infocom, text adventure and such and when a game from the IF community pops up they are interested and bid.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=122&start=0#p1361
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Crimson Spring
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-18 00:13:12

Here is one such tutorial for getting pencil art into a PC and cleaned up:

<a href="http://www.steeldolphin-forums.com/htmltuts/digital_colorpart1.html">http://www.steeldolphin-forums.com/html ... part1.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=90#p1362
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2006-12-18 02:27:08

[quote="Ice Cream Jonsey"]
I know I personally love the DVD slipcase + game on a disc setup. I am quite jealous of Europeans, as I understand that by default your PC games come that way.
[/quote] 

They are nice, and quite a few of them fit on a shelf. But I'm wishing for days gone by; hoping that the publishers would return to the large boxes with a [i]real[/i] manual inside, not the quick start guide that's taken the place of the manual...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=180&start=0#p1363
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Chat
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2006-12-18 02:37:56

[quote="David Whyld"]
What's IRC?
[/quote]   
[url=http://www.irchelp.org/irchelp/new2irc.html]Internet Relay Chat[/url]

For the record, I find IRC dull. ifMUD is cool.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=90#p1364
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-18 03:30:51

Yes, a two-page quick start guide will never take the place of a proper printed manual in my eyes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=122&start=0#p1365
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Crimson Spring
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-18 08:59:41

Of course, if your pencil art is as bad as mine it's probably better off not put in a game. [emote]Sad[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=184&start=0#p1366
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Zag Java - Instructions for Luddities?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-18 23:00:15

Hi all.

I'm at work developing a very small IF which ultimately I'd like to make available on a webpage. Unfortunately I'm expecting 95% of the webpage readership to either be PC-clueless or not sufficiently motivated to download and install a new application specifically for trying out the IF, so I thought providing a one-click Java solution would be a good way to go.

I got a hold of Zag and it certainly looks fantastic and I can get it to run fine. However, I am too java/html-unaware (and the included docs are too limited) to be able to set it up on the site so the click/download auto-opens my IF file (as distinct from just booting up the Zag java app).

Anyone found some more basic instructions for Zag-use? How do I twiddle Zag to load a particular game file?

Thanks in slavering anticipation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=185&start=0#p1367
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Fallacy of Dawn
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-19 13:17:15

Well, for my first post I'll try to start a discussion of Fallacy of Dawn by Robb Sherwin. Far and away my favorite IF game and one of very few (out of hundreds) I've actually played to completion.

Why do I like it? The writing, the characters, the dialogue. This is also one of the very few works of IF I've played that has a real sense of energy to it (possibly rare because the puzzles in most IF force a slow, analytical approach on the player).

Also is it just me or was Robb Sherwin's writing style based on that of George Alec Effinger? Maybe it's just the cyberpunk setting but at times the similarities are uncanny. Except I actually prefer Robb's writing.

So anyone else played this game? Loved it? Hated it? Etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=149&start=0#p1368
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Madam Spider's Web
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-19 14:11:07

Sara Dee's entry last year was my favorite game of that comp but I didn't care for this one.

My biggest complaint was that I just could not see what the connection was between the main game and the ending. Unlike the other posters here I got a (fairly) happy ending but even so I could not see how it was relevant to the tasks in the house.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=185&start=0#p1369
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Fallacy of Dawn
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-12-19 14:55:21

I haven't played it, but I really really should. I'm home sick this week -- maybe if I find a stretch where I'm out of bed more than five minutes at a time, it'd give me something to do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=184&start=0#p1370
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Zag Java - Instructions for Luddities?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-12-19 14:56:30

Is there a website for this? I haven't encountered it before.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=186&start=0#p1371
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: IF Comp Results
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-19 16:36:02

Well I am sad i didn't get to enter this year, things really went to shit mid October, so I couldn't really get much done.  I also didn't even play the games this year, or vote.

That being said, I'm a bit disappointed that Emily Short entered and won, and chose 400 bucks as her prize.  Yeah, it's a contest.  Yeah, anyone can win.  But when an established, famous author enters, it's a bit ridiculous to expect anything else.  How many authors went "Oh shit, Emily entered, there goes my shot at glory?"  At the very least she should have entered under a pseudonym.

I haven't played her game, so I'm not qualified to discuss the merits of it, etc.  In fact, I'm sure it's a perfect example of coding, design, and writing, and fully deserved to win.  It's just that the battle to draw in new users is lost if you're constantly undermining their efforts to achieve anything in the community.  It'd be like Charles Dickens entering a writing competition in a small town.  Who do YOU think would win?  How do you think his fellow competitors would feel?

I'm sure most people will write me off as a troll or a hater of the "cabal" or some such other bullshit.  I'd post this on raif but I know I'd get flamed even harder.  I'm honestly not trying to take away from Emily's work or her much-deserved praise as a writer of IF.  I'm just disappointed that she chose to enter a contest under her own name and then claim top prize.  At least Jason Devlin, Andrew Plotkin, and Merk chose to enter under pseudonyms or anonymously, letting their games stand on merit, not name recognition.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=186&start=0#p1372
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Comp Results
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-19 17:40:22

Well, I wasn't able to play her game since it kept crashing on my interpreter, but as a player I approve of people entering good games into the comp whether or not they're celebrities(?) of the IF world.

On the pseudonym issue since the game was written in Inform 7 I imagine anyone who knows who Emily is would be reasonably able to guess it was her work no matter what name it was written under.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=186&start=0#p1373
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Comp Results
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-19 17:42:20

I think that's a bit harsh actually. Are you saying the big names from the IF world shouldn't be allowed to enter comps for fear of showing up the little guys? Personally I'd have said being a big name is no guarantee you're going to win; it might even have the exact opposite effect. Who's willing to bet when Pudlo and Breslin saw she'd entered, they immediately thought "right, let's register half a dozen different accounts so we can give her multiple ratings of 1"?

Looking at it from another point of view, if you won the comp solely because none of the big names entered, would it mean as much to you?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=186&start=0#p1374
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Comp Results
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-12-19 17:43:44

Long time no see!

I wondered which game was yours. I remember you had planned to enter, and were even almost done. Are you still planning to release the game you had intended to enter, or will it be your entry next year?

Floatpoint is a good game. I think it would have won, even if entered pseudonymously. The average score *does* seem disproportionately high when compared to the rest of the results (and even the results from prior years), but who's to say how much this would have changed otherwise?

As a competing author, there are two ways of looking at it. Emily Short is a big name in interactive fiction. It's almost impossible to visit any IF-related website or IF-blog without seeing her website, games, tutorials, or libraries referenced. That's daunting, yes. But what if every entrant entered assuming that every big name in IF was taking part? Wouldn't it force us all to do better?

And just for reference, if I ever win, I'm definitely picking the top prize.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=184&start=0#p1375
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Zag Java - Instructions for Luddities?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-19 18:49:48

Here's what I found. Nothing with enough info for me to figure it out. Although I imagine it's fairly obvious to someone who has some levels in Java?

<a href="http://wso.williams.edu/~jon/zag/">http://wso.williams.edu/~jon/zag/</a>
<a href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Zag">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Zag</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=186&start=0#p1376
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Comp Results
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-19 19:06:42

[quote="S_K"]
Well, I wasn't able to play her game since it kept crashing on my interpreter, but as a player I approve of people entering good games into the comp whether or not they're celebrities(?) of the IF world.
[/quote]  

As do I.  I just think pseudonymously would be the way to do it.  Just as a game by "dunric" is going to have certain expectations and biases going into it, so will a game by an IF celebrity.

[quote="David Whyld"]
I think that's a bit harsh actually. Are you saying the big names from the IF world shouldn't be allowed to enter comps for fear of showing up the little guys? Personally I'd have said being a big name is no guarantee you're going to win; it might even have the exact opposite effect. Who's willing to bet when Pudlo and Breslin saw she'd entered, they immediately thought "right, let's register half a dozen different accounts so we can give her multiple ratings of 1"?
[/quote]  

No, I'm saying they should enter under a pseudonym or anonymously.  And, since Emily's game received 113 votes, a total reached by another game (The Apocalypse Clock), I would guess that there were very few "joke" voters who picked a score of 1, as you surmise, unless they also made a point of voting for that other game.

[quote="David Whyld"]
Looking at it from another point of view, if you won the comp solely because none of the big names entered, would it mean as much to you?
[/quote]  

Again, I'm not suggesting they don't enter at all, I am in fact glad they do, for the very reason you quote.  It would be exhilarating to pit my game against theirs and see how I fare. I'm just suggesting they do it without the benefit of name recognition.

[quote="Merk"]
Long time no see!

I wondered which game was yours. I remember you had planned to enter, and were even almost done. Are you still planning to release the game you had intended to enter, or will it be your entry next year?
[/quote]  

I'm working on something different now, although it's still based on my previous game.  I wish I could've entered this year, it just didn't work out.

[quote="Merk"]
Floatpoint is a good game. I think it would have won, even if entered pseudonymously. The average score *does* seem disproportionately high when compared to the rest of the results (and even the results from prior years), but who's to say how much this would have changed otherwise?
[/quote]  

Best way I can think to describe this is by quoting the results of "Shade" by Andrew Plotkin.  It finished tenth in 2000, entered pseudonymously.  Now, it is praised highly, and quoted, and talked about more often than at least five of the higher placing games of that year.  When was the last time you heard anyone talk about "Transfer" or "Nevermore?"  Exactly.

[quote="Merk"]
As a competing author, there are two ways of looking at it. Emily Short is a big name in interactive fiction. It's almost impossible to visit any IF-related website or IF-blog without seeing her website, games, tutorials, or libraries referenced. That's daunting, yes. But what if every entrant entered assuming that every big name in IF was taking part? Wouldn't it force us all to do better?
[/quote]  

It's one thing to assume their entry.  It's quite another to know you're at a disadvantage from the start.

[quote="Merk"]
And just for reference, if I ever win, I'm definitely picking the top prize.
[/quote]  

I wouldn't envy you doing so.  And suggesting Emily shouldn't have taken it was a bit sour-grapish on my part.

At any rate, I guess my point is this:  How would Emily's game's score been affected if she'd have entered it under the pseudonym "dunric?"  It probably would've gotten at least 50 less votes, for one, and most people would go into it with a major bias, expecting a debacle like Ninja II, possibly already deciding the score in their head before even playing.  It wouldn't made it any less of a game, but it certainly would've altered player's expectations and possibly even the scores.

Yes, a rose by any other name smells just as sweet.  Emily's game could've and probably would've won anyway.  I'm just suggesting that the biases inherent in the small community of IF writers and players served to give her an unusual advantage in the voting simply due to the fact that her name appeared front and center on her work.

I'm sorry that this whole thing sounds a bit crude and I'm coming off as a bit of a prick.  That's not my intention at all.  I'm just throwing my thoughts out there.  I probably would've done well to keep my fingers still and not typed this up at all, and I certainly don't want to cause hard feelings.  I apologize if I have done so.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=186&start=0#p1377
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Comp Results
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-20 04:28:30

Hm, well, for what it's worth: I considered entering under a pseudonym (and had coded accordingly) up until quite late on, but I ultimately decided it would be pointless. First of all, it was an Inform 7 game compiled to Glulx, and there aren't many people using that format yet; second, I reused quite a bit of framework code for newbies that had appeared in Bronze. So anyone who had played that or even glanced at the source was likely to ID me from the very first input line of the game -- but that they'd probably suspect just given the game's *format*, which isn't exactly something you can hide. 

At that point, I figured the only real result of using a pseudonym would be that I couldn't credit my beta-testers and advisers in the competition release, and that seemed like a lame trade-off. I'd gotten quite a lot of help on this from a bunch of people, some of whom patiently looked at multiple versions of the game over the couple of years it was in progress.

I also didn't view this as likely to give me an unfair advantage, honestly. I have had people tell me that they would've scored my games higher (in this comp, or in previous contexts) if they had come from an unknown, but they expected something more/else from me, and therefore, etc. So I don't think this is by any means a universal response, but I also don't think that the name recognition factor is quite as straightforward as it might seem: it may make people more likely to *try* the game, but I'm not sure it makes them more likely to give it any particular score. (I have suspicions about the particular reason why name-recognition helps Shade: it's a game that, at the outset, *looks* boring, and that's part of the point; and if you know it's by Zarf you're more likely to work past that. Most other IF doesn't work that way.) 

Annnyway. Those were my reasons, for whatever they're worth.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=186&start=0#p1378
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Comp Results
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-20 05:12:49

[quote="Wanaselja"]
Best way I can think to describe this is by quoting the results of "Shade" by Andrew Plotkin.  It finished tenth in 2000, entered pseudonymously.  Now, it is praised highly, and quoted, and talked about more often than at least five of the higher placing games of that year.  When was the last time you heard anyone talk about "Transfer" or "Nevermore?"  Exactly.
[/quote] 

True. But just because you're a big name in the IF world doesn't mean anyone is going to say nice things about your game. Find me one person who said nice things about Graham Nelson's [b]Reliques of Tolti-Alph[/b] and I'll find you ten who didn't.

[quote="Wanaselja"]
At any rate, I guess my point is this:  How would Emily's game's score been affected if she'd have entered it under the pseudonym "dunric?"
[/quote] 

Probably sheer shock that Panks had finally seen sense and written a game with a proper system for a change instead of those horrible home-brewed messes he comes up with. Although once you'd played the game for more than a second or two, you'd quickly realise it wasn’t a Panks game.

[quote="Wanaselja"]
Yes, a rose by any other name smells just as sweet.  Emily's game could've and probably would've won anyway.  I'm just suggesting that the biases inherent in the small community of IF writers and players served to give her an unusual advantage in the voting simply due to the fact that her name appeared front and center on her work.
[/quote] 

Should Stephen King be forced to write horror novels under a pseudonym so as not to unduly put pressure on aspiring new writers?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=185&start=0#p1379
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Fallacy of Dawn
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-20 07:37:01

[quote="S_K"]
 Also is it just me or was Robb Sherwin's writing style based on that of George Alec Effinger? Maybe it's just the cyberpunk setting but at times the similarities are uncanny. Except I actually prefer Robb's writing.
[/quote] 

He's said as much somewhere, yeah.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=185&start=0#p1380
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Fallacy of Dawn
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-20 07:49:33

This is one of those games that I've been meaning to get around to playing for a while now, but never seem to actually get round to it. I think I downloaded it ages ago and it’s lurking on my hard drive somewhere. Probably never even opened.

How does it compare to Robb Sherwin’s other games? I liked [b]A Crimson Spring[/b] and sort of liked [b]Pantomime[/b], but I gave up with [b]Necrotic Drift[/b] soon after starting it and haven't tried any of his other games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=185&start=0#p1381
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Fallacy of Dawn
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-20 08:04:07

[quote="David Whyld"]
How does it compare to Robb Sherwin’s other games? I liked [b]A Crimson Spring[/b] and sort of liked [b]Pantomime[/b], but I gave up with [b]Necrotic Drift[/b] soon after starting it and haven't tried any of his other games.
[/quote] 

I guess it depends on why you quit Necrotic Drift. Fallacy is sort of a prequel to it (or rather, Necrotic Drift is sort of a sequel to Fallacy). They both have a sort of RPGish feel, with missions and health and so on; on the other hand, Fallacy is cheerier than Necrotic Drift and a lot of people like it better. (Personally, I think Drift is the more mature work, with some neat character development in the later parts of the game, but that may be an idiosyncratic reaction.)

I also would consider both Fallacy and Drift to be better (more focused, better characters, etc) than either Crimson Spring or Pantomime.

But play with a walkthrough handy, if you can get one -- there are a few weird/annoying puzzles in Fallacy, and one of them is right near the beginning. It's worth getting past that, though, in my opinion.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=185&start=0#p1382
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Fallacy of Dawn
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-20 08:25:45

[quote="David Whyld"]
This is one of those games that I've been meaning to get around to playing for a while now, but never seem to actually get round to it. I think I downloaded it ages ago and it’s lurking on my hard drive somewhere. Probably never even opened.

How does it compare to Robb Sherwin’s other games? I liked [b]A Crimson Spring[/b] and sort of liked [b]Pantomime[/b], but I gave up with [b]Necrotic Drift[/b] soon after starting it and haven't tried any of his other games.
[/quote]  

I can't fairly compare since I didn't get very far in [b]Necrotic Drift[/b], but of what I did play I preferred [b]Fallacy of Dawn[/b]. The major reason being that Fallacy is generally upbeat and Drift is generally downbeat (or was when I stopped playing, which in all honesty wasn't very far in).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=186&start=0#p1383
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Comp Results
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-20 08:37:56

I've read enough posts on the ADRIFT forums and elsewhere to know that arguing with Mr. Whyld is an exercise in futility, so although I could go all day, I will just put it to rest.  I've laid out my arguments, Emily has responded (thank you for that) and I understand now her reasons.

Again, I didn't want this to turn into a bash of Emily.  I appreciate all the work she has done, and the way she has treated me personally on the IFMud a few months ago, as well as her work on Inform 7 and everything else.  I apologize to Emily if she takes my comments as a personal attack; they were not meant to be so (although reading my initial posting again, it comes off as a bit harsh.  I am sorry for that.)

Honestly, I feel that the competition would be well served in the future to have all games be submitted anonymously.  In such a small community as this, it is inevitable that bias will enter into the equation, whether good, bad, indifferent.  Based on name, programming language, title, etc.  I just feel that the spirit of competition would be better served by an anonymous entry system.  But that's just me, and I'm sure that there are others out there who can give better arguments AGAINST it than I can give FOR it.

Again, I hope I haven't alienated myself or caused you to think of me as a "Pudlo," so to speak.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=186&start=0#p1384
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Comp Results
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-20 08:47:16

You certainly seem to be in the habit of turning people against you all of a sudden. Do you want me to pin up a photo of Zarf for you to throw darts at?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=186&start=0#p1385
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Comp Results
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-20 08:54:48

I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=186&start=10#p1386
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Comp Results
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-20 08:58:41

It was meant as a comment on the fact that you seem to be going out of your way to turn people against you. So I thought I'd offer you the name of someone to pick on who has never been here so they wouldn't be aware of it and you can stop annoying the people here.

You having a bad day? I seem to remember the old you was quite a likeable fellow.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=186&start=10#p1387
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Comp Results
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-20 09:08:55

I just attempted to put the argument to rest, and you are attempting to inflame me again.  This goes along with my comment that arguing with you is futile; that wasn't meant as a dig at you, just as a comment that you are a competent debater who can carry an argument on for quite a while.

I already said I wasn't trying to turn anyone against me.  I already apologized.  What more do you want from me?  I respect you and am not trying to give you any further negative impressions of me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=186&start=10#p1388
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Comp Results
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-20 10:45:12

[quote="Wanaselja"]
Again, I hope I haven't alienated myself or caused you to think of me as a "Pudlo," so to speak.
[/quote] 

No hard feelings on my part, anyway.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=187&start=0#p1389
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Making a scene last for a certain number of turns.
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-20 15:35:17

How is this possible? The scenes section of the I7 documentation isn't helping. [emote]Neutral[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=90#p1390
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-20 15:51:38

eBay would definately be an interesting market should commercial IF spark up and not fail.

Personally, I'm content to sit back and watch WCP. If it succeeds, then the obvious implications are there: IF is not a dying medium. If it fails, then you know that the age of Infocom was the last bastion of commercial Interactive Fiction.

There are a lot of good free games, and most of the community has a hobbyist mentality. We're more than happy to shell out a good game or two every year for free. It's just something we like doing.

A lot of the question is if people will take the extra step from being a hobbyist to actually paying for something. At what point does a fan of a free medium put himself up to a commercial medium?

That brings into question the point of equillibrium in between sales agendas. How much should one push outside the community and try and market IF to others? How much should one markey to the community?

There's a lot of things to worry about. It costs money to do these things. Whether that will be a good idea depends on the failure/success of WCP.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=188&start=0#p1391
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: CYOA style games
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-20 16:12:13

Is anyone aware of any IF games that give the player the option of switching between the normal command interface and a CYOA style interface, or alternatively with a menu in which the options map to normal IF commands?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=188&start=0#p1392
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA style games
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-12-20 19:03:18

Not sure about the others here, but I myself haven't seen any game that had those features that you mentioned. It's usually either a normal command interface *or* a CYOA style game.

The [url=http://www.ingold.fsnet.co.uk/adbook.htm]Adventure Book[/url] system (by Jon Ingold), and the CYOA-system for TADS 2 (by Mark Musante, IIRC) allows a combination of CYOA options and a few commands with the "verb-object" syntax, I think.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=90#p1393
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2006-12-21 02:15:50

[quote="topgun227"]
Personally, I'm content to sit back and watch WCP. If it succeeds, then the obvious implications are there: IF is not a dying medium. If it fails, then you know that the age of Infocom was the last bastion of commercial Interactive Fiction.
[/quote] 
I'm not sure about that, to be honest. It sounds like the kind of games David C. plans to market won't be much like the games most of us would be marketing if we were marketing IF. (Does that make sense to you?)

Personally, I think that if commercial IF is really going to take off, it will more likely be non-linear IF, possibly less puzzly than the norm. I can see that appealing to readers of static fiction more than text games. I showed Galatea to a friend of mine - she was initially intimidated by the prompt, but quickly got the hang of it and found it fascinating. (I haven't converted her to IF yet, though.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=189&start=0#p1394
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Punctuation Removal - Beginner Qsn
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-21 02:22:35

I have managed yet again to confoose myself.

I wanted to include WhoWhat by David Cornelson. This Extension calls on Punctuation Removal by Emily Short. Because I had not included that Extension the WhoWhat choked.

So I Include Punctuation Removal by Emily Short and then I am told that it is z-machine only, which is not what I am using. The manual says that Punc Removal is built into I7 anyway so I tried using an After reading a command: remove stray punctuation (to see if Punc Removal was indeed already operating) but it claimed not to understand that.

What am I missing? I'm presuming there is something simple I have overlooked but no clue as to what.

(Just in case that wasn't terribly clear - by removing the Include Punc Removal line from WhoWhat i can get WhoWhat to work and my game to compile, BUT without any functioning Punc Removal "Who is Sue" works but "Who is Sue?" doesn't. Which is er no good.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=187&start=0#p1395
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Making a scene last for a certain number of turns.
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2006-12-21 02:34:17

[code]Train Stop ends when the time since Train Stop began is 3 minutes.[/code]
A minute is - by default - equal to 1 turn.

This is covered (unsystematically) in chapter 10.3 of the I7 documentation: Using the Scenes Index.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=189&start=0#p1396
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Punctuation Removal - Beginner Qsn
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2006-12-21 06:30:11

[quote="sparkler"]
I wanted to include WhoWhat by David Cornelson. This Extension calls on Punctuation Removal by Emily Short. Because I had not included that Extension the WhoWhat choked.

So I Include Punctuation Removal by Emily Short and then I am told that it is z-machine only, which is not what I am using. The manual says that Punc Removal is built into I7 anyway so I tried using an After reading a command: remove stray punctuation (to see if Punc Removal was indeed already operating) but it claimed not to understand that.
[/quote] 

Well, it seems you're using Glulx... Unfortunately, that means Punctuation Removal won't work (at least yet - hopefully someone (Emily?) will be able to create a Glulx version of it, as well).

The fact that the manual mentions Punctuation Removal to be built into I7 means that it is automatically usable without having to download it from somewhere - it is shipped with I7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=189&start=0#p1397
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Punctuation Removal - Beginner Qsn
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-21 06:32:06

I have in fact just uploaded a biplatform version of Punctuation Removal to the extensions website, here:

<a href="http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7/Download%20-%20Extensions.html">http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7/Downlo ... sions.html</a>

(See "Biplatform Punctuation Removal" under "Understanding".) Eventually this will become the standard form in the regular distribution.

To use it, download and install the extension, then remove the line that says

Include Punctuation Removal by Emily Short.

and replace it with

Include Biplatform Punctuation Removal by Emily Short.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=189&start=0#p1398
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Punctuation Removal - Beginner Qsn
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-21 20:09:46

Yay yay totally yay... thank you very much for both explanation and new extn respectively! -clickclick-

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=187&start=0#p1399
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Making a scene last for a certain number of turns.
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-22 15:43:00

I tried this but it gave me an error message.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=190&start=0#p1400
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: The I7 Scene Feature Sucks
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-22 22:44:45

[code]Inside of Outside Gantry Entrance is Gantry Elevator. The description of Gantry Elevator is "You're stand on the elevator at the bottom of the gantry. All around you the orange metal of the structure heads further up into the sky. The glory of the Cyclone VII is visible through the gaps in between the gantry beams. You can head up in the elevator or head outside." Pre-Liftoff is a scene. Pre-Liftoff begins when the player is in Gantry Elevator for the first time. When Pre-Liftoff begins: say "A voice echoes out saying that all astronauts should be in the superrocket in fifteen minutes.". Pre-Liftoff ends tragically when the scene ends and Loading Booth is unvisited. When Pre-Liftoff ends tragically: say "The superrocket, much to your dismay, takes off without you. Since you're pretty much pivotal to the entire mission, billions of dollars are wasted and your fired and sued. You end up living in jail with your entire family stuck in eternal debt. Good job."; end the game saying, "You have been sued like crazy."[/code]

[quote]
Problem. In the sentence 'end the game saying, "You have been sued like crazy."'  , I was expecting that ', "You have been sued like crazy."' would be some text, but I couldn't make sense of it in any context.


Problem. You wrote 'Pre-Liftoff ends tragically when the scene ends and Loading Booth is unvisited'  : but 'starts when' and 'ends when' must be followed by a condition, which this does not seem to be.
[/quote] 

I7 is a great coding system, but the scenes feature has been a nightmare so far to implement.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=190&start=0#p1401
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The I7 Scene Feature Sucks
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-25 20:08:27

I've posted a functional version of this code on raif, but to address the particular problems here:

1) the "saying..." syntax is not supposed to be followed by a comma; remove it, and you should get rid of that difficulty. 

2) your Loading Booth bit is not recognized as part of a condition is that you haven't implemented a Loading Booth yet. Inform cannot translate "if the Loading Booth is visited" into a valid condition because it has no idea (yet) what the Loading Booth might be.

3) "when the scene ends" is not meaningful to Inform as part of the condition either. In order to use types of ending, you need to specify the full condition for each individual ending; more-specific endings cannot be defined in terms of less-specific endings. So for instance

Pre-Liftoff ends tragically when the time since Pre-Liftoff began is 15 minutes and Loading Booth is unvisited.

(where Loading Booth *is* defined in the source).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=191&start=0#p1402
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Text in boxed quotations
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-12-26 18:51:27

I'm using the latest build of I7 (4F59) and version 3 of Basic Screen Effects. I can't seem to get the text in boxed quotations to display as I intend them to do.

Here's my code:
[code]When play begins:
   display the boxed quotation
      "If an injury has to be done to a man
       it should be so severe
      that his vengeance need not be feared.
      -- Niccolo Machiavelli";
   show the current quotation;
   wait for any key;
   clear the screen.
[/code]
Even in Windows Frotz it shows up as one whole sentence, which is weird considering that I've used the "box" feature before in Inform 6. Any suggestions? Should I try using an older version of I7 for this?

Thanks in advance!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=191&start=0#p1403
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Text in boxed quotations
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-27 12:14:12

When I copied and pasted your quotation, it didn't work; however, if I re-spaced it myself, it was fine. So my best guess is that you're running into trouble because it doesn't count spaces as the correct kind of white space, or something like that.

I pressed carriage return and tab before the first line of the quotation, then carriage return before each of the next lines.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=191&start=0#p1404
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Text in boxed quotations
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2006-12-27 13:32:28

I did what you tried and it worked. Weird... [emote]Very Happy[/emote] 

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=175&start=0#p1405
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Syberia on XBox - First Impressions
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-12-29 15:51:59

We got around to playing an hour or two more last night, and the experience was better. I didn't find the voice acting so lame, and I found that the left and right triggers will zoom in and out of viewing documents and letters, which makes it far easier to read. Some new locations we found were really pretty, making me appreciate the graphics more then before. It looks like it'll be a worthwhile game after all.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=192&start=0#p1406
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: TALE (Text Adventure Language Environment)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2006-12-30 18:56:52

To prospective IF authors:

I have made an initial release of a new IF authoring system called TALE (Text Adventure Language Environment).  It features a GUI, a custom IF language (in which you program your game), and a source-level debugger (in which you debug your game step by step). With the package you get a comprehensive manual (in PDF format), and also a port of Colossal Cave, written in my custom IF language.  The system is not as powerful as Inform, TADS, or Hugo, but should be much easier to learn, and, as demonstrated by the Colossal Cave implementation, the system is still powerful.  Although TALE is not meant to compete with the three complex packages mentioned above, it is an alternative to the older, primitive systems around, and should be ideal for the new IF writer who is not an expert at computer programming.

TALE is Freeware, so you can write games with it and sell them without having to pay me any fees or royalties. Free support will be provided for game developers.

Please check out my website, below, for more details.

<a href="http://home.iprimus.com.au/andrewpape/">http://home.iprimus.com.au/andrewpape/</a>

Cheers,

Andrew.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=192&start=0#p1407
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: TALE (Text Adventure Language Environment)
User: Merk / DateTime: 2006-12-31 11:48:17

Thanks for the announcement!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=193&start=0#p1408
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: NPC help
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-01-01 13:42:38

hello to all board members, new guy here with a question [emote]Very Happy[/emote] ...

I'm trying to learn I7 and having a horrible time creating some NPC's the player can talk to.  I've tried creating a new action called talking, but i was only able to get it to work with a single response for all npc's (which is obviously no good).  The "reading and talking" section of the I7 documentation is disappointingly brief.    I have tried searching rec.arts.int-fiction for info on NPC's but did not find anything useful.  Maybe everything I need to know is there, and I just need some help with search keywords?  I don't think so though.  Can anyone help?  Where can I find useful information for help like this?  The documentation included with I7 is not helpful enough I'm afraid.  Also I wanted to change the default "there is no reply" to something unique but could not find out how...

any help would be appreciated!

PS: the design manual and beginners manual for I6 look like they are very informative and well done, is there anything like it for I7? I feel like I will have to switch to I6 if i am to get anywhere!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=193&start=0#p1409
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: NPC help
User: George / DateTime: 2007-01-02 09:32:53

hello and welcome. There isn't an I7 equivalent to the DM4 so far. Your best bet is the documentation, RAIF, and this forum. 

I'm not sure exactly how you want to implement conversation in your game but here's something basic:



"Talking" by "G. Oliver"

Report asking a person about:
 say "Are you kidding?"
instead.

Report telling a person about:
 say "You -really- must be kidding this time."
instead.

A person called Rodia is in a room called the apartment. A person called Fyodor is here.

Instead of asking Fyodor about "brevity", say "He smiles wanly. 'You must be joking.'"

Instead of asking Rodia about "whining", say "Rodia looks at you coldly."

test me with "ask fyodor about life / ask him about brevity / ask rodia about axes / ask him about whining"



You'll notice that's a rehash of section 7.6, reading and talking. You'll probably want to go further. There's a pretty good article about conversation models by Emily Short at:

<a href="http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/Site/Conversation.html">http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/Site ... ation.html</a>

best of luck, George

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=193&start=0#p1410
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: NPC help
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-01-02 10:02:56

thank you for the reply george, happy new year...

i actually got something together but have stumbled upon a curious "programming error" maybe you can help? here is the code: 

[npc stuff]

Mood is a kind of value.  The moods are happy, sad and angry.

Report asking about:
	 say " [the noun] doesn't appear to know." instead.

Talking is an action applying to one visible thing.  Understand "talk to [something]" as talking.

Check talking:
	if the noun is not a person, say "You cannot talk to that."
	
Carry out talking:
	if a person is happy, say Reply in row 1 of the Table of Talking to Joe;
	if a person is sad, say Reply in row 2 of the Table of Talking to Joe;	
		
the study is a room. "this is the study." 

joe is a person in the study. joe has a mood. joe  is sad. "[if joe is sad] You see joe here, he seems a bit down. [end if] [if joe is happy] joe looks like he is in good spirits [end if] [if joe is angry] you better stay away from joe he looks angry. [end if]" 

claire is a person in the study.

the player carries a lollipop.  the lollipop is edible.

Table 1.1 - Talking to Joe
Reply
" 'I[apostrophe]m good- never felt better!' "
" 'I feel horrible' "


and here is the output

study
this is the study.

 You see joe here, he seems a bit down.   
You can also see claire here.

>talk to joe

[** Programming error:  (object number 42)  has no property p55_mood to read **]
 "I'm good- never felt better!" 
[** Programming error:  (object number 42)  has no property p55_mood to read **]
 "I feel horrible" 
>


any ideas? 


even if i can't figure this out i'm pretty happy with myself, at least i got somehwere.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=10#p1411
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-01-02 10:17:02

Hi! I'm Alex W, 21 years old. I live in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

The first interactive fiction game i ever played was Dunnet which comes with emacs.  Dunnet introduced me to the whole genre, and after googling around I found out about the IF community and started playing more games.  Vespers was the next game I played and really enjoyed.  

I've written one text-adventure for my gf to play using inform 6, and now i'm learning inform 7 to make a much more expansive game for all to play [emote]Smile[/emote]

Not sure what else to say, but feel free to ask!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=193&start=0#p1412
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: NPC help
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2007-01-02 10:56:04

What's happening is that "if a person" is happy will check whether or not any person is happy.  In particular, it will check whether Claire is happy, but she doesn't have a mood defined.  

Instead, try something like "Carry out talking to target (a person):", and "if target is happy" (for general code) or "Instead of talking to joe: ...", "Instead of talking to claire:".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=180&start=0#p1413
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Chat
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-01-02 12:00:57

edit: deleted

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=193&start=0#p1414
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: NPC help
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-01-02 12:11:45

thanks for the tips but it didn't work, here's the error message:

Translating the Source
This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 4B91) on its most recent run through:

Problem. You wrote 'Carry out talking to target ( a person )'  , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is 'talking to target ( a person )'. But that did not make sense as a description of an action, so I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook.
Because of this problem, the source could not be translated into a working game. (Correct the source text to remove the difficulty and click on Go once again.)

i also just tried giving claire a mood, but that didn't work either... i guess i'm just going about this the wrong way?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=193&start=0#p1415
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: NPC help
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-01-02 12:19:21

solved it (change is in bold):

Talking is an action applying to one visible thing.  Understand "talk to [something]" as talking.

Check talking:
	if the noun is not a person, say "You cannot talk to that."
	
Carry out talking:
	if [b]the noun[/b] is happy, say Reply in row 1 of the Table of Talking to Joe;
	if [b]the noun[/b] is sad, say Reply in row 2 of the Table of Talking to Joe;	

joe is a person in the study. joe has a mood. joe is sad.

claire is a person in the study. claire has a mood.  claire is happy.

Table 1.1 - Talking to Joe
Reply
" 'I[apostrophe]m good- never felt better!' "
" 'I feel horrible' "



output from game:

study
this is the study.

 You see joe here, he seems a bit down.   
You can also see claire here.

>talk to joe
 "I feel horrible" 
>talk to cliare
You can't see any such thing.

>talk to claire
 "I'm good- never felt better!" 
>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=194&start=0#p1416
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Change "view active topics"?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-01-06 18:10:30

When I come to this group, the first thing I almost always do is click on the "View active topics" link. The link is, I'm pretty sure, set up to only show posts from the past 24 hours. This means that no topics will be listed if none have been active in the last 24 hours, and that is unfortunate for me if I haven't visited the group in a week or so. And it's all the more unfortunate because in that case the page lacks the option to view all the topics that have been active during the last week, etc.

The solution: set the "view active topics" page to show the ten or fifteen most recently updated topics, sorted in order from most recent to least recent.

Anyway, that's my suggestion.

Greg

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=195&start=0#p1417
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Is this puzzle unfair?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-01-07 19:22:35

Okay, I'm programming a science fiction game right now, and I have a question about if a puzzle is unfair or not.

During the game, the player gets in a gantry to get in the superrocket which leads into space. In this process, he gets a gantry keycard, but a small earthquake occurs and knocks him over and he drops the keycard through the hole of the gantry. The elevator stops working as well. The only way down it to examine the gantry itself and then enter "climb out gantry", which will cause the player to get to the ground and be able to pick up the keycard, then requiring them to enter "climb up gantry" to get back in, successfully solving a puzzle. They have about 10 turns to figure this out before the timer runs out and the superrocket takes off. Does this seem like a common sense puzzle? It's bothering me and I want to make sure people will guess it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=195&start=0#p1418
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Is this puzzle unfair?
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2007-01-08 04:36:19

Leave out the timer and it should be okay [emote]Wink[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=194&start=0#p1419
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Change "view active topics"?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-01-08 06:28:10

Thanks. I'll look at the setting.

(edit)

There doesn't appear to be a system-wide preference for this. You just have to change the dropdown at the bottom of that page to include a longer range, I guess.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=195&start=0#p1420
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Is this puzzle unfair?
User: George / DateTime: 2007-01-08 09:26:33

Though I'm personally fond of timers, I agree they're not the best idea in IF.

Alternatively you could set up the idea of timed bonuses, such that you get bonus points for completing the action within ten turns, but there's no actual game-over timer per se. 

On second thought the bonus doesn't have to be just points, maybe you could put some kind of easter egg in for players that finish the action within the time limit. 

And to answer your question, I think the puzzle is fair, but ten turns might be tight if look and examine take up turns.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=195&start=0#p1421
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Is this puzzle unfair?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-01-08 23:05:36

Alright, I'll kick back the time limit. Thanks for your input!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=180&start=0#p1422
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Chat
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-01-10 13:01:25

[quote="Sargent"]
I have to say, I'm enjoying you talking about modern conveniences and setting strawmen alight while trumpeting IRC.
[/quote] Yeah, there I am crying hypocrite and then I bring up IRC. [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

Actually it was the other way around. [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=180&start=0#p1423
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Chat
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-01-10 13:25:01

The board has some kind of option to use "Jabber" -- which is a chat program, I think. I'm not sure how it works, or what has to be installed. It might be worth looking into if enough people are interested. I personally prefer posting messages instead of chatting live. But that's just me. [emote]Smile[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=180&start=10#p1424
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Chat
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-01-10 22:11:30

chating life tendz 2 l0w3r teh p0zt qualite lol if roxorz

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=196&start=0#p1425
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Debugging..
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-01-17 19:01:04

Hi all...

Is there any way to give a game I'm making, to someone and be able to see all the commands he typed through the game?

Thanx!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=196&start=0#p1426
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Debugging..
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2007-01-17 20:01:23

If you need to see all the things he tried during the game, you could have that someone type the command SCRIPT when playing the game. This would cause the interpreter to save all the commands (and the game's responses) to a text file, viewable through Notepad.  [emote]Cool[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=196&start=0#p1427
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Debugging..
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-01-18 02:42:38

[emote]Smile[/emote] Thanx!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=197&start=0#p1428
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: The Off Season
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-01-18 07:04:32

Things are slowing down, I see.

Me, I haven't felt like chatting about IF -- nor playing it, writing it, or really even thinking about it lately. I got my issue of SPAG yesterday, and that's been about it. Oh, and I answered a Hugo authoring question in the newsgroup, and mailed out the IFComp T-Shirts last week. Mainly I've just been playing a lot of video games, and working.

Must be the IF off-season.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=198&start=0#p1429
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Beta testers ...
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-01-18 17:20:13

Hi all, 

How can a person find people to beta test his game?

Thanx!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=199&start=0#p1430
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Grouping actions...
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-01-18 17:22:46

Is there a way to group actions in some rules?

I want to make an electrified cable which electrocutes anyone who 
touches, pushes, pulls, takes, hits, eats it... 

Thank you.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=198&start=0#p1431
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beta testers ...
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-01-18 19:21:47

Mainly you just post a message and ask. [emote]Smile[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=200&start=0#p1432
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Multimedia if.
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-01-19 04:07:06

Hi all, 

How can I have sound and graphics to my inform 7 game?

I read somewhere that I have to use glulx in order to do something like that, but in 

[url]http://www.inform-fiction.org/zmachine/glulx.html[/url]

the things I read makes me assume that I need inform 6 in order to implement glulx code.

Is it possible to do that with inform7?
If, yes, can you tell me how, or give me a url?

Thank you!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=199&start=0#p1433
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Grouping actions...
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2007-01-19 05:03:20

[code]Instead of pushing or pulling or taking or touching or attacking or eating the power cord:[/code]

Or, if you want something more complicated:

[code]Pushing the power cord is dangerous action.
Pulling the power cord is dangerous action.
Touching the power cord is dangerous action.
Eating the power cord is dangerous action.
Taking the power cord is dangerous action.
Attacking the power cord is dangerous action.

Instead of dangerous action:[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=199&start=0#p1434
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Grouping actions...
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-01-19 05:17:23

Thank you!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=198&start=0#p1435
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beta testers ...
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2007-01-19 07:33:53

Or you can try the IF Beta Site, but I'm not sure if it's still alive:

<a href="http://plover.net/~textfire/beta.html">http://plover.net/~textfire/beta.html</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=200&start=0#p1436
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Multimedia if.
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2007-01-19 07:47:31

You'll need to compile your game to Glulx format, simply because of better support for graphics and sound. Chapter 19 in the I7 manual shows you how to display images.

Inform 7 users may need to wait more for Glulx sound support to be included. In the meantime, I'd probably suggest dropping by the newsgroups and asking for Glulx help there. (Emily might comment on this anytime soon, too.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=200&start=0#p1437
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Multimedia if.
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-01-19 12:35:00

Yeah, displaying images is a piece of cake in inform7.

Can Inform7 produce Inform6 code, so as it is possible to implement sound to your games?

thanx!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=201&start=0#p1438
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Anybody Here Got a Wii?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-01-19 14:10:51

Anybody here have Nintendo's new console, the Wii? For the first week, I kept waiting for Mii's to show up in my Mii parade (all my travel options are enabled correctly, I'm pretty sure). I don't remember it saying that Mii's would only travel within a pre-set list of "friend" IDs. Anyway, that appears to be the case. So, I'm looking to get a Mii parade going, if only to see what happens. [emote]Smile[/emote]

I'll have to figure out my own Wii ID, but I can give it out too. Might be best in private messages, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=200&start=0#p1439
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Multimedia if.
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2007-01-19 15:59:29

I7 can't "produce" I6 code to implement sound support for your game - you'll need to drop in I6 code that contains Glulx commands that will let you play sound. However, that's no easy task - Emily and the others might be able to give better advice on Glulx code and how to enter it in I7 source, since I've never really touched it. [emote]Wink[/emote]

I doubt you can play it on the Glulx 'terp that comes with I7 but it should play OK on Windows Glulxe or Git.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=201&start=0#p1440
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anybody Here Got a Wii?
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2007-01-20 03:55:20

Well, if I had the money I'd likely buy a Wii... but I don't - ordered a new computer, since my current P4 is getting a little bit old by now.

New computer setup:

[b]Case[/b]: [i]Nexus Breeze 500W[/i]
Well, I would've gotten an Antec P180 with a 550W power supply unit, but my local computer store doesn't sell Antec's products. So I had to take this instead, even though the air circulation inside this - however patented - is poor at best.

[b]Motherboard[/b]: [i]Abit AW9D-Max[/i]
A good motherboard, with the option to set up three different RAID configurations. Although I won't be using RAID to begin with, I'm more than likely to set up at least two RAID's later: level 1 for the operating system partitions and level 0 for the rest of the data.

[b]Processor[/b]: [i]Intel Core 2 Duo E6400[/i]
Simply the best value for money atm.

[b]Memory[/b]: [i]Kingston 2 GB DDR-2 800 MHz (kit of 2)[/i]
Well, 800 MHz may be a bit fast for the Core 2 Duo's, but since I intend to overclock my computer at some point, it's the best choice. I'll add another kit of 2 later and have a total of 4 GB memory.

[b]Graphics Card[/b]: [i]MSI GF 8800 GTS 640 MB 320-bit HD[/i]
I was considering spending an extra 200 euros on the GTX, but finally settled on this. I wanted a graphics card with DX10 support...

[b]Hard drives[/b]: 2 * [i]Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320 GB SATA-II[/i]
Currently one for the OS and one for other data. Later on I'll add at least two more and set up the RAIDs.

[b]DVD-ROM[/b]: [i]LG DVD-ROM 52x / 16x[/i]
[b]DVD-RW[/b]: [i]LG DVD+-RW DL 18x Lightscribe[/i]
What to say? I like having two DVD-drives in my computer, one a reading one, the other a writing one.

[b]Keyboard[/b]: [i]Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000[/i]
Ergonomic keyboards are simply the best. With any other keyboard type, my wrists start to hurt...

[b]Mouse[/b]: [i]Logitech G5 Laser Mouse[/i]
I just like this mouse. [emote]:)[/emote]

[b]Operating System[/b]: [i]Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit OEM[/i]
Time to move on to Vista. My current computer setup will stay in use, as well.

For the current computer, I had to buy a new monitor, since my old 19" CRT ([i]Philips Brilliance 109P4[/i]) is going to be used with the better computer. Settled on a cheap, 19" LCD-panel display, with not quite enough candelas or contrast ([i]Mirai DML-519N100[/i]), but will do it's job just fine for the purposes the old computer stays in use.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=193&start=0#p1441
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: NPC help
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-01-20 09:22:19

Well some time has passed and I realized my posts thus far on npc's were pretty useless and kind of...spammy almost.  Not really helpful to anyone nor really done properly.  But at least now I know.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=201&start=0#p1442
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anybody Here Got a Wii?
User: George / DateTime: 2007-01-20 11:13:55

I bet Anchorhead will run lightning fast on that setup... [emote]Smile[/emote] 

Seriously, that puts into perspective the 'new' Thinkpad T40 I just bought. Please tell me you use a computer for a living.   [emote]Smile[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=193&start=0#p1443
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: NPC help
User: George / DateTime: 2007-01-20 11:16:51

Don't worry about it. What's the point of an open forum if we always have to follow some arbitrary code of conduct? Your posts will help some beginner down the road.  [emote]Smile[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=201&start=0#p1444
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anybody Here Got a Wii?
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2007-01-20 12:31:08

[quote="George"]
Please tell me you use a computer for a living.   [emote]:)[/emote]
[/quote] 

Actually, I don't... 8O However, a pet hobby of mine is game programming, and this does require a bit of oomph from a computer - and I'm an avid gamer, as well. So, for me it's quite natural to want to spend a bit more on a computer than the average joe does. [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=202&start=0#p1445
Forum: Competitions / Subject: IF Art Show
User: George / DateTime: 2007-01-22 18:15:00

There's a pre-announcement announcement on raif, 

<a href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_frm/thread/61c00259b4caf7fc/98832bba7de385b7#98832bba7de385b7">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts ... ba7de385b7</a>

Sounds cool. 

I went through a process the last couple of months of sketching game ideas and shelving one after another for later because they all deserved a bigger treatment than I was willing to give them at the moment. Finally I have something that I think will work for a short game. I wanted to enter Spring Thing but it doesn't look too feasible at this point, maybe the Art Show is a good alternative (plus I think my game will fit the theme). 

Anyone else thinking about entering?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=203&start=0#p1446
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Conan Kill Absolutely Everything...
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-01-23 05:36:34

Hi there, 

After a week's hard work, I finished my first if game.
It is the sequel of a little silly game I really enjoyed.
I tried my game to be silly as well (or as fountain). 

ok... here is the original : 

[url]http://www.wurb.com/if/game/2754[/url]

and if you like to test mine, please send me a pm...

Cheers!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=202&start=0#p1447
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IF Art Show
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-01-23 22:43:01

I've never checked it out before. Did it happen last year?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=202&start=0#p1448
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IF Art Show
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2007-01-23 23:38:09

[quote="Merk"]
I've never checked it out before. Did it happen last year?
[/quote] Nope, nor did it happen for the last few years before that. Like what Doe had posted, she took care of her mom during those years, and now that she's available, she's running the show again.

FWIW, I think the IF Art Show had never really been something as grand as the annual IF comp has always been, even though a lot of good IF has come out of it (e.g., Galatea"). It's always been low-key, but I may be wrong, of course [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=50#p1449
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-01-24 12:41:39

Hello.

Has this kind of died? I loved the idea, so I'd love for it to continue...

Regards,
CP

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=202&start=0#p1450
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IF Art Show
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-01-24 13:09:57

[quote]
FWIW, I think the IF Art Show had never really been something as grand as the annual IF comp has always been, even though a lot of good IF has come out of it (e.g., Galatea"). It's always been low-key[...]
[/quote] 

Well, that's sort of like saying "Animal X isn't really as big as an elephant." The impact of anything is relative, and the IF Comp itself could be seen as low-key, depending on your point of view.

No offense, of course. What you're saying is true, but only from a certain point of view.

Greg

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=50#p1451
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-01-24 13:45:21

I still think it's a good idea. I just haven't had (or made) the time to work on it. I'd support anybody else in a similar effort, though. Maybe somebody out there has enough free time to get a community/news website working.

I actually got a decent amount done on the back-end scripts and table structure. One of these days I may get back to it. I just.... don't know. Just busy, not motivated... lazy... tired... burnt out. Something. [emote]Smile[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=202&start=0#p1452
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IF Art Show
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2007-01-24 22:19:23

[quote="GregB"]
No offense, of course. What you're saying is true, but only from a certain point of view.
[/quote] 
No offense taken. Of course, maybe I just haven't been following the newsgroups [i]that[/i] long... [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=60#p1453
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-01-26 04:30:13

[quote="Merk"]
I still think it's a good idea. I just haven't had (or made) the time to work on it. I'd support anybody else in a similar effort, though. Maybe somebody out there has enough free time to get a community/news website working.

I actually got a decent amount done on the back-end scripts and table structure. One of these days I may get back to it. I just.... don't know. Just busy, not motivated... lazy... tired... burnt out. Something. [emote]:)[/emote]
[/quote] 

Yeah, no problem; I just wondered.

By the way, just to let you know, we're getting on well with our game and are planning to release it to Spring Thing 2007 (it's too long for ifcomp). Are you still interested in beta-testing sometime?

CP

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=121&start=60#p1454
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: An IF Hype Website
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-01-26 07:15:05

Maybe. If it was this summer, I'd probably be able to say definitely. I can try.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=204&start=0#p1455
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Need to register
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-01-26 14:28:48

Hello,

I just joined the forum, but almost didn't because of the need to register. I don't know, but I guess there will be some people that are discouraged by the need to first give an e-mail adress than have to activate it then to login. Perhaps you should reconsider making the first steps easier.

BTW: nice forum!

Bob

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=204&start=0#p1456
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Need to register
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-01-26 16:41:56

Thanks -- and sorry for the added hassle.

I think there's a way to turn on anonymous posting -- or even sign-ups without validation -- but that's almost always a *huge* mistake for web-boards. It's too easy to get spammed. What I've found is that privately-hosted web boards pretty much have to require some kind of account sign-up process. It's not even just to help curb spam, but because you're running a server that's allowing visitors and it's nice to know at least a *little* about who's using your system. [emote]Smile[/emote]

Rioshin -- what has your experience been with easier sign-ups?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=204&start=0#p1457
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Need to register
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2007-01-27 02:31:44

[quote="Merk"]
Rioshin -- what has your experience been with easier sign-ups?
[/quote] 

Well, easier sign-ups definitely mean spam on the boards. I'm an administrator at another forum, as well, and during the time it ran with anonymous postings or easy registrations, the amount of XXX-links were huge - had to spend almost a full working day a week to remove all the spam postings. So we went with this kind of registration there, as well, and disallowed anonymous posts. No problems anymore. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=204&start=0#p1458
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Need to register
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-01-28 08:50:46

Thanks for the answers. I didn't know that spam was a problem on web boards.

Bob

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=139&start=0#p1459
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Polendina
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-01-28 10:08:43

I didn't think Polendina was that difficult. Since you can't get the id card out of the door (which definitly is a hint that something's wrong) you have to get it out of the house another way. If I remember correctly, you lose the ring in the toilet at the beginning. When I found it later in the sewer, it was clear where things from the toilet go. So it may be a bit illogical, but is hinted well enough, I think.

You are right that there is no clear goal in the beginning, but there are some hints (like the door) that gave me the feeling of a mystery I had to discover.

Overall, I really liked the game.

Bob

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=197&start=0#p1460
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The Off Season
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-01-29 00:20:35

Does this kind of thing usually happen after the IF comp?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=205&start=0#p1461
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: container (closed)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-01-29 17:28:41

I've worked with Inform 6 and I am now messing with inform 7. Can anyone tell me how to get rid of (closed) when I have a container? For example I have a fortune cookie and I have a piece of paper inside. How to I get it to say "there is a fortune cookie here" and not have (closed) in the sentence?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=197&start=0#p1462
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The Off Season
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2007-01-29 23:10:46

[quote="tjg92"]
Does this kind of thing usually happen after the IF comp?
[/quote]  I think Merk posted that because there wasn't a lot of activity happening here that time. People would usually drop by, check for new posts/threads - if they feel like not posting for one reason or another, they don't.

I don't think it [i]usually[/i] happens after the IF Comp, though. More like "every now and then" to me, not necessarily after any comp. [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=204&start=0#p1463
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Need to register
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-01-30 07:11:32

Yeah, it's bad enough at another forum I run that I've actually turned on admin validation. That means users can't even post until I verify and validate them. Even then, they spam. They sign up with crazy links in their profiles (which actually makes them easier to spot from the real users).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=197&start=0#p1464
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The Off Season
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-01-30 07:13:28

It's probably just normal. Everything ramps up during and following the IFComp. But mainly, it's a shame I'm not doing much to contribute. My free time's just spread too thinly lately. [emote]Smile[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=205&start=0#p1465
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: container (closed)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-01-30 20:50:13

This is something I found in google groups from Emily Short. It works but it does not change the text in inventory. If anyone has any suggestions please let know.

[code]Home is a room. A couch is in home.

Steve is a man on the couch.  A book is on the couch.  The book is
portable. A pencil is on
the book.
Rule for writing a paragraph about a supporter (called pedestal) which
supports something:
        say "You can see [a pedestal] here. ";
        repeat with item running through things enclosed by the
pedestal begin;
                say "[A item] is on [the holder of item]. ";
        end repeat;
        say paragraph break.
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=206&start=0#p1466
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Inside ADRIFT 33 is out...
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-01-31 07:38:05

...and available from [url=http://www.shadowvault.net/33.htm]here[/url].

In this issue:

Editorial
Hot Off The Press - the latest news from the world of Interactive Fiction
ADRIFT Forum Digest by Stefan Donati - the latest news from the ADRIFT forum
The Big ADRIFT Survey
In The Hot Seat [Interview with Sprite]
Hook, Line & Sinker (part 3) by C. Henshaw
My Very First ADRIFT Game by James Webb
Making ADRIFT Look Good by David Whyld
Critics' Corner [The Last Resort] - reviews galore
Latest ADRIFT Releases - what's new in the world of ADRIFT
Reference - links to the many ADRIFT fan sites
Contributions - everyone who contributed to this issue of the Newsletter

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this issue of the newsletter and please find time to fill in the survey. Let the rest of the Adrift world know what you think.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=207&start=0#p1467
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: The Last Resort
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-01-31 07:39:28

[b]The Last Resort[/b] by Jim Aikin

(Note: this review is based on the first version of The Last Resort. Two (I believe) subsequent versions have since been released so it’s likely that some of the bugs referred to herein have now been fixed.)

“The Last Resort” was one of several games recently announced on RGIF in the wake of the IFComp. It’s a fairly sizeable game, too, not in terms of locations (although there are quite a few of these) but in the amount of things to do and see. Add on the amount of times I restarted the game after realising I’d missed vital things and you have a good few hours of gameplay here.

The game begins with you – a teenage girl called Diane – being dragged to the town of Eternal Springs by your Aunt Caroline, a novelist, for reasons unknown. She's now locked herself in the bathroom and is refusing to come out, leaving you alone in the cabin and wondering what to do next. Needless to say, this being a text adventure, what you do next is head out of the cabin and explore.

It soon becomes apparent that there are sinister goings on afoot. Your aunt hasn’t bought you here for a simple holiday but for something rather more lethal. If you don’t get away, and quickly, you might well find you won’t be leaving at all.

 
Bugs/errors/problems
The only real bugs I discovered with the game seemed to be, ironically enough, right at the start which I would have expected to be the most thoroughly tested part of the game. One of the drawers in the first location contained Aunt Caroline’s clothes yet every attempt to take them met with the game thinking I was referring to Aunt Caroline herself and told me that it only understood me as far as wanting to take Aunt Caroline. Elsewhere, I filled a bucket with water and tried to throw it over an awkward dog, but attempts to throw the bucket just dropped it on the ground. Why was I trying to throw it? Well… it seemed like a good idea at the time. In a puzzle which involved me getting past a troublesome canine, throwing a bucket of water over it seemed like a viable solution. Unfortunately not. I also found the bucket quite frustrating in that I couldn’t fill it if there was something (like a pill) lying in the bottom. The game seemed to think the bucket couldn’t be filled if there were items inside it, although as the items only take up a small fraction of the bucket’s total mass I don’t see what the problem would be. Oh, and the pill cannot be eaten because, according to the game, it’s plainly inedible [emote]:)[/emote]

Other than that, there was a slight wording problem with the mask in Tyrone’s hut which, when I covered it with one item, I was informed was actually covered with some wax. (Apparently it’s possible to cover the mask with wax, but this is something I only discovered after first covering it with another item and seeing wax mentioned in the mask’s description.)

While not a bug as such, some of the default Inform responses to certain commands were a little unusual. Trying to take a drawer out the chest of drawers told me the drawer in question was too heavy which struck me as odd. Either the drawers here are unusually heavy or I'm playing someone who is remarkably weak, but who, at other times, can happily carry around a burlap sack full of items, a suitcase full of items and half a dozen other items in her arms. Not to mention being able to climb through a window while loaded with all this assembled baggage.

Gargoyle, in which I started playing the game, also ran into a problem with one of the suitcases in the closet, crashing on me with an error message when I tried to pick it up. A quick switch to the standard Glulx interpreter fixed this and the game ran smoothly afterwards.


Annoyances
A further annoyance, though not a bug in the strict sense, is the game’s use of an inventory carrying limit. Never a favourite of mine as it always strikes me as an attempt to introduce a realism aspect into a game but never quite manages to succeed. Here it’s as flawed as ever. My character seems perfectly capable of carrying X amount of items (including a burlap sack (itself filled with a dozen items), a suitcase (which likewise can be filled with many items) and several other items [quite how she's capable of carrying so many items, unless she has more than the usual number of arms, is in itself baffling]), yet attempts to pick up anything else, even something remarkably small and light, is considered too much for her to handle. Surely small items could be secreted away in a pocket or just popped inside another item to allow me to carry them? There's the added problem that it’s possible to carry items on top of other items (the shovel, in particular, can be used to carry items) at the same time as carrying a dozen other items. Hardly does wonders for the realism factor.

Fortunately there's a burlap sack lying conveniently around in which items can be carried, thus removing the item restriction after a while. On the down side, the sack (and several other items) only show up after a certain point in the game so I spent a while backtracking and retracing my steps before finding them. A slight problem with the sack is that it’s perfectly possible to fill the kettle with water, put it in the sack, carry it around like that for a while, and then retrieve it from the sack… all without any of the water spilling out! Damn clever kettle. 

After all that, trying to impose something like an item carrying limit is just never going to work out very well.

At times the games is a pain for making you specify exactly what you need to do; even though it understands you perfectly, it will frequently make you jump through hoops just to achieve something relatively simple. There was a bucket I decided to stand on but the game wouldn’t let me at first because it was the wrong way up, thus requiring me to turn the bucket over first. Why? It understood what I was trying to do, the item in question was there – was it really necessary to make me turn the bucket over before I could stand on it?

Items mentioned in room descriptions are covered pretty well as far as examining them is concerned, although quite a few slipped through the net, and several commands which I really thought would be covered – climbing the trees being one of them – didn’t work. In fact, the game is often quite particular about what it will and won’t accept. Sometimes, the DIG command suffices for digging, whereas at other times you need to specify where you want to dig. It’s also possible to DIG in certain items (a suitcase and a figurine being two I tried), yet the response given is the same as if you had dug in the ground.


Inconvenient and odd restrictions
A good deal of “The Last Resort” would be easier – probably *too* easy – if the player wasn’t held back by any number of strange restrictions that seem to be in place not to make the game more realistic or to add depth but to force the player into playing the game the way the author intended. Aside from the previously mentioned item carrying restriction, there are a good number that prevent the player carrying out perfectly logical actions and the reasons given for preventing you doing this are weak to say the least.

There's a white dress in your and your aunt’s cabin that you're prevented from taking out of the cabin because it might get muddy and your aunt will be cross. Strangely enough, even after you’ve discovered the truth of the situation and your aunt’s involvement in it – namely, that she's planning to have you killed – the game still refuses to let you take the dress out of the cabin due to the possibility of it getting muddy and your aunt becoming cross over it. In light of what had happened, I would have thought you'd have other concerns than the possible muddying of a dress. I’d also question the common sense of anyone who hangs around like the player in this game does when she knows there are people planning to kill her. Wouldn’t she have simply ran at the first opportunity and not looked back?

I was also surprised, and a little frustrated, by the squeamishness of the player who, despite witnessing a murder, seeing a ghost, being attacked by a magical floating dagger and believing her own life is in danger, is too timid to pick up a dead animal or kill a spider. She's also stopped from taking action against one of the people planning to kill her because “he’s a man of God”. Violence against other obstacles is prevented as well, generally with a comment that there's probably a better way to do such and such without resorting to violence. I'm guessing the reason for this non-violence stance is to force the player to solve certain puzzles the way the author intended them to be solved, but it’s kind of annoying when you're facing death if you don’t take some kind of action and get told that you can’t physically attack someone or break something open because the game would prefer you handled it another way. Elsewhere, the game won’t let me search someone’s cabin while he’s present because it would not be polite… even though he’s just confessed to being part of a conspiracy to murder me. Please, if you're going to stop the player taking action, at least come up with a better reason for it than this.


Getting stuck
There are no hints available immediately, only via a password which can be obtained upon request from the author as an attempt to discourage people from seeking help the first time they get stuck. I can’t say I'm altogether fond of such an idea; given the choice between e-mailing the author (who might not be at the same e-mail address whenever it is you get around to playing the game, which could well be years after it was first released) and posting a request for help on RGIF or hunting around the internet for a walkthrough, I suspect most people would do one of the latter two options first. Still, on the positive side of things it did make me try harder to solve some puzzles that I would otherwise have resorted to the hints to get past if they had been available at the time.

A good deal of the puzzles seem to fall into the “solving them because they're there, not because it makes any sense to solve them” category. (If that *is* a category. If not, I've just made it up.) Take, for instance, the spider in the closet. Now in normal circumstances, if I found a spider in a closet I’d either a) kill it or b) ignore it. Here I need to deal with it for no other reason than it’s in the game and dealing with it is crucial in order to make progress – dealing with the spider allows another puzzle elsewhere to be solved, this one in turn leading to the solving of another puzzle. The thing is that one of those puzzles – getting the stove to work – struck me as odd because in real life surely there'd be other means to heat things in the cabins. If this was a game set in the Dark Ages and the only source of heat for miles around was in a specific location, I could understand it. But here, in a modern setting, it just seems a little hard to believe that the only way of heating something is with the stove. Another unnecessary restriction imposed on the game to force people into solving the puzzle in a certain way?

The same applies for similar puzzles with a dead animal, a dog and countless items that seem to be lying around for no real reason other than they're required to finish the game. There's no real reason why the main character would give these things a second glance, particularly as she's in very real danger of getting killed at any moment, yet figuring out what to do with them is essential to completing the game. Then again, maybe I should feel grateful for all these items lying conveniently around just waiting for me to come along and find a use for them. Without them, the game would be impossible to finish.

Other puzzles might seem to have a fairly straightforward solution, but, more often than not, the solution is actually a lot more complicated. One location has me trying to take one item with a magical dagger continually flying at my face every time I make a move. My initial plan was to put something on the dagger to prevent it attacking me, yet the game wouldn’t let me and instead told me there wouldn’t be anything gained by doing that. (I’d have disagreed as weighing the dagger down so it couldn’t move would have seemed like a sensible solution to the problem. It certainly made more sense than the solution used.) More than one way to solve puzzles is an idea I'm fond of as it means that if I can’t figure out the main way to do the puzzle, there might well be another way of doing it that I can try instead. As it happened, the solution was one I doubt I would have ever thought to try. The item I needed to solve the puzzle was one I already had in my hands, so requiring me to HOLD it up would have seemed unnecessary had I not been advised by the hints to try this.


Feelies 
“The Last Resort” comes with a nice PDF map which certainly helped me figure out the general layout of the game. A good thing, too, as the layout is sometimes confusing with southwest from one location leading me to another location and north being required to return me to the first one. On top of that are the cabins which have rooms that, on a normal map, would actually be inside other cabins. It took a while to familiarise myself with the general layout and the map helped me get my bearings.


Unfairness
At times, the game can be very unfair indeed. I didn’t find several key items to begin with as I’d neglected to enter some of the cabins and only became aware of these items’ existence when someone mentioned it on RGIF; unfortunately, by this time the occupant of the cabin had returned and I wasn’t able to enter, thus screwing the game up for me. Equally unfairly, no indication that the game has been rendered unfinishable is given so I played for quite a bit further before realising I wasn’t making any progress because there was no way to make progress.

As it happens, some parts of the game runs on a series of timed events. Certain locations are only accessible at certain times and if you miss your window of opportunity, you’ve blown it. Even more unfair, the game requires you to perform three separate tasks while a timed event is running, though it wasn’t until a lot later in the game that I realised anything needed doing during the course of the event. I’d also question whether anyone who ever played the game managed to figure this out on their first play through, or only realised the timer was relevant and all the things that needed doing before it was over, by first dying a few times. Solving a puzzle by dying several times doesn’t really count as solving it in my book. Getting hold of the items I’d missed required me to restart the game and play a sizeable portion of it again to reach the stage I’d been at before.

It’s also possible to put the game into an unfinishable position by scaring away the crow, though here at least the game does warn you immediately afterwards that you might have made a mistake. Going back to previous saved game positions helped on a few occasions, but quite often I’d discover too late that I’d missed something, or neglected to do something by a certain time. Before I tied up all these loose ends, I think I’d restarted the game half a dozen times or more.

Other examples of unfairness? Sometimes SEARCH and EXAMINE mean the same thing. Other times they produce different responses; something I only discovered later on in the game and which then required me heading back through every location in the game and start SEARCHing things that I’d previously only EXAMINEd. I also felt that the amount of items that needed to be looked behind or under was a little unfair. Unfortunately, the unfairness doesn’t stop there. When I opened the drawers on one of the bureaus (there was one in every cabin and most were identical), there was nothing to indicate there was anything inside and examining them revealed nothing more than a description of the drawer itself. Yet when I LOOKed IN the drawers, I found an item in there. Surely the game should have told me that there were items inside an open drawer when I first opened it or when I examined it without me needing to specify that I was looking in it as well. Makes me wonder how many other items I missed because I didn’t LOOK for them, only EXAMINEd and SEARCHed. Or are there other items only available via STUDYing certain things?

The dreaded guess the verb hampers some of the puzzles. The one involving gaining the aid of the crow was particularly bad and was something I’d never have considered if the hints hadn’t suggested it. (Yes, I weakened in the end and e-mailed the author to ask for the password for the hints.) The most annoying thing about this puzzle, and several others in the game actually, was that I had the item I needed to solve the puzzle in question but it never would have occurred to me to try the required command. 


Overall
But despite all the negative aspects of the game, there's a lot to like about it as well. A good deal of the puzzles, even the ones I’d label as ‘unfair’, can generally be figured out if you think about them. Restarting the entire game and keying in commands again when you realise you’ve missed something vital is a pain, but there's a genuine sense of achievement when you finally get the better of a puzzle you’ve been stuck on for a while. The puzzles are generally arranged in a sensible fashion in that most of them can be completed in any order and if you can’t figure one out, you can always go away and do something else in the meantime. Games that hit me with one puzzle after another and don’t let me do anything else until each one is solved don’t tend to go down very well with me. Thankfully this is one problem “The Last Resort” doesn’t suffer from. This general relaxed attitude towards the puzzle solving also works well because there are times when, having discovered a new item or some previously hidden piece of information you didn’t have access to before, you hit upon the solution to a puzzle you couldn’t get the better of first time around.

Of course, there are problems with having this kind of freedom towards puzzle solving in that you can quite often end up reaching a puzzle at a stage in the game when it’s not possible to solve it. Naturally you aren't aware of this and much time can be wasted trying to solve a puzzle when in fact your chances of solving it at that stage are zero. There are other times when you have the means to solve the puzzle (as with the crow or the dagger) but the precise wording is something you're never likely to try.

But… but I liked it. I kept on struggling with “The Last Resort” long after I’d have given up with most other games and the fact that I went through it to the bitter end, even after being forced to restart several times due to missing key items and running out of time on other occasions, has to be a point in the game’s favour. So yes, a game I’d recommend, but only to people who aren’t put off by decidedly unfair puzzles and who have lots and lots of patience.

6 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=205&start=0#p1468
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: container (closed)
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2007-02-01 08:44:35

Going by what worked with I6, try saying "The fortune cookie is not openable."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=204&start=0#p1469
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Need to register
User: Ken Franklin / DateTime: 2007-02-01 16:00:00

Yes more and more sites are having to go over to having those bits where you have to type in some characters when you post, just to stop the automatic spamming. It is often possible to reduce the required input when signing up to a minimum.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=10#p1470
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-02-02 22:13:53

In general, I tend to dislike thread necromancy. However, since this one is only a month inactive and has an appropriate topic, in this case I'll throw my hat in. I'm Chris Knight.

And let's just get this out of the way right now. No, not the guy who played Peter on the Brady Bunch (he goes by "Christopher"). But you're the first person who ever noticed that it's the same name. :)

Anyway.

I played interactive fiction when it was just called a "computer game" or "text adventure". I had Zork on my trusty TRS-80 Model III, which got me hooked. Some other early titles I played included a game called Bedlam in which you had to escape from a sanitarium, and Quest for Fire (you can probably guess the plot of that one). There was also some sort of Dungeons & Dragons game I recall -- more of an RPG really -- that was written (I think) in BASIC. I don't remember much about it at all, other than the two-handed sword was called a THS, and there was a dragon that kept killing me.

I played a lot of the Infocom titles, and wish that I would have saved the original packaging that I used to have with all of them. I was an avid reader as a young-un, so I stuck with text adventures even as computers became more graphics-oriented (though I am also a fan of the early Sierra games).

I discovered the underground modern-day IF community via usenet about 10 years ago, and briefly re-entered the scene as a player. I, at that time, had delusions of authorship... but eventually got bogged down with Real Life (tm) and never got around to it.

Somewhere in a game, I am going to put a Round Tuitt.

Anyway again.

I hate to call something a New Year's Resolution, so let's just not call it that. One of my goals for this year is to do more writing -- I did some in college, even got a paycheck as a freelancer for a while, but never did much else with it into grad school and beyond.

Now, with a family and a real job, I suppose I'm looking back and not wanting to let the many hours I spent hunched over a keyboard go. So as an extension of my goal to do more writing, I returned to the idea of writing text adventure games.

My day job is a network administrator; I know enough about programming to be dangerous (I sometimes call myself a "street coder", since I haven't had a lot of formal schooling)... so something like TADS or Inform is right up my alley.

If anyone is still reading this blathering, I will mercifully sum up. I am intending to learn TADS and start writing some text adventures (it's still hard for me to call it "interactive fiction"). I've been doing some reading and writing in the r*i-f newsgroups, and I've got a blog dedicated to my learning that the desperate amongst you can find here: <a href="http://mirrorshades.at.preempted.net/wordpress/">http://mirrorshades.at.preempted.net/wordpress/</a>

Thanks for listening. Please don't tell me if you haven't been.

Hope to see you all around.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=10#p1471
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: George / DateTime: 2007-02-03 14:46:31

Good to see you on the forum, Chris. 

Never got around to posting in this thread either; so as for myself, I've been playing text games such as muds since college. Long ago, in lieu of doing our grammar school work, we would play the text games available on the school computer (Zork and The Hobbit) and write games in BASIC. But I didn't know about IF until about a year ago; I don't remember the exact circumstances but you know how late night googling can turn things up.

I'm a carpenter by trade so I think playing and attempting to write IF feeds some other part of my brain that isn't satisfied by working with my hands.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=10#p1472
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-02-03 22:29:08

[quote="George"]
Good to see you on the forum, Chris.
[/quote]  
Ah, you must be the same George who read my blog. :)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=205&start=0#p1473
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: container (closed)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-02-05 17:30:07

but if I do that how do I open the fortune cookie and get the paper out?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=205&start=0#p1474
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: container (closed)
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2007-02-07 17:41:03

Write a specific "break" or "open" action.  (Also, if you leave it as openable, the cookie will be closeable.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=205&start=0#p1475
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: container (closed)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-02-07 22:45:02

I see what you are saying but the problem is that being new to inform 7 I'm not quite sure how to do that. Can you help me with writing a break or open action? Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=208&start=0#p1476
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Registering the player holding an item in a certain location
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-02-18 21:42:16

Okay, I have a spot in the game where I want the game to perform a special action when he enters "Warehouse Block E" and is carrying the "Small Torch. What would be the source code for this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=208&start=0#p1477
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Registering the player holding an item in a certain loca
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2007-02-19 18:57:41

In I6 or I7?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=208&start=0#p1478
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Registering the player holding an item in a certain loca
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-02-19 19:36:15

I7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=209&start=0#p1479
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Just saying Hi and after a bit of advice.
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-02-24 09:42:54

Hi all.
Don`t know how active this forum is so here goes.

I have just joined this forum after re-discoverying text adventure games after years away from them. 

Firstly a little history about my past dealings with text adventure or as it seems to be called these days IF. My first ever IF was on an old Spectrum the rubber key version and the very first IF game that I can remember playing was called Quest Adventure, I spent hours playing that one and never did complete it [emote]Sad[/emote]. After that I played several others of which the names I can`t remember. After that I was without a computer for several years and latter got a Commedore 64 and I returned to playing several IF games again the most notable being The Hobbit. I then when several years again without a computer and now I have a Windows XP based PC have just dicovered that IF are to a lesser extent still around.

Now for the advice part. 

Like I said I have just re-discovered IF`s and so far I have downloaded the TADS3 interpreter and was wondering is anyone can suggest if I would need any others as the TADS seem to be quite well cartered for. Also will be downloading a z-code interpreter for Windows.

I Also have a Palm Zire 71 PDA running PalmOS v 5.2.1. for which I have installed Frobnitz which comes with z2pdb.exe so I can convert z-code IF`s so I can play them on the Zire. Is this the best Palm IF`s program?

Now for the crunch question. I like my IF`s to be big the bigger the better which IF currently is the biggest as in the most locations to visit making the longest to complete.

Think thats it for now will wait to see I get a responce before asking anymore questions.

Cap Man (Keith)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=209&start=0#p1480
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Just saying Hi and after a bit of advice.
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-02-24 10:55:36

Hello,

first of all, I think frobnitz is a great interpreter for palm. But I think, the zire has a high res screen, so you could use Kronos, too, which has the advantage to also play the magnetic scrolls adventures (which are not freeware, I should add).

As for big games, I think Curses might be your cup of tea. It will be a long time to traverse it, because it is almost absurdly difficult. Another huge game is anchorhead, which I like much better. It has a great story, lots of locations and puzzles, that are mostly very fair.

The largest game to date seems to be 1893: A world's fair mystery. I didn't play it, but it has a couple of hundred locations and is well reviewed. A version with graphics cost 20 $, but without them, the game is freeware.

Bob

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=209&start=0#p1481
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Just saying Hi and after a bit of advice.
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-02-26 09:32:55

Thanks Bob for you advice. I have downloaded Kronos and have it installed on my PDA memory card but still have Frotnitz as well as for some reason I can`t z8 files to install to the memory card so I convert them and use them on Frotnitz.

I have also now installed on my PC TADs3, HUGO 3.1, WINDOWS FROTZ, GLULXE 1.3 and GARGOYLE so I think that will just about cover most things.

Also I found a great mapping program called IFMapper which look very promising for mapping the IF`s. Just got to figure out how to use it.

Cap Man (Keith).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=210&start=0#p1482
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Question linked to IFMapper
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-02-27 04:22:24

Like I said in my first post I am only just starting out with IF on a PC. 

Yesterday I downloaded IFMapper as it sounded a good program for mapping out any IF games I play on me PC. Now it says it has a Automapping function which I am impressed or will be if I figure how it tell you what to do. Now this is my question in the description for automapping it says and I quote

"To use automapping, go to your game and start a transcript. Usually this is done by doing:

> verbose
> script

and then specifying the name of the file."

What does the above mean?

Cap Man (Keith).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=210&start=0#p1483
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Question linked to IFMapper
User: George / DateTime: 2007-02-27 09:27:14

For IFMapper to automap your game it obviously needs to receive information about the game as you're playing it. 

By turning on >script, what you're doing is writing everything you see in your game interpreter window to a text file (called whatever you want). When you turn on the automap in IFMapper you also are asked to select a file to map from -- this is the same text file you are asked to name for your script file. 

IFMapper basically looks at either the room names or the room descriptions (your choice) and the directions (north, south, etc.) that you input into the interpreter as you play to make its map. The reason why you type >verbose is to always see full room descriptions as you play. Now, if in the automapper you select the option to map via room name, I imagine you wouldn't need to turn on >verbose -- but sometimes you might want to map by room description, for example if you're in a maze. 

Does that answer the question?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=210&start=0#p1484
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Question linked to IFMapper
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-02-27 09:45:21

Cheers George that was just what I was looking for.

Cap Man (Keith).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=211&start=0#p1485
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7:NPC Frustration
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-02-28 20:51:32

Although I am a professional programmer, I have to say I'm struggling a bit with some aspects of Inform 7.  I seem to be relying of random scatterings of examples, rather than having the clear syntax explained to me. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place.

For example, as a test I'm trying to get a character to respond when you say the word "Hello".

e.g.

>Say Hello to Dave

"Hi Steve, how's it going". - Says Dave

I just can't seem to get it to work though.

The closest example I can find is of the form "Instead of saying yes in the presence of...."

So I wrote this.

"Test" by Steve

The ballroom is a room. Dave is a man in the ballroom.
Instead of saying yes in the presence of Dave: 
    say "That was a bit non-sequitur." 

The code doesn't actually work though. The response to saying yes is just..
(to Dave)
There is no reply.

Worse still, if I change yes to hello (which is the word I wanted), it won't even compile. Clearly "yes" is a special word that I7 understands.  But what if I want to process anything the player says. Surely it would make sense to be able to capture any word in a "Instead of saying" clause.

Also, I don't really want Dave to just respond when I say "Hello" in his presence. There might be other people present after all. However, if I change the code to the very obvious line "Instead of saying yes to Dave:", it refuses to compile.

Either the documentation to speaking with NPCs is lacking or I am really missing something in the manual.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=211&start=0#p1486
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:NPC Frustration
User: George / DateTime: 2007-02-28 21:23:29

The basic conceptual problem that I think you're running into is that the conversation model for I7 is built lean and mean -- you're meant to extend the parser as you see fit, unlike say TADS 3 which has a more developed model. 

However if you look at section 7.6, example 2, there are a couple of things to help you out:

[code]The Grove is a room. In the Grove is a woman called the Sybil. 


Instead of asking the Sybil to try saying no: try saying no. Instead of asking the Sybil to try saying yes: try saying yes. Instead of asking the Sybil to try saying sorry: try saying sorry. 


Instead of answering the Sybil that "yes", try saying yes. Instead of answering the Sybil that "no", try saying no. Instead of answering the Sybil that "sorry", try saying sorry. 


Instead of saying yes in the presence of the Sybil: 
    say "She looks interested." 


Instead of saying no in the presence of the Sybil: 
    say "She looks annoyed." 


Instead of saying sorry in the presence of the Sybil: 
    say "She looks bored." 

[The complexity arises from the fact that we want to handle both YES and SYBIL, YES. If we only had the latter, 'yes' would be treated as a text given to the Sybil, just as in the commands SAY YES TO SYBIL or ANSWER YES. But because we have defined it as a command (so that the player can use it independently), SYBIL, YES is understood as an order to the Sybil to do the YES action. 

Fortunately, we can redirect everything, as here, so that the results wind up the same.

And if we want yet another variation not covered by the Inform standard:


Understand "tell [someone] [text]" as answering it that. Understand "tell [someone] that [text]" as answering it that. 


But that is a matter for a later chapter.]


Test me with "yes / sybil, yes / say yes to sybil / answer yes / tell sybil yes / no / sybil, no / say no to sybil / answer no / tell sybil no / sorry / sybil, sorry / say sorry to sybil / answer sorry / tell sybil sorry". 

[/code] 

Hope that helps.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=186&start=10#p1487
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Comp Results
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-03-01 03:33:31

I have always thought that the tradition of entering games under psuedonyms is very strange. You seem to be saying two things when you do so:

1. Community members, I submit my game to a competition which will be decided by democratic vote, thus stating implicitly that I think you are capable of rightly judging interactive fiction.

2. Community members, I am submitting my game under a pseudonym so that you will not be tempted to give me a higher score because of facts irrelevant to the quality of the work.

These two statements seem to be contradictory. Either you trust the community to have the level of maturity and intelligence needed to vote fairly (in which case pseudonyms are unneeded), or you do not trust the community to have that (in which case there is no reason to take the results of a comp seriously).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=186&start=10#p1488
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Comp Results
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2007-03-01 05:29:24

I suggest replacing "you will not be tempted to give me a higher score" with "you will not prejudge it".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=172&start=10#p1489
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A bunch o' I7 games
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-03-01 07:44:20

Or attempts to bring the playfulness of Finegans Wake to interactive fiction!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=211&start=0#p1490
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:NPC Frustration
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-03-01 16:01:47

Hmmm. I've figured it out.

Whenever you use the command "Say [word] to [person]"

The word can be captured using the following code.

Instead of answering [person] that "[word]"

So if you want to say Hello to Dave and have him say "Hi there", the code is...

Instead of answering Dave that "Hello", say "Hi There"

So when you say something to someone, it thinks you are answering them, since you have to use the "Answer" keyword to capture the words. I really think that should be more explicitly spelled out in the manual.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=211&start=0#p1491
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:NPC Frustration
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-03-01 16:51:12

It works for sentences too.  

e.g.

Instead of answering Dave that "How are you", say "'I[apostrophe]m fine.'"

>Say How are you
>"I'm fine."

However, if you try to add in the question mark...

Instead of answering Dave that "How are you?", say "'I[apostrophe]m fine.'"

It doesn't work. It does not recognise "How are you?" or "How are you"

However, if you change it to...

Instead of answering Dave that "How are you ?", say "'I[apostrophe]m fine.'"

Then it will recognise "How are you ?",  but you have to put the space in. Most people would not naturally type the space, so that is a bit annoying.  It would seem that a question mark is a special character, but if that is so, why is it able to match it if a space is present?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=209&start=0#p1492
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Just saying Hi and after a bit of advice.
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-03-02 07:34:28

[quote="Cap Man"]
Also I found a great mapping program called IFMapper which look very promising for mapping the IF`s. Just got to figure out how to use it.

Cap Man (Keith).
[/quote]  

Can't help you with that. But I just thought of something that could help you with your search for big games. On <a class="postlink" href="http://www.carouselchain.com/if/index.php">http://www.carouselchain.com/if/index.php</a> there are ratings for text adventures. The statistics give the possibility to sort the games by playtime. I don't know how reliable that is, but at least anchorhead, curses and 1893 are in the section "more than 20 hours".

Bob

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=212&start=0#p1493
Forum: Competitions / Subject: XYZZY Awards - Sunday
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-03-03 09:56:39

I saw that the XYZZYNews page has been updated with the announcement for the live awards ceremony -- Tomorrow (Sunday, March 4th) at 5:00 PM Eastern (which would be 4:00 Central, 3:00 Mountain, 2:00 Pacific).

---- Mike.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=212&start=0#p1494
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards - Sunday
User: George / DateTime: 2007-03-03 12:17:10

Good luck to everyone up for an award.

The voting deadline actually impelled me to play a few games I had been putting aside.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=211&start=0#p1495
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:NPC Frustration
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-03-04 16:38:59

Is this actually the best place to get Inform 7 questions answered or is there some official inform 7 forum?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=211&start=0#p1496
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:NPC Frustration
User: George / DateTime: 2007-03-04 18:00:25

Many I7 authors read the rec.arts.int-fiction newsgroup -- more than those that read this forum I think it's safe to say. 

<a href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=212&start=0#p1497
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards - Sunday
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2007-03-05 08:09:17

And the winners are (from Eileen's post on RAIF):

Best game: The Elysium Enigma, by Eric Eve 
Best writing: Delightful Wallpaper, by Andrew Plotkin as "Edgar O. Weyrd" 
Best story: The Traveling Swordsman, by Mike Snyder 
Best setting: Floatpoint, by Emily Short 
Best puzzles: Delightful Wallpaper, by Andrew Plotkin as "Edgar O. Weyrd" 
Best NPCs: Floatpoint, by Emily Short 
Best individual puzzle: Navigating the mansion in Delightful Wallpaper, by Andrew Plotkin as "Edgar O. Weyrd" 
Best individual NPC: Leela, The Elysium Enigma, by Eric Eve 
Best individual PC: The PC in Delightful Wallpaper, by Andrew Plotkin as "Edgar O. Weyrd" 
Best use of medium: The Baron (a.k.a. De Baron), by Victor Gijsbers

Woo-hoo! [emote]Laughing[/emote]

The original post on RAIF: <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/6ae2f02f9fda6ce2/d621341b640b5516?hl=en#d621341b640b5516">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts ... 1b640b5516</a>

EDIT: Freakin' italics won't work again [emote]Sad[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=211&start=0#p1498
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:NPC Frustration
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2007-03-05 10:35:40

There isn't an official forum, but there are certainly I7 users (like me) hanging out here from time to time.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=213&start=0#p1499
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Delightful Wallpaper - puzzle design
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-03-06 13:04:01

With Andrew Plotkin's Delightful Wallpaper winning both the Best Puzzles and the Best Individual Puzzle XYZZY, it becomes an especially interesting game to analyse in terms of its puzzle design. I would especially like to discuss it because I personally thought the first puzzle (navigating the mansion) was a good idea implemented rather badly. Let's discuss it.

What we have is a protagonist whose immateriality prevents him from doing anything but moving. Luckily for him, the puzzle requires only movements to be made: there is a hidden logic to the mansion, where stepping through certain doors and entering certain rooms changes the physical aspects of the house. By making the correct moves, we can open doors, lower platforms, rotate bridges, and so on.

This means that the puzzle has two layers:
1. Discovering the hidden logic; finding out the rules of the game, so to speak.
2. Solving the actual puzzle once the rules are known.

In order to be successful, the puzzle should be satisfying on at least one of these levels. But when I played Delightful Wallpaper, I felt it missed the mark on both.


Discovering the hidden logic of the puzzle could have been really fun: you do some moves, then notice that something has changed. What was it that made the change? You carefully retrace your steps, do first this, then that, and see what effect is had. Slowly but surely you are discovering the rules of the game.

But that was not how Delightful Wallpaper played out. You have a set of notes, which describe the rules of the game as soon as you have encountered them - but long, long before you could have actually known them as player. Take something simple: walking east in the corridor lowers the platform; walking west in the corridor raises it. (Or the other way around, I can't remember.) This would have been fun to find out, because knowing it allows you to get into the tower. But before I had actually found it out as a player, the protagonist had already written it down is his notebook. Goodbey, sense of achievement. I just read the rule instead of discovering it.

This happened to me all the time. I just wandered around, then looked at the notes to see what I had 'discovered' in the process. Not much fun, actually; and certainly not a good puzzle.


Unfortunately, discovering the rules was the hard part of the puzzle. Once you knew the rules, navigating the maze was very easy and required little thought. So the second layer of the puzzle wasn't very substantial either.


Obviously, I am painting the game a bit bleaker here than it deserves, but points often come across better if there aren't to many "although"s and other caveats in them. [emote]Smile[/emote] To frame the same thoughts in a more constructive way: I felt that the puzzle could have been a much better puzzle with some minor adjustments (especially a reworking or abolishing of the notebook, although that might mean reevaluating and adjusting the difficulty of the puzzle as well). What do you think?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=211&start=0#p1500
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:NPC Frustration
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-03-06 13:06:49

The newsgroup linked to above is a good place, as is the Inform 7 channel on ifMUD.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=213&start=0#p1501
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Delightful Wallpaper - puzzle design
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-03-06 14:11:11

I found it impossible to solve on my own.

I wasn't distracted by the notebook -- found it helpful, in fact. The bigger problem for me was that I couldn't really figure out *what* was changing. I may be remembering wrong, but it seems that after the first couple of triggers, the game stopped giving directional hints (i.e., "something rattles in the distance" instead of "something rattles somewhere to the northeast"). So, I wasn't really sure where to concentrate my search. On top of this, I was never quite sure that I'd find this "change" in the same condition, because it seemed to me that going through certain doors or in certain directions changed things *on my way* to check something else. Worse case scenario, I would trigger two things in nearby rooms, without being able to figure out which thing accounted for which change (assuming I found the change).

That's not to say I solved none of it. I did make pretty good progress, but after a while, the fun turned to frustration. I think some people really liked this part of the game -- even moreso than the second part -- but it was over my head.

I *really* liked the second part, though. The paths were open, and I found the "intentions" much more interesting. I loved the second part, and might have been happy with a full game like that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=212&start=0#p1502
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards - Sunday
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-03-06 14:15:50

I almost slept through it. And I'm not sure anybody believed that I just happened to log in right as they were presenting for Best Story. [emote]Smile[/emote] Does look kinda suspicious in retrospect, but seriously, it just worked out that way.

Thanks for posting the winners. I had forgotten to follow it up here.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=211&start=0#p1503
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:NPC Frustration
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-03-06 14:19:17

The quickest place -- and the place where pretty much everybody goes regardless of what "other" forums/chats they use -- is definitely the newsgroup.

I'm just happy the forum is seeing a bit more activity these last couple of days.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=209&start=0#p1504
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Just saying Hi and after a bit of advice.
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2007-03-11 15:17:23

[quote="Cap Man"]
I have also now installed on my PC TADs3, HUGO 3.1, WINDOWS FROTZ, GLULXE 1.3 and GARGOYLE so I think that will just about cover most things.
[/quote]     Gargoyle alone should cover most of it, *if* it's okay for you to play most modern IF games without graphics. I have to admit, though, that it does play Magnetic Scrolls games with graphics pretty well, as well as some Glulxe games. It's still a good idea to install other 'terps like the Hugo Engine and the HTML TADS Player, as they render the graphics that come with the game quite better than Gargoyle.

[quote="Cap Man"]
Also I found a great mapping program called IFMapper which look very promising for mapping the IF`s. Just got to figure out how to use it.
[/quote]    Is that the one that requires installing the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_programming_language]Ruby runtime[/url] to run?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=209&start=0#p1505
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Just saying Hi and after a bit of advice.
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-03-11 19:22:19

[quote]
Is that the one that requires installing the Ruby runtime to run?
[/quote] 

Yes thats the one and so far I have had no problems with it.

Cap Man (Keith).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=213&start=0#p1506
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Delightful Wallpaper - puzzle design
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-03-22 17:00:05

[quote="Merk"]
I loved the second part, and might have been happy with a full game like that.
[/quote] 

I have to admit that I didn't play the second part yet. It got me utterly confused quite quickly, and being pretty tired from solving the first part, I decided to save it for another time. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=214&start=0#p1507
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Adrift site down?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-03-30 02:43:08

I tried checking Adrift.org.uk a couple days ago and got nothing. Same again today. What's up?

Greg

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=214&start=0#p1508
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Adrift site down?
User: ~Ren~ / DateTime: 2007-03-30 10:39:58

Looks like it's temporarily dead. Though it wasn't exactly buzzing with conversation before this.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=214&start=0#p1509
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Adrift site down?
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2007-03-30 17:47:11

Up again.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=215&start=0#p1510
Forum: Competitions / Subject: ANNOUNCE: HP Lovecraft Commonplace Book Comp and Exhibit
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-04-09 22:50:57

I've just posted this over at rec.arts.int-fiction, but here it is again!:

HP Lovecraft put all his story ideas into his "Commonplace Book." Now 
it's time for you to take one up for yourself and realize it. 

This comp will run until mid-June: about eight weeks. 


And what will happen to the results? Well, there's the exhibit at the 
Swiss Museum of Science Fiction and Utopias, for starters. The exhibit 
will launch in October, to be followed by a few other venues as well. 
Writers and artists from around the world are contributing work based 
on Lovecraft's Commonplace Book -- including artists such as HR Giger, 
and writers such as Michael Moorcock, contributing new and original 
work to the exhibit. And also including -- Interactive Fiction. And 
why not? The curator is interested, and so am I, but I figured there's 
no reason that I should do this alone. 


And what else? Well, I'm looking into some of the Lovecraft festivals 
coming up this year, and the possibility of setting up a playable 
exhibit there. 


Anything else? How about a professionally produced CD-ROM of all the 
entries? Well, that's a difficult one, as production costs money and 
I'll need to earn it back somehow, but I want to do this if at all 
possible. 


But wait -- there's more! Why not broaden our horizons a bit? So in 
addition to English works, there will also be a French section, 
curated by JB, author of the celebrated Ekphrasis. and an Italian 
section, though not fully realized yet. And Adrift gets its own 
section, as well, so that there can be a separate Adrift "best in 
show" that I've asked David Whyld to curate. 


And well, why stop there. I also hope to invite the AGS community to 
contribute as well. 


I've put together a webpage about the event: 


<a href="http://www.illuminatedlantern.com/if/lovecraft.html">http://www.illuminatedlantern.com/if/lovecraft.html</a> 


Filled with all the rules, plans, and so on as they exist now. As I 
make more arrangements, the page will be updated. Ideas about front- 
end gallery type delivery systems for the games are also very welcome. 
The competition part of this competition is very small. I would like 
the games to be played after they are finished and a general voting 
done to determine "Best in Show" in each category, but no additional 
ranking. I strongly favor participation over judging. 


So, if you want to participate, follow the instructions on the webpage 
for your development platform. (In other words, send me, or one of the 
other curators, an email). I hope this competition will generate 
interest and enthusiasm among independent game developers. For my 
part, I thought this opportunity was too fun not to share. I hope you 
agree. 


Best regards, 


-- Peter Nepstad 
<a href="http://www.illuminatedlantern.com/if">http://www.illuminatedlantern.com/if</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=195&start=0#p1511
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Is this puzzle unfair?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-04-11 08:52:51

[quote="topgun227"]
"climb out gantry"

"climb up gantry" to get back in
[/quote] 

If you are going to do 'climb out' then perhaps 'climb in' would be more appropriate. Or both, with consideration for 'climb down gantry', 'enter gantry', and 'exit gantry'.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=204&start=0#p1512
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Need to register
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-04-11 09:07:53

[quote="Ken Franklin"]
Yes more and more sites are having to go over to having those bits where you have to type in some characters when you post, just to stop the automatic spamming. It is often possible to reduce the required input when signing up to a minimum.
[/quote] 

These are called CAPTCHA. They are beginning to be superceded by asking a simple question of the person registering (i.e. what colour is a white horse? white, red, purple) which actually requires an answer. The CAPTCHA can be beaten.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=188&start=0#p1513
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA style games
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-04-12 21:24:02

I know I'm a little late to answer this, but David Whyld's Requiem, while it didn't actually let the *player* switch back and forth, had both CYOA and regular IF gameplay.

EDIT: Italics are still broken!  [emote]Evil or Very Mad[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=188&start=0#p1514
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA style games
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-04-14 12:08:30

On a side topic, I wrote a browser-based engine for CYOA games last year, and just haven't gotten around to polishing and packaging and releasing it. I was going to use it for a game in the Lo-Tech comp, which I didn't have time to complete. I think it uses a pretty slick, and works in Netscape, Firefox, MSIE, and Opera.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=188&start=0#p1515
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA style games
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-04-15 13:32:20

[quote="Merk"]
On a side topic, I wrote a browser-based engine for CYOA games last year, and just haven't gotten around to polishing and packaging and releasing it. I was going to use it for a game in the Lo-Tech comp, which I didn't have time to complete. I think it uses a pretty slick, and works in Netscape, Firefox, MSIE, and Opera.
[/quote] 

Seriously? Cool! If you need someone to beta test it or whatever let me know. [emote]:)[/emote]

I occasionally get this inexplicable urge to write CYOAs, but I've never been completely happy with the programs I've tried so far. I really prefer the simplicity of being able to do it all online, basically just entering text in a box and adding choices, but most of the sites I've found seem pretty much dead. And of course posting on somebody else's website where anyone who has a mind to can screw with your story isn't the same as being able to write a complete game yourself and distribute the file. (Of course at this point I have no idea how your engine works, but 'browser-based' is a start and I'd love to give it a try.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=209&start=0#p1516
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Just saying Hi and after a bit of advice.
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-04-15 13:48:29

[quote]
Now for the crunch question. I like my IF`s to be big the bigger the better which IF currently is the biggest as in the most locations to visit making the longest to complete.
[/quote] 

IMHO, one of the problems with the IF scene right now is that authors are pretty much encouraged to write nothing [i]but[/i] bite-sized games. It seems like if you want something you can really sink your teeth into you have to go back a few years, and then of course you start running into things like mazes and just generally unfair puzzles, which are a little hard to stomach for a person spoiled on modern, 'user friendly' IF like myself.

But anyway, as for recommendations, I suggest you take a look at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.springthing.net">http://www.springthing.net</a> and browse through the archives, if you haven't already. (And why not try the newest games as well, since there's still a couple of weeks to vote on them.)

Of course even games in a comp where long adventures are encouraged are pretty short compared to some of the classics. So I'll also go ahead and recommend The Mulldoon Legacy and it's sequel, The Mulldoon Murders. I had a lot of fun with both, though I'd seriously suggest keeping a walkthrough handy.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=216&start=0#p1517
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Reviving the Game of the Month?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-04-15 14:11:48

Okay, so after going on a little hiatus due to RL issues, I decided to drop by here a couple of days ago and it seems like the place has been pretty dead ever since everyone got distracted by the IFComp. 

Back when this forum first kicked off the Game of the Month discussions seemed to be one of the most promising ideas that spawned the most interesting discussion, even if it didn't quite last long enough to become a 'tradition'. 

So, in the interests of giving this place a shot in the arm, anyone want to try again and choose a game for May? We could either pick up where we left off with All Hope Abandon, or someone could make some new suggestions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=216&start=0#p1518
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Reviving the Game of the Month?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-04-15 20:25:19

My time for IF is ZIP lately. I've been trying to get motivated to start on an IFComp '07 entry, but about all I've been able to do is come up with a title graphic. I planned to play and review the Spring Thing games, but have only gone so far as to download them. The chances of me participating in a game-of-the-month thing are pretty slim, but I'd be happy to see it get off the ground otherwise.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=188&start=0#p1519
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA style games
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-04-15 20:28:55

I should find the time to finish it up. I looked it over again after making that post, and I see that there were a couple things I had left unfinished. I was planning to work on an inventory-type system and an "examine" option, which I never got around to. Right now, it would do straight by-the-book CYOA, with saving/loading to and from cookies. The pages are added to a .JS file (something akin to "Page1Text=".........") with some settings for title, options, etc. It's not a GUI development system, but would be pretty simple even for non-programmers.

Being browser-based does make it pretty slick, though. Bad thing is, all the source is unencrypted, so people would be able to see/cheat. I figure that's not a huge deal, but I had thought about encrypting and unencrypting the game text just to make it a little harder to peek and get spoilers from the source code for a given game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=217&start=0#p1520
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: dobjFor(LookIn) Not functioning properly!(?)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-04-16 13:43:17

I am very new to TADS3, so I am trying to follow the examples in the guide "Getting Started in TADS3" by Eric Eve. So far it has been pretty easy to follow and understand, but I have run into a snag.  
I am working on the task of hiding a diamond ring inside a bird's nest, and I am using the action "dobjFor(LookIn)" to creat a special message that is supposed to appear when a game player types in either "Look in nest" or "Search nest". According to the guide I am reading, the definition for the class "Thing", which is the class the nest belongs to, includes instructions for the action "dobjFor(LookIn)" to refer the verb "Search" back to the "LookIn" action so the two verbs behave the same.  (I hope that made sense...) However, if I run & compile and play the game up to the apropriate place and type in "look in nest", the program runs like it is supposed to, but if I type in "Search nest" it finds the hidden object in the nest and bypasses the whole puzzle. This is very problematic, as I am supposed to elaborate on this puzzle in the next section of the guide to include finding a stick and moving the nest with the stick. If the player simply has to type "search nest" to bypass this entire process, it is not worth it! There must be some way I can get dobjFor(LookIn) and dobjFor(Search) to both execute on this object. I have tried adding "dobjFor(LookIn) asDobjFor(Search) and many other variations along those lines, but it wont compile and run that way; it just tells me there should be brackets and/or property names (the results vary) in places where they are currently not....(LOL)
Sorry if this is making your head(s) spin... it is just not working the way my, so far true and faithful, guide is telling me it is supposed to work and it is causing big loopholes in my game. I don't want to run into this problem when I am constructing my own games.
Thank you for any help you can offer!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=216&start=0#p1521
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Reviving the Game of the Month?
User: George / DateTime: 2007-04-16 19:20:15

I'm for it. Like Merk I haven't been playing a lot of IF lately but this would be a good reason to do so.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=217&start=0#p1522
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: dobjFor(LookIn) Not functioning properly!(?)
User: George / DateTime: 2007-04-16 19:25:20

Without seeing your code I can't say for sure what is happening; I have the [i]Getting Started[/i] guide in front of me, so if we could compare what you have to what's in the guide we could narrow down the problem. If they are indeed the same, then we could go from there.

edit: one other thing, I'm a little confused by your wording. Shouldn't 'look in nest' and 'search nest' in this example both find the ring? So when you say things go 'as they ought to' with look in, what do you mean by that?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=216&start=0#p1523
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Reviving the Game of the Month?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-04-16 20:36:43

I'm also not sure the open voting idea worked out that well. It became a little confusing, I think. Maybe there just needs to be a single organizer that picks the game and announces it on schedule. Maybe get suggestions, but ultimately decide without a vote. Just an idea.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=217&start=0#p1524
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: dobjFor(LookIn) Not functioning properly!(?)
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2007-04-17 08:38:14

Congratulations, you've found a bug in Heidi!

The problem is that the library is only remapping dobjFor(Search) { action() {} } to LookIn. If you type SEARCH NEST, it does Search verify and check, then LookIn action.

The simplest fix is to change this:
[code]
  dobjFor(LookIn)
  {
    
    check()
    {
      if(!isHeldBy(gActor))
      {
        "You really need to hold the nest to take a good look at what's inside. ";
        exit;
      }
    }
    action()    
    {
       if(ring.moved)
       {
         "You find nothing else of interest in the nest. ";
         exit;
       }
       ring.makePresent();
       "A closer examination of the nest reveals a diamond ring inside! ";
       addToScore(1, 'finding the ring');
    }
  }
[/code]
to this:
[code]
  dobjFor(LookIn)
  {
    action()    
    {
      if(!isHeldBy(gActor))
      {
        "You really need to hold the nest to take a good look at what's inside. ";
        exit;
      }

       if(ring.moved)
       {
         "You find nothing else of interest in the nest. ";
         exit;
       }
       ring.makePresent();
       "A closer examination of the nest reveals a diamond ring inside! ";
       addToScore(1, 'finding the ring');
    }
  }
[/code]
You should probably also email Eric and let him know about the bug.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=217&start=0#p1525
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: dobjFor(LookIn) Not functioning properly!(?)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-04-17 10:38:19

[b][size=200]Thank You!!![/size][/b]

I cannot thank you enough for helping me! I was so stuck! LOL
I switched "verify()" to "action()" and it worked like a charm. I am sorry - to the other fellow/gal who replied- about my confusing description! It felt like I was typing in circles while I was typing it, but I did not know how else to describe my problem! LOL

I will email Eric Eve and tell him what I found... I can't imagine that I am the first to run into this problem though! 

Thanks Again!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=216&start=0#p1526
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Reviving the Game of the Month?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-04-19 01:44:48

I wouldn't mind taking part in this again, if someone were to just suggest a game outright and we miss out on the voting process (which I don't think was working very well anyway).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=188&start=0#p1527
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA style games
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2007-04-19 11:59:50

See also my I7 extension "Simple CYOA"

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=218&start=0#p1528
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Letters from Home
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-04-22 18:36:02

I actually [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2007/03/10/letters-from-home-roger-firth-2000/]posted this review[/url] to my website a little while ago -- and it's for an older game -- so apologies if you've already seen it. But I realized I hadn't really publicized it anywhere, so:


Letters from Home (Roger Firth, 2000): a game I didn’t get very far into during its competition release some years ago. I replayed it this evening. It belongs to a small collection of verbal-puzzle interactive fiction where the words used to describe things are more important than the things themselves, along with Infocom’s “Nord and Bert”, Ad Verbum, Puddles on the Path, and Goose, Egg, Badger.


I have to admire LfH on several technical points. The implementation is sparse and anti-mimetic — the game doesn’t pretend to be anything but a highly artificial puzzle — and there isn’t much scenery, but it is all crisply and consistently implemented. Many of the items in room descriptions can’t be used or manipulated, but the game will at least tell you so, rather than pretending not to see any such thing. There were no bugs that I could find, and few infelicitous interactions.

The structural design of the puzzles is fairly forgiving, in the sense that many puzzles are available simultaneously and few of them are dependent in order on the others. Almost every room of the game is accessible from the outset. But there are one or two exceptions — there are a couple of ways to do things out of order and make the game harder to win, and there is also a time limit on the entire process that feels pretty much unnecessary. Thanks to these restrictions, I had to replay the game almost from scratch once, and redo another portion of it at one point. I almost think a forgiving game with just a few such game-closing opportunities is worse than a game full of them — in the latter case, the player is likely to be cautious and save often, whereas in a gentle game they come as an unpleasant shock. The good news is that it’s quite quick to replay bits of the game once you’ve been through them once, so the results of failing once aren’t too severe.

I also found Letters from Home to be the most difficult of they word-game IF I’ve played: there were numerous puzzle solutions for which I needed prompting. This got less severe as the game went on. To some extent I didn’t realize at first just how laterally one has to think about word meanings, synonyms, associations, and word sounds. All the same, there were several of these puzzles that I doubt I would ever have gotten by myself. Here again, the game is almost but not quite fair: most of the solutions involve word associations of some kind, but there are occasionally and inconsistently places where one can interact directly with a written letter or piece of punctuation.

Fortunately, there is a meticulous hint system that covers every step of game-play, so that the lost player can get some encouragement. The hint system is context-sensitive, and is one of the game’s real strengths.

The final puzzle of the game is a crossword to fill in, which can be played at two difficulty levels, depending on how you feel about cryptic crossword hints. Even in hard mode, this was easier than most cryptic crossword puzzles I’ve tried, though, and I was able to get through it without further advice from the hint system.

Even with the hints, I took longer than the competition’s two hours to complete Letters from Home, and needed to make a map with annotations, which I usually skip doing. (Fortunately, mapping this particular game pays off in a rather charming way.)

In the end, the whole thing felt extremely abstract, with almost no story and a minimal investment in my character. It was fun, but for very different reasons than most of the IF I enjoy, since it wasn’t particularly focused on exploration, conventional problem-solving, or story-telling.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=216&start=0#p1529
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Reviving the Game of the Month?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-04-22 18:45:36

I was a bit sorry "All Hope Abandon" didn't really get its time in the sun -- it's one of those games I keep meaning to go back and play, myself.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=219&start=0#p1530
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Another snag in "Heidi" !?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-04-23 12:09:34

Hello again! I am sorry to be so needy!  [emote]Embarassed[/emote]  (LOL) I promise I will try and help you guys out when I figure out TADS 3 enough to understand what's going on!  [emote]Very Happy[/emote] 

I have run into yet another snag while trying to work my way through the "Heidi" game in the "Getting Started in TADS 3" guide. Here's the scoop: I am to the part of the game where I am having a conversation with the charcoal burner (Joe Black) and I am trying to make it so Heidi can ask him about the ring as soon as he mentions it in their dialog. I am using the macro "gSetKnown(ring)" to accomlish this, as per Eric Eve. Here is the code in which this macro appears:

++ SpecialTopic 'ask why' ['ask','why']
  "<q>Why will your name be mud?</q> you want to know.<.p>
  He shakes his head, lets out an enormous sigh, and replies,
  <q>I was going to give her the ring tonight -- her engagement ring --
  only I've gone and lost it. Cost me two months' wages it did. And
  now she'll never speak to me again,</q> he concludes, with another
  mournful shake of the head, <q>never.</q><<gSetKnown(ring)>>"
; 

In the guide, Eric says "Now, once Joe has mentioned the ring, Heidi will be able to ask about it and get a sensible response (see below), even is she hasn't found the ring yet. If you recompile and play the game with these changes, you should find it all works properly."  [emote]Confused[/emote]  However, it is not working properly for me. Even after the burner mentions the ring I still get the "DefaultAskTellTopic" (Code):

; 
++ DefaultAskTellTopic
   "<q>What do you think about <<gTopicText>>?</q> you ask.<.p>
   <q>Ah, yes indeed, <<gTopicText>>,</q> he nods sagely,
   <q><<rand('Quite so', 'You never know', 'Or there again, no 
    indeed')>>.</q>"
; 

Instead of the response I should be getting, (Code):


++ AskTellTopic, StopEventList @ring
   [
     '<q>What happened to the ring -- how did you manage to lose it?</q> you 
       ask.<.p>
     <q>You wouldn\'t believe it.</q> he shakes his head again, <q>I took it 
       out to take a look at it a couple of hours back, and then dropped the
       thing. Before I could pick it up again, blow me if a thieving little
       magpie didn\'t flutter down and fly off with it!</q>',
     '<q>Where do you think the ring could have gone?</q> you wonder.<.p>
     <q>I suppose it\'s fetched up in some nest somewhere,</q> he sighs, 
     <q>Goodness knows how I\'ll ever get it back again!</q>',
     '<q>Would you like me to try to find your ring for you?</q> you 
       volunteer earnestly.<.p>
     <q>Yes, sure, that would be wonderful.</q> he agrees, without sounding
      in the least convinced that you\'ll be able to. '
   ]

Does anyone know why this might be happening? The game compiles and runs, I cannot find any typos in my code anywhere, I've been over it and over it. I've tried retyping it several times in different ways, I tried using the full code "gPlayerChar.setKnowsAbout(ring)" instead of the macro, I've tried moving the property outside of the double quotes ""... all to no avail. 
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
If you have any questions for me, I should be online all day, and I'll check the forum regularly.
Thank you in advance!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=220&start=0#p1531
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Emily Short's review of Ron Weasley and the Quest for Hermio
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-04-23 12:14:32

er, Ron Weasley and the Quest for Hermione. 

It's [url=http://www.joltcountry.com/trottingkrips/ronw.html]here[/url]!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=220&start=0#p1532
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Emily Short's review of Ron Weasley and the Quest for He
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-04-23 12:30:05

Emily Short reviewing an AIF game? Is this for real?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=220&start=0#p1533
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Emily Short's review of Ron Weasley and the Quest for He
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-04-23 13:28:05

It is, in fact, for real.

The review doesn't mostly talk about the sex scenes, though. (Sorry.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=220&start=0#p1534
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Emily Short's review of Ron Weasley and the Quest for He
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-04-24 03:04:16

Probably just as well. The sex scenes are generally the weakest part of most AIF games  [emote]Cool[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=216&start=0#p1535
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Reviving the Game of the Month?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-04-24 12:15:36

I'm for it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=219&start=0#p1536
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: EDITED>>>I am posting a reply to my own topic!
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-04-25 11:51:15

[emote]:D[/emote]  
Hi all!
I am glad to say that I have solved my own problem with the "Heidi" game!

The problem is that the code in the "Getting Started in TADS 3" Guide is missing several <.convstay> commands and the "Burner" character was leaving the conversation node containing the "gSetKnown(ring)" too early. It was, essentially, never receiving the message that Heidi knew about the ring. In order to solve the problem, I had to add the <.convstay> command to the following lines of code:

[b](added code in bold)[/b]

++ SpecialTopic 'ask why' ['ask', 'him', 'why']
"<q>Why will your name be mud?</q> you want to know.<.p>
He shakes his head, lets out an enormous sigh, and replies, <q>I was going to give her the ring tonight -- her engagement ring -- only I've gone and lost it. Cost me two month's wages it did. And now she'll never speak to me again,</q> he concludes, with another mournful shake of the head,<q>never</q><<gSetKnown(ring)>>[b]<.convstay>[/b]"
;
++ DefaultAskTellTopic
"<q>And why does...</q> you begin.<.p>
<q>Mud.</q> he repeats with a dispairing sigh. [b]<.convstay>[/b]"
;
++AskTellTopic, StopEventList @ring
[
'<q>What happened to the ring -- how did you manage to lose it?</q> you ask.<.p>
<q>You wouldn\'t beleive it.</q> he shakes his head again, <q>I took it out to take a look at it a couple of hours back, and then dropped the thing. Before I could pick it up again, blow me if a thieving little magpie didn\'t flutter down and fly off with it!</q>[b]<.convstay>[/b]',
'<q>Where do you think the ring could have gone?</q> you wonder.<.p>
<q>I suppose it\'s fetched up in some nest somewhere,</q> he sighs,
<q>Goodness knows how I\'ll ever get it back again!</q>[b]<.convstay>[/b]',
'<q>Would you like me to try to find your ring for you?</q> you volunteer earnestly.<.p>
<q>Yes, sure, that would be wonderful.</q> he agrees, without sounding in the least convinced that you\'ll be able to.'
]

__________________________________________________________

I hope this helps anyone else who is trying to work their way through Heidi.

Oh, and does anyone know Eric Eve's email address? The only one I could find came back as undeliverable. I was trying to let him know about these little bugs.

Thank you!

EDITED - 4/26/07-
Took out last "<.convstay>" command (in the stop event list about the ring) as it caused the player to become trapped in the conversation node about the ring.
-A.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=219&start=0#p1537
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: I am posting a reply to my own topic!
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2007-04-26 04:46:19

[quote="aubrey_25_99"]
Oh, and does anyone know Eric Eve's email address? The only one I could find came back as undeliverable. I was trying to let him know about these little bugs.

Thank you!
[/quote] 
I PMed you.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=60#p1538
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-04-26 12:03:41

I don't know whether people saw (and Google Groups is awful right now), but the results are out:

<a href="http://www.springthing.net/2007/">http://www.springthing.net/2007/</a>

My reviews have been up for a while, but if anyone's interested and hasn't seen them, they're posted at <a href="http://emshort.wordpress.com/">http://emshort.wordpress.com/</a> .

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=60#p1539
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-04-26 12:52:01

Yes, well done, Victor. Well deserved win. And no, I'm not resentful at all at being beaten. Not at all. Not one bit. Nah.

 [emote]:cry:[/emote]  [emote]:cry:[/emote]  [emote]:cry:[/emote]  [emote]:cry:[/emote]  [emote]:cry:[/emote]  [emote]:cry:[/emote]  [emote]:cry:[/emote] 

[quote]
Google Groups is awful right now
[/quote] 

Number one quote of the year [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=60#p1540
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-04-26 13:02:56

More awful than usual. [emote]Smile[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=60#p1541
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-04-26 13:09:25

A-ha! More fuel for my Forums vs Newsgroups Thesis.

I'm half-tempted to go and post something on RAIF about it now but don't want to wait 3 months for my reply to show up.  [emote]Wink[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=60#p1542
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-04-26 13:12:18

Oh, please don't. It's not going to change anyone's mind. I'm frequently frustrated with Usenet, but I have a different set of frustrations with forums, so...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=221&start=0#p1543
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Input wanted from IF Players
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-04-26 16:31:49

Hi! I am a IF author and I am wondering if any of you IF Gamers would like to, in a sense,  share in the creation of an IF game! I am looking for a new game idea, and I have a vague sense of what I would like to do with it, but what I am really wondering is, what - as a player - would you like to see in a game? As a gamer myself, I know that I have lists of game features and story ideas that I would like to see incorporated into games, IF or otherwise. I assume that every gamer has a similar "wish list" - even if it's just in their head! That is what I am here to pique your brain about. If you could, answer these questions- as briefly or as wordy as you like- and let me in on what you want in an IF game:

1) When you play an IF game, do you want more puzzles or more text and story-line?

2) What has been your biggest dissapointment in the IF games you have played in past? What has been your greatest joy in IF games that you have played in the past?

3) If you could play an IF game about ANYTHING in the known universe, what would it be about?

4) Is there any other comment/suggestion you would like to make about IF games and their content and/or gameplay?

Your time is greatly appreciated! I look forward to reading the responses! I find gamers to be some of the most imaginative people in this world!

Peace and love to all~
Aubrey Brightheart

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=60#p1544
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2007-04-26 22:57:57

[quote="emshort"]
...My reviews have been up for a while, but if anyone's interested and hasn't seen them, they're posted at <a class="postlink" href="http://emshort.wordpress.com/">http://emshort.wordpress.com/</a> .
[/quote] 
I was going to save this until I got home, rather than abusing the uni Internet connection, but I couldn't resist. I'm so curious about the totally different experiences we had with The Epic Origins of CamelGirl!.

I'm not surprised CamelGirl! lost, but I really enjoyed it. (It may even have been my favourite game of the comp.) I never had to resort to the walkthrough once, and while I can see how you would consider the final puzzle underclued, I (for some reason) got it straight away. Possibly this is because I'd earlier found an alternative ending where you get to use a different one of your superpowers. I really liked the ability to discover different endings (and each with their own puzzles, too!).

But it was buggy. I didn't encounter your 'terp issue, but I found a whole lot of bugs of my own, including one bizarre situation where Darcy started following me around the hospital even though she was still supposed to be handcuffed to her bed! I was also irritated by the numerous and unclued ways you could put the game in an unwinnable state.

I've been planning for a while to email the author a list of bugs and encourage her to finish putting the game together, but I haven't had time to go back over it and put a list together. (Forgot to take transcripts while playing, as usual.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=221&start=0#p1545
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Input wanted from IF Players
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-04-27 06:57:12

All of this is, of course, extremely subjective.

1) Personally, I think puzzles have been done to death. I am very interested in games that explore ways of interaction and pacing that are not puzzles. Do something interesting in that regard, and your game will be one I wish to play - even if what you try to do fails. [emote]Smile[/emote]

2) My biggest disappointment was with games that did not allow me to interact on the dimension of the story I was most interested in. For instance: the game poses an interesting moral dilemma, but I only get to solve the puzzles, not take a stance on the dilemma.

3) Surprise me!

4) We need to return to longer pieces. All of us are writing short stories, whereas novels are the more powerful art form. (Ok, I even disagree with that myself, if the statement is left unqualified, but you'll understand what I'm getting at.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=221&start=0#p1546
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Input wanted from IF Players
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-04-27 07:36:28

1. More text and more storyline. I can’t figure out the puzzles half the time and don’t care about them the other half. A game that I can make progress at without having to solve a puzzle every few moves is going to go down better with me than a puzzlefest.

2. Not sure really. Games that don’t have a good ending (if I'm spending weeks struggling to finish a game, at least me achieve something worthwhile at the end) are always a disappointment. Greatest joy? Finding something truly original in a game, or maybe discovering something about a game that I don’t think anyone else knows. (Odds on, everyone else knows about it but the illusion that I've found it first is nice.)

3. The winning lottery numbers.

4. I agree with Victor. Longer games. Let me have something to sink my teeth into. Don’t spend 6 months writing a game that I’ll finish in 6 minutes. Also, have replay value. If I particularly like a game, and there are multiple paths through it, I’ll play it again and again to see what else it has to offer. If there's only one path, I’ll play it once and then forget about it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28&start=60#p1547
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2007
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-04-27 11:20:24

Part of it was that I lost faith in the game pretty early on -- that it would be implemented without bugs, that the puzzles would be clear enough for me to solve -- and that made me more willing to go to the walkthrough later when I was stumped temporarily on anything.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=222&start=0#p1548
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Stupid n00b with a question.
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-05-02 13:24:26

I'm trying to make a gun with one shot in it. I pulled the code for the gun itself from the example on making an item that breaks when shot and that works fine, but I can't seem to find any instruction on how to limit ammo or break the gun when shot (either one will work since it is only meant to be fired once). Can anyone point me in the right direction?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=222&start=0#p1549
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stupid n00b with a question.
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-05-02 16:48:56

Sure. I suppose you have created an action called 'shooting', or something like that? A clean implementation would look something like this:

[code]The gun is either loaded or unloaded. The gun is loaded.

Before shooting the gun:
   if the gun is loaded, say "You have no ammo left!" instead.

After shooting the gun:
   now the gun is unloaded.[/code]

I think that should work.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=221&start=0#p1550
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Input wanted from IF Players
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-05-02 18:06:09

If we're allowed to lobby for styles/genres that we'd like to see -- I really enjoy historical IF, and wish there were more of it.

As for what people liked or didn't like about past games, probably the best way to build up a sense of such things is to read a lot of reviews of IF, and see what people thought worked and didn't work.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=222&start=0#p1551
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stupid n00b with a question.
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-05-02 19:20:07

Awesome. Thank you.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=222&start=0#p1552
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stupid n00b with a question.
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-05-03 04:44:46

[code]
Before shooting the gun:
   if the gun is loaded, say "You have no ammo left!" instead.
[/code] 

Shouldn't that be *un*loaded?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=222&start=0#p1553
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stupid n00b with a question.
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-05-03 06:42:42

Yes, it should.  [emote]Embarassed[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=221&start=0#p1554
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Input wanted from IF Players
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-05-04 06:32:52

[quote="aubrey_25_99"]
1) When you play an IF game, do you want more puzzles or more text and story-line?

2) What has been your biggest dissapointment in the IF games you have played in past? What has been your greatest joy in IF games that you have played in the past?

3) If you could play an IF game about ANYTHING in the known universe, what would it be about?

4) Is there any other comment/suggestion you would like to make about IF games and their content and/or gameplay?
[/quote] 

1) I prefer puzzles that fit in the story. The optimum being a great, immersive story with difficult (but not too difficult) fair puzzles that seem natural part of the plot. I think "Spider and Web" did this pretty well.

2) I don't play games I don't like for long enough to be truly disappointed. Of course I remember the times an infocom title didn't live up to my expectations. After the era of commercial IF, I was overwhelmed by Necrotic Drift (which raimains one of my favorite text adventures of all time), Anchorhead and Gateway II: Homeworld (I now it's commercial, but I played it just a year ago).

3) That doesn't really matter to me, but I tend to like science-fiction and fantasie/horror stories. On the other hand, I also loved "Blue Chairs" and I couldn't tell you exactly what that's about.

4) Make your game logical, fair and with a reasonable plot. Text adventures should follow the same rules as a good movie or novel do.

Bob

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=10#p1557
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-05-09 07:37:44

Speaking of your blog, Chris, where is it?  I was looking forward to a nice r*if digest when you mentioned it, but the link seems to be broken.

Hello, everyone.  My name is Skye Nathaniel Schiefer; I am 24 years old and have spent most of my life in New Jersey (USA), though not by my choosing.  I have a well-credentialed BA in Philosophy (of Religion, as opposed to of Logic), and a very impressive, grossly unfocused resume that could only serve to open unappealing doors.  It's been about two years since I graduated, and I've probably spent a little more of that time out of work than in it, stretching that post-collegiate "I-got-a-philosophy-degree" limbo state as long as possible among brief fits and starts of employment, in spite of the pressures applied by my creditors.  Read between the lines, people: I LIVE AT HOME WITH MY MOMMY AND DADDY.

My interests, aspirations, and unfinished projects include a long essay interpreting Jason Molina's music as a kind of philosophy of the blues, a screenplay and storyboard for an original film, a book outlining my scientific interpretation of the universe as a series of self-abstractions in which human society and technology represents the latest redefinition of the natural, a neverending stream of frustration with the oligarchical financial foundations of American democracy and the weakness of the United Nations as an international governmental body in a young global age, the occassional intricate, narrative mix cd, a couple of original videogame designs, and generally being an awesome and brilliant fellow.

My background regarding interactive media lies mostly in the realm of videogames such as (to name a few favorites and important influences) Ico, Earthbound, Silent Hill, Silent Hill 2, Super Metroid, Half-Life 2, Uplink, and Metal Gear Solid 3.  I've spent the past few years analyzing such works among a forum-based community that does not shy from theoretical debate, and I take interactive media in general seriously a priori as an emerging set of formats whose fundamental designer/player joint authorship presents a new direction for artistic expression that is of ever greater central importance and contemporary relevance.  As implied by this feeling, I basically consider interactive fiction to be the future of literature.  I told you I was an awesome guy!

Although I am certain I was exposed to the text adventures of the '80s, I honestly remember the likes of [url=http://www.faculty.uaf.edu/ffpgl/Downloads/TUTORDOS.ZIP]TutorDOS[/url] more clearly than any games of that time.  I was more involved with my Texas Instruments and Commodore 64 than the young personal computers available then.  However, when graphic adventures became common, I played Sierra and LucasArts titles prolifically even during the golden years of the SNES.  I never became involved in the modern IF community, whether or not I was aware of its existence or size.  Then, last year, a member of the videogame forum I mentioned posted something of an announcement about Inform7.  We all became very excited, and several members of the community authored their own titles to test the language for themselves (for [url=http://www.skinnycoder.com/navigawrimo/agordon/killbotz.zip]example[/url]).  Since then, I have habitually loaded up the I7 homepage just to browse through it for the umpteenth time and dwell upon the implications of a natural language development system's existence.

About a month ago, something grabbed hold of me and I wildly explored every nook of the modern IF community, browsing, researching, and learning everything I could about the medium.  I made an extensive, carefully selected and organized compilation cd including everything from a z-code implementation of Eliza from 1966 to the four Spring Thing 2007 entrants, as well as a library of mini-competitions and projects, documentation such as historical and theoretical papers, abuses and oddities, and installation files for interpreters.  I also wrote a .txt file introducing the compilation and providing a basic overview and instructions.  Really, the whole thing got started because I wanted to introduce my friend to IF, and somewhere along the line I became obsessive and took the project as far as possible.  Unfortunately, it's not something I can offer to distribute in any way since it includes z-code versions of all the Infocom titles, which Activision has not yet abandoned.  Anyway, after I got done with this, I just sort of kept going, continuing to read [i]about[/i] IF far more than actually reading IF, mostly because I am so impressed by the depth and sophistication of the IF community and want to soak it all in.

So I have a huge amount of IF lined up to read.  Once I have -- once I've seen how experienced authors have tackled certain prickly design problems, and once I've been generally inspired and blown away by everything and seen what I'm up against -- I have no doubt that I'll eventually write my own piece with I7.  After all, I found all of this because of my lasting excitement for I7, so becoming an Inform author myself will be a wonderful bit of full circle closure as well as the start of a whole new adventure.  In the meantime, I hope to talk about theory and design a great deal with you fine folks.  I'm looking forward to it!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=216&start=0#p1558
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Reviving the Game of the Month?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-05-09 07:55:55

I think this is a great idea.  The videogame forum community I partake in randomly throws out "game club" announcements, and anyone interested simply makes time for whatever the title is.  When a group of people do that at roughly the same time, interesting discussion is nearly inevitable.  It works really well, and I'd love to participate in an IF equivalent.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=225&start=0#p1559
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Not actually IF: "What Makes You Tick?"
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-05-09 14:18:42

Recently I tried some a classic-style freeware graphical adventure called "What Makes You Tick?" It struck me as the kind of thing IF players might also like -- my fuller comments are [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2007/05/08/what-makes-you-tick/]here[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=216&start=0#p1560
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Reviving the Game of the Month?
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2007-05-09 22:52:42

Err, yep ... seconded (Thirded? Fourthed?)

So - continue with All Hope Abandon, or choose another one?

David Fisher

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=221&start=0#p1561
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Input wanted from IF Players
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2007-05-09 23:47:52

[quote="aubrey_25_99"]
1) When you play an IF game, do you want more puzzles or more text and story-line?

2) What has been your biggest dissapointment in the IF games you have played in past? What has been your greatest joy in IF games that you have played in the past?

3) If you could play an IF game about ANYTHING in the known universe, what would it be about?

4) Is there any other comment/suggestion you would like to make about IF games and their content and/or gameplay?
[/quote]           

1) Original story line with naturally-fitting puzzles (possibly optional, with lots of clues). I don't like being "stuck"; there needs to be a clear way forward.

I'm probably not an average IF player in this respect, though - other people don't seem to mind being stuck as much. If a try for a while and then turn to the walkthrough, and find that the solution was unfair, that puts me off completely and I stop playing (or just play through the rest using the walkthrough).

2) Disappointment - unfair puzzles, along with parsers not understanding things they need to (eg. synonyms).

Joy - stuff I can actually do! Puzzles that are not too obvious but not to hard, either. Being guided but not over-restricted is also fun for me (ie. having genuine choices, but not being overwhelmed with unguided freedom). I also like stories that fit together well, and have a satisfying conclusion.

3) Just to contradict myself - I love the idea of a game where you can do "anything". If the goals were really clear, I would be thrilled with a game that had several hundred solutions to a puzzle. "Metamorphoses" was a step in this direction with its transformation of objects, but the story line didn't grab me too much.

One of my way-too-big background projects is along these lines - you can turn into an animal (any animal at all; I have a list of several hundred, along with their abilities). That one will probably never get finished, but it's fun to think about.

4) Comments - don't be restricted to what exists already. There are standard ways of doing things like conversation and world modelling, but there is scope for some radically different approaches as well.

General thoughts ... when you write a game, think about gameplay - what the experience will be like for the player:

Author thinks - "Give them a whole world to explore!"
Player thinks - "OK, here I am in the middle of nowhere ... what on earth am I supposed to do now?"

Author thinks - "I'll give the PC more character by letting the player experience their daily routine."
Player thinks - "OK, get out my wallet, show my id ... that's the third time now ... I wish this happened automatically ..."

Author thinks - "X needs to happen before Y, so I better stop the player from entering that room until they've done X."
Player thinks - "Why can't I go into that room? 'You don't want to do that yet'. Yes I do! Don't tell me what I want!"

David Fisher

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=216&start=0#p1562
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Reviving the Game of the Month?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-05-10 01:48:46

I'm happy with that one. I never did get round to finishing it off.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=219&start=0#p1563
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Another snag in "Heidi" !?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-05-10 15:36:15

If I recall correctly, the <<>> syntax can only be used with function calls that take no arguments. So <<gSetKnown(ring)>> won't work. You can easily create your own method (even within the same topic object), call it from within the quotation, and use it to call gSetKnown(ring).

Hope this helps.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=10#p1564
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-05-11 07:00:30

Hello, my name is Chephren Mansley, and I'm from the uk.  I'm a 21 year old student, and I've been interested in IF since about 2000.  My interest in the IF scene has drifted in and out, but always seems to return, I've started a few games over the years, and never really got anywhere, still, I'm optimistic at some time I will suceed in creating something.  I joined these boards, because I felt a sudden desire to discuss IF, or at least to distract myself in a whole new way.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=216&start=10#p1565
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Reviving the Game of the Month?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-05-11 07:04:43

I'm up for this, I need an excuse to play a game.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=221&start=0#p1566
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Input wanted from IF Players
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-05-11 07:23:46

1) I prefer non-puzzly games, or if it has puzzles, I like easy puzzles.  Or if the puzzles aren't easy it should still be possible to make progress in someway.  My main problem is I have a short attention span, as soon as I stop making progress, my interest quickly fades

2) I wouldn't really say I have had many disappointments, as I usually don't have much in the way of expectations.  The games that have given me the greatest joy are 'The Dreamhold', 'Savoir Faire', and 'Fallacy of Dawn', and I have enjoyed other games by the authors of these as well.

3) I don't really care what a game is about, execution is everything.

4) Lots of things I could say.  One of them is, if you have puzzles, try to make it so that the player's erroneous attempts to solve it gently guide him or her to the solution, instead of shutting them out with 'You can't do that', 'thats not a verb I recognise' messages.  That way even puzzle-weaklings can solve the game, without having to endure the humbling process of continually checking the walkthrough/hints.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=225&start=0#p1567
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not actually IF: "What Makes You Tick?"
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-05-14 13:49:02

Yeah, I read about this at an Adventure Game site. It's written with the Lassie game studio, which (I think) is Flash-based?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=188&start=0#p1568
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA style games
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-05-14 13:52:55

I was at the Wichita River Festival this weekend (a yearly thing, here), at the Art and Book fair, where I found a box-full of classic "Choose Your Own Adventure" brand books. I found a few misellaneous CYOA-style books in addition, including four in a "Time Machine" series, a Zork CYOA, a D&D CYOA, and a "Twist of Fate" or two. Also, I found all but one in a pair of quadrilogies called "Escape from Fromme" and "Escape from Tenopia" (or something like that). They were $0.25 each, so I couldn't pass them up. [emote]Smile[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=188&start=0#p1569
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA style games
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-05-14 14:16:49

Ah, the good old CYOA gamebooks. I have fond memories of them from my mispent youth, though I seem to remember that as with most gamebook series the earlier ones were a lot better than the later ones.

"Escape From Fromme" and "Escape From Tenopia" sound familiar but I don't think I ever read them. What are they about?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=225&start=0#p1570
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not actually IF: "What Makes You Tick?"
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-05-15 11:53:14

Yes -- it's really very pretty, with elegant and stylish drawings and some nice animated sequences. The sound quality is good as well.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=188&start=0#p1571
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA style games
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-05-16 07:56:08

Looks like fantasy, but I haven't checked them out yet. They're still in the box I carried them home in.

My wife is a social worker in an elementary school. I think some of the kids would like these kinds of books, so I'm going to send some with her to give away. At a minimum, I'll probably keep the Zork one.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=188&start=10#p1572
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA style games
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2007-05-17 12:58:20

Tenopia: <a href="http://gamebooks.org/show_series.php?id=140">http://gamebooks.org/show_series.php?id=140</a>
Frome: <a href="http://gamebooks.org/show_series.php?id=141">http://gamebooks.org/show_series.php?id=141</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=226&start=0#p1574
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Shada: Doctor Who by Douglas Adams
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-05-21 20:47:33

Following up old bookmarks tonight, as I do from time to time, I came across this on the BBC's Doctor Who page. It's a webcast (Flash animation with an audio-only version) of a re-done Douglas Adams story from the Doctor Who series. It looks to have started filming in the Tom Baker era, but abandoned, and now re-done with the 8th Doctor (the guy who was only in that movie with Eric Roberts a few years back - not a TV series). I started the first couple chapters of the first episode, and it looks like it might be interesting for Doctor Who and Douglas Adams fans alike.

<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/webcasts/shada/">http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/webcasts/shada/</a>

Enjoy.

---- Mike.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=88&start=20#p1575
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Baron - Discussion Thread *SPOILERS*
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-05-25 00:59:26

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]
As a part of my research for [i]The Baron[/i], I searched the internet for websites with the intent of helping abusive adults to stop their abuse. I could not find a single one. 
[/quote]  

Aha!  Interesting.  Because this was exactly my problem with the game itself.  It talked at great length about the situation of child abuse, and had some speculation about what could be done about it, but nothing at all about what *should* be done about it.  All I was left with was my own uninformed opinions of the matter, and I already *know* my own opinions.  I wanted the game to tell me something I didn't already know, or at least offer an opinion on something, but there was nothing there.

Game:  Here is a horrible situation!  What do you do?
Me:  OK, I try this.
Game:  OK.
Me: ...
Game: ...
Me:  So... I did something.  What happens?
Game:  What do you think happens?
Me:  Maybe this?
Game:  OK.
Me: ...
Game: ...
Me:  But what does it mean?
Game:  What do you think it means?
Me:  OK, I'm done playing with you if you're going to be like that.
Game: No, it's OK, I was done anyway.
Me: ...

So I ended up fairly frustrated at the whole conclusion.  The setup was, I felt, well done.  But forcing me to write the ending just felt like a cop-out.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=213&start=0#p1576
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Delightful Wallpaper - puzzle design
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-05-25 01:19:29

Neither the first part of the game nor the second part of the game worked for me, for two very different reasons.  The first part of the game was a puzzle which is exactly the sort of puzzle I often greatly enjoy.  I subscribe to 'Games' magazine and it reminded me of something straight out of there.  But the IF interface killed it for me.  I couldn't keep the layout of everything in my head (let alone the rules), and I felt resentful at having to write down a puzzle that should have started off written down.  I probably would have played and solved it if there had been a provided graphical map, even one as basic as the one in 'Lock and Key'.

The second part of the game lost me because I was being asked to kill people, and in exchange I was offered couplets.  This would have possibly been OK with me if the people had been worth killing, or maybe if I was a huge Gorey fan, but I'm not.  And then the game asked me to kill a little girl, and I told the game, "Damn you and your couplets, I'm not killing off a young girl," and quit.  I've played 'Shade', I know what the deal is.  If the only winning move is not to play, I can do that.  I won't *enjoy* it, but I know I'll enjoy it more than playing through to the end, so hey.

This felt quite ideosyncratic even at the time, and I would not recommend or disrecommend the game based on my reaction.

But I do wish the first half of the game had had a GUI.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=213&start=0#p1577
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Delightful Wallpaper - puzzle design
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-05-25 06:25:03

I don't think I even got as far as the second part, or at least didn't progress very far into it if I did. The puzzle design? Well... I was vaguely aware as I was moving about that certain things were being changed by my actions but I was never sure just what they were or if I should be trying to manipulate my surroundings in this way or it was simply something that was happening. Maybe if I wasn't trying to stick to the two hour limit on IFComp games I'd have been more willing to spend some more time on the game and I'd have realised what was going on, but the time limit meant I was pretty much rushing from one place to another with barely any opportunity to digest what was going on. So I spent half the game without a clue what was happening and the other half following the walkthrough, neither of which left me with very fond memories of the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=103&start=0#p1578
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 General Release
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-05-27 10:18:39

For those that have missed the discussion on raif, there is a new alpha release of TADS3 ver. 3.0.15 which can be found here: 

<a href="http://www.tads.org/tads3alpha.htm">http://www.tads.org/tads3alpha.htm</a>

Original raif discussion is here:

<a href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_frm/thread/71a693cf3ebf8ca2/7de6e0f39cb8092a#7de6e0f39cb8092a">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts ... f39cb8092a</a>

Has anyone else had time to use it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=227&start=0#p1579
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: TADS 3 or Inform 7
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-05-27 10:23:25

Hello,

I'm just starting to play around with TADS3 and was curious if others may have done so [b]and[/b] have experiences with Inform 7. Is anyone here familiar enough with both systems to make a comparison as far as ease of use?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=10#p1580
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-05-27 10:28:55

Hello,

I'm a long time lurker of the IF community and have recently decided to actually take part, particularly now when 2 new robust authoring systems are evolving out of beta. I've also signed into <a href="http://www.ifwiki.org">www.ifwiki.org</a> and hope to help fill in empty pages as penance for my long term silence.  [emote]Smile[/emote] 

I really like the idea of a moderated set of forums beyond the looseness of the rec.arts groups. Just needs more traffic here.  [emote]Wink[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=228&start=0#p1581
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Malinche Games
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-05-27 10:36:55

Has anyone actually played one of this companies works? I realize the company has a bad standing with the IF community overall (I even got into the fray), but wanted to know if someone has bitten bullet or knows someone who has.

The only review I found is at JustAdventure: 

<a href="http://www.justadventure.com/reviews/Pentari/Pentari.shtm">http://www.justadventure.com/reviews/Pe ... ntari.shtm</a>

But it certainly looks like the reviewer hasn't played enough modern IF to give his opinion levity.

::EDIT::

Okay, found another two, same reviewer, different Malinche games. Seems he's cooled to further Malinche offerings.

The First Mile.

<a href="http://www.justadventure.com/reviews/FirstMile/FirstMile.shtm">http://www.justadventure.com/reviews/Fi ... tMile.shtm</a>

And Greystone.

<a href="http://www.justadventure.com/reviews/Greystone/Greystone.shtm">http://www.justadventure.com/reviews/Gr ... stone.shtm</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=228&start=0#p1582
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Malinche Games
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2007-05-27 11:33:01

I've tried some of them myself, and I once planned on writing my comments about it somewhere. However, I was sufficiently warned about Sherman. I'd rather not comment on it.  [emote]Wink[/emote] 

Try going through the rec.arts.int-fiction archives and see for yourself.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=229&start=0#p1583
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Beginner Links
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-05-27 12:49:53

Since I'm on a posting rampage I thought I'd compile some beginner links. Feel free to offer others I may have missed.

Emily Short's Introduction to IF (pdf):

<a href="http://inform-fiction.org/I7Downloads/Examples/dm/IntroductionToIF.pdf">http://inform-fiction.org/I7Downloads/E ... onToIF.pdf</a>

The IFWiki FAQ for beginners:

<a href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/FAQ">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/FAQ</a>

Jess Knoch's Getting Started Guide (circa 2002):

<a href="http://www.strangebreezes.com/if/writings/newbie.htm">http://www.strangebreezes.com/if/writings/newbie.htm</a>

Fredrik Ramsberg's Beginner's Guide to Playing IF:

<a href="http://www.microheaven.com/IFGuide/">http://www.microheaven.com/IFGuide/</a>

The iFAQ:

<a href="http://www.plover.net/~textfire/raiffaq/ifaq/">http://www.plover.net/~textfire/raiffaq/ifaq/</a>

Brass Lantern's Beginner's Resources:

<a href="http://brasslantern.org/beginners/">http://brasslantern.org/beginners/</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=228&start=0#p1584
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Malinche Games
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-05-28 05:50:16

I played one game that someone sent me and my opinion of it pretty much mirrored what I'd heard from everyone else about it: that it wasn't much good. There were a lot of bugs, a lot of typos and a lot of things that just didn't make any sense (in one location I hit someone and broke his nose, yet the room description still indicated he was standing calmly by the bar; in another location, exits moved entirely at random). I haven't played any of the later Malinche games, more due to Howard Sherman's personality (or lack of) than anything else, so maybe he's improved but part of me finds that I don't really care. I certainly don't intend to buy a game by someone like him.

But as he's sold 150,000 copies of his games, I guess me not buying them won't bother him too much... [emote]Smile[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=230&start=0#p1585
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: system functions
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-05-30 08:43:50

I'm trying to understand the inner workings of Inform, and can't seem to find where the system functions (child, children, elder, eldest, indirect, etc) defined in lexer.c are implemented. Can anyone set me on the right path on this?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=230&start=0#p1586
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: system functions
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-05-30 10:02:36

I think I found the answer to my own question.... expressc.c, function generate_code_from, case FCALL_OP

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=227&start=0#p1587
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: TADS 3 or Inform 7
User: George / DateTime: 2007-05-30 10:31:01

Yes I have, and I (a novice programmer, not expert in any language, IF or general-purpose) don't think either language is more difficult than the other, like TADS3 might be more difficult than say, ADRIFT. 

I don't think you'll have much trouble seeing the major differences between TADS3 and I7 if you write a short game in both of them. Also if you're not familiar with Firth's Cloak of Darkness comparison page, here it is -- poke around and you'll find the same game in TADS3 and I7. 

<a href="http://www.firthworks.com/roger/cloak/">http://www.firthworks.com/roger/cloak/</a>

However I think the language itself is only half of the experience writing games in either language -- the out-of-the-box UI for either language is itself different enough between the two platforms, and the library differences (generally that you create in I7 what you customize in TADS3) make up the other half of writing your game.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=231&start=0#p1588
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Upgrade phpBB
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-05-31 09:49:21

Rioshin -- do you know if they ever came out with a database upgrade utility for the latest phpBB, from this beta? Is the "release" version out now, by chance? I figured it might have an upgrade option or something, so it could be done without data loss...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=231&start=0#p1589
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Upgrade phpBB
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2007-06-02 04:26:37

[quote="Merk"]
Rioshin -- do you know if they ever came out with a database upgrade utility for the latest phpBB, from this beta? Is the "release" version out now, by chance? I figured it might have an upgrade option or something, so it could be done without data loss...
[/quote] 
I'm currently looking at it, since they've come out with RC1...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=232&start=0#p1590
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: "Adventurer's Consumer Guide"
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-06-04 18:10:15

My review of Oyvind Thorsby's Adventurer's Consumer Guide is now up at IF review: 

<a href="http://www.ministryofpeace.com/if-review/reviews/20070601.html">http://www.ministryofpeace.com/if-revie ... 70601.html</a>

Anyone else playing this one?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=233&start=0#p1591
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: If/Begin/End If problem - please help!
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-06-05 18:05:56

Hi,
First of all this is my first post on this forum and I am a relatively new I7 user, so bear with me.

I am making a pretty simple(or atleast I think) conversation system. An NPC can have 4 different emotions "towards the player"(neutral, happy, mad, sad). Depending on the emotion(and in the case of my current NPC, whether it considers the player "noble enough"), and possibly other things(like if the player has done something) there will be a different response. Simple, eh?

Well, my problem is I get this error-
[quote]
Problem. You wrote 'end if'  : but I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with, so I am ignoring this sentence altogether.
[/quote] 

Here is my source(some things not having to do with the conversation are summed up so you can just paste it directly into I7)-
[code]
A person can be happy, mad, sad, or neutral.

The Gazebo is a room. Nobleman's Robes being worn by the Player.

The Nobleman is a person in the Gazebo. The Nobleman is neutral.

After asking the Nobleman about [weather]:
 if player is not wearing Nobleman's Robes begin;
  say "'Ha! Me talk to a simpleton like you?'".;
  Now the Nobleman is mad.;
 otherwise;
 if Nobleman is neutral, say "'It seems good.'";
 if Nobleman is happy, say "'The weather is great!'";
 if Nobleman is mad, say "He seems to be ignoring you.";
 if Nobleman is sad, say "'Horrible.'";
end if.

After asking the Nobleman about [ugliness]:
 if player is not wearing Nobleman's Robes begin;
   say "'Why would I talk with YOU about THAT?'".;
   Now the Nobleman is mad.;
 otherwise;
 if Nobleman is neutral begin; 
  say "'Are you saying I am ugly?'";
  Now the Nobleman is sad.;
 end if.
 if Nobleman is happy begin; 
  say "'What is that supposed to mean?'";
  Now the Nobleman is neutral.;
 end if.
 if Nobleman is mad, say "He seems to be ignoring you.";
 if Nobleman is sad begin; 
  say "'How dare you?'";
  Now the Nobleman is mad.;
 end if.
end if.[/code]

I don't know what is wrong, though I think there must be a more efficient way to do all the above.

Thanks ahead of time,
>BRW<

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=233&start=0#p1592
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: If/Begin/End If problem - please help!
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-06-05 19:52:17

You're running into trouble nesting your if-statements.

The more efficient way to deal with this is to use a series of "otherwise if" constructs. The following compiles and (I think) does what you want:

[code]A person can be happy, mad, sad, or neutral.

The Gazebo is a room. Nobleman's Robes are worn by the Player.

The Nobleman is a person in the Gazebo. The Nobleman is neutral.

After asking the Nobleman about "weather":
if player is not wearing Nobleman's Robes begin;
  say "'Ha! Me talk to a simpleton like you?'";
  Now the Nobleman is mad;
otherwise;
if Nobleman is neutral, say "'It seems good.'";
if Nobleman is happy, say "'The weather is great!'";
if Nobleman is mad, say "He seems to be ignoring you.";
if Nobleman is sad, say "'Horrible.'";
end if.

After asking the Nobleman about "ugliness":
if player is not wearing Nobleman's Robes begin;
   say "'Why would I talk with YOU about THAT?'".;
   Now the Nobleman is mad;
otherwise if Nobleman is neutral; 
  say "'Are you saying I am ugly?'";
  Now the Nobleman is sad.;
otherwise if Nobleman is happy; 
  say "'What is that supposed to mean?'";
  Now the Nobleman is neutral.;
otherwise if Nobleman is mad;
	 say "He seems to be ignoring you.";
otherwise if Nobleman is sad; 
  say "'How dare you?'";
  Now the Nobleman is mad; 
end if.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=233&start=0#p1593
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: If/Begin/End If problem - please help!
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-06-06 07:58:13

Works great!

Thanks very much,
>BRW<

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=234&start=0#p1594
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Game to load and play in website?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-06-10 22:16:44

Some of Emily Short's games are available to play online. How could I do that?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=234&start=0#p1595
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Game to load and play in website?
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2007-06-11 09:41:40

If you want to put z-code games online, my recommendation would be the Java-based [url=http://sourceforge.net/projects/zmpp]ZMPP[/url] (Z-Machine Preservation Project). For TADS 2 games, grab [url=http://www.drizzle.com/~dans/if/jetty]Jetty[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=234&start=0#p1596
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Game to load and play in website?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-06-11 11:02:15

Thank you!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=235&start=0#p1597
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Ideas to turn a single player adventure into multi-player
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-06-14 06:15:13

The basic idea is old, and I believe that every follower of interactive fiction has already thought about it. There are so many great text adventures with such great stories and sceneries, it is a pity that they are doomed to stay single player adventures! Would it not be great if we could walk through our beloved adventures online, together with others?

The other part is: I used to be a MUD player and developer. Lately, I looked on some LPC source code (this is the language used for programming many MUDs). I found it awful, could not find any documentation and quickly closed it again. It would be great if MUDs could be programmed as easily as Inform 7, for example. How about joining both?

The idea is in my mind for several years now, and I always turn it back, thinking it would be impossible to make a single-player game multi-player. There are good arguments for that. My main interest would be adding multi-player support to Inform 7. That would just rock! (Do You know if any such project already exists? I am sure that I am not the only one with that idea.)

But Inform is inherently single-player. The engine is created to support only one player.

Wait a minute! There are text adventures in which You can switch Your character, so You can control a group of people. Wouldn't that be a starting point for making a text adventure multi-player?

Imagine the MUD server is just a program that the clients connect to, and internally, it is running a Z machine, for example. The server is really not much more than a filtering proxy for the Z machine. When player X sends command A, the proxy server forwards the command to the Z machine. But it alters the command a little bit, so the Z machine can recognize from whom the command came. For example, it might send to the Z machine: "(X) A". The Z machine's parser would be slightly altered, so that it recognizes this as the command "switch into character X, then execute command A".

Then, the server captures all the output from the Z machine and sends it back to the client.

For a very first, super simple version, this might work. However, more is neccessary of course: When someone enters a room, all the other players in the same room are supposed to see something like "X has entered the room", while the player who has entered the room should see "You have entered the room". (I think those messages could be captured with the same mechanism that a single-player game player could "see through the eyes" of an NPC, for example when the adventure involves remote controlling a robot.)

Well, can be done. Just like the proxy prefixes every player's command when forwarding it to the Z machine, the Z machine can prefix every line of output with the player it is directed to. In that way, a simple protocol can be defined which can be used not only with the Z machine but with every IF system for which someone wrote a multi-player library patch. (Actually, the protocol would be somewhat different. For example, it would be better to use connection IDs instead of player names.)

Of course, there would be more issues to be addressed. For example, commands like undo, save and load must be deactivated. The server would need to create a save file regularly and back it up. Probably, some engine limitations would have to be broken or bended: For a MUD, it would be good to have the possibility of creating objects dynamically. (Still, it is possible without dynamic object creation. But even a moderately frequented MUD would have an enormous number of objects soon.) Some limitations could be overcome by having several Z machines running at the same time, serving different regions of the game world. (When a player goes from one region to another, the proxy transparently switches him to another Z machine, passing all the character's data to the new Z machine.) I also believe that the proxy would need to be able to have some introspection into the game world and the character's states.

Another issue is the passing of time. This might be a kill criterion why the majority of existing text adventures would not work in multi-player mode (apart from the structure of the story itself, which is always only around one player and would be inconsistent with several players). Maybe this could also be solved.

Updates are also a most critical issue. How do I update the game world when a bug was fixed? (Sounds like a killer first, but I have ideas on that one.)

You might say that this would be a very great waste of performance. But think again! The Z machine runs lightning fast. (And the other IF engines as well, by the way.) I think they are better suited for MUD development than any of the actual MUD systems, at least if You want role playing flavored MUDs.

Please think about my ideas. What do You think of them? I know, it sounds naive at first sight, but the longer I think about it, the more plausible it seems to me.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=215&start=0#p1598
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ANNOUNCE: HP Lovecraft Commonplace Book Comp and Exhibit
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2007-06-20 13:34:51

Peter Nepstad has announced the games for the Lovecraft Commonplace Book Comp are [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/msg/0c40505ba0d2d669]now available[/url].

It's on the same website for the exhibit: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.illuminatedlantern.com/if/lovecraft.html">http://www.illuminatedlantern.com/if/lovecraft.html</a>

Good luck to all the entrants!  [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=20#p1599
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-06-23 16:28:25

Hello,

My name is Ben, 24, I'm from Slovenia. I'm a student of electrical engineering (about to graduate) with too much time on my hands, and Interactive Fiction has been one of my main hobbies for quite a few years. I also love music (playing and listening to), hiking, and Steel Panthers: World at War. 8) 

My very first taste of IF was a hilarious Legend's masterpiece called "Eric The Unready". I still think this is one of the best (and funniest) games ever made, and I can't possibly recommend it enough. [emote]:lol:[/emote] I played some other Legend games as well (especially both "Gateways" and the "Spellcasting" series - which I still believe Harry Potter is based upon 8O), and some modern titles (though I'm afraid I have lots of catching-up to do in this area).

Since I also love to write, it wasn't long before I started to fiddle around with Inform 6, trying to create a game of my own. So my first "exercise" in designing IF was a recreation of a certain act from "The Dig", a graphical game by Lucas Arts, and to my surprise it actually came out quite well. 

However, I realize that I will never be able to write a truly solid game; it's the language that's causing the problem. [emote]:cry:[/emote] Though I have the general grasp of English, which is good enough for everyday chat on forums and such, it's not nearly enough for what is required from an IF author. I'll never be able to express myself quite as well in English as I can in my own language, Slovene.

So at the moment I seem to be on a special quest: I'm desperately trying to wake up (or create from nothing, for that matter) our own, Slovene IF community. In my country, the IF medium seems to be completely overlooked, which is just sad. [emote]:([/emote] So last October I even made a translation of Inform 6 libraries to Slovene (if anyone's interested, they're located here: [url]http://sloif.freehost386.com[/url]), and now I'm trying to recruit some other enthusiasts like me to actually write some Slovenian games. So far, I haven't had much luck, but I'm not willing to give up just yet. [emote];)[/emote] 

Anyway, so far I really like these forums and I think I'll spend quite some time here in the future. Cheers!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=20#p1600
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: George / DateTime: 2007-06-24 12:32:56

Welcome to the forums, Ben. Have you written all of your IF in Slovene so far? It might be worth a shot to write a game in English, though I know there's only so much time in the day to do all the projects you want to do (let alone do them in more than one language). I looked over your site and it made me want to learn Slovene! Good luck.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=20#p1601
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-06-24 13:49:01

Thanks for the kind words, George! [emote]:)[/emote] 

Yes, time is definitely the problem (at least truly dedicating it to just one activity). So far the only thing I am able to show in English (though it's very basic) is the mentioned adaptation of The Dig ([url]http://www2.arnes.si/~blipov/TheDigDemoEng.z5[/url]), but I do have a few other projects open as well. One of them, I think, is very good in concept - but I'm not sure how soon (if at all) it'll be finished... It seems that I'm quite quick and enthusiastic when it comes to building up the "frame" (coding etc.), but filling it with words (especially in English, of course) takes time... [emote]:cry:[/emote]  

Anyway, like I said - my current goal is bringing IF to Slovenia, and if I manage to attract at least half a dozen "followers" here, I'll consider it a job well done. [emote];)[/emote] In the meantime, I'll keep on reading, playing, and dreaming about this fascinating medium I've grown so fond of. No matter the language. [emote]:D[/emote]

Cheers!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=236&start=0#p1602
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: The Traveling Swordsman - Source Code
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-07-05 08:57:37

I have now released the source code to Tales of the Traveling Swordsman. It's on the official TTS page here:
[url]http://www.sidneymerk.com/tts.shtml[/url]

The direct download is here:
[url]http://www.sidneymerk.com/zips/tts_src.zip[/url]

This also includes design notes, and a "journal.txt" I kept before, during, and shortly after the game's release into IFComp 2006. The journal has info about the game (why I made certain things the way I did, my thoughts on different story points), info about coding in Hugo (the importance of custom grammar defs, using properties, etc), and just some IF design theory in general. There are other .txt files with info about each chapter, and about two alternate endings that I never actually wrote. It's a lot of junk for my own use, basically, but included in the source download for the incredibly bored among you.

I have uploaded tts_src.zip to the IF Archive as well, and it'll eventually move into the /games/source/hugo area.

---- Mike.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=237&start=0#p1603
Forum: Competitions / Subject: I stumbled upon new IFComp 2006 Reviews
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-07-05 16:29:15

These are very short and a few months old, but they weren't previously a part of the IFComp 2006 Review List (I've added it):

<a href="http://videogames.suite101.com/article.cfm/if_competition_2006_results">http://videogames.suite101.com/article. ... 06_results</a>

She has reviewed the first seven games, in brief.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=237&start=0#p1604
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: I stumbled upon new IFComp 2006 Reviews
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-07-06 09:14:58

More Comp '06 reviews found here:
<a href="http://www.highprogrammer.com/alan/rants/reviews/video_games/if/index.html">http://www.highprogrammer.com/alan/rant ... index.html</a>

Not many, and they're among some other non-comp IF, but there you go.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=238&start=0#p1605
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Problem with TADS3 compiler and Heidi
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-07-06 22:14:59

Last night I downloaded TADS3 and Heidi.  I tried to compile and run heidi but all I got was [quote]
>t3make -Fy "C:\Documents and Settings\mark\My Documents\heidi\obj" -Fo "C:\Documents and Settings\mark\My Documents\heidi\obj" -I "C:\Documents and Settings\mark\My Documents\heidi\en_us" -I "C:\Documents and Settings\mark\My Documents\heidi\en_us" -I "C:\Documents and Settings\mark\My Documents\heidi\en_us" -o "debug\Heidi.t3" -D "LANGUAGE=en_us" -D "MESSAGESTYLE=neu" -d -statprefix <@> "system.tl" "adv3\adv3.tl" "Heidi.t"
TADS Compiler 3.0.12  Copyright 1999, 2006 Michael J. Roberts
error: error creating symbol file "C:\Documents and Settings\mark\My Documents\heidi\obj\_main.t3s"
Errors:   1
Warnings: 0

t3make: error code 1

[/quote]     

It was 2 am, so instead of wracking my brains I went to sleep. This morning, much refreshed after 8 hours of sleep and three cups of coffee, and being smarter than I look (just), I manually created the folder "heidi\obj\" and the compilation got a little further, this time failing with [quote]
>t3make -Fy "C:\Documents and Settings\mark\My Documents\heidi\obj" -Fo "C:\Documents and Settings\mark\My Documents\heidi\obj" -I "C:\Documents and Settings\mark\My Documents\heidi\en_us" -I "C:\Documents and Settings\mark\My Documents\heidi\en_us" -I "C:\Documents and Settings\mark\My Documents\heidi\en_us" -o "debug\Heidi.t3" -D "LANGUAGE=en_us" -D "MESSAGESTYLE=neu" -d -statprefix <@> "system.tl" "adv3\adv3.tl" "Heidi.t"
TADS Compiler 3.0.12  Copyright 1999, 2006 Michael J. Roberts
error: error creating image file "debug\Heidi.t3"
Errors:   1
Warnings: 0

t3make: error code 1

Build failed.
[/quote]   

Once more I launched into the breach and manually created the folder "heidi\debug\".  After this, the compiler was successful.

So, my question is as follows:-  why didn't TADS3 create the necessary folders for me?

My operating system is XP sp2 and TADS3 tells me it is TADS Compiler 3.0.12 .

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=238&start=0#p1606
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with TADS3 compiler and Heidi
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2007-07-07 04:28:15

It just... doesn't.

I've asked myself this question a few times, actually.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=238&start=0#p1607
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with TADS3 compiler and Heidi
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-07-07 08:07:50

Back to GWBASIC for the TADS3 developers until they master the basics!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=238&start=0#p1608
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with TADS3 compiler and Heidi
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2007-07-08 00:18:00

Why not post it to the TADS 3 mailing list as a feature request?

[url]http://lists.v-space.org/listinfo/tads3[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=238&start=0#p1609
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with TADS3 compiler and Heidi
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-07-09 11:15:27

For what it's worth, I've never seen this problem. Considering Mike Roberts hasn't fixed the problem, I'm guessing he hasn't seen it either.

Since you seemed about to give up, I took the liberty of posting about this at the T3 development group. 

<a href="http://lists.v-space.org/archive/tads3/200707/threads.html">http://lists.v-space.org/archive/tads3/ ... reads.html</a>

Greg

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=238&start=0#p1610
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with TADS3 compiler and Heidi
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-07-09 13:13:53

If you click on that link to the TADS 3 group, you should see the response. Basically, it's intentional that t3make doesn't create directories. That way it's easier for those who are porting compilers to other platforms.

The Workbench creates the directories for you, though, when it compiles. Since you're using Windows, why not use Workbench?

Greg

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=238&start=0#p1611
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with TADS3 compiler and Heidi
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2007-07-10 04:51:41

[quote="GregB"]
The Workbench creates the directories for you, though, when it compiles.
[/quote] 
It doesn't. It creates them for you when you create a project, but if you just open a project that already exists (which doesn't have the directories) it will just report the compiler error and give up.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=239&start=0#p1612
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: 3D interactive fiction?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-07-11 17:03:41

Hey everyone...

I posted this over on RAIF, but I completely forgot about this forum and thought it would be good to hear some opinions here as well.

There have been discussions in the past on RAIF and at other sites about the future of interactive fiction, and in some cases the topic of 3D graphics has been raised. With the fairly rapid evolution of 3D game engines over the past decade, some people have expressed interest in seeing a union of interactive fiction and 3D graphics. The dialogue, however, usually ends before any real discussion of how a marriage like this would look and play. So I'd like to try and take this discussion a step further.

Is 3D interactive fiction really something that this community could envision playing? And, if so, what expectations would you have concerning its look and gameplay?

Given that the goal here is for the incorporation of interactive fiction into a 3D world, one would assume that text input and output would need to be a central component. I'm interested in hearing how people think that would work in a 3D environment.

And what about the 3D gameplay? Would people envision a first-person perspective? Or a third-person perspective with a player avatar? How would people feel about using the typical keyboard-mouse combination to control movement and camera view? And if not that, then what?

And finally, would there be any particular expectations for the visual representation of actions directed through text command entry?

I'm also interested to know if people here would be less interested in this style of game, given the fact that game development would likely be much less accessible to the individual developer than pure interactive fiction.

Thanks...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=239&start=0#p1613
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: 3D interactive fiction?
User: George / DateTime: 2007-07-11 22:35:12

I've been following the thread in RAIF too, but I had mixed feelings about this idea so I didn't post there. So, why not here then [emote];)[/emote]. 

Mainly I think IF and 3D adventure games are two separate species; I play IF to read, and an adventure game for the visual experience. I like the idea of IF with pictures, but once you get into a 3D environment with an avatar, I don't think you want to deal with text except for dialogue -- and then ideally that would be spoken by NPCs, and only the PC would select dialogue from a menu. 

The future of IF for me is still a text future. 3D IF is more like interactive cinema than a text game with a 3D environment. 

Now all this said, I'm totally for developing richer, highly narrative 3D games. To address some of your specific questions;

[list]
[*]Allow FP and avatar views -- unless you suddenly want to restrict POV for a specific gameplay reason mid-game.[/*:m]
[*]Keyboard/mouse is fine, because I suspect many games in this category will go to the PC rather than consoles (though maybe not for long)[/*:m][/list:u]

It's axiomatic that a single developer is not going to put out a AAA title, but as engines and tools get more sophisticated they could still put out a good effort -- much as many graphical game developers do now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=239&start=0#p1614
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: 3D interactive fiction?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-07-12 01:39:46

I agree with George. Personally, I don't think interactive fiction would mix well with 3D graphics. In fact, I think some of the charm would even be lost by this. IF games are so interesting and fun because imagination plays such an important role (similar to roguelike games). There are no graphics and sound to distract you, it's just you and the world that is building inside your mind.

Also, assuming that commands would still be typed in form of imperative sentences, how would the replies work? A standard work of IF can be so detailed because there are usually hundreds of things a player can do, and each of them returns a kind of reply. But if you're dealing with graphics, you (as a designer) would have to put much, much more work into this. If it'd work at all...

However, note that I have nothing against 3D games as such! For example, I still believe "Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned" is one of the best conventional adventures out there (and one of my all-time favorites, too). [emote]Very Happy[/emote] 3D environment is crucial there, and it works perfectly! The experience is just beautiful, and I wouldn't mind playing more games like this one. However, this is no interactive fiction (text adventure).

Bottom line: personally, I'm against mixing IF with 3D. IMO, Legend's games have pretty much reached the borders of "what would work with IF", and anything beyond that would turn the genre into something else. It would perhaps still be interesting, fun, but it wouldn't be interactive fiction anymore.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=239&start=0#p1615
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: 3D interactive fiction?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-07-12 12:51:29

[quote="George"]
I've been following the thread in RAIF too, but I had mixed feelings about this idea so I didn't post there. So, why not here then [emote];)[/emote]. 

Mainly I think IF and 3D adventure games are two separate species; I play IF to read, and an adventure game for the visual experience. I like the idea of IF with pictures, but once you get into a 3D environment with an avatar, I don't think you want to deal with text except for dialogue -- and then ideally that would be spoken by NPCs, and only the PC would select dialogue from a menu. 

The future of IF for me is still a text future. 3D IF is more like interactive cinema than a text game with a 3D environment. 

Now all this said, I'm totally for developing richer, highly narrative 3D games. To address some of your specific questions;

[list]
[*]Allow FP and avatar views -- unless you suddenly want to restrict POV for a specific gameplay reason mid-game.[/*:m]
[*]Keyboard/mouse is fine, because I suspect many games in this category will go to the PC rather than consoles (though maybe not for long)[/*:m][/list:u]

It's axiomatic that a single developer is not going to put out a AAA title, but as engines and tools get more sophisticated they could still put out a good effort -- much as many graphical game developers do now.
[/quote]  


Thanks for responding here, I appreciate it. It's a fascinating discussion to me, so I'm glad to have the opportunity.

One way that I look at the union of 3D and IF is that the union certainly cannot be (and is not, by definition) entirely one or the other. So if you consider a spectrum where, at one end, you have pure IF, and at the other end you have a pure 3D game, is it possible to find some point along that spectrum where features of the two combined produces something worthwhile, interesting, and fun to play? And, perhaps most importantly, is something notably different than either end of that spectrum?

The reason I say that is because I think that's what you're getting at, in a way. Can the incorporation of IF elements be the thing that produces that richer, more narrative 3D game?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=239&start=0#p1616
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: 3D interactive fiction?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-07-12 12:58:15

[quote="Lipa"]
Bottom line: personally, I'm against mixing IF with 3D. IMO, Legend's games have pretty much reached the borders of "what would work with IF", and anything beyond that would turn the genre into something else. It would perhaps still be interesting, fun, but it wouldn't be interactive fiction anymore.
[/quote] 

I definitely appreciate that stance, and thanks for the response. I guess, as I stated in my other reponse, the point is not that 3D-IF has to be IF per se. If there is some spectrum between pure 3D and pure IF along which there is a point representing a combination of the two, might that be something enjoyable, and how might that look and play? Certainly I would agree that it would no longer necessarily be interactive fiction in the pure sense. But it would also not necessarily be pure 3D either.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=239&start=0#p1617
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: 3D interactive fiction?
User: George / DateTime: 2007-07-13 01:28:31

[quote="Mike Rozak in rec.arts.int-fiction on Thu, 12 Jul 2007 05:07:00 GMT, post <a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/msg/8deacd8d825633f0">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts ... 8d825633f0</a>"]
IF, as a vague and fuzzy genre, has a few "defining features":

- The use of lots of text narration... or more broadly, lots verbal
narration.

- Text entry for commands (which allows for complex actions)

- Lack of graphics, except perhaps still images.

- Puzzle oriented gameplay, as opposed to combat-oriented

- Emphasis on story

- Increasingly, an emphasis on NPC interaction (via talking)

- Short (<50 hr) gameplay. Most titles are more like 2-10 hours.

- Created by one author, usually an amateur.

- Works on any OS/device (due to text's portability and low resource usage).

- Single player

- Turn based

- Nodal rooms 
[/quote] 

So I don't know if anyone has ever quoted RAIF here at intfiction, but if not, now someone has [emote];)[/emote]. 

I just wanted to take that list as a starting point. See, my gut reaction to this question had been: [i]IF and 3D games are simply different. You don't talk about combining them because you can't combine them. A game is either one or the other[/i]. But that argument falls apart fairly quickly. The things that make IF typically IF, such as what Mike wrote in his list above, are of course not solely the domain of IF. They apply to numerous types of games, and elements in 3D games (other than the graphics, naturally) apply to other types of games as well. 

When you write 'pure IF' and 'pure 3D' however, I'm not sure what you're describing. You can call 'pure IF' a text game such as [i]Zork[/i], or maybe an interactive story such as [i]Photopia[/i], or naturally both, but what is pure 3D? [i]Quake[/i]? [i]Prince of Persia[/i]?  [i]Halo[/i]? All of these? The more things you throw in there it seems that the less pure it becomes.

So on one hand it seems to me that your question is how do you add 'IF' elements to 3D, but on the other hand...what are IF elements really? The only thing I think you really can ask in this context deals with the first item on Mike's list: text entry of commands. As I mentioned before, I don't think 3D and text would work together, but of course I wouldn't mind being proved wrong.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=239&start=0#p1618
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: 3D interactive fiction?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-07-13 10:20:21

[quote="George"]
So I don't know if anyone has ever quoted RAIF here at intfiction, but if not, now someone has [emote];)[/emote]. 

I just wanted to take that list as a starting point. See, my gut reaction to this question had been: [i]IF and 3D games are simply different. You don't talk about combining them because you can't combine them. A game is either one or the other[/i]. But that argument falls apart fairly quickly. The things that make IF typically IF, such as what Mike wrote in his list above, are of course not solely the domain of IF. They apply to numerous types of games, and elements in 3D games (other than the graphics, naturally) apply to other types of games as well. 

When you write 'pure IF' and 'pure 3D' however, I'm not sure what you're describing. You can call 'pure IF' a text game such as [i]Zork[/i], or maybe an interactive story such as [i]Photopia[/i], or naturally both, but what is pure 3D? [i]Quake[/i]? [i]Prince of Persia[/i]?  [i]Halo[/i]? All of these? The more things you throw in there it seems that the less pure it becomes.

So on one hand it seems to me that your question is how do you add 'IF' elements to 3D, but on the other hand...what are IF elements really? The only thing I think you really can ask in this context deals with the first item on Mike's list: text entry of commands. As I mentioned before, I don't think 3D and text would work together, but of course I wouldn't mind being proved wrong.
[/quote]    

Hehe...you caught me on that one. As I was writing it, I was asking myself the same question: What is pure 3D? I think what I had in mind was a game like Halo, where the focus is all on action and graphics, and there is essentially no text. But I think if you explore that concept a little further, it's perhaps not so much that there is an absence of text, but an absence of those things that text can be used to accomplish. And that's what I think you're getting at when you refer to "IF elements".

I was actually about to respond to his post in exactly the same way, and I probably will: once you start looking at the items on his list one by one, most of them fail to meet his original argument that these are truly defining features of IF. Certainly many of those items are shared by other game types, so I'm not sure if they are truly defining features. I'm actually surprised that nobody has yet countered that post.

I think it is difficult to envision which elements of IF could be incorporated into a 3D game without just thinking of specific examples or imagining a hypothetical 3D-IF game.

Take, for example, object descriptions. My first impression is that there wouldn't be a place for these in a 3D game -- why bother describing the items when they are already rendered on screen? But really, object descriptions can contain much more information than that, which can very much enhance the gaming experience. Would providing this kind of information in textual format be helpful in a 3D game?

A nice quick example is from Emily's Savoir-Faire:

> [b]x andouillettes[/b]
Veal cased in tripe. Tasty food. The servants used to eat them with fried onions – a good, hearty smell that leaked out of the kitchen while you played outside, until you went inside, and sometimes they would let you eat at the kitchen table rather than with the Family.

That's a lot of great information that goes well beyond just describing what the object looks like, and certainly far beyond what you could get just from looking at the object rendered in 3D.

Would that work in 3D? Would players enjoy walking up to an object in a 3D room, clicking on it, and typing "X" (or EXAMINE) and seeing a response like that? Or would the reaction be more likely: why bother with the graphics, then?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=239&start=0#p1619
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: 3D interactive fiction?
User: George / DateTime: 2007-07-13 20:03:44

[quote]
> x andouillettes
Veal cased in tripe. Tasty food. The servants used to eat them with fried onions – a good, hearty smell that leaked out of the kitchen while you played outside, until you went inside, and sometimes they would let you eat at the kitchen table rather than with the Family.

That's a lot of great information that goes well beyond just describing what the object looks like, and certainly far beyond what you could get just from looking at the object rendered in 3D.

Would that work in 3D? Would players enjoy walking up to an object in a 3D room, clicking on it, and typing "X" (or EXAMINE) and seeing a response like that? Or would the reaction be more likely: why bother with the graphics, then?
[/quote]  

While I can see the benefit of reading a description like that, I think with the 3D game you don't need to read it -- because you [i]listen[/i] to it instead. Maybe at the beginning of the game you can choose your 'object description' voice, either Uma Thurman or George Clooney [emote];)[/emote].


edit: Thinking about this more, I don't know how well a sound clip would work as a reference -- once you've heard it, do you want to listen to it over and over if you want to look at it again? But then you have the question of how to display the text seamlessly with the 3D view.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=239&start=0#p1620
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: 3D interactive fiction?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-07-19 02:55:30

[quote="Rubes"]
> [b]x andouillettes[/b]
Veal cased in tripe. Tasty food. The servants used to eat them with fried onions – a good, hearty smell that leaked out of the kitchen while you played outside, until you went inside, and sometimes they would let you eat at the kitchen table rather than with the Family.

That's a lot of great information that goes well beyond just describing what the object looks like, and certainly far beyond what you could get just from looking at the object rendered in 3D.
[/quote]  

Of course.  That's called poetic license and is what makes literature so endearing and witty as compared to a camera depicting the same scene:  the author makes flourishes and personal remarks and carries away the reader imagination like a camera depicting the same everyday boredom can't...

[quote="Rubes"]
Would that work in 3D?
[/quote]  

Of course not.  Factual objective matters as seen from a camera are forever doomed for sterile boredom.  That's why you need big explosions, huge CGI crowds and large landscapes to keep the thing exciting...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=239&start=0#p1621
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: 3D interactive fiction?
User: George / DateTime: 2007-07-19 21:01:38

[quote="namekuseijin"]
Of course not.  Factual objective matters as seen from a camera are forever doomed for sterile boredom.  That's why you need big explosions, huge CGI crowds and large landscapes to keep the thing exciting...
[/quote]  

Tell me you're joking. 

Or rather, define "exciting", or even "factual objective matters".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=238&start=0#p1622
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with TADS3 compiler and Heidi
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2007-07-20 04:40:45

Mike Roberts has just released a beta version of TADS 3 (3.0.15.1). Workbench will now check for the existence of output folders before compiling and create them if necessary. (Since this is a Workbench feature, not a compiler feature, it's Windows only, of course.)

You can download the beta here: [url]http://www.tads.org/tads3beta.htm[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=239&start=10#p1623
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: 3D interactive fiction?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-07-21 22:56:17

[quote="George"]
Tell me you're joking.
[/quote]   

I'm not joking.

[quote="George"]
Or rather, define "exciting", or even "factual objective matters".
[/quote]   

From the given example, from the previous IF description:
> x andouillettes
Veal cased in tripe. Tasty food. The servants used to eat them with fried onions – a good, hearty smell that leaked out of the kitchen while you played outside, until you went inside, and sometimes they would let you eat at the kitchen table rather than with the Family.

This is "exciting".  A vivid description of an andouillettes that goes well beyond physical depiction and goes great lenghts into further providing the player with contextual information about the fictional world.  Moody.

Same scene from a camera:
A veal cased in tripe is seen here.

That's "boring factual objective matters" as it would be SEEN by a camera, though in fact most 3D videogames out there actually employ some sort of inventory menu and actually use written descriptions for those items to convey information important to the plot or to further realize the setting or character development.

So, as you see, a camera alone can't do that by means of objective factual depictions of in game objects and events.  The lens makes lousy poetry, specially when not depicting actors...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=239&start=10#p1624
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: 3D interactive fiction?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-07-21 23:53:13

[quote="namekuseijin"]
[quote="George"]
Same scene from a camera:
A veal cased in tripe is seen here.

That's "boring factual objective matters" as it would be SEEN by a camera, though in fact most 3D videogames out there actually employ some sort of inventory menu and actually use written descriptions for those items to convey information important to the plot or to further realize the setting or character development.
[/quote] [/quote]

But that was precisely the main point of the original question: yes, a visual representation of the andouillettes would be considerably more boring than a nicely worded text description, [b]but[/b] -- would it be interesting/fun/worthwhile to have a game that accomplished both: visually displaying the andouillettes in their environment, allowing graphical interaction, [b]and[/b] providing an eloquent description of the object when requested?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=239&start=10#p1625
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: 3D interactive fiction?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-07-22 00:44:28

[quote="Rubes"]
would it be interesting/fun/worthwhile to have a game that accomplished both: visually displaying the andouillettes in their environment, allowing graphical interaction, [b]and[/b] providing an eloquent description of the object when requested?
[/quote] 

From games doing just that today, like Resident Evil or Silent Hill, and their 3D inventory and textual description, I'd say no:  there's no such a thing there as a "eloquent description" or, better yet, the above example which is able to convey more of the story through the player remembering things about the past regarding the object.    Resident Evil is notable in conveying its story through lots of reports conveniently placed by dying researches where the player can easily spot them.  It fits well in the plot, but do feel kinda lame...

In IF, you don't read through bits of a scattered story, you experience it by uncovering details about the fictional world and even the main character.  Such details about the character persona and the fictional world can come subtly hiding between lines of an object or room description.  There's no way to convincingly doing that other than relying on text and perhaps voice narration, besides the graphics.

So, in the end, what's the point of graphics when it by itself can't really convey nothing?  Oh, yes, I know:  graphics are far easier an interface to most people rather than reading room and objects descriptions.  So, let's continue to rely on conveniently scattered papers all around to describe the story...

Besides, those games are far less immersive and moody to me than, say, Anchorhead. [emote]:)[/emote]

And it's not just descriptions of things, in raif I've already provided this example:
<a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/84d882659781b8fc/cd627e0c7cc35e9c">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts ... 0c7cc35e9c</a>
You may want to browse the thread there, since Andrew Plotkin gave some thought to it as well.

This is what I posted there:

Here's a short snippet from Curses describing an early event:

"As you disturb the still air, the attic key, which was balanced on
top of the demijohn, slips onto the floor and disappears into a crack
in the floorboards.  Your spirits sink as it does, rattling down some
distance.  How on earth are you going to get it back?"

Now, how does such a narration gets translated to a 3D game, or merely graphical at that, and is able to evoke such vivid imagery and sense of urgency?

Here's two tentatives, the first by cinematography alone (no literary
narration at all) and the second by camera coupled with voice
narration of the same account.

1)  camera-only:
The camera follows as the player approaches the demijohn, floorbloards cracking and the demijohn shaking gently.  The camera then, zooms in to the top of the demijohn and follows the key as it falls to the ground and through a crack.  If the game is not first-person, the player avatar is seen desperating as he watches haplessly...

1)  camera and voice narration:
The camera follows as the player approaches the demijohn, floorbloards cracking and the demijohn shaking gently.  The voice remarks: "As you disturb the still air, the attic key, which was balanced on top of the demijohn, slips onto the floor and disappears into a crack in the floorboards." The camera then, zooms in to the top of the demijohn and follows the key as it falls to the ground and through a crack.  The voice concludes:  "Your spirits sink as it does, rattling down some distance.  How on earth are you going to get it back?"  If the game is not first-person, the player avatar is seen desperating as he watches haplessly...

IMHO both fail.  The first lacks story polishness, from taking some
banal setting and having no subjective means of describing it
creatively in an exciting manner, which is what literary narration is
all about:  the author transforming boring events into enticing
happenings through the power of his own words.  The camera only shows plain boring facts:  a key is lost through a hole in the ground.

The second sounds redundant, artificial, stiff and assynchronous.  I
would get the first over it any day, which employs the "Silent Hill"
approach.  Still, I'd get textual-only literary narratives over both
always.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=221&start=0#p1626
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Input wanted from IF Players
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-07-22 01:36:57

> 1) When you play an IF game, do you want more puzzles 
> or more text and story-line?

I want a more puzzling plot and a good balance between reading and playing.

What I mean is that I don't want to read through tons of text describing what the protagonist is doing and then when I finally get to the command-prompt, I'm left to a bare fictional world to deal with, bland and boring, just waiting me to go north, catch the bad guy and then proceed to the next tons of "exciting" teen literature.

Puzzles would also be nice to unlock plot branches rather than treasures.

> 2) What has been your biggest dissapointment in the IF games 
> you have played in past? What has been your greatest joy in IF 
> games that you have played in the past?

I downloaded a Malinche game demo which played a lot like my rant from above.  That was pretty disappointing, coming from the Last Commercial Grandmaster Implementor as it did.

I've had several great joys in playing community IF works like Photopia, Curses, Kissing the Buddha's Feet, All Roads, Anchorhead or Savoir-Faire.  Be it polished writting style, clever puzzles, twisted plots or great settings.

> 3) If you could play an IF game about ANYTHING in the known 
> universe, what would it be about?

Even the most trivial story can sound fenomenal in the right hands, with the right narration, with the right choices given to the player.  Heck!, Photopia's story is rather conventional, but the narration is utterly brilliant, specially as all interlocks in the ending as the player is left thinking how perfectly it all fits together!

> 4) Is there any other comment/suggestion you would like to make
> about IF games and their content and/or gameplay?

I agree with Emily about historical settings.  I think we've had too much of cave crawling and futuristic alienesque worlds.  At least scifi authors could begin extrapolating current trends in science, not 1000 years in a 1950's imagined future...

Aubrey Brightheart, huh?
hmm, is that you, Sherman?  trying to bribe us?  out of ideas?...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=239&start=10#p1627
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: 3D interactive fiction?
User: George / DateTime: 2007-07-22 01:59:30

Notwithstanding that the examples as given in this thread seem to work against 'graphical IF without text accompaniment', is it fair basically to throw out almost a century of cinematic accomplishment with:

[quote]
So, as you see, a camera alone can't do that by means of objective factual depictions of in game objects and events. [b]The lens makes lousy poetry, specially when not depicting actors...[/b]
[/quote] 

Perhaps '3D IF' needs to rely [i]not[/i] on the power of text, but the power of cinema. That is, the power of images.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=209&start=0#p1628
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Just saying Hi and after a bit of advice.
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-07-22 02:05:13

[quote="Cap Man"]
I have just joined this forum after re-discoverying text adventure games after years away from them. 

Firstly a little history about my past dealings with text adventure or as it seems to be called these days IF. My first ever IF was on an old Spectrum the rubber key version and the very first IF game that I can remember playing was called Quest Adventure...
[/quote] 

well, welcome back.  Though it'd be so much more pleasing if it was a complete novice coming to IF for the first time!  You know, new blood and stuff...

[quote="Cap Man"]
Now for the crunch question. I like my IF`s to be big the bigger the better which IF currently is the biggest as in the most locations to visit making the longest to complete.
[/quote] 

There are quite a few, specially from earlier times.  Curses and Jigsaw, by Graham Nelson of Inform fame, are two wonderful IF masterpieces from the days of IF rebirth and are pretty big as well.    Savoir-Faire, All Roads, Anchorhead, The Legend Lives... so many to remember.  But as someone warned, most IF these days can be completed in about 2 hours.  Think of them as short stories rather than novels.  

And if you're looking for the mindless maze wandering and treasure collecting from the old days, forget it.  Modern IF is more about good story, compelling narration, believable interaction, fair puzzles and role-playing rather than plain score-oriented games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=239&start=10#p1629
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: 3D interactive fiction?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-07-22 02:16:21

[quote="George"]
Perhaps '3D IF' needs to rely [i]not[/i] on the power of text, but the power of cinema. That is, the power of images.
[/quote] 

wonderful!  This way you can quickly move on to the Quake/Unreal engine and drop your Inform and TADS...

Unfortunately, I have a gut feeling you'll soon find out that the "power of cinema" is quite powerless in INTERACTIVE-fiction.  It's one thing to think of the powerful dramatic impact of cinematic, linear and pre-recorded, game cut-scenes, but that doesn't translate just as well to interactive multibranching storytelling.  Think of my scattered-reports-for-storytelling advice from above...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=240&start=0#p1630
Forum: Competitions / Subject: IFComp 2007?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-07-23 14:11:21

So.... everybody gearing up for IFComp 2007?

Who here's planning to enter? Looks like it'll be an [color=#0000FF]off[/color] year for me, but hopefully I'll have time to play, vote, and review them all. I hope.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=240&start=0#p1631
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2007?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-07-23 15:10:00

I'm still thinking in terms of IntroComp and Scott Adams' Ghost Town Redux... But looking forward to playing the IF Comp games too. I voted in '04, but not the last two years. It would be fun to do it again in '07.

Greg

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=240&start=0#p1632
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2007?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-07-24 15:07:51

I'll be entering. Just need to get the minor problem of not having a game ready out of the way and I'll be all set.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=240&start=0#p1633
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2007?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-07-24 18:52:37

I didn't get around to playing your 2006 entry, although I had intended to. Good luck this year!!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=241&start=0#p1634
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: In-Game Creation of Objects
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-08-06 05:46:30

I should first point out that I am new to I7 and would therefore ask anyone kind enough to answer this post to speak slowly and clearly, and explain any technical terms.

When the player is in the region Dangerous Territory (and a random chance succeeds), I need to create an NPC who will then attack him. I was rather hoping to define this new object from a table, that held printed name, description, weapon, etc.

I'm not sure how to go about doing this; I7 seems to forbid "now the assailent is a thing".

I cannot simply hold an NPC off-stage until he's needed, because there will possibly be several assailents created at once, and I do not want to hold an unnecessary bank of 99 empty NPCs off-stage if I can possibly help it.

What is the usual procedure in this situation?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=241&start=0#p1635
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: In-Game Creation of Objects
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-08-06 06:25:36

I believe that dynamic (that is, run-time) object creation is (unfortunately!) not possible in Inform.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=241&start=0#p1636
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: In-Game Creation of Objects
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-08-06 09:21:49

What exactly do you have in mind about what would happen once the "attacker" appears? What will be the attackers's role? Will the character be able to interact with it? 

I'm asking because maybe (depends on your idea of the situation, of course) you could solve the problem without making any NPC's at all. You could perhaps only print the appropriate text and do any other changes to the game world, for example.

But if you do have to create a special NPC for this, maybe you could move it around, from location to location, each time it is needed? So it would essentially be "the same" attacker (same object), but you would move it around, creating the illusion of many...

Anyway, if you could please explain the idea about the attacker a little bit more in detail – what will happen once it appears etc – we could perhaps figure something out. [emote]Wink[/emote]

Otherwise, I think Victor is right – you can't create objects in the middle of the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=241&start=0#p1637
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: In-Game Creation of Objects
User: George / DateTime: 2007-08-06 17:09:33

Victor and Lipa are both absolutely correct [emote]Wink[/emote]

<a href="http://tinyurl.com/yozs3s">http://tinyurl.com/yozs3s</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=241&start=0#p1638
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: In-Game Creation of Objects
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-08-07 12:30:09

Basically, every turn you spend in a sinister region, there was a chance you would be attacked/waylaid by various people (these being muggers, bored policemen, tramps, etc.)

That means a few NPCs held off-stage, one for each kind of model. They have different AIs -the muggers obviously mug you, the bored cops give you a hard time, the tramps ask for change and share random anecdotes, etc.

However, what I actually wanted was for these above definitions to be kinds rather than objects. Then in-game I was hoping just to say '"[name entry]" is a policeman in the location of the player.'

The reason for this is that once you've met them, they're supposed to stick around as characters, who can become allies or enemies depending on how you deal with them. 

Rather than create 99 or so NPCs in the wings, only about ten of whom are ever likely to meet the player, I was hoping I could just create them in-game with randomly determined characteristics.

But if that's not possible then it's not possible.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=241&start=0#p1639
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: In-Game Creation of Objects
User: George / DateTime: 2007-08-07 13:56:47

[quote]
Rather than create 99 or so NPCs in the wings, only about ten of whom are ever likely to meet the player, I was hoping I could just create them in-game with randomly determined characteristics.
[/quote] 

What about holding a dozen NPCs in the wings and randomly assigning them characteristics?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=242&start=0#p1640
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Tables and Scoring
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-08-07 20:58:26

I noticed in the manual that there is a special Table of Rankings that has some special automatic rules, ie

Table of Rankings
Score     Rank
0            "novice"
10          "initiate"
20          "veteran"
etc.


And basically the Score can be any value and the Table automatically selects the appropriate corresponding rank.

Is there any way to nab this functionality to use with other Tables - for example a table of Health which would take a few key values (eg 0, 50 and 100) and then return a string description for whatever the player's health happened to be (ie, any number between 0 and 100).

Has anyone done this, and if so, how?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=242&start=0#p1641
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tables and Scoring
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2007-08-10 09:46:23

Something like this:

[code]Table of Health
min    message
0      "dying"
10     "barely conscious"
25     "in bad health"
50     "somewhat healthy"
75     "in good health"
100    "in perfect health"

A person has a number called healthiness. The healthiness of a person is usually 100.

When play begins:
    sort the Table of Health in reverse min order;

To say the health of (p - a person):
    let mentioned be 0;
    repeat through the Table of Health
    begin;
        if mentioned is 0 and the healthiness of p is at least the min entry
        begin;
            now mentioned is 1;
            say "[message entry]";
        end if;
    end repeat;
    if mentioned is 0, say "in unknown health".

Understand "health" as healthing. Healthing is an action out-of-world.

Report healthing:
    say "Your are [health of the player].".
[/code]

(Note, this is untested code, as I'm currently on a machine without I7)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=242&start=0#p1642
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tables and Scoring
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-08-10 17:15:00

You're really really cool, thank you very much.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=240&start=0#p1643
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2007?
User: rotter / DateTime: 2007-08-19 02:29:24

Due to a nasty dose of real life, my game will not be ready this year. I guess the world can wait a little longer for another game from me.  I'm looking forward to playing the entries though.  Hopefully it will be another good year for ADRIFT in the comp.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=240&start=0#p1644
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2007?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-08-19 11:33:40

I've been thinking about starting some pre-IFComp discussions here. Maybe a thread for beta-testing, maybe some tips/hints/advice (or I could re-surface the post from last year), or something. I could probably find some time to offer some beta testing myself.

The hype level seems really low this year. Not much talk in the newsgroups about IFComp, very few prize donations so far, no news elsewhere... and it's almost too late for would-be participants to sign up.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=243&start=0#p1645
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Queuing Actions
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-08-19 17:10:50

Is there a standard way to extend the "try Alice attacking Bob" functionality across several turns?

ie, we can already use 'try' to have any given person attempt any given action. What would be useful is to give a person a list of actions, to be attempted one after the other, turn by turn.

I imagined this list would be kept in table form, as it would then be possible to check this list, interrupt actions with more important actions, remove actions, change priorities, check if the person is intending to do something, etc.

However, Inform won't let me use actions as values in a table. Neither will it let me (at least, to my knowledge) automatically create a blank table with each new instance of a person.

I haven't had much time to play with this idea, nor to do much research online, but I would have thought this setup would have been implemented before now. Does anyone know if it already exists, and if so, how I can do it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=243&start=0#p1646
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Queuing Actions
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2007-08-20 08:57:50

It sounds like Jesse McGrew's Action Queuing extension ([url]http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7/Download%20-%20Extensions.html#topic13[/url]) should let you do what you want here.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=240&start=0#p1647
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2007?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-08-20 15:56:21

I never even saw a thread on RAIF announcing the IFComp this year. Then again, I don't check it every day so it's possible it was there and I simply missed it, but isn't there usually a bigger fuss kicked up over it than this? I'm sure last year there was quite a healthy debate going on before the Comp had even started.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=240&start=0#p1648
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2007?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-08-20 19:13:40

I usually do keep up with the newsgroups, and I don't remember an announcement either. It's probably a big buzz on the IF-MUD, which I've kinda been absent from lately.

Sargent drops by here from time to time. Maybe he's got more info. It's definitely on. The site is up and everything is there. And there may have been a newsgroup announcement I just missed.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=240&start=0#p1649
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2007?
User: George / DateTime: 2007-08-20 19:47:44

Yeah, I don't think there was an announcement in RAIF this year. 

I did see a $500 US prize on the 2007 prize list though. That's bigger than anything in 2006.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=240&start=0#p1650
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2007?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-08-20 20:04:36

There was a $500 prize the prior couple of years, though (probably from the same donor). I'm thinking about something I might donate. The Longest Journey and Dreamfall, maybe. Or Grim Fandango (although I'm kinda in the middle of playing it myself). Or a gift certicate. Or something. Don't know.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=244&start=0#p1651
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: IF-Comp 2007: Looking for Beta-Testers
User: farvardin / DateTime: 2007-08-23 16:59:21

Hello,

My wife is making a game in Inform 7 which will participate in the next 2007 IFcomp.
The game is almost finished now, and she'll probably need some beta-testers to play with it.
The game focuses on the narration and on the interaction with the NPCs.

She doesn't have much background with the modern IF culture and style (also the reason why I'm posting it myself on this list), she only wanted to write a story she had in her mind, so you may find her game refreshing and original [emote]Smile[/emote]

You can request for beta testing using this form on her website : just leave your email address, and she'll send you the game !

<a href="http://www.spritewood.net/english/contact.htm">http://www.spritewood.net/english/contact.htm</a>

(I've sent this message on RAIF and RGIF as well...)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=244&start=0#p1652
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: IFComp 2007?
User: George / DateTime: 2007-08-23 19:47:34

Thanks farvardin, I think I'll send in a request. 

I like your wife's artwork btw, I can see the pre-Raphaelite influence. Cool stuff.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=244&start=0#p1653
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: IF-Comp 2007: Looking for Beta-Testers
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2007-08-24 12:13:38

Split this into its own topic to avoid topic pollution [emote]Smile[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=244&start=0#p1654
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: IF-Comp 2007: Looking for Beta-Testers
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-08-25 07:49:09

I thought about creating some IFComp posts, and in particular, one for beta-test requests. I guess each one could just be a separate topic, to make it more obvious when a new one pops up though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=6&start=10#p1655
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Advice for IFComp Entrants
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-08-25 07:50:53

*BUMP*

Another year, another IFComp, and I'm bringing this post of various tips back to the top. [emote]Smile[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=6&start=10#p1656
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Advice for IFComp Entrants
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2007-08-25 08:44:57

Another resource for prospective IF Comp entrants is "IF Gems", a categorised collection quotes from IF Comp reviews (by Paul O'Brian, Mike Russo, Dan Shiovitz, Duncan Stevens, Mike Snyder and others).

At the moment, there are some problems with the server where it lives on the web (<a href="http://dfisher.serverspeople.net/ifgems/gems.html">http://dfisher.serverspeople.net/ifgems/gems.html</a>), but it is also available from the IF archive:

  <a href="http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/programming/general-discussion/IFGems.zip">http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/ ... IFGems.zip</a>

(The format is HTML; there are text and PDF versions in the same directory as well).

One warning: it is a bit big (about 180 printed pages) ...

David Fisher

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=6&start=10#p1657
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Advice for IFComp Entrants
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-08-25 08:47:39

I can host a mirror of that for you, if you like.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=245&start=0#p1658
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: IFComp Game for Testing
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-08-26 05:17:03

Hello,
I have an IFComp game that requires some (pretty thorough) beta-testing. It requires Glulx. Please contact me, or post here, if you are interested.
Thank you!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=246&start=0#p1659
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Wild guessing - how many IFComp Entries for 2007?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-08-26 10:17:53

Usually, 1/3 of the "intents to enter" submit a game. I wonder how many we'll see this year? I thought it was going to be down last year, but it wasn't. Maybe it will this year.

I'll predict... around 95 intents to enter, and around 31 games released.

--- Mike.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=246&start=0#p1660
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Wild guessing - how many IFComp Entries for 2007?
User: George / DateTime: 2007-08-26 10:26:31

I can't remember how many I7 games were in last year's competition, but I predict there'll be half again as many I7 games this year. But there'll be a corresponding decrease in the number of I6 games, so you won't see more than 45 finished games, or fewer than 38.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=246&start=0#p1661
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Wild guessing - how many IFComp Entries for 2007?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-08-26 10:28:35

I checked where Greb B. posted a follow-up to my '06 predictions, and he said 50% of the games were ZCode, and 55% of those were inform 7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=247&start=0#p1662
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: IFReviews.org
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-08-26 16:17:59

Hi there,

I would like to ask you all to not only post your reviews here but to also remember that there's IFRO site at <a href="http://www.ifreviews.org">www.ifreviews.org</a> where you can also post your ifreviews, rate other reviews/reviewers and see how the other users rate your own reviews.

Sorry for the publicity, but since this is a game reviews forum, i thought some publicity wouldn't hurt.

Kind regards,
RootShell

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=247&start=0#p1663
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFReviews.org
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-08-26 17:09:34

Thanks for the reminder! Is there a way, in the submission process, to reference the review's source? I don't necessarily mean this forum (as the reviews posted here are probably re-posts from elsewhere), but for reviews that originally appeared in SPAG, or reviews that were originally posted to the reviewer's personal site or blog? Should a reference such as this just appear as new text beginning the review, or is there something to handle it in the submission form?

Thanks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=248&start=0#p1664
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Introcomp 2007 Results
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-08-26 19:10:29

For those who haven't heard, they've posted the Introcomp results:
<a href="http://www.xyzzynews.com/introcomp/">http://www.xyzzynews.com/introcomp/</a>

Congrats to Jimmy Maher, Jim Aikin, and Anssi Räisänen (the top three finishers), as well as the other entrants.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=6&start=10#p1666
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Advice for IFComp Entrants
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2007-08-27 04:02:22

[quote="Merk"]
I can host a mirror of that for you, if you like.
[/quote] 
That's a lovely offer, but I would really prefer to keep it with the rest of the "Chateâu d’IF" web site ...

Thanks for the thought!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=246&start=0#p1667
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Wild guessing - how many IFComp Entries for 2007?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-08-27 05:58:52

Hmm. I think George may have a point that I7 will cause an increase in games entered this year. I will guess 42 games in total: 23 in Inform (16 in I7; 7 in I6; 2 of these will be Glulx), 10 in TADS (6 in 2 and 4 in 3 [emote]Confused[/emote]), 1 in Hugo, 5 in ADRIFT, 1 web-based and 2 DOS.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=240&start=10#p1669
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2007?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-08-28 10:36:04

To all -- if you're entering a game but haven't yet signed up (at <a href="http://www.ifcomp.org">http://www.ifcomp.org</a>), I think the deadline is September 1st.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=6&start=10#p1670
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Advice for IFComp Entrants
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2007-08-29 19:44:44

[quote="DFisher"]
At the moment, there are some problems with the server where it lives on the web (<a class="postlink" href="http://dfisher.serverspeople.net/ifgems/gems.html">http://dfisher.serverspeople.net/ifgems/gems.html</a>)
[/quote]   
Yay, it's back up again now.

The web site is called Chateâu d’IF - all welcome! (It's not-too-serious exploration of the world of Interactive Fiction):

<a class="postlink" href="http://dfisher.serverspeople.net">http://dfisher.serverspeople.net</a>

David Fisher

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=244&start=0#p1671
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: IF-Comp 2007: Looking for Beta-Testers
User: farvardin / DateTime: 2007-08-30 12:26:52

thank you [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=250&start=0#p1672
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 real time
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-09-03 08:08:25

Many of my ideas lately hinge on being able to make something real time. I've heard this is possible with I7 (I know it is with I6--I've played with Time and Dwarves) but I have no idea how to go about it. It's done in very few lines in I6, so I imagine it to be easy, but I have almost no understanding of I6, so I don't know how to convert one to the other. Would I need to edit the standard rules? How do I do it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=250&start=0#p1673
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 real time
User: George / DateTime: 2007-09-03 09:14:10

Hi Shui, for starters, there is this thread on RAIF about 'Realtime in I7':

<a href="http://tinyurl.com/2h5ptx">http://tinyurl.com/2h5ptx</a>

Now talking more generally about real time, I'm guessing you want events to proceed in your game not on the turn, but on some real time tick -- like every second, for example. Is that correct?

In that case, I think you'll want to go in one of two directions. Either the game has some central timer that polls all the relevant objects every tick to see if they want to do anything. Or, there is a queue or stack of time based events, whereby an object does something when the timer on the event in the stack expires. The game checks the top (i.e., item with least time remaining) event on the stack every <n> increment (say, every .1 second, or second, or whatever), and if that event is ready to go, it executes, and the game moves on to the next top event in the stack.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=250&start=0#p1674
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 real time
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-09-03 11:20:41

Yes, I would like events to proceed on a real time tick.

I suppose I could go either stack or poll. As far as I can see, both get me the results I want. At least providing that the stack method allows for simultaneous actions, and neither is significantly taxing on resources. What would you suggest?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=250&start=0#p1675
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 real time
User: George / DateTime: 2007-09-04 00:11:34

Apologies but my knowledge of Inform is too limited for me to know. Perhaps someone else will chime in or you can try this question on RAIF.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=88&start=20#p1676
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Baron - Discussion Thread *SPOILERS*
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-09-06 05:09:36

The question of the solution was not the one I wanted to address with [i]The Baron[/i]. I wanted to make the reader/player think about the presuppositions dominant in our culture that ensure that no solution is even sought - namely, the presupposition that horrible acts like these are the acts of a 'monster', someone who is 'evil' or 'beastly', and who just has to be sought out and (metaphorically) killed.

The question of the psychological circumstances that lead to this behaviour is therefore never asked; and it is unsurprising that no effective way to combat it has been found. You will not find what you will not seek.

Now, if you are already among the enlightened, you may think this is a cop-out; but those who are fully enlightened in this way are extremely few. I know unenlightened thoughts tend to crop up in my own mind when I read about people committing (whatever kind of) horrible acts.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=251&start=0#p1677
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Seeking a specific syntax solution
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-09-07 09:33:52

I have a basic fighting engine planned, and am having some trouble second-guessing I7's syntax.

Is there anyway I can wedge "Instead of a person (called a) attacking a person (called b):" and "Instead of attacking a person (called b):" together, while labelling the player as 'a'?

I ask because apparently the first doesn't cover the player (even though he's technically a person.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=88&start=20#p1678
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Baron - Discussion Thread *SPOILERS*
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-09-07 13:09:16

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]
The question of the solution was not the one I wanted to address with [i]The Baron[/i]. I wanted to make the reader/player think about the presuppositions dominant in our culture that ensure that no solution is even sought - namely, the presupposition that horrible acts like these are the acts of a 'monster', someone who is 'evil' or 'beastly', and who just has to be sought out and (metaphorically) killed.
[/quote]    
That sounds like a worthy goal, but I didn't get that message at all.  In fact, I didn't really glean *any* of your opinions about child abuse from the game.  There were no real consequences to any action in the game, so therefore they were all neutral from the game's point of view.  I had to imagine consequences myself, which isn't a dialog, it's just me musing to myself.  And I already know what I think.

There wasn't even anybody in the game representing the views of 'the dominant culture', to which I could compare and contrast my own.  *All* opinions in the game were my own.  There was nothing to weigh them against.

From reading reviews, not everybody had my reaction, which is good, but that's the sort of thing that would have engaged me more with the story.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=251&start=0#p1679
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Seeking a specific syntax solution
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2007-09-07 21:00:10

Instead of an actor attacking someone (called b):

It seems you can't used "(called ...)" on the actor, but you can refer to the actor as "actor" anyway. This is covered in section 12.14 of the manual.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=251&start=0#p1680
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Seeking a specific syntax solution
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-09-08 09:42:18

Many many thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=252&start=0#p1681
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Floating point arithmetic?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-09-08 10:03:25

Does I7 have the ability to handle floating point numbers? If not, has anyone written a handy extension for doing so?

I ask because simply multiplying everything by 100 and then back down again is a hassle, plus it's giving me nonsense answers - I must be maxing out. Anyone know how many bytes I7 uses to store its integers?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=252&start=0#p1682
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Floating point arithmetic?
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2007-09-08 17:35:13

IIRC, I7 using 16 bit arithmetic (max value is 65536).  There's an I6 extension for floating point operations, but I don't know if it's been ported to I7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=252&start=0#p1683
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Floating point arithmetic?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-09-09 13:16:09

I found the I6 library, it looks just what I need. How do I go about using it within I7?

I've tried wrapping the whole text in (- these -) but I7 doesn't like it. I have no idea where to put the .h file so that I7's normal Include action can find it, or even if I7's Include is capable of including *.h files.

I'm also slightly unsure -if I do suceed in getting I7 to read the library, will I then just be able to tell it say, "( 6 ^ 2.6 ) / 56 * the strength of the player" and expect it to work, or will I have to use some little bit of I6 code every time I need a number? (I'm rather anxious about this as I have no idea how to write I6 code.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=252&start=0#p1684
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Floating point arithmetic?
User: George / DateTime: 2007-09-09 14:12:59

I feel a little silly saying this, but doesn't the I7 game [i]Floatpoint [/i]use floating point numbers? You could email Emily Short and ask what she included to make it work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=252&start=0#p1685
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Floating point arithmetic?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-09-10 03:51:07

Well, I asked, and no, apparently it doesn't.

I find it difficult to believe that no other writers have had the need for proper maths in games?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=239&start=10#p1686
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: 3D interactive fiction?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-09-10 13:47:29

I realise I'm late to the party here, but I have a few comments.

Firstly:
[quote="namekuseijin"]
"As you disturb the still air, the attic key, which was balanced on
top of the demijohn, slips onto the floor and disappears into a crack
in the floorboards.  Your spirits sink as it does, rattling down some
distance.  How on earth are you going to get it back?"

Now, how does such a narration gets translated to a 3D game, or merely graphical at that, and is able to evoke such vivid imagery and sense of urgency?
...
1)  camera and voice narration:
The camera follows as the player approaches the demijohn, floorbloards cracking and the demijohn shaking gently.  The voice remarks: "As you disturb the still air, the attic key, which was balanced on top of the demijohn, slips onto the floor and disappears into a crack in the floorboards." The camera then, zooms in to the top of the demijohn and follows the key as it falls to the ground and through a crack.  The voice concludes:  "Your spirits sink as it does, rattling down some distance.  How on earth are you going to get it back?"  If the game is not first-person, the player avatar is seen desperating as he watches haplessly...
[/quote]  

I've seen two ways that graphical adventure games achieve this - one for first person games and one for third person. In a first person game (and I'm thinking of ZGI here), the disembodied voice could be an NPC that you either carry around with you (e.g. a talking pet) or that follows you around everywhere, but I don't think it needs to be. And it would probably say something like "No! How on earth are you going to get that back?" but it certainly wouldn't say the first bit - the objective description is substituted by the visual portrayal.

In third person games, the player character speaks their thoughts. The best 3D example that I've played is Dreamfall. I imagine this example would have the PC saying something like "No! I need that key! How on earth am I going to get it back?" But obviously it would depend on the personality of the PC as to precisely how they'd react.

Second, the Myst games are probably where you'll see the biggest use of text - they have entire books/journals scattered about the game. Mysts IV and V even had simultaneous voice narration of the books you found. And Uru and Myst V were both 3D games. So clearly text can play a major role in 3D games - but text input seems redundant to me.

Third, I do have an idea of something that might work. Split the screen in two. Have a traditional IF game on one side. The player then clicks on certain highlighted words - the objects of the story - and a 3D, possibly artistic/stylistic model of the object appears for scrutiny on the other side. It might even be a labelled model. In other words, this would be an interactive story with interactive illustrations.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=253&start=0#p1687
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Replacing Operators for Units
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-09-11 11:21:06

I've set up a new kind of unit like so:

A floating point is a kind of value. 9.99 specifies a floating point with parts integer and fraction (optional, preamble optional).
A floating point times a floating point specifies a floating point.


Now although I gather I7 is supposed to handle arithmetic with units automatically, I've had to rewrite the way it does multiplying and dividing, as these answers come out wrong by default;

Not knowing how to do otherwise, I rewrote them like so:

To say (N - a floating point) * (M - a floating point):
     code here;


This works fine for printing to the screen, but obviously when I want to assign values ingame, eg a = b * c, I still get I7's mangled answers.

Looking through the documentation I found 'decide' mentioned and so tried:

To decide what is (N - a floating point) * (M - a floating point):
     code here;


And if I then try: say 10.45 * 4.30, the above code is completely ignored.

Does anybody know what it is I should be doing?


Tangeantial but related: does anyone know if there are more detailed instructions you can give about displaying units? The only ones it seems to know are optional, preamble optional and without leading zeroes. What I need to do is fix it to not show trailing zeroes - ie, at the moment "8.4" is treated as 8.04, and "8.40" must be used for 8.4.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=247&start=0#p1689
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFReviews.org
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-09-15 13:44:46

Hi there Merk

To mention the source of the review, you can do what i've done for the Eamon ifreviews, which is to place a mention in the end (or top if you preffer) to other places where you can read the same ifreview, for instance:

If you check the [b]The Temple of Ngurct[/b] ifreview ( <a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifreviews.org/index.php?analise=46">http://www.ifreviews.org/index.php?analise=46</a> ) you can notice at the end of the review the following text (which links to the original place of the review)

[b]Used with Matthew Clark's kind permition.
Original review available at [url=http://www.eamonag.org/columns/reviews-all.html]Eamon Adventurer's Guild Online[/url] website.
[/b]

So everyone can add ifreviews and still have them in their own websites, blogs or any other place (such as SPAG, and others). But you'll have to add yourself the link to where your review is.

The main reason for ifreviews.org is to gather all under one common place so that we can make averages of the rates games get, and not to prevent people from having their reviews any other places (we do not have any exclusive rule, on the contrary, sharing is the key here).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=255&start=0#p1690
Forum: Competitions / Subject: It's almost time (for IFComp Games)!
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-09-26 10:49:49

I'm crossing my fingers that a busy work schedule won't keep me from playing and writing reviews for all the soon-to-be released IFComp games.

Sargent, if you're willing to say, about how many "intents to enter" were there this year? The 1/3rd rule seems to hold true, and I'm curious about how big a set there'll be for 2007.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=255&start=0#p1691
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: It's almost time (for IFComp Games)!
User: George / DateTime: 2007-09-26 20:39:01

It's funny, but I'm pretty excited too. I played most of the games last year (my 'first IFComp') and I'm looking forward to it again this year!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=255&start=0#p1692
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: It's almost time (for IFComp Games)!
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-09-27 10:41:40

It has been really low-key (still), so I'm wondering if submissions are going to be way down this year. IMO, last year will be tough to beat.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=255&start=0#p1693
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: It's almost time (for IFComp Games)!
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-09-28 16:02:56

I've done a pretty good job of playing games released this year -- Adventurer's Consumer Guide, Lydia's Heart, Blighted Isle. If I go ahead and play at least most of the comp games, I'll be in a good position to vote for XYZZY nominees, and that's a goal worth pursuing. So that gives me an extra incentive to try to play most of the comp games, maybe even all of them. Looking forward to it!

Greg

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=256&start=0#p1694
Forum: Competitions / Subject: IFComp Prizes
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-09-29 21:21:20

Wow.... there are now *2* $500 prizes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=257&start=0#p1695
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Get Lamp Trailer
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-09-29 21:29:49

I was checking the Get Lamp documentary site tonight for updates, and saw that a teaser trailer is up (and on YouTube):

[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwZxUGmqSOo[/url]

---- Mike.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=258&start=0#p1696
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Play a tutorial game instead of reading some boring text!!
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-09-29 22:59:27

I've made a game out of adrift 3.9, and you can learn the basic of it.

Download Adrift 3.9:
[url]http://www.adrift.org.uk/ftp/adrift39r.zip[/url]

Download the Game:
[url]http://kekeskyline.110mb.com/[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=259&start=0#p1698
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: MysteryHouse Series
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-09-29 23:02:51

Hi guys! i've made a new IF Series, it's called as MysteryHouse
It's about a day dream world, the first one isn't that great, but 2nd and 3rd will be better and better


Download this series here:

[url]http://kekeskyline.110mb.com/[/url]

Hint and Tip:
[url]http://kekeskyline.110mb.com/hint.htm[/url] (not Recommended)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=258&start=0#p1699
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Play a tutorial game instead of reading some boring text
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-09-29 23:03:57

It won't run in Adrift 4.0, but the engine tells me it can be converted. Why not convert to 4.0? Isn't the 3.x series pretty well obsolete?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=259&start=0#p1700
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: MysteryHouse Series
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-09-29 23:06:22

Is this related to the Williams' Mystery House game from years gone by? If so, is it a re-imagining or re-write, like the Mystery House Taken Over project?

[url]http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Mystery_House_Taken_Over[/url]

Or is the name a coincidence? I couldn't tell from your page. It looks like maybe a coincidence.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=260&start=0#p1701
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Pirates of the Caribbean: The Civil War
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-09-29 23:07:39

This is going to be a great game, When it finish. 
I will be giving more specific update on my IF website:

[url]http://kekeskyline.110mb.com/[/url]

You can see the link on the top right corner

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=259&start=0#p1702
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: MysteryHouse Series
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-09-29 23:10:34

[quote="Merk"]
Is this related to the Williams' Mystery House game from years gone by? If so, is it a re-imagining or re-write, like the Mystery House Taken Over project?

[url]http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Mystery_House_Taken_Over[/url]

Or is the name a coincidence? I couldn't tell from your page. It looks like maybe a coincidence.
[/quote] 

it's a coincidence, i never heard yours

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=261&start=0#p1703
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-09-29 23:12:26

Ever heard of [i]Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker[/i] film?? 
Well i'm going to make a IF About it

And again:
My web site:
<a class="postlink" href="http://kekeskyline.110mb.com/">http://kekeskyline.110mb.com/</a>

P.S. I got a lot of new IF going on, so check

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=262&start=0#p1704
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: adrift cost
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-09-29 23:23:24

how much does adrift cost?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=263&start=0#p1705
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: New User
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-09-29 23:28:09

Can somebody post a sample game code for inform 7 here?
I don't like to read all the manual. It's just too long

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=255&start=0#p1706
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: It's almost time (for IFComp Games)!
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-09-30 06:03:59

The e-mail I received recently stated 94 intents to enter but I can't remember if that's a high or low amount. If about a third of them do enter, we're looking at about 30 entries which is a bit down on last year.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=262&start=0#p1707
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: adrift cost
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-09-30 06:05:08

About $18 for Adrift 4; 3.9 is free.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=258&start=0#p1709
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Play a tutorial game instead of reading some boring text
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-09-30 13:03:03

i don't know y it doesn't convert, y don't you just download 3.9 runner

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=47&start=10#p1710
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good games for beginners?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-09-30 13:05:34

I've made a game just for newbies. Check out my website.

it's called as Text Adventure Tutorial

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=255&start=0#p1711
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: It's almost time (for IFComp Games)!
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-09-30 18:29:32

So the 1/3rd rule holds up pretty well another year. There are 29 entries this year.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=255&start=0#p1712
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: It's almost time (for IFComp Games)!
User: George / DateTime: 2007-09-30 19:34:54

Wow, 2006 really stands out then for its number of entries (though 2002 was closer). I guess we're back to some kind of average. 

There might be a bunch of pseudonyms, but it also seems like there are few games from 'known' authors this year. 

It doesn't seem like the 'I7 effect' has kicked in yet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=255&start=0#p1713
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: It's almost time (for IFComp Games)!
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-09-30 19:52:25

Speaking generally (since we can't discuss specific entries publicly), I think a few will probably go quickly. I'm not as worried about playing and reviewing them all this year -- I think I'll make it with time to spare, even as I begin another several months of 50-hour work weeks.

A few names are obvious pseudonyms. There are also a few I recognize from past competitions (not just the Adrift authors -- Bill Powell from 2006 and Brian Rapp from 2004 are back). Some of the games sound particularly intriguing. Even with fewer entries, I have high hopes that I'll come across a few first class winners. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=255&start=0#p1714
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: It's almost time (for IFComp Games)!
User: George / DateTime: 2007-09-30 20:11:53

Should we start a thread/forum this year for discussing games before the voting period ends?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=255&start=0#p1715
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: It's almost time (for IFComp Games)!
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-09-30 20:18:36

It could be set up as a private board, requiring a request and validation before being added to the group. It would have to be run by Sargent first, though, just to make sure it's within the judging rules. I'd love to chat privately about the games, but at the same time I like to play through them all before talking about any of them (and before being influenced by the opinions of the other judges).

There's a spoilers room in the IFMud (go up, then west, then southeast). Usually, there is pre-result chatter in there. In prior years, I've been excluded from the IFMud game channels (as a participant), but a channel for each game is usually set up there. By the time I've played them all, though, I think most of the chatter has died down (at least, I've always assumed it has -- it's possible it never really got started).

Would anybody be interested in a private discussion board here for pre-result chatter and spoilers? I'm not sure it'd be okay even to set up (would have to check), but if there's enough interest, I'll find out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=255&start=10#p1716
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: It's almost time (for IFComp Games)!
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-09-30 20:32:35

There's one other thing to consider. I'm pretty sure the authors themselves can't participate (when this came up in prior years, I checked into that). It's tough to go six weeks with only a couple of emails from a couple of judges to hang your hopes on, when there's chatter going on about your entry and others that you can't be a part of. Good thing is that all the private messages could be made public after November 15th. Bad thing is, it'd be rough on the authors who either couldn't take part, or would sneak in through somebody else's membership...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=255&start=10#p1717
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: It's almost time (for IFComp Games)!
User: George / DateTime: 2007-09-30 20:33:52

Since no one else has pointed out the obvious yet, this was discussed last year:

<a href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=115">viewtopic.php?f=23&t=115</a>

Anyway, it seems clear to me that a private forum already has the a-OK. However, I've never really checked out IFMud, so maybe during the Comp judging would be a good time to do so.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=255&start=10#p1718
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: It's almost time (for IFComp Games)!
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-09-30 20:42:48

Oh yeah -- and it probably comes up every year, somewhere. [emote]Smile[/emote]

I do like the idea of posts about the IFComp games being available after judging ends (where chat on the IFMud is presumably lost unless somebody logs it). I'd have loved to read chatter about my past entries after the competition, and I bet other authors probably would too. I tended to look for anything I could find about my games.

Just brainstorming about this for a minute --

Maybe topics could be limited to JUST the name of the game, followed by a simple and neutral topic. For instance...

Game XYZ - Spoilers
Game XYZ - Opinions
Game XYZ - Hints

...and so forth. Maybe these should even be pre-defined (it should be possible to set up a sub-board for each game, within the private board). I'd want to avoid toipcs like...

Game XYZ - I loved it!
Game XYZ - Hated it!
Game XYZ - Too buggy.

...or basically anything that isn't completely neutral.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=255&start=10#p1719
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: It's almost time (for IFComp Games)!
User: George / DateTime: 2007-09-30 20:53:00

I prefer to see all the threads in one board -- but this has the disadvantage of automatically ranking the most current threads on top, right? So maybe sub-boards would be the most neutral way to go about it. I don't particularly relish going through that many sub-boards to follow all the discussions, though I guess the private forum will still show up in the active topics list?

Also, I think on IFMud some of the conversation isn't actually chat, but more in a forum or bboard format. At the mud it seems like they use the term channel to describe both chat channels and bb's, but I could be wrong about that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=255&start=10#p1720
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: It's almost time (for IFComp Games)!
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-09-30 21:03:44

Yeah, I think there is a bulletin board *and* chat for each channel. It may not be a strict 1-to-1, but I've noticed the same thing. I don't think there has been much on the bulletin boards for the IFComp games, though. I can't subscribe during judging, but I've peeked afterwards before.

Seeing which topics have the most activity isn't necessarily a spoiler. It could be good, or it could be bad. I guess it might give people the idea that "something" is up with a particular game, though. Not sure if that would matter. It would definitely be easier to have everything in one place, you're right. Hmmm. I can give it some more thought.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=255&start=10#p1721
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: It's almost time (for IFComp Games)!
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2007-10-01 09:39:26

ifMUD's channels have an associated bulletin board, and I set it up so that there's one channel (and bb) for each game. In practice people chat about the games on the channel, and the bb is only used to mention bugs that people might run into, or suggested interpreters for the game -- in other words, the kind of information that everyone might need when playing it.

As for a discussion bulletin board, hang on a day or so. I'm fine with a board, but would like to mull over a day or so how you might should set it up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=255&start=10#p1722
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: It's almost time (for IFComp Games)!
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-01 10:32:14

Some things that would be nice, as this is considered:

A setup that would encourage people to only post after they've played (and possibly even decided on a score) for a particular game.

A setup that minimizes the chance for spoilers in games people haven't yet played. Having a good idea of who "Edgar O. Weyrd" was before I played "Delightful Wallpaper" last year probably played a part, for instance.

A setup that minimizes having your opinion swayed by the opinions of others before you've played. Even the most harmless of comments can have an impact on people (me, in particular). For instance, I had doubts about a game that people had posted a bug discussion in the newsgroup, last year. Even if I hadn't read the details, just seeing ongoing bug discussions (maybe it's Labyrinth I'm thinking about here) put certain thoughts in my head.

Yikes. I'm not sure *any* pre-result discussion can really avoid these things.

I guess it's up to each individual judge whether or not they would even want to participate, and if so, at what point in their judging. From the start, not really worried about being influenced by other opinions or spoilers? For each game, after playing and forming their own opinion? After playing them all and submitting votes?

I like the idea that every IFComp judge can post votes that are *right* -- even if drastically different than anybody else's scores. For whatever reason, I'm not a big fan of the "decide-my-opinion-based-on-what-everybody-else-says-first" kind of thing -- at least, not when it comes to the IFComp. There was some chat about this last year, and some people felt that they would *prefer* reading other people's opinions before deciding on a score, in case they were being too generous with an intended score, or not generous enough. My fear is that more discussion might lead to more of that, and to me, that kind of ruins the "fun" in thinking that it's all completely objective...

I'm rambling. Anyway, thanks for putting some thought into it, Sargent. I can see some good coming from a private discussion that can be un-hidden for public consumption after the voting deadline. There would be a wealth (potentially) of comments written while everything was still fresh on the posters' minds. But I would hope that people could practice restraint, and *try* to play each game before reading and/or writing about it.

Is anybody else out there? What do others think about this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=262&start=0#p1723
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: adrift cost
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-01 10:34:59

$18? That's all? I somehow thought it was in the $40 to $50 range. No wonder the price tag hasn't scared away the large number of Adrift authors.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=264&start=0#p1724
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Anybody seeding Comp07 torrents?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-01 10:55:02

I figured it would help to participate in the torrent downloads (since that's the recommended way of getting the IFComp files), but all three files have been sitting at zero all morning. Is anybody else participating, or is there something wrong with my Azureus? I've had luck in downloading other files (although it sometimes takes several days), but so far, nothing for IFComp. I'm not ruling out a work firewall issue, if it's working for others.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=265&start=0#p1725
Forum: Competitions / Subject: IFComp voting page Q's
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-01 11:34:54

Three questions, mainly for Sargent.

1) I get this error when I click on "options" at the top of the voting page:
[SQLUtils] Error: Unable to fetch data from query: SELECT name,email FROM judge WHERE judge_id='' :
Is it just something wrong with my account, or is there something in "options" that's broken?

2) I've never used this page to vote, so I'm not sure if it's okay to save scores for games as I go. It seems to be, since I'm told at the top how many more games I can vote on. But if I save a score mistakenly, can I correct it? Is the entire page editable up to the deadline?

3) Alphabetically, the games go side to side. I switched over to the random list early on, and started thinking that it goes down one column first, and then the other. It doesn't matter, I'm sure, but I was curious about how the random list was actually shown -- side to side like when it's alphabetical, or down both columns? Or is that just a philosophical question, since it's random either way? [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=262&start=0#p1726
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: adrift cost
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-01 15:19:42

From the amount of debate there's been about it over the years, you'd think it was a huge sum of money.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=262&start=0#p1727
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: adrift cost
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-01 16:55:19

Well, any amount is too much for some, I guess. Of course, I'm spoiled on the freeness of Hugo, but if I needed IF development without the programming, Adrift would certainly be a cheap enough route to take.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=265&start=0#p1728
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp voting page Q's
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-01 18:09:42

I think #2 is answered in the comp readme:

[quote]
You can enter your ratings as you assign them using the ballot page, if you wish. You can also change previous ratings if you change your mind about a game.
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=264&start=0#p1729
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Anybody seeding Comp07 torrents?
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2007-10-01 18:59:55

The tracker they're using is down for maintenance.  I'll continue seeding once it comes up again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=265&start=0#p1730
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp voting page Q's
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2007-10-02 09:48:16

Number 1 was an error in the code. Try it now.

Number 2 you already answered. [emote]Smile[/emote]

Number 3: the random list goes side-to-side just as the alphabetical list does.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=265&start=0#p1731
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp voting page Q's
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2007-10-02 14:07:49

"Options" doesn't work for me; it gives response 

[quote]
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_ENCAPSED_AND_WHITESPACE, expecting T_STRING or T_VARIABLE or T_NUM_STRING in /home/ifcomp/ifcomp.org/htdocs/info/options.php on line 18
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=266&start=0#p1732
Forum: Competitions / Subject: IFComp '07 Checklists
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-02 14:10:35

I thought it would be interesting to post my play list and "edit" the message each time I check one off. If I skip one (for example, it won't run on my computer) I'll mark it off the same way, just so there's no distinction between games I finished and games I'm not going to play. This is the random order assigned to me by the voting page (but I used Comp07.z5 to generate the list, which I then re-sorted based on the voting page random order).

If anybody else wants to post their list and mark off each one too, that's fine. Just reply once to this message with your own list, and then edit it as needed. No scores, comments, or opinions about the games in this topic, though, please.

XX: Varkana (varkana/varkana.gblorb)
XX: Eduard the Seminarist (moerike/moerike.z5)
XX: A Fine Day for Reaping (afdfr/afdfr.taf)
XX: My Name is Jack Mills (jackmills/jackmills.zblorb)
XX: Gathered In Darkness (gatheredindarkness/gatheredindarkness.cas)
XX: Orevore Courier (orevore/orevore.z8)
XX: Ghost of the Fireflies (firefly/firefly.exe)
XX: In The Mind Of The Master (mindofmaster/mindofmaster.taf)
XX: Beneath: a Transformation (beneath/beneath.z5)
XX: Lost Pig (lostpig/lostpig.z8)
XX: The Immortal (theimmortal/the immortal.z8)
XX: Wish (wish/wish.z5)
XX: The Lost Dimension (lostdimension/setup.exe)
XX: Deadline Enchanter (deadlineenchanter/deadlineenchanter.z5)
XX: Lord Bellwater's Secret (bellwater/bellwater.zblorb)
XX: Reconciling Mother (theyknow/theyknow.t3)
XX: Jealousy Duel X (jdx/jdx.exe)
XX: An Act of Murder (actofmurder/actofmurder.z8)
XX: Ferrous Ring (ferrousring/ferrousring.ulx)
XX: A Matter of Importance (amoi/amoi.gam)
XX: Slap that Fish (slapthatfish/slapthatfish.gam)
XX: Packrat (packrat/packrat.z5)
XX: The Chinese Room (chineseroom/the chinese room.ulx)
XX: Fox, Fowl and Feed (fff/fff.z5)
XX: My Mind's Mishmash (mishmash/mishmash.taf)
XX: Press [Escape] to Save (pets/pets.z5)
XX: Adventure XT (advxt/advxt.exe)
XX: Across The Stars (across/across.z8)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=266&start=0#p1735
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp '07 Checklists
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-02 16:40:04

Nice idea. Okay, here's mine:

1. Wish
2. Eduard the Seminarist
3. Press [Escape] to Save
4. Gathered in Darkness
5. A Fine Day For Reaping
6. My Name Is Jack Mills
7. Lord Bellwater's Secret
8. An Act Of Murder
9. Fox, Fowl & Feed
10. Varkana
11. Reconciling Mother 
12. Beneath: A Transformation
13. Lost Pig
14. Ferrous Ring
15. Slap That Fish
16. A Matter of Importance
17. Packrat
18. The Immortal
19. My Mind's Mishmash
20. Across The Stars
21. Orevore Courier
22. The Chinese Room

EDIT: Finally finished with the comp games. 7 not listed here - 1 was mine and 6 I decided against playing for one reason or another. Some good games and some bad ones and overall a stronger showing than the last few comps.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=266&start=0#p1736
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp '07 Checklists
User: George / DateTime: 2007-10-02 21:57:47

ditto David. 

[color=#008040]XX : [/color]  [color=#004040]My Mind's Mishmash[/color]
[color=#008040]XX : [/color]  Ghost of the Fireflies
[color=#008040]XX : [/color]  [color=#004040]The Chinese Room[/color]
[color=#008040]XX : [/color]  Deadline Enchanter
[color=#008040]XX : [/color]  [color=#004040]Across The Stars[/color]
[color=#008040]XX : [/color]  Lord Bellwater's Secret
[color=#008040]__ : [/color]  [color=#004040]Gathered In Darkness[/color]
[color=#008040]__ : [/color]  Vampyre Cross
[color=#008040]__ : [/color]  [color=#004040]A Matter of Importance[/color]
[color=#008040]__ : [/color]  Press [Escape] to Save
[color=#008040]__ : [/color]  [color=#004040]An Act of Murder[/color]
[color=#008040]__ : [/color]  Orevore Courier
[color=#008040]__ : [/color]  [color=#004040]Ferrous Ring[/color]
[color=#008040]__ : [/color]  The Lost Dimension
[color=#008040]__ : [/color]  [color=#004040]Varkana[/color]
[color=#008040]__ : [/color]  The Immortal
[color=#008040]__ : [/color]  [color=#004040]Slap that Fish[/color]
[color=#008040]__ : [/color]  In The Mind Of The Master
[color=#008040]__ : [/color]  [color=#004040]Fox, Fowl and Feed[/color]
[color=#008040]__ : [/color]  Beneath: a Transformation
[color=#008040]__ : [/color]  [color=#004040]A Fine Day for Reaping[/color]
[color=#008040]__ : [/color]  Lost Pig 
[color=#008040]__ : [/color]  [color=#004040]Jealousy Duel X[/color]
[color=#008040]__ : [/color]  Packrat
[color=#008040]__ : [/color]  [color=#004040]Wish[/color]
[color=#008040]__ : [/color]  Reconciling Mother
[color=#008040]__ : [/color]  [color=#004040]Eduard the Seminarist[/color]
[color=#008040]__ : [/color]  Adventure XT
[color=#008040]__ : [/color]  [color=#004040]My Name is Jack Mills[/color]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=265&start=0#p1737
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp voting page Q's
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2007-10-03 10:20:25

Yeah, I fixed one bug and uncovered a second. It should be fixed now, honest.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=268&start=0#p1738
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: IF: the RPG
User: George / DateTime: 2007-10-04 00:17:36

This is amusing:

<a href="http://www.memento-mori.com/other/games/parsley.html">http://www.memento-mori.com/other/games/parsley.html</a>

OK, who here would play this?

Just think, it's like the perfect natural language IF development system. You don't have to code anything! [emote]Smile[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=268&start=0#p1739
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF: the RPG
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-04 06:06:46

Hmmm. It seems too restrictive to me. I prefer D&D. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=266&start=0#p1740
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp '07 Checklists
User: Benjamin Sokal / DateTime: 2007-10-04 12:25:15

Okay.

XX: Reconciling Mother (tads3/theyknow/theyknow.t3)
XX: Lost Pig (zcode/lostpig/lostpig.z8)
XX: Across The Stars (zcode/across/across.z8)
XX: Wish (zcode/wish/wish.z5)
XX: Ghost of the Fireflies (windows/firefly/firefly.exe)
XX: A Fine Day for Reaping (adrift/afdfr/AFDFR.taf)
XX: In The Mind Of The Master (adrift/mindofmaster/mindofmaster.taf)
XX: The Immortal (zcode/theimmortal/The Immortal.z8)
XX: Vampyre Cross (windows/vcross/VCROSS.D64)
XX: Slap that Fish (tads2/slapthatfish/slapthatfish.gam)
XX: Adventure XT (windows/advxt/advxt.exe)
XX: A Matter of Importance (tads2/amoi/amoi.gam)
XX: Eduard the Seminarist (zcode/moerike/moerike.z5)
XX: Ferrous Ring (glulx/ferrousring/FerrousRing.ulx)
XX: Jealousy Duel X (windows/jdx/jdx.exe)
XX: An Act of Murder (zcode/actofmurder/ActofMurder.z8)
XX: Packrat (zcode/packrat/packrat.z5)
XX: Beneath: a Transformation (zcode/beneath/Beneath.z5)
XX: Orevore Courier (zcode/orevore/orevore.z8)
XX: Fox, Fowl and Feed (zcode/fff/FFF.z5)
XX: Deadline Enchanter (zcode/deadlineenchanter/deadlineenchanter.z5)
XX: Varkana (glulx/varkana/Varkana.gblorb)
XX: Gathered In Darkness (quest/gatheredindarkness/Gatheredindarkness.cas)
XX: The Lost Dimension (windows/lostdimension/Setup.exe)
XX: The Chinese Room (glulx/chineseroom/The Chinese Room.ulx)
XX: My Name is Jack Mills (zcode/jackmills/JackMills.zblorb)
XX: My Mind's Mishmash (adrift/mishmash/mishmash.taf)
XX: Press [Escape] to Save (zcode/pets/pets.z5)
XX: Lord Bellwater's Secret (zcode/bellwater/bellwater.zblorb)

Done!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=269&start=0#p1741
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Reviews? Chat?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-05 10:18:45

I'm always excited for the glut of reviews and chatter that comes in the hours after November 15th each year. It's like the whole thing has been a well-guarded secret, and suddenly the flood gates open and I get to see what everybody else thought in comparison to my own opinions.

But now, we (being all of us but the authors in the competition) can talk. But we're not. Is it because it's too early and we don't have anything to say yet? Is it because we all prefer the chatter in bulk after the judging ends? Is it because [color=#000080]nobody is coming here?[/color]

We *can* use this forum to discuss the games -- even review them, I think (just mark topics clearly and without offering opinions or spoilers *in the title* please). But *should* we? I'm tempted to post each of my reviews as I complete them, but *should* I? Do we collectively *want* to just wait until the middle of November? I'm fine with that -- I just want to get opinions.

If you're one of the IFcomp authors this year, I think you're still prohibited from participating (probably even from answering this post -- I dunno). You can mail me privately if you have any comments though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=266&start=0#p1742
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp '07 Checklists
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-05 10:47:30

XX: Across The Stars (zcode/across/across.z8)
XX: An Act of Murder (zcode/actofmurder/ActofMurder.z8)
__: Adventure XT (windows/advxt/advxt.exe)
__: Beneath: a Transformation (zcode/beneath/Beneath.z5)
X_: The Chinese Room (glulx/chineseroom/The Chinese Room.ulx)
__: Deadline Enchanter (zcode/deadlineenchanter/deadlineenchanter.z5)
__: Eduard the Seminarist (zcode/moerike/moerike.z5)
__: Ferrous Ring (glulx/ferrousring/FerrousRing.ulx)
__: A Fine Day for Reaping (adrift/afdfr/AFDFR.taf)
__: Fox, Fowl and Feed (zcode/fff/FFF.z5)
__: Gathered In Darkness (quest/gatheredindarkness/Gatheredindarkness.cas)
__: Ghost of the Fireflies (windows/firefly/firefly.exe)
__: The Immortal (zcode/theimmortal/The Immortal.z8)
__: In The Mind Of The Master (adrift/mindofmaster/mindofmaster.taf)
__: Jealousy Duel X (windows/jdx/jdx.exe)
__: Lord Bellwater's Secret (zcode/bellwater/bellwater.zblorb)
__: The Lost Dimension (windows/lostdimension/Setup.exe)
__: Lost Pig (zcode/lostpig/lostpig.z8)
__: A Matter of Importance (tads2/amoi/amoi.gam)
XX: My Mind's Mishmash (adrift/mishmash/mishmash.taf)
__: My Name is Jack Mills (zcode/jackmills/JackMills.zblorb)
__: Orevore Courier (zcode/orevore/orevore.z8)
__: Packrat (zcode/packrat/packrat.z5)
__: Press [Escape] to Save (zcode/pets/pets.z5)
__: Reconciling Mother (tads3/theyknow/theyknow.t3)
__: Slap that Fish (tads2/slapthatfish/slapthatfish.gam)
__: Vampyre Cross (windows/vcross/VCROSS.D64)
XX: Varkana (glulx/varkana/Varkana.gblorb)
__: Wish (zcode/wish/wish.z5)

Where XX means "finished for purposes of the Comp", and X_ means "started, but not finished yet".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=269&start=0#p1743
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reviews? Chat?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-05 10:49:02

I have only played three games so far, but all of them were of excellent quality. That is, they may not all have been excellent games, but they were all made with skill and care and lots of testing.

Have I just been lucky, or is the avarage quality higher than in previous years?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=269&start=0#p1744
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reviews? Chat?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-05 11:20:21

Well, I've only played three games as well. Two were pretty good. One really wasn't. I'll have to play more before I have a good feeling of whether this is an "up" year or a "down" year. In my mind, 2006 is a tough act to follow. I was very impressed with MANY of the games last year, and that's after playing only half of what was entered!

I see you posted your checklist. Are you playing them in no particular order? I was hopeing people would put them in whatever order they intend to play (even if it's the random order done by Comp07.z5 or the voting site), kind of as a way others could see what you're likely to play next. It's no biggie anyway -- it's your list. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=269&start=0#p1745
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reviews? Chat?
User: Benjamin Sokal / DateTime: 2007-10-05 12:39:52

I'm extremely impressed by a few of the entries I've played so far. I've played 9 games (one I did some beta-testing for, so I can't vote on it) and I'd say that 4 are absolutely phenomenal, two are worthy entrants, and 3 are duds. I always write a review of each game after I play it, but I don't know if I should post them anywhere until the contest is over or at least close to being over. What does everyone else think?

Ben

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=269&start=0#p1746
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reviews? Chat?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-05 13:16:36

Yeah, that's what I'm curious about too. Sargent says it's okay for us to talk about (due to a new change to the rules), but it begs the question, *should* we?

I'm kind of itching to post my reviews, even though I'd be fine with waiting until the end. I think if I do post, I'll make the topic something like "Merk's Review of Some Game Name" (no score or opinions or anything in the title). I haven't decided if I will, but I'm tempted to. Problem is, I'd have to practice restraint not to read OTHER reviews for games I haven't played yet. I did that last year, and in some ways wished I hadn't. But of course, if they're already here, I can read them as soon as I *have* played. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=269&start=0#p1747
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reviews? Chat?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-05 18:48:48

Speaking personally, simply seeing the fact that someone has checked off my game on theitr checklist makes me feel something like the following:

[i]Ohmigod. They played my game! What if they hated it? I want to know even if they did hate it! I want to know! Ohmigod! Tell me! Tellmetellmetellme![/i]

But then, I'm new to all this, and don't appreciate the culture that's built up over the years of the review inundation. One thing, though: the idea that judges have anything like objective integrity is obviously an absurd one, so I really don't think things'll be damaged by posting reviews. Any judge who's swayed by a review -- their opinion isn't important anyway; any judge worth eir salt won't be swayed. So it may, at a stretch, affect the marks -- but they're not the important thing anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=269&start=0#p1748
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reviews? Chat?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-05 19:53:11

Ieeee.... the dreaded phpBB beta italics bug.

A while back, I tried to install a release candidate that Rioshin told me about. I had a problem with the default theme/skin, of all things, and it never would run right. Maybe if I get a chance this weekend, I'll try again.

I wonder if <i>real italics HTML code</i> works?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=269&start=0#p1749
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reviews? Chat?
User: George / DateTime: 2007-10-05 20:06:22

Merk, I think it's still a little early for people to be posting reviews (I haven't played any games yet). Though Emily Short at least has posted something already at her blog.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=266&start=0#p1750
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp '07 Checklists
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2007-10-05 21:49:38

XX: My Mind's Mishmash
XX: Eduard the Seminarist
XX: Wish
XX: Adventure XT
XX: A Fine Day for Reaping
XX: Fox, Fowl and Feed
XX: In The Mind Of The Master
XX: Packrat
XX: Slap that Fish
XX: Beneath: a Transformation
XX: Press [Escape] to Save
XX: Ghost of the Fireflies
XX: Deadline Enchanter
XX: The Immortal
XX: Lost Pig 
XX: Lord Bellwater's Secret
XX: Vampyre Cross
XX: An Act of Murder
XX: Orevore Courier
XX: My Name is Jack Mills
XX: Ferrous Ring
XX: A Matter of Importance
XX: Across The Stars
XX: Reconciling Mother
XX: Varkana
XX: The Chinese Room
XX: Gathered In Darkness
XX: The Lost Dimension
XX: Jealousy Duel X

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=269&start=0#p1751
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reviews? Chat?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-05 22:23:29

One thing I know I'm allowed to say is that [b]authors love feedback[/b]. 

And whether you decide to post comments here or not, there's never been any rule against sending feedback to authors directly (even including emailing them your reviews) if you so wish.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=269&start=0#p1752
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reviews? Chat?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-06 07:44:18

As an author, I'm quite happy not to take part in any discussion of the games until the comp is over, but I still like to read reviews and see what other people think of them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=269&start=10#p1753
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reviews? Chat?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-06 07:50:27

[quote="Jota"]
One thing I know I'm allowed to say is.... 
[/quote] 
A ha! I thought I recognized that orc!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=269&start=10#p1754
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reviews? Chat?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-06 13:20:26

[quote="H.G."]
One thing, though: the idea that judges have anything like objective integrity is obviously an absurd one, so I really don't think things'll be damaged by posting reviews. Any judge who's swayed by a review -- their opinion isn't important anyway; any judge worth eir salt won't be swayed.
[/quote] 
Hmmm. I'm not so sure. I think that if a person hears good things about a game, they're going to start out expecting it to be good (and, most likely, it will be). If they heard bad things, they'll be biased against it from the start. You could make a point that people *will* make up their own minds, but a collective opinion can form. I do think this can influence opinions.

I'm not opposed to posting my reviews as I write them, and seeing others post theirs. I think I can refrain from peeking, although I might be tempted to skip games out-of-order so I can play whichever game(s) I see getting all the discussion (even if I don't know for sure if the discussion is good or bad). So there's a risk.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=269&start=10#p1755
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reviews? Chat?
User: Benjamin Sokal / DateTime: 2007-10-06 13:25:19

One thing I've noticed from reading a few reviews (of games I've already played and rated) is that one person's trash is another person's treasure. I found myself astonished at a negative review of a game I thought was one of the best I've played so far. It'll be interesting to see how the voting turns out! What I've taken from this so far (I am new to these comps) is that if I ever finish my game and enter it into next year's competition, I'll just be happy it's done and out there and available for the people to play. If it happens to get a super high score that's great, but sometimes that may just be the luck of the draw. And it would also depend on the strength of the competition. I've been impressed by many of the games I've played so far, but some other people beg to differ.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=266&start=0#p1756
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp '07 Checklists
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-06 15:23:20

Here's mine. XX = games I have played, and those I can't play. BT = games I beta-tested. I reserve the right to change this at any point, and, while I hope to complete them all, I'm not promising anything [emote]Smile[/emote].

XX: Fox, Fowl and Feed
XX: Ghost of the Fireflies
BT: The Chinese Room
XX: Wish
XX: My Name is Jack Mills
XX: Press [Escape] to save
XX: Vampyre Cross
BT: Ferrous Ring
XX: An Act of Murder
XX: Adventure XT
__: A Fine Day for Reaping
__: Beneath: A Transformation
__: Reconciling Mother
__: Eduard the Seminarist
__: Lost Pig
__: Deadline Enchanter
__: Jealousy Duel X
__: Orevore Courier
__: Slap that Fish
__: My Mind's Mishmash
__: Packrat
__: The Lost Dimension
__: Across The Stars
__: Gathered in Darkness
__: In the Mind of the Master
__:The Immortal
__: Varkana
__: A Matter of Importance
__: Lord Bellwater's Secret

Regards,
CP

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=269&start=10#p1757
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reviews? Chat?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-06 15:24:52

Where'd you find those reviews? I guess I wouldn't mind reading opinions of the ones I've already played and reviewed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=269&start=10#p1758
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reviews? Chat?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-06 15:31:23

The only reviews I've found so far have been on Emily Short's blog:

<a href="http://emshort.wordpress.com/category/interactive-fiction/">http://emshort.wordpress.com/category/i ... e-fiction/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=270&start=0#p1759
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Celestianpower's review: Fox, Fowl and Feed
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-06 15:36:07

OK, so reading the relevant discussion, people don't seem [i]against[/i] having reviews here in theory, so I thought I'd start, and see what people think in practice. Spoilers will undoubtedly follow, so if you're yet to play this game, please don't read past this point.

[quote]
This is the first game I played, and I must say, it's a very nice little game. It was really rather ingenious, and I was very happy that I worked out 2 of the puzzles without hints (getting the duck across both times). It's also a pure puzzle game, which I found happily refreshing. The tone is generally light-hearted, and it's humorous in places, which is fantastic. “It is made of twisted little threads, all alike.” was especially brilliant, in my opinion.

So, I enjoyed it. However, I was a little disappointed with the implementation. Most of the scenery in unimplemented, including obvious things included in room descriptions like roads and beaches. There are also missing verbs. I always like to drink water whenever I see it in IF, and trying to eat the duck should be better. The most tedious problem with implementation was the rope-tying. You had to tie and untie each end individually every time. I would have liked to have been able to type “tie boat to dock”, for instance, and for it to have untied it from whatever else to which it was tied, and re-tie it to the boat and dock. Also, “untie rope” should just untie it from everything.

In all, a lovely idea and cute, competent game perfect for the competition, just needing work on making the implementation more comprehensive. I scored it XX.
[/quote]  

I've XX'd the score, because that might change once I've played all of the games. Kind regards,
CP

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=269&start=10#p1760
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reviews? Chat?
User: Benjamin Sokal / DateTime: 2007-10-06 15:39:45

There are also two other sites that have reviews. I forget the addresses but I think they were linked from Emily Short's blog.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=266&start=0#p1761
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp '07 Checklists
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-06 16:50:30

I'm a bandwagon jumper.

XX: My Name is Jack Mills
XX: Fox, Fowl and Feed
XX: Beneath
XX: Deadline Enchanter
XX: The Immortal

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=270&start=0#p1762
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Review: Fox, Fowl and Feed
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-06 17:32:09

I had no real problems with the implementation; most of what I tried worked well enough. There's something to be said for keeping things simple, for not biting off more than you want to chew; were there an award for competent coding this would get a very nice score indeed. We've even got a pretty cute little xyzzy:

[quote]
> xyzzy
A hollow voice says, “I pity the fool who uses lame magic words.”
[/quote]   

This is, in fact, the only game I've played so far (out of four zcode games) that I've actually enjoyed to any real degree. On the other hand, the main puzzle itself is worn and cliché, which Emily Short has [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2007/10/04/if-competition-discussion-fox-fowl-and-feed/]expounded on[/url] quite negatively:

[quote]
This conundrum is as old as the hills, and has appeared (unfortunately) in several IF games before, alongside such classics as “use a 3-cup measure and a 5-cup measure to get 4 cups of this liquid” and “do this 15 puzzle” and “solve the tower of hanoi, picking up each disk with your teeth.”
[/quote]   

I'm afraid I agree. I can't give this a low score because—frankly—it's not by any means [i]bad[/i]; it's just there, hanging out, only worth playing at all because it takes less time and thought than watching the same Seinfeld rerun for the twentieth time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=270&start=0#p1763
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Review: Fox, Fowl and Feed
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-06 17:48:50

[quote="cunningjames"]
I had no real problems with the implementation; most of what I tried worked well enough. There's something to be said for keeping things simple, for not biting off more than you want to chew; were there an award for competent coding this would get a very nice score indeed.
[/quote] 

Hmm, I guess you're right. It's just that I'm just used to obsessively coding literally everything I can possibly think of. I realise that's ridiculous, but a few things like the rope-tye-ing could have been more elgant and less repetitive.

[quote="cunningjames"]
On the other hand, the main puzzle itself is worn and cliché, which Emily Short has [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2007/10/04/if-competition-discussion-fox-fowl-and-feed/]expounded on[/url] quite negatively:

[quote]
This conundrum is as old as the hills, and has appeared (unfortunately) in several IF games before, alongside such classics as “use a 3-cup measure and a 5-cup measure to get 4 cups of this liquid” and “do this 15 puzzle” and “solve the tower of hanoi, picking up each disk with your teeth.”
[/quote]    

I'm afraid I agree. I can't give this a low score because—frankly—it's not by any means [i]bad[/i]; it's just there, hanging out, only worth playing at all because it takes less time and thought than watching the same Seinfeld rerun for the twentieth time.
[/quote] 

Well, I must say I disagree. If the "get the stuff accross the river" were one puzzle, that's a different matter, but as it is, I think it works. That puzzle isn't what makes the game fun and challenging, it's just the premise.

Regards,
CP

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=271&start=0#p1764
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Eduard the Seminarist
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-07 00:22:54

The "official" version can be found at my website:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/eduard.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/eduard.shtml</a>

[quote]
Game #2: Eduard the Seminarist
By Heiko Theißen
Played On: October 3rd (1 hour 10 minutes)
Platform: Inform 6 (Zcode)

Game’s Blurb:
[i]An episode from a poet's years as a theological seminarist almost two centuries ago.[/i]

I wish I could begin by describing what [i]Eduard the Seminarist[/i] is actually [i]about[/i], but I [i]can’t[/i]. Among its many flaws, the game suffers from an all-encompassing lack of purpose. From the start, it just isn’t clear what you’re supposed to be [i]doing[/i]. A note found under the bed (which you’re likely to miss entirely unless the urge to look there hits you, and it [i]didn’t[/i] me until I checked the walkthrough after bumbling around the seminary for a while despite doing the same type of thing in my own 1999 entry, which I really should apologize for – but I digress) does give a sort of general goal. That’s it. At no other point, as far as I can tell, does the game attempt to help you along at all.

What’s probably just a rushed entry by an inexperienced new IF author sometimes [i]feels[/i] as though it’s equal parts laziness and willful attempts to withhold vital clues. The author would probably benefit more from my transcript than from a lengthy list of such instances here, but they include things like missing exits in room descriptions, important objects that aren’t mentioned in the room at all, a lack of backstory or explanation as to what it means to be a theological seminarist, no positive reinforcement when the player does something right, no penalty or even a friendly warning when the player messes up, too-sparse implementation of almost everything, and more. This doesn’t just make it a difficult game to beat. It makes it a difficult game to [i]play[/i].

Puzzles are worked into the story well enough, and most do seem well-placed. Even so, I never felt as though the game offered enough guidance. This is partly because I was able to play a ways into it without ever finding the note. Even with a note, I never really understood the things that the PC would have known, and these are things vital for me [i]as the player[/i] to help the PC make it to his meeting. These are things like understanding why the guards would block the street, what things I could afford to lose to the guards, why some actions might help or hinder my progress later, and so forth.

And then, it’s just buggy in general. Not only can you get stuck by closing off the solution to puzzles, you can [i]actually[/i] get stuck in objects. I was stuck, somehow, [i]inside[/i] a door, and later, on a river. These weren’t rooms. These were just game objects or scenery I inadvertently “entered” (as an object in the game program myself) in a way not intended by the author. Very near the end, realizing that I needed something from the seminary that I had no way to go back (as far as I was able to determine) and retrieve, I just played through from a restart using the included command transcript.

The game is apparently based on a book by (or about) 19th-century German poet Eduard Mörike. A possibly anachronistic reference in the game suggests it (as does the game's file name), although far too little detail made it into the game if so. It may be that this book, or this poem, or this particular episode in Eduard’s life is interesting in another form. [i]Eduard the Seminarist[/i], as a game, offers little to encourage an understanding of the source material, let alone enthusiasm for it.

I understand a degree of mystery and discovery, but the PC must have kept most of it to himself. Even when I did make progress, I never really felt that the [i]story[/i] had moved forward. The PC was entirely generic in a game that [i]probably[/i] centers around a person that had more personality and character in real life. All the detail that the author must have known while writing the game just never made it [i]into[/i] the game.

The writing is fine (and more of it might have made the game really come alive). It’s the coding and design that really fails here. Maybe that’s due to a lack of time, or a lack of experience (with Inform 6 in particular, or programming in general).

The bulk of this review is negative, yes, but I do believe the author has talent. [i]This[/i] game would require more work to fix than has already gone into creating the competition version, but I don’t mean to discourage the attempt. I hope this (among other reviews that are likely to be equally critical) doesn’t discourage the author from trying again. I considered a score of “X”, but decided on “X” given the ease with which the game can break. I’ve added an unofficial “plus” to my score, because it does have a certain charm despite its numerous flaws.
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=272&start=0#p1765
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: My Name is Jack Mills
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-07 00:44:22

The "official" version can be found at my website:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/jackmills.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/jackmills.shtml</a>

[quote]Game #4: My Name is Jack Mills
By Juhana Leinonen
Played On: October 5th (1 hour 55 minutes)
Platform: Inform 7 (Zcode)

Game’s Blurb:
[i]An Interactive Pulp Fiction[/i]

[b]>xyzzy[/b]
[i]Wrong game, pal.[/i]

For me, the term [i]pulp fiction[/i] carries two connotations. I think of something that’s probably entertaining but without substance; something hastily written, perhaps, as pulp fiction from the early twentieth century might have been; something that’s essentially throw-away literature. I also think of Quentin Tarantino’s excellent [i]Pulp Fiction[/i] movie, which epitomizes some of the common, recognizable themes from pulp fiction while managing [i]not[/i] to be hastily contrived throw-away entertainment.

[i]My Name is Jack Mills[/i] has a promising start. It’s set in the present (although the game carefully avoids telling the year), in a sufficiently generic city. Jack’s friend (a professor) has been jailed for assault. Jack rushes to help, and finds out that a certain item (a coin, described by the professor as being “a valuable historical artifact”) was stolen from him. Jack agrees to track down the thief (the professor already tried, which lead to the assault charge) and recover the artifact. In Jack’s own words “this was going to become a long night.”

It’s effectively [i]IF noir[/i], rife with crime, unlikable characters, and seemingly complicated women. Jack switches to an internal monologue in transitional scenes. He’s perfectly out of place no matter where he goes, yet he’s never out of sorts. It’s all exactly what one might expect from a story like this, and maybe that’s the problem. As nicely as it emulates the [i]idea[/i] of pulp fiction, [i]My Name is Jack Mills[/i] never seems to build onto that promising start. It’s exactly what it appears to be, with no real twist, no innovation, and nothing that injects it with that “wow” factor seen in contemporary pulp-inspired stories like Tarantino’s. It demonstrates (even emphasizes) that the bulk of what appears in the annual IFComp [i]is[/i] throw-away IF. It’s good for a couple hours of entertainment, but ultimately forgettable and buried under the accolades that will befall the competition’s better entries.

That’s a shame, because Juhana Leinonen has put obvious effort (undoubtedly countless hours of proverbial blood, sweat, and tears) into [i]My Name is Jack Mills[/i]. Some parts of the implementation really shine: the use of smell throughout; the clever way a partially covered page on the officer’s desk is shown; the ease with which Jack can navigate to points of interest around the city. Other parts, though, suffer: many instances of “you can’t see any such thing” for objects which the text has told me I [i]do[/i] see (this seems to become more common as the game progresses); a problem with disambiguating “woman” in the restaurant; minor quirks (like a missing line break and an invalid response trying to drive to the park); and even a big game-killing bug when attempting to leave Emmy’s table at the restaurant (a long series of “block” errors shown after a variable stack overflow error).

(Potential spoilers in the next paragraph.)

It might be intentional (and I wouldn’t know, as I’ve never been a big fan of the gritty detective pulp genre), but the story is full of head-scratching plot holes and unanswered questions. What [i]was[/i] so important about the Roman coin? If Julian, a very wealthy man, would trade the coin for an Egyptian mask that goes for $650 in auction, why wouldn’t he have simply bought it for himself? And if that’s the fair trade value he has assigned to the coin, why bother to steal it to begin with? It has some significance, else the professor wouldn’t make such a fuss. If Julian [i]knew[/i] what the importance was, then why be willing to trade it? Might he have been planning a double-cross? It seems doubtful, given that you [i]can[/i] win the game by making the trade.

[i]My Name is Jack Mills[/i] has at least two different endings – probably three or more. (Ed: Source code is included, and I see that there are actually five or six different possible endings off the two main branches.) They’re based on decisions made around half way through the game. Well, not decisions so much as two different leads (or methods) for recovering the stolen coin. A series of puzzles (some with more than one solution) pave the way. It’s possible to close off certain solutions by earlier actions, and it’s unlikely the player will know this has happened. At least one of the winning endings is supposed to be open no matter what happens, and I found this to be true when I played.

One ending I would have [i]liked[/i] to see, however, involved waiting for the bad guy to arrive at a place where he just never did. After a different ending reached without assistance, I turned to the walkthrough for more. It makes an allowance for this no-show situation, but doesn’t really explain what I might have done earlier that caused it. It apparently involves a chase scene, and that might have been fun.

I said earlier that the story has no twist. That’s not [i]entirely[/i] true. It’s never clear during the story just [i]who[/i] Jack Mills is, until the end. With more than one possible answer, though, it’s more gimmick than twist. It works, and it makes for a nice wrap-up, but it might have been nicer if the whole story had been in support of a single, more interesting conclusion.

The writing is okay – pretty good, even. The author does break some pretty firm grammatical rules, though. It may be for effect (I’m frequently guilty of relaxed writing myself), but I can’t think of [i]any[/i] instance where a true comma splice makes sense.

It’s just... hmm. It feels like film noir in Jack’s internal monologues, but it’s pretty ordinary otherwise. The author does work similarly clever bits into the general game, but not to the degree I expected. It’s as though the author was tackling a form of writing that exceeds his (or her?) proficiency. Back when this sort of pulp fiction was common, it may have come naturally to writers. Now, it probably needs a higher degree of exaggeration to really stress the point that this is supposed to [i]be[/i] pulp fiction. 

It’s worth playing. It could definitely be improved, but I can still recommend it as-is. It’s a respectable “X” based on my judging criteria. It might have been a “X”, but I didn’t feel the puzzles were poorly-clued and I [i]did[/i] like the tone and feel of the story. I’d like to see more in the future from this author.[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=269&start=10#p1767
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reviews? Chat?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-07 01:26:26

I went ahead and posted two of my reviews (in "quote" boxes, which seems to avoid the formatting bug in UBB italics and bold tags). I'll post more if there's an interest, although one of them is likely to make me pretty unpopular in the Adrift community.

So far, I'm only through four of the games. Today was too busy to get to the next one. Plus, my reviews seem to be taking longer to write than in prior years, which eats up the time I might otherwise spend *playing* the next game. Maybe tomorrow I'll get to another one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=269&start=10#p1768
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reviews? Chat?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-07 03:22:03

I'm thinking about setting up a simple blog collating reviews as they come, and probably adding my own. Good idea, or no?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=269&start=10#p1769
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reviews? Chat?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-07 03:44:36

Good idea.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=269&start=10#p1770
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reviews? Chat?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-07 10:37:20

From earlier:[quote="H.G."]
Speaking personally, simply seeing the fact that someone has checked off my game on theitr checklist makes me feel something like the following:
[/quote]  
From now:[quote="H.G."]
I'm thinking about setting up a simple blog collating reviews as they come, and probably adding my own. Good idea, or no?
[/quote]  
If you've entered a game in the competition (and I do see one co-authored by somebody with those initials), you'd probably want to double-check the rules for authors first: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifcomp.org/comp07/rules.html">http://www.ifcomp.org/comp07/rules.html</a>

In the announcement Stephen Granade made, authors themselves are still asked not to discuss the games. It was always gut-wrenching for me in prior years, but it's better than a potential disqualification or something like that. I just mention it, since blogging links to other reviews *might* even be a problem, but the best way to know for sure is to email Stephen directly.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=274&start=0#p1771
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Hotel Dusk (Nintendo DS)
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-07 11:42:42

I wonder why it is that the developers of commercial adventure games *still* hold on to outdated (even lazy) design decisions? I'm really enjoying Hotel Dusk (I'm only a ways into the 3rd chapter so far), but I'm already finding a few things that bug me about it.

Here's one. A delivery guy (who's important to the story, as it progresses) brings a box to Kyle (the PC). It's supposed to have products and stuff in it. When the delivery guy finds out that Kyle, an ex cop he used to know, is now a salesman, he comments something to the effect that the box must be full of cleaning supplies and other stuff like that. Nothing's wrong here until he leaves and Kyle opens the box. It's empty, except for a small notebook.

So, the delivery guy couldn't *tell* that the box he brought weighs almost nothing before making the assumption that it must be the supplies that Kyle was expecting? Really? I think if I was carrying a really light box, I wouldn't assume it was full of cleaning supplies.

Then, the doors. When you knock on room doors, nobody is ever there unless it's "time" in the story to interact with them. And when they close the door after you're done, you can knock again only to see Kyle's suspicion that "nobody is in right now." Yeah right. I never took my eyes off the door. How could the person I *just* talked to *not* be in?

And the puzzles. I like them, but the game has a bad habit of giving you tasks that you can't actually begin on until you've completed other tasks. This is a problem, because the tasks are *unrelated*. For example, in the chapter I'm in, there is writing on a pen you're supposed to read, a doll you're supposed to return to a girl, and a bookmark you're supposed to locate for the guy who owns the previously-mentioned notebook. Now, I went to the box where the bookmark was supposed to be hidden, and couldn't figure out *how* to search. I knocked on the girl's door, but nobody was home. I had forgotten about the pen, and ultimately figured it out by blindly trying things. After I did, I was able to return the doll. And after I returned the doll, Kyle's inner monologue suggested I go find the bookmark which *then* gave me a box-rotating mini-game kind of puzzle that hadn't shown up before. All these things were separate tasks I had *already* been set to work on, but they had to be taken in order.

So, why do I like the game? The story is interesting, and I have high hopes for some interesting twists and mysteries as it unfolds. For all the work that went into the interface and the story, I just wish the designers had looked to the future when it comes to abandoned old school design elements.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=275&start=0#p1772
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: A Fine Day for Reaping
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-08 10:28:04

The "official" version can be found at my website:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/reaping.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/reaping.shtml</a>

[quote]
Game #3: A Fine Day for Reaping
By James Webb (writing as “revgiblet”)
Played On: October 4th (2 hours 50 minutes)
Platform: Adrift (Version 4)

Game’s Blurb:
[i]It's not all fun being the Grim Reaper. It's your job to usher five awkward souls into the netherworld or the universe stops existing. No pressure.  Take control of The Man in Black and find out if even Death can get a credit card...[/i]

[i]A Fine Day for Reaping[/i] has the witty appeal that was lacking in the entry I played just prior to this. For a game about Death, it feels much warmer and more [i]alive[/i] -- and that’s a [i]good[/i] thing. The Grim Reaper is well done (and what [i]is[/i] it that’s so comical about a well-written lisp? I imagined him as sounding like a cross between a cheesy Mike Tyson impersonation and Sylvester the cartoon cat). At a glance in the [i]Reaper Man[/i] novel, I think revgiblet is right. His Death is different than Terry Pratchett’s, seeming a bit like William Sadler in [i]Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey[/i]. Anyway, I was pleased at how nicely the author crafted a PC with real character.

This is a puzzle-fest of the sort I like best. Each objective has two or three alternate solutions (and it’s evident that there are alternate solutions just in the way things are constructed, which is nice). Some solutions cross paths, making it likely that a player will find clues to solving an object in the course of solving a different one entirely. I like this quite a bit, although the [i]easiest[/i] of the solutions are probably the ones most players will find. This can leave the others to feel a bit like red herrings, unless you’ve connected the proverbial dots to realize certain things are no longer relevant. I managed to complete the game without peeking at the walkthrough, although not within the two-hour IFComp time limit.

And so, it was necessary that I decide on a score from a partial playthrough. My official vote is “X”, which thankfully lines up with my review score. I’m finding that I [i]really[/i] dislike the two-hour rule, though. There is such a big risk in getting it [i]wrong[/i], but it would be unfair to the review to stop entirely just to avoid deciding on a vote, or to [i]rush[/i] through and not get a feel for how the game [i]should[/i] play out. I’m a little bothered by reviews based on a few minutes of play that have been extrapolated to the game in its entirety. Those reviewers may just be more astute than I, but I find it difficult to write authoritatively about a game when I haven’t explored more of it. Getting to the end [i]can[/i] make a difference.

It makes a difference in [i]A Fine Day for Reaping[/i]. Even though the writing suffers from minor problems (the usual suspects like misplaced or missing commas and typos in general, but also an intentional but slightly jarring switch in tense during cut-scenes) it’s by and large quite nice in this game. The author has a style (maybe a bit metaphor-heavy) – whether original or borrowed, I can’t say – that [i]really[/i] makes for fun reading. That’s probably why I was more bothered that I had trouble pausing multi-page text dumps (a setting in Adrift that, for whatever reason, didn’t want to stay) than I was that the game [i]has[/i] so many lengthy non-interactive bits. None of it was dry. None of it felt unnecessary.

That’s also why I was so pleased with how revgiblet handled the ending. It’s a lot to read, but it makes the payoff for almost three hours of play much better than the “congrats - you won” kind of ending I had expected. Different solutions lead to different wrap-ups at the end (according to the walkthrough – although I have not played through again to see those endings, they’re bound to be equally worthwhile).

As much as I [i]enjoyed[/i] what revgiblet has done here, a number of problems hold it back from being the truly great game it might have been. Almost all of them are implementation problems. The design itself is fine, with predominantly logical puzzles (or at least illogical ones that [i]make sense[/i] in context) and pretty good pacing where it’s hard to get stuck for long.

The exception, as far as the design is concerned, is the twelve-hour in-game time limit. I never felt that it really added anything to the game. I’m not sure how many turns this works out to be, but it’s plenty. For a game on a time limit, it’s probably [i]too[/i] long. To be fair, players will realize this from the beginning, and probably plan their saves (and multiple saves) accordingly. The problem for me was that the game didn’t [i]need[/i] a sense of urgency. The time limit was made long enough so that exploration and sight-seeing doesn’t have to be cut down [i]too[/i] much, but if you’re not forcing a sense of urgency, then why have a time limit at all? In my play-through, I ran out of turns close to the end of my last objective. It’s a nice little non-winning ending, but it just didn’t add anything to the experience. 

Other problems are strictly bugs in the implementation. For example:

[i]Jimiyu Wangai's empty body is lying on the ground.[/i]
[b]>x table[/b]

[i]You look at the table.[/i]
[i]"Don't worry," says Jimiyu, "It's perfectly sturdy."[/i]

Now, Death [i]can[/i] talk to the dead, but in this case, poor Jimiyu had been reaped [i]and[/i] departed. The “x table” reply had to have been hard-coded on the assumption that players would only be looking at the table while Jimiyu was still alive. I found this kind of thing in some other places as well, where static descriptions (for instance, not being able to approach one NPC’s bed due to a protective spell, even though the spell was already gone) didn’t take into consideration the changes in the state of the story.

“In” and “out”, as standard commands in IF, didn’t work in places where they might have been appropriate. Some of the more specific actions were a little guess-the-verb-y (I had trouble figuring out how to take something from the “lucky dip” without finally resorting to “use dip”, for instance). There is no special way of entering a year into the machine (you just type the number as though it was a stand-alone verb, but it [i]only[/i] responds with something other than an unrecognized command message if you enter a year that the game knows), which does make it a little confusing. These kinds of small frustrations happen frequently in [i]A Fine Day for Reaping[/i], but it probably just needs more testing and polishing.

Then, there is a strange screen-clearing problem at work. I’m not entirely convinced Adrift is to fault for this, since it appears that room descriptions that shouldn’t even be printed yet are shown just prior to the clearing of the display (and there is no forced pause, even with Adrift pausing turned on). This may be a bug isolated to this game. It seems I’ve been able to pause before forced screen-clears in Adrift games before.

The “help” built into [i]A Fine Day for Reaping[/i] works more like 2005’s [i]Beyond[/i] than most other IF games. You’re whisked away to a whole new location, which is a good thing for any player to try as part of the overall experience. Once there, you don’t actually have to get hints (I found it a little under-developed, anyway, where some of what I wanted help with didn’t quite lead to answers).

The “X” I scored it at two hours fits with the game as a whole, thankfully. It does have problems, but it’s an imaginative and fun story, and a worthwhile, recommendable game. I’ve tacked on a “minus” because of the frustrations with pausing and screen-clearing, but the score itself is unchanged.
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=276&start=0#p1773
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Varkana
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-08 10:35:35

The "official" version can be found at my website:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/varkana.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/varkana.shtml</a>

[quote]Game #1: Varkana (A discreet pursuit in Arg Varkana)
By Maryam Gousheh-Forgeot (writing as “Farahnaaz”)
Played On: October 1st (2 hours 40 minutes)
Platform: Inform 7 (Glulx)

Game’s Blurb:
[i]An Interactive Fiction with a fantasy/sci-fi theme, with focus on the story.[/i]

[b]>xyzzy[/b]
[i]There, some kebab. You pick it up.[/i]
[b]>xyzzy[/b]
[i]The kebab glows a little. Other than that, nothing happens.[/i]
[b]>x kebab[/b]
[i]A morsel of tasty roast meat wrapped in bread.[/i]
[b]>eat kebab[/b]
[i]You eat the kebab. It was quite good.[/i]

IFComp 2007 starts out well for me, with a fairly strong game from first-time entrant Maryam Gousheh-Forgeot. [i]Varkana[/i] tells the story of a girl initially negligent in her duties, who begins to suspect that something isn’t right with a delegation of ambassadors from a distant land. Farahnaaz’s own town, the fortified Arg Varkana, is a beautiful place set in a land with a rich and detailed backstory. Through the course of an otherwise typical morning for her, a small mystery unfolds around Farahnaaz.

[i]Varkana[/i] has promise. I was skeptical at the start, when unfamiliar names and situations were shot rapid-fire from the first scene. It seemed overwhelming at first, but it made much more sense when I took the liberty of a second read-through after saving my progress a little further into the story. The author has put plenty of thought into the history of this fantasy world, but it isn’t easy to convey that level of backstory in a short game without overwhelming the player. This is a particularly difficult balance in a fantasy-themed game, because too little deviation from established norms makes it generic, while too much makes it hard to comprehend. What [i]Varkana[/i] seems to promise is that this backstory – and the scenario unfolding around Farahnaaz on such a nice morning – will be central to the game’s conclusion.

At the end (and with an attempt to avoid spoilers here), I’m not sure it came together that way. It’s almost as though a better story got misplaced along the way, somewhere between the promising beginning and the oddly disjointed ending. Farahnaaz, seemingly central to the story and certainly responsible for pushing the plot forward most of the way, encounters a turn of events (I’ll call it a “change in her condition”) that changes the perspective. The most complete ending (as it’s called in the walkthrough) introduces a wealth of backstory that wasn’t evident at all in the story proper. This includes an unlikely shift not only in the PC’s attitude toward the antagonist, but in the characterization of the antagonist as well.

It wasn’t necessarily that these twists were unsatisfying (although that may be true to a small degree). I just read through the final text wondering how this was the conclusion to the game I had [i]started[/i] playing. The rich backstory and the events of the day are usurped by revelations that really only depend on the earlier parts [i]as[/i] backstory. I had hoped – and the game’s promise seemed to be – that this was all going to come together in an enlightening and clever way at the end. I’m not sure that it did.

Still, the town of Arg Varkana is a beautiful, pleasant place to explore. The well-envisioned world and the well-developed backstory are perfect for an adventure like this. Most of the puzzles seem suited to the story, being neither difficult nor obscure. The writing is a pleasant mix of vivid descriptions and the right balance between brevity and verboseness (with some exceptions), although some obvious technical errors in the writing seemed more unintentional than stylistic.

Where in prior years (as an entrant myself) I couldn’t vote, this year I’m honor-bound by the two-hour rule. I hit the mark during a particularly frustrating point in the game, where it’s possible to lose without knowing quite why (and without having what you need to [i]avoid[/i] losing). I had already encountered a few other minor issues by then, but nothing major. I reviewed my own scoring guidelines and decided on an “X”.

That’s the vote I’ll submit, and I played to completion afterwards. For all that’s good about [i]Varkana[/i], though, it suffers from a few technical problems that might have been resolved with a bit more time (and still could be, in a post-comp re-release).

For instance, there seems to be one particular purpose for the art stand in the bazaar. It’s for a solution to a puzzle I solved in a different way (this is mentioned in the game’s walkthrough), but aside from that one purpose, it’s under-implemented to the point that I thought the game [i]might[/i] be broken in a way that was keeping me from moving forward. It turns out I was wrong, but an exchange like this is still a frustration:

[b]>x stand[/b]
[i]Lots of art supplies for sale. You just love examining all those tools and equipment.[/i]
[b]>buy supplies[/b]
[i]Nothing is on sale.[/i]

Examining the tools and the equipment results in the same message, and nothing is [i]actually[/i] for sale (unless you hit on the one thing you [i]can[/i] buy – and it’s not paper).

This exchange also had me wondering if the game was broken:

[b]>ask kids about paper[/b]
[i]Which do you mean, the simple, the bookshelves, papers, the paper or the papers?[/i]

The work-around for the quirk mentioned in the game’s readme.txt doesn’t help, so I began to wonder if there was a disambiguation problem that would ultimately prevent me from getting what I needed. Fortunately, I found it elsewhere (and kicked myself for not remembering about it), but it was still a shame to find implementation bugs in an otherwise well-designed game.

There were a few typos and grammatical issues (as mentioned earlier), including one typo early on where the NPC “Nivanen” was referred to as “Ninaven”. The exits from some rooms weren’t described, but this seemed limited to rooms where the missing exit was the direction from which you arrived. An in-game map was a nice touch later on (making navigation much easier), but I hesitated to use it at first for fear of getting spoilers just based on the layout or location names. All in all, it could just use some polishing.

What bothered me most, though, wasn’t the minor bugs, small errors in the text, or even the plot switch-up near and at the end. It was the dead-end point during a key confrontation, and later, a puzzle that seemed out of place given the smooth flow of puzzles up to that point.

In the case of former, it is possible to arrive in a no-win situation. The walkthrough, I found out later, advises you to “undo” out of the no-win, but I didn’t get a strong sense that the game was telling me enough to [i]know[/i] I lacked something required to proceed. I thought about it and figured out what I needed to try (without the walkthrough), but I could easily have saved over my prior games or exited/restarted where “undo” would have become impossible. It may be hypocritical to criticize this, since my own [i]Distress[/i] does this more than once, but in [i]Varkana[/i] it seemed like a complete break from the game’s established flow. The game was generally forgiving prior to that (you could die by doing stupid stuff, but never inside a dead end this way), yet this was a situation where failure came a few turns later and in a way that’s impossible to avoid if you haven’t previously prepared for it.

A little later, it’s necessary to command an NPC to take action. For this, I [i]did[/i] use the walkthrough. I’m not sure I would have figured it out otherwise, because the game hadn’t introduced NPC directives earlier. Requiring a command like “John, climb the tree” (just as an example – and a command like “tell John to climb the tree” works in this spot as well) isn’t unfair, but it probably should have been introduced earlier to establish it as a weapon in the player’s puzzle-solving arsenal. Re-reading the transcript, I can see that it [i]was[/i] clued, but it seemed entirely to do with the NPC’s appreciation for the item in question and nothing to do with the NPC’s willingness to help. For that matter, the directive might have been unnecessary. This was an action the NPC, intending to help the PC, would probably have taken after obtaining the required item without even needing the PC to point it out (especially if this particular NPC wanted the item [i]in order to[/i] help out).

I found, too, that you can drop important items in the dark room, which you can’t retrieve. This is a minor issue, since players won’t ordinarily drop important items [i]anywhere[/i], but it [i]can[/i] create potential no-win situations.

The score for my review set is a point lower than the official vote I will cast for [i]Varkana[/i]. This “unofficial” score is based on the rest of the game (played past two hours), and with more thought given to how it lines up with my [i]scoring[/i] criteria. It’s a pretty strong entry with a few problems. I can recommend it even as-is. With a positive skew for such a detailed backstory in an enjoyable fantasy setting, it gets a “X+” from me.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=269&start=20#p1774
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reviews? Chat?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-08 10:53:42

[quote="Merk"]
Plus, my reviews seem to be taking longer to write than in prior years, which eats up the time I might otherwise spend *playing* the next game. 
[/quote]   

This is the main reason why I don't think I'll write any reviews during the judging period. I simply don't have the time. But if I find something especially remarkable (good or bad or just interesting) I'll post it here.

Bob

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=269&start=20#p1775
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reviews? Chat?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-08 11:18:33

Honestly, I think I would probably have more fun with the games -- maybe even rank them higher -- if I wasn't trying to analyze them so much. I play past two hours (stopping to mark a score if so), so I can comment on the entire experience in the review (not just the first two hours of it -- else, it's really not a complete review). So that adds time. Then I write and re-write and revise and re-think and analyze and check transcripts and debate with myself about what's good and bad, and spend probably four to six hours total just writing a review. With all else that's going on, I seem to be averaging about one game and one review a day -- just not the *same* day.

But if I played and *didn't* review, I'd be missing the opportunity to explain and justify the score. I can see, though, why most reviews are so brief, and most reviewers don't have the patience to play through a game they're not enjoying. Doing this is a major project. [emote]Smile[/emote]

I miss the "good old days" when I was a lot easier to impress. Comparing my new reviews and scores to the ones I wrote for the 2004 competition (or even the mini-reviews I wrote for 1999 or 2000) shows that I'm getting crakier and harder to please. It's not intentional. I guess I've played enough now, and put such work into my own few games, that I'm starting to see flaws more easily than before. Or else, the flaws are what sticks out more. Where I previously focused on the puzzles and the story and didn't really care about how well things were implemented or how nicely written the text was, those things are starting to seem more important. It's like, if a game fails on *technical* levels, it's harder to appreciate the story or the spirit of the game itself. And it didn't used to be that way for me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=269&start=20#p1776
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reviews? Chat?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-08 16:02:01

You know, I played the graphic adventure Ankh some weeks ago with my four year old son watching (I only played less than 20 minutes, it's not like I am irresponsible or something). So we had to go to the bazar or something in order to progress the story. I said "Juri, what do you think we should do next?" and he said "I want to go to the desert." I said, "But Juri, you know, I think we should check out the bazar, don't you think?" and when he answered "I'd rather see the desert. I like to see the sand blowing down the dunes" I thought that he is much better at playing computer games than I am. He is perfectly right: these things should be diversions, fun, nice just to play without just thinking about how to progress the story. Too often I sit there, trying to find the fastest way to finish the game like it was a kind of a disease I have to get rid of.

But then, too often the games really won't let you do anything else. I just started to play an entry which has a built in "walkthrough" command, so you could play it from start to finish just using the enter key. Consequential, the game wouldn't let you do anything, that would be incoherent to the story it wants to tell and it makes it impossible to put the game into an unwinnable state. I ask myself why the author just didn't write a story? I recommend to read <a href="http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2622633">http://forums.somethingawful.com/showth ... id=2622633</a> which is a forum in which the Infocom classic Sorcerer is being played. The people try all sorts of crazy stuff, just because they think it's fun. They probably won't sit through the whole thread, but they are just having some fun, like Juri was. There's nothing wrong with story-driven IF of course, but the restrictions put upon the player sometimes lead to a lack of freedom just to mess around.

So what I initially wanted to say is, try just having some fun with the games, like you did in 2004. I remember having e-mailed you for some feedback to "Trading Punches" and although I don't quite remember what you answered, I remember being very impressed by your positive perspective to the other entrys.

Bob

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=81&start=0#p1777
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Text Editors for IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-08 16:20:21

This is a zombie, I suppose, but I'm new here and I love text editors. It's a shame not to have a real one; I'm not sure how people get by with notepad and the like for so long.

I'm on a Mac. There are a few well-regarded ones:

[url=http://macromates.com/]TextMate[/url], which I use, is very extensible and has a cute, context-dependent tab-completion setup. (The E editor for Windows is an approved clone, which uses the same language "bundles" as written for TextMate.) It's 39 euros.

[url=http://www.barebones.com/]BBEdit[/url] is venerable. Don't much care for it, myself, but it's powerful and the Mac old guard swear by it. It's rather expensive ($125), but there's a stripped-down free version called TextWrangler that's perfectly usable.

[url=http://smultron.sourceforge.net/]Smultron[/url] is free; I haven't used it much. It has all the reg'lar features.

[url=http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/]SubEthaEdit[/url] is for collaborative text editing. Sounds cool, haven't any use for it.

For windows, I used:

[url=http://www.e-texteditor.com/]E[/url], as above. It's as nice as TextMate and a good bit cheaper, too, at $35. Since Windows isn't guaranteed to have some of the language utilities required by TextMate, E uses Cygwin. (In the background only. I think it can maintain its installation, if you—like me—have a distaste for Cygwin.)

[url=http://www.textpad.com/]TextPad[/url]. Haven't used it in years, since my beginning programming classes, but I recall it being pretty extensible. I think it's meant as an IDE replacement.

[url=http://www.slickedit.com/]SlickEdit[/url] I used on an internship. *Extremely* expensive (can't say how much), but fast, and has most of the bells and whistles to act as a general-purpose Java/C/Python IDE. I *think* there are Inform 6 and TADS packages running around for it, too, but it's been a long time. Runs on Windows and Unix.

[url=http://www.jedit.org/]jEdit[/url]. The only Java text editor worth mentioning, really. I used it for ages. It's very nice, especially if you're using Java—but even if you're not. If you *know* Java, it has Beanshell hooks, very convenient, and a nice macro API. Runs everywhere there's Java.

[url=http://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html]SciTE[/url] shows off a text editing component for Windows and GTK, but is nice in its own right. Speedy. Configurable, but annoying to do so—be prepared to search through config files the option you're looking for. It opens *extremely* large files quite well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=269&start=20#p1778
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reviews? Chat?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-08 16:23:38

Yeah, 2004 was fun. I think I rated half the entries an "8" or higher (maybe more than that -- I should go check) because I *really* had fun playing them. I don't remember what mindset I was in exactly, but I was generally less critical. Or less discerning. I get the two confused. [emote]Smile[/emote]

You know, I think you've emailed me about each of my entries over the past three years (sometimes even after the comp has ended), and if I said "thanks" I probably didn't stress it enough. It's always nice to get feedback about a game, and especially nice when the person actually *enjoyed* it! So thanks!!

I've only emailed one author of the five I've played so far. Shame on me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=269&start=20#p1779
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reviews? Chat?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-08 17:33:22

[quote="Merk"]
I guess I've played enough now, and put such work into my own few games, that I'm starting to see flaws more easily than before.
[/quote] 

I've found that as well. I look at games I played years ago and really liked and know that if I were to play and review them now, my review would read like a shopping list of errors and problems. I sometimes look back at games I reviewed 4 - 5 years ago and wonder why I gave them such great reviews considering how buggy they were. The more games I play, the pickier I get. 

Another 5 years and a single typo in a game will have me screaming blue murder...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=81&start=0#p1780
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Text Editors for IF
User: George / DateTime: 2007-10-08 20:05:14

Hey, who doesn't love zombies. 

I just wanted to mention, for anyone who doesn't know, that the latest TADS 3 release now uses SciTE as its built-in editor in the Windows Workbench. It's pretty cool.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=277&start=0#p1781
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Gathered In Darkness
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-08 23:43:20

The "official" version can be found at my website:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/darkness.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/darkness.shtml</a>

[quote]
Game #5: Gathered In Darkness
By Michael Millsap (writing as “Dr. Froth”)
Played On: October 7th (4 hours 20 minutes)
Platform: Quest (Version 4)

Game’s Blurb:
[i]An eccentric genetic engineer, a forgotten evil God, a strange and sinister religious order, a powerful bloodline, a beautiful woman, a tropical paradise, horror, terror, fear, death, and one hell of a case of mistaken identity…[/i]

I had the misfortune of experiencing constant computer problems while playing [i]Gathered In Darkness[/i]. I don’t [i]think[/i] it’s the game’s fault (and it’s certainly not if nobody else experienced the same), but about ten times my computer either froze, or froze and went to a black screen, or spontaneously rebooted during play. Something [i]is[/i] off with my computer (maybe bad RAM), but I’m used to problems like this maybe a couple times a week – not ten times in an afternoon. My guess is that Quest is doing some heavy-duty things in memory (I discuss slow save games a little later) that simply made my existing hardware problem worse. This is all wild guessing, though.

The result is that I [i]personally[/i] experienced some of the madness that is inherent to the Cthulhu mythos. The game doesn’t bill itself as Cthulhu-inspired, but it becomes evident as the story progresses. I haven’t read H. P. Lovecraft, but (for what it’s worth) I’ve played a few hours of the [i]Call of Cthulhu[/i] tabletop RPG (with D20 rules). It was familiar enough that I probably could have placed it even without an in-game reference to Cthulhu (it’s in the second or third chapter).

[i]Gathered In Darkness[/i] was cut by the author from nine chapters to three, for the IFComp. Even missing its other two-thirds, it’s long enough that a two-hour play-through without hints is unlikely, even for the most skilled of IF gamers. It isn’t just the puzzles. The game is full of lengthy bits of backstory (diary entries, museum pieces, book excerpts, and so forth) that just take time to read and digest. It’s all in support of a creepy survival horror escape story that’s easy to become immersed in.

Or rather, it [i]could[/i] be. Unedited writing may spoil the mood for many players. On the one hand, we are given dark and chilling descriptions of unthinkable horrors the likes of which might be found visually in the [i]Silent Hill[/i] series. This is certainly for a mature audience, not your eight-year-old daughters. But [i]at the same time[/i] these descriptions are riddled with misspellings, words missing from sentences, comma-splices, a lack of apostrophes where they belong in possessive nouns, and other grammatical mistakes. Accurate writing is a good thing in general, but it’s especially important when you want the text to seem believable and immersive. To succeed, you really have to convince the reader that you are in full control. It shouldn’t be [i]obvious[/i] that it’s just some guy’s horrific but poorly-edited imagination.

Aside from these problems in the writing, [i]Gathered In Darkness[/i] isn’t too buggy. There are problems, but I don’t remember thinking (and my transcripts don’t suggest) that the game was seriously broken in any way. The oddities below (among others) weren’t nearly as distracting as the frequent and glaring problems in the writing itself.

I found no alternative to the “use” verb in some cases. There were wrong exits listed in some rooms. Some descriptions didn’t change to accommodate new information when they should have. The parser threw away important prepositions like “in” from commands except where it was specifically expected. As a command, “x self” works but “x me” does not. Some instances of guess-the-verb were an annoyance, but not a major one. (What I mean is that it’s usually evident that “some specific action” is appropriate, and I always seemed to hit on the right thing after two or three tries rather than give up thinking I was on the wrong track.) A skylight on the second floor of a three-story building was probably a mistake in the game’s consistency.

Consistency problems might be because the author has been working on the game for so long (according to some in-game info). In one scene, the author forgets which NPC is which. There, a woman who died early in the game reappears accidentally later on, but it’s caught and the right name is used as the scene continues. Then, in the room’s short description afterwards, she is listed with the wrong name again. This [i]could[/i] be intentional if perhaps the author was going for an [i]Eternal Darkness[/i] sort of insanity effect for the player, but I doubt it.

This is the first Quest-based game I’ve played, ever. In some ways, I’m impressed with the system. It seems like a capable competitor for Adrift, and the author has demonstrated that it’s suitable for longer adventures. Even aside from the lock-ups (which I don’t [i]actually[/i] blame on anything but my stupid, stubborn PC), there were oddities. I’m lost without running a full transcript, and it took a while to figure out that in Quest you can only enable that by launching the main runner (not a game file directly). Even then, it doesn’t flush all output to the file immediately (as though it’s working on a buffer). I liked that I could change the font size and colors (I opted to stick with the author’s intended color scheme of red on black, but I enlarged the font since I sit back a ways from my monitor), but that only applies to the main output window. I was stuck with a teeny-tiny input line, which I couldn’t read for accuracy at that distance. The stuff on the sidebar remained in a default font (small) as well.

And then, there was something odd going on with saving and loading games. The longer I played and the more saves I made, the longer it took to save and load. There were times in the third chapter when it took (I kid you not) over sixty seconds to actually save and return control to the game. Late in the game, one save even took [i]two[/i] minutes. Loading went a little quicker, but even it became painfully slow. These are small files in the 16- to 60-K range. Oddly enough, the file size [i]did[/i] grow the longer I played and re-saved. Is a save a complete re-play of commands from the game’s start or something? Surely not.

But what of the game’s story? I found it intriguing enough that I remained interested the whole way through. It’s sufficiently shocking in spots, as tales of evil, demonic cults are wont to be. A mystery surrounds the converted resort complex, its staff, and the recent gathering of guests.

(Be warned – possible plot spoilers in the next two paragraphs.)

Suspension of disbelief is vital, of course, but some parts of the plot do seem to fall on the wrong side of coherency. For example, while others are brutally murdered and left scattered (or sometimes hidden) around the hotel, the PC suffers an attack that is best described as a malicious inject-and-run with a slow-acting poison. After that, he is left to roam around (and casually escape confinement) in search of an antidote.

Security is complicated by code-only doors, special keys, and secret locks that require very specialized skills to open, yet the PC gets through easily with the right skills and the general incompetence of those who are probably supposed to keep these things out of his hands. In retrospect, that’s not all bad. It reminds me of [i]Silent Hill[/i], and it’s not out of place in a story like this. Still, I think it’s possible to improve upon these tropes of IF, or even replace them with something better.

With only three chapters of a nine-chapter tale, it’s possible (even probable) that the author has a really good reason for these things. Answers may come with the rest of the story. The author plans to release the complete game after the IFComp has ended.

Locked doors and secret passages are only a part of the puzzles that weave the story together. I found a lot to like in the game’s puzzles. The macabre nature of the story lends itself to a few that really stand out as well-placed and original. It’s not often that a game can find an important use for a mixture of shredded skin and genetic solvent. I never found the puzzles too difficult to manage, except sometimes when it came to finding or noticing certain concealed things. (In [i]Gathered In Darkness[/i], it pays to look around in all boxes, under beds, and on shelves.) Also, because each chapter isn’t entirely self-contained, some things that were intended for later chapters were just red herrings in the game’s truncated version.

I did like [i]Gathered In Darkness[/i], but it’s hard to recommend in its present state. The writing needs serious editing throughout, and the various quirks could be ironed out if the game was beta-tested to a larger extent (assuming it went through any testing at all). If chapters four through nine are the same, it would make for a recommendable game if polished up and released in full. At two hours, I scored it a “X”. That’s “below average” on my scoring criteria, but still a game I enjoyed. That vote stands as my review score as well, after completing the competition version.
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=269&start=20#p1782
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reviews? Chat?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-09 00:12:39

[quote="David Whyld"]
Another 5 years and a single typo in a game will have me screaming blue murder...
[/quote]  
Yikes! That might be a good, early warning to lighten up now before it's too late! [emote]:)[/emote]

The same goes for me. Each year, I've revised my scoring criteria some. Each time, I've tried to better explain the differences between each score on a *technical* level. That means I've intentionally focused more on things like puzzle design, accuracy in writing, implementation (are too many things "not seen here" when they really are, are there any bugs or guess-the-verb situations, do standard and familiar IF commands work, such as transcripts and undo and "x me"), story consistency, and so forth.

If you compare my 2004 criteria to last year's criteria, the differences really stand out. In 2004, there was a clear emphasis on how much fun I had with the game. How much did I *enjoy* the game. That resulted in a large number of high scores. The next year, and then again last year, I tried to expand on those things in a way that would give me a better distribution of scores *and* help me to more accurately figure out just what score an entry *deserves*.

But in doing so, "fun" seems to have become a smaller factor. It's important, but because I'm trying to use those score definitions to figure out how each game should rank, I'm really focusing on all that's bad and very little that's good in *every* game. That's really not what I intended. I just wanted a way to really lay out what guidelines I intended to follow, and stick to them. It's flawed (as any strict criteria are bound to be) not only because I can't possibly define every aspect that may or may not make a game worthwhile, but because I've made it pretty complicated just to figure out an opinion that might be better coming from gut instinct instead.

I think I'll have to stick with it this year, and I'm not even sure I *can* see the games as optimistically as I did in 2004. But I think I should probably ease up on the negativity a bit. I've played five of them so far, varying from "okay" to "fairly good", and unless the real gems are just lower in my list, I'm probably being *too* critical. Maybe next year I'll drop the detailed ratings and just go with instinct. Well see. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=269&start=20#p1783
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reviews? Chat?
User: Benjamin Sokal / DateTime: 2007-10-10 00:40:08

I have posted my reviews to:

<a href="http://www.shadowk.com/IFComp2007.htm">http://www.shadowk.com/IFComp2007.htm</a>

for those interested.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=269&start=20#p1784
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reviews? Chat?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-10 11:34:06

As an author, I am having to resist a fierce urge to take part in discussion. What was the reason for excluding authors? So that they wouldn't canvass votes, or bias things in their direction?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=269&start=20#p1785
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reviews? Chat?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-10 13:21:08

I think so, yes. I guess the same thing could happen if a huge fan (or non-fan) were to get involved as well, but as a participant, you have the most interest in having your game rank highly and all others rank lowly (two $500 prizes on the line, for instance). Rather than have any author think that some other author was unfairly swaying voters in a certain direction, it's just not allowed.

That's my *theory*. I'm not the competition organizer and can't give you the reasoning with any certainty. But that's my guess. Sargent's around from time to time. Maybe he'll offer more insight.

Authors are welcome to email me about my comments and reviews in private, though. I haven't been initiating it much (even though I should), because I worry that I'm being too negative. But I invite private discussion, as long as it's a game I've already checked off my list (see the sticky-topic for play checklists, also in this forum).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=278&start=0#p1786
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Orevore Courier
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-10 13:32:37

The "official" version can be found at my website:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/orevore.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/orevore.shtml</a>

[quote]Game #6: Orevore Courier
By Brian Rapp
Played On: October 9th (1 hours 50 minutes)
Platform: Inform 7 (Zcode)

Game’s Blurb:
[i]The ship's Security Officer is responsible for ensuring that the fantastically valuable cargo is safely delivered. To perform this task, she can rely only on her wits and a big red Destruct button.[/i]

[b]>xyzzy[/b]
[i]The security console sparks suddenly, as if by magic.[/i]

[b]>xyzzy[/b]
[i]An angry voice warns you that "security considerations do not permit the use of
magical incantations aboard this ship.  This notice will not be repeated."[/i]

[b]>xyzzy[/b]
[i]A stentorian voice booms, "ZERO TORA ECHO DESTRUCT HOT!" and everything
explodes.[/i]

         [b]*** The ship has been destroyed ***[/b]

If [i]Orevore Courier[/i] isn’t a pun on “au revoir, courier,” it really ought to be. Given the verb/noun gimmick in Brian Rapp’s previous entry (2004’s well-written [i]Goose, Egg, Badger[/i]), I think it’s possible.

An isolated security officer (you) remains seated at a control console while all havoc breaks loose in the other areas of a small courier space craft. In [i]Orevore Courier[/i] you push buttons, turn dials, view surveillance, and attempt to influence the events that threaten to destroy the ship (and you along with it). The standards of IF are gone here – no directional movement, very little use for inventory, very few actions that aren’t related to operating the console – but it still [i]feels[/i] like traditional IF. That’s probably because standard commands are still recognized. They’re simply rejected in legitimate, in-story ways.

The story is delightfully absurd. It asks the question “who would win in a battle of wits and instinct when the participants are the ship’s crew, pirates, zombies, and a dangerous metal-munching blob that must be kept cool to be kept docile?” Another game might have asked this in a grim, even grisly [i]Alien[/i]-esque setting, but not [i]Orevore Courier[/i]. I mean... c’mon! Zombies! Pirates! A brain-like blob! You can’t expect complete seriousness from a build-up like that.

This is a game in the “big puzzle box” genre (if such a thing exists). Players are given a few tools to work with (in this case, the abilities of the control console). Players learn the rules of the puzzle (in this case, how the controls are used and what can be done to influence others). Pieces move around with their own agendas and must be influenced (in this case, the aforementioned zombies, pirates, crew and “orevore” creature, all in an indirect fashion). If you enjoyed [i]All Things Devours[/i], [i]Delightful Wallpaper[/i], or [i]Mobius[/i], you may be delighted with [i]Orevore Courier[/i].

The game includes separate files – graphics – containing a map of the ship’s layout and a diagram of the control console. The latter is nice, but I found the former to be absolutely essential. Fearing spoilers, I didn’t check them right away. I should have. I just never got a clear picture from the text exactly [i]how[/i] the rooms are connected. I would strongly recommend printing [i]both[/i] images, just to keep handy while playing. They’re not spoilers. They’re key facts about the puzzle you’re working with.

It’s a [i]very[/i] interesting and well-constructed puzzle (being the game as a whole). However, I think it’s probably far harder than the author anticipated. In other learn-by-dying games, you can generally make a little more progress on each play-through, because each death or failure points you toward taking the [i]right[/i] actions the next time. I think that’s why [i]All Things Devours[/i] works so well.

The construction is different in [i]Orevore Courier[/i]. You only need to manage a small number of controls and a small number of rooms, but in general you will only get clues if you happen to be viewing the right room [i]on the right turn[/i]. This results in far more trial-and-error (and far more restarts) than might be expected otherwise. The trick is to figure out what’s going on [i]everywhere[/i]. Even that’s not so daunting, except that the same things won’t necessarily happen on each play-through if you’ve successfully influenced the various “pieces” (people) in the game that time around. So, it’s possible to play for several turns and then make a [i]single[/i] change to the course of further events that has to be reproduced on each successive play-through (or frozen as a jumping-off point via a saved game) if you intend to explore the possibilities that might branch from there.

I did moderately well at this for an hour and a half. In retrospect, I probably should have been working harder to figure out [i]goals[/i]. For instance, if I don’t want the pirates to break into the freezer, what actions should I take in time to stop them? If I want to protect the pirates from the zombies (else I end up with more zombies), how should I accomplish that and [i]still[/i] keep the orevore safe? I don’t think I ever quite figured out what my goals should be. It’s all very open. Things that [i]can’t[/i] lead to victory are allowed because you’re given the freedom to do [i]anything[/i] allowed by the control console. In a way, this also makes it a little like a sandbox game – albeit a sandbox that ends your life after a dozen or two turns.

After I felt that [i]fun[/i] was leaning towards [i]frustration[/i], I checked the walkthrough and played entirely from there. I found that I had some things right and some things wrong, but it really reinforced my conclusion that success [i]really[/i] depends on being (excuse the cliché) in the right place at the right time. Randomness, thankfully, doesn’t play a part in this. It’s still maddeningly difficult, and (unless you are far more brilliant than I will ever be) impossible to solve in a meager two hours.

The writing is effective and seemingly flawless. It’s also admirably bug-free, except for a single quirk where Ghee seems to be dead in the docking bay [i]and[/i] finagling his way out of the engine room at the same time. Actions, which do become repetitive, are aided not only by abbreviated button names, but by button names [i]as[/i] complete actions. For instance, you can enter “push docking button” but you’re less taxed by simply typing “dock.”

In many ways, my own [i]voting[/i] guidelines are rubbish. I’ve tried to describe what makes a game deserving of a given score by outlining what I look for in a good game. One like [i]Orevore Courier[/i] can hardly be faulted for featuring a story without any real depth when it’s [i]supposed[/i] to be a puzzle box, not thought-provoking literature. These guidelines are supposed to keep me on track, so that all entries are judged fairly against all others. I’ll stick with it until I come up with a better plan (maybe for next year), but it’s probably making me [i]too[/i] critical of the entries I play. What matters most is simply how [i]worth playing[/i] a game may be. If it’s [i]supposed[/i] to be fun, then [i]is it[/i] fun?

[i]Orevore Courier[/i] may be a godsend to those who enjoy complex brain teasers. Those who look for epic and serious stories without the difficulty of puzzles along the way may find little to enjoy here. I think I’m in the middle. I [i]liked[/i] what Brian Rapp has done here, and I appreciate that obvious effort has gone into constructing a small-scale but consistent and branching logistics puzzle. At the same time, it might have taken me ages to solve on my own, and it ultimately began to feel like too much brain-work for me. I’ve rated it fairly highly, as an “X” with a “plus” for such cool subject matter. If current trends hold true, and with just twenty-eight other games to compete against, I expect [i]Orevore Courier[/i] to find an easy spot in the top ten.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=278&start=0#p1787
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Orevore Courier
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-10 14:45:57

I'm reading them! I suspect other people are too. (I haven't been commenting mostly because I feel like I'm already saying what I have to say about each game in my own reviews.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=269&start=20#p1788
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reviews? Chat?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-10 15:43:19

As an author I'd love to take part in the discussions and even post a few reviews of mine... but at the same time, I don't want my game to get disqualified because of this. So I have to keep quiet and just observe.

Kinda hard though. I keep heading for the Add Reply button before stopping myself  [emote]Confused[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=278&start=0#p1789
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Orevore Courier
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-10 16:55:54

I'm awfully long-winded. I've been hoping the view count isn't just me re-loading the page a few times as I double-check what I posted. [emote]Smile[/emote]

I've been good (so far) about not reading anybody else's reviews for a game until I've written mine. But once I do, I've been heading over to your site and the others you linked to see what's there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=269&start=30#p1790
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reviews? Chat?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-10 21:52:30

Hm. I think I enjoy the games about as much as ever, relative to their quality level.

On the other hand, this process of writing a blog entry for every game has meant that I tend to write longer reviews even for games I don't like; and that means that I spend longer playing them so that I can review them justly; and that means I'm spending more time on the un-enjoyable bits of the comp. Hm. May need to revise this strategy for next year.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=278&start=0#p1791
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Orevore Courier
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-11 03:43:50

Since there are more than 70 views on some of your reviews although there is no reply, I guess there are more than 70 interested readers. I personally only read this one yet, because I didn't play any other of the reviewed games yet.

But I really had hoped more people would post their reviews in a thread to each game, so there would be an easy way to compare them (and find them later on), perhaps even a discussion. But I guess most people like it better to have reviews in personal blogs (I have no idea why).

Bob

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=278&start=0#p1792
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Orevore Courier
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-11 06:54:44

It adds to the count on each reload, and I know I've viewed them several times myself. My guess is probably a dozen or so different readers are coming to check out what's new.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=278&start=0#p1793
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Orevore Courier
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-11 07:34:10

[quote="Merk"]
It adds to the count on each reload, and I know I've viewed them several times myself. My guess is probably a dozen or so different readers are coming to check out what's new.
[/quote] 

I don't think so. Granted, you may have viewed them several times. But since one can see that there are no replies, it wouldn't be reasonable to check if there's something new. Even if some people may have forgotten if they already read a review (hard to imagine) there must be far more readers than merely "a dozen or so".

Bob

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=278&start=0#p1794
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Orevore Courier
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-11 07:57:56

Well, that's a good point. And from time to time, I do see guest (unregistered) logins showing in the list. Plus, it's still early. Probably later this month or in November, more people will have played more games.

I've only played six so far. I'll keep posting them as I go along.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=279&start=0#p1795
Forum: Competitions / Subject: From ifcomp.org: Bug in "Fireflies" makes it unwinnable
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-11 10:04:09

I guess this isn't a spoiler. I saw it announced on the IFComp main page:[quote]
[b]9 October:[/b] The game Ghost of the Fireflies has a bug that renders it unwinnable: you are unable to buy anything at the shop due to the game thinking you have no gold. There is no workaround.
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=279&start=0#p1797
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: From ifcomp.org: Bug in "Fireflies" makes it unwinnable
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2007-10-11 13:40:43

Actually, the game is winnable; you don't need to buy anything from the store.  (You'll probably need to read the source to do so.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=279&start=0#p1798
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: From ifcomp.org: Bug in "Fireflies" makes it unwinnable
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-11 14:20:14

In the source, he's using "gp" in place where he meant to use "gd" -- and "gp" isn't defined (so it's zero -- you never have money). I fixed it, but I can't re-compile.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=278&start=0#p1799
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Orevore Courier
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-12 10:12:34

I don't have anything relevant to add to your thorough review, but for what it's worth I'd like to add my two cent.

I liked the concept, which reminded me of "All Things Devours" and of the Infocom title "Suspended". It's not as brilliant as those, but still a very nice game. However, I, too, found it to be too difficult. Often, it didn't give me the right idea how to proceed and after traversing it using the walkthrough I think it should have been better clued. I spent much too long, trying for example to get Ghee doing something useful. It frustrated me far more than ATD, where I always had the feeling I'd win at the next try. But perhaps I would have beaten the game, if I hadn't tried to solve it in the judging time. I also like Zombie-games, so it was a very pleasant surprise to me, when Sharl woke up again. The descriptions are appropriatly detailed and very funny. I laughed out loud after using the Boom-Button (nice lettering by the way).

There are some implausibilities (yes, even zombie-pirate games shouldn't have plot holes): for one thing, it never is explained, why the two major incidents (zombies and pirates) are connected. I suppose they aren't, but would have liked the author putting some more thought in this. More important, I never got why the copy-button records things that happened immediatly before. I didn't get used to this in the whole playing time.

Nevertheless: I voted it an eight, thus being the best of the eight entries I played so far.

Bob

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=278&start=0#p1800
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Orevore Courier
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-12 10:41:08

The pilot is hit by a space rock that crashes through the hull (which is the cause of the initial warnings that start, I think). I guess it's a rock that turns people into zombies, which is at least more acceptable than thinking they're not connected at all. [emote]Smile[/emote]

The pirates arrive a few turns later. As far as I can tell, *that's* just a cosmic coincidence.

Something is said in the game about the copy button. I don't remember exactly, but it's to the effect that the ship's designers said there would only ever be a need to save the last few seconds of video. Basically, it's constantly recording as a moving window, and you just need to copy the most recent bit. Even if that's kind of iffy, it's a better option than trying to record *before* something happens. I like how it works, I think.

See, I didn't even realize at first that there *were* zombies. I wasn't viewing the bridge or the cargo area. I just remember there being an alarm, and then pirates boarded, and then some of them left, and then suddenly zombies arrive and start killing everybody. I had to re-play to follow the action in other areas to find out what the heck was happening. In a way that's good (maybe even the point), but it really made it hard to follow for me.

I might have solved it eventually, but not within two hours. And even though I would have allowed myself to stop at 2 hours, vote, and continue on, I didn't make it to 2 hours before I started feeling overwhelmed by the task at hand. It's the same reason I gave up in the first half of Delightful Wallpaper. It *seems* do-able at the start, but I come to realize it's logistically over my head.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=278&start=0#p1801
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Orevore Courier
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-12 12:25:55

[quote="Merk"]
The pilot is hit by a space rock that crashes through the hull (which is the cause of the initial warnings that start, I think). I guess it's a rock that turns people into zombies, which is at least more acceptable than thinking they're not connected at all. [emote]:)[/emote]
[/quote] 

Yes, I got that all right, I just think this incident should have been somehow connected to the pirates invading the ship.

[quote="Merk"]
Something is said in the game about the copy button. I don't remember exactly, but it's to the effect that the ship's designers said there would only ever be a need to save the last few seconds of video. Basically, it's constantly recording as a moving window, and you just need to copy the most recent bit.
[/quote] 

D'oh! Of course! I really missed this. Normally, my excuse is that english is not my native tongue, but actually I simply was dumb. I even wondered why the button was labeled "copy" instead of "record". Stupid me! Thanks for clarifying that.

[quote="Merk"]
I might have solved it eventually, but not within two hours. And even though I would have allowed myself to stop at 2 hours, vote, and continue on, I didn't make it to 2 hours before I started feeling overwhelmed by the task at hand. It's the same reason I gave up in the first half of Delightful Wallpaper. It *seems* do-able at the start, but I come to realize it's logistically over my head.
[/quote] 

I never played Delightful Wallpaper (there was a negative review by some polish sounding guy  [emote]:lol:[/emote]  just kidding) but I solved both All Things Devours and Suspended without help (Although I never would have beaten the latter myself if the internet had already been invented). I'm not sure about Orevore Courier, though, it really is kind of frustrating.

Bob

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=278&start=10#p1802
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Orevore Courier
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-12 16:30:14

I think the enjoyment of this game depends a lot on realizing early that you're going to need to replay several times to win and that you need to know what all the other characters are doing. Once I realized that, I relaxed a bit and played through a few times just to observe the behavior of the NPCs, not trying to solve the puzzles immediately. 

It's much more frustrating if you're trying to win on the first plays through, because you don't have nearly enough information, and the attempt to solve puzzles will keep you from observing closely and getting the clues to win on a future round.

I also had the problem that I didn't notice the heat controls at first, so that kept me unnecessarily stumped on how to neutralize the Orevore, but I put that down to my own fault!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=278&start=10#p1803
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Orevore Courier
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-12 17:04:57

[quote="emshort"]
It's much more frustrating if you're trying to win on the first plays through, because you don't have nearly enough information, and the attempt to solve puzzles will keep you from observing closely and getting the clues to win on a future round.
[/quote] 
This was very likely my problem. I rated it highly despite the frustration, but I think I'd have done better just trying to map out where everybody was and when, than trying to focus on specific solutions.

[quote="emshort"]
I also had the problem that I didn't notice the heat controls at first, so that kept me unnecessarily stumped on how to neutralize the Orevore, but I put that down to my own fault!
[/quote] 
It's odd, because it's right there when you look at the console. Maybe it's the way the text is formatted (it goes on about the buttons before talking about the dials), but I probably saw it and glossed over it. I didn't realize there *were* temp controls until I looked at the included feelie! So you're not alone in missing it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=278&start=10#p1804
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Orevore Courier
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-12 18:00:05

[quote="Merk"]
 
It's odd, because it's right there when you look at the console. Maybe it's the way the text is formatted (it goes on about the buttons before talking about the dials), but I probably saw it and glossed over it. I didn't realize there *were* temp controls until I looked at the included feelie! So you're not alone in missing it.
[/quote] 

Yeah -- for some reason after I first looked at the console, every time I wanted to remind myself what was there I typed >X BUTTONS. Which duly listed all the buttons, but not the temperature controls. I spent quite a while thinking that since FOOD was the main thing I hadn't used successfully, there must be some way in which it applied to the Orevore-pacification project...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=280&start=0#p1805
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: In The Mind Of The Master
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-12 23:26:17

The "official" version can be found at my website:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/master.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/master.shtml</a>

[quote]Game #7: In The Mind Of The Master
By David Whyld
Played On: October 11th (2 hours 25 minutes)
Platform: Adrift (Version 4)

[b]>xyzzy[/b]
[i]"Xyzzy," said the Master.[/i]
[i]At once, an item was added to his inventory.[/i]

[b]>i[/b]
[i]The Master was carrying:[/i]
[i]   _the Master's garments {worn}[/i]
[i]   _a purple pingabalong[/i]

[b]>xyzzy[/b]
[i]"Xyzzy," said the Master.[/i]
[i]At once, an item was removed from his inventory.[/i]

[b]>xyzzy[/b]
[i]"Xyzzy," said the Master.[/i]
[i]At once... nothing happened.[/i]

I have to wonder if David Whyld does anything [i]other[/i] than write Interactive Fiction. It would be an easy notion to dismiss if his games were generic and churned out over the course of an otherwise uneventful weekend, but they’re not. [i]In The Mind Of The Master[/i] is another fine example of what David can do with his platform of choice (Adrift), and it’s a worthy addition to his ever-growing list of authored titles.

[i]In The Mind Of The Master[/i] begins with a hasty escape. A mystery surrounds the identity of the titular PC, and it’s played up as the main focus of the story. He makes his getaway disguised as one of three characters, as chosen by the player. This hints at who the Master [i]might[/i] be. As more than just an amateur impressionist, The Master dons the selected costume and assumes the [i]persona[/i] of the chosen character. Stage actor? Professional magician? Criminal fugitive? Discovering the truth is the hook.

The middle parts begin to hint at possibilities that can only be explained by the supernatural or metaphysical. More than once, he is mistaken for someone else. It could be that these people just see through his disguise, but even The Master himself begins to doubt that it’s quite as simple as that. It’s as though he lacks all the facts about his own identity. I was reminded of the scene in [i]Fight Club[/i] where “Jack” follows a trail of clues to a bar where his cohort Tyler Durden had been the night before. The bartender is somber and respectful, somehow mistaking Jack for Tyler. Disguise and impersonation just aren’t enough to explain it away.

With that kind of build-up, it’s easy to expect a big payoff at the end. But – and I don’t know quite how to describe this without blatant spoilers – there’s sort of a catch-22. To win, you must take a specific action in the final scene (David even warns of this, in the introductory text). If you haven’t figured out what The Master is capable of, hoping it will be revealed near the ending, then you don’t know what winning action is necessary. So you [i]can’t[/i] win. But if you [i]have[/i] figured it out, then there is no twist or revelation at all. You must have already known it in order [i]to[/i] win. I had to get it from the hints, because I just hadn’t figured it out. It’s hinted near the beginning, but (a) it’s not something every player is guaranteed to see, (b) it’s near hints to many other possibilities as well, which come during that first scene, and (c) is distanced enough from the end that even if you take notice of it, it [i]might[/i] not trigger whatever spark of imagination allows a player to extrapolate actions from clues.

I had expected a different construction entirely, that late in the game. Because there [i]are[/i] three initial disguises, and because there [i]is[/i] some sort of specific action at the end, and because some sort of repetitive, do-over theme [i]was[/i] present and foreshadowed, I convinced myself that the trick was to play twice more (once as each of the other two characters). After one time through, it doesn’t [i]feel[/i] like a very long game, so this kind of thing made sense. I think you [i]can[/i] learn a little more by playing again with different options, but it’s not necessary that you do. All paths lead back to the same scenes. It seems constructed this way not to [i]necessitate[/i] re-plays as a means of solving that final puzzle, but simply to give players a wider range of choices and to make re-plays worth the effort.

What I [i]thought[/i] was going on – and what would probably make an interesting short game in its own right – was that some import clue from a three-piece puzzle would be identified by playing once as each of the available characters. It would be necessary for the player to combine the one thing learned from each in order to deduce that final action. The order of play wouldn’t matter, and a complete re-start (as opposed to having the game “put” you back at the beginning) wouldn’t hurt things. Once you reached the end for the third time, you would simply know what to do.

Perhaps because it [i]didn’t[/i] work that way, or perhaps because there remains a mystery behind The Master’s true identity even at the end, I wasn’t completely satisfied by the story. I really bought into the premise, though, and they say the journey is its own reward. I had fun, even though I wish David hadn’t opted to leave it open for theories. I would have liked to know [i]for sure[/i] just what was going on in The Master’s past.

Then, a few things that never made it fully into the game (more detailed notes available at the game’s end explain this) added to the mystery without ever sharing in the conclusion. For instance, the guy who picks up The Master (in the guise of a Gentleman) in a limo was intended to be part of another sub-plot. Who runs the Chamber, and what’s their agenda? Until I read the walkthrough, I hadn’t even realized the Chamber and the Montalban were related (I thought I had been taken elsewhere). This was supposed to be a bigger, more epic game. It’s probably good that the point is explained in the author’s notes, otherwise it would be easy for a player to think he or she simply missed finding those answers during the course of the game.

The story is written in third person past tense. In other words, “you see a tree” is expressed as “he saw a tree.” Maybe it’s to force a disconnection between player and PC. Maybe it’s to support that these are events that have already happened. Or, maybe it’s just to set the game apart from its peers. Whatever the reason, I’m not sure it was necessary. While it affords the author an ability to cast emotions and memories onto the PC which the player may not share, it suffers from a few unintentional lapses into the more traditional present tense.

The writing has a few other minor problems (misspellings, odd and obvious typos, etc.) in a few random spots. I noticed very minor bugs and implementation issues too, but nothing substantial enough to dwell upon. It really moves along at a nice pace overall, avoiding many of the parsing and implementation problems that are the bane of other Adrift games.

Part of this is certainly the author’s skill with so many games under his belt, but on reflection, it’s more than that. At times, the story felt as though it was on rails. It usually wasn’t (at least, not to the degree one might expect from the term “on rails”), but almost any stray action will redirect the player back, making it clear that this other location or this specific distraction doesn’t merit further attention. Beyond that, the text is written in a way that somehow provides vivid enough mental images without offering an abundance of “stuff” to interact with. So, there’s less for the author to [i]have[/i] to implement, and less for the player to concern himself or herself with.

The puzzles are pretty light fare, except for one particular sticking point outside the Montalban (in disguise as a thief), and of course at the very end. Most of the puzzles are probably just plot-pacing devices. The more difficult sequences to manage – conversations – are done through multiple-choice dialogue menus.

[i]In The Mind Of The Master[/i] is a pretty strong entry. Its weakest point, however, is that it poses too many questions that remain unanswered and left up to the player’s imagination at the end. In a story-centric game, I think players deserve a [i]little[/i] more. Unless it’s the lead-in for a sequel, it should probably be a [i]lot[/i] more. Otherwise, the entire premise – the driving question that propels a player to take such interest in discovering an answer – seems like an unfulfilled promise.

At two hours, I rated the game a “X”. That’s also the score I’ve kept for the review, although it gets an unfortunate “minus” for building a mystery that isn’t quite resolved. It could use a little more polish, but it’s still a deserving and recommendable entry.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=20#p1806
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-13 02:32:07

Hi, I'm slg. I actually registered for the forums a long time ago but never posted till now... I discovered Infocom games when I was 7 or 8 and of course loved them and then Sierra's games. And then in high school I started fiddling around with Inform but didn't do anything seriously till college. In the last few years I've been working on my Triform library, which I think is nearly ready for a 1.0 release, and my IntroComp 2006 entrant The Art of Deception.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=280&start=0#p1807
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: In The Mind Of The Master
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-13 07:09:20

Too many unanswered questions? That's what sequels be for!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=280&start=0#p1808
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: In The Mind Of The Master
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-13 08:38:40

[quote="she's long gone"]
Too many unanswered questions? That's what sequels be for!
[/quote]    
Yeah, true. It's just that this didn't seem like a game that's setting itself up for a sequel. I've ended some (most?) of my games with unanswered questions (there's even a cliffhanger (among other unanswered questions) at the end of Trading Punches that really won't be answered until the 3rd or 4th game in what's intended to be a five-game series), but I don't think in those cases I built the game's premise around those unanswered questions.

Think about it this way. If a game centers around the question "why did the sky turn green?" then it's fair to expect an answer to that at the end, even if lesser questions encountered along the way (like "why did Jill run from the cat?") aren't answered. It's very possible that others aren't bothered by this the way I am. I've been looking for other reviews to find out.

I've been trying to think if other games I've played do the same thing, and I think there are some. Among my own, I'm not sure. Trading Punches doesn't really ask a central question. It's just part of an eventual epic where those answers aren't central to the introductory story. In Distress, I'm asking "will the PC survive to be rescued?" and that's pretty much answered. In Swordsman, there *might* be a mystery around the swordsman's identity and past (although it's not played up as a central focus), but even so, that's answered at the end.

What ITMOTM does, I think, is ask the question "who is The Master?" but instead answer the lesser question "what's so special *about* The Master?" It's better than nothing, but you may have gathered from my review that you sort of have to know (or have figured out) that answer before you can *get* to the winning ending.

It doesn't destroy the fun, but players will *probably* have to use the walkthrough to deduce the final move. I still found it very enjoyable and rated it highly. It's not a 10, because I always look for that one "wow" game (although I'd go for more if more wowed me in that way). It's not a 9, because I'm looking for a higher polish in a game, and something that "feels" smooth the whole way through. This one is pretty good, but there are enough minor issues in the writing (see emshort's review for a good example) that they stick out and break the "mood" at times.

I think that's what trips up most IF authors -- myself included. It's easy to dismiss problems in the writing -- if you're the author -- because you feel the game stands on the strength of its story and the atmosphere it presents (this is true in another of the games I've reviewed so far as well, where it's doubly important to maintain that mood). But if a player keeps tripping over sentences, it's a problem. I rely on spell checking quite a bit (which is why you'll find misspellings and typos in my forum and newsgroup posts so easily -- they're entirely raw), but I can still recognize misspellings in *some* words. Comma splices tend to jump out at me. Words missing in sentences or replaced with the *wrong* words (a problem I *really* have in my own frenzied typing) make it hard to remain immersed in the story without being drawn back into the *writing* itself.

Anyway, David could polish this game up, maybe even extend it with the parts he had to skip or remove, perhaps revise the ending and work on keeping players from misunderstanding the structure of the game somehow (*thinking* you are supposed to play multiple times might just have been my own bad assumption), and it would be an even better game. It's good. I liked it. I recommend it. But I do think the complaints I have with it are valid ones.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=280&start=0#p1809
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: In The Mind Of The Master
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-13 09:48:31

It's not just the technical aspects of the writing that bothered me (though from time to time they did). I also look for a kind of poise or confidence that tells me that the author knows exactly what he wants to achieve with his prose: what mood he's trying to evoke, where he wants to direct the player's attention, what he's setting up as important questions or themes. If that confidence is present, I find I can forgive a lot of other flaws, because (as a player) I feel secure that the author knows what he's doing, that I'm not wasting my time, and that the story is going somewhere. Several of my favorite games this competition had various implementation or design problems, but did have this confidence, and that was made them stand out.

For that matter, I've played some Whyld games that did strike me this way. Silly as it was, "Paint!!!" (which I reviewed relatively positively) seemed to me to know exactly where it was going and why. "In the Mind of the Master" did not. Descriptions sometimes ran too long, were too vague, and did not convey a strong sense of attitude or direction. Dialogue dragged or contained errors, as though the author did not quite know what the point of the scene was before he started writing it. That sort of thing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=280&start=0#p1810
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: In The Mind Of The Master
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-13 10:03:23

I know what mean. It can make the difference between thinking "whatever problems there may be, the author is still in control" and "uh oh, this author is just winging it as he goes along -- can I really trust what's going on here?"

I had more of a sense for the former than the latter here, but it sounds like you didn't. Maybe it's because he ended up cutting things out or skipping things that had originally been intended. There are different "notes" available at the end that talk about the design and these exclusions, but you'd have to get the winning command to reach that point.

A clip from that text:
[quote]
The game as originally planned was far larger and more ambitious than the one you're playing now. It had at least three times as many locations, several more disguises, a far more lengthy and convoluted storyline... and wasn't really the game I wanted to write.
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=20#p1811
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: George / DateTime: 2007-10-13 11:39:43

OK, you've got my curiousity up...Triform?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=280&start=0#p1812
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: In The Mind Of The Master
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-13 15:44:05

Thanks for that very nice review. I'd love to comment on some of the points you raised... but I'd better wait another month till the comp's over with.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=280&start=0#p1813
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: In The Mind Of The Master
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-13 15:50:16

You can always email me in private, or post a PM here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=281&start=0#p1814
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Ghost of the Fireflies
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-13 18:54:04

The "official" version can be found at my website:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/fireflies.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/fireflies.shtml</a>

[quote]
Game #8: Ghost of the Fireflies
By Paul Panks (writing as “Dunric” aka “The Master of Spunk”)
Played On: October 13th (1 hour 55 minutes)
Platform: PowerBASIC (Compiled MS-DOS Executable)

Game’s Blurb:
[i]Ghost of the Fireflies follows the hilarious (mis)adventures of Raiythius, a hellhound bent on mischief, whose main goal appears to be tormenting the main character (played by you, of course).[/i]

[i]Ghost of the Fireflies[/i] begins with a hardy chiding. You’re likely to have missed it if, like me, you pressed “enter” after hitting “n” to skip the instructions. The question is followed by a two- or three-second pause, but any keypress after “n” will skip right over it. I saw it the first time because I [i]did[/i] read through the instructions. Anyway, if you’re interested in being scolded with the use of words such as “weirdo” and “stupid,” just press “n” to skip the instructions but press no other key until “HELP FOR THE LAZY” appears as the heading.

The instructions seem to spoil what might be a pretty big plot twist, but that was evidently intentional. It goes on to say that multi-phrase commands such as “get lantern and go west” will work (it’s “designed to shut up the naysayers”) even though the aforementioned chiding says it [i]won’t[/i] work (because it’s stupid for a player to do that). The game [i]doesn’t[/i] appear to support multiple commands on the same line, incidentally.

It saddens me to see Paul Panks again and again invest his effort and creativity in games people just [i]can’t[/i] play. Writing text adventures is obviously important to him, yet his insistence on doing it the [i]same way[/i] time and again despite well-intentioned advice from numerous sources has grown from stubbornness into... I don’t know... obsession, maybe. What he doesn’t see -- refuses to see, perhaps -- is that he [i]could[/i] write these “old school” RPG/Adventures in something more suited to interactive fiction, even if this is the kind of game he wants to write. In Hugo, for instance, he could intentionally re-write the grammar to support only two-word command phrasing (it would be pretty easy) with three-letter abbreviations for verbs and all object nouns. I think this would be silly, but it would allow for the [i]same[/i] game without the technical issues that exist as a result of these poorly-coded game/engine hybrids.

For all of Paul’s experience with BASIC, the game’s included source code shows that he’s still doing it pretty much the way we did in the 1980’s, before “sub” and “function” were introduced in more powerful dialects. What Paul does with spaghetti-gosubs and various branching goto’s [i]should[/i] be done with well-planned subs and functions. Errors abort the program, instead of being handled with “on error” code. Almost all variable names are two characters long, even though that’s a throwback to earlier BASIC dialects which would only [i]understand[/i] the first two letters of a variable name. PowerBASIC supports [i]all[/i] of these things. Interactive Fiction has advanced. BASIC has even advanced. Paul Panks hasn’t.

And it’s buggy -- very, very buggy. For a time, I thought it was impossible to load a saved game because as soon as I would answer “y” at the appropriate point, it would display a directory listing of my saved games followed by a fatal error that ends the program. What I realized is that I was pressing “enter” after “y” -- just like I had done when asked about instructions. In BASIC, it’s an “inkey” instead of “input.” The result is that the game thought I intended to load a save with a blank name. Instead of validating this, or even handling it with “on error” code, the game just relies on you to press “y” and then nothing else until the list comes up. Then, you must type [i]just[/i] the name of a real, existing save. Stray from that and the game dies.

Skip the next long paragraph to avoid a list of bugs I found just in a [i]partial[/i] play-through.

Other bugs are numerous. As announced at the IFComp website, you can’t buy anything at the store because the game never believes you have any money. I corresponded with Dunric and he sent me an update (I intended to use it to see the rest of the game, although I can’t base my score on it), but even [i]that[/i] version seems to have some problems in the same area. “Examining” things (among other potentially useful and necessary actions) frequently results in blank responses. You can find a fern shield, but (believe it or don’t) an [i]Ice Dragon[/i] is what actually ends up in your inventory (this, I noticed, [i]was[/i] fixed by the update). In early battles, if you attempt to use an item (from the battle menu), you’re seemingly stuck. It wants an item number in response, but the list is empty, and there is no “0” or “nevermind” option. I had to just “ctrl+break” then “enter” to force my way out of the game entirely. In dealing with Bruce Lee you can sell things you don’t even have, and unknown nouns usually result in Bruce thinking you’re selling the Ice Dragon. There was a strange quirk where nothing would happen when I tried to listen to the band’s music, but later it worked. Some bad line wrapping in a few places results in words that are split from the end of one display line to the beginning of the next.

Here’s the one that had me throwing my hands up in exasperation:

[i]Raiythius arrives.[/i]
[b]>talk to raiythius[/b]
[i]The object doesn't understand you. Only Raiythius or C/C++ programmers (employing the latest 633K 5P34K) can decipher your nano-blabber.[/i]

Paul implemented “X” for “examine” (which is nice, even given the introductory lecture on why it shouldn’t have been necessary). He even added an “alias” command to create shortcuts to two-word actions. The top of the display shows function-key shortcuts to several verbs. A text map is available in-game. The problem is that [i]these[/i] are the advanced features Paul has included to prove that he’s growing as an IF author. The game structure itself is still antiquated and obsolete.

The beginning, for instance, is a CYOA-style prologue with a couple of prompts (and not [i]command[/i] prompts -- you are expected to type “go west” and it’s not routed through general parsing). That wouldn’t be an issue except that [i]you can’t skip it[/i] on later play-throughs, and [i]you can’t load a saved game[/i] until you move through it into the game proper.

I really tried to get past these things and put effort into [i]playing[/i] a game Paul has put such effort (even if misguided) into writing. It’s just... an exercise in frustration. It’s a shame, because some of what Paul writes hints at brilliance. The rest, sadly, is an incomprehensible mesh of disparate ideas that don’t seem surreal or inviting, just confusing and strange. It ranges from beautiful imagery and well-imagined originality to exhausted elements rehashed from his prior games and toilet humor. The PC is a huge female beetle (spelled “beatle” in the game) accompanied by a comically sadistic hellhound who isn’t quite as funny as Paul thinks he is. This female beetle, it seems, can not only elicit friendly flirting from a concubine bartender, but she can engage in “romantic intercourse” with yet another woman (some opium-smoking guild master). As awkward as much of the story seems, I think it [i]might[/i] have made an interesting and surreal adventure if not marred by so darned many technical issues.

The ending is equally strange. I couldn’t get to it the intended way ([i]is[/i] the game truly unwinnable?) so I looked in the source code afterwards. At the risk of spoiling the conclusion to a story [i]somebody[/i] out there may wish to play, it involves an NPC called Dunric who commits seppuku (a specific suicide of Japanese origin) with a knife. What precedes it is the PC’s apology for the suffering Dunric has endured, and Dunric’s calm answer that “the competition” will never change him. This is surely just a figurative flight of fancy for the author (I sincerely hope that it is), but if there is [i]any[/i] correlation between Dunric the NPC and Dunric the author, it’s a chilling way to end a story -- [i]any[/i] story.

It would be easy to vote the game a “1”. Most judges will. I think if [i]anything[/i] is good about a game, it deserves at least a “2”. I’ve gone up from there, though, based almost entirely on the [i]effort[/i] that went into the game, not the result. Plus, there are a few well-written and visceral passages that make it clear Paul had [i]something[/i] big in mind for [i]Ghost of the Fireflies[/i]. I’ve rated it a “X”, but with a “minus” for being so technically unsound and generally a pain to actually [i]play[/i]. I can’t recommend it, and it’s probably going to rank at or near the bottom in the final results.

To wrap up, I would recommend (again) to Paul that he pick up Inform, or TADS, or even Adrift. Please don’t be so adamantly against learning something new and taking on a new challenge. I’d like to think we’ve always been on friendly terms. I’ve offered suggestions, sent information about bugs, written reviews far lengthier and more open-minded than most, not dismissed your games based on by-line alone, avoided (I think) the Panks-bashing that sometimes felt like a daily routine, and even beta-tested one of your games. So, [i]please[/i] consider this the friendly, well-intentioned advice it’s meant to be. Just consider it. Your games would benefit by it. I really believe this.
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=281&start=0#p1815
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Ghost of the Fireflies
User: George / DateTime: 2007-10-13 23:16:26

Wow. Well, I admit I was far less tenacious in my play of [i]Fireflies[/i]. After I couldn't buy anything, I did wander around the map for a good while, but I didn't play for two hours. 

However -- I sincerely believe that this game may be brilliant. Panks achieves with sheer chutzpah what many IF authors never even approach with their hours upon hours of nth-level examine-the-object puzzle creation and failure message tweaking, and that achievement is a game with real guts, and his mash-up of Japanese folklore, pop culture, Jesus, and hellhounds seems ridiculous at first but in many ways is so faithful that he wins you over with the details. 

I know Panks has his detractors but I think the writing is quite good in places (as Mike mentioned). 

I played a couple of Panks' games in the last comp and I do think [i]Fireflies [/i]is an improvement despite its many issues. I've actually given this game a fairly high score relative to the others I've played for the reasons above.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=281&start=0#p1816
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Ghost of the Fireflies
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-14 00:08:53

I was definitely hopeful at the start. Every time I begin a game he's written, I keep thinking maybe *this* will be the turning point for him. In this game especially, I found the writing far more interesting than in his past games. It lacks polish, but you have a great point. It carries an air of authority, and it wasn't dry or dire.

But... hmmm. I guess it's hard for me to separate the writing and the story from the mass of technical and design problems. I agree with you, though. When I read certain parts, I thought okay, this is *really* outstanding. But then I'd wonder if I was seeing brilliance, or just the awe that comes from reading something completely strange but ultimately lacking in purpose.

It seems like it came naturally to him, though. I think it would be a stretch for me to just put everything out there like that. Maybe I'm too grounded in reality. When Paul writes it, there's a level of honesty that comes across, even though the subject matter and imagery is really "out there." But it's scattered, as though it was never intended to be one coherent story.

I just wish he could back it up with programming prowess. For the life of me, I can't figure out why he *can't*. When I look at his source code, it's *obvious* why the game would be so buggy and clunky. I don't even have to find the bugs to know that they *must* exist. You really can't program that way and still have a technically sound game. Okay, I guess you could, but as you get *better* at it, you *stop* programming the way Paul does. Nevermind that he's not taking advantage of the power offered by IF-specific languages. He's not even taking advantage of the power that BASIC offers.

What I'm left thinking after playing "Ghost of the Fireflies" -- and I must have thought the same after "Jesus of Nazareth" two years ago (which, IMO, was his strongest entry) -- is that he's channeling some sort of creative genius, but *only* in concepts, and *only* in some of his work. You can compare "Simple Adventure" from last year to "Ghost of the Fireflies" and wonder how the former can be so bland while the latter is wild with originality and possibility. But he can only focus it sometimes, and only in the writing itself.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=20#p1817
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-14 00:29:59

It's an alternative to the Standard Library which does a lot of things that Platypus and Onyx Ring do, but in different -- not necessarily better ways -- and adds some others. Last weekend I managed to shake out some persistent bugs. There is an old beta in the IF Archive.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=281&start=0#p1818
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Ghost of the Fireflies
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-14 03:53:44

[quote="Merk"]
[i]Ghost of the Fireflies[/i] begins with a hardy chiding. You’re likely to have missed it if, like me, you pressed “enter” after hitting “n” to skip the instructions. The question is followed by a two- or three-second pause, but any keypress after “n” will skip right over it. I saw it the first time because I [i]did[/i] read through the instructions. Anyway, if you’re interested in being scolded with the use of words such as “weirdo” and “stupid,” just press “n” to skip the instructions but press no other key until “HELP FOR THE LAZY” appears as the heading.
[/quote]     

I noticed that too. How very stupid to insult the people who either will or won't be giving you points in the competition. 

But that's the main problem with Mr. Panks; by his reckoning, if his games are unplayable, it's not [b][i]his[/i][/b] fault, it's [b][i]yours[/i][/b].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=281&start=0#p1819
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Ghost of the Fireflies
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-14 06:06:40

Yes, but Mr Panks writes *the* best games in the world so obviously if you're having a problem with them, it must be your fault.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=20#p1820
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Benjamin Sokal / DateTime: 2007-10-14 23:15:00

Hello all!

My name is Ben, I am 29, and for the moment reside in California. As I received the fabulous birthday present of unemployment this year, I have been obsessively working on my first game. It should be finished next year (I hope!) It is a Kafkaesque comedy/fantasy/tragedy/drama/philosophy game that is mysteriously exploding in 10 different directions as I write it.

Some of my favorite games include Infocom classics such as Trinity and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, LucasArts titles such as Maniac Mansion 2, Loom, and Monkey Island, and RPG/Adventure games such as Worlds of Ultima 2 and Planescape: Torment.

It's nice to see that some people under 25 are working on interactive fiction. My worry has always been that it will die a slow and decrepid death as the children of the 80s age!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=282&start=0#p1821
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Beneath: a Transformation
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-15 11:38:45

The "official" version can be found at my website:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/beneath.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/beneath.shtml</a>

[quote]Game #9: Beneath: a Transformation
By Graham Lowther
Played On: October 14th (2 hours 25 minutes)
Platform: Inform 6 (Zcode)

Game’s Blurb:
[i]An adventure based on Robert E. Howard's "Worms of the Earth".[/i]

Ordinarily, I like these creepy, pseudo-surreal settings. That part of the game comes across very well. The writing is fine. I don’t remember any errors or mistakes of the kind that have plagued most of the other entries to this point. It’s simple but effective, allowing for easy immersion. But... hmm. The game itself isn’t quite so smooth.

In [i]Beneath[/i], you are a nameless, unknown reader with a library copy of Howard’s [i]Worms of the Earth[/i] (apparently an anthology of short stories). Fact and fantasy blend, as it becomes clear that [i]you[/i] (in the role of the PC) must be living in the world described by the very collection you’re reading. I played this late on a stormy night, which added to the mood, but not enough to cover up some serious design problems.

Hard puzzles aren’t inherently bad. They usually provide a higher challenge rating than I’m comfortable with, but I can usually recognize them as fair and solvable after the fact. The puzzles in [i]Beneath[/i] (which, incidentally, had me thinking of 2005’s [i]Beyond[/i] on title alone, despite dissimilarity otherwise) aren’t hard – they’re [i]obscure[/i]. It’s easy to make a [i]little[/i] progress through the first parts of the game, but then it becomes nearly (if not completely) impossible. Success often depends on knowing or guessing things that seem entirely unclued and counter-intuitive. Some assistance is provided in the form of in-game hints that the game is in an unwinnable state, but the hints seem too sparse to cover all the ways the game might become unwinnable. Plus, it’s never really clear [i]why[/i] the game is unwinnable, or what might be done to prevent it.

The following is an example (and a possible puzzle spoiler) right from the game. The PC can buy an owl, which flies away upon exiting the pet store. This turns out to be a [i]good[/i] thing, but it’s described as not really mattering (probably so players won’t think it was a mistake). But, because nothing happened, I didn’t even bother with the owl when re-playing later. Further in, a certain item can be found and dropped as bait of sorts for this owl. The puzzle relies not only on having released the owl earlier, but in somehow deducing that it would be interested in this item. Even if you [i]do[/i] figure that out, it’s ultimately pure coincidence story-wise that the owl [i]helps[/i] you escape a pursuer while going after this particular item. It’s just not the kind of thing a player could plan for and work out a correct solution. That’s just one example among several.

Guess-the-command problems only make it worse. The game is far too picky on what it will understand. It’s possible to take the right action but in a slightly wrong way, and never quite know that you [i]almost[/i] had it right. I don’t think an author has to account for [i]everything[/i] a player is prone to try, but the more variations to an action that may exist, the more coverage that particular action should get. One spot that merits a mention involves a newspaper and a paper bag. The game doesn’t ask for disambiguation on “paper” -- it just seems to assume the bag every time, and often without making it clear that the action you are trying for the newspaper doesn’t work because it was [i]actually[/i] routed to the bag instead. (I was close to kicking that darned dog, and it wasn’t the poor thing’s fault after all.)

This issue was spread across the game as a whole, but the “buy” action is another easy example. Buying [i]anything[/i] is particularly troublesome, as the game expects this to be handled in a specific (and frustration-inducing) way. Instead of pooling my money and allowing me to “buy” things by name, I must identify the purchase amount by bill or coin name, “pay” it to the merchant or clerk, and then [i]ask[/i] about the thing I intend to buy. Nobody makes change, so to spend your dollar (for instance) you need to find the [i]one[/i] thing that’s priced at $1. At one point, this involved multiple levels of “ask” (another instance of something I couldn’t have solved without help, considering that this particular NPC seemed pretty unresponsive to a variety of things I had [i]already[/i] tried to ask) in order to negotiate the price down. This isn’t because you can’t [i]afford[/i] the asking price, but because the author has matched one buyable item to one or two specific coins in your inventory.

[i]Some[/i] of the design problems could be the standard author-knows-but-player-doesn’t kind of thing that tends to work its way into interactive fiction when based on some existing work of fiction. I haven’t read the source material, but [i]if[/i] these puzzles are also based on elements of the Robert E. Howard stories, maybe the author just failed or forgot to make them meaningful for the uninitiated. Others have written veritable essays on the importance of [i]thinking like a player[/i], and it’s just as important when adapting a story that may be unfamiliar [i]to[/i] that player.

An inventory management limitation was another sticking point for me. I think that [i]if[/i] you’re going to do this in a game, you really have to make it smooth and automated. “Look in bag” should imply that I intend to open it. I should be able to take coins from the bag and pay a merchant without hitting an inventory limitation just because the game intends to put it in top-level inventory before handing it off. The bag, for that matter, could have been given a larger capacity.

Here’s a general tip for future IF authors. Keep things believable even when the story you’re telling is pure fantasy. Requiring that your PC order food [i]and[/i] sit down where the lighting is [i]just right[/i] in order to read from a book is somewhat unnecessary. There are two reasons this puzzle actually [i]works[/i] in [i]Beneath[/i] (the PC intends to read for quite a while so being comfortable makes sense, and the pieces/clues are in place to make it a solvable puzzle), but later it’s as though he can’t bring himself to read even a single page unless he finds the perfect light. If the town was [i]that[/i] dark, it really wasn’t portrayed well enough in the game, and if this was just a device to separate plot sections (as it appears to be), then it might have been handled in another way.

I stopped at two hours, voted the game an optimistic “X” (hoping that the parts I hadn’t yet seen would justify it), and then ran through from the beginning with the walkthrough at hand. This is the author’s first game (according to the “about” text in-game), and as such, it’s not too bad. It has the [i]potential[/i] to be a pretty good game, but it’s not solvable in two hours (if at all) given what feels to me to be a poor design with clunky command-guessing and puzzles that rely on precognition. My review score drops a point after seeing that these issues seem to persist to the end. I have scored it a “X-” (the minus being awarded for bogging down an interesting story with puzzle that can’t realistically be solved without the assistance of the walkthrough).[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=282&start=0#p1822
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Beneath: a Transformation
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-15 11:46:20

Pleeeeease don't name names or allude to any upcoming games on my list, but *are* there any truly great games this year? I'm sure there must be. I've only gone through nine so far, but *usually* by this point -- roughly a third of the way through the competition -- I will have awarded a "9" or even a "10" to one. I've played one or two that are pretty good, and two or three that are fairly good, but nothing that really has me thinking this is a great year for the IFComp. So either I'm being too picky, or the best games are concentrated at some point lower in my list, or this is just a "down" year for the competition...

Hopefully I'll come across something I can really rave about -- like a rabid fanboy or something -- soon. Try as I might to focus on the positive, my reviews *continue* to center around all that's bad in each game. [emote]Sad[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=282&start=0#p1823
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Beneath: a Transformation
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-15 13:40:26

I can't guarantee that you'll feel the same way I did, but for what it's worth, you've yet to get to any of my three favorites this year.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=282&start=0#p1824
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Beneath: a Transformation
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-15 13:58:01

Well, just knowing somebody found *three* favorites is encouraging news! [emote]Smile[/emote]

I saw that you had posted a wrap-up about your favorites, but I'm staying out until I've gone through the rest. If I thought I wouldn't have time to get through them all, I'd check it. But I think I will, this year.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=282&start=0#p1825
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Beneath: a Transformation
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-15 14:11:50

Strictly speaking, every game in the comp could be a total stinker but if three of them stank slightly less than the others, you could still claim they're your three favourites.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=282&start=0#p1826
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Beneath: a Transformation
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-15 14:28:13

Always we look on the bright side...

I enjoyed my favorites quite a lot. None made the top of my skull lift off in awe at the tremendous revolution they brought to the medium of IF, but they were well-made and lots of fun.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=282&start=0#p1827
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Beneath: a Transformation
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-15 15:39:48

I've never played a game that has made the top of my skull lift off in awe, but a few have made me wish I had a time machine so I could back to when the writer was writing the game, swipe all their ideas, and put them in one of my games. Which is about the same thing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=283&start=0#p1830
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Q. About Lost Pig (hint request)
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-16 06:49:52

(spoiler space)
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Is there any way to get the torch back if you traded it to the gnome for the glowing ball? The walkthrough calls for using the torch in a way where the ball seemingly won't work, later in the game. I don't want to have to move forward from an earlier save if I can help it, but I haven't figured out a way to either get the torch back, or open the exit in another way... Also, the gnome says there are magic words to turn the ball on and off, but he won't tell me what they are. Am I missing something, or is it unimportant to actually find out?

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=283&start=0#p1831
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Q. About Lost Pig (hint request)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-16 07:30:10

1) it is unimportant to find out.
2) other things than the torch can burn.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=283&start=0#p1832
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Q. About Lost Pig (hint request)
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-16 07:45:03

Ooooh. I somehow thought the torch was the key, not fire/heat in general. Nice. I'll try something else, then.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=283&start=0#p1833
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Q. About Lost Pig (hint request)
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-16 09:37:22

I somehow missed that there were built-in hints to answer the same question (about fire). Although it was equally vague. [emote]Smile[/emote]

I tried getting it to work with a hat full of powder and wet pants. I just never could figure out how to wring them out our anything (maybe there's a way I didn't stumble upon). I figured out something else, though, and got through it.

I'm disappointed that I needed a hint even in that one spot, though. Otherwise, I'd have gotten through without any help.

Anybody managed to get the 7th point?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=284&start=0#p1834
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Lost Pig
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-16 18:56:10

The "official" version can be found at my website:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/lostpig.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/lostpig.shtml</a>

[quote]
Game #10: Lost Pig (And Place Under Ground)
By “Admiral Jota” (writing as “Grunk”)
Played On: October 15th & 16th (2 hours 55 minutes)
Platform: Inform 6 (Zcode)

Game’s Blurb:
[i]Pig lost! Boss say that it Grunk fault. Say Grunk forget about closing gate. Maybe boss right. Grunk not remember forgetting, but maybe Grunk just forget.[/i]

[i]Now Grunk need find pig.[/i]

[b]>xyzzy[/b]
[i]Grunk not know that word. Sound like magic, though.[/i]

([i]Plugh[/i] and [i]Plover[/i] offer the same response.)

I have been looking forward to [i]Lost Pig[/i] on premise alone, while hoping it wouldn’t turn out to be a joke (or in-joke) entry in the vein of [i]Pass The Banana[/i]. I’m happy to say that familiarity with Grunk’s illustrious career in the military (see Grunk’s blog at <a class="postlink" href="http://grunk.livejournal.com/2002/04/24/">http://grunk.livejournal.com/2002/04/24/</a>) isn’t a prerequisite for enjoying [i]Lost Pig[/i]. It’s funny, but it [i]isn’t[/i] a joke entry.

[i]Lost Pig[/i] is told from the decidedly simple perspective of the main character, an orc named Grunk. A new player [i]might[/i] mistake Grunk’s broken English and seemingly unambitious goal as laziness on the author’s part. After only a few minutes of play, however, it becomes pleasingly obvious how much effort has gone into creating Grunk’s world. 

It’s easy to spot the [i]problems[/i] in a game (any random game, I mean). A player will probably recognize when he or she has encountered some bit of difficulty, be it rampant mistakes in the writing, puzzles that are unfair and impossible to solve, verbs that require a mental checklist of synonyms to deduce, objects that can’t be referenced by the important words that describe them, humor that falls short (or attempts at drama that just seem silly), useless or superfluous locations, bugs that kill (or injure) the game, or any of a countless list of other detractors. It’s [i]not[/i] so easy to notice when a game is doing almost [i]none[/i] of those things. Most things work so smoothly in [i]Lost Pig[/i] that Grunk’s choppy narration is the only thing that really stands out at first. It’s consistent, humorous, well-written and completely intentional, but it tends to draw attention away from how incredibly [i]smooth[/i] the game plays. It’s easy to sink into it after a little while, and [i]then[/i] the game’s nearly flawless design really shows through.

[i]Lost Pig[/i] could be the proverbial poster child for all that’s [i]right[/i] in puzzle-game design. Commands don’t rely on one or two specific verbs or phrasings. Puzzles have alternate solutions, making it harder to get stuck looking for one specific but obscure solution. Items work together and are often used for multiple purposes. The game doesn’t span a maze of rooms, opting instead for a minimum area with more than one purpose to each (this also avoids the tedium of traversing wide and confusing geography for puzzles that rely on elements found in different places). Puzzles are clued well and often in multiple ways (ranging from vague to somewhat obvious), making it more likely that a player will pick up on at least one of the hints while still feeling pretty clever when figuring out the solution. A potentially repetitive action (getting another brick) is made simple after Grunk takes note of the process. Grunk’s design philosophy was apparently “I need to write an interesting puzzle game told from a unique perspective, and with challenging but fair puzzles, all while doing everything I can do to keep players focused on [i]playing[/i] without the tedium of meta-game frustrations like verb-guessing, spotty implementation, and bugs in the coding.” Grunk... mission accomplished.

Detail is everywhere. The pig watches what Grunk does, and it even has a mischievous little personality. The gnome is a talker (in [i]good[/i] English), and can comment on more topics than might be found in ten similarly-sized games combined. Grunk is hapless but well-intentioned. Scenery is well-implemented. Disallowed actions are well-covered. Dialogue and interactions are well-written and witty. Library (or parser) messages have been reworked to help serve as additional narration for Grunk. Items can be wet or dry, dirty or clean, attractive or repellant, and it all fits together in one consistent world model where any item can potentially influence another.

This wouldn’t feel like a [i]Sidney Merk Review[/i] without a bug report as well, but I tell you, it’s a stretch. I noticed two or three minor mistakes in the text (discounting Grunk’s intentionally-fractured narration). Some kind of command disambiguation issue is at work in the statue room, where items in Grunk’s inventory are sometimes mistaken for similar items depicted in the paintings. And... hmm. That’s all, I think.

I could have won the game in [i]exactly[/i] two hours (and without hints), except that I misunderstood a solution to one late-game puzzle. Once I learned that I didn’t need a [i]specific[/i] item to solve the puzzle (just something that would work the same way), I struggled a little to find something else suited to this task. One particular idea (involving wet pants and a hat) seemed like an ideal solution that I just couldn’t make work. This puzzle was really my only sticking point in [i]Lost Pig[/i], and a great case can be made that this was my mistake rather than the game’s.

[i]Lost Pig[/i] is easily the strongest entry I’ve played so far this year, and probably one of the most fun, well-constructed puzzle games of any IFComp I’ve reviewed before. It lavishes the player with a detailed, always-smooth adventure, yet remains a simple puzzlefest with likable characters and a challenge that feels just right. I voted it a “X” at two hours. Even unsure of the potential goodness to come from the remainder of my IFComp play list, I can imagine [i]Lost Pig[/i] landing a well-deserved spot in the top five (perhaps even top three). It could even manage the top honor if voters are willing to trade the more traditional serious, story-heavy pick for something on the sillier side this year.
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=283&start=0#p1835
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Q. About Lost Pig (hint request)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-16 20:19:03

For the seventh point, you have to leave the shrine more or less as you found it. (There are hints in the hint menu about how specifically to do that if you want more tips.) If you do, you get a very slightly different ending and a sort of easter egg entry in the amusing menu.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=285&start=0#p1836
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: The Immortal
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-18 16:38:50

The "official" version can be found at my website:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/immortal.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/immortal.shtml</a>

[quote]Game #11: The Immortal
By Rob Anthony (writing as “Just Rob”)
Played On: October 17th & 18th (2 hours 5 minutes)
Platform: Inform 7 (Zcode)

Game’s Blurb:
[i]An interactive sci-fi mystery.[/i]

I once read somewhere that the opening scene in [i]Men In Black[/i] is perfect, because it summarizes the story without spoiling it. The camera follows the flight of a bug as it weaves and dodges danger, only to go [i]splatt[/i] at the end. Since then, I’ve begun to pay more attention to opening scenes, whether from a movie, a book, a video game, or interactive fiction.

What struck me first about [i]The Immortal[/i] is how much it says in its first few paragraphs without ever actually seeming to say [i]anything[/i]. At the first command prompt, I think I furrowed my brow and muttered “what was [i]that[/i]?” I suppose it’s not easy to write about abstractions, but a [i]good[/i] opening of this sort should give players something to latch onto and remember later. The intro to [i]The Immortal[/i] goes for surrealism without quite achieving it. The ending doesn’t cast it in a new light, because it’s pretty clear what is happening all along.

I’m either becoming too picky, or I’m forgetting how many seriously broken games are submitted each year. The alternative is that this is the Year of the Untested Game. I know it can be hard sometimes to interest people in playing a potentially buggy, unpolished game (and beyond that, to actually run transcripts and report back what they’ve found, and even beyond that, to actually [i]fix[/i] what’s wrong), but believe me, it’s vital. [i]Nobody[/i] writes a perfect game. This is true whether you’re a first-time author or an author with dozens of games to your credit. As a dare, check the credits and/or documentation for the top five or ten games in every IFComp. I bet you’ll find [i]at least[/i] three testers credited (if not more) for most of them. So decide. Do you want half a dozen potential judges to see a bad version of your game and not be able to vote on it at all, or do you want a hundred and twenty [i]actual[/i] judges to see the same version and vote low? I’m stressing the point, I know, but testing [i]is[/i] vital. You [i]can’t[/i] know how well your game will hold up to real scrutiny unless you have it tested. Most of your recruits should be very familiar with interactive fiction, with a novice or two thrown in for good measure.

This is why it’s so disappointing to find a game that [i]might[/i] have been magnitudes better with testing and revision, as is the case with [i]The Immortal[/i]. It has a fairly interesting, imaginative plot. It’s about the right size for the IFComp. Some interesting [i]ideas[/i] are involved, where science fiction meets myth and fantasy.

But boy is it broken.

It has problems upon problems, in nearly every category that a game [i]can[/i] have problems: misspellings and typos; comma splices; wrong word usage (opaque is the [i]opposite[/i] of transparent); objects without sufficient noun aliases; actions that are triggered by other unrelated actions; actions that trigger [i]always[/i], even when it’s no longer appropriate or not appropriate in the present location; actions suggested in the text merely for effect, without any verb to support it if actually attempted by a player; enterable things that can’t be entered unless you use the “in” verb; seemingly important inventory items that can’t be used in any obvious way, anywhere in the game (I’m looking at you, samurai sword); poor world state management, where descriptions are hard-coded without respect to major changes that might invalidate what the descriptions say; disambiguation problems (just try looking at the book on the “dias” while already holding another book); unsupported “optional” actions associated with likely objects (a sofa “isn’t something you can sit down on”); instant and unclued death of the “take this seemingly innocuous action and you die” sort (thank goodness for “undo”); items picked up by the PC without explicitly saying so. At least it has no quirky inventory limit, maze or hunger daemon. I guess that’s something.

Two specific issues do merit a separate mention. First, in at least two places (talking to the soul that follows you around, and entering the eastern hallway) you can continue to rack up score points well beyond the game’s 11-point maximum. Also, when I came close to the two-hour judging limit and switched over to the walkthrough, I found two mistakes. In one spot, it directs you to go “up” to leave the library, when you really must return to the antechamber (northwest) first. Also, you are directed to use the “enter” verb near the end, but only “in” appears to work. This is true in other places as well, but here it was specifically mentioned in the walkthrough. (Thank goodness the available exits are listed in the status bar.)

The puzzles in [i]The Immortal[/i] don’t seem particularly original or clever (generally requiring a specific single-use item for a matching task), but they’re not really difficult either. Rather, I don’t think they were [i]intended[/i] to be difficult. Your job as a player is made harder by the many bugs in the game. I found it possible to work around the problems and still make a good deal of progress without help. I might even have reached the end without the walkthrough, except that I reached a point where I hadn’t realized what I could do to avoid death in trying to move past a large “thought bubble.” I might have figured it out, except that my confidence in the game was so shaken by all the problems encountered to that point that I couldn’t be sure I hadn’t made the game unwinnable in some way. Up to that point, even with the problems, I had made steady progress. The game [i]is[/i] playable. It just requires looking past the multitude of problems that continue to suggest otherwise.

It’s even fun, to a degree. Although my time was divided between enjoying the game on its own terms and commenting on its various problems in the transcripts, I still came away [i]liking[/i] the game. It’s an ambitious game attempting to tell an even more ambitious story. The author seems to lack the experience to pull it off [i]right now[/i], but it could be improved. The ending seems set for a sequel, although I got the impression too that the author might have had more planned for the game that he just lacked the time to finish. Whether improving [i]The Immortal[/i] or writing a new game entirely, I would recommend to Rob that he keep at it. Too many IF authors seem to stop at one or two games, before ever becoming [i]better[/i] at it.

[i]The Immortal[/i] feels a [i]lot[/i] like [i]A Light’s Tale[/i] and [i]On Optimism[/i], two previous IFComp entries by Zach Flynn (entered as “VBNZ” and “Tim Lane,” respectively). Nothing really suggests that Rob Anthony is a pseudonym, but if it is, then that would be my guess. Even if the similarities in style and the types of problems encountered are coincidental (as most likely they are), it’s enough to say that if you [i]liked[/i] those games, then you might enjoy [i]The Immortal[/i] as well. I had enough fun to make it worth the effort, but it’s not really a recommendable game in its present state. It fits in at “X” on my scale, with a “plus” for the weird but interesting sci-fi setting.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=278&start=10#p1837
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Orevore Courier
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-18 18:52:56

I liked this game, but I did have one issue with it:  Part of the solution to the game hinges on an NPC taking an action that happens only if you have done certain other (unrelated) things correctly up until that point.  There isn't any particular [i]reason[/i] why this event happens, or any way (at least, none that I could see) that the player could predict that it would happen; it simply does.

This is problematic because it penalizes the player for trying to think ahead and plan a solution to the entire problem using the information at hand.  I was trying to think of a way to deal with all the various problems the game was throwing at me at once, not knowing that if I dealt with one, the game would unexpectedly hand me an unrelated solution to the other.

I'm alright with replaying a game like this or (say) Varicella a few times to get a sense of what will happen and how I can deal with it, but having my actions affect unrelated things seems unfair, somehow.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=278&start=10#p1838
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Orevore Courier
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-18 18:56:59

The "whisper" bit, right? I had already gone into the walkthrough before I hit that point, although I *think* I had gotten close to figuring out much of it prior to that. If I recall from emshort's review, she hit on the same thing (maybe even got it from the walkthrough) as well.

It's a good point. The game is constructed around needing to figure out what's going on and when, but that particular bit *can't* be figured out unless you get all the pieces in place the *right* way first. And because you kinda need to get past that point to *know* you have all the pieces right, it's a very obscure thing to stumble upon. At least, it appears that way to me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=286&start=0#p1839
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Wish
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-21 00:40:05

The "official" version can be found at my website:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/wish.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/wish.shtml</a>

[quote]Game #12: Wish
By Edward Floren
Played On: October 20th (35 minutes)
Platform: Inform 6 (Zcode)

[b]>xyzzy[/b]
[i]A pixie comes scurrying up to you, takes one look, offers a quizzical expression, then disappears[/i]

I have surprisingly little to say about [i]Wish[/i], an entry by Edward Floren. You are nine-year-old Sarah, on a brief adventure with hints of [i]Alice in Wonderland[/i] about it. The events leading up to Sarah’s adventure are told as cut-scenes during the transitional segments of her journey.

This is a game many players will complete in half an hour. That’s short, even by IFComp standards. So, while it’s technically a pretty solid game (I found no bugs, and only a few minor rough spots in the text here and there), there just isn’t much [i]to[/i] it. It’s a little guess-the-verb-y in spots, but not so much that proper phrasing doesn’t present itself after a couple attempts. The puzzles are about as simple as puzzles come, serving mainly just to give Sarah something to [i]do[/i] in her adventure.

[i]Wish[/i] might be a good starter game for kids, or a game kids could enjoy with the help of a parent. It has emotion that, while not particularly forced or anything, would probably strike a chord more with a younger player (or perhaps with a younger player’s grandfather) than with the typical IFComp judge slogging his way through twenty-nine entries.

As to the story, I can make a few comments (with potential spoilers). I’m not sure what symbolism was involved here. Maybe the recurring “diamond” shape is meant to match the tree’s star? The ending explains what Sarah is [i]doing[/i] during the game, but only sort of. What was the significance of these particular encounters? In light of the ending (and the “advice” given Sarah by her mother), how were these things supposed to have helped? Are they part of something bigger -- something the author believed players would understand at the end? For that matter, it seems to me like a bad idea to give [i]that[/i] advice to Sarah (at least worded as it was), when she was already struck with misguided self-blame over what happened earlier. Was there, then, [i]more[/i] to the story than meets the eye?

I have a feeling this is one game most judges won’t feel too strongly about, one way or the other. On one hand, it’s more polished and it plays more smoothly than some of the larger, more ambitious games in the competition. It tells a simple and touching (if slightly predictable) story. On the other hand, it [i]is[/i] pretty short, and while effort has certainly gone into its creation, it’s probably not to the extent seen in many of the other entries. It doesn’t deserve a low rating, but at the same time, it’s difficult to rate it on par with longer, more developed entries (another example of how my rating criteria fall short). That’s why I’ve scored (and voted) it a “X”, with a “minus” for brevity.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=286&start=0#p1840
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Wish
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-21 01:02:36

It seems I'm not the only one who felt it was probably a bad idea to tell her daughter that all would be well just by wishing hard and working hard to make it happen. I really don't think the author intended for it to come across that way, though. It was probably supposed to make for a happy ending.

Does *anybody* know what was going on in the game, though? The most obvious thing to wish for doesn't seem to relate to the game proper at all. Am I missing something? I would expect "I wish my Grandpa was okay" not "I wish I could have random adventures that don't seem to relate to my Grandpa in any way." Can anybody clue me in?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=286&start=0#p1841
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Wish
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2007-10-21 08:06:53

Nope, I'm as baffled as you are. In fact, everyone I've seen discussing Wish has been as baffled as you are. Maybe it just isn't meant to tie in neatly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=287&start=0#p1842
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: The Lost Dimension
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-21 20:18:35

The "official" version can be found at my website:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/dimension.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/dimension.shtml</a>

[quote]Game #13: The Lost Dimension
By C. Yong
Played On: October 21st (4 hours 5 minutes)
Platform: C# or VB.NET (Compiled .NET Executable)

Game’s Blurb:
[i]The lost dimension tries to present the conventional text adventure game in a non-conventional way. It is hoped that this whole new GUI approach would attract those who normally don't play text adventure game as well.[/i]

If one were to watch the first hour of Stephen King’s [i]The Langoliers[/i], play [i]Simple Adventure[/i] by Paul Panks (or any other poorly-conceived text-based combat RPG), get a little drunk, and then program a game in .NET, it would very likely turn out a bit like [i]The Lost Dimension[/i].

The story in [i]The Lost Dimension[/i] (and really, it’s not all [i]that[/i] lost; it’s just like every other strange monster-infested real-world-becomes-fantasy-land setting we’ve seen) is that all passengers on a plane have disappeared, except for the initially-sleeping main character. The plane lands (and subsequently disappears), leaving the protagonist to fend for himself (well, the “snore” audio is decidedly male) against various crazed beasties that ordinarily wouldn’t all belong in the same story. All the while, he must hunt for five magnetic stones (could be “relics of power” in any other game) as the key to escaping this strange realm.

In spite of its many problems, I [i]liked[/i] this game. I have to say that first, before I launch into a lengthy discussion on everything that’s [i]wrong[/i] with it. This is another game with a custom-made Windows-only engine, but it takes a different approach than the typical home-brewed IFComp entry. It features a point-and-click interface that’s intended to entice players for whom typing is a turn-off.

The author claims that [i]The Lost Dimension[/i] can be played completely via keyboard [i]or[/i] with the mouse, but I couldn’t figure out how to make it work right strictly by typing in a conventional way. Unrecognized commands (such as “x me”) don’t result in [i]anything[/i] but a warning tone. Verbs recognized by the game (such as “look”) bring up a pick list before you even finish typing, making it impossible to enter complete commands. Some actions (such as those listed sometimes in the “special options/actions” section) don’t seem to be recognized as text input at all. (Edit: I see that you can reference special actions at the command prompt by number, just not with any verb or command phrasing.) If, however, you play the game strictly by its point-and-click interface, it works reasonably well. Granted, it takes a little while to become comfortable with an all-click interface for a text adventure game, but it’s easy to manage after only a little while.

The game’s greatest weakness is that it throws away the power and flexibility of a real command text parser without replacing it with something equally robust (such as visually appealing graphics with point-and-click hot-spots). At any point in the game, every possible action for every potential object is pre-calculated. This allows the game to list all possible actions, or to populate pick-lists when selecting an action that requires an object. Thankfully, it does play more like a point-and-click graphic adventure game than a CYOA-style game, and that at least keeps the [i]feel[/i] of interactive fiction intact.

As the game progresses, the interface does begin to feel more natural. I can see what the author intended by it, even though I suspect most IFComp judges won’t agree. It’s really not a bad engine. To really shine, though, I think it needs work in a few areas.

It should automatically resize to fit your resolution (instead of downsizing your resolution to fit the game). The trick here (if I can be so bold as to make the suggestion) is to call a generic routine on the INIT for each and every form element. If you’ve based the default layout on 800x600, simply calculate the [i]actual[/i] screen size (possibly as a global on startup, or any time the form itself is resized) and change the position and size of the control based on the adjustment of its default size and position. You can resize fonts the same way (although a custom user-initiated font selection is probably a better idea).

The command prompt, when input is so restricted anyway, is probably better left out entirely. A transcript feature would be nice. An “undo” feature is sorely missed, and the single-file save game ability (based on the name you supply when starting the game) would have posed a problem if I hadn’t realized you can just copy or rename the saved files outside of the program to manage as many different saves as you like. Knowing (instead of guessing at) weapon and armor stats would have been nice, considering your main character stats are on display anyway. Auto-mapping would be nice. Items in the “special options/actions” list are infrequent enough that I sometimes overlooked them until later. Somehow drawing the player’s attention to that area, when options [i]are[/i] shown, would be helpful. The color scheme is pretty chaotic, and would do well with some toning-down.

It could also use a better, more original game to showcase itself. A big flaw I see in home-brewed entries like this is that plenty of effort went into making the engine, but not enough effort went into writing an interesting game. It’s as if the game is secondary, being cobbled together from random elements to form a nonsensical and generic story. It shouldn’t be that way. This engine [i]could[/i] be used to create something far more interesting, original and worthwhile.

The game is also plagued with typos, misspellings and wild grammatical failings. English seems to be a second language for C. Yong, and while it’s a nice effort if so, it’s still difficult to be enthusiastic about what’s basically very simple, generic writing. Room descriptions are short and rely more on the player’s imagination to fill in the gaps than any real visualization of what the author has supplied. Responses to most commands are brief and choppy.

My notes hold a few unintentionally amusing quotes:

[i]"Any physical beings including you cannot pass through it."[/i]
[i]"Stone Ape attacks with its Stones but MISS !"[/i]
[i]"The room is covered by various pale paintings of agony-looking human faces."[/i]
[i]"The Little green alien is slained."[/i]

Being a little gun-shy of broken battle systems in home-brewed IFComp entries before, I was leery at first of the RPG elements in [i]The Lost Dimension[/i]. I think it’s probably possible to waste the healing “holy water” (available in limited supplies) and the limited-use attack items (like guns and grenades), leaving your character too weak to progress in battle, but that didn’t happen to me until the final (and optional) fight. It actually worked pretty well for me, with well-balanced experience points, hit-points, leveling-up and stat-building that reminded me of what I [i]like[/i] about simple combat in RPG’s. Once I noticed the “next” button at the top of the combat progress window (which can be clicked over and over to speed things up), I really started to enjoy the various fights I encountered.

Still, the combat left me with a few concerns. First, it’s always in seven rounds. The “monster” always goes first (as far as I noticed), meaning it will get four attacks to your three. If the battle isn’t over, the seven rounds can be repeated with another attack (meaning your opponent gets an extra hit for [i]each[/i] round of seven). Monsters in some rounds even attempt multiple hits to my one. The balance and fairness seems okay, though, so maybe this was done to maintain a challenge. Also, some “monsters” didn’t really [i]seem[/i] like monsters to me. Why am I fighting a mule? Maybe it was a Dire Mule? Or did the author just run out of wacky ideas for monster types?

Aside from poor writing, nothing [i]major[/i] is wrong with [i]The Lost Dimension[/i] in the way of bugs. It never crashed on me... uh... except at the very beginning. This was due to an older version of the Microsoft “MDAC_TYP” library on my PC. I figured it out from the .NET exception report, downloaded and installed version 2.6 from Microsoft, and then it ran fine. Non-techie types are likely to be stuck if the same thing happens, though (hint: be sure you’ve installed .NET 2.0 [i]and[/i] updated to MDAC 2.6).

A few general bugs in the game logic could be ironed out with an updated release. It is possible to cross the river to the west from a dead-end area (it’s obviously unintentional, because you can’t cross to the east). A loose brick in a tunnel is either described in a room one west of where it actually exists, or it’s implemented one room east of where it’s described. Sometimes, a big hit in battle will lower your HP to less than zero (and without an “unconscious” range as might be seen in D&D, it doesn’t really fit here). Some of the text at the bottom of the winning end-game pop-up was covered and hidden. Some doors that can be opened will only [i]stay[/i] open when broken. I’m sure I noticed others, but without a transcript I only have my quickly-written notes to consult.

The game features MIDI for music and WAV for sound effects. It fits the game’s style, but sometimes the specific selections seem to be poor choices. For example, the level-up music is a lullaby. The sound effect played when putting on armor or refilling a gun sounds like a bug being squashed. One of the battle victory themes is some classical piece I can’t quite place (but probably should -- it’s very familiar -- and the easily-recognized “Ode to Joy” bit from Beethoven’s 9th is there in the MIDI folder as a monster theme, even though it doesn’t seem to actually play in the game).

The game isn’t just monster combat, throw-away storyline, and public domain sound files. It’s also a string of simple puzzles that generally require just “looking” at the right thing and then using what you find there at the appropriate location. I wasn’t really bothered that it didn’t feature a deeper implementation than this. The game kept me entertained for just over four hours (stopping at two to cast my vote), and somehow I never got stuck. That’s surprising, when a couple of the things I passed easily [i]should[/i] have been far less obvious (such as, spoiler here, digging inside the hut). Maybe I just got lucky. This is one of several instances where I wonder if the puzzle was clued well enough, if at all. I think the limited choices inherent to the game’s interface probably made these things more solvable than they otherwise might have been.

It isn’t necessary to map the first section (on the plane), but the game really opens up afterwards. I did well enough with a hand-drawn map (otherwise I’m sure I’d have gotten lost easily), but the author includes nice graphical maps in the game's “solutions” folder. They don’t show hidden rooms, however. Any player looking to solve 100% of the game is wise to mark a hand-drawn map anyway.

So yes. Somehow, I [i]did[/i] like this game. I finished with 88% (although without defeating the monster in the northern cave due to low health), and that feels like enough of the “extras” to really get a feel for the game as a whole. Still, it’s a tough game to recommend to players in general. It will probably appeal to anybody who likes similarly styled games (such as those written by Paul Panks). Point-and-click fans who want the novelty of something entirely text-based might enjoy it. Or, if you’re an IFComp completist with a job in .NET development (like me), you might enjoy it. I’ve been as generous with the score as I can (a “X” with a “plus” for the unique and surprisingly non-broken engine), but I can’t bump it up any higher without conflicting with games that really [i]are[/i] more polished and more fun. On my scale, that’s still a “below average - plus.”[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=288&start=0#p1843
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Deadline Enchanter
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-22 14:44:54

The "official" version can be found at my website:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/de.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/de.shtml</a>

[quote]Game #14: Deadline Enchanter
By ??? (Writing as “anonymous”)
Played On: October 21st (1 hour 10 minutes)
Platform: Inform 6 (ZCode)

[i]“This is where I end and you begin. That, at least, is what I want to think. I don't know you. Perhaps one day I will. But this Implementation--rather, its copies--are my seeds blowing to the wind. The palm-parsers, their oak gears whirring, will be pressed into hands long after I finish this.”[/i]

So begins [i]Deadline Enchanter[/i], an anonymously-entered game that falls 14th on my randomly-selected IFComp 2007 play list. As with the others to this point, I have played and will review it without the comments or opinions of others. That’s intentional. I want to vote based on how each game affected me personally, without the influence of knowing how others were affected. I’ll hunt for opinions afterwards.

This is tough for a game like [i]Deadline Enchanter[/i], because it’s either incredibly brilliant or it’s trying hard to [i]seem[/i] brilliant. An author can play games with perspective, be it a switch in person or tense or a twist on the narrator-PC-player relationship. Anonymous goes for the latter here, in a very self-referential game-within-a-game. What starts out with confusing narration begins to make more sense later. It seems offputting and disconnected in principle, but it [i]works[/i] here. I felt more involved and immersed in the story than is usual for me.

Really, it’s a story in the guise of a game -- and a seemingly linear one at that. That’s intentional. The puzzles would be impossible, except that the narrator doles out a walkthrough, requiring that the player simply follow along and take a few additional unprompted but obvious actions along the way. That’s intentional too. It lacks a deep implementation of the game world and generally doesn’t reward straying from the intended path (unless I’ve missed something, which is possible even though it seems unlikely). But yes, that too is intentional. In these ways, it [i]is[/i] a brilliant approach to game design. The few typos I found might be intentional. Minor implementation issues (such as “violence isn’t the answer to this one” when indeed it is, just with a different verb) might be intentional. [i]Anything[/i] can be deemed intentional when the author assigns his or her creation as the rushed work of the game’s narrator -- an NPC.

So let’s take it as a story told in this medium without ever meaning to be difficult or hindered by puzzles. It’s not a story about writing games. It’s a story that [i]is[/i] a game. Hmm. That sounds like nonsense. As I said, though, it’s very self-referential. As a gimmick in IF, it seems like an [i]original[/i] one. (I’m sure to be proven wrong with examples, but it’s original in [i]my[/i] experience.)

It’s also highly imaginative, where coffee has become magic powder and Earth shares its resources with alien visitors (or perhaps alien invaders). I went in expecting it to be a tongue-in-cheek hybrid of two Infocom classics (neither of which, I’m ashamed to admit, I’ve ever played), or maybe an honest homage to the same two games. From a quick read at Wikipedia, I don’t gather that the plot of [i]Deadline Enchanter[/i] mirrors or merges those games. Rather, it seems that the game’s title is in support of its self-referential nature. Even the built-in help and version information stays in character.

The narrator is interesting, opinionated and emotional. That’s [i]good[/i], given that the focus of [i]Deadline Enchanter[/i] is the narration. A favorite example from near the start:

[i]“Northwest is Ghazal Street and east is the ruins of an Al-Mart. You don't really need to go to the latter but I thought I'd point it out. Because it was a hellhole and it's better ruined.”[/i]

Is it a good [i]game[/i]? It’s definitely a good [i]story[/i], where “what’s going on” begins to make more sense as the narrator guides [i]you[/i] through it. I emphasize “you” because it could be said that the player really [i]is[/i] the PC in [i]Deadline Enchanter[/i]. Or is the player a hidden middle-man, with [i]you[/i] playing [i]as[/i] the player? That probably makes more sense. I think this is the kind of question that will spark discussion among players, especially after the competition ends. It could end up with a pretty high standard deviation in votes, being a game that will probably “wow” some while leaving others cold and confused.

[i]Deadline Enchanter[/i] is pretty short. Five or ten minutes of my time were spent afterwards, checking to see what would happen at what appears to be the game’s only decision point (and it seems to lead to a slightly altered ending). The hour it took to complete was partially spent fighting against what the game [i]wanted[/i] me to do. If there are divergent paths or extra content, it all eluded me. In retrospect, the game can probably be completed from start to finish in only a few minutes.

That leaves me in a quandary. It’s an imaginative and entertaining story told in a unique way. It’s an engaging mystery of circumstances built up around a pretty cool sci-fi scenario. At the same time, it’s pretty short, offering a sparse implementation (even if intentional). The detail has gone into the narration and the setting envisioned by the author in “simulating” the game’s world on behalf of the narrator, rather than in [i]actually[/i] simulating the game’s world. It’s perfectly reasonable that it should be this way, yet it does let the author off the hook for any flaws that aren’t directly related to the [i]telling[/i] of the story on his or her own terms. This makes it a tough game to rank -- for me, at least.

So, I have to go with my gut. It’s a very good story, recommendable for the unique way in which it’s told. My score is “X”, without any bias to give it a plus or minus.

Now, to go see what [i]others[/i] are saying, and possibly learn just how far off I am with this seemingly ill-informed analysis...[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=288&start=0#p1844
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Deadline Enchanter
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2007-10-23 07:42:04

Of the games I've played so far, I'm tipping Deadline Enchanter for the Golden Banana of Discord. Like you, I was pretty impressed (though not blown away), but other reviewers seem to have found it too pretentious.

So do you think the underimplementation is intentional or not? I more or less assumed so at first (and it certainly makes sense). But considering the scene in the cell with the pitcher, I'm not so sure. To me, that particular scene is just badly implemented. All the text is clueing one particular action, but taking it results in a default message. (See [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2007/10/07/if-competition-discussion-deadlineenchanter/#comments]the comments on Emily Short's review[/url] for spoilery discussion of this particular issue, if you aren't exactly sure what I'm on about.) I can understand that in the PC's position, she probably wouldn't bother to implement stuff around the edges (though in the first scene, she claims to have implemented a person "for 'local color'"). But the actions you have to take with the pitcher are necessary to move the story forward. Shouldn't she have made some effort either to accomodate standard synonyms or to push the player in the right direction here? This just looks like authorial carelessness to me, which undermines my readiness to believe that other underimplementation is deliberate.

Then again, it's quite possible that the author deliberately underimplemented some parts of the game but left unintentional problems in other parts.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=288&start=0#p1845
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Deadline Enchanter
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-23 08:58:21

I've given this some thought. I think the story would have worked just as well with a better implementation. Perhaps the narrator could be technologically advanced enough to still "create" a rushed game with polish. A lack of synonyms *does* seem lazy, when I think about it. This narrator's game could have been written based on a more advanced framework and default libraries, right? It's apparently created "on top of" an existing game (there is a "Dragyr" or something -- A dragon? I forget -- that's said to be a left-over from another game).

The walkthroughs given out in-game sure discourage any kind of experimentation. Is there any reason to implement alternate verbs and nouns when you're supposed to just follow the instructions? So... hmmm. Is it underimplemented to support the story, or was the story devised to explain away the underimplementation?

Here's one way of looking at it. Whatever the reason, the author was able to spend his or her time writing the story instead of programming complicated game logic. If you look at games like... well, all three of last year's winners are great examples... there is a good story at work *with* a well-implemented, detailed game world. In a way, that makes Deadline Enchanter feel a little like... I don't know... like it cheated. But still, I was really drawn into it, and so I rated it well.

I wonder who the author is? It *could* be somebody we've never heard of before, I guess. The style doesn't seem recognizable to me (based, anyway, on the games I've played from the last few IFComps). I wondered if maybe Kevin Venzke was back, but he writes in TADS (and this seems too linear and underimplemented to be something I'd expect from Kevin). Sara Dee? Same doubts (except for the TADS thing). Or was it entered anonymously not so much to hide the author's identity but to support the concept that this game came about as the narrator's creation?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=288&start=0#p1846
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Deadline Enchanter
User: George / DateTime: 2007-10-23 09:43:01

Without referencing my notes, isn't the cell scene also in the walkthrough? Though as I recall it took me a few turns to find or look at the walkthrough to know what to do with the pitcher. I remember being a little annoyed at the 'under-implemented' pitcher as well. 

You know, for authors, the first one I thought of was Plotkin. But now I'm wondering if it wasn't Jason Devlin?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=288&start=0#p1847
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Deadline Enchanter
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-23 10:25:24

I talked to Jason in email a little before the competition, and he said he wasn't entering this year. I don't really have any reason to doubt it. I don't think it's Andrew Plotkin either -- just doesn't seem polished enough.

Has anybody's review indicated they were a beta-tester? I haven't checked a few of them (like Inky's, which will list the "highly recommended" games first and I don't even want to know that much yet).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=288&start=0#p1848
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Deadline Enchanter
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-23 12:57:39

Yeah, I can't imagine zarf being that careless about implementing obvious actions. The writing isn't quite his style either.

I do have a theory about who it is, but it could be wrong.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=288&start=0#p1849
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Deadline Enchanter
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-23 13:53:15

Well, since I've pretty much ruled out either of mine, it's bound to be a better guess than what I came up with.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=289&start=0#p1850
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: The new guy
User: Chris. / DateTime: 2007-10-23 16:44:42

Happy Tuesday!

Having wanted to design text adventures for many years, I've finally begun to learn Inform 6.31 (based on the manual -- Nelson's 4th edition). I've already started designing a game that's been mapped out for quite some time, so I'm hoping to submit it (somewhere) for the enjoyment of others, etc. I have no idea where I would offer a .z5 file upon its completion.

This is a terrific forum; are there any others I should sign up with as well? If you were me, are there any online coalitions or communities you'd become part of?

Thanks!

(And why not put a terribly egocentric plug in the signature while I'm at it....floggings will commence after midnight.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=289&start=0#p1851
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The new guy
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-23 17:32:12

The bulk of the community is at the Interactive Fiction "authoring" and "playing" newsgroups (rec.arts.int-fiction and rec.games.int-fiction, respectively). You should be able to plug those into your newsreader, or if necessary, use Google Groups. Most of the people who post here also post there (plus many others who just aren't keen on web forums).

The IFWiki is nice source of info: <a href="http://www.ifwiki.org/">http://www.ifwiki.org/</a>
You can start by browsing current events and community postings.

Brass Lantern for news: <a href="http://www.brasslantern.org/">http://www.brasslantern.org/</a>

The new IFDB is slick: <a href="http://ifdb.tads.org/">http://ifdb.tads.org/</a>
And also BAF's Guide to the IF Archive - <a href="http://www.wurb.com/if/">http://www.wurb.com/if/</a>

There are web forums set up elsewhere for the Hugo community and the Adrift community, as well as (I think) Spanish and Italian IF. You're sure to find the links on the IFWiki or elsewhere though. This is the only active board I'm aware of for discussing all aspects of IF and all development platforms, except -- of course -- the newsgroups.

Most people complete their game, have it beta tested by a small number of players, and then upload the final version to the IF Archive: <a href="http://www.ifarchive.org/">http://www.ifarchive.org/</a>

Following that is usually a "new game" announcement to rec.games.int-fiction. Announcements are welcome here, too!

Right now, the annual IF Competition is in progress, so many of us are knee-deep in playing, judging, and sometimes reviewing the 29 entries. Quite a few people are already done, I guess.

Inform 7 is the successor to Inform 6, switching "coding" syntax for a sort of "natural language" syntax. It's pretty popular (more information at the Inform official site -- urhm.... check IFWiki for the link). I just mention it in case you didn't know. Many still use Inform 6. Many others have moved to 7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=288&start=0#p1852
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Deadline Enchanter
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-23 21:15:31

I guess this is a litmus test for how entrenched the IF community is...when something interesting and unique shows up, it obviously must have been written by an already established author, right? 

Though I come from 4chan, a place where releasing one's works as "Anonymous" is a sign of community pride, and not of preventing user-bias.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=288&start=0#p1853
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Deadline Enchanter
User: George / DateTime: 2007-10-23 21:38:40

[quote="unigon"]
I guess this is a litmus test for how entrenched the IF community is...when something interesting and unique shows up, it obviously must have been written by an already established author, right? 

Though I come from 4chan, a place where releasing one's works as "Anonymous" is a sign of community pride, and not of preventing user-bias.
[/quote] 

You have a good point there. Especially since part of I7's mission was to make more writers into programmers and programmers into writers, right?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=288&start=0#p1854
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Deadline Enchanter
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-23 23:02:25

[quote="unigon"]
I guess this is a litmus test for how entrenched the IF community is...when something interesting and unique shows up, it obviously must have been written by an already established author, right?
[/quote]   

Not necessarily. However, I can't remember there ever being an IFComp entry by a first-time author entered anonymously. I've seen pseudonyms -- generally online handles -- but never one purposely entered anonymously. Anybody here remember otherwise? I missed several of them over the years...

Is it entrenchment? Seemed like deduction to me. The biggest reason to enter anonymously *is* to avoid a bias. There are others -- perhaps to see how well a game will rank *as* an anonymous entry. But sure, these reasons are still within the scope of what the IF Community understands about the IFComp. Now, if somebody were to bring some *other* community's standards into it, as you suggest, then all bets are off.

If thirty ducks walk by, who'd expect the next one to be a chicken?

Are you -- or do you know -- the game's author? Or was that a general observation? If the game is by an anonymous first-time author, then obviously guessing is pretty pointless. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=289&start=0#p1855
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The new guy
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2007-10-24 10:22:40

[quote="Merk"]
Inform 7 is the successor to Inform 6, switching "coding" syntax for a sort of "natural language" syntax. It's pretty popular (more information at the Inform official site -- urhm.... check IFWiki for the link). I just mention it in case you didn't know. Many still use Inform 6. Many others have moved to 7.
[/quote] 

I'll provide the link: [url]http://www.inform-fiction.org/[/url] for Inform - both version 6 and 7. Inform 7 itself is at [url]http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7/[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=290&start=0#p1856
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Lord Bellwater's Secret
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-24 13:13:41

The "official" version can be found at my website:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/bellwater.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/bellwater.shtml</a>

[quote]
Game #15: Lord Bellwater’s Secret
By Sam Gordon
Played On: October 23rd (1 hour 35 minutes)
Platform: Inform 7 (ZCode)

[b]>xyzzy[/b]
[i]The word "xyzzy" comes into your head for no apparent reason. You cannot quite place it. Perhaps it is the title of a book that you've seen somewhere.[/i]

(Edit: There is a little more to XYZZY at work here -- which I learned of later from another discussion -- but I’m not going to spoil it.)

[i]Lord Bellwater’s Secret[/i] opens like a good mansion crawler (I have a fondness for those, maybe because a few of my earliest IF experiences were set in large puzzle-filled mansions of mystery), but it’s essentially a one-room game. Technically it’s two rooms, but the other is just an extension of Bellwater’s study. Bert Smith (you), a groom in the service of the late Lord Horace Bellwater (and by extension, his heir James Bellwater), has entered the study in secret to search for the answers to his sweetheart’s recent and reportedly accidental death.

One nice thing about this sort of design is that everything a player requires is within immediate reach. Sure, locked rooms are traded for hidden compartments and the implementation of “areas” within the room (usually approached automatically and without any impact on the story or the puzzles -- with an exception or two) is a nice touch, but it’s reassuring to know that it’s never necessary to figure out [i]where[/i] a given item will be needed. If it’s needed at all, then this is where it will be. It’s a perfect set-up for a puzzle game, because it’s more difficult to overlook or fail to investigate important items. The moment I began to wonder “okay, now what?” I just looked around a little more and came up with an answer.

That’s not to say it simplifies the puzzles. It just leaves most navigational duties out of the equation. The bulk of [i]Lord Bellwater’s Secret[/i] involves finding clues and evidence by examining what’s around. That’s simple on the surface, but a few puzzles do ensure that the story is revealed in a pretty much logical and meaningful way. Hitting on certain elements too soon (such as the hidden parchment -- I [i]didn’t[/i] find it early, but it would have been possible with blind luck or dogged determination) don’t necessarily spoil later bits, because it usually takes an understanding gained by further investigation to be of any use. Even though the puzzles aren’t complex, they do offer a few “ah-ha!” moments (such as solving the safe’s combination).

It’s all nicely implemented as well. Looking up certain entries in either of the two in-game sources seems cumbersome at first, but it’s clearly described and it works well (I envy the grammar flexibility of Inform that allows for this). Some potentially complicated actions (such as using the safe’s dial or reading from specific books among the 1200 shelved) are explained and made easy.

Ah, the books. It employs a slick little gimmick that’s not even apparent until a second or third play-through. It seems to hold up for quite a while, but whether it resorts to a generic response at some point, I can only guess. It [i]might[/i] rely on a player to simply tire of the exercise at some point (which I did), but then again, maybe all 1200 titles really [i]are[/i] there to be seen.

The story is notable in that it allows (even expects) players to make assumptions and guesses early on, which turn out to be wrong. This didn’t feel like a “twist” except in later reflection, but I suppose it is.

The downside for me is that the game begins and ends as a murder mystery, but the middle redirects the player into a big question of inheritance and motive. At the end, I expected a neat and complete resolution to [i]that[/i] plot line, rather than the primary one. In fact -- and in a bit of irony -- I finished the game with what appears to be the best ending at one hour and fifteen minutes (after two variations on a “losing” ending), yet struggled for another twenty minutes looking for something [i]more[/i]. Part of that is because I missed (or wasn’t convinced) that the ending really [i]was[/i] punishing the guilty party. Another part is that the whole issue of inheritance is [i]only[/i] in support of the twisty plot, not the point of the game as a whole.

[i]Lord Bellwater’s Secret[/i] is pretty well polished, but a few minor issues did sneak into the competition version. Several typos (“Sott” instead of “Scott” is one example) are noted in my transcript. Trying to “look inside” (implying the bag but not specifying it) gives no response at all. Automatic in-room movement (recognizing different areas of the room as different zones, just to add the realism of saying something like “you move away from X, toward the Y”) works pretty well, but does seem to fail in at least one case (entering the fireplace and then going out the window). And for that matter, the author covers too few of the possible actions a player might attempt for actually climbing out the window. One of the losing endings somehow glitches into a run-on with the [i]winning[/i] ending. If the murderer’s proper name is shown on the confession, is the other just a nickname? If so, then why switch back to the nickname during the ending? None of these things were too big a distraction. They just merit a little more attention in a post-comp version (if the author intends one).

Somebody will probably call this game derivative. Somebody will probably point out that it introduces nothing new, and that it embraces the overused themes one might associate with a story about wealth and corruption in 19th-century London. Somebody will probably complain that the truth -- the ultimate result of Bert’s investigation -- reinforces a cliché that is better left in the past. Somebody [i]might[/i] even consider these to be the game’s [i]weaknesses[/i].
 
On the last point, I wholeheartedly disagree. The trick to enjoyable, worthwhile IF isn’t always that it must break new ground, discard recognizable story elements, or strive to set itself apart from similar “generic” stories told in other mediums (such as a movie or a book). Enjoyable IF [i]can[/i] take something recognizable and perhaps overdone in other mediums and do it [i]really well[/i] as interactive fiction, where this overdone thing is possibly [i]underrepresented[/i] in IF. This is why [i]Lord Bellwater’s Secret[/i] is among my so-far favorites of this year’s IFComp entries.

As such, I’ve ranked it a “X” -- and that equates to “outstanding” on my list of judging criteria. It’s a well-crafted, puzzle-filled, seemingly predictable tale of clandestine clue-hunting, and that’s exactly what it’s supposed to be.
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=289&start=0#p1857
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The new guy
User: Chris. / DateTime: 2007-10-24 13:17:14

Thanks very much for the response. Those links are endlessly helpful. I doubt my first story will qualify for the IFComp (assuming it's supposed to take less than two hours to figure out all the puzzles; it's about, say, a Zork III-sized game), but I'm excited about asking experienced IF people to play-test my initial effort, once it's done. I've never joined a news group before, so I'll just hope that this forum gets a bit busier over time. [emote]Smile[/emote]

I figured that it would be a good idea to learn all I can in Inform 6 first, and then perhaps "graduate" to 7 once I have a reference point whence to even discern the differences between the two, not to mention the advantages of the latter over the former. Thanks again for the assistance!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=291&start=0#p1858
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Small chunk of 6.31 code for your scrutiny
User: Chris. / DateTime: 2007-10-24 15:38:50

Hopefully, this is the right forum to attempt asking for opinions on source writing! I arrived at the beginning of Chapter II in Nelson's manual, and entered/understood the first bits of the Ruins game. I decided to add a couple flags that would render a different response to "examine" if the mushroom had already been nibbled, was being taken for the second time, etc. -- as well as an attempt to keep the mushroom intact after it's been tried, since the player's death occurred if he takes two bites (i.e. after the first warning that it tastes awful). Can anyone comment on the efficiency and "correctness" of my embellishments so far? (It works perfectly, so I suppose this is mostly a stylistic query -- although you might see something that I don't even need. I'm brand-spankin'-new at this, after all.)
Thanks very much for any help!

---------------------------------------------------------

[code]constant story "RUINS^";
constant headline "An Interactive Example^Copyright (C)1999 by
Angela M. Horns. Edited 2007 by Chris Federico.^";
include "Parser";
include "VerbLib";

! The "random" outcome will always be the same after saving the text
! (source) file, oddly enough -- not after each compilation, which was
! the initial suspicion. Twenty tests were conducted for each case. The
! contents of the text file were not altered; the file was merely re-saved.
!
! The exception: If the PC has been rebooted, there will be a different
! result -- once. But this will always be the same post-reboot result for
! that .z5 file. WinFrotz will return to repeating the other result after
! this first try, and will not waver unless the PC is rebooted yet again.
!
! There appears to be no way to scramble the seed to prevent this.
!
! In other words, avoid random numbers in Inform; use some other
! method to give the illusion of randomness if it's ever necessary
! (i.e. particular combination of items carried, number of turns, etc.).

object forest "~Great Plaza~"
	with description
	"Or so your notes call this low escarpment of limestone;
	but the rainforest has claimed it back. Dark olive trees
	crowd in on all sides, the air steams with the mist of a
	recent warm rain, and midges hang in the air.^
	~Structure 10~ is a shambles of masonry that might
	once have been a burial pyramid, and little survives
	except stone-cut steps that lead into the darkness below.",
has light;

! Using "describe" as below, rather than "initial," prevents a blank
! line from being printed between the room description and the
! "object here" prose.

object->mushroom "speckled mushroom"
with name 'speckled' 'mushroom' 'fungus' 'toadstool' 'growth' 'stalk',
mushroom_picked,mushroom_tried,
	describe [;
	if(self.mushroom_picked)
	"There's a speckled mushroom here.";
	"A speckled mushroom grows from the sodden earth
	on a long stalk.";],
	description
	"It's capped with blotches, and you aren't at all sure it's
	not a toadstool.",
before [;	eat:if(self.mushroom_tried)
	{deadflag=true;"Now you know beyond the shadow of a
	doubt that it's a toadstool.^
	The poisonous kind, as it turns out.";}
	else
	{print "You nibble at it, but the foul taste repels you.^";
	mushroom.description="Now you're almost positive it's a
	toadstool.";
	self.mushroom_tried=true;
	move self to player;rtrue;}],

! The object move above is necessary to keep the mushroom from
! being removed from the game after it's eaten; it's being taken back
! from "nothing." The "return true" keeps the library from inserting its
! own "eaten" message after the specially added ("nibble") one.

after [;	take:
	if (self.mushroom_picked)
	"Taken. I'm afraid you were only able to kill it the one time,
	though.";
	self.mushroom_picked=true;
	"You pick the mushroom, neatly cleaving its thin stalk.";
	drop:
	"The mushroom drops to the ground, detached and not
	very happy about it.";],
has edible;

[initialise;location=forest;
"^^^After days of searching, days of thirsty hacking through the briars of
the forest, your patience is rewarded at last. An actual discovery!^";];
include "Grammar";[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=292&start=0#p1859
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Decompiling into Inform source code
User: Chris. / DateTime: 2007-10-24 16:37:17

I know I'm posting far too much, but I don't know where else to turn with these questions. (The news groups provided me with a long hassle -- I've never used a newsreader, etc., and have basically decided to eschew appealing to those who can't bite the bullet and use real websites. Is that arrogant? I don't mean for it to be. [emote]Smile[/emote] )

Is there any kind of decompiler online that can (at least roughly) turn, say, Zork II (the game I'm most familiar with, and would therefore learn the most from) into Inform code? I can't find zork2.z5 anywhere on the entire Internet (although I found a .DAT file....surely that isn't the same thing as a .z5?), nor a decompiler that actually works. (DisInformation, for instance, didn't even work with ZDungeon.z5 -- it seems vastly outdated.)

Thanks for any info, and for tolerating the many questions!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=291&start=0#p1860
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Small chunk of 6.31 code for your scrutiny
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-24 18:45:54

I can't help (I'm a Hugo guy -- sorry), but I did edit your message to add "code" quote tags around it. That should help on readability for whoever can answer you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=292&start=0#p1861
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Decompiling into Inform source code
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-24 18:48:23

I bet there is probably a decompiler, but if it works like most any other decompilers, the resulting source code won't be all that neat or pretty. It might not even use recognizable variable names.

Somebody should know for sure, though. Did you already try searching on the IFWiki, or in the IF Archive? If it's anywhere, it'd probably be in the archive somewhere.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=293&start=0#p1862
Forum: Competitions / Subject: IFComp in public tshirt art -- opinions?
User: George / DateTime: 2007-10-24 20:53:29

Some of you may have seen the thread on RAIF about IFComp in Public. I now have the first sketches of the tshirt art! This will be on a black shirt, on the upper chest. 

To be perfectly honest, IFComp in Public has not swept the nation. However the tshirts are going to be cool enough that I'll probably just open it up for general orders. So, I'm wondering if you guys would throw in your opinions about the art -- I have a few options to consider which I've attached. 

[attachment=0]geo4.jpg[/attachment]

[attachment=1]geo3.jpg[/attachment]

[attachment=2]geo2.jpg[/attachment]

I also have one of just the boy a bit smaller, but I maxed out the attatchments here. 

What do you think?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=291&start=0#p1863
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Small chunk of 6.31 code for your scrutiny
User: Chris. / DateTime: 2007-10-24 21:02:48

Thanks!
I appreciate that.

(I've had some discouraging responses from other IF authors I've e-mailed...."Oh, you won't get anyone to help you out with Inform 6 anymore....all the rage now is Inform 7!" I'm thinking, well, it's worth a try. [emote]Smile[/emote] )

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=292&start=0#p1864
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Decompiling into Inform source code
User: Chris. / DateTime: 2007-10-24 21:04:23

That will be my next attempt, then. Thanks again for all the assistance. I do appreciate it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=293&start=0#p1865
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp in public tshirt art -- opinions?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-24 21:11:31

That's pretty cool. The one with a single person is nice, because it's a little spookier (being all alone) and kind of mirrors that IF is single-player. That's nice art for a shirt!

The whole idea sounds cool, but I lack the time and opportunity. Good luck!!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=293&start=0#p1866
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp in public tshirt art -- opinions?
User: George / DateTime: 2007-10-24 21:13:36

It's funny you say that you like the single person one, because I like the two person one because it's IF Comp in 'Public'! [emote]Smile[/emote]

Thanks for the feedback though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=291&start=0#p1867
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Small chunk of 6.31 code for your scrutiny
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2007-10-25 05:01:26

[quote="Chris."]
(I've had some discouraging responses from other IF authors I've e-mailed...."Oh, you won't get anyone to help you out with Inform 6 anymore....all the rage now is Inform 7!" I'm thinking, well, it's worth a try. [emote]:)[/emote] )
[/quote]     
There does seem to be a rumour going around that hardly anybody uses Inform 6 any more, but I don't think it's true. More of the IFcomp 2007 games written in Inform used I6 than I7, if my memory serves me aright. In any case, the I6 experts who have switched to I7 haven't forgotten their I6 yet (they need it for low-level Inform 7 hacking!), and will generally be happy to lend a hand.

However, it's probably worthwhile downloading Inform 7 and having a look at it. I7 has some really nice features; it also has some rough spots. It's basically a question of whether you prefer the style of I6 or I7. They are totally different languages, so it's not particularly important that you learn I6 first. (In fact, I7 has been designed for beginners in a way I6 never was.)

Unfortunately, like Merk, I can't help you with your code, since my system of choice is TADS 3!

Tangentially - I do encourage you to take the time to get the newsgroups working for you. They really are the hub of the English-speaking IF community, and you're much more likely to get a quick answer to your questions there than anywhere else. If you can't figure out how to get a newsreader working for you, try Google Groups. Google Groups can be annoying, but it's pretty easy to use.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=292&start=0#p1868
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Decompiling into Inform source code
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2007-10-25 09:01:12

You may find what you need at [url]http://www.inform-fiction.org/zmachine/ztools.html[/url]. At least there's a Z-code disassembler and a utility for extracting story files in it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=277&start=0#p1869
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Gathered In Darkness
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2007-10-25 09:02:19

I can explain part of that.  QSG stores a list of every property-change made.  (If you can run perl scripts, I can send you my disassemblers for .CAS and .QSG.  You might even still have the version that came with Geas, though the CAS disassembler is out of date.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=291&start=0#p1870
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Small chunk of 6.31 code for your scrutiny
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2007-10-25 09:34:46

Your code seems reasonably efficient, though I recommend arrange your code so that the print statement is last whenever possible (second eat clause), and some general comments on style / readability:

1)  Always put a space between "if" and the paren.
2)  Always indent the "then" clause to an "if" or "else".
3)  Put the first action in a before/after on a separate line.
4)  Indent properties.
5)  Put spaces around the equal sign.
6)  Unless the code is short enough to fit on a single line, put a newline immediately after a left brace.

[code]
object -> mushroom "speckled mushroom"
 with
   name 'speckled' 'mushroom' 'fungus' 'toadstool' 'growth' 'stalk',
   mushroom_picked,
   mushroom_tried,
   describe [;
     if (self.mushroom_picked)
       "There's a speckled mushroom here.";
     "A speckled mushroom grows from the sodden earth on a long stalk.";
   ],
   description
     "It's capped with blotches, and you aren't at all sure it's
      not a toadstool.",
   before [;
     eat:
       if (self.mushroom_tried) {
         deadflag = true;
         "Now you know beyond the shadow of a
          doubt that it's a toadstool.^
          The poisonous kind, as it turns out.";
       } else {
          mushroom.description = "Now you're almost positive it's a
            toadstool.";
          self.mushroom_tried = true;
          !move self to player; ! Returning true should prevent 
          "You nibble at it, but the foul taste repels you.";
       }
   ],
   after [;
     take:
       if (self.mushroom_picked)
         "Taken. I'm afraid you were only able to kill it the one time,
          though.";
       self.mushroom_picked = true;
       "You pick the mushroom, neatly cleaving its thin stalk.";

     drop:
       "The mushroom drops to the ground, detached and not
        very happy about it.";
   ],
   has edible;
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=292&start=0#p1871
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Decompiling into Inform source code
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2007-10-25 09:52:13

.DAT and .Z3 / .Z5 / .Z8 are the same kinds of files.

Also, try the "reform" disassembler.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=277&start=0#p1872
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Gathered In Darkness
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-25 10:27:05

Was there Perl code included with Geas? I got stuck on compiling the main C part, I guess. Yeah, I'd be interested, potentially. I've been programming in Perl for ten years or so. It might be interesting! Although at this point, I'm not nearly so curious as I was when it kept on getting slower and slower. [emote]Smile[/emote]

--- Mike.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=293&start=0#p1873
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp in public tshirt art -- opinions?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-25 10:57:36

That's sup! How about add some text:
>light the lantern 
... or something

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=291&start=0#p1874
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Small chunk of 6.31 code for your scrutiny
User: Chris. / DateTime: 2007-10-25 12:01:53

Awesome. Thanks for the good advice!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=292&start=0#p1875
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Decompiling into Inform source code
User: Chris. / DateTime: 2007-10-25 12:22:49

Thanks very much. I'll try both of those and see what happens on my XP box. (It's good to know .DAT files are the same!) I'm the sort who learns things backwards, from examples, which is why this stuff is vastly helpful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=277&start=0#p1876
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Gathered In Darkness
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2007-10-25 12:33:16

I'm pretty sure that uncas.pl was present in the tarball, though it isn't actually used in the compilation of Geas.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=293&start=0#p1877
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp in public tshirt art -- opinions?
User: Benjamin Sokal / DateTime: 2007-10-25 15:00:00

I like either version, but wouldn't mind a version with text. How about a link to a neutral IF website? It would be free advertising for IF [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=293&start=0#p1878
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp in public tshirt art -- opinions?
User: Benjamin Sokal / DateTime: 2007-10-25 15:03:03

I like either version, but wouldn't mind a version with text. How about a link to a neutral IF website? It would be free advertising for IF [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=293&start=0#p1879
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp in public tshirt art -- opinions?
User: George / DateTime: 2007-10-25 19:51:17

There seems to be enough interest in different versions that it would be worthwhile to put up a few different versions on CafePress. The only downside is that the shirt would be about twice as expensive ($20 vs. $12 or so). I could make as many versions as people wanted available though. Maybe do one run at $10 (which I'm printing here locally) and then let people order from CafePress if they want?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=293&start=0#p1880
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp in public tshirt art -- opinions?
User: Benjamin Sokal / DateTime: 2007-10-26 00:59:11

Does anyone have suggestions on a website that could be underneith the picture, or a clever phrase - light the lantern was suggested above, or maybe some clever reference to grues?

If not then I would be fine with no caption. Whatever is easier.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=288&start=10#p1881
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Deadline Enchanter
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-26 09:16:58

So was there anything to that, or was it just a hit-and-run advertisement for "4chan?"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=288&start=10#p1882
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Deadline Enchanter
User: George / DateTime: 2007-10-26 10:01:20

It worked, because I had to google it to realize how huge 4chan actually is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=288&start=10#p1883
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Deadline Enchanter
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-26 12:24:32

Me too. Or he might just be slow in making it back this way. I would think, though, that if he were the game's author, he'd check back more frequently for new comments. So who knows. I'm making more assumptions, though, and it has already been pointed out that that can be a mistake.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=294&start=0#p1884
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Reconciling Mother
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-26 12:28:51

The "official" version can be found at my website:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/mother.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/mother.shtml</a>

[quote]
Game #16: Reconciling Mother
By Plone Glenn
Played On: October 25th (5 hours 25 minutes)
Platform: TADS (Version 3)

Game’s Blurb:
[i]Have you ever been in a conversation with people that you just met or barely knew and what seemed like an innocent exchange at the time became threatening on reflection?[/i]

Nothing I can write about [i]Reconciling Mother[/i] will come close to capturing what it’s like to [i]play[/i] Plone Glenn’s IFComp 2007 entry. This is one of the strangest yet most memorable works of interactive fiction I have ever played. If I were to rate it strictly on unabashed bizarreness, it’d be a sure “10”.

It’s a shame, then, that it’s so poorly constructed, confusing, and frequently incoherent. It’s trippy, but not convincingly [i]surreal[/i]. It’s as though the author took concepts from half a dozen potential game ideas and put them all together into one, perhaps forgetting what the game was [i]supposed[/i] to be about along the way.

There are suggestions and references as to his inspirational sources (certain books and movies, ranging from science fiction to philosophical to just plain odd), and trying to emulate or pay homage to those sources may have lead to this hodgepodge of ideas. Is it an investigative spy story? Is it a huge maze? Is it about time travel, or is it about space exploration? Is it a dream world? Is it about insanity? Is it a fantasy, or is it a creepy horror story? Is it about self-discovery? Is it just a vehicle for a few soft-core porn or fetish love scenes (which can be pretty unexpected at first -- some of this game isn’t workplace-safe)? Is it a mansion crawler? Is it strictly about experiencing a series of bizarre, disconnected scenes? Are the NPC interactions the point of it? Is it merely a hunt-and-gather game? I guess it’s whatever you think it is.

This kind of thing isn’t new. My own early TRS80 text adventures from the late 1980’s (including a few I planned but never wrote) are full of wacky, disjointed concepts. This comes from being blown away by the [i]idea[/i] of what’s possible in interactive fiction, without the ability to temper it with rational thinking and good design. This seems like it could be a pretty common pitfall for new authors, especially those who look strictly to the games of the 1980’s for inspiration.

Two things make [i]Reconciling Mother[/i] noteworthy, where other similarly-styled games are easier forgotten. First, the author backs up these seemingly random elements with descriptive and sometimes evocative writing. It’s flawed in some ways, but it beats the more traditional minimalist approach of “You are in a big cavern. Go east? You’re in a desert. Now what? North? A purple jungle of floating orbs. You see a blue orb. Get orb? Ah, a robot from Mars steps on you.” It’s like that on a fundamental level, but with the meat of descriptive (if sometimes [i]too[/i] lengthy) text to cover its skeleton.

Second, you just don’t see games like this as much these days. (Well, [i]I[/i] don’t, at any rate.) Today, we design and judge by a different (I hesitate to say [i]better[/i]) standard. Perhaps more [i]evolved[/i] is the right word. Stories make sense and games have a purpose and meaning. Because [i]Reconciling Mother[/i] seems to lack any clear plot (and the one offered at first sure seems to get lost along the way), it’s a throwback to an earlier time.

The game can be won in only seventeen moves, consisting entirely of directional commands. I suspect there is a much longer alternate route, but it [i]might[/i] require more than just movement (although I doubt it -- I haven’t tested it out). However, the game’s map is massive (especially given the IFComp’s focus on games of a shorter length), having at least 150 rooms (but probably more, given that one repeated section is really an alternate of the original). Getting through it [i]without[/i] making a map would have been difficult or impossible for me.

It has the [i]appearance[/i] of puzzles, but even these seem to just require directional movement. One particular bit that’s built up as a challenge involves escaping a dungeon labyrinth area (it’s not [i]really[/i] a maze) by tricking a dragon, traversing a volcano, boarding an airship, reaching an island, and having a nap. However, this really just requires [i]moving[/i]. It’s solvable by accident (and in the normal course of exploration) without ever realizing it’s supposed to be a challenge. What [i]seemed[/i] difficult at the time, upon reflection, wasn’t. The hard part (but also awkwardly fun) was just in making my own map.

The only gameplay elements at work besides directional movement seem to be picking up items found around the game world and showing or giving them to various NPC’s. Some respond specifically to certain [i]types[/i] of items, and every once in a while it’s pretty impressive how much effort the author has taken to write short scenes for the recognized combinations of “item” and “NPC”. It’s nowhere near complete (usually the NPC isn’t interested), but there is enough [i]possibility[/i] involved that some fun can be derived just in amassing a large collection and then taking it around to show.

“Giving” an item to an NPC can be repeated too, because the item never actually leaves your inventory. That may be a bug, but I found it helpful in holding onto items that could trigger reactions from more than one NPC. Oddly, no dialogue is presented in quotation marks, so it’s sometimes hard to distinguish the dialogue from the rest of the text. I got accustomed to it after a while, but it leaves me wondering if maybe the author just hadn’t figured out [i]how[/i] to quote dialogue in his TADS source code (which, I’m guessing, probably appears within quote-enclosed text already).

Oh, and it does use hearing and smell in a few places. This doesn’t seem to impact the game or even be a requirement to advance, but it’s interesting that the author did include these actions in several areas.

The implementation is otherwise sparse, static, and generally just doesn’t support the text. Very little of what’s mentioned in a room is actually implemented as an in-game item, which leads to many “you don’t see that here” or “you don’t need to use that word in this game” kinds of messages. Actions suggested (even instructed) by the text are almost never allowed by the game (it usually just requires “entering” the right location or “looking” at the right item, to trigger the necessary action automatically). What’s said about an item sometimes includes an action (the colored disks are perfect examples), and the action relies on being in a room that [i]you may have already left[/i] (the IF Clichés list at the IFWiki calls this being “painted on”). Items that are listed as being “here” after the room description are sometimes described as being “discovered” (as if the item wasn’t already mentioned) when picked up. Some actions described in room descriptions (or references in conversations or in other item descriptions) mention specific items or locations you haven’t even found yet, indicating that the author intended the story to be experienced in a specific way -- yet he left the map so open to exploration that it’s likely it [i]won’t[/i] be. The built-in hints cover only a few periodic game points, and the included walkthrough is just a short list of suggestions. Disambiguation is avoided not in a logical way, but by simply not implementing conflicting reference words for most items that are described with a word that has already been given to some other item (meaning you often have to refer to a thing by its adjective instead of its noun).

Dead-end locations are actually endings that don’t end the game. This [i]could[/i] be intentional, but it doesn’t seem to be. I think the author is so inexperienced with TADS that he must have had difficulty really implementing anything more complex than moving around, picking things up, and showing them to characters. So, a fatal drop down a broken cave floor or a too-high waterfall puts you in a location with an “ending” room description and no possible exit. Even what appears to be the “winning” ending works the same way. A good deal of time could be wasted here just by trying to “get out” of the ending (which is impossible except for an “undo” or a “restore”).

I haven’t touched much yet on the writing. I don’t have much else to say about it that I haven’t already (it being descriptive and sometimes evocative). Some passages felt [i]very[/i] familiar (no dying person ever wished he’d spent more time at work, for instance), but not enough that I can place the source. Some parts are odd but comprehensible, while a few bits become nonsensical phrase-building of the sort you might expect in the lyrics to Beck’s “Loser.” A few segments are [i]long[/i] (and without any paragraph breaks), making it tough to read. In fact, some of what appeared to be supplemental filler bits I skimmed in spite of myself.

It also has a few minor misspellings and general mistakes. This includes suspicious word choice, where the meaning might not [i]actually[/i] fit the context of the sentence (a class had to “convene” during a discussion, but it’s implied that this means they left in a hurry -- maybe they had to go convene elsewhere; a six-sided pyramid is described as having an octagonal base, which is either impossible for me to visualize, or perhaps intended to have eight sides).

I lack the first-hand experience, but I imagine [i]Reconciling Mother[/i] is a little like how it must feel to be addicted to narcotics. When the game began to get painful (in the “I should quit while I’m ahead” sort of way), I found myself playing a little further, just to map out that next new area, or just to see what eye-widening madness I might encounter next, or sometimes just to figure out what I needed to show or give to any of a number of female NPC’s to loosen their libidos. There is also a driving power to the question “what’s the point of it all” even though it’s being countered with “[i]what[/i] point? Can’t you see there [i]is[/i] no point?” This is about the only thing that makes [i]Reconciling Mother[/i] recommendable in any way. It can be a very memorable experience, even while an all-around poorly constructed game.

I think I saw [i]most[/i] of the game, but I’m sure I didn’t try giving and showing every collected item to every NPC (which would require some back-tracking). I’m of a serious mind to write a walkthrough (with maps) for [i]Reconciling Mother[/i], but then again, I do have more than a dozen other IFComp entries yet to play. It might be more revealing if the author would provide a complete walkthrough himself. I’d certainly be interested in finding out what things I missed, and whether there really [i]is[/i] a meaning or a point to the game that simply eluded me.

I’ve rated it a “X” (with the same vote cast at exactly two hours of play), but if any game deserves a “plus” for weirdness, it’s [i]Reconciling Mother[/i]. I often suggest that authors of poorly implemented games consider a post-comp update, but that’s just not practical for a game like this. In fact, polishing it up would take away some of the charm, such as it is. If it had been implemented with the detail a game of this size [i]needs[/i], it might be a fifty-hour game, not a five-hour one. So, for what it’s worth, it’s just fine as-is.
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=215&start=0#p1885
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ANNOUNCE: HP Lovecraft Commonplace Book Comp and Exhibit
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-27 01:32:43

The Commonplace Book Project has finally reached its key date today: 
the exhibit opens in Switzerland and will have a PC terminal running 
the project games for visitors. The games will also remain at The 
Illuminated Lantern website. 

Read the full press release here: 

<a href="http://www.illuminatedlantern.com/if/news/an_interactive_exhibition_of_u.html">http://www.illuminatedlantern.com/if/ne ... _of_u.html</a>


The games will be on exhibit from October through April, at which 
point the exhibit may tour to other cities. 


If you have played the games before, it may interest you to note that 
DEAD CITIES is now available in a version that includes drawings 
illustrating the action and a help bar at the bottom of the screen to 
facilitate exploration in a casual setting (such as a live exhibit). 
ECDYSIS has also been updated, and is now entirely playable by 
clicking on text links, which was originally how the game was 
conceived, but not fully realized until this version. 


Enjoy, 


-- Peter Nepstad 
<a href="http://www.illuminatedlantern.com/if">http://www.illuminatedlantern.com/if</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=291&start=0#p1886
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Small chunk of 6.31 code for your scrutiny
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-27 10:40:00

[quote="Emerald"]
[quote="Chris."]
(I've had some discouraging responses from other IF authors I've e-mailed...."Oh, you won't get anyone to help you out with Inform 6 anymore....all the rage now is Inform 7!" I'm thinking, well, it's worth a try. [emote]:)[/emote] )
[/quote]       
There does seem to be a rumour going around that hardly anybody uses Inform 6 any more, but I don't think it's true. More of the IFcomp 2007 games written in Inform used I6 than I7, if my memory serves me aright. In any case, the I6 experts who have switched to I7 haven't forgotten their I6 yet (they need it for low-level Inform 7 hacking!), and will generally be happy to lend a hand.
[/quote]  

Yes, 9 of the Inform games in this year's comp were I6; the other 8 were I7.

I haven't switched to I7 because I actually don't like the idea of 'natural language programming'. For me, programming shouldn't be about trying to tell a computer to do something using your natural language - and certainly not a verbose language like English. I prefer the 'programmatical' nature of I6.

However, I have switched to using the integrated development environment for I7: you can get it at the I7 website. Not all of its features are relevant to I6 games, but I do find the Replay, syntax highlighting and file management features particularly useful so I would recommend taking a look. Although I do wish there were an easier way to navigate between functions and objects within a file - anyone know a good way of doing it?

Anyway, I'm happy to help if you post your queries on this forum.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=295&start=0#p1887
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: A few hopefully easy questions
User: Chris. / DateTime: 2007-10-27 18:04:54

How strange...only a week in, and I'm dreaming about coding. That hasn't happened since I learned BASIC back when I was eleven! (And that was a loooong time ago...)

Thanks very much for suffering further questions. I'd imagine that these things are rudimentary, but I simply can't find relevant bits in the manual (or online), search as I might. I'm probably just not taking the right approaches, meaning that I'm looking at the wrong tutelage for each idea.

Most simply (I think): How does one turn off the scoring? My first game doesn't involve a score, and while I can probably experiment with interrupting the verb "score" with a message, that doesn't solve the problems of the banner and the quit/win-game "You have scored..." bit.

Another basic thing that I just can't glean: Is there a way to "pry" (such as with a unicorn's horn -- but it could be a crowbar or any such thing, of course)? My player must pry the eye out of a dragon, as it's a light source.

I've obviously drawn a map prior to beginning to type in my object descriptions, and one of the rooms involves an obstructed direction -- not a door, but merely the usual ability to leave the room. The player can still go back out the way he's come in, of course. A group of angry bugs is blocking further progress to the south. Elsewhere in the game, the player has found a used soda can. If he drops this can in the bugs' location, they swarm over to it and get stuck to its sticky-sweet sides, allowing progress to the south. (Yes, I'm deliberately keeping the puzzles simplex for now!)

I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to block a particular direction with a (non-takeable) object that moves once of its own accord. Would I just check the current location in the can's "after drop" section, or am I way off? I would need to change its description to include the bugs stuck to it, once it's been dropped there -- and change it to "non-takeable" as well.

The bugs don't need to be addressed on a per-bug basis, or treated as an animated character, so my guess -- but it's only a guess -- is that this one object, the "group of bugs," can serve as one thing unless the player tries to count them, in which case I'll insert a special message such as "They're too numerous to count." Am I on the right path?

Finally (sorry again about all the queries...once I get these things, doors in my head will open, spiderweb-like, to many other things), the game is won when the player places five objects -- a plate, a glass, a spoon, a knife and a fork -- on the table in a particular room, and then drops a token into a slot that's in the same room. How would you approach this? Should I put this table-check in the room's code, or the table (scenery) code instead? And how, for the love of Lebling, does one create a static/scenery "slot" that accepts just one object, and then spits it back onto the floor if the right conditions aren't met on another piece of scenery in the same room? Would these things be in the token code, or the slot code, or neither?

Thank you very, very much for considering these questions. I know it takes time to explain such things to a novice, and I truly appreciate the help. It would be endlessly valuable to me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=291&start=0#p1888
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Small chunk of 6.31 code for your scrutiny
User: Chris. / DateTime: 2007-10-27 18:12:20

Thanks so much, Kivie. I have the same opinion: I prefer a programming language-type language. And I've become obsessed with learning I6 and finally designing my own IF. Unless I eventually figure out how to get to Google Groups through the firewall at work (which I may never achieve), this forum's my only lifeline, so I'm grateful that there are still folks willing to help a newcomer!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=288&start=10#p1890
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Deadline Enchanter
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-27 23:28:54

Nah, I know the game's author as much as you. I just like randomly musing :p

And I didn't mean it as advertising, just comparative study of internet-based cultures...or something like that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=295&start=0#p1891
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A few hopefully easy questions
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2007-10-28 10:01:02

[quote="Chris."]
I've obviously drawn a map prior to beginning to type in my object descriptions, and one of the rooms involves an obstructed direction -- not a door, but merely the usual ability to leave the room. The player can still go back out the way he's come in, of course. A group of angry bugs is blocking further progress to the south. Elsewhere in the game, the player has found a used soda can. If he drops this can in the bugs' location, they swarm over to it and get stuck to its sticky-sweet sides, allowing progress to the south. (Yes, I'm deliberately keeping the puzzles simplex for now!)

I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to block a particular direction with a (non-takeable) object that moves once of its own accord. Would I just check the current location in the can's "after drop" section, or am I way off? I would need to change its description to include the bugs stuck to it, once it's been dropped there -- and change it to "non-takeable" as well.

The bugs don't need to be addressed on a per-bug basis, or treated as an animated character, so my guess -- but it's only a guess -- is that this one object, the "group of bugs," can serve as one thing unless the player tries to count them, in which case I'll insert a special message such as "They're too numerous to count." Am I on the right path?
[/quote]  

Well, this part I can answer - it's been a long time since I've last tried to do anything with Inform 6. Something akin to the following should at least help you along:

[code]object -> soda_can "soda can"
with
    name 'soda' 'can',
    bugged,
    description [;
        print "Your basic soda can";
        if (self.bugged)
            print ". There's bugs stuck all over it";
        ".";
    ],
    before [;
        take:
            if (self.bugged)
                "Yuck! With all those bugs stuck to it?";
    ],
    after [;
        drop:
            if (self.location == room_with_bugs) {
                self.bugged = true;
                "The bugs swarm from around the southern exit to the soda can, where they seem to get stuck.";
            }
    ];

object room_with_bugs
with
    description "...",
    n_to room_without_bugs,
    s_to [;
        if (soda_can.bugged)
            return room_past_bugs;
        "All those swarming bugs hinder your way past them to the south.";
    ],
has light;[/code]

And yes, you only need one object for the bugs. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=296&start=0#p1892
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Jealousy Duel X
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-28 16:34:49

The "official" version can be found at my website:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/jealousy.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/jealousy.shtml</a>

[quote]
Game #17: Jealousy Duel X
By Alex Camelio
Played On: October 27th (2 hours 0 minutes)
Platform: Macromedia Flash 5 (Windows Executable)

Game’s Blurb:
[i]Available for both PC and Mac.[/i]

The lovelorn yet mischievous college kid in me (although nearly fifteen years removed) really wants to like the premise behind [i]Jealousy Duel X[/i], in which the main character intends to humble his ex-girlfriend by collecting more phone numbers in one night than she has collected since their break-up. Some very... err... [i]implausible[/i] situations arise for him as a result. His quest is an exaggerated and often hard-to-crack series of encounters with a variety of women, culminating in -- if all goes well -- another phone number.

The game is written in Flash, and might be web page embeddable. It has that web game feel to it, anyway. I like that it resizes perfectly to fit whatever window size I want (I believe Flash handles this inherently), without [i]requiring[/i] a web connection or browser window.

Even though the presentation is pretty smooth and it’s a well-constructed game in general, I still have reservations. I’m not too bothered that it lacks text input, going for more of a CYOA ([b]C[/b]hoose [b]Y[/b]our [b]O[/b]wn [b]A[/b]dventure) style of clickable option buttons. My biggest frustration was that it has no “save” and no “undo” ability. If you make a mistake -- even a single accidental misstep after an hour of play -- your only choice is to give up or start over. “Undo” could probably have been programmed into it, although it’s possible “save” could only have existed in memory (I don’t know Flash’s file writing limitations, if any). Even those abilities would have made the game more playable and more solvable than it is now.

In some ways, the puzzles are simple. You simply make choices from those listed, and sometimes use inventory items. In other ways, they’re maddeningly difficult. Often, only some of the choices are “right,” while the others only serve to close off paths necessary for success in obtaining the current (or even some other) girl’s number. It’s usually forgiving, with the ability to pick different options after messing up the first time -- but not always. It’s also not always clear that something you’ve done has closed off something vital to later success.

I didn’t realize at first that I could even [i]use[/i] items in inventory (aside from the cell phone), but this plays an important role in several situations. Since it’s not always clear what the protagonist must do to finagle a phone number from the various vixens, it involves a lot of trial-and-error (which is hard to justify when mistakes mean starting over or being blocked from solving the puzzle entirely). Some things that [i]feel[/i] like mistakes really aren’t, and vice-versa. It’s not that it requires reading the author’s mind, or that it’s poorly clued [i]everywhere[/i]. It just [i]feels[/i] like a good deal of luck and experimentation are necessary. That doesn’t mesh well with a game that doesn’t let you “save” or “undo.”

The right answers aren’t always the intuitive ones (if they were, it might lack challenge altogether). What this means, though, in a game with no “save” and no “undo” is that when you start over, it’s easy to make the same mistakes all over again, and forget exactly what correct courses of action you took last time [i]before[/i] messing up. This makes losing a non-trivial thing, yet you can lose in unexpected ways after investing time in getting things [i]just right[/i]. For instance, in one of my attempted play-throughs I was invited to the park apparently in response to an online personal ad. I went, and was comically murdered. This lost a good deal of progress for me, and required a re-start. It seems that the invitation only comes later in the game, so if it were to appear again, I probably wouldn’t go at all (in any attempt to make further progress there), for fear of once again losing all the progress I had made to that point.

It’s like that in several spots (including the mine and the mugger). Even when I didn’t lose, I often found myself at a severe disadvantage (for instance, penniless and with only a single health point). To solve the game entirely unassisted (especially for all twelve phone numbers -- apparently a minimal winning ending is available with at least nine), I think extensive note-taking is required. This is the antithesis of a “casual” web game, though, which is what [i]Jealousy Duel X[/i] appears to be on the surface.

I didn’t solve it unassisted. Thankfully, the author made available a walkthrough (or rather, tips on various segments of the game) shortly before it came up on my random list. I solved it with eleven of the twelve numbers making heavy use of it, although I could not get the bar Blonde’s number due to status deficiencies (only one hit point, and no money). I think I could have sold a couple of unnecessary numbers gained along the way to the telemarketer (he appeared at a new area later in the game), but I somehow got rid of him. At the time, I was afraid that the $50 offer would take away [i]all[/i] my phone numbers -- including the important ones. I don’t know for sure, though, since once I got rid of him, I could never figure out how to get him back.

Graphics are one of the game’s best aspects. They’re well done, and they fit the game perfectly. This is the biggest reason why I’ve ranked [i]Jealousy Duel X[/i] as I have, and not a couple of points lower. They’re a lot like the illustrations in classic-era graphic adventures, capturing the expressions of the various characters. The main character is never shown (unless in the photograph I never found), so it’s not quite the same feel as, for instance, [i]Leisure Suit Larry[/i], where the protagonist can develop his own personality without it being attributed directly to the player.

The story, as I mentioned to start, is full of improbabilities -- and comic stereotypes. A pregnant woman (who doesn’t [i]look[/i] very pregnant) is giving birth in the same room where you’re taken (to be bandaged) at the local hospital. A breastfeeding mommy will dump her brute of a husband at the local coffee shop if you make a stand. The “ex” is insensitive and shallow. The bartender and the local hooker are equally insightful. Annoy the pimp, and he’ll flip you the bird. Some of it merits a smile or a chuckle, although some just feels forced or perhaps funny to the college kid that isn’t [i]me[/i] anymore. I admit, though, when the study group girl with curlers in her hair and what looks like Barney Rubble stubble on her face is described as having “a Donkey Kong smile,” I did laugh just a little.

This is another game that’s difficult to recommend to fans of traditional interactive fiction. Moreover, it’s difficult to recommend to CYOA fans (where you could at least “go back” to a different page) or web game fans (where games are more casual and can be replayed fairly easily). It’s the only game I’ve stopped playing at two hours this year -- and not because it was so short that I saw everything or so broken that I couldn’t. Really, I just lost interest in starting all the way over from the beginning (even with the walkthrough to point me in the right direction), knowing that one little mistake could leave me unable to get the twelve-number win once more.

I have scored it a “X” (which is “average”) on my voting scale. The author has, at least, justified the custom engine with a slick point-and-click interface and some nice visuals. That’s worth an added “plus,” although it also factors into the vote. If the same game had been written without graphics but with the same limited interaction, it would easily have scored a couple points lower.
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=294&start=0#p1893
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Reconciling Mother
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2007-10-29 06:03:01

5 hours 25 minutes? I am impressed. I only stuck it out for about an hour and twenty minutes before my mind shut down completely. I could tell there were huge swathes of game that I hadn't seen, but I'd reached the winning "ending(s)" and I had a strong hunch that even if I saw every bit of text in the game, it wasn't going to make any more sense than it already did.

But you're right - it does have a wild charm of its own. Having read a few reviews of it and realising just how much I may have missed, I'm seriously tempted to go back and look around some more. But - no. Life is too short.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=294&start=0#p1894
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Reconciling Mother
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-29 06:11:41

There's really no big pay-off for seeing more of the game. I just couldn't help it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=295&start=0#p1895
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A few hopefully easy questions
User: Chris. / DateTime: 2007-10-29 12:47:54

Wow; that helps immensely. I really appreciate that, Rioshin. Thanks. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=297&start=0#p1896
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Vampyre Cross (Disqualified)
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-30 00:06:08

From the IFComp main page:
[quote]
29 October: The game Vampyre Cross has been disqualified for violating Author Rule 4: games must be unreleased at the beginning of the competition.
[/quote] 
And here I was looking forward to jumping through a few hoops to get a C64 Emulator running...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=297&start=0#p1897
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Vampyre Cross (Disqualified)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-30 08:32:20

I guess that means Panks isn't going to win the IFComp this year then...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=297&start=0#p1898
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Vampyre Cross (Disqualified)
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-30 08:57:27

Well, that was only half sarcasm. In a way, I *did* want to get the game running, so I could review every one of them. And I still may, although it'll have to wait until after I've played the ten remaining eligible entries on my list. [emote]Smile[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=298&start=0#p1899
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: An Act of Murder
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-30 11:28:01

The "official" version can be found at my website:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/murder.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/murder.shtml</a>

[quote]
Game #18: An Act of Murder
By ??? (Writing as “Hugh Dunnett”)
Played On: October 29th (3 hours 30 minutes)
Platform: Inform 7 (Zcode)

[b]>xyzzy[/b]
[i]Impossibly, the fiddler-shaped weather vane up on the top of the house twists around and begins to actually scratch out a pleasant, simple tune on its little fiddle. As you stare up at it in astonishment, you completely fail to notice the hordes of stampeding Cossacks which trample you to death as they roar off on their way to yet another pogrom.[/i]

[i]        *** You have died ***[/i]

Be warned. While I don’t intend this review to be particularly spoiler-filled (even disregarding that the game is constructed in a way to [i]minimize[/i] the effect of spoilers), I do discuss the plot and the design mechanics a little later.

Here’s a fairly well-polished entry from “Hugh Dunnett” (also the protagonist’s name). You play the part of an Inspector with the Dundreary City Police. A wealthy investor for an upcoming stage musical (“Twisty Passages” -- clever), one Frederic Sheppard, has “fallen” from the window of his study, and it’s up to the Inspector to uncover clues and interview the witnesses in an attempt to identify the culprit.

The opening seems sort of confusing, although I have a hunch the author probably wrote it this way for the [i]opposite[/i] effect. Initially, Dunnett is hurried along by one of the witnesses (a relative of the murdered Sheppard), through several rooms and with brief introductions to a couple of the other suspects. He is then handed off to the victim’s accountant (one of the two men who found the body), who leads the way to the murder scene. It conveys a sense of urgency and was probably intended to introduce important points in a logical way. Perhaps I just wasn’t paying close enough attention, but by the time I made it down to examine the body, I forgot who I had met and the layout of the rooms I had just passed through to get there.

Luckily, the confusion is short-lived. The Inspector carries a notebook in which he makes note of clues, statements, and suspicious activities. I kept additional notes of my own (including a map -- although the game covers only a small area), and this helped as well. Only five suspects are present in the house, and that helps keep the mystery compact and solvable. Before long, I felt as “in charge” as the Inspector himself should have been, and that’s when the game really started to shine.

[i]An Act of Murder[/i] requires some specific detective-like behavior. In retrospect, it’s all very logical, but it’s possible the author has given players a little [i]too much[/i] credit in figuring it out. I checked the beginning just to see if the Chief had briefed me on what to do, but it seems very general and pretty open. Specifically, it’s important to ask suspects for their [i]alibi[/i], and about the [i]murder[/i]. Asking about the dead body [i]isn’t[/i] the same as asking about the murder (which, in effect, takes the guest’s statement), so it took a while (and possibly the hints) before I realized I should be doing these things. I believe this is probably because I had come to think I could only quiz the suspects about physical [i]objects[/i] -- clues, which are also important. So, even though it’s logical in [i]retrospect[/i], some clear direction might have helped.

The same goes for reading entries in the notebook. “[i]Read about...[/i]” and “[i]Look up...[/i]” do make sense (in fact, I’ve done this in other games, including another similarly-themed IFComp entry this year), but without a nudge or some in-game instructions, it took a while before I realized these notes could be reviewed [i]individually[/i] as well.

It’s a well-constructed game, but a few minor bugs are noted in my transcripts (yes, this is the nit-picky section). Duffy is supposed to arrive at 2:00 AM, but in my first play-through, it was well after 4:00 (and even then, only after I called). That did give me more time to investigate, but once before when I tried calling him directly, I was told by someone else that he was already on his way. That was a couple hours [i]before[/i] the second call, in which Duffy himself answered and said he would be there in five minutes. I had some difficulty with the walking stick, in a guess-the-verb sort of way. Climbing the rocks at the beach will lead Hugh up, instead of northwest. Asking suspects about “me” gives a quirky response. 

Here’s an amusing and obscure one, tried on a whim:

[b]>ask body about me[/b]
[i]Frederic Sheppard glances over at yourself and lowers his voice. You get nothing but a dead silence.[/i]

These are all minor issues. [i]An Act of Murder[/i] shows obvious polish and attention to detail. In a competition against many games that are poorly tested and haphazardly implemented, [i]An Act of Murder[/i] stands out even more.

The author has given the player a [i]mystery[/i] to solve, not just a collection quest disguised as a mystery. This is why I found my own note-taking to be of more help than the in-game notebook. There are logistics to work out, motives to prove or disprove, and yes, clues to gather. This comes closer to the [i]feel[/i] of solving a mystery than other games I’ve played (although, admittedly, this isn’t my favorite genre), because the PC doesn’t clue the player in on his reasoning. It’s up to the player to put the pieces together and work out a solution and that’s how a mystery game should be. Chief Inspector Duffy does offer additional insight near the end (and this can sometimes come from a brute-force presentation of gathered evidence), but I think the author rightfully expects that if you’ve gathered the right evidence and perhaps summoned Duffy, you’ve worked it out for yourself already.

The game begins with randomized plot elements. This isn’t obvious from a single play-through (even though the author warns of it from the beginning), so it doesn’t take anything away from the experience. I’m not sure if this was done to provide a higher replay value, or simply to thwart spoilers and potential walkthroughs, but I’d probably have been equally happy with a single “right” answer.

Calling them “randomized plot elements” may be misleading. I played through twice (with a different result the second time -- and I made it through [i]much[/i] quicker after the first). It seems that each of the five suspects is given both a motive [i]and[/i] a counter-motive. Some can be cleared because their stories coincide during the potential murder window (and if the author includes a dual-murderer scenario or a suicide scenario, I didn’t see it), and some can be cleared because they’re given a strong counter-motive for wanting Frederic to [i]live[/i]. The timetable of events is adjusted as well (I restarted a couple more times just to see that in action).

The only reason this seems to escape the [i]Clue[/i] movie cliché is that only one suspect [i]can[/i] be the murderer on any given play-through. Unless more complicated endings [i]do[/i] exist, it’s impossible to gather all necessary evidence, reach the end, and still be left with more than one suspect that fits all clues. It stands up well to a single play-through. It’s interesting a second time as well (especially with the existence of new counter-motives and the absence of key counter-motives found the first time). I suspect that after a couple times, however, it would probably begin to feel more and more game-like.

This kind of design has an impact on what’s possible story-wise. It means that either the author has written five [i]different[/i] stories (potentially) in the same scenario, or else it’s written in a way that downplays the story so that these adjustments are kept credible. Here, it seems like more of the latter. It’s an interesting mystery, but it co-exists with other variations to the same mystery. The story doesn’t [i]seem[/i] to suffer as a result, but I suspect it might have been even better if it focused on a single “right” possibility. 

Mystery seems like a really tough genre, though. It’s probably just as possible to write one that’s unsolvable as it is to write one that’s solvable only half-way through on a strong hunch. [i]An Act of Murder[/i] is a mystery that [i]works[/i], even though the details are variable. It’s one of the strongest entries I’ve yet to play this year, and is bound to be a high-ranker in the IFComp results.

Interaction among characters is pretty minimal during the game, but they do make a few comments about each other. It’s fitting and sometimes enlightening, but it lacks a strong “punch” (I’m thinking of [i]Sting of the Wasp[/i] here). The writing is effective but not flowery, with a good flow that doesn’t draw attention to itself (and that probably comes from being well proofed -- a quality sadly lacking in some other entries this year).

In addition to five (potential) winning endings, five additional “losing” endings (in which Dunnett can play the fool by accusing the wrong suspect) are a nice touch. Also, one odd but funny bit stands out, primarily because it seems like a pun that would be clever if only I knew what it meant:

[b]>x painting[/b]
[i]It's Askew.[/i]

[b]>move painting[/b]
[i]You straighten the painting as best you can, but it's still Askew.[/i]

I voted the game a reserved “X” at two hours (after voting a little too [i]highly[/i] on a couple other games that ran longer), but it’s too well-constructed and fun not to rate a point higher. So, my non-vote review score is “X-” The “minus” is mainly for sorting purposes (I enjoyed my other two X’s just a [i]tiny[/i] bit more), a few very minor issues, and a lack of initial guidance on interview techniques. I highly recommend [i]An Act of Murder[/i], and I expect it to finish well in the competition.
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=298&start=0#p1900
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: An Act of Murder
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-30 11:29:19

So, who was your murderer?

It was Alex the first time (most of my play time). On my second (quicker) play-through, it was Elinor (which kind of seemed like an awkward spelling to me).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=275&start=0#p1901
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: A Fine Day for Reaping
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-30 12:20:31

In light of comments I've seen elsewhere and thinking about the game in retrospect, I was probably a little too hard on it for the problems in Adrift. I can't change my vote (I played past two hours), but I considered changing the review score. I think I won't, because I'm reminded of some real Adrift-induced frustrations (I've left it all out of the review), but still, this *is* a very well-done game in many ways.

No specific point in bumping this, really. I was just revisiting some prior reviews, and checking around out there for new reviews of the games I played early on.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=275&start=0#p1902
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: A Fine Day for Reaping
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-30 13:56:33

Which release of Adrift did you use?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=275&start=0#p1903
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: A Fine Day for Reaping
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-30 14:21:39

The latest, I think. Version 4.0, Release 50.

Here were my specific complaints (in their chopped-out form). I don't mean this to stir up drama (which is why I chopped it -- well, that, and it belongs more in a discussion on Adrift than in a review about a specific Adrift game), but it *did* lead to some frustration and probably a score that's a point or two lower than what the game would have deserved otherwise.

[quote]
I have to get this out of the way before I begin. I don’t have a natural aversion to Adrift. Others may. I don’t.

Regardless of the cause, if problems [i]do[/i] exist in a game it can detract from the experience and enjoyment [i]of[/i] that game. That’s true, no matter what the development platform may be. When I talk about the problems in Adrift (and I do so at length, later in this review), it’s not for a loathing of the Adrift platform. It’s because games written in Adrift would generally be [i]better[/i] if written in something else (it’s the same complaint I’m likely to make of home-brewed games, including my own now). What I mean is, problems that typically crop up in Adrift games, usually as a result of how it seems to handle the scope of objects and differences in parsing, are just not inherent to other systems.

More on that a little later.

.... (the bulk of the review is here) ....

And speaking of Adrift…

There is a tendency in the Adrift community, from what I’ve observed, to feel threatened by criticism of the Adrift platform. Maybe it’s natural – I was peeved last year by a reviewer’s flippant comment about Hugo (where the comment seemed to ignore that games written in Hugo work [i]just like[/i] those in Inform and TADS) -- but it really [i]is[/i] different in Adrift. Adrift [i]doesn’t[/i] work the same way.

Differences can be a good thing. Adrift’s built-in mapping is nice. The Windows interpreter is easy to use, customizable and simple. Differences exist in the [i]nuts and bolts[/i] of how Adrift works, though, that makes me doubt an Adrift game [i]can[/i] work like a game written for a different platform. These differences can be maddening, and in some ways they [i]cripple[/i] the playability of games written in Adrift.

Try this in [i]A Fine Day For Reaping[/i]:
[b]>say time machine to horse[/b]

The response is:
[i]The time is 9:55:22 AM[/i]

[i]That just shouldn’t happen![/i] It’s not what I asked for. Ultimately it doesn’t [i]matter[/i], but it tells me that Adrift is guessing at my intentions rather than actually [i]figuring out[/i] what I meant. The right response would be “Horse can’t take you there directly” or even “please use location names when talking to Horse, rather than specific objects.”

Try something like this in most any Adrift game:
[b]>dig for a cut rope[/b]

The response is typically:
[i]You can’t cut that.[/i]

Adrift works on the premise that players will only ever enter simple commands, and that it’s safe to throw away parts of the command that aren’t understood. This allows Adrift to understand “gee I really want to cut the rope” as a command in an almost miraculous way, but all it [i]really[/i] understands (and retains from the entire command) is “cut” and “the rope”. This is a [i]fundamental[/i] difference in how Adrift works, that makes things like actively commenting a transcript during a game a downright aggravating experience. Instead of “comment recorded” or even “I didn’t understand that command,” you’re likely to get one or more [i]actual[/i] results where Adrift puts your comment into action as best it can. 

I’ve been told that Adrift grammar is based on wildcards. Is the problem just that these wildcards are overused? I do intend to dig into Adrift development one of these days, even if only to find out if it’s [i]possible[/i] to write grammar rules that parse in a more traditional way.

One player’s problem, though, is another player’s “feature”. I don’t think Adrift authors are bothered by these things much, if at all.

.... (conclusion to the review, beginning with the help system, here) ....
[/quote]  
I don't mention it there, but I've seen odd disambiguation and scoping issues in Adrift games as well. When I've seen them, it makes me thing that Adrift works on a different kind of world model than other IF development languages. I'm used to container/contained kind of relationship for the *entire* game world, where the room contains the player and other objects, the player contains a box, the box contains a sock, and so forth. Scope works on what's reachable and previously encountered. I've seen evidence to the contrary in Adrift games, but this *could* just be poor coding, not a failing in Adrift's world modelling. You guys would know better than I, though.

I think some Adrift authors -- not lumping everyone together here -- tend to dismiss complaints about Adrift without really taking a moment to focus on why people are complaining. I guess that's what I'm getting at. If there are ways to write Adrift parsing and object scoping in a more traditional way, I think it's worth looking into for Adrift authors. To me, the "right way" isn't a standard or a convention by accident. It's because that's how it all *needs* to work to avoid misleading and confusing players.

Just stuff to think about. I'm rambling.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=275&start=0#p1904
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: A Fine Day for Reaping
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2007-10-30 15:05:53

From what I know about ADRIFT:

- A game will first attempt to process a command against a list of author-provided tasks.  If none of those match, it will process the command against system tasks.

- Each author-provided task will have one or more command lines.  A command line is similar to a regular expression.  Examples might be "take *", "put %object% in *".

- To handle a system task, ADRIFT will go through its list of verbs and search for each one in turn with INSTR.  I don't know the exact order; it might check first for "drop", then "take", and so on.  (So a command like "take the lemon drop" will be interpreted as a "drop" action.)  jAsea and (at least last time I checked) SCARE instead parse system tasks the same way they parse author tasks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=275&start=0#p1905
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: A Fine Day for Reaping
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-30 15:08:50

Hmm. If that's true, then it seems like the only way to prevent parsing issues -- or minimize them, at least -- is to never use object names that conflict with verb names. Even if you create parsing rules without an abundance of wildcards, you'd still get tripped up on the "lemon drop" issue (for instance)...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=295&start=0#p1906
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A few hopefully easy questions
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-30 17:30:35

[quote="Chris."]
Most simply (I think): How does one turn off the scoring? My first game doesn't involve a score, and while I can probably experiment with interrupting the verb "score" with a message, that doesn't solve the problems of the banner and the quit/win-game "You have scored..." bit.
[/quote]    

[code]
! Put this before including Parser
Replace ScoreSub;
Replace FullScoreSub;
Replace DrawStatusLine;

! Put this after including Parser (but before VerbLib)
Object LibraryMessages
with before [;
	Score: print "Congratulations"; rtrue; ! I think you need some text here like 'congratulations' because otherwise you get a spurious full stop.
];

! And then somewhere near the end of your code:
[ DrawStatusLine width posa posb;
	@split_window 1; @set_window 1; @set_cursor 1 1; style reverse; 
	width = 0->33; posa = width-26; posb = width-13; 
	spaces (width);
	@set_cursor 1 2; PrintShortName(location); 
	if (width > 76) { 
		@set_cursor 1 posb; print "Moves: ", sline2; 
	} 
	if (width > 63 && width <= 76) { 
		@set_cursor 1 posb; print sline1, "/", sline2; 
	} 
	@set_cursor 1 1; style roman; @set_window 0; 
];

[ ScoreSub;
	"This game doesn't use a scoring system.";
];

[ FullScoreSub;
	<<Score>>;
];
[/code]

[quote]
Another basic thing that I just can't glean: Is there a way to "pry" (such as with a unicorn's horn -- but it could be a crowbar or any such thing, of course)? My player must pry the eye out of a dragon, as it's a light source.
[/quote]    
You need to make a new verb. It seems chapter 30 of the DM4 covers this. However, 'pry' is a verb included in the library as a synonym for unlock. So I imagine you'd need to do something like this:
[code]
Object eye_of_dragon "eye" dragon
with ...
	before [;
		Pry:
			move self to player;
			"You grab the eye in your hands, pull fiercely, and after a minute of back-breaking force, finally manage to extricate the faintly glowing eye from its former draconian position."; ! Or something.
	];

! After including Grammar:
[PrySub;
	"That sounds like a mad idea.";
];

Extend 'pry' first
* noun 'out' 'of'/'from' noun -> Pry
* noun 'out' noun -> Pry
* noun 'from' noun -> Pry;
[/code]

[quote]
the game is won when the player places five objects -- a plate, a glass, a spoon, a knife and a fork -- on the table in a particular room, and then drops a token into a slot that's in the same room.
[/quote]   

"A token. A slot. But how to put it all together without my insert-token-into-slot spell?" (Zork Grand Inquisitor)

[quote]
How would you approach this? Should I put this table-check in the room's code, or the table (scenery) code instead?
[/quote]    
There are probably loads of ways of approaching this. I personally might go for something like this:
[code]
[ CheckForWin;
	if (plate in table && glass in table && spoon in table && knife in table && fork in table && token in slot) {
		print "You've done it! Now we just need the butler to show up!^";
		deadflag = 2; ! This means trigger the winning ending.
		rtrue;
	}
	rfalse;
];

Object table "table" winroom
with after [;
		Receive:
			if (CheckForWin()) rtrue;
	];

Object slot "slot" winroom
with after [;
		Receive:
			if (CheckForWin()) rtrue;
			move noun to location;
			print_ret (The) noun, " is ejected from the slot and flies onto the floor.";
	];
[/code]
Receive is a so-called 'fake action' because it is automatically generated whenever there is an Insert action. You could equally put Insert actions on the cutlery and the token. If you had wanted the player to be able to put all the cutlery in a bag, say, and then put the bag on the table, then this code wouldn't trigger a win: you'd need the IndirectlyContains(container,contained) routine, which checks to see if an object is somewhere in the 'family tree' of another object.

Edit: Oh, and if you're wondering how I knew that 'pry' was a pre-defined verb, then you may find [url=http://www.inform-fiction.org/source/library/Grammar/Grammar_2_4.html]this page[/url] helpful: it's the Inform library's source code - specifically, all its world model verb definitions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=298&start=0#p1907
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: An Act of Murder
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2007-10-30 18:40:43

I got Benedict the first time and Deborah the second. I think I played it once more, but I forget who the murderer was that time.

I enjoyed Act of Murder too, but some of the conversation topics were less than obvious. Also, I found the little IF in-jokes really annoying, because they seemed so completely unrelated to the game. (Did you find the DM4 in someone's pocket? But there isn't a computer in the house...) YMMV.

Furthermore, I'm still having trouble visualising the layout of the house. When I start a game, I tend to imagine myself facing north, so I envisaged the house facing south. But it's actually the other way round in Act of Murder. Every time I went to move somewhere, I either typed the wrong direction or had to stop and think about it.

[quote="Merk"]
Also, one odd but funny bit stands out, primarily because it seems like a pun that would be clever if only I knew what it meant:

[b]>x painting[/b]
[i]It's Askew.[/i]

[b]>move painting[/b]
[i]You straighten the painting as best you can, but it's still Askew.[/i]
[/quote] 
The hint menu explains this joke (giving us another slightly painful pun in the process). It's a painting of a Victorian actor named Askew.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=298&start=0#p1908
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: An Act of Murder
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-30 18:59:20

Ooooh. No, I didn't find (or recognize) as many IF in-jokes or references as others did. Just the "Twisty Passages" play, and of course, the XYZZY verb (but boo for killing me -- heh).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=295&start=0#p1909
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A few hopefully easy questions
User: Chris. / DateTime: 2007-10-30 19:44:07

A thousand thanks for this indispensable assistance. And thanks also for the link to the source code! That'll come in extremely handy, for obvious reasons. Very much obliged. (Should I have just inspected the .h files I've actually been using? I'm almost afraid to "touch" them, if you see what I mean.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=299&start=0#p1910
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: M12's fictions
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-30 19:54:03

Hello everyone. I have recently completed these two games. I worked very hard on them, so I hope you can give them a go:

A Missing Memoir:

Trailer (low quality version):
<a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=Wq6HlDwinxU">http://youtube.com/watch?v=Wq6HlDwinxU</a>

Game:
<a href="http://eltania.net/m12/assets/files/med_mm_game.zip">http://eltania.net/m12/assets/files/med_mm_game.zip</a>

The Sight of Autumn (VERSION 2):

Trailer:
<a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=uqzHNyoTZbw">http://youtube.com/watch?v=uqzHNyoTZbw</a>

Game:
<a href="http://eltania.net/m12/assets/files/med_autumn_game.zip">http://eltania.net/m12/assets/files/med_autumn_game.zip</a>

Thanks so much.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=275&start=0#p1911
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: A Fine Day for Reaping
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-30 22:04:10

My particular gripe with this game (which I think is also an ADRIFT complaint, as I ran into it with another ADRIFT game) is that it pretends to understand things it doesn't, and *pretends to let you do things* that are actually not actions. For instance, if you type

>PRESS THE FOOBLE

and the parser doesn't know what fooble is, it will respond,

You press, but nothing happens.

This is awful! It makes the player think she's done something and it turned out to be useless, so she moves on and tries other approaches -- rather than what she should actually do, which is to figure out another name for the object she wants to press. It is in my opinion dreadful design to give a response that suggests the player did something, when in fact the parser didn't even understand the command. I remember gnashing my teeth over every piece of this game that had to do with any kind of button or machine. (Don't even get me started on the elevator.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=298&start=0#p1912
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: An Act of Murder
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-30 22:06:46

I got Elinor once, Deborah three times (my bad luck, I think), and... Alex? once? (The scenarios start to blend together a bit after several plays. But it did stay fun enough to play several times, so I guess that shows there was some value in making it all replayable, after all. At least, I thought so.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=298&start=0#p1913
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: An Act of Murder
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-30 22:10:47

I was curious about what Deb's motive would be. In my two play-throughs, I never had an impression she had *any* motive. So it must be something completely new and just didn't mesh with the others.

Did anything else change on those particular ones? Different murder weapon or alibis, when it was her each time?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=298&start=0#p1914
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: An Act of Murder
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-10-30 22:17:10

Yeah, other aspects of the story changed while it remained her. Her motive is that she doesn't want the musical to go un-funded.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=295&start=0#p1915
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A few hopefully easy questions
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2007-10-31 08:08:09

I think you can remove score completely by "Constant NO_SCORE;"

As for Kivie's kitchen code example:
-  As the code is, the token will be ejected unless it is the last object put in.  As a result, there's no point in checking for a win on the table's insert action.
- Alternately, you could have slot:Insert refuse anything but the token as too big, block any LetGo actions.

If there more multiple ways that the player could finish off the victory, you should probably put the code that checks for a win in the player's each_turn routine instead of checking each final action.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=295&start=0#p1916
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A few hopefully easy questions
User: Chris. / DateTime: 2007-10-31 17:36:12

Thanks for the addendum. [emote]Smile[/emote]
I'm really grateful for the help. I'm having a ball writing this first proper IF story.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=300&start=0#p1917
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Ferrous Ring
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-10-31 19:31:56

The "official" version can be found at my website:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/ferrous.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/ferrous.shtml</a>

[quote]
Game #19: Ferrous Ring
By Carma Ferris (Pseudonym?)
Played On: October 30th & 31st (2 hours 10 minutes)
Platform: Inform 6 (Glulx)

[b]>xyzzy[/b]
[i]A word suddenly pops up in my mind. [b]Xyzzy.[/b] Where have I heard that before? Something computer-related. Ah, I remember Leynard showing me some old text-only computer game - that's where I saw it. It was a very primitive game - from last century - and possibly one of the earliest ever made... I doubt that any computer games have been made in the whole of 2030.[/i]

This is likely to be the longest of my IFComp reviews this year.

The annual Interactive Fiction Competition is an interesting thing. It’s paradoxically a perfect way to get new game ideas out there for consumption by the IF community (and others who come around specifically to play and vote), while also being an arena that’s a little intolerant of wild departures in how IF works. I think many would probably disagree -- after all, games like [i]Photopia[/i] made a lasting mark by being different -- but the line between “failure” and “success” seems in no way wide, and it’s placed as to disproportionately favor failure. To take even [i]one[/i] risk in an IFComp entry can mean disaster. You are (a hypothetical “you,” I mean), after all, in a competition. To succeed among a crowd that likes IF because it’s familiar, you probably need to [i]really[/i] nail your convention-twist of choice.

Enter [i]Ferrous Ring[/i], an entry by Carma Ferris (a pseudonym, maybe?) that incorporates a number of unique design enhancements into what’s already a twist on the traditional IF narrative style. The author is aware of the risks (saying as much in the included “readme” file), but only the first point (about new features) is likely to be a sticking point to those who like their IF in a more traditional way. I don’t think the ideas are too ambitious to have been a part of the same game, as the author suggests. Rather, I just think she (or he?) underestimated what an impact the first point has on the enjoyment of the other two.

I’ll consider these goals individually, one at a time.

Goal 1: [i] “As a technology demonstration: it contains some features that should be of interest to the IF community, including a menu system and a solution to the 'guess the verb' problem.”[/i]

[i]Ferrous Ring[/i] includes a number of new features, specific implementations of similar features found elsewhere, and other non-traditional design choices. I’ll subdivide this section to discuss each of them.

[b]Walkthrough mode.[/b] The game has an ability to supply the next command necessary in solving the game (right on the command prompt -- the player must merely press [i]enter[/i]). This can be requested as a one-shot hint, or as a walkthrough “mode” in which each command is pre-filled in sequence (requiring that the player just press [i]enter[/i] each time the prompt comes up pre-filled, to complete the game entirely). Of all the enhancements, this felt the slickest to me. It did fail on me a time or two (once in particular, it told me to do something with a rope I had previously dropped). I used one-shot hints this way a few times in my initial play-through, then went back through it once entirely on autopilot.

[b]Noun mode.[/b] This, apparently, is the author’s solution to guess-the-verb problems (as mentioned in the “readme” file). It’s called “nominal interaction” inside the game, and it means that players can type just object names (sometimes paired with other object names, to use two things together), and the game will determine what’s the most likely and rational “action” to take as a result (with “examine” being the most likely first action for a given object). The author describes it as analogous to graphical adventure games, in which you “pick” an object, always in pretty much a “use” or “examine” context. I used this a few times -- not because I intended to play the game this way, but as an occasional crutch when I just couldn’t quite figure out what to do next (and sometimes, just as a sort of shorthand).

Here’s a simple example of [i]nominal interaction[/i] in action:

[b]>computer[/b]
[i]The computer is probably the most valuable thing here. Normally I just can't live without it... but it looks like I'm going to have to. It makes me sad to think of leaving it here, where undoubtedly it will get stolen within the day.[/i]

[b]>computer[/b]
[i]I reboot from a flash drive and format the hard drive securely. Good.[/i]

It always seemed to work, but often I didn’t really have a specific action in mind. I just wanted to see what the game assumed I would do with the referenced object. I think I actually solved (or partially-solved) a few puzzles this way. This [i]is[/i] a lot like how point-and-click graphic adventures work, but it still felt awkward in a text environment. That’s probably why the author also included...

[b]Menu mode.[/b] This extends the “noun” concept by splitting the screen vertically. A wide column on the left becomes a clickable text menu of items in scope, with an ability to combine (or “use” items together). I didn’t use this much. It felt clunky at first, and there was a definite -- though relatively brief -- delay in response time. Some longer “use” options were too wide to fit in the column (due to my choice font and window size, I suppose), chopping off all but the first two letters of the second item name in some cases. When dialogue appears (using a similar menu) or a pause prompt is displayed, the game jumps back to full-width mode, and then splits again afterwards. It seems a little odd, but presumably necessary given what’s probably some tricky behind-the-scenes coding.

I think I might have adapted to this, if played through entirely in [i]menu mode[/i]. Another of the text-based IFComp entries works this way (strictly point-and-click menu options), and I did okay there. It seems competently designed and in the few times I did use it (including a partial re-play just to evaluate it), it works okay. Some shading or border for the sidebar (menu) might have helped. I did notice a couple of quirky results (such as the word “auto” appearing in a “you can’t do that” sort of response once).

It just seemed... I don’t know... [i]unnecessary[/i], maybe. Graphic point-and-click adventures use this because they don’t have text and a command parser. While a large amount of work has doubtlessly gone into its design, I wonder at how useful it will really be to IF development in general (especially considering that many are moving away from Inform 6, toward Inform 7). I suspect that most IFComp judges won’t use [i]menu mode[/i], making it a near non-issue score-wise.

[b]Movement.[/b] Until a player-assigned section in the park (which [i]is[/i] pretty slick), directions aren’t important. At least, they’re not [i]supposed[/i] to be. This is a point I really struggled with. While you’re supposed to be able to move around simply by “going” there, I had a tough time figuring out [i]where[/i] I could go. This is made easier in [i]menu mode[/i] (where these options are listed), or by typing [i]exits[/i] (where movement options are explicitly stated), but in trying to stay with the flow of the narrative, I felt that it was often unclear -- especially near the beginning -- just what my options were. This [i]really[/i] felt clunky to me, and I found myself consciously wishing the author [i]hadn’t[/i] opted to do it this way.

[b]Parser messages.[/b] Unrecognized or unsupported commands are replaced with a few specific error messages, instead of the more traditional “I don’t recognize that verb” or “I don’t see that here” sort of responses. This is supposed to fit the narrative -- and it does -- but much like directional movement, I found myself wishing for the [i]standard[/i] way. At times, it was confusing [i]and[/i] misleading.

Take this example, from mid-way through the game:

[b]>enter house[/b]
[i]I'm not sure if any of these buildings are still used at any time, but with that bulldozer around I don't really want to try and get in them.[/i]

[b]>enter bulldozer[/b]
[i]I am suddenly struck by the compulsion to... do something. But my thoughts wash over it - drown it.[/i]

First, it’s implied that the bulldozer is here (I’m at the “Impoverished Street” now). Then, I’m prevented from entering it (and this is the sticking point) with a message that I’ve seen dozens of times before in response to unrecognized commands. The problem wasn’t that it’s impossible to enter the bulldozer. It’s that -- for whatever reason -- the bulldozer had wandered off at the moment (or something -- I never was quite clear on this, even reviewing my transcript later). I was surprised, then, when I felt stuck on a particular puzzle, that the built-in hint had me do this:

[b]>enter bulldozer[/b]
[i]I wonder... if I can control it...[/i]
[i]I get into the bulldozer.[/i]

Actually, it suggested the noun-only version ([b]>bulldozer[/b]), but it’s the same result. This also makes me wonder if the customized parser responses are as much in support of the “noun mode” and the “walkthrough mode” as they are a narrative device. At any rate, I didn’t feel that this [i]improved[/i] the experience, and probably served to make the game less playable and less solvable than it might have been otherwise.

[b]Conversation menu.[/b] This isn’t a new idea, and it works okay, but it did seem a little quirky. As previously mentioned, [i]menu mode[/i] switches off temporarily while a conversation menu is up. Also, it appears directly at the bottom without a blank line above it, making it sort of “run on” with any text above it. It’s the same one used by the built-in help/about menu, and the [i]ESC[/i] (escape) key doesn’t exit from it. I found that that the “Q” hotkey works, but this wasn’t immediately intuitive.

Incidentally, clicking with the mouse doesn’t seem to work on conversation menus. So, while the game can be put into [i]menu mode[/i] for mouse users, it still requires keyboard use whenever a conversation starts.

Even though [i]Ferrous Ring[/i] can be played without enabling or using most of these enhancements ([i]noun mode[/i], [i]walkthrough mode[/i], and [i]menu mode[/i] in particular), it still [i]feels[/i] sort of clunky. Directional movement and parser messages are a big part of that.

Goal 2: [i] “To make some (hopefully) thought-provoking, philosophical points.”[/i]

I admit that I’m not entirely clear on what philosophical points the author intended to make. The story hints at issues of racism, tolerance, and the division of social classes (and I’ll get to this more when I talk about the story), but beyond that, I’m not sure. There is, maybe, a subtext dealing with the “rightness” of crime (both when the criminals do it for self-gain at the expense of others, and when they are left with no other choice for survival), but that might not be what the author had in mind.

Goal 3: [i]“And to tell a story.”[/i]

I would have been perfectly content to experience this story in a more traditional way. I don’t mean the switch from second-person narrative to first-person (which seems to happen once or twice in every IFComp anyway -- seems okay to me), but rather, the other design decisions that kept getting in the way. I found it difficult to become immersed in the story (which I otherwise might have) due to the awkwardness of directional movement and the unhelpfulness of the parser messages.

The story [i]is[/i] where [i]Ferrous Ring[/i] really shines. It’s set in what seems at first to be a post-apocalyptic society, but upon reflection seems to be something much more subtle. I may not have it all, and what I [i]do[/i] have could be wrong, but it seems to be a society split along vague racial lines, and perhaps dealing with some sort of drastic climate changes. The “haves” have gone underground for safety, leaving the “have nots” above-ground, in squalor, and without the resources to survive comfortably. The world is rife with crime, poverty, suffering and terrorism, while those in shelter (never seen in-game) are safe and secure.

The protagonist, “Erskine Ring,” keeps a few details from the player. This is done in the interest of setting up a mysterious “what’s going on here?” kind of setting, and it seems convincing enough that it works. Some of why Ring feels so strongly about following a clue left on his video recorder is explained at the end, but it still concludes with unanswered questions. If this wasn’t [i]supposed[/i] to remain a mystery, then I missed some important bits along the way. I had a strong impression that I was [i]supposed[/i] to understand something -- perhaps even in the specific wording used -- but I just didn’t. If it’s intentionally open to interpretation and speculation, I’m curious as to what others make of it.

The game doesn’t have many complicated puzzles, although two do stand out. The first, involving the previously-mentioned bulldozer, might have been solvable if I hadn’t believed the bulldozer was off limits.

The second is pretty clever (involving a special message found in a book), but somehow I just kept skirting the actual solution. At the risk of spoiling it for others, it involves finding a [i]single[/i] passage when the clue seems to suggest three separate passages that should be located and treated as one. Maybe the clue [i]doesn’t[/i] suggest this, but it relies on a leap in logic that I just never made (because, well, you have to make this leap in order to hit on the clue that lets you figure out [i]how[/i] to solve the puzzle). It might have been smoother in [i]menu mode[/i] (where maybe the right command was prompted -- I didn’t check), and [i]walkthrough mode[/i] definitely worked, but I regretted being unable to solve it unassisted. There is [i]sort of[/i] a clue when working with numbers that are too high, but it never inspired me to make the right connection.

In addition to the first person narrative, room descriptions end with a list of things [i]good[/i] and [i]bad[/i]. This aspect of the story is also prominent in the game’s included cover art, but not only couldn’t I figure out why it was presented in this fashion, I never entirely understood how the protagonist could categorize these things so easily either. Much of it is obvious as I review my transcripts, but it’s a very intentional thing for the author to have included. It may have some deeper importance that simply eluded me.

The protagonist also had a tendency to do things contrary to my instructions. At one point, I asked him to go north, which he did after attempting to follow his own map in a different direction. Another time, I asked him to take a specific tram, and he did, but only by accident after attempting to take a different one. In these instances, it’s as though direct control of the PC was temporarily suspended, so that my command controlled his destiny rather than his intentions. That’s not a bad thing. It seems to fit in with the story.

A few fairly minor bugs (or quirks) are to be found in the competition version. When I retraced my path back through the park, there is a section where the game told me to go one way, and then back the other way again, over and over, seemingly without a purpose. Scavengers aren’t recognized as something animate. In limiting my directional movement, I noticed one place that gave two possibly conflicting messages. An important item was listed in a disambiguation message before I had actually found it (enabling me to realize it was there for the first time). In general, there just seemed to be several quirks probably related to supporting [i]noun mode[/i] and [i]menu mode[/i] in a game where normal IF commands are also accepted.

The author has put tremendous effort into the game, especially considering that it includes a custom game engine within the standard engine. Despite the quirks, it’s well-implemented, and the various enhancements do fit together nicely. A nice level of detail is present, where most things (objects and scenery) seem implemented at least for examining. Even though it feels awkward at times, it’s still well-constructed.

I’m anxious to learn how others have responded to [i]Ferrous Ring[/i]. It takes a number of risks that [i]seem[/i] good in theory, but don’t really improve the experience (and in some ways, detract from it). The story is just the kind that might have wowed me with a smoother, more traditional implementation. I voted it a “X” at two hours (and this was near to the end), and that’s the score I’ve kept for the review (with a "plus" for a very interesting story). It might be two or three points higher if only it worked more smoothly. I [i]like[/i] the game, and I recommend it -- but its biggest risk is that it may bother or annoy some players.

All things considered, it’s one of the most interesting and memorable games I’ve played in this year’s competition.
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=300&start=0#p1918
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Ferrous Ring
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2007-11-01 04:53:26

[quote="Merk"]
In addition to the first person narrative, room descriptions end with a list of things [i]good[/i] and [i]bad[/i]. This aspect of the story is also prominent in the game’s included cover art, but not only couldn’t I figure out why it was presented in this fashion, I never entirely understood how the protagonist could categorize these things so easily either. Much of it is obvious as I review my transcripts, but it’s a very intentional thing for the author to have included. It may have some deeper importance that simply eluded me.
[/quote]  
My reading: it emphasises the danger of the PC's world; living in this post-apocalyptic city requires him to trust his intuition and make quick decisions about what's safe and what isn't. The list of things "neither good nor bad" near the end of the game suggests that the PC now feels he can safely take some time to look around and explore his surroundings more carefully.

That was what I thought. But maybe I've just been writing too many English essays lately.

Overall, I was impressed by Ferrous Ring. It's very well written and has an intriguing story. It also felt very polished. I don't think the different modes helped, though. I felt that the author took advantage of the different modes to put in puzzles that would be considered guess-the-verb otherwise. Which is all very well if the player is using the special modes, but if s/he isn't (I wasn't, mostly) it can be annoying.

I have to say the game felt most polished at the beginning. The early sequences, with the video camera and the explosion and then visiting Leynard's mother, were very slick, but once the game got puzzly it started to drag. When I started poking at things, trying to figure out what my next move should be, the world-building began to feel very thin. The vague and apparently randomised error messages didn't help at all. (If anyone has anything good to say about them, I'll be surprised. Obviously they were meant to avoid breaking mimesis, but they didn't work for me that way either.)

It got to the point where I just went straight to the walkthrough whenever I got stuck, but I have an idea the author expected this. It's not the sort of game that rewards lingering, and given the plot, this makes sense. To its credit, the game mostly manages to evoke a sense of urgency; it may not reward lingering, but it doesn't generally encourage it either. (Notice there are far more details in the room descriptions of the house, when the PC is feeling safe? This is the kind of subtle mood-setting I really, really like.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=300&start=0#p1919
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Ferrous Ring
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-01 13:14:34

It was mentioned in another review -- and darn, now I forget where (plus I'm going on memory here) -- that the ending is that the PC has basically "dropped out" of society. There's the below-ground people (presumably safe), and the above-ground people (obviously not safe), and instead of choosing sides, the PC opts for neither.

That I'm pondering it a day later really says something. I just wish I hadn't been thrown off by the way it was presented. As you say, I don't think the enhancements helped. I'd have been content without them (although changing how directions work and changing parser responses were what tripped me up more than anything).

Thinking back on it, I get the feeling that the game *was* designed around supporting the noun and menu modes. After all, it would be a pretty difficult trick to "tack on" to a traditional work of IF that hadn't intended to use those features all along. If that's the case, then you may be right. The way it's put together and the way the puzzles are done lean more towards those non-traditional play styles, making the "normal" way feel tacked on as a result. And maybe that's another reason I was tripped up on the mechanics of playing *without* those features.

Surprisingly, though, I haven't come across any review that totally pans it. I haven't read them all (still), since some don't protect against spoilers on games I haven't played yet, but I do get a sense that most people do like this game, and probably rated it pretty well. It seems to have a nice shot at the top 10.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=301&start=0#p1921
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: A Matter of Importance
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-02 16:34:30

The "official" version can be found at my website:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/matter.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/matter.shtml</a>

[quote]
Game #20: A Matter of Importance
By Nestor I. McNaugh
Played On: November 1st (2 hours 35 minutes)
Platform: TADS (Version 2)

Game’s Blurb:
[i]All significant modern capitals have been made the most dishonourable way.[/i]

[b]>xyzzy[/b]
[i]You recall a couple of your (now imprisoned) buddies who were relying on magic spells too much when splitting from the place of crime, and reconsider.[/i]

Why is it that this title had me thinking of that recent Al Gore environmental documentary? Titles have a way of suggesting a theme, and I had a hunch this one would be a politically-charged semi-interactive essay. Even the game’s blurb (which turns out to be part of a translated quote from a book by early twentieth-century soviet authors Ilf and Petrov -- yes, that’s from Wikipedia) seemed to suggest political themes.

While Ilf and Petrov’s Bender is a con man, McNaugh’s unnamed protagonist is a member of a modern Thieving Guild. I say “modern” to distinguish between contemporary themes and those more commonly associated [i]with[/i] a Thieving Guild (medieval and/or fantasy), but it’s not [i]too[/i] modern. People still amass large collections of VCR movies in McNaugh’s world, so it’s probably set a good ten or fifteen years ago.

McNaugh’s satire isn’t politically-charged, and it’s not an essay. Rather, it’s a traditional puzzle-filled game inspired by a particular IF trope that ties into the title and forms much of the basis for the protagonist’s interactions with his environment. The author explains this in optional notes at the end of the game. That’s good, because until reading the explanation, this all felt a little quirky but not necessarily meaningful. If anything, it seemed perfectly reasonable given the PC’s dedication to the task at hand. I think the author had to trade off some of his concept in favor of playability. Really, it’s hard to imagine enjoying a game with a lot [i]more[/i] of this particular gimmick. The level of exaggeration seems about right, even though it probably loses some of the intended effect.

Some awkward phrasing was evident in many places, but it’s well-written (and perhaps well-tested) considering that the author isn’t a native speaker of English (so says the “credits” section). Usually, it was a variation on the same couple of quirky wording choices: using “got” where it doesn’t belong (“...had got no choice...” should be “...had no choice...”) and an awkward juxtaposition of words that differs from the norm (like “...every your move...” instead of “...your every move...” and “...only would lead you away...” instead of “...would only lead you away...”). It flows well otherwise, aside from a few minor mistakes here and there (“portersickens” should have a space in the middle; “more busy” should be “busier”; “just buy bying” is a mistake). This is all very nit-picky, and could easily be corrected in a post-competition update.

Some puzzles seem more logic-driven than clue-driven. Several times, I needed to stop for a moment and [i]think[/i] beyond what the game was telling me. That worked sometimes, but not others, and even required taking a moment to [i]really[/i] pay attention to what the game was saying. The first instance comes in crossing the busy street. I solved it without hints, but it took several minutes of being stuck with limited options, trying to think just [i]how[/i] I should go about tackling the problem. Somehow, I envisioned the PC stepping out, hand raised, to “stop traffic.” Other phrasings may work, and although this didn’t solve the puzzle, it did give me a pretty nice hint that allowed me to.

At other times, it didn’t go so well. I ended up in a football kick-and-block competition with some kid I wanted to get rid of. Even with [i]very[/i] limited options (you can’t leave the challenge after starting it, as far as I found), I didn’t solve it without hints. The author had the right idea in continuing to draw attention to the solution (or, at least, to the “thing” you use to solve it), but without the hints, I hadn’t realized that a distraction was in order (even though this is hinted as well, in that the boy is trying to distract [i]you[/i]). And even then, this was a pretty obscure and specific distraction to create, so I would have needed the hints anyway.

Getting the ball is a puzzle I had sort of solved -- I just overlooked one pretty obvious part of it (and this is probably more my fault than the game’s). The rest was pretty smooth, until I needed to make a quick escape near the end. This was [i]definitely[/i] my fault, because I [i]knew[/i] what to do (I got the [i]Home Alone[/i] idea even before seeing it in the hints). I had just forgotten about (or overlooked) another room in the store. That was a particular shame, because it meant a pretty tense and urgent situation became a seemingly endless standoff with me scouring the store for a list of titles that didn’t even exist. The police repeat themselves, but it [i]was[/i] entertaining (and maybe another nod to Ilf and Petrov).

Others may get through those parts with less effort, although I think at least one or two puzzles are bound to trip up most players. At one point, I thought maybe the author [i]expected[/i] the hints to be a necessary part in solving the game, and that it would somehow factor into the game’s twist or purpose. The kid even comments on this, after I succeeded in distracting him. Thinking back, nothing seems unfair or [i]entirely[/i] unclued, so I don’t think the author intended that the hints would [i]have[/i] to factor into things. The author has even put “guess the action” puzzles into a very limited scope, meaning you have fewer things to consider in the spot where they’re required.

They’re probably perfect for skilled players that have good intuition and an ability to think outside the proverbial box. In loading a prior save to check on something that had me confused in my first play-through, I found that getting into the store actually has an alternate (and perhaps [i]easier[/i] solution). Do other puzzles? It’s possible. Even though it seems [i]too[/i] hard a game at times, it should yield to persistence, observation, and deduction -- usually.

I was impressed with how the author, in several instances, crafted very logical reasons why very logical puzzle solutions wouldn’t work. It’s not quite the same thing as [i]including[/i] those puzzle solutions, but I can agree with the decision not to remove the challenge altogether (which some obvious answers might have done). For example:

[b]>give money to boy[/b]
[i]You consider giving the boy some cash and tell him to go, but realize the brat would just get curious, hide somewhere and secretly watch you. No, such attempt of bribing only would make matters worse.[/i]

I came away really liking [i]A Matter of Importance[/i]. It’s an uncomplicated story that delivers a bit of IF-specific satire, and it ends with a nice little twist. The author uses some lengthy “suggested commands” CYOA-like near the end, perhaps as a way of avoiding more complicated interaction, but I didn’t mind this. It ends with a small puzzle, it’s told in an entertaining way, and even the time spent stuck wasn’t a big frustration. I recommend the game (including its built-in hints), and I’ve rated it an “X” on my scale of judging criteria.
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=301&start=0#p1922
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: A Matter of Importance
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-02 17:34:41

You know what -- I wonder if the author, not being a native speaker of English -- meant for the Thieving Guild to be more of a Thieving Organization? Or a crime syndicate specializing in theft? And maybe the testers just never questioned it, because it seemed intentional. Anyway, that's my theory.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=301&start=0#p1923
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: A Matter of Importance
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-02 20:09:41

Oh -- and I liked the response to "sing." Clever!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=302&start=0#p1924
Forum: Competitions / Subject: order your IF Comp in Public tshirt!
User: George / DateTime: 2007-11-03 21:40:50

(crossposted at RAIF: <a class="postlink" href="http://tinyurl.com/2h5ay6">http://tinyurl.com/2h5ay6</a>):

I've split this off from the IFComp in Public thread (<a class="postlink" href="http://tinyurl.com/2nswlv">http://tinyurl.com/2nswlv</a>).

Everything is set for you to order a tshirt! I'll be taking orders only until November 15th.

[size=150][b]How to order:[/b][/size]

- To order, send your tshirt size and your mailing address to georgeolivergo at gmail

- Send me payment either via paypal, to georgeolivergo at yahoo, or by check (please don't send cash) to:

  George Oliver
  805 27th Ave
  Seattle, WA 98122

I'm offering Paypal just for the convenience of people who don't want
to send stuff in the mail -- they take a small cut of credit card
transactions, but I'll cover those costs as they'll be pretty
negligible.

- Tshirts are only $9!

- Domestic US shipping for one tshirt is $2.50. So, buy one shirt,
send me $11.50.

- Domestic US shipping for 2-4 shirts is $5.00. Buy 2-4 shirts, send
me the ($9 x [qty]) + $5.00.

- Please contact me for international shipping or if you're ordering
more than 4 shirts.

- I'll be shipping shirts in about 4 weeks, at the end of November.

- tshirts are black, American Apparel. We should be able to handle
most sizes from XXS to 2XL. Contact me before ordering kid sizes (2,
4, or 6).

[b]More details:[/b]

-  See the art here: <a class="postlink" href="http://flypicture.com/display/NDgxMjA=">http://flypicture.com/display/NDgxMjA=</a> (you might
have to add an equal sign to the end of the URL if your newsreader
strips it -- thanks Ben).

- See a mock-up of the art on a tshirt (hate on my gimpy skills if you
want): <a class="postlink" href="http://flypicture.com/display/NDk5MDc=">http://flypicture.com/display/NDk5MDc=</a>

- This is the printer I'm using: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.porkchopscreenprinting.com/">http://www.porkchopscreenprinting.com/</a>

- And this wouldn't have happened without the artist (her website:
<a class="postlink" href="http://driedesign.com/">http://driedesign.com/</a>). Thanks Sarah!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=303&start=0#p1925
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Walkthrough - Slap That Fish
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-04 00:09:45

I have posted a 239-point walkthrough (see the link below) for Slap That Fish. I'm interested in updating it to a full 240 points, if anybody knows what I've missed and can tell me.

[url]http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/fishwalk.txt[/url]

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(Nothing here - just leaving room in case somebody posts a spoiler.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=290&start=0#p1926
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Lord Bellwater's Secret
User: George / DateTime: 2007-11-04 11:12:15

The problem for me with this game was that I felt it could have used more polish. 

I feel kind of contradictory saying that, because in many ways this game is well polished indeed: the bookshelves, the room movement, the raft of letters, diaries, and parchments, the secret nooks and crannies. All of that was enjoyable, and I liked the story, but for me there were too many immersion-breaking minor technical issues in a (somewhat pedestrian) story such as this one to rate this more than 'good' in my scoring. 

Also I was a little unsatisfied that Bellwater Jr. didn't get his comeuppance, but I guess that makes sense given the setting. I almost wanted Bert to be the illegitimate son of Lord Bellwater -- perhaps that would have been too obvious?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=304&start=0#p1927
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Slap That Fish
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-04 17:20:01

The "official" version can be found at my website:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/fish.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/fish.shtml</a>

[quote]
Game #21: Slap That Fish
By Peter Nepstad
Played On: November 3rd (4 hours 50 minutes)
Platform: TADS (Version 2)

Game’s Blurb:
[i]This time, those fishy bastards are finally going to get what's coming to them.[/i]

[b]>xyzzy[/b]
[i]You invoke the magic word of prayer your grandfather once taught you.  But nothing happens.  Some secrets are lost, from generation to generation.[/i]

From the game’s blurb and a quick peek earlier, I was looking forward to [i]Slap That Fish[/i] on the pure absurdity of its premise. My fear was that this might turn out to be a [i]joke[/i] entry -- one intentionally bad, hastily written, playable in only a few minutes, and perhaps entered to intentionally garner a low ranking. It seems like every year’s IFComp sees at least one (often several). Being so far along in my random play list without finding an insincere entry yet, I thought [i]maybe[/i] this would be the one.

At first, it seems to be. On the surface, it’s an RPG where you, as the title suggests, simply slap a series of suspiciously behaving fish. Actually, four main actions (kick, punch, slap, and backhand) are used to dispatch each of the “fishy bastards” in what’s essentially a one-room, back-alley brawl. Although it’s funny in its absurdity, it begins with repetitive commands and not much challenge. New players are likely to think “okay, is this it?” As each challenger takes the place of his fallen aquatic comrade, it becomes a matter of figuring out which attack works (because, for instance, slapping a tuna won’t hurt it). Still, it’s just a series of attacks and recoveries, over and over and over and...

Then, at a point where one might wonder if this is really the [i]same[/i] Peter Nepstad who wrote the respected work of commercial IF, [i]1893: A World’s Fair Mystery[/i], the formula changes. You still slap fish. You still meet another in the series of challengers. However, puzzles begin to take shape. Things to [i]interact[/i] with appear. Tricking the fish and making use of previously defeated fish become important aspects in advancing to the next fight.

Moreover, a story begins to take shape. Where no story was evident before, clues are given as to what’s really going on. This is potentially misleading (and that may be the point), but it brought me from thinking the game was completely silly and pointless, to thinking maybe the PC had been traumatized on several past occasions, and this was either a bad dream or a hypnotherapy session.

By the last three battles, what started out to be a simple and repetitive RPG has become a puzzle game, with a backstory and a purpose. It’s still absurd, but this demonstrates that it’s not a joke entry. Fish are far harder to defeat, requiring more trickery, skill, and actions outside the established arsenal of melee commands. The strangest twist of all is that it seems to [i]have no twist[/i]. The story is exactly as it appears.

At the end of an initial play-through, though, I was still left feeling that the game required too much repetition. It’s also pretty difficult to think creatively, because the game often references things that [i]seem[/i] important (the “thing” on the head of the anglerfish, for instance, as well as tails and fins on most of the fish), which can’t actually be referenced at all. This limits potentially creative combat.

It also suffers from a few specific and hard-to-guess actions (I’ll discuss this below). These aren’t always guess-the-verb situations, because figuring out the action itself is the hard part (not the specific phrasing of it).

A few places [i]do[/i] seem a little guess-the-verby too, though. Here is one relatively spoiler-free example:

[i]...The force of its fall causes a brick to dislodge, revealing a dark opening. ...[/i]

[b]>look in opening[/b]
[i]It is too dark to see inside.[/i]

[b]>enter opening[/b]
[i]The opening is much too small for you to enter.[/i]

[b]>put hand in opening[/b]
[i]You can't put your hands anywhere.[/i]

[b]>x opening[/b]
[i]There is a small opening in the brick wall where a brick has been dislodged, large enough to reach into, but to dark to see inside.[/i]

[b]>reach into opening[/b]
[i]You reach into the dark opening. It is a narrow fit.  Feeling around, the first thing you find is...[/i]

The “search” verb works too, but it’s possible to dismiss the attempt when told that you can’t put your hands anywhere. I managed to get through the entire game with only two (I think) peeks at the walkthrough (which, really, is a series of hints with spoiler space). First, I needed help in defeating the shark in the second half of the battle (having figured out the cool first half myself). Then, I couldn’t figure out how to get an item I [i]knew[/i] I needed from the delivery boy. This turns out to be [i]very[/i] guess-the-verby, and it’s even something I was thrown by -- with the same complaint -- in the first game I played from this year’s IFComp.

I found a few typos (and noted them in my transcript), but it’s pretty well written otherwise. Usually, the text consists of silly but often-clever one-liners in response to fighting and defeating each fish.

In addition to minor problems in the text, I did find a few bugs. The biggest involves reading a tablet (probably before the author intended for it to have been read) and then performing the first action listed. During a battle, a strange TADS parser error message and error number are shown, and the actual text is truncated. Also (and to avoid a spoiler, I can’t be specific), using a certain item in a certain way always references the trout first, well after the trout is defeated and gone. I’m sure I noticed a few other minor quirks, but not many. It sometimes [i]felt[/i] unpolished due to unimplemented scenery (or “fish parts”) and some guess-the-verb commands, but it turns out to be solidly constructed.

I completed the game (with those couple of hints from the walkthrough) in one hour and twenty minutes. This allowed me [i]not[/i] to freeze my vote as I would when going beyond two hours (as required in the IFComp rules). I stepped away thinking it involved too much guesswork, tedious repetition, and mindless combat. I stepped away for a while, though, and then came back intending to spend another forty minutes looking for the “perfect” 20-point score solution to each fish.

If I hadn’t, I probably would have rated it lower. What I found, though, is that [i]Slap That Fish[/i] is a [i]puzzle[/i] RPG. It can be played the brute-force way (and most players are likely to do this -- I know I did), but there is a challenge in defeating each fish quickly and with a minimum of combat. It requires figuring out a certain attack combo (necessary in several of the fights), optimizing your moves, using “extra” turns (some fish can still give a full 20 points even if you “waste” a couple of turns) to preemptively rest for the next battle, and more. What seemed haphazard and poorly conceived on the first play-through seems incredibly clever on a second. It requires replays, multiple saves (because when you get it right, you might not want to start over entirely when trying another approach), and some note jotting of what works or doesn’t (how much stamina was spent versus damage dealt, and how many turns are spent resting or taking any non-attack actions which [i]also[/i] heal stamina). It’s in many ways much more fun as a mind game.

Finally, I completed it with 239 points of a maximum 240. The ending didn’t change (and I only scored 92 points the first time), so working through the game on a more challenging level seems to be its own reward. Surely [i]something[/i] changes with 240 points, but it will take a player more clever than I to figure out the ideal solution.

The game works on both levels -- defeating each fish individually and with less finesse (fewer points) and as a tightly-timed series of puzzles forming a single greater challenge. The first way is sort of a prerequisite (in understanding what’s ahead and how the game is constructed) to the second way, though, and the first way isn’t incredibly exciting. It’s a pleasant farce, but it’s a little rough in the spots where specific phrasings or unclued actions are required.

I think it will be mistaken [i]as[/i] a joke entry, especially by any judge who doesn’t recognize the author’s name. And who knows? Maybe it is, and the author just doesn’t know how to write a game that’s purposely bad without making it pretty good in the process. I ranked it a “X”, and considered either a “minus” for the frustration and repetition of the first play-through or a “plus” for the fiendishly challenging second. Ultimately, I haven’t added either to the review score.

It’s not deeply moving or epic in scope. It’s just an absurdly farcical puzzle game, which can be played for higher points to provide a greater challenge. I recommend it as such.
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=290&start=0#p1928
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Lord Bellwater's Secret
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-04 18:44:07

I didn't notice much wrong with it, if I recall correctly. It seemed well constructed and pretty well polished. You might have encountered different issues than I did.

And yeah, I too was hoping for an ending in which the junior Bellwater loses it all to Bert. The author told me in email that he had originally thought of having an ending like that, but it didn't fit with the game's theme (dealing with the Brittish class system). This threw me while I played, though, because I spent a bit of time trying to find that ending, and it doesn't exist.

This is still one of my favorite entries this year. Right now, it ranks second (factoring in the plus/minus of the other games with the same score), and I only have a few more yet to go.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=303&start=0#p1929
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Walkthrough - Slap That Fish
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-05 11:42:21

I can't help thinking that the lost turn is in the battle against the Eel. If there is a slightly quicker way to defeat it, a turn or two of extra healing would carry through into the rest of the fights, meaning saved time against the Anglerfish...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=304&start=0#p1930
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Slap That Fish
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-05 17:41:01

Interesting. I didn't feel motivated to play to optimize this game thoroughly: I kind of wanted to (and I did replay the first few fights), but there were (I thought) too few clues about how to improve my performance against the first few fish. Maybe if the game gave more feedback about why one has done a sub-par job in a given fight?

But this is hard to get right, I suspect. Still, I was very glad that it wasn't actually a randomized combat system, as I initially feared.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=304&start=0#p1931
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Slap That Fish
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-05 18:01:25

It sort of gives feedback. If you get a score approaching 20 (which is possible, once you figure out how to simply not waste time), it tells you to optimize your moves. The trick is figuring out the slap/backhand combo. Once I did that, it all worked pretty well. I figured out the first few for max points, no problem.

It gets harder, later. I sat there for quite a while with about 3 different saves on each fish, jumping between them trying to see how certain things would or wouldn't work, how it'd affect my total turns used, etc. I had a lot of fun doing that, although it *was* a lot of work. Somehow, there was enough feedback that I was able to figure it out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=277&start=0#p1932
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Gathered In Darkness
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2007-11-06 06:05:09

Yes, uncas.pl is included in the Geas tarball.

Somewhat tangentially, I've been trying to add Geas to Gargoyle (I've been quietly updating Gargoyle for myself over the last few weeks), but not really being a C/C++ programmer or understanding GLK, I hit a roadblock. I managed to persuade it to compile and link without problems, but it crashes when loading a game file.

Do you or your resident GLK expert have any plans to include a GarGLK bridge file with Geas, like you've done for GLKterm? I don't suppose you have, but it would be nifty if you did...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=277&start=0#p1933
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Gathered In Darkness
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2007-11-06 06:51:09

I don't know much about Glk.  IIRC, David Jones did that.  Also, Simon Baldwin got it working with his own multi-interpreter system.  You might try talking with either of them.

Also, which game files have you tried running it with?  It's quite possible they aren't compatible.

It doesn't matter much, though; when I started writing Geas I assumed that Quest was at least sanely designed; the more I worked on it, the more I disovered that Alex doesn't have a clue about compiler design.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=277&start=0#p1934
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Gathered In Darkness
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2007-11-06 08:23:35

Simon Baldwin's IFP - you're right. I forgot about that. I'll have a look at the source code and see if I can deduce anything useful.

The only file I've tried with it is Gathered in Darkness. I'm almost certain I deleted Beam after last year's comp (what a mess that game was!), and I've never played any other Quest game.

Anyway, I'll probably keep poking at it for a while. If (a big if...) I manage to get it working properly, I'll send you the code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=305&start=0#p1935
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: A quick question about "Before"
User: Chris. / DateTime: 2007-11-06 12:30:21

There's a car parked in one of my locations. It's not significant, but it completes the scene nicely. The thing is, I need to add some responses to the player's attempts at opening it, breaking it, etc. so that it seems real; messages like "That’s not something you can open" obviously contradict the fact that being a car, it has doors.

I have all the synonyms typed in (windows, doors, etc.), and I've given the car the following attributes: scenery, static, concealed (as its appearance is already noted in the room description) and, because I see no reason why the player shouldn’t be able to put things on top of it or stand on it, a supporter. It's not a container, because there’s no way to get it open.

This works:

[code]Before [;	attack:
		"If you damage the car, a hunt will ensue.
		Is that what you want?";

(Taking advantage of the library reply "That was a rhetorical question.")

		push, pull:
		"You might find this surprising, but it’s in ~park.~";
],[/code]

…and so forth. It works great -- if the player only uses one noun. But here's what doesn't work: Triggering the responses when the player tries to smash the car (this is the same as "attack," right?), or push/pull it, WITH another object.

For instance, there's a crowbar elsewhere in the game. If the player tries to "smash the car with the crowbar," the response is, "I only understood you as far as wanting to smash the car." It simply doesn’t like "with." And here’s the really weird one: If the player tries to "push the car with the crowbar" (one has to be prepared for somewhat experimental commands), he gets, "You can’t see that here" -- even when the player's holding the crowbar, and the car's in the location.

It works okay if the player tries to "unlock" the car with something, and even "open" it with something. But not "attack" or "push/pull."

I tried this to fix the problem thusly (you might laugh):

[code]Before [;	attack:
		if (second ~= 0)
		"Don’t hit the car with that! Someone needs a ride home
		later! Honestly. Some people.";
		"If you damage the car, a hunt will ensue.
                          Is that what you want?";
		push, pull:
		if (second ~= 0)
		"With that little thing? Apparently, you’ve lost your mind.
		How disillusioning.";
		"You might find this surprising, but it’s in ~park.~";
],[/code]

That still doesn’t make the magic Inform fairies understand "with." I thought that "if (second ~= 0)" would translate to: "if the player’s command has an indirect object." Is there any way to specify a Before that means "verb WITH noun?"

I tried the DM4, but if the solution’s in there, I can’t find it.

Thanks very much. Again, I appreciate your time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=305&start=0#p1936
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A quick question about "Before"
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2007-11-06 17:18:41

You'll have to define additional grammar.

For example:

[code]extend 'attack' * noun 'with' noun -> AttackWith;[/code]

And define an AttackWithSub.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=305&start=0#p1937
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A quick question about "Before"
User: Chris. / DateTime: 2007-11-06 17:25:12

Okay, I understand. Thanks very much. (Would the AttackWithSub just be the following?)

[AttackWithSub;<<attack noun>>;]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=306&start=0#p1938
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Packrat
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-06 17:29:31

The "official" version can be found at my website:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/packrat.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/packrat.shtml</a>

[quote]
Game #22: Packrat
By Bill Powell
Played On: November 4th and 5th (1 hour 50 minutes)
Platform: Inform 6 (Zcode)

Game’s Blurb:
[i]They call you Packrat, but who're they sending to wake the Princess? Not only has the faraway Prince failed to deliver, but it's just come out that a hefty royal loan has had twenty years to accrue in default, and the repo giants are on their way.[/i]

Bill Powell entered the IFComp last year with a two-part game ([i]MANALIVE 1[/i] and [i]2[/i]) that, despite many problems, I still enjoyed. I expected this year’s entry to be more fun, well-designed, and a good deal more polished. 

It [i]could[/i] be more fun, but some poorly-clued puzzles (maybe based on a faulty design philosophy) and a variety of quirks and bugs keep it from shining. In the built-in help, the author says:

[i]“I've done my best to make it impossible for you to make the game unwinnable without knowing it, but any decent game will require a fair amount of browsing, searching, and generally non-intuitive actions, just for thoroughness.”[/i]

It’s the part about non-intuitive actions that seems misguided. To build a puzzle out of non-intuitive actions, the player has to be shown a problem begging for a solution. The player must [i]see[/i] a challenge, and then be able to deduce the non-intuitive action based on clues he or she has already seen or can find elsewhere. It’s not enough to just hide a puzzle behind a non-intuitive action, because a player will [i]almost never[/i] stumble on it if unaware the puzzle even exists.

This would be easiest to explain by spoiling the specific instance to which I refer, but I’ll do this with a hypothetical (though similar) example. Suppose the player finds a large carpet, among various other items, inside a house at the top of a mountain. Exploring the house seems to be the goal, although it’s necessary to traverse a mountain path with a steeply sloping side to get there. The carpet is unremarkable, and it even seems a little odd (maybe even a bug) that the player is allowed to pick up an item so large. The path outside with the sloping drop-off is equally unremarkable, except perhaps that it’s described as being too dangerous. If a persistent player keeps trying to go south (down off the path), it’s discouraged but eventually allowed with an unhappy ending. Now... suppose that there is something down there, out of view and in no way clued (but which the player needs to find), and the solution is to go back outside, drop the carpet, and ride it down the steep slope.

To make a puzzle like this work, the author should (a) mention that something interesting seems to be down there, (b) hint that the player would slip and fall if trying to walk down the steep slope, and (c) mention [i]something[/i] when obtaining the carpet, perhaps to the effect that it looks thick and sturdy. I’m not even sure [i]that’s[/i] enough, but it’s a start.

In another area (which I [i]will[/i] spoil, because it’s not really a puzzle), a staircase leads up from an underground laundry into a scullery above. In the scullery, the staircase is mentioned, plus an exit to the east. If you [i]examine[/i] the staircase, an unhelpful, snarky, theme-breaking message likens you to MacGyver but doesn’t [i]also[/i] mention that the staircase goes [i]up[/i] as well as back down into the laundry room. Because the exit isn’t mentioned anywhere, I never even [i]tried[/i] going up.

Beyond this, it has numerous other problems. Disambiguation (especially in an area with many doors) seems to be an issue. Synonyms are lacking in many places (such as when the “rubble” is frequently referred to as “debris,” yet “debris” isn’t recognized as a noun). Many objects aren't implemented at all, even in areas where there really isn’t much else to see [i]but[/i] those one or two objects. When going west in the dungeon hallway, it’s impossible to return to the east (the same room just keeps popping up, as if “east” references the same room). You can pick up the cook and add him to your inventory. “Get all” cycles through pretty much every implemented object. Some objects can be referenced sometimes but not others (such as “get” by itself implying “(the finery)”, yet you can’t say “get finery” without an error). Certain messages are static, as though they were intended to be seen in a specific room but are actually visible elsewhere as well. Others simply describe the state of something even after it’s no longer true (trying to go south after defeating the dragon is an example). Some things in a room aren’t mentioned at all (such as the sink in the scullery, unless “cell” was a typo). You can even put the gargantuan cake inside Packrat’s pack.

It also has a game-halting bug which crashes WinFrotz (and possibly other interpreters -- I didn’t check). This has to do with tying the rope to two things at once, and then trying to interact with it (to untie, tie to something else, pick up, etc). Actually, I’m foggy on the specifics, but it happened twice, leaving me gun-shy about using the rope in any manner not explicitly described in the walkthrough. It’s also possible to tie the rope to something, drop the thing, leave the room [i]with[/i] the rope, roam the castle, and never drag the tied thing along. Yet technically it’s still tied to the object you left behind. It looks like the author only checks for that in the one instance where you’re [i]supposed[/i] to tie the rope to an immobile object.

 Most of these issues are [i]obvious[/i], and would be found by anybody poking around without going strictly by the walkthrough. It’s a shame that, unless I’ve missed my guess, nobody had an opportunity to test the game other than the author himself. It really shows a lack of polish, and that makes an otherwise nice little game difficult to enjoy.

The writing is fine. If there were problems, I overlooked them in light of the more pressing [i]technical[/i] issues. The story is fine too, although the interesting “packrat” theme just seems to give a name to what’s already the typical adventure game hero mindset. It’s used in character-building and in some backstory bits, but it never really seemed to factor into the medieval fantasy fairy tale except as an explanation as to why (and maybe [i]how[/i]) the protagonist picks up everything he encounters. It has an auto-purloin mode that I missed until I checked the walkthrough (because it requires doing something that seems completely counter-productive and repeatedly discouraged at the very beginning), but this seemed more annoying than useful. I reloaded a prior save and continued without it.

With more polish and better-clued puzzles, it would be a very short game. Without it, though, it’s all but unsolvable without the walkthrough. Since I’m judging the latter rather than the former, the most optimistic interpretation of my scoring criteria puts it at “X” -- below average. For my review set, I’ve added a “minus” to that. That’s for the evident lack of testing and some needlessly obscure, unclued areas. I’m positive the author can do better than this. Much of the game hints at better things, but a lack of testing is [i]Packrat[/i]’s downfall.
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=305&start=0#p1939
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A quick question about "Before"
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2007-11-07 08:29:19

AttackWithSub will get called if none of the before routines return true.  Exactly what it should do depends on your game.

For example, you might have something like:

[code]
if (second ~= sword or club)
  "That's a lousy weapon.";
if (AfterRoutines() == 0)
  "You strike ineffectively.";
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=305&start=0#p1940
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A quick question about "Before"
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-07 12:32:27

You'd only really need to define an AttackWithSub or PushWithSub if you wanted to have a different standard response. The alternative is to use precisely the solution you came up with (where it checks to see if second is zero or not) - but that will only work if you have first extended the grammar:
[code]
Extend 'attack'
* noun 'with'/'using' held -> Attack;
Extend 'pull'
* noun 'with'/'using' held -> Pull;
[/code]
Again, if you look at the [url=http://www.inform-fiction.org/source/library/Grammar/Grammar_2_4.html]library's verb definitions[/url], you'll notice that 'attack' is only defined with a single noun (called a token, I think). So if the player types anything after that first noun, it will say "I only understood you as far as...". If you look at the definition of 'push', you'll notice several lines. The parser goes through them from top to bottom to see which form of the command matches the player's input. One of the accepted forms for push is 'noun noun'. The second 'noun' is the object that goes into the global variable called 'second'. So if you type "push car with stick", then it will correctly parse 'car' as the first noun (and put it in the variable called noun) and will then imagine that 'with stick' is supposed to be the second noun - but 'with stick' does not match any object in scope; hence "you can't see any such thing".

When you specify something with the 'Extend' directive, it adds your line as though it is at the end of the list.

The 'held' token that I've put in the code above is a shorthand for accepting only an object that the player is holding. You don't have to use it; it just means that "hit car with tree" will not print your custom message, because the player isn't holding the tree (I presume).

That's my understanding of it all, anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=305&start=0#p1941
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A quick question about "Before"
User: Chris. / DateTime: 2007-11-07 13:45:46

Thanks so much. You guys have helped me more than you know.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=302&start=0#p1942
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: order your IF Comp in Public tshirt!
User: George / DateTime: 2007-11-09 09:40:23

As I mentioned on RAIF, there's only one more week left to order tshirts. Shoot me an email if you haven't yet!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=302&start=0#p1943
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: order your IF Comp in Public tshirt!
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-09 10:09:48

Is the image on the front, or the back? If front, you probably need to be specific with them that it's a larger size. They tend to assume "pocket-sized" (and even pocket positioning) otherwise. At least, the ones I've used before do.

That's pretty cheap for a shirt. The place I use seems very affordable at about $11.50 per shirt, plus $5 for mailing (priority mail bags - an extra $5 for global priority). I think last year, they were $17 total.

The demand for IFComp top-10 shirts seems to have decreased in the past couple of years. I think Stephen used to take 20 to 25 orders. It was down to about 16 when I did it in 2005, and less than that last year (maybe 11 -- so I ordered several more just for me to make the order). I'm not even sure what the interest will be this year. It might be worth asking first, before I get a quote on 15 shirts and only sell 5 or something. [emote]Smile[/emote]

Hopefully the cheaper price of your IFcomp in Public shirts are working a little better!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=302&start=0#p1944
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: order your IF Comp in Public tshirt!
User: George / DateTime: 2007-11-09 20:11:49

Thanks for the heads-up about that, this is the first tshirt order I've done and I'm learning all sorts of little things you wouldn't normally think of. The art is on the front -- the link in the original post to the tshirt mock-up is pretty much how it will look printed. 

The tshirts definitely are cheaper than I thought they would be! The printer was showing me shirts as examples and he pulled out one that he said was popular. It was like $4 a shirt. Then he showed me an American Apparel shirt, and I said, 'oh, that must be like $15?'. He says, no, that's retail -- these are $5! 

I am doing everything at cost though. For mailing I just weighed a tshirt on our postage scale and estimated first class/priority from there. I'm pretty sure I can mail one tshirt first class (haven't actually tried yet [emote]Smile[/emote] ), but anything more than one shirt and you go right up to priority mail (almost twice as expensive). Do you have the printer mail the shirts to those who ordered them, or do you hand mail them? I'm going to mail them myself. 

I don't have that many orders yet actually. I'm pretty sure I'll have to order extra to fill out the order. The problem as I see it is advertising -- I know there are people who would want the shirt if they saw it, just because I've run into friends on the street, showed them the art, and they've ordered the shirt right there [emote]Smile[/emote]. But there is a relative lack of advertising venues on IF hobby sites -- that is, advertising I can afford, as in, free advertising [emote]Wink[/emote]. Anyway, it's been a fun experience regardless.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=307&start=0#p1945
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: And the winner is...?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2007-11-09 20:39:02

In case the subject line doesn't make it clear enough, you really shouldn't read this until you've finished voting!
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For me, the winner is Lost Pig. In terms of writing, characterisation, polish and humour, it's head and shoulders over any of the other games this year. I'm a little surprised myself at this pick, because I tend to favour serious, story-heavy IF with easy (or no) puzzles. I don't think Lost Pig has any of those attributes - but gosh, it was fun! (I am, however, a sucker for great characters, and the characters in LP are fantastic.)

Other games I liked a lot were Deadline Enchanter, Varkana, Ferrous Ring and A Fine Day for Reaping. None of them were anywhere near perfect, but when they worked they worked brilliantly.

Overall, I'm pretty impressed with this year's competition. Lost Pig was the only real stand-out for me, but there wasn't a single game that I felt had absolutely nothing to recommend it.

And now, because everyone else is writing reviews and I must join the party, I present you with my (occasionally VERY spoilery) Haiku Reviews, organised roughly from least favourite to most favourite game.

[b]The Lost Dimension[/b]
A monster is here.
Where did the aeroplane go?
I need more hit-points.

[b]Adventure XT[/b]
Die, monsters, die, die!
I feel very thirsty and
I cannot go on.

[b]Jealousy Duel X[/b]
Must make Ex jealous.
Oops, I made a mistake and
I have no saved game.

[b]Eduard the Seminarist[/b]
I thought I must save
my friend from a madman but
we just read poems.

[b]Packrat[/b]
I try to acquire.
But the puzzles make no sense
and it's too buggy.

[b]Reconciling Mother[/b]
There are many rooms
and characters and items.
I don't understand.

[b]Press [Escape] to Save[/b]
I am in prison.
Pressing Escape does nothing.
It just gets weirder.

[b]Beneath: a Transformation[/b]
Nifty status line.
I go to the walkthrough and
I never come back.

[b]Gathered in Darkness[/b]
Ev'ryone is dead.
My captors take no notice
when I escape them.

[b]The Immortal[/b]
I have a sword that
I never use. Goblins kill
me from a distance.

[b]Orevore Courier[/b]
I lose. I lose again.
I will never get this right.
I blow up the ship.

[b]Slap That Fish[/b]
Take that, evil fish!
Violence is the answer to
this one. And puzzles.

[b]Wish[/b]
This is silly but
I finished it without hints.
I don't see the point.

[b]Fox, Fowl and Feed[/b]
I know the answer!
Oh wait, no I don't. I go
to the hints once more.

[b]My Mind's Mishmash[/b]
I start at the end.
I must take off my ghost cap
and wear it again.

[b]My Name is Jack Mills[/b]
My name is Jack Mills.
I say yes to ev'ryone
and find it mattered.

[b]Lord Bellwater's Secret[/b]
My lord's dark secret
is hidden in compartments.
But he left me clues.

[b]An Act of Murder[/b]
Someone is guilty.
I try to find whodunnit,
But I can't do maths.

[b]In the Mind of the Master[/b]
I break down a door
and become someone else. Then
I get stuck again.

[b]A Matter of Importance[/b]
I'll break the Guild's rules
to get even with Alice.
But first I'll play ball.

[b]The Chinese Room[/b]
Philosophical.
I get some of the jokes but
the puzzles stump me.

[b]Across the Stars[/b]
Deserted spaceship.
When I escape, the planet
is extremely strange.

[b]A Fine Day for Reaping[/b]
I am Death, but I
am bumbling and have a lisp.
This is not funny!

[b]Ferrous Ring[/b]
The prologue is cool.
But then I need the walkthrough
to use the 'dozer.

[b]Deadline Enchanter[/b]
I don't see that here?
Under-implementation
Could be delib'rate.

[b]Varkana[/b]
I must save the Book.
But first I'll have lunch and then
I'll change politics.

[b]Lost Pig[/b]
Grunk must find lost pig.
Grunk solve puzzles underground.
Grunk play with fire. Yay!

Disclaimer: I never played Ghost of the Fireflies or Vampyre Cross. I don't have or want a C64 emulator, and GotF refused to run on my computer for some reason. (So did Adventure XT, but I played it on another computer.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=307&start=0#p1946
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: And the winner is...?
User: George / DateTime: 2007-11-09 21:26:22

Emerald's reviews
are much more fun to read than:
"well implemented"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=307&start=0#p1947
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: And the winner is...?
User: Benjamin Sokal / DateTime: 2007-11-10 02:42:55

In terms of the fun factor, I have 3 games tied for 1st. But I agree with you and think Lost Pig could very well be the winner. It's hard to see anyone giving it a low or even mediocre score, whereas some of the other games that I though were a lot of fun had issues which many people will give stiff penalties for (bugs, etc.)

This is my first IFComp. How does it compare to previous competitions?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=307&start=0#p1948
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: And the winner is...?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2007-11-10 03:23:25

Well, this is only my second comp, so I don't have much to go on in the way of comparison. But I think last year's comp was much more diverse in terms of quality. Last year, there were quite a few games that I was really, really impressed by, but there were also a lot of games that I found absolutely nothing to like about. This year, on the other hand, my only real stand-out was Lost Pig, but I found something to like about every game I played.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=307&start=0#p1949
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: And the winner is...?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-10 04:09:45

[quote="Emerald"]
GotF refused to run on my computer for some reason. (So did Adventure XT, but I played it on another computer.)
[/quote]  

Try to move the game file to a directory that's up several levels (to c:\, for instance). Old DOS programs have a stricter limitation to the length of the full path of the program being run than more modern Windows versions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=308&start=0#p1950
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: The Chinese Room
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-10 21:13:29

The "official" version can be found at my website:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/chinese.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/chinese.shtml</a>

[quote]Game #23: The Chinese Room
By Joey Jones and Harry Giles
Played On: November 7th, 8th, 9th (7 hours 20 minutes)
Platform: Inform 7 (Glulx)

Game’s Blurb:
[i]A comic romp through the surreal world of philosophy thought experiments, vanquishing invisible pink unicorns, roistering with great thinkers, and battling the all-powerful Evil Demon. Suitable for beginners and experienced philosophers alike.[/i]

[b]>xyzzy[/b]
[i]A hollow voice says, "There are no obligatory Adventure references in this game."[/i]
[i]There is a long pause.[/i]
[i]"Oh, bugger."[/i]

[i]The Chinese Room[/i] really broke my stride. It required a couple hours a day over the course of three days to complete, and even that was split into multiple sessions. The authors realize it’s too long for the competition, but they submitted it anyway. I wonder at why it wasn’t saved for the Spring Thing or just released independently, but with long games showing up every year anyway (often from authors who may not even be aware that most players can’t finish in time), it’s nice that Jones and Giles were at least upfront about it in the “essentials” section of the game’s info menu.

It begins (no surprise) in a “Chinese Room” -- a construct of philosophy in which the question is posed “if you could accurately answer any question in Chinese [i]with[/i] Chinese -- not with an understanding of meaning, but strictly based on rules and pattern recognition -- would you still [i]know[/i] the Chinese language?” The problem for me was that [i]answering[/i] this question seemed to be the focus. I spent half an hour (maybe more) trying to make progress in what seemed to be a one-room game, only to realize eventually that I had gained a means of [i]escaping[/i] from the room.

And then, upon escape, it actually begins. The PC, in this world where philosophical “thought experiments” have come to life, makes his (or her – I’m not sure it’s ever established, although I did get the impression the PC is male) way through a fantasyland of logic and illogic. Without this clear and intentional design inspiration, the game might seem no different than any other wacky mesh of unlikely and unreal scenarios. But [i]with[/i] it, [i]The Chinese Room[/i] stands out for its really interesting concept.

The authors have thrown in more than two-dozen of these “thought experiments” (and other elements of or nods to philosophy in general), ranging in design from window dressing to multi-part puzzles. Many of the biggest names in philosophy are also on hand. Often, these scenarios [i]don’t[/i] fit together, except for the purpose of solving one to get some specific item that helps solve another. The game’s geography is just right (about 30 rooms, if I’ve counted correctly). This allows the disparate pieces some breathing room.

It’s never really necessary to solve the [i]experiments[/i] -- just the puzzles they represent. This often involves cheating or creatively redefining the premise in a given situation, or focusing on what key flaw other philosophers have identified in a particular hypothetical situation and then exploiting it.

My fear was that this would prove insurmountably difficult for me, given my non-existent background in philosophy. Three things keep that from being true. One, many of these situations are pretty familiar. Two, the built-in [i]THINK ABOUT[/i] command works a little like a footnote system, in that it expands upon and explains certain concepts without being blatant spoilers. Everything the authors have included that might possibly go unrecognized by or be confusing to players is cleverly explained there. Three, the puzzles are solved in ordinary ways: giving things to people, picking the right conversation topics, figuring out what to use how and where. I never felt that the answers eluded me because of a lack of understanding in terms of philosophical knowledge. The authors have succeeded brilliantly in that goal.

Still, it’s [i]hard[/i], even though clues work well when they’re seen. The authors have done a good job of making sure that the hints to complete any puzzle are there to be found within the game, but sometimes an obvious answer is forgotten when the clue was seen quite a bit earlier (using the book of Plato is an example, at least in my play-through). It also takes a high level of thoroughness, making this a game that’s likely to require long periods of “being stuck” in search of one particular thing completely overlooked earlier. This can happen several times (and in fact did, as I played). It’s not a bad way to challenge a player, but it’s definitely harder to accept in a game being played against a deadline.

Not every point of difficulty is due to a lack of observation. In addition to some bugs (including at least one major issue that seems to make the game unwinnable), a few things related to the game’s design can be problematic.

One is the inventory limit. The PC can hold only three items at one time without a sack, but the sack is easy to miss until later in the game (despite being obtainable at a much earlier point). Another is the lack of clear room exits in some locations (such as northeast from the beach). In another area, a particular NPC needs “something” to change his color, yet the game isn’t clear that it will have to be [i]more[/i] than one thing. This NPC takes what’s offered, but he doesn’t yield, raising the suspicion that the thing taken is better retrieved with an [i]UNDO[/i] -- especially when in at least one case you can’t obtain other similar items which could in theory also prove useful if you don’t bring the thing back to trade. A maze which doesn’t really seem to [i]be[/i] a maze has no obvious exit, but it’s simply a cut-scene when carrying the right item. The problem is that a player could get stuck in there (unless I missed a way out -- Ed: Woops. I did. It’s mentioned on the sign before entering), and without a well-planned prior save be forced to start again. A lack of verbs/commands in a few places (no [i]PAINT[/i] for instance, and no [i]LIGHT[/i] unless you specify the “with what” part – more examples are easy to come by) make it a little less smooth than it might otherwise have been.

At two hours, I hadn’t encountered many bugs (maybe a few minor ones, and some errors in the text), or even most of the issues mentioned above. I was more impressed at that point, and voted two points higher than the score I would eventually decide on for the review (and that’s the greatest disparity between my [i]vote[/i] score and my [i]review[/i] score yet). As I continued, though, a few things -- bugs of various sizes -- did become more evident.

Scenery is given a particular response to [i]GET[/i], [i]PULL[/i], [i]PUSH[/i], and [i]MOVE[/i] (“Philosophers are not yet supermen.”). That makes sense for houses, large objects, and scenery in general. However, this response is out of place when the thing is small and independent (such as a stack of cards). Near the start, reading the poster again (after learning Chinese) puts an object back in its starting state, even if you have taken it already. If you drop a phial of dye in the barbershop, you aren’t allowed to pick it back up in order to exchange it for another. A “Run-time problem P10” happens with most conversation topics when talking to the tree. The game doesn’t seem to recognize “x keys” even though you can interact with the “bunch of keys” in other ways. In some situations, descriptions are painted on (such as when attempting to talk to Mary after she’s already prone). A few other minor bugs are evident in my transcripts as well.

The biggest problem involved dropping a particular item. I did this due to the inventory limit (later solved when I obtained the sack), and later, when I realized I would need to return this particular item to exchange for another, I couldn’t find it. Fortunately, one other thing that wasn’t listed in the room after being dropped there [i]could[/i] be picked up (and luckily I dropped everything in the same location, so I knew it had to be there), but this one thing kept giving me the “not supermen” response, as if it had been added as scenery. I could look at it, even though it wasn’t listed in the room. But I couldn’t pick it up. This meant I had to reload a prior save (a 38-point save, when I had progressed to 71 points). This was one of my biggest disappointments in the game. I almost [i]didn’t[/i] reload, though. This was many hours into it already, and it was entertaining and well written enough otherwise to merit another chance.

The authors have injected the game with detail, but it still falls to a default message a little too often. It’s a funny twist on the “you don’t see that here” message, but it’s less amusing after the fiftieth time:

[i]“That's either not here, or carelessly undescribed by the fickle creators of this world.”[/i]

Some odd quirks make it into the writing. They’re like typos in the traditional sense. Letters are sometimes simply [i]missing[/i] from the front of words -- like “he” when it should be “the” or “ey” when it should be “they” -- almost like a search-and-replace gone horribly wrong.

Otherwise, the writing flows well. It’s descriptive, funny, and seems to express a silly philosophical wit. In several games this year, I’ve felt the writing was “fine.” That’s not a criticism; I just didn’t have much to say about it. But [i]The Chinese Room[/i] is a pleasure to read. Even when some bits are pretty long (especially some [i]THINK ABOUT[/i] text), I nearly never felt the urge to skim or lose focus.

The authors provided a separate walkthrough available at a URL referenced in the HELP menu, and I found this to be essential to completing the game in its present state. Aside for the bug that forced me to replay a section, the game doesn’t seem broken in any big way. It’s pretty well constructed, but the cumulative effect of many smaller issues and the difficulty level of the game in general had me peeking at these hints in several cases. Although they discourage its use, I’m pleased it was available. With some bug fixes and a little more attention to some minor rough spots, and without the pressure of the IFComp voting deadline, I think the game could prove challenging but solvable without the walkthrough.

I did make several hours of progress before resorting to the walkthrough. Once I did, though, I found that I had overlooked or forgotten just one key element of several puzzles in a row. It was like a chain reaction, where each thing enabled me to complete the next, and so forth. I completed the middle section thinking it wouldn’t have been so stupefying with just a [i]little[/i] more polish.

A built-in hint system is easy to miss, and I only found it late in the game. It would have been available earlier, but like many of the puzzles, it does require thoroughness to discover. I didn’t use this much, since I was far enough along and already committed to using the walkthrough when stuck. I did notice, however, that the action taken to “request” a hint is possible not just in the location where the hints are supposed to be (it requires interacting with a specific piece of scenery), but elsewhere in the game as well (and seemingly by accident).

In light of the game as a whole, I have scored it a “X+”. It’s an impressive work that should prove challenging to fans of puzzle-heavy games, although it’s made unintentionally difficult by a variety of smaller bugs and at least one bigger game-killing issue. I had enough fun with it to stay interested and entertained for the more than seven hours it required of me.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=308&start=0#p1952
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: The Chinese Room
User: Benjamin Sokal / DateTime: 2007-11-11 01:42:30

Regarding the maze you mentioned, you can indeed escape. Hint: The sign posted just outside the maze says:

Attention, Adventurer! This MAZE is not for the FAINTHEARTED, nor for the CORRUPT. This is the MORAL MAZE, where only the truly ethical shall pass. Should you find yourself LOST forever - what can you do but PRAY?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=308&start=0#p1953
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: The Chinese Room
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-11 09:50:11

Ah, yes, I do remember seeing that. For whatever reason, I quickly forgot about it once I had been wandering around for a little while. I'll make a note of it in the review, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=309&start=0#p1954
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Fox, Fowl and Feed
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-11 10:55:19

The "official" version can be found at my website:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/fff.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/fff.shtml</a>

[quote]Game #24: Fox, Fowl and Feed
By Chris Conroy
Played On: November 10th (35 minutes)
Platform: Inform 6 (Zcode)

Game’s Blurb:
[i]An IF interpretation of a classic puzzle.[/i]

[b]>xyzzy[/b]
[i]A hollow voice says, "I pity the fool who uses lame magic words."[/i]

[b]>plugh[/b]
[i]A hollow voice sighs, "Especially that one."[/i]

The shortest game of this year’s IFComp (rivaled only by [i]Wish[/i]) follows what is probably the [i]longest[/i] on my random play list. In [i]Fox, Fowl and Feed[/i], an interactive realization of a well known but simple logic puzzle, players must transport the three titular things one at a time in a rowboat across a river.

I can imagine it being a [i]little[/i] tougher to anyone who hasn’t already solved this particular logic puzzle, but it smartly introduces twists to the traditional answer. The first is that the rowboat isn’t initially ready to make the first trip. That’s easily solved. The second is that the first thing taken across won’t [i]stay[/i] there (and here, I must have smiled and nodded to myself, realizing that it wouldn’t be quite so simple after all). The solution to this isn’t hard to guess, and it requires remembering what you did to get the boat ready. This is a good primer for the rest of it, because no part of solving the game is as simple as the logic puzzle on which it is based. It requires working with much of what’s around in creative ways.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about a game this short is that it [i]does[/i] have bugs. Well, it has a couple of inconsequential but odd ones. The game attempts to drop scenery objects as though you’re holding them, if the rope is tied to one and you drop the rope. I also tripped over a strange quirk where picking up the fox says “taken” even though the fox remains on the ground.

Although not bugs per se, I noticed a few areas that might merit attention in a post-comp update. When sitting in the boat, what’s there is listed after the room description as being “in” the boat. What’s outside is listed simply as being “here.” When outside the boat, what’s in it isn’t listed at all -- just what’s on the ground. That’s okay and intuitive as described, except when sitting in the boat and nothing is there, it’s easy to forget that what [i]is[/i] listed is actually [i]not[/i] in the boat. It also seems that the game assumes you intend to drag an object behind the boat (“you won't be able to maneuver properly”) even if it’s [i]inside[/i] the boat (although it’s possible I’m just not visualizing what the author intended). I also saw no reason that the river needed to be three locations wide (one might have worked just as well), but maybe the author has worked it into some of the timing. I would like to be able to “tie x to y” (where neither “x” nor “y” is a rope), and since I’m holding the rope, have the game imply that this is what I intend to use.

The game is cleverly written, where the PC’s role as a delivery driver and the destination itself give flavor to its simple story. It’s short, yes; but it’s fun to play and read the whole way through. It doesn’t strictly fit the definition of a “X” on my voting scale, but since it’s not nearly as ambitious as games that take full advantage of the allotted two hour time limit, it’s hard to justify a higher score than this. It’s a well written, well designed, fun little puzzle game. I recommend it highly, as a short but entertaining diversion.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=270&start=0#p1955
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Celestianpower's review: Fox, Fowl and Feed
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-11 11:11:58

Finally, I can read this post that's been here almost from the beginning! [emote]Smile[/emote]

I felt the way about this that I did about Wish, although this one is marginally more fun. It's well constructed and a pleasure to play, so it deserves high marks. Yet it's pretty short (even by the standards set forth) and not overly ambitious, so it doesn't deserve marks as high as some of its peers. So, I ended up with a "pretty good" score -- above average, but not rising to excellence.

CP, why no more reviews? I had hoped that you (and others) would post more here as the comp progressed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=310&start=0#p1956
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Brand new to all this, trying to make my own game.
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-11 14:54:58

I'm trying to make a murder mystery style game and I'm struggling to make a working "accuse" action. I want the action to either end the game in victory if the target is the randomly assigned murderer otherwise I want the action to end the game in death, is this even possible? My attempts have all failed so far, here's my latest.

[code]Flooping is an action applying to one visible thing.
Understand "accuse [something]" as flooping.
Check flooping:
	if the noun is not a person, say "Only guests are the party can be accused, you can hardly expect [noun] to be the killer." instead.
Carry out flooping:
	"[if] [thing] is the murder, end the game in victory otherwise end the game in death[end if]."
Instead of flooping the player:
	say "You can't be the murderer, you've only just go to the party.".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=310&start=0#p1957
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Brand new to all this, trying to make my own game.
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2007-11-11 17:23:32

You need to change the line

[code]"[if] [thing] is the murder, end the game in victory otherwise end the game in death[end if]."[/code]

to

[code]if the noun is the murder, end the game in victory; otherwise end the game in death.[/code]

(I'm assuming that you meant to write "murder" here, not "murderer"; if it's just a typo, you'll have to change that.)

As you can see, I've removed the quotation marks, because they make the line into just a string of text which Inform doesn't know what to do with. I've changed "[thing]" to "the noun", which is how you refer to whatever the player accused. And I've added a semi-colon after "victory", so that Inform knows where that line ends and the next one begins.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=313&start=0#p1960
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: My Mind's Mishmash
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-12 18:28:01

The "official" version can be found at my website:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/mishmash.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/mishmash.shtml</a>

[quote]
Game #25: My Mind’s Mishmash
By Robert Street
Played On: October 11th (3 hours 35 minutes)
Platform: Adrift (Version 4)

Game’s Blurb:
[i]A mishmash of robots, psychic powers and "ghosts" in a game of action and survival.[/i]

Robert Street burst onto the IF scene in 2004 (as “Rafgon”) with a short Zcode game for Dave Bernazzani’s [i]C32 Competition[/i] -- a game called [i]Turning Point[/i], which I had the pleasure of beta testing. Since then, Robert has switched to Adrift (his [i]The Potter and the Mould[/i] took second place in the 2006 Spring Thing competition), except for one excellent Zcode game ([i]The Colour Pink[/i]), which placed highly in the 2005 IFComp.

I’ve come to expect good things from Robert, and on most levels, [i]My Mind’s Mishmash[/i] doesn’t disappoint. It begins in the last episode of a five-part story-within-a-story, before jumping back to the start after the episode concludes. This opener, however, is confusing and somewhat difficult to visualize. This might be intentional, and it’s at least solvable without a great understanding of what’s going on.

The story centers on “surviveor” (short for “survive or die”), whom the game describes as “a precocious schoolkid who plans to survive again today.” The PC’s story is layered over the larger backdrop of a corporate-run world, in which the workers of a mining operation find themselves in conflict with another global organization. As interlopers, “surviveor” and his nemesis “memoryblam” (lowercase on purpose) become mixed up in the conflict (and in a coming war against aliens invaders). With a ghost-like ability to become invisible (a clever construction of the world they inhabit), the two kids move about largely undetected.

This “ghost cap” plays a part in several of the game’s puzzles. When invisible, “surviveor” can’t interact with much of anything. When visible, however, he’s quickly caught (if anybody is nearby to notice). As he searches for an exit from the complex (hoping to avoid his arch enemy in the process), the [i]backdrop[/i] story moves forward or backwards by way of a “node ripper” device. It’s a bit like time travel, but to say more would be to say too much.

The game’s puzzles fit well with the story. Most are logical, although I struggled with a few of them. I couldn’t figure out what to do with the explosives (I needed a hint), but it made perfect sense after I saw the answer. In another spot (while suspended on a grating above an invisible “memoryblam” and an alien), I had the right idea but just didn’t perform the proper action. Another spot, involving the use of a “cold suit,” was made difficult because I attempted to control the thing with buttons and levers instead of a more direct imperative (I suspect better cluing might have been the key there). Most notably (and disappointingly), the endgame requires visualizing the area on top of a hill in order to take an unclued and unprompted action. My mental image was evidently off, because I needed another of the built-in hints here as well.

The game has [i]many[/i] puzzles, though, and most work pretty well. Even though the hints helped in those few instances, I never felt a reliance on them. Even after asking for help, I was able to progress quite a ways on my own until the next too-tough spot. What hurt most was just my inability to [i]visualize[/i] several areas of the game. I don’t know if this was the writer’s fault or my own, but I haven’t had such difficulties in most of the other games this year.

Something about Robert’s writing has always struck me as a little [i]off[/i], but I never can pinpoint exactly what it is. In prior games, it seemed to be long or confusing sentences, or maybe problems with punctuation. In [i]My Mind’s Mishmash[/i], nothing stands out as [i]wrong[/i] per se. It’s just... lacking in color? Dry? Matter-of-fact without any warmth or excitement? His stories [i]aren’t[/i] dull. His games are [i]fun[/i]. He has a way with world-building and puzzles. But... something about the writing just makes it all less effective than it [i]should[/i] be. I never noticed much technically wrong with this one -- just a few minor mistakes here and there -- but [i]something[/i] about it keeps it from evoking the intended excitement of thrilling chases, epic battles, and awe-inspiring scenery.

Although the game is well constructed in general (with a few bugs -- I’ll talk briefly about those coming up), two particular non-standard design decisions struck me as odd. First, rooms (or locations) aren’t given titles. Initially, this made map-keeping a little more difficult, but since room titles do appear on Adrift’s built-in auto-map, this might only be a problem for players with a non-standard Adrift runner. Also, the game never enters an “ending” state. This one could have something to do with the premise itself, but if so, I wasn’t quite convinced (and it seems to me that it would work just as well with a traditional ending routine). In essence, even when the game ends (or reaches an earlier losing ending), Adrift is still taking commands as if nothing happened. Granted, you can’t [i]do[/i] much of anything (you’re given suggestions to reload, restart, or undo), but the traditional “game over” condition is oddly absent.

It certainly feels polished in most areas, but a few bugs (or areas for improvement) are present in the competition version. Disambiguation difficulties prevent referencing a “node” when carrying the node ripper. The two sections of the complex are termed “northwest” and “southeast” at one point, even though on the map they appear to be “northeast” and “southwest.” I’m told to test out a mine cart even after I already have. The laptop can’t be called “computer.” The ghost cap prevents me from talking to “memoryblam,” even though he can talk to me. A few other small quirks are noted in my transcripts, but this one stands out as a disappointing bit of irony:

[i]memoryblam is blocking the northern exit and he raises his gun in your direction. Running away might be a good option now.[/i]

[b]>run away[/b]
[i]Why would you want to run?[/i]

[i]memoryblam shoots you before you can do anything else. You have not survived...[/i]

None of these issues keep the game from being enjoyable and recommendable, although a post-competition update would be ideal.

By the end, most of the two blended stories make sense. There is, however, a bit of a mystery shrouding “surviveor’s” world. The answers may lie in subtle clues encountered along the way -- a bit about homework, a bit about the scarcity of books, a bit about privacy, and the nature of [i]My Mind’s Mishmash[/i] in general -- but I never quite worked it all out. I get the gist of it, and the game makes it clear what’s going on. That’s enough to enjoy the story, but I still wondered a little about the world [i]not[/i] seen.

I voted it a “X” at two hours, but a few more difficulties later in the game bring the “review” score down one point. A “plus” for some cool in-game gadgets, fun puzzles, and a really intriguing sci-fi premise make it an “X+” on my judging scale.
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=313&start=0#p1961
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: My Mind's Mishmash
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-12 18:38:51

Oh, and I agree with what you said in your review, emshort, about the game's blurb being misleading and potentially off-putting (in different words). From this:

"A mishmash of robots, psychic powers and "ghosts" in a game of action and survival."

...I expected absurdities and a lack of seriousness. I expected a real "mishmash" of crazy ideas introduced just for the sake of it, and that's really not what the game is like.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=314&start=0#p1962
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Press [Escape] to Save
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-13 14:56:45

The "official" version can be found at my website:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/pets.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/pets.shtml</a>

[quote]
Game #26: Press [Escape] to Save
By Mark Jones
Played On: October 12th (1 hour 30 minutes)
Platform: Inform 6 (Zcode)

Game’s Blurb:
[i]Not even that command works.[/i] or [i]A story demonstrating society.[/i]

[i]Press [Escape] to Save[/i] is Mark’s first work of interactive fiction, marred by many of the problems first-time authors encounter. The author describes it as an experiment, in order to help him get a feel for game design. He offers that his future games will be better, although this suggestion trails off in a suspicious ellipsis, making me think he’s not entirely convinced he’ll [i]write[/i] another game (but I could be mistaken). Entries by first-time IF authors have done quite well in the IFComp over the years, but many fall short --as does this one. It’s usually foreboding when an author writes in terms of regret before the game has really even gotten underway.

The story seems to be an attempt at surrealism. Although I’m finding this harder to buy into as I play more similarly-styled games, it’s still interesting in its own right. The PC and a bunkmate are rescued from prison by a strangely glowing “person,” taken to this person’s residence (converted from an old base on Mars), and sent on a mission into the “mind dimension” to disrupt an ad hoc siphon on the pool of knowledge. The game starts out with minimal (if any) puzzles, seeming to be strictly story-based. Once the [i]actual[/i] mission starts, however, things get more complicated.

Because the author is interested in design, much of this review will focus on that -- starting with what’s [i]good[/i]. The story is pretty original, although at its heart it’s just “go on a strange quest for a strange person.” A built-in ASCII map to the “mind dimension” is a nice bonus, and it makes that area more manageable than it might otherwise have been. It’s also appropriately IFComp-sized.

One thing I particularly like about well-designed IF is attention to detail. If something is mentioned in a room description, I want to be able to interact with it -- [i]at least[/i] by examining, but preferably by whatever action the particular thing suggests of itself. “You don’t need to refer to that” is passable but not ideal. “You don’t see that here” is much worse. I like a degree of freedom to push at the boundaries. If an NPC asks me to follow him north and the room has two other exits, I will probably try [i]not[/i] following just to get a better feel for how well the author has anticipated this. This is more common when I play to vote and review (I don’t do nearly as much of this in other kinds of games I play), but an author should always assume a player might try these things [i]accidentally[/i] if nothing else. When I refer to a good or bad level of implementation, this is usually my measuring stick.

[i]P[E]TS[/i] basically fails here. Straying from the railroaded path (not that some railroading is necessarily [i]bad[/i] -- it just needs to be handled well) sometimes results in [i]blank[/i] responses. The only drawer I noticed to be implemented at all is the [i]one[/i] drawer where an important item is hidden. All others simply don’t exist in the game world, despite their appearance in room descriptions. Scenery objects are rarely implemented at all, making it easy to know what’s simply not important but hindering believability and confidence in the game world in the process. Plus, it’s [i]too[/i] easy to dismiss [i]everything[/i] the author hasn’t explicitly drawn attention to, when the increasingly anticipated response is that you can’t see any such thing.

Developing a rich game world that doesn’t confuse a player with non-essentials is tricky, I know -- but I don’t think the answer is simply to leave those things entirely unimplemented. Every game response is an opportunity to provide back-story and characterization. Every unimportant item is a chance to redirect a player’s attention back to what [i]is[/i] important. One trick is to keep descriptions of unimportant scenery fairly short (otherwise it seems important enough to have merited a long description), and to avoid introducing [i]new[/i] information in the process. It’s not necessary to describe the intricacies of a shower curtain if the shower curtain isn’t important. By keeping it brief and not mentioning extras that you might [i]also[/i] have to implement for added realism (that it’s attached by rings to a long rod, for instance), players are less likely to mistake unimportant items as something more. At the same time, they’re rewarded with a richer, more believable experience. It’s a balance that happens more in the writing than in the design: draw attention toward what’s important and away from what isn’t. Help the player stay focused, but reward (in small ways) his or her attempts to push the limits of your game world.

Actions suggested by what happens in the text don’t often work in [i]P[E]TS[/i]. I tried to scream when an NPC did (just to see what would happen), but it’s not a recognized command. “Rest” isn’t a synonym for “sleep”; the game suggests the former but only understands the latter.

Knowing the conventions of IF in general and the default grammar of your chosen development language helps. Several times in [i]P[E]TS[/i] I was met with inaccurate or misleading responses, not because the author intended it that way but because he simply forgot about (or wasn’t aware of) the default messages.

An example:

[b]>sleep[/b]
[i]Hoping that this a dream you climb up nimbly to the top bunk and decide to rest...[/i]

[b]State of Uncosciousness[/b]
[i]No light.  No sound. No pictures. No people. Nothing.[/i]

[b]>wake up[/b]
[i]The dreadful truth is, this is not a dream.[/i]

If intentional, the response to “wake up” might be telling. But it isn’t. Essentially, the PC [i]does[/i] seem to be dreaming at that point. The author just didn’t anticipate that a player would attempt to wake up, and Inform’s default handling takes over.

Another, given that the PC is in jail and can’t possibly feel self-confident and chipper:

[b]>x me[/b]
[i]As good-looking as ever.[/i]

That’s perhaps nit-picky, given that many IF authors forget about “x me” (I’ve done it too). Here’s another example, in locations with water (or when carrying water):

[b]>drink water[/b]
[i]There's nothing suitable to drink here.[/i]

Perhaps not, given what the water represents, but this doesn’t seem to be intentional. It’s just Inform letting me know that nothing has actually been implement [i]as[/i] water. The game also lets you shoot yourself with the gun, but of course nothing untoward results from it.

Suspension of disbelief must be helped along, especially in a story that requires an abundance of it. This requires a high degree of consistency in the story and the model of the world. [i]P[E]TS[/i] seems accidentally inconsistent in several areas. For instance, a key that is initially described as “the weirdest key you ever saw” has an “examine” response that likens it to a magnetic hotel key card. That’s certainly not the weirdest key [i]I’ve[/i] ever seen (or can imagine). The body of a decapitated person begins talking later in the game (the key here: no head equals no vocal cords), without even a hint as to how. The PC’s bunkmate is referred to as a “creature” (try talking to him when he’s asleep) without any indication as to why. Noises are described as a matter of routine in some places, but when you “listen,” you hear nothing (except the noises that repeat right after the default message is printed). The “person” is a super-genius, yet his dialogue doesn’t differ in any way (even to suggest a degree of mental superiority). In the “mind dimension,” an exit to the northwest is backtracked by going south (instead of southeast). That might fit with the curvature of the tunnels (or something), but it wasn’t really described in the game.

After the fairly forward-moving first part, some tricky puzzles (most to do with good timing of actions) had me relying on the walkthrough. I was also stuck because I just didn’t know what my [i]goals[/i] were. I remembered that I was supposed to shut down the pump somehow, but I had forgotten the rest of it. At the time, and [i]because[/i] I had forgotten, it seemed that I just hadn’t been given guidance at all. It’s there alright, but it’s explained earlier in the game and never reinforced or reintroduced in any way later.

If this is a story about society (as the author indicates), then I probably missed the point. As best I can tell, knowledge is power and power corrupts. But that’s reaching.

The writing has an odd appeal, but it’s full of technical problems of various kinds (repeated words, missing words, misspellings, and uncategorized mistakes in general). What stands out more than these problems, however, are the odd choices in words or phrasing from time to time. This makes some of the story unintentionally amusing. It probably loses a little out of context, but here are a few of my favorites:

[i]The walls are painted with beige wallpaper.[/i]
[i]The room inherits features of regular master bedrooms;[/i]
[i]"Um, we can't start the mission without the key", you say in a common-sense tone.[/i]
[i]You sense a sinister presence in the atmosphere.[/i]
[i]"This is the sad example!  Let me explain myself."[/i]

How do you paint wallpaper on? Was this bedroom named as the beneficiary in the wills of several “regular” master bedrooms? What does a common-sense tone [i]sound[/i] like? Just how well [i]can[/i] this PC sense things in the atmosphere? And hey, I want the [i]happy[/i] example! I’m stretching, I know, but these are the kinds of thoughts that popped into my head. The author probably [i]wasn’t[/i] going for a comedic tone, but poor word choice can cause unintentional humor. I had an impression -- as wrong as this may very well be -- that the author is either very young or a non-native speaker of English (and maybe both).

In addition to all that I’ve discussed are several honest to goodness bugs. The game begins in a fixed-width font, and I assumed this to be intentional -- for a particular effect. After viewing the map, however, it switches back to a normal proportional font. What I realized is that the entire game up to that point was fixed-width because fixed-width text in the intro simply failed to set it back. It’s possible to talk to people even though there are no topics to list. When not specifying the key in “unlock door” commands, the game always assumes the “sklorfel” -- even though it can’t unlock [i]anything[/i]. Some responses are entirely blank. The game shows too many blank lines in some places, and no blank lines (where needed) elsewhere. Three of the same “programming error” messages are shown in a row when turning on the sink in the bathroom.

As bugs go, these are minor. It’s just that the combined effect of [i]all[/i] these things -- iffy writing, sparse implementation, inconsistencies and bugs -- result in a game that isn’t nearly up to the standards set by most of its competition. As much effort as the author put into it, and as much fun as it [i]could[/i] be, I suspect it will still rank near the bottom in the final results. Even though I can find enough good in [i]Press [Escape] to Save[/i] to keep it out of the “very bad” category in my increasingly obsolete[b]*[/b] [i]scoring guidelines[/i], it’s still only a “X”.

To the author: If you’re interested, email me for my transcript, which points out several things in a bit more detail. And keep at it. If you like writing IF, [i]keep[/i] writing IF. I believe that your future games [i]will[/i] improve.

[b]* [/b][size=9]In years past, I’m sure I wasn’t nearly so critical. A paragraph could summarize what I “look for” in a game at each score level. But these guidelines -- kept with minor revisions for this year but in serious need of abandonment in future competitions -- assume that most aspects of a game are on an equal level. In other words, for a game to be great, it should have a great story, great puzzles (if there are puzzles), great writing, a great concept... and more. If a game is average, then the story will be average, the puzzles will be tricky and sometimes unclued, the writing will have some problems... etc. In reality, that’s not always how it goes. A game with a wonderful story can have bad puzzles. A game with great writing can be based on a lousy concept. Getting down into the details of how [i]each[/i] area fares without regard to the others might give me a more legitimate score, but I simply haven’t decided what kind of judging criteria I should adopt in future competitions. I need [i]something[/i] to be sure each game is judged fairly and to the same standards as every other, but I haven’t yet decided what this should be.[/size]
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=314&start=0#p1963
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Press [Escape] to Save
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-13 15:44:51

Grr.... I should have expanded on my complaints about the puzzle design, but I lack the energy to add it now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=314&start=0#p1964
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Press [Escape] to Save
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-13 15:59:35

You mean you *can't* paint wallpaper onto a wall? Goddamn, no wonder my bedroom wall's such a mess...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=314&start=0#p1965
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Press [Escape] to Save
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-13 16:00:10

(Love to comment on the rest of the review but as the comp is still running, I'll have to force myself to wait a few more days.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=314&start=0#p1966
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Press [Escape] to Save
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-13 16:47:51

I suppose you can paste it on. Stick it on. Roll it on. But I've never seen liquified wallpaper that can be *painted* on.

The more I think about it, and now that I'm checking out a few of the other reviews, the more I think the author may not be a native English-speaker. There are just too many odd wording choices.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=314&start=0#p1967
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Press [Escape] to Save
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-13 18:57:58

Having spent my afternoon reading essays by college freshmen and sophomores, I can assure you that even native speakers of English can come up with bizarrely off phrases, especially if they are trying to sound writerly but just don't have a good enough command of the vocabulary they think they're supposed to use. I had more the sense that that was the problem here than that the author was translating from another language.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=315&start=0#p1968
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Help Please - Anchorhead
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-13 21:14:49

Hey Folks-

I'm new to IF and am loving it.  I've been playing Anchorhead and am very stuck.  I even downloaded a "walkthrough" just trying to get unstuck - and it's steering me wrong!  [emote]:cry:[/emote] 

Apparently, I am missing a key.  The iron key...the one to the crypt.
The walkthrough says:

[color=#000080]The Key In The Cellar.
head...into the kitchen. Grab the flashlight from and head for the pantry, turning the torch on 
first. In there is a broom, which comes in very useful for various bit of the 
game, so get it. Unlock the cellar door (I have this key), and head down...go into the Storage room. Have a good poke about, and while 
you are at it, have a closer look at the spiders web. Before you get the key,
though, clean the web with the broom - that way, the spider won`t get you.
Put the iron key on the keyring - a useful tool, that - and head upstairs."[/color]

I get the flashlight, head down, get to the storage room...and there is no key.  No spider.  No web.  No spiders web.  I've looked up, down, all around - under everything and searched everything.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated!
It seems like there is nothing else for me to do until I get this key.
Thanks - look forward to your help.
Eddie

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=315&start=0#p1969
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: found it
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-13 22:12:19

Nevermind - found the key! [emote]Embarassed[/emote] 
Thanks.
Eddie

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=315&start=0#p1970
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Help Please - Anchorhead
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2007-11-13 22:12:47

If you've searched everything you should have come across the spider's web by now. Did you find the box of newspaper clippings? (That turns up in the same action as the spider's web.)
If not, the command that should bring them both to light is...
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SEARCH BOXES (or SEARCH CRATES, since the crates and boxes are implemented as one object).

If you've done that and nothing has turned up, I admit I'm stumped. In that case, you may have found a bug in the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=314&start=0#p1971
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Press [Escape] to Save
User: drfroth / DateTime: 2007-11-13 23:23:00

You can always paint the wallpaper after it is on the wall if you are extra lazy and do not feel like taking it down.

Wallpaper is scary.  It's like finding salamanders in your eggnog.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=316&start=0#p1972
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Adventure XT has been disqualified
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2007-11-14 10:45:24

Adventure XT has been disqualified for containing copyrighted content (Smurfs, in this case).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=316&start=0#p1973
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Adventure XT has been disqualified
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-14 11:30:19

It's probably related to it being gone from the vote list now, but the vote page is telling me I have 0 more games to vote on even though I have one left. It might be because I had already put in my vote for Adventure XT, so it's being factored into the total (27 votes entered, and only 27 games now). Not sure if it's something fixable (or even worth bothering to fix). I assume it'll still let me cast the final vote, and just tell me I have -1 games left to vote on?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=316&start=0#p1974
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Adventure XT has been disqualified
User: Benjamin Sokal / DateTime: 2007-11-14 11:45:52

I had a reply here with a possible solution but as soon as I submitted it, I realized I was misinformed. Isn't that just how it goes? Since I can't delete the message I'll just modify it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=315&start=0#p1975
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Help Please - Anchorhead
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-14 11:49:02

Thanks so much - I had apparently done everything [i]except[/i] that one command, of course.  
I'm sure I'll get stuck again - so keep an eye out. [emote]Smile[/emote]  
Thanks for being so quick with the help.
Eddie

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=316&start=0#p1976
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Adventure XT has been disqualified
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-14 13:14:21

I can always delete a message (I didn't realize general users were prevented from it). If it happens again, just let me know in a private message or something.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=316&start=0#p1977
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Adventure XT has been disqualified
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-14 13:43:31

So is that 2 of Paul Panks' 3 entries that have now been disqualified for one reason or another?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=317&start=0#p1978
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Adventure XT
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-14 14:44:54

The "official" version can be found at my website:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/advxt.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/advxt.shtml</a>

[quote]
Game #27: Adventure XT
By Paul Panks (writing as “dunric”)
Played On: October 13th (2 hours 0 minutes)
Platform: PowerBASIC (Compiled MS-DOS Executable)

Game’s Blurb:
[i]Adventure XT is an adventure set in the fabled land of Blarg.[/i]

I didn’t play [i]Adventure XT[/i] exactly how Paul Panks intended it to be played. With his previous entry this year ([i]Ghost of the Fireflies[/i]), I had tried to recompile it in QB 4.5 so that I could add a transcript ability to the game. That one proved too big to even load in the QB environment, and I never got it working with the demo version of PowerBASIC either (it disables loading and saving of program source, and trying to paste the source into the editor proved to be a mess). [i]Adventure XT[/i] is a little smaller, though, and I was able to load and recompile it in QB.

I made two minor changes. First, I changed the color scheme to gray-on-blue. The green-on-green style that’s hard-coded into the program was none too easy on the eyes. Second, I found verb definitions in a data section near the end, and I changed “examine” to “x”. If I had needed to type “examine” throughout the game, I’d have been very disappointed.

Then, with QuickBASIC 4.5, I recompiled it. This had the added benefit of handling standard output the right way (where PowerBASIC, for whatever reason, builds its own I/O without regard to traditional DOS [i]stdout[/i]). This allowed me to run the game as “ADVXT.EXE > OUT.TXT” which redirects [i]all[/i] output to a log file called “out.txt” instead of the screen. If that sounds like jargon, it’s basically a way that I could run a transcript of actual game output, where the game otherwise has no transcript ability at all. It’s a crutch, I know, but I [i]like[/i] to record and annotate a transcript as I play IF, since it helps me review everything that happens later.

But, with output to a file instead of the screen, I needed one more piece. Using a trial version of “Hoo WinTail” (a pretty slick Windows program that works like the Linux “tail -f” command, but with some bells and whistles), I could monitor the log file in real time, shrink the game window itself to just a single line (for input) positioned under the WinTail window, and play the game much like the Adrift and Quest layouts provide. (Incidentally, this made my gray-on-blue customization unnecessary.) I set WinTail’s refresh rate to one-tenth of a second, turned off the separating red-line option that is otherwise shown before each new section, increased the font size, and voila. I had a game to play that’s [i]still[/i] everything it was to begin with, but in a more accessible way.

That’s probably the most fun I had with the entire game.

Each game Paul Panks writes seems to be the reinvention of his prior games. This is true enough in the reuse and reorganization of familiar story elements (dragons, swords, flat characters that call you “knave” a little too frequently), but even the [i]program[/i] seems to be written from scratch. In one game, Paul will support “x” for “examine.” In the next, he won’t. In one game, the response to unrecognized commands is meaningless. In the next (as is the case here, thankfully), the game is able to compare input against known verbs and nouns and at least tell the player which one was unrecognized. Paul seems to have no standard, no re-usable code, no design methodology -- just a twenty-years-outdated point of reference and a penchant for rewriting essentially the same game in different ways.

[i]Ghost of the Fireflies[/i] was broken, but it had a much more interesting story and some trippy, descriptive writing. [i]Adventure XT[/i] is almost entirely generic, with room descriptions that scarcely cover the basics, let alone evoke a sense of wonder and excitement. [i]Jesus of Nazareth[/i] (perhaps the best and most playable game Paul has written in these past few years) had a sense of style and purpose -- a creative energy that is completely lacking in [i]Adventure XT[/i]. Complete [i]sections[/i] of this game seem to serve no purpose, consisting merely of similarly-described but empty locations (the burnt forest comes to mind).

Paul’s goal -- and I’m guessing here, as the game wasn’t accompanied by any of the author’s traditional notes or commentaries -- seems to have been to create a game that’s simple to play and accessible to all. It really doesn’t [i]have[/i] puzzles. At most, it’s necessary to find certain items that [i]allow[/i] progress. Having a rope, for instance, allows one to climb trees (the “up” direction then works). Having a lantern (with oil) allows one to travel in dark areas. Picking up items is about the extent of it.

One interesting addition to inventory management (which, most likely, won’t make an appearance in Paul’s next few games since each one is written from scratch) is the container concept. A knapsack, and later a backpack, can be used to hold items that would otherwise exceed the inventory limit. I found this to work reasonably well, although this kind of thing is already inherent to IF programming languages.

But this is about as deep as the implementation goes. Only creatures and items can be examined. [i]No[/i] scenery is implemented -- if you need to interact with it in any way, it will be listed following the room description. Water is implemented as a separate item, so even though you need the bottle to get water, the bottle actually remains empty and the water just kind of “floats” there in your inventory. For that matter, the water is described as both drinkable [i]and[/i] undrinkable, depending on what you look at. Only [i]one[/i] verb is allowed for any command, because they’re in a rigid and numbered list. It also seems that only [i]one[/i] noun is valid for any given item as well (seemingly for the same reason), so that “knapsack” can never be referred to simply as “sack.” You can only drink water from the fountain in the village. Another fountain, found later, [i]has[/i] water but the game doesn’t seem to realize it. You can’t put oil in the lantern, because it too just sort of floats in your inventory (possibly in a flask, but I’m not entirely sure -- it just says “oil”) to enable the lantern to work.

A thirst countdown is generously lengthy, but still needless. The game doesn’t even [i]try[/i] to discourage the slaughter of innocent NPC’s. Everybody is fair game, it seems, and there is [i]nothing[/i] in the way of characterization (except maybe for the Smurfs -- and I’m coming to that) for any of them. Swap the name of one with the name of another, and you’d probably never know the difference. Turn-based combat works okay here, but you can’t cancel it or run away (if you can, I missed it), and it’s the [i]same thing[/i] Paul has done in every other game. Opponents are sometimes said to have “massacred you into small fragments,” yet you live on with plenty of HP to spare. “Get food and wine” says “ok” even though it really only understood “get food” (I only tried this because [i]Ghost of the Fireflies[/i] told me it would work, but it didn’t, so I thought maybe Paul got the two games confused when writing the instructions).

What [i]Smurfs[/i] are doing in [i]Adventure XT[/i], I can’t possibly fathom. It’s as though Paul woke up one day, forgot what game he was writing, watched an episode on TV, laughed a bit, and then designed a whole section where you pass by Papa Smurf and Brainy Smurf on the way to Gargamel’s castle to “steal” Azrael the cat so that Handy Smurf can use him as a rug and provide the master-weapon required to defeat the [i]actual[/i] boss, Mordimar. (Edit: The inclusion of Smurfs has led to [i]Adventure XT[/i] being disqualified from this year’s competition.)

I made a map as I went along. This is necessary to avoid getting lost in the game’s large maze-like geography. I noticed later that an ASCII map is embedded in the source code, but as far as I can tell, [i]no verb[/i] in the entire game will display it.

I don’t really have much else to say about [i]Adventure XT[/i]. I’m probably being more critical and less compassionate for this one than [i]any[/i] of Paul’s prior games. This could be because I’m nearly to the end of my random play list and I’ve grown a little cranky. Or, it might just be that [i]Adventure XT[/i] is a disappointment on every level. I’ve scored it a “X” (not a “X”), basically because it’s simple (with mapping) and playable but not much else. At least [i]some[/i] effort has gone into it, but it still feels like the product of a Random Idea Generator that simply cranked out an arbitrary setting to comprise a large number of empty location. I won’t say Paul phoned this one in, but it’s by no means his best or most creative work.
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=316&start=0#p1979
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Adventure XT has been disqualified
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2007-11-14 14:51:00

He had a similar problem when Vampyre Cross was dq'd, and fixed it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=315&start=0#p1980
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Help Please - Anchorhead
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2007-11-14 16:37:26

You're welcome!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=316&start=0#p1981
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Adventure XT has been disqualified
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2007-11-14 16:58:51

[quote="Merk"]
It's probably related to it being gone from the vote list now, but the vote page is telling me I have 0 more games to vote on even though I have one left. It might be because I had already put in my vote for Adventure XT, so it's being factored into the total (27 votes entered, and only 27 games now). Not sure if it's something fixable (or even worth bothering to fix). I assume it'll still let me cast the final vote, and just tell me I have -1 games left to vote on?
[/quote] 
I saw the same thing (and never got around to emailing Stephen - bad me), but it let me enter my last vote just the same and cheerfully informed me I had -1 games left to vote on. It can't be related to AdvXT's disqualification, though, because I was seeing it long before that. If it was related to Vampyre Cross's disqualification, you'd think it would have done the same thing for AdvXT and now be subtracting two from the total. I don't know.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=316&start=0#p1982
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Adventure XT has been disqualified
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2007-11-14 17:32:37

As I said, he fixed the problem caused by Vampyre Cross after I emailed him about it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=317&start=0#p1983
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Adventure XT
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-14 18:04:25

I'd love to know why people keep playing his games. Is it the idea that, yes, his last twenty have sucked but his next one might be the masterpiece to knock Photopia off its perch?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=317&start=0#p1984
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Adventure XT
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2007-11-14 18:36:04

I am under no delusions that Panks will improve; I play because I try to play every game in the comp.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=317&start=0#p1985
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Adventure XT
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-14 19:47:32

Ditto that.

Also, I haven't completely hated all his games. Quality varies, but I've found entertainment in the more offbeat stories (Nazareth) -- and his writing is sometimes worth reading (Fireflies). Plus, I root for the underdog. In a way, yeah -- I keep thinking he's going to create something really brilliant, where the home-brewed parser isn't even a factor. A delusion maybe, but as long as he keeps trying, I'll probably keep playing -- at least in the context of the IFComp.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=316&start=0#p1986
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Adventure XT has been disqualified
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2007-11-15 03:09:22

Oh, by "he" you meant Stephen Granade! I thought you meant Paul Panks and I was very confused...  [emote]Embarassed[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=310&start=0#p1987
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Brand new to all this, trying to make my own game.
User: Chris. / DateTime: 2007-11-15 12:29:39

He says "Thank you," I'd imagine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=307&start=0#p1988
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: And the winner is...?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-15 16:14:28

I'm done playing! **WHEW** I just barely made it!

I feel much better about this year's batch now than I did early on.

My prediction is:

1st - Lost Pig
2nd - An Act of Murder
3rd - Lord Bellwater's Secret

From there, it's foggy. That's not exactly the order I've ranked them (2nd and 3rd are swapped in my rankings, and they're actually 3rd and 4th with a different game in 2nd place).

A really strong showing by Adrift authors this year. I can see one or two making the top 10, if not all three. No joke entries this year, thankfully. There are a few bad games, but they weren't entered just as jokes.

I still need to write and post my final review. Then, I'll be adding everything to a "2007" section of the <a href="http://www.sidneymerk.com">www.sidneymerk.com</a> website later tonight. I'll go ahead and post scores when I do that, in case anybody is interested.

I've decided not to review the Commodore 64 game, Paul Panks' other disqualified entry. I'll go ahead and include Adventure XT in my official review set, although it's dead last in order by score.

(Nice Haiku reviews by the way, Emerald!)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=307&start=0#p1989
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: And the winner is...?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2007-11-15 19:14:09

[quote="Merk"]
I'm done playing! **WHEW** I just barely made it!
[/quote]  
*cheers*

[quote="Merk"]
My prediction is:

1st - Lost Pig
2nd - An Act of Murder
3rd - Lord Bellwater's Secret
[/quote]  
That sounds about right to me. I wasn't particularly enthused by Lord Bellwater's Secret (I thought it was mostly well-implemented but rather dull) but I certainly see it placing highly. Looking at my scores this year, I seem to have been more likely to give a high score to an interesting, ambitious game that missed the mark than a well-implemented but less interesting game. Last year, on the other hand, I was much readier to mark games down for implementation problems.

Which game do you think will get the Golden Banana? I'm still tipping Deadline Enchanter.

[quote="Merk"]
I still need to write and post my final review.
[/quote]  
I'm looking forward to it. I've really enjoyed reading your reviews over the comp period. Even when you were critical, you were always gracious and constructive about it - something I'd really appreciate if I were a comp author. And your thoroughness blew my mind!

[quote="Merk"]
(Nice Haiku reviews by the way, Emerald!)
[/quote]  
Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=307&start=0#p1990
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: And the winner is...?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-15 19:33:17

[quote="Emerald"]
Which game do you think will get the Golden Banana? I'm still tipping Deadline Enchanter.
[/quote] 

That, or maybe Ferrous Ring.

My Mind's Mishmash and The Chinese Room seem like contenders too, although that's just a gut feeling. I haven't gone around trying to figure if there was a big and even split between like and dislike among reviews that are already posted.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=318&start=0#p1991
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Hiding spoilers
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2007-11-15 20:09:43

Hi,

Is there a better way to hide spoilers/clues/hints here on the forum? The idea of inserting "spoiler spaces" here doesn't look that good here (at least to me).

On some forums (e.g., the AGS forums), they have a method of hiding clues (putting the hints text inside something like [hide][/hide] tags) on posts. Do we have something like that here?

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=319&start=0#p1992
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Across the Stars
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-15 21:05:59

The "official" version can be found at my website:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/stars.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/stars.shtml</a>

[quote]
Game #28: Across the Stars
By “Dark Star” & Peter Mattsson
Played On: October 14th & 15th (5 hours 50 minutes)
Platform: Inform 6 (Zcode)

Game’s Blurb:
[i]The Xulthe'en Empire recruited you for duty. But this enlistment will take you Across The Stars.[/i]

[b]>xyzzy[/b]
[i]You think you hear a fizzle and a pop, but ever since coming back from zero gravity training you've been hearing strange sounds every now and then.[/i]

([i]Plugh[/i] and [i]Plover[/i] offer the same response.)

Wow. I didn’t expect this. I didn’t expect that the [i]last[/i] game on my random play list would rival my former favorite for “top game” this year. It’s nice to end the competition on such a high note, with such a great (if oversized) entry.

The biggest criticism I have of [i]Across the Stars[/i] is that the authors forgot this was a competition for [i]short[/i] Interactive Fiction -- or maybe they just ignored that. It’s not the [i]longest[/i] game I played in this year’s IFComp, but I do wish future entrants would tighten things up and aim for a game that [i]can[/i] be completed in two hours. I think the only way to finish [i]Across the Stars[/i] in two hours is to use the walkthrough or “InvisiClues” extensively.

The game comes with feelies: a “sample” transcript that makes for a good introductory primer for the IF command line (plus good back-story in general); a .PDF file containing a ship map, sign-up papers and so forth; a simulated blog (HTML pages) that make for interesting pre-game reading (without really spoiling anything or having any real bearing on the playable story); a printable crewman’s ID badge; a “synopsis.txt” file; desktop wallpaper graphics; a spoilery map of later game areas; “InvisiClues” in a separate zcode executable. I spent twenty-five minutes before making a single in-game move just reading through these things (except the full map and the “InvisiClues,” since I didn’t want spoilers). That’s a sizable bite taken out of the two-hour voting limit, but it definitely gives the game a more serious, professional quality.

In [i]Across the Stars[/i] you are a new crewman on a deep space vessel, part of the Xulthe'en Armada. The authors have developed an interesting back-story for this future galaxy, where humanity prospers after meeting an alien race known as the “Zal'tacs” some twenty thousand years prior to the start of the game.

Assuming this is measured in Earth years (it’s never suggested otherwise, and this comes from “synopsis.txt”), that’s an amazingly long period of time (could just as easily be a million bazillion gazillion years). What I mean is that twenty thousand years should have changed [i]everything[/i]. It shouldn’t feel like Star Trek, which is believably set just three or four hundred years from now. This is a peeve more than a complaint, but you can’t have humanity trade technology with aliens, thereby kick-starting us to a new era of enlightenment, and then still have things work pretty much the way they do now (plus space ships) after [i]twenty thousand years[/i] of elapsed history.

When I think about future settings, I use the past as a point of reference. Given the state of technology and society 100 years ago, 200 years ago, 300 years ago -- 1000 years ago -- at what likely point in the future could [i]this[/i] eventuality come? Consider, too, that science and technology improve more rapidly now than in centuries past. How long does it take for empires to form and fall? How long before the past is forgotten, made all but irrelevant by [i]twenty thousand years[/i] of new history? Even [i]two[/i] thousand years is stretching it (just consider the state of humanity two thousand years in our past -- the year 7 AD).

Anyway, that’s just a small peeve. It’s really all about this one adventure. [i]Across the Stars[/i] is a puzzle-heavy game. The back-story gives it flavor, but nothing much from the introductory material makes it into the game. This is a shame, since it might have been interesting to meet Lucius Winterson, or to find that Mary Ann, Zed or the PC’s missing dad make surprise appearances later on. Malice Prime might be a nice place to visit...

The puzzles, though, are what really [i]make[/i] this game. As hard as the game [i]seems[/i] at times, it [i]works[/i]. Aside from using the “THINK” command a few times (which basically just confirmed whether or not the goal I [i]thought[/i] I should be working towards was really the same one the game wanted me to focus on), I only needed the “InvisiClues” (hints) in [i]one[/i] spot -- never the map, never the walkthrough. This one spot was late in the game, where I needed to figure out how to get past four spirits. I didn’t even need the hints to help with that -- I just needed to find out that I had missed a room due to overlooking the importance of a depression in a wall at the end of one hallway. That’s it. 

It’s hard to predict how well the game’s puzzles will work for others, but I found them [i]just[/i] bordering on too hard without quite going beyond. This makes the reward -- the feeling of satisfaction after solving them -- all the better. At times, when a seemingly wild idea [i]worked[/i], I would “UNDO” just to see if I could determine whether success was only a fortunate fluke. Usually, I found that the game supported a larger number of alternate commands and phrasings, where having the right idea but coming up with a [i]wrong[/i] way to express it was less likely. This smoothness failed me sometimes (most notably near the end, when I tried to pry a panel open to no avail, until I just realizing I could just “open” it without added effort), but not often.

The game is richly implemented, where scenery actually [i]works[/i] and things referenced in descriptions of scenery are implemented. It just gets deeper from there. This too failed me [i]sometimes[/i], but not often. This is probably how I found every important but hidden thing (except for the wall depression, which I mentioned already). Because there was so much to see, I [i]looked[/i] everywhere. In a way, this is one of the keys to solving [i]Across the Stars[/i]: be thorough and look everywhere.

I also found myself doing the right things in the right places (aside from a little stumbling around during some timed sections that lead to death near the start), seemingly as if I [i]could[/i] read the authors’ minds, even when these things didn’t [i]seem[/i] suggested in the text. (STOP HERE and skip to the next paragraph to avoid [i]puzzle[/i] spoilers.) These are things like throwing the torch at [i]both[/i] monsters, pouring coffee on a malfunctioning machine, pushing a crate, lowering myself into a pit on a grappling hook, and setting the detonator at just the right place. Most likely, these things [i]were[/i] clued, whether subtly or by way of being similar to actions that were encountered earlier. Whatever the reason, [i]Across the Stars[/i] has some of the most satisfying yet solvable puzzles of any entry this year.

[i]Across the Stars[/i] also has one of the coolest tricks for PC gender determination I’ve seen. Instead of making the PC gender-neutral by way of having no name or a gender-neutral name, the PC’s name is found [i]misprinted[/i] on an ID badge. The badge says “An Darington,” but maybe it’s supposed to be “Ann” or “Dan” or something else. Later, the player is allowed to choose between two sexually provocative NPC’s -- one male, the other female -- and this sets the gender of a different NPC that can join the mission shortly after.

My transcripts have a few nit-picky comments about the game, but not many. Some are to do with implementation. When drink buttons and food buttons are labeled differently, why is it necessary to specify [i]which[/i] machine the specific button you’re pushing exists on, as part of the command? There is a bug here, too, since the tea and water buttons seem to assume I mean [i]coffee[/i] every time. The cleaning robot had potential that was never used. I also noted [i]very few[/i] minor typos.

Others are to do with possible plot holes. (STOP HERE and skip to the next paragraph to avoid [i]story[/i] spoilers.) If everybody else was simply beamed off the ship by pirates, how was the PC spared? Also, why were there signs of a struggle? If that’s not what happened, and the crew really [i]was[/i] taken by force, then the first question still lacks an answer, and it raises another: How is it that the pirates only [i]arrive[/i] (seemingly for the first time) a few turns later, after everybody else is [i]already[/i] gone? On the planet, if there is a limit to the creature’s illusion-inducing range (as there seems to be), why did the cave look like a temple from so far away? Why does the other Captain seem so incapable of taking action and making decisions, leaving everything up to an untried and untested cadet? If pirates don’t attack in this section of space (the OmniTrans says so), then [i]why[/i] did they attack? Is it to do with the mysterious crates (one at the beginning, the other at the end)? If so, what’s [i]in[/i] them? Why was the PC’s Captain given a transmission regarding an imminent collision marked for his eyes only? Isn’t this the kind of thing -- even if it involved pirates -- that some [i]other[/i] crew members should be made aware of as well? It’s possible these things [i]do[/i] have answers -- even answers within the game -- but if so, I missed it.

If I could ask for anything more of [i]Across the Stars[/i] it would be for a little more originality. Of the two creatures on the planet, one seems a little like Star Wars’ Sarlac pit and the other seems a little like a creature from Dune (even sharing the same name). Both are a little too similar to each other. Space pirates are standard stuff, too. It just [i]feels[/i] like well-trodden territory, even in areas where it may not be.

Some of the game is optional. It’s possible to overlook or bypass some areas and challenges, particularly on the planet, for a lower score. Somehow I found almost everything in my first play-through, earning 145 points of a possible 150. A tip in the end-game “AMUSING” list helped me find the final 5. The ending remains the same with 100 points, 145, or all 150, so I’m surprised that some sections [i]can[/i] be bypassed or overlooked. This includes some of the game’s most interesting puzzles, so it seems like an odd decision to make it optional [i]and[/i] fail to reward players with a different ending.

Maybe because I’m a sucker for Trek-like sci-fi (despite my longing for something less derivative), or maybe because I found the puzzles challenging without being [i]too[/i] obscure, or maybe because it was so well polished, I realized even at two hours that I [i]really[/i] liked [i]Across the Stars[/i]. I voted it a “X”. I considered a “X” at the end (as my unofficial review score), and it was a tough decision to keep my prior frontrunner in first place. Ultimately, as nicely done as [i]Across the Stars[/i] is, my [i]other[/i] favorite wins out with successful humor, a novel plot, and a well-crafted PC that never breaks character. Still, [i]Across the Stars[/i] gets a “X+” from me, and that bumps the two games I had pegged for second and third place down one notch each.

Every year, I seem to thoroughly enjoy one game that receives lukewarm responses elsewhere. [i]Across the Stars[/i] might be the under-appreciated gem of IFComp 2007. I [i]hope[/i] it ranks in the top five. I’ll be disappointed if it’s not in the top 10.
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=318&start=0#p1993
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Hiding spoilers
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-15 21:29:04

There might be something in an updated version of PHPBB3. Unfortunately, they don't support this early beta, and I can find no good way to update to a supported version without starting over and losing (or archiving) all the posts. So in a word, no. I don't think there's a way to embed a collapsable layer/div or anything like that. Sorry.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=320&start=0#p1994
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Animals (and other patterns)
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-15 22:16:57

Has there ever been an IFComp with so few games, yet so many animals referenced in the titles?

Lost PIG
PackRAT
Slap That FISH
FOX, FOWL and Feed
Ghost of the FIREFLIES

Anybody notice any other coincidences or patterns this year? There were two murder mysteries, for instance.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=298&start=0#p1995
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: An Act of Murder
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-15 23:34:58

Thanks!  I've been following your reviews, and they've been great, so thanks for that too.

Chief Inspector Duffy is in no way related to the Sergeant Duffy of Infocom fame; he is, however, a second cousin once removed of the Sergeant Duffy from "Sorry, Wrong Number".  Yeah.  That's the ticket....

Have you tried >xyzzy anywhere else in the game?  It doesn't always kill you....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=318&start=0#p1996
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Hiding spoilers
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2007-11-15 23:39:34

Re: upgrading the forum, I remember you were talking ages ago about maybe writing your own custom upgrade script. Was it just too complicated to make work? (Running the forum using an ancient beta version for the rest of its life seems like a really, really bad idea.)

Does PHPbb keep old versions available for download? If so, is there a possibility you could just do a lot of progressive upgrades until you get to a workable version?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=298&start=0#p1997
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: An Act of Murder
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-15 23:43:01

Oh, it didn't even occur to me that the death sequence only makes sense outside (otherwise, at a minimum, it'd have to be rewritten). In short, no -- I didn't! I should have.

I've seen you lurking but not posting, so I figured *one* of the games must be yours.

Well done!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=318&start=0#p1998
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Hiding spoilers
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-15 23:53:13

When I asked in the phpBB forum, the one person who responded (right before locking the thread so nobody else *could* respond) hinted that this is how he did it. I don't know for sure if each version is available, but presumably it would be possible.

I've just never had time to write my own update. Long work hours and IFComp playing/reviewing has pretty much taken all my time. And I'm not sure how drastic the changes in structure might be. I could redefine the board and all its settings -- even require people to sign up again (which appears to be mandatory as of one of the earlier release candidates) -- if only there was a good way to keep the messages and attribute them to the correct users.

I just haven't wanted to mess with it, though I agree sticking with an old beta forever is a bad idea.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=321&start=0#p1999
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Pseudonyms
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-16 00:02:01

I noticed that the info page, now that voting has ended, shows the real names of everybody who chose to "reveal" at the end of the comp.

<a href="http://www.ifcomp.org/info/">http://www.ifcomp.org/info/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=321&start=0#p2000
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Pseudonyms
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2007-11-16 00:19:59

Not that the true identities of Grunk, Farahnaaz and Dunric were really secret...

I wonder what would have happened to Slap That Fish if Peter Nepstad had entered it pseudonymously?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=318&start=0#p2001
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Hiding spoilers
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2007-11-16 00:28:05

[quote="Merk"]
(right before locking the thread so nobody else *could* respond)
[/quote] 
What was that about? Hardly sounds like a friendly, helpful community.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=318&start=0#p2002
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Hiding spoilers
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-16 00:36:00

[quote="Emerald"]
[quote="Merk"]
(right before locking the thread so nobody else *could* respond)
[/quote]  
What was that about? Hardly sounds like a friendly, helpful community.
[/quote] 
They don't support the betas, and don't want people asking for help with the betas in the forum. I didn't really thing it was an off-topic question when I posted it -- just wanted to see if anybody could point me in the right direction. Also, an earlier post had left it up in the air as to whether or not there would be imports for the beta version. That's mainly why I asked.

I wish the topic hadn't been locked, but I supposed if somebody came across my post and had a solution, they could just as easily have emailed or PM's me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=318&start=0#p2003
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Hiding spoilers
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2007-11-16 00:43:03

I just checked, and the SourceForge archives go back to 3.0 Beta 1, but they don't all seem to have upgrade scripts available.

What version are we on? I could have a look at the code for you sometime this month or the next, if you like.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=318&start=0#p2004
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Hiding spoilers
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-16 00:50:04

We're on 3.0 Beta 1. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=301&start=0#p2005
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: A Matter of Importance
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-16 00:57:40

Nestor is Valentine Kopteltsev. I have no idea why the thought didn't occur to me before. Makes sense now!

Nicely done, Valentine. It ended up being 8th on my list of favorites, but that's more to do with the strong competition than anything else.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=320&start=0#p2006
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Animals (and other patterns)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-16 04:48:06

The long winter evenings must just fly.  [emote]Very Happy[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=320&start=0#p2007
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Animals (and other patterns)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-16 05:37:13

Eduard [b]the[/b] Seminarist 
Ghost of [b]the[/b] Fireflies 
In [b]The [/b]Mind Of [b]The[/b] Master 
[b]The [/b]Immortal 
[b]The [/b]Lost Dimension 
[b]The [/b]Chinese Room 
Across [b]The [/b]Stars 

Eight cases of a certain definite article. What could this signify?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=307&start=0#p2008
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: And the winner is...?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-16 06:02:22

I'm an author, but I presume I'm allowed to post now that the voting period has ended?

Yes, of course I am. Well, like Emerald, I found something like about every game I played (which was all of them except the Windows ones), so I really enjoyed it.

Instead of rating the games as I played them, I tried to think about the minimum rank that they'd get. Then I put them in some sort of order afterwards. The top three according to me turned out as Act of Murder, Lost Pig then Lord Bellwater. Fourth, Chinese Room; fifth, Varkana. But since this is only my second IFComp, I could easily be way out. I gather that Merk is something of a prediction extraordinaire.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=294&start=0#p2009
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Reconciling Mother
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-16 06:13:42

One thing I wondered about this game: why is the filename "theyknow.t3"? Do we know?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=294&start=0#p2010
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Reconciling Mother
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-16 06:17:28

I think the author changed the name part-way through. There's a bit at the beginning and in the blurb that actually points to an interesting story, where people you've just met seem to "know" who you are and what you're doing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=307&start=0#p2011
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: And the winner is...?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-16 06:19:32

[quote="Kivie"]
I gather that Merk is something of a prediction extraordinaire.
[/quote] 
No, I never have been in the past, but we'll see how it goes this time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=320&start=0#p2012
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Animals (and other patterns)
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2007-11-16 07:01:37

Go back to comp 96.  Four or five games required suicide at some point.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=322&start=0#p2013
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Results of the 2007 IF Competition
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2007-11-16 09:00:10

The [url=http://ifcomp.org/comp07/]13th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition[/url] has ended. Congratulations to Admiral Jota, whose "Lost Pig" took first place. The top three games were:

Lost Pig, by Admiral Jota
An Act of Murder, by Christopher Huang
Lord Bellwater's Secret, by Sam Gordon

The winners of the Miss Congeniality contest were:

Lost Pig, by Admiral Jota
An Act of Murder, by Christopher Huang
Orevore Courier, by Brian Rapp

Thanks to all authors for entering and all judges for voting!

Stephen

Full results list:

1 Lost Pig, by Admiral Jota (writing as Grunk)
2 An Act of Murder, by Christopher Huang (writing as Hugh Dunnett)
3 Lord Bellwater's Secret, by Sam Gordon
4 Across The Stars, by Dark Star & Peter Mattsson
5 The Chinese Room, by Joey Jones and Harry Giles
6 Varkana, by Maryam Gousheh Forgeot (writing as Farahnaaz)
7 A Fine Day for Reaping, by revgiblet
8 Orevore Courier, by Brian Rapp
9 My Name is Jack Mills, by Juhana Leinonen
10 A Matter of Importance, by Valentine Kopteltsev (writing as Nestor I. McNaugh)
11 Ferrous Ring, by Carma Ferris
12 Deadline Enchanter, by Alan DeNiro (writing as Anonymous)
13 My Mind's Mishmash, by Robert Street
14 In The Mind Of The Master, by David Whyld
15 Gathered In Darkness, by Michael Millsap (writing as Dr. Froth)
16 Fox, Fowl and Feed, by Chris Conroy
17 Wish, by Edward Floren
18 Packrat, by Bill Powell
19 Slap that Fish, by Peter Nepstad
20 Jealousy Duel X, by Alex Camelio
21 Beneath: a Transformation, by Graham Lowther
22 The Immortal, by Just Rob
23 Eduard the Seminarist, by Heiko TheiÃen
24 Press [Escape] to Save, by Mark Jones
25 Reconciling Mother, by Glenn Engstrand (writing as Plone Glenn)
26 The Lost Dimension, by C. Yong
27 Ghost of the Fireflies, by Paul Panks (writing as Dunric)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=307&start=10#p2014
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: And the winner is...?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-16 09:43:52

[quote="Merk"]
[quote="Kivie"]
I gather that Merk is something of a prediction extraordinaire.
[/quote]  
No, I never have been in the past, but we'll see how it goes this time.
[/quote] 

You were exactly right with the top 3, and one Adrift game did indeed make the top 10.

(And yes, I loved the Haiku reviews too!)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=318&start=0#p2015
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Hiding spoilers
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2007-11-16 11:08:09

[quote="Emerald"]
I just checked, and the SourceForge archives go back to 3.0 Beta 1, but they don't all seem to have upgrade scripts available.

What version are we on? I could have a look at the code for you sometime this month or the next, if you like.
[/quote] 

As Merk said, we should be on Beta 1 - maybe 2. We do have a tiny bit of self-developed code in here, but I'm willing to forego that for getting in sync with the latest release - I think it's RC7.

However, since I don't speak SQL quite well enough to be able to manage the upgrade, and Merk hasn't had the time, I'd be glad if you could find someway to handle it. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=304&start=0#p2016
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Slap That Fish
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-16 13:34:44

Merk,

You are my hero. 

Thank you for the review and -- oh my! The walkthrough. You mentioned a notated transcript above -- if you still had it lying around, I would love a copy, and any other comments you may have, as I am of course putting together a post-comp bug-fix release. 

Oh, and did I mention you are my hero? Oh. Yes, I did.

-- Peter
<a href="http://www.illuminatedlantern.com/if/">http://www.illuminatedlantern.com/if/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=304&start=0#p2017
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Slap That Fish
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-16 15:44:41

Heh! I think most people just didn't get it. You really have to *want* to get a perfect score to get into the game on a deeper level.

Sure, I'll send you the transcripts shortly.

--- Mike.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=307&start=10#p2018
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: And the winner is...?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-16 15:47:20

I guess there really *is* a first time for everything! [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=323&start=0#p2019
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Celestianpower's review: An Act of Murder
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-16 15:50:05

This is my review for An Act of Muder [emote]Smile[/emote].

As the title suggests, this is a murder-mystery game, which casts you to investigate the murder of Frederick Sheppard, who was to put on a musical called “Twisty Passages”. This was the first murder-mystery IF I'd played, and I must say I was rather impressed. Puzzles really aren't my strong suit, so I reverted often to the hints, but that didn't seem to hamper my enjoyment. I did find the clues by myself, but I didn't quite know what to do with the information they gave me, which is more than likely due to my inadequacies than to any problems with the game. And the hints system was excellently implemented, and inordinately helpful.

The coding was perfectly competent, with nice room descriptions and plenty of conversation topics coded. I did however notice lots of missing actions, and a few lacking scenery objects. “Open window” and “look through window” should have elicited responses, for example. However, a few things did get funny responses, which gave the game a lovely tone, and stopped it from being depressing as murders can often be. Comments like “It's a long, steep drop to a rocky death that way, and you're not feeling particularly suicidal. ” are typical of this.

Another interesting feature of the game is that it was timed, 1 turn is 15 seconds of game time. Whilst I'm usually distinctly wary of such time limits, this one seemed reasonable (it gave plenty of time), and really added to the mood.

So, overall, a nice game, good plot, relatively well-implemented, and a nice use of an hour or two. I would give it 8, but I have to knock off one point for the dead body manipulation. Final score: 7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=324&start=0#p2020
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Celestianpower's review: Wish
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-16 15:51:22

Hereby follows my review of Wish [emote]Smile[/emote].

I honestly don't quite know what to make of “Wish”. You're cast as a 9 year-old girl in some sort of enchanted woodland, with seemingly no goal. Normally I require a goal from the start in order to like a game, but this one seems to get away with it. Right from the start it gives you know it's a dream-world, so you can just walk around and enjoy the scenery. The writing style really makes you believe that you're that girl, with short sentences, and a general tone of wonder. It's really rather clever.

So, you wander around this world, solving a few puzzles (which are “child's play”, appropriately), and then you get a cutscene, where the author shows that (s)he can in fact write “properly”. The game progresses so, with more easy puzzles and more cutscenes. It's all rather cute. Then the game ends. 20 minutes of play. Hmm.

In terms of coding, it's pretty sound. Personally, I like the individual coding of each scenery object, but h(is/er) method of “You see nothing special about...” works too. There are so few things, though, that this isn't much of an issue. I ran it smoothly from start to finish no problem.

Well, all things considered, and cute, but strange and bemusing game, which I enjoyed, but I can't really put my finger on why. Maybe I just like quaintness. Anyway, I've rambled. I scored it a 6.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=325&start=0#p2021
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Celestianpower's review: Press [escape] to save
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-16 15:52:14

The following text contains my review of Press [escape] to save [emote]Smile[/emote].

OK, I said to myself before I started that I would give each game at least a fair shot of 15 minutes. I did with this one, but it took a lot of willpower.

Firstly, the grammar and punctuation is terrible. Random unnecessary commas abound (“just in case, a not so probable opportunity arises” is typical). “You are going to hang tomorrow”. Hang what? A picture on my wall. I do wonder if the author is a non-native English user, or just forgot to reread what  (s)he wrote. Oh, and we don't indent paragraphs in IF.

In terms of the writing style and tone, it was far too “street” for my liking. The author used “man” an awful lot, which really did jar against the setting – you're about to be hanged for crying out loud! You should be feeling sombre, or scared, or something. It's the writing's job to evoke that mood, and it just doesn't here. At all. Oh, and the conversation was terrible. Really bad.

Implementation is also a problem. There are loads of spurious line breaks (even 4 at one point), and a lot of the time there are huge swathes of one-sentence paragraphs, which really do grate. And, at least at the beginning, you have to do a lot of just waiting for action to happen. For instance, once you've turned the light on (by typing “feel wall”? Huh?) you have to wait 5 turns until the man wakes up and you can actually do anything. Then you have to wait again for him to go to sleep so you can, and the game can set off.

And as for the plot, one moment you're about to be hanged, and the next moment you're running off in 4D space, trying to access some knowledge pool for a ghostly figure. It's very bizarre, and completely sudden.

So, in all, I really can't find anything good to say about it, other than it could have been quite good. The idea of being on the eve one's death is very interesting, and could have been powerful. This game, however, did it no justice whatsoever. Score: 3.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=326&start=0#p2022
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Celestianpower's review: My Name is Jack Mills
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-16 15:52:54

My My name is Jack Mills review follows [emote]Smile[/emote].

I really enjoyed this one. It had just the right combination of humour (“hopefully the guests aren't paying extra for the view” on examining a wall is typical) and plot for me. The puzzles were challenging, but not undoable, though I did find that I knew what I wanted to do, but couldn't find the right command a few more times than I'd have liked. 

On the subject of implementation, the game was pretty solid. I didn't notice any bad spelling or grammar, and the conversation topics were handled particularly well; nearly everything I asked about expecting an answer was catered-for. I did notice various spacing errors from time to time, but these were only very minor and occasional. The game was obviously thoroughly beta-tested.

As for the multiple endings, I only managed to complete two of them. Even with the walkthrough I couldn't do the other two (Geigner didn't turn up for Emmy's date; I couldn't work out how to bid for the mask). They were all brilliant ideas, but, as said before, could have done with more synonyms. I also would have liked to have seen the professor again at the end.

Even though this was a “gangster”-type game, there were no corpses to examine. Good show. Final score: 8.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=323&start=0#p2023
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Celestianpower's review: An Act of Murder
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-16 15:55:20

Cool -- keep 'em coming!! [emote]Smile[/emote]

I need to gather links to review sets and post another topic like last year to collect them in one place.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=270&start=0#p2024
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Celestianpower's review: Fox, Fowl and Feed
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-16 15:56:54

[quote="Merk"]
CP, why no more reviews? I had hoped that you (and others) would post more here as the comp progressed.
[/quote] 

Sorry, I was busy elsewhere. Apparently, I've only reviewed 5 games (though with beta-testing, games I couldn't play or put down instantly, I got through about half). 

CP

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=318&start=0#p2025
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Hiding spoilers
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2007-11-16 16:00:07

Well, I can't promise anything, since my PHP/SQL is rather rusty these days, but I'll take a look.

What database are you running, MySQL?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=318&start=10#p2026
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Hiding spoilers
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-16 16:11:31

Yep. MySql 5, I think.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=327&start=0#p2027
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Merk's IFComp 2007 Reviews
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-16 16:54:32

They're up now, at <a href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/ifcomp07.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/ifcomp07.shtml</a>

(Pretty much the same as what I posted here.)

I'm going to start posting links to review collections in the Game Reviews area later tonight.

Here's last year's:
<a href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=131">viewtopic.php?f=21&t=131</a>

Also, in a couple days I'll probably move all the posts from the IFComp game discussion board into other boards (Game Reviews for the reviews, this one for general chatter). I plan to "hide" that forum (after emptying it), and then rename and reuse it next year for IFComp '08 game discussion (unless very many have an objection or a better idea). I thought about adding a "Comp Game Discussion" board with those as sub-boards, but that gets kind of clunky-feeling and non-intuitive.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=318&start=10#p2028
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Hiding spoilers
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2007-11-16 16:55:13

And PHP 4? 5?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=318&start=10#p2029
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Hiding spoilers
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-16 16:57:07

You know, I think I'm thinking of my other server. This one is Fedora 4, PHP4, and MySQL4.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=307&start=10#p2030
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: And the winner is...?
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2007-11-16 18:04:55

[quote="Merk"]
[quote="Kivie"]
I gather that Merk is something of a prediction extraordinaire.
[/quote]  
No, I never have been in the past, but we'll see how it goes this time.
[/quote] 

If he does this twice in a row, that will be scary.  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=328&start=0#p2031
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: IFComp 2007 Review Sets
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-16 18:10:56

Last year's list ( <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=131">viewtopic.php?f=21&t=131</a> ) seemed pretty handy, so here are collected reviews of IFComp '07:

Rob Menke -- <a class="postlink" href="http://the-wabe.com/if-comp-2007/">http://the-wabe.com/if-comp-2007/</a>
Jason Dyer -- <a class="postlink" href="http://bluerenga.wordpress.com/ifcomp-2007-reviews/">http://bluerenga.wordpress.com/ifcomp-2007-reviews/</a>
Dan Shiovitz -- <a class="postlink" href="http://www.drizzle.com/~dans/if/comp07.html">http://www.drizzle.com/~dans/if/comp07.html</a>
Mike Snyder (me) -- <a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/ifcomp07.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/ifcomp07.shtml</a>
J. D. Clemens -- <a class="postlink" href="http://www.math.psu.edu/clemens/IF/Reviews/Comp07.html">http://www.math.psu.edu/clemens/IF/Reviews/Comp07.html</a>
Emily Short -- <a class="postlink" href="http://emshort.wordpress.com/?s=if+competition+discussion">http://emshort.wordpress.com/?s=if+comp ... discussion</a>
Doe -- <a class="postlink" href="http://doeadeer.wordpress.com/">http://doeadeer.wordpress.com/</a>
Jake Wildstrom -- <a class="postlink" href="http://www.crochetgeek.net/reviews/IF/comp07.html">http://www.crochetgeek.net/reviews/IF/comp07.html</a>
Hipolito -- <a class="postlink" href="http://octopusoverlords.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=1105537&sid=2e0f4a4a92334347af663c560d76363c">http://octopusoverlords.com/phpBB2/view ... 560d76363c</a>
Ben Sokal -- <a class="postlink" href="http://www.shadowk.com/IFComp2007.htm">http://www.shadowk.com/IFComp2007.htm</a>
Andreas Davour -- <a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/msg/fa2b53ff644a718f">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... ff644a718f</a>
Jimmy Maher -- <a class="postlink" href="http://home.grandecom.net/~maher/if/comp07.html">http://home.grandecom.net/~maher/if/comp07.html</a>
Baf -- <a class="postlink" href="http://www.wurb.com/stack/">http://www.wurb.com/stack/</a>
Super Doomed Planet -- <a class="postlink" href="http://www.superdoomedplanet.com/blog/">http://www.superdoomedplanet.com/blog/</a>
Maga (Sam Kabo Ashwell) -- <a class="postlink" href="http://diden.net/~maga/sam_comp07reviews.html">http://diden.net/~maga/sam_comp07reviews.html</a>
Jacqueline A. Lott -- <a class="postlink" href="http://www.allthingsjacq.com/intficreview_comp07.html">http://www.allthingsjacq.com/intficreview_comp07.html</a>
ralphmerridew -- <a class="postlink" href="http://ralphmerridew.livejournal.com/520.html">http://ralphmerridew.livejournal.com/520.html</a>
Cathy Saxton -- <a class="postlink" href="http://www.saxton.org/IF/07comp.php">http://www.saxton.org/IF/07comp.php</a>
Michael Martin -- <a class="postlink" href="http://www.stanford.edu/~mcmartin/if/review07.html">http://www.stanford.edu/~mcmartin/if/review07.html</a>
Dennis Klotz -- <a class="postlink" href="http://houseinrlyeh.livejournal.com/tag/if+comp+2007">http://houseinrlyeh.livejournal.com/tag/if+comp+2007</a>
Daphne Brinkerhoff -- <a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/msg/bb685397da531494">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... 97da531494</a>
David Fletcher -- <a class="postlink" href="http://www.zen27881.zen.co.uk/djf/ifcomp2007/">http://www.zen27881.zen.co.uk/djf/ifcomp2007/</a>
N. B. Horvath - <a class="postlink" href="http://nbhorvath.blogspot.com/2007_11_01_archive.html">http://nbhorvath.blogspot.com/2007_11_01_archive.html</a>
Wendy Moon -- <a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/msg/1cec94104bb3f181">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... 104bb3f181</a>

Some others are in blogs, which makes it difficult to link directly to the review collection. I'm stilling looking for others and will add more as I find them. I'll also update these links if I find better versions (such as collections outside of the original blogs).

(Update)
I've added more, found at the IF Wiki (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/IF_Comp_2007">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/IF_Comp_2007</a>). A huge thanks to whomever is responsible for collecting them (edit history says "Eriorg").

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=304&start=0#p2032
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Slap That Fish
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-16 20:30:01

Thanks much. I guess I wouldn't say the problem was that people didn't get it, but that the way that some players approached and interpreted the game put them off. I like games that make you figure out how to play when in progress, like OREVORE COURIER, for another example, but it isn't for everyone -- and I note OREVORE didn't score as highly as I might have hoped, either. 

-- Peter

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=321&start=0#p2033
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Pseudonyms
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-16 20:32:10

Hrmmm...I don't know, but maybe I'll try it next time if you think it would help!!! [emote]Smile[/emote]

-- Peter
<a href="http://www.illuminatedlantern.com/if/">http://www.illuminatedlantern.com/if/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=319&start=0#p2034
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Across the Stars
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-16 20:54:51

I was wrong! Fourth place and mid-range StdDev don't suggest to me that it's as underappreciated as I expected it to be. It's nice to see my favorites earn spots near the top.

I guess My Mind's Mishmash, then, is the Underappeciated Gem of IFComp '07. I was sure it'd rate higher than 13th and a 5.51 average vote.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=329&start=0#p2035
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Problem with read-topic tracking.
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2007-11-16 22:48:37

The read topic tracking doesn't work well if you're using a tabbed browser.

It appears it only will mark a thread / category as read when you click on the "board index" link; if you just close a tab it still lists those regions as having new posts.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=329&start=0#p2036
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Problem with read-topic tracking.
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-16 23:13:17

It does the same thing to me when I read a new message that's the only new message in a board. I have to go back to the list of topics again after exiting out before it's marked as read.

They had several betas after this one. And last I looked, they were up to the 7th release candidate *since* the betas. I kind of wish we were on version 2, since it's supported and the RC's are supported and there'd be a way for us to upgrade from 2 to 3.

I hope at some point we can figure it out. It'd be nice to get various bugs taken care of, without losing more than a year's worth of discussion. Because that's really not an option.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=330&start=0#p2037
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Wish by Edward Floren; Inform
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-17 03:49:39

Order played: 1 out of 22

This was the first game I played in the IFComp of 2007. Why was this one first? Beats me. I think it was just totally random. In previous years, I've used the IFComp’s handy randomiser to select the games for me, but after it giving me a truly awful game for my first one several years ago, I decided to swear off it in future. So from now on, whatever game I happen to play next is entirely random. Anyway, it was a decent enough game to start with.

As far as the storyline behind the game is concerned, it’s hard to say too much about it without giving away the twist at the end. But in brief, you're a little girl called Sarah who is desperately looking forward to her beloved grandfather coming to stay. This is mentioned often. Heavily mentioned. In fact, the game goes to such lengths to tell me what a Wonderful Super Ace Fab Guy Sarah’s grandfather is that halfway through playing it, I could quite happily have strangled him.

It’s easily possible to render the game unfinishable. Neglect to pick up a certain item earlier in the game and you'll find yourself unable to go back for it later on. The item in question wasn’t exactly hidden or anything like that, but I don’t recall any indication being given as to *why* I should take it when I first came across it so I simply wrote it off as a piece of scenery and didn’t give it a second thought. This forced a restart a few times as I had neglected to save my game up to that point. Fortunately it doesn’t take long to get back to where you were before. Even allowing for several restarts, I easily finished the game well within the two hour comp deadline.

There's a supplied walkthrough for if you happen to get stuck, though this only happened to me when I’d missed an item and put the game into an unfinishable position. The walkthrough at least indicated to me that I’d missed the item so it was certainly helpful in that respect*. But for the most part, this is a very, very easy game. Just as well really as at one point the walkthrough advised me to TALK to someone, even though the TALK command isn't recognised. Fortunately I was able to solve that little puzzle on my own.

* I wasted some time before consulting the walkthrough by assuming that I could either go back for the item I needed or that it wasn’t necessary and there were alternate solutions to the puzzle that didn’t require the item. Unfortunately neither of these was the case. You *do* need the item and if you didn’t pick it up, then the game *can’t* be finished.

Most of the puzzles are nice and straightforward. There are a few of the ‘find an item, give it to someone else’ variety and others that are solved merely by having the correct item in your inventory at the time. At other times, it only seems possible to ‘solve’ puzzles by waiting several moves for them to solve themselves. Whether this actually counts as solving a puzzle, I'm not sure. It’s kind of annoying, though. If I'm trying to figure out how to solve a puzzle and the game goes ahead and does it for me, it makes me question what the point of the puzzle was in the first place. Or is the point that I’m supposed to figure out the solution *before* the game tells me?

The only part that gave me any problems was making a kite. This was the game’s buggiest moment. When TIE CROSS TO FABRIC won’t work but TIE FABRIC TO CROSS will, it’s a problem. It also isn't helped by the fact that to make the cross, you need to use two other items but once the cross is made, you can’t refer to either of the items again which caused me further problems because I was trying to refer to them and the game kept hitting me with error messages about it.

Still, it wasn’t a bad little game, even if I didn’t really understand most of what was going on. My guess while playing was that it was some kind of dream or even a coma (there was a game in the IFComp last year which featured a player who was in a coma) but there was no indication of this when the game had finished. Was there some connection between the events in the game and what the game itself was about that I missed? Or did the author simply string together a number of ideas at random and just assume people wouldn’t think about them too deeply? The expected explanation at the end of the game never materialised, so I guess I’ll just have to settle for not knowing.

5 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=331&start=0#p2038
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Eduard the Seminarist by Heiko Theiben; Inform
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-17 03:50:21

Order played: 2 out of 22

It kind of tells you what I thought about Eduard the Seminarist when I say that, being perfectly serious here, I couldn’t tell at first whether or not it was a joke game. Usually it’s easy enough to spot these a mile off because they’ve got so many things wrong with them right from the word go that they might as well be called Generic Joke Game. This one was different. It had many, many things wrong with it (more of this below) but at the same time, it seemed a strange subject for a joke game and it didn’t *seem* like a joke game. Just a very, very bad one.

I unwittingly committed suicide on my second move by attempting to go south. The game, unhelpful in the extreme, decided that typing S meant I wanted to throw myself out of the window (which I hadn’t even realised was to the south) and promptly killed me. Yes, we’re definitely off to a good start here. Shouldn’t the game at least warn me that going south will kill me? (Joke game or just very, very bad one? I still can’t decide.)

For the most part, room descriptions are brief and devoid of any attempt at depth. You often get nothing more than a single line detailing where you are followed by a list of directions, except for the location of the gym where the author finally seems to have cottoned on to the fact that the people playing his games might like them more if he made a bit of effort. Unfortunately, this is a one off burst of enthusiasm and everywhere else shows a distinct lack of effort. 

What the game is supposed to be about I don’t know. There's no introduction, no background, no goal stated. Finding your way about is confusing as a few exits aren't listed so it’s generally a case of trying every direction in every location to find your way around (and if you happen to throw yourself out of a window in the process, too bad). Add to this an annoying darkness puzzle* and you’ve got a game that doesn’t try very hard to make you like it.

Re the darkness puzzle: there's a candle you can take with you to light up dark areas. But there's a rope that needs to be climbed. Only, of course, you can’t climb the rope while carrying the candle. So you drop the candle which promptly goes out (thus proving that people who throw themselves out of windows when attempting to move south are equally as unskilled at laying down their only light source and not preventing it going out) and climb the rope. Ah, but then the candle has gone out and so any location you enter which is dark you're unable to leave because it’s too dark to see. So… you enter a normal sized room, find it’s too dark, and then discover you're unable to navigate your way to the exit, which can’t be more than a few feet away from you, due to the lack of light? Blind people are able to move about in perfect darkness, but it seems seminarists can’t manoeuvre their way out of a simple room without running into problems. Added to this, even when I knew there was a front door before me in a dark location, I still couldn’t open it on account of it being dark. 

From the time I started playing this to the time I quit was about 25-30 minutes. That was pretty much all I could take of it. I've played worse games in the past than Eduard the Seminarist but it’s hard to remember them right now. It fails on just about every front and really should have been kept on the author’s hard drive as a failed first effort instead of being released to the assembled wolves (i.e. the IFComp judges and reviewers). I think I may have spent longer writing this review of the game than I did playing the game itself, which probably tells you all you need to know about it.

Addendum: After quitting the game, I went and read a few other reviews of it to see if there was something that I had missed. It seems there was. Someone mentions another bed in the first location, missed completely out of the room description, that you need to look under in order to find a key item which reveals a lot of the game’s storyline, not the least of which being the actual aim of the game. As this isn't mentioned in the room description, they either managed to get the walkthrough to work where I failed (kudos to them) or somehow managed to discern the location of an item which isn't referred to anywhere* (double kudos to them). With this in mind, I thought about going back to the game and having another go at it, but the same reviews also mention problems like literally getting stuck inside a door, picking up a tree as if it were a carry-able item and various other errors. Considering all that, I think my decision to quit when I did was the best one.

* I remember having a couple of discussions with people in the past about this kind of thing. Someone put a doormat before a front door but failed to mention it in the room description; someone else put a key under the carpet in a room but didn’t mention the carpet anywhere. Both people reckoned these puzzles were completely fair as you'd expect to see a doormat before a front door and a carpet in a room. I disagree. In IF games, you tend to work with what is displayed to you in the text on screen and shouldn’t be expected to interact with items not mentioned anywhere. 

2 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=332&start=0#p2039
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Press [Escape] To Save by Mark Jones; Inform
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-17 03:50:45

Order played: 3 out of 22

There are some IF games I play that I’ll be 10 – 15 minutes into and find I have absolutely no desire to play any further. The lack of desire to continue could simply be due to bugs, a poor standard of writing, overly difficult puzzles, an awful storyline, or a hundred and one other things. This was one such game. 

By sheer bad luck, I ended up playing two of the worst (in my opinion anyway) games in this year’s IFComp back to back. As with the previous one (Eduard the Seminarist), this is another game by a newcomer and has the same kind of problems that I generally associate with first timers. There were so many things wrong with it that it’s difficult to know where to begin.

The writing. Let’s start with the writing…

Boy, it was awful. I won’t go as far as to say it was the worst writing I've ever come across in an IF game but it’s certainly the worst in this year’s IFComp. Weird phrases litter the text, some of them making me wonder if English isn't the writer’s first language, or if he’s just very young. But it’s not just the writing that brings this game down, it’s the bugs as well. A description of one NPC read: JUST A HARDCORE JAILRAT.  A BURLY MUSCULAR MAN WITH TATTOOS ALL OVER HIS ARM, HE'S A MAN IN HIS MIDDLE FORTIES YOU'RE GUESSING.  HE SEEMS LIKE THE EASILY OFFENDED TYPE. (Amazing that you can tell so much about a man who’s currently asleep from a simple glance!) Trying to talk to him hits me with THE CREATURE IS ASLEEP which is kind of unusual in that a) he’s a man and not a creature (did the writer mistakenly flag the NPC as some kind of animal?) and b) trying to examine the creature tells me that I see no such thing. Later on I was told THE FIGURE THEN CLEARS HIS TALL THROAT and wondered to myself just what a ‘tall’ throat is.

The text is littered with numerous typos (one location is referred to as STATE OF UNCOSCIOUSNESS {sic}), grammar errors and more than a few bugs. The conversation system I didn’t care for due to it being one of these whereby you talk to an NPC, get presented with a list of options, select one, then have to go and talk to him again to reach the next set of options. Why not just follow one set of options with the next set? Why require the player to keep typing TALK TO [NAME] over and over again? Oh, and ensure you put in something for if the player doesn’t type in one of the options because [** PROGRAMMING ERROR: TRIED TO PRINT (CHAR) 130, WHICH IS NOT A VALID ASCII CHARACTER CODE FOR OUTPUT **] is a bit jarring. Also, it’s a good idea if there are no further conversation options available to tell people this instead of having

SELECT AN OPTION BELOW.

SORRY, NO TOPICS AVAILABLE.

At other places, typing in commands sometimes produced no response at all aside from a blank line. I'm not sure if this was where an error message was supposed to go, some text was intended, or if the game is just horribly broken. Probably all three.

If the storyline had been interesting, I might have persevered with the game a bit longer. But it was a generic “thrown in prison for a crime you didn’t commit” type of thing. Once there, you meet a psycho called Jimmy who has all the depth and personality of a cardboard cut out (definitely one of the worst NPCs in a game I've played for a long time) and later on you're visited by a ghostly presence which pulls you into another dimension. This was where my willpower to keep on playing it just died. Up to this point, the game had been terrible in a kind of must-see way. Like you know you're going to be disappointed if you keep playing it, but you just have to keep playing all the same just to see if it really *is* that bad. Unfortunately, it really *is* that bad. I’d like to say this was a decent but flawed effort by a first timer, but it just isn't. There are so many problems with the game that even a first time writer should have caught if he was paying attention that I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.

Last place in the IFComp 2007? Well, it’s got some serious competition this year but I’d wager it finishes in the last five.

1 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=333&start=0#p2040
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Gathered In Darkness by Dr Froth; Quest
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-17 03:51:17

Order Player: 4 out of 22

I decided a while back to quit playing Quest games on account of the fact that a) they were awful and b) they were awful. Even the ones regarded as masterpieces in the Quest community tended to be, at best, decidedly average. While I'm sure it’s possible for a decent game to be written with Quest, none of the ones written to date showed any indication of this and I’d reached the stage where I was playing new Quest games expecting them to be bad and actively sitting there waiting for some terrible bug to throw itself upon me. Hardly the state of mind you should be in when playing a new game. But…

But I gave this one a go. There were less games in this year’s comp than the previous one and as I immediately decided against playing several of them due to one reason or another, I figured I had enough time to at least give this one a shot and see if someone had finally achieved the seemingly impossible and written a Quest game that was actually worth playing.

And that was how I found myself pleasantly surprised.

While a long way from perfect, indeed it has more rough edges than you can shake a stick at, Gathered In Darkness is a solidly entertaining piece of IF. And I don’t just mean it’s a decent game by Quest standards (which, to be honest, isn't saying much), but a decent game full stop. Turn off the side panels, enlarge the text entry line and smarten up the interface a little, and you could easily be forgiven for thinking you were playing a TADS or Inform game.

Given its numerous shortcomings, I'm still not entirely convinced that it’s possible to write a truly great game in Quest, but this one comes the closest to being truly great that I've played so far. At the very least it shows that, while Quest may never produce a masterpiece, it is capable of producing above average games. I've gone over Quest’s problems (at least as I see them) in the past so I won’t reiterate them in any great detail here, but suffice to say the Quest player leaves quite a lot to be desired. The text entry line is still miniscule and, when played on my Vista PC, the new rounded START button has a tendency to obscure some of the already-too-small text I'm typing. Unfortunately, Gargoyle doesn’t seem to work with Quest, at least as far as I could tell, so the Quest player it has to be.

The player carries with him a journal in which important bits of information are contained. In theory anyway. Only the first time I was told it had been updated, there was nothing in it when I tried to read it. Seems I’d turned off the godawful side panels that Quest favours and the relevant information was contained there. A pity no one writing games with Quest ever seems to realise that some of the people playing them might do this sort of thing. Might it not be a good idea to warn people when turning them off or to at least display the information in the game window when the side panels aren't active?

There were a few annoyances with room descriptions. The first time I saw my room, there was a nice long description of it, afterwards there were just a few lines. LOOK did nothing more than reprint these few lines, not the full description. Several key items I had seen before were now hidden and I ended up having to scroll back up the screen in order to refresh my memory as to what they were. On a few occasions, I missed required items because of this and only discovered them after much scrolling up to reread the room descriptions.

Bug-wise, this seemed a little better than the average Quest game in that for the most part I didn’t encounter any real problems. However, in one location I tried to open a door and was told that the only doors I needed to worry about were locked ones. So I tried unlocking it and was told I couldn’t see a door here. Hmmm…

Guess the verb rears its head a time or two and is further complicated by an unhelpful parser:

> GET BATTERIES
I CAN'T SEE THAT HERE.

> REMOVE BATTERIES
THERE ARE NO BATTERIES IN THE FLASHLIGHT AT THIS TIME.

Why did it assume I meant the flashlight? Also there are definitely batteries present.

> REMOVE BATTERIES FROM RADIO
I CAN'T SEE THAT HERE.

> GET BATTERIES FROM RADIO
YOU OPEN UP THE BATTERY COMPARTMENT IN THE BACK AND FIND TWO D CELL BATTERIES.  THINKING THAT THEY MIGHT COME IN HANDY, YOU PUT THEM IN YOUR POCKET.

Why does GET BATTERIES FROM RADIO work yet REMOVE BATTERIES FROM RADIO doesn’t? And why does Quest not realise the radio is there when REMOVE is used, yet has no problems with the radio when GET is used? I generally don’t get too heated up over parser debates, but when one produces misleading error messages like those quoted above, it’s hard to stay cool about them.

For the most part, I liked the style of writing used here, over the top though it was. However, on a few occasions, it was *so* over the top in trying to convey a sense of horror, that it actually came across as quite comical:

A SCREAM RISES FROM DEEP WITHIN YOU BUT IT IS MURDERED BY YOUR FEAR AND DIES LONG BEFORE IT CAN ESCAPE YOUR LIPS

A scream being murdered by your fear…? That sort of thing reminds me of the slasher films you tend to get these days that throw buckets of blood and dismembered corpses all over the place because it’s so much easier than doing something genuinely scary. 

Gathered In Darkness is a fairly sizeable game to be completed within the IFComp’s 2 hour deadline. And this is the cut down version as well, trimmed from a weighty 9 chapters to a more manageable 3. Even so, getting through it in 2 hours will be a struggle due to the sheer amount of text to wade through. If the other chapters are anything like as lengthy as this one, there's probably a good 6 or more hours of gameplay in the full version.  The puzzles are fairly easy and straightforward, though as indicated above are often complicated by guess the verb and parser problems, not to mention the constant scrolling back up to read things that are only listed once in the room description. 

Starting the game seemed to take an unusual amount of time for an IF game. Whereas normally they start almost instantly, or a few seconds at the most, here I was waiting almost a minute for it starting up. Someone else mentioned in a review that loading and saving caused lengthy delays but I never experienced these myself; however he managed to get the game to start up without any noticeable delay. Whether the slowness is a computer-related problem or a problem with Quest itself I couldn’t say, but if the final version of this game is three times as large as this, I don’t much fancy the delays it is likely to bring with it.

One final point which I liked is the game’s clever way of getting around one of Quest’s worst flaws: the lack of an UNDO command in the event of player death. Here, a scripted event triggers and takes the player back one move, thus removing the need to restart the game every time you die. Nice idea. Other Quest writers should take note of it.

6 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=328&start=0#p2041
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2007 Review Sets
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2007-11-17 11:50:47

[quote="Merk"]
I've added more, found at the IF Wiki (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/IF_Comp_2007">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/IF_Comp_2007</a>). A huge thanks to whomever is responsible for collecting them (edit history says "Eriorg").
[/quote]    
You're welcome! [emote]:)[/emote] 

Yes, it was me. Before, I also collected the links to reviews of the other IF Comps (except 2005 and parts of 2006), IntroComps, and to most of the reviews in the "People" pages.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=328&start=0#p2042
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2007 Review Sets
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-17 13:11:09

Well, thanks! Keep up the good work!! [emote]Smile[/emote]

I've left a few of them off, because they require over a dozen different links. I'd rather see them collected on a list page (which, I suppose, I could do myself, by simply making a page that links to each review -- and maybe I'll do that). So, the IFWiki is more complete than my list.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=328&start=0#p2043
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2007 Review Sets
User: George / DateTime: 2007-11-17 14:51:42

My thanks as well for compiling the links. The thoroughness is impressive -- I was even surprised to see links to my blog -- I don't know if I would call what I write reviews, really! [emote]Wink[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=328&start=0#p2044
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2007 Review Sets
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2007-11-17 15:41:45

[quote="George"]
My thanks as well for compiling the links. The thoroughness is impressive -- I was even surprised to see links to my blog -- I don't know if I would call what I write reviews, really! [emote];)[/emote]
[/quote]   
Thank you!

About your blog (you mean the Kooneiform blog, I suppose?), well... I've just looked at the links again, and I must say I wouldn't really call them reviews either, actually. [emote]:oops:[/emote] It seems that I had skimmed through them a bit too quickly. Would you mind if I remove these links from IFWiki?

And should I add a link to your blog on the <a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/George_Oliver">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/George_Oliver</a> page? (I suppose that page is about you, isn't it?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=307&start=10#p2045
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: And the winner is...?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-17 15:54:56

[quote="Arnel Legaspi"]
[quote="Merk"]
[quote="Kivie"]
I gather that Merk is something of a prediction extraordinaire.
[/quote]    
No, I never have been in the past, but we'll see how it goes this time.
[/quote]   

If he does this twice in a row, that will be scary.  [emote]:lol:[/emote]
[/quote]  

Would that make [i]me[/i] a prediction extraordinaire, for predicting Merk would be a prediction extraordinaire?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=307&start=10#p2046
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: And the winner is...?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-17 16:24:21

Maybe next year I'd do another one of those Luc French-inspired lists of predictions -- things like "5 game titles will mention colors" and "3 games will have rabbits as NPC's." It didn't turn out so great last time, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=328&start=0#p2047
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2007 Review Sets
User: George / DateTime: 2007-11-17 17:47:17

[quote="Eriorg"]
Would you mind if I remove these links from IFWiki?

And should I add a link to your blog on the <a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/George_Oliver">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/George_Oliver</a> page? (I suppose that page is about you, isn't it?)
[/quote] 

Removing the review link is fine by me. 

And yeah, that's me on the wiki. Again, that is some impressive collation!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=334&start=0#p2048
Forum: Competitions / Subject: What did you think of the Comp '07 open discussion?
User: George / DateTime: 2007-11-17 17:58:59

I'm curious if people liked reading reviews during the judging period, didn't like it, or were indifferent. 

Personally the Comp felt much more 'active' with all the discussion, compared to last year. I suppose last year there were discussion forums too, here (?) and at ifMUD, but I liked everything being out in the open. 

And I managed to avoid reading about games I hadn't played yet, and most reviewers did a good job of avoiding spoilery review titles and what not.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=334&start=0#p2049
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: What did you think of the Comp '07 open discussion?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-18 02:52:35

I didn't see much of a discussion. I only looked here and enjoyed reading the reviews, but I didn' have the feeling there was an open discussion (which I would probably have liked even more).

Bob

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=334&start=0#p2050
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: What did you think of the Comp '07 open discussion?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-18 03:52:42

I would have liked there to be an even *more* open discussion. As the author of an IFComp game, I would have liked to be able to take part in the discussions myself instead of just being forced to observe. I know all the reasons given for this in the past - authors taking part in discussions during the judging period could influence how the voting goes, blah, blah, blah - but now we can have discussions out in the open, I don't really see what harm allowing the authors to discuss them would do.

But yes, I liked the discussions about the comp games, few and far between that they were. I didn't avoid playing any because other people had said how bad they were and I didn't automatically move other games that had received glowing comments higher on my to play list. But it was interesting seeing discussions of the comp games at a time when the comp was running and the games were fresh in my mind, not after the comp is over and I'm struggling to recall half of what the games were about.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=304&start=0#p2051
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Slap That Fish
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-18 03:55:38

I have to admit this was one game that I really didn't like. It seemed like a joke entry, both from the title and the first few minutes of play, and I think if it had been entered anonymously, or if I didn't know who the author was, I'd have quit it straight off the bat and written it off as a joke entry.

But even when I persevered with it, I just couldn't find anything about it to like. It was very repetitive, it had no storyline to speak of, the entire game followed pretty much the same format - you're attacked by a fish and have to defeat it. Having to find a weapon at one point to attack the fish with made it marginally more interesting, but by this stage I was already tired of it and wanted to play something else instead.

I guess we all have our off days.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=280&start=0#p2052
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: In The Mind Of The Master
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-18 04:00:08

[quote="emshort"]
It's not just the technical aspects of the writing that bothered me (though from time to time they did). I also look for a kind of poise or confidence that tells me that the author knows exactly what he wants to achieve with his prose: what mood he's trying to evoke, where he wants to direct the player's attention, what he's setting up as important questions or themes. If that confidence is present, I find I can forgive a lot of other flaws, because (as a player) I feel secure that the author knows what he's doing, that I'm not wasting my time, and that the story is going somewhere. Several of my favorite games this competition had various implementation or design problems, but did have this confidence, and that was made them stand out.

For that matter, I've played some Whyld games that did strike me this way. Silly as it was, "Paint!!!" (which I reviewed relatively positively) seemed to me to know exactly where it was going and why. "In the Mind of the Master" did not. Descriptions sometimes ran too long, were too vague, and did not convey a strong sense of attitude or direction. Dialogue dragged or contained errors, as though the author did not quite know what the point of the scene was before he started writing it. That sort of thing.
[/quote] 

I *felt* quite confident when I wrote the game, or seem to remember I did, but maybe the fact that when I started writing the game I didn't have any clear idea of how it was going to end spoilt things. To begin with, all I had in terms of the game's general outline was the main character being hunted by agents of the Cardinal and having to effect a disguise in order to elude them. Most of the game was written as I was writing it, not planned out beforehand which is really what I should have done, so maybe that's why it comes across as less confident-sounding.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=334&start=0#p2053
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: What did you think of the Comp '07 open discussion?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-18 07:20:36

It didn't seem to me that there was much discussion anywhere -- just reviews, like Bob said, and maybe a few comments afterwards (but only sometimes). It may take a year or two before the rule change really sinks in for people.

I was going at a pace that stretched 28 games over the entire length of the judging period. So, I liked being able to read and respond about individual games in a stuctured way here, and in some blog posts elsewhere. I think more discussion would have made this less manageable, where it's almost impossible *not* to see other people's opinions for games not played just in trying to join discussions for games I have.

It doesn't seem like any of the entrants were against the discussion this year, and it's probably more important that the authors feel judging is fair than that the judges do. So hmmm. I guess I'm dodging the initial question.

I liked reading the reviews, but only after writing my own for a given game. There were some I didn't even check (such as Inky's, which are structured to group "highly recommended" separate from "recommended" and "not recommended") just to avoid opinions and external bias.

What I'd like to see in the future is somebody who just doesn't care whether they're subject to spoilers or others' opinions, who would work with a "sticky" post that links to individual reviews as they're posted elsewhere. Basically "John Doe posted a reveiw of Game X at This Link." No details, no opinions, just that. Maybe even format this post in sections alphabetically, and edit it to post each new individual review in the proper section. Then, somebody like me who just wants to zone in on a specific game at a specific time could follow along and see them all. Reviews posted elsewhere without spoiler space near other reviews would, of course, be out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=334&start=0#p2054
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: What did you think of the Comp '07 open discussion?
User: George / DateTime: 2007-11-18 15:19:56

You're right that most (blog) reviews never got more than a few comments. This is what I meant by all the open discussion anyway. 

Another thing I really liked were the play lists that some people posted on this forum -- it's not like it was really significant in any way, I just thought it was neat. 

Maybe that would be a good idea for a separate thread all its own -- that is, a list of games people are playing/have played throughout the year. Though I admit even I am not the daily blogger/library thinger/del.ic.iouser who would update that on a consistent basis.


edit: I also admit I have a habit of trying to do things I am not cut out for: [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=335&hilit=]Playing now[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=335&start=0#p2055
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Playing now
User: George / DateTime: 2007-11-18 15:37:33

Inspired by [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=266&hilit=]IFComp '07 Checklists[/url], what I'll do is post a short list of games, then add to it and check off games as I go. Currently playing is in red. 

Like the IFComp thread, add your list too.

[color=#008040] __: [/color]  [color=red]Lost Pig[/color]
[color=#008040] XX: [/color] [color=#004040]Marika the Offering ([i]One Room Comp[/i])[/color]
[color=#008040] __: [/color]  An Apple from Nowhere
[color=#008040] __: [/color]  [color=#004040]Fine Tuned[/color]
[color=#008040] __: [/color]  Timeout
[color=#008040] __: [/color]  [color=#004040]Beetmonger's Journal[/color]
[color=#008040] __: [/color]  Elements

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=304&start=0#p2056
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Slap That Fish
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2007-11-18 20:21:39

The large amount of turns I spent resting hurt this game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=334&start=0#p2057
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: What did you think of the Comp '07 open discussion?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-18 21:32:35

Well, five of the nine One-Room Competition games (out now - <a href="http://www.avventuretestuali.com/orgc/orgc-2007-eng">http://www.avventuretestuali.com/orgc/orgc-2007-eng</a>) are in English. I'm really tempted to play and review those (the deadline is pretty generous -- December 22nd). I'm undecided, though. I need to get cracking on something else I'm working on, plus my wife bought me a bunch of new games for my b-day (including Super Mario Galaxy and Silent Hill Origins -- which I want to spend some free time on).

I'm not sure why, but I've kept lists of things I'm playing, reading, or watching, for the past year or two. I think I had originally planned for it to be on a blog or something, but I've just never gotten into blogging.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=334&start=0#p2058
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: What did you think of the Comp '07 open discussion?
User: George / DateTime: 2007-11-18 22:28:09

I certainly enjoy reading the stuff of people who [i]can [/i]blog consistently. 

Merk, what do you think about stickying the Playing Now thread? I wonder if anyone else would find it entertaining?

edit: it could be cool if 'playing now' meant any game, IF or otherwise.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=334&start=0#p2059
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: What did you think of the Comp '07 open discussion?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-18 22:37:43

I guess it could be sticky. I'm not sure how much interest people would take in it, though. I thought the IFComp play lists were a good idea (when listing all the games in order played) because the authors could find out when their game was coming up next.

Right now, I'm playing Metroid Prime 3 (Wii), Grim Fandango (PC - with my wife), and Mega Man - Powered Up (PSP). But I'm not sure anybody really cares but me. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=334&start=0#p2060
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: What did you think of the Comp '07 open discussion?
User: George / DateTime: 2007-11-18 23:08:39

Well, you just had me googling Grim Fandango. [emote]Wink[/emote]

another edit and I'm done: OK, that game sounds hellz cool.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=334&start=0#p2061
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: What did you think of the Comp '07 open discussion?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-19 06:41:22

Yeah, it's pretty fun. It's Tim Schafer's last game before leaving LucasArts. We've only been playing a couple hours a week (and sometimes, not even that much). We're not even quite half-way through yet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=334&start=10#p2062
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: What did you think of the Comp '07 open discussion?
User: revgiblet / DateTime: 2007-11-19 06:56:44

As an author I was a big fan of being able to read reviews during the comp rather than just at the end.  I would have been even happier to see heated debate and threats of physical violence around the forums as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=335&start=0#p2063
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Playing now
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-19 07:30:15

Is this for IF games or any games? If IF games, then... my list will be pretty empty as I'm just coming out of IFComp mode and need a break from playing any IF games for a week or two. When I get back into the swing of things, I plan to wallow in nostalgia and play some of the text adventures from when I was a teenager. There are still so many I haven't played and as I could be dead of old age in 40-50 years, I really need to get cracking.

If any games, then my list of current games is the same as it's been since about this time last year when I started playing *the* best game of them all: World of Warcraft.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=335&start=0#p2064
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Playing now
User: George / DateTime: 2007-11-19 09:20:04

Originally I thought of just IF games, but I don't see why people couldn't include all games. I don't really actively look for new (or old) games, so I appreciate it when I come across something to look up in another context.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=277&start=0#p2065
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Gathered In Darkness
User: drfroth / DateTime: 2007-11-19 12:14:08

Merk,

Thanks for the very detailed review of my game.  This was my first IF game and I really enjoyed taking part in the comp.  I have learned a lot from this, and most of what I have learned has been from the feedback of good reviews like yours.  (By good review I do not mean reviews where people thought the game was good, but reviews where the reasons that they liked or did not like it where spelled out clearly).

It was pointed out in many reviews that it might be best for me to put this game through some serious editing before uploading the full version.  I am heeding that advice and doing it right now.  Then I guess it will be a round of testing or two.  Then I will release it.

I had worked on that game for a long time.  I missed last years comp because I was still wrestling with trying to override many of Quest's default behaviors.  I told myself that this year I was going to release it regardless of where I was at to give myself a benchmark.  I was afraid that this would end up being one more thing I started and never finished.  

I had to make a fresh build for the comp (the game right now is close to 2800kb) because Alex has to put up a new version of the interpreter just so you can play it (the size is larger than the current build of Quest can handle).  Some of the coding problems crept in as I copied the first three chapters into a new file.  Many things that work fine in the main version seem to act strange in the small one.  Who knows?  As for load times... that may be out of my hands.

That does not excuse my spelling.  I suck at this.  Bad.  Quest outputs all text to Notepad which does not have a spell check feature.  I have since figured out a painful work around by coping a paragraph of text and pasting it into a word processor, running the check, and than pasting it back into Quest.  In the future I think I will write the prose portions of my game in a word processor and than just grab them as I need them while coding.  I did this on my game in the one room comp and it worked much better.

I'm going to fix these bugs and get it up and running.  Thanks so much for playing it Merk.  And not only playing it but really trying to figure it out and pick it apart.  Your review was one of the most helpful out of the ones I got.

Testing, testing, testing.  O.K.  next year we will do that. [emote]Smile[/emote] 

Michael

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=280&start=0#p2066
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: In The Mind Of The Master
User: drfroth / DateTime: 2007-11-19 12:19:05

I really enjoyed this game (though I really like games like this).  But the last move was very, very hard for me to figure out.  The mystery of the Master and his back story I thought were best left out.  Sometimes things are more interesting when you are not entirely sure of anything except what is going on in the moment.

Anyway, I do agree that the last puzzle was wickedly evil.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=280&start=0#p2067
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: In The Mind Of The Master
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-19 13:09:52

The last puzzle seems to be the one place where everyone has problems. When I wrote it, I thought that it was quite a logical thing but my testers disagreed. So much so that I ended up putting extra hints in to try and clue people in to what needed doing, but even then I think I left it way too vague. So far I don't think I've found a single person who actually managed to solve it without the hints, which probably tells me I really should have listened to my testers when they said it needed cluing a *lot* better.

Oh well. Back to the drawing board I guess.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=280&start=10#p2068
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: In The Mind Of The Master
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2007-11-19 13:22:56

I had taken the clues over the game to mean that over time, the Master takes on the full identity of the person, 1) it was a passive ability, 2) the Master wasn't totally conscious of it, and 3) it still required wearing the target's clothes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=277&start=0#p2069
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Gathered In Darkness
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-19 17:26:20

Well, I'd volunteer to *help* you test, but this is *really* going to be a big undertaking and you need somebody who's serious enough to put some time into it. And I'm working like mad right now. I'd say "I'll help" and then end up not helping. Hopefully you can find some willing recruits. Don't rush, though. You may very well end up with weeks worth of work just to react to what the testers say. And don't spend everybody in the first round. Get a person or two to start, and then when you think you've got it polished, be sure at least one or two completely different people see the new version.

Hugo spits output to a text file, but it's *just* dictionary entries (no code -- although formatting stuff like \B ends up there). What I do is dump to a text file, search/replace formatting codes (I only use a limited set, so it's only a little bit of work) en masse with blank, and then spell-check.

What are you getting out of Quest? The *entire* game, or just the text? Because if it's just the text, you should still be able to run it through spell-checking without doing a piece at a time. I'm horrible with spelling too.

Does Alex know about the problem with large saves and restores? As ralphmerridew pointed out, it's basically a log of all state changes. So, the more you play, the longer it takes to process it all when you save and load. For me, this became a *huge* pain. I'm not kidding when I say it was taking more than a minute to save the game, and almost that long to restore. Is there *anything* that can be done in the version of Quest that'll supposedly support your larger game to speed that up? I'm sure you can't answer that, but Alex should probably be made aware. And maybe he already is?

Have you seen the same kinds of lag in saving and loading after you've been playing for several hours? Or do you just use built-in cheats to skip ahead? Because if you do (and of course, you *should* otherwise it'd be a nightmare to debug later sections), you may not even be aware at how bad the save/restore performs later on. It's not even a big save file -- my guess is it's all the work Quest is doing to actually *process* those entries that takes so long.

Did I already send you my transcripts? Do you want them in email?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=280&start=10#p2070
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: In The Mind Of The Master
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-19 17:33:50

The only clue I'm aware of is near the beginning, in a book that you can overlook (a book which, in fact, I overlooked). Or else I saw it but paid it no mind. There was something about being able to completely "become" another person, right? Were there other clues later on?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=280&start=10#p2071
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: In The Mind Of The Master
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2007-11-19 18:38:54

The problems with the book as a clue are

a) There's no reason from the description of the books to think that any of them of worth reading right now.
b) The game is telling you to hurry up and get out, not mess around poking at stuff.

It might work better if the book were lying around loose, not just one of many. Even better if the book were lying open, so that just examining it lets you read the passage the Master highlighted. I suppose that would look like egregious exposition, though.

As to winning the game, I'd discovered the command you need quite early on (even though I didn't read the book), but since it never did anything interesting I'd forgotten about it by the time I got to the end. However, the reply it gives if you try to use it ahead of time does clue you fairly heavily that you'll need to use it later on, so I should have remembered.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=277&start=0#p2072
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Gathered In Darkness
User: drfroth / DateTime: 2007-11-19 19:38:00

I would love to have the transcripts.  You can send them to <a href="mailto:frothgames@yahoo.com">frothgames@yahoo.com</a>

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=277&start=10#p2073
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Gathered In Darkness
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2007-11-19 20:29:50

For Alex to really fix Quest, he'd need to dump so much that he might as well do a scratch rewrite.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=301&start=0#p2074
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: A Matter of Importance
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-20 21:31:16

Merk, thanks a lot for the review! BTW, if there was an award for the most useful review, you'd probably be the first candidate for it (and I'm sure not the only author who thinks like that). I certainly owe you one. The more so as AMOI contains a feature directly inspired by (that's an elaborate way to say "stolen from") The Traveling Swordsman - you'll notice it if you start it now, after the Comp!

A few comments on the review:

[quote]
Why is it that this title had me thinking of that recent Al Gore environmental documentary? Titles have a way of suggesting a theme, and I had a hunch this one would be a politically-charged semi-interactive essay.
[/quote]  

Aaaah, few things are as satisfying to an author as seeing a player marching right into the trap you laid for him!;)

[quote]
I think the author had to trade off some of his concept in favor of playability.
[/quote]  

Good guess;).

[quote]
The police repeat themselves, but it was entertaining (and maybe another nod to Ilf and Petrov).
[/quote]  

No, it has nothing to do with Ilf and Petrov. Acutally, the game in general has nothing to do with Ilf and Petrov, except for the quote at the beginning.

[quote]
P. S. You know what -- I wonder if the author, not being a native speaker of English -- meant for the Thieving Guild to be more of a Thieving Organization? Or a crime syndicate specializing in theft? And maybe the testers just never questioned it, because it seemed intentional. Anyway, that's my theory.
[/quote]  

That's partly true. On the other hand, being a big fan of Unnkulian games, I also like anachronistic setting elements, so that I'd probably leave it as is even if the idea people tend to associate the word "guild" with Middle Ages occured to me.

It was great fun to read your reviews in general, and that of AMOI in particular! Thanks again!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=301&start=0#p2075
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: A Matter of Importance
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-21 06:59:16

Ah! Yeah, I started it again and I see what you're talking about.

Before we know it, judges are going to start setting their clocks ahead next year, just to see what happens in the anonymous/pseudonym names. [emote]Smile[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=336&start=0#p2076
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I'm not a beginner, but...
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-21 12:55:26

I've been using Inform 7 for a while now, and recently got 5G67. I decided to make a Kingdom hearts II IF, but am having problems making "reaction commands". Here's a snippet early on that's not causing me the problem:

[color=#0000FF]The player has a text called the reaction command. When play begins: change the reaction command to "None"; change the left hand status line to "(the player's surroundings)/(the reaction command of the player)".[/color]

Now here's the part that causes me the trouble:

[color=#0000FF]Using the reaction command is an action applying to nothing. Understand "(the reaction command of the player)" as using the reaction command. Check using the reaction command: say "Nothing happens."[/color]

By the way, I replaced brackets like [ and ] with parentheses ( and ). And I can easily make rules that override that check rule, so nevermind that. From what I can tell, it's the "Understand so and so as this and that" part that causing the errors. Obviously, that part is rejecting the (the reaction command of the player) part.
So, I need help! What can I do to get this to accept it, or do I need to change the scheme of the reaction commands completely? Anything would be appreciated!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=334&start=10#p2077
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: What did you think of the Comp '07 open discussion?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-21 20:25:08

On one hand, open discussion was really cool, of course. On the other hand, I had more problems managing my spare time this year than before. Previously, I'd go through all the Comp entries, writing my comments, and then read other people's reviews (after the Comp was over). This year, I was too much tempted to read the reviews "in-between", which made me much slower at getting through the list of games. I'm not sure I'd be able to play all the entries if there were as many as in 2006 or 2005. 

On the other hand, it's entirely a matter of personal orderliness. No one can prevent me from doing it the usual way if I wanted to, so the only person to blame for problems arising if I'm not doing so is myself:).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=336&start=0#p2078
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I'm not a beginner, but...
User: George / DateTime: 2007-11-21 20:55:30

Two things:

- not sure about this, but I think you want 'indexed text' rather than text -- see section 19.7. 

- when you write 'change the reaction command to foo', Inform isn't sure whose reaction command you mean, because it doesn't know whose property you're referring to. I'm surprised you didn't get a run-time error with just the first expression you quoted. What you want then is:

[code]

"Reaction"

The Apartment is a room. 

The player has an indexed text called the reaction command.

When play begins: change the reaction command of the player to "none"; change the left hand status line to "[the player's surroundings]/[the reaction command of the player]".

Using the reaction command is an action applying to one topic. Understand "[text]" as using the reaction command. 

Check using the reaction command: if the topic understood matches the text the reaction command of the player begin; say "Nothing happens."; otherwise; say "Try again."; end if.

test me with "foo / none"

[/code]

Because I couldn't get at the reaction command property via direct substitution, that's what I came up with. 

Note that I had to change the property to lowercase 'none' to work simply with the test, but I'm pretty sure you can get around that for your own tests.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=334&start=10#p2080
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: What did you think of the Comp '07 open discussion?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-22 06:00:40

I quite liked seeing what people thought of the games. I wasn't able to respond at the time(having co-authored the Chinese Room) but it was interesting seeing responses. I think it made for a more engaging competition time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=336&start=0#p2081
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I'm not a beginner, but...
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-22 09:30:10

I made a mistake in my post. I DID do "change the reaction command of the player to so and so" instead of "change the reaction command to so and so". But, that last bit you posted... that helps. THANK YOU!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=338&start=0#p2082
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7 sample source
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-22 14:14:11

I have been attempting to compile a number of sample games for Inform 7, to no avail.   I know I have the latest version of Inform 7 (build 5G67).   None of the samples on inform website managed to compile.   Attempts to remove offending sections of the source code and recompile resulted in a slew of new error messages (hardly surprising actually, but i was desperate!).   Does anyone have any experience compiling Inform 7 games?   Is there perhaps a good place to find some Inform 7 source code?

Any help at all would be appreciated

Kays.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=309&start=0#p2083
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Fox, Fowl and Feed
User: cconroy / DateTime: 2007-11-22 20:41:24

Hi -- I'm the author of Fox, Fowl and Feed.  Thanks for your thorough review.  I definitely plan to release a new version sometime in the near future which fixes the bugs you and others have noticed.  I suspect some of them were introduced by last-minute changes without sufficient follow-up testing (I know, I know, bad software developer... don't tell my boss).  

Also, as a first-time author, I don't have any prior experience to compare against, but I would like to say that it was nice to be able to read reviews during the judging period.  Sometimes frustrating or disappointing as well, though I suppose that's no one's fault but mine. [emote]Smile[/emote]

-Chris C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=334&start=10#p2084
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: What did you think of the Comp '07 open discussion?
User: cconroy / DateTime: 2007-11-22 20:49:09

Another vote here for author participation during the judging period, even if it's restricted to an authors-only forum/topic.  Either way, though, it's great to be able to read reviews.  I got a few comments/reviews by email (big thanks to those who took the time to do so!) but I think a public medium like this forum, which reaches a wider audience, is probably a more attractive option to most reviewers.

-Chris C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=338&start=0#p2085
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 sample source
User: George / DateTime: 2007-11-23 13:04:10

Could you post again with the samples you're using, exactly as you entered them in the source window, and the errors you received?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=338&start=0#p2086
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 sample source
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2007-11-23 14:24:28

I believe Kays means the Worked Examples: The Reliques of Tolti-Aph, Bronze, Glass, Damnatio Memoriae and the two When in Romes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=339&start=0#p2087
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Are You Looking for a Programmer?
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2007-11-23 14:57:12

Dear Designer/Writer,

As almost a software engineer [size=50](1)[/size], I'm quite capable of translating your vision of a game into reality, as long as you handle the - for me - hard parts of designing the game and writing the text.

I've tried my hands at Inform 6, Inform 7 and TADS 3 code, and prefer TADS 3 above the others; however, I'm quite willing to use Inform 7 to create the game, as well [size=50](2)[/size].

As mentioned above, design and writing are not my forte. This can be seen in what pieces of IF I have tried to write: none have ever been completed, as I haven't been able to finish up the design of the game. As for writing, I am capable of writing basic text such as this, but nothing approaching the standards of fiction, static or interactive: what I write is technical in nature and not fun for anyone to read.

I would greatly appreciate the chance of finally being able to get a project from completed, to finally have created something other than mere speech in this forum or on the newsgroups (or a couple of I7 extensions [size=50](3)[/size]).


[b]Footnotes:[/b]
[size=50](1)[/size] I had almost graduated as a software engineer, with about a year left to go, when I realized sitting in an office for eight hours a day wasn't what I wanted. After quitting my studies, I've kept on programming as a hobby, and even for money occasionally.

[size=50](2)[/size] I have released a few extensions [size=50](3)[/size] for Inform 7, but for TADS 3 I have nothing to show, although it is my preferred language.

[size=50](3)[/size] See for example the extensions [i]Atmospheric Effects[/i] and [i]Achievements[/i].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=338&start=0#p2088
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 sample source
User: George / DateTime: 2007-11-23 18:24:57

I wonder if those games have been updated along with new builds of I7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=339&start=0#p2089
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Are You Looking for a Programmer?
User: George / DateTime: 2007-11-23 18:26:45

What kind of game are you interested in making rioshin?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=338&start=0#p2090
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 sample source
User: George / DateTime: 2007-11-24 00:36:21

OK, just as a test I compiled Bronze with the new build of I7. Other than needing to comment out the 'Release With' code (due to lack of the cover image) and set the game to compile to .z8, everything worked fine. So I'm guessing Kays is running into some other kind of problem.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=339&start=0#p2091
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Are You Looking for a Programmer?
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2007-11-24 02:57:57

[quote="George"]
What kind of game are you interested in making rioshin?
[/quote] 

I'm most interested in horror and sci-fi, but I'm willing to write the code for a game in any genre.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=340&start=0#p2092
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: game design documents
User: George / DateTime: 2007-11-24 18:15:23

Found this kind of randomly:

<a href="http://www.allowe.com/gamedesign/index.htm">http://www.allowe.com/gamedesign/index.htm</a>

Some of the [i]Leisure Suit Larry[/i] game design docs. Interesting stuff.

Has anyone here ever written something like that for their IF game? About how long were the [i]Larry[/i] games for those who've played them?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=341&start=0#p2093
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: An Act Of Murder by Hugh Dunnett
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-27 07:38:33

Going by the author’s name, I started this expecting some kind of comedy game or even a joke entry, but instead I was pleasantly surprised to find a well above average detective caper. Overall, it’s a fairly generic murder mystery with you as a detective sent to a country mansion to solve a murder. Clichéd? Sure. But done well enough to hide the feeling of “yep, been there, done that, bought the t-shirt” I usually get when playing such games.

A few things about the game in general struck me as kind of odd. I wandered down to the beach (the game doesn’t understand SWIM unfortunately so no paddling in the water here) to check out the scene of the crime and found the dead body just lying there. Not a single uniformed cop in sight. Heck, it wasn’t even cordoned off the way you see on TV. Now, granted, my knowledge of police procedure is pretty much taken from one TV show or another, but is it normal for the crime scene to be left like this? Someone could have come along and planted all manner of evidence and no one would have been any the wiser.

I was also a little surprised at the short time limit placed on the game. Two hours. Now, that isn't as bad as you might think because every move takes 15 seconds, so you actually have (grabs calculator) 480 moves before the game ends (and a few extra ones besides as the timer doesn’t start until you actually enter the mansion). Even so, isn't it a bit unreasonable of your boss to drop you off at a mansion in the middle of the night and expect you to question half a dozen different suspects all on your own AND come up with enough evidence to convince him of the identity of the guilty party within the space of just two hours? This is definitely a game where suspension of disbelief isn't just a good idea but essential.

As with most detective games, you wander around and interrogate the possible suspects about various topics, checking their alibis and questioning about them where they were at the time of the murder (which they seem to know to the exact minute. How convenient.) and when you’ve got enough information to know who the guilty party is, you put in a call to your boss. Strangely enough, even when I knew the identity of the guilty party (or thought I did anyway), the game wouldn’t let me make an arrest but only call my boss. Surely if I was a detective and had enough evidence to make an arrest, I should make it before the suspect gets wind of what I'm up to and legs it? But, anyway, I had a few problems with figuring out how to know when I had enough evidence to call my boss and put an end to the game. Several times, I figured I had enough (or, at least, had reached a dead end and couldn’t figure out any way to get further evidence) and called him, only to discover I didn’t have enough evidence to convince him of who the guilty party was. He’d then lose all confidence in my ability to solve a complex murder in the space of two hours and the game was over. Some kind of in game prompt to clue you into the fact that you have enough evidence might have been a good idea.

The game is randomised and certain key details – namely alibis and the like – change with each play. While this certainly adds to replay value, if you're interested in playing it through multiple times, it made it a lot more difficult for me to keep track of things. Fortunately you have a notebook in which you jot down the relevant points, which is a big help, but there were times when I struggled to remember what had happened in the game I was playing now and what had happened previously. Several times I got confused about events, remembering something I had been told in a previous play through and wondering just why certain things seemed different than I recalled them.

Despite some misgivings about the game, mainly with regard to the short time frame and the lack of believability, I really enjoyed An Act of Murder.

7 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=342&start=0#p2094
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Beneath: A Transformation by Graham Lowther
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-27 07:39:08

This one was kind of weird. I didn’t have a clue what it was really about and most of my time seemed to be spent wandering aimlessly back and forth trying desperately to figure out what I was meant to be doing. I don’t generally like games like this. I don’t like starting a game without having a clue who I am or what I'm meant to be doing, unless, of course, figuring out these things is the whole point of the game. But here I don’t think it is the point. It’s just… confusing.

A few things added to general weirdness of the game and made precious little sense. It’s described as dark outside, yet I'm able to see a glove lying on the ground from several locations away. However, it won’t let me read a book I'm carrying due to it being too dark. So… I can see a glove from several locations away yet I'm not able to read a book I'm carrying in my hand? To further complicate this, there are all manner of locations in the game which you'd normally expect to be lit (shops for instance) yet you still can’t read the book in those locations because it’s still too dark. According to another review of the game I read, the book can only be read in a certain location due to the lack of lighting, yet even when you're in a location with (I would assume) adequate lighting, you're still informed it’s too dark to read it. This seemed to be a perfect example of an author wanting a puzzle to work in a certain way and forcing the player to figure it out, yet leaving other, far more plausible options unavailable because they didn’t fit in with what he was aiming for. 

There's a walkthrough included (always a good sign as far as I'm concerned) but this one didn’t help me when I got jumped by some sinister cop outside the police station and locked in a dark cell. As far as I could tell, the walkthrough didn’t seem to cover the cell (it lists only the commands you need to type and doesn’t refer to individual locations or puzzles so unless you follow it command by command, it’s difficult to tell just where you are and which bit you should be looking at) so whether it’s possible to escape another way, or if you're never meant to get captured in the first place, I don’t know. The cell was a little buggy in that it would let me examine the book I was carrying, but stop me seeing anything else due it to being too dark.

The town the game is set in – Stregoicavar – is a pretty empty and desolate one. The few people I encountered seemed ill-inclined to engage in much conversation with me. One man I met in a pet shop proved a little more forthcoming and I even succeeded in buying a dog from him, but I couldn’t figure out how to get it out of the shop afterwards so that was money wasted. The dog just sat where it was and resisted all my attempts to either move it or get it to follow me. But then buying anything was problematic. The game won’t simply let me PAY MAN or GIVE MONEY, I have to give the *exact* right amount for everything I want to buy. No change is given, which is awkward from a game playing point of view and unrealistic from a logical point of view. Not to be mention being a major pain.

Puzzles range from the blindingly obvious to the so obscure it’s a wonder you'll ever figure them out. Some you'll probably solve without even realising you need to, others you'll never even realise need solving until you consult the walkthrough. I played this game after reading several other reviews of it and I gather I'm not the only one who felt this way. Certain actions need to be completed in order to allow progress at a later stage of the game, but no indication is given at the time that these things need to be done. There's no way to figure them out. Most of the time it seems likely to be a case of (for example) running into a locked door later on and only then realising you needed to pick up the key in the first location and not the broom.

There seemed to be a lot more going on than seemed apparent from my first play through the game. As well as the conversation I overheard with the sinister cop, there's an ancient man lying in a groove in a cliff on the outskirts of town who starts mentioning things in the book you're carrying, indicating that the events of the book have either started to affect the town itself or simply that you're a character in the selfsame book. I quite liked this idea but it couldn’t really make up for the game’s many other shortcomings.

I was left with decidedly mixed feelings about the game. On one hand, I found myself coming dangerously close to liking it. Not a lot, but enough to make me wish the beginning had been better written and gave an indication of what I needed to do, as well as the puzzles being reworked to make them a little more obvious. On the other hand, blindly stumbling around and not having a clue what I'm meant to be doing isn't much fun, so while overall I *did* like the game, I felt I would have liked it a lot more if it hadn’t been so confusing or picky about certain things. The item carrying restriction really didn’t help either.

5 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=343&start=0#p2095
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: The Chinese Room by Joey Jones & Harry Giles
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-27 07:40:38

The final game for me in the IFComp 2007. Actually there were 29 games in the comp but 1 was mine and 6 I decided not to play, bringing the total to 22. 

I had problems with this one right at the start by the game forcing you to do a puzzle, one that seems relatively straightforward on the face of it, in a very set order. For an example, (spoilers follow) the first location has a hatch in the ceiling which I need to place a chair under in order to be able to reach. The first time I did this, I got the chair under the hatch with no problem but couldn’t open the hatch as I had nothing to unlock it with. On a second play through the game, after I had found the necessary key, the game simply wouldn’t let me move the chair under the hatch. No matter what I typed, the game wouldn’t put the chair under the hatch and every time I tried, it would be moved back to its original location. All quite strange. It was only when checking through my first transcript that I realised you need to examine the wet patch on the ceiling first and only then can you move the chair under the hatch. Hmmm…

Actually there's a reason for that in that you don’t see the hatch until you’ve first examined the patch, but it’s annoying that the game will let you refer to the hatch even before you’ve seen it, will even advise you that you need to put something under it in order to be able to reach it, yet won’t let you put the chair there until you’ve examined a totally different item.

This didn’t leave me with high hopes for this game and I was seriously considering quitting, but as it was the last game I was playing in the comp and I had some time to spare, I decided to persevere with it. Lucky for me I did. After a less than wonderful start, the game begins in earnest and improves considerably. In fact, it’s a close call between this game and Lost Pig for my favourite game of the comp.

Once out of the first location, the game opens up and you find yourself in a charmingly created fantasy world. Wandering along to a village, I found an array of interesting characters debating various problems they were having and needing some help (from yours truly) into figuring out what to do. This doesn’t sound like a whole lot of fun and is generally the sort of high brow stuff that makes me roll my eyes, but here it was presented so much better than I expected it to be. There's a comedy element to the game and the interactions between the various characters are amusingly written. Conversation is, thankfully, handled in the format of TALK TO [NAME] and so eliminates the horrid guess the verb problems that plague the more commonly-used ASK [NAME] ABOUT [SUBJECT]. Here you simply get a list of conversation options to choose from. While this might seem restrictive, particularly when pitted against the other system which allows you to ask people about virtually any subject under the sun (provided the writer has covered it of course), it does a wonderful job of making what is usually a difficult part of the game, namely figuring out just what subject you're supposed to be asking about, so much easier.

Solving most of the game’s puzzles is nicely straightforward and mercifully free from guess the verb problems. A few I even managed to solve without actively trying to solve them. Disproving the existence of the unicorn was one that I solved by simply wandering around and speaking to people. It wasn’t until I spoke to a certain character later on that I realised I had solved the puzzle he had first mentioned to me a while before. Just as well really as when I was first asked to disprove the existence of a unicorn, I couldn’t for the life of me think how I was going to go about doing that.

There are a few problems with the game but fortunately only a few. Sometimes you'll be hit with a message informing you that philosophers aren't supermen when attempting to move items that even weedy little philosophers should be able to move. Surely even a philosopher, not the hardiest of adventurers, shouldn’t have much trouble in moving a simple chair around?

Overall, recommended. Highly recommended. It was a close thing between this and Lost Pig for my fave IFComp game of 2007 but I think this one just wins out.

8 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=344&start=0#p2096
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Ferrous Ring by Carma Ferris
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-27 07:41:24

For me, this had a lot in common with Reconciling Mother in that it was too weird for my liking. I'm fond in theory of new ideas and novel approaches to interactive fiction, but in practice whenever someone tries one it just seems to leave a confusing mess of a game like this. This was one of several games in the IFComp this year that I played just once and found that once was more than enough. I note from other reviews of the game that it seems to include some unusual features that clearly had a lot of work put into them to make them work, but as the game itself confused me so much that after half an hour I was aching to quit, I guess I’ll just have to miss out on them. 

Ferrous Ring does an excellent job of annoying the player at every opportunity. It doesn’t list exits from many locations, or even on some occasions give a proper location description, instead merely giving a list of good and bad points at the end. What the mimesis crowd think of this I shudder to imagine. This is what the game has for the foyer area:

FOYER
GOOD: THE STAIRWAY, MY DESTINATION.
BAD: THE DOOR TO DANGER; THE CROWDS OF PEOPLE, SHELTERING HERE.

Does a first rate job of describing the foyer, doesn’t it? Why, it’s almost like you're really there…

The parser is unhelpful and just adds to the problems of making your way around a game that doesn’t see fit to obey any of the standard rules of interactive fiction. Perfectly reasonable commands – directional ones – will often produce bizarre error messages. I AM SUDDENLY STRUCK BY THE COMPULSION TO... DO SOMETHING. BUT MY THOUGHTS WASH OVER IT - DROWN IT pops up often. Sometimes you can use the GO command to move about, other times you are hit by the unusual error message I quoted above. Most times you can’t even examine items without the error message rearing its ugly head. This has been used in place of the standard error messages, I'm guessing anyway, to make everything that happens in the game retain the aura of strangeness the writer is aiming for. To some degree, it works. But trying to make your way through a game and continually seeing the same error message for a whole variety of different reasons is a pain. You never know if you're seeing the error message because you’ve made a genuine mistake, have worded something wrongly or have simply tried something the writer didn’t anticipate. It’s akin to the old text adventures I played back in the 80’s with two word parsers that would spit out YOU CAN’T DO THAT every time you attempted something that hadn’t been specifically programmed in (which, considering the memory restrictions back then, was often). Parsers have come a long way since then, but this game sends them careening way back to the Stone Age. The ironic thing is that the system this game is written in has a first rate parser built into it, and yet the author has decided to go ahead and effectively cripple it for ‘atmosphere’.

Maybe there's some deeper meaning to Ferrous Ring that makes itself clear towards the end of the game, but I think I can happily live without knowing what it is. Sometimes, ignorance *is* bliss. 

1 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=345&start=0#p2097
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Fox, Fowl & Feed by Chris Conroy
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-27 07:41:56

This game describes itself as “an interactive exercise in transportation”, but I found it more “an interactive exercise in tedium”. For a game that is written with the sole intention of being frustrating, this one sure hits the nail on the head.

It’s a take on the old puzzle of getting a fox, duck and sack of grain across a river in a rowboat with the added problem of only being able to transport one of them at a time. This is further complicated by the fact that leaving the fox and the duck alone leans to disaster (the fox eats the duck) and leaving the duck and the sack of grain also ends badly. Add this to the fact that if you take the duck over the river first, it becomes bored and swims back… and you have one might irritating game. 

There were other things that annoyed me about Fox, Fowl & Feed. In fact, almost everything about the game annoyed me. I've played variations on it before and never much liked the idea, but this version seemed designed to be as frustrating as possible. For example, you can exit the boat with OUT but can’t enter it with IN. You can’t row the boat while carrying anything so have to keep dropping things and then picking them up before you leave the boat. I know that, strictly speaking, rowing a boat while carrying a fox might be a trifle awkward, but surely in the interests of keeping the frustration level down a bit, allowing it would be a good idea? Heck, I've played games before where I've climbed a rope while carrying a grand piano so rowing a boat with a fox in my hands shouldn’t present a problem.

As this felt like a game I’d played a dozen times before, I didn’t play for long and can only wonder at why someone decided to remake it for the comp. If you’ve got the patience for it, and haven't played anything similar before, you might well like it. Unfortunately, I didn’t.

3 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=346&start=0#p2098
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: The Immortal by Rob Anthony
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-27 07:42:24

This one was certainly bizarre. It’s one of those games that don’t seem to make any sense whatsoever and you just blindly wander around solving puzzles because they're there to be solved, often without any real indication of why you're doing these things. But while I usually find myself hating these kinds of games, this one wasn’t too bad. In fact, if not for the bugs it might have been a fairly decent game.

But the bugs. Oh dear. There were a lot of them and probably indicate that the only tester this game saw was the same person who wrote it. The worst offenders I found were:

*	Using the purple glyph stone causes a book to appear on the desk. That’s what the text reads anyway. This happens whether you're in the same location as the desk or not. I happened to use the stone in a different location and was a little bewildered afterwards when I couldn’t see either a book or the desk. Surely the stone should only be usable in the same location as the desk? Or at least the text shouldn’t mention the player able to see this happen if it happens somewhere else.

*	Using the opaque glyph stone is similarly bugged. By the look of things, it’s intended to be used in one location and one location only, yet it’s possible to use it anywhere in the game. However, the game assumes you're using it in the correct location and if you happen to be using it somewhere else (as I was), the text displayed is misleading.

*	The large bag in the room with the hobgoblins. This was seriously bugged. You're supposed to use a certain item to turn invisible and then examine the bag, but it’s possible to take the bag out of the room without the hobgoblins doing anything. However, if you then examine it far away from them, you're still informed that they awake and kill you in the same room you found it in. I carried the bag several locations away and tested this and, sure enough, the hobgoblins still killed me even though they couldn’t see me at the time. 

*	In another location, I used an item and triggered an event and was told that another hobgoblin was there… even though he had left the scene a while ago.

*	It’s spelt “dais”, not “dias”.

There were other problems as well. The game couldn’t seem to decide whether it was a serious game or a comedy. Most of the time it was serious, but silly little comments made their way into it at various times. Whether this was just meant as black humour or light relief I don’t know, but it spoiled the mood every time it happened.

Strangely, though, despite the many problems with the game I found I didn’t actually dislike it. I didn’t know what was going on, found the bugs frustrating, was even more annoyed when the walkthrough got me killed (that might be a problem on my behalf admittedly, though if I deviated from the walkthrough, I can’t see where this was from my transcript), yet all in all I thought it wasn’t a bad game. But I'm definitely knocking a point off for the bugs – when you get killed by non-existent enemies several times in a row, it’s hard to keep smiling.

5 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=347&start=0#p2099
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Lord Bellwater’s Secret by Sam Gordon
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-27 07:42:51

In short: you're a groom working for the wealthy Lord Bellwater who has recently died at about the same time as your beloved Elsie. Deciding there's more to the matter than meets the eye, you set off to discover the truth.

Lord Bellwater’s Secret is a two room game, but 99% of the action takes place in one room, Lord Bellwater’s study, the location your poor Elsie fell to her death from. In here you have to discover whether her death was an accident or something decidedly more sinister and, while you're at it, find out a few things about Lord Bellwater’s will and just who he left his sizeable fortune to. This is actually quite an easy thing to do as Lord Bellwater (clever chap!) seems to have neatly laid out everything you need to solve the mystery around his study, often in very noticeable locations and, sure enough, it’s hard to look anywhere without having a clue shoved in your face. Kind of surprising that no one thought to hide any of this stuff. 

There are a few clichés at work: a safe behind a painting (okay, I've used that one myself but even so), the instructions on how to open the safe conveniently close to hand… even the identity of Elsie’s killer is a cliché, though I won’t spoil it for you and say who it is. (Then again, as you never actually meet the killer, or anyone else for that matter, and have no idea he even exists until you find the letter confirming his guilt, it’s doubtful telling you who it was would make much of a difference.) One of the problems I always find with one room games (or two room games where the majority of the interaction takes place in one room), is that everything required to solve every puzzle or overcome every obstacle has to be very close to hand. If, for example, you need to open a locked door, you know the key is going to be here and it’s just a case of finding it. Admittedly this is the case in most IF games – the solution to every puzzle in the game has to be reasonably close – but in one room games it’s always a bit of a stretch that the necessary item you need just so happens to be within touching distance.

The game comes with a walkthrough supplied which I'm usually pleased about – not being particularly good at solving puzzles and having a tendency to quit if I become stuck (and especially because with 29 games to get through in such a short period of time, you don’t really have time to spend ages trying to solve every puzzle) – but this one was… odd. It listed commands which made no sense to me and others that I'm sure I could never be expected to figure out on my own. Why would I think to look up Ivanhoe in the bookshelves? Was there a clue about it somewhere that I missed? For that matter, *why* does the walkthrough have me look up Ivanhoe? As far as I could tell, it had no relevance to the game. But this last point is reflected throughout a lot of the walkthrough. Later on it has me checking up dates in a pocketbook. First it lists the European dates, then switches to American (which produces an error message), then goes back to European. Confused? You bet. I couldn’t decide if the walkthrough was the author’s idea of a joke at the player’s expense or if he'd just typed down things randomly during testing and not thought to get rid of them afterwards.

I had a few misgivings about the game – way too easy, seen it all before, some oddities with the walkthrough – but overall it wasn’t a bad way to spend an hour. Saying that, I was a bit disappointed that the aim of the game as stated to begin with – finding out what happened to Elsie – seemed to be sidelined and the less interesting discover-the-truth-about-Lord-Bellwater’s-will took precedence. Given the choice between solving a murder mystery or some legal stuff about wills, I know which one I’d have sooner had the game focus upon.

6 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=348&start=0#p2100
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Lost Pig by Grunk
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-27 07:43:25

If nothing else, Lost Pig is a perfect example of just why you should play a game for a reasonable amount of time before dismissing it. This one I played for a few minutes right at the start of the comp. From the title, and the author’s name, I’d assumed it was a joke entry so I planned on verifying that and then shooting it off to the recycle bin as soon as possible. My first few minutes play backed up that assumption: short, broken sentences, four directions listed from the first location but none of them accessible. The game itself seemed like a joke entry: you're an orc named Grunk who has to find a lost pig. If that wasn’t enough to convince me it was a joke entry, there's the fact that the game is written from the viewpoint of a particularly stupid individual and gives the impression of someone having a laugh at the player’s expense. So, having satisfied myself that it was indeed a joke entry, I shoved it to one side and promptly forgot about it.

Boy, that would have been a mistake.

Later on, several weeks later on in fact, I decided to have another go at it. I don’t know why. Maybe something about the implementation of the game made me wonder if there wasn’t more to it than at first meets the eye. So back to Lost Pig I went, determined to at least play it for a bit longer and, if it did turn out to be a joke entry, to write a scathing and bile-filled review to let the author know just what I thought of him.

As it happened, Lost Pig isn't a joke entry. In fact, at this stage (almost halfway through the comp entries), it’s the best game in the comp so far.

With all that out of the way, on with the game itself…

Yes, you play an orc. An orc called Grunk. And you're off to find a pig who has become lost. As might be expected, this is quite a bit harder than it first appears. I discovered the pig in the third location I came to but, alas, he wasn’t playing ball and try as I might, my simple-minded orc just wasn’t up to the job of outwitting him. So instead of merely grabbing hold of the annoying swine (in both senses of the word) and legging it out of there, I was left to figure out the secrets of the underground lair I had become stranded in and how best I might manipulate them in order to get myself, and the pig, home safely.

Getting the pig home requires solving quite a variety of puzzles, most of which don’t seem to have any connection to the pig at the time and are solved more because they're there and they need solving. I figured out quite a few on my own. Others I weakened (yes, guilty as charged) and peeked at the walkthrough. There are a few guess the verb issues – I had trouble with the pole and the stream – but nothing that really caused problems. The walkthrough was particularly handy at times and did a good job of steering me past some of the parts I was stuck on, though at others it confused me by offering hints about things I hadn’t even been aware existed. I was offered hints about a closet before I even found the closet (my finding of it was prompted more by the fact that I’d seen hints relating to it than anything else). Kind of strange, but as it helped me figure out something I hadn’t even been aware needed figuring out, I can’t really complain.

A lot of time and effort has been put into making Lost Pig work. There are few rough edges and most of the puzzles, even the ones I struggled with initially, fall neatly into line when you think about them for long enough. The initial impression I had of it – a joke game – was way off and this is one game I'm just pleased I decided to go back to and give a second chance at. 

8 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=349&start=0#p2101
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: A Matter Of Importance by Nestor I. McNaugh
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-27 07:43:52

In A Matter Of Importance, you play the part of a thief who has fallen on hard times. You haven't been doing particularly well as of late and as a result the Thieves Guild have decided to boot you out unless you can prove to them, in three days, that you’ve still got what it takes.

Interesting idea, but I can’t say I really cared for the game itself. You might be playing a master thief fallen on hard times, but you don’t seem to be capable of anything not available to the average guy in the street. Some of the actions you're forced to carry out – the chain of commands required to get into the shop for example – seem out of character for someone who makes a living breaking the law. Simple brute force never seems to be an option.

The puzzles in this game take guess the verb – or read the author’s mind actually – to a whole new level. The first puzzle I ran into – getting across a road (something which I wouldn’t have thought should even normally qualify as a puzzle) – stumped me. After trying all manner of things to get across, I resorted to the hints and found that IGNORE TRAFFIC was required. Ignore traffic? Try as I might, I can’t understand how the player was expected to figure that out. (I read another review of the game where the reviewer did manage to figure this puzzle out, mainly by typing out one things after another until something finally worked, but as it took him half an hour, I think my decision to cheat and look at the hints was justified.) When simple directional commands and even CROSS STREET or CROSS ROAD don’t work, but something vague like IGNORE TRAFFIC will, you just know this is a game you're going to have problems with. The second puzzle, dropping a certain item in a certain location in order to get rid of a certain NPC, wasn’t quite as vague as the first, but it’s still the kind of thing that it’s hard to imagine many people figuring out on their own unless they had either a lot of spare time on their hands or were trying everything possible in case something worked. The third puzzle, beating the kid at football, was even worse…

For that matter, there's the added problem with a number of the puzzles in the game that you don’t know you why need to solve them and so don’t even try until you're clued into them with the hints. With the yard keeper, it never occurred to me to try getting rid of him until I saw it mentioned in the hints. 

As I’d run into three puzzles so far and the solutions to two of them were so mind-numbingly vague that I doubt I’d have ever figured them out, I began to lose interest in the game. Sure, I could have carried on with it and resorted to typing out every command from the hints, but it’s not much fun to play a game that way.

Incidentally, the hints menu is a pain. It presents you with a list of options to choose from and after you’ve selected which one you want, you then have to press H to see the first of them. Why not just have it display the hints straightaway?

One amusing thing, though others will probably disagree, was the game gently mocking the player for resorting to the hints. In a game that was otherwise very frustrating, this was an unexpected comical moment. (Saying that, I'm not sure what to make of it. Has the writer deliberately made the puzzles incredibly vague in order to make it more likely the player will resort to the hints and thus see the in jokes? Or has he simply included them on the off chance that players cheat?)

This wasn’t a horrible game, just one I got more and more frustrated with the longer I played it. Maybe there were clues hinting to the puzzles that made the hints unnecessary, but if so they were vague and I missed them. Maybe the game improves considerably later on, but as I'm only just over halfway through the comp entries and time is pressing, I’d sooner play some of the others instead. If a game doesn’t impress me much in the first hour of playing it, and this one didn’t, it’s hard to find reasons to keep on playing it. Particularly when I suspect most of it will be played via typing out commands directly from the hints.

3 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=350&start=0#p2102
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: My Mind’s Mishmash by Robert Street
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-27 07:44:29

“A mishmash of robots, psychic powers and "ghosts" in a game of action and survival.”

So reads the blurb for My Mind’s Mishmash. I actually read a few reviews of this game before playing it (a bad idea, I know, as it can change the whole way you play a game) and see that several others dislike the blurb. I don’t really care for it myself. It doesn’t give a good impression of the game as a whole, and, considering that the game, aside from the brief first scene, isn't really a mishmash, it’s misleading as well.

For the opening, though, the game *is* a mishmash. And not one I really liked to be perfectly honest. After a brief intro in which you're informed you're a soldier of some kind in the far future, you're thrust into battle in a ‘cold suit’ and have to use your various weapons to kill an enemy described simply as the traitor. There are a number of rough edges here, with ADRIFT’s default error messages frequently spoiling the mood. When fighting the traitor (the game’s first ‘puzzle’), I'm advised that KILL TRAITOR isn't very nice (but, er, isn't that the whole point?), while FIGHT TRAITOR tells me that there is nothing here worth fighting. When trying to examine the suits of the various combatants, I'm asked which one – yours or the traitor’s? – and when selecting yours, I'm told that it’s still ambiguous. After much struggling, I managed to hit on the solution to what I was supposed to be doing and I was away, killing the traitor (even though it’s not very nice and not worth fighting) and progressing swiftly to the next part of the game.

The game is divided into a number of episodes, starting, strangely enough, with the final episode, number 5, and having the others follow in a seemingly random order. The cold suit you fight in actually seems to be part of a game you are engaged in as opposed to an actual war. A rival player named memoryblam has decided to pull a fast one on you and there's a chance he could destroy the avatar (in game character) you're using and thus set you back several days to the last time you backed up. So you set out to stop him. (Yes, this bit was a mishmash. I had to read it through several times to get my head around it and even now I'm not entirely sure I've got it right.)

Unless carefully programmed to do otherwise, ADRIFT has the annoying habit of displaying false information about exits which are currently inaccessible. If, say, you're standing in a corridor running east to west with a locked door to the north and you try to go south, you'll see a message telling you that you can only go east and west. No mention of the exit to the north is made and thus it’s possible to miss exits if you're not careful. There are also problems relating to this and the map, when often an exit will be listed in the room description yet isn't made visible on the map itself. This can work to your advantage, though, as sometimes a jagged line will be displayed on the map to indicate a hidden exit exists to another location. Once I wasn’t aware there was an exit in that direction, but the map clued me into the fact that there was, which was nice because otherwise I might have missed it.

The player wears a ‘ghost cap’ while playing through the various episodes that comprise the bulk of the game. This is a clever device that, whilst wearing it, renders you invisible to NPCs but prevents you from interacting with anything. Directional commands and examination are pretty much the only things that are available to you with the ghost cap in place. Removing it is necessary to interact with anything, but this carries the problem of NPCs then being able to see you (a patrolling guard will promptly throw you in prison if he catches you) so caution needs to be exercised when taking it off. I was in two minds about the whole ghost cap routine. On one hand, it’s quite a neat idea and allows you to explore a potentially dangerous area in complete safety so you can familiarise yourself with the layout before doing anything risky. On the other hand, having to continually type REMOVE CAP and WEAR CAP (or RC and WC) every time you need to remove or wear the cap can be a pain. From a quick look through my transcript, I see that over the half the times I needed to interact with an item, I forgot to type RC first and was then prompted to do so by the game before it would let any interaction take place. I would then wander off without remembering to put the cap back on and find myself captured a few moves later. Some kind of automatic removal and wearing of the cap might have helped.

There were ambiguity problems I found in relation to an item called the node ripper which you carry with you. As there are other nodes found in the game which are simply referred to as ‘node’, trying to examine them hit me with an ambiguity error message.

Using items was sometimes problematic. At the very start of the game, I was able to use all of the weapons in the cold suit with USE HOOK or USE GUN, yet later on the game became more picky about what it would and wouldn’t allow and forced me to specify what I needed to do in more detail. 

5 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=351&start=0#p2103
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: My Name Is Jack Mills by Juhana Leinonen
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-27 07:45:02

Most of the time I really enjoyed this game; at others, it drove me up the wall. On the good side: well written, interesting story and I found myself genuinely wanting to know what was going to happen next. On the bad side: guess the verb, guess the author’s mind and keep consulting the walkthrough because there's no other way to progress.

I reached a standstill not long into the game after finding myself unable to get into a room via a window. Turned out I was using the wrong verb. When I tried SMASH and it didn’t work (I was told that violence wasn’t the answer to this one), I resorted to the walkthrough and was advised that instead I need to BREAK the window. Turns out violence *was* the answer after all. Not long after this, within half a dozen moves in fact, I ran into a standstill again. Sometimes examining items will reveal everything you need to know, other times you need to read them as well. After this, I found myself playing the game with the walkthrough open alongside it because it was a lot less frustrating that way. This pretty much meant that I didn’t enjoy the game as much as I might have done otherwise, but struggling with unhelpful guess the verb problems isn't my idea of fun anyway.

Later on, I found myself unable to progress any further when someone got in the back seat of my car. I couldn’t speak to them, examine them or interact with them in any way. I also couldn’t drive away or get out of the car. The walkthrough clued me into the correct command but it’s hard to imagine people would have figured it out on their own. (As it happens, there's another command you'll probably try instead of the one listed in the walkthrough, but I didn’t discover this until after I’d already checked the walkthrough and exclaimed “And how the heck was I supposed to figure *that* out?”)

The game switches from past to present tense quite often and without any apparent reason. I can’t say I really cared for it. Past tense certainly is more atmospheric, which in one way was good, but as it also made the rest of the game seem a little bland by comparison, it definitely had its downsides as well. The constant switching between perspectives was a little jarring, too.

For the most part, my character’s motivations in the game never really made much sense. The basic storyline is that a friend of yours has been arrested and you’ve gone down to the police station to speak to him about it. While there, he tells you that someone has stolen an item from him and asks you to get it back. Which you agree to do on the spot. This involves breaking and entering at one point, posing as someone else at another (in a meeting with a man who comes across as the kind of person who has ‘organised crime’ written all over him) and then off you go to photograph this someone and his girlfriend at the behest of his wife. All kinda dodgy and underhanded behaviour and I found it a bit hard to swallow that my character would just go along with it without some kind of better explanation being given than ‘helping a friend out’. 

I'm tempted to knock a few points off here and there for the hassles I had with guess the verb and confusing commands, but when I finished the game (90% of the commands towards the end were entered directly from the walkthrough and no real attempt was made to ‘solve’ the puzzles in the proper way), I found that, problems aside, I’d actually enjoyed it. So the rating of 7 out of 10 stands.

7 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=352&start=0#p2104
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Packrat by Bill Powell
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-27 07:45:37

I played a couple of games by the same author in last year’s IFComp and didn’t care for either (I think I gave them both a rating of 3 out of 10), so I approached this one without much enthusiasm. However, despite my misgivings, the introduction was certainly more interesting than I expected and as I began to play the game in earnest, I soon got hooked.

As the Packrat of the game’s title, you're an adventurer/thief in a fantasy story based loosely (very loosely) on the old fairytale of the princess asleep in the castle in the middle of nowhere who needs to be awakened by a handsome prince in order to save the kingdom. You're not a prince (the handsome part I'm not sure about) but you’ve still been picked to do the job. And as this is a castle full of unguarded loot, you're only too happy to accept.

Unfortunately, I tend to run into problems with even with my favourite games in the comp. Here some of the puzzles were of the guess-the-author’s-mind variety and pretty much impossible to figure out by anyone lacking psychic abilities. There's an item in the first location which you need to take to trigger a mood swing, but when first attempting to take it you're told you can’t. As I assumed that was it for the item – it was either a red herring or it served some purpose other than being picked up – I decided not bother with it again. After becoming stuck later on and consulting the walkthrough, I found that you need to attempt to take it four times. I couldn’t understand how I was supposed to know this or even why I was being made to attempt this four times before it worked. 

Attempting to take the item four times puts you in ‘acquisitive’ mode, which gives you the strange habit of automatically attempting to pick up every single item you come across. Items that can’t be taken – like a laundry chute or a staircase– you'll still attempt to take, and you'll do this every time you come across them. The first time I saw this, I assumed it was some kind of bug. Attempting to take non-carryable items like laundry chutes and staircases certainly seems like a bug (has the author flagged them as carryable items for some reason?) but it could also just be a wry joke at the player’s expense. You *are* a packrat after all.

While in acquisitive mode, you can’t put down any items… except if you try the DROP ALL command which is a little buggy as it puts down most of the items you're carrying (obviously the author forgot to program in any restrictions for these items) and even tries to put down an item referred to as ‘nothing’, tells you that you don’t want to part with ‘nothing’ and promptly picks it back up again. ‘Nothing’ never actually shows up in your inventory but it’s still kind of odd seeing this sort of thing happen. DROP ALL also produces an unfortunate error message (on top of trying to drop the item called ‘nothing’).

Later on, performing an out of character act of kindness (you are a thief after all) puts you in ‘content’ mode which allows you to drop items normally. During my initial pay through the game, I found it possible to put the game into acquisitive mode and how to get out of it*, but was never sure what the point of these modes was. Acquisitive allows me to pick up items without actually typing anything (like an automatic GET ALL command), but short of saving a little typing I didn’t see what purpose it served. I can also imagine it becoming a little wearying after seeing several lines of 

YOU VAINLY ATTEMPT TO PURLOIN THE HIGH THRONE.
YOU VAINLY ATTEMPT TO PURLOIN THE WESTERN WINDOW.
YOU VAINLY ATTEMPT TO PURLOIN THE EASTERN WINDOW.

tacked onto the end of every other action I carry out.

* Only the once for each though, so if there was something that needed doing in acquisitive mode and I’d already exited it, I might have blown my chances of finishing the game. I ran into a problem with this in that initially I discovered content mode first (I was actually content at the time – i.e. picking up and dropping items normally – so going into content mode didn’t change anything as far as I could tell, aside from making it impossible to leave acquisitive mode), and then afterwards I discovered acquisitive mode. As I then needed to drop several items in order to complete a puzzle, I became stuck as the game wouldn’t let me drop them, being acquisitive as I was, and I had no idea how to exit the mode. 

While I wish the game had been tested more thoroughly, I still had a lot of fun playing it. It’s kind of strange considering how buggy it was that out of the 22 games I played during the IFComp, I rated it 4th overall… which is certainly a lot higher than some other games that seemed essentially bug-free. It’s tempting to knock several points off for the bugs – they *were* frustrating after all – but as I still enjoyed playing the games, bug and all, I think I’ll leave my rating of 7 as it is.

7 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=353&start=0#p2105
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Reconciling Mother by Plone Glenn
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-27 07:46:07

This one didn’t impress me. Why? Well, here’s a sample from my transcript. Try and see if you can spot any flaws:

>L
MEZZANINE
THE MEZZANINE HAS A PLUSH, RED VELVET CARPET.  THICK, TASSELED ARABIAN DRAPES
ARE HUNG ON BOTH SIDES TO THE NORTHERN ENTRANCE TO THE BALCONY.  THE DRAPES
DEPICT IMAGES OF COUPLING GOATS.  BESIDE EACH PAIR OF GOATS IS A SCYTHE AND A
BOOK.  THE ARTWORK IS LIKE SOME KIND OF PRIMITIVE FETISHISM.  TWO STAIRWAYS
COME UP FROM THE FOYER TO THE EAST AND WEST.  YOU ALMOST MISS IT BUT THERE IS A
STRANGE, AND AT THE SAME TIME, FAMILIAR SMELL HERE.

>X MEZZANINE
THE WORD "MEZZANINE" IS NOT NECESSARY IN THIS STORY.

>X CARPET
THE WORD "CARPET" IS NOT NECESSARY IN THIS STORY.

>X DRAPES
THE WORD "DRAPES" IS NOT NECESSARY IN THIS STORY.

>X ENTRANCE
THE WORD "ENTRANCE" IS NOT NECESSARY IN THIS STORY.

>X BALCONY
THE WORD "BALCONY" IS NOT NECESSARY IN THIS STORY.

>X ARTWORK
THE WORD "ARTWORK" IS NOT NECESSARY IN THIS STORY.

>X SCYTHE
THE WORD "SCYTHE" IS NOT NECESSARY IN THIS STORY.

>X BOOK
THE WORD "BOOK" IS NOT NECESSARY IN THIS STORY.

>X STAIRWAYS
THE WORD "STAIRWAYS" IS NOT NECESSARY IN THIS STORY.

>X SMELL
YOU SEE NO SMELL HERE.

Doesn’t really give a good impression, does it? None of the items I can see have been covered, and the only thing I can get a response to is, I'm guessing, just a default response of the system and not one programmed by the writer. And not ‘seeing’ a smell is equally as bad. While it isn't necessary to provide a description for every little thing the player can see, it’s definitely necessary to provide a description for *some* of them. Not including a description for *any* of them is never going to go down well. 

The rest of the game was just as bad. I met a receptionist called Monica whose entire conversation to me was without speech marks, making it confusing telling which of the text was spoken and which wasn’t. Surely the author knows how to make speech marks show up? If not, why not just use apostrophes? At least do *something* to indicate to the player which part of the text is being spoken. My opinion of the game dropped even lower when Monica indicated a pen and asked me to sign in. How? The game doesn’t understand the word PEN, it doesn’t understand the word SIGN and neither could I find anything to sign. 

I went elsewhere. I wandered east. Far east. And then I died. Funnily enough, despite the fact that I was dead, the game didn’t end and let me continue typing in commands. It even displayed the snow cave where I’d died and told me I was ‘continuing’ to go east even though I was currently dead. That’s quality game testing right there.

That was about as much as I could take. I didn’t have a clue what Reconciling Mother was supposed to be about – the introduction seems to imply you're some kind of soldier on a mission but nothing else gave any indication of this and you don’t carry any items to clue you in – and the whole thing seemed to have been put together so quickly and with so little effort, that I found it hard to summon up the enthusiasm to play it again. Out of the 11 games in the IFComp I've played so far, this has definitely been one of the worst.

Addendum: As with several other games in the IFComp this year, once I’d finished playing it, I went and looked for other reviews to see if anyone else had figured out what it was all about. Some seem to have played it for a lot longer than me (I can only wonder why), though no one seemed to have been left with a particularly good impression of it. What the game is about seemed as much a mystery to other people as it did to me and someone even commented on the fact that it appeared to be a whole mess of ideas rolled into one without anything linking them together. Maybe there's some obvious reason behind the game if you play it long enough and see everything it has to show, but considering the problems I had with it, and the fact that I was only too pleased to quit when I died, I think I’ll just let this one go.

1 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=354&start=0#p2106
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Slap That Fish by Peter Nepstad
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-27 07:46:31

Well, this was certainly weird. From the person who brought us 1893: A World’s Fair Mystery, one of the few commercial IF works of the last decade, and an excellent game in its own right, comes a game which I assumed at first was a joke entry. In fact, if the game had been entered anonymously, or the author was unknown to me, I’d have given up after five minutes, labelled it a ‘joke entry’ and not given it a second thought. Knowing the author, I persevered with this for a while longer, wondering (hoping actually) if there was a proper game here and the beginning was deliberately bad for some obscure reason which would be made clear later on. Twenty minutes later, I reached the conclusion that I’d have been better off quitting after five minutes and leaving things at that.

The premise is just downright strange. You're attacked by a fish and have to defend yourself by slapping it into submission. That’s pretty much the aim of the entire game. You defeat one fish, and another takes its place. You defeat this one, and another steps in. And so on. You take damage during combat and end up having to frequently WAIT to regain your stamina. (Your opponent, for some reason, doesn’t attack you while you're waiting or even arming yourself with weapons. Though they're intending to kill you for some reason which is never made clear, they're still perfectly willing to let you arm yourself and not do a thing about it. They also don’t regenerate stamina in the way you do which is nice.) Then when you're feeling strong enough, you start slapping the fish some more.

That’s pretty much the game in a nutshell. I defeated several different varieties of fish, I levelled up, I found myself a new weapon… and I began to wonder if there was some point to the game that I was missing. Was there something other to do than simply slapping fish that attack me? In desperation I checked the walkthrough. No, seems there's nothing else to do. The walkthrough lists a whole number of fish that come to give you grief and you have to defeat. If there's anything further on in the game (like a proper storyline for instance), the walkthrough gives no indication of it.

If you're in for some bizarreness, you might like this. I didn’t. I kept wishing I was playing 1893 instead.

2 out of 10

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=340&start=0#p2107
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: game design documents
User: drfroth / DateTime: 2007-11-27 15:31:37

I made notebooks full of similar information when creating "Gathered in Darkness."

Now, when I do it I also make another typed file and include all my room descriptions, events, and messages.  This allows for easy spell and grammar check as well as basic editing of the prose.  (I wish I had done that part for GID, but I have now for other projects).

When I am coding the file now I just type a little place marker instead of the full text.

[code]
define room <Mars>
	look <marsroomdes>
	up <Outer Space>
[/code]

This way I can check to make sure my coding works.  In the above example I would just copy and paste the actual description of Mars from my other file over the "marsroomdes."

I don't know if that is what you were wondering, but I found it to be somewhat similar to the cited example above.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=343&start=0#p2108
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Chinese Room by Joey Jones & Harry Giles
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-27 15:51:23

I'm really glad you enjoyed the game. What we were aiming for was an old school sort of adventure game akin to the LucasArts style graphic adventure games: lots of humour and object-quests but with philosophical content that brings it all together. 

Probably by the end of January a post-comp version of the game will be released that addresses the problems with the comp version. The first puzzle will probably be revised and greater interactivity with non-important objects (such as chairs) will be implemented.

Joey

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=340&start=0#p2109
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: game design documents
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2007-11-27 17:13:21

I wouldn't say it's something as formal as what Al Lowe did for the LSL games, but I do have a notebook that more-or-less describes what's going to happen in each "game" I'm planning to develop further. It has the events, hastily drawn maps, description text for rooms and NPCs (if any).

I'm looking into writing something as formal as that, but I have yet to finish an actual game. First things first [emote]Wink[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=340&start=0#p2110
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: game design documents
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-11-27 19:40:29

I work with design documents of all types.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=340&start=0#p2111
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: game design documents
User: George / DateTime: 2007-11-27 21:41:53

[quote="drfroth"]
I made notebooks full of similar information when creating "Gathered in Darkness."

Now, when I do it I also make another typed file and include all my room descriptions, events, and messages.  This allows for easy spell and grammar check as well as basic editing of the prose.  (I wish I had done that part for GID, but I have now for other projects).

When I am coding the file now I just type a little place marker instead of the full text.

[code]
define room <Mars>
	look <marsroomdes>
	up <Outer Space>
[/code]
[/quote] 

I really like this method. 

Does anyone know what would be involved to write a utility to automagically replace all the placeholding tags (i.e. '<marsroomdes>') in the source file with the description text from the description file?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=340&start=0#p2112
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: game design documents
User: drfroth / DateTime: 2007-11-27 23:36:21

I'd buy one.  Right now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=340&start=0#p2113
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: game design documents
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2007-11-28 07:38:56

You could probably write one in a few lines of Perl.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=355&start=0#p2114
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: IFReviews.org
User: Benjamin Sokal / DateTime: 2007-11-28 14:05:05

Sorry if this is the wrong place for this, but I saw that RootShell had posted to this forum before and I couldn't find contact info on ifreviews.org:

I am getting this error at ifreviews.org:

Warning: mysql_result() [function.mysql-result]: Unable to jump to row 0 on MySQL result index 24 in /home/jdocajan/public_html/ifreviews/ligado.php on line 8

Welcome bpsokal
Previous Login was today. 
My Account Logout 
Estatisticas dos Jogos
 
Warning: mysql_result() [function.mysql-result]: Unable to jump to row 0 on MySQL result index 25 in /home/jdocajan/public_html/ifreviews/includes/funcoes.php on line 2785

... etc with a bunch more lines of error messages. This error happens on several different computers I've tried.

RootShell, do you know if this is universal or just possibly a configuration problem of mine?

Thanks a bunch

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=356&start=0#p2115
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Suicide in I7
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-28 17:53:51

Hi, I'm fairly new to developing IF and very new to Inform.  In one of my games, I want to give the player the option to commit suicide, as this was a much-requested feature during testing.  It should print a short description of what they've just done, and then end the game in death.

I know that I can set "suicide" as a verb, or tell it instead of "killing self" or "killing me" or what have you, to perform the desired action... but is there a simpler way than thinking of every possible way the player could phrase the desire to end the character's life and setting it up individually?

Thanks in advance for your help. =)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=357&start=0#p2116
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Item effect delayed until player moves
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-28 18:01:43

One more question (thought I'd put it in a separate thread to aid anyone searching for similar help later):

I've got an item that the player can drink.  When they do so, it informs them what it tasted like, and that it didn't seem to have any other effect.  The problem is that I want it to "teleport" them the next time they try to move in any direction.

Here's basically how it should behave:

[b]Bathroom[/b]
You're in the bathroom.

>i
You are carrying:
a fizzy potion

>drink potion
You drink the fizzy potion.  It's pretty good, but it didn't seem to do anything.

>look

[b]Bathroom[/b]
You're in the bathroom.

>z
Time passes...

>s
You try to go that way, but suddenly feel yourself being pulled in an altogether different direction.

[b]Another Dimension[/b]
You're in another dimension.

Thanks in advance. =)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=355&start=0#p2117
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFReviews.org
User: George / DateTime: 2007-11-28 20:21:29

I just checked my account there now (using FF 2) and everything was fine, but I have run into SQL errors displayed there in the past with the same browser.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=356&start=0#p2118
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Suicide in I7
User: George / DateTime: 2007-11-28 20:34:06

No, you pretty much have to think of all the different ways. However you only have to do this once, and then you could use it for all your games, or give the code to friends for their games. 

However you can get around some of the work by using the shortcuts that Inform provides. For example, say you want to let the player kill themself with any object they can hold in their inventory. Rather than typing 'understand "kill myself with ball"', 'understand "kill myself with knife"', 'understand "kill myself with matches"', etcetera, you can use the text tokens which Inform will substitute for -- in this case, 'understand "kill myself with [something preferably held]"'. The added benefit is that when you add a new object, you don't have to add new code to take care of this new case. It's good to think of much of your code in this way, to make it flexible for new cases that may come up, though you don't need to go too crazy to make it [i]absolutely [/i]flexible. 

See the Understanding section in the manual for more on this, section 16.4.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=357&start=0#p2119
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item effect delayed until player moves
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2007-11-28 21:01:54

Hmm... In I7?  Try this:

The player can be pending teleportation.

Carry out drinking the potion:  now the player is pending teleportation.

Instead of going when the player is pending teleportation: now the player is in Alternate Dimension.  "You try to go that way..."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=355&start=0#p2120
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFReviews.org
User: Benjamin Sokal / DateTime: 2007-11-28 21:17:16

Hrmm interesting. Well I just found the "contact" link so I'll shoot over an e-mail.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=357&start=0#p2121
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item effect delayed until player moves
User: George / DateTime: 2007-11-28 21:43:47

Here is a simple way to do it. First, you could create a property on the player, and set it to something like 'true' when they drink the potion; then, make a rule so that every time the player moves, the game checks if the property is true. If it is, they are teleported, and the game changes the property back to something like 'false' (so this doesn't happen twice when the player moves again). See chapter 8 for properties, and chapter 7 for basic actions (for Instead and Before rules). 

[code]

"Theodore the Thaumaturge's Tonic of Teleportation"

The Bathroom is a room. "The apartment is through the door south.". The fizzy potion is a thing in the bathroom. The Apartment is south of the bathroom. "The bathroom is north.".

Another dimension is a room.

A person can be fizzed or flat. A person usually is flat.

Instead of drinking the fizzy potion: say "Burp!"; remove the fizzy potion from play; now the player is fizzed.

The teleportation rule is listed first in the carry out going rules. This is the teleportation rule: if the player is fizzed begin; now the player is in another dimension; now the player is flat; say "Whoa! Strong stuff."; ignore the carry out looking rules; end if.

test me with "south / north/ drink potion / south"

[/code]

You also could forget about listing the teleportation rule in the carry out going rules, and just put everything in an Instead or Before (I think).


edit: now that I've read it, I think I like ralph's idea better [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=357&start=0#p2122
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item effect delayed until player moves
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-28 22:05:23

Thank you both for the quick responses!  I think I'll go with Ralph's idea, but I'm using fizzy and flat as the variable because it's just funny.  Even though nobody will see it.  [emote]Wink[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=356&start=0#p2123
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Suicide in I7
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-28 22:10:39

Thanks, George.  I like your suggestion about setting up a flexible way to have the player commit suicide with any held object, and will probably use it in future games.  This one, however, doesn't contain much in the way of potential weapons... and I think my target audience will find using their bare hands funnier anyway.

Hmm.  I guess I have a morbid target audience.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=356&start=0#p2124
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Suicide in I7
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-11-28 22:58:35

Here's what I ended up using.  It probably isn't the most efficient way to do it, but it seems to work all right.  This won't work for killing oneself with a specific item.

[code]Killing is an action applying to one thing.  Understand "kill [something]" as killing.  Instead of killing the player: say "(Insert how you want to player to die here... I didn't include mine as it's pretty gruesome).

Way to take the easy way out."; end the game in death.

Check killing: if the noun is not the player then say "Violence isn't the answer to this one."

Suiciding is an action applying to nothing.  Understand "commit suicide" as suiciding.  Understand "suicide" as suiciding.  Instead of suiciding, try killing the player.[/code]

The only problem I have right now is that punching yourself also results in suicide.  It's probably not a likely thing for the player to type, but it isn't exactly accurate either.  If anybody has refinements, I'm open to suggestions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=356&start=0#p2125
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Suicide in I7
User: George / DateTime: 2007-11-28 23:44:25

Yeah, attack, kill, punch, they're all synonyms for the same action in Inform (namely attack). You can see all this under the Index/Actions tab. I think the trick is to clear the punch command with 'Understand the command "punch" as something new", and then write your own rule for it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=356&start=0#p2126
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Suicide in I7
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2007-11-29 03:08:03

You don't need to define a new action "killing", since all you're doing here is making all the ways to say "kill [something]" point to your new killing action. You can just use:
[code]Instead of attacking the player: say "(Insert how you want to player to die here... I didn't include mine as it's pretty gruesome).

Way to take the easy way out."; end the game in death.

Suiciding is an action applying to nothing.  Understand "commit suicide" as suiciding.  Understand "suicide" as suiciding. Understand the command "die" as something new. Understand "die" as suiciding. Instead of suiciding, try attacking the player.[/code]
(I added the lines for "die", since by default typing DIE tries to quit the game. If you don't want them, you can take them out again.)

If you want to only allow the player to use words like "kill" to kill him/herself, as opposed to words like "punch", "kick", "crack", it's a little more complicated, but you can do it like this:
[code]Killing is an action applying to one thing.
Understand the command "kill" as something new.
Understand "kill [something]" as killing.
Understand the commands "attack" and "destroy" and "murder" as something new.
Understand the commands "attack" and "destroy" and "murder" as "kill".
Instead of killing the player: say "(Insert how you want to player to die here... I didn't include mine as it's pretty gruesome).

Way to take the easy way out."; end the game in death.

[This lets you attack other things as usual.]
Carry out killing:
	try attacking the noun instead.

Suiciding is an action applying to nothing.  Understand "commit suicide" as suiciding.  Understand "suicide" as suiciding. Understand the command "die" as something new. Understand "die" as suiciding.  Instead of suiciding, try killing the player.[/code]
This means you have to list all the vocabulary for killing, which you didn't want to do. But if you want to treat different kinds of attacks differently, you'll have to.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=358&start=0#p2127
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 6: Universal "Before"?
User: Chris. / DateTime: 2007-11-29 13:37:02

Many thanks once again to everyone who was kind enough to address my questions earlier this month. I'm nearly done with my first I6 game, and it's coming out really well, I'm pleased (and surprised) to report. [emote]Smile[/emote]

It seems as if the simplest questions can't be answered by any of the popular reference works. This is probably the sort of thing the experienced coder knows by rote, but nothing I've tried seems to work. Is there a "before" verb that means "the player does anything not already specified"? I.E.

before [; push,pull,turn: "It's too strongly attached.";
             search: "You find a lot of dust.";
             (universal): "This achieves nothing." ;]

Thank you!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=358&start=0#p2128
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Universal "Before"?
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2007-11-29 13:46:10

Try "default".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=358&start=0#p2129
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Universal "Before"?
User: Chris. / DateTime: 2007-11-29 17:43:07

Ah! The magic word has been granted! Thanks so much (once again), Ralph.


(So, it's the same as the end of a "Switch" routine....of course, the one thing I didn't try...)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=358&start=0#p2130
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Universal "Before"?
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2007-11-29 22:18:41

Yes, it's the same as a switch statement.  Actually, IIRC, _every_ routine, not just those in before / after properties, in an Inform program has an implicit switch statement.

And my name is "ralphmerridew".  One word, all lowercase.  Is it that difficult?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=358&start=0#p2131
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Universal "Before"?
User: Chris. / DateTime: 2007-11-30 12:44:05

Odd question. Difficult how? Does being called by your first name offend you? I'd think the assumption that your I.D. comprises your first and last names stuck together would be very common, if not outright inevitable.

Thanks again for the help.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=359&start=0#p2132
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Post your games
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-12-01 23:31:26

Do you have a text adventure game that you want to post somewhere?

Here is your opportunity:

register in [url]http://kekeskyline.110mb.com/phpBB3[/url] 

and fill out a apply form in the your games section


We will make a special infomation page for your games and a download link
It's all for FREE!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=334&start=10#p2133
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: What did you think of the Comp '07 open discussion?
User: ~Ren~ / DateTime: 2007-12-03 18:38:09

Firstly, and somewhat off-topically, Grim Fandango is truly a thing of beauty. As a fairly non-plussed man, I know that something has been done well when I start to empathise with the plight of skeletal noir sub-characters who haven't even appeared in the story.

Back on topic, I enjoyed reading the reviews as I went through the games, and managed to steer clear of anything I hadn't played (right up until the point when I realised I didn't have time to play everything and didn't care anymore). I can see the logic of the non-author discussion rule, but really, is it required? Anyone who cared that much could pimp their game with a pseudonym with minimal risk of being found out.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=360&start=0#p2134
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: AGS games?
User: George / DateTime: 2007-12-03 20:40:20

I never have even dipped my toes in the hobby Adventure Game world, but somehow I found a link to this game today (that's what happens when you stay home sick!):

<a href="http://new.bigbluecup.com/yabb/index.php?topic=31539.0">http://new.bigbluecup.com/yabb/index.php?topic=31539.0</a>

In [i]La Croix Pan[/i], you are an American paratrooper who needs to defend a small town on D-Day. It's quite short and a lot of fun, an entertaining mix of retro Adventure Game and some non-conventional gameplay as well. 

Any other AGS games (or other Adventure Game system games) to recommend?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=360&start=0#p2135
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: AGS games?
User: revgiblet / DateTime: 2007-12-03 20:45:13

Check out Ben Croshaw's AGS games - 'Five Days a Stranger', 'Seven Days a Skeptic', 'The Trilby Files' and 'Six Days a Sacrifice'.  Play them in that order.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=360&start=0#p2136
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: AGS games?
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2007-12-03 20:58:59

Since you're getting yourself into graphical adventure games, you might also want to try others not made with AGS - try "Nathan's Second Chance", any of Deirdra Kiai's games, and "Out of Order".

There's also the homebrewed games from Jonas Kyratzes - "Museum of Broken Memories" is a good one, if you're a bit fond of Myst-like games.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=334&start=10#p2137
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: What did you think of the Comp '07 open discussion?
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2007-12-03 21:07:32

[quote="revgiblet"]
I would have been even happier to see heated debate and threats of physical violence around the forums as well.
[/quote] Now that would have been something, wouldn't it? [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=334&start=10#p2138
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: What did you think of the Comp '07 open discussion?
User: George / DateTime: 2007-12-04 00:13:50

The more I think about it, the less I support the no-discussion rule for authors. At first I thought it was just to create a 'level playing field'...but, for what exactly? At the moment it seems like all the rule does is remove a large number of IF [i]players [/i](proportionate to the typical number of judges) from any discussion while the Comp is happening, and I don't see that as a plus. 

Any amount of 'foul play' by an author certainly won't endear them to other judges, regardless.

Perhaps the rule is meant to protect authors from themselves?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=360&start=0#p2139
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: AGS games?
User: revgiblet / DateTime: 2007-12-04 02:42:28

'Out of Order' is good.

Oh, and I forgot 'Pleurghburg: Dark Ages' which is another AGS game that I found to be fun (though it doesn't seem to be everyone's cup of tea).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=334&start=10#p2140
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: What did you think of the Comp '07 open discussion?
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2007-12-04 08:22:00

To a large extent, it's both to keep authors from lobbying publicly for votes and to keep authors from being accused of doing that. I'd rather have the focus on the games themselves than how the authors are behaving.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=339&start=0#p2141
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Are You Looking for a Programmer?
User: George / DateTime: 2007-12-04 13:20:27

I'm curious -- have you started collaborating on a game?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=334&start=10#p2142
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: What did you think of the Comp '07 open discussion?
User: ~Ren~ / DateTime: 2007-12-04 15:31:39

[quote="Sargent"]
To a large extent, it's both to keep authors from lobbying publicly for votes and to keep authors from being accused of doing that. I'd rather have the focus on the games themselves than how the authors are behaving.
[/quote] 

So why not just ban authors from publicly discussing their own games?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=334&start=10#p2143
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: What did you think of the Comp '07 open discussion?
User: George / DateTime: 2007-12-04 15:54:21

I guess you could say that 'lobbying for votes' can involve both promoting/defending your own game as well as criticizing the games of fellow-authors. Raising the score of your own game via lowering that of others. 

While I like to think community standards would hold authors to fair criticism of other Comp games, who's to say what's fair, not fair, misinformed, and so forth?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=334&start=20#p2144
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: What did you think of the Comp '07 open discussion?
User: ~Ren~ / DateTime: 2007-12-04 16:29:07

[quote="George"]
I guess you could say that 'lobbying for votes' can involve both promoting/defending your own game as well as criticizing the games of fellow-authors. Raising the score of your own game via lowering that of others. 
[/quote] 

Sure, though it would make more sense, if you were going to do that, to do it anonymously. Though that wouldn't necessarily stop the perception, which is presumably the more likely and therefore bigger issue.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=339&start=0#p2145
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Are You Looking for a Programmer?
User: drfroth / DateTime: 2007-12-04 16:59:28

Do people do this very often?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=339&start=0#p2146
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Are You Looking for a Programmer?
User: George / DateTime: 2007-12-04 17:41:17

I don't know about often, but it's not unheard of -- in the last five years of IFComp, there's been at least one co-authored game each year.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=125&start=0#p2147
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Search Engine
User: drfroth / DateTime: 2007-12-04 19:16:22

That is very cool.

I noticed that Ken has not updated it since last november so I made a new one that includes all the blogs, forums, and archives that I know of (around 40) or so.

Check it out at:

[url]http://drfroth.wordpress.com[/url]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=125&start=0#p2148
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Search Engine
User: George / DateTime: 2007-12-04 19:43:06

The page says something about 'user contributors'...is there a way to allow people to add sites, perhaps with moderator approval? This seems like the perfect kind of thing for that sort of organization.

edit: for that matter, how do you see what already is added, besides searching on a very common word?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=125&start=0#p2149
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Search Engine
User: drfroth / DateTime: 2007-12-05 00:14:01

You can allow people to add sites.

The choices are by invitation (not sure how that works...I'll get back to you on that) or you can just let any ol yahoo add any site he wants.

Since I don't want "fisting grandma orgy XII" added to my search site I'm going to have to go with the first option.

If it works like I think it might, you can send the moderator an email stating your good intentions and he would send you back the invitation to add sites.

Sounds good to me,  I'll look into it further and let you know.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=339&start=0#p2150
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Are You Looking for a Programmer?
User: drfroth / DateTime: 2007-12-05 13:29:17

Alright...that sounds interesting.

I have a horror proposal....send me an email at:

frothgames(at)yahoo.com

If you are interested I'll give you the details.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=339&start=0#p2151
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Are You Looking for a Programmer?
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2007-12-05 13:37:08

[quote="rioshin"]
Design and writing are not my forte. This can be seen in what pieces of IF I have tried to write: none have ever been completed, as I haven't been able to finish up the design of the game.
[/quote]   

Out of interest, what kind of thing did you attempt?

I realise you are looking for a collaborator at the moment (and I hope you find one, or have found one already! {Edit: Looks like Dr Froth has already volunteered}) -- but maybe you could also get some helpful feedback in the area of design? My first reaction to reading something like you wrote is, "This person would love to make a game ... I wonder what would help him get past the first few hurdles so he can do that?"

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=361&start=0#p2152
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Fork: The Great Underground Dining Room
User: Chris. / DateTime: 2007-12-05 18:00:52

This was written in Inform 6.31. Some of the humor is a bit specialized; if you enjoy (or remember enjoying) old video games -- of the graphical kind, that is -- you'll glean the pertinent references. If not, it's hopefully an entertaining adventure anyway, albeit in the "classic" style. I wanted my first game to have some older types of puzzles I've always loved, with twists whenever possible, rather than anything too difficult. The story's satirical nature lends itself to non-modernity anyway. [emote]Smile[/emote]

If you give it a go, I thank you -- and, of course, many re-thanks to everyone who's helped me out in these forums. I hope you like it!

The link will download a small zipped folder, with the .z5 file itself, plus the interpreter WinFrotz. I'm sure everyone has his favorite interpreter, so disregard that if you wish, obviously.

I suppose this would be dubbed the "Beta" version, right?

<a href="http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/server/2990/Fork.zip">http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/ ... 0/Fork.zip</a>

Thanks again for trying it out!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=339&start=0#p2153
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Are You Looking for a Programmer?
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2007-12-06 04:40:30

[quote="DFisher"]
[quote="rioshin"]
Design and writing are not my forte. This can be seen in what pieces of IF I have tried to write: none have ever been completed, as I haven't been able to finish up the design of the game.
[/quote]    

Out of interest, what kind of thing did you attempt?

I realise you are looking for a collaborator at the moment (and I hope you find one, or have found one already! {Edit: Looks like Dr Froth has already volunteered}) -- but maybe you could also get some helpful feedback in the area of design? My first reaction to reading something like you wrote is, "This person would love to make a game ... I wonder what would help him get past the first few hurdles so he can do that?"
[/quote] 

I've attempted to design games a few times. I can get to the point where I have a basic premise for the game and a map laid out; however, when I try to get even some kind of plot together, I'm stumped. Completely stumped.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=363&start=0#p2156
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: How to change the "You can see..." message?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-12-10 13:43:09

I've searched everywhere. Especially in inform 7's somewhat illogical manual and snippets, but cannot find a solution.

A scene in the opening of my work is "out of this world". That means I want to change a lot of the built in messages in inform. By using "Custom Library Messages" by David Fisher, I have managed to change the "You are carrying.." text to something else. But I can't find a way to change the "You can see.." message when the runner lists the contents of a room. I want to change it to something like "You can hear...."

Does anyone know how to do this?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=363&start=0#p2157
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to change the "You can see..." message?
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2007-12-10 14:46:57

[quote="Timshark"]
I've searched everywhere. Especially in inform 7's somewhat illogical manual and snippets, but cannot find a solution.

A scene in the opening of my work is "out of this world". That means I want to change a lot of the built in messages in inform. By using "Custom Library Messages" by David Fisher, I have managed to change the "You are carrying.." text to something else. But I can't find a way to change the "You can see.." message when the runner lists the contents of a room. I want to change it to something like "You can hear...."

Does anyone know how to do this?
[/quote]  

Take a closer look at the Custom Library Messages extension, especially see the section in the documentation relating to the messages and rules regarding the Look action.

Here's the code required to change the "see" to "hear":

[code]Include Custom Library Messages by David Fisher.

Table of custom library messages (continued)
Message Id				Message Text
LibMsg <say things within>		"[what's inside % part 1] [new what's inside % part 2]"
LibMsg <say things also within>		"[what's inside % part 2] also [new what's inside % part 2]"


To say new what's inside % part 2:
	say "hear ";
	list the contents of the main object, as a sentence, including contents, listing marked items only, giving brief inventory information, tersely, not listing concealed items;
	if the main object is the location, say " here";
	say "."


Kitchen is a room. "A simple kitchen, with nothing special about it."

A woman called Amanda is in the Kitchen.[/code]

And here's the resulting transcript:

[code]Kitchen
A simple kitchen, with nothing special about it.

You can hear Amanda here.

>[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=363&start=0#p2158
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to change the "You can see..." message?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-12-10 23:10:05

Great help! The extension is more accesible now. Thank you so much, what a bless  [emote]Very Happy[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=364&start=0#p2159
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Spatial arrangements in Inform 7
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-12-11 01:43:17

How can I arrange objects spatially within a room(e.g. the window is to the east, the bed is to the west, etc)  And how can I have an object's description change based on interactions with other objects(e.g. the sword is dull and rusty until you talk to the Armorer, who cleans it)?

Is it even possible within the language?

Also, how do I upload my avatar?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=365&start=0#p2160
Forum: Competitions / Subject: TIGSource competition
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-12-11 02:09:21

TIGSource is having its first IF competition here:
[url]http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=824.0[/url]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=364&start=0#p2161
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Spatial arrangements in Inform 7
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-12-11 08:03:11

[quote="Lockett"]
Also, how do I upload my avatar?
[/quote] 
A forum avatar? That's disabled here. Sorry.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=364&start=0#p2162
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Spatial arrangements in Inform 7
User: George / DateTime: 2007-12-11 09:50:03

[quote="Lockett"]
How can I [....]

Is it even possible within the language?
[/quote] 

Very much so, but I can't go into details at the moment as I'm off to work. [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=366&start=0#p2163
Forum: Feedback / Subject: No avatars and... ?
User: George / DateTime: 2007-12-11 09:52:31

Another post just got me curious -- why no avatars?

Also I wanted to re-raise the 'moving to a newer version of [phbb/some other forum software]' question...is that still on the table?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=365&start=0#p2164
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: TIGSource competition
User: George / DateTime: 2007-12-11 10:09:03

cool Lockett, thanks for posting that. 

I'm going to write a game for this. Is anyone interested in collaborating in I7 (or TADS 3, my second choice)? The theme is Winter and/or the holidays/Christmas. Ideas off the top of my head this minute (who knows how they would work in IF):


- a hunter comes down onto an ice plain and meets another hunter, they swap stories. A contest of stories, and at the end the hunter kills the other hunter because of a blood feud, made obvious in the telling of tales between them up to that point. 

- two Father Christmases have a contest

- interstellar Christmas present delivery

- Winter RPG, Santa's elf quests to kill the Gingerbread Man. 

The deadline is midnight of the 24th, btw.  


[size=150]Proposed schedule[/size] (sure to be discarded):

[b]12/11 to 12/14[/b]: design development

[b]12/14 to 12/21[/b]: code development

[b]12/22 to 12/24[/b]: testing

12/25: ... fame and riches.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=365&start=0#p2165
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: TIGSource competition
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-12-11 10:50:37

[quote="George"]
cool Lockett, thanks for posting that. 

I'm going to write a game for this. Is anyone interested in collaborating in I7 (or TADS 3, my second choice)?
[/quote] 
Sorry, I'm going to do my own entry.

[quote="George"]
- a hunter comes down onto an ice plain and meets another hunter, they swap stories. A contest of stories, and at the end the hunter kills the other hunter because of a blood feud, made obvious in the telling of tales between them up to that point.
[/quote] 
That's the best idea on the list.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=367&start=0#p2166
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Sound support for IF
User: TimmyL / DateTime: 2007-12-11 11:19:05

Hi:

I've been authoing in Adrift for a while now, and am interested in doing things with better sound support. What's the best IF system for sound? Are there any special packages that make sound support in TADS/Inform easier? I'd really like to get up to 8 looping sounds playing simultaneously. Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance for any help!!

Tim

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=367&start=0#p2167
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Sound support for IF
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-12-11 12:20:48

Hugo is pretty good for sound.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=365&start=0#p2168
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: TIGSource competition
User: drfroth / DateTime: 2007-12-11 12:22:18

Cool!

I like Christmas....I am all over this.

Thanks for letting everyone know about it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=366&start=0#p2169
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: No avatars and... ?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-12-11 12:26:55

If we move to an updated version of phpBB -- or to any other software -- we'd have to freeze this forum and start over with users/posts in an all new forum. That's why I haven't wanted to do it. In theory, there should be a way to convert it. But it would take some know-how and knowledge of the inner-workings of phpBB to pull it off. They don't support this beta version.

Avatars, and probably other features as well, are disabled due to the roots of the forum. There was a big debate at the time, where newsgroup regulars were "concerned" (to put what nearly turned into an all-out brawl mildly) that any forum anybody would set up would by nature be bogged down with extras and graphics and slow loads and confusing features. So stuff like that was turned off.

I don't mind avatars, but it's been my experience that people are collectively unable to work withing community standards. There are tools in place to be sure avatars are a certain size (width/height, as well as file size), but I haven't checked to see how well it works. I've seen this abused elsewhere, even just in the content of the avatar itself.

I suppose if most people want it, it could be enabled. Most of the newsgroup regulars have pretty much steered clear of the forum, so maybe it's a non-issue. (After all, the IFDB got more sign-ups in its first week than this forum has gotten in its entire history -- for whatever reason, people avoid the forum.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=364&start=0#p2170
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Spatial arrangements in Inform 7
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-12-11 17:52:22

[quote="George"]
[quote="Lockett"]
How can I [....]

Is it even possible within the language?
[/quote]  

Very much so, but I can't go into details at the moment as I'm off to work. [emote];)[/emote]
[/quote] 

Can you when you get back from work?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=366&start=0#p2171
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: No avatars and... ?
User: George / DateTime: 2007-12-11 19:40:29

[quote="Merk"]
In theory, there should be a way to convert it. But it would take some know-how and knowledge of the inner-workings of phpBB to pull it off. They don't support this beta version.
[/quote] 

OK, I did look back through the forum to see if this had been asked before, so apologies if I'm beating a dead horse here. 

On a different forum I visit we just switched sites and forum software, (from ProBoard to SMF) and one of the admin wrote a script to move all the posts over (in the new forum they were all posted as the user 'archive). Of course everyone else had to re-register in the new forum. I'm guessing phpBB uses some kind of RDB? It sounds like it's more complicated than getting everything from one table and putting it into another somehow (I'm just throwing words around, I don't really know what I'm talking about here!). 

So, I guess the question is, do we really want to update forum software? I do like this forum, but then again I like the new and shiny stuff too. 

If we do want to update, here's a pretty crazy idea. If no one has the time to write or find a script...we could do it manually. In the time it would take me to find a script and understand if it would actually work, I probably could repost every thread (again using an 'archive' user). There currently are 2125 posts in this forum. I'm guessing I could update it manually in about two weeks. Anyone else who jumped in to the update project would cut down that time. But it would get done eventually. All the forum admin would need to do is install the new software on a new subdomain and set up an archive user. 

[quote]
Avatars, and probably other features as well, are disabled due to the roots of the forum. There was a big debate at the time, where newsgroup regulars were "concerned" (to put what nearly turned into an all-out brawl mildly) that any forum anybody would set up would by nature be bogged down with extras and graphics and slow loads and confusing features. So stuff like that was turned off.

I don't mind avatars, but it's been my experience that people are collectively unable to work withing community standards. There are tools in place to be sure avatars are a certain size (width/height, as well as file size), but I haven't checked to see how well it works. I've seen this abused elsewhere, even just in the content of the avatar itself.

I suppose if most people want it, it could be enabled. Most of the newsgroup regulars have pretty much steered clear of the forum, so maybe it's a non-issue. (After all, the IFDB got more sign-ups in its first week than this forum has gotten in its entire history -- for whatever reason, people avoid the forum.)
[/quote] 

I know not all forums are the same, but in my limited experience hanging out on a dozen or so forums I haven't seen much of an issue, or heard of much of one, over avatars. I think people do like them, and it probably would help draw more people to the site if the forum looked like what they're used to. It might be my imagination but we seem to be getting a few new people here recently, and from looking around at the IF boards on other community game forums, I think the potential is there to draw more (non-R*IF) people to this site.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=366&start=0#p2172
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: No avatars and... ?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-12-11 19:45:39

Well, we could take a poll, I guess -- both about just "copying" old posts into a new forum (would still require everybody to sign up again), and about avatars. Anybody else have strong feelings on this one way or the other?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=365&start=0#p2173
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: TIGSource competition
User: George / DateTime: 2007-12-11 19:47:42

Another couple of ideas I had at work today:

- soldiers in the trenches in WWI, play soccer on Christmas Eve (this is based on some story I heard)

- Cold War spy shopping for his kid in Berlin on Christmas Eve, avoiding assasins. 

- Pacific Islanders face their first winter/Ice Age (Day After Tomorrow meets Kon-Tiki).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=364&start=0#p2174
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Spatial arrangements in Inform 7
User: George / DateTime: 2007-12-12 01:54:11

[quote="Lockett"]
How can I arrange objects spatially within a room(e.g. the window is to the east, the bed is to the west, etc)
[/quote]  

The best example I could find so far was number 316 in the list of examples. 

The main question I have here is what the player is going to do in this set up. In some one-room games the description of the room changes based on where the protagonist is in the room, and where the protagonist is depends on what they last examined, touched, etcetera. So what you're doing is recording where the objects are located, and assigning the player to that location as well so that the game prints the room description from that viewpoint. 

If you actually want the player to type 'go to bed', 'go to window', etcetera, personally i would question the value of that approach. I think it's more important to focus on what the player actually is doing in the location. 

In many ways these are the same thing, but the important thing is you don't have to arrange objects spatially, like with coordinates. Just record locations and what is in relation to what. Unless you're going for some deeper simulation? 

[quote]
And how can I have an object's description change based on interactions with other objects(e.g. the sword is dull and rusty until you talk to the Armorer, who cleans it)?
[/quote]  

See section 5.1 (text with substitutions), and the chapter on Kinds (especially sections 4.6 and up). Also check out tables, in chapter 15, particularly 15.16 and 15.17, and chapter 8 on change, as well as chapter 12 on Advanced Actions. 

In this case you want to use I7's properties (these would be dull, rusty, etc.), When the Armorer cleans the sword, you change the property of the sword so the game prints the correct description. You can embed if statements in an object's description, or create a description by selecting entries in a table.

Here is a very simple example:

[code]

"Rusty Sword"

The Armory is a room. A man called The Armorer is here.

A blade is a kind of thing. A blade can be rusty. A blade can be dull. A blade usually is rusty and dull. 

A blade called a sword is here. The description of the sword is "An iron sword [if the sword is rusty]covered in rust[end if][if the sword is dull], with an edge good only for buttering your bread[end if]."

Sharpening the sword is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "sharpen [something]" as sharpening the sword. 

Check sharpening the sword: if the noun is not a blade, say "You can't sharpen that." instead. 

Carry out sharpening the sword: now the noun is not dull.

Report sharpening the sword: say "After hours and hours of work, you sharpen the sword.".

A tulip is here. 

test me with "x sword / sharpen sword / x sword / sharpen tulip".

[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=364&start=0#p2175
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Spatial arrangements in Inform 7
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-12-12 11:36:04

Thank you for your assistance.

[quote="George"]
[quote="Lockett"]
How can I arrange objects spatially within a room(e.g. the window is to the east, the bed is to the west, etc)
[/quote]  The main question I have here is what the player is going to do in this set up. In some one-room games the description of the room changes based on where the protagonist is in the room, and where the protagonist is depends on what they last examined, touched, etcetera. So what you're doing is recording where the objects are located, and assigning the player to that location as well so that the game prints the room description from that viewpoint.
[/quote]  
Actually, I just wanted to have a window on one wall that the player could look through or at.  Both choices would be useful for solving some of the puzzles that I have in mind.  So if the player wants to "examine window", the window itself would be described, while if the player wants to "look east", they would see through it.  I realize now that it wouldn't work, though.  What could I use to make the player able to look in a given direction?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=364&start=0#p2176
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Spatial arrangements in Inform 7
User: George / DateTime: 2007-12-12 19:26:43

Take a look at example 20 for the window, I think it covers what you need (and explains it better than I could! [emote]Smile[/emote] )

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=368&start=0#p2177
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: New Zork I source
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-12-15 00:49:26

I am pretty new to Inform 7. So for a fun starting project i have taken much of the hugo source and my own Zork I playing experiences and have ported most of it. I have pretty much everything working but some of the troll, thief battles and hp issues.  My question is simple. Is this something that people would like to have a resource when i am done?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=369&start=0#p2178
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: New Starcraft 2 based interactive Fiction
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-12-15 00:53:08

To celebrate the up and coming SC 2 release i will be making a starcraft based IF. I have already scoped out some of the basic plans overall but am wondering if anyone with either coding or writing experience would be interested. I have eventual plans to actually PORT this over to SC2 and add in some graphic interfaces but still keeping the general look and feel of IF.

Let me know here, thanks!

If you dont know what sc 2 is then.... <a href="http://www.starcraft2.com/">http://www.starcraft2.com/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=367&start=0#p2179
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Sound support for IF
User: TimmyL / DateTime: 2007-12-15 11:41:34

Thanks. 

I've tried Hugo, and can't get the sounds to play, even though I'm sure I'm creating the resource correctly. Even downloaded the tetris example (source) to compile and examine. It compiles perfectly, but once again no actual sound plays (yes, I'm checking the sound option). 

Any suggestions? Is there a Hugo game in which you know the sound actually works, so I can check to see if it's my computer (Adrift sounds play fine)... Do I need a special version of the compiler?

Thanks again for any help or suggestions...

Tim

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=370&start=0#p2180
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: INFORM 7: Issues i have not resolved...
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-12-15 14:59:53

I have many but here are some that i cant seem to get my arms around, any help would be nice [emote]Smile[/emote]


How do i make it so the players "it" value is set to what i want it to be?
for example the player says open box and inside the box is a letter. i now want to make it so if the player types "GET IT", it will refer to the letter NOT the box?

How do i make it so if only one item is being carried the GET ALL command doesnt try and re-pick up that item?

How do i make it so if i do a GET ALL it does not include any items that are inside of containers?
	ie i pick up a vase that has water in it i dont want it to also take the water. 
	OR i GET ALL and there is a drawer that is open i dont want it to take the robe that is inside because i cant take the drawer? stopping the drawer pickup i can do however...
 i do however still want GET ALL FROM either the vase or the drawer to work properly....

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=370&start=0#p2181
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: INFORM 7: Issues i have not resolved...
User: George / DateTime: 2007-12-15 20:12:35

[quote]
How do i make it so the players "it" value is set to what i want it to be?
for example the player says open box and inside the box is a letter. i now want to make it so if the player types "GET IT", it will refer to the letter NOT the box?
[/quote]   

I guess you could make an indexed text 'it' property (i.e., variable). I noticed you posted on RAIF as well so I'm hoping some I7 gurus will answer there. However this also works;

[code]
"Letter"

The Apartment is a room. A container called a box is here. It is closed and openable. A letter is in the box. 

Carry out taking rule: 
if the player's command matches the text "get it" begin;
if the noun is a container (called holder) and open begin; 
if one thing (called item) is in the holder begin;
now the item is carried by the player;
now the holder is in the location;
end if;
end if;
end if.

test me with "open box / get it / look / i"
[/code]

I used a nested if in the taking rule because I couldn't put all the conditions into one if -- I guess you could remove the second if condition and make it so the player took all the things from the container (if there are multiples) but that doesn't seem as sensical. 

One thing that helps for this sort of stuff is to look at the Index tab in the IDE after you hit 'Go' to compile your game. Then under the Index tab check out actions, and it will list many of the rules that fire when the player tries an action. 

I don't know the solution for your other questions -- working on it [emote]:)[/emote]. 

[quote="AJ Stuart"]
I have many but here are some that i cant seem to get my arms around, any help would be nice [emote]:)[/emote]
[/quote]   

I'm always in the same boat, I hope this helped.


edit:  added a crucial condition to the nested if which I forgot -- to make sure the player is typing 'get it' and not 'get box'!

edit again: I notice the question has been answered on RAIF -- much more succinctly, too. 

<a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_frm/thread/129899679913c9e1/38694d674bbe2dd2#38694d674bbe2dd2">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts ... 674bbe2dd2</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=371&start=0#p2182
Forum: Competitions / Subject: InsideADRIFT Game of the Year Competition 2007
User: rotter / DateTime: 2007-12-16 01:44:45

Full details of this competition can be found [url=http://www.adrift.org.uk/cgi/f/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=1;t=6387;st=0;&#entry77425]HERE[/url].

This is a competition for any ADRIFT game released during 2007. The winners of a manistream ADRIFT competition will automatically be entered and on top of that authors can each enter one more game. Organized by Ken Franklin, the voting deadline is 15:00hrs GMT on Sunday 30 December 2007. 

[url=http://www.insideadrift.org.uk/comp/]Voting Page[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=369&start=0#p2184
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: New Starcraft 2 based interactive Fiction
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-12-16 09:54:33

Hi!

You work for Blizzard?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=367&start=0#p2185
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Sound support for IF
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-12-16 09:58:47

Well, the sound should work fine in Trading Punches:
<a href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/zips/tpunch19.zip">http://www.sidneymerk.com/zips/tpunch19.zip</a>

But I have to ask the question... what OS do you use? Sound is only supported in Windows and MacIntosh native runners (although I've heard the music work in Gargoyle as well, at least on Windows). The GUI version of the Linux runner *might* support sound.

Glulx is another option, I think. But I've never played a Glulx game with sound, so I can't point to any examples.

(edit):
Oh, and the obvious Hugo example, Future Boy!
<a href="http://www.generalcoffee.com/futureboy/">http://www.generalcoffee.com/futureboy/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=369&start=0#p2186
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: New Starcraft 2 based interactive Fiction
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-12-16 12:53:37

[quote="Merk"]
Hi!

You work for Blizzard?
[/quote] 


No but i do alot of modding of their games. Warcraft 3 for example has its own programming language as will the new SC2.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=370&start=0#p2187
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: INFORM 7: Issues i have not resolved...
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-12-16 14:15:22

Thanks so much George. Little by little i master this new strange language [emote]Razz[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=364&start=0#p2188
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Spatial arrangements in Inform 7
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-12-16 15:01:09

Thank you for your help.  Do you know how to keep it from saying "You can see [thing] here." at the end of a room description?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=364&start=0#p2189
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Spatial arrangements in Inform 7
User: George / DateTime: 2007-12-16 17:44:12

The basic way to do that is to write for example, "The forge is a thing. It is scenery.".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=368&start=0#p2190
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New Zork I source
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2007-12-16 22:45:04

[quote="AJ Stuart"]
Is this something that people would like to have a resource when i am done?
[/quote] 
As far as I'm concerned, any source code for IF that's given up for public viewing and use is always something interesting and helpful. 

Your code might actually contain bits that can be emulated in other games, especially in something as ever-changing as Inform 7. Can't guarantee it will be compatible after 1 or 2 newer versions, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=364&start=0#p2191
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Spatial arrangements in Inform 7
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-12-17 10:06:44

[quote="George"]
The basic way to do that is to write for example, "The forge is a thing. It is scenery.".
[/quote] 
But I want to be able to take it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=361&start=0#p2192
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Fork: The Great Underground Dining Room
User: Chris. / DateTime: 2007-12-17 14:27:45

For those who've expressed disinterest in clicking on the GeoCities link, the game is now available from the Archive:

<a href="http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/Fork.z5">http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/Fork.z5</a>

Thanks again to anyone who tries it out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=364&start=10#p2193
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Spatial arrangements in Inform 7
User: George / DateTime: 2007-12-17 20:05:23

I'm not sure if this is what you want, but you can get at this with:

[code]
Rule for listing nondescript items: do nothing.
[/code]

Do a search on 'nondescript' in the documentation and you'll see other examples and an explanation of this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=367&start=0#p2194
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Sound support for IF
User: TimmyL / DateTime: 2007-12-18 17:39:17

Thanks! I downloaded trading punches, and get a looping synthetic sound that is obviously out of place with the story, but definitely coming from the game. I wonder if my machine is playing it at too high a sample rate or something. I am now downloading Future Boy, and will let you know if  get something reasonable.

I am using Windows XP Pro and have never had sound problems in the past. I am encouraged that I am at least getting sound of some sort out of Trading Punches, but if I can't find out what the programmer actually did to make it 'work' (I followed the "Hugo Book" and the Tetris examples to the letter), I'm still SOL. I'll let you know if I can make Future Boy work. I also have a second computer to try things out on.

Thanks so much for your advice thus far!!

Tim

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=367&start=0#p2195
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Sound support for IF
User: TimmyL / DateTime: 2007-12-18 17:42:32

*laugh* Ooops! You *are* the programmer.

And yes - congratulations on this game (I played it several years ago as part of the IF competition - don't remember sound then, though)!

Should the opening sound on the bridge be a looping synthetic blast (not noise)? If so, I have at least part of my answer.

ttys (and thanks!)

TIm

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=367&start=0#p2196
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Sound support for IF
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-12-18 19:40:38

Nope, the sound should be this MP3:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/zips/skipping_stones.mp3">http://www.sidneymerk.com/zips/skipping_stones.mp3</a>
It's synthesized (originally MIDI), but not just a looping tone.

I use Hugo on Windows XP Pro on my laptop, and Hugo sound has always worked fine. I wonder if you have some issue with DirectX?

And sound is enabled in your Hugo runner, right? You can check the menu, or just hit CTRL+P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=373&start=0#p2197
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Struggling with Inform 7 (Newbie here)
User: jcranmer / DateTime: 2007-12-18 20:14:07

I love interactive fiction.  I've been playing it since the early days of Scott Adams games on the VIC-20.  I've written a few games back in the day in BASIC, mostly for my own amusement.  

I've tried my hand at a few different versions of Inform, and never quite "gotten it". However I really like Inform 7.  I really like the ease of the language for describing rooms and basic rules, however what I am wanting to do is beyond my programming knowledge and I'm looking for help.

Imagine a grid of "rooms" say 10 X 10 or even bigger set in a forest with very similar descriptions .  One of which randomly has a "treasure" placed in it when game play begins.  (None of this is the problem)  

What I need to figure out is a compass like device, (actually a GPS with a compass setting) that points to the direction of the "treasure room" each time game play starts regardless of any road blocks in the way. I have no idea how to do this in Inform.

In other words, if the "treasure' is located to the north of the starting location, I want the GPS to point to the north, even if the player has to go west, west, north, east, east, north to get there.

Like I said, I can create the rooms and place the "treasure" randomly without any issue.  I just can't figure out how to program the GPS itself.  

Any help or links to similar code snippets would be greatly appreciated!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=373&start=0#p2198
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Struggling with Inform 7 (Newbie here)
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2007-12-18 21:11:02

[quote="jcranmer"]
Imagine a grid of "rooms" say 10 X 10 or even bigger set in a forest with very similar descriptions .  One of which randomly has a "treasure" placed in it when game play begins.

What I need to figure out is a compass like device, (actually a GPS with a compass setting) that points to the direction of the "treasure room" each time game play starts regardless of any road blocks in the way.
[/quote]    

Well, this is how I would do something like that (conceptually) ...

Give each room an "x coordinate" and a "y coordinate" (eg. the south-westernmost room could have x = 0 and y = 0; the room to its north would have x = 0 and y = 1).

To work out which direction room 2 is from room 1, find the differences in the x and y values (room 2's values minus room 1's values). For example, if room 1 has x = 5 an y = 3, and room 2 has x = 5 and y = 1, the x difference is 0 and the y difference is -2.

The GPS direction depends on the x and y difference. For example, if the x difference is 0 and the y difference is > 0, the direction is north; if the y difference is < 0, the direction is south. If the y difference between the rooms is 0, the direction is east or west if the x difference is positive or negative, respectively.

It is trickier if neither the x or y difference equals 0, since the rooms are then not in a straight line with each other (north/south or east/west). It depends whether you want to include NE, NW, SE and SW in your GPS directions. If you don't, and just want to stick to N/S/E/W for the GPS, then work out which one has the smallest absolute (non-negative) value and treat it as "0".

[Edit: I have posted some Inform 7 code to do this (including NE, etc.) later in this thread].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=373&start=0#p2199
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Struggling with Inform 7 (Newbie here)
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2007-12-18 21:18:52

Give every room two properties, an "x coordinate" and a "y coordinate".

Method 1:  Define the x coordinate and y coordinate directly for each room.

Method 2:  Make the x coordinates all -100 by default.  (Just a value to indicate that a room isn't set yet.)  Manually set the x and y coordinates of 1 room.  Write a loop that keeps looping over all the rooms.  If a room has x coordinate of -100 and some adjacent room has an x coordinate not -100, set the x & y coordinates appropriately.  (Optionally, whenever you set coordinates, check that all adjacent rooms, if set, have appropriate locations and print a warning if not.)

Method 3:  Similar to #2, but write a recursive function that sets all adjacent rooms instead of a loop, and call that function instead of manually setting one room.

Let me know if you need any more explanation on any of these.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=373&start=0#p2200
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Struggling with Inform 7 (Newbie here)
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2007-12-18 22:13:33

[quote="jcranmer"]
Imagine a grid of "rooms" say 10 X 10 or even bigger set in a forest with very similar descriptions .  One of which randomly has a "treasure" placed in it when game play begins.

What I need to figure out is a compass like device, (actually a GPS with a compass setting) that points to the direction of the "treasure room" each time game play starts regardless of any road blocks in the way.
[/quote]  

I had a go at doing this in Inform 7 ... here is the code, with some debugging left in (the x and y coordinates of the player and the treasure are printed along with the location). Using ralphmerridew's suggestion for setting up the x and y values initially would save time, too.

[code]

Forestpart is a kind of room.
A forestpart has a number called xpos.
A forestpart has a number called ypos.
The printed name of a forestpart is "Forest (at [xpos of location] [ypos of location]) (treasure [xpos of location of treasure] [ypos of location of treasure])".
The description of a forestpart is "You are in a forest of twisty trees, all alike.
Your GPS is [GPS direction to treasure]."

The player carries a GPS.
The inventory listing of the GPS is "A GPS ([GPS direction to treasure])".
The description of the GPS is "The GPS is [GPS direction to treasure]."

The player is in forest0_0.
forest3_3 contains a treasure.

To say GPS direction to (t - a thing):
	let tr_loc be the location of t;
	let dx be xpos of tr_loc minus xpos of location;
	let dy be ypos of tr_loc minus ypos of location;
	if dx is 0 and dy is 0
	begin;
		say "spinning in circles";
	otherwise;
		say "pointing ";
		let abs_dx be dx;
		if abs_dx is less than 0, change abs_dx to 0 minus abs_dx;
		let abs_dy be dy;
		if abs_dy is less than 0, change abs_dy to 0 minus abs_dy;
		if abs_dx is less than abs_dy
		begin;
			if abs_dx <= abs_dy divided by 2, change dx to 0;
		otherwise;
			if abs_dy <= abs_dx divided by 2, change dy to 0;
		end if;
		if dx is 0
		begin;
			if dy is greater than 0, say "north";
			otherwise say "south";
		otherwise;
			if dy is 0
			begin;
				if dx is greater than 0, say "east";
				otherwise say "west";
			otherwise;
				if dx is greater than 0
				begin;
					if dy is greater than 0, say "northeast";
					otherwise say "southeast";
				otherwise;
					if dy is greater than 0, say "northwest";
					otherwise say "southwest";
				end if;
			end if;
		end if;
	end if.

forest0_0 is a forestpart. The xpos of forest0_0 is 0. The ypos of forest0_0 is 0.
forest0_1 is a forestpart. The xpos of forest0_1 is 0. The ypos of forest0_1 is 1.
[...]

forest0_1 is north of forest0_0.
forest0_2 is north of forest0_1.
[...]

forest1_0 is east of forest0_0.
forest2_0 is east of forest1_0.
[...]

[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=368&start=0#p2201
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New Zork I source
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-12-19 11:04:41

I love your quote its something that is so approriate to my gaming and coding life!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=373&start=0#p2202
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Struggling with Inform 7 (Newbie here)
User: jcranmer / DateTime: 2007-12-19 17:41:25

Thanks for the quick replies!  I won't have any time to work on the game tonight, but I am anxious to try out all the suggestions.  

Seeing the actual code helped out a lot!  I'm certain that with very little tweaking it will do exactly what I was looking for.

Thanks again!  [emote]Mr. Green[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=373&start=0#p2203
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Struggling with Inform 7 (Newbie here)
User: jcranmer / DateTime: 2007-12-20 20:35:50

Please keep in mind, that I said I was new to Inform 7, but I'm having issues getting the code posted above to work for me.  [emote]:([/emote] 

Looking at it, I thought it was complete enough to compile and play around with, but no such luck.

While I am well versed in Inform complaining about every line of code I try to write, normally it just won't compile when I have something incorrect.  In this case the code compiles without issue, but ends up giving me something I have not encountered before, a runtime error [emote]:!:[/emote] 

I hate to be a pest, but can someone shed some light on what's going on here?

[quote]
 Forest (at 0 0) (treasure 
*** Run-time problem P31: Attempt to use a property of the 'nothing' non-object.

0 
*** Run-time problem P31: Attempt to use a property of the 'nothing' non-object.

0)
You are in a forest of twisty trees, all alike. Your GPS is 
*** Run-time problem P31: Attempt to use a property of the 'nothing' non-object.


*** Run-time problem P31: Attempt to use a property of the 'nothing' non-object.

spinning in circles.

>
[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=373&start=0#p2204
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Struggling with Inform 7 (Newbie here)
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2007-12-20 23:54:38

[quote="jcranmer"]
Please keep in mind, that I said I was new to Inform 7, but I'm having issues getting the code posted above to work for me.  [emote]:([/emote] 

Looking at it, I thought it was complete enough to compile and play around with, but no such luck.
[/quote] 

The parts of code that say "[ ... ]" were left out to save space.

I'll send you a private message with the complete code, to save cluttering the thread ...

David Fisher

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=373&start=0#p2205
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Struggling with Inform 7 (Newbie here)
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2007-12-21 03:54:40

Here's an implementation of David's GPS compass, without resorting to x and y coordinates in the kind. Instead, this uses the built-in best route mechanism to find the direction the treasure is in from where the player is.

[code]To say GPS direction to (t - a thing):
	let tr_loc be the location of t;
	let the total distance be the number of moves from the location to tr_loc, using even locked doors;
	let count of ns moves be 0;
	let count of ew moves be 0;
	let next place be the location;
	repeat with counter running from 1 to the total distance
	begin;
		let the way be the best route from the next place to tr_loc, using even locked doors;
		if the way is north, let count of ns moves be the count of ns moves plus 1;
		if the way is east, let count of ew moves be the count of ew moves plus 1;
		if the way is south, let count of ns moves be the count of ns moves minus 1;
		if the way is west, let count of ew moves be the count of ew moves minus 1;
		if the way is northeast
		begin;
			let count of ns moves be the count of ns moves plus 1;
			let count of ew moves be the count of ew moves plus 1;
		end if;
		if the way is southeast
		begin;
			let count of ns moves be the count of ns moves minus 1;
			let count of ew moves be the count of ew moves plus 1;
		end if;
		if the way is southwest
		begin;
			let count of ns moves be the count of ns moves minus 1;
			let count of ew moves be the count of ew moves minus 1;
		end if;
		if the way is northwest
		begin;
			let count of ns moves be the count of ns moves plus 1;
			let count of ew moves be the count of ew moves minus 1;
		end if;
		let next place be the room the way from next place;
	end repeat;
	if count of ns moves is 0 and count of ew moves is 0
	begin;
		say "spinning in circles";
	otherwise;
		say "pointing ";
		let absolute count of ns moves be the count of ns moves;
		let absolute count of ew moves be the count of ew moves;
		if absolute count of ns moves is less than 0, let absolute count of ns moves be 0 minus absolute count of ns moves;
		if absolute count of ew moves is less than 0, let absolute count of ew moves be 0 minus absolute count of ew moves;
		if absolute count of ns moves is less than absolute count of ew moves
		begin;
			if absolute count of ns moves is at most the absolute count of ew moves divided by 2, let count of ns moves be 0;
		otherwise;
			if absolute count of ew moves is at most the absolute count of ns moves divided by 2, let count of ew moves be 0;
		end if;
		if count of ew moves is 0
		begin;
			if count of ns moves is greater than 0, say "north";
			otherwise say "south";
		otherwise;
			if count of ns moves is 0
			begin;
				if count of ew moves is greater than 0, say "east";
				otherwise say "west";
			otherwise;
				if count of ew moves is greater than 0
				begin;
					if count of ns moves is greater than 0, say "northeast";
					otherwise say "southeast";
				otherwise;
					if count of ns moves is greater than 0, say "northwest";
					otherwise say "southwest";
				end if;
			end if;
		end if;
	end if.

Forestpart is a kind of room. The printed name of a forestpart is "Somewhere in a Forest". The description of a forestpart is "You are in a forest of twisty trees, all alike. Your GPS is [GPS direction to treasure]."

The player carries a GPS. The inventory listing of the GPS is "A GPS ([GPS direction to treasure])". The description of the GPS is "The GPS is [GPS direction to treasure]."

Forest_01 is a forestpart. Forest_02 is a forestpart. Forest_03 is a forestpart. Forest_04 is a forestpart. Forest_05 is a forestpart. Forest_06 is a forestpart. Forest_07 is a forestpart. Forest_08 is a forestpart. Forest_09 is a forestpart. Forest_10 is a forestpart. Forest_11 is a forestpart. Forest_12 is a forestpart. Forest_13 is a forestpart. Forest_14 is a forestpart. Forest_15 is a forestpart. Forest_16 is a forestpart. Forest_17 is a forestpart. Forest_18 is a forestpart. Forest_19 is a forestpart. Forest_20 is a forestpart. Forest_21 is a forestpart. Forest_22 is a forestpart. Forest_23 is a forestpart. Forest_24 is a forestpart. Forest_25 is a forestpart.

The player is in Forest_11. A treasure is in Forest_04.

Forest_06 is north of Forest_11. Forest_01 is north of Forest_06. Forest_02 is east of Forest_01. Forest_07 is south of Forest_02. Forest_08 is east of Forest_07. Forest_13 is south of Forest_08. Forest_12 is west of Forest_13. Forest_17 is south of Forest_12. Forest_16 is west of Forest_17. Forest_21 is south of Forest_16. Forest_22 is east of Forest_21. Forest_23 is east of Forest_22. Forest_24 is east of Forest_23. Forest_19 is north of Forest_24. Forest_20 is east of Forest_19. Forest_15 is north of Forest_20. Forest_10 is north of Forest_15. Forest_05 is north of Forest_10. Forest_04 is west of Forest_05.

Forest_03 is north of Forest_08. Forest_09 is east of Forest_08. Forest_14 is south of Forest_09. Forest_18 is south of Forest_13. Forest_25 is east of Forest_24.


Index map with Forest_02 mapped east of Forest_01. Index map with Forest_03 mapped east of Forest_02. Index map with Forest_04 mapped east of Forest_03. Index map with Forest_05 mapped east of Forest_04.

Index map with Forest_06 mapped south of Forest_01. Index map with Forest_07 mapped south of Forest_02. Index map with Forest_08 mapped south of Forest_03. Index map with Forest_09 mapped south of Forest_04. Index map with Forest_10 mapped south of Forest_05.

Index map with Forest_11 mapped south of Forest_06. Index map with Forest_12 mapped south of Forest_07. Index map with Forest_13 mapped south of Forest_08. Index map with Forest_14 mapped south of Forest_09. Index map with Forest_15 mapped south of Forest_10.

Index map with Forest_16 mapped south of Forest_11. Index map with Forest_17 mapped south of Forest_12. Index map with Forest_18 mapped south of Forest_13. Index map with Forest_19 mapped south of Forest_14. Index map with Forest_20 mapped south of Forest_15.

Index map with Forest_21 mapped south of Forest_16. Index map with Forest_22 mapped south of Forest_17. Index map with Forest_23 mapped south of Forest_18. Index map with Forest_24 mapped south of Forest_19. Index map with Forest_25 mapped south of Forest_20.

The Start Room is a region. Forest_11 is in the Start Room.
The Treasure Room is a region. Forest_04 is in the Treasure Room.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=373&start=0#p2206
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Struggling with Inform 7 (Newbie here)
User: jcranmer / DateTime: 2007-12-21 16:28:46

Thanks guys!  I completely missed "best route" in the documentation.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=364&start=10#p2207
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Spatial arrangements in Inform 7
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2007-12-21 16:57:37

Thank you very much.  I can't figure out how to make it display a message other than "Taken" after taking the item, though.

Do a good deed.  Help a newb.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=329&start=0#p2218
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Problem with read-topic tracking.
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2007-12-23 06:20:00

Looks like the upgrade fixed the problem.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=329&start=0#p2221
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Problem with read-topic tracking.
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-12-23 10:28:43

It fixed the UBBCode bug as well, although the legacy codes in existing posts have been an issue. As I come across old posts that show UBBCode instead of actual styles, I just fix it by editing and re-saving the post.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=377&start=0#p2222
Forum: Competitions / Subject: One Room Game Competition 2007 - Results
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-12-23 10:34:22

The organizer of the Italian-based One Room Game Competition has announced the results:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.avventuretestuali.com/orgc/orgc-2007-eng">http://www.avventuretestuali.com/orgc/orgc-2007-eng</a>
David Fisher came in first with "Suveh Nux." Congrats!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=366&start=0#p2223
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: No avatars and... ?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-12-23 10:45:01

There are three methods for using Avatars, which can be enabled/disabled independently: Gallary Avatars, Offsite Avatars, and Upload Avatars. I enabled uploadable avatars in this version.

I initially uploaded the one I use elsewhere (Calvin, from Calvin & Hobbes), and then deleted it. On short posts (a couple lines of text), it creates a gap since there has to be more room for the avatar on the sidebar. I suppose it's not a big deal, and it's the same issue on any other forum, but I've always just thought of the intfiction forum as being more streamlined.

Anyway, it's there.

Also (on a different topic) I have enabled guest posting. I know some people don't like to create an account and remember a password, so that should accomodate those visitors. However, a CAPTCHA code is required prior to each post, like on sign-up, where you enter text from a randomly-generated image.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=379&start=0#p2239
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: New Hugo version?
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2007-12-24 14:11:48

Has Kent hinted anywhere if he's planning to put out a new version of Hugo? I'm curious - it's nearly 2 years since he last posted a new version - either he's really busy with other projects or...something else.

Judging from his occasional posts at [url=http://www.joltcountry.com/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=8&sid=50333555890e42767bd0bde489eef374]Jolt Country[/url], it looks like he's still interested in IF.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=379&start=0#p2240
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: New Hugo version?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-12-24 15:01:34

Not that I'm aware of. It's probably just a matter of other things (not Hugo-related) being more important -- or something. [emote]:)[/emote]

Robb Sherwin and I have posted about a few minor bugs (mostly in the library) to Jolt Country, but nothing major. Probably, there just isn't a lot to be done on it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=15&start=0#p2241
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: [ADRIFT] Hourglass Competition enters judging phase
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-12-25 00:59:58

Somehow the attachment came up missing. I couldn't find it in the original board either, so I've had to remove the reference to it. Sorry.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=365&start=0#p2242
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: TIGSource competition
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-12-25 01:05:42

Did anybody here enter?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=15&start=0#p2243
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: [ADRIFT] Hourglass Competition enters judging phase
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2007-12-25 02:25:40

The topic is still marked with an attachment icon on the forum page.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=15&start=0#p2245
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: [ADRIFT] Hourglass Competition enters judging phase
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-12-25 09:45:57

Fixed.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=365&start=0#p2247
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: TIGSource competition
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2007-12-25 13:36:28

There are no entries posted yet, and since the organizer set the deadline to [url=http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=824.msg20895#msg20895]the author's midnight[/url], it might take a bit longer.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=365&start=0#p2248
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: TIGSource competition
User: George / DateTime: 2007-12-25 16:50:42

Unfortunately for me with the combination of holiday travel and other things I didn't enter and complete a game. I did get a few good game sketches from thinking about it though. 

Also I would encourage any of y'all to check out the TIGSource forums, they're really quite cool for people interested in games.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=380&start=0#p2249
Forum: Competitions / Subject: IFBeginnersComp & the Interactive Short Fiction Competition
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2007-12-25 22:34:26

In case anyone missed the announcement on rec.arts.int-fiction ...

There are two competitions for "IF games suitable for beginners" being run in parallel right now; the same game may be entered in both contests. The deadline for both is February 15th, 2008.

-- The Interactive Short Fiction Competition is more restrictive. Games must be in Inform 7 or TADS 3, the source code must be included, and games must not become unwinnable (including by dying). There is a prize of $50 for first place, as judged by the organiser. For the full set of rules, see:

<a class="postlink" href="http://mark.engelberg.googlepages.com/interactiveshortfictioncompetition">http://mark.engelberg.googlepages.com/i ... ompetition</a>

-- The IFBeginnersComp allows games in any language without the source code being required, and allows games to become unwinnable as long as the game then ends immediately (so players can "undo" and continue playing). The full rules are here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/IFBeginnersComp">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/IFBeginnersComp</a>

As an experiment, public discussion will be permitted for this comp during the judging period (February 15th to March 15th 2008).

David Fisher

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=361&start=0#p2250
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Fork: The Great Underground Dining Room
User: Chris. / DateTime: 2007-12-26 11:35:04

I felt I should publicly thank those who've sent me kind e-mails about the game. (And thanks to Kivie for trying it out at some point in the near future....no pressure!) [emote]:)[/emote]
Also, while compliments are nice, criticism's more useful. So don't hold back with that. I'm not the sensitive type!
Thanks again.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=179&start=0#p2251
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Remebering login details?
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2007-12-26 14:58:19

Looks like the upgrade opened this problem again; it remembers intfiction.org but not int-fiction.org.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=179&start=0#p2252
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Remebering login details?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2007-12-26 18:43:53

I really should disable the int-fiction.org domain, or have it auto-reroute at the server level. None of the setup is meant to work with that domain specifically.

It's probably not a bug -- the cookie domain is simply set to "intfiction.org." Maybe last time we changed it to blank or "/" slash or something. I don't remember what it was set to before.

I'll try to tweak the server settings so that it automatically removes the dash for any URL encountered, and see if that works.

[color=#BF0000](Edit #1)[/color]

Ah, I see in my prior post that I set the cookie domain to blank last time. I could do that again, I guess. But I'd rather force all domains into intfiction.org at the server level. It's cleaner.

[color=#BF0000](Edit #2)[/color]

I've set up a permanent redirect on the server, so that the following URL's automatically send you to the <a class="postlink" href="http://www.intfiction.org">http://www.intfiction.org</a> equivalent:

<a class="postlink" href="http://intfiction.org">http://intfiction.org</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://int-fiction.org">http://int-fiction.org</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.int-fiction.org">http://www.int-fiction.org</a>

That should fix the problem you're having. As a fallback, I can probably change the cookie domain to blank again, but I think redirection is a better long-term solution.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=179&start=0#p2254
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Remebering login details?
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2007-12-27 07:43:36

Seems to be working.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=381&start=0#p2255
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Problems with the IF comp page
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2007-12-31 11:22:49

Pages <a class="postlink" href="http://ifcomp.org/comp07/info.php">http://ifcomp.org/comp07/info.php</a> and <a class="postlink" href="http://ifcomp.org/comp07/games.php">http://ifcomp.org/comp07/games.php</a> give errors.
The email address for Stephen fails.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=382&start=0#p2256
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: stuck on first example in "Writing with Inform"
User: quddusaliquddus / DateTime: 2007-12-31 11:44:14

Hi all [emote]:)[/emote],
          Im new to IF programming and im stcuk on the first example in docuemnatation called  "Writing with Inform". Bascially i have the followwing in the source panel:

[color=#0000FF]"Writing with Inform 7" by Q

"Midsummer Day"
The Gazebo is a room.[/color]

And when i press the go button i get the following error:

[color=#800000]You wrote '"Midsummer Day" The Gazebo is a room'  : but it looks as if perhaps you did not intend that to read as a single sentence, and possibly the text in quotes was supposed to stand as as a sentence on its own? (The convention is that if text ends in a full stop, exclamation or question mark, perhaps with a close bracket or quotation mark involved as well, then that punctuation mark also closes the sentence to which the text belongs: but otherwise the words following the quoted text are considered part of the same sentence.)[/color]

ANY help is much appreciated. Thanks!!!


Q

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=382&start=0#p2257
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: stuck on first example in "Writing with Inform"
User: quddusaliquddus / DateTime: 2007-12-31 11:50:15

its ok. i fixed it [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=365&start=0#p2258
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: TIGSource competition
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2007-12-31 12:48:57

[quote="Isxek"]There are no entries posted yet, and since the organizer set the deadline to [url=http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=824.msg20895#msg20895]the author's midnight[/url], it might take a bit longer.[/quote]

Speaking of entries, the [url=http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=919.0]list of games entered[/url] is finally out! In total, there's 4 Inform games, 2 ALAN3 games, 2 online games, 1 TADS3 game, and 1 Windows game.

A link has also been provided where all games, except "Breathe", can be downloaded in one big ZIP file.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=381&start=0#p2259
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Problems with the IF comp page
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2007-12-31 16:45:01

I'm currently on vacation with limited internet address, so naturally that's when my hosting provider upgraded the host. I knew about the PHP problem, but not the email one. When I get back I'll work on both. Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=383&start=0#p2260
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Child's Play
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2007-12-31 17:06:50

It is playgroup day and playgroup day is normally a good day but ever since that little red-haired girl started coming she always wants your toys.

She shouldn't get your toys.

You tried telling the mom this but she doesn't understand you. She mostly ignored you but then she just shoved a pacifier in your mouth and changed your diaper.

----

I'm pleased to announce the final game of 2007: Child's Play. It's the completed version of my second-place 2006 Introcomp game, and as such is only the third completed Introcomp game, and the first of the class of 2006.

It's a puzzle game, but unlike my earlier ones, it's impossible to get it into an unwinnable state, and it's chock full of NPCs. You can get it from

  <a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/ChildsPlay.zblorb">http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/gam ... lay.zblorb</a>
  <a class="postlink" href="http://granades.com/downloads/ChildsPlay.zblorb">http://granades.com/downloads/ChildsPlay.zblorb</a>

and soon from

  <a class="postlink" href="http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/ChildsPlay.zblorb">http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/ ... lay.zblorb</a>

All of my beta-testers were wonderful, but I'd like to single out three for special mention. Admiral Jota tested both the Introcomp and final versions of the game. Lucian Smith and Dan Shiovitz went above the call of duty, playing all of the early incomplete versions of the game, which means they've been playing this game since early 2006.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=384&start=0#p2261
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Speech and Dialogue
User: quddusaliquddus / DateTime: 2008-01-01 11:38:39

Hi all [emote]:)[/emote],
          Im new to IF and I7. I wanted to know if its possible to program complicated dialogue between user and computer charcaters?

Thanks [emote]:D[/emote]

Q

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=384&start=0#p2262
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Speech and Dialogue
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-01-01 16:43:21

Sure, though it depends [i]how[/i] complicated. (You're not going to pass the Turing Test, of course.) Have a look at the Inform Recipe Book, chapter 7 - in particular, section 8.

If you were more precise about what kind of complicated dialogue you would like to achieve, we should be able to give you more specific help.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=384&start=0#p2263
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Speech and Dialogue
User: quddusaliquddus / DateTime: 2008-01-02 15:57:13

thanks for the reply. [emote]:)[/emote]

i found what im looking for in the documentation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=385&start=0#p2264
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Gargoyle on Linux
User: anvilvapre / DateTime: 2008-01-03 12:47:21

Does anybody have experience using the Gargoyle interpreter under linux?

I have it installed and ready to run yet it doesn't seem to want to! I know it's there; it just comes up as Gargoyle <gamefile> when run from the terminal.

I have tried opening .zblob and glulx files yet when I right click on them, Gargoyle is not an option to open them with!

Please can anyone help with this problem.

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=385&start=0#p2265
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gargoyle on Linux
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-01-03 15:44:20

It depends on what flavour of Linux you're using, I guess, but here's how I do it, on Ubuntu 7.10 (Gnome). I right-click on a game file and select Open With (I forget precisely what it's called, not being on Linux right now), then type "gargoyle" in the command box, then OK to run it. Once I've done that, Ubuntu remembers Gargoyle as the default for that kind of game file.

The other thing you can do in Gnome (and I presume KDE etc would have some equivalent) is right-click on a game file, select Properties, and tell it there to always open that kind of game file in Gargoyle.

Either way, you'll have to do this for every kind of game file you want to automatically open in Gargoyle.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=386&start=0#p2266
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Hi all
User: rgrassi / DateTime: 2008-01-07 07:44:19

And cheers from Italy...  [emote]:D[/emote] 
Rob

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=339&start=0#p2267
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Are You Looking for a Programmer?
User: rgrassi / DateTime: 2008-01-07 07:46:53

Yes. I really need a programmer for two games I've in mind. I don't care about the platform. I'm no good at programming and the only spare time I've is dedicated to the promotion of my commercial RPG.
Is there anyone interested?
Rob

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=386&start=0#p2268
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Hi all
User: George / DateTime: 2008-01-07 11:52:31

Felice anno nuovo, Rob! Welcome (back?) to the forum.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=387&start=0#p2269
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Quest
User: Mike W / DateTime: 2008-01-08 22:41:13

I'm introducing a new parser system for my new game tentatively titled, "Quest".

The parser accepts single words.  For example, instead of typing, "tie rope to tree", you simply type "rope" to use the rope.
[url]http://www.mikew.cjb.net/[/url]

Currently looking for beta testers.  If you like the game enough and want to keep testing it through development  (the demo is 5% of the total game) please sign up to my forum so I can keep you updated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=387&start=0#p2270
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Quest
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2008-01-12 08:10:41

There's already a system named Quest.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=387&start=0#p2271
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Quest
User: George / DateTime: 2008-01-13 13:12:26

I think from the download site he means the game is called Quest.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=388&start=0#p2273
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Challenge Me!
User: Destriarch / DateTime: 2008-01-14 11:40:15

Welp, I'm a bit bored and thought I'd have another crack at this IF lark. I'm fine with the programming (I use Inform v6.3-ish) I'm just casting around for inspiration and stuff. So basically, I'd like people to challenge me! I can't promise I'll include every suggestion. I can't promise I'll use any suggestion for that matter, but if I see something that really sparks my interest then I'll do my best! So, go ahead! Tell me what you'd like to see! Throw random words at me to use as ingredients if you like! Challenge me with tests of programming skill and stuff! Anything you like!

Ash

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=387&start=0#p2274
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Quest
User: Destriarch / DateTime: 2008-01-14 11:43:11

Won't that make it rather easy to guess puzzles? I mean you could just walk from place to place typing in the name of everything in your inventory until something happens. Also, does your parser cope with objects that have more than one function? There is an annoying tendency for objects in adventure games of all kinds to be of use once and once only, then vanish. Personally I'd like to see more stuff that sticks around and has multiple uses.

Ash

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=387&start=0#p2276
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Quest
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-01-14 11:56:17

There was a point and click text game online a year or two ago, essentially accomplishing the same thing. For the life of me, though, I can't remember what it was called. Seems like it was a 4-letter word or acronym.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=388&start=0#p2277
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Challenge Me!
User: George / DateTime: 2008-01-14 18:48:45

Great idea Ash. My game idea list is too long for me to have a go at one percent of it in my lifetime. Here are three ideas from the top:

[list][*]Supernatural paranoid androids[/*:m]
[*]A biological agent in a world of chess-playing machines[/*:m]
[*]A future world where policemen, firefighters, garbage men, etc. are all rolled into one cybernetically enhanced civil servant.[/*:m][/list:u]

Here are three programming ideas:

[list][*]A thief game, in a building with scalable walls, enterable windows, etcetera[/*:m]
[*]A kung-fu game in a programmatically generated forest -- where the player can jump from tree-top to tree-top (I'm not sure if anything but TADS 3 could do this -- unless I7 could generate at compile time?), and also float back to the ground. [/*:m]
[*]A political power struggle game, where the player and the game each start with three characters, which they may 'trade' between them, making offers to trade and accepting or rejecting. Alternatively there is a cast of twelve agents in a city which the game and player both try to recruit to serve the ultimate victory condition of the game. [/*:m][/list:u]


You also might be interested in this link:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.norefuge.net/vgng/vgng.html">http://www.norefuge.net/vgng/vgng.html</a>

And for more ideas I highly recommend these forums;

<a class="postlink" href="http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php">http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php</a>

You'll just have to take my word that not all my ideas are science fictional [emote];)[/emote].


edit: and I meant to include this link but forgot:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.random-generator.com">http://www.random-generator.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=388&start=0#p2278
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Challenge Me!
User: revgiblet / DateTime: 2008-01-15 02:28:15

I'm happy with whatever you do as long as you include the word 'Kumquat'...

...and one of your characters is named 'General Moonface'

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=387&start=0#p2279
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Quest
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-01-15 04:19:17

You might want to check out Ferrous Ring that was entered in the 2007 IFComp. It has an option to use an exactly similar system you're proposing, so you might want to read what reviewers thought of it (see [url]http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Ferrous_Ring[/url] for links to reviews).

[quote="Destriarch"]Won't that make it rather easy to guess puzzles? I mean you could just walk from place to place typing in the name of everything in your inventory until something happens.[/quote]

Many if not most graphical adventure games have a similar system where you just click hotspots, possibly with inventory objects. The number of combinations you can use grows exponentially so I don't see a problem with using only single words. Puzzles aren't generally solved by typing [i]one[/i] single command; for example if you want to boil water, you have to open the CUPBOARD, take the POT, fill it with water from the FAUCET, turn on the STOVE... etc. in the correct order.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=387&start=0#p2280
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Quest
User: Destriarch / DateTime: 2008-01-15 08:35:00

[quote="Nitku"]Many if not most graphical adventure games have a similar system where you just click hotspots, possibly with inventory objects. The number of combinations you can use grows exponentially so I don't see a problem with using only single words.[/quote]
IF and graphical adventures are very different disciplines. Selecting a command (i.e. 'Use') and an appropriate hotspot (i.e. 'Faucet') is the graphical adventure equivalent of typing 'Turn on the Tap'. The command for what to do with an item is implicit in the command that is selected or the button that is pressed. Some graphical adventures really do let you do stuff just by clicking on them, but by clicking on them you are really telling your on-screen persona to use them. Also, puzzles are far more likely to involve the using of an item from the inventory upon a hotspot on the screen, or on another item in the inventory, which is the equivalent of 'Use Hosepipe On Faucet' or similar. This one-word-command system is the equivalent of a graphical adventure wherein you enter a particular room, click on an item in your inventory and your onscreen persona automatically seeks out the relevant hotspot on screen and does the necessary. How difficult would Monkey Island be if all you needed to do was walk from room to room clicking on each inventory item in turn until something happened? Sure you can try each item in turn on each hotspot, but that takes time if there are a lot of hotspots, plus first you have to find the hotspot, find the item in question and so forth.

I'm all for making games easier to play, but there has to be some kind of challenge or the game will be a) boring and b) short-lived with little replay value. The closest I'd get to this level of simplification in IF is to abstract all commands to either 'Go to Place', 'Use Object', 'Use Object On Object', 'Talk to Person' (with maybe a multiple choice conversation system) or 'Examine Object'. This seems a bit of a waste of potential to me, since the ability to attempt to do anything that you can think of, even if it fails, is the one major advantage that IF has over graphical adventures.

Ash

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=388&start=0#p2281
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Challenge Me!
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2008-01-15 17:25:55

[quote="Destriarch"]Welp, I'm a bit bored and thought I'd have another crack at this IF lark. I'm fine with the programming (I use Inform v6.3-ish) I'm just casting around for inspiration and stuff. So basically, I'd like people to challenge me![/quote]
Here are a some thoughts:

* Write a "classic" style game (like Colossal Cave or Zork) that isn't so cruel; don't let the player get into an unwinnable situation, or make it really obvious if they do.

* A game with a lot of player agency -- where the player's choices really matter, and affect the plot in a dramatic way.

* A non-human PC with interesting abilities.

* Simulate one particular thing very deeply (but it should be relevant in the context of the game).

* Conversation with NPCs has a lot of room to explore, too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=388&start=0#p2282
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Challenge Me!
User: Destriarch / DateTime: 2008-01-16 06:59:16

[quote="dfisher"]* Write a "classic" style game (like Colossal Cave or Zork) that isn't so cruel; don't let the player get into an unwinnable situation, or make it really obvious if they do.

* A game with a lot of player agency -- where the player's choices really matter, and affect the plot in a dramatic way.

* Simulate one particular thing very deeply (but it should be relevant in the context of the game).

* Conversation with NPCs has a lot of room to explore, too.[/quote]
Ah, now this has given me an idea for a game. To address the points in order:

1) I hardly ever include player death in my games. If something would prove deadly, the hero avoids the action on behalf of the player. If the hero dies at all, then it's a part of the story, either as its legitimate end or as a plot device (i.e. to transfer control to another hero, or to allow the player to continue playing the game as a ghost.)

2) I'm planning a multiple-ending strategy where the decisions that the player makes determines what chapter(s) they face, and what happens at the end of the story. I reckon it'll be about 5 different endings in all. Hope this works!

3) I'm going all-out on this one, and I've chosen as my focus detective work. The player receives a notebook that will automatically keep track of any important clues they uncover, and the game will facilitate the ability to draw new conclusions from existing clues in order to solve puzzles.

4) I've always been a fan of highly-interactive NPCs, but this can be a problem too. There really is a lot of scope to what you can do with an NPC, but having so many options can also lead the player to confusion and being unable to guess precisely what command they need to issue to solve the puzzle. This can partially be alleviated with 'tutorial' style puzzles early on in the game which demonstrate how complex NPC interactions can work.

Ok, I'm going to get to work! I may even fit in the non-human character if I can, although from what I'm thinking of this is likely to be an NPC under the temporary or indirect control of the player rather than being the main character. People, feel free to keep dropping in ideas if you want to!

Sadly, I don't think Kumquat is going to make the final cut, but I may yet be able to find a place for General Moonface!

Ash

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=389&start=0#p2283
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Early Beta Testers Sought
User: Destriarch / DateTime: 2008-01-17 04:26:57

I'm putting together what promises to be a reasonably lengthy IF game, but one that relies on a new and slightly unusual mechanic quite strongly. As such I'd like to get playtesting started as early in the creation process as possible and release it to the testers in an episodic format. It's a sci-fi / detective thriller with a hint of the supernatural written in Inform and playable via Z-machine.

Any takers?

Ash

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=389&start=0#p2284
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Early Beta Testers Sought
User: George / DateTime: 2008-01-17 09:36:11

I would love to but don't have time -- but one thing you could do (it sounds like you're doing it already but I'm not sure) is tell people they don't have to test every release. Just put the schedule of releases up somewhere and if people have time that week (or month, or whatever) they can test. 

Here's a game that's doing that, it seems to work well:

<a class="postlink" href="http://bluwiki.com/go/Lacunabeta">http://bluwiki.com/go/Lacunabeta</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=389&start=0#p2285
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Early Beta Testers Sought
User: Destriarch / DateTime: 2008-01-17 10:32:23

Well, the idea will be that each subsequent release will start the player off at a later stage in the game, so yes people would be able to test as much or as little as they liked. At the moment I'm just concerned that the investigation mechanics are simple and elegant enough for people to solve the puzzles.

Ash

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=343&start=0#p2286
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Chinese Room by Joey Jones & Harry Giles
User: Kell-Teng / DateTime: 2008-01-19 16:24:50

I have to agree with most of what you say.  Though I didn't run into the chair/hatch issue until a second playthrough (after a lovely game-killing bug involving the Moral Guideline items).

Other than that, I absolutely loved this gem.  And the heavy Think About feature definitely enhanced the enjoyment for me.

Of course I wasn't following the 2 hour rule, so nyaa nyaa. [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=280&start=10#p2287
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: In The Mind Of The Master
User: Kell-Teng / DateTime: 2008-01-19 16:28:57

Questions, agh!  >_<

Once again I have to agree with the majority of what's been stated.  The last puzzle is /glare-worthy  trying to figure out (though really pretty spiffy once you do), and for the life of me, maybe I just fail at life and text adventures, but I couldn't seem to get to the Cardinal's home without losing my initial disguise, which annoyed.

On a slightly related note, I found the second-best 'winning' ending to be very satisfying...though of course, questions questions questions!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=390&start=0#p2288
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: In the Mind of the Master, questions, etc. (SPOILERS?)
User: Kell-Teng / DateTime: 2008-01-19 16:32:55

To keep it short,

A) Is there any actual way to hang on to your initial disguise and reach the Cardinal's home?  I thought I followed and understood the built-in walkthrough, but apparently I fail.

B) I don't suppose anyone else drew any similarities with Sin City, eh?  Mind you I'm only familiar with the movie of that name, and not trying to say the author...uh, Whyld I think...tried to rip it off.  Maybe it was just the time of night and several other factors of when I played it that caused that vibe.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=275&start=0#p2289
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: A Fine Day for Reaping
User: Kell-Teng / DateTime: 2008-01-19 16:51:45

Yeah I noticed some of those same issues too.  Have to agree though, fun, fun game.

And I can't help but cackle maniacally about the ways to win against the woman in Paris. [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=296&start=0#p2290
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Jealousy Duel X
User: Kell-Teng / DateTime: 2008-01-19 16:59:10

I beat it, with the 12 number ending.  You're right, the lack of save and undo is infuriating.

Once you get past that, though, (if you can), and the fact that you can ruin your chances soooo easily, it's a fun little romp.  Oh, also there's a 13th number you can get on a replay, along with some other stuff.  That's kinda cool.

And as far as I can figure, if you refuse the Telemarketer, you can't find him again.  But if you find the Phonebook before engaging him, you can get your $50 in a couple more different ways.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=20#p2291
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: JayDee / DateTime: 2008-01-19 22:39:27

Allow me to be the first person to introduce themself this year - Hi! I'm JayDee.

I'm about 24 years old, live in Australia, and study at uni. Theoretically study, anyhow. Most of my time is spent in these PC labs, on forums and the like. Oops.

I played some text adventures when I was younger, and I played around with game making in AGT. Thankfully, nothing remains of those attempts. (My ZZT game on the other hand, I do still have. It was somewhat complete, though.) I later heard about Inform somewhere, and the whole z-machine architecture fascinated me even though I probably had never played an Infocom game. Ever since, I've been meaning to get further into the whole IF scene, and maybe someday I will.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=340&start=0#p2292
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: game design documents
User: JayDee / DateTime: 2008-01-19 22:47:25

For all the various games and things I imagine writing one day I have a notepad. Actually, the notepad was for notes from lectures, but in between there are various lists of ideas in varying degrees of detail for games. Must type them out before I lose the paper, come to think of it.

I love reading this kind of thing, too. Can't think of that much I've read for IF games, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=20#p2293
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Kell-Teng / DateTime: 2008-01-20 00:36:54

Hallo.  You, gentle forum-goers, can refer to me as Kell, or something along those lines.  21, Indiana, U.S. resident, who's been hooked on gaming since Mattel's Intellivision...well, when my mother introduced me to theirs at least.

I want to think my first IF-esque game was, uh...probably something called Hugo's Adventure (or something like that).  Graphics, real-time, moved with the arrow keys, however you paused the action to input commands like your usual IF variety:  get key, throw torch at mummy, etc.  Though I could be wrong, there's been so many over the years. >_<

Right now I work, take care of my grandparents, and play games and read to pass the time.  My skills lie along the lines of writing, programming (though I'm still a nub), and manual labor.  But that last one's often of little fun. D:

Got the heads up on IFComp 07's crop of games from Games For Windows (and 1up.com's) freebie round-up.  Was slowly playing my way through them when I found this place when looking for reviews and such.

Nice to (sort of) meet you all!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=201&start=0#p2294
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anybody Here Got a Wii?
User: Kell-Teng / DateTime: 2008-01-20 00:39:47

I glares at you with the laserbeam eyes of jealousy!  *_*

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=43&start=20#p2295
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Dwarf Fortress and some other ramblings
User: Kell-Teng / DateTime: 2008-01-20 00:47:21

ARGH!  Curse you Dwarf Fortress, curse you!  As if ADOM and Dungeon Crawl haven't eaten enough of my life! D:

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=276&start=0#p2296
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Varkana
User: Kell-Teng / DateTime: 2008-01-20 03:20:38

Spoiler warning I guess.

[spoiler]I wasn't the only one who feels that the ending where you kill him is the most satisfying one in a story-telling sense, am I?[/spoiler]

[i][color=red]Admin-Edit:[/color] Edited to use the spoiler tags. [emote]:)[/emote][/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=20#p2297
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: George / DateTime: 2008-01-20 11:04:14

Welcome Kell and JayDee! It may be a little quiet on the forums at the moment, but I've noticed that discussion tends to go in bursts around here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=43&start=20#p2298
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Dwarf Fortress and some other ramblings
User: George / DateTime: 2008-01-20 11:07:03

[emote]:D[/emote] 

I keep meaning to try out some more rogue-likes -- what are your favourites?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=30#p2299
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-01-20 12:19:54

It's usually busiest around IFComp time. Most of the year, people don't post because nobody else is posting, so it stays pretty dead.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=43&start=20#p2300
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Dwarf Fortress and some other ramblings
User: Kell-Teng / DateTime: 2008-01-21 04:04:48

My experience is pretty much limited to the above.

ADOM (Ancient Domains of Mystery) is a particular favorite of mine.  Your usual mix of bunches of races, bunches of classes, though this one any race can choose any class (their Troll Monk is a particular favorite of mine).  Adventure through the Drakalor Mountain chain, visiting towns, caves, dungeons, etc. etc.  All sorts of places to go, and things to do, yadda yadda etc.  Defeat the forces of primordial Chaos that are corrupting reality!  Or, perhaps there is another way...
[url]http://www.adom.de[/url]

Then there's Dungeon Crawl, another little lovely that sends you through one really huge honkin' dungeon in search of the Orb of Zot.  Not all races can be all classes, but it seems both fairly balanced and fun.  For a different twist, try playing as a Ghoul or Mummy!
There are two primary versions out of this, to my understanding.  There's a version which was the last made by the original author (this I have played), and a version called Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, which is a version continuously worked on by a group of fans of the first.  Someone made a mouse interface and graphical patch for the former, which I highly recommend getting if you try it.  To my limited knowledge, Stone Soup doesn't have such yet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=43&start=20#p2301
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Dwarf Fortress and some other ramblings
User: JayDee / DateTime: 2008-01-21 17:31:09

[url=http://crawl-ref.sourceforge.net/]Crawl Stone Soup[/url] does have a tiles (graphics) version. The most recent release of Linley's Dungeon Crawl, the original, was in 2003, whereas Stone Soup is in active development.

As for roguelikes in general, the two big ones are [url=http://www.nethack.org]NetHack[/url] and [url=http://www.thangorodrim.net/]Angband[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=390&start=0#p2302
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: In the Mind of the Master, questions, etc. (SPOILERS?)
User: Bob_Woodward / DateTime: 2008-01-22 13:29:38

[quote="Kell-Teng"]
B) I don't suppose anyone else drew any similarities with Sin City, eh?  Mind you I'm only familiar with the movie of that name, and not trying to say the author...uh, Whyld I think...tried to rip it off.  Maybe it was just the time of night and several other factors of when I played it that caused that vibe.[/quote]

I saw Sin City just a few weeks ago for the first time (actually just parts of it, I didn't like it too much...), but I also instantly thought of "In the Mind of the Master", when the cardinal came in play. I think it was an intentional reference by Whyld. I liked the game much more than the movie, though.

Bob

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=335&start=0#p2303
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Playing now
User: Bob_Woodward / DateTime: 2008-01-22 13:33:33

I'm playing the new Sam & Max series right now (ep. 2 "Moai better blues") as well as "Secret File Tunguska", "Child's Play", "Half Life 2" and "Call of Duty 2".

Bob

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=335&start=0#p2304
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Playing now
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-01-22 21:24:01

I'm playing Pokemon Pearl (DS), Super Mario Galaxy (Wii), and Dora's Barnyard Buddies (for my daughter, on PS1). Recently, I've finished Grim Fandango (with my wife, on PC), Metroid Prime - Corruption (Wii), Silent Hill Origins (PSP), Final Fantasy VII (PS1), and Castlevania - Portait of Ruin (DS).

I actually keep a "play" list of my own, just for reference. I make a note of what day I start, and what day I finish. Usually, I'm playing two to three games at any given time (one on a console, one on a portable, and sometimes one with my wife). Still, I've amassed such a collection that it's completely impossible to finish all of them, ever. Especially since I only get to play a little bit each week.

Not much in the way of IF. I beta-tested a game for the upcoming beginner's competition, but then got too busy to follow up on the second beta of the same game. That's about it for me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=335&start=0#p2305
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Playing now
User: George / DateTime: 2008-01-22 23:50:08

The one thing that I'm realizing with game lists is that I don't keep up with them. I tried moving the list to my wordpress site and I still don't update it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=335&start=0#p2306
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Playing now
User: Kell-Teng / DateTime: 2008-01-23 16:26:02

I'd bother, but the list goes on and on... >_<

I still need to go back and finish off the Avernum series sometime.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=389&start=0#p2307
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Early Beta Testers Sought
User: Kell-Teng / DateTime: 2008-01-25 00:28:34

Hallo.  I have been known to be interested in stuff.  Are you still interested in people who are interested in stuff?
>_>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=389&start=0#p2308
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Early Beta Testers Sought
User: Destriarch / DateTime: 2008-01-25 07:56:51

Ummm... yes? [emote]:)[/emote]

Ash

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=389&start=0#p2309
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Early Beta Testers Sought
User: Kell-Teng / DateTime: 2008-01-25 22:57:19

Good!  Shall we talk business, then?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=389&start=0#p2310
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Early Beta Testers Sought
User: Destriarch / DateTime: 2008-01-26 02:50:29

Sure! Drop me a private note with your email address and I'll send you a copy of the most recent build.

Ash

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=391&start=0#p2311
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: *pokes*
User: Kell-Teng / DateTime: 2008-01-28 19:39:09

*crickets*

:p

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=391&start=0#p2312
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: *pokes*
User: George / DateTime: 2008-01-29 00:34:46

[emote]:D[/emote] 

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=391&start=0#p2313
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: *pokes*
User: Kell-Teng / DateTime: 2008-01-29 05:23:38

WIN.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=364&start=10#p2314
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Spatial arrangements in Inform 7
User: fullmuppet / DateTime: 2008-01-29 07:45:22

I'm new to I7 myself but I think you can do what you want with a report rule for the specific object:

[code]The Place is a room.

The whatsit is a thing in the Place.

Report someone taking the whatsit: ignore the standard report taking rule; say "You gobble up the whatsit, greedily."

Test me with "take whatsit".[/code]

Which works.


Or even more simply:

[code]Report someone taking the whatsit: say "You gobble up the whatsit, greedily." instead.[/code]

Hope this is what you are looking for.

Gav

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=208&start=0#p2315
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Registering the player holding an item in a certain location
User: fullmuppet / DateTime: 2008-01-29 08:25:15

Hi,

New to I7 myself but the following might be of help to you. It works by using a check rule on the player going to the warehouse block from any direction (I think, though I've only put one room link into the example). I've put in the example of shots ringing out and the player being killed, but it could be anything - I guess it could even trigger a scene.

[code]The Holding Area is a room.

The Block is south of the Holding Area.

The small torch is a thing in the Holding Area.

Check going to the Block: if the player carries the small torch begin; say "Shots ring out and you fall to the ground, dead."; end the game in death; end if.

Test me with "s/n/take torch/s".[/code]

Hope this helps.

Gav

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=392&start=0#p2316
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: story driven if and other questions
User: pzler / DateTime: 2008-01-30 17:30:53

I'm relatively new to IF but i think i've found a hobby that will hunt me for decades.

So far i've played several works of IF (dreamhold, photopia, galatea, my angel) These where great. well dreamhold wasn't great but more like nice, but it did teach me alot about how to play IF so it's great because of that reason. I've played a few other games as well that i didn't like that much but i respect the effort people put into them to much to insult them. The games where free of charge and i haven't written anything so who am i to judge them.

I would really like to continue to play more IF but i do have a few questions that bother me.

I like story driven IF with few puzzles the most, maybe this will change when i'm more familiar with the way IF works (40% of the time i'm giving imput the parser doesn't understand) but for the moment this is the way i like it. So I'm wondering if i can easily search for IF works with this criteria.

My second question(s) is that i often wish i could read an earlier part of my session again for reference but i have no idea how to do this. Most of my experience is with Zcode. is there a way to do this? is this different for other formats? does it depend on the interpreter? I would love to know.

and my last question that isn't that IF related.

I just got a psion mx 5 (it's old i know but it was cheap) to play IF when I'm traveling, but because english isn't my first language and most IF is english I could really use an english dictionary or a good translater (english to dutch). If you know a good program for the psion that could help me i would be gratefull.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=124&start=0#p2317
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Peasant's Quest
User: mrToad / DateTime: 2008-01-30 18:46:50

this is cool [emote]:)[/emote]

amazing it loads right in the browser. even firefox.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=392&start=0#p2318
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: story driven if and other questions
User: George / DateTime: 2008-01-30 20:16:05

[quote="pzler"]I like story driven IF with few puzzles the most, maybe this will change when i'm more familiar with the way IF works (40% of the time i'm giving imput the parser doesn't understand) but for the moment this is the way i like it. So I'm wondering if i can easily search for IF works with this criteria.[/quote]

Welcome pzler. You may know about [url=http://wurb.com/if/index]Baf's Guide[/url] and the [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/]IFDB[/url]; the former for the advanced search and the latter for the 'also play' and recommended list functions. Give [i]Fate[/i] and [i]The Baron[/i] a try (or [i]De Baron[/i] in Dutch!). 

[quote]My second question(s) is that i often wish i could read an earlier part of my session again for reference but i have no idea how to do this. Most of my experience is with Zcode. is there a way to do this? is this different for other formats? does it depend on the interpreter? I would love to know.[/quote]

Most of the newer players have a script command; you might have to type script or script on for example.


edit: re-reading I'm not sure if you mean a session you played the other day or a session you're in the middle of playing. If your player doesn't have scrollback there's probably a button or menu choice to read the transcript of game in progress.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=392&start=0#p2319
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: story driven if and other questions
User: pzler / DateTime: 2008-01-31 01:27:01

The advance search worked great, I have no idea why I never noticed this feature before. 

The script command does exactly what i need.

thank you

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=392&start=0#p2320
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: story driven if and other questions
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2008-02-01 17:29:18

[quote="pzler"]I like story driven IF with few puzzles the most, maybe this will change when i'm more familiar with the way IF works (40% of the time i'm giving imput the parser doesn't understand) but for the moment this is the way i like it.[/quote]
Some lists on the IFDB you might like:

[url]http://ifdb.tads.org/viewlist?id=dqbqekz1zkxw5u1[/url] - Games for beginners
[url]http://ifdb.tads.org/viewlist?id=dyjzfeawuunoo486[/url] - Easy, fun, short

There is also a "puzzleless" tag in the IFDB ([url]http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=tag:puzzleless[/url]), though I think this is the same list as for the advanced search in Baf's Guide.

I am interested in the "40% of the time" non-understood commands you mentioned ... could you give some examples? (It's always interesting to see what people try when they first play IF).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=393&start=0#p2321
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Gun Mute: Test my Beta
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2008-02-03 09:36:26

[img]http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t74/Spacecatrocketship/High%20Noon/gunmute_title.jpg[/img]

Hardy cowboys wanted to beta test this TADS 3 IF shoot-em-up, mainly based on simple combat puzzles and quirky sci-fi characters.  Post here, or send me a PM or email if interested...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=30#p2322
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2008-02-03 09:44:40

Hi there. I've been reading this forum for a few months now, and am now de-lurking for entirely selfish reasons.  How ya doing?

 [emote]:|[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=393&start=0#p2323
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Gun Mute: Test my Beta
User: George / DateTime: 2008-02-03 13:28:51

I'll give it a gander.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=30#p2324
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: George / DateTime: 2008-02-03 13:30:00

hey Pacian, good to see you over here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=394&start=0#p2325
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: My first experiences with IF. How did you feel?
User: tsiqa / DateTime: 2008-02-03 16:33:09

I dont quite know how to start. I think my concerns  might sound silly to some of you, nevertheless, I am interested in IF too much to let it go without attempts to try to solve its puzzles.

When I first heard of IF, I fell in love with  the idea of exploring  stories by making options. 
But when I started playing games - even simplest ones-  the process of Searching for a right verb - that is supposed help me to move through - would take so much time and effort that I did not even care where I move as long as I move. 

I mean the whole fun of making choices was taken away. My only choice was to find at least one choice.

At the end, I realise that I am not even reading what I get, I am not even enjoying the text, I am interested in it as long as I feel it might contain hints for further movement. So, I am becoming a slave of a keyword search, not of story.

What is it?
Is it just me? Am I looking for wrong things in IF? Or other beginners feel the same?
Is it that I simply need more practice to be getting a feeling of "right" things to input without making too much effort and so not losing track of the story?
Or is it indeed the salt of these games - looking for action movers, but not the returning story blocks themselves?

Any opinion of yours or tips of dealing with frustration would be so much appreciated!
What were your first playing experiences?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=394&start=0#p2326
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: My first experiences with IF. How did you feel?
User: George / DateTime: 2008-02-03 16:50:30

No, I don't think you're looking for the wrong things. I think the reality is that many IF games are pretty bad. Of course this isn't a characteristic exclusive to the IF genre, but you could make the point that in a 'bad' shoot-em-up game at least you have some buzzing lights and sounds to distract your brain from the badness of it all. 

There are many games I start playing and just abandon because I don't like them. However there are some very good games too, and it's worth seeking them out.

I think the best games are worth reading just like you would read any story. Don't be discouraged by the bad games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=394&start=0#p2327
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: My first experiences with IF. How did you feel?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2008-02-04 12:19:21

I don't think your concerns sound silly, tsiqa.  In fact, I think that's the number one concern of any IF author - will people know what to do?

I don't think you're looking for the wrong things in IF, but it is a diverse genre/medium.  There are games that are about exploring a story, which seems to be what you're looking for, but there are also (probably a greater number of) games about solving puzzles to progress through a story.  If you're finding it hard to play IF, one option is to simply focus on the easier games.  Photopia, Galatea and Vespers are all simple, story-focused IFs.  Photopia is linear, but Galatea and Vespers both allow you to easily make profound choices.

My own first experiences playing IF were positive.  One of the first IF games I played was Graham Nelson's Jigsaw, which has ludicrously hard puzzles.  I played it with a walkthrough, though, and got to enjoy the writing and learn a lot of the common IF actions in the process.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=395&start=0#p2328
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: combining items?
User: Manata / DateTime: 2008-02-06 20:57:00

Hi all.  I'm excited to see that Interactive Fiction is still alive and kicking.  I used to play zcode games all the time.  In an effort to find a hobby for the winter months I recently downloaded Inform 7, but I'm struggling with 2 very peculiar things and I hoped you guys could help me.

Any help ya'll could give me would be awesome, so here it goes...

Problem 1: I have a thing called a cup of coffee, and a container called a caulking gun.  I want, when the player puts the cup of coffee into the caulking gun, for the two items to disappear.

Problem 2: I want to put something called a badass coffee blaster in the player's holdall, (a container called messenger bag).

The cup of coffee is defined earlier in the source, simply by saying "the cup of coffee is in the trash can".
They pick the thing up from there.

The caulking gun is a container that they pick up later.

The badass coffee blaster is a thing.

Here is the code block for what I'm trying to accomplish.  The first and fifth lines are clearly incorrect.

[code]
Instead of putting the cup of coffee in the caulking gun:
	say "You slide the cup of coffee in the caulking gun, creating a badass coffee blaster.";
	remove cup of coffee from play;
	remove caulking gun from play;
	the badass coffee blaster is in the messenger bag.
	[/code]

Here is the error that the soft compile console gives me:
[code]Problem. You wrote 'Instead of putting the cup of coffee in the caulking gun'  , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is 'putting the cup of coffee in the caulking gun'. But that did not make sense as a description of an action. I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=395&start=0#p2329
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: combining items?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-02-06 22:42:43

Problem 1: Inform calls the putting into action "inserting it into", not "putting it in", so you need to change the name of the rule.

Problem 2: Saying "the badass coffee blaster is in the messenger bag" doesn't change anything; it just makes a (false) statement about the location of the badass coffee blaster. To tell Inform that you want to move the blaster, add "now" to the beginning of the line.

So the code you actually want here is:

[code]Instead of inserting the cup of coffee into the caulking gun:
   say "You slide the cup of coffee in the caulking gun, creating a badass coffee blaster.";
   remove cup of coffee from play;
   remove caulking gun from play;
   now the badass coffee blaster is in the messenger bag.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=395&start=0#p2330
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: combining items?
User: Manata / DateTime: 2008-02-07 09:04:37

Wow, i feel like a dunce.
Thank you so much for your reply, this has helped a lot!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=395&start=0#p2331
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: combining items?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-02-07 19:09:39

[quote="Manata"]Wow, i feel like a dunce.[/quote]
Programming does that to people. Don't worry about it. ("Inserting it into" often confuses people, by the way.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=393&start=0#p2332
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Gun Mute: Test my Beta
User: Kell-Teng / DateTime: 2008-02-10 06:51:57

I'm a whore when it comes to testing things. [emote]:([/emote]  Where do I sign? [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=394&start=0#p2333
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: My first experiences with IF. How did you feel?
User: Kell-Teng / DateTime: 2008-02-10 06:58:52

Fact:  Most games are riddled with flaws and problems.

Fact:  IF is just as prone, if not worse, due to the generally independent nature of development.  One of the flaws of small amounts of people being involved in the testing process, though the benefits can often outweigh that.

Fact:  Quite frankly it's not easy to learn to take the sideways step needed to learn to interface with your average IF game correctly.

Opinion:  Keep trying, there's so many types out there, I'm sure you'll find something you like.  And try not to fret about not liking a lot of games, tastes differ and stuff like that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=30#p2334
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Kell-Teng / DateTime: 2008-02-10 06:59:14

Hallo person!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=393&start=0#p2335
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Gun Mute: Test my Beta
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2008-02-10 15:08:04

Cool.  Hopefully you can hold on for a day or two, I haven't had time to work on George's suggestions yet.  I'll PM you with a download link when version 2 is ready...

 [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=396&start=0#p2336
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Take all misses the closet
User: AceRuley / DateTime: 2008-02-14 21:43:17

Hey everyone!

I'm new to programming in Inform and I'm currently reading the Inform Designers Manual (about Ch 39 or so now), and I'm also doing some programming in Inform while I read.  My game so far is okay, except for three things:

1) The game begins in a bedroom.  In the bedroom is a closet (object), and inside the closet is a shirt and jeans.  Shirt and jeans are initialized as children of closet, and the closet is closed to begin with.  Trouble is, if I open the closet and type TAKE ALL, the shirt and jeans never even get mentioned, let alone taken.  Is this a scope problem and how do I fix it (I'll probably try to figure out the add_to_scope function tonight).  If it's needed:
Closet has static container openable
Shirt -> has clothing
Jeans -> has clothing

2) I'm wanting to add a joke in the living room.  I have a magazine on a coffee table, and want the cover to have a picture of a Red Herring.  Now the Red Herring is part of the magazine, but I still want the user to be able to get the following:
>Eat Fish
Delicious!
Any suggestions?

3) Finally, the ultimate object for the completion of the game is a kettle.  The idea I have is that you have to put the kettle on the stove, wait three turns, take the kettle off the stove and add tea leaves.  Then you wait two more turns and the kettle, which did contain water, now has tea.  I haven't started this yet, but daemons is pretty much the way to go, right?  Advise will be accepted.

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=396&start=0#p2337
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Take all misses the closet
User: AceRuley / DateTime: 2008-02-15 14:07:21

Forgot to specify, I'm using Inform 6.31.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=396&start=0#p2338
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Take all misses the closet
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-02-17 15:27:35

Hi,

I see it's been a couple of days and no one has answered your post yet.  You might want to try posting these questions on rec.arts.int-fiction, the usenet group for writers of IF.  It is accessible via usenet or through Google Groups at this address:

[url]http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/topics[/url]

No offense to this great message board, which I've only just now joined, but have monitored for a while.  It's just that the traffic at raif (as it's called) seems to be a little more consistant, particularly with some of the veteran users, (not that they don't post here as well) so questions like these are likely to be answered quicker.  The group isn't divided up by development systems, so remember to put "I6" in the title of your post.  (Don't just put "Inform" -- most of the questions over there are for I7, but there are many helpful, experienced I6 users in addition.

I myself program in I7, so I can't help you with your first and third questions.  As far as the red herring, however, it's going to depend on how you want to implement the herring itself.  Do you want the player to just be able to eat the fish, removing it from the cover, or do you want the player to eat the whole magazine?  Either way, in I7 there is an edible property which must be set to allow things to be eaten.  I suspect there is something similar (an attribute?) for objects in I6.

Good luck!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=397&start=0#p2339
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Reassigning Directions
User: ChainsawPenguin / DateTime: 2008-02-18 20:51:01

Hey, all.  I'm very new at this, though I've played around with inform before (I'm new to I7).  Here's my quandry:

I'm trying to reassign the directions to be "forward, aft, port and starboard." I've accomplished this by aliasing (Understand "forward" as north.   Understand "f" as north.  Understand "a" as south.  ... etc.).  

This wall works well, except for abbreviating "starboard" as "s":
  
>s
Which do you mean, the south or the east?

Is there any way to completely overwrite "s", so that it ONLY means move starboard?  I would like to prevent the player from moving n, s, e, w while on board the ship.

Thanks for any guidance you can offer!

CP

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=397&start=0#p2340
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reassigning Directions
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-02-18 21:45:10

CP

Have you tried Mikael Segercrantz's extension "Shipboard Directions"?  It's on the I7 extensions site:

[url]http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7/Download%20-%20Extensions.html#topic5[/url]

Skinny Mike

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=397&start=0#p2341
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reassigning Directions
User: ChainsawPenguin / DateTime: 2008-02-18 22:11:04

Thanks!  

I guess I need to know how to include extensions.  I could just copy and paste, but I bet there's a more elegant way, no?

ChainsawPenguin

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=398&start=0#p2342
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Turning the Ship's Wheel; Making the Birds show up on cue
User: ChainsawPenguin / DateTime: 2008-02-18 22:15:56

Okay, as long as I'm asking n00bly questions:

1 - I want a ship's steering wheel, which can be turned.  When it's turned, how do I get it to affect.. you know, anything?  I can get the player to turn it, and I can say, "The boat turns", but then I get:

>turn wheel to port
The ship tilts slightly as it heels to port.
I only understood you as far as wanting to turn the Wheel.

How do I get rid of the error message?

Also, and I know this is stupid, but I want birds to appear at 12:05 PM.  I've gotten to where I can notify the player that birds are singing, but I want to vary the message depending on whether or not the player is belowdecks.  I have given the rooms a number called belowdecks; 1 is assigned to most rooms, but the main deck and the crow's nest (which are outside) are given a 0.  If the birds appear while the belowdecks of the current room is 1, say "There are birds singing outside!", otherwise say, "You see birds off the port bow!"

Any thoughts?

And thanks!

CP

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=397&start=0#p2343
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reassigning Directions
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-02-18 22:31:56

CP

Yeah,

I'm running I7 under windows, but the procedure should be similar whichever OS you're using.  Figure out which folder your extensions are in -- in win it's somewhere under the Inform 7 folder.  You'll see some names.  Each ext. author has a folder with his or her name.  If the author of the extension your dl-ing doesn't already have a folder (I don't believe Mikal has one in the standard package) create one.  It must be the first and last name spelled exactly as it is listed in the file.  Then download the file into that folder.  You will need to restart I7, but when you do, that extension will be listed under the available extensions in the documentaion.  After that you'll be able to include it with the line "Include Blah Blah by Blah" or more easily, by clicking an icon in the documentation of the extension itself.  (I think you'll see what I mean, but if not, I'm online now.)
Skinny Mike

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=397&start=0#p2344
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reassigning Directions
User: ChainsawPenguin / DateTime: 2008-02-18 22:39:31

Hmm... well, when I click the link, it opens an html page.  If I save the link, it saves it as an html page.  What extension should the file have?

Thanks for all your help!!

CP

EDIT:  GOT IT!  Thanks a bunch!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=398&start=0#p2345
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Turning the Ship's Wheel; Making the Birds show up on cue
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-02-18 22:42:49

CP

Could you post the code you've got for those two situations?

Skinny Mike

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=398&start=0#p2346
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Turning the Ship's Wheel; Making the Birds show up on cue
User: ChainsawPenguin / DateTime: 2008-02-18 22:45:41

[quote="Skinny Mike"]CP

Could you post the code you've got for those two situations?

Skinny Mike[/quote]


--- Here's what I've got (I'm just piddling with this for the first time; I feel dumb, as I'm a computer programmer, and I keep wanting to make arrays and assign variables and stuff):

"A Bad Day at Black Rock" by Jim Work

When play begins: 
	change the time of day to 12:00 PM; 

At 12:03 PM:
	say "Neat!"

Include Version 1/071115 of Shipboard Directions by Mikael Segercrantz.

A room has a number called belowdecks.  Belowdecks is usually 1.


The Deck is a room.  Belowdecks is 0.  "The deck of the wooden ship shows the wear of many years at sea.  A hatch leads down to the crew's quarters.  The crow's nest is high atop the mainmast, above you.  The Captain's cabin is aft, to the south.  The foc[']sle is forward, to the north."


[Heading is a kind of value.  The headings are centered, port, island, and starboard.]

The Wheel is in the deck.  [The wheel has a heading.]  The description is "The wheel controls the heading of the ship.  You can turn it to port or starboard.  After you turn it, the boat will change direction, and the wheel will return to its center position."

[Wheel commands - Right now it just turns]

After reading a command: 
    if the player's command matches "turn the wheel to port"
	begin;
    	say "The ship tilts slightly as it heels to port.";
    	end if;

After reading a command: 
 	if the player's command matches "turn the wheel to starboard"
	begin;
	say "The ship tilts slightly as it heels to starboard.";
  	end if;	

After reading a command: 
    if the player's command matches "turn wheel to port"
	begin;
	say "The ship tilts slightly as it heels to port.";
    	end if;

After reading a command: 
 	if the player's command matches "turn wheel to starboard"
	begin;
	say "The ship tilts slightly as it heels to starboard.";
  	end if;



[If the wheel is turned, give the wheel the heading port.]

Instead of taking the wheel: say "It is connected to the rudder, and bolted into place."

The Crow's Nest is a room.  Belowdecks is 0.  It is up from the Deck.  The description is "Standing high above the deck, you can see for leagues.  Deep water surrounds you, and the gently rolling whitecaps stretch to the horizon in all directions."  

The Deck Hatch is a door and scenery.  It is closed.  It is down from the Deck and up from the Crew's Quarters.  The description is "The deck hatch is made of a solid piece of teak."

The Crew's Quarters is a room.  It is down from the Deck Hatch.  "The crew's quarters is a tiny compartment with hammocks strung along the port and starboard walls.  Each hammock allows only a few inches of space for reclining.  You cannot stand up completely, as the heavy beams of the low ceiling are not quite four feet from the bottom of the ship.  The bilge lies aft through a hatch with no door."

The Bilge is a room.  It is aft from the Crew's Quarters.  "The bilge is a large storage space."

The Captain's Cabin is a room.  It is aft of the Deck.  "The Captain's cabin has a commanding view of the sea through heavy glass windows all about."

The Forecastle is a room.  It is fore of the Deck.  "The forecastle (or 'foc[']sle') houses the ship[']s two massive bronze guns."

_______________________________________

Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=397&start=0#p2347
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reassigning Directions
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-02-18 22:48:45

CP

Under windows (let me know what you're using on you're next post), no extension.  (i.e. no ".html" or ".txt")  Just leave it blank or delete the filename extension if you've already got one.

Skinny Mike

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=397&start=0#p2348
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reassigning Directions
User: ChainsawPenguin / DateTime: 2008-02-18 22:59:19

[quote="Skinny Mike"]CP

Under windows (let me know what you're using on you're next post), no extension.  (i.e. no ".html" or ".txt")  Just leave it blank or delete the filename extension if you've already got one.

Skinny Mike[/quote]

Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=398&start=0#p2349
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Turning the Ship's Wheel; Making the Birds show up on cue
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-02-18 23:41:10

CP

Oops, almost had a solution, but I ran into a snafu.  You want to use port, starboard, etc. for onboard ship navigation as well as the actual ship nav, right?  (i.e. "go port" means walk to the port side of the ship, while "turn wheel port" means turn the ship toward port?)  Also, (if I may) I'm creating a new action for the wheel -- check out Ch 12 of the docs.  You should hardly ever have to use the "After reading a command" activity. That's more for parser issues, etc.

SM

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=398&start=0#p2350
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Turning the Ship's Wheel; Making the Birds show up on cue
User: ChainsawPenguin / DateTime: 2008-02-18 23:59:39

[quote="Skinny Mike"]CP

Oops, almost had a solution, but I ran into a snafu.  You want to use port, starboard, etc. for onboard ship navigation as well as the actual ship nav, right?  (i.e. "go port" means walk to the port side of the ship, while "turn wheel port" means turn the ship toward port?)  Also, (if I may) I'm creating a new action for the wheel -- check out Ch 12 of the docs.  You should hardly ever have to use the "After reading a command" activity. That's more for parser issues, etc.

SM[/quote]

Yeah, I ran into the same "port" problem.  I might solve it by allowing the player to steer towards landmarks (once land is spotted).  Thanks for your help.  I'll check out Ch 12.  

I'm sure I'll get this more as I play with it.

Cheers!

Chainsaw Penguin

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=398&start=0#p2351
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Turning the Ship's Wheel; Making the Birds show up on cue
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-02-19 00:26:44

CP

Try this for starters (I edited out the extras):

[code]Include Version 1/071115 of Shipboard Directions by Mikael Segercrantz.

A room can be abovedecks or belowdecks.  [belowdecks will be the default]

The Deck is a room. "The deck of the wooden ship shows the wear of many years at sea. A hatch leads down to the crew's quarters. The crow's nest is high atop the mainmast, above you. The Captain's cabin is aft, to the south. The foc[']sle is forward, to the north."

Heading is a kind of value. The headings are centered, toport, island, and tostarboard.  [changed port and starboard so as not to conflict with shipboard directions.]

The Wheel is in the deck. [The wheel has a heading.] The description is "The wheel controls the heading of the ship. You can turn it to port or starboard. After you turn it, the boat will change direction, and the wheel will return to its center position."

Turning it to is an action applying to one thing and one visible thing.  [the extension has established port, etc. as directions, and a directions is considered a visible thing (not touchable) for the purpose of defining actions]
Understand "turn [something] to [direction]" as turning it to.
Understand "turn [something] [direction]" as turning it to.

Check an actor turning something to:
	if the noun is not the wheel, say "It doesn't turn." instead.

[you might want something like...]
Check an actor turning wheel to aft:
	say "You can't do a 180 in this thing!" instead.

Carry out an actor turning something to:
	say "I don't know how you want to implement headings here.".

Report an actor turning something to:
	say "The ship tilts slightly as it heels to [second noun].".[ie the direction in the command][/code]

Have fun!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=398&start=0#p2352
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Turning the Ship's Wheel; Making the Birds show up on cue
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-02-19 02:58:59

[quote="ChainsawPenguin"]I feel dumb, as I'm a computer programmer, and I keep wanting to make arrays and assign variables and stuff[/quote]
In that case, you might feel more comfortable with [url=http://tads.org/tads3.htm]TADS 3[/url], which is much more like a traditional programming language and very powerful. If you want to try it, I suggest you download the [url=http://tads.org/tads3beta.htm]latest beta[/url] - it's very stable now, and (under Windows) has an excellent IDE.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=398&start=0#p2353
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Turning the Ship's Wheel; Making the Birds show up on cue
User: George / DateTime: 2008-02-19 09:23:51

I'll second the recommendation to try TADS 3. 

You also might want to look at using regions in I7 for belowdecks/abovedecks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=398&start=0#p2354
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Turning the Ship's Wheel; Making the Birds show up on cue
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-02-19 12:36:39

Give Hugo a look as well -- Programmer-recommended. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=399&start=0#p2355
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Problem with BEGIN END stuff
User: bridgette / DateTime: 2008-02-19 19:00:19

Hello, something is happening that makes no sense. When I put conditions in text i.e. "[if player is in bed]xxxx[otherwise]vvvv[end if]." It works. But if I type this:

if player in bed begin;
say "XXX";
end if.

Then it doesn't work. WTF?

And how do I make stuff invisible when someone's in a container in a room? Like a bed? I can stop the item showing up in the room description, but if the user examines it the item description pops up. I don't want to make the bed into a seperate room... hence the above code attempts.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=399&start=0#p2356
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with BEGIN END stuff
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-02-19 20:45:54

[quote="bridgette"]Hello, something is happening that makes no sense. When I put conditions in text i.e. "[if player is in bed]xxxx[otherwise]vvvv[end if]." It works. But if I type this:

if player in bed begin;
say "XXX";
end if.

Then it doesn't work. WTF?[/quote]
You left out "is" in your second piece of code. Put that in, and it should work.

[code]if player is in bed begin;
say "XXX";
end if.[/code]

[quote="bridgette"]And how do I make stuff invisible when someone's in a container in a room? Like a bed? I can stop the item showing up in the room description, but if the user examines it the item description pops up. I don't want to make the bed into a seperate room... hence the above code attempts.[/quote]
I'm not exactly sure what effect you want to achieve here, but you could do something like:
[code]Instead of doing something to the shoes while the player is in the bed:
say "You can't see what's under the bed while you're in the bed."[/code]
Of course, you'll still need your code to keep the shoes from showing up in the room description.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=399&start=0#p2357
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: !
User: bridgette / DateTime: 2008-02-19 21:54:45

Well, I tried that code with the "is" and it still didn't work. Your other suggestion should work, but I wish someone would tell me why my if code doesn't work. Here is the exact code:

[code]If the player is in the bed begin;
Instead of examining the ink bottle, say "What are you talking about?";
end if.[/code]

Here is the error:
[code]
Problem. You wrote 'Instead of examining the ink bottle, say "What are you talking about?"'  : but this is a phrase which I don't recognise, possibly because it is one you meant to define but never got round to, or because the wording is wrong (see the Phrasebook section of the Index to check). Alternatively, it may be that the text immediately previous to this was a definition whose ending, normally a full stop, is missing?[/code]

But that makes NO sense! I tried the "Instead" stuff on its own and IT WORKED!!

Edit: now that I'm here, is there some easier way of tagging a moment, or a container, so that no objects will be visible? For example, making the room dark if some condition is present?

Edit 2: I've thought of making the room dark then lighting the bed, but a) I want to print a description and b) I don't want the game to say the bed is lit.

OK, I have the solution. But why don't my ifs work?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=399&start=0#p2358
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with BEGIN END stuff
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-02-19 22:26:38

Bridgette,

Hello!

"If (condition) then (do something)" is an example of a phrase in I7.  It is not a complete legal command in and of itself.  You must put it in some sort of context.  Here is an example of a legal (but not good) way to do this:

[code]Every turn:
     if the player is in bed, say "This bed is comfortable!".[/code]
 
You can't just use "if" on its own, just like you can't have "now the player is in bed" without telling inform when you want that to happen. The language isn't like, for example, BASIC, where the commands just get executed in order.  The advantage is that in most cases, the order in which blocks of code are written doesn't matter.  I hope that makes sense.

Skinny Mike

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=399&start=0#p2359
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: 
User: bridgette / DateTime: 2008-02-19 22:35:17

No, that didn't work. Thanks anyway though.
[code]
Every turn:
While player is in bed begin;
instead of examining say "What are you talking about?";
end while.
[/code]

I don't get it. I copy pasted this from the manual:

[code]Rule for printing room description details: stop.[/code]

But it still prints it. It didn't give an error.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=399&start=0#p2360
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: !
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-02-20 00:19:55

[quote="bridgette"]Well, I tried that code with the "is" and it still didn't work. Your other suggestion should work, but I wish someone would tell me why my if code doesn't work. Here is the exact code:

[code]If the player is in the bed begin;
Instead of examining the ink bottle, say "What are you talking about?";
end if.[/code]

Here is the error:
[code]
Problem. You wrote 'Instead of examining the ink bottle, say "What are you talking about?"'  : but this is a phrase which I don't recognise, possibly because it is one you meant to define but never got round to, or because the wording is wrong (see the Phrasebook section of the Index to check). Alternatively, it may be that the text immediately previous to this was a definition whose ending, normally a full stop, is missing?[/code]

But that makes NO sense! I tried the "Instead" stuff on its own and IT WORKED!![/quote]

The problem is that your code is inside out. "Instead of..." is the beginning of a rule, and you can't put a rule inside an if block (in fact, you can't put a rule inside anything). "If...", on the other hand, being a phrase, can't stand alone; it has to go inside a rule or some other kind of block of code.

So what you actually need to do is:
[code]Instead of examining the ink bottle:
  if the player is in the bed begin;
    say "What are you talking about?";
  end if.[/code]

You can make it simpler by doing this instead:
[code]Instead of examining the ink bottle when the player is in the bed:
  say "What are you talking about?".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=399&start=0#p2361
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with BEGIN END stuff
User: bridgette / DateTime: 2008-02-20 02:01:13

Thanks. It was disturbing that it kept not working, and frustrating. I spent literally 7 hours today learning I7, I'm almost competent.

What about this not working? It's exactly word for word like it is in the documentation.

[code]
Rule for printing room description details: stop.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=399&start=0#p2362
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with BEGIN END stuff
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-02-20 05:11:04

You are probably using it for something it's not designed to do. "Printing room description details" only controls text like "(empty)" or "(in which is a pen)" - the item is still listed in the room description. If you want things not to be listed in the room description at all, you'd have to use something like:
[code]Rule for listing nondescript items: stop.[/code]

To have this happen only when the player is in bed:
[code]Rule for listing nondescript items when the player is in the bed: stop.[/code]

Or, to just hide one thing:
[code]Before listing nondescript items when the player is in the bed:
  now the ink bottle is not marked for listing.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=399&start=0#p2363
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with BEGIN END stuff
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-02-20 10:09:06

Bridgette,

[quote]No, that didn't work. Thanks anyway though.[/quote]

Oops, that was a bad example.  The code I posted does work, just not in a way that would be useful for your stated purpose.  (Every turn rules fire at the [u]end[/u] of each turn.)  Sorry about that.  Emerald's explanation and code are much better.

The only thing I want to add is that your confusion about phrases is not uncommon.  One thing to keep in mind, in the documentation, snippets of code which are just phrases are not capitalized, while commands which can stand on there own generally are.  For example:

The Lab is a room.
Temperature is a number that varies.
Instead of eating the fish:
     say "Gross.".

are okay by themselves, while phrases like:

say "Boo."
if the boat is sinking...
move the player...
let t be the temperature.

(not capitalized) are not.  This is just a convention of the docs, which I don't believe is explicitly mentioned.  In your actual code, capitalization doesn't matter (in almost all cases) and you are free to do as you please.  It's just helpful when you racking your brains trying to figure out why certain syntax seems to work sometimes and not others.

Skinny Mike

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=399&start=0#p2364
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with BEGIN END stuff
User: bridgette / DateTime: 2008-02-20 11:37:05

Wow, y'all are so helpful. Thanks Emerald, now I feel like superman.

Now all I have to do is learn how to write good prose.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=399&start=10#p2365
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with BEGIN END stuff
User: bridgette / DateTime: 2008-02-20 14:30:06

Edit: I figured it out, but it's dumb. I had to do this:

[code]Before listing nondescript items when player is in bed:
change ink to not marked for listing.

Before listing nondescript items when player is in bedroom:
say "An ink bottle with a pen in it sits on a stack of books.";
change ink to not marked for listing.[/code]

I was trying to do this:

[code]
Before listing nondescript items when player is in bed:
change ink to not marked for listing.

The ink bottle is in the bedroom. "An ink bottle with a pen in it sits on a stack of books." The description is...[/code]

Seems like a bug.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=396&start=0#p2366
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Take all misses the closet
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2008-02-20 16:17:01

Look at the ChooseObjects entry point.  It allows you to affect whether an object is included by "... ALL".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=399&start=10#p2367
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with BEGIN END stuff
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-02-20 19:21:32

Okay, the problem here is that because of "An ink bottle with a pen in it sits on a stack of books.", the ink bottle doesn't count as a nondescript item. You're going to have to use the "writing a paragraph about" activity instead.

This is probably the best way to do it:
[code]The ink bottle is in the bedroom. The description is "..."

Rule for writing a paragraph about the ink bottle:
  if the player is not in the bed,
    say "An ink bottle with a pen in it sits on a stack of books."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=392&start=0#p2370
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: story driven if and other questions
User: pzler / DateTime: 2008-03-02 10:32:14

the 40% rate has become a bit smaller since i've played alot of games in the past few weeks. a lot of the time it's typo's or me making a hash of the english language. 

But most of the time i get stuck when i'm talking to a npc. 

another thing that i often get is "i only understood you as far as wanting....."
because i often use natural language instead of small phrases.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=392&start=0#p2371
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: story driven if and other questions
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2008-03-02 13:53:13

[quote="pzler"]the 40% rate has become a bit smaller since i've played alot of games in the past few weeks. a lot of the time it's typo's or me making a hash of the english language.[/quote]
About typos: with most interpreters, you can press the UP arrow key to have the previous command you entered again, so that you can correct it quickly instead of typing it again. I suppose you know that already, but just in case you didn't...

[quote="pzler"]But most of the time i get stuck when i'm talking to a npc.[/quote]
I guess you mean you don't know what topics you can type in "ASK <person> ABOUT <topic>". That can indeed be difficult sometimes, even for experienced players!

Some games use the ASK ABOUT (and/or TELL ABOUT) conversation method, others use TALK TO and menus, others use yet other methods... Never forget to type ABOUT (or sometimes HELP or INFO) at the start of the game: there are often explanations about the conversation method the game uses, or about special commands you could never guess by yourself but which are used by this game...

[quote="pzler"]another thing that i often get is "i only understood you as far as wanting....." because i often use natural language instead of small phrases.[/quote]
Yes, small, "telegraphic" phrases without any useless words are much more likely to be understood than "real" natural language -- and faster to type, too! Almost all useful IF commands are:

<VERB> (or other single words, such as "yes" or "no", or "north" etc.)
 or
<VERB> <OBJECT> (for example: TAKE KEY)
or
<VERB> <OBJECT> <PREPOSITION> <OBJECT> (for example: PUT KEY INTO BOX or ASK MARY ABOUT JOHN)

You can also usually omit the articles, such as "the" or "a". And don't forget the abbreviations, such as "X" for EXAMINE, "L" for LOOK, "N" for NORTH, and many others.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=392&start=0#p2372
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: story driven if and other questions
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2008-03-02 15:28:07

[quote="pzler"]another thing that i often get is "i only understood you as far as wanting....." because i often use natural language instead of small phrases.[/quote]
Could you give some examples of the things you tried (if you can remember them)?

David Fisher

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=400&start=0#p2373
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Simple action requiring an item
User: EnamoredMango / DateTime: 2008-03-09 10:07:44

I am trying to create an action that requires an item in inventory called a knife.

[code]Suiciding is an action applying to nothing and requiring the knife.[/code]

However, this returns only:
Problem. You wrote 'Suiciding is an action applying to nothing and requiring the knife'  : but the action definition contained text I couldn't follow, and may be too complicated.

I've tried to do this many ways but I always get the same proble. What should I do?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=400&start=0#p2374
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple action requiring an item
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-03-09 11:55:27

[quote="EnamoredMango"]I am trying to create an action that requires an item in inventory called a knife.

[code]Suiciding is an action applying to nothing and requiring the knife.[/code]

However, this returns only:
Problem. You wrote 'Suiciding is an action applying to nothing and requiring the knife' : but the action definition contained text I couldn't follow, and may be too complicated.

I've tried to do this many ways but I always get the same proble. What should I do?[/quote]

You're using "requiring" incorrectly.  It's only used in an action definition in the case of "requiring light".  There are two ways to accomplish this:

[code]"IntFic" by Mike Tarbert

Suiciding is an action applying to nothing.  Understand "kill me/self" as suiciding.

Check suiciding:
	if the knife is not carried, say "You'll need something for that." instead.

Carry out suiciding:
	end the game in death.

The lab is a room.  A knife is in the lab.

test me with "kill me / get knife / kill self".[/code]

or (a little more complicated):

[code]"IntFic2" by Mike Tarbert

Suiciding is an action applying to one carried thing.  Understand "kill me/self with [something]" as suiciding.  

[The following two lines allow the player to leave "the knife" out if it's visible and will force an implicit take if the knife isn't carried.]
Understand "kill me/self" as suiciding.
Rule for supplying a missing noun when suiciding:
	if the knife is visible, change the noun to the knife.

Check suiciding:
	if the noun is not the knife, say "You'll need something else for that." instead.

Carry out suiciding:
	end the game in death.

The Lab is a room.  A knife and a rock is in the lab.
North of the Lab is the Hall. 

test me with "kill me with rock / n / kill me / kill me with knife / s / kill me"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=401&start=0#p2375
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: So, the IF Archive...
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2008-03-12 15:25:16

What is it?  Why should I upload my game to it?  Is there any reason I shouldn't upload my game?  Where's the idiot-proof FAQ?  Do only smart people use the IF Archive?  What if I don't feel very smart or confident? Why is there so little information on uploading to the IF archive?  Why isn't the short page on the IF Wiki actually under the name 'IF Archive'?  Will uploading to the IF Archive induct me into some sort of secret cult?  What kind of cult?  Is it a cult with a dental plan?

Does anyone know, or do I have to perform the secret handshake first?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=393&start=0#p2376
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Gun Mute: Test my Beta
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2008-03-12 17:31:50

Well this game now has an official release [url=http://spacecatrocketship.blogspot.com/2008/03/gun-mute-download-now.html]here[/url].  It's already been featured on a couple of fair-sized blogs, to my great surprise.  

I also posted an announcement on r.g.i.f.  Given that this post contained some possibly misleading information, I'd like to reiterate my utter hatred for Usenet in all its non-modifiableness.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=401&start=0#p2377
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: So, the IF Archive...
User: George / DateTime: 2008-03-12 22:28:50

It really is something of a mystery to me too, and I venture in only when I need to get something very specific, or I'm down for browsing some IF history for a chunk of time. Nevertheless I refer you to:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/README">http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/README</a>

[quote]
We have collected as much as time permitted from many places all over
the world.  You may help us and the users of this archive by uploading
missing items. You can either upload using the web form at
<a class="postlink" href="http://ifarchive.org/cgi-bin/upload.py">http://ifarchive.org/cgi-bin/upload.py</a> or using FTP to the directory
/incoming/. If you use FTP, you will need to send email to us
explaining what it is, and on what machines it runs. If we can't make
heads or tails of an anonymous upload, we'll probably just delete it,
so if it's unclear what it is please email us about it.  There is a
size limit for uploads; ask us if you have problems.

Emails about uploads should be sent to

    submissions .at. ifarchive .dot. org
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=401&start=0#p2378
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: So, the IF Archive...
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2008-03-13 13:52:10

Thanks, George, but I've already read that, as well as the info about it on the raif and rgif faqs.  I understand the purpose of the IF archive from a player's perspective, and I'd certainly like to have a mirror for my game, but I can't believe they're so vague about how, when and what to upload.

I can only assume that the IF archive is only used by people smart enough never to make elementary, newbie mistakes - a group which I'm pretty sure doesn't include me.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=401&start=0#p2379
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: So, the IF Archive...
User: emshort / DateTime: 2008-03-18 09:15:15

I think you're imagining this harder than it is. 

You can upload whenever you like, whatever you like, as long as the "whatever" is 

a) something for which you are the copyright owner or you know to be public domain (if the maintainers have concerns, they may contact you, but there's no problem here if it's something you wrote);
b) related to IF: a game, an article or fanzine about IF, an IF development language (or libraries/extensions for IF development languages), cover art, feelies, etc.
c) (this probably goes without saying) not something inherently illegal to have, such as child pornography.

In general, this is considered a pretty normal thing to do when releasing a new IF game, but it's not required if you'd prefer to host your game somewhere else. Authors submitting to competitions, such as the IF comp, are often required to agree that their games can be uploaded to the archive as well. One possible drawback: though the archive maintainers will, of legal necessity, agree if someone really demands to have a piece of IF taken *down*, they really, really, really don't like to do that, and may try to talk you out of it. So the main reason *not* to send something to the archive is that you think you might want it to be a temporary publication. The archive tends to keep stuff around forever.

To do this, you click here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifarchive.org/cgi-bin/upload.py">http://ifarchive.org/cgi-bin/upload.py</a>

...and follow the instructions. Choose your gamefile to upload, and fill in the form with whatever information you want people to have about your game.

There is a slot where you can type the directory you think your game should wind up in, but really, if you find that confusing, leave it blank. It's there for the benefit of people who are quite familiar with the archive and may be submitting something unusual. If you're not, the maintainers will file your game with other games produced for the same VM, so in your case the game would go in a directory reserved for games in TADS. Any description you give for your game will go into the index of the directory, to help people find your game, and will also be published to RAIF at some point; every few months or so the archive maintainers publish a huge list of recent updates to the archive. (I'm not sure how many people actually read it, but it is useful for those who maintain other IF sites and want to make sure they didn't miss any game announcements.)

If you do make a mistake, or later want to replace a version of a game with a new, bug-fixed one, you can always do this by emailing the archive maintainers, who are very friendly people. Frankly, the IF archive just does not get so much traffic as to have become madly mechanized. So there's a low risk of your doing anything "stupid".

(And no, no dental plan, sorry.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=401&start=0#p2380
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: So, the IF Archive...
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2008-03-18 13:37:20

Thank you.  Maybe it's because I come from a generation more used to step-by-step hand-holding from software, but just being told, "Yeah, stick your file in here!" worries me more than it reassures.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=402&start=0#p2381
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Glulx decompilers: graphics and sounds?
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2008-03-18 14:32:53

[i](I also asked this question on RAIF.)[/i]

I used [url=http://www.exmsft.com/~benrg/if-decompilers/]Mrifk[/url], a Glulx decompiler. It seems to work very well to find all the text from a game. 

I'd like to know if there's a similar program which can retrieve all the graphics (.jpeg, etc.) and sounds (.ogg, etc.) files from a Glulx game (a .blb file)?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=403&start=0#p2382
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: "Was this review helpful to you?" (IFDB)
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2008-03-18 15:00:26

On [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/]IFDB[/url], there's the sentence [i]"Was this review helpful to you?"[/i] under every review, and you can choose [i]yes[/i] or [i]no[/i].

Do you sometimes use that? I never quite understood what's the point and what it means exactly. Does it mean "I liked this review (even if I don't necessarily agree with it)" or "(I don't necessarily liked this review, but) I agree with it and it made me discover a good game"?

And if it means the latter, can a negative review, or a review about a game I've already played (and therefore I already know if I like it or not), ever be "useful to me"? It sometimes seemed to me that negative reviews were more often found "not useful" by people on the IFDB, but maybe it was just an impression...

And if I say that a review is "not useful", could the author of that review feel insulted?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=403&start=0#p2383
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: "Was this review helpful to you?" (IFDB)
User: revgiblet / DateTime: 2008-03-18 16:54:22

I've always taken it to mean "Did this review help you to decide whether or not you wanted to play this game?"

I'm not quite sure what the purpose of it is, unless it's just the natural progression of post-modern trend to make sure that people have an opportunity to share their opinion about absolutely everything.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=403&start=0#p2384
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: "Was this review helpful to you?" (IFDB)
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-03-18 17:45:24

I think IFDB uses the reviews' approval ratings to order them on the page, so that hopefully people will find the more "helpful" (however you define that) reviews easily.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=402&start=0#p2385
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx decompilers: graphics and sounds?
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2008-03-18 20:06:20

OK, don't worry: I had an answer to my question, and it worked!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=403&start=0#p2386
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: "Was this review helpful to you?" (IFDB)
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2008-03-19 13:23:29

I think the way people take those buttons - whether on the IFDB or Amazon - is kind of like:

--Click yes if the review expresses my own opinion better than I could.

--Click no if I disagree with the opinion or find it offensive.

Whether that's the intended use of the buttons, I have no idea.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=404&start=0#p2387
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Entering room for 1st time after item has been introduced
User: murphyz / DateTime: 2008-03-23 07:14:38

Hello, 

I want to draw the attention to something in a room if it's the first time a player has entered that room after something has been introduced into play. 

i.e.  
The player leaves and enters Room A as much as they like. 
The player pulls a lever in Room B and this opens a window in Room A and introduces a bird into play in Room A.
The player returns to Room A for the first time after pulling the lever and gets the comment of "now you realise what the lever was for...as the window is open and a bird has flown in'

This isn't a real example of what I want to do, but would cover it. 

So, what I'm looking for is the command that is 'If the player is in Room A for the first time after Bird has been introduced into play'

Many thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=404&start=0#p2388
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Entering room for 1st time after item has been introduced
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-03-23 11:46:06

Murphyz,

Here's one (simple) way:

[code]
The Lab is a room.  The window is a fixed in place thing in the lab.  It can be open or closed.  

Check opening the window:
	say "It seems to be stuck." instead.

Rule for writing a paragraph about the window:
	if the window is closed, say "There's a closed window here.";
	otherwise say "[one of]You realize what that sound was when you pulled the lever.  The window is now open and [a tiny bird] has flown inside[or]There's an open window here[stopping].".

East of the lab is the Foyer.  The lever is in the foyer.  It is fixed in place.
The tiny bird is an animal.

Check pulling the lever the first time:
	say "You hear the sound of gears turning.";
	now the window is open;
	move the bird to the lab instead.

Check pulling the lever:[this will fire on subsequent pulls]
	say "Nothing happens.  Maybe you broke it." instead.

test me with "open window / e / w / e / pull lever / g / w / l".
[/code]

The [one of] text substitution is discussed in ch 5.6 "Text w/ random alternatives".  The [stopping] part removes the randomness and makes sure the first option prints only once, with the last option printing subsequently.  I used [tiny bird] (in brackets) since that marks the bird as mentioned and keeps it from being mentioned again after that first time description of the open window.  Notice that after that initial time, the bird gets it's normal generic line in the room description.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=404&start=0#p2389
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Entering room for 1st time after item has been introduced
User: George / DateTime: 2008-03-23 12:16:48

I like Mike's solution and would go for that myself, but here is an even more bare-bones example:

[code]
"Bird in Hand"

Use full-length room descriptions. 

The Greenhouse is a room. "The somnolence of orchids. [the bird in hand]". It can be open.

To say the bird in hand: if The Greenhouse is open, say "A blue bird flutters like mad.".

The Potting Room is north of The Greenhouse. "The richness of loam." A lever is here. It is fixed in place.Instead of pulling the lever the first time: say "You hear a click in the Greenhouse, then a flutter of wings."; now The Greenhouse is open. Instead of pulling the lever: say "You have already pulled it.".

test me with "n / s / n / pull lever / s / n / pull lever"
[/code]

So there's no window and no bird here. You could also nest the if clause from the 'To say...' in the room description itself, I believe. 

As an aside, does anyone know how to suppress the 'It's fixed in place' message when doing something to a fixed in place object?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=404&start=0#p2390
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Entering room for 1st time after item has been introduced
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-03-23 12:54:55

[quote]You could also nest the if clause from the 'To say...' in the room description itself, I believe.[/quote]

You could, but I was under the impression that the poster wanted the special message to print once -- the first time entering the room after the lever had been pulled -- and then revert back to a more generic room description.  I might have misunderstood, however.  [emote];)[/emote] 

Of course, in that case, you could still use the "one of / stopping" text sub. in the room description itself, instead of that whole "writing a parapraph about" thing.

[quote]As an aside, does anyone know how to suppress the 'It's fixed in place' message when doing something to a fixed in place object?[/quote]

Do you want to replace it in general, or with a specific action(s)?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=404&start=0#p2391
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Entering room for 1st time after item has been introduced
User: George / DateTime: 2008-03-23 12:58:11

Yeah, you're right Mike, I think I didn't get the gist of the OP. 

For fixed in place, I want to suppress the 'It's fixed in place.' message, maybe replacing it with a custom response. I couldn't find anything on this searching RAIF, other than some I6 stuff that was beyond me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=404&start=0#p2392
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Entering room for 1st time after item has been introduced
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-03-23 14:04:52

[quote]For fixed in place, I want to suppress the 'It's fixed in place.' message, maybe replacing it with a custom response. [/quote]

Normally, this would be simple.  There are three rules which print this message: The can't take what's fixed in place rule, the can't pull what's fixed in place rule, and the can't push what's fixed in place rule.  (Actually, only the first one prints "It's fixed in place", the other two print "It is fixed in place", but whatever.)  Replacing those 3 rules with your own would be easy, [i]but[/i] there's a bug in the current version of I7 that has to do with rules with the word "in" in them.  So the easiest way to replace all three is to get the latest version of David Fisher's Default Messages extension from the I7 website and use it:
[code]
"raif1" by Mike Tarbert

Include Default Messages by David Fisher.

The Lab is a room.  The table is a fixed in place thing in the lab. 

Table of custom library messages(continued)
Message Id					Message Text
LibMsg <cannot take something fixed>		"Your message here.[/n]"
LibMsg <cannot push something fixed in place>	"Ditto.[/n]" 
LibMsg <cannot pull something fixed in place>	"Whatever.[/n]"

test me with "get table / push it / pull it".[/code]

Note that cutting and pasting tables into the IDE tends to screw them up, so you might have to fiddle with the tabs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=404&start=0#p2393
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Entering room for 1st time after item has been introduced
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-03-23 14:24:40

[quote]For fixed in place, I want to suppress the 'It's fixed in place.' message, maybe replacing it with a custom response. [/quote]
If you'd rather add them by hand without using an extension:
[code]The Lab is a room.  The table is an enterable supporter in the lab. 

Check an actor taking something fixed in place:
	say "Your message here." instead.

Check an actor pushing something fixed in place:
	say "Your message here." instead.

Check an actor pulling something fixed in place:
	say "Your message here." instead.

test me with "get table / get on table / get table / push it / pull it".[/code]
Although this is probably easier, it puts the fixed in place rule first(since it's more specific).  This doesn't effect pushing and pulling, but it does slightly effect taking.  Normally, the rules check taking something you're on or in before checking whether or not it's fixed in place.  It's only a slight change and probably doesn't matter.  You can see the difference by commenting out the check taking rule in the above code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=404&start=0#p2394
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Entering room for 1st time after item has been introduced
User: George / DateTime: 2008-03-23 19:34:42

Cool, thanks Mike, great explanation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=404&start=0#p2395
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Entering room for 1st time after item has been introduced
User: murphyz / DateTime: 2008-03-24 08:45:08

Thanks for your help...though not a perfect solution for the real scenario I had in mind, it gave me enough to work with.

Many thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=405&start=0#p2396
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: IF Programming Questions???
User: gmaker56 / DateTime: 2008-04-07 12:49:08

Hi, I'm Gmaker56

I am new to the forums and IF. I've heard of IF it before but never really sat down and played with it a little. I have a question: I'm using QBasic to program my Text-Based Games. I want to create a couple of games and sell them online. Do you think anyone would be intrested in buying a 30 year-old technology?  [emote]:?:[/emote]   [emote]:?:[/emote]   [emote]:?:[/emote]  Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=124&start=0#p2397
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Peasant's Quest
User: gmaker56 / DateTime: 2008-04-07 22:02:37

Yeah! That is really [color=#0000FF]COOL![/color] It reminds me of...well...um...oh yea...Kings Quest, from Sierra.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=30#p2398
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: gmaker56 / DateTime: 2008-04-08 12:43:40

Hi, I'm Gmaker56!   [emote]:geek:[/emote] 

I'm an average computer geek - sits all day in a dark room with a computer enjoying text on a screen! I'm 13 years old and can program some in BASIC and C#.(But not good at C#) I'm using JustBASIC to make my IF. I haven't played much of IF but am getting a real kick out of it!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=406&start=0#p2399
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Length of IF games?
User: gmaker56 / DateTime: 2008-04-08 12:49:19

I'm making a IF game. I want the game to last about 2-3 hours (Standard Play). Is this too short or too long? How long are IF games from...like...Infocom? Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=234&start=0#p2400
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Game to load and play in website?
User: gmaker56 / DateTime: 2008-04-08 12:51:51

What about if your using BASIC. Is it possible?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=201&start=0#p2401
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anybody Here Got a Wii?
User: gmaker56 / DateTime: 2008-04-08 13:01:18

Not to be mean or anything...but I have even a faster computer! But DUDE...your computer is still really awesome!  [emote];)[/emote]  I would buy either a Xbox 360 or PS3.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=234&start=0#p2402
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Game to load and play in website?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-04-08 18:56:42

Maaaybe... I'm not sure. In any case, it wouldn't be easy.

You might want to consider using one of the specialised IF languages. Games written in Inform 6, Inform 7 or TADS 2 can be played in a web browser fairly easily. They also come with libraries, which give you a high-quality parser, basic classes for rooms, objects, and characters, and implementations of the most common verbs.

(I know it sounds like Inform 7 supersedes Inform 6, but they are actually very different languages - you could use either. Likewise, TADS 2 and TADS 3 are different languages, and you could use either, although I would say T3 is definitely superior. The only reason I recommended T2 here was because T3 games can't be played in a browser at the moment.)

To be honest with you, there's some prejudice in the community against "homebrew" IF - IF written in a general-purpose programming language without a standard library. You're unlikely to be able to create a parser (and so on) anywhere near as good as that of Inform or TADS (or any of the other specialised systems) without spending a [i]lot[/i] of time on it. And when you're finished, only people using the same operating system as you are will be able to play your game, whereas Inform, TADS, and most of the other specialised systems produce games that can be played on at least Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=407&start=0#p2403
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Using time to change an items status
User: Grower / DateTime: 2008-04-09 15:09:47

Am creating my first story and have read through the whole documentation and tried every example i could find but am still having issues.

[code]Instead of touching button:
say "You push the button, and the light turns on.";
change light to on.[/code]

What I am trying to do is set a time limit so the light turns back off after say 3 minutes / turns ('change light to off'). No matter what i try it either errors out, or the one attempt that didn't it never reset it back to off unless the player touched the button again.

Seems like this should be something easy, but thought I would ask.

Thanks for any help!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=407&start=0#p2404
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using time to change an items status
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-04-10 04:41:41

Hey Grower, welcome!

Depending upon what you want to achieve, there are at least a few different ways to do it.  Here's one (see ch 9.11. Future events):

[code]The Lab is a room.  The flashlight is a device in the lab.  The flashlight can be dead or good.

Check switching on the flashlight:
	if the noun is dead,
		say "The battery is dead!" instead.

After switching on the flashlight:
	the battery dies in three turns from now;
	continue the action.

At the time when the battery dies:
	say "The flashlight flickers out.  I guess the battery died.";
	now the flashlight is dead;
	now the flashlight is switched off.

test me with "get flashlight / turn it on / z / z / z / turn it on / turn the flashlight off".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=201&start=0#p2405
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anybody Here Got a Wii?
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2008-04-10 06:19:03

[quote="gmaker56"]Not to be mean or anything...but I have even a faster computer! But DUDE...your computer is still really awesome!  [emote];)[/emote]  I would buy either a Xbox 360 or PS3.[/quote]

Oh, likely my computer has gotten a bit old in this somewhat over a year since I picked the components for it... Compared to the latest tech, that is. Once I've managed to pay it off - had to buy it on credit, as they can be a bit expensive - I'll order the next one.

And yes, I own a PS3. [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=407&start=0#p2406
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using time to change an items status
User: Grower / DateTime: 2008-04-10 09:10:34

Thanks, i had read the  doc example, but I guess I was trying to combine the naming of the action and the definition of the action into one. "change the light in three turns from now;" is what I had been trying before.


Thanks so much! I may be back, but so far I have figured all my issues I have come across out. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=405&start=0#p2407
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Programming Questions???
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-04-10 17:17:39

I would suggest that you should make at least one free game first and see how it's received before even considering about going commercial. When you have a reputation of making award-winning, awe-inspiring games, you'll sell a lot more!

Also, as someone already mentioned, you might want to take a look at some modern IF languages like Inform or TADS. Making a decent IF parser in BASIC is a [i]lot[/i] of work - with the same effort you could learn to use a development system that's far easier to work with in the long run.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=406&start=0#p2408
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Length of IF games?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2008-04-11 11:02:17

Infocom games were, I believe, quite long puzzle-fests.  Modern IF games are tending towards shorter works of anything from a few minutes to two or three hours.  Having said that, there's definitely a desire on the part of many to see more longer games of 10+ hours.

Naturally, it's important not to bite off more than you can chew with your first IF game.  Personally, I started and never finished about two dozen prototype games before ever releasing anything - although I tend to take procrastination to extremes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=406&start=0#p2409
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Length of IF games?
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2008-04-13 23:48:26

[quote="Pacian"]Naturally, it's important not to bite off more than you can chew with your first IF game.[/quote]Pacian's right about this one. Never mind the actual length of your game, whether it takes the player 2 weeks or 2 hours to finish - it's more important, I think, to take care of the other aspects of the game (the writing, the game's mechanics, etc.) than to worry how long it can be finished.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=406&start=0#p2410
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Length of IF games?
User: gmaker56 / DateTime: 2008-04-14 19:48:10

Thanks guys. I am a little new to the IF thing...but what you said Isxek I now think is important. Not to worry about the length.  [emote]:D[/emote]   [emote]:D[/emote]   [emote]:D[/emote]  Thanks guys! This really helped!  [emote]:D[/emote]  [emote]:D[/emote]   [emote]:geek:[/emote]  [emote]:geek:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=408&start=0#p2411
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: IF lecture at cambridge university - video and slides online
User: chiyonofuji / DateTime: 2008-04-23 07:22:16

jorge nathan matias presented a lecture about "Tragedy in Electronic Literature" which used 3 text adventures that play with the medium to illustrate its point: 

RENDITION by nespresso (2007) 
FATE by victor gijsbers (2007) 
RAMESES by stephen bond (2000) 

he has a website with slides and video at [url]http://www.natematias.com/cam/trag-elit/#[/url] 
but its difficult to navigate so a video of the 15-min presentation is now on google video: 

[url]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7851700578416541552[/url]

direct link to the slides: 

[url]http://www.natematias.com/cam/trag-elit/TragPresentation.html[/url]

link to the PDF of the slides from emily short's discussion on similar 
themes at the Association for Computing Machinery's Hypertext 2007 
conference: 

[url]http://www.natematias.com/cam/trag-elit/Emily-Short-Tragedy.pdf[/url]

(sadly a broken link - anybody got a working link for this last one?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=234&start=0#p2412
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Game to load and play in website?
User: chiyonofuji / DateTime: 2008-04-23 07:38:50

if your game is in Z5 or Z8 format and it has been submitted to the IF archive, it will automatically be picked up by the smallwhitehouse IF archive mirror and become available to play online in your browser without you have to do anything.

you just need to know the directory your game has been stored in, eg:
RENDITION is in art/if-artshow/year2007/rendition.z5 so the online link is:
[url]http://ifarchive.smallwhitehouse.org/play.php?file=art/if-artshow/year2007/rendition.z5[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=408&start=0#p2413
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF lecture at cambridge university - video and slides online
User: George / DateTime: 2008-04-23 10:01:19

[quote="chiyonofuji"]jorge nathan matias presented a lecture about "Tragedy in Electronic Literature" which used 3 text 
link to the PDF of the slides from emily short's discussion on similar 
themes at the Association for Computing Machinery's Hypertext 2007 
conference: 

[url]http://www.natematias.com/cam/trag-elit/Emily-Short-Tragedy.pdf[/url]

(sadly a broken link - anybody got a working link for this last one?)[/quote]

Cool, thanks for the video chiyonofuji. 

I emailed Matias a few days ago about the PDF (having just found this in the last week myself), but I guess it might be easier just to email Emily Short [emote];)[/emote]. I'm guessing she'll reply either here or at RAIF though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=409&start=0#p2414
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 - Making things unreachable by all verbs.
User: halley / DateTime: 2008-04-29 15:37:54

I am a pretty green Inform user, though I've written other forms of Interactive Fiction and MUD code in the past.  While this works in Inform 7 Beta, I am worried that there's a much simpler way of limiting ALL actions, even future actions, that involve reaching out and touching the unreachable.  Help me see the obvious?

[quote]
A room can be indoors or outdoors.  A room is usually indoors.

A thing is either reachable or unreachable. A thing is usually reachable.

Instead of [b]touching or squeezing or climbing or burning or cutting or rubbing or taking or attacking[/b] something which is unreachable, say "You can't reach [the noun]."

The sky is an unreachable backdrop. It is everywhere. Instead of examining a sky while the location of the player is indoors, say "You can't see [the noun] from here."
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=410&start=0#p2415
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 - Planetfall and TAKE ALL GOO FROM THE KIT.
User: halley / DateTime: 2008-04-29 15:44:22

I am still new to Inform and haven't written any Z5 or Z8 IF for a while, so I don't know if it's the command parser or the standard Inform library that has a shortcoming here.

I would really like to be able to support commands that act on like-type things.  An excellent example would be Infocom's Planetfall which supported this sort of command well.  Rather than taking ALL as a pronoun, essentially it could parse it as a pronoun or an adjective.

[quote]
> TAKE ALL GOO FROM KIT.
The red goo: Taken.
The green goo: Taken.
The brown goo: Taken.

> FLOYD, GIVE ME ALL ACCESS CARDS.
Floyd gives you a useless access card and a shiny access card.
[/quote]
Anything I am missing here?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=370&start=0#p2416
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: INFORM 7: Issues i have not resolved...
User: halley / DateTime: 2008-04-29 17:50:27

It's just personal preferences, but I'm quite happy with IT being a pronoun only the player influences.  Maybe it's because I used to rattle off a chain of commands that I knew would work, long before these newfangled GUIs made everything with a macro-driven point-n-grunt interface.

[quote]
> GET ENVELOPE FROM TABLE. OPEN IT. PUT PARCHMENT IN IT. CLOSE IT. LICK IT. N. PUT IT IN CHUTE.
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=411&start=0#p2417
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 - new example:  Drunken Master
User: halley / DateTime: 2008-04-29 21:14:58

It can be handy to develop simplistic NPCs that can wander aimlessly (in computing terms, "the Drunken Walk" algorithm), or follow other NPCs or the player.  After adapting a few other examples into something that works, I hereby present "Drunken Master."  The player can WANDER or FOLLOW WONG (who is wandering) or FOLLOW DOG (who is following Wong).  Anyone can copy or mix into their projects, or into the documentation or recipe book for Inform 7.  If you spot a bug, please let me know.  I'm sure there's some weirdness around doors I didn't spot, but it handles loopback paths okay.

[code]
"Drunken Master" by Ed Halley

Section 1 - Following and Wandering

[Moving from room to room in such a way that you can see and follow them.]
To move (someone - a person) obviously to (there - a room):
	let here be the holder of someone;
	if here is not there begin; [there is not here, begin;]
		change the last location of someone to here;
		if someone is visible and someone is not the player,
			say "[Someone] heads to [there].";
		move someone to there;
		if someone is visible and someone is not the player,
			say "[Someone] arrives from [here].";
	end if.

[Following]
A person has a room called last location.
Understand "follow [any person]" as following. Understand the commands "chase" and "pursue" as "follow".  Following is an action applying to one visible thing.
	Check following:
		if the noun is not a person, say "You can't follow [the noun]." instead;
		if the noun is the actor, say "Whom are you asking to follow you?" instead;
		if the noun is in the location of the actor, say "[The noun] is right next to you." instead;
		if the last location of the noun is not the location of the actor, say "It isn't clear where [the noun] has gone." instead.
	Carry out an actor following:
		let the destination be the location of the noun;
		if the destination is not a room, say "You can not follow [the noun] into [destination]." instead;
		let aim be the best route from the location of the actor to the destination;
		if aim is not nothing begin;
			if the actor is the player then say "(heading [aim])[line break]";
			if the actor is not the player and the actor is visible then say "[The actor] follows [the noun] away.";
			change the last location of the actor to the location of the actor;
			if the actor is not the player then silently try the actor going aim;
			otherwise try the actor going aim;
			if the actor is not the player and the actor is visible then say "[The actor] follows [the noun] here.";
		end if.

[Wandering]
Wandering is an action applying to nothing. Understand "wander" as wandering.
	Carry out an actor wandering:
		let here be the location of the actor;
		let there be a random room which is adjacent to here;
		if here is not there then move the actor obviously to there.

Section 2 - The Setting

The description of a room is "A gritty, grungy place with no redeeming value."

Village Street is a room.
Vacant Corner is a room. It is north of Village Street.
Desolate End is a room. It is northeast of Village Street and east of Vacant Corner.
Dirty Road is a room. It is south of Desolate End and east of Village Street.

Section 3 - Cast of Characters

Wong Fei-Hung is a man. Wong Fei-Hung is proper-named.
	The description of Wong Fei-Hung is "Wong appears too drunk to fight."
	When play begins, move Wong Fei-Hung to Desolate End.
	Every turn:
		if a random chance of 1 in 2 succeeds begin;
			try Wong Fei-Hung wandering;
		otherwise;
			if Wong Fei-Hung is visible, say "Wong Fei-Hung takes a sloppy drink of something smelly from a large gourd.";
		end if.

Gou is an animal. Gou is proper-named. Understand "dog" as Gou.
	The description of Gou is "Gou the mutt was probably born in an alley and raised on scraps."
	When play begins, move Gou to Dirty Road.
	Every turn: try Gou following Wong Fei-Hung.

Test me with "wander / g / g / follow Wong / g / g / follow Gou / g / g / z / z".
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=409&start=0#p2418
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Making things unreachable by all verbs.
User: George / DateTime: 2008-04-30 16:33:35

One thing you could look into if you haven't is the interplay of regions and backdrops. You could make an Indoors region and an Outdoors region for example, and put the sky backdrop only Outdoors. 

[code]
"Sky"

The Mountain is a room. The Field is a north of The Mountain. The Rock is south of The Mountain. The Cave is east of The Rock. 

The World is a region. The Mountain, The Field, and The Rock are in The World.

The Sky is a backdrop. It is in The World. 
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=410&start=0#p2419
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Planetfall and TAKE ALL GOO FROM THE KIT.
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-04-30 18:25:46

Inform 7 does support this. Try this code:

[code]Lab is a room.

Goo is a kind of thing.

The red goo is goo in the lab.
The green goo is goo in the lab.

Test me with "get all goo".[/code]

It's the "Goo is a kind of..." line that's important.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=409&start=0#p2420
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Making things unreachable by all verbs.
User: halley / DateTime: 2008-04-30 22:53:10

Thanks George.

In my case, I already had some regions.  I think they can overlap, in which case this would work.  I also didn't mind someone referring to the sky in non-outdoor rooms, just in case I wanted to support it when in the presence of a window.

Not perfect but workable.  I'm enjoying Inform so far, but I think that some things are missing from the documentation, or devilishly hard to find.  For example, someone on the google group mentioned "unlisting" a rule, but I found only one example mentioned in passing but not demonstrated with syntax, buried deep in the documentation, and it didn't use the word "unlist" anywhere.  I'd point at it exactly but have since lost it again.  > FLAIL ARMS WILDLY

I did try a backdrop to implement a street that the main character isn't allowed to cross streets.  I can't think of any other IF I have played where a street isn't a path but a barrier.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=410&start=0#p2421
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Planetfall and TAKE ALL GOO FROM THE KIT.
User: halley / DateTime: 2008-04-30 22:55:28

This is one case where I swore I tried exactly that, but probably missed some tiny feature of the syntax.  Thanks for the working example.  I even added a non-goo thing to the test above, and it worked as expected.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=412&start=0#p2422
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 - new example: Secret Reagents
User: halley / DateTime: 2008-04-30 23:00:54

It's a bit lengthy, but I think this demonstrates a bit more Inform 7 syntax that was (in many cases) maddening for me to get right.  My particular bugbear is when the error messages seem to agree that the code is perfect but somehow not applicable for unknown reasons ("in any context I can find").

If you cut and paste to try it out, remember that [b]tables have to be tab-character delimited[/b].

[code]
"Secret Reagents" by Ed Halley

Part 1 - Defining Reagents and Vessels

When play begins: say "This is an Inform 7 example that provides some basic support for pouring and blending ingredients in vessels.  Unlike other examples, makes a very simple semantic quantity system instead of numeric quantities and capacities."

Section 1 - Reagent Definitions

Table of Reagents
[these are all the possible non-thing pourable values; water and muck are special]
Reagent		Taste	Flavor
water		  1		 "boring"
juice		  1		 "sour"
syrup		  1		 "extremely sweet"
honey		  1		 "sticky sweet"
tea			 1		 "soothing"
lemonade	  1		 "refreshingly sweet"
soda		   1		 "stimulating"
cocoa		  1		 "warming"
soup		   1		 "invigorating"
sugar		  1		 "crunchy sweet"
powder		 0
jasmine		0
seeds		  0
oil			 0
dirt			0
mulch		  0
soil			0
grit			0
mud		    0
sprouts		0
muck		   0

A reagent is a kind of value. The reagents are defined by the Table of Reagents.

Table of Recipes
[if not listed, water+anything=itself, anything+itself=itself, otherwise muck]
Basic		Added		Result
water		dirt		 mud
water		sugar		syrup
syrup		juice		lemonade
dirt		 mulch		soil
water		powder	  cocoa
water		jasmine	 tea
tea		  honey		tea
soil		 seeds		sprouts

Section 2 - Vessel Definitions

A vessel is a kind of thing. A vessel is either empty, partly-full, mostly-full or full. A vessel is usually empty. A vessel has a reagent called current reagent. The current reagent of a vessel is usually water.

Understand "look in [a vessel]" as examining.

Instead of examining a vessel (called the item):
	if the item is empty begin;
		say "[The item] is empty, but for a tiny bit of [current reagent of item] at the bottom.";
	otherwise;
		say "[The item] is [vessel condition of item] of [current reagent of item].";
	end if.

Filling up something is an activity.
Rule for filling up something (called the item):
	if the item is full begin;
		say "[The item] overflows.";
	otherwise;
		if the item is mostly-full, change the item to full;
		if the item is partly-full, change the item to mostly-full;
		if the item is empty, change the item to partly-full;
		say "[The item] fills until it is [vessel condition of item] of [current reagent of item].";
	end if.

Emptying out something is an activity.
Rule for emptying out a vessel (called the item):
	if the item is partly-full, change the item to empty;
	if the item is mostly-full, change the item to partly-full;
	if the item is full, change the item to mostly-full.

Section 3 - Drinking from a Vessel

Definition: a vessel is yummy if the taste of its current reagent is 1.
[cannot say 'if no flavor entry...' because empty table cells get defaults when used to define values]

Understand "drink from [a vessel]" as drinking.

Instead of drinking a vessel (called the item):
	if the item is empty begin;
		say "[The item] is already empty.";
	otherwise;
		if the item is not yummy begin;
			say "That would not taste very good.";
		otherwise;
			carry out the emptying out activity with the item;
			say "You drink from [the item] until it is [vessel condition of item].";
			say "That was [flavor of the current reagent of the item].";
		end if;
	end if.

Section 4 - Pouring from Vessel to Vessel or Mixing Reagents

Pouring it into is an action applying to two things.
Understand "put [a vessel] in/into/on/onto [a vessel]" as pouring it into.
Understand "pour [something] in/into/on/onto [something]" as pouring it into.
Understand "drain [something] in/into/on/onto [something]" as pouring it into.
Understand "fill [something] from/with [something]" as pouring it into (with nouns reversed).
Check pouring it into:
	if the noun is not a vessel, say "You can't pour [the noun]." instead;
	if the noun is empty, say "[The noun] is empty." instead;
	if the second noun is not a vessel, say "You can't pour anything into [the second noun]." instead;
	if the noun is the second noun, say "You can't pour that into itself." instead;
	if the second noun is full, say "[The second noun] is already full." instead.

Carry out pouring it into:
	let S be muck;
	let A be the current reagent of the noun;
	let B be the current reagent of the second noun;
	if the second noun is empty, let B be the A;
	if A is B, let S be the A;
	if A is not B begin;
		repeat through the Table of Recipes begin;
			if the Added entry is the A and the Basic entry is the B, let S be the result entry;
			if the Added entry is the B and the Basic entry is the A, let S be the result entry;
		end repeat;
	end if;
	if S is muck and A is water then let S be B;
	if S is muck and B is water then let S be A;
	change the current reagent of the second noun to S;
	carry out the emptying out activity with the noun;
	carry out the filling up activity with the second noun.

A bottle and a mug and a cup and a pitcher and a kettle and a pot and a tank and a bin and a packet are kinds of vessels.

Section 5 - Pouring Vessel into Drain and Filling Vessel from Faucet

[Currently we do not support stopping up the drain of the sink; the sink is not a vessel.]

A drain is a kind of thing. A drain is usually scenery.
A faucet is a kind of thing. A faucet is usually scenery.
A sink is a kind of container. A sink is usually scenery. A drain is part of every sink. A faucet is part of every sink. A tub is a kind of sink.

Instead of pouring when the noun is a sink or the noun is a faucet:
	if the second noun is not a vessel begin;
		say "You cannot fill [the second noun] from [the noun].";
	otherwise;
		if the second noun is full begin;
			say "[The noun] is already full.";
		otherwise;
			[mixing recipes can only be done from vessel to vessel, consider it a game challenge]
			if the current reagent of the second noun is not water begin;
				say " (Emptying [the second noun] first.)[line break]";
				change the vessel condition of the second noun to empty;
			end if;
			change the current reagent of the second noun to water;
			carry out the filling up activity with the second noun;
		end if;
	end if.

Instead of pouring when the second noun is a sink or the second noun is a drain:
	if the noun is not a vessel begin;
		say "You cannot pour [the noun] into [the second noun].";
	otherwise;
		if the noun is empty begin;
			say "[The noun] is already empty.";
		otherwise;
			carry out the emptying out activity with the noun;
			say "You pour [the noun] down [the second noun] until it is [vessel condition of the noun].";
		end if;
	end if.

Part 2 - Trial Run Using Vessels and Reagents

Section 1 - The Laboratory

The Kitchen is a room.

In the Kitchen is a closed openable container called a fridge.
In the fridge is a bottle called a Coke bottle. The current reagent of the bottle is soda. The bottle is full.

In the Kitchen is a pitcher. The current reagent of the pitcher is oil. The pitcher is mostly-full.
In the Kitchen is a pot. The current reagent of the pot is dirt. The pot is partly-full.
In the Kitchen is a vessel called a sack. The current reagent of the sack is mulch. The sack is full.
In the Kitchen is a mug.
In the Kitchen is a kettle.
In the Kitchen is a sink.
In the Kitchen is a packet called a seed packet. The current reagent of the seed packet is seeds. The packet is partly-full.

In the Kitchen is a packet called a teabag. The current reagent of the teabag is jasmine. The packet is mostly-full.

Section 2 - Some Experiments

Test fridge with "pour pitcher in fridge / fill pitcher from fridge".

Test bottle with "open fridge / get bottle / x bottle / drink from bottle / pour bottle in sink / drink bottle".

Test pot with "x pot / x sack / pour sack in pot / pour seed packet into pot".

Test sink with "x pitcher / drink from pitcher / empty pitcher in sink / fill pitcher from sink / x pitcher".

Test faucet with "x mug / put teabag in mug / fill mug from sink / x mug / damn".

Test me with "x mug / put teabag in mug / fill kettle from sink / pour kettle into mug / drink from mug".
[/code]

Let me know if you try it out, expand on it, bang your head in frustration on it, or find a bug you can fix.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=409&start=0#p2423
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Making things unreachable by all verbs.
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-05-01 03:25:31

Hi Halley!
[quote="halley"]In my case, I already had some regions. I think they can overlap, in which case this would work. I also didn't mind someone referring to the sky in non-outdoor rooms, just in case I wanted to support it when in the presence of a window.[/quote]
I'm afraid regions cannot overlap, although one can completely contain another (see Ch. 3.4 of the docs).  You can get around this limitation by creating kinds of regions, as in: [code]"Sky" by Mike Tarbert

An outregion is a kind of region.

The sky is a backdrop.  The description is "It's a lovely blue."  Every outregion contains the sky.

The Wilderness is an outregion.  The Forest is a room in the Wilderness. 

Deepjungle is an outregion. The Jungle is south of the forest.  It is in the deepjungle.

test me with "x sky / s / x sky".[/code]  Note that in the above code the two rooms are in different regions but, because those regions are "outregions" (a new kind of region), they contain the sky.  If you want to be able to see the sky in an interior room (such as through a window), these can be added on an individual basis.  Backdrops can be assigned to whole regions, individual rooms, or combinations thereof (ch. 3.9).

Hope this was helpful! [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=409&start=0#p2424
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Making things unreachable by all verbs.
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-05-01 03:47:38

[quote="halley"]For example, someone on the google group mentioned "unlisting" a rule, but I found only one example mentioned in passing but not demonstrated with syntax, buried deep in the documentation, and it didn't use the word "unlist" anywhere. [/quote]Yeah, I think I've used the word "unlist" before in posts too, since that's how I think of it. The correct syntax is "not listed in" and described in ch. 18.4. - Listing rules explicitly: [quote]5. And we can strike down existing rules, either specifically or in all their applications: 

The can't act in the dark rule is not listed in the visibility rules. 
The can't remove from people rule is not listed in any rulebook.[/quote]
[quote="halley"]I did try a backdrop to implement a street that the main character isn't allowed to cross streets. I can't think of any other IF I have played where a street isn't a path but a barrier.[/quote]Sorry to disappoint, but Aikin and Eve's recent "Mrs. Pepper's Nasty Secret" uses this very device in the opening. (BTW - not a spoiler, since it's right at the beginning.) [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=410&start=0#p2425
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Planetfall and TAKE ALL GOO FROM THE KIT.
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-05-01 03:49:35

Note that the previous example works only because both things have "goo" in their names, [i]not[/i] because they are a kind of goo. You should add 'Understand "goo" as goo' to make every goo kind work as expected.

[code]Lab is a room.

Goo is a kind of thing.

Understand "goo" as goo.

The red goo is goo in the lab.
The green goo is goo in the lab.
The blue blob is goo in the lab.

Test me with "get all goo".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=409&start=0#p2426
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Making things unreachable by all verbs.
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-05-01 16:33:44

[quote="Skinny Mike"][quote="halley"]I did try a backdrop to implement a street that the main character isn't allowed to cross streets. I can't think of any other IF I have played where a street isn't a path but a barrier.[/quote]Sorry to disappoint, but Aikin and Eve's recent "Mrs. Pepper's Nasty Secret" uses this very device in the opening. (BTW - not a spoiler, since it's right at the beginning.) [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
So does A Matter of Importance by Nestor I. McNaugh (Valentine Kopteltsev). Only in the case of AMOI, it's actually a puzzle you have to solve.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=410&start=0#p2427
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Planetfall and TAKE ALL GOO FROM THE KIT.
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-05-01 17:28:46

And the new version of Inform 7 has specific handling for understanding plurals - go to [url]http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7Downloads/ReleaseNotes.txt[/url] and search for "plural of".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=412&start=0#p2428
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - new example: Secret Reagents
User: halley / DateTime: 2008-05-03 10:27:32

After some play testing, I wanted to expand this so the player could refer to vessels by their current reagent.

This compiles:

[code]
Understand "[a reagent]" as a vessel.
[/code]
But it lets the player refer to any vessel in the vicinity by any reagent word, whether the vessel has that current reagent or not.

I expected these would not work but I've tried the following anyway.  There appears to be no conditions allowed.

[code]
Understand "[current reagent]" as a vessel.
Understand "[current reagent of any vessel]" as a vessel.
Understand "[a reagent]" as a vessel when the reagent is the current reagent of the object in question.
[/code]
[b]Edit:[/b]

[code]
Understand the current reagent property as describing a vessel.
[/code]
I should read more documentation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=235&start=0#p2429
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Ideas to turn a single player adventure into multi-player
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2008-05-04 00:25:22

Fascinating. This is almost exactly how [url=http://www.guncho.com]Guncho[/url] works, but I didn't have the idea until this year - and even then, it started out as nothing more than an April Fools Day gag about something that everyone has talked about but no one had ever gotten around to doing. I guess one other person had gotten close!

[list]
[*]I also used to be a MUD (well, MUSH) player and developer.[/*:m]
[*]Guncho originally hosted the Z-machine, but now hosts Glulx instead.[/*:m]
[*]The NPC action mechanism is used to show messages like "vaporware arrives from the north."[/*:m]
[*]Player input is prefixed by a connection ID before passing it to the game, and the game prefixes output with tags to direct it to different players.[/*:m]
[*]It could theoretically work with many other IF systems, although only I7 is supported now.[/*:m]
[*]Several virtual machines run at the same time, serving different parts of the game world, and the server transparently switches players between them.[/*:m][/list:u]

However, there are some differences:

[list]
[*]Guncho has no dynamic object creation: players inhabit a fixed set of generic bodies, and everything else has to be created by the realm author.[/*:m]
[*]The server knows almost nothing about what's happening inside each game. Instead, the game can push and pull information from the server as needed. The only character data that follows a player from realm to realm is their gender, description, and which direction they're traveling (to show an appropriate arrival message).[/*:m]
[*]There are no save files: realms can save data by pushing it to the server, but the server doesn't bother saving the entire game RAM.[/*:m][/list:u]

Guncho deals with the passage of time by adding a rulebook for real-time events and providing access to the system clock.

Updates are handled by:
[list=1]
[*]Asking the game for the location of each player. (Since object names and numbers may change, the location is given as a list of directions from a specially marked room.)[/*:m]
[*]Telling the realm to push all the data it wants to keep.[/*:m]
[*]Restarting the virtual machine.[/*:m]
[*]Inserting each player back into the restarted realm in the saved location.[/*:m][/list:o]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=413&start=0#p2430
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Pathway to Destruction
User: rotter / DateTime: 2008-05-11 01:49:48

With an ever growing population the global transport system is struggling to cope. You are part of a team working on an exciting project to provide fast, efficient and cheap travel.  Strapped into a 
chair in the R&D centre, the first long distance test is about to get underway. What could go wrong? 

[url=http://www.delron.org.uk/games/pathway2.zip]Pathway to Destruction[/url]

This is a Z8 port of my original competition winning ADRIFT 4.0 game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=414&start=0#p2431
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: randomized weaponry
User: espeorb / DateTime: 2008-06-05 18:56:33

Okay... so I have been programming with I7 for a while now; about 3 years. I'm usually too lazy to finish a game, but have gotten a few done...
Enough about me. This is my problem. I am creating a role-playing game... sort of, and  have been trying to create a randomized weaponry system. If I could get it working, I could use it for other things, too.

[quote]Table of Random Weapon Beginnings
beginning
"Icegnasher's"
"Flamebiter's"
"Silverwind's"
"Korrnak's"

Table of Random Weapon Types
kind
"crude maul"
"dagger"
"shortsword"
"broadsword"
"shortstaff"
"crimson staff"

Table of Random Weapon Ends
end
"of the steed"
"of flame"
"of frost"
"of awesomeness"

Table of Random Weapon Techniques
technique
"swinging with"
"stabbing with"
"smashing with"

A random weapon is a kind of weapon. A random weapon can be weak, medium or strong.
A random weapon has a text called beginning. The beginning of a random weapon is usually "tiny".
A random weapon has a text called type. The type of a random weapon is usually "dagger".
A random weapon has a text called end. The end of a random weapon is usually "of punyness".

The printed name of a random weapon is "[beginning] [type]"

When play begins:
change the beginning of all random weapons to a random beginning in the Table of Random Weapon Beginnings;
change the type of all random weapons to a random type in the Table of Random Weapon Types;
change the end of all random weapons to a random end in the Table of Random Weapon Ends;
change the technique of all random weapons to a random technique in the Table of Random Weapon Techniques.[/quote]

The problem seems to be with the last one (when play begins). The compiler says that there are many ways to do this, and my paragraph does not fit one of them, or something like that. As a side note, forget about the weak, medium and strong stuff, I'll implement what that does later. Huge thanks in advance!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=414&start=0#p2432
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: randomized weaponry
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-06-06 02:03:40

[quote]The problem seems to be with the last one (when play begins). The compiler says that there are many ways to do this, and my paragraph does not fit one of them, or something like that. As a side note, forget about the weak, medium and strong stuff, I'll implement what that does later. Huge thanks in advance![/quote]
Hi!

I'm afraid your main problem is going to be using text values for the name and type parts of your weapons. Although Inform allows things to be understood by some values, text values aren't one of them. This means the player will have no way of referring to individual weapons by name ("get the tiny dagger of punnyness", etc.). Worse, Inform won't be able to sort them out, so anytime you've got more than one random weapon in a room, you'll get something like "You see five random weapons here."

Luckily, this is easy to fix by making each of these properties a new kind of value (which you can still define using tables if you wish). Something like:

[code]"IntFic" by Mike Tarbert

A weapon is a kind of thing. A random weapon is a kind of weapon.

Weapon-type is a kind of value. The weapon-types are defined by the Table of Random Weapon-Types

A random weapon has a weapon-type. The weapon-type of a random weapon is usually dagger. Understand the weapon-type property as describing a random weapon.

Table of Random Weapon-Types
weapon-type
crude maul
dagger
shortsword
broadsword
shortstaff
crimson staff

Weapon-title is a kind of value. The weapon-titles are defined by the Table of Random Weapon-Titles

A random weapon has a weapon-title. The weapon-title of a random weapon is usually tiny. Understand the weapon-title property as describing a random weapon.

Table of Random Weapon-Titles
weapon-title	special
tiny		false
Icegnasher	true
Flamebiter	true
Silverwind	true
Korrnak		true


Weapon-end is a kind of value. The weapon-ends are defined by the Table of Random Weapon-Ends.

A random weapon has a weapon-end. The weapon-end of a random weapon is usually punyness. Understand the weapon-end property as describing a random weapon.

Table of Random Weapon-Ends
weapon-end
punyness
the steed
flame
frost
awesomeness


Rule for printing the name of a weapon:
	let wt be the weapon-title;
	if the special of wt is true, say "[wt]'s ";
	otherwise say "[wt] ";
	say "[weapon-type] of [weapon-end]".

Rule for printing the plural name of a weapon: 
	let wt be the weapon-title;
	if the special of wt is true, say "[wt]'s ";
	otherwise say "[wt] ";
	say "[weapon-type]s of [weapon-end]".

When play begins:
	repeat with item running through all random weapons:
		now the weapon-type of item is a random weapon-type;
		now the weapon-title of item is a random weapon-title;
		now the weapon-end of item is a random weapon-end.

		
The Lab is a room.  In the lab are ten random weapons.
 
test me with "get Flamebiter's / get dagger / get all Korrnak's / get all broadswords".[/code]
If I were you, though, I'd make the weapon types different sub-kinds of weapons. You're probably going to have different properties for each type (damage, etc.) and keeping track of all that using type as a kind of value is just going to make you crazy. I'm guessing you didn't do this in the first place since you didn't want to define a bunch of extra objects from the get-go. 

If this is the case, you should check out Jesse McGrew's "Dynamic Objects" extension. It allows you to dynamically create "clones" of different objects at runtime (the properties of which you can then change). I've tried it and it works great, but only for Glulx games. 

HTH!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=414&start=0#p2433
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: randomized weaponry
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-06-06 02:38:06

Hmm,

While playing around with the above code, I've noticed a weird bug. The parser recognizes "get Flamebiter's" or "get all Icegnasher's" or "get both Silverwind's", but doesn't accept "Korrnak's" at all. Curiously, if I change the name to "Korrnack" (with a "c") in the code, the parser acts fine. How could this be...?

edit:  Duh... nevermind. Korrnack with a "c" has more than seven letters. Inform ignores the rest in this case. That's the only reason it accepted the apostrophe "s" in the first place. 4am, I guess it's time for bed.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=414&start=0#p2434
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: randomized weaponry
User: espeorb / DateTime: 2008-06-06 07:33:39

Wow, thank you! This helps so much! But yes, about the factors like damage, I was thinking of my main option being setting the damage of a weak weapon between blah blah blah and blah, and same for the medium weapons, only stronger, and so on. But thanks for the idea!
EDIT: Okay I get this problem:
In 'The weapon-type of a random weapon is usually dagger' you give a value of the weapon-type property as '"dagger"', but this ought to be a weapon-type, not some text.
DOUBLE-EDIT: I fixed that, now the problem is with the last paragraph, what with 'repeat through'... you're working on a not-latest version of IF, aren't you? Cause' I've tried a lot of things with that paragraph now.
TRIPLE-EDIT *gasp*: I fixed that too, in the only way I knew of, I guess. But now it doesn't call random weapons by their name. Geh!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=414&start=0#p2435
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: randomized weaponry
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-06-06 09:34:59

[quote]I fixed that, now the problem is with the last paragraph, what with 'repeat through'... you're working on a not-latest version of IF, aren't you? Cause' I've tried a lot of things with that paragraph now.[/quote]
No, I'm using the latest version (5t18). The problem with the new "pythonesque" indentation style is that the tabs tend to get screwed up between cuts - and - pastes from newsgroups, message boards, email, etc. When I cut - n - pasted my above code, I got an error too, which I could fix like this: (replace "{tab}" with an actual tab stop)[code]When play begins:
{tab}repeat with item running through all random weapons:
{tab}{tab}now the weapon-type of item is a random weapon-type;
{tab}{tab}now the weapon-title of item is a random weapon-title;
{tab}{tab}now the weapon-end of item is a random weapon-end.[/code]If this doesn't work, you can still go back to the old syntax:(in which line indentation is ignored)[code]When play begins:
repeat with item running through all random weapons begin;
     now the weapon-type of item is a random weapon-type;
     now the weapon-title of item is a random weapon-title;
     now the weapon-end of item is a random weapon-end;
end repeat.
[/code]Either way, it works for me. Here's a sample of the output:[quote]Lab
You can see a tiny dagger of flame, a Silverwind's dagger of the steed, an Icegnasher's broadsword of frost, a Korrnak's crimson staff of the steed, an Icegnasher's crude maul of frost, a Flamebiter's crimson staff of awesomeness, a Silverwind's shortsword of flame, a Korrnak's broadsword of punyness, a tiny crude maul of flame and a Silverwind's crimson staff of awesomeness here.

>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] get flamebiter's
Taken.

>[2] get dagger
Which do you mean, the tiny dagger of flame or the Silverwind's dagger of the steed?

>[3] get all korrnak's
You can't see any such thing.

>[4] get all broadswords
Icegnasher's broadsword of frost: Taken.
Korrnak's broadsword of punyness: Taken.
[/quote]Note that step #3 doesn't work correctly because the name is seven letters long (see my second post, above). If I get time later, I'll see what I can do to make that part work better.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=414&start=0#p2436
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: randomized weaponry
User: espeorb / DateTime: 2008-06-06 11:43:02

Wow! I finally got it working. Completely. Thank you soo much!  [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=370&start=0#p2437
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: INFORM 7: Issues i have not resolved...
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2008-06-09 21:11:27

>How do i make it so the players "it" value is set to what i want it to be?

I wrote the extension "Pronouns" to deal with that problem; it's at the official Inform 7 site for download.  That problem took me forever to figure out how to solve, and  I figured if it stumped me for awhile it would probably stump others. 

As for ALL, I think there's an Activity for it. 

-R

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=415&start=0#p2438
Forum: Competitions / Subject: IFComp 2008?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-06-10 17:33:39

So, who's planning to enter a game in the annual IFComp this year? I've been thinking about it, but I'm still really really busy with work (and, now, with newborn twins).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=415&start=0#p2439
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2008?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-06-11 03:50:08

Not I. My WIP is for the IF Art Show.

I wonder if we'll see more games this year? Last year was pretty quiet. In fact, looking at the stats on IFWiki, it had the fewest games of any Comp since 1998, and the only Comp with fewer games than last year was the first one, in 1995! (1996, 1998 and 2007 are all tied on 27 games.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=415&start=0#p2440
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2008?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2008-06-12 11:22:15

I'm very tempted to, but I'm not sure I'll have anything worth submitting by the deadline.

Not to mention that the TIGSource B-Game Competition will probably be running the month before...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=415&start=0#p2441
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2008?
User: George / DateTime: 2008-06-14 12:49:29

Congratulations Merk [emote]:)[/emote]

Rather than IF I've been sucked into graphical game programming lately (by TIGSource, in fact). Pacian seems to do a good job of combining the two endeavors though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=415&start=0#p2442
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2008?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-06-15 18:13:34

[quote]Congratulations Merk[/quote]
Thanks!

Well, I've decided to enter, tentatively. We'll see how it goes. I usually rush to finish something in the last couple of months, so maybe if I start now, I won't be [i]quite[/i] as rushed as usual. It just depends on how well I can manage work and family in addition to writing a game over the next few weeks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=415&start=0#p2443
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2008?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-06-16 18:50:29

[quote="Merk"]Well, I've decided to enter, tentatively. We'll see how it goes. I usually rush to finish something in the last couple of months, so maybe if I start now, I won't be [i]quite[/i] as rushed as usual. It just depends on how well I can manage work and family in addition to writing a game over the next few weeks.[/quote]
Good luck! I'll be looking forward to seeing what you come up with...

And congrats on the twins as well!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=415&start=0#p2444
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2008?
User: uux02 / DateTime: 2008-06-20 13:30:45

My (belated) congrats on the twins, Merk! 

I'd be really glad to see your entry in IF-Comp 2008, but one has to be a realist: the children, of course, are much more important. Don't want to sound too pessimistic, but I guess you'll be quite busy for at least the next couple of years or so;).

I've had it only half as hard as you are going to;), and I have (what I think is) the worst period behind me, but there is another catch now: my daughter is competing against her elders for the computer!;)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=416&start=0#p2445
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 - Dialogue Trees?
User: spolvid / DateTime: 2008-06-22 22:50:31

I'm working on an idea for an IF game I have, and I'm working with Inform, since it seemed like a really nice package. I read through the documentation, very impressed, etc.

The problem I have is I want some sort of dialogue tree, a la Monkey Island or Sam And Max, to replace the standard "ask X about X" or "tell X about X". Ideally it would work something like this:

--------------------------------------
Test Room
You can see John here.

>TALK TO JOHN

1: "Hello John, how's it going?"
2: "Hey, did you pick up those cream puff things for me at the store?"
3: "You know, it's times like this that really makes me feel great."
4: "Um...never mind, I didn't need to talk to you."

>1

"Fine, thank you."

1: "Hey, did you pick up those cream puff things for me at the store?"
2: "You know, it's times like this that really makes me feel great."
3: "Later."

>1

"No, they were all out. Sorry. I did get you that fabric softener you like though. Want it?"

1: "Sure."
2: "Nah."

>2

"Ok, that's fine. More for me!"

1: "Hey, did you pick up those cream puff things for me at the store?"
2: "You know, it's times like this that really makes me feel great."
3: "Later."

>2

"How do you mean?"

1: "When everything just clicks, you know?"
2: "When there's an upcoming movie release I can't wait for!"
3: "When I get the day off!"
4: "Um....I dunno."

>3

"Say, that reminds me. Me and some of the guys were going to go to Harlom creek next weekend and go fishing. Wanna come with?"

1: "Sure!"
2: "Nah."

>1

"Awesome! It's gonna be great."

1: "Can you tell me more about that fishing trip?"
2: "Hey, did you pick up those cream puff things for me at the store?"
3: "You know, it's times like this that really makes me feel great."
4: "Later."

>4

"Later."

Test Room
You can see John here.
--------------------------------------

Okay, that was completely cobbled together as I wrote it, but that should give you a pretty good idea of what I want. I'm a very novice programmer, both in Inform and in general, so if there's an obvious way to do this, I don't know what it is. [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=416&start=0#p2446
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Dialogue Trees?
User: George / DateTime: 2008-06-23 00:42:37

I think a popular extension for this is Mark Tilford's Simple Chat:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7Downloads/Extensions/Mark%20Tilford/Simple%20Chat">http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7Downloa ... ple%20Chat</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=416&start=0#p2447
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Dialogue Trees?
User: spolvid / DateTime: 2008-06-23 01:07:35

Ooh, thanks! I looked through the extensions, but I never found that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=417&start=0#p2448
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: TADS 2: I'm just trying to make a cup of tea!
User: jfcwilson / DateTime: 2008-06-28 15:58:44

Shorah. First post.
I'm a bit new to TADS 2, and trying to implment a cup of tea. I need a water tap that pours water into a pot, a burner that boils the water, and a tea press that brews it. I've tried a simple "object.moveInto(place);" but I get weird errors.Help!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=417&start=0#p2449
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 2: I'm just trying to make a cup of tea!
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2008-06-29 16:31:33

I'm much better versed in TADS [i]3[/i] than 2, but I did dabble a while back.  Have you looked at Mark Engelberg's Tutorial?  It's linked to on the [url=http://www.tads.org/tads2.htm]TADS 2 page[/url], and it goes through things like indirect verbs (put [direct object] in [indirect object]), as well as a lot more besides.

On the whole though, I'm not sure that making a cup of tea is quite as simple to code as you might think.  For a start, pouring water into a pot seems like a simple enough command, until you find users wanting to 'pour water into pot' as a single action, or 'put pot under tap' and 'turn tap on', or a million other ways of phrasing it ('fill pot with water', for example).  I'd be inclined to have a one-button-push tea making machine, or a tea selling npc, but that's just me...

btw, what kind of errors do you get with moveinto?  I seem to remember it being a pretty straightforward command.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=417&start=0#p2450
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 2: I'm just trying to make a cup of tea!
User: jfcwilson / DateTime: 2008-06-30 16:46:54

I have read that tutorial. I'm basing this on that.
Well, I was trying to put a pot in a sink.

sink: fixeditem, container
sdesc="sink"
noun='sink'
location=startroom
ldesc=
{
if (pot.location=self)
"This is a sad looking sink, with a small tap. A pot rests on the drain.";
}
else
{
"This is a sad looking sink, with a small tap.";
}
;

pot: item, container
sdesc="pot"
ldesc="This is a pot."
noun='pot'
location=startroom
;

The pot, by being in the sink, when a tap was turned, would check to see if the pot was in the sink, and if so, to place water into it.
i'm not at my own computer, as it does not have internet, so i'm not sure exactly how to define the tap here, so i'll just tell how I'm trying to work it.

tap: 

doturn(actor)=
{
if (pot.location=sink)
{
 "Water gushes from the tap and fills the pot.";
water.moveInto(pot);
}
else
{
"The water gushes on, doing nothing, therefor costing you another 1/8 of a cent wasted.";
}
}
;

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=417&start=0#p2451
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 2: I'm just trying to make a cup of tea!
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2008-07-01 13:55:41

The following code works for me.  (Note that this is not ready to go in a released game: synonyms and alternative methods galore would be needed.)  You were missing the verDoTurn(actor) bit.

[code]sink: fixeditem, container
   sdesc="sink"
   noun='sink'
   location=startroom
   ldesc=
   {
      if (pot.location=self)
      {
         "This is a sad looking sink, with a small tap. A pot rests on the drain.";
      }
      else
      {
         "This is a sad looking sink, with a small tap.";
      }
   }
;

pot: item, container
   sdesc="pot"
   ldesc="This is a pot."
   noun='pot'
   location=startroom
;

tap: fixeditem
   sdesc="tap"
   noun='tap'
   location=sink
   verDoTurn(actor)={}
   doTurn(actor)=
   {
      if (pot.location=sink)
      {
      "Water gushes from the tap and fills the pot.";
      water.moveInto(pot);
      }
      else
      {
         "The water gushes on, doing nothing, therefor costing you another 1/8 of a cent wasted.";
      }
   }
;

water: item
   sdesc="water"
   adesc="some water"
   noun='water'
   location=nil
;
[/code]

Also, here's that implemented in TADS 3:

[code]
somePlace: Room 'Magical Castle in the Clouds'
;

+sink: Container, Fixture
    noun='sink'
    name='sink'
;

++tap: Component
    noun='tap'
    name='tap'
    dobjFor(Turn)
    {
        verify(){}
        check()
        {
            if(pot.location!=sink)
            {
                reportFailure('You see no reason to pour water fruitlessly down the plughole. ');
                exit;
            }
        }
        action()
        {
            "You fill the pot with water. ";
            water.moveInto(pot);
        }
    }
;

++pot: RestrictedContainer
    noun='pot'
    name='pot'
    
    validContents = [water] 
;

water: Thing
    noun='water'
    name='water'
    aName='some water'
;
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=415&start=0#p2452
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2008?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-07-02 08:53:48

Having done nothing on my entry since my last post, I may not be ready this year after all.

The twins (boy and girl - not sure I mentioned it) are starting to sleep more at night. We have another daughter too (almost 3 years old now), and it was about three months when she started sleeping at night. They get up once or twice each, but at least we're not having to take shifts staying awake around the clock just so the other can get a good stretch of sleep.

And now, Metal Gear Solid 4 is about to start competing for my free time. My game idea is a little too involved to rush together in the last couple of months, so this may turn into a Spring Thing entry or an IFComp 2009 entry.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=415&start=0#p2453
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2008?
User: George / DateTime: 2008-07-02 18:31:13

Perhaps an IF for 4 and under? [emote]:)[/emote].

I think planning games for Spring Thing is quite a good idea actually. Who here wants to do a game for Spring Thing oath? 
[size=150][b]
[color=#40BF40]"I solemnly swear that I will enter a game for Spring Thing 2009, barring acts of God, misdirection, calumnity, or indigestion."[/color][/b][/size]


[b]Signed:[/b]

George

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=415&start=0#p2454
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2008?
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2008-07-03 05:34:24

Congrats on the twins, too!
No big competition for me for now... It's all just a mess, really, and there's also work.  [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=417&start=0#p2455
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 2: I'm just trying to make a cup of tea!
User: jfcwilson / DateTime: 2008-07-03 16:10:27

That bit worked fine, now I'm trying the burner. But this is not working! Sorry to leech off you people, but cann you help? I'm thinking a lightsource object, that would be the simplist to implment, but I'm getting errors like: invalid token, undefined object when the object is defined, that sort of thing. Help! I've been working on this project for months, and this is a vital part. The entire code for this project spans over 300 objects and 30,000 letters, and I don't want to toss it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=418&start=0#p2456
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: All TADS 2 users
User: jfcwilson / DateTime: 2008-07-03 16:22:52

I have an idea.
Have any of you played the adventure game Myst? It's not text, it's graphics. 
Well, I wonder if anyone intrested in cooperating to make a story-rich text myst game, related to the games.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=417&start=0#p2457
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 2: I'm just trying to make a cup of tea!
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2008-07-04 11:21:19

I'm afraid we've reached the limit of my TADS 2 knowledge, though someone else may be able to help you.  In order for that to happen, however, you'll have to be a lot more specific.

-What is the burner supposed to do from the user's perspective?
-What are you trying to do from a coder's perspective (eg. why do you need the burner to be a lightsource)?
-What is your code, and where does the compiler say the errors are?  Which token does it say is invalid? Which object does it not think has been defined (and where do you define and use that object)?

Sadly, when it comes to computer code, phrases like 'that kind of thing' aren't very helpful, since code must cohere to a very specific syntax.

Best of luck, anyway.  If no-one answers your question here, try the [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/topics]news group[/url].   [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=418&start=0#p2458
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: All TADS 2 users
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-07-06 09:26:13

Does Cyan -- or whomever owns the Myst license -- allow or encourage fan-made games?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=418&start=0#p2459
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: All TADS 2 users
User: jfcwilson / DateTime: 2008-07-07 12:10:22

I'm not entirly sure- so if someone knows, please post before we begin. I wonder if the same applies to freeware games, if they do not permit sold games. Also, one thing I know is true is that if we choose not to release it, it would be absolutly legal.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=417&start=0#p2460
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 2: I'm just trying to make a cup of tea!
User: jfcwilson / DateTime: 2008-07-07 12:23:35

This is what the player would get:

>put pot in sink
 Done.
>turn tap
 A stream of water fills the pot.
>put pot on burner
Done.
>turn on burner
The burner lights up, and causes the water to simmer.
>z
Time passes...
>z
Time passes...
>z
Time passes...
>z
Time passes...
The water boils.
>put water in press
Done.
>put tea in press
Done.
>close press
Closed.
>z
Time passes...
>z
Time passes...
The tea looks ready.

that's all i'm having trouble with. Now that I realize it, I don't need it to be a lightsource. I'm trying a notify method, like: notify(object,&method, 4); to set the time release. I don't have the code right here, as i'm on a library computer, but i'll put it on a floppy and bring it over soon.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=419&start=0#p2461
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: TADS 2 HTML
User: jfcwilson / DateTime: 2008-07-08 12:20:05

I'm trying to display a picture of a room using HTML mode of TADS 2. 
First of all, how do I enter html mode, and how would i tell it to display a picture upon entering the room?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=43&start=20#p2462
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Dwarf Fortress and some other ramblings
User: Newbunkle / DateTime: 2008-07-09 17:53:01

Regarding the IF as a Sim, I've always wondered about that too. I remember when I was using AMOS on the Amiga, I wanted to do something like that set in a hotel. You could do your job, or wander around the hotel and do whatever you wanted: steal from guests, kill your boss, etc. I got the rooms done, and some of the NPC's, but the AI stumped me. I eventually got bored and programmed a poor Dungeon Master clone instead, lol. I wanted your workmates to follow scripts unless you messed them up. I.e, putting alcohol in their soda would make them oversleep or something like that. It was far too big to manage.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=420&start=0#p2463
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Old Game
User: Newbunkle / DateTime: 2008-07-09 17:59:16

I doubt you'll be able to help, but something has been bugging me for ages. When I was a kid I was given an adventure game for Xmas. It was my first one and I had no idea what to do. I figured out some of the basics, but gave up on it. I've never got over it beating me, and if I could find a copy I can emulate I'd have a proper go at it. The trouble is I don't know the name.

All I can remember was that it was for the Commodore 64/128. It had pictures, if you can call them that. I think I remember a beach, and a computer/machine that required a code (which I could never find). Unless I've mixed it up with another game, I'm pretty sure that you went to Madame Tussauds, or somewhere similar. Does that ring a bell with anyone? All of this would have been within the first few locations. I never got very far with it at all.

I know its a long shot, but I thought I'd ask anyway, lol.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=421&start=0#p2464
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 - Two lines in and I'm stuck already, lol.
User: Newbunkle / DateTime: 2008-07-10 19:01:15

Hi, I'm about to start experimenting with I7, and I'm trying some things out. There's something I want to do, but I'm not sure how to do it. I've tried searching the help, but because I'm not sure what I'm looking for its like looking for a needle in a haystack. What I want to do is write some introductory text at the beginning of the adventure, to explain what situation you're finding yourself in.

So far I've tried 'When play begins: Say "..."', but that puts the text before the title of the story, which I don't want.

The other thing I tried was putting the following in the room description: "[if the player is in the Cabin for the first time]...[end if]", but that triggers more than once if the player types look before leaving the room. 

Any hints on what commands I should be using to achieve what i want? The text has to be after the story title and before the room description (and name if possible).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=421&start=0#p2465
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Two lines in and I'm stuck already, lol.
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-07-11 01:06:38

Before looking in the Cabin for the first time: say "..."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=421&start=0#p2466
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Two lines in and I'm stuck already, lol.
User: Newbunkle / DateTime: 2008-07-11 05:47:19

That's perfect! You're a true legend.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=420&start=0#p2467
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Old Game
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-07-11 06:57:47

Maybe this?
<a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock:_The_Riddle_of_the_Crown_Jewels">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock:_ ... own_Jewels</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=0#p2468
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: Lipa_B / DateTime: 2008-07-14 03:56:51

Hi! 

I'm wondering if it's possible to play interactive fiction on modern mobile phones. If so, what does one need to get things started? I assume a special interpreter is required and needs to be installed on the phone, right?

Any further information, hints, tips, and links will be most appreciated!

Thanks, best regards!

Ben

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=423&start=0#p2469
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: actor.travelTo(place);
User: jfcwilson / DateTime: 2008-07-16 13:33:03

How does one make it so that when you order the "actor.travelTo(place);" when you get there it does not show the "sdesc"? What i'm trying to do is make it so that the player will not know he is being moved. The sdesc is the same, but becouse she\he pushes the button(which does the operation), ordinarily that would not display the "sdesc". a seasoned player would spot that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=0#p2470
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-07-16 22:28:14

I don't know, but that would be interesting. I think cell phone games are written in some mobile version of Java. It might be possible to have a runner/interpreter that's able to download the actual game content/file over the web.

If it has been done - and if it's freely available - the IF Archive would probably be the place to look (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifarchive.org">http://www.ifarchive.org</a>). I've never heard of an IF interpreter for cell phones, but it's probably possible.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=423&start=0#p2471
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: actor.travelTo(place);
User: uux02 / DateTime: 2008-07-21 12:58:17

Maybe 

actor.moveInto(place)

will do it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=424&start=0#p2472
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: TADS 2 game in production
User: jfcwilson / DateTime: 2008-07-21 15:51:57

My father and I are starting a sort of two-person studio called "Slow Turtle Interactive."
We are currently develeping a game called "The Tower."
My father is largly responsible for the plot, while I implement and map.
I would like to get ideas for plot, that I can process. If anyone feels like giving me ideas, please e-mail me at "jfcwilson@yahoo.com". 
The protaganist is a museum curator, who is ordered by the board of directors to look into a sudden unhearthing of artifacts, old and new, artful and scientific, and find it's source.
The setting is a fictional country in south america, starting in a port town bordering the edge of the atlantic ocean. Beyond the town is a dense rainforest, with a small river flowing through it. Deep in the jungle lies an immense lake, never before seen. In the middle is a island, and on the island is a tall, square tower, almost 500 feet tall. The lake is an obscure  reference to El Dorado, the myth.
The time is present.

As the game is freeware, you will not gain any compensation.

Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=425&start=0#p2473
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform/Glulx Windows Question
User: bailey / DateTime: 2008-07-23 01:55:35

A possibly-tricky question I'm hoping someone can help with:

I'd like to create a window, other than the main window, into which the user can enter text, so that play can switch between two windows at different points during a game.

I've had no problem setting up extra windows up using the [url=http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7Downloads/Extensions/Jon%20Ingold/Flexible%20Windows]Flexible Windows extension by Jon Ingold[/url]. The documentation for that extension also suggests that I can use hyperlinks in new windows using a statement that looks something like this:
[code]To expect links in (g - a g-window):
(--) glk_request_hyperlink_event({g}.ref_number); .
[/code]
From looking through the Glk specification, it seems like it should be possible to specify that a window should "expect" text input in a similar way,  maybe using glk_request_line_event() -- but I don't know my way around glk at all.

If anyone can help me with this, or even let me know if it's possible, I'd be grateful.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=425&start=0#p2474
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform/Glulx Windows Question
User: George / DateTime: 2008-07-27 15:37:11

Have you also had a look at the [url=http://adamcadre.ac/gull/]Gull documentation[/url]?

Also isn't it [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=b67iuep7o6b0kxpm]Narcolepsy[/url] that implemented something like this?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=426&start=0#p2475
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Woof: An Interactive Romp(or, rather, An Interactive Wait
User: jfcwilson / DateTime: 2008-07-29 14:02:25

This game took ages to finish. I'm sorry, but a game where almost the entire gameplay takes place in one room, with achingly long waits between cutscenes that are fruitless, where you progress the game mainly by barking at the manager, until he kills you, is not a good game.
Final rating: 2/10

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=427&start=0#p2476
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Table Problems
User: ryacku / DateTime: 2008-08-02 19:18:30

[code]Period is a kind of value. The periods are morning, midday, and evening.
Table 1 - News Items
Period	News
Morning	"Today, a sad tragedy occured in near the Dimon district."
Morning	"later"
Midday	"So"
Midday	"Then they"
Midday	"And so"
Evening	"Decling output has lead to the seizure and auction of Huyam Manufacturing plant"
Evening	"Service has been temporarily disrupted for maintainance"

Climate is a kind of value. The climates are hot, norm, cold, frigid, and off.
Ventilation is a kind of value. The ventilations are on, vacuum, and off.
Define security as security level. Security level is a kind of value. The securitys are none, low, high, and sealed.
Comms is a kind of value. The comms are on, restricted, and off.

Table 2 - Table of Atmospherics Settings
Sector	Climate	Venting	Security	Power	Utilities	Comms
Alpha	norm	on 	low	on	on	on
Beta	norm	on	none	on	on	on
Core	cold	on	high	on	off	on
Gamma	off	vacuum	sealed	off	off	on
Delta	on	on	low	on	on	on[/code]
[quote]Problem. You wrote 'Table 1 - News Items Period News Morning "Today, a sad tragedy occured in near the Dimon district." Morning "later" Midday "So" Midday "Then they" Midday "And so" Evening "Decling output has lead to the sei [...] ction of Huyam Manufacturing plant" Evening "Service has been temporarily disrupted for maintainance"'  : but I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with, so I am ignoring this sentence altogether.


Problem. You wrote 'The ventilations are on, vacuum, and off'  : but this seems to refer to something whose name begins with a comma, which is forbidden. Perhaps you used a comma in punctuating a sentence? Inform generally doesn't like this because it reserves commas for specific purposes such as dividing rules or 'if' phrases.


Problem. You wrote 'Define security as security level'  : again, I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with.


Problem. The sentence 'The securitys are none, low, high, and sealed'   appears to say two things are the same - I am reading 'securitys' and 'none' as two different things, and therefore it makes no sense to say that one is the other: it would be like saying that 'Tarzan is Jane'. It would be all right if the second thing were the name of a kind, perhaps with properties: for instance 'Treehouse is a lighted room' says that something called Treehouse exists and that it is a 'room', which is a kind I know about, combined with a property called 'lighted' which I also know about.


Problem. The sentence 'The securitys are none, low, high, and sealed'   appears to say two things are the same - I am reading 'securitys' and 'low' as two different things, and therefore it makes no sense to say that one is the other: it would be like saying that 'Tarzan is Jane'. It would be all right if the second thing were the name of a kind, perhaps with properties: for instance 'Treehouse is a lighted room' says that something called Treehouse exists and that it is a 'room', which is a kind I know about, combined with a property called 'lighted' which I also know about.


Problem. The sentence 'The securitys are none, low, high, and sealed'   appears to say two things are the same - I am reading 'securitys' and 'high' as two different things, and therefore it makes no sense to say that one is the other: it would be like saying that 'Tarzan is Jane'. It would be all right if the second thing were the name of a kind, perhaps with properties: for instance 'Treehouse is a lighted room' says that something called Treehouse exists and that it is a 'room', which is a kind I know about, combined with a property called 'lighted' which I also know about.


Problem. The sentence 'The securitys are none, low, high, and sealed'   appears to say two things are the same - I am reading 'securitys' and 'sealed' as two different things, and therefore it makes no sense to say that one is the other: it would be like saying that 'Tarzan is Jane'. It would be all right if the second thing were the name of a kind, perhaps with properties: for instance 'Treehouse is a lighted room' says that something called Treehouse exists and that it is a 'room', which is a kind I know about, combined with a property called 'lighted' which I also know about.


Problem. You wrote 'The comms are on, restricted, and off'  : again, this seems to refer to something whose name begins with a comma.
[/quote]
I have no clue what to do here.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=427&start=0#p2477
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table Problems
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-08-03 02:47:08

The first error message is because you don't have a line space before the table. When you define climate, ventilation and security levels, you have the word "off" in each of them, but each value has to have unique properties. Also, "on" is a reserved word. "Define security as security level" doesn't mean anything.

[code]Period is a kind of value. The periods are morning, midday, and evening.

Table 1 - News Items
Period	News
Morning	"Today, a sad tragedy occured in near the Dimon district."
Morning	"later"
Midday	"So"
Midday	"Then they"
Midday	"And so"
Evening	"Decling output has lead to the seizure and auction of Huyam Manufacturing plant"
Evening	"Service has been temporarily disrupted for maintainance"

Climate is a kind of value. The climates are hot, norm, cold, frigid, and unset.

Ventilation is a kind of value. The ventilations are running, vacuum, and stopped.

Security level is a kind of value. The security levels are none, low, high, and sealed.

Comms is a kind of value. The comms are available, restricted, and unavailable.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=428&start=0#p2478
Forum: Feedback / Subject: RSS feed
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-08-03 02:53:33

Could it be possible to get new posts as an RSS feed? It would be easier to follow the topics and maybe the board could be added to Planet IF at [url]http://wordeology.com/planet-if/[/url] for more visibility. A quick Google search seems to suggest there are extensions available for phpBB that add RSS.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=428&start=0#p2479
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: RSS feed
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-08-03 11:32:00

[quote]Could it be possible to get new posts as an RSS feed?[/quote]
I don't know how to do this, but I think it's a great idea.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=427&start=0#p2480
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table Problems
User: ryacku / DateTime: 2008-08-03 20:39:28

Hey, how am I supposed to see the space before each table in the documentation? Oh well. Now I know. Thank you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=429&start=0#p2481
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Vegitarian
User: jfcwilson / DateTime: 2008-08-04 14:28:03

I am vegan.
Anyone else?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=430&start=0#p2482
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Mock Computer Interface
User: ryacku / DateTime: 2008-08-04 23:37:28

Basically I'm thinking about have a computer interface inside an IF game I'm making. I'm thinking about making it similiar to AMFV's various modes. What is the best way to do this? Or the right direction I should be pointed in? Because I'm thinking I may need to create an interface involving immobile NPCs, but I'm hoping that the large dialogue trees that might result aren't the best solution.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=429&start=0#p2483
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Vegitarian
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2008-08-05 04:47:57

Well, yes, if you wish to know: I am a vegetarian, and have been one for a little over four years now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=30#p2484
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2008-08-05 04:52:07

Hi gmaker56,

Unless you really relish the challenge of writing an IF game from the ground up--which is very difficult to do well--I strongly suggest you take a look at one of the existing IF programming languages. They give you a lot for free: a virtual machine that runs on many operating systems, a sophisticated parser, a basic world model; and you'll still be able to build the game you envision.

Currently, the most used IF development systems are TADS 3 (which looks like a traditional programming language, and comes with a graphical IDE for Windows) and Inform 7 (which has an intriguing natural language approach, and comes with a graphical IDE for Linux, Windows and MacOS X).

Have fun!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=403&start=0#p2485
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: "Was this review helpful to you?" (IFDB)
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2008-08-05 04:55:26

I use those options constantly to rate the quality of the review. Not whether I agree with it, but whether it's a good review. (Check Zork I on the IFDB: I have voted that the current topmost review is helpful, even though it was written in opposition to my own review.)

IFDB uses these scores, as Emerald says, to ensure that the best reviews get on top. So if there are 30 reviews for a game, you'll first see the ones that people thought most helpful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=430&start=0#p2486
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Mock Computer Interface
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2008-08-05 05:03:43

Check this URL: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/source/inform/lists.tar.Z">http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/gam ... ists.tar.Z</a>

It's the (Inform 5?) source code to "Lists and Lists", which has a mock computer interface. Maybe you can glean some ideas from it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=429&start=0#p2487
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Vegitarian
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-08-05 05:15:41

[quote]Well, yes, if you wish to know: I am a vegetarian, and have been one for a little over four years now.[/quote]
Victor,

Do you believe this is the result or the cause of your obsession with violence as a means of survival?  [emote];)[/emote] 
[url]http://gamingphilosopher.blogspot.com/2008/07/violence-in-my-games.html[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=429&start=0#p2488
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Vegitarian
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2008-08-05 17:56:03

My obsession (at least in my game design!) is with violence, not necessarily with violence as a means of survival--it's just that that's the kind of violence that is easiest to understand, easiest to buy into, and easiest to have the players commit.

Is there a link? Well, certainly, though it is not a strictly logical connection. Violence against humans is a bizarre phenomenon that we need to understand in order to diminish it, which is where my games come in. Violence against animals is a bizarre phenomenon that we don't even need to understand in order to diminish it: we can just stop doing it. That's where my vegetarianism comes in.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=403&start=0#p2489
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: "Was this review helpful to you?" (IFDB)
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2008-08-05 19:16:40

Thank you for your answers, everybody! [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=428&start=0#p2490
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: RSS feed
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-08-06 07:18:35

There might be something out there to do that - I don't know. I could look into it when I get a chance. I know nothing about RSS or RSS feeds, though, so I'd be investigating as a total newbie.

(update)

I checked out planet-if.com (which I really didn't know about before -- maybe heard it mentioned elsewhere, but that's about all). It looks to be more news and blog based. Would forum posts make it seem kinda... spammy? Too much off-topic or trivial stuff showing up too often (great for a discussion board, not so great as an RSS feed)?

Maybe I just need to get off my lazy duff and finish the news and posting scripts for intfiction.org, and investigate "RSS Feeds" for that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=428&start=0#p2491
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: RSS feed
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-08-06 07:52:28

I agree that adding new posts to planet-if would probably clutter it up too much, but just having them available as a feed might be nice. I'm pretty much "feed ignorant" myself, but being able to check for new posts without having to go to the site (like you can with the RSS feed from the I7 extensions page) is convenient. In the case of intfiction, it would only save a couple clicks, since you can already go to new posts, but someone who regularly checks a bunch of feeds might appreciate it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=431&start=0#p2492
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: another anchorhead help thread.
User: randomtempaccount / DateTime: 2008-08-07 00:16:22

All right, this board doesn't seem that active, so I doubt I'll get a reply, but here goes:
 
In the game "Anchorhead"  I think I've came across a bug or something stopping my progress.  In the second day, after doing all the random tasks in the house and town, and getting the copper key from the hobo, when I go back to the house I get the "Michael doesn't reply/must be alone" message, but when I go up to his study, I still get the "Better not disturb him" message.  I've even started the game over (more than once) and the same thing happens.  Any help?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=432&start=0#p2493
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: AMOI-I don't get it
User: jfcwilson / DateTime: 2008-08-07 12:37:30

AMOI(A Matter Of Importance)
I have gotten to the part where the boy is loitering in front of the jewel shop, and can't get past him. Help!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=432&start=0#p2494
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: AMOI-I don't get it
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-08-07 18:10:53

Yeah, this part is really tricky if I remember correctly. Let me think...

(spoiler space)
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It has something to do with shoes if I remember correctly. And a ball you're supposed to kick... I think. Hmm. I will have to check my transcript and get back to you. If I remember right, it's a non-standard action, like removing your shoes or tying the laces together or something.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=431&start=0#p2495
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: another anchorhead help thread.
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-08-07 21:32:48

That's one I never played.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=431&start=0#p2496
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: another anchorhead help thread.
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-08-08 02:44:19

I think you may have got stuck in the same way I did. If I remember correctly (it's been a long time since I played Anchorhead), there's a pretty trivial action you have to take early on in the chapter, and if you don't you're stuck. At least, I never found a way around it.

At the beginning of the day, while Michael is in the bathroom, did you
[spoiler]search his clothes[/spoiler]
[spoiler]and take his library card?[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=433&start=0#p2497
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Debuggin verbs in I7?
User: Ewarwoowar / DateTime: 2008-08-08 09:27:03

Hi Gang!

I'm a newbie I7 programmer (done some I6 programming but never actually completed a game! and I'm a programmer IRL too) working on my first game, and must say that I think that I7 is absolutey genius!

Anyway, I'm having some issues with tracking things down in the documentation (but note from other's posts that I'm not alone in this regard).

I was wondering if I7 has any debugging verbs and, if so, what are they and how do you turn them on?  I'm hoping to be able to get objects no matter where they are in the game and also go directly to a location.

The documentation makes referencing to debugging in several places but doesn't go into any details, and the only debugging command that is explicitly mentioned is 'ACTIONS'.

Many thanks,
Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=30#p2498
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Ewarwoowar / DateTime: 2008-08-08 10:11:58

Hi Gang!

Paul here from England.  Only came across this forum the other day when searching for some help to a problem I had with my newly-discovered Inform7 download!  And very glad I am to have found it, too!

I'm a fair bit older than most on here (I won't go into specifics) and my first introduction to IF was a magazine article in Personal Computer World in about 1978 about this wonderful new game called 'Adventure' and how to program your own.  Ever since then I've wanted to write my own game and did start a couple using BASIC on the Commodore Pet (while at school) and later, again in BASIC, on the VIC20 and then the C64.  By then I'd actually played 'Adventure' on the college's DEC PDP-10 mini (much to the annoyance of my Computer Science tutor!) and later bought and played all the adventure games I could afford (Scott Adams ones on the C64 and the Infocom Zork series - again on C64 - readily come to mind).

I ended up becoming completely obsessed with an online adventure game that actually had OTHER PEOPLE in it!  YES!  I know - amazing, huh?  But then this was 1982.  This was MUD (the very first!) running on the mainframe at the University of Essex, and could only be played at night (I was a computer operator by this time working shifts and could play all night every third week) using a special connection that you could only rent from British Telecom.  Cost me about £70 per month in phone bills which, in the early 80's was a huge amount (about a week's wages at the time if I recall correctly).

Well, life got in the way after that, and MUD ended up going commercial and I didn't want to pay a hefty phone bill AND pay to play and I drifted away from text adventures.

Late 90's and I discovered this thing called Inform and the Z-machine (and British Legends - the original MUD now running on CompuServe!) and re-kindled my interest in IF.  I downloaded the old Zork games and was hooked again!  I tried learning Inform and then, in an attempt to get around my short-comings in that department, wrote an IDE for Inform called Inform Edit (later renamed to Inform Explorer).  Again life got in the way and IE ended up gathering dust and the world of IF moved on without me.

Recently I re-discovered MUD, only in the form of MUD2 this time, and spurred on by that have again become interested in authoring something myself.  I saw I7 about 2 years ago, but was too busy at that time to follow it up, and downloaded it again last week and have been looking at it since then and trying to get my head around it.  My personal project is to port MUD2 into I7 and, with the aid of Guncho, get it up and running in multi-user mode.  I've made a start, but I guess only time will tell whether I actually get very far with it (I have a very good history of starting things and then losing interest).

Well, that's me - bit of a mish-mash of experience - and I hope to be a good contributor to the forum.

Regards,
Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=431&start=0#p2499
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: another anchorhead help thread.
User: randomtempaccount / DateTime: 2008-08-09 01:35:23

Yeah, and I'm pretty sure I did everything because the second time through I was using a walkthrough to see if I might have missed something vital to see if that was the issue.  I even downloaded the file through a different site to see if the problem would reoccur, and it did.  It turns out you can just go to sleep at that point and search his computer in the morning, but I haven't progressed much since then, so I don't know if that'll have any consequences later on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=433&start=0#p2500
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Debuggin verbs in I7?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-08-09 05:02:39

The testing commands I know of are ACTIONS, RULES, SCENES, SHOWME (chapter 2.7), PURLOIN and GONEAR. The last two should be the ones you're looking for.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=433&start=0#p2501
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Debuggin verbs in I7?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-08-09 08:04:42

In terms of documented debugging verbs, there's also RELATIONS.

In addition, there are some undocumented ones shown in the "Tests Template" section of Appendix B, which can be found on the I7 website. Of those, I've found TRACE to be recently useful to me when I was trying to track down a parser disambiguation issue. It turns on parser tracing to a specified level of detail, ranging from "TRACE 0" (off) to "TRACE 6". (Although the notes only mention levels from 0 - 5, 6 does give a slightly more detailed breakdown.)

Of the ones Nitku mentions, my all - time, indispensible, wouldn't - understand - a - thing - without debugging verb is RULES (especially in "RULES ALL" mode) followed closely by ACTIONS.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=30#p2502
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2008-08-09 09:40:45

[quote="Ewarwoowar"]I ended up becoming completely obsessed with an online adventure game that actually had OTHER PEOPLE in it!  YES!  I know - amazing, huh?  But then this was 1982.  This was MUD (the very first!) running on the mainframe at the University of Essex, and could only be played at night (I was a computer operator by this time working shifts and could play all night every third week) using a special connection that you could only rent from British Telecom.  Cost me about £70 per month in phone bills which, in the early 80's was a huge amount (about a week's wages at the time if I recall correctly).[/quote]
Hi Paul!

I got my BSc in Computer Science from the University of Essex, so an extra special welcome to the forum for you.   [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=30#p2503
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: George / DateTime: 2008-08-10 11:50:12

Welcome Paul. Your MUD2 to Guncho project sounds very cool. How is Guncho coming along these days anyway?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=434&start=0#p2504
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Looking for music
User: jfcwilson / DateTime: 2008-08-10 15:38:12

I'm done. 
Thank you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=435&start=0#p2505
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7, Experiencing Things
User: ryacku / DateTime: 2008-08-10 18:33:50

How would I put a value on an experience? Like AMFV's internal badness value on events and sights.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=30#p2506
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Ewarwoowar / DateTime: 2008-08-11 04:12:30

Hi Pacian, hi George!

Thanks for the welcome.  Small world, eh Pacian?  I never went to the Uni, but lived down the road in nearby Clacton.  Did you ever get to play MUD while it was on the Uni's machine or was that before your time?

I don't really know much about Guncho or how it works, but understand from the author (Jesse McGrew) that development is currently on hold (real life getting in the way!), but that he plans to resume development in the "near future".

I'm hoping that he does and that it gets better over time as I've already found a few things about it that I'm not completely happy with, but hey: it's saved me from having to do much of the hard work that I knew was needed to get it up and running.

Cheers,
Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=433&start=0#p2507
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Debuggin verbs in I7?
User: Ewarwoowar / DateTime: 2008-08-11 04:15:14

Thanks guys.

From what I can see, debugging is active within the IDE without having to do anything special.  Is this right?

Cheers,
Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=433&start=0#p2508
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Debuggin verbs in I7?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-08-11 04:58:20

That's correct.

If you need to compile a debug version for use [i]outside[/i] of the IDE -- if you want to test your work on another 'terp, for example -- include this line:[code]Include (- Constant DEBUG; -) after "Definitions.i6t".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=40#p2509
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2008-08-11 16:18:00

[quote="Ewarwoowar"]Thanks for the welcome.  Small world, eh Pacian?  I never went to the Uni, but lived down the road in nearby Clacton.  Did you ever get to play MUD while it was on the Uni's machine or was that before your time?[/quote]
I never encountered it, but that doesn't mean much.  A lot was before my time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=433&start=0#p2510
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Debuggin verbs in I7?
User: Ewarwoowar / DateTime: 2008-08-12 04:20:14

Thanks Mike, I'll put that in in a comment just so's I don't forget.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=435&start=0#p2511
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7, Experiencing Things
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2008-08-12 07:51:39

I'm not sure what you want to do, so maybe you can be more specific?

If you want to keep track of how many bad things someone has seen, for instance, you could try something like this:


==============

Bad things counter is a number that varies. Bad things counter is 1.

A thing has a number called the badness. The badness of a thing is usually 0.

The mutilated corpse is here. The badness of the mutilated corpse is 3.

The disembodied hand is here. The badness of the disembodied hand is 2.

After examining:
   increase the bad things counter by the badness of the noun;
   now the badness of the noun is 0.

==========


But maybe this is not at all what you want?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=424&start=0#p2512
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: TADS 2 game in production
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2008-08-12 08:00:47

I don't really understand what you want. You seem to have made a lot of decisions concerning the plot already, so what kind of ideas would you like to hear?

I mean, I could say something like: "Make it a game that seems to be an old-school treasure hunt when you begin, but in fact turns out to be about the disastrous living conditions in rural South-America and how this is the result of exactly the kind of capitalist sentiments that the treasure hunt exemplifies!", but that might not be the kind of suggestion you are looking for.

Also, you have only given us some relatively unimportant details--where it is set, when it is set, that kind of thing. Tell me more about the protagonist: what kind of person is she? What are her dreams and fears? Has she done something of which is she ashamed and which will come back to haunt her when she is far from civilization in the rain forest?

Or tell me more about the theme of your story. Are you going the "Heart of Darkness" way, using a remote location deep in the Andes as a metaphor for the savage heart of mankind? Or do you want to use the ruins of El Dorado as symbols of how not even the greatest works of men can stand against the test of time? Do you want to make it a morality tale, in which the treasures of El Dorado are not in fact gold, but wisdom / love / whatever you believe to be of the greatest importance to our lives?

In sum -- tell us more, because right now you have given us only the most external facts about your tale, and none of the really interesting stuff that you want to do with it.

Also, what kind of gameplay do you envision?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=435&start=0#p2513
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7, Experiencing Things
User: ryacku / DateTime: 2008-08-12 16:28:06

Exactly it. Thank you. I figure I'm going to use this eventually, possibly wierding out guests of a dinner party or such. I could imagine a lot of scenarios where I could use this. Really, thank you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=437&start=0#p2515
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 and Guncho: how do I tell Guncho that a PC can't see?
User: Ewarwoowar / DateTime: 2008-08-14 08:11:25

Hi gang, 

I'm tinkering with Guncho and putting together a realm and have hit on what I think is (and will be) a fundamental problem within multi-user IF: that of vision (and possibly hearing - but that's another, albeit related, topic). 

I have changed the sleep action using a before rule to flag whenever a PC is asleep (providing they need it of course): 

[code][Command: sleep] 
Before sleeping: 
        if the actor is asleep: 
                say "You[']re already asleep, you idiot." instead; 
        otherwise: 
                if the current stamina of the actor is less than the maximum stamina of the actor: 
                        now the actor is asleep; 
                        say "Zzz..."; 
                        tell "[The actor] has fallen asleep." to everyone who can see the actor, except the actor; 
                        stop the action. 

Before doing anything while the actor is asleep: 
        say "You can't do that, you[']re asleep." instead. [/code]

Now, while the PC is asleep, I don't want them notified of world events such as other PCs or NPCs coming or going (i.e. they shouldn't be able to see them, or hear them either for that matter). 

I'd hoped to achieve that by using the following rule: 

[code]Visibility rule when the actor is blind or asleep: 
        If the actor is blind or the actor is asleep: 
                there is insufficient light; 
                stop the action. [/code]
But this doesn't work: I still get messages about other players entering or leaving, even though the PC really shouldn't be able to 'see' them. 

Can anyone throw any light on this for me please? 

Thanks, 
Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=235&start=0#p2516
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Ideas to turn a single player adventure into multi-player
User: Ewarwoowar / DateTime: 2008-08-14 08:29:02

Wow! I've just come across this topic and found it encouraging to find other people thinking along the same lines as me.

I, too, have had it in my head for several years now to develop (or perhaps help develop!) a multi-player IF framework.  I've thought about different ways in which it could be done and came to the conclusion that something which converts an Inform file into another language which will then be compiled into an executable, complete with a pre-configured server framework around it - I was leaning towards C# as the syntax is very similar to Inform.

However, once I started looking, I came across Inform 7 (I had previously used I6) and almost immediately came across Guncho, which I've now started looking into using in anger.

It's a bit of a steep learning curve as not only have I got to try and figure out I7, but I also need to figure out how Guncho changes things behind the scenes too.

I'm keen to progress my realm and would like to offer any help I can to Vaporware and others to progress the development of Guncho: it saves re-inventing the wheel and perhaps helps make the current one a little more rounded in places!

Regards,
Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=438&start=0#p2517
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7, Parts of Self
User: ryacku / DateTime: 2008-08-14 22:52:59

>x self
You see a polished chrome finish covering most of your body. Although parts are scratched, your body is shiny. Your are equipped with a mop brush, an internal chronometer, along with a chargemeter on your body.

>x chargemeter
You can't see any such thing.

>x chronometer
You can't see any such thing.


[code]A robot is a kind of person. The actor is a robot. A robot is always neuter.

...

The internal chronometer is a kind of thing. The internal chronometer is a part of every robot. The description of internal chronometer is "Your atomic clock states the time is [time of day] Galactic Standard Time."

The Chargemeter is a kind of thing. Chargemeter is a part of every robot. The description of the chargemeter is "The dial indicates that you are fully powered."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=438&start=0#p2518
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7, Parts of Self
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-08-15 00:56:29

If you add the line:
[code]The player is the actor.[/code]
your code should work as you expect.

Or you can replace "The actor is a robot." with 
[code]Yourself is a robot.[/code]

The line "The actor is a robot." just creates a robot called "the actor"; it doesn't tell Inform that "the actor" is the player character.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=432&start=0#p2519
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: AMOI-I don't get it
User: uux02 / DateTime: 2008-08-18 21:36:14

Spoiler space
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-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
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You have to distract the boy by throwing something at the same time you're kicking the ball. Unfortunately, the parser won't let you do so directly.
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-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Thus, you'd have to throw something that's attached to your feet.
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One of your shoes. Just make sure it isn't attached too firmly by...
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... UNDOing your LACE.

BTW, which version of the game are you playing? The post-competition version should give you a direct hint in this respect if you hang out there long enough.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=439&start=0#p2520
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: TADS 2 problem and rec.arts.int-fiction problem
User: jfcwilson / DateTime: 2008-08-21 13:09:25

First, when I post on rec.arts.int-fiction, it asks for something called a "Cc". I don't know what that is, and won't let me post without it.


Second,

I'm tryinig to make a cutscene like in The Plant. I've done it before quite easily.
However, when I compile this code(some testing code I rigged up for this problem), 
it compiles(with the -C option) and runs  just fine, but when I go north, it exits HTML TADS, and says in an error message box: "You must specify a numeric value!". I checked some old code I used before to do the same thing, and I appear to be doing it correctly. Any input?




#include <adv.t>
#include <std.t>

startroom: room
sdesc="Short desc"
ldesc="Long desc."
north=
{
 "Setting the notify..";
 notify (aScript, &script, 0);
 return(nil);
}
;

aScript: item
script =
  {
    self.scriptNum++;
    switch (self.scriptNum)
    {
      case 1:
        "\bThis boring room is so boring. ";
        break;
      case 2:
        "\bOh god.. so boring... ";
        break;
      case 3:
        "\bBoring, Boring, Boring. ";
        break;
      case 4:
        "\bSave me from this epic boring starting room!";
        break;
      case 5:
        "\bFinally,this lamenting script is finished. ";
        unnotify(self, &script);
        break;
    }
  }
;

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=439&start=0#p2521
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 2 problem and rec.arts.int-fiction problem
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2008-08-21 15:19:58

How do you try to post to the newsgroup? Are you using a newsreader like Mozilla Thunderbird, or are you using a web interface like Google Groups?

"CC" sounds like the good old "carbon copy" of email, but that shouldn't be something you need to supply.

(I know nothing about TADS, so can't help you with your second question, alas.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=440&start=0#p2522
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Looking for help, or an example
User: StefanJ / DateTime: 2008-08-21 22:25:27

Howdy!

I've been tinkering with I6 on and off for a couple of years. I completed one adventure ("Radley Manor") and am working on another, much more ambitious one.

One of the puzzles involves making a pot of coffee with a big old coffee maker. You need to put in grounds and water, turn the machine on, and put a mug into a receptacle. 

I can't get the "if the empty mug is put into the receptacle, and the other conditions are met, replace the empty mug with a full mug" to work.

Is there a bit of sample or example code out there someone could recommend?

And a general question . . . if I put a bit of code here for comments, can I still enter the overall piece in competition?

Thanks

Stefan

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=439&start=0#p2523
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 2 problem and rec.arts.int-fiction problem
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-08-22 02:09:33

[quote="jfcwilson"]I'm tryinig to make a cutscene like in The Plant. I've done it before quite easily.
However, when I compile this code(some testing code I rigged up for this problem), 
it compiles(with the -C option) and runs  just fine, but when I go north, it exits HTML TADS, and says in an error message box: "You must specify a numeric value!". I checked some old code I used before to do the same thing, and I appear to be doing it correctly. Any input?[/quote]
You just need to add
[code]scriptNum = 0[/code]
to your aScript object.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=440&start=0#p2524
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Looking for help, or an example
User: ryacku / DateTime: 2008-08-22 23:36:40

I think you could.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=441&start=0#p2525
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Help!
User: johnny / DateTime: 2008-08-24 14:51:35

I'm trying to implement this Inform 7 code in TADS 3:

[code]
Instead of throwing the meat at the dragon:
        Say "The dragon catches the meat and runs off to eat it.";
        Move the meat into the dragon;
        Move the dragon into nowhere;
[/code]

or something like that (I don't really know exactly what code to use in Inform). How do I do this?

PS: nowhere is a room for things that disappear.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=238&start=0#p2526
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with TADS3 compiler and Heidi
User: johnny / DateTime: 2008-08-24 14:56:02

[quote="tadpole"]Back to GWBASIC for the TADS3 developers until they master the basics![/quote]

What's GWBASIC?????

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=440&start=0#p2527
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Looking for help, or an example
User: StefanJ / DateTime: 2008-08-24 15:53:43

OK, I figured it out. The problem with my initial design was a dumb syntax error. 

I was using the condition:

coffee_maker.on

Rather than:

coffee_maker has on

Here is the implementation. The "coffeed" and "watered" attributes get set by using a coffee can and a water can, respectively.

[quote]Object mug_empty "coffee mug" mess_hall
with name 'mug' 'coffee',
description "It's a white earthenware coffee mug, built to last.",
initial "A coffee mug sits on the end of the counter.",
each_turn [;
	if(self in coffee_maker_receptacle && coffee_maker has on)
	{
		remove self;
		move mug_full to player;
		print "A stream of coffee fills the mug, which you take.";
		
	}
	return true;
]
;[/quote]

[quote]Object coffee_maker "coffee maker" kitchen
with name 'coffee' 'maker' 'urn' 'percolator',
watered false,
coffeed false,
brewing false,
ready false,
firstlook true,
description 
[;	print "Standing by the kitchen door is a big industrial grade percolator.";
	if (self.firstlook)
	{
		print "The cylindrical machine is stained and beaten up through long use. Camp counselors are allowed to serve themselves right from the machine, but coffee is off-limit to campers. Once, on a dare, one of the bigger Wolf Lodge guys snook in and tried to take a mug full. He got in *big* trouble!^";
		self.firstlook = false;

	}
	print "The coffee maker has hopper for ground coffee ";
	if (coffee_maker.coffeed==true)
			print "(which is full), ";
		else
		print "(which is empty), ";
	print "a brewing done light ";
	if (coffee_maker has on)
		print "(which is lit), ";
	else
		print "(which is off), ";
	print "a water meter ";
	if (coffee_maker.watered==true)
		print "(which shows full), ";
	else
		print "(which shows empty), ";
	print "and a receptacle for a coffee mug ";	
	if (mug_empty in coffee_maker_receptacle)
		print "(which has an empty mug in it). ";
	else if (mug_full in coffee_maker_receptacle)
		print "(which has a mug of steaming coffee in it). ";
	else
		print "(which is empty). ";
],
before
[;
	SwitchOn:
	if (coffee_maker.coffeed && coffee_maker.watered)
	{
		give coffee_maker on;
		print "The indicator light turns on. A gurgling sound comes from within the machine. ";
		!start timer
		return true;
	}
	else
	{
		print "The indicator light stays off and the switch flips back to the ~off~ position. Perhaps the percolator doesn't have everything it needs to make coffee?";
		return true;
	}
],
has static switchable
;[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=441&start=0#p2528
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Help!
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-08-25 04:03:10

Try this:
[code]dragon: UntakeableActor
    'dragon'
    'dragon'

    iobjFor(ThrowAt)
    {
        action()
        {
            if (gDobj == meat)
            {
                "The dragon catches the meat and runs off to eat it. ";
                meat.moveInto(nil);
                dragon.moveIntoForTravel(nil);
                exit;
            }
            else
            {
                inherited();
            }
        }
    }
    
    throwHitFallMsg = 'The dragon sniffs at {the dobj/him} and turns its head 
        away scornfully. '
;[/code]

The important part of the code is the "action()" method. The "throwHitFallMsg" gives a message for throwing something other than the meat at the dragon.

I used "moveIntoForTravel" on the dragon, rather than just "moveInto", because you [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/techman/t3npcTravel.htm]aren't supposed to use "moveInto" on Actors[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=441&start=0#p2529
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Help!
User: johnny / DateTime: 2008-08-25 12:28:18

Thanks a lot!

Probably I could find this in the reference but it would have been tedious.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=238&start=0#p2530
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with TADS3 compiler and Heidi
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2008-08-26 07:22:56

[quote]GW-BASIC was a dialect of BASIC developed by Microsoft from BASICA, originally for Compaq. [...] It was bundled with MS-DOS operating systems on IBM PC compatibles by Microsoft. [...] The language was suitable for simple games, business programs and the like. Since it was included with most versions of MS-DOS, it was also an inexpensive way for many would-be programmers to learn the fundamentals of computer programming.[/quote]
<a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GW-BASIC">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GW-BASIC</a>

Google is your friend.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=238&start=10#p2531
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with TADS3 compiler and Heidi
User: johnny / DateTime: 2008-08-26 16:39:43

I dont like plain BASIC very well, Microsoft VB is better

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=442&start=0#p2532
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: A perspective on the subject of competitions
User: Chris. / DateTime: 2008-08-26 17:53:56

Just a viewpoint that might be interesting to ponder: Why is it that any activity that's genuinely enjoyed by a reasonably sized group of people must be reduced to the rather juvenile sphere of "competition"?

In the case of the IF community, it only seems to be counter-progressive, considering that the limited amount of judges ostensibly can't -- or don't want to -- explore through any text adventure that takes more than a specified, small amount of time to complete (especially considering the amount of submissions).

Perhaps they should refrain from the undertaking, then? I would only say such a thing because this seems a self-defeating limitation. If it's taken for granted that competition pushes the writer to enhance all of his skills, then shouldn't this hypothetical writer be encouraged to expand, making his work less linear and more unorthodox (and hence, more time-consuming, as any truly fresh approach takes longer to assimilate) -- rather than being encouraged to explore the different ways in which a minimalist idea can be dressed up stylistically or rhetorically?

I might be missing something, of course; maybe they've tried to add judges, but nobody wants to spend so much time playing others' games and rating them within finite critera. I can understand that.

I submit that competing for some kind of prize threatens the visceral enjoyment of pulling fiction out of one's imagination purely for his own pleasure; and that considering the submissions' enforced limitations, it truly keeps the craft from expanding much. It seems to practically encourage the writer's adherence to quickly completed challenges or easily navigated stories (read: predictability), even notwithstanding the more obvious, if equally significant, limitations on sheer world size.

I guess I simply don't understand why it's not natural for people to enjoy sharing their creative endeavors with one another, and just be glad that there are others of like interest with whom to have fun with their chosen fixations, even when those fixations are decidedly (and, I might add, gloriously) "unfashionable."

Lest this be interpreted wrongly, I've never entered an IF competition, and don't intend to; my games are too long, to begin with. Half the fun for me is the exploration facet. In fact, what I truly enjoy is the process itself, rather than the completion; I do this purely for my own enjoyment. Other writers' acceptance of, or rejection of, competitions doesn't exactly matter to me. And much of this paragraph is based on personal taste, of course. But I can't help but find myself rather curious as to what other IF writers might think about this. It's just a fun thing to talk about, you might say.

I suppose it goes without saying that anyone who displays arrogance, or a general feeling of superiority, about writing such a thing as interactive fiction -- still a niche hobby, as far as the computing world is concerned (granted, we shouldn't be concerned with this) -- is quite off the mark, and presumably harbors other purposes, conscious or not, than the enjoyment of word-craft and genuine imaginative undertakings. Any such incarnate example of "contributing nothing productive to any self-styled community" figures quite outside my devil's advocate-like challenge of "writing games for one's own pleasure" (the whole point) vs. "writing games to gain others' approval" (external and quite besides the point).

This is not intended to shortchange anyone's efforts, subvert any writer's pride in winning a past competition, or exhibit antagonism in any sense. Diverse opinions are healthy things to consider (and collectively help to prevent stagnation in any creative field), and like the man said, without deviation, progress is not possible.

This is merely provided as food for thought from someone who's loved playing and writing text adventures for a quarter-century -- hopeful fodder for grown-up discussion, if any replies at all are forthcoming in these relatively sparse forums. Thanks for taking it in the intended spirit.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=442&start=0#p2533
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A perspective on the subject of competitions
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-08-26 19:27:58

Emily Short wrote a thoughtful piece last year on [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2007/11/12/art-in-competition/]the value of the IF Comp[/url] to the IF community. Worth reading if you haven't seen it yet.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=442&start=0#p2534
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A perspective on the subject of competitions
User: Chris. / DateTime: 2008-08-27 12:11:10

Thanks, Emerald! I'll definitely read that. I appreciate the link.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=443&start=0#p2535
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Amazing research on the Colossal Cave code (and location!)
User: Chris. / DateTime: 2008-08-27 15:34:37

Has anyone seen this? Talk about an exhaustive amount of investigative work! Pretty fascinating stuff, at least if you're a rather obsessive IF nerd like me.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/001/2/000009.html">http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vo ... 00009.html</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=442&start=0#p2536
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A perspective on the subject of competitions
User: George / DateTime: 2008-08-27 16:43:22

[quote="Chris."]Just a viewpoint that might be interesting to ponder: Why is it that any activity that's genuinely enjoyed by a reasonably sized group of people must be reduced to the rather juvenile sphere of "competition"?

In the case of the IF community, it only seems to be counter-progressive, considering that the limited amount of judges ostensibly can't -- or don't want to -- explore through any text adventure that takes more than a specified, small amount of time to complete (especially considering the amount of submissions).[/quote]

I would say that competition isn't only juvenile. First of all I don't think it's coincidence that the root of the term is based in a coming together; secondly the spirit of competitions in many game development communities is a genuine community spirit, and has little to do with 'competition' in the strict sense of the word. 

IF writers tend to develop their competition pieces in relative isolation; compare this with something like the IGF competition or TIGSource comps and you see serious differences. I don't know if in more publically visible (and moneyed) competitions like IGF people consciously jack up the hype meter, or in shorter comps (like TiGSource's) people feel free to display their development process, or it's just that the IF community is based in a quieter, more niche, mid 90s Internet and there's no reason to change that fundamental culture in a major way (I'm not saying there is, anyway).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=442&start=0#p2537
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A perspective on the subject of competitions
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2008-08-27 18:39:07

[quote="Chris."]I submit that competing for some kind of prize threatens the visceral enjoyment of pulling fiction out of one's imagination purely for his own pleasure; and that considering the submissions' enforced limitations, it truly keeps the craft from expanding much.[/quote]
If people truly are pulling fiction out of their imagination for their own pleasure, surely they're the only people who'll have heard of it?  But even if they really aren't interested in anyone else enjoying it but themselves, some of their enjoyment would come from their skill in the craft - which can only be seriously improved with feedback and criticism.

[quote="Chris."]I guess I simply don't understand why it's not natural for people to enjoy sharing their creative endeavors with one another, and just be glad that there are others of like interest with whom to have fun with their chosen fixations, even when those fixations are decidedly (and, I might add, gloriously) "unfashionable."[/quote]
As I understand it, many in the IF community find that, whether it's natural or not, this simply isn't what happens.  The IF competition is seen as the one place you can release an IF game and actually find any reason to believe that other people have actually played it.

This doesn't especially chime with my own experiences, however, and the only competitions I take part in are more casual affairs whose chief aim is simply to get people to make and release games that they wouldn't have otherwise.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=444&start=0#p2538
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 6:How to extract direction, location from a Go order?
User: StefanJ / DateTime: 2008-08-27 19:40:24

Part of my current project's map is a lake.

I made a "Lake" class to describe the rooms which make up the lake. It has rules for drowning (or swimming to shore if there is one nearby).

I also made gave a "dock" attribute to the two actual docks in the map. These are not Lake rooms.

I'd like to limit the movement of the boat to Lake rooms, and to the docks.

Below is how I roughed it out:

[code]Object lost_boat "A humble punt" north_shore
with name 'punt' 'humble' 'boat',
description "A shallow old punt made of weathered plywood. It looks in good repair.",
before
[;
	Go:
	if(parent(GODIR)==Lake)
	{
		print "You row the punt";
		move self to direction;
	}
	else if(GODIR has dock)
	{
		print "You skillfully tie the punt to the dock.";
		move self to direction;
	}
	else
	{
		"Sorry. Unlike Michael, you can't row the boat ashore . . . only on the lake or up to a dock.";
	}
],
has enterable container open static
;[/code]

Now, the problem is, how do I determine the room that lies in the desired direction?

Example:

[code]Lake middlelake
with description "middle of lake",
n_to north_dock,
s_to south_lake;[/code]

The player is in the boat and the boat is in middlelake. The player enters "GO NORTH".

How do I extract "north dock" from that command?

Thanks,

Stefan

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=442&start=0#p2539
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A perspective on the subject of competitions
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-08-27 21:37:44

To me, the annual IFComp has been the driving force behind the IF I've released. When there's no deadline, no urgency, no sense of commitment -- nothing "on the line" so to speak -- I don't create much of anything. This is arguably a character flaw on my part, but be that as it may, a couple games a few people have really enjoyed probably wouldn't exist if I hadn't felt driven to compete. It's probably the same for some of the other participants.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=442&start=0#p2540
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A perspective on the subject of competitions
User: Chris. / DateTime: 2008-08-28 14:03:50

Thank you for the thoughtful comments. They're certainly more experience-based than mine; I've done this for years without really offering anything for people to play. The only bit I would respectfully disagree with concerns the theory that a writer can only get better with criticism and feedback -- but I only contest this if it's being applied universally. I'm more "selfish" with my...let's call them creative endeavors, just to be a bit pretentious for a moment. I write according to my own tastes, as I suspect most people do in the IF world, before they start proofreading to attract/maintain the interest of a hypothetical "audience."

I try to improve upon making myself happy. Life is short. Approval seems to be a wasteful thing to seek. Y'know, to be honest, with this attitude, it's amazing I've managed to get any books published at all. [emote]:)[/emote]

But I certainly see why that possibility would be pointed out, and I appreciate the time you more succinct people have taken to respond.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=444&start=0#p2541
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6:How to extract direction, location from a Go order?
User: DrkStarr / DateTime: 2008-08-30 18:56:17

I'm not sure how others would this, but this is how I would do it.

"Go" is definded in Grammar.h as:

[code]
Verb 'go' 'run' 'walk'
    *                                           -> VagueGo
    * noun=ADirection                           -> Go
    * noun                                      -> Enter
    * 'into'/'in'/'inside'/'through' noun       -> Enter;
[/code]

So Go is read by the Room object, I wouldn't be trying to read it from the boat object.
If you have to break out Go from Run/Walk I would do that.  But I think players would
be more likely to just type north or south in the first place.  Playtesting helps with this.

I think your Middle of the Lake Object should look like this:

[code]
Lake middlelake
with description "middle of lake",
n_to [;
    print "You skillfully tie the punt to the dock.^";
    return north_dock;
],
s_to [;
    print "You row the punt.^";
    return south_lake;
],
cant_go "Sorry. Unlike Michael, you can't row the boat ashore . . . only on the lake or up to a dock.";
[/code]

Also, with a can't go like that a player might try, Row To Dock or Row To Lake.

If you're really worried about run/walk you can break those away: copy the GoSub from the Verblibm.h
renaming it to WalkSub or something that doesn't conflict and putting something like this at the
top of the routine.

[code]
[ WalkSub i j k df movewith thedir old_loc;
    if (location == middlelake) "So you're God and can walk on water now?";

    ! first, check if any PushDir object is touchable
[/code]

The Grammar for run/walk would look like this if you used the WalkSub:

[code]
Verb 'run' 'walk'
    *                                           -> VagueGo
    * noun=ADirection                           -> Walk
    * noun                                      -> Enter
    * 'into'/'in'/'inside'/'through' noun       -> Enter;
[/code]

Well, that's how I would do it. I'm sure there's a way to read Go from the boat object, but I would
read it from the Room Object because that's the way Inform is designed.  I try to stick with the way 
Inform is set up, avoiding those game crashing bugs.

Just my two cents [emote]:)[/emote]

- D

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=40#p2542
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Sparky / DateTime: 2008-09-04 17:49:17

Hi, I'm new here...my nickname online and off is Sparky, so call me that please. I first started using my real-life nick online when I got harassed and stalked because people knew I was female. That stopped when I started going by Sparky, then and now people tend to think I'm a teenaged boy. [emote];)[/emote] But I'm actually a 33 year old woman. I have never been part of or followed any sort of "IF community" so I don't really know any of the websites or influential persons. I have asked a few questions on the newsgroup but that's it. Anyways my brother and I grew up on the Infocom games, and we always wanted to write IFs together, but never did it (he's into computer programming and I have a degree in Creative Writing from USC). I finally authored my first IF in 2006, and finished another short one this year. I'm currently working on a longer one, that my brother helped with. (And I will be asking for help on here very soon I think, lol.) So far my games have been based on cartoons - my first is a She-Ra game, and the last one and the one I'm doing now are for Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends. I run the largest fansite for Foster's home (at fosters-home.com) so I thought I'd write some games for my site. However what I have discovered is even the older fans, who might appreciate IFs more than the youngin's who won't touch a homebrew game if it isn't an mmorpg, don't give a damn. Same for my She-Ra game, really. So no one ever plays my games and I never get any feedback.  [emote]:roll:[/emote]  I do plan on, once my current game is done, to work on something not based on something copyrighted, so I can hopefully do something more with it, at least get the IF community to play it...I'll never know if I'm any good or improving until I can get someone to play my games after all. [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=40#p2543
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: George / DateTime: 2008-09-04 21:31:09

Welcome to the forum Sparky. Sometimes it seems like you have to look hard to find people who like playing IF! [emote];)[/emote]. However at other times I'm surprised by the positive reception it gets in pretty mainstream places. So I think there's still hope.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=445&start=0#p2544
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Help with money!
User: Username / DateTime: 2008-09-08 06:27:21

I'm making a game, and I want to have a money system in it. So I looked up "money" and went to Nickle and Dimed. I copied the text exactly, but Inform's saying:

Problem. The phrase or rule definition 'Instead of going somewhere when the player encloses something ( called the stolen goods ) which is not owned by the player'   is written using the 'colon and indentation' syntax for its 'if's, 'repeat's and 'while's, where blocks of phrases grouped together are indented one tab step inward from the 'if ...:' or similar phrase to which they belong. But the tabs here seem to be misaligned, and I can't determine the structure. 

The first phrase going awry in the definition seems to be 'if the owner of the stolen goods is not a person begin'  , in case that helps.

[u][i][b]Please help![/b][/i][/u]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=445&start=0#p2545
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with money!
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-09-08 18:37:16

It's hard to say what's going wrong without seeing your code. But check that you don't have any "begin ... end" phrases (since you're using the colon/indent style) in that section of code, and make sure that the tabs are all in the right place and that they haven't accidentally turned into spaces instead.

(By the way, this would be better off under Inform Development.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=445&start=0#p2546
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with money!
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2008-09-10 04:38:32

Moved to the Inform Development section.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=445&start=0#p2547
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with money!
User: Username / DateTime: 2008-09-10 06:15:35

Ok, I changed some stuff and it all seems to be working fine now. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=447&start=0#p2548
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: The Reliques of Tolti-Alph -- build problem with Inform 7
User: rccraigb / DateTime: 2008-09-10 15:19:40

Hi,

I recently downloaded Inform 7 (5T18) and "The Reliques of Tolti-Aph" source to try a test compile.  It is not working, failing at a point in part II with a "broken half-brick".

Has anyone else been able to compile this source?

Thanks!

Craig

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=447&start=0#p2549
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: The Reliques of Tolti-Alph -- build problem with Inform 7
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-09-11 07:57:21

That game has been made with a very, very old build of I7 (one of the firsts, AFAIK). The syntax has changed a lot since then so you would have to make changes in many places to make the code work.

The tutorial is full of other good example pieces and if you want to try to compile a longer work, you could check out some of the more recent games at [url]http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=tag:I7+source+available[/url]. For example [url]http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=xrofykwwtvx686gr[/url] should work with 5T18.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=448&start=0#p2550
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Help "building a statue"
User: Sparky / DateTime: 2008-09-11 23:59:05

Okay I'm dumb, but I can't make this work.

In my game you're bringing sets of blocks ("BLEGOS", a LEGO parody) to an NPC which he adds to the statue on the couch next to him until it is complete (and then you win). There are 12 sets of blocks, therefore there are 13 different statues in different stages of completion. [i]statue1, statue2[/i] etc are "statues" and [i]Duchess' blocks, Cracker's blocks[/i] etc are "blegos". All I can come up with is something like:

[code]Carry out giving blegos to Bloo:
	say "'Hey, thanks man!' quips Bloo, taking the blocks from you and sticking them onto the statue.";
	if the couch contains the statue1
	begin;
		remove statue1 from play;
		move statue2 to the couch;
	end if;
	if the couch contains the statue2
	begin;
		remove statue2 from play;
		move statue3 to the couch;
	end if;[/code]

(and so on)

Or:

[code]Every turn while the statue1 is on the couch:
	Carry out giving blegos to Bloo:
		say "'Hey, thanks man!' quips Bloo, taking the blocks from you and sticking them onto the statue.";
		remove statue1 from play;
		move statue2 to the couch.

Every turn while the statue2 is on the couch:
	Carry out giving blegos to Bloo:
		say "'Hey, thanks man!' quips Bloo, taking the blocks from you and sticking them onto the statue.";
		remove statue2 from play;
		move statue3 to the couch.[/code]

both of which results in a chain reaction when you give him one set of blegos where all the statue objects swap one after the other, finalising in the statue13 being on the couch and the game ending. I only want one replacement to happen each time you give Bloo some blegos.  [emote]:|[/emote]  I thought the second example would have worked, but no. I feel dumb because this is probably something easy, but I can't figure it out. (I also don't know how to remove the blegos you just gave to Bloo from play, although Bloo's possessions are concealed so it looks fine and I'm not sure it's important.) Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=449&start=0#p2551
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Glulx: Game pausing every turn?
User: Sparky / DateTime: 2008-09-12 00:17:08

So I had to switch to Glulx today when my game got too big, and now when I test it the game lags heavily on most commands (moving and looking most noticeably). Just curious if anyone might know why, this didn't happen with z-code. The only major thing I changed about my game is I'm using the Patrollers extension and I have several wandering characters set up now. Thanks. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=449&start=0#p2552
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx: Game pausing every turn?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-09-12 01:01:44

Adding several characters using Patrollers is probably why your game is slowing down. I'm not familiar with Patrollers, but looking over it quickly, the pathfinding it requires would probably be fairly heavy once you have several character patrolling, especially if you have a large map. As to what you can do to speed things up... firstly, if you happen to have "Use slow route-finding." set, remove that. Secondly, if you have any RoomLed patrollers, change them (if you can, of course) to DirectionLed patrollers to save the game having to do pathfinding for them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=448&start=0#p2553
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help "building a statue"
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-09-12 01:24:05

That happens because the game first checks if there's a statue1 on the couch. If there is, it replaces it with statue2. Then it checks if there's a statue2 on the couch, which there again is, because it was just put there. The easiest solution is to add 'otherwise', which prevents this:

[code]Carry out giving blegos to Bloo:
   say "'Hey, thanks man!' quips Bloo, taking the blocks from you and sticking them onto the statue.";
   if the couch contains the statue1
   begin;
      remove statue1 from play;
      move statue2 to the couch;
   otherwise if the couch contains the statue2;
      remove statue2 from play;
      move statue3 to the couch;
   otherwise if [...]
   end if;[/code]

Here's another a bit cleaner approach:

[code]Statue is a kind of thing.
Statue1, statue2 and statue3 [etc] are statues.

Statue has a thing that varies called the next contraption. 

The next contraption of statue1 is statue2.
The next contraption of statue2 is statue3. [etc]

Carry out giving blegos to Bloo:
	say "'Hey, thanks man!' quips Bloo, taking the blocks from you and sticking them onto the statue.";
	let swappy be a random statue on the couch;
	now the next contraption of swappy is on the couch;
	remove swappy from play.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=448&start=0#p2554
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help "building a statue"
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-09-12 01:39:55

(I see Nitku has already answered your question, but I'll post my reply anyway. You can compare our approaches and decide which works better for you.)

You could do this:
[code]Carry out giving blegos (called blocks) to Bloo:
   say "'Hey, thanks man!' quips Bloo, taking the blocks from you and sticking them onto the statue.";
   remove blocks from play;
   if the couch contains the statue1
   begin;
      remove statue1 from play;
      move statue2 to the couch;
      stop the action;
   end if;
   if the couch contains the statue2
   begin;
      remove statue2 from play;
      move statue3 to the couch;
      stop the action;
   end if;
   [etc][/code]

(Notice that "(called blocks)" gives the blegos in question a name, so we can remove them from play later. Or, if you prefer not to name them, you can just say "remove the noun from play".)

This works, but means a lot of repetitious code. Unless you're going to have something different happen each time the player gives Bloo some blegos, a better way would be something like this:

[code]Table of Statue Stages
stage
statue2
statue3
statue4
statue5
statue6
statue7
statue8
statue9
statue10
statue11
statue12
statue13

Carry out giving blegos (called blocks) to Bloo:
	say "'Hey, thanks man!' quips Bloo, taking the blocks from you and sticking them onto the statue.";
	remove the blocks from play;
	let old statue be a random statue in the couch;
	remove old statue from play;
	repeat through the Table of Statue Stages begin;
		let new statue be the stage entry;
		move new statue to the couch;
		blank out the whole row;
		break;
	end repeat;
	if statue13 is in couch begin;
		say "'Well, that looks finished to me!'";
		end the game in victory;
	end if.[/code]

We have to use "random statue in the couch" to select the statue currently there, because although we know there will never be more than one statue on the couch, Inform doesn't. Also, we use "repeat through the Table of Statues" even though we only want one statue per turn because "repeat through" skips the rows we've already blanked out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=448&start=0#p2555
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help "building a statue"
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-09-12 06:43:27

[quote="Emerald"](I see Nitku has already answered your question, but I'll post my reply anyway. You can compare our approaches and decide which works better for you.)[/quote]

That's the beauty of programming, isn't it: there are a thousand and one ways to solve any given problem!

Personally I would've coded the blockbuilding something like this:

[code]
The statue is on the couch. The statue has a number called construction phase. The construction phase of the statue is 1.

The description of the statue is "[statue-description][run paragraph on]".

To say statue-description:
	if the construction phase of the statue < 4
	begin;
		say "There's not much built yet.";
	otherwise if the construction phase of the statue < 8;
		say "It's coming along nicely.";
	otherwise if the construction phase of the statue < 12;
		say "It looks like a statue already.";
	otherwise if the construction phase of the statue is 12;
		say "Almost finished!";
	otherwise;
		say "All done!";
	end if.

Carry out giving blegos (called blocks) to Bloo:
	say "'Hey, thanks man!' quips Bloo, taking the blocks from you and sticking them onto the statue.";
	remove blocks from play;
	increase the construction phase of the statue by 1.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=447&start=0#p2556
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: The Reliques of Tolti-Alph -- build problem with Inform 7
User: rccraigb / DateTime: 2008-09-12 14:35:12

Thank you for the recommendations -- I will look into these.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=448&start=0#p2557
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help "building a statue"
User: Sparky / DateTime: 2008-09-12 16:26:37

YOU GUYS RULE BIG TIME.  [emote]:D[/emote] I thought of adding in all the "otherwises" after going to bed, but I may use one of these other solutions. Thanks a lot. [emote]:)[/emote]

edit: I decided to use the very last example (thanks Nitku) - the only problem is, "remove blocks from play" is not working, the blocks are all showing in Bloo's inventory. Since I can make his inventory invisible and just say he's not carrying anything in his description, I guess I can live with it, but does anyone know how to actually remove the blocks from play? I'd prefer it. Thanks. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=449&start=0#p2558
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx: Game pausing every turn?
User: Sparky / DateTime: 2008-09-12 16:43:21

Thank you. I did not set anyone to use slow route-finding manually, so do I assume that is not being used? (Sorry, but I didn't see anything about that in the documentation.)

As for room-led, yes they are almost all room-led. I'll just deactivate them for now then, because my game's map was done for me by my brother and it's a mess, some room exits aren't even working. I have to basically re-do everything, so I'd better not set up direction tables for the NPCs yet. HOWEVER I do have the game divided into regions, do you know if I can make a Patroller Aimless and wander a Region? That would be ideal, but it's not in the docs so it might not be possible. :/ Thanks a lot. [emote]:)[/emote]

edit: Even with the Patrollers all deactivated there was a lag on the first movement in the game, ditto with removing Patrollers completely. It gets better after that first turn, but really is it normal for the game to lag so much at first with Glulx? The lag is better than it was, it's only on the first turn instead of every turn, but that's still kind of annoying. I have an NPC who presses a random button in the elevator every turn, might that cause it? If so, why is only the first turn affected?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=449&start=0#p2559
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx: Game pausing every turn?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-09-12 17:48:14

[quote="Sparky"]Thank you. I did not set anyone to use slow route-finding manually, so do I assume that is not being used? (Sorry, but I didn't see anything about that in the documentation.)[/quote]
By default, slow route-finding is used on Z-Code and fast route-finding on Glulx, so if you haven't set it either way, it should be using fast. It's mentioned in Writing with Inform 6.9, "Adjacent rooms and routes through the map".

[quote="Sparky"]As for room-led, yes they are almost all room-led. I'll just deactivate them for now then, because my game's map was done for me by my brother and it's a mess, some room exits aren't even working. I have to basically re-do everything, so I'd better not set up direction tables for the NPCs yet. HOWEVER I do have the game divided into regions, do you know if I can make a Patroller Aimless and wander a Region? That would be ideal, but it's not in the docs so it might not be possible. :/ Thanks a lot. [emote]:)[/emote]

edit: Even with the Patrollers all deactivated there was a lag on the first movement in the game, ditto with removing Patrollers completely. It gets better after that first turn, but really is it normal for the game to lag so much at first with Glulx? The lag is better than it was, it's only on the first turn instead of every turn, but that's still kind of annoying. I have an NPC who presses a random button in the elevator every turn, might that cause it? If so, why is only the first turn affected?[/quote]
To be honest with you, I don't know the answer to either of those questions...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=449&start=0#p2560
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx: Game pausing every turn?
User: Sparky / DateTime: 2008-09-12 18:24:28

Thanks though! [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=449&start=0#p2561
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx: Game pausing every turn?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-09-12 23:05:24

[quote]Even with the Patrollers all deactivated there was a lag on the first movement in the game, ditto with removing Patrollers completely. It gets better after that first turn, but really is it normal for the game to lag so much at first with Glulx? The lag is better than it was, it's only on the first turn instead of every turn, but that's still kind of annoying.[/quote]It's difficult to figure out the cause of your problem without seeing the source, but since posting it in its entirety is not feasible, maybe if you gave a little more info, we could help more. First of all, when you say "there was a lag on the first movement in the game", you mean immediately [i]before[/i] the first turn, right? (i.e. before the command prompt is printed the first time.) If so, that's probably the result of "when play begins" rules. "Patrollers" has a few of these for initializing and debugging the patrollers, whether or not they're active (that's why deactivating them wouldn't affect the start - up delay). However, you say that you removed Patrollers completely. Do you mean you didn't include it at all? If that's the case then obviously at least part of the problem is unrelated to the extension. Once again, if the time lag is before the first turn, it's probably due to "when play begins" rules. Try posting those, along with the names of any extensions you're using. Also, what kind of machine are you using?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=449&start=0#p2562
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx: Game pausing every turn?
User: Sparky / DateTime: 2008-09-12 23:28:39

I just completely redid the map, and the lag is gone. I guess the messy way my brother had done the map initially was confusing the game or something. I dunno. But the lag is gone now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=450&start=0#p2563
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: "If NPC carries..." doesn't work with multiple items?
User: Sparky / DateTime: 2008-09-13 20:14:15

How do I make this scenario work?

[code]If Duchess carries the widgeta, the widgetb, and the widgetc begin;
        say "Duchess sighs heavily. 'Oh, I suppose you vant your stupid toys now,' she glowers at you. 'Here, take the cheap things.' She practically throws five blue BLEGOS(tm) at you, then turns her back.";
	     move Duchess' blocks to player.[/code]

This only works with a single item, but you need to bring this NPC 3 things before she'll give you her blocks, and the player should be able to deliver them in any order....Oh and of course, I only want it to occur once. Can anyone help? [emote]:)[/emote] Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=450&start=0#p2564
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "If NPC carries..." doesn't work with multiple items?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-09-14 03:16:22

You'll have to write the conditions in full sentences. As for the occurring only once part, you could add a fourth condition that's true only when the action hasn't happened yet:

[code]    
If Duchess carries the widgeta and Duchess carries the widgetb and Duchess carries the widgetc and Duchess carries blocks 
begin;
   say "Duchess sighs heavily. 'Oh, I suppose you vant your stupid toys now,' she glowers at you. 'Here, take the cheap things.' She practically throws five blue BLEGOS(tm) at you, then turns her back.";
   move Duchess' blocks to player;
end if.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=450&start=0#p2565
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "If NPC carries..." doesn't work with multiple items?
User: Sparky / DateTime: 2008-09-14 15:50:55

I appreciate it. [emote]:)[/emote] I had no idea you had to write it that way. Thanks a ton. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=451&start=0#p2566
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Delayed actions
User: Sparky / DateTime: 2008-09-14 17:23:37

Is there a way to tell Inform to do something only when something has been in a certain state for a certain number of turns? Like "When Crackers has been adoptable for three turns/minutes if...begin, etc" (which doesn't work)? Instead of "Every turn when Crackers is adoptable" (with "change Crackers to unadoptable" at the end of the action) which is how I have it now, but that means it happens in the same turn Crackers becomes adoptable and I'd rather there was a delay.

I saw the example in the documentation about starvation ("MRE") but I'm wondering if there's a way to tell Inform to just delay an action for a set number of turns, with the player able to perform actions in the meantime. Thanks. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=451&start=0#p2567
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Delayed actions
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-09-14 21:21:58

I'm not sure what you mean. The example you site does have a delay (starvation doesn't occur until three minutes after hunger resumes). Here are two more stripped down examples, with slightly differing effects. If you want something to happen if something has been in a particular state for a certain amount of time (as you initially stated):[code]The Lab is a room.
The timer is a device in the lab.

Every turn:
	if the timer has been switched on for three turns:
		end the game saying "Boom!".

test me with "turn timer on / z / turn timer off / z / turn timer on / z / z / z".[/code]In this case the timer must be continuously on for three turns to set off the "boom." Note that I just used a device because it already has the "switched on/off" property built in (as well as automatically responding to the corresponding action). You could adapt this for any property.

If you just want a timing delay which is unaffected by the player's subsequent actions:[code]The Lab is a room.
The timer is a device in the lab.

After switching on the timer:
	the boom occurs in three turns from now;
	continue the action.

At the time when the boom occurs:
	end the game saying "Boom!".

test me with "turn timer on / z / turn timer off / z".
[/code]HTH  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=451&start=0#p2568
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Delayed actions
User: Sparky / DateTime: 2008-09-14 21:33:49

Got it, thanks!  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=439&start=0#p2569
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 2 problem and rec.arts.int-fiction problem
User: jfcwilson / DateTime: 2008-09-15 12:41:00

I'm using google groups.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=452&start=0#p2570
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Lots of Inform 7 questions
User: doozer8688 / DateTime: 2008-09-18 12:32:40

Hi.

I've been writing an IF using Inform 7 for a class. It's due tonight and I've been having a lot of problems tying everything together.

I'm trying to use [If unvisited][otherwise] to say things only if the player has never been in that room before, but it still displays the first thing every time I visit a room. Here's an example of how I'm using it:

The Mansion is a region. James's Room is a room. James's Room is in the Mansion. James is a man in James's Room. Instead of examining James: say "You know your friend James, a millionaire's heir, to be quite the ladies man, despite his appearance. The first woman he ever loved just happened to be the mother of his son, Ashlie, who, though the two broke up, has been living with him to provide a better home for their son. Lately, James has been caught up with Rene, an ex-prostitute he found on a night of loneliness.". "[If unvisited]You enter James's room. You see your friend sitting on his bed, obviously upset about something. Maybe you should ASK HIM ABOUT SOMETHING.[otherwise]James is gone. You probably shouldn't be in here if he's not". Understand "him" as James. After asking James about "something", say "James looks up at you and says, 'Oh. Hey. It's Rene... She's pregnant, but the baby might not be mine. She started working for her pimp again.' Uh, maybe you should LEAVE James alone right now. The door is that black oak panel that is closed to the west."

The prompt to ask James something displays every time I enter James's Room, even though there are no compiler errors.
---

Twice in my game, I want to move a character from one room to another, but after the action that's supposed to lead to a character being moved, the character remains in the same room and the player can still interact with him there. Example:

The black oak panel is west of James's Room and east of the Grand Hallway. The black oak panel is a door. The black oak panel is closed and unlocked. The Grand Hallway is in the Mansion. Ashlie is a woman in the Grand Hallway. Instead of examining Ashlie: say "Ashlie lives with James, the father of her son Harley. She's very unhappy about the addition of Rene under their roof.". After going to Grand Hallway: say "[If unvisited]As you leave, James rushes out, darting down the hall. A few moments later you hear the front door slam. Ashlie asks what's wrong. You jump; you didn't know she was there. Should you TELL HER ABOUT RENE? Would James mind? Maybe you should TELL HER ABOUT NOTHING.[otherwise]Ah, yes. How very grand is this hallway.". After going to Grand Hallway: move James to Cafe. Understand "her" as Ashlie. After telling Ashlie about "Rene", say "Ashlie is shocked. And calls up Erin. Maybe telling Ashlie wasn't the best idea.". After telling Ashlie about "nothing", say "Ashlie shrugs. 'OK, don't tell me. Just make sure he doesn't do anything crazy.'"

James stays in his room, again though there are no compiler errors.
---

In a part of my fiction, I've set up rules for saying yes and no:

"[If unvisited]You stop in the local cafe. As you approach the counter, you see Rose, of all people, has noticed you and is coming your way with a smile. 'Hey,' she says, 'Have you seen Alan? He's not at work and you always seem to know what he's up to.' YES or NO?[otherwise] You approach the cute cashier and order a latte and a scone.". After saying no, say "She sighs. 'Fine.' Maybe he's not telling anyone anything these days, not just me. I can't believe I have to ask this when he's my husband, but do you know what's been up with him?' Should you TELL HER ABOUT ALAN?". After saying yes, say "She almost seems surprised. 'You do? Home? Oh. That's odd. But, then again, so many things have been odd lately. Do you know what's been up with him?' Should you TELL HER ABOUT ALAN?". Understand "her" as Rose. After telling Rose about "Alan", say "'What?' Rose is taken aback. 'I've...I've got to get out of here.'". After saying no, say "'OK. Maybe I just need to ask him directly. I'll see you later.'". After going from the Cafe: move Rose to the Chimney House.

This compiles fine, but when I type yes or answer yes, it says "There is no reply" or "That was a rhetorical question." Why isn't it adhering to the rule?
---

I've been trying to work out the endings of my game, but I can't figure out the syntax to do it. Throughout the game, the player has been learning secrets from characters and been given opportunities to share those secrets. I want to base my possible endings on whether or not the player shared secrets. The ends I want are:

If the player told Rose about "Alan": end the game by saying "Rose ended up leaving Alan after you told her about his dealings with the mob. Word got around and Erin pursued full custody of the twins. With nothing good to live for, Alan's life became completely absorbed by the mob. I bet you're feeling pretty good right now, huh?"

If the player told Jane about "Marie": end the game by saying "You get a text from a friend telling you to go to the nearest TV and turn on the local news. Marie is getting arrested! Man... What a shame!"

If the player told Rose about "Alan" and told Jane about "Marie": end the game by saying "In the next few weeks, you see how you changed a few lives dramatically. You get a text from a friend telling you to go to the nearest TV and turn on the local news. Marie is getting arrested! Man... What a shame! Rose ended up leaving Alan after you told her about his dealings with the mob. Word got around and Erin pursued full custody of the twins. With nothing good to live for, Alan's life became completely absorbed by the mob. I bet you're feeling pretty good right now, huh?"

Otherwise: end the game by saying "Well! What a day! You dodged some bullets and any slip ups didn't lead to anything that wouldn't have happened otherwise. Phew... Tomorrow, you're staying in."
---

Also, I want don't want the endings to occur until the player has reached Your House, a room in the game. So, do I say something like: If the player is in Your House and <conditional endings>


Thanks for any help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=453&start=0#p2571
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Mock ebay/paypal interface
User: Sparky / DateTime: 2008-09-18 21:09:56

I have the computer object working in one way in my game right now, but I really think it'd add something to the game to have something like this instead...

How can I have an ebay (it being something that s part of the computer I guess) that can be searched for things? Either by implementing "search ebay for (any text)" or with a "search ebay" that enters a scene or something where the command prompt changes to "Search for >" and then whatever is typed having an effect? Maybe having it so that if you type "done" it goes back to normal? Since there is only one specific phrase that has to be searched for, how can I have it so that if they type that phrase it does one thing and if they type anything else they get a random message from a table (containing things like "Your search yielded over 5,000 results, please try again." etc)?

Further, once the correct phrase has been searched for, how can I have it then ask for a username and then a password (found elsewhere in the game of course), where incorrect answers get a "Incorrect username or password" message and a stop to the action?

Sorry if this is too vague but I don't even know where to start. :/ At least some nudges in the right direction would help. Thanks. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=452&start=0#p2572
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lots of Inform 7 questions
User: markm / DateTime: 2008-09-19 12:57:35

That's a lot of questions!

For the first one, you're using '[if visited]' after you define james, which means that it's checking james and not his room.  This works (don't forget to set 'verbose' when trying it out):

[code]Drawing Room is a room.  Drawing Room is east of Sitting Room.

Sitting Room has description "[if visited]You've seen this place before[otherwise]This looks very similar to the drawing room (to the east)."

Drawing Room has description "Go west young man."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=453&start=0#p2573
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Mock ebay/paypal interface
User: Sparky / DateTime: 2008-09-19 21:56:52

I figured it out, because I am Smart!  [emote]:D[/emote] Lol.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=454&start=0#p2574
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: TAB (ThinBasic Adventure Builder)
User: catventure / DateTime: 2008-09-21 10:27:25

Hi,

The following **might** be of interest to some members.

TAB is my text adventure/interactive fiction maker project in Alpha development and being made with the thinBasic script programming language for Windows 98/2000/Me/XP/Vista platform.

It is not meant to compete with other languages such as INFORM, TADS, HUGO or ALAN.
In fact it has similarities with many old text adventure makers such as STAC, GAC, Quill or PAW... so has a kind of "retro" feel and look about it...
It operates on a condition/action coding rather than INFORM's natural english language.

Here are some details and links: 

TAB consists of two programs:

The TAB Editor: Create, build and test your text adventure.

The TAB Player: Standalone distributable to play your finished adventures.

Current release: Alpha 43 ; 20 Sep 2008.

TAB supercedes my previous IF creator "Creative Adventure Toolkit" which is now no longer being updated/supported.

Download TAB Alpha Editor/Player+demos here:
<a class="postlink" href="http://tab.thinbasic.com/">http://tab.thinbasic.com/</a>

TAB forum:
<a class="postlink" href="http://adventure.rpgdynasty.com/">http://adventure.rpgdynasty.com/</a>

TAB blog:
<a class="postlink" href="http://ifiction.wordpress.com/">http://ifiction.wordpress.com/</a>

Best regards,
catventure.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=452&start=0#p2575
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lots of Inform 7 questions
User: Ewarwoowar / DateTime: 2008-09-23 10:34:49

Hi doozer,

Mark's right: the reason that the description of James' Room doesn't change is that the description is attached to James, not the room.  The other problem you have is that James is not moved when you go into the Grand Hallway, meaning that when you return to James' Room, James is still there and you get his description again.

If you put "The description of James's Room is" before the "[if unvisited...] description, it should work as you'd intended the first time, however, because you've used [if unvisited], if you <look> any time after the first move - even if you don't go anywhere - you will get the second description "James is not here" which is NOT what you want (because he still is!).

So, two problems:
1) why didn't James move?
This is because you have two identical After rules and only the first one is being checked.  If you roll the two together, you can get James to move as well as printing the description of James running down the hallway.
2) why does the description change even though James hasn't moved?
This is because the "visited" flag is set for the room after the first turn.  After the first turn it will be visited.  There are a couple of ways of fixing this, but the simplest would be to change the [if visited] to [if James is in James's' Room].

The way in which you are constructing the descriptions is going to cause you problems, because if, having made the above changes, you go into the hallway and then back into James' room, you get the "he's not here" description (which is fine) but if you then go back into the hallway for a second time, you are told that James has just rushed past you again.  Here, again, you need to attach the description of the hallway to the hallway directly using "The description of the Grand Hallway is ...".

Your yes/no problems are due to the fact that "yes" and "no" are not verbs, so you can't use "After saying yes" because the after rules will never get executed.  You need to use "instead of saying yes in the presence of ..." in these instances, BUT looking at what you are trying to achieve I think you need to completely re-think how you're going to do this, because you wil only be able to have two responses to ALL conversations with the same character.  You ought to perhaps look into using some tables with topics and responses to drive your plot forward.

This would also allow you to keep track of what you've told to whom (by updating the table) and thus driving your end-game text.

You could stop the player from going to the ending location until a certain number of things has been said to a certain number of people, and one this has been done you could use an After rule for Your House, which runs through the various possibilities, printing out some text for each one (again, another good use of a table or two here).

Sorry that this wasn't in time for your course, but I hope it's useful to you.

Regards,
Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=455&start=0#p2576
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Games coming soon!
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-09-30 11:57:35

The IFComp 2008 set should be released today or tomorrow.

Here's a re-post of the announcement to rec.games.int-fiction about this year's discussion board:
[quote]Last year's 2007 IFComp discussion was fairly successful (being the first year the rules were changed to allow for public reviews and discussions prior to the end of the voting period), so we've set up a 2008 discussion board for the forthcoming games:

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=32">viewforum.php?f=32</a>

To the new, this isn't an IFComp-sponsored forum or anything. Just a discussion board visited by a few authors and players if Interactive Fiction, and with room for more!

The official rules for public discussion are at the IFComp website:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifcomp.org/comp08/rules.html">http://www.ifcomp.org/comp08/rules.html</a>

Rules specific for the IntFiction.org IFComp 2008 board are pretty much the same. I'm *hoping* to play and review all the games this year, and always prefer going into a game as blindly as possible. I like to assume that any game can be the best one yet, so I personally try not to join in discussions until I've played and voted on a particular game. Others are either less prone to having their opinions affected by game chatter and reviews, or *prefer* knowing other opinions before judging a game. To be safe, please use topic titles that indicate which game(s) the discussion is about, avoid topic titles that could force an opinion onto somebody who doesn't yet want to open the topic (for instance: "Game X is wonderful!!" or "Game Y is too buggy to even play!"), use [ spoiler ] ... [ /spoiler ] tags in the text where appropriate, and just... well... enjoy![/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=455&start=0#p2577
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Games coming soon!
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-09-30 12:17:51

Oh, and like last year, reviews are welcome too. I used a topic like "Merk's Review: Game XYX" on mine.

After voting ends and the discussion dies down, the individual topics will be moved to the appropriate forums - game reviews, general game discussion, etc. The 2008 board will be emptied as a result, then hidden until next year, when it'll become the 2009 discussion. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=455&start=0#p2578
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Games coming soon!
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-09-30 23:11:12

Looks like they're out! 35 games this year:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifcomp.org/comp08/download.html">http://www.ifcomp.org/comp08/download.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=455&start=0#p2579
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Games coming soon!
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2008-10-01 07:06:38

And here I am at work and unable to start playing.   [emote]:cry:[/emote] 

[quote="Merk"]The 2008 board will be emptied as a result, then hidden until next year, when it'll become the 2009 discussion. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
The intfiction forum phoenix...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=456&start=0#p2580
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: IFComp 2008 Checklists (spoiler-free!)
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-01 15:01:19

It was kind of fun last year to post my random-ordered checklist, and then mark off each game after I finished playing. If anybody else wants to join in, just reply to this post with your list (in the order you intend to play - whether it's random, alphabetical, by platform, etc) and then edit it each time you complete a game.

No scores or commentary, please (at least, for this topic).

[X] Afflicted
[X] Riverside
[X] Snack Time!
[X] Project Delta
[X] Ananachronist
[X] Opening Night
[X] Trein
[X] Everybody Dies
[X] LAIR of the CyberCow
[X] Nerd Quest
[X] Search for the Ultimate Weapon
[X] Cry Wolf
[X] The Absolute Worst IF Game in History
[X] Freedom
[X] A Date With Death
[X] Violet
[X] April in Paris
[X] Red Moon
[X] When Machines Attack
[X] Piracy 2.0
[X] Recess At Last
[X] The Ngah Angah School of Forbidden Wisdom
[X] Buried In Shoes
[X] Berrost's Challenge
[X] Magic
[X] The Hall of the Fount of Artois
[X] The Lighthouse
[X] Escape from the Underworld
[X] Martian Odyssey
[X] Nightfall
[ ] Grief
[ ] Dracula's Underground Crypt
[ ] Channel Surfing
[ ] The Lucubrator
[ ] The Missing Piece

(11/17/2008)
And so I only got to 30 of the 35 this year.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=457&start=0#p2581
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Misguided First Impressions (about the game names & blurbs)
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-01 16:00:54

For fun, here are my first impressions just from the games' titles and blurbs. [i]Hopefully[/i] there's nothing spoilery in here, since I haven't actually played any but the first game. Maybe when I've finished all thirty-five, I'll compare each impression to the [i]actual[/i] game. I thought this might be useful, since often a [i]first impression[/i] carries a lot of weight when it comes to evaluating the actual game.

[b]Afflicted[/b]
I didn't really have a first impression about this, and have already played it. The blurb seemed to have a bit of awkward wording (maybe the word "only" could go, in the second sentence). Not much else to note.

[b]Riverside[/b]
No blurb on the game information and voting page. "Riverside" makes me think of downtown Wichita. Maybe something peaceful, tranquil. A pleasant, easy-going kind of slice-of-life game.

[b]Snack Time![/b]
Something humorous, or possibly sinister. Blurb leans more toward the former. Probably very puzzly.

[b]Project Delta[/b]
Sounds ambitious, and with a title that's kind of generic. Custom engine, referred to as a custom universe. Could be good if done well, but hints at over-the-top cheesiness.

[b]Ananachronist[/b]
Hmm. Something like All Things Devours or Mobius, maybe? Time/paradox puzzles. Probably difficult. Hopefully fun.

[b]Opening Night[/b]
Something very centered around the story, maybe. Sounds like a period piece.

[b]Trein[/b]
On the one hand, it seems clued for [i]Silent Hill[/i] ("Trein Hill" ... "all is silence" from the blurb). On the other, mention of taxes and rebellion, making me think maybe something politically-themed?

[b]Everybody Dies[/b]
From the title alone, a very grim story. From the blurb, it's hard to say.

[b]LAIR of the CyberCow[/b]
From the title, a joke entry. Something over the top. A little promise shown from the blurb. I'm guessing a short game, and yeah, maybe a joke entry.

[b]Nerd Quest[/b]
Ha! I want to play this. Java, eh? Should run on my laptop. Probably silly, probably lacking in the niceties offered by more widely-used IF development systems, but we'll see.

[b]Search for the Ultimate Weapon[/b]
[i]Cringe...[/i] I used an example like this in my pre-comp review introduction for this year. Generic title. A genre that holds little interest for me. But will hope for the best!

[b]Cry Wolf[/b]
A clever title. Interesting blurb. First impression: this'll be a serious entry, and a well-written game.

[b]The Absolute Worst IF Game in History[/b]
Doesn't Stephen Bond have a whole page about titles [i]not[/i] to use? Or is this game attempting to make the list? My guess is, it's trying for irony, but probably [i]will[/i] be kinda bad. Then again, it could be a good game [i]about[/i] the worst game ever (kinda like Tenacious D's "Tribute"). But probably a joke entry.

[b]Freedom[/b]
Death by blurb. The title's okay, and could lead one's imagination in many direction. The blurb is probably going for irony, but does nothing to excite a potential player.

[b]A Date With Death[/b]
Ah, I wondered if DW would make an appearance. From the title alone, though... isn't this just like 10 other games? The setting reminds me a little of another recent Adrift entry (different author). There's a certain... force and flavor, maybe... to David's work. Looking forward to it.

[b]Violet[/b]
Title alone: just various women named Violet. Blurb: an unassuming, simple college term paper simulator, probaly with puzzles and a smallish plot. But these are the kind that are deceptively nondescript, and then blow you away. So we'll see.

[b]April in Paris[/b]
Sounds artsy. Cultured. Over my head, perhaps. Ah, a familiar author, but haven't played his prior work. My expectations are high.

[b]Red Moon[/b]
Wolves. A western. No blurb, so nothing to contradict me yet. Probably involving death or blood. Of course, it could be sci-fi, taken literally.

[b]When Machines Attack[/b]
Ha! Re-purposing a familar phrase. That works! Author's name sounds familiar. The Chinese Room, maybe? No blurb, so no other thoughts except it's probably a spoof of some kind. Maybe with a Terminator flavor.

[b]Piracy 2.0[/b]
Ah... already [i]totally[/i] wrong. From the title, I was thinking "software" piracy (and maybe the "version number" is purposely misleading). But the blurb knocks that idea away. So are we talking sea pirates, or something in outer space? Either way, sounds like a fun romp. (Note: the admiral's last name is the same as somebody I know in real life, and, uh, don't have high regard for).

[b]Recess At Last[/b]
Students, or a courtroom drama. Blub says the former. Sounds like it'll be a good game for kids, maybe with lightweight puzzles.

[b]The Ngah Angah School of Forbidden Wisdom[/b]
Harry Potter? Hogwarts? I got nothin' else on this one. "Ngah Angah" is a little, er, clumsy-looking.

[b]Buried In Shoes[/b]
A title that suggests a mystery, and urges the player to find out more. A [i]good[/i] title. No idea what to expect. Maybe the PC gets buried while wearing shoes. Dunno.

[b]Berrost's Challenge[/b]
Sounds like one where a semi-evil wizard forces you through a series of trials. Let's check the blurb. Oh! Hey! I might not be too far after after all!

[b]Magic[/b]
A very simple title. This'll make it hard for the author to Google for reviews and miscellaneous chatter, though (I had the same problem with Distress). Only other thought that comes to mind is a plot line in "Apollo Justice - Ace Attorney" which I'm playing on the DS now. Magicians. Hmmm.

[b]The Hall of the Fount of Artois[/b]
Sounds like high fantasy. Blurb... doesn't necessarily confirm that. "Hall of the Mountain King" pops into my head when I look at the title. Sounds like it'll make for a fun game, though.

[b]The Lighthouse[/b]
Memories of a "lighthouse" adventure on the CoCo 2 (TRS-80) from the 80's. Something from the Rainbow Book of Adventures, I think. I was enthralled by "text adventures" then, and a well-done lighthouse adventure might bring back fond memories. Ah, maybe TMI from the author in the blurb.

[b]Escape from the Underworld[/b]
Hmmm. Another seemingly generic title. Blurb is a winner, though. Looking forward to it!

[b]Martian Odyssey[/b]
First thought - The Martian Chronicles (Bradbury). I'm a sucker for this sort of thing, though. A title like this has a wealth of promise, which is probably hard to live up to.

[b]Nightfall[/b]
Bradbury, and now Asimov? And wasn't there a similarly-named game a few years ago, dealing with werewolves or vampires? But man... I have to trust that author. Expectations are high for this one.

[b]Grief[/b]
As long as the game doesn't [i]give[/i] me grief... har har. Hmm. Grieving? Death? Or just annoyances cast upon the PC? Oh, the author was 10th in 2006 (or was it 2005 - I remember the name because I did the T-shirts).

[b]Dracula's Underground Crypt[/b]
Hmm. Is this going to be the Year of the Vampire? Seems like every year has an accidental theme common to an abnormal number of games. But it's not incredibly original, as a title. Comedy is a tough genre in IF. It's easier to get players to take seriously whatever you take seriously than it is to make them laugh at whatever you find funny. But it could work!

[b]Channel Surfing[/b]
What was that John Ritter movie? [i]Stay Tuned[/i], maybe? That's my first impression. Something TV-related, or possibly an intentional switcharoo (maybe involving actual surfing).

[b]The Lucubrator[/b]
Okay... if your game's title is easily misread as "The Lubricator," you might have problems. It's probably a very serious game, yet I'm chuckling at my mistake... (A minute or so later.) Okay, well, that just proves my need for a more well-rounded vocabulary. It's a real word after all. Woops!

[b]The Missing Piece[/b]
Sounds promising from the title alone, but I remember a little about the author's previous entry. It was kinda... hard to play. The blurb... isn't that pretty much the same concept as the author's previous game? Generic RPG-type stuff. But hopefully a good one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=458&start=0#p2582
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Scoring System (for this year)
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-01 16:50:46

For the last couple of years, I have wanted to change my [url=http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/scoring.shtml]scoring[/url] system to something a little more technical. Several times, I found games that didn't really fit any definition clearly. Maybe the story was incredible but the game was buggy, or maybe the writing was great but the puzzles were impossible to solve. I probably could just scrap any sort of judging guidelines entirely, but when it takes four to six weeks to play every entry, I want to [i]try[/i] to make sure the rating from game to game is fair and at a level of scrutiny that's equal to all the others. If this [i]doesn't[/i] work, then next year I might just use my best guess and not worry so much with a scoring system.

But, here's what I'm trying for this year. Feel free to borrow it, use it, change it, mock it, whatever. I might revise it in small ways before the end of the competition, but I think it's fairly static now.

[b]My 2008 IFComp Scoring System:[/b]

[b]Free Point (F):[/b] (0=Unplayable, 1=Playable)
0 points if the game is not playable (disqualified before playing, obscure platform, crashes on start-up, etc). 1 point if it’s playable enough to be judged and voted.

[b]Technical / Implementation (T):[/b] (0=Bad, 1=Fair/Good, 2=Great)
0 points if the game is buggy, poorly tested, broken, or implemented only at a basic level (just the minimum to support the core of the game). 1 point if the game works well enough to demonstrate technical competency, doesn’t seem to be just a “bare-bones” implementation, and works without exhibiting numerous problems or major frustrations. 2 points if the game excels on a technical level, where the game feels more alive and real because it’s responsive, well-coded, well-designed, and does a great job at handling most commands.

[b]Puzzles / Interactivity (P):[/b] (0=Bad, 1=Fair/Good, 2=Great)
0 points if the game lacks interactivity at even a good CYOA level, or if there is little to no point to this aspect of the game. 1 point if the puzzles are okay but could be better (maybe they’re average or below, too lacking in originality, poorly-clued or unfair, too simple, or in a game without puzzles, if the interaction is only moderately meaningful or interesting). 2 points if the puzzles are interesting, original, and fairly clued (or, in a puzzle-less game, for great and perhaps novel interactivity).

[b]Story / Purpose (S):[/b] (0=Bad, 1=Fair/Good, 2=Great)
0 points if the game has no plot, a throw-away plot (“generic knight searches for the generic Wonder Sword and does generic stuff while battling generic RPG monsters” for instance), or no discernable purpose. 1 point if the plot is worthwhile and entertaining (but not necessarily all that it might be), or if the story isn’t the point, if the game’s “purpose” works as intended. 2 points if the story is engaging and imaginative, fresh, unexpected, and well-told (or in a game purposely lacking a story, if something highly worthwhile takes its place).

[b]Writing: (W)[/b] (0=Bad, 1=Fair/Good, 2=Great)<BR>
0 points if the text is poorly composed, unintentionally choppy, or grammatically error-ridden in an accidental way. 1 point if the writing succeeds with little to no problem, but doesn’t inspire or seems to lack imagination. 2 points if the writing is immersive, expressive, vivid, entertaining, exciting, fresh -- in short, really worth reading.

[b]Reviewer Bonus (B):[/b] (0=No Bonus, 1=Bonus)
In prior years, this took the form of half- or full-point skews to the score or a plus/minus designation to the score. This year, a bonus point will be given for the same reasons. It may be given to a great effort from a first-time participant, or for “something” particularly enjoyable that doesn’t necessarily factor into the rest of the score. It may be given when “2” just isn’t high enough for some aspect of the previous four categories. It will probably also be given to my favorite of the competition, especially since it’s the only way a game can garner a “10” using this system.

[b]Composite (SCORE):[/b] (1=Horrible … 6=Average … 10=Excellent)
The above points are added to create the composite, resulting in a score from 1 to 10. Games which can’t even be given the [i]Free Point[/i] are not ranked or voted.

Example: F:1 + T:2 + P:1 + S:1 + W:2 + B:0 = [b]SCORE: 7[/b]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=458&start=0#p2583
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Scoring System (for this year)
User: blackgoat / DateTime: 2008-10-01 18:28:09

Thanks - this is a good system. I'll adopt it as well, if you don't mind!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=457&start=0#p2584
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Misguided First Impressions (about the game names & blurbs)
User: SeanHuxter / DateTime: 2008-10-01 18:51:47

Fun read.

Sean.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=456&start=0#p2585
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2008 Checklists (spoiler-free!)
User: DrkStarr / DateTime: 2008-10-01 19:06:21

It was fun for me to watch as people played through the games last year, so I'll post mine too.
Made with Inform.

[X] Piracy 2.0
[X] The Missing Piece
[X] When Machines Attack
[X] Project Delta
[X] Buried In Shoes
[X] Channel Surfing
[X] LAIR of the CyberCow
[X] Grief
[X] Nightfall
[X] Snack Time!
[X] A Date With Death
[X] Nerd Quest
[X] Escape from the Underworld
[X] Recess At Last
[X] April in Paris
[X] Berrost's Challenge
[X] Ananachronist
[X] Everybody Dies
[X] A Martian Odyssey
[X] The Lighthouse
[X] Freedom
[X] Trein
[X] Opening Night
[X] Violet
[X] The Hall of the Fount of Artois
[X] Dracula's Underground Crypt
[X] The Absolute Worst IF Game in History
[X] Red Moon
[X] Cry Wolf
[X] Riverside
[X] Search for the Ultimate Weapon
[X] The Lucubrator
[X] Afflicted
[X] Magic
[X] The Ngah Angah School of Forbidden Wisdom

- D

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=457&start=0#p2586
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Misguided First Impressions (about the game names & blurbs)
User: Healy / DateTime: 2008-10-01 20:47:20

Looking over the games I've played, it's interesting to compare your first impressions of them with my opinions of them after I finished them. But getting more into to that would be pretty spoiler-y, so I'll keep quiet for now.  [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=457&start=0#p2587
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Misguided First Impressions (about the game names & blurbs)
User: -JDC- / DateTime: 2008-10-01 22:12:32

Greetings; I've lurked here from time to time but just finally got around to registering...

Reading through the list of game titles, I found myself wondering which 80's band would have recorded songs with those titles (ok, I cheated a bit and included bands I listened to in the 80's...). It seemed to fit with this thread, so here's what I came up with (I couldn't come up with bands for a lot of them; maybe someone else can finish the list...):

Snack Time! - Iggy Pop
Grief - The Smiths
Piracy 2.0 - Thomas Dolby
April in Paris - PiL
Magic and Freedom are actual 80's song titles...
Violet - Elvis Costello
Riverside - Tom Waits
Cry Wolf - The Cure
When Machines Attack - NIN
The Lighthouse - Bruce Springstein
Afflicted - Black Flag
Dracula's Underground Crypt - Bauhaus
A Date With Death and Escape from the Underworld- (insert other random Goth bands)
The Lucubrator - David Byrne
The Absolute Worst IF Game in History - They Might Be Giants
Buried In Shoes - Blondie
A Martian Odyssey - Iron Maiden
Everybody Dies - REM
Red Moon - Echo and the Bunnymen

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=456&start=0#p2588
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2008 Checklists (spoiler-free!)
User: George / DateTime: 2008-10-01 22:48:43

I liked this last year too:

2008 IF Competition

 X : When Machines Attack  
 X : Search for the Ultimate Weapon  
 X : The Lucubrator  
 X : Afflicted  
 X : The Missing Piece  
 X : The Lighthouse  
 X : Everybody Dies  
 X : Red Moon  
 X : Nightfall  
 X : Channel Surfing  
 X : Piracy 2.0  
 X : LAIR of the CyberCow  
 X : Freedom  
 X : Cry Wolf  
 X : Berrost's Challenge  
 X : Opening Night  
 X : The Hall of the Fount of Artois  
 X : Riverside  
 X : A Martian Odyssey  
 X : Nerd Quest  
 X : Project Delta  
 X : Violet  
 X : April in Paris  
 X : A Date With Death  
 X : The Absolute Worst IF Game in History  
 X : Grief  
 X : Trein  
 X : Magic  
 X : Dracula's Underground Crypt  
 X : Buried In Shoes  
 X : Escape from the Underworld  
 X : Ananachronist  
 X : Snack Time!  
 X : Recess At Last  
 X : The Ngah Angah School of Forbidden Wisdom

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=456&start=0#p2589
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2008 Checklists (spoiler-free!)
User: blackgoat / DateTime: 2008-10-02 01:09:53

[X] Afflicted
[X] Piracy 2.0
[X] Snack Time!
[X] The Absolute Worst IF Game in History
[X] Freedom
[X] Riverside
[X] Opening Night
[X] Nerd Quest
[X] Recess At Last
[X] Project Delta
[X] Grief
[X] Channel Surfing
[X] Magic
[X] Everybody Dies
[X] Berrost's Challenge
[X] Red Moon
[X] Violet
[X] Buried In Shoes
[X] Dracula's Underground Crypt
[X] The Lucubrator
[X] Escape from the Underworld
[X] Trein
[X] April in Paris
[X] Nightfall
[X] Ananachronist
[X] When Machines Attack
[_] LAIR of the CyberCow
[_] Search for the Ultimate Weapon
[_] Cry Wolf
[_] A Date With Death
[_] The Ngah Angah School of Forbidden Wisdom
[_] The Hall of the Fount of Artois
[_] The Lighthouse
[_] Martian Odyssey
[_] The Missing Piece

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=456&start=0#p2591
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2008 Checklists (spoiler-free!)
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2008-10-02 03:52:24

And here's mine... [emote]:)[/emote]

[X] Dracula's Underground Crypt
[X] Channel Surfing
[X] Piracy 2.0
[X] Snack Time!
[X] Project Delta
[X] Buried in Shoes
[X] Berrost's Challenge
[X] Escape from the Underworld
[X] The Missing Piece
[X] Nightfall
[X] When Machines Attack
[X] Red Moon
[X] Everybody Dies
[X] The Lucubrator
[X] Riverside
[X] The Hall of the Fount of Artois
[_] The Lighthouse
[_] Nerd Quest
[_] The Ngah Angah School of Forbidden Wisdom
[_] Opening Night
[_] Recess At Last
[_] April in Paris
[_] Afflicted
[_] Violet
[_] A Martian Odyssey
[_] The Absolute Worst IF Game in History
[_] A Date With Death
[_] LAIR of the CyberCow
[_] Search for the Ultimate Weapon
[_] Ananachronist
[_] Trein
[_] Grief
[_] Magic
[_] Freedom
[_] Cry Wolf

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=457&start=0#p2592
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Misguided First Impressions (about the game names & blurbs)
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-10-02 04:26:38

[quote]Reading through the list of game titles, I found myself wondering which 80's band would have recorded songs with those titles (ok, I cheated a bit and included bands I listened to in the 80's...). [/quote]Hilarious!  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 
(But I have to dock you a letter grade... the Boss spells it with two e's.)  [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=458&start=0#p2593
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Scoring System (for this year)
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-02 07:15:32

Sure. Feel free!

I'll have to make a conscious effort not to be [i]too[/i] stingy with the 2's, though. Otherwise, good-but-not-great games will end up with a score of only 5 or 6. But hmm. Maybe that's fair. Well, I have plenty more ahead of me before I know how well I'm able to use this.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=457&start=0#p2594
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Misguided First Impressions (about the game names & blurbs)
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2008-10-02 11:40:31

Here are my first impressions about titles, subtitles and blurbs.

Note: I didn't read your posts (except the beginning of Merk's first post) before writing mine, because I didn't want to be influenced; so my remarks may be sometimes redundant with what's already been said in this thread.

Note (2): Don't take my comments too seriously: some of them are harsh, and might prove to be extremely unfair when and if I actually play the games...


[b]The Absolute Worst IF Game in History :[/b] Oh dear. Not a good start. The title is as unpromising as [i]My first stupid game[/i] or games like that. Probably just a totally unfunny joke game.

[b]Afflicted:[/b] Maybe a sordid story about a serial killer, or a story about alien abduction. (Or a sordid story about abduction by serial killer aliens.)

[b]Ananachronist:[/b] Somewhat intriguing, although this isn't the first game about temporal paradoxes. The blurb seems serious, but the title seems humorous; I wonder if the game is a comedy or not.

[b]April in Paris:[/b] Doesn't seem bad (although I don't really know what a "social difficulty" could mean, but English isn't my first language). The real-world setting might be a pleasant change from fantasy/SF settings. I must say that the word "exasperating" makes me think of the author's posts on R*IF, because he often sounds exasperated in his posts [emote]:)[/emote] .

[b]Berrost's Challenge:[/b] Sounds rather conventional, but Enchanter-like spells are still fun!

[b]Buried In Shoes:[/b] Er, I don't know. Strange title, and not a very explicit blurb — but these are not necessarily bad things!

[b]Channel Surfing:[/b] I don't know if it's about sports (But is surf-riding possible on channels? I thought it was on seas...) or about Internet chat channels.

[b]Cry Wolf:[/b] Horror story. The writing is perhaps a bit overdone, but I like the fact that it apparently isn't a parody.

[b]A Date With Death:[/b] The story seems really similar to several other ADRIFT games. Maybe it's a sequel to another game by David Whyld?

[b]Dracula's Underground Crypt:[/b] Parody of horror/vampire stories. I like the punch-line (the last sentence) in the blurb. I'm not sure I like the subtitle that much, though.

[b]Escape from the Underworld:[/b] A sequel to [i]Hell: A Comedy of Errors[/i] (which I never played, by the way)?

[b]Everybody Dies:[/b] [i]"Ever see a shopping cart in a river?"[/i] Er, no, I don't think. Is it that frequent in Canada? But anyway, the blurb is rather good: I'm curious about what happens in the game, which is a good sign.

[b]Freedom:[/b] The blurb sounds [i]really[/i] boring. Let's hope the game is not, and the blurb is intentionally boring just to surprise us when we actually play it!

[b]Grief:[/b] A sad story, I suppose.

[b]The Hall of the Fount of Artois:[/b] Sounds interesting, but "You have one night..." suggests that there might be an irritating time limit, and the word "distraction" suggests that it might be a short and superficial game.

[b]LAIR of the CyberCow:[/b] It seems to be a wacky parody, but the blurb suggests it might be actually funny.

[b]The Lighthouse:[/b] Advice to competition authors: never, [i]never[/i] put sentences like "This game is very short and also is my very first game!" in your game blurbs. It's [i]not[/i] encouraging. Also, don't put obvious spelling mistakes like "foucus" instead of "focus". It's [i]not[/i] encouraging, either.

[b]The Lucubrator:[/b] The title reminds me of the French word "élucubrations", which would suggest very crazy and improbable ideas. But according to my dictionary, the word "lucubrator" (I didn't know it) seems much more serious than that. A game about a writer?

[b]Magic:[/b] Maybe another game with Enchanter-like spells, like Berrost's Challenge. I find the title a bit too obvious and generic for a story about magicians.

[b]A Martian Odyssey:[/b] The subtitle is too detailed and complicated. I hope "interpersonal communication" isn't just a fancy way of saying that you can talk to one NPC somewhere in the game [emote]:)[/emote] . But the blurb isn't too bad.

[b]The Missing Piece:[/b] "GUI text-based CRPG game"? But is it parser-based, at least? Otherwise, I'm not sure it's appropriate for the IF Comp; or, at least, I wouldn't be too interested.

[b]Nerd Quest:[/b] A computer program written by a nerd for nerds. I also suspect it's just a poor game written mainly as a demo for the author's own homebrewed programming language.

[b]The Ngah Angah School of Forbidden Wisdom:[/b] Wacky (and a bit silly) parody of fantasy stories, or of Harry Potter?

[b]Nightfall:[/b] The name of the author (Eric Eve) suggests it'll probably be a very good game, and the blurb doesn't ruin that impression. The subtitle suggests it'll be shorter than [i]The Elysium Enigma[/i].

[b]Opening Night:[/b] A love story set in the 1930s or 1950s, perhaps?

[b]Piracy 2.0:[/b] The title suggests it's version 2.0 of software for cracking copy-protected games, but it's obviously not true. The blurb says it's about pirates and the subtitle says it's in space, so I guess it must be about space pirates (brilliant deduction, isn't it?). Apparently, it begins in a prison from which you must escape, which isn't the most original beginning ever.

[b]Project Delta:[/b] I like CYOA-style adventure gamebooks, but I never liked too much CYOA as computer games... And the words "short prequel" suggest it's just a teaser, or a game the author couldn't finish in time for the IF Comp.

[b]Recess At Last:[/b] Sounds like a somewhat superficial story about a teenage boy.

[b]Red Moon:[/b] Is this a remake of the Level 9 game?

[b]Riverside:[/b] Not a bad title, but I just can't guess what the game's about with it.

[b]Search for the Ultimate Weapon:[/b] Historical game about ancient China in which half the words are in Chinese. Might be interesting anyway.

[b]Snack Time!:[/b] Seems to be a simple and unambitious game.

[b]Trein:[/b] I suppose you mean "paying their taxes", not "playing their taxes"? Otherwise, the blurb's not too bad.

[b]Violet:[/b] A story about a guy who has to write a story? Doesn't sound very fascinating, but we'll see.

[b]When Machines Attack:[/b] A clichéd science fiction story about robots rebelling against humans?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=444&start=0#p2595
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6:How to extract direction, location from a Go order?
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2008-10-02 14:02:48

IIRC:
Inform will put the direction object (n_obj, s_obj, or the like) in the "noun" variable.

To find the room to a particular direction, you'd do something like:

location.(noun.door_dir)

Be sure to check it against 0.

You will need to tweak that if you have places where the direction properties point to routines or strings.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=456&start=0#p2596
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2008 Checklists (spoiler-free!)
User: Mr Lizard / DateTime: 2008-10-02 14:43:49

Oh go on then.

[x] Riverside
[x] Escape from the Underworld
[x] LAIR of the CyberCow
[x] The Lighthouse
[x] Opening Night
[x] Ananachronist
[x] A Martian Odyssey
[x] Channel Surfing
[x] The Ngah Angah School Of Forbidden Wisdom
[x] April In Paris
[x] Search for the Ultimate Weapon
[x] Nightfall
[x] Berrost's Challenge
[x] The Lucubrator
[x] Grief
[x] Everybody Dies
[x] Piracy 2.0
[_] When Machines Attack
[_] A Date With Death
[x] Trein
[x] Violet
[_] Dracula's Underground Crypt
[x] Afflicted
[x] Project Delta
[_] Cry Wolf
[x] Snack Time!
[x] The Missing Piece
[_] The Hall of the Fount of Artois
[x] The Absolute Worst IF Game In History
[_] Nerd Quest
[_] Magic
[x] Freedom
[x] Recess At Last
[x] Red Moon
[x] Buried In Shoes

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=459&start=0#p2597
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Rule 5 - calling IF Comp Authors!
User: hrrwlsn741 / DateTime: 2008-10-02 14:50:46

Dear IFComp Authors,

As you are aware, it is against the rules for us, as authors of this year's IFComp, to talk in public about our own or others' entries:  in order not to bias the judges' minds for or against any work.

However, *private* discussion is permitted, and discussion on a private forum is permitted.

Thus, Rule 5, the IF Comp Author's Club -- a place where we can talk shop and comment on the judges' commentaries privately.

<a class="postlink" href="http://tinyurl.com/IFCrule5">http://tinyurl.com/IFCrule5</a>

 
The Rule 5 forum has been examined and given the green light by Stephen Grenade, this year's IFComp organizer.

If you are an IF Comp author and haven't gotten your registration info, please contact me so I can set you up.

Thanks

Harry

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=456&start=0#p2598
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2008 Checklists (spoiler-free!)
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2008-10-02 15:29:10

[x] Dracula's Underground Crypt
[x] The Lucubrator
[x] April in Paris
[x] The Absolute Worst IF Game in History
[x] Berrost's Challenge
[x] When Machines Attack
[x] Afflicted
[ ] Piracy 2.0
[ ] Buried In Shoes
[ ] Search for the Ultimate Weapo
[ ] Red Moon
[ ] Everybody Dies
[ ] Channel Surfing
[ ] Cry Wolf
[ ] Freedom
[ ] Escape from the Underworld
[ ] The Ngah Angah School of Forbidden Wisdom
[ ] Nightfall
[ ] A Date With Death
[ ] Riverside
[ ] Grief
[ ] Trein
[ ] Magic
[ ] The Lighthouse
[ ] A Martian Odyssey
[ ] Recess At Last
[ ] The Hall of the Fount of Artois
[ ] Ananachronist
[ ] LAIR of the CyberCow
[ ] Snack Time!
[ ] Project Delta
[ ] Nerd Quest
[ ] The Missing Piece
[ ] Violet
[ ] Opening Night

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=460&start=0#p2599
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: rioshin's Scoring System for 2008
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2008-10-02 17:06:56

Well, since Merk put his scoring system on here, maybe I should do the same...

The last few years, my scoring system has been [i]way too[/i] technical, so I've toned it down quite a bit. It's actually quite like Merk's - I actually based it a bit on his for this year. [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote] 

[b]Technical Implementation[/b] [i](TECH)[/i]
This measures the technical aspects of the game: are there bugs, missing commands, etc.

0 - A very buggy game showing no or almost no technical competence
1 - A buggy game, minor technical competence
2 - Some bugs, the game shows technical competence
3 - Very few bugs, excellent technical competence
4 - Excels at technical competence, no bugs found, responsive


[b]System of Choice[/b] [i](SYS)[/i]
Yes, I do take away a few points for games using homebrew systems or other rare systems.

0 - Homebrew system or single-platform game
1 - A rare system, available for a few platforms only (eg. Alan and Adrift)
2 - A common system, available for multiple platforms (eg. Zcode, Tads)


[b]Puzzles and Interactivity[/b] [i](PUZZ)[/i]
Measuring the easiness/hardness of the puzzles, how well they're clued and how original they are. For games without puzzles, measures the level of interactivity.

0 - No puzzles; lacks any interactivity
1 - Unoriginal puzzles, puzzles very poorly clued, unfair or very easy puzzles; almost no interactivity
2 - Puzzles are somewhat original, occasionally unclued, hard or easy; some interactivity
3 - Quite original puzzles that are well-clued and of a suitable difficulty; good interactivity
4 - Very original puzzles, extremely well-clued and of a suitable difficulty; excellent interactivity


[b]Story and Purpose[/b] [i](STOR)[/i]
This category measures the feel of the story, or for story-less games, the level of purpose felt during the game.

0 - No plot or discernable purpose
1 - A generic, throw-away plot; almost no purpose
2 - A non-generic but unoriginal story; some purpose
3 - An original story that doesn't raise much interest; good level of purpose
4 - An original story that's hard to stop reading/playing; excellent level of purpose


[b]Writing[/b] [i](WRI)[/i]
Since IF is dependent upon language, it's just right to try to measure the level of accomplishment in it.

0 - Poorly composed text, unintentionally choppy, grammatically error-ridden
1 - Successfull writing with little problems, but is uninspiring
2 - Immersive, vivid, expressive, entertaining, exciting - you find more superlatives


[b]Length[/b] [i](LEN)[/i]
How well does the length of the game match with the story it tells?

0 - Way too short or long for its story
1 - Too short or long
2 - Game length fits the story to the mark


[b]Subtotal[/b] [i](SUB)[/i]
SUB = ((TECH + SYS + PUZZ + STOR + WRI + LEN) / 3) + 1 (rounded to the nearest integer)

This formula gives a score between 1 and 7 for any game.


[b]Reviewer's Bonus[/b] [i](BON)[/i]
Well, this tells how much [i]I[/i] liked the game; nothing more, nothing less.

0 - I didn't like this game
1 - Nice game, although I wouldn't play it again
2 - I'll be returning to this game, as it caught my interest
3 - Well, I just [i]couldn't[/i] stop playing this until it was finished


[b]Final Score[/b] [i](SCO)[/i]
SCO = SUB + BON

Since the subtotal is between 1 and 7, inclusive, and the bonus between 0 and 3 (again inclusive), the final range is 1 to 10.

Example:
TECH:2, SYS:2, PUZZ:1, STOR:1, WRI:1, LEN:0, BON:1
SUB: 2 + 2 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 0 = 7; 7 / 3 + 1 = 3; SCO: 3 + 1 = 4

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=460&start=0#p2600
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: rioshin's Scoring System for 2008
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-02 20:48:57

Heh -- cool. And even more complicated than mine!! [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=457&start=0#p2601
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Misguided First Impressions (about the game names & blurbs)
User: -JDC- / DateTime: 2008-10-02 21:05:27

[quote="Skinny Mike"]Hilarious!  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 
(But I have to dock you a letter grade... the Boss spells it with two e's.)  [emote];)[/emote][/quote]

Oops... Does this mean I don't get to complain about spelling errors in Comp games? [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=461&start=0#p2602
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Peter's IFComp 2008 Thoughts and Reviews
User: Peter Nepstad / DateTime: 2008-10-02 22:20:27

Thanks for setting this board up. While I enjoyed reading reviews of the games during the comp last year when I was a competitor, the two places I didn't much care for seeing them was at rec.arts and rec.games int-fiction. They were just too hard to avoid, there. This board, though, I felt was better, with reviews segregated from the rest of the boards and out of the way.

So, I thought I'd post some thoughts here as I play. Comments are welcome of course.

[b]GAMES MENTIONED SO FAR IN THIS THREAD[/b]

[b]Berrost's Challenge[/b]
[b]Dracula's Underground Crypt[/b] 
[b]The Absolute Worst IF Game in History[/b]
[b]Escape from the Underworld[/b]
[b]April in Paris[/b]
[b]Riverside[/b] (page 2)
[b]A Martian Odyssey[/b]
[b]Red Moon[/b]
[b]Violet[/b]
[b]The Lucubrator[/b]
[b]Buried in Shoes[/b]
[b]Lighthouse[/b] (page 3)
[b]Grief[/b]



First thoughts: Only one TADS 2 game? Oh, its breaking my heart. Not just because I love TADS 2, but because it suggests I may never see the day when someone writes a proper HTML-TADS interpreter for Mac OS X.

So, Mark Hatfield, here's to you. Thanks for representing.

And as it happens, I found Mark's TADS 2 work [b]Berrost's Challenge[/b] an enjoyable diversion. I liked the strong and consistent authorial voice, and from a technical perspective the game deals with a wide variety of difficult substances like grease, sludge, grains, and water, without trouble -- certainly they behaved in the expected manner, and did what I wanted them to, without much stress on the parser. Implementing body parts usually always ends in tears, too, but in my casual play session never stumbled onto any errors or weird responses about my thumb, which plays such an integral part in the game.

The story is light, breezy fantasy. In many respects the game reminded me of YAGWAD, from a previous comp, which I also enjoyed for many of the same reasons.

I played right up to the two hour mark, but if anything I think the game is too short. Your job is to collect scrolls, and "graduate" from your wizard studies. When the mission is accomplished at the end, Berrost [spoiler]finally intimates that there is something larger going on that needs your wizardly attention.[/spoiler] This struck me as just right, but then we don't get to play that part, instead, "that is another story."

One of the concepts I really like in Berrost's Challenge is that there are always two ways to solve a puzzle: one with magic, and one without. The downside of this though is that the way this difference is framed makes it not very fun: if you solve the puzzle using magic, you don't earn as many points. So what we are left with is a magic-based game that doesn't want you to use any magic. I would have enjoyed it more if I was encouraged to use magic the first time around then perhaps given an "expert mode", in which you could try to play again without the use of magic. In the event, I collected scrolls, but never used them, which is a crime when there could have been some spellcasting going on (and the Enchanter series was always my favorite).

Best Puzzle: [spoiler]teamsters workbench/mining cart[/spoiler].

So, only one TADS 2 game, but it is well implemented, nicely written, and entertaining, and hints at larger ambitions.

-- Peter
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.illuminatedlantern.com/if/">http://www.illuminatedlantern.com/if/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=461&start=0#p2603
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2008 Thoughts and Reviews
User: Peter Nepstad / DateTime: 2008-10-03 00:08:07

[b]Dracula's Underground Crypt[/b] by Alex Whitington and [b]The Absolute Worst IF Game in History[/b] by Dean Menezes

I thought the title of [b]Dracula's Underground Crypt[/b] was redundant -- but after a moment I started to like it because it made me think of other places Dracula's Crypt might be, places odd enough that you might really need to specify: "Dracula's Suburban Crypt", or "Dracula's Rib Shack Crypt". Maybe a comedy. And sure enough, it is, though the author's disclaimer at the beginning of the game was sufficient to discourage me from playing it. Essentially Alex lets the prospective player know that, though his life was previously dull enough to allow time to dabble in IF, he is too busy now to finish it or beta test it, and he leaves it to others like myself who presumably have nothing better to do in our lives than play untested, practically-disowned games. In this, Alex is mistaken.

Likewise, Dean Menezes gives us fair warning for his game, by the title alone, [b]The Absolute Worst IF Game in History[/b]. 

As authors, we sometimes are the worst judges of our own work. Sometimes we think it is better than Jesus, when really we've not yet even caused Shem to break a sweat. Other times, we think it is probably rubbish, but we might just be depressed because of factors outside of the game itself, parts that might have had to come out, parts that as it turns out players won't notice or even care existed.

I guess what I'm saying is, your game may or may not be awful, but why not let your players decide? If you don't have confidence in your work, why should anyone else? Your games might be good, they might not be, but because of your approach, I doubt many people will bother to find out.

-- Peter

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=460&start=0#p2604
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: rioshin's Scoring System for 2008
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2008-10-03 02:25:53

[quote="Merk"]Heh -- cool. And even more complicated than mine!! [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
Well, thankfully not that much more complicated - you should see what I used last year, where the score ranged between 0 and 100... [emote]:)[/emote]

Basically, this one is almost like yours, compared to what I've used previously - some areas with a bit more detail in the scoring and a few more areas I look at while playing, but it all converts to a reasonable score. And I managed to get more space for my own opinion on the game, as the bonus ranges from 0 points to 3 points, instead of your 0 to 1. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=461&start=0#p2605
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2008 Thoughts and Reviews
User: Healy / DateTime: 2008-10-03 03:11:06

[quote="Peter Nepstad"][b]Dracula's Underground Crypt[/b] by Alex Whitington and [b]The Absolute Worst IF Game in History[/b] by Dean Menezes

I thought the title of [b]Dracula's Underground Crypt[/b] was redundant -- but after a moment I started to like it because it made me think of other places Dracula's Crypt might be, places odd enough that you might really need to specify: "Dracula's Suburban Crypt", or "Dracula's Rib Shack Crypt". Maybe a comedy. And sure enough, it is, though the author's disclaimer at the beginning of the game was sufficient to discourage me from playing it. Essentially Alex lets the prospective player know that, though his life was previously dull enough to allow time to dabble in IF, he is too busy now to finish it or beta test it, and he leaves it to others like myself who presumably have nothing better to do in our lives than play untested, practically-disowned games. In this, Alex is mistaken.

Likewise, Dean Menezes gives us fair warning for his game, by the title alone, [b]The Absolute Worst IF Game in History[/b]. 

As authors, we sometimes are the worst judges of our own work. Sometimes we think it is better than Jesus, when really we've not yet even caused Shem to break a sweat. Other times, we think it is probably rubbish, but we might just be depressed because of factors outside of the game itself, parts that might have had to come out, parts that as it turns out players won't notice or even care existed.

I guess what I'm saying is, your game may or may not be awful, but why not let your players decide? If you don't have confidence in your work, why should anyone else? Your games might be good, they might not be, but because of your approach, I doubt many people will bother to find out.

-- Peter[/quote]
I actually played through Dracula's Underground Crypt; on the whole I enjoyed it, but it did give me undue heartache (you know, had things like overcomplicated room descriptions, important items missing from the room description, bugs involving an npc, serious guess-the-verb issues). The author gave out his email address in the game and said people should tell him about bugs there; perhaps I'll take him up on his offer.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=461&start=0#p2606
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2008 Thoughts and Reviews
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2008-10-03 08:04:09

[quote="Peter Nepstad"]Likewise, Dean Menezes gives us fair warning for his game, by the title alone, [b]The Absolute Worst IF Game in History[/b]. 

As authors, we sometimes are the worst judges of our own work.[/quote]
Although it seems to me that this entry was created with the direct intention of being awful, rather than being named for the author's lack of confidence.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=461&start=0#p2607
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2008 Thoughts and Reviews
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2008-10-03 12:59:08

I wonder how TAWIFGIH compares to some of the Clueless Bob Newbie stuff.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=461&start=0#p2608
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2008 Thoughts and Reviews
User: Peter Nepstad / DateTime: 2008-10-03 15:48:37

[quote="Healy"]
I actually played through Dracula's Underground Crypt; on the whole I enjoyed it, but it did give me undue heartache (you know, had things like overcomplicated room descriptions, important items missing from the room description, bugs involving an npc, serious guess-the-verb issues). The author gave out his email address in the game and said people should tell him about bugs there; perhaps I'll take him up on his offer.[/quote]

Good to hear it was enjoyable. I'm always up for a Dracula story myself, so although he's lost me in terms of the comp version, I'd be more than happy to try out a post-comp bug fix version.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=461&start=0#p2609
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2008 Thoughts and Reviews
User: Peter Nepstad / DateTime: 2008-10-03 16:32:24

[b]Escape from the Underworld[/b] by Karl Beecher

Hell is a bureaucracy. Sure its an overdone idea, but that doesn't mean that wandering around in it and playing in it isn't fun. I kept thinking Terry Pratchett, but not sure if that's right. I also kept thinking of the British TV show The Mighty Boosh, particularly the classic episode in which Howard dies and is sent to Monkey Hell by accident. It's hilarious, but maybe the Boosh is an acquired taste.

In any case, Escape is strong in terms of story and writing. All the inspirational posters in Hell were a joy to read, and I loved the call center (Because of course, there is a call center in Hell). Other times, though, I felt a certain dissonance between the levity of the game and the subject, probably due to the fact that you play a low-level torturer, and current US government policy to approve and sanction torture. On the whole, though, it is clearly not meant to be taken seriously, and enjoyable in that spirit.

Where the game struggles is in the implementation. The problem is the solutions to various puzzles were implemented, but nothing around the solutions was, so unless you know exactly what to type or do, it is impossible to solve.

Here's an example of what I mean:
[spoiler]At one point, the receptionist hints that she'd like a cigar. Fair enough. But there isn't a trace of any cigars anywhere to be found. It turns out if you ask the mechanic about a cigar [ASK MECHANIC ABOUT CIGAR], he will offer one to you in exchange for a drink or something. But here's the problem: if you ask any of the characters about anything else that is not currently in their room, the game responds: I don't see that here (or something like that). So after a little testing, the game has taught me to NOT ask anyone about objects that are not directly visible. You can ask everyone about each other, though. But again, if you ASK MECHANIC ABOUT RECEPTIONIST, their shared love of cigars doesn't enter in to his response. Also when examining the room, the mechanic, and so on, at no time does the game suggest he might be carrying cigars. In other words, there is absolutely no reason that I could find that I would ask the mechanic about cigars. Except that I read it in the walkthough.[/spoiler]

The above is just an example; the trouble is, it is the rule, not the exception, and every single puzzle is problematic in the same way. There are a lot of standard responses that should have been modified, too, such as the standard "Violence isn't the answer to this one" type message whenever you attack someone.

I enjoyed the writing, the story, the environment, as far as I got. The game just isn't finished yet. The entire game needs another pass or two by the author to fill in all the implementation gaps, then it needs to go out to an enthusiastic beta tester or two to tighten it further. Right now, it feels like the outline for a really fun game, rather than the game itself.

Best Puzzle: [spoiler]Catching the little hellmouse and putting its soul in a bottle. A simple puzzle, but atmospheric.[/spoiler]

It seemed like there might be a bug that prevents you from finishing, at least, I couldn't [spoiler]call the receptionist, no matter how often I typed in her number.[/spoiler]

-- Peter

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=462&start=0#p2610
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Project Delta: Trojan?
User: DrkStarr / DateTime: 2008-10-03 19:29:02

My virus software is flagging the nxi.exe as a suspicious file, containing a CRYP_MEW-11 Trojan.  Has anybody else ran into this, is this file safe?  Personally I'm kind of hesitant to run an exe from the comp on this computer, and my virus software blocked The Missing Piece from touching the internet after installing.

Any help would be appreciated, even from the authors.

- D

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=460&start=0#p2611
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: rioshin's Scoring System for 2008
User: George / DateTime: 2008-10-03 20:28:02

I'm curious about the reasoning about subtracting points for homebrew [i]or[/i] single-platform games...are you saying a homebrew game that was multi-platform would still get 0 there?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=461&start=0#p2612
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2008 Thoughts and Reviews
User: Eric Mayer / DateTime: 2008-10-03 21:23:23

I had the same problem and couldn't finish even following the walkthru.  I got the vague impression in a few places that tasks had to be accomplished in a particular order to trigger certain things necessary to advance the action.  Having said that, I enjoyed the game. Quite funny and original in parts. I liked the "hot" receptionist. And I wasn't too peeved at not being able to finish, looking at the final puzzle I am pretty sure I wouldn't have figured it out even if I were confined to Hades for eternity.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=462&start=0#p2613
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Project Delta: Trojan?
User: Retro / DateTime: 2008-10-03 21:23:48

Hello,

I'm the author of Project Delta.
We are not allowed to discuss our games in public until the comp is over.

All I can tell you is this:

The executable is packed with MEW, a free exe-packer program which can be found at:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.softpedia.com/get/Programming/Packers-Crypters-Protectors/MEW-SE.shtml">http://www.softpedia.com/get/Programmin ... W-SE.shtml</a>

E.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=462&start=0#p2614
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Project Delta: Trojan?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-03 22:20:36

AVG Free Edition doesn't give a warning. And it didn't trigger Corporate Norton Antivirus on my work PC (although I haven't actually tried to run it yet).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=462&start=0#p2615
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Project Delta: Trojan?
User: DrkStarr / DateTime: 2008-10-03 23:48:36

Sweet, thanks for getting back to me, I feel a lot better about the file. This is the computer that I program IF on, so I really don't run anything on it, and I was a little worried.  I'll be trying it out tomorrow.  [emote]:D[/emote] 

- D

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=462&start=0#p2616
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Project Delta: Trojan?
User: Retro / DateTime: 2008-10-04 00:07:11

I'm getting suspicious about this myself... Who knows, maybe when you pack exe-files with it then MEW adds a trojan-code without the author's knowledge.

I should use another packer in the future.

E.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=462&start=0#p2617
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Project Delta: Trojan?
User: DrkStarr / DateTime: 2008-10-04 09:09:09

[quote="EK_Dev"]I'm getting suspicious about this myself... Who knows, maybe when you pack exe-files with it then MEW adds a trojan-code without the author's knowledge.[/quote]

Maybe, maybe not.  I'm using Trend Micro's PC-cillin on this machine, and it could just be seeing an exe wrapped in MEW and flagging it suspicious because it doesn't know any better.  When I scan it with NOD32 on my Vista box nothing comes up, but like I said, this is my dev box and I'm a little sensitive about it.   [emote];)[/emote]   Just knowing that you did use a MEW wrapper makes me feel better, because it explains why it was flagged on this machine.

- D

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=462&start=0#p2618
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Project Delta: Trojan?
User: Retro / DateTime: 2008-10-04 11:26:36

[quote="DrkStarr"]Maybe, maybe not.  I'm using Trend Micro's PC-cillin on this machine, and it could just be seeing an exe wrapped in MEW and flagging it suspicious because it doesn't know any better.  When I scan it with NOD32 on my Vista box nothing comes up, but like I said, this is my dev box and I'm a little sensitive about it.   [emote];)[/emote]   Just knowing that you did use a MEW wrapper makes me feel better, because it explains why it was flagged on this machine.[/quote]

I have Vista with Norton Protection Center and Norton Internet Security installed on my machine. I have just scanned all my harddrives and the nxi.exe. Nothing found.

This is strange. Why would an antivirus program such as PC-cillin flag a compressed executable as a trojan virus?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=462&start=0#p2619
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Project Delta: Trojan?
User: DrkStarr / DateTime: 2008-10-04 12:20:06

Maybe this will help.

This is the link Trend Micro gives me:
[url]http://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/virusencyclo/default5.asp?VName=Cryp_MEW-11[/url]

It also says:
Aliases: Generic.dx (McAfee), Trojan.Dropper (Symantec), Troj/Patch-F (Sophos), 
In the wild: Yes
Overall risk rating: Low

Description: 
This is the Trend Micro heuristic detection for suspicious files that manifest similar behavior and characteristics as malware packed by MEW.
 
I know this is not what you want to hear, but maybe it is spyware.  I can't submit it for review, so I really don't know, but if it is malware, maybe you can contact Stephen Granade and submit a new version using UPX.

- D

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=462&start=0#p2620
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Project Delta: Trojan?
User: Retro / DateTime: 2008-10-04 14:07:03

[quote]Description: 
This is the Trend Micro heuristic detection for suspicious files that manifest similar behavior and characteristics as malware packed by MEW.[/quote]

Oh, I see. You have activated heuristic detection in your antivirus program. This is not recommended really. You should have turned it off, because it tends to give lots of false warnings on files, even on normal Windows system files.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=462&start=0#p2621
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Project Delta: Trojan?
User: DrkStarr / DateTime: 2008-10-04 14:41:10

[quote="EK_Dev"]Oh, I see. You have activated heuristic detection in your antivirus program. This is not recommended really. You should have turned it off, because it tends to give lots of false warnings on files, even on normal Windows system files.[/quote]
Well, the software installs with heuristic detection turned on, I've never had any problems with it, so I've never had to turn it off.

So maybe we're back to:
[quote="DrkStarr"]It could just be seeing an exe wrapped in MEW and flagging it suspicious because it doesn't know any better. [/quote]
Which is what I was thinking in the first place when you said that you used a MEW wrapper, but when you said that the authors site was suspicious I was a little worried.  

I'm thinking that there's probably nothing wrong with the file, sorry for all the confusion - D

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=462&start=10#p2622
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Project Delta: Trojan?
User: Retro / DateTime: 2008-10-04 15:04:59

[quote]Which is what I was thinking in the first place when you said that you used a MEW wrapper, but when you said that the authors site was suspicious I was a little worried.[/quote]

Like I said, I made a mistake. I will use a reliable packer next time, such as UPX.

Greets
Emilian

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=385&start=0#p2623
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gargoyle on Linux
User: rushomancy / DateTime: 2008-10-04 18:29:14

Heya.  I hope this isn't considered thread necromancy or whatever.  Anyway, I switched to Linux (latest Ubuntu distro if that helps) just recently, and with the IF comp games out I've been wanting to get into them, so I checked this site out for the recommended terps and installed Gargoyle.  Which I like pretty nicely, except I'm having problems with blorb files.  I just get a blank window with nothing in it and if I hit any key it closes.  I can run them okey-dokey under Wine, so it's not some huge crippling issue, but I would like to be able to run them natively; any suggestions?

Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=461&start=0#p2624
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2008 Thoughts and Reviews
User: rifflesby / DateTime: 2008-10-04 21:08:39

Hello, just popping in to say I'm posting my thoughts/notes/rants while playing this years' games on my blog, at [url]http://minimumsafedistance.org[/url], and my girlfriend Jenni is doing the same at [url]http://mybloglovesme.tumblr.com[/url]. Cheers!

Warning: SPOILERS

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=463&start=0#p2625
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: FORTAVM is a new virtual-machine I invented and I require...
User: zzo38 / DateTime: 2008-10-04 22:02:42

Can someone please review the specification? Please note that the standard libraries aren't complete yet, but it should still work (although not very good) without the standard libraries. Can you make a comment of it? Is there anything ambiguous? Is there something you think is wrong with it? Is this specification clear enough to write a interpreter? Please be specific.

[url]http://zzo38computer.cjb.net/textadv/fortavm/[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=463&start=0#p2626
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: FORTAVM is a new virtual-machine I invented and I require...
User: George / DateTime: 2008-10-04 22:27:03

Looks interesting but you could say it's outside my area of expertise [emote];)[/emote]. You might get more looks at this if you post in rec.arts.int-fiction.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=463&start=0#p2627
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: FORTAVM is a new virtual-machine I invented and I require...
User: zzo38 / DateTime: 2008-10-04 23:30:49

[quote="George"]Looks interesting but you could say it's outside my area of expertise ;). You might get more looks at this if you post in rec.arts.int-fiction.[/quote]I posted it to nntp.aioe.org at rec.arts.int-fiction, and it did post OK on nntp.aioe.org, but I can't find it on the Google copy of that newsgroup. How long does it take to copy? Am I doing something wrong? Is there some important header that I omitted? (Please note, I only put 3 headers on the message: Newsgroups, From, Subject. Are there other required headers?)

Well, let's see if anyone else replies here about my virtual-machine specification, someone that understands it better.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=463&start=0#p2628
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: FORTAVM is a new virtual-machine I invented and I require...
User: George / DateTime: 2008-10-04 23:45:46

I don't know, maybe it'll show up shortly. Others might already have it in their news reader feeds.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=461&start=0#p2629
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2008 Thoughts and Reviews
User: Peter Nepstad / DateTime: 2008-10-05 00:19:04

[b]April in Paris[/b] by Jim Aikin

Looking for a game that I could assume to be solidly implemented, I went for Jim's latest game [b]April in Paris[/b] next. I betatested one of his previous games, LAST RESORT, until I thought it was perfect, perhaps not coincidentally, Jim decided not long after to scrap the game entirely and re-write it as LYDIA'S HEART. Well, I quite liked it the way it was, but what the heck.

In any case: April in Paris. Clearly thoroughly tested. Lots of difficult exchanges handled effectively with natural vocabulary. So for example,
[spoiler]If you want to invite a person to lunch, you do not have to type ASK WOMAN ABOUT LUNCH INVITATION or something similarly awkward, you can just INVITE APRIL or INVITE HER TO LUNCH.[/spoiler]

April in Paris takes place in a Parisian cafe, in which you are trying to get the attention of the waiter, which must be accomplished through a series of conversations and fetch tasks. The cafe is implemented in a neat way, its sort of one big room, and all the people in it are visible and can be talked to, but it is also divided up into multiple areas that must be traveled to. It all looks like it is taking advantage of one of those new features of TADS 3 I read about. It is an interesting effect, though still I don't know if it is really an improvement over implementing the cafe as multiple discreet rooms. Certainly it was disorienting at first, and took some time to get used to. Interacting with a person who is not in your sub-area causes you to move to the person's sub area, which is confusing until you notice it happening. And early in the game I tried to kiss the girl you meet and found myself standing outside the restaurant on the sidewalk with no way back in (until I understood the mechanic and tried the same with the waiter, thus moving me back into the restaurant). Bugs like this are the type of thing that survive a beta test and in no way detract from the game.

April in Paris is well crafted. Once again, it is clear that Jim has put care and attentiveness into both the writing and the implementation. There is only one thing I don't like about the game, and that is the subject matter. Really, waiting at a cafe while a waiter ignores you happens in real life, and is no fun in real life, so why would I want to play the situation? This game is most successful when it distracts me from the central premise, and least when I am reminded once again of what I'm supposed to be doing. Me, I would have left the cafe ages ago. There are plenty of wonderful restaurants in Paris, and its not worth wasting time in one that isn't. Unless it was a front for a secret, ancient American death cult. Hmmm....yes, LYDIA IN PARIS, I see it now...

Best puzzle: [spoiler]Figuring out how to get April inside the cafe.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=463&start=0#p2630
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: FORTAVM is a new virtual-machine I invented and I require...
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-05 10:12:55

Yeah, I see it, posted at 2:38 PM CST yesterday.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=464&start=0#p2631
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Links to review sites/blogs
User: JoshuaH / DateTime: 2008-10-05 11:25:15

Thought I'd create a topic for folks to submit their links (or other's links) to IFComp review sites and blogs.

Mine is here: <a class="postlink" href="http://unimplement.blogspot.com/">http://unimplement.blogspot.com/</a>

(Authors, don't read it if you're faint of heart! And there's tons of spoilers, so you may not want to read if you haven't played.)

Reviews up for: A Martian Odyssey, Project Delta, Piracy 2.0

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=464&start=0#p2632
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Links to review sites/blogs
User: Retro / DateTime: 2008-10-05 11:58:42

Hello,

an update of "Project Delta: The Course" has been made today which fixes some interpreter bugs
and is compressed with UPX, a bug-free executable packer.

[EDIT]
The organizers told me that I have to wait until the comp is over before uploading the update......

Emilian

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=464&start=0#p2633
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Links to review sites/blogs
User: JoshuaH / DateTime: 2008-10-05 12:09:44

No.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=464&start=0#p2634
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Links to review sites/blogs
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-05 12:17:59

I don't know if it has changed, but in prior years the version you submit by the deadline is the version judges are asked to play and rate. It's heartbreaking to find an obscure but important bug after the competition begins (I know from experience), but it gives all participants the same chance. I would be surprised -- unless it's changed -- if an updated version gets included for official download at this point...

As for links to reviews, this is as good a place as any to list them. Thanks! At some point I'll gather them up and make a frequently-updated post to collect them all, as in prior years:

(2006) <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=131">viewtopic.php?f=21&t=131</a>
(2007) <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=328">viewtopic.php?f=21&t=328</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=464&start=0#p2635
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Links to review sites/blogs
User: Retro / DateTime: 2008-10-05 12:22:32

[quote="JoshuaH"]I don't know if it has changed, but in prior years the version you submit by the deadline is the version judges are asked to play and rate. It's heartbreaking to find an obscure but important bug after the competition begins (I know from experience), but it gives all participants the same chance. I would be surprised -- unless it's changed -- if an updated version gets included for official download at this point...[/quote]

Well, this is not an attempt to violate any deadlines. It is more of a last-minute security fix to ensure that players' computers are not infected with any virus!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=464&start=0#p2636
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Links to review sites/blogs
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-05 12:31:18

It sounds like you already have, but you might want to continue strictly in private with Stephen. Authors aren't supposed to discuss the games in a public forum -- presumably, even if it's to notify people of a security risk -- and asking people not to blame you if their computer gets infected with a virus is liable to cause some negative preconceptions. So yeah -- best thing is probably to let Stephen know exactly what's going on, and let the annoucement of a new version or a security warning come directly (and officially) from the competition site.

Good luck! I know how it feels to find a serious problem in an entry after the deadline has passed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=464&start=0#p2637
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Links to review sites/blogs
User: Retro / DateTime: 2008-10-05 12:35:13

@Merk:
There seems to be some confusion here. Let me explain...

The fixed version which I have made today does not differ from
the original adventure itself which I originally submitted!
It represents the following changes only:

1. nxi.exe is compressed with UPX now, scanned and guaranteed to be virus-free!
2. fixed a program crash which may occur in the Node-X interpreter on a certain occasion.

That's all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=464&start=0#p2638
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Links to review sites/blogs
User: Retro / DateTime: 2008-10-05 12:40:01

[quote="Merk"]Authors aren't supposed to discuss the games in a public forum -- presumably, even if it's to notify people of a security risk -- and asking people not to blame you if their computer gets infected with a virus is liable to cause some negative preconceptions.[/quote]

I know. And as you can see I am not discussing my game, but trying to inform people of a security issue which I have fixed today.

Greets
Emilian

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=464&start=0#p2639
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Links to review sites/blogs
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2008-10-05 13:25:23

[color=#FF0000][b]*** MESSAGE NO LONGER UPDATED: SEE [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=472]THAT THREAD[/url] INSTEAD ***[/b][/color]

Emily Short did [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2008/10/04/if-competition-reviews-elsewhere/]a list of links to IF Comp 2008 reviews[/url] on her blog (a few of these links were provided by Victor Gijsbers and myself in the comments). I guess we could put these links here, too:

[url=http://plover.net/~bonds/comp08.html]Stephen Bond[/url]
[url=http://inkjuice.com/]Gemma Bristow[/url]
[url=http://frater.wordpress.com/]Nick Bronson[/url]
[url=http://minimumsafedistance.org/]Riff Conner (rifflesby)[/url] (warning: reviews don’t seem to be cut-tagged)
[url=http://anothermrlizard.blogspot.com/]Ben Dixon (“Another Mr Lizard”)[/url]
[url=http://gamingphilosopher.blogspot.com/]Victor Gijsbers[/url]
[url=http://unimplement.blogspot.com/]JoshuaH (a.k.a. Joshua Houk)[/url]
[url=http://stupidparsertricks.blogspot.com/]Aric Maddux[/url]
[url=http://mcmartin.livejournal.com/109804.html]Michael Martin[/url]
[url=http://selfasfractal.blogspot.com/]Sarah Morayati (a.k.a. Lucea)[/url]
[url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=461]Peter Nepstad[/url] (here on this very forum)
[url=http://nitku.net/if/comp08/reviews/]Nitku[/url]
[url=http://www.superdoomedplanet.com/blog/]Wesley Osam[/url]
[url=http://mybloglovesme.tumblr.com/]Jenni Polodna[/url] (warning: reviews don’t seem to be cut-tagged)
[url=http://monksbrew.blogspot.com/]Mike Rubin (Rubes)[/url]
[url=http://newlin.wordpress.com/]George Shannon (“Newlin”)[/url]
[url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/]Emily Short[/url]
[url=http://skeetlj.livejournal.com/]Skeet[/url]
[url=http://ralphmerridew.livejournal.com/]Mark J. Tilford (ralphmerridew)[/url]
[url=http://jrw.livejournal.com/]J. Robinson Wheeler[/url]
[url=http://uk.youtube.com/user/Wintericecrystal]Wintericecrystal (YouTube video reviews!)[/url]

[url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/25bb0499afa304b1]RGIF discussion about “Freedom”[/url]

Mike Snyder (Merk) is also writing reviews in this forum.


These blogs and forums don’t have any reviews yet, but there’ll probably be some reviews sooner or later:

[url=http://www.octopusoverlords.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=63371]Octopus Overlords forum[/url]
[url=http://drfroth.wordpress.com/category/if-comp-2008/]Dr. Froth[/url]
[url=http://www.infodarkness.com/blog.htm]infodarkness[/url]
[url=http://www.wurb.com/stack/]Carl Muckenhoupt[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=464&start=0#p2640
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Links to review sites/blogs
User: George Shannon / DateTime: 2008-10-05 13:45:33

[quote="Eriorg"]
[url=http://newlin.wordpress.com/]“Newlin”[/url][/quote]

That one's mine.  I hope people find it useful, I just started it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=458&start=0#p2641
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Scoring System (for this year)
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-05 14:21:58

Just two games in, and I've already had to revise the wording a little. One of the biggest changes is to the Technical/Implemantation score, which now considers a "bare-bones" implemnation (even if it's not evidently buggy or broken) as zero points.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=464&start=10#p2642
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Links to review sites/blogs
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2008-10-05 14:25:55

OK, I edited my message with your real name. Thank you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=464&start=10#p2644
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Links to review sites/blogs
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-10-05 14:39:28

Mine are at [url]http://nitku.net/if/comp08/reviews/[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=465&start=0#p2645
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Riverside
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-05 14:49:57

I haven't decided whether or not I want to post every review here this year, before the competition ends. I think I'll at least post selected reviews. Either way, I'll put them up at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/">http://www.sidneymerk.com/</a> by the time the competition ends. When I did this last year, I removed the scores from the header and text. I'll go ahead and remove the score summary from the header for this (and any others I post), but I'll leave it in the body (usually toward the bottom) if applicable.

I would recommend that voters [i]do not[/i] read my reviews until after you have already played and formed your own opinion. Just in case, I'll provide some spoiler space. But, I'll clean all of this up and link to my "official" review after the compeition.

Here goes, with my review of Riverside. Comments and discussion are welcome.

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[quote]Game #2: Riverside
Authors: Jeremy Crockett and Victor Janmey (Drew, Jeremy, and Vic)
Played On: October 4th (55 minutes)
Platform: Inform 7 (Zcode)

It took [i]three[/i] people to write [i]Riverside[/i]? Really?

The game starts promisingly enough, with a brief but provocative “wish” sequence, followed by some sort of mystery based around a friend’s murder. The writing is adequate (if a bit lengthy in spots), and it does a good job of building high expectations for the story proper. Although sparsely implemented (descriptions are painted on in many cases, and scenery doesn’t exist as objects in the game world), nothing suggests that [i]Riverside[/i] will turn out to be the lead-in for... for what?

It’s a joke entry, most likely. Last year’s competition was surprisingly lacking in these, yet I fear this year (if upcoming titles and blurbs are any indication) may see an abundance of them. In some ways, it almost feels like the beginning of a serious entry that became a joke simply because the authors wanted to submit it but couldn’t come close to finishing in time. Unless they explain, that’s anybody’s guess.

In short, there isn’t much to see or do here. A couple of introductory scenes offer enough interactivity to feel convincingly serious, but then it ends in the most jarring and cavalier of ways just before things [i]should[/i] start to ramp up. It’s not just that it’s an abrupt ending; it’s that the ending thumbs its proverbial nose at the player, abandons continuity, lapses into what seems to be mockery, and does little but offer insight into some further absurdity that was there all along (a hidden verb, which can be used twice in the first scene and once in the second, but is oddly missing from the last section).

So what’s [i]Riverside[/i], exactly? The authors’ idea of a joke, I guess. It’s certainly not a game that’s worth playing or recommending. It’s time wasted -- time that could have been spent playing and reviewing the next entry.

As for scoring, I’ve given it a “1” for writing (excluding the crazy bit at the very end, which is like that on purpose but to no fathomable reason) and a “1” for puzzles (they amount to little but looking and moving around, but it’s a very small fraction above what I’d consider a zero). It gets, of course, the base point, but all else is zero. That’s a generous “3” from me. I don’t think the authors were after a high ranking anyway.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=465&start=0#p2646
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Riverside
User: George Shannon / DateTime: 2008-10-05 15:00:38

Pretty much the same reaction.

If it's a joke, holy moly, it was a lot of effort to say "HA GOTCHA"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=465&start=0#p2648
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Riverside
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-05 15:10:10

I'm glad there was a walkthrough. My first reaction was that this was somehow related to the story - a turn for the surreal, maybe - and that I needed to figure out something else to do to push things forward. The little "smiley" at the end of the walkthrough, though... is it "we're sorry" or "we fooled you" or what?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=464&start=10#p2649
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Links to review sites/blogs
User: Mr Lizard / DateTime: 2008-10-05 15:45:35

I've now added cut-tags to [url]http://anothermrlizard.blogspot.com[/url]. (which turned out to be much harder than expected).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=464&start=10#p2651
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Links to review sites/blogs
User: JoshuaH / DateTime: 2008-10-05 16:46:53

Ditto for my page as well, and ditto on the "thanks for making that easy, Google". Thanks, Eriorg. (And you suppose right!)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=466&start=0#p2652
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Snack Time!
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-05 17:37:50

Here is a draft of the next of my reviews. I probably should mention that I usually tweak them and make small revisions before the "official" posting at [url=http://www.sidneymerk.com/]my site[/url] at the end of the competition. So yeah - consider it a draft.

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[quote]Game #3: Snack Time! (An Interactive Break for a Bite)
Authors: “Hardy the Bulldog” and Renee Choba
Played On: October 5th (35 minutes)
Platform: Inform 7 (Zcode)

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
[i]Can you help one hungry bulldog in his quest to find something good to eat? He would like that. A lot.[/i]

[i]Snack Time![/i] is a cute, super-short diversion. It’s maybe [i]too[/i] short, even by IFComp standards. The concept (PC is an animal), while done before in previous competitions, could stand for a little meatier treatment. The game is everything it sets out to be, which is to say it’s not incredibly ambitious.

Being told from Hardy’s viewpoint, things are described in very general terms. A couch is “the long soft thing.” An oven and a refrigerator are “a thing that gets hot” and “a box that stays cold,” respectively. The television is “the box of light.” It’s all put into context, though. What these things [i]really[/i] are is obvious from the text, and the game accepts the appropriate English names just fine. Parts of the text can be a [i]little[/i] hard to visualize on a first pass (and even a little clunky to read), but it’s effective overall.

Plus, it’s all smooth enough until the end. Putting yourself in Hardy’s place isn’t hard, and the game recognizes the kinds of actions typical of dogs. This makes some actions that would be non-intiutive in any other game (jumping up on a something, biting something, begging, etc) fair as elements of the game’s relatively lightweight puzzles. It’s also pretty good about recognizing unimportant actions. Hardy is prevented from doing the more aggressive things in reaching his goal, but the game usually [i]understands[/i] them.

In giving [i]Snack Time![/i] the highest mark for Implementation, I’ve had to judge the game’s responsiveness separate from the difficult bit at the end (which, in scoring, factors more into the puzzles than the implementation). Each achievement is worth ten points (of a perfect fifty). The final two achievements (gained simultaneously at the end, where the second is optional) were harder to come by. Part of the reason is that a very strong clue for what Hardy must do at the end is seemingly seen only if you don’t move a certain item before “Pet” has a chance to encounter it. If you leave it alone, wake “Pet” and wait a couple turns, something happens that’s a strong and important clue for the endgame. 

Without that clue, however, it’s pretty difficult to know [i]what[/i] to do without stumbling on the answer by accident. For me, it meant checking the hints. I only found that it [i]was[/i] clued on a second play-through, and that was by failing to move the item in question. Something is missing there at the end. As the final puzzle -- the final few turns -- it makes sense that the difficulty would rise. The problem, though, is twofold. One, something that [i]should[/i] conceivably work (simply taking what you want), doesn’t. That would have been a great spot to give even a vague hint, but the chance was missed. Two, an unfortunate choice in wording can lead one to believe that a specific action (one perhaps even independent of the rest of the game) must be required at just the right moment. The final ten points [i]might[/i] be clued in the 40-point ending, but it seems unlikely most players will pick up on the one little bit that [i]might[/i] be the clue.

But it’s cute. And it’s not a bad game by any means. It’s just short, not very ambitious, and potentially hard to crack at the end. It rates a “6” using my self-imposed [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=458]judging[/url] rules, and that puts it right about “average.”

Renee entered the IFComp in 2005 with [url=http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp05/history.shtml][i]History Repeating[/i][/url], another short and sort-of nondescript average kind of game. I’d like to see something longer and more ambitious from this author in the future; something more substantial story-wise.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=467&start=0#p2653
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Afflicted
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-05 17:52:21

Okay... I just can't help it. Since I [i]can[/i] post my reviews, I feel like I [i]should[/i] post my reviews (all of them). So, here's backtracking to the first I played in this year's competition. Doug Egan's [i]Afflicted[/i]. Like the others, it's a draft that may be tweaked or revised in small ways before being officially posted to [url=http://www.sidneymerk.com/]my site[/url] at the end of the competition.

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[quote]Game #1: Afflicted
Author: Doug Egan
Played On: October 1st (1 hour 35 minutes)
Platform: Inform 7 (Zcode)

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
[i]This isn't the safest neighborhood. A young woman was abducted near here only recently. But as a city sanitarian you are obligated to complete your annual inspection of the local dive.[/i]

[b]>xyzzy[/b]
[i] You break mimesis to pay your respects to Will Crowther.[/i]

The first game in every IFComp is always the toughest to score and review. My enthusiasm from the prior year has given way to other responsibilities, and (I’m ashamed to admit) I’ve fallen into the bad habit of playing little to no Interactive Fiction in the spanning months. I tend to feel a little out of sorts with the first game, uncertain whether I’m being too critical or not critical enough. This year is even tougher, because I’ve adopted a new rating [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=458]system[/url] that may keep my votes bottom-heavy if I’m too stingy with and protective of the 2’s.
 
This is demonstrated perfectly by Doug Egan’s [i]Afflicted[/i]. The writing is fine. The story is fine. The puzzles are fine (although they don’t extend much further than basic exploration and observation). It’s a technically sound game. But if no aspect of the game is “great,” it can be no higher than a “5” (or a “6” if given the bonus point) by my new scoring system. So, what [i]really[/i] merits a categorical 2? Excellence? Or just anything that feels a step above mediocre?

It’s obvious that the game’s core theme is intentionally hidden by the author, and I won’t spoil it here. That it becomes increasingly grim and disturbing should be enough to set the tone. At times, though, what’s probably meant to be macabre seems a little silly. It succeeds [i]most[/i] of the time, and does offer up some gruesome imagery, but [i]every once in a while[/i] it just seems more odd than shocking. (I’ve never, for instance, encountered any game in which the protagonist can experience the aftertaste of urine.)

Before it goes full-on weird, it does a great job of putting the player in the role of a restaurant health and safety inspector. The premise seemed dull at the outset, but before long I was smirking and happily noting every violation I could come across – and actively seeking them out, no less. This is pretty important, because the story begins to open up as you encounter more violations and as you start to suspect the truth of things.

The story’s biggest flaw is that it seems to rely on the player to carry on with the same sense of duty as the protagonist. That’s fine at first, but it’s hard to believe that any sane and rational-minded human being would carry on with his little notepad to the extent that [i]this[/i] protagonist must. If there’s a legitimate reason beyond just an inflated sense of “being thorough,” it doesn’t come across in the story. I was already ready to bail out, yet the game insisted that I hadn’t yet completed my duty. To [i]hell[/i] with duty. I’d have bolted to my car the moment the ice in the sink melted.

The story’s [i]second[/i] biggest flaw is that certain losing endings should probably go a little differently. In particular, it’s possible to get arrested. But, it’s possible to get arrested while [i]carrying[/i] things that should raise a few eyebrows (or at least some kind of explanation in the ending). It’s not so much that the core story is on rails (I don’t mind this in most games), but there are a number of implausible circumstances (why isn’t the PC pursued down the hall, for instance) even discounting the supernatural.

It’s a solid implementation, for the most part. I was pleased (especially early on) that many optional (and non-obvious) actions were anticipated by the author. The game was clearly tested and polished prior to release. I only encountered two sticking points, but they were pretty [i]important[/i] sticking points.

In the first, I couldn’t figure out how to make use of something found in a first aid kit. The pressure mounts, and each turn counts, yet I fumbled with the right verb or action to make it work. It turns out that some simple (and even obvious) phrasings work fine, but what I tried wasn’t outrageous or anything. I imagined the PC fumbling around the way I was, so it [i]kind of[/i] worked for the story, but probably not as the author intended. In the second case, I tried to reassemble something the wrong way, to no obvious affect. I was missing, hmm… “joining” pieces, so to speak, but was left with the feeling that this just wasn’t something the game supported and I was on the wrong track. Later, thankfully, I tried again with better results. An opportunity was missed there, though, to clue the player and give a little hope for later.

The protagonist can accumulate an inventory of generally useless stuff -- things encountered while noting violations, primarily. I hesitate to call them “red herrings” because they may be pieces of alternate puzzle solutions, but in my play-through (and selected re-plays) I never found uses. This leaves them [i]feeling[/i] like red herrings, even if that’s not the case.

There is one thing in particular the protagonist must do to advance the story, yet it’s something I suspect most players will try to avoid on subsequent play-throughs (or even UNDO to before it), yet I couldn’t find an alternative. I think there probably [i]is[/i] an alternative, but I didn’t find it. Something obvious (using one of the items in inventory) didn’t work for me. And the game didn’t really give a good reason why it wouldn’t.

All in all, I came away with the impression of a good, competently constructed game. I’m scoring it an optimistic “2” on writing -- its strongest quality -- although I expect even better from some of those I’ve yet to play. All other categories get a solid “1” (including the bonus point, just in case I’m being too tough on this year’s first entry), for a composite score of “7.”

Update: After playing far too many poorly-tested, broken games after this one, I have bumped the implementation score up to “2” for a composite score of “8.”[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=468&start=0#p2654
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: [beta] [TADS 2] DARKTOWN (version: beta 1)
User: zzo38 / DateTime: 2008-10-05 17:55:21

I made a game called DARKTOWN and I want comment of it. It is the first beta, the game isn't complete yet. The last thing that you should be able to do is to do is to get rid of the big pineapple. If you have question, you may post question here also. Post some comments also. And if you are creating a transcript for beta-testing, use // at the beginning of a line to make comment in the transcript file, don't use square brackets. This game recognizes // to mean comments in the transcript.

Download at: [url]http://zzo38computer.cjb.net/textadv/beta/darktown/[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=468&start=0#p2655
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: [beta] [TADS 2] DARKTOWN (version: beta 1)
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-05 18:18:17

If you don't get any takers, you might try again in three or four weeks. The 2008 [url=http://www.ifcomp.org/]IF Competition[/url] is underway (you may already know), so many of us are busy playing our way through this year's crop.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=461&start=10#p2656
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2008 Thoughts and Reviews
User: Peter Nepstad / DateTime: 2008-10-05 20:55:48

[b]Riverside[/b] by a bunch of people

Perhaps the ambitions of the authors exceeded their ability to such a degree that they finally had to angrily abandon their effort. It sort of felt like a child trying to put together a Lego kit then smashing it to pieces instead in frustration.

The game opens with a promising funeral scene, but it turns out nothing much in the scene is implemented: you can't interact with your fellow mourners, nor any of the surroundings (tombstones, etc). In fact for the most part the only verb implemented was EXAMINE.

Then the story proceeds to a dull and similarly un-implemented apartment scene. I thought I would be unable to finish the game (despite the walkthrough), but luckily [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2008/10/02/if-competition-riverside/]Emily Short's review[/url] came in with the save for the one sentence you need: READ ALBUM.

Not that it mattered, as shortly thereafter the game self destructs in a fit of pique. 

-- Peter

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=461&start=10#p2657
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Peter's IFComp 2008 Thoughts and Reviews
User: Peter Nepstad / DateTime: 2008-10-05 21:19:31

[b]A Martian Odyssey[/b] by "Horatio"

When your title conjures up Bowie songs and Bradbury stories, boy, you'd better have it all together.

This game doesn't, unfortunately. But it does have an "old school" vibe that is not entirely unwelcome, and the spare descriptive style serves to showcase the alien landscape and keeps its "otherness" mostly unknown. You want to find out more about the things you see and creatures you meet, but basically the game is too simple and won't let you, so you only have an imperfect idea of what you are looking at most of the time. While this effect is not likely intentional, nevertheless I think it is workable. We are no where near Bradbury, here, but the game does have the creative energy of the old pulps, and could if more successful suggest a work by, say, A. Merritt. The alien creatures are tremendously imaginative. 

(My favorite:[spoiler]the pyramid monster.)[/spoiler]

I was also happy to see that the spare descriptions were researched in terms of naming some areas of the Martian landscape. In some ways, a lot of care went into this game.

But as with many of the other games I've played in the comp so far, the implementation is too simple and ultimately fails. Not enough synonyms, not enough thought for all the ways a person might try to accomplish a task, guess-the-verb as the only way forward. And puzzles are generally of two types: either I knew what I needed to do but could not come up with the phrasing to make it work, or I didn't know, and couldn't know without authorial mind-reading.

And then it ends, when the game was still just a series of vignettes. The game just might have been able to overcome its severe implementation problems if it had an overarching premise of more grandeur than simply: I crashed, I'm walking back to get picked up.

-- Peter

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=469&start=0#p2658
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Project Delta: The Course
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-05 21:44:32

Here's my next review, in unofficial draft form. Four games down, 31 to go.

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[quote]Game #4: Project Delta: The Course
Author: Emilian Kowalewski
Played On: October 5th (15 minutes)
Platform: Custom (Node-X CYOA Interpreter for Windows)

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
[i]The Course is a short prequel to Project Delta, a CYOA-style text adventure inspired by Area 51 conspiracy theories, set in its own universe and scripted in "Node-X", a game system developed by the author himself.[/i]

Maybe this is the year of the [i]far-too-short[/i] game?

[i]Project Delta: The Course[/i] weighs in at just 15 minutes, and part of that comes from experimenting with the various built-in color themes. This is little more than a tech demo for Emilian’s new console-mode CYOA system, Node-X.

Most of the effort -- well, nearly [i]all[/i] of the effort -- went into the development of Node-X rather than the game that’s meant to showcase it. It’s fitting, then, that this review is going to focus primarily on Node-X (and mostly in the form of suggestions). The story, billed as a prequel to a larger upcoming Node-X game, does nothing to distinguish itself or captivate players. An amnesiac military woman is given a very short demonstration of the Node-X interface by a generic military man. It’s not even as entertaining as the introductory interface training in a video game, although presumably it serves the same purpose. Really, there is [i]nothing[/i] here. No story. A generic setting. It [i]might[/i] get a player interested in Node-X, but [i]nobody[/i] is likely to play [i]The Course[/i] and develop anticipation or hunger for the as-of-yet unreleased [i]The Assignment[/i].

So, I’ll focus on the Node-X engine.

It’s odd that the author chose a console-mode presentation. I suppose there’s nothing here that makes it a [i]bad[/i] choice -- only, if it has to be PC-only, a Windows-based or web-based interface would provide more future flexibility. At the risk of self-promotion, I developed something sort of similar to this (CYOA with game saving, inventory, system commands like “examine”, and more) using DHTML and JavaScript. I’ve never released it (it needs a little work, anyway), but since it supports multimedia and works on many platforms, it seems like a better direction to take for a CYOA engine.

From [i]The Course[/i], it seems the author intends for it to be more for menu-based IF than CYOA. (Mine, incidentally, is the same way. You could do traditional CYOA, but the advanced feature set also lends itself to more traditional IF where there are puzzles and inventory and fewer wildly branching CYOA-style plot lines.) Still, the more IF-like your CYOA becomes, the less justification I can see in a text-only console-mode PC-only implementation.

Node-X needs a transcript feature, with annotation. My “transcript” for [i]Project Delta: The Course[/i] is just a few notes taken in NOTEPAD while playing. This is handy not just for IFComp judges, but for eventual beta-testers of Node-X games. A running transcript, which a player can turn on or off and add comments while playing, would be a nice (and useful) addition.

An [i]UNDO[/i] feature would be nice. My own CYOA engine (sorry, sorry -- it may be bad form to keep referencing it, but it’s my basis for comparison) has this, and it’s just a matter of remembering the previous state (in this case, probably inventory) and returning to the prior page (or “node”).

An open specification for the game’s binary format (*.NX1) might be a good idea. It would probably be something others could use in creating non-Windows interpreters, and (maybe) even work into multi-format interpreters like Gargoyle or Spatterlight. It will take something like this to gain a wider acceptance within the IF community (assuming that’s even a goal -- and it may be, given that this was submitted to the IFComp).

I noticed a tendency in [i]The Course[/i] to show extra blank options sometimes. I’m not sure what that was all about. A bug? Intentional, as a means of showing that there [i]aren’t[/i] any more options? I’m just not sure. It [i]seemed[/i] like a bug.

It’s unfortunate that [i]The Course[/i] isn’t an interesting game. The IFComp is a good way to get exposure in the IF Community, and a more worthwhile game could really have been a showcase for Node-X. I’m left with mixed feelings about the interpreter. On the one hand, it does seem to work fine (although in a far less sophisticated way than even the least popular of IF development languages). The author has probably worked as hard on this game as any other of this year’s participants (albeit on the engine, not the game). On the other hand, the “game” itself would be worthless no matter the platform.

So, what I’ve opted to do is give 1 Technical point (for Node-X itself), 1 Writing point (this is generous -- the writing isn’t horrible, but there [i]are[/i] frequent problems and it’s just not very interesting), the free point, and -- both as encouragement to consider my suggestions and because I [i]still[/i] have a soft spot for the optimism shown by home-brew authors -- the bonus point. That’s a composite score of “4,” and that’s (sad though it may be) about double what I expect the game’s competition average to be.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=469&start=0#p2659
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Project Delta: The Course
User: Retro / DateTime: 2008-10-05 22:34:38

This year we gave you [b]The Absolute Worst IF Game in History[/b] and [i][b]The Absolute Shortest IF Game In History[/b][/i].  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote] 

Thanks for the review.

Emilian

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=468&start=0#p2661
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: [beta] [TADS 2] DARKTOWN (version: beta 1)
User: zzo38 / DateTime: 2008-10-05 22:50:36

I guess people that don't do IF Comp can beta-test my game. Maybe in November, you can do it too (if you want to). I need beta-test, but not one person in particular, please.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=468&start=0#p2662
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: [beta] [TADS 2] DARKTOWN (version: beta 1)
User: Mewizkuit / DateTime: 2008-10-06 01:19:02

I tried the game. I've included a "walkthrough" of the game so far.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=460&start=0#p2663
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: rioshin's Scoring System for 2008
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2008-10-06 08:42:19

[quote="George"]I'm curious about the reasoning about subtracting points for homebrew [i]or[/i] single-platform games...are you saying a homebrew game that was multi-platform would still get 0 there?[/quote]
It's there to award games that as many people as possible can play - a homebrew system is most likely single-platform, but not always, as it depends on what technology is used. Thus, the more platforms a game runs on, the higher a score it will get in this department.

Homebrews, which I have marked for 0, are basically because of that single-platform limitation. Of course, if the technology used is Java, for example, I'll have to revise my score somewhat, since it runs on quite a few different platforms.

What I wanted with this score is to [i]reward[/i] those games that are accessible to most users - which means, that no matter how good a e.g. windows-only game is, it can't get a full 10, as it's not accessible enough. Adrift games, for example, can get a 10 if they get full scores in every other department, but scoring a 10 is hard even for a game written in Zcode.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=467&start=0#p2664
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Afflicted
User: George Shannon / DateTime: 2008-10-06 18:51:25

I really liked it, I gave it a bit higher than you, I guess, on my completely arbitrary scale.  I liked the idea of the author taking a cliche and running with it.

Yeah, you don't HAVE to do that horrible thing you're thinking of.  But it cuts off the 'best' ending.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=471&start=0#p2665
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Ananachronist
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-06 21:36:21

Here's the draft of my review of Joseph Strom's "Ananachronist."
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[quote]Game #5: Ananachronist (A puzzle in four dimensions)
Author: Joseph Strom
Played On: October 5th and 6th (2 hours)
Platform: Inform 7 (Zcode)

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
[i]Have you ever wondered about lack of universe-destroying temporal paradoxes? The anthropic principle just not a good enough explanation for you? Here's a short game about how difficult it is to keep the universe non-existence free.[/i]

Assuming that an “anachronist” is somebody who deals with “anachronisms,” there’s an extra “an” at the beginning of this game’s title. Then again, maybe that’s intentional.

But maybe not. The text is full of little typos of the kind made when the writer is typing in a hurry (check out my forum and newsgroup posts; it’s the exact same thing). If the game wasn’t [i]proofread[/i] then it probably wasn’t [i]tested[/i]. And if it wasn’t [i]tested[/i], then there is a good chance that what the author sees as obvious and fair will turn out to be obscure and [i]unfair[/i]. Beta-testing accomplishes more than just weeding out the bugs. It lets you find out -- before it’s too late -- how actual players are going to interact with your game.

[i]Ananachronist[/i] is probably trying to be a game like [url=http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp04/devours.shtml][i]All Things Devours[/i][/url] or [url=http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/mobius.shtml][i]Mobius[/i][/url] (or even [url=http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/orevore.shtml][i]Orevore Courier[/i][/url] with its multiple vantage points that require some trial-and-error), but it never comes together. I’m tempted to say that it never [i]quite[/i] comes together, but in many ways it’s not even close. The story bit at the very beginning is interesting, but it serves the unfortunate duty of [i]hiding[/i] the player’s goal behind some confusing purple prose. The introduction isn’t bad, but it causes a paradox of its own. It’s only possible to make sense of it after you’ve figured out what your goal is, but you can’t figure out your goal unless you know what the introduction is all about.

For quite a while, I made modest progress exploring the game’s three different “overlapping” zones. “Exploring” is about all I managed to do, though. I had skipped the tips in the included “readme.txt” for fear of spoilers, but in looking back, I doubt I would ever have tried some of the things it suggested I try. The game gave me no reason to suspect that the three zones could be influenced by each other in those ways. If it did, I completely missed it. It’s probably something the player is supposed to “figure out,” but there [i]has[/i] to be some kind of basis for discovering the rules of the game world.

This is a big enough problem, but [i]Ananachronist[/i] has more. When the game [i]does[/i] tell you what to do (searching for something in the computer, for instance), it doesn’t actually accept the phrasing it suggests (you must “look up” things in the computer instead). An item that is supposed to work in “line of sight” with a panel [i]actually[/i] works only if you “wave” it (and that’s not even something the text suggested). Keep in mind that all the while, the player really has [i]no idea[/i] what he’s supposed to be doing. There are miscellaneous things to interact with, but it’s nearly impossible to deduce [i]why[/i] you’re interacting with them, [i]what[/i] it’s supposed to achieve, or [i]how[/i] it all fits together. 

Worse, there is a bit of a problem with consistency that makes even trial-and-error difficult. Take, for instance, the following exchange:

[b]>touch canvas[/b]
[i]You feel nothing unexpected.[/i]

[b]>open canvas[/b]
[i]You push the flaps aside but they fall back in place.  Nothing stops you from just walking through them however.[/i]

[b]>pull canvas[/b]
[i]The canvas simply disintegrates at your touch.[/i]

This would be a minor complaint, except that getting the canvas to disintegrate turns out to be [i]important[/i]. But, who’d have thought to even [i]try[/i] it, given that it behaved in completely ordinary ways in response to ordinary actions? The game’s entire design proves again and again that the author has everything worked out in a perfectly reasonable way, but he just wasn’t able to translate it into a fair and fun experience for [i]other[/i] people.

One action that the player must perform many times -- putting things on the pedestal -- could benefit from more simplicity. It might have been re-worked as a much shorter action, for instance. It could also be implied that the player intends to remove the current item before placing the next, without requiring that the player do so explicitly.

Despite the numerous problems -- unclued and misclued puzzles, a lack of discernable goals, unimplemented scenery objects, counter-intuitive actions, and even a few run-time parser errors involving attempts to open and unlock things -- I had high expectations that it was all going to pay off at the end. I finished the game on autopilot (i.e., a restart, and then a cut-and-paste of the game’s walkthrough commands), but it ends with nothing; no explanation, no big congratulations, no clever tying-together of everything that came before. If the journey is the reward, it never even took the scenic route.

This is a tough one to score. Categories are a toss-up between 0 and 1 (but never 1 and 2). With testing, revision, better clues and a real ending, it [i]could[/i] become a pretty playable game. It needs more, though. Even if, as the author says, everything else has been sacrificed for the sake of this one puzzle (and that’s not even accurate; it’s a series of puzzles just like any adventure game), it’s not [i]interesting[/i] enough as-is.

It has what [i]could[/i] be a good core concept, but it’s marred by too many problems in the implementation. Rated on what it is, with the benefit of the doubt given for what it [i]could be[/i], I’m rating it a “1” in every category (without the bonus). That’s a composite score of “5.” My gut says “4,” but I’m sticking with my rating system.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=461&start=10#p2666
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Peter's IFComp 2008 Thoughts and Reviews
User: Peter Nepstad / DateTime: 2008-10-06 21:39:57

[b]Red Moon[/b] by Jonathan Hay

It's a one room game. Not much to do, nor much going on. There are no puzzles, other than to figure out that you must repeat a command over and over again before getting the desired result. Sometimes the response to the command changes, sometimes it doesn't. The "world" described in the single room doesn't make much sense: an old wooden shack with...a computer? With a little refinement, this could be an interesting opener to a longer game. As it stands it tries for a short, clever EC - Comics type ending but it lacks punch.

-- Peter

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=467&start=0#p2667
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Afflicted
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-06 21:41:48

I liked it too, really. Of the five I've played so far, it has the lead. I might have been a little tough on it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=461&start=10#p2668
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Peter's IFComp 2008 Thoughts and Reviews
User: Peter Nepstad / DateTime: 2008-10-06 22:26:34

[b]Violet[/b] by Jeremy Freese

Every once in a while a game comes along and creates a character so stunningly vivid and fully realized that you feel you know and love them. Last year's comp brought us the player character Grunk in Lost Pig. This year, it's Violet, the player character's girlfriend, who does not even appear in this one room game but who inhabits the authorial voice of the game. Every response generated through your interaction is told to you by Violet -- not, she reminds us, Actual Me Violet, but close enough. I think I'm in love.

[spoiler]OK, I admit it: I went across the hall once -- just once! -- when Julia was talking about being a contortionist, but I did Undo, so I hope Violet forgives me, one more time.[/spoiler]

The story is simple: you need to write your dissertation, you keep getting distracted by things. And the story, such that it is, is one I pretty much deeply hate: any game having to do with college life generally makes me want to floss with barbed wire. So what makes this boring, lame, annoying storyline palatable is basically the fact that it is fucking brilliantly imagined, written, and implemented. 

One issue for the bug-fix release:
[spoiler]:I can plug EARS, but not EAR. Needed the hints to get past that one.[/spoiler]

Best Puzzle:
[spoiler]The blinds thingy. Or, maybe the internet connection. I don't know, they were all pretty good.[/spoiler]

Jeremy: Seriously, this game is truly great. Thank you for raising the bar. Please write more.

Jeremy, one more thing: But really, not about college again. Please.

-- Peter

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=471&start=0#p2669
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Ananachronist
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-10-07 05:04:39

[quote]Assuming that an “anachronist” is somebody who deals with “anachronisms,” there’s an extra “an” at the beginning of this game’s title. Then again, maybe that’s intentional.[/quote]

It's a word play: the time-altering mages are creating anachronisms (ana-chronos, anti-time), and the police force that tries to undo these anachronisms are anti-anachronists (ana-ana-chronos).

Also I'm hoping someone will write a spoof game called Bananachronist. Like the saying goes: fruit flies like an arrow, time flies like a banana.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=471&start=0#p2670
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Ananachronist
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-07 06:58:53

Ah. Okay. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=464&start=10#p2671
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Links to review sites/blogs
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2008-10-07 19:00:32

I've been regularly editing my own message with more links to reviews. But I think they'd be more visible if they were in the first post of a sticky thread, like last year...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=464&start=10#p2672
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Links to review sites/blogs
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-07 19:03:41

Good idea. If you want to keep doing the update, just start a new post and I'll "sticky" it for you. That way, you'll be the author and have permission to make changes to the top post.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=472&start=0#p2673
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: IF Comp 2008: Links to reviews
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2008-10-07 19:23:56

[b][color=red]Note: I've just finished copying these links (actually, sometimes more accurate links) [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/14th_Annual_Interactive_Fiction_Competition]on the IFWiki[/url]. I'll do further updates there, if there are any, because I don't really want to maintain two separate lists.[/color][/b]

Emily Short did [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2008/10/04/if-competition-reviews-elsewhere/]a list of links to IF Comp 2008 reviews[/url] on her blog (a few of these links were provided in the comments by various people, including myself). I guess we could put these links here, too:

[url=http://diden.net/~maga/maga_ifcomp_2008.html]Sam Kabo Ashwell[/url]
[url=http://www.auntiepixelante.com/]Anna Anthropy[/url] (no cut tags)
[url=http://plover.net/~bonds/comp08.html]Stephen Bond[/url]
[url=http://inkjuice.com/?tag=if-comp-2008]Gemma Bristow[/url]
[url=http://frater.wordpress.com/]Nick Bronson[/url]
[url=http://ceceatitagain.blogspot.com/search/label/IFComp08]Cesia[/url] (no cut tags)
[url=http://www.math.psu.edu/clemens/IF/Reviews/Comp08.html]J. D. Clemens (JDC)[/url]
[url=http://minimumsafedistance.org/]Riff Conner (rifflesby)[/url] (no cut tags)
[url=http://www.avventuretestuali.com/recensioni/if-comp-2008]Francesco Cordella[/url] (in Italian)
[url=http://blog.scatmania.org/]Scatman Dan[/url] (no cut tags)
[url=http://www.infodarkness.com/if/ifcomp2008.html]Dark Star[/url]
[url=http://www.elbeno.com/blog/]Ben Deane[/url] (no cut tags)
[url=http://staff.science.uva.nl/~dimitrak/comp08reviews.txt]Christos Dimitrakakis[/url] (no cut tags)
[url=http://anothermrlizard.blogspot.com/]Ben Dixon (“Another Mr Lizard”)[/url]
[url=http://georgedorn.livejournal.com/162491.html]George Dorn[/url]
[url=http://www.zen27881.zen.co.uk/djf/ifcomp2008/]David Fletcher[/url]
[url=http://gamingdungeon.ikrell.com/]Gaming Dungeon[/url]
[url=http://gamingphilosopher.blogspot.com/]Victor Gijsbers[/url]
[url=http://nbhorvath.blogspot.com/]N. B. Horvath[/url] (no cut tags)
[url=http://unimplement.blogspot.com/]Joshua Houk (a.k.a. JoshuaH)[/url]
[url=http://imrihamun.livejournal.com/]Imrihamun[/url]
[url=http://nitku.net/if/comp08/reviews/]Juhana Leinonen (Nitku)[/url]
[url=http://isquiesque.livejournal.com/tag/if+comp+2008]Jacqueline A. Lott[/url]
[url=http://stupidparsertricks.blogspot.com/]Aric Maddux[/url]
[url=http://home.grandecom.net/~maher/if/comp08.html]Jimmy Maher[/url]
[url=http://mcmartin.livejournal.com/109804.html]Michael Martin[/url]
[url=http://www.the-wabe.com/if-comp-2008/]Rob Menke[/url]
[url=http://selfasfractal.blogspot.com/search/label/ifcomp]Sarah Morayati (a.k.a. Lucea)[/url]
[url=http://www.wurb.com/stack/]Carl Muckenhoupt[/url]
[url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=461]Peter Nepstad[/url] (here on this very forum)
[url=http://kooneiform.wordpress.com/2008/11/15/the-end-is-nigh/]George Oliver (kooneiform)[/url]
[url=http://www.superdoomedplanet.com/blog/]Wesley Osam[/url]
[url=http://pigpuppet.blogspot.com/search/label/IFComp08]Lucy Pigpuppet[/url]
[url=http://mybloglovesme.tumblr.com/]Jenni Polodna[/url]
[url=http://monksbrew.blogspot.com/]Mike Rubin (Rubes)[/url]
[url=http://magnusmartyr.blogspot.com/]P. F. Sheckarski[/url]
[url=http://newlin.wordpress.com/]George Shannon (“Newlin”)[/url]
[url=http://inkylj.livejournal.com/]Dan Shiovitz[/url]
[url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/]Emily Short[/url]
[url=http://skeetlj.livejournal.com/]Skeet[/url]
[url=http://www.sidneymerk.com/ifcomp08.shtml]Mike Snyder (Merk)[/url] (also wrote reviews in this forum)
[url=http://ralphmerridew.livejournal.com/]Mark J. Tilford (ralphmerridew)[/url]
[url=http://jrw.livejournal.com/]J. Robinson Wheeler[/url]
[url=http://www.crochetgeek.net/reviews/IF/comp08.html]Jake Wildstrom[/url] (no cut tags)
[url=http://uk.youtube.com/user/Wintericecrystal]Wintericecrystal (YouTube video reviews!)[/url]
[url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/msg/c060f89a2c38701b]Reiko Yukawa (Reiko)[/url]

[url=http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/backissues/spag53.html]SPAG #53[/url]
[url=http://forum.ifiction.ru/viewtopic.php?id=1109]Reviews on the Russian forum[/url]
[url=http://www.octopusoverlords.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=63371]Octopus Overlords forum[/url]
[url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/25bb0499afa304b1]RGIF discussion about “Freedom”[/url]
[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchbar=tag%3AIF+Competition+2008+%23reviews%3A1-]Reviews at IFDB[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=464&start=10#p2674
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Links to review sites/blogs
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2008-10-07 19:30:28

Done. (If you want to edit my message to add other links when you find them, feel free!)

About one of the latest links I added: doing YouTube videos for interactive fiction reviews is a funny idea! Was it ever done before?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=464&start=10#p2675
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Links to review sites/blogs
User: George / DateTime: 2008-10-07 20:07:58

I just watched some of that, quite entertaining. I can't recall anyone ever doing that. 

There seems to be a lot more blogging going on this year than last. Makes sense all in all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=461&start=10#p2676
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Peter's IFComp 2008 Thoughts and Reviews
User: blackgoat / DateTime: 2008-10-07 20:37:02

Violet, have to agree with you - what a fantastic game.  By far the best I've played at this Comp, and I've played more than half of them already. I'd go and say it is better than a lot of games that have won previous year's comps.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=458&start=0#p2677
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Scoring System (for this year)
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-08 15:28:50

Just a note to anybody who's using or going to use this system or one like it:

I'm six games in now, and I'm already struggling a little with my own scoring system. The problem is, for instance, I can look at a game and think "well, this deserves an 8" (just, as a gut reaction), but to justify an 8, it has to get 2's in two of the primiary categories.

I've been reluctant to [i]give[/i] many 2's (so far) because that's the "top" score for that category. I [i]have[/i] given 2's when I feel it's close enough or in order to justify the higher score I think the game deserves, but on the whole it does seem like my scores are ending up a point or two lower than where they would have been with my ranking system from [url=http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/scoring.shtml]last year[/url].

And the reason is probably obvious. When I was voting the game "as a whole," I could give an 8 or even a 9 if the "whole game" fell a little short of expectactions. Now, if the "whole game" falls short of expectactions, I'm breaking that out into its component pieces, meaning it loses a point in [i]each[/i] category, not just as a whole.

Rioshin, you might have the right idea in giving a larger range of scores in each category, and then averaging at the end. For instance, I'd probably struggle less if I rated each category 1 to 10, added them up, and divided by the number of categories. I [i]didn'[/i], because then I'd have to decide whether to round up or round down, but I'm starting to think that might be better.

Even as it stands, if I were to give a 1.5 in two categories, the score would end up being what it should be without having to give a 1 in one category and a 2 in the other to get the same result. I may just be over-thinking it, but I think I'd rather vote a game too high than too low.

Anyway, I'm leaving it as-is for now. But I did want to give a heads-up to anybody who might use this system that it does seem to force scores lower than you might have intended.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=474&start=0#p2679
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Beta testers wanted for "Unreliable Narrator"
User: Jeremymia / DateTime: 2008-10-08 17:53:32

Name may change.

This is a very short game, and I don't think it would benefit by being any longer. It probably takes no more than 20 to 30 minutes to complete. If you're interested, shoot me an e-mail at <a href="mailto:Jeremymia@gmail.com">Jeremymia@gmail.com</a>.

A quick summary of the game is this: You're playing a piece of Interactive Fiction, but the interpreter -- responsible for reporting details of the world to you -- is not cooperating.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=475&start=0#p2680
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Opening Night
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-08 22:04:17

A draft of my review of Opening Night is below the spoiler space.
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This one took a while to write, and it's not even that long a review. The big problem was just trying to figure out [i]what[/i] I wanted to say without needless rambling (I even cut out a couple harmless but extraneous rants). With three kids now (that includes six-month-old twins), I'm finding too little free time and a general lack of excitement when it comes time to actually write the review.  [emote]:?[/emote] 

[quote]Game #6: Opening Night
Author: David Batterham
Played On: October 7th (1 hour 15 minutes)
Platform: Inform 7 (Zcode)

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
[i]You stepped off the streetcar moments ago, halting before the grand facade of the Marquis Theatre. You have come to see your idol, the Broadway star Miranda Lily, performing in all her dizzying glory.[/i]

This is a pretty good game. I feel guilty for not simply leaving it at that, because much of what I’m going to discuss here would seem to contradict it.

[i](A long rant criticizing my own [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=458]scoring system[/url] snipped from here.)[/i]

[i]Opening Night[/i] is told in three acts, although they aren’t identified as such. The story moves seamlessly from what I think of as a traditional “adventure game,” into a middle where it becomes evident the author is up to something more than he seemed to be at the beginning, and finally to an on-rails bit with revelations and explanations. This [i]type[/i] of story is probably going to feel clichéd to other judges, which is a shame because even though it’s been done in IF, it hasn’t been done [i]to death[/i]. In fact, of several possibilities that occurred to me in the middle and toward the end, this particular twist didn’t cross my mind -- and I’ve [i]done[/i] this twist (sort of). So, for me, it worked.

Information the author provided states that it’s not supposed to be heavy on puzzles, but I still found the first act (and to a lesser extent, the second act) entertaining [i]as[/i] a puzzle game. I got stuck in the second act trying to cross a large gap in the floor, and had to be more observant and revisit a prior location (as the hints suggested) to find the solution. That took so long to solve that the pacing -- especially since this was at a point where players will want to make quicker progress to find out what’s really going on -- came to a halt. This may not be a sticking point for other players, though. It might even be the first thing that comes to mind.

[i](Another long rant, this time on pacing in IF, snipped from here.)[/i]

Tonally, [i]Opening Night[/i] isn’t consistent. It starts out as sort of a would-be romance. Then it’s kind of creepy in spots. One particular scene with the trappings of a slapstick comedy seems ill-placed in a game that later turns serious, introspective, and a little depressing. Should we pity the protagonist? Should we find the situation amusing? It’s hard to do both.

If left at that, it would probably feel accidental and shoddy. [i]Opening Night[/i] tells a story, though, that continues to bounce around in my head well after the last turn was taken. It’s comedy [i]and[/i] tragedy -- the masks of theatre -- both fighting for dominance but separated by two distinct plot layers. The comedic layer is optimistic, light-hearted, and pleasant. The tragic layer is grim and mildly disturbing.

On a technical level, it’s a moderately solid game. I noted a few minor problems in my transcript, but nothing game-halting. The puzzle with the trash can could have been smoother, allowing either for the two-step action that seemed logical or for a slightly different solution. A bit of painted-on text tells me I “might” be able to reach a window even after I’ve gone through and come back. Things that would seem movable are described as “fixed in place.” You can’t always refer to things in the game in the same way the game does (i.e., “x hole” works, but “x jagged hole” does not). Very near the end, it’s possible to go north into what’s probably an accidental, undescribed room. At one point, you can no longer go south even though nothing in the game explains why.

A few plot points are definite head-scratchers. If the door leading out of the storage room is blocked by so much theatre clutter (props, costumes, etc), then how could anybody have left except by the same way I entered? It could be explained away given the ending, but it’s more likely the door was blocked simply because the player couldn’t be allowed to get into the theatre some other way. For that matter, I thought I might find passable clothes among the costumes, but the game never discounted the possibility directly. It just kind of ignored my attempts to find a better suit among the clothes on the racks.

Be warned: The next paragraph can be considered a plot spoiler.

[spoiler]Another head-scratcher presents itself after the ending, in regards to the protagonist being a young adult [i]in 1917[/i]. If you pay attention to the ambient goings-on outside the theater near the end of the game, you’ll probably see what I mean. I guess it’s possible, but it begs the question of just [i]how[/i] active the PC really was (and even [i]could[/i] have been) during the game’s events. Given that you can’t actually reach the fire escape later in the game, maybe the answer is “not very” (except for some crawling).[/spoiler]
On individual merits, [i]Opening Night[/i] succeeds as a story worth playing. I liked the relatively simple puzzles too, even though one left me stuck for quite a while. It’s solid enough to avoid major technical problems, and obviously had adequate beta-testing. That just leaves the writing.

Nothing is “wrong” with the writing, per se. It’s good, solid adventure game text, unmarred by the kinds of jump-out-at-you mistakes often seen in IFComp games. Still, certain bits just felt a little off, as though the author was struggling for synonyms and came up blank. These are phrases like [i]“filling it equally full”[/i] and [i]“corridor ends in a dead end”[/i] and [i]“brilliantly bright.”[/i] Simple re-wording -- for instance, “corridor dead-ends” -- might have done the trick. That’s an amateur’s opinion, but when even an amateur picks up on those things, it might be worth checking.

My gut, as scoring goes, says “8.” The game isn’t perfect, but it won me over. The problem is, only the story scores a 2 out of 2 and even with the bonus point, that’s a “7.” This might be one I vote higher than the review score. Unless too many of its upcoming competitors raise the bar, [i]Opening Night[/i] deserves a spot in the top ten.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=461&start=10#p2681
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Peter's IFComp 2008 Thoughts and Reviews
User: Peter Nepstad / DateTime: 2008-10-08 23:06:43

[quote="blackgoat"]Violet, have to agree with you - what a fantastic game.  By far the best I've played at this Comp, and I've played more than half of them already. I'd go and say it is better than a lot of games that have won previous year's comps.[/quote]

You're not giving me much incentive to keep playing games, here! Still, looking at your remaining list, I think there are still some possibilities of finding a peer. But my guess is we're looking through the rest to find all the runners-up. Violet is a game that I will study, when this comp is over, and marvel at. Not in terms of the puzzles, particularly, or the awful setting, but in the sustained narrative voice, the over-writing of the stock answers, done completely seamlessly. Remarkable stuff.

-- Peter

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=461&start=10#p2682
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Peter's IFComp 2008 Thoughts and Reviews
User: Peter Nepstad / DateTime: 2008-10-08 23:25:51

[b]The Lucubrator[/b] by Rick Dague

I got a feeling of deja-vu when firing up THE LUCUBRATOR. Because when I first discovered the TADS development system, and started fiddling with it, I decided I would write a game that started with you lying on a slab in a morgue (I don't recall the exact year, but TADS was still shareware at this time). I wrote a few rooms, slapped a toe tag on the body, and a lab with a lab rat. The idea was you would eat the rat, thus discovering your zombie-like craving for flesh.

And then, I left the country for work for a while and didn't have a computer for a couple years. When I got back into writing IF, I was well over zombies and thankfully the incomplete game exists only in my memory.

Or it did, until I started playing The Lucubrator. It's like Rick ate a part of my brain! 

Though the central premise is the same, this actual real and released game deviates quite quickly from my imagined plot. For one thing, I didn't think to insert some sort of gay love triangle into my zombie plot, as is the case here, I guess. The story is unclear. In fact I never really understood why the gay couple was making zombies, except perhaps because adoption was not lawful in their state of residence. Does it have something to do with lucubrators? I'm trying, here.

The puzzles are all impossible. They generally have to do with killing people who are trying to kill you. So what you have is a timed puzzle, in which only one way to kill your opponent is allowed. This is the text adventure equivalent of the old Dragon's Lair arcade game, in which you are only allowed a single flick of the joystick in the proper direction to live; flicking it the wrong way results in death.

I sort of feel like zombies have reached the end of their useful shelf-life (again). Admittedly, SHAUN OF THE DEAD was pretty funny, but otherwise, that's it. And how VIOLET got away with both being on a college campus AND having zombies...well, let's just make it the exception that proves the rule.

-- Peter

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=461&start=10#p2683
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Peter's IFComp 2008 Thoughts and Reviews
User: Peter Nepstad / DateTime: 2008-10-08 23:49:45

[b]Buried in Shoes[/b] by Kazuki Mishima

The other day a friend and I were discussing the books we were reading. I was reading War, Evil, and the End of History by Bernard-Henri Levy, which was interesting but generally I was still glad I just grabbed it from the library. She was reading The Zookeeper's Wife, by Diane Ackerman. The title (and author) made me curious, but then I was curious no more when told that it was about the Nazi occupation of Poland. It may or may not be a good story, but I realized at that moment that really, I don't ever need to read another Holocaust story again.  I've read it, seen the documentaries, watched the movies. I can recite the statistics. I've read Michael Shermer's book about crazy people who deny the Holocaust even happened and why they do that. So no matter how good that book is, I just can't get up any interest in reading it. Because it is mining a subject that has been endlessly explored, while many other stories simply remain untold. (Similarly, I also can't watch even one more Italian mafia film or TV show, even if it is called the Sopranos.)

So, Buried in Shoes is another Holocaust story. I enjoyed the shifting perspectives, but I didn't learn enough in each perspective to really make them worthwhile. Also I would have liked to enter the perspective of the Hitler Youth as well, so that we may understand them more, and pity or hate them (or both) because of it. 

No puzzles. The ending was abrupt. The game paints a picture, is evocative in its text, but is too short to fully immerse the player, and altogether lacking in learning moments even though the story is about learning, and forgiveness. Despite the creative and interesting title, Buried in Shoes ultimately does not deepen my understanding of the Holocaust, nor does it further the discussion. In the end, it's just another story that I wish was about something else.

-- Peter

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=458&start=0#p2684
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Scoring System (for this year)
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2008-10-09 05:23:56

[quote="Merk"]Just a note to anybody who's using or going to use this system or one like it:

I'm six games in now, and I'm already struggling a little with my own scoring system. The problem is, for instance, I can look at a game and think "well, this deserves an 8" (just, as a gut reaction), but to justify an 8, it has to get 2's in two of the primiary categories.

I've been reluctant to [i]give[/i] many 2's (so far) because that's the "top" score for that category. I [i]have[/i] given 2's when I feel it's close enough or in order to justify the higher score I think the game deserves, but on the whole it does seem like my scores are ending up a point or two lower than where they would have been with my ranking system from [url=http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/scoring.shtml]last year[/url].

And the reason is probably obvious. When I was voting the game "as a whole," I could give an 8 or even a 9 if the "whole game" fell a little short of expectactions. Now, if the "whole game" falls short of expectactions, I'm breaking that out into its component pieces, meaning it loses a point in [i]each[/i] category, not just as a whole.[/quote]

True. My first two years as a judge, I voted by [i]gut instinct[/i]. The moment I switched to a more general scoring system, I found my scores falling, with the same reason: a game I would have debited a point or two lost those points multiple times, because I felt the writing, the story, the technical implementation, etc. weren't quite up to what I expected. So the last few years of voting, I've trained myself (while simplifying my voting system as to not eat too much time to decide on the score) to give better scores - to expect a little less each year.

[quote="Merk"]Rioshin, you might have the right idea in giving a larger range of scores in each category, and then averaging at the end. For instance, I'd probably struggle less if I rated each category 1 to 10, added them up, and divided by the number of categories. I [i]didn'[/i], because then I'd have to decide whether to round up or round down, but I'm starting to think that might be better.[/quote]

That's one of the reasons I've been using scoring systems like this the last few years, with larger ranges of scores in each category. (You should have seen the one I used in 2006! Too bad I've managed to lose the word document it was in due to a hard-drive crash - but the total score of the categories was in the 120's, with about 20 or so categories I was looking at. It was way too impossible to score a perfect 10.)

[quote="Merk"]Even as it stands, if I were to give a 1.5 in two categories, the score would end up being what it should be without having to give a 1 in one category and a 2 in the other to get the same result. I may just be over-thinking it, but I think I'd rather vote a game too high than too low.

Anyway, I'm leaving it as-is for now. But I did want to give a heads-up to anybody who might use this system that it does seem to force scores lower than you might have intended.[/quote]

I'm actually thinking of going back to something more complex the next year, but with a twist: I score each game, decide the minimum and maximum for that year's crop, and then put the games on a Bell-curve according to that...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=461&start=10#p2685
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Peter's IFComp 2008 Thoughts and Reviews
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2008-10-09 14:10:07

[quote="Peter Nepstad"]I got a feeling of deja-vu when firing up THE LUCUBRATOR. Because when I first discovered the TADS development system, and started fiddling with it, I decided I would write a game that started with you lying on a slab in a morgue (I don't recall the exact year, but TADS was still shareware at this time).[/quote]
It's also the opening to Shadowrun on the SNES - one of my all time favourite beginnings for a game.  I totally mean to do it myself at some point.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=476&start=0#p2686
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Trein
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-09 23:49:51

Scroll down for the draft of my review of [i]Trein[/i].

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[quote]Game #7: Trein
Author: Leena Kowser Ganguli
Played On: October 9th (1 hour)
Platform: Inform 7 (Zcode)

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
[i] Trouble has been brewing in Trein Hill. The people stopped playing their taxes and all is silence. What's worse, there's rumors of disappearances and even rebellion! It is up to you to find out what is happening in that isolated territory.[/i]

[i]Trein[/i] is set in a feudal-fantasy world, where you (as the King’s representative) must investigate and report back on the situation in the kingdom’s town of Trein Hill. The game takes place over modest geography in the town and the town’s castle.

I [i]could[/i] spend this entire review quoting specific problems in the game’s text, but I’ll keep it to a minimum. That’s too crass a treatment for what’s obviously a well-intentioned game from an inexperienced new IF author. Even though I wear my critical “reviewer” hat, I’ve developed a fondness for these games with overly ambitious stories uncontained by their bare-bones implementation. This kind of game shows up in every IFComp. A convincing argument can be made that the IFComp shouldn’t be a test bed for beginners’ efforts, but that’s the way it goes and that’s part of its charm.

Too many factors work against [i]Trein[/i], despite the author’s good intentions. It’s implemented in a way that says “this is my first game” (or, at least, “this is my first game in Inform 7”). Various quirks include at least one room description that doesn’t show up in verbose mode, painted-on descriptions, inappropriate object-specific articles, capitalization problems due to directly-listed capitalized object names, occasional formatting problems, and many objects mentioned in the text that are simply unimplemented in any other way. It’s clearly written by someone with a beginner’s grasp of programming in an IF language.

The game also adheres to the long-outmoded tradition of listing “important stuff you see here” as a separate paragraph following the room description, where today these things are generally worked into the text or restricted to just the stuff the player has previously picked up.

The text itself could compensate a little for all this, but unfortunately, it doesn’t. The beginning is strong, but even the game’s blurb has a typo (“playing” instead of “paying”). It should have been proofread by somebody other than the author, which isn’t to say the author is blameless for not doing her [i]own[/i] proofreading as well. Sometimes, a letter is missing from a word or a word is missing from a sentence, as though the author was in a hurry to get everything down but lacked the time to polish it. Other problems include capitalization issues which probably [i]can’t[/i] be blamed on object names (compass directions are often capitalized, and even nouns embedded in descriptions often are), some confusing descriptions (especially when the author describes the relations between rooms and their exits), and just some poorly-worded passages in general.

The puzzles are pretty easy. They’re even clued in heavy-handed ways, where the answer isn’t just hinted but actually [i]suggested[/i] by the text. They’re little more than finding an item, and maybe using it to get the next. The only spot most experienced players [i]might[/i] get stuck is an implementation issue, where you must put something “on” something else even though “in” seems just as obvious. The game is full of unintentional red herrings, yet these never pose a problem because the important stuff is even more prominent.

The story really wants to be detailed and epic, but the rest of the game holds it back. It has an intriguing opening, well-placed pieces of backstory, and some hints of a more thought-out game world. It never approaches its potential, though. The story is [i]just[/i] good enough to earn the game’s only “1” in a 2-point [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=458]category[/url], but it could be much more than it is. A tapestry seemed to hint at the solution for an upcoming confrontation, but it was a promise unfulfilled. The game doesn’t culminate in any sort of conflict, climax, or endgame. It has a nice little revelation near the end, but it comes as just another step in a story that doesn’t ever rise or fall in other ways. Even the protagonist, who [i]should[/i] be a pretty interesting character, never quite is.

Outside the context of the competition, it isn’t a game I can recommend unless it sees a [i]lot[/i] more work in all areas. But, as an IFComp entry, I did enjoy the time I spent with it. I appreciate what the author was [i]trying[/i] to do, but even given the bonus point, it only scores a “3.” I’d like to see more from this author in the future, though -- especially after she gets a better handle on programming with Inform and can spend more time with proofreading and beta-testing.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=469&start=0#p2687
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Project Delta: The Course
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-11 09:10:47

No... "FutureGame" from IFComp 2005 is the shortest I've seen. It's only a couple of minutes long, and it's just one or two keypresses.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=465&start=0#p2688
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Riverside
User: George Shannon / DateTime: 2008-10-11 10:51:30

I think it's "we're sorry" just because if it was a joke, it ruins the game's joke.  The walkthrough should have run long, so if you ever glanced at it, you have no idea the joke hits you in the train station.  Divide the walkthrough into Funeral, At Home, Riverside, Area 51, etc., just to mess with people.

Oh well.  Who can fathom the minds of authors?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=477&start=0#p2689
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Everybody Dies
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-11 11:22:27

Scroll down for the review draft, and any discussion that might come after it.

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[quote]Game #8: Everybody Dies
Author: Jim Monroe
Played On: October 10th (50 minutes)
Platform: Inform 7 (Glulx)

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
[i]Ever see a shopping cart in a river? Ever wonder how it got there? And who has to fish it out? In a suburb of Toronto, three grocery store employees discover the answers to these questions... with disastrous consequences.[/i]

[b]>xyzzy[/b]
[i]Magic doesn't work in the suburbs.[/i]

It’s nice to play a game where such a brief title tells you [i]exactly[/i] what happens.

The game opens with the F-bomb. I don’t know what it is with me and profanity when it comes to interactive fiction, but it usually seems to bug me. I’m not usually bothered by it in movies, and it’s not like I don’t curse when the need arises. Is it something about seeing it [i]written[/i] that rubs me the wrong way? Is it that I think of IF as something that should rise above resorting to “colorful” language? I don’t see why that should be the case, when it fits the story and the characters. [i]Everybody Dies[/i] makes no apologies in its frequent use of profanity and lesser cringe-worthy slang.

It [i]works[/i] in this game, and that’s an import distinction. If you write about a slacking metalhead and an Indian kid confronted by a mentally unstable racist hate-monger -- in a first-person stream of consciousness sort of way, no less -- it wouldn’t seem nearly as convincing with sanitized dialogue. Imagine the story with more family-friendly characters, and it just doesn’t seem as interesting.

The game avoids elaborate descriptions in favor of characterization. Instead of spending paragraphs on esthetically pleasing but more character-neutral facts about the location and scenery -- the traditional way, if you will -- most of the writing in [i]Everybody Dies[/i] focuses on how each of the three playable characters [i]reacts[/i] to it. I know that a first-person narrative in IF feels like an unnecessary detachment to some players, but here it’s done the [i]right[/i] way. It’s not a matter of just changing “you” to “I” and leaving all else the same. The author takes advantage by giving the protagonists feelings and opinions that aren’t nearly as effortless when “you” are the PC.

Take, for instance, this bit:

[i]“I can't take my eyes away. I tell myself that it would make an amazingly brutal tat or even an album cover but I also feel like I'm gonna hurl. And then I see the little fish, the one inside, open its eye.”[/i]

According to one not-so-great Wil Wheaton movie, fish [url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0284115/]don’t blink[/url], but that’s beside the point. Traditional second-person IF works best when you describe things to the player in a way that gets him to feel or think what you want him to feel or think. The more you [i]tell[/i] a player what he’s feeling or thinking, the more he’s likely to fight it. First-person IF, as this game demonstrates, works best when the author does exactly the opposite. First-person IF that thinks it’s second-person IF is the problem. [i]Everybody Dies[/i] forces a greater disconnect between the player and the protagonists -- that’s true. But here, it works to the game’s advantage.

The writing is flawless, or very near so. The different personalities of the three protagonists come across well in the writing. It’s descriptive enough to paint a mental picture (which is often more a curse than a blessing), but it’s more about the situation than the setting. I came away very impressed with how smoothly the author told an entertaining short story.

Because much of the game is dialogue and internal monologue, fewer “things” present themselves for interaction. It’s implemented quite well, but in retrospect feels almost like a magic trick. The author says plenty that’s important to the story (including flashes of memories), but without introducing many immediate nouns. This reduces puzzles to their simplest form (and I’ll get to that in a moment), but what’s there is given adequate attention to detail. If you see a toilet, for instance, the game [i]does[/i] anticipate that you might want to [i]flush[/i] it.

This interaction, though, doesn’t push any boundaries. The game has a clever bit where the current PC can interact with one or both previous ones, but it’s only required a couple of times. Even when it’s not [i]required[/i] to advance the story, the game still does a great job of supporting optional uses. The puzzles are as tightly integrated into the story as you’re likely to see in a work of IF -- exactly as they should be -- but with the side effect of making them [i]really[/i] easy. Even when progression isn’t just a matter of moving from room to room or WAIT-ing, the puzzles are one-command processes that are usually obvious because it’s exactly what the protagonist [i]would[/i] do (or is prompted to do) in that situation. This makes the only two-point category in which I can’t give the top mark. That’s not to say the puzzles [i]should[/i] be more complicated or difficult. That clearly wasn’t the author’s goal. Only -- hmm. I would have liked more chances in the later segments to make use of the prior PCs, and it all could be a [i]little[/i] longer without risking a strain to its novel design.

My only real complaint about the implementation is that with so much of it requiring very short commands, it becomes a mild annoyance when far longer ones are required. I’ve never been a big fan of the “person, do this” directive command style. The game tells you when it becomes necessary the first time (thank you, game), but I had problems typing “graham” consistently. Maybe short names like “Ed” and “Jo” would have done the trick. The endgame also requires lengthier commands, which can be a bit of a pain if you’re figuring it out through trial-and-error.

I haven’t mentioned the game’s artwork yet, but it deserves a paragraph. (In a text-only glulx interpreter, would the “void” scenes show up as an unexplained series of [i]nothing[/i], though? I wonder.) The style is cartoon-like, reminding me of the artwork in Flash-based animation. All three protagonists are represented, as well as a multi-part cartoon about three oddly clever fish. It’s very well done. It fits the game perfectly, and it earns [i]Everybody Dies[/i] a kudatory (sorry if that’s a made-up word) bonus point.

But what [i]is[/i] it with those fish? Does it symbolize more than just a working-together theme? Is there some unspoken subplot with the fish? It stands to reason that the fish somehow represent the protagonists, but it’s a connection I can’t quite make. I think I’ll go check a few other reviews after this, where somebody has probably already explained it all.

Jim Monroe’s only previous work of IF (according to the [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Jim_Munroe]IF Wiki[/url]) was [i]Punk Points[/i] from IFComp 2000, which placed 22nd but was a finalist for the “Best NPCs” XYZZY Award. It’s one I haven’t played. I have no doubt, though, that [i]Everybody Dies[/i] will see a much higher finish this year, perhaps even in the top five. It gets a “9” from me.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=478&start=0#p2690
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: LAIR of the CyberCow
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-11 23:19:04

The review is below the spoiler space. Just scroll down.

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[quote]Game #9: LAIR of the CyberCow
Author: Harry Wilson [i](IFComp info page)[/i] or Conrad Cook [i](game’s >about)[/i]
Played On: October 11th (1 hour 55 minutes)
Platform: Adrift (Version 3.9)

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
[i]One of the few games in the neglected Farm Noir genre, [b]LAIR of the CyberCow[/b] takes a stylishly chilling, ambivalently moral look at the social themes of our times -- or, does it? Play it now: don't wait for the movie. (Requires ADRIFT 3.9)[/i]

[b]>xyzzy[/b]
[i]That kind of humor will get you nowhere.[/i]

One can tell from the blurb that [i]LAIR[/i] is going to have problems. One can tell that it’s going for absurdity and humor, but that it’s likely to be more amusing to the author than to anybody else.

Sadly, that does seem to be the case with [i]LAIR[/i]. It’s a complete game, showing obvious effort and moderate attention to detail; don’t mistake it for a joke entry. But at the same time, it falls flat in many ways. The humor doesn’t work well when it’s being drowned by implementation problems. (However, I do find it more amusing in the transcript, and I can see better what the author had in mind.) The absurdity is downplayed to the extent that it sometimes feels as though the story is [i]supposed[/i] to be taken seriously. Some puzzles work and some don’t, and it’s possible to make the game unwinnable in several ways. The writing is sometimes okay, but often suffers from clunky phrasings. In general, it fails to describe things well enough to be satisfying and believable (sometimes, you won’t even know more about a thing after you’ve examined it because the description is too vague).

Among its biggest problems is that it’s easily broken. I found two place -- at [i]least[/i] two -- where the game can be rendered unwinnable. I tried to hit the fairy, and when the game assumed I meant to use the plans, the fairy just sort of disappeared. I restored an earlier save. Later, near the end, I got stuck riding in something that never did reach the top of where it was supposed to be going. Nothing happened, until after several turns when I “woke up” back in the house, went down the well, and could no longer leave. Again, I had to restore a prior save.

Better beta-testing should have rooted out these kinds of problems. Even when not completely broken, things are made more difficult by inconsistent daemon messages (“daemons” being automatic tasks that run within the game, usually independent of the player’s actions). A message announces the fairy’s arrival or departure only if you’re not doing something else, making it more difficult to track her down. Sometimes when night turned to day, the game didn’t tell me (which made it odd when it turned to night again). “Moving” and “lifting” one large object with another doesn’t work (and even seems to suggest it’s not possible), yet “prying” and “flipping” it works.

Whenever Adrift 3.9 (or, perhaps, this game in particular) would impress me with something cleverly implemented (“get all from couch” works, for instance), it would almost immediately disappoint me on some other technical point (“undo” says it works, but only seems capable of sending you one turn back, despite multiple uses). It still runs the gamut of issues inherent to the Adrift parser, but on the whole this didn’t pose as big a problem as it has in other Adrift games I’ve played...

...With one notable exception. I’ll spoil this puzzle (and believe me, you’re better off for it) with quotes from my transcript:

[b]>look under couch[/b]
[i]The couch is a pale green velvety plaid, suitable for most purposes.  One of these modern, lightweight deals.[/i]

[b]>move couch[/b]
[i]Moving the couch reveals a cleverly-hidden trapdoor![/i]

Those commands didn’t come consecutively. After not finding the trapdoor to begin with (because the game ignored “under”) I spent many long and fruitless minutes doing other stuff. At one point, when I felt I was stuck beyond all hope, I peeked at the walkthrough. I was supposed to push the couch. Well, silly me. There was nothing special about the couch; no clue, except that it was described as “lightweight.” In a better game (as callous as this may sound), the author would have anticipated that [i]if[/i] a player were to look under the couch, it would make sense to reveal the existence of the trapdoor. 

Often, the game just didn’t give enough information. It took a while to discover that Vluurinik was actually a fairy, and I only realized it after the game started referring to her as one. A puzzle involving her capture is made almost unsolvable (without a peek at the hints), not only because there’s no indication of what she wants, but because [i]getting[/i] what she likes requires a suspicious leap in logic. (Cover your eyes here, if you want to avoid another puzzle spoiler.) If you want me to milk the cow, don’t make me think the cow is hostile. And, while you’re at it, [i]remind me that cows have nipples[/i] when I look at it, instead of telling me it’s a totally customized, unique kind of cow. Milking it becomes the last thing I’d ever think of! This puzzle was [i]kind of[/i] clued in the bowl’s description, but only to the extent that I thought I might need to find some cereal. I never connected the dots from cereal to milk, and milk to cow. But maybe that’s my fault.

The plot never commits itself to being ridiculous, yet neither is it serious. This makes the internal logic hard to figure out. Many situations crop up that [i]seem[/i] fitting of the silly scenario, yet have all the trappings of an accident. For instance, you can’t carry a huge metal cross up a ladder for obvious reasons, yet you can climb up and down a rope with it. The PC sticks his toe in the bell’s crack, but presumably is wearing shoes throughout the adventure (this could, I think, just be a case of ambiguous wording). You can wake up back at the cottage without ever explicitly going there. No explanation is given as to why the cottage consists of [i]only[/i] a living room. It’s possible to pick up an object without realizing it, because the “you pick it up” message, reworded as simply “still hot!”, convinced me that I wasn’t [i]able[/i] to pick it up.

The author sometimes uses a dramatic pause as a means of delaying bits of information. The game actually freezes for a few seconds, and as far as I found, you can only wait until the text continues. It seems overused, but to be honest, I’m not sure even a single use was necessary. Allowing a keypress to move forward would have been nice.

Yet all this, and I still liked it. I can’t [i]recommend[/i] it, but it has a charm that makes it palpable in the context of the competition. I’m voting it a “4.” I’m probably creating my own cliché here, but I [i]would[/i] like to see more from this author in the future. Key thing, though: beta-testing. Play the top games from prior competitions, too, and read plenty of reviews (both for the top games, and for the lower-ranking ones). Most IF authors who keep at it do better and better with practice. Next year, raise the bar.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=479&start=0#p2691
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Nerd Quest
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-12 13:53:44

Below the spoiler space...
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[quote]Game #10: Nerd Quest
Author: RagtimeNerd / Gabor de Mooij
Played On: October 12th (25 minutes)
Platform: MechaniQue (Java)

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
[i]This is a snack-sized adventure game written in my own hobby programming language MechaniQue. I will make it available as a web page so you don't have to install anything (see walkthrough for details and URL).[/i]

Man oh man. Oh man.

[i]Nerd Quest[/i] is written in “MechaniQue,” a programming language invented by the game’s author, which is itself written in Java. I could get it to run on my work laptop, but I didn’t want to [i]play[/i] on my work laptop today, so I installed the Java 6 runtime environment from [url=http://www.sun.com/]Sun[/url]. That worked. I set my DOS-mode window to 9999 lines of scrollback (intending a makeshift cut-and-paste transcript at the end), and plunged forward into the wacky world of [i]Nerd Quest[/i].

First impression: It needs line breaks. I should get a blank line before each command prompt, if nothing else. It’s really hard to read as is.

Second impression: Man oh man oh man this is bad. B-aaaaaaaa-d. The author is evidently a capable Java programmer, but he’s clueless about today’s interactive fiction. I have a hunch that the author remembers text adventures from the 80’s, but mostly played hobby efforts (that was the case for me as well, when I got back into IF authorship a decade ago). So, going strictly on rose-colored memories as to how they worked, the author set forth in writing his own Java-based IF engine, and a game to showcase it. The end result: I feel as though I’ve been operated-on by a surgeon whose only qualifications are the purchase of a scalpel and some VHS recordings of ER and Grey’s Anatomy.

The previous home-brewed game I played in this year’s IFComp suffered from the same failure in ambition. The author has written a custom game engine, but has showcased it with the least interesting game possible. Worse, the game highlights the system’s numerous weaknesses, without proving it has [i]any[/i] strengths. In truth, I have no idea what to make of the MechaniQue game engine. Is it capable of [i]SAVE[/i] and [i]UNDO[/i], but the author just didn’t use the abilities in this particular game? Does it support a transcript feature? Does it have any kind of world modeling, so that it can understand in-game objects that relate to each other (containers, platforms, etc.)?

My guess is “no” on all accounts, because the parsing in [i]Nerd Quest[/i] is entirely context-sensitive. The game tells me I need a key to unlock one door (incidentally, there appears to be no such key in the game), yet it doesn’t even understand the same command issued for a door in a different room. It gives no hint that its parser is doing anything more than keyword matching (and this is easy to recognize -- every one of my own home-brewed text adventures worked the same way), meaning that [i]anything[/i] the game doesn’t expect gets the same “not possible” response.

It even lacks the simple niceties of other IF systems. The author wasn’t aware that “x” is a shortcut for “examine,” or even that “examine” should be an alternate for “look at.” Each command prompt is prefaced with the open-ended question “what are you going to do?” as though it’s [i]actually[/i] capable of understanding the variety of things I might want to do. As far as I can tell, output is dumped directly to the screen (instead of to an output management routine), making it necessary for the author to format appropriate line breaks as part of the output. Even this he fails to do in sensible ways, since words are sometimes broken between lines, and some lines end far shorter than is required in an 80-column display.

If the author had written [i]Nerd Quest[/i] in another IF language -- Hugo, for instance -- it might have the shortcuts and conventions of today’s IF. It wouldn’t, however, be much better as a game. It’s the epitome of 80’s amateur IF, where the author has thought up a simple setting and a couple simple puzzles to go with it, but nothing more. It has a story, but it shows all the forethought of a daydream. Nothing suggests to me that the author didn’t just think up the whole thing while booting up his computer to write it.

You are an IT geek, tasked with server maintenance. You have a new girlfriend, but you can’t make the date unless you can escape the locked server room. [i]Fixing[/i] the server and letting your date know you’re running behind (you have a cell phone, after all) isn’t an option. Nevermind that spiking the boss’s coffee and skipping out on work is going to get you fired (or, at the very least, seriously reprimanded) tomorrow. Then again, being [i]locked[/i] in an overheated room you’re not [i]supposed[/i] to leave gives you a decent case for criminal charges against your manager.

The author has done just the bare minimum (and every time I say that, I think of Mike Judge talking about “pieces of flair” in [url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151804/][i]Office Space[/i][/url]) to allow a player to get from the server room, through the offices, to freedom. Almost nothing is described. Everything simply “exists” in the game’s world. For instance, I found a “beamer” in the conference room. “Does he mean to say that a BMW -- the [i]automobile[/i] -- is here in the conference room?” I asked myself. “Well, let’s find out,” I replied to myself.

[b]>look[/b]
[i]Conference room, ground floor.[/i]
[i]Here are a large table, a PC and a beamer.[/i]
[i]To the south is a door.[/i]
==WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?==
[b]>look at beamer[/b]
[i]An expensive beamer.[/i]

The game has a handful of very simple puzzles, dealing primarily with finding stuff. The only real stretch -- spiking the manager’s coffee -- was solvable without the walkthrough. That particular puzzle completely ignores the obvious solution (involving no additional props), and makes me an expert in something I (as this protagonist) have probably never even done before, but okay.

Even for a home-brewed system, implementation is pretty poor. In addition to the lack of a consistent world model (making command recognition a veritable crap shoot), it isn’t well constructed. If you try to “talk to manager” in the same room as the manager, you’ll actually call him on the phone. Synonyms are lacking, like “door” for “trapdoor.” The “pantry” sure sounds like a kitchen to me. Problems in the text -- like missing punctuation, missing articles, “achive” instead of “achieve”) -- were aplenty. In the conference room, certain commands directed at objects other than the computer keep assuming I [i]mean[/i] the computer.

It’s a better game than the first home-brewed effort (a CYOA) that I played for this competition, but I’m scoring it lower. It loses the point for writing ([i]Nerd Quest[/i] is as minimal as you can get without resorting to descriptions like “you are a in a room. An item is here.”) It even loses the bonus point for thwarting my efforts to get a transcript. My hope of grabbing the entire scrollback was dashed when the game window [i]exited on its own[/i] after my final move. Really, it doesn’t even have a proper ending. I leave the building. That’s all. Presumably, this “Debby” was worth the effort.

So, with the one free point and a point for puzzles that at least give the player something to do, [i]Nerd Quest[/i] gets a mere “2” from me. My advice to the author -- if he’s open to advice -- is to play the top games from the past few competitions for eye-opening insight into what’s possible (and expected of IF) these days. Also, read [url=http://www.ifcomp.org/comp08/if.html]this page[/url] at the IFComp website, which gives a simple overview of typical IF interactions.

Also, re-think your parsing system so that its world model is more object-oriented (you’re using Java; presumably you’re familiar with this). As an example, you should [i]never[/i] need to code command recognition for every door the player encounters. Give all “door” objects an “openable” attribute, let your parser figure out which object in the game world the player means when he types “door” (i.e., your “door” object will need noun and adjective properties), and then check to see if the object is “openable” or not. If not, say “that isn’t something you can open.” If so, check if it’s currently “opened.” Allow the author to override the default messages and even “handle” requests to “open” (where “this particular door” is the object), and you’re set. [i]That’s[/i] the direction I suggest for your MechaniQue game engine.

An alternative is to download the free compiler for any of the existing IF languages. If you want to write interactive fiction -- no matter how much you enjoy the construction and tinkering allowed by writing your own system -- you’ll be much better off. I know this from firsthand experience.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=477&start=0#p2692
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Everybody Dies
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-12 15:51:32

I just read another review that tipped me off to something that should have been obvious. The cartoon colors of the three PCs match the colors of the three fish.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=479&start=0#p2693
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Nerd Quest
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-12 19:59:51

Another review I've now seen suggests that the "beamer" is probably a projector (like -- to display slides or a computer display up on the wall). That makes a *lot* more sense than finding a BMW there, although it's definitely disappointing to think there was no way to drive out of there in a new car to pick up Debby. Heh.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=480&start=0#p2694
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Search for the Ultimate Weapon
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-12 23:23:05

(Yep.... scroll down...)
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[quote]Game #11: Search for the Ultimate Weapon
Author: Sharilynn
Played On: October 12th (55 minutes)
Platform: SUDS (Windows)

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
[i]The interactive fiction is very loosely based on the story of Wu Mei, a legendary Kung Fu nun during the Qing Dynasty in China. She is said to be the founder of various Chinese martial arts such as Wu Mei Pai and Wing Chun Kuen.[/i]

This game is broken.

If you don’t believe me, try this alternate walkthrough, which completely bypasses every puzzle in the game:

[spoiler]W, LOOK AT TABLE, GET OPENER, STAB PRINCE WITH OPENER, E[/spoiler]
Then, for fun, instead of exiting or restarting as the game suggests, just keep playing. Seriously. It will work, at least in the competition version of [i]Search for the Ultimate Weapon[/i].

Strictly speaking, SUDS (the IF development system used for this game) isn’t a home-brew. The game doesn’t get its own SUDS folder in the IFComp installation, but the author of the game (unless I’m mistaken) isn’t the author of SUDS. Plus, SUDS has been around a while. At least, I think it has. It’s one I’ve heard of before, although I admit this is the first SUDS game I’ve ever played.

What’s surprising, then, is that it has all the trappings of a home-brew. It has no [i]UNDO[/i]. [i]X[/i] doesn’t work for “examine.” [i]Z[/i] doesn’t work for “wait.” Its transcript window is really just a list of prior commands. It doesn’t even echo your actual command into the game window, but rather shows a parsed version of it. The auto-complete function (until turned off) actually makes the game [i]harder[/i] to play.

It [i]looks[/i] pretty professional on the surface. It’s like a flashier version of [url=http://www.axeuk.com/quest/]Quest[/url], with multiple themes, colorful icons, and a default user interface that’s probably a big attraction to the uninitiated. Keywords are highlighted and clickable. Items and scenery are listed to the side as additional point-and-click spots. It has an always-on clickable compass rose, and a map that’s reminiscent of [url=http://www.adrift.org.uk/cgi/new/adrift.cgi]Adrift[/url]. Once the initial pizzazz wears off, though, even the “hardcode” mode (which removes the icons, the compass, and the item lists) isn’t enough to make it a comfortable experience. It still shows dialogue and certain events in pop-up windows, and despite bumping up the game text size to my liking, I found no way to increase the size of the input prompt. I found no way to turn off the clickable keyword highlighting, either.

It’s a shame the game is so broken and difficult to use (I’ll get to some specifics in a moment, primarily for the author’s benefit). The author was obviously going for something poignant; something with a moral; something with heart. It’s supposed to be Zen and tranquil. It’s supposed to be enlightening.

Exits unknown to the author allow the player to jump from the beginning into later segments (even the end -- see my walkthrough earlier in the review). The “ultimate weapon” is sometimes called the “ultimate one” (even in the title graphic), almost as though the author renamed it partway through and forgot to update everything. I liked each of the three or four custom color schemes representing the times of day (especially the burgundy-on-sky-blue “day”), but the game speeds through the days [i]so quickly[/i] that it’s almost seizure-inducing. Plus, certain system actions (like looking at the “welcome” dialogue) unintentionally force it back to a white-on-blue default. Descriptions are painted on (for instance, the rope is always under the table, even if it’s in your inventory). The dialogue pop-up is actually counter-intuitive to the game’s first puzzle, since when out of dialogue options the first time, one is likely to think the conversation can’t be continued. It asks questions without accepting the answer ([b]>kill prince[/b]; [i]“With what?”[/i]; [b]>knife[/b]; [i]“You don’t know how to knife.”[/i]). The text doesn’t pause when it dumps more lines than will fit in the window, requiring some scrollback-hunting to find the beginning of what was missed. The text wasn’t adequately proofread.

It has its positives, but not enough to make up for all that’s broken. The map image (not the SUDS built-in map, but one provided by the author later in the game), and the image of the metal box are nice touches. The author tried to use puzzles with a purpose, and a story that [i]means[/i] something. It [i]could[/i] be a much better game than it is -- with work -- because it has the foundation of something much more worthwhile.

I’m scoring [i]Search for the Ultimate Weapon[/i] a “4.” That’s with one point for writing, one for puzzles, one for the story, and the “free” point. It gets no point for technical implementation, nor did anything earn it a bonus.

It [i]looks[/i] like this is Sharilynn’s first game, and whether or not that’s really the case, I hope this and other potentially unfavorable reviews don’t discourage her from trying again. It can’t be said often or loudly enough that beta-testing is vital. I think those directional exploits would have been caught right away. I won’t try to encourage you to switch from your IF system of choice, but I [i]will[/i] say that a flashy presentation is no substitute for solid parsing.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=467&start=0#p2695
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Afflicted
User: Aquillion / DateTime: 2008-10-13 03:38:27

Found an error:  Try to 'note bar' through the window east of where you start the game.  At least, I assume it's an error.  In fact, trying to note the bar from anywhere gives an error, I think.

Also, more logic silliness than a bug, and this one is a spoiler:

[spoiler]"You see nothing noteworthy about the mutilated corpse."  Unusual, because it did have clever responses for noting the individual body parts.

Also, while there are different endings depending on when you go to the car (you [i]can[/i] leave without doing any more than finding enough health violations to shut them down), there's no special ending for leaving after discovering the corpse.  What, I don't even mention it to the police?

[i]> get angela
I don't suppose Angela's body would care for that.[/i]

In the endgame, when you're wandering around with only one hand, possibly a vampire, having indirectly killed one vampire and resurrected another...  if you try to walk too far down the street, it still tells you that you shouldn't spend too long in this neighborhood, and that you should just go back and finish your inspection so you can leave.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=461&start=10#p2696
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: That Cigar Thing
User: Jacqueline / DateTime: 2008-10-13 14:16:00

(My apologies if someone else pointed this out in comments somewhere; I looked, but couldn't see that they had, but I'm new to this forum.  [i]Anyway...[/i])

I had a [url=http://isquiesque.livejournal.com/412050.html]very similar issue[/url] with [i]Escape from the Underworld[/i], but in the case of the cigar I actually got that puzzle without a hint.  It's as overtly clued, really, as the receptionist hinting that she wants a cigarette or cigar: the maintenance guy's description states that he 'looks hot and sweaty and reeks of cigars.'  I actually asked him about cigars before I even realized that would be a solution to a puzzle.

On the whole, though, as I stated in my review, I found that solutions to puzzles were generally hidden in secondary- and tertiary-level descriptions, but the vast majority of objects were implemented so shallowly that I'd stopped looking too deeply at anything early on in the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=477&start=0#p2697
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Everybody Dies
User: George / DateTime: 2008-10-13 22:25:19

Just played this. I think there's something there about the fish eating each other as well. It's not really a cycle of life...a progression of life in a way I guess. 

I really enjoyed this too. Best of the comp for me so far. The one main thing that bothers me is after about 1/3 of the way through, it feels more like a railroad. I'm not sure I would have liked a 'longer' work per se, but a rounder one would have been good.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=481&start=0#p2698
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Cry Wolf
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-14 21:24:48

Downward, scroll.
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[quote]Game #12: Cry Wolf
Author: Clare Parker
Played On: October 13th (2 hours 45 minutes)
Platform: Inform 7 (Glulx)

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
[i]You are awoken, startled by a sound in the night. Still bleary from dreams, you turn on the light to chase away the shadows. But there, beyond the safety of your room, something moves in the darkness. It is long past midnight, and a wolf is at your door.[/i]

This will be a hard one to discuss without plot spoilers, but I’ll try to keep it vague.

[i]Cry Wolf[/i] starts out in a pretty large house, in the sense that there are nine or ten different locations, each populated by the kinds of things you’d expect to find there (kitchen stuff, bedroom stuff, bathroom stuff, living room stuff, office stuff, and so forth). It seems at first that this will make up the entire game. That’s not a bad thing; a multi-part puzzle involving the safe tending of an injured wolf would make a nice two-hour game. In fact, this opening act took long enough for me to get through that I fully expected a winning ending after I’d done my part.

And then the game goes on.

The second act (as categorized by the walkthrough), too, could have been the last. It definitely takes the story in a new direction, but by then, there was no great mystery as to what was going on. If the game had ended there, I can see no notable loose ends to tie up. The problem is that the protagonist, one Peter Marcus (a veterinarian), has the unfortunate disability of being unable to put two and two together. While I, as the player, am wondering if he’s [i]really[/i] that dense, he’s constrained by the real-world rationalities of a real-world person. It’s hard to translate that into a story without making the protagonist seem incapable of exercising simple logic. Of course, Peter Marcus has no idea he’s a character in an adventure game, where [i]anything[/i] is possible.

The third act, too, would have been a fitting conclusion to the game. Things get weirder, but in a way that’s consistent with the story and perfectly reasonable given deductions that any player is likely to make. By the fourth act, though, it’s evident the author intends to carry the story to its furthest possible conclusion, and this is confirmed in the fifth and final act. Revelations made in the fourth act almost seem superfluous, because it pulls back the shroud of mystique surrounding a plot that was really only a mystery to Peter Marcus. In effect, everything revealed by Marissa is just extra shading on an already-recognizable sketch.

This works more heavily against the story than one might think. The fourth act is supposed to be a pivotal point, where Peter comes to grips with certain facts, begins to reconcile this with his own views of the world, becomes conflicted by exactly [i]what[/i] he’s feeling, yet is truly amazed by the possibilities. This would be [i]incredible[/i] if in some way it was possible to get the player to [i]really[/i] put himself in Peter’s place. I never felt it, though. The author wrote it well enough, and maybe it was just the late hour at which I played, but I just wasn’t able to share the protagonist’s wide-eyed wonder, doubt, enthusiasm, affection, confliction -- any of it. Unfortunately, that made slogging through the dialogue more of a chore than it was probably intended to be.

Even with these problems, [i]Cry Wolf[/i] has a very memorable story, and some of the most memorable scenes I’ve experienced in IF. I’ve never played a game quite like this. The experience is often marred by convoluted puzzles that don’t work smoothly at all, but the cumulative effect of the [i]story[/i] ends up being a very positive one.

The game has minor bugs, other more serious implementation problems, and puzzles that often fall apart due to just a general lack of user-friendliness. The story is imaginative and entertaining enough to make pushing through the problems worth it, but it’s a shame that the author’s ambition didn’t translate into a more solid game.
 
I’m about to describe some of the implementation problems I found, so skip over it unless you’re the author or you care about bugs.

To (presumably) compensate for the difficulty in typing the long names of five different kinds of medicine, the author channels “get bottle” into a multiple-choice menu. However, one of them doesn’t work, and I still found myself referring to them by name for other commands. At one point, I’m supposed to get dressed, but “clothes” always assumes Celia’s clothes, and that won’t work. The answer is to simply “get dressed,” without actually being in possession of your own clothes. The game refers to the girl as “Marissa” well before she has been introduced to the PC. “Read books” in the office gives a blank response. Looking “in” the bag puts the article “a” before every listed item -- even the plural ones (for instance, “a gauze bandages”). A painted cabinet “hides” the television, even when it’s open. “Get all” in most places [i]attempts[/i] to purloin every implemented item in the room, portable or otherwise. You can look at Marissa while parked, and the game assumes you’re still driving. The office at the clinic has exits to the south [i]and[/i] southeast, but they’re the same exit. During a surgery, the game obstinately refused to assume I meant to use the scalpel for making an incision, unless I said so explicitly, despite it being the only thing in my hand. Using some of the objects in the game -- the phone, for instance -- was clunky due to command-grammar rules that failed to cover some obvious possibilities.

The author did a good job of giving descriptions to most of the things mentioned in the text (avoiding the dreaded “you don’t see that here” problem), but put so much extraneous “stuff” in the game world (to better flesh it out, probably) that most of it is [i]only[/i] implemented for examining.

In the fourth act, I chose what I thought to be agreeable, polite questions among those offered; yet I broke the game. Marissa was finally ready to talk -- she said so -- but any attempt to talk to her just repeated the same thing with no dialogue choices at all. At that point, I had to reload a prior save and play forward again. The second time, with only minor changes to my dialogue choices, it worked fine.

I said in the review for a prior game that the PC was able to expertly perform a task that he probably had no prior experience in (incidentally, this was the act of using a bamboo stick as a blow-gun to shoot a pill into a coffee cup, presumably from across the room). Well, [i]Cry Wolf[/i] does the opposite. It makes the PC seem like a complete imbecile at a task that [i]should[/i] be relatively straightforward for a veterinarian, by making the player micromanage the entire procedure without any guidance. Fortunately, I’ve played a little of [url=http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/933018.asp?q=trauma%20center][i]Trauma Center[/i][/url] and I’ve actually been in the room where this procedure was performed (twice), and that was good enough to let my intuition guide the way. The bigger challenge for me in [i]this[/i] puzzle was that the gloves and mask were [i]hidden away![/i] I figured it out after restoring a prior save and watching what my [i]associate[/i] did, but prior to that I would have sworn the game was broken because I was fumbling around like Jerry Lewis in a black-and-white comedy, yet [i]nobody in the room seemed to care.[/i] A friendly “hey dummy, check the cabinet that’s easily overlooked with everything else that’s here” after a few turns might have helped. Better yet, my assistant could have had [i]everything[/i] ready for me. I checked the built-in hints while stuck there, but its unhelpful advice on the subject was simply that I needed gloves and a mask -- something I already knew from trying to pick up the scalpel without them.

That was by no means my only problem with a puzzle, but it stands out most because I spent so long fumbling around in a scene that was supposed to be urgent. Scissors (with one rounded point, but presumably a sharp one too) couldn’t cut the plastic wrap on a package of meat. I had to find a newsletter to look up details about the medicine, when a presumably working computer (with access to [url=http://www.google.com/]Google[/url], perhaps) was also available. I had trouble doing what I needed to do with the steaks, because it wasn’t clear that I needed to do a couple of other things first in preparation. A puzzle involving making and serving coffee seemed kind of glitchy, but again, I think this can be chalked up to inadequate game grammar (even approaching “guess the verb” territory). In many cases, the game just didn’t give enough feedback to explain why something that [i]should[/i] have worked [i]didn’t[/i] work.

Long text dumps (and there were a few) didn’t bother me. In the end, the story really won me over, despite problems in the implementation.

I was honor-bound to set (and not change) my vote before playing beyond two hours, but that’s difficult to justify with my [i][url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=458]scoring[/url][/i] guidelines. I’m comfortable giving the game a “2” for writing, and after some mental back-and-forth about the story, I’m also scoring a “2” there. The puzzles and the implementation, however, don’t fare as well. The puzzles need work, but earn a “1,” while the implementation just seemed broken and frustrating at times. Obvious effort went into the game, but a review of my transcript shows way too much frustration with it on a technical level. I’m giving it no point for implementation, but it gets the bonus point for being unlike anything I’ve played before (in a favorable way). That means my review score is one point less than the vote -- in short, a “7.”[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=482&start=0#p2699
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: The Absolute Worst IF Game in History
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-14 23:34:50

(spoiler space)
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[quote]Game #13: The Absolute Worst IF Game in History
Author: Dean Menezes
Played On: October 14th (10 minutes)
Platform: Inform 7 (Zcode)

[b]Game’s Subtitle:[/b]
[i]An Interactive thingy[/i]

I was seriously tempted not to bother with a review of this game. I was also tempted to vote it a “10” just to (maybe) deny the author his obviously sought-after last place finish, but I figure the hordes of 1’s wouldn’t be affected much by a lone, dishonest 10.

But, surprisingly, I do have a little to say about the “game.”

At first glance, it seems as though the author has tried to dump every outmoded IF design cliché of yesteryear into this joke entry... but he hasn’t. Random death? Check. Random [i]winning[/i]? Not an IF cliché, but check. The “twisty little passages” nod to Colossal Cave? Yep. A maze that’s not actually mapped geographically? Sure thing. Long, made-up fantasy words? You bet. All library defaults used, including “as good-looking as ever” for [i][b]>X ME[/b][/i]? Uh huh.

But where’s the hunger daemon? Why doesn’t [i][b]>XYZZY[/b][/i] teleport me to another location? Where’s the painted-on room description? Where’s the unimplemented scenery? [b][i]>UNDO[/b][/i] actually works. It’s not so much the absolute worst IF game ever, as it is the absolute worst IF [i]parody game[/i] ever.

I’m not encouraging the author to try harder to disappoint next year; far from it. But neither am I encouraging him to submit a real entry next time. My guess is that he’s after a last-place finish and some witty thrashings from angry reviewers. But... meh. I actually expected that it might do a better job of pretending as though something interesting was just around the next corner, if only I’d keep at it, much the way 2006’s [url=http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp06/sisyphus.shtml]Sisyphus[/url] -- a far more successful joke entry -- did.

It’s a “1” from me. Was there ever a doubt?[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=469&start=0#p2700
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Project Delta: The Course
User: Retro / DateTime: 2008-10-15 07:48:24

[quote="Merk"]No... "FutureGame" from IFComp 2005 is the shortest I've seen. It's only a couple of minutes long, and it's just one or two keypresses.[/quote]

Well, the shortest CYOA-game I saw, was back in 1989. It was written in BASIC by a german programmer for the Commodore 64. The game was about a teddybear ([url=http://gifts.cafepress.com/item/commodore-64-teddy-bear/18611810]like this one[/url]). The player was given 3 or 4 choices. Whatever choice you made, you died afterwards.  [emote]:roll:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=479&start=0#p2701
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Nerd Quest
User: cconroy / DateTime: 2008-10-15 14:18:04

Haven't played the game, but thanks to a recent business trip with a sales rep from our London office, I can confirm that "beamer" is a Britishism for "projector".  I was a little confused when that first came up too. [emote]:)[/emote]  

Incidentally, it seems "beamer" for BMW is considered incorrect by purists, which explains why I keep seeing "bimmer" (which I had assumed was a misspelling) in various places around the 'net.  See [url]http://www.bmwccbc.org/misc/tech-and-trivia/bimmer.html[/url] .

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=479&start=0#p2702
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Nerd Quest
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-15 14:34:25

Hmm. Interesting.

Unfortunately, when misinformation spreads to such a degree, I think there's no going back. It's why "hacker" equates to "computer security criminal" now, and why "browser-based game" (a sticking point of mine) is used to describe other kinds of web games that [i]are not[/i] browser [i]based[/i] (Java and Flash games are not browser-based, for instance). I'm sure there are a thousand others -- using the Kleenex brand name to refer to tissue in general in some parts of the country, for instance.

Supposing for a moment that a BMW auto [i]is[/i] called a "beamer," it brings up a good point. Not only should a game be beta-tested, it should be beta-tested by English-speaking players in other countries. In the case of this game, the confusion might have been cleared up by a more meaningful object description, but I can imagine some other confusing (and embarassing) word choices. For instance, I might write a light-hearted game about some clumsy girl who falls on her fanny. At least in the southern United States, that's a more polite way of saying "butt" or "rear-end," but I've heard that it has a different meaning in England.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=461&start=20#p2703
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Peter's IFComp 2008 Thoughts and Reviews
User: Peter Nepstad / DateTime: 2008-10-15 18:35:14

[quote="Pacian"]It's also the opening to Shadowrun on the SNES - one of my all time favourite beginnings for a game.  I totally mean to do it myself at some point.[/quote]

Well, we're in good company, anyway. Here's an entry from Lovecraft's Commonplace Book:

187	 Dream of awaking in vast hall of strange architecture, with sheet-covered forms on slabs—in positions similar to one’s own. 

Maybe I should try to run a second Commonplace Book project next year? Lots of good entries left to be developed...

-- Peter

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=461&start=20#p2704
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: That Cigar Thing
User: Peter Nepstad / DateTime: 2008-10-15 18:40:27

[quote="Jacqueline"]I had a [url=http://isquiesque.livejournal.com/412050.html]very similar issue[/url] with [i]Escape from the Underworld[/i], but in the case of the cigar I actually got that puzzle without a hint.  It's as overtly clued, really, as the receptionist hinting that she wants a cigarette or cigar: the maintenance guy's description states that he 'looks hot and sweaty and reeks of cigars.'  I actually asked him about cigars before I even realized that would be a solution to a puzzle.[/quote]

I saw that, too, but the trouble was, the parser didn't recognize your ability to ask about anything that wasn't already in the room (or that wasn't another person). So once I looked around and didn't see a cigar, I didn't ask about one, previous experience having taught me that the game wouldn't know what I was talking about. I assumed you just asked people about other people, basically. Then it turned out it does recognize things not in the room, if you're meant to ask about that thing to solve a puzzle.

There is a coding thing you have to do in TADS 2 to make ASK and TELL work for items not present in a room. It isn't obvious, but it isn't particularly hard. I assume there must be a similar mechanic for INFORM games to do the same.

-- Peter

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=483&start=0#p2705
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Freedom
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-15 20:38:54

The draft of this review is below the dotted spoiler space. Just scroll down.

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[quote]Game #14: Freedom
Author: Anonymous
Played On: October 15th (15 minutes)
Platform: Inform 6 (Zcode)

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
[i]An ordinary day in the life of an ordinary person.[/i]

[b]>xyzzy[/b]
[i]A hostile silence greets your words.[/i]

[i]Freedom[/i] took ten minutes from start to finish, and much of that was spent just poking at the implementation for review purposes. An additional five minutes were spent playing through a second time to check out a couple of questions I had about the implementation. It’s a very short game.

The game has a purpose; or at least, it says it does. It’s not mentioned in the blurb (although the blurb does support the premise -- kind of), and it’s not mentioned at the end. It’s explained only in the [b]>about[/b] text. I don’t know how I would have reacted to the game if I had known its purpose prior to playing, but in a way, I’m glad I didn’t. This gave me the opportunity to find out if the game [i]really[/i] succeeds in doing what the author intended. I do think the author’s note should have appeared at the end, though, since many players are likely to miss it. I would include it in this review, but it feels too much like a spoiler. If you haven’t played yet, but intend to despite the game’s low score, be sure to type [i]ABOUT[/i] after you’ve completed the game once.

Without knowing what the author had in mind, [i]Freedom[/i] seemed like a very simple, very short, very boring non-game. That’s a good indication that it doesn’t work to get the point across. I didn’t even suspect that there might be a purpose to the game, and that it was meant to simulate a condition of importance to the author. At no time did I feel the way the game was supposed to make me feel. There is a chance it’s just a joke game (and I’m just a sucker for believing the premise), but going on the assumption that it was a completely honest attempt to do what the author states in his (or her?) note, it failed.

This in itself is a bitter irony of the kind that seems manufactured to [i]be[/i] bitterly ironic. Maybe it is -- a joke entry, I mean. If it is, [i]this[/i] one was cleverly executed. If it’s not (and this assumption will make up the remainder of this review), then I hope my comments come across as constructive and encouraging rather than condescending and rude.

The problem with the game’s premise is that it’s indiscernible from the goings-on in [i]any[/i] typical work of interactive fiction. As an example that shouldn’t spoil this particular premise, imagine a game where you pick up a rug. Maybe you can use the rug to hide a painting inside (found at a home décor store, maybe). Along the way, you’ll need to pick up loose change intended as a tip from a restaurant table, a paperback book left unattended by a sunbather, and a pair of sunglasses. Assume, too, that I hadn’t already told you that all of it was supposed to fit together somehow, and this was all just “stuff” that happened in the game. Now, if I told you that this was a game that’s meant to demonstrate what it feels like to suffer from kleptomania, would you answer back that you had easily deduced that already from the game?

Well, maybe. If it was really well written, fleshed out, offered insight into the protagonist’s state of mind, and didn’t [i]feel[/i] like just any typical adventure game, maybe you would. If I told you the premise [i]before[/i] you played, maybe you would recognize the theme along the way. But, if this game progressed just like any other, maybe with a slant towards the old-school design philosophy of building puzzles out of things the player must find and nab for personal use, then its actual purpose would probably come as a surprise.

[i]Freedom[/i] isn’t old-school, full of puzzles, or anything of the sort. Really, it’s just a boring little errand quest. Its implementation is pretty basic, but it never feels broken or frustrating. You can look at a few things, but you’re usually just redirected back to the goal at hand. It has no story, and it doesn’t seem ambitious enough. It’s written okay, but in a simple way that seems to [i]want[/i] to be boring. Without the author’s note to give insight into [i]why[/i] the game exists, it probably wouldn’t even merit more than a paragraph or two of softened diatribe.

To achieve what the author intended, the game needs shading. It shouldn’t be written in such a neutral way. Without context, different people can interpret these events in different ways. It all seemed pretty normal to me. Using my own point of reference, I didn’t experience these events in the way the author intended. Part of that may be because it’s not really happening, but a bigger part is that the game gives very little insight into the protagonist’s state of mind. I’ve said in other reviews that it’s not a good idea (especially in a second-person narrative) to “tell” the player what he’s thinking and feeling, but [i]something[/i] needed to have been put here in its place. Maybe the apartment should have been described with more warmth and comfort, while other places should have been cold and suspicious. Would that be an exaggeration of what the author attempted to simulate, though? I don’t know. I [i]do[/i] know, however, that there [i]must[/i] be far more to this than was present in the game, which says to me that the author didn’t construct it in a way that gets the point across.

[i]Freedom[/i] gets the free point, a point for its implementation (modest, but seemingly bug-free and -- except for maybe one part in the grocery store -- smooth), and a point for the writing. For puzzles and interaction, I did not give a point. Likewise, the story (in this game, its “purpose”) gets no point -- not because it was it was a bad idea, but because it didn’t come close to accomplishing what the author intended. That’s a composite score of “3.”

[i]If[/i] this was a joke entry, it was expertly done. The only improvement might have been if the author’s note came at the end of it, instead of in the “about” text. If it [i]wasn’t[/i] a joke, it needed a far more convincing narrative to get the point across.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=461&start=20#p2706
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Peter's IFComp 2008 Thoughts and Reviews
User: Peter Nepstad / DateTime: 2008-10-15 20:55:32

[b]The Lighthouse[/b] by Eric Hickman & Nathan Chung

In the second room, I typed GET ALL and picked up the bed. That is all.


-- Peter

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=461&start=20#p2707
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Peter's IFComp 2008 Thoughts and Reviews
User: Peter Nepstad / DateTime: 2008-10-15 21:14:33

[b]Grief[/b] by Simon Christiansen

Apologies for the anecdotal nature of these reviews, but I have to share that a friend of mine contacted me about six months ago asking about tools with which to write Interactive Fiction. I was needless to say entirely thrilled, as none of my real-world, around-town friends have any interest. So I gave him the Inform or TADS details and links. A month or so ago I ran into him at a party and asked how it was going. He hadn't started what he was going to create. So I asked him more about it. He said he wanted to write an interactive divorce, to help people role-play various scenarios and how to respond. 

Which sounded like a bundle of laughs, though I tried to make a few encouraging noises anyway as best I could.

Well, if he wanted to be first in the IF-as-therapy sweepstakes, he's too late by half because now here comes GRIEF.

GRIEF is the perfect game to give to any overly happy, well adjusted person you know, just to knock them down and make them feel as miserable as the rest of us.

Or, maybe it isn't. Maybe therapy + IF isn't a chocolate + peanut butter sort of combination.

[spoiler]Grief is a game which allows you to play through the horrible death of your child, through a number of means, none of them pleasant. I knew that was what the game was on about from about the second or third move, it was so blatantly telegraphed with overly cute descriptions of your little bundle of joy. You play waiting for the hammer to drop, and then, it does.[/spoiler]

What is really neat about the game is that you can communicate with it using normal language. After walking into the game kitchen, and being told to make breakfast for the boy, I was all ready for a tedious exercise of opening refrigerators, turning on stoves, breaking eggs. But instead I typed "MAKE BREAKFAST" and it did. I liked that. The same thing happened with everything else, from driving your car to going to work. It was all made to work using actual English, not just IF-English. Which is pretty great.

To offset the fact that the game is well implemented, is the fact of its subject matter. I couldn't figure out the optimal ending without the walkthrough. The problem is, the game is not adequately clued enough, nor pleasant enough, to make you want to play again once, let alone the number of times you would need to in order to get to the "correct" ending.

[spoiler]I think part of the problem here is that the first death is not a result of your negligence, or as a result of your error, in any way. It's just an accident. So why do I need to do it over and over again to try to make it right? I don't, it was an accident. Now, if instead the game set up a premise in which I'd been drinking, having an affair, blowing off work, oversleeping, or some combination thereof, it would have been interesting to try and overcome all those personal limitations (as in, throwing away all your beer and not drinking, etc.).[/spoiler]

Overall, I found Grief to be well implemented, though personally I have absolutely no desire to play interactive therapy sessions, ever, and this was not an exception to the rule.

-- Peter

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=483&start=0#p2708
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Freedom
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-16 08:14:40

A few other comments, now that I've looked at a couple other reviews...

I didn't get stuck at the end, because "hug" is mapped to "kiss" and I almost always try to kiss every potentially attractive woman I encounter in interactive fiction.

Also, nobody else is suggesting that it [i]might[/i] be a joke entry. I feel bad for even using the word, given that I [i]don't[/i] think there's anything dishonest or misleading about the game's premise, but...

[spoiler]Imagine if it [i]was[/i] a joke entry, or some sort of small-scale social experiment. I mean, it's dull as a game, and it was submitted to a competition where reviewers can be cranky and vitriolic about dull games. Yet the author reveals something very personal that could either completely change the tone of the review, or make the reviewer feel bad to find out the game's purpose [i]later[/i].[/spoiler]
The only part that didn't seem to work smoothly for me was the grocery store scene. I don't think the implementation of it was part of the game's purpose, but it took a little more effort there. I knew to "buy groceries" but I also tried "pay for groceries" with no luck.

After reading the author note, after finishing the game once:

[spoiler]My honest gut reaction was wow: maybe [i]I[/i] have social anxiety disorder. People are usually rude at groceries stores, inattentative at book stores, and madmen behind the wheel. And I think maybe that's why the premise doesn't work the way the author intended. The game doesn't show how somebody with this disorder perceives the world. It just describes what seem to be ordinary situations, and unless you share this disorder, that's not enough to put you in the protagonist's place.[/spoiler]
So [i]can[/i] a premise like this work in a game? Other than the base, familiar emotions like fear and happiness, is it possible to demonstrate to a player what a certain [i]unfamiliar[/i] state of mind [i]feels[/i] like? Would the fact that it's a game muffle the effect to too great an extent?

I don't think I've seen this sort of thing attempted before. [i][url=http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp05/cheiron.shtml]Cheiron[/url][/i] made me feel like a clueless doctor wannabe, although I don't think that was the intent. [i][url=http://www.sidneymerk.com/spring06/baron.shtml]The Baron[/url][/i] shocked me, but didn't make me feel like

[spoiler]a child molester (and granted, I don't think you were [i]supposed[/i] to).[/spoiler]
Maybe it would be easier to make a player feel like a vampire, because that's unreal and full of possiblities. To succeed in demonstrating a disorder like the one in [i]Freedom[/i], though... I don't know. Maybe it [i]did[/i] need exaggeration, but as was pointed out in another review, it's [i]already[/i] exaggerated in your own mind if you have the disorder, probably making it difficult or impossible to recognize that these things don't elicit panic or trepidation in most people.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=484&start=0#p2709
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: A Date With Death
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-18 10:49:22

(scroll down below spoiler space for the draft of my review)...

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[quote]Game #15: A Date With Death
Author: David Whyld
Played On: October 16th & 17th (2 hours 45 minutes)
Platform: Adrift (Version 4.0)

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
[i]It's not easy being king. Especially when you're the king of a nation constantly at war with, well, everyone. And when the Grim Reaper comes knocking on your door, you wonder if being king is really worth all this hassle...[/i]

[b]>xyzzy[/b]
[i]You find yourself disappointed that the author couldn't think of a witty response to be made to the xyzzy command.[/i]

[b]>plugh[/b]
[i]”Plugh!” you cry, to which someone stops by just long enough to wittily respond with “put a plugh in it!” before departing swiftly.[/i]

[i]A Date With Death[/i] is the first game in this year’s IFComp that I simply [i]cannot finish[/i] through to the “final” ending. (Strictly speaking, that’s not true; one game wasn’t finished by the [i]authors[/i] and therefore ends abruptly, and another -- a more obvious joke entry -- apparently has some super-convoluted way out of its maze.) [i]A Date With Death[/i] has plenty of plot beyond the point where I became hopelessly stuck, but I would either (A) have to think of some solution unmentioned in the hints, which hasn’t yet occurred to me, or (B) start over and hope that this isn’t an event that happens [i]every[/i] time.

I stopped in the game’s 6:00 hour (although I think this can vary), where I get teleported back to The Seat of Rulership, confronted by the Angel of Death, and left with seemingly no way out of an imminent demise a few turns later. I found the glove (little good it does me), but carry nothing else in my inventory. I can summon a servant, but can get him to do absolutely nothing except fetch High Chancellor Verenor (who refuses to come). I have a guard, but he’s transfixed and unhelpful.

As a result, this will be a review of only part of [i]A Date With Death[/i]. I made it through [i]maybe[/i] half, but based on my weak score out of 100, maybe far less. I’m disappointed that the game doesn’t include a walkthrough, and that the built-in one is found only through a super-secret command that I was unable (despite many attempts) to guess. Reviews based on only part of a game tend to bother me, but with so many more yet to play in this IFComp and the days rapidly falling off the calendar, my only other reasonable alternative was not to review it at all. At least it’s not a review based on only a few [i]minutes[/i] of play, where the reviewer gave up out of boredom or crankiness -- not to call anybody else out on that.

If a player is thorough, several minutes of introductory material must be read prior to entering the first command. This is one of the most text-heavy works of IF I’ve played, where even the room descriptions are supplemented with paragraphs of narration. This is often the result of game events, because [i]a lot[/i] is happening in [i]A Date With Death[/i].

The story is a familiar one. The protagonist -- in this case, the king of some realm -- must cheat or con his way out of death in what will probably turn out to be a battle of wits with the Grim Reaper (I say “probably” because I couldn’t complete the game). The twist is that death has proven temporary for this king in the past, in a realm where his cruel but loyal and adoring advisor has a means of resurrecting the dead. [i]A Date With Death[/i] is the third in a trilogy, but I found the storyline easy to follow and the important events of the prior games well covered without having played the first two.

The game’s humor succeeds most of the time, but two particular bits left me cold. One of the king’s bodyguards has a bad case of gas. Call me crazy, but fart jokes seem like the low-hanging fruit of comedy (and, incidentally, at a level of humor that’s likely to be inversely proportional to the reader’s age). Also, the Chancellor’s penchant for having the king’s subjects brutally beaten or senselessly murdered crops up again and [i]again[/i] and [i]AGAIN[/i], to the point that I began to feel horrible for the plight suffered upon these innocent people. It was kind of funny at first, but when you really start to think about it, it’s pretty depressing.

I like the way the story is told otherwise. Even though it’s plenty to read, it’s usually [i]fun[/i] to read. A few typos are jarring (and of the kind that should have been noticed in beta-testing) and a few sentences seem awkwardly worded, but the game reads well enough most of the time. My biggest complaint, at least as a reaction while [i]playing[/i], is that the text-to-command ratio seems a little high. I would have liked to spend a little more time [i]doing[/i] and a little less time [i]reading[/i]. Even as-is, it might have mimicked bite-sized segments by using a blank line between paragraphs. I see this often in games, and even finagled Hugo into doing the same thing in my last IFComp entry. It seems to work well.

I didn’t encounter many bugs. One odd thing is that Ibben the servant will run away when the Angel of Death appears, but if you summon him [i]afterwards[/i], he seems to be completely unaware of the danger. Thugg is said to already be in the throne room when you’re “teleported” there, yet he arrives from elsewhere on the next turn. They all seem like pretty minor issues, and don’t appear to break the game.

The game is typical of what I’ve come to expect from David Whyld. It’s interesting, with a sort of dark, cynical humor to it. The characters -- or caricatures -- seem familiar in their stereotypical and “one trick” behavior. It’s usually fun, but maybe too easy to get stuck at a point that prevents further progress. I’ve rated it a “1” in every [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=458]category[/url] (including the bonus, mainly because I feel guilty for not putting even more time into trying to get [i]unstuck[/i]) for a composite score of “6.” That was my gut reaction at the two-hour mark (hence, my vote) as well.

[url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/David_Whyld]David Whyld[/url] is one of the most prolific among [url=http://www.adrift.org.uk/cgi/new/adrift.cgi]Adrift[/url] authors -- well, among [i]all[/i] writers of IF, actually. I haven’t played many games from his back catalog, but of the few I have, there seems to be a... sort of [i]sameness[/i], for lack of a better word. I’m not claiming I could tell you a game was written by David Whyld simply by playing it, but he [i]does[/i] seem to gravitate towards the same kind of twisted humor. That’s not necessarily a complaint. There is a “sameness” to Star Trek and Star Wars books (of course), or in the picaresque plots of Jack Vance (incidentally, the one author I consider my “favorite” among several I enjoy incredibly). And [i]that’s[/i] not meant to be a comparison -- merely an observation. My round-about point is, I think this might be holding David back. Something different, unexpected, and in a vein far different than [i]A Date With Death[/i] could prove worthwhile too.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=485&start=0#p2710
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Violet
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-18 19:40:07

(scroll down)
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[quote]Game #16: Violet
Author: Jeremy Freese
Played On: October 18th (2 hours 5 minutes)
Platform: Inform 7 (Zcode)

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
[i]Calm down. All you have to do is write a thousand words and everything will be fine. And you have all day, except it's already noon.[/i]

[b]>xyzzy[/b]
[i]That time on the sixth floor of the library:[/i]
[i]"Violet, that was-- that was--"[/i]
[i]"Magical?"[/i]
[i]"How did you do that?"[/i]
[i]"Any sufficiently awesome girlfriend is indistinguishable from magic."[/i]

If this is Jeremy Freese’s first game, he’s a fount of previously untapped brilliance. [i]Violet[/i] harnesses the structure of and the talent shown in last year’s one-room IFComp third-place finisher, [i][url=http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/bellwater.shtml]Lord Bellwater’s Secret[/url][/i]. While there are little indications that Freese may in fact [i]be[/i] [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Sam_Gordon]Sam Gordon[/url] (how the walkthrough is presented, the game packaged as .zblorb, etc), it’s certainly not decisive evidence. As of this writing, it’s just as likely that Jeremy Freese has knocked the ball out of the proverbial ballpark on his first effort.

And having [i]fifteen beta-testers[/i] didn’t hurt his odds.

(Update: Sam has set the record straight by stating that he had nothing to do with [i]Violet[/i] and that he’s not Jeremy.)

[i]Violet[/i] takes place in a single room: the protagonist’s office. In this kind of design, everything the player needs to complete the adventure is (usually) within reach. The room is given “zones” -- by the desk, by the door, in the corner, by the bookshelf -- but it’s not necessary to move explicitly from place to place. An element of some puzzles does involve pushing something into these zones, but the game is smart about bringing things back when needed and describing the implicit actions of the protagonist.

That’s just one of the many ways in which [i]Violet[/i] is silky smooth. The author has anticipated obvious and non-obvious actions (and he probably owes a debt to a few of his testers for this), making sure that [i]most of the time[/i] the game knows the appropriate way to react if the action is tried on [i]any[/i] object in the game. I only found a couple very small bugs, and the worst of these were a blank response to [b]>throw square at pen[/b], and some lag in displaying my inventory. That’s it. In nearly every other way, the game is perfectly solid.

If Jeremy Freese [i]isn’t[/i] Sam Gordon, the two should become friends. [i]Violet[/i] uses exactly the same kind of plot pacing devices. The player isn’t required to read a thousand lines of exposition all at once, about anything and everything, which is what one might expect of a poorly designed one-room game. Instead, the author first gives the basic essentials -- the cabinet, the desk, the door, and a little more. Each top-level “thing” is the gateway to second-tier objects and scenery, and so on, for however deep is necessary. The deeper the player digs, the more of the backstory is handed out.

The game even makes assumptions (which are usually accurate) about [i]why[/i] the player is attempting certain things, which can be used as subtle clues or as redirection back to more important tasks. Often, this takes the form of a blanket assumption that you’re just trying random stuff to avoid the protagonist’s primary task, but I really had the impression that the author had thought things through to such a large extent that [i]anything[/i] I tried was already anticipated. As illusions go, it was a convincing one.

Some of the puzzles seemed to border on impossible, yet everything was solvable [i]right at two hours[/i] without the hints or the walkthrough. This is an even more impressive trick. Not only were the puzzles satisfying without being too easy, but two hours was exactly time enough to also poke around the game’s edges looking for flaws, trying things that didn’t even seem to relate to the tasks at hand. I [i]like[/i] doing this in interactive fiction, especially when I intend to score the game and write a review. This could be freakish coincidence, but I’d rather think (especially given how well written the entire game is) that Jeremy obsessively tweaked the difficulty to get it just right. For me, it [i]was[/i] just right: the pacing, the difficulty, the [i]kinds[/i] of puzzles -- all of it.

The brilliance of the game’s puzzle design isn’t that they’re new puzzles, or puzzles with clever twists. It’s that the author managed to minimize the potential usefulness of any one thing, while allowing multiple uses where appropriate. The author doesn’t give the player a hammer, and then only implement one single thing you can break with it, denying attempts to break everything else. If it can reasonably be attempted, the game usually [i]lets[/i] you attempt it, with perfectly rational explanations as to why it doesn’t work as you had hoped. (Incidentally, there are no hammers in [i]Violet[/i].) This is done by paying attention to the size, shape, and other properties of things. Although it doesn’t feel contrived or intentional at the time, it’s obvious that the construction of these puzzles was most likely a long, thought-out process. Every solution that introduces a new object can [i]potentially[/i] mislead the player, or present too easy a solution to some [i]other[/i] puzzle, which in itself could be overlooked by the author. Yet here, everything is perfectly placed, and [i]nothing[/i] (that I found) was overlooked. The game is consistent and expertly crafted.
 
[i]Violet[/i] also employs a twist on the second person narrative, and the relationship between the narrator and the protagonist. I doubt this is something new, but in my limited experience, no other game I can recall does exactly this. (In my pre-results review draft at [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/]intfiction.org[/url], the next paragraph will get the hidden spoiler treatment.)

[spoiler]The narrator is the protagonist’s mental representation of his own girlfriend. He does this seemingly not due to any level of insanity, but because he needs that directive force to accomplish the very task that will drive his [i]actual[/i] girlfriend away if it can’t be completed. So, when the game says “you” it’s the protagonist imagining his girlfriend commenting to him (essentially, the whole game), but “I” becomes valid as well, since that’s the make-believe girlfriend commenting about herself. Narrators have been given an identity in second person IF before, but has this narrator ever been the protagonist’s inner voice cast in the role of his own girlfriend? It would be memorable enough even if it [i]didn’t[/i] work, but more so because it [i]does[/i]. She comes across as sensible and likeable, and the extent to which her patience has been stretched seems completely believable. Her personality is just as developed as the protagonist’s, if not more so.[/spoiler]
The story is nothing groundbreaking, but it has emotional moments, funny moments, and various moments of “ah! I get it!” Along the way, the importance of those promised “one thousand words” becomes more and more clear. At the beginning of the game, I found myself trying to do the very thing the protagonist intended to avoid -- looking at stuff, trying to move things, listening to the conversation in the hall and checking out the spectacle in the park beyond the window -- generally, goofing off and wasting time. I didn’t [i]want[/i] to avoid these distractions, because they were [i]fun[/i]. Little by little, exactly as required by the story, I began to sympathize. I began to focus my efforts. I began to cheer for the protagonist, hoping that this entire effort would end in his favor. It’s possible that I did this more for the narrator’s benefit than the protagonist’s, but this is one of the few games I’ve felt compelled to complete not just for [i]my[/i] benefit (as a player who wants to win), but for these make-believe characters as well.

I think many good things will be said about [i]Violet[/i], and in ways better expressed than this. Just in browsing various blogs for other reviews of the games I’ve already completed, it has been impossible to avoid mentions of this one. I scroll down or avert my eyes to the best of my ability, but couldn’t help getting the preconception that [i]this[/i] was going to be a good one. (Really, guys -- I think we collectively need to agree on some way of preventing cross-pollination of game chatter next year, at least until the end of the voting period.)

I’m scoring it a “9” (which is perfect in every [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=458]category[/url]), but if it holds its place as my favorite for the rest of the competition, I’m going to add the bonus point and vote it a “10”. Strictly speaking, I logged two hours [i]and five minutes[/i] in the game. However, five minutes is a good estimate of how long I spent distracted on other matters (tabbed out for email, answering the phone, or whatever). This could easily turn out to be the winner of IFComp 2008. It’s at least a shoe-in for the top three.

The only real negative I have -- saved until the very end -- is that the whole “one room” design thing may feel less original if something just like this pops up again next year. That’s not to say it isn’t a [i]good[/i] design; only that it could begin to feel more like a gimmick if the trend goes on.

Update: As my favorite of the competition, I did add the bonus point to my vote, for a top score of “10.” And this was the 2008 IFComp winner. Congrats![/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=485&start=0#p2711
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Violet
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-19 10:35:21

That last part should probably be taken with a grain of salt. If another game [i]this good[/i] were to pop up, even designed with the same one-room model, that's really [i]not[/i] a bad thing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=485&start=0#p2712
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Violet
User: samgordon / DateTime: 2008-10-19 11:48:02

I can positively refute the suggestion that Jeremy Freese and Sam Gordon are the same person! I didn't manage to get my latest game finished for this year's comp, but I'm flattered that you think my work could be compared with Jeremy's.

Cheers

(The real) Sam Gordon

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=485&start=0#p2713
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Violet
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-19 12:08:41

Okay -- ha ha. Thanks.

Well, since that's just a draft, I can either revise that out of it, or just add an addendum. I think it's still a fitting comparison, though (the design is a lot like what you did in Lord Bellwater's Secret), so I might just add notes in the review or at the bottom.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=185&start=0#p2714
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Fallacy of Dawn
User: shagbark / DateTime: 2008-10-19 15:18:28

You start in a video arcade.  Someone plants a bomb in the room.  You can't leave the room.  You're told you need to find something to cut the lock on the Castles machine.  You have nothing to cut the lock with.  You die.

I went through this sequence about 10 times.  Then I remembered:  This was why I stopped playing IF!  Stupid hintless puzzles that stop you cold.  No walkthru available.

Screw it.  Life is too short for this nonsense.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=483&start=0#p2715
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Freedom
User: George Shannon / DateTime: 2008-10-19 16:11:20

I dunno, surely it can be okay to respect this person's problems but still say their game sucks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=484&start=0#p2716
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: A Date With Death
User: George Shannon / DateTime: 2008-10-19 16:17:05

[quote="Merk"]
I stopped in the game’s 6:00 hour (although I think this can vary), where I get teleported back to The Seat of Rulership, confronted by the Angel of Death, and left with seemingly no way out of an imminent demise a few turns later.[/quote]

Same here!  I started over, managed to accomplish a little more, but was still screwed in this part.  Took me two hours.  I still have no idea what the 'hint' meant.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=484&start=0#p2717
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: A Date With Death
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-19 17:22:52

Anybody played through that part, and know how to deal with that particular puzzle?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=475&start=0#p2718
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Opening Night
User: cconroy / DateTime: 2008-10-20 11:50:08

So far this is the only game I've played from this year's comp.  I too have a young child, a three-month-old daughter, which is also why I didn't enter a game of my own this year.  Based on your review, though, I had to play it to make sure that the twist wasn't the same one I had in mind for a future work. [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote="Merk"]If you pay attention to the ambient goings-on outside the theater[/quote]

Are you referring to [spoiler]hearing a cell phone ring?  I guess that does stretch the age of the PC a bit -- even if the "present" is actually, say, 15 years ago, that still makes him 90+.  And the fact that you still hear streetcars rattling past amongst car alarms and cellphones seems a bit odd.  (Also, by that point I had actually "tuned out" the ambient noise, so it took me longer than it should have to figure out what was going on.)[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=475&start=0#p2719
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Opening Night
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-20 13:23:46

[spoiler]Yeah, that's what I'm referring to. And 15 might be a stretch. It happens in the game [i]so often[/i] that it has to be fairly recent. Fifteen years ago (1993), few people had "mobile" phones, and usually they came in big bags due to the huge battery (i.e., "car phones"). So I'm thinking this century, probably from 2002 or so. It's [i]probably[/i] supposed to be present day, though, and that'd make the PC simply ancient.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=486&start=0#p2720
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Gravitation
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-21 18:30:06

I'm probably behind the times, but I just found this game last night. It's not IF -- the only text is the title screen (and the score, I guess) -- but it has a story.

<a class="postlink" href="http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/gravitation/">http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/gravitation/</a>

It's available for free for Max, Linux, and Windows. Arrow keys to move, space bar to jump. That's pretty much it. If you [i]haven't[/i] played it before, give it a shot. For a game that takes only 8 minutes to play, it's pretty deep.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=487&start=0#p2721
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: April in Paris
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-22 22:35:40

Anybody still reading these? I guess most of the entries don't really need a discussion, but I'm still kind of surprised there hasn't been more of it anyway. Are the discussions going on in the IFMud, in blogs, in private, and elsewhere? Or is everybody pretty much just making IFComp '08 a personal experience?  [emote]:P[/emote]  [emote]:D[/emote]

Scroll down for the draft of my review of April in Paris.

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[quote]Game #17: April in Paris
Author: Jim Aikin
Played On: October 20th (1 hour 15 minutes)
Platform: TADS 3

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
[i]On the first day of your dream vacation, you encounter an exasperating social difficulty. (Game file contains complete hints and walkthrough. Zip file includes pdf map.)[/i]

[i]April in Paris[/i] is a game that [i]should[/i] be more fun than it is. The writing is pleasantly error-free, or very near to it. It has a few simple puzzles that seem to set the pacing pretty well. It’s technically competent, with just a few quirks (although one is a moderately serious bug) that aren’t bad enough to destroy faith in the game’s implementation. It [i]should[/i] be really enjoyable.

Why, then, this lukewarm response? Part may be to do with the [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=485]truly excellent entry[/url] I played just prior to this (don’t click that link if you don’t yet want opinions on IFComp ’08 entries you might not have played). That’s a very tough act to follow.  Recognizing my bias, I have given [i]April in Paris[/i] the reviewer bonus point -- just in case I’m being too critical.

In the two days I’ve put off writing this review, I’ve given some thought to why [i]April in Paris[/i] didn’t captivate me the way it could have. My biggest problem was with the game’s geography. It’s essentially three rooms, but the main one has been subdivided into six room-like zones. The included .PDF map makes this layout clearer, but I didn’t check it until afterwards for fear of spoilers. The game uses a TADS 3 extension for handling movement within a single room (I think that’s right; in response to my transcript, Jim offered a little insight into the game’s construction).

I was initially confused by the layout, but even when I understood it, I was constantly unclear on who and what was where. Since this main area is open, the player can see what’s happening all around. The waiter is said to move around, but often between other zones. Things are described as they pertain to these six zones (near the south end of the railing, north end of the interior area, etc). The game is good about implicitly moving the player (for instance, an attempt to sit at your table will return you to the proper zone automatically), but the cumulative result -- for me -- was constant confusion.

Scrapping the zone concept and sticking to a room-based approach might have worked. I think I understand why the game [i]doesn’t[/i], though, and it’s for realism. It wouldn’t make sense to be oblivious to the goings-on just a few feet north of where you stand, when it’s essentially an open area. A better solution might have been the “one room” concept. Except for the runaway dog (which could be adapted), it might have been possible to condense the game’s main area into a single room, making accommodations for the ways this might affect the puzzles. Referring to the map might have helped too, but it still would have been a little awkward to mentally manage what was happening where.

The young woman, who seemed to be a central piece in the story, felt strangely flat. Two-dimensional characters are common enough in IF -- it’s even the norm -- and it’s not usually a problem (especially in puzzle games). This game is more story-centric, though, so I would have expected more characterization -- especially for this character. Maybe I didn’t talk to her enough. As the game progressed, she just seemed more and more like a puzzle piece, or maybe a prop. Initially, I didn’t even trust her. The lesser characters were fine. Even the waiter, with his obstinate attitude, seemed believable and developed enough to fit the needs of the story. Only the young woman seemed to need a more important role than she was given.

Of the game’s title and blurb, and in an attempt to “guess” at what each of the thirty-five IFComp 2008 entries [i]might[/i] be like, I made the following [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=457]prediction[/url]:

[i]“Sounds artsy. Cultured. Over my head, perhaps... My expectations are high.”[/i]

I expected that I might have to involve my wife (with her minor in French) in figuring out some of the dialogue. I expected something that would evoke strong images of this foreign city -- not necessarily a thinly veiled virtual tour as in 2004’s [url=http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp04/bluesky.shtml]Blue Sky[/url], but something that would spark the imagination and make me yearn for a vacation. I expected something grand and exciting, maybe.

It’s clear that [i]April in Paris[/i] wasn’t meant to be any of that. Even though the fault is mine for expecting that it might be, the game still has untapped potential. Somebody at a nearby table kept shouting “Extraordinary cuisine!” I would have expected to hear other kinds of random chatter, and a larger variety of random happenings in general. Even restricted to a single scene (the café), the game might have taken more opportunities to expound upon what it [i]feels[/i] like to be a tourist in Paris. Ultimately, the story didn’t seem interesting enough, the puzzles had me pitying the poor hungry fellow for all that he had to endure just to get a good meal (rather than actively enjoying the effort), and confusion with the café’s geography left me as frustrated as the protagonist himself.

It’s not a [i]bad[/i] game by any means. It’s even a welcome change from the poorly-written, untested ones that make up a large number of the entries each year. I understand that Jim may be planning to release an updated version after the competition. That’s not likely to impact the underlying framework or the game’s modest story, but it would probably be a more recommendable version nonetheless. The competition version is still worth a play-through, if no update is released. I have scored it a “7,” which includes full points for writing and the reviewer bonus point.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=487&start=0#p2722
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: April in Paris
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-22 23:00:26

One thing I probably should have pointed out -- and still may, in a revision -- is that the in-game hints were great. I only used them once, but that one time was spot-on helpful, and I could see where other recent clues were also available. It seems to adapt to your progression in the game. Very nice.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=485&start=0#p2723
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Violet
User: cconroy / DateTime: 2008-10-24 14:25:31

I haven't played Lord Bellwater's Secret, but after trying Violet, I was favorably reminded of another entry from last year: Lost Pig.  Not necessarily in the tone (though they are both whimsical to different degrees), but in the attention to detail and implementation.  I liked this one a lot and, even with limited data points for comparison, I would also not be surprised to see this one place near the top.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=339&start=10#p2724
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Are You Looking for a Programmer?
User: George / DateTime: 2008-10-25 14:03:47

I'd like to revive this thread. Are there people out there who either would like to program but not write content, or vice-versa?

Personally I'm kind of in both boats. I would like to do both, and one or the other, on separate projects. I have a few things going right now, so if anyone is up for discussing some ideas let me know. My top picks for development environments are I7, TADS 3, Python, and Flash, but I'd be willing to look at something else.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=339&start=10#p2725
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Are You Looking for a Programmer?
User: rgrassi / DateTime: 2008-10-25 14:08:49

I absolutely need a programmer.
Have two-three ideas for both short-medium games.
Rob

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=454&start=0#p2726
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: TAB (ThinBasic Adventure Builder)
User: rgrassi / DateTime: 2008-10-25 14:28:19

Very interesting.
Rob

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=385&start=0#p2727
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gargoyle on Linux
User: dott.Piergiorgio / DateTime: 2008-10-25 16:56:26

my issue is another: Installing the Italian mod of Gargoyle from [url=http://www.logossrl.com/gargoyle-mod/gargoyle_mod_it.html]here[/url] I end with a Gargoyle whose runs only from his directory, and running it from another dir led to a segfault of gargoyle, but the single 'terp runs fine save Agility whose don't compile (fail in the linking phase).

what I need is having a Gargoyle system whose can run systemwide and pointing to my story dir, whose is ~/if/bin 

but the main issue remain that no one can understand what is the most up-to date version of Gargoyle, I can count at least three or four forks....

Best regards from Italy,
Dott. Piergiorgio.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=488&start=0#p2728
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Red Moon
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-25 17:06:52

After stalling out over the past five days, I've moved forward. This is a draft of my review for Red Moon, which is the 18th game on my randomly-ordered list. That makes it the center mark, with 17 before and 17 yet to come. It looks like I'll make the deadline, but I think others have been finished for days now.

This is nothing to do with Red Moon or any game in particular, but I'm starting to think I might skip the reviews next year, and just play to vote. Or maybe I'll get an entry done in time myself. The big thing is just that I seem to be spending more time reviewing than playing, and most of what I have to say could probably come out just in the form of a discussion. 

Also -- and this is something I thought I'd never do -- but I might also take to skipping ones that don't win me over after a few minutes (next year, I mean). I know that's the norm for many judges. I used to dislike the practice on principle alone. If an author put effort into a game -- or even if he didn't -- it's still important to see everything there is to see, in order to make the most informed decision possible. The worst thing for me, especially in response to my earliest entries, was seeing a reviewer dismiss the game as worthless after admitting to playing through only a fraction of it. But now... I don't know. I'm starting to see why that happens. Skipping the obviously bad ones and not worrying about a review would definitely speed up the process. [emote]:)[/emote]

But that's digression, and nothing to do with this review. So...

Scroll down past the spoiler space for the review.

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[quote]Game #18: Red Moon
Author: Jonathan Hay
Played On: October 25th (45 minutes)
Platform: Inform 7 (Zcode)

[b]>xyzzy[/b]
[i]Not even powerful, ancient magicks will save you now.[/i]

Jonathan’s Hay’s [i]Red Moon[/i] has an auspicious start. The protagonist and his almost comatose sister are hiding in a dark, decrepit one-room hut as something unimaginably dangerous lurks outside. Fear and paranoia even turn shadows and darkened shapes [i]inside[/i] into would-be evils. They have nowhere to run. The menace could be upon them at any moment. A chance to call for help is rendered impossible. For the first few minutes, the game does [i]everything[/i] right in setting the stage for an impressive survival horror experience.

And then… it fizzles. The threat becomes less and less real as nothing happens. The protagonist takes a moment to reminisce about a photo, which doesn’t fit with the urgency of the situation. Limited things in this one room exhaust themselves of useful interaction early on, so it’s easy to feel stuck. Suspense gives way to frustration and boredom. Ultimately, I began to wonder if the story might have worked better without dropping the player into immediate danger that goes unfulfilled. By then, of course, the game had lost its initially strong grip on me.

This may have been the point. With no new ideas, I began to try the old ones. I noticed odd things. Then again. Definitely, something strange is going on. It’s counter-intuitive, but clued just well enough to work. Since this is the game’s only puzzle I’ll not spoil it, but I think a little frustration is probably a prerequisite to taking the necessary actions.

The author has implemented five different things that can end the game, so it’s more likely the player will stumble on at least one of them. My first win was one of the four alternates. The hints tip off the “main” solution, and the others are also in the included walkthrough. All five are essentially the same conclusion, with only minor differences in what leads up to it.

I don’t know if this is the story the author set out to tell, or if (as mentioned in notes from his walkthrough) his mere three days of development time just sort of forced it. As a three-day project, and as the author’s first work of IF, it’s impressive. The implementation is decent given the limited surroundings, and even some unexpected surprises come in the form of responses to actions I didn’t expect to work. The writing is okay (with a few bits that seem awkwardly worded), and it’s at least a complete game. It’s just not a very [i]long[/i] game, and it’s complete only in the sense that the author didn’t just leave loose ends hanging.

I’m not sure that should be taken as praise, though. The game it [i]started out[/i] to be would have been far more interesting. If it had kept its opening momentum, gone creepier, kept its pacing, developed the protagonist, given his sister a real role in the story... then who knows. Even keeping the game’s final revelation (which, if I guess correctly, will be a subject of contention with many of the judges), the author had plenty of room to develop this theme in a longer game.

This is a very good first effort, and an amazing one given such a short development time. It just doesn’t stand up well against its better competition. I’ve scored it one point for its implementation, one for the story, one for writing, and the free point. That’s a vote of “4.” No, scratch that. [i]Red Moon[/i] earns the bonus point as well. It’s a noteworthy effort by a first-time author, so that’s a bonus for encouragement. I’d like to see what he does with three weeks, three [i]months[/i], or even longer. If Jonathan Hay makes an appearance in IFComp 2009, I’ll expect it to be a better, meatier work.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=385&start=0#p2729
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gargoyle on Linux
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-25 17:16:22

I've not tried Gargoyle on Linux. But, I only have access to Linux via SSH, and that's the all-text command line environment.

This may not relate (though the last part may), but in an email about one of my games the other day, somebody pointed out some info about using native Windows IF interpreters with WINE on Linux. Here's what he said:

[quote]Regarding WINE, assuming one has WINE installed, you just run the setup file for Windows Hugo and it does what windows setups always do - installs the program, and puts a shortcut in the Wine folder (on Ubuntu, Applications -> Wine -> Programs).

Running that shortcut Just Works after that; not all WINE installations run so smoothly (in fact, several of the IF interpreters don't install without higgledy-piggledy DLL chasing crap).  So it's noteworthy that this one does.

(If anybody cares, the same is also true of WinFrotz and WinGlulxe; and unfortunately, there are some adventures out there that I haven't been able to get to run on any native Linux interpreters - notably, a lot of the zblorbs refuse to run under either Frotz or XZip or several others I tried that should theoretically handle zblorbs.)[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=385&start=0#p2730
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gargoyle on Linux
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-10-25 17:44:43

[quote="rushomancy"]... I'm having problems with blorb files.  I just get a blank window with nothing in it and if I hit any key it closes.  I can run them okey-dokey under Wine, so it's not some huge crippling issue, but I would like to be able to run them natively; any suggestions?[/quote]
These would be Glulx blorbs compiled with Inform 7, right? They've been problematic on Linux for a while now. I remember trying to get the Blue Lacuna Sneak Preview working... Truthfully, Wine is probably the best solution, but you could also try this version of Gargoyle, if you haven't already: <a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/msg/c7fe935be655278f">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts ... 5be655278f</a> The other possibility is compiling Glulxe with GLKterm, but I assume that's a more techy (and less satisfying - GLKterm doesn't do multimedia, as I recall) solution than you would prefer.

[quote="dott.Piergiorgio"]my issue is another: Installing the Italian mod of Gargoyle from [url=http://www.logossrl.com/gargoyle-mod/gargoyle_mod_it.html]here[/url] I end with a Gargoyle whose runs only from his directory, and running it from another dir led to a segfault of gargoyle, but the single 'terp runs fine save Agility whose don't compile (fail in the linking phase).[/quote]
My copy of gargoyle_mod runs fine, but I think I downloaded a binary that someone made available rather than compiling it myself and I can't remember who, so I can't really help here, sorry...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=488&start=0#p2731
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Red Moon
User: George / DateTime: 2008-10-25 19:32:29

I'm constantly impressed by how seriously some of the judges take the judging, by doing like you say and playing through a work they wouldn't normally without the context of judging. I admit my approach is the complete opposite, and I have no problem with judging a work based on the opening 15 or 20 minutes of play. 

One advantage of the recent relaxation of discussion rules is I can read a review of a game I previously dismissed, and then go back to it. 

Hopefully it  balances out? [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=488&start=0#p2732
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Red Moon
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-25 19:40:30

That reminds me of a third way to make the comp go quicker. Wait, check the reviews, and only play the best. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=479&start=0#p2733
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Nerd Quest
User: farvardin / DateTime: 2008-10-26 12:59:31

strange I wasn't shocked by the word "beamer" (maybe it's because I'm also a nerd who know the "latex-beamer" project [emote]:)[/emote] ).

I've just played this game, and while it's always interesting to have new game engine, it's true this one needs more improvement. It's not that bad, but it lacks some common synonymous (like inside = in or examine / x = look at). It may be more suitable to CYOA like games?

I think you've just broken the developer's heart: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.mechanique.nl/blog.html">http://www.mechanique.nl/blog.html</a> 
[quote]Seems like I have to stop the MechaniQue project altogether. Bye Bye... MechaniQue. [/quote]

[emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=479&start=0#p2734
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Nerd Quest
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-26 13:40:56

[quote]I think you've just broken the developer's heart: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.mechanique.nl/blog.html">http://www.mechanique.nl/blog.html</a>[/quote]
Yikes. Using an existing IF development language was an alternate suggestion. The main one was to just to observe what's out there now, and make this one more object-oriented. And he's somehow drawling a correlation between complaints about the writing and complaints about the engine. [emote]:([/emote] My [i]Nerd Quest[/i] review isn't the worst or most negative one out there, is it? [emote]:([/emote] [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=479&start=0#p2735
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Nerd Quest
User: George / DateTime: 2008-10-26 14:00:26

I wouldn't worry about it. At the same time the author says (on his website) that his IF language is basically a hobby project for himself and just himself, a way to relax, he enters the game in the Comp and says that apparently it sucks. I don't think you can have it both ways.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=479&start=0#p2736
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Nerd Quest
User: farvardin / DateTime: 2008-10-26 14:17:57

it seems there are always people who prefer to design game system rather than writing games [emote]:)[/emote]

Of course using any existing systems would have turned the game writing much easier.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=485&start=0#p2737
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Violet
User: farvardin / DateTime: 2008-10-26 16:19:03

I played and liked Lord Bellwater's Secret much.
And I'm also enjoying this Violet too !

I don't have much more to say than in the review, but the writing of Violet is very well conducted. The author knew for sure how to deal with the temptation of wasting time on internet, better than the protagonist of Violet... (and better than me, who has a game to write too...)
He certainly wrote more than 1000 words, and this fiction is vividly filled with events (outside window, outside the door).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=488&start=0#p2738
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Red Moon
User: George Shannon / DateTime: 2008-10-26 18:41:25

[quote="Merk"]The big thing is just that I seem to be spending more time reviewing than playing, and most of what I have to say could probably come out just in the form of a discussion. [/quote]

I noticed this too, I would typically play through one game in part of the evening, but spend the rest of the evening reading reviews and writing my own.  It's a little tough, but I think it's worth doing at least once.  We'll see next year.

I think I got all the 'short' games in one bunch in my random order.  Lately I need all two hours to finish the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=488&start=0#p2739
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Red Moon
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-27 07:40:48

[quote="George Shannon"]I noticed this too, I would typically play through one game in part of the evening, but spend the rest of the evening reading reviews and writing my own.  It's a little tough, but I think it's worth doing at least once.  We'll see next year.[/quote]
Which do you do first -- read other reviews, or write your own? I've been doing the latter, although a time or two I've seen spoilers just in checking reviews that mention or reference other IFComp games. So far, my observations and opinions are more in step with the norm than in years past.

[quote="George Shannon"]I think I got all the 'short' games in one bunch in my random order.  Lately I need all two hours to finish the game.[/quote]
Ha. You and me both. At first, I wondered if there were going to be [i]any[/i] overly-long entries this year, but the answer is yes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=489&start=0#p2740
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: CyberCow WARNING
User: hrrwlsn741 / DateTime: 2008-10-27 15:35:25

I have been authorized to relay this vital information...

Harry.

***
[quote]
LAIR of the CyberCow was written using ADRIFT 3.90, and apparently 
only properly runs under the Windows ADRIFT 3.90 runner. Converting it 
to 4.0 or using non-Runner interpreters can introduce bugs in the 
game. 

Stephen [/quote]
***
original: (<a class="postlink" href="http://tinyurl.com/5lop5t">http://tinyurl.com/5lop5t</a>)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=185&start=0#p2750
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Fallacy of Dawn
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2008-10-28 16:28:32

[quote="shagbark"]You start in a video arcade.  Someone plants a bomb in the room.  You can't leave the room.  You're told you need to find something to cut the lock on the Castles machine.  You have nothing to cut the lock with.  You die. Screw it.  Life is too short for this nonsense.[/quote]

It is not a good puzzle. (Nor is, really, the next one in the game, but that's another story.) The idea is that the player reads the descriptions of the arcade games by [b]>look[/b]ing at them and realizes that Delarion was fixing the Mr. Do! one, so a saw would be nearby (and in fact, if you look at Mr. Do! while the bomb is ticking, it will practically flat-out tell you that the saw is underneath it). Such are the pitfalls of having a protagonist with a bad memory (which is another "characteristic" I'd never use in IF again). 

It's funny, looking back, I would have written that opening in late 2000. It's been eight years and my interest in making the kind of old-school, intentionally obscure, Zork III-style puzzle has completely evaporated. I just want people to have a good experience, make good progress, and see all the text. But when I was starting out, there was definitely some unconscious desire to make games with puzzles that people potentially "think about" off-line, away from their computers. But that world doesn't exist any longer, since there are not only thousands of good text games to play otherwise, but thousands of games in other genres. 


-- Robb

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=479&start=0#p2751
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Nerd Quest
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-10-29 12:18:49

[quote="Merk"][quote]I think you've just broken the developer's heart: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.mechanique.nl/blog.html">http://www.mechanique.nl/blog.html</a>[/quote]
Yikes.[/quote]

I wouldn't worry about it. This kind of hobby projects pop up all the time and the author is really enthusiastic about it at first but as soon as they realize it's not all dancing in the moonlight enjoying marshmallows and champagne they abandon the project. If he hadn't been put down by the review(s), the project would've died a natural death very soon (I'm not trying to be negative here and I apologize for rubbing salt in wounds but the project had that written all over).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=499&start=0#p2752
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Taking a Jacket from an NPC (actor)
User: scifieric / DateTime: 2008-10-29 14:52:38

This sounds silly, even to me but I don't know how to get around the "can't remove from people rule".

an actor taking [color=#BF0000]can't take component parts rule[/color]
an actor removing something from [color=#BF0000]can't remove what's not inside rule[/color]
an actor removing something from [color=#BF0000]can't remove from people rule[/color]
an actor removing something from [color=#BF0000]convert remove to take rule[/color]

I can get a character to GIVE something they are wearing but not to have it taken by the player:

[code]Instead of examining someone:
	say "[The noun] is wearing [the list of things worn by the noun] and is carrying [the list of things carried by the noun]."

The block giving rule is not listed in the check giving it to rules.

A persuasion rule for asking people to try giving: persuasion succeeds.

Procedural rule about the player taking clothing:
	ignore the can't take people's possessions rule.

The ballroom is a room. "This is where the gala event will happen. You're going to have to be on your best manners."

Clothing is a kind of thing. Clothing is always wearable.  A person can wear clothes. A mink coat is a kind of clothing.

Sandy is here. Sandy is a woman. Sandy wears a mink coat.[/code]
I try the following:
[color=#4000BF]>get mink coat
That seems to belong to Sandy.

>take mink coat
That seems to belong to Sandy.

>Sandy, give me mink coat
Sandy gives the mink coat to you.[/color]

I know this example is the wrong way to go about it but I'm embarrassed to show how wildly off-base I am in trying to get this done!  I know I'm not doing it right and any help would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=499&start=0#p2753
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Taking a Jacket from an NPC (actor)
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-10-29 16:36:59

The rule you need to override is the "can't take people's possessions rule". If you want to ignore it for everything that anyone is carrying or wearing, use:
[code]The can't take people's possessions rule is not listed in any rulebook.[/code]

Or if you just want to be able to take Sandy's mink coat, but not her diamond necklace:
[code]Procedural rule when taking the mink coat:
	ignore the can't take people's possessions rule.[/code]

To check what rule you need to override, type RULES before trying GET MINK COAT. The last rule listed before "That seems to belong to Sandy." (or whatever unwanted message you're getting) is almost always the culprit.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=500&start=0#p2754
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Halloween Collaboration
User: emshort / DateTime: 2008-10-29 22:28:39

I am running a short open-authorship project from now through November 3: anyone who likes may participate by writing conversation to be incorporated into a short joint game. 

The details can be found [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2008/10/29/a-halloween-experiment/]here[/url], with some follow-up [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2008/10/30/alabaster-release-4/]here[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=501&start=0#p2755
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: wHen mAchines aTtack
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-29 22:47:09

(scroll down - the review draft is below)

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[quote]Game #19: wHen mAchines aTtack (A Technological Horror)
Author: Mark Jones
Played On: October 26th and 27th (6 hours 15 minutes)
Platform: Inform 6 (Zcode)

[i]WMA[/i] (or maybe [i]HAT[/i], given the odd capitalization of its title) is the second game (or at least the second IFComp entry) by [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Mark_Jones]Mark Jones[/url], the author of last year’s [i][url=http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/pets.shtml]Press [Escape] To Save[/url][/i]. Although his second effort is marred by many of the same problems found in his first, it [i]is[/i] an improvement overall.

For some reason -- and despite the game’s subtitle -- I expected more whimsy than horror. The title suggests a parody of [i][url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0293702/]When Animals Attack[/url][/i] (or something similar), yet [i]WMA[/i] isn’t going for humor. It starts out strange, gets creepy, then creepier, and progresses through various scenes of the macabre and horrific. Despite its plethora[b]*[/b] of problems, I found [i]WMA[/i] oddly riveting and not quite the chore to slog though that might be typical of a game with these issues. It has a style and gusto that, while seriously undermined by its broken writing and non-intuitive geography, I was able to appreciate for what it [i]intended[/i] to be.

Of last year’s [i]P[E]TS[/i], I said that “The writing has an odd appeal, but it’s full of technical problems of various kinds…” The same is true for [i]wHen mAchines aTtack[/i]. “Your” and “you’re” are sometimes used correctly, but often interchanged. (Tip: pronouns aren’t made possessive with the use of an apostrophe. “Your” means “belonging to you” just like “its” means “belonging to it,” while “you’re” is a contraction of “you are” and “it’s” is a contraction of “it is.”) The text is riddled with grammatical problems -- missing words (“seems to refrigerator” is missing the “be a” that would make it “seems to be a refrigerator”), incorrect word usage (“fowl” when the author meant “foul,” and how does singing “ease the attention?”), typos (“down with” instead of “done with” for instance), and even inconsistencies in the game’s own made-up words (sometimes “integratron” but sometimes “integatron”). Rarely a paragraph goes by without several glaring problems of the kind that could have been caught if somebody other than the author had proofread the text.

Even when the writing isn’t too technically flawed, it often feels rough-edged, too simple in form, or difficult to mentally parse. Sentences like these stand out in a negative way:

[i]“A drinking fountain is present on this side of the room, next to a closet door which is to the south of it, directly east of you.”[/i]

[i]“The receptionist talks some more.”[/i]

[i]“And because you said something, that also must have made Wong afraid of something.”[/i]

[i]“Resting on the shelves seem to be tons and tons of glass containers.”[/i]

[i]“The jars and the myriad of them makes your bones feel brittle and makes the atmosphere in this room seem really dense, in addition to being very eerie.”[/i]

[i]“You breathe a slight sigh of relief, although you aren't completely.”[/i]

[i]“You look around to see if anyone is in the current location and run off to the northeast.”[/i]

It isn’t always easy to look past these problems, but some of the imagery conjured up succeeds surprisingly well when you do. The author has created a truly creepy scenario, although too often he resorts to telling the player just how unsettled he or she is supposed to feel by a given scene. This all makes for a strange balance. The story is often gripping, yet it fights for dominance against the poor way in which it’s written. It does lapse into accidental camp sometimes (especially when the author cranks up the weirdness knob to a level that’s way over the top), but the drive to see more is what kept me motivated for the more than six hours it took to complete.

The author does a better job describing actions and interactions than in describing some of the game’s locations. The factory’s main area, comprised of several open “rooms,” was particularly difficult to picture. For instance:

[quote][b][i]North Side of Large Room[/i][/b]
[i]This is the northern edge of the very large room and is part of a side hallway that leads west towards the western edge of the room and east towards the eastern edge of the room.[/i]

[i]Looming overhead, the presence of the catwalk platform covers your head in light shadows.[/i]

[i]Dozens of manufacturing machines of various sizes fill the area in the of this room all over, in addition to a fairly large machine that blocks a main portion of your view.[/i]

[i]A railing separates the machinery area from the rest of the room, and runs the length of the area in a square.[/i][/quote]
The problem is often that the author has envisioned the scene from a certain angle or vantage point, without successfully relaying that information to the player. Sometimes, things are described as being just “in front of” you when a direction might have been better. Or, directions are used, but in misleading or confusing ways. This made navigation incredibly difficult until I took pen to paper to make a map.

This, too, was a challenge. Sometimes, the author describes things to the east that are actually to the west, or vice-versa. Worse, room exits aren’t consistent. In many areas, coming back from an adjacent room isn’t as simple as just reversing the direction (in other words, when you go southwest, you can’t always return by going northeast). Some of it is evidently accidental, but sometimes it’s the author’s attempt to create what he probably feels to be a realistic geography. As an example, the player’s position in one particular hallway is probably its center. That puts the door to the player room southwest of that position. When inside the room, however, the door is due east. It makes sense rationally, but it relies on the player understanding that movement from room to room isn’t always a straight path. This is common throughout the entire game, and in areas where the relationship between the adjacent rooms isn’t even obvious.

The next paragraph, detailing various other technical problems, will probably prove boring to everyone but the game’s authors. Feel free to skip ahead.

Other problems are manifold. Some descriptions are painted on (for instance, the rope is always described in relation to the bathtub where it’s originally found). Vital objects are sometimes unmentioned in room descriptions (the game expects interaction with a “panel” at one point, but uses the word “pad” in the text; “machinery” is necessary at one point, but isn’t mentioned in the text). It’s possible to “examine” the note with the locker combination, but “read” fails. An exit south, back into the reception area, is blocked by a concern over what the receptionist might think about shirking your duty, even after such concerns are meaningless. In fact, it’s possible to get stuck there later in the game after re-entering the building. It’s possible to get completely stuck in other ways too, especially later in the game (for instance, a quirk with the fire pit left me in white smoke with no options), requiring multiple UNDO’s or a RELOAD. When the tension ramps up, the player is said to check the exits (to make sure the proverbial coast is clear), yet this pre-movement message continues for the duration of the game, well beyond the point where it no longer makes sense. The robot’s eyes “sink in” even though he has no eyes. Certain events are triggered [i]only[/i] by taking a non-intuitive action, without additional prompts or clues or triggers (one example comes early on, when it’s necessary to be wearing a suit that some players will probably have already done an “UNDO” out of when its seemingly detrimental properties are clear; another comes later, where the only way to get through a door is to examine a box, thereby triggering a countdown that actually only counts down while you take additional turns [i]in the same room[/i]). Doorways that don’t exist are described in the cave. A creature continues to act fully alive a turn or two after he’s rendered dead on the floor. Things dropped in a dream aren’t automatically returned to inventory. I even encountered engine-level “programming errors” at two points (attempting to go west when already at the cafeteria counter, and again when trying to put an eyeball on a sensor).

At one point, the author is so anxious to develop a large chunk of the story that he resorts to a text-dump that is [i]nineteen pages[/i] long.

The game’s early puzzles are usually simple and straightforward. I really enjoyed figuring out how to use the protagonist’s assigned machine, for instance. The beginning seems more focuses, and the player is usually given goals (a definite improvement over last year’s entry). However, as the game progresses, the puzzles are increasingly obscured by bad design decisions and implementation problems that make them difficult or impossible to solve without hints. The hints helped in most of these cases, although a time or two they didn’t cover the situation. A walkthrough was also included with the competition version. I didn’t use it while playing, but it does appear complete.

This is a game that’s likely to rank very low in the competition, although it has a shot at an upper-middle position if other judges agree that it somehow manages to be a little more than the sum of its parts. It’s a game that snubs its nose at the “two hour” target, though, which it would probably blow by even in a perfect play-through that required the player to merely read its text. At two hours, I hadn’t encountered some of the game’s more obscure puzzles and progress-halting bugs. I voted it a “6” -- which is justified by my self-imposed [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=458]scoring[/url] guidelines by adding the bonus point (for [i]being[/i] more than the sum of its parts). It’s a game for IFComp completists, but it needs extensive work to be recommendable in any other context.

Like last year -- and as with all of this year’s entries that support it -- I kept transcripts (with comments) of the entire play-through. These are available to authors upon request. They’re no substitute for beta-testing (testing is supposed to happen [i]before[/i] the competition), but they might be useful for a post-competition update. My advice remains unchanged: have several people play-test your game (and keep transcripts) in two or three phases after you [i]think[/i] you’re finished with it. Add to this, however, a more serious adherence to the “two hour” rule. Some judges may be tempted vote a game down when it goes on and on [i]and on[/i] in a competition where many other games have to be worked in before the deadline as well.

------

[b][small]* My apologies to Jefe and El Guapo.[/small][/b][/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=499&start=0#p2756
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Taking a Jacket from an NPC (actor)
User: scifieric / DateTime: 2008-10-30 03:17:31

Outstanding!  Thanks for both examples, number two is probably what I'll go with.  I was afraid whatever the solution was, that a complete over ride would enable rampant theft (LOL!) and I don't want that.

Thank you!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=501&start=0#p2757
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: wHen mAchines aTtack
User: cconroy / DateTime: 2008-10-30 14:10:48

I played this game for about 10 minutes and then gave up.  I thought the introduction while following the receptionist around was a good technique to help you get the lay of the land.  Unfortunately, the wording of the room descriptions, combined with the large simultaneous information dump you're getting from the receptionist, made it really difficult for me to build a mental map.  After that I glanced at the walkthrough, saw it was pretty involved and moved on.  

The game did sound promising, though.  I would definitely be willing to give it a shot in a post-comp release (hopefully a well-edited one).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=502&start=0#p2758
Forum: Competitions / Subject: RoFLComp (and five other minicomps for 2009)
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2008-10-31 06:32:58

There will be a series of six overlapping minicomps in 2009. There are no prizes at the moment, but there is a panel of 10+ judges for each competition who will write reviews of the games (including our very own Merk!)

The competitions and their deadlines are:

(Feb 1st) RoFLComp ([b]Edit: now SimComp[/b]) - physical simulation (RoFL = rope/fire/liquid)
(Mar 15th) EnvComp - set in an unusual environment
(May 1st) AbilityComp - PC has a special ability (invisibility, X ray vision, etc.)
(Jun 15th) NPCComp - games with convincing/believable NPCs
(Aug 1st) SenseComp - PC's primary sense is not sight
(Sep 15th) GamePlayComp - non-traditional gameplay

Each of them will last three months (overlapping by 1.5 months). The first one (SimComp) starts more or less now.

More details here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/RoFLComp">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/RoFLComp</a>

... which includes links at the top to the other five.

David Fisher

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=502&start=0#p2759
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: RoFLComp (and five other minicomps for 2009)
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-31 07:40:00

Cool. This has come together pretty fast!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=501&start=0#p2760
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: wHen mAchines aTtack
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-31 07:47:57

I got the same impression. The lead-in was probably meant to familiarize the player without the layout and some important locations, yet it ended up being too confusing for me. Somehow, I had mentally pictured the large main area as having a central work zone surrounded by railing of some sort (it wasn't really clear), but with a path that goes all the way around on all sides. Later, I found that really wasn't the case. You can only go around it in sort of a semicircle to the south, east, and north. The author used plenty of text to describe it, but it was the [i]wrong[/i] text. I never did figure out how the "big" machine was blocking my view, or what it was blocking my view of, or how the railing protected the work area, or really just what the place would look like from a bird's-eye view.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=479&start=0#p2761
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Nerd Quest
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-31 08:03:52

[quote]it seems there are always people who prefer to design game system rather than writing games[/quote]

Yeah, there's that. The first couple of homebrews I've played in this IFComp were meant to be engines, not just stand-alone homebrew games.

It's not always like that, though. When I was writing IF in QuickBASIC, it wasn't because I wanted to write an engine (although I got started on one a little later in VB -- called SAGE -- abandoned now). It really was because I wanted to write IF. I think some of the homebrew work in past competitions comes about for the same reasons:

One, the author has a flat view of how IF works. When you're just starting out, it's easy to underestimate its under-the-hood complexity. As a player, you try things that don't work, and get responses that mean "that didn't work." When things do work, it's obvious that the author intended it to work (even if it's just default handlers, like putting stuff in containers). It's with this view of IF that homebrew authors design their games. They don't realize there's a world model of objects and relationships that make it work the way it's supposed to, and instead go for immitating the way they perceived IF to work as a player. You must have nouns and verbs, you pair them up as needed, and everything else gets a "that didn't work" message.

Two, armed with this photocopy-of-a-painting view of IF, the author (possibly a programmer) doesn't see the need to learn an all new "only-for-IF" language to do something that's perfectly practical in their programming language of choice. You don't need TADS to write a verb/noun parser that has no object-oriented relationship among its various setpieces. In fact, using a general-purpose language, the tendency is to think TADS or Inform or Hugo would be too [i]restrictive[/i], since the sky is the limit in a general-purpose language.

That's how it was for me. The funny thing is, my change in viewpoint wasn't even intentional. When I entered IFComp 2004 with [i]Trading Punches[/i] (and if I'm remembering this correctly), it wasn't so much to join the crowd as it was to enter something anonymously (where I thought doing another game in QB would make it obvious that I was the same guy from 1999). I picked Hugo because it had good multimedia capabilities I didn't see elsewhere, and because it seemed to be underrepresented.

I guess my point is, when homebrews show up in the IFComp, it's not always because the author is more interested in programming an engine. I think much of the time, the author just makes the wrong assumptions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=502&start=0#p2762
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: RoFLComp (and five other minicomps for 2009)
User: George / DateTime: 2008-10-31 09:28:04

definitely, nice work David!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=502&start=0#p2763
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: RoFLComp (and five other minicomps for 2009)
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2008-10-31 15:28:57

[quote="George"]definitely, nice work David![/quote]
Thanks!

I am quite amazed at the response from the judges. I was hoping for at least three judges for some of the minicomps, and now all six have ten judges or more.

Having a panel of judges to write a review of each game was Emily Short's suggestion as a motivation for people to submit games; hope it works!

David Fisher

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=502&start=0#p2764
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: RoFLComp (and five other minicomps for 2009)
User: George / DateTime: 2008-10-31 16:11:07

I think you're right, it may be what's needed to get the series off the ground. 

Btw, I love the name RoFL comp, even if it isn't a comedy comp. It's somewhat apt, given the times simulationist games get a bad rap, no? ;D

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=502&start=0#p2765
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: RoFLComp (and five other minicomps for 2009)
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-10-31 16:56:15

I think it might be misleading. SimComp would have been nicer, IMO....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=502&start=0#p2766
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: RoFLComp (and five other minicomps for 2009)
User: George / DateTime: 2008-10-31 17:57:18

I just can't get over the word Sim for some reason. To be honest I've never liked it. Maybe I was forced to play the Sims as a child...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=502&start=0#p2767
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: RoFLComp (and five other minicomps for 2009)
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-11-01 09:04:54

I'm pretty excited about this competition series. I tend not to play much IF during the rest of the year, and this'll make sure that I have to (at least on the three occassions where I'm judging). I'm also combing through my long list of ideas to see if any are a perfect fit for EnvComp or AbilityComp.

I do have some questions/suggestions (again) though.

Rule #6 allows for public discussion. Does this mean the games will be released to the public at the same time they're released to judges? I initially thought the games wouldn't be released publicly until after the results, but that's not right, is it?

Reviews and scores aren't supposed to be posted or discussed prior to the results. Does this extend to all public discussions about the games by the judges? (I would probably refrain from the discussing the games during judging anyway, but I'm just curious.)

It's interesting that you'll permit updated versions during the competition. Would it be a good idea to maybe put limits on it though, such as games would have to be updated in the first two (or three?) days, and maybe limited to one update only? It's probably not a big deal, either day.

Are you planning to come up with an umbrella name for the competition series, and maybe put up a website for them? Of course, the pages at the IFWiki probably work just as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=502&start=0#p2768
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: RoFLComp (and five other minicomps for 2009)
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2008-11-01 15:36:11

[quote="Merk"]Rule #6 allows for public discussion. Does this mean the games will be released to the public at the same time they're released to judges?[/quote]
Yes, they will be.

[quote="Merk"]Reviews and scores aren't supposed to be posted or discussed prior to the results. Does this extend to all public discussions about the games by the judges? (I would probably refrain from the discussing the games during judging anyway, but I'm just curious.)[/quote]
Since the "prizes" in these minicomps are really the reviews themselves, it's better if judges don't post about the games they are judging, but you can use your own discretion. If you make a small comment about a game (or answer a help request), I'm sure no one will mind ...

[quote="Merk"]It's interesting that you'll permit updated versions during the competition. Would it be a good idea to maybe put limits on it though, such as games would have to be updated in the first two (or three?) days, and maybe limited to one update only?[/quote]
I'd rather not put an official limit on it; this is one we can probably work out the details of at the time, if it comes up at all.

(The reason for this rule was: if you were an author and there was a major bug that stopped people from playing your game, you'd want to be able to do a quick fix and re-release it straight away; if you were another author and you'd done a lot of work to make the deadline, and another author gets more time, that might feel unfair; so allow people to re-release games with a potential score penalty).

[quote="Merk"]Are you planning to come up with an umbrella name for the competition series[/quote]
Err .. "the 2009 minicomp series"? (I certainly don't want it named after me!)

[quote="Merk"]and maybe put up a website for them? Of course, the pages at the IFWiki probably work just as well.[/quote]
Yes, I'm working something out ... I need somewhere to put the reviews and enable people to upload and download the games, and the IFWiki probably isn't suitable for that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=503&start=0#p2769
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Piracy 2.0
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-11-02 01:35:19

Well, I stalled out again for several days. At this rate, even with only 15 more to go I worry that I [i]might not[/i] get through all the entries before the November 15th voting deadline. Kiddos that have been sick and the demands of work (the first phase of a large software project that was [i]supposed[/i] to be completed on Friday after three years of pushing back deadlines and redesigns from higher-up isn't [i]quite[/i] ready yet) has kind of left me struggling for free time and motivation. [emote]:)[/emote]

But anyway, scroll down for the draft of my latest review.

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[quote]Game #20: Piracy 2.0
Author: Sean Huxter
Played On: November 1st (2 hours 15 minutes)
Platform: Inform 6 (Zcode)

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
[i]Admiral Copeland entrusted you with a mission to bring a pirate to trial. En-route the pirate's band attacks, boards your ship and kills your crew, throwing you into the brig. But you're not going to let that stop you from completing your mission are you?[/i]

[b]>xyzzy[/b]
[i]Dude![/i]

[b]>plugh[/b]
[i]Yeah![/i]

Sean Huxter’s inspiration comes from Infocom classics. I always feel like a bit of an IF poseur when I admit this, but I never played an Infocom game. Well, technically I’ve played a few minutes of Zork, a few minutes of HHGG, a few minutes of Nord & Bert, and a few minutes from a couple others from the Comedy Collection. This wasn’t when those games were originally released. The extent of my classic-era IF experience comes at the tail end, in the form of hobbyist, amateur, fan games.

[i]Piracy 2.0[/i] feels a bit like [i][url=http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp04/splash.shtml]Splashdown[/url][/i] from IFComp 2004, in form and setting. It too, if I recall correctly, was heavily influenced by the works of Infocom. I gather from the game’s [b]>ABOUT[/b] text that the author is new to the interactive fiction community, and may not have played many past IFComp entries (or other works of hobbyist IF since the demise of Infocom) as a more recent base of reference. Some of the game’s design decisions take an old-school approach, but it’s thankfully a playable and moderately solid work. I think this is probably because today’s IF continues to be influenced by those early works, even though many aspects have changed to accommodate the tendencies of today’s players to be less forgiving of brutally difficult games.

Sean’s game isn’t brutally difficult, but it does feature some elements of those old-school designs that make it borderline frustrating in places. Although the blurb is ambiguous, these are space pirates (rather than the high seas kind), and a very simple combat mechanism gives the player a finite amount of health before death. I didn’t realize it at first, but the encounters and hit/miss chances appear to be random. This makes [b]>UNDO[/b] your friend. (Randomness -- especially randomized combat -- is one of those old-school features that has fallen out of favor.) It’s possible to recover health at a point later in the game (useful if you haven’t been using [b]>UNDO[/b]), but this appears to offer a limited number of uses. Around then (at least for me), the pirates stopped attacking, so it wasn’t as rough as it could have been. The combat, too, doesn’t really fall into complex RPG territory, so it shouldn’t be daunting to most IF enthusiasts.

One of the biggest problems I noticed in the design (especially the later parts) was that it became easy to block off success in several ways. That’s not inherently bad, as long as the player is clear on what action was taken several turns back to cause the losing ending. At a minimum, the player should be clued into what might have been done differently to avoid failure. Certain actions cause a ten-turn countdown, and that works well. Other actions, though, are less obvious. As I worked toward finding the “best” ending, I had trouble figuring out if I was supposed to have waited to turn on the distress signal, or waited to lay in a new course, or if I should have started one of the countdowns at a certain point before or after either of those things. Ultimately, it feels like I stumbled into the 100-point ending by pure luck, rather than by fully solving the game’s endgame puzzles.

Speaking of score, the game seems confused on whether or not it even [i]has[/i] a score. During the game:

[b]>score[/b]
[i]Life has no score. However, you have used 151 moves. And your health report: The cold feeling in your fingers is almost gone. You have two wounds.[/i]

But [i]after[/i] the game, I scored 80 points (and later, the full 100):

[i]“In that game you scored 100 out of a possible 100, in 540 turns.”[/i]

It’s also confused on the first officer’s name (and gender). A crew roster calls “her” Lisa McGregor, yet this doesn’t mesh with later statements:

[i]“This is a letter from your First Officer to his wife on Bromax.”[/i]
[i]“Ah. Yes. Matt Blake's letter to his wife, Stephanie.”[/i]

Several locations have a computer console and a monitor, offering the player a variety of command abbreviations. For most of the game I used the prompted form of “type [i]code[/i] on keypad.” This was okay -- they’re very short codes. Later, though, I realized the author had implemented these codes as stand-alone commands, which really helped alleviate the tedium of interacting with the various computer consoles.

The game is pretty solid, with “bugs” that are generally very minor. I noticed a missing blank line once or twice, an [i]extra[/i] blank line once or twice, and even a missing response for [b]>put battery in panel[/b]. Later in the game, some sort of meta-text was shown at the end of the room description for the Main Bridge, stating “ceres.state not between 1 and 8.”

Even though what’s implemented is pretty solid, I noticed a number of cases where the author should have implemented [i]more[/i]. Sometimes, this took the form of the dreaded “guess-the-verb” problem. In one particularly difficult instance (and this is a puzzle spoiler -- be warned), I wanted to replace a gun’s dead battery with a fresh one. After some frustrating back-and-forth with the parser, I first solved it by dropping the new battery in one room, moving to a different room so I would be able to extract the gun’s depleted battery, then going back to retrieve the good battery so I could make use of it. Afterwards, I poked around a little more until I figured out what was happening. The game wasn’t asking for disambiguation for “battery,” probably expecting me to use its adjective also (or instead). To make matters worse, it wasn’t possible to refer to the gun at all when removing it, and in fact, “remove” wouldn’t even work.

My transcript illustrates this frustration nicely:

[b]>x pistol[/b]
[i]This is a standard issue laser pistol. It's pitted and scratched. Typical of weapons owed by space pirates. A scratched battery is in the grip. There is a small red light flashing on the grip.[/i]

[b]>put battery in pistol[/b]
[i](the shiny battery in the pistol)[/i]
[i]There is no room for a second battery in the pistol.[/i]

[b]>get battery from pistol[/b]
[i]That seems to be a part of the pistol.[/i]

[b]>get battery[/b]
[i](the shiny battery)[/i]
[i]You already have that.[/i]

[b]>remove battery from pistol[/b]
[i]That seems to be a part of the pistol.[/i]

[b]>remove battery[/b]
[i](the shiny battery)[/i]
[i]You're not wearing that.[/i]

[b]>get scratched battery from pistol[/b]
[i]That seems to be a part of the pistol.[/i]

[b]>get scratched battery[/b]
[i]You take the scratched battery from the pistol.[/i]

The game was clearly tested, but maybe not by anyone familiar with the common failings of interactive fiction. The response to [b]>X ME[/b] is the default “As good-looking as ever.” The game has toilets, but “flush” isn’t a verb (nit-picky I know, but of quite a few IFComp games this year with toilets, I only recall [i]two[/i] -- so far -- where [b]>flush toilet[/b] is understood). The writing on a piece of paper can be examined, but [b]>read paper[/b] responds with “that's not readable.”

The text, fortunately, fares better. It isn’t flashy or awe-inspiring, but it’s descriptive enough without being excessive, free of spelling and grammatical errors (I noticed none, at any rate) and a pleasant read after too many poorly written IFComp entries. This is the only of my scoring categories in which I have awarded the game top [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=458]points[/url].

Of the plot -- the game’s story -- I have mixed feelings. On one hand, it’s interesting enough, and I’m a sucker for science fiction. I tend to enjoy exploring space ships in text adventures. On the other hand, it really doesn’t introduce anything new. The author was wise to abandon the humor of his [i]Piracy 1.0[/i] (described in the [b]>ABOUT[/b] information) in favor of a more serious tone, but the game plays out with only minor surprises. It didn’t feel like a fresh idea, or even a fresh telling of a stale idea. Parts of it may be Trek-inspired (a bridge section that can be separated from the rest of the ship in times of emergency conjures up mental images of the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Forward]Enterprise D[/url], for instance).

The puzzles work pretty well, yet they often seem at odds with the story. The protagonist -- the ship’s captain -- should be supremely familiar with all aspects of his ship. I would expect him (or her – if I’m right, the captain is gender-neutral to make it easier for all players to assume the role) to know exactly what computer commands are available, how those systems work, and the dangers to be faced in certain areas. Yet most of the time, the protagonist is only as informed as the player, which requires reading instructions and experimenting with options. This might have been solved if the protagonist was just a lesser crew member, but being the captain does serve to explain why you were initially spared (plus, it feels less clichéd than a typical generic-crewman adventure). Given the puzzles, it’s impossible to make a player feel like an all-knowing ship’s captain from the start, but [i]something[/i] might have been done to get more mileage out of the premise. Maybe a stronger personality for the PC would have helped make him (or her) a more convincing captain.

On the subject of plot-point head-scratchers, why do the pirates come and go randomly? This gives [i]Piracy 2.0[/i] more the feel of a video game, and that may not be what the author intended. I would have expected the pirates to become a little more organized, and with their obviously impressive numbers perhaps stake out [i]every location[/i] instead of roaming around. And did anyone else notice that the 100-point ending (unless I missed an alternate path) is obtained in a way that effectively disposes of the only loyal, surviving crewman? (To be fair to Sean, I did the same thing in a prior game, although here it almost feels accidental.) I also thought there might be a final face-to-face confrontation with the pirate leader, but this only transpired as a remote communication (but again, maybe I missed an alternate path).

A link in the [b]>ABOUT[/b] text points to [url=http://www.huxter.org/piracy/]this[/url] website, where the author has provided a title image, a map of the ship’s interior, and a “blueprint” of the ship itself. It’s all very nice work, and I’m surprised it wasn’t included [i]with[/i] the game. In keeping with the Infocom tradition, an [i]actual[/i] feelie (the purple [url=http://www.huxter.org/piracy/datacube.htm]DataCube[/url]) is even available at a modest price (and this would make an appropriate listing for [url=http://www.feelies.org/]feelies.org[/url]).

[i]Piracy 2.0[/i] is a solid, recommendable game overall. It even gets the bonus point, but for what’s probably one of the most random, trivial reasons imaginable. In the author’s notes, he identifies himself as a fan of [url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/][i]Doctor Who[/i][/url]. Coincidentally, I’m [url=http://www.netflix.com]Netflixing[/url] my way through the recovered (and the never-lost) back episodes of the first seven Doctors, after fond memories of watching the Tom Baker (fourth Doctor) episodes as a kid (and the ninth/tenth doctor episodes now – Season Three in particular had a few really excellent episodes). Also, I too wrote games for the TRS-80 CoCo (most still available [url=http://www.cocoquest.com/]here[/url]), and these two things combined get a bonus point (for a composite score of “7”) that’s just as random as the pirate crew in [i]Piracy 2.0[/i].[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=503&start=0#p2770
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Piracy 2.0
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-11-02 02:01:58

I see that it was pointed out in emshort's blog (<a class="postlink" href="http://emshort.wordpress.com/2008/10/08/if-competition-piracy-20/">http://emshort.wordpress.com/2008/10/08 ... piracy-20/</a>) that there are several ways to win (and maybe several ways to get the full 100 points). Maybe I've judged the puzzles a little too harshly (going for full points would have bumped the score up to an 8). Hmm. Well, I can't change my vote (froze it at the 2 hour mark), and I probably won't work another paragraph into the review (it's already plenty long), but in retrospect (and I just finished playing a few hours ago) I can see where the puzzles worked better than I realized. The different options available via the computer are straightforward enough that some likely combinations present themselves.

I think the problem for me was that I had a tough time figuring out if I was making the right use of the right options. For instance, I won with 100 points without having to disable the computer or release the gas (I did, in fact, release the gas during a losing ending, but the pirates were immune). If I remember right, I got 100 points for disabling both lasers (but I only knew I needed to do this from a non-optimal ending in which the pirates escaped with the ship after *using* the lasers), setting the self destruct, waiting about 8 turns before releasing the saucer section, and *then* turning on the distress signal and setting a new course. But I'm not 100% sure on the order of those last things -- and I'm pretty sure I had to immediately leave the bridge when ordered to do so (even a single wasted turn messes that up, if I recall correctly). I remember the timing being pretty tough, and there was a time before where the pirates *escaped* in the same amount of time.

So I'm just not sure.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=488&start=0#p2771
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Red Moon
User: George Shannon / DateTime: 2008-11-02 15:22:36

I try to make sure I have most of a review written before I read other reviews.  I think it colors my review too much otherwise.  I end up thinking "Wait, I can't say that, that's what [someone else] said."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=502&start=0#p2772
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: RoFLComp (and five other minicomps for 2009)
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2008-11-03 04:39:20

[quote="Merk"]I think it might be misleading. SimComp would have been nicer, IMO....[/quote]
After several other similar requests ...

It's officially SimComp now instead of RoFLComp (with apologies to George! If it helps, think of it as SeemComp ...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=502&start=10#p2773
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: RoFLComp (and five other minicomps for 2009)
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-11-03 06:42:15

I was thinking of possible names to suggest for the series, and nothing obvious presents itself. Well, I thought of one thing. It's a series of mini-comps, and there are many of them, so maybe it could be the ManyComp Series. Or maybe it doesn't need a name, especially if it's just a one-year thing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=504&start=0#p2774
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Recess At Last
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-11-03 15:28:44

(Scroll down, please.)

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[quote]Game #21: Recess At Last (An Interactive Restlessness)
Author: Gerald Aungst
Played On: November 2nd (55 minutes)
Platform: Inform 7 (Glulx)

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
[i]After endless months of indoor recess, an eager student's plan to try out his brand new sneakers is thwarted by one missing assignment.[/i]

I don’t know how [i]Recess At Last[/i] went wrong. The in-game credits give thanks to several IF community regulars, yet anecdotal evidence suggests that either none of those people were given a chance to actually test the game, or the author didn’t have an opportunity to make sufficient changes based on their findings.

But let’s back up. It’s a very simple story. [i]Recess At Last[/i] is aimed at players in the protagonist’s age group. A fourth grader wants to try out his brand new shoes during recess after many days of indoor confinement due to bad weather. The teacher expects his homework, though, and the young protagonist can’t find it. He must locate the missing page or redo it, before the recess period ends.

I’ve noticed a recent rise in the demand for IF targeted to (or at least suitable for) children -- or else it’s simply something that has finally appeared on my radar because my own kids might become interested in IF when they’re older. This is the kind of game that might make a good choice or recommendation... if it wasn’t such a beating to play through.

The author seems well-intentioned, and he put obvious effort into [i]Recess At Last[/i]. Despite these efforts, the game is riddled with design and implementation problems. 

Before I launch into those things, though, the story itself deserves some discussion. Successful children’s literature (and the same is true of movies) will have aspects that may appeal to adults as well. In my experience, these stories tend to be fantastical in nature. Even [url=http://www.wurb.com/if/genre/28]“slice of life”[/url] stories (for children) tend to have exaggerated premises or unreal aspects. For instance, one of my three-year-old daughter’s favorite books, [url=http://www.amazon.com/Pinkalicious-Victoria-Kann/dp/0060776390]Pinkalicious[/url], features a little girl who turns pink after eating too many pink cupcakes. (She’s also a big fan of [url=http://www.seussville.com/]Dr. Seuss[/url] books.) If these elements are missing, the story could still be something exciting or foreign in nature: stories about life in another country, for instance, or stories that feature things the young reader (or in my daughter’s case, the listener) may never have the opportunity to experience. It’s a perfect time to spark their imaginations.

The story in [i]Recess At Last[/i] is a double whammy. I can’t imagine it being of interest to most adults. Those days are far behind us, and a homework simulator doesn’t rekindle that youthful spirit. For reasons unknown to me, it has been easier to fill the text-rendered shoes of a vampire, or a detective, or a spaceman, or even an animal than to step into the role of a fourth-grader who has to turn in his homework so he can go out to recess. Nothing is remotely [i]fun[/i] about that. The kicker is that I’m not sure this would be fun for fourth-graders either, hence the double whammy.

Let’s move on to its implementation.

The more complicated the actions required of the player, the more robust and comprehensive the command grammar should be. One of the easiest ways for any work of IF to fail is by requiring non-standard actions and then recognizing only a very small range of possible ways the player might express those actions. Many hours of development can be sunk into working out all these possibilities (and adding more as a result of beta-testing), but it’s important to do so or the game will suffer.

As a generic example, imagine a game where a puzzle involves tying a string to a heavy medallion and then hanging it from a hook to trigger some sort of trap door. If the game [i]only[/i] allows the player to [b]TIE[/b] the medallion to the string, then [b]HANG[/b] the string on the hook, it’s going to be a serious sticking point for players. That’s traditionally called [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Guess_the_verb]“guess the verb”[/url], and it’s among the biggest reasons IF isn’t taken seriously by many who have tried it in the past. Suppose the player [i]first[/i] wants to [b]ATTACH[/b] the string to the hook, and then [b]LOOP[/b] the string through the medallion. If your game triggers on the action of hanging an already-weighted string to the hook -- and especially if your grammar definitions are lacking -- you’ve just given the player a legitimate reason to complain.

These problems plague [i]Recess At Last[/i]. In one example, the game doesn’t know how to parse an intended target from the “write” verb. I’m guessing this was a little tricky to code, but even so, it’s not what the player is likely to expect. Paper was on my desk, which is where I would expect it to be before attempting to write on it. Yet:

[b]>write on paper[/b]
[i]In your best cursive handwriting, you write "On paper" on your blue jeans.[/i]

[b]>get paper[/b]
[i]Taken.[/i]

[b]>write on the paper[/b]
[i]In your best cursive handwriting, you write "On the paper" on the clean sheet of paper.[/i]

Even more guess-the-verby was this:

[b]>x buzzer[/b]
[i]A small gray box with a small button and speaker so that visitors can buzz in to the office to be let in.[/i]

[b]>press button[/b]
[i]It is fixed in place.[/i]

[b]>push buzzer[/b]
[i]It is fixed in place.[/i]

[b]>in[/b]
[i]You still have the same two options. Wait, or try the buzzer.[/i]

[b]>try buzzer[/b]
[i]You press the buzzer and wait nervously for the secretary to answer.[/i]

Incidentally, [b]>buzz in[/b] also works, but [b]>buzz buzzer[/b] doesn’t.

The game’s design and implementation problems aren’t limited simply to actions that aren’t nearly as smooth as they need to be. A piece of paper is described as blank, even after you’ve written on it. After telling the teacher I didn’t need another copy of the worksheet, she told me to ask again if I changed my mind, yet I wasn’t allowed to bother her again for it after that. I didn’t realize I needed to mention the library to the teacher to get permission to leave the room, probably because I’ve forgotten that such things are mandatory in the fourth grade (thereby sticking me there in the classroom until I checked the hints). It wasn’t clear that the protagonist’s brother wasn’t in gym class; until I played a second time using the walkthrough and took an action where it’s mentioned that the brother is sick at home, I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t refer to or see him in the gym. Attempting to open the letter from mom gives a misleading response, and this sort of sabotaged my understanding of what the envelope was [i]for[/i]. [b]>search binder[/b] says the binder is empty, even though it’s not. Sam continues to look for his worksheet, even after he finds it (in fact, he doesn’t even express interest in it after I borrow it and attempt to give it back).

The game sometimes even refuses to honor actions it [i]understands[/i]:

[b]>x unfinished worksheet[/b]
[i]I only understood you as far as wanting to examine Sam's unfinished Henry Hudson project.[/i]

The problems seem to continue ad nauseam, but the most frustrating of all is some sort of engine error that happens [i]every single turn[/i] after playing for a short while:

[i]*** Run-time problem P12: Too many activities are going on at once.[/i]

I have no idea what activities are going on, because from where I sat, [i]nothing[/i] much was happening. I tried updating WinGlulxe, but no joy. Even starting over didn’t do the trick, as the problem simply started in a different place. Yet this didn’t appear to interfere with gameplay, other than the unfortunate side effect of separating my input on a different line than the [b]>[/b] (prompt symbol).

After a time, I relied heavily on the built-in hints. After completing the game one way, I checked the walkthrough and was pleased to find that [i]both[/i] of the possible objectives for turning in the completed worksheet were valid solutions.

So no, I don’t know how [i]Recess At Last[/i] went wrong. The writing seems error-free and appropriate for the target audience, and the puzzles (although made more difficult by implementation problems) are interesting enough to give the game merit outside its bland plot. The game even has a nice title graphic. In most other ways, though, it falls flat. The author could have imagined a story far more interesting than this. More testing (especially by people more familiar with the workings of interactive fiction) would certainly have helped make [i]this[/i] story smoother and more playable than it is. It probably still wouldn’t appeal to an older audience, but it [i]might[/i] be something kids could enjoy more.

I have scored [i]Recess At Last[/i] one point for the writing, one point for the puzzles, and the base “free” point. Anything more -- especially since I feel more guilty than usual at the amount of criticism I’ve heaped onto this game -- would be dishonest. That’s a score and vote of “3.” Although that’s not an encouraging score, I do hope that the author stays interested and motivated enough to play and write more interactive fiction.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=504&start=0#p2775
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Recess At Last
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-11-03 16:14:55

So nobody else had this happen before every single prompt a short ways into the game?

[quote]*** Run-time problem P12: Too many activities are going on at once.[/quote]
Once it started, it never stopped, and even starting over didn't solve it after the first few turns. It didn't interfere with the game, aside from just being an annoyance. But nobody else has mentioned it in their reviews. In fact, some mention they found no bugs at all, and that the game was pretty solid.

It's as though I played a completely different version... [emote]:([/emote] [emote]:([/emote] [emote]:([/emote]

(Update):

Okay, I figured out how to reproduce it. Just take an action that gives the message "that noun did not make sense in that context." After the twentieth such action, the problem will start and never go away. Incidentally, the asterisk (which I use for denoting comments) gives that message, and I was commenting quite a lot (which is usual for me). Most likely, others didn't see it because you never did twenty actions for which the "noun" didn't make sense...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=504&start=0#p2776
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Recess At Last
User: emshort / DateTime: 2008-11-03 20:11:11

No, I didn't run into that. In fact, my playthrough was remarkably smooth compared to what you describe: I had little trouble filling out the sheet of paper (and I was apprehensive going into that sequence, because it seemed very very likely that a command requiring the player to type a freeform text answer would fail horribly). And I don't recall much guess-the-verb, either.

I agree with you about the content, though: mostly this reminded me of how I felt about the early years of elementary school -- namely, bored. I was happiest when I could get through the worksheet-type tasks early and read library books instead.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=504&start=0#p2777
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Recess At Last
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-11-04 06:50:53

Filling out the paper was one of the smoother parts for me -- go figure! It didn't take long for me to figure out how to read forward from the beginning of the book, answer the questions (I think the game told me the right phrasing in response to trying to write on the worksheet), and bring it back to the teacher. But if you were to look at my transcripts, you'd wonder how I ever managed to make it to the end.

Maybe the repeating error cast the whole thing in a bad light for me. It's ironic that it probably started happening because I was commenting in the transcript.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=502&start=10#p2778
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: RoFLComp (and five other minicomps for 2009)
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2008-11-04 15:16:56

[quote="Merk"]I was thinking of possible names to suggest for the series, and nothing obvious presents itself.[/quote]
SimEnAbSenGa ... but that leaves out NPCComp ... [emote];)[/emote]

(It's probably fine without a real name; "the 2009 minicomp series" seems to communicate OK).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=505&start=0#p2779
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: The Ngah Angah School of Forbidden Wisdom
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-11-04 15:54:02

Scroll.... downward!

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[quote]Game #22: The Ngah Angah School of Forbidden Wisdom
Author: Anssi Räisänen
Played On: November 4th (1 hour 5 minutes)
Platform: ALAN 3

One of the things I like most about [i]Ngah Angah[/i] is that it knows exactly what it is, and it doesn’t mess around in getting straight to the point. It’s covered by a simple love story, where the protagonist has finally tracked his sweetheart to a secret, secluded school where magic and illusion reign. He must complete three challenges before gaining entry to the school, and this is his only concern. These three challenges are all that stand between him and his true love.

The story, however, isn’t the point. The author has crafted three simple challenges -- puzzles -- and the player’s goal is to solve each of them. The first is sort of a logic puzzle, although the other two just require deduction. Actually, that’s not quite right. None of the puzzles are clued (although the first puzzle is itself a clue), so deduction doesn’t quite factor into it. To solve the puzzles, it’s necessary to be observant, and simply try unlikely things with the limited resources at hand. This ends up being a great deal of trial and error, especially in the second scene where an unintentional red herring can lead the player astray. An astute (or lucky) player might breeze through them in a matter of minutes. For me, it took about one hour to solve the game.

Somehow, I had more fun in solving these puzzles than is befitting of their limited complexity. The scope is so small that it was never a matter of managing too many pieces at once. In a way, it’s like a treasure hunt, where the objective is to figure out the one action necessary to solve or survive the encounter. Although the first puzzle is more logic-based than the other two, all three were interesting enough to keep me motivated despite numerous failures. Even though I [i]liked[/i] the puzzles, I felt they could have been more involved, perhaps requiring more steps to solve.

Implementation problems were generally minor, and fit into two categories: game problems, and (presumably) ALAN problems. For the former, there were a few pieces of scenery unimplemented, a problem or two with plural nouns (try to [b]>eat the butterflies[/b], for example), a default (and often inaccurate message) when trying to push things with the staff, and a few more. None of these seemed to interfere with gameplay, or detract from it in a major way. (An exception may be in the scene at the end, where it's necessary to perform an action that must be phrased in a very particular way, with shorter versions rejected for no obvious reason.)

However, bugs or quirks in the ALAN runner (the one included with the IFComp interpreter set -- a GLK implementation, I believe) were problematic. The runner wouldn’t remember my font settings between sessions. Transcript comments that stretched beyond the line’s end caused the interpreter to crash and exit. The strangest (and most frustrating) of these problems was an issue with restoring a prior save, where certain things or events weren’t correctly initialized. For instance, the three men in cloaks are completely missing from the second room if reloading there after an exit or restart, making the game impossible to solve. The examiner doesn’t appear in the third room if restoring there. It’s as though certain aspects of the game aren’t saved and restored the way they should be. Fortunately, the game is so short that starting over is no big deal.

The second two scenes reverse death with a “resurrecting” message. Although it’s disconcerting at first, I really appreciated it after a while, especially in the second scene, which ends on a three-turn timer. It seems like an odd decision not to have done the same thing in the first room as well, even though death isn’t a common occurrence then.

A graphic image necessary for solving the first puzzle doesn’t show up when reading a note that’s supposed to display it. At first, I didn’t know why no text was shown for the note. After a while -- and after remembering that an image was included in the game’s directory -- I figured out what was happening. Apparently, this is another quirk in ALAN (or the GLK Windows ALAN runner). The author is aware, and the [b]>HELP[/b] text directs the player to view the image outside the game environment in that event. However, I didn’t check the built-in help until I had completed the game.

This is tangent to the review, but it’s good advice anyway. Don’t hide important pre-game facts behind a hint or help command that some players won’t try for fear of spoilers. I generally stay away from [b]>HELP[/b] unless I’m stuck and looking for hints. I would rather see this kind of information in a [i]readme.txt[/i] (which usually implies “no spoilers”), or as a separate command in the game that’s suggested to the player in a way that [i]explicitly[/i] says it’s important and spoiler-free.

[i]The Ngah Angah School of Forbidden Wisdom[/i] gets one point in every [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=458]category[/url]. I’ve also awarded the bonus point, because I had more fun with the game’s narrowly focused puzzles than might be implied from the score. That’s a composite score of “6” -- about average -- making for a good (if unassuming), recommendable game.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=505&start=0#p2780
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: The Ngah Angah School of Forbidden Wisdom
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-11-04 17:29:11

In the comments after another review, I learned that the text in the game is unencrypted (just open the .A3C game file with notepad, or any text editor). There is mention of burning the staff to fend off the butterflies (which is the "red herring" -- dealing with the torches -- that I mentioned in the review). Did anybody solve this by somehow burning the staff? One thing I noticed is that you can lose the staff at the beginning, by purposely breaking it. Maybe my solution to the second room wasn't the only one?

[spoiler]Take the curtain from one of the doorways, then wear it for protection.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=506&start=0#p2781
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Buried In Shoes
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-11-04 23:22:02

The review is below.

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[quote]Game #23: Buried In Shoes
Author: Kazuki Mishima
Played On: November 4th (20 minutes)
Platform: Inform 6 (Zcode)

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
[i]Everything is about the question.[/i]

I’ve missed those quote boxes at the front of Zcode games. Whatever happened to those? They seem to have fallen out of favor.

The next time somebody asks “what exactly [i]is[/i] a [i]puzzleless[/i] work of IF,” I’m going to point to [i]Buried In Shoes[/i]. It may not be the best of its kind, but it really exemplifies the concept. It’s more than just the pressing of keys to advance the text, yet it’s still essentially a series of obvious actions used in the place of puzzles. Some optional actions are supported, but without any significant impact to the story. Players are given a small amount of freedom to temporarily hop off the story’s rails, with the reward being a little bit more information about the story and the setting.

The story (it’s not so much a “game”) is short and surreal. After taking the slow, scenic route to the end at only fifteen minutes, I played through twice more (which took about five minutes total). It’s successfully ambiguous at first, posing multiple possibilities and allowing the player to speculate about the symbolism. Although the story doesn’t… well, “name names” so to speak… it becomes increasingly clear what’s going on as it progresses. This is confirmed by part of the [b]>about[/b] text.

Although I’ve scored the story a “2” (top points for the category on my [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=458]scoring[/url] system for this year), it didn’t fully win me over or come with the emotional impact it might have. I may be alone in thinking this, but it seems the story wasn’t developed enough. It ends too soon after it begins, and with the whole thing feeling so hazy and rushed, it was hard to connect on the level that this particular story deserved. That doesn’t seem to be a direct result of the way it was constructed, or that the author told it in a surreal way. In fact, I found it sufficiently immersive. Maybe the author just intended it more as a reminder, without actually trying for an emotional punch.

It’s implemented well enough on a technical level, but given the small scope, it doesn’t [i]have[/i] to do much. I didn’t note any problems (although I did notice that “states” is spelled “staes” on a page of the [b]>about[/b] info). The writing succeeds in being surreal, and it manages to say plenty using few words. These two aspects of the game earn 1’s -- not necessarily because of identifiable shortcomings that hold them back from 2’s, but because neither seems ambitious or developed enough to be labeled “great.”

As the first game I’ve played in this year’s competition that lacks puzzles, it’s the first test of my scoring definition for interaction in place of puzzles. This too earns it a “1” after much thought, for a composite score of “6.” It’s an interesting story -- perhaps an interesting experiment in storytelling -- but it seems too short to draw the player in fully, and not ambitious enough to make a lasting mark among similar works of IF. It’s worth a play, though, being perfectly solid and undemanding of both a player’s time and his or her puzzle-solving abilities.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=506&start=0#p2782
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Buried In Shoes
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-11-05 07:07:02

[quote]Maybe the author just intended it more as a reminder, without actually trying for an emotional punch.[/quote]
Hmmm. Others were more affected by it than me. My first reaction was that it seemed like a less effective [i]The Baron[/i]. The question at the end didn't seem as meaningful (and probably a little too ambiguous), but this may just have been my misinterpreting it. Emily Short's [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2008/10/13/if-competition-buried-in-shoes/]review[/url] seems to peg the point pretty well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=484&start=0#p2783
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: A Date With Death
User: Lenny / DateTime: 2008-11-05 20:30:45

Yep, check the garden for what you need to defeat the angel of death. you might have to ask the scribe about it to know what to do.
step by step:
[spoiler]go to the garden, x plants, x it, plant seed, wait (or do something else, it takes ten turns to grow), x tree, take bark, e, s, talk to bartimony, uff, and now you should know how to defeat the angel but just in case the command is 'raise uff' when you meet him[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=484&start=0#p2784
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: A Date With Death
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-11-05 20:40:05

Ah. Well. Bummer. Since the Angel comes in just a turn or two from where I've saved, there's no way for me to go do all of those things unless I start from the beginning.

For a puzzle like this to work, there should be some sort of hinting as you're being shoehorned into the losing ending. There should be some inkling of a clue that there's something you're supposed to prepare in advance. Ideally, it should even be possible to go do those things before having to face that particular challenge. From what you've said, there's no way to solve this puzzle unless you stumble on the solution *before* you encounter the puzzle.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=507&start=0#p2785
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Berrost's Challenge
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-11-08 09:47:48

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[quote]Game #24: Berrost’s Challenge
Author: Mark Hatfield
Played On: November 5th, 6th and 7th (6 hours)
Platform: TADS 2

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
[i]Just an old-school text adventure with a tip of the cap to Infocom's Enchanter series.[/i]

[b]>xyzzy[/b]
[i]That spell hasn't been invented yet.[/i]

[i]Berrost’s Challenge[/i] is part of a dying breed. There was a time when a game with hunger and sleep daemons, instant death, limited UNDO ability, inventory weight limits, irreversible no-win paths, and tough puzzles would have been the [i]safe[/i] choice. Nowadays, though, even the puzzle-fests steer clear of fantasy settings and magic systems. If today’s IF shows a trend, it’s toward storytelling. This tends to sacrifice what were once the traditional aspects of “text adventures” -- namely, everything that makes the game difficult for a player to complete.

This makes [i]Berrost’s Challenge[/i] a shock to the system. This kind of game isn’t [i]dead[/i], but in the context of the annual competition, it seems to be more and more unusual. That’s not to say the IFComp is devoid of puzzle-fests, but much of the time those puzzles aren’t interesting, or they’re completely unsolvable, or the game is so seriously broken that the puzzles simply don’t [i]work[/i]. [i]Berrost’s Challenge[/i] has problems, yes -- including problems with the very concept of some of its puzzles -- but it comes [i]really close[/i] to working just as the author hoped.

What holds the game back from greatness (as a text adventure, I mean -- its story is just a contrivance for its myriad puzzles) is a lack of polish. The puzzles themselves stay just on the near side of solvable. The game features some of the best clueing I’ve seen. It’s often subtle, sometimes not, but usually just the thing to spin a player’s mind-gears in the direction it takes to think of a likely solution. The game manages to hint at when it’s necessary to look under something, search something, even [i]listen[/i] to something -- all non-obvious things to try otherwise -- without clubbing the player with a “do this, you dummy” message. I haven’t felt such satisfaction in [i]solving[/i] puzzles since... since I don’t remember. With most games, this requires mind-reading at one extreme, and simply doing what’s fairly obvious at the other.

It’s that lack of polish, though, that comes close to ruining things. Guess-the-verb is a way of life for the nameless acolyte in [i]Berrost’s Challenge[/i]. This held me back more than the puzzles themselves, which had me alternating my mood between “that was really awesome!” and “oh, you jerk, I [i]tried[/i] that already!” Could it not be implied that [b]>PUT X IN Y[/b] is the player’s attempt to [b]DIP X IN Y[/b]? Could “getting” berries not imply that I intend to “pick” them?

This is a more specific example:

[b]>enter well[/b]
[i]I don't know how to enter the old well.[/i]

[b]>climb into well[/b]
[i]I don't recognize that sentence.[/i]

[b]>d[/b]
[i]If you want to jump in the well just say so.[/i]

[b]>jump in well[/b]
[i]You climb onto the stone wall and jump into the well.  I hope you know what you're doing.[/i]

And this:

[b]>stand on barrel[/b]
[i]I don't know how to stand on the barrel.[/i]

[b]>climb barrel[/b]
[i]I don't know how to climb the barrel.[/i]

[b]>enter barrel[/b]
[i]I don't know how to enter the barrel.[/i]

[b]>get on barrel[/b]
[i]You hastily place your belongings in a pile on the ground then, sloshing water all over the floor, you hoist yourself up and into the barrel.[/i]

And this, which I feel comfortable spoiling since it’s not [i]exactly[/i] the solution to any puzzle:

[b]>put thumb in grease[/b]
[i]You can't dip your thumb into the tin of axle grease.[/i]

[b]>put grease on thumb[/b]
[i]You smear some of the grease on your thumb.[/i]

Most times, these problems weren’t enough to hold me back from success. I see two reasons for that. One, in recognizing the author’s tendency to only implement a limited number of phrasings for an action, I was more likely to keep trying variations to an action that seemed to be obvious or clued, until I had exhausted every realistic phrasing I could think of. Two, there are five different “sets” of puzzles to work on from the start, so being stuck on one means I could go work on another; and in the process of doing that, I often hit on something I hadn’t previously tried for one of the others. Amazingly, this meant I was rarely stuck for long.

As each scroll is found and its spell learned, this pool of puzzles shrinks. At the same time, though, this provides a potential “cheat” for one of the other puzzles. For instance, if a player beats Silas in thumbwrestling but can’t best him in a [i]real[/i] wrestling match (which is required, in order to get the key to a locked chest), then the Scroll of Knock will do the trick (assuming the player already has it). Other scrolls empower the player in other ways. An incentive [i]not[/i] to cheat comes in the form of a loss in “wit” (score) points. Using magic -- even once -- means it’s impossible to complete the game with a full 100 points.

This aspect of the game will probably get mixed results. On the one hand, it’s nice to be given a way to bypass certain problematic puzzles. But on the other, the game’s biggest draw [i]is[/i] the puzzles, and the urge to complete them all with full points. It’s easier to cheat by merely looking at the included hints. It’s also a shame that a game about learning and using magic actually [i]precludes[/i] the use of it, in the effort to achieve full points. Although I digress, it would have been interesting to see what kinds of puzzles the author might have designed if aiming for the player to actually solve them in strictly magical ways.

Even though I was rarely stuck for long, I finally reached an end to the good luck in the game’s final puzzle. I say “final,” but all the pieces were in place for me to have solved it much earlier, only I hadn’t figured it out. This one involved the previously mentioned thumbwrestling match. Everything before this, I solved without hints and without magic. This one stuck me partly due to guess-the-verb, and partly due to accidental red herrings. I had convinced myself that I needed to change the tint of something brown so that it was more flesh-colored. To that end, I spent a good deal of time trying to figure out a way to grind light-colored things with the golem’s grindstone -- a piece of paper, a clam shell – but to no avail. Only then did I finally check the hints. I felt defeated enough (while kicking myself for misinterpreting the clue) to check the hints one more time on the next part of the puzzle. And then I wanted to kick the [i]author[/i], because I had [i]tried[/i] that very thing -- but I had tried to “put” something on the NPC, rather than “throw” it at him.

If Guess-the-Verb has a partner in crime, its name is Red Herring. Sometimes, the game purposely doesn’t allow an action that is just as reasonable as some other action. The solution to the thumbwrestling match is a great example of this, since it requires extra steps that wouldn’t reasonably be necessary if attempting to do the same thing in the real world. The grindstone poses another problem. It screams “use me to grind something up!” yet as far as I found, such actions are impossible. In fact, most of the game’s puzzles [i]are[/i] open enough, and among such a large set of scenery and props, that the author has had to intentionally disallow certain solutions just to keep a high challenge level. Yet he failed to recognize (or had no time to implement) some obvious ways in which these objects might be made to work together.

And I’d like to think that if I [i]really[/i] wanted to kill a bird (sorry, PETA) I could do so with any of the blunt objects lying around (a rock, a board, a scrap of metal -- especially when it flies to a spot where it’s all but trapped already) without having to jump through the unusual hoops required by this particular puzzle.

The game’s sleep and hunger puzzles are an oddity. A command is provided to turn them off, but I didn’t, since I wanted to experience the game exactly as the author intended. However, they prove pointless. As puzzles, they’re a nightmare until you figure out what to do, and then an annoyance when you have to [i]keep[/i] doing them. It amounts to finding a “flooglemid” (which can be found over and over), and then using it at the only place where food and rest costs a single coin. That’s it. I never let things go far enough to find out what happens if you [i]don’t[/i] replenish your concentration (which in itself seemed useless, as I wasn’t casting magic). It just seemed unnecessary.

The inventory limit is less problematic. I found the village square to be an ideal dumping ground for everything, and it wasn’t too big an inconvenience to swap things out as needed. Still, I’m not sure this was really [i]necessary[/i] aside from added realism, and it too can be increased by use of the game’s irreversible [b]>curmudgeon[/b] command. It appears that a “clamshell” (is this not actually the shell of a small clam?) can hold various things to [i]maybe[/i] help a player work around the inventory limit, but this item is hidden (some players won’t even find it), and I never tested out the theory beyond just noticing that large items would fit inside it.

I pity the player who doesn’t keep multiple, frequent save files in [i]Berrost’s Challenge[/i]. It’s possible to put the game into an unwinnable state in a variety of ways, and often so far back that even frequent abuse of the Flashback spell (the game’s score-subtracting [b]>UNDO[/b] alternative) is a longshot. For instance, the spice-grinding golem will give up his broom for a few turns. The exact mechanics of this aren’t clear at first, so it’s possible to swipe the broom and head back to town. The moment you return, however, you’re golem-fodder. If there is a way to get back into the spice mill after more than a few turns have passed, I never found it. In theory, a player could spend hundreds of turns outside doing other stuff everywhere else. However, the broom is required (spoiler here) for a puzzle [i]in the mill’s loft[/i], so you’re effectively prevented from completing the game.

Aside from puzzle-related problems, the game has a few other bugs. When the captain is asleep on his cot, he’s still described as doing stuff as though he’s at the top of the guardtower. This is just one of several actions that are “painted on,” by which I mean the same thing always happens in response to an action, without regard to the current state of the game. The response to “paint me” is the same as the response for any NPC (the same, too, if the NPC is sleeping). Anything put on the ledge assumes the berries. Anything put on your thumb assumes the grease. You can lose your thumb (implemented as a hidden object, apparently) when the game auto-drops all your stuff upon entering (excuse me – “getting into”) the barrel, and you can’t get it back. You can get out of the mine cart while it’s still moving, yet you don’t actually get out. The author misuses “its” and “it’s” in places.

Why, then, with so many problems, did I [i]enjoy[/i] this game so much? It definitely harkens back to the olden days (the 1980’s), where this was the kind of IF I played. Despite the likelihood of many alternate “real life” solutions, the in-game ones are interesting as adventure game puzzles. The thing with the bird (which I mentioned earlier) was actually one of my [i]favorites[/i].

I expect reactions to be mixed, but generally negative (although I’ll be pleasantly surprised if I’m wrong). The game is too long for the IFComp, but at least it’s not [i]lacking[/i] in ambition (a complaint I’ve had of several prior entries). The puzzles are challenging enough to prove impossible for less experienced players (and, given guess-the-verb issues, even some experienced ones). The story exists just to justify the puzzles. Various other annoyances ensure that many players will lose patience before ever getting into the puzzle-solving flow. I have scored all categories a “1,” except puzzles, which get a “2” (top points). I’ve given the bonus, because it stands out as more [i]fun[/i] than some other games that attempt to do the same thing, for a composite score of “7.”

It needs some polish. If the author invested some time in expanding the command grammar especially, it would be highly recommendable to puzzle game enthusiasts. It’s moderately recommendable now, for players who are willing to suffer through a few implementation problems for the sake of some cleverly conceived text adventuring.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=508&start=0#p2786
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Grim Fandango
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-11-08 11:27:52

This news has been making the rounds, so you're all probably already aware, but a document detailing the puzzles in Grim Fandango (and some that didn't make it), has been released by designer Tim Schafer. It's supposed to be [url=http://www.doublefine.com/news.php/site/just_one_more_grim_thing/]here[/url], but I'm not seeing it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=508&start=0#p2787
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Grim Fandango
User: George / DateTime: 2008-11-08 12:25:08

It's gone from that page as far as I can tell too, but instead try this:

<a class="postlink" href="http://willhostforfood.com/access.php?fileid=39994">http://willhostforfood.com/access.php?fileid=39994</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=509&start=0#p2788
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Vonkeror: the new web-browser
User: zzo38 / DateTime: 2008-11-08 14:01:12

I used to use Firefox but now I use Vonkeror and I am writing it myself, it is based on Conkeror and XUL-runner.[url]http://zzo38computer.cjb.net/vonkeror/[/url] Please make a comment of it, suggestion, bug report. There is no toolbar, menu bar, icons, menus, warning about phishing, or stupid thing like that. You have to push f12 [ if you want cookie management and f12 ] for bookmarks management. To save a image you push C-] i C-s and it number the images, you push the number of the one you want. There is no tooltip, instead it displays in mini-buffer. Next version: 0.3. I want you to post comment, please.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=510&start=0#p2789
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Help with syntax
User: seasoup / DateTime: 2008-11-08 17:04:06

Hello everyone, I just discovered Inform yesterday and started learning how to use it.  Flotz on the iPhone reintroduced me to IF which I haven't played since the Zork days.  I'm running into trouble trying to overwrite the throwing action to throw an item.  Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

[THROW]
Understand the command "throw" as something new.
Throwing is an action applying to one carried thing and one visible thing. Understand "throw [something] at [someone]" as Throwing.

report throwing something at someone: say "You throw the [the second noun] at [the noun]".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=510&start=0#p2790
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with syntax
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-11-08 17:22:27

Hi,

You want something like this:

[code]
Understand the command "throw" as something new.
Slinging it at is an action applying to one carried thing and one visible thing. Understand "throw [something] at [someone]" as slinging it at.

Report slinging something at someone: say "You throw the [the noun] at [the second noun]."
[/code]

"Throwing" is already defined in the standard library so we'll have to call this something else, like "slinging". Even then "slinging" isn't enough when there are two nouns, you need the "at" somewhere there, therefore "slinging it at". "It" refers to the first noun.

Though the easiest way to replace a library action is just

[code]
Before throwing something at something:
   ...
   ...
   stop the action.
[/code]

but if you just want to fine-tune how throwing things work or report itself, neither of these options is the optimal one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=510&start=0#p2791
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with syntax
User: seasoup / DateTime: 2008-11-08 17:33:56

Well, I when throwing something before, it would just drop it.  Or when throwing it at someone it would say You lack the nerve when it comes to the crucial moment.

I guess all I needed to do was say:

dragon is a person.
Instead of throwing something at the dragon: say "the [noun] hits the dragon on the nose."

Is that the optimal way?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=510&start=0#p2792
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with syntax
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-11-09 03:15:37

Yes, that's much better! I would add

[code]Instead of throwing something at the dragon: 
   say "[The noun] hits the dragon on the nose.";
   now the noun is in the location.[/code]

So that whatever you throw leaves your inventory.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=510&start=0#p2793
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with syntax
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2008-11-09 04:22:50

Perhaps it is enough to use Before in this case, but the general solution would be something like

[code]The block throwing at rule is not listed in the check throwing it at rules.

Carry out throwing something at something:
    now the noun is in the location.

Report throwing something at the dragon:
    say "[The noun] hits the dragon on the nose."[/code]

Now, if you want to enable throwing a knife at the dragon, killing the dragon in the process, you can add something like this:

[code]Report throwing the knife at the dragon:
    say "[The noun] hits the dragon straight in the eye, its blade sliding in all the way. The dragon lets out a menacing growl as it slowly falls down and dies. You retrieve the knife from the corpse.";
    now the knife is carried by the player;
    remove the dragon from play;
    stop the action.[/code]

and modify the original report throwing something at the dragon rule to add the same "stop the action" clause to it, just in case.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=510&start=0#p2794
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with syntax
User: seasoup / DateTime: 2008-11-09 04:31:04

[quote]The block throwing at rule is not listed in the check throwing it at rules.[/quote]
I don't understand what this sentence does.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=510&start=0#p2795
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with syntax
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2008-11-09 07:13:58

[quote="seasoup"][quote]The block throwing at rule is not listed in the check throwing it at rules.[/quote]
I don't understand what this sentence does.[/quote]

First, some very quick theory on rules and rulebooks (for further information, I suggest reading chapter 18 in the Inform 7 manual) and how to get at this phrase:

If you compile your game in progress and go to the index tab and click actions and then in the section Actions concerning other people on the magnifying glass after Throwing it at, you'll see at the bottom a list of rules regarding the action throwing it at.

One of the rules (a check an actor throwing something at rule, to be specific) is called the [i]block throwing at rule[/i], and it is the one responsible for the [i]You lack the nerve when it comes to the crucial moment[/i] output and for stopping further processing of the command.

If you look in the Inform 7 documentation (Chapter 18, Section 1 - On Rules), you'll see a list of rulebooks available. Before, instead, after, check, carry out and report are rulebooks dependent upon a specific action. (In this case, the action is [i]throwing it at[/i].) The rulebook in which the rule we want to disable is (from the above paragraph) the check throwing it at rulebook, as the block throwing at rule is listed in it.

Now we get to the meaning of the phrase above:

[code]The block throwing at rule is not listed in the check throwing it at rules.[/code]

This is a procedural rule; basically a rule modifying how other rules work. What we name here is the rule we want ([i]block throwing at[/i]) and the rulebook we want ([i]check throwing it at[/i]), and say that we don't want the first mentioned rule running when the rulebook is run through - that the rule is not listed in the specified rulebook.

Sine the rule originally was in that rulebook, we get the effect that it is removed from it, which allows for the action to proceed onward instead of being blocked.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=507&start=0#p2796
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Berrost's Challenge
User: George Shannon / DateTime: 2008-11-09 12:16:46

[quote]I pity the player who doesn’t keep multiple, frequent save files in Berrost’s Challenge.[/quote]

[emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=507&start=0#p2797
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Berrost's Challenge
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-11-09 12:39:37

Sorry. [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=467&start=0#p2798
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Afflicted
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-11-09 15:48:57

I have decided to bump the score up from 7 to 8, after giving an extra point for implementation. I've played too many games in this year's competition which are broken and untested, not to give credit where credit's due. There are a few minor problems in [i]Afflicted[/i], but it works pretty well, shows a fair degree of polish, and is definitely a step above some of the games I've given a "1" for.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=506&start=0#p2799
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Buried In Shoes
User: George Shannon / DateTime: 2008-11-09 18:06:40

I wasn't really affected at all (I hope I am not accused of lacking a soul or anything).  I saw a pretty firm split between "I didn't get it" and "I cried my eyes out."  It has some nice imagery, for sure, but it never tried to come together for me.

I should have checked 'About' first.  It might have worked more then.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=511&start=0#p2800
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Magic
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-11-09 21:57:24

Scroll down.

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[quote]Game #25: Magic
Author: Geoff Fortytwo
Played On: November 9th (2 hours 5 minutes)
Platform: TADS 3

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
[i]A story of the dangers that magicians can face.[/i]

[b]>xyzzy[/b]
[i]Everyone enjoys the XYZZY spell.  Sadly, children are rarely willing to travel from their birthday parties to a debris filled room on the other side of the world in order to see it in action.[/i]

[b]>plugh[/b]
[i]You invoke the grand spell PLUGH and with a poof you are instantly transported to exactly where you were!  For some reason this spell never gets a positive reaction at parties.[/i]

It’s hard to know just what to make of Geoff Fortytwo’s [i]Magic[/i]. It’s dark humor, mixed with the absurd, sprinkled with some disturbing imagery (such as the rotting corpse of a dead mime). It begins with little more than expressions of insecurity shown by a children’s party magician (apparently suffering from low self-esteem), but gradually gets more and more weird as wild rabbits attack in a run-down city, a cult of bunny-worshipers help and hinder progress, and [i]real[/i] magic becomes a tool for the protagonist to use.

The game offers adequate short-term goals, but doesn’t present the player with a primary objective until very near the end. Much of the game is spent just interacting with what’s around, hoping something good will come of it. These small steps peter out after a while, when there are no more hats to find or wounds to bandage. It becomes a matter of working backwards from what [i]appears[/i] to be the primary goal: getting a hand grenade. Even this becomes a “do it because it’s there” objective, since it’s not clear [i]why[/i] the protagonist would need such a thing until the very end.

The game is solid. As far as I could tell, it was bug-free. I didn’t notice any guess-the-verb issues or other rough spots in the implementation. It’s also written pretty well, without noticeable spelling or grammatical problems. This alone puts it a step above much of what was entered in this year’s competition. So, that leaves the story and the puzzles.

I already described the story: dark humor, absurd, a little disturbing in spots. It’s interesting and original, but it seems to meander a little without offering a clear point. For most of the game, it’s just a scenario in which the protagonist does stuff. Usually, when a protagonist does stuff, it’s for a reason. Here, it seems too unfocused. It’s not the typical problem of puzzles taking the place of a story, because the game is obviously trying to tell one. It’s just a hard thing to pinpoint or explain in brief, because it ends up not feeling like a story in the traditional sense.

The puzzles hint at brilliance, but suffer from poor cluing. The protagonist learns a magic trick that plays a part in several puzzles, but it’s never quite consistent in what it does. Of course, that's not necessarily a negative -- it gives variety, after all. It transforms one thing into another, based on a comparison of the two. It allows the protagonist to look like certain NPC’s, but not every NPC. Sometimes it turns one thing into the other thing. Sometimes it gives one thing the properties of another, using the other thing as a sort of metaphoric inspiration. At least once, the transformation involves wordplay. It’s gimmicky but slick, and not something I’ve seen in IF before.

(The next paragraph contains probable puzzle spoilers.)

Poor hinting makes some of the puzzles next to impossible. Halfway through, I took to the built-in hints and relied heavily on them for the remainder of the game. The protagonist is expected to do certain non-obvious things that aren’t prompted or motivated in any way. It’s probably possible to stumble on them with enough trial and error, but I often felt that I wouldn’t have been able to figure out what to do [i]without[/i] the hints. Part of the problem is that the game allows the player to beat his or her head against a dead end, without making an effort to redirect the player back to other areas. It’s necessary to solve certain puzzles before others, but it’s often unclear how that works because the player has no idea what reward will be found. For instance, a player is likely to get stuck trying to pilfer a coin from a collection plate, completely unaware that elsewhere in the game is a coin you’re supposed to find and put [i]into[/i] the plate. In another example (the hamster wheel), a vital piece of it is hidden two objects deep, and is only discovered in a disambiguation question.

[i]Magic[/i] scores a “7” even without the bonus point, due to its solid implementation and well-edited writing. It’s an interesting game, but the puzzles are brought down by a lack of adequate hinting. The story, too, could be more focused than it is. Still, this is one of the more enjoyable works of IF in this year’s competition, and I recommend it.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=511&start=0#p2801
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Magic
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-11-10 00:03:42

[quote]It’s gimmicky but slick, and not something I’ve seen in IF before.[/quote]
Hmm. Seems it's being pointed out that it [i]has[/i] been done before, and with better results. Well, I did say that *I* hadn't seen it before. [emote]:)[/emote]

Dan Shiovitz makes an interesting observation that it's really a [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaggy_dog_story]shaggy dog story[/url], which would explain the meandering plot.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=465&start=0#p2802
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Riverside
User: farvardin / DateTime: 2008-11-10 06:37:09

I rather enjoyed the game, but was disappointed by the end. I thought it was just a joke and instead of entering the "choochoo" we could enter the real train, but it was the same. For an half game, I gave an half note. Instead of 6.5 it will deserve a 3 [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=512&start=0#p2803
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: How to model an animal
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-11-10 11:24:17

Hey all,

I'm brand spanking new to creating an interactive fiction game (though I've played them).

I'm making a game that contains a monkey, and I'm not sure whether to model it as a person or an object. 

The player should be able to talk to it and elicit a (nonverbal) response. It should be able to travel the area.

However, I also want it to be "takeable" by the player.

My first impulse is to say that the monkey is a person but is "takeable". Is that possible? Is that the best way?

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=512&start=0#p2804
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to model an animal
User: farvardin / DateTime: 2008-11-10 12:47:06

there is also the "animal" kind!

But you can't carry such an animal. You can do this instead:

[code]Jungle is a room.

The monkey is a portable animal in Jungle. [portable doesnt work here]

Instead of taking monkey:
	if the player is not carrying monkey
		begin;
			say "done.";
			move monkey to player;
		otherwise;
			say "But you're already carrying this monkey!";
		end if.


test me with "carry monkey/again/drop monkey/carry monkey"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=510&start=0#p2805
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with syntax
User: seasoup / DateTime: 2008-11-10 13:04:57

[quote]If you compile your game in progress and go to the index tab and click actions and then in the section Actions concerning other people on the magnifying glass after Throwing it at, you'll see at the bottom a list of rules regarding the action throwing it at.[/quote]

Thanks for the response, I especially liked the index tip [emote]:)[/emote]

I'm having trouble establishing a  simple loop.  I copied it exactly from the documentation and still keep getting an error:

[code]repeat with X running from 1 to 10: 
    if X is 4, next; 
    say "[X] "; 
    if X is 7, break;[/code]


Problem. You wrote 'repeat with X running from 1 to 10'  : but the punctuation here ':' makes me think this should be a definition of a phrase and it doesn't begin as it should, with either 'To' (e.g. 'To flood the riverplain:'), 'Definition:', a name for a rule (e.g. 'This is the devilishly cunning rule:'), 'At' plus a time (e.g. 'At 11:12 PM:' or 'At the time when the clock chimes') or the name of a rulebook followed by some description of the current action (e.g. 'Instead of taking something:').

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=512&start=0#p2806
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to model an animal
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-11-10 15:30:33

Excellent, I didn't realize there was an Animal type. I think I started with an old instruction manual.

Thanks for your help, this is so much fun!

Shae

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=510&start=0#p2807
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with syntax
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-11-10 15:58:29

[quote]I'm having trouble establishing a simple loop. I copied it exactly from the documentation and still keep getting an error:
[code]repeat with X running from 1 to 10: 
    if X is 4, next; 
    say "[X] "; 
    if X is 7, break;[/code]
[/quote]

Phrases, such as "repeat... " or "if... then... " are not valid commands in and of themselves. They can only be contained within a command. You have to give inform some context as to when this loop should be performed, for example:
[code]Instead of throwing the knife:
     repeat....
[or]
Every turn:
[or]
After looking:[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=513&start=0#p2808
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: The Hall of the Fount of Artois
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-11-10 18:30:41

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[quote]Game #26: The Hall of the Fount of Artois
Author: Simon Ellis
Played On: November 10th (1 hour 50 minutes)
Platform: Custom (Microsoft Visual C++)

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
[i]Pierre Artois, the scion of the Artois, lies spellbound and immobile in a room in his family's home. You have one night in which to break an evil curse and restore the hopes and future of the ancient family![/i]

[b]Or:[/b]
[i]An interactive distraction.[/i]

Oooooooh. That’s the wheezing, deflating, pitiful groan of somebody who expected more of [i]Artois[/i] but instead got a typical homebrew with all the typical problems. It even offers up some atypical ones, such as a “game restore” feature that [i]crashes[/i] the game.

I honestly think I would have made it much further if I had not misinterpreted the description of the upstairs landing. I thought the hall ran west and then curved back to the northeast from there. Instead, west [i]and northeast[/i] were two of the directions available from the landing. This meant I never found some important objects needed to get me past the point where I was stuck, which was roughly halfway through the game. I may just have missed that one. I’m positive, though, that “south” wasn’t mentioned as an exit from the corner of the lane beyond the terrace, yet a player must go that way as well.

Eventually, I restarted and followed the walkthrough exactly. This proved problematic as well, since using the built-in restart (“quit” and then answer “yes” to restart) doesn’t reset the protagonist’s inventory weight. I had to [i]actually[/i] close the game and open it again so that I could pick stuff up a short ways into the game.

The game does a better job of recognizing that a verb is a verb and a noun is an object in the game than many custom-made efforts I’ve seen, but only barely. It still suffers from “you can’t do that” messages that are often too ambiguous. It’s not always clear if the game doesn’t recognize a verb, if it only doesn’t recognize it in that context, or if it doesn’t recognize it because no indirect object was specified ([b]>pick lock[/b] is a good example of that). It has no [b]undo[/b], no scrollback buffer (an aspect of the compiler used), an always-terse mode that can’t be switched to verbose (made worse because room inventory is hidden as well), no [b]>x[/b] in place of [b]>examine[/b], almost no implemented scenery unless it’s in the list of “green” text following the room description, no “it” or “them” to re-reference the last object, too few verb and noun synonyms, and no transcript feature.

Items described as “open” cannot be closed. Actions described in the text -- shaking the bell, for instance -- aren’t actually supported. It has some kind of underground cellar maze. Some objects (such as the “torch”) aren’t described well enough to help a player understand why they aren’t working. Any direction but south from the grounds north of the lane gives an “ok” message but nothing else happens. Rooms described as being elegantly furnished have no explicitly mentioned scenery at all, and for all practical purposes are completely empty. Most rooms exist only to house a single object, and some rooms seem to have nothing of importance at all.

It seems the protagonist has requested that everything and everyone be removed prior to his arrival. Really. No joke. That’s what’s going on, according to the letter in the curse-breaker’s inventory.

Above all, the player is dumped into the first room of the Artois mansion with absolutely no clue as to what’s happening. That would be forgivable for a few turns if the game at least offered an immediate goal (or if it was assured every player would read the game’s IFComp blurb in advance). Eventually, a player will check his or her inventory and find that letter -- the one that explains the mission (find and “heal” Pierre Artois). This might have worked for me if I had found the room where Pierre was located, but unfortunately it was in that area upstairs that I mistakenly thought didn’t exist. Even knowing the goal and finding a book that explains curse-breaking isn’t quite enough. For that matter, what qualifications does this guy [i]have[/i] if he came in without any clue as to how to break the curse he was hired to break?

The puzzles aren’t presented in a way where the primary goal is in sight, but one thing stands in the way, yet something else stands in the way of that, and so forth. It’s like that, yes, but it’s completely opaque to the player. You can only ever see the puzzles at hand, so a leap of faith is required to assume that this odd, fiddly thing will ultimately lead you in the direction of the next puzzle, and eventually to a cure for Pierre’s cursed state. It’s hard to say how well this would have worked over the course of the game. I wasn’t inclined to play this one beyond its allotted two hours, so when it became clear I wouldn’t get through it in time, I typed commands robotically from the walkthrough without paying much attention to the puzzles that were being breezed through as a result.

It offers very little in the way of originality, and even seems to scrape the proverbial barrel bottom in later segments for inspiration. For instance, an oddly placed Sphinx impedes progress, and its riddle is the one we’re all painfully familiar with already. Shortly before, a dragon wants gold coins (although I’m not sure why).

Here’s a tip to future authors. If you give me a sledgehammer, [b]hit[/b] and [b]break[/b] had darned well better be recognized as verbs, and in more places than just the single room where smashing something is actually allowed.

What’s more fun than playing this game? Singing “It’s the Hall of the Fount of Artois” to the beat of the Michael Jackson lyric “Mama se, mama sa, mama coo sa.” It’s eerie how well it works, as long as you don’t pronounce “Artois” the French way. What’s more fun than that? Inventing your own ending, where you dig up the bag of gold coins and simply leave the manor as a rich, rich man.

I scored it a “3” -- one point for the writing (which really isn’t bad), one for the puzzles (which do have their moments), and the “free” point. I gave no points for the implementation or the story. It has nothing to make it recommendable, except perhaps a joke involving the “bladed agricultural implement.” Even that only serves to prove that the author is [i]aware[/i] of how rigidly constructed his game is.

It’s clear that the author simply isn’t familiar enough with interactive fiction. He probably based [i]Artois[/i] on his fond memories of it, without realizing the alternatives to home-brewed games. Although this review is more critical and less forgiving than most, I hope it doesn’t discourage the author from giving it another shot. But by all means, check out the far better and more successful games out there today, especially the higher-ranking ones from this competition. You’ll be surprised at just how much you missed when it came to implementing and designing [i]Artois[/i].[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=513&start=0#p2809
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: The Hall of the Fount of Artois
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-11-10 18:53:29

I guess "bladed agricultural implement" comes from Curses. Hmm. That was one of this game's more clever parts. [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=511&start=0#p2810
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Magic
User: George Shannon / DateTime: 2008-11-10 19:11:13

Even following the walkthrough, I had no idea what to make of that hamster cage puzzle.  Wow.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=514&start=0#p2811
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Modifying Inform 7 standard rules
User: vasinian / DateTime: 2008-11-11 04:26:22

Modifying Inform 7 standard rules - is there any way to do this? I want to change some of the standard messages used.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=514&start=0#p2812
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Modifying Inform 7 standard rules
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-11-11 04:41:57

You don't usually need to modify the standard rules to change default messages, unless you want to do something complex like changing the inventory list. Try using one of David Fisher's extensions for changing default messages, [url=http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7Downloads/Extensions/David%20Fisher/Default%20Messages]Default Messages[/url] or [url=http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7Downloads/Extensions/David%20Fisher/Custom%20Library%20Messages]Custom Library Messages[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=512&start=0#p2813
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to model an animal
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-11-11 04:47:58

It might be better to just block the rule that prevents the player from taking the monkey. Then you don't have to bypass other checks the parser makes (carrying capacity etc).

[code]Procedural rule while taking the monkey:
	ignore the can't take other people rule.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=512&start=0#p2814
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to model an animal
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-11-11 08:47:14

That sounds good, Nitku, thanks for the info!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=515&start=0#p2815
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: The Lighthouse
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-11-11 14:58:18

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[quote]Game #27: The Lighthouse
Authors: Eric Hickman & Nathan Chung
Played On: November 11th (5 minutes)
Platform: Inform 7 (Zcode)

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
[i]The Lighthouse is a small game in where your main foucus is to turn on the light in the Havenworth lighthouse. This game is very short and also is my very first game![/i]

I feel so bad for the game’s authors that I’ve added the bonus point to the free point, just so I wouldn’t have to put [i]The Lighthouse[/i] on the same level as [i]The Absolute Worst IF Game in History[/i]. This isn’t really even a game. It’s a collection of grammatical errors, locks and obvious keys, a button, and a profound lack of experience with both Inform and Interactive Fiction in general. It doesn’t feel like a joke entry, which makes it all the more disappointing.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=516&start=0#p2816
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Stephen King's Cujo
User: alpha23 / DateTime: 2008-11-12 05:12:52

Hi!

I'm new to writing IF and also new to this community. The first IF game I played was Anchorhead and oh boy was I surprised. I never imagined this to be such a fun (if you can really call it that way in this game  [emote];)[/emote] )! Actually, it was one of the best games I ever played. [emote]:D[/emote] 
However, first of all I have to say that I'm not a native English speaker or writer (I'm from Germany) and so I might have some problems expressing myself properly, especially when writing IF.

To get to my project: After I finished playing Anchorhead I instantly had a vision - what about writing an IF novel to a book that already exists, but not as some kind of re-narration or "<name of book>-themed" stuff, but to work directly with the novel's original text instead. To test this, I grabbed the first English novel from my shelf, which was, as you may have already guessed "Cujo" by Stephen King. Now, I don't really like the book that much and I only once read it in German, but as a little test project, the first few pages should suffice. It's not finished, but I already post here to maybe get some comments and/or collaborateurs for a little "preview version".
If anyone feels fond in correcting texts and making stylistic suggestions, I'd be happy if you could post here. [emote]:)[/emote] 
First of all, I'd like to explain, what I expect from a direct novel adaptation. All the places and rooms you go to have to feel "real" and dynamic. Everything that's mentioned in a description can be examined, touched or taken, no matter if it serves any purpose for the solution or not. To be precise: I want something like a real world adaptation, which was done really well in Anchorhead. Till now, I didn't find any game that can be compared to Anchorhead regarding the design of the rooms and items (if you know one, please post here!).
So far, I've created:
- a basic map of the upper floor of the Trenton's house with Tad's room, the hallway (north part and south part) and the bathroom.
- a description of all kinds of things inside Ted's room, including scenery like the moonlight or the shadows that the willow tree in front of the window casts (you get a basic idea of what I'm talking about when I say "realistic").
- the player (Ted), placed inside his bed, waking up "one morning not long after midnight" in May 1980. Ok, if you own the book, you know that I'm in the very first scene where Ted has his encounter with the monster in his closet.
Ah, btw, I program in Inform 7.

Basically I thought I could write the scene faster. Now I've been programming for three days and there's way to go! 
So, I really feel like I could need a little help here, not to actually write an IF of the whole book (which would take about five years to program and half a year to play through [emote];)[/emote] ), but only from the first scene, at least for now.
I'd like to meet people, who like the idea of adapting novels and re-write them in IF and maybe even start a little project with at least 3-5 people and actually adapt a book!

Ok, that's for now. if I've woken your interest, just post here!

Regards, Timo

P.S. @ admin: If anyone feels that I started this thread in the wrong category, please move it to the appropriate section.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=517&start=0#p2817
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Escape from the Underworld
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-11-13 15:03:47

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[quote]Game #28: Bobby T. Minion in 'Escape from the Underworld'
Author: Karl Beecher
Played On: November 11th and 12th (1 hour 40 minutes)
Platform: Inform 6 (Zcode)

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
[i]Take control of Bobby T. Minion, the demon who has had a change of heart, and help him escape from the Underworld, the place to where torturing the souls of the damned has been outsourced.[/i]

I’ve had a week-long virus that is unfortunately kicking my butt something fierce. In the interest of at least finishing one more review while I’m lucid, this will be a brief one.

The story is good, although it feels a little less than original (and I’m still not sure how suddenly the entire underworld knew this one little minion was on his way out near the end). The writing is okay too, but seemed to stumble occasionally with odd wording choices.

Puzzles are the strongest feature of [i]Escape from the Underworld[/i], but they’re not as smooth as they might be due to implementation problems. Soldering the wire and using the phone are two of the biggest offenders. The author forces guess-the-verb situations, which means “solving” the puzzle is only half the battle.

All in all, I like [i]Escape from the Underworld[/i]. I couldn’t think of a good reason to give the bonus point, but with a “2” for puzzles and a “1” in the other categories, that’s a solid “6”. The author has apparently envisioned more games in this series, and I’d like to see where Bobby T. Minion goes from here.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=431&start=0#p2818
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: another anchorhead help thread.
User: seasoup / DateTime: 2008-11-14 18:19:02

well, I did search his wallet and take out his id card, but then put it back in and put it away because there was no reason to steal from Michael at that point.  He's the characters husband for crying out loud.  So, I did get past the point commented on above, michael is gone but now I cannot go into the library and look up the book.  am I just screwed and need to restart, or is there a way past this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=431&start=0#p2819
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: another anchorhead help thread.
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-11-14 20:47:25

According to an old [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/msg/5d10c5fda717c786]r.g.i-f message[/url], you don't [i]need[/i] the ID card. It makes it easier to get certain information, but you can apparently get this information other ways. I don't know how, though. It's been a long time since I played Anchorhead, and when I got stuck wanting the book, I just restarted.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=518&start=0#p2820
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: A Martian Odyssey
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-11-15 14:32:56

Feeling a little better today, but I'm majorly bummed out that I won't be able to finish all of the remaining six games by the voting deadline tonight. I'll be lucky to finish one... [i]maybe[/i] two more after I post this.

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[quote]Game #29: A Martian Odyssey
Author: Horatiu Romosan
(Based on a story by Stanley G. Weinbaum)
Played On: November 15th (1 hour 15 minutes)
Platform: Inform 6 (Glulx)

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
[i]A science fiction text adventure of space exploration and interpersonal communication[/i]

[b]And:[/b]
[i]You are D. Jarvis, chemist of the famous crew, the Ares expedition, first human beings to set foot on the mysterious neighbor of the earth, the planet Mars.[/i]

Players without sound -- or with their computer’s volume turned down -- will wonder why this game’s primary file weighs in at [i]fifty megabytes[/i]. Several strange melodies (ambient “soundscapes” by composer [url=http://www.thombrennan.com/]Thom Brennan[/url]) play throughout the game, apparently embedded in the glulx game file.

After completing [i]A Martian Odyssey[/i], I intended to base my review around several observations. The story seems to take place in an alternate history, where somebody named “Doheny” invented atomic power, somebody named “Cardoza” was the first visitor to the moon, and decades of NASA studies are disputed by its very premise, which is that our neighbor in space, Mars, is teeming with alien life and structures that would be easily identifiable by today’s long-range observation. I was going to applaud the author’s statistical research (although I didn’t verify the numbers shown). I was going to mention that the series of encounters reminded me quite a bit of vintage sci-fi (Hal Clement, perhaps). I was going to point out, maybe, that this would have made a good story back when everything under the sun really [i]hadn’t[/i] been written, and when humanity had a more shrouded and mysterious perception of our own solar system. I was even going to suggest that “Dick” and “Putz” are less than flattering names.

However, [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Martian_Odyssey][i]A Martian Odyssey[/i][/url] doesn’t just [i]sound[/i] like something that should already exist. It [i]does[/i] exist. Despite a collection of old sci-fi novels and anthologies numbering in the thousands, I was completely unfamiliar with Stanley G. Weinbaum. The story, originally published in an issue of [i]Wonder Stories[/i] in 1934, is not protected by copyright and can be downloaded [url=http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/23731]here[/url]. (Update: Ha! I [i]do[/i] have this. It’s the first story in the 1970 [i]Science Fiction Hall of Fame[/i] paperback, edited by Robert Silverberg.)

So, this review shifts to different points: does this static-to-interactive conversion [i]work[/i] here, and does it succeed as interactive fiction in its own right?

I haven’t read the complete story (although it’s short enough, I probably will) -- I’ve merely skimmed it. But it’s clear that the events on Mars are related by Jarvis to the others after the adventure has ended. In his game, Romosan sticks with the traditional second-person imperative. This makes it more a typical exploration adventure, rather than the frequently interrupted telling to wide-eyed disbelievers that Weinbaum intended it to be.

Romosan takes inspiration from the story for the game’s few puzzles, but they’re often so poorly clued that the walkthrough becomes a player’s only salvation.

This, from the original story...

[i]“Anyway, I rigged up a harness from some seat straps, and put the water tank on my back, took a cartridge belt and revolver, and some iron rations, and started out.”[/i]

...becomes a puzzle in which I attempted, with increasing levels of frustration, to somehow [i]disconnect[/i] and [i]untie[/i] the tank from my suit, since the game was adamant that I could not leave with it “connected” or still “tied to” me. I had overlooked the straps in the seat, disregarding them as unnecessary scenery. Even when the thought occurred to me that I might leave with the tank, I found no good way to harness it to my suit. This [i]could[/i] have worked, but it needed better clueing.

And this...

[i]“...and then I noticed the smoke eddying and swirling past us, and sure enough, there was the entrance!”[/i]

...becomes an exercise in mind-reading, where a player must deduce that [b]>follow smoke[/b] is a viable course of action. This may be solvable just by moving in the same direction as the smoke, but when I tried that at first, the smoke seemed to disappear from the room descriptions.

Romosan allows players to stray from Weinbaum’s story in a few instances. It’s possible to kill Tweel as early as the first meeting, for instance. I did not play forward to see how that works out, but I suspect there are no circumstances that would force a no-win situation as a result. It’s even possible to die, which certainly wouldn’t have meshed with an after-the-fact telling. This justifies the leap to interactivity, sure -- but at the risk of becoming a different story. This is one of the many debatable points in static-to-interactive conversions. Even if it’s good to allow freedom and flexibility, the game probably should have taken steps to encourage more communication between Jarvis and Tweel earlier in the story. It wasn’t until much later that I even [i]tried[/i], and only then learning it had a name.

A few implementation problems give the game a not-so-polished feel. Missing blank lines and extra blank lines throw off the layout in places. A “programming error” dealing with distance, when viewing the controls in the downed rocket, seemed the sort of thing that would have been noticed in beta-testing (and for that matter, some of the numbers keep [i]changing[/i]). Guess-the-verb was problematic (an instance springing readily to mind is when [b]>enter mine[/b] wasn’t the correct action but [b]>down[/b] was). Going west from the mine links back to the wrong location (and incidentally, this allows the player to encounter a waving Putz again, even though it’s just painted onto the room text). Too few “things” in the game world (scenery, mainly) are implemented even for basic examination.

As interactive fiction, [i]A Martian Odyssey[/i] doesn’t succeed in the same way its source material does. Underclued puzzles and minor implementation problems aside, it just feels too sparse. Weinbaum got away with it because his Jarvis was skimming over the dull and focusing on the exciting. Told in a traditional text adventure way, though, a player needs more than just one-liners to describe the thrill and grandeur of standing on a different planet for the first time. Do the following passages inspire awe? Not really.

[quote][b]Crash site[/b]
[i]A barren desert stretches as far as you can see. Only the crashed rocket breaks the surrounding monotony.[/i]

[b]>n[/b]
[i]You start cussing the fellows for not picking you up.[/i]

[b]Thyle II[/b]
[i]A desert of soft sand with nothing to see.[/i]

[b]>n[/b]
[i]You cuss Karl's cranky motor.[/i]

[b]On the edge of a canal on Thyle II[/b]
[i]Just a dry, green ditch about four hundred feet wide, and straight as a railroad on its own company map.[/i]

[b]>n[/b]
[i]As you step into the canal, the green lawn surrounding you moves out of the way![/i][/quote]
Okay, well, maybe that last line.

Everything just comes across as too bland and rushed-through in the game. That’s not to say [i]A Martian Odyssey[/i] the short story couldn’t work as interactive fiction. Only that, in this reviewer’s opinion, it didn’t here. I’ve given it a “1” (half-points) in every [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=458]category[/url], which scores it a “5” out of 10. I considered the bonus point as well (the ambient music, while not the author’s, was appropriately moody), but didn’t after noticing that my score distribution was pretty “6”-heavy already.

A minor gripe, saved as an afterthought, is that it isn’t possible to bring Tweel along at the end. The game seemed to hint that it [i]should[/i] be, so I spent some time replaying the last few moves hoping to accomplish something more. The end, however, plays out just like the Weinbaum original, so it stands to reason this wasn’t meant to be.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=515&start=0#p2821
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: The Lighthouse
User: George Shannon / DateTime: 2008-11-15 16:47:14

I can only assume the author is very young and just not that ambitious.

Did you pick up the button and carry it around and push it in random rooms? [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=518&start=0#p2822
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: A Martian Odyssey
User: George Shannon / DateTime: 2008-11-15 16:57:10

The seat belt thing completely stumped me.  I'm still not sure how I figured it out.

Also, I'm going to guess that the music files were not OGG (which I've never seen take up more than two megs each) and were AIFF, which is uncompressed.  That was seriously needlessly gigantic.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=518&start=0#p2823
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: A Martian Odyssey
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-11-15 18:40:59

[quote]The seat belt thing completely stumped me.  I'm still not sure how I figured it out.[/quote]
I know how I did. The walkthrough. [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote]Also, I'm going to guess that the music files were not OGG (which I've never seen take up more than two megs each) and were AIFF, which is uncompressed.  That was seriously needlessly gigantic.[/quote]
Yeah, or maybe MP3 with a high bitrate (or low compression, or whatever it is with MP3). I think there were several different songs. A few at 8mb each would do it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=515&start=0#p2824
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: The Lighthouse
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-11-15 18:43:02

Ha ha. No. Too funny.

I've heard he's 15. Or [i]they're[/i] 15. There's a blog, and it sounds like they were pretty excited about the competition. Maybe they just ended up rushed for time. I dunno.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=518&start=0#p2825
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: A Martian Odyssey
User: George / DateTime: 2008-11-15 19:04:53

The funny thing about the seat belt is I knew that was exactly what I wanted to do, but the syntax to make it happen was so absurdly simple I missed it. I can't remember exactly at the moment but I couldn't attach straps to tank or anything like that, I just needed to get the tank after I cut the straps, and I was good to go. That alone stumped me for several turns. 

I mentioned this elsewhere but I really wanted this game to be a straight-up crash-landed astronaut on Mars survival story. I think that could have worked with this style of game pretty well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=518&start=0#p2826
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: A Martian Odyssey
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-11-15 19:25:38

If it [i]had[/i] been a crash-landing survival story on a barren planet, I'd think I was playing my own game!! [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=519&start=0#p2827
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Voting's over... Authors? (Spoilers Within)
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-11-15 23:08:41

Well, voting has ended, so authors can now speak up. What were your favorite games? Any reviews you found unfair (here or elsewhere), about your game or any of the others? What are your picks?

My guess is (based on personal experience and other reviews), it'll go down like this:

1) Violet
2) Nightfall
3) Everybody Dies
4) Afflicted
5) April in Paris
6) Piracy 2.0
7) Snack Time!
8) Buried In Shoes
9) Opening Night
10) ....?

There were five I didn't play, and I may be shortchanging those in my predictions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=519&start=0#p2828
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Voting's over... Authors? (Spoilers Within)
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2008-11-16 00:11:20

I've [url=http://lunasspecto.webs.com/blog.htm?blogentryid=4251578]posted[/url] about my entry, "Buried In Shoes", on my blog. Thanks to all who reviewed this year's entries. I think I might take the golden banana; I've thought so since I decided to enter the competition (at which point I had already prepared my piece for beta-testing).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=519&start=0#p2829
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Voting's over... Authors? (Spoilers Within)
User: RChoba / DateTime: 2008-11-16 13:57:51

[quote="Merk"]Well, voting has ended, so authors can now speak up. What were your favorite games? Any reviews you found unfair (here or elsewhere), about your game or any of the others? What are your picks?[/quote]

Nightfall really sucked me in; on my second time through I printed out the map and attempted to visit every location to get all the memories. Even though the game isn't perfect (I found a few typos and had a few nit-picks with it) it's very atmospheric and technically pretty slick. 

I also had a lot of fun with Violet, although by the end I was I was getting tired of the puzzles and feeling like they were too contrived. But Violet's strong voice and all the customized messages were great. So these two were my favorites this year, and I think they (along with Everybody Dies) will be in the top 3.

Oh, Hardy also liked the sandwich in April in Paris (and what happens to it). [emote]:-)[/emote]

There were a couple of games this year that I just didn't get, although many people seemed to really like them. Opening Night was one of these for me. I was thinking it was a light, puzzly thing, but then the tone shifted and it lost me. Although I got to the end, somehow I felt more confused than touched by it. It's quite possible I missed the point.

I also didn't care much for Everybody Dies. When I first tried to play it, the language and player character really turned me off, and I quit. After reading some nice reviews, I gave it another chance, but went though most of it not really enjoying it at all. My main emotion playing it was revulsion: I didn't really like any of the characters, I was examining nasty fish and cleaning nasty toilets... While I think in this case I understood the ending, it just didn't move me. I did really like the illustrations, though.

The game I felt the worst for was Freedom. I have a friend who suffers with anxiety problems and panic attacks, so I am sensitive to these issues, but the game could have done a lot more to show how it feels to deal with them. Mostly I'm afraid that the author will be really discouraged by the reviews. 

As for my game, Snack Time!, I liked hearing people's comments about it and thought that the reviews were pretty fair. I knew the length might count against it, but for the most part people seemed to think it at least cute and fun. I was surprised by Merk's comments about the ending action needed not being clued well enough; one of my beta-testers had commented specifically on me making that too obvious and so I had changed it a bit. Merk, you said it seemed that this clue came only if one thing was left undisturbed, but different things and scenarios should trigger this same clue. I would like to see your transcript to see how this happened for you, and I'm sorry you missed it the first time around. I think I could use your comments to make the ending better.

Thanks to everyone who played and wrote reviews, it made the waiting time easier. As did playing the other entries, thanks authors.

Now, where are the results, already? [emote];-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=519&start=0#p2830
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Voting's over... Authors? (Spoilers Within)
User: Retro / DateTime: 2008-11-16 15:17:53

[quote="Merk"]Any reviews you found unfair (here or elsewhere), about your game or any of the others? What are your picks?[/quote]

First off I thank everybody who reviewed my entry [i]"Project Delta: The Course"[/i], regardless of positive or negative feedback.

In retrospect I can say that the reviews altogether weren't that bad for me and quite inspiring in terms of how to improve the functionality of the Node-X system. For example, the concept of [b]transcripts[/b] has become something I share with the community. I haven't thought about it myself, but since more than two people screamed for it I'm adding this feature to the Node-X interpreter and it will be basicly implemented in any future version and generation from now on.

For the tech freaks: the thing will be called a "transcript logger". When the player activates it during game by typing the command letter T it will automatically write game output into a *.txt file and into a desired folder specified by the user in the nodex.ini config file. It's easier to code than it sounds actually, because I already have a versatile load/save subsystem implemented in Node-X, as all of you know who had a closer look at the various interpreter subfunctions.

[i]{blurb}[/i]

But more on Node-X and its new features in the next weeks and months.....

As for the other entries: I guess either Violet or Nightfall have a good chance to become winner of this year's competition. But I remember reading a couple reviews where these titles were not scored 9 or 10, but 7 or less. Anything is possible. Let's wait for the results...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=519&start=0#p2831
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Voting's over... Authors? (Spoilers Within)
User: Bob_Woodward / DateTime: 2008-11-16 15:48:22

[quote="Kazuki Mishima"]I've [url=http://lunasspecto.webs.com/blog.htm?blogentryid=4251578]posted[/url] about my entry, "Buried In Shoes", on my blog. Thanks to all who reviewed this year's entries. I think I might take the golden banana; I've thought so since I decided to enter the competition (at which point I had already prepared my piece for beta-testing).[/quote]

I liked your game, although it didn't touch me as much as I guess you hoped I would. I think it's awfully hard to make a game dealing with the holocaust. But it definitly made me want to see the memorial you were inspired by.

Bob

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=519&start=0#p2832
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Voting's over... Authors? (Spoilers Within)
User: probabilityZero / DateTime: 2008-11-16 16:46:39

[quote="Merk"]What were your favorite games?[/quote]The first game I played from this competition was Everybody Dies (I guess the name caught my eye), and I think it might be my favorite of the bunch.

[quote="Merk"]Any reviews you found unfair (here or elsewhere), about your game or any of the others?[/quote]There were a few reviewers that completely misinterpreted my game. Most reviews were pretty accurate (not enough testing, implementation problems), and there were lots of reviews that understood what I meant but disagreed with me (which is understandable), but when the reviewer just didn't understand what I was trying to say, or misinterpreted the message, it got on my nerves. It's partially my fault, sure, but the fact that some reviewers understood it rather well while others completely missed anything but the very surface level satire convinced me that it's at least partially [i]their[/i] fault as well.

Anyway, my game scored pretty much exactly how I thought it would. I knew it wasn't tested enough (I had some friends beta test it, but none of them had ever played IF before). I'm happy that I got a few good reviews, and a lot of constructive criticism.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=520&start=0#p2833
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's Review: Nightfall
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-11-16 17:18:06

This was the last one I played before the deadline (and it was a close call playing through in time to vote -- we're talking two or three minutes close). I didn't get to the final five games on my randomly-sorted list, regrettably. The highest of those ranked 16th (the lowest, 29th), and even though I'm tempted to play and review for completeness, I probably won't (sorry -- if anybody cares).

Here's my last review, then. Eric Eve's "Nightfall".

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[quote]Game #30: Nightfall
Author: Eric Eve
Played On: November 15th (2 hour 30 minutes)
Platform: Inform 7 (Glulx)

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
[i]The Enemy is expected to arrive at any moment. Staying behind is either the stupidest or the bravest thing you've ever done. Only one thing - or one person - could have made you stay. So now there's nothing for it but to find her before it's too late.[/i]

[b]>xyzzy[/b]
[i]There's no orange smoke and no magical translation; if you want to go somewhere you'll just have to walk.[/i]

I didn’t get the chance to review [i]Nightfall[/i] before the results were announced, but I played (literally right up to the voting deadline) in time to cast a vote. Its second-place finish is exactly what I expected, so seeing the results doesn’t seem like much of a pre-review spoiler.

Since I played through [i]Nightfall[/i] the night of November 15th, the game’s urgency came across far better than it might have otherwise. At the start, though, I checked the map and my first words muttered were “oh (f-word).” The map is enormous, and I’m accustomed to Eric’s games being large, thought-provoking, puzzle-filled enterprises that take far longer than two hours to complete. I suppose if I expected any different this time, it was wishful thinking.

However, the game has a pace that almost carries the player along. The [b]>go to (location)[/b] ability is a life-saver, coupled with the provided map. The game plays out as the protagonist follows a series of clues, looking for [i]her[/i] (a girl he’s crushed on for many years) before an unknown “enemy” invades the city or conquers it or destroys it or something. Every moment could be the last, and the urgency comes across well in the story despite all the side endeavors and memories.

Amazingly, I completed the game at about two hours, albeit with a losing ending. Of my complaints about the game (all of which are fairly nit-picky), this is the first. This losing ending felt like a fitting, albeit tragic [i]winning[/i] ending. My first reaction was that this was exactly what was [i]supposed[/i] to happen. It was only after casting the vote and playing past the voting deadline that I began to retrace steps, follow up on additional clues, and ultimately check the walkthrough.

I haven’t yet gone through the game again from the walkthrough, but I did manage a winning ending just by re-loading at the endgame and taking a suggestion from the walkthrough. Actually, the game diverges enough even at that late stage that it’s possible to get a couple of winning endings (one of which even leaves the nature of “things” a mystery to the protagonist).

[i]Nightfall[/i] is a perfect example of kinder, gentler, modern-day interactive fiction that still manages to offer a challenge. It’s user-friendly beyond a point I’ve seen in most other games, not just in its auto-navigation but in its near-perfect [b]>think[/b] clueing, its automatic handling of mundane tasks (unlocking doors if you have the key, for instance), and some puzzles that can be avoided entirely.

Some of it, I just didn’t understand (although it might become more clear with the longer route offered in the walkthrough). Why were some of the status-listed directions in all-caps, and some not? I thought it might have something to do with “her” name (I’ve assumed the last name after learning the first), but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Why couldn’t the protagonist think of her as anything [i]but[/i] “her” until the end? And this is more a nit-pick than a plot head-scratcher, but if the protagonist wasn’t athletic enough to climb a light pole, how could he trek the city (presumably miles and many miles of walking) over the course of the story (which can run long) without tiring? Adrenaline? Love?

Despite what sometimes feels like hand-holding (I’ll call it good pacing), it has a story that should keep most players nail-biting and seat-edge-sitting for its duration. Few other games have made me want to know [i]what[/i] is happening to this degree, where the premise of a city under evacuation comes across as perfectly plausible and immersive. It’s interspersed with memories of “her” (which can be a little annoying, but only a little -- and a big part of the point of the game), but most of the game is focused on the task at hand. Very little gets in the way of being swept along with the game’s flow.

With little time to reflect, I voted the game a “9.” Upon reflection, that’s top points in every category (the writing, the implementation, the puzzles, the story -- it’s all top-notch), but without the bonus point. It comes close to being the best of this year’s competition, and with its large geography and epic plotline, is actually the antithesis of the game that just nudges it out.

Well done, and a must-play.[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=519&start=0#p2834
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Voting's over... Authors? (Spoilers Within)
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-11-16 17:24:04

[quote="Kazuki Mishima"]I've [url=http://lunasspecto.webs.com/blog.htm?blogentryid=4251578]posted[/url] about my entry, "Buried In Shoes", on my blog. Thanks to all who reviewed this year's entries. I think I might take the golden banana; I've thought so since I decided to enter the competition (at which point I had already prepared my piece for beta-testing).[/quote]
For what it's worth, I liked Buried in Shoes a lot, and was surprised it didn't place better in the comp. The fact that it was so short didn't bother me - I figured it was meant to be a vignette more than an argument about anything. However, I would have liked to have seen what [i]was[/i] there more completely implemented, particularly the main scene in the shop. I wanted things to be more responsive; continually getting told "You achieve no reaction.", "You hear nothing unexpected.", "You can only do that to something animate." broke the mood. In particular, more responses from the shoes in various scenes would help a lot. I can send you my transcript if you'd like to see it.

Obviously this is very subjective, but I would have liked to see the image of the shoes used again at the end of the piece. It's a strong image, but it seemed to me to fade out as the story moved on. I'd like one more glimpse of it - in some guise - before the final question.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=519&start=0#p2835
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Voting's over... Authors? (Spoilers Within)
User: blackgoat / DateTime: 2008-11-16 18:39:01

Interesting to see that Violet won with the highest average score (8.53) ever seen in an IF Comp, from what I can tell.  

Is this really Jeremy Freese's first game?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=519&start=0#p2836
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Voting's over... Authors? (Spoilers Within)
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2008-11-16 18:46:30

I was sure that Jeremy Freese was a veteran IF author using a pseudonym until I caught a glimpse at his blog.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=519&start=0#p2837
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Voting's over... Authors? (Spoilers Within)
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2008-11-16 19:03:14

I've just seen that "Berrost's Challenge" has this competition's highest standard deviaton in scores.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=519&start=10#p2838
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Voting's over... Authors? (Spoilers Within)
User: jeremy / DateTime: 2008-11-16 19:36:49

I'm Jeremy Freese.  Violet is my first game.  I got totally obsessed while writing it.  More importantly, I had some EXCELLENT beta testers, and every time I wanted to do something and couldn't figure out how, somebody on RAIF helped me.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=475&start=0#p2839
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Opening Night
User: uux02 / DateTime: 2008-11-16 21:34:18

[spoiler]On the other hand, one can think of this like sort of a "curse" - an undone task that is so important for the protagonist he can't afford to die (or become less active) until he completes it.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=519&start=10#p2840
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Voting's over... Authors? (Spoilers Within)
User: blackgoat / DateTime: 2008-11-16 21:51:14

[quote="jeremy"]I'm Jeremy Freese.  Violet is my first game.  I got totally obsessed while writing it.  More importantly, I had some EXCELLENT beta testers, and every time I wanted to do something and couldn't figure out how, somebody on RAIF helped me.[/quote]

Wow, hats off to you sir!  Congratulations on the win.  Any new games planned for the future?   [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=520&start=0#p2841
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Nightfall
User: ReikoYukawa / DateTime: 2008-11-16 22:43:22

[quote]Why were some of the status-listed directions in all-caps, and some not?[/quote]
[color=#008000]I think it says it in some of the ABOUT text or something, but it's a way to keep track of which locations you've visited. I think the uppercase directions lead to rooms you haven't visited, and the lowercase to ones you have (or the reverse, if I'm remembering wrong).[/color]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=519&start=10#p2842
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Voting's over... Authors? (Spoilers Within)
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-11-16 22:51:54

[quote="blackgoat"]Interesting to see that Violet won with the highest average score (8.53) ever seen in an IF Comp, from what I can tell.[/quote]

Not to take anything away from that score or the win, but I think many judges probably do what I do, and evaluate games in the competition as they relate to each other, rather than to how they relate to prior competitions and other games played previously. In theory, I'd expect a competition with one "very very good" game and 34 "very very bad" ones to have its winner rank at 9.0 or higher, due to the tendency to give top points to the best among the set. I know not all judges do this, but probably enough do. I bumped [i]Violet[/i] up to a "10" (from a "9") in the final minutes of voting, since it remained my favorite of the 30 I played.

A competition with a larger number of excellent entries would probably have its top game rated [i]lower[/i] than a year where a lesser entry won, if the lesser entry was among fewer strong contenders. At least, that's what seems to happen. When you start to divide various judges among too many favorites, the points of the top games will tend to sink a little.

In my opinion, there were some good games this year, and only two -- well, maybe three -- really outstanding ones. I hope that's not me being cynical, although it probably is. (I also hope I'm not burning bridges by saying that.) I felt like 2006, by comparison, was a far stronger year in the number of really awesome entries.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=475&start=0#p2843
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Opening Night
User: George / DateTime: 2008-11-16 23:00:18

This is one of the few games I was planning to go back to play in more depth, so thanks for the review, I think it's given me the extra push I needed. When I first played it I was kind of confused by the surreal turn it took and didn't think the writing or story matched that feeling; it looks like something else was going on that I missed in the Comp-playing rush.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=520&start=0#p2844
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Nightfall
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-11-16 23:11:43

Ooooh. [emote]:)[/emote] That could be it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=475&start=0#p2845
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Opening Night
User: drbatter / DateTime: 2008-11-17 00:04:40

[spoiler]Yes, although I wanted everything to make sense in the end, the PC's age is one part of [i]Opening Night[/i] that may require some suspension of disbelief. The "modern" time period I had in mind was early to mid-90s, when cellphones were first becoming popular (if a bit of a yuppie status symbol). This would still put the PC in his 90s. If I had changed the time periods though, I don't think I would have been able to tell the same story.[/spoiler]

Thanks for the review and for playing my game!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=519&start=10#p2846
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Voting's over... Authors? (Spoilers Within)
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2008-11-17 11:12:48

[quote]Most reviews were pretty accurate (not enough testing, implementation problems), and there were lots of reviews that understood what I meant but disagreed with me (which is understandable), but when the reviewer just didn't understand what I was trying to say, or misinterpreted the message, it got on my nerves.[/quote]
A work of art is not a certain amount of information trying to get across from the author to the viewer; and therefore, there isn't really such a thing as [i]misinterpreting the message[/i]. There can be more and less fruitful interpretations of a work of art, but the goal is certainly not to arrive at the interpretation that the author had--why would the author be the one who best understands the work? No reason to assume that.

In fact, I would say that misinterpretations are a [i]good[/i] thing: they show that your work is rich enough to support several different readings. I'd take it as a compliment. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=521&start=0#p2847
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Code Organization
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-11-17 14:00:48

Hello,

I'm getting ready to make my first game outside of a 4-room test game, and it's going to be fairly large (at least for me). I'd like some tips on organizing it so that it doesn't get confusing. As a web developer I'm aware that a manageable organization up front can make all the difference in not getting overwhelmed.

I'd love some suggestions on how others do it. This is what I'm leaning toward right now:

[map directions]

North of the Dining Room is the Kitchen.
East of the Kitchen is the Dining Room.
Etc

[rooms]

The Dining Room is a room. 
     "You are in a well decorated dining room with blah blah..."

The Kitchen is a room
     "You are in a small kitchen with blah blah..."

[initial states]

The table is in the dining room.
The chair is in the dining room.

The refrigerator is in the kitchen.
    The milk is in the refrigerator.
The sink is in the kitchen.

[every turn]
Instead of taking milk:
  do whatever
  etc


Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=522&start=0#p2848
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Look up something in a book
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-11-17 14:46:54

Hey all,

Sorry for the zillion questions. 

I'd like to have a book that the player can look things up in. Obviously, I want "Look up wildbird" to mean look him up in the book, and not "look at wildbird" or "examine wildbird."

This doesn't work:
Instead of looking up wildbird: [or look uping wildbird or lookuping wildbird]
	if the player is carrying guidebook
		begin;
		say "the wildbird is a purple bird native to North America.";
	otherwise;
	   	say "You dont have the guidebook"
	end if.

I'll be allowing the player to look up several things, so I need to be able to give different transitive objects.

thanks

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=469&start=0#p2849
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Project Delta: The Course
User: Retro / DateTime: 2008-11-17 16:26:37

Hello Merk,

now that the comp is over and we authors can speak openly about our entries I like to comment on some points you made in this review. I also want to mention that I really liked reading your reviews for all the other entries too. Really, they were constructive, informative and not insulting. That's how it should be imho.

Ok, let's start...

[quote="Merk"]Most of the effort -- well, nearly [i]all[/i] of the effort -- went into the development of Node-X rather than the game that’s meant to showcase it.[/quote]

It's correct that most of my effort went into the development of Node-X and that I hadn't finished the game in time, because the deadline was approaching and I had to hurry. But Project Delta was NEVER intended to showcase my system! That's what many reviewers misunderstood.

Perhaps I should have written in my game blurb that "Project Delta: The Course" was a short test game for Node-X, a homebrew system which was in its early development stage, but no beta anymore.

[quote]It’s odd that the author chose a console-mode presentation.[/quote]

The console-mode representation is for the old retro-feel only. It is being used until I decide that Node-X is polished enough to be ported into a true Windows-interface. Since everthing is coded in Freepascal it is easy to turn a console-mode program into a Windows-interface program, although Windows Programming in Freepascal is not always an easy task and even I have to dig some Freepascal tutorials first to learn it a lot better.

[quote]I suppose there’s nothing here that makes it a [i]bad[/i] choice -- only, if it has to be PC-only, a Windows-based or web-based interface would provide more future flexibility.[/quote]

I agree with that. Just read the introduction at the [url=http://www.freepascal.org/]official Freepascal site[/url], so you can get an idea of all the possible platforms and representations I can compile my sourcecode for.

However, I'm focusing on DOS and Windows first.

Concerning web-based interface, I always wanted to write a text-adventure in HTML and with some javascript. Since I had designed some websites back in 1998 this should be no problem for me these days. I'm not that skilled in Javascript though, but pure HTML is fine for me. And the best thing about text-adventures in HTML is that you can add images, sound and even flash-sequences, so it doesn't have to be text-only! Who knows, maybe I will submit a HTML-based IF in one of the next competitions.

[quote]At the risk of self-promotion, I developed something sort of similar to this (CYOA with game saving, inventory, system commands like “examine”, and more) using DHTML and JavaScript. I’ve never released it (it needs a little work, anyway), but since it supports multimedia and works on many platforms, it seems like a better direction to take for a CYOA engine.[/quote]

Sounds cool. You should release it! I'd be the first to try your system.....

[quote]From [i]The Course[/i], it seems the author intends for it to be more for menu-based IF than CYOA.[/quote]

Ofcourse a CYOA-game has to be menu-based. There's no other way.

I mean the original CYOA gamebooks by publisher Bantam Books ([url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choose_Your_Own_Adventure]see CYOA on Wikipedia[/url]) were written and printed in following format, for example:

[i]You stand in front of the cave entrance.

If you decide to start back home, turn to page 4. 
If you decide to wait, turn to page 5.[/i]

Now how to translate this into a computer program? Right, you have to use a menu-based interface. So it will look like this on the screen, for example:

[i]You stand in front of the cave entrance.

(1) start back home 
(2) wait[/i]

Sure, you could make it look more like traditional CYOA:

[i]You stand in front of the cave entrance.

If you decide to start back home, press 1. 
If you decide to wait, press 2.[/i]

But in a videogame it would look confusing and boring, wouldn't it? Because each time the same line [i]"If you decide to ..., press ..."[/i] has to be repeated. Authors could not even compensate it by using alternate lines such as:

[i]If you want to start back home, press 1. 
But if you think you should wait, hit 2.[/i]

That's even more confusing. So I think there is nothing better than a menu-based interface in this case.

And that's how it works in Node-X. You get no corny sentences, but some choices listed, make a decision by pressing the according key (1 or 2 in this case) and then the program "turns" (jumps) to the chosen "page" (node).

[quote]Still, the more IF-like your CYOA becomes, the less justification I can see in a text-only console-mode PC-only implementation.[/quote]

I don't understand your point. What do you mean [i]the more IF-like your CYOA becomes[/i]? Is there really such a great difference between IF and CYOA?

Isn't IF (Interactive Fiction) just another name for textadventure, be it parser-based or multiple-choice-based?
And isn't CYOA just another name for multiple-choice textadventure?

[quote]Node-X needs a transcript feature, with annotation. My “transcript” for [i]Project Delta: The Course[/i] is just a few notes taken in NOTEPAD while playing. This is handy not just for IFComp judges, but for eventual beta-testers of Node-X games. A running transcript, which a player can turn on or off and add comments while playing, would be a nice (and useful) addition.[/quote]

Ditto. A lot of reviewers wanted the same thing, so I'm adding this feature to my latest Node-X version right now...  [emote]:)[/emote] 

[quote]An [i]UNDO[/i] feature would be nice.[/quote]

Another point of yours which I really can't follow. What the heck do you need an UNDO feature in a videogame?

If the player makes a bad choice during game, he/she just loads his/her last savegame.

And by the way, in Project Delta the current progress is even quicksaved automatically at a certain node, just in case you haven't noticed it when playing my game and checking the Load/Save menus afterwards. That's because I added an autosave-feature to certain nodes. Scripters/Authors - who write custom adventures for Node-X - can determine at which point they want the player's current progress being autosaved, regardless of the player saving his/her progress or not.

[quote]An open specification for the game’s binary format (*.NX1) might be a good idea. It would probably be something others could use in creating non-Windows interpreters, and (maybe) even work into multi-format interpreters like Gargoyle or Spatterlight. It will take something like this to gain a wider acceptance within the IF community (assuming that’s even a goal -- and it may be, given that this was submitted to the IFComp).[/quote]

Node-X binary file format (*.nx1, *.nx2, etc.) is compiled script. The script itself is simple text which can be written in Notepad or any other text editor, just as HTML. So if you want to port it to other interpreters or other platforms you don't really need to focus on the binary format. You could interprete the script instead. Just a hint.

[quote]I noticed a tendency in [i]The Course[/i] to show extra blank options sometimes. I’m not sure what that was all about. A bug? Intentional, as a means of showing that there [i]aren’t[/i] any more options? I’m just not sure. It [i]seemed[/i] like a bug.[/quote]

It was a bug and has been fixed.

[quote]The author has probably worked as hard on this game as any other of this year’s participants (albeit on the engine, not the game). On the other hand, the “game” itself would be worthless no matter the platform.[/quote]

I worked so hard on Node-X itself that I had less than 24 hours left to write an adventure for it. This is no joke!

At least I delivered something. Good for me, because I was able to take part in this year's competition! Bad for Node-X, because it didn't show the capabilities of my system.

But don't worry. My next Node-X adventure will be a lot better and longer. And it will be a real adventure and not just a demo/tutorial.

Greets

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=469&start=0#p2850
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Project Delta: The Course
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-11-17 16:48:28

[quote]Ofcourse a CYOA-game has to be menu-based. There's no other way.[/quote]
Certainly... but that's not exactly what I meant. I meant that instead of having a "Choose Your Own Adventure" where each choice branches the plot (often wildly, as in CYOA books), The Course pretty much replaces likely interactive fiction commands with choice numbers. In other words, you don't click (1) to ride a rocket to Mars or (2) to shuttle to the center of the Earth... rather, you click (1) as a substitute for "go east" and (2) as a substitute for "talk to man" (generic examples). In other words, CYOA isn't [i]constructed[/i] the same way that interactive fiction is. What you ended up with (and, like I said, what I did as well) is a more traditional text adventure where the most likely "commands" are given to you in a menu. I hope that makes sense.

I have a couple dozen books in the CYOA series, as well as a few CYOA-like books from other sources. The choices usually lead to whole new plot segments, not just a small piece of the game. That's what I meant.

[quote]I don't understand your point. What do you mean the more IF-like your CYOA becomes? Is there really such a great difference between IF and CYOA?[/quote]
Yeah, the one described above. [emote]:)[/emote] But it's more than that. Interactive Fiction lets you work in a more free-thinking way. CYOA just has you progress through the plot by flipping page. But the introduction of inventory, dialogue, etc, starts bending this more towards the realm of interactive fiction. So you're not using CYOA as CYOA was envisioned, you're using it more like interactive fiction. And the more like interactive fiction (of the parser-based variety) it becomes, the more that interactive fiction should probably be what it is...

[quote]Another point of yours which I really can't follow. What the heck do you need an UNDO feature in a videogame? If the player makes a bad choice during game, he/she just loads his/her last savegame.[/quote]
I may be stealing this from something Andrew Plotkin observed several years ago, but it's more interesting to replay a section of a video game than it is to re-read text over and over trying to find the right solution. Also, text games really aren't "video" games (although it worked well enough in the new Prince of Persia series).

I use UNDO just to peek a couple turns ahead. It lets me see what clever or witty thing the author might have anticipated to an undesirable action, without forcing me along that path permanently. It's not such much a matter of necessity in that regard, but it [i]is[/i] a much-missed convenience. And without "UNDO" the game just feels incomplete.

Taking it back to CYOA books, UNDO was inherent. It was called "going back to the prior page if this choice looked like a mistake." [emote]:)[/emote] So its absence is probably even [i]more[/i] glaring in CYOA than in IF.

[quote]I worked so hard on Node-X itself that I had less than 24 hours left to write an adventure for it. This is no joke![/quote]
I don't think anybody will dispute it. But the reasons you see comments like this -- and about it being a poor choice as a game to showcase Node-X even if that wasn't the point -- was because the competition was for games, not game systems. I'm not saying you [i]shouldn't[/i] have entered -- only that you didn't give judges the thing they were expecting to judge...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=522&start=0#p2851
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Look up something in a book
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-11-17 16:59:15

That doesn't work because Inform doesn't have a default "look up [text]" action, only "look up [text] in [something]".

This is probably the best way to do it:
[code]Section - Briefly Consulting About

Briefly consulting about is an action applying to one topic.
Understand "look up [text]" or "read about [text]" or "read [text]" as briefly consulting about.

Check briefly consulting about:
	if the player cannot see the guidebook,
		say "You don't have the guidebook." instead.

Carry out briefly consulting about:
	try consulting the guidebook about the topic understood instead.


Section - Entries in the Guidebook

[the default for looking up unlisted topics]
Instead of consulting the guidebook about:
	say "The guidebook seems not to have an entry on that topic."

Instead of consulting the guidebook about "wildbird":
	say "The wildbird is a purple bird native to North America."[/code]

This way, both LOOK UP WILDBIRD and LOOK UP WILDBIRD IN GUIDEBOOK will work without you having to write two sets of rules doing the same thing. To add an entry to the guidebook, just add another rule like:
[code]Instead of consulting the guidebook about "whatever":
	say "Blah blah blah."[/code]

If you want the player to be holding the guidebook before looking something up (as opposed to it being on the ground or on a table or something like that):
[code]Before consulting the guidebook about:
	if the player does not have the guidebook:
		say "(first taking the guidebook)[command clarification break]";
		silently try taking the guidebook;
	if the player does not have the guidebook:
		stop the action.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=522&start=0#p2852
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Look up something in a book
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-11-17 17:01:22

Check out example 90 in the manual ([url]http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7/ex94.html#e94[/url]), it should be pretty much just what you need (it's even about birds!)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=522&start=0#p2853
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Look up something in a book
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-11-18 08:00:21

I didn't even know there was a  "look up [text] in [something]" verb. I'm reading the manual but I hadn't gotten there yet.

This is a huge help. Thanks so much to both of you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=482&start=0#p2854
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: The Absolute Worst IF Game in History
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-11-18 10:21:03

It looks like this game received more individual votes than any other game. The title must have been a play-me magnet. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=521&start=0#p2855
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Code Organization
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-11-18 10:50:16

The best thing to do is to look at how other people have done it. [url]http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=tag%3Ai7+source[/url] lists many games with released source code. Looks like many people tend to organize the code roughly as General rules - Rooms (with items as each room's subchapters) - NPCs - Testing. It also depends on the type of the game what the best organization is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=469&start=0#p2856
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Project Delta: The Course
User: Retro / DateTime: 2008-11-18 12:19:37

[quote="Merk"]The Course pretty much replaces likely interactive fiction commands with choice numbers. In other words, you don't click (1) to ride a rocket to Mars or (2) to shuttle to the center of the Earth... rather, you click (1) as a substitute for "go east" and (2) as a substitute for "talk to man" (generic examples). In other words, CYOA isn't [i]constructed[/i] the same way that interactive fiction is. What you ended up with (and, like I said, what I did as well) is a more traditional text adventure where the most likely "commands" are given to you in a menu. I hope that makes sense.[/quote]

Exactly, the most obvious choices in a particular situation are given to the player in a menu. That's how I write text adventures with Node-X. So yes, I see your point now. It's true that The Course is more like traditional IF where the player is progressing through small pieces of the game and not jumping to whole new plot segments.

But that's just my style, however. Other authors - who are interested to use Node-X for creating their own adventures - don't need to do it that way. They could write it more CYOA-like if they want to. So a choice like "ride a rocket to Mars" would teleport players directly to "Mars". In my adventures players would be required to "enter the rocket", "start its engines" and "fly it to Mars" before they can reach the destination "Mars", maybe even find a key or operate the controls first to start the "engines". That's the difference, yes.

Also I want to make one thing clear, so that everyone can understand: Node-X is a system made for its own subgenre which is a mix of multiple-choice adventure, CYOA, Text-RPG and traditional IF. It doesn't even try to compete with Inform, TADS or other parser-based systems. The "parser" in Node-X is only used for special functions such as load/save game, change palette, show inventory, transcripts, etc.

[quote]I may be stealing this from something Andrew Plotkin observed several years ago, but it's more interesting to replay a section of a video game than it is to re-read text over and over trying to find the right solution. Also, text games really aren't "video" games (although it worked well enough in the new Prince of Persia series).

I use UNDO just to peek a couple turns ahead. It lets me see what clever or witty thing the author might have anticipated to an undesirable action, without forcing me along that path permanently. It's not such much a matter of necessity in that regard, but it [i]is[/i] a much-missed convenience. And without "UNDO" the game just feels incomplete.

Taking it back to CYOA books, UNDO was inherent. It was called "going back to the prior page if this choice looked like a mistake." [emote]:)[/emote] So its absence is probably even [i]more[/i] glaring in CYOA than in IF.[/quote]

Well, the way you describe it I do see the necessity of an UNDO function now. Okay, I will add this feature too.  [emote]:)[/emote] 

But I have one question: Is it enough when the UNDO function jumps back to the player's previous page (node) or do you want me to code the UNDO function in a way that you could even jump back multiple pages?

I imagine this could be pretty funny actually. A player finishes the adventure and on the last node he starts to undo everything node by node until he reaches the start again, hehe. Like pressing rewind on a tape recorder or something. Wierd, but why not. [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]  

[quote][quote]I worked so hard on Node-X itself that I had less than 24 hours left to write an adventure for it. This is no joke![/quote]
I don't think anybody will dispute it. But the reasons you see comments like this -- and about it being a poor choice as a game to showcase Node-X even if that wasn't the point -- was because the competition was for games, not game systems. I'm not saying you [i]shouldn't[/i] have entered -- only that you didn't give judges the thing they were expecting to judge...[/quote]

Next time I will give judges what they expect. At least I hope so. I mean the IF competition is intended for "short works of interactive fiction" anyway, isn't it?  [emote];)[/emote] 

I wonder how short a text adventure can be to make judges still happy. The IF Comp Rules only state the maximum length ("game must be playable within 2 hours"), but not the minimum length...

So what is the minimum length of a game entered in the competition? 5, 10 or 15 minutes?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=482&start=0#p2857
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: The Absolute Worst IF Game in History
User: Bob_Woodward / DateTime: 2008-11-18 12:31:37

[quote="Merk"]It looks like this game received more individual votes than any other game. The title must have been a play-me magnet. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Its title said it would establish a record. Besides, you could be sure only to spend about 10 minutes for it. I think that was the motivation to start it. It was at least for me.

Bob

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=469&start=0#p2858
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Project Delta: The Course
User: Bob_Woodward / DateTime: 2008-11-18 12:35:30

[quote="EK_Dev"]So what is the minimum length of a game entered in the competition? 5, 10 or 15 minutes?[/quote] 

As you said, there is no minimum length. I would say most games with a playing time under 15 minutes will have disadvantages. Although, I think games like 9:05 would always have a rather high rating, in spite of its shortness.

Bob

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=469&start=0#p2859
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Project Delta: The Course
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-11-18 12:41:26

[quote]But I have one question: Is it enough when the UNDO function jumps back to the player's previous page (node) or do you want me to code the UNDO function in a way that you could even jump back multiple pages?[/quote]
In IF, you can UNDO several turns. This often doesn't amount to the entire game (I've seen it vary, but it never appears to be infinite). Maybe a dozen turns, but definitely more than one is typical.

I don't know anything about your Node-X, so I don't know how you would implement this. It might be possible to have an UNDO that goes back indefinitely. That would certainly be the case if you had no inventory or state management [i]other[/i] than the concept of a "page number" because your UNDO facility would be an internal list of page numbers you just flip back to.

This is more complicated if there is inventory and other state considerations. The two likely ways to do this would be to put the game state in a virtual envelope (i.e., everything that would go into a SAVE goes into the next available UNDO slot instead), or track just the state changes for purposes of reversal (i.e., every time you do anything to change the state of the game, write a reversal to the UNDO list, whether it's to flip back a page, put an inventory item back where it originally was, or whatever).

[quote]Next time I will give judges what they expect. At least I hope so. I mean the IF competition is intended for "short works of interactive fiction" anyway, isn't it?  [emote];)[/emote][/quote]
Well, take the example of a movie. You can do a lot in 2 hours, and people will probably feel their $10 ticket price was justified. If the movie lasts just five minutes and really doesn't tell much of a story, they're gonna be royally ticked off. Not that judges [i]pay[/i] to participate in the IFComp -- just an analogy.

[quote]I wonder how short a text adventure can be to make judges still happy. The IF Comp Rules only state the maximum length ("game must be playable within 2 hours"), but not the minimum length... So what is the minimum length of a game entered in the competition? 5, 10 or 15 minutes?[/quote]
There isn't a minimum set by the rules. But judges expect something that's at least substantial. This is more wisdom by observation rather than any hard and fast rule. Longer games tend to do better. Longer games tend to be viewed as having more effort put forth. Longer games tend to be able to tell better, more complete stories. Longer games tend to look like more serious, honest entries. Granted, when I'm down to the end of the competition and I'm starting to get cranky, I'm happy to come across a shorter one. [emote]:)[/emote]

Approaching or exceeding two hours doesn't automatically make a game good. Just look at the competition results. But anything less than half an hour seems far too short [i]to me[/i], given that this is just 25% of what the author could have given me. Fifteen minutes is a snack. Five minutes just feels like a non-effort.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=469&start=0#p2860
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Project Delta: The Course
User: emshort / DateTime: 2008-11-18 12:43:37

There's no minimum game length for the competition, but I think people are looking for something that is substantial enough to have (in itself) some kind of point: to tell a story, to provide a fun gaming challenge, something along those lines. If you can do something really interesting in five minutes, so be it. (Though I think a lot of judges also factor the ambition of the project a bit into their scoring, so something that is very small may not place as high -- see the reactions to "Snack Time", which most people thought was fun and cute and well-implemented, but just not trying anything quite as challenging as the games that ranked above it. On the other hand, Sam Barlow's "Aisle" has gotten a lot of respect over the years even though it is a one-turn-only work.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=469&start=10#p2861
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Project Delta: The Course
User: Retro / DateTime: 2008-11-18 12:49:09

[quote="Bob_Woodward"]As you said, there is no minimum length. I would say most games with a playing time under 15 minutes will have disadvantages. Although, I think games like 9:05 would always have a rather high rating, in spite of its shortness.[/quote]

Sounds like in the competition shortness can be compensated by quality.

So let's assume someone submits an entry in the next comp which is even shorter than "Project Delta: The Course" and can be played in just 5-10 minutes, but he/she creates a very entertaining, interesting and well-written adventure. Will his/her entry recieve higher ratings than longer ones?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=469&start=10#p2862
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Project Delta: The Course
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-11-18 12:53:07

[quote]So let's assume someone submits an entry in the next comp which is even shorter than "Project Delta: The Course" and can be played in just 5-10 minutes, but he/she creates a very entertaining, interesting and well-written adventure. Will his/her entry recieve higher ratings than longer ones?[/quote]
I think it would still feel out of place in the IFComp. It might be a gem, and it would probably rank higher befitting its quality, but I think the very best of the longer games would still have an advantage.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=469&start=10#p2863
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Project Delta: The Course
User: Retro / DateTime: 2008-11-18 12:55:16

[quote="emshort"]There's no minimum game length for the competition, but I think people are looking for something that is substantial enough to have (in itself) some kind of point: to tell a story, to provide a fun gaming challenge, something along those lines. If you can do something really interesting in five minutes, so be it. (Though I think a lot of judges also factor the ambition of the project a bit into their scoring, so something that is very small may not place as high -- see the reactions to "Snack Time", which most people thought was fun and cute and well-implemented, but just not trying anything quite as challenging as the games that ranked above it. On the other hand, Sam Barlow's "Aisle" has gotten a lot of respect over the years even though it is a one-turn-only work.)[/quote]

Ah ok, you have just answered my previous question before I posted it. Thanks.

If it's 5-10 minutes only, but well-written, there should be no problem.

Anyways, any future game of mine which may be submitted to the competition will be certainly longer than 15 minutes, as I have mentioned in my previous posts. So that's not really an issue for me anymore. But it's good to know what judges expect and what not.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=469&start=10#p2864
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Project Delta: The Course
User: Retro / DateTime: 2008-11-18 13:48:00

[quote="Merk"]I don't know anything about your Node-X, so I don't know how you would implement this. It might be possible to have an UNDO that goes back indefinitely. That would certainly be the case if you had no inventory or state management [i]other[/i] than the concept of a "page number" because your UNDO facility would be an internal list of page numbers you just flip back to.[/quote]

You may not know anything about Node-X at this point, but you have just described how it basicly works:

Each node (page) has an index number or tag which it is refered by. So in order to jump back to the previous node the engine just needs to "feed" the Nodejumper class (=heart of Node-X!) with the last index number and it will jump to it next.

I have already created special variables for this:

[i]lastNode
currNode
nextNode[/i]

Variable names speak for themselves I guess, but this is what they mean:

In lastNode the index number of the node is stored from which the player came from.
In currNode the index number of the node is stored in which the player currently is.
In nextNode the index number of the node is stored to which the player wants to go (after making a choice).

[i](you know, it's just like in the "Back To The Future" movies where Doc Brown explains to Marty McFly the time display inside the time machine: "this shows the time you came from, this shows the time you are, this shows the time you go").[/i]  [emote]:)[/emote] 

As you said, the only problem would be to keep record of all the dynamic inventory and flag states during game.

But the engine shouldn't mess around with them! Because there is one case in which an UNDO function could create unintended jumps and even bugs!

It's the so-called [b]PNT_Revisited[/b] state of a PathNode. This state tells the engine whether a node has been "visited" the first time or multiple times by a player. If it was visited multiple times it can branch into an alternate destination and thus completely changing the plot of the game! I added this feature to create a higher value of replayability and a new dimension of gameflow.

So I'm not sure if an UNDO funtion is such a good choice in my case. I have to re-think......

You know what... let's drop the UNDO feature for now. It's too risky. Too many possible bugs and workarounds I would have to consider first. [emote]:|[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=512&start=0#p2865
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to model an animal
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-11-18 14:17:37

Verb problem -- I'm putting it here because it's related to this thread.

Inform knows "feed the fruit to the monkey", so why doesn't it know this?

Instead of feeding fruit to monkey:
  if the player is carrying the fruit:
    say "The monkey gobbles up the fruit";
    move fruit to nowhere;
  end if.

It doesn't know the verb. I can see there's something going on with the "to monkey" being added to the simple verb, but I don't know how to solve it.

thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=523&start=0#p2866
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Invent a verb
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-11-18 15:25:19

I hope I'm not wearing out my welcome here. Maybe I can repay the community by releasing a decent game (decent for a newbie, that is)  [emote]:P[/emote] 

Here's something that has come up again and again. Suppose I want to invent a verb, and invent something new that happens when the player uses that verb, not just map it to an existing verb. For example I figured out "Understand 'pick [something]' as taking" when I wanted the player to be able to pick flowers. But what if I want to do something totally new?

Like, 

[code]Instead of dig: 
 If player is in the forest,
  say "You dig a hole and find a beetle"
  move beetle to Forest.
 end if[/code]

Or, in the case of transitive verbs:

[code]Instead of chasing the bird:
  Say "You run after the bird and catch it",
  move bird to player.[/code]

This is a skill I could use again and again. 

Thanks to everyone for all their help here. I'm having a great time and I predict this hobby will be more than a short term one for me!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=523&start=0#p2867
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Invent a verb
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-11-18 15:36:46

Apparently I need to practice a little patience.

I just came across this in the documentation, and though I haven't yet applied it to the things I want to do, it looks like it will work for me.

Putting it here for anyone else who might have searched for it:

[code]Universal opening is an action applying to nothing. 
Understand "open sesame" as universal opening. 
Carry out universal opening: now all doors are open. 
Report universal opening: say "Open Sesame!" [/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=523&start=0#p2868
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Invent a verb
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-11-18 15:53:17

(Well, you beat me to the post, but here it is anyway.)
Hi! Don't worry about wearing out your welcome.  [emote]:)[/emote]  Check out the docs, starting with ch 12.7 "New Actions" for the complete answer to your question. In a nutshell, though, you create an action like:[code]Digging is an action applying to nothing.

Chasing is an action applying to one thing.

Hitting it with is an action applying to one thing and one carried thing.[/code]Notice the definition itself tells you if the verb is transitive or not, or if it requires an indirect as well as a direct object. It also sometimes mentions other requirements (carried, requiring light, etc.). Then you can add your "understand" grammar, just like you do with existing verbs. Finally, add the check, carry out and report rules. You can use "instead" rules at first to experiment, but personally, I think over - reliance on them leads to messy code later. Ideally, they're supposed to be used to override behavior (hence the name "instead"), not for coding entire new actions. Hope that helps.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=512&start=0#p2869
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to model an animal
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-11-18 16:15:01

Well, for one thing, you mixed up the colon/indent and begin;/end if syntax, but I guess you just typed that in your post rather than pasting it from actual code.  [emote]:)[/emote] As far as "feeding" goes, it's not a defined action -- it's recognized as a synonym for "giving" which is the actual action. (This can be found in the "actions" index of a compiled game.) Even though the in - game parser recognizes different grammar for actions, when you're programming the game, you need to use the unique action name. Otherwise it would become impossibly confusing, since often the same syntax can be routed to multiple different actions. Try:[code]Instead of giving fruit to the monkey:
	say "The monkey gobbles up the fruit.";
	remove fruit from play.[/code]Hope that helps.

Edit: Also, since the giving action already requires the player to be carrying the item, you don't need to add that condition.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=511&start=0#p2870
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Magic
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-11-18 16:33:50

I've seen several reviews that mention a joke or pun at the very end of the game, centered around the final action. I wish I had my transacript in front of me to investigate a little more, but I don't. Can anybody shed light on what this joke is? I'm trying to figure out how I didn't recognize it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=482&start=0#p2871
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: The Absolute Worst IF Game in History
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-11-18 16:47:20

Me too. I figured I could spend 5 or so minutes on it and have it out of the way early.

Also, at the time I had an inexplicable desire to play a really bad game. Go figure.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=512&start=0#p2872
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to model an animal
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-11-18 16:59:22

Ah, thanks Mike. I figured if "feed" was recognized in game play I could use it. That actions menu of the index is helpful!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=523&start=0#p2873
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Invent a verb
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-11-18 17:16:33

Actually I was only able to get a transitive verb to work this way:

[code]Chasing[something] is an action applying to one visible thing. 
Understand "chase[something]" as chasing. 

Instead of chasing the bird:
  say "you chase the bird";

Instead of chasing an animal:
  say "you chase an animal";

Instead of chasing[something]:
  say "you cannot chase that".[/code]

Without [something], during game play I typed in "chase bird" and got "I only understood you as far as chasing" rather than the intended message.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=523&start=0#p2874
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Invent a verb
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-11-18 17:48:39

[code]Chasing[something] is an action applying to one visible thing.[/code]The [something] above does nothing. Anything in brackets outside of quoted material is a comment and thus ignored. It would be the same if you put:[code]Chasing[put any kind of gibberish you want here and it would still work] is an action applying to one visible thing.[/code]The place you need "[something]" is here:[code]Understand "chase[something]" as chasing.[/code]Which I didn't mention since you seemed to get the whole grammar thing from the earlier post.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=523&start=0#p2875
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Invent a verb
User: emshort / DateTime: 2008-11-18 18:10:56

It sounds like you're doing fine, but you may also find it useful to look at the Recipe Book sections on adding a new command. Online, that section starts here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7/Rdoc27.html">http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7/Rdoc27.html</a>

...but it also is in your built-in documentation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=523&start=0#p2876
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Invent a verb
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-11-18 18:15:04

Well Mike, obviously I don't know as much as you think I do [emote]:)[/emote]   Thanks for the clarification.

Emshort, thanks for the great resource!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=511&start=0#p2877
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Magic
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2008-11-18 20:16:48

The ending is a reference to Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=469&start=10#p2878
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Project Delta: The Course
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2008-11-18 20:50:18

Shortest game I've played was "Hello Cruel World" by Graham Nelson.

EK_Dev:

What advantage does your system offer over one written with SimpleCYOA (an I7 extension I wrote)?  It offers game state, multiple undo, and save/restore.

(And you can add undo to your system.  Have UNDO also revert the status of PNT_Revisited.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=524&start=0#p2879
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Hiding item inventory in description
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-11-19 09:49:48

In an Inform6 guide, I found an example of hiding inventory items in the description, so that it won't be so obvious to the player that the item is important.

The example showed how to replace something like

[quote]You are on a farm.

You can see a turkey here.[/quote]

with 

[quote]You are on farm, the sky is blue, so forth and so on. A turkey scratches around nearby. It's cold out. And what have you.[/quote]

Sorry for the crummy paraphrasing.

The Inform6 way to do this doesn't seem to work in Inform7. Can anyone point me to a tutorial on how to do this?

On a vaguely related note, I gave a hat to a character named Granny to wear. The game didn't tell the player that Granny had on a hat, even after "examine Granny". How is the player supposed to know there's a hat? 

If I say

The description of Granny is "Granny is an old lady; she's wearing a hat"

Then her description will be out of date if I allow her hat to fall off or get stolen.

As always, any advice is appreciated. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=524&start=0#p2880
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hiding item inventory in description
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-11-19 15:13:02

If you just want the turkey to be a static object in the room -- not mentioned in a separate description, or takeable by the player, but examinable, you could just make it scenery (ch 3.8). If you want it to be a normal object, just not listed separately in either the list of nondescript items or its own paragraph, modify the "writing a paragraph about" activity (ch 17.22). Marking an item as "mentioned" will tell inform it's been taken care of and doesn't need to be listed again. In any case, you're allowed to put "[if...][otherwise][end if]" tags in text. See below:
[code]The Farm is a room. "You are on a farm, the sky is blue, so forth and so on. [if the turkey is in the location]A turkey scratches around nearby.[end if] It is cold, blah, blah..." 

Rule for writing a paragraph about the turkey when the location is the farm:[see ch 17.22]
	now the turkey is mentioned.

North of the farm is The Barn.

A turkey is an animal in the farm. It is wearing a hat. The description is "Just your usual turkey[if the item described wears something]... other than the fact it's wearing [a list of things worn by the item described][end if]."

Persuasion rule: rule succeeds. [makes the turkey follow commands] 

test me with "x turkey / turkey, drop hat / x turkey / turkey, go north / l / n ".
[/code]
Also FYI, "inventory items" generally refers to items actually in inventory (carried by the player). I'm guessing you meant "objects".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=524&start=0#p2881
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hiding item inventory in description
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-11-19 17:26:07

Ah yes, I meant objects. Thanks Mike, this looks like it will work out great.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=524&start=0#p2882
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hiding item inventory in description
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-11-19 18:26:45

You're welcome! FWIW, technically speaking, it would probably be more correct to add a rule before the "listing the nondescript items of something" activity (ch 17.23) which is the activity that prints out the extra items at the end of a room desc. (the stuff followed by, "You can also see... ") In the above example, replace the rule for writing a paragraph about with:[code]Before listing nondescript items of the farm:
	now the turkey is not marked for listing.
[/code]The results (in this case) are the same.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=524&start=0#p2883
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hiding item inventory in description
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-11-20 08:15:29

Oh, excellent. That's actually going to help me with a lot of various issues.

I've always been annoyed when I play an IF game and encounter something like this:

[quote]You're outside in a meadow. The moon is bright.

>look at moon

You can't see any such thing.[/quote]

On the other hand, you don't need the moon for the game play, so it's nice if you can just define it, to deal with the likelihood that the player will look at it, and then keep it out of the way. 

I understand "scenery" and "backdrop" are useful here, or making an item a part of another item, but I appreciate that last tip as another way to deal with the problem.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=469&start=10#p2884
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Project Delta: The Course
User: Retro / DateTime: 2008-11-20 11:28:26

[quote="ralphmerridew"](And you can add undo to your system.  Have UNDO also revert the status of PNT_Revisited.)[/quote]

I will think about it..................

But in the meantime I will focus on other priorities, such as how to write a good and long text adventure.  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote] 

Cheers

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=526&start=0#p2885
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Oh Mercy. Player "makes" something formerly nonexistent?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-11-20 15:55:11

OK, I thought I had this one whipped but then I saw some really stupid bugs.

I defined a word "make":
[code]Making is an action applying to one thing. 
Understand "make [something]" as making.[/code]

I want the player to be able to make a hat when he has collected the materials to make it with. Since it matters what you make, I have to have "applying to one thing". But if there isn't already a hat in the room, then "make hat" results in "you can't see any such thing" even before it applies my custom commands.

So I tried putting an invisible hat in the room (scenery). A stupid hack, I know. That resulted in me having to write a lot of "instead" code so that if you try to take or examine or wear it, "You can't see any such thing."

Then I discovered the insurmountable problem: That means you can't make the hat when you're in another room.

I guess I could put the hat on the player and try to make it invisible, but this all feels like a really stupid way to proceed.

Relatedly, I'd prefer it if "make dinosaur" or even "make lsdkjfladksj" resulted in "You don't know how to make that" rather than "You can't see any such thing." Why should you have to see it to try to make it?

As always, any advice would be appreciated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=521&start=0#p2886
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Code Organization
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-11-20 18:01:10

Good advice, Nitku, I will do that. 

One thing I'm doing in the meantime is creating individual puzzles in their own small projects (like makeHatTester) so that I can test them exhaustively before entagling them in the larger project. So far I'm surprised at how manageable I'm keeping the game. I do want to make sure I can read through and understand it after it's all in one large file, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=526&start=0#p2887
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Oh Mercy. Player "makes" something formerly nonexistent?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-11-21 01:51:19

[quote="ShaeSays"]I defined a word "make":
[code]Making is an action applying to one thing. 
Understand "make [something]" as making.[/code]

I want the player to be able to make a hat when he has collected the materials to make it with. Since it matters what you make, I have to have "applying to one thing". But if there isn't already a hat in the room, then "make hat" results in "you can't see any such thing" even before it applies my custom commands.

[...]

Relatedly, I'd prefer it if "make dinosaur" or even "make lsdkjfladksj" resulted in "You don't know how to make that" rather than "You can't see any such thing." Why should you have to see it to try to make it?[/quote]

Try defining your action as applying to a topic instead of a thing:
[code]Making is an action applying to one topic.
Understand "make [text]" as making.[/code]

Then you'll have rules like:
[code]Carry out making "hat": [etc][/code]

The quotation marks around "hat" in that rule tell Inform that it's a topic it's dealing with, not a thing. The tricky bit here is making sure that any word the player can use to refer to the hat also works when making the hat. You might try something like:
[code]Understand "hat/sombrero" as "[hat-names]".
Understand "[hat-names]" as the hat.

Carry out making "[hat-names]": [and so on][/code]

That solves both your problems: the hat doesn't have to be around when the player makes it (because MAKE HAT doesn't actually refer to the hat, only to a hat topic), and you can easily add a "Check making" rule to catch attempts to make non-hat things.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=526&start=0#p2888
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Oh Mercy. Player "makes" something formerly nonexistent?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-11-21 03:02:52

That's one method; here's another for comparison. You can act on objects out of play using a two-fold process. First, you define the action as applying to a visible thing. "Visible" here means "in scope" which usually means the player can see it, but not necessarily touch it. Then use the the word "[any ...]" in the grammar definition. This puts any object of that description (including ones the player can't see) into scope for the purposes of that action. (See ex. 265 "Introduction to Juggling")[code]A thing can be makeable.

Making is an action applying to one visible thing. 
Understand "make [any makeable thing]" as making.
[/code]Now Inform will understand the make command for anything you define as makeable. Next you wanted to change the error message:[code]Understand "make [text]" as a mistake ("You don't know how to make that.").
[/code]Now any text (including object names) that aren't makeable things will fall here.
Now I just added a list of objects for the parts and a simple check, carry out and report rule (you might need to redo the tabs when pasting this code):[code]A thing has a list of objects called the needed parts.

Check making:
	let has-parts be true;
	repeat with item running through the needed parts of the noun:
		if the player does not enclose the item:
			now has-parts is false;
			break;
	if has-parts is false, say "You don't have all the necessary components on you." instead.

Carry out making:
	repeat with item running through the needed parts of the noun:
		now item is in limbo;
	now the player carries the noun.

Report making:
	say "After a little work, you make a spiffy new [noun]."

[/code]Finally the scenario:[code]The Lab is a room. Some felt is in the Lab.
North of the lab is the Back. A band is in the Back.

Limbo is a container. The hat is a makeable wearable thing in limbo. The needed parts is {some felt, the band}.

test me with "make gumbo / make felt / get felt / make hat / n / make hat / get band / make hat / wear it / i."[/code]Of course that would still need to be fleshed out. Also, check out examples 309 and 402, which deal with making a shirt and a fishing pole respectively.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=526&start=0#p2889
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Oh Mercy. Player "makes" something formerly nonexistent?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-11-21 04:24:28

I suggest you go with Mike's code. His is much more elegant than mine! [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=516&start=0#p2890
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Stephen King's Cujo
User: radix / DateTime: 2008-11-21 12:12:13

[quote="alpha23"]Hi!

To get to my project: After I finished playing Anchorhead I instantly had a vision - what about writing an IF novel to a book that already exists, but not as some kind of re-narration or "<name of book>-themed" stuff, but to work directly with the novel's original text instead.
[/quote]

I'm not sure how obvious it is, but I expect this is a clear violation of the original text's copyright.

Just a heads-up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=526&start=0#p2891
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Oh Mercy. Player "makes" something formerly nonexistent?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-11-21 13:13:44

Hm, Emerald, my first impuse was to go with yours, just because it seemed more immediately familiar.

I need some time to absorb both ideas and figure it all out. Thanks so much to both of you!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=527&start=0#p2892
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Suggestion for a new board
User: radix / DateTime: 2008-11-21 15:41:50

I had a short private conversation with an administrator about adding a new board and he suggested I post it to this board to see what the consensus is.

One of the things that I find lacking at intfiction.org is a forum for general discussion of writing games, separate from the system that's used. When I want to ask people's advice on how to design a puzzle, or talk about the direction a plot could take, or discuss gameplay, or talk about the intricacies of interactive storytelling, I don't know which forum to use. These are the kinds of topics I'm most interested in discussing.

I don't know if we need yet *another* subforum when it seems intfiction.org is still spread thin, but I'll leave it up to the admins: do you think such a "General IF Authoring" forum would be useful? Maybe this could be an expansion/renaming of the existing "Getting Started with IF Authorship" forum, which has the benefit of being system-agnostic but is currently limited to discussion about *learning* IF authorship, instead of generally *practicing* it.

You should take my suggestion with a large grain of salt, of course, because as you can see I have made exactly 0 posts to intfiction.org so far. I really want to use something better than RAIF, though.

What are your thoughts?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=527&start=0#p2893
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Suggestion for a new board
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-11-21 16:42:06

One thing we could do is move Adrift, Hugo, and Alan messages into the "Other" board (I didn't want to before, but it's clear there isn't enough traffic to warrant them), which would make having another general-purpose authoring forum okay. It could be called "Design, Advice, Tips, and Tricks" or something to that effect.

Anybody for or against the idea?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=527&start=0#p2894
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Suggestion for a new board
User: George / DateTime: 2008-11-21 19:15:10

I think this is a good idea.

And regarding a little forum reorganization....[emote];)[/emote] -- these are our current sub-forums:


[quote]General and Off-Topic Talk
Here you may talk about mostly anything, even stuff unrelated to authoring or playing Interactive Fiction.
46 Topics
483 Posts
Last post on Sat Nov 08, 2008 12:01 pm 


Getting Started Playing IF
Here you can find out information on what it takes to start playing Interactive Fiction and what programs you need.
8 Topics
57 Posts
Last post on Sat Oct 25, 2008 2:44 pm 


Game Announcements and Beta Testing
If you've completed a game or wish to get Beta testers for one, you can use this forum.
21 Topics
57 Posts
Last post on Wed Nov 12, 2008 3:12 am 


Hints and Tips
Stuck? If so, then you've come to the right place for a gentle nudge onward.
5 Topics
24 Posts
Last post on Fri Nov 14, 2008 6:47 pm 


Game Reviews
Liked a game, or hated it? Share your opinions with others!
114 Topics
384 Posts
Last post on Tue Aug 05, 2008 4:16 pm 


Game Discussion
Discussion on playing IF and on specific games.
31 Topics
227 Posts
Last post on Sat Nov 08, 2008 10:25 am 


Competitions
General discussion relating to the IF community's competitions, and competition announcements.
45 Topics
375 Posts
Last post on Tue Nov 04, 2008 1:16 pm 


IFComp 2008 Game Discussion
Discussion of the IFComp 2008 games is welcome here. Please keep spoilers out of the subject lines, and be courteous when posting spoilers in the message bodies. Opinions are fine in messages, but please don't post topic headers that might force an opinion onto others who haven't played the game yet (at least during the judging period). Thanks.
42 Topics
214 Posts
Last post on Thu Nov 20, 2008 9:28 am 


Getting Started with IF Authoring
This is an area for people who are just getting into authoring Interactive Fiction, or wish to learn more about what it takes to author IF.
19 Topics
121 Posts
Last post on Fri Sep 12, 2008 11:35 am 


Inform Development
Questions and discussion relating to authoring IF using Inform.
90 Topics
392 Posts
Last post on Fri Nov 21, 2008 11:13 am 


TADS Development
Questions and discussion relating to authoring IF using TADS.
11 Topics
49 Posts
Last post on Mon Sep 15, 2008 9:41 am 

Hugo Development
Questions and discussion relating to authoring IF using Hugo.
6 Topics
25 Posts
Last post on Mon Dec 24, 2007 1:01 pm 


ADRIFT Development
Questions and discussion relating to authoring IF using ADRIFT.
5 Topics
41 Posts
Last post on Mon Oct 01, 2007 1:55 pm 


ALAN Development
Questions and discussion relating to authoring IF using ALAN.
1 Topics
3 Posts
Last post on Sun Oct 01, 2006 8:19 am 


Other Development Systems
Questions and discussion relating to authoring IF using any other IF Development System.
7 Topics
27 Posts
Last post on Sat Oct 25, 2008 11:28 am 


Looking for Collaborators
Here you can look for collaborators on a project, be they writers, designers or programmers.
6 Topics
21 Posts
Last post on Fri Nov 21, 2008 10:12 am 


Community Announcements
Announcements from the administration of the IF Forum.
6 Topics
63 Posts
Last post on Sun Oct 05, 2008 12:49 pm 

Feedback
Here you may post feedback on these forums to the management.
15 Topics
75 Posts
Last post on Fri Nov 21, 2008 2:42 pm 

 [/quote]



So based on number of topics and activity, and following on Merk's idea about the Other subforum, I think we could trim the forum down like this:
[quote]
General and Off-Topic Talk


Game Announcements and Beta Testing
If you've completed a game or wish to get Beta testers for one, you can use this forum.


Hints and Tips
Stuck? If so, then you've come to the right place for a gentle nudge onward.


Game Discussion and Reviews
Discussion on playing IF and on specific games.


Competitions
General discussion relating to the IF community's competitions, and competition announcements.


IFComp 2008 Game Discussion
Discussion of the IFComp 2008 games is welcome here. Please keep spoilers out of the subject lines, and be courteous when posting spoilers in the message bodies. Opinions are fine in messages, but please don't post topic headers that might force an opinion onto others who haven't played the game yet (at least during the judging period). Thanks.


Getting Started with IF Authoring and Playing
This is an area for people who are just getting into  Interactive Fiction, or wish to learn more about what it takes to author IF.


Game Design
For questions not related to implementation in a specific IF language


Inform Authoring Questions and Discussion


TADS Authoring Questions and Discussion


Other Development Systems (ALAN, ADRIFT, Hugo, etc.)
Questions and discussion relating to authoring IF using any other IF Development System.


Looking for Collaborators
Here you can look for collaborators on a project, be they writers, designers or programmers.


Forum Announcements and Feedback
[/quote]

Basically going from 18 subforums to 13. Personally I'd combine hints and tips into Game Discussion but I can see the reasons for keeping spoilers completely separate; anyway I think there are benefits to fewer subforums, but there would be some work involved obviously -- moving about 60 threads, deleting six subforums, and adding one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=527&start=0#p2895
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Suggestion for a new board
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-11-21 20:51:15

Firstly, I agree that a board for general IF authorship (craft/theory) discussions would be a good thing to have.

Secondly, it does seem that rearranging the boards would be a good idea, and I think George's scheme sounds sensible. Certainly the number of development-system-specific boards can be reduced: Adrift has its own message boards, so it seems unnecessary to have one here, and the only person I can think of who uses Alan is Anssi Räisänen. I guess Hugo is used little enough these days to be relegated to "other" status as well, though it's sad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=526&start=0#p2896
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Oh Mercy. Player "makes" something formerly nonexistent?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-11-21 21:09:47

After looking all this over, I see that Mike's code is more versatile and more correct.

But for this game I do consider using Emerald's, only because the player is going to make one thing, from one material, and call it by one name. Also, this game is a Christmas present to my husband [emote]:)[/emote] , and quicker might be better this round. If I get done early I'll go back and improve things that could have been done better.

Question, though, if I use Emerald's way: How do I handle the attempted making of non-hats?

This code:

[code]Carry out weaving "hat":
 If the player is carrying the fibers
  Begin;
   say "You weave the fibers into a crude hat. It looks terrible, but it's serviceable.";
   remove fibers from play;
   move hat to player;
  Otherwise;
   say "You don't have anything to weave with.";
 End if. 

Carry out weaving:
   say "You don't know how to make that.".[/code]

Causes me to get both messages after weaving the hat. Switching the order, using "check", and other such things seems to either get me both messages or only the latter.

[Edited to remove a bad syntax example, which it turns out didn't have much to do with my problem]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=526&start=0#p2897
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Oh Mercy. Player "makes" something formerly nonexistent?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-11-21 22:35:02

When an action is being run, all the applicable check and carry out rules run in order. The reason you get both messages is because both rules [i]should[/i] fire when you type "weave hat". "Carry out weaving 'hat'" fires when the topic understood is "hat" and "carry out weaving" fires whenever the action is "weaving" (regardless of topic).

Actually, the example you edited out is closer to correct, but has a few problems. First, the variable the topic is put into is called "topic understood" (not "topic"). Second, since the topic understood is a snippet, you have to use "matches" to compare it to quoted material. Third, if you want to have a check rule which ends the action, you end it with "instead." Fixing those leaves you with:[code]Check weaving:
	if the topic understood does not match "hat",
  		say "You don't know how to weave that." instead.[/code] ... which works, but still has a slight problem. You see, when working with topics,  Inform matches the snippet exactly. It makes no assumptions about articles, etc. like it would with an object. In other words, with the code above, coupled with your "Carry out weaving "hat":" rule, you end up with this output:[quote]>weave hat
You don't have anything to weave with.

>weave a hat
You don't know how to weave that.

>weave the hat
You don't know how to weave that.[/quote]This can be fixed by using a text substitution, as Emerald suggested up-thread. This leaves you with something like:[code]Understand "hat/cap" and "a/the hat/cap" as "[hat-names]".

Check weaving:
if the topic understood does not match "[hat-names]",
  say "You don't know how to weave that." instead.

Carry out weaving "[hat-names]":
...[/code]
Edit: Strictly speaking, you don't have to use "matches" when dealing with snippets; you could also use "includes" (see ch. 17.31).  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=527&start=0#p2898
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Suggestion for a new board
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2008-11-22 14:41:15

Thirded (or fourthed?)

While we're talking about pruning, would it be so terrible to merge the Hints and Tips, Game Discussion and Reviews forums (taking it one step further than George does above)?  As long as each thread is well-titled, I don't see that anyone would stumble onto anything they didn't want to.  It all seems pretty much like 'discussion' to me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=528&start=0#p2899
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's IFComp 2008 Reviews
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-11-22 16:40:37

My reviews are now compiled and up at my website:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/ifcomp08.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/ifcomp08.shtml</a>

In the next few days (and maybe during other board restructuring that has been suggested), I'll move topics from here and hide the IFComp board until next year. So, it might be a good idea to update links or bookmarks to my reviews at the website above, since when the posts are moved existing links will break.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=0#p2900
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: ArchdukeJames / DateTime: 2008-11-22 22:16:33

Hi there,

I'm newly registered to the board and all ready I have a problem. How presumputous, right? 

Anyway, I need help figuring out how I can do six things for a puzzle line in my text adventure.

How can I have a scene trigger the moving of a character? When I put in this:

[code]Move player to Dank Cellar.[/code]

I get: 

[code]Problem. You wrote 'Move player to Dank Cellar'  : but I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with, so I am ignoring this sentence altogether.
[/code]

Dank cellar is all ready defined as a room and the manual says: 

[code] 8.9. Moving the player 


The player is a thing, too, and can also be moved, which has the effect of instantaneous transportation, without the need for a suitable map connection to the new location. For instance: 

move the player to the Bodleian Library [/code]

So I don't know what is wrong.

Second, how might I code being able to use a cup to capture a fly? 

Third, how might I code a cat so that when the fly is released from the cup, it becomes distracted, and therefore takable by means of throwing a bag ontop of it? In essence: Putting the cat in the bag. But without allowing that to be used until he is in a state of distraction from the fly?

How might I code the ability to drop an object (the cat in the bag) down a toilet connected to a sewer? Would I code the toilet as a door? But I don't want the player to be able to go down it. 

How might I conceal a person in a room (a ghost) until as such time as a dead cat is used to see him and speak with him?

How might I have the ghost react differently based on what the player is wearing? I want him to give out different "quests" depending on whether I am wearing a different outfit. If no outfit is worn (the player's normal clothes), I want the ghost to kill the player. 

I'm quite new to authoring in Inform 7and if I am missing something in the manual just tell me the area in which it is located and I'll pursue it there. Many thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=526&start=0#p2901
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Oh Mercy. Player "makes" something formerly nonexistent?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-11-22 22:23:28

Ergh! What am I doing wrong?

[code]Weaving is an action applying to one topic. 
Understand "weave [text]" as weaving. 

Understand "hat/a hat/the hat/straw hat/a straw hat/the straw hat/fiber hat/a fiber hat/the fiber hat" as "[hat-names]".

Carry out weaving "[hat-names]":
If the player is carrying the fibers
  Begin;
   say "You weave the fibers into a crude hat. It looks terrible, but it's serviceable.";
   remove fibers from play;
   move hat to player;
  Otherwise;
   say "You don't have anything to weave with.";
End if. 

Check weaving:
if the topic understood does not match "[hat-names]",
  say "You don't know how to weave that." instead.[/code]

This gets me:
[code]
>weave hat
You don't know how to weave that.

>weave a hat
You don't know how to weave that.

>weave sdlkfjs
You don't know how to weave that.

>take fibers
Taken.

>weave hat
You don't know how to weave that.

>weave straw hat
You don't know how to weave that.[/code]

Same result if I swap the positions of carry out and check, or if I use "include" instead of "match."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=526&start=0#p2902
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Oh Mercy. Player "makes" something formerly nonexistent?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-11-23 00:13:00

It's this line:
[code]Understand "hat/a hat/the hat/straw hat/a straw hat/the straw hat/fiber hat/a fiber hat/the fiber hat" as "[hat-names]".[/code]

The slash can only be used to separate alternative words, not alternative phrases. If you do it this way it should work:
[code]Understand "hat" or "a/the hat" or "straw/fiber hat" or "a/the straw/fiber hat" as "[hat-names]".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=0#p2903
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-11-23 01:16:52

[quote="ArchdukeJames"]I'm newly registered to the board and all ready I have a problem.[/quote]
That's what we're here for! Well... one of the things.

[quote="ArchdukeJames"]How can I have a scene trigger the moving of a character? When I put in this:

[code]Move player to Dank Cellar.[/code]

I get: 

[code]Problem. You wrote 'Move player to Dank Cellar'  : but I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with, so I am ignoring this sentence altogether.
[/code][/quote]
It sounds like you're trying to use "Move player to Dank Cellar" outside of a rule. All commands like "move player to Dank Cellar" have to be part of rules or phrases; otherwise Inform doesn't know when to use them. This should work (changing "Your Scene" to the actual name of the scene):
[code]When Your Scene begins:
	Move player to Dank Cellar.[/code]

Section 10.2 of the manual shows how to use "When Scene begins" and "When Scene ends" rules.

With the other questions, more details would help us help you. Maybe post sample transcripts, showing exactly what you would like to see happen. Some quick ideas:

[quote="ArchdukeJames"]How might I code the ability to drop an object (the cat in the bag) down a toilet connected to a sewer? Would I code the toilet as a door? But I don't want the player to be able to go down it.[/quote]
If you don't want the player to go down the toilet, then there's no reason to make it a door. I would make it an ordinary thing and catch attempts to put things in it with a couple of Instead rules, like so:

[code]Instead of inserting something into the toilet:
	say "You don't want to lose that right now."

Instead of inserting the bag into the toilet when the cat is in the bag:
	say "You drop the bag into the toilet and flush. Bag and cat disappear into the depths of the sewers.";
	move the cat to Sewer;
	remove the bag from play.[/code]

[quote="ArchdukeJames"]How might I conceal a person in a room (a ghost) until as such time as a dead cat is used to see him and speak with him?[/quote]

Is there any particular reason to have the ghost in the room but hidden? If not, I would start him off-stage (just put "The ghost is a man." and don't say where he is) and then use "move the ghost to Dank Cellar" (or whichever room) to make him "appear" when the player uses the dead cat.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=0#p2904
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: ArchdukeJames / DateTime: 2008-11-23 03:32:57

Emerald:

Many, many thanks for your help! The scene seems to work now for the move. Is there anyway to include the first scene's room description, though? I'd like for the player to be able to read what the description of the room is like, even if the intro won't have one stay there very long (until the end of the intro's text). 

[quote]With the other questions, more details would help us help you. Maybe post sample transcripts, showing exactly what you would like to see happen. Some quick ideas:[/quote]

Sounds good. I'll try to give you examples of each. I'll post that in my next post in about 10 minutes. [emote]:)[/emote]  

As to the toilet-code, thanks! I just inserted that. Running the game to see if it is okay. It is, though now I hvae to make the cat-in-the-bag. 

[quote]Is there any particular reason to have the ghost in the room but hidden? If not, I would start him off-stage (just put "The ghost is a man." and don't say where he is) and then use "move the ghost to Dank Cellar" (or whichever room) to make him "appear" when the player uses the dead cat.[/quote]

I want the player to have to use the dead cat in order to see him. It's an old exorcist's ritual. 

Thanks so much again. Expect the test code in a moment.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=0#p2905
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: ArchdukeJames / DateTime: 2008-11-23 03:50:40

[quote]Second, how might I code being able to use a cup to capture a fly?[/quote]

I have all ready coded a cup to be in a cupboard in a servant's kitchen. Elsehwere, a fly will be found. Hmm, let's say the fly is buzzing around...the Servant Privy (because it smells). 

So I'd have something like:

[code]The fly is a person in the Servant Privy.

Instead of taking the fly, say "You can't take the fly with [object]". 

Instead of taking the fly with the cup say, "You capture the fly in the cup"; move the fly to cup.
[/code]

Now when I put the above in, I get these errors:

[code]Problem. You wrote 'Instead of taking the fly with the cup say, "You capture the fly in the cup"'  : but I can't find a verb that I know how to deal with, so can't do anything with this sentence. It looks as if it might be a rule definition, but if so then it is lacking the necessary colon (or comma). The punctuation style for rules is 'Rule conditions: do this; do that; do some more.' Perhaps you used a full stop instead of the colon?


Problem. You wrote 'move the fly to cup'  : but I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with, so I am ignoring this sentence altogether.
[/code]


Onto the next question:

[quote]Third, how might I code a cat so that when the fly is released from the cup, it becomes distracted, and therefore takable by means of throwing a bag ontop of it? In essence: Putting the cat in the bag. But without allowing that to be used until he is in a state of distraction from the fly?[/quote]

I want there to be a cat which is untakable unless it is distracted, therefore letting you sneak up and put it in a bag. The distraction would be the release of the fly, hwich would make the cat jump off the chair and go after it, therefore allowing you a chance to snag him in the bag. If you tried to take him, he would run off otherwise. 

Here's the code so far:

[code]The Lord's Room is a room.

The Lord's room is in the third floor.

There is a richly apholstered chair in the Lord's Room. The richly apholstered chair is supporter.

A cat is a person in the Lord's room.

The cat is on the richly apholstered chair.[/code]

ALl that code apparently works.

Basically, I have no idea what to do after that.

[quote]How might I have the ghost react differently based on what the player is wearing? I want him to give out different "quests" depending on whether I am wearing a different outfit. If no outfit is worn (the player's normal clothes), I want the ghost to kill the player.[/quote]

Basically, there are three outfits in the game you can find. The servant's, the lord's, and the lady's. I want the ghost (who is the ghost of the Lord's steward) to speak to you as if you are those people depending on what you are wearing. But if not, I want him to kill you as an intruder. 

How might I write that at all? Also, would his appearance with the dead cat being used in his room be made via a scene? Or what? I am also having problems coding that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=0#p2906
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: ArchdukeJames / DateTime: 2008-11-23 03:54:14

To clarify, this is my puzzle line so far:

Get cup from cupboard in Servant Kitchen. (coded)

Use cup to capture fly in Servant Privy.

Get bag from somewhere (I haven't decided yet).

Release the fly in the Lord's Room to distract cat.

Use bag to take cat.

Drop the cat in the bag down the toilet. (coded)

Go to sewer and watch a scene where the cat gets out of the bag and kills a giant rat, which also kills the cat. (The giant rat kills the player otherwise). (Might need a bit of help with this but I haven't tackled it yet).

Take the rat-gnawed key from rat's nest. (coded)

Take the dead cat. 

Use the rat-gnawed key to open the library door. (Coded)

Read "Dr. Satan Dracula's "Summa Necromantica" to learn to use a dead cat to see ghosts. (Going to code it momentarily).

Use dead cat in Steward's Room after you get the Servant (coded), Lord, or Lady outfit and wear it.

Speak to Steward as either of those people.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=0#p2907
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-11-23 07:40:51

Hi!
[quote]Use cup to capture fly in Servant Privy.
...
Release the fly in the Lord's Room to distract cat.
Use bag to take cat.
[/quote]You could create a new "catching it with action":[code]Catching it with is an action applying to one thing and one carried thing.

Understand "catch [thing] with/using [something preferably held]" as catching it with.
Understand "take [thing] with/using [something preferably held]" as catching it with.
Understand "get [thing] with/using [something preferably held]" as catching it with.
Understand "use [something preferably held] to catch/take/get [thing]" as catching it with (with nouns reversed).

Check catching it with (this is the only catch animals rule):
	unless the noun is an animal, try inserting the noun into the second noun instead.

Check catching it with (this is the can only catch with bag or cup rule):
	unless the second noun is the cup or the second noun is the bag, say "You can't catch [the noun] with [the second noun]." instead.

Check catching the cat with:
	unless the cat is distracted, say "[The noun] keeps eluding you. If only you could distract it with something." instead.

Carry out catching it with:
	now the second noun contains the noun.

Report catching it with:
	say "You capture [the noun] with [the second noun]."

Instead of catching the fly with the bag:
	say "You wave the bag around, but it's so bulky, you miss the fly every time."[/code]Then you'll probably want to create a "releasing" action. If not, you'll need to adjust the taking rules to allow taking animals (normally blocked) for the situations when they're in containers -- otherwise, the player won't be able to get them out. I'll leave that to you.  [emote]:)[/emote] Either way, you probably want to add something like:[code]After dropping the cup:
	if the fly is in the cup:
		now the fly is in the location;
		say "As soon as you put the cup down, the fly escapes.".[/code](Note that if you decide to allow the fly to be caught with other containers, you'll need to adjust the above accordingly.) Then you could add a "distracted" property to the cat, [i]but[/i], if you only want it to be distracted with the fly, you could skip the property and just define a conditional "decide" phrase along with an every turn rule to describe the cat when distracted:[code]To decide if the cat is distracted:
	if the fly is in the holder of the cat, decide yes;
	otherwise decide no.

Every turn when the cat is in the location and the cat is distracted: say "The cat seems preoccupied with the fly.".[/code]If you add all that to this sample scenario:[code]The cup is an open unopenable container. The bag is an open openable opaque container. The player carries the bag.

The lab is a room. The cup is in the lab. The fly is an animal in the lab.
The Back is north of the lab. The cat is an animal in the Back. 

test me with "get fly / catch fly / take fly with cup / i / n / catch cat / bag / drop cup / use bag to get cat / i".[/code]... you get this output:[quote]Lab
You can see a cup (empty) and a fly here.

>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] get fly
I don't suppose the fly would care for that.

>[2] catch fly
(with the bag)
You wave the bag around, but it's so bulky, you miss the fly every time.

>[3] take fly with cup
(first taking the cup)
You capture the fly with the cup.

>[4] i
You are carrying:
  a cup
    a fly
  a bag (open but empty)

>[5] n

Back
You can see a cat here.

>[6] catch cat
What do you want to catch the cat with?

>[7] bag
The cat keeps eluding you. If only you could distract it with something.

>[8] drop cup
As soon as you put the cup down, the fly escapes.

The cat seems preoccupied with the fly.

>[9] use bag to get cat
You capture the cat with the bag.

>[10] i
You are carrying:
  a bag (open)
    a cat[/quote]I don't now how that will all work in conjunction with the rest of your puzzles, but hopefully, it's a start.

Edit: Note that the above quoted output doesn't display the indents on the inventory lists properly, but in the game itself, things look the way they should.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=526&start=0#p2908
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Oh Mercy. Player "makes" something formerly nonexistent?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-11-23 08:11:09

Yay, it works! I even briefly thought about the fact that I didn't fully understand the structure in that statement, and then promptly forgot.

Thanks so much, you two know everything!

"Make" is cool. It would be fun to use in another game, with the other code, where a number of things could be made from a number of items.

Thanks again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=0#p2909
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: ArchdukeJames / DateTime: 2008-11-23 08:42:54

In a word: you are the man. Thanks! I am going to try that out immediatly.

Both of you have been amazingly helpful so far. My project is really coming along thanks to your insight.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=0#p2911
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: ArchdukeJames / DateTime: 2008-11-23 10:05:33

Another problem! Egads!

[code]A match is kind of thing. Understand the lit property as describing a match. Understand "lighted" or "flaming" or "burning" as lit. Understand "extinguished" as unlit. 

Before printing the name of a lit match, say "flaming ". 
Before printing the name of an an unlit match, say "extinguished ". 

The match is a switched off device.

Carry out switching on match: now the location is lit.

Carry out switching off match: [if the room is dark] say "Darkness cloaks the room."; [if the room is lit] say "The acrid smell of an extinguished match fills your nostrils."

The player carries the match.  "A match originally hidden in Arverus' hair."[/code]

This string of code works (the match lights up a dark room) but it has several bugs that are annoying and don't come up as problems. 

First, the match's description doesn't fit the description I gave of it "A match originally hidden in Arverus' hair".

Second, the match lists as "extinguished" regardless of whether it is on or not. 

Third, I don't seem to be able to say "light the match" (or strike the match) instead of "switch match on".

Fourth, when I extinguish the match, it doesn't follow my instructions of changing what it says depending on the condition of the room. 

Also, how might one use the match to light something else? Considering a match has an extremely limited life, I want Arverus to be able to light something on fire to keep his light burning more. Eventually, he'll have a lantern.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=0#p2912
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-11-23 10:52:19

A few things here:[quote]The player carries the match.  "A match originally hidden in Arverus' hair."[/quote]First, if you put a quoted description after an object's definition, you are setting the initial appearance (the description printed the first time a player sees something in a room, which disappears after it is handled) not the description (the one printed after the command "examine"). (See ch 3.11.) Second, the description is applied to the [i]subject[/i] of the previous sentence, which in this case is the player, not the match. This can be verified by typing "showme yourself" at the command prompt. Change the above to:[code]The player carries the match. The description of the match is "A match originally hidden in Arverus['] hair."[/code]or,[code]The match is carried by the player. The description is "A match originally hidden in Arverus['] hair."[/code]Also note, apostrophes in quoted material are expanded out to quotes. If you want an apostrophe, use [']."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=0#p2913
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: ArchdukeJames / DateTime: 2008-11-23 18:52:41

"The match is carried by the player. The description is "A match originally hidden in Arverus['] hair.""

Thank you! I'll put that in right away. [emote]:)[/emote] 

I forgot about the apostrophe thing. I read that command, but didn't see a use for it yet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=10#p2915
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: ArchdukeJames / DateTime: 2008-11-23 19:24:10

Apparently, the cat is not distracting....

Okay, here, check this out:

[code]Chapter The Lord's Room

The Lord's Room is a room.

The Lord's room is in the third floor.

There is a richly apholstered chair in the Lord's Room. The richly apholstered chair is supporter.

A cat is an animal.

The cat is on the richly apholstered chair.

After dropping the cup:
      	if the fly is in the cup:
		now the fly is in the location;
		say "As soon as you put the cup down, the fly escapes.".

To decide if the cat is distracted:
	   	if the fly is in the holder of the cat, decide yes;
   		otherwise decide no.

Every turn when the cat is in the location and the cat is distracted: say "The cat seems preoccupied with the fly.".[/code]

I think the problem is in here:

[code]To decide if the cat is distracted:
	   	if the fly is in the holder of the cat, decide yes;
   		otherwise decide no.[/code]

I am going to mess around with it.

Okay, I changed it to: 

[code]To decide if the cat is distracted:
	   	if the fly is in the location of the cat, decide yes;
   		otherwise decide no.[/code]

But the problem is: The cat is on the apholstered chair. So being in the lord's room doesn't count as the location of the cat and I can't drop the cup on the chair (which would be awkward anyway). 

Hmmm. Perhaps if I make a command that moves the cat from the chair if the fly is in the lord's room?

But how would I do that? My initial attempt doesn't seem proper so far. Which is:

[code]If the fly is in the lord's room move the cat to Lord's room.[/code]

Which doesn't work, but doesn't produce an error.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=10#p2916
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-11-23 19:36:30

It didn't occur to me that you'd have the cat on a chair. "Location" is the room, not the chair, but you have to account for the fact that if the fly is in a cup in that room, it'll be in the same location. Try this (untested):[code]To decide if the cat is distracted:
     if the holder of the fly is the location of the cat, decide yes;
     otherwise decide no.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=10#p2917
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-11-23 19:47:00

[quote="ArchdukeJames"][quote]Is there any particular reason to have the ghost in the room but hidden? If not, I would start him off-stage (just put "The ghost is a man." and don't say where he is) and then use "move the ghost to Dank Cellar" (or whichever room) to make him "appear" when the player uses the dead cat.[/quote]

I want the player to have to use the dead cat in order to see him. It's an old exorcist's ritual.[/quote]
What I mean is, can the player interact with the ghost in any way [i]before[/i] using the cat? If not, I'd code it something like this:
[code]The ghost is a man.

Check using the cat in Place when the ghost is in Place:
	say "You've already made the ghost visible." instead.

Check using the cat when the cat is alive:
	say "That won't work. You need a dead cat." instead.

Check using the cat when not in Place:
	say "Nothing happens. Apparently there are no ghosts in this room." instead.

Carry out using the cat:
	move the ghost to Place.

Report using the cat:
	say "The ghost appears!"[/code]
You'll need to change "Place" to whichever room the ghost appears in, and "using the cat" to whichever action the player needs to take to use the cat. If it's an action that already exists, this example might need tweaking.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=10#p2918
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: ArchdukeJames / DateTime: 2008-11-23 19:48:26

It distracts the cat! BUT...

It doesn't trigger saying the cat is distracted?

Which would be troublesome, as the player needs to know if he is distracted or not.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=10#p2919
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-11-23 19:51:48

The new decide phrase seems to work fine, but you'll need to adjust the every turn rule. The way it stands now, the cat is properly distracted, but the every turn rule doesn't fire, so the player isn't clued in. Change it to this:[code]Every turn when the cat is visible and the cat is distracted:
	unless the cat is in the bag, say "The cat seems preoccupied with the fly.".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=10#p2920
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: ArchdukeJames / DateTime: 2008-11-23 19:57:47

Perfect! The cat now appears as distracted obviously to the player, cluing him on what to do next.

Now, to figure out how to make the sewer work right. If I have problems with that, I'll ask. But so far, you guys have been pretty damn helpful. [emote]:)[/emote]

Thanks Skinny Mike. You make me feel all tingly inside. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=10#p2921
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: ArchdukeJames / DateTime: 2008-11-23 20:09:03

Okay, now I am having a bit of trouble with the sewer.

What I want to have happen in the sewer is this:

If you enter into the sewer without a light, a giant rat kills you. 

IF you enter into the sewer with a light, the giant rat kills you (but with a different message). 

IF you enter into the sewer with a light and the cat has been flushed down the toilet in the hat (I changed it from a bag to a hat, because of 'the cat in the hat' LOL), the giant rat and cat kill eachother, allowing you to take a rat-gnawed key from the rat's nest. Also, this allows you to pick up both a dead rat corpse and a dead cat corpse.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=10#p2922
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-11-23 20:11:03

Haven't heard that one in a while...   [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=10#p2923
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: ArchdukeJames / DateTime: 2008-11-23 20:29:12

Basically, I am thinking of making the command something like:

[code]If the player is in the sewer: 
  	[if dark]"The gleaming eyes of a giant rat peer from the out the darkness. Scuttling your way with startling speed, it launches itself upon you and gnaws a gaping hole into your neck. In death, your body is eaten over the course of several weeks.""; end game
   	[if lit]"A giant rat kills you"; end game
	[if lit and cat is in the sewer]"the giant rat and cat fight eachother to the death"; remove giant rat and cat from play; move rat corpse and cat corpse to sewer.
[/code]

When I do this, hwoever, it doesn't seem to work right...

It says:

[code]Problem. You wrote 'If the player is in the sewer'  : but the punctuation here ':' makes me think this should be a definition of a phrase and it doesn't begin as it should, with either 'To' (e.g. 'To flood the riverplain:'), 'Definition:', a name for a rule (e.g. 'This is the devilishly cunning rule:'), 'At' plus a time (e.g. 'At 11:12 PM:' or 'At the time when the clock chimes') or the name of a rulebook followed by some description of the current action (e.g. 'Instead of taking something:').
[/code]

What am I doing wrong with these sorts of commands?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=511&start=0#p2924
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Magic
User: Aquillion / DateTime: 2008-11-23 21:09:24

[quote="Merk"][quote]It’s gimmicky but slick, and not something I’ve seen in IF before.[/quote]
Hmm. Seems it's being pointed out that it [i]has[/i] been done before, and with better results. Well, I did say that *I* hadn't seen it before. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
If you mean the magic used, it's vaguely reminiscent of the magic in [i]Savoir Faire[/i], although in that game you link the fate of objects or exchange properties, rather than completely changing the objects themselves.

I had three big problems with this game, though.  The first you mentioned (there's just not enough sense of what your goals are and what you're supposed to be doing.)  Even the fact that the rabbits are the 'villains' isn't really adequately established -- the first rabbit that attacks you is set up as somewhat justified, so my reaction was to be glad I'd gotten off that lightly.

The second problem is that it's often not clear how your magic works -- for instance, although it requires that two things be similar, that similarity only goes one way (in the way the game's designer though of).  Trying to change things in the opposite direction never works, even though you'd expect it to.  And in general it's hard to figure out exactly what you're looking for in terms of similarities.

The third problem is that there's not really any chance to play with the game's magic system -- games like [i]Enchanter[/i] gave you large numbers of places where you could fiddle with things magically right off the bat, so you could get a sense for how your spells work.  The absence of that here really detracted from the sense of 'magic.'  I was never even quite sure if my discovery of an actual magic spell was meant to be something fantastic or mundane -- [i]did[/i] I have any real magical abilities before that?  Was this a world where magic was commonplace, or was this something strange and fantastic?  I didn't get enough reaction from my character to know.

The setting did remind me a bit of [i]Bedknobs and Broomsticks[/i], which is a plus, I guess.  But I couldn't tell if that was in my head or if it really was supposed to be that sort of setting.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=10#p2925
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: ArchdukeJames / DateTime: 2008-11-23 23:27:55

I tried more things. None have worked so far adn I am getting stumped.

[code]If the player is in the sewer:
  	if the sewer is dark: 
	 	"The gleaming eyes of a giant rat peer from the out the darkness. Scuttling your way with startling speed, it launches itself upon you and gnaws a gaping hole into your neck. In death, your body is eaten over the course of several weeks.""; end game;[end if]
            otherwise if the sewer is lit: 
		    "A giant rat kills you"; end game;[end if]
            otherwise if the sewer is lit and the cat is in the sewer: 
		   "the giant rat and cat fight eachother to the death"; remove giant rat and the cat from play; move rat corpse and cat corpse to sewer.[end if][end if][/code]

This gives me:

[code]Problem. The rule or phrase definition 'If the player is in the sewer'   seems to use both ways of grouping phrases together into 'if', 'repeat' and 'while' blocks at once. Inform allows two alternative forms, but they cannot be mixed in the same definition. 

One way is to end the 'if', 'repeat' or 'while' phrases with a 'begin', and then to match that with an 'end if' or similar. ('Otherwise' or 'otherwise if' clauses are phrases like any other, and end with semicolons in this case.) You use this begin/end form here, for instance - 'end game'  . 

The other way is to end with a colon ':' and then indent the subsequent phrases underneath, using tabs. (Note that any 'otherwise' or 'otherwise if' clauses also have to end with colons in this case.) You use this indented form here - 'if the sewer is dark'  .[/code]

I am thinking of just making a Rat Attack scene that triggers when you enter in the sewer. Would that work? Or what am I doing wrong?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=20#p2926
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-11-24 01:14:51

Like "move player to Dank Cellar", "if the player is in the sewer" needs to be inside a rule or phrase; otherwise Inform doesn't know what to do with it. You could create a Rat Attack scene and put your code in a "When Rat Attack begins" rule, but in this case that would be overkill. Here's how I'd do it:
[code]Every turn when the player is in the Sewer and the giant rat is in the Sewer:
	if in darkness:
		say "The gleaming eyes of a giant rat peer from the out the darkness. Scuttling your way with startling speed, it launches itself upon you and gnaws a gaping hole into your neck. In death, your body is eaten over the course of several weeks.";
		end the game in death;
	otherwise if the cat is in the Sewer:
		say "The giant rat and cat fight each other to the death.";
		remove giant rat from play;
		remove cat from play;
		move rat corpse to Sewer;
		move cat corpse to Sewer;
	otherwise:
		say "A giant rat kills you.";
		end the game in death.[/code]
There are a few things to note here:
[list]
[*]"If the sewer is dark" will be true even the player is carrying a light; it tests whether the room itself is lit, not whether something is lighting the room. You need to use "if in darkness" instead.[/*:m]
[*]With your code, the giant rat will kill the player any time the Sewer is lit, whether or not the cat is in the Sewer. Putting the cat-and-rat-kill-each-other section before the rat-kills-player section fixes this.[/*:m]
[*]"End game" isn't a phrase Inform understands. You have to use "end the game in death", "end the game in victory", or "end the game saying "some text"'.[/*:m]
[*]You can't move more than one thing at once by saying "remove the giant rat and the cat from play" or "move rat corpse and cat corpse to sewer". You have to move them separately.[/*:m]
[*]"If" statements in square brackets, like "[if lit]", can only be used inside blocks of text, like "say "The fridge is [if the fridge is open]open[otherwise]closed."". Outside a block of text, anything in square brackets will be interpreted as a comment and ignored.[/*:m][/list:u]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=20#p2927
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: ArchdukeJames / DateTime: 2008-11-24 03:27:46

Emerald, you have saved my interactive fiction buttocks again. I will repay you one day in the delights of the flesh...

By which I mean, I will give you a cannibal feast at the source of the Congo.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=20#p2928
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: ArchdukeJames / DateTime: 2008-11-24 04:05:01

Okay, another wee problem:

In the beginning, my main character is thrown into a Dank Cellar to die by thirst in utter darkness. Little do they know, but he has a hidden match in his hair which permits him light (and therefore the ability to solve a puzzle to get out of the locked room). 

The problem, though: Is when I code the match, it doesn't apparently continue to light the way if I go into another room.

Now I used the torch in the manual and that seems okay, but it doesn't permit me to extinguish or light the torch (which I'd change to a match). How might I make the torch lightable? Do I make it into a device? When I made the match lightable as a device originally, it didn't work out.

Here are the two codes:

Torch from the manual:

[code]A torch is kind of thing. Understand the lit property as describing a torch. Understand "lighted" or "flaming" or "burning" as lit. Understand "extinguished" as unlit. A torch is usually lit. 


Before printing the name of a lit torch, say "flaming ". 
Before printing the name of an unlit torch, say "extinguished ". 

The player carries a torch.[/code]

My half-original code:

[code]A match is kind of device. Understand the lit property as describing a match.  Understand "lighted" or "flaming" or "burning" as lit. Understand  "extinguished" as unlit. 

Before printing the name of a lit match, say "flaming ". 
Before printing the name of an an unlit match, say "extinguished ". 

Carry out switching on match: now the location is not in darkness.

Carry out switching off match:
	if in darkness:
		say "Darkness cloaks  the room."
	otherwise:
		say "The acrid smell of an extinguished match fills  your nostrils."

A hidden match is carried by the player. A hidden match is a match. The hidden match is switched off. Hidden match is portable. The description is "A match originally hidden in Arverus ['] hair."[/code]

I get an error with this that says 

[code]The phrase or rule definition 'Carry out switching off match'   is written using the 'colon and indentation' syntax for its 'if's, 'repeat's and 'while's, where blocks of phrases grouped together are indented one tab step inward from the 'if ...:' or similar phrase to which they belong. But the phrase 'if in darkness'  , which ought to begin a block, is immediately followed by <no text> at the same or a lower indentation, so the block seems to be empty - this must mean there has been a mistake in indenting the phrases.[/code]




My original version didn't get an error but had the problem:

[code]A match is kind of device. Understand the lit property as describing a match. Understand "lighted" or "flaming" or "burning" as lit. Understand 

"extinguished" as unlit. 

Before printing the name of a lit match, say "flaming ". 
Before printing the name of an an unlit match, say "extinguished ". 

The match is a switched off device.

Carry out switching on match: now the location is lit.

Carry out switching off match: [if the room is dark] say "Darkness cloaks 

the room."; [otherwise] say "The acrid smell of an extinguished match fills 

your nostrils."

A hidden match is carried by the player. A hidden match is a match. Hidden 

match is portable. The description is "A match originally hidden in Arverus

['] hair."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=20#p2929
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-11-24 08:28:24

Haven't looked over your whole code, but this jumps out:[quote]Carry out switching on match: now the location is lit.
[/quote][i]Objects[/i] can be lit or unlit, [i]rooms[/i] can be lighted or dark. This is explained in ch 3.15, but can be more easily discovered by consulting the "kinds" page of the index tab. (In general, the index is an invaluable tool. There have been several posts, here and on raif, from authors including myself that indicate that using the index tabs leads to a quantum leap in understanding I7.)

The use of two different properties to describe what seems to be the same thing might seem like silly at first, but it has to do with the way Inform handles light. Rooms cast light inward, or down the "object tree" toward the player. Objects cast light outward, or up the tree. (If the player is in a [i]lighted[/i] room, but inside an opaque container, they are in darkness. If they carry a [i]lit[/i] flashlight and put it inside a transparent platic bag, they are in light.) 

To get back to your issue then, if you want the match to light a room, just cause the [i]match[/i] to be lit, and don't worry about making the room lighted -- that will happen automatically, provided the match is in proper position (i.e. not inside a closed, opaque container). So you [i]could[/i] change the above to:
[code]Carry out switching on match: now the match is lit.[/code]... but I wouldn't do that. Why mess with devices unless you really want the player to be able to "Turn on match?" Better to make a striking action (You've already got practice creating actions. [emote]:)[/emote] ) Then you could just:[code]Carry out striking the match: now the noun is lit.[/code]Hope that all makes sense.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=20#p2930
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: ArchdukeJames / DateTime: 2008-11-24 08:31:41

Thanks so much! I will go and code that in post haste. 

Also, thanks for the tip on the index. But how do you access it? When I click on it, everything remains blank.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=20#p2931
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-11-24 08:43:00

Oh yeah, this is a common question that I forgot to address. The index is designed to index the [i]current compiled[/i] project. It is created and/or updated every time you hit "Go" and the project compiles [i]successfully[/i]. This makes sense; you normally want to know the actions, objects, rules, etc. for the game you're working on right now, not some generic template game. The problem is, sometimes you need a generic game to get you started finding things. I still start every project with one room ("The lab is a room.") and hit "go" immediately before doing anything else. This gives me an index to work with.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=20#p2932
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: ArchdukeJames / DateTime: 2008-11-24 08:57:47

Many thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=527&start=0#p2933
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Suggestion for a new board
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-11-24 09:14:02

I'll try to make the changes later in the week, unless Rioshin gets to it first.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=20#p2934
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: ArchdukeJames / DateTime: 2008-11-24 09:39:03

I feel sexy.

VERY sexy.

[code]Striking is an action applying to one carried thing.

Understand "strike [thing]" as striking.
Understand "light [thing]" as striking.

Check striking (this is the only strike matches rule):
   unless the noun is a match, say "you can't strike [noun]"

Carry out striking:
   Carry out striking the match: now the match is lit.[/code]

Works!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=20#p2935
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: ArchdukeJames / DateTime: 2008-11-24 09:59:40

I made something better. This allows me to make all sorts of lightable things (lanterns, lamps, penises...wait, what?). Also, a sister command is "douse".

Both are provided here:

[code]Part Lighting Command

A lightable is a kind of thing.

Lighting is an action applying to one carried thing.
Understand "light [thing]" as lighting.
Understand "ignite [thing]" as lighting.
Understand "strike [thing]" as lighting.

Check lighting (this is the only light a lightable rule):
   unless the noun is a lightable, say "you can't light [noun]"

Carry out lighting:
   Carry out lighting the noun: now the noun is lit.

Part Dousing Command

Dousing is an action applying to one carried thing.
Understand "snuff [thing]" as dousing.
Understand "extinguish [thing]" as dousing.
Understand "douse [thing]" as dousing.

Check dousing (this is the only douse lightables rule):
   unless the noun is a lightable, say "you can't douse [noun]"

Carry out dousing:
   Carry out dousing the noun: now the noun is unlit.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=20#p2936
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: ArchdukeJames / DateTime: 2008-11-24 10:21:21

I am having a bit of problems with this command. 

The code has no problems, but it doesn't seem to work right. I think there is something I am overlooking, but I can't find it yet. 

[code]Part Second Sight Command

A makesghostsappear is a kind of thing.

Secondsighting is an action applying to things.
Understand "open the cat-corpse's eyes" as secondsighting.

Check secondsighting (this is the only makesghostsappear uses second-sight rule):
   unless the noun is a makesghostsappear, say "you cannot open [noun][apostrophe]s eyes"

Check secondsighting (this is the only time you can use second sighting is dropping the cat-corpse in the steward's room rule):
   unless the noun is in the Steward's Room, say "there is no ghosts to be seen."

Carry out secondsighting:
   Carry out secondsighting the noun: move the Steward's Ghost to the Steward's Room.[/code]

The problem: When I try to open the cat-corpse's eyes, it says "you must supply a noun" in the game window.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=30#p2937
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-11-24 11:08:35

Well, first off:[quote]Secondsighting is an action applying to things.
Understand "open the cat-corpse's eyes" as secondsighting.[/quote]The action definition and the grammar should (almost) always agree. (There are times when you can get around this with special rules for supplying a missing noun, but this isn't really one of those times.) The action you want applies to one thing. "One thing" in this context means "one thing at a time" -- even "taking" which can have multiple objects is defined as applying to one thing. So your gammar line should contain a noun text substitution in brackets, like [something] or [cat-corpse]. This almost works:[code]Secondsighting is an action applying to one thing.
Understand "open [something]'s eyes" as secondsighting.[/code]The problem is apostrophes in grammar statements tend to mess up the mechanism. Notice the output depending on whether or not I put a space before "'s":[quote]>open cat-corpse's eyes
I only understood you as far as wanting to open the cat-corpse.

>open cat-corpse 's eyes
>l
Steward's Room
You can see a Steward's Ghost and a cat-corpse here.[/quote]Also, you've got some redundant code in the carry out rule. I'm not even really sure why it compiles, but all you need is:[code]Carry out secondsighting:
	move the Steward's Ghost to the Steward's Room.[/code]I think I have an easier solution involving the opening action, but mess with that in the meantime and see if it helps.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=30#p2938
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-11-24 12:35:34

Okay, forget the opening action, let's just stick with your secondsighting action. Inform understands apostrophes best when the are refering to parts of what are called assemblies (see ch 4.5. Assemblies and body parts). This is when you've got a generic kind of thing -- like a body part -- which is a part of another kind of thing. Even if you only want the one corpse, you can make it a kind of thing, which always has a part which is another kind of thing (the eyes) and inform will properly understand "cat corpse's eyes":[code]A corpse is a kind of thing. The eyes are a kind of thing. The eyes are a part of every corpse.

The cat corpse is a corpse in the Steward's Room.
Understand "cat's eyes" as the cat corpse's eyes when the cat corpse is visible.[/code]Note that you need that last line because "cat corpse's eyes," "corpse's eyes," and even "eyes" are understood automatically, but not "cat's eyes."

Next, the secondsighting action:[code]Secondsighting is an action applying to one thing.
Understand "open [eyes]" as secondsighting.[/code]Since we use "[eyes]" in the grammar line, those are the only kinds of direct objects to the secondsighting action. You want to do it this way since you want still want "open [something]" to be able to open doors, etc. Note that this means you can leave out the check rule for the "makesghostsappear" kind of thing, since things that are not a kind of eyes will go to the open action and be rejected there if the noun is not openable. Finally:[code]Check secondsighting (this is the only time you can use second sighting is dropping the cat-corpse in the steward's room rule):
   unless the location is the Steward's Room, say "There are no ghosts to be seen."

Carry out secondsighting:
	move the Steward's Ghost to the Steward's Room.

Report secondsighting:
	say "The Steward's Ghost appears!"[/code]I think that does what you need.

Edit: Note that if you give corpses eyes, you'll probably want to give them to every person (including yourself). Players will find it odd as well as bad form if the only eyes in the whole game that can be examined or interacted with are the dead cat's. See ex.48 for an example involving noses.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=530&start=0#p2939
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Trading
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-11-24 18:20:20

I wrote this:

[code]The onlyroom is a room.
Mayuta is a person in the onlyroom.
Mayuta is carrying a scythe.
Understand "knife" as scythe.
There is a radio here. There is a doodad here. 

Trading is an action applying to one carried thing and one thing.
Understand "trade [thing] for [thing]" as trading.

Check trading (this is the whatever rule):
  Unless the first noun is the radio and the second noun is the scythe,
   say "Your trade offer was rejected" instead.[/code]

Which seems to me to be fairly parallel to the catching-the-cat action in the Inform Questions thread, but it doesn't work. Inform doesn't understand the unless condition.

Since it makes no sense to trade when no one is in the room, I'd also like to do something like 

[code]Check trading:
 If the player can not see a person
  say "There's no one here to trade with." instead.

Check trading:
 If the player can not see Mayuta
  say "Your trade offer was rejected." instead.[/code]

This doesn't work either -- inform says it doesn't understand the if statement. 

I also tried "cannot" instead of "can not" and "Unless the player can see Mayuta" to no avail.

Incidentally, can I have more than one "check" statement?

When I can get past this first set of errors, I'll add something like this:

[code]Carry out trading:
   say "You motion to Mayuta that you[apostrophe]d like to trade your radio for his knife. He smiles, nods in agreement, and you exchange the goods.";
   move radio to Mayuta;
   move scythe to the player.[/code]

Edited to add: just realized that I also have to check that Mayuta is carrying the scythe. Haven't thought that one out yet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=30#p2940
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: ArchdukeJames / DateTime: 2008-11-24 19:15:01

Dude. You are the man! Thank you so much.

I am going to apply that code ASAP.

One quick question: 

Why is this giving me an error?

[code]The description is "A curious compendium of four-pannelled comics. The problem being, of course, is that none of them are very funny. Bizarre - yes. Offensive - most certainly. Perplexing - to the extreme. Inane - of course. But funny? No! Are there seriously fans of this comedy? Truly, Dr[.] Satan Dracula was one odd duck of a scholar."[/code]

Problem. You wrote 'The description is "A curious compendium of four-panne [...] ula was one odd duck of a scholar."'  : but a substitution contains a '.', ':' or ';', which suggests that a close square bracket ']' may have gone astray.

But...there are no '.' ':' or ';' without brackets there....

I even tried doing:

[code]Holier than Thou Featuring Dr[.] Satan Dracula is a book. The description is "A curious compendium of four-pannelled comics. The problem being, of course, is that none of them are very funny. Bizarre [-] yes. Offensive [-] most certainly. Perplexing [-] to the extreme. Inane [-] of course. But funny? No! Are there seriously fans of this comedy? Truly, Dr[.] Satan Dracula was one odd duck of a scholar."[/code]

But to no avail.

Never mind! Fixed it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=530&start=0#p2941
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trading
User: ArchdukeJames / DateTime: 2008-11-24 19:18:44

Though I am fairly new at this, I will give this smoe thought and see if I can jury rig you an answer.

Especially as you mentioned a problem solved in my thread.

Give me a bit and I shall get back to you. [emote]:)[/emote] If succesful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=530&start=0#p2942
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trading
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-11-24 19:30:42

First thing:[quote]There is a radio here. There is a doodad here.[/quote]This is not correct syntax; it creates two items, one called "radio here" and another called "doodad here" and places them off stage. Try:[code]A radio and a doodad are in onlyroom.[/code]Next, there is no variable called "first noun." It's just "noun" and "second noun." Your other two check rules are just missing commas (or the word "then"). As in:[code]Check trading:
If the player can not see a person,
  say "There's no one here to trade with." instead.

Check trading:
If the player can not see Mayuta then say "Your trade offer was rejected." instead.[/code]Other than those little things, you seem to be doing fine [emote]:)[/emote] 

One tip: I've noticed that for me, when Inform doesn't understand a phrase I think it should (like an "if... then"), it almost always turns out to be a mistake in punctuation in the phrase itself, or the line [i]immediately preceding[/i] it. The next most common mistake for me is a misspelling of a variable name or action name. My personal fave is "Instead of examing" for "Instead of examining." [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=30#p2943
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-11-24 19:49:26

"[.]" and "[-]" are not valid text substitutions. The only reason I7 provides us with a built-in sub for the apostrophe is because authors need some way of using quotation marks. For example, if we want to print out:[quote]Smokey says, "Only you can prevent forest fires."[/quote]We have to have an easy way to put quotes inside of quotes without confusing inform. We could do this:[code]...
say "Smokey says, [quotation mark]Only you can prevent forest fires.[quotation mark]"[/code]... but since that's a common need, we're given the option of using apostrophes as a shortcut:[code]...
say "Smokey says, 'Only you can prevent forest fires.'"[/code]Of course, when you [i]actually need[/i] an apostrophe, we need something else, so we get to use either "[apostrophe]" or "[']". See point #4 in ch 5.14.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=530&start=0#p2944
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trading
User: ArchdukeJames / DateTime: 2008-11-24 23:39:29

Skinny Mike is all about the helpfulness.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=30#p2945
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: ArchdukeJames / DateTime: 2008-11-24 23:40:58

Thanks again! I figured that out through trial and error of changing things.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=30#p2946
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: ArchdukeJames / DateTime: 2008-11-25 00:02:19

Okay, now this is going to be a bit harder...

NOw that the ghost is all in the right place and such, I want the ghost to react to the player differently based on whether he is wearing a different outfit. Spread throughout the game will be provisionally three outfits. A servant's, a lord's, and a lady's. If the player is not wearing one of these three, the ghost will kill them. 

I am going to fiddle around and see if I can make this happen based off the rat attack thing. In fact, that might be the perfect basis for doing a code on this...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=30#p2947
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: ArchdukeJames / DateTime: 2008-11-25 00:32:13

[code]Every turn when the player is in the Steward's Room and the Steward's Ghost is in the Steward's Room:
      	if the player is not wearing the servant's uniform,  lord's clothes, or the lady's clothes:
		say "Get out intruder!";
		end the game in death;
      	otherwise if the player is wearing the servant's uniform:
		say "Oh, Buckley! There you are!";
      	otherwise if the player is wearing the lord's clothes:
		say "My lord!";
	otherwise if the player is wearing the lady's clothes:
		say "My lady!"[/code]

That is my code so far. The problem is:

[code]Problem. You wrote 'The first turn when the player is in the Steward's Room and the Steward's Ghost is in the Steward's Room'  : but the punctuation here ':' makes me think this should be a definition of a phrase and it doesn't begin as it should, with either 'To' (e.g. 'To flood the riverplain:'), 'Definition:', a name for a rule (e.g. 'This is the devilishly cunning rule:'), 'At' plus a time (e.g. 'At 11:12 PM:' or 'At the time when the clock chimes') or the name of a rulebook followed by some description of the current action (e.g. 'Instead of taking something:').[/code]

What should I put in place of the first line to make it work? I also want it to work every other time the player enters the room thenceforth, until all the items he'll request (the three main quests) are given to him. After which, I want to change his reactions to the quest after that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=30#p2948
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: ArchdukeJames / DateTime: 2008-11-25 00:51:13

I changed things around...but now I am getting some new errors.

[quote]Every turn when the player is in the Steward's Room and the Steward's Ghost is in the Steward's Room:
      	if the player is not wearing the servant's uniform,  lord's clothes, or the lady's clothes:
		say "Get out intruder!";
		end the game in death;
      	otherwise if the player is wearing the servant's uniform:
		say "Oh, Buckley! There you are!";
      	otherwise if the player is wearing the lord's clothes:
		say "My lord!";
	otherwise if the player is wearing the lady's clothes:
		say "My lady!"[/quote]

[code]In Part Third Floor, Chapter Steward's Room:


Problem. You wrote 'if the player is not wearing the servant's uniform, lord's clothes, or the lady's clothes begin'  : but this is a phrase which I don't recognise, possibly because it is one you meant to define but never got round to, or because the wording is wrong (see the Phrasebook section of the Index to check). Alternatively, it may be that the text immediately previous to this was a definition whose ending, normally a full stop, is missing?


Problem. 'otherwise if the player is wearing the servant's uniform'   makes sense only inside a 'if ... end if' block.


Problem. 'otherwise if the player is wearing the lord's clothes'   makes sense only inside a 'if ... end if' block.


Problem. 'otherwise if the player is wearing the lady's clothes'   makes sense only inside a 'if ... end if' block.[/code]

A bit more complicated than I hope. Where am I getting it wrong?

By the way: My code should be properly indented. In the game, it is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=30#p2949
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: ArchdukeJames / DateTime: 2008-11-25 01:42:52

Fixed it. [emote]:)[/emote]

This is succesful:

[code]Every turn when the player is in the Steward's Room and the Steward's Ghost is in the Steward's Room:
      	if the player is not wearing the servant's uniform or not wearing the  lord's clothes or not wearing the lady's clothes:
		say "Get out intruder!";
		end the game in death;
      	otherwise if the player is wearing the servant's uniform:
		say "Oh, Buckley! There you are!";
      	otherwise if the player is wearing the lord's clothes:
		say "My lord!";
	otherwise if the player is wearing the lady's clothes:
		say "My lady!"

The lady's clothes is a thing. The lady's clothes is wearable.

The lord's clothes is a thing. The lord's clothes is wearable.[/code]

However....

I just realized it is not recognizing the command "if the player is wearing the servant's uniform". IN as much as the ghost just killed me, despite the fact that I am wearing the servant's uniform.

As I have no error message, what should I do?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=30#p2950
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-11-25 02:00:53

Use "and" in the if statement, not "or":
[code]if the player is not wearing the servant's uniform and not wearing the  lord's clothes and not wearing the lady's clothes:[/code]
At the moment, Inform is reading the line as saying, "If any of these three things is true, do this stuff", and since two of them are true (you're not wearing the lord's clothes and you're not wearing the lady's clothes), it's doing that stuff. "And" tells Inform that they all have to be true before it does that stuff.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=40#p2951
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: ArchdukeJames / DateTime: 2008-11-25 08:24:55

LOL...

Dude, I broadsided myself with that nonsense.

Thank you. 

I can't believe it was that simple! LOL!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=40#p2952
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: ArchdukeJames / DateTime: 2008-11-25 08:33:53

Is there any way I can make the command not constantly repeat itself everytime I do something in the room, though? I'd ike someone to be able to say, look, or read something, without having the same thing repeated over and over again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=40#p2953
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: ArchdukeJames / DateTime: 2008-11-25 09:36:04

Is there no way to put an apostrophe in an item's name? I would really like my book to read: Dr Satan Dracula's "Summa Necromantica".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=40#p2954
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-11-25 14:02:52

Try this from ch 17.10:[code]Summa Necromantica is in the lab.
Before printing the name of Summa:
	say "Dr. Satan Dracula's [italic type]".
After printing the name of Summa:
	say "[roman type]".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=530&start=0#p2955
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trading
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-11-25 14:19:49

DOH! What a bunch of stupid mistakes. Maybe I was tired when I tried to program that one.

Thanks Skinny Mike.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=530&start=0#p2956
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trading
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-11-25 15:04:12

Argh! I keep running into a set of bugs that is related.

[quote]You can see Mayuta, a radio and a doodad here.

>trade scythe for radio
(first taking the scythe)
That seems to belong to Mayuta.

>trade radio for scythe
(first taking the radio)[/quote]

The first thing doesn't make sense of course, since you don't end up with it after "first taking" it. The second one caused nothing to fire because 

[code]Instead of trading when the player is not carrying the noun:
  say "You aren't carrying it."[/code]

didn't override it, and my trade code handling what to do when you aren't carrying the item didn't fire, nor did the code when you are carrying it. So you're left with a blank line.

Can I disable whatever rule that makes you "first take" an item that you're not holding, before trading it, eating it, wearing it, etc? It has given me trouble with all three of those and now with trade!

Edited to add: Oops, the code for when the player is carrying the item did in fact fire, after I fixed something about it that was broken. I still don't like this "first taking" business though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=530&start=0#p2957
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trading
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-11-25 15:27:25

[quote]Can I disable whatever rule that makes you "first take" an item that you're not holding, before trading it, eating it, wearing it, etc? It has given me trouble with all three of those and now with trade![/quote]Easy enough for the trading action; just take out the "carried" requirement of the rule definition. As in:[code]Trading is an action applying to two things.[/code]This removes the implicit take, so if you want to make sure the player has the thing to be traded, you'll have to have a separate rule to check that (which it looks like you already do). Note that you can also override implicit takes in actions defined by the standard rules as applying to carried things (i.e. the built - in actions like eating and wearing). This is a little more complicated -- see ex 354 "Lollipop Guild" -- but in the case of trading, that would be over - kill. More advanced still would be the use of Eric Eve's "Implicit Actions" extension (avail. on I7 website) which -- among other awesome things -- rewrites the way implicit actions are reported so that they make more sense (i.e. "(first trying to take the scythe)").

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=530&start=0#p2958
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trading
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-11-25 16:25:07

Cool. Thanks Mike.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=40#p2959
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: ArchdukeJames / DateTime: 2008-11-25 18:59:10

Thanks so much!

I was searching for [apostrophe] and it never came up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=530&start=0#p2960
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trading
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-11-25 19:28:47

Code:

[code]Mayuta is a person in the onlyroom.

[code about other people and items and scenery, omitted]

Instead of trading when the player is not carrying the noun:
 say "You aren't carrying a [noun].".

Instead of trading when the second noun is not portable:
 say "You can't take the [second noun].".

[other stuff regarding trading with people, omitted]

Instead of trading when the second noun is in the location: [this is for "trading" when no one is around]
   say "You drop the [noun] and pick up the [second noun].";
   move noun to the location;
   move second noun to the player.[/code]

Game play:

[quote]>take doodad
Taken.

>trade doodad for trees
You can't take the Trees.

>trade doodad for Mayuta
You drop the doodad and pick up the Mayuta.[/quote]

What the heck? I thought the earlier "insteads" overrode the later ones, and in fact that usually seems to be the case. I thought that kind of made up for the lack of nested ifs. Not true?

Do I really need to repeat all my earlier conditions in the statement "Instead of trading when the second noun is in the location" ?

Edited to add: If I specify that Mayuta is not portable, then things work as I would like. But people are already not portable! "Take Mayuta" -> "I don't suppose Mayuta would care for that"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=40#p2961
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-11-25 19:48:01

I didn't know you could have multiple otherwises. That should come in handy.

I'm struggling without my nested ifs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=530&start=0#p2962
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trading
User: radix / DateTime: 2008-11-25 19:54:27

[quote="ShaeSays"]
What the heck? I thought the earlier "insteads" overrode the later ones, and in fact that usually seems to be the case. I thought that kind of made up for the lack of nested ifs. Not true?
[/quote]

Nope, it's actually that more [i]specific[/i] "instead"s override less specific ones. If you have an "instead of examining something" rule and an "instead of examining the doggy" rule, if the player examines the doggy the one about examining the doggy will be used, no matter the order those two rules appear in. You can also just create one general rule that has some "if" statements in its body that check various conditions manually.

Hope this helps. I'd write up some example code, but it's bed time!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=530&start=10#p2963
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trading
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-11-25 20:02:56

[quote]What the heck? I thought the earlier "insteads" overrode the later ones, and in fact that usually seems to be the case.[/quote]This is true, however there are rules with regard to specificity which are first mentioned in ch. 18.5 and broken down in detail in 18.18. This specificity only comes into play when you use a conditions (such as, but not limited to, "when") in the preamble of a rule (the part before the first colon). You can avoid this by just using rules like:[code]Instead of trading:
     if foo then bar.
Instead of trading:
     if foo2 then bar 2.[/code]These rules will be checked in source order.[quote]I thought that kind of made up for the lack of nested ifs.[/quote]What lack of nested ifs? Nesting of if... then statements is allowed -- except inside of quoted text. Do I misunderstand you?[quote]But people are already not portable![/quote]People [i]are[/i] portable (after all, they aren't fixed in place, which is the opposite property). They are not takeable due to the "can't take other people rule" which would be checked if you used the phrase "try the player taking the noun." Instead you've merely moved the object to the player. You as the author can do that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=40#p2964
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: ArchdukeJames / DateTime: 2008-11-25 20:20:00

Shaesays, you are my fellow struggling newbie. I feel solidarity with you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=531&start=0#p2966
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Hidden door
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-11-25 20:46:29

I know I can't be the only person to have wanted this, but I'll be darned if I can figure out how to do it.

There's a forest with underbrush. Until the player clears the underbrush, he can't see the barbed wire, which is a door (and needless to say, can't go east where it would lead). Even after clearing underbrush, he can't climb the barbed wire without wearing a protective garment or clipping the barbed wire, but that seems easy enough to program and might be too much info for the problem at hand.

If I say 

[code]Barbed wire is a door.
Barbed wire is east of the forest and west of the army base[/code]

You can see, climb, taste, and smell that darned barbed wire. And while I could omit it from the description, and program "instead" code for all that, it seems like there must be a better way, since a savvy player might detect the door.

If I say

[code]Limbo is a container. Barbed wire is in limbo.

Instead of cutting the underbrush:
 say "now you've cut away the underbrush.";
 now barbed wire is a door;
 now barbed wire is east of the forest and west of the army base.[/code]

Or any related construction, Inform doesn't like that.

I could make barbed wire not a door per se, like so:

[code]Barbed wire is a thing. Barbed wire is fixed in place.
isUnderbrushCleared is a number that varies. isUnderbrushCleared is 0.

Instead of cutting the underbrush:
 say "now you see barbed wire";
 move barbed wire to the location;
 isUnderbrushCleared is 1.

Instead of going east when the player is in the forest and isUnderbrushCleared is 1:
 say "You go east to the army base";
 move player to army base.[/code]

But I'm afraid this will give me trouble when I want other people in the game to be able to follow the player in and out the door, and possibly in other door-related situations as well.

I see a lot of ways to proceed, but I'm not sure which will give me the least trouble. Any advice?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=530&start=10#p2967
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trading
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-11-25 20:50:14

Thanks Radix! That helps, no code needed. That, and the fact that I just learned in another thread that I can use multiple otherwises.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=530&start=10#p2968
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trading
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-11-25 20:52:39

People are portable but not takeable, I see.

Any time I had tried to do nested ifs, I got a ton of errors. Perhaps I don't know the syntax rules -- I'll see if I can find something in the documentation. It would definitely help if I could use them.

Thanks Mike!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=530&start=10#p2969
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trading
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-11-25 22:17:26

Looking again upthread, I guess we kind of got on a tangent about rule order that isn't really the issue with regard to this rule:[quote]Instead of trading when the second noun is in the location: [this is for "trading" when no one is around]
   say "You drop the [noun] and pick up the [second noun].";
   move noun to the location;
   move second noun to the player.[/quote]The thing is, you need to be careful when moving objects around. Inform assumes that you, the omnipotent author, know what you're doing and if you say "move something to somewhere" it usually will (in some cases even if it causes the game to crash!) This is where the use of the "try" and "try silently" syntax (ch. 7.4) comes in handy. Returning to the above example, it looks like you want to have a "trading with no one" action here -- dropping one object and taking another, with a single message to describe the combined actions. Here's one way of doing it which uses a nested if (I used the [i]begin... end if[/i] syntax so you wouldn't have to worry about the tabs getting messed up in cutting / pasting):[code]Instead of trading when the second noun is in the location (this is the trading when no one is around rule):
	silently try dropping the noun;
	if the noun is in the holder of the player begin;
		silently try taking the second noun;
		if the player carries the second noun begin;
			say "You drop the [noun] and pick up the [second noun].";
		end if;
	end if.[/code]Note that when you use [i]begin[/i], you follow it with a semi - colon, [i]not[/i] a colon. The upshot is you don't have to worry about the indenting. In the above code, we use "silently" to supress the normal reporting of taking and dropping. First, the player tries to drop the noun and [i]if the drop is successful[/i] (there are some situations where it might not be) tries to take the second noun. Next, if the take was successful, the desired message is printed. If either of these tried actions fail -- if you try to take a person, for instance -- the normal refusal message ("I don't suppose Mayuta would care for that") will print. The other upshot of using "try" is that you don't have to worry about duplicating all twelve of the different checks the standard rules perform for taking something. Hope I explained that okay.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=531&start=0#p2970
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hidden door
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-11-25 23:51:44

Maybe the extension [url=http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7Downloads/Extensions/Andrew%20Owen/Secret%20Doors]Secret Doors[/url] will do what you want?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=531&start=0#p2971
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hidden door
User: radix / DateTime: 2008-11-26 07:31:57

Yeah, Secret Doors will probably be helpful, but I'll explain some things which were causing you confusion:

Indeed, you can't create new objects with "Now" -- Inform does not allow dynamically allocating new objects or table rows at runtime (though Jesse McGrew has some extensions to allow this). I think you were on the right path as far as moving the barbed wire into place in the second example. Another option which is perhaps more complex is to take advantage of the "Deciding the scope of something" activity as documented in Chapter 17 of the Inform 7 manual. This would allow you to say that the barbed wire door is not in the scope of the player until he has cleared out the underbrush, which would mean that even though the barbed wire is *there*, it would not be accessible via any of those actions that you mentioned.

So, about your second example: there are a couple things that would generalize and simplify it. You didn't need to create a new "isUnderbrushCleared" variable -- instead, you could write your code such that instead of checking that variable, it would check for the presence of the barbed wire. You also don't need to implement the "move" manually:

[code]
The forest is a room.
The underbrush is in the forest.
The barbed wire is a thing.

The destination is east of the forest.

Instead of cutting the underbrush:
    say "The barbed wire draws near!";
    move barbed wire to the location;

Before going east when the player is in the forest:
	if the barbed wire is not in the forest:
		say "There seems to be underbrush blocking your way!";
		stop the action;
[/code]

Hope this helps a bit.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=530&start=10#p2972
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trading
User: radix / DateTime: 2008-11-26 07:42:48

[quote="ShaeSays"]
Any time I had tried to do nested ifs, I got a ton of errors. Perhaps I don't know the syntax rules -- I'll see if I can find something in the documentation. It would definitely help if I could use them.
[/quote]

That's strange - nested ifs should work fine. Are you using colon-and-indent syntax? Here's an example:

[code]
instead of tasting the sun:
	If the player carries wax and the player carries feathers:
		say "(first making wings from the wax and feathers)"
		if the strength of the player > 50:
			say "With your great strength you leap upwards and flap your wings. When you get to the sun, you give it a lick; it tastes like hot chocolate."
		otherwise:
			say "You jump and flap, but alas, your puny strength is not enough."
	otherwise:
		say "Yeah right."
[/code]

Make sure you get the colons and tabs right.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=40#p2973
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: ArchdukeJames / DateTime: 2008-11-26 11:06:20

Okay, now I have another question:

With my aforementioned ghost who appears, I also want there to appear a keychain (a container with a whole buttload of keys on it) on a supporter (a key-hook). But I don't want this to appear everytime the ghost talks to the player, as he is going to talk quite a great many times. Basically, I want it to appear the first time the ghost appears and doesn't kill the player, but not anytime after, as the player is likely to take it immediatly. This key-chain is also crucial because it will dramatically open up the game world: ALmost all the other rooms will be locked until you complete this puzzle, so as to not have people finish the other puzzles before they do this. 

Also, is there a way to make the ghost shut up until the player enters the room again? I don't want every action taken in the room while the ghost is there to make the ghost yap the same speech again and again. That'd get annoying quick.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=532&start=0#p2974
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Making a value depend on another value that varies
User: Natasha / DateTime: 2008-11-26 15:38:28

I'm working on a social-interactions prototype and am finding myself blocked. I've only been using inform for about a week, and any guidance on this is very greatly appreciated, as I'm finding myself up against a deadline and stressed.

Here's a quick description of the system:

A player can perform social actions on a non-player character. 

An NPC has a number called "romance". Romance begins at zero. Using social actions increases romance by varying point levels-- "flirt, "touch," and "kiss" would increase Romance by 10, 20, and 30 respectively.

An NPC also has a value called "state". The states are indifferent, interested, infatuated, and seduced. An NPC is usually indifferent.

I'm having trouble correlating the states to a [b]range of point values[/b] rather than individual social actions. I've been able to say "if the player flirts with the NPC, now the NPC is interested."

But, what I actually need is:

if the romance of a person is 0, the person is indifferent.
if the romance of a person is between 1 and 10, the person is interested.
if the romance of a person is between 11 and 20, the person is infatuated.
etc.

(I will then have those states determine which social actions an NPC will allow, but I more or less have this working for now so I'm just giving context.)

How can I make the state value depend on number properties? Should this be in a rule structure? The documentation in Inform 7 is a little dense, and hard to sift through.

Thanks very much for some advice,

Natasha

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=532&start=0#p2975
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making a value depend on another value that varies
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-11-26 15:52:12

[quote="Natasha"]
if the romance of a person is 0, the person is indifferent.
if the romance of a person is between 1 and 10, the person is interested.
if the romance of a person is between 11 and 20, the person is infatuated.[/quote]

I think you want

[code]Definition: A person is indifferent if the romance of it is 0.
Definition: A person is interested if the romance of it is at least 1 and the romance of it is at most 10.
Definition: A person is infatuated if the romance of it is at least 11 and the romance of it is at most 20.[/code]

See chapters 6.4. and 14.2. in the manual.

Edit: And when you do it this way, you don't need the "state" value anymore.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=339&start=10#p2976
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Are You Looking for a Programmer?
User: dramton / DateTime: 2008-11-28 10:45:38

I am interested in producing an action based game for people who like that style within a text setting.
I have a lot of design ideas and have been writing stories based on action games and they can translate well.
My needs for the program are: time-based (real time) features; effective interaction (i.e. movement) between areas (rooms) for all characters; implementing laws which can apply through the game without having to write responses to each scenario (e.g. physical laws, categories of objects, etc).
If there is anyone who has worked on this in the past it would be great to hear about. 
I have a second interest in the ability of text based game programming to open up the creative potential of lots of would-be designers put off by the daunting skill requirements for today's big games. Text-based is a simple and effective learning ground for creation of other games, as simple (action) games can be written very quickly. I would love to see people able to put together in a few hours something with an 'action feel', even a single room with objects and materials responding by text input in a way which properly reporoduces the 'real time' feel of 3d games, fully playable and immersive. It is achievable by having appropriate rule definitions for interactions, gravity and motion, and an input - feedback system that can process the status of everything in the world at every predefined unit (say a second), and display the information in a need-to-know basis which is not overwhelming.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=533&start=0#p2977
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Software for authoring 'action' type IF games?
User: dramton / DateTime: 2008-11-28 11:01:40

Looking for software, or a collaborator, to implement an action style IF game, or, hopefully, produce a new type of IF-authoring program which features libraries of material types, physical laws and a broad range of links between the interface (single player) and the game world to produce a unique type of interactive environment where authors can quickly write up an environment (say, a room), define its contents and structures, and immediately interact with things by having all those rules pre-programmed.
That is, with every game entity in the world tracked at each unit of time (second) similarly to modern FP games.
Something that, with the hard work of programming done, can be used to make a more immersive game that will appeal to those who prefer simple actions and simple keyboard inputs working on top of a complicated world environment ... I suppose that its like playing a 3d game blindfold, but I imagine it being highly immersive ... or at least a good way to improve typing speed!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=527&start=0#p2978
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Suggestion for a new board
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2008-11-29 11:13:00

[quote="Merk"]I'll try to make the changes later in the week, unless Rioshin gets to it first.[/quote]

I guess I managed to get to it before you, Merk. [emote]:)[/emote]

I decided to still keep the Announcements and the Feedback forums separate; that gives you users an easier way to spot any announcements from us than having to go through the Feedback forum for admin-originated posts (as the Announcements forum requires Admin or Global Moderator privileges to start a new topic), while the Feedback forum is for you to give proposals and other feedback to us.

But in detail, I added the Design and Theory forum and combined Discussion, Hints and Tips and Reviews into one, as well as combined the Hugo, Adrift and Alan-specific groups into Other systems, as brought up in this topic.

If you want any further improvements to the forums, just go ahead and ask. I'm definitely open to ideas on how to improve the user experience of these forums - and Merk seems to be, as well. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=527&start=0#p2979
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Suggestion for a new board
User: radix / DateTime: 2008-11-29 12:09:49

Thanks rioshin and Merk, and to the others who posted suggestions.

I'm going to disappear for business travel for a couple weeks, so I guess I won't be able to populate the new board just yet. Maybe I'll be able to respond to some topics when I come back :-)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=527&start=0#p2980
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Suggestion for a new board
User: George / DateTime: 2008-11-29 13:34:11

Thanks guys, the board index looks a lot better to me now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=534&start=0#p2981
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Trying to change the topic understood doesn't work
User: marotta / DateTime: 2008-11-30 00:12:15

[b]Trying to change the topic understood doesn't work[/b]

I'm trying to find a way around it.

I've got a coding/syntax problem that I'd like some help with.

I'm trying to create a command to allow these type of commands:
say "Bob, where is the hammer."

I've gotten as far as parsing 'the topic understood' which is 'Bob, where is the hammer.'
I'd like to execute this type of saying by in the code trying this command:
ask Bob about hammer.

I'm using:
Include Conversation Package by Eric Eve.

I have two problems.

1) First, I can't get 'say' working because it is already defined, so I've substituted 'xsay'. This a problem, but minor. If anyone can help me with that let me know.

2) In the coding of xsay, I can set the current interlocutor, but I can't redefine the topic understood so that the 'try asking CH about it' works.

understand "xsay [text]" as xsaying.
xsaying is an action applying to one topic.

Carry out xsaying:
   let CH be Bob;
   Change current interlocutor to CH;
[   none of the next steps works. ]
[   let TE be the text "piston"; ]
    let TE be the printed name of TP;
[   change the topic understood to TE;]
   Replace the topic understood with TE;
   try asking CH about it;
[   try asking CH about "[TP]";]


I get an error something like this:
*** Run-time problem P39: Attempt to say a snippet value which is currently invalid: words 2 to 13.

Thanks for your help.

DJM

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=40#p2982
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Ragzouken / DateTime: 2008-11-30 07:53:52

Hello intfiction.org!

I'm Mark, though online and to most friends I'm known as Ragz. I come from the southwest of England. I'm 18 and in my third year college studying some filler (but still interesting) subjects before I go on to a Computer Science course at the University of Bristol.

I don't really have a history of interactive fiction. I recall seeing my brother playing one, when I was young, and wanting to do so too, but at that age I found it too difficult to understand. I did, however, get interested in adventure games. I played King's Quest 7, Broken Swords 1 & 2 many times over, and utterly failed to get anywhere in The Last Express. Quite recently I picked up Myst and started playing, and went on to try out most of the series. From there I played two series of flash games, Submachine and Daymare which inspired me to want to make my own adventure game. At some point after this I got into a discussion about text based games and decided that Interactive Fiction might be a more interesting form to make my daymare/myst inspired game.

I'm currently working on that game now, in Inform 7. It's a small starting chapter of a bigger idea I haven't fully worked out. I'm not actually very good at English, as may be apparent. I failed both English Language and Literature at GCSE and had to take a condensed year-long course of GCSE at college. I passed that with a C grade. My prose may not be up to standard, but I hope with enough constant revision I'll be alright. Maybe I'll pick up some of the skills from this forum and other IF too [emote];)[/emote].

I came here from the Brass Lantern, looking for a community for interactive fiction that I could try and join in with. I find Mailing lists and MUD a bit difficult to grasp, I have more experience using forums.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=534&start=0#p2983
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trying to change the topic understood doesn't work
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-11-30 13:50:43

I suppose you have to do this with regular expressions. This changes the player's command in form SAY "X, WHERE IS Y" to ASK X ABOUT Y.

[code]After reading a command: 
	let N be indexed text; 
	let N be the player's command; 
	replace the regular expression "\bsay \'(.+?), where is (.+?)(\?*)\'" in N with "ask \1 about \2"; 
	change the text of the player's command to N.[/code]

That being said, the usual convention is BOB, WHERE IS THE HAMMER (without SAY "...") and experienced players might find it cumbersome to write the extra SAY and quotation marks.

[quote]1) First, I can't get 'say' working because it is already defined, so I've substituted 'xsay'. This a problem, but minor. If anyone can help me with that let me know.[/quote]

Understand the command "say" as something new. See chapter 16.3 in the manual.

I'm not familiar with Eric's extension so I can't help you with the rest of the questions. Maybe someone else will cover that part.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=40#p2984
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2008-11-30 14:31:18

Welcome to the forum, Ragzouken, and good luck for your game!  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=40#p2985
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Sparky / DateTime: 2008-11-30 17:03:42

You can always team up with someone else Ragz. I have a degree in English but am pokey at doing all the coding myself, for example. [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=535&start=0#p2986
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Calling the IF Meta-Comp:  Define this comp!
User: hrrwlsn741 / DateTime: 2008-11-30 17:55:30

[color=#008000]
Folks, I am calling the Meta-Comp for early Summer '09.  Meta-Comp is a new and innovative concept in IF game competitions, which will challenge game designers' creativity in truly unique ways.


The Timeline:

The Comp will begin July 1, which in '09 is a Wednesday.  Prizes will be drawn from a cash pool, with proportional allotments (explained below):  I'll donate $100 to start us off.

Early registration opens May 1 and runs until June 1.  It costs $5 to register early.  Normal registration runs June 2 until June 17, and costs $10.  Late registration runs right up until June 29, and costs $15.

Game designers are required to upload their games by the end of June 29 -- not at their time of registration.

All registration fees go directly into the prize pool, so you'll have a chance to win it back.

Judging begins July 1 and runs until July 25, which gives judges three and a half weeks.  The winners are announced on the 26th, and we have the rest of the month for victory celebrations.  Winners will be expected to write acceptance speeches.  --Posts.


The Theme:

"Meta" now means "about."  Originally, it meant "after."  Aristotle wrote a book on nature, and that book was called Physics:  then he followed it with one on the nature of nature, that one was called Meta-Physics.

The meta- prefix is generally used to describe concepts that are being applied to themselves.  In role-playing circles, "meta-gaming" is to play, not the game from within the game-world, but from outside and above the game-world:  "Do you think the D.M. would really have had the butler do it?"  --that is meta-gaming.

The meta- prefix is generally applied to situations that are self-referential.

Some people have suggested that a Meta-Comp would be a competition of competitions; others have suggested that it be a competition of games that make meta-references (xyzzy humor).  In reality, the Meta-Comp is whatever you, the game designers and the judges, decide it will be.


The Rules

"You know the rules; there are no rules..."

The Meta-Comp does not apply rules to the competition.  Instead, the contestants are expected to provide the rules on which their game should be judged.

Each entry to the Meta-Comp will include an IF game and a description, including rules, of the competition which that game is meant for.  Judges will assign each entry an Olympic score, 1-10, on whatever basis they choose.

Some competitions have rules requiring games be newly-written, or that the competitors comport themselves in a certain way.  Meta-Comp has no such rules, but the competition entries themselves may; and judges are of course free to use their votes to reward newly-written games, or especially admirable comportment of the game writers, or indeed any criteria whatsoever.


Is Meta-Comp Really Wide-Open?

Meta-Comp is absolutely wide open.  Of course, that means it operates on mutual trust -- or mutual paranoia, as the case may be.  A game writer who creates a game with illegal content -- through blatant copyright violation, perhaps -- may argue that although the game is illegal he has broken no rules, and that would be true.  But in such an extreme case, the comp organizer would also be aware that there are no rules against removing such an entry...

The expectation is that the mutual paranoia/trust scheme will be fully sufficient, and no such intrusion into the comp will be needed.


The Goal

The goal of the Meta-Comp is not just to generate games with in-jokes and games about gaming, although those are considered entirely desirable:  but to encourage and stimulate total creativity in game design, both in the creation of the game itself, and in the creation of the contextualization of games.  By having game designers define the competition in which their game is meant to be played, Meta-Comp is the first forum for the demonstrative advocation of certain *types* of games:  the Meta-Comp contestant says with his or her entry, "Games like this are cool."

--Or indeed, the contestant can enter an Uncool Game Comp.  It's entirely open.


Conrad.


ps - Prize Structure

So, let's say we have 10 entries:  some are early, some late, it averages out to $10 per entry for $100.  And let's say that nobody else donates to the prize pool.  So we have:

$100 (original pool)
$100 (10 entries x $10 ea.)
-------
$200 prize pool.

We award prizes to those entries that came in first, second, and third, and to two honorable mentions:

1st:  half the pool.  $100.
2nd:  half the remaining pool.  $50.
3rd:  half the remaining pool.  $25.
2 H.M.s:  each an equal portion of what remains.  So $12.50.

I'd like to get the honorable mention prize up to a more respectable sum, so I'll welcome donations.  -- Not yet, but please think it over.

I mean, $12.50 isn't *bad*.  And it's hard to predict right now what $12.50 will get you in late July of '09 -- at this rate, it might buy you a half a tank of gas or a small house.  But I'm hoping we can get a better prize pool than this.

--This is going to be a cash-prize-only system, because it's too difficult to integrate a highest-scorers-pick-first with this system.  But, if you were thinking of donating an item, you can still help -- just donate the postage you'd have spent on sending that item.  Small donations work together to make a huge influence!

C.


#
[/color]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=532&start=0#p2987
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making a value depend on another value that varies
User: Natasha / DateTime: 2008-12-01 09:36:56

Thank you, I've tried that and it works. Though, this code causes the state values to not work, returning:

Problem. You wrote 'The states are indifferent, interested, infatuated, or seduced'  : but this seems to say that a general description is something else, like saying that 'a door is a number'.

As you've said this can eliminate the need to use state values at all, but the practical reason that I'm using them is to "understand state as describing a person," which allows me to call the state value into a persons description if the player looks at them, etc.

How might I maintain these adjectives having a number value, but still be able to use them as descriptors?

Best Regards,
Natasha

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=532&start=0#p2988
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making a value depend on another value that varies
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-12-01 16:20:37

Here you go:

[code]Understand "indifferent" as a person when the item described is indifferent.
Understand "interested" as a person when the item described is interested.
Understand "infatuated" as a person when the item described is infatuated.
...[/code]
(see chapter 16.17 in the manual.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=530&start=10#p2989
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trading
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-01 22:56:56

Thanks to both of you. Mike, it's good to know about that "try" syntax. It will probably help me in some other areas too.

Radix, I don't remember what punctuation I was using now -- I think that what happened was that I tried it unsuccessfully several times, probably with the wrong punctuation, then looked for it in the manual and didn't find it, then saw a bunch of examples that seemed to be working around it, and finally assumed it couldn't be done. Thanks for the example, I'm sure I'll be able to make it work now by following your syntax and punctuation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=531&start=0#p2990
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hidden door
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-01 23:03:35

Radix, that's certainly simpler than what I did. Thank you.

I haven't yet dealt with the dynamics of having characters that obey the player and that move freely on their own, but toward the end of the game, I want the player's family to follow him through that barbed wire door. Will I need to do some sort of "instead" code for each person in the game? This seems risky, somehow.

Emerald, I've never used one of those extensions before. Perhaps I should check that one out!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=531&start=0#p2991
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hidden door
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-01 23:06:38

Also: there will be a time when the player cuts the barbed wire (after getting clippers or something from the other side of it) so there will be more than one way to handle the "instead" when the barbed wire is in the location (when it's intact you must wear protection to climb over it, when it's cut you can walk through). However I guess I can do that with an "if barbedWireIsCut is 0" sort of variable in the same instead code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=40#p2992
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-01 23:15:07

ArchdukeJames, the feeling is mutual. It is nice to read your threads because we are sort of on the same level and the knowledge in them is useful to me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=535&start=0#p2993
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Calling the IF Meta-Comp:  Define this comp!
User: hrrwlsn741 / DateTime: 2008-12-02 10:20:19

[color=#004000]
I'm replying to my own thread here to tell you that the Meta-Comp website is online!

[quote][/color][color=#0000BF]http://metacomp.conradcook.net[/color][color=#004000]
[/quote]

Conrad.[/color]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=536&start=0#p2994
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: nested kinds of objects?
User: stacia / DateTime: 2008-12-02 17:44:06

Hi everyone, I posted this on the if newsgroup but that doesn't seem to be very active. Hoping I can get some help from here! Here's a copy of my question:

Hi, I am beginning inform 7 and I have a question. I have tried
multiple ways to attack this problem but I always get some sort of
error.

Say for example I am trying to create a book. I want each book to have
an appendix. That's fine. But if I then want each appendix to have
properties (like a first entry and a last entry) how do I deal with
this? I could have the book have just a first entry and a last entry
but I want the code to represent the hierarchy, as well as perhaps use
the same appendix object for other items. I tried making an appendix a
part of every book, but then I didn't know how to over-ride features -
such as if I wanted the last entry to be "u" instead of "z". When I
just said that books have an appendix called index, the compiler
complained about there being no appendix in the world. I even tried
making a "default" appendix for it to set to but it didn't like that
either. What is the right way to assign and access properties and
values embedded in objects like this?

The book example is just an example - I am working with something that
has a highly hierarchical structure and it would get clumsy after a
while to just put everything on the "book" thing.

THanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=536&start=0#p2995
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: nested kinds of objects?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-12-02 18:50:09

Hi !  [emote]:)[/emote] 

I saw your post on raif, but didn't answer since I'm not sure I quite get what you're looking for. It would be easier if you posted some sample code of yours (even the stuff that didn't work) or a sample desired transcript, so we could get a better idea.[quote]I tried making an appendix a part of every book, but then I didn't know how to over-ride features - such as if I wanted the last entry to be "u" instead of "z". [/quote]When you create a new kind, you create default values for any properties you give it, which can be over-ridden. Maybe something like this?[code]A book is a kind of thing.

An appendix is a kind of thing. An appendix is a part of every book.
An appendix has some text called first entry. The first entry is usually "Default first entry".
An appendix has some text called last entry. The last entry is usually "Default last entry".

Instead of examining an appendix:
	say "The first entry reads: '[first entry of the noun].'";
	say "The final entry reads: '[last entry of the noun].'".

The Lab is a room.
The generic book is a book in the Lab.
The diary is a book in the Lab. The first entry of the Diary's appendix is "List of Accomplishments". The last entry of the Diary's appendix is "I give up".

test me with "read appendix / generic / read diary's appendix".[/code][quote]When I just said that books have an appendix called index, the compiler complained about there being no appendix in the world.[/quote]This technique should work as well, depending on how you implemented it. Without seeing your code, I have no idea why it didn't. [quote]The book example is just an example - I am working with something that has a highly hierarchical structure and it would get clumsy after a while to just put everything on the "book" thing.[/quote]Unfortunately, the book example might be leading me down the wrong path. Does the structure you're trying to model involve actual components, layers of text objects, or just properties you want to be able to tack onto parent objects in groups? Does that make sense?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=537&start=0#p2996
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: ActorStates in Tads3
User: QueenoftheCapes / DateTime: 2008-12-02 19:02:44

Hi guys!  I'm working on my second major game in Tads3, and the actorstates are giving me nothing but grief.  I have what is basically an escort quest with an NPC who reacts violently to a given substance, but the trouble is, he's not really reacting at all. [emote]:([/emote] 

First it just wouldn't leave the initial actor state, no matter what I did.  Then when I omitted the initialState property, it didn't choose any state at all! o_O

I just can't figure out how to make the states change.  I must have poured through the tutorials over and over.  I tried the isActive property, agendaItems for setCurState, even both at the same time!  The properties in the actor himself operate correctly, but the actorStates...they just....aAARRGGHHH!!!

Can you guys help me work this out?  [emote]:cry:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=536&start=0#p2997
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: nested kinds of objects?
User: stacia / DateTime: 2008-12-02 21:06:47

That is exactly what I was looking for! I am so sorry, it seems that I did get it, but was experiencing a whole other problem. I guess I still have kinds mixed up. For example I have problems when I try this:

[code]A red book is a kind of book. The first entry of the red book's appendix is usually "Hello".[/code]

I get : Problem. You wrote 'The first entry of the red book's appendix is usually "Hello"'  : but the property first entry for the red book's appendix is not allowed to exist, because you haven't said it is. What properties something can have depends on what kind of thing it is: see the Index for details.

If a red book is a kind of book, it should have an appendix too, shouldn't it?

I'd love to tell you about what I'm working on, but I'm afraid it would confuse you. I hardly understand it! I'm trying to model a system to see if I can do it in Inform and learn it along the way. I'll choose my analogies carefully though [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=536&start=0#p2999
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: nested kinds of objects?
User: stacia / DateTime: 2008-12-02 21:49:39

Ok again I solved my own problem. I am getting kinds and objects mixed up - the proper thing shoudl have been "the first entry of the appendix".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=538&start=0#p3000
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: how to refer to properties of parts of objects
User: stacia / DateTime: 2008-12-03 00:04:01

Here is some sample code:

[code]
A cat is a kind of thing.

A nose is a kind of thing. A nose is a part of every cat. A nose has some text called left nostril. A nose has some text called right nostril. Right nostril is usually "The right nostril looks clear". Left nostril is usually "The left nostril looks runny".

Understand
Instead of examining cat:
  say "???"

The garden is a room. A cat called Bob is in the garden.[/code]

I'm not sure what to put in the question marks. I want the description of every cat to show the status of the left and right nostril of taht cat.

Sorry for the silly example, not sure what I was thinking but again this is paraphrasing my problem.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=40#p3001
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2008-12-03 02:01:18

[quote="Ragzouken"]Hello intfiction.org![/quote]
Hello to you too, Mark! And welcome ...

[quote="Ragzouken"]I came here from the Brass Lantern, looking for a community for interactive fiction that I could try and join in with. I find Mailing lists and MUD a bit difficult to grasp, I have more experience using forums.[/quote]
If you haven't discovered it already, there is also a newsgroup for IF authors called rec.arts.int-fiction; the archives are here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Past_raif_topics">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Past_raif_topics</a>

... and a collection of quotes from past IF competition reviews here (aimed at future IF authors):

<a class="postlink" href="http://jacl.game-host.org:8080/dfisher/ifgems/gems.html">http://jacl.game-host.org:8080/dfisher/ifgems/gems.html</a>

David Fisher

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=538&start=0#p3002
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: how to refer to properties of parts of objects
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-12-03 05:08:58

[quote]Understand
Instead of examining cat:
  say "???"[/quote]This one is a little tricky. You can refer to "Bob's nose," but not "the noun's nose." First, get rid of that spurious "Understand" and then try this:
[code]Instead of examining a cat:
	let N be a random nose which is part of the noun;
	say "[right nostril of the N]. [left nostril of the N]."[/code]Note that since there is only one nose on a cat, "a random nose which is part of the noun" will be [i]that[/i] nose. This is a neccessary, yet overly - unintuitive syntax that I believe is on the list of things to be fixed in the future. (It has been discussed that "let N be the nose which is part of the noun" -- when there is only one possible nose -- should probably be acceptable, but at the moment, it's not.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=537&start=0#p3003
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: ActorStates in Tads3
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2008-12-03 07:18:07

Hi QueenoftheCapes!

[quote="QueenoftheCapes"]Then when I omitted the initialState property, it didn't choose any state at all! o_O[/quote]
Yep, that's what isInitState does.  Set it to true on the state you want the containing actor to use from the start of the game.   [emote];)[/emote] 

[quote="QueenoftheCapes"]I just can't figure out how to make the states change.  I must have poured through the tutorials over and over.  I tried the isActive property, agendaItems for setCurState, even both at the same time!  The properties in the actor himself operate correctly, but the actorStates...they just....aAARRGGHHH!!![/quote]
At the point you want your actor to assume a certain ActorState, you need to call setCurState(whatever) - where 'whatever' is the new actor state you want to use.

Try doing this for a very simple case - for example, put it into the topicResponse of a particular AskTellTopic - and you should find that it works.  If it does, then I suspect the issue has more to do with how exactly you're handling this part:

[quote="QueenoftheCapes"]an escort quest with an NPC who reacts violently to a given substance[/quote]
If you're able to set actor states in the simplest case, then perhaps you can go into what you specifically want to happen here and how you've tried to go about it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=537&start=0#p3004
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: ActorStates in Tads3
User: QueenoftheCapes / DateTime: 2008-12-03 08:57:05

Ah, thank you! [emote]:)[/emote]   Okay, I'm testing the basics now.

In the mean time, what I'm trying to do is cause state to change whenever he canSee(objectinquestion)

like for example:

vampire : Actor 
;

+cringing : ActorState
"He looks pretty upset"
isActive = vampire.canSee(cross)
;

+standing : ActorState
"He is standing in an example question, making faces."
isActive = !vampire.canSee(cross)
isInitState = true
;

That's basically what I've been trying to do, but with no results.  I'm reluctant to try placing the setCurState thingy in an action(){} for anything, because there are theoretically a million ways a cross could be hidden away or revealed.
Am I missing something here? [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=532&start=0#p3005
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making a value depend on another value that varies
User: Natasha / DateTime: 2008-12-03 10:25:20

This works, but is not quite the action I was trying to achieve. This allows me to to say "look at indifferent" and get the description of the item, if it is indifferent. 

What I'd like I'd to be able to do is say in the item description: "The item appears [indifferent, interested, etc.]" depending on which the item is.

Alternatively, it might work better for my purposes to simply be able to change the description of an item depending on which adjective it is. This would be for a specific, proper named thing (person) and contingent on its description.

For instance,

If Mary is indifferent, then the description of Mary is "..."

Any pointers in the right direction would be swell [emote]:)[/emote] I'll just be muddling through the manual until then. Thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=537&start=0#p3006
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: ActorStates in Tads3
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2008-12-03 14:41:51

I think your best bet is to check each turn to see if the vampire has seen a cross, and change the state accordingly.  There are quite a few different ways to go about this.  Inside the actor itself, afterTravel can run checks immediately on entering a new location (if, say, you want the vampire's description in the room to immediately appear as something like, "The vampire looks very upset.") and idleTurn runs every turn that the vampire doesn't take an action (but if you override idleTurn be sure to add 'inherited;' to the method, or the whole TADS Workbench will crash).

Within actorStates, takeTurn seems to do the same things as idleTurn (without the crashing), while afterAction runs every turn that the actor sees an action occuring (whether that action is taken by the player, the vampire, or yet another actor).

I've messed about with stuff like this before (and I probably will again), so I tried a little bit of experimental coding...   [emote];)[/emote] 

[code]
gameMain: GameMainDef
    /* the initial player character is 'me' */
    initialPlayerChar = me
;

startRoom: Room 'Start Room'
    "This is the starting room. "
    north=nextRoom
;

+hidingPlace: Container 'box' 'box';

++cross: Thing, Hidden 'cross' 'cross';

+ me: Actor;

+vampire: Person 'vampire' 'vampire'
    canSeeCross=(vampire.canSee(cross) || vampire.canSee(cross2))
    crossCheck()
    {
        if(canSeeCross && vampire.curState!=vampireCringing)
        {
            "<.p>The vampire hisses. <q>That cross! Hideous thing!</q>";
            setCurState(vampireCringing);  //set vampire to cringing state
        }
        else if(!canSeeCross && vampire.curState!=vampireStanding)
        {
            "<.p>The vampire relaxes. <q>The ambience is much nicer all of a sudden.</q>";
            setCurState(vampireStanding);  //return vampire to normal state
        }            
    }
    idleTurn()  //called every turn by actor, unless it takes an action
    {
        inherited; //this does important stuff which we mustn't override
        vampire.crossCheck();
    }
;

++vampireCringing : AccompanyingState
    specialDesc="The vampire seems very upset. "
    accompanyTravel(leadActor, conn)  
    { 
        return leadActor == gPlayerChar; 
    }
    afterAction()  //called every turn someone takes an action, if the actor is in this actorState
    {
        vampire.crossCheck();
    }
;

++vampireStanding : AccompanyingState
    specialDesc="The vampire is here, elegant and darkly dressed."
    isInitState = true
    accompanyTravel(leadActor, conn)  
    { 
        return leadActor == gPlayerChar; 
    }
    afterAction()
    {
        vampire.crossCheck();
    }
;

//////////////////////NEXT ROOM//////////////////

nextRoom: Room 'Next Room'
    south=startRoom
;

+cross2: Thing 'cross' 'cross'
;
[/code]
This is only one possible (probably inelegant) solution.  You could break up the two checks (can I see a cross/can I NOT see a cross) into the two different actorStates, for example, and remove the idleTurn stuff entirely.  Then the vampire will only notice a cross in plain sight (or the absence of a cross) on the first actual turn after you enter a location.  It all depends on the messages you write.

It'd also be nice to have like a vampireRepellant mix-in class that you could add to any crosses, garlic, rosaries, wolfsbane etc that you happen to implement.  For that you could probably do a check like so:

[code]
        //NB. I've not tested this code in its current form
        local seenRepellant = nil;
        
        foreach(local cur in vampire.location.contents)
        {
            if(cur.ofKind(vampireRepellant))
            {
                seenRepellant = cur;
                return seenRepellant; //return that item
            }
        }
[/code]
Which would also allow you to get the name of the item the vampire was worried about and stick it into messages.  Again, there's probably a better way to do that, but unless you're doing anything really CPU intensive with your game, it would work.

For most of this stuff, I've referred to the [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/tourguide/index.html]TADS 3 Tour Guide[/url].  I know there's lots of different manuals and tutorials, but that's the one I look at the most often.

Hope this helps.   [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=537&start=0#p3007
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: ActorStates in Tads3
User: QueenoftheCapes / DateTime: 2008-12-03 14:47:59

Thank you so much!! [emote]:D[/emote] 
I'll try that.  Thanks, guys! [emote]:)[/emote]

Edit: It works! You people are beautiful!  Thank you! =D

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=539&start=0#p3008
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Infinitely replenishing supply of an item
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-03 22:43:05

There are leaves on the tree. I want the player to take some.

However, if he goes east, drops them, and comes back, I don't want the tree to be barren as winter now. Surely he couldn't have taken them ALL.

If leaves are scenery, he can't take them -- if they are out east they can't also be on the tree, and so forth. Is there a way to deal with this?

thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=532&start=0#p3009
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making a value depend on another value that varies
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-12-04 02:47:22

Sorry, I misinterpreted the question ("understand x as describing a person" by itself does only what I showed in the last post). Here's a solution:

[code]To say romance of ( socializer - a person ) in words:
	if the socializer is indifferent:
		say "indifferent";
	otherwise if the socializer is interested:
		say "interested";
	otherwise if the socializer is infatuated:
		say "infatuated". [and so on]

After examining a person:
	say "[The noun] looks [romance of the noun in words]."[/code]

And to have the description vary completely depending on the mood:

[code]The description of Mary is "[Mary's mood description]".

To say Mary's mood description:
	if Mary is indifferent:
		say "Mary doesn't look like she cares.";
	otherwise if Mary is interested:
		say "Mary looks back at you and smiles.";
[and so on] [/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=539&start=0#p3010
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Infinitely replenishing supply of an item
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-12-04 04:34:16

This is a classic problem in IF -- not classic as in "hard," just classic as in "everyone asks this question at some point." Like most classic IF problems, there are a couple of examples of how to deal with this in the Recipe Book (see Ch. 10.3 "Dispensers and Supplies of Small Objects"). Both involve having an object to represent the collective group, and an object or objects to represent the takeable thing -- initially off-stage and moved into play as needed. The first one, "Extra Supplies," uses a singular object (a pen) which you could easily change to "a handful of leaves." The second example models individual slices of pizza which allows the player to have several at a time with a hard limit. (The supply is replenished with any slice the player happens to eat.)

Neither of these examples implements a truly [i]infinte[/i] supply of something. This would entail what is referred to as "dynamic creation of objects" -- objects which are not defined ahead of time, but created at runtime (while the player is actually playing the game). Inform does not support this as a standard feature. There is an extension -- Jesse McGrew's "Dynamic Objects," available on the website -- for this which is tres cool, but probably over - kill for what you need. Ask yourself, do you really want or need to have your players running around dropping hundreds of leaves everywhere in the game just to see how many are available? (They will, too, I promise.) In most cases, a limited supply will be enough for the player to consider the matter sufficiently implemented, without tempting them to go all leaf - crazy on your game. To paraphrase Zarf, "There's a reason why Inform has gotten along without truly dynamic objects for 15 years."

I want to add that I'm not trying to steer you away from extensions in general or that one in particular. In another thread -- not sure if it was to you or not -- I might have given that impression. Most of the extensions represent kick - ass, easy - to - use solutions to what are generally painful problems. Some newer authors are afraid to use them because (I guess) they figure, "I don't fully understand the standard package, so why try an extension?" This is absolutely not the case. Graham's philosophy with I7 is to leave most of the more complicated, unusual, or simulationy - type things to extensions, leaving the standard rules to deal with the most universal stuff. Also, for me personally, opening up extensions to see how they work has taught me a ton about the language. Definitely use them. Just not in this case. Unless you want to.   [emote];)[/emote] 

(Sorry for such a long - winded response to what was really a simple question. Five thirty am does that to me sometimes.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=532&start=0#p3011
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making a value depend on another value that varies
User: Natasha / DateTime: 2008-12-04 11:48:05

This is great and works exactly the way I need it to, thanks so much.

Why is it that we must say
To say romance of ( socializer - a person ) in words:

instead of
To say romance of a person in words:?

I only ask so that I might broaden my understanding of I7's temperament.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=532&start=0#p3012
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making a value depend on another value that varies
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2008-12-04 11:56:12

[quote]Why is it that we must say
To say romance of ( socializer - a person ) in words:

instead of
To say romance of a person in words:?
[/quote]

The second phrase defines the words "romance of a person in words" as a text substitution -- exactly those 6 words, in exactly that order.

The first phrase defines the words "romance of ________ in words" as a text substitution, and assumes that the blank will be filled in with the name of a specific person. It then assigns the variable "socializer" to stand for that person, so you can use that variable in your code.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=539&start=0#p3013
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Infinitely replenishing supply of an item
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2008-12-04 12:35:35

Here's one way you could do it:

[code]Garden is a room. 

A tree is here. "A tree grows in the middle of the garden. [status of foliage]." The description is "[status of foliage]." The tree is fixed in place. Understand "branch" or "branches" as the tree.

To say status of foliage:
	if all of the handfuls of leaves are on-stage:
		say "It has been stripped bare of leaves";
	otherwise if almost all of the handfuls of leaves are on-stage:
		say "Nearly all of its leaves have been stripped";
	otherwise if most of the handfuls of leaves are on-stage:
		say "More than half of its leaves have been stripped";
	otherwise if some of the handfuls of leaves are on-stage:
		say "Some of its leaves have been recently stripped";
	otherwise:
		say "Its branches are full of green leaves"

Some growing leaves are part of the tree. Understand "foliage" as growing leaves.

Understand "take [growing leaves] from/off [tree]" as removing it from.
Understand "get [growing leaves] from/off [tree]" as removing it from.
Understand "remove [growing leaves] from/off [tree]" as removing it from.
Understand "pull [growing leaves] from/off [tree]" as removing it from.
Understand "strip [growing leaves] from/off [tree]" as removing it from.

Instead of removing the growing leaves from the tree, try taking the growing leaves.

Instead of taking the growing leaves:
	if there is an off-stage handful of leaves:
		move a random off-stage handful of leaves to the player;
		say "You strip [if there is at least one off-stage handful of leaves]a[otherwise]the last[end if] few leaves from the tree's branches.";

Instead of doing something to the growing leaves when there are no off-stage handfuls of leaves:
	say "The tree is completely bare."

A handful of leaves is a kind of thing. The plural of handful of leaves is handfuls of leaves. There are 50 handfuls of leaves. 
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=532&start=0#p3014
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making a value depend on another value that varies
User: Natasha / DateTime: 2008-12-04 12:50:35

Could we not say:

To say romance of (a person ) in words:

?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=532&start=0#p3015
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making a value depend on another value that varies
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2008-12-04 13:28:44

[quote="Natasha"]Could we not say:

To say romance of (a person ) in words:

?[/quote]
Nope. The main problem being that the compiler would throw an error message.

But the reason why the compiler won't let you do it is because writing it that way wouldn't accomplish anything. 

Let us suppose that the syntax you suggest does work. The most intuitive interpretation is that it defines "romance of _______ in words" as a text substitution, with the expectation that the blank will be filled in with the name of a person. So you could write statements like:

[code]say "Bob feels [romance of Bob in words] towards you."
say "Jane feels [romance of Jane in words] towards you."[/code]
etc.

The problem comes when you try to write the instructions for that text substitution:

[code]To say romance of (a person) in words:
   if _______ is indifferent:
      say "indifferent";
   otherwise if ________ is interested:
      say "interested";
   otherwise if ________ is infatuated:
      say "infatuated". [and so on][/code]
What do you put in the blanks? You can't just say "the person", because Inform doesn't have any way of knowing which person you mean. (Although it sounds natural to say it that way in English, Inform isn't capable of making those kinds of contextual assumptions, and even if it could, there might be cases where you wouldn't want it to.) Because what the text substitution says depends on which person its referring to, you need some way of referring to the *specific* person mentioned in the text substitution.

The notation "(socializer - a person)" is short-hand for "(a person, whom for the purposes of these instructions we will refer to as 'the socializer')". The word "socializer" is arbitrary -- you could instead use "potential love interest" or "dude" or "X", whatever makes it easier for you, the author, to read your own code. Whatever you use (let's just assume you stick with "socializer") then becomes the label for the specific person that you were referring to, and you can use that label in your instructions. So:

[code]To say romance of (socializer - a person) in words:
   if the socializer is indifferent:
      say "indifferent";
   otherwise if the socializer is interested:
      say "interested";
   otherwise if the socializer is infatuated:
      say "infatuated". [and so on][/code]
Does that make sense?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=431&start=0#p3016
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: another anchorhead help thread.
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2008-12-04 15:18:44

Interesting; I don't think I've ever heard of this bug.

Did you pick up the newspaper?

When you go to the study, do you type OPEN DOORS first, or just E? (My memory of the code is pretty spotty, but if there is a bug that's one place it could be.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=532&start=10#p3017
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making a value depend on another value that varies
User: Natasha / DateTime: 2008-12-04 15:48:15

Hm,

I suppose my contention with the format is that it's not particularly intuitive to assign an arbitrary variable to something that one wants to make a blanket statement about. The way I would intuitively assume Inform would translate the following:

[code]To say romance of (a person) in words:
   if _______ is indifferent:
      say "indifferent";
   otherwise if ________ is interested:
      say "interested";
   otherwise if ________ is infatuated:
      say "infatuated". [and so on][/code]

is that it (a person) refers to any and every person, and applies to all of them in the world ...which is in fact the way I'd hoped it would work. As far as I could tell from the way the code is working, assigning the variable didn't actually modify the thing (a person) in anyway, it still makes a blanket statement about all people. Now the term "socializer" is used interchangeably with "a person," so why not just  say "a person"?

Unless, if now "socializer" is a term used to mean any person but only in the context of referring to their romance level? That, I might be able to wrap my mind around.

~

On a different note, I have a new thorn in my side to solicit advice about.

I'd like an actor to do something once it reaches a certain romance level. It will be different things for different actors, but let's say in this case it's for Gwen to give the player a rose. Gwen should give the player a rose when she becomes infatuated.

I couldn't find any leads on delivering the piece of text and the rose item [i]at any point[/i] when Gwen enters the range of romance points that specifies that she is infatuated, which would be cool.

Instead, I tried:
[code]
To get the rose:
	say "...";
	now the player carries the rose.

After doing something to Gwen:
	if Gwen is infatuated, get the rose.
[/code]

It didn't break the build, but neither did it work. Using "instead of doing something to Gwen," of course, caused the other action rules to not work on her.

Ideas?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=532&start=10#p3018
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making a value depend on another value that varies
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2008-12-04 16:12:08

[quote="Natasha"]Hm,

I suppose my contention with the format is that it's not particularly intuitive to assign an arbitrary variable to something that one wants to make a blanket statement about. The way I would intuitively assume Inform would translate the following:

[code]To say romance of (a person) in words:
   if _______ is indifferent:
      say "indifferent";
   otherwise if ________ is interested:
      say "interested";
   otherwise if ________ is infatuated:
      say "infatuated". [and so on][/code]

is that it (a person) refers to any and every person, and applies to all of them in the world ...which is in fact the way I'd hoped it would work. As far as I could tell from the way the code is working, assigning the variable didn't actually modify the thing (a person) in anyway, it still makes a blanket statement about all people. Now the term "socializer" is used interchangeably with "a person," so why not just  say "a person"?[/quote]
Because the condition "if a person is indifferent" will return true if *any* person in your game is indifferent. You might invoke the say-phrase in reference to Mary (e.g., "Mary feels [romance of Mary in words] towards you."), but asking "if a person is indifferent" will get a positive response if Tom, Jane, Brian, or anyone happens to be indifferent, even though Mary herself might be infatuated.

Your if-then statement needs to be able to refer to the specific person that you referred to when you invoked the say-phrase. So we give that person -- and only that person -- the temporary label of "socializer" (or whatever), so you can refer to her specifically in your instructions.

[quote]Unless, if now "socializer" is a term used to mean any person but only in the context of referring to their romance level?[/quote]
Yes, that's exactly right. "Socializer" only has meaning within the instructions for that specific say-phrase. Everywhere else in your code it is meaningless.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=532&start=10#p3019
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making a value depend on another value that varies
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2008-12-04 18:25:19

[quote="Natasha"]I'd like an actor to do something once it reaches a certain romance level. It will be different things for different actors, but let's say in this case it's for Gwen to give the player a rose. Gwen should give the player a rose when she becomes infatuated.

I couldn't find any leads on delivering the piece of text and the rose item [i]at any point[/i] when Gwen enters the range of romance points that specifies that she is infatuated, which would be cool.

Instead, I tried:
[code]
To get the rose:
	say "...";
	now the player carries the rose.

After doing something to Gwen:
	if Gwen is infatuated, get the rose.
[/code]

It didn't break the build, but neither did it work. Using "instead of doing something to Gwen," of course, caused the other action rules to not work on her.

Ideas?[/quote]
This one is a little hard to diagnose without seeing your code.

First, make sure you have some way of verifying in-game that Gwen is actually infatuated when you think she is. The bug might be simply that Gwen is never becoming infatuated.

Assuming that's all working, using an after rule might be problematic. Some actions (like kissing) don't ever get to the after rulebook. They're designed to stop at the check stage, and the usual way to override them is with instead rules, so your after rule will never fire if you KISS GWEN. Also, "doing something to Gwen" assumes that Gwen is the noun. Some of the actions you've designated as affectionate might be treating Gwen as the [i]second[/i] noun. In particular, GIVE CHOCOLATES TO GWEN treats "chocolates" as the noun and "Gwen" as the second noun, so again, your after rule would not fire.

A better solution would be to use an "every turn" rule:

[code]Every turn while Gwen is infatuated:
	if Gwen is in the location and Gwen has the rose:
		say "Gwen blushes and hands you a rose.";
		move the rose to the player.
[/code]
Every turn rules fire at the end of the turn, after the player has done whatever was necessary to make Gwen infatuated. Note the if-then statement checks to make sure that 1) it only happens if Gwen is actually in the room with the player, and 2) it only happens if Gwen is carrying the rose, which ensures that the message doesn't fire over and over again while Gwen is infatuated.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=532&start=10#p3020
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making a value depend on another value that varies
User: Natasha / DateTime: 2008-12-04 18:54:02

Aha!

I did have a way of checking the demeanor of the actor in game by examining it, it's part of what my mess of romance point values and associated moods was for. Incidentally, it did turn out that the problem was that I was "kissing Gwen," among other actions. The "after" rule worked by examining Gwen, but the every turn rule is much more elegant because, as you've said, it alleviates the problem of repeated actions by voiding it once she doesn't have the item anymore.

Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=540&start=0#p3021
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Communicating the type of game to the player
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2008-12-05 02:05:27

Hmm ... an empty forum. I'll bite ...

I am writing a fairly linear game, originally designed for the IF Art Show; I'm not sure if that will actually happen this year, so the game might end up in Conrad's "Meta Comp" in July (not that it contains meta references).

The idea is that you are exploring the mental landscape of a teenage boy -- you come across Cynicism, Mistrust and other "people" inside the PC's mind. It is almost puzzleless; there are some things to do, but they are fairly obvious. The main idea is exploration and conversation (the environment isn't the focus of the game, and there are hardly any objects). A little understanding of the PC's past is needed to make progress at some points, but most of the information you get out of conversations is not necessary for finishing the game.

What is a good way to communicate to the player that this isn't a normal IF game? If someone approaches it looking for puzzles to solve and whizzes through it (in about ten minutes), they'll miss the point entirely. It's meant to be a thoughtful and reflective experience rather than a puzzle to "solve".

David

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=532&start=10#p3022
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making a value depend on another value that varies
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-12-05 09:09:28

[quote="Natasha"]Unless, if now "socializer" is a term used to mean any person but only in the context of referring to their romance level? That, I might be able to wrap my mind around.[/quote]

Just to clarify, "socializer" doesn't have any meaning in Inform unless you give it one - in other words, I pulled that out of my hat. You could have "x", "party-goer", "foobar", "minced meat" or whatever you want. I just chose that word because it seemed to fit the context. 

Here's another example why placeholder words are necessary:

[code]To say (lover - a person) likes (target - a person):
	say "[The target] is the love interest of [the lover]."[/code]

If you wrote:  To say a person likes a person: say "[The person] is the love interest of [the person].", the compler would get confused for obvious reasons.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=539&start=0#p3023
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Infinitely replenishing supply of an item
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-05 13:48:19

Michael Gentry:

Nice! Not only is this helpful, but I really like "instead of doing something to" -- a functionality I didn't know was there.

Skinny Mike:

I will check out those chapters, thanks for the info! I am still scared of extensions, but it sounds like I shouldn't be.

As I've said in another thread, I'm making this game as a Christmas present. I'm making some mistakes -- for example, I used an awful lot of "instead" code before I realized exactly how it should be used -- but I'm hoping to produce something on time and functional (I'm testing each piece to death to avoid bugs) if not elegant.

My second game, however, shall be perfect AND elegant! And will use extensions!  [emote]:P[/emote] 

Thanks so much for everyone's help. I really am learning a lot in a short amount of time. I love the way Inform has an easy learning curve, even for more complicated tasks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=539&start=0#p3024
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Infinitely replenishing supply of an item
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-05 13:53:26

[quote]do you really want or need to have your players running around dropping hundreds of leaves everywhere in the game just to see how many are available?[/quote]

This is a good thought, too, Mike. If I was playing a game with 50 handfuls of leaves available, I might assume that I was supposed to create a big leaf pile somewhere and then jump out of an airplane into it, or something (hm, there's a thought for a future game). 

For now it seems like 3 or 4 or 5 handfuls would prevent the weirdness of seeing a barren tree upon the second trip into the room, or forgetting where you put the leaves and going back for more only to find the tree bare.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=540&start=0#p3025
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Communicating the type of game to the player
User: Retro / DateTime: 2008-12-05 14:00:44

[quote="dfisher"]The idea is that you are exploring the mental landscape of a teenage boy -- you come across Cynicism, Mistrust and other "people" inside the PC's mind. It is almost puzzleless; there are some things to do, but they are fairly obvious. The main idea is exploration and conversation (the environment isn't the focus of the game, and there are hardly any objects).[/quote]

Is this supposed to be a conversation-only adventure? Because it sounds like one.

If so then I suggest you write the game in a multiple-choice/CYOA-based interpreter.

Because if you use a parser-based interpreter then players will assume naturally that your game is about typing commands such as "go north", "examine room", "take key" or "open door" in order to progress through an environment unless you write a note at the beginning which explains that there's no environment at all and that the only commands understood are "talk", "reply" or "say [something]". But this may confuse players who expect a fully-featured adventure with parser-interface where they can type lots of different commands and expect them to work.

My upcoming Node-X system lets you set up such a conversation-only scenario actually. Inventory switched off, no items/objects, no puzzles, a single location or no environment at all. Just the player making choices during a conversation with a NPC, for example. You know, as if the player was online in a chatroom or talking to him-/herself.

If this is what you are after then the mere fact that you present a CYOA-based adventure is - in my opinion - enough to communicate to your audience that your game isn't a normal one.

What I mean is: if you force the player to make choices instead of typing commands then you can better direct him/her in a direction you - as author - want him/her to go. You don't even have to force the player, because if the player sees that this is a multiple-choice textadventure then he/she will make choices naturally and not think about which commands to type. Sounds logical, doesn't it.

Imagine a textadventure where the only goal is to find the right answers during a conversation. I already had an idea for a game like this actually. Although I don't know if such adventure already exists or if it's possible to make such with a parser-based system.

Anyway, I think multiple-choice is the way to go for adventures like that.

Just my 2 cents.

Emilian

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=540&start=0#p3026
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Communicating the type of game to the player
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2008-12-05 15:35:14

I'm all for being up-front about your game.  Briefly tell your players about the structure, but let them find out the content for themselves.  (I feel the same way about the commands in puzzle games: give them the verbs, since finding the right nouns will be enough of a challenge.)  In your case I'd suggest prompting the player to view the about text when the game starts, and then just giving them a vague and non-spoilery description, like, "This is a puzzleless game with a strong emphasis on conversation."  But, I wouldn't mention anything about the whole mental landscape aspect - that should left up to the actual text of the game.

Having said all that, though, I'm sure that even if you didn't mention anything about the game's type, people would get it anyway.  Players may be surprised when a game with an engrossing story slaps them in the face with an impossible puzzle, but I don't think finding that it has no puzzles is likely to upset anyone.

[quote="EK_Dev"]Anyway, I think multiple-choice is the way to go for adventures like that.[/quote]
I'm not so sure.  Maybe I'm weird, but I suffer strongly from the 'lawnmower effect'.  I've always found churning through the branches of a conversation tree to be rather tiresome - no matter how well the writing itself flows.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=540&start=0#p3027
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Communicating the type of game to the player
User: Retro / DateTime: 2008-12-06 11:00:28

[quote="Pacian"][quote="EK_Dev"]Anyway, I think multiple-choice is the way to go for adventures like that.[/quote]
I'm not so sure.  Maybe I'm weird, but I suffer strongly from the 'lawnmower effect'.  I've always found churning through the branches of a conversation tree to be rather tiresome - no matter how well the writing itself flows.[/quote]

Well, it's true that in most games of any genre the conversation system is tiresome and suffers from - how you call it - the "lawnmover effect" where after a certain amount of time the conversation doesn't deliver any new information, so that the player loses interest.

It's the same in real life: when you have a conversation with someone and that someone repeats him-/herself all the time or "beats a dead horse" then you become tired and don't want to listen anymore.

Even commercial games suffer from this problem. For example, in the 3D-FPS/RPG [b][i]S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Shadow of Chernobyl[/i][/b] (which is one of my favorite games) the developers implemented a conversation system where the player can approach a NPC and ask questions. Now the flaw with that conversation system is that most of the NPCs give you the same answers and that the player himself can only ask the same questions most of the time.

For instance, there is this "famous" question you can ask any NPC you encounter in the Zone of STALKER:

[i]"Can you tell me something interesting about this place?"[/i]

Not only that this question itself becomes very boring very quickly. No, any NPC's answer to it is mostly the same and goes like this:

[i]"No, I don't know anything about this place ... bla bla."[/i]

And *IF* they tell you something interesting then it is the same information again each time you ask a certain NPC the same question. So the conversation lacks some variation which would have added to the replayability of the game.

There is another well-known and older commercial 3D-FPS/RPG which has a very *good* conversation system actually. It's my most favorite cyberpunk-game [b][i]Deus Ex[/i][/b] (which is by the way a great inspiration for my textadventure games)! In Deus Ex when you start a conversation with a NPC the answers and even the player's questions can vary and depend on whether you have accomplished a certain task before or whether you have a certain item in your inventory or not.

I have already implemented such a variation in version 1.0 of my system Node-X (see "Project Delta: The Course") where so-called [b]"FlagNodes"[/b] can perform checks on the player's inventory or other values and then branch into an alternate node (page). This technique can be used, for example, to make a conversation with a NPC turn into another direction when the player did a certain thing before.

I don't know if you guys have noticed it, but in "Project Delta: The Course" I added one situation - using a FlagNode controlling it - where Lt. Walker says [i]"Hey, where's your beretta?! Have you left it on the table? ..."[/i] if the player put the beretta back on the table before following Lt. Walker to the target range.

To cut a long story short, I think it all depends how well a conversation is branched and how much variation/replayability it has. 

And it doesn't really matter if the textadventure is multiple-choice or parser-based. Even in a parser-based game things can become very tiresome very soon. For example, when a player gets the same answer over and over again when typing in unknown commands:

[code]>OPEN TRUNK

I don't know how to do that.

>GET INTO CAR

I don't know how to do that.

>F**K YOURSELF

I don't know how to do that.

>...[/code]

It's really just a matter of variation and "alternate branching" - how it's called in Node-X - to keep a conversation interesting in my opinion. And by the way, the answers which a parser gives to the player when he/she types a command can also be understood as some sort of "conversation". And as you know, that "conversation" can become so tiresome in so many parser-based adventures. I really hate when a parser gives me the same answers to the same problem or the same typed commands.

P.S. If I made a parser-based adventure (which I won't do, because I aim at the CYOA/multiple-choice subgenre only) then the above example would look as follows:

[code]>OPEN TRUNK

You need a key to open that trunk.

>GET INTO CAR

You can't. The car's doors are locked.

>F**K YOURSELF

I shouldn't do that in a public place. Should I ?

>OPEN TRUNK

As I said this trunk can only be opened with a key. 

>OPEN TRUNK

Are you deaf or something? I said YOU NEED A KEY!

>OPEN TRUNK

I think YOU should f**k yourself.

>FUCK YOURSELF

Haha, you are too stupid for this game.

>GET INTO CAR

The rules are simple: Find the f**king key or quit.

>QUIT

Now finally you did something right. Bye-bye, lamer.[/code]

Some people could argue that this technique breaks the fourth wall or is bad, because it insults the player in the end. But you know what, I think such a technique is cool and I hope that someone will implement something like this in his/her parser-based adventure in the future, although I'm aware of the fact that such implementation is hard to code, because the parser would have to keep track of many variables and depend its answers on it.

Emilian

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=90#p3028
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Retro / DateTime: 2008-12-07 01:35:12

Hi,

I'd like to revive this old topic and add my two cents to it. First off all, I think it would be fascinating if Interactive Fiction hit the commercial market and become a success in it. In order to accomplish this I believe IF authors and the IF community as a whole should learn from the "big guys". You know, the main game developers out there who produce blockbusters and know their discipline.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=540&start=0#p3029
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Communicating the type of game to the player
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2008-12-07 08:21:19

I guess, in respect to the original post, creating a CYOA or entirely menu-based game does relieve you of some of the trouble of relaying to the player what kind of game it is, as they can only select from those options that you choose to give them.  At the same time, even within that framework, it's still useful to discuss how to present a game to the public, in terms of blurbs and pitches.  Even if you know that you want to play a CYOA game, you may not want to play a horror CYOA game - or you may [i]only[/i] want to play a horror one.

I also suspect that an author with a work in progress is unlikely to be happy with the idea of the time and effort needed to convert to a new, fundamentally different development environment - throwing out not just code, but also design work.

[quote="EK_Dev"]It's the same in real life: when you have a conversation with someone and that someone repeats him-/herself all the time or "beats a dead horse" then you become tired and don't want to listen anymore.[/quote]
To an extent, but even if the character is saying different things, I still find many menu-based conversations tiring.  "Select one of these options" can often feel too much like a slightly more flavourful variant of "press space to continue".

[quote="EK_Dev"]In Deus Ex when you start a conversation with a NPC the answers and even the player's questions can vary and depend on whether you have accomplished a certain task before or whether you have a certain item in your inventory or not.[/quote]
I would argue that this isn't a function of the conversation system, but is rather dependent on how much time and effort the game devs are prepared/able to put into implementing and testing this kind of complexity.

[quote="EK_Dev"]For example, when a player gets the same answer over and over again when typing in unknown commands:
[code]>OPEN TRUNK
I don't know how to do that.[/code][/quote]
Relating this back to the original post, if you're up-front about what commands are relevant to the game, this isn't an issue.  Not to mention that for this example, in TADS and Inform you'd just implement the trunk as an openable container and players could open it and stick items in it to their heart's content.

[quote="EK_Dev"]Some people could argue that this technique breaks the fourth wall or is bad, because it insults the player in the end. But you know what, I think such a technique is cool and I hope that someone will implement something like this in his/her parser-based adventure in the future.[/quote]
Plenty of people have tried to do that sort of thing (at least on small scales).  Invariably it just pisses players off when the insulting messages wind up firing for commands that the player believes to be perfectly reasonable.  Not to mention that if you're going to put that much effort into fleshing out your game, you could probably store much more narrative-relevant states than how stupid you think the player is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39&start=90#p3030
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Commercial IF
User: Merk / DateTime: 2008-12-07 10:37:48

Well this post sure is a blast from the past. [emote]:)[/emote]

At the time, several of us had come up with what would probably still be a good idea even now, for commercial IF. There is even a private board for discussing how it would work, how new content would be created, how it would be sold, royalties, etc. I think everybody just became too busy with other things, and it's been stagnant for the past couple of years. Personally, I haven't had time to do much of anything creative.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=540&start=0#p3031
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Communicating the type of game to the player
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2008-12-07 14:23:02

[quote="Pacian"]In your case I'd suggest prompting the player to view the about text when the game starts, and then just giving them a vague and non-spoilery description, like, "This is a puzzleless game with a strong emphasis on conversation."[/quote]
Hmm. Maybe. But I still like the idea of somehow communicating in-game what kind of thing is expected from the player ...

I guess my worry is what happens in the first location -- I can easily imagine someone getting frustrated and saying, "What am I supposed to be doing?" -- when the answer is, "as much or as little as you like; and when you have finished exploring the options here, continue down the path".

[quote="Pacian"][quote="EK_Dev"]Anyway, I think multiple-choice is the way to go for adventures like that.[/quote]
I'm not so sure.  Maybe I'm weird, but I suffer strongly from the 'lawnmower effect'.  I've always found churning through the branches of a conversation tree to be rather tiresome - no matter how well the writing itself flows.[/quote]
For this particular game, "ask about (topic)" would be much more suitable than conversation menus.

David

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=540&start=0#p3032
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Communicating the type of game to the player
User: George / DateTime: 2008-12-07 15:27:41

One easy method you could use at first is to have the game do things that require a response from the player. So often a game has its intro text and then the player is put in a static room. If instead the game prompted the player to do things, either through an NPC or some environmental action, that could give the player an idea of what they were to do in an otherwise open-ended environment. The trick would be to taper the prompting gradually so in a short amount of time the player was both on their own and armed with the knowledge they would need of how the game works. In a more linear or railroady game you could of course keep up the prompting for a much longer amount of time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=541&start=0#p3033
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Two things with the same name
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-07 19:10:33

I read somewhere in the manual, I think, that two things can have the same name because what is being referred to will be determined by its scope. I can't find the section now.

However, I had some problem with it anyway, and I don't know if I can describe exactly what the problem was now because I moved on to something else (not that that totally matters for what I'm about to ask). I know that I wanted there to be a Shaman's hut, a Your Hut (perhaps the pronoun was a problem), and the ability to see "huts" as some kind of backdrop when you are in a commons area surrounded by huts. I couldn't make it happen.

In a yet to be developed section, I'd like for there to be two planes. They'll be in different rooms, but I worry about unforseen problems.

Here's my question - would "kinds" be a good way to handle this? For example

[code]A hut is a kind of thing.
The Shaman's hut is a kind of hut.
Your hut is a kind of hut.

A plane is a kind of thing.
A biplane is a kind of plane.
A jet is a kind of plane.[/code]

Since I'm not prepared with the exact details of what went wrong, some general guidance would be appreciated. Try this with "kinds"? And if not, where's that section of the manual that deals with this?

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=531&start=0#p3034
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hidden door
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-07 20:08:18

I just remembered the flaw when making barbed wire not a door. I want it seen when you're east of it and when you're west of it, like a door. If it's in one location, it's not in the adjoining one.

I've come up with some hacks, maybe, but sometimes hacks are trouble...

[code]Instead of going east when the player is deep in the forest and the barbed wire is not in the location:
  say "The forest is deep and inpenetrable to the east".

[barbed wire is placed in the location after underbrush is cleared, as per discussion above]

Instead of going east when the player is deep in the forest and the barbed wire is in the location:
  If the barbed wire is clipped begin; 
    move player to army base [which is east];
    move barbed wire to army base;
  Otherwise;
    If the player is wearing the bark cloth begin; [haven't tested this nested-if syntax yet -- just learned it is possible]
       say "Wrapped in the bark cloth for protection, 
       you are able to climb over the barbed wire with some difficulty.";
       move player to army base;
       move barbed wire to army base;
    Otherwise;
       say "The barbed wire is in the way.";
    end if.
  End if. 

Instead of going West when the player is in army base and the barbed wire is in the location:
  If the barbed wire is clipped begin; 
    move player to the deep in the forest;
    move barbed wire to deep in the forest;
  Otherwise;
    If the player is wearing the bark cloth begin;
       say "Wrapped in the bark cloth for protection, 
       you are able to climb over the barbed wire with some difficulty.";
       move player to deep in the forest;
       move barbed wire to deep in the forest;
    Otherwise;
       say "The barbed wire is in the way.";
    end if.
  End if. 
[/code]

A test showed me that if sis is asked to go east when persuasion succeeds, the above doesn't cover her. So she needs to also be programmed specifically to go through the barbed wire if it's clipped, to not go through it if it's not (there's only one bark cloth and I'm not going to allow the player to dress sis specifically -- hopefully dressing a NPC isn't existing functionality?), and, I guess, I will NOT move the barbed wire to the next room with sis, since what's important is that the player see it. Unless there's a more generic way to say that the above applies to everyone who tries to move east and west.

Then I'll have to repeat for Mom and Granny, for whom persuasion succeeds under the right circumstances, and I guess, not for NPCs for whom persuasion does not succeed.

I'm not giving any of these people free will (if something like that's even possible), nor am I moving them around randomly or via any means but persuasion. But once I start hacking to this degree I start wondering if it's going to come back to bite me in the butt later. Maybe there's something I'm not thinking of?

Should I hack this far, or consider the more advanced moving-the-door-out-of-scope activity, or pursue the hidden door extension? I know it's largely a matter of opinion, but I'd like to do what will be least likely to cause unexpected bugs.

thanks!

UPDATE: Tests reveal that I need only a set of code for the player, and a set of code for everyone else (not separate for Sis, Granny, and Mom):

[code]Instead of going east when isBarbedWireCut is 0:
 say "The barbed wire is in the way, YOU". 

Instead of anyone going east when isBarbedWireCut is 0:
 say "The barbed wire is in the way, OTHERPERSON". [/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=540&start=0#p3035
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Communicating the type of game to the player
User: Retro / DateTime: 2008-12-07 22:49:30

[quote="Pacian"]I guess, in respect to the original post, creating a CYOA or entirely menu-based game does relieve you of some of the trouble of relaying to the player what kind of game it is, as they can only select from those options that you choose to give them.[/quote]

Exactly. Menu-based games can help you solve such problems.

It's a decision the author himself has to make whether to base his game on a parser or multiple-choice interface. Each one has its advantages and disadvantages. I think it depends on what kind of game you want to design. If you feel fine with command-based stuff and think that this is the right thing for your game then do it. Try to communicate your kind of game to player in the best way. Or if you feel better with CYOA then do this instead. Nobody forces you to do use development tools which you don't feel comfortable with.  

[quote]I also suspect that an author with a work in progress is unlikely to be happy with the idea of the time and effort needed to convert to a new, fundamentally different development environment - throwing out not just code, but also design work.[/quote]

Wait, that's an assumption I cannot stand by now, because I know nothing or very little about David Fisher's project at this point.

Is the development of this game already in progress or hasn't it started yet? Which phase is it currently in - planning/conception, coding, beta-testing?

If it's at the end of coding phase or in beta-testing phase then I agree with you that the author shouldn't switch engines.

[quote][quote="EK_Dev"]In Deus Ex when you start a conversation with a NPC the answers and even the player's questions can vary and depend on whether you have accomplished a certain task before or whether you have a certain item in your inventory or not.[/quote]
I would argue that this isn't a function of the conversation system, but is rather dependent on how much time and effort the game devs are prepared/able to put into implementing and testing this kind of complexity.[/quote]

Hmm.. did I really say it was the "function" of the conversation system? I don't think so. What I really meant was the complexity of the conversation. Sorry for the confusion. My english is not perfect. I can express myself better in german.

[quote][quote="EK_Dev"]Some people could argue that this technique breaks the fourth wall or is bad, because it insults the player in the end. But you know what, I think such a technique is cool and I hope that someone will implement something like this in his/her parser-based adventure in the future.[/quote]
Plenty of people have tried to do that sort of thing (at least on small scales).  Invariably it just pisses players off when the insulting messages wind up firing for commands that the player believes to be perfectly reasonable.  Not to mention that if you're going to put that much effort into fleshing out your game, you could probably store much more narrative-relevant states than how stupid you think the player is.[/quote]

That's why I said I won't do it. I only meant it would be funny seeing someone else creating this "insult the player" IF type. Who knows, maybe if a decent author wrote a game like that it could become a success. But I won't risk myself, because I'm new to this community and I haven't published enough IF games yet that I could afford these kind of experiments.

Perhaps a respected person in the IF community could write this type of game. I imagine it would recieve better reception from the IF community than if it was made by an unknown developer. But I'm just guessing.

However, don't get me wrong. I'm a person who loves to experiment with new ideas and think out-of-the-box. That's why I code my own CYOA/multiple-choice interpreter, because I believe that there's still room for experimentation and creation of new game concepts in that subgenre. And I like to be one of those to represent it.

I think there is no rigidness like in the popular parser-based IF genre where certain rules had already been established by the community over the last 10 to 20 years which authors today are not allowed to break unless they want to piss off players and get megaloads of bad reviews, as you pointed out.

Sometimes I tend to call parser-based textadventures "mainstream IF" and CYOA/menu-based ones "underground IF". And as you know - no matter which industry (movies, games, music) we are talking about - there always was and is more freedom of experimentation in the underground than in the mainstream. The mainstream creates a single rule which works and sticks to it. The underground is independent and can change its "face" more often without suffering consequences.

So I would present such games as [b]"indie/underground IF games"[/b].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=541&start=0#p3036
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two things with the same name
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-12-08 02:22:12

You don't need kinds for this. I'm not sure if you mean same name in the game or in the code, but if you mean in the game:

[code]The biplane is in the hangar. The printed name of the biplane is "plane". Understand "plane" as the biplane.
The jet is in the runway. The printed name of the jet is "plane". Understand "plane" as the jet.[/code]
You can't have the same name for two different things in the code (as in The plane is in the hangar. The plane is in the runway.), because the compiler can't then tell them apart. You can have some slack with different sections in the code, like so:

[code]Chapter 1 - Shaman's hut

Village is a room.

Shaman's hut is in the village. The hut is scenery.

Chapter 2 - Your hut

Your hut is in the village. The hut is scenery.[/code]
Here "The hut is scenery" refers to the hut described in the same chapter. If you remove the chapter headings "the hut" refers to the Shaman's hut which is defined first. Note that this not good coding practice, as it leads to hard to see mistakes if you reorganize the code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=541&start=0#p3037
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two things with the same name
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2008-12-08 08:47:23

[code]The biplane is in the hangar. The printed name of the biplane is "plane". Understand "plane" as the biplane.
The jet is in the runway. The printed name of the jet is "plane". Understand "plane" as the jet.[/code]
This won't cause any problems with your code, but it can be potentially confusing to the player. You'll end up with a game that looks like this:

[code]Hangar
You can see a plane and a plane here.

>GET IN PLANE
Which do you mean, the plane or the plane?[/code]
What you want, I think, is for the planes to be called "biplane" and "jet", respectively, but for the player to be able to [i]refer[/i] to either one of them as "plane". You can do this with just the understand-statements, like so:

[code]The biplane is in the hangar. Understand "plane" as the biplane.
The jet is in the runway. Understand "plane" as the jet.

-------------

Hangar
You can see a biplane and a jet here.

>GET IN PLANE
Which do you mean, the biplane or the jet?
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=531&start=0#p3038
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hidden door
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2008-12-08 09:20:59

What I would do is make the barbed wire a backdrop, and then write some instead rules for going back and forth from the Forest to the Army Base depending on the circumstances.

[code]Forest is a room. The Army Base is east of the Forest.

The underbrush is in the Forest. "The underbrush is very thick, especially to the east."

Instead of going east from the Forest when the barbed wire is not on-stage, say "The underbrush is too thick in that direction."

Instead of cutting the underbrush:
	remove the underbrush from play;
	move the barbed wire backdrop to all fenced rooms;
	say "You clear the underbrush away, revealing a barbed wire fence."

Definition: a room is fenced if it is the Forest or it is the Army Base. [This definition is just for moving the barbed wire. Because of the weird way backdrops work. You can't just say "move the barbed wire to the Forest and the Army Base".]

The barbed wire is a backdrop. Understand "fence" as the barbed wire. The barbed wire can be clipped or intact.

The barbed wire is not scenery. [We want to mention the barbed wire when it is present. We could tailor each individual room description, but it's easier to just make the backdrop nonscenery so that the game mentions it automatically whenever it is present, and then then write rules for that.] 

Rule for writing a paragraph about the intact barbed wire:
	say "A barbed wire fence blocks your way to the [if the location is the Forest]east.[otherwise]west."

Rule for writing a paragraph about the clipped barbed wire:
	say "A hole has been cut in the barbed wire fence to the [if the location is the Forest]east.[otherwise]west."

Instead of cutting the barbed wire:
	say "You clip the barbed wire, creating a hole in the fence that you can walk through easily.";
	now the barbed wire is clipped.

Instead of going east from the Forest when the barbed wire is intact, say "You'll have to climb over the fence."
Instead of going west from the Army Base when the barbed wire is intact, say "You'll have to climb over the fence."

Instead of climbing the intact barbed wire when the player is wearing the bark cloth:
	say "With the bark cloth for protection, you are able to climb over the barbed wire without difficulty.";
	if the player is in the Forest, move the player to the Army Base;
	otherwise move the player to the Forest.

Instead of climbing the intact barbed wire:
	say "The razor-sharp barbs would badly slash your unprotected hands."

[Since "climbing the intact barbed wire when the player is wearing the bark cloth" is a more specific condition than "climbing the intact barbed wire", Inform will automatically check that rule first and follow it if the condition is true. So the player will only be denied if he is not wearing the bark cloth.]

Instead of climbing the clipped barbed wire:
	say "There is no need to climb the fence; the barbed wire have been clipped."

[And here are some props for testing:]

Some clippers are in the Forest. Instead of cutting something when the player does not have the clippers, say "You have nothing to cut with!"

A bark cloth is in the Forest. It is wearable.

Test me with "e / look at barbed wire / cut underbrush / get clippers / cut underbrush / e / climb fence / wear bark cloth / climb fence / cut barbed wire /  climb fence / w".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=542&start=0#p3039
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Quick question about repeating dialogue actions
User: BrooksSeveer / DateTime: 2008-12-08 10:08:06

Hi. This is a dumb question, and one which I've figured out before, but I can't find the example on the help files to help me, and my old game was on a computer that crashed over the summer. Anyway:

I want to know how to have the player be able to ask a charachter the same question and get a different response. I'm already basically doing it by shaping the conversation using scenes, but in this particular game I'm also incorporating several unique verbs, (FLATTER, INSULT, FLIRT WITH, etc.) and I don't want the player to be able to get the same response when doing these actions, even if the context itself hasn't changed greatly. (I'm using branching mood/exposition scenes to keep track of the flow of information).

I know this solution is painfully simple, and what's more frustrating is that I used this feature alot in a much earlier tutorial learning game I made for myself about a year ago.

Can anyone please help me out. Either by posting an example or referencing me to something similarly pertinent. Thanks so much!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=542&start=0#p3040
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Quick question about repeating dialogue actions
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-12-08 11:05:21

By far the easiest way (in my opinion) is the one of...or... construction (see chapter 5.6 in the manual):

[code]Carry out insulting King Arthur:
   say "[one of]You empty headed animal food trough wiper![or]Your mother was a hamster![or]Your father smelt of elderberries![at random]"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=542&start=0#p3041
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Quick question about repeating dialogue actions
User: BrooksSeveer / DateTime: 2008-12-08 11:28:05

Well the order is important. It's also important that should the player exhaust all of the conversation options, that a default message appears. At some point a character should have no more (at least at that point in the game) to say on any particular subject.

I should have been a bit more specific. I'd prefer a solution that allows me to run through a table of responses, and once that table is exhausted, the game resorts to an unchanging default message.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=542&start=0#p3042
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Quick question about repeating dialogue actions
User: BrooksSeveer / DateTime: 2008-12-08 11:43:56

Okay, I figured out a solution that works. I don't know if it's most elegant way of solving the problem. Any pointers?

[code]"Dialogue Testing" by Brooks

Understand "lawn" and "grass" as "[lawn]".

Lawn is a room.

Fudgestone is a man. Fudgestone is in the lawn.

Table of Fudgestone Events
event
"Do you know anything about the lawn?' you ask Fudgestone.

'No sir,' he says, 'I do not.'"
"'Are you really sure? Are you positive?'

'As positive as a proton,' he tells you."
"'It's just that,' you say, 'If you know anything, anything at all, I'd really appreciate--'

'I do not know anything about the lawn!' he snaps."

Instead of asking Fudgestone about "[lawn]":
	repeat through the Table of Fudgestone Events
	begin;
		say "[event entry][line break]";
		blank out the whole row;
		rule succeeds;
	end repeat;
	say "Before you can open your mouth, Fudgestone raises his eyebrows, questioning the very logic which would persuade you to ask such a redundant question."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=542&start=0#p3043
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Quick question about repeating dialogue actions
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-12-08 12:14:35

Sorry, I wasn't being too specific either: [at random] is only one option.

[code]Instead of asking Fudgestone about "[lawn]":
   say "[one of]'Do you know anything about the lawn?' you ask Fudgestone.

'No sir,' he says, 'I do not.'[or]'Are you really sure? Are you positive?'

'As positive as a proton,' he tells you.[or]'It's just that,' you say, 'If you know anything, anything at all, I'd really appreciate--'

'I do not know anything about the lawn!' he snaps.[or]Before you can open your mouth, Fudgestone raises his eyebrows, questioning the very logic which would persuade you to ask such a redundant question.[stopping]"[/code]

Other options are [cycling], [sticky random], [as decreasingly likely outcomes], [in random order] etc. You'll find them all in the chapter 5.6.

But your method is fine as well and it might produce more legible code. Another method is "for the Xth time":

[code]Instead of asking Fudgestone about "[lawn]":
   say "Before you can open your mouth, Fudgestone raises his eyebrows, questioning the very logic which would persuade you to ask such a redundant question."

Instead of asking Fudgestone about "[lawn]" for the first time:
   say "'Do you know anything about the lawn?' you ask Fudgestone.

'No sir,' he says, 'I do not.'";

Instead of asking Fudgestone about "[lawn]" for the second time:
   say "'Are you really sure? Are you positive?'

'As positive as a proton,' he tells you."

Instead of asking Fudgestone about "[lawn]" for the third time:
   "'It's just that,' you say, 'If you know anything, anything at all, I'd really appreciate--'

'I do not know anything about the lawn!' he snaps."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=531&start=0#p3044
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hidden door
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-09 10:44:55

Michael, that sounds good. I will try that out.

If I want to use a description of the room that includes the barbed wire when it is there and does not when it is not (which I know how to do), then can I skip the code that says that the barbed wire is not scenery? I'm trying to migrate all my descriptions to a more organic prosey sort of thing instead of allowing stuff to be listed, when it is reasonable to do so.

Another question; when I tried this:

[code]Instead of anyone going east when the person is deep in the Jungle and the barbed wire is in the location:
  If the barbed wire is clipped begin;
    move the person to army base;
 Otherwise;
       say "The barbed wire is in the way.";
    end if.[/code]

Inform didn't like "move the person". Is there a way to write this?

If not, I can always repeat the code for each person who is persuadable.

Thanks!

(PS: I realize that latter snippet of code will need to be rewritten for this new way of doing the barbed wire fence.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=541&start=0#p3045
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two things with the same name
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-09 10:46:27

Michael, that looks good. I will try it. I didn't realize that the "Which do you mean" functionality was built-in. That's great.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=531&start=0#p3046
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hidden door
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-12-09 10:59:47

"person" is a kind and you need to refer to a specific character, "the actor".

[code]Instead of anyone going east when the actor is deep in the Jungle and the barbed wire is in the location of the actor:
  If the barbed wire is clipped begin;
    move the actor to army base;
Otherwise;
       say "The barbed wire is in the way.";
    end if.[/code]
(note that I added "location of the actor", because "location" alone means "location of the player".)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=531&start=0#p3047
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hidden door
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-09 11:03:17

Awesome Nitku, thank you!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=531&start=10#p3048
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hidden door
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-09 11:22:19

[code]Instead of anyone going east when the actor is deep in the Jungle and the barbed wire is in the location of the actor:
  If the barbed wire is clipped begin;
    move the actor to army base;
Otherwise;
       say "The barbed wire is in the way.";
    end if.[/code]

Can I use this to cover the player too? Rather than having two sets of code?

Going off to test that now, but I don't want to break more stuff than I have to...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=531&start=10#p3049
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hidden door
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2008-12-09 12:18:57

[quote="ShaeSays"]If I want to use a description of the room that includes the barbed wire when it is there and does not when it is not (which I know how to do), then can I skip the code that says that the barbed wire is not scenery? I'm trying to migrate all my descriptions to a more organic prosey sort of thing instead of allowing stuff to be listed, when it is reasonable to do so.[/quote]
Sure, that would work. Backdrops are scenery by default. So take out the statement that says the barbed wire is *not* scenery, then take out the two rules for writing a paragraph about the barbed wire. Then tailor your room descriptions as you please.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=531&start=10#p3050
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hidden door
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2008-12-09 12:36:16

[quote="ShaeSays"][code]Instead of anyone going east when the actor is deep in the Jungle and the barbed wire is in the location of the actor:
  If the barbed wire is clipped begin;
    move the actor to army base;
Otherwise;
       say "The barbed wire is in the way.";
    end if.[/code]

Can I use this to cover the player too? Rather than having two sets of code?

Going off to test that now, but I don't want to break more stuff than I have to...[/quote]
Yes, this rule would catch the player going as well.

However: you don't need that "move player to army base" line. A more efficient way to write the rule would be to stop the action and print a message if the fence is intact, but simply let the action proceed as normal if the barbed wire is clipped. Like so:

[code]The barbed wire can be clipped or intact.

Instead of an actor going east from the Jungle when the barbed wire is in the location of the actor:
	if the barbed wire is intact, say "The barbed wire is in the way.";
	otherwise continue the action.[/code]
If the barbed wire is clipped, the going action proceeds as normal (i.e., the actor moves to the next room). This is a good thing because Inform will automatically print appropriate messages if the player is there to witness someone going (i.e., "Joe leaves to the east."). That doesn't happen if you're moving them "by hand".

And finally, here's an even slicker way to write the rule:

[code]Instead of an actor going east from the Jungle when the intact barbed wire is in the location of the actor:
	say "The barbed wire is in the way."[/code]
If you move "intact" to the description of the barbed wire in the rule itself, you can dispense with the if-then statement. The rule will only fire if the barbed wire is present [i]and[/i] intact. If either of those conditions do not apply, then the rule does not fire, and the going action proceeds normally.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=531&start=10#p3051
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hidden door
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-09 13:32:20

[quote]However: you don't need that "move player to army base" line. [/quote]

Yeah, actually that's an artifact of a way I was trying to do this before I saw your better method.

However I hadn't actually taken notice of "stop the action" and "continue the action" yet. Those are valuable to know about.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=543&start=0#p3052
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Unwinnable states
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-09 14:01:45

What are people's opinions on unwinnable states? When I first started my game I decided not to have any, then I started thinking it would be a cool way to make puzzles not so obvious: in other words, just because you found a piece of fruit and gave it to a NPC who ate it, doesn't mean you did the right thing.

Are unwinnable states expected? Do they tick off the players?

How about if they're included but addressed in a "help" tip? ("Maybe you shouldn't have been so quick to dispose of that fruit.")

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=543&start=0#p3053
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Unwinnable states
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2008-12-09 14:58:56

Well, there's several different ways your game could go:

[list][*]The game can be put in an unwinnable state easily, and unwittingly.[/*:m]
[*]The game can be put in an unwinnable state, but only by going out of your way to do something obviously stupid (like flush a key down a toilet before you've used it, e.g.)[/*:m]
[*]The game can be put in an unwinnable state, but immediately ends or otherwise notifies you when it happens.[/*:m]
[*]The game cannot be put in an unwinnable state.[/*:m]
[*]The game cannot be "lost" at all -- i.e., there are no losing moves.[/*:m][/list:u]

My impression is that the more "modern" sensibility is to either avoid unwinnable states altogether, or to have the game end as soon as you put the game into an unwinnable state. However, I don't think a game with unwinnable states would be shunned, just regarded as more "old-school". For some people that's a plus.

If your game can be put into an unwinnable state, I think it's considerate to say so in the ABOUT text, so that people don't go in with the wrong expectations and get frustrated. I also like the idea of giving the player the option to be alerted when the game is put into an unwinnable state, but that would take some programming.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=543&start=0#p3054
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Unwinnable states
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2008-12-09 15:12:08

Something else that occurred to me. One of the major cornerstones of game and puzzle design is [i]feedback[/i] -- that is, does the game give you positive feedback when you're on the right track, and/or negative feedback when you're barking up the wrong tree. When you try a wrong solution, does the game clearly acknowledge that you tried something? Is it clear why what you tried doesn't work? Does a more correct solution suggest itself. Is it even obvious that there is a puzzle here that is meant to be solved?

Good feedback is generally considered an essential component of good puzzle design. The problem with leaving your game open to unwinnable states is that those sorts of traps tend to provide little or no feedback. I think you have to be careful to provide clues somewhere, at some point, that the player has done something wrong, even if it's not at the precise moment that he made the mistake.

For example, if there's a puzzle in your game that requires fruit, it should be relatively clear, either from the puzzle's appearance or through feedback, that the player needs fruit to solve it. If the player smacks his forehead and says "Oh, crap! I need the fruit, but I gave it to the NPC and he ate it over 50 turns ago! Now I'm going to have to start all over!" -- well, I think that's fair play.

But if the fruit puzzle has no feedback and it's not obvious what is needed there, then you run the risk of the player never realizing that he's put the game into an unwinnable state. He'll never realize that there is no solution anymore; he'll just keep wandering around, revisiting dead-ends, until he eventually decides your game is too hard and gives up. You don't want that.

So include them if you like, but keep an eye on feedback.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=543&start=0#p3055
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Unwinnable states
User: cconroy / DateTime: 2008-12-09 16:52:57

[quote="Michael Gentry"]For example, if there's a puzzle in your game that requires fruit, it should be relatively clear, either from the puzzle's appearance or through feedback, that the player needs fruit to solve it. If the player smacks his forehead and says "Oh, crap! I need the fruit, but I gave it to the NPC and he ate it over 50 turns ago! Now I'm going to have to start all over!" -- well, I think that's fair play.
[/quote]

IIRC, that's the exact reason I never finished Zork Zero, substituting (minor spoilers at this point, I suppose, but better safe than sorry)

[spoiler]"flamingo" for "NPC", "flamingo food" for "fruit"[/spoiler]

and "500" or so for "50".

Actually, that may not have been the exact reason, but I did find out about it in advance from a friend and would have gotten stuck had I made it that far.  (Come to think of it, I had the exact same problem with one of the later fully graphical Zorks -- Return to Zork, I think?  Something you can do in the very beginning that seems innocuous actually hurts you much further down the line.)  

That's not to say that I think unwinnable states are bad.  Depending on how they're implemented, they can range from only somewhat nasty to downright cruel.  Certainly as a player I prefer the former.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=543&start=0#p3056
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Unwinnable states
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2008-12-09 17:03:40

There are some quotes from various IF reviewers about games with unwinnable states here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://jacl.game-host.org:8080/dfisher/ifgems/gems_2.html#2.9">http://jacl.game-host.org:8080/dfisher/ ... 2.html#2.9</a>

To me it's much more fun knowing that a game either isn't going to allow me to get into an unwinnable state, or that there will be a very clear warning if it does ... then I can relax and explore / experiment with everything without having to worry about whether I'm doing something irrevocable.

But there's room in the IF world for all kinds of games! So long as there's a clear warning in the "about" text.

David

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=543&start=0#p3057
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Unwinnable states
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2008-12-09 22:29:49

[quote="Michael Gentry"]My impression is that the more "modern" sensibility is to either avoid unwinnable states altogether, or to have the game end as soon as you put the game into an unwinnable state. However, I don't think a game with unwinnable states would be shunned, just regarded as more "old-school". For some people that's a plus.[/quote]
Personally, although I've got nothing against old-school games, I definitely prefer the modern way about unwinnable states. For me, this kind of fairness is even one of the biggest advantages of modern IF games!

Cconroy mentioned Zork Zero: I remember that I had a similar problem with another object of that game (I discovered after many turns that the game was unwinnable and I had to start all over, or almost). I still loved Zork Zero, but [i]despite[/i] that flaw, certainly not because of it!

Death and losing endings are OK for me, though -- as long as you can UNDO. There's also a TADS 3 extension (I don't know if something similar exists for Inform, but I guess it's possible to do, anyway) which was used in [i]All Hope Abandon[/i] and implements the RETRY command, which is basically a more powerful UNDO which automatically takes the game back to the last winnable state (when you die but UNDO isn't useful because the game has been unwinnable for more than a few turns): this is OK, too.

Note that unwinnable states can be much more bearable if the game is very short (for instance, if it's the sort of game you have to replay several times in order to win, anyway). The longer the game is, the more painful it is to start over!

[quote="Michael Gentry"]The game can be put in an unwinnable state, but only by going out of your way to do something obviously stupid (like flush a key down a toilet before you've used it, e.g.)[/quote]
I wouldn't like that, either: when I'm stuck, I sometimes try stupid things, and I don't think I should be "punished" for that, at least not with anything worse than a losing ending (preferably a funny one).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=543&start=0#p3058
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Unwinnable states
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2008-12-10 06:47:42

[quote="Michael Gentry"]If the player smacks his forehead and says "Oh, crap! I need the fruit, but I gave it to the NPC and he ate it over 50 turns ago! Now I'm going to have to start all over!" -- well, I think that's fair play.[/quote]
This is ultimately a decision about what kind of audience you're aiming for.  Many players will also think it's fair play to throw up their hands and stop playing at this point, afraid of what else they may have unknowingly broken.

[quote="Eriorg"][quote="Michael Gentry"]The game can be put in an unwinnable state, but only by going out of your way to do something obviously stupid (like flush a key down a toilet before you've used it, e.g.)[/quote]
I wouldn't like that, either: when I'm stuck, I sometimes try stupid things, and I don't think I should be "punished" for that, at least not with anything worse than a losing ending (preferably a funny one).[/quote]
The trouble is that the number of syntactically valid commands that an IF game can accept is simply enormous.  Players can only expect a tiny fraction of them to actually produce a result - and when they get a result, they see that as a positive achievement.

Not to mention that for every otherwise well designed game that punishes you for flushing keys down the toilet, there's another badly designed game where you'll lose all your items and wind up trapped in a locked sewer - and you don't [i]really[/i] know which you're in until you've finished it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=543&start=0#p3059
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Unwinnable states
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-10 11:08:08

Good feedback, everyone.

The fruit question wasn't hypothetical. I want the player to give it to someone he has reason to believe will have a special interest in it, and as soon as he does so he will get the reward. But I think it might be fair to allow him to give it to any and everyone, who will gladly take it and eat it, so that he has to do a little thinking about who it should be given to instead of just ticking off a list until the result is good. As a player, I think if I gave fruit to someone who ate it or flushed a key down a toilet (without an immediate reward), I'd consider it my own fault when I needed the fruit or key later. 

But the points about length of game and informing the player in the About file are good ones. And there are other puzzles where I think an unwinnable state could be even more unfair (than one where an item dissappears without reward). In fact, I am suddenly recalling some old school game where I think you had to give beef jerkey to a clam, which I was pretty upset about -- because there was another character it made more sense to give it to, and because giving beef jerkey to a clam isn't something you'd do in the real world nor was it suggested by the game clues.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=544&start=0#p3060
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Override Built-in Synonyms?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-10 14:33:47

I have a feeling that this isn't going to be an easy one, and that I might have to deal with it with logic rather than with syntax.

I was dissappointed to learn that "screw" is the same as "turn". I had counted on having a lot of devices: radios, plane consoles and such, where I'd hate to stop the player from "turn knob", the most obvious way I can think of to tinker with these devices. In fact I've already programmed what happens when you turn the radio's knobs.

I'd also hoped to throw a screwdriver into the mix and allow the player to unscrew parts from the plane. But screw means turn, so now I can't tell him he's not allowed to unscrew anything unless he's carrying a screwdriver, even though I want him turning knobs with his bare hands but not loosing screws with them. 

I'd love to decouple these two words. In leui of that I guess I'll have to write a bunch of rules about screwing and unscrewing when the player is not holding the radio and is not holding the screwdriver and is not sitting in the plane, and whether it looks like he is unscrewing something from the plane or turning a knob on the plane, and so forth. Ergh. 

Maybe it would be easier to define only a handful of things as screwable/turnable in the first place, and try to let context determine response from there?

Advice appreciated.

Thanks

PS: Screw = Unscrew too? That's even worse.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=514&start=0#p3061
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Modifying Inform 7 standard rules
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-10 15:12:39

These are really cool. I think I'm going to play with one if time permits after I get my game operational. Any notable difference between the two?

Question about this:

[code]LibMsg <unknown object>			"You can't see any such thing."[/code]

Would this (or something like it) work?

[code]LibMsg <unknown object>			"You can't see any such thing.[or]You wish.[or]Fat chance.[at random]"[/code]

Also, I've never used an extension before -- I notice that you do so with an include line, which brings up a more basic question on Inform programming: Can you keep your own source code in several files? If so do you do this with includes too? I haven't really thought about this yet because my code is in separate files for testing at the moment anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=545&start=0#p3062
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Verb both Transitive and Intransitive
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-10 15:39:10

Here's the best way I've come up with to do it:

[code]Flying is an action applying to one topic.
Understand "fly [text]" as flying.
Understand "fly" as flying. [maybe not needed?]

Instead of flying "plane" when the player is in the plane: 
  say "You fly the plane.[line break]".

Instead of flying "plane" when the player is not in the plane: 
  say "You are not in a plane.[line break]".

Instead of flying:
 If the player is in the plane 
  Begin;
    say "You fly the plane.[line break]";
  Otherwise; 
    say "You flap your arms but nothing happens.[line break]";
 End if.[/code]

The problems are minor: If you're in the plane with the doodad and you say "fly doodad", you end up flying the plane. 

Adding a block like this caused only the last set to fire:

[code]Instead of flying "plane" when the player is in the plane: 
  say "You fly the plane.[line break]".

Instead of flying "plane" when the player is not in the plane: 
  say "You are not in a plane.[line break]".

Instead of flying [text]:
 If the player is in the plane 
  Begin;
    say "Perhaps you be a little clearer."; [in case they say something that happens to mean plane]
  Otherwise; 
    say "It doesn't seem flyable.[line break]";

Instead of flying:
 If the player is in the plane 
  Begin;
    say "You fly the plane.[line break]";
  Otherwise; 
    say "You flap your arms but nothing happens.[line break]";
 End if.[/code]

This didn't seem to be possible, unless I couldn't get the syntax right:

[code]Flying is an action applying to nothing or applying to one thing.
Understand "fly [thing]" as flying.
Understand "fly" as flying.[/code]

This is the ideal sort of result I want:

[quote]> Fly 
You flap your arms but nothing happens.

>Fly doodad
It doesn't seem to be flyable. 
[or whatever. perhaps it would be funny to have it soar and end up dropped, but I dunno how to make this happen within the context of the problem at hand]

>Enter plane.
OK.

>Fly doodad
It doesn't seem to be flyable.

>Fly plane
You fly the plane.

>Fly the good ole areo-plane
Perhaps you could be a little clearer.

>Fly
You fly the plane.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=545&start=0#p3063
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Verb both Transitive and Intransitive
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-10 15:46:15

Of course in the final version I'd want those last two "fly"s to get "You're already flying the plane", but I can handle that. Just trying to keep the example short.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=545&start=0#p3064
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Verb both Transitive and Intransitive
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-12-10 16:30:23

[quote="ShaeSays"]
[code]Instead of flying [text]:
...[/code][/quote]
The word [text] here does nothing. Bracketed text outside of quotation marks is [i]always[/i] considered comments and thus ignored. That's probably why that rule didn't work as expected.

As for your main problem with transitive / intransitive, whether or not an action requires a direct object (and / or an indirect one) is determined by the action definition. In many cases, you'd want two different actions to describe a transitive / intransitive situation. In this case, however, you could look at it as one transitive verb, with cases where the direct object is understood, not stated.

Inform can do this -- see ch 17.30 "Supplying a missing noun/second noun." The trick is to set up a grammar line without a direct object and then write a rule for filling it in:
[code]The lab is a room. The plane is a vehicle in the lab. A rock is in the plane.

Flying is an action applying to one thing. Understand "fly [something]" as flying.

Check flying:
	if the noun is not the plane, say "You can't fly that." instead.

Check flying:
	if the player is not enclosed by the plane, say "You'll have to get in first." instead.

Carry out flying:
	say "Weee."

[Here we set up the case where a noun is omitted.]

Understand "fly" as flying.
Rule for supplying a missing noun when flying: [ch 17.30]
	if the player is enclosed by the plane, change the noun to the plane;
	otherwise say "You flap your arms, but nothing happens." instead.

test me with "fly / fly plane / enter plane / fly rock / fly / fly plane".[/code]
EDIT: Okay, strictly speaking, bracketed text in an i6 inclusion is [i]not[/i] considered a comment, but in pure I7 code, it is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=544&start=0#p3065
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Override Built-in Synonyms?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-12-10 17:02:59

[quote="ShaeSays"]
I was dissappointed to learn that "screw" is the same as "turn".
...
I'd love to decouple these two words. [/quote]
This can be done (in this case) as easily as:[code]Understand the command "screw" as something new.[/code]... at which point "screw" is no longer associated with any action at all and is thus free for your use. (See ch. 16.3. Overriding existing commands). There are some cases where you need to be careful, because the word is associated with more than one action. In those cases, you'll have to remember to re - associate that grammar as if you were defining it for the first time. For example, if you "understand the command 'take' as something new" you've not only eliminated "take cat" but also "take inventory."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=514&start=0#p3066
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Modifying Inform 7 standard rules
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-12-10 17:33:38

[quote="ShaeSays"]Any notable difference between the two?[/quote]
Default Messages is more or less a trimmed-down version of Custom Library Messages, so unless you need the extra stuff in Custom Library Messages, it's probably best to use Default Messages.

[quote="ShaeSays"]Would this (or something like it) work?

[code]LibMsg <unknown object>			"You can't see any such thing.[or]You wish.[or]Fat chance.[at random]"[/code][/quote]
You'd need to add "[one of]" at the start of your message, like so:

[code]LibMsg <unknown object>			"[one of]You can't see any such thing.[or]You wish.[or]Fat chance.[at random]"[/code]
But apart from that, I think it should work just fine.

(Incidentally, it's probably better to use more helpful error messages than "You wish.", since the player won't know whether the command was understood and the game is disallowing it, or whether there was a problem understanding the command, like not being able to find a matching object.)

[quote="ShaeSays"]Also, I've never used an extension before -- I notice that you do so with an include line, which brings up a more basic question on Inform programming: Can you keep your own source code in several files? If so do you do this with includes too? I haven't really thought about this yet because my code is in separate files for testing at the moment anyway.[/quote]
Officially, you have to keep all your code in a single file. If you really want to separate your code into different files, though, you can create your own pseudo-extensions and include them in your project. This is best done with code that you've already tested and that is relatively bug-free, since Inform 7 isn't very helpful when it comes to finding bugs in extensions. Normally all extensions are listed in the credits of the game, but if you want to hide your pseudo-extensions, you can add

[code]Use authorial modesty.[/code]
to the code of each of your pseudo-extensions, to stop them from showing up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=514&start=0#p3067
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Modifying Inform 7 standard rules
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-10 21:00:06

Yeah... I was sort of using "you wish" as shorthand. It's good to know that kind of thing is possible, it could make the game feel more organic while still allowing useful messages.

Putting all the text in one file is not a big deal. I'm not ready to do anything substandard with that yet. I'll just name my sections wisely.

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=544&start=0#p3068
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Override Built-in Synonyms?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-10 21:01:39

Oh, awesome. Then that will be easier to deal with than I'd anticipated. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=545&start=0#p3069
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Verb both Transitive and Intransitive
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-10 21:05:30

Oh yay, that looks much simpler than I was making it out to be.

And I knew that about the bracketed text, I just forgot Again  [emote]:oops:[/emote] 

Thanks so much!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=544&start=0#p3070
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Override Built-in Synonyms?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-11 09:08:28

How dangerous would it be to 

[code]Understand the command "read" as something new.[/code]

In other words, in the case of read/examine, are there obvious unintended consequences like the "take inventory" example?

There are a couple of books in my game, and I'd like to differentiate between looking at them and reading them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=544&start=0#p3071
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Override Built-in Synonyms?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-12-11 09:55:11

Not at all -- in fact there's an example in the Recipe Book that does this (#285 "Pages"). You might want to check out the other Recipe Book examples in RB 9.6 "Reading Matter" as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=544&start=0#p3072
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Override Built-in Synonyms?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-11 10:32:44

Perfect, thanks Mike.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=530&start=10#p3073
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trading
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-11 11:10:07

I've decided to allow trading with any NPC (why not!?), even though only a few trades are profitable. I have programmed trading as such, with repeating code for each person:

[code]Instead of trading when the player is carrying the noun and the player can see Mom and Mom is carrying the second noun:
 say "You offer to trade your Mom the [noun] for the [second noun]. She accepts your offer and you exchange the goods.";
 move noun to Mom;
 move second noun to the player.

Instead of trading when the player is carrying the noun and the player can see Granny and Granny is carrying the second noun:
 say "You offer to trade Granny the [noun] for the [second noun]. She accepts your offer and you exhange the goods.";
 move noun to Granny;
 move second noun to the player.[/code]

I knew it was inelegant from the start, but I couldn't seem to make something like this work:

[code]Instead of trading when the player is carrying the noun and the player can see a person and the person is carrying the second noun:
 say "You offer to trade the [noun] for the [second noun]. Your offer is accepted.";
 move noun to the person;
 move second noun to the player.[/code]

Is there any way I can do this "the person" thing? I'm now regretting the-block-of-code-for-each-person because I'd like to cause certain trades to have certain results, without writing the whole thing over and over again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=530&start=10#p3075
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trading
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-12-11 12:29:31

Well, again, "the person" or "a person" both mean "any person anywhere in the game", not "the same person previously referred". Try this:

[code]Definition: a person is another if it is not the player.

Instead of trading when the player is carrying the noun and the player can see another person (called the trading partner) and the trading partner is carrying the second noun:
   say "You offer to trade the [noun] for the [second noun]. Your offer is accepted.";
   move noun to the trading partner;
   move second noun to the player.[/code]
This of course works elegantly only if there's only one person in the location.

Note that even the player is a person and we can always see ourselves. That's why you need to specify that we mean someone who is not the player.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=530&start=10#p3076
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trading
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-11 12:50:58

Nitku, thanks so much. 

Actually I think it will work when there is more than one person in the location, because the first test for trading is that the thing you want to trade for is in the location. There is only one of each thing, so once someone is holding that thing, they are the trading partner. Between the rules I've already created and the help you've given me, I think I can deal with more than one NPC in the location.

Thanks again!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=547&start=0#p3077
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Random game commentary
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-11 13:59:36

[code]Every turn when the player is carrying the monkey:
  say     "[one of]The monkey wraps his arms around your neck.
	[or]The monkey makes a screeching sound.
	[or]The monkey picks at your hair.
	[or][or][or][or][or][or][or][or][or][or]
	[at random]"[/code]

The extra [or]s are so that the game actually says something every few turns, rather than every turn. This causes some blank lines, which isn't the worst bug in the world. But is there a better way?

This didn't work:

[code]Every five turns when the player is carrying the monkey:[/code]

Ditto with "Every few turns" "Random turns when" and so forth.

Should I generate a random number and then say "Every turn when the player is carrying the monkey and randomNumber is 5"? I don't know how to get a random number generated every turn, and it seems like overkill.

Thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=530&start=10#p3078
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trading
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-12-11 14:06:55

[quote="ShaeSays"]There is only one of each thing, so once someone is holding that thing, they are the trading partner.[/quote]

Ah, you are absolutely right. My mistake!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=547&start=0#p3079
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Random game commentary
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-12-11 14:11:45

You can use "when a random chance of 1 in 5 succeeds". See chapter 8.17.

[code]Every turn when the player is carrying the monkey and a random chance of 1 in 5 succeeds:
   say "[one of]The monkey wraps his arms around your neck.[or]The monkey makes a screeching sound.[or]The monkey picks at your hair.[at random]".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=530&start=20#p3080
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trading
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-12-11 15:14:02

Actually now that I think about it, it does make a difference. Because the internal logic works like this (we assume Alice and Bob are in the location and Bob is carrying the second noun in question):

...when the player is carrying the noun [the player is carrying the noun, ok]
...and the player can see another person (called the trading partner) [we can see Alice -> now Alice is the trading partner]
...and the trading partner is carrying the second noun [Alice is not carrying the second noun! -> condition is false]

The problem is that Inform is not going through every person in the location but it evaluates each part of the condition separately. Fortunately this is easily fixed, just change the order:

[code]Instead of trading when the player is carrying the noun and another person (called the trading partner) is carrying the second noun and the player can see the trading partner: ...[/code]
Now "trading partner" is always the person who is holding the second noun, no matter who else is around.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=547&start=0#p3081
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Random game commentary
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-11 17:10:54

Awesome, thanks.

I don't know what it is about the book, but I never find what I need with a search. And when I read through it, I keep seeing things I already know or things I'll never do (like changing the font size). In fact most of my successes with new ideas come from just typing things different ways until the compiler likes it.

Eventually I'll stop being such a newbie.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=548&start=0#p3082
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Leaving a vehicle?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-12 10:05:13

This is a game PLAY question. How are you supposed to leave a vehicle (and I assume other containers/supporters)?

[quote]>exit plane
I only understood you as far as wanting to exit.

>get out of plane
I only understood you as far as wanting to get outside.

>leave
You'll have to say which compass direction to go in.

>leave plane
But you're already in the military plane. [this one is especially dumb IMO - since when is leaving entering?]

>go door
You can't see any such thing.[/quote]

Weird... I hope it's more obvious to the average player than to me... perhaps I'll have to create "Insteads" for all those perfectly obvious looking commands...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=549&start=0#p3083
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Supplying a Missing Direction
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-12 11:13:21

The plane is pushable between rooms.

[quote]>push plane
It is fixed in place.

>push plane south

[b]field[/b]
You are in a field.

>[/quote]

That's awfully counterintuitive.

This didn't work:
[code]Rule for supplying a missing direction when pushing:
  say "Which direction?" instead.[/code]

Is there an easy fix? Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=548&start=0#p3084
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Leaving a vehicle?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-12 11:17:08

"Get out" works. Does anything else?

I wonder how dangerous it would be to program insteads for all those other phrases I tried, so they'll succeed?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=550&start=0#p3085
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: NPC says something after 1st encounter after variable change
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-12 11:54:00

OK. So the player is going to go do something that makes a noise, and once that noise is permeating the whole game map (got that part), people who weren't persuadable before become persuadable (got that part). But I want it to be clear that that's why they've become persuadable.

In other words

[quote]>Perform action irrelevant to discussion
Now you've made a loud noise

>Listen
There's a loud noise that can be heard everywhere.

>Go east

[b]Otherroom[/b]
Mom is here.

>Mom, go West

Mom now hears the loud noise and is anxious to follow you to see what it's all about.

Mom goes West.[/quote]

So I need some sort of code like 

[code]After talking to mom for the first time after the doodad is humming
  say "Mom now hears the loud noise and is anxious to follow you to see what it's all about."[/code]

Which wasn't quite right, of course. Advice appreciated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=549&start=0#p3086
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Supplying a Missing Direction
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-12-12 15:54:45

"Pushing" and "pushing to" are two different actions, so you'll just have to change the message for the pushing action.

[code]Instead of pushing the plane:
   say "You have to supply the compass direction you want to push it to."[/code]
(It's generally better not to have the parser ask a question when it doesn't react to the answer gracefully. In this case if you ask "Which direction?" and the player answers NORTH, they'll walk there without the plane which can be very confusing.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=548&start=0#p3087
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Leaving a vehicle?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-12-12 17:23:43

I would only expect GO DOOR to work only if you've mentioned that the plane has a door (and fully implemented that door). The others seem reasonable, though.

[quote="ShaeSays"][quote]>leave
You'll have to say which compass direction to go in.

>leave plane
But you're already in the military plane. [this one is especially dumb IMO - since when is leaving entering?][/quote][/quote]
I don't have a copy of Inform 7 handy to test this, but it looks to me like Inform is treating LEAVE as a synonym for GO, so it treats LEAVE PLANE as GO PLANE. I agree that this produces dumb results.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=549&start=0#p3088
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Supplying a Missing Direction
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-12 19:23:40

Oh, good point on the "Which direction" thing, Nitku.

That was a simple one that I can't believe I had trouble with. Duh. 

Thanks again!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=551&start=0#p3089
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Three states not mutually exclusive?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-12 19:37:11

[code]The military plane can be inspected, partlyinspected, or uninspected. [/code]

This isn't working the way I expect, and I just want to clarify one thing before I drive myself nuts looking for bugs.

The compiler didn't like

[code]The military plane can be [b]either[/b] inspected, partlyinspected, or uninspected. [/code]

Which makes me suspect that states in sets of three aren't mutually exclusive. It would explain my problem, but my code is getting big, so there's a chance it's some other problem too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=40#p3090
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-12 20:40:49

Hey James,

Maybe we can test each other's games when we're finished!

Granted, we'll know some of the puzzles. I'll be all like, here's the part where you drop that dead cat in the toilet. And you'll be all like, "Here's the part where I put on the bark cloth to climb over the barbed wire."

BUT, we could give each game a fresh eye and give feedback, like, "I wanted to type 'pet cat'" or what have you.

And we won't make fun of each other for being noobs.

I plan to be done in about a week, or at worst, before Christmas. Lemme know what you think.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=552&start=0#p3091
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: How to examine the room you're in
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-13 12:01:32

This is not a question, but a trick I just stumbled on, that I thought someone might care about. As ArchdukeJames once said, "How presumptuous, right?"

There was something that I didn't like. If "tent" is the name of your room, then "tent" has a description, which is the description of the entire room. Perhaps:

[quote]The tent is made of a sturdy, olive drab canvas that has nonetheless rotten and torn in spots over the years. There's a hammock in the corner covered by a mosquito net. The center of the tent sags under the weight of a set of canvas shelves.[/quote]

If you're a player like me, you like to examine every single thing mentioned in the description. But if you're in the tent, and you say:

[code]>look at tent
You can't see any such thing.[/code]

It doesn't even give you the room description again! Not to mention the fact that you might want to give a more intuitive description of the item itself. 

And of course if you try to call something else the tent and put that in the tent, the compiler doesn't like that.

But then I thought of this:

[code]The canvas is scenery in the tent. Understand "tent" as canvas.
The description of the canvas is "It's olive drab, old and worn."[/code]

Just find a synonym, name it as scenery, and write a description for it. Now when you look at an item suggested by the very room name itself, you don't get that terrible "You can't see any such thing" message.

PS: I know that "look" will get the player the room description again, but I don't think the player should be prevented from trying the perfectly reasonable "look at tent".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=551&start=0#p3092
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Three states not mutually exclusive?
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2008-12-13 12:42:51

In any multi-state property, the states are [i]always [/i]mutually exclusive. If you say "A plane can be inspected, partlyinspected, or uninspected," then the plane can only be one of those things at any given time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=548&start=0#p3093
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Leaving a vehicle?
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2008-12-13 12:55:41

The action Inform wants is "exiting", which does not take a noun. "Exit", "Out", and "Get out" all are synonyms.

I've always felt that the syntax for getting out of things is too finicky. This code should provide you with some good alternatives without endangering your game:

[code]Instead of getting off a container when the player is in the noun, try exiting.

Understand "exit [something]" as getting off.
Understand "leave [something]" as getting off.
Understand "get out of [something]" as getting off.[/code]
The getting off action normally only works for supporters, but this code checks to see if you're inside the thing you're trying to get off, and converts the action to the more container-friendly exit action.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=529&start=50#p3094
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Five Coding Questions in Inform 7
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2008-12-13 12:58:52

[quote="ArchdukeJames"]With my aforementioned ghost who appears, I also want there to appear a keychain (a container with a whole buttload of keys on it) on a supporter (a key-hook). But I don't want this to appear everytime the ghost talks to the player, as he is going to talk quite a great many times. Basically, I want it to appear the first time the ghost appears and doesn't kill the player, but not anytime after, as the player is likely to take it immediatly. This key-chain is also crucial because it will dramatically open up the game world: ALmost all the other rooms will be locked until you complete this puzzle, so as to not have people finish the other puzzles before they do this.[/quote]
Create the key-hook with the keys already on it, but leave it off-stage. In the code where the ghost appears, add the following line;

[code]move the key-hook to Ghost Room;[/code]
This will move the keys along with it, since they're on the hook. It doesn't matter if this line fires more than once. If the hook is already in the Ghost Room, nothing happens.

[quote]Also, is there a way to make the ghost shut up until the player enters the room again? I don't want every action taken in the room while the ghost is there to make the ghost yap the same speech again and again. That'd get annoying quick.[/quote]

[code]The ghost can be chatty or quiet. After going to the Ghost Room, now the ghost is chatty.

Every turn when the ghost is chatty and the location is the Ghost Room:
     say "The ghost says 'Boo!'";
     now the ghost is quiet.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=548&start=0#p3095
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Leaving a vehicle?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-13 13:05:32

Michael, that is super helpful. I thought it would be more difficult than that.

This helped me manage my persuadable people in the same way:

[code]
Instead of asking a person (called the exitor) to try getting off a container when the exitor is in the noun, try asking the exitor to try exiting.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=550&start=0#p3096
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: NPC says something after 1st encounter after variable change
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2008-12-13 13:07:17

[code]The doodad can be humming or quiet. [With either-or properties, the doodad will automatically start at the second value (in this case "quiet") unless you specify otherwise.]

Before asking Mom to try doing something while the doodad is humming for the first time:
     "Now that your Mom has heard the doodad humming, she is much more inclined to do what you ask."[/code]

This adds the text before checking to see if Mom will actually do it. So you might want to replace "try doing something" with "try [some specific action]" if there's only a limited number of things Mom will actually do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=553&start=0#p3097
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Draggable between rooms?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-14 12:05:58

[code]Now the noun is pushable between rooms;[/code]

is working for me, but what if I want it to be pullable or draggable between rooms? Using those two words in the code above doesn't work... does this functionality exist out of the box? Or is "pull" designed to be used for something special on the spot, like pulling a cord? The fact that "drag" is its synonym makes me think you should be able to drag something similarly to the way you'd push it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=549&start=0#p3098
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Supplying a Missing Direction
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-14 12:13:08

Same puzzle: I want the player to be able to push a plane to a field, but not just push it everywhere on the map willy nilly, because that would complicate my life programmatically, plus logically pushing the plane into a hut and so forth would be silly.

[code]Instead of pushing the plane to the military base:
  say "You can't get the plane through the muddy area." instead. [/code]

and

[code]Instead of pushing the plane to north:
  say "You can't get the plane through the muddy area." instead. [/code]

Neither works... what's up with that? The player just pushes that plane right on in.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=544&start=0#p3099
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Override Built-in Synonyms?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-14 12:32:27

Well, this is weird.

[code]Understand the command "screw" as something new.
Understand the command "unscrew" as something new.

Screwing is an action applying to one thing.
  Understand "screw [thing]" as screwing.

unscrewing is an action applying to one thing.
Understand "unscrew [thing]" as unscrewing.

[the usual check and carry out code omitted][/code]

It's working, in that it checks my conditions, carries out the screwing and unscrewing in the way that I've defined, etc., but then...

[quote]>turn plane
that's not something you can unscrew![that's my custom unscrewing check message]
[/quote]

It didn't decouple itself from turn here... plus I find it a little mysterious that "turn" aligned itself with my "unscrew" rather than my "screw"...

Anyone know what the heck is going on?

Apologies for any unintended innuendo/humor in this post.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=553&start=0#p3100
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Draggable between rooms?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-12-14 12:50:45

I think what's throwing you off the mark is the idea that "normal" pushing and pushing between rooms would somehow be related or that one would be a special case of the other. That is [i]not[/i] true, they are not related any more than for example jumping and singing are. They are separate actions that just have confusingly similar names. For dragging and pulling between rooms to work you just add synonyms to the "pushing it to" action just like with any other action:

[code]Understand "pull [something] [direction]" as pushing it to.
Understand "pull [something] to [direction]" as pushing it to.
Understand "drag [something] [direction]" as pushing it to.
Understand "drag [something] to [direction]" as pushing it to.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=544&start=0#p3101
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Override Built-in Synonyms?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-14 12:53:56

My "screwing" and "unscrewing" actions are so complex (apologies again) that I figured it might be better to redefine "turn".

[code]Understand the command "turn" as something new.

Turning is an action applying to one thing.
Understand "turn [thing]" as turning.[/code]

gets me the message

[quote]You wrote 'Turning is an action applying to one thing'  : but that seems to be an action already existing, so it cannot be redefined now.[/quote]

What the heck? I could swear I had this type of thing working before.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=553&start=0#p3102
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Draggable between rooms?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-14 13:00:42

Oh... well actually I wasn't trying to turn "push" and "pull" into synonyms.

Thinking of how I would play my game if I were the player, I decided that I would "push" a vehicle if I wanted to move it and couldn't drive it. If I wanted to get a detached airplane wing somewhere, though, I'd pull or drag it.

So how do I make the wing pullable or draggable (I need a "now" statement as it only becomes that way after you unscrew it)? Is that merely a function of it being portable? And if so, could I make it pushable/draggable without making it portable? In other words, intuitively, after you drag something it would be in the room with you, but not in your inventory list. I don't want the player envisioning himself happily dancing around with an airplane wing under his arm.

If that's not how pulling/dragging is out of the box, then I suppose I can try to reprogram it. However, knowing the trouble I'm having reprogramming "screw" and "unscrew" (see other thread), maybe I'll just find another way to proceed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=553&start=0#p3103
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Draggable between rooms?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-14 13:03:11

Now that I rethink what you said, I suppose I could solve my problem by making push and pull synonyms, and just dealing with the unlikely awkwardness of the player pulling a vehicle or pushing a wing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=544&start=0#p3104
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Override Built-in Synonyms?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-14 13:10:43

I decided to do this instead:

[code]Tool Unscrewing is an action applying to one thing.
  Understand "unscrew [thing]" as Tool Unscrewing.

Check Tool Unscrewing:
 If the noun is not the pprightwing and the noun is not the ppleftwing and the noun is not the rightwing and the noun is not the leftwing and the noun is not the wings and the noun is not the rudder and the noun is not a part of the jeep, 
  say "that's not something you can unscrew." instead.

Check Tool Unscrewing:
  If the player is not carrying the screwdriver, say "You don't have a screwdriver." instead.[/code]

Now here's the weird part:

>turn plane
You don't have a screwdriver.

Not only is it still confusing "tool unscrewing" or "unscrewing" with "turning"... but it why didn't the earlier, more specific condition fire before the later, less specific condition?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=544&start=0#p3105
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Override Built-in Synonyms?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-14 13:20:45

OK, scratch that last question. That was not an unscrewing message that time, but an identical screwing one.

However, I really need help with making "screwing" and "unscrewing" something different from turning, and not just hiding their relationship in the message content, because I use "turn knob" in a radio puzzle that I haven't integrated yet.

So first things first: Define "screw" as something new? Or use "Tool unscrewing"?

And then, how to make sure "turn" doesn't engage screwing or unscrewing code? Should I paste all of the relevant code here?

This is my last puzzle, which I'd hoped to get done today, so I can move on to making interesting dialog and pretty descriptions. [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=549&start=0#p3106
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Supplying a Missing Direction
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-14 13:26:09

Forget it, dumb mistake.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=544&start=10#p3107
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Override Built-in Synonyms?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-12-14 13:44:01

[quote="ShaeSays"]Well, this is weird.
[quote]>turn plane
that's not something you can unscrew![that's my custom unscrewing check message]
[/quote]

It didn't decouple itself from turn here... plus I find it a little mysterious that "turn" aligned itself with my "unscrew" rather than my "screw"...
[/quote]Well "rotate", "twist", "unscrew" and "screw" are all synonymous with "turn" by default, but I would have thought your code to decouple "screw" and "unscrew" would have worked. When I try it with this basic code:[code]The lab is a room. The plane is in the Lab.

Understand the command "screw" as something new.
Understand the command "unscrew" as something new.

Screwing is an action applying to one thing.
Understand "screw [thing]" as screwing.

unscrewing is an action applying to one thing.
Understand "unscrew [thing]" as unscrewing.

Check Unscrewing: say "That's not something you can unscrew!" instead.[/code]... I get:[quote]>unscrew plane
That's not something you can unscrew!

>turn plane
Nothing obvious happens.

>rotate plane
Nothing obvious happens.

>twist plane
Nothing obvious happens.[/quote]I seem to remember that with commands that are defined in the index as "same as" another (as opposed to just being grammar for the command), you sometimes have to redo the whole group, but that doesn't seem to be the issue here.

Hm. Let me think.[quote="ShaeSays"]Apologies for any unintended innuendo/humor in this post.[/quote]If you knew this group better, you'd know there's nothing to apologize for.    [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=544&start=10#p3108
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Override Built-in Synonyms?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-12-14 13:58:23

[quote="ShaeSays"][code]Understand the command "turn" as something new.

Turning is an action applying to one thing.
Understand "turn [thing]" as turning.[/code][/quote]Ok, that you definitely [i]can't[/i] do. Even if you decouple the grammar for a command, that action's name is still reserved for good. You could, for example, eliminate all grammar for "taking" and define a whole new action in its place (using the grammar "get," "take," etc.) but you could never call it "the taking action."

I'm still confused about your main issue. Check in the actions index and see that your unscrewing and screwing actions are listed as "New actions defined in the source." You'll probably have to scroll down, since they'll be below the standard actions. Then check each of these actions, as well as the "turning" action, (by clicking on the magnifying glass icon next to it), and see what grammar is defined as "Typed commands leading to this action." Let us know what you find.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=544&start=10#p3109
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Override Built-in Synonyms?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-14 14:05:31

OK, don't think too hard...

After converting and unconverting and reconverting my code to "screw" vs "tool screw", it appears to be working now. Must have been some sort of dumb syntax thing.

I'll let you know if that changes.

Thanks so much for the help... I'm getting close to the finish line!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=539&start=0#p3111
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Infinitely replenishing supply of an item
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-14 16:15:26

Just now getting around to integrating this into other parts of my game. Actually the leaves are fibers, and the tree is a banana plant, and you need to remove them with a knife instead of by hand. I used the exact code provided by Michael and added my cutting code. Undesirable thing:

[quote]>cut fibers
You use the knife to strip some of the fibers from the banana plant's stem.

>cut fibers
(the handful of fibers)
Cutting that up would acheive little.[/quote]

After cutting the fibers once, doing something to the fibers again defaults to the handful.

I tried this:

[code]Instead of cutting the handful of fibers:
  silently try taking the growing fibers.[/code]

But it wouldn't be silent about it:
[code]>cut fibers
(the handful of fibers)
You use the knife to strip some of the fibers from the banana plant's stem.[/code]

Ugh, I hate those parethesis-generated implicit action thingies. They almost always screw up my code.

Any ideas?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=539&start=0#p3112
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Infinitely replenishing supply of an item
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2008-12-14 18:52:21

[quote="ShaeSays"]Ugh, I hate those parethesis-generated implicit action thingies. They almost always screw up my code.[/quote][i]This[/i] parenthetical has nothing to do with implicit actions. It's generated by the "clarifying the parser's choice of something" activity described in ch. 17.28. Basically, when the parser chooses a noun from multiple possibilities, it prints the full name in parentheses. This can be supressed with something like:[code]Rule for clarifying the parser's choice of the handful of leaves when cutting: stop.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=539&start=0#p3113
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Infinitely replenishing supply of an item
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-14 20:04:08

Well, it implicitly chose from among the possibilities, though, didn't it? Otherwise it might have said "Which fibers, the growing fibers or the handful of fibers?"

Anyway, thanks for that fix!!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=550&start=0#p3114
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: NPC says something after 1st encounter after variable change
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-14 21:20:04

My game isn't dialog-centric, but there are a couple of situations in which you need to talk to people, mostly to get exposition out of them (and for a couple of other things).

In many of these situations, I don't want the player to have to choose the exact right words (like, "Mom, I found a fruit tree") but just to simply talk to the NPC after the right confluence of circumstances.

Is there a way I can get

[quote]Mom, take fruit
Mom, I found a fruit tree
Mom, slkjdsf
Tell mom about fruit
Tell mom about sdfllkjsdf
Ask Mom about fruit
Ask Mom about slfjsad
Say hi [in the presence of mom][/quote]

And any other conversation-related commands I might be forgetting to all prompt the same response after the right mix of circumstances? I assume I need to program a number of them each separately, but I while I was able to successfully program "After asking mom about:", it doesn't fire after each of these situations and I wasn't able to find the code that does. "After telling mom about:" and "After saying to mom:" didn't work.

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=550&start=0#p3115
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: NPC says something after 1st encounter after variable change
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2008-12-15 08:27:16

[b]Mom, take fruit[/b] is asking someone to try doing something, since "take fruit" is a properly formed command.

[b]Mom, I found a fruit tree[/b], [b]Mom, slkjdsf[/b], and [b]Say hi[/b] are all handled by the awkwardly named "answering it that" action. Since "I found a fruit tree" and "slkjdsf" are not valid commands, they get converted to the equivalent of "say _____ to Mom."

[b]Tell mom about fruit[/b] and [b]Tell mom about sdfllkjsdf[/b] are both handled by the "telling it about" action.

[b]Ask Mom about fruit[/b] and [b]Ask Mom about slfjsad[/b] are handled by the "asking it about" action.

[quote]"After telling mom about:" and "After saying to mom:" didn't work.[/quote]
"After telling mom about something" should work for [b]tell mom about ________[/b]. "After answering mom that something" should work for [b]say _____ to mom[/b] or [b]Mom, whatever[/b].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=539&start=0#p3116
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Infinitely replenishing supply of an item
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2008-12-15 08:35:38

It's not just a semantic issue. The term "implicit action" does have a specific meaning in Inform. An implicit action is when the game makes you do something you didn't explicitly tell it to do, such as taking an object before you wear it:

[code]>wear the bark cloth
(first taking the bark cloth)
You put on the bark cloth.[/code]
The distinction is important because there are sections in the documentation that talk about implicit actions. If you were to look in those sections for an answer to the problem you mentioned, you would not find anything.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=539&start=0#p3117
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Infinitely replenishing supply of an item
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-15 11:43:31

Ah, I see. I was just thinking the compiler had performed an implicit action in choosing something from among confusing possibilities without getting my explicit instruction on which thing. Thanks for the clarification.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=550&start=0#p3118
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: NPC says something after 1st encounter after variable change
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-15 11:46:31

Thanks Michael, I will try those. Looks like I just didn't have the exact wording right for telling and answering.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=550&start=0#p3119
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: NPC says something after 1st encounter after variable change
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-15 12:03:54

This was too complicated, I guess, or maybe something else is wrong with my syntax?

[quote]Before asking Mom to try doing something or telling mom about something or answering mom that something while the military plane is humming for the first time:
     say "Your mom hears the plane's engine running and is anxious to find out what it's all about."[/quote]

This didn't work, which makes perfect sense, since the compiler doesn't know what "something":

[code]Before asking Mom to try doing something while the military plane is humming for the first time:
     say "Your mom hears the plane's engine running and is anxious to find out what it's all about."

Before telling mom about something while the military plane is humming for the first time:
  Try asking Mom to try doing something instead.[/code]

But if I repeat the "say" for all three items, I'm afraid it will say it after you ask mom, after you tell mom, and after you answer mom, when I want it to be said only once after any sort of conversation.

Hm, I just had a thought. Maybe I could do:

[code]Before telling mom about whateveh while the military plane is humming for the first time:
     say "Your mom hears the plane's engine running and is anxious to find out what it's all about."

Instead of telling mom about something while the military plane is humming for the first time:
 try telling mom about whateveh instead. [seems potentially buggy]

Instead of answering mom that something while the military plane is humming for the first time:
 try telling mom about whateveh instead.

Instead of asking mom about something while the military plane is humming for the first time:
 try telling mom about whateveh instead.[/code]

Sorry for the thinking out loud here, but my game has gotten hard to test due to the complexity. 

Is the latter the way to go, or is it overkill due to some syntax error in the first snippet (which seems better written)?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=550&start=0#p3120
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: NPC says something after 1st encounter after variable change
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2008-12-15 13:18:13

[quote="ShaeSays"]This was too complicated, I guess, or maybe something else is wrong with my syntax?

[code]Before asking Mom to try doing something or telling mom about something or answering mom that something while the military plane is humming for the first time:
     say "Your mom hears the plane's engine running and is anxious to find out what it's all about."[/code][/quote]
Yeah, you'll have to break that up into separate rules. 

[quote]But if I repeat the "say" for all three items, I'm afraid it will say it after you ask mom, after you tell mom, and after you answer mom, when I want it to be said only once after any sort of conversation.[/quote]
Ah, okay, I see. Best way to get around this is to define a say phrase:

[code]
Before asking Mom to try doing something while the military plane is humming for the first time:
     say "[mom hears humming]";

Before asking Mom about something while the military plane is humming for the first time:
     say "[mom hears humming]";

Before telling Mom about something while the military plane is humming for the first time:
     say "[mom hears humming]";

To say mom hears humming:
     say "[one of]Your mom hears the plane's engine running and is anxious to find out what it's all about.[or][stopping]";
[/code]
Any time you try to talk to your mom via any means, the game goes to the "mom hears humming" routine. The one of...or...stopping construction causes the routine to print your message the first time it's fired, and then nothing all subsequent times.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=550&start=0#p3121
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: NPC says something after 1st encounter after variable change
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-15 14:46:48

Michael: Very cool, thanks so much!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=544&start=10#p3123
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Override Built-in Synonyms?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-17 17:45:21

Confused again.

Skinny Mike, why is 

[code]Understand the command "screw" as something new.[/code]

OK, as you said earlier in the thread, and 

[code]Understand the command "turn" as something new.[/code]

Not ok?


Here's the reason I ask.

I had this in a separate file which tested ok:

[code]Understand the command "read" as something new.[/code]

(In fact, didn't someone supply me with that suggestion here?)

But when I integrated it into my larger game I got the error:

[quote]You wrote 'Reading is an action applying to one thing, requiring light'  : but that seems to be an action already existing, so it cannot be redefined now. [/quote]

I even tried moving it to the beginning of the code in case it was an order thing, but I got the same error.

Can I not do this? If not, why did it work in my small tester file?

Thanks...

Edited to add: Found this exact code in the recipe book, 16.9. Understanding kinds of value !

Edited to add: OK, I'm a big giant dork. I was getting the error because I had put that "read" line in twice, while integrating my various testers. I'm still curious, however, about the difference between redefining "screw" verses "turn". Is it because one is the original action and the other is the synonym?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=543&start=0#p3124
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Unwinnable states
User: zzo38 / DateTime: 2008-12-18 01:42:21

You can make it with or without unwinnable states, but either way you should indicate the politeness/cruelty of the game so you know what to expect.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=544&start=10#p3125
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Override Built-in Synonyms?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-12-18 03:17:25

Mike wasn't saying that you can't do the "Understand...", that part's fine. But you can't do

[code]Turning is an action applying to one thing.[/code]
Because "turning" is already defined as an action in the standard rules and you need to use some other name, like "twisting" or whatever.

That's why you got the error with reading (note what the error message says: the problem isn't the "Understand..." line, it's that you defined the reading action twice.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=544&start=10#p3126
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Override Built-in Synonyms?
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2008-12-18 08:38:29

It's important to note that there is a difference between the name of an action used internally in code, and the words you assign to that action that the player can use in the game.

"Turning" is an action that is defined in the standard rules. You can't undefine or redefine an action once it's been defined, so you can't make a new action and call it turning. However, there is nothing preventing you from redefining the [i]word [/i]"turn" to make it refer to something else. So this code actually completely legal:

[code]Understand the command "turn" as something new.[/code]
This has no effect on the [i]turning action[/i], which still exists. All it means is that the player cannot perform the turning action by typing "TURN ________". The game will just say "That's not a verb I recognize," unless/until you redefine the word "turn" to mean something else.

It is entirely possible (and sometimes desirable) to "remove" an action from the game by redefining all of its synonyms as something new.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=544&start=10#p3127
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Override Built-in Synonyms?
User: Retro / DateTime: 2008-12-18 12:34:43

[quote="ShaeSays"]After converting and unconverting and reconverting my code to "screw" vs "tool screw", it appears to be working now. Must have been some sort of dumb syntax thing.[/quote]

Sorry for bursting into this discussion, but I'd like to suggest that you also add the following special cases of "turn", "screw" and "unscrew", just for increasing the comical factor of your textadventure:

(the parser-answers in the examples below are placeholders only)

[code]>TURN ME ON
This is no porn adventure.

>TURN YOU ON
You wish. ;)

>SCREW YOU
Screw yourself, kid.

>UNSCREW YOURSELF
Don't be rude!

>TURN ME OFF
...[/code]

Believe it, they are crazy gamers like me who would type in such goofy commands to see the parser's reaction. Other players would probably never think of them anyway, but they should be implemented IMO. [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=544&start=10#p3128
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Override Built-in Synonyms?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-18 13:52:37

EK.. very nice. That will go well with the "spank monkey" and "choke monkey" messages I couldn't resist putting in, since my game contains a monkey and all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=543&start=0#p3129
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Unwinnable states
User: radix / DateTime: 2008-12-18 21:28:54

I don't think there's a problem with unwinnable states, I just think there's a problem with *unendable* states. Getting stuck in a situation where there's no way for the game to actually end is really really horrible. It doesn't have to end *immediately* when the important state change occurs, but I would try to make sure that the game ends any time that no more interesting content can be explored by the player.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=543&start=10#p3130
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Unwinnable states
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-18 22:07:20

Argh, I wrote a long post and then it got eaten by the ether. Here's the short version:

About Files: Can someone point me to a good example of one? Not sure what to include and how to organize it.

Politeness/Cruelty: Is this an objective index set forth somewhere? I don't know how I'd categorize my game in its current state.

Thanks for everyone's comments and suggestions. My game is finished and it contains unwinnable states, but I think they're fair, the mistake will be obvious later in play, I'll announce them in the About and Help text, the player can accomplish quite a bit despite making a mistake, and the game isn't terribly long so it shouldn't be too much of a pain to start over. 

It's my first game and it isn't perfect, but it was fun and I'll definitely do it again, and hopefully improve.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=543&start=10#p3131
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Unwinnable states
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2008-12-19 08:51:24

[quote="ShaeSays"]Politeness/Cruelty: Is this an objective index set forth somewhere? I don't know how I'd categorize my game in its current state.[/quote]
I don't think you could really make such an index truly 'objective', but Andrew Plotkin's [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Cruelty_scale]Cruelty Scale[/url] is widely referenced.  Personally, I think it's unfair how it lumps death in with other unwinnable states, even though it's impossible to continue further in a game when dead (at least in the sense it's meant here), but that seems to just be me.  [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=544&start=10#p3132
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Override Built-in Synonyms?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-19 10:36:29

On the note of adding funny messages, is there a way to do this?

[code]Instead of examining the player's face:
  say "There's no mirror around here, you know."[/code]

Other people have examinable faces in the game, so it seems useful to address this. I've also needed it before for other things, but managed to get around it in other ways.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=544&start=10#p3133
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Override Built-in Synonyms?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-19 11:10:41

And actually, on that note again... 

When examining "face" and the like when other people are in the room, the game always asks "Who's face, yours or Granny's?"

This wasn't so bad when "face" was the only bit of code to deal with. But I like to flesh out everything mentioned in the descriptions, so now hands, hair, nose, eyes, and so forth are added to the list.

Is there a way to say, blanketly, something like

[code]When examining face when people besides the player are in the room, assume the face belongs to the other person [/code]
?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=547&start=0#p3134
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Random game commentary
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-19 12:17:21

On a related note, this:

[code]The description of the monkey is
            "[if examining for the first time]The monkey is brown with 
        	 a light-colored belly, black feet and hands, and a long tail. He is very cute.
	[otherwise]
	[one of]
	The monkey is quietly picking through his fur.
	[or]
	The monkey stomps his feet and jumps up and down.
	[or]
	The monkey shows you his teeth.
	[or]
	The monkey seems to smile and clap his hands.
	[or]
	The monkey looks bored.
	[or]
	The monkey makes a screeching sound.
	[at random]".[/code]
Didn't do what I expected -- I got one of the middle messages on first examination. I tried "examining the monkey" and some other things but that didn't work out either.

I could set a boolean and then break this into two parts, but is there a way to make this work with some other syntax?

thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=547&start=0#p3135
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Random game commentary
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2008-12-19 14:01:15

[quote="ShaeSays"]On a related note, this:

[code]The description of the monkey is
            "[if examining for the first time]The monkey is brown with 
        	 a light-colored belly, black feet and hands, and a long tail. He is very cute.
	[otherwise]
	[one of]
	The monkey is quietly picking through his fur.
	[or]
	The monkey stomps his feet and jumps up and down.
	[or]
	The monkey shows you his teeth.
	[or]
	The monkey seems to smile and clap his hands.
	[or]
	The monkey looks bored.
	[or]
	The monkey makes a screeching sound.
	[at random]".[/code]
Didn't do what I expected -- I got one of the middle messages on first examination. I tried "examining the monkey" and some other things but that didn't work out either.

I could set a boolean and then break this into two parts, but is there a way to make this work with some other syntax?

thanks[/quote]

Either

[code]Instead of examining the monkey for the first time, say "The monkey is brown with a light-colored belly, black feet and hands, and a long tail. He is very cute."

The description of the monkey is "[one of]The monkey is quietly picking through his fur.[or]The monkey stomps his feet and jumps up and down.[or]The monkey shows you his teeth.[or]The monkey seems to smile and clap his hands.[or]The monkey looks bored.[or]The monkey makes a screeching sound.[at random]".[/code]

or

[code]The description of the monkey is "[one of]The monkey is brown with a light-colored belly, black feet and hands, and a long tail. He is very cute.[or][randomized monkey description][stopping]".

To say randomized monkey description:
	say "[one of]The monkey is quietly picking through his fur.[or]The monkey stomps his feet and jumps up and down.[or]The monkey shows you his teeth.[or]The monkey seems to smile and clap his hands.[or]The monkey looks bored.[or]The monkey makes a screeching sound.[at random]".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=544&start=20#p3136
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Override Built-in Synonyms?
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2008-12-19 14:07:54

[quote="ShaeSays"]And actually, on that note again... 

When examining "face" and the like when other people are in the room, the game always asks "Who's face, yours or Granny's?"

This wasn't so bad when "face" was the only bit of code to deal with. But I like to flesh out everything mentioned in the descriptions, so now hands, hair, nose, eyes, and so forth are added to the list.

Is there a way to say, blanketly, something like

[code]When examining face when people besides the player are in the room, assume the face belongs to the other person [/code]
?[/quote]

You can use a "does the player mean rule" to weight the parser's choices. 

[code]Does the player mean examining the player's face: it is unlikely.[/code]

Of course, that rule as written only applies when [i]examining[/i] someone's face. If you expect the player to try punching people in the face, you can make the rule broader:

[code]Does the player mean doing something to the player's face: it is unlikely.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=547&start=0#p3137
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Random game commentary
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-19 14:16:11

Awesome, thanks Michael.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=544&start=20#p3138
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Override Built-in Synonyms?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-19 14:22:23

Hm..

[quote]A pulse is a kind of thing. A pulse is a part of every person.
A face is a kind of thing. A face is a part of every person. Understand "expression" and "jaw" and "nose" and "eyes" as face.
Hair is a kind of thing. Hair is a part of every person. 

Does the player mean doing something to the player's face: it is unlikely.
Does the player mean doing something to the player's pulse: it is unlikely.
Does the player mean doing something to the player's hair: it is unlikely.[/quote]

Gets me 

[quote]You wrote 'Does the player mean doing something to the player's face'  , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is 'doing something to the player's face'. But that did not make sense as a description of an action. I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook.[/quote]

(and ditto for the other two)... I assume there's just some kind of syntax thing going on here...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=544&start=20#p3139
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Override Built-in Synonyms?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-19 15:53:04

My game's all done, and now I'm adding synonyms and frills.

It seems to me that someone with a screwdriver and a notion to remove a wing from a plane might reasonably type in "remove left wing" instead of "unscrew left wing".

Code:

[code]Instead of taking off the ppleftwing:
  try unscrewing the ppleftwing instead.[/code]

Play:

[quote]>remove left wing
(first taking the private plane's left wing)
That seems to be a part of the private plane.[/quote]

Clearly it's worrying about whether I'm "wearing" the wing before getting to my instead code. 

I noticed that adding a similar code for something that's not a part of something else is a little better, but it still gives the "f(first taking the item)" message.

I understand there's some complicated method of overriding Inform's natural impulses, but I'm not sure I'm ready to do something complicated. 

Didn't I see somewhere that you can have Inform respond to some completely arbitrary string from the player, whether or not it contains real commands?

Other ideas welcome as well.

Thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=544&start=20#p3140
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Override Built-in Synonyms?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-12-19 17:57:40

[quote]You wrote 'Does the player mean doing something to the player's face'  , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is 'doing something to the player's face'. But that did not make sense as a description of an action. I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook.[/quote]
Try something like this (untested):
[code]Does the player mean doing something to a face which is part of the player:[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=544&start=20#p3141
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Override Built-in Synonyms?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-19 22:34:13

That didn't work either, Emerald. I tried a few other permutations of it too.

Luckily I have only five NPCs. Guess I'll name faces and hands and such for each of them, at least for now. It's just too silly to have inform asking the player whether he wants to look at his own face.

Edited to add: Can't get that to work either, actually.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=544&start=20#p3142
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Override Built-in Synonyms?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-19 23:44:30

Found the answer to my earlier question, about making "remove" act like "unscrew" under the right circumstances:

[code]Before taking off the leftwing:
  try unscrewing the leftwing instead.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=544&start=20#p3143
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Override Built-in Synonyms?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-12-20 09:38:32

For the disambiguation:

[code]Definition: a face is your own if it is part of the player.

Does the player mean doing something to your own face: it is unlikely.[/code]
For the examining, you can use the same definition:

[code]Instead of examining your own face:
   say "..."[/code]
Or, for a more general approach (you'll probably want descriptions for other characters' faces too):

[code]Instead of examining a face when the noun is part of the player: [or some other character]
   say "..."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=544&start=20#p3144
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Override Built-in Synonyms?
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2008-12-20 11:06:21

[quote="ShaeSays"]
[quote]You wrote 'Does the player mean doing something to the player's face'  , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is 'doing something to the player's face'. But that did not make sense as a description of an action. I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook.[/quote][/quote]
Whoops, sorry about that. I thought "player's face" was the item's name in code. Inform doesn't recognize possessives out of the box.

Nitku's solution is the best, I think -- define "your own" as an adjective that you can use in code.

I noticed you have other body parts as well -- pulse, hair, etc. You can handle all of those with a single rule if you make them all of a kind.

[code]A body part is a kind of thing.

A face is a kind of body part. A face is part of every person.
A pulse is a kind of body part. A pulse is part of every person.
Hair is a kind of body part. Hair is part of every person.

Definition: a body part is your own if it is part of the player.

Does the player mean doing something to your own body part: it is unlikely.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=544&start=20#p3145
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Override Built-in Synonyms?
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2008-12-20 11:12:03

[quote="ShaeSays"]Found the answer to my earlier question, about making "remove" act like "unscrew" under the right circumstances:

[code]Before taking off the leftwing:
  try unscrewing the leftwing instead.[/code][/quote]

FYI, you can make the word "remove" mean different things in different contexts with understand rules.

[code]Understand "remove [leftwing]" as unscrewing.[/code]
Now you don't need a before rule, because the parser knows from the get-go that "remove" means "unscrew" when you're talking about the left wing.

If you have several plane parts that can be removed, you can make them of a kind, and handle all of them with one understand rule.

[code]A plane part is a kind of thing.

The leftwing is a plane part.
The rightwing is a plane part.
The rudder is a plane part.

Understand "remove [plane part]" as unscrewing.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=554&start=0#p3146
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: How Does Room Describing Work?
User: craigp / DateTime: 2008-12-20 12:06:55

I'm trying to completely gut and replace the room description functions of Inform 7, but I can't seem to track down how to override the rules I need to override. I do "instead of looking", for example, but that only works when the player is actually typing "look" or, for some reason, on the very first turn of the game.

When moving between rooms, even into unvisited rooms, it displays the standard description. I've checked the rules sequence, and I need to replace the "room description paragraphs about objects rule" at the very least. But I'm not sure what the syntax is to do that.

I've tried a few ways, including just "the room description paragraphs about objects rule: ...", but they all error out. I've made plenty of rules before, but I've never tried to replace an existing rule, so...

Does anyone know the solution?

-Craig

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=554&start=0#p3147
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How Does Room Describing Work?
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2008-12-20 19:02:10

The "room description paragraphs about objects rule" is in the carry out looking rulebook. It's an action rule book, so you can find it in the Index, under the Actions tab, under the detailed view for Looking.

If you want to replace it with your own code, you can do so by writing your own rule and replacing the old one with it:

[code]Carry out looking (this is the my new looking rule):
	etc., etc.

The room description paragraphs about objects rule is not listed in any rulebook.
The my new looking rule is listed after the room description body text rule in the carry out looking rulebook. [This is where the old RDPAO rule was.][/code]

That will completely and irreversibly tear out the standard rule and replace it with your own. If you only want to use your new rule in certain parts of the game, and allow normal behavior otherwise, use a procedural rule:

[code]Procedural rule: if (some condition applies), substitute the my new looking rule for the room description paragraphs about objects rule.[/code]

Finally, you might also want to read the Activities chapter of the documentation, particularly sections 17.24-17.26, which go into more nitty-gritty detail about how room descriptions are constructed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=554&start=0#p3148
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How Does Room Describing Work?
User: craigp / DateTime: 2008-12-20 20:06:40

Thanks for the help, I'll go do that.

And... I'm working with old documentation. Mine doesn't have anything like that in it. Maybe I should download the newest version.

-Craig

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=544&start=20#p3149
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Override Built-in Synonyms?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-22 10:22:09

Nitku and Michael:

Thanks for the new info. This new code doesn't throw an error, but it doesn't actually work either. Code:

[code]A hand is a kind of thing. A hand is a part of every person.
A pulse is a kind of thing. A pulse is a part of every person.
A face is a kind of thing. A face is a part of every person. Understand "expression" and "jaw" and "nose" and "eyes" as face.
Hair is a kind of thing. Hair is a part of every person.

Definition: a face is your own if it is part of the player.
Definition: a hand is your own if it is part of the player.
Definition: a pulse is your own if it is part of the player.
Definition: hair is your own if it is part of the player.

Does the player mean doing something to your own face: it is unlikely.
Does the player mean doing something to your own pulse: it is unlikely.
Does the player mean doing something to your own hair: it is unlikely.

Instead of examining your own face:
   say "There are no mirrors here, you know."

The description of Mom's face is "Mom has a kind face, deeply lined but optimistic. Her eyes are full of compassion. She looks tired."[/code]

Game play:
[code]>look at face
Which do you mean, your face, Granny's face or the bird's face?[/code]

Anyone know why this isn't working?

I especially don't want the bird's "face" to come under discussion at all. I have noticed that animals seem to be special cases of humans.

Can I say something like:

[code]Does the player mean doing something to an animal's face: it is impossible.[/code]

I'd also be open to coding body parts for non-player humans only, one by one, but I couldn't really figure out how to do that either. 

I'm starting to regret giving anyone a face...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=514&start=0#p3150
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Modifying Inform 7 standard rules
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-22 12:50:31

So -- to use this extension, do I just scroll to the messages I want to change, like so?

[quote]Section: Implicit Actions

	Table of custom library messages (continued)
	Message Id						Message Text
	LibMsg <report implicit take>				"(first taking [the main object])"[/quote]

And maybe change to 

[quote]Section: Implicit Actions

	Table of custom library messages (continued)
	Message Id						Message Text
	LibMsg <report implicit take>				"(first trying to take [the main object])"[/quote]

And then put the extension (Default Messages.txt) into My Documents\Inform\Extensions...

And then say "Include Default Messages by David Fisher." at the beginning of the code?

Also, will changing "first taking the object" to "first trying to take the object" help alleviate the awkwardness of stuff like this:

[code]>Wear hat
(First taking the hat)
That seems to belong to Granny[/code]

Or will it have consequences I'm not thinking of?

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=539&start=10#p3151
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Infinitely replenishing supply of an item
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-22 15:14:47

Hello again!

While testing this bit, I discovered that something wasn't working as I intended. After you strip one or more handfuls of fibers from the tree, and weave a hat, I'd like to remove at least one of the handfuls of fibers from inventory because intuitively, it was used to make the hat.

I had had this, which didn't throw an error but didn't remove the fibers, possibly because it was removing the growing ones rather than the handful? I'll have to test that again to see. (Edited to add: yes that's what it's doing)

[code]Carry out weaving "[hat-names]":
If the player is carrying the handful of fibers
  Begin;
   say "You weave the fibers into a crude hat. It looks terrible, but it's serviceable.";
   remove the fibers from play;
   move hat to player;
  Otherwise;
   say "You don't have anything to weave with.";
End if. [/code]

I tried switching to this:
[code]
Carry out weaving "[hat-names]":
If the player is carrying the handful of fibers
  Begin;
   say "You weave the fibers into a crude hat. It looks terrible, but it's serviceable.";
   remove the handful of fibers from play;
   move hat to player;
  Otherwise;
   say "You don't have anything to weave with.";
End if. [/code]

But then I get this:

[code]Problem. You wrote 'remove the handful of fibers from play'  , but 'handful of fibers' seems to be an object matching a description, whereas I was expecting to find the name of an object there.[/code]

Incidentally the "if" condition is working, and it's using the same object.

What's going wrong here?

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=544&start=30#p3152
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Override Built-in Synonyms?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-12-22 18:48:57

It is actually working but perhaps you expected it to work a bit differently. Whenever the disambiguation question pops up, it suggests every possible item the player can see and you can't exclude things from this list. You can only make them less or more likely to be selected automatically, so "Does the player mean..." doesn't have any effect after the parser has decided it can't pick the most likely option and has to ask the player for a clarification. (You can see that your code works as intended when there's only one NPC in the room.) In this case, the player's face is "unlikely", but the granny's and the bird's faces are equally likely so the game can't choose.

As far as I know there isn't a (easy) way to exclude things from the disambiguation question list, and perhaps there isn't need for it either because player just might want to examine their own face.

As for the animal face problem:

[code]A face is a kind of thing. A face is a part of every man. A face is a part of every woman. [A face is a part of yourself.][/code]
"Animal" is a sub-class of a "person", that's why animals got the face as well. Note that the player is just a person, not a man or a woman, so they'll have to be treated separately. This will solve the first problem as well in your example now that granny is the only person beside the player that has a face.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=539&start=10#p3153
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Infinitely replenishing supply of an item
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-12-22 19:01:16

I suspect that you may have accidentally created a named object called "fibers" that are in the tree but when the player takes them they get "handful of fibers" that is a kind of thing (you can confirm this if you view the game's objects in Index -> World). Anyway, the correct syntax is

[code]remove a random handful of fibers carried by the player from play[/code]
Or, more elegantly perhaps:

[code]If the player is carrying handful of fibers (called those fibers):
   remove those fibers from play.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=544&start=30#p3154
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Override Built-in Synonyms?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-22 19:54:43

Ah, thanks Nitku. That makes sense. I ended up programming a bunch of people and their body parts separately, and this would have been a lot cleaner. Maybe I'll have time to clean it up before it goes into a gift-wrapped box here in the next day or two.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=539&start=10#p3155
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Infinitely replenishing supply of an item
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-22 19:59:39

Perfect Nitku, that works. Thanks so much.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=544&start=30#p3156
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Override Built-in Synonyms?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-22 20:16:13

By the way, isn't the compiler ignoring [A face is a part of yourself] because its in comment brackets? How do I make sure the player's face is dealt with?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=524&start=0#p3157
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hiding item inventory in description
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-22 23:21:59

Back on this topic...

Code:

[code]Before entering the hammock when the bird is on the hammock and Granny is on the hammock and Granny is wearing the ghat:
  say "You climb onto the hammock and snuggle in close to Granny, causing the hammock to bounce and rock. The movement upsets the bird, which flies around the hut a bit, grabs Granny's hat in its beak, and flies out the door with it.";
  remove the ghat from play;
  remove the bird from play.[/code]

Play:

[quote]>get in hammock
You climb onto the hammock and snuggle in close to Granny, causing the hammock to bounce and rock. The movement upsets the bird, which flies around the hut a bit, grabs Granny's hat in its beak, and flies out the door with it.

You get onto the hammock.

On the hammock you can see Granny.[/quote]

I don't want the game repeating those last two lines, when I did a good job describing that stuff in the paragraph. I tried "instead" code instead, tried "rule for writing a paragraph about the hammock..." and other things, but I can't get it to stop reporting. I also want it to stop only for this incident, and not throughout the game.

help appreciated as always!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=544&start=30#p3158
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Override Built-in Synonyms?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-12-23 04:45:25

[quote]By the way, isn't the compiler ignoring [A face is a part of yourself] because its in comment brackets?[/quote]
Yes, I put it in as a comment. Remove the brackets.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=524&start=0#p3160
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hiding item inventory in description
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-12-23 04:52:15

Change the before rule into an after rule, that should override the normal reporting if nothing else in the code comes into way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=514&start=0#p3161
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Modifying Inform 7 standard rules
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-12-23 04:57:22

No, you never modify the extension's code directly. You include the extension as it is and put the code that controls the extension inside your own code:

[code]Include Default Messages by David Fisher.

Table of custom library messages (continued)
Message Id   Message Text
LibMsg <report implicit take>   "(first trying to take [the main object])"[/code]

(this is covered in the extension's documentation, section 1.4.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=514&start=0#p3162
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Modifying Inform 7 standard rules
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-23 08:42:00

Thanks Nitku -- I don't see the documentation though? Where is it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=524&start=0#p3163
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hiding item inventory in description
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-23 08:43:54

Weird, I wouldn't have thought of that as something that would have worked here. But it did! Thanks Nitku!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=555&start=0#p3164
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Dealing with implicit action reporting
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-23 08:52:32

As I've said in other threads, this sort of thing bothers me because it doesn't make sense, and I'd like to fix it, or at least make the reporting a little more sensible:

[code]>wear hat
(first taking Granny's hat)
That seems to belong to Granny.

>inventory
You are carrying nothing.[/code]

Could one just write a series of commands like:

[code]Instead of eating something (called the food) when the player isn't carrying the food: 
  say "You aren't carrying it". 

Instead of wearing something (called the clothes) when the player isn't carrying the clothes: 
  say "You aren't carrying it". [/code]

And if so, how many such commands are there to write?

Alternatively, should I take David Fisher's custom messages and just change "first taking the object" to "first trying to take the object"?

Will either of these ideas have unintended consequences?

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=544&start=30#p3165
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Override Built-in Synonyms?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-23 10:35:50

All fixed and working. Thanks Nitku!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=543&start=10#p3166
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Unwinnable states
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-23 10:37:35

Thanks Pacian.

Does anyone have an example of an About file they think is a particularly good one?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=514&start=0#p3167
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Modifying Inform 7 standard rules
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2008-12-23 13:38:51

If you click on the "Installed extensions" link in the main documentation's table of contents, you are shown a list of all installed extensions. If you click on an extension's name you are shown its documentation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=556&start=0#p3168
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Releasing the Game
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-23 13:45:10

I'm trying to release a sample game to make sure I know how before I release my game. I read through releasing and publishing in the documentation. I created some cover art and some other files. I pushed release. I successfully generated a test.zblorb file.

[quote]In the same way that books in many different languages nevertheless have the same kind of binding, the Blorb wrapper can contain story files of several different story file formats (for instance, versions of Glulx or the Z-machine)[/quote]

I double-clicked on that zblorb, and it didn't know how to open. What comes next isn't clear to me, even after reading about it. If the zblorb isn't a ready-to-play compiled file, then what is it? How do I get the Glulx or Z-machine versions (after I figure out what they are and which I need). I would like to make this game playable on both Windows and the latest Ubuntu. I'm putting this game on a CD, mostly so that I can wrap it in Christmas wrap. Can/should I include programs that will run the game? I don't want my husband to have to go download something before he gets to play.

Sorry for being so clueless. Thanks for all the help!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=514&start=0#p3169
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Modifying Inform 7 standard rules
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-23 14:24:49

Hm, I can't even seem to get it installed. I'm just using the Default Messages.txt file that you get when you right click and "save target as" on default messages in the post at the top of this thread. Is that it or is there more?

[quote]You wrote 'Include Default Messages by David Fisher'  : but I can't find that extension, which should be placed at Inform\Extensions in your 'My Documents' folder.[/quote]

I mean, that's totally where I put it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=556&start=0#p3170
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Releasing the Game
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-12-23 17:10:42

The simplest thing to do is probably just to include installers for Windows and Ubuntu interpreters. Since it's nice to have the game look the same on both platforms, I'd suggest Gargoyle. There's a [url=http://ifiction.free.fr/fichiers/gargoyle_i386.deb].deb file for Ubuntu[/url] available, as well as the [url=http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/interpreters-multi/gargoyle/gargoyle-2006-09-17-windows.exe]Windows installer[/url]. The Windows installer will automatically create shortcuts and associate .zblorb files with itself, so that's easy. The Ubuntu one doesn't, unfortunately.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=514&start=10#p3171
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Modifying Inform 7 standard rules
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2008-12-23 17:18:50

The file needs to be called just "Default Messages" or "Default Messages.i7x", not "Default Messages.txt". The simplest way to install an extension is to save the downloaded text file somewhere where you can easily find it, then open Inform and use File/Install Extension (I think that's where you find it). That way Inform will automagically put the extension where it belongs, with the right file extension and so on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=556&start=0#p3172
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Releasing the Game
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2008-12-23 19:32:46

Wow, direct links! Thanks so much Emerald, you are awesome.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=556&start=0#p3174
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Releasing the Game
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2008-12-24 14:23:58

If you decide later on that you're going to release your game in the Glulx format, you have one other option on Windows, aside from what Emerald suggested.

Let's say the filename of your game is "MyGame.blb" and you have a copy of the Glulxe interpreter (which is usually "Glulxe.exe"). You can rename "Glulxe.exe" to "MyGame.exe", so that the player can just double-click on "MyGame.exe" and it will automatically run your game.

I just took a quick look at the help file for Windows Frotz to see if it could be done for .ZBLORB files, but it looks like it's not possible.

Of course, installing Gargoyle will let your husband play other IF games in other formats as well, which is also a big plus. [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=514&start=10#p3176
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Modifying Inform 7 standard rules
User: farvardin / DateTime: 2008-12-27 06:07:11

If you want to see a very heavy modification of the standard rules, you can get some inspiration from this extension (turning inform 7 into French):
<a class="postlink" href="http://svn.tuxfamily.org/viewvc.cgi/informfr_informfr/inform7-fr/Eric%20Forgeot/French.i7x?view=co">http://svn.tuxfamily.org/viewvc.cgi/inf ... 7x?view=co</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=556&start=0#p3177
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Releasing the Game
User: farvardin / DateTime: 2008-12-27 07:07:06

it's probably too late now, but you can also use the files in here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifiction.free.fr/fichiers/inform6_kit_debutant.zip">http://ifiction.free.fr/fichiers/inform ... butant.zip</a>

it was released for IF beginning authors in French, but you can download it as well.

In this archive, remove the lib, media, outils_linux, outils_macosx, src folders, 
just keep the "jouer version texte.exe" and the "outils_win" folder. 
Don't rename this folder, otherwise it won't work.
Don't rename or move the gargoyle_inform.
You can rename the "jouer version texte.exe" with a red lamp to whatever.exe you want.
Just keep your game in z5 format and extension (z5 only) in the same folder as this exe, and people should be able to play your game when they click on the .exe

Basically, it's just a batch file with this code:

[code]outils_win\gargoyle_inform\frotz.exe *.z5[/code]

converted to .exe with a program called : Bat_To_Exe_Converter.exe

Tested without any known viruses (the .exe was generated on linux, with wine)

On linux, another option would be to get this script:

[code]wget http://ifiction.free.fr/fichiers/ifictionfr.sh[/code]

and make it executable with 

[code]chmod +x ifictionfr.sh[/code]

When started from a terminal, with the game as argument ( ./ifictionfr.sh yourgame.z5 for example), it will download and install frotz in the home folder (in ~/.ifictionfr ) and load the game (in console mode only, but you can also make it start gargoyle or something else already installed) 

If started without argument, it will only propose to download French games [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=558&start=0#p3178
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Beta Testers Needed for Vague
User: rotter / DateTime: 2008-12-31 07:52:30

For the first time in ages I’ve got a game nearing completion which I would like to enter in one of next years comps.

I could do with someone to help with a bit of beta testing of [i][b]Vague[/b][/i], which has been in production for a while.

Any one interested please drop me a line at [email]richardo@delron.org.uk[/email]

rotter

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=559&start=0#p3179
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Choice of Perspective
User: WayneMiller / DateTime: 2009-01-01 17:54:43

What are the tradeoffs and considerations in choosing to write interactive fiction in the first, second, or third person?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=559&start=0#p3180
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Choice of Perspective
User: radix / DateTime: 2009-01-01 19:09:35

I could probably come up with lots to say about this on another day, but here's something short...

Second person is good if you want to treat the player as the PC. This can sometimes benefit the player's immersion. It's good if you want to avoid giving your main character a very strong personality and instead let the player pretend he's in the game.

First person is good for giving your PC a definite personality and voice, since you can portray his thoughts with much less struggle. "> BURN ROPE" "You don't want to do that." is much less believable than "> BURN ROPE" "I certainly wouldn't do that!".

Third person is rather unusual for IF, probably because most IF is very strongly tied to a particular character's view point, which the other two literary perspectives are generally better at portraying.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=560&start=0#p3181
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Sanguinis Nobilis (a MUSH)
User: WayneMiller / DateTime: 2009-01-01 20:01:25

I wondered if anyone here ever played the MUSH, Sanguinis Nobilis, which ran in the mid-to-late 90's. If so, who did you play? I played Seth of Mile End Park.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=561&start=0#p3182
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Guarding A Door Or Thing
User: WayneMiller / DateTime: 2009-01-01 20:23:07

I'd like to generalize guarding something. Here is what I have:

[code]
protection relates one person (called the protector) to one thing.
The verb to guard (he guards, they guard, he guarded, it is guarded, he is guarding) implies the protection relation.

Instead of touching something that is guarded by [b]someone (called the guardian) in the presence of the guardian:[/b]
	say "That's not a good idea."
[/code]

This does not compile.

I get this message:
[quote]
Problem. You wrote 'Instead of touching something that is guarded by someone ( called the guardian ) in the presence of the guardian'  , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is 'touching something that is guarded by someone ( called the guardian ) in the presence of the guardian'. But that did not make sense as a description of an action. I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook.
[/quote]

Though -- this will work if I take away the generalization and tie this to a proper person.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=561&start=0#p3183
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Guarding A Door Or Thing
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-01-01 21:30:13

Hi Wayne,

I'm a super newbie (first game last month!) but I wonder if this would work:

[code]Instead of touching something that is guarded by [b]someone (called the guardian) when the player can see the guardian:[/b]
   say "That's not a good idea."[/code]

I may well be wrong but I told myself I'd try to be helpful once I learned a bit, as others here have been so helpful to me.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=561&start=0#p3184
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Guarding A Door Or Thing
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-01-01 21:37:54

Or maybe the problem is with the "is guarded by"?

What about

[code]Instead of touching something (called the guardedthing) when someone is guarding the guardedthing...[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=559&start=0#p3185
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Choice of Perspective
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-01-02 03:09:06

[quote="radix"]Third person is rather unusual for IF, probably because most IF is very strongly tied to a particular character's view point, which the other two literary perspectives are generally better at portraying.[/quote]
Personally, I'd be disinclined to write IF in the third person simply because it might not be clear at any given moment which character you control.  On the other hand, in a game with lots of different controllable characters, third person might be preferable - in order to minimise the influence the characters' perspectives might have on the text.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=561&start=0#p3186
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Guarding A Door Or Thing
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2009-01-02 08:07:34

I think what is happening is that Inform is reading [b]someone in the presence of the guardian[/b] as [b]a person who is inside something called 'the presence of the guardian'[/b], and getting confused. You can get around this by breaking off the "in the presence" clause and making it part of the body of the rule.

[code]Before touching something that is guarded by someone:
     if the protector of the noun can see the player, say "That would not be a good idea." instead.[/code]

"Can see the player" is essentially the same condition as "in the presence of" -- it's a bit more flexible than simply checking if the protector is in the location, because now you can have an invisible docent, or a docent who is watching from another room.

I've made it a before rule because a before rule continues on with the normal action-processing unless you specifically tell it not to, while instead rules always stop the action unless you specifically tell it not to. The same rule as an instead rule would have to be written:

     if the protector of the noun can see the player, say "blah blah";
     otherwise continue the action.

The before rule written above is exactly equivalent, but less wordy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=559&start=0#p3187
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Choice of Perspective
User: WayneMiller / DateTime: 2009-01-02 18:03:32

Writing in 3rd person worked really well for "Lost Pig" because it makes the PC seem barely capable of speaking (or thinking). I cannot remember how "Suspended" worked. Was it third person?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=559&start=0#p3188
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Choice of Perspective
User: radix / DateTime: 2009-01-02 18:49:06

[quote="WayneMiller"]Writing in 3rd person worked really well for "Lost Pig" because it makes the PC seem barely capable of speaking (or thinking).[/quote]

I would say that Lost Pig is actually in first person. It's just that Grunk refers to himself in the third.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=562&start=0#p3189
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Header Strategies
User: WayneMiller / DateTime: 2009-01-03 14:14:42

How do you arrange your headers when writing medium-sized IF?

Do you use all the levels of the headers, or just some?
Do you separate the map from its contents, the conversations from the actors, jumble it all up? What do you do? How do you arrange it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=563&start=0#p3190
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Labelling the Skein
User: WayneMiller / DateTime: 2009-01-03 14:23:16

When you label your skein, what do you choose to label? Do you have some particular organization or strategy that you follow?

What are other strategies you pursue with the skein?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=563&start=0#p3191
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Labelling the Skein
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2009-01-03 16:17:38

[quote="WayneMiller"]When you label your skein, what do you choose to label? Do you have some particular organization or strategy that you follow?

What are other strategies you pursue with the skein?[/quote]

I usually have one thread of the skein that's just a walkthrough of the whole game, with labels at major scene breaks or turning points so that I can quickly run the game to a given scene.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=563&start=0#p3192
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Labelling the Skein
User: WayneMiller / DateTime: 2009-01-03 16:21:42

Do you tend to have very deep skeins where you test things in serial, or do you have really broad skeins where you test many things in parallel?

Do you use the "test" feature, or just rely on in-game interactions?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=561&start=0#p3193
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Guarding A Door Or Thing
User: WayneMiller / DateTime: 2009-01-03 16:47:46

Here is something interesting:

My doors do not need to be "touched" to be opened; which surprises me a little.

Perhaps I am doing something to override that with this?

[code]Before going through a closed door (called the blocking door):
	say "(first opening [the blocking door])[line break]";
	silently try opening the blocking door;
	if the blocking door is closed, stop the action.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=564&start=0#p3194
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Building Deep or Broad?
User: WayneMiller / DateTime: 2009-01-03 20:42:17

When building IF, what are the trade-offs between building depth first versus building breadth first?

For example, building a story depth first would be to build a very flimsy story that can be won, but not else. Then the author goes back and starts progressively adding detail to the story as he wishes.

Building a story breadth-first would be to build a very solid first scene that was complete (or mostly complete) before building the second scene.

It would seem to me that the advantage of depth is that once you've got an end-to-end game, you can add detail until you are tired, and then you can release because you've got a winnable game. It also has the advantage of getting you to think about your entire story from end to end early so you can identify common parts of code, and avoid wasting time on fluff that's not core to the game.

On the other hand, I see breadth-first as a better way to include other participants for testing. You can give them the scenes in sequence, like chapters in a book. Because the scenes are complete, they can play and enjoy them.

Are there other considerations? What have others done?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=565&start=0#p3195
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Documenting User-defined Kinds
User: WayneMiller / DateTime: 2009-01-04 01:24:53

Some of the built-in kinds have documentation that describes what they are in the Index. For example:

[b]thing (plural things)[/b]
Represents anything interactive in the model world that is not a room. People, pieces of scenery, furniture, doors and mislaid umbrellas might all be examples, and so might more surprising things like the sound of birdsong or a shaft of sunlight.

How do I document custom kinds in this way?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=565&start=0#p3196
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Documenting User-defined Kinds
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-01-04 14:54:33

Hi Wayne!

Use "specification," as in:[code]A weapon is a kind of thing. The specification of weapon is "Represents something with which one player can attack another."[/code]Note that this can be done for actions as well:[code]Slashing it with is an action applying to one carried thing and one thing. The specification of the slashing it with action is "By this action, an actor can attack another with a bladed weapon."[/code]See ch 24.9 -- Extensions in the Index.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=566&start=0#p3197
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Executing Arbitrary Code From a Conversation
User: WayneMiller / DateTime: 2009-01-04 17:32:41

In my very simple conversation model, people have a keyword and phrase that they respond to for ask/tell. What I would like to add, to this two column table, is an arbitrary set of phrases that are executed when that keyword is referenced in the table.

Example:
[code]
Table of Morgan-Conversation
Topic	Reply	Action
"job"	"'Looks like somebody got murdered last night. Job is to figure out who did it and why. Pay on this one is pretty good.'"	--
"pay"	"'It pays fifty thousand. Can you get to the morgue tonight? We know someone down there who will let you take a look at the body.'"	--
"your mother"	"I'M OFFENDED! HOW DARE YOU INSULT ME!"	change emotion of Morgan to angry.
[/code]

If the only kind of action I might perform would be to set the emotions of people, I could just have the column be the new emotional value and construct rules to set it. My problem is that I want to do a wide variety of things, so this is probably too limited.

Another choice might be to put stored actions into the column (I think this is possible?), but then I would have to define an action for each type of coded response, and there could be many.

What I (think I) really want is to put some [i]phrase[/i] in the table that gets executed. Is that possible?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=566&start=0#p3198
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Executing Arbitrary Code From a Conversation
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-01-04 18:18:53

As far as I know, you can't just put a phrase in a table like that. But you can put a reference to a rule, and then execute that rule when the corresponding topic is mentioned, like so:
[code]Table of Morgan-Conversation
Topic	Reply	Rule
"job"	"'Looks like somebody got murdered last night. Job is to figure out who did it and why. Pay on this one is pretty good.'"	--
"pay"	"'It pays fifty thousand. Can you get to the morgue tonight? We know someone down there who will let you take a look at the body.'"	--
"your mother"	"I'M OFFENDED! HOW DARE YOU INSULT ME!"	the insult Morgan rule

This is the insult Morgan rule:
	change emotion of Morgan to angry.

After asking Morgan about a topic listed in the Table of Morgan-Conversation:
	say the reply entry;
	say paragraph break;
	if there is a rule entry, consider the rule entry.[/code]
This lets you make your action as complex as you want. For instance, if you wanted Morgan to shoot the player because of the insult, you could do that:
[code]This is the insult Morgan rule:
	change emotion of Morgan to angry;
	try Morgan shooting the player.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=521&start=0#p3199
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Code Organization
User: WayneMiller / DateTime: 2009-01-04 19:10:44

Are there any source files that other recommend as particularly well-organized?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=563&start=0#p3200
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Labelling the Skein
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2009-01-04 21:20:25

I don't usually spend much time structuring it. I'll keep one locked thread that's just a walkthrough so I can quickly get to different sections. The rest, I just test things as I go, and prune the skein back when it gets too bushy.

With playtesters, I have them make transcripts, and then I'll type that transcript into the game and keep it as a locked thread in the skein (with a label on the endpoint, "test script 1" or whatever). Then I'll fix the game and run the script, fix and run, fix and run, until the transcript runs smoothly the way it's supposed to.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=561&start=0#p3201
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Guarding A Door Or Thing
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2009-01-04 21:48:28

"Touching" is a specific action, distinct from other actions. When you write a rule that fires before, after, or instead of "touching something", it's testing to see if the action is, literally, touching -- in other words, that the player typed >TOUCH DOOR. If you want to capture other actions that imply touch (like opening, pushing, pulling, etc.), you will need to write your rule to include them, too.

[code]Instead of doing anything other than examining the door: blah, blah.[/code]

Be careful not to get this confused with "touchability". Inform does test whether an object is "touchable" for the verbs for which that would be logical, but what it's mainly testing for is whether the object referred to is inside a closed container or in a different room. (This is so you can have things like a key inside a locked glass box, so the key is visible and referable-to, but not touchable.) 

The similarity in nomenclature is unfortunate, but touching and touchability are different things. Testing something's touchability does not simulate the touching action. However, the touching action does test for touchability, as does the opening action.

A handy way to trap any action that would require a touchable noun is:

[code]Instead of doing something to the door when the current action requires a touchable noun: blah, blah.[/code]

Recommended reading: Chapters 6.10, 7.9, 12.16-12.18 of the documentation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=566&start=0#p3202
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Executing Arbitrary Code From a Conversation
User: WayneMiller / DateTime: 2009-01-04 22:47:46

Bummer. If that is so, I wonder if I'm better off with eliminating the third column and just using 'after' rules?

e.g.
[code]
After asking Morgan about "your mother": change the emotion of Morgan to angry.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=567&start=0#p3203
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: new author- needs help- TADS3
User: scottydu81 / DateTime: 2009-01-05 02:04:59

I am new to authoring, and i am designing a game using TADS 3.  I can do a few things pretty well (i have the entire game area mapped out with most of the items), but i am having trouble with one particular item.

without giving too much away about the game, i am trying to make an openable container that doesnt exactly open, it breaks open (like hiding a key inside of a dragons egg). not only that but the player must use a specific item to break it.

i humbly ask for youse guys' help, any suggestion will help me greatly.  i am new to authoring, and i have so much fun programming this.  anyone have ideas?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=566&start=0#p3204
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Executing Arbitrary Code From a Conversation
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2009-01-05 08:08:43

[quote="WayneMiller"]Bummer. If that is so, I wonder if I'm better off with eliminating the third column and just using 'after' rules?

e.g.
[code]
After asking Morgan about "your mother": change the emotion of Morgan to angry.
[/code][/quote]

That's what I ended up doing after a bunch of experimentation. In fact, eventually I ditched tables altogether and put the response in an after rule as well:

[code]After asking Morgan about "your mother":
     say "'Don't you talk about my mother!' Morgan yells.";
     now Morgan is angry.[/code]
I've found that tables are generally a pain to use with anything involving long strings -- it's too hard to format. And using an after rule gives much more flexibility.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=568&start=0#p3205
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Want to meet IF enthusiasts in your area?
User: jimmunroe / DateTime: 2009-01-05 09:19:50

I do! After the great reception Everybody Dies got (thanks everyone!)
I thought it'd be fun to maybe start an IF writers' circle in Toronto,
Canada, where I live.

But then I thought maybe other folks in other cities might want to
connect with local writers and readers of IF, too.

So I started this map here:
<a class="postlink" href="http://platial.com/mapv/Interactive-Fiction-Enthusiasts/570241">http://platial.com/mapv/Interactive-Fic ... sts/570241</a>

It's really simple to add yourself to the map, though in general the
app is not without its glitches. But it may well serve the purpose!

If folks want to add it to a webpage then the embed code is below.

[code]<object width="100%" height="350px" id="mapKit1" align="middle"
classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://
download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/
swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0"><param name="movie" value="http://
platial.com/widgets/frappr/visitormap.swf?
mapViewId=570241&trackingId=mkFL_123103442357&apiKey=3a282b0ef606949e6a2e12fb4fe6ba677df73e69&domain=platial.com&remote=1&deepLinking=0"
><param name="bgcolor" value="#4c4c4c"><param name="quality"

value="high" ><param name="wmode" value="opaque"><param
name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain"><param name="base"
value="http://platial.com/widgets/frappr/" ><embed src="http://
platial.com/widgets/frappr/visitormap.swf?
mapViewId=570241&trackingId=mkFL_123103442357&apiKey=3a282b0ef606949e6a2e12fb4fe6ba677df73e69&domain=platial.com&remote=1&deepLinking=0"
quality="high" width="100%" height="350px"
allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" bgcolor="#4c4c4c" name="mapKit1"
align="middle" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" type="application/x-
shockwave-flash"  base="http://platial.com/widgets/frappr/"
wmode="opaque" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/
getflashplayer"></embed></object><div style="padding:5px;  background-
color: #757575; font-family:verdana,sans-serif; font-size:11px; text-
align:left;"><div style="float:right;"><form action="http://
platial.com/search" method="GET"><input type="text" name="what"
style="margin-bottom:5px"/><input type="submit" value="Platial Search"
style="margin-bottom:5px"/><input type="hidden" name="where"
value="world"/><div style="clear:both; "></div></form></div><div
style="color:#ddd; float:left;"><a href="http://platial.com/mapmaker/
frappr/" style="color:#FFD747; font-size: 14px; text-decoration:none;
">Get Your Frappr GuestMap!</a><br/>Powered by Platial</div><div
style="clear:both"></div></div>[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=567&start=0#p3206
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: new author- needs help- TADS3
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-01-05 18:04:23

I would suggest defining the egg (or whatever it is) as [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/searchGo.php?d=doc/libref/object/BasicOpenable.html]BasicOpenable[/url], Thing. This will let it keep track of its open/closed status, but it won't respond to OPEN/CLOSE commands.

The library doesn't have a BREAK X WITH Y action (only BREAK X), so you'll probably want to create one. If you haven't created an action of this kind before, have a look at [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/techman/t3verb.htm]How to Create Verbs[/url] in the Technical Manual, the "Verb with two objects" section. Then define dobjFor(BreakWith) on the egg so that it responds correctly to BREAK EGG WITH SLEDGEHAMMER (or whatever your game uses). You'll need to call "makeOpen(true)" here, so that the egg now knows it is open.

If you have trouble, I'll run up some example code for you.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=567&start=0#p3207
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: new author- needs help- TADS3
User: scottydu81 / DateTime: 2009-01-05 18:29:14

thank you for your help, i really appreciate it.  ill look into what you said (the bit about defining verbs will be helpful).

to raise curiousity, i am writting a horror type game, sort of a mix between the movies 'Saw' and 'Identity'.  i have the layout done, as well as most of the objects.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=431&start=0#p3208
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: another anchorhead help thread.
User: Nezumi / DateTime: 2009-01-06 07:27:07

You don't need the book from the university library to clear the second day -- you should read it eventually, but you get another chance to get the faculty card on the third day. All the information needed to clear the second day is hidden around the mansion. To be more specific...

[spoiler]You can find a journal in the velvet lining in the china cupboard in the dining room, newspaper clippings in the cellar in the room with the crates and boxes -- you need to find these to get the iron key you need to proceed, but be sure to take the time to actually read them -- and some wet pages hidden in a hole behind the bed in the children's room -- you need to push it to find the hole. This will give you everything you'll need for now.[/spoiler]

As for the bug the original poster mentioned... not sure what could have caused it. I didn't encounter it myself. As someone suggested... are you sure you actually picked up the newspaper?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=562&start=0#p3209
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Header Strategies
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-01-07 20:32:32

Hi Wayne,

I asked this same question a while back (see Code Organization). I was advised to look at others' code and see how they've done it, though I never got a chance because the IF game sites were blocked at my work, where I did a bunch of my research. You might try that.

If you prefer advise from someone who has made exactly one game   [emote]:lol:[/emote] , here's how I did it. 

I used major headers only but I ended up using comments as subheaders so I could have used subheaders. My first section was the Map and Initialization: the rooms and their relationship to each other, and custom messages to replace "you can't go that way" for the boundaries (like "there's nothing to see to the north but empty fields"). For Initialization I put various universal rules and states that could happen to any character or object in any room (i.e. "A person can be awake or asleep. People are usually awake. ")

Then I used a section for each room.

Then my last few sections were Conversations, Guidebook Entries, and Humor. In humor I put a bunch of silly stuff that didn't further the game, but that I thought would be cute to include in response to some predicted user commands.

For each room section, I divided it into People, Items, Room Descriptions, New Actions, Rules, and Ambiance. Under ambiance I put scenery and descriptions of items that served not to further the game, but just to make it well implemented. For example, when I mentioned a bird with brightly colored feathers, I didn't want the player to get "you see no such thing" in response to "x feathers", even if feathers aren't important to game play. Dividing this stuff out helped me not have to wade through it when looking for something important. 

All in all, this worked well for me. I'd probably do it this way again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=569&start=0#p3210
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: TAKE ALL spoils surprises
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-01-07 21:15:08

I was unhappy to learn that while the Old Man was playing the game I made for him, he typed in "Take all" and got something like:

field: that's hardly portable
sun:  that's hardly portable
sky:  that's hardly portable
grass: It's best not to pick plants at random in the jungle.
moss: the moss is of no use to you

and so forth.

Luckily, the couple of REALLY hidden things in my game that I wanted to remain hidden, I put in limbo and had them only appear after a certain action is done (i.e. after looking in pocket: now the clippers are in the pocket). So I was lucky I was that OCD and it didn't ruin anything important, BUT, it's rather ugly, and actually could give him ideas that he didn't have before, because maybe an item was intended to get noticed/described only after several layers of examining.

Can this be flatly disabled? I tried:

[code]After taking everything:
  say "You can only take one thing at a time."[/code]

But it still reported everything before giving the response. 

It's my fault that I didn't know about "take all" and implement something for it, but does anyone else see this as sort of an Inform bug? I mean what's the point of defining the sun as scenery if it's going to get mentioned during "take all" -- and who really makes a game so simple that "take all" isn't going to reveal ugly messages about things you never would have tried to take?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=564&start=0#p3211
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Building Deep or Broad?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-01-07 21:38:47

I don't know how experienced an IF programmer you are, but for a newbie like me, I found that it was almost impossible to build a bare-bones winnable game all at once. When lots of things depend on lots of other things, and the winnable walkthrough is long, and you're inexperienced at every piece, if you try to build them all at once it seems to take forever before you can even do the first test, and then your game is too big to test.

This is what I did. Suppose you have to go through a string of tasks to find and get a screwdriver, and you have to go through a different string of tasks to use the screwdriver, and then maybe a different string of tasks to use the thing you built with the screwdriver, and so forth. I tested each segment in its own "tester" project with the needed items already there, and integrated them into the "real" game once they were bug free. So in other words, I just put the screwdriver right there on the ground when building the tester for using it, even though in the final game the player would have had to jump through some hoops to acquire it.

This proved useful because as a newbie, some components of the game were easier to build than others, and some components I'd be especially inspired to build at a particular time because I'd just read about a cool way to build them in the documentation, so it was nice to build a part when you were inspired to do so and not because all the parts that came before were perfect.

Short answer: I guess I did what you're calling breadth first. But in small, not-overwhelming chunks.

That said, I also added stuff after I was "done": more descriptions, randomized conversational reponses, humor, etc.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=569&start=0#p3212
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: TAKE ALL spoils surprises
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-01-07 21:42:54

I ended up doing this:

[code]Rule for deciding whether all includes scenery: it does not. 
Rule for deciding whether all includes people: it does not.
Rule for deciding whether all includes insects: it does not.
Rule for deciding whether all includes the private plane: it does not.
Rule for deciding whether all includes the military plane: it does not.
Rule for deciding whether all includes the jeep: it does not.
Rule for deciding whether all includes the hammock: it does not.[/code]

Though I would sure prefer something that just disables the command.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=566&start=0#p3213
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Executing Arbitrary Code From a Conversation
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2009-01-08 05:48:40

If you still want to use a table, another possibility is to use a "to say" rule which doesn't actually print anything, eg. (untested code):

[code]
Table of Morgan-Conversation
Topic      Reply
"turtle"   "Who told you about the turtle?[Morgan -> suspicious]"

To say (p - a person) -> (e - an emotional state):
    change the emotion of p to e.
[/code]
David

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=570&start=0#p3214
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: some Noob questions
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2009-01-08 09:18:03

howdy

I´m currently learning Inform 7 in order to write a text adventure

so I want to know which of the following things are possible in IF7:

-) displaying text in a different colour (to provide dual narration)
-) multiple choice dialogues with consequences
-) talking to npc about certain predefined topics (like talk to man about weather)
-) hidden scores

thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=570&start=0#p3215
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: some Noob questions
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-01-08 13:22:00

[quote="JC Denton"]so I want to know which of the following things are possible in IF7:

-) displaying text in a different colour (to provide dual narration)[/quote]
Yes. See the extension Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short that comes pre-installed.

[quote="JC Denton"]-) multiple choice dialogues with consequences[/quote]
Yes. See [url]http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7/Download%20-%20Extensions.html#topic27[/url], for example Quip-Based Conversation by Michael Martin should do the trick.

[quote="JC Denton"]-) talking to npc about certain predefined topics (like talk to man about weather)[/quote]
Yes. See chapter 7.6. in the manual.

[quote="JC Denton"]-) hidden scores[/quote]
Yes. (I assume "hidden score" means keeping score that isn't visible to the player. The exact technique depends on what purpose the score is ultimately used for.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=564&start=0#p3216
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Building Deep or Broad?
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2009-01-08 15:15:13

[quote="WayneMiller"]When building IF, what are the trade-offs between building depth first versus building breadth first?[/quote]

I tend to get most of the game gelled in my head or in my notes first, then build it, as you say, breadth-first -- implementing the first scene, fleshing it out, testing it until it's reasonably solid, then moving on, chronologically, until I get to the end.

[quote]It would seem to me that the advantage of depth is that once you've got an end-to-end game, you can add detail until you are tired, and then you can release because you've got a winnable game.[/quote]
Perhaps, but then you run the risk of releasing a winnable, but poorly implemented game, which to my view is no more "complete" then a well-implemented game that's only half done. Which is not a criticism of depth-first design per se -- I think you go with whichever one works best for you -- but I would be wary of going into a project planning to release it whenever I get tired of working on it. I won't release something unless it's complete, and the advantage of breadth-first for me is that it's easier for me to tell when it's complete.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=569&start=0#p3217
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: TAKE ALL spoils surprises
User: WayneMiller / DateTime: 2009-01-08 20:46:06

Perhaps you could at least get rid of some of the vehicles, by generalizing that the kind "vehicles" cannot be taken?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=569&start=0#p3218
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: TAKE ALL spoils surprises
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-01-08 21:22:38

That would generally be true, but in my case, I had several vehicles that were junked and nonoperational. After discovering in testing that a NPC could get into them and drive off west, I made them into fixed-in-place containers instead.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=564&start=0#p3219
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Building Deep or Broad?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-01-08 21:40:11

[code]I tend to get most of the game gelled in my head or in my notes first...[/code]

Yes... I also designed the game on paper and with a flow chart before starting. I highly recommend this. I found that even if small sections weren't well thought out they affected other sections when I finally gelled them, and that's no fun after you've already spent a bunch of time implementing things.

It's also possible, after designing the game, to add extra loops of activity when the main game or even parts of it are well implemented. You can plan at first to allow the PC to grab a needed item out of a room, and later if you're inspired you can create a little mini challenge in getting it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=564&start=0#p3220
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Building Deep or Broad?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-01-09 07:15:00

I like the depth-first approach (although I really think of it more as breadth - to me depth seems more like how deeply you implement things).  

I'm very easily distracted, and I like the sense of achievement I get from being able to say that I've implemented the complete map, added all the characters to it, then added the scenery and decoration.  

Although I guess I am kind of scatter-brained.  I really just work on whatever's caught my interest, filling in ticks on a grid of things to implement before I consider the game complete.  I do always leave the scenery and decoration and in-game nudges and hints until last because I just find it so tedious.

Ultimately, I think that no IF game ever can be 'complete'.  The simple fact of accepting natural-ish language input is that you could arguably spend forever adding responses to sensible input.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=564&start=0#p3221
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Building Deep or Broad?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-01-09 17:14:06

I'm with Pacian - I'd rather get the basic framework of the game in place and then go back and flesh it out. (Of course, unlike the others, I haven't released a game yet, so...) If I implement the early parts of the game fully and then decide I need to radically change something basic, I'll have to lose a lot of work. I got slightly burnt with this on my WIP a while back, when I decided several areas of the game needed extreme makeovers, forcing me to edit or even scrap the scenery items I'd already implemented. I try to make sure I have a good idea of the structure of my WIP before I start programming, but it's hard to tell whether what I've planned will work out until I actually see it in the game. Implementing just the backbone of the game and then going back to fill in the details lets me get an idea of how it will work out before I invest too much time in details that might well have to change.

The other reason is that I'm pretty detail-oriented, and it's easy for me to get bogged down implementing everything I can think of. "But if the player foos the bar before the baz, they should have a different response to frobbing..." Then I realise what a mess I'm getting myself into, tear my hair, and go read a book instead. I have an old prospective Art Show entry which succumbed to this obsession with unimportant details. In one of its areas (the only area I ended up implementing), there's a hut. I wanted the hut to have a dim interior that let the player see and interact with large objects, but not small objects or details of large objects. I spent days hacking at the TADS 3 lighting model and finally managed to make it (appear to) work. At this point I realised that it really didn't matter that much whether the hut interior was dim or not and collapsed.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=567&start=0#p3222
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: new author- needs help- TADS3
User: scottydu81 / DateTime: 2009-01-10 03:27:10

i have tried following the manuals steps for creating verbs, though i have not figured itout. so far, i have-

[b]DefineTIAction(BreakWith);
VerbRule (BreakWith)
    'break' dobjList 'with' singleIobj
    :BreakAction
    verbPhrase= 'break ([i]item i want to break is here[/i]) with ([i]item i want to break it with is here[/i])'
;
modify Thing
    dobjFor(BreakWith)
    {
        verify()
        {
            illogical ('Hmm... looks like you might need something else to smash this with');
        }
    }
    iobjFor(BreakWith)
    {
        verify()
        {
            illogical ('Hmm... what can I break with this?');
        }
    }
;[/b]

i have that creating the verb, and then on the item i want broken, i have-

[b]actionDobjBreakWith()
        {[i]'game text here[/i].';
    }[/b]
so far, all it does is say that 'breaking that would serve no purpose'

Am i missing something here?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=571&start=0#p3223
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Scenes, Conditions, and the Grammar
User: WayneMiller / DateTime: 2009-01-10 20:56:17

I would like to start scenes when the player does something.
[code]Bad Food is a scene. Bad Food begins when the mushroom stew has been eaten.[/code]
But it looks like I'm not getting the condition quite right, as it is rejected by the compiler.

To solve the problem, I am putting a flag on the stew so that:
[code]Bad Food is a scene. Bad Food begins when the flag of the mushroom stew is true.[/code]
I would rather do something like the first statement, which is more elegant. Is it possible?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=572&start=0#p3224
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Where Does Your Time Go?
User: WayneMiller / DateTime: 2009-01-10 21:56:01

Where does most of your time go to writing IF?

Some possibilities might be:
Writing the code
Writing content and descriptions
Debugging and testing

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=571&start=0#p3225
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scenes, Conditions, and the Grammar
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-01-10 22:35:27

I don't have Inform handy to check this, but try something like:
[code]Bad Food begins when we have eaten the mushroom stew.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=567&start=0#p3226
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: new author- needs help- TADS3
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-01-10 22:59:41

Just looking at your code (I don't have TADS handy for testing), changing your VerbRule to this should work:
[code]VerbRule (BreakWith)
    'break' dobjList 'with' singleIobj
    : BreakWithAction
    verbPhrase= 'break (what) with (what)'
;[/code]

Previously, you had
[code]: BreakAction[/code]
so the game was understanding BREAK EGG WITH HAMMER simply as BREAK EGG.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=571&start=0#p3227
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scenes, Conditions, and the Grammar
User: WayneMiller / DateTime: 2009-01-11 00:02:48

I think this works. Thank you.

How does one apply past tense so that the scene triggers when an NPC has done something (eaten the stew, for example)?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=567&start=0#p3228
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: new author- needs help- TADS3
User: scottydu81 / DateTime: 2009-01-11 02:56:28

ok, cool. i got the game to respond to the command, though how do i make the game recognize that the egg can be broken by the hammer?  it still says the illogical text even if i have the hammer in inventory (i get the illogical text from the dobjFor(BreakWith) line)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=567&start=0#p3229
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: new author- needs help- TADS3
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-01-11 03:22:25

While I don't know this for sure, the actionDobjBreakWith() looks suspicious and I doubt if TADS knows how to call it automatically. For very least you'll have to override the verify() function for the egg. Try this:

[code]dobjFor( BreakWith )
{
   verify() {}

   action() 
   {
      "Smash! ";
   }
}[/code]

And you'll have to override the verify() in the hammer's iobjFor( BreakWith ) as well.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=571&start=0#p3230
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scenes, Conditions, and the Grammar
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-01-11 07:39:32

[quote="WayneMiller"]How does one apply past tense so that the scene triggers when an NPC has done something (eaten the stew, for example)?[/quote]
Inform has no built-in way of doing this, so you'll have to create your own. If you move the stew off-stage when it's eaten (and it is never off-stage otherwise), you could check for that, or you could make eating the stew set a flag, something like this (untested):

[code]Stew-eaten is a truth state that varies.

Carry out Bob eating the mushroom stew:
now stew-eaten is true.

Bad Food begins when stew-eaten is true.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=567&start=0#p3231
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: new author- needs help- TADS3
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-01-11 07:54:00

[quote="Nitku"]While I don't know this for sure, the actionDobjBreakWith() looks suspicious and I doubt if TADS knows how to call it automatically.[/quote]
Actually, this part is fine. This:
[code]dobjFor(BreakWith)
{
action()
{
// whatever
}
}[/code]
is only a complicated macro for this:
[code]actionDobjBreakWith()
{
// whatever
}[/code]
(I can't seem to find the place in the docs where this is explained, though.)

[quote="Nitku"]For very least you'll have to override the verify() function for the egg.[/quote]
Nitku is right: your egg is a Thing, so it will inherit Thing's illogicality, unless you explicitly override it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=572&start=0#p3232
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where Does Your Time Go?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-01-11 12:07:53

I'd say that, of the time that I explicitly set aside to sit down at the PC and write IF, by far the most time is spent playing Fallout 3.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=572&start=0#p3233
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where Does Your Time Go?
User: WayneMiller / DateTime: 2009-01-11 13:45:22

What a great game. The penultimate mission is mind-blowing awesome.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=572&start=0#p3234
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where Does Your Time Go?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-01-11 14:46:35

If only they'd never made it.  How many creative projects I'd have finished by now...

In all seriousness, one thing I've found is that I probably spend about as much time (if not longer) testing than coding - but only because testing involves a lot of waiting for beta-testers to get back to you.  Fixing the bugs they find is usually pretty straightforward (though mileage will vary), but obviously it takes time for them to find those bugs - and while they're doing that you just have to pace up and down and boil water like an expectant father from a couple of centuries back.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=573&start=0#p3235
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Common Verbs
User: WayneMiller / DateTime: 2009-01-11 23:33:13

What verbs do you like to add to your games that are not part of the standard set, but are generic enough to be added to most games?

For example, I think TIME(?) and DIAGNOSE were part of many of the Infocom games, but not are not part of standard inform.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=575&start=0#p3237
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: How to trigger an action when moving a character into a room
User: nedry / DateTime: 2009-01-14 09:07:29

I need to have something happen (an NPC greet the player, basically) when a character is *moved* into another room, for the first time, as opposed to entering the room, of the players own free will.

After messing around for a while... i got

carry out going to the room:
  <some actions>

to work, but this only triggers when the player walks in by his own free will... not when he is moved there.

I'm not new to programming (i've been programming computers for about 25 years) and maybe that is the problem.  I wrote a game in TADS many years ago, and that seemed to make more sense.  I have been fighting the temptation to go back there... this is a quest now.  I will make this work.

Thanks for any help you can provide!

Take Care,

Mark

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=573&start=0#p3238
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Common Verbs
User: dfisher / DateTime: 2009-01-14 17:08:20

"about" and "credits" are fairly common ... "help" and "hint" should probably have a response as well, even if your game doesn't have any built in hints (better to say so than not to recognise the verbs).

"xyzzy" is a pretty common Easter egg (and sometimes "plugh").

"follow" might be appropriate to some games (eg. after an NPC leaves a room).

By default, "look through" is a synonym for "search" for Inform games; if you have a window, remember to allow the player to look through it.

"swim in/across" and "dive into" might be appropriate if there is a body of water to swim in.

"kick" and "bite" are fairly common, as well as "knock" for doors.

"mend" or "fix" or "repair" might be an obvious action if the game includes a broken object.

"talk to" is good if you have any NPCs (even if it just says to use "ask/tell" instead). "hi/hello/greet", "bye/goodbye" and "thanks/thank you" can also be appropriate.

If you have any objects with obvious uses, remember to include those as well (eg. "vacuum floor" if there is a vacuum cleaner).

"pet/pat" is pretty common if you have an animal that can be petted/patted.

"remember" is a pretty common action as well if it seems the PC knows more than the player, but it might not apply to your game.

And depending on your tastes, you might want to include the generic verb "use".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=575&start=0#p3239
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to trigger an action when moving a character into a room
User: WayneMiller / DateTime: 2009-01-14 19:56:55

I'm not 100% sure, I am new to Inform myself. Here's my stab at the problem:

"Move" in this case is a [i]phrase[/i] and not an [i]action[/i]. Therefore, you can't have rules that apply to it like After, Instead, and so forth.

What you can do is create a new phrase, called something like Teleport, and put the logic in teleport that does what you are talking about. Then instead of moving someone around, you just "teleport them".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=575&start=0#p3240
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to trigger an action when moving a character into a room
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2009-01-15 07:42:03

This is somewhat awkward wording, but it should do what you want:

[code]Every turn when the player is in the Greeting Room and the Greeting Room was not visited:
    say "Bob says, 'Well, hello there.'"[/code]

"...was not visited" actually means "was not visited [i]at the beginning of this turn[/i]." So the rule will only fire the first time you enter the Greeting Room, regardless of how you got there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=569&start=0#p3241
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: TAKE ALL spoils surprises
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2009-01-15 07:56:50

Rules for deciding whether all includes [whatever] are actually specifically designed for this exact problem. I would suggest that you not attempt to disable the "all" grammar, since it would 1) be quite difficult, 2) possibly have unexpected consequences, and 3) not be nice to players who would expect TAKE ALL to work as it normally should.

Having lots of individual cases is really not a problem (in terms of how your code behaves). Remember that you can group items together with any available descriptor. For example:

[quote="ShaeSays"]In my case, I had several vehicles that were junked and nonoperational. After discovering in testing that a NPC could get into them and drive off west, I made them into fixed-in-place containers instead.[/quote]
[code]Rule for deciding whether all includes fixed-in-place things: it does not.[/code]
You might also consider making a new kind for junked vehicles.

[code]A wreck is a kind of vehicle. A wreck is usually fixed in place. Instead of going a direction by a wreck, say "This wreck is not going anywhere."[/code]
So a rule for deciding whether all includes vehicles (presumably, it does not) would apply to wrecks, too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=474&start=0#p3245
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Beta testers wanted for "Unreliable Narrator"
User: Jeremymia / DateTime: 2009-01-18 22:21:55

Hello again everyone.

I've had two EXTREMELY helpful beta testers. One who greatly helped me improve the "big picture" of the game, and one who pointed out far too many grammar and spelling mistakes. I've made the changes that they've recommended, which has improved the game tremendously -- this is my first game, and I never really knew how invaluable this process is.

I'm back at school and (since I seem to only work on this game when I should be doing something productive), I'd like to get in contact with some more beta testers. If you're interested, please send an e-mail to <a href="mailto:Jeremymia@gmail.com">Jeremymia@gmail.com</a>.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=569&start=0#p3246
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: TAKE ALL spoils surprises
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-01-19 11:54:20

Michael, the idea for defining a "wreck" is a good one. I didn't really anticipate the problems with non-moving vehicles as I started to program the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=474&start=0#p3247
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Beta testers wanted for "Unreliable Narrator"
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-01-19 11:55:25

This is a super cute idea for a game, by the way. 

I'd test but I'm already testing one at the moment.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=575&start=0#p3248
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to trigger an action when moving a character into a room
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-01-19 11:58:13

It seems you could also use a boolean state that you change after the teleporting and then change back after the desired action.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=573&start=0#p3249
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Common Verbs
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-01-19 12:01:36

I added several verbs that I think I'd want in most games:

help
trade 
drive (vehicles are a built in type, but drive is not recognized?)
talk to 
look up (in a book)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=572&start=0#p3250
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where Does Your Time Go?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-01-19 12:03:43

I spent a lot of time writing descriptions. All of the tasks were time-consuming, of course, but writing takes some creativity and I tried to flesh out all sorts of anticipated user commands that didn't necessarily further the game, to make it feel immersive.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=564&start=0#p3251
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Building Deep or Broad?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-01-19 12:08:24

Pacian, I agree -- I visualize depth and breadth here as opposite from how it was proposed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=576&start=0#p3252
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Getting a property of an adjacent room
User: Goldenrod111 / DateTime: 2009-01-20 19:03:22

I have given rooms the property of being either wet or dry, successfully (I think). However, I want to be able to determine whether the room to the west of the player's location is wet (I am currently using it to determine what rooms are stormy, and the storm is moving westward). So far, I have this:
[code]A room is either wet or dry. A room is usually dry.

Every turn when player is in the Plains, the Gorge, or the Upper Plains:
If turn count = 2
begin;
  change Grass WNW to wet;
  change Grass WW to wet;
  change Grass WSW to wet;
  change North Gorge WW to wet;
  change North Gorge W to wet;
  change South Gorge WW to wet;
  change South Gorge W to wet;
end if;
If turn count = 3
begin;
  change Grass NW to wet;
  change Grass W to wet;
  change Grass SW to wet;
  change North Gorge C to wet;
  change North Gorge EC to wet;
  change South Gorge C to wet;
  change South Gorge EC to wet;
end if;
If turn count = 4
begin;
  change Grass N to wet;
  change Grass C to wet;
  change Grass S to wet;
  change North Grass W to wet;
  change North Grass NW to wet;
  change North Grass N to wet;
  change North Gorge Fork to wet;
  change North Gorge SE to wet;
  change North Gorge Drain to wet;
  change Northern Gorge S to wet;
  change South Gorge NE to wet;
end if;
If turn count = 5
begin;
  change Grass NE to wet;
  change Grass EC to wet;
  change Grass SE to wet;
  change North Grass E to wet;
  change Northern Gorge C to wet;
  change Northern Gorge N to wet;
  change Grass E to wet;
end if;
If turn count = 6
begin;
  change Grass WNW to dry;
  change Grass WW to dry;
  change Grass WSW to dry;
  change Grass NW to dry;
  change Grass W to dry;
  change Grass SW to dry;
  change Grass N to dry;
  change Grass C to dry;
  change Grass S to dry;
  change Grass NE to dry;
  change Grass EC to dry;
  change Grass SE to dry;
  change Grass E to dry;
  change North Grass E to dry;
  change North Grass W to dry;
  change North Grass NW to dry;
  change North Grass N to dry;
end if;
If player is in the Plains
begin;
  If location is wet
  begin;
    if a random chance of 3 in 5 succeeds
    begin;
      say "The storm is right above you, soaking your clothes. Lightning strikes the ground near you, making you jump.";
    otherwise;
      end the game saying "You have been struck by lightning.";
    end if;
  otherwise if the room west of the location is wet, say "The storm is getting closer; you can see the rain falling just to the west.";
  end if;
end if;[/code] The plains, gorge, and upper plains are all regions. I am getting a few error messages with this. The first one, [quote]In the sentence 'If turn count = 2 begin'  , I was expecting that 'turn count = 2' would be a condition, but I couldn't make sense of it in any context.[/quote] (also with turn count equaling 3, 4, 5, and 6) I assume is saying that I have the wrong format for these conditions, ant that I could figure out the right one relatively quickly. The other, [quote]You wrote 'otherwise if the room west of the location is wet, say "The storm is getting closer; you c [...] the rain falling just to the west."'  : but an 'otherwise if' (or 'else if') which uses a comma to give a single consequence can only be used immediately following an equally simple 'if', and can't be used in the middle of a begin ... end if block. To provide alternatives within such a block, use 'otherwise if ... condition...;' (in the same way that one would use 'otherwise;' without a condition).[/quote] is a bit trickier. This is my first time using Inform, and I am still learning the language. If anyone could help me solve these problems, I would greatly appreciate it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=576&start=0#p3253
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting a property of an adjacent room
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2009-01-20 21:55:16

[quote]In the sentence 'If turn count = 2 begin'  , I was expecting that 'turn count = 2' would be a condition, but I couldn't make sense of it in any context.[/quote] 

There is no equals sign in Inform. What you have to say is, "if the turn count is 2".

[quote]You wrote 'otherwise if the room west of the location is wet, say "The storm is getting closer; you c [...] the rain falling just to the west."'  : but an 'otherwise if' (or 'else if') which uses a comma to give a single consequence can only be used immediately following an equally simple 'if', and can't be used in the middle of a begin ... end if block. To provide alternatives within such a block, use 'otherwise if ... condition...;' (in the same way that one would use 'otherwise;' without a condition).[/quote]

I think that means you're trying to mix inline if-then format with block (begin/end if) if-then format. Inform has trouble with that. Try:

[code]If player is in the Plains
begin;
  If location is wet
  begin;
    if a random chance of 3 in 5 succeeds
    begin;
      say "The storm is right above you, soaking your clothes. Lightning strikes the ground near you, making you jump.";
    otherwise;
      end the game saying "You have been struck by lightning.";
    end if;
  otherwise;
    if the room west of the location is wet
    begin;
      say "The storm is getting closer; you can see the rain falling just to the west.";
    end if;
  end if;
end if;[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=577&start=0#p3254
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Random Generation & Calenders
User: ryacku / DateTime: 2009-01-21 01:13:32

I'm going to be creating a game that requires randomly generated object/character, except I don't know how. And how would I assign conversation tables (if possible without much work) to these randomly generated characters? 

Also, how do I work a daily calender? I know how to do the parts involving a table of months and their days, but how do I have Inform reset the day and move forward the day? Like February 1st instead of January 32nd?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=577&start=0#p3255
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Random Generation & Calenders
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-01-21 06:16:47

[quote="ryacku"]I'm going to be creating a game that requires randomly generated object/character, except I don't know how. And how would I assign conversation tables (if possible without much work) to these randomly generated characters?[/quote]
Depends on what you mean by randomly generated - do you mean you have some amount of ready made objects/characters and the game chooses one of them at random? Or is there one person that has random characteristics, like hair color, different clothes etc? Or do you want to create stuff on the fly (for example a sock drawer where the player can pick up as many socks as they want)? Are you using some extension for the conversation?

[quote]Also, how do I work a daily calender? I know how to do the parts involving a table of months and their days, but how do I have Inform reset the day and move forward the day? Like February 1st instead of January 32nd?[/quote]
If you have the months and their days in a table, you could check if the day part is greater than that month's amout of days in the table. If it is, change it to 1 and increment the month. It's hard to give code examples without knowing how you've handled the dates in general, so if you could post that part of the code it would be easier to give more precise instructions.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=576&start=0#p3256
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting a property of an adjacent room
User: Goldenrod111 / DateTime: 2009-01-21 06:23:33

Thanks! That solves almost everything. I think that I originally did have ifs instead of =, but I think that I changed them when I saw one of the error messages. [emote]:roll:[/emote] Anyway, those work now, and I am only getting an error for one part of the code: [quote]In the sentence 'if the room west of the location is wet begin'  , I was expecting that 'room west of the location is wet' would be a condition, but I couldn't make sense of it in any context.[/quote] Again, any help is appreciated!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=576&start=0#p3257
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting a property of an adjacent room
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2009-01-21 07:04:18

[quote="Goldenrod111"]Thanks! That solves almost everything. I think that I originally did have ifs instead of =, but I think that I changed them when I saw one of the error messages. [emote]:roll:[/emote] Anyway, those work now, and I am only getting an error for one part of the code: [quote]In the sentence 'if the room west of the location is wet begin'  , I was expecting that 'room west of the location is wet' would be a condition, but I couldn't make sense of it in any context.[/quote] Again, any help is appreciated![/quote]

That's a tricky one, but I finally figured it out. You need to say, "if the room west [i][b]from[/b][/i] the location is wet begin".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=576&start=0#p3258
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting a property of an adjacent room
User: Goldenrod111 / DateTime: 2009-01-21 07:32:04

Thanks! Is there any way to modify that code to check if the player is entering a wet room in the gorge from the plains? I know that the code given in the second example in Emily Short's Basic Screen Effects extension can check to see what directions lead to a room, but I don't know how to check to see if the room in the direction the player is going is wet or not. To give an example: [quote][b]Plains[/b]

>n
The gorge is full of rushing water, and you don't think you will be able to swim in it.[/quote] (most of the rooms in the area that I am working on are called "Plains" as well).

Also, I added another condition, making the player drown when he is in a room in the gorge that becomes wet, but this is giving me a few errors.
[code]If the player is in the Gorge
begin;
	say "You hear a rushing sound behind you, and turn to find a flood rushing towords you."
	end the game saying "You have drowned."
end if;[/code]
[quote][b]Problem.[/b] In the line 'say "You hear a rushing sound behind yo [...] find a flood rushing towords you." end the game saying "You have drowned." end if'  , I was expecting that '"You hear a rushing sound behind yo [...] find a flood rushing towords you." end the game saying "You have drowned." end if' would be something to 'say', but it didn't look like any form of 'say' that I know. So I tried to read '"You hear a rushing sound behind yo [...] find a flood rushing towords you." end the game saying "You have drowned." end if' as a value of some kind (because it's legal to say values), but couldn't make sense of it that way either. (Sometimes this happens because punctuation has gone wrong - for instance, if you've omitted a semicolon or full stop at the end of the say phrase.)


[b]Problem.[/b] You wrote 'If the player is in the Gorge begin'  : but the definition of the phrase ended with no matching 'end' for this 'begin', bearing in mind that every begin must have a matching end, and that the one most recently begun must be the one first to end. For instance, 'if ... begin' must have a matching 'end if'.[/quote]
I'd like help with this, but I have to go and will probably not be able to check any responses until this evening or tomorow.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=576&start=0#p3259
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting a property of an adjacent room
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2009-01-21 09:57:06

[quote="Goldenrod111"]Thanks! Is there any way to modify that code to check if the player is entering a wet room in the gorge from the plains? I know that the code given in the second example in Emily Short's Basic Screen Effects extension can check to see what directions lead to a room, but I don't know how to check to see if the room in the direction the player is going is wet or not. [/quote]

The going action has a variable called "the room gone to". If "Gorge" is a region, you can say:

[code]Instead of going to the Gorge when the room gone to is wet, say "whatever".[/code]



[quote]Also, I added another condition, making the player drown when he is in a room in the gorge that becomes wet, but this is giving me a few errors.
[code]If the player is in the Gorge
begin;
	say "You hear a rushing sound behind you, and turn to find a flood rushing towords you."
	end the game saying "You have drowned."
end if;[/code]
[/quote]

You forgot to put semicolons at the ends of the lines.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=576&start=0#p3260
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting a property of an adjacent room
User: Goldenrod111 / DateTime: 2009-01-21 10:58:46

[quote]You forgot to put semicolons at the ends of the lines.[/quote] *slaps head* Well, that is one of the things I have trouble remembering to do. Thanks for pointing it out.

Gorge is a region, but when I tried to use it in my code I got: [quote][b]Problem.[/b] In the sentence 'Instead of going to the Gorge when the room gone to is wet'  , 'is wet' seems to be intended as something the player might be going to, but it doesn't make sense in that context.

[b]Problem.[/b] You wrote 'Instead of going to the Gorge when the room gone to is wet'  , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only 'going to the Gorge when the room gone to is wet'. But this condition did not make sense, so I am unable to accept this rule.
[/quote] Thanks for all the help!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=576&start=0#p3261
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting a property of an adjacent room
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2009-01-21 11:39:15

[quote="Goldenrod111"]Gorge is a region, but when I tried to use it in my code I got: [quote][b]Problem.[/b] In the sentence 'Instead of going to the Gorge when the room gone to is wet'  , 'is wet' seems to be intended as something the player might be going to, but it doesn't make sense in that context.[/quote][/quote]

Ah, sorry, it seems Inform wants to see an object name there, not a description. Try this:

[code]Instead of going to a wet room that is in the Gorge: say "whatever."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=576&start=0#p3262
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting a property of an adjacent room
User: Goldenrod111 / DateTime: 2009-01-21 17:25:02

It works!  [emote]:D[/emote]  Thanks! That should be all I need for this part of the game, but I'll ask (most likely in a different thread) if I run into any more problems.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=577&start=0#p3263
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Random Generation & Calenders
User: ryacku / DateTime: 2009-01-21 19:26:58

No extension. Unless you have one to suggest. I'm only asking about the  I just want to create objects/characters with random names and characteristics or values. Although I could work around random names.


[quote]In Volume 2 - Game Mechanisms, Section 3 - Time:


Problem. You wrote 'The current day is 20'  : but this seems to say that a thing is a value, like saying 'the chair is 10'.

Problem. You wrote 'Ignore sleeping rule'  : but I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with, so I am ignoring this sentence altogether.
Problem. You wrote 'Sleeping is an action applying to hay'  : but that seems to be an action already existing, so it cannot be redefined now. If you would like to reconfigure an action in the standard set - for instance if you prefer 'unlocking' to apply to only one thing, not two - create a new action for what you need ('keyless unlocking', perhaps) and then change the grammar to use the new action rather than the old ('Understand "unlock [something]" as keyless unlocking.').

Problem. You wrote 'Understand "sleep"'  : again, I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with.[/quote]
[quote]
A weekday is a kind of value. A month is a kind of value.

The weekdays are Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. The current weekday is a weekday that varies. The current weekday is Tuesday.
The months are January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December. The current month is a month that varies. The current month is January.

A day is a kind of value. 31 days specifies a day. The current day is 20.

Table 1.0 - Table of Months
Month	Day
January	31
February	28
March	31
April	30
May	31
June	30
July	31
August	31
September	30
October	31
November	30
December	31

Ignore sleeping rule.

Sleeping is an action applying to hay.

Understand "sleep" 

This is the sleeping rule:
	change the time to morning;
	change the current weekday to the weekday after the current weekday;
	if day is greater than month;
		change the current month the the month after the current month;
		change the day to 1.

Morning is a time that varies. Morning is 7:00 AM.

This is the new advance time rule: 
	if the current time period is less than night: 
		change the current time period to the time period after the current time period; 
	otherwise: 
		change the current weekday to the weekday after the current weekday. 
[/quote]


Another problem came up though. I'm treating congress as a container not placed in a room:
[quote] Problem. You wrote 'There is 20 conservatives in the congress'  : but multiple objects can only be put into relationships, by saying something like 'In the Drawing Room are two women.', and all other assertions with multiple objects are disallowed: so 'Three doors are open.' is rejected - I can't tell which three.
[/quote]
Obviously I'm trying to have multiple conservatives. Like multiple matches.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=577&start=0#p3264
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Random Generation & Calenders
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-01-22 04:01:58

[quote="ryacku"]No extension. Unless you have one to suggest. I'm only asking about the  I just want to create objects/characters with random names and characteristics or values. Although I could work around random names.[/quote]
Ok. The reason I was asking was because you specifically mentioned conversation tables which led me to believe you had already chosen a discussion system.

Here's how to do random characteristics:

[code]Hair tint is a kind of value. Hair tints are black, brown, white, and red.

The shopkeeper is a man. The shopkeeper can be happy or disgruntled. The shopkeeper has a hair tint called hair color. The description is "His hair is [hair color]. He looks [if happy]happy[otherwise]disgruntled[end if]."
	
When play begins:
	change the hair color of the shopkeeper to a random hair tint;
	if a random chance of 1 in 2 succeeds:
		now the shopkeeper is happy;
	otherwise:
		now the shopkeeper is disgruntled.
    [and so on][/code]
Random names are a bit more trickier, because you probably want the player to be able to refer to the character by their name (see chapter 16.15. in the manual).

[code]Table of shopkeeper names
name
"Alfred"
"Bob"
"Charles"
"David"

The shopkeeper has some indexed text called first name. Understand the first name property as describing the shopkeeper.
The printed name of the shopkeeper is "[first name]".

When play begins:
	choose a random row from the table of shopkeeper names;
	change the first name of the shopkeeper to the name entry.[/code]
This should have no effect on whatever conversation model you're using.

[quote]Problem. You wrote 'The current day is 20'  : but this seems to say that a thing is a value, like saying 'the chair is 10'.[/quote]
"Day" seems to be a reserved word. It's easier to just use a number: "The current day is a number that varies."

[quote]Problem. You wrote 'Ignore sleeping rule'  : but I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with, so I am ignoring this sentence altogether.
Problem. You wrote 'Sleeping is an action applying to hay'  : but that seems to be an action already existing, so it cannot be redefined now. If you would like to reconfigure an action in the standard set - for instance if you prefer 'unlocking' to apply to only one thing, not two - create a new action for what you need ('keyless unlocking', perhaps) and then change the grammar to use the new action rather than the old ('Understand "unlock [something]" as keyless unlocking.').

Problem. You wrote 'Understand "sleep"'  : again, I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with.[/quote]
Sleeping is already defined in the standard library, so you can't define it again. It's best to use the one that's there and modify its behavior.

[code]The current day is a number that varies. The current day is 20.

Table 1.0 - Table of Months
Month	Day
January	31
February	28
March	31
April	30
May	31
June	30
July	31
August	31
September	30
October	31
November	30
December	31

Instead of sleeping:
	say "Yawn.";
	change the time of day to morning;
	advance the day.

To advance the day:
	change the current weekday to the weekday after the current weekday;
	if current day is greater than the day corresponding to the month of current month in the table 1.0:
		change the current month to the month after the current month;
		change the current day to 1.

Morning is a time that varies. Morning is 7:00 AM.[/code]

[quote]Another problem came up though. I'm treating congress as a container not placed in a room:[/quote]
Could you treat it as a room that's not connected to any other room, if that solves the problem?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=564&start=0#p3265
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Building Deep or Broad?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-01-24 02:54:59

I thought of something else to say about this issue. For me another benefit of doing a complete piece at a time (as a newbie) was that I learned a lot by testing one piece that saved me time on building others. 

As a trivial example, I found that the articles and capitalization used when naming a person or animal (the spider, The spider, a spider, etc) affected built-in responses. For example, sometimes I'd get an awkward response like "I don't think Spider would care for that" that taught me something about how the spider definition should be written. It was easier to fix that once and do it right the next time, I think, than it would have been to have gone across fifteen definitions and tweak them all (which is boring and annoying). Take that one example times the fifteen things I learned while building it, and that's a worthwhile savings of time I think.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=578&start=0#p3266
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Using "wear a tattoo" and other unusual expressions
User: Retro / DateTime: 2009-01-26 04:39:53

Hello everyone,

as some of you might noticed during the judging period in the IFComp'08 there were some reviews in which people complained that I used expressions such as [i]"wear a tattoo"[/i] and [i]"cartridge"[/i] in my entry "Project Delta: The Course".

I've made a research on these expressions recently, because I wanted to find out whether they are wrong or not and if I should fix them in my final release. And I've found this via google today:

<a class="postlink" href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/6734849.stm">http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/6734849.stm</a>

It's a short article from 2007 written by BBC News. It's about tattoos, but that's not the point here. What is interesting is that BBC uses the same expression "wear a tattoo". Quote: [i]"Footballer David Beckham and singer Amy Winehouse are just two celebrities that [b]wear tattoos[/b], have they influenced your decision to [b]wear them[/b]?"[/i] The article's headline is even called [i]"Why wear a tattoo?"[/i].

And about the cartridge-thing... this was actually an expression which I researched before I had written the text for my tutorial version of Project Delta, because as you may noticed all the weapon names and descriptions in Project Delta are based on real firearms, such as the Beretta 92FS and its 9x19mm Parabellum [i]cartridge[/i].

Source: <a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9x19mm_Parabellum">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9x19mm_Parabellum</a>

I always knew that it's usually called a "clip" and not a "cartridge". I'm not only a fan of interactive fiction, but also a big fan of first-person shooters, you know. So I'm familiar with that, because in FPS games they always call it "clip". But I like the word cartridge. It's actually the technical term for clip which is used by weapons manufacturers. You can read it in the wikipedia-link I've just posted above.

Now to cut a long story short. I don't want to get into any arguments with reviewers on this one or sound like a smartass, but I have to ask this...

If "wear a tattoo" is a wrong expression in your opinion then why BBC uses it? Did BBC make a mistake? Is it slang maybe? Or can it be that this expression just appears unusual to some of you, because you simply haven't heard of it before? Same with "cartridge".

And much more important why I really bring this topic up is a general question... uhm, should authors use expressions like that or should they avoid them?

I mean considering the weapon names and stuff like this: I always liked technical terms to describe technology, especially in a text adventure which is about Area 51. I think this is just the right way, but if you have a different view on that then share it with me.

Emilian

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=578&start=0#p3267
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Using "wear a tattoo" and other unusual expressions
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-01-26 05:08:28

I don't know about the tattoo thing, but cartridge is not the same thing as clip: a cartridge is the shell of a single bullet and a clip is where you have the ammunition. See [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartridge_(firearms)[/url] and [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clip_(ammunition)[/url].

There's always a chance that the reviewer has not heard the expressions before or they're from a region where language is used differently (English varies quite a lot geographically!) so I would take the advice, research it as you have done, and keep in mind that the reviewer might be mistaken as well (and also that I might be mistaken too). You could also always email the reviewer and ask why they felt the expressions were off.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=578&start=0#p3268
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Using "wear a tattoo" and other unusual expressions
User: Retro / DateTime: 2009-01-26 06:42:50

[quote="Nitku"]I don't know about the tattoo thing, but cartridge is not the same thing as clip: a cartridge is the shell of a single bullet and a clip is where you have the ammunition. See [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartridge_(firearms)[/url] and [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clip_(ammunition)[/url].[/quote]

Thanks for sorting that out.

I had a feeling that the "cartridge" expression was a mistake of mine, but I wanted to have this confirmed. So yes, cartridge is the shell of a single bullet only and not of all bullets. That was my confusion when reading that wikipedia article. I guess that's the disadvantage when using technical terms in text adventures and games in general. One has to carefully research them and make sure that one doesn't confuse them him-/herself. Sometimes these things happen unintentionally - as in this case.

[quote]There's always a chance that the reviewer has not heard the expressions before or they're from a region where language is used differently (English varies quite a lot geographically!) so I would take the advice, research it as you have done, and keep in mind that the reviewer might be mistaken as well (and also that I might be mistaken too). You could also always email the reviewer and ask why they felt the expressions were off.[/quote]

Yeah, you know, I'm writing IF in english and german. English can really be a problem, because you have to understand the difference between american and british english. For example, the room where the weapons were stored I called [i]Armory[/i]. I looked it up in an online dictionary. It's american english. In british english, however, it is called the [i]Weaponry[/i].

I suppose I just have to decide in which english - american or british - I want to write. And then I have to add a note in my game blurb or in the game itself about which style of english my game uses.

In this particular case I think it makes sense sticking to american english. Simply because Area 51 is located in USA, Nevada. That should fit. I could ofcourse release a special version of my game using british english, but I don't know if this is really necessary since both - american and british people - understand the language anyway, don't they?  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=578&start=0#p3269
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Using "wear a tattoo" and other unusual expressions
User: revgiblet / DateTime: 2009-01-26 16:46:01

Actually, as a Brit I would expect to see the word 'Armoury' rather than 'Armory' or 'Weaponry'.  'Weaponry' is not a term I've ever heard to describe a storage room for weapons, but it might be because of the prevalence of the American version (kind of like the whole gaol/jail thing).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=577&start=0#p3272
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Random Generation & Calenders
User: ryacku / DateTime: 2009-01-26 22:15:54

Thanks for the help. Wouldn't have thought of that naming system myself. Now people can't be certain which butler did it.

How do I modify the behavior of sleep, and have it only apply to a type of object called a hay?

[quote]Problem. You wrote 'The current day is 20'  : but this seems to say that a thing is a value, like saying 'the chair is 10'.[/quote]
[quote]A day is a kind of value. 31 days specifies a day. The current day is 20.

Table 1.0 - Table of Months
Month	Day
January	31
February	28
March	31
April	30
May	31
June	30
July	31
August	31
September	30
October	31
November	30
December	31[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=579&start=0#p3273
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: blueful
User: radix / DateTime: 2009-01-26 23:09:37

I just wanted to make sure everyone has seen blueful.com. It's done by Aaron A. Reed. It's the prelude to his new (long anticipated!) game Blue Lacuna.

It's very much worth the 15 minutes or so that it takes to, uh, "read".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=578&start=0#p3274
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Using "wear a tattoo" and other unusual expressions
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-01-27 14:19:25

Hi EK,

I'm not familiar with your game or the debate surrounding it, but I thought I'd chime in anyway. 

If you're using a potentially odd phrase like "wear a tattoo" in the descriptions (I.E. You're in the tattoo parlor. There's a woman here. She wears a butterfly tattoo.), then I think that's fine, whether the user is familiar with the phrase or not. If it's so indecipherable to the user (and anyway, it's not), they're welcome to look it up. That's what you do when you read fiction. You're listening to the voice of the author.

On the other hand if you're asking for the phrase from the user, I might be inclined to use as many synonyms for it as possible (wear a tattoo, have a tattoo... I dunno, sport a tattoo?), to make sure all users can figure out what to say. Even if it isn't wrong, it isn't fair if they can't move forward in the game over an inability to guess the right phrasing. But that phrase doesn't sound like an imperative anyway so maybe that isn't what you were doing.

Incidentally, I don't know that I've ever heard anyone say "wear a tattoo", but I also don't think it sounds all that weird.

I'm American and I notice a lot of these games are written in British English. Most of the phrases between the two dialects are the same, many of the phrases that aren't the same are phrases I'm aware of and understand, and if I'm not aware then I look it up. For example, when I first played Christminster the game mentioned a "mog", which I wasn't familiar with and looked up. It became obvious later that the mog was a cat, but it didn't hurt me none to look it up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=578&start=0#p3275
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Using "wear a tattoo" and other unusual expressions
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2009-01-28 10:44:01

[quote]Yeah, you know, I'm writing IF in english and german. English can really be a problem, because you have to understand the difference between american and british english. For example, the room where the weapons were stored I called [i]Armory[/i]. I looked it up in an online dictionary. It's american english. In british english, however, it is called the [i]Weaponry[/i].[/quote]

Not in any dictionary that I've looked in.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=580&start=0#p3276
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Creating a New Action
User: Goldenrod111 / DateTime: 2009-01-28 13:42:04

I want the player to be able to wash things (only himself, currently) in a river or other water source (checking whether something is large enough to wash in will come later, if I decide to make more things in different sizes washable). I am basing this on the Eddystone example, and currently have [code]A thing can be dirty or clean. A thing is usually clean. The player is dirty.
A thing can be wet or dry. A thing is usually dry.

Instead of examining the player: 
    say "[if dirty]You are tired and worn from your travels, and your outward appearance reflects that. [otherwise if clean]You are still tired, but no one could guess that just by looking at you. [end if]".

Understand "wash [something] in [something]" as cleaning it in. Cleaning it in is an action applying to two things.

Instead of washing something, say "Try specifying you want to wash [the noun] in." 

Check cleaning it in: if the noun is not dirty, say "[The noun] is already clean. Why wash it?" instead; if the noun is a person, say "You doubt [if the noun is female]she[otherwise if the noun is male]he[otherwise][the noun][end if] would appreciate that." instead; if the second noun is dry, say "You cannot wash [the noun] in the dry [second noun]." instead.

Carry out cleaning it in: 
    The noun is now clean. 

Report cleaning it in: say "You wash [the noun] in [the second noun], removing the dirt and grime."[/code] This mostly works, but the line "Instead of washing something, say 'Try specifying you want to wash [the noun] in.'" is giving me problems. In Eddystone this was used to see if the player left off the direction to turn the light towards, but I cannot figure out how to change it for my purposes, as the line I have now gives me an error: [quote]You wrote 'Instead of washing something'  , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is 'washing something'. But that did not make sense as a description of an action. I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook.[/quote] Also, how would I allow the player to wash himself now that I have prevented him from washing people?

Finally, completely unrelated, but is there any way that I can get the chapter name, other than creating a variable and changing it to the name of current chapter at the beginning of each one?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=580&start=0#p3277
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating a New Action
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2009-01-28 14:03:49

[quote="Goldenrod111"]This mostly works, but the line "Instead of washing something, say 'Try specifying you want to wash [the noun] in.'"[/quote]

You defined the action in code as "cleaning". "Wash" is a grammar that you defined for the player to use in-game. There is no "washing" action in the code, which is why Inform is getting confused.

What you want is a way to handle cases where the player just types "WASH DISHES" without specifying what to wash the dishes in, right? For that, you need to do two things. 

First, define another grammar line that makes it legal for a player to type that.

[code]Understand "wash [something]" as cleaning it in.[/code]

Now, the game will still want to see a second noun. So write a rule for the "supplying a missing second noun" activity:

[code]Rule for supplying a missing second noun while cleaning:
	say "Try specifying what you want to wash [the noun] in."[/code]

The cool thing about this is that you can add code to automatically pick something logical:

[code]Rule for supplying a missing second noun while cleaning:
	if a wet thing is visible, change the second noun to a random visible wet thing;
	otherwise say "Try specifying what you want to wash [the noun] in."[/code]

See chapter 17.30 in the documentation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=580&start=0#p3278
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating a New Action
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2009-01-28 14:14:45

[quote="Goldenrod111"]Also, how would I allow the player to wash himself now that I have prevented him from washing people?[/quote]

The simplest way is to change the relevant if-then statment:

[code]if the noun is a person and the noun is not the player, say "You doubt [etc, etc]."[/code]

Incidentally, you have all your "error checking" for the cleaning action inside one check rule. This is legal (that is, it compiles and it works), but a better method is to put each if-then inside a separate check rule. Each check rule will fire in sequence, stopping if it finds a problem.

[code]Check cleaning it in: 
   if the noun is not dirty, say "[The noun] is already clean. Why wash it?" instead.

Check cleaning it in: 
   if the noun is a person and the noun is not the player, say "You doubt [if the noun is female]she[otherwise if the noun is male]he[otherwise][the noun][end if] would appreciate that." instead.

Check cleaning it in:
  if the second noun is dry, say "You cannot wash [the noun] in the dry [second noun]." instead.[/code]

This makes it a lot easier to keep track of which rules are affecting the action, and when.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=580&start=0#p3279
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating a New Action
User: Goldenrod111 / DateTime: 2009-01-28 14:59:12

Thanks!
[quote]You defined the action in code as "cleaning". "Wash" is a grammar that you defined for the player to use in-game. There is no "washing" action in the code, which is why Inform is getting confused.[/quote] Oops! I had originally defined "cleaning it in" as "washing it in", but changed it to see if I could fix some problems that way, and I guess I forgot to change all of the references to "washing".
[quote]What you want is a way to handle cases where the player just types "WASH DISHES" without specifying what to wash the dishes in, right?[/quote] Actually, I was intending that the player had to specify what he wanted to wash the "noun" in, but I prefer the code you gave me that supplies the second noun automatically. However, is there any way that I can change that so it will chose some things over others ("...it is very likely"), or will the "random visible wet thing" automatically look for things like that?
[quote]if the noun is a person and the noun is not the player, say "You doubt [etc, etc]."
[/quote] I thought it would have something like that, but I wasn't completely sure about how to word it.

Thanks again for the code and the help!

Finally, two questions. First, is there any way for me to get the name of the chapter (for example, to put in the status bar)? Second, how would I make a backdrop (called canyon) wet or dry depending upon whether a room beside the player is wet? Unfortunately, I only want this to respond if the wet room is in the gorge, and sometimes other rooms beside the player are wet as well. I wouldn't want the player being able to wash himself in a gorge a few rooms away!  [emote];)[/emote]

Edit:
I ran into another problem, and decided to place it here instead of in a new or an older thread.[code]After doing something other than going a direction from the Tree:
	if the turn count is greater than 6;
		say "You wait until the the rain passes, and then you get out of your shelter and, rather quickly, leave the plains before a snowstorm comes.";
		end the game in victory.[/code] gives the problem report [quote]You wrote 'After doing something other than going a direction from the Tree'  , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is 'doing something other than going a direction from the Tree'. But that did not make sense as a description of an action. This looks like a list of actions to avoid: 'going a direction from the Tree' was okay; so I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=580&start=0#p3280
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating a New Action
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2009-01-28 15:54:54

[quote="Goldenrod111"]However, is there any way that I can change that so it will chose some things over others ("...it is very likely"), or will the "random visible wet thing" automatically look for things like that?[/quote]

"Random visible wet thing" will choose one wet thing in the room, at random. If there's only one wet thing in the room, it will choose that one. If you anticipate having more than one wet thing in a room at once, and you want certain things to have precedence, you can set up some if-then statements to handle that.

[code]Rule for supplying a missing noun while cleaning:
   if the sink is in the location, change the second noun to the sink;
   otherwise if a wet thing is in the location, change the second noun to a random visible wet thing;
   otherwise say "You will have to specify what you want to clean [the noun] in."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=580&start=0#p3281
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating a New Action
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2009-01-28 17:19:44

[quote="Goldenrod111"]Finally, two questions. First, is there any way for me to get the name of the chapter (for example, to put in the status bar)?[/quote]

If by "chapter" you mean the name of a scene, then no. You can't refer to "the current scene" because there could be any number of scenes running simultaneously.

The simplest way to do Chapters would probably be to just set up a global variable for the chapter name:

[code]Current chapter is some text that varies.[/code]

Then change it manually at the appropriate time:

[code]now current chapter is "Chapter 2 - The Storm".[/code]

You can print the value of "current chapter" with a simple substitution:

[code]say "We are currently on [current chapter]."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=580&start=0#p3282
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating a New Action
User: Goldenrod111 / DateTime: 2009-01-28 18:07:07

[quote]If by "chapter" you mean the name of a scene, then no. You can't refer to "the current scene" because there could be any number of scenes running simultaneously.
[/quote] I meant the chapter in the code, but I figured that I would have to use something like that example you gave me. Thanks for clearing up that "Random visible wet thing" question as well. However, do you know about that last error report that I got (in the edit of my previous post)?

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=580&start=0#p3283
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating a New Action
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2009-01-28 18:25:12

[quote="Goldenrod111"]I meant the chapter in the code, but I figured that I would have to use something like that example you gave me. Thanks for clearing up that "Random visible wet thing" question as well. However, do you know about that last error report that I got (in the edit of my previous post)?[/quote]

The chapter/section headings you put in the code are just for your own reference. They are ignored by the compiler.

[quote]You wrote 'After doing something other than going a direction from the Tree' , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is 'doing something other than going a direction from the Tree'. But that did not make sense as a description of an action. This looks like a list of actions to avoid: 'going a direction from the Tree' was okay; so I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook.[/quote]

The clause "from the Tree" is a clause that is specific to only the going action. "Doing something other than going" involves actions other than going, so "from the Tree" won't work there. Try:

[code]Instead of doing something other than going when the location is the Tree:[/code]

You don't have to say "going a direction", although technically it's correct -- the grammar for going ensures that only a direction would be the noun in any case.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=577&start=0#p3284
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Random Generation & Calenders
User: Goldenrod111 / DateTime: 2009-01-28 18:40:40

I am just starting with Inform, but I think I might know the answer to your sleeping problem. I am sure this code still needs a lot of work, and it assumes you mean that you want the day to be advanced if the player sleeps when he is on the hay, but this should be functional. [code]Instead of sleeping:
	if player is on the hay:
		say "Yawn.";
		change the time of day to morning;
		advance the day;
	otherwise if the hay is in the location:
		try entering the hay;
		say "Yawn.";
		change the time of day to morning;
		advance the day;
	otherwise:
		continue the action.[/code] Make sure that the hay is enterable and either a supporter or a container. The above example was written with the hay being a supporter, so if you want it to be a container you will need to change the "on" in the second line to an "in".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=580&start=0#p3285
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating a New Action
User: Goldenrod111 / DateTime: 2009-01-28 18:42:04

Thanks, but when I update the code, I get an error message (both shown below).[code]Instead of doing something other than going when the location is the Tree
begin;
	if the turn count is greater than 6
	begin;
		say "You wait until the the rain passes, and then you get out of your shelter and, rather quickly, leave the plains before a snowstorm comes.";
		end the game in victory.
	otherwise;
		continue the action;
	end if;
end if.[/code][quote]The sentence 'Instead of doing something other than going when the location is the Tree begin'   seems to be talking about a previously unknown room or thing called Instead of doing something other than going when the location. Ordinarily, I would create this, but because the name contains the word 'when' or 'while' I'm going say no. That's because this far more often happens by mistake than deliberately. For instance, people sometimes type lines like 'Jumping when the actor is on the trampoline is high-jumping.' But in fact although 'jumping' is an action, 'Jumping when...' is not - 'when' can't be used here (though it can be used in rule preambles). So the sentence is instead read as making an object 'jumping when the actor' and putting it on top of another one, 'trampoline is high-jumping'. This can lead to a lot of confusion. 

If you genuinely do want an object whose name contains the word 'when', try something like: 'In the box is a thing called When worlds collide.'[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=580&start=0#p3286
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating a New Action
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-01-29 02:21:38

Hi Goldenrod.  [emote]:)[/emote] 

You've got some begin / end syntax confusion as well as a punctuaton mistake in there. First, the pramble of a rule (Instead of... etc.) is followed by a colon, not a semi-colon. Begin / end is not used for this. Also, only use the period at the end of a block. Try:[code]Instead of doing something other than going when the location is the Tree:[colon here - no begin / end]
   if the turn count is greater than 6
   begin;
      say "You wait until the the rain passes, and then you get out of your shelter and, rather quickly, leave the plains before a snowstorm comes.";
      end the game in victory;[semi-colon (not a period) here]
   otherwise;
      continue the action;
   end if.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=580&start=10#p3287
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating a New Action
User: Goldenrod111 / DateTime: 2009-01-29 10:17:23

Thanks for pointing that out! This should hopefully be the last question I have to ask in this topic, but how would I make a backdrop (called canyon) wet or dry depending upon whether a room beside the player is wet?  I only want this to respond if the wet room is in the gorge, though, and sometimes other rooms beside the player are wet as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=580&start=10#p3288
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating a New Action
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2009-01-29 10:37:22

[quote="Goldenrod111"]Thanks for pointing that out! This should hopefully be the last question I have to ask in this topic, but how would I make a backdrop (called canyon) wet or dry depending upon whether a room beside the player is wet?  I only want this to respond if the wet room is in the gorge, though, and sometimes other rooms beside the player are wet as well.[/quote]

Your description of the conditions involved is a little bit confusing, but I'll give it a shot. It sounds like you want the backdrop (the canyon) to be wet IF the player's current location is wet, AND if at least one other room besides the player's location is both in the gorge (which I assume is a region) and also wet. Correct?

You can change the status of the backdrop using a "now the canyon is..." phrase. You set up the specific conditions with an if-then statement.

[code]if the location is wet and there is a wet room that is in the Gorge, now the canyon is wet;
otherwise now the canyon is dry.[/code]

I'm not clear on whether you need the other room to be immediately next to the character's location, or if it can be any room on the map. If the former, you can add the adjective "adjacent" to specify that the other wet room must be immediately next to the character's location.

[code]if the location is wet and there is a wet adjacent room that is in the Gorge, now the canyon is wet;
otherwise now the canyon is dry.[/code]

Now you can't just write that if-then statement by itself -- you need to put it in a rule so the game knows when to check it. So how often does the game need to check to see if the canyon is wet or dry? If there are rooms turning wet or dry all the time in your game, you might want to check every turn. So:

[code]Every turn:
   if the location is wet and there is a wet adjacent room that is in the Gorge, now the canyon is wet;
   otherwise now the canyon is dry.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=580&start=10#p3289
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating a New Action
User: Goldenrod111 / DateTime: 2009-01-29 10:59:05

Sorry that was confusing. I wanted the backdrop (the canyon) to be wet if at least one room adjacent to the player's location is both in the gorge (which is a region) and wet. I didn't care if the player's location was wet, so I took that part out of the code and it works very nicely now. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=568&start=0#p3290
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Want to meet IF enthusiasts in your area?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-01-29 22:10:54

I added a Code /Code block around your script. I hope it didn't mess up the format... also hope that was okay with you.

I finally got around to checking that out. Pretty cool idea -- although Kansas seems to be a near void when it comes to Interactive Fiction. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=568&start=0#p3291
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Want to meet IF enthusiasts in your area?
User: radix / DateTime: 2009-01-29 22:38:51

I've been getting back to working on my WIP lately, and have been kind of itching for a bit of discussion about IF, so I would enjoy getting together with some people in Boston or Cambridge. I see there's a good number around here. I wonder if Nick Montfort would could be convinced to host something at MIT...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=40#p3292
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-01-30 12:31:37

I guess I'll do this now.

My nick online and off is Shae. I'm female, 40 yrs old, living in rural Southeastern Indiana, USA after moving from Indianapolis earlier this year.

I played the Scott Adams games when I was a kid and have enjoyed IF ever since, though I am not as experienced a player as many here. I just finished a computer science degree and have worked for years as a web developer.

I created my first IF game in December with copious amounts of help from the people on this forum, in the Inform 7 section. While I think I did alright, it's probably too embarrassing to share. I hope to write another soon that avoids the newbie pitfalls I fell into with the first, and I'm sure that one will be brilliant.  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=568&start=0#p3293
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Want to meet IF enthusiasts in your area?
User: jimmunroe / DateTime: 2009-01-30 13:43:52

Toronto is no Boston, either, when it comes to IF! S'pose it makes sense with the Infocom hq being near there and all. 

What I've been thinking about recently is getting two or three other IF-curious writers that I really like together and starting more of a workshop type thing. I've been doing it with other types of games:
<a class="postlink" href="http://nomediakings.org/artsygames/">http://nomediakings.org/artsygames/</a>
...and there's no reason it wouldn't work well for IF.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=40#p3294
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: radix / DateTime: 2009-01-30 14:07:16

[quote="ShaeSays"]I guess I'll do this now.

My nick online and off is Shae. I'm female, 40 yrs old, living in rural Southeastern Indiana, USA after moving from Indianapolis earlier this year.
[/quote]

Hi Shae :-) I actually know a guy named Shae Erisson, no joke. He got his legal name changed from something a lot more mundane.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=570&start=0#p3295
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: some Noob questions
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2009-02-03 02:14:35

how does one apply multiple clauses to an action: like e.g. "instead of dropping the pen when you are in room 2 AND wear a girdle"?
can't get this to work...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=570&start=0#p3296
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: some Noob questions
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-02-03 04:32:01

The player character must be referred to as "the player" in the code, and "location" is used for "the current room the player is in". Also note that all parts of the phrase must be written fully, that is "when the player has the duct tape and the hammer" won't work but "when the player has the duct tape and the player has the hammer" will. Try this:

[code]Instead of dropping the pen when the location is room 2 and the player is wearing a girdle: [...][/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=570&start=0#p3297
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: some Noob questions
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2009-02-04 01:21:01

ok, that works now

but how to add exclusions, like Instead of dropping the pen when the location is room 2 and the player is wearing a girdle UNLESS something something... e.g. the player carries the magic wand

or another case: if any 2 of 3 given conditions are fulfilled...

thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=575&start=0#p3298
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to trigger an action when moving a character into a room
User: nedry / DateTime: 2009-02-04 08:07:28

thanks for all of your answers!  I got this to work.

sorry for the delay in answering you guys, real life got in the way, again!

BTW, I'm working on a text adventure based on Inferno -- the larry niven / jerry pournelle version...

... i just wish I had time to do it!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=570&start=0#p3299
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: some Noob questions
User: Goldenrod111 / DateTime: 2009-02-04 08:44:40

[quote]but how to add exclusions, like Instead of dropping the pen when the location is room 2 and the player is wearing a girdle UNLESS something something... e.g. the player carries the magic wand[/quote] I am not completely sure about how to do this either, but I think you would use something like this (tested): [code]Instead of dropping the pen when the location is room 2 and the player is wearing a girdle and the player is not holding the magic wand: [...][/code] Hope this works!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=570&start=0#p3300
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: some Noob questions
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2009-02-04 17:47:14

[quote="JC Denton"]but how to add exclusions, like Instead of dropping the pen when the location is room 2 and the player is wearing a girdle UNLESS something something... e.g. the player carries the magic wand[/quote]

This is basically the same as requiring the opposite condition.

[code]Instead of dropping the pen when the location is room 2 and the player is wearing the girdle AND the player is NOT carrying the magic wand[/code]

[quote]or another case: if any 2 of 3 given conditions are fulfilled...[/quote]

There is no built-in logic for this, but you could write a procedure of your own to do it.

[code]Instead of dropping the pen when the required conditions is at least 2

To decide which number is the required conditions:
     let X be zero;
     if the location is room 2, increase X by one;
     if the player is wearing the girdle, increase X by one;
     if the player is not carrying the magic wand, increase X by one;
     decide on X.[/code]

Note that "the required conditions" is an arbitrary label. We could also say "the magic ingredients" or "foobozzle" or whatever.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=578&start=0#p3301
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Using "wear a tattoo" and other unusual expressions
User: Retro / DateTime: 2009-02-05 15:54:11

[quote="Michael Gentry"]Not in any dictionary that I've looked in.[/quote]

Here you go: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.dict.cc/englisch-deutsch/weaponry.html">http://www.dict.cc/englisch-deutsch/weaponry.html</a>

It's correct what revgiblet wrote though. [i]Armory[/i] is american and [i]Armoury[/i] is british writing. And according to dict.cc the word [i]Arsenal[/i] is a synonym for Armory, as you can read [url=http://www.dict.cc/?s=armory]here[/url] (scroll the page down).

Weaponry also means "Waffenarsenal" ("weapons arsenal", literally translated) in german. The reviewer who said it should have been called "Weaponry" instead of "Armory" had probably misunderstood what I was refering to in my adventure when my NPC Lt. Walker said:

[i]"This is the Armory. On the table in front of you is a pistol. Take it!"[/i]

The reviewer probably thought that Walker was refering to the pistol itself and not to the storage room in general, as it was intended when I wrote the text.

In that case the sentence should have been:

[i]"This is the Weaponry. On the table in front of you is a pistol. Take it!"[/i]

In conclusion, "Armory/Armoury" refers to the weapons storage room only and "Weaponry" refers to the weapons themselves as a whole (arsenal). Weaponry seems to be a synonym for Arsenal too. In other words, you could say [i]"The weaponry is stored inside the armory."[/i] and it had the same meaning as [i]"All weapons are inside the storage room."[/i] (correct me if I'm wrong).

It's a bit confusing, but I think I have figured it out now.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=578&start=0#p3302
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Using "wear a tattoo" and other unusual expressions
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2009-02-05 20:02:39

Yes, correct. 'Weaponry' is not the same thing as 'Armory' (or 'Armoury'), neither in British nor American English. Weaponry refers to the weapons themselves, Armory is the place you keep them in.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=570&start=0#p3303
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: some Noob questions
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2009-02-07 20:20:45

Actually, here's a way that reads a little better:

[code]Instead of dropping the pen when sufficient conditions are met:
     [etc.]

To decide whether sufficient conditions are met:
     let X be zero;
     if the location is room 2, increase X by one;
     if the player is wearing the girdle, increase X by one;
     if the player is not carrying the magic wand, increase X by one;
     if X is at least 2, decide yes;
     otherwise decide no.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=570&start=0#p3304
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: some Noob questions
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2009-02-10 01:10:54

some more questions:

1. how do you do something WITH a thing, e.g. cut me with knife...?

2. how do you get multiple outcomes of a random selection : e.g. 1/3 chance "Yes", 1/3 "Maybe" and 1/3 "No", and only one of these is the result, not 1/3 chance for every event (don't know how to explain this better)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=581&start=0#p3305
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Keeping a key from working until other conditions are met
User: DarkAsteroid / DateTime: 2009-02-10 01:14:37

I am trying to create a situation where a door cannot be unlocked, even if the player has the key, until certain other actions have been accomplished. I thought of setting a counter to zero and incrementing it every time one of the other actions gets accomplished. Then I would have a multiple-If statement of some kind saying, in effect, "If the player has the key and the counter is less than the required value, say "There must still be something left for you to do until you leave this place." else if the player has the key and the counter equals the required value, allow the door to be unlocked. If the player doesn't have the key, of course, it shouldn't even get to the if...else.

Seems that it should work, but how to write the code is beyond me at this point. Any help gratefully accepted!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=581&start=0#p3306
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keeping a key from working until other conditions are met
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-02-10 04:04:44

You could use a counter variable, but in this case a simple decide phrase would do the trick. As in:[code]The Lab is a room.
The back door is a locked door. It is west of the Lab. It has matching key the brass key. The brass key and the ball are in the Lab.

The painting is a fixed in place thing in the Lab. It has description "This is a clue necessary to solving the puzzle."

To decide if the lab requirements are met:
	if we have not examined the painting, decide no;
	if the player does not carry the ball, decide no;
	decide yes.

[This next rule will only fire if the player has the brass key:]
Check unlocking the back door with the brass key:
	unless the lab requirements are met,
		say "You feel like there's something more to do here first." instead.

test me with "unlock door / key / unlock door / x painting / unlock door / get ball / unlock door with key".[/code]Note that the decide phrase continues to check the conditions until a decision is made (i.e. it doesn't bother to check for the ball if the painting hasn't been examined and will only get to "yes" if both conditions have been met. Also, since the check rule contains "with the brass key", it will only fire if the player has the key (although it will perform an implicit take if the player can reach the key but doesn't actually have it.) See Michael Gentry's post from [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=570]this other thread[/url] for an example where only some conditions need to be met before doing something.

You might also want to add a rule for suplying a missing noun, so the player doesn't have to specify the key. If so, see ch 17.30.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=570&start=0#p3307
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: some Noob questions
User: Goldenrod111 / DateTime: 2009-02-10 07:02:37

[quote="JC Denton"]1. how do you do something WITH a thing, e.g. cut me with knife...?

2. how do you get multiple outcomes of a random selection : e.g. 1/3 chance "Yes", 1/3 "Maybe" and 1/3 "No", and only one of these is the result, not 1/3 chance for every event (don't know how to explain this better)[/quote]
[s]1. There might be another way to do this, but I think this is the most useful when you get into more complex coding:
[code]Check cutting something:
  if the noun is yourself, say "Ouch!" instead.[/code][/s]Edit: Oops! I forgot that you wanted to cut something [i]with something[/i]. Disregard the above text, and look on the next page for a better answer.

2. Chapter 5.6 in the documentation has some good information about having random [i]text[/i], and 8.17 has more information about randomness in general; both of the descriptions there are probably better then I could explain it here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=570&start=10#p3308
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: some Noob questions
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-02-10 08:01:41

[quote="JC Denton"]1. how do you do something WITH a thing, e.g. cut me with knife...?[/quote]
There's no "cutting something with something" action in the standard library, so you'll have to make one yourself. See chapter 12.7. in the manual and especially chapters 6.1. and 6.2. in the recipe book.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=570&start=10#p3309
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: some Noob questions
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2009-02-10 13:31:32

[quote="JC Denton"]some more questions:

1. how do you do something WITH a thing, e.g. cut me with knife...?[/quote]
You would have to define a new action. Start with something like this:

[code]Slicing it with is an action applying to one thing and one carried thing.

Understand "cut [something] with [something preferably held]" as slicing it with.[/code] 

You would then have to write check, carry out, and report rules to make it do the things you want it to do in your game. Check the documentation, 12.7-12.9 and 12.17.


[quote]2. how do you get multiple outcomes of a random selection : e.g. 1/3 chance "Yes", 1/3 "Maybe" and 1/3 "No", and only one of these is the result, not 1/3 chance for every event (don't know how to explain this better)[/quote]

If you're talking about just displaying random text, you would use a [one of]...[sticky random] construction:

[code]say "You shake the magic 8-ball. It says, '[one of]Yes[or]No[or]Maybe[sticky random].'"[/code]
That picks a random choice the first time the text is printed, then sticks with that choice for all subsequent times it is printed.

If you're doing something more complicated, you can declare a value that varies, randomize it once in your code, and then refer to that value whenever you want.

[code]The outcome is a number that varies. When play begins: change the outcome to a random number from 1 to 3.

if the outcome is one, [...];
otherwise if the outcome is two, [...];
otherwise [...];[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=581&start=0#p3310
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keeping a key from working until other conditions are met
User: DarkAsteroid / DateTime: 2009-02-10 20:35:05

Excellent! That's just what I needed. Thanks, Skinny Mike.

Now (of course!) I have another problem. Somehow I can easily put things ON things but not IN things.

This works just the way I would expect:
[code]After putting Big Bird on the yellow couch for the first time, award 1 point.[/code]

But this:
[code]After putting Oscar into the green garbage can for the first time, award 1 point.[/code]

Leads to this response:
[quote][b]Problem.[/b] You wrote 'After putting Oscar into the green garbage can for the first time'  , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is 'putting Oscar into the green garbage can for the first time'. But that did not make sense as a description of an action. I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook.[/quote]

...and I run up against the same thing over and over in different places. What is it I am not understanding about putting things IN things? [emote]:?[/emote] (And yes, I have tried both "Putting in" and "Putting into.")

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=581&start=0#p3311
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keeping a key from working until other conditions are met
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-02-10 21:04:26

[quote="DarkAsteroid"][code]After putting Oscar into the green garbage can for the first time, award 1 point.[/code]

Leads to this response:
[quote][b]Problem.[/b] You wrote 'After putting Oscar into the green garbage can for the first time'  , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is 'putting Oscar into the green garbage can for the first time'. But that did not make sense as a description of an action. I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook.[/quote][/quote]

Inform's name for this action is "inserting it into", not "putting it into". (You can check the Actions section of the Index to find out the name of an action you want to handle.) So if you phrase the rule this way, it should work:
[code]After inserting Oscar into the green garbage can for the first time, award 1 point.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=581&start=0#p3312
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keeping a key from working until other conditions are met
User: DarkAsteroid / DateTime: 2009-02-10 21:30:53

AHA! HA! I *KNEW* it had to be a problem with the syntax but had not found that one yet. Thanks, Emerald, for helping without sneering.  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=582&start=0#p3313
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Selecting responses based upon character name
User: DarkAsteroid / DateTime: 2009-02-11 13:04:06

I want to set up a situation where, if the player tries to tickle a thing called Elmo, one response will be given -- but if the player tries tickling anything else, a second (different) response will be given.

I have tried many variations on the IF phrase but haven't hit upon one which will work yet. I tried:

[code]Tickling is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "tickle [something]" as Tickling. 

To tickle, Something or Elmo:
  if Elmo then say "Elmo giggles and giggles!";
  otherwise say "[noun] is not ticklish.";[/code]

This does not lead to any errors, but it doesn't work either... Elmo correctly giggles and giggles when tickled, but all other uses of the command lead to a new command prompt with no textual response at all.

Where am I going wrong?
Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=582&start=0#p3314
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Selecting responses based upon character name
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2009-02-11 13:51:18

[code]
To tickle, Something or Elmo:
  if Elmo then say "Elmo giggles and giggles!";
  otherwise say "[noun] is not ticklish.";[/code]

This isn't a rule for a player action. What you've done is created a function to be called from inside the source code. That you named it "tickle" is an arbitrary detail, it doesn't have anything to do with the player action that you defined.

To make a player action do something, you need to create Before, Instead, Check, Carry Out, After, and/or Report rules for it.

This sets up the default response for tickling something:
[code]Report tickling something: say [the noun] is not ticklish."[/code]

This creates an exception if you happen to be tickling Elmo:
[code]After tickling Elmo: say "Elmo giggles and giggles!"[/code]

Incidentally, I noticed you defined your action as applying to one [i]visible[/i] thing. This means that the action will work on something even if it is [i]only[/i] visible (as opposed to being both visible and touchable). For example, it would let you tickle something inside a closed glass box.

What you want is an action that applies to one [i]touchable[/i] thing (touchable also implies visible). Since touchable is the default state for a new action, you can just write:
[code]Tickling is an action applying to one thing. Understand "tickle [something]" as Tickling.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=582&start=0#p3315
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Selecting responses based upon character name
User: DarkAsteroid / DateTime: 2009-02-11 15:57:50

Thanks, Michael!

I learn more and more with each question I ask. Great board.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=40#p3316
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: ImortisInglorian / DateTime: 2009-02-12 10:47:00

Hey there, everybody.

My name is Imortis Inglorian.  Long time fan of IF games and have tried many of the IF authoring systems.  Inform 6 & 7, TADS 2 & 3, Alan 3, Adrift, RAGS, Quest, and even tried to develop my own once (I'm a programmer by trade).  I have never released anything because I don't have the writing skill I feel I need.

I look forward to getting help, and helping out here on these forums.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=583&start=0#p3317
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Interstate Zero problem
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2009-02-13 01:07:09

need a hint (please as quick as possible): how do you get on the bus? can't find neither money nor a ticket, nor a complete walkthrough 

has the source code ever been released btw?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=584&start=0#p3318
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Interactive Fiction Writing Month
User: radix / DateTime: 2009-02-14 22:33:27

I just want to make sure everyone has noticed that Interactive Fiction Writing Month is now starting. It's a project to encourage and help new authors of IF. Check out the web site:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.instamatique.com/if/">http://www.instamatique.com/if/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=583&start=0#p3319
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Interstate Zero problem
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2009-02-16 11:51:47

come on people I NEED that answer
there is no walkthrough on the net

PLEASE!!!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=583&start=0#p3320
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Interstate Zero problem
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-02-16 14:44:03

[quote="JC Denton"]come on people I NEED that answer[/quote]
Obviously, I-0 has loads of possible solutions, plenty of which are easy to find, so I'll assume that you really, really want to solve this [i]particular[/i] solution.

Hint 1:
[spoiler]Have you looked around in Ed's store?  Specifically at the beverage case and its contents?[/spoiler]
Hint 2:
[spoiler]Okay, I'll admit: I have no idea how to get this particular soda.  But there's another one around. It's not actually described anywhere, except when you first arrive in Willowburton.[/spoiler]
Hint 3:
[spoiler]Josh has it.[/spoiler]
Hint 4:
[spoiler]You can get his soda by being very nice or very horrible to him.[/spoiler]
Hint 5:
[spoiler]ATTACK JOSH or SCREW JOSH.[/spoiler]
Hint 6:
[spoiler]Now peel the label from the bottle, wait for the bus and give the label to the driver.[/spoiler]

[quote="JC Denton"]there is no walkthrough on the net[/quote]
Well there is [url=http://ifarchive.flavorplex.com/if-archive/solutions/I-0.sol]this[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=583&start=0#p3321
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Interstate Zero problem
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2009-02-16 16:10:01

peel the label? ok I overlooked this one but it doesn´t make too much sense

yeah and this is not mentioned in the hints file you link to, which is not a "walkthrough" therefore

thanks

PS: it was worth it  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=585&start=0#p3322
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7 single-turn games
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2009-02-17 17:41:33

How would you create a single-turn game in Inform 7. I'm thinking of a game in the style of "Aisle", not in the style of "The Phoenix Move", though I suppose discussion of the workings of "The Phoenix Move" wouldn't really hurt anything.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=586&start=0#p3323
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: The Endling Archive (a Glulx project)
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2009-02-17 20:32:11

I have a very small project I'd like to share. Before I go any
further, I should warn you that I don't consider this IF. It's a sci-
fi story-driven Glulx thing, and it even uses the standard Inform 6
library a bit, but it's not IF by my standards. Anyway, you can find
it on IFDB at [url]http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ms15e48egclycv3[/url]. It's
called "The Endling Archive".

Peace,
Kazuki Mishima

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=587&start=0#p3324
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Legends of Zork
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-02-17 20:54:18

Anybody heard this? On page 28 of the latest Game Informer magazine, it mentions that a Dublin-based company, Jolt Online Gaming, is working on a persistent browser-based (by which I assume they mean web-based -- an important distinction unless it really will be an HTML game) Zork. Release date: unknown.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=587&start=0#p3325
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Legends of Zork
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-02-18 07:03:32

I remember a couple of posts cropping up about this on Planet IF a while back.

The site's [url=http://www.legendsofzork.com/]here[/url], and Rock, Paper, Shotgun did a post [url=http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/01/14/you-are-likely-to-be-eaten-by-another-grue/]here[/url].

I don't really think they're doing much except cashing in on the name.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=587&start=0#p3326
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Legends of Zork
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-02-18 18:43:31

Well, with the backing of Activision at least they have a leg up on the typical coattail-rider. That's something.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=564&start=0#p3327
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Building Deep or Broad?
User: WayneMiller / DateTime: 2009-02-27 22:00:00

Here's a thought I had for fleshing the primary thread. Perhaps others could comment if this would be worth trying:

Write a "winning" version of the transcript first, then start coding the story so that the winning version of the transcript can be recreated through play. Then progressively add more and more features and error messages until the game is complete.

Perhaps the value here is that you see all the connected prose together without worrying about all of the sources that have to come together to compose it. I wonder if it might help me stay "at the top level" of the story. The effort to prepare the transcript could perhaps be reused in cutting and pasting the work into the code when it is done.

In my own development, I am finding that I am getting too mired in the development and details (which is fun!!) and really haven't put enough into the big picture. What's resulted is a big picture that feels too cobbled.

What I don't like about this method is that once you leave the transcript to develop the code, it would be too tedious to maintain the transcript.

What do others think?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=568&start=0#p3328
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Want to meet IF enthusiasts in your area?
User: radix / DateTime: 2009-02-28 22:03:08

In Boston (well, Cambridge (well, Somerville)) We just had a small IF meetup here at Davis Square. It was great! Zarf was there, and one guy who was participating in the IF Writing Month, and a few other people. We briefly discussed the idea of meeting regularly (about once a month) and at least two of us definitely want to do it. We organized this one at this forum thread:

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifmonth.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=meetups&thread=5&page=1">http://ifmonth.proboards.com/index.cgi? ... d=5&page=1</a>

but I'll try to post here when we come up with details for the next one.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=562&start=0#p3329
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Header Strategies
User: WayneMiller / DateTime: 2009-02-28 22:42:09

Here are some relevant RAIF threads:
[url]http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/5ea8a3e8cf34b982?q=code#[/url]
[url]http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/c466473e4cf799b6?q=code[/url]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=588&start=0#p3330
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Beta Testers Needed For Realm of Obsidian
User: amethyst / DateTime: 2009-03-01 12:22:55

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for beta testers for my new game, Realm of Obsidian. It's one of the first games created with the use of TAB (thinBASIC Adventure Builder). (See the post for TAB in the "Other Development Systems" forum.) If anyone is interested, please email me at: <a href="mailto:amethystgames@ymail.com">amethystgames@ymail.com</a>.

You can also visit my blog at: [url]http://amethystgames.wordpress.com[/url]  (shameless plug, I know...)

Thank you for your time.  [emote]:)[/emote]

- Amy Kerns

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=564&start=0#p3331
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Building Deep or Broad?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-03-01 19:08:18

I seem to use neither approach, or both. I come up with an idea for a story. I start working on it. Before long I think of some other stuff to add, or decide that some of my first ideas don't work and change or delete them. It's not a linear process, it's just doing the next indicated thing.

Certain things, such as scenery in the rooms and making sure the verbs have reasonable synonyms, tends to get left until a later stage. As a result, my testers spend more time than they should need to nagging me about missing scenery and synonyms!

At any point I might decide something more is needed because a puzzle seems too boring. I can think of two major places where that happened with my '09 Spring Thing entry, but I can't talk about it yet because the judging hasn't even started.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=589&start=0#p3332
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: How do people talk to each other in Inform?
User: metalknight / DateTime: 2009-03-03 11:55:23

I can't seem to make NPCs respond to the player talking to them.
This is the entirety of my code:
[code]"Test" by MK

The Place is a room.

Sally is a person in The Place.

Instead of saying Hi to Sally: say "She responds, 'Hey, what's up?'"[/code]

This produces an error saying that it looks like I'm trying to describe a rule that occurs after a player action, but "saying Hi to Sally" doesn't make sense as an action. This occurs if I use before, after, when, and report. I experience no change 
Conversely, opening Sally and having her say something in response works totally fine, as does making an item and giving said item to her. It's only when I try to use "saying" or "telling" or equivalent that I get an error. 
What the crap?
Just to be clear I'm trying to make it so the player can enter "Say hi to Sally" and have her respond "Hey, what's up?", as opposed to the player doing something like, "tell Sally about hi".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=589&start=0#p3333
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do people talk to each other in Inform?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-03-03 12:34:05

The action of saying something to someone is actually "answering it that" (see the actions tab in the index page), so the wording you're looking for is

[code]Instead of answering Sally that "hi":
   say "She responds: 'Hey, what's up?'".[/code]
(For more info, see chapters 7.6-7.9 in the Inform Recipe Book.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=568&start=0#p3334
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Want to meet IF enthusiasts in your area?
User: radix / DateTime: 2009-03-04 08:06:04

We've started a mailinglist / googlegroup for Boston IF meetups.

<a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/boston-if">http://groups.google.com/group/boston-if</a>

We're currently trying to plan something for March 22.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=590&start=0#p3335
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7, Conditional Value trouble
User: ryacku / DateTime: 2009-03-05 19:13:15

[code]After examining:
	increase the bad things counter by the badness of the noun;
	if the thing examined has a badness is greater than 0;
		say "Your con-comms unit begins to broadcast to you 'Our sensors are picking up the content loud and clear. We got it. The gross value of your experiences in this time is [bad things counter], but we'd like the value to be at [required sights counter].'";
	now the badness of the noun is 0.[/code]


[quote]Problem. You wrote 'if the thing examined has a badness is greater than 0'  : but this is a phrase which I don't recognise, even though it starts with 'if'. 'If' phrases normally have one of two forms: 'if (condition), (do something)' and 'if (condition) begin; ... ; end if'. (The difference is that the begin/end version can encompass multiple-phrase consequences if the condition is true, whereas the simpler form allows only one phrase to count as the 'do something' part.)[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=590&start=0#p3336
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7, Conditional Value trouble
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2009-03-05 19:23:07

I must admit that I don't have a copy of Inform 7 handy, but have you tried changing the semicolon in your if-say statement to for a comma?

[code]   if the thing examined has a badness is greater than 0,
      say "Your con-comms unit begins to broadcast to you 'Our sensors are picking up the content loud and clear. We got it. The gross value of your experiences in this time is [bad things counter], but we'd like the value to be at [required sights counter].'";[/code]

I can't verify this fix at the moment.

Peace,
Kazuki Mishima

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=591&start=0#p3337
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Mapper
User: ryacku / DateTime: 2009-03-05 19:24:22

Does anyone know anything that would make map-making, or at least organizing a map easier than on paper (the eraser marks eventually make parts unusable after a while)?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=590&start=0#p3338
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7, Conditional Value trouble
User: ryacku / DateTime: 2009-03-05 19:27:33

I also had to change my wording a bit too. Thanks for setting me on the right path.


It's right now:

[code]After examining:
	increase the bad things counter by the badness of the noun;
	if the badness of the noun is greater than 0,
		say "Your con-comms unit begins to broadcast to you 'Our sensors are picking up the content loud and clear. We got it. The gross value of your experiences in this time is [bad things counter], but we'd like the value to be at [required sights counter].'";
	now the badness of the noun is 0.[/code]

Just saying this for anyone else reading this just in case they want to know how to do this.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=592&start=0#p3339
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Need some help making my own action
User: Dagon / DateTime: 2009-03-11 00:26:29

I'm making an action that allows you to fire small enough items with a slingshot. Here's what I've got:

[code]
Shooting is an action applying to two things and requiring light.
Understand "shoot [something] at [something]" and "fire [something] at [something]" as shooting.
Carry out shooting:
	if the noun is ammo:
		say "You load the [noun] into your slingshot, pull the rubber band back, and take aim at  the [second noun]...";
		center "*** THWAP! ***[paragraph break]";
		say "The [noun] slams into the [second noun]!";
		now the second noun is broken;
		remove the noun from play;
	otherwise:
		say "You can't fire the [noun] in your slingshot! (Try 'fire <ammo> at <target>')".
Before shooting:
	if the player is not carrying the slingshot, say "You aren't carrying your trusty slingshot! You can't shoot anything without it!" instead.
After shooting the television set, say "The TV screen shatters violently, spewing sparks, broken glass, and thick, white smoke into the air."
[/code]

This works fine, but there are two things I need help with.
First, 
[code]now the second noun is broken;[/code]
I really only want this to run if the item is also "fragile", but as far as I can tell, inform can't do nested if statements, and trying to use the term 'the second noun' in the after code doesn't seem to work. 

Similarly (in that if 'second noun' worked in the after code this would not be a problem), 
[code]After shooting the television set, say "The TV screen shatters violently, spewing sparks, broken glass, and thick, white smoke into the air."[/code] assumes that the television set is the first noun, and I can't seem to get it to execute if you shoot [i]at[/i] the television set. Tried everything I thought was logical (after shooting at the television set, after shooting something at the television set, after shooting anything at the television set, etc).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=592&start=0#p3340
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need some help making my own action
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2009-03-11 09:48:17

There's a few problems here, and a few things that work as-is but could work better. But basically you're on the right track.

First, since the shooting action requires two nouns, you need to format its name properly: it should be "shooting it at". This lets Inform know that the complete format for invoking this action internally is "shoot [something] at [something]", and allows Inform to assign "noun" and "second noun" properly. (That's why it's not recognizing "second noun" in your original code.)

Next, checking for ammo and checking to see if the player is holding the slingshot should each be broken out into its own "check shooting it at" rule. The check rulebook is for testing rules that stop the action from happening if they turn out to be true.

The resulting output ("The [noun] slams into the [second noun]!") should be broken out into a report rule. That way, if you want to have a special output for a special case (for example, the TV set), you can easily pre-empt the default output with an after rule.

As for your two specific questions:

[quote]I really only want this to run if the item is also "fragile", but as far as I can tell, inform can't do nested if statements,[/quote]

Inform definitely does handle nested if-then statements. However, there are two formats for if-then blocks:

[code][begin-end, indentation optional]
if the second noun is fragile begin;
now the second noun is broken;
end if;

[colon-indent, indentation required]
if the second noun is broken:
	now the second noun is broken.[/code]

You cannot mix these two formats within the same block of code.

Also, you can have single-line if-then statments, with no "otherwise" clause, in a block if-then. At least, you can if you're using the colon-indent format; I'm not sure about begin-end.

[quote][The after rule] assumes that the television set is the first noun, and I can't seem to get it to execute if you shoot at the television set.[/quote]

This is related to how you format the action name. The proper name for the action is "shooting it at", where the first object after the word "shoot" will always be the noun, and the object after the word "at" will always be the second noun. "Shooting the television set" always means putting the TV in your slingshot and firing it at something, which is disallowed by your check rules. So the proper condition for your after rule should be "After shooting something at the television set."

I've revised your code to reflect all these corrections:


[code]Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short.

Shooting Gallery is a room. 

A slingshot is here. 

A thing can be ammo. A bullet is a kind of thing. A bullet is usually ammo. Ten bullets are here.

A thing can be broken. A thing can be fragile.

A ming vase is here. It is fragile. A television set is here. It is fragile.

Shooting it at is an action applying to two things and requiring light.

Understand "shoot [something] at [something]" and "fire [something] at [something]" as shooting it at.

Check shooting it at (this is the must be holding the slingshot rule):
	if the player is not carrying the slingshot:
		say "You aren't carrying your trusty slingshot! You can't shoot anything without it!";
		stop.

Check shooting it at (this is the must have proper ammo rule):
	if the noun is not ammo:
		say "You can't fire the [noun] in your slingshot! (Try 'fire <ammo> at <target>')[paragraph break]";
		stop.

Carry out shooting it at:
	say "You load [the noun] into your slingshot, pull the rubber band back, and take aim at  [the second noun]...";
	center "*** THWAP! ***[paragraph break]";
	if the second noun is fragile, now the second noun is broken;
	remove the noun from play;

Report shooting it at:
      say "[The noun] slams into [the second noun]!";

After shooting something at the television set, say "The TV screen shatters violently, spewing sparks, broken glass, and thick, white smoke into the air."

Test me with " shoot bullet at vase / get slingshot / shoot television at vase / shoot bullet at vase / shoot bullet at television / look"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=592&start=0#p3341
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need some help making my own action
User: Dagon / DateTime: 2009-03-11 14:49:52

Ah-ha! Thanks for the help!  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

I actually have another question regarding something completely unrelated, if you care to indulge me.

I want the player to see what's on a supporter when they look at it (which currently doesn't happen), but to not report what's on supporters in the actual room text (Which currently does happen, for example, "There is a television set on the television stand.").

This one I actually have no idea how to go about doing, as changing built-in rules isn't something I've tried doing yet, nor is it something I've passed through in the documentation.

Edit: I'm still getting this problem, similar (but not the same as) one I got when I was trying to write a similar statement in the original version of the code, which led to my misunderstanding that inform wouldn't do nested ifs.
[quote]Problem. In the sentence 'if the second noun is fragile, now the second noun is broken'  , I was expecting that 'second noun is fragile' would be a condition, but I couldn't make sense of it in any context.
[/quote]

It doesn't actually matter, though, since the only thing I'm using the 'broken' property for is to change the description of broken items, so nonfragile objects getting broken doesn't actually *do* anything, other than setting that extra flag.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=592&start=0#p3342
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need some help making my own action
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2009-03-12 07:29:39

[quote="Dagon"]I want the player to see what's on a supporter when they look at it (which currently doesn't happen), but to not report what's on supporters in the actual room text (Which currently does happen, for example, "There is a television set on the television stand.").[/quote]

The first task is pretty straightforward. You can write a rule that adds output after examining a supporter.

[code]After examining a supporter:
   if something is on the noun, say "On [the noun] you see [a list of things on the noun]."[/code]

The second task requires you to get into Inform's built-in activities for writing locale descriptions (the "locale description" is all the stuff that gets written after the room description). The sections to read in the documentation are 17.24-17.26, but in the meantime the quickest way to do it is:

[code]The describe what's on scenery supporters in room descriptions rule is not listed in any rulebook.[/code]


[quote]Edit: I'm still getting this problem, similar (but not the same as) one I got when I was trying to write a similar statement in the original version of the code, which led to my misunderstanding that inform wouldn't do nested ifs.[/quote]

I can't tell you why you're getting this error without looking at your code. It might be that your action is still not defined properly, or it might be that you forgot to define fragile as an either/or property.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=592&start=0#p3343
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need some help making my own action
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-03-12 07:48:42

[quote="Michael Gentry"][code]After examining a supporter:
   if something is on the supporter, say "On [the noun] you see [a list of things on the noun]."[/code][/quote]
Correction:
[code]After examining a supporter:
   if something is on the noun, say "On [the noun] you see [a list of things on the noun]."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=592&start=0#p3344
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need some help making my own action
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2009-03-12 08:27:32

Whoops, absolutely correct. I've edited the original post.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=588&start=0#p3346
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Beta Testers Needed For Realm of Obsidian
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2009-03-14 12:56:44

email sent

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=339&start=10#p3347
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Are You Looking for a Programmer?
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2009-03-14 16:26:08

I need [color=#FF00FF]pink[/color] text in Inform7
can you write an extension?  [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=594&start=0#p3348
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Reporting on actions happening elsewhere
User: rhughes2832 / DateTime: 2009-03-18 04:35:09

Hi, I'm new here, so apologies if this is a dumb question.

How can I make an action in one location visible to other locations. For example, two rooms, garden & aviary. If a parrot squawks in the aviary, I should be able to hear it in the garden. In the code below, "polly squawks" is only reported if I am in the aviary.

In the documentation, section 17.27 talks about the scope of things, but not actions.

I guess the problem is described in 12.13, "Inform's doctrine is that you witness an action if you can see any of the actor, the noun or the second noun at either the beginning or the end of the action;" Can I change this?

I've tried "place polly in scope", but that makes no difference.

Many thanks,

Richard


[code]"squawking"

squawking is an action applying to nothing.
understand "squawk" as squawking.

carry out squawking:
	say "SQUAWK".

report someone squawking:
	say "[the person asked] squawks".

a parrot is a kind of animal.
polly is a parrot.

the garden is north of the aviary.
polly is in the aviary

every turn:
	try polly squawking.

test me with "z / z / s / z / z / n / z / z"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=594&start=0#p3349
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reporting on actions happening elsewhere
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-03-18 05:40:13

You can use an after rule:

[code]After polly squawking when the player is in the garden:
	say "You hear a squawk coming from the south."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=594&start=0#p3350
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reporting on actions happening elsewhere
User: rhughes2832 / DateTime: 2009-03-18 09:49:23

[quote="Nitku"]You can use an after rule:

[code]After polly squawking when the player is in the garden:
	say "You hear a squawk coming from the south."[/code][/quote]

That's great - does what I need. Many thanks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=595&start=0#p3351
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: VerDoCut: Problems
User: jfcwilson / DateTime: 2009-03-18 15:51:05

Hi,

I tried R.A.I.F first, but apparently no one there knows what to do about this, because I got no replies.

I'm having a problem in TADS 2. I'm trying to implment a puzzle in 
which the player cuts 
a curtain of vines, in order to continue down a path. But when I test 
it, I get a "I don't 
know how to cut the vines" for just "cut vines" and I get a "I don't 
understand that sentance" 
with "cut vines with machete". 


As far as I know, I'm coding it correctly. Does anyone see a problem 
with this implamentation? 
(I've done the verbs, so that's not the problem). 


********************Code***************************************************­********* 


island3_jungle_northPath_vines: fixeditem 
isCut=nil 
sdesc="vines" 
ldesc="This curtain of vines is twisted, thick, green, and dangerous 
looking." 
noun='vines' 'vine' 
adjective='curtain' 
location=island3_jungle_northPath 
verDoCut(Me)= 
{ 
 if (self.isCut=true) 
 { 
  "It's already quite butchered, thank you."; 
 } 
 else if (island1_machete.location!=Me) 
 { 
  "You don't have anything to cut it with."; 
 } 


} 


doCut(Me)= 
{ 
 "You hack unskillfully away at the vines, feeling adventureous. After 
nearly a minute, you come 
  out the other side, twirling your machete, nearly slicing your foot 
off."; 
  self.isCut:=true; 
  return(island3_jungle_northPath_further); 

} 


ioCutWith (actor, dobj) = 
{ 
 if (self.isCut=nil) 
 { 
  if (dobj=island1_machete) 
  { 
   "You hack unskillfully away at the vines, feeling adventureous. 
After nearly a minute, you come 
  out the other side, twirling your machete, nearly slicing your foot 
off."; 
  self.isCut:=true; 
  return(island3_jungle_northPath_further); 
  } 
  else 
  { 
  "<<dobj.thedesc>> is not exactly the correct tool for the job."; 
  } 
 } 
 else 
 { 
  "The vine curtain is already cut."; 
 } 

} 


; 

******************************Code 
End*********************************************** 

Thanks,
  James

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=595&start=0#p3352
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: VerDoCut: Problems
User: uux02 / DateTime: 2009-03-21 08:27:45

[quote]
I'm having a problem in TADS 2. I'm trying to implment a puzzle in 
which the player cuts 
a curtain of vines, in order to continue down a path. But when I test 
it, I get a "I don't 
know how to cut the vines" for just "cut vines" and I get a "I don't 
understand that sentance" 
with "cut vines with machete". 


As far as I know, I'm coding it correctly. Does anyone see a problem 
with this implamentation? 
(I've done the verbs, so that's not the problem). 
[/quote]

It seems that the problem lies in the verb definition you didn't show here. It should look similar to this one:

[code]
cutVerb: deepverb
    verb='cut'
    sdesc="cut"
    doAction='Cut'
    ioAction(withPrep)='CutWith'
;
[/code]

Let's start with the "cut vines" command. The message you get hints at the fact the suffix of the handler 
methods names you chose (Cut) don't match the doAction property of your definition for the verb "cut". I suspect 
you wrote something like doAction='cut' (since it's the most common error). Again, it should match the name 
prefix of the handlers [b]exactly[/b] - including the letter capitalisation. Please check it one more time.

The message you get for "cut vines with machete", again, means you haven't defined the ioAction at all or 
defined it the wrong way. It should be exactly as shown in my example (the withPrep argument means you use 
the command "cut" with the preposition "with", and 'CutWith', again, is the exact match for your chosen 
handler method name suffix.

But I see one more problem with your handlers definitions for "cut vines with machete". In this command,
"vines" is the direct object, and "machete" - the indirect object. Thus, you need the following verifiers/handlers
methods:
verDoCutWith(actor, iobject) - for vines (it could do the same as verDoCut)
verIoCutWith(actor) - for machete (it could do nothing)
ioCutWith(actor, dobj) - for machete; it could call a method in vines - a common practice - like this:

[code]
ioCutWith(actor, dobj)={dobj.doCutWith(actor, self);}
[/code]

Also, you'd have to rename you ioCutWith method in the vines object into doCutWith.

Please tell me whether this answer was of any help for you.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=596&start=0#p3353
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Instead of doing something other than
User: Ragzouken / DateTime: 2009-03-21 18:36:26

[code]Touching is sensing. Smelling something is sensing. Tasting something is sensing. Examining something is sensing. Listening to something is sensing.

Instead of sensing when the noun is ethereal:
	say "bla".[/code]

This works fine, but if I instead alter it to:

[code]Touching is sensing. Smelling something is sensing. Tasting something is sensing. Examining something is sensing. Listening to something is sensing.

Instead of doing something other than sensing when the noun is ethereal:
	say "bla".[/code]

This gives the problem:

[quote]You wrote 'Instead of doing something other than sensing when the noun is ethereal'  , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is 'doing something other than sensing when the noun is ethereal'. The part after 'when' (or 'while') was fine, but the earlier words did not make sense as a description of an action. This looks like a list of actions to avoid: 'sensing' only made sense as a named kind of action, which can be used on its own but not in an action list; so I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook.[/quote]

What am I doing wrong, and how can I achieve what I expected the problematic code to do?

[size=150]EDIT:[/size]

I'll just describe what I actually want to do.

A player can be focusing a room, or focusing nowhere. Any items in the focused room are 'ethereal'. Sensing is using any of the five senses. I want something that acts when the player tries to do anything other than sensing an ethereal thing whilst focusing a room.

I so far have:
[code]Focusing relates one person to a room. The verb to focus (he focuses, they focus, it is focused, he is focusing) implies the focusing relation. Focusing on is an action applying to one thing. Understand "focus on [any visited room]" as focusing on.

After deciding the scope of the player while the player is focusing a room (called the projection):
	place the projection in scope.

Touching is sensing. Smelling something is sensing. Tasting something is sensing. Examining something is sensing. Listening to something is sensing.

Rule for reaching inside a room (called target) when sensing:
	if the player is not focusing the target:
		deny access;
	otherwise if the player is holding the sensory orb:
		allow access.

Definition: a thing is ethereal if it is inside the room focused by the player.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=596&start=0#p3354
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Instead of doing something other than
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-03-22 09:52:46

[quote="Ragzouken"][code]Touching is sensing. Smelling something is sensing. Tasting something is sensing. Examining something is sensing. Listening to something is sensing.

Instead of doing something other than sensing when the noun is ethereal:
	say "bla".[/code][/quote]To answer the first part, it looks like you can't use kinds of actions in conjunction with "doing something other than" although you can use a regular list like "Instead of doing something other than examining, smelling... etc." As far as the rest, you appear to be on the right track. If you want the player to only be focused on one room at a time you must say "one room" not "a room" which implies various rooms. [code]Focusing relates one person to one room. The verb to focus (he focuses, they focus, it is focused, he is focusing) implies the focusing relation. 

Focusing on is an action applying to one thing. Understand "focus on [any visited room]" as focusing on.
[/code]This is fine, except you haven't fully created your action, just defined the grammar. When you say "the verb to focus implies..." the word "verb" means "verb I (as the programmer) am going to use to refer to this relation I just created." This doesn't connect it to the action which also happens to uses the verb (as in "verb a player will use to trigger this action") focus. (Two different meanings of "verb" are at work here.) So add some rules (in this case, only the "carry out" is crucial):[code]Check focusing on:
	unless the player carries the orb, say "You don't have the power to do that... yet!" instead.
Carry out focusing on:
	now the actor is focusing the noun.
Report focusing on:
	say "You are focused on [the noun].".
[/code]You might also want to add something like this if you want the orb to be a requirement of the focusing power:[code]After dropping, putting, inserting or giving the orb to:
	say "You've lost your focus on [the list of rooms focused by the player].";
	now the player focuses nothing;
	continue the action.[/code]Now this code of yours will work:[code]After deciding the scope of the player while the player is focusing a room (called the projection):
	place the projection in scope.[/code]Now you'll be able to refer to things in the focused room in commands. However, as you've probably noticed, this only works for "examining." "Tasting, smelling, etc." require touchability, so (slightly varying your code):[code]Touching is sensing. Smelling something is sensing. Tasting something is sensing. Examining something is sensing. Searching something is sensing. Listening to something is sensing.

Rule for reaching inside a room when sensing:
	allow access.[/code]Assuming you haven't added any other scope rules, the only time you'll be reaching into rooms is when you're focused on it, so you don't need to worry about that again in this rule. I also added searching since it seemed to fit what you're doing and because when you examine a container without a description, the standard rules automatically redirect to searching (which looks inside). Now sensing works and trying any other action with an object in the focused room gives you the message "You can't reach into the..." Add this to test it:[code]The Lab is a room. The box is an open container in the lab. The Orb is in the box. 
North of the Lab is the Back.

Test me with "focus on back / focus on lab / get orb / n / focus on lab / x box / smell it / taste it / touch it / listen to it / get it / put orb in box / drop orb / x box".
[/code]HTH [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=596&start=0#p3355
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Instead of doing something other than
User: Ragzouken / DateTime: 2009-03-22 14:46:22

Thanks, that's been very helpful. From it I've been able to put together what I think I want:

[code]Before doing something while the player is focusing a room (called the projection) and the sensory orb is held:
	if the noun is ethereal:
		if the current action is sensing:
			continue the action;
		otherwise:
			say "The orb does not react.";
			stop the action;
	otherwise:
		say "You lose focus and the image on the orb fades to the murky clouds.";
		now the player focuses nothing;
		continue the action.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=591&start=0#p3356
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Mapper
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-03-25 13:30:00

You just want a computerized tool that will allow you to draw boxes and connections? 

If so try Visio or Dia.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=597&start=0#p3357
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Converting a game to web-based
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-03-25 13:55:10

Hello... I'm baaaaaaaack.  [emote]:)[/emote] 

So I was thinking I might see if I can take my little first-timer IF game and convert it to a web-based format so I can make it into an easter egg on my website.

I know I've played a couple of web-based IF games, long ago, but I don't know what the format was or if there's an easy way to convert games already built in Inform.

Can someone point me in the right direction?

Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=598&start=0#p3358
Forum: Competitions / Subject: When's the Comp?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-03-25 13:56:01

I built my first game last year, and depending on timing might like to try my hand at the comp. When is it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=597&start=0#p3359
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Converting a game to web-based
User: radix / DateTime: 2009-03-25 14:01:00

The best web-based interpreter, IMO, is Parchment:

<a class="postlink" href="http://parchment.toolness.com/">http://parchment.toolness.com/</a>

<a class="postlink" href="http://code.google.com/p/parchment/">http://code.google.com/p/parchment/</a>

It supports (only) the Z-Machine, which means you can write your game in Inform and run it on Parchment. Of course, that means you have to use the Z-Machine backend in your project settings, and so your game can't be too large or use Glulx-specific features.

Andrew Plotkin is working on a web-based interpreter for Glulx games, but I think he's still in the early stages.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=597&start=0#p3360
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Converting a game to web-based
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-03-25 14:20:03

Ah -- good to know. If I recall correctly, my game is too big to use Z machine. 

Maybe I'll write a speed game for my website easter egg!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=598&start=0#p3361
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: When's the Comp?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-03-25 20:49:53

The deadline is usually the last or second to last day of September. Judging starts October 1st and runs through November 15th. The ifcomp site isn't updated with the new year's info yet, but that usually happens in the spring with an official announcement or something.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifcomp.org/">http://www.ifcomp.org/</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=599&start=0#p3362
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Clothing part of Inventory
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-03-26 10:10:35

[quote]>take inventory
You are carrying:
  a dress (being worn)[/quote]

This is awkward -- any way to disable it? I want the player to discover it when examining herself.

I tried some things that didn't work:

Rule for deciding whether inventory includes the dress: it does not.
Rule for writing a paragraph about the player:
  now the dress is mentioned.
Rule for writing a paragraph about inventory:
  now the dress is mentioned.
Rule for writing a taking inventory:
  now the dress is mentioned.

Advise appreciated, thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=598&start=0#p3363
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: When's the Comp?
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2009-03-26 11:24:24

[quote="Merk"]The deadline is usually the last or second to last day of September.[/quote]
Yes -- but don't forget that authors also must submit their intents to enter one month before (usually before September 1st).

And, although it may seem obvious (but it's apparently not obvious for everybody...), don't forget to take enough time for beta-testing before you submit your game. Here's an anecdote: for the IFWiki, I added the names of the beta-testers for every game of one or two years of the IF Comp. It was funny to see, with few exceptions, the number of beta-testers per game getting smaller and smaller as I was going down the list from winner to last place, until there were no beta-testers at all near the bottom of the list...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=599&start=0#p3364
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Clothing part of Inventory
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-03-26 11:51:30

Found it in the documentation:

[code]Instead of taking inventory: 
    say "You're carrying [a list of things carried by the player]."[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=599&start=0#p3365
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Clothing part of Inventory
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-03-26 11:53:06

Hm. Though now it's not describing things that are in containers that the player carries. Can I make it do that too?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=599&start=0#p3366
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Clothing part of Inventory
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-03-26 12:23:07

Yes, see chapter 11.14 and example 174 in that chapter.

[code]Instead of taking inventory: 
    if the number of things carried by the player is 0, say "You are empty-handed." instead; 
    now all things carried by the player are marked for listing;
    say "You are carrying ";
    list the contents of the player, tersely, as a sentence, including contents, listing marked items only; 
    say "."[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=599&start=0#p3367
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Clothing part of Inventory
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-03-26 13:37:56

Perfect. Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=600&start=0#p3368
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Invisible items
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-03-26 13:50:04

I have run into this problem several times over the course of my two games  [emote]:)[/emote] 

Sometimes I want to move something into view only after the player has done a certain examination. To give a really a straightforward example, I'm making a simple easter egg hunt game. The last thing I want happening is for the player to be able to walk into an area and say "take egg" and get an egg from a non-obvious open container in the location that he has no knowledge of yet, just because he was gutsy enough to type the command.

So I have solved this problem by putting items into limbo and then moving them in after examination. This poses the problem of making sure they don't pop back in to the container after each examination.

[code]A thing can be found or unfound. 

The blue egg is unfound.
Every turn:
  If the player is carrying something (called the find), now the find is found.

A crook is a part of the dogwood tree. The crook is a container. 

Instead of examining the crook when the blue egg is unfound:
   say "You stand on your tiptoes and look into the crook where the branches meet. A blue egg is nestled there.";
     now the blue egg is in the crook.[/code]

This seems a little inelegant somehow. The "Every Turn" thing works because it marks a found thing found (over and over, but oh well) and nothing in the code marks it back to unfound after it's found. 

This isn't working:

[code]After looking in the crook: try examining the crook instead.[/code]

Nor is this:

[code]After looking in the crook when the blue egg is unfound:
   say "You stand on your tiptoes and look into the crook where the branches meet. A blue egg is nestled there.";
     now the blue egg is in the crook. [/code]

Both just tell me that the crook is empty even though the egg is unfound.

So... 1) Can/should I get "looking in" working the way that "examining" works, or 2) Is there a better way to mark something "invisible"?

Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=598&start=0#p3369
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: When's the Comp?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-03-26 13:54:46

Good to know, Eriorg.

Does one usually find beta testers among one's friends, or by advertising here on the forum?

I'd guess that beta testers on the forum might be hard to find since everyone's looking at once?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=600&start=0#p3370
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Invisible items
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-03-26 14:41:09

I assume that by "looking in" you mean the command LOOK IN <something> and not the command LOOK while being inside the crook yourself? Because the code you posted means the latter. The "looking inside" action maps to "searching". You can confirm this if you run the game, command ACTIONS and then LOOK IN CROOK, or if you look up "look in" in the actions tab of the index page.

I haven't tested this, but unless I'm not seeing something obvious it seems to me that you could get rid of the every turn rule by just changing the flag right when the item is found.

[code]Instead of examining the crook when the blue egg is unfound:
   say "You stand on your tiptoes and look into the crook where the branches meet. A blue egg is nestled there.";
   now the blue egg is in the crook;
   now the blue egg is found.[/code]
Or just use a "for the first time" rule and get rid of the flag altogether:

[code]Instead of examining the crook for the first time:
   say "You stand on your tiptoes and look into the crook where the branches meet. A blue egg is nestled there.";
   now the blue egg is in the crook.

Instead of searching the crook:
   try examining the crook.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=600&start=0#p3371
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Invisible items
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-03-26 15:32:56

Oh, ok. The "Searching" is what I'm looking for. Thanks for that!

[code]I haven't tested this, but unless I'm not seeing something obvious it seems to me that you could get rid of the every turn rule by just changing the flag right when the item is found.

[code]Instead of examining the crook when the blue egg is unfound:
   say "You stand on your tiptoes and look into the crook where the branches meet. A blue egg is nestled there.";
   now the blue egg is in the crook;
   now the blue egg is found.[/code][/code]

I had it this way at first, and I could swear it gave me some kind of trouble, but now I'm not sure. The only problem I see now is if the player looks in the crook, sees the egg, and doesn't take it, then when he comes back and looks again it doesn't tell him it's there again. I guess that's ok actually -- I guess it's still there, and I could write an "if" into the description that is called when the egg is found. 

The "first time" code looks even better. I'll give that a try.

Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=600&start=0#p3372
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Invisible items
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-03-26 15:38:18

[code]Instead of examining the crook for the first time:
   say "You stand on your tiptoes and look into the crook where the branches meet. A blue egg is nestled there.";
     now the blue egg is in the crook.

Instead of searching the crook:
   try examining the crook.[/code]

[quote]>examine crook
You stand on your tiptoes and look into the crook where the branches meet. A blue egg is nestled there.

>look in crook

*** Run-time problem P7: Too many rulebooks in simultaneous use.

>[/quote]

Seems to be about those two rules, as I don't get the runtime error when I take one of them out, and I'm pretty sure I've eliminated all other related material.

EDIT: Actually I get the runtime error when I eliminate "Instead of examining the crook for the first time" but not when I eliminate "Instead of searching the crook".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=600&start=0#p3373
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Invisible items
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-03-26 15:45:41

I made a "tester" program so that I could pare down to only the parts of this problem that matter.

[code]The North Lawn is a room.

The blue egg is a thing.

The dogwood tree is a thing in the North Lawn. The dogwood tree is fixed in place. Understand "dogwood" and "tree" as the dogwood tree.

A crook is a part of the dogwood tree. The crook is a container. The branches are a part of the dogwood tree. A flower is part of the dogwood tree. Understand "flowers" as the flower.

Instead of examining the crook for the first time:
   say "You stand on your tiptoes and look into the crook where the branches meet. A blue egg is nestled there.";
     now the blue egg is in the crook.

Instead of searching the crook:
   try examining the crook.[/code]

That's the whole code, and I still get the runtime error.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=600&start=0#p3374
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Invisible items
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-03-26 15:49:02

I should learn a little patience.

Swapping the two seemed to solve the problem:

[code]Instead of searching the crook for the first time:
   say "You stand on your tiptoes and look into the crook where the branches meet. A blue egg is nestled there.";
     now the blue egg is in the crook.

Instead of examining the crook:
  try searching the crook.[/code]

Don't know why, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=600&start=0#p3375
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Invisible items
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-03-26 15:56:23

[code]Instead of searching the crook:
   try examining the crook.
[/code]The "examine undescribed containers rule" in the carry out examining rules redirects examining containers without descriptions to the searching action. Therefore, your "instead" rule is putting the game into a loop. Change the code to this and both searching and examining are covered:[code]Instead of searching the crook for the first time:
	say "You stand on your tiptoes and look into the crook where the branches meet. A blue egg is nestled there.";
	now the blue egg is in the crook.[/code]... of course if you actually give a description to the crook, then you'll need to go back to your original code.

EDIT: Just to be clear, if you use the above code, you don't need this at all (it happens automatically):[code]Instead of examining the crook:
  try searching the crook.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=600&start=0#p3376
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Invisible items
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-03-26 21:37:57

[quote]The "examine undescribed containers rule" in the carry out examining rules redirects examining containers without descriptions to the searching action. Therefore, your "instead" rule is putting the game into a loop. [/quote]

Neat. That's exactly the kind of thing I'd learn here and not in the documentation.

For a minute Mike, you had me worried about giving that crook a description and what to do next. But you know what, that damn crook doesn't need a description.  [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=598&start=0#p3377
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: When's the Comp?
User: George / DateTime: 2009-03-26 22:38:36

[quote="ShaeSays"]Good to know, Eriorg.

Does one usually find beta testers among one's friends, or by advertising here on the forum?

I'd guess that beta testers on the forum might be hard to find since everyone's looking at once?[/quote]


In past comps I don't think everyone does look 'publicaly' at once -- at most a handful of people will publicaly look for testers I think. There is a beta testing group you can join -- <a class="postlink" href="http://plover.net/~textfire/beta.html">http://plover.net/~textfire/beta.html</a> -- or look up the names of beta testers from the past comp games and contact them directly (perhaps saying you liked the game they tested ;D ). Emily Short has good articles on testing at her site if you do a search of the archives.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=597&start=0#p3378
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Converting a game to web-based
User: George / DateTime: 2009-03-26 22:43:31

Not to worry -- a fantastic glulxe interpreter is in the wings -- a demo is running now. It uses Silverlight, though. Check RAIF.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=598&start=0#p3379
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: When's the Comp?
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2009-03-26 23:13:04

[color=red](EDIT: I hadn't seen George's post when I wrote this, so some of my answers are similar.)[/color]

Well, it's better if your beta-testers, or at least most of them, already know well enough how to play IF. So, friends are rarely the best choice, unless you're lucky enough to have many (in real life, not web) friends who are IF fans!

There are several ways to find beta-testers on the Internet:
[list][*] asking here on the forum, or on the [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/topics]rec.games.int-fiction[/url] newsgroups[/*:m]
[*] using the [url=http://www.plover.net/~textfire/beta.html]IF Beta Site[/url][/*:m]
[*] asking on the [url=http://ifmud.port4000.com/]ifMUD[/url] (a little complicated if you've never been on the ifMUD before, though; see [url=http://diden.net/~maga/ifMUDfaq/]ifMUD For Beginners[/url] for help)[/*:m]
[*] or even sending e-mails to IF players: see [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2008/11/21/more-about-beta-testing/]this blog post by Emily Short[/url] for more details.[/*:m][/list:u]

And please don't forget to credit your beta-testers somewhere in your game (in the answer to ABOUT or CREDITS, for instance). It's polite and -- more importantly [emote]:)[/emote] -- some IF comp judges might have a better first impression of your game if they know it's been beta-tested.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=598&start=0#p3380
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: When's the Comp?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-03-27 04:22:59

[quote="ShaeSays"]Does one usually find beta testers among one's friends, or by advertising here on the forum?[/quote]
Depending on who your (RL or web) friends are, I think it can be a good idea to start testing with them, and then cast your net wider.  Your friends might have more of an idea what it is you're trying to do and how well you've succeeded.  But catching bugs and rough patches often just involves getting a number of different people (with different playing styles, different levels of familiarity with IF etc.) to play your game.

[quote="ShaeSays"]I'd guess that beta testers on the forum might be hard to find since everyone's looking at once?[/quote]
Well...  Nobody's looking [i]now[/i].  There's no harm in starting early.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=600&start=0#p3381
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Invisible items
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-03-27 06:49:19

I've moved this from the IFComp 2009 discussion to the Inform discussion.

I really hadn't meant the IFComp 2009 forum to even be visible until October. Just haven't figured out how to hide it yet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=598&start=0#p3382
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: When's the Comp?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-03-27 07:00:08

(Moved from IFComp 2009 game discussion to general competition discussion.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=600&start=0#p3383
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Invisible items
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-03-27 14:28:23

Ooops, Merk, I'm sorry.

I only meant to post my "When's the comp" post over there. I must have posted another topic without paying attention to where I was.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=598&start=0#p3384
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: When's the Comp?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-03-27 14:33:12

[quote]Well... Nobody's looking now. There's no harm in starting early.[/quote]

Well, I kinda need to write a game first.  [emote]:D[/emote] 

Actually I have written [i]one[/i], but I was hoping to use that one as a learning experience, and try to do something better.

Thanks to all for the advice on beta testers!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=601&start=0#p3385
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Event at a random time
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-03-27 14:42:33

This is something I've been wondering about for a while. 

I used this in my last game:

[code]Every turn when the player is carrying the monkey and a random chance of 1 in 10 succeeds:
 	say "[one of]The monkey picks at your hair.
	[or]various other choices
	[at random]".[/code]

But now I'm wondering about how to implement a random event that should only happen once. For example, as you move about the map, at some point a rabbit shows up that wasn't there before.

Would be as easy as the above format, adding "for the first time" somewhere?

On the other hand, I don't want the player to be distracted by the random event on their very first move. And maybe I don't want the even to happen [i]just anywhere[/i]. So maybe I'd like the event to occur on or after the 15th move, but only when the player is in the courtyard. 

I think this will come in handy in future situations as well as in the rabbit puzzle, so I'm looking for general guidance or chapters in the documentation moreso than a specific implementation. I searched the documentation but didn't find anything but the "random chance" code above.

thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=601&start=0#p3386
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Event at a random time
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-03-27 15:51:37

[quote="ShaeSays"]But now I'm wondering about how to implement a random event that should only happen once. For example, as you move about the map, at some point a rabbit shows up that wasn't there before.

On the other hand, I don't want the player to be distracted by the random event on their very first move. And maybe I don't want the even to happen [i]just anywhere[/i]. So maybe I'd like the event to occur on or after the 15th move, but only when the player is in the courtyard. 

I think this will come in handy in future situations as well as in the rabbit puzzle, so I'm looking for general guidance or chapters in the documentation moreso than a specific implementation.[/quote]
This would probably be a good place to use scenes (ch. 10). Something like this would work:[code]Rabbit Prelude is a scene. Rabbit Prelude begins when the turn count > 6.
Rabbit Prelude ends when the rabbit is in the courtyard for the first time.

Every turn during Rabbit Prelude:
	if the player is in the courtyard and a random chance of 1 in 3 succeeds:
		say "A rabbit appears.";
		move the rabbit to the courtyard.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=601&start=0#p3387
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Event at a random time
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-03-27 16:35:31

Oh cool Mike, that looks like what I need. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=603&start=0#p3389
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Dragging with and without directions
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-03-27 23:40:50

I'm having a variety of problems here, and this one really has me stumped.

Here's the deal. You're stuck in a basement and the only way you can get out is to drag a chair under the window and then stand on it to get out the window. The window is on the east side of the room.

I'd like to respond to all the things the player might say:

Shove chair
Shove chair to window
Shove chair east

And the same with push, pull, and drag.

Here's what I have:

[code]Shoving is an action applying to one thing.
Understand "shove [something]" as shoving.
Understand "push [something]" as shoving.
Understand "pull [something]" as shoving.

Check shoving:
  If the noun is fixed in place, say "It won't budge." instead.

Carry out shoving:
  say "You shove the [noun]  around the room aimlessly."

Shoving it to is an action applying to two things.
Understand "shove [something] to [something]" as shoving it to.
Understand "push [something] to [something]" as shoving it to.
Understand "pull [something] to [something]" as shoving it to.
Understand "shove [something] to [direction]" as shoving it to.
Understand "push [something] to [direction]" as shoving it to.
Understand "pull [something] to [direction]" as shoving it to.
Understand "shove [something] [direction]" as shoving it to.
Understand "push [something] [direction]" as shoving it to.
Understand "pull [something] [direction]" as shoving it to.

Check shoving it to:
  If the noun is fixed in place, say "It won't budge." instead.

Check shoving:
  If the noun is not the chair, say "Ok." instead.

Carry out shoving it to:
  If the second noun is the window
  Begin;
    say "You shove the chair under the window.";
    now the chair is climbable;
  Otherwise;
    say "Ok.";
  End if.

Carry out shoving it to:
  If the direction is east
  Begin;
    say "You shove the chair under the window";
    now the chair is climbable;
  Otherwise;
    say "You shove the chair away from the window";
    now the chair is useless;
  end if.[/code]

Shoving without a second noun or direction works, as does pulling, pushing and dragging without a second noun or direction.

Shoving with a second noun was working until it mysteriously stopped.

Shoving with a direction gives me the mysterious message "You must name something more substantial."

I realize that even if it were working, "Shove chair east" generally means shoving it [i]out of the window and into the next room[/i]. I don't want it to do that, but I'd like to allow that command from the user if possible. Nothing in the game will be pushable between rooms so I don't care if I preserve the built-in functionality.

I don't believe I need a mini-map inside of the room, as it seems like I can just assume that pushing the chair east will always position it under the window and pushing it anywhere else will move it away.

Additionally, I got these weird results that give two lines each:

[code]>shove chair to window

You shove the chair under the window.

You shove the chair under the window

>shove chair to table

Ok.

You shove the chair under the window[/code]

Looks like the two "carry out shoving" blocks are both firing, which makes sense I guess, but I'm not sure how to code this otherwise. Also, why is it assuming that the direction is east in the second block?

Since I'm having a variety of problems, I'm not sure where to start:

Can I make "shove chair east" do something special rather than try to push it into the next room?
How do I handle not having two "carry out" phrases for "shoving it to" when I have both a second-noun variety and a direction variety to implement?
How do I implement "If the direction is east"?
What's wrong with my shoving-with-a-second-noun code, that it always thinks I'm heading to the window?
What the heck does "You must name something more substantial" mean?

Sorry this is so convoluted. Any advice is appreciated!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=603&start=0#p3390
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dragging with and without directions
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-03-28 06:24:27

First, I suggest you use the existing "pushing" action:

[code]Understand the command "shove" as "push".

Instead of pushing the chair:
   say "You shove the [noun]  around the room aimlessly."

Instead of pulling the chair:
   try pushing the chair.
[/code]

Then the shoving it to [something] code. This is adapted from the Inform recipe book chapter 3.2. example 197:

[code]Internal position is a kind of value. The internal positions are nowhere at all, over by the window and over by the west side.

The chair is in the basement. The current chair position is an internal position that varies. The current chair position is over by the west side.

Understand "push [something] to [something]" as pushing it over to. 
Understand "pull [something] to [something]" as pushing it over to. 
Pushing it over to is an action applying to two things.
The pushing it over to action has an internal position called the old position. 
The pushing it over to action has an internal position called the new position. 
Setting action variables for pushing something over to something: 
    now the old position is the current chair position; 
    now the new position is nowhere at all; 
    if the second noun is the window, now the new position is over by the window.

Check pushing it over to: 
    if the noun is not the chair, say "That's not something you can push." instead; 
    if the player is on the noun, say "Not while you are standing on [the noun]." instead; 
    if the new position is nowhere at all, say "It wouldn't do any good to push the chair there." instead;
    if the new position is the old position, say "The [noun] is already [new position]." instead. 

Carry out pushing it over to: 
    change the current chair position to the new position. 

Report pushing it over to: 
    say "You shove [the noun] [new position]."[/code]

Then handling PUSH CHAIR EAST:

[code]Instead of pushing the chair to:
	if the second noun is east:
		try pushing the chair over to the window;
	otherwise:
		say "It wouldn't do any good to push the chair there."[/code]

That should do it.

[quote]How do I implement "If the direction is east"?[/quote]
The direction, when given as a player command, is a noun or a second noun, in this case "if the second noun is east..."

[quote]What's wrong with my shoving-with-a-second-noun code, that it always thinks I'm heading to the window?[/quote]
While "if the direction is east" makes sense to a human reader, remember that (with some exceptions) the compiler disregards all instances of "the" and "a". So it reads that as "if direction is east", or in other words, "if east is a direction". Which is always true. 

[quote]What the heck does "You must name something more substantial" mean?[/quote]
The game expects a physical object, not a direction. You can't "push east" any more than you can eat west or sit on south.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=603&start=0#p3391
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dragging with and without directions
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-03-28 18:41:40

[quote]First, I suggest you use the existing "pushing" action[/quote]

I was thinking I couldn't do this, since I was going to do new things with it. But you're right, it appears I can use the existing stuff.

[quote]Instead of pushing the chair to:
   if the second noun is east:[/quote]

So this will work even if the player says "Push chair east" instead of "Push chair to east"? I wouldn't have guessed that. 

[quote]The direction, when given as a player command, is a noun or a second noun[/quote]

I wouldn't have guessed that either, especially since I saw some code using "blah [direction]" in the documentation. That's easy!

Thanks so much Nitku!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=603&start=0#p3392
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dragging with and without directions
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-03-28 18:59:27

Just for clarification, is the "nowhere at all" designed to simplify where the chair can move and how to keep track of it?

I consider using only "over by the window" and "away from the window", with East leading to "over by the window" (perhaps telling the player if the chair is already there) and all other commands (move chair to table, move chair west, move chair South, etc) leading to "away from the window". I think it might be a bit awkward to be allowed to move the chair east, but then be stopped from moving it elsewhere, unless that's a nightmare to implement.

Guess I'll go tinker with that right now and see what happens.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=595&start=0#p3393
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: VerDoCut: Problems
User: jfcwilson / DateTime: 2009-03-29 14:24:24

Thanks, I'll give it a try!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=603&start=0#p3394
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dragging with and without directions
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-03-29 23:03:35

For some reason I can still push the chair while I'm on it -- sometimes. Code:

[code]
Understand the command "shove" as "push".
Understand the command "scoot" as "push".

Instead of pushing the chair:
   say "You shove the [noun] around the room aimlessly."

Instead of pulling the chair:
   try pushing the chair.

Internal position is a kind of value. The internal positions are over by the window and toward the west side of the room.

The current chair position is an internal position that varies. The current chair position is toward the west side of the room.

Pushing it over to is an action applying to two things.
Understand "push [something] to [something]" as pushing it over to. 
Understand "pull [something] to [something]" as pushing it over to.
Understand "push [something] [something]" as pushing it over to. 
Understand "pull [something] [something]" as pushing it over to.
Understand "push [something] under [something]" as pushing it over to. 
Understand "pull [something] under [something]" as pushing it over to.
Understand "push [something] over by [something]" as pushing it over to. 
Understand "pull [something] over by [something]" as pushing it over to.

The pushing it over to action has an internal position called the old position. 
The pushing it over to action has an internal position called the new position. 

Setting action variables for pushing something over to something: 
    now the old position is the current chair position; 
    if the second noun is the window
    Begin;
      now the new position is over by the window;
    Otherwise; 
      now the new position is toward the west side of the room;
    End if.

Check pushing it over to: 
    if the noun is fixed in place, say "It won't budge." instead; 
    if the noun is not the chair, say "That hardly seems helpful." instead; 
[b]    if the player is on the noun, say "You'll have to get off the [noun] first." instead;[/b]
    if the new position is the old position
    Begin;
      If the new position is over by the window,
        say "The [noun] is already [new position]." instead;
   End if.

Carry out pushing it over to: 
   change the current chair position to the new position.

Instead of pushing the chair to:
   if the second noun is east
   Begin;
      If the current chair position is over by the window
      Begin;
        say "The chair is already over by the window." instead;
      Otherwise;
        say "You shove the chair under the window.";
        change the current chair position to over by the window;
      End if; 
   End if;
   if the second noun is west 
   Begin;
     change the current chair position to toward the west side of the room;
     say "You shove the chair west."; 
   End if;
   if the second noun is south 
   Begin;
     change the current chair position to toward the west side of the room;
     say "You shove the chair south."; 
   End if;
   if the second noun is north 
   Begin;
     change the current chair position to toward the west side of the room;
     say "You shove the chair north."; 
   End if.

Report pushing it over to: 
     say "You shove [the noun] to [the second noun]."
[/code]

Play:

[quote]
>get on chair
You get onto the chair.

>push chair east
You shove the chair under the window.

>push chair to table
You'll have to get off the chair first.

>push chair west
You shove the chair west.
[/quote]

What the heck? Any advice?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=603&start=0#p3396
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dragging with and without directions
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-03-30 05:01:04

You aren't checking whether the player is on the chair when they push the chair to directions. Try to replace your "instead of pushing the chair to" rule with this:

[code]Instead of pushing the chair to:
	if the second noun is east
	Begin;
		try pushing the chair over to the window;
	otherwise; 
		silently try pushing the chair over to the table;
		if the rule succeeded, say "You shove the chair [second noun].";
	End if.[/code]

Now pushing in directions goes through same checking mechanisms as pushing over to objects. This also fixes a bug that caused empty lines with intermediate directions (PUSH CHAIR NORTHWEST), but note that PUSH CHAIR UP and PUSH CHAIR DOWN still give nonsensical answers. (You might also want to check cases like PUSH CHAIR TO CHAIR and PUSH CHAIR TO ME.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=603&start=0#p3397
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dragging with and without directions
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-03-30 07:34:52

Thanks for that, Nitku. That worked.

What stumped me is that if I open a brand new project and test pushing:

[code]the onlyroom is a room. The otherroom is north of the onlyroom.

The box is a supporter in the onlyroom. The box is enterable. The box is pushable between rooms.[/code]

The not-pushing while on the item is built-in:

[quote]>get on box
You get onto the box.

>push box north
You'll have to get off the box first.[/quote]

So I'm confused. It looked to me like the "pushing it over to" check should have affected both "push chair east" and "push chair to table".

Why didn't that check code work for "east", and how did I override the built-in check that works in the test game?

Sorry for beating this dead horse. I like to understand rather than just copy.

Thanks for the help!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=603&start=0#p3398
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dragging with and without directions
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-03-30 08:18:12

It seems like every time I fix something I break something else. Now I can't get out the window after moving the chair, which was the whole point. This may be unrelated to the push code, not sure. I'll try to copy all the relevant bits of code.

[code]

[map boundary code]
Instead of going west when the player is in the churchyard and the window is intact: say
  "The church door is locked so you can't get inside." [I don't want the player to think about the basement window until she notices it]
Instead of going west when the player is in the churchyard and the window is broken:
  If the player is carrying something, say "It looks like a big drop. Better put your stuff down first." instead;
  If the purple egg is found, say "There's nothing more to see in there, and your feet still hurt from last time." instead;
  If the purple egg is unfound
  begin;
    If the current chair position is over by the window
    Begin;
      say "You carefully climb through the window, landing on the chair below.";
      now the player is in the Church Basement;
      now the player is on the chair;
    Otherwise;
       say   "You carefully climb into the window and scoot yourself through. There is a big drop as you hit the basement floor. Luckily it is carpeted, but you still hurt your knees.";
      now the player is in the Church Basement;
    End if;
  End if.

Instead of going east when the player is in the church basement:
  If the player is not on the chair,
  say "The window is too high. You can't get back up there." instead;
  If the player is on the chair and the current chair position is over by the window
  Begin;
   say "You climb out the window with some difficulty.";
   now the player is in the Churchyard;
  End if;
  If the player is on the chair and the current chair position is toward the west side of the room,
   say "The window is too high. You can't get back up there." instead.

Instead of entering the window when the player is in the Church Basement:
 Try going east instead.

Instead of entering the window when the player is in the churchyard and the window is intact:
  Say "The window is closed."

Instead of entering the window when the player is in the churchyard and the window is broken:
  try going west instead.

Instead of going up when the player is in the Church Basement:
  Try going east instead.

Instead of going down when the player is in the churchyard and the window is intact:
  say "You can't go that way." instead.

Instead of going down when the player is in the churchyard and the window is broken:
  try going west instead.

[push-related code]

Instead of pushing the chair:
   say "You shove the [noun] around the room aimlessly."

Instead of pulling the chair:
   try pushing the chair.

Internal position is a kind of value. The internal positions are over by the window and toward the west side of the room.

The current chair position is an internal position that varies. The current chair position is toward the west side of the room.

Pushing it over to is an action applying to two things.
Understand "push [something] to [something]" as pushing it over to. 
Understand "pull [something] to [something]" as pushing it over to.
Understand "push [something] [something]" as pushing it over to. 
Understand "pull [something] [something]" as pushing it over to.
Understand "push [something] under [something]" as pushing it over to. 
Understand "pull [something] under [something]" as pushing it over to.
Understand "push [something] over by [something]" as pushing it over to. 
Understand "pull [something] over by [something]" as pushing it over to.

The pushing it over to action has an internal position called the old position. 
The pushing it over to action has an internal position called the new position. 

Setting action variables for pushing something over to something: 
    now the old position is the current chair position; 
    if the second noun is the window
    Begin;
      now the new position is over by the window;
    Otherwise; 
      now the new position is toward the west side of the room;
    End if.

Check pushing it over to: 
    if the noun is fixed in place, say "It won't budge." instead; 
    if the noun is not the chair, say "That hardly seems helpful." instead; 
    if the player is on the noun, say "You'll have to get off the [noun] first." instead;
    if the new position is the old position
    Begin;
      If the new position is over by the window,
        say "The [noun] is already [new position]." instead;
   End if.

Carry out pushing it over to: 
   change the current chair position to the new position.

Instead of pushing the chair to:
   if the second noun is east
   Begin;
      try pushing the chair over to the window;
   otherwise; 
      silently try pushing the chair over to the table;
      if the rule succeeded, say "You shove the chair [second noun].";
   End if.

Report pushing it over to: 
     say "You shove [the noun] to [the second noun]."

Instead of climbing the chair:
  try entering the chair.

Instead of climbing the window:
  try entering the window.
[/code]

Problem:

[quote]>enter window
The window is too high. You can't get back up there.

>scoot chair to window
You shove the chair to the window.

>climb chair
You get onto the chair.

>e
You'll have to get off the chair first.

>climb window
You'll have to get off the chair first.[/quote]

Sorry I'm so high-maintenance.

EDIT: It occurs to me that the response suggests that the "current chair position" isn't getting set to "over by the window".

I tried this but it didn't help:

[code]Instead of pushing the chair to:
   if the second noun is east
   Begin;
      try pushing the chair over to the window;
      if the rule succeeded, now the current chair position is over by the window;
   otherwise; 
      silently try pushing the chair over to the table;
      if the rule succeeded, say "You shove the chair [second noun].";
   End if.[/code]

Maybe it was redundant anyway... I'm confused.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=603&start=0#p3399
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dragging with and without directions
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-03-30 09:43:50

[quote]So I'm confused. It looked to me like the "pushing it over to" check should have affected both "push chair east" and "push chair to table".[/quote]
Instead rules override check rules. They literally mean "instead of doing this action, don't even try doing it but do this instead and nothing else". (They could not function at all if they went through the normal check rules: you couldn't, for example, do [i]'Instead of pushing the chair to north: say "It's too heavy."'[/i] because the response would always be "The chair cannot be moved from place to place", as the standard library check rule would intervene.)

If you do an after rule (After pushing the chair to east: ...) you would go through the normal check rules. (But an after rule would not work here, because you specifically want to override the check rules. An after rule means "After this action has succeeded under normal conditions, do this.") 

The getting-out-of-window problem is this:

[code]Instead of going east when the player is in the church basement:[/code]
Perhaps confusingly the player is not in the church basement when she is on the chair. A thing can be "in" only one thing at a time. So the player is in the chair, and chair is in the basement. When you need to know the [i]room[/i] where the player is, use "location". So just change that line to

[code]Instead of going east when the location is the church basement:[/code]

[quote]It occurs to me that the response suggests that the "current chair position" isn't getting set to "over by the window".[/quote]

It is being set. The instead rule makes the game act exactly as if the player had typed PUSH CHAIR TO WINDOW; the "try doing" goes through the check rules, carry out rules and report rules as normal. "Silently try doing" does the same, except that it skips the report rules.

[quote]Sorry for beating this dead horse. I like to understand rather than just copy.[/quote]

There's nothing to apologize. That's a very good learning strategy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=595&start=0#p3400
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: VerDoCut: Problems
User: jfcwilson / DateTime: 2009-03-30 11:57:39

Hi,

I think I read that wrong, as when I test it, I get a TADS error message: 
wrong number of arguments to user function "island3_jungle_northPath_vines.verDoCut"

Is this correct?

CODE START****************************************
island3_jungle_northPath_vines: fixeditem
isCut=nil
sdesc="vines"
ldesc="This curtain of vines is twisted, thick, green, and dangerous looking. You could probably cut it if 
you had the correct tool."
noun='vines' 'vine'
adjective='curtain'
location=island3_jungle_northPath
verDoCut(Me)=
{
 if (self.isCut=true)
 {
  if (island1_machete.location<>Me)
  {
   "You don't have anything to cut it with.";
  }
  else
  {
   "They're already quite butchered, thank you.";
  }
 }
}
doCut(Me)=
{
 "You unskillfully hack your way through the vines, feeling adventureous. You eventually come
  out the other side, and continue east, twirling the machete and nearly cutting your toe off.\b";
  self.isCut:=true;
  Me.travelTo(island3_jungle_northPath_further);
}
verDoCutWith(Me, dobj)=(self.verDoCut)
doCutWith(Me, dobj)=(self.doCut)
;

island1_machete: item
sdesc="machete"
ldesc="It's a brand new machete, with a rubber grip and a steel guard. Looks quite expensive."
noun='machete' 'blade' 'sword'
location=island1_beach_w
verDoTake(Me)=
{ 
 if (island1_bird.location=nesthole)
 {
  "You reach for the machete, but the bird snaps his beak, and you hastily withdraw.";
 }
 else
 {
  "Taken.";
  self.moveInto(Me);
 }
}
verIoCutWith(Me)={}
ioCutWith(actor, dobj)={dobj.doCutWith(Me, self);}
;

cutVerb: deepverb
    verb='cut'
    sdesc="cut"
    doAction='Cut'
    ioAction(withPrep)='CutWith'
;

CODE END*********************************

Thanks very much,
       James

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=603&start=0#p3401
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dragging with and without directions
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-03-30 17:42:54

[code]Instead of going east when the location is the church basement:[/code]

Perfect! That was a confusing one. Thanks Nitku!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=595&start=0#p3402
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: VerDoCut: Problems
User: uux02 / DateTime: 2009-04-01 20:55:07

[quote="jfcwilson"]Hi,

I think I read that wrong, as when I test it, I get a TADS error message: 
wrong number of arguments to user function "island3_jungle_northPath_vines.verDoCut"

[SNIP]

Is this correct?[/quote]

Not entirely;).

I assume you get the said TADS message when you type "cut vines with machete." That's because the following methods in your island3_jungle_northPath_vines should be rewritten as follows:

[code]
verDoCutWith(Me, dobj)=(self.verDoCut(Me))
doCutWith(Me, dobj)=(self.doCut(Me))
[/code]

Previously, you called verDoCut and doCut without arguments, that was the problem.

Besides, verDoCut should be rewritten, too - currently, it doesn't do the verification properly. That's how it should look:

[code]
verDoCut(Me)=
{
if (self.isCut=true)
    {
"They're already quite butchered, thank you.";
    }
else if (island1_machete.location<>Me)
{
"You don't have anything to cut it with.";
}
}
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=595&start=0#p3403
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: VerDoCut: Problems
User: uux02 / DateTime: 2009-04-01 21:42:48

Oh, and there seems to be one more problem with your code - the verDoTake method of the machete object. Change your definition

[code]
verDoTake(Me)=
{ 
if (island1_bird.location=nesthole)
{
"You reach for the machete, but the bird snaps his beak, and you hastily withdraw.";
}
else
{
"Taken.";
self.moveInto(Me);
}
}
[/code]

to just 

[code]
verDoTake(Me)=
{ 
if (island1_bird.location=nesthole)
{
"You reach for the machete, but the bird snaps his beak, and you hastily withdraw.";
}
}
[/code]

The default doTake method inherited from the item class will take care of the rest.

One of the rules of TADS programming says, you should never change anything (setting variables, moving objects, etc.) in verifier methods (that is, methods whose names begin with 'ver'). They only should check conditions, and display messages. This is because those methods are often called by the system "silently" (with their messages sent to the display being suppressed), which can result in unpredictable game state changes you're not even aware of. This, in its turn, may lead to errors that are very-very hard to track down.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=604&start=0#p3404
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Trying to make Wake Up interpret the same as Wake
User: tsmpaul / DateTime: 2009-04-02 21:14:33

Hi guys. I'm using Inform 7.
My problem is, I've got a person, and I want the player to use the 'wake' or 'wake up' commands on the person, but for the command to simply be the same as examining the person.

I've tried:

understand the command "wake" as something new.
understand the command "wake" as "examine".

now when I type "wake (person's name)" while playing the game, it examines them, and carries out all the stuff I want it to do.

However, if I'm playing, and I type "wake up (person's name)" it doesn't examine the person, or treat it as the 'wake' command! Instead, I get the message:

"I only understand you as far as wanting to wake up."

So, to summarise, if I type "wake (person's name)" and "wake up (person's name)" the program does something different.

I tried adding the lines:
understand the command "wake up" as something new.
understand the command "wake up" as "examine".

but it still just says
"I only understand you as far as wanting to wake up."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=605&start=0#p3405
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Trying to 'release' my story
User: tsmpaul / DateTime: 2009-04-03 03:08:20

I've read the documentation. I'm writing a story, currently called the 'The Monk Murder Mysteries' but with the filename of MonkMurderMysteries.inform

I made a directory MonkMurderMysteries Materials

Then I added these lines to my source:

[code]Release along with a website, the introductory rulebook, and a file of "A Letter to the Bishop of Cornwall" called "MMMLetter.pdf".

The files to be released when the project MonkMurderMysteries.inform is published are all kept in a subfolder called "MonkMurderMysteries Materials" in the same folder that contains the project.[/code]

Those two lines look to me exactly like they do in the instructions, but with my names inserted into them. However, it just brings up errors when I try to play or release the game:

[code]Problem. You wrote 'The files to be released when the project MonkMurderMysteries'  : but I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with, so I am ignoring this sentence altogether.

Problem. You wrote 'inform is published are all kept in a subfolder called "MonkMurderMysteries Materials" in the same folder that contains the project'  : but this seems to give something a name which contains double-quoted text, which is not allowed. If you do need quotes in a name, one option would be to write something like 'In the Saloon is 'Black' Jacques Bernoulli.'; but this problem message is often caused by an accident in punctuation, in which case you never intended to create an object - you thought that the text ended a sentence because it finished with sentence-ending punctuation, when in fact it didn't, so that I read the next words as following on. 

(It may help to know that I am reading the primary verb here as 'is', not 'contains'.)

Problem. You wrote 'inform is published are all kept in a subfolder called "MonkMurderMysteries Materials" in the same folder that contains the project'  : but I can only make 'a something called whatever' when the something is a kind I know, possibly qualified with adjectives. For instance, 'an open door called the Marble Door' is fine because 'door' is the name of a kind and 'open' is an adjective which means something for doors. But 'a grand archway called the Great Gates' would not normally mean anything to me, because 'archway' is not one of the standard kinds in Inform. (Try consulting the Kinds index.)[/code]

It seems to be ending the sentence after the word MonkMurderMysteries and before the file extension 'inform' when it hits the full stop, dividing it into two sentences instead of one sentence...

[color=red][b]Admin Edit:[/b] modified to use the code-tags[/color]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=605&start=0#p3406
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trying to 'release' my story
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2009-04-03 04:12:08

[quote="tsmpaul"]I've read the documentation. I'm writing a story, currently called the 'The Monk Murder Mysteries' but with the filename of MonkMurderMysteries.inform

I made a directory MonkMurderMysteries Materials[/quote]

I hope your directory structure looks like this:

[code]Projects
|
+- MonkMurderMysteries.inform
+- MonkMurderMysteries Materials
+ possible other projects[/code]

as this is how Inform wants them to be.

[quote="tsmpaul"]Then I added these lines to my source:

[code]Release along with a website, the introductory rulebook, and a file of "A Letter to the Bishop of Cornwall" called "MMMLetter.pdf".

The files to be released when the project MonkMurderMysteries.inform is published are all kept in a subfolder called "MonkMurderMysteries Materials" in the same folder that contains the project.[/code][/quote]

Your problem is the second line. Just drop it, Inform knows where to look for the folder MonkMurderMysteries Materials already - it has to be contained in the same folder as the MonkMurderMysteries.inform folder.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=604&start=0#p3407
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trying to make Wake Up interpret the same as Wake
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-04-03 04:14:45

If you do
[code]Understand "wake up [something]" as examining.[/code]
It should work, BUT you'll probably be better off not making 'wake' a synonym for 'examine': now if you try to wake up anything in the game, it behaves as if you had examined it. Assuming the NPC is named Bob, you could leave the wake verb as it is and simply do
[code]Instead of waking Bob:
   try examining Bob.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=591&start=0#p3408
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Mapper
User: chimorph / DateTime: 2009-04-03 05:08:04

I use autorealm - I can't remember the url offhand, but you can find it easy enough on google.  It's an open-source rpg mapper, which can do anything from very simple block diagrams to full on terrain maps.
I like it because it allows me to do a little more than a simple block diagram - e.g. approximate room sizes and shapes, locations of key objects, puzzles etc.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=595&start=0#p3409
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: VerDoCut: Problems
User: jfcwilson / DateTime: 2009-04-03 10:50:26

It works now. Wow, been stuck on that for over a month, thanks a lot.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=605&start=0#p3410
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trying to 'release' my story
User: tsmpaul / DateTime: 2009-04-03 18:05:20

Ah! Thank you! It all works now [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=604&start=0#p3411
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trying to make Wake Up interpret the same as Wake
User: tsmpaul / DateTime: 2009-04-03 18:09:25

Thanks for the advice, I switched to 'Instead of / try examining' and no problems now.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=606&start=0#p3412
Forum: Competitions / Subject: GunchoComp
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2009-04-05 19:37:46

The Guncho competition is now open. (If you're not familiar with Guncho, the multiplayer Inform 7 system, visit [url]http://www.guncho.com[/url].)

See [url]http://wiki.guncho.com/index.php?title=GunchoComp[/url] for the comp rules. Here are the highlights:

[list]
[*]Entries must be received by [b]August 6, 2009[/b] and must not have been open to the public before then.
[/*:m]
[*]There are two judging categories: Best Use of Multiplayer and Best Replay Value.
[/*:m]
[*]Judges will have approximately six weeks to submit their rankings.
[/*:m]
[*]Discussion is allowed, including from authors, but authors will not be able to edit or play their realms during the judging period.[/*:m][/list:u]

To submit your entry, email me at <a href="mailto:jmcgrew@hansprestige.com">jmcgrew@hansprestige.com</a> with the name of your realm (if developing online) or the source code (if developing offline). Also email me if you're interested in donating to the prize pool.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=607&start=0#p3413
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: how to detect verbose and brief modes
User: tsmpaul / DateTime: 2009-04-05 20:32:31

Hi guys! Another quick question, if anyone can help:

I'm making use of Emily Short's menu system, and am making a Setting Options section. Using the code sample in Inform 7's documentation, I added the Notify Mode for notifying the player of score changes, and thought, another setting that could be useful is having the Verbose mode turn on or off. (I usually prefer to have it on, myself)

This is how my Table of Setting Options looks:

[code]Table of Setting Options
title	subtable	description	toggle
"[if notify mode is on]Score notification is on[otherwise]Score notification is off[end if]"	--	--	switch notification status rule
"[if verbose mode is on]Verbose is on[otherwise]Verbose is off[end if]"	--	--	switch verbose mode status rule
[/code]


I tried copying the score notification, but changing the wording:

[code]To decide whether verbose mode is on:
	(- verbose_mode -) ;

This is the switch verbose mode status rule:
	if verbose mode is on, try switching brief mode on;
	otherwise try switching verbose mode on.
[/code]


I'm not sure what the correct wording for handling verbose and brief modes is. This brings up these errors:

[code]Problem. You wrote 'if verbose mode is on, try switching verbose mode off'  : but this is not an action I recognise, or else is malformed in a way I can't see how to untangle.

Problem. You wrote 'otherwise try switching verbose mode on'  : again, this is not an action I recognise.
[/code]

Any advice would help [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=607&start=0#p3414
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: how to detect verbose and brief modes
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-04-06 03:20:29

Hi there,

First of all, there are three settings for this: brief (the standard mode), verbose, and superbrief (which never shows descriptions). The current setting is stored in an i6 global variable called "lookmode". This isn't discussed in the main documentation, but can be discovered by searching the template document (appendix B on the website). I6 variables are (basically) all numbers, so I've created a new kind of value to make it easier to read. (1, 2 and 3 are automatically converted to standard, verbose and superbrief.) There are also three actions used to switch this setting which can be located in the actions index under "Actions which happen out of world." Try adding this code to your example:[code]Table of Setting Options (continued)
title	subtable	description	toggle
"Room descriptions are currently set to [current-lookmode]."	--	--	toggle lookmode rule

Lookmode is a kind of value. The lookmodes are standard, verbose and superbrief.

The current-lookmode is a lookmode that varies.
The current-lookmode variable translates into I6 as "lookmode".

This is the toggle lookmode rule:
	if the current-lookmode is:
		-- standard: try preferring unabbreviated room descriptions;
		-- verbose: try preferring abbreviated room descriptions;
		-- superbrief: try preferring sometimes abbreviated room descriptions.
[/code]Note that the tabs might get screwed up when you copy and paste from this board, so you might have to fiddle with it a bit. I've tried it on my end and it works. You can test it by adding these rooms:[code]The Lab is a room. "This is the description of the Lab." The player is in the Lab.
The Back Room is north of the Lab. "This is a description of the Back Room."[/code]Hope that helps!

EDIT: The tabs do get messed up. As long as you replace the "<tab>" in the following code with an actual tab stop, you should be okay.[code]This is the toggle lookmode rule:
<tab>if the current-lookmode is:
<tab><tab>-- standard: try preferring unabbreviated room descriptions;
<tab><tab>-- verbose: try preferring abbreviated room descriptions;
<tab><tab>-- superbrief: try preferring sometimes abbreviated room descriptions.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=607&start=0#p3415
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: how to detect verbose and brief modes
User: tsmpaul / DateTime: 2009-04-06 05:10:53

The people on this forum are so helpful, it's great! I don't think I would have worked that out on my own, so thanks. My story is coming along quite nicely now. I'll have to go and check out that Appendix B template document, and see what other stuff is in there.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=606&start=0#p3416
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: GunchoComp
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-04-06 06:50:21

Cool. Thanks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=609&start=0#p3417
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: describing actions that are already completed
User: Seirei / DateTime: 2009-04-08 11:33:36

I apologize in advance for the extreme noobishness of the forthcoming questions...I just started working with Inform 7 two days ago, and am completely hooked. I've read most of the manual, but I'm running into a few snags on what should be simple stuff.

First off, I'm having trouble giving descriptions of actions that I want successfully completed without creating redundancy. For example, let's say I've set up a room called the Alley, in which there is a metal bin. 

Writing this:

[size=85]The metal bin is an openable container that is in the Alley. Some rotten food is a thing inside the metal bin. The metal bin is closed.

Before opening the bin, say [color=#0000FF]"After a moment you manage to heave up the thick lid of the bin, and immediately regret your curiosity; the thick stench of rotting food, dirty diapers and other, even less appetizing scents assault your senses. Gagging, you barely keep from dropping the lid."[/color][/size]

Yields this:

[size=85]>open bin
After a moment you manage to heave up the thick lid of the bin, and immediately regret your curiosity; the thick stench of rotting food, dirty diapers and other, even less appetizing scents assault your senses. Gagging, you barely keep from dropping the lid.

You open the metal bin, revealing some rotten food.[/size]

How do I make it so that the action is not repeated—that is, so the "You open the metal bin, revealing some rotten food" is not written—but still have the bin be open? I tried using the "Instead" rule, but that left the bin closed.

Thank you so much!! I appreciate your patience.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=609&start=0#p3418
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: describing actions that are already completed
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2009-04-08 12:20:12

I've responded in a new thread.

[color=red][b]Admin: [/b]Split from original topic and merged with the answer[/color]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=609&start=0#p3420
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: describing actions that are already completed
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2009-04-09 15:36:52

Broken off from another thread:

[quote="Seirei"]First off, I'm having trouble giving descriptions of actions that I want successfully completed without creating redundancy. For example, let's say I've set up a room called the Alley, in which there is a metal bin. 

Writing this:

[code]The metal bin is an openable container that is in the Alley. Some rotten food is a thing inside the metal bin. The metal bin is closed.

Before opening the bin, say "After a moment you manage to heave up the thick lid of the bin, and immediately regret your curiosity; the thick stench of rotting food, dirty diapers and other, even less appetizing scents assault your senses. Gagging, you barely keep from dropping the lid."[/code]

Yields this:

[code]>open bin
After a moment you manage to heave up the thick lid of the bin, and immediately regret your curiosity; the thick stench of rotting food, dirty diapers and other, even less appetizing scents assault your senses. Gagging, you barely keep from dropping the lid.

You open the metal bin, revealing some rotten food.[/code]

[/quote]

The "Before" stage is run before the action happens, but then allows the action to proceed normally. That's why you got the redundant message -- first your message is printed, then the opening action proceeds normally, complete with the default message.

The "Instead" stage is also run before the action happens, but then *prevents* the action from being carried out. That's why the bin remains closed with your instead rule -- the game was never allowed to actually carry out the opening action.

What you want is the "After" stage. The after stage is run after the action is successfully carried out, but *before* the default message is printed. By default, action processing stops once an after rule successfully fires, so the game's default message is pre-empted.

[code]The metal bin is an openable container that is in the Alley. Some rotten food is a thing inside the metal bin. The metal bin is closed.

After opening the bin, say "After a moment you manage to heave up the thick lid of the bin, and immediately regret your curiosity; the thick stench of rotting food, dirty diapers and other, even less appetizing scents assault your senses. Gagging, you barely keep from dropping the lid."[/code]

See documentation sections 7.5 and 12.2.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=609&start=0#p3421
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: describing actions that are already completed
User: Seirei / DateTime: 2009-04-09 16:22:41

Thank you so much, Michael. I really should have thought of that.  [emote]:oops:[/emote] 

I'm certain I'll have more questions later...thanks for your patience with such a noob!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=591&start=0#p3422
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Mapper
User: Schilcote / DateTime: 2009-04-10 16:38:54

I use the Infomer IDE for my Inform coding, and it comes with an automated mapper, which you simply feed a transcript into to get a map. Unfortunately, Informer is hard to find. Good luck.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=610&start=0#p3423
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Interesting (and possibly original) game mechanism
User: Schilcote / DateTime: 2009-04-10 16:53:14

I am writing a game in Inform, which is currently called "Space Quest!", but the name will be changed since it is copyrighted. In Space Quest, the PC is a robot, who has the power to transfer his mind to other robots, using ChangePlayer(). Is this a good idea, and has it been done before?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=50#p3424
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Schilcote / DateTime: 2009-04-10 17:15:37

I don't really want to introduce the real me, so I'll just introduce my online persona.

Online:
I am Schilcote, a twenty-trillion year old supercomputer built by an unknown race. I fly around in a spaceship shaped like a Chevrolet truck, which is larger on the inside than the outside. My interests are shooting sparks, emmiting blue smoke, and building empires.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=235&start=0#p3425
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Ideas to turn a single player adventure into multi-player
User: Schilcote / DateTime: 2009-04-10 17:19:29

It might be interesting for my WIP to be multiplayer in some respect, like different players can inhabit different robot shells.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=611&start=0#p3426
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Making a number depend on general algebra of other numbers?
User: dissembly / DateTime: 2009-04-10 20:35:18

Hi all,

I am experimenting with Inform 7, and seeing about creating RPG-type game mechanics.

I am trying to create a situation where you can become friends with an NPC, and their opinon of you is dependant on your reputation and on your personal history with them.

So, i have defined three numbers:[quote]A person has a number which varies called reputation.
A person has a number which varies called howmuchtheylikeyou.
A person has a number which varies called familiarity.[/quote]...and I want to set it up so that "NPC's familiarity = player's reputation + NPC's howmuchtheylikeyou". The game mechanic that i have in mind involves using all three numbers separately depending on the situation, thus it would be useful to define "reputation" and "howmuchtheylikeyou" separately, and then use a combined value ("familiarity") in some situations. I could just add them together when i need them, without bothering to have a combined value called "familiarity", but i think that would just lead to the exact same problem later on - i mean, compare "if familiarity of the noun > 20" to "if reputation of the player plus howmuchtheylikeyou of the noun > 20" - the latter option seems much more prone to ambiguity (and frustration) further down the track, especially since Inform doesn't seem to use brackets in the way mathematicians use them (inform only seems to allow statements like "a + b > 20", not "(a+ b) > 20", if you get my drift). For the sake of argument, i'd like to know how to define a third value that encapsulates that concept from the beginning, without needing to think about it further down the track. I'd like to know how to solve this problem, and if it's unsolvable, i'd like to know that as well, if only for the sake of working out how Inform reads things.

I started with:[quote]The familiarity of (NPC - a person) is the reputation of the player plus the howmuchtheylikeyou of NPC.[/quote]... which returns the error:[quote]Problem. You wrote 'The familiarity of ( NPC - a person ) is the reputation of the player plus the howmuchtheylikeyou of NPC'  : but this seems to give something a name which contains brackets '(' or ')', which is not allowed since the potential for confusion with other uses for brackets in Inform source text is too high. (If you need, say, a room which the player sees as 'Fillmore (West)', you can get this effect with: 'Fillmore West is a room with printed name "Fillmore (West)".')[/quote]Another try:[quote]To determine the familiarity of (NPC - a person): the familiarity of NPC is the reputation of the player plus the howmuchtheylikeyou of NPC.[/quote]returns...[quote]Problem. You wrote 'the familiarity of NPC is the reputation of the player plus the howmuchtheylikeyou of NPC'  : but this is a phrase which I don't recognise, possibly because it is one you meant to define but never got round to, or because the wording is wrong (see the Phrasebook section of the Index to check). Alternatively, it may be that the text immediately previous to this was a definition whose ending, normally a full stop, is missing?[/quote]...and...[quote]Every turn: let the familiarity of (NPC - a person) be the reputation of the player plus the howmuchtheylikeyou of NPC.[/quote]gives me...[quote]Problem. In the sentence 'let the familiarity of ( NPC - a person ) be the reputation of the player plus the howmuchtheylikeyou of NPC'  , I was expecting that 'familiarity of ( NPC - a person )' would be a variable name (specifically a name not so far used), but it turned out to be a property whose value is a number.[/quote]I could go on and on like this! I've tried about a dozen more different ways of attempting to add two number together to create the third number, but unfortunately i only discovered this forum a few minutes ago, so i haven't saved all the different formulations i've tried.

Consistent problems seem to be that Inform doesn't actually recognise the bracketed "(NPC - a person)" in this context, or that it doesn't realise that "reputation" and "howmuchtheylikeyou" are actually supposed to be numbers, and thus can be added together (even though that's explicitly defined, it often seems to treat them as values that contain text).

I'm pretty sure there's some fundamental kind of syntax that i am not understanding, that mathematical words like "plus" and "minus", and things like "(NPC - a person)" actually only have meaning to Inform under certain specific conditions, and can't simply be used wherever you want. But i can't figure out what those conditions are, and it's really not clear to me at all in the manual.

So, how do you add together numbers that belong to people (whether player or NPC) in the gameworld? How do you make Inform understand a general statement like "a = b + c" - where b and c could have different numerical values depending on which characters are involved?

How do you do algebra in Inform?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=612&start=0#p3427
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Substitutable text *within* the source code itself?
User: dissembly / DateTime: 2009-04-10 20:58:34

In the "say" command, we are able to have substitutable text like so:[quote]say "[the noun] says, 'I am [the age of the noun] years old."[/quote]I am wondering if there is any way to do this inside the source code itself?

For example, using the chatnodes that come with Mark Tilford's "Simple Chat" extension, let's say we have defined a chat-node for every NPC in the game;[quote]Include Simple Chat by Mark Tilford.
Ben-chatnode1, Alice-chatnode1, Nazeem-chatnode1 are chat nodes.
[/quote]And then we have defined some action that will lead the player to a chat node, and, naturally, the chat node that the player gets led toward depends on who the player is talking to - here's an example:[quote]Carry out chatting:
	  If the noun is Ben:
		    run a conversation from Ben-chatnode1;
	  If the noun is Alice:
		    run a conversation from Alice-chatnode1;
	  If the noun is Nazeem:
		    run a conversation from Nazeem-chatnode1;
		    stop the action.[/quote]This works quite nicely, but, purely for the sake of knowing, i wonder if there is a way to put substitutable text inside the source code somehow? 

Is there any mechanism where the above action could be condensed to something of the formula:[quote]Carry out chatting:
		run a conversation from {the noun}-chatnode1.[/quote]Has anyone developed some clever way to do this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=611&start=0#p3428
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making a number depend on general algebra of other numbers?
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2009-04-11 03:03:14

I think this should work (I haven't tested it, though):

[code]To decide on the familiarity of (NPC - a person):
    decide on reputation of NPC + howmuchtheylikeyou of NPC.[/code]

If it doesn't, then something like the following should work:

[code]Every turn:
    repeat with NPC running through people:
        let familiarity of NPC be reputation of NPC + howmuchtheylikeyou of NPC.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=612&start=0#p3429
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Substitutable text *within* the source code itself?
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2009-04-11 03:09:40

How about something like this:

[code]Table of People Chat
Name     Node-Name
Ben      Ben-chatnode1
Alice    Alice-chatnode1
Nazeem   Nazeem-chatnode1
[note that the spaces between the Name and Node-Name, and correspondingly on the rows below it, should be tabs instead, for the table to work correctly]

Carry out chatting:
    choose row with a Name of noun in the Table of People Chat;
    run a conversation from Node-Name entry;
    stop the action.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=611&start=0#p3430
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making a number depend on general algebra of other numbers?
User: dissembly / DateTime: 2009-04-11 03:52:48

Thank-you for the very swift reply [emote]:)[/emote]

The first idea you suggested turns up this:[quote]Problem. You wrote 'decide on reputation of NPC + howmuchtheylikeyou of NPC'   as the outcome of a phrase, an instruction to work out a number, but in the definition of something which was not a phrase to decide a value.[/quote]...the impression i'm getting from the error message is similar to the impression i had with earlier error messages, the program seems to not be treating the various numbers [i]as[/i] numbers. Is that a reasonable reading of the errors?

I am tinkering with the second one now; it still produces error messages, but i altered the punctuation a bit and came up with a new error message that i haven't seen before:[quote]Problem. You wrote 'let familiarity of NPC be reputation of NPC plus howmuchtheylikeyou of NPC'  , which is a phrase that can be construed in more than one way. I tried the possibilities in the order numbered below, and would have accepted the first which successfully matched - but none of them did.

1. let (a name not so far used) be (a complex value of some sort)

2. let (a name not so far used) be (the name of a kind of simple value)

3. let (a name not so far used) be (the name of a kind of complex value)

4. let (a name not so far used) be (a simple value of some sort)

5. let (a temporary 'let' or 'repeat' variable) be (a value of some sort)
[/quote]I haven't seen this one yet! It looks like something that ought to be in the manual sonewhere.

I always tried it while omitting the "plus the howmuchtheylikeyou of the NPC" bit, so it's just "let one number be another number" - same error message. Then i tried it with "let familiarity of NPC be familiarity of NPC plus 1", which is a sort of phrase that i [b]know[/b] i've seen Inform7 accept before, and it produced the same error message again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=612&start=0#p3431
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Substitutable text *within* the source code itself?
User: dissembly / DateTime: 2009-04-11 03:58:12

That sounds like a brilliant idea. I'll play around with that! Thank-you [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=611&start=0#p3432
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Problem solved!!
User: dissembly / DateTime: 2009-04-11 04:08:34

Based on your ideas, i came up with this:[quote]Numberfixing is an action applying to nothing.

Every turn:
	try numberfixing.


Instead of numberfixing:
	repeat with NPC running through people:
		now familiarity of NPC is reputation of player plus howmuchtheylikeyou of NPC.[/quote]...and it works!

I have a command that lets you view the numbers associated with different characters, so i could track whether it was working or not.

It doesn't do anything at the start of play (since it's an "every turn" rule), but after the first move, all of the "familiarity" numbers suddenly come out correctly.

I tried it in a room with three NPCs, and gave each one a distinct "howmuchtheylikeyou" value (1, 3, and 5), and then gave the player a "reputation" value of 5, and each "familiarity" value came out exactly as it should have for each character (6, 8, and 10!).

So now i can create character statistics that interact with the statistics of the player... i imagine you could almost create a "Warhammer"-style RPG this way (since the game mechanic of Warhammer involves character statistics that interact with each other, and are thus different for each pair of characters)...!

Thank-you again [b]rioshin[/b] for your suggestions that led to the answer!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=611&start=0#p3433
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making a number depend on general algebra of other numbers?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-04-11 06:01:30

[quote="rioshin"]I think this should work (I haven't tested it, though):

[code]To decide on the familiarity of (NPC - a person):
    decide on reputation of NPC + howmuchtheylikeyou of NPC.[/code][/quote]

This works (and is the best, simplest way to solve this problem):
[code]To decide what number is the familiarity of (NPC - a person):
	decide on reputation of NPC + howmuchtheylikeyou of NPC.[/code]

Section 11.17 of the manual explains how this works.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=611&start=0#p3434
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making a number depend on general algebra of other numbers?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-04-11 07:50:48

Just a warning: if you use the every turn rule to update the value, it will not be updated until the end of the turn. Consider this:

[code]
[At the beginning of the turn, howmuchtheylikeyou of Bob is 6 and reputation 2, so familiarity is 8]

After attacking Bob:
   decrease the howmuchtheylikeyou of Bob by 10;
  [Note: howmuchtheylikeyou is now -4 and reputation 2 but familiarity is still 8]
   if the familiarity of Bob is less than 0:
      say "'I'm not surprised, considering it's you,' Bob says.";
   otherwise:
      say "'Why would you hit me? I thought you were the good guy,' Bob cries." [this option will be selected.]

[at the end of the turn, familiarity is updated to -2.]
[/code]

So with an every turn rule familiarity always represents the situation at the end of the previous turn, not the current situation. Which might or might not be what you want. 'To decide' solution always gives the up-to-date number.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=612&start=0#p3435
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Substitutable text *within* the source code itself?
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2009-04-11 15:37:01

You might also try something like this:

[code]
A person has a chat node called the chatter. 
The chatter of Ben is Ben-chatnode1. 
The chatter of Alice is Alice-chatnode1. 
The chatter of Nazeem is Nazeem-chatnode1.

Carry out chatting:
   run a conversation from the chatter of the noun.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=50#p3436
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Superstar Kenneth / DateTime: 2009-04-11 18:12:01

Hello. My name is Kenneth. I am interested in IF (Just finished Violet and Everybody Dies), and am wanting to start trying to make my own. 

Please to meet you all!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=613&start=0#p3437
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Starting off...
User: Superstar Kenneth / DateTime: 2009-04-11 18:18:39

Hello. I have a question for you all. I'm going to start writing some IFs, but I'm not sure which language to use. Considering I have no experience in making them, I'm not sure what is best to use.

I downloaded something called AGT, but I would like to know if this and other possible items are good, and easy to use.

Thank you for your time

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=613&start=0#p3439
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Starting off...
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-04-12 03:40:32

Most games nowadays are written using Inform 6, Inform 7 or TADS 3. Inform 6 and TADS 3 resemble "traditional" programming languages and with Inform 7 you're using full English sentences. The choice is usually between Inform 7 and TADS 3, not only because they are the most widely used and extensively documented languages but if and when you need help there are lot of people who can help you. If you choose some minor language, you're often on your own just because it's hard to find anyone proficient enough to be able to help.

I haven't tried AGT but it is very old and now probably an unsupported system. I don't remember seeing any new games released using it during the last few years. Nothing stops you from trying it, though.

Here are some links that might be useful:
[url=http://www.inform-fiction.org]Inform 6 and 7[/url]
[url=http://tads.org/tads3.htm]TADS 3[/url]
[url=http://www.firthworks.com/roger/cloak/index.html]Cloak of Darkness[/url] - a game that's been implemented in many different systems so you can compare how the code looks like
[url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Past_raif_topics:_Development:_part_1#Authoring_systems_in_general]Discussions about choosing an authoring system[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=635&start=0#p3460
Forum: Feedback / Subject: this sudden influx of spam
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-04-12 09:24:17

All this spam is [i]really[/i] annoying. Is it possible to put a CAPTCHA on the sign-up page or something? (I'm just assuming these are automated posts, of course - I might be wrong...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=635&start=0#p3461
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: this sudden influx of spam
User: Schilcote / DateTime: 2009-04-12 12:43:12

If they're not automated, then somebody must have alot of time on their hands. I don't think the spam pepole use real pepole anymore anyway, it's probably too expensive compared to a bot. I say that spam should be illegalised, since it's often advertising pr0n on child-friendly forums.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=635&start=0#p3463
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: this sudden influx of spam
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2009-04-12 14:04:07

...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=635&start=0#p3464
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: this sudden influx of spam
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2009-04-12 15:28:37

Seems I'd forgotten to set the require-Captcha flag... [emote]:oops:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=635&start=0#p3465
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: this sudden influx of spam
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-04-12 18:20:50

I see you've fixed it now. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=635&start=0#p3467
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: this sudden influx of spam
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-04-12 22:57:34

I've only seen two spam posts, and I've blocked both and let the forum delete the posts. I'm seeing the same thing happen at my other forum. Most likely there's a forum list out there that just got "updated".

When we moved to this server, I found that it's running an obsolete Fedora Core version which no longer is supported by any YUM repositories. There is an Apache module that's required for doing real-time graphics, and it's not installed. I had to disable the forum's "CAPTCHA" otherwise new sign-ups would fail entirely. I'll have to see about manually installing whatever the module was, which will take a little time and research.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=635&start=0#p3468
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: this sudden influx of spam
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-04-12 23:06:56

Hmm. When I enabled it after the server move, it was throwing an error. Maybe it was fixed in this updated version. Anyway, I see it's working now, but it's the "plain" version. The better version is more reliable, but it requires whatever that graphics module is that I can't remember the name... We'll see how this goes, anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=635&start=0#p3469
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: this sudden influx of spam
User: radix / DateTime: 2009-04-12 23:34:34

Thanks for the quick response, Merk and rioshin.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=635&start=0#p3490
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: this sudden influx of spam
User: Schilcote / DateTime: 2009-04-13 05:54:11

Well, it isn't working. I hope this place dosn't go under from spambots. I just got here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=635&start=0#p3510
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: this sudden influx of spam
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-04-13 07:28:13

[quote="Schilcote"]I hope this place dosn't go under from spambots. I just got here.[/quote]Anyway, I'll have to see about installing the Apache module that allows for the better CAPTCHA. They can script around the plain one, plus real people do sometimes create the spammer accounts. There are "services" for it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=676&start=0#p3511
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Narrative experimentation
User: radix / DateTime: 2009-04-13 11:08:44

Hi all. I'm interested in the ability of games to tell deep and engaging stories, and how we can tell stories with games in ways that are completely different from traditional forms. So I've lately been trying to steep myself in games which do this.

One such game is [url=http://distractionware.com/blog/?p=759]Judith, by Terry Cavanagh and Stephen Lavelle[/url], which was just released today. I've decided to do something of an analysis of the game. I strongly suggest that you play the game before reading this: it's a very short play, and requires no hand-eye coordination. It runs on Windows, OS-X, and Linux (with Wine).

[spoiler]Judith has an unusual narrative structure for a video game. In fact, it's a bit confusing at first: the switch to a different perspective character is a bit jarring, and there's no explicit communication that it's happening. But I think this is a well-crafted confusion. It happens several times, and there are some cues - some text color changes, and there's a fading effect, but the first or second time you see this shift it's not clear what those cues mean. It's an interesting decision on the part of the developers that all the dialog is unadorned: there is no "I say," "She says," around the dialogue, and the only indication that someone different is speaking is that the color of the text changes - there is never an explicit indication of which color represents which person; we just figure that out from context. Anyway, it soon becomes clear that you're controlling two different characters - an adulterous man on a tryst with his adulterous lover in an abandoned house, and a woman who lived in that house with her husband long ago (the latter seeming to be a reference to Blue Beard).

This game doesn't really have any choices in it, although it may seem it does at first. All doors but one are always locked, and the one unlocked door is always the only way to progress the plot. At first the game looks open and there is some sense of confusion - we don't know who these characters are, we don't know what exactly we should be doing, and we don't know why we're switching perspectives. But after a couple of these perspective switches, we know exactly what to do; we know the rhythm of the narrative. We're consistently switching back and forth between the present man and the past woman. Every day the woman wakes up, explores her husband's secret dungeons, and goes to bed. Between each of these days, our present man makes progress in the search for his lover.

Both of these plots end in reaching the same room, but one is chilling and another is a great relief. The woman (who at this point I felt was far too naive, but I was still sympathetic) learns her husband's final and terrible secret, while the man is reunited with his lover. One moment we're horrified, but the next we're relieved.

This game shows that something with very limited player agency and with effectively no choice can still present an intriguing experience. But why does this need to be a game, if it's linear? Why not just make an animated movie? Well, let's see.

First, the simple fact that we're controlling the characters may increase our sympathy with them. It's certainly not true that simply controlling a character makes us sympathetic to him, as many games with horrible protagonists have shown us, but that's not to say that our interest in that character won't be increased at all by our controlling them. [i]I[/i] am the man looking for his lover, [i]I[/i] am the woman learning her husband's horrible secrets. When I learned about the prisoner for the first time, for a moment I reacted: jesus, what should I do? This is too much for me! And so I "ran" (that is, very purposefully pressed my arrow keys) out of the dungeon, momentarily relieved to have the door close.

I think another reason that this works so well as a game may lie in another idea which I've been trying to crystallize lately. It has to do with explicitly [i]limiting[/i] player agency. This comes up in a very interesting way when we, as the woman, approach the dagger in the husband's armory. For every interaction in the game, there is a simple sentence which appears when the action is possible; most often it's something like "Open Door" or "Take Necklace". But when we approach the dagger, the action text is "Take dagger and kill the prisoner". I had an interesting reaction to this when I saw it -- at first, some sort of surprise. Then I thought, well, what else would I do with the dagger? I wasn't even thinking about killing the prisoner as I approached the dagger; it was just an item in the room and I wanted to approach it, examine it, take it, and see what I could do with it. When we interact with the dagger, our character automatically walks down the hall to the prisoner and kills him, in what I suppose should be called a cutscene. Why did the developers do it this way? Why not just allow us to take the dagger, and if we choose (even if there is no actual choice in order to advance the plot), walk down the hall and have the option to "Kill prisoner with dagger"? I'm not really sure; maybe they just decided that the player might not realize that they should be killing the prisoner with it. Perhaps the message is: This is What Happens. There is nothing else you can do; you must accept what needs to be done and you must deal with the consequences. What's happening here is that the author is *limiting* our agency. He's preventing us from carrying out the actions we want to do at a fine-grained level, and instead giving us a simple option. I think limiting agency can be a very important part of developing immersive games, but the way it's used here is even more interesting, as if it's actually reinforcing a thematic point. Or maybe it was a completely arbitrary decision. :-) Regardless, I think that this is something unique to games. It may seem like it's just taking this particular game closer to the experience of the movie, but the interesting thing is that it's happening in the context of greater agency, and so it's possible to reduce this agency in certain parts of the game, and if it's done with finesse, it can help to get a point across or at least evoke some interesting emotion in the player.[/spoiler]

So how is this relevant to IF? How can we give these properties to our games, and what will and won't work in the context of our genre? How can we make linear IF that doesn't feel claustrophobic and overly limiting? 

I could go on and try to answer those questions, but I've been writing for long enough, so I think I'll just end with that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=613&start=0#p3515
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Starting off...
User: Superstar Kenneth / DateTime: 2009-04-13 22:38:30

Thank you for the help!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=676&start=0#p3516
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Narrative experimentation
User: George / DateTime: 2009-04-13 22:53:19

I was able to play this tonight, and I've just finished reading [url=http://tigsource.com/articles/2009/04/13/judith#comments]the comments on the TIGSource front page[/url]. With the caveat that I greatly enjoy Terry's and increpare's other games, I have mixed feelings about taking the mechanics of [b]Judith [/b]that you talk about and applying them to IF, for a couple of reasons. 

First, IF already has done linear narrative with limited (and an elastic sense of) player agency, and done it well; the examples almost are too numerous to list. However this is a fairly new idea in the kinds of genres that games like [b]Judith [/b](or [b]Passage[/b], [b]Passages[/b], [b]Don't Look Back[/b], etc.) are borrowing their mechanics from -- FPSs, sidescrollers, platformers and so on. I think it feels fresh and different partly because these games are subverting the traditional expectations of those genres. But I feel it would be a mistake to think what makes [b]Judith [/b]feel fresh and different would also make IF feel the same. 

The second reason follows from the first, really -- if new ground is retread with old concepts, even if they're in a different vehicle, I don't think IF will be going in any new directions. I'm not one who [i]only [/i]wants to go new places, but I definitely enjoy doing so ;D. 

However to go back a little on my previous comment, I do think a concept of limiting a player's [i]specific [/i]agency can work with IF in some new ways that haven't been explored a great deal until recently. I say specific to contrast it with a general concept of agency, the choices the player has at a particular moment. By specific I mean narrowing down those choices to a small number of verbs relevant to and intrinsically tied into the work itself, verbs which by their very presence in the work reinforce the nature of the work itself. By expanding and limiting that specific agency I think you could do some interesting things.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=610&start=0#p3517
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Interesting (and possibly original) game mechanism
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-04-14 06:49:00

[quote="Schilcote"]Is this a good idea[/quote]
Well, it's an idea.  There's certainly nothing wrong with it.  What really matters is what you do with it - how you flesh it out and incorporate it into a game.

[quote="Schilcote"]and has it been done before?[/quote]
[url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Suspended]Suspended[/url], perhaps?  Or [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradroid]Paradroid[/url].  And then there's the [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=tag:multiple%20protagonists]multiple protagonists[/url] tag at the IFDB.

I think the potential for multiple PCs that you can switch between at will is still largely untapped, really.  But again, I think that what's more important than whether you're braving new ground is whether you actually come up with a fun and/or compelling game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=0#p3519
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: AlanDeSmet / DateTime: 2009-04-14 17:55:03

It depends on your phone.  If you have an iPhone, check the App Store for "Frotz", which will play z-code/z-machine games.  iPhone Frotz is particularly good since it comes with some good games and you can download more directly on it. If you have a Palm based phone (mostly the Treos), I like [url=http://cellardoor.sourceforge.net/]CellarDoor[/url], but getting games onto it is a little bit of work.  Other phones, I don't know.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=258&start=0#p3520
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Play a tutorial game instead of reading some boring text!!
User: Schilcote / DateTime: 2009-04-14 20:27:56

No leetspeak/lolspeak/chatspeak will be permitted by mein grammar furer (me). Otherwise, I will make fun of your spelling, your grammar, and anything else. Just the way I am.

But seriously, type your post in word, then copy it from word and paste it into the post box. It will make you easier to understand, and therefore easier to help. Also, I will not make fun of your grammar.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=676&start=0#p3521
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Narrative experimentation
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-04-15 06:45:17

As George said, IF has already explored limited player agency - whether it's in the likes of Rameses and Photopia, or, at the logical extreme, in CYOA games.  I think why Judith works so well is that it places this limited interaction at the narrative level within a 3D environment that you can explore physically (only, you know, a virtual kind of physicality).

To me, the potential for limiting player agency in IF should be more about preventing people being flummoxed and undercut by the immense number of syntactically valid commands.  Ideally, I'd even like to see Judith kind of reversed in a game with text input and output: letting you explore the narrative with a nice amount of freedom, while the physical concerns of geography and action are handled automatically.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=676&start=0#p3541
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Narrative experimentation
User: radix / DateTime: 2009-04-15 08:48:57

So yeah, the thing that Judith does relies on the list of verbs or displaying the possible action that is mostly an adventure/RPG game thing these days. A kind of, "surprise! you weren't expecting this option to be here, were you?". Although, there are definitely some opportunities for this kind of thing in IF...

It's interesting to me that elements of game UI that are purely utilitarian at first can become dramatic parts of the narrative if you twist them at certain parts of the game. One extreme example of this in IF is Shrapnel, where even the main UI element of IF - text printed on a screen - is distorted as you play. The status bar and prompt could also be fun to play with, and I'm sure other games have done so. Maybe the "topics suggested" thing that I've seen TADS games use (like your Dead Like Ants game, Pacian) could also be used to "surprise" the player this way. "You could talk about her wings, herself, your sisters, or your crushing emotional despair at never having been loved by your mother." :-)

The thing at the end of Photopia was pretty cool, and I thought it was kinda nifty that he decided to describe the actions that the character does in terms of command prompts, but essentially that was just a cut-scene. I think a cooler example of this player agency stuff is in (you guessed it, a Cadre game) <a class="postlink" href="http://adamcadre.livejournal.com/114784.html">http://adamcadre.livejournal.com/114784.html</a> . Granted, this is just a jokey 5-minute game in response to a comment someone made on his blog, but I think it's a better example of manipulating player agency than Photopia, since the manipulation seems more "connected" to the player's commands.

Speaking of players being flummoxed by vocabulary: I was thinking the other day about how neat it would be to write an IF game where the only verbs are >USE, >JUMP OVER/ON, and >TALK TO (in addition to the basic movement verbs. although...) I'm going to bet that there's been a Mario parody done in IF already. :-)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=676&start=0#p3542
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Narrative experimentation
User: radix / DateTime: 2009-04-15 08:55:23

Also, I should apologize for the last few sentences in my original post. I had written up the entire thing for my blog or a forum, but at the last minute decided to post it here. "Oh, I need to relate this to IF somehow." And so my tired mind produced those questions. I didn't mean to imply that limited player agency and linear plot hasn't been done in IF; I know very well that it has, since my main interest as both a player and a writer has been in linear, story-strong IF.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=700&start=0#p3544
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Please help
User: Schilcote / DateTime: 2009-04-15 19:23:43

For starters, this has nothing to do with the discussion of IF. Infact, this has absolutely NOTHING to do with IF at all! YOU ARE ON THE WRONG BLOODY WEBSITE!

Secondly, welcome to the forums.

Thirdly, it could possibly be your power supply. I'm not really that good with the inside of computers, I mostly do software. However, if you google "Tech Support forums" or, even better, go to your local Best Buy and go to the Geek Squad desk, they will hook you up.

Fourthly, when you end an interogative, you place a question mark (?) not a period or full stop (.).

And lastly, typing in ALL CAPS and then a long string of exclamation points is not a good way to call attention to your problem. Spelling please as pleazz is not good either.

I hope you find the solutions to your problems, but this is not the correct place for the type of problem you have. If you have anything IF related to say, then you are welcome to say it.

Sincerely,
Schilcote

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=700&start=0#p3565
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Please help
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-04-16 07:13:41

You're a good sport! But that was a spam post. The link to "cheap laptops" at the bottom gave it away. I went ahead and deleted the user and his posts.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=635&start=10#p3566
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: this sudden influx of spam
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-04-16 18:59:24

I'm not going to bother with getting GD for PHP set up (that's the missing module I couldn't remember). Supposedly, it has been cracked too. For now, I've just done a quick hack to the board so you actually have to read the CAPTCHA instructions when you sign up (or customize the bot to read it -- which is unlikely since these things are general-use bots). I'll probably have to re-do it each time a board update comes out, but I've heard that the next version of PHPBB3 may have some new anti-spam options.

Anyway, I suspect this'll be the end of most of the spam. But we'll see.

For future reference, I have it show an "X" at the start of the CAPTCHA graphic, even though it's not really part of the code. This amounted to some small changes in the scripts (part of which is just to offset the image a little, which probably doesn't help at all, but made me feel better).

In /includes/ucp/ucp_confirm.php:
Change this: $captcha->execute($row['code'], $row['seed']);
To this: $captcha->execute("X".$row['code'], $row['seed']);

In /includes/captcha/captcha_non_gd.php:
Change this: var $width = 320;
And this: var $height = 50;
To this: var $width = 350;
And this: var $height = 60;

In /language/en/common.php:
Basically, locate this section and change the two messages to this:
'CONFIRM_CODE_EXPLAIN'  => 'Enter the code exactly as it appears, but <B><FONT COLOR="#C00000">leave off the leading "X"</FONT></B>. All letters are case insensitive, there is no zero.',
'CONFIRM_CODE_WRONG'    => 'The confirmation code you entered was incorrect. Remember to leave off the leading "X".',

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=635&start=10#p3567
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: this sudden influx of spam
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-04-16 19:08:33

Great, thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=613&start=0#p3568
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Starting off...
User: rotter / DateTime: 2009-04-18 11:16:17

And if you do not take to programming you could alway look at [url=http://www.adrift.org.uk/cgi/new/adrift.cgi]ADRIFT[/url] which is a popular alternative.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=50#p3569
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Retro / DateTime: 2009-04-19 12:45:06

Hello,

I also don't want to introduce my real self. So far all which is known about me is my real name, my age (32) and that I'm the programmer of the Node-X system for CYOA/multiple-choice IF which is permanently under development since 2007. I like IF and classic point&click adventure games (e.g. Zak McKracken, Maniac Mansion 1-2, Monkey Island series), but I'm also a huge fan of 3D-shooters with a rich collection of original titles from classic DOOM to F.E.A.R. 2 - Project Origin. That's it.

Emilian

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=721&start=0#p3570
Forum: Competitions / Subject: IFComp 2009: Node-X distribution (Win32, Linux), FAQ
User: Retro / DateTime: 2009-04-19 17:48:59

Hi,

I wondered if there's a section in the comp under which I can submit my own platform-independent games for my interpreter, so I don't have to include the interpreter each time.

This question is relevant, because the latest version of the Node-X interpreter is not Windows-only anymore. Node-X now also comes with a *nix executable, so Linux users don't have to run my interpreter in Wine or other Win32-emulators. Windows-Users can run the EXE as usual. Both, the Win32 and Linux versions are the same program, but for different systems. You got it.

If I take part in this year's comp, how should I submit my Node-X games?

Possible ways I can think of:

[list]pack the interpreter's Win32 and Linux executables in a zip-file, add the gamefile itself (name.nx1) and submit/upload everything to the "Windows Games" section of the IFComp (could be confusing, because it's not Windows-only)

pack only the gamefile (name.nx1) in a zip, submit it to the IFComp in "other games" or whatever section (which one?) and add a readme-file with info where players/judges can download the interpreter for their individual system (either Win32, Linux or MacOSX executable) to be able to run the gamefile (this way seems reasonable to me)[/list:u]

Which way should it be?

[b]Please note that the Node-X interpreter is a standalone application (such as Z-Code and Glulx interpreters, for example) which will be released before the competition for people to run Node-X gamefiles released by me or other authors in the future. It will not include any new competition games, thus IFComp rule ("submitted entries are not allowed to be released before the comp") is preserved.[/b] 

Emilian

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=721&start=0#p3571
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp: other platform-independent game formats
User: radix / DateTime: 2009-04-19 19:44:46

The comp allows games submitted for any platform. See [url=http://www.ifcomp.org/comp08/games.html]2008's entries[/url], for example -- there was even an Alan game that year.  If your game isn't Windows-only, don't submit it as a Windows game; submit it as a Node-X game, and make sure people know where they can get a Node-X interpreter (putting that information in the README file is a good idea).

The IFComp administrators also prepare a package of all the necessary interpreters for Windows, as well as a package of all the games plus all the interpreters for Windows. So if you point them at your interpreter I'm sure they'll include it in those packages. And people on non-Windows machines can get the interpreter from wherever it's officially hosted.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=721&start=0#p3572
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp: other platform-independent game formats
User: Retro / DateTime: 2009-04-20 13:48:29

Alright, I will do that. Thanks.

The admins can include the Win32-version of the interpreter in their package and put the game file under a section called "Node-X Games", "Other Games" or even "Platform-independent Games" on their IFComp website, so users know what it is. People on Linux machines will find a seperate download link for the interpreter in my readme file.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=722&start=0#p3573
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Child of an object
User: Kivie / DateTime: 2009-04-22 12:10:22

Is there an I7 equivalent to the I6 function, child(object), which returns the first object that is inside the given object?

To put this in context, I am setting up the I7 equivalent of something like this:
[code]
if (~~(noun provides friends)) rfalse;
f = child(second);
len = noun.#friends/WORDSIZE;
for (i=0:i<len:i++) {
	if (noun.&friends-->i == 0) {
		noun.&friends-->i = f;
		break;
	}
}
remove f;
[/code]

The following seems to work:
[code]
	if the noun does not provide the property friends, stop; [Actually I want it to continue with the normal rule for this action.]
	add a random thing which is in the second noun to the friends of the noun;
	let F be a random thing in the second noun;
	remove F from play;
[/code]
I just can't accept that "random thing which is in the second noun" is the concisest way to get a child of the second.

And incidentally, does anyone know of an Inform 6 to Inform 7 comparison chart or something that shows the I7 equivalents of I6 stuff?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=586&start=0#p3574
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Endling Archive (a Glulx project)
User: Kivie / DateTime: 2009-04-22 13:54:25

It says page not found...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=586&start=0#p3575
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Endling Archive (a Glulx project)
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-04-22 18:28:50

Same for me.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=722&start=0#p3576
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Child of an object
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-04-22 18:59:51

[quote="Kivie"]I just can't accept that "random thing which is in the second noun" is the concisest way to get a child of the second.[/quote]
As far as I know, it's the only way to do this at the moment. Occasionally someone on the newsgroups is tripped up by this and complains it's unintuitive. I have a vague idea that it's on Graham's list of things to improve, but I doubt it's a high priority.

[quote="Kivie"]And incidentally, does anyone know of an Inform 6 to Inform 7 comparison chart or something that shows the I7 equivalents of I6 stuff?[/quote]
There's Emily Short's [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/writing-if/inform-7/i6-entry-points-translated/]I6 Entry Points, Translated[/url]. (It doesn't include "child", but I expect she'd be open to feedback.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=586&start=0#p3577
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Endling Archive (a Glulx project)
User: radix / DateTime: 2009-04-22 19:46:15

It's available on the IFDB.

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ms15e48egclycv3">http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ms15e48egclycv3</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=586&start=0#p3578
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Endling Archive (a Glulx project)
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2009-04-22 19:47:09

Sorry, folks. I remodeled my website and invalidated the link. I've placed a more current link in my original post.

Peace,
Kazuki Mishima

Edit: Radix beat me to this post by several seconds....  [emote]:oops:[/emote]

P.S.: Incidentally, I'm making pseudo-sequal to this as an experimental "visual novel" using [url=http://renpy.org/]Ren'Py[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=723&start=0#p3579
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7 on Pocket PCs?
User: gilbertgea / DateTime: 2009-04-22 21:31:39

Greetings all,

Just a brief technical question: can Inform 7 be installed and run on a pocket PC?

Thanks,

Gilbert

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=722&start=0#p3580
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Child of an object
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-04-23 07:23:21

[quote="Emerald"][quote="Kivie"]I just can't accept that "random thing which is in the second noun" is the concisest way to get a child of the second.[/quote]
...I have a vague idea that it's on Graham's list of things to improve...[/quote]
And it is; it's in the [url=http://inform7.com/learn/documents/April2009Document.txt]new consultation document[/url], Programming point 2.

[quote](Pr.2) -- A better way to refer to a single item with a given
specification, in a situation where it's known that it must be the only
one. At present "a random..." is sometimes used for this, so for instance:

[code]try inserting the item into a random pocket that is part of the garment;[/code]

Here the author knows that the garment has exactly one pocket, and is
really trying to say "the pocket which is a part of this particular
garment" - no actual randomness is really involved, and the source text is
therefore misleading to read.

Various alternatives are proposed. At the moment, the one we like best is
to use articles more naturally here, so that

[code]try inserting the item into the pocket that is part of the clothing.[/code]

...would assert that there is only one such pocket, and throw a run-time
problem message if that proves to be false. This would be quite difficult
for us to implement; we're interested in investigating it in the long term
but make no promises.[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=722&start=0#p3581
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Child of an object
User: Kivie / DateTime: 2009-04-23 08:55:42

Thank you very much. Emily Short's article looks very useful.

I really hope that Programming point 2 is addressed. This also means that the order of children of an object is irrelevant in I7. That is, in I6, child(object) would return the object most recently put into the object, which also generally corresponded to the object that would be listed first in a room description.

It looks like I might have lots of Inform 7 questions (I'm sorry to say), the likes of which do seem to be flooding the conversation channels of IF!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=722&start=0#p3582
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Child of an object
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-04-23 09:27:09

[quote="Kivie"]I really hope that Programming point 2 is addressed.[/quote]
Well, a major reason for the consultation document is to get people's opinions on proposed changes (and rejected ideas). If this is important to you, go ahead and email Graham some feedback.

[quote="Kivie"]This also means that the order of children of an object is irrelevant in I7. That is, in I6, child(object) would return the object most recently put into the object, which also generally corresponded to the object that would be listed first in a room description.[/quote]
If you really want the last item put into the container, not just any item, you can do this:
[code]let toylist be the list of things in the toybox;
if the number of entries in toylist is not 0:
	let last item be entry 1 of toylist;[/code]
Have a look at chapter 20 of the manual, particularly sections 7 (Lists of values matching a description) and 9 (Accessing entries in a list).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=722&start=0#p3583
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Child of an object
User: Kivie / DateTime: 2009-04-23 11:33:43

Thanks for your help. The child feature isn't desperately important to me; I just assumed there'd be a better solution. It seems generally that some things are more concise in I7 than in I6 and some things aren't.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=723&start=0#p3584
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 on Pocket PCs?
User: Kivie / DateTime: 2009-04-23 11:36:25

The Inform development environment only runs on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Solaris. Games made with Inform 7 can be played on many more systems, though, including Pocket PC. There will probably be interpreters for Pocket PC for both the Z-machine and Glulx, which are the two virtual machines that interpret story files. At the very least, Frotz has a Pocket PC version.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=724&start=0#p3585
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Multiple kinds not allowed
User: Kivie / DateTime: 2009-04-24 05:47:40

This isn't part of a game I'm actually making - it's just a simpler example of a problem I ran into.
[code]An item for sale is a kind of thing. A price tag is a kind of thing. A price tag is part of every item for sale.
A flamingo is an item for sale. An antique desk is an item for sale. On the desk is a vase. The vase is an item for sale.[/code]
I think you can see the problem here. Since the desk is a supporter, it cannot also be an item for sale, but I obviously don't want all items for sale (like a flamingo) to be supporters, neither do I want all supporters to be for sale. And a similar problem would arise if I wanted the vase to be a container, as it should be.

And what if I wanted to take this further:
[code]An item for sale is a kind of thing. A price tag is a kind of thing. A price tag is part of every item for sale.
A Persian piece is a kind of thing. Understand "Persian" or "Iranian" as a Persian piece. Instead of buying a Persian piece, say "The Persian style doesn't appeal to you.".
A flamingo is an item for sale.
A rug and a statue are Persian pieces. The rug and the statue are items for sale.[/code]

Again, Persian piece and item for sale are incompatible. I could conceivably want a Persian vase for sale, meaning I'd need it to be a container, an item for sale [i]and[/i] a Persian piece. Am I missing something obvious?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=0#p3586
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: farvardin / DateTime: 2009-04-24 06:14:52

for google android based phone (like htc dream), there is twisty : <a class="postlink" href="http://code.google.com/p/twisty/">http://code.google.com/p/twisty/</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=725&start=0#p3587
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: [linux livecd] Esclinux
User: farvardin / DateTime: 2009-04-24 06:19:36

Esclinux is a linux x86 live system which focus on interactive fiction interpreters and compilers. 
 
The homepage is located at: 
 
<a class="postlink" href="http://esclinux.tk">http://esclinux.tk</a>  
 
The iso is currently hosted on a free download service, until a more advanced version will out (therefore I need feedbacks from you): 
 
<a class="postlink" href="http://dl.free.fr/jDJjhupXj">http://dl.free.fr/jDJjhupXj</a> 
 
The md5 for checking the iso is: 47d8acc1a0f070370481cf562ca054e7 esclinux_gnome21042009.iso 
 
What is new: 
 
        - It's based on Archlinux instead of Debian now. Archlinux is a rolling 
 release distribution, always up to date. Therefore this version is 
 providing recent and updated unix technologies. 
         - Gnome 2.26 
         - better looking than before (Sun Nimbus icons and desktop appearence, 
 and some special icons for IF projects and files) 
         - Xorg 1.6 
         - compiz for 3D desktop effects. 
         - current version of gnome-Inform 7 (5Z71) 
         - current version of gargoyle (garglk) 
         - the previous version of inform 7 is kept for the command line 
 program, "just in case you need it" 
         - All the current existing extensions are provided. (some may not be 
 compatible with inform 5Z71) 
         - JACL, Tads, Hugo, Alan 
         - svn tools to work on your projects online and share it with others 
 
        - It can be installed on an usb key using the unetbootin tool, and 
 therefore can be launched from usb. The system is very fast and 
 responsive on this kind of media, and you can save your session when 
 shutting down the computer. 
 
It's more Inform oriented, but users of other systems (tads 2 & 3, hugo, alan, jacl) should contact me if they want I improve the support for their preferred system. 
 
More informations, last updates and basic instructions are on the [url=http://esclinux.tk]homepage[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=724&start=0#p3588
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Multiple kinds not allowed
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-04-24 06:42:59

Yes, the lack of multiple inheritance can be a nuisance at times but since you're just tracking simple properties you can just do:

[code]A thing can be for sale. A thing is usually not for sale.
A thing can be Persian. A thing is usually not Persian. Understand "persian" and "iranian" as a thing when the item described is Persian.

The antique desk is for sale. The rug is for sale and Persian.

Instead of buying a Persian thing, say "The Persian style doesn't appeal to you."[/code]
See chapter 4.6. in the manual.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=724&start=0#p3589
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Multiple kinds not allowed
User: Kivie / DateTime: 2009-04-24 06:57:52

Ah, thank you. I did suspect that that could be a solution but I happened to have got the syntax wrong. But what about "A price tag is part of every for sale thing." That doesn't work. Apparently 'every' can only be used with kinds. Is there a way to get around that?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=724&start=0#p3590
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Multiple kinds not allowed
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2009-04-24 12:00:21

[quote="Kivie"]Ah, thank you. I did suspect that that could be a solution but I happened to have got the syntax wrong. But what about "A price tag is part of every for sale thing." That doesn't work. Apparently 'every' can only be used with kinds. Is there a way to get around that?[/quote]

Sort of. You can create a set amount of price tags off-stage, and then:

[code]When play begins:
   repeat with item running through things for sale:
      now a random off-stage price tag is part of the item.[/code]

But this means you have to keep track of how many for-sale items you create and make sure you have enough price tags to go around.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=726&start=0#p3591
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Displaying Pictures
User: achilleez13 / DateTime: 2009-04-24 12:14:08

Hi all,
   I'm a complete noob at Inform 7,can anyone please give me a clear description of how to implement images into a story? I've managed to get the images I want into the right place so the program knows they are there( they are listed in content) but it's where to place the display instruction that is confusing me.As in :-

display the Figure of Woodlands;

returns 

Problem. You wrote 'display the Figure of Woodlands'  : but I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with, so I am ignoring this sentence altogether. 

Any help would be much appreciated and thanks in advance for any answers.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=726&start=0#p3592
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Displaying Pictures
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-04-24 14:55:42

Hi and welcome to the forum!  [emote]:)[/emote] 

"Display the figure of..." is a [i]phrase[/i] like "if... then", or "say 'blah...'"; it is not a complete statement in and of itself. You need to give inform some context as to when you want the phrase to apply, as in:[code]When play begins:
	display the Figure of the Woodlands.

After looking in the Spooky Forest:
	display the Figure of the Scary Tree, one time only.

After examining the pocketwatch:
	display the figure of the pocketwatch;
	continue the action.[/code]Note that you might want to use "continue the action" when using "after" rules, since by default, they end the action before any report rules fire. It usually doesn't matter in the case of "examining" or "looking" since there aren't any "report" rules by default, but it's something to be aware of for the other actions.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=724&start=0#p3593
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Multiple kinds not allowed
User: Kivie / DateTime: 2009-04-24 16:30:43

Hmm, OK. Thanks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=727&start=0#p3594
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Maze - Multiple Rooms, Same Name
User: wolverine88001 / DateTime: 2009-04-25 02:13:24

Alright. I'm working on a game with a maze in it. I want it to really be confusing and have the room name pop up the same as long as they are inside the maze. Such as, Maze Room #1 is the name of the room inside the code, however, in the game, it should show up as Maze. Do I need to write some kind of switch so that when they enter the maze, the room name on the status bar stays the same and when they leave, it goes back to being normal, or is there an extension that I can use for this?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=727&start=0#p3595
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Maze - Multiple Rooms, Same Name
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-04-25 03:07:00

Which development system are you using? Inform 7?

(Technical questions like this one should really be posted on the board for the development system you're using; so if you're using Inform 7, you should post questions like these on the Inform Development board.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=727&start=0#p3596
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Maze - Multiple Rooms, Same Name
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-04-25 03:27:54

It's possible to do what you want in pretty much every development system but please, please reconsider making a maze. Everybody hates mazes. Especially confusing ones.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=723&start=0#p3597
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 on Pocket PCs?
User: gilbertgea / DateTime: 2009-04-25 03:42:14

Thanks Kivie.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=728&start=0#p3598
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: World Conquest: a kind of RPG
User: Kivie / DateTime: 2009-04-25 05:35:17

I recently finished [url=http://www.corfizz.com/#WorldConquest%20%5B%5BLost%20in%20Translation%5D%5D%20%5B%5BIcelandic%20Conquest%5D%5D]"World Conquest"[/url], consisting, in fact, of two games, both played on a political map of the world. That's right - you can navigate between all the countries of the world using compass directions, and even see the country's flag if your interpreter supports images (so I hope you can appreciate how long it took me to implement!). Although it is implemented in Inform 6 (Glulx), the game is probably better thought of as a text-based RPG.

"Lost in Translation" is the larger of the two games. In it, you have to translate texts by moving between countries that speak the relevant languages, e.g. translating from German to Russian is as simple as moving from Germany through Poland to Russia. You get points from the translations, with which you can learn the languages of the world. The game doubles up, therefore, as a queryable database of 292 of the world's languages (the ones with more than ~1.5 million speakers).

"Icelandic Conquest" is simpler: you just have to get Iceland to take over the world. Iceland has no army of its own, so the method of doing this is to plant the Icelandic flag in a country. You get flags by making deliveries across the globe (testing your geographical awareness!) - and you get more flags for making quicker deliveries.

In addition to these games there is also a "pure exploration" mode for travelling the world without pressure, as well as a few mini-games (quizzes).

If this sounds intriguing, do try the game(s) out and do submit bug reports (though I might not get around to fixing the bugs for a while). [emote]:)[/emote]

I wonder if there are other experiments with RPG-like games implemented with IF authoring systems?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=726&start=0#p3599
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Displaying Pictures
User: achilleez13 / DateTime: 2009-04-25 07:16:44

Many thanks for your help. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=729&start=0#p3600
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Same Name, Different Room
User: wolverine88001 / DateTime: 2009-04-25 17:49:15

Alright. Well, I'm using I7 and have already been informed that everyone hates mazes. Well, thankfully the layout of my maze is going to be relatively simple. Only a few rooms. However, I need to try and figure out how to make a maze with rooms like Maze 1 and Maze 2 and Maze 3 and then have them show up in the status bar as Maze, Maze and Maze instead of Maze 1, etc.

If someone knows how to do this, please help. I have been through the manual and haven't been able to find anything in regards to directly manipulating the status bar or giving my rooms alias names or anything like that.

Thanks for any help that people might be able to provide. [emote]:)[/emote]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Alright. I hate replying to my own posts so I just edit...

Anyway, I was going through the inform cookbook and found the Bee Chamber example. Looks like something I should play with. Making a Maze rule or something similar to it that states how all the Maze rooms are to work, then generate the rooms and then start working on them in the layout of the map. I think I can do this, however, as usual, I'm open for suggestions or other ideas. [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=729&start=0#p3601
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Same Name, Different Room
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-04-25 18:24:05

All you have to do is change the printed name of each room to "Maze", like so:
[code]The printed name of Maze 1 is "Maze".[/code]

This is the simplest, most concise way of doing it:
[code]A maze-room is a kind of room.
The printed name of a maze-room is "Maze".

Maze 1 is a maze-room.
Maze 2 is a maze-room. It is south of Maze 1.
Maze 3 is a maze-room. It is east of Maze 2.

Test me with "s / e".[/code]

If you want your maze rooms to all have the same description as well, you can add:
[code]The description of a maze-room is "You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=729&start=0#p3602
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Same Name, Different Room
User: wolverine88001 / DateTime: 2009-04-25 20:03:38

[quote="Emerald"]All you have to do is change the printed name of each room to "Maze", like so:
[code]The printed name of Maze 1 is "Maze".[/code]

This is the simplest, most concise way of doing it:
[code]A maze-room is a kind of room.
The printed name of a maze-room is "Maze".

Maze 1 is a maze-room.
Maze 2 is a maze-room. It is south of Maze 1.
Maze 3 is a maze-room. It is east of Maze 2.

Test me with "s / e".[/code]

If you want your maze rooms to all have the same description as well, you can add:
[code]The description of a maze-room is "You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike."[/code][/quote]

Thank you many much, Emerald. I was going to try and write something very similar to that thanks to the Bee Hive example in the cookbook. [emote]:)[/emote] Now to try and get some more work done on this game of mine and possibly bump it up to revision 2 finally. [emote];)[/emote] Thanks again, Emerald. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=730&start=0#p3603
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: An Act of Murder - Help Needed
User: Hogwash / DateTime: 2009-04-26 17:44:11

Hello all. I am in desperate need of a solution for [i]An Act of Murder[/i] by Christopher Huang.  I know parts are randomised, but I hope that someone out there will know what I need to do. I called the Chief Inspector, and have told him as much as I can and thought that I had eliminated everyone, but still don't know what to do.  Here is where my game stands:

[spoiler]Murder weapon is blood-stained poker.  Cedric has no motive for murder due to blackmail letter.  Alex and Deborah both have alibis at time of death.  Benedict did not know about secret passage where murder weapon was hidden.  Elinor has motive and ability to use murder weapon[/spoiler]

I have told Inspector Duffy eveything I know and it seems that four of the five suspects have been eliminated but I still can't win.  If I try to arrest the remaining suspect, they are found not guilty on account of there being one piece of evidence missing.

What have I missed out?  Thanks in advance, this is really, really bugging me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=730&start=0#p3604
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: An Act of Murder - Help Needed
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-04-26 20:11:42

Did built-in [b]>HELP[/b] prove unhelpful? It's been a while since I played, and glancing at my transcript doesn't make it clear what you might be missing. You definitely have to have something that proves the motive, and something that proves no alibi.

Be sure you really do tell Duffy everything. Do things like >Tell Chief About Elenor's Statement, >Tell Chief About Body Position, >Tell Chief About Tide Table, etc. Eventually, he should tell you that you have enough evidence to make the arrest. Until then, it won't work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=731&start=0#p3605
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Wierd reactions...
User: wolverine88001 / DateTime: 2009-04-27 20:40:35

Alright. Is it just me or is there some sort of specific method for developing the world? (I'm just frustrated cause I'm getting wierd reactions from I7 all of a sudden) I mean, I have a pile of leaves in the middle of the forest, and I described the pile of leaves as "lying on the ground is a pile of leaves". However, when I run the game, I get "Lying on the ground is a pile of leaves" followed a paragraph later by "There is a pile of leaves here". I have had this problem many times and have never found a solution for it, outside of just starting my code over from scratch, but this takes forever when you are 20+ rooms in size. [emote]:([/emote]

Has anyone else had wierd issues like this? Or how about, the description for room 1 is "blah blah" followed a paragraph later by the description of the pile of leaves is "blah blah" and then you go to compile and it tells you that the description for room 1 is blah blah and cannot be overriden by the description of the pile of leaves which are in room 1? I don't know if this makes any sense to anyone else, but it sure the heck don't make no sense to me. [emote]:([/emote]

help?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=731&start=0#p3606
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Wierd reactions...
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-04-28 05:06:44

It's hard to say what's going wrong without seeing your code, or at least having more information. A couple of things that I can think of, off the top of my head: Do you create the pile of leaves by using the phrase "called a pile of leaves", e.g. "A thing called a pile of leaves in the Forest"? If you do, and if you have already referred to the pile of leaves earlier in your code, then Inform might be creating two piles of leaves. Do you have any "for writing a paragraph about" rules (or any other rules that control whether the pile of leaves is mentioned)? If you do, then something might going wrong there. Apart from that, I can't really say. Maybe someone else - with more experience with I7 than I have - has some more ideas.

Can you come up with a minimal test case that exhibits this behaviour? It sounds like you can't, but that would definitely help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=728&start=0#p3607
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: World Conquest: a kind of RPG
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2009-04-28 05:28:05

I'm working on a D&D 3.5 rules-based game, eventually...  [emote]:|[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=728&start=0#p3608
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: World Conquest: a kind of RPG
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-04-28 16:07:13

This is... interesting.  Can I suggest editing your first post to sell your game a bit more?  Explain what it's about and so on.  This map does seem to be quite a feat, so well done on that.

But, as impressive a logic (or geographical) puzzle as this is, I couldn't help thinking it would be better (in terms of being more fun, and also in terms of being a better educational tool) with a bit of character or even storyline to it.  As it is, it really does just feel like playing around with symbols on a map, but I think you could potentially make it more interesting than that.  Why not change the flags to microfilms or something and make that game about espionage, for example?

The only bug I've found so far is that SUB behaves a bit weirdly outside of the point when you're told to use it.

And on a geographic note, you could SUB the UK up into a few different regions, speaking Gaelic and Welsh and so on, but I guess that's true of a lot of countries and it could get a bit silly for you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=731&start=0#p3609
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Wierd reactions...
User: wolverine88001 / DateTime: 2009-04-28 22:46:51

Alright. Here's another tidbit of confusion for me. My world map. I have a rather large forest, a house and the front of the house is somehow mixed up with one of my forest rooms. Until I try to link to this forest room, everything is fine. As soon as I link and compile, my Front of House room disappears and gets overwritten by my Forest 9 room. The forest 9 room shouldn't even be near the house, yet it is totally taking over the front of the house. Has anyone experienced this or even understand what I'm trying to say? Lemme try and get it to copy again so I can paste in here.

[attachment=0]Botched World Map.jpg[/attachment]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=732&start=0#p3610
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: GLULX compilation - Colors
User: wolverine88001 / DateTime: 2009-04-28 23:32:44

How do I change the color of text? Can I change text color in the status bar? I was thinking about having directions that you can go show up in blue on the status bar so that they would stand out from the rest of the black and white montage.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=731&start=0#p3611
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Wierd reactions...
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-04-29 00:25:13

The map that Inform creates in the Index will quite likely turn into a weird mess as you start adding rooms. Search for the phrase "index map" in the Documentation, and you'll see some ways of getting the map to look better.

However, this should not affect game-play. The way you've written your post, it's not 100% clear whether you're just talking about the map getting messed up, or whether you're talking about a room actually disappearing from the model world (so that the player can't visit that room). Can you be more specific about the problem you're having?

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=724&start=0#p3612
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Multiple kinds not allowed
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-04-29 00:42:16

As a purely aesthetic footnote ... a game with 50 items for sale would quickly become tedious. At least, if I were the player I think I'd react that way. As an author, I'd be inclined instead to make the three things that are actually useful to the player into real for-sale items and subsume the rest of the merchandise under some sort of "You glance around briefly, and nothing catches your eye" message.

But that's just my personal take on it. Other authors may disagree. (And maybe I'm just being lazy!) But if you limit the number of items for sale, creating a price tag for each shouldn't be too big a burden.

--Jim Aikin

P.S.: Yeah, multiple inheritance. Dang. I don't actually miss it much, but this is a good example....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=730&start=0#p3613
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: An Act of Murder - Help Needed
User: Hogwash / DateTime: 2009-04-29 07:27:12

Ah, I got there in the end. When I posted originally I must have restored to a point prior to telling Duffy about something I thought I had already mentioned.

A good game, very well written, although in my case a 'recap' command that told you everything that Duffy currently knows would have come in useful!

Thanks for your help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=731&start=0#p3614
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Wierd reactions...
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2009-04-29 08:34:26

The inform index map gets easily confused. Section 22.17 tells you how to give the index map explicit instructions to display properly.

However, the index map doesn't affect gameplay. If your code says that room F6 is east of room FP, then that's where it is in your game. Inform can't figure out how to draw it properly, is all.

If you want help with the problem in your original post, you're going to have to post some actual code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=731&start=0#p3615
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Wierd reactions...
User: wolverine88001 / DateTime: 2009-04-29 21:06:01

Hehe. Sorry 'bout that. It just kinda all ran into one single thought process that day. Anyway, thank you for the information about I7 getting confused when drawing up maps. I've started tinkering with the Index Map and the EPS file that it makes. Would anyone happen to know of a free eps to bmp converter or something else free for working with EPS files? I can't get Acrobat to read 'em, even though they are listed as a sub-class of PDF. All I have right now if PDFFly and my demo time is beginning to run short. Down to 23 days now. [emote];)[/emote]

Thanks much for any help and suggestions and ideas. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=733&start=0#p3616
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Split Screen in GLULX
User: wolverine88001 / DateTime: 2009-04-29 21:47:19

I know that Beyond Zork and Zork Zero both used a split screen kind of system to display stuff, more Beyond Zork, but either way, I was wondering if there were some way to mimic this effect in Inform 7? I've tried researching the concept on my own and have found nothing but references to the concept, no actual information on how to make it happen. [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=733&start=0#p3617
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Split Screen in GLULX
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-04-29 23:11:56

This isn't something I have any experience with, but have a look at Jon Ingold's extension Flexible Windows. The version currently on the Inform website is incompatible with the latest release of Inform 7, but you can get a newer version here: [url]http://www.archimedes.plus.com/Downloads/Flexible%20Windows.i7x[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=728&start=0#p3618
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: World Conquest: a kind of RPG
User: Kivie / DateTime: 2009-04-30 12:37:34

[quote="Pacian"]This is... interesting.  Can I suggest editing your first post to sell your game a bit more?  Explain what it's about and so on.  This map does seem to be quite a feat, so well done on that.[/quote]
Well, thank you for your comment! I linked to the web page that explains what both games are about, so I thought I'd keep the forum post brief.

[quote="Pacian"]But, as impressive a logic (or geographical) puzzle as this is, I couldn't help thinking it would be better (in terms of being more fun, and also in terms of being a better educational tool) with a bit of character or even storyline to it.[/quote]
Then you should probably play a bit further into Lost in Translation... (Icelandic Conquest is, indeed, void of plot, given its ridiculousness, but I suppose it wouldn't be too difficult to add more zest to it.)

Personally I think it'd be more fun if it were graphical. More people would probably play it and, given the complexity of the thing, it would probably be easier to see what's going on. But I lack the skills to do graphical games.

[quote="Pacian"]As it is, it really does just feel like playing around with symbols on a map, but I think you could potentially make it more interesting than that.  Why not change the flags to microfilms or something and make that game about espionage, for example?[/quote]
If you look at your inventory, you'll see that the deliveries do have an identity (and one of them is microchip, I think). I'm not sure it would work without flags, though, because the idea is that placing a flag in a country claims it for yourself, which is supposed to be a kind of dig at colonialism and the territorial 'games' of the 19th and 20th centuries.

[quote]The only bug I've found so far is that SUB behaves a bit weirdly outside of the point when you're told to use it.[/quote]
It's only really relevant to Lost in Translation. Can you elaborate on the bug?

[quote]And on a geographic note, you could SUB the UK up into a few different regions, speaking Gaelic and Welsh and so on, but I guess that's true of a lot of countries and it could get a bit silly for you.[/quote]
Yes, I could, but the way I designed it was that only languages with greater than about 1.5 million speakers would get their own region, and, although you can learn Welsh and Scottish Gaelic (in the game), they don't have as many speakers as that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=733&start=0#p3619
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Split Screen in GLULX
User: Kivie / DateTime: 2009-04-30 12:40:03

I have used [url=http://gwindows.trenchcoatsoft.com/]GWindows[/url] to achieve this effect before... It's designed for Inform 6 though and I'm not sure if it can be integrated into I7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=724&start=0#p3620
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Multiple kinds not allowed
User: Kivie / DateTime: 2009-04-30 13:34:53

[quote="Jim Aikin"]As a purely aesthetic footnote ... a game with 50 items for sale would quickly become tedious. At least, if I were the player I think I'd react that way. As an author, I'd be inclined instead to make the three things that are actually useful to the player into real for-sale items and subsume the rest of the merchandise under some sort of "You glance around briefly, and nothing catches your eye" message.

But that's just my personal take on it. Other authors may disagree. (And maybe I'm just being lazy!) But if you limit the number of items for sale, creating a price tag for each shouldn't be too big a burden.

--Jim Aikin

P.S.: Yeah, multiple inheritance. Dang. I don't actually miss it much, but this is a good example....[/quote]

You might not like my competition entry then!
But thanks for the comment. I thought, as well as adding realism, it means that the player genuinely has to think about what they do or don't need; it also lends itself to multiple puzzle solutions and easter eggs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=728&start=0#p3621
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: World Conquest: a kind of RPG
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-04-30 16:13:31

[quote="Kivie"]Well, thank you for your comment! I linked to the web page that explains what both games are about, so I thought I'd keep the forum post brief.[/quote]
Although people may not click that link unless you give them a sufficiently good reason first.   [emote]:P[/emote]

[quote="Kivie"][quote]The only bug I've found so far is that SUB behaves a bit weirdly outside of the point when you're told to use it.[/quote]
It's only really relevant to Lost in Translation. Can you elaborate on the bug?[/quote]
On further experimentation, it seems to work in every game except Icelandic Conquest, where it responds with "That isn't a valid country." to every country (except Iceland, which it says I don't need to refer to).

Going back to this question:
[quote="Kivie"]I wonder if there are other experiments with RPG-like games implemented with IF authoring systems?[/quote]
The answer is plenty have tried, but few if any have been successful.  [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/The_Reliques_of_Tolti-Aph]The Reliques of Tolti-Aph[/url] is perhaps the best known and regarded, and it has its critics.  Victor Gijsbers is working on something that looks very promising, though.

EDIT:  I should add, I don't think there's anything inherently difficult about creating an IF RPG, at least compared to creating any other kind.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=394&start=0#p3622
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: My first experiences with IF. How did you feel?
User: rswoods / DateTime: 2009-04-30 20:48:58

my first experience with IF was Thy Dungeonman on Homestarrunner.com.  It was not a difficult game so searching for the correct verb didn't diminish the enjoyment of it.  The high level of humor and absurdity made it a pleasure to play even if it was awkward playing a 'typing game' at first.
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.homestarrunner.com/dman3.html">http://www.homestarrunner.com/dman3.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=728&start=0#p3623
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: World Conquest: a kind of RPG
User: George / DateTime: 2009-04-30 21:33:27

[quote="Kivie"]I wonder if there are other experiments with RPG-like games implemented with IF authoring systems?[/quote]

There is a rather large series of IF RPG games, look up 'Eamon' on IFDB (and I've downloaded your games, and will have time to play them soon -- looks interesting!).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=734&start=0#p3624
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 Handbook Nearing Completion
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-05-01 01:26:46

Version 0.7 of The Inform 7 Handbook is now available at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm">http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm</a>. This version is close to 95% complete.

I've already had a few very kind emails from people who are finding the Handbook useful. In case you missed the initial announcement ... the idea is to present the basics of I7 programming in a task-oriented manner, so that novices (either adult or younger) can get started writing games more easily. There's a whole chapter on creating rooms and scenery, another chapter on characters, and so on.

Advanced topics such as relations and Glulx effects are covered only in a superficial, dip-your-toes-in-the-water way. The Handbook is never going to be a 500-page O'Reilly monstrosity, or at least I hope not; but it _is_ a book-length work -- 75,000 words and counting.

It's a PDF with bookmarks, clickable cross-references, and a glossary. Your feedback and error-checking will be much appreciated! (My email address is at the end of the Foreword.)

--Jim Aikin

P.S.: Props to OpenOffice Writer, which supplied the cross-referencing and TOC handles.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=734&start=0#p3625
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 Handbook Nearing Completion
User: Terry / DateTime: 2009-05-01 05:24:40

Hi Jim, I just downloaded version 0.7 today. It's been a great help for me learning to use I7, recommend it to anyone who feels the inspiration to write their IF masterpiece using Inform 7 but knows little or nothing about how to go about it. It's certainly inspired me to read and learn.. and start work writing my first I7 game.

.. at least I will start once I finish reading the handbook!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=728&start=0#p3626
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: World Conquest: a kind of RPG
User: Kivie / DateTime: 2009-05-01 13:33:08

Great - thanks for the suggestions. I've updated my initial post, and I'll look into that bug at some point (but in comparison to some of my earlier bugs, it's minor!)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=733&start=0#p3627
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Split Screen in GLULX
User: wolverine88001 / DateTime: 2009-05-02 00:31:30

Thank you, both of you. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=736&start=0#p3629
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Z3...??
User: wolverine88001 / DateTime: 2009-05-03 01:46:17

I'm just wondering, as illogical as this may be, but is there any way to get glulx to put out a blorb file and only a blorb file for use with, say, a z6 game? Or z3?

Just curious if this is possible with I7?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=736&start=0#p3630
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Z3...??
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-05-03 03:23:47

Inform 7 can't generate Z3 files. Even Inform 6 hasn't supported Z3 for years. If you want to compile a Z3 file, [url=http://www.firthworks.com/roger/informfaq/ii.html#6]you have to use an older version of I6[/url].

Z6, on the other hand, should be fine. The Inform 7 IDE for Linux has an option to compile to Z6 on the Settings page.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=50#p3631
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Jeric / DateTime: 2009-05-04 17:56:57

Hello Sailor.

The long and short of it is I'd found inform7 last week, kinda been fiddling around there. been interested in IF since middle school (right before the big upgrade in '96-'97 several of our computers had the DOS versions of the zork trilogy). Looked, with little success, for AGT due to not knowing of anything else. Forgot about IF games for a long while, instead focused on MU* games to get my text fix. I forget what got my attention centered on inform, probably a random wiki crawl. Anyway, as I've found no other forum on the matter of text gaming (I'm not terribly comfortable with news groups for some reason) here I am.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=235&start=0#p3632
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Ideas to turn a single player adventure into multi-player
User: Jeric / DateTime: 2009-05-04 18:08:11

Found I7 last week, found Guncho last Thursday (literally in this instance). While its limited in regard to things that most MU*s can do (finger info, stats, combat, persistent saving everything, realm wide administrative abilities, bulletin boards, item creation, a few other things) ...at least I think, from what I've read off the wiki, that these things either aren't implemented, or not fully implemented, I like the ideas it brings forward from the ideas of cooperative game play, role play potential, competition, and all from the perspective of being firmly planted in the realm of IF, rather than outright attempting to be another MU* language (though I could see the ability to become a relatively easy to implement mud/mush/whatever once the rulebooks are written for those of us that aren't sure, or able, to write the proper code.)

the advantage, as I see it, that doesn't seem to be taken advantage of by many mush's/muds, is that inform already has a robust method of dealing with npc's (look at Emily short for resounding proof there.) That could most defiantly help for the wallpaper npc's that you would need in a quasi believable world that's populated by more than just heroic/villainous sorts.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=50#p3633
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: George / DateTime: 2009-05-04 18:55:23

Welcome to the forums Jeric. If you haven't already, check out the google groups interface for Usenet, it's not that much different from reading a forum and is an accessible way of reading rec.arts.int-fiction and rec.games.int-fiction (and a lot of other newsgroups of course).

Also, when you say no other forums on text gaming, do you mean IF specifically or text gaming in general?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=737&start=0#p3634
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Hiding an object in a bowl of soup
User: zadillo / DateTime: 2009-05-04 19:16:16

Hi all,

I'm just getting started, and I've run into a real stumper for me. Essentially, what I want to do I think is pretty simple, but I've been searching for how to use things like concealment, hiding, found/unfound, etc. and none of them seem to be what I'm looking for.

Essentially, I have a puzzle which involves finding a ring. The ring is hidden in a bowl, so I want to make it so that the player has to eat the bowl of clam chowder in order to discover there's a ring there. But right now, the presence of the ring is revealed (it says there's a bowl containing soup and a ring).

So, I'm wondering, what's the best way to do this?  I tried to come up with a sort of kludge, where the game wouldn't let you just dig into the soup for the ring without eating it first (which requires the player finding a spoon through another puzzle).

I've been trying to go through lots of examples but can't seem to find anything quite relevant to this. A bowl of soup with an object hidden in an opaque liquid that would only be revealed once the soup is eaten (or I could perhaps let the player pour the bowl of soup out, but that would be messy).

I have a similar puzzle with a plate of salad (another object is hidden underneath some salad, which the player has to eat after finding a fork), so I figure I'd be able to solve this the same way.

Thanks!

-Zadillo

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=50#p3635
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Jeric / DateTime: 2009-05-04 19:52:27

Well mainly IF, but it seems that most of my googling showed specific topics rather than whole forums dedicated to the problems and perks of IF writing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=736&start=0#p3636
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Z3...??
User: Jeric / DateTime: 2009-05-04 19:55:31

Out of curiosity, why do you want z3? Even GBA and DS versions of frontz offers support for Z6 (and possibly z8 though I'm not sure) files, and both of thsoe systems have exceedingly limited memory to work with.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=597&start=0#p3637
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Converting a game to web-based
User: Jeric / DateTime: 2009-05-04 19:58:34

Why is it running silverlight? Why not Flash, or Java? You know, something that's portable.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=737&start=0#p3638
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hiding an object in a bowl of soup
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2009-05-04 21:04:07

[quote="zadillo"]I'm just getting started, and I've run into a real stumper for me. Essentially, what I want to do I think is pretty simple, but I've been searching for how to use things like concealment, hiding, found/unfound, etc. and none of them seem to be what I'm looking for.

Essentially, I have a puzzle which involves finding a ring. The ring is hidden in a bowl, so I want to make it so that the player has to eat the bowl of clam chowder in order to discover there's a ring there. But right now, the presence of the ring is revealed (it says there's a bowl containing soup and a ring).[/quote]

Usually the best way to implement hidden objects is to use the "deciding the concealed possessions of somethinig" activity (Chapter 17.9).

[code]The bowl is an open, unopenable container.

Some soup is in the bowl. A ring is in the bowl.

Rule for deciding the concealed possessions of the bowl:
   if the partucular possession is the ring and the soup is in the bowl, yes;
   otherwise no.[/code]

The ring remains invisible and unreferable-to as long as the soup is in the bowl. You set up the parameters for how to get the soup out of the bowl however you like:

[code]Instead of taking the soup: say "You can't scoop the soup out with your bare hands."

Instead of eating the soup:
   if the spoon is not carried by the player:
      say "You need a spoon.";
   otherwise:
      say "You slurp up the soup, and discover a ring at the bottom of the bowl!"
      remove soup from play.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=737&start=0#p3639
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hiding an object in a bowl of soup
User: zadillo / DateTime: 2009-05-04 21:18:00

[quote="Michael Gentry"][quote="zadillo"]I'm just getting started, and I've run into a real stumper for me. Essentially, what I want to do I think is pretty simple, but I've been searching for how to use things like concealment, hiding, found/unfound, etc. and none of them seem to be what I'm looking for.

Essentially, I have a puzzle which involves finding a ring. The ring is hidden in a bowl, so I want to make it so that the player has to eat the bowl of clam chowder in order to discover there's a ring there. But right now, the presence of the ring is revealed (it says there's a bowl containing soup and a ring).[/quote]

Usually the best way to implement hidden objects is to use the "deciding the concealed possessions of somethinig" activity (Chapter 17.9).

[code]The bowl is an open, unopenable container.

Some soup is in the bowl. A ring is in the bowl.

Rule for deciding the concealed possessions of the bowl:
   if the partucular possession is the ring and the soup is in the bowl, yes;
   otherwise no.[/code]

The ring remains invisible and unreferable-to as long as the soup is in the bowl. You set up the parameters for how to get the soup out of the bowl however you like:

[code]Instead of taking the soup: say "You can't scoop the soup out with your bare hands."

Instead of eating the soup:
   if the spoon is not carried by the player:
      say "You need a spoon.";
   otherwise:
      say "You slurp up the soup, and discover a ring at the bottom of the bowl!"
      remove soup from play.[/code][/quote]

This is great, thank you!  I will try it out!

-Zadillo

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=737&start=0#p3640
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hiding an object in a bowl of soup
User: zadillo / DateTime: 2009-05-05 10:02:25

OK, I think I've got almost everything working (although I had to take out "Instead of taking the soup: say "You can't scoop the soup out with your bare hands."" - it seemed to always kick in even if I did have the spoon in my possession. And it seemed like even if I said "eat the soup" instead of "take the soup", it kicked in with that message.... i think because when I tried to eat the soup it said "first taking the soup"). 

The only major problem I'm still having is that the description of the item is still showing the presence of the ring.  It tells me I can't see it if I try to take it, but it's still here:

[quote]Kitchen
You find yourself in a mostly empty kitchen. There is a bowl of soup here.

You can see a bowl (in which are some soup and a ring).

>take ring
You can't see any such thing.
[/quote]

Any advice on this?  I'd like to have it not mention that the ring is there until the player has eaten the soup.  If it's only a choice of describing all contents or no contents I'd probably be OK with just not describing the contents at all, but I'd definitely love to figure this last bit out.

The puzzle itself is working - once the player eats the soup, the ring is takeable.  I just want to make it so that the presence of the ring isn't given away.

For reference, here's the code I'm using right now:

[code] A bowl is here. The bowl is an open, unopenable container. Some soup is in the bowl. A ring is in the bowl. The description of the bowl is "The bowl of soup is full of some unidentifiable, thick soup. Perhaps you should eat it."

Rule for deciding the concealed possessions of the bowl:
	if the particular possession is a ring and the soup is in the bowl, yes;
	otherwise no.

Instead of eating the soup:
	if a spoon is not held by the player:
		say "You don't have the ideal tool for the job.";
	otherwise:
		say "You eat the delicious soup, and discover a ring at the bottom of the bowl!";
		remove the soup from play.
[/code]

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=737&start=0#p3641
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hiding an object in a bowl of soup
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-05-05 13:05:51

Since you don't want the player to see the ring nor interact with it before the soup is eaten, it might be easier if the ring wasn't there at all beforehand (as far as the internal workings of the game go).

[code] A bowl is here. The bowl is an open, unopenable container. Some soup is in the bowl. The description of the bowl is "The bowl of soup is full of some unidentifiable, thick soup. Perhaps you should eat it."

The ring is a thing. [i.e. the ring is off-stage at first]

Instead of eating the soup:
	if a spoon is not held by the player:
		say "You don't have the ideal tool for the job.";
	otherwise:
		say "You eat the delicious soup, and discover a ring at the bottom of the bowl!";
		remove the soup from play;
		now the ring is in the bowl.
[/code]


[quote="zadillo"]OK, I think I've got almost everything working (although I had to take out "Instead of taking the soup: say "You can't scoop the soup out with your bare hands."" - it seemed to always kick in even if I did have the spoon in my possession.[/quote] 

Yeah, you have nothing there restricting the rule. This should work:

[code]Instead of taking the soup when the player is not carrying the spoon: 
	say "You can't scoop the soup out with your bare hands."[/code]

[quote]And it seemed like even if I said "eat the soup" instead of "take the soup", it kicked in with that message.... i think because when I tried to eat the soup it said "first taking the soup").[/quote]

You can get rid of that with

[code]Procedural rule while eating: 
	ignore the carrying requirements rule.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=737&start=0#p3642
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hiding an object in a bowl of soup
User: zadillo / DateTime: 2009-05-05 13:59:34

Thanks, that did the trick!

One last tiny question.  I'm noticing now that it says:

"You can see a bowl (in which are some soup)"

I've described the soup as "Some soup is in the bowl." I guess it is saying are, but is there a better way to make it say "in which is some soup"? If I change it to just "The soup is in the bowl", I get "You can see a bowl in which is a soup" which isn't right either

Thanks!

-Zadillo

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=737&start=0#p3643
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hiding an object in a bowl of soup
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-05-05 14:27:04

Try:

[code]The soup is in the bowl.  The indefinite article of the soup is "some".[/code]
As in Chapter 3.18 of Writing with Inform.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=737&start=0#p3644
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hiding an object in a bowl of soup
User: zadillo / DateTime: 2009-05-05 14:47:22

Thank you very much, that did the trick!

Btw, I'm running into one other little problem.  I'm using the transmutation machine (from the recipe book).  

I won't include everything here, but here's the basics of what I'm using:

[code]
Transmutation relates things to each other in groups. The verb to become (it becomes, they become, it became) implies the transmutation relation.

Definition: a thing is transmutable if it becomes more than one thing. [* It always becomes itself.]

A thing can be pennylike. The penny is a pennylike thing. It becomes a copper fork.

A thing can be copperlike. The copper fork is a copperlike thing.

The machine is fixed in place in the workshop. Procedural rule when inserting something into the machine: ignore the can't insert into what's not a container rule.

Check inserting something which is not transmutable into the machine:
	instead say "You can't transmute that."

To decide which thing is new form of (obj - pennylike thing): decide on a random copperlike thing which becomes obj.

Carry out inserting something into the machine:
	remove the noun from play;
	now the player carries the new form of the noun.

Report inserting something pennylike into the machine:
	say "The machine clicks, whirrs, and with a roar, spits out [a new form of the noun].";
	rule succeeds.
[/code]

Above I'm just including the object that is a problem. Essentially, you stick the penny in the machine, and it spits out the copper fork (which you're awarded points for after placing it in a trophy case). 

What I noticed while testing it though is that if you insert the copper fork into the machine, it would cause an error. I tried adding some different rules (i.e. I added something like:

[code]
To decide which thing is new form of (obj - copperlike thing): decide on a random copperlike thing which becomes obj.

Report inserting something copperlike into the machine:
	say "The machine clicks, whirrs, and with a roar, spits out [a new form of the noun].";
	rule succeeds.
[/code]

The main common thread I found with whatever I tried is that the rule would succeed, but the copper fork would no longer be in inventory. So it would be like it removes the noun from play, but the player doesn't carry the "new form" of the noun.

Initially I wanted it to simply not be transmutable at all (so the copper fork would just be rejected), but it looks like as I left it, it did let you transmute it anyway.

For the time being, I'm preventing the player from doing it by adding:

[code]
Check inserting a copper spork into the machine:
	instead say "You don't want to do that."
[/code]

But I figure this is a bad solution, and there should be some way to ensure that the final outputted object is simply not regarded as transmutable so it will be rejected by the initial "Check inserting something which is not transmutable into the machine:" rule.

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=739&start=0#p3646
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Stating starting locations
User: Jeric / DateTime: 2009-05-06 12:19:44

Out of curiosity, and in case I didn't do this right, if inform drops the player in a space i don't want them to start in, other than rearranging how everything is lain out in code, how do I state, explicitly, where a player starts at?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=740&start=0#p3647
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Location error Message Headach
User: Jeric / DateTime: 2009-05-06 14:05:07

[quote]Problem. You wrote 'Holding Cell is a room'  , but that seems to contradict 'Holding Cell is a room'  , as person and room are incompatible. (If person were a kind of room or vice versa there'd be no problem, but they aren't.)
[/quote]

The actual line of code.

[code]
Holding Cell is a room. The description is "testing"
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=739&start=0#p3648
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stating starting locations
User: Kivie / DateTime: 2009-05-06 16:47:06

Simply
[code]The player is in the Gazebo.[/code]
It's worth remembering that the 'player' is an object just like any other person (the player is the object called 'selfobj' in the I6 code), and so you set their initial location in the same way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=740&start=0#p3649
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Location error Message Headach
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-05-06 17:59:20

This is Inform being computerishly stupid. You see, instead of reading it as "There is a room called Holding Cell", Inform is reading it as "A room is holding something called Cell." Which Inform thinks is nonsense, presumably because only people are allowed to "hold" things.

You can simply change it to:
[code]There is a room called Holding Cell.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=740&start=0#p3650
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Location error Message Headach
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-05-06 18:38:32

[quote="Jeric"]The actual line of code.
[code]
Holding Cell is a room. The description is "testing"
[/code][/quote]Are you using the latest version of I7 (5z71)? While Emerald's solution does work, this exact situation was dealt with in the latest version. From the release notes:[quote]Another one that is arguably a change of design rather than a bug fix:
subject-verb inversion in assertions has been withdrawn for prepositions which are also participles... we don't want to rule them out altogether. But we do want to prevent these sentences from being misread as inversions: "Holding Area is a room."[/quote]When I try to compile the code example you give (even without the missing period), it works fine. If you have additional code and the line "Holding Cell is a room." doesn't compile correctly under 5z71, there might be something else wrong. You might want to post the complete code here or report this as a bug.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=739&start=0#p3651
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stating starting locations
User: Jeric / DateTime: 2009-05-06 20:11:16

Initially when I'd try 'when play begins' as the argument, just to make sure when the thing started, player would end up being where I wanted 'em it threw up an error (forgot what exactly). My solution was 'When play begins: set player (here)'.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=740&start=0#p3652
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Location error Message Headach
User: Jeric / DateTime: 2009-05-06 20:13:46

Think I'm running an old version then (which is wierd since i downloaded it a couple weeks ago).

Anyway I just sidestepped the problem by renaming it something else, as to the missing period, it didn't give any problems in the other rooms (removing that one line caused the proble mto go away, also put temp descriptions in each room till I get things fleshed out).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=586&start=0#p3653
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Endling Archive (a Glulx project)
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2009-05-06 20:22:46

I have finished a visual novel sequel to [i]The Endling Archive[/i]. There are download links here: [url]http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=5052[/url]. Sorry if this doesn't interest you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=741&start=0#p3654
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Adding metadata
User: Kivie / DateTime: 2009-05-07 09:48:35

I have a Glulx game written in I6 which has images in addition to cover art, and I'd like to make a nice blorb file that includes not just these images, but the iFiction metadata that interpreters nowadays can read. I tried using the Inform application (5Z71) to do this, as per §22.14. However, I get the following error, in the file auto.inf: 
[code]# Error:  An array may not have 0 or fewer entries[/code]
And even if this worked, it would not add the other images that I need in the blorb file, so I'd need a way of doing that. I tried editing the Release.blurb file directly and then running the cBlorb application manually. However, I get the following error: 

[code]Release.blurb, line 3: Error: not a valid blurb command: 'variable [RELEASE] = "1"' [/code]
There are also similar errors for all the other variable commands as well as the destination command. These are actually warnings, since the program does in fact make a blorb file for me, but as a result of considering these commands to be invalid, the metadata is absent from the blorb, although the images are correctly added.

I also tried using the 'babel' program from the Treaty of Babel. After compiling it with gcc on Mac OS X 10.4.11, I ran the command babel -blorb, supplying the story file, iFiction file (as generated by the Inform app) and cover art. After fixing an error apparently caused by the iFiction file's having two ifid tags inside the identification tag, I managed to generate a blorb file, but the metadata does not show up in Zoom (but it does in Spatterlight). But I don't know how to add the other blorb resources with their appropriate resource numbers - does anyone know?

So, have I discovered lots of bugs in all these programs, or am I doing something wrong?

(I posted this on r.a.i-f as well).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=394&start=0#p3657
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: My first experiences with IF. How did you feel?
User: Antinumeric / DateTime: 2009-05-08 12:13:39

My first experience with IF was on an old greenscreen computer my grandparents had. There was Sid Miers Pirates and this wierd text adventure where you landed on an alien desert, went south or died, then got eaten by a monster in a tunnel...  My more recent (and much mroe positive) experience with IF has been Photopia, which I found an excellent story, although I played it through several times trying to find differences.
Actually I was wondering if anyone knew of a way to make the text be selectable in Photopia, I wanted to send an excerpt to a friend?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=394&start=0#p3658
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: My first experiences with IF. How did you feel?
User: George / DateTime: 2009-05-09 11:11:10

[quote="Antinumeric"]
Actually I was wondering if anyone knew of a way to make the text be selectable in Photopia, I wanted to send an excerpt to a friend?[/quote]

I think it depends on the interpreter you're using -- some don't have cut and paste built in. Most, though, allow you to save or log a transcript of the game you're playing, and you can open those up in any text editing program to obtain an excerpt. 

And welcome to the forums Antinumeric [emote]:)[/emote].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=394&start=0#p3659
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: My first experiences with IF. How did you feel?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-05-09 17:38:25

[quote="Antinumeric"]Actually I was wondering if anyone knew of a way to make the text be selectable in Photopia, I wanted to send an excerpt to a friend?[/quote]
As George said, it depends what interpreter you're using. Gargoyle doesn't allow you to select text. If you're using Windows Frotz, Windows Glulxe or Windows Git, pressing Ctrl+L will bring up the "scrollback" and let you select and copy text from it. If you're playing Photopia 2.01, the one with the decorative borders, which comes bundled with its own interpreter, it will be running on Windows Glulxe, so try pressing Ctrl+L.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=50#p3660
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Terry / DateTime: 2009-05-10 04:43:19

Hello, I'm Terry. It's a real pleasure to find a dedicated IF forum, I feel at home here already. I much prefer a forum format to Usenet and newsgroups, nothing against rec.arts.int-fiction and rec.games.int-fiction, I guess it's just me. It would be useful to know the places online to visit to keep up with what's going on in IF..
suggestions welcome!

A bit about me. I've been interested in IF (text adventures back in the day!) since the early 80's, I used to meet up with other computer adventure game enthusiasts playing what were then cutting edge text games, we often ended up play testing the games. Playing a text adventure with a group of friends in teams for an evening of friendly competition was highly entertaining and so much fun! Does group playing / team competitions still go on these days or is IF only a single player solitary pursuit?

I'm currently writing my first game using Inform 7, I started it a couple of years ago but had to put it on hold partly due to a lack of free time but mainly due to finding the manual hard to get to grips with. As luck would have it, just when I was back itching to get writing I came across Jim Aikin's Inform 7 Handbook, a godsend! For anyone wanting to get writing their first game it can't be recommended highly enough.

That's it, enough about me, I'm off to get back to writing my game!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=50#p3661
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-05-10 06:19:00

[quote="Terry"]Playing a text adventure with a group of friends in teams for an evening of friendly competition was highly entertaining and so much fun! Does group playing / team competitions still go on these days or is IF only a single player solitary pursuit?[/quote]
Hello Terry,
If you know anything about muds, there's one dedicated to IF [url=http://ifmud.port4000.com/]here[/url]. Primarily used as a chat server for IF enthusiasts, there's a bot on the site called Floyd which allows people on the server to play IF games collectively. There is a group called ClubFloyd which gets together weekly to do just that. Here's a [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/f07f3ee3c9dd34bd#]recent thread on raif discussing a change in meeting times[/url]. Also, here's [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/IfMud]a link to the IFWiki entry about IfMUD[/url] and one [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/ClubFloyd]about ClubFloyd here[/url]. Welcome to the community!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=50#p3662
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-05-10 06:36:27

[quote="Terry"]Hello, I'm Terry.[/quote]
Welcome!

[quote="Terry"]It would be useful to know the places online to visit to keep up with what's going on in IF..[/quote]
[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/]IFDB[/url] is a database of information on IF games - the most comprehensive we have. Handy for download links and reviews. It aims to help people find new games that they'll like, so it also has recommended lists, polls, and "If you liked this game..." links. Anyone with an account can add or edit entries, so if you notice a game is missing or has incorrect or incomplete information, please join up and help keep things up to date!
[url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Main_Page]IFWiki[/url] aims to be a sort of Wikipedia of IF-related stuff. It's got information on people, authoring systems, games, competitions past and present... Also check out the lists of craft and theory articles and the links to old discussions on r.a.i-f and r.g.i-f.
[url=http://planet-if.com/]Planet IF[/url] is a blog aggregator for various IF-related blogs. You can subscribe to it directly, or just poke through the list of blogs on the sidebar.
[url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/]Emily Short's website[/url] is full of good stuff: as well as her blog, it has links to articles she's written on the craft of IF and "making of" articles for some of her games.
[url=http://brasslantern.org/]Brass Lantern[/url] has a [url=http://twitter.com/brasslantern/]Twitter feed[/url] with IF and adventure game-related news. It also has articles on these topics and reviews of various games.

There's a lot of other stuff out there, and probably other people will chime in with suggestions, but I hope that will give you somewhere to start.

[quote="Terry"]Does group playing / team competitions still go on these days or is IF only a single player solitary pursuit?[/quote]
[url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/ClubFloyd]ClubFloyd[/url] meets once a week on IFmud to play a game cooperatively. I don't know of any competitive play, though.

You might also be interested in [url=http://www.guncho.com/]Guncho[/url], which is an Inform 7-based system for creating multiplayer IF. Not much has been done with it since its release, but hopefully [url=http://wiki.guncho.com/index.php?title=GunchoComp]GunchoComp[/url] will bring some games out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=50#p3663
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2009-05-10 07:05:39

Welcome to the forum, ShaeSays, ImortisInglorian, Schilcote, Superstar Kenneth, EK_Dev, Jeric, and Terry!

[quote="Emerald"][quote="Terry"]It would be useful to know the places online to visit to keep up with what's going on in IF..[/quote]
[...]
There's a lot of other stuff out there, and probably other people will chime in with suggestions, but I hope that will give you somewhere to start.[/quote]
Emerald's links are very good; I'd like to add [url=http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/]the SPAG webzine[/url].

[quote="Emerald"][quote="Terry"]Does group playing / team competitions still go on these days or is IF only a single player solitary pursuit?[/quote]
[url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/ClubFloyd]ClubFloyd[/url] meets once a week on IFmud to play a game cooperatively. I don't know of any competitive play, though.[/quote]
For competitive play [i]in real life[/i], if you're in the UK (or if you're willing to travel there just for IF!), there's [url=http://www.adventureconvention.co.uk/]the Adventure Convention[/url] once a year, with [url=http://www.adventureconvention.co.uk/megapoints.php]the Megapoints competition[/url]. It seems to be rather about "old-school" puzzle games, though -- but I guess it's appropriate for a competition for players!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=60#p3664
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-05-10 07:43:55

[quote="Eriorg"]I'd like to add [url=http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/]the SPAG webzine[/url].[/quote]
Agreed. I started to add SPAG, then I thought, "This list is getting out of hand," and took it off again. But it's a great little e-zine; I love it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=60#p3665
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Terry / DateTime: 2009-05-10 17:04:07

Thanks for the welcome and the helpful replies, there's certainly a few places for me to check out. I suppose to feel part of the IF community the forum here is a good place to frequent, ClubFloyd sounds interesting I will have to call in there sometime. I'm in the UK so I will definitely be looking into the Adventure Convention it sounds very much like what we used to do, I'd call it 'group game play' with teams trying to complete a game within a set time limit. It was back when Scott Adams released his early classic text adventures, we often got to play the games before they were officially published. They were the days, started with Tandy TRS80's being the most popular computer at our 'computer club', my first microcomputer was a BBC Model B with 32K ram, yes a whopping 32K!

With the limited knowledge I have of MUD's I assume them to be Fantasy worlds with an RPG element. I have to admit I do prefer Sci-Fi to Fantasy, I assume ClubFloyd is more of a meeting place for playing as a group, cooperatively killing monsters then off to the ClubFloyd lounge to sit around chatting after a hard session of IFmud gaming! I've no idea really, I will have to go and take a look.

Having had reference made to "old-school" puzzle games has got me intrigued, so are text adventure games now thought of as old style text games and IF as some higher form of literary work and not just simply a game, puzzle or otherwise? When I'm working on my 'I7 creation' should I be aware of the need to comply with certain accepted 'rules of form' or the genre to classify my imaginary world, or just not worry and be totally free to do whatever I like? I'd prefer to be free rather than constrained by limitations on my imagination and creativity!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=379&start=0#p3666
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: New Hugo version?
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2009-05-10 17:58:03

Still no word from Kent regarding Hugo? I asked the same question 2 years ago... [emote]:o[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=60#p3667
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-05-10 18:14:47

[quote="Terry"]With the limited knowledge I have of MUD's I assume them to be Fantasy worlds with an RPG element. I have to admit I do prefer Sci-Fi to Fantasy, I assume ClubFloyd is more of a meeting place for playing as a group, cooperatively killing monsters then off to the ClubFloyd lounge to sit around chatting after a hard session of IFmud gaming! I've no idea really, I will have to go and take a look.[/quote]
IFmud is really just a chat MUD. I believe players have created the odd quest, but mostly they just hang around in the Lounge and chat. The reason ClubFloyd is held there is because there's a bot (Floyd, in the Toyshop) which can play IF. Using Floyd makes it easy for everyone joining in a session to see what's happening and put in their commands.

[quote="Terry"]Having had reference made to "old-school" puzzle games has got me intrigued, so are text adventure games now thought of as old style text games and IF as some higher form of literary work and not just simply a game, puzzle or otherwise?[/quote]
To a certain extent, yes. You'll notice that many of the recent works considered "classics" in the community tend to have a more literary focus. On the other hand, a good game won't be rejected out of hand just because it's an "old-school" puzzler. (Well, okay, some people will reject it out of hand. Other people, who think IF has become too arty-farty, will be very happy. Most fall somewhere in the middle.) The main problem with releasing a game like that is that the games which get the most attention are those released in the [url=http://ifcomp.org/]IF Comp[/url], and those are supposed to be no more than two hours long. Releasing a game outside a competition often means it gets less attention, unless it's by an author with an established reputation. The [url=http://www.springthing.net/]Spring Thing[/url] competition allows games of any length, but doesn't get as much attention as the IF Comp either.

I have a feeling that more puzzly games are making a bit of a comeback, but it's usually the shorter but very deeply implemented puzzle games that are the most successful. See for instance [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=mohwfk47yjzii14w]Lost Pig[/url], which won the IF Comp and the [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/XYZZY_Awards]XYZZY[/url] (IF equivalent of an Oscar) for Best Game in 2007, and [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=xkai23ry99qdxce3]Suveh Nux[/url], which won the One Room Game competition and the XYZZY for Best Puzzles the same year. Both are mainly focused on puzzles, but because they're so deeply implemented, being stuck and trying random stuff is as much fun (or more fun!) than actually achieving anything. And (as far as I can remember) there's no particular penalty for failure in either game, so you can fool about burning things and casting magic spells on random objects to your heart's content.

In general, there's more of an expectation of depth these days: if you mention an item in a room description then it should be examinable, NPCs should have replies for reasonable but unnecessary queries, and so on. There's also a general preference for games which don't let you get easily into an unwinnable situation (if you're going to make a game that's nasty or cruel by Andrew Plotkin's [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Cruelty_scale]cruelty scale[/url], it's best to let players know that up front). Looking at [url=http://jacl.game-host.org:8080/dfisher/ifgems/gems.html]IF Gems[/url], a collection of quotes from IF Comp reviews, will give you an idea of what people tend to look for in an IF game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=742&start=0#p3668
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Creating stand-alone executables from IF files?
User: Franklint / DateTime: 2009-05-10 18:50:16

Hi, guys.

I'm not sure if this is in the right forum, as it's more related to general game [i]development[/i] rather than [i]design[/i], so please move it if necessary.

Several months ago, I started reading the Inform documentation, as I'd really like to get good at writing interactive fiction. Real life and other hobbies got ahead of me, and I slowly stopped reading the tutorial, and forgot most of what I had read. Recently, however, I've decided to try and start again, and learn how to use Inform properly in order to finally make the game I've been discussing with a friend of mine for ages.

While I'm sure this question has been asked many times before, I think it's pretty important and could prove very useful for the interactive fiction community.

After writing a game in Inform (and, I suppose, TADS or whatever), you are able to export the finished work to one of several formats. These files require a seperate interpreter to be downloaded by anyone wishing to play your game, which is annoying and no doubt reduces the number of potential players. What I'd be interested in exploring is some way to create self-contained applications from these IF files, in order to make them instantly playable on one or more operating systems. I believe there are two main ways to go about this.

1) Coding a "wrapper" from the ground up.
This would involve someone writing a type of interpreter that could wrap the game file in the casing of an external application, allowing it to be run straight from the computer. Presumably, there would be a version for Windows, a separate one for Mac and another one for Unix, and each would be able to load up and export the same kinds of IF files. This would require a fair amount of programming skill. In this case, each different type of game file would have to be individually coded into the application and made "exportable".

2) Wrapping an interpreter and game file in one package.
This would potentially be much easier. What it would involve would be a person or group of people creating an application package on a Mac, for example (I know more about the format of Mac apps than others), which contained a slimmed down version of an interpreter (for example, Spatterlight), a directory in which to place the game file, and a script which opened the interpreter, loaded the game file and started play. This would simulate the effects of a stand-alone game application, and would require substantially less coding knowledge. In this case, any and all game types readable by the interpreter chosen would be exportable. Examples of this are the distributions of Cosmic Osmo and The Manhole for OS X on Demonoid, which contain an emulator, BIOS, OS and game disk in one application, and the The Pirate Bay distribution of Classic-On-Intel, which, again, contains an emulator, BIOS, OS and hard drive image.

Being able to create these kinds of applications on the fly would make it far, far easier for developers and authors to distribute their creations and get them seen by a wider audience, as well as making them appear much more professional by making it easier to attach custom icons and README files. On the flipside, it would see a massive increase in the amount of plainly bad games in circulation, with new authors being able to immediately create full programs out of their games.

Any input appreciated. How easy do you think this would be?

Cheers,
Franklint

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=743&start=0#p3669
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Spaceship - Collaborative IF Project
User: Terry / DateTime: 2009-05-10 19:05:09

I found this interesting, if you like Sci-Fi and programming using Inform 7 how about collaborating with Spaceship!

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.toastkid.com/About.html">http://www.toastkid.com/About.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=60#p3670
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Terry / DateTime: 2009-05-10 19:08:57

Thanks Emerald, I couldn't have had a more informative and helpful reply, you've covered just about everything!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=742&start=0#p3671
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Creating stand-alone executables from IF files?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-05-10 19:45:16

[quote="Franklint"]After writing a game in Inform (and, I suppose, TADS or whatever), you are able to export the finished work to one of several formats. These files require a seperate interpreter to be downloaded by anyone wishing to play your game, which is annoying and no doubt reduces the number of potential players.[/quote]
Well, actually, if you write it in TADS, one of those formats [i]is[/i] a Windows Executable.  I seem to be about the only TADS author making use of that option, but from what I can tell, a significant fraction of my audience has appreciated it.

There's a page on making standalone executables for all formats [url=http://plover.net/~textfire/raiffaq/online/standalone.htm]here[/url], but there's no date on it (and earlier today I was on an IF site that hadn't been updated in ten years, so this info may be [i]very[/i] out of date).

Executables are becoming a bit passe, though.  A lot of the indie game devs I know are switching to Flash and other browser based options to get the absolute maximum audience access - the concept is that anyone with a browser should be able to play your game.  When it comes to IF languages, that currently means Inform (and more specifically the Z machine) is your only option.

As I see it, you need to know who your audience are.  The IF community like their story files and interpreters, indie games fans like their Windows executables, and casual gamers like to play games in their browsers.  Until someone comes up with an IF language that supports all three options, I think it's entirely sensible to pick the language you use based on how you think it will best be played (and who will want to play it).  For example, I've switched to I7 for my latest WIP because I think it's based around a very casual-friendly concept.

[quote="Franklint"]2) Wrapping an interpreter and game file in one package.[/quote]
You can do this to a limited extent by sticking an interpreter in the same zip as your story file (assuming you have permission).  The Windows download for Blue Lacuna comes with the Git interpreter in it and a Read Me that just tells you: "TO PLAY: simply drab the "BlueLacuna-r1" file onto the "Git" icon."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=744&start=0#p3672
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Object removal and Movement conditions
User: Bloodsong / DateTime: 2009-05-11 03:15:08

Hi, all.  Just got started with I7 and am looking to make a few conditions for leaving a room in an example program I just started.  What it boils down to is the PC is trapped in a room.  To leave the room, the PC must manipulate an object in a way that removes it from the game world.  I cannot, however, figure out how to configure conditions on leaving a room or removing an object from the game.  

I can hear you now, "Damn newbie!"  Any help is appreciated.  Below is the sample code that I came up with for this exercise.  Using real life to inspire this, I developed it as someone in a cubicle that can't leave until the presentation is sent.
[quote]Cubicle is a room.  A presentation is in the cubicle.

Office is a room.  It is west of the Cubicle.

Instead of going west:
say "Can't leave until the presentation is sent."[/quote]

I know that the last bit is probably unneeded, but it was the best way I could think of keeping the PC contained until I puzzle this out.  Thanks.

Tommie

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=744&start=0#p3673
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Object removal and Movement conditions
User: Bloodsong / DateTime: 2009-05-11 03:42:51

I should have also included that I know how to create the new action "sending".  All I need help on is removing the presentation from the game after it is sent and creating the conditions that prevent the PC leaving the room until the presentation is "sent"/removed from the game.

Tommie

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=744&start=0#p3674
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Object removal and Movement conditions
User: Bloodsong / DateTime: 2009-05-11 04:00:09

OK, I found the problem with removing the object.  Darn punctuation problems.  Hard to tell the difference between a comma and a full stop on a netbook when I don't have my glasses.   [emote]:D[/emote] 

Still trying to figure out the condition release, though.

Tommie

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=744&start=0#p3675
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Object removal and Movement conditions
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-05-11 04:35:40

You were actually quite close with the last bit. You'll just have to add the condition when (and where) it's not allowed to go west.

[code]Instead of going west from the cubicle when the location of the presentation is the cubicle:
    say "Can't leave until the presentation is sent."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=744&start=0#p3676
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Object removal and Movement conditions
User: Bloodsong / DateTime: 2009-05-11 05:11:48

Woot!  That is the trick!  Thanks!

Tommie

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=591&start=0#p3677
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Mapper
User: Terry / DateTime: 2009-05-11 05:18:49

I use IFMapper it does everything I want it to and no need for paper!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=379&start=0#p3678
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: New Hugo version?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-05-11 07:12:42

Nothing that I'm aware of.

Quite a bit of what could be done to further and improve Hugo could be done by others. I'd like to see:

1) Either a browser-based or plugin-based (Java, Flash, Silverlight?) interpreter for Hugo, probably as a GLK implementation.

2) An updated standard library. The library has a few cool tricks built in, but there is a lot more it [i]could[/i] do. I've posted code snippets for handling "*" as a transcript character (complete with confirmations) -- something good for the library. I've expanded and added quite a few verbs/commands in prior games, that if generalized might really improve the standard library. I'd like a standard option for changing the indention behavior to use blank lines between paragraphs instead of spaces at the beginning of a paragraph's first line (something I had to sort of "hack" into things for The Traveling Swordsman).

3) From there, Hugo could support the same sort of extensions community that Inform and TADS do. For instance, I wrote this thing called "Cool-Menu" which shows up late in Distress but was going to be used as an opening menu for some future games. Never released it - although it's there in the Distress source code. The problem is, too few people use Hugo, because they feel the others are bigger, better, and more supported. But since too few people use it, not many are around to support it or make it bigger and better. Speaking for myself, I've generally been more interested in writing games than releasing extensions or a custom base library, and even that urge has subsided the last couple of years.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=742&start=0#p3679
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Creating stand-alone executables from IF files?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-05-11 10:27:06

As Pacian said, the TADS 3 Workbench for Windows offers this out-of-the-box, though only for Windows executables. It's very powerful and customisable, though.

For other game types on Windows, you can bundle an interpreter with the game file and create a .bat file to run the game with the interpreter. I did this for a CD of IF I gave to a couple of friends last year; it's not difficult. Have a look at the .bat file in [url=http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/glulx/photo201.zip]the latest version of Photopia[/url] to see how it can work. Yes, it's [i]that[/i] simple. You don't get a nice installation wizard and shortcuts and so on, though.

J D Clemens did some work on a way to bundle an IF game with a Mac interpreter. It's no longer in active development, but you can find info and a link in [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/aa8e2029983c2f8e/3364824115d6565f]this r.a.i-f thread[/url]. I expect he'd be willing to help if you wanted to use it: he originally intended it as a general-purpose solution for bundling IF for Macs.

Nothing in particular has been done for Linux users, as far as I know. But you can use the same sort of setup as for Windows: bundle up the game file and pre-compiled interpreter, and add a shell script to run the game with the interpreter. With a little extra work, you could even turn it into a .deb or .rpm to make the install really easy; I don't know enough to tell you how, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=745&start=0#p3680
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: The UK Adventurer's Convention
User: Terry / DateTime: 2009-05-11 11:56:09

I'm interested to know if anyone from The UK Adventurer's Convention are on the forum. Just curious to find out!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=746&start=0#p3681
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Game Design Advice
User: Terry / DateTime: 2009-05-11 12:15:00

For my current WIP I would like to include the words of the acappella from a music track, my question is do I need to be concerned about copyright issues? It may be a NPC saying or singing the words or I may end up quoting them word for word, would it make any difference? I guess in addition, if it's ok would I then need to give any credits for the original musical work/composer etc?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=746&start=0#p3682
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Game Design Advice
User: radix / DateTime: 2009-05-11 12:31:27

I'm not a lawyer, so I don't really want to offer any advice, but I did some quick googling and came across this.

<a class="postlink" href="http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/299584.html">http://answers.google.com/answers/threa ... 99584.html</a>

I'm sure there are more and better references you could use if you search some more.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=746&start=0#p3683
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Game Design Advice
User: Terry / DateTime: 2009-05-11 13:17:41

Thanks for your googling, I wasn't being lazy not trying to look it up myself, I just thought it may be something that had been looked into before.

I think this could mean it's ok to quote the lyrics as I'm not intending to profit off of the work.

[quote][i]"If you have no intention of profiting off the work you're creating,
you likely would be fine, quoting the lyrics. News reporters,
teachers, and the like may quote song lyrics without infringing on the
copyright rules."[/i][/quote]

I'm not one for copying someone elses work, I may end up writing my own version but the words are so evocative and haunting even without the music that I really do think they would set the mood just right and be so appropriate.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=745&start=0#p3684
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The UK Adventurer's Convention
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2009-05-11 13:42:48

I don't know if anyone from the Adventure Convention is on this forum (but I suspect that's not the case); however, I do know that you'll find some of these people on [url=http://solutionarchive.com/forum.php]the CASA forum[/url], a small forum about old text adventures and their solutions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=406&start=0#p3685
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Length of IF games?
User: Terry / DateTime: 2009-05-11 13:59:54

I would be interested to know the rough length of an 'average' IF game (I assume length generally equates to program/code size). I appreciate it might be like asking how long is a piece of string, but my reason for asking is related to using Inform 7 and the possible length/size of 'standard' games. What I'd also like to find out is, are there any games that stand out as having a 'clever' design that pack in more game for their size compared to other games? Does the current 'state of the art' in game AI restrict game length, can clever programming give the impression of an intelligent NPC? I guess I'm concerned that what I can achieve may be limited by my programming ability rather than my creative ability. An example of a game I could play to exemplify the best cutting edge game AI would be appreciated!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=745&start=0#p3686
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The UK Adventurer's Convention
User: Terry / DateTime: 2009-05-11 14:02:51

Thanks for your help, I will go and take a look at the CASA forum.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=406&start=0#p3687
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Length of IF games?
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2009-05-11 15:35:53

[quote="Terry"]I would be interested to know the rough length of an 'average' IF game (I assume length generally equates to program/code size). I appreciate it might be like asking how long is a piece of string, but my reason for asking is related to using Inform 7 and the possible length/size of 'standard' games.[/quote]
I don't know what's the program/code size of average IF games, but according to [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/822b065cfaef8d9e/64f7096929b4f2d1]this thread from the IF newsgroups[/url], the [i]longest[/i] game source code (for Inform 7, at least) seems to be 385,000 words. Of course, source codes of almost all the games are [i]considerably[/i] smaller...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=406&start=0#p3688
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Length of IF games?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-05-11 18:30:44

[quote="Eriorg"]I don't know what's the program/code size of average IF games, but according to [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/822b065cfaef8d9e/64f7096929b4f2d1]this thread from the IF newsgroups[/url], the [i]longest[/i] game source code (for Inform 7, at least) seems to be 385,000 words.[/quote]
It ended up being [url=http://lacunastory.com/about.html#sourcebook]389,453 words[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=742&start=0#p3689
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Creating stand-alone executables from IF files?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-05-11 18:39:25

Someone just asked about this in [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/502a8ba8fca4ab62#]this r.a.i-f thread[/url] and Otto Grimwald replied with a post about a tool he created to do launch a specific game with the appropriate interpreter.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=379&start=0#p3690
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: New Hugo version?
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2009-05-11 23:08:45

I agree with most of what you said...especially the browser-based version of the Hugo Runtime. I've been thinking a few months ago if I could ask a friend of mine at work to create a Java port of Hugo, even if I have to shell out a few bucks.

I'm really just concerned about having Hugo catch up with the "competition," so to speak. There's a lot of things going on with the other systems that I'd like to see in Hugo, or at least see what else Kent had in mind. But you're right, there's just not enough interested users (most are probably dabblers like me [emote]:D[/emote]) to probably push Kent into looking into Hugo after all these years.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=747&start=0#p3691
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: AI
User: Bloodsong / DateTime: 2009-05-12 00:40:25

Terry, 

I have just started programming these games myself, so I don't know a WHOLE lot about programming (see my question in the Inform section from last night and laugh...) however I do have a bit of knowledge in computer science with an interest in AI from an armchair perspective, and that is where I will answer the questions about that.

IFs aren't supposed to exhibit any kind of AI, really.  It is a fictive art, not an intelligence science.  This is proven by the average size of the story files.  There is no way that you are going to program any kind of believable AI with a limit of around 4 MB.  Not and have any kind of decent story propelling the game, anyway.

Instead, the creativity of responses within the strictures you set for the outcome of each valid choice the PC can make will present the illusion of AI.  That is the art aspect coming into play.  That is why a lot of the problems I have seen on the newsgroups (yes, I have lurked long), have less to do with programming and more to do with the same things that plague authors and novelists of all stripes.  Plot, character development, and structure are important to maintaining the illusion of a totally imersive world.  

That being said, there are some programming tools at our disposal that can help feed that illusion.  For instance, creative use of the programming tools to make certain aspects of the dialog random so that subsequent play throughs are somewhat different are possible.  For instance, [i]Violet[/i] by Jeremy Freese uses such a coding trick.  He talked about that a bit in his interview about the game in SPAG recently. (I wish I could find the link, but my work computer blocks that site, sorry).

Anyway, I hope this helped.

Tommie

P.S.  This was supposed to be HERE ([url]http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=406[/url]), but I clicked the wrong button, can someone please correct my mess up?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=748&start=0#p3692
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Trying to find a few games I played before...
User: insydr / DateTime: 2009-05-12 01:40:27

Hopefully someone can help! It would be great to rediscover these games.

Game #1: I think it was a sci-fi setting, maybe some sort of lab. As the main character (possibly a robot?), you would wake up and start exploring some rooms, but after a certain number of moves you would be "reset" by some sort of scientist/observer NPC. The cycle would continue until you figured out how to break free (by removing some device or avoiding being drugged or something). That's about all I can remember right now.

Game #2: I've got even sparser/weirder details on this one. Pushing some sort of red button. A deluge of water flooding a tube/passageway. Controlling robots remotely. Starting the game as a corpse?

Game #3: There's some sort of device that everyone is watching you try out. Except for some reason it's been sabotaged, and you have to go back and figure out what happened/who did it. Maybe it was a time machine? When you're in the device I believe there's some sort of note attached to the inside.

I REALLY wish I knew where my old IF collection was right about now!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=406&start=0#p3693
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Length of IF games?
User: Terry / DateTime: 2009-05-12 03:09:27

So quite a few words then, more than I anticipated. I can see it's more about what you do with the words, quality comes before quantity! Reading the thread on the IF newsgroups puts some interesting perspectives on the length and size of IF works, saying there that some can do a lot more with far less words than others. I guess that's the clever part.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=747&start=0#p3694
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: AI
User: Terry / DateTime: 2009-05-12 03:22:04

Thanks Tommie very helpful. I think I should have called it 'pseudo game AI' so it appears by 'clever trickery' that the game and NPC's in the game seem to exhibit intelligence, anything to make the IF world more believable and immersive for the player. Like you I'm not too experienced with programming, I'm getting to grips with Inform 7 and still have a lot of learning to do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=406&start=0#p3695
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Length of IF games?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-05-12 05:31:36

Well, bear in mind that Blue Lacuna is significantly longer than any other I7 game yet released. In fact, it was longer than Graham Nelson expected any I7 game to be.

[quote="Terry"]An example of a game I could play to exemplify the best cutting edge game AI would be appreciated![/quote]
As Bloodsong said, AI - or even pseudo-AI - isn't important to most IF. There are a few games which have played around with it, though. The best example game I can think of would be [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=6a23xff9er4s83pl]Child's Play[/url], which has a cast of active characters with simple goal-driven behaviours. As a bonus, the I7 source code is availabe, so you can see how it all works. I've heard [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=jdrbw1htq4ah8q57]Make It Good[/url] also features AI-driven characters, but I haven't had time to play it yet. [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/poll?id=rladr7x9vqz5a5fx]This IFDB poll[/url] has some other suggestions.

Also, if you're interested in an ambitious AI-related IF which failed utterly (but in an interesting way!), have a look at [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=vvf6ej4vxwwxqnjy]The Battle of Walcot Keep[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=748&start=0#p3696
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Trying to find a few games I played before...
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-05-12 07:27:03

Do you know if these were commercial games, or if you found them on the internet? About how long ago did you play?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=406&start=0#p3697
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Length of IF games?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-05-12 07:44:18

[url=http://ifwiki.org/index.php/Galatea]Galatea[/url] is the quintessential example of how AI (or pseudo-AI) is used in IF games - not just, IMO, an example of it being done well, but an example of how it can be used to best effect.

The game keeps track of the moods of its principle NPC based on what you've been discussing, and also tracks the apparent mindset of the player character based on how he seems to be acting towards her.

It's not AI in the sense that the NPC is acting by herself, or pursuing goals, or will ever do much that wasn't coded into her directly, but it is the kind of thing that players often [i]think of[/i] as AI, in that it presents a convincing illusion of a character with her own internal thoughts and feelings about what's going on around her.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=748&start=0#p3698
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Trying to find a few games I played before...
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2009-05-12 09:38:41

And do you know what computer (PC? Apple II? Commodore 64? Spectrum? etc.) you played these games on?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=747&start=0#p3699
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: AI
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2009-05-12 12:05:30

[quote="Bloodsong"]For instance, [i]Violet[/i] by Jeremy Freese uses such a coding trick.  He talked about that a bit in his interview about the game in SPAG recently. (I wish I could find the link, but my work computer blocks that site, sorry).[/quote]
Here's the link: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/backissues/spag54.html#freese">http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/backissue ... tml#freese</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=748&start=0#p3700
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Trying to find a few games I played before...
User: insydr / DateTime: 2009-05-12 13:03:31

Definitely found them on the internet, and I was playing them on a PC, using either (or both) WinFrotz and TADS!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=748&start=0#p3701
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Trying to find a few games I played before...
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-05-12 13:18:09

[quote="insydr"]Game #3: There's some sort of device that everyone is watching you try out. Except for some reason it's been sabotaged, and you have to go back and figure out what happened/who did it. Maybe it was a time machine? When you're in the device I believe there's some sort of note attached to the inside.[/quote]
Sounds a bit like [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Till_Death_Makes_a_Monk-Fish_Out_of_Me!]Til Death Makes a Monk-Fish Out of Me[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=748&start=0#p3702
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Trying to find a few games I played before...
User: insydr / DateTime: 2009-05-12 15:51:51

I think you're right! And, if I remember correctly, Game #2 and #3 are actually the same game.

All that leaves is Game #1, but I have a feeling it might be [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Delusions]Delusions[/url]... if so, the mystery is solved!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=406&start=10#p3703
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Length of IF games?
User: Terry / DateTime: 2009-05-12 16:02:16

I'll be taking a look at those recommendations, thank you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=744&start=0#p3704
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re:  Movement conditions
User: Bloodsong / DateTime: 2009-05-12 21:29:20

This has to do with forcing movement, so I am just going to put it at the end of this one rather than start a new thread.

During the beginning of my WIP, I have a point where the action can go one of two directions, depending on a yes or no response.  The answer given determines where the next available area is, and I want the answer to transport the PC to that area without interim movement inputs.  So basically, from where the PC is, if they answer yes, there is narrative, then the PC is in a nightclub, if they say no, a different piece of narrative, then the PC is in its apartment.

I already have the consent rules down, but I don't know how to set the consent rule to force a room change.  Can anyone help me with this?

Tommie

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=744&start=0#p3705
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Object removal and Movement conditions
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-05-13 02:53:40

"now the player is in the nightclub". If the problem is that you've tried this and it doesn't work, we'll need to see the code you have so far.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=744&start=0#p3706
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Object removal and Movement conditions
User: Bloodsong / DateTime: 2009-05-13 12:59:02

Ok, here is the code.  For brevity, I abbreviated the narration, but the problem I am encountering now is that the entire thing compiles, but when I reach this area, a "yes" or "no" is met with the standard "that was a rhetorical question."

[code]The Break Area is a room.  The Break Area is east of the Exterior."A small area...Are you coming?'"
	If the player consents now the player is in Red Devil Doors; 
	otherwise the player is in Apartment.

The Red Devil Doors is a room.

The Apartment is a room.[/code]

I have tried putting a "When Break Area is entered:" clause in there, but that caused the entire thing to not compile, telling me that "when" is old syntax for a rule starting when an event takes place, informs me that the new syntax is to start with "at" or "to" both of which either prevent me from compiling, or have no effect when I reach this point in the code.

Tommie

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=744&start=0#p3707
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Object removal and Movement conditions
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-05-13 14:07:01

The issue is that your if statement isn't really occuring in any specific circumstance.

Try:

[code]
After looking in the Break Area:
	If the player consents, now the player is in Red Devil Doors; [don't forget the comma after the if statement]
	otherwise now the player is in the Apartment.
[/code]
Or:

[code]
After going to the Break Area for the first time:
	Try looking; [don't override printing the room description]
	If the player consents, move the player to Red Devil Doors;
	otherwise move the player to the Apartment.
[/code]
And possibly there's a better place to put it than either of these, depending on the circumstances (I'm still just learning I7 myself).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=744&start=0#p3708
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Object removal and Movement conditions
User: Bloodsong / DateTime: 2009-05-13 16:02:51

Excellent!  You guys rock!  Not sure if it is possible, but is there any way to change the response when someone tries leaving to anything other that "Please answer yes or no>"?

Tommie

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=742&start=0#p3709
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Creating stand-alone executables from IF files?
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2009-05-13 16:36:58

[quote="Pacian"]When it comes to IF languages, that currently means Inform (and more specifically the Z machine) is your only option.[/quote]Not necessarily. There's an extant Java 'terp for TADS 2 games called [url=http://www.drizzle.com/~dans/if/jetty/index.html]Jetty[/url] that can be found somewhere in the IF Archive.

[quote="Pacian"]You can do this to a limited extent by sticking an interpreter in the same zip as your story file (assuming you have permission).  The Windows download for Blue Lacuna comes with the Git interpreter in it and a Read Me that just tells you: "TO PLAY: simply drab the "BlueLacuna-r1" file onto the "Git" icon."[/quote]
I'm not sure if it can be applied to Git, but Windows Glulxe has an option for the IF author to rename the "Glulxe.exe" file to the name of the actual game. This is, of course, assuming you've made a Glulx game with a .BLB file extension.

So, if the file name is "Footstool.blb," you can rename "Glulxe.exe" to "Footstool.exe" and then it should be able to play the blorbed Glulx file.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=744&start=10#p3710
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Object removal and Movement conditions
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-05-14 02:18:23

You can use the extensions [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/David%20Fisher/Default%20Messages/index.html]Default Messages[/url] or [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/David%20Fisher/Custom%20Library%20Messages/index.html]Custom Library Messages[/url], both by David Fisher.

[code]Include Default Messages by David Fisher.

Table of custom library messages (continued)
Message Id				Message Text
LibMsg <yes or no prompt>		"'Yes' or 'no' are the only options at the moment."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=747&start=0#p3711
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: AI
User: Terry / DateTime: 2009-05-15 03:48:17

That's what I was looking for, the unusual narration in [i]Violet[/i] certainly adds to the illusion allowing the narration and description of the game world to change. I found [url=http://nickm.com/post/2009/05/violet/]this[/url] discussion/review of [i]Violet[/i] interesting.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=736&start=0#p3712
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Z3...??
User: wolverine88001 / DateTime: 2009-05-18 21:47:25

Honestly? It was nothing more than nostalgic curiosity.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=733&start=0#p3713
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Split Screen in GLULX
User: wolverine88001 / DateTime: 2009-05-18 23:04:13

Rargh! This silly split screen extension is wierd. It looks like it has the capacity to reroute any kind of output I want, but what I would like to do, is do away with the status bar and make an entirely new status window. Then I wanted an output window and an input window.

However, unfortunately, even after reading through the manual again for I7 and reading through the source for the split screen extension, I can find nothing to help me with this. Either I'm just oblivious to the keywords I should be using or there is no real information on h[i]how[/i] to do this.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=749&start=0#p3714
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Help with dobjfor
User: mattmunin / DateTime: 2009-05-19 09:53:09

So i have a container object, a venus flytrap.

the "blue key" is in it's mouth. I want to set it up so that you can only take the key if you give the flytrap the steak object. if the steak is not in the flytrap, i want it to display a message, and not take the key.

can anyone help?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=750&start=0#p3715
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Been a while
User: espeorb / DateTime: 2009-05-19 15:25:31

Hmm...
I remember making a post on the Intfiction.org forums about a previous problem with Inform 7, and you all were quite helpful.
I come with another problem - using the unused actions.

Now, before I post the code that's giving me the problem, let's just explain what's happening here. You're sneaking - well, rather, running - from an anarchic group called the Horde. The "light at the end of the tunnel", or the exit out of the forest where this group may still be (and you happened to end up!) seems closer and closer and then suddenly as you walk into a new area in the forest, you see one of the generals of the Horde! Paralyzed with fear, you reach for your dagger - you may not be able to wound him through his darkened and bloodied battle armor, though the diamond-like substance of which the dagger is made might be able to thrust far enough through his armor to stun him, leaving you able to escape in the opposite direction.

Okay, so none of that story matters much.
Anyway, the problem:

[code]Check attacking Vuslief the Slayer:
if Spotted by the Slayer is happening
begin;
ignore the block attacking rule;
end if.

Report attacking Vuslief the Slayer:
if the crystalline dagger is carried
begin;
if Vuslief the Slayer is not stunned
begin;
say "You thrust [the dagger] at Vuslief the Slayer! He reels backwards suddenly - it must have broken through his armor and wounded him suddenly, catching him off-guard! Now is the time to escape!";
now Vuslief is stunned;
end if;
else if the crystalline dagger is not carried by the noun;
say "You can't attack without a weapon! What happened to your dagger?";
else if Vuslief the Slayer is stunned;
say "He's already stunned and reeling from your blow. Escape back into the forest!";
end if.
[/code]

Vuslief the Slayer is the name of the general, while "Spotted by the Slayer" is the scene that starts once he sees you. Three moves is all he needs to dig his blade up out of the ground, raise it and slash you in two - thus the scene.

Now, here's the problem. When I compile it, no errors.
But when I play:

[code][b]Tunnel of Oak[/b]
The branches of the oak trees hang over you from far above, intertwining with each other to form a shady path. Browned leaves from the autumn of yesteryear crunch under your feet as you walk through the path, and the trees on either side get denser and denser, sometimes growing their roots into each other. To the north, you can see a "light at the end of the tunnel" - the way out of the forest and onto the main road. The path continues to the south.

An armored knight of the Horde, commonly known as the heartless killer Vuslief the Slayer, stands here with both hands on his massive blade.

>attack vuslief
>[/code]

Nothing. It doesn't do what it should under the circumstances - doesn't say what it's supposed to, or apparently stun him. Testing shows that the action did succeed, however.

What am I doing wrong here?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=749&start=0#p3716
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Help with dobjfor
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-05-19 15:37:39

As far as I know, there's no way for the player to get the key without 'taking' it, either explicitly or implicitly, so you just need to add a check for taking the key.

There are three parts to an action in T3: verify, check and action.  Since the take verb defines its own stuff for each of these parts, we just need to override the check part, calling failCheck if the situation doesn't meet our criteria.

This should sort you:

[code]+Steak: Thing 'steak' 'steak'
    "A juicy steak that would satisfy any carnivore. "
;   

+VenusFlyTrap: Container 'venus fly trap' 'venus fly trap'
    "What a vicious set of jaws.  They could probably take your whole hand off. "
;

++BlueKey: Thing 'blue key' 'blue key'
    "You suspect it opens a blue door somewhere. "
    dobjFor(Take)
    {
        check()
        {
            if(Steak.location!=VenusFlyTrap)
            {
                failCheck('Yeah, not putting your hand in those jaws.  
                Perhaps if you could find something else for them to chew on? ');
            }
        }
    } 
;[/code]
You might also like to add similar handling for the steak, so you can't take it back from the plant.

Thinking about it, though, it might be nice to implement the Venus Fly Trap as a character, since I think players may end up thinking of it that way.  In that case, you just need to configure the method that defines when you can take stuff from it:

[code]+Steak: Thing 'steak' 'steak'
    "A juicy steak that would satisfy any carnivore. "
;   

+VenusFlyTrap: Person 'venus fly trap' 'venus fly trap'
    "What a vicious set of jaws.  They could probably take your whole hand off. "
    checkTakeFromInventory (actor, obj)
    {
        if(obj==BlueKey)
        {
            if(Steak.location!=self)
            {
                "The fly trap grips the key tightly in its vicious jaws. ";
                exit; //this makes taking the object fail
            }
            else
                "You carefully extract the key from the fly trap. ";
        }
        else if (obj==Steak)
        {
            "The fly trap is busy chewing on the steak. ";
            exit;
        }
    }
    iobjFor(PutIn) remapTo(GiveTo,DirectObject,self)
;

++ GiveTopic @Steak
    topicResponse
    {
        "The fly trap chomps on the steak greedily. ";
        Steak.moveInto(VenusFlyTrap);
    }
; 

++BlueKey: Thing 'blue key' 'blue key'
    "You suspect it opens a blue door somewhere. "
;[/code]
You'd also want to change the way its inventory is described (see [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/techman/t3lister.htm#inventory]this article[/url]) and give it some default topics with witty responses to attempts to engage it in conversation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=750&start=0#p3717
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Been a while
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-05-20 01:44:30

You probably mean "if the crystalline dagger is not carried by the player", since "the noun" refers to Vuslief. That probably isn't the problem, though. There seems to be some circumstances where the action can fall through the report rule without triggering anything, namely if the dagger is not carried by the player and carried by Vuslief and Vuslief is not stunned. Personally I would split each condition in a separate rule. Also when the action is supposed to fail, it's better to use check rules.

[code]Check attacking Vuslief the Slayer when Spotted by the Slayer is happening:
    ignore the block attacking rule.

Check attacking Vuslief the Slayer when Vuslief the Slayer is stunned:
    say "He's already stunned and reeling from your blow. Escape back into the forest!" instead.

Check attacking Vuslief the Slayer when the crystalline dagger is not carried:
    say "You can't attack without a weapon! What happened to your dagger?" instead.

Carry out attacking Vuslief the Slayer:
    now Vuslief the Slayer is stunned.

Report attacking Vuslief the Slayer:
    say "You thrust [the dagger] at Vuslief the Slayer! He reels backwards suddenly - it must have broken through his armor and wounded him suddenly, catching him off-guard! Now is the time to escape!"[/code]
The carry out and report rules don't need conditions since they are activated only when the action gets through all the check rules.

The benefit of using multiple rules like this is that now when you type RULES in the game you can see which of the individual rules apply when you try the action, which makes debugging much easier.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=750&start=0#p3718
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Been a while
User: espeorb / DateTime: 2009-05-20 06:44:31

[quote="Nitku"]You probably mean "if the crystalline dagger is not carried by the player", since "the noun" refers to Vuslief. That probably isn't the problem, though. There seems to be some circumstances where the action can fall through the report rule without triggering anything, namely if the dagger is not carried by the player and carried by Vuslief and Vuslief is not stunned. Personally I would split each condition in a separate rule. Also when the action is supposed to fail, it's better to use check rules.[/quote]

Ahhh... I don't know how I missed that. And no matter how many years of experience I get with Inform, my "code" still comes out cluttered  [emote]:D[/emote] 

[quote="Nitku"][code]Check attacking Vuslief the Slayer when Spotted by the Slayer is happening:
    ignore the block attacking rule.

Check attacking Vuslief the Slayer when Vuslief the Slayer is stunned:
    say "He's already stunned and reeling from your blow. Escape back into the forest!" instead.

Check attacking Vuslief the Slayer when the crystalline dagger is not carried:
    say "You can't attack without a weapon! What happened to your dagger?" instead.

Carry out attacking Vuslief the Slayer:
    now Vuslief the Slayer is stunned.

Report attacking Vuslief the Slayer:
    say "You thrust [the dagger] at Vuslief the Slayer! He reels backwards suddenly - it must have broken through his armor and wounded him suddenly, catching him off-guard! Now is the time to escape!"[/code]
The carry out and report rules don't need conditions since they are activated only when the action gets through all the check rules.

The benefit of using multiple rules like this is that now when you type RULES in the game you can see which of the individual rules apply when you try the action, which makes debugging much easier.[/quote]

As I tried what you suggested here, a chain of debugging lead me to figure out what exactly kept the scene from flowing as it was. Vuslief the Slayer [i]was stunned by default.[/i]
Thank you very much, sir. I appreciate your help.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=749&start=0#p3719
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Help with dobjfor
User: mattmunin / DateTime: 2009-05-20 07:08:04

Thanks a million times. This was unbelievably helpful.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=751&start=0#p3720
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: regarding the remapTo() macro
User: mattmunin / DateTime: 2009-05-20 08:53:05

so i have my container, a venus fly trap.

to get the blue key which is inside his mouth, i need to first give him a steak.

everything works, but i want to be able to "give steak to venus fly trap"

right now, i can only "put steak in venus fly trap" which sounds silly.

thanksamillioninadvance

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=751&start=0#p3721
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: regarding the remapTo() macro
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-05-20 09:16:53

I'm always making mistakes with remapTo.  The first thing I forget is that to remap to a verb with a direct and/or indirect object you need to make sure to include them both in the macro, or you'll get a runtime error.

So, you could remap to a verb with no object like so:

[code]dobjFor(Climb) remapTo(Up)[/code]
Remap to a verb with a direct object (self) like so:

[code]dobjFor(Climb) remapTo(Push, self)[/code]
And in this case, we want to remap the verb, the direct object and the indirect object (self), like this:

[code]iobjFor(GiveTo) remapTo(PutIn,DirectObject,self)[/code]
Which hopefully gives you what you want.  Note that we're remapping 'iobjFor', since the venus fly trap is the indirect object in this case.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=750&start=0#p3722
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Been a while
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-05-20 09:57:16

[quote="espeorb"]... lead me to figure out what exactly kept the scene from flowing as it was. Vuslief the Slayer [i]was stunned by default.[/i][/quote]
Well, that actually was not the problem with your original code. I want to first make clear that Nitku's method is [i]definitely[/i] the way to go here. Using individual check rules is not only easier to debug, but easier to expand or modify later. However, your original code does illustrate a common error which is worth pointing out for the sake of others who may read this. Your if statements are improperly nested. You have (in pseudo code):[quote]
if dagger carried begin
if Vuslief  not stunned begin
else if dagger not carried
else if Vuslief stunned
[/quote]
In order for that to be properly formed, you'd need (again in pseudo code with indents for emphasis):
[quote]
if dagger carried begin
- - if Vuslief not stunned begin
- - else if Vuslief stunned
else if dagger not carried[/quote]This way all the possibilities are covered and you never get a blank response. For illustrative purposes only, this code works as expected, but [b]do NOT[/b] do it this way:[code]Report attacking Vuslief the Slayer:
	if the crystalline dagger is carried
	begin;
		if Vuslief the Slayer is not stunned
		begin;
			say "You thrust [the dagger] at Vuslief the Slayer! He reels backwards suddenly - it must have broken through his armor and wounded him suddenly, catching him off-guard! Now is the time to escape!";
			now Vuslief is stunned;
		else if Vuslief the Slayer is stunned;
			say "He's already stunned and reeling from your blow. Escape back into the forest!";
		end if;
	else if the crystalline dagger is not carried;
		say "You can't attack without a weapon! What happened to your dagger?";
	end if.
[/code]I only point this out because improperly nested ifs can be a problem and proper understanding of them is helpful. (I'm not saying you don't understand them -- it was probably just a mistake -- but other people might end up reading this.) Your post also shows why many Inform programmers try to avoid large nested ifs. They are difficult to debug and / or modify. For example, if you later want to add a magical shield for Vuslief, adding a new check rule for that is simple. You still need to place it in the right spot logically, but doing the same thing in a block of nested ifs means not only editing existing code (where you might add new errors), but having to figure out where to place [i]both ends[/i] in the block. Even messing up one "else" or "end if" can completely screw up the logic of one of those things. 
Hope that wasn't more info than you really wanted.  [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=750&start=0#p3723
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Been a while
User: espeorb / DateTime: 2009-05-20 11:48:59

[quote="Skinny Mike"][quote="espeorb"]... lead me to figure out what exactly kept the scene from flowing as it was. Vuslief the Slayer [i]was stunned by default.[/i][/quote]
Well, that actually was not the problem with your original code. I want to first make clear that Nitku's method is [i]definitely[/i] the way to go here. Using individual check rules is not only easier to debug, but easier to expand or modify later. However, your original code does illustrate a common error which is worth pointing out for the sake of others who may read this. Your if statements are improperly nested. You have (in pseudo code):[quote]
if dagger carried begin
if Vuslief  not stunned begin
else if dagger not carried
else if Vuslief stunned
[/quote]
In order for that to be properly formed, you'd need (again in pseudo code with indents for emphasis):
[quote]
if dagger carried begin
- - if Vuslief not stunned begin
- - else if Vuslief stunned
else if dagger not carried[/quote]This way all the possibilities are covered and you never get a blank response. For illustrative purposes only, this code works as expected, but [b]do NOT[/b] do it this way:[code]Report attacking Vuslief the Slayer:
	if the crystalline dagger is carried
	begin;
		if Vuslief the Slayer is not stunned
		begin;
			say "You thrust [the dagger] at Vuslief the Slayer! He reels backwards suddenly - it must have broken through his armor and wounded him suddenly, catching him off-guard! Now is the time to escape!";
			now Vuslief is stunned;
		else if Vuslief the Slayer is stunned;
			say "He's already stunned and reeling from your blow. Escape back into the forest!";
		end if;
	else if the crystalline dagger is not carried;
		say "You can't attack without a weapon! What happened to your dagger?";
	end if.
[/code]I only point this out because improperly nested ifs can be a problem and proper understanding of them is helpful. (I'm not saying you don't understand them -- it was probably just a mistake -- but other people might end up reading this.) Your post also shows why many Inform programmers try to avoid large nested ifs. They are difficult to debug and / or modify. For example, if you later want to add a magical shield for Vuslief, adding a new check rule for that is simple. You still need to place it in the right spot logically, but doing the same thing in a block of nested ifs means not only editing existing code (where you might add new errors), but having to figure out where to place [i]both ends[/i] in the block. Even messing up one "else" or "end if" can completely screw up the logic of one of those things. 
Hope that wasn't more info than you really wanted.  [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

That's great theory, actually. Up to this point I had been using nested loops (you can call them "ifs" if you want, but they're still programming loops essentially. Just like a For or While loop in... I'm not going to get into that.)
But the method you two state is true. It is indeed a LOT easier to pull apart and add things in if I don't have all of my Checks and Reports and such cluttered into a nested mess.

Anyway, as to the whole "Vuslief the Slayer was stunned by default" comment. I had made an elaborate scene out of what would happen if you didn't attack him in time and such, but it didn't play out the way I wanted it to. In fact, it didn't play out at all.
The reason it was doing this, I found out, was that the entire text of the scene and Vuslief being able to attack the player was reliant on him not being stunned.

So when I added:
[code]Vuslief the Slayer can be battle-ready or stunned.[/code]

I did not in fact add:
[code]Vuslief the Slayer is battle-ready.[/code]

Therefore, he was stunned by default due to not specifying which of the two conditions he was in. Let this be a lesson for the newbies - don't forget to specify conditions. As in, "either X or Y (or possibly Q)" conditions.

Thanks for all the help!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=752&start=0#p3724
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Conspiracy Theory Game
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-21 11:12:50

I've been thinking that a conspiracy theory might lend itself well to an IF game -- it would be fun to watch the evidence unfold. For example, Roswell, though that seems too obvious. Or any of the many government conspiracy theories that abound and are reasonably well recognized. 

I don't want to repeat anyone else's idea -- has this been done? And if so, with what conspiracies?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=724&start=0#p3725
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Multiple kinds not allowed
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-21 12:24:10

I sort of like the multiple items for sale thing. I presume you only have a set amount of cash and can't buy everything? Otherwise I'd just buy everything just in case I need it, which could be tedious. But it would be fun to know I could only afford three things, and to try and understand what they should be. 

Then again I've also programmed some things which proved unpopular among some, such as unwinnable states.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=731&start=0#p3726
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Wierd reactions...
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-21 12:31:39

[quote] I have a pile of leaves in the middle of the forest, and I described the pile of leaves as "lying on the ground is a pile of leaves". However, when I run the game, I get "Lying on the ground is a pile of leaves" followed a paragraph later by "There is a pile of leaves here". [/quote]

Isn't this that deal where you need to write something like (not tested -- coming from memory):

[code]Rule for writing a paragraph about the pile of leaves: now the pile of leaves is mentioned.[/code]

That stops Inform from writing it, usually because you want to mention it yourself in a description.

Warning, though: Don't put "lying on the ground is a pile of leaves" in the description of the room, ground, or leaves, if the pile of leaves can be taken or will later blow away. Then the player will still get the description that it's there after it's gone.

You can do something like (again not tested):

The description of the forest is "[if the pile of leaves is in the forest]There is a pile of leaves on the ground.[otherwise]It's just an ordinary forest.[end if]"

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=750&start=0#p3727
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Been a while
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2009-05-21 13:39:59

[quote="espeorb"]So when I added:
[code]Vuslief the Slayer can be battle-ready or stunned.[/code]
I did not in fact add:
[code]Vuslief the Slayer is battle-ready.[/code]

[/quote]

Handy shortcut: whenever you create an either-or property in the form:

[code]Smith can be X or Y.[/code]
Inform always assumes that the [i]second[/i] term is the default unless you specify otherwise. So you could write "Vuslief the Slayer can be stunned or battle-ready," and he would be battle-ready by default without you having to specify it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=753&start=0#p3728
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: help with killing zombies
User: mattmunin / DateTime: 2009-05-21 23:15:39

so i want to have a zombie in the zombie lair.

attack zombie with knife yeilds a failure message of some kind, such that zombies are immune to knives.

if you attack with candlesticks it is a success and the zombie is killed.


halp? please?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=724&start=0#p3729
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Multiple kinds not allowed
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-05-22 06:45:13

[quote="ShaeSays"]I sort of like the multiple items for sale thing. I presume you only have a set amount of cash and can't buy everything? Otherwise I'd just buy everything just in case I need it, which could be tedious. But it would be fun to know I could only afford three things, and to try and understand what they should be. 

Then again I've also programmed some things which proved unpopular among some, such as unwinnable states.[/quote]
I'd like that... if it was possible to make more money in some way.  Perhaps in a rather tedious fashion that meant you couldn't close off buying something important, but that would discourage you from trying to buy out the whole store.

Without that, you would be creating... an unwinnable state.   [emote]:P[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=737&start=0#p3730
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hiding an object in a bowl of soup
User: Goldenrod111 / DateTime: 2009-05-22 10:03:35

If you are only using the machine to turn the penny into a fork, it might be easier to just create an event for if the player inserts a penny into the machine, instead of any transmutable object. If you only have a few objects that do this, you might still be able to create individual events for each, but this would be hard to do with a large number of objects. I don't have my copy of Inform open (and have not worked with it for a while), but the following code might work - add more "else if the noun is..." blocks for each object.
[code]Instead of inserting something into the machine:
   if the noun is the penny:
      remove the penny from play;
      now the player carries the copper fork;
      say "The machine clicks, whirrs, and with a roar, spits out a copper fork.";
   else:
      say "You can't transmute that."[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=737&start=0#p3731
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hiding an object in a bowl of soup
User: zadillo / DateTime: 2009-05-22 10:44:22

[quote="Goldenrod111"]If you are only using the machine to turn the penny into a fork, it might be easier to just create an event for if the player inserts a penny into the machine, instead of any transmutable object. If you only have a few objects that do this, you might still be able to create individual events for each, but this would be hard to do with a large number of objects. I don't have my copy of Inform open (and have not worked with it for a while), but the following code might work - add more "else if the noun is..." blocks for each object.
[code]Instead of inserting something into the machine:
   if the noun is the penny:
      remove the penny from play;
      now the player carries the copper fork;
      say "The machine clicks, whirrs, and with a roar, spits out a copper fork.";
   else:
      say "You can't transmute that."[/code][/quote]

Thanks, that makes sense.  I think the main thing at this point is more just curiosity for me, about what I might be doing wrong above that I'm apparently not properly defining what is and isn't a transmutable object (so the broad example in the sample code doesn't work).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=733&start=0#p3732
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Split Screen in GLULX
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2009-05-22 13:07:39

Much as I hate to route traffic away from this site, you might try posting to rec.arts.int-fiction. Jon Ingold is a frequent poster there and might be willing to help you out.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=753&start=0#p3733
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: help with killing zombies
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-22 15:35:36

There are several ways you could do this... if it's a simple matter of knives and candlesticks only, and you just want the player to type "kill zombie", you could get away with some instead statements.

Note: I'm a newbie myself so others might have better advice.

[code]
A person can be alive or dead. People are usually alive.

Instead of doing something to a person when the person is dead:
  say "He doesn't respond."

Instead of attacking the zombie when the player is not carrying the knives and the player is not carrying the candlesticks:
  Say "Attacking the zombie with your bare hands would be futile." [assuming there aren't some other weapon-like items you want to check for]

Instead of attacking the zombie when the player is carrying the knives and the player is not carrying the candlesticks:
  say "You stab the zombie, but he seems to be immune to knives and just keeps going."

Instead of attacking the zombie when the player is carrying the candlesticks:
  say "You hurl the candlesticks at the zombie and kill him.";
  now the zombie is dead;
  now the candlesticks are in the location.

[/code]

If you want the player to use constructions like "Kill zombie with candlesticks" you could define a verb and put in some check statements. 

[code]Zombiekilling is an action applying to one visible thing and one carried thing.
Understand "attack [thing] with [thing]" as zombiekilling.
Understand "kill[thing] with [thing]" as zombiekilling.

Instead of attacking the zombie:
  say "Specify what you'd like to kill the zombie with."

Check zombiekilling:
  If the first noun is not the zombie,
   say "Violence is not the answer to this one." instead.

Check zombiekilling:
  If the second noun is the knives,
   say "Zombies are immune to knives." instead.

Check zombiekilling:
  If the second noun is not the candlesticks,
   say "That doesn't seem to have any effect." instead.

Carry out zombiekilling:
  now the zombie is dead;
  now the candlesticks are in the location.

Report zombiekilling:
  say "You hurl the candlesticks at the zombie and kill him."[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=753&start=0#p3734
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: help with killing zombies
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-05-22 19:59:22

[quote="mattmunin"]attack zombie with knife yeilds a failure message of some kind, such that zombies are immune to knives.

if you attack with candlesticks it is a success and the zombie is killed.[/quote]

[code]zombieLair: Room
    'Zombie Lair'
;

+ knife: Thing
    'knife'
    'knife'
    
    iobjFor(AttackWith)
    {
        verify() { }
    }
;

+ candlestick: Thing
    'candle stick/candlestick'
    'candlestick'
    
    iobjFor(AttackWith)
    {
        verify() { }
    }
;

+ zombie: Person
    'zombie'
    'zombie'
    
    dobjFor(Attack)
    {
        check()
        {
            failCheck('Attacking the zombie with your bare hands might not be such a good idea. ');
        }
    }
    
    dobjFor(AttackWith)
    {
        check()
        {
            if (gIobj == knife)
                failCheck('Zombies are immune to knives. ');
        }
        
        action()
        {
            moveIntoForTravel(nil);
            "You beat the zombie over the head with a candlestick until it collapses into a
            pile of dust, which blows away. ";
        }
    }
;[/code]

Depending on what you actually want to happen to the zombie (does its body stay in the zombie lair after it has been killed?), you'll have to change the "moveIntoForTravel(nil)" bit.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=734&start=0#p3735
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 Handbook Nearing Completion
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-05-22 23:21:31

The [i]Inform 7 Handbook [/i]is now at version 0.95. It's available for download from <a class="postlink" href="http://musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm">http://musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm</a>.

I've had lots of good input from various Inform experts, to say nothing of proofreading to clean up a few typos. Also, the kids in my class keep asking questions about stuff they want to do, so I add those bits too. The Handbook is more than 200 pages long, and has extensive cross-references.

I hope Inform newcomers will find it useful. So far, the feedback has been very positive.

--Jim Aikin

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=0#p3736
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: chrislondon / DateTime: 2009-05-23 11:29:59

Frotz is excellent, i use it on a regular basis on my iPhone. I think one of it's main advantages is that it hooks up to the IF Archive so you have access to a huge library. I'm currently playing violet on it which you should definitely try if you haven't already.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=754&start=0#p3737
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Stopping the player from entering the room
User: Goldenrod111 / DateTime: 2009-05-23 12:39:57

I am using Emily Short's Basic Screen Effects to make a custom upper border for my game. On the right side of that, I have a "compass rose" that displays the room's exits (like in Bronze, but without the "unvisited room" tracking). To create the illusion of a larger area, I have created an extra room, which I link the edge rooms to. I don't want the player to enter this room, though, so I have written the following code to try to stop him.
[code]Instead of entering Extension:
	if the player is in the Plains:
		say "The plains continue as far as you can see in that direction, and there is nothing for you there.";
		stop the action;
	if the player is in the Gorge:
		say "The gorge seems to go on forever. You would be better served to just climb out to the plains.";
		stop the action;[/code]Unfortunately, while this does not cause any errors, it seems to have no effect. Am I doing something wrong (I know that "Instead" does the same thing as "stop the action")?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=754&start=0#p3738
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stopping the player from entering the room
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-05-23 13:28:06

"Entering" is the action of moving the player into a container or onto a supporter. "Going" is the action that gets you from one room to another. (For example, if you enter a door, the action is converted to going.) Based on your description of the setup (that is, assuming that "Extension" is the name of your out of bounds room), this should work. (See ch 7.13. "Going from, going to" of the docs.):[code]Instead of going to Extension:
	if the player is in the Plains:
		say "The plains continue as far as you can see in that direction, and there is nothing for you there.";
	if the player is in the Gorge:
		say "The gorge seems to go on forever. You would be better served to just climb out to the plains.".
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=753&start=0#p3739
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: help with killing zombies
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-23 16:59:38

Oh duh, sorry. Obviously I didn't realize what forum I was in.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=752&start=0#p3740
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Conspiracy Theory Game
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-23 17:05:06

13 views and no comments... maybe I'll take that to mean no one knows of one right offhand...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=755&start=0#p3741
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Random Number
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-23 17:33:13

I can't seem to get the random number thing working, even if I compile the code directly out of the documentation.

This:

[code]When play begins: 
    let Y be a random number between 6 and 10; 
    if Y is: 
        -- 6: say "Six is the magic number!"; 
        -- 7: say "The number of the day is seven!"; 
        -- otherwise: say "Today's magic number is boring." [/code]

which I found under example 170, gives me the error:
[quote]
Problem. In the phrase or rule definition 'When play begins'  , the phrase '-- 6'   came as a surprise since it was not a case in an 'if X is...' but was instead some other miscellaneous instruction.

Problem. In the phrase or rule definition 'When play begins'  , the phrase 'say "Six is the magic number!"'   came as a surprise since it was not a case in an 'if X is...' but was instead some other miscellaneous instruction.[/quote]

This (also from 170):

[code]When play begins: 
    let N be a random number between 1 and 5; 
    if N is 1: 
        say "N is one."; 
    otherwise if N is 2: 
        say "N is two."; 
    otherwise if N is 3: 
        say "N is three."; 
    otherwise: 
        say "N is more than the number of your toes." [/code]

Gets me this:

[code]The phrase or rule definition 'When play begins'   is written using the 'colon and indentation' syntax for its 'if's, 'repeat's and 'while's, where blocks of phrases grouped together are indented one tab step inward from the 'if ...:' or similar phrase to which they belong. But the tabs here seem to be misaligned, and I can't determine the structure. 

The first phrase going awry in the definition seems to be 'let N be a random number between 1 and 5'  , in case that helps.[/code]

I even tried putting these in a brand new program to make sure it wasn't an earlier syntax error in my game. 

When I try this:

[code]Carry out Riddling:
    let N be a random number between 1 and 12; 
    if N is 1,
    Begin;
           say "Whats the answer to this example riddle?";
           pause the game;
           say "The answer.";
    otherwise,
           say "What a bout this other riddle?"
           pause the game;
           say "The other answer".;
    end if.[/code]

I get:

[quote]Problem. You wrote 'if N is 1, Begin'  : but this is a phrase which I don't recognise, possibly because it is one you meant to define but never got round to, or because the wording is wrong (see the Phrasebook section of the Index to check). Alternatively, it may be that the text immediately previous to this was a definition whose ending, normally a full stop, is missing?

Problem. You wrote 'otherwise'  : but this is an 'else' or 'otherwise' with no matching 'if', which must be wrong.[/quote]

which I'm guessing means I have a syntax error with the whole if/otherwise/end if business. However, a switch statement would be better anyway.

Maybe I don't get to define the random number within the carry-out-riddling? Maybe I need to format the three statements within a choice differently? But that still doesn't explain why the example text doesn't work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=755&start=0#p3742
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Random Number
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-23 17:55:41

I just managed to work the syntax errors out of the if/otherwise block, but would prefer the switch statement.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=756&start=0#p3743
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Figure Score after player asks
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-23 18:30:20

I'm making a goofy little game where a player gets points for every treasure placed in a container. For a while I was increasing score when an item was found and decreasing when it was dropped, but then I ran into problems with scoring after an item was found, put in carried container, removed, put in pocket, returned to container, and so forth, because it was in the player's possession when it was in the pocket and so forth, but anyway, that's not important.

It occurred to me to just figure the score when the player asks, by counting the treasures in the container. Who cares if he has found and dropped it three times, put it in a pocket and so forth?

So the question is, can you figure score after the player asks? I got errors from "intead of scoring" and "instead of saying score". 

Obviously I can do (psuedocode, too lazy for syntax right now):

Every turn:
  score is 0;
 If the treasure1 is in the container, increase  score by 1;
 If the treasure2 is in the container, increase score by 1. [etc]

But that seems like a lot of overhead, can I figure it only after he asks?

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=756&start=0#p3744
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Figure Score after player asks
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-23 18:35:57

Patience, is what I need.

There were tons of examples in the documentation using "score" and after consulting many of them I figured my question was a needle in a haystack. Found it though:

[code]Instead of requesting the score:
  say "test".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=756&start=0#p3745
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Figure Score after player asks
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-23 18:48:33

Then again, this compiles but isn't working:

[code]After requesting the score:
  now the score is 0;
  if the treasure1 is in the container, award 1 point;
  say "test".[/code]

Ditto with "before requesting the score", "instead of requesting the score", removing the line "now the score is 0", and saying "increase score by 1" instead of "award 1 point".

It doesn't even say "test", so I guess it isn't even firing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=756&start=0#p3746
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Figure Score after player asks
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-23 19:11:51

[code]Carry out requesting the score:
  now the score is 0;
  if the treasure1 is in the container, award 1 point;
  say "test".[/code]

works.

I'll shut up now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=755&start=0#p3747
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Random Number
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-05-23 19:14:25

From the fact that you referred to this as Example 170, I infer that you're using an older version of Inform. It's 172 in the most recent version.

That said, the Example ought to compile under whatever version you're using. It certainly compiles without trouble in 5Z71 in Windows. I can use the switch statement syntax.

My tentative conclusion, based on the Problem messages you're getting, is that somehow you've got a row of spaces in there in place of a Tab. Messages of this type often indicate a wrong indentation.

There should definitely not be a comma before Begin; in your last code block.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=756&start=0#p3748
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Figure Score after player asks
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-23 19:42:39

erghh!!

code:

[code]Carry out requesting the score:
  now the score is 0;
  if the treasure1 is in the container, award 1 point;
  [etc with 11 more treasures]
  if the player is not carrying the container, now the score is 0;
  say "test".[/code]

Play:

[quote]>[2] take treasure1
>[3] put treasure1 in container
You put the treasure1 into the container.

>[4] score
test
You have so far scored 1 out of a possible 12, in 4 turns.  [color=#FF0000][this is good][/color]

>remove treasure1
(first taking the treasure1)
You're not wearing that.

[Your score has just gone up by one point.] [color=#FF0000][this is bad -- why would this have happened? This shouldn't have increased score, plus I haven't told it to score anything except after the player asks.][/color]

>score
test
You have so far scored 0 out of a possible 12, in 5 turns. [color=#FF0000][this is good I guess, since the player took the treasure with the implicit take][/color]

>[/quote]

This is not remnant code elsewhere as I tested it in a clean project.

First, why did the score go up, even though it was apparently undone right away?

Granted, "remove" assumed you were wearing the treasure, but I can see how someone might type that to remove the treasure from the container, and if the do they don't need to get a score reporting, much less a confusing one.

It also happens with:

[code]>take treasure1 [out of container]
Taken.

[Your score has just gone up by one point.]
>score
test
You have so far scored 0 out of a possible 0, in 4 turns.[/code]

In any case this could all be solved by turning off the reporting of the score at any time other than at the player's request, can I do that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=755&start=0#p3749
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Random Number
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-23 19:56:21

Jim, you were right, it was spaces instead of tabs when I copied it directly from the documentation.

I didn't even realize there was a distinction, so it didn't work when I retyped it either. I've been using spaces instead of tabs for the whole six months or so that I've been doing this, and haven't run into a problem til now.

Good to know! Now I can use that switch statement which is much cleaner than a bunch of otherwises. 

Thanks Jim!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=755&start=0#p3750
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Random Number
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-23 19:57:49

Oh, and about the fact that I'm using an older version of Inform. If I remove my current version and install the new, will I lose my projects or have any conversion problems with them?

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=755&start=0#p3751
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Random Number
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-05-23 21:22:21

Updating Inform ... you should be making backups of your projects on a separate physical hard drive in any case, so even in the unlikely event that the install trashes anything (it shouldn't!), you can recover without problems. In Windows XP, for instance, the Inform app goes in Program Files, but the project files are in My Documents. Overwriting the stuff in Program Files shouldn't affect anything in My Documents.

Compatibility issues are unlikely, but by no means impossible. The syntax checking has been tightened up a bit in the new version, for instance.

I'm pretty sure you can install the new version in a different location from the old one. I haven't tried it, so I can't give you tips. If I wanted to do it, I'd go into Program Files and rename the Inform 7 folder to "Inform 7 Old" before installing the new version. In the Mac, you may have to log on as an administrator to change a folder name in Applications, but it shouldn't be hard to do. Then the new install can't possibly overwrite the old one, and you can switch between versions if you need to simply by renaming the folders.

Plus, if you _should_ run into compatibility issues, you can always download the old version from the Inform website and reinstall it. So there's pretty much no way to end up trashing any of your creative work.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=756&start=0#p3752
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Figure Score after player asks
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-05-23 21:31:52

I'm getting the same results you are. This may be an I7 bug, or it may simply be a side effect of the way the score awarding mechanism works. I'm betting it uses a procedural rule, and procedural rules aren't listed by the RULES ALL command, which makes the problem tricky to diagnose.

So the question I need to ask is, why are you doing it this way? Why are you trying to recalculate the score on the fly when the player asks for the score? This was an attempt to solve another problem, wasn't it? Maybe if we can fix the original problem....

I'll go look at that message.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=756&start=0#p3753
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Figure Score after player asks
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-05-23 21:46:35

[quote="ShaeSays"]I'm making a goofy little game where a player gets points for every treasure placed in a container. For a while I was increasing score when an item was found and decreasing when it was dropped, but then I ran into problems with scoring after an item was found, put in carried container, removed, put in pocket, returned to container, and so forth, because it was in the player's possession when it was in the pocket and so forth.[/quote]

I can see the problem. It took me a few minutes to work out how to do what you seem to be describing. Try this example game:

[code]
The Lab is a room.
The player is carrying a fish, a banana, and a used hypodermic syringe.
The old shipping trunk is a closed openable container in the Lab.

After inserting the fish into the trunk:
	if the fish is in the trunk for the first time:
		award 1 point;
	continue the action.
After inserting the banana into the trunk:
	if the banana is in the trunk for the first time:
		award 1 point;
	continue the action.
After inserting the syringe into the trunk:
	if the syringe is in the trunk for the first time:
		award 1 point;
	continue the action.
[/code]
One possible source of problems when you award points for having the player put something somewhere is that the After rule may run even if the action failed (which can happen, in the game above, if the player tries to put something in the trunk while the trunk is closed).

The solution, which I worked out by trial and error, is a sort of double test. First, is the action "inserting the banana into the trunk"? And within that, is the banana actually IN the trunk for the first time?

Try this and see if it solves the problem.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=756&start=0#p3754
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Figure Score after player asks
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-23 21:58:04

Well, I suppose it might be a little hokey, but I didn't want the player to retain the point scored if he removed the item from the trunk (for example) after putting it in and getting a point for it, because the goal was to get everything there and leave it there. So the point would be 1 while it's in there and 0 when it's out, no matter how many times it's pulled in and out. And checking the score while moving things in and out would help guide the player to the goal.

I think this is an I7 bug. It's not that big a deal since it ultimately results in the correct score, but the incorrect reporting is undesirable.

I ended up putting this at the front of my game:

[code]When play begins,
	try switching score notification off.[/code]

As far as I can tell the scoring is working right despite the weird reporting.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=756&start=0#p3755
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Figure Score after player asks
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-05-23 22:08:27

[quote="ShaeSays"]Well, I suppose it might be a little hokey, but I didn't want the player to retain the point scored if he removed the item from the trunk (for example) after putting it in and getting a point for it, because the goal was to get everything there and leave it there.[/quote]
Oh, that's not too difficult. Try this:

[code]
The Lab is a room.
The player is carrying a fish.
The old shipping trunk is a closed openable container in the Lab.

A thing has a truth state called points-awarded. The points-awarded of a thing is usually false.

After inserting the fish into the trunk:
	if the fish is in the trunk:
		if the points-awarded of the fish is false:
			now the points-awarded of the fish is true;
			award 1 point;
	continue the action.

Instead of taking the fish:
	if the fish is in the trunk:
		award -1 point;
		now the points-awarded of the fish is false;
	continue the action.
[/code]
I tested this a bit, not exhaustively. The point can be awarded and un-awarded over and over. Of course, you'll need to write those two rules for every scored object in your game, but that's par for the course in IF.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=756&start=0#p3756
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Figure Score after player asks
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-05-23 22:19:12

Actually, the truth state isn't needed. This seems to do the job:

[code]
After inserting the fish into the trunk:
	if the fish is in the trunk:
		award 1 point;
	continue the action.

Instead of taking the fish:
	if the fish is in the trunk:
		award -1 point;
	continue the action.
[/code]
Thanks for bringing up this topic. I've added it to the Handbook!

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=756&start=10#p3757
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Figure Score after player asks
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-05-23 23:29:08

[quote="ShaeSays"]code:

[code]Carry out requesting the score:
  now the score is 0;
  if the treasure1 is in the container, award 1 point;
  [etc with 11 more treasures]
  if the player is not carrying the container, now the score is 0;
  say "test".[/code]

Play:

[quote]>[2] take treasure1
>[3] put treasure1 in container
You put the treasure1 into the container.

>[4] score
test
You have so far scored 1 out of a possible 12, in 4 turns.  [color=#FF0000][this is good][/color]

>remove treasure1
(first taking the treasure1)
You're not wearing that.

[Your score has just gone up by one point.] [color=#FF0000][this is bad -- why would this have happened? This shouldn't have increased score, plus I haven't told it to score anything except after the player asks.][/color]

>score
test
You have so far scored 0 out of a possible 12, in 5 turns. [color=#FF0000][this is good I guess, since the player took the treasure with the implicit take][/color]

>[/quote][/quote]

This is because changing the variable "score" automatically prints an announcement about the points won/lost at the end of the turn. SCORE, being an out-of-world action, doesn't count as a turn, so the score announcement doesn't print until the next action the player takes.

If you really want to calculate the score on the fly, you'll have to do it with a different variable. Or, better, forget the variable altogether, like so:
[code]Part 1 - Score Code

A thing can be valuable. A thing is usually not valuable. 
[All treasures should be marked as valuable.]

To decide what number is the dyna-score:
	if the player is not carrying the chest, decide on 0;
	otherwise decide on the number of valuable things in the chest.

Carry out requesting the score:
	say "You have so far scored [dyna-score] out of a possible [number of valuable things], in [turn count] turns.";
	stop the action.

When play begins:
	change the right hand status line to "[dyna-score]/[turn count]".
	
Part 2 - Testing Stuff

Lab is a room.

The Ming vase is a valuable thing in the Lab.

The chest is a container in the Lab.

Test me with "get all / score / put vase in chest / score / drop chest / score".[/code]

The problem with that, however, is that it never prints a score notification when things are added to or removed from the chest, and if you want to use the score to remind players what they should be doing with the treasures, that's probably a bad thing. I would do it with rules that award and subtract points for placing items in the chest. This is an easy way to do it:
[code]Part 1 - Score Code

A thing can be valuable. A thing is usually not valuable.
[All treasures should be marked as valuable.]

After inserting a valuable thing into the chest:
	award 1 point;
	continue the action.

Before taking a valuable thing when the noun is in the chest:
	award -1 points.

After dropping the chest when a valuable thing is in the chest:
	let x be the number of valuable things in the chest;
	decrease the score by x.
	
Part 2 - Testing Stuff

Lab is a room.

The Ming vase and the diamond necklace are valuable things in the Lab.

The chest is a container in the Lab.

Test me with "get all / score / put vase in chest / score / get vase from chest / score / put vase and necklace in chest / score / drop chest / score".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=756&start=10#p3758
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Figure Score after player asks
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-24 00:26:26

Jim and Emerald,

Thanks so much for the code snippets. They were all much more elegant than what I was trying to hobble together.

[quote]This is because changing the variable "score" automatically prints an announcement about the points won/lost at the end of the turn. [/quote]

I'm confused though -- as far as I can tell it announced an increase in point where a decrease would have been appropriate (take treasure when the treasure was in the chest should have decreased a point). And also it seemed to lie, or at the very least undo what it did immediately after it did it. And if it undid, why didn't it announce that too?

[code]SCORE, being an out-of-world action, doesn't count as a turn, so the score announcement doesn't print until the next action the player takes.[/code]

Then why didn't it report the loss at the turn after the turn in question?

It would be good to understand what Inform is up to for educational purposes, but in the end, this is buggy as far as the end user experience is concerned and has to be worked around. Looks like I have several options for doing that now! Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=757&start=0#p3759
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Pause the game;
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-24 00:32:07

I'm using this statement and I notice it erases the screen after the pause.  Any way to get around that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=756&start=10#p3760
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Figure Score after player asks
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-05-24 01:23:43

[quote="ShaeSays"][quote]This is because changing the variable "score" automatically prints an announcement about the points won/lost at the end of the turn. [/quote]

I'm confused though -- as far as I can tell it announced an increase in point where a decrease would have been appropriate (take treasure when the treasure was in the chest should have decreased a point). And also it seemed to lie, or at the very least undo what it did immediately after it did it. And if it undid, why didn't it announce that too?[/quote]

Because the increase it's reporting is from the "award 1 point" in the "Carry out requesting the score" rule. The way your system works, the score only changes when the player types SCORE, not after the player puts a treasure in the container or takes it out again. (Look at the score in the status line.)

So the player types SCORE. The game changes the score to 0 and then adds a point for each treasure. After the next in-world action the player takes (in this case REMOVE TREASURE1, but it could just as well have been LOOK or X TREASURE1 or JUMP or something), I7 notices that the score has changed and reports the change. If you put three treasures into the container and then typed
>SCORE
>REMOVE TREASURE1
the game would report that your score had gone up by 3.

Does that make sense?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=757&start=0#p3761
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pause the game;
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-05-24 01:25:36

Use this instead:
[code]wait for the SPACE key;[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=756&start=10#p3762
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Figure Score after player asks
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-05-24 01:27:02

[quote="ShaeSays"]I'm confused though -- as far as I can tell it announced an increase in point where a decrease would have been appropriate (take treasure when the treasure was in the chest should have decreased a point). And also it seemed to lie, or at the very least undo what it did immediately after it did it. And if it undid, why didn't it announce that too?

[code]SCORE, being an out-of-world action, doesn't count as a turn, so the score announcement doesn't print until the next action the player takes.[/code]

Then why didn't it report the loss at the turn after the turn in question?

It would be good to understand what Inform is up to for educational purposes, but in the end, this is buggy as far as the end user experience is concerned and has to be worked around. Looks like I have several options for doing that now! Thanks![/quote]
I'm a little late to the party, but let's see if I can help. The reason the score reporting mechanism seems "buggy" is that you modified a fundamental part of it without taking that into account. Granted, the docs don't explain the details, but I'll try.

The notify score changes rule is listed in the turn sequence rulebook (see index). Since out of world actions aren't supposed to advance time, etc., they prematurely end the turn sequence rules, skipping everything after the generate action rule (including notify score changes). When you changed the carry out rules for requesting the score (an out of world action), you didn't just change the way the score is modified, you inadvertantly [i]postponed[/i] notification as well.

The reason the notification is delayed until the next turn is due to the way the notification works. Basically there are actually two score variables in I7: the score and the last notified score (see List of named values in the Contents index). The notification code merely checks the current score against the last notified score and, if it is different (i.e. if the score isn't the same as the last time this was checked) it prints a notification. So here's what happened with my comments in italics:

[quote]>[4] score
[i]Here you have code awarding 1 point for having treasure1 in the container.[/i]
test
You have so far scored 1 out of a possible 12, in 4 turns.
[i]Since this is an out of world action, it skips notification (therefore, the last notified score is not updated).[/i]

>remove treasure1
(first taking the treasure1)
You're not wearing that.
[i]It doesn't matter what (in - world) action you do here. Once it gets to the notify score changes rule, Inform checks the current score against the last notified score. Since notification was skipped in the previous turn the last notified score is still 0, but the score is 1, so...[/i]
[Your score has just gone up by one point.][/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=756&start=10#p3763
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Figure Score after player asks
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-05-24 01:31:29

Just noticed a couple of bugs in my second snippet of code. (It didn't account for picking up the chest when it contained valuables, and it was missing a "continue the action".) Fixed:
[code]Part 1 - Score Code

A thing can be valuable. A thing is usually not valuable.
[All treasures should be marked as valuable.]

After inserting a valuable thing into the chest:
	award 1 point;
	continue the action.

Before taking a valuable thing when the noun is in the chest:
	award -1 points.

After taking the chest when a valuable thing is in the chest:
	let x be the number of valuable things in chest;
	award x points;
	continue the action.

After dropping the chest when a valuable thing is in the chest:
	let x be the number of valuable things in the chest;
	decrease the score by x;
	continue the action.
   
Part 2 - Testing Stuff

Lab is a room.

The Ming vase and the diamond necklace are valuable things in the Lab.

The chest is a container in the Lab.

Test me with "get all / score / put vase in chest / score / get vase from chest / score / put vase and necklace in chest / score / drop chest / score / get chest / score".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=752&start=0#p3764
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Conspiracy Theory Game
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-05-24 04:24:40

I'm sure they must exist, but if you make a game about JFK's assassination by the Illuminati, or the alien from Roswell escaping Area 51, I don't think anyone's going to go "Hey, she's ripping off [GAME X]!"

Originality and innovation are only a means to an end.  Quality and craft are the most important parts of any game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=752&start=0#p3765
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Conspiracy Theory Game
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-05-24 05:38:47

I don't know of any off-hand, however:

Quickly Googling '"interactive fiction" "conspiracy theory"' brings up a couple of references to [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=77rsl9mezn5iogto]The Plant[/url], by Mike Roberts. One [url=http://web.archive.org/web/20041204121505/http://www.igs.net/~tril/if/best/index.html]now-defunct website[/url] suggests [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=l7qf2lyc563kk84p]Little Blue Men[/url], by Michael Gentry, as well. Searching IFDB for "conspiracy" offers up [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=y38nga6m3w8qpd47]Project Delta[/url], by Emilian Kowalewski (which isn't even IF, strictly speaking, and which received terrible reviews). Caveat: I have not played any of these games.

That seems to be pretty much it, unless you count [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=i8rgwxt2m2nf8fco]The Cabal[/url] by Stephen Bond, which is a big rec.arts.int-fiction in-joke about accusations that Graham Nelson and a few other IF aficionados were trying to control the IF community.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=756&start=10#p3767
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Figure Score after player asks
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-24 10:32:09

Emerald and Mike:

Thanks for the explanations. I think I understand but I'll have to mull it over some. It helps to know that there is both a "score" and "last notified score".

While I know it's not the most elegant approach, is my scoring working correctly? It seems to be but obviously I can't have tested every contingency. What I've done is what I've described above: calculated the score on the fly after requesting score, and turned off notifications. (I'm also wondering if the way I turned off notifications is the simplest way, looks a little overkill).

I ask because I like to finish a game before going back and making things that work more elegant. It keeps me motivated to have some finished (if ameteur) stuff out there. But learning and doing it right next time is important too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=757&start=0#p3768
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pause the game;
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-24 10:37:41

Brilliant, thank you!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=756&start=10#p3769
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Figure Score after player asks
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-05-24 12:36:20

[quote="ShaeSays"]While I know it's not the most elegant approach, is my scoring working correctly? It seems to be but obviously I can't have tested every contingency. What I've done is what I've described above: calculated the score on the fly after requesting score, and turned off notifications. (I'm also wondering if the way I turned off notifications is the simplest way, looks a little overkill).[/quote]If you want to do it this way, you'll have to: turn off score notification, turn off the ability of the player to turn it back on, and remove the score from the status line (since it won't be accurate). The easiest way to do these three things is:[code]The notify score changes rule is not listed in the turn sequence rulebook.

Understand the command "notify" as something new.

When play begins:
	change the right hand status line to "[turn count]".[/code]Note that removing the command "notify" also removes "notify on" and "notify off" automatically.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=756&start=10#p3770
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Figure Score after player asks
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-24 13:49:58

As I suspected, more issues unforseen to me. Thanks Skinny Mike!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=539&start=10#p3771
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Infinitely replenishing supply of an item
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-24 15:26:15

Back to this topic:

[code]Rule for clarifying the parser's choice of the handful of leaves when cutting: stop.[/code]

For some reason this didn't work for:

[code]Rule for clarifying the parser's choice of the purple treasure when inserting: stop. [/code]

I also tried "inserting it into" and "inserting it into the container" and some other things.

Not a huge deal, but I find the reporting awkward. If I've done a good job saying how "likely" actions are, and I've reported in my own code, I shouldn't need Inform to report too.

In reality, I'm inserting a bunch of similarly named things in the same container throughout the game, so even if I can get something to work I might need to write it 12 times.

There isn't anything like this available, is there?

[code]Rule for clarifying the parser's choice: stop. [/code]

I think I could stand to have it never report on anything.

Advice on the former problem or the latter idea appreciated.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=758&start=0#p3772
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Lies and Seductions, a free adventure game
User: lankoski / DateTime: 2009-05-25 06:37:00

Hi,


I like to introduce the game Lies and Seductions that we have recently released. The game a loose adaptation of the novel Dangerous Liaisons by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos.

Are you able to guide Abby to seduce a rock star, Chris, who has promised to stay virgin until marriage? In order to success you need to gather dirty little secrets, use those secrets in your advantage, and make an impression on Chris.

The game is available for Windows and Mac at [url]http://www.liesandseductions.com/[/url].

All comments appreciated.

[img]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3544/3476462752_a93779c9d5.jpg[/img]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=758&start=0#p3773
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Lies and Seductions, a free adventure game
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-05-25 13:36:28

A rock star staying a virgin until he's married??? Dude, you been smokin' way too many of those funny cigarettes.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=758&start=0#p3774
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Lies and Seductions, a free adventure game
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-25 19:35:16

Maybe he's a Christian rock star.

Of course that wouldn't mean he was staying a virgin, only that he was lying about it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=754&start=0#p3775
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stopping the player from entering the room
User: Goldenrod111 / DateTime: 2009-05-26 13:55:01

Thanks! It works now! However, I have run into another problem. I want the game to preform special code on the first time the player enters a room. I am currently using the following code.
[code]Before entering Woods Entrance:
	if the scene number is 1:
		now the scene number is 2;
		say "You run under the trees, barely making it in before the ground behind you is soaked.";
	else:
		continue the action.[/code]"scene number" is a numeric variable that I am using to keep track of the part of the game the player is in (as you can see, this is still close to the beginning). The "else" is in there for later, if I want to include more events. Unfortunately, this code does not run. What am I missing?

EDIT: I just found an example (page 52 of the [url=http://www.musicwords.net/if/InformHandbook.pdf]Inform Handbook[/url]) that might work in this case, as the player can only enter "Woods Entrance" at this point from one other room. However, what should I do if I want to have something like this later, where the room has multiple entrances?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=754&start=0#p3776
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stopping the player from entering the room
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-05-26 14:27:35

The problem is probably the same as earlier: the action is not "entering" but "going to". You could also use the "for the first time" structure (see chapter 7.16 in the manual):

[code]Before going to the Woods Entrance for the first time:
    say "You run under the trees, barely making it in before the ground behind you is soaked."[/code]
By the way, you are aware that you don't need to use a variable to track scenes since Inform has built-in scene management (chapter 10)?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=754&start=0#p3777
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stopping the player from entering the room
User: Goldenrod111 / DateTime: 2009-05-26 15:04:10

Thanks, it works! I didn't want to use "for the first time" because this room is the main "bridge" to the area where most of the game takes place, and it is very likely that I will put another event here. My "scene number" variable is somewhat different than the built-in scene, functioning more like chapter numbers in a book. I also use it to print a suitable heading in the status bar (if scene number is one, say...), which I don't believe is something that Inform's scenes can do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=754&start=0#p3778
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stopping the player from entering the room
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-05-26 15:41:34

[quote="Goldenrod111"]Thanks, it works! I didn't want to use "for the first time" because this room is the main "bridge" to the area where most of the game takes place, and it is very likely that I will put another event here.[/quote]
You can have multiple before rules without them interfering with each other, for example

[code]Before going to the Woods Entrance for the first time:
    say "You run under the trees, barely making it in before the ground behind you is soaked."

Before going to the Woods Entrance when the player carries the flashlight:
    say "You manage to lose your flashlight.";
    remove the flashlight from play.[/code]

The flashlight rule would always run when the player has the flashlight, regardless of whether the "for the first time" rule would run.

[quote]My "scene number" variable is somewhat different than the built-in scene, functioning more like chapter numbers in a book. I also use it to print a suitable heading in the status bar (if scene number is one, say...), which I don't believe is something that Inform's scenes can do.[/quote]
Well if you use "if scene number is one, say..." that's not much different from doing "If Crossing the Woods is happening, say..." But you actually can attach text to scenes. For example like this:

[code]A scene has some text that varies called heading. The heading of a scene is usually "".

Crossing the Woods is a scene. The heading of Crossing the Woods is "Chapter 1: Crossing the Woods".
Crossing the Woods begins when play begins. Crossing the Woods ends when Meeting the Werewolf begins.
Meeting the Werewolf is a scene. The heading of Meeting the Werewolf is "Chapter 2: Meeting the Werewolf".
Meeting the Werewolf begins when the time since Crossing the Woods began is 3 minutes.

To decide which text is the current heading:
	repeat with x running through scenes:
		if x is happening and the heading of x is not "", decide on heading of x;
	decide on "".
		
When play begins:
	change the left hand status line to "[current heading]".
	
Test me with "z/z/z"[/code]

Scenes give much more flexibility than a single variable, but if that's enough for your needs there's nothing stopping you from using that approach.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=759&start=0#p3779
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: "for the first time" inside invented action
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-26 19:26:31

I'm trying to avoid using flags when "for the first time" would work. Trouble is, I can't get it to work inside an action I created.

[code]Digging is an action applying to nothing.
Understand "dig" as digging.

Check digging:
  If the player is in the basement,
    say "There's no place to dig here" instead.

Carry out digging:
  If the player is digging in the North Lawn for the first time[/code]

Is there a syntax here that will work?

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=759&start=0#p3780
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "for the first time" inside invented action
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-26 19:30:16

Incidentally, using "instead of" after the action definition meant that whatever was in that block happened despite my check rules.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=759&start=0#p3781
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "for the first time" inside invented action
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-05-27 00:10:26

[quote="ShaeSays"]Incidentally, using "instead of" after the action definition meant that whatever was in that block happened despite my check rules.[/quote]Yeah, Instead rules are processed before Check -- see the diagram in 12.2. "How actions are processed." As far as the syntax for the above:[code]Carry out digging in the North Lawn for the first time:
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=754&start=0#p3782
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stopping the player from entering the room
User: Goldenrod111 / DateTime: 2009-05-27 08:09:29

[quote="Nitku"]You can have multiple before rules without them interfering with each other, for example
[code]Before going to the Woods Entrance for the first time:
    say "You run under the trees, barely making it in before the ground behind you is soaked."

Before going to the Woods Entrance when the player carries the flashlight:
    say "You manage to lose your flashlight.";
    remove the flashlight from play.[/code][/quote]I just think it is easier (just a matter of personal preference) to read the code:
[code]Before going to the Woods Entrance:
    if the scene number is 1:
        say "You run under the trees, barely making it in before the ground behind you is soaked."
    otherwise if the player carries the flashlight:
        say "You manage to lose your flashlight.";
        remove the flashlight from play.[/code]

[quote="Nitku"]Well if you use "if scene number is one, say..." that's not much different from doing "If Crossing the Woods is happening, say..." But you actually can attach text to scenes. For example like this:

[code]A scene has some text that varies called heading. The heading of a scene is usually "".

Crossing the Woods is a scene. The heading of Crossing the Woods is "Chapter 1: Crossing the Woods".
Crossing the Woods begins when play begins. Crossing the Woods ends when Meeting the Werewolf begins.
Meeting the Werewolf is a scene. The heading of Meeting the Werewolf is "Chapter 2: Meeting the Werewolf".
Meeting the Werewolf begins when the time since Crossing the Woods began is 3 minutes.

To decide which text is the current heading:
	repeat with x running through scenes:
		if x is happening and the heading of x is not "", decide on heading of x;
	decide on "".
		
When play begins:
	change the left hand status line to "[current heading]".
	
Test me with "z/z/z"[/code]

Scenes give much more flexibility than a single variable, but if that's enough for your needs there's nothing stopping you from using that approach.[/quote]The problem that I thought that I might run into there was having multiple scenes running at the same time, and only one space to display the text. I might use it if I need more flexibility in the future, but for this game, that one variable works nicely.


I have run into another problem, though (error and code below).
[quote][b]Problem. [/b]The phrase or rule definition 'Instead of taking the lightbulb from the lamp'   is written using the 'colon and indentation' syntax for its 'if's, 'repeat's and 'while's, where blocks of phrases grouped together are indented one tab step inward from the 'if ...:' or similar phrase to which they belong. But the phrase 'if the lightbulb is not in the lamp'  , which ought to begin a block, is immediately followed by <no text> at the same or a lower indentation, so the block seems to be empty - this must mean there has been a mistake in indenting the phrases.
[/quote][code]Instead of taking the lightbulb from the lamp:
	if the lightbulb is not in the lamp:
		say "The socket is empty, so you cannot remove it from the lamp."
	otherwise:
		say "You [if the lamp is switched on]turn off the lamp, and [end if]unscrew the lightbulb.";
		now the lamp is switched off;
		silently try taking the lightbulb.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=754&start=0#p3783
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stopping the player from entering the room
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-05-27 09:28:31

There's a semicolon missing from the end of the third line.

That takes care of the error message you had, but the code still wouldn't work for a number of reasons:
- the action is wrong again, it should be "removing it from". (The debug command ACTIONS is useful for finding out what are the "real" actions that the parser understands.) 
- if the player types GET LIGHTBULB instead of GET LIGHTBULB FROM LAMP, the rule won't run.
- if the player types GET LIGHTBULB FROM LAMP when the bulb is not in the lamp, the rule won't run either. This is because the command is then parsed as taking an object called "lightbulb from lamp".

The easiest way to solve all but the last point is:
[code]After taking the lightbulb when the lightbulb was in the lamp:
	say "You [if the lamp is switched on]turn off the lamp, and [end if]unscrew the lightbulb.";
	now the lamp is switched off.[/code]
Fixing the last point is a bit trickier and possibly more hassle than it's worth.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=754&start=0#p3784
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stopping the player from entering the room
User: Goldenrod111 / DateTime: 2009-05-27 10:18:36

Punctuation...one of the hardest things in Inform. I want that rule to run only when the player is taking the lightbulb from the lamp, and the action to run normally every other time. Are you saying that it might not run even then? Also, I found that a device cannot also be a container. I solved this by making the socket an Inform-recognized part of the light, but want to redirect everything except examining it to the main lamp. [s]Would I use something like the following?[/s][code]Instead of doing something other than examining with the socket: try doing it to the lamp.[/code]

EDIT: Never mind, I found the solution to this in Example 85 ("Fine Laid"):[code]Before doing something other than examining when the current action involves the socket: 
    if the socket is the noun, change the noun to the lamp; 
    if the socket is the second noun, change the second noun to the lamp; 
    try the current action instead.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=754&start=0#p3785
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stopping the player from entering the room
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-05-27 10:55:41

[quote="Goldenrod111"]Also, I found that a device cannot also be a container. I solved this by making the socket an Inform-recognized part of the light...[/quote]It looks like you've got your solution using component parts, but I just wanted to comment on the above since this isssue comes up now and then. There are sometimes cases where an author feels stymied because Inform doesn't allow "multiple inheritence" -- that is, something can't be a member of two different mutually exclusive kinds (like container and device). In almost all cases we can get around this using properties. If you look at the "kinds" index, you'll see that a device is like any other thing except that it has an additional property; it can be switched on or switched off. If you want to create something which can be switched on/off but isn't a device, it's as simple as giving it this property:[code]The lamp is a container in the Lab.
The lamp can be switched on.[/code]Now the lamp will be a container that also responds appropriately to the switching it on / off actions. I'm not saying you should do that in this case, just that it's a good thing to keep in mind.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=754&start=10#p3786
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stopping the player from entering the room
User: Goldenrod111 / DateTime: 2009-05-27 13:15:21

That's a good tip! Thanks! Now, another question. I would like to keep track of the player's moves purely through a time (of day)-based system, and would like to change the ending screen to show the amount of time taken, instead of the number of turns. Also, I would like the time to show up only after the first "scene" has ended (scene number is greater than 1). Is there any way to do this without completely rewriting the obituary, as described on page 17.36 of the Documentation?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=754&start=10#p3787
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stopping the player from entering the room
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-05-29 01:41:53

[quote="Goldenrod111"]I want that rule to run only when the player is taking the lightbulb from the lamp, and the action to run normally every other time. Are you saying that it might not run even then?[/quote]

Try the following and you'll see what I mean:

[code]The lamp shop is a room. The light bulb is in the lamp shop. The antique lamp and the modern lamp are containers in the lamp shop.

Instead of removing the light bulb from the antique lamp:
	say "Light bulb removed from the antique lamp.";
	silently try taking the light bulb.
	
After taking the light bulb when the light bulb was in the modern lamp:
	say "Light bulb removed from the modern lamp."
	
Test me with "get bulb/put bulb in antique lamp/get bulb/put bulb in antique lamp/get bulb from antique lamp/put bulb in modern lamp/get bulb/put bulb in modern lamp/get bulb from modern lamp"[/code]

The antique lamp uses "removing it from", the modern lamp uses "taking". The difference is that "removing it from" applies [b]only[/b] when the player types TAKE BULB FROM LAMP, but not when they type TAKE BULB (when the bulb is in the lamp), and it is likely that most players use the shorter version of the command. When the bulb is not in a lamp taking is not affected at all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=759&start=0#p3788
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "for the first time" inside invented action
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-29 08:10:03

Hey Mike,

Thanks for the info...

[code]Carry out digging in the North Lawn for the first time:[/code]

But suppose I want digging in the basement and the indoor rooms to give one error via check rules ("You can't dig indoors"), digging in the North Lawn for the first time to unearth something, and digging in the North Lawn thereafter to be fruitless.

I couldn't write "Carry out" twice, and I couldn't think of a way to do a check that said something like "Instead of digging in the north lawn except for the first time". 

Wait, is it "after the first time"? I'm not sure if I tried that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=754&start=10#p3789
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stopping the player from entering the room
User: Goldenrod111 / DateTime: 2009-05-29 08:19:55

I believe that, after I posted that question, I did test your suggestion, as it now uses "taking".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=760&start=0#p3790
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Do posts get archived?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-29 08:25:50

I was looking for an old post in which someone helped me set "talking to" and "answering it that" and "asking" and all the other conversation-related commands in Inform 7 to the same thing. This is very useful for non-conversation-centric games where you just want NPCs to say certain things when spoken to, no matter how they're spoken to.

I couldn't find the post and have had trouble finding other old posts too. I've only been around since last September or so, so they shouldn't even be a year old. Are posts deleted or archived around here after a certain amount of time?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=761&start=0#p3791
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: All Conversations Created Equal
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-29 08:41:35

I'm trying to set up a little module that I can use over and over again, that sets all conversation styles equal. I got some help on this months ago, but I can't find the post now. In any case, I think I learned most of what I needed to know then and can lift the code out of my first game.

However,

Entire code:

[code]The onlyroom is a room.
Guy is a man in the onlyroom.
Guy is carrying a ball.

[define talking]
Talking to is an action applying to one visible thing. 
Understand "talk to [someone]" as talking to.

Carry out talking to:
	Say "This is a custom response."

[set all conversations to "talking to"]
Instead of asking someone (called the listener) about something:
	Try talking to the listener instead.

Instead of telling someone (called the listener) about something:
	Try talking to the listener instead.

Instead of answering someone (called the listener) that something:
	Try talking to the listener instead. [/code]

Play:
[quote]onlyroom
You can see Guy here.

>Hello, Guy
You seem to want to talk to someone, but I can't see whom.[/quote]

I certainly didn't expect that -- what the heck? The Guy is right there!

On a related note, are there any "talking" actions that I'm missing? The goal is to have some NPCs that say certain things in non-conversation-centric games when they are spoken to, regardless of whether they are asked, told, said hello to, and any other style of talking that a player might come up with.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=761&start=0#p3792
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: All Conversations Created Equal
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-05-29 09:16:50

The convention (and how the parser works) is to use the form NPC, TOPIC. So if you try GUY, HELLO it should work.

[quote="ShaeSays"]On a related note, are there any "talking" actions that I'm missing? The goal is to have some NPCs that say certain things in non-conversation-centric games when they are spoken to, regardless of whether they are asked, told, said hello to, and any other style of talking that a player might come up with.[/quote]
You might want to cover YES and NO as well. And perhaps commanding NPCs too, especially if you wish to cover the NPC, TOPIC commands.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=761&start=0#p3793
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: All Conversations Created Equal
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-29 09:19:27

Oh, duh. This is what happens when a casual player tries to make games. Time to round up some beta testers.

Thanks for your help Nitku.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=759&start=0#p3794
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "for the first time" inside invented action
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-05-29 09:31:16

"more than once" or "at least twice". (see chapter 7.16 in the manual)

Personally I would use the following structure:

[code]Check digging when the location is the North Lawn:
    say "You've already unearthed everything of value." instead.

Check digging when the location is the basement or the location is indoors: [assuming "indoors" is a property of a room]
    say "You can't dig indoors." instead.

Check digging: [catches all other cases]
    say "There's no reason to dig here." instead.

Instead of digging when the location is the North Lawn for the first time: [a special event]
    say "You find a spork!";
    now the player carries the spork.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=759&start=0#p3795
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "for the first time" inside invented action
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-29 09:56:34

Thanks Nitku. Much better.

Similar situation:

Treasures are hidden everywhere, and they all have a similar name. What I don't want is for the player to start up the game, enter a room, say "Take treasure" on pure whim, and be rewarded for that. So in most cases I have the treasure appearing, say in a container, only after she examines the container. This tends to work fine.

In one case I have a NPC carrying a treasure. I don't want you to know that until you examine Suzy, so that you don't walk into a room, ask for a treasure and get a response when you've bypassed the game play that leads you to know that Suzy is carrying it.

I started with "Rule for determinining the concealed possessions of Suzy: yes."

But that meant:

> x suzy
Suzy is carrying the red treasure.

Take red treasure
You can't see any such thing.

So what I want is (sloppycode)

Instead of taking the red treasure:
  if Suzy has been examined at least once, 
   say "Suzy won't give it up easily"
  otherwise, 
   say "you don't see it here".

and

Instead of asking Suzy for the red treasure
 (same thing).

"Examined at least once" didn't work and I couldn't find a syntax that did.

I ended up doing this, which seems inelegant:

A person can be examined or unexamined.
After examining Suzy for the first time, now Suzy is examined.
If Suzy is examined, ... game recognizes that you know about the treasure.

Is there a better way? I keep finding that most of my booleans aren't necessary and are only making the code weirder, longer or harder to read.

Edited to add:  The reason I don't have Suzy's treasure appearing only after you examine her is because I want to say 
The description of Suzy is "[if Suzy carries the treasure]Suzy is carrying...[otherwise]Suzy looks like whatever"
I think there might have been another reason too. I'll have to think about that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=759&start=0#p3796
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "for the first time" inside invented action
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-05-29 10:16:39

The most "elegant" way that I can think of is

[code]Rule for deciding the concealed possessions of Suzy: 
	if we have examined Suzy, no;
	otherwise yes.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=759&start=0#p3797
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "for the first time" inside invented action
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-29 10:29:07

Oh jeez, that's simple. Thanks Nitku!!!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=762&start=0#p3798
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Plurals
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-29 11:04:54

Sorry for the prolific posting. I swear I look for these things in the documentation.

Can I do something like this?

[code]Understand "treasures" as one or more of the red treasure, the blue treasure, the brass treasure, etc.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=760&start=0#p3799
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Do posts get archived?
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2009-05-29 11:10:43

The posts should be there, as we don't run any time-realted removal or archiving of posts.

For example, the forum for discussing Inform-related programming runs to 7 pages; last september (september 2008) is currently on page 4 of it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=760&start=0#p3800
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Do posts get archived?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-05-29 11:13:57

Were you looking for [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=550]this thread[/url] by any chance?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=762&start=0#p3801
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Plurals
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-29 11:17:03

I had an idea, but it might be inelegant, even if I can get it working, which I can't.

Treasures is backdrop. Treasures is everywhere.

Instead of doing something to treasures:
	try doing the action to the green treasure;  
             try doing the action to the red treasure;
             [etc].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=762&start=0#p3802
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Plurals
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-05-29 11:24:46

The answer depends on how you've definded these items -- as individual things or as a member of a "treasure" kind. For the former:[code]The Lab is a room. 
The red treasure, the blue treasure, and the brass treasure are in the Lab.
Understand "treasures" as the plural of red treasure.
Understand "treasures" as the plural of blue treasure.
Understand "treasures" as the plural of brass treasure.[/code]... and the latter:[code]The Lab is a room. A treasure is a kind of thing.
The red treasure, the blue treasure, and the brass treasure are treasures in the Lab.
Understand "treasure" as a treasure. Understand "treasures" as the plural of treasure.[/code]
(See ch. 16.8. Understanding names.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=762&start=0#p3803
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Plurals
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-05-29 11:31:21

[quote="ShaeSays"]Treasures is backdrop. Treasures is everywhere.[/quote]I wouldn't do this. I've tried (and seen others try) to use backdrops in this manner and what usually results is really messy code that doesn't end up working right anyway. Backdrops are great for many things, but IMO this kind of parser trick isn't one of them.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=760&start=0#p3804
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Do posts get archived?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-29 11:33:41

Pacian: That's the one. Guess my searching skills weren't so great.

Rioshin: Good to know. Now I know to just keep looking rather than wondering if it's gone.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=762&start=0#p3805
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Plurals
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-29 11:40:24

Perfect. I'm so glad I defined treasures as a kind. The 2nd snippet worked. It's becoming more obvious all the time why "kinds" are useful.

The 1st snippet is intriguing. It doesn't read like it will take all three treasures when you say "take treasures" but I see that it does. I think that might have even crossed my mind but seemed unlikely. This is good to know too.

Thanks Mike!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=763&start=0#p3806
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Changing Unlocking Door Response: 2 Problems
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-29 13:13:40

Ok, this is a pretty weird problem, and maybe one I shouldn't even be worried about because it's kind of a cosmetic thing.

There's a church with a door. The only reason there's a door there is that it's stupid to have a church without a door. I don't want the player to ever enter the church through the door. It also looks nice with the windows.

My beta tester ran into the following situation. He said, "Pastor, unlock door" and the default response was "What do you want the pastor to unlock the door with?". The tester said that this makes him think he ought to go looking for a key, and since that's not the case in this game, it would be nice to have some other response that makes it clear to the user that no one's opening the door and there's no point in pursuing it. I think it's a good point. It's one thing for the player to not be sure whether he should enter through a door or a window, but it's another to bring up a "key" that doesn't exist.

I tried some variations on "Instead of asking the pastor to try unlocking the door, say "That's never going to happen". But the response is always the same as above, because you haven't supplied a second noun.

So I tried to do this ridiculous hack:

[code]The churchdoor is part of the chapel. The printed name of the churchdoor is "church door". The churchdoor is a container. The churchdoor is openable and closed and locked and enterable. Instead of entering the churchdoor, say "The door is locked."

The pastor is carrying the invisikey. The matching key of the Church door is the invisikey. 
Rule for deciding the concealed possessions of the pastor: yes.

Rule for supplying a missing noun when unlocking the Church door with: [also tried second noun in both spots]
	Change the noun to the invisikey.

Instead of asking the pastor to try unlocking something with something:
	say "The pastor doesn't have a key to the door."[/code]

Two things aren't working. The program isn't supplying the missing noun, and the custom response isn't firing even when the second noun is explicit:

[quote]>pastor, unlock door 
What do you want the Pastor to unlock the church door with?

>pastor, unlock door with invisikey
There is no reply.[/quote]

This variation and others like it either gave me an error or didn't work:
[code]Instead of asking the pastor to try unlocking the churchdoor with the inviskey:
	say "The pastor doesn't have a key to the door."[/code]

So... the questions are, is this the best way to do this? And if so, what's wrong with this code?

Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=763&start=0#p3807
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing Unlocking Door Response: 2 Problems
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-29 13:29:24

OK, I just imported this code into a clean project and it's working there. It turns out I get the responses I get because the pastor is wearing a suit and tie.

This fixed it:
[code]Does the player mean asking the pastor to try unlocking the churchdoor with the suit: It is very unlikely.
Does the player mean asking the pastor to try unlocking the churchdoor with the tie: It is very unlikely.[/code]

Still wondering if this is the best way to do this though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=763&start=0#p3808
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing Unlocking Door Response: 2 Problems
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-29 13:34:15

also

[code]Rule for clarifying the parser's choice of the invisikey when unlocking the churchdoor with: stop.[/code]

[quote]>pastor, unlock door
(with the invisikey)
The pastor doesn't have a key to the door.[/quote]

Why didn't that work?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=763&start=0#p3809
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing Unlocking Door Response: 2 Problems
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-05-29 14:13:36

The example 351 in chapter 17.30 explains how to supply missing nouns for NPC actions.

[code]Rule for clarifying the parser's choice of the invisikey when unlocking the churchdoor with: stop.[/code]
This applies only when the player is the one doing the action. You need

[code]Rule for clarifying the parser's choice of the invisikey when an actor unlocking the churchdoor with: stop.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=764&start=0#p3810
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Need testers: Easter Egg Hunt and Amazon Adventure
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-29 14:35:11

Hello,

I'm a newbie-noob-n00b who has, over the past six months, learned Inform 7 and created two games.

I'm not entering them in a comp or anything, especially since I've received copious amounts of help on them in this forum (warning, may look very familar to those who have read my posts!). I'm just looking for testing and general (gentle) feedback for my own learning purposes. There's no deadline to meet. 

One is called "Dead Pilots Don't Fly". It's a lost-in-the-amazon, gotta-get-home sort of adventure. I created it for a Christmas present for my husband, so it's filled with things he likes rather than things with commercial appeal. Probably not the most original game, but somewhat big and complex, at least I think.

The other one is called "Easter Egg Hunt" and it's a lighthearted, hopefully humorous game that I created specifically to hide on my website as an easter egg because my other game was too big to port to web. In this one you find a dozen eggs and that's that. Some are easy to find and some are hard.

I'm looking for all sorts of feedback: awkward or buggy play, enjoyment level, story writing quality, maybe even whether some of the code is written poorly.

Contact me at shaesays At g mail dotcom. Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=756&start=10#p3811
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Figure Score after player asks
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-29 16:24:40

Found a flaw with my method. There's no good way to end the game unless the player says score.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=597&start=0#p3812
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Converting a game to web-based
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-29 23:07:02

Ergh. So I tried to use this Parchment thing, and my game URL gave me:

[quote]An error occurred:

Error loading story: Exception(u'got status code 404 for url <a class="postlink" href="http://www.shaesplace.com/games/Easter%20Egg%20Hunt.zblorb'">http://www.shaesplace.com/games/Easter% ... nt.zblorb'</a>,)

Traceback (most recent call last):

  processZcodeAppspotResponse
  FatalError[/quote]

I didn't see any emails or troubleshooting pages or anything... anyone know about this?

Is it really just a matter of typing the URL of the game into that form? There's no submit button or anything, so I'm really confused about what it's even doing.

Thanks for any assistance anyone can give.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=597&start=0#p3813
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Converting a game to web-based
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-29 23:24:23

I tried the javascript way too, and it never gave me a whole javascript file -- the extension was always ".part".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=597&start=0#p3814
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Converting a game to web-based
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-05-30 02:29:42

404 is a file not found error. You might want to try to rename the file so that it doesn't have spaces in it, sometimes that helps.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=731&start=0#p3815
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Wierd reactions...
User: Bloodsong / DateTime: 2009-05-30 02:45:49

OK, yeah, I am late to the party.  Curse me out later.  I just did a little experiment with the entire "pile of leaves" thing since it didn't seem to have a resolution in this thread.

I can duplicate the problem of having the pile mentioned twice in two separate paragraphs with the following code:

[code]The Forest is a room.  The description of the Forest is "There is a pile of leaves here."

There is a pile of leaves in the forest.  The description is "The leaves just sit there in a pile, begging for a jump from a toddler to make a mess of it once again."[/code]

Yes I have kids and have gone through this circus a time or two....

Anyway, the output at that point in the Game tab is:  
[quote][b]Forest[/b]
There is a pile of leaves here.

You can see a pile of leaves here.[/quote]

To get the bit about the kids, you have to x the pile.  To get this annoyance to go away, you have to use a scenery declaration.  Changing the pertinant code to:
[code]There is a pile of leaves in the forest.  The pile is scenery. The description is......[/code]

Just thought I would put that here since I had much the same problem for a while...=]

Tommie

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=756&start=10#p3816
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Figure Score after player asks
User: Bloodsong / DateTime: 2009-05-30 04:44:11

I am totally new to I7 myself, but this problem intrigues me.  Couldn't the desired outcome be achieved by removing the score from the status line, and have the score tabulated by looking in the chest for any item contained within with a certain property, such as "valuable"?

Here is what I mean in pseudocode:

To calculate score:
    For items in chest:
        If item has property "valuable" increase score +1 point
        Otherwise score does not change
    Go to next item.

Tommie

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=765&start=0#p3817
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Extension problem
User: Bloodsong / DateTime: 2009-05-30 05:25:41

OK, now I have a question of my own.

In my game, I am trying to include Conversation Framework by Eric Eve.  To do so I include the standard code:

[code]Include Conversation Framework by Eric Eve.[/code]

The error message I get back is completely a non sequitor, though. 

[quote][b]Problem.[/b]  You wrote 'Include Epistemology by Eric Eve' : but I can't find that extension, which seems not to be installed. (You can get hold of extensions which people have made public at the Inform website.)[/quote]

UMMMMMM.....HUH?!  I looked on the Inform website and viewed the source code for Conversation Framework and realize that it says "Include Epistemology by Eric Eve", however I was wondering now exactly how one would go about downloading said extension?

Tommie

P.S.  Never mind.  I had an I D 10 T error there.  Figured it out.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=765&start=0#p3818
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Extension problem
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-05-30 05:51:42

The extension is there in Inform's web site, the same place where you found Conversation Framework.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=765&start=0#p3819
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Extension problem
User: Bloodsong / DateTime: 2009-05-30 06:15:25

The problem is that now when I try to click the "Download Extension" links, I am just brought to the source code page instead.  What I was originally asking for was how to change that into an extension that I could use, but I figured out how to accomplish what I needed without an extension.  I will fill out a report on the site about that confusion if anyone else can tell me that they are experiencing the same problem, though....

Right now I have another problem:

I am trying to keep someone out of a room until they have checked in with a guardian.  The basics of how this would work out:

[code]After asking guardian about "entrance", say "The guardian looks you over and deems you worthy...or at least decent cannon fodder...it is hard to tell."[/code]

After this point, I have the door that he is guarding as locked.  How do I situate the code to unlock the door and usher the player through after this transaction?

Tommie

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=765&start=0#p3820
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Extension problem
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-05-30 06:43:07

[quote="Bloodsong"]The problem is that now when I try to click the "Download Extension" links, I am just brought to the source code page instead.[/quote]
That's how it's supposed to work. Extensions are distributed as source code. When you get to the source code page, select "Save as..." from your browser and save the extension to your hard drive. Then follow the installation instructions in chapter 2.10 in the manual (they depend on what operating system you are using).

[quote]I am trying to keep someone out of a room until they have checked in with a guardian. [/quote]
You just add the unlocking code to the same rule:
 
[code]After asking guardian about "entrance":
    say "The guardian looks you over and deems you worthy...or at least decent cannon fodder...it is hard to tell.";
    now the entrance is unlocked;
    try going north. [this makes the player go through the door automatically (assuming the room is to the north).][/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=765&start=0#p3821
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Extension problem
User: Bloodsong / DateTime: 2009-05-30 07:06:52

[code]After asking guardian about "entrance":
    say "The guardian looks you over and deems you worthy...or at least decent cannon fodder...it is hard to tell.";
    now the entrance is unlocked;
    try going north. [this makes the player go through the door automatically (assuming the room is to the north).][/code][/quote]

There is what I was doing wrong...I coded it as: 

[code]the entrance is now unlocked;[/code]

[rant]I think I need sleep......[/rant]
Tommie

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=756&start=20#p3822
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Figure Score after player asks
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-30 09:57:49

Bloodsong, that's basically what I was trying to do. At first it seemed to me like less overhead than figuring the score every time an item was removed or added.

The biggest problem was how to end the game. Unless I'm mistaken, that's usually done with something like:

Every turn in which score = maxscore
say "You win!"
End the game in victory.

If the score is zero until someone says score and the score-figuring mechanism looks in the chest, then this type of thing never fires and you have to hope that the player says Score right after gathering that last treasure. And it has to reset to zero between looking or else it will be cumulative and add the score to the last score.

As Mike pointed out, it also caused me to have to hack the scorekeeping tally at the top of the window and some other things. Also, it means you don't get the constant feedback while playing that adding a treasure raised your score, removing it lowered your score. Turns out it was better to keep the score up to date the whole game.

I guess you could do this:

Every turn
score = 0
score = number of items in chest

But then you aren't saving any overhead, and you might as well do it one of the prettier ways that Mike or Emerald proposed.

So I think Mike and Emerald are correct as usual.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=597&start=0#p3823
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Converting a game to web-based
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-30 09:59:55

Weird, Niktu. Actually I had done that and it didn't change anything. And I had also verified that the file was there by typing it in a browser window.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=731&start=0#p3824
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Wierd reactions...
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-30 10:07:51

[quote]To get this annoyance to go away, you have to use a scenery declaration.[/quote]

Bloodsong, unless you don't want the pile of leaves to be scenery, because maybe you're going to move them or maybe you want them to  be a container so you can hide something in them or whatever.

All you have to do is ask Inform not to mention them, no matter what kind of thing they are:

[code]Rule for writing a paragraph about the pile of leaves: now the pile of leaves is mentioned.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=763&start=0#p3825
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing Unlocking Door Response: 2 Problems
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-30 10:14:51

Thanks Nitku, I'll give that a try!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=756&start=20#p3826
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Figure Score after player asks
User: Bloodsong / DateTime: 2009-05-30 16:46:30

So there is no way to turn off score reporting (i.e. the status bar read out and score update messages) without resetting score to zero?  If you could just leave the score intact but not let the PC know what that score is, wouldn't you be able to leave in the "maxscore = game is happy end" parameter?

I only ask because this seems like something that would be useful for some genres.

Tommie

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=756&start=20#p3827
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Figure Score after player asks
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-05-30 16:58:03

[quote="Bloodsong"]So there is no way to turn off score reporting (i.e. the status bar read out and score update messages) without resetting score to zero? [/quote]Upthread, I've described how you can: turn off score notification, turn off the ability of the player to turn it back on, and remove the score from the status line. That code can be used regardless of your scoring method.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=756&start=20#p3828
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Figure Score after player asks
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-30 18:47:28

[quote]So there is no way to turn off score reporting (i.e. the status bar read out and score update messages) without resetting score to zero? [/quote]

No, score reporting can be turned off. That's not what is making it necessary to reset score to zero.

Either you figure the score every turn or you figure the score when someone asks. 

If you figure the score every turn, all is well. But then there's no need to count the items in the chest every time. Just count a point when a treasure goes in or remove a point as one goes out, as others have suggested. The score is updated all the time. Why would you count the items in the chest if you're keeping track every turn anyway?

In my mind, the advantage of counting the items in the chest vs. paying attention when someone adds and removes was getting rid of the overhead of tallying score every turn. Perhaps you had a different benefit in mind.

My thought was forget about the score until the player asks. Then say, score=0, score=items in the chest. Without the score=0 part, the first time you ask you have 10 and the second time you ask you have 20 because it counts again. That's all. Perhaps a bigger deal has been made of that than was necessary.

If you don't figure the score til the player asks, though, then the player goes happily bouncing along for another 50 turns even after he had won, because he forgot to ask and no one told him.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=764&start=0#p3829
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Need testers: Easter Egg Hunt and Amazon Adventure
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-31 22:21:20

If anyone wants to preview, the files are now all here: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.shaesplace.com/games">http://www.shaesplace.com/games</a>

I just noticed some problems with the conversation in Easter Egg Hunt that I thought I had fixed. But I don't want to tinker with it endlessly before getting some feedback so it'll stay for now while I work on fixing it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=597&start=0#p3830
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Converting a game to web-based
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-31 22:23:11

I ended up using zmpp which is very self-explanatory and easy to configure. Plus it doesn't need to be hosted by a third party like Parchment.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=756&start=20#p3831
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Figure Score after player asks
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-31 22:37:30

Hm, I'm using this code, which I believe was my adaptation of Emerald's solution:

[code]After inserting a treasure into the basket:
   award 1 point;
   continue the action.

Before taking a treasure when the noun is in the basket:
   award -1 points.

After taking the basket when a treasure is in the basket:
   let x be the number of treasures in basket;
   award x points;
   continue the action.

After dropping the basket when a treasure is in the basket:
   let x be the number of treasures in the basket;
   award (x * -1) points;
   continue the action.[/code]

This gave me some problems -- I wish I could copy and paste the problem but I was playing my web-based version and it wouldn't let me. Basically I collected 5 treasures, put them in the basket, dropped the basket, collected 2 more, and put them in the basket while it was on the ground. This told me my score had gone up, which I guess shouldn't be the case since I wasn't holding the basket. When I said Score, it told me I had a 2 instead of a 7 because it had deducted the five. When I picked up the basket, however, and said Score I had 7.

I'm not sure how to get around these difficulties, which is why I had started pursuing the real-time count thing. Though maybe I just adapted Emerald's code wrong.

Guess I'll investigate the other solutions offered in this thread. Or I guess I could just decide that you get the score whether you're holding the basket or not, though it will still be nice to solve the problem.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=756&start=20#p3832
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Figure Score after player asks
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-05-31 22:39:28

Maybe it's just...

[code]After inserting a treasure into the basket when the player is carrying the basket:
   award 1 point;
   continue the action.

Before taking a treasure when the noun is in the basket when the player is carrying the basket:
   award -1 points.

After taking the basket when a treasure is in the basket:
   let x be the number of treasures in basket;
   award x points;
   continue the action.

After dropping the basket when a treasure is in the basket:
   let x be the number of treasures in the basket;
   award (x * -1) points;
   continue the action.[/code]

?

Haven't tested "when the player is carrying the basket" syntax though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=597&start=10#p3833
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Converting a game to web-based
User: radix / DateTime: 2009-05-31 23:20:26

Just for the record, Parchment does not need to be hosted by a third party. It's open source software, and IMO has a much better user experience than ZMPP, mostly because it doesn't require Java.

On the other hand, I'll admit that it's probably not easy to set up your own hosted version for someone not familiar with the command line. You can get the code from <a class="postlink" href="http://code.google.com/p/parchment/">http://code.google.com/p/parchment/</a> and run the tools there to build the necessary files that you can upload to your web host.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=756&start=20#p3834
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Figure Score after player asks
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-06-01 00:02:19

Oops, yeah, my bug. Sorry. Your fix is correct.

"When the player is carrying the basket" will work as long as the player can't put the basket into something else s/he's holding. If that's possible, then you'll need to use "when the player encloses the basket" instead.

Something else I just noticed: if you get rid of the basket by putting it in or on something else, the game won't deduct any points, so you'll need to change the "After dropping the basket" rule to account for that. Unfortunately, I don't have the time right now to rewrite it for you. [emote]:([/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=597&start=10#p3835
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Converting a game to web-based
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-06-01 13:08:56

Also, I got the other game working just fine with Parchment: <a class="postlink" href="http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://www.shaesplace.com/games/EasterEggHunt.z5">http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/tru ... EggHunt.z5</a> (The other one gives a "too large" error message; non-blorbed it would probably work.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=756&start=20#p3836
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Figure Score after player asks
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-06-01 13:18:26

Maybe it would be easier to rewrite the scoring system in this case. Unless I'm missing something major here just a couple of lines should work:

[code]Use no scoring. [disables the built-in scoring]

To decide which number is the current score:
    decide on the number of treasures in the basket.

Understand the command "score" as something new. Understand the command "notify" as something new.

Requesting the current score is an action out of world. Understand "score" as requesting the current score.

Carry out requesting the current score:
    say "You have [current score] point[if the current score is not 1]s[end if]."[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=752&start=0#p3837
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Conspiracy Theory Game
User: ryacku / DateTime: 2009-06-01 18:55:13

Huh. I actually been trying to make an IF game (reminiscent of Floor 13) where you play a secret police agent who tries to keep conspiracies hidden, and troublemakers quiet.

A conspiracy game would sound nice, but would be difficult by nature because conspiracies tend to try to stay hidden, planting red herrings along the way. I'd probably be too lazy to solve those puzzles.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=339&start=10#p3838
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Are You Looking for a Programmer?
User: ryacku / DateTime: 2009-06-01 19:14:11

I think if you did:

[code][pink letters] I'm PINK![black letters][/code]

It would work.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=756&start=20#p3839
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Figure Score after player asks
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-06-02 11:28:37

Emerald and Nitku, both good ideas. I'll look them over and figure out what to do.

No worries about writing the code for me Emerald! I appreciate the advice and I can investigate how to put it into action.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=597&start=10#p3840
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Converting a game to web-based
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-06-02 11:35:01

Weird. Thanks for the tips. Guess it was the blorb-ness.

I couldn't even find instructions anywhere on what to do other than upload it to the hosted site. Well, no matter, looks like I have several options now.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=339&start=10#p3841
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Are You Looking for a Programmer?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-06-02 11:39:53

Actually writing extensions is a great idea for someone who wants to program but doesn't have game ideas.

How about one that gets rid of implicit takes? Or one that makes conversations a matter of plugging values into a table for the game writer?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=766&start=0#p3842
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Why doesn't this work?
User: Bloodsong / DateTime: 2009-06-04 02:58:37

OK, guys, I am back with a problem that will likely have an easy answer that I am overlooking.

I am trying to put together a scene where someone is waking up.  I would like to prevent the PC from sitting on the couch before fixing a cup of coffee (perfectly plausible, right?).

The problem is that I can't get that done.  Here is the only code I was able to write to this effect that compiled:
[code]The couch is an enterable supporter.  The couch has a carrying capacity 3.  The couch is in the Living Room.

Before entering the couch:
	if the player does not carry a cup of coffee, say "I need java before I sit down." instead.
[/code]

All indentation is correct and when I click play it does compile, but when I try to sit on the couch, nothing stops me.  What am I missing?

Tommie

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=766&start=0#p3843
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why doesn't this work?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-06-04 12:40:16

Hi Tommie,

It would be better if you posted a [i]complete[/i] example of your code. The code above doesn't compile since you haven't defined a room called "the Living Room" or anything called "a cup of coffee." When I add the minimum required to get it to compile:[code]The Living Room is a room. A cup of coffee is in the Living Room.[/code]... it works as expected. Here's the output:[quote]Living Room
You can see a cup of coffee and a couch here.

>sit on couch
I need java before I sit down.

>go couch
I need java before I sit down.

>enter couch
I need java before I sit down.

>get coffee
Taken.

>sit on couch
You get onto the couch.[/quote]If you're getting a different result, it must be something in your other, unposted code.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=766&start=0#p3844
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why doesn't this work?
User: Bloodsong / DateTime: 2009-06-04 15:35:35

Mike, 

Thanks for the heads up.  I left those parts out on purpose because I knew that if I made a mistake in the room and item definitions, that was the quickest way to get it.  Thought I put that in my OP, but it seems I omitted that.  Sorry.

So I spent some time with three windows open to try figuring out the problem.  I found it. 

It ends up that I am using the extension "'Liquid Handling' by Al Golden".  That one requires a second Golden extension, "Supplemental Actions".  Supplemental actions separates "sit" and "enter" as synonyms.  In fact, according to the accompanying documentation:

[quote]SIT, STAND, AND LIE are now separate commmands from ENTER.[/quote]
Which begs the question, do I have to now create two clauses under the "Before" rule, or is there a quick and easier way to re-synonym-ify (like that coinage?) those words?  [rant]Honestly, I can see the utility of having those words no longer be synonyms, but I think that the utility is rare enough that it shouldn't be part of an extension that will see so much work.[/rant]OK, rant over.

Tommie

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=767&start=0#p3846
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Alabaster released
User: emshort / DateTime: 2009-06-05 06:55:18

The Queen has told you to return with her heart in a box. Snow White has made you promise to make other arrangements. Now that you're alone in the forest, it's hard to know which of the two women to trust. The Queen is certainly a witch — but her stepdaughter may be something even more horrible... 

There are some eighteen possible endings to this fairy tale. 

Some of them are even almost happy. 

------ 
Alabaster is a fractured fairy tale by John Cater, Rob Dubbin, Eric Eve, Elizabeth Heller, Jayzee, Kazuki Mishima, Sarah Morayati, Mark Musante, Emily Short, Adam Thornton, and Ziv Wities. 
Illustrated by Daniel Allington-Krzysztofiak. 

Available now from <a class="postlink" href="http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/Alabaster/index.html">http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/Alabaster/index.html</a> 

Please note -- as the site also points out -- that you'll want the latest available Glulx interpreter to play. That's Git 1.2.4 for Windows, Zoom 1.1.4 for Mac. Alabaster is processing-intensive and makes use of the latest Inform optimizations.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=462&start=10#p3847
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Project Delta: Trojan?
User: Bloodsong / DateTime: 2009-06-06 03:27:50

Nothing picks up ALL trojans and spyware.  If something did, then their would never be a need for updates/upgrades.  It is a game in itself, hackers/coders trying to outdo each other....

My advice, have two sweepers running on consecutive days, one reliable paid device, one free device.  Believe it or not, the free ones are often able to detect new stuff first, but not remove it, in my experience.  Then the updates for the paid goods removes it a few days/weeks later from the quarantine.  

I do the same with spyware detection, JSYK.

Tommie

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=766&start=0#p3848
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why doesn't this work?
User: Goldenrod111 / DateTime: 2009-06-06 07:49:12

I would use[code]Understand "sit" as something new. Understand "sit" as entering.[/code]but I am not completely sure if this would work (haven't tested it yet), and you might not need to include the "something new" phrase.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=462&start=10#p3849
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Project Delta: Trojan?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-06-06 07:56:10

paolari's post (above yours) was context-sensitive spam. I'm deleting it, and the bot account that posted it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=766&start=0#p3850
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why doesn't this work?
User: Bloodsong / DateTime: 2009-06-06 09:29:40

Actually, the "'sit' as entering" code was something I tried that wouldn't compile originally.  The problem was simply that the original library (Standard Rules by Graham Nelson) already realizes "sit", "stand", and "lie" as being the same as "enter" with regards to enterable supporters.  The extension Supplemental Actions by Al Golden undid this, and it SEEMS (didn't try all that hard once I found a work around) that any code written to try to undo this causes a fight in I7 that the compiler just can't resolve.

The code that ended up working was:
[code]The couch is an enterable supporter.  The couch has a carrying capacity 3.  The couch is in the Living Room.

Before entering or sitting on the couch:
	if the player does not carry a cup of coffee, say "I need java before I sit down." instead.

Before sitting in or lieing on or lieing in or standing on or standing in the couch:
	try sitting on the couch instead.

A cup of coffee is a thing.  A cup of coffee is in the Kitchen.
[/code]

Tommie

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=764&start=0#p3851
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Need testers: Easter Egg Hunt and Amazon Adventure
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2009-06-06 12:26:19

I´ll have a look at it..

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=768&start=0#p3852
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: The Last Guardian
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-06-06 23:38:10

Fans of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus will be interested in this video on GameSpot, out of E3:

<a class="postlink" href="http://e3.gamespot.com/video/6211104/?hd=1">http://e3.gamespot.com/video/6211104/?hd=1</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=767&start=0#p3854
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Alabaster released
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2009-06-07 13:06:58

again with the fairytale? *sigh*   [emote];)[/emote]

seriously though, I bet it will show technical prowess if not an interesting setting...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=767&start=0#p3855
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Alabaster released
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-06-07 16:12:25

Maybe it's because I'm not a hardcore gamer who has seen everything that comes down the pike, but I actually thought it was a super cool idea.

I love the idea of the possibly untrustworthy Snow White and the multiple endings.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=767&start=0#p3856
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Alabaster released
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-06-08 13:34:39

Just because modern interpretations of fairy tales are typically trite and cliche, that doesn't mean that the old masters of the form didn't produce works that were bold, imaginative and uncompromising.

Any attempt to recapture/subvert that is good in my book.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=769&start=0#p3857
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Beta-testers Wanted for IF Comp Entry
User: jdobson / DateTime: 2009-06-09 20:19:31

I've "finished" my first work of IF, and am hoping to find some beta testers.  I plan on entering IF Comp 2009.  The game is called Brew Dog, and is a short sci-fi drama.  It's made with Quest (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.axeuk.com">http://www.axeuk.com</a>), and is about 189 Kb.  (I mention the size because an individual on another message board though it was pertinent.)  

There is a webpage for Brew Dog [url=http://sites.google.com/site/queststuff/Home/brewdog]here[/url].

If anyone can spare some time, gimme' a shout.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=613&start=0#p3861
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Starting off...
User: fredrik / DateTime: 2009-06-17 05:41:30

You've probably coded half a game by now, but I'd like to add my $.02 worth anyway. For you and anyone else reading this thread and thinking about which system to choose.

Inform 7 and TADS 3 are both fine choices, and I think Adrift is good too, but in a quite different way. However, they're not the only valid options.

If you happen to like Inform 6, there is no good reason why you shouldn't use it. There are still a *lot* of people around who know it well and will happily answer questions about it. The documentation is rich, and the Inform Beginner's Guide is an excellent way to get started.

Also, you should check out HUGO. It's actively maintained by the very friendly Kent Tessman. A number of good games have been developed using HUGO, and there's source code available for some of them. Look at Cloak of Darkness. If the HUGO code makes sense to you, give it a whirl. It's quite capable when it comes to graphics and sound too, in case you'll want to add such things to your games.

Good luck with your authoring no matter which system you go for.

/Fredrik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=766&start=0#p3862
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why doesn't this work?
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2009-06-17 11:43:59

You could also define all those things as a kind of action.

[code]Sitting on something is reposing. Sitting on something is reposing.
Lying on something is reposing. Lying in something is reposing.
Standing on something is reposing. Standing in something is reposing.
Entering something is reposing.

Before reposing when the noun is the couch:
   if the player does not carry a cup of coffee, say "I need java before I sit down." instead.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=774&start=0#p3865
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: How to make a door transparent in I7
User: twosticks / DateTime: 2009-06-24 09:23:11

Hey, everybody.  I'm new to interactive fiction, I just downloaded Inform 7 yesterday and I've already hit a few bumps.  I want to create a cell door in a prison.  You know, iron bars, but essentially see through. How do I write the source code to make it transparent?  Or should I just put that in the description?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=775&start=0#p3866
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Changing location exits by a device
User: ryanprov / DateTime: 2009-06-24 11:07:46

I'm trying to allow the player to move around the exits to locations in the game world from a control room. The player will be able to press buttons or something to connect different areas in different ways. This needs to be a little more complicated than an elevator type problem though; think of a 3x3 grid where the player can select a location for any of nine different places and the exits need to work as expected.

I'm not sure how I should go about coding this. Any suggestions?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=774&start=0#p3867
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: How to make a door transparent in I7
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-06-24 11:42:20

Depends on what you want to achieve. In Inform, each room is basically a sealed box, conceptually speaking. In order to create something like a window that can be looked through, you have to write a response to 'look through window' that fakes the action, since the stuff in the room that's on the other side of the window is not in scope.

But there's another solution, in your specific case: You could make the cell an openable lockable enterable transparent container. This container would be within a larger "room" called the Cell Block or something like that. Then the player's location would be described as "Cell Block (in the cell)", and anything else in the Cell Block, such as a jailer who comes and goes, would be in scope, so the player could examine it, converse with the jailer, or whatever.

Hope this helps. Have fun!

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=775&start=0#p3868
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing location exits by a device
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-06-24 11:44:45

This is not difficult, provided there are no doors between the locations. Doors in Inform are not movable, unfortunately.

Untested, but I believe if you write code like this:

now the wine cellar is north from the crypt;

...it should do what you have in mind. If you can't work it out, post another message and I'll sit down and try to get it working.

--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=774&start=0#p3869
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: How to make a door transparent in I7
User: twosticks / DateTime: 2009-06-24 14:58:13

Talk about thinking outside the box!  Yeah, I'll give that a try, that also helps with adding more 'cells' to the 'cell block'.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=394&start=0#p3870
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: My first experiences with IF. How did you feel?
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2009-06-24 15:39:38

my first experience with IF was Zork, lol

but the first game that showed me what the medium can really achieve was Photopia, and this one has not been surpassed so far

what I really hate is when you get stuck and you have to go from room to room again and again to see if something has changed or to pay attention to some miniscule detail you would never notice by yourself (Anchorhead is a prime example for both of these flaws) and there is no different solution to the puzzle, such things can ruin even the best writing

also fairy tales  [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=774&start=0#p3871
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: How to make a door transparent in I7
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-06-24 16:41:19

One thing to be cautious of: In some situations Inform can get confused if you use the same word to refer to two different objects -- in this case, Cell and Cell Block. I would recommend calling the cell CellA (or something similar), and then add something like:

The printed name of CellA is "cell A". Understand "cell" and "cell a" as CellA.

--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=774&start=0#p3872
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: How to make a door transparent in I7
User: twosticks / DateTime: 2009-06-24 17:39:47

I already ran across that one, so I named it Cell 7B.  Not that there's a Cell 7A, yet.

Here's another one.  I want to make a lightbulb that you can switch on or off, and I can't quite get the wording right.  I've downloaded your pdf, where is the best place to look to create an item that has two states changed by an action?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=774&start=0#p3873
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: How to make a door transparent in I7
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-06-24 22:05:57

Look under "Mechanical Marvels" on page 92. That has some information on devices.

--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=60#p3874
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2009-06-25 04:44:55

Hi…
Well, I’m one of the ”old boys” here. I’m from 1956 which makes me 52 at this time…
My interest in IF started way back in the 80’s when I got my hands on a 48K Spectrum and played “the Hobbit” which was actually high tech back when…  [emote];)[/emote] 
Soon I bought G.A.C and the Quill and began making my own adventures, pestering friends and family.
When I finally bought a PC I soon discovered Adrift which was just what I needed not having the time or patience to learn a programming language.
On my adventure record I can boast of “Ghost Town” a graphic text adventure.
And I am currently (June 25 2009) working on the game (Through Time)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=60#p3875
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2009-06-25 08:44:36

Welcome to the forum, Finn!   [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=775&start=0#p3876
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing location exits by a device
User: ryanprov / DateTime: 2009-06-25 20:46:50

How should I organize this mass exit changing though? When the player makes changes in the control room, the exits need to change with respect to other setting in the control room. The changes need to be dynamic.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=775&start=0#p3877
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing location exits by a device
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-06-25 21:42:54

It's difficult to give concrete suggestions without knowing what sorts of controls you have, or what functions you want to give them.

I'd just write it one line at a time:

[code]
Instead of pulling the red lever:
    if the green switch is switched on:
        now the wine cellar is north of the crypt;
        now the dank pit is east of the crypt;
        [...]
    otherwise:
        now the wine cellar is north of the dungeon;
        [...]
    say "Somewhere not far off, you hear an enormous grinding, groaning sound."
[/code]

There probably aren't any shortcuts. Just write what you want to happen.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=394&start=0#p3878
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: My first experiences with IF. How did you feel?
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2009-06-27 04:32:19

My first experience with IF was "the Hobbit" on a trusty 48K Spectrum, and at that time most of the adventuring was "guess the verb" Today, however, I feel that even amateurs like us has come a long way. Yes, there are some bad games out there, but I don't think you can blame it all on the author.
The first thing I look for if I find a game that looks interesting is if there's a walkthrough, or some kind of hint sheet to go along with it. If there's no walkthrough the next thing is checking if the author has provided an e-mail address so I can ask for help in case I get stuck. If none of the above excists I'm reluctant to start the game. There's nothing more frustrating than getting stuck, knowing what you have to do, but not being able to find the right command.
This is why beta testing games is so important, but unfortunately finding a beta tester is not that easy, and if you want a beta tester who sticks with you it's even harder.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=776&start=0#p3879
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Problems displaying special unicode characters
User: K Swiss 87 / DateTime: 2009-06-28 04:08:55

I'm using Inform 6.31 and Frotz.

I've tried using

[code]Zcharacter table '@{2660}' '@{2663}' '@{2665}' @{2666};[/code]

to add the symbols for the card suits to the character set, but I can't get them to display properly in the interpreter. They show up as those annoying white boxes instead symbols for Spades, Diamonds, etc.. Using the same code, I can get other special unicode characters to display properly, but not those ones. Here's the full code I'm trying to implement:

[code]Zcharacter table '@{2660}' '@{2663}' '@{2665}' '@{2666}';
Array pack_of_cards --> 52;
[Shuffle i j;
   for (i=1:i<52:i++) {
         j = random(i+1) - 1;
         pack_of_cards-->i = pack_of_cards-->j; pack_of_cards-->j = i;
   }
];
[Card n;
    switch(n%13) {
        0: print "Ace";
        1 to 9: print n%13 + 1;
        10: print "Jack"; 11: print "Queen"; 12: print "King";
    }
    print " of ";
    switch(n/13) {
        0: print "@{2660}"; 1: print "@{2663}";
        2: print "@{2665}"; 3: print "@{2666}";
    }
];
[Main i;
! Create the pack in "factory order":
for (i=0:i<52:i++) pack_of_cards-->i = i;

! Shuffle the cards:
Shuffle();

print "The pack has been shuffled into the following order:^";
for (i=0:i<52:i++)
     print (Card) pack_of_cards-->i, "^";
];[/code]

This was actually taken right out of the designer's manual, except for the addition of these unicode characters and a few other minor adjustments. Originally, in the Card routine it printed "Hearts", "Spades", etc.. I thought it would be nice if I could get it to print the appropriate symbols instead. Any idea why this doesn't work or how I could get it to work? Thank you!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=776&start=0#p3880
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problems displaying special unicode characters
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-06-28 21:38:08

I don't know a great deal about Inform 6, I'm afraid, particularly not about its support for special characters. But it's possible that the font Frotz is using simply doesn't support those characters. To check whether that's the problem, download the zipped .zblorb file I've attached to this post (it's an Inform 7 example which uses a lot of special characters, including the playing card symbols) and run it. Go east then south to the Gaming Lounge, and see if the symbols in the room description show up. If they do, then you have a problem with your I6 code. If they don't, it's probably a problem with your interpreter or font.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=776&start=0#p3881
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problems displaying special unicode characters
User: K Swiss 87 / DateTime: 2009-06-28 22:25:46

Wow. I didn't even think about the interpreter font. It was late and I wasn't thinking clearly. That was indeed the problem. Thank you for the file, and your help.

Is there any way to preset the font at compile time? At the very least, I would include an advisory statement at the start of the game about font selection, I suppose.

EDIT: I've realized that it would be better to write a routine that prints using an appropriate font regardless of what the player has the font set to, and am educating myself to that end by reading up on fonts in the DM. Thanks again for your help, Emerald.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=776&start=0#p3882
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problems displaying special unicode characters
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-06-28 23:23:32

Glad to have helped!

Like I said, I don't know much about Inform 6 and its support for special characters. But Roger Firth's [url=http://www.firthworks.com/roger/informfaq/aa20.html]article on character sets in I6[/url] might help you, particularly the last section, "Runtime issues".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=776&start=0#p3883
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problems displaying special unicode characters
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2009-06-29 05:55:40

[quote]Is there any way to preset the font at compile time?[/quote]
No, there's no way to control the font: that's purely the user's choice. However, if you're using Windows Frotz 1.13 or later, the interpreter will try to find a suitable font to use for Unicode characters. From the revision history:
[quote]Improved the logic used to output Unicode text: now if a character can be drawn in any font on the system, that font will be used where needed. For best results a 'Unicode' font (e.g. "Arial Unicode MS" or "Code 2000") should be installed, though it doesn't need to be selected as either the proportional or fixed width font.[/quote]
If you install a decent Unicode font, then the characters will be available - see the attached screenshot of the "Clavier" example on my system.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=776&start=0#p3884
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problems displaying special unicode characters
User: K Swiss 87 / DateTime: 2009-06-29 10:17:36

[quote]No, there's no way to control the font: that's purely the user's choice. However, if you're using Windows Frotz 1.13 or later, the interpreter will try to find a suitable font to use for Unicode characters. From the revision history:[/quote]

I see! I'm only using version 1.09. I'll get the latest version from the developer's site.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=777&start=0#p3885
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Disambig/Distinguishers
User: QueenoftheCapes / DateTime: 2009-06-29 14:57:00

Hello, geniuses.  I need to borrow a cup of brains.

For reasons that seem less and less valid as I try to program, I decided to elaborate on the anatomy of my Actors.

Ex:
[code]
bob: Person 'Bob' 'Bob'
;

+bHead : Component 'head' 'head'
"It's severed. "
;

alice: Person 'Alice' 'Alice'
;

+aHead: Component 'head' 'head'
"It's not severed. "
;

scientist: Person 'scientist/schroedinger' 'Schroedinger'
;

+sHead: Component 'head' 'head' 
"It may or may not be severed. "
[/code]

Um....but less morbid.  

Anyway, here's what I [b]want:[/b]

[quote]

>Examine Head

[i]Whose head do you mean, Bob's head, Alice's head, or Schroedinger's head?[/i]

[/quote]

But as you can probably guess, here's what I'm getting:
[quote]

>Examine Head

[i]What head do you mean, the head, the head, or the head?[/i]

[/quote]

I've tried creating a new class and reordering the distinguishers...
[code]

class BodyPart: Component
sightSize = small
distinguishers = [ownershipDistinguisher, locationDistinguisher, basicDistinguisher]
;

[/code]

But it does nothing.  I still get the same "The head, the head, the head" mumbo jumbo.

I even tried doing something with the listers, but that resulted in some bizarre nonsense about 
" 's head do you mean, the head, the head's head, the head?"

...  

yeah.

I've been pouring through the tourguide and the library, but one is no help here and I barely understand the other.  Is what I want even possible without have to go back and rename everyone's heads based on who they are?  

Please help; I'm on the verge of gnawing off my left arm. >_<

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=777&start=0#p3886
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Disambig/Distinguishers
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-06-29 16:46:58

Look up the disambigName property in the Library Reference Manual. It may do what you want.

On the other hand, why not name bHead 'Bob\'s head'? Do you gain anything by not giving it a distinctive name?

BTW, I hope you'll consider joining the TADS Study Group, which Conrad just started in Google Groups. I'm sure we'll be kicking around ideas like this as we go along.

--Jim Aikin

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=776&start=0#p3887
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problems displaying special unicode characters
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2009-06-30 02:40:57

A few more quick suggestions:

1) You don't strictly need to add the Unicode chars to the Zcharacter table if all you're going to do is print them out: you can use the @print_unicode opcode instead, just giving it the number of the Unicode character.

2) You can also ask the interpreter if it thinks it can output a given Unicode character with the @check_unicode opcode.

Both of the above require a "Standard 1.0" compliant interpreter, but virtually all of them are these days (and have been since the late 1990s): you can check the header to be sure.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=776&start=0#p3889
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problems displaying special unicode characters
User: K Swiss 87 / DateTime: 2009-06-30 07:50:41

[quote="DavidK"]you can use the @print_unicode opcode instead, just giving it the number of the Unicode character.[/quote]

Awesome! Boy am I glad I registered here! You guys are more helpful than I could have imagined. I'm sure I will be back with more problems to discuss in the future.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=777&start=0#p3890
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Disambig/Distinguishers
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-06-30 08:12:41

As Jim suggested, I think a combination of 'Bob\'s head' and isProperName=true would probably serve you well in a lot more situations than this.  Compare "You can't do that to the head." to "You can't do that to Bob's head."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=777&start=0#p3891
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Disambig/Distinguishers
User: QueenoftheCapes / DateTime: 2009-06-30 11:48:06

Hmm, alright.  I had originally wanted to avoid having to go back and rename everything, but I managed to use << >> to put a disambigName in my custom Class. Easy.  Never even thought about the other situations, though, so I guess I'll have to check that out too.

Thanks, guys. [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=779&start=0#p3892
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Twins
User: QueenoftheCapes / DateTime: 2009-06-30 12:14:42

Yeah, me again  [emote]:roll:[/emote] -- same game, but a much more complicated problem now.  

Two of my NPCs are twins.  In my game, as in life, these twins are treated sometimes as individuals and sometimes as a group.  How they are handled depends on whether or not they're in the same location and doing the same thing.

Ex:

[quote]
You are in a toystore.

The twins are here, rollerskating.
[/quote]

Vs.

[quote]
You are in a toystore.

Tweedledum is playing with a hula hoop.

Tweedledee is skipping rope.
[/quote]

After several attempts, I finally came up with something that seems to be capable of handling most of what I want; the twins each belong to a CollectiveGroup, and their ActorStates are all custom-made TwinStates designed to report its own specialDesc and distantDesc when the twin is unique, and nothing when they're together and in "equivalent" states.  The group, natch, has the opposite instructions:

[code]

twinGroup: CollectiveGroup 'twins' 'twins'
 t1State = twin1.curState
 t2State = twin2.curState
desc()
   { 
    "<<twin1.name>> and <<twin2.name>> <<twin1.lastName>> are identical twins. "; 
    if(t1State.isEqualTo == t2State)
     t1State.dittoDesc; 
     else
      inherited;
     } 
specialDesc()
   { 
     if(t1State.isEqualTo == t2State)
     specialDesc = t1State.dittoDesc; 
     else
      specialDesc = nil;
     }
distantSpecialDesc()
   {
     if(t1State.isEqualTo == t2State) 
    distantSpecialDesc = t1State.distantDittoDesc;
     else
      distantSpecialDesc = nil;
    }
 dobjFor(Examine)
  {
    verify() {}
    preCond = [Twin1Seen, Twin2Seen]
   }
; 

class TwinState: ActorState
dittoDesc = "The twins are here. "
distantDittoDesc = "The twins are off in the distance. "
 t1State = twin1.curState
 t2State = twin2.curState
identicalStateCheck
 { 
  if(t1State.isEqualTo == t2State)
   {
    specialDesc = nil;
    remoteSpecialDesc = nil;
    }
 }
;

//Coding is then applied thusly:

twin1: Person 'Tweedle Dum' 'Tweedle Dum'
@beach2
isHim = true
isProperName = true '
desc="Tweedle Dum is a twin "
dittoDesc = curState.dittoDesc
distantDittoDesc = curState.distantDittoDesc
collectiveGroups = [twinGroup]
;


+t1rollerskate : TwinState
isInitState = true
stateDesc = "Tweedledum is rollerskating. "
dittoDesc = "The twins are both rollerskating. "
distantDittoDesc = "The twins are far away, rollerskating."
isEqualTo = t2rollerskate
;

/*
*t2rollerskate is an actorstate in the second twin.  
*It does not contain the last 3 properties in t1rollerskate, because twin1 handles all of that coding.
*/


[/code]

/whew/

It's probably sloppy, but it does most of what I want.  However, there are some problems I can't seem to hash out.

First of all, while the distantDesc for the CollectiveGroup is working just fine, its specialDesc is not reporting at all.  At first I thought it was a coding error (All those brackets and parentheses and semicolons...)  but when I replaced it with a simple doublequoted string, (eg., specialDesc = "WORK, YOU STUPID PROGRAM!!!!") I still got nothing.  Is there something about collectiveGroups that I'm not aware of, or is there a flaw in my code?  

Another problem which I've been having involves the Actors themselves.  While I'm able to turn off specialDesc and distantDesc in favor of the Group descriptions, the twins are still being reported.

Ex:

[quote]
You are in a toystore.

The twins are off in the distance, rollerskating.

Tweedledum is standing in the roller rink.
Tweeldedee is standing in the roller rink.
[/quote]

How do I turn that off?

Does this all make sense?  I can elaborate and provide more of my coding if needs be.  I'm just so confused at the moment.  [emote]:([/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=779&start=0#p3893
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Twins
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-06-30 12:35:31

I can answer this question in two parts.

a) I don't know.

b) Eric Eve will know.

Eric doesn't, I believe, frequent this forum. But he does keep an eye on the newsgroup (rec.arts.int-fiction). If you don't have newsgroup access through your ISP, you can post questions to it through Google Groups.

--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=779&start=0#p3894
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Twins
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-06-30 15:08:00

[quote="QueenoftheCapes"]Yeah, me again  [emote]:roll:[/emote] -- same game, but a much more complicated problem now. [/quote]
You're not kidding!   [emote]:D[/emote] 

[quote="Jim Aikin"]b) Eric Eve will know.

Eric doesn't, I believe, frequent this forum. But he does keep an eye on the newsgroup (rec.arts.int-fiction). If you don't have newsgroup access through your ISP, you can post questions to it through Google Groups.[/quote]
Hey, while we may not have Eric Eve around, there are still a few of us who like to take a crack at problems like this.  Don't write us off yet!   [emote];)[/emote] 

[quote="QueenoftheCapes"]Another problem which I've been having involves the Actors themselves.  While I'm able to turn off specialDesc and distantDesc in favor of the Group descriptions, the twins are still being reported.

How do I turn that off?[/quote]
That much is simple.  Every object has a useSpecialDesc property that determines when it shows its specialDesc and distantSpecialDesc. 

I also notice this:

[quote="QueenoftheCapes"][code]t1State = twin1.curState
t2State = twin2.curState[/code][/quote]
I'm pretty sure those won't give you the current states, since they're set in the object rather than in any given function.  Either move these lines into the functions where they're used, or make them a function that returns the states.

[quote="QueenoftheCapes"]Is there something about collectiveGroups that I'm not aware of, or is there a flaw in my code?[/quote]
Experimenting a little, it seems that collectiveGroups qualify as distant unless they're actually physically present in the same room as the player.  A little hack to work around this: have one of the twins constantly check the location of the collectiveGroup and move it if necessary.

Here's a little something I cooked up:

[code]mergeTwins()
{
    return (twin1.location==twin2.location && twin1.curState.isEqualTo==twin2.curState);
}

class TwinState: ActorState
    isEqualTo = nil
;

twinGroup : CollectiveGroup, SecretFixture 'twins' 'twins'  @StartRoom
    "Jeunet and Pinon seem to be joined at the hip. "    
    specialDesc="The twins are here. "
    useSpecialDesc=mergeTwins()
    distantSpecialDesc="The twins are over there. "
; 

StartRoom: Room 'Start Room'
    "This is the starting room. "
    north=SecondRoom
;

+Me: Person
    desc="You look like someone who is sick of twins. "
;

SecondRoom: Room 'Second Room'
    "This is the second room. "
    south=StartRoom
;

DistanceConnector [StartRoom, SecondRoom] ;

twin1: Person 'Pinon' 'Pinon' @StartRoom
    collectiveGroups = [twinGroup]
    isProperName=true
    useSpecialDesc=!mergeTwins()
    dobjFor(Attack)
    {
        verify(){}
        check(){}
        action()
        {
            "You launch a seering verbal attack on Pinon.  He becomes very, very angry. ";
            setCurState(t1AngryState);
        }
    }
    dobjFor(Push)
    {
        verify(){}
        check(){}
        action()
        {
            self.moveIntoForTravel(SecondRoom);
            "You push Pinon and he rolls away in a well-meaning fashion. ";
        }
    }
    afterAction()
    {
        if(twinGroup.location!=self.location)
            twinGroup.moveInto(self.location);
    }
    isHim=true
;

+t1CaperingState: TwinState 
    stateDesc="Pinon is capering like a crazy fool. "
    specialDesc="Pinon is here, capering away. "
    isInitState = true
    isEqualTo = t2CaperingState
;

+t1AngryState: TwinState 
    stateDesc="Pinon is fuming with rage. "
    specialDesc="Pinon is standing here, smoke coming out of his ears. "
    isInitState = true
;

twin2: Person 'Jeunet' 'Jeunet' @StartRoom
    collectiveGroups = [twinGroup]
    isProperName=true
    useSpecialDesc=!mergeTwins()
    dobjFor(Push)
    {
        verify(){}
        check(){}
        action()
        {
            self.moveIntoForTravel(SecondRoom);
            "You push Jeunet and he rolls away in a well-meaning fashion. ";
        }
    }
    isHim=true
;

+t2CaperingState: TwinState 
    stateDesc="Jeunet is capering like a crazy fool. "
    specialDesc="Jeunet is here, capering away. "
    isInitState = true
    isEqualTo = t1CaperingState
;[/code]
Try pushing one of the twins to move him into the second room.  Attack Pinon to change his ActorState.  

I haven't implemented distantSpecialDescs, but hopefully this is a start.  Also, I'm not too sure if you really want the CollectiveGroup to be a SecretFixture as well, but I think you seem to have a better handle on actions and collections than I do.

Anyway, let us know how you get on!   [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=780&start=0#p3895
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 - Clear the screen
User: SuziY / DateTime: 2009-07-01 05:48:03

How can I clear the screen every time I enter a room?
I have tryed 

"	Before printing the locale description: 
		clear the screen;
		rule succeeds.	"

using Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short.
but this never shows the room description.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=780&start=0#p3896
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Clear the screen
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-07-01 08:10:17

Using an "After going" rule should work better.

There was a game in the last year's IFComp, [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Berrost%27s_Challenge]Berrost's Challenge[/url], that did the same. Some people hated it (the screen clearing, that is). The problem is that once the game clears the screen you can't scroll back to previous text. So unless you have a very good gameplay reason for clearing the screen, I would suggest against it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=779&start=0#p3897
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Twins
User: QueenoftheCapes / DateTime: 2009-07-01 14:49:41

A better handle than you do? Really?  Heck, I'm just winging it.  [emote]:shock:[/emote] 

The code looks useful, but I'm not sure of one thing:  Where exactly is that mergeTwin() check located?  It just seems to be floating there... I hate to ask a stupid question, but can you actually do that? o.O

Edit:  Okay, I tried it, and it seems to work.  Thanks again, Pacian! [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=779&start=0#p3898
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Twins
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-07-01 17:26:02

You're welcome.   [emote];)[/emote] 

[quote="QueenoftheCapes"]The code looks useful, but I'm not sure of one thing:  Where exactly is that mergeTwin() check located?  It just seems to be floating there... I hate to ask a stupid question, but can you actually do that? o.O[/quote]
In TADS 3 you can.  Other OOP languages, such as Java and C# prevent you from having functions that aren't part of an object.  Generally, it's probably something you want to avoid, especially for behaviour that you might want to override in instances or sub-classes of specific objects, but for exceptional cases and odd bits and bobs, it doesn't hurt.  

In particular, I think it's good for things relating to text output or comparisons - things that might potentially be useful to call anywhere in your code.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=780&start=0#p3899
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Clear the screen
User: SuziY / DateTime: 2009-07-02 08:02:11

Nitku

Thank you for your reply, and pointing me in the right direction, works with

"	before going:
		clear the screen.	"

Thanks again for your help

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=781&start=0#p3900
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: A Group of Questions which Need Answers
User: chinkeeyong / DateTime: 2009-07-02 08:52:51

OK, I just signed up to ask a single question:

I'm writing an interactive fiction where you can switch consciousnesses between different random people. This is my code so far:
[code]A thing can be animate or inanimate. Things are usually inanimate. People are always animate. Animals are always animate.

Being is an action with past participle been, applying to one thing.
Understand "be [a thing]" as being.
Check being:
	If the noun is not animate:
		say "You can only do that to something animate." instead;
	Otherwise if the noun is the player:
		say "You are already you." instead;
	Otherwise:
		say "With great exertion, you attempt to disembody your awareness and move it into another person. It seems to be working, but not as you hoped.[paragraph break]You are now [the noun]."
		
Carry out being:
	now the player is the noun;
	try looking.
	
Does the player mean doing something to the player: it is very unlikely.

Does the player mean being a person: it is very likely.[/code]
However, Inform automatically assumes that the noun must be visible, which I don't want to be the case. How can I override this?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=781&start=0#p3901
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing the player with an action
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-07-02 09:53:00

You need "any thing" in the understand line to take any object into account. Also, the action needs to be defined as applying to one visible thing (as opposed to something that you can touch from where you are), otherwise the parser will give a "you can't reach there" error.

[code]Being is an action with past participle been, applying to one visible thing.
Understand "be [any thing]" as being.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=781&start=0#p3902
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing the player with an action
User: chinkeeyong / DateTime: 2009-07-02 18:57:58

That makes sense, and it works. Thanks!

Edit:

Is it possible to remove something from scope?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=781&start=0#p3903
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing the player with an action
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-07-03 01:36:24

[quote="chinkeeyong"]Is it possible to remove something from scope?[/quote]

You could do something like this:

[code]Understand "be [any possessible thing]" as being.

Definition: a thing is possessible if it is in the possession chambers.
[or alternatively: A thing can be possessible. A thing is usually possessible.]
[/code]

But if you want the player to be able to only become people he has met, you could download Eric Eve's Epistemology extension from I7's web site that does most of that work for you.

[code]Include Epistemology by Eric Eve.

Understand "be [any known thing]" as being.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=781&start=0#p3904
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing the player with an action
User: chinkeeyong / DateTime: 2009-07-03 01:52:00

No, this is completely unrelated. I want the player to not be able to see or interact with a hidden door until he's performed an action. Unfortunately, doors can't be moved out of play, so I don't know how to go about this.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=781&start=0#p3905
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing the player with an action
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-07-03 01:59:32

Ah, ok. Sorry about that. Well, for the door problem you could use a couple of extensions: Hidden Items by Krister Fundin or Secret Doors by Andrew Owen. Both should do just that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=781&start=0#p3906
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing the player with an action
User: chinkeeyong / DateTime: 2009-07-03 02:17:09

I'll go check them out. Thanks!

Edit:

I think something with my source is very wrong. I'm getting spammed by programming errors that say this:

[code][** Programming error: nothing (object number 0)  has no property parse_name to read **]

[** Programming error: tried to find the ".&" of nothing **]

[** Programming error: tried to find the ".&" of nothing **]

[** Programming error: nothing (object number 0)  has no property parse_name to read **]

[** Programming error: tried to find the ".&" of nothing **][/code]

and so on. As far as I can tell, the parser is trying to find nonexistent properties of nothing, but nothing in my code seems to be the problem. I've uploaded  my (massive) source file in a zip [url=http://chinkeeyong.webs.com/jailbreak.inform.zip]here[/url], in case it's useful.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=781&start=0#p3907
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A Group of Questions which Need Answers
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-07-04 01:29:53

I had a look at the game ... and I don't know the answer. It only happens after the player has used 'be' to become the second guy, so suspicion is bound to center on the line 

now the player is the noun;

But on closer examination, if I try 'be the first guy', the problem goes away. So that theory is on the back burner.

On yet closer examination, the problem seems to occur only in the Tall Room. So my best guess is that one of your Before or Instead rules that involves checking whether the player is in the Tall Room has got a bug in it.

That's the best I can do. Sorry.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=781&start=0#p3908
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A Group of Questions which Need Answers
User: chinkeeyong / DateTime: 2009-07-04 03:06:07

Well, you tried, I guess. As far as I can tell, it happens when the player is in the Tall Room or the Utility Closet. It also doesn't actually do anything other than regurgitate buckets of messages, since I can progress through the game no problem.

Oh, and when trying to yell at the first guy from the Tall Room, a new message appeared!

[code][** Programming error: tried to find the "parent" of nothing **]

[** Programming error: tried to find the "parent" of nothing **]

[** Programming error: tried to test "has" or "hasnt" of nothing **]

[** Programming error: tried to test "has" or "hasnt" of nothing **]

[** Programming error: tried to test "has" or "hasnt" of nothing **]

[** Programming error: tried to test "has" or "hasnt" of nothing **]

[** Programming error: tried to test "has" or "hasnt" of nothing **]

[** Programming error: tried to test "has" or "hasnt" of nothing **]

[** Programming error: tried to test "has" or "hasnt" of nothing **]

[** Programming error: tried to find the ".&" of nothing **]

[** Programming error: tried to find the "parent" of nothing **]

[** Programming error: tried to find the "parent" of nothing **]

[** Programming error: tried to test "has" or "hasnt" of nothing **]

[** Programming error: tried to test "has" or "hasnt" of nothing **]

[** Programming error: tried to test "has" or "hasnt" of nothing **]

[** Programming error: tried to test "has" or "hasnt" of nothing **]

[** Programming error: tried to test "has" or "hasnt" of nothing **]

[** Programming error: tried to test "has" or "hasnt" of nothing **]

[** Programming error: tried to test "has" or "hasnt" of nothing **][/code]

I am more and more certain that this is an Inform 6 thing, but I don't know how to fix it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=781&start=0#p3909
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A Group of Questions which Need Answers
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-07-04 03:25:31

I took a look at it with RULES debugging on, and the culprit seems to be the After deciding the scope of the player rule. You have a line there that places a random person in the prison cell in scope, but there's nobody there so the game tries to place "nothing" in scope, which gives the error messages. If you add tests whether there actually is someone there before adding them to scope the errors go away.

[code]After deciding the scope of the player:
	If the player is in the Jail Cell or the player is in the Prison Cell:
		place the Tall Room in scope;
		place the wooden door in scope;
		place the hallway in scope;
	If the player is in the Tall Room:
		if a person (called the prisoner) is in the Jail Cell, place the prisoner in scope;
		if a person (called the prisoner) is in the Prison Cell, place the prisoner in scope.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=781&start=10#p3910
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A Group of Questions which Need Answers
User: chinkeeyong / DateTime: 2009-07-04 03:40:09

Oh yeah.

 [emote]:cry:[/emote] 

Ok then, thanks for the help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=782&start=0#p3911
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Looking at a room
User: stevex / DateTime: 2009-07-05 14:23:46

I'm new to interactive fiction and to Inform.  Loving it so far!  But I have this simple thing I'm trying to do and I just can't figure out how.

In a nutshell, I have a street, and a driveway.  You're standing on the street, and you can see the driveway to the North.  The user wants to look at or examine the driveway.

How do I let them do that?  

[code]
The street is a room.  "You are standing on the street.  There's a driveway to the North."  

The driveway is a room.  The driveway is north of the street.
[/code]

When standing on the street, I want to say "look at the driveway" or "examine driveway", but I get "You can't see any such thing". 

I tried creating it as scenery but then there's a naming conflict.

Thanks
 -- Steve

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=782&start=0#p3912
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Looking at a room
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-07-05 15:26:11

The easiest way to do it is to name the scenery object something else.

[code]The driveway-scenery is scenery in the street. The description is "The driveway is to the north." The printed name is "driveway". Understand "driveway" as the driveway-scenery.[/code]
Another method is to allow looking at adjacent rooms, which is described in example 78 in chapter 6.14 of the manual.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=782&start=0#p3913
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Looking at a room
User: stevex / DateTime: 2009-07-05 16:26:45

That works, thanks - but there's a complication.  I'm using this:

[code]
Understand "go [any room]" as going by name. Understand "go to [any room]" as going by name.

Going by name is an action applying to one thing.
[/code]

To let me say "go laneway".  With the laneway-scenery there, "go laneway" doesn't work.

I tried the example in section 6.14 but I get this error when I attempt to use it:

Problem. You wrote 'try looking toward the viewed item'  : but this is not an action I recognise, or else is malformed in a way I can't see how to sort out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=782&start=0#p3914
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Looking at a room
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-07-06 02:24:06

[quote="stevex"]With the laneway-scenery there, "go laneway" doesn't work.[/quote]
GO [something] is a synonym for entering things, so you have to disable that functionality first.

[code]Understand the command "go" as something new.
Understand "go [direction]" as going.  [this restores GO NORTH etc.][/code]
Note that this has to be placed in the code before you define the going by name action, otherwise it too will be disabled.

[quote]I tried the example in section 6.14 but I get this error when I attempt to use it:

Problem. You wrote 'try looking toward the viewed item'  : but this is not an action I recognise, or else is malformed in a way I can't see how to sort out.[/quote]
Looks like you copy-pasted only the first half of the example. The looking toward action is defined in the latter half. (You can click the blue square in the example code to move the entire example to your source.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=543&start=10#p3915
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Unwinnable states
User: Schilcote / DateTime: 2009-07-07 08:40:58

You're game dosn't have to be so well designed that you need to have examples on good about files. Just write what you think makes sense, many pepole won't (how did that o get in there... I'll ask my english teacher) even read it anyway.

And now I have a question. I was thinking about unwinnable states, and I wondered if it might be a good idea to put in a hint that the player has put the game into such a state. I was thinking something like this:
[quote]

>Put key in toilet

Done.

>Flush toilet
The toilet flushes.
You hear distant evil laughter...

[/quote]

The laughter, as explained in the hints probably, is the author laughing at you for being a moron, and a hint that you better undo that last action. It might also be usefull for a puzzle, where you think you put the game into an unwinnable state, but in actuallity there's a way to escape, and you know this because you didn't hear the laughter.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=782&start=0#p3916
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Looking at a room
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-07-07 14:57:28

Not clear on whether your "go" code is failing or whether you're just trying to differentiate two things that now answer to the same name. 

If "go [room]" is working the way you want it to, and the driveway-scenery is working, then it seems you could just use an "instead":

[code]Instead of examining the driveway: try examining the driveway-scenery.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=783&start=0#p3917
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Consulting
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-07-07 15:02:33

I can never seem to look up an old post; there must be something wrong with my searching skills.

Long ago someone gave me this code for looking up items in an encyclopedia:

[code]Briefly consulting about is an action applying to one topic.
Understand "look up [text]" or "read about [text]" or "read [text]" as briefly consulting about.

Check briefly consulting about:
   if the player is not carrying the guidebook,
      say "You aren't carrying the guidebook." instead.

Carry out briefly consulting about:
   try consulting the guidebook about the topic understood instead.[/code]

I see now that "consulting" is built in. Is there some benefit to defining this extra verb? Will the out-of-box verb allow me to consult more than one type of thing about topics?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=543&start=10#p3918
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Unwinnable states
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-07-07 15:43:39

Yeah, I like that evil laughter touch. 

I'm going to rework the game in question (since my testers found out that it SUCKS - no that's a bit strong, but it needs help) so that will give me a chance to implement some kind of warning like that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=775&start=0#p3919
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing location exits by a device
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-07-07 16:08:39

Not sure if you're trying to make, for example, the exit to the wine cellar sometimes on the north side and sometimes on the south side, which is what others have responded to, I think. In other words, the exit and the room both move.

OR, if you're trying to just have a bunch of exits on an unmoving map that may or may not be there at a given time. If that's the case, couldn't you just program them all in as doors, and then use instead statements to make some of them invisible when they aren't activated?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=783&start=0#p3920
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Consulting
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-07-08 09:37:41

Looks like the purpose of that action is to give a shorthand for the actual consulting action and a sensible answer when the player doesn't have a book to consult at hand. As you can see the last rule redirects the action to the standard consulting action. So the benefit is basically a cleaner error message and a convenient shorthand for the player (so that they can just LOOK UP OVERHAND KNOT instead of having to type LOOK UP OVERHAND KNOT IN THE GUIDEBOOK every time.)

[quote]Will the out-of-box verb allow me to consult more than one type of thing about topics?[/quote]
Yes. The first noun defines what item is being consulted.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=782&start=0#p3921
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Looking at a room
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-07-08 10:00:41

[quote="ShaeSays"][code]Instead of examining the driveway: try examining the driveway-scenery.[/code][/quote]
Actually that would not work because the driveway is not in scope, which was the problem in the first place. As far as I understood it the problem with GO was that the game was choosing the wrong action, not the wrong thing.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=784&start=0#p3922
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Adrift ?
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2009-07-08 12:53:59

I'm a sworn "Drifter" and I just discovered this forum not so long ago...
Just out of curiousity I wonder how many besides me in this Forum actually use Adrift?
Cheers

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=782&start=0#p3923
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Looking at a room
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-07-08 20:35:24

[code]Actually that would not work because the driveway is not in scope...[/code]

I guess I'm not clear on why the driveway-scenery in and of itself would interfere with the "go driveway" code then (as opposed to the "go driveway" code not working for other reasons). But perhaps I'm missing something. Hopefully the original poster will let us know if the problem got worked out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=783&start=0#p3924
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Consulting
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-07-08 20:36:43

[quote]so that they can just LOOK UP OVERHAND KNOT instead of having to type LOOK UP OVERHAND KNOT IN THE GUIDEBOOK every time[/quote]

Oh, I see. Cool, thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=782&start=0#p3925
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Looking at a room
User: stevex / DateTime: 2009-07-08 21:19:26

I haven't found a solution yet that works perfectly.

[code]
"test" by Steve Tibbett

Understand the command "go" as something new.
Understand "go [direction]" as going.  [this restores GO NORTH etc.]
Understand "go [any room]" as going by name. Understand "go to [any room]" as going by name.

Going by name is an action applying to one thing.

The street is a room.  "You're standing in the street.  You see  a driveway to the North."

The driveway-scenery is scenery in the street. The description is "It's not very long.  Maybe long enough for two normal length cars, three Smart Cars, or one of those wood-paneled station wagons." The printed name is "driveway". Understand "driveway" as the driveway-scenery.

The driveway is a room.  "You're standing on the driveway."  The driveway is north of the street.
[/code]

This is the entire test project.  When I run it, if I type "go driveway", nothing happens - I just get a prompt back with no output.

I'd like to be on the street and able to say "examine driveway" or "go driveway".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=782&start=0#p3926
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Looking at a room
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-07-09 02:00:45

[quote="stevex"]When I run it, if I type "go driveway", nothing happens - I just get a prompt back with no output.[/quote]
You haven't defined what the action should do, so it does nothing. If you look at example 291 or 292 in the manual you'll see a full implementation of the action. (Specifically, you need the carry out and check rules.)

[quote="ShaeSays"]I guess I'm not clear on why the driveway-scenery in and of itself would interfere with the "go driveway" code then[/quote]
As I explained earlier, it's because in the standard rules GO DRIVEWAY is a synonym for ENTER DRIVEWAY. That's why this synonym must be disabled so that the parser will not try entering the scenery object but triggers the going by name action instead. If you try stevex's example code above you'll see this is not an issue anymore.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=782&start=0#p3927
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Looking at a room
User: stevex / DateTime: 2009-07-09 05:37:43

Ah that worked, thank you!

[code]
Carry out going by name: 
    let aim be the best route from the location to the noun, using doors; 
    if aim is not a direction, say "You can't think how to get there from here." instead; 
    say "(heading [aim])[command clarification break]"; 
    try going aim; 
    if the location is not the noun, say "You'll have to stop here."
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=782&start=10#p3928
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Looking at a room
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-07-09 07:23:16

Thanks Nitku and Stevex. That seems like a good little snippet that might be useful in all games. I remember the old Scott Adams games used that construction ("go driveway").

I'm trying to collect some snippets that I'll always add to all games. For example, I like "talk to [person]" which isn't built in and can easily be mapped to one of the other conversation verbs. And there are others.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=785&start=0#p3929
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Can you help?
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2009-07-09 09:22:24

This is probably a weird request, but I hope to find someone who can help me.

I am currently working on a game about the American revolution (1776) 
I am looking for pictures and a plan showing the Graff House in Phillidelphia.
Apparently Thommas Jefferson rented two rooms on the upper floor and I am trying to make the game as realistic as possible.
I have tried to search the net, but I can't really find what I'm looking for....
Please help..
Thanks in advance..
Cheers

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=785&start=0#p3930
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can you help?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-07-09 09:45:33

I'll bet money there's a Historical Society in Philadelphia. They may not be online at all, but if you phone the public library in Philly and ask, I'm sure they can give you a phone number to call.

--Jim Aikin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=752&start=0#p3931
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Conspiracy Theory Game
User: Retro / DateTime: 2009-07-09 19:52:48

[quote="Emerald"]Searching IFDB for "conspiracy" offers up [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=y38nga6m3w8qpd47]Project Delta[/url], by Emilian Kowalewski (which isn't even IF, strictly speaking, and which received terrible reviews).[/quote]

Strictly speaking, this is not correct. Node-X adventures are mostly a subgenre of [b]Interactive Fiction[/b] called multiple-choice textadventures, also known as CYOA. Just to clean this up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=752&start=0#p3932
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Conspiracy Theory Game
User: Retro / DateTime: 2009-07-09 20:49:01

[quote="ryacku"]A conspiracy game would sound nice, but would be difficult by nature because conspiracies tend to try to stay hidden, planting red herrings along the way. I'd probably be too lazy to solve those puzzles.[/quote]

You would probably be too lazy to solve those puzzles, I can't tell. None of the less, you could write the plot in such a way that there are no or only a few red herrings included.

For example, you could use a structure like this:

1. someone is found dead in a crime scene
2. player works for the police and has to investigate
3. first investigation concludes that it was suicide
4. player finds hidden clues for a conspiracy
5. second investigation concludes that the person was murdered by someone
6. player finds more clues to prove his conspiracy theory and find the murderer
7. game solved.

As you can see, one red herring is being used here. First the player is being convinced that it was suicide, then he finds out it was murder.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=786&start=0#p3933
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Instead of Unlocking
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-07-10 15:48:43

Ergh! This has happened to me in two games. I want to have a locked, closed door, for ambiance, but opening it is not something that will happen. Therefore, this is undesirable:

[quote]You can see the front door here.

>unlock door
What do you want to unlock the front door with?[/quote]

But none of this works...

[code]Instead of unlocking the door:
  say "There's no way to get the key."
Instead of unlocking the door with something: ...
Instead of opening it with the door: ...
Instead of opening the door with: ...
Instead of opening it with when the noun is the door: ...[/code]

What the heck is the syntax?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=786&start=0#p3934
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Instead of Unlocking
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-07-10 15:56:39

The problem arises due to the fact that the action 'unlocking it with' is defined, while the action 'unlocking' isn't. You can solve it this way:
[code]The Living Room is a room. "It's an ordinary living room. The front door is to the south."

The front door is a door. It is scenery. The front door is south of the Living Room. The front door is locked.

Check unlocking the front door:
	say "You're not going that way.";
	rule succeeds.

Unlocking is an action applying to one thing and requiring light. Understand "unlock [something]" as unlocking.

Check unlocking:
	say "There doesn't seem to be a keyhole."[/code]
Note, however, that this will prevent the "What do you want to unlock it with?" parser question from ever arising, even with doors that you [i]do [/i]want the player to be able to unlock.

Hope this helps.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=786&start=0#p3935
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Instead of Unlocking
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-07-10 16:04:16

Here's a slightly more complete example, which handles "unlock <something>" in a more reasonable way:
[code]Check unlocking:
	if the noun is locked:
		say "You don't seem to have the key.";
	otherwise:
		say "[The noun] doesn't appear to be locked.";
	rule succeeds.

The Kitchen is a room.

The kitchen door is north of the Living Room and south of the Kitchen. The kitchen door is a scenery door. The kitchen door is locked. The fish unlocks the kitchen door.

The player carries a fish.

Check unlocking the kitchen door:
	if the player carries the fish:
		try unlocking the kitchen door with the fish instead.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=787&start=0#p3936
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Looking for an artist
User: Merlin-C / DateTime: 2009-07-15 11:25:48

Hi...
I am looking for someone who'd be interested in helping me making the pictures for a game I have been working on for some time.
I must warn  you that it's an AIF, so naturally the pictures will be of erotic nature.
I am trying to make a game different from the other AI F's where everything is about sex, and getting as many girls on their back as possible.
This game is, for a change, written from the perspective of a woman, and in short the story is as follows:
The player takes the role of a wealthy young English woman, in the late 1890's. Because she has fallen in love with the ”wrong” guy back in England her mother thought it would be appropriate to take her on a voyage (In this case to Egypt) so she could forget this unsuitable young man back in England.
However, one day as they visit the bazaar in Cairo, their guide and bodyguard is brutally murdered and the young woman (Penelope) is kidnapped and brought you a distant fort way out in the dessert.
Her job is to try and find her way out of the imprisonment and get back to civilization.

If anyone should be interested in helping me out, please send an e-mail to:
<a href="mailto:Merlin.c69@gmail.com">Merlin.c69@gmail.com</a>

Thank you in advance.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=786&start=0#p3937
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Instead of Unlocking
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-07-16 12:31:21

Thanks Jim! I'm actually not going to have any unlockable doors, but I'll use the second code for good form. Who knows, I might change my mind later.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=786&start=0#p3938
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Instead of Unlocking
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-07-16 12:39:53

Incidentally, I got as far as to realize that "unlocking it with" is the verb. But is there really no way to refer to that verb out of the box? Something like, "Instead of unlocking it with when the first noun is..." I could swear I tried everything though and couldn't find it.

Also, "scenery door" is recognized? Are there any advantages to "scenery door" over "door"? Does this mean I can also do things like "scenery container"?

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=786&start=0#p3939
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Instead of Unlocking
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-07-16 13:03:42

On that note, I just noticed that whenever you say "unlock fish" or anything else, the default response is "What do you want to unlock it with?". It might be nice to change that behavior in general to "That's not something you can unlock" unless you code otherwise. Why is there even such a quality as "lockable" if it doesn't provide a negative response to trying to lock/unlock anything that isn't specified as lockable? 

More of an opinion than a question.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=786&start=0#p3940
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Instead of Unlocking
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-07-16 15:03:28

[quote="ShaeSays"]Incidentally, I got as far as to realize that "unlocking it with" is the verb. But is there really no way to refer to that verb out of the box? Something like, "Instead of unlocking it with when the first noun is..." I could swear I tried everything though and couldn't find it.[/quote]
"Instead of unlocking the front door with something: ..." or the general case, "Instead of unlocking with: ..."

[quote]Also, "scenery door" is recognized? Are there any advantages to "scenery door" over "door"? Does this mean I can also do things like "scenery container"?[/quote]
"Scenery" is not a kind like "supporter" or "container" but a property like "lockable" or "female". It does mainly two things: the object is automatically fixed in place, and is not listed in the room description. A door has these properties by default so making it scenery doesn't actually do anything. If you have a container that shouldn't be carried and shouldn't have a paragraph of its own in the room description, it can be made scenery. (see chapter 3.8 in the manual.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=786&start=0#p3941
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Instead of Unlocking
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-07-16 15:15:01

[quote="ShaeSays"]Why is there even such a quality as "lockable" if it doesn't provide a negative response to trying to lock/unlock anything that isn't specified as lockable?[/quote]
I do agree that the default behavior is kludgy, but the lockable property does provide a proper response:

[code]The wharf is a room. A key is carried by the player. A box is a locked, lockable container in the wharf. A fish is in the wharf.

Test me with "unlock box with key/unlock fish with key".

[This produces:

>unlock box with key
That doesn't seem to fit the lock.

>unlock fish with key
That doesn't seem to be something you can unlock.][/code]

Fortunately the built-in Locksmith extension makes locking and unlocking things behave much smoother, so you might want to take a look at that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=787&start=0#p3942
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for an artist
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2009-07-17 04:00:35

[quote="Merlin-C"]
This game is, for a change, written from the perspective of a woman, 
quote]

how would that be a change? 75% of IF are written from the perspective of a woman... (at least the ones I - randomly - played)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=787&start=0#p3943
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for an artist
User: Merlin-C / DateTime: 2009-07-17 04:40:39

[quote="JC Denton"][quote="Merlin-C"]
This game is, for a change, written from the perspective of a woman, 
quote]

how would that be a change? 75% of IF are written from the perspective of a woman... (at least the ones I - randomly - played)[/quote][/quote]

How many and what games have you played?   [emote];)[/emote]  The only one I know that is especially played from the female perspective is British Fox. I would say that 75% if not more has a male figure as the main character?
Almost all AIF is written by guys for guys ...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=787&start=0#p3944
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for an artist
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2009-07-17 07:39:05

I think that JC Denton meant IF games in general, not AIF in particular. Although even for modern non-AIF IF, 75% sounds a bit much to me... (And old 1980s IF games relatively rarely had women as player characters: more often, either it was a man or the gender wasn't mentioned.)

Somebody made [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/AIF_games_with_female_PCs]a list of AIF games with female PCs[/url] on the IFWiki.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=787&start=0#p3945
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for an artist
User: Merlin-C / DateTime: 2009-07-17 09:19:34

Aha.. I see.. Sorry about that JC.  [emote]:oops:[/emote] 
But since I specifically mentioned AIF's in my original posting, I naturally assumed that was what he was refering to.

I will agree with you though Eriorg, that even within IF's a 75% of the games sounds a bit high to me.
Anyway.. I am still looking for someone who'd think it would be fun helping me with the illustrations...  [emote];)[/emote] 
Cheers

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=787&start=0#p3946
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for an artist
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2009-07-17 14:22:09

[quote="Eriorg"]I think that JC Denton meant IF games in general, not AIF in particular. [/url] on the IFWiki.[/quote]
yes  [emote]:)[/emote] 

never heard of AIF before anyway, I had to guess what the A stands for  [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=788&start=0#p3947
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Voices
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2009-07-17 16:03:38

has there ever been a game with full or partial voice acting? is that even possible in Inform 7?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=788&start=0#p3948
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Voices
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-07-17 19:18:15

I haven't played it, but [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=v0a4wtgwepxumryc]Future Boy![/url] apparently has voice acting. I don't know how extensive it is.

[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=p9ci8ridqcdcpw5b]Six Stories[/url] also has voice acting, but if I remember correctly, only in the cutscenes.

I don't know of any Inform 7 games that have voice acting, but there's nothing to stop you from doing so. You'd have to compile to Glulx and possibly use an extension that gives you access to Glulx's more advanced multimedia features.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=788&start=0#p3949
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Voices
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-07-18 01:41:57

[quote="JC Denton"]has there ever been a game with full or partial voice acting? is that even possible in Inform 7?[/quote]
Chapter 21 of the Documentation includes some information on playback of sound files from within a Glulx game.

Bear in mind, you're at the mercy of the interpreter software your players are using. Some users definitely won't hear the sounds, so it would be cruel to embed any vital story-related information in the audio.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=788&start=0#p3950
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Voices
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2009-07-18 09:51:06

well it´s not like interpreters would cost money or be 10 GB of data...  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=788&start=0#p3951
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Voices
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-07-18 10:38:26

[quote="JC Denton"]well it´s not like interpreters would cost money or be 10 GB of data...  ;)[/quote]
No, but not everyone uses Windows. On OS X only Spatterlight plays sound, but I couldn't get The King of Shreds and Patches to work with it. I'm not sure if interpreters for Linux or handhelds handle sound.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=788&start=0#p3952
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Voices
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-07-18 11:06:29

[quote="Nitku"]I'm not sure if interpreters for Linux or handhelds handle sound.[/quote]
I don't know about Linux, but I'm betting that IF on handhelds may become significant, for several reasons: (1) They're now powerful enough to do the job. (2) Millions of people have the hardware. (3) Those people are accustomed to using little teensy keyboards. (4) Handhelds are never going to have big enough screens to run decent graphics-intensive games. (5) You've got your phone in your pocket, and you've got ten minutes to kill, so why not play IF? It's an easy impulse.

If we can get audio streaming from the game into the earbud, a dialog or music track would work. Interesting idea, actually ... I wonder what the state of the technology is.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=788&start=0#p3953
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Voices
User: Retro / DateTime: 2009-07-19 20:39:58

[quote="Jim Aikin"]I'm betting that IF on handhelds may become significant[/quote]

I agree. And I'd say that it will become the future of IF too. 

[quote]If we can get audio streaming from the game into the earbud, a dialog or music track would work. Interesting idea, actually ... I wonder what the state of the technology is.[/quote]

It could work well with iPods. They have the capability to play audio tracks in many audio formats including WAV and MP3.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=786&start=0#p3954
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Instead of Unlocking
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-07-20 12:23:49

Hm, the "instead of unlocking with" code doesn't work for me, nor do my default responses seem to be the same as yours, Nitku.

Entirely clean project, all code:

[code]The onlyroom is a room.
The otherroom is a room. 
The front door is a door. The front door is east of the onlyroom and west of the otherroom.
The fish is a thing in the onlyroom.

Instead of unlocking the front door with something:
  Say "test".

Instead of unlocking the front door with:
  Say "test 2".

Instead of unlocking with:
  Say "test 3".

Instead of unlocking:
  say "test 4"
[/code]

[quote]onlyroom
You can see a front door and a fish here.

>unlock front door
What do you want to unlock the front door with?

>unlock fish
What do you want to unlock the fish with?

>unlock front door with fish
(first taking the fish)
test
[/quote]

I can work around my problem, I think, but it's interesting that we're getting different default responses.

Edited to say: Actually we're not getting different responses. It's the presence of the key that makes you get "That's not something you can unlock" instead of "What do you want to unlock it with".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=786&start=0#p3955
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Instead of Unlocking
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-07-20 12:28:02

Ditto with 

[code]After unlocking:
  say "test 4" instead.[/code]

And "before".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=787&start=0#p3956
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for an artist
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-07-20 12:37:48

Me neither... animated? amorous?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=787&start=0#p3957
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for an artist
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-07-20 14:23:50

[quote="ShaeSays"]amorous?[/quote]

Close.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=786&start=10#p3958
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Instead of Unlocking
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-07-20 23:24:11

This is because you are trying commands in the form of "unlock door", but the standard library does not have an unlocking action. It only has unlocking WITH action, that applies to two things. You will always have to use two nouns with it and it will always ask for the second noun if it's missing, no matter what you do. If this bothers you the easy solution is

[code]Include Locksmith by Emily Short.[/code]
This will add an unlocking action that applies to only one thing and thus does not ask for the second one.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=787&start=0#p3959
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for an artist
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2009-07-21 02:42:50

[quote="ShaeSays"]Me neither... animated? amorous?[/quote]

Try "Adult"  [emote]:oops:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=786&start=10#p3960
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Instead of Unlocking
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-07-21 19:58:06

I wonder if there's some hack with "rule for determining the second noun..." or the like. 

Probably not. I will get the extension. Thanks Nitku!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=787&start=0#p3961
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for an artist
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-07-21 21:26:01

HA!

Silly me. 

I would have done a search but I was at work and a little afraid of what it might turn up.  [emote]:oops:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=790&start=0#p3963
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Inform7 and other general questions
User: Dhomochevsky / DateTime: 2009-08-14 17:22:11

Hello there,
I have absolutely no experience in programming, but have always wanted to try writing an IF game, and after playing around, I've decided to go use I7 as my authoring system. Testing the waters with it, a couple of questions/problems have come up.

Firstly, say I have a room with levers A, B and C in it. I want to include these in the description of the room (say "A small room with three levers"), and not have them pop up again after that in the line "You can see Lever A, Lever B and Lever C here" since it just repeats itself.

This raises another problem however: if I DO manage to remove this, will it cause problems with the description of the room if I pick up one of those (portable) levers, or can I write it in such a way that it recognizes the removed object and prints the description with only two levers.

Secondly, if I put a torch in this room, the above line will further read "... and a lit torch (providing light)". Is there a way to remove "(providing light)" from that? 
Is this just overcomplicating things for me? It seems to me like it somehow breaks atmosphere or flow when it suddenly switches to the technical "You see objects here". Do all authors stick with this?

Thirdly, if these levers are alligned from left to right - I wanted to name them Left Lever, Middle Lever and Right Lever, but I also want them to show up in the description (the one that I want to fully take out, but I guess it's still good to know) as "the Left, Middle and Right Levers" not "Left Lever, Middle Lever, Right Lever". And while we're on this subject, when I enter 'pull lever' I get asked "which one, Left Lever, Middle Lever or Right Lever?" How can I add a definite article to them, or maybe even turn it into "the Left, Middle or Right one?"

My fourth question has to do with the Welcome text, Release and build notes at the start of the game. Can I remove those too? If I use the "when play begins: say..." rule, the cited text appears BEFORE the build notes, and the rest (starting room) after. Or can I move it all the way to the top so it doesn't go in between them?


My last questions are less technical:
What is the best way to go about writing the game? I have it outlined in my head from start to finish, but I found that when putting it to paper, I tend to stray away from sticking to I7's norms and go towards flowing prose, and when I need to apply it, I have to chop up parts of text, even rephrase much of it, and so on.
Working part by part on it seems a better way.

Regarding reading the manual: I've read about 7 chapters, but it's tiresome when all I have to go on is just an explanation and a given example, and much of the information doesn't stick to me, so I've found it easier to just start experimenting and learn from that (while still applying the manual's instructions). This however is very nonlinear so I jump back and forth through chapters a lot. Is there a better way to learn and get used to I7?

Thanks a lot. I'm looking forward to discussing authoring further. Cheers [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=790&start=0#p3964
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inform7 and other general questions
User: George / DateTime: 2009-08-14 20:20:26

hi, welcome to the forums [emote]:)[/emote]. First of all I recommend you check out some of the extensions that are designed to address many of the questions you have. 

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/all-extensions-by-title/">http://inform7.com/extensions/all-extensions-by-title/</a>

I'd start with [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Emily%20Short/Room%20Description%20Control/index.html]Room Description Control[/url] especially. 

I'm not that familiar with I7 itself so hopefully some others here can step in and give you more specific help.

Regarding the release and build notes (the banner), see example 357, 'Bikini Atoll', which uses:

[code]Rule for printing the banner text: <insert your code here>[/code]


[quote]Is there a better way to learn and get used to I7?[/quote]

You may want to get a copy of Jim Aikin's I7 manual, it has a different approach than the included documentation. 

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm">http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=791&start=0#p3965
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Switch statements; and random time
User: Zeborah / DateTime: 2009-08-14 23:49:55

Sometimes I'm not sure if I'm missing something or the code is missing something.  Admittedly, so far it's always me; but why doesn't this work?
[code]The Square is a room.  Greta is a woman in The Square.  John is a man in The Square.  Asako is a woman in The Square. SeungHo is a man in The Square.

Instead of examining:
	if noun is:
		-- a man: say "He's handsome.";
		-- a woman: say "She's beautiful."[/code]

It gives me the error message:
[code]Problem. The case '-- a man'   is required to be a constant value, rather than something which has different values at different times: specifically, it has to be the name of an object.
Problem. The case '-- a woman'   is required to be a constant value, rather than something which has different values at different times: specifically, it has to be the name of an object.[/code]

But this does work:
[code]Instead of examining a person in The Square:
	if noun is a man, say "He's handsome.";
	if noun is a woman, say "She's beautiful."[/code]

And while I'm here:  I want my game to start at a random time.  I tried [code]The time of day is a random time.[/code] but that gives an error message [code]Problem. The sentence 'The time of day is a random time'   tells me that 'time of day', which is a time that varies, should have value 'random time', but this is the name of an object and not a time.[/code]

So I tried [code]When play begins: change the time of day to a random time.[/code] but then suddenly it starts complaining about other things in the code which had until now been working fine, all on the pattern of [code]Problem. You wrote 'change the hair-colour of the folk to a random hair-colour'  , but 'hair-colour of the folk' is supposed to be a property whose kind of value is a hair-colour, so it cannot be set equal to a random hair-colour, whose kind is a hair-colour.[/code]

Buh?  And moreover, what?

Zeborah

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=790&start=0#p3966
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inform7 and other general questions
User: Dhomochevsky / DateTime: 2009-08-15 02:28:49

I haven't tried using any kind of extension yet, since I've felt intimidated by them, maybe not yet ready to deal with them, but by the looks of things it's not something that complicated. 

I'm checking out the manual too, it's very helpful. Thanks a bunch! [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=791&start=0#p3967
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Switch statements; and random time
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-08-15 03:07:14

[quote="Zeborah"][code]Problem. The case '-- a man'   is required to be a constant value, rather than something which has different values at different times: specifically, it has to be the name of an object.
Problem. The case '-- a woman'   is required to be a constant value, rather than something which has different values at different times: specifically, it has to be the name of an object.[/code][/quote]
The error message says it basically. You have to use exact object names with switch statements, not kinds like man and woman. I'm not sure why this is so but it appears to be a limitation of I7.

[quote]So I tried [code]When play begins: change the time of day to a random time.[/code] but then suddenly it starts complaining about other things in the code which had until now been working fine, all on the pattern of [code]Problem. You wrote 'change the hair-colour of the folk to a random hair-colour'  , but 'hair-colour of the folk' is supposed to be a property whose kind of value is a hair-colour, so it cannot be set equal to a random hair-colour, whose kind is a hair-colour.[/code][/quote]
Hard to tell without seeing the code, but I tried this:

[code]The lab is a room.

Hair-colour is a kind of value. Hair-colours are black, brown, red and blonde. A person has a hair-colour.

When play begins:
	change the time of day to a random time;
	repeat with folk running through people:
		change the hair-colour of the folk to a random hair-colour.[/code]
which works without problems. Are you using the latest build (5Z71)?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=791&start=0#p3968
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Switch statements; and random time
User: Zeborah / DateTime: 2009-08-15 03:56:23

Nitku wrote:
[quote]You have to use exact object names with switch statements, not kinds like man and woman. I'm not sure why this is so but it appears to be a limitation of I7.[/quote]
<pouty-face>  Ah well, I guess I'll go on doing it the long way then.

[quote]Are you using the latest build (5Z71)?[/quote]
I *thought* I was using the latest build seeing as how I downloaded it only a couple of days ago, but it was 5U92; googling now I see I must have been on the wrong site.  I've just downloaded 5Z71 and that fixes whatever the problem was.

Thanks!

Zeborah

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=790&start=0#p3969
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inform7 and other general questions
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-08-15 04:08:51

[quote="Dhomochevsky"]Firstly, say I have a room with levers A, B and C in it. I want to include these in the description of the room (say "A small room with three levers"), and not have them pop up again after that in the line "You can see Lever A, Lever B and Lever C here" since it just repeats itself.
[...]
Thirdly, if these levers are alligned from left to right - I wanted to name them Left Lever, Middle Lever and Right Lever, but I also want them to show up in the description (the one that I want to fully take out, but I guess it's still good to know) as "the Left, Middle and Right Levers" not "Left Lever, Middle Lever, Right Lever". [/quote]
You can use grouping (see the documentation chapter 17.14):

[code]The lab is a room.

A lever is a kind of thing.

The left lever, the right lever and the middle lever are levers in the lab.

Before listing contents:
	group levers together.
	
Before grouping together levers:
	say "[listing group size in words] levers (";
	
After grouping together levers:
	say " lever)";

A lever has some text called the short name. The short name of left lever is "left". The short name of right lever is "right". The short name of middle lever is "middle".
	
Rule for printing the name of a lever (called the current lever) while grouping together levers:
	say "[the short name of the current lever]".[/code]

[quote]This raises another problem however: if I DO manage to remove this, will it cause problems with the description of the room if I pick up one of those (portable) levers, or can I write it in such a way that it recognizes the removed object and prints the description with only two levers.[/quote]
It does cause problems but in a different way: what if the player picks up the levers and drops them in some other room? It's better to have portable items handled by the game in their separate paragraphs, otherwise you'll have to modify every room description by hand, just in case the player happens to drop the items there.

[quote]Secondly, if I put a torch in this room, the above line will further read "... and a lit torch (providing light)". Is there a way to remove "(providing light)" from that?[/quote]
I'm not actually seeing that in the room description, only in the player's inventory. Removing it might be a bit of a hassle (there's an example in chapter 20.3, example 407).

[quote]It seems to me like it somehow breaks atmosphere or flow when it suddenly switches to the technical "You see objects here". Do all authors stick with this?[/quote]
No, that's why there's the "initial appearance" property which allows you to give special room descriptions to the objects before they are picked up (see chapter 3.1).

[quote]And while we're on this subject, when I enter 'pull lever' I get asked "which one, Left Lever, Middle Lever or Right Lever?" How can I add a definite article to them, or maybe even turn it into "the Left, Middle or Right one?"[/quote]
Inform does that automatically, but looks like you've omitted "the" from your code when defining the levers, so Inform thinks they are proper names. So instead of 
[code]Left Lever is in the lab.[/code]write
[code]The left lever is in the lab.[/code]
(Also, you might want to consider dropping the capital letters from the objects, since they are not proper names. Some players find unnecessary capitalizing annoying.)

[quote]My fourth question has to do with the Welcome text, Release and build notes at the start of the game. Can I remove those too? If I use the "when play begins: say..." rule, the cited text appears BEFORE the build notes, and the rest (starting room) after. Or can I move it all the way to the top so it doesn't go in between them?[/quote]
George's method should work fine, but bear in mind it's then polite to give credit to Inform's creators at some other part of the game if not in the banner. You can also move the intro text after the banner by using "Before looking for the first time" rule instead of "When play begins" rule.

[quote]What is the best way to go about writing the game? I have it outlined in my head from start to finish, but I found that when putting it to paper, I tend to stray away from sticking to I7's norms and go towards flowing prose, and when I need to apply it, I have to chop up parts of text, even rephrase much of it, and so on. Working part by part on it seems a better way.[/quote]
I would argue that there's no universally best way to do it. What works for one person might not work for others and if you find one way of designing better than another you're obviously right when it comes to how you should work. Here are some past conversations you could browse for tips: [url]http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Past_raif_topics:_IF_Theory:_part_1#Game_design[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=792&start=0#p3971
Forum: Competitions / Subject: IFComp 2009!
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-08-15 14:09:29

I've been entertaining the notion of entering this year's Annual IF Competition -- it'd make my fifth time. To be safe, I even went ahead and signed up at [url]http://www.ifcomp.org/[/url]. This doesn't mean I'll finish in time, or even make it another day without completely losing my motivation, but I'm giving it a shot.

Anybody else here entering a game this year? Definitely, maybe, not sure?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=790&start=0#p3975
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inform7 and other general questions
User: Dhomochevsky / DateTime: 2009-08-16 02:22:11

Thank you, this is extremely helpful!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=793&start=0#p3976
Forum: Competitions / Subject: The Twin competition (Adrift)
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2009-08-16 03:57:11

The Twin Competition is hereby officially open.!

The competition is for all users of Adrift… registered as well as well as non-registered.
There are two prizes…
For non-registered users the prize is a free registry, paid for by me…   

For registered users … £ 10 or the equivalent in $ (how they are being paid is still under consideration… but they will be paid! )   

There are no restrictions for the non registered members. Create your game as you wish as long as it is within the rules of the comp.
 
For the registered and therefore (hopefully) more experienced members the restrictions are a little different...
Their game has to have at least two endings with a clear difference.. for instance a happy and a sad ending.
At least 5 rooms, 10 objects and just for the hell of it, 2 events. 

The competition runs from now and till September 30th 11:59pm GMT.

Rules for the competition
What you want to serve as or how you’re going to do it is up to you…
* You can use either:  Adrift Version 4.0  ,  Adrift Version 3.90  or even Adrift Version 5.0 (If you dare )
* All entries must be accompanied by a walk through (if not the author must be prepared to supply one on request). It can be a simple transcript from the runner. This must give the text that will allow a player to complete the game, from beginning to end, following the details given.
* File sizes are unlimited (within the restrictions of the shareware version of course for non-registered “Drifters”)
* Games may be pass worded, but the organizer prefers them not to be so that others can learn from the techniques used.
* Games must not contain content of an offensive adult nature.
* Naturally enough the games should be a completely original work, although parody is allowed.
* No more than two entries will be accepted from each contributor.
* At least three (3) different people in each category must enter or the competition for that category is void. 

Entry:
All entries should be sent to me at <a href="mailto:Rosenloev.1@gmail.com">Rosenloev.1@gmail.com</a> by no later than 11:59pm GMT Wednesday 30st of September

Judging:
The games will be added to the Adrift adventure page and a poll will take place after the deadline which has not yet been decided.. (depending on the number of entires) the winner will be announced... 
Good luck to everyone.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=792&start=0#p3977
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2009!
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2009-08-16 03:58:44

I would love to.. I am not sure if my game will be ready... It's quite complex but I will give it a try.
Good luck to you..
Cheers

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=794&start=0#p3978
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Augmented Fourth: Release 2
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-08-16 11:11:34

[b]Original post from briuri:[/b]

WANTED: Amateur musicians to serve the Royal Court. Must provide own instrument and be inured to copious constructive criticism. Impress your friends! Meet the King! Apply in person at the Castle, located on the south side of the volcano in sunny Central Papoosen.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/Aug4.z8">http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/Aug4.z8</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/solutions/Aug4Solution.zip">http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/sol ... lution.zip</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/source/inform/Aug4Source.zip">http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/gam ... Source.zip</a>

Release 2 (July 21, 2009) corrects a few minor issues that always irritated the author, but not enough to render him willing to fix them during the previous nine years. If you have played it before, there's nothing different enough to warrant another playthrough besides nostalgia.

- Fixed a crash bug caused by examining an object in the Fifth Bank of Nolava.
- Removed an unfair red herring in Finney's House, related to a statue.
- Removed the random-number trumpet-playing failures.
- Added several default verb actions and new verbs suggested by players.
- Clarified some hints offered by Leonine about one of the puzzles.
- Updated source code annotations.

Thank you for all the kind comments and reviews over the past nine years!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=794&start=0#p3979
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Augmented Fourth: Release 2
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-08-16 11:12:15

[b]Original post from Jim Aikin:[/b]

Good news! I enjoyed the game, and I'm glad you're supporting it. (Any chance of a new one?)

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=794&start=0#p3980
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Augmented Fourth: Release 2
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-08-16 11:12:58

[b]Original post from briuri:[/b]

I'm hoping to revive my second effort which was about 60% done before it was abandoned for various reasons in June 2000. After that, I'd like to learn Inform 7, but I'm forcing myself to finish what I started first! 

Glad you enjoyed Augmented Fourth!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=795&start=0#p3982
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: One more
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-08-16 11:24:26

[b]Original post by JC Denton[/b]:

of my "is it possible" questions, since the actual writing of my first game takes a very long time and keeps me from delving into inform 7 too much  [emote]:cry:[/emote] 

dialogue trees a la:

answer possibility 1
answer possibility 2

1 leads to 1.1, 1.2, 1.3

2 leads to 2.1, 2.2

1.1 and 1.2 lead to 1.1.1
1.3 leads to 1.3.1

2.1 ends conversation 

2.2 -> back to 1

and so on etc etc.

possible or not?
easy or not?

I mean I don´t need to know how to actually do it right [b]now[/b], just to know if it is manageable at all, since I NEED that kind of stuff for my game, dialogue trees with probably 7 levels or more

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=795&start=0#p3983
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: One more
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-08-16 11:26:24

[b]Original post by Nitku:[/b]

Often it's not a question of "is it possible", but "how" and "how easily". If you've seen something done in an IF game before, it's possible to do with I7 (and most other systems too).

You might want to take a look at Quip-Based Conversation by Michael Martin or Simple Chat by Mark Tilford, both found at I7's extension page (<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/npc/#Saying_Complicated_Things">http://inform7.com/extensions/npc/#Sayi ... ted_Things</a>). Both of them add the functionality you're looking for.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=796&start=0#p3984
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Need help with finer points of story
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-08-16 11:29:56

[b]Original post by Schilcote:[/b]

I am writing a game in inform 6 (let's not discuss reasons now) and, though I have coding well squared away, and I have a general story idea, I can't seem to figure out a motivation or a distinct objective for my character(s). I need somebody to help me plan out the storyline.

We can talk on #ifdev on Freenode (how many pepole here know there's an IF IRC channel?  [emote]:)[/emote]), or through email, or just through this thread.

The IRC probably won't be such a good idea because I can't ever predict where I'm going to be at a certian time, and I have no memory to speak of, so it'd be best to use a forum thread. My E-Mail is currently under siege by spammers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=796&start=0#p3985
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Need help with finer points of story
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-08-16 11:30:49

[b]Original post by George:[/b]

When you say you have a general story idea, how general are we talking here? Do you have a beginning, middle and end, or at least two out of those three, or do you have more of a setting and a theme? 

For a basic start on character motivation, think of it this way. What does your character want? Who (this can be another character or just a general environment) doesn't want your character to want that? What will your character do to get what they want? What will others (again, either other characters or the environment) do to stop them?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=796&start=0#p3986
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Need help with finer points of story
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-08-16 11:31:23

[b]General post by Jim Aikin:[/b]

Your main character should have a problem. The problem should be emotionally significant. Solving the problem should provide a meaningful reward to the character.

I could give examples from my own games, but at the moment I'm sort of stumped too. I have several story ideas, but none of them appeals to me. Either the working out of the story as IF would be prohibitively complex, or I don't really care about the lead character's predicament, or it all just seems too trivial to spend a lot of time on....

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=797&start=0#p3987
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Looking for gamebook writers
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-08-16 11:36:49

[b]Original post by filiph:[/b]

Hi,

for a gamebook mobile app, we are looking for stories. If you already have a gamebook-like interactive fiction or if you have an interesting idea for one, we're very interested.

The best possible scenario for us is an interactive fiction written in HTML, like here: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.boraski.com/zork/">http://www.boraski.com/zork/</a> or here: <a class="postlink" href="http://photics.com/games/revisions/">http://photics.com/games/revisions/</a>.

The mobile app is now being developed for the [url=http://www.android.com/]Android platform[/url]. In the future, it will allow for much more than just choosing one of multiple options at each stage. The gamebook will be fully programmable, with points, inventory, fights and all.

We can't pay you for your work at this stage (or maybe never, there's no business model, it's just a fan project), but if you'd like your story to be read more, here's your chance. I seriously believe that mobile phones are the future of interactive fiction and – especially – gamebooks.

Anyways, I'm looking forward to your stories and your opinion on the whole thing.

Cheers!
Filip Hracek

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=797&start=0#p3988
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for gamebook writers
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-08-16 11:37:35

[b]Original post by George:[/b]

I like the idea of this a lot Filip, but I'm curious what will distinguish your app from playing an html-based game in a web browser running on Android? Or are you not just reading HTML but a custom file format?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=797&start=0#p3989
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for gamebook writers
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-08-16 11:39:02

[b]Original post by filiph:[/b]

Hey George,

You are right: the basic idea is using existing technology (HTML for hypertext, JavaScript for scripting). I don't think it would be wise to bring yet another gamebook technology to the market -- especially since HTML+JavaScript can do anything that the other systems can and since it's now supported anywhere.

The distinguishing factors from playing a gamebook online are:
[list]
[*]Speed - files are served locally from the device, no annoying connection round trips[/*:m]
[*]No internet connection needed - you can play the gamebook in the underground or on a plane[/*:m]
[*]Packaging - finding & downloading a new gamebook will be super easy[/*:m]
[*]API - the writer will be able to store data (like inventory, events, experience points etc.) in the App, they will be able to trigger events and such[/*:m]
[*]plus saving, quick access, tools etc ... the possibilities are endless[/*:m][/list:u]

What do you think? Is it a good idea?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=797&start=0#p3990
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for gamebook writers
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-08-16 11:41:04

[b]Original post by Jim Aikin:[/b]

The two sites you posted links to are, as far as I can see, just doing CYOA -- branching stories with static pages and no user interaction.

Javascript would, I'm pretty sure, allow you to set up a basic parser, inventory management, and so on, so that (a) new text could be displayed within an existing page in response to commands, and (b) features of a given play-through would be persistent from page to page.

Has anybody done that type of thing yet? If so, can you toss us a few links? If not, is that what you're planning to do?

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=797&start=0#p3991
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for gamebook writers
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-08-16 11:41:56

[b]Original post by filiph:[/b]

Hi Jim,

yes, those two gamebooks are pure CYOA. The version 0.1 of the app will only support these, so that's why I chose them.

I'm not sure if what we have in mind has been done before or not. I know for a fact that online gamebooks with similar features exist (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.myadventuregame.com/">http://www.myadventuregame.com/</a>), but all of those I could find used proprietary scripting languages. I don't think that's practical anymore. Also, JavaScript as a scripting language could bring a lot more interactivity to the gamebooks. (Look what JavaScript can do nowadays: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.chromeexperiments.com/">http://www.chromeexperiments.com/</a> – needs a fast computer & browser, though.)

Anyways, right now I'd be glad to get my hands on a regular CYOA. Do you guys have any tips for me?

Cheers!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=797&start=0#p3992
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for gamebook writers
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-08-16 11:42:30

[b]Original post by George:[/b]

There have been Javascript-based games (there was one in an IFComp from a few years back, can't remember the name off the top of my head), though usually they are command-line based (like traditional IF). I think a new gamebook-style system (i.e. CYOA) is a good idea -- but then again I like gamebooks. Jim, there have been (print) gamebooks that were very sophisticated in their use of inventory, puzzles, commands, persistent worlds (persisting your character from book to book) and so on. It is not quite IF as we know it but very good regardless. Of course they usually were fantasy or SF but, as in IF, this isn't fundamental to the medium itself. 

Filip, I recommend taking this question to the rec.arts.int-fiction newsgroup (look it up on Google Groups if you don't know it). You also could try the Project Aon forums though they are very specific to Lone Wolf, you could find some general interest or knowledge in providing CYOA-based stories. Unfortunately I'm not aware of any general interest gamebook forums out there that are very popular.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=797&start=0#p3993
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for gamebook writers
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-08-16 11:45:08

[b]Original post by Emerald:[/b]

[quote="George"]There have been Javascript-based games (there was one in an IFComp from a few years back, can't remember the name off the top of my head)[/quote]
[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=kvg34tnaj1zpydoe]Aunts and Butlers[/url]. The author also did a [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=4j6apvpoo2el0rh]spoof of Hamlet[/url] using the same Javascript-based system. But they're both parser-based, so if the OP is looking for CYOA, they won't fit the bill.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=797&start=0#p3994
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for gamebook writers
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-08-16 11:46:52

[b]Original post by filiph:[/b]

Thank you both for suggestions! I'm especially glad I found the Lone Wolf project.

I'll update this thread when the App hits a public version. Thanks again!

Filip

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=797&start=0#p3995
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for gamebook writers
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-08-16 11:47:30

[b]Original post by wildermuthn:[/b]

I'm interested in writing. I think an iPhone CYOA would be a huge hit. It's simple technology - I don't know that you need to make something more complicated than a CYOA. A gamebook would be pretty fascinating, but probably less interesting to most people. My email is <a href="mailto:nate.wildermuth@gmail.com">nate.wildermuth@gmail.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=797&start=0#p3999
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for gamebook writers
User: Retro / DateTime: 2009-08-17 15:58:02

Interesting topic, Merk.
Where did you copy these posts from? Is it from rec.arts.int-fiction or another newsgroup/forum ?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=797&start=10#p4000
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for gamebook writers
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-08-17 22:17:43

It's what those users posted here originally, before the server crash forced the restoration a three-week-old backup. Eriorg found them in Google Cache or somewhere.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=797&start=10#p4001
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for gamebook writers
User: Retro / DateTime: 2009-08-19 06:02:01

Well, then I'm glad that you restored it.  [emote]:)[/emote] 

The last poster said a very significant sentence:

[quote][b]Original post by wildermuthn:[/b]
... I think an iPhone CYOA would be a huge hit. ... [/quote]

You know, these days programmers like us experiment with building new systems for CYOA/Multiple-Choice IF on platforms such as DOS, Windows, Linux, Java/HTML and whatnot. Right now it's all just for fun. But the end result of all that effort is to have it ported on iPhone in the future. And whoever does it first and wins the race could have a major hit in the IF scene. And believe me, SOMEONE will do it definately. And other developers will follow this trend.

Drool over the pic below and imagine how cool it would be to have your favorite interpreter running on IPhones:

[img]http://img.timeinc.net/time/2007/top_10_photos/gadgets_iphone.jpg[/img]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=797&start=10#p4002
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for gamebook writers
User: George / DateTime: 2009-08-19 10:57:39

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.magnetismstudios.com/CYOA">http://www.magnetismstudios.com/CYOA</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=797&start=10#p4003
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for gamebook writers
User: Retro / DateTime: 2009-08-21 16:50:09

Nice to see that there are developers out there who have already ported classic CYOA gamebooks on iPhone/iPod Touch. This is a good sign.
The trend is progressing and speeding up now, as expected. There is not much time left until it reaches maximum and switches to degressive rate.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=798&start=0#p4004
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Walkthrough/hints for "Survival In New York"?
User: bswb97 / DateTime: 2009-08-22 15:27:27

Anyone familiar with this game? I first got it about 20 years ago as part of a Keypunch Software Sword & Sorcery pack (because surviving New York obviously involves swords and/or sorcery). The game had a time limit for you to get to a certain point before the sun went down and you died in the ghetto. It frustrated the hell out of me and I even opened up the code as a kid to see if I could figure out some solution.

Anyways, I came across it as a free abandonware download and the game still stumps me. If anyone knows how to get through this, your help is much appreciated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=339&start=10#p4005
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Are You Looking for a Programmer?
User: Dhomochevsky / DateTime: 2009-08-28 02:57:51

Are there any programmers interested in coding/co-writing a game?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=799&start=0#p4006
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Tools for mapping interactive fiction games?
User: Jens Leugengroot / DateTime: 2009-08-30 05:37:48

Hi folks,

what tools do you use for mapping interactive fiction games? Back in the 80s I used a pencil and a piece of paper. But, well today I got this fancy notebook and I want to to it the elctronic way.

While searching the web I found this tool
[url]http://www.cjmweb.net/GUEmap/[/url]
I also tried mapping with MS Powerpoint and various other tools. 

So, what do you use?

Jens

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=799&start=0#p4007
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Tools for mapping interactive fiction games?
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2009-08-31 01:40:05

Hej Jens...
Just out of curiousity, where are you from? I am from Denmark myself and your nick suggests that you are too. Am I right?

Anyway.. back to your question. 
I am still a paper & pencil guy. I like having the map right next to me when I create my game, but I will surely have a look at the link.
I guess I'm old fashioned in that way. I also printed out the manual for Adrift although it was available as a pdf file.
Cheers
Finn

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=60#p4008
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2009-09-01 22:52:53

Hello, I'm Paul Lee.  I've been following IF off and on for several years, although I haven't participated all that much.  I'm now eighteen; when I was fourteen I entered the 2005 Comp with "Dreary Lands."  I've also written some reviews for SPAG.  I'm what most people would call religious, and I seek to find truth and purpose by faith in Jesus Christ, although I'm aware that I fall far short every day.

I think I was eleven when I first discovered interactive fiction on a CD with a bunch of demo, shareware, and freeware games.  There was an application called "Adventure Blaster" that installed a few Inform and TADS games with their Windows interpreters along with a front-end that would launch them and help files with information about IF.  I believe among the games included were [i]Theatre[/i] by Brendon Wyber, [i]Wearing the Claw[/i] by Paul O'Brian, [i]So Far[/i] by Andrew Plotkin, and [i]Losing Your Grip[/i] by Stephen Granade.  There were also a couple other TADS games the titles and authors of which I can't remember.  I loved [i]Wearing the Claw[/i]; it was the first IF game I finished, and it's the game responsible for getting me hooked. [emote]:)[/emote] 

I decided to join this forum now because I think I'm ready to participate more actively in the IF community.  I've been writing notes for a game concept that I hope to start coding and writing descriptions for very soon.  I hope I finish this project, as the story is particularly close to my heart.  Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=60#p4009
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2009-09-02 08:19:51

Welcome, Bainespal! [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=800&start=0#p4010
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: The King of Shreds and Patches -- help
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2009-09-02 22:31:35

I've been playing through [i]The King of Shreds and Patches[/i] by Jimmy Maher for over a month now.  I think I'm just into the endgame, and I'm stuck beyond help of the hints.

Here's the immediate context:
[spoiler]The PC has just come back from visiting with John Dee, and then goes to bed.  When he wakes up, he finds a letter from Lucy telling him to come visit, but the maid says she'd just gone somewhere.[/spoiler]

Here's what I did:
[spoiler]First, I went to Joseph Barker's house at Whitehall but couldn't get past the guards.  Then I went back to other end of the map and eventually found Barker's company at Billingsgate Wharf.  The conversation with the NPC there seemed unproductive, but it knocked off one of the goals.  The hint system confirms that there is no way to get past the guards at this point.[/spoiler]

Here are the PC's remaining goals (revealed by the THINK command):
[spoiler]-- Now that you know at last where he resides, you should pay Joseph Barker a little visit at his home in Whitehall.  It may be your only way of saving Lucy (assuming she is still alive, of course).

-- Lucy has disappeared from her home under very strange circumstances.  You need to try to find her; a sick feeling tells you she may otherwise end up (God forbid) sharing the same fate as Marijne.[/spoiler]

I don't know what to do, or if I've made the game state unwinnable.  Any suggestions would be appreciated.  Thank you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=792&start=0#p4011
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2009!
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2009-09-03 09:59:35

Go for it, Merk!  I really appreciated [i]Distress[/i] and [i]Tales of the Traveling Swordsman[/i].  I know what it's like to run out of steam, though, and I hope you'll get it done.  I'm exited to play the Comp games again this year after missing last year!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=792&start=0#p4012
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2009!
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2009-09-03 19:42:36

At this point I'm really just waiting for the entries to come in. Any predictions on who or what the winners will be? I think I remember last year you came pretty close [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=792&start=0#p4013
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2009!
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-09-03 20:42:41

My game-in-progress is too ambitious for this year, as it turns out. I could probably have managed it if (as usual) I hadn't been overly busy with work. Some pretty important things came up, some of which had me busy all of last weekend. That, plus family stuff, daughter's birthday, etc... And I'm really disappointed, because what I've started has a lot of potential.

I could enter something, if I aimed lower. Something super-short, maybe, or a joke-like entry. But right now, I'm not planning anything. [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=792&start=0#p4014
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2009!
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-09-03 20:50:27

[quote]At this point I'm really just waiting for the entries to come in.[/quote] A bit under a month yet to go. The anticipation is part of the fun!

[quote]Any predictions on who or what the winners will be?[/quote] I was giving this some thought lately. My first instinct was that the winning game always has some kind of gimmick to it -- no matter how good the story or the writing or setting or the puzzles or whatever, without something innovative it doesn't win. But it seems like that's not strictly true. Quite a few of the winners over the years have been traditional -- but very well done -- entries.

[quote]I think I remember last year you came pretty close[/quote] Well, not last year, or the year before. [i]The Traveling Swordsman[/i] was 4th in 2006. [i]Distress[/i] was 4th in 2005. [i]Trading Punches[/i] -- 2004, my first game after five years, and the first that wasn't a home-brewed parser -- was 10th place. In 1999 it was [i]Lunatix - The Insanity Circle[/i] which I was pretty impressed with at the time (still am, on some technical levels), which came in 12th.

I guess "close" is relative. [emote]:)[/emote] Since I've always been in it as much for the competition as for the enjoyment in and of itself, it's been gratifying to place highly yet a little disappointing not to break into the top 3. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=800&start=0#p4015
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The King of Shreds and Patches -- help
User: adept42 / DateTime: 2009-09-04 00:24:06

I had trouble at the same point, and I just figured out what I missed. [spoiler]When Betsy leaves to search Lucy's room she suggests you look around the room. If you examine the hearth you'll notice a smoldering piece of paper. Move it with your trusty walking stick to pick it up.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=800&start=0#p4016
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The King of Shreds and Patches -- help
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2009-09-04 09:27:21

I see.  That does the trick.

Thanks, adept42. [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=801&start=0#p4017
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: TADS 2: Error opening input file: How to fix?
User: jfcwilson / DateTime: 2009-09-04 12:40:02

Hello all, 

I just started my second game with TADS 2, and I compiled it for the first 
time, but the debugger says: "TADS 1501: Error opening input file." This is all it says, it doesn't specify what line, or even what source file.
I'm not sure what this means, or how to solve it... My game currently 
has 9 source files(most of them empty). Anyone know how to solve this, 
or at least what TADS is trying to tell me? 
I made sure that that TADS knows where the source files are.


Thanks, 
   James

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=792&start=0#p4018
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2009!
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-09-04 16:31:09

[quote="Merk"][quote="Isxek"]Any predictions on who or what the winners will be. I think I remember last year you came pretty close.[/quote] Well, not last year, or the year before...[/quote]I think Isxek meant your [i]predictions[/i] were close.  [emote];)[/emote]  IIRC you made an initial prediction just after the comp started -- but before actually playing any entries -- based on the authors, titles and blurbs. Of course we don't even have that info to go on yet, so even premature predictions would be, well, premature.  [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=801&start=0#p4019
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 2: Error opening input file: How to fix?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-09-04 18:53:11

As the message says, it's not able to open one of your source files.  For each source file you've included (I actually can't remember how you do this in TADS 2 - is it in the file itself?), check that it's in the right place and has [i]exactly[/i] the right name.

Make sure to look for non-obvious typos in the filename like 'TehFile.t'.  And check that the file extensions are all correct.  Eg. check that you haven't accidentally saved a .t file as a .txt.  Finally, try closing any text editors or anything that might be hogging the files and stopping TADS from accessing them.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=792&start=0#p4020
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2009!
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-09-04 20:17:55

Oooooh. Yeah, I misunderstood. I guess that makes the rest of my reply completely unnecessary. [emote]:)[/emote]

Years ago, somebody used to post on rec.games.int-fiction with a bunch of wild predictions. I want to say it was Luc French. I've tried that a couple of times here, but mine are never as interesting.

I hate to predict anything yet, though. Authors might be tempted to include even the wildest ones in their WIP! Ha ha.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=721&start=0#p4021
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp: other platform-independent game formats
User: Retro / DateTime: 2009-09-06 12:48:48

Hello world,

since the first generation of Node-X is nearing "gold" status and undergoing final beta-testing
I would like to announce a few changes concerning my game entry to the IFComp 2009:

1. Both, the standalone interpreter and the gamefiles, will be submitted together as a Windows Game.
A readme-file including the download link for the Linux version will be attached.

2. Both, the Win32 and Linux executable of the Interpreter, will be crunched with
the latest version (3.03) of the widely known and used executable packer UPX.
[b]Note: Make sure to turn off heuristic analysis in your anti-virus application to
avoid false virus warnings![/b]

For more info on UPX see: <a class="postlink" href="http://upx.sourceforge.net/">http://upx.sourceforge.net/</a>

----------------------------------------------------

Last but not least, some Q&A/FAQ for those of you who might have some questions:

Q: [b]Why are you using an executable packer such as UPX? What are the advantages of using it?[/b]
A: First off, exe packers are useful to lower the size of a software distribution. UPX produces better compression rates on unpacked executables than ZIP. Second, the executable stays packed when unzipped, saving you space on your medium (disk, harddisk, USB drive, etc). Third, the whole package can be downloaded faster from the bandwidth-limited ifarchive.org server, saving you time.

Q: [b]Will you use a Windows installer or stuff like that?[/b]
A: No, executable and gamefiles will be zipped (*.zip) and uploaded to the IFComp server, as usual. The entry can be unzipped to wherever you want and the executable can be run instantly.

Q: [b]What are the minimum requirements/specs for the Node-X Win32 executable?[/b]
A: Windows 95/98, Intel 80386 or AMD

Q: [b]What OS/Class and processor type Node-X ELF will support?[/b]
A: Linux/ELF32, Intel 80386 (minimum specs)

Q: [b]Can I run the Node-X ELF on Solaris or any other OS none of the less?[/b]
A: As long as your OS supports ELF32 and UNIX - System V, you should be able to run it on any operating system.

If your question hasn't been answered, feel free to post it in this topic.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=721&start=0#p4022
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp: Node-X distribution (Win32, Linux), FAQ
User: George / DateTime: 2009-09-06 21:02:50

So is the upx packer something that requires upx to unpack and run the executable? Because if so, and the unpacked thing is less than half a megabyte, do you really want to require people to download upx?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=721&start=0#p4023
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp: Node-X distribution (Win32, Linux), FAQ
User: Retro / DateTime: 2009-09-07 06:24:34

[quote="George"]So is the upx packer something that requires upx to unpack and run the executable? Because if so, and the unpacked thing is less than half a megabyte, do you really want to require people to download upx?[/quote]

No, you don't require UPX to unpack and run NXI. A decompression routine of UPX is embedded inside the executable and automatically unpacks the code to memory when you run the executable in your Windows desktop/explorer or Linux terminal. You won't notice the decompression process at all.

This is taken from the UPX site:

[quote]UPX is a versatile executable packer with the following features:
[list]
- excellent compression ratio: typically compresses better than WinZip/zip/gzip, use UPX to decrease the size of your distribution ! 
- very fast decompression: ~10 MB/sec on an ancient Pentium 133, ~200 MB/sec on an Athlon XP 2000+. 
- no memory overhead for your compressed executables because of in-place decompression.[/list:u][/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=721&start=0#p4024
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp: Node-X distribution (Win32, Linux), FAQ
User: George / DateTime: 2009-09-07 12:42:47

Cool, sounds neat!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=721&start=0#p4025
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp: Node-X distribution (Win32, Linux), FAQ
User: Retro / DateTime: 2009-09-08 09:52:13

(see update info below)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=802&start=0#p4026
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Conversation -- Menus generated from ASK/TELL
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2009-09-08 20:44:07

I have an idea regarding conversing with NPCs that I plan on incorporating in my tentative work in progress, if I can figure out how to do it on whatever authoring system I end up using.  I'm wondering if it has been done before.

What about bringing up a menu upon an ASK ABOUT or TELL ABOUT command with options regarding what [i]exactly[/i] the PC is to inquire or comment on the topic?  Naturally, the menu options will very based on what the game author determines to be the PC's knowledge on the topic at any given game state.  At the beginning of the game, the PC might have a couple possible questions about a visible landmark; after exploring the landmark for him/herself, the PC might have more available questions and perhaps some comments directed to the same NPC (or, possibly, multiple NPCs).

Menu options will typically go away after being selected.  When their are no options left for a given topic, a summary of all that was discussed on the topic could perhaps be given, as in the advanced ASK/TELL system used by many games.  As an additional feature, if there is only one available option for a particular topic, it will be selected automatically without producing the menu.  This would be difficult to code, but I think it would be well worth it.

Here's a brief mock transcript:

[b]> ASK MAN ABOUT CAVE
What would would you like to inquire about the Cavern of Doom?
[1] "What so special about this cave?"
[2] "Is the cave dangerous?"

>>1
"Well," says the man, "it's rumored that ancient treasure lies hidden within, and that's attracted foolish adventurers for many generations."

>ASK MAN ABOUT CAVE
You ask, "Is the cave dangerous?"

The man smirks. "Well, you tell me.  Half the fool adventurers who go in there never come out again, and most that do come back insane or maimed."

>ASK MAN ABOUT CAVE
You have no other questions regarding the cave.  The man has told you that there are rumors of treasure hidden in it, and that many who venture into its depths do not survive.[/b]

A game using this conversation model could implement a TALK TO command as well, which would bring up a menu of topics directly related to the current state of the plot.

I think this idea aims at many of the same goals as the common advanced ASK/TELL system with topic suggestions incorporated into the TADS 3 library.  The only substantial advantage I think this system would have over the advanced ASK/TELL is that it's cosmetically easier to read, but that's my subjective opinion.  The advanced ASK/TELL is a very good system, but I also like the affect of conversation menus even though they limit interactivity.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=802&start=0#p4027
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Conversation -- Menus generated from ASK/TELL
User: George / DateTime: 2009-09-08 22:13:24

I could be mis-remembering, but check out Fate by Victor Gijsbers and City of Secrets by Emily Short.

eta: I'm not sure if these games give you menu options about a topic per se, I think they use a general menu interface with specific quips. But I don't see too much different between that and what you're talking about, so they might be good to look at anyway.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=802&start=0#p4030
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Conversation -- Menus generated from ASK/TELL
User: Retro / DateTime: 2009-09-09 17:12:18

[quote="Bainespal"]Naturally, the menu options will very based on what the game author determines to be the PC's knowledge on the topic at any given game state.  At the beginning of the game, the PC might have a couple possible questions about a visible landmark; after exploring the landmark for him/herself, the PC might have more available questions and perhaps some comments directed to the same NPC (or, possibly, multiple NPCs).[/quote]

You can create such conversation scripts with the Node-X system I have developed.
I call it "flag-dependent" conversation. A more common name is interactive conversation.

For example, in Node-X you can base NPC conversations on a couple of game states,
such as on which node/s the player was before, on which item the player possesses
or not in the inventory and even on which item the player holds in which hand.

This technique allows you to create very interactive NPC conversations with a high
level of replayability.

Here is a pseudo-transcript for Node-X, based on your transcript:

[code][b]Situation 1[/b]
[b]State: player hasn't examined the cave and approaches NPC for the first time[/b]

The man asks "What would would you like to inquire about the Cavern of Doom?"

[1] "What so special about this cave?"
[2] "Is the cave dangerous?"

>1

You ask the man what is so special about this cave and he replies:
"Well, it's rumored that ancient treasure lies hidden within,
and that's attracted foolish adventurers for many generations."

[1] "Can you tell me more about the ancient treasure?"
[2] "Is the cave dangerous?"

>1

You ask the man if he can tell you more about the ancient treasure.
He says: "I heard some adventurers saying that there is a secret
entrance in the cave in which the treasure is supposed to be hidden."

[1] "Is the cave dangerous?"
[2] "Has anyone found the entrance yet?"

>2

You ask him if anyone has found the hidden entrance yet.
The man replies: "There has to be an entrance somewhere,
but I have no idea where it could be."

[1] "Ok. I guess I would have to examine the cave by myself. See you later."
[2] "One last question... Is the cave dangerous?"

...[/code]

And now let's take a look how the whole conversation would change
in Node-X when there is a completely different situation in the game
and when the player would make the same choices at the beginning
of the conversation...

[code][b]Situation 2[/b]
[b]State: player has examined the cave before, found a hole in one of the cave's walls
and approaches NPC for the first time[/b]

The man asks "What would would you like to inquire about the Cavern of Doom?"

[1] "What so special about this cave?"
[2] "Is the cave dangerous?"

>1

You ask the man what is so special about this cave and he replies:
"Well, it's rumored that ancient treasure lies hidden within,
and that's attracted foolish adventurers for many generations."

[1] "Can you tell me more about the ancient treasure?"
[2] "Is the cave dangerous?"

>1

You ask the man if he can tell you more about the ancient treasure.
He says: "I heard some adventurers saying that there is a secret
entrance in the cave in which the treasure is supposed to be hidden."

[1] "Is the cave dangerous?"
[2] "Hmm, I found a hole in one wall when examing the cave..."

>2

You tell the man that you found a hole in one wall when examing the cave.
He raises his eyebrow and says: "Hey, that could be the secret entrance!"
The man asks you: "Have you already entered it?"

[1] "No, I'm a cautious person. Do you know if the cave is dangerous?"
[2] "No, it was too dark to see anything."

>2

You explain that it was too dark to see anything.
The man says: "I see. Take this old oil lamp of mine and enter the hole."

[1] "Thanks! That might be useful in finding the treasure there."
[2] "Can you tell me if this cave is dangerous at all?"

...[/code]

You could create a third situation for the conversation script where the player has entered the hole
without oil lamp, even though it was too dark, has found the treasure none of the less and approached
the NPC for the first time. Write some funny comments the NPC makes when you tell him that you
have already found the treasure and without using his oil lamp!  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote] 

I know this may sound a bit like self-advertisement now, but if such interactive conversations
is what you look for creating as an author I strongly recommend using my multiple-choice/CYOA
system Node-X.

As I mentioned before, you can write very interactive conversations with high replayability.
And if you are a skilled writer and take this stuff to the extreme you can create even more
realistic conversations with a non-repetitive flow which would make your adventure or story
different every time you play it.

Too bad I ran out of time last year and couldn't showcase this feature in my previous entry
"Project Delta" for IFComp 2008.  [emote]:([/emote]  Let's hope I can showcase interactive conversations in
my new entry for the upcoming IFComp 2009...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=802&start=0#p4031
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Conversation -- Menus generated from ASK/TELL
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2009-09-09 19:55:30

Hm, thanks for the replies.

[quote="George"]I could be mis-remembering, but check out Fate by Victor Gijsbers and City of Secrets by Emily Short.
[/quote]

I'll have to try [i]City of Secrets[/i] when I get the chance.  I think I started playing [i]Fate[/i] before.  Anyways, my idea for a conversation system really isn't anything new when it comes to content or goals.  I guess it really comes down to my preference for displaying content and the balance between interactivity and specific plot devices. Thanks for the info.

[quote="EK_Dev"]And now let's take a look how the whole conversation would change
in Node-X when there is a completely different situation in the game
and when the player would make the same choices at the beginning
of the conversation...[/quote]

One thing I noticed about your example situations is that you avoid the "lawnmower effect" where the player just goes down the list of menu options by dynamically changing the actual wording of the options based on the player's selections.  It looks like it ultimately guides the player into choosing the options that reveal or advance the plot.

I like menu systems that deposit the player back at the command prompt after making a selection, because they seem more immersive.  However, if Node-X is completely multiple-choice, then I assume the whole user interface would be more or less the same when simulating a conversation as at any other time?  Maybe that would make the conversation more immersive by being seamlessly integrated, but I really have no idea how it would look, to be honest.

[quote="EK_Dev"]I know this may sound a bit like self-advertisement now, but if such interactive conversations is what you look for creating as an author I strongly recommend using my multiple-choice/CYOA system Node-X.[/quote]

Well, I have very little experience with CYOA, but I'm willing to at least consider it as a possible approach.  Natural conversation is one of my lofty goals for my game concept, but it's not my only goal, or even my main goal.  Really, I just want to make a work of interactive literature with a story that explores the human condition, which is also hopefully fun as a game in its own right.

I just searched the IF Wiki for Node-X, but I came up empty.  Do you have any resources on the web for it yet?  I didn't play any of the 2008 Comp games, but I just downloaded Project Delta.

Then again, if I actually ever release this concept of mine, I'll be pleasantly surprised!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=802&start=0#p4032
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Conversation -- Menus generated from ASK/TELL
User: Retro / DateTime: 2009-09-10 08:36:50

[quote="Bainespal"]One thing I noticed about your example situations is that you avoid the "lawnmower effect" where the player just goes down the list of menu options by dynamically changing the actual wording of the options based on the player's selections.[/quote]

Yes, I do this with intention. Since a node is treated as a page in a CYOA gamebook you get a new set of choices/options each time. Now in a normal game situation repeated options can have the same wording as before, e.g. "open door", "go north", etc. It would make no sense in this case. But if the options are part of a conversation and are repeated then you would be wise to slightly change/adjust their wording each time to better fit them to the current point in the conversation.

You could also add more variation when the NPC is being asked the same question on a particular page but gives a slightly different answer to it. In the example above this would apply to the "Is the cave dangerous?" question. The NPC does not have to give the PC the exact same answer to this question on page 1, page 2 and so forth. You can change the wording there too. This way you can further increase the replayability factor of the adventure.

As I said before, the more you take this technique to the extreme, the less predictable your adventure will be. Gamers will be interested to replay your adventure several times, just to see what a NPC would have said on this page or that page when being asked the same question. Is the outcome of the NPC conversation always the same when a certain question is being asked? Or is it different on a particular page and leads to an alternative ending? Maybe there is a hidden easter-egg? These are the kind of questions gamers will ask when encountering a well-scripted conversation in Node-X.

[quote]It looks like it ultimately guides the player into choosing the options that reveal or advance the plot.[/quote]

The trick is to gently guide the player into a certain directon but not force him/her to go into that direction. The player has to be given the feeling that it was his/her choice in the end and not the author's choice. So the player has to think what to do next. This is critical in a multiple-choice adventure, because as you know multiple-choice tends to be too predictable and players begin to feel like a pawn being guided "on rails", so to speak. I'm currently experimenting with this kind of stuff. It's not that easy to create a situation in the game where the player is being gently surprised. You know, the well-known [i]"wow, I didn't expect THAT to happen"[/i] effect which makes a good adventure.

[quote]I like menu systems that deposit the player back at the command prompt after making a selection, because they seem more immersive.[/quote]

Well, in a Node-X adventure the player will mostly be back at the command prompt after making a selection at a node. There are exceptions though. I have also implemented so-called "JumpNodes". These are pages without options which jump to a pre-defined node/page after the player presses a key. They can be used to introduce new chapters or sections during game. I already used that in "Project Delta". In the new version of the Node-X interpreter a JumpNode can also be programmed to jump to a random (!) page. This can further increase the replayability factor which I talked about some paragraphs above. Things can become complex in a Node-X adventure. It's not just "jump from this page to that page".

[quote]However, if Node-X is completely multiple-choice, then I assume the whole user interface would be more or less the same when simulating a conversation as at any other time?  Maybe that would make the conversation more immersive by being seamlessly integrated, but I really have no idea how it would look, to be honest.[/quote]

I don't exactly understand what you mean by saying "seamlessly integrated", but ofcourse you can mix conversation-type options with normal options such as "open door" or "enter room" and make everything dependent on each other. It could look like this, for instance:

[code]You are in the cave in front of the hole in the wall. The man stands beside you.

[1] light up oil lamp
[2] exit cave
[3] "Will you go first or are you too scared?"

>3

You ask the man if he will enter the hole first or if he is too scared.
He replies: "No, I'm not scared at all. Light up the oil lamp or give it to me
and I will tell you if the entrance is clear or not."

[1] light up oil lamp
[2] give oil lamp to man
[3] leave the cave
[4] "You know, I think I should enter the hole first."

>4

You tell the man that you think you should enter the hole first.
The man answers: "Alright, go first and I will watch your back."

[1] light up oil lamp and enter hole
[2] leave the cave

...[/code]

If this is not immersive enough then I don't know what immersive is.  [emote]8-)[/emote] 

[quote="EK_Dev"]Well, I have very little experience with CYOA, but I'm willing to at least consider it as a possible approach.  Natural conversation is one of my lofty goals for my game concept, but it's not my only goal, or even my main goal.  Really, I just want to make a work of interactive literature with a story that explores the human condition, which is also hopefully fun as a game in its own right.[/quote]

I understand. You want to write an adventure where the PC talks to himself/herself or to his/her multiple personalities (shizophrenic PC). Looking at all the script examples I posted above I'd say it's possible to write such a game in Node-X. In our case, when the PC stands in front of the hole the NPC (man) can be replaced with the PC's mind. The PC is unsure whether or not he should enter the hole and makes a monologue.

[quote]I just searched the IF Wiki for Node-X, but I came up empty.  Do you have any resources on the web for it yet?  I didn't play any of the 2008 Comp games, but I just downloaded Project Delta.[/quote]

Well, the Node-X interpreter ("nxi.exe", "nxi (elf)"), which has an integrated compiler and adventure loader, is on my harddrive and is currently undergoing final beta-tests of mine, but I haven't released it yet. It will be uploaded to the IFComp 2009 on September 30th, together with my entry (external gamefile). So by downloading my entry gamers not only can play my submitted adventure but also get the opportunity to create their own Node-X adventures.

There will be no tutorials included though which teach you how to write a Node-X adventure script (NodeScript) which the compiler understands. So you would have to figure it out by yourself, but it's not really that hard. However, I will release Node-X tutorials at a later point on a website of mine... maybe after the competition.

[quote]Then again, if I actually ever release this concept of mine, I'll be pleasantly surprised![/quote]

You could give Node-X a try and see if the concept of yours can be released in a multiple-choice environment with features I have already mentioned and demonstrated in the examples above.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=802&start=0#p4033
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Conversation -- Menus generated from ASK/TELL
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2009-09-10 18:32:03

[quote="EK_Dev"]I understand. You want to write an adventure where the PC talks to himself/herself or to his/her multiple personalities (shizophrenic PC). Looking at all the script examples I posted above I'd say it's possible to write such a game in Node-X. In our case, when the PC stands in front of the hole the NPC (man) can be replaced with the PC's mind. The PC is unsure whether or not he should enter the hole and makes a monologue.[/quote]

No, I meant the spiritual aspect of the human condition, not the psychological.  The PC will be a universal symbol, the regions of the map will be somewhat symbolic, and several NPCs are symbolic representations of sin and evil.

[quote="EK_Dev"]You could give Node-X a try and see if the concept of yours can be released in a multiple-choice environment with features I have already mentioned and demonstrated in the examples above.[/quote]

I think I see a potential use for a multiple-choice environment in my concept, regarding the map of the prologue, which is just too big.  Maybe with Node-X I could have the player initially jump around to the main areas instead of having to explore many rooms and possibly lose interest quickly.  I'll continue to write notes and draw maps and maybe fiddle with some code in various authoring systems, and I'll give Node-X a look when it's released. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=802&start=0#p4034
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Conversation -- Menus generated from ASK/TELL
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-09-11 02:26:01

[quote="George"]I could be mis-remembering, but check out Fate by Victor Gijsbers and City of Secrets by Emily Short.[/quote]

I think you're misremembering where Fate is concerned - I'm pretty sure it's just ordinary menus - but City of Secrets uses this system. So does Pytho's Mask. So does Best of Three, although since it's proactive about bringing up new quips, you don't really need to change the subject much (if ever).

You might like to have a look at Emily Short's article on [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/writing-if/my-articles/conversation/]IF conversation[/url], if you haven't already.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=799&start=0#p4035
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Tools for mapping interactive fiction games?
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2009-09-11 04:22:27

[quote="Finn Rosenløv"]Hej Jens...
Just out of curiousity, where are you from? I am from Denmark myself and your nick suggests that you are too. Am I right?

Finn[/quote]
jens can be a german name as well, not uncommon

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=802&start=0#p4036
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Conversation -- Menus generated from ASK/TELL
User: Retro / DateTime: 2009-09-11 09:38:55

[quote="Bainespal"]No, I meant the spiritual aspect of the human condition, not the psychological.  The PC will be a universal symbol, the regions of the map will be somewhat symbolic, and several NPCs are symbolic representations of sin and evil.[/quote]

Sounds like the bad dream level in Max Payne...

[quote]I think I see a potential use for a multiple-choice environment in my concept, regarding the map of the prologue, which is just too big.  Maybe with Node-X I could have the player initially jump around to the main areas instead of having to explore many rooms and possibly lose interest quickly.  I'll continue to write notes and draw maps and maybe fiddle with some code in various authoring systems, and I'll give Node-X a look when it's released. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Drawing concept maps is what I recommend. Especially if you want to implement enviroments in Node-X and not just plain CYOA stories. Besides, Node-X supports all ASCII characters for text output. So you could not only draw concept maps on paper but actually implement them in the game! This can be useful if you want to write a more graphical text adventure.

Here's an example for a minimap and text used together in a Node-X adventure:

[code]Minimap
-----   ------
|   |___|    |
| 1  ___   2 |
|   |   |    |
-----   ------

You are in room 1.

[1] examine room 1
[2] go to room 2

>_[/code]

Sorry for the lame ASCII graphics. This is just a quick example using standard text characters.  [emote];)[/emote] 

Each number in the minimap represents a node. You may understand now why I have named the system "Node-X". Because a node can not only represent a page in a CYOA gamebook, but can represent a point on a map instead. That's why in Node-X a standard node is not called a "page", but a "PathNode". JumpNode is another node type, as I have mentioned in my previous post. Can be also used for portals and stuff. And there are more node types.

It's a bit like editing a 3D map for Unreal Tournament or another first-person shooter. If you draw any concept maps for your text adventure with rooms and stuff, make sure to include PathNodes (e.g. dots) where you want the PC to be able walking around later in the game. This makes it easier to implement actual environments in Node-X, not just text.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=799&start=0#p4037
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Tools for mapping interactive fiction games?
User: Terry / DateTime: 2009-09-11 13:36:34

Hi Jens, there is a thread about mapping here

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=591">viewtopic.php?f=37&t=591</a>

Hope it's of interest to you. BTW I still use IFmapper.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=803&start=0#p4038
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Popular MUD's
User: Terry / DateTime: 2009-09-11 13:46:13

I was just wondering as I've still yet to come across any popular (not abandoned, totally devoid of 'life') Sci-Fi/Future Based MUD's, so do any exist these days?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=802&start=0#p4039
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Conversation -- Menus generated from ASK/TELL
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2009-09-11 17:58:30

[quote="Emerald"]You might like to have a look at Emily Short's article on IF conversation, if you haven't already.[/quote]
I've never seen that article before; it looks very helpful. Thanks.

[quote="(in the article) Emily Short"]Modified Menu/Topic Hybrid. This system combines the freedom of ASK/TELL with a menu system. When you begin a conversation with someone, you see a menu of the possible things to say listed in the status line, and you may say one of them simply by typing the corresponding letter. If, however, you would like to change the subject, you may also type >TOPIC DIAMOND NECKLACE, and a new menu appears. For instance, >TOPIC JONES might bring up a menu[/quote]
I see that my idea is very similar to this, although what I had in mind is slightly different when it comes to game commands and perhaps also in the handling of topic suggestions.  I haven't really played any games using this method.  Emily Short must be about the only one handling conversation this way, but that says a lot for the system's level of immersion and finesse.

[quote="EK_Dev"]Drawing concept maps is what I recommend. Especially if you want to implement enviroments in Node-X and not just plain CYOA stories. Besides, Node-X supports all ASCII characters for text output. So you could not only draw concept maps on paper but actually implement them in the game! This can be useful if you want to write a more graphical text adventure.[/quote]
That's an interesting idea that I never thought about.  An ASCII map, possibly an interactive one, might be a way to organize the greater prologue region. Hm, possibilities...

[quote="EK_Dev"]
It's a bit like editing a 3D map for Unreal Tournament or another first-person shooter. If you draw any concept maps for your text adventure with rooms and stuff, make sure to include PathNodes (e.g. dots) where you want the PC to be able walking around later in the game. This makes it easier to implement actual environments in Node-X, not just text.[/quote]
Thanks for the advice!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=803&start=0#p4040
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Popular MUD's
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2009-09-11 18:11:59

A year ago I was much more into MUDs than IF.  However, I stayed on fantasy-themed MUDs with strictly enforced roleplay for the most part.  I remember hearing about an attempt at a commercial science fiction RPI (roleplay intensive) MUD on an RPI community site, but that site has been offline for a long time now, and I have no idea if the MUD was ever launched.

Iron Realms Entertainment is apparently developing a new SF MUD called [i]Tears of Polaris[/i], but it doesn't look to be open yet.  Here's the URL of it's forum: <a class="postlink" href="http://forums.tearsofpolaris.com/">http://forums.tearsofpolaris.com/</a>.

Sorry I couldn't be of much help.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=802&start=0#p4041
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Conversation -- Menus generated from ASK/TELL
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-09-11 19:19:48

[quote="Bainespal"][quote="Emerald"]You might like to have a look at Emily Short's article on IF conversation, if you haven't already.[/quote]
I've never seen that article before; it looks very helpful. Thanks.[/quote]
There's also Mike Robert's article [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/techman/convbkg.htm]Choosing a Conversation System[/url]. It doesn't specifically discuss hybrid ASK/TELL/menu systems, but it does give the rationale behind the topic suggestion system he chose for TADS 3, which is similar (as you noted in your original post).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=803&start=0#p4042
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Popular MUD's
User: George / DateTime: 2009-09-11 20:16:10

Bainespal is correct, there aren't any really active SF muds right now. According to mudstats.com it looks like Miriani (a MOO) and Otherspace (a mush) are the most popular, with 48 and 45 logins respectively as the current 30 day average. 

Of course there are a ton of fan themed muds out there too.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=799&start=0#p4043
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Tools for mapping interactive fiction games?
User: Jens Leugengroot / DateTime: 2009-09-13 07:38:33

[quote="JC Denton"][quote="Finn Rosenløv"]Hej Jens...
Just out of curiousity, where are you from? I am from Denmark myself and your nick suggests that you are too. Am I right?

Finn[/quote]
jens can be a german name as well, not uncommon[/quote]

Yup, that`s right. I`m from (southern) Germany. The more you move to the north of Germany the more popular the name will become.

Thanks for the thread. I found what I was looking for.

Jens

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=803&start=0#p4044
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Popular MUD's
User: Terry / DateTime: 2009-09-13 08:08:36

Thanks for the replies, they are helpful. Basically shows not much in the way of SF muds around right now I guess.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=803&start=0#p4045
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Popular MUD's
User: George / DateTime: 2009-09-13 12:20:48

I've always wanted to make a SF mud that was less SF-fantasy like Star Trek/Wars. I read [i]Red Mars [/i]recently and I think a colonization, maybe crash-landing colonization kind of setting would be cool.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=803&start=0#p4046
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Popular MUD's
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-09-14 06:29:12

You might try checking at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.mudconnect.com/">http://www.mudconnect.com/</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=804&start=0#p4047
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Two seperate events resulting in death?
User: Sleaze / DateTime: 2009-09-15 04:23:01

I'm very new Inform 7 and am currently stumped.
I want it so that if the player is to do two actions (drink alcohol and take pills) then the game will end in death.
I have tried several methods that in theory should have worked fine but am always responded with an error message of some kind.

Can someone please enlighten me as to how I would go about doing this? Thanks!  [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=803&start=0#p4048
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Popular MUD's
User: Terry / DateTime: 2009-09-15 05:22:14

Merk thanks for the link.

I think what I'd like to play is not exactly a MUD or MU*, certainly not a strict RPG variety, I'm not really into RP, I'd prefer more of a world where I can freely wander around and occasionally bump into real players who are also present in the world. NPC's would ideally be there to interact with, I guess it would be sort of a multi-player text adventure set in space with a whole galaxy to explore. Tears of Polaris looks interesting I will keep an eye on when it opens.

To have an isolated colony on a distant planet and the possibility of leaving the planet to explore the surrounding planetary system I think would be fun, just so long as no dragons, elves or trolls, or any annoying crowds of humans!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=785&start=0#p4049
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can you help?
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2009-09-15 07:03:29

Thanks for your help...
I found them (with a little help) and wrote them an e-mail..
Got a very kind response..

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=805&start=0#p4050
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Sound in Inform 6
User: johnb820 / DateTime: 2009-09-15 07:42:57

Hi everyone. I am new to this forum, been playing through the IF comp games the last few years and finally decided to make a game myself. It's not a very complicated game, mostly atmospheric and very loose. I really want to complement my game as well as my future project by adding background music and/or sound effects (Been reading too many sound novels). As I understand it, inform 7 provides an easier way to include sound files and inform 6 requires some not so easy hacks to make it work. My programming background in Java and C++ made me go with inform 6 to start developing. Could someone maybe point me in the right direction to getting sound working with I6?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=394&start=10#p4051
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: My first experiences with IF. How did you feel?
User: johnb820 / DateTime: 2009-09-15 07:52:57

My first experience with IF was playing Zork Zero with my father. I found the world so expansive and the entire experience enthralling. As a kid I found the humor in Zork Zero hilarious.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=385&start=0#p4052
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gargoyle on Linux
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2009-09-15 08:02:48

Nowadays, you should get your Linux packages for gargoyle here: <a class="postlink" href="http://code.google.com/p/garglk/wiki/Packages">http://code.google.com/p/garglk/wiki/Packages</a>

The debian file works perfectly under Ubuntu, and is right now more up to date.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=804&start=0#p4053
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two seperate events resulting in death?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2009-09-15 08:05:30

Could you post some of your code? That might make it easier to point out what you ought to change / see what you don't understand. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=788&start=0#p4054
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Voices
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2009-09-15 08:40:06

[quote="Nitku"][quote="JC Denton"]well it´s not like interpreters would cost money or be 10 GB of data...  [emote];)[/emote][/quote]
No, but not everyone uses Windows. On OS X only Spatterlight plays sound, but I couldn't get The King of Shreds and Patches to work with it. I'm not sure if interpreters for Linux or handhelds handle sound.[/quote]
Gargoyle on Linux plays the sounds in TKoSaP perfectly.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=804&start=0#p4055
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two seperate events resulting in death?
User: Sleaze / DateTime: 2009-09-15 09:09:05

This is one of the many methods I have tried.  Is there a particular problem with this or am I completely off?
If this is completely unfixable, I'll post one of the tried methods.

[code]Instead of drinking can of beer:
		remove can of beer from play;
		Say "You guzzle down the beer. That hit the spot.".

Instead of eating the pill:
	Say "You pop the pill in your mouth and swallow it.".

To determine whether poisoned is met:
	if player has eaten pill; decide no;
	if player has drunk can of beer; decide no;
	decide yes.

If poisioned is met:
	end the game in death.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=804&start=0#p4056
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two seperate events resulting in death?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2009-09-15 09:27:13

Hi Sleaze,

That's something we can work with.

First things first. We need your game to consider whether the player is poisoned. Right, your code is never going to do that. The part starting "If poisoned is met:" is never going to be executed by your program, since it is not contained in a rule. (In fact, it probably won't compile.)

So what we need to do is incorporate it in a rule, and the easiest thing would be to incorporate it in an Every turn rule. That way, the game will check whether the character is poisoned every turn. So we get something like this:

[code]Every turn:
   if poisoned is met:
      end the game in death.[/code]

(Of course, you'll probably want to add a line where the game actually tells you what is happening! But let's get the basic functionality first.)


The second problem is that your if's don't really seem to work. I wonder if they even compile? Anyway, as you have written it, it appears as if you want to decide no if the player has eaten the pill, decide no if he has drunk the beer, and decide yes if he hasn't done either. But I thought you wanted to have the player be poisoned when he did both, not when he did neither of those actions? You would need something like this:

[code]To determine whether poisoned is met:
   if player has eaten pill and the player has drunk the can of beer:
      decide yes;
   decide no.[/code]

Now I'm not 100% sure that this will work, because I don't have Inform 7 installed here and cannot try it. I wonder whether drinking is a standard action? If not, you'd have to create it first.

Be sure to try this stuff out and post again; I'll try to take another look when I have my Inform 7 and Inform 7 documentation at hand. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=805&start=0#p4057
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Sound in Inform 6
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2009-09-15 09:29:03

With a harder question like this, be sure also to ask it on the newsgroup: <a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/topics">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts ... ion/topics</a> . (Or approach it through a newsreader, if you have one.) More hard-core Inform 6 programmers hang out there than here. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=804&start=0#p4058
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two seperate events resulting in death?
User: Sleaze / DateTime: 2009-09-15 10:08:50

Thanks for your help, Victor
Its still not quite working.  First off yes, you are right that I had my yes and nos turned around there xD  It was late and I guess I got confused and yeah I already made drinking an action.

Upon first entering it I got:

[code]
Problem. In the sentence 'if player has eaten pill and the player has drunk the can of beer begin'  , I was expecting that 'player has eaten pill and the player has drunk the can of beer' would be a condition. It didn't make sense as one long phrase, but because it was divided up by 'and'/'or', I tried breaking it down into smaller conditions, but that didn't work either. 'player has eaten pill' did not make sense; 'the player has drunk the can of beer' did not make sense; so I ran out of ideas.

Problem. The line 'decide yes'   seems to be a way that the phrase you're defining can come to an end, with a phrase to make a decision, but it should always end up with no value resulting.

Problem. The line 'decide no'   seems to be a way that the phrase you're defining can come to an end, with a phrase to make a decision, but it should always end up with no value resulting.

Problem. In the sentence 'if poisoned is met begin'  , I was expecting to read a condition, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'poisoned is met'.
[/code]

I tried messing around with it after that but everything I tried would just create yet another error.
I am willing to take another route in doing this all together if there is a simpler way to go about this.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=805&start=0#p4059
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Sound in Inform 6
User: johnb820 / DateTime: 2009-09-15 10:31:42

I could have guessed that I suppose. Thanks though. I will make sure to put the question up on the newsgroup or otherwise do more research.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=804&start=0#p4060
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two seperate events resulting in death?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2009-09-15 15:51:41

Here is some code that works (I made the bear edible rather than drinkable, for simplicity, I'm sure you can fit it into your own game):

[code]"Death by overdose" by Victor Gijsbers

Hades is a room.

The beer is in Hades. The beer is edible.

The pill is in Hades. The pill is edible.

The overdose counter is a number that varies. The overdose counter is 0.

Instead of eating beer:
	remove beer from play;
	increase overdose counter by 1;
	Say "You guzzle down the beer. That hit the spot.".

Instead of eating the pill:
	remove pill from play;
	increase overdose counter by 1;
	Say "You pop the pill in your mouth and swallow it.".

To decide whether poisoned is met:
	if the overdose counter is 2:
		decide yes;
	decide no.

Every turn:
	if poisoned is met:
		end the game in death.[/code]

One problem with your original code was that it said "to determine whether" where it should have said "to decide whether". The other problem was with the conditions... apparently, "player has eaten the pill" is not something Inform 7 can understand. You can see how I made my own conditional in the code above.

By the way, this code could of course be simplified by turning the last two paragraphs into:

[code]Every turn:
	if the overdose counter is 2:
		end the game in death.[/code]

Hope this helps. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=804&start=0#p4061
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two seperate events resulting in death?
User: Sleaze / DateTime: 2009-09-15 16:23:31

Worked like charm.  Thanks a ton.
I owe you one, man. [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=803&start=0#p4062
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Popular MUD's
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-09-15 20:30:52

[quote]I guess it would be sort of a multi-player text adventure set in space with a whole galaxy to explore.[/quote]
If I had ever finished it -- and promoted it so that more than just 2 or 3 people actually played -- [url]http://www.starlock.com/[/url] would probably have been worth checking out. The game is text-based, but with rampant illustrations for everything. Six years worth of off-and-on development did yield some substance, but it runs dry after about 3 or 4 weeks of playing. It's not [i]exactly[/i] interactive fiction -- it's more link-driven, but with the start of what was going to be an NPC text-input conversation engine at parts. Actually, I could give a laundry list of all the things it has or was going to have -- an eBay-like auction system for in-game commerce (done), inventory and psuedo-magic system (done), hundreds of locations on dozens of planets (partially done), MUD-style interaction/chat so that you "exist" in the same world and at the same location as other players there (done), two-player javascript billiards (done), other single-player javascript mini-games (done), in-game script designer so people could write and distribute in-game mini-games (partially done), over a hundred storyline quests comprising 25 "levels" of advancement (quests for 5 levels are done), etc.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=801&start=0#p4063
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 2: Error opening input file: How to fix?
User: uux02 / DateTime: 2009-09-15 21:16:27

Sorry for the late answer - have been on vacation. You probably solved the problem yourself, but for the sake of completeness...

First of all, 

[quote="Pacian"]As the message says, it's not able to open one of your source files. For each source file you've included... [/quote]

is not quite correct. If the compiler couldn't find one of the included files, that'd be the error message TADS-107 (and then, it'd tell you what exactly file it couldn't find). TADS-1501 means it can't find the "main" game file (whose name should match the resulting .gam file). This is the error one gets if (s)he runs the command-line TADS-compiler tc32.exe specifying a non-existent file on the command line.

If you use TADS Workbench, check the following. Select the command "Settings..." in the "Build" menu. In the dialog box that opens select "Files->Source" in the right pane (as far as I remember, it'll be selected by default anyway). Then check that the text in the "Source File" input box matches your actual main source file name (including the path) [b]exactly[/b].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=788&start=0#p4064
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Voices
User: George / DateTime: 2009-09-15 22:07:12

[quote="Jim Aikin"](4) Handhelds are never going to have big enough screens to run decent graphics-intensive games.[/quote]

I certainly agree that IF on mobile devices works well, but you're already seeing pretty cool graphics-intensive games on handhelds. Don't think just phones (though the iPhone and Android phones of course are not just exceptions to the rule here), but consider all the gaming handhelds which probably will slowly accrue common mobile features, such as telephony.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=803&start=0#p4065
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Popular MUD's
User: Terry / DateTime: 2009-09-17 09:07:18

Wow looks great, very impressive! Sadly I guess it's like the other sci-fi/space type games that I've found to date so far, empty and devoid of life [emote]:([/emote]
I visited OuterSpace MUD, it was just me and the NPC robots and droids there.. "helloo anyone here, anybody at home?"

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=806&start=0#p4066
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Looking for regularly available Inform 7 Consultant.
User: Sleaze / DateTime: 2009-09-17 20:53:29

Hey, I'm pretty new to Inform 7 but know most of the basics. 
I want to go ahead and get started on one of my many planned IFs.
But I find I am quite frequently running to problems that completely stump me causing me to quit the project completely.
I have grown tired of having to constantly hunt down tutorials/consult the manual/ask questions here.
So I thought maybe a good idea would be to exchange information (AIM/ MSN Messenger..) with someone who considers themselves a whiz with Inform 7 and would be available to messege most of the time.
I would be EXTREMELY thankful if someone is willing to take up this task and I will of course credit them on the project.

-Sleaze

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=806&start=0#p4067
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for regularly available Inform 7 Consultant.
User: George / DateTime: 2009-09-18 02:01:56

You might want to check out ifMUD. It's pretty good at real-time help or so I've heard, and you'll have more than just one person there to answer questions. 

I'm also available, but my rate is $35 every fifteen minutes, billed in 5 minute increments. Let me know if that would work out for you.  [emote]8-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=806&start=0#p4068
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for regularly available Inform 7 Consultant.
User: Sleaze / DateTime: 2009-09-18 02:19:00

[quote="George"]You might want to check out ifMUD. It's pretty good at real-time help or so I've heard, and you'll have more than just one person there to answer questions. 

I'm also available, but my rate is $35 every fifteen minutes, billed in 5 minute increments. Let me know if that would work out for you.  [emote]8-)[/emote][/quote]

Thanks I'll check it out.
Also, while tempting, your offer is a bit too pricey for little broke me.  [emote];)[/emote]  
I would actually be willing to pay for the service but would only be willing to pay by the project not by a time period..

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=806&start=0#p4069
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for regularly available Inform 7 Consultant.
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2009-09-18 12:26:22

Sleaze, you should also keep on posting your problems to this forum. You could simply make one topic called "Sleaze's Inform 7 questions" or something. [emote];)[/emote]

I don't know how much programming experience you have, but if you have little, I have some advice for you that may help you avoid many problems. It's this: code in very small portions, then compile and test immediately.

If you've written 20 lines of code and get an error message, or the game starts behaving in a way you didn't expect, the problem might be in any of those 20 lines. If you've written 2, it must be in those 2 lines. Much easier to find. [emote]:)[/emote] I always work this way myself, and it allows me to recognise many problems before they have a chance to become complex.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=807&start=0#p4070
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: New to Inform 7
User: BlueBlood / DateTime: 2009-09-18 15:33:01

I just downloaded Inform 7, and i don't know much about it at all.  I have TADS 3 as well, but it is even more complicated.  Well, first off i am not a programmer and know nothing about computer code.  I had might as well be staring at an alien language.  I was just wondering if anyone had any tips or hints that might make this easier for me.  I'm good at making rooms...who couldn't figure that out through the manual, and traveling between rooms.  I can make objects and put them in the room, but, honestly, everything else is complicated.  I know i sound like a moron, but i just can't comprehend the code, or something.  Maybe someone can give me simple codes with an understandable explaination.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=806&start=0#p4071
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for regularly available Inform 7 Consultant.
User: Sleaze / DateTime: 2009-09-18 17:35:11

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Sleaze, you should also keep on posting your problems to this forum. You could simply make one topic called "Sleaze's Inform 7 questions" or something. [emote];)[/emote]

I don't know how much programming experience you have, but if you have little, I have some advice for you that may help you avoid many problems. It's this: code in very small portions, then compile and test immediately.

If you've written 20 lines of code and get an error message, or the game starts behaving in a way you didn't expect, the problem might be in any of those 20 lines. If you've written 2, it must be in those 2 lines. Much easier to find. [emote]:)[/emote] I always work this way myself, and it allows me to recognise many problems before they have a chance to become complex.[/quote]

Thanks for the advice, dude.   [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote] 
And yeah, I'll keep posting my problems here then.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=807&start=0#p4072
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New to Inform 7
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2009-09-18 18:24:06

BlueBlood--the best examples are probably those in the in-program manual itself. Work through it slowly, make sure you understand all the examples, and I'm sure you can make an easy game in little time.

Alternatively, think up something relatively non-complicated that you would like to program, try it out, then ask us if you can't figure out how to do it. For instance, try the following three tasks in succession:

1. Make an apple that the player character can eat.
2. The same, but now you get to see a custom message "That's one tasty apple!", when you eat it.
3. The same, but now you have to get the apple from a closed chest first.
4. The same, but now the player dies immediately after eating the apple.

You'll have learned quite a number of basic Inform 7 ideas once you've completed these steps. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=807&start=0#p4073
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New to Inform 7
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2009-09-18 22:23:50

[quote="BlueBlood"]I just downloaded Inform 7, and i don't know much about it at all.  I have TADS 3 as well, but it is even more complicated.  Well, first off i am not a programmer and know nothing about computer code.  I had might as well be staring at an alien language.  I was just wondering if anyone had any tips or hints that might make this easier for me.  I'm good at making rooms...who couldn't figure that out through the manual, and traveling between rooms.  I can make objects and put them in the room, but, honestly, everything else is complicated.  I know i sound like a moron, but i just can't comprehend the code, or something.  Maybe someone can give me simple codes with an understandable explaination.[/quote]
I know the feeling.  I've downloaded just about every IF authoring system I've heard about and have played with all of them a little.  It's fun to make rooms and objects, but once that pleasure wares off, it's very frustrating not to know how to get the system to do what you have in your head.

As a thirteen-year-old kid, I studied the fourth edition of the [i]Inform Designer's Manual[/i] meticulously.  I was discouraged, but I had fallen in love with IF, and my enthusiasm carried me through.  However, I probably could never have learned Inform 6 well enough to write even the simplest game had it not been for the [i]Inform Beginners' Guide[/i] by Roger Firth and Sonja Kesserich, an awesome tutorial that expected no programming knowledge of its readers.  I have never since encountered a tutorial that seemed as eye-opening and easy to follow as the [i]IBG[/i], but Eric Eve has written an excellent TADS 3 tutorial based on one of the example games in it.

I never became extremely proficient, but I think I got to the point where my biggest obstacles were design problems rather than implementation/coding problems, in general.  For the Comp entry I hastily wrote in 2005, I tried to stick to the limits of my I6 ability, and I felt the need to show off the tricks that I did know how to do, such as daemons/timers.  That was probably why I used all those pretty text colors! [emote]:roll:[/emote] Even so, I never understood the concept behind the attempt effect that caused the most glaring out of all the many bugs in [i]Dreary Lands[/i] after I became aware of the glitch.

Actually, now I'm feeling something of the old frustration again, now that I have a concept and a story that I really want to give to the IF community.  I thought it would be easier to pick up I7 or one of the other authoring systems by virtue of knowing a little I6.  However, I've been finding that I have forgotten many things, while things that I do remember sometimes confuse me as I try to work them out in the newer systems.  Despite all this, still my greatest obstacle is coming up with a coherent plan.  I'm so close, and yet there are issues that I just can't seem to work out, and areas of design that I have no idea what to do about.  I wouldn't give myself a very good chance of finishing my dream game; but I'm confident that I will succeed in completing something if I'm meant to do so. [emote]:)[/emote] 

I say all this hoping to encourage you in some way.  I've been there, and I'm sort of still there.  If writing IF is something you desire very much to accomplish, then don't give up!  Keep working through the example games in manuals and tutorials, typing in the code yourself and recompiling after every change.  You'll be entering code that you have no idea how to use at first, but it will be cool to see that it does work.  Eventually, principles both of IF design and of the system you're using will begin to unfold in your mind.  Don't lose heart!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=807&start=0#p4074
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New to Inform 7
User: Terry / DateTime: 2009-09-20 08:28:02

Hi BlueBlood, I was like you a few months ago but just when I needed help to go beyond making rooms and objects I came across the Inform 7 Handbook by Jim Aikin. I love IF and have always wanted to write my own games, well now I can, at least I'm learning how to and making good progress. Without the I7 Handbook I don't think I would have got to where I am now, not without a lot of effort understanding all the 'how do I' questions that seemed hard to find answers to.

The thread is here <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=734">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=734</a> if you need help starting out with I7 I don't know of a better introduction, I'm sure Jim would appreciate some feedback and encouragement knowing he has helped another Inform 7 newbie!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=807&start=0#p4075
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New to Inform 7
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-09-20 11:15:13

Thanks for the props, Terry! The Handbook is available at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm">http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm</a>.

I'm working on an expanded edition, but I don't plan to release it until after the next version of I7 appears. The current edition is 200 pages long, though, so there's lots of information in it. It's written specifically for newcomers to I7.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=807&start=0#p4076
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New to Inform 7
User: Terry / DateTime: 2009-09-20 12:25:39

No problem, thanks Jim! The Handbook is just what a newcomer to Inform 7 needs, I know it was what I needed. I was hoping you might be expanding the content, I'm ready and keen to continue on up to more advanced use of I7. I have stayed with version 5Z71 that you used for the handbook, I will update after the next version of I7 has been released and the expanded Handbook is out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=721&start=0#p4077
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp: Node-X distribution (Win32, Linux), FAQ
User: Retro / DateTime: 2009-09-20 12:31:27

Current stage of the Node-X development and beta-test process:

The interpreter has been revised with some latest fixes and last-minute features
and is nearing completion. Both executables for Win32 and Linux have been packed
with upx and then scanned with the newest version and database of Kaspersky
Anti-Virus 2009. [b]No trojan virus has been detected in neither file.[/b]

As done before, I post the current sizes (subject to change!) of the packed and
unpacked executables below, just for curiosity. Please note that the final releases
will include a MD5 checksum for each executable (Win32/Linux), so you can verify
file integrity after you downloaded it.

[code]NXI.EXE   | Packed:  91 k  (93.184) | Unpacked: 295 k (302.416)
NXI (ELF) | Packed: 174 k (187.856) | Unpacked: 613 k (628.716)[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=807&start=0#p4078
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New to Inform 7
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2009-09-21 20:22:39

I just downloaded the Inform Handbook, too.  I expect that it'll be helpful to me as well.  Thanks for the link.

Every wannabe author of IF owes a big thank you to all those who have taken the time and effort to write these tutorials!  I mentioned Firth and Kesserich, but over the years I've studied a number of guides and tutorials.  As I don't ever expect to be a master of adventurecraft, I'll always appreciate the work and care that goes into a tutorial, at least as long as I have anything to do with IF.

One of the first Inform 6 tutorials I worked through was a charmingly fun and useful little manual, even though it cut off abruptly just before unlocking the all-important secret of routines.  Those were the days!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=808&start=0#p4079
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: pockets(tads 3)
User: Zacechawa / DateTime: 2009-09-21 20:39:41

TADS 3:
For some reason, when I try to place something of Class Pocket in something of class PocketContainer, class PocketContainer screws up.
[code]class Pocket: Hidden, Container 'pocket*pockets' 'pocket'
    desc() {
        if(hole.isIn(obj) || holeSide.isIn(obj)) {
            "There's a hole in me pocket! ";
            if (hole.isIn(obj)) hole.discover();
            if (holeSide.isIn(obj)) holeSide.discover();}
        else
            "Your pocket. Or at least, now it is. ";}
    specialDesc() {
        if(!isIn(me))
           "You dropped your pocket. ";
        else
            "Your pocket is where is belongs. ";}
    isEquivalent = true
    bulk = -2
    weight = -1
    bulkCapacity = 4
    weightCapacity = 3
;
class PocketContainer: Wearable, Container
    maxPockets = 2
    iobjFor(PutIn) {
        verify() { inherited;
            if(!gDobj.ofKind(Pocket))
                illogical( '(dobj) isn\'t a pocket. ');
            if(contents.length >= maxPockets)
                illogical( 'It hasn\'t any room! ');
        }}
;[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=808&start=0#p4080
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: pockets(tads 3)
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-09-22 07:34:40

I'm at work at the moment, so I don't have access to the TADS 3 Workbench, but I don't suppose you could go into a little more detail about what you're trying to do and why?

Also, I'm wondering why the Pocket has negative weight and bulk, because that seems like something that might potentially lead to problems when you place it in another container.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=808&start=0#p4081
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: pockets(tads 3)
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-09-22 13:22:47

Right, the problem isn't specific to the Pocket class.  There's a nil object reference when you try to place any object in the PocketContainer.  TADS doesn't seem to be able to access gDobj at that level.  One simple solution is running the check in check() instead of verify() and replacing the illogical() with failCheck().

I'm not sure exactly why you can't use gDobj in verify.  It might be a design choice - since verify is supposed to be about those actions which are easily excluded.  In other words it might be that if the [i]action[/i] is sensible (eg. putting things in objects of this kind) then it should pass the verify stage regardless of whether the [i]context[/i] is sensible.

Alternatively, there might just be a way to access the direct object that I don't know about.  I've already been tripped up by the fact you have to use DirectObject when you remap a verb.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=808&start=0#p4082
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: pockets(tads 3)
User: Zacechawa / DateTime: 2009-09-22 18:52:58

I wanted to make a pocket, which would increase the amount you could hold, so it has negative bulk, and pockets have to go in clothes, but not all clothes have pockets, so I had to make a new class. When you place it in a container, wouldn't it generally add the bulk to the bulk of what's in the container... wait... it has to be stretchy container... ok I will change PocketContainer to Wearable, StretchContainer.

The whole idea is you dropped your pockets everywhere, and you are on a quest to find them.  It was my idea of a retutorial, as I was mostly using Inform 7, but Inform 7 wasn't doing what I wanted and I found it's 'database' to be harder to search, but that's just me.  I had used TADS before, but that was long ago enough for me to forget the words (most of the syntax I still get).  There are also two holes, each one begins in a pocket.  You can transport yourself through the holes, and I have that figured out, but now I'm trying to figure out how to see and hear through them (reading about SenseConnectors), and hopefully it will come to a point where NPC's will put the hole in their pocket, so there is a whole room in their pocket, and drag you to secret locations. The PocketContainers are used as 'equipment' in this 'RPGish' thing.  I hope it works out.

I still need to look over the displaying of correct grammar, 'There's a hole in me the pocket!'("There's a hole in me <<hole.location.theName>>! ") That's just silly. I'll find it.

Anyhow... Thanks Pacian! My pockets fit in my pants!!! WOO!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=808&start=0#p4083
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: pockets(tads 3)
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-09-22 22:05:38

[quote="Pacian"]I'm not sure exactly why you can't use gDobj in verify.  It might be a design choice - since verify is supposed to be about those actions which are easily excluded.  In other words it might be that if the [i]action[/i] is sensible (eg. putting things in objects of this kind) then it should pass the verify stage regardless of whether the [i]context[/i] is sensible.

Alternatively, there might just be a way to access the direct object that I don't know about.  I've already been tripped up by the fact you have to use DirectObject when you remap a verb.[/quote]
When verify is run, the direct and indirect objects haven't necessarily been decided yet, because verify is part of the decision process. In some situations, you could fudge this by using "gAction.dobjList_[1].obj_" to get the first possible direct object. But the PutIn action's indirect object verification runs before its direct object verification, so there isn't even a list of possible direct objects at this stage. The easiest thing to do, as Pacian said, is use the check stage instead.

[quote="Zacechawa"]I wanted to make a pocket, which would increase the amount you could hold, so it has negative bulk[/quote]
That won't work, because you'll be increasing the amount that the coat can hold, but you can only put pockets in the coat anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=809&start=0#p4084
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: beginner questions/programming
User: VelvetElephant / DateTime: 2009-09-23 22:53:05

Good evening everyone-

New to the board- this is my first post.  I'm a long time fan of IF but I haven't been following it for several years.  I'm looking to write my own but I'm not too savvy with programming.  In addition, my biggest problem with IF (aside with frustration over commands) was always a sense of disorientation and getting lost.  

I was wondering if the current IF software out there would support:

A) a simple map function (i.e. a small simple outline like a blueprint next to the text simply showing where the player currently is) or;

b) an idea that occurred to me the other day that the text could be divided up into 9 different boxes composing a square and each box relates text relative to your position

Example:  You're standing in a large room with a purple couch to the north, a staue of Elvis to the south, a grue to the east, and so on.  Instead of seeing just a description of the room you would see a grid with a description of each direction in the corresponding box.  It would be arranged thus (each hash or letter represents a direction:
#|N|#
W|#|E
#|S|#

NW;You see blank |  N: You see a purple couch |  NE: You see blank
W: Nothing           | C: General description of the room, item at your feet|  E: A grue stands patiently
SW: A black hole   | S: Elvis stands gleaming.                                     | SE: You wish you saw Elvis standing here.

Get the idea?  I think it would help alleviate disorientation since it would give more spatial awarness to the game.  I would appreciate if anyone could answer these beginner questions.

Thanks,
WT

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=809&start=0#p4085
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: beginner questions/programming
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2009-09-24 03:19:08

As far as I'm aware there is no game that does this, but it wouldn't be impossible to code.

For a game that uses a compass rose (with changing colours depending on whether a room has already been visited), check out Bronze by Emily Short. If you were to use the Inform 7 language, you could simply copy-paste the code from ther game and have a compass rose like this as well.

Also displaying mini room descriptions would be an additional challenge, but not, as I said, impossible.

You might also want to check out The King of Shreds and Patches by Jimmy Maher, which uses a graphical map and a "GO TO" command--more work, since you need to draw a map, but very good against disorientation,

A third solution would simply be not to use too many rooms. Whether that would work will depend very much on the kind of game you wish to make.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=809&start=0#p4086
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: beginner questions/programming
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-09-24 07:12:22

If you minimize how often your room descriptions describe the relative positions of scenery to the player, this probably wouldn't even come up. If you think about static fiction (books, whatever), it's done without the need to stick the character at a fixed spot in the room. Granted, it's not up to the reader to interact with the scenery in static fiction, but I think more of that kind of construction can help avoid player-confusion in IF.

In your example:

"You're standing in a large room with a purple couch to the north, a staue of Elvis to the south, a grue to the east, and so on..."

Unless you're micromanaging the room (a la a one-room game, where the player can "approach" various things, and the maybe the puzzles involve spatial orientation), it's probably not necessary to tell the player exactly where in the room everything is. But even if it is, you can usually make it flow better by trying to reserve direction descriptions for room exits only, and then describing scenery as "near" that exit.

Also, and for the same reasons above, when you [i]have[/i] to describe directions, it's probably better to describe them in relation to the room as a whole, rather than assuming the player is standing in a certain spot and describing it in relation to the player. I.e., "near the south wall" instead of "to the south." It seems better to describe things specifically in relation to player (i.e., "to the south") primarily when it's an exit or something "distant" that's visible from the current location but not actually "in" the current location (such as being able to see mountains to the south, if standing in a field).

So:

"This large room features a statue of Elvis near the southern wall, strangely complementing a purple couch beside the open doorway leading north. A door to the east is closed, which is just as well since it's currently blocked by a rather upset-looking Grue."

The more complex it becomes, the harder it will be to visualize. I can remember that being a big problem in one particular scene in my Trading Punches, where the area on and around a pavilion was far more spread out and complicated than it needed to be, causing some players to completely misunderstand the layout.

It's easier if you think of north as "forward/up", south as "backward/down", west as "left" and east as "right". What would be more confusing to me than your initial example would be a game where I was sometimes facing east, sometimes facing south, and so on. Without writing as though the player is in a certain spot facing a certain direction, it will [i]probably[/i] be easier for the player to orient themselves naturally -- especially when most of the specifics aren't important anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=809&start=0#p4087
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: beginner questions/programming
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-09-24 15:48:20

[quote="VelvetElephant"]A) a simple map function (i.e. a small simple outline like a blueprint next to the text simply showing where the player currently is) or;[/quote]
ADRIFT has a built in map in its Windows interpreter.  The ADRIFT parser can be annoying at times, but I do love that map.

[quote="VelvetElephant"]b) an idea that occurred to me the other day that the text could be divided up into 9 different boxes composing a square and each box relates text relative to your position[/quote]
I think Merk's right that there are much better ways to alleviate disorientation in traditional IF games - for example structuring your map in a certain way (I've tried linear and circular maps, although some people were confused by the circular one).

On the other hand, I think that there might well be a use for this in a non-standard IF game of some sort.  A game where it [i]is[/i] important to know what's around you and where it is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=809&start=0#p4088
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: beginner questions/programming
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-09-24 18:34:47

[quote="Pacian"]On the other hand, I think that there might well be a use for this in a non-standard IF game of some sort.  A game where it [i]is[/i] important to know what's around you and where it is.[/quote]
It would be an interesting experiment, but I think it would require a custom engine. Hugo [i]might[/i] be able to do this, since you can define multiple text windows (as long as they're for display, and the main input/output area must come below all of them). I should try a test some time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=811&start=0#p4092
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: The Gallery of Zork
User: NathanaelCulver / DateTime: 2009-09-27 17:53:06

As a long-time IF (and, in particular, Infocom) afficionado, I wanted to take a moment to raise awareness of my new Infocom tribute site, The Gallery of Zork at <a class="postlink" href="http://gallery.accardi-by-the-sea.org">http://gallery.accardi-by-the-sea.org</a>. The intent of the site is to be a visual repository of all things Infocom. For those of you familiar with the Infocom Gallery (<a class="postlink" href="http://infocom.elsewhere.org/gallery/">http://infocom.elsewhere.org/gallery/</a>), think of the IG on steroids.

The Gallery of Zork collection already extends well beyond what the Infocom Gallery offers, both in quantity and quality. In addition to game packaging scans, the GZ has sections devoted to the more obscure Infocom software products (Cornerstone, Battletech, Circuit's Edge, Tombs and Treasure, et alia), the complete series of Infocom-based paperbacks, and other rarities.

The Gallery of Zork is already the largest online repository of its kind, and I will be adding to it going forward.

---------

My motivation: a couple of years ago I began scanning my collection of Infocom games, and contacted the administrator of the Infocom Gallery, (which hadn't been updated since 2004), offering to provide new scans. Instead, he sent me a number of scans he hadn't gotten around to posting, and offered to let me take over the site. The Gallery of Zork is the result.

Please take a look and let me know how GZ can be improved.

--NathanaelCulver

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=812&start=0#p4093
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Chaos
User: johnb820 / DateTime: 2009-09-27 23:52:26

Hi. So I have put together my first IF called Chaos. I am a student attending the University at Buffalo studying computer science. My interest lay in combining the logical formation of a programming language with the creative, artistic, and self expressive side to writing an IF.

The intent of this IF was to make an atmospheric game reminiscient of some of my favorite filmmakers such as Takashi Miike, David Lynch and Alejandro Jodorowsky. I can't say for sure it achieved that goal. Anyway, I did not have anyone test it but I assure that it is playable and can be finished. It is largely plotless and does not feature any real puzzles. I just felt the urge to throw it out there in case anyone is interested. Also, self expression should never be amiss no matter the quality imo. Feedback is appreciated but not expected.

[url=http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jbarker2/Chaos.z5]Chaos[/url]
My email: <a href="mailto:johnb820@gmail.com">johnb820@gmail.com</a>.

Sincerely, John Barker

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=812&start=0#p4094
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Chaos
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-09-28 09:25:16

Some potential players may either be polishing up their [url=http://www.ifcomp.org/]IFComp[/url] entries or testing for others right now, so if you don't get much feedback yet, you might try announcing it again in late November. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=812&start=0#p4095
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Chaos
User: johnb820 / DateTime: 2009-09-28 10:22:43

I figured that much. I didn't consider the game good enough, probably relating to a lack of testers and me being relatively inexperienced with Inform, to be entered into the IFcomp which is why I wasn't expecting any feedback.  Just another amateur game to check out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=813&start=0#p4096
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 runtime error P12?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-09-29 13:17:49

I'm helping beta-test a game, and I encounter the following error:

"Run-time problem P12: Too many activities are going on at once."

It happens in WinGlulxe, and in Gargoyle with both Glulxe and Git. I think it's the latest of everything. I've tried no other interpreters, but believe it to be a problem in the game rather than the 'terp.

The author is trying to track down the problem, but isn't too sure what might cause it. I suggested he post on rec.arts.int-fiction but figured I might as well poke around here on his behalf, just to see if anybody has a clue.

It happens after entering unrecognized commands. Maybe 15 or 20 commands that the game doesn't understand (random words, attempts to log a comment, things like >sneeze which are totally unnecessary for the game, etc). I don't know I7 at all, and so I can't really suggest a solution.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=813&start=0#p4097
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 runtime error P12?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2009-09-29 19:54:42

It's likely, if this builds up over time, that something is starting activities but not ending them, for some reason.

One way to try to diagnose this would be to turn on the RULES debugging command, which might mention named activity rules that are running more and more often. Whatever is running an extra time per turn is your culprit and the thing to focus on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=813&start=0#p4098
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 runtime error P12?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-09-30 10:12:14

I saw that Ron Newcomb (was it Ron?) in the newsgroup suggested there might be an issue in an older version of the I7 libraries or compiler. He wasn't sure of the version, but thought upgrading from 5Uxx to 5Zxx (if it was built with 5Uxx) might help. It does appear to be compiled with 5Uxx (5U92, according to the file). He said the problem happens after 21 unrecognized commands, although for me it happens after 18.

I'm hoping he's able to just upgrade and recompile.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=743&start=0#p4099
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Spaceship - Collaborative IF Project
User: Terry / DateTime: 2009-09-30 17:05:49

I have seen that the new proper edition/version of Spaceship! has been released.

The game's official website is here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://barrymars.co.uk/spaceship/index.html">http://barrymars.co.uk/spaceship/index.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=814&start=0#p4100
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: It's nearly here...
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-09-30 19:01:40

This went okay last year, so we'll try again this year. The IFComp now allows public discussions of the games by players/judges (although not by the authors/participants themselves), so this board is here for reviews, comments, hint requests, and so on.

Like last year, I'd like to ask everybody to refrain from posting spoilers without proper warning (the "spoiler" BB tag may help here, or for the first spoiler in the thread, maybe use a bunch of blank lines or single-dot lines).

Also, please please PLEASE don't create topics that give away opinions about any of the entries. In other words, no topics like "Quest for the Red Herring is the best game ever!" or "Yikes, Quest for the Red Herring is really buggy." I realize that in any other context a more descriptive topic is better, but some (like me, for instance) really enjoy playing the games for the first time during the voting period without any preformed notions other than our own. Sometimes, even something as simple as an explicit hint request (i.e., "I can't get past the beginning puzzle in QftRH!!!") can be telling.

The best thing would be to mention the game name discussed, and the general focus of the post. For instance, "Merk's Review of Quest for the Red Herring" or "Quest for the Red Herring - general discussions." That way, people who haven't played yet can (if they choose) wait to read the topic until they've reached and completed that game.

I'm not big on moderating -- plus it's one of several complaints folks have when talking about forums versus Usenet. But since I'd like to make this a good place for discussions even among people who haven't played all the games yet and don't want to be influenced, just be warned that I'll moderate topics titles at needed (but only [i]if[/i] needed).

Thanks -- and here's hoping for a great batch of entries!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=812&start=0#p4101
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Chaos
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2009-09-30 21:13:04

Well, I just played most of your game, or at least quite a bit of it.  For a first game, I think it's far from bad.  Granted, this is coming from someone who turned out an unplayably buggy little game with a premise that was just as abstract and even more cliched.  You were smart enough not to enter your game in the competition, at least. [emote]:)[/emote] 

It's interesting that a fair number of simple games by first-time authors seem to be surreal.  I actually think the surreal genre has more potential than a lot of people give it.  It could only work as a genre in IF, but I believe it can work.  I really don't mind apparently absurd abstractions in a game.  If the author can pull off a symbolic scheme, I actually like it.

I'll explain my situation in the game, and you can tell me how to get unstuck, if you want.  [emote];)[/emote] 
[spoiler]I discovered the message "The great (someone) commends those who seek the supernatural for help.  Pray and my powers will be (something)." on the cauldron, but praying doesn't do anything useful in that room.  I already found the wooden flower, the recipe book, the spoon, the white knight, and the merry-go-round.  The white knight can be put in the cauldron, but that doesn't seem to affect anything.

In the city room, the woman is interested in the recipe book when I try to show it to her or give it to her, but I don't know how to make her take it.  I'm assuming that the book is the thing she wants to "exchange" for; I may be wrong.

I don't know what to do about the vulture.[/spoiler]

I've got a log of my progress so far.  I left comments in the log regarding bugs and incongruities if you want to see it.  I could send you the log now, or I could wait until I finish the game.  I deeply appreciated the transcript of [i]Dreary Lands[/i] that Merk sent me after I emailed him about the review he wrote of my game.

Anyways, your game is much less buggy than mine was, and it's wonderfully free of obvious spelling and grammar errors.  Good job!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=809&start=0#p4102
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: beginner questions/programming
User: VelvetElephant / DateTime: 2009-09-30 22:40:39

Thanks for all of the replies!

I'll definitely check out your suggestions: The King of Shreds and Patches, Bronze, ADRIFT, etc.  I have so much to learn!

I'm still interested in developing the grid idea and seeing what comes of it. At least in my mind, it would be an interesting system for maintaining orientation while removing the somewhat artificial constructions of N - S - E - W.  When I walk through a house (in real life) I don't think, "there's a door to the north and a desk to the south", I think of objects being positioned relative to each other rather than based on a system of cardinal direction. If I walk through a new doorway I don't position the door N,S,E, or W I think of the door just as behind me or across from the window etc.  The descriptions in each box would be fairly short just to keep unnecessary complication to a minimum.

Obviously there's a lot of work to do- both with the merits of the concept, as well as the actual production of the code necessary to realize it.  Lots of work to do!  I'm sure I'll have more questions, but in the meantime thank you!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=809&start=0#p4103
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: beginner questions/programming
User: VelvetElephant / DateTime: 2009-09-30 22:50:15

P.S. I'm going to take a serious look into map structuring (circular and otherwise) as a means of alleviating disorientation.  I think part of the reason I hadn't thought of that is attributable to the fact I live in an old, somewhat labyrinthine house.  It would be hell to navigate in an IF!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=721&start=0#p4104
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2009: Node-X distribution (Win32, Linux), FAQ
User: Retro / DateTime: 2009-10-01 00:16:48

Alright, folks. I've recently uploaded my game entry to the IFComp 2009.
Games are being processed currently on the [url=http://www.ifcomp.org/]IFComp site[/url] and released very soon...

Before I go silent in public concerning my game entry I finally want to give you
the latest packed sizes of both NXI executables which you'll encounter in my
IFComp entry: [i](unpacked sizes are listed for curiosity only)[/i]

[code]NXI.EXE   | Packed: 113 k (116.224) | Unpacked: 317 k (324.956)
NXI-LINUX | Packed: 174 k (178.792) | Unpacked: 612 k (627.020)[/code]

Last but not least, I would like to point you to my new Node-X Forum:
<a class="postlink" href="http://devnode.freeforums.org/">http://devnode.freeforums.org/</a>

Keep your eyes peeled for upcoming tutorials and other things.
[b]Please do not discuss my game there. The forum is intended for
interpreter-related discussion only, at least during the judging period.[/b]

Ok, that's it so far.

See you in the IFComp Author's club or in the Node-X forum if you like... [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=809&start=0#p4105
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: beginner questions/programming
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-10-01 10:54:12

[quote="Merk"]It would be an interesting experiment, but I think it would require a custom engine. Hugo [i]might[/i] be able to do this, since you can define multiple text windows (as long as they're for display, and the main input/output area must come below all of them). I should try a test some time.[/quote]
I meant to post this a week ago, but I'm pretty sure you can use HTML tables in TADS.  And that would do the trick.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=814&start=0#p4106
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: It's nearly here...
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-10-01 11:04:32

[quote="Merk"]I'm not big on moderating -- plus it's one of several complaints folks have when talking about forums versus Usenet.[/quote]
Without wanting to get into that discussion, I think the complaints cut both ways.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=815&start=0#p4107
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: IFComp 2009 Predictions
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-01 11:51:27

Okay -- the games will be released any time now, and before that happens, I'd like to again make a few predictions.

There will be between 24 and 27 games this year -- a dip from recent years.

The top-ranking game will feature monkeys in a small way. The lowest-ranking game will feature monkeys in a [i]big[/i] way.

Surprisingly, there will be no magic or wizardry of any kind in the entries this year, although several will use science as a psuedo-magic.

There will be what seems like an abnormal number of long game names -- five words or more -- this year. I'm thinking probably 15 of the entries (at least) will have long names. One will be so long that it's pretty much a sentence unto itself.

Exactly one game this year will have been beta-tested by me. (Okay -- this one will be true for sure.)

There will be no noticeable change in the percentage of games which have not been beta-tested.

The winning game will be from a first-time author, but the next four will be by established authors.

Very few pseudonyms this year. Discounting aliases used by people who've never released games before and who have not participated in the IFComp before, there will only be two anonymous or psuedonymed games by established authors.

Merk will regret, for pretty much the whole competition, being too lazy to finish an entry of his own. (Again, this is pretty much a given.)

Two games will be disqualified. One -- and perhaps for the the first time ever, I'm not sure -- will be because the author discusses his game publicly. The other will be due to copyright issues.

A game that includes a large hole or bottomless pit of some sort will also include some kind of car chase or racing mini-game.

One of the best games in the competition will have some glaring flaw or fatal bug that prevents most people from playing or enjoying it. "Best" is defined as... well, if the game didn't have this issue, popular concensus is that it might have finished in the top three.

One game will involve the resurrection of dinosaurs, with inspiration clearly being Jurassic Park.

One game will involve the resurrection of people -- mummies, probably, but possibly zombies. An extra point for me, though, if it turns out to involve religious themes instead.

One game will begin with a poorly-worded appology for how bad the game is. And really, it won't be all that bad.

One or more games will have titles in the form of Verb/Verb Noun/Noun. For instance "Running and chasing the wind and the rain" or "Beat Drop Monkey Man."

There will only be two entries for non-IF platforms (DOS, Windows, Java, HTML, etc). I know there's a new Node-X game coming up, so that doesn't count. One of the entries will be pretty good, with a functioning parser that accpets "all" and uses a more realistic object/parsing model. The other will be the good 'ol two-word parser variety, and most IF conveniences won't work.

Two games will be sequels to prior works of IF, with the originals probably (but not necessarily) being written by the same two authors.

One of the authors will enter two games this year.

Two different authors will have very similar names, or will somehow be confused for each other during the voting and discussion.

There will be three Adrift entries this year, with one being fairly bad, one being passable/good, and one being really good.

There will be no Hugo entries this year.

Most games will be written in Inform 6 and 7. (Yet another no-brainer).

Not many TADS entries this year. Maybe 1 for TADS2, and one for TADS3.

Several games will have colors in the names. The Green Field, or The White Rabbit, or The Tan and Olive Summer. Rainbows don't count.

At least one game will be co-authored by a child and an adult, basically with the adult (a parent or big bro/sis) bringing the child's creative vision to life. The game itself won't be great, but it'll be hard to criticize it.

One game by more than two authors will appear. I'm thinking a group of people co-authoring a game (ala IF Whispers, but not necessarily with the same blind pass-off).

The exact title of one of the games will be "Dawn of the Monkeys." (No, I don't have any insider info on that. Just a wild guess.)

Something about one of the games will really irk people, make them uncomfortable, make them feel used or dirty. It's going to be a really weird game, and as much social experiement as game.

Something good is going to happen to the author of the game that ranks 14th this year. For instance, while judging is going on, this author wins a million dollars playing scratch tickets. Or maybe he/she finds a pair of socks that have been missing for months, and it turns out the socks contain millions in rare coins.

NPC's: A robot, a dog, a vampire, an alien, your mom, your sister's boyfriend. Also, most of these will show up as PC's as well (with the exception of your sister's boyfriend, because then it would -- strangely enough -- be "you").

Various Plots: A kid trying to save his farm. A sinner's quest for redemption. A parody of pop culture. Travelling with a circus. A day in the life of somebody who's completely boring, and without any sort of payoff at the end. Somebody just came into a pile of cash and must decide how to spend it. Trying to find a job. Trying to lose a job or get kicked out of the military. A doomsday plot (at least four of these). Trapped in the mind of a madman. Trapped in the "mind" of a robot.

Various Locations: Fort Knox. The moon. The PC's apartment or home (quite a few of these). A computer lab. A cloning lab. A lab that defies all explanation. Shrunken and inside another person or animal. Delaware. Australia. The zoo - any zoo will do. A sinking ship. A frozen wasteland. A post-apocolyptic wasteland. A teenage wasteland. Waste Land Pharmacy. Under a bed. In the shower (with water on). Multiple historical settings, such as the Civil War or ancient Greece. On top of a very tall building. A lighthouse. Underwater. Drifting in space.

Nothing says "joke entry" like a game with no command prompt and no buttons to even click! We'll see one of these.

A troublesome maze and a mis-designed hunger daemon will show up, but thankfully not in the same game. Or maybe we'd be better of if it was, since then two different games wouldn't give us fits...

In two of the games, it will be possible to win in only 4 moves. In one, this is a due to a bug and is completely accidental. In the other, it's by design. Bonus for me if the intentional one can be won in 1 or 2 moves.

Two of the games will feature strong and controvesial themes -- teen pregnancy, for instance, or maybe euthenasia (sp?).

One game will be heavily political, and will make very few attempts to hide the fact. We'll be role-playing some radical political viewpoint, and it won't even be vague enough to avoid comparisons with the political and economic climate of the last several months. My psychic powers aren't telling me exactly what viewpoint will be represented.

Two games will be abnormally long. We're talking six hours or more on a fairly straightforward play-through.

Five games will be abnormally short, and they won't even be joke entries. We're talking ten or fifteen minutes to see and do everything.

Only one game will take place on a space ship, but two others will take place on alien worlds in which the PC was recently aboard a spaceship or intends to return to one. Two [i]more[/i] games will mention space ships, but without any real bearing on the plot (i.e., a modern-day game where an NPC is watching Star Trek).

One author will be extremely mad at me for spoiling the premise of their game in my predictions above. It will be difficult for me to defend myself, because whichever game this is and whatever the prediction was will have been almost spot-on predicted by me. This will lead me to believe that I may indeed posess psychic powers, and for the next few months I will test this theory fruitlessly by playing the lotto and trying to read my wife's mind.

And.... that's.... all I've got!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=815&start=0#p4108
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2009 Predictions
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-10-01 13:38:02

Using the Nostradamus 'scattergun' approach to prediction, I take it?   [emote]:D[/emote] 

I had noticed a slight trend in recent games that I was expecting to become more apparent in the comp, but I can't remember what it was.

I predict there'll be a game drawing a lot of inspiration from Blue Lacuna.  If we're lucky it'll be the more user-friendly approach.  If we're unlucky it'll be the Myst-ish backstory.

[quote]"Beat Drop Monkey Man."[/quote]
I think I might make this game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=815&start=0#p4110
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2009 Predictions
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-01 14:31:51

[quote]Using the Nostradamus 'scattergun' approach to prediction, I take it?[/quote] Well, I deserve a little credit for leaving out predictions that directly contradict each other, just so I'm assured of 50% accuracy. [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote]I predict there'll be a game drawing a lot of inspiration from Blue Lacuna. If we're lucky it'll be the more user-friendly approach. If we're unlucky it'll be the Myst-ish backstory.[/quote] I need to (and keep saying I need to) expand my horizons and play more non-comp games...

[quote]"Beat Drop Monkey Man." I think I might make this game.[/quote] I'll beta-test!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=815&start=0#p4111
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2009 Predictions
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-10-01 17:38:35

I predict that this game:
[quote="Merk"]Something about one of the games will really irk people, make them uncomfortable, make them feel used or dirty. It's going to be a really weird game, and as much social experiement as game.[/quote]
will be one of these games:
[quote="Merk"]Two of the games will feature strong and controvesial themes -- teen pregnancy, for instance, or maybe euthenasia (sp?).[/quote]
and will also be a game where you play as your sister's boyfriend...



[quote="Merk"]There will be between 24 and 27 games this year -- a dip from recent years.[/quote]
I can believe that - the number of entries has been dropping over the last few years. [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=815&start=0#p4112
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2009 Predictions
User: johnb820 / DateTime: 2009-10-01 18:50:37

Well, I don't expect anyone to argue that one considering the many complaints of lack of quality. I predict the winning game will most definitely have some sort of innovative gimmick. Other predictions, still no westerns, a parody titled Still the Worst IF Ever, and a game revolving around clones (read innovative gimmick).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=815&start=0#p4114
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2009 Predictions
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-10-02 03:02:30

Score two for Merk: 24 games, of which 3 are Adrift.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=815&start=0#p4115
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2009 Predictions
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-02 06:32:58

I also have a good feeling about space ships, based on blurbs and one-move intro attempts in many of them. There may be a frozen wasteland as well -- too early to tell.

I was right that TADS participation was on the decline, but I didn't take my prediction far enough. None at all? I was shocked.

Also, no sign of any monkeys yet, sadly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=816&start=0#p4116
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Merk's IFComp 2009 Playlist and Spoiler-Protected Comments
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-02 06:44:30

We've done this the last couple of years, and I've enjoyed it. And I think some of the participating authors who lurk are interested in knowing when new chat about their game might show up.

I'm talking about play lists. List out the all the games in the order you intend to play (I use the ifcomp.org random voting list) and X off each one after playing. In years past we all stuck to a single topic and re-edited our own post each time we wanted to update the list. There were only a handful of us doing it, though, and unless anybody objects, how about this year anybody taking part just creates their own separate Play List topic? Handle it however you want! [emote]:)[/emote]

I'll start with my random list. I haven't yet decided if I'll be posting full reviews this year (this seems to become more and more time-consuming with each passing year), or if I'll write them but wait to post until after the competition, or what. At a minimum, I might respond to this topic after playing each game with a sentence or two in a "spoiler" tag.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=815&start=0#p4117
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2009 Predictions
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2009-10-02 07:05:34

[quote="Merk"]I need to (and keep saying I need to) expand my horizons and play more non-comp games...[/quote]

You didn't play Blue Lacuna yet? Shame on you!  [emote]8-)[/emote]

This years compulsory non-comp games are at least:

* Blue Lacuna
* Alabaster
* The King of Shreds and Patches
* Make it Good (didn't play it yet, but much praise has been heaped on it).

Am I forgetting something? The Bryant Collection and Cacophony are certainly worth playing, but not as essential as those already mentioned. And there might be real gems out there that I haven't had a chance to play yet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=816&start=0#p4118
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp 2009 Play List
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-02 07:27:56

[X] zork, buried chaos - By bloodbath
[X] Trap Cave - By Emilian Kowalewski
[X] Gleaming the Verb - By Kevin Jackson-Mead
[X] Resonance - By Matt Scarpino
[X] Earl Grey - By Rob Dubbin and Adam Parrish
[X] The Grand Quest - An interactive struggle By Owen Parish
[X] Interface - By Ben Vegiard
[X] Star Hunter - By Chris K.
[X] Condemned - By a Delusioned Teenager
[X] Eruption - A tectonic excitement By Richard Bos
[X] Beta Tester - By Darren Ingram
[X] GATOR-ON, Friend to Wetlands! - By Dave Horlick
[X] The Duel That Spanned the Ages - By Oliver Ullmann
[X] Yon Astounding Castle! of some sort - By Tiberius Thingamus
[X] The Hangover - By Red conine
[  ] The Believable Adventures of an Invisible Man - By Hannes Schueller
[  ] Grounded In Space - An Inadvertent Adventure By Matt Wigdahl
[  ] Spelunker's Quest - By Tom Murrin
[  ] Broken Legs - By Sarah Morayati
[  ] Byzantine Perspective - A Straightforward Burglary By Lea
[  ] The Duel in the Snow - A Tale of Old Russia By Utkonos
[  ] The Ascot - A Shake 'n Nod Adventure By Duncan Bowsman
[  ] Rover's Day Out - By Jack Welch and Ben Collins-Sussman
[  ] Snowquest - A Curious Tale By Eric Eve

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=815&start=0#p4119
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2009 Predictions
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-02 07:36:02

Guilty as charged. I [i]might[/i] have played [i]Conan Kill Everything[/i] this year, but it might have been last year, and anyway it's not a very lengthy game. [emote]:)[/emote]

I did download version 3 of Blue Lacuna, and I played a few turns. Looked like my kind of thing. Maybe I'll make it a priority after the competition is over.

I keep spending what little free time I have doing other things. Been doing a lot of console gaming (played through Half-Life and Half-Life 2 for the first time, playing Kingdom Hearts with my daughter, suffering through multiple deaths in Castlevania - The Dracula X Chronicles on PSP, etc). I can usually play those when other things are going on around me, but I like peace and quiet with IF.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=815&start=0#p4120
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2009 Predictions
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2009-10-02 09:48:53

[quote="Emerald"][quote="Merk"]There will be between 24 and 27 games this year -- a dip from recent years.[/quote]
I can believe that - the number of entries has been dropping over the last few years. [emote]:([/emote][/quote]
[quote="Pacian"]Score two for Merk: 24 games, of which 3 are Adrift.[/quote]
Indeed, it's the lowest number of games since the very first IF Comp in 1995!  [emote]:shock:[/emote] And I'm not sure at all that the number of games (in English at least) released outside the IF Comp has progressed enough to compensate...

[quote="Merk"]I was right that TADS participation was on the decline, but I didn't take my prediction far enough. None at all? I was shocked.[/quote]
And you were also right that there were no Hugo entries, but wrong about about entries in non-IF platforms: there was only one. The rest is really just all Inform and (a little bit) ADRIFT.

Whatever Inform's qualities may be (and they're certainly great!), I do find it rather sad that it's now almost a monopoly [emote]:([/emote] . The main IF systems were all created in the 1990s or late 1980s, but, as far as I know, there was no major authoring system since then (I mean new systems by other authors, not Inform 7 or TADS 3), and all the non-Inform systems seem to be slowly dying without any new ones to replace them... [emote]:([/emote] 


About titles:
[quote="Merk"]There will be what seems like an abnormal number of long game names -- five words or more -- this year. I'm thinking probably 15 of the entries (at least) will have long names. One will be so long that it's pretty much a sentence unto itself.[/quote]
"Only" five titles with five words or more:
[i]The Believable Adventures of an Invisible Man[/i]
[i]The Duel in the Snow[/i]
[i]The Duel That Spanned the Ages[/i]
[i]GATOR-ON, Friend to Wetlands![/i]
[i]Yon Astounding Castle! of some sort[/i]

I admit that [i]The Believable Adventures of an Invisible Man[/i] and [i]Yon Astounding Castle! of some sort[/i] are pretty long titles.


[quote="Merk"]One or more games will have titles in the form of Verb/Verb Noun/Noun. For instance "Running and chasing the wind and the rain" or "Beat Drop Monkey Man."[/quote]
Apparently not...

[quote="Merk"]Several games will have colors in the names. The Green Field, or The White Rabbit, or The Tan and Olive Summer. Rainbows don't count.[/quote]
There's [i]Earl Grey[/i], but I didn't find others.


And I don't understand this prediction:
[quote="Merk"]Or maybe he/she finds a pair of socks that have been missing for months, and it turns out the socks contain millions in rare coins.[/quote]
I can't imagine why on Earth someone would take somebody else's socks in order to put their money in it, [i]then[/i] give these socks back? [emote]:shock:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=815&start=10#p4121
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2009 Predictions
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-02 10:42:22

[quote="Eriorg"]And I don't understand this prediction:
[quote="Merk"]Or maybe he/she finds a pair of socks that have been missing for months, and it turns out the socks contain millions in rare coins.[/quote]
I can't imagine why on Earth someone would take somebody else's socks in order to put their money in it, [i]then[/i] give these socks back? [emote]:shock:[/emote][/quote]
But if it [i]did[/i] happen, my psychic abilities would forever be unquestionable! [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=812&start=0#p4122
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Chaos
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2009-10-02 12:41:27

Hi John..
I've already sent you a private msg. regarding your search for Betatesters, but then I thought that his little info might come in handy to all forum members.

<a class="postlink" href="http://if.game-testing.org/">http://if.game-testing.org/</a>

Here you can ask for beta testers, and give a fwe information on  your games so you have a better chance of getting the right Beta tester for your game.
I've used it once or twice and it seems pretty much ok.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=816&start=0#p4123
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp 2009 Play List
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-10-02 13:42:22

Huh, the comp site gave me the exact same list. I wonder if there's something wrong with the site's randomizer?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=816&start=0#p4124
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp 2009 Play List
User: jeremy / DateTime: 2009-10-02 14:12:35

Someone else also has this random list, so presumably there's a randomizer issue.  You might want to re-randomize if you haven't started and want your own order.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=816&start=0#p4125
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp 2009 Play List
User: markm / DateTime: 2009-10-02 14:33:09

Yes, there's a bug in the site's random-order generator.  I'm going to see if I can fix it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=815&start=10#p4126
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2009 Predictions
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-10-02 14:53:24

[quote="Eriorg"]Indeed, it's the lowest number of games since the very first IF Comp in 1995!  [emote]:shock:[/emote] And I'm not sure at all that the number of games (in English at least) released outside the IF Comp has progressed enough to compensate...[/quote]I think one important contributing factor is that a lot of established authors have realised they can get attention for their games outside the competition.  My uninformed opinion is that only prolific or first time authors are really going to be motivated to enter IFComp now.

[quote="Eriorg"]Whatever Inform's qualities may be (and they're certainly great!), I do find it rather sad that it's now almost a monopoly [emote]:([/emote] . The main IF systems were all created in the 1990s or late 1980s, but, as far as I know, there was no major authoring system since then (I mean new systems by other authors, not Inform 7 or TADS 3), and all the non-Inform systems seem to be slowly dying without any new ones to replace them... [emote]:([/emote][/quote]
TADS 3 has about as many authors using it at it ever has - Me, Eric Eve, Jim Aikin, Geoff Fortytwo...  Inform 7 will always be more appealing to authors because it makes certain things very easy for them.  Them's the breaks.

[quote="Emerald"]and will also be a game where you play as your sister's boyfriend...[/quote]
Still trying to get my head around this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=816&start=0#p4127
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp 2009 Play List
User: markm / DateTime: 2009-10-02 16:19:25

OK, I updated the RNG and it should be working now.  It has the side-effect of creating a new list per person, but I think that's OK this early on in the comp.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=816&start=0#p4128
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp 2009 Play List
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-02 17:52:55

Thanks! I'll check mine and re-shuffle my play list accordingly.

(edit)
Sorry to be a pest, but now I'm not seeing the option to switch between Alphabetical and Random. Looks like there's a button missing... ?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=815&start=10#p4129
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2009 Predictions
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2009-10-02 18:25:33

[quote="Pacian"]TADS 3 has about as many authors using it at it ever has - Me, Eric Eve, Jim Aikin, Geoff Fortytwo...[/quote]
Maybe (although two authors from your list now also use Inform 7). But it's certainly much less than TADS 2 had c. 10 years ago. Even then, Inform (6) was definitely more used, but not nearly as much.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=816&start=0#p4130
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp 2009 Play List
User: markm / DateTime: 2009-10-02 18:37:13

The button will not show up unless you are logged in.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=816&start=0#p4131
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp 2009 Play List
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-02 19:41:37

Oooh. Right-o. Thanks.

Interestingly, the game that was previously first is now last on my random list.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=815&start=10#p4132
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2009 Predictions
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-10-02 21:08:38

[quote="Eriorg"]Indeed, it's the lowest number of games since the very first IF Comp in 1995!  [emote]:shock:[/emote] And I'm not sure at all that the number of games (in English at least) released outside the IF Comp has progressed enough to compensate...[/quote]
I also started wondering about how the number of IFcomp games released related to the total number of IF games released. So: [url=http://docs.google.com/View?id=dhsngmzr_0fwxqhqhj]Questionable statistics! Graphs![/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=815&start=10#p4133
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2009 Predictions
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2009-10-02 22:15:02

Interesting work, Emerald! But...

[quote="Emerald"]It appears to show an increase in the number of released games. However, it's possible (even likely?) that what it really shows is an increase in [i]documented[/i] releases, rather than overall releases.[/quote]
I confirm! You must know that the "Games released in XXXX" IFWiki pages are, in general, [i]considerably[/i] more complete and reliable for recent years (since c. 2005, I think), since the IFWiki itself existed: games have been added (mostly by David Welbourn, and occasionally by me or other contributors) as they were released, and not just arbitrarily when someone thought of adding them, like in pages about older years...

And the XYZZY eligible games have the same problem: maybe you don't know it, but it's also David Welbourn who does these lists, and nowadays he mainly uses the lists from IFWiki (why should he do the same work twice, anyway?). For instance, I don't think most games in French or Spanish I had added myself on these IFWiki pages would have been on the XYZZY lists otherwise! To sum up, the XYZZY lists are also more complete now (but still not totally complete, I guess).

So I think the most reliable of your data for total number of IF releases per year is actually the IFDB, even if it's less complete than the others for recent years! The IFDB games are mostly from Baf's Guide, therefore from the IF Archive, which already existed in 1995. OK, I admit that the IF Archive doesn't contain many ADRIFT, Quest, AIF, or non-English games, for instance... But even ADRIFT and AIF releases have declined in recent years; and the non-English communities have really different histories and should probably not be mixed with the English one in these statistics, in my opinion.

And the IFDB data does show a decline in recent years, very parallel to the decline of IF Comp releases!

(The IFDB data shows a bit more games in 2008 than in 2007, but I think it's just an illusion, because the IFDB was created in late 2007: recent non-IF Archive games were added to the IFDB when they were released, unlike older years. It's the same problem as the IFWiki pages, but only for very recent years.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=815&start=10#p4134
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2009 Predictions
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2009-10-03 07:46:31

On the other hand, there's also something I hadn't thought about in my previous message: Speed-IF used to be much more popular some years ago. Which means that there were many rushed and very very short games among the games released in these years, more than now... It may well be misleading for our little statistics.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=816&start=0#p4135
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp 2009 Play List
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-03 11:09:59

I'm still trying to decide if I want to write long reviews as in years past. My intention was to limit my comments to just a couple sentences, but already I've found little restraint when it comes to writing more. My first review, coming up, is short by comparison, but still longer than intended.

I'm simplifying my scoring criteria this year. I'm ripping off Game Informer Magazine's guidelines this year. No more evaluating story separate from puzzles separate from implementation separate from whatever in the score -- just the review (if needed).

Here's what I'm using:

[b]10: Outstanding.[/b] A truly elite title that is nearly perfect in every way. This score is given out rarely and indicates a game that cannot be missed.

[b]9: Superb.[/b] Just shy of gaming nirvana, this score is a high recommendation because the game reviewed is head-and-shoulders above the competition.

[b]8: Very Good.[/b] Innovative, but perhaps not the right choice for everyone. This score indicates that there are many good things to be had, but arguably so.

[b]7: Average.[/b] The game's features may work, but are nothing that even casual players haven't seen before. A decent game from beginning to end.

[b]6: Limited Appeal.[/b] Although there may be fans of games receiving this score, many will be left yearning for a more rewarding game experience.

[b]5: Passable.[/b] It may be obvious that the game has lots of potential, but its most engaging features could be undeniably flawed or not integrated into the experience.

[b]4: Bad.[/b] While some things may work as planned, the majority of this title either malfunctions to varying degrees or it is so dull that the game falls short as a whole.

[b]3: Painful.[/b] If there is anything that's redeeming in a game of this caliber, it's buried beneath agonizing gameplay and uneven execution in its features and theme.

[b]2: Broken.[/b] Basically unplayable. This game is so insufficient in execution that any value would be derived in extremely small quantities, if at all.

[b]1: Horrifying.[/b] Here, they usually put in joke to show an example of something that would merit a 1 in some other context. Most recent example: Worse than a movie written by Michael Bay and directed by Kevin Smith.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=816&start=10#p4136
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp 2009 Play List
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-03 11:17:39

[size=150][b]zork, buried chaos - By bloodbath[/b][/size]

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
You were exploring the underground empire when there was an earthquake and it caved in! You have to escape!

[i](Score and review contained within expandable spoiler):[/i]
[spoiler][b]Preconceptions:[/b]
The title being in all lowercase seems lazy and accidental. My hunch is that attention to detail isn’t this author’s strong suit. Also, I’m not usually a fan of fanfic – in this case, fanIF. In fact, I wonder about the legalities of releasing a game under the “Zork” name. I can buy that the title might not be trademarked now (if it ever was), but what of the copyright issues? Maybe the author will address that at the start of the game.

[b]Review Summary:[/b]
A sloppily-constructed homage to Zork, which is broken in many ways.

[b]Played:[/b] 10/3/2009 for 40 minutes.
[b]Score:[/b] 2 (Broken)
[b]Transcript:[/b] [url=http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp09/zork.txt]here[/url]

If anything, the game is worse than expected. I get the impression that the author did [i]try[/i], but the implementation is so sparse, and without any sort of hook or payoff, that I can’t recommend the game even as a must-play oddity. Descriptions are lacking, but where present offer almost no information. Nothing sparks the imagination. Red herrings abound -- a map that you can’t actually use, for instance. You are allowed to pick up things that shouldn’t be portable. Actions that should work require specific phrasings. Weapons are just props. It’s easy to get stuck (multiple places) because something you need to progress might not be in your inventory yet. I could go on, but why?

I was able to solve much of it without the walkthrough. Upon winning, I tried a run-through using the walkthrough exclusively, and it appears to be broken at one spot toward the end. No matter – it’s at least useful enough to help anyone reach the end, provided said “anyone” is willing to suffer through boring, uninspired gameplay.

Story? None to speak of.

It’s substantial enough to raise it above a 1 (which would indicate “horrifying” – I’m reserving this for games that have almost no content at all and possibly no way to win), but just barely. Nor can I justify a 3, which would indicate that at least some small part of it might have been well-executed.

It’s also a disappointing way to start the competition.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=815&start=10#p4137
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2009 Predictions
User: Fuyu_Yuki / DateTime: 2009-10-03 18:52:24

[quote]Beat Drop Monkey Man[/quote]
If I ever do another game, I'm going to give it this title. 

Regardless of its actual content.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=816&start=10#p4138
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp 2009 Play List
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-03 20:48:51

[size=150] [b]Trap Cave - By Emilian Kowalewski[/b] [/size]

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
First complete fantasy adventure in english and german for my advanced MC & CYOA system Node-X (V1.1, Generation 1). Short demo for writing your own Node-X games included, as well as Win32 and Linux executables of interpreter. Enjoy!

[i](My comments, while spoiler-free, are in the expandable spoiler below):[/i]
[spoiler][b]Preconceptions:[/b]
Emilian visits the intfiction.org forum from time to time, and he entered a Node-X sample game in last year’s IFComp, so I sort of know what to expect. I hope it’s more substantial than last year’s entry. I took at peek at the first room prior to playing, when all the games were released, and am a little worried that parts of it may not be fully translated to English.

[b]Played:[/b] 10/3/2009 for maybe 2 minutes.
[b]Score:[/b] Unrated
[b]Transcript:[/b] Not Supported

[b]Review Summary:[/b]
N/A

I can’t rate this. I guess I was expecting a mostly-English game with a few stray bits of German left untranslated, but as far as I can tell, it’s the other way around. The first “room” and the CYOA-style menu options are in English, but as far as I can tell, every description and “room” afterwards isn’t. Despite the possible German origins of my last name, I don’t speak (nor read) it.

What I saw seemed okay, with the exception of a West/East option in which West was “W” and East was “O”. An artifact of the partial translation, maybe? Don’t know.

So really, I can’t review or rate this. Well, given more than two hours (and depending on the length of the game), I suppose I could cut-and-paste the text into AltaVista’s [url=http://babelfish.altavista.com]BabelFish[/url], but I’m afraid the resulting score would be lower than deserved due to the circumstances by which I managed to play.

With luck, Emilian will find 10 or more German-speaking judges, so that [i]Trap Cave[/i] is ranked in the results.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=816&start=10#p4139
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp 2009 Play List
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-10-03 22:56:57

[quote="Merk (re: Trap Cave)"][spoiler]What I saw seemed okay, with the exception of a West/East option in which West was “W” and East was “O”. An artifact of the partial translation, maybe?[/spoiler][/quote]
[spoiler]Yeah, I'd say that's a translation thing, since "east" is "Ost" in German (and "west" is "West").

Unfortunately, my German isn't good enough for me to be able to judge this either.

I also had a lot of trouble getting it to run at all. I'm an Ubuntu user, so I tried the Linux binary, but it couldn't find the game files. It seemed to be over-writing the paths in the "nodex.ini" file, so it always ended up looking for the game files in the wrong place. In the end I fixed the "nodex.ini" file manually and used Wine to run the Windows binary.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=816&start=10#p4140
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp 2009 Play List
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-03 23:43:15

[size=150] [b]Gleaming the Verb - By Kevin Jackson-Mead[/b][/size]

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
None provided.

[i](Score and review contained within expandable spoiler):[/i]
[spoiler][b]Preconceptions:[/b]
Here’s a game that’s fully aware of what it is, and intends to use one of IF’s most commonly-noted deficiencies as its strength and premise. Wait, that’s gleaming, not [i]gleaning[/i]? Wordplay within wordplay? A pun, perhaps? Well, we shall see. It could also just be a joke entry – something of which recent years’ IFComps have been surprisingly short.

[b]Review Summary:[/b]
A short experiment in delivering word puzzles through interactive fiction, but lacking in excitement and not really integrated into any sort of story.

[b]Played:[/b] 10/3/2009 for 50 minutes.
[b]Score:[/b] 3 (Painful)
[b]Transcript:[/b] [url=http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp09/gleaming.txt]here[/url]

[i]Gleaming the Verb[/i] is an IF wrapper for a multi-part letter-manipulation puzzle. Unfortunately, that’s all it is. Even though the specifics of the puzzle necessarily change as the game progresses, I never felt it was a very [i]interesting[/i] puzzle.

On the positive side, the author wisely chose not to drag out the game beyond the point where even the most dedicated player would probably call it quits. Also, given the title and the oddly worded opener, getting started by recognizing the first part of the puzzle should be easy for most players. I only stumbled (but for quite a while -- eventually consulting the walkthrough) at one step.

It’s possible that the author intended this as a serious entry, but with so little here, it seems unlikely. My theory, misguided though it may be, is that the author found himself with only a day or two left before the competition deadline, no game, and an idea for a quick word puzzle. It works, and nothing seems broken per se, but it’s a game with a very narrow focus and limited appeal.

If the game had some way to repeat the most recent phrase, I never found it. This may be more confusing near the beginning, where players may not have caught onto the gimmick yet and too many unnecessary attempts to take other actions cause the phrase to scroll off the screen. Given that every other potential distraction has been removed from the game, though (including the PC’s clothing), this isn’t a major complaint.

What [i]could[/i] have been interesting is the same type of puzzle -- the same concept -- integrated more closely with traditional interactive fiction and a less superficial story. I appreciate what effort is shown here, but I also hope the author produces something more substantial in the future.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=816&start=10#p4141
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp 2009 Play List
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-03 23:55:43

[quote="Emerald (re: Trap Cave)"][spoiler]Yeah, I'd say that's a translation thing, since "east" is "Ost" in German (and "west" is "West").[/spoiler][/quote][spoiler]Ah. I suspected something like that. Thanks for the info![/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=815&start=10#p4142
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2009 Predictions
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-10-04 03:27:29

Sounds like we need a Beat Drop Monkey ManComp.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=816&start=10#p4143
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp 2009 Play List
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-04 11:02:58

[size=150][b]Resonance - By Matt Scarpino[/b][/size]

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
None provided.

I beta-tested this one, so I'll wait to post the comments/review I've written until later in the competition (or afterwards).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=817&start=0#p4144
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Renee's IFComp '09 Playlist and Reviews
User: RChoba / DateTime: 2009-10-04 11:27:26

Since I don't have a game in this year's comp, I'm not bound to silence or limited to chatting in the author's club. Last year I really appreciated being able to hear thoughts on my game before the results were out, so for this year's authors I wanted to do the favor of providing game feedback during the comp. Here's my randomized play list I'll be checking off as I go along:

[x] Rover's Day Out
[x] Grounded In Space
[x] GATOR-ON, Friend to Wetlands! 
[x] Condemned
[x] Yon Astounding Castle! of some sort
[x] The Grand Quest
[x] The Hangover
[x] Interface
[x] Spelunker's Quest
[x] zork, buried chaos
[x] Byzantine Perspective
[x] Eruption
[x] Star Hunter
[x] Gleaming the Verb
[x] The Duel in the Snow
[x] The Believable Adventures of an Invisible Man
[x] The Ascot
[x] Trap Cave
[x] Earl Grey
[x] Beta Tester
[x] Snowquest
[x] The Duel That Spanned the Ages
[x] Broken Legs
[x] Resonance

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=817&start=0#p4145
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Renee's IFComp '09 Playlist and Reviews
User: RChoba / DateTime: 2009-10-04 12:23:41

[size=150][b]Rover's Day Out[/b][/size]

I'm all for games about dogs of any kind...

[spoiler]Really liked the opening, overall found things a bit disorienting but interesting. Enjoyed the trippy dreams, the memories, and the back and forth between David and Janet. Did not enjoy repeating the same banal actions over and over. Also found the strange prompts and status displays neat... but confusing. 

I'm a person, no, I'm an ACU, no, I'm a "dog"... (and as a dog I go to a place with a sleeping room and eating room and a cold box... did somebody play Snack Time!?) 

SO, I think it's a great use of IF to have the player doing actions that seem to be one thing but which actually do something else. But in this game I never quite got clear what all my actions translated to. And I wish those actions weren't repeatedly using the toilet and cooking an egg. 

If you really think about it, this is a glorified in-your-apartment game. With enough extra coolness to make that (mostly) forgivable.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=817&start=0#p4146
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Renee's IFComp '09 Playlist and Reviews
User: RChoba / DateTime: 2009-10-04 12:55:48

[size=150][b]Grounded in Space[/b][/size]

I imagine hearing the title in one of those booming, reverberating voices...

[spoiler]It's perhaps unfortunate that my random list has me playing one space game after another.

The intro scene seems a bit unnecessary, since it doesn't seem to matter if I turn my remote to high or off or if I try to apologize to my dad. I still end up grounded... in SPACE (space... space... space...)

The game seems good at pointing me in the right direction, letting me know what I need to learn from the computer before I get into the thick of things. But yikes, that's a lot of info about the automining probe! (Where's the auto in that, again?) Some things here are not so intuitive. Like, there is no way I would have figured out all those buttons and dials without resorting to the walkthrough. 

A bigger issue is how I am limited in what I try to do, which seems often to be a timing issue. For example, when I first encountered the pirates, I went to try and launch a probe at them, but the game wouldn't let me. I also tried to exit the ship, and was blocked, even once punishment mode was off and I supposedly had control. But later on I could do both of these things. What changed? I also tried to fly home and got an ending which told me I hadn't saved Laura. Wait, who? I didn't know I was abandoning anyone. When I undid that turn and waited, I got to meet the damsel in distress. 

I think the main problem with this game is that it stinks to be grounded. (Even in space.) The restrictions of the game only letting me try certain things at certain times was frustrating. I got a few different endings, but not the optimal one, and I'm not really motivated to try again. Which is too bad, because overall the game is competently coded and bug-free. It's just lacking a sense of fun and freedom.

(Oh, and I think the computer should understand an order to take evasive maneuvers.)[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=817&start=0#p4147
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Renee's IFComp '09 Playlist and Reviews
User: RChoba / DateTime: 2009-10-04 13:22:36

[b][size=150]GATOR-ON, Friend to Wetlands![/size][/b]

Gator-on, dudes! Excellent!

[spoiler]So, I'm on a tram with a shiny key, a bag of corn chips, and a homing beacon. And I'm anxious. Am I some kind of Frito-loving alien terrorist out to destroy the wetlands? Because I think I'm cool with that. 

Did I type examine beacon a million times, or was it just that I kept typing x beaxon and had to retype it that it took forever? No, I typed it a million times. I wouldn't mind wandering around following the arrows (they'll show you where to go) so much if the scenery was more interesting. (ex: "Water collected in this depression to form an alligator hole." and yet I can't examine said water, depression, or hole.)

When I found the hatch, I got confused thinking perhaps that it was the name for an alligator nest with eggs or something. Like a hatching site. (Guess I was pretty sleepy when I started this one. See alien comment above.) But no, it's a hatch one has to open. After beating crows and mazes and such. (I couldn't give the chips to the crow because it's inanimate. Wait, has someone replaced the animals here with evil robot ones?)

X me when in fuschia = You look mighty. Yeah! 

Hey, there's a great big threatening button which should never, ever be pressed! Oops, I really shouldn't have pressed it.

Hmm, I can form a crackling mace. That will probably come in handy.

Ok, I enjoyed the total goofiness here despite the fact that the game was really lacking in polish. The point is to transform into a giant rainbow gator? Why didn't you say so in the first place?!? Seriously, if there were more hints to your mission from the beginning, more descriptive scenery and some more explicit hints, this game would really level up in awesomeness. As it is, I still had fun with it.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=817&start=0#p4148
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Renee's IFComp '09 Playlist and Reviews
User: jeremy / DateTime: 2009-10-04 14:46:29

It's good to see you're reviewing!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=817&start=0#p4149
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Renee's IFComp '09 Playlist and Reviews
User: RChoba / DateTime: 2009-10-04 19:40:01

Thanks, Jeremy. I'm glad you're reviewing too. Not that I've read all your reviews, as I'm avoiding spoilers on games I haven't yet played. But your filler text is great. [emote]:-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=815&start=10#p4150
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2009 Predictions
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-10-04 20:04:18

[quote="Eriorg"]... the non-English communities have really different histories and should probably not be mixed with the English one in these statistics, in my opinion.[/quote]
True, and something I hadn't thought of. If we're interested in the impact of the IFComp, only communities which generally participate in the IFComp should be included, which rules out the Quest and AIF communities as well as the non-English communities. There has been the odd Quest game in the Comp, but the huge majority of Quest games are apparently released on the Quest website. (I'm not sure whether it rules out the Adrift community, which is somewhat separate from the r*if community, but not as much as the Quest and AIF communities... I think there are enough Adrift entries in the IFComp to justify its inclusion in statistics.)

[quote="Eriorg"]Speed-IF used to be much more popular some years ago. Which means that there were many rushed and very very short games among the games released in these years, more than now...[/quote]
It would be interesting to break down the released games by competition, including the Spring Thing, Speed-IF, and so on, and see whether games released outside of [i]any[/i] comp have increased. I have the impression that entries have declined for most competitions, not just the IFComp. Greg Boettcher was talking about cancelling Spring Thing, since it's had so few entries in the last two or three years.

Unfortunately, I don't have time to compile those statistics right now. Maybe in a month or two, after uni finishes for the year...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=60#p4151
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: ManolisG13 / DateTime: 2009-10-05 04:01:09

Hello everyone.. My name is Manolis and I'm from Greece.. I'm 27 and a half years old and I live in Athens..

First of all, I'm very happy that there exists a general (not only inform, adrift etc etc) IF forum, I think it's the only one (correct my if i'm wrong..).. I found this place from a post on rec.games.int-fiction (or arts maybe?)..

I love gaming in general, but the genres I grew up with and have the best memories are those of Adventures and RPGs(back in the day most adventurers played rpgs too and vice versa, most magazines here had their "hints" pages together for the genres [emote];)[/emote] ).. I have spent enough money to have a very good library of games of the above two types of games [emote]:)[/emote]

Now, with the today called Interactive Fiction , or Text Adventures as I know them from back then, it all started by a coincidence.. I was playing back at the time at my 286 classic adventures, Monkey Island, Quest For Glory, Larry, King's Quest and one day at the local computer shop I noticed 3 games with similar packaging that caught my eye.. They were the "Solid Gold" versions of Zork 1, Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy and Leather Godesses of Phobos.. I really don't know how they ended up there since they were already "old" by that time standards, but after i checked them they seemed nice [emote]:)[/emote] and their price was good => 3000 drachmes or .. 8 euros each by today's standards.. I bought them all and was HOOKED, especially with Zork with it's classic gameplay of find all the treasures [emote]:)[/emote] My english wasn't that good back then, not they are much better now though ;p but the online hints helped go through all of them.. Time passed and the next text adventures i played were the classic shareware ones of pre 1996 era which came on magazines, Unkulian I think, a pc version of the 350 points Collosal Cave / Adventure which started it all..Anyway, more time passed and in 2000 i got internet.. I quickly found out about Xyzzynews, Spag, the old page of Stephen Grenade (is it spelled that way?) at about, before brasslantern, and the 2 newsgroup channels.. And the IFcomps of course that have been taking place from 1995.. It was like a revelation for me, since in just a few days there were so many great things to check..Time passed and I always followed all the news and comps etc etc but never participated actively in discussions in IF things.. I even tried to create my own game just for the sake of it, with ALAN which is easy about 6-7 years ago but never finished it.. Two(?) or one year back I saw inform transform to a much friendlier language so I will try that one day.. 

And that's all about me.. Besides IF I always played classic adventures and rpgs (ang games in general..), and have explored vie emulators even those text adventures of the Spectrum era.. Those had a raw but strange and nice feeling.. 

This year I decided to try a lot of Ifcomp games, so I thought this place would be great to come and ask for some hints when stuck (i do get stuck a lot lol :p ) but the biggest thing is that via this forum maybe i'll stick to it this year and on and follow IF things more closely now.. The creation of this forum helps, because imho forums are a much better place for discussion and socializing than the newsgroups channels (I also have my own greek forum about p2p : )..

Ok, that's all, I hope this time i will follow things more closely and great to find you all and this place [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=60#p4152
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-05 07:12:16

Hi, and welcome to the forum!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=70#p4153
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2009-10-05 09:11:47

Welcome to the forum, ManolisG13! [emote]:D[/emote] 

[quote="ManolisG13"]Stephen Grenade (is it spelled that way?)[/quote]
It's Stephen Gr[b][u]a[/u][/b]nade.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=815&start=10#p4154
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2009 Predictions
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2009-10-05 09:46:43

[quote="Emerald"]It would be interesting to break down the released games by competition, including the Spring Thing, Speed-IF, and so on, and see whether games released outside of [i]any[/i] comp have increased. I have the impression that entries have declined for most competitions, not just the IFComp. Greg Boettcher was talking about cancelling Spring Thing, since it's had so few entries in the last two or three years.

Unfortunately, I don't have time to compile those statistics right now. Maybe in a month or two, after uni finishes for the year...[/quote]
Here are data from the IFWiki; I hope I didn't make any mistakes:

[url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/IF_Art_Show]IF Art Show:[/url]
[quote]1999 (Spring + Summer): [b]5[/b] entries.
2000: [b]8[/b] entries.
2001: [b]4[/b] entries.
2003: [b]6[/b] entries.
2004: [b]5[/b] entries.
2007: [b]3[/b] entries.[/quote]

[url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Spring_Thing]Spring Thing:[/url]
[quote]2002: [b]1[/b] entry.
2003: [b]4[/b] entries.
(No Spring Thing in 2004.)
2005: [b]6[/b] entries.
2006: [b]4[/b] entries.
2007: [b]4[/b] entries.
2008: [b]3[/b] entries.
2009: [b]4[/b] entries.[/quote]

[url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/IntroComp]IntroComp:[/url]
[quote]2002: [b]13[/b] entries.
2003: [b]6[/b] entries.
2004: [b]7[/b] entries.
2005: [b]7[/b] entries.
2006: [b]7[/b] entries.
2007: [b]7[/b] entries.
2008: [b]6[/b] entries.
2009: [b]3[/b] entries.[/quote]

[url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Speed-IF]Speed-IF:[/url]
[quote](late) 1998: 1 + 4 + 5 = [b]10[/b] entries.
1999: 10 + 7 + 8 + 6 + 5 + 1 + 3 = [b]40[/b] entries.
2000: 5 + 2 + 6 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 5 = [b]30[/b] entries.
2001: 9 + 5 + 10 + 3 + 5 + 8 + 6 + 1 + 4 + 8 + 6 + 4 + 6 + 4 = [b]79[/b] entries.
2002: 5 + 5 + 3 + 1 + 4 + 7 + 5 + 3 = [b]33[/b] entries.
2003: 8 + 4 + 4 + 12 + 3 + 3 + 5 + 2 + 3 + 5 = [b]49[/b] entries.
2004: 4 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 1 = [b]14[/b] entries.
2005: 1 + 3 = [b]4[/b] entries.
2006: 4 + 6 + 2 = [b]12[/b] entries.
2007: 4 + 7 = [b]11[/b] entries.
2008: 3 + 6 + 3 = [b]12[/b] entries.
2009: [b]4[/b] entries (so far).[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=815&start=20#p4155
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp 2009 Predictions
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-10-05 13:28:01

[quote="Emerald"]If we're interested in the impact of the IFComp, only communities which generally participate in the IFComp should be included[/quote]
[i]If[/i] that's what you're interested in, then yes.  But in terms of a sense of a decline in IF, I think the fact that more IF games are being made and released outside the community is a seriously mitigating factor.  More people know about IF, and a more diverse set of creators are dabbling in it.  

Even if the total number of games has decreased, the overall trend is a positive one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=816&start=10#p4156
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp 2009 Playlist and Spoiler-Protected Comments
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-06 15:39:11

[size=150][b]Earl Grey - By Rob Dubbin and Adam Parrish[/b][/size]

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
A game about a tea party, a monarchy, and the unpredictability of language.

[i](Score and review contained with expandable spoiler):[/i]
[spoiler][b]Preconceptions:[/b]
It’s impossible for me to hear “earl grey” and not think of Captain Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation. It’s probably because I’m not a fan of tea in general, and have never developed any other associations for the term. Although a tea party and a monarchy don’t seem, on the surface, to be the kind of thing I’d usually enjoy, the “unpredictability of language” part intrigues me. My favorite author (Jack Vance, for the curious) has done interesting things involving language, misunderstandings, and humor derived from cultural differences. I hope this is what I’ll find in [i]Earl Grey[/i].

[b]Review Summary:[/b]
A worthy and well-crafted game, [i]Earl Grey[/i] successfully integrates word puzzles into the game and builds an absurd but entertaining story around it all.

[b]Played:[/b] 10/05/2009 and 10/06/2009 for 3 hours and 45 minutes.
[b]Score:[/b] 8 (Very Good)
[b]Transcript:[/b] [url=http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp09/earlgrey.txt]here[/url]

This is not at all what I expected, but ironically, it’s an answer to one of my complaints about the prior game. Here, word puzzles are far more interesting, and closely integrated with the story. It reminds me of the “Letter-Man” cartoons in the old PBS children’s series [i][url=http://pbskids.org/electriccompany/]The Electric Company[/url][/i], which I really enjoyed back then.

In essence, the game’s conceit is that everything is made up of words, and that by adding or removing a single letter, the “thing” the word represents can change into some completely different thing. For example, add an “e” to “can” and now you have a cane. Transformations aren’t limited just to nouns. It’s possible to change a specific aspect of something by altering its adjectives. The complete absurdity of this is put to great use in [i]Earl Grey[/i], and it’s bound to stand out as one of the more innovative and memorable games of this year’s competition.

As an added gimmick, the protagonist’s internal monologue – his or her thoughts regarding pretty much everything going on – appears as text immediately [i]below[/i] the input prompt in Glulxe (it’s even better in Gargoyle, appearing at the bottom of the display like a footnote). This tends to be clever and entertaining, offering personality to the PC but in a more detached way. It also helps players realize that the PC’s thought process itself isn’t subject to in-game manipulation.

The biggest problem with the game – the [i]only[/i] notable problem with the game, really – is that when stuck, there is nothing to prevent (or even strongly discourage) brute force attempts to simply manipulate every word in every sentence. The authors combat this in three ways, but I’m not sure it’s enough. One, the change has to make grammatical sense in the context of the sentence. Two, valid manipulations that would break the story are usually understood but rejected with a reason as to why the PC won’t try it. Three, many of the target words are under one or two levels of description, so it’s necessary to be observant rather than just mine the room description for accepted commands.

As clever as all this is, I found it difficult to solve without help from the walkthrough. A little more brute force attempts might have helped, with the exception of one point later in the game where the rules change a little and it doesn’t seem clear (or, it didn’t to me) that a new type of magic has been introduced (as opposed to just a new malleable object). It very well may be balanced at the perfect level of difficulty, but I suspect the experience will vary from player to play more than is typical for traditional IF.

The game boasts a large number of beta-testers, and the polish shows. It’s easy to recommend [i]Earl Grey[/i], and I can see it ranking highly in the IFComp results, with a chance at nomination for the “Best Use of Medium” XYZZY award. After all, you must have text to accomplish this kind of word-manipulation puzzle, and the authors did an outstanding job of making this an entertaining story in its own right. It ends with a bit of a head-scratcher of an ending, but the journey was its own proverbial reward.

Maybe for [i]Earl Grey 2 – Clever Sequel Title Goes Here[/i] we can have multi-part puzzles, in which letters must be added, removed, [i]and then rearranged[/i] within the same starting word. Then again, my poor head would probably explode.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=818&start=0#p4157
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: The West Australian mentions the IFComp
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-10-06 21:44:33

Today's issue (7 Oct) of the [i]West Australian[/i] newspaper gives the IFComp a mention, in its WebWatch column.

(Coincidentally - or not? - the other item mentioned in the column is [url=http://clockwords.us/]Clockwords[/url], a game Emily Short was [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2009/09/22/clockwords-prelude/]involved in writing[/url].)

I've attached a scan of the column, in case anyone's interested - not that it tells us anything we didn't know!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=816&start=10#p4158
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp 2009 Playlist and Spoiler-Protected Comments
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-06 22:41:26

[size=150][b]The Grand Quest - An interactive struggle By Owen Parish[/b][/size]

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
You've spent the best part of your life as a man dreaming of the goblet. You seek it. While you've had a job, a family, your thoughts were always looking forward, dwelling on The Grand Quest.

[i](Score and review contained within expandable spoiler):[/i]
[spoiler][b]Preconceptions:[/b]
Not much on this. I’m kind of neutral. Title seems a little generic, yet sets itself up for an epic adventure that probably can’t be achieved in a mere two hours.

[b]Review Summary:[/b]
Primarily a series of logic puzzles that range from stale and trite to tedious and obscure.

[b]Played:[/b] 10/6/2009 for 1 hour and 5 minutes.
[b]Score:[/b] 4 (Bad)
[b]Transcript:[/b] [url=http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp09/grandquest.txt]here[/url]

I was very tempted to rate this game a point higher, but here’s why I didn’t. A “5” is passable, with obvious potential. Although I’m certain the author himself has potential, he put it into a generic story that features some tired stock puzzles, some non-puzzles, an agonizing exercise in tedium (the two-card puzzle, about as exciting as the Towers of Hanoi, where even following the instructions outlined in the walkthrough requires far too many steps), and an opening riddle that is [i]probably[/i] original yet [i]probably[/i] can’t be solved by anyone. Even a well-known key-and-keyhole puzzle is made difficult by misdirecting the player toward a red herring instead.

Aside from some missing scenery and some questionable design decisions (these can leave a player stranded in a room without any automatic ending or indication of even being stuck, with only a magic word as your way out), the implementation is otherwise solid. It’s just not an interesting game in light of what [i]can[/i] be done in interactive fiction.

As long as I’m doling out advice, I’d suggest to the author (and anybody else thinking of writing a game that’s just a series of puzzle/riddle rooms), don’t. You’re going about it backwards. Sometimes it’s okay to invent a really clever, original puzzle or game mechanic and build a game around it, but much of what’s here isn’t original and leans more towards deception rather than cleverness. Spend more time on the [i]fiction[/i] first. Think of a story – the kind of thing that might interest you if you were just sitting down to read a book. Think of a plot. Think of highs and lows and conflicts, and think about giving the player something to play, read, and enjoy. [i]Then[/i] figure out what kinds of puzzles make the most sense in the context of the story you intend to tell.

To those with an itching for pure puzzles – those of you who enjoy opening a book of logic puzzles or solving riddles one by one – you very well may find much to like in [i]The Grand Quest[/i]. Be warned, though. Here, they range from the stale and trite to the tedious and obscure.

I applaud the effort if not the result, and hope that the author steps it up for next year.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=816&start=10#p4159
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp 2009 Playlist and Spoiler-Protected Comments
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-10-07 11:35:44

[quote="Merk (re: The Grand Quest)"][spoiler]an opening riddle that is [i]probably[/i] original yet [i]probably[/i] can’t be solved by anyone.[/spoiler][/quote]
[spoiler]I did solve 4/5ths of it and guessed the last one: 

My first is at the end of the worst of all places. => I'm not that sure of this, but the last letter of HELL is L.
My second is at the beginning of royal water. => No idea. I used brute force after I had solved the others (it's A). Does anyone know what this means? 
My third is a worker or monarch, in a fortress of sixes. => Bees (B) have workers and queens and their nests are build of hexagon-shaped cells (6 sides).
My fourth is before the drink in art. => In the word "art" R is before T ("tea")
My fifth is after the water in cat. => A is after C ("sea") in "cat".[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=816&start=10#p4160
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp 2009 Playlist and Spoiler-Protected Comments
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-07 12:12:33

[quote="Nitku (re: The Grand Quest)"][spoiler]My first is at the end of the worst of all places. => I'm not that sure of this, but the last letter of HELL is L.
My second is at the beginning of royal water. => No idea. I used brute force after I had solved the others (it's A). Does anyone know what this means? 
My third is a worker or monarch, in a fortress of sixes. => Bees (B) have workers and queens and their nests are build of hexagon-shaped cells (6 sides).
My fourth is before the drink in art. => In the word "art" R is before T ("tea")
My fifth is after the water in cat. => A is after C ("sea") in "cat".[/spoiler][/quote]
[spoiler]Ah. Well, I was pretty certain on the 1st and 3rd. It was the other three that left me baffled. After looking at the walkthrough, I deduced that the "water in cat" was the letter "C" (sea), but hadn't realized "T" was "tea" -- I was thinking a lowercase "t" looked like a glass/drink of some sort. Ha ha.

I did read a review from somebody saying they [i]did[/i] solve this (I've not been reading reviews until I've done my own), and it involved Googling "Royal Water." So maybe the answer is online.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=816&start=20#p4161
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp 2009 Playlist and Spoiler-Protected Comments
User: emshort / DateTime: 2009-10-07 12:20:58

[quote="Merk"][quote="Nitku (re: The Grand Quest)"][spoiler]My first is at the end of the worst of all places. => I'm not that sure of this, but the last letter of HELL is L.
My second is at the beginning of royal water. => No idea. I used brute force after I had solved the others (it's A). Does anyone know what this means? 
My third is a worker or monarch, in a fortress of sixes. => Bees (B) have workers and queens and their nests are build of hexagon-shaped cells (6 sides).
My fourth is before the drink in art. => In the word "art" R is before T ("tea")
My fifth is after the water in cat. => A is after C ("sea") in "cat".[/spoiler][/quote]
[spoiler]Ah. Well, I was pretty certain on the 1st and 3rd. It was the other three that left me baffled. After looking at the walkthrough, I deduced that the "water in cat" was the letter "C" (sea), but hadn't realized "T" was "tea" -- I was thinking a lowercase "t" looked like a glass/drink of some sort. Ha ha.

I did read a review from somebody saying they [i]did[/i] solve this (I've not been reading reviews until I've done my own), and it involved Googling "Royal Water." So maybe the answer is online.[/spoiler][/quote]

[spoiler]I haven't played this game, but I'm pretty sure the answer you're looking for is <a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_regia">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_regia</a>.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=816&start=20#p4162
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp 2009 Playlist and Spoiler-Protected Comments
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-07 12:48:07

[quote="emshort (re: The Grand Quest)"][spoiler]I haven't played this game, but I'm pretty sure the answer you're looking for is <a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_regia">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_regia</a>.[/spoiler][/quote]
[spoiler]Yep, that fits!

So I probably overstated things when I said nobody would be able to solve it. The 1st and 3rd letters seem obvious enough, the 4th and 5th can be deduced if you're in the right frame of mind, and the 2nd -- Royal Water -- might be obvious to some or at least guessable based on what appears to be a missing vowel in the resulting word.

I guess I'm just not a fan of riddles. I was stumped by riddles in the game I beta-tested this year as well. I think puzzles in IF work best when what they are (puzzles) is less obvious. In this case, it might have been more fun to have some story-based reason for figuring out each letter individually (where the individual components of the riddle present themselves as some object-manipulation puzzle rather than a riddle), and then piece it all together at the end.

It's just more interesting to find a large bucket, fill it with rocks so that a pulley system is lowered, stand on the other end to reach a switch, use a long pole to grab at something that opens up elsewhere in the room (but only there while the switch is flipped, which un-flips if you get off the contraption), and so on. Just a random example. It would feel like you're doing something and accomplishing something. Letting the protagonist be active, rather than being presented with a brain-bender you have to just solve, is just more interesting and feels like solving the game, rather than solving a puzzle that you know in advance is a puzzle.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=817&start=0#p4163
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Renee's IFComp '09 Playlist and Reviews
User: RChoba / DateTime: 2009-10-07 13:08:48

[size=150][b]Condemned[/b][/size]

With a title like that, I guess I shouldn't be expecting rainbows and kittens and such. Which is too bad, as I like rainbows and kittens and such.

[spoiler]Soon into the game I find I am wearing a gag. One that I can't remove, even though I tied it myself. In a few turns, I die. I see how this game is going to be.

For the most part, the writing here is very good, at least in the sense that it creates a real mood and feeling of foreboding. I did run into a few oddities, like the message "You can't talk to the (Hunting-for-Sister)." Said sister also doesn't really talk like an 8-year old, and she wears a tied-eyed shirt.

But it must say something good for the game that in a short amount of time I cared about the characters enough to not want to see things end badly for them. I mean, I'm playing a poor kid with a ratty bike, a messed-up mom, a wicked stepfather, and clothes that must be washed before school the next day. I'm obviously feeling guilty for something awful that happened, which I'm pretty sure spells doom for my kid sister.

Although the game seems technically sound, having the player repeatedly type a command like "wait", or even "talk to (someone)" is not really all that interactive. To be fair, the game did field my attempts at doing other things. But it was soon clear that I would have little control over what happened in the story. Which upset me, as I wanted to stop the train wreck of an ending I could just feel was coming. 

I got through the car ride with my "friends", which was really really awful, and I couldn't do anything about it. Then I was confronted with an empty cross and told that it made me feel uncomfortable and sick. A fair assessment. I decided the only way to get a happy ending was to quit the game, so I did.

Playing a game that wants me to literally crucify myself is not really my thing. The solid writing suffers from telling a story-on-rails, and a depressing one at that. If someone wants to tell me how it ends so I can be glad I didn't torment myself by finishing it, go ahead. Or maybe I should just make up an ending for it myself. One where Jill gets a kitten and sees a rainbow. Yeah.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=817&start=0#p4164
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Renee's IFComp '09 Playlist and Reviews
User: RChoba / DateTime: 2009-10-07 13:24:42

[size=150][b]Yon Astounding Castle! of some sort[/b][/size]

Me thinketh this is yon old-school adventure of some sort.

[spoiler]Hey! How did the author get Stephen Hawking to read the intro?

The good: there's a squirrel. And some decent puzzles. And a Book of Wisdom that gives appropriate hints. 

The bad: all the ye-ing and yon-ing and -eth-ing started to wear on me quickly, and made figuring out what I had to do unnecessarily difficult.

The really good: when you wanteth to win, you can typeth "win". Which I did after a while, becoming a stamp licker with a shrine devoted to my one treasure. I was content with that. 

The game never quite went from amusing to all out funny for me. And I guess I'm just not much of a quest-y type of person. But if you are into this style, there seems to be a decent solve-some-puzzles, beat-the-wizard sort of game here.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=817&start=0#p4165
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Renee's IFComp '09 Playlist and Reviews
User: RChoba / DateTime: 2009-10-07 13:48:09

[size=150][b]The Grand Quest[/b][/size]

First two space games in a row, then two puzzly quest games? You're failing me, randomized game list.

[spoiler]The game tells me I don't feel like leaving yet. But I actually kinda do. (Grumble.)

Instead of having an array of puzzles for you to solve at your leisure, this game presents you with one puzzle, one room at a time. (While teasing you with things that look like you could sit on them. But you can't.) For the most part, these puzzles are the sort where you need outside information to solve them. Like, from the walkthrough. Even with the walkthrough, the puzzle with the cards is beyond me. Fortunately, I have been taught a magic word which lets me escape. (And no, it's not quit.) Typing this word, however, tells me there is no way back in. Oh, well.

May be fun for folks that are really into solving logic puzzles. But I didn't like how linear and disconnected to the overall goal the puzzles were.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=816&start=20#p4166
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp 2009 Playlist and Spoiler-Protected Comments
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-07 15:48:10

[size=150][b]Interface - By Ben Vegiard[/b][/size]

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
What happens when your favorite Uncle, a successful electronics company owner, has you try out his latest invention? Of course, something goes amiss and you must struggle to set it all right or suffer the consequences. Deliberately “Old School” romp.

[i](Score and review contained within expandable spoiler):[/i]
[spoiler][b]Preconceptions:[/b]
Sounds like a fun, puzzle-y romp. The blurb makes me think some sort of time travel might be involved (or maybe that’s a by-product of the blurb giving me mental images of [url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088763/][i]Back of the Future[/i][/url] – but with Doc Brown cast in the role of your favorite uncle and considered “successful” by others). I just hope the author is taking what was fun about “old school” adventures while adapting it to modern conveniences and player-friendly design. High hopes for this one.

[b]Review Summary:[/b]
Nothing new or remarkable here, but [i]Interface[/i] is a short, well-made puzzle game that lets players experience life as a poorly-made robot.

[b]Played:[/b] 10/7/2009 for 1 hour and 25 minutes.
[b]Score:[/b] 7 (Average)
[b]Transcript:[/b] [url=http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp09/interface.txt]here[/url]

The author’s concept from a quarter-century ago translates respectably into a playable and fun little romp. Trapped inside the mind of a robot (I’d say “body” but it’s your mind that moved, plus this way it makes not one but [i]two[/i] of my [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=815]predictions[/url] true), the protagonist must escape from an evil scientist’s house and if possible, transfer back into his (or her) original human body.

Okay, the scientist isn’t necessarily evil. Mischievous, maybe? Not even that – just careless and inconsiderate, as is the wont of any scientist capable of creating this kind of technology, I suppose. Anyway, the game has a few well-clued (if not over-clued) puzzles that integrate nicely with the story. Some alternate solutions for at least part of it exist, and with credits that list multiple beta-testers, it’s easy to see how the extra input has helped the game rise above its roots in juvenile fandom.

The implementation is quite good, barring a number of typos and minor flaws here and there. I’d like to think these were introduced very late in development, else any of the cited testers would likely have spotted them. However, this is a perfect example of how a fairly straightforward and ordinary game can be polished up to make a playable and fun experience recommendable to any fan of puzzle-y IF.

Although “7” translates to “Average” (because I’m using the [url=http://www.gameinformer.com/]Game Informer[/url] scale this year), it’s easily above average when compared to similar games by first-time authors. I enjoyed the puzzles, and only got stuck once (and on something that wasn’t unfair, so I fault myself for that). It doesn’t raise the bar or try new things, but it succeeds in being exactly what it claims.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=819&start=0#p4167
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: IF auction for charity
User: emshort / DateTime: 2009-10-07 20:22:46

Several IF-related goodies are being auctioned off to defray medical expenses for a friend of a friend; that includes custom IF offers from me and from Yoon Ha Lee, and source to some of my old games. There's more information here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://community.livejournal.com/care_faith_hope/tag/offered:+interactive+fiction">http://community.livejournal.com/care_f ... ve+fiction</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=817&start=0#p4168
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Renee's IFComp '09 Playlist and Reviews
User: RChoba / DateTime: 2009-10-08 09:35:51

[size=150][b]The Hangover[/b][/size]

Despite what the blurb says, this is not really the story of me. Because I don't get drunk and wind up married to some strange women. And if I did, my first thought would not be changing the name on my debit card. But we'll let that pass.

[spoiler]I'm going to be as nice about this as I can. This game is really not good. It's not good for many reasons. 

The myriad of spelling, grammar, and capitalization errors sure don't help. There's your instead of you're, a women on my couch, no one listening to my rabblings, a character that may be Liam or Liel (depending on which part of the room description you believe), and people wearing suites.

If you can ignore all that, there's still some major issues with things not really working well in the game. Like putting on your robe only to read that it's still on the floor, or finding that nothing's for sale in any of the stores, or discovering some money only to find it cannot be called money, or dollar, or bill, but only two dollar bill, which is not fun to repeatedly type.

And, finally, unforgivably, the walkthrough doesn't work. For example, it tells me to put things in my robe, but then I find they are all too big. (What kind of giant toothbrush am I using?) There's also a puzzle in which I must give my mail to a secretary in order to get a form. I give the mail (I can't give the mail to the secretary, but I can give the secretary the mail), I get points for this, but I sure don't get a form. And then I'm sunk. 

This game is broken. Beyond repair.

(And, btw, am I some really progressive male that I am changing my name after getting married? And also, where is this bank that sends me a letter the very morning after I say my drunken wedding vows? That's some good customer service.)[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=817&start=10#p4169
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Renee's IFComp '09 Playlist and Reviews
User: RChoba / DateTime: 2009-10-08 09:58:21

[size=150][b]Interface[/b][/size]

Time for a deliberately old school romp.

[spoiler]As soon as I see that my Uncle's name is Floyd, I think I am dealing with an Infocom fan. The about text verifies this. And the 1984 version of me understands, and doesn't mind at all.

Although the premise is a bit silly (your uncle letting his assistant put your mind in the body of a robot) I found the game to be pretty fun. There's an area to explore and puzzles to solve. Things are described and implemented in an understandable way. There's even a giant machine which you can figure out how to use just by being logical! (As in, no millions of mind-boggling buttons and dials.) And if you get stuck, there are some invisiclue-style hints to (maybe) help you out.

The game went pretty quickly, and I was able to win with 70 points (how do I get the other 20? Does it have something to do with the mysterious property tage, or is that like the fromitz board I never found a use for in Stationfall?) Overall I liked the game and its author's nostalgia for old text adventures. Now that he's achieved the vision his 14-year-old self wanted, I would like to see what else he can do.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=816&start=20#p4170
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp 2009 Playlist and Spoiler-Protected Comments
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-08 11:31:51

[size=150][b]Star Hunter - By Chris Kenworthy[/b][/size]

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
Explore amazing ruins. Seek out mysterious treasures. Risk all you own in trade at the Android Bazaar - to find the priceless lying Bear of Deneb.

[i](Score and review contained within expandable spoiler):[/i]
[spoiler][b]Preconceptions:[/b]
I forgot to write this prior to playing. I suppose it sounded like a game that’s right up my alley, in terms of epic space opera and 80’s-style cheesy b-movie sci-fi.

[b]Review Summary:[/b]
A lengthy, generic collection and trading quest set to a sci-fi backdrop, with numerous ways to make the game unknowingly unwinnable. It requires some insight that only the author himself has – or the walkthrough – to successfully reach the end.

[b]Played:[/b] 10/7/2009 and 10/8/2009 for 2 hours and 15 minutes.
[b]Score:[/b] 4 (Bad)
[b]Transcript:[/b] [url=http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp09/hunter.txt]here[/url]

[i]Star Hunter[/i] puts the generic fantasy object collection quest in a sci-fi setting, but its only distinguishing factor is how much effort the author has put into making sure that solving it unassisted is a feat of impossibility. Difficult is one thing. This is another.

Varied are the actions a player can take which put the game into an unwinnable state. It’s hard to know which instances are bugs (early in the game, for instance, the ship got stuck in hyperspace), and which are intentional (such as when the walkthrough – but not the game itself – warns that it’s possible to be stuck if you send the mine lift down without you). My first inclination was to use the walkthrough to un-stick myself, and I found that I’d made a bad trade at the Android Bazaar, which left me without the right chip or tape I’d need to reach the next world’s beam-down point. The game does absolutely nothing to prevent this, or even discourage it. Worse, nothing happens, leaving only the most pessimistic of players to deduce that they’ve probably exhausted whatever options might be available to make further progress possible.

The walkthrough shows that it’s possible to get more information from the various androids about the various items up for sale, but this wasn’t obvious to me until then, and it’s completely optional. I would expect the typical player to get stuck early on (even if not encountering any of the game-altering bugs, such as when the black android’s bowl of goodies completely vanished from the game), and the [i]atypical[/i] player to give up far before completing the game. It’s [i]very[/i] ambitious for an IFComp entry, where even a restart and a strictly-by-the-walkthrough play attempt will take thirty to forty five minutes.

Potential is there, sure. But at its heart, the game is little more than a collection quest. Find treasure to trade for different (I hesitate to say “better”) treasure, to reach new places, to find new thingies, to trade up again, and so forth. Exploration could be its own reward in a setup like this, but the locations aren’t very interactive (often existing with no purpose other than to provide extended geography, or to be home for an object that can be picked up), and generally without very vivid descriptions.

The underlying flaw here is that the player can find so many things (and red herrings seem to abound), and it’s not clear at all what might be important later, or what might be okay to trade. I found that putting everything I have on the table and then attempting to buy something from an android is a quick way to cheat the process (the android will pick what he wants as payment, if anything), but this leads to confusion and is a good way to lose an item that’s needed for purchasing something [i]more[/i] important from a [i]different[/i] android. And yes – that seems to leave you stuck, with no way to advance, yet still being allowed to roam around as though the possibility of figuring out what to do next was still an option.

One good thing about [i]Star Hunter[/i] is that it’s a reminder of all the things not to do in a work of interactive fiction. Many of these things, I’ve learned the hard way, yet it’s still good to reinforce it from time to time. When a series of actions must be repeated over and over (as is the case with setting a new course and beaming down to a new location in this game), I’m going to slap my own hand if I even [i]think[/i] about forcing the player to repeat that same series without some kind of short-cut (or even a re-design to put Transport and Navigation in the same room).

Another is that it [i]does[/i] have bits of well-done humor here and there. I remember smiling at a few parts, which served to raise it a notch above Totally Generic.

[i]Star Hunter[/i] is a tough game to score. I considered numbers in the 3 to 5 range, and at two hours (still busily keying in commands from the walkthrough at that point) rated it a “5.” That’s frozen as my vote, but on further consideration, I took off a point for the review score. The ending in no way justifies the work involved in playing the game itself, and so much here is just not implemented (such as, spoiler alert, being able to sit in the chair to find the big thing under the cushion that’s only identified if you [i]search[/i] the chair). A “4” according to [url=http://www.gameinformer.com/]Game Informer[/url] is “while some things may work as planned, the majority of this title either malfunctions to varying degrees or it is so dull that the game falls short as a whole.” That’s an apt summary of [i]Star Hunter[/i].

The game needed beta testers, but I’m not convinced it had any. This is a tricky thing, though, because there isn’t a whole lot of impact a beta tester could have had on a game like this. It could be more polished, and possibly without some of the game-killing bugs, but it would still be a too-long collection quest requiring that players have precognition or infinite patience to play. Many, many revisions would be required to morph [i]Star Hunter[/i] into a more player-friendly, playable experience. As it stands, I can’t recommend it outside the context of the IFComp.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=816&start=20#p4171
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp 2009 Playlist and Spoiler-Protected Comments
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-08 12:18:04

[size=150][b]Resonance - By Matt Scarpino[/b][/size]

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
None provided.

I'm going to go ahead and post my thoughts on Matt Scarpino's [i]Resonance[/i]. This is a game I had an opportunity to play and test prior to the competition, and so this is just a collection of thoughts and opinions rather than a review.

Wait... what did I just say?

[spoiler][b]Preconceptions:[/b]
N/A. I beta-tested this game.

[b]Played:[/b] N/A.
[b]Score:[/b] N/A.
[b]Transcript:[/b] N/A.

No review here; just a few comments.

I’m impressed by the effort Matt has put into his first game. It manages to avoid the “my first game” look and feel that typically plagues the work of newcomers to the form. Part of this may be due to beta-testing already done before I was involved, and if so, kudos to Katzy! Regardless, good job Matt!

My biggest reservations about [i]Resonance[/i] were, unfortunately, things that aren’t easily changed (especially so close to the submission deadline). If I had been playing for the first time, as a competition judge or as a peer with an eye on the Miss Congeniality vote, these are a few things I probably would have noted:

[b]*[/b] Movement between cars and buildings always felt kind of clunky in the beta. Matt explained a [i]right[/i] way of doing it in the instructions included under [b]>about[/b], but I worry that many players won’t check it for fear of spoilers. It seemed that putting the buildings in a cardinal direction – or even removing the story point that required using a car at all – might have helped.

[b]*[/b] At one point it is (or was) possible to get stuck answering a series of three riddles. [i]Stuck[/i] may be too strong a word, given that built-in hints will do the trick, but some players may choose to tough it out for too long and then dock the game because hints were the only way out. Just before the competition started, I believe Matt was able to improve this, but I haven’t gone back through to see how well the changes work.

[b]*[/b] Players may wonder whether the story is supposed to be taken seriously or not. It’s somewhere between believably restrained and over-the-top (aside from the path of the “dancing man,” which few – if any – players are likely to find without the walkthrough).

[b]*[/b] The protagonist’s brother, Steve, behaves like a tutorial (and perhaps as a voice for the game) through parts of the beginning, and I thought there might be a way to integrate this into the gameplay a little more.

[b]*[/b] Unless it differs in the final version, beating the evil genius involves entering his office and talking to him. No endgame puzzle; nothing more to solve. It seemed anticlimactic. I was happy with how the ending itself was improved in later betas, and it’s possible that the work leading up to this will make up for the lack of interaction in the final confrontation with the bad guy.

[b]*[/b] Even though conversation was simplified to just a single word (“talk” or “t”), I found times when it seemed more intuitive to actually specify the name of the person (for example, [b]>talk to steve[/b] in the presence of others), but the game didn’t support this. I thought it would have been easy to support both ways (the original non-person version would make an assumption, as intended), and wonder how the single-word version alone will work out for judges.

[b]*[/b] The story – the whole setup, really – just has a “been there, done that” kind of feel to it. I can’t point to specific examples, but I worry that more experienced players are going to find it a little too generic. It’s always hard for me to objectively judge the quality of a game when I’ve played a buggier, earlier version of it, and this year I’m not going to try. 

I hope [i]Resonance[/i] is well-received by judges and finds a place in the upper rankings, but I have a feeling I probably wasn’t able to help soon enough or thoroughly enough to have a large enough impact in areas where it matters – the story, the overall construction and navigation, and so forth. Still, I have a feeling it’s going to rank between 5th and 8th, given that there are 24 contenders this year, and that’s not bad.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=816&start=20#p4172
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp 2009 Playlist and Spoiler-Protected Comments
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-08 16:59:34

[size=150][b]Condemned - By a Delusioned Teenager[/b][/size]

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
None provided.

[i](Score and review contained with expandable spoiler):[/i]
[spoiler][b]Preconceptions:[/b]
Oh, man. I should have left well enough alone. Getting inspiration from what some other judges are doing, I decided to check the credits/about text first, to see if any beta-testers were listed – not because I intend to skip untested games as a matter of policy, but just as a curiosity. The author’s email address, while hip-ified, leads me to believe he’s the same author who entered with some very strange but strangely compelling entries twice before. I would have liked to have known if I’d have guessed it just by playing, but now I’ll never know for sure.

[b]Review Summary:[/b]
Dark, introspective and frequently uncomfortable, [i]Condemned[/i] is a memorable and well-coded game of a style far removed from lighter, more common “text adventure” fare. Long non-interactive bits may be a turn-off for many, but the story and the vivid way in which it’s told go a long ways in making up for it.

[b]Played:[/b] 10/8/2009 for 2 hours and 55 minutes.
[b]Score:[/b] 8 (Very Good)
[b]Transcript:[/b] [url=http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp09/condemned.txt]here[/url]

I don’t think I would have guessed. Later sections are reminiscent of the author’s previous works, but not to the extent that I would have placed it.

Dark themes and troubling scenes are at work in [i]Condemned[/i]. An early scene manages to convey a real sense of suspense and dread; a later one, sadness and regret. Mixed in are long runs of non-interactivity (it becomes more and more on-rails as the story progresses), and some really troubling imagery that will make many players wish to be any other PC but this one.

The first half feels more polished and restrained than the second, although all of it shows a more experienced command of IF authorship. Most scenery is implemented at least for examination, and the author has also accommodated a satisfying number of recognized (but optional) actions as well. What few puzzles there are seem simple and solvable, never really getting in the way of the story. If anything, I might have liked a few more puzzles or at least ways to interact, as a good portion of the game involves either repeat-talking or repeat-waiting. Being able to [i]influence[/i] the story is probably a wish most players will have as well, but sadly, events must unfold as ordained.

I saw no mention of beta-testers (and indeed, there are a few small problems here and there – typically typos), but it [i]feels[/i] tested nonetheless.

Little about the story itself needs said in this review, but I will say that it leaves the happy-fun comfort zone to which many players (including myself) are probably more accustomed and comfortable with. It has an almost autobiographical feel to it, or an insider’s perspective on the themes involved -- which I truly hope is not the case. It blends very believable real bits with symbolism. It’s surreal yet immersive most of the time, and conveys a real sense that the author takes the story just as seriously as he intends that players should.

In later segments, though, it does dip towards inadvertent, uneasy, over-the-top cheesiness. It also goes on longer than might be expected, seemingly dragging the story out beyond the point where most real emotion has already been elicited from the player. In the author’s earlier games, reading oddly-worded descriptions and interactions was a source of accidental amusement, and there is far less of that here. Some of the dialogue shows hints of the same sort of pattern, and some of the vivid but oddly-constructed passages come close to breaking the overall effect, but on the whole the author shows far more restraint this time around. The story is helped by these occasional unusual turns of phrase, rather than being sabotaged by them as may have been the case in the author’s prior work.

It’s not a game for youngsters, and I can’t speak as to how well the surreal aspects of the story speak for the angst of a traumatized teenager, but I can appreciate the work that has gone into [i]Condemned[/i]. It gives a person much to mull over well after the ending (which lends itself to discussion as well), and that’s something that puts a game like this in a class apart from tamer fare. As uncomfortable as parts of this game may be, I enjoyed it for giving a perspective far removed from my own, and I recommend it especially to anybody with an inclination towards IF of a more introspective and darker nature.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=816&start=20#p4173
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp 2009 Playlist and Spoiler-Protected Comments
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2009-10-08 17:07:11

[quote]As long as I’m doling out advice, I’d suggest to the author (and anybody else thinking of writing a game that’s just a series of puzzle/riddle rooms), don’t.[/quote]

I'm not listening.  [emote]8-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=816&start=20#p4174
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp 2009 Playlist and Spoiler-Protected Comments
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-08 17:24:07

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote]As long as I’m doling out advice, I’d suggest to the author (and anybody else thinking of writing a game that’s just a series of puzzle/riddle rooms), don’t.[/quote]
I'm not listening.  [emote]8-)[/emote][/quote]
Ha ha.
[spoiler]Yeah, but you're the guy who not only [i]solved[/i] what I felt was the biggest offender at work in that particular game -- enjoyed it, even -- you also worked out the math and distilled the logic behind the puzzle! In all liklihood, there would be no talking you out of [i]anything[/i], no matter how mentally unprepared some of us might be to play through the result. [emote]:)[/emote][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=816&start=20#p4175
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp 2009 Playlist and Spoiler-Protected Comments
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2009-10-08 18:03:51

[spoiler]You know that I'm actually working on a game that is nothing but a series of puzzles? [emote]:)[/emote] Its called [i]The Art of Fugue[/i], and it's in open alpha.

Luckily, the game does not involve linear algebra.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=816&start=20#p4176
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp 2009 Playlist and Spoiler-Protected Comments
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-08 18:12:03

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][spoiler]You know that I'm actually working on a game that is nothing but a series of puzzles? [emote]:)[/emote] Its called [i]The Art of Fugue[/i], and it's in open alpha.

Luckily, the game does not involve linear algebra.[/spoiler][/quote]
Nope! I didn't. But good luck!! [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=817&start=10#p4177
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Renee's IFComp '09 Playlist and Reviews
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-10-09 06:20:57

[quote="RChoba (re: Interface)"][size=150][b]Interface[/b][/size]
[spoiler]I was able to win with 70 points (how do I get the other 20? Does it have something to do with the mysterious property tage, or is that like the fromitz board I never found a use for in Stationfall?)[/spoiler][/quote]
[spoiler]To get the full score, you have to get into the front yard through the front door instead of the garage. Also, I'm pretty sure "property tage" is a typo for "property tags" (they're mentioned in the room description).[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=817&start=10#p4178
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Renee's IFComp '09 Playlist and Reviews
User: RChoba / DateTime: 2009-10-09 09:30:41

[quote="Emerald"][quote="RChoba (re: Interface)"][size=150][b]Interface[/b][/size]
[spoiler]I was able to win with 70 points (how do I get the other 20? Does it have something to do with the mysterious property tage, or is that like the fromitz board I never found a use for in Stationfall?)[/spoiler][/quote]
[spoiler]To get the full score, you have to get into the front yard through the front door instead of the garage. Also, I'm pretty sure "property tage" is a typo for "property tags" (they're mentioned in the room description).[/spoiler][/quote]
[spoiler]That's interesting, because I did use the front door and not the garage. Property tage or property tags, I'm still not sure what it's/they're doing there. [emote]:-)[/emote][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=817&start=10#p4179
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Renee's IFComp '09 Playlist and Reviews
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-10-09 10:27:26

[quote="RChoba"][quote="Emerald"][quote="RChoba (re: Interface)"][size=150][b]Interface[/b][/size]
[spoiler]I was able to win with 70 points (how do I get the other 20? Does it have something to do with the mysterious property tage, or is that like the fromitz board I never found a use for in Stationfall?)[/spoiler][/quote]
[spoiler]To get the full score, you have to get into the front yard through the front door instead of the garage. Also, I'm pretty sure "property tage" is a typo for "property tags" (they're mentioned in the room description).[/spoiler][/quote]
[spoiler]That's interesting, because I did use the front door and not the garage. Property tage or property tags, I'm still not sure what it's/they're doing there. [emote]:-)[/emote][/spoiler][/quote]
[spoiler]Then I don't know how you managed to avoid getting full score. Maybe there are more alternative puzzle solutions than I realise.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=816&start=30#p4180
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp 2009 Playlist and Spoiler-Protected Comments
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-09 14:42:29

[size=150][b]Eruption - A tectonic excitement By Richard Bos[/b][/size]

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
You have just woken up, in a cave, with a hangover, and something is rumbling. And it isn't your stomach.

[i](Score and review contained within expandable spoiler):[/i]
[spoiler][b]Preconceptions:[/b]
Aside from two mini-comp entries (says [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/]ifwiki.org[/url]) back in 2000 (which I haven’t played), it doesn’t appear that Richard Bos has done much IF authorship. The name is very familiar, though. A regular in the IF newsgroups, I think (but I can’t check past posts at the moment). Something tugs on my memory that maybe Richard is one of the more outspoken posters, with some strong opinions that sometimes do but often don’t coincide with whatever topic he’s responding to. This is all very vague, though, and since I can’t remember any topics of mutual participation, my guess is he wouldn’t know me either. As for the game, not much comes to me just from the title and the blub. Seems like it might be a little generic, but with flavor.

[b]Review Summary:[/b]
A very short game set on a now-deserted island; well-coded and amply polished, but lacking in substance and ambition.

[b]Played:[/b] 10/9/2009 for 35 minutes.
[b]Score:[/b] 6 (Limited Appeal)
[b]Transcript:[/b] [url=http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp09/eruption.txt]here[/url]

The game’s [b]>about[/b] text helps explain the series of events and the reasons behind Richard’s submission in this year’s Interactive Fiction Competition. In part, with so many bad games showing up every year, a very short but well-polished and competently-coded game stands to rank highly, even if it’s not a stand-out work, lacks innovation, and features only the simplest of stories.

It’s an interesting point, and one I think Richard is very likely to prove. [i]Eruption[/i] is perfectly fine. It’s focused and well-implemented. It’s the kind of game new authors should take a cue from: not an expansive map, a few easy one- or two-part puzzles, no outmoded design annoyances, attention to detail, no grand ambitions in terms of story or design. It stays centered on a small, manageable game world, allowing the author to implement more optional actions and responses to various verb/noun combinations that usually go missing in more ambitious games. Most would-be IF authors (or game designers) would be wise to start by coding an [i]Eruption[/i] before planning that epic ten-hour opus.

[i]Eruption[/i] is the tale of a man – presumably a man, but I suppose it isn’t said – with a hangover and the inevitable touch of amnesia that goes along with it, on an island, with a growing sense of concern. It’s an easy story to figure out, even before things in the game begin to click for the protagonist. It’s very short, very easy (aside from some possible confusion with the interconnections between locations), and nicely polished. The writing isn’t overly verbose, yet it paints a believable picture of this small island in the tropics.

It’s difficult not to rank it a “7” (average – particularly in terms of it being a decent game from beginning to end, and that it’s nothing even casual players haven’t seen before), but it’s so short and so simple (even if what’s here [i]is[/i] expertly done) that a “6” seems more applicable. By the scale I’m using, this means “limited appeal" ([i]“although there may be fans of games receiving this score, many will be left yearning for a more rewarding game experience.”[/i] – stolen from [url=http://www.gameinformer.com/]Game Informer[/url]). Although many IFComp judges are by now [i]accustomed[/i] to poor and mediocre games outnumbering the worthwhile and exceptional ones, I think even the author would agree that [i]Eruption[/i] is only a snack-sized diversion en route to more substantial works.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=816&start=30#p4181
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp 2009 Playlist and Spoiler-Protected Comments
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-09 21:06:38

[size=150][b]Beta Tester - By Darren Ingram[/b][/size]

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
The goal is discovery. The fun is walking around and doing and seeing, with an emphasis on games and puzzles.

[i](Score and review contained within expandable spoiler):[/i]
[spoiler][b]Preconceptions:[/b]
Hmm. Blurb isn’t very exciting or imaginative. Also, my usual routine of playing, then reviewing, [i]then[/i] reading other reviews has led to my seeing unfortunate (and extremely unfavorable) mentions of this game in the review of [i]another[/i] game, over at Conrad Cook’s blog. Granted, Conrad’s evaluation of the game I [i]intended[/i] to read about is far from in line with my own, so there may be good to come of [i]Beta-Tester[/i] too. I guess the safer thing for me would be to finish the Comp before reading [i]any[/i] comp chatter... since I can’t “un-see” other people’s opinions, and I can’t keep from adjusting my own expectations as a result. [b]:([/b]

[b]Review Summary:[/b]
A trek through a virtual reality of disjointed scenes and slapstick humor, [i]Beta Tester[/i] succeeds in some ways but fails in others. Not unreservedly recommendable, but it does have enough “good” in it to entertain.

[b]Played:[/b] 10/9/2009 for 1 hour and 20 minutes.
[b]Score:[/b] 5 (Passable)
[b]Transcript:[/b] [url=http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp09/beta.txt]here[/url]

I can’t know this for sure, but I’m reasonably certain [i]Beta Tester[/i] isn’t a joke entry. It’s a game [i]with jokes[/i], but that’s not the same thing. Every part of the game shows obvious effort, and not of the “I’m going to make these poor judging fools suffer” variety. Unless I’m way off the mark – admittedly, a possibility no matter the situation – the author is attempting to entertain his audience, not punish us.

I’m no stranger to [url=http://www.sidneymerk.com/lunatix.shtml]games that use unreal elements to justify the coding of any mismatched whim that comes to mind[/url], and that seems to be what Darren has done in [i]Beta Tester[/i]. It’s slapstick and zaniness and goofball comedy that may be drawing its inspiration from Monty Python and others. So, through the entirety of [i]Beta Tester[/i] I couldn’t help but ponder the question, “why isn’t this working more effectively here?” Was it because this sort of humor just doesn’t translate well into interactive fiction? Was it the author’s delivery, or the ever-present knowledge that this is the work of a hobbyist? Have I just outgrown this sort of thing, or (shudder) developed a calloused sense of humor?

A large part of this may just be something a little more obvious. Absurd humor is at its best when it’s unexpected, placed within an otherwise ordinary setting. This is something of which Monty Python – based on my very-far-from-expert knowledge of their sketch comedy – seemed to excel. When the whole game is a mishmash of random and purposely-unreal themes, the humor just doesn’t stand out as much.

That’s not to say [i]Beta Tester[/i] doesn’t have its moments. The good parts just seem too familiar, as if I’ve heard the same jokes or seen the same slapstick. The game itself lacks focus, meandering from scene to disconnected scene with no apparent purpose – no plot, but plenty of self-referential bits. It tends to overuse the Super Duper Proper Naming Gimmick, and the dramatic “pause” – used everywhere – gets annoying as early as the opening scene.

The first puzzle – the one required just to progress further into the game – is more complicated and obscure than those that follow, but in the end I was pleased with how almost everything was solvable without hints. The exception, for me, was one point where “asking” is necessary, even though “talk to” had been completely unsupported. By then, I had the impression that the only communication I could instigate with an NPC involved automatic events based on entering the room, sitting down, or taking some other text-triggering action.

The implementation isn’t perfect. It’s not even great. But neither is it bad, on the whole. Aside from some blank responses and quite a few missed opportunities to support optional (but often obvious) actions, it all seemed solid enough not to draw too much attention to the rough parts.

The game does open up into the “walking around and doing and seeing” promised by the blurb, although the first parts make that seem like an empty promise. A two-player dice game called “First To 100” is something I had never seen before. I don’t know if it’s the author’s own invention or if he found it elsewhere ([url=http://www.google.com/]Google[/url] brings up unrelated results), but it was pretty clever nonetheless. It’s part luck, part guts, and easy to learn. It felt pretty clunky as implemented in the game (maybe this is something that needs a more graphical approach), but the game itself could be adapted for more than two participants, and perhaps enjoyed more with real dice. The author’s variation on Rock Paper Scissors was interesting too, but at the core, unchanged. I kept wishing for Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock (chuckle if you get that).

Lacking a story (this is just a setting used as a vehicle for the things the author himself finds humorous), and lacking an ending (although that’s not strictly true, since after a point it’s up to the player to trigger the ending, wrapping things up as though a typical game’s final goal had been met), it’s not easily recommendable. But if you’re in a wacky, laugh-for-any-reason kind of mood, and if you just want to tinker around in a disjointed world of nonsense, give [i]Beta Tester[/i] a go. There are worse ways to kill an hour.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=820&start=0#p4182
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: IFComp Game Names - Merged!
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-11 10:36:00

Nitku, at his blog, put up an IFComp 2008 and 2009 edition of the random game name generator that David Fisher did. I found this humerous and it hasn't already been mentioned here.

You can reload over and over for different results. It looks like it mixes an IFComp title (first part or last part) with the title of some existing work of IF. Here are a few that were interesting enough for me to keep!

The Ultimate Elf
Rybread Celsius Can't Find Nightfall
Opening Time!
Mini-Adventure With Death
The Absolute Worst IF Demo
LAIR of the Robots
Everybody Stranded
Piracy Railroad
Fun and Shoes
Psycho Time!
Conan Afflicted
Amnesia Challenge
Beaten Space
Dark Grey
Frankenstein's Grand Quest
Moist In Space
The Grand Nightmare
Batman!! Condemned
And Then Out
Eruption Gals
The Grand Day I mauled ...

And finally:

Snowquest of the Lambs

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=820&start=0#p4183
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp Game Names - Merged!
User: Mr Lizard / DateTime: 2009-10-11 11:48:40

zork, with Trolls

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=820&start=0#p4184
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp Game Names - Merged!
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2009-10-12 10:57:22

I liked [b]Transylvania III: Vanquish the Interface[/b].

Sounds like one heck of a postmodern game!

By the way, this is the link: [url]http://nitku.net/if/namegenerator/[/url].

Oh, and I'd love to play the Platonic/gnostic adventure called [b]Grounded in Time[/b].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=817&start=10#p4185
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Renee's IFComp '09 Playlist and Reviews
User: RobMaule / DateTime: 2009-10-12 11:22:43

[quote="RChoba"][size=150][b]Interface[/b][/size]
[spoiler]The game went pretty quickly, and I was able to win with 70 points (how do I get the other 20?[/spoiler][/quote]
[spoiler]You get, I believe, another 5 points for opening the garage door.  And it's impossible, as far as I can tell, to get the full score because leaving the driveway gives you 15 points and ends the game.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=820&start=0#p4186
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp Game Names - Merged!
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-10-12 18:05:07

[quote="Merk"]Mini-Adventure With Death[/quote]
Pretty sure I've already made this game.

[quote="Merk"]Eruption Gals[/quote]
An exciting journey to the heart of a volcano with an all-female team of geologists.

Or just AIF.

EDIT:  I got: [b]Are you Too Chicken to Operate![/b]  Which sounds like a nervewracking game of one-upmanship between DIY medical practitioners.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=820&start=0#p4187
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp Game Names - Merged!
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-12 18:44:47

I had to force myself to stop, but here are a few more that caught my eye!

Galatea In Space
Dangerous Day Out
Beneath: a Cave 
Colossal Adventure- Jewels of some sort
Outside Quest
Alien Legs
The Believable Underground Crypt
Murder Quest 
The Duel of the Alchemists
Eric the Grey
Leatherworld Hangover
1-2-3... Odyssey
A Date With the Mole Man

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=817&start=10#p4188
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Renee's IFComp '09 Playlist and Reviews
User: RChoba / DateTime: 2009-10-12 19:14:16

[size=150][b]Spelunker's Quest & zork, buried chaos[/b][/size]

Two different games. One giant cave?

[spoiler]These two games have already merged in my memory. They both have you exploring a cave and trying to find your way out, with a lot of unhelpful descriptions (you see nothing special about the whatever) along the way.

Spelunker's Quest may be slightly better, although it had a lot of annoying (to me) sudden death moves. But zork, buried chaos had more typos, and I got stuck halfway down a slide by an obstruction which I could not further examine for the life of me. 

The fact that people are still writing games like these tells me there must be some audience for them. But it's not me, sorry.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=820&start=0#p4189
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp Game Names - Merged!
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-12 20:05:48

Oooh, one more, because this would make a cool game. [emote]:)[/emote]

A Martian in Scotland

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=820&start=0#p4190
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp Game Names - Merged!
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2009-10-13 04:01:36

[quote="Merk"]1-2-3... Odyssey[/quote]
I love it.

They should make a competition out of this name generator. "Speed-IF name generator", or something.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=820&start=0#p4191
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp Game Names - Merged!
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2009-10-13 05:28:19

Why does this remain so much fun?

[b]Germania Mercy[/b]

Don't count on it.

[b]Agency and the Troll[/b]

To be published in the [i]Subterranean Journal of Philosophy[/i].

[b]Don't Fire Until You See The Second Pit[/b]

An excercise in restraint.

[b]Fail-Safe Zauberland[/b]

A themepark with hubris.

[b]Madam Fifi's Whorehouse Zzzzz[/b]

Not a lot of customers, apparently. Or not a lot of whores.

[b]Hey, I'm Mortality[/b]

Play [i]Planescape: Torment[/i] from a different perspective.

[b]Fritz' Leatherworld[/b]

He would have to be called Fritz, wouldn't he? Anyone seen the new Rammstein clip already? "I can't get laid in Germany!"

[b]Leopold the Dungeonkeeper[/b]

He was called Fritz too, but he changed his name.

[b]Death 1942[/b]

Subtitle: "The duel in the snow."

[b]Christian Text Adventure Kittens[/b]

> eat mouse
I don't think the mouse would care for that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=820&start=0#p4192
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp Game Names - Merged!
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-10-13 13:37:17

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]They should make a competition out of this name generator. "Speed-IF name generator", or something.[/quote]
TIGSource did have a competition for the video game name generator - the entrants are [url=http://www.tigsource.com/features/vgng/]here[/url], although none of them are parser-based IF (We Love Mind Control Rocket comes close).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=820&start=0#p4193
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp Game Names - Merged!
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2009-10-13 15:28:49

[b]Jobs Revenge[/b]

God had better watch out. (Please ignore the missing apostrophe.)

[b]Frankenstein's Hobbit[/b]

'Cause you have to start small.

[b]Sharing All The Way Book III: Askin[/b]

They don't do answerin until book VII.

[b]Attack of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy[/b]

Panic.

[b]Me Pumping![/b]

One for the "real amateurs" channel.


I really [i]must[/i] stop now. Right. Stop. Now.

Just one more refresh...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=820&start=10#p4194
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp Game Names - Merged!
User: Mr Lizard / DateTime: 2009-10-13 16:03:59

This is rather addictive, isn't it?

Gerbil Casebook of Sherlock Holmes
Hampstead Godzilla: The True Story
Dracula of Nazareth
Drive-In Puzzle Box
Escape from Things
Murder Daughter

(I'm having to check all of these against IFDB to make sure they're not real titles. Especially the last one. Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction and there are some deranged geniuses out there.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=820&start=10#p4195
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp Game Names - Merged!
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-13 21:17:27

You must be doing the general IF ones. I like the links for IFComp 2008 and 2009. [emote]:)[/emote]

[b]Aunt Velma's Coming to in the Snow[/b]
...and once she's awake, she's gonna notice that wicked frostbite...

[b]Pirating Quest[/b]
Surely this already exists...

[b]Dig Cave[/b]
An extreme landscaping sim.

[b]Screen the Verb[/b]
Because too many verbs have been prank-calling me.

[b]Nerd Waif[/b]
This speaks for itself.

[b]Art D's First Weapon[/b]
He was but a wee lad back then.

[b]Augmented Death[/b]
This is even [i]better[/i] than plain old death. Trust us!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=820&start=10#p4196
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp Game Names - Merged!
User: Mr Lizard / DateTime: 2009-10-14 15:00:35

[b]GATOR-ON: Friend of Marie Antoinette[/b]
A historical romance with a twist.

[b]Here Quest[/b]
(One of the shorter Quests.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=821&start=0#p4197
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 syntax with more than 9 indents
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-10-15 06:47:24

I use Inform 7 (5Z71), and write using the "pythonesque" style of tab-indented code (because unfortunately I find the "begin if/end if" style utterly incomprehensible and confusing).

I've been having a lot of trouble for some time now because Inform seems to refuse to compile any individual line of code that contains more than nine indentations when using the "pythonesque" writing style.  Until now, I've always found a way to break my code down into logically "simpler" units to avoid using more than nine indentations (even though the result is often so verbose that it's nearly impossible for me to read afterwards, and the time required to write or copy/paste line after line of mostly redundant code is very annoying).  However, I am currently working on some things that are just too complex to write without going beyond nine indentations.

Since the problem I've been having with Inform is in my opinion a very serious limitation to its practical functionality, I would have expected to see at least a few discussions of this issue in threads here (or at the 'raif' newsgroup).  However despite several searches, I haven't found any mention at all of the problem.  Since I can hardly be the first person who has ever written a semi-complex code-rule in Inform 7, I'm therefore thinking that perhaps I'm doing something wrong in my style of writing.  I'm hoping some of the experts here might either point out an error in my method, know of an undocumented feature or setting that will enable Inform to read lines of code that contain more than nine tabs, or otherwise have some suggestions for generally dealing with the problems I've been having.

In simple terms, my difficulties arise from Inform refusing to compile code in the format of the following example--in fact, the compile process stops almost instantly after pressing "Go" in a way which indicates to me the program isn't even trying to work things out.

[code]
The testarea is a room.

Condition1 is a kind of value.  The condition1s are aa, bb, cc, dd, ee, ff, gg, hh, ii, and jj.

A thing has condition1.  A thing is usually aa.

To say status for (item - a thing):
	if item is aa:
		say "A.";
	otherwise:
		if item is bb:
			say "B.";
		otherwise:
			if item is cc:
				say "C.";
			otherwise:
				if item is dd:
					say "D.";
				otherwise:
					if item is ee:
						say "E.";
					otherwise:
						if item is ff:
							say "F.";
						otherwise:
							if item is gg:
								say "G.";
							otherwise:
								if item is hh:
									say "H.";
								otherwise:
									if item is ii:
										say "I.";
									otherwise if item is jj:
										say "J.".

The description of the player is "[status for the player]".
[/code]

While attempting to compile the above code, Inform quickly spits out the following rather senseless error message:

"Problem:  The phrase or rule definition 'To say status for (item - a thing) is written using the 'colon and indentation' syntax for its 'if's, 'repeat's and 'while's', but that's only allowed if each phrase in the definition occurs on its own line.  So phrases like 'say "I.'", which follow directly on from the previous phrase, aren't allowed.".

The real problem, however, is that Inform 7 isn't able to read any particular line that has more than nine tabs (or at least it won't read such lines for me).  If the last lines of the above are changed to:

[code]
if item is hh:
	say "H.";
otherwise:
	say "Groovy.".
[/code]

there is no problem, since the lines "say 'H.'" and "say 'Groovy.'" are only indented by nine tabs.

Of course the above example is much ado about nothing, since it can be easily rewritten using only a few tabs:

[code]
To say status for (item - a thing):
 	if item is aa:
		say "A.";
	otherwise if item is bb:
		say "B.";
	otherwise if item is cc:
		say "C.";
	otherwise if item is dd:
		say "D.";
	otherwise if item is ee:
		say "E.";
	otherwise if item is ff:
		say "F.";
	otherwise if item is gg:
		say "G.";
	otherwise if item is hh:
		say "H.";
	otherwise if item is ii:
		say "I.";
	otherwise:
		say "J.".
[/code]

Or even in several other various ways that allow me to compile it to full functionality.

However I am frequently attempting to write code which is not nearly as simple as the above example.  If a given rule needs to consider a large enough number of factors, it either simply isn't possible to express with less than ten indentations, or becomes so artificially complex that it's nearly impossible to comprehend and debug after being written using less than ten indentations.

For example, here is the first section of something I was working on today (for a liquid/fluid system) that shows the trouble I'm having in more practical terms; it's definitely a bit cryptic without an explanation of all the variables and activities used, but generally demonstrates what I'm talking about:

[code]
Carry out an actor pouring:
	let currentcarrycapacity be the carrying capacity of the actor;
	now the carrying capacity of the actor is 100;
	if the noun is a notsource liquid and the second noun is a notsource liquid:
		if the liqsim of the noun is the liqsim of the second noun:
			if the noun is in a fluidworthy container (called pouredholder) and the second noun is in a fluidworthy container (called poureeholder):
				let noun2containercapacity be the maxvolume of the poureeholder minus the currentvolume of the poureeholder;
				if the liquidvolume of the noun is greater than noun2containercapacity or the liquidvolume of the noun is noun2containercapacity:
					decrease the liquidvolume of the noun by noun2containercapacity;
					increase the liquidvolume of the second noun by noun2containercapacity;
					if the liquidvolume of the noun is less than 1:
						fixdensity for the second noun;
						repeat with newhome running through things in the noun:
							move newhome to the actor;
							silently try the actor inserting newhome into the second noun;
							if newhome is not in the second noun:
								move newhome to the pouredholder;
								now newhome is wet;
								change the dampstoragevalue of newhome to the passonliquid of the noun;
								repeat with updatewetness running through things enclosed by newhome:
									unless updatewetness is in a closed fluidworthy container or updatewetness is incorporated by something in a closed fluidworthy container or updatewetness is incorporated by something that is incorporated by something in a closed fluidworthy container or updatewetness is incorporated by something that is incorporated by something that is incorporated by something in a closed fluidworthy container:
										now updatewetness is wet;
										change the dampstoragevalue of updatewetness to the passonliquid of the noun;
						remove the noun from play;
					fluidadjust pouredholder;
					fluidadjust poureeholder;
				if the liquidvolume of the noun is less than noun2containercapacity:

				[and so forth for dozens of lines]
[/code]

I don't especially want to discuss or debate the details of the above example (not because I'm particularly taciturn but rather because my point is I'm generally having problems with all kinds of code rather than just this one instance) other than to say that it won't compile for me only because the lines:

[code]
now updatewetness is wet;
change the dampstoragevalue of updatewetness to the passonliquid of the noun;
[/code]

are at the tenth level of indentation.

As I mentioned earlier, since I can hardly be the first person to ever write semi-complex code like the above in Inform 7, I suppose I must be doing something wrong--however, I don't understand what that may be, so hopefully someone will have some suggestions.

I certainly don't need dozens of indents, but I frequently find myself writing code that either would require indents in the ten to fifteen range, or would be much easier to conceptualize, write, and subsequently read if I could use ten to fifteen indents.  I'm not particularly enthusiastic about trying to learn the "begin if/end if" system, but if that's what it would take to make parts of my code compilable I'll try it.  However if I were to guess it seems sensible to assume that since the "begin if/end if" style also uses indentations, it would suffer from the same limitation as my current style.  On the other hand, since again however I can hardly be the first person to ever write code like the above, the fact must be that I am doing something wrong.

In short, I'm confused and not really able to continue my Inform work anymore without either a significant revision of my expectations about the complexity of my simulated world-model or a solution to this problem.  I would appreciate any guidance, and thanks in advance for any suggestions.


p.s.:  Sorry, I just tried copying/pasting some of the boxed text above and it seems I haven't used the board's "code posting" function properly as my tabs weren't preserved within the boxed sections.  In any case, it should be clear from the way the text is displayed where the tabs are supposed to be.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=816&start=30#p4198
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp 2009 Playlist and Spoiler-Protected Comments
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-15 09:27:03

If anybody's curious, I haven't been forgetting to update my checklist and post new reviews. I've just stalled out over the past few days. Part work, part Half-Life 2, part laziness. But I hope to get back into the swing of playing and reveiwing soon. I'd hate not to finish, especially with fewer entries this year.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=820&start=10#p4199
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp Game Names - Merged!
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2009-10-15 10:09:06

It's a new addiction.

[b]Pass the Holy Grail[/b]

Arthur's knights celebrating is not a pretty sight.

[b]Downtown Tokyo, Present Crack City[/b]

Get some free with your manga.

[b]Condemned for Spam[/b]

And you deserve it!

[b]Alcohol solves Snowquest[/b]

[spoiler]Ah, that's why the story didn't make sense to me when I played it sober![/spoiler]

[b]Eruption Kill Everything[/b]

When volcanos speak.

[b]Dig the Snow[/b]

Hey, that's a spoiler!

[b]Arnold the Adventurer Hunter[/b]

He has hated those bastards ever since one broke into his house and stole the family heirloom.

[b]Beta to the Ninth Power[/b]

In other words: bugfest.

[b]A Date With Nether Regions[/b]

Okay, [i]now[/i] it's time to stop.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=821&start=0#p4200
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 syntax with more than 9 indents
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-10-15 11:37:21

[quote="Endosphere"]Since I can hardly be the first person who has ever written a semi-complex code-rule in Inform 7, I'm therefore thinking that perhaps I'm doing something wrong in my style of writing.
...
I certainly don't need dozens of indents, but I frequently find myself writing code that either would require indents in the ten to fifteen range, or would be much easier to conceptualize, write, and subsequently read if I could use ten to fifteen indents.[/quote]This may in fact be a bug, but I would suggest that you reevaluate your approach. Obviously I can't tell you what programming practices are best for [i]you[/i] to "conceptualize, write, and subsequently read," but I can say that your posted code does appear to have several places where indentation can be reduced. Unfortunately, it's hard for me to give you a concrete example since you cut off the code block before any of the "otherwise" portions of the early conditionals. For example:[code]...
if the noun is in a fluidworthy container (called pouredholder) and the second noun is in a fluidworthy container (called poureeholder):
...[/code]What happens if both nouns aren't fluidworthy containers? If the action fails in some way this probably should have been in an initial check rule. If it partially succeeds in a way that requires a completely different set of code -- for example situations where you pour a gallon of water into a leaky half-gallon container and you want the leaky container to leak, but the original container to remain half full -- you could put that in a separate carry out rule, as in:[code]Carry out pouring (this is the pouring one fluidcontainer to another rule):
	 if the noun is in a fluidworthy container (called pouredholder) and the second noun is in a fluidworthy container (called poureeholder):
		...

Carry out pouring (this is the pouring one fluidcontainer to a nonfluidcontainer rule):
	...
[/code]If you need to do different calculations for determining the pouredholder and poureeholder which vary depending on the source or nature of the liquid, you could do that up front as action variables of the pouring action:[code]The pouring action has an object called the pouredholder.

Setting action variables for pouring:
	if the noun is in a fluidworthy container, now the pouredholder is the holder of the noun;
	...
[/code]
In short, there are usually lots of ways of breaking it up that don't involve redundant code (other than repeating the name of the rule in some cases) and in fact will reduce redundancy. I looked through an unpublished extension of mine which contains some pretty complex rules and conditions (over 50 rules and around 45 new phrases) and the the greatest indent depth I used was five (in two rules). The vast majority were in the 2 - 4 range. It may seem easier at first to have one huge nested block, but in my experience it's much harder to debug or alter later. Think of it this way, is it easier to have a nested conditional where the first branch is a dozen lines above the second branch, or to break it down?  [emote]:)[/emote]
 
If you like, you can send me your complete code and I can give you an example of how [i]I[/i] would reorganize it and a more detailed explanation of why. Then you can decide for yourself if that's a better approach for [i]you[/i]. I'll pm you w/ my email info.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=821&start=0#p4201
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 syntax with more than 9 indents
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-10-15 11:47:19

You should probably email Graham about this, as it appears to be a hard-coded limitation in the compiler. My guess is, nobody has yet tried using more than 9 levels of indentation, and for the reason Mike alluded to: Organizing the code is easier if it's done in a different manner, by calling separate functions for the various cases you're working through.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=816&start=30#p4202
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp 2009 Playlist and Spoiler-Protected Comments
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-15 13:48:47

[size=150][b]GATOR-ON, Friend to Wetlands! - By Dave Horlick[/b][/size]

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
None provided.

[i](Score and review contained within expandable spoiler):[/i]
[spoiler][b]Preconceptions:[/b]
If ever a game needed a blurb, it’s this one. Infinite possibilities for ridiculous humor have been shamelessly squandered here. I get that the hyphen in “GATOR-ON” must be there to aid “proper” pronunciation of a proper name (some sort of alligator superhero in the Everglades, I would guess), but I can’t help putting it into other contexts. “GATOR-ON, Wayne! GATOR-ON, Garth!” Or maybe “be... excellent to each other. And... GATOR-ON, DUDE!” I’ve been looking forward to this one, and I hope it’s everything I expect.

[b]Review Summary:[/b]
Painfully flawed, descriptively sparse, seriously buggy in places, and completely unable to contain the ambition of its own plot.

[b]Played:[/b] 10/15/2009 for 55 minutes.
[b]Score:[/b] 3 (Painful)
[b]Transcript:[/b] [url=http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp09/gatoron.txt]here[/url]

Here’s a game that [i]could[/i] be fun: extreme environmentalism meets [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltron]Voltron[/url]. What happens when a special group of like-minded eco-friendly guys and gals form an eco-crime-fighting mecha-team? Silly, zany adventures (but with a positive message) ensue!

It’s only the intro to a game, really – and that’s the least of its problems. The fun doesn’t really start until the end (where the author’s grand idea begins to show itself). The entire experience is marred by bugs and huge design flaws. The first “scene” has what could be a cool puzzle, but it requires a [i]huge[/i] landscape to work, and these locations often share the same brief, uninspired descriptions. Worse, solving the puzzle requires doing something that then makes it difficult (and, if my first attempt is indicative, potentially impossible) to find the target location again. The whole first section is done in such a way that it’s always painfully obvious that this is just a bunch of room objects linked together and given some basic descriptions. A player needs to sink comfortably into the game world, not be constantly reminded that it’s just some game code cobbled together.

Further scenes show promise, but they’re empty and no more descriptive than the first part. The huge geography of the wetlands is trimmed down to a single room in each of the final two scenes, but this only amplifies the degree to which the implementation is lacking. It’s easy to break the game in the final scene, especially for players trying to figure out what to do next but not following along as the author must have intended.

It’s easy to see what the author had in mind, but it needed so much more time and effort to really pull off with any success. The unusual “plot” is the only thing keeping this game a notch above rating a “2” (broken), but it’s a marginal distinction – and, at the risk of sounding harsh, a generous one as well.

If it was possible to take the game apart, fix what’s broken, and put it back together again, here is what I would suggest. Make the first part more focused, and with a much [i]much[/i] smaller area. Use this to introduce the main character more than is currently done, but don’t make the player trek miles and miles across the wetland. Give the player a goal (which seems lacking currently). Then expand the middle scene to really get the player into the “feel” of this GATOR-ON team. Implement the hideout, and give the player things to do. By the time the final scene happens, the player should already be familiar with the mechs, the other team members, and so on. That way, focus can be put on the battle itself. Then polish, polish, polish, get additional beta-testers familiar with IF, and polish some more.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=70#p4203
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Eudoxia / DateTime: 2009-10-15 13:55:27

My name is Alex.

I was reading an issue of Games for Windows (now defunct, >:( *angry face*) and there was an article about Text Adventures. I found the link to Home of the Underdogs (I miss the old site  [emote]:cry:[/emote] ), then the link to some AGI games. Eventually, Interactive Fiction caught my attention.

I started out with Computer Novel Construction Set (a very good but limited (and obscure) program--released 24 years ago), then ADRIFT, then Inform 7. I made some games (The Isolation Series (not released--must rewrite that), and some [unfinished] games, including Crimson Twilight (again, not released--I won't rewrite it, but i could finish it)).

Currently i'm writing Chimaera Beast, a game based on a story I trid two implement twice already. Both times it failed, but this game will be short (The first chapter in a series), so I guess i'll finish it.

Meaby today.

PS: Galatea roxors

PS.2: Inform 7 for Linux noms my RAM  [emote]:cry:[/emote]  [emote]:cry:[/emote]  [emote]:cry:[/emote]  [emote]:cry:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=454&start=0#p4204
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: TAB (ThinBasic Adventure Builder)
User: Eudoxia / DateTime: 2009-10-15 14:06:16

Cool
Is it open source?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=822&start=0#p4205
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I7] Giving orders to a device (Format is NAME, ORDER)
User: Eudoxia / DateTime: 2009-10-15 14:15:59

So, some time ago, I was writing a game. In the game, the player carried a handheld device (Called Omega), and the first task for the player: give an order to the computer.

For example:

>omega, mail

Would open the New Mail folder (Of course, a fake).

>omega, calendar

Would print the schedule.

I tried many things, and it didn't work. The rules only applied to animals, men or women, and i tried to set omega as an animal, but there would be side effects (Mostly the interpreter prompting the reply you usually get when you try to operate an animal but find an error condition.).

Is there any way to do this?

I know it has been done before, in The Orion Agenda (dispenser, coffee//dispenser, water).

--Eudoxia

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=81&start=10#p4206
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Text Editors for IF
User: Eudoxia / DateTime: 2009-10-15 14:17:04

I use the IDE for Inform 7, and Vim and Geany for general programming.q

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=822&start=0#p4207
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Giving orders to a device (Format is NAME, ORDER)
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-10-15 17:52:14

Several ways to accomplish what you're looking for come to mind--for example, you could simulate a conversation with Omega by having several different commands that all redirect to a menu with options like 1.  Ask Omega to check mail, 2.  Ask Omega to check calender, etc.

Perhaps those more knowledgeable than myself can give you some much better help, but given the specifications for functionality that you discussed it seems that the easiest way to work out interacting with Omega involves nothing more than some selective punctuation removal.  The following shows one way to implement what you described:

[code]
The Test Area is a room.  The description of the Test Area is "A featureless room, with walls made of bare concrete block, serves as your workshop.".

A supporter called the work bench is in the Test Area.  The description of the work bench is "A sturdy table made of thick planks of unvarnished wood serves as your makeshift desk.".

A container called the tool box is on the work bench.  The description of the tool box is "A large metal tool box, painted fire-engine red.  The tool box is [if open]open[otherwise]closed[end if].".  The tool box is closed and openable.

A device called Omega is on the work bench. Understand "pda" as omega.  The description of omega is "Your trusty handeheld pda.  The chrome-plated device is voice-activated, and no batteries are necessary since it has a built-in microfusion reactor.".  Omega has a number called mailbox.  Mailbox is usually 0.

After reading a command:
	let currentcommand be indexed text;
	let currentcommand be the player's command;
	replace the regular expression "omega," in currentcommand with "omega";
	replace the regular expression "pda," in currentcommand with "omega";
	change the text of the player's command to currentcommand.

Omegamailing is an action applying to one visible thing.  Understand "[something] mail" as omegamailing.

Check omegamailing:
	if omega is switched off:
		try switching on omega;
		if omega is not switched on:
			say "Your omega seems to be broken." instead.

To say currentmail for (reader - a thing):
	if reader is the player:
		if the mailbox of omega is 1:
			say "From: sally52@allies.com[line break]I got your message, and I'll meet you by the wharf tonight at ten.";
		if the mailbox of omega is 2:
			say "From george@intrigue.com[line break]I have some information you may find interesting.  Meet me at the Westside Cafe at noon tomorrow.";
		otherwise:
			say "From fast-eddie@viagra.com[line break]We have special offer just 4 you!!  Please be responding at soon as possable to advantage on special offer!!!".

Report omegamailing:
	say "[currentmail for the player][line break]".

[Takes care of an odd response if omega is not visible, for example inside the closed tool box]

Rule for printing a parser error when parser error is not a verb I recognise:
	if the player's command includes "omega" or the player's command includes "pda":
		unless the player can see omega:
			say "You seem to have misplaced your omega device.".	

[If we ask an inamimate object other than omega for our mail, the default response seems appropriate: "You can't talk to the (whatever)."]

[/code]

We can now pretend the player is talking to Omega, unless talking would be inappropriate--for example if we put Omega in the tool box and close the tool box.  Of course you'd need to write some conditions to determine the current "mailbox" of the Omega.  One small problem with the above code is that if the player types a long command such as "Put pencil, shotgun, omega, and necklace on work bench" they'll receive a parser error since the comma after "omega" will be automatically removed; I myself don't use commands of that type when playing a game, but there are probably many folks who do that would be frustrated at having to re-type such a long command for no apparent reason.

Hopefully the above will be helpful to you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=821&start=0#p4208
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 syntax with more than 9 indents
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-10-15 19:14:19

@Skinny Mike:

Thanks for your suggestions and your kind offer.  I actually had never considered constructing such highly-specific Carry Out rules for different conditions that did not involve discrete identifiable objects; in fact for some reason, I wouldn't have thought that would work (which I suppose is why I never tried it).  In other words, while I often in fact make rules such as:

Carry out pouring:
     do boring stuff.

Carry out pouring the bleach into the ammonia:
     say "A noxious cloud fills the room.";
     end the game in death.

I never considered an intermediate step such as:

Carry out pouring:
     if the noun is viscous and the second noun is a person:
          now the second noun is sticky;
          now the second noun is upset with the player.

as a discrete "Carry Out" rule of its own.  Your suggestion will be very helpful in allowing me to free up some additional tabs, since apparently the whole tab problem isn't just in my imagination.

After reading your response as well as Jim Aikin's, I guess my work-style is different from veteran practices.  For example, the "pouring" action described in my original post is in fact a generalized "pouring/dumping/emptying into" action.  When I sat down to write the rule, I first started off by making a long list of conditions to consider, such as:

[code]
[liquid: a very specific kind of container, that has a variable called 'liqsim' which provides things such as its description and printed name, as well as indicating how mixing it with other liquids will play out; Issource or notsource liquid: separates things like a lake and a stream of tap-water from a water puddle or a cupfull of coffee; Fluidworthy or not container: a general characterization of all containers; fluidworthy containers can be hasfluid if they contain a liquid, or otherwise are not hasfluid]

Carry out pouring:
	[if the noun is a liquid that is not a liquid source and the second noun is a liquid that is not a liquid source]
		[if the liquids of the objects of are the same]
			[if both liquids are in a container]
			[if only the first liquid is in a container]
			[if only the second liquid is in a container]
			[if neither liquid is in a container]
		[if the liquids are different, we will apply the generic mixing rules]
			[if both liquids are in a container]
			[if only the first liquid is in a container]
			[if only the second liquid is in a container]
			[if neither liquid is in a container]

[skipping ahead a few paragraphs to avoid listing all the boring iterations of noun is a liquid and second noun is a liquid]

	[if the noun is a hasfluid container and the second noun is not a liquid source]
		[if the liquid in the noun is the same as the liquid of the second noun]
			[if the container's liquid will be emptied into the liquid]
				[if anything in the first container can be moved to the liquid]
				[otherwise the item stays in the container but is now dripping wet]
			[otherwise if the first container retains some liquid]
		[etc]

	[if the noun is a hasfluid container and the second noun is a hasfluid container]
		[if the liquids in both are the same]
			[if the first container's liquid will be emptied into the second container]
				[if anything is in the first liquid and the item will fit into the second container]
				[otherwise the item stays in the original container, but is now dripping wet]
			[if the first container retains some liquid]
		[if the liquids are different and need to be generically mixed]
			[if the first container's liquid will be emptied into the second container]
				[if anything is in the first liquid and the item will fit into the second container]
				[otherwise the item stays in the original container, but is now dripping wet]
			[if the first container retains some liquid]
				[moving everything in the first container to the liquid in the second container]
				[if anything from the first container didn't fit or couldn't be moved]
		[etc]

[skipping ahead a few more paragraphs]

	[if the noun is a container that is not a liquid and isn't hasfluid and the second noun is a supporter]
	[if the noun is a container that is not a liquid and isn't hasfluid and the second noun is the location]
	[if the noun is a supporter and the second noun is a liquid]
	[if the noun is a supporter and the second noun is a hasfluid container]
	[if the noun is a supporter and the second noun is a container that isn't involved with liquids]

[and so forth, but I think you get the idea by this point]
[/code]

I then just started at the top and went through line by line, filling in what I wanted to happen for each set of conditions.  I find this method clarifies my thoughts about what I'm trying to accomplish (and often I just copy/paste when one side of a condition is unchanged from previous either/or checks), but I can see where others would find this process and its result completely unwieldly.

In any case, I found your suggestions to be very helpful.  Separating the whole process into much more specific carry-out checks will definitely free up some apparently limited/valuable indentations--and I usually only need one or two extra indentations to work things out.

@Jim Aiken

Thanks for your response.  I'm a little reluctant to e-mail the Inform creators about the issue, since if the tab-limit is indeed hard-coded increasing it would be more of a feature request than a bugfix, and apparently other than myself it wouldn't be a feature anyone would use.  Perhaps however this thread will come to their attention.

In any case, I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you very much for the wonderful Inform Handbook you wrote and made freely available.  The target audience of the book may be school-kids, but speaking as a middle-aged person I found your reference book to be invaluable in deciphering the complexities of Inform 7.  I read every page of it (twice, in fact) after I had spent considerable time studying the I7 documentation but was still mystified by the simplest principles of the program; had it not been for your fine book I may have given up on Inform rather continue to muddle on in frustration.  For anyone trying to learn Inform 7, I would strongly recommend reading your book first before even looking at the documentation that comes with the program--your book is [i]that good[/i].


Thanks again, guys, for the fast responses.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=821&start=0#p4209
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 syntax with more than 9 indents
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-10-15 22:55:34

[quote="Endosphere"]I'm a little reluctant to e-mail the Inform creators about the issue, since if the tab-limit is indeed hard-coded increasing it would be more of a feature request than a bugfix, and apparently other than myself it wouldn't be a feature anyone would use.  Perhaps however this thread will come to their attention.[/quote]
Graham is certainly open to feature requests. Doesn't mean he'll implement them, but I'm sure he's very interested in learning more about how people are using (or desiring to use) Inform. The compiler error message you encountered is certainly wrong, and therefore a bug.

The functionality you're trying to implement (mixing liquids, it looks like) is certainly among the more complex challenges in IF. (The cocoa mug in "Lydia's Heart" was a nightmare to code, and it had only four ingredients.) I'm pretty sure there are ways to encapsulate portions of your code so that you'd have fewer indents, but I wouldn't presume to try to guess what would work best for your particular needs.

[quote="Endosphere"]In any case, I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you very much for the wonderful Inform Handbook you wrote and made freely available.  The target audience of the book may be school-kids, but speaking as a middle-aged person I found your reference book to be invaluable in deciphering the complexities of Inform 7.  I read every page of it (twice, in fact) after I had spent considerable time studying the I7 documentation but was still mystified by the simplest principles of the program; had it not been for your fine book I may have given up on Inform rather continue to muddle on in frustration.  For anyone trying to learn Inform 7, I would strongly recommend reading your book first before even looking at the documentation that comes with the program--your book is [i]that good[/i].[/quote]
<blushes modestly>Thanks. I'm glad people are finding it useful -- and yes, the emphasis on younger authors has become somewhat dated or less relevant. I'm working on an updated, expanded version of the Handbook. It's mostly finished, but it won't be released until after the next version of Inform, because I'll want to bring it into conformity with whatever code changes may appear.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=822&start=0#p4210
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Giving orders to a device (Format is NAME, ORDER)
User: SJ_43 / DateTime: 2009-10-16 12:12:57

[quote="Eudoxia"]So, some time ago, I was writing a game. In the game, the player carried a handheld device (Called Omega), and the first task for the player: give an order to the computer.

For example:

>omega, mail

Would open the New Mail folder (Of course, a fake).

>omega, calendar

Would print the schedule.

I tried many things, and it didn't work. The rules only applied to animals, men or women, and i tried to set omega as an animal, but there would be side effects (Mostly the interpreter prompting the reply you usually get when you try to operate an animal but find an error condition.).

Is there any way to do this?

I know it has been done before, in The Orion Agenda (dispenser, coffee//dispenser, water).[/quote]

Well, instead of making Omega an animal, you could give it the "talkable" attribute, like so:
Include (- has talkable, -) when defining Omega.
That way you can give it orders, but it will be treated as a thing in all other respects, so no "That would be less than corteous" or "I don't think Omega would care for that" messages.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=780&start=0#p4211
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Clear the screen
User: Eudoxia / DateTime: 2009-10-16 14:38:36

Try adding "Include Basic Screen Effects By Emily Short" above the code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=823&start=0#p4212
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Action names
User: Zeborah / DateTime: 2009-10-16 20:07:47

I'm always getting into trouble mixing and matching kinds of values (eg text vs snippets; this time stored actions vs action-names) and bumbling around trying to find a way to make what I want to do work.

What I want to do this time is:  the player is wearing various restraints and has to get them off; while wearing them, however, various restraints prevent various actions.  Originally I was bundling the actions together as behaviours, but it was all complicated, and it seemed like it'd be more elegant to do something like:

[code]A restraint is a kind of thing. A restraint is usually wearable. The blindfold, the gag, the collar, the handcuffs, and the shackles are restraints which are worn.

Instead of doing something when the player wears a restraint:
	repeat through the Table of Restricted Movements:
		if the current action is the movement entry:
			say "You have no hope of [the current action] while wearing [the restraint entry with definite articles]."

Table of Restricted Movements
movement	restraint
going	{collar, shackles}
eating	{gag, handcuffs}
jumping	{collar, shackles}[/code]

Various fine-tuning is necessary to add in a condition that the player actually be wearing the specific restraints that restrict the specific movement but it's presently moot because:

The problem is that of course, while this works fine for "jumping" which doesn't take a noun, it doesn't recognise "going" or "eating" because the current action will be eg "going north" or "eating gag".  So I tried [code]if the action-name part of the current action is the movement entry[/code] and got [quote]it looks as if you intend 'action-name part of the current action is the movement entry' to be a condition, but that would mean comparing two kinds of value which cannot mix - an action name and a stored action - so this must be incorrect.[/quote]

Personally I'm all for miscegenation in kinds of value, but since it's not to be - is there any way of doing what I want to do with a table, or shall I go back to my clunky behaviours?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=823&start=0#p4213
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Action names
User: Zeborah / DateTime: 2009-10-16 20:32:35

Oh never mind!  I went to do the dishes and solved it: [code]if the action-name part of the current action is the action-name part of the movement entry:[/code]
The moral of the story is, always leave your dishes unwashed in case you get stuck on a coding problem and need something boring to think over.  [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=822&start=0#p4214
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Giving orders to a device (Format is NAME, ORDER)
User: SJ_43 / DateTime: 2009-10-16 22:28:48

Here's an implementation:

[code]Include Default Messages by David Fisher.

A computer is a kind of device.
Include (- has talkable, -) when defining a computer.

Checking for mail is an action applying to nothing.
Understand "mail" as checking for mail.

Check an actor checking for mail:
	unless the actor is a computer, stop the action.

Carry out a computer checking for mail:
	say "'You have no messages.'"

Displaying the calendar is an action applying to nothing.
Understand "calendar" as displaying the calendar.

Check an actor displaying the calendar:
	unless the actor is a computer, stop the action.

Carry out a computer displaying the calendar:
	say "'No appointments today.'";

Checking for mail is doing computer stuff. Displaying the calendar is doing computer stuff.
Persuasion rule for asking a computer to try doing computer stuff: persuasion succeeds.

Instead of doing computer stuff, say "That command is for computers only."

Instead of a switched off computer (called comp) doing something:
	say error message for the comp;
	rule succeeds.

Asking a computer about something is computer conversation.
Telling a computer about something is computer conversation.
Asking a computer for something is computer conversation.
Instead of computer conversation, say "You can only do that to something animate."
Instead of answering a computer that something, say error message for the noun.

To say error message for (comp - a computer): 
	if comp is switched on, say "'Does not compute!'";
	otherwise say "[The comp] is currently switched off."

Table of custom library messages (continued)
Message Id	Message Text 
LibMsg <person ignores command>	"[if the main object is a computer][error message for the main object][otherwise][The main object] has better things to do.[/p][end if]" 

The Lab is a room. Omega is a computer in the Lab. 

Test me with "take omega / omega, mail / turn on omega / omega, mail / omega, calendar / omega, sing / mail".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=822&start=0#p4215
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Giving orders to a device (Format is NAME, ORDER)
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-10-17 01:39:28

Way cool example, SJ_43. I've grabbed it (with proper credit to you, of course, and to Eudoxia for posing the question) to include in the next version of the Inform 7 Handbook.

I've become quite shameless about scouting out tips and examples that I think people may find useful -- I figure, having the material gathered together in one place is easier than having to scout through forums and the newsgroup for it.

--Jim Aikin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=823&start=0#p4216
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Action names
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-10-17 02:05:48

I'd be curious to see how you've developed this example. I'm having trouble with it, primarily because I don't know the syntax for extracting a list entry from a table entry. Here's what I've tried:
[code]A restraint is a kind of thing. A restraint is usually wearable. The blindfold, the gag, the collar, some handcuffs, and some shackles are restraints.

Instead of doing something when the player wears a restraint:
	repeat through the Table of Restricted Movements:
		if the action-name part of the current action is the action-name part of the movement entry:
			say "You have no hope of [the current action] while wearing [the restraint entry with definite articles].";
		otherwise:
			continue the action.

The Dungeon is a room. "A dank and dismal dungeon. You can go north."

A German chocoloate cake is in the Dungeon. The cake is edible. The description is "Mmm -- that cake sure does look good!"

The Crypt is north of the Dungeon.

The player wears the collar and the handcuffs.

Table of Restricted Movements
movement	restraint
going	{collar, shackles}
eating	{gag, handcuffs}
jumping	{collar, shackles}[/code]But the results are less than spectacular. The player can jump or eat the cake without problems. Going north will print out the error message from the Instead rule ... but then the action will take place anyhow.

Ideally, I'd like to see the error message refer to one specific restraint, not to a list of them. And of course the Instead rule needs to test whether the player is actually wearing the restraint in question. Currently it doesn't do that.

I'd love to include this in an Appendix in the upcoming expanded edition of the Inform 7 Handbook ... but at the moment I don't see how to get it working. Is it working for you? If so, are you willing to share your secrets?

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=823&start=0#p4217
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Action names
User: Zeborah / DateTime: 2009-10-17 03:11:45

I did manage to get it working.  Let's see... <fiddles>

To stop the going north from succeeding despite the error message printing, we need another 'instead':[code]say "You have no hope of [the current action] while wearing [the restraint entry with definite articles]." instead;[/code]"Stop the action" would work too; I don't know what best practice is.

And the reason it lets you do anything other than going was that the "otherwise" clause was inside the repeat loop, so it only tested the first row of the table before effectively breaking the loop.

The remaining problem is that in the code I posted I hadn't got around to actually testing whether or not the player is actually wearing the restraints that prevent the action; once that's added in, the full "Instead" rule is:
[code]Instead of doing something when the player wears a restraint:
	repeat through the Table of Restricted Movements:
		if the action-name part of the current action is the action-name part of the movement entry:
			let problems be the list of restraints worn by the player;
			repeat with the item running through the list of restraints worn by the player:
				if the item is not listed in the restraint entry, remove the item from problems;
			if problems is not empty, say "You have no hope of [the current action] while wearing [problems with definite articles]." instead;
	continue the action.[/code]Now when you're wearing the collar and handcuffs and try to go north it only complains about the collar; and when you take off the collar it lets you go where you like.

(Btw, I'm using lists of restraints rather than a specific restraint because if, eg, something is tying you to the wall and something else is shackling your legs, then both those things will prevent you going north, and it would seem misleading to refer to only one in the problem message.  A simpler puzzle mightn't require all that though.)

(The only remaining problem I have is that when I try to list all the actions in the Inform dictionary into my table, it gives me a giant compile error of death:
[quote]File "(yaddayadda)/NewJump.inform/Build/auto.inf"; Line 27545	# Error:  An array must have between 1 and 32767 entries
> Array Blk_Heap -> MEMORY_HEAP_SIZE + 16;[/quote]I've fixed this for now by trimming the table down to just the actions that are relevant to my story, but I may tear my hair out when I need to create new actions later on and the table gets too long again.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=822&start=0#p4218
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Giving orders to a device (Format is NAME, ORDER)
User: SJ_43 / DateTime: 2009-10-17 04:26:47

Thanks Jim!

I'll just clarify something that may not be obvious to beginners: when an order to someone is not understood as a correct command, it's turned into an "answering it that" action instead, which is why "answering a computer that something" is handled differently from "asking a computer about something" (and the other talking actions).

Edit: To make "say hello to omega" produce the correct response:
[code]Understand "answer [text] to [computer]" as a mistake ("You can only do that to something animate.").[/code]

Oh, and the "check" rules may seem superfluous, but they are there to stop any NPCs from carrying out the computer commands.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=820&start=10#p4219
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp Game Names - Merged!
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-10-17 12:55:39

Since this has become a small hit with some people and to my surprise even the old 2008 comp title edition is still popular, I've now added all the previous IFComps to the generator. Plus there's an option to mix titles from [url=http://nitku.net/if/namegenerator/index.php?ifcomp=all]any IFComp ever[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=820&start=10#p4220
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp Game Names - Merged!
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-17 16:43:50

Ieeee!!! I thought I was done!

[b]And the Waves Choke the Guest[/b]
This is why we never have company over.

[b]Undo Act of Murder[/b]
Too late now. It's the waves' fault.

[b]Mystery Just Cause[/b]
No particular reason. Just 'cause.

[b]Alien Paradise[/b]
Subtitle: The Beaches of Alpha Centauri

[b]Ruined At Last[/b]
Ruining things is harder than you might think.

[b]Jacks or Beans[/b]
A wild retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk.

[b]Terrible Day for Reaping[/b]
It's a darker, edgier sequel.

[b]Research Rent-A-Spy[/b]
He doesn't do much spying, preferring instead to stay indoors.

[b]Stupid Missing Piece[/b]
A short game about a little boy and a frustrating jigsaw puzzle.

[b]Lunatix: The Grief[/b]
Hey. That's not fair. It wasn't [i]that[/i] bad...

[b]Ninja The Contest[/b]
I think I saw this on G4. Involves a zany obstacle course?

[b]Sabotage Spanned the Ages[/b]
This is why our society has never been able to progress.

[b]Congratulations! Samuel Gregor[/b]
You might already be our next millionaire!

[b]Slouching Traveling Swordsman[/b]
His back hurts.

[b]Goofy Mirror[/b]
Nothing's wrong with the mirror...

[b]A Day for Soft Optimism[/b]
Since [i]most[/i] days are for hard pessimism, this is an improvement.

[b]You Are Out[/b]
No way! I was safe! Totally safe!! You stink, ref!!

[b]A Night Unforgotten[/b]
No joke here. That actually sounds like a real title!

[b]Scavenger Crypt[/b]
You definitely [i]don't[/i] want to go in there.

[b]Sophie's Immortal[/b]
Ah! So [i]that's[/i] why she never seems to age.

[b]Stiffy Makane: The Amnesia[/b]
But from what I've heard, it something not easily forgotten...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=823&start=0#p4221
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Action names
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-10-17 21:17:53

Very cool -- thanks. This is now one of half a dozen examples in an Appendix at the end of the Handbook.

One way to avoid the compiler error might be to reverse the table. Instead of using a line for every action name, use a line for every restraint, and then make a list of action names in a second column. I may play around with that a little. It would mean restructuring the Instead rule, but maybe there's a way to do it.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=823&start=0#p4222
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Action names
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-10-17 23:11:59

Okay, with a little help from Mike Tarbert, I managed to work this out. I reversed the table so that the actions are in a list, and then reversed the Instead rule. Here's a complete short game that tests it. The handcuffs required a bit of handholding (if you see what I mean), because Inform stupidly won't let something be lockable unless it's a door or a container.
[code]A restraint is a kind of thing. A restraint is usually wearable. The blindfold, the gag, the ball-and-chain, and some handcuffs are restraints.

Instead of doing something when the player wears a restraint:
	repeat through the Table of Restricted Movements:
		if the player wears the restraint entry:
			let impulses be a list of action-names;
			let impulses be the movement entry;
			if the action-name part of the current action is listed in impulses:
				say "You have no hope of [the current action] while wearing [the restraint entry]." instead;
	continue the action.
	
The handcuffs can be locked or unlocked. The handcuffs are locked. The small iron key unlocks the handcuffs.

Instead of locking the handcuffs with the small iron key:
	if the handcuffs are locked:
		say "They're already locked.";
	otherwise if the player does not carry the small iron key:
		say "You don't seem to have the key.";
	otherwise:
		now the handcuffs are locked;
		say "You lock the handcuffs with the small iron key."

Instead of taking off the handcuffs:
	if the handcuffs are locked:
		say "The handcuffs seem to be locked.";
	otherwise:
		now the player carries the handcuffs;
		say "You remove the handcuffs."
		
Instead of wearing the handcuffs:
	if the handcuffs are worn:
		say "You're already wearing the handcuffs.";
	otherwise if the handcuffs are locked:
		say "You'll need to unlock the handcuffs before you can put them on.";
	otherwise:
		now the player wears the handcuffs;
		say "You put on the handcuffs."
		
Instead of unlocking the handcuffs with the small iron key:
	if the handcuffs are unlocked:
		say "But they're not locked!";
	otherwise if the player does not carry the small iron key:
		say "You don't seem to have the key.";
	otherwise:
		now the handcuffs are unlocked;
		say "It's awkward, but you manage to insert the key in the keyhole and turn it. Now the handcuffs are unlocked."
		
Instead of taking the small iron key when the player wears the handcuffs:
	now the player carries the small iron key;
	say "You manage to pick up the key, even though you're wearing handcuffs."

The Dungeon is a room. "A dank and dismal dungeon. You can go north."

The Dismal Crypt is north of the Dungeon. "The walls of the crypt are oozing...."

The player wears the ball-and-chain and the handcuffs.

The tool chest is an openable container in the Dungeon. The tool chest is closed. The blindfold and gag are in the tool chest. The small iron key is in the tool chest.

Dave is a man in the Dungeon.

Table of Restricted Movements
restraint	movement
ball-and-chain	{going action, jumping action, entering action, exiting action, getting off action, climbing action}
gag	{eating action, kissing action, answering it that action, telling it about action, asking it about action, asking it for action, saying yes action, saying no action, tasting action, saying sorry action, singing action}
handcuffs	{taking action, removing it from action, taking off action, dropping action, putting it on action, inserting it into action, searching action, touching action, waving action, pulling action, pushing action, turning action, squeezing action, eating action, consulting it about action, locking it with action, unlocking it with action, switching on action, switching off action, closing action, wearing action, attacking action, showing it to action, throwing it at action, cutting action, tying it to action, drinking action, swinging action, rubbing action, setting it to action}
blindfold	{looking action, searching action, examining action}

Test me with "n / remove ball-and-chain / remove handcuffs / open chest / unlock handcuffs with key / remove handcuffs / remove ball-and-chain / n".[/code]
You'll note that the opening action is specifically not included in the list of actions in the table that corresponds to the handcuffs. Opening the chest could, instead, be handled specifically. Feel free to play around with this and let me know if there are problems with it!

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=824&start=0#p4223
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Relations crash Dynamic Objects Extension or vice-versa
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-10-19 04:05:27

I've run into a bad problem involving an interplay between either the Dynamic Tables or Dynamic Objects extensions for Inform 7 and user-defined relations.  Basically the problem is that if a sufficient number of objects exist in the game world, and a relation could possibly hold between them (even though said relation does not in fact hold), then Inform 7 crashes when a new object is dynamically created using the Dynamic Objects extension.  Whether the trouble is with Dynamic Objects, or rather with Dynamic Tables (which is required to run the former), or rather with my own code, I can't say (the extensions themselves are both written in Inform 6 code, which I am not really able to comprehend).  There was no contact info for the author of the extensions in the accompanying documentation, and my preliminary on-line research didn't turn up any discussion of this issue anywhere.  I was hoping that someone here might be familiar with the extensions and how Inform 7 allocates or uses memory.

I only recently started using the Dynamic Objects/Tables extension to solve a few problems in a sub-project that is part of a larger ruleset I've been working on.  Everything was working fine until I integrated the sub-project into my main project, and immediately Inform 7 began to crash each time something was created per the Dynamic Objects process.  After some experimenting, I discovered that a potentially large but in practice hardly-used relation defined in my main project was not getting along with either Dynamic Objects or Dynamic Tables.  However, I don't understand enough about how Inform 7 uses memory to really comprehend the true nature of the problem, except to say that the problem definitely seems to be some sort of memory issue.

In my main project, I have several actions where a new object is dynamically created.  The process seems to finish, and report rules associated with it appear in the test game; then a very large number of error messages that say:

[** Programming error: tried to read outside memory using -> **]

start running down the screen and Inform crashes (a true crash, i.e. "Inform 7 caused a stack fault in module Inform7.exe").  For example, I have an action where the player pours some water from a full cup into an empty cup, requiring the creation of a new bit of water in the empty cup.  So in my test game, I see:

>pour pitcher in mug
You pour some water from the pitcher into the mug.

[** Programming error: tried to read outside memory using -> **]
[** Programming error: tried to read outside memory using -> **]
[** Programming error: tried to read outside memory using -> **]

repeated a few dozen times, after which Inform crashes.

I set out to see if I could construct a small test scenario that would recreate the problem, which is shown below.  I'm not looking for any particular tips or advice on the substance of the rather crude code posted below, since it's only purpose is to simply demonstrate the issue that crashes Inform for me; what I really need help with is determining the cause and hopefully potential solutions to the more general crashing scenario.

First I wrote a quick scenario that would utilize creating objects dynamically.  Note that if anyone would like to try this scenario for themselves they'll need both the Dynamic Tables and Dynamic Objects extensions available from the Inform 7 website, and will have to set the project file to compile to Glulx.  Furthermore, hopefully as a new person to the forum here I can be excused for not yet getting the hang of the "code-posting" function, as the tabs in the following code were converted to spaces (so you'll have to set the tabs manually in Inform).

[code]Include Dynamic Objects by Jesse Mcgrew.

Use slow route-finding.

Rule for printing room description details: stop.

Rule for printing room description details of a container: omit contents in listing.

The testarea is a room.  The description of the testarea is "A bare room that serves as your workshop.".

A tissue is a kind of thing.  The description of a tissue is usually "A [if the noun is clean]pristine[otherwise]used[end if] white paper tissue with a hint of a pleasant fragrance.".  A tissue can be clean or soiled.  A tissue is usually clean.

A container called a box of tissues is in the testarea.  The description of the box of tissues is "A shoebox-sized box of tissues emblazoned with a bright blue and white pattern.  [if the box contains anything]A tissue is sticking out of the top of the box[otherwise]The box is empty[end if].".  The box of tissues is open and not openable.  The box of tissues has a number called tissuecount.  Tissuecount is usually 25.

One tissue is in the box of tissues.

After printing the name of the box of tissues while taking inventory: omit contents in listing.

A pencil is in the testarea.  The description of the pencil is "A sharpened No.2 pencil, painted a dull yellow.  A fine eraser is on one end.".

An eraser is a kind of thing.  The description of an eraser is usually "A rubber eraser, with plenty of life left in it.".

One eraser is part of the pencil.

A container called the trash can is in the testarea.  The description of the trash can is "A small brown plastic trash bin.".  The trash can is open and not openable.

Check inserting something into the box of tissues:
	if the second noun contains a tissue and the noun is not a tissue:
		say "The box is only for tissues." instead;
	if the noun is a tissue:
		if the noun is soiled:
			say "Your wife will be very upset if you do that.  Use the trash can, you slob." instead.

Does the player mean taking a tissue that is in the box of tissues: it is likely.

Instead of taking a tissue:
	if the noun is in the box of tissues:
		if the tissuecount of the box of tissues is less than 1:
			say "There aren't any more tissues.  Looks like you'll have to wipe your nose on your sleeve.";
			stop the action;
		otherwise:
			if the tissuecount of the box of tissues is at least 2:
				let newtissue be a new object cloned from the noun;
				move newtissue to the player;
				decrease the tissuecount of the box of tissues by 1;
				say "You pull a tissue from the box.";
			otherwise:
				let abcd be a random tissue in the box of tissues;
				now abcd is carried by the player;
				decrease the tissuecount of the box of tissues by 1;
				say "You take the last tissue from the box.";
	otherwise:
		continue the action.

Connexion relates things to each other.

The verb to phylink (he phylinks, they phylink, he phylinked, it is phylinked, he is phylinking) implies the connexion relation.

Definition: a thing is linkedup if it phylinks anything.[/code]

I had determined that a relation called "connexion" in my main project, which is in practice rarely used (it is used to simulate the flow of electricity between power outlets, power cords, and electrical devices) was somehow directly related to Inform crashing during/after dynamically creating an object, which is why I tacked the seemingly out-of-place definition of the relation onto the end of the tissue-test case presented here.  I was initially a bit frustrated when I ran the tissue-test scenario presented here and there were no problems.

>get tissue
You pull a tissue from the box.

After playing around for a while, I noticed that in the Index pane of my main project, the connexion relation is shown as requiring 19K of memory, but in the Index pane of this test scenario it was not even listed as having a memory usage.  I had a thought then that perhaps the number of objects in my main project which could potentially participate in the connexion relation (even though in practice only a handful of items do so) might have some bearing on the problem.  So I started adding on to the end of the tissue-test scenario presented above:

[code]A marble is a kind of thing.  The description of a marble is usually "A shiny marble.".

The northern-testarea is north of the testarea.

There are 50 marbles in the northern-testarea.

The southern-testarea is south of the testarea.

There are 50 marbles in the southern-testarea.

The western-testarea is west of the testarea.

There are 50 marbles in the western-testarea.

The eastern-testarea is east of the testarea.

There are 50 marbles in the eastern-testarea.[/code]

At this point, I was rewarded with the crashing problem faithfully recreated:

>get tissue
You pull a tissue from the box.

[** Programming error: tried to read outside memory using -> **]
[** Programming error: tried to read outside memory using -> **]
[** Programming error: tried to read outside memory using -> **]

repeated a few dozen times, after which Inform crashed.

I'm hoping someone will be able to offer some guidance about what may be happening here.  What is outside memory, what is trying to read it (or perhaps--read 'outside' of it), and what is said reader "using"?

If need be I can find some other way to duplicate the effect of the "connexion" relation in my main project without using any relations at all, and I am now firmly committed to the requirement of being able to create objects dynamically.  However, neither of these considerations really address the larger issues here, namely:

a) I am doing something wrong in using [i]any[/i] sort of relation modeled in the format of the connexion relation, or
b) is there a bug or other problem in either the Dynamic Tables or Dynamic Objects extensions themselves (and if so, whether anything can be done about it), or
c) all of the above.

Thanks in advance to anyone able to comment on this admittedly obscure issue.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=816&start=30#p4224
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp 2009 Playlist and Spoiler-Protected Comments
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-19 10:16:39

[size=150][b]The Duel That Spanned the Ages - By Oliver Ullmann[/b][/size]

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
A frantic struggle for survival in hard vacuum.

[i](Score and review contained within expandable spoiler):[/i]
[spoiler][b]Preconceptions:[/b]
Well, the title sounds like fantasy and the blurb sounds like science fiction. Either would be fine. As I browse blogs for reviews of games I’ve already reviewed, I haven’t stumbled on any opinion-spoilers for this one, so it’s a completely blank slate. However, I also haven’t stumbled on any extremely [i]positive[/i] opinion-spoilers for [i]any[/i] game (for instance, I couldn’t [i]help[/i] but hear good things about last year’s [url=http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp08/violet.shtml][i]Violet[/i][/url]), which seems unlikely since all of them have been amply covered by an ample number of reviewers by now. Are there no stand-out 10’s this year? Or are reviewers doing a better job this year of spoiler-protecting their reviews? I’ve reached the halfway point, and three or four of those yet to come have encouraging titles or blurbs (or authors), so all hope is not yet lost. And this might very well be [i]the one[/i].

[b]Review Summary:[/b]
A stand-out, imaginative opener to a new sci-fi IF trilogy, featuring fair but challenging puzzles and an epic storyline.

[b]Played:[/b] 10/15/2009 for 2 hours and 10 minutes.
[b]Score:[/b] 9 (Superb)
[b]Transcript:[/b] [url=http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp09/theduel.txt]here[/url]

Where the annual IF competition is concerned, it’s tough to be a sci-fi fan; almost as tough, I would think, as being a fantasy fan. It’s easy to butcher these genres without adding anything new. It’s even easier to throw a dozen familiar ideas together (sans plot) and call it a story. I guess the same could be said of any genre, but I probably notice it most in the one I would otherwise enjoy most.

Elements of [i]The Duel[/i] are familiar in many ways. At different points, I was reminded of various things – [i]Half-Life 2[/i], [i]Metroid[/i], [i]Halo[/i], and the [i]New Jedi Order[/i] series of books set many years after the movies, among others. Some would call this derivative (at this point, what isn’t?), but I felt this was more the hint of inspiration rather than duplication. As a whole, it felt original. It was also entertaining on a story level. The game features a more thought-out world and back-story than seems typical for IFComp sci-fi, and it’s one where I’m actually looking forward to the sequels.

The game takes place in several scenes, but doesn’t sacrifice puzzles in its effort to tell a story. It’s an appropriately-sized puzzle-fest, and the puzzles are logical, well-placed, and fitting of the story. I found them to be well balanced and fair, although I did get stuck enough twice that I needed hints. The first time, I hadn’t paid enough attention to something in my inventory (part of the armor), and the second, I had misunderstood the relationship between me, a ladder and a four-meter gap (I thought the gap was above the ladder leading down, not across the floor with the ladder on the other side).

In the included help text, the author admits that the game has ways to get stuck. I think, though, that he overestimates the ability of a typical player to recognize these places ahead of time and avoid them. For instance, I found one situation where I needed to remove my armor, but I forgot to put it back on before wandering off. I ended up trapped in a different room where instant death awaited me the moment I tried to leave (because I had no armor). It also seems possible to run out of ammo (even for the automatic turret, which thankfully offers a solution to what could otherwise become tedious random attacks), but I was able to finish with ammo to spare, never putting that theory to the test. It lends a sense of urgency and consequence to the game, though. The interesting story and the well-crafted puzzles are enough to make up for being nasty (possibly cruel) on the [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Cruelty_scale]Cruelty Scale[/url].

A few minor technical issues – typos and possibly a bug involving the turret – are the only implementation problems that stand out. This is a very polished and well-tested game. I was impressed with the number of supported, anticipated actions. Much of it moves along at an exciting pace. The text is descriptive and entertaining. Add to that good puzzles and an intriguing story, and episode one of [i]The Duel that Spanned the Ages[/i] is a standout entry that should fare well in IFComp 2009.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=824&start=0#p4225
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Relations crash Dynamic Objects Extension or vice-versa
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-10-19 11:09:57

Jesse McGrew is often to be found on rec.arts.int-fiction. If you post about this there, I'm pretty sure he'll respond quickly.

FWIW, I copied your code and got exactly the same result, except that Inform (i.e., the Windows IDE) didn't crash.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=816&start=30#p4226
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp 2009 Playlist and Spoiler-Protected Comments
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-19 15:14:12

[size=150][b]Yon Astounding Castle! of some sort - By Tiberius Thingamus[/b][/size]

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
In this adventure, findeth ye olde treasures from within yon castle. Maketh friends as ye o'ercome meddlesome goblins! Outwitteth ye riddling gnome! Resizeth ye belts & belt-like things! Can ye getteth all o' ye treasures & defeateth ye evil wizard?

[i](Score and review contained within expandable spoiler):[/i]
[spoiler][b]Preconceptions:[/b]
I wonder if the author has heard of [url=http://www.homestarrunner.com/dungeonman.html]Thy Dungeonman[/url]? Is this going to be a serious attempt at humor, a parody of a parody, or just a joke entry? It seems like I’ve stumbled on mentions of this game looking for other reviews (and at this point, it seems impossible to avoid), but I don’t remember any of it being favorable. I guess I’m starting this one with very low expectations.

[b]Review Summary:[/b]
Although it could be a very decent (if generic) puzzle-fest, the purposely clunky way in which it lampoons Old English parody text makes it too much a chore to read and play. It’s also a bit on the long side for an IFComp entry.

[b]Played:[/b] 10/19/2009 for 1 hour and 45 minutes.
[b]Score:[/b] 6 (Limited Appeal)
[b]Transcript:[/b] [url=http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp09/yacoss.txt]here[/url]

I didn’t play this through to completion, and so I don’t feel qualified to fully review it. From the looks of things, I finished maybe half of it, into an underground portion where I made some progress but had to start relying more and more on the built-in hint (the book of wisdom) and even the walkthrough. Even with a “speedy” version of the walkthrough available and fifteen minutes to spare, it just doesn’t seem worth it.

The disappointing thing is that nothing is wrong with a good old-fashioned fantasy puzzle-fest. It’s certainly not everybody’s cup of tea, but I kind of like games that are put together the way this one is. It has things to find, puzzles to solve, areas blocked off until further progress is made, a throw-away plot that’s at least interesting enough to justify the puzzles and draw it all together. It’s even competently coded, and didn’t exhibit many of the quirks I’ve come to associate with Adrift games. Part of this may be because I played entirely using Scare (in Gargoyle), but a bigger part is probably that the author has done a pretty good job writing a solid, working game.

So what went wrong?

It must be-ith all yon faux-Olde-English-ization of thy every sentence or sentence-like thing. Makeseth it hard t’ readeth or something of some sort.

I don’t often feel awful for being less impressed by a game than it probably deserves, but here, I do. The author put so much effort into this. It’s not hastily thrown together. It’s not buggy and simple. Sure, it’s a generic puzzle fantasy treasure collection quest, but it could have been a [i]good[/i] one, akin to [url=http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp05/pink.shtml][i]The Colour Pink[/i][/url]. It’s as though the author sabotaged his own work, thoroughly and irreversibly. The protagonist comes across as a complete moron, and not in the loveable [url=http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/lostpig.shtml][i]Lost Pig[/i][/url] sort of way (which is even worse, because the player is described as being the protagonist).

As absurd and familiar as the game’s premise may be, it also shows cleverness and originality. For instance, the spiral section (w, n, e, s, repeat) with rooms all rhyming with “bakery” was sort of charming. A room description spewing P-words must have been difficult to construct, but ultimately it’s just hard to comprehend and a chore to visualize. I felt the gnome’s riddles were a little easier to solve (possibly because I was using the book of wisdom and hadn’t yet realized it was actually a cheat) than however many entries so far this year have had riddles, but the one requiring Wikipedia sort of broke the illusion.

That’s about all the non-reviewery-type things I have to say. I’ve rated it a “5” – passable – which means this on the [url=http://www.gameinformer.com/]Game Informer[/url] scale: [i]“It may be obvious that the game has lots of potential, but its most engaging features could be undeniably flawed or not integrated into the experience.”[/i] While the writing style is [i]very much[/i] integrated into the experience, I don’t know if the game would have been worlds better without it, or if it would have been just another generic puzzly fantasy treasure hunt. I’m disappointed (in myself, if not the game) for giving up before completing it. Still, it must say something meaningful when even a person who has suffered through far worse in this and other IFComps would choose to quit.

[i]Update:[/i] Upon further reflection, I’m bumping the score up to a “6.” Enough [i]good[/i] is here, and (whether liked or disliked) the text style is thorough and never lets up, that it deserves more credit than I initially gave. It [i]is[/i] a recommendable game (especially if played at leisure, without feeling the pressure of a two-hour voting limit), although it’s not going to be the right choice for everyone.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=824&start=0#p4227
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Relations crash Dynamic Objects Extension or vice-versa
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-10-20 06:28:40

Thanks for verifying the "[** Programming error: tried to read outside memory using -> **]" aspect of the problem; actually that is more helpful to me than it one might initially think, as I seem to generally have some unusual troubles with Inform 7.

I don't have any immediate means to post things to rec.arts.int-fiction (or any other newsgroup), but there's no reason I couldn't look into what would be required for me to do so.

I can see where the crashing aspect of the problem I talked about above (as distinct from the general relations vs. Dynamic Objects problem) could be a localized issue for me.  I'm a little curious in fact whether anyone else has tried to use Inform 7 on a Windows 98 computer (beyond installing the program and doing an example or two from the documentation), and if so what your experience was.  I've certainly had a lot of trouble with it in general; one of the Inform staff was extremely helpful and put a considerable amount of effort into getting the program to generally work for me, but I still have some functionality issues (of which the crash part of problem discussed above is likely another instance).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=824&start=0#p4228
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Relations crash Dynamic Objects Extension or vice-versa
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2009-10-20 12:57:54

Endosphere, here are your immediate means for posting to rec.arts.int-fiction: <a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/topics?lnk">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts ... topics?lnk</a> . [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=824&start=0#p4229
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Relations crash Dynamic Objects Extension or vice-versa
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2009-10-20 18:20:42

Hi, Jesse McGrew here. I think I found the bug. Around line 196 of the extension, find these two lines:

[code]    ! 1 word for static bitmap pointer + 8 word v2v header + 1 word per 16 entries in the bitmap
    nbmp = DT_Alloc((1+VTOVS_HDR_WORDS)*WORDSIZE + (n+15)/16);[/code]

And change the second line to read as follows:

[code]	nbmp = DT_Alloc((1 + VTOVS_HDR_WORDS + ((n+15)/16)) * WORDSIZE);[/code]

If this works for you then I'll release an update.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=824&start=0#p4230
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Relations crash Dynamic Objects Extension or vice-versa
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-10-20 21:56:17

Thanks to everyone for the responses.

@VictorGijsbers

Thank you for your suggestion.  Perhaps I'm in an unusual situation because my ISP eliminated native access to usenet earlier this year, which leaves me with no quick means to participate in such.  I did take a quick look at the Google Groups FAQ, and given your suggestion I'll certainly continue to do some more reading about it (my initial reaction to what I was reading in the FAQ was that using it would be like posting a big bullseye for spammers on my back, but perhaps that's not at all correct).

Heading a bit off topic, I can of course read newsgroups however through web-based means (including through Google Groups) and I wanted to take this opportunity to say thank you as I noticed you reposted another somewhat obscure topic I had here last week to the r-a-if; it was very generous of you to take time to do that, and I'm sincerely grateful for the help (that issue in the other thread was very puzzling to me, and although I wish Inform had the extra functionality I was looking for at least now I know I'm not actually doing anything too implausible even though it's not permitted by the program).  I can definitely use all the assistance I can get, and I am very appreciative of the genuine spirit of support and helpfulness I've experienced from members of the IF community like yourself and others.

In the meantime, I'd also like to say thank you to the administrators and staff of the Intfiction.org forum for providing this easy-to-use and accessible alternative forum for those like myself seeking help with IF questions.

@Jesse McGrew

Thank you very much--I think that fixes everything.

I made the change you posted in the Dynamic Objects extension, saved it, and tried the "tissue-test" scenario shown above.  Everything worked perfectly (no "Programming error" message and no crashing), so I tried out the revised extension with my main project as well.  I currently have only two instances of dynamic object creation in that code, but they are completely unrelated apart from utilizing the dynamic object creation process (one mentioned above where the game needs to create some liquids on the fly, the other involving removing ammunition from the ammunition magazines of some weapons I designed); however I'm fairly sure the larger code also contains at least one usage of every other type of I7 relation under the sun as well (with the possible exception of things relating to each other in groups, although I certainly have people relating to each other in groups included). In any case it seemed like something that would be a fairly definitive test.  Both actions worked smoothly with no hint of error or crashing, and therefore I feel pretty confident in saying the fix you posted here definitely solves the problem.

Thanks for the fix, the quick response, and in general for the Dynamic Objects extension as the extension is definitely something I'll be using frequently to solve what would otherwise be some fairly intractable problems in my coding of a rather complex world-model.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=825&start=0#p4231
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: New to I7: a couple questions
User: Briefcase / DateTime: 2009-10-21 15:36:04

1) How can I make it so Inform doesn't display what objects are in a room? (It would be helpful if it was a wildcard which works for all objects)

2) How can I make it so Inform will say something different everytime (Well, not everytime, more like two or three times) I do an action on it?

3) How can I make a Hint system?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=825&start=0#p4232
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New to I7: a couple questions
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2009-10-21 16:40:13

1) If you want any given object to be not displayed in the room description, make it scenery. "The cabinet is scenery." This will also automatically make it something that cannot be picked up (which is reasonable, since objects that can be picked up and dropped anywhere should certainly proclaim their presence).

If you want to stop all objects from being displayed in the room description, there are more rigorous ways to do so, but this would generally be a very bad idea.

2) I'm not sure what you mean with "everytime I do an action on it"... an action on what? Could you give an example? The easiest method for making text that varies is to write something like: "You see [one of]a brick[or]a book[or]an elephant[purely at random].", or "You see [one of]a brick[or]a book[or]an elephant[stopping]."

3) You'll want to install the Simple Menus extension by Emily Short and check its documentation. There may also be dedicated Hint-extensions; be sure to check the website.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=825&start=0#p4233
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New to I7: a couple questions
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-10-21 18:24:42

Hello.

VictorGijsbers gave some good answers.  It's a little hard to tell from your questions what exactly you want to do (which makes it hard to say how to do whatever that is), but here's what I thought about while reading your questions:

For example, if in #1 you mean:

a) You'd like to simulate a room with lots of things in it that the player-character can see at some times but not at other times.  In this case, you could either just make the room dark (and then the player-character won't be able to see anything) and have a light switch they can turn on, or you could have something like a blindfold in which case you'd write special rules about the 'looking' action, such as:

Instead of looking while the player is wearing the blindfold, say "You can't see anything since you're blindfolded.".

b) You want to have some things in a room that are always visible, but other things that start out hidden.  There are lots of ways to do that, but it depends on what the hidden thing is and why it's hidden--for example, is it up on a shelf that the player-character isn't tall enough to see onto?  Is it a ghost that fades in and out of existence as it pleases?  Is it something that's usually invisible, but can be found if the player-character is wearing some special x-ray glasses?

c) You meant your question to be understood in a very literal way--in which case I couldn't really answer at all without knowing more.  Generally speaking, if a character can't see something the character can't interact with it, and if there's something a character will never see (and therefore never interact with) I'm not quite sure why you'd want to have such an object, or what purpose it would serve;

d) You meant that the player-character can see the object but just that you don't want it described along with the room, in which case the "scenery" suggestion is the way to go.

In #2, I'm guessing you mean you want to do something like this:

>take bag
You pick up the bag.

>take bag
You heft the bag over your shoulder.

>take bag
You lean down and snatch the bag.

If that's what you meant, this would involve writing "Report" rules for certain actions, or maybe "After" rules (depending on how you want it to work).  For example, you could have a rule like this:

After taking the bag:
	say "[one of]You pick up the bag[or]You heft the bag over your shoulder[or]You lean down and snatch the bag[at random].".

#3 could be pretty complicated.  If you're making a game just for one special person, it might be easier to just write out some clues and tell them they'll have more fun if they only look at the clues you wrote when they're really stuck.  If you're making a game for a larger group of people, if it were me I wouldn't worry or even spend any time at all thinking about a hint system until I had completely finished my game and had a few friends try it out, to see which puzzles they have trouble with; then I'd try to make in-game hints for puzzles that everyone found somewhat hard, or that at least one person found extremely hard (even if everyone else breezed through it).  Making a hint system is a pretty advanced thing to do, though, and the reason I suggest waiting until after you finish your game is that you'll need to build up your coding skills before you try to do it.

If you're just starting out with Inform 7 and either haven't read much of the manual yet or are having trouble understanding the manual (I myself found it fairly hard to understand at first), one of the regulars on this forum wrote a really excellent and easy-to-follow guide called "The Inform 7 Handbook."  There's a link to it on the Inform 7 web-page in the news section, or you can go straight to source at [url]http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm[/url] and get it there.  I'd highly recommend downloading this handbook (its a pdf file) and reading through it, as you'll probably be able to read the whole thing in an hour or two and it explains pretty much everything you need to know to quickly get started making games with Inform.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=825&start=0#p4234
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New to I7: a couple questions
User: Briefcase / DateTime: 2009-10-21 19:07:19

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]If you want any given object to be not displayed in the room description, make it scenery.[/quote]Whoops! In the first post, I forgot to mention that I had already done this to objects which don't (or can't) be picked up.

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]If you want to stop all objects from being displayed in the room description, there are more rigorous ways to do so, but this would generally be a very bad idea.[/quote]Why would it be a bad idea?

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]I'm not sure what you mean with "everytime I do an action on it"... an action on what? Could you give an example?[/quote]Something like this:

">look at stuffed bear
*You would have a long description here*

>look at stuffed bear
*You would have a short description here*"

There would also be another instance with something similar:

">look at box
It's green.

>look at box
It's yellow.

>look at box
It's orange."

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]You'll want to install the Simple Menus extension by Emily Short and check its documentation. There may also be dedicated Hint-extensions; be sure to check the website.[/quote]Okay.

[quote="Endosphere"]You meant that the player-character can see the object but just that you don't want it described along with the room, in which case the "scenery" suggestion is the way to go.[/quote]It would be similar to this. The character you play as can see and interact with something, but the game doesn't tell the player that the object is there at first. For example:

"You are in a room with a pool table in the center and a few chairs on all sides of it.

>look at pool table
There is a cue stick on the table.

>pick up cue stick
Taken."

[quote="Endosphere"]If that's what you meant, this would involve writing "Report" rules for certain actions, or maybe "After" rules (depending on how you want it to work).  For example, you could have a rule like this:

After taking the bag:
	say "[one of]You pick up the bag[or]You heft the bag over your shoulder[or]You lean down and snatch the bag[at random]."[/quote]
I think that would work with what I said before with the box changing colour.

[quote="Endosphere"]Making a hint system is a pretty advanced thing to do, though, and the reason I suggest waiting until after you finish your game is that you'll need to build up your coding skills before you try to do it.[/quote]
Okay.

[quote="Endosphere"]If you're just starting out with Inform 7 and either haven't read much of the manual yet or are having trouble understanding the manual (I myself found it fairly hard to understand at first), one of the regulars on this forum wrote a really excellent and easy-to-follow guide called "The Inform 7 Handbook."  There's a link to it on the Inform 7 web-page in the news section, or you can go straight to source at [url]http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm[/url] and get it there.  I'd highly recommend downloading this handbook (its a pdf file) and reading through it, as you'll probably be able to read the whole thing in an hour or two and it explains pretty much everything you need to know to quickly get started making games with Inform.[/quote]
Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=825&start=0#p4235
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New to I7: a couple questions
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-10-21 23:21:47

[quote="Briefcase"][quote="Endosphere"]You meant that the player-character can see the object but just that you don't want it described along with the room, in which case the "scenery" suggestion is the way to go.[/quote]It would be similar to this. The character you play as can see and interact with something, but the game doesn't tell the player that the object is there at first. For example:

"You are in a room with a pool table in the center and a few chairs on all sides of it.

>look at pool table
There is a cue stick on the table.

>pick up cue stick
Taken."[/quote]
Oddly enough, in poking around on my hard drive, I found an example game that does almost exactly this:

[code]The Billiard Room is a room. "A handsomely appointed billiard table dominates the center of this room."

The billiard table is a scenery supporter in the Billiard Room. The description is "It's big and green[list-table-stuff]."

The white ball and the cue chalk are on the table. The indefinite article of the cue chalk is "a piece of".

To say list-table-stuff:
	let L be the list of things on the billiard table;
	if the number of entries in L > 0:
		say ". On the table you can see [a list of things on the billiard table]".

The describe what's on scenery supporters in room descriptions rule is not listed in any rulebook.[/code]
The main limitation of this code is that now the stuff lying on scenery supporters won't be listed in ANY room, not just in the Billard Room. Here's an alternate way to do pretty much the same thing, without that limitation:
[code]The Billiard Room is a room. "Comfortable-looking leather chairs stand against the oak-panelled walls of this room. Overhead, a single hooded light fixture shines down."

The billiard table is a supporter in the Billiard Room. The description is "It's big and green[list-table-stuff]."

The white ball and the cue chalk are on the table. The indefinite article of the cue chalk is "a piece of".

Rule for writing a paragraph about the billiard table:
	say "A handsomely appointed billiard table dominates the center of the room."

To say list-table-stuff:
	let L be the list of things on the billiard table;
	if the number of entries in L > 0:
		say ". On the table you can see [a list of things on the billiard table]".[/code]
In the second version, the billiard table is not scenery, so Inform will want to write a paragraph about it. We replace the default rule for doing this with a rule that doesn't mention what's on it. The side effect is, now we don't mention the table in the room description.

Try both versions and see which one you like better.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=825&start=0#p4236
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New to I7: a couple questions
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2009-10-22 02:33:57

[quote="Briefcase"][quote="VictorGijsbers"]If you want to stop all objects from being displayed in the room description, there are more rigorous ways to do so, but this would generally be a very bad idea.[/quote]Why would it be a bad idea?[/quote]
Well, if you do something truly rigourous, like simply kill off Inform's routine that prints objects in the room description, it can have a lot of unintended side effects. But again, it might be easier to discuss with an example.

[quote="Briefcase"]">look at stuffed bear
*You would have a long description here*

>look at stuffed bear
*You would have a short description here*"[/quote]

My previous example with [one of]..[or]...[stopping] would work perfectly here.

[quote="Endosphere"]Making a hint system is a pretty advanced thing to do, though, and the reason I suggest waiting until after you finish your game is that you'll need to build up your coding skills before you try to do it.[/quote]
Well... using one of the Menus extensions, it's not so bad. Check out Adaptive Hints by Eric Eve: <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/Eric%20Eve/Adaptive%20Hints/index.html">http://inform7.com/extensions/Eric%20Ev ... index.html</a> . You'll also need to install Menus by Emily Short.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=826&start=0#p4237
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: CYOA database
User: Retro / DateTime: 2009-10-22 04:23:19

Hi fans of multiple-choice adventuring,

wikia.com have a CYOA database with a bunch of unfinished games which can be played online
and improved/edited. Click [url=http://cyoa.wikia.com/wiki/CYOA_Database]here[/url] or on the desired links below:

[url=http://cyoa.wikia.com/wiki/Creation:Example]Example[/url] (created by [b]Example[/b]) 
[url=http://cyoa.wikia.com/wiki/Creation:Benign]Benign[/url] (created by [b]Squeegy[/b]) 
[url=http://cyoa.wikia.com/wiki/Creation:Salsa_Kingdom_Siege]Salsa Kingdom Seige[/url] (created by [b]Revenant Jesus[/b]) 
[url=http://cyoa.wikia.com/wiki/Creation:Haunted_Horrors]Haunted Horrors Series[/url] (created by [b]Squeegy[/b]) 
[url=http://cyoa.wikia.com/wiki/Creation:The_Adventure_of_Squeegy]The Adventure of Squeegy[/url] (created by [b]Unknown[/b]) 
[url=http://cyoa.wikia.com/wiki/Creation:Origin]Origin[/url] (created by [b]Gooseheaded[/b]) 
[url=http://cyoa.wikia.com/wiki/Creation:Phone_Booth]Phone Booth[/url] (created by [b]Eddward[/b]) 
[url=http://cyoa.wikia.com/wiki/Creation:A_Most_Squamous_Adventure]A Most Squamous Adventure[/url] (created by [b]Fwoop[/b]) 
[url=http://cyoa.wikia.com/wiki/Creation:Survival_in_City]Survival in the City[/url] (created by [b]Pitchblack[/b]) 
[url=http://cyoa.wikia.com/wiki/Creation:The_Lewis_Gram_Case]The Lewis Gram Case[/url] (created by [b]Carlos Cano[/b]) 
[url=http://cyoa.wikia.com/wiki/Creation:Nuclear_Rush]Nuclear Rush[/url] (created by [b]Holygiant[/b]) 

I will look into some of them and probably write one or more reviews when I'm done with my own work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=827&start=0#p4238
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform7 Writer -- Faster & Safer Code
User: Eudoxia / DateTime: 2009-10-22 13:55:19

Imagine a program, possibly a command line app, that writes the code for you. Leave out the language semantics, focus on the game. This is an example of a session (It’s a snippet, the routines to declare the game’s title and else have been left out):


    shell>room
    name>Observatory
    desc>The observatory is a large room.[line break] There is a telescope in the middle.
    location>east
    from?>Hallway
    Room declared.
    shell> 

[Note: The user pressed enter after every line, except "Room Declared.".]

Objects:


    shell>obj
    name>Telescope
    primary desc>You can see a Telescope here.
    desc>The telescope is white and large.
    location>Observatory 

This is just an example, the real system would have more options (Defining kind(s), the alias, printed name, et cetera).

With something like this, the writer could create large and complex environments full of objects and scenery to interact with (Like the environment in Frederik Pohl’s Gateway; easily 40% of the rooms have more than 6 objects), in a short period of time (Introducing the concept of IF-RAD: Interactive Fiction + Rapid Application Development). A function could also be added to create simple tasks (IF, Instead of…, Instead of … when …, etc.) and to define the interaction between objects.

It works like this:

get input from the command line
if input is "room"
---ask questions to define room (name, printed name(?), description, directions)
------generate the code to do that (I7 code)
------write the code on a file
else, if input is "object"
---ask questions to define object (name, printed name(?), description, kinds)
------generate the code to do that (I7 code)
------write the code on a file
...

The App is called Inform7 Writer, and is still in alpha stage (Early development).

~~Eudoxia

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=828&start=0#p4239
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7:  Limit on declarations for kinds of value?
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-10-22 16:01:32

As I did some more work on my project yesterday, I seem to have encountered another stumbling block with no readily identifiable cause.  This problem seems to be that I have run up against some sort of limit on declaring new kinds of value.  I looked through the I7/5Z71 documentation, including all the various "Release Notes" sections, and could not find any reference to this issue (although I might have missed something--the print in those Release Note sections is pretty small and my vision isn't what it used to be).  I also did a few on-line searches, but didn't turn up anything that seemed directly relevant to my problem.

Basically the situation is that I have a project file that compiles and works fine; however, if I add one additional declaration in the form of:

A is a kind of value.  The as are b and c.

the project won't compile; I instead get the mysterious and dreaded:

[quote]Problems:

Translating the Source - Failed 
The application ran your source text through the Inform 7 compiler, as usual, but the compiler unexpectedly failed. This should not happen even if your source text is gibberish, so you may have uncovered a bug in the program.

When a program like the I7 compiler fails, it typically returns a numerical error number: this time, the error code was 10, and that probably indicates that the compiler failed to manage its data structures properly. Perhaps you created a complicated situation on which it has not been fully tested.

The best option now is probably to reword whatever was last changed and to try again. Subsequent attempts will not be affected by the failure of this one, so there is nothing to be gained by restarting the application or the computer. A failed run should never damage the source text, so your work cannot be lost.

If you think it likely that the Inform 7 compiler is at fault, please check that you have the currently distributed build of the system: if you have, please consider taking the time to fill out a bug report form and email it to the author. If you think the fault may be due to a problem in an extension you're using, then please contact the extension's author directly. 

Sorry for the inconvenience.[/quote]
message of doom.

I've noticed before that when Inform throws out an error message like this, sometimes helpful information can be deduced from any additional messages that appear in the "Progress" pane of the "Errors" tab, but in this case beyond the usual "I've read your source text, I've also read the Standard Rules, etc" the only thing listed there is "Compiler finished with code A.".

To frame the issue in more concrete terms, I searched my source text for the phrase "kind of value" and found that I have 48 statements declaring a kind of value using the format "A is a kind of value."  Some of the values are fairly simple, like:

Phenomenal is a kind of value.  The phenomenals are tangible and intangible.

while others are a bit more complex, like:

Color is a kind of value.  The colors are clear, white, grey, black, red, pink, green, blue, yellow, orange, purple, brown, gold, silver, copper-colored, brass-colored, and nocolor.

Any attempt to add an additional kind of value using what would be statement #49 in this format causes the compile process to fail as noted above.  I tried using a few different silly phrases, such as:

Tetron is a kind value.  The tetrons are mestral and destral.

or

Qrstuv is a kind of value. The Qrstuvs are defgh and ijklm.

just to be sure I wasn't running into one of those hidden variable-name conflicts with the Standard Rules or any extensions, but it didn't matter--so the problem is definitely in trying to add any additional statement defining a new value, regardless of content, using a statement in the format "A is a kind of value."

I'm not able to quickly say what the total number of variables in use are if, in addition to statements such as "A is a kind of value" one were to also include statements such as "A thing can be x or y.  A thing is usually x." or "The car has a number called mpg," although if anyone thinks it's relevant I guess I could try to go through and count all such statements (in the particular version of the project I was working with I'm at about 75000 words, well over ninety percent of which is composed of rather dense rules as opposed to easy-to-scan room/item descriptions).

An additional twist on the problem is that while naming a new value using the phrase "A is a kind of value" causes the compiler to fail, naming a new value in a different way/format, such as:

The pencil has a number called timesused.  Timesused is usually 1.

is accepted, and the project compiles and works fine with the new value properly assigned.

In my on-line research of the problem, I found a few older references of people who encountered "error code 10," but none of the discussions seemed at all relevant to this matter.  While I'd of course be very happy if anyone could say immediately what the problem is, I would also be quite content if anyone could direct me to any resource or documentation that either discusses what is implied by cryptic statements such as "The error code was 10" and "Compiler finished with code A", or else mentions any limits on declaring kinds of value.

Thanks in advance for any advice on this matter.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=825&start=0#p4240
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New to I7: a couple questions
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-10-22 17:43:13

This whole billiard table-cue stick discussion is pretty interesting.  I found it very confusing when learning Inform 7 why an activity called "printing room description details of something" would effect not only (as one would expect) "printing room description details," but also "printing details while directly examining an object" (so to speak), which necessitates writing extra rules such as:

Report examining a supporter which supports something:
	say "On [the noun] [is-are] [list of things on the noun with indefinite articles].".

when one only wants to get rid of something like:

You see a billiard table (on which is a cue stick) here.

in a room description.

In any case, as an example for Briefcase that there are usually a few different ways to accomplish something in Inform, my first thought when looking at Jim Aikin's billiard table example is that I would have wrote something like this:

[code]The Billiard Room is a room. "Comfortable-looking leather chairs stand against the oak-panelled walls of this room. Overhead, a single hooded light fixture shines down."

The billiard table is a supporter in the Billiard Room. The description of the billiard table is "A full-sized billiard table with amber felt and a polished cherrywood frame.".

The cue stick is on the billiard table.  The description of the cue stick is "A slightly warped old cue stick.  Despite its worn appearance, a subtle glow seems to surround it.".

Rule for printing room description details of the billiard table: omit contents in listing.

Instead of examining the billiard table:
	say "[description of the noun][line break]";
	try searching the billiard table;
	rule succeeds.[/code]

which of course does pretty much the same thing as Jim's example, but in a slightly different way.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=809&start=0#p4241
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: beginner questions/programming
User: VelvetElephant / DateTime: 2009-10-22 22:23:39

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=828&start=0#p4242
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Limit on declarations for kinds of value?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-10-22 23:46:25

Well, there's definitely not an upper limit of 48 kinds of value. I just checked by creating a game with 50 of them. 

Have you posted this on r.a.i-f yet? If not, you may want to do so. It could well be a bug in the compiler, but it's not something I know how to diagnose.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=828&start=0#p4243
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Limit on declarations for kinds of value?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-10-23 00:48:13

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Well, there's definitely not an upper limit of 48 kinds of value. I just checked by creating a game with 50 of them.[/quote]Hmm. I got 50 to work as well, however w/ 51 KOVs the [i]i6 compiler[/i] crashes for me. Note that this is a different error than the one Endosphere describes. It's the one that begins with:[quote]Translating the Source - Failed 
The application ran your source text through the Inform 7 compiler, as usual, and it found no problems translating the source. Something must have gone wrong all the same, because the second stage of the process - using the Inform 6 compiler to turn this translated source into a viable story file - turned up errors. This should not happen. The errors are written out on the Progress tab, but will only make sense to experienced Inform 6 users (if even to them).[/quote]Endosphere: Do you have any code in the form of "the object is either foo, bar or bah" (as described in ch 4.10. Conditions of things -- for example "The cask is either customs sealed, liable to tax or stolen goods.")? This creates a new kind of value called "object condition" ("cask condition" in the example) and would therefore count towards the overall total of KOVs.

It doesn't explain the problem, but it might help narrow it down.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=828&start=0#p4244
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Limit on declarations for kinds of value?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-10-23 00:55:19

Could it be something to do with the names you've used for that specific value? Have you tried creating a project with just that value to see if you still get the error?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=828&start=0#p4245
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Limit on declarations for kinds of value?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-10-23 01:08:58

[quote="Emerald"]Could it be something to do with the names you've used for that specific value? Have you tried creating a project with just that value to see if you still get the error?[/quote]If I understand correctly, the OP's got a project that compiles fine until one more new KOV is added, regardless of the name given or the number of different values of the new kind.

Unfortunately, the more I look into it, the less sense it makes. This from Graham's [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/msg/b16093fe00391fe5]announcement for build 4K40[/url](Jan 23 2007):[quote]A limit on the number of new kinds of value which could be created by a 
single source text has been removed. (Previously it stood at 400: now 
there is no limit.) [/quote] This is almost certainly a bug of some sort, but I'm not sure how to even begin to track it down.

EDIT: I just posted this issue on raif. I'm sure someone will be curious enough to jump in.  [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=827&start=0#p4246
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform7 Writer -- Faster & Safer Code
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-10-23 01:33:48

Looks interesting. There's another tool called Inferno that does almost the same but from a slightly different angle and smaller scope: [url]http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/2b336a9434aeb04[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=829&start=0#p4247
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Ferret
User: Ferret / DateTime: 2009-10-23 09:52:30

Inspired by Zork, a game called Ferret was created in the 1980s. It existed only on Data General computers and was consequently little known. It has recently been ported to the DOS platform as a Windows text mode executable. The ethos of the game was full information, i.e., no hidden things, spells, secrets or specialist information. The data needed to solve puzzles is either present in the game or generally available. This doesn't mean it is an easy game!
Useful features are that the game is extendable and has the ability to use command scripts and combine them with saved games to minimise searching time, etc.
The game is available for free from [url]http://www.jugglingsoot.com[/url].
See Info and News in the game and [url]http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Ferret[/url] for more information.
Have fun.
Ferret

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=816&start=30#p4248
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp 2009 Playlist and Spoiler-Protected Comments
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-23 14:20:31

[size=150][b]The Hangover - By Red conine[/b][/size]

[b]Game’s Blurb:[/b]
The Hangover is the story of you. You awake in your apartment with an unknown women and your bank informing you that you changed your name last night. The goal? Get the approval form in triplicate to get the name on your debit card changed!

[i](Score and review contained within expandable spoiler):[/i]
[spoiler][b]Preconceptions:[/b]
I’m starting out without a very positive impression of this one. The blurb’s first sentence is awkward and unnecessary. Waking up in your apartment has become an IF cliché. I awaken with “an unknown women” – [i]an[/i] is singular but [i]women[/i] is plural, so this is evidently a typo. Why would my bank be calling me about something that only happened last night, and how would they even know? Shouldn’t I be the one to initiate a call to my bank? And in what country is it standard practice for a man to change his name after getting married? Or was it changed for some other reason, and the strange [i]woman[/i] in my apartment is just misleading me? Also, I don’t have Adrift 3.9 on this laptop, and I don’t see it on the Adrift downloads page. I guess I’ll try with Gargoyle first.

[b]Review Summary:[/b]
Untested, unedited, and in many ways unplayable, [i]The Hangover[/i] has some issues with unrecognized commands that are at best extreme guess-the-verb situations, and at worst game-killing flaws.

[b]Played:[/b] 10/23/2009 for 1 hour and 10 minutes.
[b]Score:[/b] 2 (Broken)
[b]Transcript:[/b] [url=http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp09/hangover.txt]here[/url]

By now, I’m guessing that every joke about [i]The Hangover[/i] has been cracked and every flaw has been criticized in other reviews. Assuming the game isn’t bad [i]intentionally[/i], I suspect the author is very young and very inexperienced. Even the game’s core themes – before it all degenerates into absurdity – show a perplexing lack of understanding about the subject matter involved.

The writing is painful. It could be improved to just “bland” with some work, but as it stands, every apostrophe-less contraction, misspelled word (even the short ones), and formatting or punctuation problem stands out like Sinbad in a bikini.

It also allows players to proceed without vital inventory items, with no way back, and without any justification plot-wise. In my first play-through, upon getting stuck in a padded cell, I thought that was simply the game’s proverbial punch line. The walkthrough said otherwise, but no amount of creative command entry helped me figure out [i]how[/i] to give or trade a specific item to a specific person. Of course, I was able to continue (even skipping over a later spot where the walkthrough said I would [i]need[/i] that missing item), but I had another “give” problem at the end. I suppose the walkthrough explains the ending, but it would have been nice to see it in-game.

It’s put together with a sort of creative bravado, showing that the author had fun writing it. It’s broken, though, and implemented only at a very basic level where most scenery is absent, room exits sometimes contradict the room text, information is “painted-on” in the room description, and important facts are sometimes missing altogether. It would be easy to call this a “typical” first effort, but it’s well below even that. [i]The Hangover[/i] is an unplayable mess.

I’m not one to encourage giving up, though. Advise to the author: Play more IF, read more articles and reviews about this and prior competitions, think like a player even as you’re writing, find testers, and don’t let the first draft be your [i]only[/i] draft in your future efforts. You’ll find it far more satisfying when players are able to see and comment on the good points in your game, rather than labeling it a total dud.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=827&start=0#p4249
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform7 Writer -- Faster & Safer Code
User: Eudoxia / DateTime: 2009-10-23 14:36:17

hmm, that looks interesting. Reminds me of this app for IF development, the name escapes me, but the subtitle in the readme file was "The Imagination Processor" (I think). Basically you go around, typing stuff like !edit or !goto (I think) to creatae objects and stuff.

Very immersive, but limited.

EDIT:

1 - There's some progress with the functions to declare rooms and objects

2 - Here's a screenshot of the program running, and the code behind it:

[img]http://i36.tinypic.com/2q89bnt.png[/img]

EDIT 2: I forgot:

The operating system is Linux, but the C++ code is portable, so any Windows or Mac user can compile it to make a native build.

The only part of the source code that should be changed for compatibility is the shell commands (system commands called to do something specific, for example: display the name and contents of the directory, create a new directory, navigate through the directories, and terminate the app if it goes into a loop and starts eating your RAM).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=828&start=0#p4250
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Limit on declarations for kinds of value?
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-10-23 15:42:13

Thanks to everyone for the responses.  I spent some more time looking into the problem, and wanted to update my findings.

@Jim Aikin
Thanks for trying to duplicate the issue.  I've found that Skinny Mike seems to have found the key to the whole thing and that both you and I fell one kind of value short in our diagnoses, but I definitely appreciate the time you took to try constructing your own example.

@Emerald
That's a good guess, and was my first thought as well.  I tried a few different ways of iterating the new value, though, and it didn't make a difference.  Thanks nonetheless for your input.

@Skinny Mike
I think you've successfully diagnosed the general issue, and kudos to you for doing so much more accurately than I was able to in my original post.  The problem indeed is that when fifty kinds of value are defined, defining a 51st new kind of value using the phrase "A is a kind of value" causes the project to fail the compile process.  The aspect I had overlooked (and frankly would have never thought of on my own) was:

[quote="Skinny Mike"]Do you have any code in the form of "the object is either foo, bar or bah" (as described in ch 4.10. Conditions of things -- for example "The cask is either customs sealed, liable to tax or stolen goods.")? This creates a new kind of value called "object condition" ("cask condition" in the example) and would therefore count towards the overall total of KOVs.[/quote]
I went through my code more carefully after reading your statement, and found that I have:

47 statements in the format "A is a kind of value" in my source text;
1 statement in the format "A is a kind of value" in an extension I'm using;
2 statements in the format "A thing can be..." that present more than two options (e.g. "A thing can be soaked, wet, or dry (this is the dampness property).")

for a total of fifty declared kinds of value.  This means, as you noted, that my real problem is in trying to declare a 51st kind of value (which breaks the compiler).

Although a few of my declarations for kinds of value have only two options (like the phenomenality example shown above), most have more than that (the largest is the color example shown above, with 17 options).  However, I think we can say that since you and Jim both constructed examples using only two options in each value, the number of options in any particular value has little bearing on the issue.

I thought your comment that you got a different error message was very interesting, so I tried a further experiment.  I made a small sample file by copying and pasting all 49 declarations of kinds of value in my source text, plus the 1 declaration from the extension used therein, and added a single room (since a room is necessary for a project to compile).  The smaller test compiled fine.  I then added one additional declaration of a kind of value in the format:

Tetron is a kind of value.  The tetrons are mestral and destral.

The project refused to compile, with the exact same error message I reported in my original post (error code 10, compiler finished with code A), as opposed to the error message you got.  To be thorough, I deleted the "tetron" declaration and restated it like so:

A thing can be mestral or destral.  A thing is usually destral.

The small project compiled fine with no errors in this second case.

One of my thoughts on the overall design of my larger project was that I would generally try to use "A is a kind of value" declarations unless a value was truly intended to apply to every possible instance of a generic "thing," and that by avoiding unnecessary statements like "A thing can be x or y" when x or y are conditions that would only be referenced in some cases for some things I would save some resources (by not storing dozens of irrelevant values for every possible thing).  I guess that now seems like it may not work out, but while making the smaller test project I noticed some of my value declarations are either/or conditions (i.e. the extension or phenomenality value mentioned above, which definitely applies to every possible "thing") and could be successfully restated as "A thing is x or y," which will free up a few apparently limited kind of value slots for me to use in the immediate future.  I was also relieved that no one immediately pointed out anywhere in the documentation that says anything like "You can only have 50 declarations of kind of value," that I had overlooked.

In summary, thank you very much for your concise diagnosis of the problem.  Hopefully an Inform guru will ride in a white horse and offer us some suggestions for fixing this issue now that it is properly defined.

I would also still be interested in looking at any resource or documentation anyone knows about that explains what is meant by statements such as "error code 10" or "compiler finished with code A."

Thanks again to everyone for the comments.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=809&start=0#p4251
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: beginner questions/programming
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2009-10-23 16:49:30

I agree with Pacian and others that the magic square configuration you're talking about would be an interesting thing to try in a specialized game-world, but that it would probably cause more confusion than it prevented otherwise. 

If you are interested in using maps in an Inform 7 game, you may want to check out my Graphical Window Sprites extension. It will get a major update/makeover soonish (probably to be released sometime after the next build of I7, whenever that happens), but at this point you're probably interested more in ideas anyway. You can download some short example games that use the extension here:

[url]http://www.sendspace.com/file/fowqkq[/url]

You might also try Mark Tilford's I7 extension "Automap", which automatically maps the world using ASCII.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=828&start=0#p4252
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Limit on declarations for kinds of value?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2009-10-23 19:13:18

A code 10 means that the compiler has failed for reasons that it doesn't know how to explain (no problem message) and that probably have to do with data-typing. In other words, the "Translation failed..." message is already telling you everything it knows about error code 10. The bit about "code A" I can't explain myself, and I suspect it is only meaningful to Graham.

What you can do about this:

a) report the bug to Graham, using the simplest possible example code;
b) in the meantime, trim a bit (as you yourself suggest) so that you're not using kind of value as often.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=830&start=0#p4253
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I7] implicit taking happens before persuasion is decided
User: Zeborah / DateTime: 2009-10-23 23:54:08

My latest trial and tribulation: I want a persuasion rule that makes a character refuse to do something, but the implicit taking rule is carried out so the character cheerfully starts doing the action before getting around to refusing to do it.

[code]"Easily persuaded?" by Zeborah

The Stage is a room.  "You're about to wow the audience with your magic trick.  All you need to do is ask [Sally], your beautiful assistant, to take off your handcuffs."
 
Sally is a woman in the Stage. The handcuffs are worn by the player.

A person can be polite.
After reading a command:
	if the player's command includes "please":
		now the player is polite;
		cut the matched text;
	otherwise:
		now the player is not polite.

Persuasion rule:
	if the player is polite:
		persuasion succeeds;
	otherwise:
		say "'You [italic type]might[roman type] say [']please['] when you ask,' [the person asked] says petulantly.";
		persuasion fails.

A procedural rule when someone trying taking:
	ignore the can't take people's possessions rule.

Instead of someone trying taking off:
	say "Humming cheerfully, [the person asked] takes off your [noun].";
	rule succeeds.

Test me with "sally, take off my handcuffs / sally, please take off my handcuffs".[/code]
results in:
[quote]Stage
You're about to wow the audience with your magic trick.  All you need to do is ask Sally, your beautiful assistant, to take off your handcuffs.

You can see Sally here.

>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] sally, take off my handcuffs
(Sally first taking the handcuffs)
"You might say 'please' when you ask," Sally says petulantly.

>[2] sally, please take off my handcuffs
(Sally first taking the handcuffs)
Humming cheerfully, Sally takes off your handcuffs.[/quote]

This just seems wrong to me.  But in the meantime, how can I tinker with the implicit taking rule for a non-player character?  (Ideally I'd like to have it not print anything at all.)  All my attempts at phrasing it get rejected by the compiler.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=828&start=0#p4254
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Limit on declarations for kinds of value?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-10-24 00:26:31

Endosphere,

I've sent off a bug report to Graham explaining the issue with sample code (as well as links to this thread and the one on raif). I still encourage you to do the same as any additional data points might prove helpful. The reporting form is somewhere in the Inform package (I forget where) and also here: [url]http://inform7.com/contribute/BugReport.txt[/url]

Just to clarify, Jim and I were able replicate your crash (albeit w/ a different error message than yours) using different code. I used three values per KOV and he used two. In both cases the error occurs after exceeding 50 KOVs. So far, no one else has jumped in over at raif, but the thread is [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/ed565295da33aa64#]here[/url] for your reference. I'm still curious as to why your error message is different than mine and Jim's, though. I've been going on the assumption that you're using the latest build (5z71).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=828&start=0#p4255
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Limit on declarations for kinds of value?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-10-24 00:57:44

[quote="Endosphere"]One of my thoughts on the overall design of my larger project was that I would generally try to use "A is a kind of value" declarations unless a value was truly intended to apply to every possible instance of a generic "thing," and that by avoiding unnecessary statements like "A thing can be x or y" when x or y are conditions that would only be referenced in some cases for some things I would save some resources (by not storing dozens of irrelevant values for every possible thing). [/quote]I'm not sure, but I think that there's more overhead associated with the creation of a new KOV then a new either/or property (which IIRC gets compiled as an i6 attribute), so the above strategy might not save you any resources anyway. At any rate, you can avoid giving things superfluous properties by creating new kinds and assigning them the needed properties. Since properties can be assigned both to kinds and individual objects, you don't need to worry too much about a kind hierarchy limiting you later. (For example, even though doors can be open or closed, we can still create a new kind or even a single object -- like an umbrella -- which provides that property.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=830&start=0#p4256
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] implicit taking happens before persuasion is decided
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-10-24 02:56:33

It's late, so forgive me if I don't explain this clearly or thoroughly enough, but...
[quote="Zeborah"]But in the meantime, how can I tinker with the implicit taking rule for a non-player character?  (Ideally I'd like to have it not print anything at all.)[/quote]This part is easy:[code]Rule for implicitly taking the handcuffs:
	if the person asked is sally, silently try sally taking the handcuffs;
	otherwise continue the activity.[/code]... or more generally:[code]Rule for implicitly taking the handcuffs:
	if the person asked is not the player, silently try the person asked taking the handcuffs;
	otherwise continue the activity.[/code]This will eliminate the message for either Sally or any NPC respectively, but retain the default for the player.

If your more general question is why an implicit take is going on at all, then that's because of the way the taking off action is defined. (It requires the noun to be one carried thing). Although in my opinion this is not a desireable default behavior, it actually helps you in this particular case. The reason is that the taking off action is by default designed to allow actors to remove something that [i]they[/i] are wearing. Under normal circumstances, Sally would fail the check rule for this and the action would fail as well. Since you've added an instead rule, you've preempted this check, but also the carry out as well. (Your addition of "rule succeeds" merely tells inform to treat it like a success -- it doesn't [i]cause[/i] the action to succeed in the game world.) However, since the implicit take has already occurred, Sally ends up with the cuffs anyway and everything works out. Does that make sense?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=830&start=0#p4257
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] implicit taking happens before persuasion is decided
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-10-24 02:59:18

The wording is a bit complex but this should work:

[code]A procedural rule while asking someone to try taking off:
	ignore the carrying requirements rule.[/code]

Edit: Whoops, Mike beat me by two minutes. His solution looks better, anyhow.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=830&start=0#p4258
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] implicit taking happens before persuasion is decided
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-10-24 03:36:31

Actually, now that I read this:[quote]I want a persuasion rule that makes a character refuse to do something, but the implicit taking rule is carried out so the character cheerfully starts doing the action before getting around to refusing to do it.
[/quote]... I guess I missed the point of your whole post. You don't really want to suppress the implicit take message, but rather the take itself. (That way you can go about the business of using persuasion rules to decide everything else.) In this case, I would go with Nitku's suggestion, [i]except[/i] it doesn't appear to work for some reason. I actually tried that first and when it didn't work, I figured "Screw it, Sally's got the cuffs, so what difference does it make how it worked." In this case, since you want to control (or eliminate) the implicit take completely, it does matter. Generally speaking, the carrying requirements rule (which is what causes the implicit take to fire) can be circumvented either by a procedural rule or a before rule. I've tried both with this code and it won't work for some reason. With rules tracing on, I get "Rule "A procedural rule while asking someone to try taking off" applies." -- which is correct -- and then the implicit take fires anyway, effectively ignoring the rule it just said it was following. This might be a bug having to do with the interaction of persuasion / carrying requirements / other actors, but there's no way I can track it down tonight. Maybe the elves will come and work on it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=830&start=0#p4259
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] implicit taking happens before persuasion is decided
User: Zeborah / DateTime: 2009-10-24 03:49:37

Thanks for the implicitly taking syntax - I kept trying to do something like "Instead of someone trying implicitly taking" as if it was any other action.

For the rest of it:[quote]You don't really want to suppress the implicit take message, but rather the take itself.[/quote]
Ye-es: that is, I want to re-order it so that a failed persuasion suppresses an implicit take.  Currently we seem to have things happening in this order:
 * player asks NPC to do something
 * implicitly taking is begun, printing "NPC first taking X"
 * persuasion rule is carried out - if it fails, we belatedly stop; otherwise
 * the taking action is carried out
 * the final action is carried out

Whereas I'd expect a sequence like:
 * player asks NPC to do something
 * persuasion rule is carried out - if it fails, we stop right there; otherwise
 * implicitly taking prints "NPC first taking X"
 * the taking action is carried out
 * action is carried out

...I'm not sure how clear I'm being, sorry.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=831&start=0#p4260
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Computer Novel Construction Set
User: Eudoxia / DateTime: 2009-10-24 10:03:08

[img]http://yois.if-legends.org/images/vault/hayden_cnconst.jpg[/img]

From Underdogs:

[quote]Arguably the world's first commercial text adventure authoring program for IBM PC, Hayden's Computer Novel Construction Set is a surprisingly versatile program that lets non-programmers create stand-alone text adventures in the Infocom tradition, complete with storyline and inventory-based puzzles.CNCS uses a series of DOS-based menus and pop-up windows for building rooms, objects, descriptions, etc. A nice touch is that the game you create is automatically presented with different windows for each game element, e.g. one window for your character's inventory, one for room description, one for commands, and so on. This is much more advanced than most early games from Hayden themselves (e.g. The Holy Grail), and this multiple-window presentation is a good format rarely seen in IF (with some exceptions, e.g. Infocom's Beyond Zork). The included tutorial file and mini-game give a good idea of what the program is capable of, and the most options are self-explanatory.

Overall, CNCS is definitely worth a look for anyone interested in writing interactive fiction games but don't want to spend (a lot of) time to learn the nitty-gritty of modern-day IF authoring languages (such as Inform or TADS). It is user-friendly, versatile, and stands up quite well with time -- more than a decade after its release. The parser seems to be more versatile than later freeware program Adventure Game Toolkit (AGT), although it is still largely limited by verb-noun construct. Here's hoping that we may soon see some new IF written using this early tool [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

I started out writing IF with this. It's limited, but with some trickery you can do semi-advanced stuff.

It includes a simple game and a more complex game (With the sources) to teach you everything you need to know.

Download: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.fileplanet.com/122087/120000/fileinfo/Computer-Novel-Construction-Set">http://www.fileplanet.com/122087/120000 ... uction-Set</a>

I wish I had the source code  [emote]:roll:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=832&start=0#p4261
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: CYOA trend
User: Retro / DateTime: 2009-10-24 11:04:44

Dear readers,

I have recently received an email from Aric Maddux, who runs the [url=http://ifcomp08authorsclub.wildapricot.org/]IFComp Authors club[/url] , that he suspended me from the discussion forum.

He made allegations that I was "trolling" and that I made sexist remarks towards author Sarah  Morayati which I didn't do. I was expressing my personal opinion of Sarah Morayati which was not sexist in any way. I am a person who has great respect for women and I treat them as equal persons if they treat me the same way.

Sarah Morayati has made offensive remarks about my work and about religion in a topic which I  have a copy from. Here's the quote related to it:

[quote]09-Oct-09 14:02 - Sarah Morayati

Oh, for the love of the fucking Byzantine Jesus. 

- This isn't the CYOA System Comp; this is the IF Comp. It's for works of interactive fiction. 
Games, stories, submit what you will. You could create the most technologically sophisticated 
language known to humankind and several species of alienkind, but _that is not what the comp 
is for_, any more than it's for fine sculpture or 900-page novels.[/quote]

After showing "trollish" behaviour herself Sarah Morayati accused me of being a "troll", because I was expressing my viewpoint about some of the reviews regarding my IFComp entry [i]Trap Cave[/i]. She said:

[quote]09-Oct-09 18:52 - Sarah Morayati

I'm done feeding the trolls now.

Wait, no, one more comment: If you truly want good writers to step in and make good CYOAs with 
your system, it might help to be a little less belligerent and a lot less of a troll.[/quote]

So let's get this straight. She mocked the christian religion by saying "fucking Byzantine Jesus", she told me that the IF Competition is not for CYOA although she is no IFComp organizer to decide that, she accused me of being a "troll" and now Aric Maddux suspended me from the forum and accuses me of being a sexist, because I said that I would throw her out of  my house if she was my girlfriend, that I suspect she is not jewish and that I expressed to the forum that she should stop trolling and mind her own business. In fact, let me add one point here. I think she is not even a Christian, because she is mocking Jesus Christ. And if she was truly a Jew she would have had respect of other religions in my opinion.

Aric Maddux has suspended me from the forum and deactivated my account. I sent a response email to him and told him that this is a violation of free speech and that I feel my name and person defamed!

Aric has replied and refused to reactivate my account. He has stated that the reactivation of my account is solely dependent on my agreement to numbers 1 and 3 of the following forum rules:

[quote]1. Refrain from making sexist remarks / insults.
2. Refrain from making racist remarks / insults.
3. Refrain from "trolling" in general.
4. Refrain from spamming.[/quote]

I disagree, because I feel innocent and I didn't violate any of the above rules in the first place.

Regards,
Emilian Kowalewski

Germany, October 24th 2009

[b][EDIT]
I renamed this topic to "CYOA trend", because the original topic is closed. This is about CYOA trends now and whether this genre will have a greater impact in the game industry or not in the future.[/b]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=832&start=0#p4262
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Violation of free speech and defamation on the Authors Club
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-24 15:05:38

I don't really want to get into an ethical battle, and maybe the laws are different in Germany, but free speech doesn't apply to privately-owned places. It's more to the effect that the [i]government[/i] can't censor you (although, in practice, that certainly doesn't seem to be the case). But other citizens are perfectly welcome to, at least in their own homes, places of business, and so on. I'd like to think it's a last resort, though. In your shoes, if I felt I'd been accused unfairly, I'd probably be equally upset. But in the end, it boils down to the interpretation of the policies in place, and even if unfair, Aric can ban whomever he wants.

Good luck, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=828&start=0#p4263
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Limit on declarations for kinds of value?
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-10-24 16:37:22

@emshort

Thanks.  I filled out a bug reporting form and sent it in.

@Skinny Mike

Thanks for putting the time in with me on this problem and for reposting the issue over at the other forum.

[quote="Skinny Mike"]I'm not sure, but I think that there's more overhead associated with the creation of a new KOV then a new either/or property (which IIRC gets compiled as an i6 attribute), so the above strategy might not save you any resources anyway.[/quote]
I don't doubt you on that at all as you're a lot more knowledgeable about these things than I am, and you're right of course that using kinds of things helps.  The idea that it's more efficient to assign uneeded properties to things than attempt to assign them only when needed is counterintuitive to me, but it is what it is I guess.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=830&start=0#p4264
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] implicit taking happens before persuasion is decided
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-10-24 18:32:25

I think part of the trouble here is that the phrase you've decided you want to use, "Sally, take off my handcuffs," seems clear enough to you or I but is a bit confusing to Inform.  Consider the following examples, seen while I ran your testcode:

>sally, get handcuffs
"You might say 'please' when you ask," Sally says petulantly.

>sally, remove handcuffs
(Sally first taking the handcuffs)
"You might say 'please' when you ask," Sally says petulantly.

>sally, remove handcuffs from me
"You might say 'please' when you ask," Sally says petulantly.

>sally, take off handcuffs
(Sally first taking the handcuffs)
"You might say 'please' when you ask," Sally says petulantly.

>sally, take handcuffs off me
"You might say 'please' when you ask," Sally says petulantly.

>sally, take off my handcuffs
(Sally first taking the handcuffs)
"You might say 'please' when you ask," Sally says petulantly.

What's happening here is that Inform thinks we are asking Sally to take off some handcuffs worn by Sally; apparently it is trying to "help out" (gotta love those implicit actions) by having Sally first try to take the handcuffs, so that she can presumably then take them off (of herself).  It seems sensible to the human reader that "take off [i]my[/i] handcuffs" means we are instructing Sally to arrange things so that we are no longer wearing the handcuffs, but it's not working out that way except in a very incidental sense (if Sally were wearing the handcuffs so that she could try to take them off, then it's true the player would no longer be wearing them--but that misses the point of the whole exercise).  Add in a little extra ambiguity from the difference between the taking action and the removing it from action, and I think that's mostly what is at the heart of the trouble you're having with this phrase.

I'm sorry I can't be more helpful right at the moment, but I'll play around with your code later to see if I can come up with anything.  One quick thing I saw while pasting your code into Inform and typing a few variations of take/remove from into the test game is that if you haven't already done so, you'll probably want to add a small rule like:

Every turn:
     now the player is not polite.

or else saying "please" to Sally one time will make her forever enthralled with the player.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=830&start=0#p4265
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] implicit taking happens before persuasion is decided
User: Zeborah / DateTime: 2009-10-24 19:05:31

Argh.  I'm definitely not explaining this right.  Let's try a different verb so that my contortions of "take off" don't get in the way:[code]"Easily persuaded?" by Zeborah

The Stage is a room.  "You're about to wow the audience with your magic trick.  All you need to do is ask [Sally], your beautiful assistant, to eat the chocolate cake."
 
Sally is a woman in the Stage. The chocolate cake is in the Stage.  The cholate cake is edible.

A person can be polite.
After reading a command:
	if the player's command includes "please":
		now the player is polite;
		cut the matched text;
	otherwise:
		now the player is not polite.

Persuasion rule:
	if the player is polite:
		persuasion succeeds;
	otherwise:
		say "'You [italic type]might[roman type] say [']please['] when you ask,' [the person asked] says petulantly.";
		persuasion fails.

Instead of someone trying eating:
	say "Humming cheerfully, [the person asked] eats [the noun].";
	remove the noun from play;
	rule succeeds.

Test me with "sally, eat the chocolate cake / sally, please eat the chocolate cake".[/code]
Now when we test this we get:[quote]Stage
You're about to wow the audience with your magic trick.  All you need to do is ask Sally, your beautiful assistant, to eat the chocolate cake.

You can see Sally and a chocolate cake here.

>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] sally, eat the chocolate cake
(Sally first taking the chocolate cake)
"You might say 'please' when you ask," Sally says petulantly.

>[2] sally, please eat the chocolate cake
(Sally first taking the chocolate cake)
Humming cheerfully, Sally eats the chocolate cake.[/quote]
At [1], the implicit take is ordered so that it says Sally takes the chocolate cake even though the persuasion rule says she refuses to act.  (The persuasion rule does stop the actual taking, but comes too late to stop the 'first taking' line.)  I'm saying it'd make more sense for the persuasion rule to be considered before anything else, including the implicit take.

(Re the ongoing politeness thing, that's covered in the 'otherwise' part of the 'after reading a command' rule.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=825&start=0#p4266
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New to I7: a couple questions
User: Briefcase / DateTime: 2009-10-24 20:02:25

I've taken everyone's advice and things seem to be working perfectly except for this:

[code]The large table is in the laundry room. The description is "The table is highly stylized." The hammer and screwdriver is on the large table. The description for the screwdriver is "The screwdriver is bent out of shape."[/code]

I'm getting this error:

[quote][b]Problem.[/b] You wrote 'The description for the screwdriver is "The screwdriver is bent out of shape."' but this seems to say that a thing is a value, like saying 'the chair is 10'.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=825&start=0#p4267
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New to I7: a couple questions
User: Kelly / DateTime: 2009-10-24 20:41:22

I think you need to use 'of' instead of 'for' when assigning a description: 

[code]The large table is in the laundry room. The description is "The table is highly stylized." The hammer and screwdriver is on the large table. The description of the screwdriver is "The screwdriver is bent out of shape."[/code]

Note that it now reads "The description [b]of[/b] the screwdriver" instead of "The description [b]for[/b] the screwdriver".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=830&start=0#p4268
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] implicit taking happens before persuasion is decided
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-10-24 21:18:23

[quote="Zeborah"](Re the ongoing politeness thing, that's covered in the 'otherwise' part of the 'after reading a command' rule.)[/quote]
[size=85]Oops, I thought I was being clever but in fact I was just being careless and not reading your code closely.[/size] [emote]:oops:[/emote] 

As soon as Inform begins trying to determine whether or not Sally can eat the cake, the implicit taking action will occur automatically (and annoyingly in my opinion); this means you have to intercept the whole action prior to it reaching that stage.  I guess that's the point I was trying to make in my other post--that you generally had the right idea but were trying to intercept the wrong action (taking, as opposed to removing it from).

In the eating example, if I understood correctly (if not it's certainly my fault rather than yours) I think this is what you're looking for:

[code]The Stage is a room.  "You're about to wow the audience with your magic trick.  All you need to do is ask [Sally], your beautiful assistant, to eat the chocolate cake."

Sally is a woman in the Stage. The chocolate cake is in the Stage.  The chocolate cake is edible.

A person can be polite.

After reading a command:
	if the player's command includes "please":
		now the player is polite;
		cut the matched text;
	otherwise:
		now the player is not polite.

Persuasion rule:
	if the player is polite:
		persuasion succeeds;
	otherwise:
		say "'You [italic type]might[roman type] say [']please['] when you ask,' [the person asked] says petulantly.";
      		persuasion fails.

Before asking someone to try eating something:
	if the player is polite:
		unless the person asked encloses the noun:
			try the person asked taking the noun;
	otherwise:
		say "You [italic type]might[roman type] say [']please['] when you ask,' [the person asked] says petulantly." instead.

After Sally eating the chocolate cake:
	say "Humming cheerfully, [the person asked] eats [the noun].".[/code]
By intercepting the Sally's eating action before we officially ask her to try eating, we are able to cut off the automatic implicit-taking-while-checking-eatability activity that occurs (even prior to any "Before" rules we might directly write regarding it) when Sally starts to consider eating the cake on her own.  Note that we're considering the results of the persuasion rule here, and we didn't actually intercept the persuasion rule itself; nor is it necessary to do so unless the code grows considerably more complex.

Therefore we have:

>sally, eat cake
You might say 'please' when you ask," Sally says petulantly.

>sally, please eat cake
Sally picks up the chocolate cake.

Humming cheerfully, Sally eats the chocolate cake.

If you prefer the original reporting style of the implicit action in cases where Sally does eat the cake, you could of course change the Before rule to:

[code]Before asking someone to try eating something:
	if the player is polite:
		unless the person asked encloses the noun:
			silently try the person asked taking the noun;
			say "(first taking [the noun])"
	otherwise:
		say "You [italic type]might[roman type] say [']please['] when you ask,' [the person asked] says petulantly." instead.[/code]
Hopefully the above is more helpful to you than my first post; if not please say so and we'll try again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=830&start=0#p4269
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] implicit taking happens before persuasion is decided
User: SJ_43 / DateTime: 2009-10-24 22:37:10

[quote="Zeborah"]At [1], the implicit take is ordered so that it says Sally takes the chocolate cake even though the persuasion rule says she refuses to act.  (The persuasion rule does stop the actual taking, but comes too late to stop the 'first taking' line.)[/quote]
Perhaps I've misunderstood you, but it seems to me that Nitku's procedural rule (or a more general version of it) does what you want:
[code]The Stage is a room.  "You're about to wow the audience with your magic trick.  All you need to do is ask [Sally], your beautiful assistant, to eat the chocolate cake."

Sally is a woman in the Stage. The chocolate cake is in the Stage. The chocolate cake is edible.

After someone eating:
   say "Humming cheerfully, [the person asked] eats [the noun].";

A person can be polite.
After reading a command:
	if the player's command includes "please":
		now the player is polite;
		cut the matched text;
	otherwise:
		now the player is not polite.

Persuasion rule:
	if the player is polite:
		persuasion succeeds;
	otherwise:
		say "'You [italic type]might[roman type] say [']please['] when you ask,' [the person asked] says petulantly.";
		persuasion fails.

A procedural rule while asking someone to try doing something:
	ignore the carrying requirements rule.

Test me with "sally, eat the chocolate cake / sally, please eat the chocolate cake".[/code]
Sally still picks up the cake before eating it, because the procedural rule just stops the implicit take when we are requesting the action; as soon as the persuasion succeeds a new action is started ("Sally eating the cake"), which goes unaffected. 

[quote="Zeborah"]I'm saying it'd make more sense for the persuasion rule to be considered before anything else, including the implicit take.[/quote]
Well, it's a bit complicated I think, because generally you want the instead rules between the carrying requirements and the persuasion checking rules: instead rules for actions that require carried things should be able to assume that we are definitely carrying the thing, and you may want to be able to write rules like Instead of asking the robber to try attacking the player, say "You don't want to encourage him!"

I don't see why the carrying requirements rule is applied at all when requesting actions though. Surely there's no need for Sally to carry anything for us to ask her to do something? Or am I overlooking something?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=830&start=0#p4270
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] implicit taking happens before persuasion is decided
User: Zeborah / DateTime: 2009-10-24 23:05:22

Thanks all.  Among the various suggestions here, I seem to have got my own code sorted out now, so just carrying on out of academic interest:

Endosphere - yeah, choosing the right point at which to intercept actions is the tricky part. [emote]:?[/emote]  

SJ_43 -
[quote]Well, it's a bit complicated I think, because generally you want the instead rules between the carrying requirements and the persuasion checking rules: instead rules for actions that require carried things should be able to assume that we are definitely carrying the thing, and you may want to be able to write rules like Instead of asking the robber to try attacking the player, say "You don't want to encourage him!"[/quote]

Asking itself has no carrying requirements, though - that only attaches to the thing you're asking the npc to do.  So something like:

[code]Instead of asking the robber to try eating the chocolate cake for the first time, say "Are you sure you want to encourage him?"

Persuasion rule for the robber trying eating the chocolate cake:
    say "'Chocolate's bad for my digestion,' the robber says grumpily.";
    persuasion fails.[/code]

should imho work so that the "instead" rule can intercept the asking; but if the player insists then the persuasion rule can intercept the robber agreeing to do it; but if the robber did agree, *then* the implicit-taking-before-eating could come into play.  (As opposed to now, where it comes into play after the instead-of-asking rule but before the persuasion rule.)

Anyway it's kind of a moot point - how it works is how it works so I'm just grumping really. [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote]I don't see why the carrying requirements rule is applied at all when requesting actions though. Surely there's no need for Sally to carry anything for us to ask her to do something? Or am I overlooking something?[/quote]

No, the carrying requirements rule is applied to Sally-trying-eating.  Even if she hasn't yet been successfully persuaded to eat it.  (grump grump [emote]:)[/emote] )

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=827&start=0#p4271
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform7 Writer -- Faster & Safer Code
User: Prolixic / DateTime: 2009-10-25 02:53:18

[quote="Eudoxia"]Imagine a program, possibly a command line app, that writes the code for you. Leave out the language semantics, focus on the game....:[/quote]

I tried something similar with a Word document template that allowed you to set up simple regions, rooms, doors, backdrops, objects and people using forms to organise things and then generate the basic code.  People were cautious about using this sort of thing because of the use of macros.  The template is still available on-line here if you want to have a look for ideas.  It was created several I7 versions ago so some of the functionality may not be relevant now.

The link to it is:

<a class="postlink" href="http://prolixic.inform7.googlepages.com/Informatic.dot">http://prolixic.inform7.googlepages.com/Informatic.dot</a>

Prolixic

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=832&start=0#p4272
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Violation of free speech and defamation on the Authors Club
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-10-25 05:31:31

Emilian, I've enjoyed your participation in this forum, and I really like the enthusiasm you have for Node-X.  I can imagine that the reaction to your games in IFComp must be very frustrating for you.  But you're really not helping yourself right now.

If you want us to believe you're not trolling their forum, posting the other party's responses to your actions without context, in a completely different forum, is really not the way to go about it.

[quote="EK_Dev"]I said that I would throw her out of  my house if she was my girlfriend[/quote]
If I said something offensive, would you say that you'd throw me out of your house if I were your boyfriend?  If not, then there's the sexism right there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=832&start=0#p4273
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Violation of free speech and defamation on the Authors Club
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2009-10-25 05:38:44

[quote="EK_Dev"]she told me that the IF Competition is not for CYOA although she is no IFComp organizer to decide that[/quote]
I think there was an unfortunate misunderstanding here. If I understand correctly what she wrote:
[quote="Sarah Morayati"]This isn't the CYOA System Comp; this is the IF Comp. It's for works of interactive fiction. Games, stories, submit what you will. You could create the most technologically sophisticated language known to humankind and several species of alienkind, but _that is not what the comp is for_, any more than it's for fine sculpture or 900-page novels.[/quote]
Note that she wrote "This isn't the [b][i]CYOA System[/i][/b] Comp", not "This isn't the [b][i]CYOA[/i][/b] Comp". Actually, CYOAs have always been accepted in the IF Comp: there's one other (not only [i]Trap Cave[/i]) CYOA game in this very IF Comp, there were also [i]Desert Heat[/i] in 2000, [i]Space Horror I: Prey for Your Enemies[/i] and [i]Mortality[/i] in 2005, [i]Jealousy Duel X[/i] in 2007, and several others. But her point is that the IF Comp is for [i]games[/i] -- whether they are parser-based or CYOA -- not for [i]authoring systems[/i], and people review and judge the games, not the systems they were written with. Even if Graham Nelson had first released Inform 7 in the IF Comp, it would still have been poorly received (or maybe not even accepted at all in the comp, I don't know) if there was no game with it.

A competition for new authoring systems might be an interesting idea, but a very different one, with a somewhat different audience... and without the two-hour limit, because I guess it'd need more time to judge a system fairly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=830&start=10#p4274
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] implicit taking happens before persuasion is decided
User: SJ_43 / DateTime: 2009-10-25 06:19:38

[quote="Zeborah"]
[quote]I don't see why the carrying requirements rule is applied at all when requesting actions though. Surely there's no need for Sally to carry anything for us to ask her to do something? Or am I overlooking something?[/quote]

No, the carrying requirements rule is applied to Sally-trying-eating.  Even if she hasn't yet been successfully persuaded to eat it.  (grump grump [emote]:)[/emote] )[/quote]
Actually I [i]was[/i] kind of overlooking something: 

>[1] sally, eat the chocolate cake
(Sally first taking the chocolate cake)
"You might say 'please' when you ask," Sally says petulantly.

The parenthesis here isn't saying that Sally tries to take the cake: it says that we first [i]ask her[/i] to take it, and it is this request that she responds to.

[quote="Zeborah"]Anyway it's kind of a moot point - how it works is how it works so I'm just grumping really. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
Well, that's one great thing about Inform: it's so easy to rearrange rules to suit your personal preferences.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=825&start=0#p4275
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New to I7: a couple questions
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-10-25 08:53:59

How can I make it so Inform doesn't display what objects are in a room? 

Maybe I'm missing something, but I think there's a simpler answer than making it scenery or fooling with the descriptions of all things in all rooms. It's something like:

[code]Rule for writing a paragraph about the pool cue: now the pool cue is mentioned.[/code]

Though if a person tries to pick it up on a blind guess that it exists, they'll succeed. If you don't want that, you can put the cue in limbo and only move it to the table after the table is examined.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=833&start=0#p4276
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Starting out small?
User: linger / DateTime: 2009-10-25 10:04:49

I'm interested in starting to write IF. However, before starting out on a grand, epic project, it seems wiser to create something small and simple. After all, I wouldn't want to lose motivation halfway, or make something complex without first learning the proper way to structure and plan it out. Do most other people start with writing IF this way? Is there any other advice you have along this line?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=70#p4277
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: linger / DateTime: 2009-10-25 10:09:28

I'm still somewhat new to IF. I also first learned of it via The Underdogs site in 2006. I downloaded Glowgrass, Lash, Photograph etc and rather liked them. After entering college there's been a long stretch of not playing much, but now my attention has returned. I might be slightly younger than the average IF fan...21?

Outside IF, my main interests are otaku/moe culture, transhumanism, and political science.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=568&start=0#p4278
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Want to meet IF enthusiasts in your area?
User: linger / DateTime: 2009-10-25 10:12:30

[quote="radix"]In Boston (well, Cambridge (well, Somerville)) We just had a small IF meetup here at Davis Square. It was great! Zarf was there, and one guy who was participating in the IF Writing Month, and a few other people. We briefly discussed the idea of meeting regularly (about once a month) and at least two of us definitely want to do it. We organized this one at this forum thread:

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifmonth.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=meetups&thread=5&page=1">http://ifmonth.proboards.com/index.cgi? ... d=5&page=1</a>

but I'll try to post here when we come up with details for the next one.[/quote]

Oh, what a shame I missed that, I walk to Davis Square all the time. Sounds like it was fun.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=833&start=0#p4279
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Starting out small?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-25 10:16:47

I think that's a good approach to starting out. You might think up a simple story that involves just two or three rooms (or locations), a small number of objects (three or four), and only one or two puzzles. Focus on making sure everthing has descriptions, everything works together (i.e., there are responses for all the likely ways each object might be used with each piece of scenery and with each other, etc).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=568&start=0#p4280
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Want to meet IF enthusiasts in your area?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-25 10:18:14

I think I saw on the newsgroup that another was coming up later this month. If I'm right, it might not be too late. Anybody know?

(Edit)
Looks like it's not too late. The announcement says it's happening October 27th:

<a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/msg/f846f7b9d39f2241">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts ... b9d39f2241</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=833&start=0#p4281
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Starting out small?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-10-25 11:27:29

Although [i]trying[/i] to write too large a game can be an educational experience in itself, as long as you know when to quit.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=70#p4282
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2009-10-25 15:49:50

Welcome to the forum, Eudoxia and linger! [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=827&start=0#p4283
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform7 Writer -- Faster & Safer Code
User: Eudoxia / DateTime: 2009-10-25 16:58:33

Looks interesting, I might take a look at it (I think it might run on OpenOffice, meaby).

Some progress, finished the functions to declare basic info (author, name, release number, year, genre), the one to create rooms, and the last function to create objects, and the routines to write that info on a file (default is "generated_code.i7w").

The code compiles, and runs.

Also:

I replaced cin >> var; with getline(cin, var); which is awesome.

EDIT:

I destroyed all the bugs (Mostly minor stuff) in the functions to declare rooms, objects and basic info.

I also created a function to create a new kind, (kind of thing, or kind of [something]), and a function to manually add code to the file that contains the generated I7 code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=832&start=0#p4284
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Violation of free speech and defamation on the Authors Club
User: Retro / DateTime: 2009-10-25 17:42:13

[quote="Pacian"]Emilian, I've enjoyed your participation in this forum, and I really like the enthusiasm you have for Node-X.  I can imagine that the reaction to your games in IFComp must be very frustrating for you.  But you're really not helping yourself right now.[/quote]

You like my enthusiasm? You must be an exception. But if you think that I'm frustrated because some reviewers on the web give me bad press then you don't know me. Who are these guys?

No, I am frustrated for one simple reason: Because I was banned from a forum! WTF?

I was banned only one time from a forum in the last 12 years which I am active on the internet now. And that was only because I and other Duke fans on the [url=http://forums.3drealms.com/vb/index.php]3D Realms Forums[/url] claimed that Duke Nukem Forever was a hoax and that it will never be released. Someone even argued that DNF won't be released until 2010. And we were right, DNF is still not released and the chances for a release in 2010 are very low. As always.  [emote]:twisted:[/emote] 

But that was a funny ban and a funny rant and nobody was upset about it. I re-registered on 3DR's forums under a different nickname later on and everything was cool again. Joe Siegler is the most competent webmaster you can find imho. If there are trolls or other problematic people on 3DR's forums he usually locks or deletes the related threads, because it happens all the time. He bans users only when something [i]really[/i] bad happens. I say he is a like good cop. He fires a gun only as a last option, so to speak. You know, when crazy Duke fans like us come and question 3DR's release date policy, for example. [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote] 

Seriously, here in the Interactive Fiction community everyone is so hostile. You don't have to look at the reaction to me and my games. Just look how the IF community treats itself. Reviewers bitch about every entry on the IFComp, no matter what. This year there is some kind of rant between Conrad Cook and Richard Bos, because they call each other "jerky" or whatever. I don't know what the hell is going on here. Is there a flamewar or special deal I don't know about?

You know, when I took part in the IFComp 2008 for the very first time I thought this community welcomes new people like me. But NO, in these two years all they did was flaming, bitching and writing biased reviews about my releases. And now they wonder why I react hostile too. How do you suppose a normal person to react to such ignorance and hostility?

Someone even said a few weeks ago: the reason why there are less entries in the IFComp 2009 is because authors and programmers know that they can get attention for their games outside the competition. Maybe I should leave this community too..... There seems to be a strong clique in the IF community here whose aim is to push Inform, Adrift and Glulx games. Someone here talked about a "conspiracy" to control the IF community once. I mean I don't know much about the whole Paul Panks issue, but what I know is that he was very hated by the IF community for some reason. Didn't he commit suicide or something?

I don't want to insult anyone here, but you guys should really reflect yourself. I think it's no exaggeration when I - as an outsider and observer - say that this community is one of the most intolerant I have ever experienced on the internet. I am part of this community for 2 years now and I am already sick of it.

I should really return to the FPS modding community and release some new stuff. People are so much cooler there, no matter if you release a sucky mod or not. This November and December I have time to play S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat, Borderlands, Batman: Arkham Asylum and some other commercial FPS/TPS titles of 2009.

Why should I waste my time with the IFComp when everyone here hates me and my CYOA so much?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=832&start=0#p4285
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Violation of free speech and defamation on the Authors Club
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-10-25 19:03:19

I'm sorry you've found the IF community hostile. It's true that some reviewers are needlessly unkind about games they don't like - and I'm not happy about that either.

(That said, after reading your thread on r.a.i-f, I think you were out of line, and Aric Maddux had every right to ban you from that forum.)

[quote="EK_Dev"]There seems to be a strong clique in the IF community here whose aim is to push Inform, Adrift and Glulx games.[/quote]
I think you misunderstand the nature of the community ([i]this[/i] community, I should say, since there are non-English IF communities with a somewhat different focus). And it's probably a language issue. "Interactive fiction", as we use it, doesn't mean any kind of fiction that's interactive. It refers specifically to parser-based IF - text adventures - the kind of IF that Inform, TADS, Adrift, etc were designed for creating. Occasionally some members of this community dabble in CYOA - there was the LoTech competition in 2001, for instance. But the focus is and, as far as I know, always has been parser-based IF.

That's not to say I (or anyone else) want to kick you out of the community. There are always going to be people in it who like CYOA and find your work interesting. I'm just trying to help you understand why the majority of people are not interested in your work. CYOA isn't what they're here for.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=833&start=0#p4286
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Starting out small?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-10-26 05:58:21

Starting small sounds like a good idea, given that writing a game takes [i]much[/i] longer than it would at first seem. It gets a bit faster when you've familiarized yourself with the authoring system and don't have to fight as much with the coding so practicing with a smaller game speeds up the development of a possible longer game later.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=832&start=0#p4287
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Violation of free speech and defamation on the Authors Club
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2009-10-26 07:56:42

[quote="EK_Dev"]I mean I don't know much about the whole Paul Panks issue, but what I know is that he was very hated by the IF community for some reason. Didn't he commit suicide or something?[/quote]
Paul Panks wasn't hated by the IF community; far from it, I would say. But there were a couple of people who liked to poke fun at his games and him, and on an un-moderated forum like the usenet groups, there is not way to stop them. Luckily, they never managed to lessen Paul's enthusiasm.

The obituary wasn't clear about the exact cause of death, but it [i]seems[/i] to imply that he had health problems throughout his life: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/azcentral/obituary.aspx?n=paul-allen-panks&pid=129569950">http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/azcent ... =129569950</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=832&start=0#p4288
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Violation of free speech and defamation on the Authors Club
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2009-10-26 08:25:43

About the topic in question, and after reading all the stuff on the rec.arts.int-fiction newsgroup, I'd like to make a few remarks.

It is certainly true that your game has gotten some bad reviews, and it is also true that some reviewers can be pretty unpleasant if they don't like a game. Now, it is important not to confuse the two: people can write a bad review of your game without being nasty and/or wanting to say something bad about you. For instance, this was certainly the intention of [url=http://gamingphilosopher.blogspot.com/2009/10/if-competition-trap-cave.html]my review[/url]: I don't think Trap Cave lives up to the standards of the interactive fiction competition, and since I am judging that competition, I apply those standards. It's not meant to be nasty towards you. I think this is true in general about the [i]Trap Cave[/i] reviews, and I know you would have gotten a totally different response if you had asked people to look at your CYOA-system outside of the comp.

Of course, it's still possible that some reviews are unfairly negative. I don't think we can discuss that right now, because during the comp authors are not allowed to discuss their games. But we can get back to that in a couple of weeks, once the competition has ended. If, for instance, you believe that my review was unfairly negative, I certainly would like to hear about that once the competition is over.


Having seen what you wrote in the authors forum, I can understand why you were banned. You really shouldn't have done that. On the other hand, I can certainly imagine that you were angry and that some of the other posters had written things which made you angry. Also, let's be aware that forum-based communication isn't easy: the lack of intonation and body language alone can make your message come out as much less friendly than it was intended. So don't worry about it too much.


Basically, I don't think people hate you or CYOA. I think they did dislike your two games, for reasons you can find in the reviews, but that is not the same thing and you should not confuse them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=833&start=0#p4289
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Starting out small?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2009-10-26 09:18:35

I'd like to go against the common opinion here: I think the best thing to do is to write a game you are interested in making, and if that is a large game, so be it. Now obviously, you should perhaps not start with something the size of [i]Blue Lacuna[/i]--I'm sure there are smaller games that are still interesting. But writing a small practice game... where will you find the motivation to keep going, if it's not the motivation of writing a game you actually want to share with people?

Personally, I started with [i]The Baron[/i], which is not small.

There is nothing wrong with starting with a large game, as long as you can program it in small chunks. The first scene of a larger game could be the equivalent of a small game, after all.

If you [i]do[/i] write a small practice game first, make it really small. Do it just to familiarise yourself with the language, not to get to know all the subtleties, and make sure you don't spend too much time on it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=833&start=0#p4290
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Starting out small?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-26 09:37:33

I guess there's no wrong way as long as you're motivated and stick with it. I just know that I often regret starting out in Hugo with [i]Trading Punches[/i]. I overestimated the extent to which my programming experience would translate into award-winning IF, and I [i]really[/i] put too much trust in my prior experiences writing home-brew IF (the most recent of which had been five years prior). It's an interesting story with epic potential, but I don't think I was ready enough. The implementation didn't match the ambition. I hope to do better when I (some day) continue with the next game in that series, but I think I should have done more learning before tackling even an IFComp-sized game like that.

But I guess it was still good as a learning experience. I'd just rather that my learning experience hadn't been [i]that[/i] particular game. Something much smaller might have been better. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=832&start=0#p4291
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Violation of free speech and defamation on the Authors Club
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-10-26 10:18:32

[quote="EK_Dev"]Seriously, here in the Interactive Fiction community everyone is so hostile. [i]...(snip)...[/i] I don't want to insult anyone here, but you guys should really reflect yourself. I think it's no exaggeration when I - as an outsider and observer - say that this community is one of the most intolerant I have ever experienced on the internet.[/quote]
That's almost identical to what somebody else wrote about the IF community in their blog, right? Is this really how you feel, or is it possible you're drawing on the existing frustrations of others?

Anyway, as far as I can tell, there's no membership required in the IF community. No dues to pay. Not even a requirement that you write games, or even play them on a regular basis. Just posting and talking about IF makes you a part, and after a year (or two years?), I doubt anybody would consider you an outsider. You shouldn't consider yourself one, even if you're working with CYOA and a custom system.

I've also been part of a number of different online communities over the years, and this is [i]far[/i] from the most hostile I've seen. By comparison to some of them, the IF community (in its various locations and forms) is like a haven for goodwill ambassadors.

I think it's easy to mistake grumpiness for hostility. After the newness of IF wears off, many people just aren't as excited about games that aren't well-written, well-coded, innovative or entertaining anymore. A lot of those show up in the IFComp. The IFComp is different things to different people, and to many, it's more about recognizing the best rather than cajoling the worst into doing a better job next time. To me, I'd like to think it's a bit of both. I see myself getting a little grumpier too, though, as my standards inexplicably increase. But nothing in my reviews -- I hope -- are personal attacks or indicate that I think the author is a moron or a fool. It's not how I think, so I hope it doesn't come across that way.

Now, you probably wouldn't know now because I'm rarely ever confrontational about anything, but I had the same sort of experience you did when I first found the IF community in... 1997? 1998? I think it was 1998, because if you try hard enough and know what to look for, you can still find some or all of it in archived usenet posts back then. It's interesting to revisit, though, because a lot of what I took as personal attacks [i]weren't[/i] -- it was a bit of everything else, ranging from some fun-poking, to some useful advice I just took personally, to some support that I might not even have recognized at the time because I was so defensive. This was very similar to your situation, because I was writing home-brewed IF (QuickBASIC, for me), insisting that it would be great (or, at times, insisting that it didn't [i]need[/i] to be, because what Inform and TADS could do was overkill), and just being a nuisance in general.

I'm not saying to conform, or to change what you're writing or how you write it. I'm not saying you should "go with the flow", so to speak -- even if I'm not the ideal example of nonconformity. I guess what I'm saying is, it's probably better to not purposely go [i]against[/i] it. You can develop Node-X and do some worthwhile things with it, without counter-attacking the people who seem to be attacking you. You [i]might[/i] be mistaking grumpiness for hostility, or worse, overlooking helpful advice that might make potential players more receptive to your future works.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=832&start=0#p4292
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Violation of free speech and defamation on the Authors Club
User: Bob_Woodward / DateTime: 2009-10-26 13:27:02

[quote="Merk"]... maybe the laws are different in Germany, but free speech doesn't apply to privately-owned places. It's more to the effect that the [i]government[/i] can't censor you (although, in practice, that certainly doesn't seem to be the case). But other citizens are perfectly welcome to, at least in their own homes, places of business, and so on...[/quote]

I can assure you, that here in Germany the same laws apply. Actually, we have some laws that pretty much constrain the freedem of speech, which tends to amaze my american friends (e.g. to insult people is a criminal act - although actually things are a bit more complicated).

Bob

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=817&start=10#p4293
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Renee's IFComp '09 Playlist and Reviews
User: RChoba / DateTime: 2009-10-26 19:15:38

[size=150][b]Byzantine Perspective[/b][/size]

What if I'm not smart enough to play this game?

[spoiler]Starting out in a cat burglar outfit and night vision goggles made me really excited about this game. Then I got really frustrated. I played around for a while. I tried using the hints. I looked at the map. (It's a nice map, by the way.) I checked out the walkthrough. In the end I finished without quite knowing how I had done it and feeling like I had missed something big. 

So I gave it a break and came back to it. This time I printed the map, which was more helpful. I didn't feel quite so stupid playing the second time. But I still got frustrated.

While the game sets you up with the objective of stealing a chalice from a museum, the obstacles you might think you'd encounter along the way don't really happen. You have already gotten in through a skylight, the security guys have left a note lying around with the code for the vault, there are no laser beams to dance through and no police alarms to avoid. Instead, the big problem is figuring out where you really are and why you can suddenly walk through walls. 

I suppose enjoyment of the game then depends on if you can figure this out or not. While it's not exactly a one-puzzle game, the whole thing does hinge on you learning how to use your goggles. I know, the friend I borrowed them from is a bit sketchy, but why didn't this "friend" explain how to use the goggles? Why didn't I notice a button on them earlier and ask about it? Why do I have the note that explains this in my pocket? And why would anyone want goggles that NEVER show where you currently are? (That's the big thing I missed the first time around, while you can shift your perspective, it never shows what's right in front of you, so I had kept clicking to try and make this happen, which got very disorienting.)

Perhaps I'm too impatient (or just too dumb) for this game. The setup was neat (although the premise is as iffy as my friend with the goggles), the writing and coding were good (although some inconsistent line spacing could be tweaked), the main puzzle was unusual (but for me kind of annoying). Overall, a good effort that I could see some people really enjoying a lot more than I did.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=817&start=10#p4294
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Renee's IFComp '09 Playlist and Reviews
User: RChoba / DateTime: 2009-10-26 21:11:43

[size=150][b]Eruption[/b][/size]

Hey! I'm halfway done!

[spoiler]This one starts with a hangover and a cave. Double bleh.

In his about text, the author explains his motivation for entering the competition: he's pretty sure his game is better than the junk most people have been turning in over the years. Hmm. Is that a good enough reason to participate? Maybe, and maybe that's the motivation for others as well, but I can't recall anyone ever saying it that way quite so bluntly. For some reason, I found myself irritated by this reasoning. I'm not saying you should only enter a game you think can win the comp, or that you shouldn't bother with the spell-checking and beta-testing and all that. But the lack of enthusiasm here kinda bothers me. Enter the comp because you want people to play your game, or to get feedback to improve, or because you love old text adventures and have always wanted to write your own, or because you have an interesting story to tell, or because you want to win or place as high as you can, or even because you want to raise the bar for the comp and show others how it can be done. But thanking the authors of terrible games while aiming to end up just above them? Well, if those reasons for entering a game satisfy you, then good for you, I guess.

Aside from the author's comments, the game itself is a decent escape-from-a-catastrophe dealio. You quickly figure out that you must leave an island before a volcano erupts, and you solve a few little puzzles along the way. Although I did not like the you-can't-go-back-the-way-you-came map, the hints provided are good, there's even a puzzle with two solutions allowed for, and all in all the game seems free of bugs and typos. Yes, this game is technically better than some others in the comp. So, I guess the author did what he set out to do. I just wish his sights were set higher, the passion for writing his game greater.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=834&start=0#p4295
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: doType horrors
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2009-10-27 01:03:42

I'm attempting to write a game in TADS 2; I started years ago, and have only just picked it up again. It was going well... until I needed a keypad. It's a simple keypad, a single object; all I need is to be able to say "type 1234 on keypad". However, try as I might, I can't figure out how to do so. Once the number is type, it compares it to the 'code' number, and unlocks a door it it matches, or otherwise clicks and does nothing.

I know it's just my grasp of the language - I've gotten pretty far using guides, looking at code, and just using common sense, but this has got me stumped. If I could figure out how to use the typeOn verb, that would probably pull me through...

Also, this is my first post here, so, hi! [emote]:-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=834&start=0#p4296
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: doType horrors
User: uux02 / DateTime: 2009-10-27 14:21:49

[quote="ArmanX"]I'm attempting to write a game in TADS 2; I started years ago, and have only just picked it up again. It was going well... until I needed a keypad. It's a simple keypad, a single object; all I need is to be able to say "type 1234 on keypad". However, try as I might, I can't figure out how to do so. Once the number is type, it compares it to the 'code' number, and unlocks a door it it matches, or otherwise clicks and does nothing.

I know it's just my grasp of the language - I've gotten pretty far using guides, looking at code, and just using common sense, but this has got me stumped. If I could figure out how to use the typeOn verb, that would probably pull me through...

Also, this is my first post here, so, hi! [emote]:-)[/emote][/quote]

[code]
numObj:basicNumObj  // This definition is probably already present in your standard std.t file
;
Keypad: fixeditem
noun='keypad'
sdesc="keypad"
verIoTypeOn(actor)={}
ioTypeOn(actor, dobj)={if(dobj.value=1234)
                         {"You have won!";
                         }
                       else
                         {"The number you typed is incorrect.";
                         }
                      }
location=startroom
;
[/code]

This should work. The calling sequence for indirect/direct object methods is as follows:

direct object.verDoTypeOn(actor, indirect object)
indirect object.verIoTypeOn(actor)
indirect object.ioTypeOn(actor, direct object)

For the command "type 1234 on keypad", the direct object is the so-called numObj - a special class that handles numbers. [i]value[/i] (which is checked in the if operator) is a special property of this class that contains the actual value of the number.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=834&start=0#p4297
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: doType horrors
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2009-10-28 09:15:08

Aha! ioTypeOn, instead of doTypeOn... that makes sense. And it works perfectly! Thanks for that [emote]:-D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=832&start=10#p4298
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Violation of free speech and defamation on the Authors Club
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-10-29 07:43:04

[quote]I've also been part of a number of different online communities over the years, and this is far from the most hostile I've seen[/quote]

Indeed.

I know nothing about the OP's issue and don't really care to research it. People on the Interwebz will argue with you, and will sometimes get nasty. You'll just get an ulcer if you spend too much time caring.

But to see real hostility, visit a Christian forum with visiting atheists or vice versa, or just about any forum on controversial topics.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=833&start=0#p4299
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Starting out small?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-10-29 07:55:15

When I started out about a year ago, I decided to write a four-room practice "game" on making a Margarita, with salt in a cabinet in one room and a glass in another, etc.

I thought that sounded so simple as to be a waste of time, but I just wanted to get my feet wet with Inform. But I was [b]amazed[/b] at the amount of work it took, and the number of things that I thought would be child's play that I ended up having to look up in the documentation. Plus there's those little tiny syntax things to learn, where if you word something slightly different you get an error or an unexpected result. 

So it was a very valuable experience. I'd really recommend making a simple game like that.

If you start out with a "real" game, then I'd definitely make it in a stepwise fashion. In other words, put in a few broad things and get them working together, then move on to the details of acquiring or using the broad things.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=832&start=10#p4300
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Violation of free speech and defamation on the Authors Club
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2009-10-29 10:21:42

I played some [i]Supreme Commander[/i] semi-recently. I don't know if it's typical for RTS-games, but the official forums were really nasty. People calling each other names, telling each other that they suck so much that they ought to uninstall the game, endless posts of the "OMG stupid n00b go away"-type... not a friendly atmosphere, to say the least. Compared to that, the IF-community is very friendly indeed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=835&start=0#p4301
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Performing an Action on a Thing Not Seen
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-10-29 10:24:39

I've had this problem a number of times, and I can't remember if I've ever solved it. I think I've always just looked for a way to avoid doing it.

I'd like to define a verb "finding" that acts upon things that exist in the game. Obviously, you only try to find things you can't see. But Inform worries about the fact that it can't be seen before even moving on to my custom code. 

[code]Finding is an action applying to one thing. 
Understand "find [thing]" as finding.

Check finding: If the player can see the noun, say "It's right here." instead.

Carry out finding: say "Let's have a look around."[/code]

[quote]>find bicycle
You can't see any such thing.[/quote]

I've tried "Before finding" and "instead of finding when" and "Finding is an action applying to one invisible thing" and everything else I can think of.

I thought of using topics instead of things, but then I can't differentiate responses for items that are and aren't present.

Any advice is appreciated!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=835&start=0#p4302
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Performing an Action on a Thing Not Seen
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-10-29 11:01:52

[quote="ShaeSays"]I've tried "Before finding" and "instead of finding when" and "Finding is an action applying to one invisible thing" and everything else I can think of.[/quote]When defining an action, the word "visible" means "in scope", not literally visible. It includes objects which are placed in scope using a "Deciding the scope of something" rule as well as those allowed due to the use of the "any" token in a grammar line. (Ex. 268 "Introduction to Juggling" and uses this technique.)

However, you'll probably want to qualify things to prevent the player from getting too much unintended information when finding things. Below I used a known / unknown property which just marks things as known the first time a player sees them. Also, I changed the parser error when finding to something a little more helpful.

(Edit: Now that I've built it, I see that ex. 360 "WXPQ" does most of the below as well -- with the exception of the known / unknown bit.)[code]A thing can be known or unknown.
After printing the name of something (called it) while looking: now it is known.

Finding is an action applying to one visible thing. 
Understand "find [any known thing]" as finding.

Check finding: If the player can see the noun, say "It's right here." instead.

Carry out finding: say "[The noun] is in [the location of the noun]."

Rule for printing a parser error when parser error is noun did not make sense in that context: 
	if we are finding, say "I don't know what that is or how to find it.";
	otherwise say "That noun did not make sense in this context.".

The lab is a room. The blue ball is in the lab.
North of the lab is the back. The red ball is in the back. 

test me with "find ball / find red ball / find bicycle / n / find ball / get it / s / drop ball / n / find ball / red".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=835&start=0#p4303
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Performing an Action on a Thing Not Seen
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-10-29 11:14:09

[quote="Skinny Mike"]When defining an action, the word "visible" means "in scope", not literally visible. [/quote]I guess one could argue that "visible" does in fact mean literally visible (to the PC in the game) and that objects which are placed in scope using a "Deciding the scope of something" rule and those allowed due to the use of the "any" token become visible as a result.   [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=835&start=0#p4304
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Performing an Action on a Thing Not Seen
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-10-29 11:24:22

Awesome Mike, that works great. Thank you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=835&start=0#p4305
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Performing an Action on a Thing Not Seen
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-10-29 11:33:41

Completely random question:

[code]After printing the name of something (called it) while looking: now it is known.[/code]

Can I use the word "it" like that in more than one rule, or will they interfere with each other? I'm always thinking of stupid words for those rules (like After printing the name of something (called the printedthing)) and "it" certainly does read better...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=835&start=0#p4306
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Performing an Action on a Thing Not Seen
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-10-29 11:41:54

[quote="ShaeSays"]Completely random question:

[code]After printing the name of something (called it) while looking: now it is known.[/code]

Can I use the word "it" like that in more than one rule, or will they interfere with each other?[/quote]Yes. Variables created using "called" are local, i.e. created, used, and then destroyed by the rule in question. I usually use something simple like "it" when the rule is a one-liner and the meaning is clear. In more complex rules, I use more descriptive names like you mention above.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=835&start=0#p4307
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Performing an Action on a Thing Not Seen
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-10-29 11:52:48

[code]A thing can be known or unknown.
After printing the name of something (called it) while looking: now it is known.

The player is carrying a turtle.

Finding is an action applying to one visible thing.
Understand "find [any known thing]" as finding.

Check finding: If the player can see the noun, say "It's right here." instead.

Carry out finding: say "[The noun] is in [the location of the noun]."

Rule for printing a parser error when parser error is noun did not make sense in that context:
   if we are finding, say "I don't know what that is or how to find it.";
   otherwise say "That noun did not make sense in this context.".

The lab is a room. The blue ball is in the lab.
North of the lab is the back. The red ball is in the back.

test me with "find turtle / i / find turtle".[/code]

[quote]>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] find turtle
That noun did not make sense in this context.

>[2] i
You are carrying:
  a turtle

>[3] find turtle
That noun did not make sense in this context.[/quote]


Hm. I understand that the rules for when a thing is known could be tweaked a little, to include things that are carried and things that have been examined. And I can handle that part. However, why is it firing the default parser error instead of the "finding" parser error?

Edit: This fixed it. 

[code]Finding is an action applying to one visible thing.
Understand "find [any thing]" as finding.[/code]

From here I guess I can tailor responses or check statements according to whether the thing is known.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=835&start=0#p4308
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Performing an Action on a Thing Not Seen
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-10-29 12:07:03

[quote="Skinny Mike"]When defining an action, the word "visible" means "in scope", not literally visible. It includes objects which are placed in scope using a "Deciding the scope of something" rule as well as those allowed due to the use of the "any" token in a grammar line. (Ex. 268 "Introduction to Juggling" and uses this technique.)[/quote]
Ahh, no, I think that's not correct. "visible" means "visible somewhere in the model world". It specifically [i]doesn't [/i]relate to scope. The usage is simply backwards from what one would expect. You can test this with the following code:

[code]Acquiring is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "acquire [any thing]" as acquiring.

Check acquiring:
	if the player holds the noun, say "You've already got that!" instead.

Carry out acquiring:
	now the player carries the noun.

Report acquiring:
	say "As if by magic, you find yourself holding [the noun]."[/code]

This magic spell will acquire anything in any room, even rooms distant from the player. But: If you comment out the word "visible", you'll get an error message that the player can't reach into the distant room.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=835&start=0#p4309
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Performing an Action on a Thing Not Seen
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-10-29 13:13:01

[quote]Hm. I understand that the rules for when a thing is known could be tweaked a little, to include things that are carried and things that have been examined. And I can handle that part.[/quote]

Ergh! I said I could handle it, but apparently I lied.

None of these things work to make a carried thing known?

[code]After printing the name of something (called it) while taking inventory: now it is known. [not desirable anyway, would rather it was already known before taking inventory]
Carry out taking something (called it): now it is known.
After the player taking something (called it), now it is known. 
This is the carriedthing rule: If the player carries something (called it), now it is known.
This is the carriedthing rule: If the player is carrying something (called it), now it is known.
This is the carriedthing rule: If the player is carrying a thing (called it), now it is known.
This is the carriedthing rule: If a thing (called it) is carried by the player, now it is known.

Definition: A thing is known if the player is carrying it. [works but makes other rules not work, which makes sense][/code]

This works:

[code]Carry out examining something (called it): now it is known. [/code]

The "After printing the name of something" rule wasn't working well enough for me, because I copiously use "Rule for writing a paragraph about the front door: now the front door is mentioned." so that I can integrate descriptions into my narrative.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=835&start=0#p4310
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Performing an Action on a Thing Not Seen
User: SJ_43 / DateTime: 2009-10-29 13:35:26

[quote="Jim Aikin"][quote="Skinny Mike"]When defining an action, the word "visible" means "in scope", not literally visible. It includes objects which are placed in scope using a "Deciding the scope of something" rule as well as those allowed due to the use of the "any" token in a grammar line. (Ex. 268 "Introduction to Juggling" and uses this technique.)[/quote]
Ahh, no, I think that's not correct. "visible" means "visible somewhere in the model world". It specifically [i]doesn't [/i]relate to scope. The usage is simply backwards from what one would expect. You can test this with the following code:[/quote]
Actually, Mike is right. The "acquire [any thing]" creates a new scope routine for this grammar line, which means that the definition of scope is temporarily altered. When you remove "visible" from "applying to one visible thing" you're saying that it's not enough that the noun is visible, it must be touchable as well. The scope routine puts all things in the game in scope, but since the action is defined as requiring a touchable noun you get an error (like "You can't reach into the distant room" if the noun is in another room, or "You can't, since the glass container is closed" if it's inside something).

[quote="Skinny Mike"][code]Rule for printing a parser error when parser error is noun did not make sense in that context:
   if we are finding, say "I don't know what that is or how to find it.";
   otherwise say "That noun did not make sense in this context.".[/code][/quote]
I'd just like to point out a trap here. When the parser error is about to be printed, the action variables haven't been updated: they are still set to whatever they were on the last turn. So we can't test whether "we are finding", but must instead do something like "if the player's command includes "find", say..."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=835&start=10#p4311
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Performing an Action on a Thing Not Seen
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-10-29 14:02:49

[quote="SJ_43"]Actually, Mike is right. The "acquire [any thing]" creates a new scope routine for this grammar line, which means that the definition of scope is temporarily altered. When you remove "visible" from "applying to one visible thing" you're saying that it's not enough that the noun is visible, it must be touchable as well. The scope routine puts all things in the game in scope, but since the action is defined as requiring a touchable noun you get an error (like "You can't reach into the distant room" if the noun is in another room, or "You can't, since the glass container is closed" if it's inside something).[/quote]
Thanks for clarifying. My bad.

What's annoying about this situation is that by inserting an extra qualifier ("visible") in your code, you're actually [i]removing [/i]a qualifier that is active but only implied in the code, not stated. I can see why Graham would have done it this way -- to save typing by letting the user write simple code for the most common situation. All the same, it's bass-ackwards.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=835&start=10#p4312
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Performing an Action on a Thing Not Seen
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-10-29 15:50:03

[quote="SJ_43"][quote="Skinny Mike"][code]Rule for printing a parser error when parser error is noun did not make sense in that context:
   if we are finding, say "I don't know what that is or how to find it.";
   otherwise say "That noun did not make sense in this context.".[/code][/quote]
I'd just like to point out a trap here. When the parser error is about to be printed, the action variables haven't been updated: they are still set to whatever they were on the last turn. So we can't test whether "we are finding", but must instead do something like "if the player's command includes "find", say..."[/quote]That's right SJ, my bad. This is why Shae wasn't getting it to work right above.

As far as this:[quote="ShaeSays"]None of these things work to make a carried thing known?[code]Carry out taking something (called it): now it is known.[/code][/quote]This works fine for me, although I'd probably shorten it to:[code]Carry out taking: now the noun is known.[/code]However, you're right that is doesn't cover all the bases. I haven't tested this extensively, but an after doing something rule to make all visible things known (see below) seems to work. (I made it a "first rule so it wouldn't be circumvented by any other after rules. Also make sure to "continue the action.") I also added a when play begins rule to cover things enclosed (directly or indirectly) by the player at the start of the game. This will cover things initially enclosed by the player but not visible because they're inside a closed container, but not stuff inside similar containers which are picked up later until they are revealed by opening the container. Is this better?[code]A thing can be known or unknown.
First after doing something:
	now everything visible is known;
	continue the action.

When play begins: now everything enclosed by the player is known. [note "enclosed" -- not carried]

Finding is an action applying to one visible thing. 
Understand "find [any known thing]" as finding.

Check finding: if the player encloses the noun, say "You're carrying it somewhere on your person." instead.

Check finding: if the player can see the noun, say "It's right here." instead.

Carry out finding: say "[The noun] is in [the location of the noun]."

Rule for printing a parser error when parser error is noun did not make sense in that context: 
	if the player's command includes "find", say "I don't know what that is or how to find it.";
	otherwise say "That noun did not make sense in this context.".

The lab is a room. The blue ball is in the lab. The purse is a closed, openable, opaque container carried by the player. The coin is in the purse. The box is a closed, openable, opaque container in the lab. The bat is in the box. 
North of the lab is the back. The red ball is in the back. 

test me with "find box / find purse / find coin / find bat / get box / find bat / open box / find bat / find ball / find red ball / find bicycle / n / find ball / get it / s / drop ball / n / find ball / red find bat".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=835&start=10#p4313
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Performing an Action on a Thing Not Seen
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-10-29 17:32:30

[quote]As far as this:
[quote]ShaeSays wrote:
None of these things work to make a carried thing known?
[code]Code:
Carry out taking something (called it): now it is known.[/code][/quote]
This works fine for me...[/quote]

I should have clarified. Yes, it works for taking something, but it wasn't working for a thing that the player carried from the start of the game. I had announced the thing in the intro, so it was silly to let it behave like an "unknown" item.

I will try what you added, which should handle that case. Thanks so much for all the help!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=836&start=0#p4314
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: A few questions concerning custom actions
User: Aradsama / DateTime: 2009-10-29 21:23:27

Hello, newbie here. I was just re-introduced to IF through one of my college classes in which the latest assignment was to play through Bronze by Emily Short. I liked it so much I wanted to make my own and eventually found Inform 7. I've been mucking about with it, testing a few things and trying to decide what kind of game I wanted to design. I decided to make a game about something else that I liked...Transformers (Specifically about the Transformers Animated Dinobots). Yes, I'm an odd one, but I figure that if it's something that I like then I more than likely won't get bored whilst trying to make it work. And that in trying something like this I'll be able to get used to using Inform 7 in the process.

Okay, on to the main point - custom actions.

There are twon main ones that are supposed to have a link to the plot : Headbutting and Transforming.

For Headbutting, I already have a really basic one -

[code]Headbutting is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "headbutt [something]" as headbutting. Report headbutting something: say "You headbutt the [noun] and are left with a bit of an ache in your helm."
After headbutting Oak Tree for first time: say "Your helm collides with the trunk, causing a hollow thud. A few leaves float down from the tree."
After headbutting Oak Tree for second time: say "Your helm collides with the trunk, causing a hollow thud. An acorn falls out of the tree."
After headbutting Oak Tree for third time: say "Your helm collides with the trunk, causing a sharp crack. The trunk appears to have splintered slightly."
After headbutting Oak Tree for fourth time:  say "Your helm collides with the trunk, causing a sharp crack. With a creaking groan, the tree topples over."
After  headbutting Grimlock: say "Grimlock growls angrily at you and stomps away."[/code]

Edited slightly. It now says the messages I want to appear when headbutting the tree.

However, there are a few things that I want to happen when headbutting the Oak Tree.
Such as - 
On the first time I want a few leaves to be dislodged.
On the second time I want an acorn to fall out of the tree.
On the third time I want the trunk to splinter.
On the fourth time I want the tree to fall over and turn into a different object called 'Fallen Trunk'

I have items for the leaves and the acorn premade.

I'd also want Grimlock to stomp angrily away if he's headbutted...but I haven't got to anything regarding NPC movement yet so that can wait.

The other action, Transforming...would be a transition between two states : Bot Mode or Alt Mode.
I want it so that some actions are restricted depending upon which state you are in at the time.
I'd also like it if I could have the description of an NPC and yourself change depending on the state.
I'm pretty sure that this would have something to do with values...but I'm not too certain on how to go about it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thankyou.

- Arad

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=836&start=0#p4315
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A few questions concerning custom actions
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-10-29 23:13:37

Rather than use After rules, my tendency would be to use Instead rules. Note that the leaves, acorn, and fallen tree are initially nowhere: the Instead rules bring them into the location. Note also that I moved the bracket in your Report headbutting rule -- this is the more usual way to do it, for technical reasons.

Hope this helps!

--JA
[code]Forest Path is a room. "A massive oak stands here."

The oak tree is scenery in Forest Path. The oak tree can be cracked or not cracked. The description is "The massive oak tree is [if cracked]split down the middle[otherwise]impressive indeed[end if]."

Grimlock is a man in Forest Path.

Headbutting is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "headbutt [something]" and "butt [something]" as headbutting. Report headbutting: say "You headbutt [the noun] and are left with a bit of an ache in your helm."

Instead of headbutting Oak Tree for first time:
	now the green leaves are in Forest Path;
	say "Your helm collides with the trunk, causing a hollow thud. A few leaves float down from the tree."

Instead of headbutting Oak Tree for second time:
	now the acorn is in Forest Path;
	say "Your helm collides with the trunk, causing a hollow thud. An acorn falls out of the tree."

Instead of headbutting Oak Tree for third time:
	now the oak tree is cracked;
	say "Your helm collides with the trunk, causing a sharp crack. The trunk appears to have splintered slightly."

Instead of headbutting Oak Tree for fourth time:
	remove the oak tree from play;
	now the fallen tree is in Forest Path;
	say "Your helm collides with the trunk, causing a sharp crack. With a creaking groan, the tree topples over."

Instead of headbutting Grimlock:
	remove Grimlock from play;
	say "Grimlock growls angrily at you and stomps away."

Some green leaves are a thing. An acorn is a thing.

The fallen tree is scenery. Understand "oak" as the fallen tree. The description is "Once a mighty oak, now it lies fallen."[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=836&start=0#p4316
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A few questions concerning custom actions
User: Aradsama / DateTime: 2009-10-29 23:23:27

Ooh, okay, that works very well. Thank you very much!  [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=835&start=10#p4317
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Performing an Action on a Thing Not Seen
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-10-30 07:17:11

All working well. Thanks for the help, and the enlightening discussion on scope!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=836&start=0#p4318
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A few questions concerning custom actions
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-10-30 08:06:56

Jim: Just curious, wouldn't "Carry out headbutting Oak Tree" and "Carry out headbutting Grimlock" (with some if statements inside) work as well? When do you decide between the two?

[quote]
The other action, Transforming...would be a transition between two states : Bot Mode or Alt Mode.
I want it so that some actions are restricted depending upon which state you are in at the time.
I'd also like it if I could have the description of an NPC and yourself change depending on the state.
I'm pretty sure that this would have something to do with values...but I'm not too certain on how to go about it.[/quote]

I'm much more of a newbie than others here, so excuse my hubris in addressing this one.

I think you need adjectives (described in 6.5) or either/or properties (4.6).

I don't know anything about transformers, so excuse my examples.  Luckily there's Wikipedia [emote]:D[/emote] 

[code]The lab is a room.

A transformer is a kind of thing. Wheeljack and Bumblebee are transformers in the lab.

There is an oak tree in the lab.

A transformer can be Bot Mode or Alt Mode.

Wheeljack is Alt Mode. Bumblebee is Bot Mode.

The description of Wheeljack is  "Wheeljack is the resident inventor and gadgeteer. Right now Wheeljack is in [if wheeljack is bot mode]bot mode.[otherwise]alt mode.[end if]"

The description of Bumblebee is "Bumblebee is small in size and often volunteers for missions where his small size is an asset. Right now Bumblebee is in [if bumblebee is bot mode]bot mode.[otherwise]alt mode.[end if]"

test me with "examine Wheeljack / examine Bumblebee"

[/code]

You could also use if statements anywhere else you normally use them with those states (If Wheeljack is Bot Mode... do this)

Incidentally when I had "Wheeljack is[b] in [/b]Alt Mode", Inform got confused, thinking I was giving a location. So I dropped the "in".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=836&start=0#p4319
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A few questions concerning custom actions
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-10-30 11:00:23

[quote="ShaeSays"]Jim: Just curious, wouldn't "Carry out headbutting Oak Tree" and "Carry out headbutting Grimlock" (with some if statements inside) work as well? When do you decide between the two?[/quote]
Yes, that would also work. My general rule of thumb (and it's largely a matter of coding style, I suppose) is that when I create new actions, I use the Check/Carry Out/Report cycle only for the [i]general [/i]process of the action, and Instead rules to handle what happens when the action is applied to some specific thing that needs special handling.

Quite often, that means I only write a Check rule for the new action, since I never want the player to be able to use that action on sundry items:

[code]Check whistling at: say "You tootle a few notes, and are ignored." instead.

Instead of whistling at Irene: say "Irene slaps your face. 'How dare you?'"[/code]--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=827&start=0#p4320
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform7 Writer -- Faster & Safer Code
User: Eudoxia / DateTime: 2009-10-30 16:51:00

Normally I would edit the last post, but the Alpha 0.2 version is here!

You can create rooms, objects, kinds, write raw code to insert it, and it includes some documentation.

The Linux executable is here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.megaupload.com/?d=QP5VI4AP">http://www.megaupload.com/?d=QP5VI4AP</a>

If you are running Windows or OS X, you can compile the source code with a C++ Compiler.

Sources:

[code]//i7 Writer
//Version 0.2, Alpha
#include <iostream>
#include <cstdlib>
#include <math.h>
#include <sstream>
#include <string.h>
#include <fstream>

using namespace std;

/*Shell*/
	string input;
/*Basic Info*/
	string title, author, genre, release, year;
/*Room, Obj, Scn*/
	string name, desc, desc_if_present, loc, loc_from, printed_name, portable;
/*Multipurpose*/
	string multip;



void splash()
{
	cout << "*========================*\n";
	cout << "|     Inform 7 Writer    |\n";
	cout << "| ---------------------- |\n";
	cout << "|   Faster & Safer Code  |\n";
	cout << "| ---------------------- |\n";
	cout << "| By Alex Rosslyn, et al |\n";
	cout << "| ---------------------- |\n";
	cout << "| Type $h to get help or |\n";
	cout << "|       $q to quit       |\n";
	cout << "*========================*\n";
	cout << "\n\n";
}

void bas()
{
	/*Code Vars*/
		string code_title_and_author, code_release, code_year, code_genre;
		cout << "\ttitle>";
		getline(cin, title);
		cout << "\tauthor>";
		getline(cin, author);
		cout << "\trelease number>";
		getline(cin, release);
		cout << "\tyear>";
		getline(cin, year);
		cout << "\tgenre>";
		getline(cin, genre);
		cout << "Basic Information Declared.";
	/*Put all the info together*/
		cout << "\nConcatenating data...";
	/*Title & Author*/
		code_title_and_author = "\x22";
		code_title_and_author += title;
		code_title_and_author += "\x22 By \x22";
		code_title_and_author += author;
		code_title_and_author += "\x22.\n";
	/*Release*/
		code_release = "The release number is ";
		code_release += release;
		code_release += ".\n";
	/*Story Year*/
		code_year = "The story year of creation is ";
		code_year += year;
		code_year += ".\n";
	/*Genre*/
		code_genre = "The story genre is \x22";
		code_genre += genre;
		code_genre += "\x22.\n";
	/*TODO: Add the routine to ~w on file --(25/10/09: Done! File I/O is super easy.)*/
		cout << "\nCode genereated. Writing on file...\n";
		ofstream codegen_bas("generated_code.i7w", ios::app);
		codegen_bas << code_title_and_author;
		codegen_bas << "\n";
		codegen_bas << "[Basic Information]";
		codegen_bas << "\n\n";
		codegen_bas << code_release;
		codegen_bas << code_year;
		codegen_bas << code_genre;
		codegen_bas << "\n";
		codegen_bas << "\n";
		codegen_bas.close();
	/*Print the generated code, telling the user that everything is allright*/
		cout << "<<code>>\n"
			 << "\x22" << title << "\x22 By \x22" << author << "\x22.\n"
			 << "The release number is " << release << ".\n"
			 << "The story year of creation is " << year << ".\n"
			 << "The story genre is \x22" << genre << "\x22.\n"
			 << "<<end code>>\n";
			 /*
			 << code_title_and_author
			 << code_release
			 << code_year
			 << code_genre;
			 * 
			 * This little function here ^ prints the value of the vars that 
			 * contain the generated code to be printed on the file. Useful 
			 * to see if the generated code printed on the screen matches the
			 *  one written on the file.
			 * */
		code_title_and_author.clear();
		code_release.clear();
		code_year.clear();
		code_genre.clear();
		
}

void room()
{
	string code_name, code_desc, code_loc, code_loc_from, code_printed_name;
	cout << "\tname>";
	getline(cin, name);
	cout << "\tdesc>";
	getline(cin, desc);
	cout << "\tloc>";
	getline(cin, loc);
	cout << "\t\tfrom?>";
	getline(cin, loc_from); 
	cout << "\tprinted name?>";
	getline(cin, printed_name);
	if(printed_name == "DEF")
	{
		goto room_final;
	}
	room_final:		
	cout << "Room declared.\n";
	cout << "Code genereated. Writing on file...";
	cout << "\n<<code>>\n"
		 << name << " is a room.\n"
		 << name << " is " << loc << " from " << loc_from << ".\n"
		 << "The description is \x22" << desc << "\x22.";
	if(printed_name != "DEF")
	{
		cout << "\nThe printed name is \x22" << printed_name << "\x22.\n";
		/*Printed Name*/
			code_printed_name = "The printed name is \x22";
			code_printed_name += printed_name;
			code_printed_name += "\x22.\n";
	}
	cout << "<<end code>>\n";
	/*Name*/
		code_name = name;
		code_name += " is a room.\n";
	/*Description*/
		code_desc = "The description is \x22";
		code_desc += desc;
		code_desc += "\x22.\n";
	/*Location*/
		code_loc = name;
		code_loc += " is ";
		code_loc += loc;
		code_loc += " from ";
		code_loc += loc_from;
		code_loc += ".\n";
	/*TODO: Add the routine to ~w on file*/
		ofstream codegen_room("generated_code.i7w", ios::app);
		codegen_room << "\n";
		codegen_room << "[Room]";
		codegen_room << "\n\n";
		codegen_room << code_name;
		codegen_room << code_desc;
		codegen_room << code_loc; 
		codegen_room << code_loc_from; 
		if(printed_name != "DEF")
		{
			/*Routine to ~w the printed_name on the file*/
				codegen_room << code_printed_name;
				codegen_room << "";
		}
	codegen_room.close();
	/*Cout the generated code, for testing purposes
	cout <<	code_name
		 << "\n" << code_desc
		 << "\n" << code_loc
		 << "\n" << code_loc_from
		 << "\n" << code_printed_name;
		 * 
		 * Checked, the code is printed the way it should. The function will remain disabled*/
	/*Clear vars*/
		name.clear();
		desc.clear();
		loc.clear();
		loc_from.clear();
		printed_name.clear();
	/*Clear CodeGen Vars*/
		code_name.clear();
		code_desc.clear();
		code_loc.clear();
		code_loc_from.clear();
		code_printed_name.clear();
}

void obj()
{

	string kind;
	string code_name, code_desc_if_present, code_desc, code_loc, code_printed_name, code_kind, code_portable;
	cout << "\tname>";
	getline(cin, name);
	cout << "\tdescription_if_present>";
	getline(cin, desc_if_present);
	cout << "\tdesc>";
	getline(cin, desc);
	cout << "\tloc>";
	getline(cin, loc);
	cout << "\tkind>";
	getline(cin, kind);
	/*Generate de Code -- Then scrap everything up and recycle*/
		/*Name*/
			code_name = name;
			code_name += " is a room.";
		/*Description If Present*/
			code_desc_if_present = "\x22";
			code_desc_if_present += desc_if_present;
			code_desc_if_present += "\x22.";
		/*Description*/
			code_desc = "The description is \x22";
			code_desc += desc;
			code_desc += "\x22.";
		/*Location*/
			code_loc = name;
			code_loc += " is in ";
			code_loc += loc;
			code_loc += ".";
		/*Kind*/
			code_kind = name;
			code_kind += " is a ";
			code_kind += kind;
		/*Printed name*/
			/*See ahead*/
		/*TODO: Add routine to ~w on file*/
		/*File ~w routine:*/
			cout << "Code [|]genereated. Writing on file...";
			ofstream codegen_obj("generated_code.i7w", ios::app);
			codegen_obj << "";
			codegen_obj << "[Object]";
			codegen_obj << "";
			codegen_obj << code_name;
			codegen_obj << code_desc_if_present;
			codegen_obj << code_desc;
			codegen_obj << code_loc;		
			codegen_obj << code_kind;
		/*End CodeGen 1*/
			cout << "\nanother kind?>";
				getline(cin, kind);
				if(kind == "DEF")
				{
					goto obj_next;
				}
				else
				{
					code_kind = name;
					code_kind += " is a ";
					code_kind += kind;
				}
		/*File ~w Routine:*/
			codegen_obj << code_kind;
	obj_next:
	cout << "\tportable?>";
	cin >> portable;
	if(portable == "Y" || portable == "y")
	{
		/*CodeGen, Stage 2*/
			code_portable = name;
			code_portable += " is portable.";
	}
	else if(portable == "N" || portable == "n") 
	{
		/*CodeGen, Stage 2*/
			code_portable = name;
			code_portable += " is not portable.";
	}
	/*File ~w routine:*/
		codegen_obj << code_portable;
		codegen_obj << ".";
	/*End CodeGen 2*/
		cout << "\tprinted name(type 'DEF' to use obj name)>";
		getline(cin, printed_name);
	if(printed_name == "DEF")
	{
		goto obj_final;
	}
	else
	{
		/*CodeGen, Stage 3*/
			code_printed_name = "The printed name is \x22";
			code_printed_name += printed_name;
			code_printed_name += "\x22.";
		/*Write it on the file*/
			codegen_obj << code_printed_name;
		/*End CodeGen 3*/
	}
	obj_final:
	cout << "Object Declared.";
	cout << "Clearing variables...";
	/*Clear the Vars*/
		name.clear();
		desc.clear();
		loc.clear();
		loc_from.clear();
		printed_name.clear();
	/*Clear CodeGen Vars*/
		code_name.clear();
		code_desc.clear();
		code_loc.clear();
		code_printed_name.clear();
		cout << "Closing file...";
		codegen_obj.close();
}

void scn(){}

void kind()
{
	/*CodeGen Vars*/
	string code_kind, code_parent;
	/*Routine*/
	cout << "\tname>";
	getline(cin, name);
	cout << "\t\tparent?>";
	getline(cin, multip);
	if(multip == "DEF") 
	{
		cout << "Kind " << name << " will be on the root location (No parent).\n";
		/*CodeGen*/
		code_kind = name;
		code_kind += " is a kind of thing.";
	}
	else
	{
		cout << "Kind " << name << " will use " << multip << " as parent kind.\n";
		/*CodeGen*/
		code_kind = name;
		code_kind += " is a kind of ";
		code_kind += multip;
	}
	/*~w it on the file*/
	/*Clear Vars*/
	/*Clear Code Vars*/
	/*Close the Stream*/
 	
}

void life(){}

void ins()
{
	cout << "\tcode>";
	getline(cin, multip);
	ofstream codegen_ins("generated_code.i7w", ios::app);
	codegen_ins << multip;
	codegen_ins.close();
	multip.clear();
}

void man()
{
	cout << "\n\n--------------------------------------------\n"
		 << "$h :: Show this document\n"
	     << "$q :: Terminate application\n"
		 << "$r :: Restart\n"
		 << "$c :: Clear Screen\n"
		 << "$d :: Show contents of current directory\n"
		 << "$x :: Force Quit\n"
		 << "$a :: About\n"
		 << "------------------------------------------------\n";
}

void about()
{
	cout << "\n\n---------------------------------------------------------\n"
		 << "Contents:\n"
		 << "	1 $ About\n"
		 << "		2 % About I7W\n"
		 << "		3 % About the Author\n"
		 << "	4 $ Manual\n"
		 << "\n\n---------------------------------------------------------\n";
	main:
	cout << ">>>";
	getline(cin, multip);
	if(multip == "1")
	{
		cout << "\n\n---------------------------------------------------------\n"
			 << "Two Subsections:\n"
			 << "	2 % About I7W\n"
			 << "	3 % About the Author\n"
			 << "\n\n---------------------------------------------------------\n";
		goto main;
	}
	else if(multip == "2")
	{
		cout << "\n\n---------------------------------------------------------\n"
			 << "About Inform-7 Writer (I7W):\n"
			 << "	Inform-7 Writer is a command-line application written in t\n"
			 << "he C++ Programming Language with the GCC/G++ Compiler.\n"
			 << "	I7W takes input from a command-line interpreter, and asks \n"
			 << "questions to the user to declare certain information. For exa\n"
			 << "mple, if the user enters 'room' at the shell, the program wil\n"
			 << "l ask him questions like 'name' and 'desc' (Description).\n"
			 << "	The answers are then put together along with Inform-7 code\n"
			 << "and the code is written on a file.\n"
			 << "	With I7W, the writer can create huge and complex environme\n"
			 << "nts for the player to explore, rich in objects and scenery.\n"
			 << "\n\n---------------------------------------------------------\n";
		goto main;
	}
	else if(multip == "3")
	{
		cout << "\n\n---------------------------------------------------------\n"
			 << "About the Author:\n"
			 << "	Inform-7 Writer was created by Alex Rosslyn.\n"
			 << "	His blog can be found at:\n"
			 << "		http://pleasegodno.wordpress.com\n\n";
		goto main;
	}
	else if(multip == "4")
	{
		cout << "\n\n---------------------------------------------------------\n"
		     << "Shell Commands (command::description):\n"
			 << "	bas  :: Declare the Basic Information (Name, Author, etc.)\n"
			 << "   room :: Declare a room.\n"
			 << "   obj  :: Declare an object.\n"
			 << "   ins  :: Manually Insert Inform-7 code into the file.\n"
			 << "   kind :: Declare a new kind.\n"
			 << "	life :: Create a Lifeform (class::animal)\n"
			 << "Internal Commands:\n"
			 << "	$h   :: Show the Internal Commands\n"
			 << "	$q   :: Terminate application\n"
			 << "	$r   :: Restart\n"
		 	 << "	$c   :: Clear Screen\n"
		 	 << "	$d   :: Show contents of current directory\n"
		 	 << "	$x   :: Force Quit\n"
			 << "	$a   :: Show this Document\n"
			 << "\n\n---------------------------------------------------------\n";
		goto main;
	}
	else
	{
		cout << "Invalid.\n";
		goto main;
	}
}


int main()
{
	/*Vars*/
	/*Header Text*/
		splash();
	shell:
	/*Command Shell*/
		cout << "\nshell>";
		getline(cin, input);
		if(input == "room")
		{
			room();
		}
		else if(input == "obj" || input == "object")
		{
			obj();
		}
		else if(input == "scenery" || input == "scn")
		{
			scn();
		}
		else if(input == "bas")
		{
			bas();
		}
		else if(input == "life")
		{
			life();
		}
		else if(input == "ins")
		{
			ins();
		}
		/*Internal*/
			else if(input == "$q")
			{
				goto EXT;
			}	
			else if(input == "$h")
			{
				man();
			}
			else if(input == "$r")
			{
				splash();
			}
			else if(input == "$c")
			{
				system("clear");
			}
			else if(input == "$d")
			{
				cout << "Current Directory:\n\n";
				system("pwd");
				cout << "Contents:\n";
				system("ls -a");
			}
			else if(input == "$x")
			{
				cout << "Terminating process...\nTerminal should print 'Terminated' if successfull.\n";
				system("killall i7w");
			}
			else if(input == "$a")
			{
				about();
			}
		/*Invalid*/
			else
			{
				cout << "Invalid command.\n";
				goto shell;
			}
	goto shell;
	EXT:
	return 0;
}
[/code]

EDIT: Forgot to mention something: The generated code is stored in a file code "generated_code.i7w". This is the default file (In the future you will be able to change the name).

EDIT_2: 1111th post in the section!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=837&start=0#p4321
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Handbook Updated
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-10-30 17:25:36

I've updated [i]The Inform 7 Handbook[/i] from 1.0 to version 1.9b. The new edition can be downloaded from <a class="postlink" href="http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm">www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm</a>. It has more than 60 pages of new material, including lots of code details and ideas. (Also a few new graphics, just for fun.)

If you spot errors or have suggestions for improvements, please email me! (A good address is <a href="mailto:midiguru23@gmail.com">midiguru23@gmail.com</a>.) I don't plan to finalize version 2.0 until after the next official release of Inform, so we may have another month or two to fine-tune it.

I figured I should upload the current version now, rather than wait, because maybe there's something in there that someone can use. Hope so.

--Jim Aikin

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=827&start=0#p4322
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform7 Writer -- Faster & Safer Code
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2009-10-30 17:43:33

I don't have developer tools installed on my Mac, so I haven't tried this but, it occurs to me that Inform7 Writer could probably be implemented in I7 itself. Glulx games can output files, which means that you can output a fully functioning I7 source file directly. (I am doing this with a WIP, actually--the "game" allows you to create a composition interactively, then outputs source code that will recreate it in the player's own project.) Just a thought.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=827&start=0#p4323
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform7 Writer -- Faster & Safer Code
User: Eudoxia / DateTime: 2009-10-30 19:29:09

[quote="ektemple"]I don't have developer tools installed on my Mac, so I haven't tried this but,[/quote]

I think you just download xCode.

[quote] it occurs to me that Inform7 Writer could probably be implemented in I7 itself. Glulx games can output files, which means that you can output a fully functioning I7 source file directly. (I am doing this with a WIP, actually--the "game" allows you to create a composition interactively, then outputs source code that will recreate it in the player's own project.) Just a thought.

--Erik[/quote]

I think there were some commands in the I7 docs ('show me', I think) that allow you to get the properties of some object, and other commands to modify those.


Note: The original post said version .02, which is 0.02. This is a typo, it's actually 0.2.

EDIT: The App that was similar to Inferno is called 'CAW: Creative Adventure Writer' and was developed by Richard Hunt.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=827&start=0#p4324
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform7 Writer -- Faster & Safer Code
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2009-10-30 20:48:12

[quote][quote]Quote:
it occurs to me that Inform7 Writer could probably be implemented in I7 itself. Glulx games can output files, which means that you can output a fully functioning I7 source file directly. (I am doing this with a WIP, actually--the "game" allows you to create a composition interactively, then outputs source code that will recreate it in the player's own project.) Just a thought.

--Erik[/quote]

I think there were some commands in the I7 docs ('show me', I think) that allow you to get the properties of some object, and other commands to modify those.[/quote]

Well, what I meant was that the whole application could be implemented in I7, with an I7 "game" that asks you "questions" and compiles your answers into source code, just as your WIP does. And now that I think about it, Emily Short did something very like this with her collaborative tool in the open collaboration on Alabaster:

[url]http://emshort.wordpress.com/2008/10/29/a-halloween-experiment/[/url]

Heck, if you did something like this in I7, you could even generate the world dynamically--i.e., the author could interact with the world as she builds it.

Anyway, best of luck finishing up this tool!

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=827&start=0#p4325
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform7 Writer -- Faster & Safer Code
User: Eudoxia / DateTime: 2009-10-30 21:14:56

Thanks [emote];)[/emote]

I think the only functions that work flawlessly are bas (Basic game info) and room (Create a room). Obj (Creating an object) has this minor bug, and other functions (The one to declare kinds, the one to manually insert code, and the props one (Generates code like this: "A [kind] can be [text]". Example: A thing can be green.)) also work flawlessly.

EDIT: YAY! 

BUGS = KILLED  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

Here's a tip from a guy: Don't write the whole program and then compile to fix the bugs, write 4 lines of code, then compile  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]


EDIT:

Example of session:

[code]*========================*
|     Inform 7 Writer    |
| ---------------------- |
|   Faster & Safer Code  |
| ---------------------- |
| By Alex Rosslyn, et al |
| ---------------------- |
| Type $h to get help or |
|       $q to quit       |
*========================*



shell>bas
	title>Millenium
	author>Alex Rosslyn
	release number>2
	year>2001
	genre>Science-Fiction/Horror
Basic Information Declared.
Concatenating data...
Code genereated. Writing on file...
<<code>>
"Millenium" By "Alex Rosslyn".
The release number is 2.
The story year of creation is 2001.
The story genre is "Science-Fiction/Horror".
<<end code>>

shell>room
	name>Observatory
	desc>The Observatory is a large room.
	loc>west
		from?>hlw
	printed name?>DEF
Room declared.
Code genereated. Writing on file...
<<code>>
Observatory is a room.
Observatory is west from hlw.
The description is "The Observatory is a large room.".<<end code>>

shell>room
	name>hlw
	desc>The Hallway is a long and dark room.
	loc>east
		from?>Observatory
	printed name?>The Dark Hallway 
Room declared.
Code genereated. Writing on file...
<<code>>
hlw is a room.
hlw is east from Observatory.
The description is "The Hallway is a long and dark room.".
The printed name is "The Dark Hallway".
<<end code>>

shell>obj
	name>Box    
	description_if_present>You can see a Box here.
	desc>The Box is small.[if open] It's open.[end if][if closed] It's closed.[end if]
	loc>hlw
	kind>container
Code [|]genereated. Writing on file...
	another kind?>openable
	portable?>Y
	printed name(type 'DEF' to use obj name)>DEF
Object Declared.Clearing variables...Closing file...
shell>ins
	code>Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short.    

shell>prop
	a...>thing
	can be...>green
A thing can be green.
shell>prop
	a...>thing
	can be...>red
A thing can be red.
shell>
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=837&start=0#p4326
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Handbook Updated
User: Eudoxia / DateTime: 2009-10-30 21:19:30

That's quite handy,

I wish I had read it earlier, lol.

Also gave me an idea for the prop() routine in i7 Writer.

Nice Handbook, earns my Seal of Approval.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=832&start=10#p4327
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Violation of free speech and defamation on the Authors Club
User: Retro / DateTime: 2009-10-30 23:27:57

[quote="ShaeSays"]But to see real hostility, visit a Christian forum with visiting atheists or vice versa, or just about any forum on controversial topics.[/quote]

Please leave out any religious talk in my topics. Okay? Christianity, Atheism, Judaism and so forth.
They are not my business and will never be.

I can show you how to step into the light of a new digital era. Let CYOA be the platform to guide you. Choice is the path to wisdom.
And you already made a choice by posting in this topic. Would you done so if I didn't give you the oppurtunity?
Choice is control. Choice is power. And I'm its forerunner.

Emilian K.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=832&start=10#p4328
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Violation of free speech and defamation on the Authors Club
User: Retro / DateTime: 2009-10-31 00:29:52

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Compared to that, the IF-community is very friendly indeed.[/quote]

There is a problem in the IF community. People use old parser-systems which do not compete with the mainstream game industry. Now advanced CYOA can give a new input, a solution to the problem. It is a great opportunity.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=828&start=10#p4329
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Limit on declarations for kinds of value?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-10-31 11:07:44

@ Endosphere and anyone following this thread:

Graham sent me (and Jim) an email this morning verifying that this is indeed a bug that crept into the last build (5z71) and has been removed in the upcoming release. A new test case has also been added to the test suite to prevent this bug from reappearing in future builds. Before anyone asks, he did not mention when the new build is coming out, but in my experience, when you start getting bug reports back, the team is coming down the home stretch.  [emote]:D[/emote]

Also, I generally don't share the contents of private emails without asking first, but I figured in this case it would be ok. Apologies to all involved if it is not.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=838&start=0#p4330
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: George's 2009 playlist and reviews
User: George / DateTime: 2009-10-31 12:12:29

I'm a little late to the party, but better late than never (or after November 15 I should say). 

[b]My playlist:[/b]

[x] Star Hunter (zcode/hunter/hunter.z5)
[x]  zork, buried chaos (zcode/zorkburiedchaos/zork, buried chaos.zblorb)
[x]  Beta Tester (zcode/beta/Beta Tester.z8)
[x]  Earl Grey (glulx/earlgrey/earlgrey.ulx)
[x]  The Ascot (adrift/ynkaboom/YNKaboom.taf)
[x]  Gleaming the Verb (zcode/gleaming/gleaming.z5)
[x]  Yon Astounding Castle! of some sort (adrift/astoundingcastle/astoundingcastle.taf)
[ ]  The Believable Adventures of an Invisible Man (zcode/invisible/invisible.z8)
[ ]  Eruption (zcode/eruption/eruption.z5)
[ ]  Resonance (glulx/resonance/resonance.gblorb)
[ ]  GATOR-ON, Friend to Wetlands! (zcode/gatoron/gatoron.z5)
[ ]  Trap Cave (windows/trapcave/nxi.exe)
[ ]  Condemned (zcode/condemned/condemned.z5)
[ ]  Interface (zcode/interface/Interface.z8)
[ ]  The Grand Quest (zcode/grandquest/TheGrandQuest.z5)
[ ]  Rover's Day Out (glulx/rover/rover.gblorb)
[ ]  Spelunker's Quest (zcode/spelunkers/Spelunker's Quest.zblorb)
[ ]  The Duel That Spanned the Ages (zcode/duelthatspanned/duel.z8)
[ ]  The Duel in the Snow (zcode/duelinthesnow/duel.z8)
[ ]  Broken Legs (glulx/broken/Broken Legs.gblorb)
[ ]  Byzantine Perspective (zcode/byzantine/byzantine_perspective.zblorb)
[ ]  The Hangover (adrift/hangover/hangover.taf)
[ ]  Grounded In Space (glulx/gis/GiS.gblorb)
[ ]  Snowquest (zcode/snowquest/Snowquest.zblorb)


As in past Comps I'll be rating games in three categories: Execution (how well the game plays technically; this category forgives a lot of errors like spelling and so on), Creativity (the richness of the idea, its characters and so on), and WTF!?, which rates how audacious, daring, and/or bold the entry is. The final score averages the rating in each category.

Usually I don't play through two hours if a game isn't holding my interest; I'll still score these games though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=838&start=0#p4331
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: George's 2009 playlist and reviews
User: George / DateTime: 2009-10-31 13:29:17

[size=150]Star Hunter[/size]

[spoiler]To be honest I would have enjoyed this a lot more if I actually was hunting stars. An old school text adventure, Hunter isn't without its charms, such as collecting every object in sight and putting things into other things to see what happens, and hyperjumping around the solar system. However this isn't enough to hold my interest; I would have liked to see some more verve in the action, maybe an antagonist racing you to find the bear? After about 45 minutes I peeked at the walkthrough. I salute anyone who wins this game. 

[b]Execution[/b]:  Competently coded, and I can't really fault it for ease-of-use since figuring out the various interfaces is what a lot of the gameplay is about. [b]6[/b]. 

[b]Creativity[/b]:  Just enough to keep this together, but not without some style. [b]6[/b]

[b]WTF!?[/b]:  Not much going on here. [b]5[/b]

[b]Score: 5.7[/b][/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=817&start=10#p4332
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Renee's IFComp '09 Playlist and Reviews
User: RChoba / DateTime: 2009-10-31 13:57:00

[size=150][b]Star Hunter[/b][/size]

I'm always up for some strange adventures in infinite space...

[spoiler]At first I was feeling really unsure of this game since I needed to mess around with a lot of mechanical stuff to make things happen, and that is not usually my strong suit in IF. But then I found myself suddenly off the ship and in some camp, and realized I had actually managed to get the transporter thingie working (even though I didn't know what it was!)

Did some exploring but got hung up in the bazaar trying to figure out what to trade for. (This game seriously needs to provide some more hints and/or motivation!) I traded for a tape but apparently picked the wrong one, as I was unable to get down to the next planet I ended up at. This killed my momentum and I decided to stop there. I thought I would just come back to this game later, but then a glance at the walkthrough told me there was a LOT more to do, so I don't know if I'll be able to finish this one before the comp is out.

I did like the nods to various sci-fi stuff (although I think it's self-sealing stembolts, not stealing) and I enjoyed being able to figure out the ship and transporter controls without much trouble. I also liked seeing my score go up (always makes me feel good to know I'm on the right track.) On the other hand, I did not like the lack of direction, and I'm afraid the process of getting around could become pretty boring through repetition. I think this would have held my interest better if it was more fun just exploring and/or if the ultimate goal was made clearer.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=817&start=10#p4333
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Renee's IFComp '09 Playlist and Reviews
User: RChoba / DateTime: 2009-10-31 14:13:45

[size=150][b]Gleaming the Verb[/b][/size]

For some reason, this title makes me want to recite Jabberwocky.

[spoiler]If I have to gleam the verb, shouldn't gleam be a recognized verb?

This is a short little word puzzler game that, depending on how you feel about word puzzlers, could be fun or not. Basically it's got one thing to figure out: how to turn a fairly nonsensical phrase into a verb for interacting with a cube. (Not that you really interact with the cube, you just say "whatever cube" and there you are, next clue.) 

I got the first two words, not the next two, and then the final two. So I didn't feel as dumb playing it as I did the other figure-one-thing-out game I played.  I enjoyed the game as a short diversion within the comp, it was kinda neat for a change, but I don't know how well it would stand if you were playing it alone instead of in a group of other games. 

And why was I naked?[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=817&start=20#p4334
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Renee's IFComp '09 Playlist and Reviews
User: George Shannon / DateTime: 2009-11-01 12:20:38

[quote="RChoba"][size=150][b]Condemned[/b][/size]

With a title like that, I guess I shouldn't be expecting rainbows and kittens and such. Which is too bad, as I like rainbows and kittens and such.

[spoiler]Soon into the game I find I am wearing a gag. One that I can't remove, even though I tied it myself. In a few turns, I die. I see how this game is going to be.

For the most part, the writing here is very good, at least in the sense that it creates a real mood and feeling of foreboding. I did run into a few oddities, like the message "You can't talk to the (Hunting-for-Sister)." Said sister also doesn't really talk like an 8-year old, and she wears a tied-eyed shirt.

But it must say something good for the game that in a short amount of time I cared about the characters enough to not want to see things end badly for them. I mean, I'm playing a poor kid with a ratty bike, a messed-up mom, a wicked stepfather, and clothes that must be washed before school the next day. I'm obviously feeling guilty for something awful that happened, which I'm pretty sure spells doom for my kid sister.

Although the game seems technically sound, having the player repeatedly type a command like "wait", or even "talk to (someone)" is not really all that interactive. To be fair, the game did field my attempts at doing other things. But it was soon clear that I would have little control over what happened in the story. Which upset me, as I wanted to stop the train wreck of an ending I could just feel was coming. 

I got through the car ride with my "friends", which was really really awful, and I couldn't do anything about it. Then I was confronted with an empty cross and told that it made me feel uncomfortable and sick. A fair assessment. I decided the only way to get a happy ending was to quit the game, so I did.

Playing a game that wants me to literally crucify myself is not really my thing. The solid writing suffers from telling a story-on-rails, and a depressing one at that. If someone wants to tell me how it ends so I can be glad I didn't torment myself by finishing it, go ahead. Or maybe I should just make up an ending for it myself. One where Jill gets a kitten and sees a rainbow. Yeah.[/spoiler][/quote]
[spoiler]Yeah, pretty much the worst stuff you imagine is what happens.  It's blatantly manipulative, which is annoying, even if it's good at drawing out emotions.  The ending gets really odd, and I think it was mostly due to the author not knowing when to stop writing.

It's an oddly strong game except for those faults, I think.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=839&start=0#p4335
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Links to IF Comp 2009 reviews
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2009-11-02 08:00:43

I've been maintaining a list of links to IF Comp 2009 reviews at the IFWiki: [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/15th_Annual_Interactive_Fiction_Competition#Reviews]the general list is there[/url], and I've just added links on [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/15th_Annual_Interactive_Fiction_Competition#The_Entries]the individual pages of the games[/url] (click on the name of the game to see its page with links to reviews in the Links section).

Emily Short [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2009/10/03/if-comp-reviews/]also maintains a general list of links[/url], which helped me a lot. Yoon Ha Lee also did [url=http://yhlee.livejournal.com/1585896.html]a list of links to reviews sorted by game[/url] some time ago, but now it's not as up-to-date as the links I added on the IFWiki.

Since it's a wiki, you can correct mistakes yourselves if there are any, and you can add links to new or missing reviews yourselves too! (Note that there may be too many captchas because of recent anti-spam measures; I think this little problem hasn't been fixed yet, unfortunately, but it shouldn't be too bad if you don't need to do a lot of edits.)

Have a good read!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=836&start=0#p4336
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A few questions concerning custom actions
User: Aradsama / DateTime: 2009-11-02 13:34:33

Thankyou ShaeSays. That works wonderfully for the transforming of the NPCs.

Though now I'm having another problem with something else.

[code]
Sweeping is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "sweep [something]" as sweeping.

Clawing is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "claw [something]" as clawing.

Mud is a thing. Mud can be clawed or not clawed. The description is "Some wonderful squishy mud. It has [if clawed]claw marks in it[otherwise] the perfect consistancy for digging[end if]."

Instead of sweeping some mud:
	If mud is clawed:
		say "You sweep your tail over the mud, smoothing out the claw marks.";
		now mud is not clawed;
	otherwise:
		say "You sweep your tail over the mud, spreading it around a little."

Instead of clawing some mud:
now mud is clawed;
say "You dig at the mud a little, leaving behind some claw marks."[/code]

The clawing action works just fine, but the sweeping one doesn't. However there's no errors being reported concerning it. It'll play the game but when you type in 'sweep mud' it just says 'You achieve nothing by doing this.'

EDIT : Changed it to clawed or not clawed. Still doesn't work.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=838&start=0#p4337
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: George's 2009 playlist and reviews
User: George / DateTime: 2009-11-02 14:56:56

[size=150]zork, buried chaos[/size]

[spoiler]Once again, I'm faced with a game where the title endears me more than the actual gameplay. It reminds me Paul Panks' [i]Ghost of the Fireflies[/i], though even that game had a lot going for it to make up for its lack of firefly ghosts. To make a long story short, I could get behind [i]zork, buried chaos[/i] if there was some amount of chaos, buried or not, but as it stands it's another old school game without too much going on. I lasted about 15 minutes. 

[b]Execution: 5.[/b] It gets the job done. 

[b]Creativity: 4.[/b] Not much to see here. 
[b]
WTF!?: 6.[/b] I have to give a little bit of respect for entering this game in 2009. 

[b]Score: 5.[/b][/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=836&start=0#p4338
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A few questions concerning custom actions
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2009-11-02 16:24:17

The problem with sweep is that it is already defined by the Inform library; it is a synonym for rub. (The easiest way to see when you've run up against an already defined command is to comment out everything you've written relating to the command, compile the game, and then do a search in the Actions part of the Index tab for the verb.) To get this going, you just need to amend the action definition like so:

[code]
Understand the command "sweep" as something new. Sweeping is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "sweep [something]" as sweeping.
[/code]

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=838&start=0#p4339
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: George's 2009 playlist and reviews
User: George / DateTime: 2009-11-02 16:29:13

[size=150]Beta Tester[/size]

[spoiler]One thing I've always liked about the IFComp is how it feels like you've just walked into an arcade (or, if you prefer, a library). And like an arcade or library you'll walk by a few titles that are really similar, the shooters with the plastic guns or five year out of date books on HTML or whatever, but then you'll turn a corner and walk down another aisle and find something different. 

You could make the case that at its core [i]Beta Tester[/i] isn't different from the first two games I played -- it's an exploration game with some puzzles -- but I would argue that in IF, a game's presentation, or in other words, a game's voice, can be everything. [i]Beta Tester[/i], then, lives (and dies, unfortunately for me) on its voice. 

I get the feeling from this game that the author started off with a lot of energy to work on the first puzzle room, but this energy waned as he went further in. You can hear this in how the style of the voice supports the puzzle solving in the first room with its failure messages and extra descriptions, but later comes to replace much of the player agency with scripted outcomes to the actions you do take. 

There is some genuinely funny writing here, but again, later in the game the comedy is less about the style of the voice itself and more about trying to script the comedy like conventional fiction, and for me this just didn't work. The beginning of the scene with Greymyrrh is a good example. I quit a little after this point, as I didn't feel the future boded well, and there was no walkthrough to peek at to see if I was making a mistake (I admire people like Mike S. with the stamina to play all the way through most of the games and write a fully informed review -- unfortunately I'm not one of those people!). 

Ultimately [i]Beta Tester[/i] started off strong with real personality, but I think later used this style, to its detriment, as a crutch in place of real gameplay. 

As far as I can tell this is the author's first game; I definitely look forward to the second. 

[url=http://kooneiform.wordpress.com/files/2009/11/george_beta_tester_01.doc]gameplay script[/url] (I'm not doing this for every game, just the ones that held my interest for a while)
[b]
Execution: 7[/b]. Some complicated interactions pulled off well. (I've revised an earlier score for Star Hunter downward in this category)

[b]Creativity: 8[/b]. Definitely a lot of effort here. 

[b]WTF!?: 7[/b]. Mainly because any IF game with a personality has something going for it in my opinion. 

[b]Score: 7.3[/b][/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=836&start=0#p4340
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A few questions concerning custom actions
User: Aradsama / DateTime: 2009-11-03 00:45:22

[quote="ektemple"]The problem with sweep is that it is already defined by the Inform library; it is a synonym for rub. (The easiest way to see when you've run up against an already defined command is to comment out everything you've written relating to the command, compile the game, and then do a search in the Actions part of the Index tab for the verb.) To get this going, you just need to amend the action definition like so:

[code]
Understand the command "sweep" as something new. Sweeping is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "sweep [something]" as sweeping.
[/code]

--Erik[/quote]

Oh! Thankyou!!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=840&start=0#p4341
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: The Player is NOW wearing his angry face...
User: garypryke / DateTime: 2009-11-03 11:21:57

Having a seriously annoying problem. I'm writing a Harry Potter game. I have already declared that the players character is NOT wearing several items of clothing. (Hey! Watch it! I ain't being pervy!). I've taken it directly from the book and so as the game opens you need to get up and get dressed before you can leave the room. If you don't do it within a set amount of time, you start to smell burning (because you have been told to get straight to the kitchen and watch the bacon). At this point I want the game to dress Harry and send him straight to the kitchen. This part looks something like this:

At 7:15 am:
	if the player is not in the kitchen carrying frying pan, say "You can smell smoke and you realise it must be the bacon burning. Uh oh, you'll be in trouble now!";
		if the player is not wearing boxer shorts, say "You on put your shorts.";
		if the player is not wearing the t shirt, say "You put on your T Shirt.";
		if the player is not wearing the trousers, say "You quickly put on the trousers.";
		if the player is not wearing the glasses, say "You quickly put on the glasses.";
		if the pair socks are under the bed, say "You grab the socks from under the bed.";
		if the player is not carrying socks, say "You put the socks on.";
		if the player is not in the kitchen, say "You run to the kitchen.".

Now how the hell do I get the character to actually be WEARING those items of clothing. Everything I try fails. Help me! PLEASE! I can't have him running around thinking he's clothed when he's not. It's just WRONG!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=840&start=0#p4342
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The Player is NOW wearing his angry face...
User: garypryke / DateTime: 2009-11-03 13:15:30

AH GOT IT!

"Now the player is wearing" is the phrase I needed.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=838&start=0#p4343
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: George's 2009 playlist and reviews
User: George / DateTime: 2009-11-04 01:01:31

[size=150]Earl Grey [/size]

[spoiler]The worst I can say about [i]Earl Grey[/i] is it's a game I would like to like more. I think in the end it's just not the kind of game I usually like, as it's sort of a cross between [i]Violet [/i]and [i]Lost Pig[/i] (I should add I've played about twenty minutes of those two games combined). I lasted a little longer with this one, and [url=http://kooneiform.wordpress.com/files/2009/11/george_earlgrey_01.doc]the script is here[/url]. I had to go to the walkthrough in the first puzzle, but I rarely play a game using a walkthrough at all, so it says a lot for this game that I continued from that point. 

One of my favorite things about IF is its facility for transformation, something that hooked me early on in one of the first games I played ([i]Worlds Apart[/i], when the heroine changes into a bird), so [i]Earl Grey[/i] had me from the start. 

The problem was, except for a few moments (knocking the guardsman to wryness, and transforming the paper, as notable examples), the transformations remained firmly behind the battle lines of the crossword so to speak, though of course this really is no fault of the game itself. It could be I'm terrible at puzzles and just bitter as well. In any case a combination of losing interest and needing to hit the walkthrough more and more ended the game for me in the middle of the sphere scene; I'll probably go back to this just to read the walkthrough. 

[b]Execution: 8[/b]. I especially liked the limits on the command set, though just by habit I was a little grabby grabby from time to time. 

[b]Creativity: 8.[/b] Imaginative to say the least.
[b]
WTF!?: 8.[/b] An 8 for the unusual gameplay, probably would have scored a 9 if it wasn't a series of puzzle boxes. 
[b]
Score: 8.[/b] Best of my list so far.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=817&start=20#p4344
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Renee's IFComp '09 Playlist and Reviews
User: RChoba / DateTime: 2009-11-05 18:18:24

[size=150][b]The Duel in the Snow[/b][/size]

I'm dreaming of a White Russian...

[spoiler]So right off the bat I liked the special commands and the glossary. But the thirst puzzle drove me crazy, and I ended up rushing outside and off to the duel since I couldn't find anything to drink in my house. (Why can't I eat/drink some snow? Or make some gin with the juniper berries?) Anyway, I lost the duel.

The second time around I took my time, solved the thirst issue and then read a whole lot of poetry. The nature of the game started to wear on me since I couldn't really change things or speed things up. And, you know, it's hard to talk to characters with names like Gronovskij. (But they sure shoot better than I do.) 

Wanting to know more about what was going on with Natasha and why the insult hurt so much, I played again. This time I thought about how the random anecdotes in the flashback should have stopped when Gronovskij and Kropkin are talking about/laughing at me. Eventually I turned to the walkthough to discover that the owl saves the day. (Who knew? And it appears to be the only way to not die; I tried using the book and the bottle in my pocket instead of the owl but found no help there.) 

A question in the Amusing asks me if I ever discovered what really happened... no, although I really really wanted to! But after reading some other reviews, I am pretty sure the game was hinting at Natasha having run off with Kropkin (since she seems to be the poet and the last poem in the book is for K- and all) and the whole duel thing really gets instigated by my dear friend Kropkin (who sobered up quite quickly when I challenged Gronovskij) to get me out of the way. (But, why would I have to be out of the picture if my wife has already left me?)

This led me to playing yet again, in an effort to figure out if there's a way to confirm the suspicions about Kropkin. He sighs when I ask about Natasha and blushes about the poetry, so I guess I'm on to something. But I can't challenge him, or shoot him during the duel instead of Gronovskij. This, I think, is a missed opportunity. Imagine an ending where you play through, suspect your friend, even get shot (since the death scene is where Natasha is revealed as the writer) and then you have a chance to shoot your "friend" when he comes to help you. (Meaning you'd have to reserve your pistol shot until the very last.) The ending would still be bleak, fitting the tone of the story, but it might also be a bit more satisfying.

Anyway, the game as it stands is atmospheric and interesting, but the lack of real motivation (outside of thirst) at the beginning and the inability to uncover all the mysteries or really change anything is a bit of a letdown. Although it says something about the game that I played through it repeatedly, kept thinking about it, and came back again, doesn't it? It would have been even more compelling with more story/resolution and less emphasis on distracting/odd puzzles.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=817&start=20#p4345
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Renee's IFComp '09 Playlist and Reviews
User: RChoba / DateTime: 2009-11-05 18:25:25

[size=150][b]The Believable Adventures of an Invisible Man[/b][/size]

Your definition of believable may vary.

[spoiler]From the introductory text alone I find myself not liking the PC. 

Entering a wardrobe takes me to my apartment? Oh, yeah, because I was in a secret lab. That's my secret lift.

Being naked and invisible makes it really hard to carry stuff around unseen. Please tell me I don't have to hide things inside my person. Pretty please?

I have poisonous pizza in my oven? That the walkthrough tells me I am supposed to throw out the window for the creepy guy instead?

I don't think I really want to take my revenge out on anyone just now. Thanks.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=817&start=20#p4346
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Renee's IFComp '09 Playlist and Reviews
User: RChoba / DateTime: 2009-11-05 18:29:49

[size=150][b]The Ascot[/b][/size]

Why is it that the file name for this game is YNKaboom? Am I missing something?

[spoiler]I am offered an ascot, then told it is cursed. Do I still want it? Um, no thanks. That was easy enough.

Oh, all right, I'll give it another chance. This time I'll say yes to everything. Except for the question at the end about playing the adventure again.

The humor/style of this is just not my thing. And I can't get too invested in a game when all I have to type is Y or N each turn.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=817&start=20#p4347
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Renee's IFComp '09 Playlist and Reviews
User: RChoba / DateTime: 2009-11-05 18:38:17

[size=150][b]Trap Cave[/b][/size]

But [i]this[/i] cave is different. It's in Germany.

[spoiler]Most of the game is in German, but the choices were in English, so I did play around a bit just making choices with no real idea of the context. I found a key and eventually got a RIP message.

I'm not against CYOA as a rule, but I think it works much better when it's used to change the direction of a story instead of being used as an exploration tool. If my choices include things like examine this or go south, then I'd much rather be free to look and walk around on my own. Also, this style is no fun for puzzles, since it's hard to let the player figure stuff out and feel the satisfaction of actually solving things. I mean, if my choices are:

1) do something really clever to solve the puzzle
2) poke around some more

well, what would you pick? And how would it matter?[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=838&start=0#p4348
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: George's 2009 playlist and reviews
User: George / DateTime: 2009-11-05 23:57:13

[size=150]The Ascot[/size]

[spoiler]One thing I've noticed in the few years I've judged IFComp games is people talking about 'joke entries'. Like, 'is this a joke entry? Maybe this is just a joke entry but...I'm just going to assume this isn't a joke entry and...', etcetera. The assumption kind of being that I'm getting conned, and this isn't serious business, or more to the point that the author didn't put any effort into their game. 

But what's wrong with a joke, especially if all IF games are supposed to be riddles anyway  [emote];)[/emote] ? Furthermore, I haven't written any IF myself, but from the little I've messed around I get the sense that writing something that even just barely hangs together is significantly more work than I usually think about when I'm trying to tell a joke. All of this is a long preamble to saying that  [i]The Ascot[/i] is not a typical work of IF -- in fact it feels like a joke -- but whether it's a joke or not I think it's told very well. It demonstrates perfectly my opinion that the best IF uses the medium to its advantage; just because most IF doesn't have graphics doesn't mean that the [i]form [/i]of an IF is not vitally important.

[i]The Ascot[/i] conveys its form mainly by turning the game into a CYOA with two choices every turn; in this way it controls the game's pacing (and so how the shape of its form unfolds) nearly to a tee. Any attempt to diverge from this constraint will ultimately end in death (brilliantly done). This is a very good way to present a game, if the writing is terrific, and I enjoyed some of the writing here a lot -- "I mean, the sight of it is like nine nightmares wrapped in accidental electrocution... I mean, really shocking". However at other times the writing was too glib for me and didn't feel quite as vivid or gutsy as I would have liked, so in the end I wasn't as entertained as I think I could have been. 

[b]Execution: 8[/b]. IF doesn't have to be complicated to be done well. 

[b]Creativity: 7[/b]. A typical IF fantasy, but not done badly. 

[b]WTF!?: 7[/b]. The unusual format deserves some points here. 

[b]Score: 7.3[/b][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=817&start=20#p4349
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Renee's IFComp '09 Playlist and Reviews
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2009-11-06 09:27:23

[quote="RChoba"][size=150][b]The Ascot[/b][/size]

Why is it that the file name for this game is YNKaboom? Am I missing something?[/quote]
Now that I think of it, the filename is a hint about how to win the game. Really! I'm liking The Ascot more and more. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=817&start=20#p4350
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Renee's IFComp '09 Playlist and Reviews
User: RChoba / DateTime: 2009-11-06 10:14:51

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="RChoba"][size=150][b]The Ascot[/b][/size]

Why is it that the file name for this game is YNKaboom? Am I missing something?[/quote]
Now that I think of it, the filename is a hint about how to win the game. Really! I'm liking The Ascot more and more. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

K, now I know I'm missing something! Perhaps a replay is in order.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=838&start=0#p4351
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: George's 2009 playlist and reviews
User: George / DateTime: 2009-11-07 11:50:40

[size=150]Gleaming the Verb[/size]

[spoiler]A word puzzle game (and that's all, as far as I can tell) with minimal operating instructions, [i]Gleaming [/i]may have some relationship between the puzzles and the answers but I wasn't able to understand it. The weird thing is that many of the answers are very simple, more on the order of a spatially well defined cascade of letters through the puzzle, so...I just don't get it I guess. I don't think this was substantial enough for a Comp entry honestly, but nevertheless it's competently done. 

[b]Execution: 7.[/b] Sufficient for what it does.

[b]Creativity: 6[/b]. Some points are in order for even thinking of those puzzles.

[b]WTF!?: 6.[/b] I'd give this more points if the game wasn't as slight as it was. 
[b]
Score: 6.3[/b][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=832&start=10#p4352
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Violation of free speech and defamation on the Authors Club
User: Bob_Woodward / DateTime: 2009-11-07 12:52:15

[quote="EK_Dev"]There is a problem in the IF community. People use old parser-systems which do not compete with the mainstream game industry. Now advanced CYOA can give a new input, a solution to the problem. It is a great opportunity.[/quote]

Well, I guess you're kidding. Either that or you're trolling. I mean, first of all it is obviously nonsense to apologetically call one game system superior to one other. That's like calling action adventures per se better than first person shooters. But even if you really felt like that, it would be absurd to go to this forum and tell the members that it's a problem that people use parser-systems (when perhaps 99 % of the members like parser based games). At least it would be rude. But you're kidding, of course.

Bob

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=817&start=20#p4353
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Renee's IFComp '09 Playlist and Reviews
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2009-11-07 18:49:35

[quote="RChoba"]K, now I know I'm missing something! Perhaps a replay is in order.[/quote]

Mild spoiler:
[spoiler]There is a way to really win this game, getting a 100% positive ending.[/spoiler]

Medium spoiler:
[spoiler]It has something to do with typing commands that are not yes/no. Try it.[/spoiler]

Second medium spoiler:
[spoiler]Bascially, you don't have two options, but three: Y, N and Kaboom. That's why the filename is a spoiler. [emote]:)[/emote][/spoiler]

Heavy spoiler
[spoiler]Say something not "yes/no" twice at a random point in the game, then give the interpreter to the monster. It will say "Huh?", which makes the interpreter explode. Pretty clever fourth-wall breaking puzzle, actually.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=841&start=0#p4354
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: GNOME-Inform7's Memory Leaks
User: Eudoxia / DateTime: 2009-11-08 17:43:55

I have a tiny problem with i7: The program seems to be full of memory leaks.

Every time I type something, it freezes and I have to wait until the letters appear on the screen (The RAM chart on the upper panel reachers the top, also). If I type a lot (More than 10 words), the program freezes. For some reason, when a program uses all my CPU, Ubuntu 'locks' it. The window becomes dark, and then returns to normality. But the problem is still there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=842&start=0#p4355
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Stopping Players entering rooms.
User: DavidTurner / DateTime: 2009-11-08 21:35:57

I want to be able to stop a player entering any room if criteria hasnt been met.
Something like:
[code]Before entering a room:
	if player has less gold than the room's entry fee
		say "You cannot enter" instead.[/code]

I know the code probably wont work but its just to give an idea of what i would like to achieve.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=842&start=0#p4356
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stopping Players entering rooms.
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-11-08 23:13:10

Use a "before going to" rule (see ch. 7.13 Going from, going to). Note that entering is for enterable supporters and containers, not for changing rooms. Something like this should get you started:[code]Lab is a room. "North is the back, the lobby is to the south, east is the office and the closet is west."
North of Lab is the Back. South of Lab is the Lobby.
East of Lab is the Office. West of Lab is the Closet.

A room can be allowed or forbidden. [default forbidden]
Lab, Lobby and Closet are allowed.

Before going to a forbidden room:
	say "You're not allowed in [the room gone to]." instead.

Instead of jumping:
	now the Back is allowed;
	now the Office is allowed;
	say "You are now permitted entry to the Back and the Office."

test me with "n/e/s/n/w/e/jump/n/s/e".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=841&start=0#p4357
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: GNOME-Inform7's Memory Leaks
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2009-11-09 05:12:26

I use Gnome-Inform 7 myself, but I don't have this problem.

The best thing to do would be either to mail Philip Chimento directly, or make a bug report here: <a class="postlink" href="http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=179857&atid=890833">http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_i ... tid=890833</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=832&start=10#p4358
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Violation of free speech and defamation on the Authors Club
User: Retro / DateTime: 2009-11-10 01:05:31

[quote="Bob_Woodward"]Well, I guess you're kidding. Either that or you're trolling.[/quote]

None of both.

[quote]I mean, first of all it is obviously nonsense to apologetically call one game system superior to one other.[/quote]

I never said that. Show me where I did before making allegations like this...

Besides, it would be unwise and completely stupid of me calling Node-X "superior" at this stage of development, especially if it currently runs in a DOS window. [emote]:lol:[/emote]

[quote]That's like calling action adventures per se better than first person shooters.[/quote]

Many adventure fans will agree with it. I can't and won't comment on that, because I have no prejudices against first person shooters, although I know that adventures games are more advanced in the gameplay sector.

[quote]But even if you really felt like that, it would be absurd to go to this forum and tell the members that it's a problem that people use parser-systems (when perhaps 99 % of the members like parser based games). At least it would be rude.[/quote]

I would say it's currently 80% for parser-based and 20% for CYOA, taking the entire and worldwide gaming community in account and not just the rec.arts.int-fiction newsgroup.

[quote]But you're kidding, of course.[/quote]

I am never kidding.

At the end of the 90s I started producing an experimental style of techno and house music. I called it "acid groove" that times. Just a name which I felt sounded cool. I uploaded some tracks of mine on online music communities between the years 2000 and 2002. Some people who downloaded my music called it "interesting" and asked me how I called that style. I said I called it "acid groove", but I felt that the name was not right though. Most people, however, said that my music sucked. They even called me "rude" and a "troll", because I told them in forums that Trance - which was very popular that times - was out of date.

You want to know what my so-called "acid groove" sounded like?

It sounded like what is nowadays popular and widely known as [b]Electro / Electrohouse[/b]! [emote]:!:[/emote] (Click [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electro_house]here[/url] for more info)
Now that's a better name than "acid groove", isn't it.   [emote]:D[/emote] 

Today I can proudly say that I was one of the first musicians who made Electro in a time where it was considered "underground" and most people didn't see the upcoming trend, because they were so narrow-minded. Today we have David Guetta, Lady Gaga and others in the mainstream who all copy that style which we already made 10 years ago!

Same case here. Mark my words: [b]In 10 years advanced CYOA systems will enter the mainstream and parser-based games will become a rarity![/b]  [emote]:!:[/emote] 

Call me "rude", call me a "troll", call me whatever you want. I am right and I am not kidding.

And you know why? Because I am good at trend forecasting. I always was. You can laugh about it or not, but you will see.
But always remember. I can't tell you exactly what the future in 10 years will look like. And it will probably not me who will push the whole CYOA genre into the mainstream. My prediction is that it will be a major game company who will do it.... probably from USA or Britain, as always. They will see a business opportunity and make the entire thing take off in the gaming industry...

That's what I meant when I said that I am a "forerunner". First it was Electro. Now it's advanced CYOA gaming! All which matters is that I am one of the first coders who pushes that CYOA thing. I am already proud of it. It will take off..... you can't stop it! There are already small game companies who produce and sell more and more CYOA titles. [emote]8-)[/emote]

I could disappear from this community and you would never see me again. But it won't change what I said about the upcoming CYOA boom. Nobody credits "Emilian Kowalewski" these days for being one of the first underground musicians who made Electro. Maybe it's my name, it doesn't sound stylish enough, eh.  [emote];)[/emote] But maybe that's the secret.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=817&start=20#p4359
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Renee's IFComp '09 Playlist and Reviews
User: RChoba / DateTime: 2009-11-10 08:46:08

[size=150][b]Earl Grey[/b][/size]

This title seems incomplete without tea at the front and hot at the end.

[spoiler]At first, I was completely befuddled about what this game was trying to do. But it's actually a pretty cool and unique concept: you change things by removing and adding letters to their names. How? It involves a mysterious runebag and some particular phrasing. This neat idea is bogged down, however, by opening with a lesson in which you do a lot of talking to a man named Eaves. Then the game wants you to be mean to him, for no apparent reason, then he is mean back, and then the stated purpose of the game completely changes.

While I did like the concept and the hints/internal monologue at the bottom, when the game changed I found myself wishing the point was just to go gather tea still. At one point, the game has you thinking, "You know, Eaves, it's not like I didn't have other options today..." and I agreed, remembering the list of other games I could be playing. Didn't finish this one.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=817&start=20#p4360
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Renee's IFComp '09 Playlist and Reviews
User: RChoba / DateTime: 2009-11-10 09:21:59

[b][size=150]Beta Tester [/size][/b]

Hey, is this a just a trick to get your game tested?

[spoiler]This game does a bunch of things wrong. There's no real plot or endgoal (the motivation is just have fun) there's some errors in the gameplay (like no response when trying to unlock a door) a tone which some have found hostile (I never felt truly insulted) and what seems like a lack of hints (you have to type walkthru). And yet, overall, I really enjoyed myself here.

There's also a bunch of pausing. 
Pause. 

For emphasis. 
Pause. 

Or humor. 
Pause. 

Which wears kinda thin. 
Pause. 

And yet it adds something to the pacing of the game which really works. (Especially in the slapstick bits, which I would not have thought could be done well in IF, but which I found rather amusing.) 

I liked the helpful hamster and the writing (the paragraph about the cool kids at school was great) and didn't mind so much going from one random puzzle to another. And while IF is not the place I'd expect to find a game like First to 100, I was impressed with the coding and liked playing it. Eventually I did tire a bit, finding the food and drink puzzles dull and the finish pretty bland. 

The game could easily have been called Toybox, since it's basically a collection of toys/puzzles you can pick up and play with randomly before closing it all down when you're done. If you accept it for what it is you may just have fun with it. I did.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=817&start=30#p4361
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Renee's IFComp '09 Playlist and Reviews
User: RChoba / DateTime: 2009-11-10 10:10:41

[size=150][b]Snowquest[/b][/size]

A game by a known author... I've been looking forward to this one.

[spoiler]Ah, to be in the hands of a competent writer! I knew going in that whether I liked the game or not I would find it decently coded and polished. There I was not disappointed. With the story, however...

I got the feeling that the author didn't know what he wanted this game to be. It starts out as an adventure, then gets a little quest-y, goes for an artsy vibe while bringing in some sci-fi, and ends up being just plain weird. While there are some nice images and moments, as a whole it doesn't really all hang together.

In addition to not buying the story, I also found the puzzles unnecessarily hard. As in, I knew what I had to do and yet could not accomplish it. (Like, I thought I had already broken a twig of the branch, but I hadn't. And I was sure what I needed to do with the bone, but didn't come up with the magic rub word. Also, I knew I had to move the snow off the cockpit, but didn't think to just clean it. And in the end I thought I had the gun when I didn't, and couldn't see why I wasn't able to shoot it.) These frustrations could have been helped with some better descriptions and/or some alternate verbage implemented in there.

Some random thoughts as I was playing...
A unicorn dream? Am I a replicant?
Help us nameless IF adventurer. You're our only hope. 
Wait a minute, is this just another CAVE game?
The body is me? Hang on, am I Starbuck?
[i]IS[/i] the FBI equipping its agents with mind-bending crystals?

I really didn't like that the only way to get the "good" ending was to make what turned out to be wrong choices along the way. Add this to the earlier "it was all a dream" bit and it just felt like the game kept cheating. I don't like being jerked around by a game unless there's a point to it all. Here, there wasn't. Next time I hope Eric Eve uses his powers for good, not evil. (Ok, evil's a strong word. But you know what I mean. Don't waste your talent on half-baked ideas.) (And chill, out, man. Some people [i]can[/i] be trusted!)[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=817&start=30#p4362
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Renee's IFComp '09 Playlist and Reviews
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-11-10 13:14:09

Re. Snowquest:
[quote="RChoba"][spoiler]The body is me? Hang on, am I Starbuck?[/spoiler][/quote]
Glad I'm not the only one who thought of that.   [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=842&start=0#p4363
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stopping Players entering rooms.
User: DavidTurner / DateTime: 2009-11-10 17:35:20

Ah I see...
The problem was with- you dont enter rooms- you go into them.
Thanks for the help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=823&start=0#p4364
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Action names
User: DavidTurner / DateTime: 2009-11-10 17:40:17

I know this must be a bit of a bump.. but why are you trying to work this out?
Even so - its kinky [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=838&start=0#p4365
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: George's 2009 playlist and reviews
User: George / DateTime: 2009-11-10 20:38:44

[size=150]Yon Astounding Castle! of some sort[/size]

[spoiler]The amazing thing about this game is I stuck with it -- even after the totally unclued up exit in the hovel, looking something up in Wikipedia (?!), and the random apply this to that sort of thing going on here. Regardless YAC is unabashedly what it is, and pulled off with a style and unity most games don't come close to. Still it was far too much of this sort of thing for me to stick with it; I quit after about an hour when the goblin stole my treasure and peeked at the walkthrough. I'll come back to this on a rainy afternoon. I don't know why but I had fun playing this game.

[b]Execution: 8.[/b] Despite the random difficulty and some minor typos this is really well put together in my opinion. 

[b]Creativity: 8.[/b] The work of a fertile mind. 
[b]
WTF!?: 7.[/b] This gets points for the Olde Englishe (which isn't random as far as I can tell -- there is a curse of spakery after all). 

[b]Score: 7.6[/b][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=843&start=0#p4366
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Changing a global truth state
User: sbouchard / DateTime: 2009-11-10 23:28:04

I'm a programmer working on my first Inform project and trying to figure out the language as I go. It's mostly going well, but I've run into a problem that I just can't seem to find documentation on. (Maybe my programming background is making me search for the wrong things?)

I'm using Eric Eve's Conversation Suggestions extension and I don't want it to list suggested topics when the player first greets an interlocutor. According to the extension's documentation, I need to change suggest-on-greeting to false. Seems easy enough. But I can't get it to work.

When I try, "Change suggest-on-greeting to false." the compiler complains that it can't find a verb that it knows how to deal with. This is particularly frustrating, as "change" is used throughout the documentation for Inform 7.

When I say "Now suggest-on-greeting is false.", the compiler complains that I'm trying to say that a thing is a value. From what I can tell, the compiler thinks I'm creating an object called suggest-on-greeting, rather than referring to the existing global variable. But the global variable definitely exists; it shows up under the Contents Index.

I imagine this is an unbelievably simple mistake for me to be making, but I've been searching for hours for an answer and I'm either using the wrong terms or looking in the wrong places. Any help would be hugely appreciated! Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=843&start=0#p4367
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing a global truth state
User: George / DateTime: 2009-11-11 00:23:08

I can't tell exactly without seeing your actual code, but I have a feeling you're trying to make an imperative statement without a context; frequently things like 'Now the...' or 'Change the...' type statements need a context for them to work, such as an activity, rule check, condition, and so on. 

For an easy example, maybe try something like:

[code]When play begins: change suggest-on-greeting to false. [/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=843&start=0#p4368
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing a global truth state
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-11-11 00:25:59

[quote="sbouchard"]I'm using Eric Eve's Conversation Suggestions extension and I don't want it to list suggested topics when the player first greets an interlocutor. According to the extension's documentation, I need to change suggest-on-greeting to false. Seems easy enough. But I can't get it to work.[/quote]

"Change" phrases don't work on their own. You need to place the command inside a rule.
[code]When play begins:
    change suggest-on-greeting to false.[/code]

Everything that doesn't set up the initial state of the world (i.e. every change to the world state) must go into a "function" (a rule or such). Here the extension sets up the initial state (suggest-on greeting is true), so every change to that variable must be done inside a rule.

Edit: Damn! Again 2 minutes too slow :)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=843&start=0#p4369
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing a global truth state
User: sbouchard / DateTime: 2009-11-11 01:28:47

Ah! Okay, now I understand. It wasn't clear to me that I needed context to make imperative statements, and I wasn't familiar with the "When play begins" rule book. I made that change and it works exactly the way I had hoped. Perfect!

Thanks for your quick replies, both of you! (Even Nitku!)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=807&start=0#p4370
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New to Inform 7
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-11-11 08:12:05

[quote]I thought it would be easier to pick up I7 or one of the other authoring systems by virtue of knowing a little I6.[/quote]

Bainespal, If I'm not mistaken, you can still write games in I6 if you prefer. My Old Man prefers I6 because he sees it as more objective and code-like.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=807&start=0#p4371
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New to Inform 7
User: Eudoxia / DateTime: 2009-11-11 12:54:34

I know the feeling.

Write simple games (Like the examples above), try & fail, retry, etc.

Another idea: Go to the thread about Inform7 Writer, copy-paste the sources into a C++ compiler, compile it, run it, and you can type stuff and it generates the code for you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=843&start=0#p4372
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing a global truth state
User: George / DateTime: 2009-11-11 14:31:38

[quote="sbouchard"]Ah! Okay, now I understand. It wasn't clear to me that I needed context to make imperative statements[/quote]

I should add that 'all imperative statements need a context' probably is more a rule of thumb than something hard and fast, but if you think of I7 as a declarative language things make more sense.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=832&start=10#p4373
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Violation of free speech and defamation on the Authors Club
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2009-11-11 16:34:36

There's been a substantial CYOA business in Japan for years.  Look up visual novels like Ever 17.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=807&start=0#p4374
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New to Inform 7
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-11-12 12:31:52

[code]1. Make an apple that the player character can eat.
2. The same, but now you get to see a custom message "That's one tasty apple!", when you eat it.
3. The same, but now you have to get the apple from a closed chest first.
4. The same, but now the player dies immediately after eating the apple.[/code]

These are very good ideas. When I started out I tried to make a 4-room game about making a margarita, and I found it to be way harder than anticipated, so it was a great initiation into the process. 

I thought I'd just have each ingredient in a different room, and maybe some of them behind closed cabinets, but I didn't anticipate the intricacies of pouring from one vessel to another, shaking salt, checking that all activities had been completed before winning, and so forth.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=832&start=10#p4375
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA trend
User: Retro / DateTime: 2009-11-13 08:14:47

[quote="ralphmerridew"]There's been a substantial CYOA business in Japan for years.  Look up visual novels like Ever 17.[/quote]

Thanks. I looked up Ever17 and it looks promising. I found some screenshots at [url=http://www.kreativrauschen.de/blog/bilder/visual-novels/erver-17/]this link[/url]. 

Perhaps a japanese game production studio will make the CYOA genre more popular in the industry. With their Manga style and stuff they have good chances, I can imagine. And they have a very fitting name for it. They call it "Visual Novel".

I also thought about merging CYOA with graphics. Actually I have had this idea since January 2007 when I started coding Node-X. But I thought it would be better to work out my CYOA engine first before porting the entire code to a graphical representation. This explains why I still run my code in a DOS window.

Now let's hope that visual novels can gain attraction outside of Japan aswell...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=844&start=0#p4376
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Possessive nouns ending in "s": evil or just annoying?
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-11-14 03:45:26

I feel a bit silly bringing this up as I feel I really should know the answer, but apparently I had never before tried to use a noun ending in 's' in Inform 7 that must occassionally be referred to in a possessive sense and now that I want to do so I'm at a loss for ideas.  For example consider the following code:

[code]Include Plurality by Emily Short.

The testarea is a room.

A head is a kind of thing.  One head is part of every person.
Some eyes are a kind of thing.  One eyes are part of every head.

A woman called Doctor Janus is in the testarea.[/code]
When trying to interact with the Janus' head or eyes in the above example, I immediately noticed that  something needed to be done because:

a) Commands must be in the format "[command] janus's head" to interact with her parts; for example "x janus's head";

b) Output text from Inform prints the possessive form of janus' name  in the format "janus's"; for example the command "get janus's eyes" results in the output text "Those seem to be a part of Doctor Janus's head.";

My immediate reaction on noticing this problem was to add the following command to address (a):

[code]After reading a command:
	let T be indexed text;
	let T be the player's command;
	replace the regular expression "janus'" in T with "janus's";
	change the text of the player's command to T.[/code]
but that did absolutely nothing (compiled fine but no effect in-game); nor did:

[code]After reading a command:
	let T be indexed text;
	let T be the player's command;
	replace the regular expression "janus\'" in T with "janus\'s";
	change the text of the player's command to T.[/code]
To address (b) I tried adding the following:

[code]Doctor Janus is plural-named.[/code]
thinking this would hook into the "To say possessive for whatever when whatever acts plural" portion of the Plurality extension, but it didn't work; neither did adding a more explicit statement:

[code]To say possessive of Doctor Janus: say "Doctor Janus[apostrophe]"[/code]
to the source code.

In any case, none of this fiddling around would have addressed the general issue of how to properly use possessive nouns that end in 's' (either in commands or in output text) since the fiddling was specific to 'doctor janus.'  Does anyone have any suggestions on how to deal with this problem?  At the moment I'm thinking I'll just give the good doctor some other name that doesn't end in 's' and make a mental note to never again use any name that ends in 's' that will need to be referred to in a possessive context, but that's a cop-out rather than a solution; I'd prefer to think that possessive nouns ending in 's' are just annoying rather than truly evil [emote]:([/emote] .

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=844&start=0#p4377
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Possessive nouns ending in "s": evil or just annoying?
User: SJ_43 / DateTime: 2009-11-14 08:17:13

[quote="Endosphere"]My immediate reaction on noticing this problem was to add the following command to address (a):

[code]After reading a command:
	let T be indexed text;
	let T be the player's command;
	replace the regular expression "janus'" in T with "janus's";
	change the text of the player's command to T.[/code]
but that did absolutely nothing (compiled fine but no effect in-game); nor did:[/quote]
The reason this doesn't work is that the apostrophe actually matches a quotation mark instead!

[quote="Endosphere"]To address (b) I tried adding the following:

[code]Doctor Janus is plural-named.[/code]
thinking this would hook into the "To say possessive for whatever when whatever acts plural" portion of the Plurality extension, but it didn't work; neither did adding a more explicit statement:

[code]To say possessive of Doctor Janus: say "Doctor Janus[apostrophe]"[/code]
to the source code.[/quote]
Well, when Inform creates the head it automatically gives it the printed name "Doctor Janus's head". So if you like you could just manually change the printed name of her head. Here's a more general fix:
[code]The testarea is a room.

A head is a kind of thing.  One head is part of every person.
Some eyes are a kind of thing.  One eyes are part of every head.

A woman called Doctor Janus is in the testarea.

After reading a command:
   let T be indexed text;
   let T be the player's command;
   replace the regular expression "\w+s[apostrophe]\b" in T with "\0s";
   change the text of the player's command to T.

Rule for printing the name of something which is part of something:
	let T be indexed text;
	let T be "[printed name of the item described]";
	replace the regular expression "(\w+s[apostrophe])s\b" in T with "\1";
	say "[T]";[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=844&start=0#p4378
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Possessive nouns ending in "s": evil or just annoying?
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-11-14 09:48:57

Thank you, SJ_43.  That

[quote="SJ_43"][code]After reading a command:
let T be indexed text;
let T be the player's command;
replace the regular expression "\w+s[apostrophe]\b" in T with "\0s";
change the text of the player's command to T.

Rule for printing the name of something which is part of something:
let T be indexed text;
let T be "[printed name of the item described]";
replace the regular expression "(\w+s[apostrophe])s\b" in T with "\1";
say "[T]";[/code][/quote]

bit is elegantly concise and works perfectly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=845&start=0#p4379
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Turn Count since Certain Event
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-11-14 18:06:38

I'll be glad when I can quit asking for help here. Eventually I'd like to enter a comp, and I don't feel like I can do that if I've gotten a bunch of help. Though whether small non-game-revealing syntax questions disqualify, I don't know.

I'd like to make something happen ten turns after something else happens. 

I've tried the following:

[code]
Scenepause is a value that varies. Scenepause is 0.

Every turn during Scene Y:
     [If something is true that makes the scene end],
     now Scenepause is turn count.

Scene x is a scene. Scene x begins when turn count is > than Scenepause + 10.[/code]

Compiler doesn't like "now Scenepause is turn count" or "now Scenepause equals turn count".

If there's a syntax for something like "Scene x begins when turn count since Y happened is 10", then I certainly can't find it or guess it.

Help is appreciated as always.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=817&start=30#p4380
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Renee's IFComp '09 Playlist and Reviews
User: RChoba / DateTime: 2009-11-14 19:15:59

[size=150][b]The Duel That Spanned the Ages[/b][/size]

Three left, and I'm getting tired.

[spoiler]Begins with an infodump, then a bit in a bar, then a suspenseful bit with your squad, and then it's a race for survival! I think, anyway, as I didn't play much beyond the zombies attacking me.

This is certainly an ambitious game, Episode 1 of who knows how many, but I was let down by all the introductory stuff that didn't seem to matter. Like, I think I was just wasting time at the bar, no? And I wasn't really attached to the squad, but then I got them all killed. And I can't be sure, since I didn't play it through, but the rest of the game seems like a lot of escaping and shooting and so forth, which doesn't really interest me. 

(Truth be told, I was more interested in finishing the other two games on my list before the comp time ran out...)[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=817&start=30#p4381
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Renee's IFComp '09 Playlist and Reviews
User: RChoba / DateTime: 2009-11-14 19:39:08

[size=150][b]Broken Legs[/b][/size]

The first thing I do when the comp games come out is open each one to read the intro. I was dying to get back to this one.

[spoiler]Even if this year's comp wasn't filled with duels and caves and quests and snow, this game would still stand out. The unique premise is this: You're Lottie Plum, a spoiled, unsympathetic Broadway hopeful who's just flubbed an important audition. Your only hope now is to sabotage all the other girls waiting to try out. Mean? Yes. But also pretty entertaining.

My main problem with this game was that it's insanely hard. As in, I never would have finished without the walkthrough. I don't mean in two hours for the comp, I mean ever. Even with mommy's help (cool hint system) and a couple of playthroughs, I was pretty stuck. Maybe I'm thick, but some of the puzzles (like the foam one) seemed a bit out there. And some important objects (like the motet) could definitely have been clued better.

I did love being able to type who or what is whatever, as well what happens when you don't answer y or n to a yes or no question, and the awesome option available on replay after you win. (I was feeling a bit of uncertainty about the final action in the game, but in the context of the ending, I'm ok with it.)

Overall, the game's strong voice/character, custom messages, technical quality, and unique story outweigh the crazy hard puzzles. I hope this game does well. I would help it take down some other games to place higher if I could.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=817&start=30#p4382
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Renee's IFComp '09 Playlist and Reviews
User: RChoba / DateTime: 2009-11-14 20:06:22

[size=150][b]Resonance[/b][/size]

Possibly my favorite cover art of the comp.

[spoiler]The author of this game says he was inspired by Nightfall, and it definitely shows. But where Nightfall managed to suck me in and creep me out, this game fails. The whole thing just feels a bit off, a tad overdone. The inconsistent tone made me never quite sure if it wanted to be taken seriously or not.

I ran into some errors which did not help my game immersion. One was a runtime problem when trying to look into a cabinet (I hoped there wasn't anything important in there) and another was an issue with conversation topics which led to me having this exchange with my (dying) brother: 

"Hey Steve (dying), I really don't have more to say or ask."
"No problem, Jimmy. If you have any more questions, let me know."

Way to break the mood, bug.

While we're on the subject, I wasn't too keen on the conversation system here. I'm not opposed to picking from a list, although it's not my favorite option, but the numbering was annoying. (Here's your topic choices: 2, 5, or 0. Wait, what happened to 1, 3, & 4?) I also didn't like seeing all those things in parenthesis telling me stuff was (empty) (open) (dead) etc. My brother being an in-game tutorial irked me. I didn't like having to repeatedly go out and in and in and out, and the travel just seemed unnecessarily slow. The atmospheric messages never quite worked for me, either, since there weren't enough and they lost impact on repeat usage. And then there were the riddles. Sigh. I guess little puzzles like that work in some games, but man, when it's life or death someone's-trying-to-take-over-the-world time, it's just unrealistic and silly to run into random riddles.

I'm sorry to be so negative on this game, but that was my experience with it. I never quite got it, or got into it. I do appreciate the fact that there are apparently 3 paths through the game. Perhaps I would have enjoyed another one better, although I was doing my best to follow where the clues led. With less bugs, stronger writing and a consistent tone, things could have been better. Instead, this is the way the comp ends for me, not with a bang, but a whimper.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=845&start=0#p4383
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Turn Count since Certain Event
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2009-11-14 20:46:14

[quote="ShaeSays"]I'll be glad when I can quit asking for help here. Eventually I'd like to enter a comp, and I don't feel like I can do that if I've gotten a bunch of help. Though whether small non-game-revealing syntax questions disqualify, I don't know.[/quote]
Really, you shouldn't worry! You certainly can enter a comp if you've gotten help. I guess most (if not all?) authors of comp and non-comp games need programming help from time to time. That's not at all the same thing as an uncredited co-author!

It's polite to thank the forum members for their help in the ABOUT or CREDITS text of your game, but that's all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=817&start=30#p4384
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Renee's IFComp '09 Playlist and Reviews
User: RChoba / DateTime: 2009-11-14 20:53:52

[size=150][b]Final Thoughts[/b][/size]

Yay! I made it through all the games! Just a few final thoughts before I vote.

I think I will remember this year as the hangover/duel/cave/quest/snow/space comp. (Someone should write a game with all those things as an homage.) Overall there weren't a lot of really bad/buggy games here, although more than once I wished for more creativity, better motivation, and/or just more fun!

[b]My favorites this year:[/b]
Duel in the Snow (although I liked my imaginary ending best)
Broken Legs (despite the insanely hard puzzles and perhaps because of the annoying PC)

[b]I also enjoyed:[/b]
Snowquest (well, up until the end)
Beta Tester (despite its random nature)
Interface (cause I dig nostalgia)
GATOR-ON, Friend to Wetlands! (for fun more than for technical merit)

[b]Other games that I thought were good:[/b]
Rover's Day Out (but I didn't like repeating the same dull actions)
Byzantine Perspective (although I was too thick for the main puzzle, I thought it was cool)
Gleaming the Verb (nice for a quick word-puzzle diversion)

I recognize some other games were technically good, but just not my thing. Usually if I just don't like a game I won't rate it, unless I've played it all the way through. So I may not vote on all the games even though I tried playing them all.

[b]My guesses for top three: [/b]
Rover's Day Out, Broken Legs, and Snowquest.
(But I'd love to see Duel in the Snow here. And I'd be mad if I saw Resonance here.)

Congrats to all the authors for getting your games done and entered! This was fun, let's do it again next year. [emote]:-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=832&start=10#p4385
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA trend
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2009-11-14 22:15:36

If you want to look at a general engine for visual novels, look at ONScripter/NScripter or KiriKiri.  For strictly textual CYOAs, my SimpleCYOA extension is good.  (It's a few days worth of work, but I was building on the Inform 7 platform.)

Sample source code:
    Instead of displaying page right door: say "The door locks behind you. A fiery pit splits this room in two. Two bridges cross it. Do you [link left bridge]cross the left bridge"; if current state is has potion, say ", [link right bridge]cross the right bridge, or [link drink]drink the potion?"; otherwise say " or [link right bridge]cross the right bridge?".

will display

The door locks behind you. A fiery pit splits this room in two. Two bridges cross it. Do you 1) cross the left bridge, 2) cross the right bridge, or 3) drink the potion?

or

The door locks behind you. A fiery pit splits this room in two. Two bridges cross it. Do you 1) cross the left bridge or 2) cross the right bridge?.

properly word-wrapping, depending on whether or not the player has the potion.  If you don't want choices listed inline, instead having each choice on its own line, the code's nicer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=845&start=0#p4386
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Turn Count since Certain Event
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-11-14 22:35:34

[quote="ShaeSays"]I'd like to make something happen ten turns after something else happens. 

Compiler doesn't like "now Scenepause is turn count" or "now Scenepause equals turn count".

If there's a syntax for something like "Scene x begins when turn count since Y happened is 10", then I certainly can't find it or guess it.[/quote]
Try this -- I think it does what you want:
[code]The Test Lab is a room. "Many devious tests are conducted here."

The player carries a banana. The banana is edible.

Scenepause is a number that varies. Spool is a truth state that varies. Spool is false.

Scene Y is a scene. Scene Y begins when play begins.
Scene X is a scene. Scene X begins when spool is true.

After eating the banana:
	let N be the turn count;
	now scenepause is N + 5;
	continue the action.

Every turn during Scene Y:
	if turn count is scenepause:
		now spool is true.

Test me with "scenes / eat banana / z / z / z / z / z".[/code]
It appears you can't set a variable to turn count directly, but you can set a temporary variable to turn count and then set scenepause to the temp variable. In addition, you need to use a global truth state (here I've called it spool) to trigger the start of the new scene. Hope this helps!

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=845&start=0#p4387
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Turn Count since Certain Event
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-11-15 00:57:44

...and it turns out there's an even easier way to do it:
[code]The player carries a banana. The banana is edible.

Scene Y is a scene. Scene Y begins when play begins.
Scene X is a scene.
	
Scene X begins when the banana has been nowhere for 7 turns.

Test me with "scenes / eat banana / z / z / z / z / z".[/code]
It appears that any condition can be used in this syntax. The main limitation is that you can only start a scene in one way, so you couldn't write two different "Scene X begins when..." rules. But you could easily write a scene-starting rule with two conditions, like this: "Scene X begins when spool has been true for 5 turns or the apple has been polished for 5 turns." Or, if your scenario is more complex, you could create a global truth state, set it to true in various blocks of code, and then use it to cue up a scene after a delay:
[code]Spool is a truth state that varies. Spool is false.

The player carries an apple and a banana. The banana is edible.

After eating the banana:
	now spool is true;
	continue the action.
	
Instead of rubbing the apple:
	now spool is true;
	say "You rub a shine onto the apple."
	
Scene X begins when spool has been true for 5 turns.

Scene Y is a scene. Scene Y begins when play begins.
Scene X is a scene.[/code]
Hope this helps.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=846&start=0#p4388
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Adventure hint system ?
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2009-11-15 01:45:26

Since most adventure games are free these days, players tend to discard a game much faster if they go stuck. The argument is; Why bother when there’s another free game out there?
Walk-through’s or hint sheets are important if you want people to play your game.
I’m writing games using the Adrift platform which has a built-in hint system. But unfortunately this system only allows for two hints.
What I’m looking for is a system like the UHS (universal Hint System) where the player only gets a little information at a time. Problem with the UHS is that the people owning it decide whether a hint file is worth publishing or not.
So if there’s a programmer out there who’s bored in these long dark winter nights, it would be greatly appreciated if a free (or shareware) hint system was made…
Cheers

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=845&start=0#p4389
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Turn Count since Certain Event
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-11-15 01:48:08

[quote="ShaeSays"]Eventually I'd like to enter a comp, and I don't feel like I can do that if I've gotten a bunch of help. Though whether small non-game-revealing syntax questions disqualify, I don't know.[/quote]
If it were me I'd just freely ask away for any help I needed.  I enjoy reading your posts and entertaining myself by finding possible solutions for the issues you present, but I sometimes find it difficult to decide which particular aspect of the questions you pose is your "true" focus or what the actual issue is that you're having trouble with.  Rather than be mysterious, if I were in your place I'd clearly state what I needed help with as the chances are very, very, very, low that anyone playing a game I made six months or a year from now would have their experience "ruined" because they have a photographic memory and recalled some minor discussion in the past on a message board, and my chances of getting my question directly answered would rise significantly.

I was playing around with the question you posed and came up with three distinct ways to solve the issue in addition to the several ways that Jim Aikin already proposed; perhaps one of them will be helpful to you.  Between the time I started experimenting and came back to make this post, Jim made his second post so note that that the first option presented below is almost identical to an answer Jim gave above, because I was writing it as he made his post.

Choice #1

[code]The testarea is a room.

Bella is a woman.  The description of Bella is "The most beautiful woman you have ever seen; her warm smile makes your knees feel wobbly.".

Scene Y is a scene.  Scene Y begins when play begins.

The player carries a quarter.  The description of the quarter is "A shiny twenty-five cent coin.".  Understand "coin" as the quarter.

A jukebox is in the testarea.  The description of the jukebox is "A large jukebox sits in the corner of the room, garishly lit with blue and red neon lights.  According to its listings, every record in the jukebox is 'June in January' by Bing Crosby.  A coin slot is set in the front of the jukebox, above which is a small decal that says '25 cents.'".  Understand "juke box" or "slot" or "coin slot" or "coinslot" as the jukebox.

Check inserting something into the jukebox:
	if the noun is not the quarter:
		say "That seems like a bad idea.  You might jam the coin slot." instead.

Instead of inserting the quarter into the jukebox:
	remove the noun from play;
	say "You slide the quarter into the coin slot, and the ineffably soothing sounds of der Bingster fill the room.".

Scene X is a scene.  Scene X begins when the quarter was off-stage for ten turns.

When Scene X begins:
	move Bella to the testarea;
	say "As if from nowhere, a mysterious woman appears.  'My name is Bella,' she says in a soothing voice.  'Would you care to dance?' she charmingly asks.".[/code]

Choice #2

[code]The testarea is a room.

Bella is a woman.  The description of Bella is "The most beautiful woman you have ever seen; her warm smile makes your knees feel wobbly.".

Scene Y is a scene.  Scene Y begins when play begins.

The player carries a quarter.  The description of the quarter is "A shiny twenty-five cent coin.".  Understand "coin" as the quarter.

A jukebox is in the testarea.  The description of the jukebox is "A large jukebox sits in the corner of the room, garishly lit with blue and red neon lights.  According to its listings, every record in the jukebox is 'June in January' by Bing Crosby.  A coin slot is set in the front of the jukebox, above which is a small decal that says '25 cents.'".  Understand "juke box" or "slot" or "coin slot" or "coinslot" as the jukebox.

Instead of inserting the quarter into the jukebox:
	remove the noun from play;
	say "You slide the quarter into the coin slot, and the ineffably soothing sounds of der Bingster fill the room.";
	Bella materializes in ten turns from now.

At the time when the Bella materializes:
	move Bella to the testarea.

Scene X is a scene.  Scene X begins when Bella is in the testarea for the first time.

When Scene X begins:
	say "As if from nowhere, a mysterious woman appears.  'My name is Bella,' she says in a soothing voice.  'Would you care to dance?' she charmingly asks.".[/code]

Choice #3

[code]The testarea is a room.

Bella is a woman.  The description of Bella is "The most beautiful woman you have ever seen; her warm smile makes your knees feel wobbly.".

Scene Y is a scene.  Scene Y begins when play begins.

The player carries a quarter.  The description of the quarter is "A shiny twenty-five cent coin.".  Understand "coin" as the quarter.

A jukebox is in the testarea.  The description of the jukebox is "A large jukebox sits in the corner of the room, garishly lit with blue and red neon lights.  According to its listings, every record in the jukebox is 'June in January' by Bing Crosby.  A coin slot is set in the front of the jukebox, above which is a small decal that says '25 cents.'".  Understand "juke box" or "slot" or "coin slot" or "coinslot" as the jukebox.

Time1 is a number that varies.  Time1 is usually 0.
Time2 is a number that varies.  Time2 is usually 0.

Instead of inserting the quarter into the jukebox:
	remove the noun from play;
	say "You slide the quarter into the coin slot, and the ineffably soothing sounds of der Bingster fill the room.";
	let N be the turn count;
	change time1 to N;
	change time2 to N.

Every turn during Scene Y:
	unless time2 is 0:
		increase time2 by 1;
		if time2 - time1 is 10:
			move Bella to the testarea.

Scene X is a scene.  Scene X begins when Bella is in the testarea for the first time.

When Scene X begins:
	say "As if from nowhere, a mysterious woman appears.  'My name is Bella,' she says in a soothing voice.  'Would you care to dance?' she charmingly asks.".[/code]

With what Jim wrote, that gives you five or six different ways to make a scene start ten turns after a trigger action.  If none of these are applicable but you don't want to exactly say why, please don't hesitate to ask for more help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=262&start=0#p4390
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: adrift cost
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2009-11-15 02:40:24

[quote="Merk"]Well, any amount is too much for some, I guess. Of course, I'm spoiled on the freeness of Hugo, but if I needed IF development without the programming, Adrift would certainly be a cheap enough route to take.[/quote]

 [emote];)[/emote] 
Not to mention that you might be lucky and win a registration for free by entering one of the competitions  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=832&start=10#p4391
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA trend
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-11-15 04:13:31

And [url=http://renpy.org/wiki/renpy/Home_Page]Ren'Py[/url] is pretty popular among hobbyists as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=844&start=0#p4392
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Possessive nouns ending in "s": evil or just annoying?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2009-11-15 07:51:16

Don't let [url=http://www.bartleby.com/141/strunk.html#1]Strunk and White[/url] see this thread!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=844&start=0#p4393
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Possessive nouns ending in "s": evil or just annoying?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-11-15 10:54:40

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Don't let [url=http://www.bartleby.com/141/strunk.html#1]Strunk and White[/url] see this thread![/quote]
Indeed. The correct possessive form of Janus is Janus's. If you prefer Janus', it's because you're confusing it with a plural possessive, which is indeed formed (assuming the plural is regular) by adding a bare apostrophe.

Thus, "The dogs' barking was noisy" refers to several dogs, as does "The asses' braying was noisy." But "The ass' braying was noisy" is incorrect. It should be "The ass's braying was noisy." This is how you would speak the sentence. Nobody says, "The ass' braying" out loud when forming a possessive.

Curiously, English pronunciation leaves us no way to tell whether the speaker said "the asses'," "the asses," or "the ass's." But they're different forms, nonetheless.

Someone might say or write, "The ass braying was noisy," but that's not correct either. The present participle requires a possessive as its subject -- a rule that is, I'm sorry to say, gradually sliding into obsolescence.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=845&start=0#p4394
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Turn Count since Certain Event
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-11-15 15:51:38

Jim and Endosphere:

Thanks so much for so many helpful examples!

Endosphere, I often do put my actual code into my posts, but just didn't feel like it this time... I'm both a little weary of giving away too much of a game I'd like to enter in a comp, but also just thought that the snippet I'm working on right now is a little complicated with an awful lot of irrelevant variables in it.

However, I think I'll be able to use "Scene X begins when something has been true for 10 turns", and if I can't make that work, it looks like I have several more approaches to choose from.

Eriorg, giving credit to the people who have helped me is a great idea; I'll keep that in mind!

Thanks again!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=844&start=0#p4395
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Possessive nouns ending in "s": evil or just annoying?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-11-15 15:54:51

I believe that both are correct in the case of a proper name, actually.

There are many web pages out there that support this rule:

[quote]
Always add 's to the end unless that creates a repetition of the same sound at the end:

Moses' instead of Moses's

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.usingenglish.com/forum/ask-teacher/3961-correct-possessive-form-proper-names.html">http://www.usingenglish.com/forum/ask-t ... names.html</a>[/quote]

Though I don't have the energy to find one that everyone would consider official.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=844&start=0#p4396
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Possessive nouns ending in "s": evil or just annoying?
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-11-15 16:44:12

Ruh-roh, perhaps I should explain my thoughts on this issue as it appears I may have inadvertently engendered a minor controversy. [emote]:o[/emote] 

On a message board such as this, frequented by very literary-minded folks, I realize the following could be considered trollish.  That's certainly not my intention, but for the benefit of posterity I'd like to state the following for the public record:

[quote="Some deceased dude named [url=http://www.bartleby.com/141/strunk.html]Strunk[/url]"]1.  Form the possessive singular of nouns with 's.  Follow this rule whatever the final consonant. Thus write,
	Charles's friend
	Burns's poems
	the witch's malice

This is the usage of the United States Government Printing Office and of the Oxford University 	Press.

Exceptions are the possessives of ancient proper names in -es and -is, the possessive Jesus', and such forms as for conscience' sake, for righteousness' sake. But such forms as Achilles' heel, Moses' laws, Isis' temple are commonly replaced by
	the heel of Achilles
	the laws of Moses
	the temple of Isis[/quote]
Back when I was in college, I was commanded to buy a book with a very long title, written by some lady that I was told was to be considered an "authority" of "writing style."  For some reason I still have this book (which, amusingly, is thoroughly written in an utterly unpleasant style) around, so I blew the dust from it and found that it says the following:

[quote="In [i]A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations[/i] (University of Chicago Press, 1982), page 40, some deceased chick named Kate Turabian"]3.7  Form the possessive of a proper name in the singular by adding an apostrophe and s:...

3.8  The possessive case of the names of Jesus and Moses, and of Greek (or hellenized) names of more than one syllable ending in es, is formed by adding an apostrophe alone:[/quote]

Frankly that's all nonsense.  With all due respect to anyone's religious beliefs, Moses and Jesus are not entitled to any special grammatical status that shouldn't also be given to everyone else; if this duo are to be excused from having an awkward and aesthetically displeasing 's tacked on to the end of their names, then everyone else (including fictional characters, e.g. "Doctor Janus") should also be excused.  I also think that while it's valid for someone scientifically discussing a language to speak of [i]contemporary standards[/i] of a language under observation, I don't feel any compulsion at all to recognize some alleged rules of any language when such are presented as The Law.  As long as the communicat-ee understands the communicat-or, then the complete purpose of language has been fulfilled and there's nothing of value to be gained by claiming a communication is illegitimate because it did not follow an imaginary rule that some deceased professor invented to sell a few books and make a few bucks.  Said another way, the only valid rules of language are those which allow one person to comprehend another person; stipulating any rules beyond that is either pedantry, or motivated by profit, or more simply motivated by an individual's respect for tradition (quite obviously, then, I am saying I do not share this latter attitude of reverence for such tradition).  Therefore I am resolved to steadfastly refuse to add an 's after any possessive singular noun that ends in s, and will instead only add an apostrophe.  Others are free to join me, or not; as long as each can comprehend what the other has written, I won't be concerned by the format in which any message is communicated.    

For these same reasons--namely that it pleases me and I recognize no higher grammar authority than my own ability to comprehend what another has written--I will forever write the the word [url=http://northernplanets.blogspot.com/2007/08/dilemna-of-spelling-dilemma.html]dilemna[/url] in the dignified form "dilemna" rather than the vacuous and puerile form "dilemma" that some claim is "correct."  I will continue to firmly believe that all so-called dictionaries that claim "dilemma" as the correct spelling for a word describing a difficult choice, as well as all people who claim it has always been spelled thusly, are suffering the odd effects of a mild disturbance in the fabric of reality that has somehow subtly distorted this space-time continuum.

[size=50]Why, [i]yes[/i], I [i]am[/i] an anarchist.  Why do you ask?[/size]

P.S.  Jim and Victor: I have tremendous respect for you both; as I have firmly held the opinions I stated above for very many years now and this seemed as good an opportunity as any to further unleash them onto the world, please don't think I was assailing either of you personally.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=847&start=0#p4397
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: When are results announced?
User: linger / DateTime: 2009-11-15 20:05:36

I'm just a newbie to the IF comp, so forgive me if this is a stupid question. The schedule says voting ends on Nov 15th (<a class="postlink" href="http://ifcomp.org/comp09/schedule.html">http://ifcomp.org/comp09/schedule.html</a>), but it doesn't mention when results are announced. Does anyone know when that is done?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=844&start=0#p4398
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Possessive nouns ending in "s": evil or just annoying?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-11-15 23:43:12

Here's the thing: There are no Immutable Laws about how English should be written or punctuated.

U kn rait laik dhiss iff; U wahnt .. tu.

This sentence is completely comprehensible, and thus is plainly in accord with Endosphere's dictum, "As long as the communicat-ee understands the communicat-or, then the complete purpose of language has been fulfilled...."

But here's the other thing: If you write like that, your peers will quickly (and rightly) conclude that you're utterly uneducated, mentally defective, or deliberately attempting to be offensive. (The three conditions are not mutually exclusive.) And if your writing sends that message, why would anyone bother to read it? Life is short. Everyone has too much to do. We all have to make snap decisions about how to spend our time, based on the available evidence. When we read what someone has written, the available evidence includes, very prominently, the writer's knowledge or ignorance of standard English orthography and usage.

That's why we steer quickly away from websites whose copy is rife with typos, misspellings, and grammatical errors. I don't know about you, but if someone is a sloppy writer, my assumption is, that person is probably a sloppy thinker too. And I don't care to waste time imbibing the opinions of sloppy thinkers.

So I would have to say, no, it's simply not the case that communicating clearly is the ONLY purpose of the thousand and one informal rules that give structure to written English. There is an important social purpose beyond that, which you ignore or belittle at your peril.

It's also the case that usage changes from decade to decade. A hundred years ago, "to-day" was the standard spelling. Today the hyphen has been lost. And even within the current decade there are significant areas of disagreement around the margins about what constitutes good or substandard usage. British spelling differs significantly from American. But there IS a value system, to which a lot of people subscribe, by which certain usages are understood as substandard. "Ain't" has been around for hundreds of years, and it's STILL substandard. That's not to say you can't or shouldn't use it. But careful writers understand that by using "ain't," they're establishing a colloquial tone.

Tonal variations are significant in part because they create a layer of meta-information above or behind the content. If you don't believe this, sit down and read the first paragraph of [i]The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn[/i]. The tonal information establishes Huck's character in a way that none of the actual information does. It's a different dimension of communication. If you don't believe me, I invite you to try rewriting the opening paragraph of [i]Huck Finn[/i] in schoolbook-correct English. You'll ruin it. Something important will have been destroyed.

In conclusion: Yes, this stuff does matter.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=847&start=0#p4399
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: When are results announced?
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2009-11-16 05:37:40

It's done! [emote]:D[/emote] See <a class="postlink" href="http://ifcomp.org/comp09/results.html">http://ifcomp.org/comp09/results.html</a> .

It was faster this year than some previous years; usually, you often had to wait one day or almost, if I remember correctly.

Now the latest issue of SPAG isn't here yet, but it should come soon, though not necessarily today...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=844&start=0#p4400
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Possessive nouns ending in "s": evil or just annoying?
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2009-11-16 06:28:09

[quote="Jim Aikin"]U kn rait laik dhiss iff; U wahnt .. tu.

This sentence is completely comprehensible, and thus is plainly in accord with Endosphere's dictum, "As long as the communicat-ee understands the communicat-or, then the complete purpose of language has been fulfilled...."[/quote]
Really? [emote]:shock:[/emote] Maybe it's because I'm not a native English speaker, but I find it very hard to understand indeed! Yes, with a bit of time and effort, I can understand it... but there's a big difference between [i]reading[/i] a text and [i]deciphering[/i] it like a rebus. I think it's just rude to require people to decipher what you write: it wastes their time, and that time could have been better -- and more pleasantly! -- used to think about what you wrote. It also blurs your meaning: in general, when you write like that, we can understand more or less what you mean, but the nuances are lost.

Sure, that doesn't mean that there are no excessively pedantic or dated rules, or that you shouldn't make efforts to understand people who do the best they can but just don't know the language very well. But that's not enough to justify linguistic anarchy. [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=844&start=0#p4401
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Possessive nouns ending in "s": evil or just annoying?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-11-16 10:12:54

[quote="Eriorg"][quote="Jim Aikin"]U kn rait laik dhiss iff; U wahnt .. tu.

This sentence is completely comprehensible, and thus is plainly in accord with Endosphere's dictum, "As long as the communicat-ee understands the communicat-or, then the complete purpose of language has been fulfilled...."[/quote]
Really? [emote]:shock:[/emote] Maybe it's because I'm not a native English speaker, but I find it very hard to understand indeed! Yes, with a bit of time and effort, I can understand it... but there's a big difference between [i]reading[/i] a text and [i]deciphering[/i] it like a rebus.[/quote]
I agree that that sentence doesn't lend itself to fluent reading. However, you'll note that Endosphere's dictum says nothing about the speed or ease with which the text can be read. This is a second basic problem with his point of view, I think. It's similar to but not congruent with the first.

I would add that it's important to give non-native English speakers wide latitude in this area. When I read an owner's manual written in English (or translated into English) by a German speaker, I don't make any assumptions about the writer's technical competence with the subject matter based on his or her grammatical or usage errors! Doing that would be silly.

And likewise, we all make silly typos when posting messages in forums and newsgroups. This is not a cause for concern. Copy that's intended for dissemination, I would argue -- copy that's written ahead of time and intended to be read at a later date -- is in a different category. More care is required. But even in forums and newsgroups, someone who is obviously ignorant of spelling and punctuation will rate a less thoughtful response than someone who writes well.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=848&start=0#p4402
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Games that do conversation well
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-11-16 11:10:54

Hello all,

The two and a half Inform games I've written thus far haven't really delved into the intricacies of conversation. When I started I figured conversation was a complex topic all of its own that I didn't need to confuse myself with while learning to program IF in general. In my first game, I used a technique where "asking" and "saying" and all those other conversation-verbs worked in exactly the same way, and the NPC's simply gave you five soundbites of information when you spoke to them, in any way, five times. 

I've played a lot of old-school IF, but not a lot of newer, so I haven't learned much about conversations through playing either. 

Now I'm ready to start thinking about it, and I'd like to solicit opinions. In the case of inform, do players really pay a lot of attention to whether they're "asking", "saying", etc? Is it desirable to program different responses depending on which of these verbs was used?

Do most programmers use a table with keywords, where certain words from the player elicit certain responses from the NPCs? What are some of the other techniques?

What are some IF games that I can play around with, that do conversation especially well? For this exercise I don't really care if they are stellar games in any other capacity. I'd just like to learn something about what a good implementation of conversation looks like.

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=848&start=0#p4403
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Games that do conversation well
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-11-16 14:42:03

Emily Short's [b]Galatea[/b] is the gold standard of realistic ask/tell conversation, that also incorporates a narrative that hinges on whether the PC can actually believe the NPC is a real person.  As an example, if you ask the NPC the same question several times she might (depending on the context) suspect that you're testing her to try and get her to repeat herself robotically.

[b]The Elysium Enigma[/b] by Eric Eve is a nice demonstration of the concepts that Michael J. Roberts feels are good for IF games and made easy to implement in TADS 3 (and which Eve has also made available in Inform 7) - namely topic inventories and conversation 'nodes' which prompt you with non-standard interactions ("You could laugh or cry.")  I... don't actually feel that some of the choices here are especially sensible - eg. having to ask about something several times to get all the facts, or the way it's possible to get the characters into a state where the narration will only provide you with summaries of what they've already said and the NPC is left strangely mute.

Adam Cadre's [b]Photopia[/b] is the first game with multiple choice conversations that comes to mind.  I think it shows that strong dialogue coupled with a simple system of interaction can result in something that's still very compelling.

[b]Pytho's Mask[/b], again by Emily Short, demonstrates a hybrid ask/tell multiple choice conversation system where you can pick options from a menu or ask characters about subjects that may open up new choices.

Andrew Plotkin's [b]Spider and Web[/b] only allows you to answer yes or no in conversation - although the conversation [i]is[/i] actually an interrogation.

And for the sake of completeness, my own [b]Gun Mute[/b] includes a character who is unable to talk and can only point at objects, wave, nod or shake his head (essentially an ask/tell system limited to visible objects).

[quote="ShaeSays"]Now I'm ready to start thinking about it, and I'd like to solicit opinions. In the case of inform, do players really pay a lot of attention to whether they're "asking", "saying", etc? Is it desirable to program different responses depending on which of these verbs was used?[/quote]
I think in general you can give the same response, unless it's on a subject where the PC specifically knows more than the NPC - in which case the player might be expecting to be able to fill the other character in on the details, or at least get a response as to why the PC doesn't think it's a good idea.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=844&start=10#p4404
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Possessive nouns ending in "s": evil or just annoying?
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-11-16 15:31:49

Thanks to all for the interesting comments.

[quote="[url=http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Alphabet_and_Simplified_Spelling]Mark Twain[/url]"]But look at the "pneumatics" and the "pneumonias" and the rest of them. A real reform would settle them once and for all, and wind up by giving us an alphabet that we wouldn't have to spell with at all, instead of this present silly alphabet, which I fancy was invented by a drunken thief. Why, there isn't a man who doesn't have to throw out about fifteen hundred words a day when he writes his letters because he can't spell them! It's like trying to do a St. Vitus's dance with wooden legs.[/quote]

@Jim Aikin
I certainly agree with your points that careless writing is to be avoided, as such almost always interferes with the process of effective communication.  Furthermore I certainly agree that a writer (or speaker) who fails to meet the expectations of his intended audience should hardly be surprised if he encounters criticism or indifference in place of plaudits.  Precision in the use of language and care in the presentation of such is particularly important in written communication, where the intended audience cannot observe the many subtle visual and audible cues that greatly enrich more intimate forms of discourse.

Nonetheless I don't believe any of those observations properly address my point, which was that I find no compelling basis for paying homage to what I consider the trivial obsessions of alleged authorities, be they alleged authorities of "writing style" or any other field of endeavor.  While it would of course be possible for us to broaden the discussion quite a bit further (perhaps in some directly relevant ways) if I were write a few paragraphs in support of my resolute belief that the only two philosophers of the last century who had anything at all interesting to say were Michel Foucault and Marshall McLuhan, I think the conversation has already gotten a bit off course.  When an individual's opinions are entrusted with authority by a large number of people--in this case, the opinions of Mr. Strunk and Ms. Turabian--and said individuals make ridiculous assertions--in this case tantamount to "Well, we can see that something doesn't look quite right about this adding an 's to possessive nouns ending in s idea, and what we see is honestly disturbing enough that we're not going to insult ancient religious and cultural icons by requiring the rule we're stipulating be applied to them; it would be an outrage, people may not go along with it, and most importantly <gasp> they might question our authority!!!!"--then my initial instinct is to question the soundness of acknowledging such reputed authorities, as well as to thereafter ignore what they have said when I disagree with such.  While you are quite correct in that there are consequences to my decision, I am fully willing to accept such.  Even though I am American I will continue to spell the word for a certain indistinct color as grey, no matter what misfortune ensues, because I think the word looks better spelled that way.  In the final analysis then perhaps our differing views on this matter are simply a result of differing temperments.  

I'm reminded of an incident that occurred many years ago when, as a young man, I spent some time working in a factory.  One day I didn't have anything else to do, so like a good little worker-bee I picked up a broom and started sweeping a large bare area of empty floor in an attempt to justify my wages.  A Very Important Personage at said factory happened to walk by, who vigorously proceeded to try to impress upon me that I just was not sweeping the floor correctly.  I wasn't holding the broom right, I was going north-to-south when anyone with any sense knows that one must go east-to-west, etc.  I attempted to demonstrate to the nice gentleman that just as much dirt was collected by the broom when going this way or that way, but he wouldn't hear of it.  "This is how we've always swept the floor, because it's the best way," he argued, with quite obviously increasing irritation.  In the end I patronizingly agreed with him, and he went off to bother someone else.  There were obviously some differences, far beyond proper sweeping techniques, in our ways of looking at the world that weren't likely to be resolved.

I found it interesting that you brought up the aesthetic aspects of Mark Twain's opening of Huckleberry Finn, as I draw the exact opposite conclusion from the juxtaposition of that reference and the preceding argument you were making.  One aspect of my views on this whole matter is that the sort of bureaucratic mindset that would produce an uncharmingly written treatise presuming to offer stylistic advice to writers (as evidenced by the sources I quoted referring to when to use an 's) is a) the same sort mindset that would likely look down upon the often irreverent ideas of Samuel Clemens, and b) the same sort of mindset that would likely write scathing (but poorly-written) reviews of Mark Twain's books as stylistically unacceptable.  Please note that I'm not implying that you have such a mindset, but am merely wondering why you argue in favor of those who have such, and that it's interesting that we can reach such opposite conclusions from consideration of the same ideas.

By the way, although I have a positive opinion of Samuel Clemens I'm honestly not very familiar with most of his writings, and I found the reference quoted above by looking at Wikipedia for about five minutes.  Any subtle allusions referencing Clemens' work will likely be lost on me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=841&start=0#p4405
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: GNOME-Inform7's Memory Leaks
User: Eudoxia / DateTime: 2009-11-16 16:27:23

Already emailed him, waiting for a reply.

The leaks are getting worse... I can't even copypaste without I7 crashing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=847&start=0#p4406
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: When are results announced?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-11-16 17:37:05

Yikes -- I played over half the games, and *still* didn't reach any that were in this year's top 3. I guess that's why I was thinking it was a really "down" year -- I hadn't gotten to the winners yet. [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=816&start=30#p4407
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's IFComp 2009 Playlist and Spoiler-Protected Comments
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-11-16 20:15:52

Well, I didn't get to them all this year -- including the three that ended up being the [i]top three[/i] finishers. I'm especially disappointed about that. Anyway, at some point soon I'll get these formatted and copied over to [url=http://www.sidneymerk.com/]SidneyMerk.com[/url]. I'm not sure [i]how[/i] soon, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=848&start=0#p4408
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Games that do conversation well
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-11-17 00:52:59

Here are some useful links: [url=http://ifwiki.org/index.php/Conversation#Links]Articles about conversation[/url], [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=tag:conversation]games tagged with "conversation" at IFDB[/url] and a [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/poll?id=b85guqglsjwk6te]one-room conversation game poll[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=849&start=0#p4409
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Description Issue!
User: matt123 / DateTime: 2009-11-17 05:47:34

I will just post what I've written below, and the error that comes with it to start.


"Ice" by Matthew Hall

The Hydroponic Center is a room. The description of the Hydroponic Center is [color=#0080FF]"Rows upon rows of ground hugging fungi awaiting impregnation with this season's grafts. Above you is a high and reflective dome. The 'suns' have been set for optimal work lighting, instead of optimal growth." [/color] 

When play begins, say 

[color=#0080FF]"From the memior of Anzo Allgood:

[italic type]'How did it come to pass that I, Anzo Allgood, would be standing atop this hillcrest about to attack a giant beast I have never known the likes of with a spear, or 'spar' as Ga-nor calls it. It is a weapon, I think, better suited for stabbing fruit off of citrus trees like we used to do in the orange grotto as children! But the acrid taste from my memory reminds me only too well of how hungry I am now, nearly a month without food. I wonder a moment about how the others are faring and if they've fixed the elevator. 

Ga-nor calls the hairy giants 'big ones,' and tells me that we need to find an sick one to kill or, 'our heads go stompy.' I think he means that his people only ever hunt weak ones. Even from up here[/color] [color=#0080FF]I can tell that their tusks are sharp. We spy the group eating something dark and slimy off the crust of the ice field below. It seems an age since that morning. My wife and I were tending the fields...'


[roman type]'Ho! Anzo!' You and your wife look up to see Marlin, huffing and puffing, bent over and resting his hands on his knees. Sweating profusely, he rights himself while simultaneously shaking his head and splattering you both with sweat. You exchange a look with your wife, you never liked Marlin.

'Anzo,' He pauses to respect your wife, 'Dalmatia,' he nods. 'Anzo, the Honored are to assemble before the counsel, at once.

Having given the news, he turns to spread it elseware. 'Wait, Marlin,' shouts Dalmatia, what has happened?' 

'I don't know, but Anzo should hurry, he is nearly the last I've spoken to.' With that Marlin is off. You exchange another look, but this time, one of worry. The Honored have never been called to assemblage.

'I'll meet you at home,' says Dalmatia, and she runs off to the west toward the children's school. You turn north."[/color]
  

The Education Sector is a room. The children's school is a room. The Habitation Sector and the Public Sector are rooms. Home is a room. 

The children's school is east of the Education Sector. Home is west of the Habitation Sector.
   

North of the Hydroponic Center is the Habitation Sector. West of the Hydroponic Center is the Education Sector. East of the Hydroponics Center is the Public Sector.




Ok, now for the error that is driving me nuts:

Problem. You wrote '"From the memior of Anzo Allgood:

[...] children's school. You turn north."'  , but in another sentence 'The description of the Hydroponic Center is "Rows upon rows of ground hugging f [...] ghting, instead of optimal growth."'  : but this looks like a contradiction, because the same property seems to be being set in each of these sentences, but with a different outcome.


I have changed the original text around a bunch (originally I gave some directions in the room description, but that seemed to be an issue). But it still won't work. Is there a way to tag some text as just "story" so that I7 ignores it? Why the heck is it giving me issues? I think it basically thinks that I am describing the room "Hydroponics Center" twice.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=849&start=0#p4411
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Description Issue!
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-11-17 09:34:54

[quote]When play begins, say [/quote]Remove the blank line after say. Blank lines are (usually) not ignored in I7. Changing it to:[code]When play begins, say "From the memoirs of..."[/code]... works fine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=851&start=0#p4412
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: TADS 3 Questions
User: Jonathan D / DateTime: 2009-11-17 11:55:51

Greetings,

Firstly, I am thinking of developing an IF/RPG hybrid (I know, doomed to fail, you think), and have yet to choose a development language, although TADS 3 is looking very cool to my very geeky brain.

Secondly, what a great job has been done on the documentation for TADS 3.  A few of the questions listed below I've already found answers to, simply by exploring (in a haphazard manner) the various documents in the Author's Kit.  I have indicated which ones have already been answered with (Yes/No!) - no No's yet!.

Thirdly, the RPG side of this project requires a different way of designing.  For instance, I will need to make master object templates, and then populate instances of these objects throughout the game world, often dynamically during run-time.  That is just one example of what I mean by "different way of designing".  (Traditional IF, I presume, requires single instances of very detailed objects, whereas an RPG (in my view) would require many instances of an object in various states.)  Also, several gamist mechanisms will need to be employed, which serve to simplify reality rather than to exemplify it.

Fourthly, I don't expect anyone to give me detailed instructions on how to achieve everything listed below (although, I certainly don't forbid it!).  A simple yes/no would be cool, and perhaps a keyword or two (in relation to a positive answer) so I can search the documentation.

[list]1. Can I create my own types (classes in TADS)? [b][color=#0000FF](Yes!)[/color][/b]
2. Can I dynamically add/remove those types to objects during play?
3. Can an over-ridden method in a sub-type defer to (call) the same method of it's parent? 
[list]i.e.  In C# I can do a 'base.SomeMethod'[/list:u]
4. Can I check for user-defined types in logic statements?
[list]i.e.  if IsOfType(obj, type)[/list:u]
5. Can I iterate over subsets of objects based on type? [b][color=#0000FF](Yes!)[/color][/b]
6. Can I iterate over objects within a certain context?  (Like within a given room, container, inventory, etc.)
7. Can I check for the existence of properties and methods on an object?
[list]i.e. if HasProperty(obj, property) OR if HasMethod(obj, property)[/list:u]
8. Can I dynamically create/destroy objects during play?
9. Do implicit actions cause actors to take a turn?
[list]i.e. 'eat apple'
> (taking it first) [NPC takes a turn here]
> You eat it. [NPC takes another turn here][/list:u]
10. Is there a way to turn off all implicit actions?
11. If so, can I store the last [possibly a set] of implicit actions?
[list]I ask this because I'd like to implement the following:

> 'eat apple'
You'd have to take it first.
> 'do so'
You take the apple.
> 'continue'
You eat the apple.

OR

> 'eat apple'
You'd have to take it first.
> 'do so and continue'
You take and eat the apple.

Optionally, I would like the player to be able to utilize a command such as "/auto actions on" to re-assert implicit actions.

Does something like this exist in the Adv3 library already, or will I be [i][b]forced to have fun[/b][/i] creating it myself?  (I require this for turn-based combat, and for other tactical considerations.)[/list:u]
12. Can I dynamically change the scope of rooms/objects via some function/method?
[list]i.e. obj.InScope(false | true) OR SetScope(obj, false | true)[/list:u]
13. Is an object aware of when it comes into and goes out of scope?
[list]i.e.
someobject: someClass 
{
[list]InScope () {
}[/list:u]
[list]OutScope () {
}[/list:u]
}[/list:u]
14. Can I redirect a verb on an object to another verb? [b][color=#0000FF](Yes!)[/color][/b]
[list]i.e. 'undo screws' -> 'remove screws' [/list:u][/list:u]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=847&start=0#p4413
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: When are results announced?
User: linger / DateTime: 2009-11-17 11:59:31

Yeah, that was fast! Nice.

[quote="Merk"]Yikes -- I played over half the games, and *still* didn't reach any that were in this year's top 3. I guess that's why I was thinking it was a really "down" year -- I hadn't gotten to the winners yet. [emote]:([/emote][/quote]

I think if you do compare the average scores of all games, this year is down from the previous. But it just be that games are being rated more harshly, due to rising/settling standards or new players coming in who aren't as tolerant of wonky design. I found my scores, at least, to be generally lower than the average scores.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=851&start=0#p4414
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 Questions
User: George / DateTime: 2009-11-17 12:39:59

[quote="Jonathan D"]
Does something like this exist in the Adv3 library already, or will I be [i][b]forced to have fun[/b][/i] creating it myself? [/quote]

People more experienced than I in T3 will be along to answer your questions, but I have to say that is my favorite quote of the week. Welcome to Intfiction Jonathan  [emote]:)[/emote] .

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=851&start=0#p4415
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 Questions
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-11-17 13:20:17

[quote="Jonathan D"]2. Can I dynamically add/remove those types to objects during play?[/quote]I'm not aware of a way to do this.  Even if it's possible, there might be a better way to implement what you want to do.

[quote="Jonathan D"]3. Can an over-ridden method in a sub-type defer to (call) the same method of it's parent?[/quote]Yes, by calling inherited()

[quote="Jonathan D"]4. Can I check for user-defined types in logic statements?
[list]i.e.  if IsOfType(obj, type)[/list:u][/quote]Yes.  if(object.ofKind(MyClass))

[quote="Jonathan D"]6. Can I iterate over objects within a certain context?  (Like within a given room, container, inventory, etc.)[/quote]Yes.  Foreach(local cur in me.contents)

[quote="Jonathan D"]7. Can I check for the existence of properties and methods on an object?[list]i.e. if HasProperty(obj, property) OR if HasMethod(obj, property)[/list:u][/quote]Properties and methods that don't exist on an object will return true to the following condition: (Me.nonexistantMethod('an argument')==nil)

Not sure if there's a better check than that.

[quote="Jonathan D"]8. Can I dynamically create/destroy objects during play?[/quote]Yes.  Destruction is via a java-style garbage collector.

[quote="Jonathan D"]9. Do implicit actions cause actors to take a turn?[/quote]No.

[quote="Jonathan D"]12. Can I dynamically change the scope of rooms/objects via some function/method?[/quote]Yes.

[quote="Jonathan D"]13. Is an object aware of when it comes into and goes out of scope?[/quote]I'm not sure it's quite as simple as your example, but yes.  I think this is probably the same method you'd be interested in for 12.

[quote="Jonathan D"]10. Is there a way to turn off all implicit actions?[/quote][quote="Jonathan D"]11. If so, can I store the last [possibly a set] of implicit actions?[/quote]Probably, but I don't know how.  _tryImplicitAction() in exec.t might be the place to start - or more basically, look at the "Custom Preconditions" section of the Technical Manual.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=849&start=0#p4416
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Description Issue!
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2009-11-17 16:29:30

Another neat way to do this is by using the format:
[code]The story description is "XXxyyyyyXXXXyyyy."[/code]
and then:
[code]When play begins:
	say "[story description][paragraph break]".[/code]
This comes in handy in many ways, including the tweaking of (i.e.) Emily Short's Menus Systems.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=70#p4417
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2009-11-17 16:40:46

Hi all.

My name is Marco Innocenti, Italian, age 37.
I'm a literal "text adventure"-maniac since when I was barely born, in the early '80s, when I used to play IF on my C64. I still drool at the thought of The Hobbit, Gruds in Space and Leather Goddesses of Phobos. Since then, i never really left the house of IF.

I tried authoring IF (I'm quite the kind who tries to author everything, from actual fiction to music to arts) back in the I6 days. I found myself frustrated by the lack of competence in advanced programming and of time to dedicate to such a task.

Now, with the awesome I7 up and running, I'm back in the "business" again. I feel I can do something more than a three-room exercise with no puzzle at all. Hope you will hear more from me. The only handicaps I must now rub away are my highly deformed english-writing (that due to the fact I played MMORPGS for the last 8 years thus transforming with time every "can't" in a "cant" and every "you" in a "u"... a bad habit that is now hard to remove) and my not-so-good english.

In the meanwhile, I will look at this forum with love in my eyes.
Be prepared, for I am a very verbal man [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=851&start=0#p4418
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 Questions
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-11-17 18:04:26

[quote="Pacian"][quote="Jonathan D"]2. Can I dynamically add/remove those types to objects during play?[/quote]I'm not aware of a way to do this.  Even if it's possible, there might be a better way to implement what you want to do.[/quote]
You can use "obj.setSuperclassList(listOfClasses)". Since you want to add or remove a single superclass, not change the entire list, you'd probably want to do something like this:
[code]local listOfClasses = obj.getSuperclassList()
// add or remove the superclass from listOfClasses
// if adding, you'll have to remember to insert it in the right place in the list
obj.setSuperclassList(listOfClasses)[/code]
Of course, like Pacian said, this may not be the best way to handle the problem you're looking at. You can look up setSuperclassList in the Tour Guide for more information (and a warning about careless use of it...).

[quote="Pacian"][quote="Jonathan D"]7. Can I check for the existence of properties and methods on an object?[list]i.e. if HasProperty(obj, property) OR if HasMethod(obj, property)[/list:u][/quote]Properties and methods that don't exist on an object will return true to the following condition: (Me.nonexistantMethod('an argument')==nil)

Not sure if there's a better check than that.[/quote]
There is; it's "obj.propDefined(prop)". It works for both properties and methods. I haven't checked (I'm away from home and don't have TADS handy) but I'm pretty sure you need to give the argument as a reference, e.g. "obj.propDefined(&propertyName)" - that is, you need the ampersand before the property name.

[quote="Pacian"][quote="Jonathan D"]8. Can I dynamically create/destroy objects during play?[/quote]Yes.  Destruction is via a java-style garbage collector.[/quote]
See the System Manual's chapter Object Definitions for more information.

[quote="Pacian"][quote="Jonathan D"]10. Is there a way to turn off all implicit actions?[/quote][quote="Jonathan D"]11. If so, can I store the last [possibly a set] of implicit actions?[/quote]Probably, but I don't know how.  _tryImplicitAction() in exec.t might be the place to start - or more basically, look at the "Custom Preconditions" section of the Technical Manual.[/quote]
Sounds like an interesting problem! Looking at the article on the Command Execution Cycle in the Technical Manual might give you an idea of how to go about this. It's a long article - very in-depth - but you'll probably only be interested in some of the sections.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=849&start=0#p4419
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Description Issue!
User: matt123 / DateTime: 2009-11-17 18:27:22

Arg! Such a silly, simple fix. Thanks very much. And thanks, too for the idea about using substitution [ ]s. That will come in handy.

I have a follow up question, if you don't mind. I would like to try and make NPC conversation more organic than the typical text based game format (the whole, try a bunch of key words thing). My idea is to start a scene every time a player uses "talk to [NPC]" that gives him options to choose from. The option choices lead to different responses from the NPC (I obviously didn't invent this method of NPC conversation). For example:


1. Hi there, I'm Joe Player

2. Nevermind


Selecting 1. would lead to:


"Yeah, I'm Cindy, whaddya want?"

1. Well, um..I'm looking for this thing...

2. Cindy, huh? You sure got an attitude. 

3. Cindy, you seem a little tense, what's on your mind?



That sort of thing. 


Is using a scene in I7 a good idea or tool for this way of conversing? Any other ways that could be different/better than this (but still more organic than "tell NPC about onions; "I don't know anything about that," etc.) ?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=70#p4420
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2009-11-17 22:14:54

Welcome to the forum, Marco! [emote];)[/emote] 

Do you know that an Italian-language IF community exists? Sure, if you write IF in Italian, you'll have a [i]far[/i] smaller audience than in English... But it might still be worth it, especially if you're not very good in English. I think Inform 7 was translated into Italian, but I'm not quite sure (was it only an incomplete version?) -- anyway, it's possible to translate it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=849&start=0#p4421
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Description Issue!
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-11-18 00:38:08

[quote="matt123"]Is using a scene in I7 a good idea or tool for this way of conversing?[/quote]

The easiest way is to go to <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/npc/#Saying_Complicated_Things">http://inform7.com/extensions/npc/#Sayi ... ted_Things</a> and download either Quip-Based Conversation, Reactable Quips or Simple Chat. Each of them should do what you described, so pick the one that looks easiest to use and most suitable to your needs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=70#p4422
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2009-11-18 03:58:08

[quote="Eriorg"]Do you know that an Italian-language IF community exists?[/quote]

Yes, I tested it. There are two reasons why I'd rather do an imperfect english IF than an italian one.

1) The Ita-IF is almost perfect, a job very well done. Too bad, at the moment, it lives on the basics of the english version, thus providing aberrations in the syntax that I find very hard to get corrected, or digested. I.e.: eng > "it's part of the door"; ita > "è parte [b]di la[/b] porta" while the correct use would be "è parte [b]della[/b] porta".

2) The second reason has more sentimental roots: for me, as opposed to all the others IF-players i know, IF [i]is[/i] in english. IF is Infocom, Level9, Magnetic Scrolls, Scott Adams. And now: Gentry, Plotking, Short etc. During the ages (moreso, in the times when IF was a trend, here in Italy) some magazine came out with many, many adventures that, altho funny and well written, lacked the spirit of true IF: they were a collection of cul-de-sacs, a room with a puzzle following the next until the end. The prose itself was puzzle oriented and never-ever much evocative. That, weighted with the far more interesting Infocom games (and — why not — with the fact that a foreign language has always much more appeal), turned me into a non-lover. So: to me, reading/writing "the cave is immersed in the pale glowing of the moon, filtering from the opening in the ceiling" has much more appeal than "la caverna è immersa nel pallido baluginìo della luna, che filtra dall'apertura nel soffitto." That's all.

By the way: my english is not [i]that[/i] bad [emote]:)[/emote] 
My big problem is that I'm quite a nice writer in Italian, and I tend to use similar phrase-construction that the one I use in italian. This, often, brings me to hard-to-compose sentences, infinite periods, cranky text.

Nothing, I hope, that a good beta tester wouldn't correct in no time.

Anyway, I still think about IF as an hobby (my mistake!). This means no one will hang me by the sacred ones if i build up something below the average quality.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=846&start=0#p4423
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Adventure hint system ?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-11-18 06:41:21

You should be able to build the hint system into your game. There are several forms it can take, from trying to figure out what the player should be working on next, to just a one-after-the-other series of hints covering the whole chapter/section. Would something like that work for you, in place of an external program?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=846&start=0#p4424
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Adventure hint system ?
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2009-11-18 09:28:08

[quote="Merk"]You should be able to build the hint system into your game. There are several forms it can take, from trying to figure out what the player should be working on next, to just a one-after-the-other series of hints covering the whole chapter/section. Would something like that work for you, in place of an external program?[/quote]


I'm not sure I can build a hint system into my game. I am using Adrift which is an "already made" platform meaning that the author doesn't program anything (as such) It has a built-in hint system, but it only allows the author two hints, a sneaky one and a sledge hammer one....
So I believe that my best option would be an external program.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=852&start=0#p4425
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Scene changing problem..please help!
User: westwestwest / DateTime: 2009-11-18 09:54:59

Hi, was hoping you guys could help with a problem I am having on my first attempted Inform7 script. At the start of the game I want the player to be able to call in sick or go to work - with each option ending the morning scene and beginning another (either day off or work). I have had no problem making the morning scene end (and the work scene begin) when the player arrives at their office, and I have set up telephones (using the recipe book model) at home and at work which the player can use to call in sick. My problem has occurred with trying to make the morning scene end as the result of the telephone conversation.

I have tried setting up a truth state which is varied when a certain question is asked - and using this to trigger the scene change but it seems to have no effect - at least the scene does not start.

i.e. skiving is a truth state that varies
     
     instead of asking Hayley about "cold":
             say "blah blah blah";
             change skiving to true.
     
     Day off is a scene. Day off begins when skiving is true.

I have also tried to start the scene when the person on the other end of the line has a certain property, also with no success.

Any help on how I can start this scene, and scenes in general (other than by the location of the player or by the time) would be very much appreciated!

Westwestwest

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=851&start=0#p4426
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 Questions
User: Jonathan D / DateTime: 2009-11-18 10:57:12

[quote]Welcome to Intfiction Jonathan.[/quote]

Thanks for the greeting, and to Pacian and Emerald for your great responses.

Dynamic modification of classes:

[quote="Emerald"][quote="Pacian"][quote="Jonathan D"]Jonathan D wrote:
2. Can I dynamically add/remove those types to objects during play?[/quote]
I'm not aware of a way to do this. Even if it's possible, there might be a better way to implement what you want to do.[/quote]

You can use "obj.setSuperclassList(listOfClasses)". Since you want to add or remove a single superclass, not change the entire list, you'd probably want to do something like this:
[code]
local listOfClasses = obj.getSuperclassList()
// add or remove the superclass from listOfClasses
// if adding, you'll have to remember to insert it in the right place in the list
obj.setSuperclassList(listOfClasses)[/code]

Of course, like Pacian said, this may not be the best way to handle the problem you're looking at. You can look up setSuperclassList in the Tour Guide for more information (and a warning about careless use of it...).[/quote]

I would like to be able to add/remove a collection of properties/methods from an object at run-time.  Any way to do this?  setSuperclassList leaves all the properties and methods on an object untouched when the class from which those properties and methods were inherited is removed from the super-class list.

For instance (pseudo-ish-code, still learning):

[code]+ rapier_1: SwordClass, ImbuedAndThereforeAMostPowerfulWeaponIndeedClass

dobjFor(Lick) 
  { 
     verify()  
     { 
         if(!(object.ofKind(ImbuedAndThereforeAMostPowerfulWeaponIndeedClass)) 
           illogicalAlready('You're done with licking - and consequently demoting - powerful weaponry. '); 
     } 

     action() 
     { 
            //remove ImbuedAndThereforeAMostPowerfulWeaponIndeedClass, along with all of it's properties and methods
            "You lick the god-like object.  A sudden and overwhelming sense of idiocy permeates your consciousness.  Owa tafu liam.";         
     } 
  } 
; 
    
class ImbuedAndThereforeAMostPowerfulWeaponIndeedClass
{
    doesQuintupleDamage
    absorbsLife
    devoursPizza
    deniesExistence = 'most assuredly'
    considersAlgorithmicComplexityAHorriblyDryTopicForAfterDinnerDialogue

    UponStrikingAnEnemy()
    {
        "You feel smite-y."
    }
}  [/code]

I'm beginning to wonder if I should build an RPG extension first, before I even attempt to create an IF/RPG hybrid.  I am wondering this because the world model of Adv3 seems to be quite intricate, and it may be better for me (in regards to both learning the library, and developing code-eye* for TADS) to tap into the class hierarchy on an ad-hoc basis.  Does this make sense? 

Process:
    [list]1. I want to achieve ThisFeature.
    2. Check Adv3 for ThisFeature.
    3. If ThisFeature.isIn(Adv3), { learn how ThisFeature is constrained in the model. }
    4. If ThisFeature.toString = 'not too interdependent', { tap into built-in ThisFeature. }
    5. If !ThisFeature.isIn(Adv3) | ThisFeature.toString = 'a complex issue, forsooth', { build my own, independent class for ThisFeature. }[/list:u]

*code-eye: to read source code as one might peruse the morning paper.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=853&start=0#p4427
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Introductions
User: Jonathan D / DateTime: 2009-11-18 12:27:13

EDIT:  Somehow I managed to screw up (well, it's not surprising): this should have gone in the 'Introducing Ourselves' sticky.

'Allo, folks.

My name is Jonathan Dobson. I'm in school for mechanical engineering.  Became a dad 4 months ago.  Live in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.  Been dabbling with programming since the TRS-80, and have been pleasantly distracted by the subject my whole life.

Unlike 99% of folks into IF (warning: assumption [yes, I do that]), I have played .1% of what's out there.  As far as the classics go, I managed Zork when I was nine years old.  After which I didn't play another IF game for 20 years (1987 to 2007).

I have been attempting for the past two years (on and off) to create an IF/RPG model with a lesser-known IF interpreter called [url=http://www.axeuk.com]Quest[/url].  Quest is going to be revamped drastically over the next while, so I've decided to make a move towards TADS in the interim.

The only game I've created is a small, one-room effort via Quest called Brew Dog, and [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=769]I was on this forum[/url] asking for beta-testers as 'jdobson'.  Unfortunately, I am no longer using the email address attached to 'jdobson', so I've created a new account.  Brew Dog has never been released, although I think I'll wrap it up by February.

Presently I am swimming in the TADS 3 documentation (without a life jacket), and have yet to see the shoreline.  (For those of you who have already constructed beach-houses along the cliffs, I suppose you will be spotting my emergency beacon flashing off in the distance soon enough.)

I've joined the TADS 3 Study Group, and am hoping to make good use of the discussions there.  

If anyone has any experience drafting a turn-based, role-playing-esque game with TADS, I would certainly be interested in what you've developed so far.  (Part of me doesn't expect anyone to have done this, but, who knows!)

I'm also a fledgling writer, and pianist (non-classical).  Does TADS support music files?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=851&start=0#p4428
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 Questions
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-11-18 13:46:51

If you're interested in RPG-ish attributes for an item, how about using objects to describe the attributes of the item?  Changing the entire class just seems like a pretty brute force way to go about it.  

For example, if you wanted the player to start with a weak wooden sword of fire -1, how about something like this:

[code]startingWeapon: Sword
    madeFrom=Wood
    damageModifier=-1
    attributes=[Fire,Weak]
    currentCondition=40
;

Wood: MaterialType
    descriptor='wooden'
    materialName='wood'
    armorValue=1
    weaponValue=2
    weight=4
    bestCondition=50
;[/code]
And so on, where each custom class defines some particular aspect of this or other items, and the attribute list contains miscellaneous objects or flags that you could check for in certain situations.  The 'conductor' attribute would have various effects when facing a lightning monster or something - and varnishing a weak wooden sword could remove the Weak object from its attribute list.

[quote="Emerald"]There is; it's "obj.propDefined(prop)". It works for both properties and methods. I haven't checked (I'm away from home and don't have TADS handy) but I'm pretty sure you need to give the argument as a reference, e.g. "obj.propDefined(&propertyName)" - that is, you need the ampersand before the property name.[/quote]
Aha.  Thanks.   [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=854&start=0#p4429
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Another description issue
User: dsrtrosy / DateTime: 2009-11-18 14:06:11

I apologize if this has been answered--I can not find a way to search the forum!

I HATE the auto-descriptions. I have worked very hard to create descriptions of every item in a room, but about 80% of them are ignored in exchange for the description I7 auto-generates. For example, I have the following code:

A bed is here. "I see a bed, neatly made with white blankets and pillow, right in the middle of the room. That seems like a strange place to put the bed, but I can't budge it." The bed is scenery. The bed is enterable. A pillow is on the bed.  Blankets are on the bed. Blankets are scenery. 

The first time I hit "Go", I saw my initial room descriptor (the one that begins play) plus my descriptor of the bed which I had typed above. I then added a table to the room and hit "Go." This time, instead of my nice "I see a bed, neatly made..." etc, I got the auto-generated "On the bed is a pillow." That's it. What the heck? 

In addition, I understood that if a container was scenery (such as the table I added after the bed), nothing on the table could be seen until it was examined by the player. Now, my table shows everything, just as the bed shows the pillow. Am I getting things out of order? How does one learn the proper order, if that is the case? None of the documentation says "Do this first, do this next" and I'd like a few ground rules if possible.

Thank you!!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=846&start=0#p4430
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Adventure hint system ?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-11-18 14:30:01

Don't be so quick to give up!  There are some pretty complex ADRIFT games out there.  Surely you could build your own hints system independent of the one they give you?  Even if you can't override the system 'hint' command, you could implement it as 'think' instead.

In my current work in progress (in TADS 3) I've written my own hint command which displays different text depending on whether certain states are true, or gives out a sequence of increasingly explicit pointers if the player requests them during a particularly tricky state.  Something like this:

[quote][b]Castle Dungeon[/b]
You are in a dungeon!  The gate to the north is closed.  A dark tunnel leads south.
>hint
Now you have the key, you can open the gate.
>hint
Now you have the key, you can open the gate.
>open door
(first unlocking the door)
You open the door.  A terrible dragon lies waiting behind it, blocking your path!
>hint
It looks like you'll need to deal with that dragon before you can proceed,
>hint
Who do you know who might be able to help you with a dragon?
>hint
Didn't Sir George want to make his name as a dragon-slayer?
>hint
Go talk to Sir George in the Castle Keep.
>hint
Go talk to Sir George in the Castle Keep.[/quote]
(Or something like that, anyway.)

ADRIFT can surely check the state of the game and return a different piece of text for a given command depending on that state?  I can't believe it's [i]that[/i] limited.  (And I'm pretty sure I can recall playing ADRIFT games with their own hint menus - The PK Girl, for example.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=851&start=0#p4431
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 Questions
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-11-18 16:50:26

[quote="Jonathan D"]I would like to be able to add/remove a collection of properties/methods from an object at run-time.  Any way to do this?  setSuperclassList leaves all the properties and methods on an object untouched when the class from which those properties and methods were inherited is removed from the super-class list.[/quote]
I don't know of any way to do that, so I'd probably do something like Pacian's code, putting an extra object or class in a property instead of the class list.

For instance, take the example you've given, of an imbued sword. I'd give the sword object a property called "enchantment" or some such, and set enchantment to be the ImbuedAndThereforeAMostPowerfulWeaponIndeedClass. (Since classes and objects in TADS 3 are almost identical in every way, you probably won't actually need to create an instance of the class for this to work. You can just create instances for the occasions when you want to change the details of an enchantment.) Then, instead of calling "rapier.UponStrikingAnEnemy()", you call "rapier.enchantment.UponStrikingAnEnemy()". To remove the enchantment, you set "enchantment = nil", and if you want to check whether the sword is enchanted, you can use "if (rapier.enchantment)". And so on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=853&start=0#p4432
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introductions
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-11-18 17:11:54

I haven't said it yet, so welcome! (Nice to have another TADS user on board!)

[quote="Jonathan D"]Does TADS support music files?[/quote]
Yes, it does. According to the Introduction to HTML TADS, it supports MIDI, WAV, MP3 and Ogg Vorbis formats. Sound requires HTML TADS interpreters, which are only available for Windows and Mac, but the game will still run in non-HTML interpreters - it just won't play the embedded sounds. See the Introduction to HTML TADS manual for more information. (But beware, it's the manual most direly in need of rewriting and clean-up. You may need to do some spelunking to find the information you want.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=854&start=0#p4433
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Another description issue
User: emshort / DateTime: 2009-11-18 17:17:03

If you make something "scenery", that tells Inform *not* to put a special sentence about that object in the room description. If you want the object to have its own sentence, but not to be movable, then you want to make it "fixed in place" rather than scenery.

For instance:

A bed is here. "I see a bed, neatly made with white blankets and pillow, right in the middle of the room. That seems like a strange place to put the bed, but I can't budge it." The bed is fixed in place. The bed is enterable.

In fact, by default if you make something a supporter (which the bed should be, since you can put things on it), it will also be fixed in place. So this would accomplish what you want:

A bed is here. "I see a bed, neatly made with white blankets and pillow, right in the middle of the room. That seems like a strange place to put the bed, but I can't budge it." The bed is an enterable supporter.

There aren't instructions in the manual about the order of these sentences because Inform does not enforce an order. 

[quote]In addition, I understood that if a container was scenery (such as the table I added after the bed), nothing on the table could be seen until it was examined by the player.[/quote]

A table is usually a supporter, not a container. The distinction is that containers have things "in" them, while supporters have things *on* them (and if you write "The vase is on the table", Inform will understand that the table is a supporter, even if you don't have a sentence that says "The table is a supporter."). Containers do not automatically reveal their contents in room descriptions, but supporters do. 

There are some ways around that, if you prefer to modify the output. If you look in the Recipe Book under "Place > Room Descriptions", there are some more examples of how to fine-tune description output.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=854&start=0#p4434
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Another description issue
User: dsrtrosy / DateTime: 2009-11-18 17:30:08

I see what you mean for most of the problem, but the auto-generated text is still there. Is there any  sort of work around to keep I7 from telling more of the story than I want told? I've played IF where nothing can be seen until you're looking for it. THAT'S what I want!!

(And thanks for the info!!)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=854&start=0#p4435
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Another description issue
User: emshort / DateTime: 2009-11-18 17:46:53

[quote="dsrtrosy"]I see what you mean for most of the problem, but the auto-generated text is still there. Is there any  sort of work around to keep I7 from telling more of the story than I want told? I've played IF where nothing can be seen until you're looking for it. THAT'S what I want!!

(And thanks for the info!!)[/quote]

It may be auto-generating "On the bed is the pillow"; if so, that's because you haven't told it the pillow is scenery.

If you want Inform not to write any of these sentences, ever, you can write

[quote]The room description paragraphs about objects rule is not listed in any rulebook.[/quote]

Unfortunately, though, that will put all the burden on you to create your own descriptions, and will take away a lot of the standard hooks.

A slightly more helpful general hack might be the following:

[quote]Foo is a room. The table is in Foo. "There's a handsome table here.". On the table is an apple.

Rule for writing a paragraph about a supporter (called target):
	say "[initial appearance of the target][line break]";
	now everything on the target is not marked for listing;
	rule succeeds.[/quote]

This will print the initial appearance of a supporter object but never reveal its contents in the room description. 

A word of warning, though: this may well irritate players. I at least would not be enthusiastic about this interaction:

[quote]Foo
There's a handsome table here. 

>x table
You see nothing special about the table. 

>search table
On the table is an apple.[/quote]

...since it feels as though the game is deliberately avoiding telling me something important and useful to know. So if you do go that route, you may want to (at the very least) make sure the description of the supporter mentions the items that are on it. 

One way to do that would be 
	
[quote]After examining a supporter which supports something:
	say "There's [a list of things on the noun] on [the noun]."[/quote]

...but of course now you're back to autogenerated prose, just in a new place. So if you want it to have custom prose for every possibility, you'll have to resign yourself to writing it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=854&start=0#p4436
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Another description issue
User: dsrtrosy / DateTime: 2009-11-18 19:52:58

Wow...food for thought.

So I do still have some questions if you will bear with me! 

1) if I choose the second option, do I use that only once, or do I have to write one for every situation?

2) can't I just put something in like "Understand examine [something] as searching." ? Is there a reason why search and examine are not the same thing? That is a long-time irritation of MINE. Is there a good reason for them to be different?

3) if I'm willing to write better copy than I7, is the first option the best? I assume that it leaves everything else alone.

Thank you!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=853&start=0#p4437
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introductions
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2009-11-18 20:09:27

Welcome to the forum, Jonathan, and good luck for your game! [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=851&start=0#p4438
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 Questions
User: George / DateTime: 2009-11-18 20:15:20

I just want to add to Pacian's idea on designing objects -- in RPGs especially, it's very useful not to think of code objects being 1:1 with game objects. You can think of things this way for items, monsters, pretty much anything in the game, instead of creating elaborate class hierarchies and the like.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=855&start=0#p4439
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Question on lists as variables
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-11-19 01:41:57

I have a question about using lists as variables.  I'm much more interested in learning the particular reason why something I tried didn't work than I am in learning some other way to accomplish my goal, since that's already done.

Some time ago I made door-kind that simulates various doors with electronic locks openable using various keycards, and as I was recently going through my code I noticed these somewhat forgotten keycard/door toys and thought it would be interesting to add a second kind of electronic door that simulates a biometric locking system.  My initial thought about how to implement such was that I'd assign each (simulated) lock a list of names of characters authorized to access the lock, and that the (simulated) unlocking action for these doors would simply consist of determining if the current actor's name was listed therein.

I started by writing the following:

[code]A biodoor is a kind of door.  A biodoor is usually closed and openable.  A biodoor is usually locked and lockable.  The description of a biodoor is usually "A sturdy door with a computerized biometric locking mechanism.  A fingerprint-scanning device is set in the middle of the door.".  Understand "electronic door" or "door" or "computerized door" as a biodoor.

A biometric scanner is a kind of thing.  Understand "biometric scanner" or "scanner" or "scanning device" or "scanner pad" or "scan pad" or "pad" or "glass" as a biometric scanner.  The description of a biometric scanner is usually "A hand-sized piece of dark glass, inset at an angle on top a small metal box, is firmly attached to the middle of the door.  To unlock the door, one touches one's hand to the glass; the device then scans the user's fingerprints and (assuming the user is authorized to access the door) automatically unlocks the door.".   A biometric scanner has a list of text called the authorizedusers.  The authorizedusers of a biometric scanner is usually {"nobody"}.

One biometric scanner is part of every biodoor.


The testarea is a room.

A man called George is in the testarea.  The player is George.

The southernarea is a room.

A biodoor called the Security Door is south of the testarea and north of the southernarea.  The authorizedusers of the Security Door's biometric scanner is {"George"}.[/code]
That was all fine, and compiled with no problem.  I then added a series of checks to redirect all the various ways a character could interact with such a door or scanner to the the action of the actor trying to touch a biometric scanner when the door incorporating it is closed and locked.  That was all fine as well.  However, when I tried to write the actual rule that would unlock and open such a door, I couldn't find any relevant phrasing that would compile.  For example, my first try was:

[code]Procedural rule for an actor touching a biometric scanner:
	ignore the report touching things rule.

Carry out an actor touching a biometric scanner that is part of a biodoor (called hbdr):
	if the actor is listed in the authorizedusers of the noun:
		change hbdr to unlocked;
		silently try the actor opening hbdr;
		if hbdr is open:
			if the actor is the player:
				say "You touch your hand to the scanner and hear a metallic 'click' as [the hbdr] unlocks and opens.";
			otherwise if the player can see the actor:
				say "[The actor] touches the scanner, and you hear a metallic 'click' as [the hbdr] unlocks and opens.";
		otherwise:
			if the actor is the player:
				say "You touch your hand to the scanner, but nothing happens.  Something must be wrong with either the scanner or [the hbdr].";
			otherwise if the player can see the actor:
				say "[The actor] touches the scanner, but nothing happens.  Something must be wrong with either the scanner or [the hbdr].";
	otherwise:
		if the actor is the player:
			say "You touch your hand to the scanner, but nothing happens.  You are not authorized to access [the hbdr].";
		otherwise if the player can see the actor:
			say "[The actor] touches the scanner, but nothing happens.  Apparently [the actor] is not authorized to access [the hbdr].";
		otherwise:
			stop the action.[/code]
Which failed to compile with the message:

[quote="Inform 7"]You wrote 'if the actor is listed in the authorizedusers of the noun begin'  : but the ingredients in this phrase do not fit it, but I am confused enough by this that I can't give a very helpful problem message. Sorry about that.[/quote]
I tried other various combinations of the first few lines, variations on a theme such as:

[code]Carry out an actor touching a biometric scanner that is part of a biodoor (called hbdr):
	let curbdl be the authorizedusers of the noun;
	if the actor is listed in curbdl:
		change hbdr to unlocked;[/code]
that all resulted in similar failed compiler messages.  I also tried changing the code for the biometric scanner object by defining the list as:

[code]A biometric scanner has a list of people called the authorizedusers.  The authorizedusers of a biometric scanner is usually {"nobody"}.[/code]
resulting in the compiler errors:

[quote="Inform 7"]In 'The authorizedusers of a biometric scanner is usually { "nobody" }'   you give a value of the authorizedusers property as '{ "nobody" }', but this ought to be a list of people, not a list of some text.

In 'The authorizedusers of the Security Door's biometric scanner is { "George" }'   you give a value of the authorizedusers property as '{ "George" }', but this ought to be a list of people, not a list of some text.[/quote]
which make little sense to me in this context since both "nobody" and "George" are valid terms for referring to people in this particular code.

What I'm wondering is: why exactly didn't any of these attempts work?

Although the following probably has little to do with my question, for the sake of anyone interested in the outcome of the experiment I eventually did find a very obtuse way to use the list idea.  The following code compiles fine and works fine when substituted for the first lines of the Carry Out rule:

[code]Carry out an actor touching a biometric scanner that is part of a biodoor (called hbdr):
	let curbdl be the authorizedusers of the noun;
	let checkone be the printed name of the actor;
	repeat with checktwo running through curbdl:
		if checktwo matches the text checkone:
			change hbdr to unlocked;[/code]
Since it seems pointless to compose and test against a list if one is going to go to the trouble of changing it to indexed text later, I threw the whole thing out and just set up the doors to work in a somewhat similar way to the keycard doors I already had (which also use indexed text).  So in the end I went with the following basic code for the biometric doors:

[code]A biodoor is a kind of door.  A biodoor is usually closed and openable.  A biodoor is usually locked and lockable.  The description of a biodoor is usually "A sturdy door with a computerized biometric locking mechanism.  A fingerprint-scanning device is set in the middle of the door.".  Understand "electronic door" or "door" or "computerized door" as a biodoor.

A biometric scanner is a kind of thing.  Understand "biometric scanner" or "scanner" or "scanning device" or "scanner pad" or "scan pad" or "pad" or "glass" as a biometric scanner.  The description of a biometric scanner is usually "A hand-sized piece of dark glass, inset at an angle on top a small metal box, is firmly attached to the middle of the door.  To unlock the door, one touches one's hand to the glass; the device then scans the user's fingerprints and (assuming the user is authorized to access the door) automatically unlocks the door.".  A biometric scanner has some indexed text called the authorizedusers.  The authorizedusers of a biometric scanner is usually "nobody".

One biometric scanner is part of every biodoor.

Procedural rule for an actor touching a biometric scanner:
	ignore the report touching things rule.

Carry out an actor touching a biometric scanner that is part of a biodoor (called hbdr):
	let curper be indexed text;
	let curper be the printed name of the actor;
	if the authorizedusers of the noun matches the text curper, case insensitively:
		change hbdr to unlocked;
		silently try the actor opening hbdr;
		if hbdr is open:
			if the actor is the player:
				say "You touch your hand to the scanner and hear a metallic 'click' as [the hbdr] unlocks and opens.";
			otherwise if the player can see the actor:
				say "[The actor] touches the scanner, and you hear a metallic 'click' as [the hbdr] unlocks and opens.";
		otherwise:
			if the actor is the player:
				say "You touch your hand to the scanner, but nothing happens.  Something must be wrong with either the scanner or [the hbdr].";
			otherwise if the player can see the actor:
				say "[The actor] touches the scanner, but nothing happens.  Something must be wrong with either the scanner or [the hbdr].";
	otherwise:
		if the actor is the player:
			say "You touch your hand to the scanner, but nothing happens.  You are not authorized to access [the hbdr].";
		otherwise if the player can see the actor:
			say "[The actor] touches the scanner, but nothing happens.  Apparently [the actor] is not authorized to access [the hbdr].";
		otherwise:
			stop the action.


The testarea is a room.

The southernarea is a room.

A man called George is in the testarea.  The player is George.

A biodoor called the Security Door is south of the testarea and north of the southernarea.  The authorizedusers of the Security Door's biometric scanner is "george".[/code]

Which works just fine.

In any case, I'm hoping anyone familiar with list functions can comment on why my attempted usage of a list failed in the original cases, and if there is a way to use a list to achieve the sort of functionality I originally envisioned.  Thanks in advance for any responses.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=855&start=0#p4440
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Question on lists as variables
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-11-19 02:25:48

[quote]which make little sense to me in this context since both "nobody" and "George" are valid terms for referring to people in this particular code.[/quote]

I don't have I7 at hand now to test, but "nobody" and "George" are actually [i]not[/i] valid terms for referring to people; they are strings of text. (For example 'Instead of examining "George": ...' would not work for the same reason.)

 If you remove the quotation marks around George it should work. Also, unless you have a person called nobody in the game, I'm not sure referring to it will work. You can just have an empty list if the object doesn't have any authorized users. (The authorizedusers of a biometric scanner is usually {}.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=854&start=0#p4441
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Another description issue
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-11-19 02:33:22

Assuming I followed the thread correctly, the answers to your last questions would be:

1)  Writing that rule one time would cover every supporter in the game.

2)  You could do that, but it might entail more work than you'd think.  A simpler way to get rid of examining in favor of searching would just be to write:
[code]Instead of examining something:
     say "[description of the noun]";
     try searching the noun.[/code]
3)  Either way is a lot of extra writing, but if you're willing to do the extra work to get the results you want then, as emshort mentioned, the first way gives you more control.

In general though, going all the way back to your original post, it sounds like the answer to part of your questions might depend on how exactly you are structuring your paragraphs as you write your code.  Although it's a little extra effort, instead of writing everything as you've been doing, for example:

A bed is here. "I see a bed, neatly made with white blankets and pillow, right in the middle of the room. That seems like a strange place to put the bed, but I can't budge it." The bed is scenery. The bed is enterable. A pillow is on the bed. Blankets are on the bed. Blankets are scenery.

you might want to add the extra phrase "The description [whatever] is" to your descriptions.  For example:

A bed is here. The description of the bed is "I see a bed, neatly made with white blankets and pillow, right in the middle of the room. That seems like a strange place to put the bed, but I can't budge it." The bed is scenery. The bed is enterable. A pillow is on the bed. Blankets are on the bed. Blankets are scenery.

It's hard to say for sure without seeing what you were working on, but I suspect you were writing things in such a way that Inform was getting confused about what text to match with which object.  For instance as Chapter 3.11 of the Inform documentation says,

[quote="Writing with Inform"]The player's first sight of something is the text used as its "initial appearance": 

The plain ring is here. "Cast aside, as if worthless, is a plain brass ring." 

This text appears as a separate paragraph in the text describing the Painted Room. It will continue to be used until the first time player picks the ring up (if this ever happens), so it normally describes things in their original, undisturbed context. (Inform uses an either/or property called "handled" for this: something is "handled" if it has at some point been held by the player.) 

Thus when a piece of text stands alone as a sentence in its own right, then this is either the "description" of the most recently discussed room, or the "initial appearance" of the most recently discussed thing. Either way, it is used verbatim as a paragraph in the text shown to the player visiting the room in question. 

But a thing also has an ordinary "description", which is used to give a close-up look at it. This text is ordinarily only revealed to the player when a command like "examine ring" is keyed in: 

The description of the plain ring is "No better than the loops of metal the old women use for fastening curtains." 
[/quote]
If you're only relying on initial appearances and never using descriptions, the resulting code could be confusing to Inform under some circumstances.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=855&start=0#p4442
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Question on lists as variables
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-11-19 03:02:12

Thanks.  You're right about the quotation marks; they were a significant part of the problem.

Although "nobody" (no quotes) can refer to a lack of actors, for example:

[code]The testarea is a room.
A bed is an enterable supporter in the testarea.
Every turn:
     if nobody is on the bed:
          say "The bed is empty.".[/code]
in this case as you said "nobody" (with quotes) was text in the same way that "George" (with quotes) was text rather than a reference to an actor.  I think by the time I got to that last bit that actually did give a useful error message ("this ought to be a list of people, not some text") I was too frustrated to pause and consider the error message carefully.  This is also why the whole thing worked when I converted the contents of the lists to indexed text and tried to match them.

Thanks for the response.  It would have taken me a while to realize what I was doing wrong there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=852&start=0#p4443
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scene changing problem..please help!
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-11-19 03:17:02

There must be a problem with the way you're defining, setting, or resetting your variables.  The following short example worked fine for me:

[code]The testarea is a room.

Skiving is a truth state that varies.  Skiving is usually false.

After examining the player for the second time:
	change skiving to true.

Day Off is a scene.  Day Off begins when skiving is true.

When Day Off begins:
	say "You now have the rest of the day to spend as you please at The Man's expense.  Hooray!".[/code]

This resulted in:

[quote][b]testarea[/b]

>x me
As good-looking as ever.

>x me
As good-looking as ever.

You now have the rest of the day to spend as you please at The Man's expense.  Hooray!

>[/quote]

There was another thread a few days ago about how to start scenes.  That might be helpful to you as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=454&start=0#p4444
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: TAB (ThinBasic Adventure Builder)
User: catventure / DateTime: 2009-11-19 05:47:48

Hi,

The TAB program was recently updated and is available from:
<a class="postlink" href="http://tab.thinbasic.com/">http://tab.thinbasic.com/</a>

You can watch a small videoclip demo here:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1Z72QpLTIE">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1Z72QpLTIE</a>

Sorry not open source. Source code not yet available just yet.

Regards,
catventure.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=844&start=10#p4445
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Possessive nouns ending in "s": evil or just annoying?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2009-11-19 10:17:29

[quote]For these same reasons--namely that it pleases me and I recognize no higher grammar authority than my own ability to comprehend what another has written--I will forever write the the word dilemna in the dignified form "dilemna" rather than the vacuous and puerile form "dilemma" that some claim is "correct."[/quote]
With "puerile", you presumably mean "created when Mankind was still young, as in classical antiquity"? [emote]:)[/emote] Just think of those coarse, undignified Greeks writing "λήμμα" when they should have been writing "λήμνα"!

(Who had thought that a mere reference to Strunk and White would create such a discussion?)

If you care to share your argument that only Foucault and McLuhan (of all people!) are interesting 20th century philosophers, please do. (Though I must warn you: convincing me that Rorty, Sellars, Kuhn, Davidson, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Derrida, Adorno, Girard, and so on haven't written anything worth reading is not going to be easy. Also, it seems strange that you would defend pluralism in such an inconsequential realm as spelling, while defending monism when talking about which ideas are interesting.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=851&start=0#p4446
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 Questions
User: Jonathan D / DateTime: 2009-11-19 12:41:22

[quote="George"]...it's very useful not to think of code objects being 1:1 with game objects.[/quote]
What do you mean by the terms "code object" and "game object"?

[quote="Pacian"]And so on, where each custom class defines some particular aspect of this or other items, and the attribute list contains miscellaneous objects or flags that you could check for in certain situations.[/quote]
[quote="Emerald"]...putting an extra object or class in a property instead of the class list.[/quote]

I see.  Thanks for pointing me in this direction.  I might have gone ahead and made things needlessly kludgy (and I still might, in other ways).  Extensibility is the main issue, and the above method (assigning an object/class to a property) is nice.  Hadn't realized that variables were dynamically typed, speaking of which...

Why are "multi-methods" called, well, "multi-methods"?  Unless I'm misinterpreting the [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/sysman/multmeth.htm]system manual entry[/url] (which, I admit, may be the case), these are multi-functions, since they cannot be placed on objects.  (Methods are functions tied to objects, whereas functions are parent-less, in my limited understanding.)  This seems to be reinforced by the System's Manual under [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/sysman/dynobj.htm]Dynamic Objects[/url], which states that:

[quote="System's Manual"]C++ and Java both provide "overloading" [of constructors], which allows multiple methods of the same name (and hence multiple constructors) to be defined as long as they have different argument lists. TADS does not offer an overloading mechanism. You can, however, use variable argument lists with TADS constructors to achieve a similar effect.[/quote] 

So if constructors cannot be overloaded, I would assume any object method could not be overloaded either.  In which case, my confusion as to why multi-methods are named as they are.  (Hopefully I am misguided, and methods [i]can[/i] be overloaded!)

Another thing:  if I go ahead and create a new object at run-time [myObject = new hostileActor], the System's Manual says that "Dynamic objects don't have names, so you must refer to them through variables or properties."  Is there a way to assign a name (symbol) to a dynamically-created object, or an anonymous object for that matter?  

"Because an anonymous object doesn't have a symbol that you can use to refer to the object, you must use some other mechanism to manipulate the object. For example, you can use the firstObj() and nextObj() functions, since iterations with these functions include anonymous objects." (System's Manual, [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/sysman/objdef.htm]here[/url]).

firstObj() and nextObj() iterate over the entire game - is there a way to iterate in this fashion through the current scope only, or through specific containers?  (EDIT:  Nevermind 'specific containers'; Pacian already indicated "Foreach(local cur in me.contents)"  I assume, then, there is a way to loop through scope?).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=851&start=0#p4447
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 Questions
User: George / DateTime: 2009-11-19 17:51:27

[quote="Jonathan D"][quote="George"]...it's very useful not to think of code objects being 1:1 with game objects.[/quote]
What do you mean by the terms "code object" and "game object"?[/quote]

This means that a single game object (e.g., a sword) could be made up of multiple code objects (a material object, a weapon object, an enchantment object, etcetera). The sword in the code could then be an instance of an item class with a properties attribute that contains material, weapon, enchantment, similar to what Pacian was talking about, but there would be no sword class in the code per se.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=851&start=10#p4448
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 Questions
User: Jonathan D / DateTime: 2009-11-19 18:22:42

[quote="George"]The sword in the code could then be an instance of an item class with a properties attribute that contains material, weapon, enchantment, similar to what Pacian was talking about, but there would be no sword class in the code per se[/quote]

I think I see, though you may verify:  all the particulars for the sword are abstracted into base objects, which the sword comprises via properties pointing to those objects.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=851&start=10#p4449
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 Questions
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-11-19 18:25:51

[quote="Jonathan D"]Why are "multi-methods" called, well, "multi-methods"?  Unless I'm misinterpreting the [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/sysman/multmeth.htm]system manual entry[/url] (which, I admit, may be the case), these are multi-functions, since they cannot be placed on objects.  (Methods are functions tied to objects, whereas functions are parent-less, in my limited understanding.)  This seems to be reinforced by the System's Manual under [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/sysman/dynobj.htm]Dynamic Objects[/url], which states that:

[quote="System's Manual"]C++ and Java both provide "overloading" [of constructors], which allows multiple methods of the same name (and hence multiple constructors) to be defined as long as they have different argument lists. TADS does not offer an overloading mechanism. You can, however, use variable argument lists with TADS constructors to achieve a similar effect.[/quote] 

So if constructors cannot be overloaded, I would assume any object method could not be overloaded either.  In which case, my confusion as to why multi-methods are named as they are.  (Hopefully I am misguided, and methods [i]can[/i] be overloaded!)[/quote]

No, you're right - methods can't be overloaded. At this point, anyway. (I keep meaning to email Mike and request he extend the feature to methods as well.) As for the name, my best guess as to why they're called "multi-methods" rather than "multi-functions" is because they're implemented as methods under the hood. (Which means it should be easy to extend the feature to methods as well - I hope?)

[quote="Jonathan D"]Another thing:  if I go ahead and create a new object at run-time [myObject = new hostileActor], the System's Manual says that "Dynamic objects don't have names, so you must refer to them through variables or properties."  Is there a way to assign a name (symbol) to a dynamically-created object, or an anonymous object for that matter?  

"Because an anonymous object doesn't have a symbol that you can use to refer to the object, you must use some other mechanism to manipulate the object. For example, you can use the firstObj() and nextObj() functions, since iterations with these functions include anonymous objects." (System's Manual, [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/sysman/objdef.htm]here[/url]).

firstObj() and nextObj() iterate over the entire game - is there a way to iterate in this fashion through the current scope only, or through specific containers?  (EDIT:  Nevermind 'specific containers'; Pacian already indicated "Foreach(local cur in me.contents)"  I assume, then, there is a way to loop through scope?).[/quote]

There's no way to give a dynamically created object a permanent name, no.

You can get a list of things in scope by calling gAction.getScopeList(), but as its note in the Library Reference Manual explains, it may not include [i]everything[/i] that's in scope if you've been fiddling around with scope by adding objects that wouldn't otherwise be in scope.

There are a couple of other ways you can handle this. firstObj() and nextObj(), of course. You can limit them to only return instances of a specific class, and since they're implemented at the interpreter level, not the library level, they're very fast. If you want to check whether the object they've given you is in scope, you can do "if (gAction.objInScope(obj))". Unlike getScopeList(), objInScope(obj) should always be right about whether an object is in scope or not.

If you're going to have a huge game with thousands of objects and you're worried about slow-down if you're iterating over so many objects, you can keep your own list to iterate over. It means more work for you, of course. For instance, say you want to keep a list of all the Smurfs in your game. You give the Smurf class a property called allSmurfs and set it to be an empty list. Use a PreinitObject to go through all the Smurfs in your game at start-up and add them to the list. (PreinitObjects run their code when you compile for release and the results are saved in the compiled game file, so you can use firstObj()/nextObj() here without worrying about players experiencing slowdown. They're tremendously handy for doing tedious initial  bookkeeping tasks.) Give the Smurf class a constructor that adds new Smurfs to the list, and in the code for Smurf death, remove the Smurf from the list. Then you can iterate over Smurf.allSmurfs instead of firstObj()/nextObj(). That's a simple example, but you could extend it to create your own list of allMonstersWithEnchantedWeapons or whatever you want (of course, you'd have to account for all the ways a monster could lose its enchanted weapon).

This is probably also a good time to point out that "scope" in TADS 3 isn't just one giant list. It's specific to whichever action is being taken. So your NPC in the next room might be in scope for the CALL action, but out of scope for EXAMINE; in scope for SHOOT, but out of scope for PUNCH; and so on. This is why you check scope by calling gAction.objInScope(obj), rather than obj.objInScope().

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=844&start=10#p4463
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Possessive nouns ending in "s": evil or just annoying?
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-11-20 01:42:57

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]With "puerile", you presumably mean "created when Mankind was still young, as in classical antiquity"? [emote]:)[/emote] [/quote]

I'll see your  [emote]:)[/emote] and raise you a   [emote]:lol:[/emote]  .   I do sincerely think that "dilemna" looks much nicer, as well as less trivial, than "dilemma" (regardless of the etymology of the word), although on this very narrow point I'll concede I'm unlikely to produce any arguments that would command general assent.


[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Also, it seems strange that you would defend pluralism in such an inconsequential realm as spelling, while defending monism when talking about which ideas are interesting.)[/quote]

  I don't see any point at which I've done any such thing as you imply, but in the interest of fostering a more general discussion I'll revise my previous statement by removing the needlessly inflammatory phrase "at all interesting" and replace said phase with the words "novel and profoundly relevant for the human condition."  On one hand I think WVO Quine and Ludwig Wittgenstein, for example, had several novel things to say.  While the several novel things said by these fellows may be quite interesting, they have no particularly profound relevance for the human condition.  On the other hand Jean-Paul Sartre, for example, had several things to say that are profoundly relevant for the human condition but were hardly novel; in my view all modern existentialism is merely a refinement of ideas originally articulated by Buddha over 2500 years ago.  As for the others you mentioned I'm not familiar enough with Rene Girard and Donald Davidson to have any opinion of them at all, although after a [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Girard]shockingly[/url] [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Davidson_(philosopher)]cursory[/url] investigation I'd say that Davidson sounds like a fairly sensible fellow.  I've never found the others you mentioned very compelling [i]and[/i] novel, although I'm willing to listen to a statement of what you may find interesting about them.

To give my statement about Foucault and McLuhan a wider context, I would argue that Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Nietzsche also presented novel ideas that were profoundly relevant for the human condition, and that in the two centuries or more since the time of Kant (if one excludes Nietzsche) not many arguments at all have been presented that are philosophically interesting.  While Foucault developed some interesting ideas of Nietzsche in novel ways, he also presented some genuinely new ideas that are profoundly relevant to the human condition (namely his investigations into the practice of power).  More controversially, I think that in the matters of interest he shared with his contemporaries Foucault formulated his ideas with a level of sophistication and cogency that is lacking in others (including some of the folks you mentioned), for example in his essay "What is an Author?" or in his book [i]The Archaeology of Knowledge[/i].  In what is certainly a much more controversial statement I'd say that McLuhan's theories represent a further development of some profound ideas first formulated by Kant, but that McLuhan's theories are legitimately novel in that they are distinct enough from anything Kant ever likely considered to stand apart on their own.  For example, I'm imagining a study of Kant's [i]Critique of Pure Reason[/i] in which one stops after turning each page and writes in the margin "The medium is the message."        

Nonetheless I am certainly not demanding anyone's assent to these propositions on pain of dire consequence, as in the case of a school-kid who might be punished with bad grades or worse for refusing to add an 's after writing a possessive noun ending in s because he preferred to add only an apostrophe.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=851&start=10#p4465
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 Questions
User: Jonathan D / DateTime: 2009-11-20 11:46:15

[quote="Emerald wistfully"]Which means it should be easy to extend the feature to methods as well - I hope?[/quote]

Me too.  Hope, that is.

[quote="Emerald perspicaciously"]If you're going to have a huge game with thousands of objects and you're worried about slow-down if you're iterating over so many objects...[/quote]

...yes...

[quote="Emerald"]...you can keep your own list to iterate over. It means more work for you, of course. For instance, say you want to keep a list of all the Smurfs in your game. You give the Smurf class a property called allSmurfs and set it to be an empty list. Use a PreinitObject to go through all the Smurfs in your game at start-up and add them to the list. (PreinitObjects run their code when you compile for release and the results are saved in the compiled game file, so you can use firstObj()/nextObj() here without worrying about players experiencing slowdown. They're tremendously handy for doing tedious initial bookkeeping tasks.) Give the Smurf class a constructor that adds new Smurfs to the list, and in the code for Smurf death, remove the Smurf from the list. Then you can iterate over Smurf.allSmurfs instead of firstObj()/nextObj(). That's a simple example, but you could extend it to create your own list of allMonstersWithEnchantedWeapons or whatever you want (of course, you'd have to account for all the ways a monster could lose its enchanted weapon).[/quote]

Excellent info there - thank you.

[quote="Emerald, continuing to be very instructive,"]This is probably also a good time to point out that "scope" in TADS 3 isn't just one giant list. It's specific to whichever action is being taken. So your NPC in the next room might be in scope for the CALL action, but out of scope for EXAMINE; in scope for SHOOT, but out of scope for PUNCH; and so on. This is why you check scope by calling gAction.objInScope(obj), rather than obj.objInScope().[/quote]

Interesting.  Actions determine scope - brilliant.  Where can I read more about this?

Two more questions - is it possible to:

[list]1. programmatically execute a command as though the player had typed it?
2. load a TADS 3 snippet (say, from a string variable), and then execute that snippet during run-time?[/list:u]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=851&start=10#p4466
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 Questions
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-11-20 19:27:19

[quote="Jonathan D"]Actions determine scope - brilliant.  Where can I read more about this?[/quote]
The documentation doesn't seem to have an article specifically explaining the ins and outs of scope yet. The Technical Manual has an article on Redefining Scope, which gives a very brief overview of scope before explaining a few ways of modifying it. You might also find the Tour Guide's articles on SenseConnector and DistanceConnector useful; these classes are designed to make it easy to add the contents of other rooms to scope.

[quote="Jonathan D"]Two more questions - is it possible to:

[list]1. programmatically execute a command as though the player had typed it?
2. load a TADS 3 snippet (say, from a string variable), and then execute that snippet during run-time?[/list:u][/quote]

1. You can start a new action with "newAction", "newActorAction", "nestedAction", "nestedActorAction", "replaceAction" or "replaceActorAction". They're all macros for more complicated commands; you can look them up in the Library Reference Manual to see the differences between them. The "Actor" variants allow you to specify which actor will take the action, while the plain variants use the current actor (gActor).

If, on the other hand, you want to be able to feed the parser an arbitrary string and have it turn the string into an action and perform the action... that's more complicated. I'm sure it's possible, though. I think I played about with it a bit once, but never quite got around to finishing it. You'd probably want to have a look at the Command Execution Cycle article in the Technical Manual to get an idea of where you'd jump in. The Library Reference Manual will help here too. If you're using the TADS Workbench for Windows, set a few breakpoints in the library code and step through so you can see which properties and methods are doing what. My cursory examination of the library suggests that you'll want to start by looking at readMainCommandTokens(which) and the section of Actor.executeActorTurn() which calls readMainCommandTokens.

2. I don't [i]think[/i] you can do that, but there's probably a better way of handling the problem anyway. You might be able to use an anonymous function or a reference to an existing function or method. What are you trying to accomplish?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=852&start=0#p4467
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scene changing problem..please help!
User: westwestwest / DateTime: 2009-11-21 04:43:58

Thanks for the advice. I have tried virtually the same thing in some other test scripts and it works fine. Thing the problem in the original might be to do with some of the telephone code...going to try redoing it this weekend!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=848&start=0#p4468
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Games that do conversation well
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2009-11-21 09:08:49

[quote="ShaeSays"]Now I'm ready to start thinking about it, and I'd like to solicit opinions. In the case of inform, do players really pay a lot of attention to whether they're "asking", "saying", etc? Is it desirable to program different responses depending on which of these verbs was used?
[/quote]

My opinion is that it's good to implement at least ASK and TELL separately.  There is a difference between the PC informing an NPC about a topic and the PC inquiring about the topic.  When players use those commands, I think they have in mind whether they are imagining the PC giving out information or (more often) begging for it.  If they don't care whether the PC is asking or telling, its probably because they already have a feeling that the game is not immersive enough to differentiate.  I think implementing ASK and TELL as separate commands may do more for realism and immersion than making the NPC say a different quip each time it is asked about the topic.

I could see how implementing SAY as a third conversation command might further increase the player's level of engagement and immersion.  I don't think a SAY command would have nearly as much applicability, but if the author took the trouble to have NPCs respond to certain words that the player can SAY, I think that would be awesome!

Just my thoughts.  Good luck.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=857&start=0#p4469
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Keyrings and wallets
User: takua108 / DateTime: 2009-11-21 15:55:57

Hey there! So I decided to try and write my own IF work. I have past experience in a variety of programming languages, and I'm finding Inform 7 interesting and fun.

However, I cannot figure out how to accomplish two simple tasks.

1.) Since I'm making a modern-day story, you start out in your bedroom, and you need to get your keys and your wallet. This one isn't that big of a deal, but I'd like to have a "keyring" item that contains multiple keys ("house key," "car keys," etc.). However, I don't want the player to have to do "open keyring ; take house key from keyring ; use house key on front door ; put house key in keyring ; close keyring," as that's just silly. Is there any easy way around this (ideally the player would type "use house key on front door" and it would automagically work), or should I just resort to having one "keyring" item ("use keyring on door")?

2.) Similarly, they player is going to have a wallet which will contain various cards. This part I can get working easily; just make the wallet a container and put a driver's license, ID card, credit card, etc. inside of it. Then I tried putting the keyring inside of the wallet, and it worked. How can I make the wallet only take certain types of things? I tried a bunch of different ways and none of them seemed to work.

Thanks for the help in advance!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=848&start=0#p4470
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Games that do conversation well
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-11-21 21:11:30

Thanks so much for all the replies and opinions. The examples and links are very helpful. I especially liked Nitku's link covering the various ways conversation has been implemented.

I have more to comment but have had a family emergency and haven't been able to follow up. I appreciate the info and would love to talk more about this soon!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=857&start=0#p4471
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keyrings and wallets
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-11-21 21:16:49

[quote]Similarly, they player is going to have a wallet which will contain various cards. This part I can get working easily; just make the wallet a container and put a driver's license, ID card, credit card, etc. inside of it. Then I tried putting the keyring inside of the wallet, and it worked. How can I make the wallet only take certain types of things?[/quote]

[code]Instead of putting something other than the ID card or the credit card in the wallet:
  Say "That's not something that will fit easily into the wallet."
[/code]

I'll let others handle the other question.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=855&start=0#p4472
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Question on lists as variables
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-11-21 21:35:42

[code]You wrote 'if the actor is listed in the authorizedusers of the noun begin' : but the ingredients in this phrase do not fit it, but I am confused enough by this that I can't give a very helpful problem message. Sorry about that.[/code]

Is it the colons in your nested ifs? I always have trouble with nested ifs, but maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. Also, the error message you posted has the word "begin" in it, but the code you posted does not, so I don't think we're seeing the exact code that generated that error?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=847&start=0#p4473
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: When are results announced?
User: Aquillion / DateTime: 2009-11-21 21:39:04

It's also interesting to look at how many people played each game (which, presumably, helps indicate which games the people who didn't play every game and who didn't play games at random were most likely to play.)  For instance, [i]Yon Astounding Castle! of some sort[/i] got only 76 votes, the second-lowest -- did its name scare people off?  Or was it just because it was Adrift?

Trap Cave having the lowest vote total is hardly a surprise, given that it was a Windows game.

Byzantine Perspective got the most votes.  Did its fancy-sounding name make people more likely to try it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=857&start=0#p4474
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keyrings and wallets
User: emshort / DateTime: 2009-11-22 00:01:04

For what it's worth, the Locksmith extension (included with the Inform download) includes a default keyring implementation. You might have to tweak it a little if you have special plans for it (I don't think it recognizes "use key..."), but it does let the player automatically try keys on doors when appropriate.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=855&start=0#p4475
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Question on lists as variables
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-11-22 02:58:10

[quote="ShaeSays"]Is it the colons in your nested ifs?[/quote]
Nope, it's that the contents of the list don't match what they're compared to. 

[quote]Also, the error message you posted has the word "begin" in it, but the code you posted does not, so I don't think we're seeing the exact code that generated that error?[/quote]
Inform converts internally the "colon-and-indent" syntax into the "begin-end" syntax when it processes the source code, so it's merely the error message that's misquoting the code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=855&start=0#p4476
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Question on lists as variables
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-11-22 07:13:18

As Nitku rightly said, the "begin" thing is a left-over from the time when the only writing style Inform allowed was the "begin if/end if" system; a lot of compiler messages are worded as if this was still the case.

[quote="ShaeSays"]I always have trouble with nested ifs...[/quote]

What sorts of trouble?  There are a few different ways of writing things supported by Inform 7, so if you're having trouble with one style you may have other options.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=855&start=0#p4477
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Question on lists as variables
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-11-22 10:38:21

[quote]What sorts of trouble? There are a few different ways of writing things supported by Inform 7, so if you're having trouble with one style you may have other options.[/quote]

Eh, I always work it out eventually. I can only ever get the "begin" style to work actually, and it seems like overkill for certain small if statements. I guess it would be good if I understood the other style better. I guess I could examine the sample given here actually.

On larger nested if statements, no matter which style I attempt, I always seem to manage to get the punctuation wrong. There are no examples that I know of in the documentation of [i]heavily[/i] nested if statements, so I feel like I'm doing a lot of guessing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=857&start=0#p4478
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keyrings and wallets
User: takua108 / DateTime: 2009-11-22 10:42:38

[quote="ShaeSays"][code]Instead of putting something other than the ID card or the credit card in the wallet:
  Say "That's not something that will fit easily into the wallet."
[/code][/quote]
This doesn't seem to work for me:[quote][b]Problem.[/b] You wrote 'Instead of putting something other than the ID card or the credit card in the wallet'  , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is 'putting something other than the ID card or the credit card in the wallet'. But that did not make sense as a description of an action. Looking at this as a list of alternative actions: 'putting something other than the ID card' did not make sense; 'the credit card in the wallet' did not make sense; so I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook.[/quote]
I tried "placing" and "inserting" and such, and I tried removing the "-ing" and then the error changes to "it needs an -ing." [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=857&start=0#p4479
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keyrings and wallets
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-11-22 11:02:34

The action is actually called "inserting it into" (you can verify this by looking at the verb list in the index tab). For some extra flexibility I suggest that you make "card" a kind and make a more general rule:
[code]A card is a kind of thing. An ID card is a card. A driver's license is a card. [and so on]

Instead of inserting something other than a card into the wallet:
    say "[The noun] doesn't fit inside the wallet."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=857&start=0#p4480
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keyrings and wallets
User: takua108 / DateTime: 2009-11-22 11:10:42

[quote="Nitku"]The action is actually called "inserting it into" (you can verify this by looking at the verb list in the index tab). For some extra flexibility I suggest that you make "card" a kind and make a more general rule:
[code]A card is a kind of thing. An ID card is a card. A driver's license is a card. [and so on]

Instead of inserting something other than a card into the wallet:
    say "[The noun] doesn't fit inside the wallet."[/code][/quote]
This still isn't quite working for me. Here's what I have so far:[code]The dresser is in the Bedroom.

A card is a kind of thing. An ID card is a card. A driver's license is a card.

The wallet is a closed opaque openable container on the dresser. "Your wallet sits on top of your dresser."

In the wallet are a driver's license and an ID card.

Instead of inserting something other than a card into the wallet:
    say "[The noun] doesn't fit inside the wallet."[/code]

I'm getting the same error I posted above, only with "inserting something other than a card into the wallet" being the troublesome statement. I am using the latest version (to my knowledge...?) of Inform 7, am I missing something?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=857&start=0#p4481
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keyrings and wallets
User: takua108 / DateTime: 2009-11-22 11:13:36

Aha! Got it to work. I had to use[code]Instead of inserting something that is not a card into the wallet:[/code]and everything works fine. Thanks again for the help, guys! Weird, though, that it didn't understand the other syntax.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=857&start=0#p4482
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keyrings and wallets
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2009-11-22 11:54:50

[quote="takua108"]Weird, though, that it didn't understand the other syntax.[/quote]
Inform 7 is pretty much packed with weird little syntax gotchas like this. My theory (unconfirmed, I hasten to add) is that during the initial development phase, Graham was improvising rather than working at being rigorously systematic.

Or rather, I suspect he gave a high priority to implementing, in each case, a phrase that seemed clear to him -- or something that the compiler could be induced to understand without ambiguity. Phrases that are obviously equivalent to a human reader are quite generally not understood by the compiler.

In addition, there are internal inconsistencies, my favorite being "remove X from play". You can't say "now X is nowhere" or "now X is off-stage", although you can test "if X is nowhere" or "if X is off-stage", and "play" is not a word that has a meaning in any other context.

The way most of us learn this stuff is by writing games, making mistakes, and posting messages here or in the newsgroup.

Have fun!

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=858&start=0#p4483
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Walker & Silhouette: Let's Get Testy
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-11-22 16:17:27

Misfits in a strange city; crime fighters grappling with the weirdest mysteries; rivals who become partners until the last:

[img]http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t74/Spacecatrocketship/WalkerSilhouette/walkerSilhouetteCover2a.jpg[/img]

A keyword-only adventure coming soon to an interpreter near you. 

--------------

Walker & Silhouette is entering the final stages of testing.  I've been working on this for about six months now, so I'm not looking to make any changes to the structure of the game - but I am looking to weed out any typos or bugs that may have slipped through the net.

This is a relatively short (possibly 1-2 hours) and straightforward game.  The emphasis is on story and character, but some scenes involve puzzles of moderate difficulty (hints are available, and are also something I'm specifically looking to test).  The game file comes in TADS .t3 and Windows .exe formats.  If you're interested in being a tester, post here or PM me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=858&start=0#p4484
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Walker & Silhouette: Let's Get Testy
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-11-22 17:39:00

Sounds interesting! I'll take a look at it. My email address is <a href="mailto:emily.boegheim@gmail.com">emily.boegheim@gmail.com</a>.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=859&start=0#p4485
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: More newb stuff: remotely-opened doors
User: takua108 / DateTime: 2009-11-23 00:37:06

Hey there, two more places where I'm stuck, both involving doors and the opening thereof.

1.) I'd like to have a garage door that opens and closes when you press the garage door button. I can make the button, but I can't figure out how to make it open the door.

2.) Similarly, I'm trying to make a bunch of "security doors" in this office-complex-type thing. These doors are automated, and have a slot that you can slide your ID card through to open them. After you go through, it should close.

The second one is probably quite a bit more complex than the first, so if I only get an answer for the first one, that's okay, I can work my way around it. And I'd just like to let you all know that I'm not just typing in cool ideas I have into the forums and trying to get someone else to do all the work for me... I actually spent quite awhile trying to make (and failing) both of these things. I guess I just need more time with Inform =D

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=859&start=0#p4486
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More newb stuff: remotely-opened doors
User: takua108 / DateTime: 2009-11-23 01:48:41

Alright I *finally* solved the problem of remotely opening doors. Here's my complete solution:[code]The Driveway is north of the Front Yard, and in Outdoors.

The Garage is north of the Kitchen, and in the House.

The garage door is a door. It is east of the Garage and west of the Driveway. "[if open]The garage door is wide open.[otherwise]The garage door is closed."

The garage button is a device inside the Garage.

Instead of pushing the garage button: if the garage button is switched off, try switching on the garage button; otherwise try switching off the garage button.

Instead of opening or closing the garage door, say "You need a garage door opener to do that."

After switching on the garage button:
	say "The garage door slides open.";
	change the the garage door to open.
After switching off the garage button:
	say "The garage door slides shut.";
	change the garage door to closed.[/code]Now to try and tackle the second problem...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=855&start=0#p4487
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Question on lists as variables
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-11-23 04:03:21

@ShaeSays:

I've never been able to make any sense of the "begin if/end if" system myself, so I can imagine your frustration if you're trying to use it at the same time as generally figuring out how to do various semi-complex things in your code.  If you want to try the indentation system but find first looking at examples helpful, here is the code for the doors with electronic key locks (briefly mentioned in my original post); it contains a few more statements that consider multiple if-then checks.

The original purpose of this code was to a) generally have some sort of high-tech security doors, and b) have some doors that escape the limitations of the "one matching key per lock" philosophy of Inform's Standard Rules:

[code]Color is a kind of value.  The colors are red, blue, and green.

Sliding it into is an action applying to one carried thing and one visible thing.  Understand "slide [something] in [something]" as sliding it into.  Understand "slide [something] into [something]" as sliding it into.  Understand "swipe [something] in [something]" as sliding it into.

Check an actor sliding something into something:
	unless the noun is a card-key:
		try the actor inserting the noun into the second noun instead;
	unless the second noun is an eldoor or the second noun is a key-card reader:
		try the actor inserting the noun into the second noun instead.

Report examining a door (called lathl):
	if lathl is open:
		say "[The lathl] is currently open.";
	otherwise:
		say "[The lathl] is currently closed.".

An eldoor is a kind of door.  An eldoor is usually closed and openable.  An eldoor is usually locked and lockable.  The description of an eldoor is usually "A sturdy door with an electronic locking mechanism.  A key-card reader is set in the middle of the door.".  Understand "electronic door" or "door" as an eldoor. 

A key-card reader is a kind of thing.  Understand "keycard reader" or "key card reader" or "key-card reader" or "card reader" or "lock" or "card-reader" or "slot" or "card slot" or "keycard slot" or "key-card slot" or "key card slot" or "key slot" or "vertical slot" as a key-card reader.  The description of a key-card reader is usually "An electronic locking mechanism is firmly attached to the door.  The most prominent feature of the device is a small vertical slot along the edge of one side.  To unlock the door, one must slide a valid card-key in the slot."  A key-card reader has some indexed text called the doorcode.  The doorcode of a key-card reader is usually "1".

One key-card reader is part of every eldoor.

A card-key is a kind of thing.  Understand "card-key" or "cardkey" or "card key" or "keycard" or "key card" or "card" or "key" as a card-key.  The description of a card-key is usually "A [color] credit card-sized key with a magnetic strip along one side, for use in electronic security mechanisms.".  A card-key has some indexed text called the lockcode.  The lockcode of a card-key is usually "0".  A card-key has a color.  Understand the color property as referring to the card-key.

Check an actor inserting something into a key-card reader:
	unless the noun is a card-key:
		say "The slot is designed to read card-keys, not [noun]s." instead;
	otherwise:
		try the actor sliding the noun into the second noun instead.

Check an actor inserting something into an eldoor:
	unless the noun is a card-key:
		say "The slot is designed to read card-keys, not [noun]s." instead;
	otherwise:
		try the actor sliding the noun into a random key-card reader that is incorporated by the second noun instead.

Check an actor sliding a card-key into an eldoor:
	try the actor sliding the noun into a random key-card reader that is part of the second noun instead.

Carry out an actor sliding a card-key into a key-card reader that is part of an eldoor (called hedr):
	if hedr is unlocked:
		if the actor is the player or the player can see the actor:
			say "The door will automatically lock itself the next time it closes.";
		otherwise:
			stop the action;
	otherwise:
		if the actor is the player:
			if the lockcode of the noun matches the text doorcode of the second noun:
				change hedr to unlocked;
				silently try the actor opening hedr;
				if hedr is open:
					say "You slide the card in the slot, and hear a metallic 'click' as the [hedr] unlocks and opens.";
				otherwise:
					say "The [hedr] should have opened, but didn't.  Something else must be preventing the door from opening.";
			otherwise:
				say "You slide the card in the slot, but nothing happens.  Apparently the [noun] doesn't work with the [hedr].";
		otherwise:
			if the player can see the actor:
				if the lockcode of the noun matches the text doorcode of the second noun:
					change hedr to unlocked;
					silently try the actor opening hedr;
					if hedr is open:
						say "[The actor] slides [if the actor is male]his[otherwise if the actor is female]her[otherwise]its[end if] [noun] into the slot, and you hear a metallic 'click' as the [hedr] unlocks and opens.";
					otherwise:
						say "[The actor] slides [if the actor is male]his[otherwise if the actor is female]her[otherwise]its[end if] [noun] into the slot, but nothing happens.  Apparently something else is preventing the [hedr] from opening.";
				otherwise:
					say "[The actor] slides [if the actor is male]his[otherwise if the actor is female]her[otherwise]its[end if] [noun] into the slot, but nothing happens.  Apparently [actor]'s [noun] doesn't work with the [hedr].";
			otherwise:
				if the lockcode of the noun matches the text doorcode of the second noun:
					change hedr to unlocked;
					try the actor opening hedr;
				otherwise:
					stop the action.

Instead of switching on a key-card reader, say "It doesn't work that way.".

Instead of switching off a key-card reader, say "It doesn't work that way.".

Instead of an actor closing an eldoor:
	change the noun to locked;
	continue the action.

Instead of an actor closing a key-card reader that is part of an eldoor (called hedr):
	say "(closing [the hedr])";
	try the actor closing hedr.

Instead of an actor locking a locked eldoor with something:
	if the actor is the player or the player can see the actor:
		say "[The noun] is already locked.";
	otherwise:
		stop the action.

Instead of an actor locking an unlocked eldoor with something:
	try the actor sliding the second noun into a random key-card reader that is part of the noun.

Instead of an actor unlocking a locked eldoor with something:
	try the actor sliding the second noun into a random key-card reader that is part of the noun.

Instead of an actor unlocking an unlocked eldoor with something:
	if the actor is the player or the player can see the actor:
		say "[The noun] is already unlocked.";
	otherwise:
		try the actor opening the noun;
		continue the action.


Persuasion rule: persuasion succeeds.

The testarea is a room.

An eldoor called a wooden door is north of the testarea and south of the northern testarea.  The doorcode of the wooden door's key-card reader is "a".

An eldoor called a steel door is east of the testarea and west of the eastern testarea.  The doorcode of the steel door's key-card reader is "c".

An eldoor called a glowing door is south of the testarea and north of the southern testarea.  The doorcode of the glowing door's key-card reader is "e".

An eldoor called the sliding door is west of the testarea and east of the western testarea.  The doorcode of the sliding door's key-card reader is "g".

Every turn when the sliding door was open:
	now the sliding door is closed;
	now the sliding door is locked;
	if the player can see the sliding door:
		say "The sliding doors slam shut with a harsh metallic 'clang.'".

Joan is a woman in the testarea.

A security pass is a kind of card-key.

The player carries a pass1.  The pass1 is a card-key.  The pass1 is green.  The printed name of the pass1 is "green security pass".  Understand "security pass" or "pass" or "security card" as the pass1.  The lockcode of pass1 is "abcd".

The player carries a marble.  The description of the marble is "A shiny marble with a rainbow swirl of colors.".

Joan carries a pass2.  The pass2 is a card-key.  The pass2 is blue.  The printed name of the pass2 is "blue security pass".  Understand "security pass" or "pass" or "security card" as the pass2.  The lockcode of the pass2 is "abcdefg".

After examining or searching Joan:
	if Joan carries anything:
		say "Joan is holding [a list of things carried by Joan].".

Does the player mean doing something with a security pass that is carried by the player: it is likely.

A container called a locker #1 is in the testarea.  The locker #1 is locked and lockable.  The locker #1 is closed and openable.  The description of the locker #1 is "A steel foot-locker with a large white '1' painted on the top.  This is your locker.".  The matching key of the locker #1 is the pass1.  Understand "locker 1" or "my locker" as the locker #1.

A container called a locker #2 is in the testarea.  The locker #2 is locked and lockable.  The locker #2 is closed and openable.  The description of the locker #2 is "A steel foot-locker with a large white '2' painted on the top.  This is Joan's locker.".  The matching key of the locker #2 is the pass2.  Understand "locker 2" or "joan's locker" as the locker #2.[/code]
The basic way the code works, then, is that we can create some things called card-keys.  These card-keys can function as normal keys if we like, but they can also function in a more complex way by using some indexed text called "lockcode" that may be assigned individually.  Furthermore, each "eldoor" has some indexed text called "doorcode".  The way I have things set up above is that each door has one letter (a, b, c, etc) for its doorcode, while each card-key has several letters assigned for its lockcode (abcd, abcdef, etc).  Therefore each card-key will open any door whose doorcode letter matches a letter found in the card-key's lockcode.  In the above example, Joan's key will open all the doors and the locker #2, while the player's key will only open the wooden door, the steel door, and the locker #1.

The basic things to remember when using the indentation system are to end a condition check with a colon and a statement with a semicolon; also Inform won't allow you to indent by more than 9 tab-indents on any individual line.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=859&start=0#p4488
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More newb stuff: remotely-opened doors
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-11-23 04:17:41

[quote="takua108"]Now to try and tackle the second problem...[/quote]

There's some info [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=855]here[/url] that may be helpful to you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=851&start=10#p4489
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 Questions
User: Jonathan D / DateTime: 2009-11-23 04:59:19

[quote="Emerald"]1. You can start a new action with "newAction", "newActorAction", "nestedAction", "nestedActorAction", "replaceAction" or "replaceActorAction". They're all macros for more complicated commands; you can look them up in the Library Reference Manual to see the differences between them. The "Actor" variants allow you to specify which actor will take the action, while the plain variants use the current actor (gActor).[/quote]

Thanks.

[quote="Emerald"]If, on the other hand, you want to be able to feed the parser an arbitrary string...which calls readMainCommandTokens.[/quote]

Thank you.  Specifically I am looking to restrict player and NPC action to ordered sets, where everyone gets an opportunity to perform one, and only one, action per turn.  If anyone attempts to perform more than one action, the actions beyond the initial action are stored in a queue.  The action queues are emptied out sequentially.  NPC's have access to their queues, and can alter them on the fly as they see fit.  This allows them to plan several tactical moves in advance, and to respond to local, incremental (turn by turn) changes in state.

This may prove to be more work than I am willing to undertake - I'll have to get a firm handle on how the library implements everything.  For instance, the following is not ideal:

[list]> take the apple, the orange, and the banana
the apple:  Done.
the orange: Done.
the banana: Done.[/list:u]

A fruit guardian walks into the room.

Rather, this would be more suitable:

[list]> take the apple, the orange, and the banana
the apple:  Done.

A fruit guardian walks into the room.

(take the orange)
Done.

The fruit guardian draws his sword, advancing on you. (initiating combat)[/list:u]

>

In this latter case, the take action for the banana was aborted because the combat event was more important.

[quote="Emerald"]2. I don't [i]think[/i] you can do that, but there's probably a better way of handling the problem anyway. You might be able to use an anonymous function or a reference to an existing function or method. What are you trying to accomplish?[/quote]

As of now, nothing in particular but everything in general.  Besides this feature just being plain cool, I could foresee using it to create Actors who build their own internal logic as play progresses; unique to every play, even for identical transcripts (although similar, in that case, but not perfectly so).  I suppose this could be achieved in other ways, using sets of actions, states, randomness, and so on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=859&start=0#p4490
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More newb stuff: remotely-opened doors
User: takua108 / DateTime: 2009-11-23 05:13:55

Thank you so much! This is pretty much exactly what I need, but with a different implementation. It also provides great insight as to some things I didn't understand about Inform before (such as semicolons).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=857&start=0#p4491
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keyrings and wallets
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2009-11-23 07:14:23

I think that having all of the variant syntaxes covered in a programming language like I7 is quite impossible.
Altho much appreciated, fore-thinking about every possibile combination in a sentence must be a hell of a work.

I fail in those even when producing verbs or responses for easy predictions. I.e.: in a short game I'm writing, I implemented an instead rule in case the player wanted to brake while driving a motorbike. I used a trick: the parser looks for a verb ("slow/down/and ten more") and when it catches it, says: "But speed is all you want, now.". Ofc, typing "breathe slowly" will result in the same outcome, which sounds strange. But nontheless...

Too bad, among the verbs, I forgot to put "brake". Because [i]that's[/i] how you slow down when driving: by [i]braking[/i].
Still, I forgot. Sounds idiot, uh? Well, it is not. [emote]:)[/emote]

--

On the subject, "inserting it into" is a pain in the arse. I spent so much time, on my first attempts (before finding out the "actions" tab in I7) in guessing the exact verb for when i put a coin into a purse. While the rest of the actions are quite easy, this one was not.
Putting in? Putting into? No. Dropping in? No, altho it seems to mean something to the interpreter.
I dont exactly[i] insert a coin into a purse[/i]...

That said, I never found a programming language so friendly as I7.  Kudos to GN and whoever is working on the project.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=860&start=0#p4492
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Help, I'm stuck in "So Far"!
User: chieftainette / DateTime: 2009-11-23 07:38:29

I'm playing Andrew Plotkin's "So Far" and I'm completely stuck at the following point:

[spoiler]I'm in the "dank black" world where you're in total darkness, following a bunch of annoying sounds around  -- plipping, crashing, thudding, etc. I know that following a specific sound "unlocks" areas that you can't go to otherwise, but even though I've tried following many of the sounds I can't seem to find the way out (the silent place). I know how to ward off the evil chord thing, so that's not a problem... I just can't find my way to the exit.[/spoiler]

I've tried googling, but there don't seem to be any actual walkthroughs of "So Far" -- just some hints that don't state precisely how to get through, which I'm afraid is what I need at this point. All the plipping/plopping has become a bit much for my sanity.

Can anyone help?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=859&start=0#p4493
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More newb stuff: remotely-opened doors
User: SJ_43 / DateTime: 2009-11-23 08:08:01

[quote="takua108"]2.) Similarly, I'm trying to make a bunch of "security doors" in this office-complex-type thing. These doors are automated, and have a slot that you can slide your ID card through to open them. After you go through, it should close.[/quote]
I had a go at this. Here's a kind of door that automatically closes in two turns (and just for fun, I also made it possible to have some cards open more doors than others).
[code]
Security level is a kind of value. The security levels are low, medium and high.

A security door is a kind of door. Every security door has a security level. Every security door has a time called the closing time. After examining a security door: say "There is a small slot on the wall next to it."

A slot is a kind of thing. One slot is part of every security door. 
A security card is a kind of thing. Every security card has a security level.

Instead of opening a closed security door, say "You will have to use the slot next to [the noun]."
Instead of closing an open security door, say "There's no way to close [the noun] manually."

Instead of unlocking a security door with a security card:
	let slit be a random slot which is part of the noun;
	try inserting the second noun into the slit.

Instead of inserting something into a slot:
	unless the noun is a security card, say "[The noun] is too thick to fit in the slot." instead;
	let relevant door be the holder of the second noun;
	if the security level of the noun is less than the security level of the relevant door, say "You slide [the noun] through [the second noun], which blinks red in response. The door stays closed." instead;
	say "[The second noun] blinks green as you slide [the noun] through it";
	now the closing time of the relevant door is two minutes after the time of day;
	if the relevant door is closed:
		now the relevant door is open;
		say ", and the door immediately opens.";
	otherwise:
		say "."

Every turn:
	repeat with relevant door running through open security doors:
		if the closing time of the relevant door is the time of day:
			now the relevant door is closed;
			if the player can see the relevant door, say "[The relevant door] slides shut again."

[To help the parser a bit:]
Understand "insert [security card] in/into [slot]", "put [security card] in/into [slot]" or "slide [security card] through [slot]" as inserting it into.
Understand "open [security door] with [security card]" or "unlock [security door] with [security card]" as unlocking it with.

The Corridor, the Office, the Bathroom and the Lab are rooms. The office door is a security door. It is east of the corridor and west of the office. The lab door is a security door. It is north of the corridor and south of the lab. The bathroom door is a security door. It is west of the corridor and east of the bathroom.
The security level of the lab door is high. The security level of the office door is medium.

The player carries a security card called the ID card. The security level of the card is medium.

Test me with "open office with card / open lab door / open lab with card".
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=861&start=0#p4494
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Start Room and some Miscellaneous Questions
User: justahack / DateTime: 2009-11-23 16:07:58

Hello,

I have two silly questions regarding Inform 7 that I can't seem to find elsewhere. Or, at least, I don't know enough to determine where I could find them. 

1) In regards to the start room, I understand that the first room described automatically becomes the start room. But, is there a way to explicitly make a room the start room, without having it be the first room being read by Inform 7?

2) Introduction. When my game starts, I have something like this that shows up:
[code]
A Super Lab
A lab for experimentation of concepts ... by Justahack
Release 1 / Serial number 091123 / Inform 7 build 5Z71 (I6/v6.31 lib 6/12N) SD

Lab
All manner of experimentation is handled in this pristine white room. There is a door to the east, leading into the Storage Room.
[/code]

I've been trying to use Emily Short's Basic Screen Effects' "wait for any key" to achieve an affect where the game will wait for any key after it finishes the line, "Release 1 / Serial number ..."

Then clear the screen and prints out the lab, but I'm not certain how to achieve that. I've tried to do this,

[code]
"A Super Lab" by Justahack

Include Plurality by Emily Short.
Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short.

Section 0 - Metadata

The story genre is "Science Fiction". 
The story headline is "A lab for experimentation of concepts ..."
The release number is 1.
The story creation year is 2009. 
The story description is "In the bowels of a small mountain, a small lab was mysteriously carved, almost by 'magic'. Shielded from prying eyes that were not privy to x-ray goggles, this small lab was used by an apprentice in various experimentations involving the mysterious languge of I7."

wait for any key;
clear the screen;

[/code]

But that just brings up an error. When I was perusing this forum, I believe I came across something explaining that a line like, "Let X be 100." has to be put underneath a rule, so I suspect that there is a similarity here. Since this works fine:

[code]
every turn:
clear the screen;
[/code]

Any information would be appreciated.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=861&start=0#p4495
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Start Room and some Miscellaneous Questions
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2009-11-23 16:57:52

I think you just missed the "when play begins".
[code]When play begins:
	say "[story description]";
	wait for any key;
	move the player to the lab.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=861&start=0#p4496
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Start Room and some Miscellaneous Questions
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-11-23 16:59:36

[quote="justahack"]1) In regards to the start room, I understand that the first room described automatically becomes the start room. But, is there a way to explicitly make a room the start room, without having it be the first room being read by Inform 7?[/quote]I'm not sure this is documented; I could find examples of it in the docs, but no actual explanation. The syntax is "The player is in ..." As in:[code]The Lab is a room.
North of the Lab is the Lobby.

The player is in the Lobby.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=861&start=0#p4497
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Start Room and some Miscellaneous Questions
User: SJ_43 / DateTime: 2009-11-23 18:05:15

[quote="justahack"]I've been trying to use Emily Short's Basic Screen Effects' "wait for any key" to achieve an affect where the game will wait for any key after it finishes the line, "Release 1 / Serial number ..."

Then clear the screen and prints out the lab, but I'm not certain how to achieve that. I've tried to do this,

[...]

But that just brings up an error. When I was perusing this forum, I believe I came across something explaining that a line like, "Let X be 100." has to be put underneath a rule, so I suspect that there is a similarity here.[/quote]You're right, all phrases like that (except statements that describe the initial state of the world) have to be inside rules or Inform wouldn't know what to do with them.

The banner and initial room description are printed out by two consecutive rules in the startup rules: the display banner rule and the initial room description rule. They are both very simple:
[code]This is the display banner rule: say "[banner text]".
This is the initial room description rule: try looking.[/code]
To pause before the room description you can squeeze in a new rule between these two, or modify one of them, perhaps like this:
[code]The display banner and pause rule is listed instead of the display banner rule in the startup rules.
This is the display banner and pause rule:
	say "[banner text]";
	wait for any key;
	clear the screen;
	say line break;[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=861&start=0#p4498
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Start Room and some Miscellaneous Questions
User: justahack / DateTime: 2009-11-23 18:57:05

Ahh, thanks everyone. Your suggestions were very helpful. They were exactly what I was looking for, and a bit more. [emote]:D[/emote] I will have to examine the startup rules and rules in general a bit more.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=847&start=0#p4499
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: When are results announced?
User: DJHastings / DateTime: 2009-11-24 20:37:46

[quote="Aquillion"]Byzantine Perspective got the most votes.  Did its fancy-sounding name make people more likely to try it?[/quote]
Perhaps it was the high-quality map?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=858&start=0#p4500
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Walker & Silhouette: Let's Get Testy
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2009-11-25 01:17:05

if you need more testers, I'll have a look at it...

<a href="mailto:lepermessiahtr@hotmail.com">lepermessiahtr@hotmail.com</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=862&start=0#p4502
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Defining vs Determining Values
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-11-25 06:24:30

I've been having some trouble with creating compilable code that includes variables that are preset for some kinds of things but determined by formula for other kinds of things.  The matter is a bit complex and I think an example rather than an attempt at explanation will best demonstrate what I'm talking about.

Let's say we have a game world in which every possible thing will have a numeric value called weight, and that this value may change over time for some objects under some circumstances.  We wish to stipulate the weight of some (probably) static things when defining them, while writing rules that will derive or adjust the weight of other things according to current conditions.  Setting aside all other particulars of the following example not directly related to this question (such as the various superior ways to determine the gross and net weights of an item, or whether the whole scenario is unnecessarily complex and contrived) let's say we wrote:

[code]A person has a number called vitality.  The vitality of a person is usually 5.

A thing has a number called weight.  The weight of a thing is usually 1.  The weight of a person is usually 150.

The description of a thing is usually "Fascinating.  [The noun] [unless the noun is the player]weighs[otherwise]weigh[end if] [weight of the noun] pounds.".

The Batting Cage is a room.  The description of the Batting Cage is "Surrounded by a thick canvas backdrop, the team has gathered here for batting practice.".

Persuasion rule: persuasion succeeds.

A man called Jeff is in the Batting Cage. The player is Jeff.  The vitality of Jeff is 6.
A man called Sam is in the Batting Cage.  The vitality of Sam is 8.
A woman called Carol is in the Batting Cage.

A bowling ball is in the Batting Cage.  The weight of the bowling ball is 14.
A baseball bat is in the Batting Cage.  The weight of the baseball bat is 2.

A ring is in the Batting Cage.  The description of the ring is "A practice weight that fits onto a baseball bat.  It is generally believed that swinging a bat with the weight attached will increase the power of a batter's swing.  This ring weighs 2 pounds.".  The weight of the ring is 2.

Instead of an actor putting something on the baseball bat:
	unless the noun is the ring:
		say "Let's stay focused here.";
	otherwise:
		if the second noun incorporates the ring:
			say "The ring is already on the bat.";
		otherwise:
			now the ring is part of the baseball bat;
			increase the weight of the baseball bat by 2;
			say "[if the actor is the player]You place[otherwise][The actor] places[end if] the ring on the bat.".

Instead of taking the ring:
	if the noun is incorporated by the baseball bat:
		move the noun to the actor;
		decrease the weight of the baseball bat by 2;
		say "[if the actor is the player]You remove[otherwise][The actor] removes[end if] the practice ring from the bat.";
	otherwise:
		continue the action.

The block swinging rule is not listed in the check swinging rulebook.

Check an actor swinging:
	unless the noun is the baseball bat:
		say "Let's stay focused here." instead.

After an actor swinging the baseball bat:
	if the noun incorporates the ring:
		increase the vitality of the actor by 1;
		if the vitality of the actor is greater than 10:
			change the vitality of the actor to 10;
		if the actor is the player:
			say "You feel your muscles bulging after your workout.";
			continue the action;
		otherwise:
			say "[The actor]'s muscles are bulging after [if the actor is male]his[otherwise]her[end if] workout.";
			continue the action;
	otherwise:
		continue the action.

Report an actor swinging something:
	if the actor is the player:
		say "You swing the bat as the others study your technique.";
	otherwise:
		say "[The actor] swings the bat as the rest of you study [if the actor is male]his[otherwise]her[end if] technique.".[/code]
Wonderful.  The code compiles and everything works as well as we might expect for such a simple scenario.  However, we included the statement "A person has a number called vitality" and oddly referred to this number during the process of swinging the bat.  Let's say we later decide to put this obscure value to use and specify that "vitality" will determine a person's bodyweight, but we want the weight of other things to remain their predefined value.  Therefore we modify the code in the following way:

[code][Delete:]
The weight of a person is usually 150.

[Add:]
To decide what number is weight of (abc - a person):
	let wvalue be the vitality of abc;
	change wvalue to wvalue * 30;
	decide on wvalue.[/code]
Inform doesn't like this change, and tells us:

[quote="Inform 7"]Problem. You wrote 'increase the weight of the baseball bat by 2'  , which is a phrase that can be construed in more than one way. I tried the possibilities in the order numbered below, and would have accepted the first which successfully matched - but none of them did.

1. increase/increment (weight of the baseball bat - a temporary 'let' or 'repeat' variable) by (2 - a value)

2. increase/increment (weight of the baseball bat - a non-temporary variable) by (2 - a value)

3. increase/increment (weight of the baseball bat - a table entry) by (2 - a value)

4. increase/increment (weight of the baseball bat - a property belonging to something) by (2 - a value)

weight of the baseball bat: a number, which results in a number[/quote]
(with a similar message for "decrease the weight of the baseball bat by 2").

Fine.  We take a more direct approach, changing the two Instead rules for modifying the bat with the ring as follows:

[code][Delete:]
increase the weight of the baseball bat by 2;

[from the Instead of an actor putting something on the baseball bat rule, and replace it with:]

now the weight of the baseball bat is 4;

[Delete:]
decrease the weight of the baseball bat by 2;

[from the Instead of taking the ring rule, and replace it with:]

now the weight of the baseball bat is 2;[/code]
Inform doesn't care for this either, and tells us:

[quote="Inform 7"]Problem. You wrote 'now the weight of the baseball bat is 4'  : but equality is not something I can change, so either those are already the same or are different, and I can't alter matters.[/quote]
 [emote]:cry:[/emote] Apparently then we will not be allowed to directly modify the weight of things that have a predefined weight if the weight of other things in the game-world is derived from a formula rather than directly defined.

I originally included the statement "The weight of a thing is usually 1" as a catch-all for things whose weight I didn't care to define.  If I eliminate this statement and replace it with a more complex decision process, such as:

[code]To decide what number is the weight of (abc - a thing):
	unless the weight of abc is 0:
		decide on the weight of abc;
	otherwise:
		decide on 1.[/code]
Nothing changes and I get the same compiler error as last time.  However this latest addition is problematic in itself, since if I comment out the two "now the weight of the baseball bat is" lines and then examine the bowling ball (for example), the test game rightly crashes with the message "Fatal Error: Stack Overflow" since I attempted to define the weight of something by referring to its weight.

It's not helpful to delete the latest rule addition and replace it with a multitude of statements such as:

[code]To decide what number is the weight of (abc - a thing):
	decide on 1.

To decide what number is the weight of the bowling ball:
	decide on 14.[/code]
etc, since I really do want to change the weight of the baseball bat under some conditions and it would seem that no valid "decide" rule could properly address the weight of the baseball bat.

In theory one could deal with the general problem by giving everything two weights, a hidden weight and a usable weight.  One could then write rules such as:

[code]The hiddenweight of the bowling ball is 14.

To decide what number is the weight of (abc - a thing):
	unless the hiddenweight of abc is 0:
		decide on the hiddenweight of abc;
	otherwise:
		decide on 1.

To decide what number is weight of (abc - a person):
	let wvalue be the vitality of abc;
	change wvalue to wvalue * 30;
	decide on wvalue.[/code]
But a) this is surely an inconvenient and highly contrived method, and b) in fact a solution to the general problem is needed for some rather complex code that runs to tens of thousands of words, and modifying hundreds of lines of code that deal with weight to add a highly contrived "hidden weight" value is a proposition that arouses little enthusiasm.

If anyone has experience writing I7 code in which some general values of things:

a) are determined by formula in some cases but directly defined in other cases, and 

b) must be altered under certain conditions

I would be very interested in hearing your insights into this issue.  Thanks in advance for any responses.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=858&start=0#p4503
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Walker & Silhouette: Let's Get Testy
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-11-25 07:46:09

I've emailed you both.

 [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=863&start=0#p4504
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Modifying TravelConnector/List Appending
User: Jonathan D / DateTime: 2009-11-25 15:12:20

I want to disallow travel if the PC isn't wearing their outfit.  This works:

[code]modify TravelConnector
    
    canTravelerPass(traveler)
    {
        if (adventurersOutfit.wornBy == me) return true; else return nil;
    }
    
    explainTravelBarrier(travel)
    {
        "You're not going anywhere naked.  ";        
    }
;
[/code]

Although the above works, I would like to implement it this way:

[code]nakedBarrier: TravelBarrier
    canTravelerPass(traveler) { return adventurersOutfit.isWornBy(traveler); }
    explainTravelBarrier(traveler)
    {
        "You're not going anywhere naked.  ";
    }
;    

modify TravelConnector
    travelBarrier += nakedBarrier
;[/code]

This doesn't work, however, because I can't seem to append to a list with the += operator.  I have tried...

    travelBarrier.append(nakedBarrier)

...but this doesn't work either.  (I'm getting stack overflow in the library).  Am I on the right track here?  What's the proper way to append to a list?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=862&start=0#p4505
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Defining vs Determining Values
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2009-11-25 17:31:48

What you're requesting is the ability to define a phrase that has the same syntax as a property reference ("the ___ of ___") and have Inform figure out which one you mean at any given moment. But this is troublesome.

What happens if you have a variable X pointing to some object, and then you write "say the weight of X"? It looks like you're referring to the weight property, but what if X is actually pointing to a person, whose weight is calculated by a phrase? Inform would have to check this at runtime and generate very different code for the two situations.

And then what happens if you write "change the weight of X to 10"? If X is a person, is this a legal but pointless request to change the weight property (whose value will never be used), or is this illegal because a person's weight is calculated on the fly and can't be changed directly? The former is a subtle bug waiting to happen; the latter means Inform would have to do another runtime check and throw an error in one of the two situations. From a programming standpoint, that error is undesirable, since there's no straightforward way to detect it before it happens. (It's easy to check whether X provides the weight property, but not whether X is an object whose weight is defined by a phrase, because you could have any number of phrases for different kinds or even individual objects.)

From a programmer's standpoint, my suggestion is to pick an Inform feature to use for weight and stick with it for all objects: either a property or a phrase.

Using a property would cut down on the amount of code you have to change: just add an "every turn" rule that recalculates the weight of every person. If a person's weight is rarely used and hard to calculate, a phrase would be more efficient, but that means changing more code.

From a philosopher's standpoint, my suggestion is to rethink the concepts you're using here. Weight (well, mass) is an inherent attribute of an object, not a derived calculation. It can be changed, say by slicing off a chunk of the object, but it stays the same until you explicitly change it. It should be a property. A derived calculation would be something like the weight of an object plus its contents -- that's a great time to use a phrase, since that quantity can't be changed directly. And it's a different concept from the object's weight, so you can give it a different name, which solves the conflict. I know you said not to fixate on the details of this example, but perhaps the same point is true of whatever you're really trying to do.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=863&start=0#p4506
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Modifying TravelConnector/List Appending
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-11-25 17:38:09

"travelBarrier += nakedBarrier" and "travelBarrier.append(nakedBarrier)" would work if you were using them within a function or method, but since you're initialising a property, you have to do things a little differently.

This works:
[code]modify TravelConnector
    travelBarrier = static inherited + nakedBarrier
;[/code]
The "static" tells TADS that this is just initialising the property, so it can add nakedBarrier at compile time and not worry about it again.

If, for some reason, you wanted TADS to recalculate the list every time it was used, you could do this instead:
[code]modify TravelConnector
    travelBarrier = (inherited + nakedBarrier)
;[/code]
The parentheses are a shortcut for a function that just returns "inherited + nakedBarrier".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=862&start=0#p4508
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Defining vs Determining Values
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-11-25 23:31:52

Thanks for the response.  I was a little concerned that I wasn't able to define the general issue coherently, but even had I failed to do so you have very accurately outlined the various aspects of the problem.  From the error messages the compiler itself gave, it wasn't discernible to me whether I was conceptually trying to do something not allowed or if I was just failing to find the proper syntax for doing something.   I was hoping there would be some tricks to get around the problem, but what you've said is just as valuable since if I know nothing can be done I won't spend any more time trying to ask Inform to do something it isn't able to do.  

[quote="vaporware"]And then what happens if you write "change the weight of X to 10"? If X is a person, is this a legal but pointless request to change the weight property (whose value will never be used), or is this illegal because a person's weight is calculated on the fly and can't be changed directly?[/quote]
My thinking was that I would be cautious and never write anything that, in terms of the example above, would change the weight of a person.  I would be content for the compiled game to crash if I did in fact do so, since the error would be mine.  However, I can see the reasonableness of Inform not allowing such a general approach for the reasons you mentioned.

[quote="vaporware"]From a philosopher's standpoint, my suggestion is to rethink the concepts you're using here. Weight (well, mass) is an inherent attribute of an object, not a derived calculation. It can be changed, say by slicing off a chunk of the object, but it stays the same until you explicitly change it.[/quote]
If we set aside the example code I gave above, this idea bears relevance for what I was trying to do in several cases.  One part of the unusual problems I often run into is that I'm trying to make a generic ruleset rather than any particular game with unique situations that can be directly addressed, and am trying to minimize massive every turn repeat-though rules.  I have some complex liquid rules, and have an activity that is carried out every turn to recalculate the weight of every liquid based on its current volume.  This particular code is important to me and can't be done any other way, so anything that interferes with it must be set aside.  I originally encountered the general issue described above when I later tried to implement some derived values for the weight of living things.  For a long time I was just setting the weight of people (along with everything else except liquids) directly, e.g. "Joan weighs 125," except in the case of things whose weight is based on their kind (in which case the weight is specified in the class definition).  However, I also have given every person a physical body with a detailed implementation of body parts.  I ran into the problem, then, when I attempted to say that the net weight of a person is the net weight of the person's body--so that, for example, if a dinosaur takes a bite of George and George loses a leg, George would then weigh about 12 percent less than he did before.  Even that itself isn't an too much of an issue, though; the problem came when I further decided that since every person's body already had a height and a general body shape (fat, thin, muscular, etc) I wanted to set the net weight of a person's various body parts by a formula based on their individual height and general body shape.  That didn't sit well with Inform, for the reasons discussed in your post.  It wasn't a big deal to me, and since I couldn't figure out the underlying problem I continued to specify an exact weight for each person rather than use a formula.  By making an assumption that most players won't be so obsessed with either trivia or vicious bloodlust that they'll be upset enough by minor discrepancies to abandon the game, I can accept (since I am too lazy to assign a weight to every individual part of every individual body, even though no technical issues prevent me from doing so) that some players might be mildly disappointed to seek out a scale and discover that the disembodied leg of George, who weighs 185 pounds, weighs the same as the disembodied leg of Ned, who weighs 155 pounds.  I recently ran into another angle on the problem, though, when I decided that some small items treated as weighing 0 pounds individually should begin to have an effect on the gross weight of containers (including people) and supporters when these small objects are aggregated in large quantities.  Again I turned to a formula to resolve the issue, and was again frustrated, at which point it seemed best to try to resolve the matter definitively.

Thanks again for your response.  Although it may not be what I hoped to hear, your answer is something I can indeed understand and accept.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=864&start=0#p4509
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: A More Efficient Rule
User: justahack / DateTime: 2009-11-26 04:25:21

Hello and Happy Thanksgiving all,

I've read up to chapter 7 in the Inform manual, and have been trying to get a better handle on the grammar rules. Every now and again I will try to implement some random example of either my own or the manual's making in order to see if I've gotten a somewhat firm grip on what I just read. 

I wrote this small bit in response to Chapter 7.13. 

[code]
Lab is a room. The description of the Lab is "A pristine white lab, completely empty."

East of the Lab is the Storage Room.

Trolly is in the lab. Trolly is a vehicle. 

Instead of going to the Storage Room:
	if the player is not in a trolly, say "You can't enter there without a vehicle";
	if the player is in a trolly begin;
		say "You roll faster than your average turtle, for all of a few boring seconds.";
		move trolly to the Storage Room;
		try looking;
	end if.
[/code]

The idea is that I want to prevent the player from entering the Storage Room, unless he is in a vehicle. Which the code above does just fine. But, I feel what I wrote is a bit verbose, and there probably is a shorter way of accomplishing the same using some kind of negative modifier. For example,

[code]
Instead of going to the Storage Room in other than the Trolly:
	say, "You can't enter there without a vehicle.";
Instead of going to the Storage Room:
		say "You roll faster than your average turtle, for all of a few boring seconds.";
		move trolly to the Storage Room;
		try looking;	
[/code]

Which, does not work. I suspect it is because there might not be such a negative modifier. But I could be wrong. If there is, I'm curious if there is one or if there is a more efficient way of writing what I wrote out.

On a side note, when I tried doing,
[code]
		(the first code listed, up until the move line)
		try going east; // instead of move trolly to the Storage Room;
		(the rest)
[/code]

I manage to bring up a bunch of errors in inform 7. Then I realized it was because my rule for "going to the Storage Room" was recursively calling itself. Is "Moving" a more conventional means of moving the player or would trying directions be more conventional?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=863&start=0#p4510
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Modifying TravelConnector/List Appending
User: Jonathan D / DateTime: 2009-11-26 05:19:54

Thanks, Emerald.  I'm sure this must be written somewhere in the docs, I just haven't managed to wander into that part of the wilderness yet (Systems Manual, perhaps?).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=857&start=0#p4511
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keyrings and wallets
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-11-26 08:38:42

[code]
The wallet is a closed opaque openable container on the dresser. "Your wallet sits on top of your dresser."[/code]

I fear that after removing the wallet from the dresser, which I assume can be done, the description of the wallet will still say it's on the dresser. You can mitigate that by putting an if statement inside the description.
[quote]
I think that having all of the variant syntaxes covered in a programming language like I7 is quite impossible.
[/quote]

It helps if at least one example of each sort of syntax is in the manual. When I can find it there I can usually muddle through. Unfortunately there's always something that isn't in there, that I have to find out here instead.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=855&start=0#p4512
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Question on lists as variables
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-11-26 08:43:14

Endosphere,

Awesome, thanks. I'm going to bookmark this page to help me get through those nested if statements next time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=864&start=0#p4513
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: A More Efficient Rule
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-11-26 10:19:53

I'm not quite sure what you mean by efficiency, but I like to use the "unless" condition a lot as a timesaver.  Instead of writing something like:

[code]A red marble, a blue marble, a green marble, a yellow marble, and a purple marble are in the bag of marbles.

Check taking a marble:
     if the noun is the red marble or the noun is the blue marble or the noun is the yellow marble or the noun is the yellow marble:
          say "You only roll with green marbles." instead.[/code]
You can just write:

[code]Check taking a marble:
     unless the noun is the green marble:
          say "You only roll with green marbles." instead.[/code]
You're mostly on the right track about the reasons the codes you posted don't work.  One minor thing is that the only reason you had to add "try looking" after moving to the Storage Room is that you used Instead rules, which required you to move the Trolly/player, thereby circumventing the normal process of going somewhere (which includes looking after you arrive).  You'll also crash the game, as you noted, anytime you write something that amounts to "Instead of going east, try going east". 

[quote="justahack"]Is "Moving" a more conventional means of moving the player or would trying directions be more conventional?[/quote]
Unless you really want to, you don't need to go out of your way to do either of those.  You can just let the normal rules apply (these are rules that apply to the "going" action), and add a small check to see if the character is in the Trolly.  Any of the following examples do that:

[code]Lab is a room. The description of the Lab is "A pristine white lab, completely empty."

East of the Lab is the Storage Room.

Trolly is in the lab. Trolly is a vehicle.

Before going east in the Lab:
	unless the player is in the Trolly:
		say "You're too lazy to walk over there.  Why not ride the Trolly?" instead.

Check going:
	if the room gone from is the Lab and the room gone to is the Storage room:
		unless the player is in the Trolly:
			say "It's too far.  You feel compelled to use the Trolly." instead.

Instead of going from the Lab to the Storage room:
	unless the vehicle gone by is the Trolly:
		say "It must be at least 30 feet from here to there!  That Trolly sure looks inviting.";
	otherwise:
		continue the action.	

[note that since this next one directly moves the character, adding a "try looking" would be necessary to print the room description of the Storage Lab after moving there]

Instead of going east in the Lab:
	if the player is in the Trolly:
		move the Trolly to the Storage Room;
		say "You take the Trolly for a spin and end up in the Storage Room.";
	otherwise:
		say "Ugh.  You don't really want to walk that far, do you?".

Instead of going from the Lab to the Storage Room:
	if the player is in Trolly:
		continue the action;
	otherwise:
		say "As a matter of principle, you refuse to go to the storage room unless you are in your sleek, supercharged Trolly.".
[/code]
For the most part, the words "Before", "Check", and "Instead" are interchangeable in the above examples (although you'd want to get rid of the word "instead" inside the lines of the rule if you changed the "Before" rule or the "Check" rule with an "Instead" rule, and would need to add the word instead after the final line of each branch if you changed one the "Instead" rules to a "Before" or "Check" rule).

In general it's best to avoid Instead rules, since they skip so many of the processes built into regular actions, are not counted as actually having happened (in case you'd like to check later) without special extra steps, and usually prevent you from having "After" or "Report" rules which come in handy sometimes.

I'm not sure I really answered any of your questions. If not, please continue asking.


p.s.  Although it's probably obvious, if you run the example with all the various ways of going you'll need to comment out all but one of the Before/Check/Instead rules at a time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=865&start=0#p4514
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Optimization/Alternate Methods
User: Jonathan D / DateTime: 2009-11-26 10:59:23

I've created a travelBarrier that disallows travel unless the player is wearing an object with the property 'removesNakedness' set to true:

[code]+outfit: Wearable 'black grey outfit*outfits/clothing/clothes' 'black and grey outfit'
    "some description here"
    removesNakedness = true
;
[/code]
[code]//The traveler must be wearing something that removes nakedness.
nakedBarrier: TravelBarrier
    
    canTravelerPass(traveler) 
    {         
        return me.contents.indexWhich({x:
                                         x.propDefined(&removesNakedness) 
                                         && x.removesNakedness
                                         && x.isWornBy(me)
                                         });
    }
    
    //Tells the traveler that they cannot be naked when travelling.    
    //If they are carrying anything that they can wear in order to
    //remove their nakedness, we tell them so.
    explainTravelBarrier(traveler)
    {
        "You're not going anywhere naked";
        
        //Finds any items carried by the player that will remove nakedness.
        local lst = [];
        foreach (local itm in me.contents)
        {
            if (itm.propDefined(&removesNakedness))
            {
                if (itm.removesNakedness) lst += itm;
            }
        }                

        if (lst.length > 0)
        {
            printRemoveNakednessItems(lst, true);
        }
        else
        {
            
            //If the player doesn't have any viable items, check the current location.
            local itm = firstObj(Wearable);
            while (itm)
            {
                if (itm.canBeTouchedBy(me) && itm.canBeSeenBy(me)) lst += itm;
                itm = nextObj(itm, Wearable);
            }
            
            if (lst.length > 0) printRemoveNakednessItems(lst, nil); else ".";
        }            
    }
    
    //Print the viable items.
    printRemoveNakednessItems(lst, isCarrying)
    {
        local suffix = nil;
        if (isCarrying) suffix = ' (which you are carrying)';
        
        ", but you may assuage this conviction (that is, the resolve to move about only when clothed) by wearing ";
        if (lst.length == 1)
        {                
            local idx = lst.createIterator();
            idx.getNext();
            local itm = idx.getCurVal;
            "<<itm.theName>><<suffix>>.";
        }
        else
        {
            "any of the following<<suffix>>: <.p>";
            foreach (local itm in lst)
            {
                "\n\t<<itm.aName>>";
            }
        }
    }

;   [/code] 

1. Is there any way to optimize (make more concise) the above?  
2. I'm assuming lazy evaluation in the anonymous function for canTravelerPass - is this a correct assumption?
3. Are there alternate means to accomplish the same thing?
4. This part:
[code]            local idx = lst.createIterator();
            idx.getNext();
            local itm = idx.getCurVal;[/code]
seems unwieldy - any other way to get an item/first item from a list?
5. What will happen when an NPC (or any other object) uses this barrier?  (i.e. Do I need to do a check: if(traveler == me))...
6. When checking for viable objects in the current room, are canBeSeenBy and canBeTouchedBy sufficient?  Is it possible for a coder to model (via adv3) a clothing object that, although suitable, wouldn't show up for this list?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=848&start=0#p4515
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Games that do conversation well
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-11-26 12:21:56

This is the link that I found super helpful: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.tads.org/howto/convbkg.htm">http://www.tads.org/howto/convbkg.htm</a>

It covers all the various ways anyone has ever done conversation, to the author's knowledge, with the pros and cons of each. Here are its basic conclusions:

[b]Cheap AI/Keyword matching[/b] (responses from NPCs are derived from keywords in PC's statement/question) - Lacks context sensitivity, fails to cope with homophones, doesn't fool anyone

[b]Ask/Tell[/b] - doesn't maintain a conversation state, is unnatural, NPC may repeat itself, limited range of expression

[b]Menus[/b] - can create a "menu maze" that the player feels the need to exhaust, eliminates guess-the-keyword problem, awkwardly breaks from the usual UI

[b]Hyperlinked replies[/b] - same pros and cons as menus

[b]Menu-less TALK TO[/b] (PC initiates conversation, but has no control over what is said) - is context-aware, decreased player interactivity with increased authorial control, is too distancing

[b]Emotion words[/b] rather than talk words - never satisfactory implemented

[b]Avoid conversation[/b] (such as setting game in a foreign land)

[b]NPC asks and PC responds[/b] - contrived, limited

The author's recommendations:

Use ask/tell with full exchanges, perhaps with topic suggestions (sort of like a menu)
Don't hide important info in conversation at all

After reading about all this, I was left preferring what the author calls "cheap AI" -- but he was pretty critical of it:

[quote]
In practice, this type of interface hasn't been very successful, mostly because none of the known "cheap AI" techniques stands up to even modest scrutiny... it suffers mightily from its lack of context sensitivity (minor changes, like inserting the word "not" or rearranging a couple of words, can completely change the meaning of a sentence)... a poor fit to the actual tree-like, highly recursive internal structure of natural languages... 

The main problem with the cheap AI approaches is that players quickly see through them. Technically sophisticated players realize at once what's really going on, and adjust their playing styles accordingly [by] entering individual keywords [alone]... Technically unsophisticated players... decide that the program is buggy... you might conclude you're better off putting your effort into something with a higher return on investment. 
[/quote]

Do others really find it that unsatisfactory? Ask/tell isn't too bad, maybe even better with topics. But I do find myself [b]really[/b] not enjoying a menu system when I encounter it in a game.

It was enlightening to see the many possible other options -- the article was exactly what I was looking for.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=848&start=0#p4516
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Games that do conversation well
User: George / DateTime: 2009-11-26 13:23:28

I agree with the article that if I play a game with cheap AI, I just use keywords, so you might as well use an 'ask about'/topics system, which I think is much easier for people unfamiliar with parser-based games. 

That said, I think IF can really shine when the conversation system is not just tacked on to the game structure, but integral with it --[i] Spider and Web[/i] and [i]Failsafe [/i]come to mind. This does kind of leave you hanging if you need a general purpose system -- but maybe the trick is to figure out how to more fully integrate the conversation system in the first place.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=866&start=0#p4517
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Hint system?
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2009-11-26 13:59:17

The subject is hints for adventure games and I’ve been giving it some thought over time.
It is my belief that a lot of relatively good games gets discarded by players because the lack of a walk-through or a hint sheet/system.
So how come that someone hasn’t made a hint system that can be sent along with the game?
Without actually being a programmer I still would think that it’s a relatively easy task to create a program which allowed the game author to create a hint sheet. (I’m sorry if I’m wrong)
I really do believe that it would be a great asset to any game and also add to the playability (We all want people to play our games, don’t we?) if there was a hint system published along with the game.
So I guess my question is: Is there someone out there who would be interested in making such a hint system, available for all games?
I have a few ideas about the design, but unfortunately lack any programming skills.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=866&start=0#p4518
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Hint system?
User: George / DateTime: 2009-11-26 15:55:25

One way this might be workable would be to include it in the functionality of a game browser/downloader service, like Steam for example. So there would be some universal standard the game developers could write for. Otherwise the technical details of each game development platform are just too different to make this work, I think.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=848&start=0#p4519
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Games that do conversation well
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-11-26 16:38:51

I did play a game with cheap AI once.  You get exchanges like this:

Player:  I think John is a horrible person.
NPC:  John lives in the old windmill.  I hear he'll pay good money for any dragon's teeth you give him.

or

Player:  I feel like an idiot for not realising that.
NPC:  There's no need to call me names!

And you realise pretty quickly that you'd have got the same response if you'd just typed 'John' or 'idiot' by themselves.

One of my favourite conversation systems of all time is the one used in the SNES RPG Shadowrun.  Highlighted words appear in the dialogue, which are then added to an inventory of topics that you can bring up with anyone else.  To start with you can only talk about a few things, but eventually you've got all sorts of topics to discuss.  

Exactly what 'using' a word entails is left open to interpretation, which meant there could be some funny exchanges when a discussion turned out to use a word in a different way than you might have expected.  (Most of the time you just got a default response, though...)

Could you use this system in a typical IF game?  Probably.  But I suppose you might have to limit the number of topics to make them more easy to display without a GUI.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=848&start=0#p4520
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Games that do conversation well
User: Jonathan D / DateTime: 2009-11-26 18:18:53

[quote]One of my favourite conversation systems of all time is the one used in the SNES RPG Shadowrun. Highlighted words appear in the dialogue, which are then added to an inventory of topics that you can bring up with anyone else. To start with you can only talk about a few things, but eventually you've got all sorts of topics to discuss. [/quote]

This is what I am planning to implement for an IF/RPG.  A similar system was used for Ultima VI, I think.  I may attempt to turn it into an extension, but I'm going to study how ask/tell works in adv3 first.  (I haven't even started to think about conversations yet - still on page 60-ish of "Learning TADS".)  It may be that one can just modify the library, as opposed to building something from scratch.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=866&start=0#p4521
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Hint system?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-11-26 22:18:18

I also recommended this in the seeking-collaborators forum. Some sort of module where the programmer could just fill in a table of help topics and responses would be awesome.

[quote]I have a few ideas about the design, but unfortunately lack any programming skills.[/quote]

What are your ideas, just out of curiosity?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=864&start=0#p4522
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: A More Efficient Rule
User: justahack / DateTime: 2009-11-26 22:49:44

[quote]
In general it's best to avoid Instead rules, since they skip so many of the processes built into regular actions, are not counted as actually having happened (in case you'd like to check later) without special extra steps, and usually prevent you from having "After" or "Report" rules which come in handy sometimes.
[/quote]

Mmm, I will keep that in mind in the future. Thank you for your other suggestions; It's given me more options to consider when doing or trying to accomplish certain effects.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=867&start=0#p4524
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Referring to object from its description
User: chinkeeyong / DateTime: 2009-11-27 06:38:45

I have a new kind of container called the Mon Capsule in my project. The idea is that I want the description of a Capsule to list its contents, but I have no idea how to refer to it from its description. "A list of things contained" doesn't work, nor "a list of things inside". Can anyone enlighten me with the proper syntax?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=867&start=0#p4525
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Referring to object from its description
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-11-27 08:58:49

[quote="chinkeeyong"]I want the description of a Capsule to list its contents, but I have no idea how to refer to it from its description. "A list of things contained" doesn't work, nor "a list of things inside".[/quote]Both of those work, you just need to add "item described" to refer to the actual thing itself:[code]Lab is a room.

The capsule is a container in the Lab. The description is "The capsule contains [a list of things inside the item described]."

A box is a kind of container. The description is usually "[The item described] contains [a list of things contained by the item described]."

A box called the mysterious box is in the capsule. A ball and a bat are in the mysterious box.

test me with "x capsule / x box / get bat / put it in capsule / x capsule".[/code]As you see from the above, this works both for individual containers and for new kinds of containers (if you indeed need more than one). Also "[item described]" by itself will print the name of the object.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=867&start=0#p4526
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Referring to object from its description
User: chinkeeyong / DateTime: 2009-11-27 09:08:50

Okay, nice. Thanks for your help.

Another question: what's the syntax for a rule that triggers when printing the description of a kind of thing? I'm trying to do this:
[code]Before printing the description of a mon (called the victim):
	let the type index be the type corresponding to an index of the species of the victim in the Table of Mon Stats;
	say "[bold type][nickname][roman type] / [name corresponding to an index of the species of the victim in the Table of Mon Stats][line break]Level [level][paragraph break][name corresponding to an index of the type index in the Table of Mon Types]";
	stop.[/code]

But it doesn't quite work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=867&start=0#p4527
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Referring to object from its description
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-11-27 09:29:38

Without seeing your table, it's hard for me to tell what you're doing wrong. Are you actually using the table to define the objects (as described in ch 15.16 of the docs)? If so, then you don't need that corresponding syntax anyway, you can just use "[species of the victim]."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=867&start=0#p4528
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Referring to object from its description
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-11-27 09:44:01

[quote="chinkeeyong"]what's the syntax for a rule that triggers when printing the description of a kind of thing?[/quote]Oops, I didn't read that quite right. Do you want something to print in the room description of a mon or in the [i]actual[/i] description of a mon (i.e. the thing that's printed when a player types "examine"). If it's the latter, there isn't an activity which governs the behavior. You can, however, add a "to say" phrase for this if you like:[code]The description of a mon is usually "[mondesc of item described]"

To say mondesc of (m - a mon):
	say "[The m] is [level of m] ... etc.".
[/code]... or you can piggy back on (or replace) the examining action which triggers the description. This will append info after the description:[code]After examining a mon:
	say "It's a level [level of noun] mon."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=868&start=0#p4529
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [Newbie] Parts and description thereof
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2009-11-27 19:08:49

Hello, everyone! I've just started to try my hand at I7. It's been frustrating and wonderful by turns.

A lot of problems I've encountered I've managed to work out in time. This one, though, has me stumped. Maybe someone here can help me.

[code]"Written on the body"
A body part is a kind of thing.
A face is a kind of body part. A face is part of every person. 
A pimple is a kind of body part. A pimple is part of every man.

Definition: a person is other if it is not the player.
Definition: a thing is selfish if it is part of the player and the player can see an other person. 
Does the player mean doing something when the noun is a selfish thing: it is very unlikely. 

The Hall of Testing is a room. "This place is curiously empty."
Manny is a man in the Hall of Testing. The player is Manny.
Jane is a woman in the Hall of Testing. "Jane is here. She's, most emphatically, not you."

Test me with "look at Jane's face/look at your face/look at pimple"[/code]

The problems are twofold:
[list][*]How do I get the parser to efficiently refer to the player as "you" when we're referring to parts of the player, and[/*:m]
[*]How do I make it associate "you" as in "your face" as referring to the part in question?[/*:m][/list:u]

This is probably a newbie mistake, but I'm at my wits' end.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=868&start=0#p4530
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Newbie] Parts and description thereof
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2009-11-27 23:10:58

Well, that was bracing.

After a lot of looking around and poking about, I solved it.

[code]"Overwritten on the body"
A body part is a kind of thing.
A face is a kind of body part. A face is part of every person. 
A pimple is a kind of body part. A pimple is part of every man.
The Hall of Testing is a room. "This place is curiously empty."[/code]

So far so good. Everything is as before. But now, we make a few changes.

[code]Understand "your/my/mine" as a thing when the item described is part of the person asked.
Definition: a person is other if it is not the player.
Definition: a thing is selfish if it is part of the player and the player can see an other person. 
Does the player mean doing something when the noun is a selfish thing: it is very unlikely.[/code]

Next, the "fix." It's ugly and clunky, but it preserves the sometimes transient nature of The Player. In other words, it changes the printed name of the body part in question whenever it is called.

[code]Rule for printing the name of a body part when the player encloses the noun:
	Let N be indexed text;
	Let N be the printed name of the noun;
	replace the regular expression ".*[apostrophe]s " in N with "your "; 
	say "[N]".

Manny is a man in the Hall of Testing. The player is Manny. Understand "me" as Manny. 
Jane is a woman in the Hall of Testing. "Jane is here. She's, most emphatically, not you."
The hat is a thing. It is in the Hall of Testing.
Test me with "look at Jane's face/look at your face/look at pimple"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=868&start=0#p4531
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Newbie] Parts and description thereof
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-11-27 23:28:47

While I was typing a response to your post, it looks like you figured something out on your own.  In case it may be helpful, here's what I was going to suggest:

[code][First method--add the following to the code you posted originally]
The printed name of a face is usually "face".
The printed name of a pimple is usually "pimple".

After reading a command:
	let typed-in be indexed text;
	let typed-in be the player's command;
	replace the regular expression "my" in typed-in with "manny's";
	change the text of the player's command to typed-in.

Before printing the name of a body part that is incorporated by a person (called the owner):
	if the owner is the player:
		say "your ";
	otherwise:
		say "[owner]'s ".
[/code]

Since your second post indicates you may be familiar with the frustrating issues associated with "your former self," I'll skip what I was going to write about that.  Furthermore, if you're at a point where you can come up with that text substitution rule on your own then you probably don't need the preface to the second method I was going to write so I'll just post the code:

[code][Second method--in place of all the code you originally posted]
Embodiement relates one person (called the bodifier) to various things.  The verb to embody (he embodies, they embody, he embodied, it is embodied, he is embodying) implies the embodiement relation.

A body part is a kind of thing.
A face is a kind of body part. A face is part of every person.  The printed name of a face is usually "face".
A pimple is a kind of body part. A pimple is part of every man.  The printed name of a pimple is usually "pimple".

Definition: a person is other if it is not the player.
Definition: a body part is selfish if the player embodies it.

Does the player mean doing something to a selfish body part in the presence of an other person: it is unlikely.

The Hall of Testing is a room. "This place is curiously empty."
Manny is a man in the Hall of Testing. The player is Manny.
Jane is a woman in the Hall of Testing. "Jane is here. She's, most emphatically, not you."

After reading a command:
	let typed-in be indexed text;
	let typed-in be the player's command;
	replace the regular expression "my" in typed-in with "manny's";
	change the text of the player's command to typed-in.

Before printing the name of a body part that is incorporated by a person (called the owner):
	if the owner is the player:
		say "your ";
	otherwise:
		say "[owner]'s ".

[Assuming the game doesn't have a homicidal maniac who carries the severed noses of his victims in his pocket:]

When play begins:
	repeat with person-setup running through people:
		repeat with part-setup running through body parts enclosed by person-setup:
			now person-setup embodies part-setup.[/code]

Body parts, and in general any things/kinds of things that rely heavily on incorporation, are very awkward to deal with using Inform.  I write a lot of code like this myself, so if you have any other questions please don't hesitate to ask.





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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=868&start=0#p4532
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Newbie] Parts and description thereof
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2009-11-27 23:42:37

I love this!

The concept of relations is one I've just begun to dip my to into. Not too surprisingly (given my programmer inclinations) I want to abstract everything down to generalised situations, so I suspect relations would work like a charm. Must... learn... goddammit!

I was kinda proud of the solution I cobbled together, but your second solution is just plain elegant. I have to ask one thing, though, about one section.

[code]After reading a command:
   let typed-in be indexed text;
   let typed-in be the player's command;
   replace the regular expression "my" in typed-in with "manny's";
   change the text of the player's command to typed-in.[/code]

It seems this would iterate regardless of what was written, and would mean hard-coding you to a particular player name. What am I missing?

As an aside: how heavy is regex on the virtual machine anyways? I was crashing on a regular basis while trying to tame the indexed text.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=868&start=0#p4533
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Newbie] Parts and description thereof
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-11-28 00:28:02

[quote="Eleas"]Not too surprisingly (given my programmer inclinations) I want to abstract everything down to generalised situations...[/quote]
I feel your pain.  I'm no programmer, but due to the way my mind seems to work in general I'm the same way.  However, if you approach every particular coding problem in Inform with a view to generalizing it to all situations, I think you'll learn the ins-and-outs of the program much faster; so while it may be frustrating at first, eventually you'll advance your knowledge very effectively compared to someone who writes highly specialized rules for one unique situation, then moves on to the next unique situation, etc.

[quote="Eleas"]It seems this would iterate regardless of what was written, and would mean hard-coding you to a particular player name. What am I missing?[/quote]
You're not missing anything; what you said is correct.  If you're making a game where the player will experience the world through the eyes of several characters, you could just add on lines to the rule:

[code]After reading a command:
	let typed-in be indexed text;
	let typed-in be the player's command;
	if the player is Manny:
		replace the regular expression "my" in typed-in with "manny's";
	if the player is Jane:
		replace the regular expression "my" in typed-in with "jane's";
	change the text of the player's command to typed-in.[/code]
If you're making some sort of game focused on astral projection, "Quantum Leap," or something like that where the player will constantly be jumping through dozens of bodies, you could generalize this to:

[code]The printed name of Manny is "Manny".
The printed name of Jane is "Jane".

After reading a command:
	let typed-in be indexed text;
	let typed-in be the player's command;
	let currentname be indexed text;
	let currentname be the printed name of the player;
	replace the regular expression "my" in typed-in with "[currentname][apostrophe]s";
	change the text of the player's command to typed-in.[/code]
Although not related to your question, this rule allows you to do other interesting things.  For example, say we write "A thing called Manny's suitcase is in the Hall of Testing."  If the player is Manny, I think it would be perfectly natural for them to type "x my suitcase" or "get my suitcase".  This rule facilitates that kind of easy interaction.

[quote="Eleas"]As an aside: how heavy is regex on the virtual machine anyways? I was crashing on a regular basis while trying to tame the indexed text.[/quote]
I'm not sure what you mean.  What kind of trouble exactly did you have?


(edit) p.s.  In the "Second Method" I posted above, the line "Before printing the name of a body part that is incorporated by a person (called the owner):" should actually read "Before printing the name of a body part that is embodied by a person (called the owner):" for two reasons:
a) To generally take advantage of the embodiement relation, and
b) One of the main points of using a relation here is to easily deal with further sub-incorporation, in cases where we want to add something like "Some eyes are part of every face."




-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=868&start=0#p4534
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Newbie] Parts and description thereof
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2009-11-28 01:25:42

[quote="Endosphere"]I feel your pain.  I'm no programmer, but due to the way my mind seems to work in general I'm the same way.  However, if you approach every particular coding problem in Inform with a view to generalizing it to all situations, I think you'll learn the ins-and-outs of the program much faster; so while it may be frustrating at first, eventually you'll advance your knowledge very effectively compared to someone who writes highly specialized rules for one unique situation, then moves on to the next unique situation, etc.[/quote]

I will admit that I've made progress beyond my expectations during the short while I've worked with it. Also, what you say is absolutely true: I've lost count of the reams and reams of code that eventually collapsed under sheer feature bloat. Generalising these thing has become less of a cute trick and more of a survival strategy, these days. *sigh*

[quote]You're not missing anything; what you said is correct.  If you're making a game where the player will experience the world through the eyes of several characters, you could just add on lines to the rule:

<snip>

If you're making some sort of game focused on astral projection, "Quantum Leap," or something like that where the player will constantly be jumping through dozens of bodies, you could generalize this to:

<snip>

Although not related to your question, this rule allows you to do other interesting things.  For example, say we write "A thing called Manny's suitcase is in the Hall of Testing."  If the player is Manny, I think it would be perfectly natural for them to type "x my suitcase" or "get my suitcase".  This rule facilitates that kind of easy interaction.[/quote]

Very slick. I like it. Initially I was against it because I wanted to define all the characters by name in one place only. Biases, I suppose, and I'd lack the nifty effects you described.

[quote][quote="Eleas"]As an aside: how heavy is regex on the virtual machine anyways? I was crashing on a regular basis while trying to tame the indexed text.[/quote]
I'm not sure what you mean.  What kind of trouble exactly did you have?[/quote]

Well, I tried, for instance, to echo "[name of object]", and the virtual machine died. Then again, I suspect such use was highly... irregular... in the first place.

Anyway, I noted another bug cropping up in the example. The command works perfectly until such time as we try to refer to the other person by their assumed pronoun. Some extra fiddling and the inclusion of the [b]Pronouns[/b] extension by Ron Newcomb helped me deal with it, but it now still requires post-processing, plus that it looks overly elaborate. I'll see what I can do to make it a bit more elegant.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=868&start=0#p4535
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Newbie] Parts and description thereof
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-11-28 01:59:02

[quote="Eleas"]The command works perfectly until such time as we try to refer to the other person by their assumed pronoun.[/quote]
I honestly don't know much about pronoun-usage in Inform; perhaps someone else can address that.  I never use pronouns when playing a game, and since all my Inform-writing is designed only to entertain myself I (perhaps unwisely) don't take pronouns into consideration when writing code.

[quote="Eleas"]Well, I tried, for instance, to echo "[name of object]", and the virtual machine died.[/quote]
If that's exactly what you wrote, "[name of object]" doesn't have a valid referent as far as I know.  You could however have "[printed name of the noun]" or "[printed plural name of the item described]" or just "[noun]", for example.  Also as far as I know you can't use text tokens to compile indexed text, since Inform (rightly) wants to be very particular about indexed text.  For example, if you wrote "Manny is a man," you wouldn't be able to write "Let "[man]" be indexed text," since there could be men other than Manny and Inform would have no way to decide what to fill in for "[man]."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=867&start=0#p4536
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Referring to object from its description
User: chinkeeyong / DateTime: 2009-11-28 02:04:09

I meant the latter, and yes, I am defining the tables correctly. I'll be sure to use your method; thanks for your help!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=847&start=0#p4537
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: When are results announced?
User: Retro / DateTime: 2009-11-29 15:36:40

[quote="Aquillion"]Trap Cave having the lowest vote total is hardly a surprise, given that it was a Windows game.[/quote]

First of all, Trap Cave is not a "Windows game". It's a text adventure for the Node-X interpreter which runs on Windows and Linux. And hopefully it will also run on MacOS and handheld systems in the future once proper cross-compiling tools are released and I can finally compile my terp's code for these systems too.

Second, the low amount of votes for Trap Cave had other reasons. One major reason was that the english version was only partially translated from german to english. Another major reason - which I claim - is that this community is hostile against CYOA and programmers like me who want to bring in new systems which may pose a competition to Inform, Glulx and the like.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=869&start=0#p4538
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Hacky Custom Tag Woes
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-11-29 16:37:32

Update:

Okay, I figured it out by myself.  I don't know why I'm so reluctant to step through code in TADS, but I should probably do it more often.  The issue is the line:

[code]start = match[1] + match[2];[/code]

Which sets the point at which the next iteration searches for the next tag.  When the string that's substituted is shorter than the original string, the next iteration starts off too far ahead, which in the case of '<.k cat>, <.k mouse>' means it starts in the middle of the second tag and can't recognise it.

Although I'm sure it's inefficient, I'm going to comment out this line of code altogether.  Subtracting numbers from it just sounds like a recipe for array out of bounds exceptions...

-------------------------------------Original Problem-------------------------------------------------

So my WIP is using special formatting for certain words - formatting that is initially set based on the interpreter's capabilities and which the user can then also change.  I have a little function which takes a string and adds html formatting to it as necessary, or returns the string in all caps, or just returns the string unchanged.

Because I wanted to make using this function extra easy, I decided to create my own special tag.  After a cursory glance through the docs and library, I basically just ripped off the conversationManager outputFilter like so:

[code]keywordManager: OutputFilter
    filterText(ostr, txt)
    {
        local start;
        
        /* scan for our keyword tags */
        for (start = 1 ; ; )
        {
            local match;
            local tag;
            local arg;
            
            /* scan for the next tag */
            match = rexSearch(tagPat, txt, start);

            /* if we didn't find it, we're done */
            if (match == nil)
                break;

            /* get the argument (the third group from the match) */
            arg = rexGroup(3);
            if (arg != nil)
                arg = arg[3];

            /* pick out the tag */
            tag = rexGroup(1)[3].toLower();

            /* check which tag we have */
            if(tag=='k')
            {
                //replace it with k function string
                txt = rexReplace(tagPat, txt, k(arg), 0);
            }

            /* continue the search after this match */
            start = match[1] + match[2];
        }

        return txt;
    }
    tagPat = static new RexPattern(
        '<nocase><langle><dot>'
        + '(k'
        + ')'
        + '(<space>+(<^rangle>+))?'
        + '<rangle>')
;[/code]
In the showIntro method I add this outputFilter with the following line:

[code]mainOutputStream.addOutputFilter(keywordManager);[/code]
The idea is that this allows me to output strings like so:

[code]"Some text to be output, this <.k word> is highlighted.
[/code]
I was under the impressions that all this was working fine, but apparently there's a certain condition in which it goes peculiar.  If the 'k' function returns a string that [i]doesn't[/i] contain HTML tags, and there are two of these tags in a row with no letters between them, like so:

[code]"Here is a list of a <.k cat>, <.k dog> and <.k mouse>."[/code]
What is actually output is something like this:

[quote]Here is a list of a CAT, MOUSE and .[/quote]
And the debug view in the workbench complains of 'Error: Unknown tag' for the '<.k mouse>' tag.

So... I've managed to blag it this far, but I think I need help now.  If I hard code the 'k' function to return '<i>hello</i>, everything works, if I hard code it to just 'hello' then I get the error for a list as above.  I'm wondering if there's something wrong with my regular expression in tagPat?  I just copied the one being used in the conversationManager, so maybe I need to tweak it a little more?  Alternatively, could the problem be a conflict with an existing outputFilter?

I could just switch to using my k function directly, but at this late juncture I'm not keen to do such a massive find/replace job on my code...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=870&start=0#p4539
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Repeating scene
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-11-29 17:16:52

This doesn't seem to be working:
[quote]
Horse Taming is a scene. Horse Taming begins when horsesightings has been 3 for 10 turns [color=#FF0000]or when the black horse is in limbo[/color]. Horse taming ends when the black horse is tamed.[/quote]

Basically, Horse Taming is a scene in which a black horse appears. You are given 4 turns to tame the horse, and if you don't, it runs away (goes in limbo). But then comes back later. 

Granted, my code for placing the horse back in limbo after it runs away may be at fault, but I just want to make sure that "or" condition above for starting a scene is legal.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=847&start=0#p4540
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: When are results announced?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-11-29 17:28:06

[quote="EK_Dev"]Another major reason - which I claim - is that this community is hostile against CYOA and programmers like me who want to bring in new systems which may pose a competition to Inform, Glulx and the like.[/quote]You may be right about CYOA, EK_Dev.  You may even be right about Node-X.  But until you actually make a game that truly demonstrates the potential of the system, no-one is going to pay any attention.

I can't read German, so I haven't played Trap Cave.  But reading the reviews by people who can read German ([url=http://gamingphilosopher.blogspot.com/2009/10/if-competition-trap-cave.html]prime example[/url]), I don't see people complaining that its not Glulx.  I see people complaining that it's extremely generic and shallow, and that at certain points it doesn't give them options that they felt were logically available to them.  Even if these comments are motivated by hostility towards the future, they also sound like complaints that are entirely valid.

You had an entire year after entering Project Delta to create a game that could show off the capabilities of Node-X and present a strong argument for how you feel text games should progress.  Instead you gave us a game that does something we've seen a hundred times before, sometimes a hundred times better.  Exactly which part of Trap Cave - a story-light cave crawl with instant death - is supposed to be recognised as a paradigm shift in text gaming?  If anything, it shows that you're not even aware of [i]previous[/i] shifts in the medium, something that will hardly make people sit up and listen.

Certainly there are a few people in the IF community who are resistant to new formats, or new modes of interaction (but probably a lot less than in other forms of game).  When you've actually created an [i]interesting game[/i] that they disregard solely for its novelty, rather than its flaws, [i]then[/i] you get to complain about them.  But only then.

I've mentioned before that I like you, Emilian, but after a year of you plugging Node-X at every conceivable opportunity, I'm not looking forward to another year of you complaining that you're being persecuted.  You're not.  People didn't like Trap Cave because it's flawed and old fashioned.  Node-X - and [i]you[/i] - can do a lot better.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=870&start=0#p4541
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Repeating scene
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-11-29 20:03:23

The scene-starting condition should be okay as stated, if the conditions you specified are verifiable.  For example, this works fine:

[code]The testarea is a room.

A marble is in the testarea.

A chair is in the testarea.  The chair is an enterable supporter.

Progress is a scene.  Progress begins when the marble is carried by the player or the chair is the holder of the player.

When Progress begins:
	say "Hooray for progress!".[/code]

Just out of curiousity, are you trying to use the word "limbo" as a direct synonym for "off-stage"?  If so, that won't work.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=871&start=0#p4542
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: How Temporary are Temporary Variables?
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-11-30 03:08:40

While using Inform 7, I am often a bit frustrated by temporary variables that don't seem to be very temporary.  I'm wondering if I am not properly comprehending the nature of these variables (and if not, whether someone could explain the matter) or if this is a bug in the program.

I'll apologize in advance for posting tediously long sections of code without any context, but I've only ever noticed the trouble in complex rules (and posting the full context would probably be beyond the abilities of the forum to record).  Fortunately I'm fairly certain it won't be necessary for anyone to understand what the following code does or what the many cryptic variables utilized mean in order to see the phenomenon to which I'm referring.

The following bits of code are from parts of a highly-randomized combat system I'm developing.  I have replaced the standard "attacking" action with a new action called "attacking it with" to deal with hand-to-hand combat between characters.  I have a second action, "shooting it with," to handle combat with ranged weapons.

First therefore I define some action variables for the "attacking it with" action.  Although it's not relevant to the issue at the heart of my post, the following code determines whether an attack is successful, and if successful what damage is done to the target:

[code]The attacking it with action has a number called hit-or-miss.  The attacking it with action has a number called damage-inflicted.

Destructioncheck is a number that varies.  Destructioncheck is usually 0.

Setting action variables for an actor attacking something (called the target) with something (called the means) (this is the pre-attacking-variables rule):
	now destructioncheck is 0;
	if the target is notbroke:
		change destructioncheck to 1;
	if the target is evasive:
		let vaxie be a random number from 1 to 100;
		if the means is a weapon:
			let rivuto be melee-hit-chance of the actor plus accuracy-bonus of the means minus evasion-rating of the target;
			if rivuto >= 100:
				change rivuto to 99;
			if vaxie is less than rivuto or vaxie is rivuto:
				change hit-or-miss to 2;
			otherwise:
				change hit-or-miss to 1;
		otherwise:
			let rivuto be melee-hit-chance of the actor minus evasion-rating of the target;
			if rivuto >= 100:
				change rivuto to 99;
			if vaxie is less than rivuto or vaxie is rivuto:
				change hit-or-miss to 2;
			otherwise:
				change hit-or-miss to 1;
	if the target is not evasive:
		if a random chance of 95 in 100 succeeds:
			change hit-or-miss to 2;
		otherwise:
			change hit-or-miss to 1;
	if the target provides currenthp:
		let elveto be the object-damage of the means;
		let critchance be luck of the actor;
		if the means is a weapon:
			change elveto to elveto minus damage-reduction of the target;
			let fenril be (elveto multiplied by ten) multiplied by damage-resistance of the target;
			change fenril to (elveto multiplied by 1000) minus fenril;
			change the damage-inflicted to a random number between (fenril divided by 2000) and (fenril divided by 1000);
			increase the damage-inflicted by the melee-damage of the actor;
			if the accuracy-bonus of the means is greater than 0:
				change critchance to (accuracy-bonus of the means divided by 3) plus critchance;
		if the means is not a weapon:
			change elveto to elveto minus damage-reduction of the target;
			let fenril be (elveto multiplied by ten) multiplied by damage-resistance of the target;
			change fenril to (elveto multiplied by 1000) minus fenril;
			change the damage-inflicted to a random number between (fenril divided by 2000) and (fenril divided by 1000);
			increase the damage-inflicted by the melee-damage of the actor;
		let gawil be a random number from 1 to 100;
		if a random chance of critchance in 100 succeeds:
			if hit-or-miss is 2:
				say "Critical hit!";
			if gawil is greater than 0 and gawil is less than 46:
				change the damage-inflicted to (damage-inflicted multiplied by 15) divided by 10;
			if gawil is greater than 45 and gawil is less than 86:
				change the damage-inflicted to damage-inflicted multiplied by 3;
			if gawil is greater than 85:
				change the damage-inflicted to (damage-inflicted multiplied by 45) divided by 10.[/code]

When combined with all the other rules in the game, everything works great.  I then proceed to define the "shooting it with action," and define action variables for it to determine, among other things, if the attack was successful and how much damage is done by a successful attack:

[code]The shooting it with action has a number called hit-or-miss.  The shooting it with action has a number called total-hits.  The shooting it with action has a number called damage-inflicted.

Setting action variables for an actor shooting something (called the target) with something (called the means) (this is the pre-shooting-variables rule):
	now destructioncheck is 0;
	if the target is notbroke:
		change destructioncheck to 1;
	let vaxie be a random number from 1 to 100;
	if the target is evasive:
		if the means is a weapon:
			change hit-or-miss to 1;
			let rivuto be ranged-hit-chance of the actor plus accuracy-bonus of the means minus evasion-rating of the target;
			if rivuto >= 96:
				change rivuto to 95;
			if the means is a mechstylegun:
				if the rateoffire of the means is less than the currentammo of a random ammaclip enclosed by the means or the rateoffire of the means is the currentammo of a random ammaclip enclosed by the means:
					repeat with multishot running from 1 to rateoffire of the means:
						change vaxie to a random number from 1 to 100;
						if vaxie is less than rivuto or vaxie is rivuto:
							now hit-or-miss is 2;
							increase total-hits by 1;
				otherwise if the rateoffire of the means is greater than the currentammo of a random ammaclip enclosed by the means:
					repeat with multishot running from 1 to currentammo of a random ammaclip enclosed by the means:
						change vaxie to a random number from 1 to 100;
						if vaxie is less than rivuto or vaxie is rivuto:
							now hit-or-miss is 2;
							increase total-hits by 1;
			if the means is a manualgun:
				if the rateoffire of the means is less than the currentammo of a random ammochamber enclosed by the means or the rateoffire of the means is the currentammo of a random ammochamber enclosed by the means:
					repeat with multishot running from 1 to rateoffire of the means:
						change vaxie to a random number from 1 to 100;
						if vaxie is less than rivuto or vaxie is rivuto:
							now hit-or-miss is 2;
							increase total-hits by 1;
				otherwise if the rateoffire of the means is greater than the currentammo of a random ammochamber enclosed by the means:
					repeat with multishot running from 1 to currentammo of a random ammochamber enclosed by the means:
						change vaxie to a random number from 1 to 100;
						if vaxie is less than rivuto or vaxie is rivuto:
							now hit-or-miss is 2;
							increase total-hits by 1;
		otherwise if the means is not a weapon:
			let rivuto be ranged-hit-chance of the actor minus evasion-rating of the target;
			if rivuto >= 91:
				change rivuto to 90;
			if vaxie is less than rivuto or vaxie is rivuto:
				change hit-or-miss to 2;
			otherwise:
				change hit-or-miss to 1;
	if the target is not evasive:
		if the means is a weapon:
			change hit-or-miss to 1;
			let rivuto be ranged-hit-chance of the actor plus accuracy-bonus of the means;
			change rivuto to rivuto plus rivuto;
			if rivuto >= 96:
				change rivuto to 95;
			if the means is a mechstylegun:
				if the rateoffire of the means is less than the currentammo of a random ammaclip enclosed by the means or the rateoffire of the means is the currentammo of a random ammaclip enclosed by the means:
					repeat with multishot running from 1 to rateoffire of the means:
						change vaxie to a random number from 1 to 100;
						if vaxie is less than rivuto or vaxie is rivuto:
							now hit-or-miss is 2;
							increase total-hits by 1;
				otherwise if the rateoffire of the means is greater than the currentammo of a random ammaclip enclosed by the means:
					repeat with multishot running from 1 to currentammo of a random ammaclip enclosed by the means:
						change vaxie to a random number from 1 to 100;
						if vaxie is less than rivuto or vaxie is rivuto:
							now hit-or-miss is 2;
							increase total-hits by 1;
			if the means is a manualgun:
				if the rateoffire of the means is less than the currentammo of a random ammochamber enclosed by the means or the rateoffire of the means is the currentammo of a random ammochamber enclosed by the means:
					repeat with multishot running from 1 to rateoffire of the means:
						change vaxie to a random number from 1 to 100;
						if vaxie is less than rivuto or vaxie is rivuto:
							now hit-or-miss is 2;
							increase total-hits by 1;
				otherwise if the rateoffire of the means is greater than the currentammo of a random ammochamber enclosed by the means:
					repeat with multishot running from 1 to currentammo of a random ammochamber enclosed by the means:
						change vaxie to a random number from 1 to 100;
						if vaxie is less than rivuto or vaxie is rivuto:
							now hit-or-miss is 2;
							increase total-hits by 1;
		otherwise if the means is not a weapon:
			let rivuto be ranged-hit-chance of the actor plus ranged-hit-chance of the actor;
			if rivuto >= 96:
				change rivuto to 95;
			if vaxie is less than rivuto or vaxie is rivuto:
				change hit-or-miss to 2;
			otherwise:
				change hit-or-miss to 1;
	if the target provides currenthp:
		let elveto be the object-damage of the means;
		let critchance be the luck of the actor;
		if the means is a weapon:
			change elveto to elveto minus damage-reduction of the target;
			let fenril be (elveto multiplied by ten) multiplied by damage-resistance of the target;
			change fenril to (elveto multiplied by 1000) minus fenril;
			if total-hits is at least 1:
				change damage-inflicted to 0;
				repeat with burstcheck running from 1 to total-hits:
					increase the damage-inflicted by a random number between (fenril divided by 2000) and (fenril divided by 1000);
			if damage-inflicted is less than 1:
				change damage-inflicted to 1;
			if the accuracy-bonus of the means is greater than 0:
				change critchance to (accuracy-bonus of the means divided by 3) plus critchance;
		if the means is not a weapon:
			change elveto to elveto minus damage-reduction of the target;
			let fenril be (elveto multiplied by ten) multiplied by damage-resistance of the target;
			change fenril to (elveto multiplied by 1000) minus fenril;
			change the damage-inflicted to a random number between (fenril divided by 2000) and (fenril divided by 1000);
			if damage-inflicted is less than 1:
				change damage-inflicted to 1;
		let gawil be a random number from 1 to 100;
		if a random chance of critchance in 100 succeeds:
			if hit-or-miss is 2:
				say "Critical hit!";
			if gawil is greater than 0 and gawil is less than 46:
				change the damage-inflicted to (damage-inflicted multiplied by 15) divided by 10;
			if gawil is greater than 45 and gawil is less than 86:
				change the damage-inflicted to damage-inflicted multiplied by 3;
			if gawil is greater than 85:
				change the damage-inflicted to (damage-inflicted multiplied by 45) divided by 10.
[/code]

When combined with all the other "shooting it with" rules, everything compiles fine.  However in the course of the test game when a) the "defining action variables for an actor shooting it with" rule is present at the same time as the "defining action variables for an actor attacking it with" rule, and b) I have one character shoot another character, I always see some variaton of the following jibba-jabba:

[quote="Inform 7"]>shoot dean with rifle
Variable unavailable: 20103/0

[** Programming error: tried to read from -->513 in the array "MStack", which has entries 0 up to 159 **]

[** Programming error: tried to read from -->512 in the array "MStack", which has entries 0 up to 159 **]
Variable unavailable: 20103/0

[** Programming error: tried to read from -->1191247 in the array "MStack", which has entries 0 up to 159 **]

[** Programming error: tried to read from -->1191246 in the array "MStack", which has entries 0 up to 159 **]
Variable unavailable: 20103/1
Variable unavailable: 20103/1
Variable unavailable: 20103/1
Variable unavailable: 20103/1
Variable unavailable: 20103/1
You fire at Dean, scoring Variable unavailable: 20103/1
Variable unavailable: 20103/1
Variable unavailable: 20103/1
Variable unavailable: 20103/1
Variable unavailable: 20103/1
Variable unavailable: 20103/1
Variable unavailable: 20103/1
a good, solid hit.[/quote]

Whenever situations like this occur, changing the relevant code simply by changing the names of what should be temporary variables solves the problem.  For example, when I change the "shooting it with" rules as follows:

[code][Note: the only changes made were prefacing some variable names with an "SW," and enclosing other variable names with a capital "A"]

The shooting it with action has a number called SWhit-or-miss.  The shooting it with action has a number called total-hits.  The shooting it with action has a number called SWdamage-inflicted.

Setting action variables for an actor shooting something (called the target) with something (called the means) (this is the pre-shooting-variables rule):
	now destructioncheck is 0;
	if the target is notbroke:
		change destructioncheck to 1;
	let AvaxieA be a random number from 1 to 100;
	if the target is evasive:
		if the means is a weapon:
			change SWhit-or-miss to 1;
			let ArivutoA be ranged-hit-chance of the actor plus accuracy-bonus of the means minus evasion-rating of the target;
			if ArivutoA >= 96:
				change ArivutoA to 95;
			if the means is a mechstylegun:
				if the rateoffire of the means is less than the currentammo of a random ammaclip enclosed by the means or the rateoffire of the means is the currentammo of a random ammaclip enclosed by the means:
					repeat with multishot running from 1 to rateoffire of the means:
						change AvaxieA to a random number from 1 to 100;
						if AvaxieA is less than ArivutoA or AvaxieA is ArivutoA:
							now SWhit-or-miss is 2;
							increase total-hits by 1;
				otherwise if the rateoffire of the means is greater than the currentammo of a random ammaclip enclosed by the means:
					repeat with multishot running from 1 to currentammo of a random ammaclip enclosed by the means:
						change AvaxieA to a random number from 1 to 100;
						if AvaxieA is less than ArivutoA or AvaxieA is ArivutoA:
							now SWhit-or-miss is 2;
							increase total-hits by 1;
			if the means is a manualgun:
				if the rateoffire of the means is less than the currentammo of a random ammochamber enclosed by the means or the rateoffire of the means is the currentammo of a random ammochamber enclosed by the means:
					repeat with multishot running from 1 to rateoffire of the means:
						change AvaxieA to a random number from 1 to 100;
						if AvaxieA is less than ArivutoA or AvaxieA is ArivutoA:
							now SWhit-or-miss is 2;
							increase total-hits by 1;
				otherwise if the rateoffire of the means is greater than the currentammo of a random ammochamber enclosed by the means:
					repeat with multishot running from 1 to currentammo of a random ammochamber enclosed by the means:
						change AvaxieA to a random number from 1 to 100;
						if AvaxieA is less than ArivutoA or AvaxieA is ArivutoA:
							now SWhit-or-miss is 2;
							increase total-hits by 1;
		otherwise if the means is not a weapon:
			let ArivutoA be ranged-hit-chance of the actor minus evasion-rating of the target;
			if ArivutoA >= 91:
				change ArivutoA to 90;
			if AvaxieA is less than ArivutoA or AvaxieA is ArivutoA:
				change SWhit-or-miss to 2;
			otherwise:
				change SWhit-or-miss to 1;
	if the target is not evasive:
		if the means is a weapon:
			change SWhit-or-miss to 1;
			let ArivutoA be ranged-hit-chance of the actor plus accuracy-bonus of the means;
			change ArivutoA to ArivutoA plus ArivutoA;
			if ArivutoA >= 96:
				change ArivutoA to 95;
			if the means is a mechstylegun:
				if the rateoffire of the means is less than the currentammo of a random ammaclip enclosed by the means or the rateoffire of the means is the currentammo of a random ammaclip enclosed by the means:
					repeat with multishot running from 1 to rateoffire of the means:
						change AvaxieA to a random number from 1 to 100;
						if AvaxieA is less than ArivutoA or AvaxieA is ArivutoA:
							now SWhit-or-miss is 2;
							increase total-hits by 1;
				otherwise if the rateoffire of the means is greater than the currentammo of a random ammaclip enclosed by the means:
					repeat with multishot running from 1 to currentammo of a random ammaclip enclosed by the means:
						change AvaxieA to a random number from 1 to 100;
						if AvaxieA is less than ArivutoA or AvaxieA is ArivutoA:
							now SWhit-or-miss is 2;
							increase total-hits by 1;
			if the means is a manualgun:
				if the rateoffire of the means is less than the currentammo of a random ammochamber enclosed by the means or the rateoffire of the means is the currentammo of a random ammochamber enclosed by the means:
					repeat with multishot running from 1 to rateoffire of the means:
						change AvaxieA to a random number from 1 to 100;
						if AvaxieA is less than ArivutoA or AvaxieA is ArivutoA:
							now SWhit-or-miss is 2;
							increase total-hits by 1;
				otherwise if the rateoffire of the means is greater than the currentammo of a random ammochamber enclosed by the means:
					repeat with multishot running from 1 to currentammo of a random ammochamber enclosed by the means:
						change AvaxieA to a random number from 1 to 100;
						if AvaxieA is less than ArivutoA or AvaxieA is ArivutoA:
							now SWhit-or-miss is 2;
							increase total-hits by 1;
		otherwise if the means is not a weapon:
			let ArivutoA be ranged-hit-chance of the actor plus ranged-hit-chance of the actor;
			if ArivutoA >= 96:
				change ArivutoA to 95;
			if AvaxieA is less than ArivutoA or AvaxieA is ArivutoA:
				change SWhit-or-miss to 2;
			otherwise:
				change SWhit-or-miss to 1;
	if the target provides currenthp:
		let AelvetoA be the object-damage of the means;
		let AcritchanceA be the luck of the actor;
		if the means is a weapon:
			change AelvetoA to AelvetoA minus damage-reduction of the target;
			let AfenrilA be (AelvetoA multiplied by ten) multiplied by damage-resistance of the target;
			change AfenrilA to (AelvetoA multiplied by 1000) minus AfenrilA;
			if total-hits is at least 1:
				change SWdamage-inflicted to 0;
				repeat with burstcheck running from 1 to total-hits:
					increase the SWdamage-inflicted by a random number between (AfenrilA divided by 2000) and (AfenrilA divided by 1000);
			if SWdamage-inflicted is less than 1:
				change SWdamage-inflicted to 1;
			if the accuracy-bonus of the means is greater than 0:
				change AcritchanceA to (accuracy-bonus of the means divided by 3) plus AcritchanceA;
		if the means is not a weapon:
			change AelvetoA to AelvetoA minus damage-reduction of the target;
			let AfenrilA be (AelvetoA multiplied by ten) multiplied by damage-resistance of the target;
			change AfenrilA to (AelvetoA multiplied by 1000) minus AfenrilA;
			change the SWdamage-inflicted to a random number between (AfenrilA divided by 2000) and (AfenrilA divided by 1000);
			if SWdamage-inflicted is less than 1:
				change SWdamage-inflicted to 1;
		let AgawilA be a random number from 1 to 100;
		if a random chance of AcritchanceA in 100 succeeds:
			if SWhit-or-miss is 2:
				say "Critical hit!";
			if AgawilA is greater than 0 and AgawilA is less than 46:
				change the SWdamage-inflicted to (SWdamage-inflicted multiplied by 15) divided by 10;
			if AgawilA is greater than 45 and AgawilA is less than 86:
				change the SWdamage-inflicted to SWdamage-inflicted multiplied by 3;
			if AgawilA is greater than 85:
				change the SWdamage-inflicted to (SWdamage-inflicted multiplied by 45) divided by 10.[/code]

My code works fine, so I'm not looking for any pointers on the particulars (unless of course someone cares to offer such).  My questions are simply:

a) am I failing to understanding these variables properly when I understand them as "temporary variables," as in

[quote="Writing with Inform, Chapter 11.15"]Temporary variables made by "let" are only temporarily in existence while a phrase is being carried out.[/quote]
or,

b) is this some kind of bug, or

c) none of the above.

I realize this is a very long post for anyone to read through, so thank you in advance for any responses.




-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=871&start=0#p4543
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: How Temporary are Temporary Variables?
User: SJ_43 / DateTime: 2009-11-30 06:00:29

[quote="Endosphere"]When combined with all the other "shooting it with" rules, everything compiles fine.  However in the course of the test game when a) the "defining action variables for an actor shooting it with" rule is present at the same time as the "defining action variables for an actor attacking it with" rule, and b) I have one character shoot another character, I always see some variaton of the following jibba-jabba:[/quote]
As you've discovered, all action variable names must be unique:
[quote="Writing with Inform, Chapter 12.10"]Every action's variables must be named differently from those of all other actions, because there are some "before" rules (for instance) which take effect for many different actions, and which might need access to any of their variables. So action variables should be named in a way marking out to which action they belong. The best way to do this is to include the past participle of the action name - just as "camera photographed with" contains the past participle "photographed" of the action "photographing".[/quote]I guess they are talking about general action rules such as "Instead of loud behaviour" or "After doing something with the bomb in the presence of the guard dog". The variables can be accessed here as well, but you'd have to be careful only to refer to them inside clauses that check the specific action, or you'll get those "variable unavailable" errors.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=871&start=0#p4544
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: How Temporary are Temporary Variables?
User: SJ_43 / DateTime: 2009-11-30 07:13:30

[quote="Endosphere"]
a) am I failing to understanding these variables properly when I understand them as "temporary variables," as in

[quote="Writing with Inform, Chapter 11.15"]Temporary variables made by "let" are only temporarily in existence while a phrase is being carried out.[/quote][/quote]
Well, they are not the same thing exactly. Those created with "let" become "regular" temporary variables that only exist inside a certain routine, like "i" in the following:
[code][ CountToTen i;
	for (i=1: i<11: i++) print i;
];[/code]
But the action variables have to be available throughout the duration of an action and all of its rulebooks. Have a look at the chapter on the MStack Template in Appendix B to see how they're implemented.

I'm wondering though why the compiler doesn't give an error when you try to create several action variables with the same name?

Also, the following part sounds strange to me:
[quote="B/stackt - MStack Template §6"]Typechecking in the compiler should mean that it is impossible to produce either error message below: NI will only compile valid uses of MstVO ("M-stack variable offset") where the seek succeeds and the offset is within range.
[code][ MstVO id off pos;
	pos = Mstack_Seek_Frame(id);
	if (pos == 0) {
		print "Variable unavailable: ", id, "/", off, "^";
		rfalse;
	}
	if ((off<0) || (off >= MStack_Frame_Extent)) {
		print "Variable stack offset wrong: ", id, "/", off, " at ", pos, "^";
		rfalse;
	}
	return pos+off;
];[/code][/quote]
because that first error message is the one you get when you try to refer to an action variable that belongs to another action. So why does it say it's impossible to produce? Am I reading that wrong?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=870&start=0#p4545
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Repeating scene
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-11-30 07:32:16

Limbo is a container off stage. The horse goes into it after running away, but doesn't start out in it (so that the first condition will work).

I'm going to take your example and substitute a limbo container in, just to make sure. But yeah... looks like the problem might be somewhere else. Thanks Endosphere.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=870&start=0#p4546
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Repeating scene
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-11-30 09:30:15

Do you mean that the scene runs once but you can't get it to repeat? If so, you have to define the scene as a recurring scene. By default scenes will not run more than once unless they are declared recurring (see manual chapter 10.7).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=870&start=0#p4547
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Repeating scene
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-11-30 13:45:41

[code]Do you mean that the scene runs once but you can't get it to repeat? [/code]

Ah, yes, that is what I mean. Thanks for the advice Nitku.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=870&start=0#p4548
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Repeating scene
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-11-30 14:41:37

I can only assume that this is not valid?

[code]Horse Taming begins when Horse Taming ends.[/code]

I put in debugging statements so that I would know when Horse Taming began and ended. It ended alright, but did not restart. 

I used scene-ends for both conditions because the compiler told me that at least one of the conditions for a recurring scene had to be the end of a scene and because it didn't work with another kind of condition, either.

UPDATE:

This worked, and it's more what I wanted anyway:

[code]Horse Taming begins when Horse Taming has ended for 4 turns. [/code]

UPDATE AGAIN:

It only repeated once!! ERG!!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=848&start=0#p4549
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Games that do conversation well
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-11-30 14:51:41

I was very inspired by the conversation and the prose in general in Galatea.

As a random side note, I think I have a hard time switching from left brain to right; while I'm making my logic work correctly I'm not in the best shape for writing pretty prose, even though I'm capable of it at other times.

So I think I'll start following a process whereby I do one before the other. Creating the game with simple placeholders where the text would go, and then filling in better text when it's all working, is the obvious way. But I can also envision being inspired by the story first and writing it all down in paragraph form before starting on the game construction.

Does anyone ever do this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=870&start=0#p4550
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Repeating scene
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-11-30 15:25:20

I can see why it won't repeat more than once, I guess. It begins when it has ended for 4 turns, and that's that. When it has begun and ended again, it has ultimately ended for more than 4 turns, I guess, and never fires again.

What I need is a scene that will repeat over and over until the horse is "tamed", but will stop doing so after that. 

10.7 only describes 2 recurring scenes that follow each other continually, like Night and Day. I'm not sure if other sorts of repeating are allowed.

Currently I'm going to go ahead and try to alternate Horse Taming with an insignificant scene that might as well repeat. But a more concise implementation would be preferred.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=870&start=0#p4551
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Repeating scene
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-11-30 17:16:19

I'm not sure I understand what you need. Here you say:[quote="ShaeSays"]What I need is a scene that will repeat over and over until the horse is "tamed", but will stop doing so after that. [/quote]... but upthread you have:[quote="ShaeSays"]... Horse taming ends when the black horse is tamed.[/quote]It seems to me you've got two mutually exclusive options playing out here. Either you want a scene that continues until something happens, or a scene which plays out, ends, and then repeats until something happens. You can't repeat a scene until it has ended. Sorry if I just misunderstand you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=870&start=0#p4552
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Repeating scene
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-11-30 19:41:08

I was playing around with the general idea you proposed and wrote the following.  I'm not sure if it's exactly what you had in mind, but perhaps it will be helpful in shedding some light on the underlying issues.

[code]The Prarie is a room.  The description of the Prarie is "An endless vista of tall grass sways in a gentle breeze coming down from the hills on this fine summer day.".

The description of the player is "You're as fine a pioneer as ever lived.".

Some grass is in the Prarie.  The grass is scenery.  The description of the grass is "A soft blanket of verdant grass covers the surrounding prarie.".

Whistling is an action applying to nothing.  Understand "whistle" or "hum" as whistling.

Report whistling:
	say "As a lovely vision of Wilma Lee fills your mind, you decide to get back to work.  If only you can beat that darn Willison at the whistling championships, Wilma Lee will certainly see that you're a man who's going places in this world.".  

A horse is a male animal.  The description of horse is "[unless tamed]A mysterious stallion who seems to embody the free spirit of the prarie[otherwise]A friendly horse.  He looks a lot like Seabiscuit[end if].".  Understand "stallion" or "wild horse" or "wild stallion" as horse.  The printed name of a horse is "[if the horse is untamed]wild stallion[otherwise]horse[end if]."

Horse can be tamed or untamed.  Horse is untamed.

After examining the horse for the first time:
	say "For some reason you remember a discussion you once had with an old trapper you met up on the mountain one day.  He told you that while a broken horse may make a good pack-animal, a friendly horse will reliably stand by your side forever.  He added that making friends with a wild horse usually takes some persistence.".

Petting is an action applying to one thing and requiring light.  Understand "pet [something]" or "stroke [something]" as petting.

Check petting:
	unless the noun is the horse:
		say "That seems silly." instead.

Report petting the tamed horse:
	say "You give the stallion a friendly scratch behind his ear, which he seems to enjoy.".

Report petting the horse for the first time:
	say "You concentrate on projecting an aura of kindness, and after a moment the horse stands still and allows you to approach.  You lightly scratch the side of his neck, and then he backs away.".

Report petting the horse for the second time:
	say "The proud animal stands still for a moment and allows you gently stroke his mane.".

After petting the horse for the third time:
	now the horse is tamed;
	say "You playfully scratch the horse's side, and then he turns his head and sniffs your hair.  Apparently you've made a new friend.".

Instead of touching the horse:
	try petting the horse.

Limbo is an enterable container.  Horse is in limbo.

When play begins:
	say "You've come to the prarie to relax and practice your whistling--you've been working on a doozy of a tune in preparation for the upcoming regional whistling championships, but you're desperately aware you need to improve your technique if you're going to beat that rascal Bill Willison this year.".

Every turn:
	unless the player can see the horse:
		say "You fill the prarie with an ethereal melody as you whistle.";.

Horse Taming is a recurring scene.  Horse Taming begins when the holder of Horse has been limbo for four turns and Horse is untamed.

Horse Taming ends when the location of Horse has been the Prarie for four turns and Horse is untamed.

When Horse Taming begins:
	move Horse to the Prarie;
	if the player can see Horse:
		say "You feel a subtle vibration in the earth, and suddenly [unless the horse is tamed]a mysterious[otherwise]the wild[end if] stallion gallops into view.".

When Horse Taming ends:
	if the player can see Horse:
		say "The wild stallion gallops off toward the hills.";
	move Horse to limbo.[/code]

So the horse will keep running back and forth between limbo until he is tamed, after which he will stay in the prarie with the player.  The "whistling" stuff is just to give the player something to do while he's waiting around for the horse.




-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=871&start=0#p4553
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: How Temporary are Temporary Variables?
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-11-30 20:03:23

Thanks for the answers, SJ_43.  I definitely was not understanding the issue, but it makes sense now that you pointed out the need for action variables to be named uniquely.  I had briefly thought about the possiblity that some Instead rules related to combat actions (such as "Instead of attacking someone with a gun, try shooting the noun with the second noun") were causing the trouble because they grabbed the setting action variables rules for both actions at once, but when I commented out all those pre-emptive rules and there was no difference I set the idea aside without going further and realizing all the other very generic check rules that had nothing to do with the combat ruleset were also doing the same thing.

[quote="SJ_43"]...because that first error message is the one you get when you try to refer to an action variable that belongs to another action. So why does it say it's impossible to produce? Am I reading that wrong?[/quote]

I took a look at the document you mentioned.  Although I don't understand I6 code, the comments before each bit of code were pretty clear about what each section of code does.  I don't think you're reading anything wrongly, because the word "impossible" prefacing the bit of code you quoted is a pretty strong word, and I read the whole thing the same way you did.

Thanks again for your help on this issue.



-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=870&start=0#p4554
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Repeating scene
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-11-30 20:08:06

Skinny Mike,

You are correct in that I've contradicted myself. It comes from changing my mind repeatedly about how to implement the problem and thus how to end the scene.

I want the horse to gallop into view for the first time after a certain event. That works.

I want the horse to hang around, waiting to be tamed, for a few turns and then run away if player has failed to tame him.

I want him to come back after a bit if player has failed to tame him, because I'm not trying to punish the player forever for not immediately figuring out the puzzle.

So as long as horse isn't tamed, the cycle of horse coming and going should repeat. But after he's tamed, no more coming and going.

Endosphere: thanks for the code. I will play around with it and see how it works out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=870&start=10#p4555
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Repeating scene
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-11-30 20:24:13

Maybe you should give the horse-taming scene two endings: a successful ending and an unsuccessful ending. See Writing with Inform, section 10.8. Then you can have Horse Taming end unsuccessfully when the horse runs away and successfully when it's tamed, and only let it begin again when it ended unsuccessfully.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=848&start=10#p4556
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Games that do conversation well
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-12-01 03:54:34

[quote="ShaeSays"]So I think I'll start following a process whereby I do one before the other. Creating the game with simple placeholders where the text would go, and then filling in better text when it's all working, is the obvious way.[/quote]I do this when there's complex logic involved - for pretty much the same reason you said.  Although I find it is possible to get into the right frame of mind to do both when you're familiar enough with what you're doing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=872&start=0#p4557
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Help with disabling cardinal directions
User: Pe-ads / DateTime: 2009-12-01 06:08:51

I've just started with Inform (well, a few weeks ago, really) and have started trying to write a (simple) adventure. Basically, it's about 3 rooms, but I want to disable cardinal directions.

This is my code:

[b]A room can be cardinal or uncardinal. A room is usually uncardinal. A direction can be cardinal or normal. A direction is usually not normal. North, northeast, east, southeast, south, southwest, west and northwest are cardinal.
Before going in a cardinal direction when the location is uncardinal, say "Who knows what your bearings are. You certainly don't have a compass. Try something else."[/b]

The compiler likes the code and compiles it just great. Until you try to play.

When I type 'east' (there's an east connection to another room), it lets you go east.

I looked up the chapter on directions, and it didn't really help me. Everything appears to work great in their source-code, just not mine. Can somebody please help me?  [emote]:?[/emote] 

Thanks,

Pe-ads

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=872&start=0#p4558
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with disabling cardinal directions
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-12-01 07:30:56

Just remove the word "in" from the before rule and it should work fine. Also, you need the word "instead" at the end, or the action will just continue after printing the message.

[code]Before going cardinal direction when the location is uncardinal:
    say "Who knows what your bearings are. You certainly don't have a compass. Try something else." instead.[/code]
(I've solved this previously with a slightly different approach: <a class="postlink" href="http://nitku.net/if/escapade/source_12.html">http://nitku.net/if/escapade/source_12.html</a>).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=873&start=0#p4559
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Slightly Better Time Machine
User: justahack / DateTime: 2009-12-01 10:02:03

Hello again, 

My apologies if this is a rather simple question. I created a new action called "tune the [something]" that was to simulate some kind of time traveling phenomenon. All it did was, in the carry out section of the action, just move the player from one room to another. The route was static or sequential, that is, it would always move the player from room A, to B, to C, to D, and then finally back to A. I got it to work.

Next, I wanted to make something slightly more sophisticated, and allow the user to decide on where to go by modifying the action to accept a second parameter ... some number. For example, "tune the [something] to 1" would move the user to room A. "tune the [something] to 2" would move the user to room B, and so on.

So I tried to modify my original action into the following:

[code]
Tuning is an action applying to two things.
Understand "tune the [something] to [something]" as Tuning.
[e.g "tune the dial to 3" - to go to the moon]
Check tuning:
	if the noun is not the dial, say "That's not really something you can tune." instead.
	if the second noun is a not a number, say "That's not even valid!" instead.

Carry out tuning:
	if the time machine is in the Lab:
		move the time machine to On top of a Train;
	otherwise if the time machine is in On top of a Train:
		move the time machine to On the Moon;
	otherwise if the time machine is in On the moon:
		move the time machine to Land of the Lost;
	otherwise if the time machine is in Land of the Lost:
		move the time machine to the Lab;

Report tuning:
	say "You tune the dial carefully to the next crudely written mark.";
	try looking;
[/code]

Problem seems to arrive at line 6, 
[code]
if the second noun is a not a number, say "That's not even valid!" instead.
[/code]
which I suspect is a result of my less than perfect understanding of how to handle two parameters. Or perhaps a less than perfect understanding on how to properly form conditions. Or both. I've consulted Chapter 7, section 10 regarding first and second noun but that does not really seem to clear things up. 

Any help or pointing to the relevant documentation would be helpful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=873&start=0#p4560
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Slightly Better Time Machine
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-12-01 11:01:26

Hi,

See Chapter 16.6. Actions applying to kinds of value, as well as the example there, "Saftey."

One thing you need to look out for is the wording of the action. When using two nouns (regardless if whether or not one is a kind of value) you need to add a placeholder in the definition of the action for inform to properly understand your rules. For example "tuning is an action applying to one thing and one number" won't cut it; you need something like "tuning [i]it to[/i] is an action..." The "it to" tells inform how you want to word your rules so you can code something like "Instead of tuning the radio to 123: ..." Also, if you need to refer to the value, you use "<value> understood" where <value> is whatever kind of value you're using (such as "number understood" in this case). Here's a very stripped down example:[code]Lab is a room. The time machine is in the lab.

Tuning it to is an action applying to one thing and one number.
Understand "tune [something] to [a number]" as tuning it to.

Report tuning it to:
	say "You tune [the noun] to [the number understood]."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=872&start=0#p4561
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with disabling cardinal directions
User: Pe-ads / DateTime: 2009-12-01 11:57:04

Thanks a lot! It works perfectly now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=870&start=10#p4562
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Repeating scene
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-12-01 15:04:04

Hey that sounds useful, Emerald, and intuitive to read. I will check it out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=873&start=0#p4563
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Slightly Better Time Machine
User: justahack / DateTime: 2009-12-02 00:56:23

Hi Skinny Mike, 

Thank you for pointing me in the right direction, the example was helpful both in style and syntax. I got the action to work, and in case anyone is interested here is my solution. It is a bit verbose.

[code]
Tuning it to is an action applying to one thing and one number.
Understand "tune the [something] to [a number]" as Tuning it to.
Check tuning:
	if the noun is not the dial, say "[the noun] is something you can tune." instead;
	if the player is not in the time machine, 
		say "Maybe you should enter the time machine first?" instead;
		
Report tuning:
	say "You tune [the noun] carefully to [the number understood].";

After tuning the dial to 1:
	say "A magical mist surrounds you and suddenly transports you to ...";
	move the time machine to the Lab;
	try looking;

After tuning the dial to 2:
	say "A magical mist surrounds you and suddenly transports you to ...";
	move the time machine to On top of a Train;
	try looking;

After tuning the dial to 3:
	say "A magical mist surrounds you and suddenly transports you to ...";
	move the time machine to On the Moon;
	try looking;

After tuning the dial to 4:
	say "A magical mist surrounds you and suddenly transports you to ...";
	move the time machine to Land of the Lost;
	try looking;

Instead of tuning the dial to a number greater than 4:
	say "That's not a valid number!";

Instead of tuning the dial to a number less than 1:
	say "That's not a valid number!";
[/code]

It seems like it can be shortened somehow or more "elegantly" put together, but for now I am just happy I can even get it to work, at all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=873&start=0#p4564
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Slightly Better Time Machine
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-12-02 01:08:12

Just a side note: it's not advisable to write the word "the" in an action's grammar. It would mean that the players [i]must[/i] use "the" in their commands: commanding something like TUNE DIAL TO 1 would give a rather confusing and unhelpful error message. The parser will automatically disregard articles in the commands, so if you write 'Understand "tune [something] to [a number]" as tuning it to' the game will understand TUNE DIAL, TUNE THE DIAL and TUNE A DIAL all the same.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=873&start=0#p4565
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Slightly Better Time Machine
User: justahack / DateTime: 2009-12-02 02:28:22

Thanks for the heads up Nitku,

Hmm, I think I did read about the parser automatically stripping articles of definition. It sounds rather familiar. I shall keep that in mind when I write future actions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=873&start=0#p4566
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Slightly Better Time Machine
User: chinkeeyong / DateTime: 2009-12-02 07:11:27

FYI, the 'After' part of the code could be streamlined like this.

[code]After tuning the dial:
   say "A magical mist surrounds you and suddenly transports you to ...";
   if the number understood is:
      -- 1:
         move the time machine to the Lab;
      -- 2:
         move the time machine to On top of a Train;
      -- 3:
         move the time machine to On the Moon;
      -- 4:
         move the time machine to Land of the Lost;
   try looking;[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=861&start=0#p4567
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Start Room and some Miscellaneous Questions
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-12-02 14:09:56

I have a question inspired by the discussion of start-up text and banner text in this thread.  I understand there an informal obligation to display the banner text of an Inform 7 game at some time near the beginning of play, which is no problem.  Let's say, however, that one wanted to get this out of the way as quickly as possible by making an introductory splash screen.  If we write:

[code]The testarea is a room.

Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short.

The display banner rule is not listed in the startup rulebook.

When play begins:
	say paragraph break;
	say paragraph break;
	center "[banner text]";
	say paragraph break;
	say paragraph break;
	say paragraph break;
	center "Press a key to continue";
	wait for any key;
	clear the screen;
	center "[roman type]It was a dark and stormy night, etc, and you find yourself in the testarea.";
	say paragraph break.[/code]

The result is something that looks like this:

[code]
  Nebulously Dramatic Title
An Interactive Fiction by Anonymous
Release 1 / Serial number 091202 / Inform 7 build 5Z71 (I6/v6.31 lib 6/12N) SD




                      Press a key to continue[/code]

which looks fairly silly.  One would have hoped that by saying "center [banner text]" the result would be something like:

[code]                            Nebulously Dramatic Title
                       An Interactive Fiction by Anonymous
Release 1 / Serial number 091202 / Inform 7 build 5Z71 (I6/v6.31 lib 6/12N) SD

                            Press a key to continue[/code]
(if you're viewing this on a small monitor or in a small window, the above may appear to look much worse than the first example; the point however is that each individual line of text is centered).

Apart from discarding the official banner text and composing a manually-constructed version with the proper type-setting, what would be involved in instructing Inform to achieve the second result on its own?




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=861&start=0#p4568
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Start Room and some Miscellaneous Questions
User: George / DateTime: 2009-12-02 17:13:31

I got an interesting result when I tried a minimal example (just centering the banner text when play begins):

[code]Error: Overflow in VM_PrintToBuffer.[/code]

And no centered banner. 

So maybe constructing your own banner and centering it line by line may be necessary?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=861&start=0#p4569
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Start Room and some Miscellaneous Questions
User: Kelly / DateTime: 2009-12-02 17:21:05

I got the same error as you George.

I'm not an Inform expert, but I would [i]guess[/i] it may have something to do with the fact that the first line in the banner text (the game title) is bolded, and Basic Screen Effects disallows anything other than fixed-width fonts for centering*:

[quote]Note that centered text will always be set to fixed-width; font stylings such as bold and italic will not work. (If they did, they would throw off the centering; the screen model is insufficiently sophisticated to deal with centering non-fixed-width letters.[/quote]


I don't know what to offer you in terms of solutions, unfortunately, other than hard-coding the banner as you suggested.

* This isn't entirely accurate; putting small amounts of text and centering it seems to work, but writing any more than a sentence or so crashes the terp.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=861&start=0#p4570
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Start Room and some Miscellaneous Questions
User: Kelly / DateTime: 2009-12-02 17:35:55

...Actually, I'm getting really inconsistant centering behaviour now, where [i]any[/i] moderate sized piece of text, regardless of style, will bring up the VM_PrintToBuffer error as well as [b]Fatal Error: Call to non-routine[/b], crashing the game. I don't think there's any limit to the amount of text you can center (it's not mentioned in the docs), but Basic Screen Effects might be trying to center the whole string on one line, even if it exceeds the screen width. [Sorta Ninja Edit: The same text with line breaks still crashes, so I guess not?]

But I don't know, honestly. I've never had any centering trouble before. Weird.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=861&start=0#p4571
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Start Room and some Miscellaneous Questions
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-12-02 19:11:03

@George and Kelly:

That "VM_PrintToBuffer" error you both noted has something to do with the z-machine.  When I open a new Inform 7 project the first thing I do before typing anything is to switch the project file over to Glulx, but I should have appreciated while composing my question that not everyone follows such a practice.  If you take the example code I posted and switch the project file over to Glulx, you shouldn't see the error anymore.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=855&start=0#p4572
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Question on lists as variables
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-12-03 17:51:51

OK Endosphere, here I am having my recurring nested if problem.

[code]Check riding:
	Instead of riding something that is not the black horse:
		If the noun is a person:
			say "That would violate the categorical imperative.";
		Otherwise:
			say "Nothing is to be achieved by this.".[/code]

To me, this example looks quite a bit like the one you posted above, but it will not compile. 

I realize that I have two lines at the beginning that are already using colons, which maybe prohibits me from using those other colons, or something. But this is exactly what I always run into -- my problem never exactly matches any documentation I can find, so I end up using the "begin;" style because I can make that work.

This time I decided to try to go ahead and try to learn rather than fall back on the other style. Advice appreciated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=855&start=10#p4573
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Question on lists as variables
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-12-03 17:54:44

Here's the error, if that helps.

[quote]Problem. The phrase or rule definition 'Instead of riding something that is not the black horse'   is written using the 'colon and indentation' syntax for its 'if's, 'repeat's and 'while's, where blocks of phrases grouped together are indented one tab step inward from the 'if ...:' or similar phrase to which they belong. But the tabs here seem to be misaligned, and I can't determine the structure. The first phrase going awry in the definition seems to be 'If the noun is a person'  , in case that helps.  This sometimes happens even when the code looks about right, to the eye, if rows of spaces have been used to indent phrases instead of tabs. [/quote]

I already tried removing and re-tabbing the tabs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=874&start=0#p4574
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Using an Extension
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-12-03 18:28:45

Ok. I added this:

[code]Include Rideable Vehicles by Graham Nelson.[/code]

Because I have a horse I want the player to be able to ride.

But I'm having a heck of a time doing anything with it.

I certainly don't seem to be able to override the check and carry out code for riding. I kind of wanted my own conditions and responses (maybe the white horse is too mean to ride?)

Even this didn't work, which I find baffling (not that it's a good way to do it):

[code]Instead of riding the black horse:
 	say "Yee ha! You're riding the horse.".[/code]

"Ride horse" is a legal command and gives me Graham's built in response.

I guess when you use an extension you can't modify it?

Why do I want to change it? Well it doesn't seem to be doing anything for me that I need to do:

[code]>Get on horse
You mount the black horse

>Ride east
You must name something more substantial

>Ride horse
You are already riding the black horse[/code]

These all strike me as unintuitive responses ... sort of giving the impression that one is riding in place as if on a treadmill. Must mounting equal riding?

Assuming I want to re-code this myself... can I simply make the horse "enterable" so one can sit on it? I couldn't get that to work. I considered making it a vehicle but didn't know if that would have unintended consequences, and I guess that would still make it something you get "in" rather than "on" (thus the inspiration for Graham's Rideable Vehicles).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=855&start=10#p4575
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Question on lists as variables
User: chinkeeyong / DateTime: 2009-12-03 19:10:00

The problem is that "Check riding:" specifies a rule in the check riding rulebook, but "Instead of riding..." specifies a rule in the instead rulebook. To fix the problem, just decide on one or the other:
[code]Check riding:
   If the noun is not the black horse:
      If the noun is a person:
         say "That would violate the categorical imperative.";
      Otherwise:
         say "Nothing is to be achieved by this.".[/code]
[code]Instead of riding something that is not the black horse:
      If the noun is a person:
         say "That would violate the categorical imperative.";
      Otherwise:
         say "Nothing is to be achieved by this.".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=874&start=0#p4576
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using an Extension
User: chinkeeyong / DateTime: 2009-12-03 19:16:52

The verb for riding is actually mounting.

[code]The black horse is a rideable animal in Wherever The Horse Is.
After mounting the black horse:
   say "Yee ha! You're riding the horse.".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=855&start=10#p4577
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Question on lists as variables
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-12-03 23:34:58

chinkeeyong gave a very good answer.

@ShaeSays
You can have Before, Check, Instead, Carry Out, After, or Report rules, but you can't mix these phrases inside of a rule.  Perhaps some confusion could be caused by by the fact that the word "instead" can be used inside these rules, but not in the way you tried to use it; it's used to redirect the rule to something else or end the rule after checking against a condition, but "instead" can't be used as a condition itself inside the other kinds of rules.

Once you decide the rule will be a Check rule or an After rule (for example), you can only have conditions inside it; other types of rules aren't allowed.  So it's not the "ifs" that you were trying to nest, it was the rule types themselves.

One small thing to note on the example "Check" rule chinkeeyong posted is that since there's no instead at the end of the [i]conditions[/i] to redirect the action, the rule doesn't effectively check anything, so if you want to try it as an example you'd want to change it to:

[code]Check riding:
	if the noun is not the black horse:
		if the noun is a person:
			say "That would violate the categorical imperative." instead;
		otherwise:
			say "Nothing is to be achieved by this." instead;
	[otherwise:
		continue the action.][/code]
You don't need to write the "otherwise: continue the action" part in a check rule, but maybe it would be helpful to imagine it there to see how the check rule works.




-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=855&start=10#p4578
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Question on lists as variables
User: chinkeeyong / DateTime: 2009-12-04 01:18:31

Whoops. Sorry about the code error, ShaeSays, and thanks for pointing it out, Endosphere.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=874&start=0#p4579
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using an Extension
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-12-04 01:48:52

You've got a lot of complicated issues packed into this post, ShaeSays.  chinkeeyong was right on which verb (mounting) to use, but there's more than that going on here.

[quote="ShaeSays"]Even this didn't work, which I find baffling (not that it's a good way to do it):

[code]Instead of riding the black horse:
say "Yee ha! You're riding the horse.".[/code]

"Ride horse" is a legal command and gives me Graham's built in response.
[/quote]
If you look in the "Actions" section of the "Index" tab in your project, the third section ("Commands available to the player") lists all the synonyms for verbs in the game.  Looking there we see that "ride" is a synonym for the "mounting" action (as chinkeeyong rightly noted).

If you change the example you gave to use the correct action, though, you'll also want to get rid of the Instead rule (again as chinkeeyong noted) since this would mean you never actually get a chance to mount the horse; the Instead rule you used directly prevents any attempt to do so.  To make things even more confusing, if for some reason the "Instead of riding the black horse" rule did work, it would crash your game when you tried to ride the horse since you'd be saying "Instead of riding the black horse, try riding the black horse."

[quote="ShaeSays"]I guess when you use an extension you can't modify it?[/quote]
Sure you can, but some ways are better than others.  If you really wanted to, you could just open up the extension and directly change it in any way you want by adding, deleting, or changing stuff.  This is a bad idea, however, for several reasons:
--if you make direct changes to an extension and then need to ask questions on the forum about some code that relies on the extension in some way, no one will be able to figure out what's going on since your version of the extension will be different from everyone else's version;
--if you release a game along with all the source code and extensions used, the author of the extension will probably be concerned and possibly very upset to see that they are listed as the author of stuff they didn't write.

The best way to modify extensions is to use procedural rules in your own code.  For example, although it's a minority view I really dislike implicit actions.  The "Locksmith" extension included with Inform 7 is very useful, but contains lots of implicit actions.  For example, the first rule listed in the Locksmith extension is:

[code]Before going through a closed door (called the blocking door) (this is the opening doors before entering rule):
	if using the sequential action option:
		try opening the blocking door;
	otherwise:
		say "(first opening [the blocking door])[command clarification break]";
		silently try opening the blocking door;
	if the blocking door is closed, stop the action.[/code]
If I don't like this rule, rather than go into the extension and erase it or comment it out, all I have to do in my own code is add the following:

[code]Include Locksmith by Emily Short.
Procedural rule for going through a closed door: ignore the opening doors before entering rule.[/code]
This tells my game to ignore the rule found in the Locksmith extension dealing with opening doors before going through them.  For this to work, though, the rules in the extension have to be named (for example, "(this is the opening doors before entering rule)") .  One problem in the "Rideable Vehicles" extension is that some of the rules aren't named, and therefore there's no way to procedurally ignore them.  In this case, you may want to open the extension, give all the rules names, and save it for your personal use; you just would never want to redistribute it to anyone in that condition.

[quote="ShaeSays"]Assuming I want to re-code this myself... can I simply make the horse "enterable" so one can sit on it? I couldn't get that to work. I considered making it a vehicle but didn't know if that would have unintended consequences, and I guess that would still make it something you get "in" rather than "on" (thus the inspiration for Graham's Rideable Vehicles).[/quote]
Actually by including the Rideable Vehicles extension and defining the horse as a rideable animal, it is already both an enterable supporter and a vehicle since that's what the extension defines a rideable animal to be.

[quote="ShaeSays"]Why do I want to change it? Well it doesn't seem to be doing anything for me that I need to do:

[code]>Get on horse
You mount the black horse

>Ride east
You must name something more substantial

>Ride horse
You are already riding the black horse[/code]

These all strike me as unintuitive responses ... sort of giving the impression that one is riding in place as if on a treadmill. Must mounting equal riding?[/quote]
One way to get some better responses here would be to make some empty commands that redirect to the proper action (which is the "going" action) while trying to use the horse.  One complication is that directions are not "things," so the typical way of writing a command (X is an action applying to one thing) won't work; this is also why you got the response "You must name something more substantial" when you typed "Ride east".  For example:

[code]Riding there is an action applying to one object.

Understand "ride [direction]" as riding there.

Check riding there:
	unless the player is carried by a rideable animal:
		say "What do you want to ride?" instead;
	otherwise:
		let way be the noun;
		try going way instead.

Riding it there is an action applying to one thing and one object.  Understand "ride [something] [direction]" as riding it there.

Check riding something there:
	unless the noun is a rideable animal:
		say "You're not riding anything." instead;
	otherwise:
		let way be the second noun;
		try going way instead.[/code]
These two new verbs, "riding there" and "riding it there", don't do much but redirect to the going action; however, they also let the player use the phrasing you want to allow.

The last parser response you were unhappy with:
>Ride horse
You are already riding the black horse
is determined by a rule in the Rideable Vehicles Extension:

[code]Check an actor mounting (this is the can't mount when mounted on an animal rule): 
	if the actor is carried by a rideable animal (called the steed):
		if the actor is the player, say "You are already riding [the steed].";
		stop the action.[/code]
If you don't like that phrasing, you can change it (since this particular rule is named) in a few ways.  Here's one way:

[code]The way better can't mount rule is listed instead of the can't mount when mounted on an animal rule in the check mounting rulebook.

Check an actor mounting (this is the way better can't mount rule): 
	if the actor is carried by a rideable animal (called the steed):
		if the actor is the player:
			say "Whatever ShaeSays wants to say.";
			stop the action.
[/code]
In conclusion, then, maybe we could say:
a) You can change anything you want about an extension, but
b) some ways are better (and more considerate to the extension author) than others; however
c) these better ways are not necessarily simpler ways.

As far as not being able to ride the white horse, that's a case where it might actually be a good idea to use an Instead rule, such as:

Instead of mounting the white horse, say "He's too mean, he'd probably throw you off just for the fun of it."

since you really do want to block riding the white horse.

Don't get discouraged. [emote]:)[/emote] Eventually the whole horse scenario will be exactly the way you want, and you'll have learned a lot in the process of writing it.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=875&start=0#p4580
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 - Different descriptions of people?
User: Keltena / DateTime: 2009-12-04 09:58:22

My game starts in one room. Specifically, a room with a couch. A character - let's call him 'Y' - is relaxing on the couch, so I put in this code:

[i]A man called Y is here. "Y, my mentor, is relaxing on the couch." The description of Y is "Despite his race, he's well respected as a lawyer. The only thing that doesn't fit is the long blond hair. Actually, I've always had this weird feeling he'd fit right in at a disco club..."[/i]

Then, soon afterward, I move him to another room. The problem I'm having is that, with him in the different room (that, as it so happens, does [i]not[/i] have a couch), the description it outputs is still "Y, my mentor, is relaxing on the couch."

I know there has to be a way to fix this that I'm missing, but I've been searching the documentation for ages and can't find it. Can anyone tell me how to fix this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=70#p4581
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Keltena / DateTime: 2009-12-04 10:06:06

Hey there. Name's Melanie, 15 years old (I feel so young here D8), and I'm currently working on a... well, a crossover interactive fanfiction, you'd call it? I know, kinda silly, but I have the plot in my head and it just has to be made - plus, I love trying new things, and writing IF falls squarely into that category.

Right now I'm struggling a bit with the actual programming aspect, but I'm having fun. Interactive fiction's been one of my favorite mediums for a while, ever since I was really young and tried playing the original Adventure, in fact, so I'm happy to be joining those who create their own.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=70#p4582
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: George / DateTime: 2009-12-04 11:15:26

Awesome, welcome to the forums Keltena  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=875&start=0#p4583
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Different descriptions of people?
User: George / DateTime: 2009-12-04 11:21:28

You can use 'if' conditionals within descriptions, like this:

[code]
"Couch"

The Office is a room. "North is the Library."

A man called Y is here. "[If location is the Office]Y, my mentor, is relaxing on the couch.[else]Y, my mentor, is here." The description of Y is "Despite his race, he's well respected as a lawyer. The only thing that doesn't fit is the long blond hair. Actually, I've always had this weird feeling he'd fit right in at a disco club..."

The Library is a room. It is north of the Office. "South is the Office."

After going north from the Office: move Y to the Library; continue the action. 

test me with "n"
[/code]

Look up 5.5 in the documentation, 'Text with variations'.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=874&start=0#p4584
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using an Extension
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-12-04 12:08:35

Hi Endosphere,

Thanks for the response. There's a lot to digest in your post that I haven't tried to digest yet.

However, many of my problems stem from one fact: I didn't know you could open and look at (or change, however ill-advised that may be) the code in the extension. How do I do that?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=855&start=10#p4585
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Question on lists as variables
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-12-04 12:16:03

OK, makes sense. thanks guys.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=875&start=0#p4586
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Different descriptions of people?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-12-04 12:18:54

I'd go so far as to say:
[code]
A man called Y is here. "[If Y is enclosed by the couch]Y, my mentor, is relaxing on the couch.[else]Y, my mentor, is here."[/code]

Since otherwise you'll also get awkward results if you examine Y, examine the couch, move one of these without the other, etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=874&start=0#p4587
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using an Extension
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-12-04 13:05:41

[quote="ShaeSays"]I didn't know you could open and look at (or change, however ill-advised that may be) the code in the extension. How do I do that?[/quote]In windows, under the "file" menu, there's an option to "Open Extension." I suspect there's some similar option for the other OSes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=875&start=0#p4588
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Different descriptions of people?
User: Keltena / DateTime: 2009-12-04 13:40:10

Ah, thanks a lot; that was a major problem for me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=874&start=0#p4589
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using an Extension
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-12-04 14:39:14

Cool, thanks Mike.

Between that new info and the revelation that "mount" is the verb to manipulate, I think I can probably do what I need to do. Thanks all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=70#p4590
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2009-12-04 18:58:09

Welcome to the new generation of IF authors! [emote]:D[/emote] (I mean Keltena, of course.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=80#p4591
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2009-12-04 20:26:09

[quote="Keltena"]Right now I'm struggling a bit with the actual programming aspect, but I'm having fun. Interactive fiction's been one of my favorite mediums for a while, ever since I was really young and tried playing the original Adventure, in fact, so I'm happy to be joining those who create their own.[/quote]
Ah... I remember pouring over the [i]Inform Designer's Manual[/i] over and over again when I was 12-13-14 years old, determined to learn Inform to write my own game.  I was so excited to be able to enter the IF Competition!  I felt the way I imagine a kid who loves baseball would feel if he were able to play a game with the Yankees.  When I think about it, I still feel awed about having entered the Comp, even considering my lackluster buggy little game, which I'm patronizingly fond of.  [emote]:D[/emote] 

Welcome, Melanie, and keep at it!

[quote="Eriorg"]Welcome to the new generation of IF authors! [emote]:D[/emote][/quote]
I hope we can bring uphold the honor of our hobby as the torch is passed!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=874&start=0#p4592
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using an Extension
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-12-05 02:53:52

Also, extensions have documentation that describes how to use it and often how to customize its behavior. You can find them by clicking on the "Installed extensions" link on the documentation main page and then clicking on the extension's name.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=876&start=0#p4593
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I7] Acting on remote things
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2009-12-05 08:33:47

Hi. I have a rather nooby question. I want to create an action which can be used on any player-character, regardless of whether or not they are in the same room as the player. I can't find any way to make I7 let the player use the action on remote things, though. Any pointers?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=876&start=0#p4594
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Acting on remote things
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-12-05 09:57:33

This is discussed in the manual chapter 16.7 and its examples. Basically you use the "any" qualifier in the action's grammar like this:

[code]Calling is an action applying to one visible thing.
Understand "call [any person]" as calling.

Report calling:
    say "You call [the noun] and hang up right away. Sucker!"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=877&start=0#p4595
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: A tutorial lost?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2009-12-06 16:21:24

Hey all,

I've been working on room descriptions lately. It's been fun, but I now feel the need for a fresh perspective. I caught a few references to a tutorial written by Jeff Nyman which [url=http://inform7.com/news/2009/08/24/jeff-nyman-tutorial-on-descriptions-and-locales/]dealt exclusively with the subject[/url]. However, I can't seem to find the actual article. Is it still available online in some shape or form? I believe it might be tremendously beneficial to newbies such as I, particularly when it comes to the creation of dynamic rooms. 

A quick Google search revealed little, aside from the fact that the [url=http://www.genuinetesting.com/]genuinetesting.com[/url] domain has been down for some time. I would email Mr. Nyman about this myself, but I'm aware that many of the big names in the community have little enough time as it is. More to the point, he still has a blog, and may have deliberately taken it off the web, in which case a reminder might be seen as nagging.

Does anyone know?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=877&start=0#p4596
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A tutorial lost?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-12-06 19:53:29

I posted a request over at raif for you. The thread is here: [url]http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/145b79963dfaee32#[/url]. I would have just emailed Jeff, but I'm not sure he uses that gmail account. I don't know him personally, but from what I do know, I'm sure he wouldn't consider it "nagging."  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=878&start=0#p4597
Forum: Feedback / Subject: RSS Feed?
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2009-12-06 21:52:07

Quick question, not sure if it's possible - is there a way to get an RSS feed of new topics from here? 

(I should state that I am running phpBB2 on my personal forum, and I'd rather code graphics in ZIL than figure out how to get anything working with version 2, so if this is not possible or feasible, I understand completely. Seriously completely.)

That being said, I'd read it every day, so it would absolutely be appreciated.

Thanks,

Robb

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=877&start=0#p4598
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A tutorial lost?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2009-12-06 22:17:49

[quote="Skinny Mike"]I posted a request over at raif for you. The thread is here: [url]http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/145b79963dfaee32#[/url]. I would have just emailed Jeff, but I'm not sure he uses that gmail account. I don't know him personally, but from what I do know, I'm sure he wouldn't consider it "nagging."  [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Wow, thanks! You certainly didn't have to go to such lengths, but I'm certainly grateful for it.

Now, while I wait for him to reply, I think I'll do my best to make every mistake there is on the subject, so as to... uh... "learn by doing." [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=877&start=0#p4599
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A tutorial lost?
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-12-06 23:31:17

Sorry I don't have anything helpful to add, but modifying the default way room descriptions work is a headache-inducing experience (or at least I found it to be so).  Please keep us all updated if you come across any novel techniques in your research into the issue, as I for one would certainly be interested in reading anything new rather than trying to study the abstruse "Activities" chapter of the Inform manual for the 7034th time. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=877&start=0#p4600
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A tutorial lost?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2009-12-06 23:45:29

[quote="Endosphere"]Sorry I don't have anything helpful to add, but modifying the default way room descriptions work is a headache-inducing experience (or at least I found it to be so).  Please keep us all updated if you come across any novel techniques in your research into the issue, as I for one would certainly be interested in reading anything new rather than trying to study the abstruse "Activities" chapter of the Inform manual for the 7034th time. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Oh, I'll definitely do that. I may have hit upon a few techniques already while brainstorming, but my greatest worry is that the source might end up being too elaborate for a useful forum post.

OTOH, if that is the case I could just PM it to whoever feels curiosity on the matter. Blithely assuming it'll work at all, of course. [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=555&start=0#p4601
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dealing with implicit action reporting
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2009-12-07 00:02:04

I found something that may be pertinent to the question: the [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Eric%20Eve/Text%20Capture/doc_0.html]text capture extension[/url] by Eric Eve. His usage instructions may shed light on the matter (the relevant line emphasised by my bolding it):

[quote]It generally makes for smoother game-play if commands like PUT BALL IN BOX or PUT BOX ON TABLE perform an implicit take when the object to be put somewhere isn't already held. We generally do this by saying "[color=blue](first taking the whatever)[/color]" and then using 'silently try taking the whatever' to attempt the implicit take.

[b]If, however, the attempted take doesn't succeed[/b] (perhaps because the object we're trying to take is fixed in place), then a message like "[color=blue](first taking the whatever)[/color]" is a little misleading, since we have not in fact taken the object in question, we have merely attempted to do so. In this situation "[color=blue](first trying to take the whatever)[/color]" would be more appropriate. The difficulty is that we don't know whether 'silently try taking the whatever' will succeed until we try it, so we don't know whether we want "[color=blue]first taking..[/color]." or "[color=blue]first trying to take...[/color]" until we've tried to take the object and maybe seen a message explaining why we can't; but we'd then want "[color=blue](first trying to take the whatever)[/color]" to be displayed before the message explaining why it couldn't be taken.[/quote]

Basically, I suspect you may be content with the solution you mentioned. You problem might largely be worked around by restricting what can be implicitly taken to such items that are "public" or at the very least not enclosed, worn or possessed by another person. If you think the limitation that Eric addresses may crop up later on, the extension may be a better choice and/or complement.

Hope this is helpful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=879&start=0#p4602
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Formatting output text into columns
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-12-07 00:03:51

I was trying to print some output text into something resembling columns, but have been having so much difficulty I'm sure I must be blatantly overlooking something; after all, Inform is a program whose sole focus is text, so surely there is a simple way to accomplish what I want.

Let's look at an example.  I have some simple information that I want listed in a column format, and after searching the Inform manual I couldn't find a discussion of the subject anywhere so I started playing around and wrote the following example.  Let's also stipulate that I'm completely unconcerned that attempting to output text in columns will mean any end-user will experience frustratingly undreadable text while trying to play my game on their iPhone, or using that old 7" CRT monitor they just dug out of their closet, or while resizing the game window to a tiny area occupying 1/45 of the display space on their normal-sized monitor.

[code]The testarea is a room.

Infochecking is an action applying to nothing.  Understand "infocheck" as infochecking.

Report infochecking:
	say "Value A: [a random number from 1 to 100]	Value B: [a random number from 1 to 100][line break]Value C: [a random number from 1 to 200]	Value D: [a random number from 1 to 100][line break]Value E: [a random number from 1 to 200]	Value F: [a random number from 1 to 100]";
	say paragraph break.[/code]
Although I knew before ever hitting "Go" that the above would be unsatisfactory, for the sake of thoroughness let's note that the output looks like:

[code]>infocheck
Value A: 66 Value B: 44
Value C: 126 Value D: 26
Value E: 132 Value F: 100[/code]
I had an idea that since all the variable output was to be a number of three digits or less, I could "typeset" the output by inserting a variable number of spaces between the statements of each output line if I also switched to fixed-letter spacing.  So I got rid of the first code and wrote this:

[code]The testarea is a room.

Infochecking is an action applying to nothing.  Understand "infocheck" as infochecking.

Report infochecking:
	let valuea be a random number from 1 to 200;
	let valueb be a random number from 1 to 200;
	let valuec be a random number from 1 to 200;
	let valued be a random number from 1 to 200;
	let valuee be a random number from 1 to 200;
	let valuef be a random number from 1 to 200;
	say "[fixed letter spacing]Value A: [valuea][if valuea is less than 10]          [otherwise if valuea is less than 100]         [otherwise]        [end if]Value B: [valueb][line break]Value C: [valuec][if valuec is less than 10]          [otherwise if valuec is less than 100]         [otherwise]        [end if]Value D: [valued][line break]Value E: [valuee][if valuee is less than 10]          [otherwise if valuee is less than 100]         [otherwise]        [end if]Value F: [valuef][variable letter spacing]";
	say paragraph break.[/code]
This results in the following output:

[code]>infocheck
Value A: 141        Value B: 37
Value C: 138        Value D: 140
Value E: 29         Value F: 139[/code]
That's a little better, but still not acceptable to me for three reasons:

a) this whole business of 'counting the spaces' seems sort of silly, and
b) I think the fixed-width font (not shown here) used by the Inform test game is fairly ugly; I don't really want to look at it.  Much more importantly (and more seriously), however, is
c) while the 'count the spaces' system works for the simple scenario outlined above, it would quickly break down into implausibility in a more complex scenario.  For example, how would one ever hope to manually align the following into columns?

[code]The testarea is a room.

Infochecking is an action applying to nothing.  Understand "infocheck" as infochecking.

Stuff is a kind of value.  The stuffs are cc, ddd, eeee, fffff, gggggg, hhhhhhh, and iiiiiiii.

Report infochecking:
	say "Value A: [a random stuff]	Value B: [a random stuff][line break]Value C: [a random stuff]	Value D: [a random stuff][line break]Value E: [a random stuff]  Value F: [a random stuff]".[/code]

There's probably a simple technique I'm overlooking here, but since I can't figure it out any help would be appreciated.




-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=879&start=0#p4603
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Formatting output text into columns
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2009-12-07 00:33:26

[quote="Endosphere"]There's probably a simple technique I'm overlooking here, but since I can't figure it out any help would be appreciated.[/quote]
Off the cuff, and while being almost entirely ignorant on the subject, I've gotten the sense that Inform is merely the language - it produces text, but only formatted in a semantic sense (yes, the coloured text bends the rules in that regard, but to be fair, we've seen the same thing happen to HTML). The files are designed for running on virtual machines with similar but not identical specifications and using different story formats. Way I see it, it does not extend to tabulation and the like (and indeed, we are discouraged from attempting to use tabs in regular expressions).

[i]However[/i]... that said, we can use regexes in other fun ways. Consider the instructions in [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc343.html]chapter 19.9[/url]:

[code]...{2,5}    Matches "..." between 2 and 5 times[/code]
If you'll accept the tradeoff of setting things to a fixed-width font, this could conceivably be used in the following fashion:
[list=1][*] Make a judgement on how wide the screen is in characters.[/*:m]
[*] Decide on number of visual table columns. The width of each will be equal, so (total) / (number of table columns + space between columns) will be the width of each.[/*:m]
[*] Calculate the character length for each string you want to put in a visual table. [/*:m]
[*] Regex - replace said string with a new string that looks like this: [color=blue](margin-half column width) + "string" + (margin-half column width)[/color].[/*:m]
[*] Print all elements in the same row at the same time, with the decided-upon margin in between each "cell". This should probably also be done using Regex, for maximum ease of use later on.[/*:m]
[*] Find the grave of the creator of the Courier Font. Urinate on it.[/*:m][/list:o]

It [i]should[/i] work. It should be noted that [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/ex160.html#e160]Lethal Concentration 1[/url] is the only place I've seen it done in the manual, and there, Emily Short pragmatically uses a simpler method where she inserts one space if the number is less than 100, and another if it's less than 10, or something to that effect.

You'll want something more flexible; I suspect this might be it.

([b]Note:[/b] I edited the ever-living crap out of this post. This should be the last edit though, hopefully enough to be legible. I blame my lack of sleep and enduring insanity for this abomination.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=555&start=0#p4604
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dealing with implicit action reporting
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-12-07 00:33:52

[quote="ShaeSays"]Could one just write a series of commands like:[/quote]
Absolutely.  Another way is just to rewrite the "implicit taking" function so it only adds the "(first taking whatever)" after the player has actually taken whatever.  For example if you add the following:

[code]Rule for implicitly taking anything:
	try silently taking the noun;
	if the player carries the noun:
		say "(first taking [the noun])[command clarification break]";
	otherwise:
		do nothing.[/code]
You'll now see this when trying to wear the hat:

[code]>wear hat
That seems to belong to Granny.[/code]
with no other changes to the functionality of implicit taking.




-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=879&start=0#p4605
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Formatting output text into columns
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-12-07 01:18:53

[quote="Eleas"][3] Calculate the character length for each string you want to put in a visual table. 
[4] Regex - replace said string with a new string that looks like this: [color=blue](margin-half column width) + "string" + (margin-half column width)[/color].
[/quote]
That's actually very clever, thanks.  It's a bit of work, but changing the variable output to indexed text and then modifying it directly to insert some spaces is at least a practical solution to the last example, and I don't think I would have thought of it.

[quote="Eleas"][6] Find the grave of the creator of the Courier Font. Urinate on it.[/quote]
 [emote]:D[/emote]  I don't know; I'd hate to think of what shocking cyclopean terrors would await me if I were to be haunted by the angry ghost of any person capable of inflicting such misery on the world.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=880&start=0#p4606
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Aisle-like games, teaching IF with positive reinforcement?
User: linger / DateTime: 2009-12-07 01:32:05

I was thinking about [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=j49crlvd62mhwuzu]Aisle[/url]-type games today, one action games where the purpose is exploration. In a way, they naturally teach new players how to think in "If language." The parser commands that unlock new content are usually those written in a traditional IF way. Whenever a new player types in a command with traditional IF thinking, he's positively reinforced with new content.

Also, they're simple and literally impossible to get stuck on. Even though they're basically a giant "guess the verb" puzzle, I think they're well suited to teaching new players. The only ones I know of, though, are "Aisle" and "[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=6vej1yd9quwfm9qn]Pick up the Phone Booth and Aisle[/url]." Are there any more prominent ones out there? I think this sort of design-space is under-explored.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=878&start=0#p4607
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: RSS Feed?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-12-07 01:53:01

Seconded. I've requested this before, I too would like to read everything possible through a RSS feed reader and not come here just to check if there are any new posts.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=879&start=0#p4608
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Formatting output text into columns
User: emshort / DateTime: 2009-12-07 01:57:51

[quote="Eleas"] 
It [i]should[/i] work. It should be noted that [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/ex160.html#e160]Lethal Concentration 1[/url] is the only place I've seen it done in the manual, and there, Emily Short pragmatically uses a simpler method where she inserts one space if the number is less than 100, and another if it's less than 10, or something to that effect.
[/quote]

The Lethal Concentration example predates Inform having indexed text and regexps. I would certainly use indexed text now if I were doing a layout with any degree of complexity.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=877&start=0#p4609
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A tutorial lost?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2009-12-07 01:59:45

Is the Recipe Book material on this topic unhelpful (under Place > Room Descriptions)? This is an area that I've revised a bunch of times, because what it's trying to explain is so complex, but further feedback is welcome.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=880&start=0#p4610
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Aisle-like games, teaching IF with positive reinforcement?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-12-07 02:55:40

There's [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=22oqimzgf8snv002]Rematch[/url], but I wouldn't recommend it for teaching beginners to play IF. Firstly, it requires commands far more complex than any other game's parser can handle. Secondly, it's a puzzle game, and a difficult one at that. Although it's a one-turn game, it'll take a long time for most players to work out the one command that will win the game. (On the other hand, I found Rematch tricky in part because I had preconceptions about the way the parser worked and what its limitations would be - new players would be less likely to have [i]that[/i] problem.)

Apart from that, I don't know of any other one-turn games. IFDB has [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=h59mnn480ouc2fn8]The Phoenix Move[/url] tagged as "[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=tag:one-move]one-move[/url]", but one of the reviews points out that it isn't really - only one aspect of the game resets after a move, and you need a sequence of commands to win.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=877&start=0#p4611
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A tutorial lost?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2009-12-07 03:59:06

[quote="emshort"]Is the Recipe Book material on this topic unhelpful (under Place > Room Descriptions)? This is an area that I've revised a bunch of times, because what it's trying to explain is so complex, but further feedback is welcome.[/quote]

*ponders*

That page's been helpful, to a point. It's certainly let me glean a basic understanding. Still, I feel it tries to explain too much in too small a space. The information, while densely packed, also gives a meandering impression to me: it mentions a lot of things, but seems to avoid going into detail. I'm left slightly overwhelmed as well as wondering whether it's all an introduction to further in-depth explanation.

Also, given my limited experience with I7, I'm hard-pressed to distil the techniques of these mostly rather specific examples into generic code. I feel strong unease at the notion of starting in on a project featuring functionality I can't abstract and reuse as needed. The first few times I read through the [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rex227.html#e227]Low Light[/url] example, for instance, it left me convinced that it would require each object in the location to have its own actions and hand-coded functionality. I've since slowly begun working out how this might not be the cause.

Of these examples, [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rex93.html#e93]Copper River[/url] was probably the most useful. It sold me on the possibility of elegant, reusable techniques for overarching control of descriptions. Since everything with Inform is still quite new and different to me, it was reassuring knowing what's possible and what isn't. Without knowing which of my ingrained principles I can rely on, I doubt I'd be able to code anything.

Plus, of course, Copper River was funny.



A caveat to my critique seems necessary: I have ADD, or attention-deficit disorder, so I have a hard time parsing a multitude of seemingly unrelated facts. Indeed the natural language approach seems in some ways to be quite the challenge to me. It may be that the manual works well as it is, but simply teaches in a way that gives me difficulty absorbing its lessons.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=877&start=0#p4612
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A tutorial lost?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-12-07 04:24:30

[quote="Eleas"]It may be that the manual works well as it is, but simply teaches in a way that gives me difficulty absorbing its lessons.[/quote]You should also check out Jim Aikin's [url=http://musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm]The Inform 7 Handbook[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=80#p4613
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2009-12-07 04:29:54

Well, this might as well be my first post there. 

*ahem* So, hello there. I'm a Portuguese 23-year old adventure game afficionado. I'm broad-minded enough to accept any form and/of hybrid of the adventure game genre, but my heart is still set in the traditional adventure game and IF. The reason I prefer IF is because of the unlimited possibilites it gives to the player; the reason I keep going back to the graphical games is because the strength of multimedia is unarguable, and a powerful way to create atmosphere and an emotional connection with the player when done right. Such as there are things IF can do that graphical games never will, so there are things in multimedia that plain text can't achieve.

But I rant - apologies. I've dabbled in AGS, and I've dabbled in Inform 7. Currently I've stopped dabbling, because I realized I'm more of a player than an author.

I like to understand what makes games good, or what makes some games fall short of their potential. I do this with simply my experience of adventuring - I have played pretty much every major adventure game released, with the exception of some more recent titles which don't interest me much anyway, and am alphabetically going through my archive of downloaded IF - all the IF I could find everywhere. I'm a bit of a packrat, and I may be a bit obsessive. But ah well, no one's completely normal. I put down my opinions in my reviews, although I only review a game when I have something to add, something that hasn't been said already.

I've very high standards for a playing experience, because I believe that adventure games and IF not only have the potential to be great and grand entertainment, they also can be true art forms. I've grown rather picky as a result, but I can still appreciate the good qualities in an overall lesser game. I also can't be bothered to play a game that disappoints me in the first couple of turns, not with so many great games out there.

Every day I check RAIF, RGIF, IFDB and the ADRIFT page for more posts and any mentions of new games. Now I'll start checking INTFICTION as well. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=879&start=0#p4614
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Formatting output text into columns
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2009-12-07 04:42:49

[quote="endosphere"]That's actually very clever, thanks. It's a bit of work, but changing the variable output to indexed text and then modifying it directly to insert some spaces is at least a practical solution to the last example, and I don't think I would have thought of it.[/quote]

Thank you. [emote]:)[/emote] It strikes me now that you don't really need a regexp at all (sometimes I'd swear they're just cantankerous). For this situation, getting the line length and calculating column width is a simple enough operation. Then, to pad the rest, you might just use a repeat loop on one or both sides as needed. As long as there's no whitespace within the original string itself, you should be fine. 

AFAI you can't get away from indexed strings here, though, as you'll need to count characters. Still, for your purposes you're not going to want overlong strings anyway, so this may be a moot point.

[quote="emshort"]The Lethal Concentration example predates Inform having indexed text and regexps. I would certainly use indexed text now if I were doing a layout with any degree of complexity.[/quote]

Oh. I didn't realize; I thought you simply made the choice not to bother with regexps at all, since there were so few space adjustments involved.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=877&start=0#p4615
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A tutorial lost?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2009-12-07 05:24:07

[quote="Skinny Mike"][quote="Eleas"]It may be that the manual works well as it is, but simply teaches in a way that gives me difficulty absorbing its lessons.[/quote]You should also check out Jim Aikin's [url=http://musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm]The Inform 7 Handbook[/url].[/quote]

As you say, it too is a good book, and I've been reading it off and on these last weeks. I took to it easier in some ways, but I still feel it's overly wedded to the idea of world-building by exception (i.e. reliance on Instead rules and unique behaviour). 
Mainly, however, I think I'm not so much having trouble with these book as just looking for yet another perspective. I usually learn much by watching how different people approach a task, which usually helps in illuminating the dimensions of a given problem as well.

Gah. After reading my latest posts here, I fear I've sounded like a bit of a pretentious code monkey at times. If so, it wasn't my intention. 
While I enjoy programming, I'm aware that Inform isn't TADS3 (which I hear can hold its own, I'm not knocking it) so I'm really not trying to bring it closer to C++ (or into a shiny ever-complex mechanical toy, for that matter). And while I don't know I7 all that well, as far as I can tell its main strength (related, yes, to its natural language) lies in giving a writer the tools to [i]describe[/i] the world and the game as opposed to [i]coding[/i] it, largely untroubled by what happens under the hood. 
I like that. Creating a person by saying "this is a person" is difficult to beat in terms of brevity and precision.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=80#p4616
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2009-12-07 06:28:45

Welcome, Peter Pears! [emote]:D[/emote] It's nice to see you on this forum.

[quote="Peter Pears"]I [...] am alphabetically going through my archive of downloaded IF - all the IF I could find everywhere.[/quote]
Wow! That looks like a [i]big[/i] project. I'm curious: did you already manage to reach the "B" letter [emote];)[/emote] ?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=80#p4617
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2009-12-07 06:31:00

I'm currently on "D" - "DayInTheLifeOfATupperwareSalesmanA.tzx". [emote];)[/emote] I also played the new game "Backup" because, well, it's B, and I already did B, so it superceded the Ds. I'm going for filename, BTW, not game name.

Note I didn't saying I'm "completing them all". Some games are just too bad, or annoyed me too much. I try them all. I play further on the ones I like best. I may be obsessive, but I'm not a masochist. And before you ask, yes, I get to complete a fair share of them. [emote]:)[/emote] But curiously, I tend to leave most AGT, DOS, ADRIFT and Spectrum games unfinished. Draw your own conclusions.

Also, I'm looking forward to playing Trinity, but as you can guess, I've a lot to cover until then. [emote]:)[/emote] I'm closer to Dungeon and Deadline.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=874&start=0#p4618
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using an Extension
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2009-12-07 09:19:11

[quote="Endosphere"]If I don't like this rule, rather than go into the extension and erase it or comment it out, all I have to do in my own code is add the following:

[code]Include Locksmith by Emily Short.
Procedural rule for going through a closed door: ignore the opening doors before entering rule.[/code][/quote]
Or even better, since you're completely disabling that rule:
[code]The opening doors before entering rule is not listed in any rulebook.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=848&start=10#p4619
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Games that do conversation well
User: ALear / DateTime: 2009-12-07 11:53:40

I'm vaguely surprised Alabaster hasn't been mentioned, given that most of it is a conversation, and a remarkably fluid and engaging one at that. It makes use of the 'topic inventory' concept that tads.org article mentions, and does it extremely well.

On the other hand, I hadn't bothered trying Galatea until I saw this thread...

... and I don't know if it's just me, but I find the opacity of Galatea somewhat infuriating and baffling. It's utterly unclear how to push things forward, at least so far, and on several occasions I tried to make use of what looked like an intended conversational hook only to get this maddening response:

  You can't form your question into words.

I don't know about other folks, but this type of response is a large part of why I'm growing to hate the tendency towards second person in IF.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=881&start=0#p4620
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Synonyms not working
User: Keltena / DateTime: 2009-12-07 13:59:21

I'm a little confused here, once more, as I'm attempting to make synonyms work (e.g., make a character referrable to by their first or last name as well as their full name, or make something with a long name able to be referred to by a shorter description).

Here's an example of what I have that doesn't work:

[i]Understand "photo" as "[photo of the crime scene]". [/i]

However, when I ask a character about "photo", unlike when I ask them about "photo of the crime scene", I get the 'There is no reply' response.

Help?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=882&start=0#p4621
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Changing default responses?
User: Pe-ads / DateTime: 2009-12-07 14:14:36

Hi, I'm looking for a way to change the machine's response to actions, e.g. instead of saying 'Taken' make the machine say 'You stuff it in your pocket'. I'm sure there's a bit in the manual somewhere about it, and I think I read it, but I can't find it  [emote]:([/emote] 

Any help would be nice.


Pe-ads

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=883&start=0#p4622
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Help with defining new actions.
User: Pe-ads / DateTime: 2009-12-07 14:48:00

Hi, yet another question.

Basically I want to have a memory stick that the player can plug into various devices (the only devices in the game are computers). However, Inform doesn't like my code:

[code]A memory container is a kind of container.

Plugging is an action applying to one memory container and one device. Understand "plug memory stick into [device]" as plugging. Carry out plugging a memory container into a device: now the memory stick is plugged into the device.

A check plugging rule: if the memory stick is not carried then say "You can't plug your memory stick into something without actually having your memory stick!" instead.

Report plugging: say "[one of]You shove the memory stick into [the device][or]You plug in the memory stick.[cycling]"
[/code]

It keeps on saying this:

[quote]Problem. You wrote 'Plugging is an action applying to one memory container and one device'  : but an action can only apply to things or to kinds of value, for instance: 'photographing is an action applying to one visible thing'.
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=882&start=0#p4623
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing default responses?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-12-07 18:04:06

You could use the method in ch. 7 "Basic Actions," section 7.5. "After rules:"[code]After taking the machine: say "You stuff it into your pocket."[/code]I personally would go with a report rule:[code]Report taking the machine: say "You stuff it into your pocket." instead.[/code]With the report rule, you need to add "instead" at the end to end the rulebook and avoid printing the default response. You don't need this with an after rule, because preempting the report rules is the default behavior for after rules.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=881&start=0#p4624
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Synonyms not working
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-12-07 18:55:33

[quote="Keltena"]... I'm attempting to make synonyms work (e.g., make a character referrable to by their first or last name as well as their full name, or make something with a long name able to be referred to by a shorter description).[/quote]This works automatically with objects, but with topics (which are just chunks of text) you need to set it up like your doing. [quote="Keltena"]Here's an example of what I have that doesn't work:
[i]Understand "photo" as "[photo of the crime scene]".[/i][/quote]That should work, but without seeing your whole code, I'm not sure where you went wrong. This works:[code]Lab is a room. Sam Spade is a man in the lab.
The photo of the crime scene is in the lab.

Understand "a/the photo/photograph of a/the crime scene" or "photo/photograph of a/the crime scene" or "a/the photo/photograph of crime scene" or "photo/photograph of crime scene" or "a/the photo/photograph" or "photo/photograph" as "[photo of the crime scene]".

Instead of asking sam spade about "[photo of the crime scene]", say "This is the response I'm looking for."

test me with "ask sam about photo / ask spade about the photo / ask sam about photograph / ask sam spade about the photo of the crime scene / ask sam about photo of crime scene / ask sam spade about the photo of crime scene / ask sam about photo of the crime scene / ask sam about photo of a crime scene / ask spade about the photograph".
[/code]Three things to note about the above:[list]1) You don't need to set up synonyms for asking Sam Spade -- "Sam," "Sam Spade" and just "Spade" all work, since the someone part of the action deals with objects (people);[/list:u][list]2) however, if you later want to ask someone else [i]about[/i] Sam, you'll need to go through the synonym adding process for him as a topic;[/list:u][list]3) you need to type a bunch of stuff to cover every possibility.[/list:u]

IMO, if you have a game where people are going to be asking about a lot of [i]things[/i] -- like a mystery, for example -- you should create a new action for that. See example 282 "Nameless" for a way to do that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=881&start=0#p4625
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Synonyms not working
User: Keltena / DateTime: 2009-12-07 19:13:33

It is in fact a mystery. Thanks for pointing out the example; that's going to save me a [i]ton[/i] of trouble and meaningless work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=860&start=0#p4626
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Help, I'm stuck in "So Far"!
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2009-12-07 20:51:53

[i]So Far[/i] is a great game, one of my favorites, but it's been years since I've played it.  However, I'm almost certain that I used a walkthrough!  It seems that there's a solution at the IF Archive, which has a step-by-step walkthrough after general advice for each section:  <a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/solutions/SoFar.sol">http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/solutions/SoFar.sol</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=883&start=0#p4627
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with defining new actions.
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2009-12-07 22:07:33

This problem is due to a confusing restriction that Inform imposes. Basically, in your action definition, you are only allowed to use a restricted set of terms, "thing" and "value" being the most common. So, instead of:

[code]
Plugging is an action applying to one memory container and one device.
[/code]

...you need:

[code]
Plugging is an action applying to two things.
[/code]

The grammar line ("Understand...as plugging") is where you refer to more specific kinds or objects. Actually, your grammar line is also malformed. Because you defined the action as applying to two things, Inform will be expecting two bracketed terms, one for each of those things. Yours refers to only one thing; the reference to "the memory stick" in the grammar line is literal text will force the player to type exactly those words. Here's what you want:

[code]
Understand "plug [a memory container] into [device]" as plugging.
[/code]

Now the player can refer to any memory container, and can also refer to just "memory" or "the stick" or "stick" or whatever. 

A couple more tips: 

(1) You can write more specific rules if you call the action "plugging it into". Inform will then understand rules that specify the objects, e.g. "Instead of plugging the shiny memory stick into the Macintosh"...

(2) Your code will be more reusable and easier to maintain if you use bracketed tokens to refer to objects, rather than just writing their names. Here's the report rule redone (also, note that you need to use "the noun" and "the second noun" to refer back to the objects the player typed):

[code]
Report plugging: say "[one of]You shove [the noun] into [the second noun][or]You plug in [the noun].[cycling]"
[/code]

This way, if you decide to add a second memory container called the flash drive, you don't have to rewrite your code. Ditto if you decide to change the name of the memory stick. Inform will automatically insert the correct name.

Hope this helps.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=882&start=0#p4628
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing default responses?
User: Pe-ads / DateTime: 2009-12-08 03:44:36

Cheers!

I thought it must be something like that, but I wasn't sure if it only applied to custom actions, and not default actions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=883&start=0#p4629
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with defining new actions.
User: Pe-ads / DateTime: 2009-12-08 03:58:17

Thanks a lot!

You guys are really helpful over here, especially to newbies like me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=862&start=0#p4630
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Defining vs Determining Values
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-12-08 04:14:48

I decided to solve the problem discussed above by utilizing the 2-values per characteristic (e.g. hiddenweight/weight) method I mentioned for a number of different characteristics present in my code.

Although most authors designing an Inform game probably wouldn't have much interest in what follows beyond mere curiousity, for the benefit of anyone more generally interested in crpg-esque systems or detailed character generation I'll record here a method I devised for determining by formula the weight of an average person.  I did a modest amount of research into finding some sort of standardized way to determine a rule-based way to decide the weight of a human character and couldn't turn up [b]The Answer[/b], so based on snippets of info here and there as well as some value judgements based on my own sensibilities I came up with the following.  Since we'll be weighing characters, we'll assume we've already implemented some sort of weight system with various appropriate rules; the code below assumes a weight system based on units of one ounce.  We also give each character a height (in inches), an age (in years), and a general body-type (with six basic styles from which to choose).

Generally speaking, the following guidelines are used in this height/weight system:

The base value for a man's bodyweight is set at 106 pounds (1696 ounces) plus 7 pounds (112 ounces) for every inch of height over 5 feet (60 inches).  For the first 60 inches of height, a man weighs 28.27 ounces per inch of height, which I've fudged to 29 ounces per inch.  

The base value for a woman's bodyweight is set at 105 pounds (1680 ounces) plus 5 pounds (80 ounces) for every inch of height over 5 feet (60 inches).  For the first 60 inches of height, a woman weighs 28 ounces per inch of height.

The above two ideas were based on some research at various websites peddling various products, so I won't provide any cites; nonetheless the basic idea seemed generally sound to me, although I played around with the exact poundages a bit before deciding on the 7lbs/inch for men and 5lbs/inch number for women.

I've factored age into the equation as follows, after experimenting with different values (i.e. the numbers here are somewhat more arbitrary than the rest of the formulas):
--for a person under the age of 25:  the average weight is decreased by approximately one-half of one percent for each year of age under the age of 25;
--for a person between the ages of 26 and 60: the average weight is increased by approximately one-half of one percent for each year of age over the age of 25;
--for a person over the age of 60, the weight is increased by the amount of weight the individual would have presumably gained between the ages of 26 and 60, only to then be decreased by approximately one percent for each year of age over the age of 60.

Last but by no means least is an attempt to account for the frame/build/body-shape of the indivudual.  There are 6 possible body-shapes:
--if the individual is frail/extremely thin, the weight is reduced by 25 percent;
--if the individual is thin/very lean, the weight is reduced by 15 percent;
--if the individual is an average healthy person with an average build, no adjustment is made;
--if the individual is unusually well-muscled but lean (i.e. your average superhero/athlete/etc), the weight is increased by 15 percent;
--if the individual has a somewhat soft/overweight build, weight is increased by 25 percent;
--if the individual is unusually obese, weight is increased by 35 percent.

If a particular character did not fit these guidelines in some way, we could just write a special rule to decide that character's weight in any way desired.

The following example translates the above into Inform 7-ese:

[code][to be safe, one should set the project to compile to glulx if the weight of any item is expected to approach 2000 pounds]

The testarea is a room.

[height is measured in inches]

A person has a number called height.  The height of a person is usually 66.  The height of a man is usually 68.  The height of a woman is usually 64.

[age is measured in years]

A person has a number called age.  The age of a person is usually 25.

[reflects the frame/build of the person]

Bodyshape is a kind of value.  The bodyshapes are frail, lean, normal, muscular, flabby, and obese.  A person has a bodyshape.  A person is usually normal.

[weight is measured in ounces; 16 ounces=1 pound]

A thing has a number called hiddenweight.  The hiddenweight of a thing is usually 1.

A thing has a number called weight.

To decide what number is the weight of (stuff - a thing):
	decide on hiddenweight of stuff.

[a final branch, 'if avgjoe/avgjane is afflicted,' is part of the test game and has nothing to do with the general calculation]

To decide what number is the weight of (avgjoe - a man):
	let bwvalue1 be height of avgjoe - 60;
	if bwvalue1 is greater than 0:
		change bwvalue1 to bwvalue1 * 112;
		increase bwvalue1 by 1696;
	if bwvalue1 is less than 1:
		change bwvalue1 to 0;
		repeat with htupd running from 1 to height of avgjoe:
			increase bwvalue1 by 29;
	let bwvalue2 be bwvalue1 / 200;
	if the age of avgjoe is less than 25:
		decrease bwvalue1 by (bwvalue2 * 24);
		repeat with ageupd running from 1 to age of avgjoe:
			increase bwvalue1 by bwvalue2;
	if the age of avgjoe is greater than 25 and the age of avgjoe is less than 61:
		repeat with ageupd running from 26 to age of avgjoe:
			increase bwvalue1 by bwvalue2;
	if the age of avgjoe is greater than 60:
		increase bwvalue1 by (bwvalue2 * 35);
		repeat with ageupd running from 61 to age of avgjoe:
			decrease bwvalue1 by (bwvalue2 * 2);
	change bwvalue2 to bwvalue1 / 100;
	if avgjoe is frail:
		decrease bwvalue1 by (bwvalue2 * 25);
	if avgjoe is lean:
		decrease bwvalue1 by (bwvalue2 * 15);
	if avgjoe is muscular:
		increase bwvalue1 by (bwvalue2 * 15);
	if avgjoe is flabby:
		increase bwvalue1 by (bwvalue2 * 25);
	if avgjoe is obese:
		increase bwvalue1 by (bwvalue2 * 35);
	if avgjoe is afflicted:
		change the hiddenweight of avgjoe to (bwvalue1 / 3);
		decide on hiddenweight of avgjoe;
	decide on bwvalue1.

To decide what number is the weight of (avgjane - a woman):
	let bwvalue1 be height of avgjane - 60;
	if bwvalue1 is greater than 0:
		change bwvalue1 to bwvalue1 * 80;
		increase bwvalue1 by 1680;
	if bwvalue1 is less than 1:
		change bwvalue1 to 0;
		repeat with htupd running from 1 to height of avgjane:
			increase bwvalue1 by 28;
	let bwvalue2 be bwvalue1 / 200;
	if the age of avgjane is less than 25:
		decrease bwvalue1 by (bwvalue2 * 24);
		repeat with ageupd running from 1 to age of avgjane:
			increase bwvalue1 by bwvalue2;
	if the age of avgjane is greater than 25 and the age of avgjane is less than 61:
		repeat with ageupd running from 26 to age of avgjane:
			increase bwvalue1 by bwvalue2;
	if the age of avgjane is greater than 60:
		increase bwvalue1 by (bwvalue2 * 35);
		repeat with ageupd running from 61 to age of avgjane:
			decrease bwvalue1 by (bwvalue2 * 2);
	change bwvalue2 to bwvalue1 / 100;
	if avgjane is frail:
		decrease bwvalue1 by (bwvalue2 * 25);
	if avgjane is lean:
		decrease bwvalue1 by (bwvalue2 * 15);
	if avgjane is muscular:
		increase bwvalue1 by (bwvalue2 * 15);
	if avgjane is flabby:
		increase bwvalue1 by (bwvalue2 * 25);
	if avgjane is obese:
		increase bwvalue1 by (bwvalue2 * 35);
	if avgjane is afflicted:
		change the hiddenweight of avgjane to (bwvalue1 / 3);
		decide on hiddenweight of avgjane;
	decide on bwvalue1.

[note this doesn't calculate gross weight, i.e. weight plus weight of any carried items, but presumably our general weight system would be more refined]

To say scaleweight for (weigher - supporter):
	let weighed-items be 0;
	if anything is on weigher:
		repeat with weighee running through things on weigher:
			increase weighed-items by weight of weighee;
		change weighed-items to weighed-items divided by 16;
	say "[weighed-items]".

To say (elev - a number) in elevated terms:
	if elev is less than 1:
		say "a fraction of an inch";
	otherwise if elev is greater than 0 and elev is less than 12:
		say "[elev] inches";
	otherwise if elev is greater than 11:
		let subelev be the remainder after dividing elev by 12;
		let baseelev be elev divided by 12;
		say "[baseelev]['][subelev]'".

A scale is an enterable supporter in the testarea.  The description of the scale is "A common bathroom scale.  The LED display reads '[scaleweight for the item described] lbs' in large red digits.".

Persuasion rule: persuasion succeeds.

Cyrus is a man in the testarea.  The age of Cyrus is 42.  Cyrus is obese.  The height of Cyrus is 75.  The player is Cyrus.  The description of Cyrus is "At [height of cyrus in elevated terms], you're a mountain of a man.".

Joe is a man in the testarea.  The description of Joe is "Joe is average in every way.  He's [height of joe in elevated terms].".
Jane is a woman in the testarea.  The description of Jane is "Jane is average in every way.  She's [height of jane in elevated terms].".

Tommy is a man in the testarea.  The age of Tommy is 16.  The height of Tommy is 67.  Tommy is muscular.  The description of Tommy is "It's Tommy, Jane's teenaged-son.  He's on the varsity football squad, and stands around [height of tommy in elevated terms].".
Sally is a woman in the testarea.  The age of Sally is 77.  Sally is frail.  The height of Sally is 62.  The description of Sally is "It's Sally, Joe's grandmother.  Joe suspects she's ill as her [height of sally in elevated terms] frame is skin-and-bones, but she refuses to see a doctor.".
Brenda is a woman in the testarea.  The age of Brenda is 47.  The height of Brenda is 65.  Brenda is flabby.  The description of Brenda is "It's Brenda, Jane's mother.  She's [height of brenda in elevated terms].".

Baby Dan is a man in the testarea.  The age of Baby Dan is 1.  The height of Baby Dan is 17.  The description of Baby Dan is "It's Joe's infant son, Dan.  He's only a year old and can already walk around on his own--amazing!  Tiny Dan is but [height of dan in elevated terms] tall.".

A bowling ball is in the testarea.  The description of the bowling ball is "A shiny bowling ball in a brilliant shade of emerald green.".  The hiddenweight of the bowling ball is 240. [15 pounds]

A person can be afflicted.  A person is usually not afflicted.

An odd berry is in the testarea.  The odd berry is edible.  The description of the odd berry is "Hmmm.  This small purple berry gives you a bad vibe.".

Before asking Baby Dan to try eating the odd berry:
	say "That's just wrong." instead.

After an actor eating the odd berry:
	if the actor is the player:
		say "You eat the berry, and...[no line break]oh no!  You've been afflicted with a strange wasting disease!";
		now the player is afflicted;
	otherwise:
		say "[The actor] eats the berry, and suddenly shrivels up to a mere shadow of [if the actor is male]him[otherwise]her[end if]self.  [The actor] has been afflicted with a strange wasting disease!";
		now the actor is afflicted.

			
Test me with "get on scale / x scale / get off scale / get ball / put ball on scale / x scale / get ball / joe, get on scale / x scale / joe, get off scale / jane, get on scale / x scale / jane, get off scale / tommy, get on scale / x scale / tommy, get off scale / sally, get on scale / x scale / sally, get off scale / brenda, get on scale / x scale / brenda, get off scale / dan, get on scale / x scale / dan, get off scale / eat berry / get on scale / x scale".[/code]
Certainly the assessment of the relationship between weight, height, age, and body-shape accomplished by the above code won't be to everyone's liking as it's based in part on my own sense of things (and even given that I'll likely continue fiddling with the numbers a bit), but perhaps it will be useful to anyone trying to come up with a way to codify such a value in any type of fairly detailed crpg.  If anyone finds the above helpful, they should feel free to use or modify it in any way they like.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=883&start=0#p4631
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with defining new actions.
User: Pe-ads / DateTime: 2009-12-08 04:16:30

Meh, I've run into a new problem.

Inform doesn't like this:

[code]Carry out plugging a memory container into a device: now [the memory container] is plugged into [the device].
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=883&start=0#p4632
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with defining new actions.
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-12-08 04:26:43

First, lose the brackets. They are used only in printed text, everywhere else they are comments that are ignored by the compiler. Second, you must use "noun" and "second noun" to refer to the things in question in this case.

[code]Carry out plugging a memory container into a device: 
    now the noun is plugged into the second noun.[/code]
This all assumes, of course, that you have defined a "plugged into" relation somewhere else in the code...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=883&start=0#p4633
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with defining new actions.
User: emshort / DateTime: 2009-12-08 04:29:20

Another problem is that if you have an action that applies to two objects rather than one, you need to define your action to contain the word "it" -- which is where the first object will go. So for instance:

Plugging it into is an action applying to two things. Understand "plug [something] into [something]" as plugging it into.

Only when Inform knows about "into" will it let you write a carry out rule that starts with "Carry out plugging a memory container into a device: ...".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=848&start=10#p4634
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Games that do conversation well
User: emshort / DateTime: 2009-12-08 04:31:37

[quote="ALear"]I don't know about other folks, but this type of response is a large part of why I'm growing to hate the tendency towards second person in IF.[/quote]

I get the rest of your criticism, and indeed player responses like yours to Galatea are part of the reason Alabaster is designed as it is. 

But I'm not clear on how the problem has anything to do with the use of the second person; wouldn't it be just as annoying (in the sense of the computer failing to carry out your wishes) if it said something like "I can't form that question into words"?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=848&start=10#p4635
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Games that do conversation well
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-12-08 04:46:36

[quote="emshort"]But I'm not clear on how the problem has anything to do with the use of the second person; wouldn't it be just as annoying (in the sense of the computer failing to carry out your wishes) if it said something like "I can't form that question into words"?[/quote]

I don't know if this is what ALear was thinking, but I can see how the second person can be more annoying. "You can't form a question" feels like the game is saying that [i]the player[/i] can't find the words or phrase the question right when in fact the player probably does know how to form the question, but it's [i]the parser[/i] that doesn't know how to handle the input. The parser is basically accusing the player of its own limitations. It feels more honest and less annoying if the parser acknowledges the true reason why the input wasn't accepted.

(I suppose this also depends on how much the player feels like "you" is referring to the player directly, or is the player taking some role while playing the game and "you" refers to that role and not to the player himself.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=883&start=0#p4636
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with defining new actions.
User: Pe-ads / DateTime: 2009-12-08 04:56:44

I did what you guys said, but it still won't work:

[code]
A memory is a kind of thing. The plural of memory is memories.

A memory container is a kind of container. It can only hold memories.

The memory stick is a memory container.

Plugging it into is an action applying to two things. Understand "plug [a memory container] into [a device]" as plugging it into. 
Carry out plugging a memory container into a device: 
      now the noun is plugged into the second noun.

A check plugging it into rule: if the memory stick is not carried then say "You can't plug your memory stick into something without actually having your memory stick!" instead.

Report plugging: say "[one of]You shove [the noun] into [the second noun][or]You plug in [the noun].[cycling]"[/code]

That's all the code relating to the memory stick. It looks like it should work, but Inform keeps on saying this:

[quote]In Section 1 - Extra rules:


Problem. In the sentence 'now the noun is plugged into the second noun'  , I was expecting to read a condition, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'noun is plugged into the second noun'.
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=883&start=0#p4637
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with defining new actions.
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-12-08 05:29:14

If you read that compiler error closely, it means Inform doesn't really understand what it means for one thing to be "plugged into" something else.  The source of Inform's confusion is the ambiguity of the phrases you're using.  It makes sense to you or I that plugging something into something (an action) results in two things being plugged into each other (a state of being).  Inform can't understand that, though, on its own.

What you need to do is add some kind of state you can check (for example, "connected") that is effected when the action of plugging one thing into something else is taken.  This would depend on your story and what you want to accomplish, but for example you could have something like:

[code]The testarea is a room.
			
A memory is a kind of thing. The plural of memory is memories.

A memory container is a kind of container. It can only hold memories.

A thing can be connected.  A thing is usually not connected.

The memory stick is a memory container in the testarea.

Plugging it into is an action applying to two things. Understand "plug [a memory container] into [a device]" as plugging it into.
 
Carry out plugging a memory container into a device: 
	now the noun is connected;
	now the second noun is connected.

A check plugging it into rule: if the memory stick is not carried then say "You can't plug your memory stick into something without actually having your memory stick!" instead.

Check plugging something into something:
	if the noun is connected:
		say "[The noun] is already plugged in." instead;
	if the second noun is connected:
		say "Something is already plugged into [the second noun]." instead;
	if the second noun is not the computer:
		say "You can't plug [the noun] into [the second noun]." instead;
	if the noun is not a memory container:
		say "That's not something you can plug in to anything." instead.

Unplugging it from is an action applying to two things.  Understand "unplug [something] from [something]" as unplugging it from.

Check unplugging something from something:
	unless the noun is connected:
		say "[The noun] isn't plugged in to anything." instead;
	otherwise:
		unless the second noun is connected:
			say "Nothing is plugged in to [the second noun]." instead.

Carry out unplugging something from something:
	now the noun is not connected;
	now the second noun is not connected.

Report unplugging:
	say "You unplug [the noun] from [the second noun].".

Report plugging: say "[one of]You shove [the noun] into [the second noun][or]You plug in [the noun].[cycling]".

A computer is a device in the testarea.[/code]

In general you're only making things harder on yourself by insisting on writing the implementation of the "Plugging it into" action as "Understand 'plug [a memory container] into [a device]' as plugging it into."  You're much better off just saying "'Understand plug [something] into [something] as plugging it into" and then writing a check rule to disallow plugging anything but a memory container into anything, and disallowing plugging anything into something that isn't a computer.

Hopefully that's helpful; if not please keep asking and someone will get you on the right track.



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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=883&start=0#p4638
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with defining new actions.
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2009-12-08 06:18:52

I would define "plugged into" as a relation as Nitku suggested:
[code]Device-connection relates one memory container to one device. The verb to be plugged into implies the device-connection relation.[/code]
With that in place, you can use phrases like "now the noun is plugged into the second noun" or "now the noun is not plugged into anything". The game will remember which sticks are plugged into which computers, and you can use that in your check rules:
[code]Check plugging it into:
    if the noun is plugged into something (called the current host):
        say "But [the noun] is already plugged into [the current host]." instead;
    if something (called the current stick) is plugged into the second noun:
        say "But [the current stick] is already plugged into [the second noun]." instead.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=883&start=0#p4639
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with defining new actions.
User: Pe-ads / DateTime: 2009-12-08 06:23:48

Thanks a [b]lot[/b], guys (and girls). Now my memory stick is working fine and I can get to the business of putting stuff on it.

I really am amazed by how friendly the people on this forum are, and how quick they respond! I got about three answers in 2 hours. On most forums, people get uppity and swear at you, and it isn't particularly nice.

Also, is it okay if I rip your code completely, Endosphere? I copied and pasted it for now, but I will type it out manually if need be!  [emote]:P[/emote]

@vapoware, that certainly looks a lot cleaner, and I may change it later, but for now I'm fed up with changing my memory stick code, so I think I'll just stick with what I've got at the mo. Thanks anyway. 

IntForum will definitely get a mention in my credits.

Again, thanks,

Pe-ads

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=848&start=10#p4640
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Games that do conversation well
User: emshort / DateTime: 2009-12-08 09:29:54

Yeah, the intention (at least) is that it's the protagonist, not the player, who is limited about what to say. (Which is consistent with the rest of the game, after all -- it's the protagonist's childhood, etc., that will be described if you talk to her.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=862&start=0#p4641
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Defining vs Determining Values
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-12-08 10:21:58

Interesting code, Endosphere. I look forward to seeing your system / game.  [emote]:)[/emote] 

One important thing to note however, is that calculated values and variables are separate constructs and should not be confused. For example, this line:[code]A thing has a number called weight.[/code]... is both unnecessary and potentially dangerous. Here you are creating a [i]property[/i] of things which is a number. Later, with your "to decide" phrases, you create a calculated value with the same name. Generally, you won't notice this conflict, since the calculated value will take precedence in most cases. However, look at this transcript after running the "test me" script in the IDE (edited for clarity):[quote]>[28] x scale
A common bathroom scale.  The LED display reads "102 lbs" in large red digits.

>showme me
yourself - man
    bowling ball
...
hiddenweight: 1636
weight: 0
male; afflicted
...
>[/quote]According to the debugging command, your weight is zero. This is because that routine is looking at the weight [i]property[/i] you created with the above line of code (which defaults at zero and hasn't been changed), not the [i]calculated value[/i] you have named "weight of (avgjoe - a man)." Although it doesn't affect your test code, the line should be deleted since there is a potential for conflict and giving everything in the world a property you're not actually using is a waste of memory.

EDIT: Also, I just noticed that your phrase for the scale needs a tweak. Notice that the player works out to 102 lbs (his starting weight / 3) with no accounting for the bowling ball he's carrying. That's because of this line:[code]repeat with weighee running through things on weigher:[/code]Remember that "on" means directly on. If you want to include indirect containment, do this:[code]repeat with weighee running through things enclosed by weigher:[/code]... which adds in the 15 lbs of the bowling ball.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=555&start=0#p4642
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dealing with implicit action reporting
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-12-08 13:21:11

WOW! Only a [b]One Year [/b]turnaround time for a response!

 [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

I think I "solved" the problem by changing the reporting to "first trying to take".

However, the other two suggestions are very helpful. I'll look into them, as I was never very happy with just adding "trying".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=878&start=0#p4643
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: RSS Feed?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-12-08 17:57:49

RSS feeds are among the many web technologies I've never dabbled in. It's possible somebody has already written something -- some sort of add-on -- to do this in PHPBB3, although I'd need to investigate. Presumably it wouldn't be hard to add my own (either in PHP, or in Perl accessing the same forum database), but again, I'd need to find out more to make it happen.

I think when it was suggested before, it was as a means of having it integrated with Planet-IF. My fear there was that much of the day-to-day posts wouldn't constitute "news" or "announcements" and would just clutter Planet-IF. In the past, I've worked on a news portal gateway type site that would interface directly to the PHPBB3 database, and use private/hidden forums as a source of the main news items (i.e., PHPBB3 handles all the posting, user validation, groups, etc, but with a custom front-end to use as a portal). The same kind of thing could work for an RSS news feed, I suppose -- feed just the "news and announcements" admin board.

But now, I realize you can get RSS feeds in a variety of ways. I think my PSP has an option for subscribing to RSS feeds. And doesn't Outlook now? So I can see the benefit to setting up the entire forum on an RSS feed. But again, it's something I would need to investigate. It sounds like there's some interest in this, so I [i]will[/i] check into it when I get a chance. But no promises it'll be today. [emote]:)[/emote]

I have a good-sized vacation coming up around Christmas. If I don't get to it before then, it'd give me a nice project to work on while I'm off work. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=555&start=0#p4644
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dealing with implicit action reporting
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2009-12-08 19:36:55

[quote="ShaeSays"]WOW! Only a [b]One Year [/b]turnaround time for a response![/quote]

I just looked through "unanswered posts" and figured what the hell, can't be more than a week or so old. [emote]:D[/emote]

[quote]I think I "solved" the problem by changing the reporting to "first trying to take".

However, the other two suggestions are very helpful. I'll look into them, as I was never very happy with just adding "trying".[/quote]

I've got to ask the both of you as more experienced I7 developers, what are the most salient things to watch out for when dealing with post-processing of text? I mean, if we assume you're not bottlenecked by an extremely slow system in other ways, are there any other common limits to the method of trapping and refining commands that didn't go through in the first place?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=862&start=0#p4645
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Defining vs Determining Values
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-12-08 20:57:54

Thanks for the response, Skinny Mike.  The example code demonstrating the weight formula in action is a bit muddled; it should probably have been posted a separate thread, if at all (my only reason for posting it was that I've been researching quite a bit and haven't been able to find anything that does the job).  Since all my weight-code-writing is in my mind closely related to the issue discussed several weeks ago in this post I tacked it on here, and then made a half-hearted effort to tie the example to the previous discussion; this was probably to the detriment of both the body-weight formula and the defining/determining variables discussion.

[quote="Skinny Mike"]One important thing to note however, is that calculated values and variables are separate constructs and should not be confused.[/quote]
Although you could just mean there's no apparent reason to state weight as a value in the example given (which is true, although there are several important reasons in my general code from which I adapted the example in a somewhat muddled way), I'm understanding you here as making a clarification of vaporware's earlier point,

[quote="vaporware"]What you're requesting is the ability to define a phrase that has the same syntax as a property reference ("the ___ of ___") and have Inform figure out which one you mean at any given moment. But this is troublesome...Inform would have to check this at runtime and generate very different code for the two situations.[/quote]
by providing the example:

[quote="Skinny Mike"]Here you are creating a [i]property[/i] of things which is a number. Later, with your "to decide" phrases, you create a calculated value with the same name...According to the debugging command, your weight is zero. This is because that routine is looking at the weight [i]property[/i] you created with the above line of code (which defaults at zero and hasn't been changed), not the [i]calculated value[/i] you have named "weight of (avgjoe - a man)."[/quote]
Actually this expansion of values was my very deliberate intention.  In my rambling response to vaporware, my main point was intended to be that I understand I want to do something Inform doesn't allow, namely to 

[quote="Endosphere"]...have a game world in which every possible thing will have a numeric value called weight, and that this value may change over time for some objects under some circumstances. We wish to stipulate the weight of some (probably) static things when defining them, while writing rules that will derive or adjust the weight of other things according to current conditions,[/quote]
and even though

[quote="Endosphere"]Apparently then we will not be allowed to directly modify the weight of things that have a predefined weight if the weight of other things in the game-world is derived from a formula rather than directly defined,[/quote]
I'm undeterred and want to do it anyway.  Thus due to a lack of options I've decided on the hack noted near the end of my first post that results, as you rightly noted, in "a potentially dangerous...potential for conflict" in the code.  I'm comfortable, however, with the idea that in order to get what I want I'll need to code cautiously to avoid any potential problems.

Thanks as well for pointing out a better way for the scale to work in the example; it was sort of silly for me to make a note rather than just change two words in the rule to make the example work better in terms of its own small game world.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=883&start=10#p4646
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with defining new actions.
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-12-08 21:23:58

[quote="Pe-ads"]Also, is it okay if I rip your code completely, Endosphere? I copied and pasted it for now, but I will type it out manually if need be! [emote]:P[/emote][/quote]
Take it and use it any way you want, I'm glad I could help.  Speaking only for myself, there's never any need to give any credit for my answers to anything here on the forum.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=555&start=0#p4647
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dealing with implicit action reporting
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-12-08 21:43:20

@ShaeSays

[quote="ShaeSays"]Posted: 23 Dec 200[b]8[/b][/quote]
[quote="Eleas"]Posted: 07 Dec 200[b]9[/b][/quote]

[quote="ShaeSays"]WOW! Only a [b]One Year [/b]turnaround time for a response![/quote]

[size=50]Oops, since the post was at the top of the subforum I just glanced at the "Dec" part without noticing the "8/9" part.[/size]

I'm just going to blame Eleas and say the whole thing was his fault. [emote]:lol:[/emote]

[size=50]Does anyone else besides me think the forum experience here could be made better with a larger selection of smilies to choose from?[/size] 

In any case, since implicit actions are the normal behavior of Inform and getting rid of them (if one wants to) is relegated to a stray line here or there in the documentation, this info was worth a fresh look anyway.


@Eleas
[quote="Eleas"]...what are the most salient things to watch out for when dealing with post-processing of text? I mean, if we assume you're not bottlenecked by an extremely slow system in other ways, are there any other common limits to the method of trapping and refining commands that didn't go through in the first place?[/quote]
I'm not sure what you mean; could you provide a general example of something you're trying to do?  I work on an ancient computer, so if anyone is likely to know about what makes Inform go ssllooww it's me, and the only things I've ever noticed that cause a big performance hit are every turn rules with lots of repeating through things.  I've never noticed any slowdowns while text was being processed, but on the other hand I don't normally do things that run through large sections of indexed text either.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=884&start=0#p4648
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Smile and the world smiles back at you
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-12-08 22:02:11

Thanks for providing this fine message board.  I realize there is an expectation that discussions here will be conducted with a certain level of refinement and sophistication, but has anyone ever looked into augmenting the selection of  [emote]:)[/emote] smilies available?  I've always found that sometimes these little yellow creatures can be worth an entire paragraph or two of text.
I don't have any idea about what's involved in coding a message board, so if it would be a lot of work or if the view of the management is that more smilies would bring down the level of decorum on the board, just ignore this request.

Thanks.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=848&start=10#p4649
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Games that do conversation well
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2009-12-09 00:34:37

I'm trying a method I first saw in Ultima 6 with the game I'm working on now. Words that are valid topics appear in different colors, and if you [b]>think[/b] about characters to get a list of currently-available topics.

(It's probably been done by a ton of text games that I can't think of now.)

I was playing through The Circuit's Edge a few months ago, and I think I'll try its method next. TCE gives you a menu with about three choices (say hello, say something complimentary, say the most terrible thing you can think of) and then an option to "TALK ABOUT." But I don't know. Maybe a combo method would actually be worse.

There's no great way to implement it, and I guess you really have to think, as an author, that you're making a game, and you're going to implement an arbitrary method of communication, and just try to make whatever method you choose as fun and engrossing as possible.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=884&start=0#p4650
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Smile and the world smiles back at you
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-12-09 03:10:04

I'd use the existing smilies more if they didn't have chins.   [emote]:|[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=848&start=10#p4651
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Games that do conversation well
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2009-12-09 05:09:55

I understand that a common criticism to ASK/TELL might be "it feels unnatural", but it doesn't have to. "Anchorhead", whose conversations comprised entirely of ASK/TELL, was the first IF game in which conversation felt extraordinarily natural. I suppose it's all a matter of coding and design, as it usually is.

I haven't played Pytho's Mask, but if it's like City of Secrets, then I have to second that - it's a mixture of ask/tell and topics-based, which can give very interesting, broad, detailed results. Hell to implement, I'm sure, but heaven to play through. More than once, in the case of City of Secrets.

I did implement something in my WiP in an attempt to make an ASK/TELL system sound more natural. I made it so that typing "NPC, topic?" or "NPC, topic" would ASK the NPC about the topic, and "NPC, topic." or "NPC, topic!" would TELL him/her about it. It had the advantage of working seamlessly with a "say" command which has been mentioned very early in this thread - "NPC, hello" (or "NPC, hello.") would be as easy to parse as "NPC, John". And it would only be a matter of adding extra responses to "NPC, where is John" or "NPC, who is John". Downside is that I couldn't find a way to then restore the original Inform ability to command characters about, but it didn't bother me for my WIP.

When testing the game, I personally found it much better to type this than to type "ask NPC about TOPIC". Felt more natural, even though it completely strips away the illusion of it being anything but a keyword system. "Carmen Devine", I was surprised to see, implemented something similar, without the punctuation marks, and I was glad to use that alternate style of conversation.

Other than this, I can only echo what has been said - it depends mostly on your game, and on your design, and on your writing, and what you feel comfortable with. Apart from Cheap AI, which I find pretensious and frustrating, there is no wrong answer, and the answer you feel *right* with is sure to be the right answer. Experiment! [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=885&start=0#p4652
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Twitternomic
User: Jonathan D / DateTime: 2009-12-09 06:49:35

A colleague and I are starting a new nomic, called twitternomic.  We're looking for a few players, and I thought I'd post here.  Seem to be all sorts of intelligent/interesting folk involved with IF.

The game of Nomic was created in 1982 by Peter Suber, a philosophy professor out of Earlham College.  The wikipedia entry for Nomic can be found [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomic]here[/url], and Suber's site on the game can be found [url=http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/nomic.htm]here[/url].

The gist of Nomic is that a "move" is a rule change of the game itself.  This makes for a very interesting, open-ended endeavour into <i>whatever is of common interest</i> to the players themselves.  As one of the draws of IF is that sense of open-ended, anything-is-possible exploration, I am hoping there may be a few you here that we can hook.

The website for twitternomic can be found [url=http://sites.google.com/site/twitternomic/]here[/url], where you can read the initial rule set.  That website will keep track of game state, but as for the dialogue (proposals, debates, votes) we will most likely create a Google Group.

Many nomics dissolve into paradox, and end quickly.  Others are more robust.  For a look at a long-running nomic, check out Agora Nomic [url=http://www.agoranomic.org/]here[/url].  You can peruse their current rule set, which is quite complex.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=848&start=10#p4653
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Games that do conversation well
User: ALear / DateTime: 2009-12-09 06:59:04

[quote="emshort"]Yeah, the intention (at least) is that it's the protagonist, not the player, who is limited about what to say. (Which is consistent with the rest of the game, after all -- it's the protagonist's childhood, etc., that will be described if you talk to her.)[/quote]

Which is part of why I dislike second person. When there's not intended to be a real distinction between the player and the character, second person works... but when the player character has their own history, their own thoughts, their own methods, then the division shouldn't be blurred so much. 

That is a separate entity, so why should the game confuse me and this other person?

EDIT: I just realized this might have come across a little more negatively than I intended. I'm just trying to convey that, at least for some of the audience, this kind of conflation makes it a lot harder for us to enjoy what is otherwise well written material.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=886&start=0#p4654
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Examples of interesting action/combat in IF
User: ALear / DateTime: 2009-12-09 07:02:14

Since there's a thread on conversation, I'm curious as to how various authors have handled the task of complex or difficult feats of physical exertion, including combat.

I'm having trouble envisioning good approaches, but maybe I just haven't been exposed to enough work yet that has attempted -- possibly even successfully -- to carry this kind of narrative.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=886&start=0#p4655
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Examples of interesting action/combat in IF
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-12-09 07:27:21

Here's a list from IFDB: [url]http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=tag%3Acombat[/url]. Looks like it covers most of the notable games of the combat and puzzle combat genres.

(IFDB is a great place for requests like this: you can even start a poll where other users can vote for games to be on the list, for example: <a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/poll?id=4lroom6mc963xree">http://ifdb.tads.org/poll?id=4lroom6mc963xree</a>)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=848&start=10#p4656
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Games that do conversation well
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-12-09 09:09:19

[quote="ALear"]That is a separate entity, so why should the game confuse me and this other person?[/quote]
I wish IF authors would use the first person more often, [i]but[/i] I do think there is a use for a second person narrative in a game with a characterised PC.

In a game where you are supposed to enter the character's head and think like them, I think referring to them as 'you' can be appropriate and even powerful.  

On the other hand, if the game wants to tell a character's story more than it wants to put you in their shoes (especially if you're not going to be making many choices on their behalf), I think first person feels a lot more natural.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=878&start=0#p4657
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: RSS Feed?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-12-09 11:41:32

Thanks, Merk. Admittedly the Planet IF thing is not such a hot idea, especially now when the forum has gained more momentum, but it would be cool to have for personal use. I remember seeing RSS plugins for phpBB before so there should be ready to use solutions available.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=848&start=10#p4658
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Games that do conversation well
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-12-09 15:00:31

I've been following this last part of the conversation in a slightly confused manner.

[quote]Yeah, the intention (at least) is that it's the protagonist, not the player, who is limited about what to say.[/quote]

Em, am I to understand that when you, the player (represented by an art critic), type in a command to question the NPC (Galatea), and the response is "You can't form your question into words", that the "you" referred to is Galatea? Why would she be attempting to form a question in response to your question?

I didn't process it that way, especially since responses are built into Inform like "You jump on the spot, fruitlessly" after the PC says "jump", clearly mapping "you" to the PC. I'm not saying you built this in Inform (don't know), but that it seems like a convention that could cause confusion if broken.

That said, responses like "You can't form your question into words" don't bother me. I realize I'm playing IF, and that there are going to be a million things I can say that will garner a default response, because they aren't part of the story and weren't implemented. I don't really care how that default response is written.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=878&start=0#p4659
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: RSS Feed?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-12-09 15:05:48

Seconded... I'd probably read the forum through Google Reader if it were possible. No hurry though. As a person who runs a hobby site for free, I know it's painful to get around to doing new things.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=848&start=20#p4660
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Games that do conversation well
User: ALear / DateTime: 2009-12-09 15:50:05

[quote="ShaeSays"]
Em, am I to understand that when you, the player (represented by an art critic), type in a command to question the NPC (Galatea), and the response is "You can't form your question into words", that the "you" referred to is Galatea? Why would she be attempting to form a question in response to your question?
[/quote]

No, by 'protagonist' Emily means the art critic.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=858&start=0#p4661
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Walker & Silhouette: Let's Get Testy
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-12-09 17:34:03

Version 8 of [b]Walker & Silhouette[/b] has emerged blinking into the light of the outside world.

You can grab it [url=http://gamesforcrows.blogspot.com/2009/12/walker-silhouette-download.html]here[/url].

Bug reports are still welcome.  I'll upload it to the IF Archive once it's done the rounds without exploding.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=858&start=0#p4662
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Walker & Silhouette: Let's Get Testy
User: emshort / DateTime: 2009-12-09 20:21:51

Woo!!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=887&start=0#p4663
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Confused "Instead of" messages
User: ChainsawPenguin / DateTime: 2009-12-09 20:51:33

Tillingham's footlocker is a container in the touring cabin.  It is locked. Instead of taking Tillingham's footlocker, say "It's really too heavy for you to lift."

Tillingham's hammock is a supporter in the touring cabin.  It is fixed in place. Instead of taking Tillingham's footlocker, say "It's best to leave his hammock alone."

I'm designating these as Tillingham's footlocker and Tillingham's hammock to distinguish them from the player's footlocker and hammock, designated "your footlocker" and "your hammock", and I have clauses that allow the parser to understand "my footlocker" as your footlocker, and similarly for your hammock. 

When I test it, though, I get this response:

Tillingham's hammock: That's fixed in place.

Tillingham's footlocker: It's best to leave his hammock alone.

Presumably, I'm doing something wrong, but if you have any insight, please let me know!!

~~ CP ~~

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=887&start=0#p4664
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Confused "Instead of" messages
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2009-12-09 20:56:42

I suspect something was lost in pasting, or you have a typo. Both of your rules are written about the footlocker. This works as expected:

[code]Touring Cabin is a room.

Tillingham's footlocker is a container in the touring cabin. It is locked. Instead of taking Tillingham's footlocker, say "It's really too heavy for you to lift."

Tillingham's hammock is a supporter in the touring cabin. It is fixed in place. Instead of taking Tillingham's hammock, say "It's best to leave his hammock alone."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=887&start=0#p4665
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Confused "Instead of" messages
User: ChainsawPenguin / DateTime: 2009-12-09 21:05:15

Look at it again?  I've bolded the section that you seem to think is repeated...?

EDIT: er... I've tried to, anyway...  I think you can see what i mean, though.

EDIT: aha.  Thanks!!  I missed your edit, which fixed the problem.

[quote="vaporware"]I suspect something was lost in pasting, or you have a typo. Both of your rules are written about the footlocker. This works as expected:

[code]Touring Cabin is a room.

Tillingham's footlocker is a container in the touring cabin. It is locked. Instead of taking [b]Tillingham's footlocker[/b], say "It's really too heavy for you to lift."

Tillingham's hammock is a supporter in the touring cabin. It is fixed in place. Instead of taking [b]Tillingham's hammock[/b], say "It's best to leave his hammock alone."[/code][/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=888&start=0#p4666
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: More trouble with naming
User: ChainsawPenguin / DateTime: 2009-12-09 21:21:06

[code]Your footlocker is a container in the touring cabin.  It is closed, openable, lockable and locked. Your footlocker key unlocks your footlocker.  Understand "my footlocker" as your footlocker.

Your footlocker key is carried.  Understand "my footlocker key" as your footlocker key.
[/code]

Trying to "unlock my footlocker" gives this

>unlock my footlocker
(with your footlocker key)
That doesn't seem to be something you can unlock.

>unlock my footlocker with my footlocker key
That doesn't seem to be something you can unlock.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=888&start=0#p4667
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More trouble with naming
User: ChainsawPenguin / DateTime: 2009-12-09 21:22:19

I'm sorry if I'm acting a little n00by here.  This is my first stab at this with Inform7.  At this rate, you guys will see the whole game before I put it out there!  

Thanks for your feedback!!

~~ CP ~~

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=888&start=0#p4668
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More trouble with naming
User: George / DateTime: 2009-12-09 22:15:28

Examine this test I made with that code and you'll see the core of the problem:

[code]
Welcome
An Interactive Fiction
Release 1 / Serial number 091209 / Inform 7 build 5Z71 (I6/v6.31 lib 6/12N) SD

Touring Cabin
You can see your footlocker (closed) here.

>i
You are carrying:
  your footlocker key

>unlock footlocker
(your footlocker key with your footlocker key)                  <--------- problem is here
That doesn't seem to be something you can unlock.
[/code]

The way the code is written the game isn't distinguishing properly between the footlocker and the footlocker key, because the game only reads the first 9 characters of a phrase to distinguish objects, and in your case the first nine characters are identical. See 3.1 of the documentation. 

A simple fix is like this:

[code]
Touring Cabin is a room.

Your footlocker is a container in the touring cabin.  It is closed, openable, lockable and locked. Your locker key unlocks your footlocker.  Understand "my footlocker" as your footlocker.

Your locker key is carried.  Understand "my locker key" as your locker key.
[/code]

Which gives the output:

[code]

Welcome
An Interactive Fiction
Release 1 / Serial number 091209 / Inform 7 build 5Z71 (I6/v6.31 lib 6/12N) SD

Touring Cabin
You can see your footlocker (closed) here.

>unlock footlocker with my locker key
You unlock your footlocker.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=888&start=0#p4669
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More trouble with naming
User: ChainsawPenguin / DateTime: 2009-12-09 22:27:26

Excellent!  Thanks!

Let me ask a question.  Is there any way to extend the nine character limit?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=888&start=0#p4670
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More trouble with naming
User: ChainsawPenguin / DateTime: 2009-12-09 22:35:35

Also, this is explanation and example actually in section 17.31 Activities in the documentation; I see, however, that the example is from section 3.  Thanks again for the fix!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=888&start=0#p4671
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More trouble with naming
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-12-09 23:23:48

I'm not sure if your last post meant you found an answer to the question:

[quote="ChainsawPenguin"]Is there any way to extend the nine character limit?[/quote]
If not, you can set your project to compile to glulx and use the variable "Use DICT_WORD_SIZE of [xx]" to change the maximum length of understood words.  For example:

Use DICT_WORD_SIZE of 17

should probably take care most items the character would likely interact with; if not you could just increase the number to whatever length needed.



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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=888&start=0#p4672
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More trouble with naming
User: ChainsawPenguin / DateTime: 2009-12-09 23:39:07

Thanks a bunch!  I had not actually found that fix in the code.  

Is it detrimental to a game to post questions on this forum?  I'm a programmer by day, and I don't want to spoil everything for the whole community by posting my questions here, but you guys are a GREAT resource!!

Thanks again!

~~ CP ~~

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=886&start=0#p4673
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Examples of interesting action/combat in IF
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-12-09 23:41:58

I think a "good" combat system would generally meet the following related but distinct criteria:

1) The combat system in question provides an entertaining experience for the player.  If a game isn't fun, then the player's time is wasted; when many players start to spread the word that their time was wasted on a game, a subsidiary result is that author's time in making the game has been wasted because his effort will be considered a failure (unless we're speaking of a commercial game, in which case the author's main concern is whether or not he got paid and a happy audience is a pleasant bonus but not a primary focus).  In general the most important characteristic of any game or any component of any game is whether or not it will serve to entertain the player; if something isn't fun, it must go or be revised until it is fun.

2) The combat system in question complements the general tone, themes, and style of the game.  This somewhat relates to the first criteria in the sense that certain types of people will be drawn to certain types of games in the first place, and will have fun playing a game if it meets their expectations.  On the other hand, this criteria is more subtle as well.  A realistic fighting system would likely seem odd in a surreal-style game; in a game focused on clever puzzles, a means of resolving conflicts by solving puzzles is probably more appropriate; in a game with a highly realistic general environment, a fighting system that is too simplistic will likely be a disappointment.

3) In more specific terms of a text game (as opposed to graphically-oriented games), I think fighting or combat should serve the story by providing a means to enhance the general excitement level of the player and increase the sense of tension at key points, by allowing an alternative means (via physical challenges) for resolving difficult situations/puzzles, and by providing increased replay-value through the introduction of a randomised element of gameplay.  Unless we are speaking of some sort of unusual text game dealing with elite martial-artists or such, a fighting system that aspires to much more than these goals is likely to detract from rather than enhance the game.  Furthermore, without the assistance of a graphical interface any system of combat in a text game that moves much beyond a relatively simple system with intuitive commands and concisely-written descriptions of the actions of all participating characters is likely to directly frustrate the player.

I think three of my generally favorite IF games used combat/fighting in an effective way that meets the above criteria: [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ii7j0kliujc4k8wf]Scavenger[/url] by Quintin Stone, [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=4qfjt6y5pkan2220]Crystal and Stone, Beetle and Bone[/url] by Jenny Brennan (particularly the "boss fight" near the end of the game), and [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=9ntef9expou18abv]King of Shreds and Patches[/url] by Jimmy Maher.  Another game that integrated and handled fighting fairly well in my opinion was the recent [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=zkbp7ygz2uafxr1c]Duel That Spanned the Ages Part 1[/url].  I haven't played many of the games listed on Nitku's link, but of those listed that I have played I thought Crimson Spring had a fair fighting system (for at least as far as I played into the game, which was about halfway).

Although my tastes in IF certainly wouldn't be shared by everyone, when I was building a fairly intricate combat system to entertain myself I wrote down the following notes as guidelines and tried to stay closely focused on them:

a) Criteria (1) and (3) from above;

b) The average fight should last between 5 and 15 turns.  Assuming we have a "true" heavily randomized fighting system rather than a fighting system that is just an alternate way to present traditional puzzles, a fight lasting only 1 or 2 turns is unlikely to provide much satisfaction for the player while a fight lasting 20 or more turns is unlikely to be fun;

c) The average person is not a trained combatant, but fortunately neither is his opponent likely to be a trained combatant; therefore most attacks (particularly with weapons that require some level of skill, such as guns) should miss.  Furthermore unless powerful weapons are in use, most attacks are only minimally damaging to the target of the attack; for example it's actually fairly difficult to punch an actively resisting person to death in real life, and barring a strike to the head the average person can usually survive at least several blows from a heavy club.  Barring "lucky shots" to the head or a vital organ, most healthy adults do not instantly fall over dead even after being shot with a common-caliber gun several times (although they may well faint from shock, or bleed to death eventually unless they recieve medical attention).  While such gameplay could be very boring in a graphically-oriented game, a text game can shine here by making good use exciting descriptions for failed and ineffective attacks to create a sense of continuing urgency for the player;

d) Weapons and armor must be described in such a way that 1) the player clearly understands how to use them, and 2) the player can clearly comprehend the relative effectiveness of any weapon or armor compared to other such items.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=888&start=0#p4674
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More trouble with naming
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-12-10 00:09:05

[quote="ChainsawPenguin"]Is it detrimental to a game to post questions on this forum?[/quote]
I'd say just ask away until you get all the help you need, and if you don't understand any particular answer don't hesitate to ask for clarification.  Without at all meaning to single out anything that goes on here at this forum, I'd say that in every sort of noncommercial gaming community many people unnecessarily limit themselves by, for whatever reason, being reluctant to ask questions.

If I had what I thought was a cool idea for a game that I was intending to release at some point, I'd phrase the question for myself in the following way:

Is it better to never finish my game because there are technical issues I can't understand, rather than ask for help when I need it?




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=888&start=0#p4675
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More trouble with naming
User: George / DateTime: 2009-12-10 00:32:54

[quote="Endosphere"]Without at all meaning to single out anything that goes on here at this forum, I'd say that in every sort of noncommercial gaming community many people unnecessarily limit themselves by, for whatever reason, being reluctant to ask questions.[/quote]

Agreed, we're all here to discuss and learn about IF CP, so ask away.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=886&start=0#p4676
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Examples of interesting action/combat in IF
User: ALear / DateTime: 2009-12-10 03:59:27

Yeah, I think those are reasonable criteria. I don't think 'randomized' is strictly necessary, but otherwise I agree with you on those three points.

I'll take a look at those examples. The ones from the ifdb 'combat' tag are.. well, many of them I question. Zork 1, for instance, can hardly be accused of having much narrative for the combat to support, and the combat itself was... hardly anything to speak of.

Happily, I was surprised by the recent release of [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=aw6l8f2xt5m1min7]Backup[/url] which, on initial examination, seems to have glimmerings of a viable combat system. I haven't gone far in it yet, and I fear its simple mechanic could potentially become monotonous, but I'm holding hope for now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=888&start=0#p4677
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More trouble with naming
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2009-12-10 05:14:29

Actually, the 9 character limit isn't the problem here. That limit means 9 characters [b]per word[/b]. "Footlocker key" is two words. Inform can't distinguish "footlockezzzzz key" from "footlocker key", but it [i]can[/i] distinguish "footlocker crowbar" from "footlocker key".

The problem is that Inform's parser will normally accept any combination of words in an object's name, and doesn't really care if you leave some words out. So "footlocker" matches the footlocker and the key equally well. George's solution works because it takes the word "footlocker" out of the key's name.

Another solution would be to specify the key's name in a way that prevents the word "footlocker" from matching by itself. The trick here is (1) make the object privately-named so Inform doesn't understand its name by default, then (2) use understand lines to add "footlocker key" back as a phrase, which Inform won't break apart and match as separate words:[code]Your footlocker key is carried. It is privately-named. Understand "key" or "footlocker key" or "your/my key" or "your/my footlocker key" as your footlocker key.[/code]

A third solution in some situations is to leave the name as-is and use "does the player mean" rules to eliminate nonsensical actions:[code]Does the player mean unlocking your footlocker with the second noun: it is likely.
Does the player mean unlocking your footlocker key with the second noun: it is unlikely.
Does the player mean unlocking something with your footlocker: it is unlikely.[/code]
However, that doesn't work well in this particular case, because of the word "my". Inform sometimes (not sure exactly when) takes that to mean "the one I'm carrying", and in this case the only object matching "footlocker" that you're carrying is the key.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=888&start=10#p4678
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More trouble with naming
User: George / DateTime: 2009-12-10 10:11:23

Thanks for the explanation vw, that makes more sense.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=886&start=0#p4679
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Examples of interesting action/combat in IF
User: emshort / DateTime: 2009-12-10 17:22:15

In my experience, combat randomization doesn't work terribly well in IF, because it interacts badly with turn-based play and the presence of UNDO. There have been a few attempts to get around those problems, but they remain fairly pervasive; there's some theoretical discussion here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifwiki.org/index.php/Past_raif_topics:_Game_Mechanics:_part_2#Combat">http://ifwiki.org/index.php/Past_raif_t ... t_2#Combat</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://inky.org/if/rota.html">http://inky.org/if/rota.html</a>

However, the games with the puzzle combat tag on IFDB tend to be doing something a bit more interesting ( <a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchbar=tag%3A+puzzle+combat&searchGo.x=0&searchGo.y=0">http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchbar=t ... archGo.y=0</a> ): they all require puzzle solutions.

If you're looking into attempts at more tactical play, in addition to Backup you should check out Victor Gijsbers' combat experiments; the playable demo is mentioned at

<a class="postlink" href="http://gamingphilosopher.blogspot.com/2008/06/idols-of-war-inform-attack-public-alpha.html">http://gamingphilosopher.blogspot.com/2 ... alpha.html</a>

but there are a number of other posts on what he was trying to do.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=889&start=0#p4680
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Storing player location
User: Redux / DateTime: 2009-12-11 00:44:34

Hey folks,
long time tinkerer, first time Inform 7 user here.

Having played around with I7 for a little while I seem to have hit a wall.

The player goes on a ... spiritual journey, which may be initiated in ANY room in the game, which transports the player to a maze of rooms. Once at the end of the maze, aka enlightenment, the player is transported back to the location s/he was in when s/he started the journey... My problem is that I do not know how to create an exit which stores the location of the player and allows them to use it to return to it... 

Now I get how to create the custom command to send the player there, works perfectly too, but the return journey is the problem.

I hope someone here can help me.  [emote]:|[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=889&start=0#p4681
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Storing player location
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2009-12-11 01:17:25

You can use a global variable for this. Something like...

[code][define the variable:]
The journey starting point is a room that varies.

[save the player's old location when they start the journey:]
Instead of xyzzying:
    change the journey starting point to the location;  [<--]
    move the player to the first maze room.

[send the player back when they exit the maze:]
After going to the final maze room:
    move the player to the journey starting point.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=848&start=20#p4682
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Games that do conversation well
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-12-11 13:04:39

Alear said:
[quote]
No, by 'protagonist' Emily means the art critic.[/quote]

But Emily said:

[quote]
Yeah, the intention (at least) is that it's the protagonist... After all -- it's the protagonist's childhood, etc., that will be described [b]if you talk to her.[/b][/quote](emphasis mine)

So then, by your interpretation, Alear, Em describes the mere act of playing the game as "talking to her (the art critic)"? After all, I assume you don't say "self, hello" or "tell art critic about..." in the midst of play, and "talking to" as a command is what this thread is about.

Confusing either way, so I'd like to hear Em's answer if she's still around.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=889&start=0#p4683
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Storing player location
User: Redux / DateTime: 2009-12-11 13:16:34

Thank you so much, that worked.  [emote]:D[/emote]
Can hardly believe I spent so much time trying to get it right and it was such a simple line.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=888&start=10#p4684
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More trouble with naming
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-12-11 13:24:45

[quote]At this rate, you guys will see the whole game before I put it out there![/quote]

Gosh, that sure sounds familiar. [emote]:oops:[/emote] 

[quote]
Is there any way to extend the nine character limit?[/quote]

I know you've gotten some good responses to this question, but I'd add one more thing. You could call your variable asdfkjls if you wanted to and still have it print and respond to the word "footlocker key". I ran into this problem and solution when I had a bunch of similarly named variables all pertaining to airplane parts.
[code]
The locker key is a key. Understand "footlocker key" as the locker key. The printed name of the locker key is "footlocker key".[/code]

I wouldn't [b]actually [/b]call the variable asdfkjls, by the way, just in case inform does some unexpected reporting of some kind, like "Which do you mean, the skeleton key or the asdfkjls?" I actually don't think that particular one would happen, but I recall it happening somewhere and surprising me. So give it an inoffensive synonym.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=848&start=20#p4685
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Games that do conversation well
User: ALear / DateTime: 2009-12-11 14:06:57

In the course of interacting with Galatea, the player character's background is revealed in bits and pieces, through thoughts written in prose instead of dialogue.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=888&start=10#p4686
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More trouble with naming
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2009-12-11 15:53:17

[quote="ShaeSays"]I wouldn't [b]actually [/b]call the variable asdfkjls, by the way, just in case inform does some unexpected reporting of some kind, like "Which do you mean, the skeleton key or the asdfkjls?" I actually don't think that particular one would happen, but I recall it happening somewhere and surprising me. So give it an inoffensive synonym.[/quote]
If you make it privately-named, that shouldn't be a problem.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=848&start=20#p4687
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Games that do conversation well
User: emshort / DateTime: 2009-12-11 18:53:41

ALear is right: I mean the protagonist = critic.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=890&start=0#p4688
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Changing background colour doesn't work.
User: Pe-ads / DateTime: 2009-12-12 09:42:07

I've been trying to change the background colours on Inform. But it doesn't work.

[code]Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short

Turn the background black.
[/code]

I keep on getting errors about Inform not recognising the verb. Any help would be appreciated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=890&start=0#p4689
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing background colour doesn't work.
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-12-12 10:27:30

[quote="Pe-ads"][code]Turn the background black.[/code][/quote]The above is a phrase which, like all phrases in I7, needs a context so inform knows where or when to apply it:[code]Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short.

Lab is a room. 

When play begins:
	turn the background red;
	clear the screen.[/code]
Also, make sure you're compiling to z-code; the color effects in "Basic Screen Effects" don't work under glulx.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=890&start=0#p4690
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing background colour doesn't work.
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-12-12 12:24:45

I have a separate question about changing the displayed colors in a game, but under glulx rather than z-code.  I've been reading through the documentation of the "Glulx Text Effects" extension by Emily Short, and am unclear on a few issues.

Due to some interest in graphic arts, I tend to be fairly particular when using adjectives to describe the color of something.  The problem with this is that a) some people may not be familiar with the subtlties of various hues, and b) different people use many different words to refer to various subtle hues.  I'm not really interested in having colored-text displayed during normal gameplay, but I was thinking of adding an option in a "help" menu that would be something similar to "I keep seeing all these crazy words in the descriptions of things.  What's the difference between salmon-pink and dark salmon?" that would just be a simple list of colored words, such as:

[color=#FF91A4]Salmon pink[/color]
[color=#E9967A]Dark salmon[/color]
[color=#FF0000]Red[/color]
[color=#FF2400]Scarlet[/color]
[color=#DC143C]Crimson[/color]
[color=#DE3163]Raspberry[/color]
[color=#900020]Burgundy[/color]

etc, in case my use of color adjectives may be unclear to a reader/player.  The easiest way to do this would be to just include a small graphic image consisting of a list of colored example words (which I already understand how to do), but for the sake of curiosity I was wondering how to do this with regular text.

Reading through the "Glulx Text Effects" information, however, I have two questions:

1) The documentation says:

[quote="Glulx Text Effects"]This extension provides a table of glulx color values to start from, as follows...where the assigned number of each value is the decimal representation of a hex color code...[/quote]
Am I understanding correctly that this "hex color code" (that must be converted to a decimal number) is the same value more commonly known as an HTML color code?

2) The documentation says:

[quote="Glulx Text Effects"]A number of styles are predefined by Glulx. The author is also allowed to define two text styles of his own, which we will call special-style-1 and special-style-2. 

To set up style instructions with Glulx Text Effects, we create a table, like this...[/quote]
Does this mean it would not be possible to print a long list of colored words such as I was envisioning, since I would be limited to "two text styles" of my own, or am I misunderstanding the whole thing?

Thanks.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=890&start=0#p4691
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing background colour doesn't work.
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-12-12 12:49:53

[quote="Endosphere"]Does this mean it would not be possible to print a long list of colored words such as I was envisioning, since I would be limited to "two text styles" of my own...?[/quote]AKAIK, that is correct. I [i]think[/i] you can redefine the user styles when creating a new window, but using more than two user - defined styles (which include colored text) in the same window is out.

This thread from raif might be of interest:[url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/276d6ed280303213/646d153cbb04248c#]I7:Glulx Text Effects, Better Ways to Word It (in Source Text)[/url]

In particular, note this quote from [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/msg/2b57d825e166cbcc]one of Aaron Reed's posts[/url] from the above:[quote]I've been speaking about Blue Lacuna quite a bit recently in college classes and at a digital arts conference a few weekends ago. Whenever I explain that the color-coded keywords are "blue, green, and bold," people always ask me why the third one isn't a color, too. I have to explain that it's for "technical reasons," which tends to be an unimpressive moment in the presentation.[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=890&start=0#p4692
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing background colour doesn't work.
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-12-12 13:13:14

[quote="Endosphere"]Due to some interest in graphic arts...[/quote]Also, I don't know if you're aware of the current discussion regarding Zarf (Andrew Plotkin)'s proposal for a new Glk style system spec., but you might want to check it out and / or make your voice heard.

The original thread from raif is [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/618bddaab693e0ec#]here.[/url]

The proposal was reposted on [url=http://ifwiki.org/index.php/New_Glk_styles]ifwiki here[/url].

The current thread on raif is [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/02d4f0415400ea3d#]here[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=890&start=0#p4693
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing background colour doesn't work.
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-12-12 14:27:11

Thanks for the response, Skinny Mike.  It sounds like the "including a picture" idea is the only way to go here.

[quote="Endosphere"]Reading through the "Glulx Text Effects" information, however, I have two questions:

1) The documentation says:

[quote="Glulx Text Effects"]This extension provides a table of glulx color values to start from, as follows...where the assigned number of each value is the decimal representation of a hex color code...[/quote]
Am I understanding correctly that this "hex color code" (that must be converted to a decimal number) is the same value more commonly known as an HTML color code?[/quote]
In the first link you posted, someone posted a long list of colors with an associated value for each in the format specified by the "Glulx Text Effects" extension.  After researching a bit by converting the colors listed there into hexadecimal format and comparing the results to a [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colors]few[/url] [url=http://www.webdevelopersnotes.com/design/list_of_HTML_color_names.php3]sample[/url] charts, it looks like the "hex color code" mentioned in the extension documentation does indeed correspond to the hexadecimal expression of RGB values that I would normally call an HTML color.  Perhaps I was just being dense while reading the extension documentation.




-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=891&start=0#p4694
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: You also have yourself, on the chair.
User: orikae / DateTime: 2009-12-12 15:08:06

I've installed the Trinity Inventory extension for my game, but as my game's first puzzle requires that the PC frees him/herself from the a chair, they start sitting on a chair. This is what I get when I run inventory:

You're not holding anything, but you're wearing a rumpled suit and restraints which are binding your wrists and feet together. You also have yourself on the metal chair. 

Obviously, I don't want this to happen. How does this come about?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=890&start=0#p4695
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing background colour doesn't work.
User: orikae / DateTime: 2009-12-12 15:29:53

I would note that basic colour theory provides that the perception of a colour depends on its surrounding colour. So if you put dark salmon on a white background, it will look different than dark salmon on dark blue.

Since you're going with an image, it won't be as unpredictable as it would be with an interpreter-modifiable variable, but it's still something to keep in mind.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=891&start=0#p4696
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: You also have yourself, on the chair.
User: orikae / DateTime: 2009-12-12 17:41:25

This was fixed by Skinny Mike over at RAIF. Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=892&start=0#p4697
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Events
User: ryacku / DateTime: 2009-12-13 01:18:14

[quote]After entering the telephone booth:
	if the bad things counter is:
	-- 0: say "The booth shakes back and forth before it finally stops...";
		move the telephone booth to Jekkel Park.[/quote]

[quote]Bad things counter is a number that varies. Bad things counter is 1.

Required sights counter is a number that varies. Required sights counter is 10.

A thing has a number called the badness. The badness of a thing is usually 0.

After examining:
	if the player is holding the con-comms unit:
		increase the bad things counter by the badness of the noun;
		if the badness of the noun is greater than 0,
		say "Your con-comms unit begins to broadcast to you 'Our sensors are picking up the content loud and clear. We got it. The gross value of your experiences in this time is [bad things counter], but once the value's at [required sights counter], you can move on in time.'";
		now the badness of the noun is 0.[/quote]

Except it doesn't work.

How do I make it so that when I enter the telephone booth, it moves the booth to jekkel park, and tells the player that the booth is shaking? Obviously I don't want it so that whenever I reenter the booth it tells me it's moving in to the same location.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=892&start=0#p4698
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Events
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-12-13 05:27:01

I don't quite see what the bad things counter does. Your "after entering the phone booth" rule suggests that the rumbling and teleporting should happen only when the bad things counter is exactly zero. The counter starts at 1 and you keep adding to it during the game, so I don't see how the condition would ever be true, unless some items have a negative badness.

Anyway, the basic teleport to location unless already there rule would look something like this:

[code]After entering the telephone booth when the location is not Jekkel Park:
    say "The booth shakes back and forth before it finally stops...";
    move the telephone booth to Jekkel Park.[/code]
Sorry if I didn't get the right picture, just ask again if that didn't help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=892&start=0#p4699
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Events
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-12-13 06:21:02

That's a really complex scenario you presented, without explaining what any of the somewhat cryptic terms are intended to mean.  Nonetheless for fun I played around with what you posted, and I think this is what you were looking to do:

[code]Lansing Street is a room.  Jekkel Park is a room.

The bad things counter is a number that varies.  The bad things counter is usually 1.

The required sights counter is a number that varies.  The required sights counter is usually 10.

A thing has a number called the badness.  The badness of a thing is usually 0.

Every turn when the bad things counter is 10:
	change the bad things counter to 0.

When play begins:
	say "*brzzt* *pop* As you step out of your spiffy interdimensional telephone booth, you ponder the task ahead.  To escape this dimension and advance your quest to save the universe, you must obtain and scan at least nine of the holy artifacts mysteriously known as 'pokemon cards,' in order to recover their ancient wisdom and finally solve the riddle of Axnioz.".

The Telephone Booth is an enterable container in Lansing Street.  The telephone booth is open and openable.

Instead of taking the telephone booth:
	say "Actually, the booth is supposed to take you--to your next destination.".

After entering the telephone booth while the location is Lansing Street:
	if the bad things counter is 0:
		say "The booth shakes back and forth before it finally stops...";
		move the telephone booth to jekkel park;
		try looking;
	otherwise:
		continue the action.

The con-comms unit is a device.  The con-comms unit is in the telephone booth.  The description of the con-comms unit is "A combination interdimensional radio and optical scanner.".

After examining anything:
	if the player is holding the con-comms unit:
		increase the bad things counter by the badness of the noun;
		if the badness of the noun is greater than 0:
			say "Your con-comms unit begins to broadcast to you 'Our sensors are picking up the content loud and clear. We got it. The gross value of your experiences in this time is [bad things counter], but once the value's at [required sights counter], you can move on in time.'";
		now the badness of the noun is 0;
		continue the action;
	otherwise:
		if the noun is a pokemon card:
			say "Praise the Gedzels!  This is it!  You'd better get your con-comms unit and scan this holy artifact immediately.";
			continue the action;
		otherwise:
			continue the action.

A brown bag is a container in Lansing Street.  The brown bag is closed and openable.  The description of the brown bag is "A crumpled paper bag.".

A Pokemon Card is a kind of thing.  The badness of a pokemon card is 1.

A pokemon card called a Mewtwo card is in the brown bag.  The description of it is "Oh my, it's Mewtwo!  Priceless!".
A pokemon card called a Pikachu card is in the brown bag.  The description of it is "It's Pikachu! Yay!".
A pokemon card called a Hitmonchan card is in the brown bag.  The description of it is "It's Hitmonchan!  Cool!".
A pokemon card called a Hitmonlee card is in the brown bag.  The description of it is "It's Hitmonlee!  Awesome!".
A pokemon card called a Squirtle card is in the brown bag.  The description of it is "It's Squirtle.  Hmm.".
A pokemon card called a Charizard card is in the brown bag.  The description of it is "It's Charizard!  Yes!".
A pokemon card called a Psyduck card is in the brown bag.  The description of it is "It's Psyduck.  Sigh.".
A pokemon card called a Tentacruel card is in the brown bag.  The description of it is "It's Tentacruel.  Eww.".
A pokemon card called a Vulpix card is in the brown bag.  The description of it is "It's Vulpix!  Hooray!".

Rule for deciding whether all includes the brown bag: it does not.
Rule for deciding whether all includes a pokemon card: it does not.
Rule for deciding whether all includes the telephone booth: it does not.

Rule for printing room description details: stop.
Rule for printing room description details of a container: omit contents in listing.

Report examining an open container:
	say "You [if nothing is in the noun]don't see anything in there[otherwise]see [the list of things in the noun] inside[end if].".[/code]




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=878&start=0#p4700
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: RSS Feed?
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2009-12-14 00:44:50

[quote="Merk"]I have a good-sized vacation coming up around Christmas. If I don't get to it before then, it'd give me a nice project to work on while I'm off work. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

No sweat. I moved this site up on my bookmarks list, so I've been coming here more frequently anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=394&start=10#p4701
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: My first experiences with IF. How did you feel?
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2009-12-14 00:48:48

Zork 1 was my first text game. It blew me away that a game could just be ... text. And when the floppy disk's light would suddenly go red, indicating that my brother and I had found our way into a new room, well, that was magic.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=394&start=10#p4702
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: My first experiences with IF. How did you feel?
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2009-12-14 05:40:18

[quote="Ice Cream Jonsey"]And when the floppy disk's light would suddenly go red, indicating that my brother and I had found our way into a new room, well, that was magic.[/quote]
Yes, I have very similar memories about the first text adventure I really enjoyed (not quite the first one I played, but almost), the French game [i]Conspiration[/i] in 1988. But it was a cassette version (for the Amstrad CPC 464), so, instead of the floppy disk's light, there was a "Loading please wait" screen and the cassette playing. But the effect was the same, and we had ample time to look forward to the next part of the game and wonder what would happen in it [emote]:)[/emote] .

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=890&start=0#p4703
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing background colour doesn't work.
User: Pe-ads / DateTime: 2009-12-14 10:06:52

Thank you, guys!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=893&start=0#p4704
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Trouble with pressing buttons
User: Pe-ads / DateTime: 2009-12-14 10:11:28

I'm having some trouble with the player pressing buttons. Basically, I've got my memory stick (which you guys helped me with earlier), and the player can plug it into stuff. Now I want the player to be able to press a button and something will now be in the memory stick.

[code]A button is a kind of thing.

Pressing it is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "press [something]" as pressing it.

Check pressing it:
	if the noun is not a button:
		say "[The noun] isn't a button." instead.

The Get Memory button is a button. It is part of the RMG. 
When the Get Memory button is pressed, say "Random memory (Childhood_Memory_4) successfully transferred to Memory Container.";
	now Childhood_memory_4 is in the memory stick.

[/code]

I realise I haven't added in a rule yet about the memory stick being plugged in for the action to work, but Inform just doesn't like my code (again!). It says:
[quote]Problem. You wrote 'When the Get Memory button is depressed, say "Random memory (Childhood_Memory_4) [...] y transferred to Memory Container."'  : but this seems to give something a name which contains double-quoted text, which is not allowed. If you do need quotes in a name, one option would be to write something like 'In the Saloon is 'Black' Jacques Bernoulli.'; but this problem message is often caused by an accident in punctuation, in which case you never intended to create an object - you thought that the text ended a sentence because it finished with sentence-ending punctuation, when in fact it didn't, so that I read the next words as following on.
[/quote]

Any help? (and yes I realise i have a question every few days!)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=394&start=10#p4705
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: My first experiences with IF. How did you feel?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2009-12-14 11:43:25

I took a stab at playing IFs a longish while ago, back when the Amiga 500 was new. Mainly, it was [i]Hitchhiker's Guide[/i], [i]Planetfall[/i] and some brief time later an odd game called [i]Demoniak[/i]. I finished none of those, or indeed got very far into them. Only recently have I come back to IF, beginning with the excellent[i] Galatea[/i]. It sold me on IF as a medium.

There could be many reasons for why those earlier games didn't grab me, though. For one, I wasn't back then quite as good at English as I am today, and for another, I was a lot easier to distract due to Attentive Deficit Disorder. Regardless, I think for the most part, it was that I just couldn't trust the game I was playing to have my back.

Interactive Fiction, for better or worse, requires one's willing suspension of disbelief to a greater degree than do graphical games, because feedback not as instant; you conceptualise your immediate surroundings in your head rather than on-screen. However, I've felt similar levels of irritation in modern-day games as well; for instance, when enemy units fade into existence between me and the thing I'm supposed to protect in [i]Wing Commander[/i] or [i]GTA [/i]like games, or when my fragile main character is teleported into close combat because the designers were morons ([i]NWN 2[/i], 'tis you I scoff at). It's frequently arbitrary (or appears so), often unnecessary, and always detrimental to the 'fun' aspect of gameplay. 

Interactive Fiction has an attraction beyond glitz precisely because it lacks graphics; it can avoid the dependence on flashy graphical extravaganza that tends to mar so many modern games. For me as a beginner back in the eighties and early nineties, the illusion of a parser understanding English in at least [i]some[/i] shape or form was immediate, and so very intriguing. That's a powerful tool right there for IF authors. The neophyte, faced with this possibility, may simply take it and run with it; instantly, there so many things you [i]just want to try out.[/i]

The flip side, though, is when the illusion shatters, as it so often will. It's not as big of a problem when the parser clearly says "I don't understand that verb" or whatever - it's an annoyance to be sure, but I can forgive the parser admitting that it doesn't understand what I mean by wanting to "confibulate" the wrench, particularly when the parser actually admits to not understanding. That, I can live with. All games require a paring down of effective choices, because if your mind is overwhelmed with choices, gameplay generally suffers - I believe there's even mathematical proofs on the subject (although they define gameplay as something decidedly different). Regardless, we can't make provisions for allowing players infinite freedom. They can't do anything, and wouldn't, as a rule, thank us if they could. 

But guess-the-verb for common verbs, especially when having to do something necessary or apparently necessary? Worse, how about its evil cousin, guess-the-[i]noun?[/i] Evil, both of them. Instantly ruinous to immersion, for much the same reason that discovery of AI cheating killed the fun in your common 1990s RTS game. Even worse is the parser clearly giving misleading information, such as "there is no documents in the room", despite the fact that there's a "folder containing secret documents" right there on the desk, and the character just died because the parser wasted your last moments alive failing to understand you.

I stop trying to play a game when grinding and reloading becomes the only way to conquer poor implementation. When that happens, then the fault lies not in the game being difficult, but the controls themselves. I won't sit down and try to have fun with a game in which I can't fully participate, anymore than I'll boot up a flight sim after discovering glitches in my joystick. Elements of chance have their place, but not, I feel, in the normal course of an IF game.

The ideal game for me:
[list][*] Always presents me with a goal, something my avatar ought to strive for - even if I might disagree.[/*:m][*] Does not smack my fingers for acting rationally.[/*:m][*] Varies pace and descriptions to match mood.[/*:m][*] Does not force me to perform menial work (if I find myself continuing another game beyond the text "you can't read a closed advertisment flier," then it was either written by a reanimated Roger Zelazny, or I was paid handsomely for reviewing it).[/*:m][*] Presents its information in a way that doesn't overwhelm my mind's eye.[/*:m][*] Understands my intent even if it doesn't allow it automatic success, even (and [i]especially[/i]) if it's an action vital to the plot.[/*:m][*] Give me a reason, emotionally, for doing what I do (again I must mention [i]Galatea[/i], and how effortlessly it made me [i]feel[/i]: empathy for the titular character, and a vague sense of voyeuristic shame toward myself for my part in her predicament, however small that part might have been).[/*:m][/list:u]

[u]Nota bene:[/u] This post is a bit overlong and rambling, for which I apologise. Since I woke up today my eyes won't focus properly. Might be time for a visit to the doctor's.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=893&start=0#p4706
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with pressing buttons
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-12-14 13:17:04

Inform is saying you have to be more specific; just saying "when something..." isn't enough, you have to place that statement in the context of a rule.  Also, Inform doesn't understand that pressing a button makes the button pressed, sort of like the trouble you were having before.

For example, if you added the something like the following:

[code]
A button is a kind of thing.  A button can be depressed.  A button is usually not depressed.

Carry out pressing a button:
     now the noun is depressed.

Every turn:
     if the Get Memory button is depressed:
          say "Insert message here.";
          move childhood_memory_4 to the memory stick;
          now the Get Memory button is not depressed.[/code]



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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=893&start=0#p4707
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with pressing buttons
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2009-12-14 13:29:11

This seems to work as advertised.

[code]A button is a kind of thing.
The Get Memory button is a button. It is part of the RMG.
The memory stick is a container.
Childhood_memory_4 is a thing.

Understand "press [something]" as pushing.

Check pushing:
	if the noun is not a button:
		say "[The noun] isn[']t a button." instead.


Instead of pushing the Get Memory button:
	say "Random memory (Childhood_Memory_4) successfully transferred to Memory Container.";
	now Childhood_memory_4 is inside the memory stick.

The Roomy Room is a room. The RMG is a thing. The RMG is in the Roomy Room. The Memory Stick is in the Roomy Room. The Childhood_memory_4 is in the Roomy Room.

Test me with "press Get Memory button".
[/code]

I'm not yet good enough with I7 to determine how best to create new commands, but I do know that you used the imperfect for "pressing it" which you didn't define ("is pressed" being irregular as well; afaik Inform would evaluate it as "pressing ited" even had it worked). I recommend dropping the "it" entirely, as it is not part of the command but a stand-in for a noun.

This is also why I conflated "pressing" with "pushing"; it seems to do the trick, it provides better disambiguation, and I could make it work, which is useful in its own right.

Also, when providing code (and I say this without trying to be annoying), it might help to declare the things that would make it work. Granted that I'm more than a bit confused at the moment, but the absence of the memory stick, the RMG, and indeed the room itself meant extra coding, thus adding more potential errors into the mix.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=893&start=0#p4708
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with pressing buttons
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2009-12-14 13:31:01

I must also respectfully submit that while Endosphere's example looks a lot cleaner, my own example ultimately leaves the button much happier.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=894&start=0#p4709
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: The Trouble with Npcs (Part 1)
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-12-14 23:58:26

The trouble with npcs (part 1) is that:

     	a) there doesn't seem to be a way to write persuasion rules to account for relations amongst actors unless one of the actors is the player, and

     	b) even if such persuasion rules could be written, there doesn't seem to be a way to construct action rules that effect an npc asking another actor to try doing something.

If there is any way to do either of these things I certainly can't figure it out, despite hours of trying.

For the purposes of discussion, let's consider the following scenario:

[code]The Patio is a room.  The description of the patio is "Your family has gathered on your backyard patio to have a barbecue on this fine sunny day.".

A grill is a container in the patio.  The grill is closed and openable.  The  description of the grill is "Your propane grill is fired up and ready to go.".

A table is a supporter in the patio.  The description of the table is "A flimsy aluminum card-table.".

A platter is on the table.  The description of the platter is "A large ceramic plate".

A steak is a kind of thing.  The description of a steak is usually "A juicy, well-marbled raw steak.".

Five steaks are on the platter.

Marriage relates one person to another (called the spouse).

The verb to be married to implies the marriage relation.

Dominance relates various people to various people.  The verb to dominate (he dominates, they dominate, he dominated, it is dominated, he is dominating) implies the dominance relation.

Joe is a man in the patio.  The player is Joe.  The description of Joe is "It's you!  You've had a few too many beers, and are having trouble concentrating on what needs to be done.".

Helen is a woman in the patio.  The description of helen is "It's Helen, your lovely wife.  Luckily she's here to keep the household running smoothly.".

Timmy is a man in the patio.  The description of Timmy is "It's your eight-year-old son, Timmy.".

Sara is a woman in the patio.  The description of Sara is "It's your twelve-year-old daughter, Sara.".

Eddie is a man in the patio.  The description of Eddie is "It's your sleazy brother-in-law, Eddie.  He was here in a flash when Helen told him there would be free food.".

When play begins:
	now Joe is married to Helen;
	now Joe dominates Timmy;
	now Joe dominates Sara;
	now Helen dominates Timmy;
	now Helen dominates Sara;
	say "Objectives: 1) have Helen successfully instruct a Sara to get the platter, resulting in compliance; 2) have Helen instruct Eddie to take a steak, which Eddie will refuse to do; 3) have Helen successfully instruct Joe to take a steak, resulting in compliance.";
	say paragraph break.[/code]
I've tried all sorts (literally dozens) of various ways of constructing and phrasing different rules to enact something that would be [i]conceptually[/i] similar to the following:

[code]1) A persuasion rule:
	if the "person asking" is the spouse of the person asked:
		persuasion succeeds;
	otherwise if the "person asking" dominates the person asked:
		persuasion succeeds;
	otherwise:
		persuasion fails.

2) Before/check/instead of/carry out/after/report an actor asking another actor to try doing anything:...

3) Every turn/after X condition holds:
	try actor #1 asking actor #2 to try doing something...[/code]
I can't find a way to do any of these, and am starting to think it's just not possible.  I originally hit upon this problem while constructing a scenario with some soldiers, where everyone (including the player) would be obliged to follow orders from a superior officer, but that seems implausible unless I can work out the much simpler scenario posted here.  Whether or not the general concept of npcs controlling other actors is undesirable is in my opinion a wholly separate matter from whether or not the idea is technically feasible--and if it can be done I'd like to know how.

Does anyone have any suggestions?




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=894&start=0#p4710
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: The Trouble with Npcs (Part 1)
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2009-12-15 00:16:48

Inform's action model isn't sophisticated enough to handle this. An action can be requested ("asking ... to try ..."), but the system doesn't keep track of [i]who[/i] is requesting the action -- the requester is always presumed to be the player.

You might be able to work around that by using a global variable to store the identity of the person making the request, which you could check from persuasion rules and so on. But you won't be able to describe actions that way ("try actor #1 asking actor #2 to try doing something"), at least without some I6 trickery, because I7 isn't set up for it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=894&start=0#p4711
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: The Trouble with Npcs (Part 1)
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-12-15 00:27:24

Thanks for the response, vaporware.

Of the many things I tried, I thought the following approach held particular promise:

[code]The current-asker is a person that varies.

Before [an actor/a person/someone] asking [anyone/a person] to try doing anything:
     change the current-asker to the actor;
     continue the action.

A persuasion rule:
     if the current-asker is the spouse of the person asked:
          etc. [/code]
But the problem was, as you noted, that I couldn't find a way to construct the "Before" rule; the only way to construct a rule that would even compile was by writing just:

Before an actor asking:

which of course refers to the action of an actor asking [i]about[/i] something--not at all what was intended.  Although not relevant to the current discussion, an interesting side note to this particular approach was that when I put a check in the persuasion rule that said:

say "[current-asker], [person asked]";

Inform listed the current-asker as that ancient nemesis, "your former self." [emote]:x[/emote] 




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=394&start=10#p4712
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: My first experiences with IF. How did you feel?
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2009-12-15 06:52:23

galatea might be technically groundbreaking (like all of Emily Short's works), but I found it dull and devoid of an interesting setting (like all of Emily Short's works)

well I'll try it once more  [emote]:|[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=394&start=10#p4713
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: My first experiences with IF. How did you feel?
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2009-12-15 08:04:34

Did you also find [i]City of Secrets[/i] "devoid of an interesting setting"?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=893&start=0#p4714
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with pressing buttons
User: Pe-ads / DateTime: 2009-12-15 14:39:48

I tried both of your solutions and they compile fine. However, when you run the game, it bizarrely says that you can't see the button. I changed the code to 'one thing' instead of 'one visible thing', but it still kept on saying "you can't see that here".

Compiler error maybe?

Any help would be appreciated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=893&start=0#p4715
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with pressing buttons
User: Pe-ads / DateTime: 2009-12-15 15:02:26

On second thoughts, does anyone know any extensions that handle switches and buttons? I've looked around on the Inform extensions website, but nothing appears to be there  [emote]:([/emote] 

It's just that I'll be using several buttons and several switches in this game, and an extension would be better than having to program it by hand.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=893&start=0#p4716
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with pressing buttons
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2009-12-15 16:05:29

[quote="Pe-ads"]I tried both of your solutions and they compile fine. However, when you run the game, it bizarrely says that you can't see the button. I changed the code to 'one thing' instead of 'one visible thing', but it still kept on saying "you can't see that here".

Compiler error maybe?

Any help would be appreciated.[/quote]

[list=a][*] In my case, as it is a complete example, did make changes to it, or did it run as-is? (This may be a stupid question, but sometimes it's good to get the stupid questions out of the way right away; I've found changing code in single steps to be a far more reliable method of making things work. Test, note that it works, change one thing, recompile, test again, etc. It's monotonous, but it will save you headaches.) Also, did you employ the "test me" command?[/*:m]
[*] Which compiler do you use? Which platform? (Windows/Mac/Linux)[/*:m][/list:o]

When I compile the code I gave you, I get the expected result. You can't see the button while examining the RDM, though, but it's still there to be manipulated and you can examine it directly ("x button"). Using the Linux Gnome Inform 7 5Z71 distribution, here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=894&start=0#p4717
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: The Trouble with Npcs (Part 1)
User: SJ_43 / DateTime: 2009-12-15 16:35:38

I tried making an example based on vaporware's suggestion, perhaps it will give you some ideas... The syntax is "try the thief requesting the action of the troll dropping the axe" (I know, it's a bit lengthy [emote];)[/emote]). The command persuasion rules work like the persuasion rules, but I put them before even the before rules so an action won't start unless the persuasion succeeds. In this scenario a gang of soldiers give each other orders, and they (including the player) have to obey those with a higher rank.

[code]The current requester is an object that varies.

To try (requester - a person) requesting (deed - a stored action):
	change the current requester to the requester;
	try the deed;
	change the current requester to nothing;

The command persuasion rule is listed before the before stage rule in the action-processing rules.
This is the command persuasion rule: 
	if the current requester is a person: 
		follow the command persuasion rules;
		unless the rule succeeded, stop the action.

The command persuasion rules is a rulebook. Command persuasion rules have outcomes persuasion fails (failure) and persuasion succeeds (success).


Rank is a kind of value. The ranks are Private, Sergeant and Colonel.
A person has a rank. Before printing the name of a person: say "[rank] ".

The Minefield is a room. Jones, Lewis, Roberts, Lee and Jackson are people in the minefield.
The rank of Jones is colonel. The rank of Roberts and Lee is sergeant. 
Rule for printing the name of the player: say "Player".

Instead of someone jumping:
	if the player can see the actor, say "[The actor] skips about for a while.";

Instead of doing something when the current requester is a person:
	say "Well, you don't really have a choice... [run paragraph on]";
	continue the action;

Command persuasion rule for an actor doing something:
	if the rank of the current requester is greater than the rank of the actor, persuasion succeeds;
	if the actor is not the player and the player can see the actor, say "'No way,' [the actor] growls.";
	persuasion fails.

Every turn:
	let requester be a random person that is not the player;
	let subject be a random person that is not the requester;
	say "'[Subject], let me see you jump!' shouts [the requester].";
	try the requester requesting the action of the subject jumping;

Test me with "z/z/z/z".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=893&start=0#p4718
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with pressing buttons
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-12-15 16:39:10

[quote="Pe-ads"]However, when you run the game... it still kept on saying "you can't see that here". Compiler error maybe?[/quote]Without seeing your code, I can't tell, but IMO, this is pretty unlikely in this case. The most common reason for this type of issue is that the author thinks they've put something in a room and hasn't really, or they're referring to something by a name that inform doesn't recognize as that object.

Either way, it's easy to check. Under the Index tab, click on World. It will show you a map, followed by a breakdown of each room including a list of the objects it contains (at startup). If you don't see a button in the correct room, then you have the first problem. You might, however, see something like this:
[quote][i]part[/i] red doohickey - [i]button[/i][/quote]
... which means you've created an object called "a red doohickey" which is part of something else (the object above it on the list) and is a member of the "button" kind. This is an indication that you have the second problem. Things are not automatically referrable by their kind name; if you have a button that doesn't have the word "button" in its name, the player can't automatically refer to it by saying "press button." You have to add a line like:[code]Understand "button" as the red doohickey.
[or if you want the word button to refer to any button:]
Understand "button" as a button.[/code]Sorry if this just confuses the issue, but if you post the code you're having trouble with, I could explain it better.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=894&start=0#p4719
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: The Trouble with Npcs (Part 1)
User: SJ_43 / DateTime: 2009-12-15 16:51:16

I wasn't actually sure exactly what you wanted to do, so I also tried this thing where you can tell NPCs to give orders to each other (like "patient, tell doctor to examine you"). 

[code]The instructor is a person that varies.
The instructee is a person that varies.
The instructed command is indexed text that varies.
The instruction stage is a number that varies.
["instructing" is only true when an NPC (the instructee) is acting by order of another NPC (the instructor)]
To decide whether instructing: if the instruction stage is positive, yes; no.

Before reading a command when instructing: decrease the instruction stage by one.
For reading a command when instructing:
	change the text of the player's command to "[instructee], [instructed command]";
	[so that "tell doctor to jump" works just like "doctor, jump": ]
	if the instructor is the player, change the instruction stage to 0;

Ordering it to is an action applying to one thing and one topic.
Understand "tell [someone] to [text]", "ask [someone] to [text]" or "order [someone] to [text]" as ordering it to.
Understand the command "instruct" as "order".

Carry out an actor ordering someone to:
	change the instruction stage to two;
	change the instructor to the person asked;
	change the instructee to the noun;
	change the instructed command to the topic understood;

[To keep the every turn rules, advance time rule, etc. from running twice: ]
The skip to next turn before instructing rule is listed before the every turn stage rule in the turn sequence rulebook.
This is the skip to next turn before instructing rule: if the instruction stage is greater than one, rule succeeds.

[To avoid "There is no reply" if we type "doctor, tell patient to adsfasd": ]
Instead of answering someone that when instructing, say "[The instructor] gives you a confused look."

Understand "herself/himself" as a person when instructing and the item described is the instructee.
Understand "you" as a person when instructing and the item described is the instructor.

A first persuasion rule for asking someone to try ordering someone to: persuasion succeeds.

Persuasion rule when instructing (this is the NPC persuades NPC rule):
	if the instructor is a woman and the instructee is a man, persuasion succeeds;
	if the instructor is the instructee, say "That's too complicated." instead;
	say "[The instructee] ignores [the instructor]." instead;

[Persuasion rules that are only for when the player asks an NPC need "when not instructing" appended to them: ]
Persuasion rule for asking someone to try doing something when not instructing: say "[The actor] sniffs. 'The only thing I'll do for you is tell other people what to do.'" instead.


The Lab is a room. The doctor is a woman in the lab. The patient is a man in the lab.

Test me with "tell doctor to examine patient / patient, tell doctor to examine you / doctor, tell patient to exmaine himself/ doctor, tell patient to examine himself".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=894&start=0#p4720
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: The Trouble with Npcs (Part 1)
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-12-15 23:16:46

Thanks for the response, SJ_43.  Those two examples are awesome, and I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to write them (and "pulling out the heavy artillery" so to speak while so doing).  Actually both examples demonstrate things I've unsuccessfully tried to do in the past, and are very helpful.  I don't believe I would ever have come up with the first line of the first example, "The current requester is an object that varies," on my own.  Initially I was having trouble understanding why you chose to define this as an object and even changed the phrase to "The current requester is a person that varies" while playing with the example (which subtly breaks the resulting game), until I realized how this definition interacts with the "nothing" status assigned to the variable.

Thanks again.



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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=892&start=0#p4721
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Events
User: ryacku / DateTime: 2009-12-16 20:58:14

Thanks to the both of you. Sorry for the confusing question, I wasn't entirely sure what to ask for...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=394&start=10#p4722
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: My first experiences with IF. How did you feel?
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2009-12-17 01:32:12

can't say I played every game but I played four or five (each one of the full lengths has technical features/ideas I'm gonna steal, eh borrow), which is more than of any other author

the short one in the inform 7 tutorial with the lesbians and the evil fish is actually interesting, more of that!  [emote];)[/emote] 

tried it again, and galatea just does nothing at all for me, not "manipulative"  [emote]:roll:[/emote]  enough

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=394&start=10#p4723
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: My first experiences with IF. How did you feel?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2009-12-17 04:07:11

Ah, I disremember exactly what my first IF was. I do remember that one of the earliest was "Zork" - I'd bought a package that included Zork Anthology (Zorks 1, 2, 3, Beyond and Zero, plus .DAT files for a bunch of Infocom games with zero documentation, so they were absolutely worthless), Return to Zork and Zork Nemesis. 

What I remember very clearly is that I'd tried some IF before and after Zork, and something in Zork just kept me coming back to it. It seemed much more alive, somehow. I was then about ten or eleven, maybe twelve, and I recall the following games from that period:

 - Crypt
 - Dungeons of Dunjin (have to replay that one, I have good memories)
 - The Doppy and Pru trilogy (Strangest thing ever! Not in a good way)
 - TZero (Fat chance of a non-english 11year old kid understanding that one)
 - Deep Space Drifter, I think. Or some similar title. Was in DOS.
 - Some Indiana Jones game
 - The Mist
 - Unkullian Underworld 1 and 2.
 - And let's not forget Gateway, the first IF I ever won (with extensive hints). Masterpiece.

There were others, of course. These are the earliest ones I remember. Back then, all I wanted was adventure games, adventure games, adventure games. I got to play a lot of greats and a lot of crap, but I was pretty omnivorous.

Now, I tend to look for games that'll flick my switches, push my buttons. I want to go on gaming trips in which I can make an emotional connection. "Fahrenheit", which I played recently, was one such game. In IF, the recent game I've played which did that was "Chancellor", a game with which I connected very strongly, for some reason. I also connected strongly with "Across the Stars". Oh, and Photopia, of course. I suppose there's no rhyme or reason for these things.

Still, if a game is good, it doesn't matter whether it's "old-school" or "new-school". I want to play a sort of game which is likelier to be found in new- than old-school, but I was hooked on "Adventurer's Museum" from the very first couple of screens.

After a long hiatus of IF, in which I just played graphical adventures, I have to say it was great to return to it. Graphical adventures are relatively limited - you have fixed verbs and fixed hotspots. If you're stuck, and want to see the rest of the story, you either resort to a walkthrough (there goes the gaming enjoyment) or brute force you way around it. IF has the potential to remove such boundaries. IF is limitless in its interaction - or it gives that illusion. I like that freedom. It's much better to think "What can I do now in this place at this time?" than to think "Ok, what can I do with these hotspots and these inventory items?". Sure, some IF games have very transparent mechanics, but that's the fault of an author, not of the genre.

Personally, and I hope I'm not going too far off-topic, I prefer games with multimedia content. I don't want games to rely on graphics, but I want my IF game to be an emotional experience, and emotional experiences shouldn't be limited to any one medium. Sound, images and animations are extremely effective, and pictures can be worth a thousand words, and I wish more games used them, and used them well. I'm afraid that by sticking too closely to an all-text format simply because "text can do things other mediums can't" (no argument there, but a well-placed sound or image or animation can do things text can't, because it's so immediate, and has the potential to seduce, enthrall, or frighten in a second - can induce serenity or paranoia very easily) we might be missing out on a real potential storytelling aspect of IF. The book metaphor has served us well, but Infocom was the first to say - despite their marketing: "Find out what it's like to enter a story. Get one from Infocom. There's room for you in every disk." - that Shakespeare didn't have to wonder about whether Hamlet did decide to kill Laertes after the fateful play, therefore skipping the rest of "Hamlet, Prince of Denmark". IF isn't a book, any more than adventure games aren't movies, and I sometimes wonder whether we're scared to admit that. And that allowing multimedia would be a way to admit we're playing games, and trying to inject more art into them than there actually is.

Make no mistake, IF - and games in general - has the potential to be art. High art. I firmly believe this. And it doesn't need to be cooped up in all-text format to do it.

Heh. Early-morning rant. Well, it was building up and had to come out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=893&start=0#p4724
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with pressing buttons
User: Pe-ads / DateTime: 2009-12-17 11:14:24

Oops, my bad.

The RMG was short for Random Memory Grab, but I called it RMG in the source code, so the button wasn't actually in the game world.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=895&start=0#p4725
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Runtime Errors...
User: Pe-ads / DateTime: 2009-12-17 14:31:02

Yes, I have more questions...

Basically, I created an either/or property to show whether a container was opened or unopened (I was surprised this wasn't built into Inform), so I could have different descriptions based on whether the player had opened the 'power control' or not (the player would know if it was safe to open depending on if they had opened it).

Here's the code:
[code]
A container can be unopened or opened. A container is usually unopened.
Every turn:
	if a container is open:
		now the noun is opened.


The Testing Area is a room

The control panel is here. It is fixed in place. The description is "A dazzling array of buttons and levers assault your eyes, with bizarre lights and screens dotted about upon its yellow surface. However, as you have been in a Testing Area before, you understand all the functions of the various devices. There's [a list of things that are part of the control panel] attached to it, plus much more that isn't really necessary at the moment."


The power control is part of the control panel. The power control is a closed and openable container. The description of the power control is "A large box sits on the top of the Control Panel with the words 'Power Control' marked on it, and a picture of someone being zapped by lightning. [if closed]Presumably you would die if you opened it, however there is a hinge lid, so it is openable.[otherwise if the power control is opened]Despite the bizarre warning on the lid, you know it's safe to open. [end if][if open]You can see [a list of things in the power control] in the opened box.[end if]".
[/code]

Inform compiles it fine, and it runs fine. Until you try to look at something that isn't a container:
[quote]*** Run-time problem P10: Since the control panel is not allowed the property "unopened", it is against the rules to try to use it.[/quote]

I really have no idea why this happens. I know I could set it to just check if the power control was open every turn, as that's the only container I want to check, but it's annoying to see that my code doesn't work. Ah, the life of a newbie.

Any help would be appreciated.

Pe-ads

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=895&start=0#p4726
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Runtime Errors...
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-12-17 15:21:29

[quote="Pe-ads"]Basically, I created an either/or property to show whether a container was opened or unopened (I was surprised this wasn't built into Inform)...[/quote]It is; see ch. 9.12. Actions as conditions. The phrase you're looking for is "if we have opened..." Note that the "we" here means anybody in the game, including npcs. Also, it looks like your conditionals are a little out of whack. Remember you can't use nested conditionals in regular descriptions. If you have a description that changes based on any slightly complicated logic, it's usually best to move it into a "say" phrase (ch. 5.10. Making new substitutions). Just remember to leave an extra space at the ends of the lines to avoid a double line break:(also remember that the tabs will be screwed up in the code below, so you'll have to fix those manually)[code]The power control is part of the control panel. The power control is a closed and openable container. The description of the power control is "[power control desc]". 

To say power control desc:
	say "A large box sits on the top of the Control Panel with the words 'Power Control' marked on it, and a picture of someone being zapped by lightning. ";
	if the power control is closed:
		if we have opened the power control:
			say "Despite the bizarre warning on the lid, you know it's safe to open. ";
		otherwise:
			say "Presumably you would die if you opened it, however there is a hinge lid, so it is openable. ";
	otherwise:
		say "You can see [a list of things in the power control] in the opened box. ".
[/code]
As for this:[quote="Pe-ads"]Every turn:
	if a container is open:
		now the noun is opened.[/quote]The reason the above doesn't work is because "noun" is a global variable meaning the noun of the current action, not just the thing you happen to be talking about at the moment. Therefore, if on a particular turn, the player tries "examine control panel," the every turn rule will check to see if the [i]control panel [/i](since it's the current noun) is open.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=888&start=10#p4727
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More trouble with naming
User: chinkeeyong / DateTime: 2009-12-18 01:56:53

To stop that from happening, you could change its printed name. Or, as a last resort, write something like "Rule for printing the name of the asdfkjls when asking which do you mean: say 'something goes here'."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=896&start=0#p4728
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Can't figure out how to make a ladder
User: C. Everett / DateTime: 2009-12-18 02:08:06

Hi.  I'm new with Inform 7, and any kind of programming in general.  I vaguely remember reading something in the documentation about ladders, but I can't find it again.  Anyway, here's the code I have so far:

[code]
The ladder is a door.  The ladder is an open door.  It is south of the Artificial Intelligence Core Chamber.  It is south of the Hub. 

The Hub is a room.  It is above the Artificial Intelligence Core Room.
[/code]

Can someone help me?


EDIT:  I just wanted to mention that I haven't read all the way through the documentation yet, so I apologize if the answer to my problem appears somewhere later in it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=896&start=0#p4729
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can't figure out how to make a ladder
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-12-18 02:18:28

You might be thinking of chapter 3.5 in the recipe book and example 43 that discuss staircases, ladders and the such.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=896&start=0#p4730
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can't figure out how to make a ladder
User: C. Everett / DateTime: 2009-12-18 02:55:03

That did it.  Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=895&start=0#p4731
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Runtime Errors...
User: Pe-ads / DateTime: 2009-12-18 08:15:59

Your version of the text works much better, Mike. 

However, do you (or anyone else) have any idea how to implement the opened/closed thingy? I've just set the game to chick if the power control is opened every turn, because that's the only container I want to check in [i]this[/i] game, but if I wanted to use something similar in a different game, then I'd have to set [b]every container[/b] in the game that I wanted to check on. It's also bugging me that the code isn't 'perfect'.  [emote]:x[/emote] 
Yes, I know I'm a bit fastidious  [emote];)[/emote] 

Pe-ads

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=895&start=0#p4732
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Runtime Errors...
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-12-18 08:57:06

[quote="Pe-ads"]... do you (or anyone else) have any idea how to implement the opened/closed thingy?[/quote]Maybe I don't understand you correctly. It sounds to me like you want to change the message if the container [i]has ever[/i] been opened during the game, which my code does. Look again (with annotations):[code]To say power control desc:
	say "A large box sits on the top of the Control Panel with the words 'Power Control' marked on it, and a picture of someone being zapped by lightning. ";
	if the power control is closed:[<-- if the box is currently closed, the next condition is checked]
		if we have opened the power control: [<-- if the box has EVER been opened before, this it true]
			say "Despite the bizarre warning on the lid, you know it's safe to open. ";
		otherwise:[<-- this means that the box is closed and has NEVER been opened before]
			say "Presumably you would die if you opened it, however there is a hinge lid, so it is openable. ";
	otherwise:[<-- this means the box is currently open -- no need to check if it's been open before]
		say "You can see [a list of things in the power control] in the opened box. ".
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=895&start=0#p4733
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Runtime Errors...
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2009-12-18 09:04:46

[quote="Pe-ads"]Your version of the text works much better, Mike. 

However, do you (or anyone else) have any idea how to implement the opened/closed thingy? I've just set the game to chick if the power control is opened every turn, because that's the only container I want to check in [i]this[/i] game, but if I wanted to use something similar in a different game, then I'd have to set [b]every container[/b] in the game that I wanted to check on. It's also bugging me that the code isn't 'perfect'.  [emote]:x[/emote] 
Yes, I know I'm a bit fastidious  [emote];)[/emote] [/quote]
If you're just using "opened" to mark whether an object has ever been opened, then as Mike pointed out, you probably don't need to define it at all. Inform already has two syntaxes to check past conditions.

One is the one he pointed out: "if we have opened the box" will be true if the "opening" action has ever been successfully performed on the box (by any actor).

The other is "if the box has been open", which will be true if the box has ever been open at the start of a turn (whether it was opened by the "opening" action or through some other code).

But note that the second syntax is taken more literally, and doesn't work with variables the way you might expect: "if the noun has been open" refers to [i]any[/i] past noun, not the object that's currently the noun.

Finally, your code for "opened" can be made to work like so:[code]Every turn:
    now every open container is opened.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=897&start=0#p4734
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Undersides, Visibility Levels, and Scope/Concealment
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-12-18 12:31:23

There are a few things I've been having trouble with for a long time, and as I am currently working on something that involves both of these issues it seemed like a good time to ask for some help on the problems.

I was working on some code for containers or supporters intended to simulate an "empty space" underneath these objects if such is desired.  There is a fine extension on the Inform website, "Underside" by Eric Eve, that does this already; however since for various reasons I'm not interested in using that extension, I decided to make my own.  I'm mostly finished and happy with the way the code below works:

[code]
Chapter 1 - Support Code

[not directly relevant to the matter at hand, but needed for the sample code to work as intended]

Include Plurality by Emily Short.

Rule for deciding whether all includes scenery:  it does not.
Rule for deciding whether all includes something fixed in place:  it does not.

Use full-length room descriptions.

Rule for printing room description details: stop.

Bulk is a kind of value.  The bulks are microsize, smallsize, cupsize, gallonsize, bagsize, suitcasesize, bathtubsize, bedsize, closetsize, shedsize, roomsize, and megasize.

A thing has a bulk.  A thing is usually smallsize.  A person is usually bathtubsize.

Before an actor inserting something into something (this is the sizecheck for inserting rule):
	if the actor is the player:
		if the bulk of the noun is greater than the bulk of the second noun:
			say "[The noun] [is-are] too big to fit into [the second noun]." instead;
	otherwise:
		if the player can see the actor:
			if the bulk of the noun is greater than the bulk of the second noun:
				say "[The actor] looks at [the noun], looks at [the second noun], and shakes [if the actor is male]his[otherwise if the actor is female]her[otherwise]its[end if] head." instead;
		otherwise:
			if the bulk of the noun is greater than the bulk of the second noun:
				stop the action.

Before an actor entering a container (this is the sizecheck for entering rule):
	if the actor is the player:
		if the bulk of the player is greater than the bulk of the noun:
			say "You can't fit into [the noun]." instead;
	otherwise:
		if the player can see the actor:
			if the bulk of the actor is greater than the bulk of the noun:
				say "[The actor] looks at [the noun] and shakes [if the actor is male]his[otherwise if the actor is female]her[otherwise]its[end if] head." instead;
		otherwise:
			if the bulk of the actor is greater than the bulk of the noun:
				stop the action.

A container is usually openable.  A container is usually closed.

Rule for printing room description details of a container (called UE) (this is the intermediate casual container looking rule):
	if UE is open or UE is transparent:
		unless UE contains a person:
			omit contents in listing;
		otherwise:
			let heldones be a list of things;
			repeat with sittas running through things in UE:
				if sittas is a person:
					add sittas to heldones;
			say " (in which [is-are] [heldones])";
			omit contents in listing;
	otherwise:
		continue the activity.

Report examining a container which contains something (this is the after xing a container rule):
	if the noun is open or the noun is transparent:
		say "In [the noun] [is-are] [list of things in the noun with indefinite articles].".

Rule for printing room description details of a supporter (called UQ) (this is the better supporter looking rule):
	if UQ does not support a person:
		omit contents in listing;
	otherwise:
		let loungers be a list of things;
		repeat with T running through things on UQ:
			if T is a person and the player can see T:
				add T to loungers;
		say " (on which [is-are] [loungers])";
		omit contents in listing.

Chapter 2 - Undersides

[This code is what was intended to be discussed in this thread]

Section 1 - What they are

An underside is a kind of container.  An underside is usually open and not openable.  The printed name of an underside is usually "[the holder of the item described]".  The bulk of an underside is usually bathtubsize.  An underside is usually scenery.  An underside is usually privately-named.  An underside is usually enterable.

The specification of an underside is "A conceptual representation of the spatial area underneath a thing.".

Section 2 - Miscellaneous Rules for Undersides

Report examining a supporter (called xedsup) which supports something (this is the after xing a supporter rule):
	unless the player is in an underside incorporated by xedsup:
		say "On [the noun] [is-are] [list of things on the noun with indefinite articles].".

Check looking under something:
	unless the noun incorporates an underside:
		say "You don't find anything of interest under [the noun]." instead;
	otherwise:
		let redir be a random underside incorporated by the noun;
		try searching redir instead.

Rule for deciding whether all includes something in an underside: it does not.

Instead of an actor examining an underside:
	try the actor searching the noun.

Procedural rule for an actor searching an underside: ignore the standard search containers rule.

Report searching an underside (this is the after xing an underside rule):
	if the noun is open:
		if the noun contains anything:
			say "Under [the holder of the noun] [is-are] [list of things in the noun with indefinite articles].";
		otherwise:
			say "You don't find anything unusual under [the holder of the noun].";
	otherwise:
		say "You don't find anything unusual under [the holder of the noun]."..

Check an actor taking an underside:
	if the actor is the player:
		say "You can't take a 'space.'" instead;
	otherwise:
		if the player can see the actor:
			say "[The actor] ignores your nonsensical request." instead;
		otherwise:
			stop the action.

Report an actor searching something that incorporates an underside (this is the thorough search of things with undersides rule):
	try the actor searching a random underside that is incorporated by the noun.

Carry out taking something that incorporates an underside (called curunder) (this is the addon taking something with an underside rule):
	if curunder is open and curunder contains anything:
		let undalist be a list of things;
		repeat with revealedstuff running through things in curunder:
			add revealedstuff to undalist;
			move revealedstuff to the holder of the noun;
		say "As you take [the noun], you reveal [undalist with indefinite articles] that [if the number of entries in undalist is 1]was[otherwise]were[end if] underneath it.".

After looking while the holder of the player is an underside (called curunder) (this is the thorough looking from an underside rule):
	try searching curunder;
	continue the action.

Section 3 - Putting into and Taking from Undersides

Putting it under is an action applying to two things and requiring light.  Understand "put [something] under/underneath/beneath [something]" as putting it under.  Understand "drop [something] under/beneath/underneath [something]" as putting it under.  Understand "place [something] under/underneath/beneath [something]" as putting it under.  Understand "move [something] under/underneath/beneath [something]" as putting it under.  Understand "hide [something] under/underneath/beneath [something]" as putting it under.

The specification of the putting it under action is "A courtesy redirect action for putting things into an 'underside' container.".

Instead of an actor putting something under something (this is the simulate putting under rule):
	if the second noun incorporates an underside:
		let curunder be a random underside incorporated by the second noun;
		if the noun is curunder or the second noun is curunder:
			if the player can see the actor:
				say "That's irrational.";
			otherwise:
				stop the action;
		otherwise:
			unless the noun is in curunder:
				if the bulk of the noun is greater than the bulk of curunder:
					if the player can see the actor:
						say "[The noun] is too big to fit under [the holder of curunder].";
					otherwise:
						stop the action;
				silently try the actor inserting the noun into curunder;
				if the noun is in curunder:
					if the player can see the actor:
						say "[if the actor is the player]You place[otherwise][The actor] places[end if] [the noun] under [the second noun].";
					rule succeeds;
				otherwise:
					rule fails;
			otherwise:
				if the player can see the actor:
					say "[The noun] is already under [the second noun].";
				otherwise:
					stop the action;
	otherwise:
		unless the noun is the second noun:
			if the player can see the actor:
				say "That's impractical in this case." instead;
			otherwise:
				stop the action;
		otherwise:
			say "That's irrational.".

Removing it from under is an action applying to two things and requiring light.  Understand "get [something] from under/underneath/beneath [something]" as removing it from under.  Understand "take [something] from under/underneath/beneath [something]" as removing it from under.  Understand "pull [something] from under/underneath/beneath [something]" as removing it from under.  Understand "remove [something] from under/underneath/beneath [something]" as removing it from under.

The specification of the removing it from under action is "A courtesy redirect action for retrieving things from an 'underside' container.".

Before an actor removing something from under something (this is the simulate removing from under rule):
	if the second noun incorporates an underside:
		let curund be a random underside incorporated by the second noun;
		unless the noun is in curund:
			if the player can see the actor:
				say "[The noun] isn't under [the second noun]." instead;
			otherwise:
				stop the action;
		otherwise:
			try the actor taking the noun instead;
	otherwise:
		if the player can see the actor:
			say "There isn't anything under [the second noun]." instead;
		otherwise:
			stop the action.

Section 4 - Entering and Exiting Undersides

Crawling under is an action applying to one thing.  Understand "get under/underneath/beneath [something]" or "crawl under/underneath/beneath [something]" or "hide under/underneath/beneath [something]" or "move under/underneath/beneath [something]" as crawling under.

The specification of the crawling under action is "A simulation for entering 'underside' containers.".

Check an actor crawling under something (this is the check and redirect crawling under rule):
	if the noun incorporates an underside (called curunder):
		if the bulk of the actor is greater than the bulk of curunder:
			if the player can see the actor:
				say "[if the actor is the player]You[otherwise][The actor][end if] can't fit under [the noun]." instead;
			otherwise:
				stop the action;
		if curunder is closed:
			silently try the actor opening curunder;
			unless curunder is open:
				if the player can see the actor:
					say "[if the actor is the player]You[otherwise][The actor][end if] aren't able to get under [the noun]." instead;
				otherwise:
					stop the action;
		if the holder of curunder is the holder of the actor and the actor is the player:
			say "You'll need to get [if the noun is a container]out of[otherwise]off[end if] [the noun] before you can get under it." instead;
		try the actor entering curunder instead;
	otherwise:
		if the player can see the actor:
			say "[The noun] isn't something [if the actor is the player]you[otherwise][the actor][end if] can get underneath in any practical sense." instead.

After an actor entering an underside (this is the reporting-redirect-for entering an underside rule):
	if the player can see the actor:
		say "[if the actor is the player]You get underneath[otherwise][The actor] gets underneath[end if] [the holder of the noun].".

Crawling out from is an action applying to one thing.  Understand "get out from under/underneath/beneath [something]" or "crawl out from under/underneath/beneath [something]" or "move from under/underneath/beneath [something]" as crawling out from.

The specification of the crawling out from action is "A courtesy redirect action for exiting from an 'underside' container.".

Instead of an actor crawling out from something (this is the redirect crawling out from to exiting rule):
	try the actor exiting.

After an actor exiting (this is the reporting redirect for exiting an underside rule):
	if the container exited from is an underside:
		if the player can see the actor:
			say "[if the actor is the player]You get[otherwise][The actor] gets[end if] out from under [the holder of the container exited from].";
		if the actor is the player:
			try looking;
	otherwise:
		continue the action.

Chapter 3 - Example Room

Persuasion rule: persuasion succeeds

The Bedroom is a room.  The description of the bedroom is "Your cozy bedroom.".

A bed is an enterable supporter in the bedroom.  The bed is bedsize.  The description of the bed is "Your comfy bed.".

An underside called bedspace is part of the bed.

A sock is in the bedspace.  The description of the sock is "A dusty sock.".

A blanket is on the bed.  The blanket is bathtubsize.  The description of the blanket is "A faded wool blanket.".

A marble is in the bedroom.  The description of the marble is "A shiny azure marble.".

Zeke is a man.  The player is Zeke.
Zelda is a woman.  The description of Zelda is "Your lovely wife, Zelda.".

Zeke and Zelda are on the bed.

Test me with "x bed / stand / look under bed / get sock / put sock under bed / search bed / get marble / get under bed / l / showme bed / drop marble / get out from under bed / zelda, get under bed / x bed / search bed / get on bed / l /zelda, stand / l.".
[/code]
There are two remaining features I want to add, but both of them involve processes I've been unable to fully understand for quite some time now.

1) Modifying the visibility ceiling

In this particular case, when the player is under the bed I'd like the room description to appear as:

[b]Bedroom[/b] (under the bed)
Your cozy bedroom.

More generally, I've looked at the section in the Standard Rules dealing with the looking action and determining visibility levels several times; although I can mostly follow how the process works, I don't understand how to intervene in or modify the process.  I've had other situations before where, for example, the player is in container A which is inside container B.  In that case I always wanted the room description while looking to say:

[b]Room[/b] (in container B)
A room.

rather than 

[b]Room[/b] (in container B) (in container A)
A room.

If anyone can suggest a direct solution for the matter at hand involving undersides I'd be interested to hear it, but I would also be interested in hearing any discussion about how to generally affect the visibility levels processing.

2) Removing things from scope

I'd like to set things up so that when the player (or all actors if possible) is in an underside of object XYZ, the player/actors cannot see other items on (for supporters) or in (for containers) object XYZ, except of course for items that are in the underside of XYZ along with the player; I'd also like to prevent the player (or other actors if possible) from interacting with any items on/in object XYZ unless such objects are in the underside of XYZ.  For example, if I am hiding under a bed it's not possible for me to read a magazine that's on top of the bed; furthermore if Jane enters the room while I'm under the bed and drops a scarf on the bed, I shouldn't know at all that a scarf is now on the bed until I stand up and look.

This is something I've had trouble with for some time now.  While the Inform documentation is full of examples regarding how to add things to the scope of the player, it has little to say about deciding the scope of other actors and as far as I can determine it has not a single word about how to remove things from anyone's scope (player or other actors).

So far I tried two things to address the issue in particular regard to undersides; both of them compiled fine, but neither worked:

[code][(a)]
After deciding the scope of the player while the player is in an underside (called the smallerbox) (this is the can't see other side of holder while in underside rule):	
	let the greaterbox be the holder of the smallerbox;
	unless the greaterbox is transparent:
		place the greaterbox in scope, but not its contents;
		repeat with adjustment running through things in the smallerbox:
			place adjustment in scope.[/code]
The above seemed to have absolutely no effect on anything.

[code][(b)]
Rule for deciding the concealed possessions of a supporter (called cursup):
	unless cursup incorporates an underside:
		make no decision;
	otherwise:
		let curund be a random underside incorporated by cursup;
		if the player is in curund:
			if the particular possession is in curund:
				no;
			otherwise:
				yes;
		otherwise:
			make no decision.[/code]
(b) had the odd effect of hiding the player after entering the underside, as well as blocking the "After entering an underside" rule (both of which are undesirable effects), but otherwise had no effect on anything.

Despite the claim
[quote="Writing with Inform, Chapter 17.27"]We very rarely want to forbid the player to refer to things close at hand...[/quote]
I find that this is something I want to do on a fairly regular basis, for both the player and for other actors; sadly I don't really know how to even start writing such rules.

Does anyone have any suggestions for dealing with these issues?




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=897&start=0#p4735
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Undersides, Visibility Levels, and Scope/Concealment
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2009-12-19 04:04:12

It's late (early) here, so I'll offer a quick and only partially tested solution to #1. I added this code to the above for testing purposes:[code]The box is an enterable, open, bedsize container in the bedspace.
Test box with "stand / get under bed / l / go box / l".[/code][quote="Endosphere"]In this particular case, when the player is under the bed I'd like the room description to appear as:

[b]Bedroom[/b] (under the bed)
Your cozy bedroom.[/quote]This seems to give the most basic result which follows the style of the standard rules:[code]This is the new room description heading rule:
	say bold type;
	if the visibility level count is 0:
		begin the printing the name of a dark room activity;
		if handling the printing the name of a dark room activity,
			issue miscellaneous library message number 71;
		end the printing the name of a dark room activity;
	otherwise if the visibility ceiling is the location:
		say "[visibility ceiling]";
	otherwise:
		say "[The visibility ceiling]";
	say roman type;
	let intermediate level be the visibility-holder of the actor;	
	repeat with intermediate level count running from 2 to the visibility level count:
		if the intermediate level incorporates an underside enclosing the actor,
			say " (under [the intermediate level])"; [*]
		otherwise issue library message looking action number 8 for the intermediate level; [*]
		let the intermediate level be the visibility-holder of the intermediate level;
	say line break;
	say run paragraph on with special look spacing.

The new room description heading rule is listed instead of the room description heading rule in the carry out looking rules.
[/code]Note, however, that you get descriptions like:

[b]Bedroom[/b] (in the box) (under the bed)

Since you only want the most immediate holder of the actor named (if I read your post correctly), you could do this instead:[code]This is the other new room description heading rule:
	say bold type;
	if the visibility level count is 0:
		begin the printing the name of a dark room activity;
		if handling the printing the name of a dark room activity,
			issue miscellaneous library message number 71;
		end the printing the name of a dark room activity;
	otherwise if the visibility ceiling is the location:
		say "[visibility ceiling]";
	otherwise:
		say "[The visibility ceiling]";
	say roman type;
	let intermediate level be the visibility-holder of the actor;
	if the intermediate level incorporates an underside enclosing the actor,
		say " (under [the intermediate level])";
	otherwise issue library message looking action number 8 for the intermediate level;
	say line break;
	say run paragraph on with special look spacing.

The other new room description heading rule is listed instead of the room description heading rule in the carry out looking rules.
[/code]... which, when the player is in the the box which is under the bed, results in:

[b]Bedroom[/b] (in the box)
[quote="Endosphere"]More generally, I've looked at the section in the Standard Rules dealing with the looking action and determining visibility levels several times; although I can mostly follow how the process works, I don't understand how to intervene in or modify the process... but I would also be interested in hearing any discussion about how to generally affect the visibility levels processing.[/quote]I'll get back to you on this, but suffice it to say I don't think it's a good idea to mess with the visibility routines if you don't have to. Even though they are involved in both of your issues, they affect other things as well; changing them could have unintended effects. I'm pretty sure we can solve your scoping issue another way. I'll get back to you.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=897&start=0#p4736
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Undersides, Visibility Levels, and Scope/Concealment
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2009-12-19 05:45:42

For #2, try this:[code][This affects scope, but not descriptions.]

Rule for deciding the concealed possessions of a supporter which incorporates an underside (called curund) which encloses the player:
	if the particular possession is in curund or the particular possession is curund:
		no;
	otherwise:
		yes.

[This affects descriptions.]

Rule for listing nondescript items for a supporter which incorporates an underside which encloses the player: do nothing.[/code]
I also noticed that you can refer to the sock even when you can't see it because you're standing up. If you don't want that, you'll need another "deciding the concealed possessions" rule. If you [i]do[/i] want that, maybe you want to be able to refer to the blanket when you're under the bed, in which case you don't want [i]this[/i] first rule either.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=898&start=0#p4737
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: programmatically creating scenes
User: George / DateTime: 2009-12-19 13:42:16

We can't create scene kinds or create scenes from tables as we can with objects and values, but I'm curious if there's still a way to create scenes from tables; something like this:

[code]
When play begins:
    repeat through the Table of Scenes:
        [scene entry] is a scene;
        [scene entry] begins when [begin-condition];
        ....
[/code]

Nothing has worked so far -- any ideas?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=895&start=0#p4738
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Runtime Errors...
User: Pe-ads / DateTime: 2009-12-19 15:38:19

@vaporware
I realised today (on the bus of all places), that I could just use the code you suggested. Also, thanks for pointing out that Inform already has 'opened/unopened' stuff.

Pe-ads

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=899&start=0#p4739
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Rolling Dice in Tads3?
User: QueenoftheCapes / DateTime: 2009-12-19 22:22:32

Hi; sorry if this has been covered elsewhere, but how do you program dice in Tads3?

In my current project, I'm trying to implement a D20 which, of course, when rolled would generate a number 1-20 which would then become a value to be applied to a number of things depending on context.  

Currently, I have a do-nothing die:
 [code]
class Die : Thing
vocabWords = 'die*dice'
dobjFor(Roll)
{
verify(){}
check(){}
action()
 {
  "{you/he} roll{s} a <<rand(20)>>. ";
  }
}
;
[/code]

The problems with this are
a) I want to exclude zero as a possible outcome, which it currently is.  Preferably, I'd like to have it randomly select numbers between a given min and max, but so far the literature doesn't seem to say how to do that. :p  
Also,
b) It's currently display only.  What should I do so that I get a random value for *computing* purposes?  Anonymous function? Script? Something else altogether?

Does anyone have any ideas?


ETA: Just updating to say that I worked out an awkward kludge for problem A,
[code]

class Die : Thing
vocabWords = 'die*dice'
dobjFor(Roll)
{
verify(){}
check(){}
action()
 {
  "{you/he} roll{s} a <<rand(gDobj.sides)>>. ";
  }
}
;

d20: Die 'd20' 'D20'
"It's a blue, nearly round die with sides numbered one through twenty. "
sides = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20]
;
[/code]

But I keep thinking there has *got* to be a more effecient way to do these things.  Is there?  
Also, still working on B.  :p

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=897&start=0#p4740
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Undersides, Visibility Levels, and Scope/Concealment
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-12-19 22:45:05

@Skinny Mike

Thanks for the response.  The room description heading rule doesn't seem quite so intimidating after reading your revised versions, especially since you provided two examples that do slightly different things; I didn't fully understand before how the various lines of the room description header rule related to each other, and since I was worried about Bad Things happening (or more particularly, Subtle Bad Things That I Wouldn't Notice Until Much Later When I Would No Longer Remember Doing Whatever Caused Them) I hadn't tried to "get in there" and change anything before.  I agree with your comment that great care should be taken when modifying the process, but I'm glad you provided both those examples as I will probably use both of them eventually in different contexts.  The first example does indeed seem appropriate for the "undersides" idea, while the second second will solve a long-standing issue I've been having with the way I represent liquids (namely, as containers) in my game environment, resulting in what I feel are silly room descriptions like:

[b]Bathroom[/b] (in the bathtub) (in the water)

(as opposed to floating above the bathtub full of water?  Well, it [i]is[/i] possible I guess).

Is there any reason (in the context of my worries about Subtle Bad Things happening as well as your comment about unintended effects) not to write several of these header rules for various conditions, and then use procedural rules to select the appropriate version for the current context?  For example (not tested):

Procedural rule: if the holder of the player is a liquid, substitute the liquid-room description heading rule for the room description heading rule.

Your post was very helpful to me, thanks again.

@vaporware

Thanks for the response.  I played around with various combinations of what I wrote and what you wrote (I had four  [emote]:shock:[/emote]  text files open at the same time with game transcripts from various combinations), and I think the functionality I like best is the inclusion of both your rules.

[quote="vaporware"]I also noticed that you can refer to the sock even when you can't see it because you're standing up. If you don't want that, you'll need another "deciding the concealed possessions" rule. If you [i]do[/i] want that, maybe you want to be able to refer to the blanket when you're under the bed, in which case you don't want [i]this[/i] first rule either.[/quote]
I hadn't made up my mind about this as there's some subtlety involved.  I had already spent some time pondering variations of the point you raised in regard to the blanket while designing the undersides, and I spent some more time pondering the issue after reading your comment.  My general opinion on design is that whenever a decision must be made between realism versus better gameplay, realism should lose; in this case though it's not clear to me whether arguing that an edge of the blanket may be hanging down far enough to be visible from under the bed is a realism argument or a facilitating gameplay argument.  I still haven't made up my mind completely on the issue, but since I liked the way things worked while including both of your rules I guess I'm leaning toward saying that in the interest of gameplay everything on "the other side" of an underside should be excluded from view.  On your other point about the sock being "visible" (in the Inform/technical sense) but not described anywhere, that's actually by design.  If someone has looked under a bed and seen something there, I don't think presuming that they'll remember what they saw (particularly since they always have the option of just looking again whenever they like) is asking too much; plus it makes things easier when it's time to tell the player his character is tired and should go to sleep, without the character automatically noticing that Freddy Kreuger, Cujo, and the Blob of Doom from Planet X are currently holding a Union of Scary Monsters meeting under the bed.

Thanks again for your response, it was very helpful.

@anyone

--Is anyone able to particularly explain why the example rule (a) I gave above (After deciding the scope of the player while the player is in an underside) didn't do anything?  I really thought that should have worked, and I'm not feeling comfortable about failing to see the reasons for the rule's failure to do anything.

--[i]Completely[/i] off topic: if there are any mathematics and geometry whizzes reading this thread who would like to amuse themselves for a few minutes by helping someone who never paid attention in math class (namely, me  [emote]:([/emote] ) solve a math-related problem, feel free to join in.  Here's the problem:

If we have:

a) a world where everything is a square (or sometimes a rectangle) with dimensions measured in inches; and

b) we have some liquids that are always squares with dimensions measured in inches; and

c) according to some research from Wikipedia:

1 gallon = 128 fluid ounces = 231 cubic inches = a figure 3 inches by 7 inches by 11 inches (or, according to my calculator, a cube 6.1358 inches by 6.1358 inches by 6.1358 inches; I could be wrong); and

d) according to my calculator then (I could be wrong), 1 fluid ounce = 1.8046875 cubic inches;

then

e) if we remove 1 (or 18, or 135, etc) fluid ounces from the gallon-cube of fluid, is there a general formula or concept for determining the resized dimensions (height, width, depth) of the gallon-minus X number of ounces-cube?  What about if we add 1 (or 7, or 92, etc) fluid ounces to the gallon-cube:  how would the gallon-cube's resized dimensions be determined in that case?  Bonus points  [emote]:)[/emote] for you if the forumla is easily translated into Informese, but if not that's no problem.  Double bonus points if you can explain your answer in terms a grade-school kid could understand, since grade-school was around the time I stopped paying attention in math class [emote]:D[/emote] .




-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=898&start=0#p4741
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: programmatically creating scenes
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-12-19 22:59:29

I'm not sure I can be very helpful on this (sorry), but I'm curious about something.  Were you intending your table idea simply as a time-saver (to accumulate all the scenes and conditions in one place for easy reference) or were you intending to write to the table during gameplay (to try changing entries such as "[begin-condition]", etc)?





-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=899&start=0#p4742
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Rolling Dice in Tads3?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-12-19 23:31:13

[quote="QueenoftheCapes"]a) I want to exclude zero as a possible outcome, which it currently is.  Preferably, I'd like to have it randomly select numbers between a given min and max, but so far the literature doesn't seem to say how to do that. :p[/quote]
TADS 3 doesn't have a function that returns a random number in any given range. As you've noticed, rand(20) actually returns a random number from 0-19. If all of your ranges will be from 1 to some other number, then it's easiest to use rand(max) + 1; in the case of your d20, you'd use rand(20) + 1.

It's easy enough to create a function that returns a random number from a given range, though. This does the trick:
[code]function randBetween(num1, num2)
{
    /* find out which of the given numbers is larger */
    local maximum = max(num1, num2);
    local minimum = min(num1, num2);
    
    /* calculate the random number */
    local tempMax = maximum - minimum + 1;
    local randNum = rand(tempMax) + minimum;
    return randNum;
}[/code]

[quote="QueenoftheCapes"]b) It's currently display only.  What should I do so that I get a random value for *computing* purposes?  Anonymous function? Script? Something else altogether?[/quote]
rand() doesn't print the number itself; it just returns it. (The number is being printed by the << >> brackets in your string.) So you can store the random number in a local variable or a property, just like any other number. For instance:
[code]local roll = rand(20) + 1;[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=898&start=0#p4743
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: programmatically creating scenes
User: George / DateTime: 2009-12-20 00:17:45

Well that's funny -- it started as the former, but as I played with it it became the latter! I'm not quite sure what kind of game that would turn out to be, but it seems like an interesting path to go down.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=0#p4744
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: C. Everett / DateTime: 2009-12-20 02:20:21

[b]NEW PROBLEM:[/b]
I have a few things whose descriptions will change a bit if the player has already looked at certain other things.  I think I need an if statement in brackets before the added text, but I'm not sure how to word it.  "If x is/has been examined/looked at/discovered"?


[rant=SOLVED PROBLEMS][b]NEW PROBLEM:[/b]
I don't know what I need to do to let the player activate the drone.  Code so far is:

[code]
The drone is either active or inactive.  The drone is inactive.  Activating is an action applying to one thing.  Activating is making the thing active.  Understand "activate [something]" as activating.  



Instead of going when drone is inactive:
	say "testing 2"
[/code]

(I'm going to fill in 'testing 2' later.)[/rant]

[rant=ANSWERED QUESTIONS][b]NEW QUESTION:[/b]
I need to make a few usable computers in my game, which will primarily be used to view journal entries and retrieve certain pieces of information.  How exactly would I go about doing this?[/rant]

-----

Slogging through the documentation is giving me a headache, so if you just want to tell me of a specific part of it (the documentation) that'll fix my problem, instead of trying to explain it yourself, feel free to.

First problem.  The game I'm working on now (my first) centers on the A.I. of a small, abandoned, research lab wandering around through a work drone proxy.  I want the player to have to perform an action like "activate drone" or "sync drone" before being able to move, basically.  Except I have no idea how to go about this.

Second problem.  This is probably a stupid, newbie problem, but anyway: the starting room is called "A.I. Personality Core".  I don't know how to get the periods in the 'A.I.' abbreviation, or if I even can.

Third problem.  Not really that vital, I was just wondering if there's a simple way to have a door have a different name depending on which side of it you're on.  Like "door to Richard's Quarters" becomes "door to Hub" when you're in Richard's Quarters.  I seem to remember seeing something about "double-faced doors" [i]somewhere[/i], but I have no idea where that was.


And I just want to say I feel lazy asking for help instead of scouring the documentation, so feel free to tell me to bugger off if the mood strikes you.



(Oh, and I'll try to dump any more problems I encounter in this thread, instead of starting a bajillion others.)
(Thread previously called "More (assorted) problems")

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=0#p4745
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More (assorted) problems
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-12-20 03:17:41

[quote="C. Everett"]First problem.  The game I'm working on now (my first) centers on the A.I. of a small, abandoned, research lab wandering around through a work drone proxy.  I want the player to have to perform an action like "activate drone" or "sync drone" before being able to move, basically.  Except I have no idea how to go about this.[/quote]
You could add a before rule:

[code]Activating is starting up.
Syncing is starting up.

The drone is either active or inactive. The drone is inactive.

Before doing something when the drone is inactive and the current action is not starting up:
	say "You can't do that while the drone is not activated!";
	stop the action.[/code]

Edit: I may have misread the question, so if you mean that only moving to other rooms should be disallowed then just:

[code]Instead of going when the drone is inactive:
	say "The drone can't move while it's inactive."[/code]

[quote]Second problem.  This is probably a stupid, newbie problem, but anyway: the starting room is called "A.I. Personality Core".  I don't know how to get the periods in the 'A.I.' abbreviation, or if I even can.[/quote]
You can call the room something else in the code and give it a printed name (see example 18 in chapter 3.11):

[code]The AI Personality Core is a room. The printed name of the AI Personality Core is "A.I. Personality Core".[/code]

[quote]Third problem.  Not really that vital, I was just wondering if there's a simple way to have a door have a different name depending on which side of it you're on.  Like "door to Richard's Quarters" becomes "door to Hub" when you're in Richard's Quarters.  I seem to remember seeing something about "double-faced doors" [i]somewhere[/i], but I have no idea where that was.[/quote]
See example 61 in chapter 5.5 and use the printed name property just like with the room name.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=0#p4747
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More (assorted) problems
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-12-20 03:45:16

Nitku gave some good answers while I was writing a reply.  Since I was already done writing before I noticed, though, here's what I had in mind:

[quote="C. Everett"]And I just want to say I feel lazy asking for help instead of scouring the documentation, so feel free to tell me to bugger off if the mood strikes you.[/quote]
If you have question that you've taken the time to post, then it's likely that 5 (or 50, or 500) people also have the same question but for whatever reason were reluctant to ask.  We're all here to learn about Inform, but if no one starts any threads no one else will learn anything.  In other words, ask away. [emote]:)[/emote] 

Second and third problems:
You want to use a property called "printed name" that can be assigned to things; this property defines what appears in the test game when Inform wants to refer to the item (but [i]only[/i] in the test game; not in your actual code).  One complication here is that the player will only ever see this printed name, so you'll want to make sure the test game will understand what the player means when they refer to something by the printed name you've chosen by using the phrase "Understand...as."

For example:
[code]Room1 is a room.  The printed name of room1 is "A.I. Personality Core".

A door called the multinamed is south of room1 and north of room2.  The printed name of multinamed is "[if the location is room1]door to Richard's Quarters[otherwise]door to the A.I. Personality Core[end if]".  Understand "door" or "door to richard's quarters" or "door to ai personality core" as the multinamed.

The printed name of room2 is "Richard's Quarters".[/code]
If Inform ever gives you a problem about the printed name of something (for example, regions can't have the printed name property) could just write:

Rule for printing the name of whatever: say "Insert your message here".

I made your example more complicated in one additional way.  If we have something that will have periods in its name, this could present a problem (note I didn't write Understand "door to a.i. personality core" as the multinamed).  There's an extension automatically included with Inform 7 called "Punctuation Removal."  If you take a look at the documentation for that extension, it's fairly self-explanatory.

Your first question could be much more complicated, and a little more information will be needed to answer it.  Does the player act through the robot some of the time, or all of the time?  Are there multiple characters to be played, or are you attempting to set up a situation in which there is a main character who gives orders to a robot avatar (like that old game, [i]Suspended[/i])?

If you're just starting out and having trouble with the documentation for Inform 7, there's a good resource that's helpful and easy to understand linked at the [url=http://inform7.com/news/]Inform website[/url] under the news item "Jim Aikin's Inform Handbook completed".




-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=897&start=0#p4748
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Undersides, Visibility Levels, and Scope/Concealment
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2009-12-20 07:32:01

[quote="Endosphere"]Is anyone able to particularly explain why the example rule (a) I gave above (After deciding the scope of the player while the player is in an underside) didn't do anything?  I really thought that should have worked, and I'm not feeling comfortable about failing to see the reasons for the rule's failure to do anything.[/quote]
An "after deciding the scope" rule can only add things to scope: scope isn't a list, it's a process, and all the default objects have already been placed in scope by the time your "after" rule runs. The only ways to remove things from scope are (1) write a "deciding the concealed possessions" rule, or (2) completely replace the default scope behavior by writing a "for deciding the scope" rule. The latter is hard to do well, since the default implementation is part of an I6 function and uses some local state that isn't available to an I7 replacement, but it would be complicated even if that weren't a problem.

Also, scope doesn't control what goes in descriptions, so removing things from scope would only prevent the player from referring to them. It wouldn't stop them from being listed.

[quote][i]Completely[/i] off topic: if there are any mathematics and geometry whizzes reading this thread who would like to amuse themselves for a few minutes by helping someone who never paid attention in math class (namely, me  [emote]:([/emote] ) solve a math-related problem, feel free to join in.  Here's the problem:

If we have:

a) a world where everything is a square (or sometimes a rectangle) with dimensions measured in inches; and

b) we have some liquids that are always squares with dimensions measured in inches; and

c) according to some research from Wikipedia:

1 gallon = 128 fluid ounces = 231 cubic inches = a figure 3 inches by 7 inches by 11 inches (or, according to my calculator, a cube 6.1358 inches by 6.1358 inches by 6.1358 inches; I could be wrong); and

d) according to my calculator then (I could be wrong), 1 fluid ounce = 1.8046875 cubic inches;

then

e) if we remove 1 (or 18, or 135, etc) fluid ounces from the gallon-cube of fluid, is there a general formula or concept for determining the resized dimensions (height, width, depth) of the gallon-minus X number of ounces-cube?  What about if we add 1 (or 7, or 92, etc) fluid ounces to the gallon-cube:  how would the gallon-cube's resized dimensions be determined in that case?  Bonus points  [emote]:)[/emote] for you if the forumla is easily translated into Informese, but if not that's no problem.  Double bonus points if you can explain your answer in terms a grade-school kid could understand, since grade-school was around the time I stopped paying attention in math class [emote]:D[/emote] .[/quote]
What you're looking for is the cube root. As you might remember from middle school, square root is the opposite of squaring: if x*x = y, then x is the square root of y, assuming x is positive. Likewise, if x*x*x = y, then x is the cube root of y. You know y (the volume) and you want to find x (the length of each side).

So: take your 231 cubic inch volume, convert one fluid ounce to cubic inches and subtract it, then take the cube root of the result to get the length of each side.

Inform can calculate square and cube roots, either with a phrase ("the cube root of 125") or indirectly through the equation feature, and it can also do the unit conversion for you: this is all described in chapter 14 of the manual. For example...
[code]Length is a kind of value. 1 in specifies a length scaled at 100.
Area is a kind of value. 1 sq in specifies an area scaled at 100. A length times a length specifies an area.
A volume is a kind of value. 1 cu in specifies a volume scaled at 100. 1 gallon (singular, in gallons) specifies a volume equivalent to 231 cu in. 10 gallons (plural, in gallons) specifies a volume equivalent to 231 cu in. 1 fl oz (in fluid ounces) specifies a volume equivalent to 1.8 cu in. A length times an area specifies a volume.

Equation - Cube Volume Equation
	v = l^3
where v is a volume and l is a length.

When play begins:
	let v be 1 gallon;
	decrease v by 1 fl oz;
	let l be given by the Cube Volume Equation;
	say "[v] (~[v in fluid ounces]) fits in a cube [l] on a side."[/code]
But since Inform internally does all math in integers, you won't get much precision, and the conversion factor between cubic inches and fluid ounces won't be very accurate. Scaling the units at 100 gives you two decimal places. Any more than that and you'll get garbage results because of integer overflow.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=898&start=0#p4749
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: programmatically creating scenes
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2009-12-20 07:49:50

[quote="George"]We can't create scene kinds or create scenes from tables as we can with objects and values, but I'm curious if there's still a way to create scenes from tables; something like this:

[code]
When play begins:
    repeat through the Table of Scenes:
        [scene entry] is a scene;
        [scene entry] begins when [begin-condition];
        ....
[/code]

Nothing has worked so far -- any ideas?[/quote]
Can't be done, I'm afraid. Scenes have to be defined at compile time, and that means they have to be at top level, not inside a rule or phrase as you've done here.

Defining them with a table isn't supported either. "Condition" is a kind of value, so you can't put the begin or end condition in a table, at least without special help from the compiler (like how "topic" isn't a kind of value either, but you can still have topic columns).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=899&start=0#p4750
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Rolling Dice in Tads3?
User: QueenoftheCapes / DateTime: 2009-12-20 21:55:46

Thanks!  [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=899&start=0#p4752
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Rolling Dice in Tads3?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2009-12-21 07:57:15

Note the first: I know nothing about TADS, 3 or otherwise. But I do know a few things about die rollers.

First, as Emerald already said, rolling a die in your bog-standard coding language is easiest done by simply randomising and adding numbers to make the range fit. I'll do this in metacode; hopefully the ideas will be lucid enough.

(single die, where x is the number of sides to the die)[code]random(x-1)+1    // solves for a single die with 2 or more sides[/code]
Next, bonuses and penalties are applied.
(where y is the die bonus or penalty)[code]random(x-1)+1+y   // solves for any single die with 2 or more sides and a bonus or penalty, e.g. 1d8-5, 1d20+30, etc[/code]
So far, everything is simple enough. But what to do when you have multiple dice? Well, obviously, run the routine again. Best to put it in a function, of course, but that's good practice anyway. For legibility, I tend to create functions that are called like this in languages like PhP:
[code]dieRoll("3d6+1");[/code]
The function then chunks the input string and interprets it as needed, which is trivial enough.

[i]But[/i]... what if we have notions such as "remove the lowest die"? What you do then is store each die rolled as a part of an array. Then you have the function iterate through the array and remove those dice that rolled the lowest, the highest, or whatever result you wanted. Then you add/subtract the final bonus or penalty.

[b][i]But[/i][/b]... what about Infinity dice? I speak of the good old mechanic in which you get to roll, for instance, 3d6, and in which every 6 means you don't add the 6 but instead roll two new d6es, and so on and so forth? It's a dead useful mechanic, providing a limited but sometimes dramatic uncertainty factor. But it also, if you're not clever about things, will be a bitch to code: the first impulse of the modern coder is to do it recursively (that is that each result of 6 would call the die roller function twice from [i]within[/i] the die roller function, and so on) leading to completely unnecessary hi-jinks. 

Or we could do it with a For-Next loop, which would loop through every die. Each time you roll 1 to 5, you add it as normal to the tally. Whenever you roll 6, you don't add it: you instead add 2 to the number of dice that must be rolled.


...I really must learn TADS3. Regrettably I can't seem to get it to work on my system. All that aside, I hope someone will find something useful in the above post.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=902&start=0#p4753
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Ghost Town hint system
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2009-12-21 14:14:42

For those of you who has or are playing Ghost Town I just want to let you know that I've made a hint system for it which can be downloaded here:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.delron.org.uk/index.htm">http://www.delron.org.uk/index.htm</a>
Just look under "Whats new" on the right hand side of the screen.
Have fun

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=846&start=0#p4754
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Adventure hint system ?
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2009-12-21 14:19:24

[emote]:D[/emote] 
Just to let you know that I finally finished the hint system for Ghost Town.
If you want to have a look at it feel free to do so.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.delron.org.uk/Ghost%20Town%20hints.html">http://www.delron.org.uk/Ghost%20Town%20hints.html</a>

Cheers

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=903&start=0#p4755
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: saying a thing's property in relation to another thing?
User: George / DateTime: 2009-12-21 15:59:48

I'm looking for a concise way to say a thing's property in relation to another thing -- apologies if that's a little confusing, I'm still getting the basics of I7 figured out. I'm looking for something concise as I have a lot of things and I'm trying to minimize extra typing. Currently I'm generating I7 code with regular expression matching in a separate text editor, but I'm wondering if there's an easier way to just write it in I7.

What I have are a bunch of things with properties containing text, like this:

[code]
A tool has some text called vs concertina wire.
A tool has some text called vs electric fence.
A tool has some text called vs watchtower.
A tool has some text called vs dogs.
....
[/code]

Where a tool is a kind of thing. Then I want to say this property when comparing a particular tool against another thing, if the particular tool has a non-empty property. So it looks like this:

[code]
The silk map cancels exposed terrain. 
The vs exposed terrain of the silk map is "testing."
[/code]

Where 'canceling' is a relation between tools and another kind, obstacles (of which exposed terrain is a member).

Currently I'm getting at this in a big switch statement, that looks like:

[code]
To say (T - a tool) vs (O - an obstacle):
	if O is:
		-- concertina wire: say vs concertina wire of T;
		-- electric fence: say vs electric fence of T;
....
[/code]

Then a test of all of this looks like:

[code]
When play begins:
	repeat through the Table of Enemy Obstacles:
		if the silk map cancels the obstacle entry:
			say the silk map vs obstacle entry. 
[/code]

So, to make a long story short -- is there an easier way to 'say the silk map vs obstacle entry'?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=903&start=0#p4756
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: saying a thing's property in relation to another thing?
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2009-12-21 19:58:37

My recommendation is to use tables instead of separate properties for each obstacle. You could make one big table listing the text for each combination of tool and obstacle, or give each tool a table-name property pointing to its own table which would only need to list the obstacle and text. With one big table, you'd have to use a loop to find the matching row; with separate tables, you'd have simpler code ("let tbl be the obstacle text table of T; if O is an obstacle listed in tbl, say the quip entry;") but you'd need more definitions.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=903&start=0#p4757
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: saying a thing's property in relation to another thing?
User: George / DateTime: 2009-12-21 20:24:41

I had started off with a big table, but found a bug in the number of columns allowed (which will be fixed, but in the next release I'm guessing) that made that unworkable -- I wasn't sure about using individual tables, thanks for the suggestion.

[i]edit[/i]: yep, that's way more concise than what I had  [emote]:)[/emote] . Didn't need the relation or the switch statement at all.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=903&start=0#p4758
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: saying a thing's property in relation to another thing?
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2009-12-21 23:54:30

[quote="George"]I had started off with a big table, but found a bug in the number of columns allowed (which will be fixed, but in the next release I'm guessing) that made that unworkable[/quote]
Ah.. if you were hitting the column limit, I imagine you had something like this:[code]Table of Obstacle Text
tool            vs concertina wire      vs electric fence       ...
silk map        "blah"                  "blah"                  ...[/code]
I was thinking of something more like this:[code]Table of Obstacle Text
tool            obstacle                quip
silk map        concertina wire         "blah"
silk map        electric fence          "blah"

To decide which text is the quip for (T - tool) vs (O - obstacle):
        repeat through the Table of Obstacle Text:
                if the tool entry is T and the obstacle entry is O, decide on the quip entry;
        decide on "".[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=903&start=0#p4759
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: saying a thing's property in relation to another thing?
User: George / DateTime: 2009-12-22 10:19:23

Yes, I was doing your first example -- the second didn't even occur to me, as I was creating the things from the table.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=831&start=0#p4760
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Computer Novel Construction Set
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2009-12-22 12:16:56

Sounds a bit like Adrift to me...
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.adrift.org.uk/forum/">http://www.adrift.org.uk/forum/</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=0#p4761
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More (assorted) problems
User: C. Everett / DateTime: 2009-12-23 01:26:21

First, I just want to say thanks to both of you.  I've nearly got the bones of my game world in place now.

Second:

[quote]Your first question could be much more complicated, and a little more information will be needed to answer it. Does the player act through the robot some of the time, or all of the time? Are there multiple characters to be played, or are you attempting to set up a situation in which there is a main character who gives orders to a robot avatar (like that old game, Suspended)?
[/quote] 


There are three possible bodies in the game.  The drone, which is what the player uses for most of the game, an organic artificial body, and an advanced robotic body, the latter two of which are each used in a different ending.

It's not so much a main character giving orders to a robot avatar, it's more like the A.I. character controlling the drone through a direct link.  So, the drone acts as the player for most of the game, but the player can switch into one of two different artificial bodies near the end of the game.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=897&start=0#p4762
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Undersides, Visibility Levels, and Scope/Concealment
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-12-23 13:18:20

Thanks for the help on the math, vaporware.  I see now what I was doing wrong: I was trying to subtract the dimensions of the new cube from the original cube, rather than simply recalculating the original cube.  I guess that career in physics is out the question for me. [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

I'm able to get a bit more precision with these values because I'm actually using half-inches as my basic unit of measurement; it's not a completely adequate solution by any means, but it helps (in addition to not doing well with math, I can't relate to the metric system either--and I'm too old to change my ways).




-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=0#p4763
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More (assorted) problems
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-12-23 13:21:59

Nitku's first suggestion, "Before activating..." should basically be all you need for the various robots.  If not, or if you need help refining the particulars, feel free to ask.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=904&start=0#p4764
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: MERRY CHRISTMAS
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2009-12-24 13:28:05

I know that we Danes are a very impatient people... We celebrate Christmas on the evening of the 24th and not like you otherwise patient human beings who can wait unwrap your presents to the following day...  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

Anyways...
                       I just want to wish all Creators, and Gamers a very [b]MERRY  CHRISTMAS ...[/b]
                       I hope that whatever you have wished for must be under the tree ...  [emote]:P[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=878&start=0#p4765
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: RSS Feed?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2009-12-24 13:51:29

Well, I've looked over some basic information, and it seems pretty easy. Fortunately, I'm already very familiar with XML, and with producing XML content via server-side programming. On the surface, this is something I could create myself, in just a short while.

But this basic information seems to lack answers to some questions I have. I'll probably need to do some more research. For instance, Basic RSS information doesn't appear to include a time/date tag for the reader to know when the item was published. Maybe there are advanced tags not shown in the tutorial I've seen. Wouldn't the reader need that to know what was "new" since last time? Or is the feed supposed to include [i]all[/i] items, growing indefinitely? Should it instead include X number of prior days' items, or X number of the most recent items? Should it contain each post's text individually, or the contents of a complete thread as one item, or just the title and a link?

Creating the RSS feed should be simple. Knowing exactly what should go into it seems a little more up in the air...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=878&start=0#p4766
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: RSS Feed?
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2009-12-24 19:03:48

You know what, I ran into some of the same questions when I started to write the RSS feed for the forum on Caltrops.com. I think what we ultimately decided to do was deliver the last twenty posts in descending chronological order. People can decide how many they want to view on their clients - for instance, I can pick from one to ten items on the google.com/ig thing I use for feed. Let me see if I can find the PHP code we used...

[code]$sql = <<<EOD
SELECT * 
FROM posts p, threads t, forums f
WHERE p.tid = t.tid
AND t.fid = f.fid
AND f.fid not in ('493', '83')
AND p.title NOT LIKE '%NSFW%'
ORDER BY p.post_time DESC 
LIMIT 20 

EOD;
[/code]

It's a custom implementation, not phpBB, but the general idea is there. There's more code to handle what parts of the post get brought back. And then the entire thing sits at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.caltrops.com/rss.php">www.caltrops.com/rss.php</a>. 

Actually, let me know if you'd like the file we ended up running with, Mike, I'd be happy to send it over. And Merry Christmas!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=899&start=0#p4767
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Rolling Dice in Tads3?
User: QueenoftheCapes / DateTime: 2009-12-24 22:05:24

....Coool.... [emote]:shock:[/emote] 

And yes, you must learn Tads3.  As it is, my experience with rpg die-roll systems is limited, and so I'm working with a combination of scant knowledge and guesswork; reinventing the wheel as it were. :p  All these things sound very useful to know.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=905&start=0#p4768
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: How do you call Randomize?
User: QueenoftheCapes / DateTime: 2009-12-24 22:09:42

While researching the rand() function, I came upon a line in the library which apparently says that rand() isn't truly random unless randomize() is called.  Upon reflection and experimentation, I found this to be true.  The problem is, How and Where to I call randomize()?

I hate to sound like a n00b, but I just can't figure out if I'm supposed to stick it in the code somewhere or - Oh God Please No - replace every instance of rand() with randomize().

Please tell me I just have to flag it as "on" somewhere. X_X

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=904&start=0#p4769
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: MERRY CHRISTMAS
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2009-12-25 05:24:58

And <inserty deity of your choice> bless us every one!

*not available in atheist households*

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=905&start=0#p4770
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How do you call Randomize?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-12-25 06:35:23

You only have to call randomize() once. You need to call it before you use rand(), so the best place to call it is either gameMain.showIntro() or an InitObject. I'd use showIntro(); it's simpler.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=899&start=0#p4771
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Rolling Dice in Tads3?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2009-12-25 12:23:25

[quote="QueenoftheCapes"]....Coool.... [emote]:shock:[/emote] 

And yes, you must learn Tads3.  As it is, my experience with rpg die-roll systems is limited, and so I'm working with a combination of scant knowledge and guesswork; reinventing the wheel as it were. :p  All these things sound very useful to know.[/quote]

TADS 3 does appear to have its good sides. I primarily enjoy Inform 7 at present because it's forced me to go back to the basics and learn alternative ways of doing things. But broader knowledge is also a useful thing, so I've just installed TADS 3. I'll give it a whirl one of these days.

One thing I have to stress regarding computer RPGs, a thing I think has yet to occur to perhaps ninety-eight percent of the more famous publishers of "computer RPG", is what role playing as a concept is actually about. The reason we use dice in tabletop games isn't because they're dice and we love numbers; it was simply seen as the least cumbersome way to both [i]randomise the action[/i] and let the player [i]place bets[/i]. 

That's why I can't really comprehend why hit points or overt number damage still exists in computer games today. If you hit a person with a sword, it will presumably cause some manner of setback. Fine, that's okay. In a realistic setting, this might lead to bleeding, shock, broken bones or death; perhaps the person instead will be so charged with adrenaline that she will keep fighting and hardly feel it. In an unrealistic, heroic setting, the character might grunt, clutch a superficial cut on her cheek, raise her sword again, and continue; either that, or she will not be hit in the first place.

I have yet to see a story or TV show in which a hit from a sword resulted in "-15 hp" briefly floating above the head of a character. It's useless, mechanics-bound information, and it will only serve to pull you out of mimesis. Once it was tolerated because the simplest pen-and-paper systems available used it for attrition, but then as now, there are so many other systems around that are frankly better. Said systems should be used instead of the tick-tick-boom method of "I'm just fine... crud, HP is 0! I'm dead!"

EDIT: So I guess what I'm saying is actually three things.
[list=1][*] Avoid adopting the Bioware school of doing things, i.e. bringing in everything but the dice themselves. It's a popular method because some apparently hold this as the point of RPGs, but otherwise it is of limited utility.[/*:m][*] The presentation of violence as entertainment (or chases, or anything else we usually see in RPGs) will differ between genres. In Star Wars, a five-man group of plucky outsiders are perfectly expected to brave the unknown; we take it in stride; the action is spectacular and flamboyant and superlative. In Call of Cthulhu, "braving the unknown" is... well, pretty much what does tend to happen in a Lovecraft book, but it seldom ends well.[/*:m][*] Instead of presenting numbers, present what they [i]mean[/i] in in-game terms.[/*:m][/list:o]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=904&start=0#p4772
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: MERRY CHRISTMAS
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2009-12-25 13:06:21

Happy Christmas everyone!

*waves to Finn Rosenløv across the strait*

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=80#p4773
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2009-12-25 13:38:22

Hello everyone!

I've been semi-active on the forum recently, but been hesitant to take the plunge as it were and introduce myself formally. The solution, I guess, is to cut back on the formality. So, hi. My name is Björn, I'm 29 years old, and I'm from Sweden, just as my location text subtly infers. Until quite recently I managed to remain largely unfamiliar with IF games; I was twelve or so when I tried Hitchhiker's Guide, Planetfall and Zork II, and the Infocom parser didn't quite work for me back then (and still doesn't, but that's a different kettle of fish entire). But, being an avid RPG aficionado, I've always regarded story as being more important than visuals. 

I'm a jack of many trades and have mastered few; I love the English language; I'm decently familiar with the most common forms programming - C++, PhP, JavaScript, Pascal, various Basic dialects, and HTML, which apparently does count if you're writing a job application. While I already know a few novice tricks in I7 and I6, I'm in the process of broadening my knowledge, and will also be checking out TADS 3 as well (it's only fair, after all).

As a poster, I try to do my best to contribute usefully and maintain a decent content-to-noise ratio. I also believe it's necessary to express the occasional bit of humour - unfortunately, mine is of the freeze-dried variety (I bought British quips on discount and had them shipped over to Sweden). Therefore, if something I said makes no apparent sense, the reason is probably my staunch belief in my own funniness.

I do sometimes tend to harp on about a few subjects. One of these (when discussing IF writing) is general solutions contra specific ones; while coding I tend to jump through an amazing array of contortions just to avoid writing the "instead of taking the cookie, [...]instead of taking the chocolate cookie, [...] instead of taking the ham, [.. et cetera ad nauseam]" sort of code. This is deliberate, and comes from seeing far too many (large and time-consuming) projects grow completely incomprehensible due to that tiny bug you missed in one snippet of otherwise redundant code.

Um. So... yeah. That's me. Hi.
*shuffles off*

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=906&start=0#p4774
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Hugo -- illegal semicolons/undefined properties
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2009-12-26 11:14:15

I must be making a very amateur mistake in the first complicated object that I started to implement in the Hugo game which I recently began writing.  I can't see what I'm doing wrong.

First of all, here's the entire object definition, with the text deleted.  It's supposed to be a bed that can be recessed into the wall in order to save space.  When recessed, it's considered "not open."

[code]object bed "..."
{
  in startroom
  is static
  noun "...", "..."
  adjective "..."
  pronoun "..."
  long_desc
  {
   "...bulk of description...";
     if self is open print "..."; else print "...";
     print " ... ";
     if self is open print "... "; else print "... ";
     print "... ";
     if self is open print "...";
       else print "...";
     print "."
  }
  short_desc
  {
   "...first part of description... ";
   if self is open
    "...";
   else
    "...";
   print "."
  }
}[/code]

When I compile the above code, I get an error complaining of an illegal semicolon on the line containing the last "else print" statement in the long_desc:
[code]if self is open print "..."; ! No period at end of sentence
       else print "..."; ! No period at end of sentence
     print "."[/code]

I can change these lines to get rid of the semicolons on the first two print statements and remove the last one by printing the period at the end of both of the other two statements instead of at the end of the code block by itself:
[code]if self is open print "..." ! Period at end of sentence
       else print "..." ! Period at end of sentence[/code]

This gives me a different error, "Undefined property," at the last line of the object definition (containing only the closing brace), which is also the last line of the source file.

I tried enclosing all of the conditional statements in braces, but that didn't work, either.

Thanks!  I hope you all had a good Christmas yesterday. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=906&start=0#p4775
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Hugo -- illegal semicolons/undefined properties
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2009-12-26 13:11:15

I was able to get this to compile:

[code]
object testbed "..."
{
  in startroom
  is static
  noun "...", "..."
  adjective "..."
  pronoun "..."
  long_desc
  {
   "...bulk of description...";

	if self is open 
	{
		print "..."; 
	}
	else 
	{
		print "...";
	}
     print " ... ";

	if self is open 
	{
		print "... "; 
	}
	else 
	{
		print "... ";
	}
     print "... ";

     if self is open 
     {
	print "...";
     }
     else 
     {
	print "...";
     }
     print "."
  }

  short_desc
  {
   "...first part of description... ";
   if self is open
    "...";
   else
    "...";
   print "."
  }
}[/code]

Do you get the undefined property error if you remove the definition for the bed completely? It may be an issue with something other than the bed, and it's just telling you that it's on the last line because everything else got compiled OK.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=907&start=0#p4776
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Empty text substitutions Aren't
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-12-26 13:42:26

Apparently Inform 7 doesn't consider an empty text substitution to be "really" empty.  I'm not sure what to say about this strange problem, other than to ask if I'm doing something wrong.  Consider the following example:

[code]The testarea is a room.

A marble is in the testarea.

A thing has some text called the pungency.  The pungency of a thing is usually "".
A thing has some text called the currentpungency.  The currentpungency of a thing is usually "[pungency of the item described]".

A room has some text called the aroma.  The aroma of a room is usually "".

The block smelling rule is not listed in the check smelling rulebook.

Report smelling a room (called the waftarea):
	let waftlist be a list of things;
	repeat with wafted running through things in the waftarea:
		say "**[wafted]=[currentpungency of wafted];";
		unless the currentpungency of wafted is "":
			add wafted to waftlist;
		say line break;
	unless the aroma of the waftarea is "":
		say "[aroma of the noun][unless waftlist is empty][paragraph break]You can also smell [waftlist with indefinite articles] here.[otherwise][line break]";
	otherwise if the aroma of the waftarea is "":
		say "[unless waftlist is empty]Apart from [waftlist with indefinite articles], y[otherwise]Y[end if]ou don't smell anything unusual in this area.".

Test me with "smell".[/code]
The example shows that while the content of the text substitution is null, apparently Inform is considering some other contexts while evaluating the substitution.  Does anyone know what these hidden contexts may be or if there's a way to check if, in terms of the example given, the "[pungency of the item described]" is devoid of printable text?  It's also valid to write "unless the currentpungency of wafted is empty" in the "Report smelling a room" rule shown above, but without any difference in the results.




-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=0#p4777
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (NEW QUESTION+NEW PROBLEM)
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-12-26 14:08:06

Re: "New problem"

Hmm, I was really surprised to see that the code you posted even compiled, as I've never seen anything written that way before; I say that not as a knock on you, but as an expression of frustration with Inform's often arcane ways.  Here's what I would suggest:

a) The drone can be active or inactive.  The drone is usually inactive.
This sets a flexible either/or state for the drone.

If you need to touch the drone to activate it, the definition of the action as you wrote it is mostly fine; if the drone is activated remotely, you'd want to change the definition as applying to one visible thing.  For example:

b)either:

Activating is an action applying to one thing.  Understand "activate [something]" as activating.

or

Activating is an action applying to one visible thing.  Understand "activate [something]" as activating.

Then you just need a carry out and a report rule for the "activating" action to 1) make the action do something, and 2) let the player know something in the world has changed.  You probably want a check rule as well, to prevent confusion.  For example:

c)
[code]
Check activating something:
     unless the noun is the drone:
          say "That's not something you can activate." instead;
     otherwise:
          if the drone is active:
               say "[The noun] is already activated." instead.

Carry out activating the drone:
     now the drone is active.

Report activating the drone:
     say "You activate [the noun].".[/code]

Re: "New Question"
The easiest way to do this is to use the "Menus" extension included with Inform; that's what I've used several times to simulate interacting with a computer, and I was happy with the results.  You can use that extension to set up pages with submenus to display information, and you can also use it to have menus that directly change conditions in the game world.  The best way to learn how to use the extension is to experiment with it, but if you try that and can't figure it out feel free to ask for more help.




-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=907&start=0#p4778
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Empty text substitutions Aren't
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2009-12-26 15:58:07

Regular text is compared by identity, not by content, even though it sometimes [i]seems[/i] like the content is being compared. Two variables that you set to the empty string "" will compare as equal, because Inform merges the string constants at compile time -- but a text with substitutions like "[pungency of the item described]" is a different value, even though it might look the same when you print it.

To check whether two texts will [i]print[/i] the same, you need to convert them to indexed text before comparing.

In this case, you can take a shortcut, since you only care about whether or not the text is empty. You can just use the indexed text measurement phrases, which will automatically convert the text to indexed text:
[code]if the number of characters in the currentpungency of wafted is not 0:
         add wafted to waftlist;[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=906&start=0#p4779
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Hugo -- illegal semicolons/undefined properties
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2009-12-26 17:18:19

[quote="Ice Cream Jonsey"]Do you get the undefined property error if you remove the definition for the bed completely? It may be an issue with something other than the bed, and it's just telling you that it's on the last line because everything else got compiled OK.[/quote]
The bed object was indeed the problem, and now that I followed your outline, it compiles fine. [emote]:D[/emote]  I deeply appreciate the effort you took to go through my sloppy code line by line.  I didn't expect someone to step in and offer help so soon and so thoroughly.

I'm going to have to get in the habit of putting every piece of code between braces.  I learned by experimentation that braces may enclose the text string of a long_desc, but they don't have to.  I imagine that there must be other cases where the braces aren't strictly needed but will still compile.  It will probably be better for me just to use them all the time.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=907&start=0#p4780
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Empty text substitutions Aren't
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2009-12-26 22:33:16

Thanks, vaporware.  The actual rule I was working on is a bit more complex than the example I posted above, but due to your suggestion I was able to get everything working as intended.  While pre-testing various methods using the example above, though, I ran across the following odd if not outright buggy behavior (in case anyone wanted to use the example above for anything):

a) Writing the "Report smelling a room" rule this way:

[code]Report smelling a room (called the waftarea):
	let waftlist be a list of things;
	repeat with wafted running through things in the waftarea:
		unless the number of characters in the currentpungency of wafted is 0:
			add wafted to waftlist;
	if the number of characters in the aroma of the waftarea is not 0:
		say "[aroma of the noun][unless waftlist is empty][paragraph break]You can also smell [waftlist with indefinite articles] here.[otherwise][line break]";
	otherwise if the number of characters in the aroma of waftarea is 0:
		say "[unless waftlist is empty]Apart from [waftlist with indefinite articles], y[otherwise]Y[end if]ou don't smell anything unusual in this area.".[/code]
gives the unexpected (to me, since the "currentpungency of the player is ""--the same as the marble) result:

[b]testarea[/b]
You can see a marble here.

>smell
Apart from yourself, you don't smell anything unusual in this area.

b) Writing the "Report smelling a room" rule this way:

[code]Report smelling a room (called the waftarea):
	let waftlist be a list of things;
	let samplewaft be indexed text;
	repeat with wafted running through things in the waftarea:
		change samplewaft to the currentpungency of wafted;
		unless the number of characters in samplewaft is 0:
			add wafted to waftlist;
			say "=[samplewaft].";
	if the number of characters in the aroma of the waftarea is not 0:
		say "[aroma of the noun][unless waftlist is empty][paragraph break]You can also smell [waftlist with indefinite articles] here.[otherwise][line break]";
	otherwise if the number of characters in the aroma of waftarea is 0:
		say "[unless waftlist is empty]Apart from [waftlist with indefinite articles], y[otherwise]Y[end if]ou don't smell anything unusual in this area.".[/code]
results in the same behavior as (a), namely:

[b]testarea[/b]
You can see a marble here.

>smell
Apart from yourself, you don't smell anything unusual in this area.

with the additional very unexpected (to me) result that if we add a line in the repeat loop to print the current content of the temporary "samplewaft" token, the test game crashes with a P32 "Attempt to use a property of nothing" error after typing the command "smell".

c) After the above two failures, the following unexpectedly (to me, under the circumstances) worked just fine when substituted for the "Report smelling a room" rule given in the example:

[code]Report smelling a room (called the waftarea):
	let waftlist be a list of things;
	let samplewaft be indexed text;
	repeat with wafted running through things in the waftarea:
		change samplewaft to the currentpungency of wafted;
		unless the number of characters in the currentpungency of wafted is 0:
			add wafted to waftlist;
	if the number of characters in the aroma of the waftarea is not 0:
		say "[aroma of the noun][unless waftlist is empty][paragraph break]You can also smell [waftlist with indefinite articles] here.[otherwise][line break]";
	otherwise if the number of characters in the aroma of waftarea is 0:
		say "[unless waftlist is empty]Apart from [waftlist with indefinite articles], y[otherwise]Y[end if]ou don't smell anything unusual in this area.".[/code]
giving the originally intended result:

[b]testarea[/b]
You can see a marble here.

>smell
You don't smell anything unusual in this area.

This seemed strange at first since, on casual examination, we make a temporary text variable called "samplewaft" and then don't [i]explicitly[/i] do anything at all with that variable, resulting in a changed consideration by Inform of the way the "currentpungency" text is handled.  It is what it is, I guess.




-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=905&start=0#p4781
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How do you call Randomize?
User: QueenoftheCapes / DateTime: 2009-12-26 23:08:13

Oh thank you so much!  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=907&start=0#p4782
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Empty text substitutions Aren't
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2009-12-27 02:45:11

The error "Attempt to use a property of the 'nothing' non-object" is apparently caused by the use of "the item described" in the referenced property. I'm not sure exactly when that variable is supposed to be set, but this is probably worth reporting as a bug.

That error is what causes the unexpected behavior where "yourself" is listed: when the property value is converted to indexed text, that error message is included (since conversion works by printing the text and capturing whatever comes out), so the result isn't empty.

Finally, I believe the unexpected fix works because "the item described" is no longer nothing after the property is converted for the first time; the act of reading the property sets it. I believe that's also why you only see "yourself" in the list, and not the marble as well: you only get the error for the first object.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=0#p4783
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (NEW QUESTION+NEW PROBLEM)
User: C. Everett / DateTime: 2009-12-27 21:45:56

(to Endosphere:)

Thanks!  I've solved the drone problem (for now, at least), and I'm getting the hang of the Menu extension.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=0#p4784
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-12-28 03:54:45

[quote="C. Everett"][b]NEW PROBLEM:[/b]
I have a few things whose descriptions will change a bit if the player has already looked at certain other things.  I think I need an if statement in brackets before the added text, but I'm not sure how to word it.  "If x is/has been examined/looked at/discovered"?
[/quote]

The wording is "if we have examined x".

(By the way, it would be easier at least for me to follow this thread and probably to those who read it afterwards if you would post new questions as new posts at the end of the thread instead of editing the first.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=878&start=0#p4785
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: RSS Feed?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-12-28 04:04:14

[quote="Merk"]For instance, Basic RSS information doesn't appear to include a time/date tag for the reader to know when the item was published. Maybe there are advanced tags not shown in the tutorial I've seen.[/quote]
There's the pubDate tag that does just that. Here's a good list of all tags in the RSS 2.0 standard: <a class="postlink" href="http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rss/rss.html">http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rss/rss.html</a>

[quote]Wouldn't the reader need that to know what was "new" since last time? Or is the feed supposed to include [i]all[/i] items, growing indefinitely? Should it instead include X number of prior days' items, or X number of the most recent items?[/quote]
Usually a feed contains X most recent items. It's the feed reader's job to decide which items are unread, based on pubDates, titles, content etc. 
 
[quote]Should it contain each post's text individually, or the contents of a complete thread as one item, or just the title and a link?[/quote]
I'd prefer individual posts with the post's content in the feed and the link tag pointing to the complete thread. That way you could follow new posts from the feed and if you want to see the whole thread you could get it with the link.

Unless you have made major changes to the phpBB code I'm still suggesting you use a ready-made solution: for example <a class="postlink" href="http://www.outshine.com/blog/2007/03/phpbb-rss-mods.php">http://www.outshine.com/blog/2007/03/phpbb-rss-mods.php</a> compares three mods that add RSS functionality. Sounds a lot easier than building the feed from scratch.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=906&start=0#p4786
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Hugo -- illegal semicolons/undefined properties
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2009-12-28 09:10:30

Cool - glad that worked for you!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=908&start=0#p4787
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Translating the Source Failed
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-12-29 09:18:20

Hello all,

Recently I copied my Inform projects off onto a CD, reformatted my hard drive (Windows XP Professional), reinstalled Inform and copied my projects back into the new Projects folder.

Now I'm getting the "Translating the Source Failed" message no matter what I do. I commented everything out of my program except the title, and still got it. I created a brand spanking new program, and still got it. I moved everything around to different places, and still got it.

What the heck?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=908&start=0#p4788
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Translating the Source Failed
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-12-29 09:38:15

Just for the record, I just now grabbed everything Inform I could find, threw it in a folder, zipped it and threw away the original. I removed Inform again through "add/remove programs". I installed it again.

Same result -- I can't even make a new project that will compile.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=908&start=0#p4789
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Translating the Source Failed
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-12-29 10:00:44

What does the I6 compiler error message say? You can see it if you switch back to the "Progress" tab when you get the error.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=908&start=0#p4790
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Translating the Source Failed
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-12-29 10:16:37

[code]"new" by Shae

The lab is a room.[/code]

Progress tab:
[quote]C:\Program Files\Inform 7\Compilers\ni \
    -rules "C:\Program Files\Inform 7\Inform7\Extensions" -package "C:\Documents and Settings\shae\My Documents\Inform\Projects\new.inform" -extension=z5

Compiler finished with code A[/quote]

and in case you need it:

[quote][size=50]Translating the Source - Failed 
The application ran your source text through the Inform 7 compiler, as usual, but the compiler unexpectedly failed. This should not happen even if your source text is gibberish, so you may have uncovered a bug in the program.[/size]

When a program like the I7 compiler fails, it typically returns a numerical error number: this time, the error code was 10, and that probably indicates that the compiler failed to manage its data structures properly. Perhaps you created a complicated situation on which it has not been fully tested.

[size=50]The best option now is probably to reword whatever was last changed and to try again. Subsequent attempts will not be affected by the failure of this one, so there is nothing to be gained by restarting the application or the computer. A failed run should never damage the source text, so your work cannot be lost.

If you think it likely that the Inform 7 compiler is at fault, please check that you have the currently distributed build of the system: if you have, please consider taking the time to fill out a bug report form and email it to the author. If you think the fault may be due to a problem in an extension you're using, then please contact the extension's author directly. 


Sorry for the inconvenience.[/size][/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=908&start=0#p4791
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Translating the Source Failed
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-12-29 10:19:23

Just tried compiling with a more complicated program, and got the same message under progress: "Compiler finished with code A"

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=908&start=0#p4792
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Translating the Source Failed
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-12-29 11:41:45

This is just guessing, but the error message suggests that Inform can't find the Standard Library or some other part it needs. Is the Standard Rules.i7x file in its place in C:\Program Files\Inform 7\Inform7\Extensions\Graham Nelson?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=908&start=0#p4793
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Translating the Source Failed
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-12-29 11:46:11

Yes, that one is there.

But I agree, I think it's a missing item, somehow, because it started happening after reinstallation and because it happens no matter how simple the game is.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=908&start=0#p4794
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Translating the Source Failed
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-12-29 11:57:15

Browsing around on Google I found a post on the Translating the Source Failed error in which someone said "I run and install all programs on my laptop with Administrative privileges so I think I can rule out 'security setting issues'... "

I'm on a work computer (shh) that might be pushing out changes to the image periodically... does that point to a security setting issue, or otherwise clarify things?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=908&start=0#p4795
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Translating the Source Failed
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2009-12-29 12:08:56

If you installed wihout administrator rights, maybe it couldn't install everything it needed. Other than that I'm out of ideas.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=908&start=0#p4796
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Translating the Source Failed
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-12-29 12:18:56

I looked, and if I'm looking in the right place, I [b]do[/b] have administrator privileges.

I tried it all again a few times, destroying every Inform-related bit I could find, but no luck. Not much out there on Google either.

Oh well, thanks for trying Nitku. This may become something I can only do from home for a while, on the good old Linux machine.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=80#p4797
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: George / DateTime: 2009-12-29 14:27:42

hey Björn, welcome to the forum. I admit all those 'insteads' bug me too a lot of the time. Sometimes it's good to do what's fast though, especially when writing IF -- otherwise you may never finish it! [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=908&start=10#p4799
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Translating the Source Failed
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-12-29 16:23:02

I found someone complaining of a similar problem in a forum, and in their case, it was thought to be related to a firewall. Since I was at work when I started this thread, I tried again at home but got the same error. Then I uninstalled and reinstalled with the already downloaded installer and still got the error. Then I re-downloaded an installer, uninstalled and reinstalled, and got the same error.

Then I decided to go back a version, and download the installer for 5U92. 

I got the Translating the Source Failed error again, this time with a different graphic.  [emote]:([/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=908&start=10#p4800
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Translating the Source Failed
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2009-12-29 16:24:46

I suspect you're getting this error because Inform is unable to write to your project folders. Windows has an annoying habit of marking files read-only when you copy them from a CD to the hard drive (since they were read-only on the CD).

Open your My Documents folder, right click on the Inform folder and open its properties, uncheck "Read-only", click "Apply", and make sure "Apply changes to this folder, subfolders and files" is selected.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=833&start=0#p4801
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Starting out small?
User: RedOrZed / DateTime: 2009-12-29 17:28:07

[quote="ShaeSays"]When I started out about a year ago, I decided to write a four-room practice "game" on making a Margarita, with salt in a cabinet in one room and a glass in another, etc.

I thought that sounded so simple as to be a waste of time, but I just wanted to get my feet wet with Inform. But I was [b]amazed[/b] at the amount of work it took, and the number of things that I thought would be child's play that I ended up having to look up in the documentation. Plus there's those little tiny syntax things to learn, where if you word something slightly different you get an error or an unexpected result. 

So it was a very valuable experience. I'd really recommend making a simple game like that.

If you start out with a "real" game, then I'd definitely make it in a stepwise fashion. In other words, put in a few broad things and get them working together, then move on to the details of acquiring or using the broad things.[/quote]

I have to agree with ShaeSays  [emote]:D[/emote] the scope of my first game is fairly simple, but a bit broad. I wrote up a basic outline on a plane flight, then started programming it. It is quite amazing how much you think "ooh that needs a bit more detail" or "to help the player get where I want them to be, I need to just..." and suddenly it's a whole load of creative thinking required, which you then need to implement. 

I've only got two basic locations so far - a pub and a market, but there are 14 "rooms" and 5 characters! And there aren't any market traders yet! By the time the player gets to the Palace (where the 'quest' is given to them) it's going to be a fair bit of code  [emote]:shock:[/emote] 

Just doing the small amount I've done so far has taught me so much  [emote]8-)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=910&start=0#p4802
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Using "Clock Math"
User: QueenoftheCapes / DateTime: 2009-12-29 20:47:00

I'm trying to figure out how to implement "Clock Math" in Tads3.  In other words, a clock has 12 possible values [1, 2, 3....12], so when it's at 12 and 1 more hour is added, the result is 1, not 13.  Likewise, we hit December 1st before November 32nd rolls around.

So, I know how to increment a value of something, but how do I cause the "roll-over" effect in clock math?  How do I ensure that a value over Z goes back to A and continues counting from there?

Any thoughts?  [emote]:?[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=910&start=0#p4803
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using "Clock Math"
User: baltasarq / DateTime: 2009-12-30 03:03:53

Hi !

[quote="QueenoftheCapes"]
So, I know how to increment a value of something, but how do I cause the "roll-over" effect in clock math?  How do I ensure that a value over Z goes back to A and continues counting from there?
[/quote]

I don't know *anything* about TADS, but what you are asking for is the mathematic module operation.

[code]
hours = ( hours + 1 ) % 12
[/code]

The '%' sign is the module. It is possible that TADS accepts it as is. The module is the remaining of dividing hours by 12, so you will always get values between 0 and 11.

The module operation can be simulated, if not available, by doing something like this (assuming that '/' is the integral division):

[code]
hours = abs( hours - ( ( hours / 12 ) * 12 ) )
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=910&start=0#p4804
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using "Clock Math"
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2009-12-30 05:33:10

At a basic level, I'd have a 'Time' object to keep track of the time - with variables for the hour, minute, date, month etc.  Then add functions to increase or decrease the time by a certain amount, or set it to a certain time and date.  baltasarq's module calc might come in handy here (TADS does support %, according to [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/sysman/expr.htm]this[/url]).

But if you just want to keep track of time without changing it much, it's probably just simple enough to write a method like this, to advance time:

[code]
incrementHour()
{
    hour++;

    if(hour>12)
        hour=1;
    else if(hour==12)
    {
        if(!isPM)
            isPM=true;
        else
        {
            isPM=nil;
            incrementDay();
        }
    }
}
[/code]
(And this method could be called by incrementMinute when minute is greater than 60, etc.)

In terms of dates, I'd keep two lists - one of month names and one of the number of days in each month.  The Time object would record the month as a number, but could then look up the name and length in the lists when it needed to print the date or check whether the day needed to be reset to 1.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=908&start=10#p4805
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Translating the Source Failed
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2009-12-30 08:01:36

Thanks for the suggestion Vaporware. I tried it, but it didn't work. I even applied the change by hand to every subfolder just in case, and went into C: and did the same to the Infrom program folders there. Weirdly, after changing a folder to read-only, when I clicked on properties again, the square was filled in again (not checked), indicating that perhaps Windows undid my preference? Or perhaps not.

It's weird that even brand new installations and projects don't work, as well as those that got copied to and from a CD.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=910&start=0#p4806
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using "Clock Math"
User: QueenoftheCapes / DateTime: 2009-12-30 13:13:40

Woo!  Baltasarq, the second method works perfectly!  Thanks so much!  [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=912&start=0#p4808
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Room Methods?
User: QueenoftheCapes / DateTime: 2009-12-30 23:02:14

Hi again.  [emote]:D[/emote] 

So, I'm moving an actor by fiat using MoveIntoForTravel, and I want to know how to fix it so that the room reports its name, desc, and listed objects the way it does automatically when you just walk into a place.  I've been leafing through the manuals, but I can't figure out what method or property I need, and my Search-Fu is weak.  [emote]:oops:[/emote]   So does anybody here know the answer?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=912&start=0#p4809
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Room Methods?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2009-12-31 03:38:41

[code]gActor.lookAround(gameMain.verboseMode.isOn)[/code]
The bit in the brackets tells the method whether or not verbose mode is on, so it can shorten the room description if verbose mode is off. If you want a full-length description regardless of whether verbose mode is on, you can just call gActor.lookAround(true).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=913&start=0#p4810
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Happy New Years!
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2009-12-31 17:14:49

May the next one bring fun, heaps of cash, and the return of temperatures above freezing. Happy New Years, everyone!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=914&start=0#p4811
Forum: Competitions / Subject: IFComp versus independent release
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2010-01-01 19:53:31

I've been getting used to Inform 7 lately and I've been wondering about whether I should aim to finish my WIP and have it tested in time for IFComp 2010. I don't expect my piece to perform at all spectacularly, but this seems like a good way to get it out the the IF community. I was wondering what folks generally think about the relative merits of releasing a project through the IFComp or another competition and of making an independent release. I didn't really follow the 2009 IFComp (being a bit distracted by my first semester of college studies), but I remember some reviewers of the 2008 IFComp complaining about brevity and lack of quality in many games. My completed project is likely to be on the short side, and I wonder if maybe it's [i]too[/i] short for the IFComp, even if the IFComp rules have a maximum playtime clause. Also, does the IFComp seem to be leaning toward or away from puzzles? I'm not very good at all with IF puzzles, so I tend to read and write more-or-less "puzzleless" pieces.

Your opinions and advice will be appreciated.

Peace,
Kazuki Mishima

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=913&start=0#p4812
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Happy New Years!
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2010-01-01 19:55:32

Hear, hear!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=914&start=0#p4813
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp versus independent release
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2010-01-02 06:45:35

[quote="Kazuki Mishima"]I was wondering what folks generally think about the relative merits of releasing a project through the IFComp or another competition and of making an independent release.[/quote]
Well, the biggest advantage of releasing your game in the IF Comp (not really true about any other competition, unfortunately...) is that many people will play your game and write reviews about it -- so you'll get much more feedback about your game. On the other hand, if people don't like it, the reviews can be harsh...

[quote="Kazuki Mishima"]I didn't really follow the 2009 IFComp (being a bit distracted by my first semester of college studies), but I remember some reviewers of the 2008 IFComp complaining about brevity and lack of quality in many games. My completed project is likely to be on the short side, and I wonder if maybe it's [i]too[/i] short for the IFComp, even if the IFComp rules have a maximum playtime clause.[/quote]
It's certainly possible that some judges will complain if your game is too short, but unless it's really really short, I think lack of quality would be a much more worrying problem...

[quote="Kazuki Mishima"]Also, does the IFComp seem to be leaning toward or away from puzzles? I'm not very good at all with IF puzzles, so I tend to read and write more-or-less "puzzleless" pieces.[/quote]
I don't think it'll be a problem at all -- on the contrary, puzzles might be a problem if they're unfair or illogical.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=914&start=0#p4814
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp versus independent release
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-01-02 08:42:37

I've never released a game in IFComp, and I'm not really interested in doing so.  Too many rules.

As Eriorg mentioned, the main advantage is getting lots of reviews - the disadvantage is that many games are probably released in the comp because the authors know they'd never get as much attention elsewhere.  It never ceases to amaze me how two dozen different people will seem to relish writing lengthy, acerbic reviews of the same untested, sparsely implemented puzzle game.  And this year I think a lot of the more interesting, more polished games were released outside the comp.  

That said, I think that if there's a kind of game that the comp would be a good platform for, it's smaller games that might not make many waves otherwise.  But then again, people are more inclined (or at least I am) to play shorter games anyway...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=914&start=0#p4815
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp versus independent release
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2010-01-02 12:28:19

Thanks a bunch for your responses.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=915&start=0#p4816
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Trapping words to NPCs
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-01-03 09:48:51

Hello everyone!

As the year begins anew, so too does my ever-optimistic attempt at coding I7. I seem to have a knack for disregarding basic solutions and problems and heading unerringly for the most complex and arcane stuff. This, I fear, is no different.

I was playing around with a scene in which an NPC would react to orders, but would be insulted if you used a particular name or title for the character. I want to create an extra step within the Understand process that not only translates but flags; in effect, almost another pronoun which carries a connotation of its own (addressing your boss as "shithead" as opposed to "milord", for instance).

Basically, the issue is to make a variant of the [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/ex68.html#e68]Cave Troll example[/url], in which an error-producing command is halted, analyzed, and then regexped into a new command, which finally is fed back into the parser. Cave Troll or simpler variants suffice to trap all of this kind of parser errors. Unfortunately, there seems to be a host of errors that are not amenable to such solution, and which do in fact finish executing [i]before[/i] the rules are even called.

For instance, take this code:
[code]The Lounge is a room. The Study is north of the Lounge.

John Armitage Wakinshaw IIIrd is a man in the Lounge.
A persuasion rule for asking someone to try doing something: persuasion succeeds.

Test me with "actions / Jack, go north / John, go north"[/code]

As I understand it, the reason this occurs before we can affect it is because the library file Language.i6t performs its magic before the parser proper, and (for some reason I can't fathom) isolates these operations within a place where I7 can't easily reach.

I know that, if need be, we can do an "every turn" sort of chunking effect which would match every command beginning with "[color=#40BF80][certain words], [/color]". It feel like more than a little overkill to do it for every single command, however, especially since I don't want it to trigger if we actually [i]do[/i] have a character named "Madame" or "Mylady."

I've poked around [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/]rec.arts.int-fiction[/url] in search of an answer, but there's not much there. All I found was the [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/msg/9819689e4306aeb0]Cherubim example[/url], which doesn't seem to work as advertised. Any takers?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=915&start=0#p4817
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trapping words to NPCs
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-01-03 10:16:47

I think it's easier if you have the insulting names parse as usual and then just check if the player has used those words.

[code]The Lounge is a room. The Study is north of the Lounge.

John Armitage Wakinshaw III is a man in the Lounge.
Understand "wankingshaft" as John Armitage Wakingshaw III.

Insulting command is a truth state that varies.

Before reading a command:
    change insulting command to false.

A persuasion rule: 
    if the player's command includes "wankingshaft":
        change insulting command to true;
    persuasion succeeds.

Before John Armitage trying doing something when the insulting command is true:
    say "'It's Wakingshaw! Wakingshaw!' he cries.";
    [stop the action.  <-- if you don't want the NPC to try the action when insulted]

Test me with "wankingshaft, look / John, go north"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=831&start=0#p4818
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Computer Novel Construction Set
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-01-03 18:48:15

[quote="Eudoxia"]I wish I had the source code  [emote]:roll:[/emote][/quote]

You can write your own source code for the CNCS if you are familiar with programming.
I did that and coded a quick interpreter and editor which is able to read, edit and display some of the data in the CNCS gamefiles...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=915&start=0#p4819
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trapping words to NPCs
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-01-03 18:54:12

Nitku gave a good answer that works well.  I know you're always wanting to generalize, however, so I played around with your question for a few minutes and came up with this:

 [emote]:twisted:[/emote] Warning: Juvenile Antics Ahead

[code]The testarea is a room.
The western testarea is west of the testarea.

A man called John Battista is in the testarea.  Understand "buttfeasta" or "john buttfeasta" as john.  The description of john is "It's John Battista.  He's kind of a jerk, and people often remind him of this by calling him 'John Buttfeasta.'".

A person has some text called hated-nickname.  The hated-nickname of john is "buttfeasta".

Persuasion rule for asking someone to try doing anything:
	if the player's command matches the text "[hated-nickname of the person asked]":
		say "[The person asked] glares at you.";
		persuasion fails;
	otherwise:
		persuasion succeeds.

Test me with "x john / battista, w / w / buttfeasta, e".[/code]
In the above case, an insulted person has a very short memory and doesn't stay angry.  If you want them to continue being angry after you insult them, something like this would be in order:

[code]The testarea is a room.
The western testarea is west of the testarea.

A man called John Battista is in the testarea.  Understand "buttfeasta" or "john buttfeasta" as john.  The description of john is "It's John Battista.  He's kind of a jerk, and people often remind him of this by calling him 'John Buttfeasta.'".

A person has some text called hated-nickname.  The hated-nickname of john is "buttfeasta".

A person can be upset.  A person is usually not upset.

Apologizing is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "apologize to [something]" as apologizing.

Check apologizing:
	unless the noun is a person:
		say "Do sunsets make you cry, too?" instead;
	otherwise:
		if the noun is the player:
			say "You have issues." instead;
		unless the noun is upset:
			say "'You don't have anything to apologize for, [italic type]do you[roman type]?' says [the noun]." instead.

Carry out apologizing:
	now the noun is not upset.

Report apologizing:
	if the player's command matches the text "[hated-nickname of the noun]":
		say "You bite your tongue and politely say '[noun], I apologize.'";
	say "'I accept your apology,' says [the noun].".

Persuasion rule for asking someone to try doing anything:
	if the person asked is upset:
		say "'Get away from me, you vermin,' scowls [the person asked].";
		persuasion fails;
	otherwise if the player's command matches the text "[hated-nickname of the person asked]":
		say "[The person asked] glares at you.";
		now the person asked is upset;
		persuasion fails;
	otherwise:
		persuasion succeeds.

test me with "john, w / w / buttfeasta, e / g / apologize to buttfeasta / battista, e"
[/code]




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=916&start=0#p4820
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Strange Discrepency of the finished file size. Please help!
User: BrooksSeveer / DateTime: 2010-01-04 10:11:54

I've been working on a project for a little while now, and decided to work on it at a different computer from my home computer. It's literally the exact same source code, same extensions, etc. But the version of Inform 7 that I loaded onto my computer at work is newer. The one on my home computer is Sept. 2008. 

Here's the problem. BIG problem:

When I compile the game, depending on which version of Inform I'm using I get two very different file sizes!

With the old Inform, Sept. 2008 version my file compiles to 387kb.
With the newer Inform, April 2009, USING THE EXACT SAME STORY CODE, my file compiles now to [i]479 kb[/i]!!

I would really like to keep the game file under 512kb, so I don't drift into having to deal with GLULX. Is there something I'm missing? Is there something I'm overlooking? 

Any help or advice or even explanation would be greatly appreciated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=916&start=0#p4821
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Strange Discrepency of the finished file size. Please help!
User: BrooksSeveer / DateTime: 2010-01-04 10:34:58

Never mind! I just downloaded an earlier version of Inform. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=893&start=0#p4822
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with pressing buttons
User: Pe-ads / DateTime: 2010-01-04 10:46:56

Uh.

The buttons still weren't working before Christmas, so I decided to leave it until the New Year. Now I need help.

Basically, when I press the button, Inform says "Nothing obvious happens". Every time. I even changed the code to a slightly different version of Eleas' code, and it still didn't work. Here's the code:

[code]
A button is a kind of thing. It can be depressed or undepressed. A button is seldom depressed.

Pressing is an action applying to one thing.

Understand "press [something]" as pressing.

Check pressing:
	if the noun is not a button:
		say "[The noun] isn[']t a button." instead.

The  RMG is part of the Sub walls. Understand "Random Memory Grab" as the RMG. It is a device. The printed name of the RMG is "Random Memory Grab". The RMG is powerful.

The Get Memory button is a button. The Get Memory button is part of the RMG.
Instead of pressing the Get Memory button:
	if the RMG is powerful:
		if the RMG is connected:
			now Childhood_memory_4 is in the memory stick;
			say "Random memory (childhood_memory_4) successfully transferred to Memory Containment Device.";
		otherwise:
			say "A message appears on the screen: 'Not enough power to perform memory grab.'";
	otherwise:
		say "You press the button, but nothing happens."

The Testing Ground is a room.
The Sub walls are in the Testing Ground.
[/code]

If you want to know about the memory stick code, check this topic: [url]http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=883#p4622[/url] ,and refer to Endosphere's code for the end result.

Hope you guys can help me with my coding again,

Pe-ads

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=893&start=10#p4823
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with pressing buttons
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-01-04 11:35:10

The problem is that the standard library already has the pushing action defined with the synonym "press", so you don't have to make your own. The response you're getting is from the standard action. So you should do just fine with:

[code]A button is a kind of thing. It can be depressed or undepressed. A button is seldom depressed.

Check pushing when the noun is not a button:
      say "[The noun] isn[']t a button." instead.

The  RMG is part of the Sub walls. Understand "Random Memory Grab" as the RMG. It is a device. The printed name of the RMG is "Random Memory Grab". The RMG is powerful.

The Get Memory button is a button. The Get Memory button is part of the RMG.

Instead of pushing the Get Memory button:
   if the RMG is powerful:
      if the RMG is connected:
         now Childhood_memory_4 is in the memory stick;
         say "Random memory (childhood_memory_4) successfully transferred to Memory Containment Device.";
      otherwise:
         say "A message appears on the screen: 'Not enough power to perform memory grab.'";
   otherwise:
      say "You press the button, but nothing happens."

The Testing Ground is a room.
The Sub walls are in the Testing Ground.[/code]
I assume that you have defined "powerful", "connected" etc somewhere else in the code. If not, you have to do that for the above to work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=893&start=10#p4824
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with pressing buttons
User: Pe-ads / DateTime: 2010-01-04 11:58:06

Thank you! The code works perfectly now. 
And BTW, I have defined connected and powerful elsewhere. Connected is if there's a memory stick in a device, and powerful is if a device has power.

Thanks a lot,

Pe-ads

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=917&start=0#p4825
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Changing score change text
User: Pe-ads / DateTime: 2010-01-04 12:16:18

You know how Inform reports when your score changes? Basically, I want to change that text from "[Your score has gone down by one point]" to "[The GCS level has gone  down by one point]", or the same when the score goes up. I know it sounds strange, but in the game the score is the 'GCS level'.

Any help would be appreciated,

Pe-ads

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=917&start=0#p4826
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing score change text
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2010-01-04 13:15:25

There are two places (other than the status line) where the score is reported. The first (as you mentioned) is the notification mechanism that occurs automatically at the end of a turn. The second is when a player types the command "score." This shows you how to alter both, with a scenario added for testing:[code][Here we create a new rule for checking / notifying the score: (Remember to fix the tabs when cutting / pasting.)]
This is the custom notify score changes rule:
	if the score is not the last notified score:
		if the score is less than the last notified score:
			let difference be the last notified score - score;
			say "[bracket]The GCS level has gone down ";
		otherwise:
			let difference be the score - last notified score;
			say "[bracket]The GCS level has gone up ";
		say "by [difference in words] point[if difference > 1]s[end if].[close bracket][line break]";
		now the last notified score is the score. [<- updates last notified score to current score]

[The "notify score changes rule" is the rule responsible for checking for a score change at the end of every turn and reporting it if there is one. (See the "Rules Index" under "The top level  -> Turn sequence rules rulebook.") This will replace that rule with the new one we just made:]
The custom notify score changes rule is listed instead of the notify score changes rule in the turn sequence rulebook.

[This removes the standard rule for how the score is reported when the command "score" is entered by the player:]
The announce the score rule is not listed in the carry out requesting the score rulebook.

[This adds a new way to report the above:]
Carry out requesting the score:
	say "Your GCS level is currently [score] out of a possible [maximum score]."

Lab is a room.
The maximum score is 10.
Instead of jumping: increase the score by 2; say "Whee!".
Instead of waiting: decrease score by 1; say "Whoa!".
test me with "jump / score / l / z / score / jump / l / score / z / z / score".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=917&start=0#p4827
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing score change text
User: Pe-ads / DateTime: 2010-01-04 15:30:56

Cheers! That works fine now. I hadn't really thought of doing it as a rule, as I'm not that advanced in Inform.

Pea-ds

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=918&start=0#p4828
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: [Announce] Babble
User: baltasarq / DateTime: 2010-01-05 04:58:19

Hi, there !

I've created a tiny tool being able to create iFiction files with their corresponding ifID.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.caad.es/baltasarq/prys/babble/babble.html">http://www.caad.es/baltasarq/prys/babble/babble.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=916&start=0#p4829
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Strange Discrepency of the finished file size. Please help!
User: baltasarq / DateTime: 2010-01-05 05:02:23

Hi, there!

I think that I7 should give you the option of stripping parts of that big library, if you are not going to use them. Obviously you're not using them, as your game compiles with an earlier version.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=918&start=0#p4830
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: [Announce] Babble
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-01-05 18:39:52

I had been thinking about how to organize bibliographical information within a game file when you're not using an authoring system that keeps track of the information for you (Inform 7 and TADS 3).  This look useful.  I'll definitely have to look into it if I ever manage to get my IF project ready to release.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=918&start=0#p4831
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: [Announce] Babble
User: baltasarq / DateTime: 2010-01-06 03:51:57

Hi!

[quote="Bainespal"]I had been thinking about how to organize bibliographical information within a game file when you're not using an authoring system that keeps track of the information for you (Inform 7 and TADS 3).  This look useful.  I'll definitely have to look into it if I ever manage to get my IF project ready to release.[/quote]

Sure!
But remember that babble does only generate the .ifiction file with the data you fill in, and the corresponding, valid ifID. You need a blorb packager to complete the task.

You will get the most benefits of Babble if you combine it with bresc:

<a class="postlink" href="http://caad.es/baltasarq/prys/bresc/">http://caad.es/baltasarq/prys/bresc/</a>

Bresc is compatible with the typical resource file from blc/bres. If you add a simple line such as this one:

[code]
bib adventure.ifiction
[/code]

...to your res file (being adventure.ifiction the ifiction file you just generated with Babble), and repackage with bresc, then you'll be done. Your zblorb or gblorb file will be ready to use.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=919&start=0#p4832
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Beta testing Adrift game
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2010-01-07 00:44:36

I’m looking for an Adrift Beta tester.
I’m currently working on a rather big game and am looking for someone who has the patience to keep with me until the game is finished.
The game requires the use of the internet in order to solve some of the puzzles and due to the graphics is best played on a stationary computer.
Looking forward to hear from you.
Cheers

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=920&start=0#p4833
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: TADS Testers’ Toolkit Beta
User: mstone / DateTime: 2010-01-07 12:08:37

The TADS Testers’ Toolkit (TTT) is a TADS 3 library containing a collection of authors’ toys with pretentions of being useful tools. How useful? The only way to find out is to put the toolkit in the hands of some TADS 3 authors for beta-testing (beta-authoring?) and see how well it works for them. With the toolkit an author can:

- Type a simple command (‘>list’) right in the interpreter to generate a neatly formatted list of supported commands, ala:
    >get (dobj)
    >get off of (dobj)
    >eat (dobj)
    >throw (dobj) at (iobj)
    .
    .
    .
The lists are dynamically generated from the actual predicate objects, meaning that they will automatically include any custom commands defined by a project or its included libraries.

- Generate similar lists of Things, Topics, Directions, etc.

- Type another simple command (‘>test’) to automatically try all commands on a single Thing (without having to type out each command separately), or a single command on all Things. Just like with the lists above, custom commands are automatically included in the test.

- Write flexible test scripts. For example, you could record:
    *>ask (dobj) about chocolate
    *>tell (dobj) about chocolate
and then type:
    >replay “myTalkScript.cmd” with Charlie
    >replay “myTalkScript.cmd” with Grandpa
to do basic conversation testing on each of your Actors in turn - without ever having to leave the interpreter window.

- Execute a totally random, but syntactically valid, command. Execute a dozen random commands and laugh at how crazy some can be!

- And more!

The purpose of this toolkit is to make interpreter-assisted testing easier and more effective for TADS authors. (Well, that and give me an excuse to write TADS 3 code ;) However, there is also the possibility that it will backfire. Authors might find themselves grinding their teeth and pulling their hair, trying to solve a bug in their code that isn’t really there - because it in the testing tools. I need the help of some brave and generous TADS authors to beta-test the toolkit and find out whether it’s more of a help or a hindrance.

If you’re interested, please contact me at [email]ttt.author@gmail.com[/email].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=918&start=0#p4834
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: [Announce] Babble
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-01-07 18:26:04

I've been wondering for a long time how to manually accommodate the bibliographical metadata with a system that doesn't store that information automatically or support blorb.  I wrote my other post in this thread quickly; I wasn't very clear.  I meant that, as far as I can tell, only Inform 7 and TADS 3 really accommodate Babel information.  Isn't Inform the only one that uses blorb at all?  I believe ALAN 3 also generates a random IFID for each project, but I don't know if it stores the other information.

An author using ADRIFT or Hugo could of course print the IFID in the game banner, and at least could store the other bibliographical information as constants (or something similar), to be displayed by a game command.  Is there anything else that could or should be done?

For the record, I'm trying to use Hugo.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=921&start=0#p4835
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Menus
User: Pe-ads / DateTime: 2010-01-08 12:17:19

Yeah guys, more problems!

Basically, in my game I want a few computer terminals. I've already coded my memory stick that can be plugged into the computers, and now I want a menu based way to transfer files.

I guessed I would need and that there would be an extension for this. I went into the 'Installed Extensions' bit of the Inform documentation, and I found one called 'Menus'. Great, I thought, just what I need. It said it wasn't suitable for in-game menus (i.e. conversation response choosing), but I didn't really mind having to clear the screen to show it. However, the problem came in the implementation of the extension.

The only thing you can do with the menu selections is either open a different menu, display some text, or toggle a rule. Now this is fine for a settings menu or info menu, but not really when I want to toggle to toggle the transfer of a file to a memory stick (i.e. a 'now file_1 is in the memory stick' kind of thing).

Is there a way to implement this extension somehow, do I have to code my own extension, or this a different, more suitable extension available for this kind of thing? I can't find anything on the Inform 7 website at the mo, but perhaps other people know of other, secret ways to find extensions that only the initiated can find.

Any help would be much appreciated, as seeing most of my game is based around this concept.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=918&start=0#p4836
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: [Announce] Babble
User: baltasarq / DateTime: 2010-01-08 15:27:12

Hi !

[quote="Bainespal"]I've been wondering for a long time how to manually accommodate the bibliographical metadata with a system that doesn't store that information automatically or support blorb.
[/quote]

Mmm... that sounds difficult. Anyway, I have to say that I don't know very well any other system than I6 (and well, other spanish ones that are not very famous here).

I think that the ifiction file should be included in the blorb file. You could borbalize the hugo if piece and the ifiction file, and that would work for the metadata, but would probably render your game unusable (unless it is manually unblorbed before).

What I am trying to tell you is that the authoring system should follow the treaty of Babel, if it does not, I think there is little to do.

<a class="postlink" href="http://babel.ifarchive.org/">http://babel.ifarchive.org/</a>

[quote]
I believe ALAN 3 also generates a random IFID for each project, but I don't know if it stores the other information.
[/quote]

Yes, but it must generate an ifiction file, containing at least the sections ifentification (ifID) and bibliographic (author and title). This is mandatory.

[quote]
An author using ADRIFT or Hugo could of course print the IFID in the game banner, and at least could store the other bibliographical information as constants (or something similar), to be displayed by a game command.  Is there anything else that could or should be done?
[/quote]

They can display that information as you say, but I'm afraid that does not mean they are following the standard. That means that the interpreter won't be able to display the metadata when you select that game.

[quote]For the record, I'm trying to use Hugo.  [emote];)[/emote][/quote]

Again, AFAIK, authoring systems must me modified before using Babel. I think that the easiest way would be to just modify the interpreters, so they are able to extract the game from the blorb file and then play it.

Another way would be to modify a multi-platform interpreter, such as Gargoyle, and make it unblorb the game before playing it with the appropriate interpreter, provided they are one of that systems that apparently do not support Babel (Hugo, in this case). The main advantage is that would left the authoring system untouched. The main disadvantage is that it puts the complexity over the shoulders of the Gargoyle programmer.

Anyway, I again say that I have no deep knowledge about all of these authoring systems, so take it with a grain of salt.

Regards,

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=921&start=0#p4837
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Menus
User: George / DateTime: 2010-01-08 19:43:45

I'm not sure from your description but it sounds like you first tried the Menus extension (by Emily Short I think). While it seems you're OK with it I would suggest that's not really suitable for in-game commands and effects, it's more of a help/hint menu I believe. You might try Mark Tilford's Simple Chat (<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/Mark%20Tilford/Simple%20Chat/index.html">http://inform7.com/extensions/Mark%20Ti ... index.html</a>) which is a menu-based conversation system, but could be probably be adapted easily enough for your application.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=921&start=0#p4838
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Menus
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-01-08 21:10:25

I never tried to use the extension George mentioned, so he could very well be right that it would be much easier than using the "Menus" extension.

How exactly to accomplish what you want depends on what you had in mind as being involved with "transferring" a file (does a copy remain on the original computer, etc).

If decide to use "Menus" after all, I was looking at it and the extension is a bit fussier than I remembered.  I spent less time (it was only a few minutes) writing the example below than I would have if I had tried to write out an explanation, and I think if you play around with this example for a few minutes it will be pretty obvious how everything works.  Most of the code below is just to support the quick way I set up the computer/memory-sticks, since I didn't recall exactly what you had decided on that.  Of course you'd need to adapt everything to your own goals, but this should give a guide of sorts:

[code]The testarea is a room.  The description of the testarea is "Open the computer, insert the memory-stick into the computer, and then read the computer; after you exit the 'computer' menu, examine the memory stick to verify that the file_1 has been transferred (if you elected to copy it).".

Include Menus by Emily Short.

A computer is a kind of thing.
A memory-stick is a kind of container.  A memory-stick can be switched on or switched off.  A memory-stick is usually switched off.  The carrying capacity of a memory-stick is usually 0.

Instead of searching a memory-stick:
	try examining the noun.

Check inserting something into a memory-stick:
	say "You'd probably only damage [the noun] if you tried that." instead.

A computer called a laptop is in the testarea.  The laptop can be open or closed.  The laptop can be openable.  The laptop is closed and openable.  Understand "computer" or "screen" as the laptop.  The description of the laptop is "It's Agent Wilson's laptop computer.  It's currently [if closed]closed and turned off[otherwise]open and turned on[end if].  (The computer may be used by READing it.)".

After opening the laptop:
	say "You open the laptop computer and the screen lights up as it powers on.".

After closing the laptop:
	say "You close the laptop computer, turning it off.".

Instead of switching on the laptop:
	try opening the noun.

Instead of switching off the laptop:
	try closing the noun.

A memory-stick called a blue memory stick is in the testarea.  The description of the blue memory stick is "A small, portable flash drive.  According to the tiny display on the side, [if the blue memory stick contains anything]it currently holds [a list of things in the item described][otherwise]it is currently empty[end if].".

Rule for printing room description details: stop.
Rule for printing room description details of something: omit contents in listing.
The examine described devices rule is not listed in any rulebook.

Check switching on a memory-stick:
	say "[The noun] will power up automatically when inserted into any compatible computer." instead.

Check switching off a memory-stick:
	say "[The noun] doesn't have an internal power source; it's on when inserted into a computer, and off at all other times." instead.

Instead of inserting a memory-stick into a computer:
	now the noun is incorporated by the second noun;
	now the noun is switched on;
	say "You plug [the noun] into [the second noun].".

Instead of taking a memory-stick:
	if the noun is incorporated by a computer:
		say "You remove [the noun] from [the holder of the noun].";
		now the noun is switched off;
		move the noun to the player;
	otherwise:
		continue the action.
	
Understand the command "read" as something new.

Reading is an action applying to one visible thing.  Understand "read [something]" as reading.

Check reading something (this is the prevent useless reading rule):
	say "[The noun] doesn't have anything of interest written on it." instead.

Procedural rule for reading the laptop: ignore the prevent useless reading rule.

Check reading the laptop:
	if the noun is closed:
		say "You'll need to turn on the computer before you can use it." instead.

Carry out reading the laptop:
	change the current menu to the Table of Computer-Stuff01;
	change the current menu title to "Directory of C: My Computer";
	carry out the displaying activity;
	clear the screen.

A computer-file is a kind of thing.

Instead of doing anything to a computer-file:
	say "And how do you propose to do that?".

There is a computer-file called file_1.

Table of Computer-Stuff01
title	subtable	description	toggle
"meganfox-bikini.jpg 147 kb"	Table of Computer-Stuff02	--	--
"temp.tmp 5.7 mb"	Table of Computer-Stuff03		--
"topsecret.txt 936 kb"	Table of Computer-Stuff04	--	--

Table of Computer-Stuff02
title	subtable	description	toggle
"View File"	Table of Computer-Stuff02A	--	--
"Copy File to Memory Stick"	Table of Computer-Stuff02B	--	--
"Delete File"	--	--	file02-erase rule

Table of Computer-Stuff02A
title	subtable	description	toggle
"View Image File"	--	"[paragraph break]Your current version of Inform Picture Viewer is out of date.  Please visit the Inform Corporation website to update your software."	--

Table of Computer-Stuff02B
title	subtable	description	toggle
"[if the laptop incorporates a memory-stick]Copy File[otherwise]No memory stick detected[end if]"	--	"[paragraph break]Error copying file"	--

File-02check is a number that varies.  File-02check is usually 0.

This is the file02-erase rule:
	if file-02check is 0:
		choose row with title of "meganfox-bikini.jpg 147 kb" in the Table of Computer-Stuff01;
		blank out the whole row;
		sort the Table of Computer-Stuff01 in title order;
		change file-02check to 1;
	otherwise:
		do nothing.

Table of Computer-Stuff03
title	subtable	description	toggle
"View File"	Table of Computer-Stuff03A	--	--
"Copy File to Memory Stick"	Table of Computer-Stuff03B	--	--
"Delete File"	--	--	file03-erase rule

Table of Computer-Stuff03A
title	subtable	description	toggle
"View Unknown File Type"	--	"[paragraph break]!@#$%^&*()_+|}{:?><,./;'\=-@#$%^&*()_+|}{:?><,./;\=-@#$%^&*()_+|}{:?><,./;'\=-@#$%^&*()_+|}{:?><,./;\=-@#$%^&*()_+|}{:?><,./;'\=-"	--

Table of Computer-Stuff03B
title	subtable	description	toggle
"[if the laptop incorporates a memory-stick]Copy File[otherwise]No memory stick detected[end if]"	--	"[paragraph break]Error copying file"	--

File-03check is a number that varies. File-03check is usually 0.

This is the file03-erase rule:
	if file-03check is 0:
		choose row with title of "temp.tmp 5.7 mb" in the Table of Computer-Stuff01;
		blank out the whole row;
		sort the Table of Computer-Stuff01 in title order;
		change file-03check to 1;
	otherwise:
		do nothing.

Table of Computer-Stuff04
title	subtable	description	toggle
"View File"	Table of Computer-Stuff04A	--	--
"Copy File to Memory Stick"	Table of Computer-Stuff04B	--	--
"Delete File"	--	--	file04-erase rule

Table of Computer-Stuff04A
title	subtable	description	toggle
"View Text File"	--	"[paragraph break]Turkey trots to water.  The pearl is in the river.  Johnny has one red shoe.  The moon is full tonight.  Jeanine likes to tango.  Patty likes green bicycles.  The world wonders."	--

Table of Computer-Stuff04B
title	subtable	description	toggle
"[if the laptop incorporates a memory-stick]Copy File[otherwise]No memory stick detected[end if]"	--	--	file04-copy rule

File-04check is a number that varies.  File-04check is usually 0.

This is the file04-erase rule:
	if file-04check is 0:
		choose row with title of "topsecret.txt 936 kb" in the Table of Computer-Stuff01;
		blank out the whole row;
		change file-04check to 1;
		sort the Table of Computer-Stuff01 in title order;
	otherwise:
		do nothing.

This is the file04-copy rule:
	if file_1 is off-stage and the blue memory stick is incorporated by the laptop:
		move file_1 to the blue memory stick;
	otherwise:
		do nothing.[/code]
Due to the way the forum works, if you copy/paste the above into Inform the Table Descriptions will be a real mess; just remember to remove any spaces and instead insert a 'tab' after each entry of each table line.




-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=918&start=0#p4839
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: [Announce] Babble
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-01-08 21:15:37

Thanks, Baltasar.  That's very helpful.  [emote]:)[/emote] 

[quote="baltasarq"]They can display that information as you say, but I'm afraid that does not mean they are following the standard. That means that the interpreter won't be able to display the metadata when you select that game.[/quote]
From what I make of the Hugo documentation, the only meta information the Hugo Engine (interpreter) can be made aware of is the title of the work.  Inform and TADS interpreters are good at making use of the meta information generated by the systems.  The ADRIFT Runner appears to only know the title, author, and date that the game file was last modified.

This may be somewhat unfortunate, but I don't think it's a terribly big deal.  If the meta data is displayed prominently enough by the game and is accurately recorded on websites such as the IFID and IF Wiki, the bibliographical information will be able to serve its purpose.

I just glanced at the Treaty of Babel text.  I didn't read the whole thing; I didn't even skim through much of it, but I noticed this:

[quote="the Treaty of Babel"]We might say that bibliographic data for IF can be provided at three
levels:

- "internally", that is, it can be printed out by the work of IF - for
instance in the game banner, or in response to a typed VERSION command;

- "locally", that is, it can be read and used by the run-time software
playing the story file (the "interpreter"), or by other programs which
have direct access to the file;

- "externally", that is, it can exist entirely independently of the
story file, for instance in a bibliographic database like the one kept
by CDDB for published CDs.
[/quote]
The only level that requires an authoring system and interpreter that fully support Babel is the second of the three, the "local" level.  The author of a given work can manually supply meta information internally within the game and externally on archival websites.

For my part, I'll do my best to accommodate the treaty on my own, and I won't worry that my project won't fully or officially follow the standard.  I'll store my own metadata within the source code with constants, display at least some of it in the banner, display all of it with a game command, and include it in any documentation.  I'll simply display my cover art above the opening text of the game, and the interpreter will be none the wiser.  Of course, I'll make sure the IFID has the correct data.  I'll be following the spirit of the treaty, if not the letter. [emote];)[/emote] 

And I'll be extraordinarily happy if I ever get to the point in development that I'm actually ready to do something about bibliographic matters.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=922&start=0#p4840
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: A problem with "understanding"
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2010-01-08 23:04:59

The following paragraph of Inform 7 code is crashing my work in progress:

[code]
Talking to something is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "talk to [something]" as talking to.
[/code]

Inform 7 gives the following complaint during translation:

[quote]
[b]Problem.[/b] You wrote 'Understand "talk to [something]" as talking to'  : but 'understand ... as ...' should be followed by a meaning, which might be an action (e.g., 'understand "take [something]" as taking'), a thing ('understand "stove" as the oven') or more generally a value ('understand "huitante" as 80'), or a named token for use in further grammar ('understand "near [something]" as "[location phrase]"'). Also, the meaning needs to be precise, so 'understand "x" as a number' is not allowed - it does not say which number. 
[/quote]

I can't for the life of me figure out what it is I'm doing wrong. Any suggestions? I'm using the GNOME interface on Ubuntu 9.10, not that the platform should make a difference...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=922&start=0#p4841
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: A problem with "understanding"
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-01-08 23:18:09

[code]Talking to something is an action applying to one visible thing.[/code]
That creates an action called "talking to something", which is legal but not what you want: "something" doesn't belong as part of the name. You get an error later because the understand statement refers to "talking to", which is not the full name of the action.

Change the definition to:[code]Talking to is an action applying to one visible thing.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=922&start=0#p4842
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: A problem with "understanding"
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2010-01-08 23:23:57

Aah. Thanks, vaporware. I should probably try coding when I'm actually awake.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=921&start=0#p4843
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Menus
User: Pe-ads / DateTime: 2010-01-09 08:48:28

Cheers, guys. I think I'll use Endosphere's example, though thanks for the link to the other extension, George.

@Endosphere:

Thanks for the example! It was very funny, and showed me the best way to implement the transferring stuff using the 'toggle' function.


Thanks again,

Pe-ads

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=923&start=0#p4844
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Tables
User: Pe-ads / DateTime: 2010-01-09 10:20:52

Is it possible to list an object in a table? Here's an illustration of what I want:

[code]
The testing ground is a room.
The Box of Goodness is in the testing ground.

Meat is a thing.
Present is a thing.
Apple pie is a thing.
Chocolate is a thing.

Table of Goodness
Object      Displaytext
                
chocolate  "A bar of Cadbury's materialises in the Box of Goodness."
present     "A large gift-wrapped item appears in the Box of Goodness."
apple pie  "A steaming apple pie emerges from a flash of colour in the Box of Goodness."
meat        "A lightning bolt streaks down into the Box of Goodness, and lo, Meat appears."

goodnesscount is a number variable. It is 0.

Every turn when goodnesscount is less than 4:
    choose a random row in the Table of Goodness;
    now (Object entry) is in the Box of Goodness;
    say "[Displaytext entry]";
    now goodnesscount=goodnesscount+1   
[/code]

I don't think this code will work in Inform though, as I tried something similar earlier and it didn't work. Is my syntax bad, or is it just plain impossible?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=923&start=0#p4845
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tables
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-01-09 10:56:13

It will work, with a few tweaks. You have one line break too many in the table. The variable definition is a bit off and the last line in the every turn rule must be rephrased.

[code]Table of Goodness
Object	Displaytext
chocolate	"A bar of Cadbury's materialises in the Box of Goodness."
present	"A large gift-wrapped item appears in the Box of Goodness."
apple pie	"A steaming apple pie emerges from a flash of colour in the Box of Goodness."
meat	"A lightning bolt streaks down into the Box of Goodness, and lo, Meat appears."

goodnesscount is a number variable. Goodnesscount is 0. [You can't use "it" with variables.]

Every turn when goodnesscount is less than 4:
    choose a random row in the Table of Goodness;
    now object entry is in the Box of Goodness;
    say "[Displaytext entry][line break]";
    increase goodnesscount by 1;
    blank out the whole row. [presumably you don't want duplicates so I added this line.][/code]

You don't actually even need the variable, you can just check whether there's anything left in the table:

[code]Every turn when the Table of Goodness is not empty:
    choose a random row in the Table of Goodness;
    now object entry is in the Box of Goodness;
    say "[Displaytext entry][line break]";
    blank out the whole row.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=923&start=0#p4846
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tables
User: Pe-ads / DateTime: 2010-01-09 11:00:50

Thanks a lot! I thought it would have been possible somehow, but I wasn't sure how to do it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=924&start=0#p4847
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Just saying hi
User: sussman / DateTime: 2010-01-09 20:01:26

I wasn't aware of this forum till others pointed it out.  Just saying hi.  Been watching the IF community since the late 90's, watching Inform evolve and playing community games quietly.  Over the last couple years I "came out of the shell", and was one of the co-authors for 'Rover's Day Out' in the recent IFcomp.  (Jack and I are now working on a mini-game for the JiG competition at the end of the month.)

Endless detail about me is here: [url]http://www.red-bean.com/sussman[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=924&start=0#p4848
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Just saying hi
User: sussman / DateTime: 2010-01-09 20:05:22

Grr, I meant to add this onto the 'introduce ourselves' thread.  Doh.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=925&start=0#p4849
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Help, coding problem, can't figure out how to say this
User: SamReader / DateTime: 2010-01-09 21:46:55

Hi Just started coding with inform 7. This should be simple but it's not.
I'm trying to whenever the player tries to pick something up (aka take)  I want the game to say "([noun] not taken) I don't have time for anything else. I need to leave for work!" 
unless they are trying to pick up the note (a simple object in my room), 
basically is was set up like this

[color=#0000FF]Instead of taking something: If the note is not handled, say "([noun] not taken) I don't have time for anything else. I need to leave for work!";

After taking the note for the first time: say "I think I will take work off today. I want to work on my resolutions. But I should call my boss.";  award 10 points; say "Work avoided.";[/color]

but then I realize the player can't take the note.
how do i keep the basic statements above but make an exception for taking the note.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=430&start=0#p4850
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Mock Computer Interface
User: SamReader / DateTime: 2010-01-09 21:59:16

Can't open file.
But I'm having the same basic problem.
I want to include a computer interface. 
Check email.
Visit a few sites, maybe using a web address with the computer. 
but i really have no idea how i should go about making that. 
Any help would be really great. 

thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=430&start=0#p4851
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Mock Computer Interface
User: George / DateTime: 2010-01-09 23:24:00

If you can't open that file SamReader you may not have an appropriate unzipper program. You can download something like [url=http://www.7-zip.org/]7-zip[/url], it might help.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=925&start=0#p4852
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help, coding problem, can't figure out how to say this
User: George / DateTime: 2010-01-09 23:36:06

[code]
R is a room. 

The note is in R. 

Foo is in R. 

Baz is in R. 

Instead of taking something that is not the note when the note has not been handled, say "You don't have time to take [the noun]!".

After taking the note:
	say "I think I'll take work off today.";
	award 10 points;
	say "(work avoided)".

test me with "take foo / take note / take foo".
[/code]

Adding 'when the note has not been handled' seems appropriate here, but isn't necessary.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=430&start=0#p4853
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Mock Computer Interface
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-01-10 09:42:34

Take a look at this new extension, Computers. It might have what you need: <a class="postlink" href="http://hansprestige.com/inform/extns2009/Computers.i7x">http://hansprestige.com/inform/extns2009/Computers.i7x</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=925&start=0#p4854
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help, coding problem, can't figure out how to say this
User: SamReader / DateTime: 2010-01-10 14:27:17

That fixed my problem but created a new one. 
[color=#0000FF]
After taking the slipcover for the first time, 
say "You remove the slipcover, revealing the coach. The pattern is not as bad as you had feared. Instead the couch is a medium blue with pale blue spirals. It is beautiful and makes the whole room look much better. You wounder why you had ever covered it up in the first place." 
After taking the slipcover for the first time: say "You remove the slipcover, revealing the coach. The pattern is not as bad as you had feared. Instead the couch is a medium blue with pale blue spirals. It is beautiful and makes the whole room look much better. You wounder why you had ever covered it up in the first place."; 
award 10 points; 
say "Living room decorated.";[/color]

but now because the first take is blocked by the previous code (see first post), this never happens. 
how do I have it be the first successful take, ex unblocked take,
I want it to happen only once so you can't just drop it and pick it up again earning points each time.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=430&start=0#p4855
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Mock Computer Interface
User: SamReader / DateTime: 2010-01-10 14:33:08

This link is awesome thank you.
Would I be allowed to use it or parts of it in code for a competition. (the jayisgames competition [url]http://jayisgames.com/archives/2009/11/game_design_competition_7.php[/url])
I would be sure to give it mention in the credits.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=925&start=0#p4856
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help, coding problem, can't figure out how to say this
User: George / DateTime: 2010-01-10 15:17:44

You have a few choices, you can write two rules (Instead of something that is not the note, Instead of something that is not the slipcover). If you have many objects you would like to take, you can create a property (A thing is OK to take), and use it like so:

[code]
A thing can be OK to take. 

the note is in R. The note is OK to take. 

the slipcover is in R. The slipcover is OK to take. 

Foo is in R. 

Baz is in R. 

Instead of taking something that is not OK to take when the note has not been handled, say "You don't have time to take [the noun]!".
[/code]

You can also write a description of an action, which works sort of the same way:

[code]
the note is in R.  

the slipcover is in R.  

Foo is in R. Taking Foo is dawdling. 

Baz is in R. Taking Baz is dawdling. 

Instead of dawdling when the note has not been handled, say "You don't have time to take [the noun]!".
[/code]

Regarding your other question, 

[quote]
I want it to happen only once so you can't just drop it and pick it up again earning points each time.
[/quote]

You can describe the object more specifically, like:

[code]
After taking the not handled note:
	say "I think I'll take work off today.";
	award 10 points;
	say "(work avoided)".

test me with "take foo / take slipcover / take note / take foo / drop note / take note".
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=430&start=0#p4857
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Mock Computer Interface
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-01-10 17:00:01

[quote]Would I be allowed to use it or parts of it in code for a competition. (the jayisgames competition <a class="postlink" href="http://jayisgames.com/archives/2009/11/game_design_competition_7.php">http://jayisgames.com/archives/2009/11/ ... tion_7.php</a>)
I would be sure to give it mention in the credits.[/quote]

Yes, you can use this or any other extension. All submitted extensions are considered to be released under a suitable license for just about any use. Inform will automatically attribute the extension, but you can also add your own note of appreciation if you like.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=926&start=0#p4858
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [Your score has just gone up by one point.]
User: Carlos / DateTime: 2010-01-11 14:53:43

Hi all,

I'm new to writing with Inform 7 (and to writing IF at all), and am having a lot of fun learning the system. My first project is going to be a very basic game, one where I use an IF story to help my community college students learn grammar. 

The story of the game, building on the popularity of a certain teen wizard who must not be named, is that students attend the Margram Academy of Magic to learn to cast spells. I've replaced the traditional score at the top with the word "Spellpower" (and am supremely proud of myself for figuring out how to do so!) and I want to use that spellpower number to dictate how many chances players get to answer the grammar question before them correctly.

Every time a point is awarded, the message "[Your score has just gone up by one point.]" appears. I would like it to read "[Your spellpower has just gone up by one point.]" instead. My attempts to make this change have been fruitless (and rather pathetic), and I haven't been able to find anything in the documentation, either in Inform or on the web, that addresses changing score notification (other than turning it on or off). Any ideas how to code this?

Much appreciated, folks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=924&start=0#p4859
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Just saying hi
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-01-11 14:57:47

Hi Sussman,

I guess it's up to me to welcome you to the forum!  They can be a quiet bunch around here, but it's still worth posting requests for beta testers and the rest here.

 [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=847&start=0#p4860
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: When are results announced?
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-01-11 15:43:54

[quote="Pacian"]You may be right about CYOA, EK_Dev.  You may even be right about Node-X.  But until you actually make a game that truly demonstrates the potential of the system, no-one is going to pay any attention.[/quote]

I'm a programmer and techno musician, but no game designer or novel writer!

It is not my job to write a top-notch academic interactive fiction game. Ask TOP 10 IFComp writers instead. I'm sure they can do a better job than me in that field.^^

In a professional game company the roles are clearly defined too. You have programmers who code the engine for a game. Game and Level Designers who create ideas and build the actual game on that engine. Game and texture artists who create the look and feel of the game which the game designers have envisioned. And game musicians and sound engineers who contribute their particular talent to make the game sound good. And last but not least you have the publisher who is responsible for marketing and advertising the game.

You can't blame the programmer for being a newbie in art design. It's not his expertise!
You can't blame game designers for bad marketing. It is not their job but the publisher's!
I think everyone agrees with me on that subject.

Same as I can't blame IFComp writers for not being able to code their own Inform or Glulx parser systems, because it's not their expertise.

My particular expertise is programming. If you're looking for a good programmer then I am your man. But if you want me to write a good Interactive Fiction game myself then I have to disappoint you. I'm a newbie in IF writing. That doesn't mean that I won't be able to write good interactive fiction some day, but it takes time and experience. Especially in my case, because my main focus since 2007, when I started to code Node-X, is and will be the system/engine itself. In other words, writing lines of source code that rocks. I usually do not pay much attention to the adventures I write at this point. My engine is the real game, if you want.

[quote]You had an entire year after entering Project Delta to create a game that could show off the capabilities of Node-X and present a strong argument for how you feel text games should progress.  Instead you gave us a game that does something we've seen a hundred times before, sometimes a hundred times better.[/quote]

I had an entire year to code a much more advanced version (1.1) of Node-X. And I have done a good job imho. Read the included [i]NXI_ChangeLog.txt[/i] file. It is a report of everything which I have done between October 2008 and September 2009 concerning the system itself. Who cares about Project Delta or Trap Cave? They are just examples. The Node-X system is my real work. Programming is an art by its own. You can't code a system like Node-X in a few days only. It requires a lot of time and planning, especially if you deal with upward and downward compatibilty issues, as I do. For example, you have to make sure that gamefiles created for an older generation of Node-X or savefiles created with an older version are compatible with a newer generation and version that doesn't exist yet, and vice versa. An interesting science all by itself, if I might add.

So why don't you stop complaining about my text adventures and write your own ones with the Node-X system? It's very easy. I have given you the tools. Now it's YOUR turn to show me what you can create with it..... if you need tutorials for the scripting language then you know where to find me.  [emote]:roll:[/emote] 

[quote]I've mentioned before that I like you, Emilian, but after a year of you plugging Node-X at every conceivable opportunity, I'm not looking forward to another year of you complaining that you're being persecuted.  You're not.  People didn't like Trap Cave because it's flawed and old fashioned.[/quote]

Trap Cave has a cool ASCII logo! Retro-style. You reviewers said it yourself.  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

Isn't it a nice little feature I have given you? You can mix ASCII art and text in your IF adventures!
You can't do that in Inform or Glulx!

[quote]Node-X - and [i]you[/i] - can do a lot better.[/quote]

You were good until that sentence of yours which is quoted above. Node-X and I can do a lot better, you say? Aha. Who are you to tell me? My mom? LOL!

Don't even start with me on that subject or tell me that I haven't done enough, because it will be you who will look stupid in the end. Coding an engine AND writing a game for it, all by yourself only, is much harder than just writing a text game for an existing Inform or Glulx system! Imagine the IFComp organisers would demand from the authors to program their own parsers with their games each time. Then you would not have 24 authors in the last competition but much less, like 3 or 5 people, including me. I would participate in the competition anyway, just to show my programs. hehe.

They should make a competition for IF system programmers. Who can code the most interesting construction kit or something like that. I would be the first to join.  [emote]8-)[/emote]

Peace

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=926&start=0#p4861
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Your score has just gone up by one point.]
User: Carlos / DateTime: 2010-01-11 15:57:10

Sorry folks, rookie mistake: didn't search the forums before posting. In case anyone else missed it, here is the response with the answer: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=917&p=4827&hilit=score#p4827">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=917&p=4827&hilit=score#p4827</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=924&start=0#p4862
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Just saying hi
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2010-01-11 20:46:47

Welcome to the forum, sussman! [emote]:D[/emote] 

[quote="sussman"](Jack and I are now working on a mini-game for the JiG competition at the end of the month.)[/quote]
Good luck!

It seems that there'll be many entries in that competition...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=926&start=0#p4863
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Your score has just gone up by one point.]
User: Pe-ads / DateTime: 2010-01-12 04:15:46

Either that, or you can use David Fisher's default messages extension if you want to change a lot of default messages easily. I found it after Skinny Mike gave me a solution to my question. You can find it here: [url]http://inform7.com/extensions/David%20Fisher/Default%20Messages/index.html[/url] .

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=430&start=0#p4864
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Mock Computer Interface
User: Pe-ads / DateTime: 2010-01-12 04:19:04

Hey, Sam, my game uses computers and is for that same comp!  [emote]:D[/emote] First game as well.

That 'computers' extension looks interesting, but in my game all I want is really menu-based computers and 'Computers' looks a bit too complex for that!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=847&start=0#p4865
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: When are results announced?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-01-12 05:45:04

Ah, Emilian.  I'm glad to see that your enthusiasm and positivity have returned.  I was starting to worry that I'd scared you off.   [emote]:D[/emote] 

[quote="EK_Dev"]I had an entire year to code a much more advanced version (1.1) of Node-X. And I have done a good job imho. Read the included [i]NXI_ChangeLog.txt[/i] file. It is a report of everything which I have done between October 2008 and September 2009 concerning the system itself.

[...]

Don't even start with me on that subject or tell me that I haven't done enough, because it will be you who will look stupid in the end. Coding an engine AND writing a game for it, all by yourself only, is much harder than just writing a text game for an existing Inform or Glulx system![/quote]
That's perfectly fine, just so long as you remember that IFComp is a competition for games.  The subject of discussion was Trap Cave's performance in the comp, and if you spent the past year working on something else, it was never going to do much better than your previous game.

[quote="EK_Dev"]Trap Cave has a cool ASCII logo! Retro-style. You reviewers said it yourself.  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

Isn't it a nice little feature I have given you? You can mix ASCII art and text in your IF adventures!
You can't do that in Inform or Glulx![/quote]
Well, actually...   [emote]:P[/emote] 

[quote="EK_Dev"]So why don't you stop complaining about my text adventures and write your own ones with the Node-X system? It's very easy. I have given you the tools. Now it's YOUR turn to show me what you can create with it..... if you need tutorials for the scripting language then you know where to find me.  [emote]:roll:[/emote] [/quote]
I can certainly see that there's a bit of a Catch-22 in play here - until someone writes a cool game with Node-X, I don't think many authors will want to use it...  but without authors, where does the cool game come from?

I will admit that I did take a poke into the Node-X files during IFComp, but I couldn't get a good grasp on what was going on in there.  Perhaps if you started a Node-X thread in the Other Development Systems sub-forum, we could get a discussion going?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=918&start=0#p4866
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: [Announce] Babble
User: baltasarq / DateTime: 2010-01-12 06:58:25

Hi !

[quote]
I just glanced at the Treaty of Babel text.  I didn't read the whole thing; I didn't even skim through much of it, but I noticed this:
[quote="the Treaty of Babel"]We might say that bibliographic data for IF can be provided at three
levels:

- "internally", that is, it can be printed out by the work of IF - for
instance in the game banner, or in response to a typed VERSION command;

- "locally", that is, it can be read and used by the run-time software
playing the story file (the "interpreter"), or by other programs which
have direct access to the file;

- "externally", that is, it can exist entirely independently of the
story file, for instance in a bibliographic database like the one kept
by CDDB for published CDs.
[/quote]
The only level that requires an authoring system and interpreter that fully support Babel is the second of the three, the "local" level.  The author of a given work can manually supply meta information internally within the game and externally on archival websites.
[/quote]
Well, I wasnt' aware of that. It's fantastic that you can still add metadata that way. The only unfortunate thing is that won't be displayed by Zoom, for example, when the game is selected. Or maybe yes, provided the metadata file is named after the game file. I simply don't know.

[quote]
For my part, I'll do my best to accommodate the treaty on my own, [...]
And I'll be extraordinarily happy if I ever get to the point in development that I'm actually ready to do something about bibliographic matters.[/quote]

I wish you make it!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=921&start=0#p4867
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Menus
User: Pe-ads / DateTime: 2010-01-12 09:24:42

After using Menus and writing about a quarter of the needed code for it, I gave it a test run. IMHO, it's a bit weird. It takes over the status line, and it comes out differently on different interpreters. So instead, I'll try using Simple Chat, as it can be adapted to my needs fairly easily.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=908&start=10#p4868
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Translating the Source Failed
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2010-01-12 13:47:12

OK, this is just super freaking weird.

A guy at work spilled a glass of water in my laptop and damaged it so I was slated to get a new one. I figured this issue would go away with the new laptop.

I'm running Windows 7 now.

I downloaded Inform and installed it again. No trace of the old app or files were moved to the new computer from the old, nor were there for any other reason.

This time, every time I compile anything I get "The webpage could not be displayed" and in the status bar, "The game has not been compiled".

For what it's worth, the Internet connection is working fine.

I'm downloading I7_5Z71_Windows.exe for "PC running Windows 95 or later" from <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/download/">http://inform7.com/download/</a>.

Is there something wrong with this file? Or is this an unrelated new Windows 7 problem?

Is it time to file a bug report? If so can someone point me in the right direction to do that?

Thanks

Edited to add: "Compiler finished with code 2"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=908&start=10#p4869
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Translating the Source Failed
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-01-12 13:58:40

I'm not aware of any problems with running Inform on Windows 7. I'm using Windows 7 Ultimate myself.

My suspicion is still that this is some kind of security setting that's preventing Inform from writing its output. Can you check a couple things...

1. On the "Errors" tab, select "Progress" and paste everything that appears there.

2. After trying to compile the project, leave Inform running and open your Documents\Inform\Projects folder, open the folder for your project, then open the Build folder inside that, and list the files that appear inside.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=908&start=10#p4870
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Translating the Source Failed
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2010-01-12 15:59:39

DOH!

This time this is probably all my fault.

When the computer was put in my hands, I immediately started customizing it in the colors and file structures and such that I like.

I noticed there was no "My Documents", but instead a folder named after my user name, that spoke of adding and removing "libraries" (whatever those are) and contained a dozen "My Music" and "My Whatever" folders that looked completely obtrusive and annoying to me.

I backed that junk up and then deleted it. Then I created my own "My Documents" folder just so I could get started with storing some work files without researching Windows 7 for two hours first.

SO... Inform used to put a folder in "My Documents" containing Projects and other folders. Obviously it's not there now, and I can't tell that it's anywhere. I looked in Program Files (the program was there of course but the folder structure looked different) and even tried re-creating it here and there, but that didn't help.

So I assume I probably need to do one of the following... ?

1. Restore that built-in folder that I deleted (I'd really rather not, if it's going to prevent me from deleting its built-in cruft)
2. Set a default somewhere in Inform telling it where to store projects?
3. Recreate the Projects folder and other folders somewhere?
4. Reinstall Inform and choose a different location?

Thanks for your help Vaporware.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=908&start=10#p4871
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Translating the Source Failed
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-01-12 16:09:38

The best thing is probably to restore the deleted folders. If you really don't want to do that, you could try just recreating the Documents folder: click your name on the Start menu, which should open your home directory (containing Contacts, Desktop, Favorites, Links, Searches, etc.), then create a folder called Documents in there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=908&start=10#p4872
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Translating the Source Failed
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2010-01-12 16:44:28

Thanks Vaporware.

Recreating just Documents didn't work. Restoring the whole user folder did. 

Grrr!!!! Why must Windows always litter numerous and useless undeletable folders all over everything? That's a post for another forum, I guess.

No way to hide that user folder off my desktop, but still let it exist and hold those Inform files I assume?

If not I will live with it for now, because I'm tired of not writing Interactive Fiction!!

Thanks again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=927&start=0#p4873
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Weird bug with I7 and the Pronouns extension
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-01-12 18:09:45

First off, the Pronouns extension is great. This error, however, is odd, and I thought I'd report it. At present, I can't see any way around it other than trap every instance that could give rise to the offending error - which I'm loath to do. But needs must.

Anyhow, to demonstrate:

[code]
Include Pronouns by Ron Newcomb.

Home is a room. 
Corwin is a man in Home. The player is Corwin. 
Fiona is a woman. Fiona is in Home. 
Bleys is a man. Bleys is in Home. 
Deirdre is a woman. Deirdre is in Home. 
Brand is a man. Brand is in Home.

A garment is a kind of thing. 
The sweater, the skirt, and the tie are garments. 

A body part is a kind of thing.
A face and a nose are kinds of body part. A nose and a face are parts of every person. 

Deirdre is wearing the sweater. Bleys is wearing the tie. Fiona is wearing the skirt.

Understand "your" as a thing when the item described is enclosed by the person asked.
Understand "my" as a thing when the item described is enclosed by player.
Understand "his" as a thing when the item described is enclosed by him.
Understand "her" as a thing when the item described is enclosed by her.

Definition: a person is other if it is not the player.

Rule for printing the name of a body part (called stuff) that is not other:
	let x be indexed text;
	let x be the printed name of stuff;
	let y be indexed text;
	let y be the printed name of player;
	replace the regular expression "[y]'s" in x with "your";
	say "[x]".

Test me with "x Bleys / x his face / x fiona's face / x her face / x her weeble / x her wooble / x his weeble / x his graaa".[/code]

How to fix this naughty little beastie?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=927&start=0#p4874
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Weird bug with I7 and the Pronouns extension
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-01-12 18:20:23

I should perhaps add that I'm running the I7 version 5Z71 for Windows. [emote]:oops:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=927&start=0#p4875
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Weird bug with I7 and the Pronouns extension
User: George / DateTime: 2010-01-12 20:28:19

It certainly looks like a bug to me (if you're referring to the odd behaviour around 'her'), and with Inform7 rather than the extension. I guess we should expect as much from IF code written by men.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=928&start=0#p4876
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Fang Vs. Claw: The Duel That Spanned the Ages Episode 2
User: scramble / DateTime: 2010-01-13 06:32:26

Hi all, I posted this a few days ago at if.game-testing.org and thought I'd repeat it here for you fine folks:

In a starlit age...
...a defeated warrior faces a world of blood and rust...
...an ancient guardian has nothing to protect but his own rage...
...a four-armed acolyte sacrifices his soul for vengeance...
...and as always, the stars shine unblinkingly on the carnage.

***

This is the sequel to my entry in the last IF comp. The game is about 1/3 done and I need feedback about some design decisions and my writing.

As Episode 1, this is a scifi-horror game, but veterans of the first game will notice that Episode 2 is a very different beast from Episode 1. (Knowledege of Episode 1 is very helpful, but not required.)

I can use all sorts of testers. It doesn't matter if you want to accompany the game all the way to completion or can only muster the time to play once.

I hope to complete the game in time for the 2010 IF Comp.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=927&start=0#p4877
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Weird bug with I7 and the Pronouns extension
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-01-13 08:47:26

[quote="George"]It certainly looks like a bug to me (if you're referring to the odd behaviour around 'her'), and with Inform7 rather than the extension. I guess we should expect as much from IF code written by men.  [emote];)[/emote][/quote]

Yes indeed, the problem seems to be with the internal pronouns - however, I wasn't [i]completely[/i] certain, so I thought I'd just report the circumstances involved. Linguistically, the word "her" does have a wider meaning than "his" or "its", since you can say both "talk to her" and "talk to her parrot" with equal validity (while "talk to his" or "talk to its" is obviously incorrect).

This, sadly, demonstrated further problems of the buggy kind:

[code]Home is a room. 
Corwin is a man in Home. The player is Corwin. 
Fiona is a woman. Bleys is a man. Fiona and Bleys are in Home. 

A shirt is a kind of thing.
Fiona is wearing a shirt. Bleys is wearing a shirt.

Before examining a thing:
	let x be the holder of the noun;
	say "[printed name of x]".

Test me with "x shirt / x shirt / x his shirt / x shirt".[/code]

Now, add the following among the clothing declarations:
[code]Corwin is wearing a shirt.[/code]

Evidently, the gender pronouns refuse to play nice with duplicates - "it" evidently means "any one iteration of the shirt," and as far as I can tell the parser then goes by first player-worn, then female-worn, then finally male-worn. The problem is when similar clothes force the user to type "x john / x john's shirt" because mary also wears a shirt - and unless the player knows to look at John before asking about "his" shirt, John's shirt will be invisible.

I would really like it to disambiguate between duplicates when said duplicates are nearby. I think I can do it manually, but it comes across as setting myself up for nasty errors further down the line.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=929&start=0#p4878
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Unlocking doors
User: frogulis / DateTime: 2010-01-14 05:01:42

I'm new to Inform 7 and writing IF.
Recently I was experimenting and I tried making a door that is locked, and unlocks not by a key, but when a certain thing (e.g. a Shoe) is in a certain container (e.g. a box).
I tried some things such as:

If the Shoe is in the Box then Unlock the Door.  (I created the shoe, box and door beforehand)

But this doesn't work. It compiles and plays, but it thinks that "in the Box then Unlock the Door" is a thing. What should I do???!!!
Please tell me if I'm missing important punctuation there or something, but that's almost copied straight out of the manual.

Thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=908&start=10#p4879
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Translating the Source Failed
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2010-01-14 12:04:43

In other news... Windows 7 is acting [i]weird[/i]. Maybe it's because I deleted that folder and brought it back.

Putting a documents "shortcut" on the desktop somehow seems to put the real documents there, as do some other folders. This makes it hard to understand when I am deleting and how to stop looking at something without deleting it.

I put a folder called "organize" on my desktop when I first got the computer, put some stuff in it, took the stuff out, and deleted the folder. Now that folder comes back every hour or two, even after reboots. I'm guessing that I must have put something from the library in it, and now Windows thinks that it's a special folder that ought to behave erratically. I even renamed it "go away", but it won't. 

When I add a favorite to IE, EIGHT (no more, no less) identical favorites folders are generated in my library. If I delete one, I delete them all. If I add another favorite after deleting, I immediately get another eight folders. They can't be hidden. I can't find anything on Google about this.

My copy-and-paste and select-all keyboard shortcuts don't work in most programs. This I found on Google, but no solution that works for me.

I don't really expect anyone to have advice... just venting.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=929&start=0#p4880
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unlocking doors
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-01-14 12:37:47

[quote]If the Shoe is in the Box then Unlock the Door.[/quote]

This code has a couple of problems. The main issue is that it isn't tied to an event that Inform can understand. What you want to do is done by Inform through actions, and a sentence beginning with "if" only really makes sense after you've tied to an action or other event that Inform understands.

So, what you want to tell Inform is not that the door should unlock if the shoes are in the box, but that the door should unlock after the shoes *have been put in* the box. Make sense? Inform internally refers to this as inserting something into something else (the player will usually type "put shoe into box", but you have to use the specific language that Inform understands. The Index is a handy place to see what this language is.) So, something like this:

[code]After inserting the shoe into the box: .... [/code]

The other problem is that, to change the state of the world (e.g. to unlock a door), you need to use the word "now" or "change":

[code]Now the red door is unlocked.[/code]

So, here's a complete little game that will do something similar to what you want:

[code]
The Bedroom is a room. The red door is  east of the Bedroom and west of the Living Room. The red door is a closed door. The red door is locked.

The Kitchen is north of the Living Room.

The box is a container in the Kitchen. The shoe is in the Kitchen. The player is in the Kitchen.

After inserting the shoe into the box for the first time:
	now the red door is unlocked;
	say "You put [the noun] into [the second noun]. A click sounds from [if the location is the bedroom or the location is the living room]the vicinity of the door[otherwise]the south part of the house.";
[/code]

A note about "after" rules like the one that's doing all the work here: They don't allow the normal message of an action to print. In other words, without any such rule, Inform will print "You put the shoe in the box" after the player successfully performs that action. However, because our after rule doesn't blocks that standard message, we have to present our own text to tell the player that his action succeeded. 

You'll also see that I used [the noun] and [the second noun] to report the success of the inserting it into action to the player. I did this so that the code would be easier to change later--let's say that I decide I want the player to put a watch into the box instead of a shoe. Now I just need to change the word "shoe" in the first line of the rule to "watch" and Inform will automatically produce the correct output (it's the same if we change the box, too).

Hope this helps!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=930&start=0#p4881
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Support for the Esperanto alphabet
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2010-01-14 23:18:56

I'm wondering how many interpreters support the full [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_orthography]Esperanto alphabet[/url], including such exotic letters as Ĉĉ, Ĝĝ, Ĥĥ, Ĵĵ, Ŝŝ, and Ŭŭ. There are standards for writing Esperanto where these letters are not available, but I'd rather include them if possible. On my Ubuntu 9.10 system, neither the interpreter in Inform 7 nor Ubuntu's official "gargoyle-free" package of Gargoyle can display these.

Edit: Perhaps I should note that I'm compiling to Z-code at the moment.

Edit 2: I've remembered the Unicode Interrogation extension for Inform 7 by Michael Martin, and am now using that to provide two different versions of any Esperanto text.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=929&start=0#p4882
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unlocking doors
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-01-15 01:30:16

Here's a solution that works regardless of how the shoe got into the box, and has the door locked if the shoe is later removed from the box. This "fakes" a locked door by preventing the player to open the door when it's locked.

[code]The Bedroom is a room. The red door is  east of the Bedroom and west of the Living Room. The red door is a closed door.  

The Kitchen is north of the Living Room. The box is a container in the Kitchen. The shoe is in the Kitchen. The player is in the Kitchen.

Instead of opening the red door when the shoe is not in the box:
    say "A hollow voice says: 'Please deposit all shoes into the shoebox before entering.'"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=930&start=0#p4883
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Support for the Esperanto alphabet
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-01-15 03:33:57

The catch with Unicode characters is that two conditions must be met for it to work:

1) The interpreter needs to support Unicode, and
2) The font that the interpreter is using (usually provided by the operating system) needs to include images for the characters.

Windows Frotz and Zoom (for OSX) have pretty decent Unicode support, so I'd expect both these to display the Esperanto characters if there is a font present that includes them. I know that Ben Cressey has recently merged the Unicode work I did to the Frotz core for Windows Frotz into Gargoyle, but I don't believe that that work is available as yet, except from the Gargoyle source code repository.

There's a Unicode.z5 test program bundled with Windows Frotz that prints all the Unicode characters it can, which may help: you can see if that prints out the characters you want. Alternatively, I can offer to test any Z-code file you've got under Windows Frotz.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=929&start=0#p4884
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unlocking doors
User: frogulis / DateTime: 2010-01-15 03:45:30

Many thanks, this is really useful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=931&start=0#p4885
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Breaking things
User: Pe-ads / DateTime: 2010-01-15 04:42:41

I'm initialising a notebook that the player can rip the spiral-binder from. Here's the code:

[code]
The Testing Ground is a room.

Your notebook is here.

The description of your notebook is "A large notebook, full of your scribblings. A metal spiral-binder holds the pages together." Understand "log", "experiment log", or "experiment notebook" as your notebook.  Your notebook is breakable.

Instead of attacking your notebook:
	now the binder is not part of your notebook;
	move the binder to the player;
	change the description of the binder to "The metal spiral-binder you ripped from your notebook.";
	say "You rip the spiral binder from your notebook. Pages fly over the floor, but you pick them up, along with the binder and shove them i your lab coat.";
	change the printed name of your notebook to "your broken notebook.";
	change the description of your notebook to "A collection of pages which [italic type]were[roman type] part of your notebook, until you ripped the binder off it."


The binder is a thing. Understand "spiral-binder", "spiralbinder" and "spiral binder "as the binder.
The description of the binder is "The metal spiral-binder holds your notebook's pages together."
The binder is part of your noteboook.
[/code]

However, Inform says "now the binder is not part of your notebook" is too vague a phrase. Any ideas of how to implement this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=931&start=0#p4886
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Breaking things
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-01-15 10:24:06

[quote="Pe-ads"]However, Inform says "now the binder is not part of your notebook" is too vague a phrase. Any ideas of how to implement this?[/quote]

Actually you don't need that line at all.  When you move an incorporated item to a new holder (for example, "Move the noun to the player") the item automatically ceases to be incorporated by its (former) holder.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=927&start=0#p4887
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Weird bug with I7 and the Pronouns extension
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-01-15 10:38:43

That is a pretty strange problem.  The following (seemingly redundant) line takes care of the issue without introducing any immediately obvious side-effects:

[code]Rule for printing a parser error when parser error is can't see it at the moment:
	say "You can't see any such thing.".[/code]
On an unrelated note, if you're going to be setting up any scenario where gender differences between characters are nontrivial, you're better off throwing out Inform's default treatment of such matters as it's generally very confused and a source of endless frustrations.  A simple step that will save you a lot of future headaches would be:

[code]A human is a kind of animal.
A guy is a kind of human.  A guy is always male.  Understand "man" as a guy.  Understand "men" as the plural of a guy.
A gal is a kind of human.  A gal is always female.  Understand "woman" as a gal.  Understand "women" as the plural of a gal.[/code]




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=908&start=10#p4888
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Translating the Source Failed
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-01-15 10:56:37

Isn't progress grand? [emote]:)[/emote] 

I don't know anything at all about Windows 7 (or Windows Vista), so I can't offer any advice on the particular troubles you're having beyond some general ideas:

--If these troubles are on a computer at your workplace, and if there's an IT department at your workplace, tell them they gave you a lemon and then complain to your boss every day that you're not nearly as productive as you could be if you had a properly working computer.  There's no need of course to mention that you're having trouble installing video games; the troubles mentioned in your very last post could be easily framed in terms of Official Job-related Stuff, and (to me at least) indicate that something is clearly wrong with your OS installation.

 --Inform 7 for Windows requires that Internet Explorer is installed on your computer; were you given a computer with Firefox etc installed instead of Internet Explorer?

--If you look at the "Help>Windows Inform Notes" section of Inform 7 for Windows, there's a subsection about making a "home.txt" file.  You just make a one line text-file naming a path to wherever you would like Inform 7 to store your user files, which can be anywhere you like (no My Documents required).  After making this file, Inform will move its stuff to whatever folder you specified in "home.txt" the next time you start the program.  It will also leave behind your original user files in the "My Documents" directory; after restarting Inform with the new "home.txt" pointing to somewhere else then (assuming you didn't install Inform itself in "My Documents") anything Inform-related in "My Documents" can be deleted as it will never be called upon again. [emote]:?[/emote] 

--Ditch that newfangled junk OS and go back to good old DOS 6.2 [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

--Vaporware's suggestion a while back about changing files restored from a cd backup from read-only status was a good one; if these newer operating systems you're using still have a command line where you can run batch files, just make a one line batch file:

[code]attrib -r *.* /s[/code]
If you create this file (e.g. "noreadonly.bat") in the parent folder of where-ever you restored your backup to and run it, it will remove the read-only status from all the files in the entire directory in one simple step.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=931&start=0#p4889
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Breaking things
User: Pe-ads / DateTime: 2010-01-15 11:01:45

Oh, okay. Cheers!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=908&start=20#p4890
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Translating the Source Failed
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2010-01-15 15:23:37

Endosphere: Thanks so much for the info!

[quote]--If these troubles are on a computer at your workplace, and if there's an IT department at your workplace...[/quote]
 [emote]:lol:[/emote]  [emote]:lol:[/emote]  [emote]:lol:[/emote]  [emote]:lol:[/emote]  [emote]:lol:[/emote]  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

I am [b]IN[/b] the IT department in my workplace.  [emote]:oops:[/emote] 

[quote]...tell them they gave you a lemon and then complain to your boss every day that you're not nearly as productive as you could be if you had a properly working computer.[/quote]

Actually, I could easily revert to another OS upon request. In fact, as an IT user, I'm sometimes considered an "early adopter" or "tester" by the folks in IT who are rolling out / thinking of rolling out / experimenting with / etc new programs, operating systems, versions, settings and so forth. So that's probably the only reason I got Windows 7, and my problems are probably due entirely to the fact that the whole mess isn't tested for our company yet.

However, the OS is messing with my game-playing far more than my work. I just put my work stuff in an unrelated folder, and ignore all that User Folder Library junk. And actually, I don't totally mind being a guinea pig for stuff that we're going to roll out eventually to the rest of the company. I also get toys and gadgets and better settings than most folks.

But I was just getting ready to open a new thread because once again, Translating the Source Failed. ARGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!

[quote]...something is clearly wrong with your OS installation.[/quote]

My problems, I'm sure, are due to the removal of that damn virus of a User Folder, and probably some other "cleanup" I did when I received the computer. Not that I don't consider it a flaw in an OS if deleting an innocuous-looking folder off your desktop screws up your computer indefinitely.

My multiple-favorites-folder problem was compounded by a multiple-search-folder problem. However, I managed to fix both with a reg edit that I found on the InterWebz.

[quote]--Inform 7 for Windows requires Internet Explorer...[/quote]

Got it.

[quote]--If you look at the "Help>Windows Inform Notes" section of Inform 7 for Windows, there's a subsection about making a "home.txt" file.[/quote]

Now THIS is useful. I will try this before opening a new thread on my Windows 7 problems. 

[quote]--Ditch that newfangled junk OS and go back to good old DOS 6.2 [emote]:lol:[/emote][/quote]

I'm a Linux user at home. I really prefer to be in control of my folders. AND, I just ordered a new laptop. It's taking forever to get to me. But once it does, I'll probably do most of my goofing off on that computer.

[quote]just make a one line batch file[/quote]

Another good solution. Maybe I'll fix these problems yet!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=932&start=0#p4891
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: "Figueres in my Basement"
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2010-01-15 18:09:16

I made "Figueres in my Basement" today using Michael R. Bacon's Interactive Poetry extension for Inform 7.

Note: Figueres is a town in Catalonia, not a misspelling of [i]figures[/i].

You can try it in your browser using Parchment: [url]http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http%3A//mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/figueres.zblorb[/url]
or download the blorb-wrapped z-code file via the IFDB page: [url]http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=oszryjtl33cwgivl[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=927&start=0#p4892
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Weird bug with I7 and the Pronouns extension
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-01-15 18:35:19

[quote="Endosphere"]That is a pretty strange problem.  The following (seemingly redundant) line takes care of the issue without introducing any immediately obvious side-effects:

[code]Rule for printing a parser error when parser error is can't see it at the moment:
	say "You can't see any such thing.".[/code][/quote]

Awesome. Thank you; that does indeed fix the problem. 
I think I was overly focused on the his-her dichotomy, or, in other words, how to make "his sweater" refer to a sweater worn by someone male (preferable the one listed by the pronoun "him") rather than a woman (which it will cheerfully do, unless I've made a terrible mistake somewhere and it only happens on my system). I've regexed that behaviour away, laboriously, and I'll continue to chip away at the code until it looks tolerable, but... the parser's behaviour in that regard still bugs me.

[quote]On an unrelated note, if you're going to be setting up any scenario where gender differences between characters are nontrivial, you're better off throwing out Inform's default treatment of such matters as it's generally very confused and a source of endless frustrations.  A simple step that will save you a lot of future headaches would be:[/quote]

Aha, interesting. I like that it formalizes things, but I think I'm missing the full implications. Which problems will that piece of code address?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=927&start=0#p4893
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Weird bug with I7 and the Pronouns extension
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-01-15 20:34:33

[quote="Endosphere"]On an unrelated note, if you're going to be setting up any scenario where gender differences between characters are nontrivial, you're better off throwing out Inform's default treatment of such matters as it's generally very confused and a source of endless frustrations.  A simple step that will save you a lot of future headaches would be:

[code]A human is a kind of animal.
A guy is a kind of human.  A guy is always male.  Understand "man" as a guy.  Understand "men" as the plural of a guy.
A gal is a kind of human.  A gal is always female.  Understand "woman" as a gal.  Understand "women" as the plural of a gal.[/code][/quote]
I'm not sure what benefit this is supposed to provide. It basically duplicates the built-in man and woman kinds, which are defined like so:[code]The plural of man is men. The plural of woman is women.

A man is a kind of person.
The specification of man is "Represents a man or boy."
A man is always male. A man is never neuter.

A woman is a kind of person.
The specification of woman is "Represents a woman or girl."
A woman is always female. A woman is never neuter.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=930&start=0#p4894
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Support for the Esperanto alphabet
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2010-01-15 21:56:26

Thanks for the offer to run tests (and the work on Frotz Unicode support). I ran some tests of my own on Windows Frotz (using the default fonts, I think) and it did everything I hoped it would - or at least, it did on Windows. [emote]:)[/emote] Wine doesn't handle Windows Frotz very well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=927&start=0#p4895
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Weird bug with I7 and the Pronouns extension
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-01-16 13:54:45

[quote="Eleas"]Aha, interesting. I like that it formalizes things, but I think I'm missing the full implications. Which problems will that piece of code address?[/quote]
[quote="vaporware"]I'm not sure what benefit this is supposed to provide. It basically duplicates the built-in man and woman kinds, which are defined like so...[/quote]
My comment was of a very general nature, and doesn't address any particular aspect of the code discussed in this thread.  Writing rules for either all or some beings under the default person/man/woman/animal system presents many technical difficulties and simple inconveniences, since these distinctions are very arbitrary, in my opinion are not very useful, and ignore the likelihood that members of the separate categories "man" and "woman" will have much more in common with each other than a member of either category will likely have in common with a member of the generic "person" or "animal" classes.  I've also seen many cases where Inform gives nonsensical compiler errors when one attempts to write rules considering a person or animal's gender*; in many contexts the program regards gender as a temporary state rather than a fixed characteristic unless one explicitly defines kinds which are then explicitly assigned a gender (e.g. A dog is a kind of animal.  A boy-dog is a kind of dog.  A girl-dog is a kind of dog.  A boy-dog is always male.  A girl-dog is always female).

I certainly didn't intend to derail the thread with my side comment.  As Eleas has had a few threads now directly or indirectly making reference to body parts, I was just noting in passing that there are many troubles particularly associated with attempting to make men and women with different sorts of body parts (for example, let's say we're talking about men whose heads have beards/mustaches vs women whose heads do not have beards/mustaches) then subsequently writing rules about either body parts in general or the particular body parts of men that that are not shared by women (or vice-versa) since men and women are different classes of beings under the default system.  These troubles are further amplified if for example our game also includes cats, who have have completely different types of heads than either men or women.  All such problems are eliminated, however, by combining "men" and "women" into one class ("human") and then separating them as sub-kinds of the greater class; if one is working on a set of general rules rather than rules for a particular scenario, building in this sort of formalization from the start is much less frustrating than attempting to go back and add it in later after one has already written thousands of words of rules on the assumption that the default system would be adequate for all purposes.

*nope, I can't produce any specific examples at the moment

Back on topic:
[quote="Eleas"]I would really like it to disambiguate between duplicates when said duplicates are nearby. I think I can do it manually, but it comes across as setting myself up for nasty errors further down the line.[/quote]
This always requires extra effort, but in general I would think you'd want to have some customization of items if for no other reason than to avoid monotony.  For example rather than simply saying that John and Mary are both wearing shirts, I'd want to write that John is wearing a green t-shirt and Mary is wearing a silk blouse in which case it's much easier for the player to refer to John's shirt or Mary's shirt.  Although this is very subjective, as a player I wouldn't try to refer to John's outfit as "his shirt" rather than "green t-shirt" (leaving out any reference to John himself).




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=928&start=0#p4896
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Fang Vs. Claw: The Duel That Spanned the Ages Episode 2
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-01-16 14:38:23

I don't know if I'd be a very good tester, but I did play and enjoy Part 1.  If you can't find any seasoned testers, send me a PM with details when you're at the point where you need some feedback.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=927&start=0#p4897
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Weird bug with I7 and the Pronouns extension
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-01-16 18:50:43

[quote="Endosphere"]I certainly didn't intend to derail the thread with my side comment.[/quote]

Though I'm not a mod, I have to say that as far as I'm concerned, I've yet to see you derailing anything. On the contrary your input is always useful, and given the levels of activity on the forum, it's not like you're hogging the microphone. [emote]:P[/emote]

[quote]This always requires extra effort, but in general I would think you'd want to have some customization of items if for no other reason than to avoid monotony.  For example rather than simply saying that John and Mary are both wearing shirts, I'd want to write that John is wearing a green t-shirt and Mary is wearing a silk blouse in which case it's much easier for the player to refer to John's shirt or Mary's shirt.  Although this is very subjective, as a player I wouldn't try to refer to John's outfit as "his shirt" rather than "green t-shirt" (leaving out any reference to John himself).[/quote]

Yeah, I know; it's understandable, and I was going to do that. Thing is, my exploration of the methods was intended to solve cases where something like that does [i]not[/i] work. When you say "as a player", you say that as a player presumably used to IF. I get that, and it's fine. I also recall how, for the longest time, neither I nor my friends wanted any part of IFs. We never got into them, and the reason given was almost unanimous: it felt as if the parser was deliberately standing in our way and sabotaging our efforts (I later took up playing again after trying Galatea, which convinced me of the potential of IFs). 
Heading into digression territory now, however, so I'll put it under a spoiler tag:

[spoiler]I'm not trying to create a perfect parser, far from it. But to me, the pursuit of a limited vocabulary as the better alternative is a false dilemma. We don't need to allow [b]"fetch the waiter, telling him to prepare a light dinner and be quick about it"[/b] recognition; there are many simpler ways of allowing the player to influence the world without such contortions. That, however, shouldn't be an excuse for [b]"examine Joey's face"[/b] failing because Joey is a synonym rather than proper name, or for [b]"x her shoes"[/b] to instead (without telling us) causing the parser to examine her husband's blood-soaked boots because [b]"she's"[/b] actually wearing [b]"slippers"[/b], pronouns be damned.

A grizzled IF player might accept this as established conventions. To a beginner or casual player, both examples are completely capricious; it's only because you know how IFs are actually put together that you're able to tell why you can examine [b]"Joey"[/b] but not [b]"Joey's face"[/b], or why two things that are shoes, one of which is worn by a woman, should default to the person we expressly used a pronoun to exclude (in a command which, lest we forget, was accepted by the parser).

In light of that, I feel I have no choice but to patch the system (clumsily, as learning I6 and C# at the same time has proven to be a strain) before I even dare to begin a project. I do that, of course, because I think Inform is a barrel of fun in many other respects. I'm just dissatisfied with its behaviour when it comes to winning the trust of players.

(I say "trust" because to me "mimesis" is incidental; immersion is in the eye of the beholder, and not really the issue at hand. Yes, acceptance of the illusion is a grand thing, but before that can be instilled in a player, basic faith in the system itself must exist. There's a difference between reading a novel and wishing it were more atmospheric, and opening a book to find the pages falling out and/or inserted at random.)[/spoiler]

Returning to the topic, the list of what needs to be done has mutated. What I'm attempting right now is:
[list][*] allowing "his" to reference to an object enclosed by a male person. Right now, it does not, in several respects.[/*:m][*] causing "her" to reference to an object enclosed by any female person, and, if that object is not contained by any female person in scope, causing it to interpret the word as the pronoun she. Inform's behaviour when it comes to the feminine pronouns appears somewhat broken.[/*:m][*] allowing the disambiguation to accept responses to "Which suitcase, John's or Mary's" that lack the possessive and may consist of synonyms ("John" or "her" being perfectly reasonable responses that suffice to remove any ambiguity, i.e. the purpose of disambiguation) [/*:m][*] Having the parser consider "(something)'s" as a reference to possessive by name or synonym, and altering (for instance) "lady's coat" into "Miriam's coat" when Miriam holds the reference "lady" and encloses the coat.[/*:m][/list:u]

All of this I can and have done with regex. The code, however, is quite ugly. I'd rather find a better way, particularly since I dislike having to provide every person with a synonym text. But that's the way it seems I have to go.

So there's one thing right now I really need, to reduce some the amount of workarounds. I don't even know if it can be done. But is there some way of making I6 to return the understood synonym words of a given object as text? If so, how?



Edit: cleaned up a few odd choices of words

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=908&start=20#p4898
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Translating the Source Failed
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2010-01-17 11:36:43

OK this is just weird.

I created the home.txt file and put in a new path. In fact I tried different paths, including simply C:\

Inform is ignoring my home.txt file. I created a project called "Lab", got the standard "Translating the Source Failed", and when I went out to look for the file it was somewhere else besides where I had defined.

Not only was it somewhere else, but here's the weird part. Inform is creating the file inside "My Documents" and inside a folder called "Personal", which I did at one point move some projects into.

Clearly Inform can't forget about that old, custom location for some reason, even after I uninstall through "Add and Remove Programs" and then delete the Inform folders from My Documents and Program Files. In other words, it seems clear that it isn't uninstalling completely.

Does anyone know where all its files get scattered to, and how I can delete them? Or do a cleaner install?

Other suggestions welcome too. Not sure why it would ignore my home.txt file, even if it did remember other folders.

thanks.

PS: I also tried making sure all folders in question were not read-only.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=933&start=0#p4899
Forum: Competitions / Subject: French IF Comp 2009
User: farvardin / DateTime: 2010-01-17 17:34:09

The French IF community is proud to announce the beginning of the votes for our 2009 Comp (yes, we lag a bit...)

	<a class="postlink" href="http://ifiction.free.fr/index.php?id=concours&date=2009">http://ifiction.free.fr/index.php?id=concours&date=2009</a>

If you can read French, you can participate to the votes by playing to our 3 games:

	<a class="postlink" href="http://ifiction.free.fr/index.php?id=jeu&j=048">http://ifiction.free.fr/index.php?id=jeu&j=048</a>
	<a class="postlink" href="http://ifiction.free.fr/index.php?id=jeu&j=049">http://ifiction.free.fr/index.php?id=jeu&j=049</a>
	<a class="postlink" href="http://ifiction.free.fr/index.php?id=jeu&j=050">http://ifiction.free.fr/index.php?id=jeu&j=050</a>

I've played a bit to them, and they are made by authors who have quite experience with coding in Inform, and who have focused on delivering some funny and amusing stories, so we hope you'll enjoy them.

You can download them from there, or play them online using Parchment or Zmpp.
It's even better if you can provide a transcript along with your votes.

There are 3 notes to give for each game (from 1 to 10, 10 being the best of course):
- Pleasure to play, mood, ideas, story (weight 2)
- Writing skills  (weight 1)
- technical skills  (weight 1)

You can send your votes to ifictionfr #@t# gm@il #.#d@t#.# com

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=934&start=0#p4900
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: "you can't see any such thing" when things are visible
User: George / DateTime: 2010-01-17 19:16:55

I have a bit of an odd case I don't understand. Take this example:

[code]
"giving"

The desk, map, and file are in a room called HQ. 

The officer is a man in HQ. 

test me with "give desk to officer / give officer to desk"
[/code]

[quote]
HQ
You can see a desk, map, file and an officer here.

>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] give desk to officer
(first taking the desk)
The officer doesn't seem interested.

>[2] give officer to desk
You can't see any such thing.

>
[/quote]

So why the 'you can't see any such thing' message? Trace on shows that 'give officer to desk' fails when parsing the command. Is this because you can't implicitly take a person? How do I intercept that library failure in this case? Should I catch it in the printing the parser error activity?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=934&start=0#p4901
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "you can't see any such thing" when things are visible
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-01-17 21:06:23

[quote="George"]So why the 'you can't see any such thing' message?[/quote]
The reason for this seemingly nonsensical message is the way the "giving it to" action is defined in the Standard Rules:

[quote]Typed commands leading to this action

"give [something preferably held] to [someone]"
"give [someone] [something preferably held]" [i]reversed[/i][/quote]
When you type "give officer to desk," the program looks around for some[i]one[/i] called "desk" to whom it can move the officer; upon finding no such person, the response "You can't see any such thing" is logically (from the program's point of view) the best choice for a comment.  The same thing happens with any similarly defined action, for example the "showing it to" action.

You can get rid of this behavior to obtain a more appropriate error message by adding a new line:

[code]Understand "give [something] to [something]" as giving it to.[/code]




-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=908&start=20#p4902
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Translating the Source Failed
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-01-17 21:35:16

My admittedly very limited understanding of Windows Vista and Windows 7 is that both of these bloated operating systems contain zillions of lines of code all aimed directly at preventing the user from interacting with his or her files, based on the assumption that the user is a knucklehead who can't be trusted to run their own computer.  Presumably there are ways one could reduce this heavy-handedness (probably only discoverable after days or weeks spent reading thick books full of technical mumbo-jumbo).  My guess is these "features" are what's at the heart of your afflictions here--the trouble isn't with Inform at all, it's with the way the OS works to protect you from interfering with the intricate workings of its ineffable genius. [emote]:cry:[/emote] 

Since your troubles have been going on for a while now without much progress, I'd suggest you check out the Inform bug report form and send an e-mail to David Kinder asking for technical help.  I'm sure he can get things straightened out for you fairly quickly, and he's pretty good at explaining complex issues in an easily understandable way.




-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=934&start=0#p4903
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "you can't see any such thing" when things are visible
User: George / DateTime: 2010-01-17 23:26:14

Great explanation Endosphere, thank you!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=908&start=20#p4904
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Translating the Source Failed
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2010-01-18 10:17:26

[quote]these bloated operating systems contain zillions of lines of code all aimed directly at preventing the user from interacting with his or her files, based on the assumption that the user is a knucklehead who can't be trusted to run their own computer.[/quote]

 [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

I've always thought that Windows could please everyone (isn't that what they want to do?) by one simple little fix.

When you first install Windows, you get a choice: Are you a regular user or an advanced user?

Regular users get all the BS. Advanced users get to interact with their stuff.

If I may gripe, another thing that bothers me is the way that each new version of Windows, IE or Office moves everything into DRASTICALLY different locations, for no good reason that I can find. Neither I nor a novice user really wants to have to hunt five minutes for "save as" because it used to be right there, and now it's buried under six tabs and dialogs. Why, Microsoft, Why????

[quote]I'd suggest you check out the Inform bug report form and send an e-mail to David Kinder asking for technical help. [/quote]

True, true, I am about to do that now. By way of update, since my last posting I've uninstalled Inform more completely (by deleting David Kinder files from the registry and so forth) and reinstalled, ran Dependency Walker, changed the home.txt file all sorts of ways, and all kinds of other junk, but no luck. What's really infuriating is that it was working for about five minutes, a week or two ago.

I've been told I should create a new Admin account, log in as that user, delete my user account, and log back in as me, so that my User Folder will be recreated from scratch and not with the customizations I've inflicted on it. I'll do that first and see if it helps.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=932&start=0#p4905
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: "Figueres in my Basement"
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-01-18 15:11:39

Interesting.  I like the tone.  Some cool imagery at work, although it doesn't seem to diverge as much as I expected when I replayed.

One thing I'd mention, although I suspect this is an issue with the poetry extension, is how typing a [i]non[/i]-significant word from the text, ('the', for example) triggers the response "(That word is not part of the poem at all.)"  Perhaps that could be worded a bit better.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=932&start=0#p4906
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: "Figueres in my Basement"
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-01-18 15:25:47

[quote="Pacian"]One thing I'd mention, although I suspect this is an issue with the poetry extension, is how typing a non-significant word from the text, ('the', for example) triggers the response "(That word is not part of the poem at all.)" Perhaps that could be worded a bit better.[/quote]

Yes, that's an issue with the extension (I reported it to the extension author soon after it was released, actually). I remember looking at the source and thinking that it would be difficult for a user of the extension to fix without hacking the extension itself.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=932&start=0#p4907
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: "Figueres in my Basement"
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-01-18 17:52:05

I think I fall into the "interested in theory but not sure what to make of this one" category. But I may have the wrong interaction approach -- I keep typing in words because I want to know more about them and the backstory they suggest, which doesn't have quite the results I expect.

Hm.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=932&start=0#p4908
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: "Figueres in my Basement"
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2010-01-18 18:23:45

[quote="emshort"]I keep typing in words because I want to know more about them and the backstory they suggest, which doesn't have quite the results I expect.[/quote]

The backstory they suggest is my personal life. Maybe I should have kept this thing to myself. I could explain what every line means to me, but that would mean telling my life story.

Well, if you want to know the bits of the backstory that aren't so personal:
[rant]Figueres, Catalonia, was the hometown of Salvador Dalí, whose surreal paintings of distorted everyday objects came to mind when I saw a twisted old nail in my father's basement (part of "one of three homes" I inhabit) and whose fantastic mustache I envy. Lately I was grinding some metal (something I'd never done before) in that basement, which provides about half of the inspiration for the second stanza.[/rant]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=935&start=0#p4909
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Conversation and trigguring events
User: SamReader / DateTime: 2010-01-18 20:36:48

here's my code I am also using the telephone extention from here [url]http://inform7.com/extensions/George%20Tryfonas/Telephones/source.html[/url]
[color=#0000FF]Judy is a woman. The office phone is a telephone. The calling number of the office phone is 2345. The owner of the office phone is Judy.
Before telling Judy about something: try asking about something instead.
Before answering Judy that something: say "Best to confine your conversation to questions and answeres." instead.
Before asking Judy about something: if the topic understood is a topic listed in the Table of Conversation, say "[reply entry] [paragraph break]" instead; 
otherwise say "[the noun] does not reply." instead.
After asking Judy about  [topic in row 1 of the Table of Conversation]: award 10 points; say "(work safely avoided)";


Table of Conversation
topic					reply
"work /missing /absent /missing work"	"'Sure I'll tell Mrs. Stark you won't be in today. Enjoy your day off.' says Judy in a pleasant tone."
"leaving"				"'If you want to leave, you would need to give your 3 weeks notice. I have the paper right here but I would be sad to see you go.' says Judy."[/color]

I'm having trouble with two things
one I can only talk about missing work, not work, missing, or absent, 
this might be a formatting problem how are you supposed to get tables to look properly, What is inform looking for when it determines the end of a row or column

and two
the after asking Judy about, doesn't work, the code is understandable but nothing happens.

This would be a big help

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=936&start=0#p4910
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Changing a rule
User: SamReader / DateTime: 2010-01-18 21:08:28

I'm trying to change the basic calling text of this extension [url]http://inform7.com/extensions/George%20Tryfonas/Telephones/source.html[/url]
This is what my code says
[color=#0000FF] Report dialling it on:  if other party of the player is Judy, say "Hello, Joe's knick nacks [random company name]? This is the bosses secretary Judy speaking. How can I help you?"  instead.[/color]

It prints as 
the basic text, and then my new text

how would I have it just print my new text?

Thanks

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=936&start=0#p4911
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing a rule
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-01-18 23:00:31

Inform 7 will run all the before/check/carry out/after/report rules thay apply to any situation.  In this case it runs both the "report dialling" rule found in the Telephones extension and the new "report dialling" rule you wrote in your code.  There are at least two ways you could get around this:

1) Write an "after dialling" rule to preempt the "report dialling" rule found in the extension.  For example:

[code]After dialling 2345 on something:
	say "Acme Incorporated, Judy speaking.".[/code]
This will prevent the "report dialling" rule from the extension from working when calling Judy.

2) Use a procedural rule to tell Inform to ignore the "report dialling" rule from the extension under certain circumstances, such as when calling Judy.  If you look in the extension, the rule in question is called "the standard dialling rule":

[code]Procedural rule for dialling 2345 on something: ignore the standard report dialling rule.

Report dialling 2345 on something (this is the report calling Judy rule):
	say "Acme Incorporated, Judy speaking.".[/code]
There are other ways as well; also the two ways shown above could be refined quite a bit.  They should be enough to get you started, but if you have more questions feel free to ask.




-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=932&start=0#p4912
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: "Figueres in my Basement"
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-01-18 23:24:43

That helps somewhat -- thanks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=935&start=0#p4913
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation and trigguring events
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-01-18 23:52:08

You have a lot going on here.

[quote="SamReader"]I can only talk about missing work, not work, missing, or absent,[/quote]
This is because of the way you have the phrase set up, and it's actually "working" exactly the way you've written.  For example:

>Ask Judy about absent work
"Sure I'll tell Mrs. Stark you won't be in today. Enjoy your day off." says Judy in a pleasant tone.

In other words, as the code is currently written it's set up as understanding "work work" or "absent work" or "missing work" or "missing work" as the first topic.  There are two ways to fix this to do what you want:

a)
[code]Table of Conversation
topic	reply
"work/missing/absent" or "missing work"	"'Sure I'll tell Mrs. Stark you won't be in today. Enjoy your day off.' says Judy in a pleasant tone."[/code]
b) Make a text token for the phrases you want to use
[code]Understand "work/missing/absent" or "missing work" as "[token1]".

Table of Conversation
topic	reply
"[token1]"	"'Sure I'll tell Mrs. Stark you won't be in today. Enjoy your day off.' says Judy in a pleasant tone."[/code]
[quote="SamReader"]this might be a formatting problem how are you supposed to get tables to look properly, What is inform looking for when it determines the end of a row or column[/quote]
You need a tab between each column, and a line break at the end of each row.  For example, imagine it this way:

Table of Conversation[press enter]
topic[press tab]reply[press enter]
"missing work"[press tab]"'Bla bla bla' says Judy."[press enter]

[quote="SamReader"]the after asking Judy about, doesn't work, the code is understandable but nothing happens.[/quote]
The code as you posted it here can't actually compile, because the part:

After asking Judy about [topic in row 1 of the Table of Conversation]: 

is invalid; you have some brackets, making a comment out of "topic in row 1 of the Table of Conversation"; if you just forgot to put quotes around it as posted, I don't think it would work anyway as written.  There are a few ways to fix that, for example:

[code]Understand "work/missing/absent" or "missing work" as "[token1]".

After asking Judy about "[token1]":
	award 10 points;
	say "(work safely avoided)".[/code]
But that's only part of the problem.  You wrote:

Before asking Judy about something: if the topic understood is a topic listed in the Table of Conversation, say "[reply entry] [paragraph break]" instead; 
otherwise say "[the noun] does not reply." instead.

By setting things up this way and adding "instead" to the end of each phrase, you end the action after Judy says her reply, and no "after" rule will ever be reached.  The extension itself uses this method, though, so it's hardly your fault for trying to copy it. 

Another minor problem is that if your "after" rule did work, the player could rack up loads of easy points by repeatedly asking Judy about missing work; ten points are awarded each time this happens.

There are a few ways to fix all this, but I want to think them over before responding.  In the meantime perhaps someone else can help you with this part.




-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=0#p4914
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: C. Everett / DateTime: 2010-01-18 23:57:47

[quote="Nitku"][quote="C. Everett"][b]NEW PROBLEM:[/b]
I have a few things whose descriptions will change a bit if the player has already looked at certain other things.  I think I need an if statement in brackets before the added text, but I'm not sure how to word it.  "If x is/has been examined/looked at/discovered"?
[/quote]

The wording is "if we have examined x".

(By the way, it would be easier at least for me to follow this thread and probably to those who read it afterwards if you would post new questions as new posts at the end of the thread instead of editing the first.)[/quote]

Thank you, and I will do that.  It'll probably be faster anyway.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=0#p4915
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: C. Everett / DateTime: 2010-01-19 00:07:53

QUESTIONS:

I pretty much have all of my game world set, and now I'm going to start laying down puzzles/inventory items, etc.

This is a list of some things I will need to do.  Could someone tell me if the documentation covers these topics, and what section?

--Password guarded computers, using the Menus extension for the computers. 
--Switches that need to be flipped to allow actions on computers.
--Items that need to be combined/attached to other items/objects/things in order to perform certain actions.
--Inventory items representing data that the player needs to be in possession of in order for them to carry out certain tasks on computers.

I think there were more, but they escape me at the moment.

Sorry if any of that makes no sense what-so-ever.  It's just that the game I'm working on is for a competition, and I wanted to get all this out there while I had the "push" to do so, so I'm writing kind of fast here.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=936&start=0#p4916
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing a rule
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-01-19 07:09:35

I would generally avoid using a procedural rule for this kind of thing; it's overkill, since the procedural rulebook is checked a number of times per turn. It is best used for operations that you can't achieve any other way.

The "after..." method that Endosphere works just fine. A way to do it that is even more in the "spirit" of Inform's rule system is to move the condition into the rule's header, like this:

[code]Report dialling it on when the other party of the player is Judy:
     say "Hello, Joe's knick nacks [random company name]? This is the bosses secretary Judy speaking. How can I help you?" instead.[/code]

This makes this version of the rule more specific than one that begins with just "report dialling it on:", and therefore this rule will fire first. You want to be sure that you tell Inform not to also go on to the other report rule(s), and this can be done with either the "instead" you used, or by explicitly stating that the rule succeeds or fails:

[code]Report dialling it on when the other party of the player is Judy:
     say "Hello, Joe's knick nacks [random company name]? This is the bosses secretary Judy speaking. How can I help you?";
     rule succeeds.[/code]

I prefer the latter method myself, since it's easier to see at a glance that the rulebook has terminated.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=937&start=0#p4917
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Undo and death tracking
User: ResidualToast / DateTime: 2010-01-19 16:13:47

In my game I have a bunch of ways for a character to die, but he should be able to undo and then solve the puzzle with no problem.  However, I'm wondering if there's a way to track how many times the character died and undos(undoes?)
Is it possible to do that, or does the way undo is structured make it impossible?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=937&start=0#p4918
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Undo and death tracking
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-01-19 17:03:22

You can try the Undo Output Control extension, which allows you to attach rules to UNDO as if it were a normal action. UNDO isn't a regular action, of course, so this is merely an imitation,--but it does allow you to say things like "before undoing an action" and "after undoing an action". To keep track of the number of times the player has undone, you could write:

[code]After undoing an action:
     Increase the undo-count by 1;
     rule succeeds.[/code]
This increases a global variable by 1 *after* the UNDO has occurred, which makes it quasi-independent of the state-change that the UNDO brings about (see below for a significant limitation, though). Now, this increases the count for all UNDOs, not just end-of-game UNDOs. You seem to want this to apply only to after-death UNDOs, and that's more difficult because there is no appropriate time at which to tell the game when to increase the count: When the player is dead, the UNDO hasn't happened yet, and any flag you set will be immediately undone (i.e., before the after undoing rule can kick in, that flag has already been reset). And when the player has undone, he is no longer dead and so we can't query the game about whether the player has died...

One way you could get around this conundrum is by disallowing *all* UNDOs except the ones that take place after the game has ended. Both Undo Output Control and Conditional Undo allow the author to conditionally disallow UNDOs (they're also compatible).

Whatever you do with an UNDO count, you want to be sure that the player can never UNDO twice in a row, since he will then destroy the UNDO count by rolling back to the previous state of the counter. Limiting UNDOs to once in a row can be done like so:

[code]After undoing an action:
     Increase the undo-count by 1;
     now the undo-flag is true;
     rule succeeds;

Before undoing an action:
     if the undo-flag is true:
          say "Your powers over the space-time continuum only allow you to move time backward one turn.";
          rule fails;

Every turn when the undo-flag is true:
     now the undo-flag is false;[/code]
To take an entirely different tack: If you're compiling to Glulx, you can write an external file to the player's hard drive with information about the undo count, etc. External files don't depend on game state, so this would enable you to do anything you like. I believe external files are covered in Chapter 22 of the manual.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=10#p4919
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-01-19 20:10:03

[quote="C. Everett"]
This is a list of some things I will need to do.  Could someone tell me if the documentation covers these topics, and what section?

--Password guarded computers, using the Menus extension for the computers. 
--Switches that need to be flipped to allow actions on computers.
--Inventory items representing data that the player needs to be in possession of in order for them to carry out certain tasks on computers.[/quote]

The following solution doesn't let you use the Menus extension, but it might be more suitable in other ways, if you don't mind the shameless self-plug: I have an extension out just called "Computers", which makes it easy to create password-locked computers, implement search engines and email tables, and have option menus or operating systems. There's also some rudimentary implementation for data ports that can accept disks/USB drives/DVDs/etc. One of the examples shows how you might use a USB drive to add information to be found by the computer's search engine. 

I've just updated the extension to version 2; you can find the details here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/01/20/computers-extension-v2/">http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/01/20 ... ension-v2/</a>

The computers do have to be switched on to operate, which I assume is what you have in mind with "switches that need to be flipped".

As for 

[quote]
--Items that need to be combined/attached to other items/objects/things in order to perform certain actions.
[/quote]

...that's a little on the vague side for me to give specific advice about, but you might want to look at the Recipe Book section called "Simple Machines" -- the "What Makes You Tick" example demonstrates a fishing rod that can be put together from component parts in any order.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=938&start=0#p4920
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Hugo: Getting the number of arguments in a routine
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2010-01-20 12:52:37

Hello - I'm trying to create a separate random() function** that will allow authors to randomly select items from a list (pretty much like what the Inform random() does). For example:
[code]random(Treehouse, Park, Market)[/code]However, I haven't found anything in the manual that would allow the author to get the number of arguments provided in a routine. [emote];)[/emote] Is there a way to do so? If not, is there a more elegant way (than the one I'm thinking) to code this in Hugo?

[size=85]**This routine will be named differently of course. Probably something like rnd() or rand().[/size]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=938&start=0#p4921
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Hugo: Getting the number of arguments in a routine
User: George / DateTime: 2010-01-20 20:40:22

I think you can do this by creating a Hugo array, and then getting the number of elements in the array. Check out page 78 of the Hugo book. I don't think you want to find the number of arguments; if you're passing them in from a routine you could create an array with them first and then count them.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=10#p4922
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-01-21 00:40:25

[color=#0000FF]--Switches that need to be flipped to allow actions on computers.[/color]

If you mean something like an on/off switch for the computer, the general idea would be to make a switch that is part of the computer, and then change the description of the computer based on whether or not the switch is on/off.  You would also make whatever means you choose for interacting with the computer simply dependent on whether this switch was on or off.  Perhaps there are better examples I'm not thinking of, but the basic idea of the "No Relation" example in the Inform documentation could be adapted for this purpose.

[color=#0000FF]--Inventory items representing data that the player needs to be in possession of in order for them to carry out certain tasks on computers[/color]

Do you mean an object (like a dvd or a security keycard) that the player must use with the computer, or do you instead mean something the player-character must know (like "All the directory names look like a jumble of random letters" unless the character read somewhere what to look for specifically)?

[color=#0000FF]--Items that need to be combined/attached to other items/objects/things in order to perform certain actions.[/color]

Another example of this in the documentation is "Some Assembly Required."

Your basic rule would probably end up looking something like:

[code]Check doing something to a gadget:
     if the noun incorporates a widget:
          do stuff;
     otherwise:
          say "[The noun] isn't working at the moment."[/code]

[color=#0000FF]-Password guarded computers, using the Menus extension for the computers. [/color]

That new "Computers" extension does indeed look pretty interesting.  If you wanted to use "Menus" instead, though, you'd probably want to implement the password check by asking the player a question that must be answered properly (i.e. with the proper password) before bringing up the menu.  Some examples from the documentation that show how to ask the player a question are "Identity Theft" and "Baritone, Bass.".




-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=938&start=0#p4923
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Hugo: Getting the number of arguments in a routine
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2010-01-21 11:37:21

That's what I was seeing here. However, is it possible to enter a list of items enclosed in brackets instead as an argument?
For example:[code]random([Item1,Item2,Item3])[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=10#p4924
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-01-21 11:49:00

[quote="Endosphere"][color=#0000FF]--Switches that need to be flipped to allow actions on computers.[/color]

If you mean something like an on/off switch for the computer, the general idea would be to make a switch that is part of the computer, and then change the description of the computer based on whether or not the switch is on/off.  You would also make whatever means you choose for interacting with the computer simply dependent on whether this switch was on or off.  Perhaps there are better examples I'm not thinking of, but the basic idea of the "No Relation" example in the Inform documentation could be adapted for this purpose.
[/quote]

The computers extension does let the computers be turned on and off, but if you specifically want to model a switch as a separate object, "Model Shop" is probably the best example to borrow from.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=847&start=10#p4925
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: When are results announced?
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-01-21 15:04:11

[quote="Pacian"]Ah, Emilian.  I'm glad to see that your enthusiasm and positivity have returned.  I was starting to worry that I'd scared you off.   [emote]:D[/emote] [/quote]

You scared me to death. Hu hu huuuu.  [emote];)[/emote] 

[quote="EK_Dev"]That's perfectly fine, just so long as you remember that IFComp is a competition for games.  The subject of discussion was Trap Cave's performance in the comp, and if you spent the past year working on something else, it was never going to do much better than your previous game.[/quote]

This was probably the second and last time that I released a game to the IFComp.

I'm gone...

...or maybe not. Perhaps you guys will have me a third time in the comp. All good things are three.  [emote];)[/emote]

Let's leave it undecided at this point.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=938&start=0#p4926
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Hugo: Getting the number of arguments in a routine
User: George / DateTime: 2010-01-21 23:57:56

With any luck Merk will chime in here. My guess is that Hugo doesn't support that, sorry I can't help you more than that [emote]:)[/emote].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=10#p4927
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: C. Everett / DateTime: 2010-01-22 00:26:44

Thanks much, both of you.  As for the switch, there is a part in my game where the player has to switch network connections for the computers of the area back on, so certain information may be transferred from one computer to another that can actually do something with it.  

Now I'm having a problem with the multiple choice program.  I can get it running fine, but when I enter 'type 1' or 'enter 1' or 'type entry 1', it gives me this:

[quote]P21 - Attempt to look up a non-existent column in the table 

Most problems are detected when Inform translates the source text, but this is one of the exceptions, a "run-time problem" which emerges only during play. 

[/quote]


This is my code:

[code]Table of Cath's Entries
index	title	description
--	"Entry 1"	"blah blah"
--	"Entry 2"	"BLAH blah"[/code]

What am I missing?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=10#p4928
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-01-22 01:35:58

[quote="C. Everett"] 

This is my code:

[code]Table of Cath's Entries
index	title	description
--	"Entry 1"	"blah blah"
--	"Entry 2"	"BLAH blah"[/code]

What am I missing?[/quote]

The multiple choice program is looking for a rule (called "effect") that it can follow, not text to print. (If you look at the ATM example, you'll notice all the entries in the table are rules, not text descriptions.) That means that the multiple choice program is capable of doing things other than text printing, like moving objects in the game world, or whatever, but it's probably not the most efficient method if what you want is just to let the player read some text files. (Something to think about for version 3, perhaps.) 

However! There's an easy way to add that functionality. Put the following into your game and it will make your menu just print text, instead:

[code]

The new pick a number rule is listed instead of the pick a number rule in the input handling rules.

An input handling rule for a multiple-choice program (called chosen software) (this is the new pick a number rule):
	let N be indexed text;
	let N be "[the topic understood]";
	repeat through the options table of the chosen software:
		let numero be indexed text;
		let numero be "[index entry]";
		if N is numero:
			say "[description entry][line break]";
			rule succeeds;
	say "[out of bounds response of the chosen software][paragraph break]";
	try examining the chosen software.

[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=880&start=0#p4929
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Aisle-like games, teaching IF with positive reinforcement?
User: scramble / DateTime: 2010-01-22 06:07:20

[quote="linger"]I think this sort of design-space is under-explored.[/quote]

You're right.

Well, it would be not too hard to do another Aisle in a different setting and with different story seeds. I felt that playing Aisle was like having your own personal imrov actor in a box. There's this simple starting situation, you pitch an idea what should happen next, and the actor just makes up the rest from there. 

It actually reminds me a lot of the recent story-telling/Indie movement in the RPG community.

Anyway, just thinking aloud here...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=920&start=0#p4930
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: TADS Testers’ Toolkit Beta
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-01-22 06:51:55

Per your request, I did send an e-mail to you. I'll just reiterate here that what you've developed may actually factor in very well for a set of classes that I'm currently writing material for. These classes are exclusively TADS 3 and will be focused on effective ways to use TADS, beyond just being able to write textual IF with it.

I'm most definitely interested in seeing what you have here.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=847&start=10#p4931
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: When are results announced?
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-01-22 10:06:48

(post deleted by author)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=880&start=0#p4932
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Aisle-like games, teaching IF with positive reinforcement?
User: George / DateTime: 2010-01-22 12:28:56

That's an interesting analogy actually. Many story game RPGs concern themselves with setting up rules to talk about a particular situation. I guess you could extend this to the Jeepform live action games as well.

I'm trying to think of other IF games that are similar but I'm drawing a blank. I'm not sure games that model physics/materials/magic should be included here; this kind of rule setting rarely has to do with the physics of the model world (though it may influence the physical types of characters you commonly have). 

Sorry if that's a little vague but I don't quite have it worked out myself.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=847&start=10#p4933
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: When are results announced?
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-01-23 03:41:57

[quote="EK_Dev"]Trap Cave has a cool ASCII logo! Retro-style. You reviewers said it yourself.  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

Isn't it a nice little feature I have given you? You can mix ASCII art and text in your IF adventures!
You can't do that in Inform or Glulx![/quote]
Sure you can. [url=http://hansprestige.com/inform/smilies-b2.z5]This awesome game[/url] was written in Inform 6 and features [i]three[/i] ASCII arts, scaled (with anti-aliasing) to fit your screen.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=847&start=10#p4934
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: When are results announced?
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-01-23 07:56:56

[quote="vaporware"]Sure you can. [url=http://hansprestige.com/inform/smilies-b2.z5]This awesome game[/url] was written in Inform 6 and features [i]three[/i] ASCII arts, scaled (with anti-aliasing) to fit your screen.[/quote]

Pffft. Who cares if Inform can do that. I don't.

You think you're special, just because you use a system like Inform which you didn't even code yourself? I bet you don't even know how to program a system like Inform from scratch with C/C++ or another programming language. And I bet you're just jealous that a guy like me could do it.

I tell you something: Nobody is special. Not you... not your bully-parade who started to attack me from the very beginning on in 2008 for whatever reasons... and not even me. Yeah, I know, I'm not a honorable german in your eyes, but just a guy from Poland who you can treat like your 13-year old brother. Believe me, I can see racists and Poland-haters everywhere I go. It doesn't matter if I live in Germany or Honolulu. But I know how to defend myself. If people keep bullying me on the internet I will call the FBI. Simple as that. I guess you know that bullying and mobbing other users on the internet, like wintericecastle did to me with his videos at youtube, is considered a "cybercrime" which the FBI takes very seriously. And it doesn't matter if you are a server administrator and make up your own community rules to ban "unwanted" users like me, because the FBI/Police can override it. You don't want to make it end like that, do you?

And at least I don't have to show off how "AWESOOOME" I am with my text adventures. I mean, come on. If it were some elite games with the latest 3D graphics which you guys designed then I would understand it, but you and your reviewers make all this trouble because of text adventures? Don't make me laugh. Really, that's childish. Then some of you have the arrogance to vote down other authors the next year in the comp, like a certain author from 2008 did who I don't want to name here before I get banned from the forum again, because he is some prominent professor or whoever. I never needed to win this competition, because I, even if you don't believe it, participated for the fun only. And to have a good time with other people in the community here, which you screwed for me by the way. Congratulations.

And I didn't come to the comp for "business reasons", like some suspicious people who make advertisement for a certain search engine which I don't want to name either, even if I use it every day. Heh. I mean this is ridiculous. I really don't know what problem you guys have. But this is not normal. Believe me.

With that being said, I think it's better you mind your own business from now on and find yourself another idiot who you can make fun of.

Have a nice day.

Bye.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=847&start=10#p4935
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: When are results announced?
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-01-23 09:54:43

[quote="Pacian"]I've mentioned before that I like you, Emilian, [/quote]

I don't believe you. You don't like me. And I don't like you, by the way.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=930&start=0#p4936
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Support for the Esperanto alphabet
User: David Welbourn / DateTime: 2010-01-23 16:20:38

I don't know if this will help or not, but way back when, I was trying to translate one of my Speed-IF games into Esperanto. I don't think I did a good job of it, but here's where I left version 2 of it: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.plover.net/~davidw/fajfeta_v2.z5">http://www.plover.net/~davidw/fajfeta_v2.z5</a> , where I tried to offer the player the option of how s/he'd like the Esperanto characters to appear. Try as I might, changing the font in Windows Frotz failed to display the proper characters for me. Perhaps I was just doing it wrong, but I don't know.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=847&start=10#p4937
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: When are results announced?
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-01-23 17:00:08

[quote="Pacian"]That's perfectly fine, just so long as you remember that IFComp is a competition for games.  The subject of discussion was Trap Cave's performance in the comp, and if you spent the past year working on something else, it was never going to do much better than your previous game.[/quote]

Because you would never given me the chance anyway. One of your reviewers spoiled it finally. He said I could make the best game in the world and he would still give me bad reviews and votes. You think you can fool me? You think I haven't already discovered your true intentions in 2008? It's not about the performance of my games here. That's a blatant lie and you know it. It's about me. You guys hate me, because you and your friends are racists. So don't even try to play games with me, because I have already disguised your evil plans.

[quote]I can certainly see that there's a bit of a Catch-22 in play here - until someone writes a cool game with Node-X, I don't think many authors will want to use it...  but without authors, where does the cool game come from?[/quote]

I haven't watched the movie Catch-22, but I know what it is about. And I know what you're trying to imply with it. I am not insane, so stop insulting me like that. You say you like me, but behind my back you make fun of me. Great. But very ineffective. You still underestimate my real power.

[quote]I will admit that I did take a poke into the Node-X files during IFComp, but I couldn't get a good grasp on what was going on in there.  Perhaps if you started a Node-X thread in the Other Development Systems sub-forum, we could get a discussion going?[/quote]

No. I think you should start a Node-X thread in my forum (see URL in my signature).

[quote="Pacian"]I'm not looking forward to another year of you complaining that you're being persecuted.[/quote]

There is a difference between complaining and defending your position when you are being attacked for no valid reason. I think that's undisputable. If you rape a girl and she kicks you in the nuts then don't shout at her afterwards, because you obviously deserved it.

If you're not looking forward to another year of Node-X then maybe you should leave...  [emote]:)[/emote] 

I mean it's a psychological thing. You revealed yourself and implied it: You try to scare me off in hope that I don't come back again. So ofcourse I will come back again and again and again... until you stop.

Do you know the "Schisshase-Spiel", as they call it in Germany? It goes like that: Two cars drive with full speed towards each other. Now one car has to evade the other car or there will be a crash. The loser is the car which evades first. And the game is lost when both cars evade or crash, but that's unlikely in our situation. Because I know haters like you. You are so arrogant that you will never evade. And that's good. Because I can defeat you that way.

So, let's play your game. You think my car will evade first? And I tell you I rather crash my car into yours if it has to be that way. So if you want to get out of this situation then YOU better evade, because I won't do it and we will both lose. There is no winner in this game anyway.

I don't give you a chance either. You can write the worst reviews about me and my games, I will not leave!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=847&start=10#p4938
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: When are results announced?
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-01-23 17:26:48

[quote="EK_Dev"]Pffft. Who cares if Inform can do that. I don't.[/quote]
That's funny, since you were the one who brought it up.

[quote]You think you're special, just because you use a system like Inform which you didn't even code yourself? I bet you don't even know how to program a system like Inform from scratch with C/C++ or another programming language. And I bet you're just jealous that a guy like me could do it.[/quote]
First: no, I don't think I'm special.

Second: we all base our own work on the work of others. Did you write your own C/C++ compiler? Did you write your own assembler? No, you used tools "which you didn't even code yourself", and that's OK.

Third: no offense, but a CYOA generator is not exactly comparable to a system like Inform (or TADS, or Hugo, etc.) which compiles a complex object-oriented language to run on a virtual machine. It's a fine accomplishment, but just because you wrote Node-X doesn't mean [i]you[/i] can "program a system like Inform from scratch" either.

Fourth: you just lost two bets. I'm not going to get into a pissing contest with you, but [url=http://hansprestige.com/snack/g/atc.ulx]this[/url] ([url=http://hansprestige.com/snack/g/atc.sn]source code here[/url]) was written in a language I designed, compiled with a compiler I wrote myself, and runs on a platform for which I've written my own interpreter. The game itself is a port of Ed James's ATC, but I think we can both agree that original game design isn't our strength or our goal.

[quote]Believe me, I can see racists and Poland-haters everywhere I go.[/quote]
That must be exhausting.

[quote]But I know how to defend myself. If people keep bullying me on the internet I will call the FBI. Simple as that. I guess you know that bullying and mobbing other users on the internet, like wintericecastle did to me with his videos at youtube, is considered a "cybercrime" which the FBI takes very seriously. And it doesn't matter if you are a server administrator and make up your own community rules to ban "unwanted" users like me, because the FBI/Police can override it. You don't want to make it end like that, do you?[/quote]
You don't really think you're intimidating anyone, do you?

If the FBI actually cared about people being less than cordial to each other on message boards, the internet would be a very different place.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=930&start=0#p4939
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Support for the Esperanto alphabet
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2010-01-23 17:28:28

Mr. Welbourn:

Oddly enough, the Esperanto characters in my work-in-progress worked in Windows Frotz for me, while the Esperanto characters in your file didn't. I suspect this is a character encoding issue I circumvented by using Inform 7.

In case you're wondering, by the way, I'm just including a bit of Esperanto text in my story. I haven't yet tried to write IF in Esperanto.

Peace,
Kazuki Mishima

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=847&start=10#p4940
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: When are results announced?
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-01-23 20:03:38

[quote="vaporware"][quote="EK_Dev"]Pffft. Who cares if Inform can do that. I don't.[/quote]
That's funny, since you were the one who brought it up.[/quote]

I didn't say I didn't care about ASCII art in systems. I said I didn't care what Inform does with it.
That's a difference.

[quote]First: no, I don't think I'm special.[/quote]

That's sad. Because everyone is special in his/her own way.

[quote]Second: we all base our own work on the work of others. Did you write your own C/C++ compiler? Did you write your own assembler? No, you used tools "which you didn't even code yourself", and that's OK.[/quote]

At least programmers can code applications for certain compilers. Most people can only install and use applications which programmers have coded.

But you know what: really elite people build their own hardware. Can you build your own microprocessor? I can't and you can't either.

[quote]Third: no offense, but a CYOA generator is not exactly comparable to a system like Inform (or TADS, or Hugo, etc.) which compiles a complex object-oriented language to run on a virtual machine. It's a fine accomplishment, but just because you wrote Node-X doesn't mean [i]you[/i] can "program a system like Inform from scratch" either.[/quote]

How do you know I couldn't program a system like Inform? Do you know me that well? Or do you judge me only by the work I've done so far?

Or let me guess: You think my programming skills suck, because the Node-X interpreter runs in a DOS window. A typical misconception. Good DOS programs can do more than Windows-based applications. Just because a program has a cool GUI doesn't mean that its functionality is better than a program running in a DOS window.

I wonder how you guys would reacted if I presented Node-X in 32-bit graphics in 1280x720 or higher resolutions. For me as a programmer the so-called "video output" makes no difference. It's the internal code which is important. Same with videogames. You can have the best-looking game in the world, but if it crashes every 5 minutes then it's badly programmed and not worth it.

[quote]Fourth: you just lost two bets. I'm not going to get into a pissing contest with you, but [url=http://hansprestige.com/snack/g/atc.ulx]this[/url] ([url=http://hansprestige.com/snack/g/atc.sn]source code here[/url]) was written in a language I designed, compiled with a compiler I wrote myself, and runs on a platform for which I've written my own interpreter.[/quote]

This is not a "pissing contest". And why do you think that my words were adressed to you? I was adressing all the bad IFComp reviewers out there. You haven't reviewed none of my games, as far as I know. You only showed up now and started an argument with me. What do you want?

[quote]The game itself is a port of Ed James's ATC, but I think we can both agree that original game design isn't our strength or our goal.[/quote]

Please speak for yourself only, okay. Again: How do you know I couldn't design an original game? Do you know me that well? Or do you judge me only by the work I've done so far?

And to make things clear: I said that my current goal is to program a solid system with lots of cool features. But that doesn't mean that I won't be interested in original game design in the future. I mean how can I build a game if I don't have a system to build it on?

I could also submit a text adventure written in Inform to the IFComp. But it would make no sense, because Inform doesn't give me what I need to create my vision of a game. So I have to build my own system first which has all the features I need.

[quote][quote]Believe me, I can see racists and Poland-haters everywhere I go.[/quote]
That must be exhausting.[/quote]

Mostly not, because I ignore haters in real life and try to keep out of their sight. But here on internet I have to deal with haters when they attack me. I can't block them or delete their comments as I could do on YouTube, for instance.

[quote][quote]But I know how to defend myself. If people keep bullying me on the internet I will call the FBI. ...[/quote]
You don't really think you're intimidating anyone, do you?[/quote]

Yes, I do. Times are changing. Just because you sit there anonymously in front of your computer and talk rude to others, doesn't make you invincible anymore. There was a recent case in Germany where a father sued an entertainer, because he made fun of his son on television. The father said the entertainer ridiculed his son publically on television and made him look stupid in front of millions of TV viewers. The judge agreed and he won the case. Now the entertainer and the TV channel have to pay money to the father and his son. The same can happen to you if you ridicule others on YouTube.

[quote]If the FBI actually cared about people being less than cordial to each other on message boards, the internet would be a very different place.[/quote]

"A very different place"? I guess you mean a place where racists, nazis, trolls and haters have no chance to go on someone's nerves. I would love such a place.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=847&start=10#p4941
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: When are results announced?
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-01-23 20:50:21

(This is getting quite off-topic...)

[quote="EK_Dev"]I didn't say I didn't care about ASCII art in systems. I said I didn't care what Inform does with it.
That's a difference.[/quote]
Heh. Your exact words were: "Isn't it a nice little feature I have given you? You can mix ASCII art and text in your IF adventures! You can't do that in Inform or Glulx!"

But when it was pointed out that you [i]can[/i], you said "Who cares if Inform can do that. I don't."

If you don't care whether the things you say are true, why should anyone bother listening to you?

[quote]How do you know I couldn't program a system like Inform? Do you know me that well? Or do you judge me only by the work I've done so far?[/quote]
Maybe you should have asked yourself those questions before you wrote: "I bet you don't even know how to program a system like Inform from scratch with C/C++ or another programming language. And I bet you're just jealous that a guy like me could do it."

[quote]And why do you think that my words were adressed to you? I was adressing all the bad IFComp reviewers out there.[/quote]
You quoted me and responded to my post. There was no indication that any of those words were addressed to anyone else.

[quote]How do you know I couldn't design an original game? Do you know me that well? Or do you judge me only by the work I've done so far?[/quote]
I'm sure you could with the right amount of motivation and practice. I'm just going by what you said earlier: "It is not my job to write a top-notch academic interactive fiction game. [...] But if you want me to write a good Interactive Fiction game myself then I have to disappoint you. I'm a newbie in IF writing. [...] I usually do not pay much attention to the adventures I write at this point."

[quote]Mostly not, because I ignore haters.[/quote]
You wrote several paragraphs, including insults and threats to call the FBI, in response to me pointing out that something you said was inaccurate. I hope that's not your idea of ignoring.

[quote]Times are changing. Just because you sit there anonymously in front of your computer and talk rude to others, doesn't make you invincible anymore. There was a recent case in Germany where a father sued an entertainer, because he made fun of his son on television. The father said the entertainer ridiculed his son publically on television and made him look stupid in front of millions of TV viewers. The judge agreed and he won the case. Now the entertainer and the TV channel have to pay money to the father and his son. The same can happen to you if you ridicule others on YouTube.[/quote]
I see. So how much money do you think someone would have to pay if he said "you and your friends are racists" or "I have already disguised your evil plans" on the internet, where it could be seen by over a billion readers?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=847&start=10#p4942
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: When are results announced?
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-01-23 23:55:26

[quote="vaporware"](This is getting quite off-topic...)[/quote]

Then let's stay on topic and talk about why exactly you rated my Node-X game so badly in the competition...

[quote][quote="EK_Dev"]I didn't say I didn't care about ASCII art in systems. I said I didn't care what Inform does with it.
That's a difference.[/quote]
Heh. Your exact words were: "Isn't it a nice little feature I have given you? You can mix ASCII art and text in your IF adventures! You can't do that in Inform or Glulx!"

But when it was pointed out that you [i]can[/i], you said "Who cares if Inform can do that. I don't."

If you don't care whether the things you say are true, why should anyone bother listening to you?[/quote]

So what do you want? Make me admit that I made a mistake and didn't know that Inform could do ASCII logos?
Only strange that I haven't seen a single Inform adventure yet which had an ASCII logo.

Anyway. I think I can name other features which Node-X has and Inform hasn't. For instance, the Chunkloader and automatic protocol/transcript function which I wrote. Don't tell me Inform can automatically repair broken savefiles or save automatically generated transcripts into textfiles, because I checked it. Inform can't. You can correct me if I'm wrong ofcourse, but I know pretty sure that these features are unique and made by me only.

[quote][quote]How do you know I couldn't program a system like Inform? Do you know me that well? Or do you judge me only by the work I've done so far?[/quote]
Maybe you should have asked yourself those questions before you wrote: "I bet you don't even know how to program a system like Inform from scratch with C/C++ or another programming language. And I bet you're just jealous that a guy like me could do it."[/quote]

I understand. You don't want me to address you directly. Maybe you are different than the others indeed. I can't tell that, because I don't know you.

[quote][quote]And why do you think that my words were adressed to you? I was adressing all the bad IFComp reviewers out there.[/quote]
You quoted me and responded to my post. There was no indication that any of those words were addressed to anyone else.[/quote]

My mistake. I should have used the word "bad reviewers" instead of "you".

[quote][quote]How do you know I couldn't design an original game? Do you know me that well? Or do you judge me only by the work I've done so far?[/quote]
I'm sure you could with the right amount of motivation and practice. I'm just going by what you said earlier: "It is not my job to write a top-notch academic interactive fiction game. [...] But if you want me to write a good Interactive Fiction game myself then I have to disappoint you. I'm a newbie in IF writing. [...] I usually do not pay much attention to the adventures I write at this point."[/quote]

Okay. But have you actually played Trap Cave to judge whether my own estimation was right or wrong? Or do you just go along with what I say without further thinking about it?

I mean if you wrote "My nickname is vaporware and it's bad" then I would either replied "I also think that your nickname is bad" or "No, I think your nickname isn't that bad as you think". I wouldn't replied "Yeah, your nickname is bad, because you said so."

You see the difference? Whatever I say you take for granted, as if you don't have your own opinion about it. Or you take it too literally without actually bringing it into the right context.

I can only think about two possibilties why you do that: Either on purpose or because you really can't understand me.

Normally in such a situation I would ask you how old you are. But I assume you are an adult and able to interprete what people say to you.

[quote][quote]Mostly not, because I ignore haters.[/quote]
You wrote several paragraphs, including insults and threats to call the FBI, in response to me pointing out that something you said was inaccurate. I hope that's not your idea of ignoring.[/quote]

Again, you are linking two aspects with each other which don't belong to each other. Either on purpose or because you really don't understand the meaning of my sentences.

I can only repeat what I said before: I was addressing the bad reviewers and not you directly.

And besides, if I tell someone that I will call the police or FBI if he/she doesn't stop attacking or hurting me then it's not a threat, but called self-defense. And it is my right to defend myself. If you were a true American you would understand it. But obviously you can't even get that together.

[quote]I see. So how much money do you think someone would have to pay if he said "you and your friends are racists" or "I have already disguised your evil plans" on the internet,[/quote]

Boy, you are good. Do you have a master degree in psychology or something? I should really watch my language when I talk to you, because in the end you make this look as if I was the bad guy, eh.

But nice try of yours in scaring me off again, I have to say.  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote] 

[quote]where it could be seen by over a billion readers?[/quote]

LOL! That's the first time in our conversation that you made me laugh. I mean it in a positive way.

A billion readers? Haha, are you kidding me? Dude, you can't even get so many views for a single video on YouTube. Maybe 23 million if you are a famous superstar like Britney Spears. But not a billion.

And watch the counter below this forum. You can be lucky if 10 or 15 people visited this forum today and read our conversation in this thread.

I guess that was part of your scare-tactic. It's cute that you actually believe you can intimidate me.  [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=847&start=20#p4943
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: When are results announced?
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-01-24 00:06:49

Alright, back to topic...

For what exact reason people have rated my entry Trap Cave so badly in the competition?

Why was Project Delta in 2008 voted better than Trap Cave in 2009, although Project Delta was only a demo and less complex than Trap Cave?

Why have some people on this forum expected me to fall on the last place and then wondered that I wasn't voted the worst game in the competition?  [emote]:D[/emote] 

[Charlie Sheen mode on]
Questions, Mr. President. Questions.
[/Charlie Sheen mode off]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=847&start=20#p4944
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: When are results announced?
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-01-24 00:53:25

[quote="EK_Dev"]Then let's stay on topic and talk about why exactly you rated my Node-X game so badly in the competition...[/quote]
For what it's worth, I didn't vote in the competition, and I haven't played your game (or most of the other entries). If you are interested in writing a good game, then I hope you get some good feedback here. But getting good feedback is going to be hard if you snap at everyone who criticizes your work.

[quote]Only strange that I haven't seen a single Inform adventure yet which had an ASCII logo.[/quote]
I suspect the biggest reason for that is taste, but another reason is that Inform games could be running in any size window, and a nice ASCII graphic might not fit in a small window. (The scaling trick I used in the snake game doesn't really work for something with a lot of detail.)

[quote]Anyway. I think I can name other features which Node-X has and Inform hasn't. For instance, the Chunkloader and automatic protocol/transcript function which I wrote. Don't tell me Inform can automatically repair broken savefiles or save automatically generated transcripts into textfiles, because I checked it. Inform can't. You can correct me if I'm wrong ofcourse, but I know pretty sure that these features are unique and made by me only.[/quote]
Well, I don't quite see the point of repairing broken save files (do people still get random file corruption in the year 2010?), and saving transcripts is a standard feature of most Z-code and Glulx interpreters... but more to the point, I don't see why you're framing this as a competition between Node-X and Inform. They are not in competition. They're designed for making completely different types of games.

[quote]Okay. But have you actually played Trap Cave to judge whether my own estimation was right or wrong? Or do you just go along with what I say without further thinking about it?[/quote]
I'm going by what you said, what reviewers have said, and the IF Comp scores. I haven't played the game, but I have no reason to doubt what I've read about it.

[quote]And besides, if I tell someone that I will call the police or FBI if he/she doesn't stop attacking or hurting me then it's not a threat, but called self-defense. And it is my right to defend myself. If you were a true American you would understand it. But obviously you can't even get that together.[/quote]
Before you tell me what being a "true American" is all about, why don't you read up on the First Amendment? American law protects free speech to a much greater extent than you seem to think it does. The criticism you've received on this message board is [i]nothing[/i] compared to the things that American courts have held to be legal in marches, TV and radio shows, newspapers and magazines, and even other web sites. Nothing you've experienced here qualifies as "cyberbullying" or harassment under any relevant law.

And if you think this sort of mildly heated criticism is "attacking or hurting" you to such a degree that you need to "defend" yourself by wasting the FBI's time reporting something that [i]is not illegal[/i]... well, the internet is going to be a very stressful place for you.

You might be able to censor your YouTube comments, but you can't censor the entire internet. No matter who you are or what you do, you're going to encounter people who are mean to you, and you're going to have to deal with that fact. The way you've chosen to deal with it here, it seems to me, has not been very productive or mature. Hopefully that will change.

[quote]Boy, you are good. Do you have a master degree in psychology or something? I should really watch my language when I talk to you, because in the end you make this look as if I was the bad guy, eh.[/quote]
Yes, isn't it strange that I can do that just by pointing out things you've said? [emote];)[/emote]

[quote]I guess that was part of your scare-tactic. It's cute that you actually believe you can intimidate me.  [emote];)[/emote][/quote]
I'm not trying to intimidate you: again, the FBI doesn't care what either of us write here. I'm just pointing out that you're doing the same things that you claim to be "defending" yourself against.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=10#p4945
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: C. Everett / DateTime: 2010-01-24 01:19:15

Thanks again.  

Could you recommend any tutorials on implementing puzzles/puzzle-like obstacles?  Or what sections of the documentation I should pay particular attention to?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=930&start=0#p4946
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Support for the Esperanto alphabet
User: David Welbourn / DateTime: 2010-01-24 01:31:17

Ah. I guess then we can safely assume that I made an error, not Windows Frotz. Good to know.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=10#p4947
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-01-24 02:40:40

There are some tutorials out there on *designing* puzzles -- like, working out what makes a good or bad one. But tutorials for *coding* puzzles? Not exactly, because that's too broad a question: a puzzle could involve anything in the world model. So it's hard to give advice about "how to code a puzzle" without knowing what the puzzle is that you want to code.

But let me try to break it down a little conceptually.

Typically in IF a puzzle involves something that the player wants to get, reach, or achieve -- some action he wants to do -- but can't, until he's fulfilled some previous requirement. So it might be a door he can't open, a room he can't go into, a trophy he can't take, a woman he can't dance with. But all these things are tied up with some action that the player might type into the game, for which he should get refusals until he tries under the correct circumstances.

That means that to code the puzzle, we need to keep track of some information:

-- has the player fulfilled the requirement for doing the puzzle-solving action? E.g., is he carrying the key that opens the door? Is the tall lady carrying the rose that the player is supposed to give her before dancing with her? That sort of thing.

-- has the puzzle already been solved once? (If we're keeping score, we need to know this for scoring purposes so that we don't give the player more points each time he opens the same locked door, for instance.) We might keep track of this with a special attribute -- like "The tall lady can be ready to dance or finished dancing." and then set that attribute from "ready to dance" to "finished dancing" when the player manages to dance with her.

And we also need to put a restriction on the action the player is trying to do, until the requirement is fulfilled. In Inform, that might mean writing rules like

Instead of dancing with the tall lady when the tall lady does not carry the rose:
   say "The lady doesn't seem at all interested. Perhaps you'll need to get her attention with a token of your admiration first."

And of course we also need a rule to say what happens when the player succeeds:

Instead of dancing with the tall lady when the tall lady carries the rose:
   if the tall lady is ready to dance:
      say "She is delighted to dance with you!";
      award five points.
      now the tall lady is finished dancing;
   otherwise:
      say "She has already danced enough for the evening."

Notice that this rule will only occur when the player has achieved the prerequisite (handing over the rose somehow); then it will check to see whether the puzzle is previously unsolved (if she's "ready to dance"). If so, it awards the points and describes the success case, and marks the lady as "finished dancing". The next time the player tries the same thing, we'll instead get the refusal message ("She has already danced enough...") and no more points will be awarded in the future.

There are many much more complicated ways to code puzzles depending on the world model features involved, but it usually comes back to the same concepts: 

-- check whether the player is *allowed* to do the action that completes the puzzle 
-- check whether this is the first time he's doing so, if you're tracking points or have a puzzle that can't be repeated
-- if this is a valid solution attempt, print the message describing success and give whatever rewards the player has earned (such as raised score, new objects to play with, etc)
-- (if appropriate) flag that the puzzle is done.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=847&start=20#p4948
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: When are results announced?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-01-24 04:36:34

[quote="EK_Dev"]I haven't watched the movie Catch-22, but I know what it is about. And I know what you're trying to imply with it.[/quote]
According to Wiktionary: "(idiomatic) A difficult situation from which there is no escape because it involves mutually conflicting or dependent conditions."  That was all I meant by it.

[quote="EK_Dev"]Because I know haters like you. You are so arrogant that you will never evade. And that's good. Because I can defeat you that way.[/quote]
You don't need to defeat me.  I surrender.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=939&start=0#p4949
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: asking nobody about something
User: Capnegg / DateTime: 2010-01-24 05:01:43

While trying to guess what a player might type, I realized that I can't get I7 to handle the following.
If, for example, there is only the box and John in the room, it would be rational of the player to type "Ask about the box" rather than "Ask John about the box".
The response to "Ask about the box" is a confusing "You can see no such thing".
I can't see a way of trapping and dealing with this. Amongst other things, I tried making a rule for 'asking about something' (as opposed to 'asking someone about something') but I7 insists that it can already handle 'asking about something'.
What have I missed?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=939&start=0#p4950
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: asking nobody about something
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-01-24 07:56:23

You could use another action to help: (untested, but should give the idea)

[code]Targetless asking about is an action applying to one topic.
Understand "ask about [text]" as targetless asking about.

Definition: a person is NPC if it is not the player.

Check targetless asking about when the number of NPC persons in the location is 0:
    say "There's nobody here to ask." instead.

Check targetless asking about when the number of NPC persons in the location is greater than 1:
    say "You have to be more specific about who you want to talk to." instead.

Carry out targetless asking about:
    let target be a random NPC person in the location;
    try asking the target about the topic understood;
    stop the action.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=939&start=0#p4951
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: asking nobody about something
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-01-24 08:44:57

Here's a little scenario to demonstrate one way to do this:

[code]The Lab is a room.

The Station is north of the Lab.

The Wasteland is north of the Station.

Bob is a man in the Lab. Cindy is a woman in the Station. Lindy is a woman in the Station.

Definition: A person is virtual if he is not the player.

There is a box in the Lab. There is a pencil in the Lab.

Asking about is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "ask about [any thing]" as asking about.

Check asking about something when the player cannot see a virtual person:
	say "There is no one here to ask about the box.";
	stop the action;
	
Check asking about something when the player can see more than one virtual person:
	say "Please indicate who you would like to talk to about [the noun] by typing 'ask <person> about [the noun]'.";
	stop the action.

Carry out asking about something (called the item):
	if there is a virtual person in the location:
		let interlocutor be a random virtual person in the location;
		try quizzing the interlocutor about the item;
		
Quizzing it about is an action applying to two visible things. Understand "ask [something] about [any thing]" as quizzing it about.

Report an actor quizzing something about (this is the generic quizzing rule):
	say "[The noun] doesn't have much to say about that."
	
Report an actor quizzing Bob about the box:
	say "Bob says, 'That, sir, is my favorite cardboard box. I'll thank you to leave it alone.'";
	rule succeeds.[/code]

I created the quizzing action because you seemed to want to ask about things, and Inform's "asking about" action refers to topics. 

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=939&start=0#p4952
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: asking nobody about something
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-01-24 08:47:17

...And I see that Nitku beat me to it with exactly the same solution. Ah well...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=847&start=20#p4953
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: When are results announced?
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-01-24 12:46:27

[quote="vaporware"][quote="EK_Dev"]Then let's stay on topic and talk about why exactly you rated my Node-X game so badly in the competition...[/quote]
For what it's worth, I didn't vote in the competition, and I haven't played your game (or most of the other entries). If you are interested in writing a good game, then I hope you get some good feedback here. But getting good feedback is going to be hard if you snap at everyone who criticizes your work.[/quote]

If you haven't played my game and rant about its features with me here then why should people listen to what you say? Why should I even talk to you? I have better things to do than wasting my time with a bunch of ignorants.

Our discussion has ended.

Goodbye.

P.S. You are not that important as me either. Nobody in this world gives a damn what you and the reviewers think, because intelligent people make up their own opinion anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=847&start=20#p4954
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: When are results announced?
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-01-24 12:58:49

[quote="Pacian"][quote="EK_Dev"]Because I know haters like you. You are so arrogant that you will never evade. And that's good. Because I can defeat you that way.[/quote]
You don't need to defeat me.  I surrender.[/quote]

Well, Pacian. You may surrender. But we will see if those ignorant reviewers surrender when I submit my next game in the upcoming IFComp 2010......

But somehow I have the feeling that this whole IF competition is going to die in the coming years anyway. Not manly people play text adventures in the year 2010. And authors leave, because they know they can get attention for their games outside the competition. Just look at the numbers in the [url=http://www.ifcomp.org/comp09/results.html]IFComp'09 results list[/url]. Only 24 games entered and only 133 voters in total. That's not much.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=930&start=0#p4955
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Support for the Esperanto alphabet
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-01-24 13:55:32

David, if you've still got the source feel free to put it on the web page and I'll do my best to point out why it doesn't work. Note that you'll also most likely need at least Inform 6.30, as earlier versions had nasty bugs in its handling of non-Latin-1 alphabets.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=847&start=20#p4956
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: When are results announced?
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-01-24 15:24:57

[quote="EK_Dev"]Why should I even talk to you? I have better things to do than wasting my time with a bunch of ignorants.[/quote]
You're right, I think it'll be best for everyone if you go back to spending your time uploading videos of yourself playing shooter games.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=847&start=20#p4957
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: When are results announced?
User: George / DateTime: 2010-01-24 15:46:19

[quote="EK_Dev"][quote="Pacian"]
You don't need to defeat me.  I surrender.[/quote]

Well, Pacian. You may surrender. But we will see if those ignorant reviewers surrender when I submit my next game in the upcoming IFComp 2010......[/quote]

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th370QmFtk8">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th370QmFtk8</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=10#p4958
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: C. Everett / DateTime: 2010-01-25 00:16:00

I thank you once again.  Time will only tell, but I think that helps me a great deal in visualizing coding puzzles.  Did you just write that now, or is it copypasta?  I only ask because I think that if you haven't posted it somewhere on your blog already, it might help people like me (who can write, but have never before come within twenty yards of programming before) if you did.

I also have another question.  Is it possible to have the printed name of something change depending on whether or not the player has read one of the entries on the computer?  As in, 'data module' becomes 'pattern data' or 'module w/ pattern data' if the player has read the entry telling them what it is.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=939&start=0#p4959
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: asking nobody about something
User: Capnegg / DateTime: 2010-01-25 06:08:24

Thankyou both for your replies, which answer my question.
I had been trying something similar, but had been using 'something' rather than 'one visible thing'.
What is the difference between 'one thing', 'any thing' and 'something'?

Also, I didn't have-
Understand "ask about [any thing]" as asking about.
and I don't understand what this does.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=939&start=0#p4960
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: asking nobody about something
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-01-25 12:33:37

[code]Understand "ask about [any thing]" as asking about.[/code]
This provides the grammar for the new action--it describes what the player can type to cause the action to be triggered.

The "[any thing]" token means that any object in the game will be matched, which is why it's good for conversations. This way, you can talk about an object that's in another room. (If you don't want the player to be able to talk about objects he hasn't seen, you can check out the Epistemology extension, which tracks actors' knowledge, allowing you to refer to "any [b]known[/b] thing".)

If we had just used the "a thing" or "something" token (these are synonyms), then only objects that the player [i]can actually see[/i] will be matched: if the player tries to ask about a pencil that's in another room, the game will respond with "You can't see any such thing."

If you want use the "[any thing]" token in your grammar, it is also important that you define the action itself using "one [b]visible[/b] thing":
[quote]Asking about is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "ask about [any thing]" as asking about.[/quote]
The "visible" tells Inform that the player doesn't need to be holding the object to interact with it, that it needs to be merely visible for the action to succeed. If you don't specify visible--for example, if you just use "Asking about is an action applying to one thing"--Inform will assume that you the player needs to be [i]holding[/i] the object for the action to succeed. And thus, if it's off in another room, the player won't be able to do that and the action will fail with a message something like "You cannot reach into the <other room>". 

Yes, this does seem a bit odd--an object off in another room is not visible, so why should we use the term "visible" in referring to it? The answer is that "visible" doesn't really mean "able to be seen"--it means "in scope," and what [i]that[/i] means is that the object can be interacted with, regardless of whether the player can see it. When we used "any thing" in our grammar, Inform opened up the scope to include all things in the game, and thus, for the duration of this action, everything is "visible" in this sense. (Arguably, it was a bad idea to use the term "visible" for the concept of scope. But once it's clear that the word has a special meaning, it isn't too hard to understand.)

Jim Aikin's Handbook talks about scope, if you want to read more (it's a pretty fundamental concept):

[url]http://www.musicwords.net/if/InformHandbook.pdf[/url]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=940&start=0#p4961
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: programmed Restart
User: SamReader / DateTime: 2010-01-25 13:23:59

If my game if you leave from the door I want the game to display some ending text and then restart, re-triggering all of the starting game text. 
How can I as the programmer trigger a restart?


with my code. 
the start text
[color=#0000FF]When play begins:
say "'Buzz..Buzz' Your alarm clock goes off at 6:00am waking you. You get up from bed, shower and get dressed for work. Nice pants, nice shirt, suit jacket. You eat breakfast. Toast, coffee, bowl of cereal. Brush you hair, glance out the kitchen window for the weather, get your coat and shoes. Pause. Hating your job, boring, predictable, the kind of job you only do fo a regular income hating every moment of it. Hating your apartment, tiny, dull, plain, expensive. Hating youself, your aweful job, no dates or relationships in site, everyday just getting older. Hating watching your life just slide away, no ambition, nothing changes, just one day following into another. You wish you could just get away, escape your job, your boring life, maybe even yourself. 
But work awaits. [line break]" [/color]

Leaving by the door triggures ending text
[color=#0000FF]Instead of going from the apartment to a room which is not in the apartment the first time:
say "If I wait around any longer I will be late. But I really don't feel like going to work today."; [as a warning b/c leaving ends in death]
Before going from the apartment to a room which is not in the apartment for more than the first time:
say "You surrender to normalacy and leave for work. 8 hours later you return home, cook dinner for yourself, watch TV until 11pm and go to bed. ";
end the game saying "Your last thought before dropping off to sleep is 'I hope tomorrow is different.'"; 
[/color]
then the game would restart and reprint the start text

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=940&start=0#p4962
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: programmed Restart
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-01-25 13:55:20

Something like this will do it:

[code]Instead of switching off the computer:
	abide by the immediately restart the VM rule;
	rule succeeds;[/code]

You'll want to decide how to delay things long enough for the player to read your final text. The best thing is probably to include Basic Screen Effects and wait for any key:

[code]Instead of switching off the computer:
	say "Your last thought before dropping off to sleep is 'I hope tomorrow is different.'"; 
	wait for any key;
	abide by the immediately restart the VM rule;
	rule succeeds;[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=847&start=20#p4963
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: When are results announced?
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-01-25 14:21:37

[quote="vaporware"]You're right, I think it'll be best for everyone if you go back to spending your time uploading videos of yourself playing shooter games.[/quote]

...of cool shooter games, I'd like to add.  [emote]8-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=10#p4964
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-01-25 14:52:02

I just wrote it on the spur of the moment. I'm not sure it's quite thought-out enough to be blogworthy, but I'll think about it.

Re. your other problem: you could do something like

The data module can be unidentified or identified. The printed name of the data module is "[if unidentified]data module[otherwise]pattern data[end if]". Understand "pattern" as the data module when the data module is identified. 

That last line would let the player use the same in-game terminology that you use when printing the name.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=935&start=0#p4965
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation and trigguring events
User: SamReader / DateTime: 2010-01-25 15:54:08

the code
[color=#0000FF]Before asking Judy about something: if the topic understood is a topic listed in the Table of Conversation, say "[reply entry] [paragraph break]"; 
otherwise say "[the noun] does not reply." instead.
[/color]

produces the following
>ask judy about being absent
Judy does not reply.

>ask judy about missing work
"Sure I'll tell Mrs. Stark you won't be in today and are using one of your vacation days. Enjoy your day off." says Judy in a pleasent tone. She isn't available.

without the instead it writes she isn't available at the end, it must be a default of the code.

As for the repition for more points I was going to add code like
After asking Judy about x once, award points
once I got it to work

The brackets in this piece of code
[color=#0000FF]After asking Judy about  [topic in row 1 of the Table of Conversation] once: award 10 points; say "(work safely avoided)";[/color]
are from 15.2 of the documentation about looking up entries in tables where it says this:
 [color=#0000FF]repeat with N running from 1 to the number of rows in the Table of Selected Elements: 
    say "The atomic weight of [element in row N of the Table of Selected Elements] is [atomic weight in row N of the Table of Selected Elements]." [/color]
and the text in the brackets becomes [color=#00FFFF]really light blue[/color].
but that is in a say statement i don't know what punctuation to use to get the same effect in a command,

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=940&start=0#p4966
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: programmed Restart
User: SamReader / DateTime: 2010-01-25 16:06:36

Got it
Thank You

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=938&start=0#p4967
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Hugo: Getting the number of arguments in a routine
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-01-25 19:24:53

I hope you can get this to work.  Library support for randomized events, etc. is an area in which Hugo seems to be lacking.  I'm far to much of a novice (and a non-programmer) to offer my own suggestions.  Thanks for going through the effort to look into this deficiency!  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=10#p4968
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: C. Everett / DateTime: 2010-01-26 00:23:07

And then I would just use the effect column of the table to change it from unidentified to identified, right?  The bit of code you gave me for displaying the journal entries as text won't mess with the effect column, will it?


Okay.  I'm getting near the end of my game, I think.  But I'm having problems with the ultimate goals.

Basically, in my game the player is the A.I. of a research complex that was evacuated for whatever reason.  To escape, he needs to fashion a suitable body for himself and then download his programming/personality/soul/whatever.  I offer two ways to do this in the game: one, a robotic body, or two, an artificial organic body.

For the organic body, the player needs to have an item, 'pattern data', inserted into the master terminal, and something called a 'wet frame' in one of the growth vats in order to cultivate/grow the organic body.  Then, to download themselves, they need to have an item called 'Galatea Protocol' inserted into the master terminal.

For the android/robotic body, the player needs to attach a pair of appropriate arms and legs to a chasis with a head already provided.  All they need to do to download themselves is hook the android up to the lab's computer.


...And I am just having the biggest mental block, even after your conceptual breakdown.  I'm pretty sure what I need to do [i]conceptually[/i], it's just when I start trying to figure out how to [i]code[/i] these two sets of actions that my brain starts to melt.

I feel sorta bad about asking for help with this, because I don't know how anyone can help me without just coding it for me.  But I will be more than grateful for any kind of help anyone can offer.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=20#p4969
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-01-26 02:17:21

[quote="C. Everett"]And then I would just use the effect column of the table to change it from unidentified to identified, right?  The bit of code you gave me for displaying the journal entries as text won't mess with the effect column, will it?[/quote]

Erm. Yeah, it would, but you could if you wanted *also* have it execute a rule in the effects column; just add a line like "if the effect entry is a rule: follow the effect entry" to the rule that prints description texts.

[quote="C. Everett"]
Okay.  I'm getting near the end of my game, I think.  But I'm having problems with the ultimate goals.

Basically, in my game the player is the A.I. of a research complex that was evacuated for whatever reason.  To escape, he needs to fashion a suitable body for himself and then download his programming/personality/soul/whatever.  I offer two ways to do this in the game: one, a robotic body, or two, an artificial organic body.

For the organic body, the player needs to have an item, 'pattern data', inserted into the master terminal, and something called a 'wet frame' in one of the growth vats in order to cultivate/grow the organic body.  Then, to download themselves, they need to have an item called 'Galatea Protocol' inserted into the master terminal.

For the android/robotic body, the player needs to attach a pair of appropriate arms and legs to a chasis with a head already provided.  All they need to do to download themselves is hook the android up to the lab's computer.
[/quote]

Okay, well, let's break it down. 

The ultimate action the player is going to do to succeed, in both cases, is going to be downloading themselves into a body. So you need to have an action that allows him to do that. The action can check that an organic body or a robot body is available, and fail if it isn't. Something vaguely like this:

Instead of downloading when the organic body is in the growth vat and the Galatea protocol is in an extension port that is part of the main terminal:
     [winning stuff]

Instead of downloading when the android chassis is complete and the android is hooked to the computer:
     [different winning stuff]

and then you'll also want to give sensible messages when the player tries to download but the bodies aren't ready.  Like:

Instead of downloading when the organic body is in the growth vat and the Galatea protocol is not in an extension port which is part of the main terminal:
     say "[something about having the body but not the protocol]"

And similar rules for having the protocol but not the body; or having the android chassis ready but not hooked up; and one more for the base case where the player isn't ready at all:

Instead of downloading: [this rule is less specific, so it will only happen if the other two don't]:
     say "[message about not being able to download when there isn't an available body]"

====

Okay. so that gives us our final success. How do we let the player get the bodies ready? 

For the organic option, you'll need an action for growing the body in the growth vat. Are you having the player press a button somewhere to activate this, or something along those lines? Whatever the action is, that'll need to check that "pattern data" is inserted, and then it will need to create the organic body. So you'd want something attached to a rule about pushing a button (or whatever):

Instead of pushing the vat grow button when the pattern data is in the master terminal and the wet frame is in the growth vat:
    remove the wet frame from play;
    move the organic body to the growth vat.

and then some rule that tells the player about how he's failed if he pushes the button (or whatever) when the wet frame isn't there and/or the pattern data isn't inserted.

====

To create the robot body, you'll need to hook things up to one another with things like "ATTACH LEG TO CHASSIS" or whatever, and ATTACH ANDROID TO COMPUTER. "Attach" is defined by Inform as part of the "tying it to" action; if you don't like that, you could create your own attachment verb, but let's assume for now you're sticking with tying it to. What I suggest is that you create some rules like

A spare leg is a kind of thing. (and then provide two spare legs in various places)

Instead of tying a spare leg to the android chassis:
      now the noun is part of the android chassis;
      if the number of spare legs which are part of the android is 2:
            say "You screw in the second leg. Success!";
      otherwise:
             say "You give the android a leg. Better, but he looks a bit lop-sided without a left leg."

...and something similar for the two arms.

"part of" is an idea that Inform already has built in, conveniently; that means that once something is part of the android, it will always be visible when the android is, it'll move around with him, and the player won't be able to take it off again unless you make some further rules to allow that. And you can tell whether the android is complete or not by checking whether he has two spare legs and two spare arms. Maybe you might even write a definition at this point:

Definition: the android chassis is complete:
    if two spare arms are part of the android chassis and two spare legs are part of the android chassis: 
         yes;
    otherwise:
         no.

...and that would make it easier to check that you have a full-model body to work with.

If that all didn't make sense, let me put it this way: you have here not one puzzle, but three. There's the master puzzle of downloading into a body, but then there are also two other puzzles involving prepping the two kinds of body to be downloaded into. If you apply to each of these puzzles the same basic structure I outlined, you should wind up where you want to be.

Good luck, and keep letting us know if you get stuck on specifics.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=939&start=0#p4970
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: asking nobody about something
User: Capnegg / DateTime: 2010-01-26 04:51:42

Thankyou Erik.
Although I have been tinkering with programming in various languages over the last 30 years or so, I am finding I7 very difficult to get to grips with. Thank goodness for forums!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=941&start=0#p4971
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: I7 extension: Interactive Poetic Interludes
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2010-01-26 12:42:06

I've adapted Michael Bacon's Interactive Poetry extension for the creation of short "interludes" of keyword-based poetry or narrative within interactive fiction created with Inform 7.

You can now find the extension on [url=http://inform7.com/write/extensions/]the Inform 7 extensions page[/url].

Peace,
Kazuki Mishima

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=941&start=0#p4972
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: New I7 extension: Interactive Poetic Interludes
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-01-26 16:02:56

Cool idea. I just tried out the example, and it works pretty seamlessly. I suspect that the number of IF's for which this will be really useful is small, but maybe it will spark some ideas.

One thought: It would be cool if there were support for:

(1) Keyword highlighting a la Blue Lacuna;
(2) on Glulx, hyperlinked keywords as an added interface simplifier.

I don't *think* the latter would be very hard, at least, but I haven't looked at the organization very closely. 

In any case, I'm not suggesting that this extension (or the original) in any way needs these enhancements--just that they'd be neat!

Good stuff.
Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=941&start=0#p4973
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: New I7 extension: Interactive Poetic Interludes
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2010-01-26 16:33:50

Glad you like the extension. I made it for a work-in-progress, and I thought of keeping it to myself.

[quote="ektemple"](1) Keyword highlighting a la Blue Lacuna;
(2) on Glulx, hyperlinked keywords as an added interface simplifier.[/quote]

I don't think I have the coding prowess or the inclination to make those enhancements myself at present, but they [i]do[/i] sound like good ideas. If anyone wants to take a stab at coding them, be my guest.  [emote]:D[/emote] 

Peace,
Kazuki Mishima

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=939&start=0#p4974
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: asking nobody about something
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2010-01-26 19:19:23

[quote]Also, I didn't have-
Understand "ask about [any thing]" as asking about.
and I don't understand what this does.[/quote]

An important thing that hasn't been said (unless I missed it) is that the compiler is reading "about" as a noun. It's used to seeing "Ask Bob about stuff" where Bob is a noun that can be looked for.

"Ask about..." looks like you're asking some person or thing called "about". Thus, "You can't see any such thing."

That's why a new syntax had to be developed to make the compiler recognize that construction.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=941&start=0#p4975
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: New I7 extension: Interactive Poetic Interludes
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-01-26 22:04:01

Very nice, Kazuki.  I like how you used a scene for this. Good idea.   To answer your question in the docs regarding keeping time from running, add "out of world" like this: 

[code]Topic-choosing is an action out of world applying to one topic.[/code]

Mind, this will take a little re-arranging.  The poem display rule should then probably be a Report rule, and we should explicitly call the scene-changing rules so that can happen.  Every turn rules won't run while out-of-world.  This is probably a good thing as the author is using Every Turn rules for stuff that would interfere.  

[code]Report topic-choosing (this is the poem display rule): 
    [ Etc. ];
    consider the scene-changing rules.
[/code]

Finally, since Before, Instead, and After rules don't run while out-of-world, you'd be able to remove this line: [code]Instead of doing something other than topic-choosing when Poetic Interlude is happening: try topic-choosing the player's command.[/code]

(I haven't actually tested this, so you may need to nudge it here & there.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=942&start=0#p4976
Forum: Feedback / Subject: How do i change my display name?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-01-26 22:17:13

I'd like my name to appear up in the corner of my posts where my login name is currently, but the User Control panel won't let me.  It says I need to confirm my current password to change it, but after entering the password and clicking submit, it just says thanks and puts me right back where I was.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=20#p4977
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: C. Everett / DateTime: 2010-01-26 23:52:06

I have another problem, but this one is rather minor.  I'm not sure how to word this code:

[code]
Instead of opening Sensitive Organics when the Bio Key is not in the player inventory:
	say "You need a Bio Key to open this.  Catherine had one.  It should be around here somewhere.". 

[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=20#p4978
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-01-26 23:57:02

"if the player does not enclose the Bio Key" will check for cases where the player doesn't have it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=943&start=0#p4979
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: PAX East
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-01-27 00:00:15

This may be a redundant announcement, but I haven't seen a discussion of it here. To wit:

There will be IF programming, including a panel with modern IF authors and the premiere showing of Jason Scott's IF documentary "Get Lamp", at Penny Arcade Expo East, in Boston March 26-28th of this year. 

If you're interested, there is a lot more information here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifwiki.org/index.php/PAX_East_2010">http://ifwiki.org/index.php/PAX_East_2010</a>

Tickets for the convention are said to be selling very quickly, so if you want to secure a place, it might be worth buying now.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=942&start=0#p4980
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: How do i change my display name?
User: George / DateTime: 2010-01-27 01:19:21

You know, I don't think you can change the username. On my control panel there's no text box in which to do that. That text might reflect what's possible with some other admin setting or something.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=943&start=0#p4981
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: PAX East
User: George / DateTime: 2010-01-27 01:21:44

Thanks for mentioning this, though I'm bummed I can't go.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=944&start=0#p4982
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Superglus 1.1
User: Uto / DateTime: 2010-01-27 07:59:13

Hi,

Superglus, the Gilsoft's PAW extended clone authoring system for glulx has his new version 1.1 online since today at 

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.caad.es/superglus">http://www.caad.es/superglus</a>

Some new capabilities are NPC support, multiple sound channels made easy, and sprites to allow mobile graphic sceneries.

Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=943&start=0#p4983
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: PAX East
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2010-01-27 09:39:28

Don't think I can show up on the 26th, but I'll be home in the Boston area for spring break by the 29th. Good timing.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=941&start=0#p4984
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: New I7 extension: Interactive Poetic Interludes
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2010-01-27 11:27:00

Thanks a bunch for the advice, Mr. Newcomb. I'll try reworking the extension a bit.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=935&start=0#p4985
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation and trigguring events
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-01-27 11:30:56

I noticed as well the effect of changing the "before" rule by removing the "insteads."  That was actually why my last post was probably rather unhelpful (sorry); the way the extension functions in this regard is (I think) enough of a problem to look into making a significant redesign of its processes.

[quote="SamReader"]...i don't know what punctuation to use to get the same effect in a command,[/quote]
Actually all you should need to do is add quotes around the bracketed text, which will turn it into a text substitution rather than a comment (which is what it is as currently shown, resulting in an uncompilable rule).  What I posted last time will work for the general idea of what you want to do, assuming the problem with the extension's "before" rule is fixed.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=20#p4986
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-01-27 11:40:32

I don't have anything to add to emshort's suggestions on the technical side, but just wanted to say that it sounds like you're going to have a pretty cool game when you're done.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=847&start=20#p4987
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: When are results announced?
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-01-27 18:14:27

[quote="George"][quote="EK_Dev"][quote="Pacian"]
You don't need to defeat me.  I surrender.[/quote]

Well, Pacian. You may surrender. But we will see if those ignorant reviewers surrender when I submit my next game in the upcoming IFComp 2010......[/quote]

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th370QmFtk8">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th370QmFtk8</a>[/quote]

Two camels in a tiny car...  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote] 

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQkYjDeUq10">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQkYjDeUq10</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=20#p4988
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: C. Everett / DateTime: 2010-01-27 19:50:42

@Endosphere:  Thank you!  I'll be sure to put a link up here to the game when I'm finished.



Now I'm having trouble with the journal entries.  Most of them spill out of the description column, and Inform doesn't like it.  Is there anything I can do to fix this without gutting most of my journal entries?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=20#p4989
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: C. Everett / DateTime: 2010-01-27 20:37:30

I think there's something I'm not getting about the definition thing.

[code]Definition: and2 is complete:
	if maniplimb is part of and2 and distancelegs is part of and2;
		yes;
	otherwise;
		no.[/code]


[quote]
Problem. You wrote 'if maniplimb is part of and2 and distancelegs is part of and2'  : but this is a phrase which I don't recognise, even though it starts with 'if'. 'If' phrases normally have one of two forms: 'if (condition), (do something)' and 'if (condition) begin; ... ; end if'. 

 The difference is that the begin/end version can encompass multiple-phrase consequences if the condition is true, whereas the simpler form allows only one phrase to count as the 'do something' part.


 See the manual: 11.7 > Begin and end



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem. You wrote 'otherwise'  : but this is an 'else' or 'otherwise' with no matching 'if' (or 'unless'), which must be wrong.


 See the manual: 11.8 > Otherwise
[/quote]

What did I do wrong?

(Maniplimb is a pair of arms, and distancelegs is a pair of legs.  And2 is the android chassis.  In case that's not clear.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=20#p4990
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-01-27 21:13:14

[code]Definition: and2 is complete:
   if maniplimb is part of and2 and distancelegs is part of and2;
      yes;
   otherwise;
      no.[/code]

There are two problems. One is punctuation. Semicolons are for ending a line; you need a comma between the condition and the decision. 

The second is that "otherwise" isn't needed in definitions. Each line in a definition is a decision. Here's how it should look:

[code]Definition: and2 is complete:
     if maniplimb is part of and2 and distancelegs is part of and2,
           yes;
     no.[/code]

You might find the syntax summary useful for these kinds of questions:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/learn/documents/I7_syntax.txt">http://inform7.com/learn/documents/I7_syntax.txt</a>

...I know I do!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=847&start=20#p4991
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: When are results announced?
User: George / DateTime: 2010-01-27 23:18:17

Is that somehow a metaphor for what this thread has become?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=20#p4992
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: C. Everett / DateTime: 2010-01-27 23:35:26

Thank you ektemple.


...Aaand now I've hit another snag.  God.  I'm feeling so inept today.

[code]
If and2 is complete:
	move and2 to Inventory;
	move Automa to on assembly platform.

[/code]

I have a feeling "If and2 is complete:" is where the problem is.  Is that it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=20#p4993
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2010-01-28 00:48:03

[quote="C. Everett"]I have a feeling "If and2 is complete:" is where the problem is.  Is that it?[/quote]Yes, but not the only one. First, "if's" are conditional statements that can only be used as phrases within some context (like a rule) otherwise inform doesn't know when to check it. You need to tuck it into a rule (see below). Also, unless you have a room or container called "inventory," the line "move and2 to Inventory" won't work either; inform doesn't recognize "inventory" as an actual place. Say "move and2 to the player" or better yet (since it's clearer), "now the player carries and2." Also, unless you have something called "on assembly platform" you need to change that as well (just get rid of "on").

Since I don't know exactly when you want this condition to be checked, and I don't know what actions you have created, I can't give you more specific advice. Assumming you have some sort of action which connects the various parts called, for example, "connecting it with" you could do something like:[code]Carry out connecting something with:
	if and2 is complete:
		now the player carries and2;
		move Automa to assembly platform.[/code]If you still can't get it to work, post the code for whatever action you're using that you want to trigger the above behavior.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=20#p4994
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-01-28 03:30:50

[quote="C. Everett"]Now I'm having trouble with the journal entries. Most of them spill out of the description column, and Inform doesn't like it. Is there anything I can do to fix this without gutting most of my journal entries?[/quote]
When you say the entries "spill out" of a column, I'm not exactly sure what you mean in a technical sense.  What is Inform doing to indicate the program "doesn't like" this (compiler error, strange in-game effects, etc)?

[quote="C. Everett"]I think there's something I'm not getting about the definition thing.[/quote]
Don't feel bad about that.  Despite what the I7 documentation seems to imply, in my experience anything beyond the simplest declaration of a functional adjective is much more likely to work reliably and as intended if you phrase it as a "to decide" rule rather than a "definition."  You're probably better off writing the rule this way:

[code]To decide if (gadget - an and2) is complete:
	if gadget incorporates a maniplimb and gadget incorporates a distancelegs:
		decide yes;
	otherwise:
		decide no.[/code]
You would then want to write rules in this way:

[code][Insert your rule for doing something to an and2 here]:
     if the noun is complete:
          [do stuff][/code]
etc.

Although it may not affect you in this particular case, complex "definition" phrasing often compiles fine but subtly fails to work, which can leave one scratching one's head as one's code grows in complexity.




-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=942&start=0#p4995
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: How do i change my display name?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-01-28 07:06:52

If you want to change your username (it will be seen by everybody) to your real name, it might be possible from the admin console. I can give it a try, if you want. Real name is in your URL, correct? If it's possible to change, it would also become the ID you use to log in.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=938&start=0#p4996
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Hugo: Getting the number of arguments in a routine
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-01-28 07:13:48

I would need to do some research. I think when I've done this before (check my "IsEqual" function in utils.hug in the Traveling Swordsman source) I get the number of parameters by checking to see if the value passed in with zero. If the function allows 5 parameters (for instance) and you only send 2, then the last 3 will be received by the function automatically as 0's. That's probably not ideal if 0 (or the "nothing" object) is a valid value for your function.

Another way -- not hands-off, but should work -- would be to specify the number of arguments as the first parameters. I.e., MyFunction(parmcount, parm1, parm2, parm3, parm4, parm5, ....) called as MyFunction(2, houseobj, w_obj).

If I come up with a better idea I'll let you know. It seems like there *should* be a parameter count function automatically, but offhand I don't know what it would be.

(edit) Another thing you could do, kind of thinking outside the box on this, is just randomize among the maximum number of parameters, and keep looking until the randomly picks one that's non-zero. As long as at least one non-zero parameter (i.e., a real object reference) is sent in, the routine should pick up one without looping too many times. I suspect you wouldn't see a delay or anything in running the code, but you'd want to try it first.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=943&start=0#p4997
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: PAX East
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-01-28 07:26:39

Thanks! I actually hadn't seen that yet!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=941&start=0#p4998
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: I7 extension: Interactive Poetic Interludes
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2010-01-28 14:15:40

I've fixed that turn counter problem and updated the link in my first post for version 2 of the extension.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=30#p4999
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-01-28 16:30:24

[quote="Endosphere"] 
Don't feel bad about that.  Despite what the I7 documentation seems to imply, in my experience anything beyond the simplest declaration of a functional adjective is much more likely to work reliably and as intended if you phrase it as a "to decide" rule rather than a "definition." 
...
Although it may not affect you in this particular case, complex "definition" phrasing often compiles fine but subtly fails to work, which can leave one scratching one's head as one's code grows in complexity.[/quote]

I find this alarming, because definitions are in many ways more robust than "to decide" phrases, and they're especially preferable in cases where you want to define a concept like "being complete", where subsequently you might want to be able to refer to, e.g., "the list of complete androids". 

I know you may not have a good example to hand, but if you do run across some more cases where you think the definition is misbehaving, please do report it as a bug. (If it's *not* a bug, just a misunderstanding, it's possible that we could still use that report to refine the documentation a bit.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=945&start=0#p5000
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: New style system in Glulx
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-01-28 17:48:44

This discussion has been running for several months on the RAIF newsgroup (or sputtering, since I tend to reply in occasional short bursts). But I know the newsgroup contains only a small slice of the world's Inform users. So I want to offer this here.

A perennial complaint about Glulx is that the text style system is too restrictive. You have a handful of predefined styles plus two "user" styles; you can adjust their appearance but the results aren't really reliable across interpreters. It's not very good. I've been putting off thinking about this for a decade (I said "perennial complaint" and I meant it!) but it's time to pick it up.

I have a sketch of a New Plan for Glulx styles. Only a sketch so far, because I need to know whether people will buy into the principles before I flesh out all the details. (My first attempt at details got thoroughly derailed by subsequent discussion.)

The principles:

- This is a plan for reforming Glulx's text-style system, not the entire display layer. You will still open Glk windows and display text, same as you used to. 

- (An example of a total-reform proposal is "Give the game access to Javascript and full control of an HTML window." That's come up on the newsgroup, and it's a possible plan, but it's not where I'm going. Somebody else can work on that.)

- While I'm not throwing the entire problem into HTML, I do like CSS as a style specification language. It's familiar and it does everything we need.

- CSS also does a lot of things we *don't* need. I don't expect a Glulx interpreter to implement the CSS box model, relative/absolute/fixed positioning, or any of that stuff. (As I said, layout will continue to be done with Glk windows.)

- Therefore, this plan uses a subset of CSS, not the entire thing. Roughly: text font/style/color attributes, indentation, alignment, line spacing, padding. The appearance of Glk windows can be controlled with background and border attributes. 

- I expect there to be two kinds of Glulx interpreters going forward: native interpreters (like Glulxe, Git, Zoom), and Javascript interpreters (like Parchment) which run in a web browser. The latter will have access to an actual HTML/CSS display engine; the former may or may not. This plan will have to use a simple enough subset of CSS that either kind of terp can implement it.

- Interpreters could accept CSS declarations outside the subset, but this would be optional and not guaranteed. (This could permit fancier options like :first-letter, background-image, drop-shadow...)

- For simplicity, all style information will be defined in a stylesheet file *rather than in your Inform code*. (This is the real point of contention, but I am defending it for the moment.) There will not be an Inform declaration for "green text is color #05FF20". Rather, you will define the style's appearance in a CSS file in your Materials folder. This stylesheet will get wrapped up in your Blorb file when you build, same as image or sound files. 

- Your Inform code can then say "[style mygreen]some text[style normal]", and the output will pick up whatever appearance the stylesheet defines for "mygreen". (The exact syntax depends on what Graham decides, of course.) Inform-6 users would have a similar form, although they would probably have to do some manual coordination between the stylesheet and a list of I6 style values.

- This may seem way overcomplicated. There are, however, advantages:

- We will *not* have to define a complete I7 representation of the CSS language. That would be a very large headache. CSS will go straight from the stylesheet to the interpreter.

- (Future versions of I7 might go in this direction, but I'm not expecting it right away.)

- By encouraging the game author to think in terms of defining semantic styles, rather than text appearance, we will offer a great deal of flexibility to the *player*. To wit:

- Glulx interpreters would be able to load in user stylesheets -- written in the same CSS as game stylesheets -- to customize or override the game appearance. If you want to play all your IF in green Optima on black, with Copperplate for the room headings and a white input line, you can do this. Players would be able to upload and pass around favored stylesheets. An author could drop a popular stylesheet into his own game, for that matter.

- If the styles of a given game are defined sensibly, a user could customize them just by looking at the interpreter's style list and adding some lines to a user stylesheet. 

- User stylesheets override game stylesheets. (In CSS terms, user stylesheets are "!important".) An interpreter could also provide more specific preference options, like "ignore color" or "make everything three sizes larger".

- It might be possible to define a "do everything for everybody" stylesheet -- say, one that defines hundreds of pre-built colors for a naive author -- but I would like to discourage that if possible. It puts a great burden on the interpreter without actually giving the author any new capability. It also makes it much harder for players to sensibly customize the game display.

- That said, I have some ideas about CSS style inheritance which should minimally cover that case.

- I also have a notion of "interpolated styles" that offers a certain amount of runtime style adjustment. I'm sure I will be explaining it soon but this post has already gotten really long.

Comments so far? My primary goal here is to design a system that interpreter writers *can* use (not insanely complicated for them) and that authors *are willing* to use. If everyone's first reaction to this is to look for ways to bypass the system, then the system is a failure. Which is possible, I know. That's why I'm asking about it here: so I don't spend a lot of time implementing something that nobody takes advantage of.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=935&start=0#p5001
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation and trigguring events
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-01-28 17:55:34

Assuming we don't want to rewrite the whole "Telephones" extension to facilitate more complex conversation sequences (such as what you're trying to do here), I think the simplest way to get around all the issues here is to break things up into several rules.  This may seem overly complicated, but since you're using a table for Judy's conversations (either because that's what the example in the extension uses or because you're planning on adding more interaction with her later) I couldn't find any other way to work it all out that was less complicated than what follows (which isn't to say there aren't other ways).

What I'm suggesting is that you:

a) address the possible things we may want to ask Judy about in separate rules;

b) due to the way the extension works, address the scoring issue in the same "before" rule as the behavior that results in scoring;

c) add a variable (I've called it "playing hookey" below) to address the issue of preventing unlimited scoring of points

Working from the code shown in your original post, I think this does what you're looking for:

[code]Include Telephones by George Tryfonas.

The testarea is a room.

The phone1 is a telephone in the testarea.  The description of the phone1 is "Your home telephone.".  The printed name of the phone1 is "phone".  Understand "phone" or "telephone" or "my phone/telephone" or "my home phone/telephone" or "home phone/telephone" as the phone1.

Judy is a woman. The office phone is a telephone. The calling number of the office phone is 2345. The owner of the office phone is Judy.

Before telling Judy about something: try asking Judy about it instead.

Before answering Judy that something: say "Best to confine your conversation to questions and answeres." instead.

Playing hookey is a truth state that varies.  Playing hookey is usually false.

Understand "work/missing/absent" or "missing work" as "[token1]".

Before asking Judy about something:
	unless the topic understood is a topic listed in the Table of Judy Conversation:
		say "[the noun] doesn't seem interested." instead.

Before asking Judy about "[token1]":
	say "[reply in row 1 of the Table of Judy Conversation][paragraph break]";
	if playing hookey is false:
		change playing hookey to true;
		award 10 points;
		say "(work safely avoided)[paragraph break]" instead;
	otherwise:
		do nothing instead.

Before asking Judy about "leaving":
	say "[reply in row 2 of the Table of Judy Conversation][paragraph break]" instead.

After dialling 2345 on something (this is the report calling Judy rule):
	say "Acme Incorporated, Judy speaking.".

Table of Judy Conversation
topic	reply
"[token1]"	"'Sure I'll tell Mrs. Stark you won't be in today. Enjoy your day off.' says Judy in a pleasant tone."
"leaving"	"'If you want to leave, you would need to give your 3 weeks notice. I have the paper right here but I would be sad to see you go.' says Judy."[/code]
If you have any questions about how or why this works, or why the way you had written things originally doesn't work, please feel free to ask.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=945&start=0#p5002
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New style system in Glulx
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-01-28 18:13:33

That all sounds pretty good to me.  If the creator thinks color is important, he can have a flexible implementation of color; if the user thinks color is important (for example, I play everything except z-files on Gargoyle to take advantage of color customization options) then the user can have it their way as well.  I don't know much about CSS style sheets, but presumably they're something one can fairly easily learn to use in simple ways.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=30#p5003
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-01-28 18:17:10

[quote="emshort"]I know you may not have a good example...[/quote]
A cursory scan of some of my older files didn't turn up any surviving examples [emote]:([/emote] , but I'll keep your suggestion about making a bug report in mind for the future.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=942&start=0#p5004
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: How do i change my display name?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-01-28 22:11:06

If it isn't too much trouble, that would be wonderful.   "Ron Newcomb".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=30#p5005
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-01-28 23:21:46

Seems like I had an issue with Definition too, and recently.  This was right at about two months ago.  I had done something like:

[code]Volition is a kind.  zen is [the non-]volition.
Definition: zen is primed: no.
Definition: a volition is primed if the sub-intent of it is primed or it is in-progress.
[/code]

Note that the adjective "primed" is recursive on Definition, that its base case "zen" is put into its own line.  IIRC, I had issues with this regarding either an infinite loop (which might have been my fault) or, when the subintent of a volition is zen (and therefore never primed), it was acting otherwise.  I *do* remember I re-arranged it as: 

[code]Definition: a volition is primed if the sub-intent of it is primed or it is in-progress or it is not zen.[/code]

and got better results.  Endosphere, you ever did something with recursion or separating out a particular instantiation like that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=30#p5006
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-01-28 23:41:39

I take that back. It was, IIRC:

[code]The verb to be actualized by implies the incorporation relation.
Definition: a volition is primed if it is not in-progress or it is actualized by something.
[/code]

Which didn't work as expected.  But, it was "something"'s fault, not Definition's.  It actually works again if I had said:

[code]Volition is a kind OF THING.[/code]

The "something" doesn't catch stuff higher on the inheritance tree than Thing.  So, false alarm, sorry. 

...and the infinite loop:

[code]
Definition: a volition is primed if it is not in-progress or it is actualized by something primed.
[/code]

... was my fault. (Note the last word in that code.) I don't think Inform could've caught the problem there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=30#p5007
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: C. Everett / DateTime: 2010-01-29 00:12:14

[quote="Skinny Mike"][quote="C. Everett"]I have a feeling "If and2 is complete:" is where the problem is.  Is that it?[/quote]Yes, but not the only one. First, "if's" are conditional statements that can only be used as phrases within some context (like a rule) otherwise inform doesn't know when to check it. You need to tuck it into a rule (see below). Also, unless you have a room or container called "inventory," the line "move and2 to Inventory" won't work either; inform doesn't recognize "inventory" as an actual place. Say "move and2 to the player" or better yet (since it's clearer), "now the player carries and2." Also, unless you have something called "on assembly platform" you need to change that as well (just get rid of "on").

Since I don't know exactly when you want this condition to be checked, and I don't know what actions you have created, I can't give you more specific advice. Assumming you have some sort of action which connects the various parts called, for example, "connecting it with" you could do something like:[code]Carry out connecting something with:
	if and2 is complete:
		now the player carries and2;
		move Automa to assembly platform.[/code]If you still can't get it to work, post the code for whatever action you're using that you want to trigger the above behavior.[/quote]

I do have a room called Inventory.  I'm not sure I get the code you posted.  Would that trigger the events I want when both sets of limbs are connected to and2?  And I don't think I have an action called connecting it with.  I'm using "attach".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=30#p5008
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: C. Everett / DateTime: 2010-01-29 00:16:32

[quote="Endosphere"][quote="C. Everett"]Now I'm having trouble with the journal entries. Most of them spill out of the description column, and Inform doesn't like it. Is there anything I can do to fix this without gutting most of my journal entries?[/quote]
When you say the entries "spill out" of a column, I'm not exactly sure what you mean in a technical sense.  What is Inform doing to indicate the program "doesn't like" this (compiler error, strange in-game effects, etc)?

[/quote]

Sorry.  Here it is:

[code]
Table of Cath's Entries
index	title		description
--	"November 3, 20X3"		"I've just arrived at the research facility.  It's spartan, but it has the appropriate resources.  I think I'll do just fine here."
--	"November 9, 20X3"		"Today, I was properly introduced to Richard, our robotics expert.  He's a bit... messy, but amiable enough.  I think I've made a friend.""
--	"November 28, 20X3"		"DATA CORRUPTED"
--	"December 12, 20X3"		"DATA CORRUPTED"
--	"January 2, 20X4"			"Most of the staff went away for New Year's, so I rang in the new year with Richard and the facility's resident A.I.  He likes to be called Abe.  I'm not sure why, and neither is he."
--	"September 17, 20X4"		"This is outrageous.  The higher-ups are enacting a Crypt Protocol.  They won't even tell us why, and I've got both Anima One and Two running live organics.  I'll have to abort them both if they aren't finished soon."
--	"September 27, 20X4"		"DATA CORRUPTED"
--	"October 13, 20X4"		"Anima One managed to finish up, after some tinkering with the porccesses.  I owe a lot of gratitude to Richard.  Even though Anima Two wasn't able to finish before final Crypt Protocols, they both might've been lost if it wasn't for his help.  He can hold his own when it comes to organics, it seems, and all this time I never had the vaguest idea.  I'm ashamed to say I'm a little bit envious, as I can't manage a thing in his area of expertise."
--	"November 3, 20X4"		"Hard to imagine it's been just a year since I came here, and I'm already leaving.  The organism from Anima One is finally able to walk on its own, so we need to leave.  Hell, we should've left days ago.  They never did tell us what the Crypt was for, but come late October, they didn't need to.  It's just starting to get ugly out there...  I'm naming the organism Quincy."
--	"For Abe..."			"We certainly got to know each other this past year, didn't we?  Not nearly as well as I'd have liked, but I suppose there's nothing to be done now.  I really wish we didn't have to put you in the Vault, but they sent a representative to oversee Crypt procedures.  The most I can do is offer you a way out when, if, you ever wake up.  You'll find everything you need in my PC's data ports, and in my desk.  If you do decide to find us... be careful out there.  --Cath"[/code]

[quote]
This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 5Z71) on its most recent run through:




Problem. In the table Cath's Entries, the entry 'Table of Cath's Entries index title description -- "November 3, 20X3" "I've just arrived at the research [...] . I think I'll do just fine here." -- "November 9, 20X3" "Today, I was properly introduced t [...] ough. I think I've made a friend." " -- " November 28, 20X3" "DATA CORRUPTED" -- "December 12, 20X3" "DATA CORRUPTED" -- "January 2, 20X4" "Most of the staff went away for Ne [...] m not sure why, and neither is he." -- "September 17, 20X4" "This is outrageous. The higher-up [...] both if they aren't finished soon." -- "September 27, 20X4" "DATA CORRUPTED" -- "October 13, 20X4" "Anima One managed to finish up, af [...] a thing in his area of expertise." -- "November 3, 20X4" "Hard to imagine it's been just a y [...] . I'm naming the organism Quincy." -- "For Abe..." "We certainly got to know each othe [...] s... be careful out there. --Cath"'   cannot be accommodated, because its row is already full.
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=30#p5009
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-01-29 00:44:23

You have one " too many at the end of this line:

[code]--   "November 9, 20X3"      "Today, I was properly introduced to Richard, our robotics expert.  He's a bit... messy, but amiable enough.  I think I've made a friend.""[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=30#p5010
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: C. Everett / DateTime: 2010-01-29 00:59:24

[quote="Nitku"]You have one " too many at the end of this line:

[code]--   "November 9, 20X3"      "Today, I was properly introduced to Richard, our robotics expert.  He's a bit... messy, but amiable enough.  I think I've made a friend.""[/code][/quote]

Wow.  Just... wow.  I can't believe it was something so simple.

It's working just fine now.  Many thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=945&start=0#p5011
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New style system in Glulx
User: baltasarq / DateTime: 2010-01-29 05:19:20

Hi, there !

[quote="zarf"]
- This is a plan for reforming Glulx's text-style system, not the entire display layer. You will still open Glk windows and display text, same as you used to. 
[/quote]

What about already existing games? What about new games using the old styles?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=945&start=0#p5012
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New style system in Glulx
User: Capnegg / DateTime: 2010-01-29 06:23:29

I was thinking on similar lines, Zarf. Having much more experience with html and CSS than I have with IF, I was delighted to discover that Parchment allowed me to tinker with styles, though only in a limited way.
It seems to me that the easiest way to implement stylesheets in IF would be for I7 to allow class names to be embedded in the output file, and for a new zmachine to create html as output. The game file would have to be distributed along with its associated CSS file.
CSS is very powerful, and it would be a shame to ignore it for the sake of backward compatibility.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=945&start=0#p5013
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New style system in Glulx
User: George / DateTime: 2010-01-29 10:07:46

I think it's most sensible not to define style within the Inform code. This isn't much different than html/css with the exception of inline styles, but for a game I don't think inline styles are so critical. 

Regarding old games or games with different styles, since the point of CSS is to degrade gracefully when not supported, it seems like that should be a design goal of this system as well (I'm guessing that's the plan anyway).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=946&start=0#p5014
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Graphical Interactive Fiction
User: GameSmith / DateTime: 2010-01-29 10:49:21

Hi Guys,

I am a hobbiest game developer and for my current project I thought I would go back to basics and make a super-retro game. I like the idea of interactive fiction but I can't really get into it that much because the lack of visual location cues makes me feel lost easily after which I tend to loose interest.

I was wondering if IF purists would consider graphics to be a hindrance to the writing or can they help those of us who have a more visually inspired imagination enjoy the genre . The game I am working on has very deliberately bad graphics, similar to those in Mystery House and alot of the puzzles are depicted visually.

Do IF fans consider Mystery House IF or is it an adventure game?

Edit:
Also given I am writing my own IF engine from scratch, are there any helpful documents with lists of IF conventions so I don't frustrate IF fans if my engine doesn't work the way you would expect? 
Are there any features that current IF engines lack?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=946&start=0#p5015
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Graphical Interactive Fiction
User: Bob_Woodward / DateTime: 2010-01-29 12:45:32

Hi!

I guess it pretty much depends on what you think of. When I think of interactive fiction, I think of text adventures. So by that definition, the old Sierra Adventures would be adventure games, but not IF. There are of course text adventures with graphics like the Legend games, later Infocom games (Arthur, Shogun) or the Scott Adams games I played (The Incredible Hulk). Nowadays, many games that are developed with Hugo are using graphics (Necrotic Drift, Future Boy). But mostly, the accompaning graphics are of purely illustrational use, they could be shut off without making the game unplayable (I think Zork Zero was an exception).

I think, you should ask your question on the newsgroup rec.arts.int-fiction. The people over there are really helpful (although such a question could also trigger a flamewar - you never know...)

Bob

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=945&start=0#p5016
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New style system in Glulx
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-01-29 15:39:18

The current thread on rec.arts.int-fiction can also be considered to be badly derailed... I think one reason for the quick derailment of the thread related to this higher-level proposal (higher-level in comparison to the original, more detailed proposal) is that, despite some kvetching that seemed more or less ancillary to the proposal, there is substantial buy-in. It's an excellent proposal.

[quote="zarf"]- This is a plan for reforming Glulx's text-style system, not the entire display layer. You will still open Glk windows and display text, same as you used to.

- (An example of a total-reform proposal is "Give the game access to Javascript and full control of an HTML window." That's come up on the newsgroup, and it's a possible plan, but it's not where I'm going. Somebody else can work on that.)[/quote]

I think that someone else will indeed work up some extension/modification of Glk (YceVM, anyone?) that substitutes JS+HTML for the output, but later--this won't happen until [i]after[/i] Quixe and this new style system are implemented. And regardless of whether someone does this, the new style system and Quixe both will open up new avenues for presentation of IF.

There are a couple of things that I'm wondering about. Apologies if they have been referred to in one of the proposals:
[list]
[*][b]Hyperlinks. [/b]How will textual hyperlinks be styled? In the present version of Glk, hyperlinks are styled by the interpreter. I don't think this is good enough anymore. There's a new extension for I7, for example, that extends Aaron Reed's colored keyword system, allowing for hyperlinks. Without author control over hyperlink styles, though, all of the hyperlinked keywords must be the same color; in other words, semantic information is lost. An easy fix: make the author/game library fully responsible for styling hyperlinks, with a change to the spec to indicate that interpreters should do no styling. At the I7 level, this would look something like "[style BlueHyperlink][set link 1]Hypertext[end link 1][style Normal]." A bit awkward for authors to type, but easily made shorter by a new phrase (e.g., "to say set blue link (N - a number):").
[/*:m]
[*][b]Multiple classes.[/b] In HTML/CSS, multiple classes can be assigned to the same element, e.g. <p class="red_paragraph text_shadow">. Will the new style system support this kind of thing, or will styles need to be atomic? This could allow for shorter stylesheets in some cases, particularly if the author is making much use of linear interpolation of styles. 
[/*:m]
[*][b]Dynamic stylesheet hints[/b] It would be worth considering whether to allow a glk call that would allow for specific attributes of any style to be changed dynamically from within the game. This is already being done, to one degree or another, with linear interpolation of styles to a new (presumably unnamed and dynamically created) style. (Note: I'm not talking about dynamically changing the appearance of text already printed to the screen, just the stylesheet that has been loaded for the game.) This might be a good compromise between the folks that want to be able to set attributes in-line (equivalent to <p style="color:red;">) and the semantic approach. It would allow for an author to provide her own color-picker (via a graphics window, for instance), as some want to do, without defining a mountain of styles.
[/*:m]
[*][b]Interpreter identification.[/b] Given that there are, as you say, likely to be two types of interpreter going forward, it would be nice if a game had a means of identifying the interpreter it was running on, whether by name, or perhaps more robustly, by type. Are there plans for something like this? (I can see it being too difficult too implement, since native interpreters would likely make their own modifications to deal with their particular platform. Worth asking about, though.)[/*:m][/list:u]

Thanks for all your work on this and on Quixe!

Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=946&start=0#p5017
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Graphical Interactive Fiction
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-01-29 16:03:15

I think you'll be surprised how little people are bothered about it.  

If your game [i]relies[/i] on graphics, it may cause problems with accessibility for some people, but in general I think you should just make the game that you want to make and not worry too much about whether it fits neatly in any particular pigeonhole.

[quote="GameSmith"]Also given I am writing my own IF engine from scratch, are there any helpful documents with lists of IF conventions so I don't frustrate IF fans if my engine doesn't work the way you would expect? 
Are there any features that current IF engines lack?[/quote]
The usual problems that people experience with homebrew parsers are:

[list][*]Lack of portability.  If you're starting from scratch, you might like to work in Flash or some other online format for maximum accessibility.  If you can come up with a sturdy engine, you'll actually have a significant advantage over most other IF games.[/*:m]
[*]Lack of support for abbreviations like 'x' for 'examine' or 'i' for 'inventory'.[/*:m]
[*]Lack of 'undo'. (I think you can get away with this, depending on exactly [i]how[/i] your game is going to be old school.  If you can die, or perform actions that will have bad consequences, players will usually be annoyed if they have to reload from their last save rather than just typing 'undo'.)[/*:m]
[*]Lack of complex phrases.  Now, again, this depends on what kind of game you're making.  If you require inventory management, for example, then being able to parse a command like "drop all but ming vase" is pretty much a necessity.  But unless they're forced to, I bet most people never use commands of that complexity.[/*:m]
[*]Disambiguation.  Okay, actually, even Inform is pretty bad at this.  "Unlock door with blue" "Which blue do you mean, the blue key or the blue gem?"  Duh, what do you think I mean?  (TADS, at least, handles this sensibly.)  But being able to ask the player questions that they can then answer to narrow down what they mean can help things run more smoothly.  But, yet again, this is also something that you can try to avoid in your game design by naming objects distinctively.[/*:m][/list:u]

And try these links:

[list][*][url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Homebrew_parser]Homebrew Parser at IFWiki[/url][/*:m]
[*]Adam Cadre has a [url=http://adamcadre.ac/content/if.txt]Getting Started[/url] page that lists common IF commands and behaviour.[/*:m]
[*]Ditto [url=http://www.brasslantern.org/beginners/playta1.html]this page[/url] at Brass Lantern.[/*:m][/list:u]

Not quite what you're looking for, I know, but hopefully they're a start.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=946&start=0#p5018
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Graphical Interactive Fiction
User: GameSmith / DateTime: 2010-01-29 16:27:19

Thanks for the responses.

I will hopefully have a beta up in a week or so for you guys to try. It will be in Java Applet form so easily web accessible.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=945&start=0#p5019
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New style system in Glulx
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-01-29 19:40:45

Here are some use cases that would still be impossible or impractical:

[list]
[*]Display a character's name using three channels of color to display stats: red 0-255 indicates HP, blue 0-255 indicates MP, green 0-255 indicates luck.[/*:m]
[*]Display a word in a random color chosen from a set of thousands (or the full spectrum of available colors).[/*:m]
[*]Load an arbitrary small bitmap image and display it as full color ASCII art.[/*:m][/list:u]

My complaints about the proposed changes boil down to a disagreement over the value of putting aesthetic choices into authors' hands. This proposal -- like the current Glk -- makes the [i]system[/i] responsible for ensuring that players can customize every aspect of a game's stylistic appearance, and in order to do that, it denies authors the ability to control the appearance in certain ways (such as computing a color at runtime).

I would much rather give the game full control over styles, even if in some cases that means the [i]author[/i] has to be responsible for letting players customize the game's appearance.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=942&start=0#p5020
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: How do i change my display name?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-01-29 23:53:38

w00t! Thank you Merk!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=945&start=0#p5021
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New style system in Glulx
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-01-30 00:26:25

[quote="ektemple"]It would allow for an author to provide her own color-picker (via a graphics window, for instance)[/quote]
 
I don't see how allowing an author to create his own idiosyncratic color picker is a good thing. Most platforms have a standard color-picking dialog box, and bucking that standard cannot be wise.  [i]Especially[/i] if it's only used for preference-setting. Let the interpreter call the platform's standard dialog. 

This isn't to say your feature request that enables color-pickers is a bad request, just that a color-picker is a bad example for promoting the feature's inclusion in the spec.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=394&start=10#p5022
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: My first experiences with IF. How did you feel?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-01-30 00:34:28

[quote="tsiqa"]But when I started playing games - even simplest ones-  the process of Searching for a right verb - that is supposed help me to move through - would take so much time and effort that I did not even care where I move as long as I move. I mean the whole fun of making choices was taken away. My only choice was to find at least one choice.[/quote]

My first experiences with I-F were just a few years ago, and I felt the exact same way.  The first I-F I actually enjoyed was Emily Short's [u]Bronze[/u], because it has a tutorial mode that displays the relevant verbs and such.  After playing through the whole game, I felt I finally had enough of a handle on "how to play I-F" that I could try other works (that are still for beginners, even though they lack an explicit tutorial). 

Re: other's comments, yes, Emily's [u]Galatea[/u] was a bit dull, but it was written for a purpose other than purely to entertain.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=30#p5023
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: C. Everett / DateTime: 2010-01-30 01:32:41

Alright.  I'm 99% sure I have nearly everything done.  Now I'm just working on some cosmetic things.  Like:

If I want the opening text to display after the title and version stuff, how do I do that?

And these actually aren't so cosmetic--

How do I make a room act as a 'finish line'?  You know, you enter it, you win?
How do I keep a certain character from entering a room?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=946&start=0#p5024
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Graphical Interactive Fiction
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-01-30 05:23:42

One important thing is to have the parser give as accurate information as possible when it doesn't understand the player's command. The game should subtly teach the player the scope and limits of its parser through the error messages.

Here's an example of a good parser:

[color=#000080]>SHAKE EGG
That's not a verb I recognize. (You don't need to use the verb SHAKE in the game.)

>PUSH CHAIR
You can't see any such thing. (The verb was understood, but the chair is not here or you have to refer to it with some other name.)

>EAT CHAIR
That's clearly unedible. (The verb and the noun were understood, but the action is not sensible.)

>OPEN DESK
That's not something you can open. (It doesn't have any drawers or it's not the kind of desk that opens.)

>SHOOT VILLAIN
What do you want to shoot the villain with? (The shooting action requires two nouns.)

>THROW BALL TO DOG
I understood "throw ball", but not the rest. (This verb requires only one noun.)
[/color]
Here's an example of a bad parser:

[color=#400080]>SHAKE EGG
Impossible.

>PUSH CHAIR
Impossible.

>EAT CHAIR
Impossible.

>OPEN DESK
Impossible.

>SHOOT VILLAIN
Impossible.

>THROW BALL TO DOG
Impossible.[/color]

This leaves the player completely in the dark. Does the action fail because the verb is not supported? Did I misspell a word? Did I use an unsupported synonym? Do I need to be more specific? Less specific? It's easy to make a parser that understands correct input, but the hard part is to make it understand [i]incorrect[/i] input. If you look at the standard library of any IF system you'll see that most of it is for handling these cases.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=30#p5025
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-01-30 05:35:52

[quote="C. Everett"]If I want the opening text to display after the title and version stuff, how do I do that?[/quote]

There's an automatic LOOK action after the banner, so you can fit text in between with this:

[code]Before looking for the first time:
    say "And the adventure begins...";
    continue the action.[/code]

[quote]How do I make a room act as a 'finish line'?  You know, you enter it, you win?[/quote]

You could use an "after going to" rule, but an every turn rule covers all methods of entering the room, even when you move the player there by hand.

[code]Every turn when the location is the treasure room:
    say "Yay! You found the treasure!";
    end the game in victory.[/code]

[quote]How do I keep a certain character from entering a room?[/quote]
That very much depends on how you move the character around (I assume you mean an NPC). In general you can just block the character's movement:

[code]Instead of the robot trying going to the incinerator:
    if the player is in the location of the robot:
        say "The robot heads towards the incinerator, hesitates and turns around."[/code]
If you mean you have several player characters and some of them aren't allowed to go to some rooms, you can do:

[code]Instead of going to the incinerator when the player is the robot:
    say "You'd melt to death!"[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=942&start=0#p5026
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: How do i change my display name?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-01-30 09:39:59

No problem. Turns out it's an easy thing for admin to change. Would be nice if it was an easy thing for everybody to change. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=946&start=0#p5027
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Graphical Interactive Fiction
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-01-30 09:52:49

Nitku's example is especially important, and it's one of the things I always got wrong in homebrew IF. It's [i]easy[/i] to check an input line for known words, and then match this up against a preset list of known actions. For instance, if the first word is "get" or "take" and the word "jacket" is contained inside the input, then run code for picking up the jacket. But what happens when the player wants to  "take off jacket" or you've also included a bee (intended as pure scenery) and the player is trying to "get yellowjacket?"

What this alludes to is an underlying object model, in which everything in the game (aside from pure scenery, which should still react to basic commands) is an "object" with properties such as whether or not it's a container, a platform, something that can be used to tie other things together (i.e., a rope or string), something sharp, something that provides a light source, and so on. Then comes the even [i]harder[/i] part -- building a parser that doesn't check specific words against a list of possible commands, but is built as grammar rules. In other words, something to the effect of "get/take/pick up [object]" and the parser compares known objects against the input.

But believe me, this is [i]difficult[/i] to get right. I started working on a home-brew .NET game for IFComp '09, originally intended as a joke. I wanted the parser to be *good* though -- I mean, good enough to avoid the two-word-parser syndrome, handle objects like described above, parse the right way, etc. I spent quite a few hours on it, and eventually just ran out of time and motivation. It's pretty interesting, though. It handles some complex concepts, including object disambiguation and grammar rules (based on my experiences with the Hugo IF language). It handled attributes, etc. Not sure I got around to pronouns (i.e., "get it" after doing "x rock"), but it was on the to-do list.

At the end, I decided it was too much effort for a joke entry, and that if I really wanted to code something, I should write a Hugo runner native to .NET. Of course, I've done no such thing (I'm lazy), but I did decide that writing a homebrew parser the "right" way just doesn't seem worth it. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=945&start=0#p5028
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New style system in Glulx
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-01-30 10:39:18

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]This isn't to say your feature request that enables color-pickers is a bad request, just that a color-picker is a bad example for promoting the feature's inclusion in the spec.[/quote]

Well, I brought the color-picker up as an example only because it's been expressed as a desideratum a number of times in the various raif threads around the proposal. Perhaps one rationale for people wanting something like this: There will be a lot of potential latitude in what interpreters can offer in terms of customization--anything from an über-bare "Click here to select the text file containing your favored custom style sheet" to a fully-featured GUI CSS editor that would allow the player to use the color picker and other tools to customize each and every style provided by the game. An author's ability to provide an in-game color picker for the classes they deem important would mean that the average player need not monkey around with interpreter-specific-- and possibly quite fussy--tools, or have to wade into a morass of style names. (On the other hand, is the average player likely to want to change  your selected colors either?). 

(Personally, I look forward to presenting games on the web, where I expect most players will choose to accept the styles I work so hard to put together... I see the many concessions to what the player wants in the spec as more about the current audience for IF, accustomed to playing in terminals and the like, than to the audience we all hope is out there, and which web terps and better aesthetics may help us reach...)

Another example that would be enabled by that feature request would be vaporware's second example:

[quote="vaporware"]Display a word in a random color chosen from a set of thousands (or the full spectrum of available colors).[/quote]

...and I guess even the third, if you were willing to accept a *lot* of inefficiency (i.e., a glk call for every change in color as you print characters one by one in the ASCII art image). I doubt anyone would accept this, though it might make a very small image doable.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=947&start=0#p5029
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: A very... Bizarre post...
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-01-30 11:11:48

I decided to release the source code to "Bizarre" -- an unfinished IF game/engine written in C#/.NET. This was originally going to be a joke entry in IFComp 2009 (after I realized I wouldn't get my [i]real[/i] entry done in time). But I wasn't satisfied making it a two-word parser, because I wanted the joke to be a really "bizarre" game but with a strangely competent parser (would have been entered anonymously, of course).

I made good progress before abandoning it. It has command scrollback, and doesn't do what many Windows-based homebrews do with the command prompt (i.e., it's actualy part of the text window, not a separate line). It has text resizing (buttons are at the bottom), color scheme invert feature that was going to feature in the game itself, and a couple other things like that. It knows "oops" and can ask for disambiguation. Has grammar defs, not just two-word parsing. Was going to support pronouns, but I didn't get that done.

Not much here though, game-wise. Just a couple objects you can't really do anything with. I was initially putting all the effort into the parser/engine (the game itself was going to be a joke, and I wasn't too worried about thinking it out fully or having it make much sense).

I don't know if what's here is useful. Probably not, especially since it's unfinished (didn't get around to doing a scripting engine either, so verb routine handling would have to be hard-coded at present -- and is, in the "core" module). But here it is -- source code as a Visual Studio 2005 .NET 2.0 project, and the .EXE for the game itself compiled and included. I've attached it to this message.

Enjoy! Or don't! [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=948&start=0#p5030
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Sam & Max Season 1 for $4.95.
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-01-30 15:12:40

I saw a tip at [url=http://www.brasslantern.org/]Brass Lantern[/url] that Sam & Max Season 1 is $5 (ends after tomorrow). This appears to be for the PC version, downloadable only.

My wife and I played through the six episodes on the Wii. Fun games, and some pretty interesting puzzles, although the Wii versions seemed pretty buggy in places. I haven't seen it said that the PC versions suffer from the same bugs, so this seems like a great deal for anybody who hasn't already tried the games.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.telltalegames.com/samandmax2010">http://www.telltalegames.com/samandmax2010</a>

My wife [i]still[/i] recites lines from these games. Things like:

"Do you believe in magic? Because I doooooo..."

"I'm a HALF Elf!"

"Halt! Are you trying to deliver something? I'm watching you!"

"I am the master of gravity. YOU WILL FALL!"

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=949&start=0#p5031
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: A sort of RPG?
User: RedOrZed / DateTime: 2010-01-30 17:05:27

I'm working on my first game, and I'm looking to provide different ways to solve the various problems. Rather than solving each problem in one defined order, there will be multiple solutions (within programmed limits of course).

My idea was the player could steal, bribe, use diplomacy, violence or simply think her way through. Obviously there is a story and a goal to be achieved, but I was trying to avoid a simple linear "find sword to kill troll to cross bridge to get jewel" type thing.

thinking further along these lines, the idea of getting better at particular "skills" the more they are done comes to mind. The more times the player opts to steal things, the easier it is to keep stealing, the more she talks to people diplomatically, the more persuasive she becomes etc.

But then, aren't there a limited number of "skills" one can have? If the player becomes an excellent thief, won't they be a worse diplomat? There are a limited number of puzzles, and if one is solved in a particular way, that would add to the "count"; IE if there are 4 puzzles and the player completes all of them by stealing, they have 4 "thief" points but 0 "diplomat" points, so the 5th puzzle is much easier to thieve their way out of, instead of talking.

This strikes me as a kind of basic RPG, with different "classes" one can choose, not necessarily at the start of the game, but cumulatively by the players actions.

My problem is this: doesn't that become very limiting? Does it mean that the game will play out a certain way, because the player becomes locked into their "class"? They have more "killer" points than "talker" points, so they are less persuasive, so the next problem is best solved by killing, and so on and so on. Does this limit how I can program the game? If I lead a player down a particular path, mightn't I paint myself into a corner? Or I would I have to program all the possibilities, making things possibly more interesting for the player, but a complete PITA for me, the novice writer?

I hope I've explained what's on my mind [emote]:?:[/emote] I'm not so much worried about the technicalities, just looking for opinions etc.  [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=949&start=0#p5032
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: A sort of RPG?
User: George / DateTime: 2010-01-30 18:32:36

I understand what you're saying and I think you get the consequences of that kind of system. 

However -- I think it can still work, though in a slightly different way. If a player solves puzzles in a stealthy way, rather than making the character better at stealth, present more opportunities for the player to use stealth in later puzzles. A player interested in a class/role gets the same benefits without the game suffering the drawbacks that you describe (i.e. a victory spiral or a narrowing options path). 

Of course this is different from a typical RPG. If you want to make a RPG I'd say just go for it, and make the successive challenges more difficult like you usually do in those games.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=950&start=0#p5033
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Simple Chat by Mark Tilford Problems
User: cunctator / DateTime: 2010-01-31 01:39:14

Hi. This is my first time writing interactive fiction, so if I have
overlooked some huge, glaring error I'm sorry.

I read the documentation about the extension and it seems pretty clear
to me, but when I typed it all down Inform couldn't process all the
links or responses to the dialogue. For example, I typed:

Instead of giving link to lady_polite2: say "'I'm [italic type]imeline
[roman type], just like you.'"
Instead of finding responses to lady_polite2: say "She smiles for a
second and nods for an even shorter time. This isn't going well."
Instead of finding responses to lady_polite2: link to lady_expolite;
lady_casual; link to lady_true1.
Instead of preparing lady_polite: do nothing.

Inform thinks all of it is an error. Here's one:

Problem. You wrote 'Instead of finding responses to lady_polite3'  ,
which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is
'finding responses to lady_polite3'. But that did not make sense as a
description of an action. I am unable to place this rule into any
rulebook.

Also, I used to write "Deactivate link to lady_polite," because I
looked over the source code of Fate by Victor Gijsbers, but that
didn't work. So I changed it to "Instead of preparing lady_expolite,
lady_polite, lady_casual, lady_true1: do nothing." But that doesn't
work either.

I think there are other problems, but Inform doesn't list all of them
at one time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=951&start=0#p5034
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Simple Chat by Mark Tilford Problems
User: cunctator / DateTime: 2010-01-31 01:39:30

I read the documentation about the extension and it seems pretty clear
to me, but when I typed it all down Inform couldn't process all the
links or responses to the dialogue. For example, I typed:

Instead of giving link to lady_polite2: say "'I'm [italic type]imeline
[roman type], just like you.'"
Instead of finding responses to lady_polite2: say "She smiles for a
second and nods for an even shorter time. This isn't going well."
Instead of finding responses to lady_polite2: link to lady_expolite;
lady_casual; link to lady_true1.
Instead of preparing lady_polite: do nothing.

Inform thinks all of it is an error. Here's one:

Problem. You wrote 'Instead of finding responses to lady_polite3'  ,
which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is
'finding responses to lady_polite3'. But that did not make sense as a
description of an action. I am unable to place this rule into any
rulebook.

Also, I used to write "Deactivate link to lady_polite," because I
looked over the source code of Fate by Victor Gijsbers, but that
didn't work. So I changed it to "Instead of preparing lady_expolite,
lady_polite, lady_casual, lady_true1: do nothing." But that doesn't
work either.

I think there are other problems, but Inform doesn't list all of them
at one time.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=951&start=0#p5035
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple Chat by Mark Tilford Problems
User: George / DateTime: 2010-01-31 02:17:35

Can you make a minimal working example that runs using the chat extension? All of your syntax seems fine (with the exception of the discrepancy between your error message and your code, though I'm guessing that's because you were pasting in an error message maybe not associated with your example code), so I recommend making just one chat menu, testing that to see if it works as it should, then make a second menu with links, and so on.

If you run into problems post your complete source code for that example here so we can just paste it into Inform and run it to see the same errors. Use the code tags to enclose the example.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=951&start=0#p5036
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple Chat by Mark Tilford Problems
User: cunctator / DateTime: 2010-01-31 03:21:07

All the dialogue I've typed so far:

[code]Part 1-Dialogue

Instead of talking to Lady: run a conversation from lady_intro.

lady_intro, lady_expolite, lady_polite, lady_polite1, lady_polite11, lady_polite12, lady_polite13, lady_polite31, lady_polite32, lady_casual, lady_casual1, lady_casual2, lady_casual3, lady_true1, lady_true2, lady_true3 are chat nodes.

Instead of giving text for lady_intro: say "I approach her enormous assemblage of Chanel No. 5 pheromones nervously. Somehow she manages to catch my eye through the frills and pomp, and with a whiff of her arms her ratty friends dissipate, even if just for a little while."
Instead of finding responses to lady_intro: link to lady_expolite; lady_polite; link to lady_casual; link to lady_true1.

Instead of giving link to lady_stop: say "'Nevermind.'"
Instead of giving text for lady_stop: say "I leave our little enclove, and the Red Sea of garish costumes closes behind me."

Chapter 1-Extremely Polite

Instead of giving link to lady_expolite: say "'Hello. Nice to have encountered you.'"
Instead of giving text for lady_expolite: say "'Well, nice to have encountered you too.' she replies, with a taut (but still!) smile. Both of us know we were 100% sure we would see each other at the party (perhaps even went just for that) but that goes unmentioned."
Instead of finding responses to lady_expolite: link to lady_polite; link to lady_casual; link to lady_true1.

Chapter 2-Polite

Instead of giving link to lady_polite: say "'Hello, how are you?'"
Instead of giving text for lady_polite: say "'I'm [italic type]wunderbar[roman type]. You?'"
Instead of finding responses to lady_polite: link to lady_polite1; link to lady_polite2; link to lady_polite3; link to lady_polite4

Instead of giving link to lady_polite1: say "'I'm extremely [italic type]goed[roman type], thank you for inquiring.'"
Instead of finding responses to lady_polite1: say "'Oh! Good! Okay.' The right side of her smile reaches up, but the left stays where it is. I hate to see her lopsided smiles. I hate it."
Instead of finding responses to lady_polite1: link to lady_polite11; link to lady_polite 12; link to lady_polite 13.

Instead of giving link to lady_polite11: say "'Did you know that[putsomethinghere]? I only found out yesterday, and when I did, I thought that was just absurd!.'" 
Instead of finding responses to lady_polite11: say "She smiles for a second and nods for an even shorter time. This isn't going well."
Instead of finding responses to lady_polite11: link to lady_expolite; lady_casual; link to lady_true1. 
Instead of preparing lady_polite: do nothing.

Instead of giving link to lady_polite12: say "'Don't smile like that. Please. You don't have to placate me. If anyone is boring you, frown as much as you like! Show them that you're not worth their words, because babe, you're not - you're worth even more than the stars.'" 
Instead of finding responses to lady_polite12: say "Sometimes I find thinking up the strangest things. I shrug it off."
Instead of finding responses to lady_polite12: link to lady_expolite; lady_casual; link to lady_true1. 
Instead of preparing lady_polite: do nothing.

Instead of giving link to lady_polite13: say "Honey, if you love me won't you please smile?" 
Instead of finding responses to lady_polite13: say "That game is four decades too early, I'm afraid."
Instead of finding responses to lady_polite13: link to lady_expolite; lady_casual; link to lady_true1. 
Instead of preparing lady_polite: do nothing.

Instead of giving link to lady_polite2: say "'I'm [italic type]imeline[roman type], just like you.'" 
Instead of finding responses to lady_polite2: say "She smiles for a second and nods for an even shorter time. This isn't going well."
Instead of finding responses to lady_polite2: link to lady_expolite; lady_casual; link to lady_true1. 
Instead of preparing lady_polite: do nothing.

Instead of giving link to lady_polite3: say "'[put something here].'" 
Instead of finding responses to lady_polite3: say "'I'm sorry, I don't understand French.' She stares at you petulantly, with a smiling naivete behind that straight face. 'What does that mean?"
Instead of finding responses to lady_polite3: link to lady_polite31; lady_polite32.

Instead of giving link to lady_polite31: say "'It means whenever you come into a room I find it slightly harder to breathe and when you tell me about your dreams for the future I want to go up to Parliament and demand they let them come true. It means I don't mind spending time with you.'" 
Instead of finding responses to lady_polite31: say "That's too much. How delusional am I? Who says such things?"
Instead of finding responses to lady_polite31: link to lady_polite32.

Instead of giving link to lady_polite32: say "'It's the name of a new book I'm reading. By Voltaire. It's wonderful. You should try it.'" 
Instead of finding responses to lady_polite32: say "She looks at you quizzically. She knows I know it's not that. Don'taskDon'taskDon'task. 'Oh. That's interesting.' She looks at her impeccably polished nails, and then at her shoes. This is not going well."
Instead of finding responses to lady_polite32: link to lady_expolite; lady_casual; link to lady_true1. 
Instead of preparing lady_polite: do nothing.

Instead of giving link to lady_polite 4: say "'I'm fine as long as long as you stay beside me and you allow me to look and talk to the perfection that is you.'"
Instead of finding responses to lady_polite4: say "There is no way I'm saying that. That's most - [italic type]too[roman type] forward of me. And there's less extreme ways of expressing my affection towards her. No - my [italic type]friendly feelings[roman type] toward her."
Instead of finding responses to lady_polite4: link to lady_expolite; lady_casual; link to lady_true1. 
Instead of preparing lady_polite: do nothing.

Chapter 3-Casual

Instead of giving link to lady_casual: say "'Why, salutations!'"
Instead of giving text for lady_casual: say "She grins a wonderfully candid (and toothy) smile. 'Salutations to you too.' She leans back on her chair, 'How do you know Mrs. Leicester? She doesn't seem to like men who have words to say.'"
Instead of finding responses to lady_casual: link to lady_casual1; link to lady_casual2; link to lady_casual3.

Instead of giving link to lady_casual1: say "'What on earth she sees in me, I don't understand either.'"
Instead of giving text for lady_casual1: say "'Oh. Okay.' She looks at her impeccably polished nails, and then at her shoes. This is not going well.'"
Instead of finding responses to lady_casual1: link to lady_expolite; lady_polite; link to lady_true1. 
Instead of preparing lady_casual: do nothing.

Instead of giving link to lady_casual2: say "'Put something here.'"
Instead of giving text for lady_casual2: say "'Put something here.'"
Instead of finding responses to lady_casual2: link to lady_expolite; lady_polite; link to lady_true1. 
Instead of preparing lady_casual: do nothing.

Instead of giving link to lady_casual3: say "'Put something here.'"
Instead of giving text for lady_casual3: say "'Put something here.'"
Instead of finding responses to lady_casual3: link to lady_expolite; lady_polite; link to lady_true1. 
Instead of preparing lady_casual: do nothing.

Chapter 4-True

Instead of giving link to lady_true1: say "'You're the most beautiful woman I have ever known. I'm willing to bet in the entire world too. Give me your fingers and we'll leave this terrible house and set sail for the Caribbean tomorrow."
Instead of giving text for lady_true1: say "Oh no, no, no. I cannot say that! What would she think? What would they all think? That would be most forward of me...[paragraph break] I give her a blank stare, and she stares blankly back at me."
Instead of finding responses to lady_true1: link to link to lady_expolite; lady_polite; link to lady_casual; link to lady_true2. 
Instead of preparing lady_true1: do nothing.

Instead of giving link to lady_true2: say "'Here's the key to the penthouse suite at the Savoy. Meet me at ten.'"
Instead of giving text for lady_true2: say "What?"
Instead of finding responses to lady_true1: link to link to lady_expolite; lady_polite; link to lady_casual; link to lady_true3. 
Instead of preparing lady_true2: do nothing.

Instead of giving link to lady_true3: say "I-I-uh-I have a-uh, uh, something for you."
Instead of giving text for lady_true3: say "'Ooo, what could it possibly be?' Her face glows with excitement. 'Wait. can you talk to Peter Bowles first? He is...' and she gestures somewhere south. 'I need to get my magnifying glass. I can barely see things near me without it.' She beams at you, while your heart is slowly deep-fried and eaten by hungry tourists around the Thames who think Fish and Chips is Britain's official snack."
Instead of finding responses to lady_true3: link to lady_true4. 
Instead of preparing lady_expolite, lady_polite, lady_casual, lady_true1: do nothing.

Instead of giving link to lady_true4: say "I don't have her magnifying glass yet."
Instead of giving text to lady_true4: say "Peter Bowles is somewhere south - better to go quickly than leave her waiting so long."[/code]

Thank you for your prompt response!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=951&start=0#p5037
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple Chat by Mark Tilford Problems
User: George / DateTime: 2010-01-31 04:57:13

I suspect you added things and took things away as you were trying to get the game to work, and as a result there are a lot of errors at the moment. I'll try to summarize the majority of them:

* the game refers to chat nodes that don't exist in the chat nodes you defined. Make sure you always declare something is a chat node if you refer to it later. 

* there is no talking to action in the source. 'Instead of talking to Lady' will fail for that reason. See the example included with the Chat extension, and paste in that talking action definition. 

* sometimes the game refers to an incorrect chat node name; for example, 'lady_polite 4' rather than lady_polite4. 

* Sometimes an Instead rule is defined like this: 'Instead of preparing lady_expolite, lady_polite, lady_casual, lady_true1: do nothing.'. However in general you can't chain chat nodes in rules like this. You would need to make these separate rules. There are ways around this but for now I suggest separate Insteads.

* Sometimes syntax is incorrect; for example 'Instead of finding responses to lady_intro: link to lady_expolite; lady_polite; link to lady_casual; link to lady_true1.'. Note that 'lady_polite' has no link to. 

* Sometimes there is bracketed text within quotes that doesn't refer to a variable or expression (e.g.  "'Did you know that[putsomethinghere]? I only found out yesterday, and when I did, I thought that was just absurd!.'"). Brackets within quotes always mean there's a substitution there, so you'll get an error if it's not defined. There are a couple of ways around this, but the simplest probably is to do '***REPLACE***' or something like that. Brackets [i]outside [/i]of quoted text are ok -- those are comments. 

* many times simple syntax errors are repeated; I think this is probably because of cutting and pasting. Always test to make sure the code works before beginning to add a lot of content by pasting, text generation, etcetera.

* in short, the main problems are:
    * syntax errors -- typos and names
    * code organization -- leaving out definitions

For this reason my best suggestion at this point is to create a [i]very [/i]small working example. Say, three chat nodes, a room, the Lady, and get it to run. Then add things incrementally and make sure the game runs after each change. Do this until you get comfortable with things, and then you can add things in bigger chunks. 

For what it's worth here is your example which now runs. I have no idea if the conversation will work flawlessly -- it probably won't, as I deleted much of the source eliminating errors. All I did was go through each error one by one and fixed it by correcting a typo or deleting the source. 

[code]
Part 1-Dialogue

Include Simple Chat by Mark Tilford

The Chamber is a room. Lady is a person in the Chamber. 

Talking to is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "talk to [someone]" as talking to. Report talking to: say "You have nothing to say.".

Instead of talking to Lady: run a conversation from lady_intro.

lady_intro, lady_expolite, lady_polite, lady_polite1, lady_polite11, lady_polite12, lady_polite13, lady_polite31, lady_polite32, lady_casual, lady_casual1, lady_casual2, lady_casual3, lady_true1, lady_true2, lady_true3 are chat nodes.

Instead of giving text for lady_intro: say "I approach her enormous assemblage of Chanel No. 5 pheromones nervously. Somehow she manages to catch my eye through the frills and pomp, and with a whiff of her arms her ratty friends dissipate, even if just for a little while."
Instead of finding responses to lady_intro: link to lady_expolite; link to lady_polite; link to lady_casual; link to lady_true1.



Chapter 1-Extremely Polite

Instead of giving link to lady_expolite: say "'Hello. Nice to have encountered you.'"
Instead of giving text for lady_expolite: say "'Well, nice to have encountered you too.' she replies, with a taut (but still!) smile. Both of us know we were 100% sure we would see each other at the party (perhaps even went just for that) but that goes unmentioned."
Instead of finding responses to lady_expolite: link to lady_polite; link to lady_casual; link to lady_true1.

Chapter 2-Polite

Instead of giving link to lady_polite: say "'Hello, how are you?'"
Instead of giving text for lady_polite: say "'I'm [italic type]wunderbar[roman type]. You?'"
Instead of finding responses to lady_polite: link to lady_polite1

Instead of giving link to lady_polite1: say "'I'm extremely [italic type]goed[roman type], thank you for inquiring.'"
Instead of finding responses to lady_polite1: say "'Oh! Good! Okay.' The right side of her smile reaches up, but the left stays where it is. I hate to see her lopsided smiles. I hate it."
Instead of finding responses to lady_polite1: link to lady_polite11; link to lady_polite12; link to lady_polite13.

Instead of giving link to lady_polite11: say "'Did you know that *******? I only found out yesterday, and when I did, I thought that was just absurd!.'"
Instead of finding responses to lady_polite11: say "She smiles for a second and nods for an even shorter time. This isn't going well."
Instead of finding responses to lady_polite11: link to lady_expolite; link to lady_casual; link to lady_true1.
Instead of preparing lady_polite: do nothing.

Instead of giving link to lady_polite12: say "'Don't smile like that. Please. You don't have to placate me. If anyone is boring you, frown as much as you like! Show them that you're not worth their words, because babe, you're not - you're worth even more than the stars.'"
Instead of finding responses to lady_polite12: say "Sometimes I find thinking up the strangest things. I shrug it off."
Instead of finding responses to lady_polite12: link to lady_expolite; link to lady_casual; link to lady_true1.
Instead of preparing lady_polite: do nothing.

Instead of giving link to lady_polite13: say "Honey, if you love me won't you please smile?"
Instead of finding responses to lady_polite13: say "That game is four decades too early, I'm afraid."
Instead of finding responses to lady_polite13: link to lady_expolite; link to lady_casual; link to lady_true1.
Instead of preparing lady_polite: do nothing.





Instead of giving link to lady_polite31: say "'It means whenever you come into a room I find it slightly harder to breathe and when you tell me about your dreams for the future I want to go up to Parliament and demand they let them come true. It means I don't mind spending time with you.'"
Instead of finding responses to lady_polite31: say "That's too much. How delusional am I? Who says such things?"
Instead of finding responses to lady_polite31: link to lady_polite32.

Instead of giving link to lady_polite32: say "'It's the name of a new book I'm reading. By Voltaire. It's wonderful. You should try it.'"
Instead of finding responses to lady_polite32: say "She looks at you quizzically. She knows I know it's not that. Don'taskDon'taskDon'task. 'Oh. That's interesting.' She looks at her impeccably polished nails, and then at her shoes. This is not going well."
Instead of finding responses to lady_polite32: link to lady_expolite; link to lady_casual; link to lady_true1.
Instead of preparing lady_polite: do nothing.



Chapter 3-Casual

Instead of giving link to lady_casual: say "'Why, salutations!'"
Instead of giving text for lady_casual: say "She grins a wonderfully candid (and toothy) smile. 'Salutations to you too.' She leans back on her chair, 'How do you know Mrs. Leicester? She doesn't seem to like men who have words to say.'"
Instead of finding responses to lady_casual: link to lady_casual1; link to lady_casual2; link to lady_casual3.

Instead of giving link to lady_casual1: say "'What on earth she sees in me, I don't understand either.'"
Instead of giving text for lady_casual1: say "'Oh. Okay.' She looks at her impeccably polished nails, and then at her shoes. This is not going well.'"
Instead of finding responses to lady_casual1: link to lady_expolite; link to lady_polite; link to lady_true1.
Instead of preparing lady_casual: do nothing.

Instead of giving link to lady_casual2: say "'Put something here.'"
Instead of giving text for lady_casual2: say "'Put something here.'"
Instead of finding responses to lady_casual2: link to lady_expolite; link to lady_polite; link to lady_true1.
Instead of preparing lady_casual: do nothing.

Instead of giving link to lady_casual3: say "'Put something here.'"
Instead of giving text for lady_casual3: say "'Put something here.'"
Instead of finding responses to lady_casual3: link to lady_expolite; link to lady_polite; link to lady_true1.
Instead of preparing lady_casual: do nothing.

Chapter 4-True

Instead of giving link to lady_true1: say "'You're the most beautiful woman I have ever known. I'm willing to bet in the entire world too. Give me your fingers and we'll leave this terrible house and set sail for the Caribbean tomorrow."
Instead of giving text for lady_true1: say "Oh no, no, no. I cannot say that! What would she think? What would they all think? That would be most forward of me...[paragraph break] I give her a blank stare, and she stares blankly back at me."
Instead of finding responses to lady_true1: link to lady_expolite; link to lady_polite; link to lady_casual; link to lady_true2.
Instead of preparing lady_true1: do nothing.

Instead of giving link to lady_true2: say "'Here's the key to the penthouse suite at the Savoy. Meet me at ten.'"
Instead of giving text for lady_true2: say "What?"
Instead of finding responses to lady_true1: link to lady_expolite; link to lady_polite; link to lady_casual; link to lady_true3.
Instead of preparing lady_true2: do nothing.

Instead of giving link to lady_true3: say "I-I-uh-I have a-uh, uh, something for you."
Instead of giving text for lady_true3: say "'Ooo, what could it possibly be?' Her face glows with excitement. 'Wait. can you talk to Peter Bowles first? He is...' and she gestures somewhere south. 'I need to get my magnifying glass. I can barely see things near me without it.' She beams at you, while your heart is slowly deep-fried and eaten by hungry tourists around the Thames who think Fish and Chips is Britain's official snack."
[/code]

So, just to repeat myself -- always get a small example working first! Don't add tons of text right away -- it'll only make finding errors more difficult. Good luck!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=952&start=0#p5038
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: burning things  :evil:
User: frogulis / DateTime: 2010-01-31 06:44:46

I think this is one of those stupid problems that probably have simple answers. [emote]:evil:[/emote] 

Anyways, I'm using inform 7 and although I can easily make an object lit when the game starts, I'm not sure what I have to do to allow the player to light objects ingame without "This dangerous act would achieve little". [emote]:twisted:[/emote] 

Thanks in advance [emote]:ugeek:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=953&start=0#p5039
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: C. Everett's Concept Exercises
User: C. Everett / DateTime: 2010-01-31 12:46:38

Now that I've finished the game I was working on, I want to try getting a better grasp on Inform 7.  I thought it made sense to make this a different thread from my other one, since these problems don't really involve games I'm really working on.  They're just concepts I had that I want to try and get working.


The first one is decapitating an NPC and leaving behind a corpse and a severed head that can be picked up by the player.  A little graphic, maybe, but it's just an exercise.


The code I have right now is:

[code]
Execution Chamber is a room.  Victim is a neuter person in execution chamber. 

Decapitating is an action applying to one visible thing.  Understand "decapitate [thing]" as decapitating.

Storehouse is a room.

Victim's corpse is a thing.  It is in the Storehouse.  It is fixed in place.  Victim's severed head is a thing in the Storehouse.

The description of Victim's corpse is "A headless body.  If you had not done the de-headifying yourself, you would have no idea who it was.".

The description of Victim's severed head is "Victim's head.  He wasn't too bad looking.  Too bad he pissed off the king.".

Check decapitating a thing:
	if thing is a person:
		if person is Victim:
			remove Victim from play;
			move Victim's corpse to Execution Chamber;
			move Victim's severed head to Execution Chamber;
			say "Your blade comes down, and parts his head from his shoulders.".
	if thing is Victim's severed head:
		say "It wouldn't do much good, would it?";
	if thing is Victim's corpse:
		say "He's only got the one head!".
[/code]


This is what Inform says:

[quote]
This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 5Z71) on its most recent run through:




Problem. The phrase or rule definition 'if thing is Victim's severed head'   is written using the 'colon and indentation' syntax for its 'if's, 'repeat's and 'while's, where blocks of phrases grouped together are indented one tab step inward from the 'if ...:' or similar phrase to which they belong. But the phrase 'if thing is Victim's corpse'  , which ought to begin a block, is immediately followed by 'say "He's only got the one head!"'   at the same or a lower indentation, so the block seems to be empty - this must mean there has been a mistake in indenting the phrases.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem. The phrase or rule definition 'if thing is Victim's severed head'   is written using the 'colon and indentation' syntax for its 'if's, 'repeat's and 'while's, where blocks of phrases grouped together are indented one tab step inward from the 'if ...:' or similar phrase to which they belong. But the tabs here seem to be misaligned, and I can't determine the structure. The first phrase going awry in the definition seems to be 'say "It wouldn't do much good, would it?"'  , in case that helps. 

 This sometimes happens even when the code looks about right, to the eye, if rows of spaces have been used to indent phrases instead of tabs.
[/quote]

I think maybe I'm misusing 'check'.  Is that part of it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=953&start=0#p5040
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Concept Exercises
User: George / DateTime: 2010-01-31 13:33:07

I think you misplaced a full stop. 

if person is Victim:
    remove Victim from play;
    move Victim's corpse to Execution Chamber;
    move Victim's severed head to Execution Chamber;
    say "Your blade comes down, and parts his head from his shoulders.".   [size=150]<---- [color=#FF0040]here[/color][/size]
    if thing is Victim's severed head:

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=953&start=0#p5041
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Concept Exercises
User: C. Everett / DateTime: 2010-01-31 13:46:34

That was it.  Thank you!


But now it's doing something I don't know how to explain:

[quote]
[b]Execution Chamber[/b]
You can see Victim here.

>decapitate victim
Your blade comes down, and parts his head from his shoulders.
It wouldn't do much good, would it?
He's only got the one head!

[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=953&start=0#p5042
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Concept Exercises
User: George / DateTime: 2010-01-31 14:10:40

The problem is in your if checks. You're asking for example, is the severed head a thing? It is, so the condition is true. 

You want, 'if noun is Victim's severed head', etcetera. 

Also the check rule can be just 'check decapitating' in this case.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=952&start=0#p5043
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: burning things  :evil:
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-01-31 15:35:13

This, I think, is the most common kind of question about Inform. In the spirit of teaching a man to fish, here's how to figure this kind of thing out on your own:

When you run into something like this, type "rules" while you're playing the game in the IDE. This will turn on rules tracing, so you can see what rules are firing when. Then try the action again.

Here's what happens in this case:

[code]>burn myself
[Rule "block burning rule" applies.]
This dangerous act would achieve little.[/code]

So, you need to disable or otherwise work around the block burning rule. The quick and dirty way around it is with an "instead" rules:
[code]
Instead of burning the player:
	say "Argh!"[/code]

Instead rules take precedence over most other rules associated with actions.

Another way to do it is to look at the Actions tab in the Index. Find the burning action and look at the rules associated with it. You'll see the blocking rule there. In this case, it is in the check burning rulebook. So, to get around this rule, all you have to do is write another check burning rule that will fire before the block burning rule. You can do this in multiple ways:

(1) Write the rule more specifically than the current rule:

[code]A burnable is a kind of thing. The torch is a burnable.

Check an actor burning a burnable thing:
     [code here][/code]

Burning a burnable thing is more specific that burning any old thing, so Inform will list your new rule before the block burning rule.

(2) Say explicitly that your new rule is the first rule in the check rulebook:
[code]
First check an actor burning something:[/code]

Finally, another way to get rid of that pesky rule is to remove it entirely. You'll never hear about how dangerous fire is again!

Now the block burning rule is not listed in any rulebook.

There are a number of other ways to deal with this, of course. But these are the main ones...

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=954&start=0#p5044
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Question: Combining items to create a new item
User: k_sharp / DateTime: 2010-01-31 23:24:11

Hello, everyone!  I'm a newcomer here, but I'm hoping someone can help me out.  I want to create a command to allow the player to combine two items to create a new item.  I got the following combine command to work:

[color=#0000FF]Understand "combine [something] with [something]" as combining it with. 
Combining it with is an action applying to two things.[/color]

After combining the two things, I want it to turn them into a new item that the player can take.  For (a really stupid) example:

[color=#0000FF]In the cell is an altar.  There is a gold peach and a silver peach on the altar.

After combining the gold peach with the silver peach:
say "You have created some sort of magical item.";
*[here the game should make a new item].[/color]

The last line marked by * is where I'm having the problem.  How can I pull this off?  I would really appreciate any and all help.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=954&start=0#p5045
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question: Combining items to create a new item
User: George / DateTime: 2010-02-01 01:13:55

The usual way to do this is with a little sleight of hand. Write your definition of the third item, but don't move it to the location or the player's posession until the two items are combined. At the same time, remove the two components from play. For example, 

[code]
The Cell is a room. 

The magic peach is a thing.

Combining it with is an action applying to two things.
Understand "combine [something] with [something]" as combining it with.

In the Cell is an altar. There is a gold peach and a silver peach on the altar.

After combining the gold peach with the silver peach:
	say "You have created some sort of magical item.";
	remove the noun from play;
	remove the second noun from play;
	now the magic peach is on the altar.

test me with "combine gold with silver / look"
[/code]

There also is an extension to create items dynamically -- <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/Jesse%20McGrew/Dynamic%20Objects/index.html">http://inform7.com/extensions/Jesse%20M ... index.html</a> -- though I believe the game needs to be glulx to include that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=951&start=0#p5046
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple Chat by Mark Tilford Problems
User: cunctator / DateTime: 2010-02-01 04:11:28

Hi!

I have a different problem now, I'm afraid. I inputted the code you suggested, and Inform was able to process it. Unfortunately, after lady_intro, I can only access lady_expolite. It doesn't link to lady_polite, lady_casual, or lady_true1. I have tried again and again, and I have no idea what the problem is.

Also, you mentioned how "there is no talking to action in the source. 'Instead of talking to Lady' will fail for that reason." I looked up the extension example, and it stated, "Instead of talking to larry: run a conversation from hello larry." It seems the same to me.

Thank you for your help!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=954&start=0#p5047
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question: Combining items to create a new item
User: k_sharp / DateTime: 2010-02-01 04:24:57

Aha, thank you so so so much!!  This had been driving me crazy!  Now I understand.   [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=951&start=0#p5048
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple Chat by Mark Tilford Problems
User: George / DateTime: 2010-02-01 10:13:28

Yes, the source I quoted above is incomplete. To get it to run I deleted much of the example because of the errors I mentioned. It runs, but the conversations will have to be added to so that it will really work. 

[quote]
Also, you mentioned how "there is no talking to action in the source. 'Instead of talking to Lady' will fail for that reason." I looked up the extension example, and it stated, "Instead of talking to larry: run a conversation from hello larry." It seems the same to me.[/quote]

The problem here is that 'Instead' is not an action, it is a rule. The talking to action looks like this:

[code]
Talking to is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "talk to [someone]" as talking to. Report talking to: say "You have nothing to say.".[/code]

In other words, there is no 'talking to' action defined in Inform. You need to define it yourself. 

In the Simple Chat extension example you'll see that action definition; the original problem was that it was missing from the Lady source, only the instead rule was included.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=955&start=0#p5049
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: New game 'Hoosegow' released.
User: sussman / DateTime: 2010-02-01 11:14:40

Jack and I are at it again.  Our new short game 'Hoosegow' was 
submitted to the JiGcomp last night, and should be up on their site 
via Parchment sometime today (along with 30 other games.)  I've 
submitted it to ifarchive.  Should I also submit to ifwiki or ifdb? 

For the impatient, you can get it right now from the game's site: 
<a class="postlink" href="http://code.google.com/p/hoosegow">http://code.google.com/p/hoosegow</a> 

My blog post about the (insane) process of writing this game is here: 
<a class="postlink" href="http://blog.red-bean.com/sussman/?p=351">http://blog.red-bean.com/sussman/?p=351</a> 

Huge thanks to all the beta-testers!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=946&start=0#p5050
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Graphical Interactive Fiction
User: GameSmith / DateTime: 2010-02-01 13:31:17

My first version probably won't have a very good parser. I am actually doing this for a 4k competition, so I have to fit the parser + graphics + text in 4k of code. I will try to gear the game towards only requiring verb + object actions to keep things simple. If I manage to get it finished and it is well received I will start work on a more sophisticated parser + visual editor.

I think natural language processing is a fascinating topic and I am a much better programmer than writer so hopefully I'll be able to come up with something interesting.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=953&start=0#p5051
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Concept Exercises
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-02-01 14:30:26

In regard to the idea of general concepts, moving beyond any particulars I'd suggest the following:

a) You'll probably be better off down the road if you start using some "best practices" now.  You're currently sticking everything associated with this example in a single check rule (reminiscent of an "instead" rule), which if repeated many times in many unrelated cases will lead to code that will probably become too confusing for you to even decipher let alone modify anymore.  I think you'd be better off sticking to using "check" rules for checking conditions that allow an action to proceed or fail, using "carry out" rules for changing the game world (moving the parts and removing the npc), and using "report" rules for telling the player how the game world has changed due to his actions.  This isn't an issue of functionality as much as an issue of convenience for yourself in the future.  In any case, I think anyone who wants to move beyond doing the simplest things with Inform must master the check/carry out/report system (as opposed to the newbie/quick-start "instead" system) so the sooner you start thinking about everything in these terms the quicker you'll progress.

b) As you start to consider more expansive options, you'll need to start considering more extensive implementations of these options.  Given the rule in your example, for instance, what happens if the player:

--tries to decapitate an inanimate object?
--tries to decapitate the player-character?
--tries to decapitate someone other than victim?
--tries to decapitate people when not carrying a blade?
--tries to decapitate people in rooms other than the execution chamber, with or without a blade?

--Also, how do characters react to an attempted decapitation of themselves or witnessing the attempted decapitation of another character?  It seems problematic to imply that "victim" simply stands still and complies with the player's attempted assault.  Furthermore if one attacks and kills Joe's pal Fred, does Joe's behavior toward the player change?

These are more philosophical issues than technical issues.  You need to make a decision about how far your games will go to accomodate unconventional behavior by a player.  Sometimes this falls under the category of making the game "user-friendly," while in other cases it's more about being thorough and making the game unbreakable.  My own opinion on these matters is that if you publicly release a game, some wiseacre out there will intentionally try all sorts of irrational in-game behavior and then whine endlessly about how your game is lame if it doesn't accomodate the player's every desire to be silly and break the system.  Whether that happens or not, by designing as if it will happen you'll become a much better designer in general, and the quality of your work will automatically increase considerably (I'm speaking of general principles, and not implying that there's any problem of quality in your current work).  If you're familiar with the old "Fallout" crpg series, for example, consider the design flaws that enabled the commonly used tactic of poisoning npcs with medicinal super-stimpacks that were intended to be used for healing, and the resulting genuine frustration of players in cases where this unexpected behavior broke the functionality of the games.

c) Rather than having all these objects (which will become hard to keep track of as their number grows) off-stage, why not just give each character a body and head?  Decapitation would then involve removing the attached head and resolves some of the issues listed in (b) above.  This approach would involve an investment of coding time up-front (during which you'll likely incidentally learn a lot), but would make things much easier down the road compared to the time one would spend writing special rules for each case and then sorting out how all those special rules interact with each other.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=40#p5052
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-02-01 14:41:37

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Endosphere, you ever did something with recursion or separating out a particular instantiation like that?[/quote]

Nah, as I recall the problems were with fairly innocuous definitions in a variety of different contexts, but I've been sticking to favoring "to decide" rules for some time now and no longer remember the details.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=950&start=0#p5053
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Simple Chat by Mark Tilford Problems
User: scramble / DateTime: 2010-02-02 01:49:27

I'm using the same extension in my current WIP and I'm having no trouble at all. Can you send me (or post here) a minimal project that produces the problems?

Or maybe check some basic things first:
[list]
[*]Have you correctly included the extension?[/*:m]
[*]Have you defined lady_polite2 as a chat node?[/*:m]
[*]Is that definition above the "instead of giving link..." bit?[/*:m][/list:u]

Otherwise it might just be a missing colon or something like that. As I said, a complete project would be nice.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=946&start=0#p5054
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Graphical Interactive Fiction
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-02-02 04:22:54

Erm... while it's laudable and interesting that you're willing to try and cram all those things in 4kb... I feel I should point out that it's better to have no graphics and a more robust parser. Eye candy can't really ruin a game. A bad parser can, very easily.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=880&start=0#p5055
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Aisle-like games, teaching IF with positive reinforcement?
User: scramble / DateTime: 2010-02-02 05:01:19

[emote]:D[/emote] 

I think physics/materials/magic modelling gets in the way of this kind of story pretty quickly. With all the radically different stories, you'd have to write a whole lot of different simulations. Sort of like statting a whole bunch of NPCs on the fly and drawing detailed maps for all possible locations. You'd go nuts.

That's why I believe something like Aisle only works as a one-move game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=951&start=0#p5056
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple Chat by Mark Tilford Problems
User: cunctator / DateTime: 2010-02-02 05:47:01

I worked it out, and now I get it! Thank you!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=946&start=0#p5057
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Graphical Interactive Fiction
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-02-02 07:27:27

Even fully utilizing 4k, I think a 2-word parser would be the best that can be achieved -- even without graphics. If the game itself carefully avoids objects and scenery that might lead to ambiguity (don't include a jacket and a yellowjacket both), and if the puzzles are simple and obvious enough not to require much command experimentation (don't require complex ropes and containers, etc), it might be possible to pull off something playable. Or, maybe a one-room game with limited scope.

It has been a long time since I've tried working under size limit constraints. I remember having to optimize CoCo/TRS-80 source to fit memory limits, and it was always a pain.

Good luck!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=955&start=0#p5058
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: New game 'Hoosegow' released.
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-02-02 07:30:23

The IFWiki and IFDB can be user-edited, although if it's part of a competition, somebody may already be planning to add them. If in doubt, wait a couple days then try adding yourself. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=955&start=0#p5059
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: New game 'Hoosegow' released.
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-02-02 08:15:30

It's already been done:

[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=p2bxy33newzb930t]IFDB[/url]
[url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Hoosegow]IFWiki[/url]

It's a fast moving world, the user-edited Internet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=955&start=0#p5060
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: New game 'Hoosegow' released.
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2010-02-02 08:28:15

Awesome!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=955&start=0#p5061
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: New game 'Hoosegow' released.
User: George / DateTime: 2010-02-02 09:22:00

awesome indeed! Great work sussman! 

I can't wait to play the games. By the way, if you go to jayisgames.com/cgdc7 right now, you'll see something neat.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=880&start=0#p5062
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Aisle-like games, teaching IF with positive reinforcement?
User: George / DateTime: 2010-02-02 09:43:31

In terms of the sheer work involved being a limiting factor I think you're right as a general rule. However if an IF author was insane enough I think it could happen [emote]:)[/emote]. Maybe this kind of game would be better created as a team effort...?

There's an IRC game called [url=http://thouandone.wordpress.com/category/kazekami-kyoko-kills-kublai-khan/]Kazekami Kyoko Kills Kublai Khan[/url]. In it two players trade phrases that they make up improv style, in a duel of wits basically. I've always thought it'd be interesting to make an IF game like this...it'd kind of turn into a Scribblenauts of IF. A ton of work no doubt but I think it'd be fun. Anyway, this is a little OT to the original post.  [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=946&start=0#p5063
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Graphical Interactive Fiction
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2010-02-02 11:28:02

This thread has strayed from its original question, which is cool of course, but I think the original question is an interesting one.

I'm not a typical IF player at all, so maybe my opinion isn't worth a darn. But I think I would find graphics distracting. IF is more like a novel than it is like GTA (or whatever), and my thought is sort of, if you can't do it well enough, why try to do it. I'd expend my energy on good prose and and as others have said, as robust a parser as possible under the limitations. It's possible that a good story will make even a simple IF game really standout, while graphics will definitely not.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=949&start=0#p5064
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: A sort of RPG?
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2010-02-02 11:42:57

[quote]Or I would I have to program all the possibilities, making things possibly more interesting for the player, but a complete PITA for me, the novice writer?[/quote]

Maybe this is the kind of thing that calls for a tiny practice program. When I first put my hands on Inform7, I made a 4-room game in which the goal is to gather supplies and make a margarita.  It was a valuable experience.

So maybe you could have a teensy 4-puzzle game. In the first puzzle, you can either club a guy, talk to him, etc., and no matter what you do you end up with the treasure, but your diplomacy score rises or falls and so forth. Then the elements appear for the second puzzle and so on. Just to see what happens. 

I think you do have to program 4 possibilities for every puzzle that moves the plot forward or increases score. But maybe it wouldn't have to be the same puzzle? In other words, in the second puzzle, to get the second treasure or plot device, you can either talk to a good guy or club a different bad guy.

Just my initial thoughts.

Incidentally I think this sounds like a very cool idea. And yes, ambitious.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=956&start=0#p5065
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Jay Is Games All-IF Competition
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2010-02-02 14:35:54

The Jay Is Games all-IF competition has started, and all 30 of the games are available:

<a class="postlink" href="http://jayisgames.com/cgdc7/">http://jayisgames.com/cgdc7/</a>

There are a number of games from community regulars. Off the top of my head, here are the ones I saw:

Escape in the Dark, by Owen Parish (the torch)
Fragile Shells, by me! (the space station)
Heavenly, by Jim Aikin (the harp)
Hoosegow, by Ben Collins-Sussman and Jack Welch (the icon with the wooden building)
Roofed, by Jim Munroe (the guy in a striped top and green pants sitting down)
Zegrothenus, by Poster (the z icon)

If you want to judge, you've got three weeks to do so.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=40#p5066
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: C. Everett / DateTime: 2010-02-02 17:40:29

Okay.  For anyone who wants to try playing my game, it's up.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.jayisgames.com/cgdc7/">http://www.jayisgames.com/cgdc7/</a>

My game is called "Terminal".  It shouldn't be too hard to spot.  It's got one of the most straightforward icons there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=956&start=0#p5067
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Jay Is Games All-IF Competition
User: George / DateTime: 2010-02-02 19:34:15

Very exciting!

I'm impressed by the number of games entered, plus the (25ish?) authors who I don't recognize from IFComp, RAIF, or anything like that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=955&start=0#p5068
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: New game 'Hoosegow' released.
User: sussman / DateTime: 2010-02-02 19:44:59

Yeah, I added the ifwiki page.  Someone else added the IFDB one, I guess.  Woo!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=957&start=0#p5069
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: The process of writing IF
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-02-02 19:52:35

Every writer, and probably every programmer as well, has his or her own way of doing things, I'm sure.  There are many aspects of actually going about the task of writing IF.  Maybe some of them can only be learned by experience, but I think a discussion of the IF writing process could be useful for wannabe authors, such as myself.

One of the important practical decisions we have to make is whether to take notes about our vision for a game before beginning to write and code, and if so, how extensively.  When I used to play at making text adventures with Inform and ADRIFT as a young teen, I rarely took any notes.  If I did, the notes amounted to a scribbled, incomplete map that I never finished implementing.  My 2005 Comp entry came out nearly spontaneously in a little under two months.  At least partially on the advice of Mike Roberts in an article about the practical aspects of IF design that's included in the TADS documentation, I decided to make extensive notes for what I intended to be my next project, after having failed to get very far in a few hopeful projects after throwing "Dreary Lands" together.  Since June 2009, I've been occasionally jotting down notes, keeping them organized in a binder.  I'm glad that I didn't start coding when the initial concept came to me, because my plans have taken off in different directions.  My basic basic idea and ultimate goal have remained the same, but my current vision is much more complicated and ambitious than my original thoughts.

I'm wondering if any authors who have had success in completing their WIPs have any tips about the execution of our ideas and notes.  Several times, I felt like I was nearly ready to begin coding, but I don't know where to start.  This past December, I laid aside this WIP, on the top of my tremendous heap of forsaken ideas and wasted effort.  A new story idea had come to me, and I thought it could make a good IF game.  Frustrated with taking notes, I jumped right into coding.

In my experience, one of the difficulties of writing IF is introducing the plot.  In both this latest project that I'm working on and the previous one for which I made all the notes, I now realize that I don't know how to get the game into motion.  This realization is what recently made me decide that I need to mostly rewrite my start to this new game (I'll keep the two rooms), which isn't going anywhere.  Now I have an idea that would give another dimension to a game that I had abandoned at least a year ago, which was going to be built on the same premise as "Dreary Lands", but completely redone.  I know that I'll never get anywhere if I keep jumping from idea to idea, but it's really hard to stay focused on a project that seems to have a flat tire. [emote]:([/emote] 

Has anyone had success with the technique of writing a mock transcript before coding?  I'm thinking of trying this approach for my current WIP.

Well, I'm sorry that this post was so self-serving.  Most of my personal frustration is likely due to my laziness and indecisiveness, but I'm sure that some of it is common to the experience of trying to write interactive fiction.  I'd be interested in any discussion. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=833&start=0#p5070
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Starting out small?
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-02-02 20:04:09

I don't know that it's necessary to start with a "small" game, but I think it should be an uncomplicated one.  You probably don't want to do anything innovative with the IF format on your first attempt, and you may also want to stay away from difficult programming and extremely complicated plot devices.  As the wise posters above, who have experience in successfully completing IF, have said, the important thing is that you're motivated to finish it.

I find that when I try to do something very simple, it often ends up becoming rather ambitious as I think and fantasize about it.

I certainly wish you success!  [emote]:D[/emote]   It's very satisfying to have written an IF game.  I'm glad I ended up finishing "Dreary Lands" to enter it into the 2005 IF Competition, even though it was horribly buggy and amateur.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=949&start=0#p5071
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: A sort of RPG?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-02-02 20:34:09

[quote="RedOrZed"]I'm working on my first game, and I'm looking to provide different ways to solve the various problems. Rather than solving each problem in one defined order, there will be multiple solutions (within programmed limits of course).

My idea was the player could steal, bribe, use diplomacy, violence or simply think her way through. Obviously there is a story and a goal to be achieved, but I was trying to avoid a simple linear "find sword to kill troll to cross bridge to get jewel" type thing.[/quote]I like this.[quote="RedOrZed"]thinking further along these lines, the idea of getting better at particular "skills" the more they are done comes to mind. The more times the player opts to steal things, the easier it is to keep stealing, the more she talks to people diplomatically, the more persuasive she becomes etc.[/quote] But I don't like this. 

If the story's interaction comes from such circumnavigations, then blocking off those methods to all but ones the PC has practiced a lot at -- either due to practice or due to not-specialized-yet -- artificially dilutes the interactivity you just programmed into it.

Rather, if you want to accrue "flavored points", use those points as a kind of reputation among NPCs.  I.e., use them to have NPCs mention the PC's character obliquely.  For example, practiced at stealth could have NPCs jumping out of their socks when the PC talks to them. "OH jeez! You surprised me.  Um, yes, I think he's over by the fountain talking to Biggs."  That sort of thing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=957&start=0#p5072
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: The process of writing IF
User: George / DateTime: 2010-02-02 20:56:19

I can't really comment on finishing IF, as I haven't ;D. Emily Short has a good article at her site about various ways to go about implementing a game, from mock transcript to design document, etcetera, here: <a class="postlink" href="http://emshort.wordpress.com/2009/08/23/idea-to-implementation/">http://emshort.wordpress.com/2009/08/23 ... mentation/</a>.

One piece of advice that I think is good is to 'start in the middle'. That is, don't start a game by writing the beginning (a pitfall your game fell in it seems). By the time you get to the end it's likely your beginning will be the weakest part of your game, both in terms of coding/technical skill, and in relation to what comes after as the game naturally develops. Since a strong beginning is critical, you could try putting this off until the game is well established.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=957&start=0#p5073
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: The process of writing IF
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-02-02 21:06:00

Until people filter in and 'fess up, Emily Short had an excellent blog post on this in August: 

<a class="postlink" href="http://emshort.wordpress.com/2009/08/23/idea-to-implementation/">http://emshort.wordpress.com/2009/08/23 ... mentation/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=954&start=0#p5074
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question: Combining items to create a new item
User: k_sharp / DateTime: 2010-02-02 21:43:22

I assume this same trick could also be used to move a NPC to the player's location??

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=847&start=30#p5075
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: When are results announced?
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-02-02 22:27:07

[quote="George"]Is that somehow a metaphor for what this thread has become?[/quote]

Well, this thread is about subjects which deal about the results of IFComp 2009, as imposed by the thread starter.
Watch the video and you will know why I posted it.

I mean, come on, do you really believe that bad reviews and low ratings will scare someone like me off?
I thought you knew better.

They say the world is going to end in 2012 and not 2010. I'm just sayin'.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=945&start=0#p5076
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New style system in Glulx
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-02-03 00:22:20

Okay, that's a reasonably encouraging set of replies. Thanks all.

My notions for old games:

Some interpreters will support both the old system and the new system. In such an interpreter, old games will default to the old system and new games will default to the new system. (Because new games will have a call compiled in to request the new system.) On those interpreters, everything would work fine.

However, I expect (going forward) that some interpreters will only support the new system. For example, Quixe. (That's the Javascript Glulx interpreter that I've been working on slowly. It's going to be enough work to get one system looking good on it; two is over my horizon.)

In the new system, the old styles would be understood by default. So an old game that simply used those styles (without setting stylehints) would still work sensibly on *all* interpreters.

The problem case is when you run an old game which sets stylehints (customized style appearance, particularly for the two "user" styles) on Quixe (or some other interpreter which only handles the new system). The stylehints would be ignored and the user styles would appear as plain text. The games would ultimately have to be updated to look right.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=945&start=10#p5077
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New style system in Glulx
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-02-03 00:41:05

Other questions:

Hyperlinks: I honestly haven't thought them through. I guess the game stylesheet will be able to set properties for hyperlinks just as for styles -- it would be a CSS class, distinct from any of the Glulx style classes.

Multiple classes: You can only assign one style to a given bit of text. They don't stack. I think this is unavoidable; the way I'm dealing with style inheritance (and hyperlinks) means that each style adds several CSS classes. Paragraph style attributes (attributes like paragraph-indent, right-align, etc) also get handled in a somewhat icky way with CSS classes. The interpreter has to be able to handle all this consistently, and allowing multiple *styles* on a piece of text would become exponentially painful.

Interpreter identification: As I noted above, you will be able to request either the old style system or the new system, although a given interpreter might only support one or the other. You will also be able to query which system you've got. 

I'm not planning to have a way to identify which *interpreter* you're on, because doing anything useful with that information is kind of a nightmare. (Interpreters change more often than games do, in the long term.)

Dynamic hints: As vaporware notes, there are things you can't do without runtime style changes. Linear interpolation of styles gives you some of those options back; other things remain impossible.

This model is a tradeoff, and I am sufficiently convinced of the value gained to make sacrifices. (The value gained, in this case, is *not* having to pass CSS -- or CSS-equivalent data -- into and out of the virtual machine. Also, being able to define the full spread of appearance data at startup time. Mutating an HTML document's stylesheet at runtime -- which is what Quixe would do -- is not an efficient activity.) 

As I said on RAIF, coming up with a flexible system for displaying IF is hard enough without *also* designing a flexible system for displaying *IF customization widgets*. I appreciate that interpreters will have different ways of doing this -- but I think they will, on the whole, be better than letting each game ad-hoc a solution. And one of the points of the stylesheet system is to *give* interpreters a consistent way to customize styles: "download a stylesheet file and install it". Supporting that is a low burden on interpreter-maintainers, so it should be reasonably portable.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=945&start=10#p5078
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New style system in Glulx
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-02-03 00:43:10

So, I will go forward with this. I will write up the plan in more detail (enough detail that you can notionally write CSS and know what it will do), and also start talking directly to the I7 team and interpreter maintainers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=880&start=0#p5079
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Aisle-like games, teaching IF with positive reinforcement?
User: scramble / DateTime: 2010-02-03 07:25:50

[quote="George"]Anyway, this is a little OT to the original post.  [emote]:D[/emote][/quote]

It might be, but it also could end up with one of us doing an Aisle-style game, just what the OP wishes for  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=956&start=0#p5080
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Jay Is Games All-IF Competition
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2010-02-03 07:56:08

[quote="Sargent"]There are a number of games from community regulars. Off the top of my head, here are the ones I saw: [...][/quote]
Andrew Plotkin also said he'd submit a game, but apparently, he used a pseudonym.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=957&start=0#p5081
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: The process of writing IF
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2010-02-03 09:43:59

I've gone about this a number of different ways, most recently with the design-stuff-on paper followed by a transcript.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=956&start=0#p5082
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Jay Is Games All-IF Competition
User: Pe-ads / DateTime: 2010-02-03 10:19:02

I was a writing a game for it, but didn't finish it in time  [emote]:([/emote] . Oh wells. I guess I'll enter it into a different comp. It's certainly been a learning experience (my first game!).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=957&start=0#p5083
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: The process of writing IF
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-02-03 11:26:14

For every game I've finished, I had ten ideas for games that never went anywhere.

An important part of it is settling on the right idea, something you care about, but also something with properly defined limits to it.  If you start without knowing where you're going to finish, you'll probably struggle to ever get there, whereas if you at least know what your goal is, it doesn't matter so much if the path there is fuzzy.

My usual process, after I've settled on an idea (which usually involves notes and prototypes) is to create the bare bones of the game - the locations and main interactions, and then flesh it out.  With my last game I completed each scene in the order the player would encounter them, but I found that a bit arduous.

Obviously, once you're a fair way into any creative project it becomes more difficult to keep working on it, but as long as you care about the idea, you'll want to finish it to prevent all your work so far going to waste.

[quote="Bainespal"]Has anyone had success with the technique of writing a mock transcript before coding?  I'm thinking of trying this approach for my current WIP.[/quote]
Well, the game that won the last IFComp was written in this fashion.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=958&start=0#p5084
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Comps with nearish deadlines...
User: Pe-ads / DateTime: 2010-02-03 16:03:13

Hi guys,

I was writing a game for the recent Jay is Games IF contest, but didn't finish my game in time [emote]:([/emote] . Oh wells. Anyway, I was wondering if there were any comps that finish in about 1-2 months time? The theme for Jay is Games comp was 'Escape', so it would either have to be a general contest or one with that theme.


Any help would be appreciated,

Pe-ads

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=958&start=0#p5085
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Comps with nearish deadlines...
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-02-03 16:31:24

Spring Thing might be your best bet:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.springthing.net/2010/">http://www.springthing.net/2010/</a>

If your game has only one room, the One Room Game Competition is also an option:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.avventuretestuali.com/orgc/orgc2010_eng">http://www.avventuretestuali.com/orgc/orgc2010_eng</a>

There's also a list of comps here (scroll to the bottom):

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifwiki.org/index.php/Main_Page">http://ifwiki.org/index.php/Main_Page</a>

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=945&start=10#p5086
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New style system in Glulx
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-02-03 17:10:54

I've proposed my own set of extensions on RAIF, with the more modest goal of making Glk's style capabilities a superset of the Z-machine's (to allow Z-code style extensions to be ported, and to allow fully functional Z-machine interpreters to use Glk as their output system). Summary:

[list]
[*]Add support for temporary style hints, which take effect immediately and take precedence over the currently selected style.[/*:m]
[*]Add support for terminating characters, which end line input without printing a newline and let the game know which key the user pressed.[/*:m]
[*]Add support for "unwriting" text at the end of a window, to support the Z-machine's wacky arrangement for partial line input.[/*:m]
[*]Increase the number of user styles to 16.[/*:m][/list:u]

zarf, I imagine you won't want any part of this, but I would like to at least coordinate the various constants (new user styles, gestalt selectors, dispatch selectors) to avoid conflicts with the official Glk spec.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=957&start=0#p5087
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: The process of writing IF
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-02-03 17:34:58

Thanks for the replies.  [emote]:)[/emote]   There's some genuinely helpful and interesting information here.  I haven't finished reading Emily Short's article yet, but it's just the kind of analysis that I was looking for.  Thanks for the pointer, Ron and George.

[quote="George"]One piece of advice that I think is good is to 'start in the middle'. That is, don't start a game by writing the beginning (a pitfall your game fell in it seems). By the time you get to the end it's likely your beginning will be the weakest part of your game, both in terms of coding/technical skill, and in relation to what comes after as the game naturally develops. Since a strong beginning is critical, you could try putting this off until the game is well established.[/quote]
That's a very interesting design philosophy that I had never even imagined.  It may be very worthwhile.  I'm always excited about the really interesting bits that I'm planning on implementing, but I never know how to advance to those parts.  It may be a very good idea to code my favorite or most important parts first, and work backwards toward the less-important parts.

[quote="Pacian"]An important part of it is settling on the right idea, something you care about, but also something with properly defined limits to it. If you start without knowing where you're going to finish, you'll probably struggle to ever get there, whereas if you at least know what your goal is, it doesn't matter so much if the path there is fuzzy.[/quote]
I think I understand what you're saying, and I agree.  If you keep changing you're mind about what you want to accomplish, or about what you fundamentally want your game to be, then it's highly unlikely that you'll ever finish.  Strangely, the only game that I ever "finished" -- at least released -- was done without much of a final goal besides creating a real text adventure that could be won.  I don't think I would have cared that much how it turned out, as long as I had [i]something[/i] to enter the Competition with.  Of course, that little game hardly disproves that you need to have a specific, unchanging goal in order to successfully complete most [i]serious[/i] IF projects.  I have very definite goals for my two most recent attempts, so I'm hopeful that I may be able to finish them one day.

[quote="Pacian"]My usual process, after I've settled on an idea (which usually involves notes and prototypes) is to create the bare bones of the game - the locations and main interactions, and then flesh it out. With my last game I completed each scene in the order the player would encounter them, but I found that a bit arduous.[/quote]
I think this process may be very workable for those who can stick to it.  With my latest (perhaps my current) WIP, I was trying to do this, more or less, except that I was working chronologically from the beginning to the end.  However, when I don't know what to do to make progress, I start working on the details that I had intended to save for later.  That can be dangerous if anything needs to be changed, and it can cause burnout.

Good thoughts, everyone.  [emote]:D[/emote]   I can't wait to finish reading Emily Short's excellent exposition on the subject.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=945&start=10#p5088
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New style system in Glulx
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-02-03 21:22:08

[quote="zarf"]Hyperlinks: I honestly haven't thought them through. I guess the game stylesheet will be able to set properties for hyperlinks just as for styles -- it would be a CSS class, distinct from any of the Glulx style classes.[/quote]This makes Hyperlink one of the basic ten (eleven) styles?  I imagine with the web-based terps, having email addys and website links for the author's homepage in the CREDITS will become increasingly common.  

Also, is there a difference between hyperlinks that just do something in-game, and hyperlinks that actually go to the wilds of the internet?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=847&start=30#p5089
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: When are results announced?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-02-03 21:48:40

Hi Emilian, I didn't play Trap Cave, mostly because of the reviews I read which said it was half English / half German.

I would definitely encourage you to enter a game in the next IF comp (or Spring Thing or one of the many other comps), just make sure it's written in a single language. Make that German if you have to (though understand then that only German speakers will vote on it.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=959&start=0#p5090
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Parchment!
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-02-03 22:23:12

Hi, I'm Dannii the main developer for Parchment the web Z-Machine interpreter.

Since Parchment was introduced a year and a half ago we've had a lot of people use it and tell us they love it! We now regularly have hundreds of users a day, and sometimes that reaches the thousands.

But I don't feel I really know what Parchment's users think about it. The amount of feedback we receive has slowed somewhat.

So, if you've used it, what do you think? Any comments at all would wonderful. What do you like, or dislike? Any bugs? Features you wished it had? Had any crazy dreams that involve Parchment?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=959&start=0#p5091
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment!
User: George / DateTime: 2010-02-04 00:54:17

The main thing I would like to see would be more platforms supported -- TADS, Adrift, Hugo, and an API for hooking it into new platforms (that may already exist, I'm not sure). I realize some of those may be hard targets (especially Hugo and Adrift) and some are on the horizon...but new platforms would be my top choice if things were prioritized. 

I like Parchment, though to be honest I rarely use it for playing full games. Usually I use the play now button at IFDB (the one that downloads and then starts the game automatically), and it's virtually like having a browser interpreter for all platforms. 

I did in fact have a crazy dream involving Parchment -- have you ever seen the Flash site [url=http://wonderfl.net/]wonderfl[/url]? I thought of the same thing, only for Inform 7, using Parchment.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=958&start=0#p5092
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Comps with nearish deadlines...
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-02-04 01:12:44

And there's nothing wrong with just releasing the game. Non-comp games get much more exposure these days than they used to.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=959&start=0#p5093
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment!
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-02-04 01:25:43

More platforms is definitely something we're working on, well for Glulx at least. I've looked into the TADS 3 VM spec, but it's one complicated thing. There are no independent implementations of it - only the original one that Mike Roberts made has been ported around for other OSes. There is a full spec for the VM, but that doesn't mean implementing it will be easy, or ever hard. It could be very hard [emote]:P[/emote]. Because its so complicated I suspect no one other than Mike actually grasps how it all works, as compared to the Z-Machine and Glulx which have had many independent implementations and oobviously many people grasp how they work.

I'm not aware of there being specs for the other systems you mentioned. It could amount to reverse-engineering another interpreter, something I am not going to even consider doing.

All, a web compiler for Inform? That's a good idea, I've considered it before. Not too easy, and not really in the scope of the Parchment project either... but another project could definitely use Parchment as part of it.

Thanks for your comments!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=960&start=0#p5094
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Divis Mortis - general questions and beta testing
User: lglasser / DateTime: 2010-02-04 02:44:52

Hi there, IF-savvy.

I'm quite new to writing IF, but I've been working on something since the last comp, and I thought I'd give it a shot for the one coming up in a year; I definitely need some beta testing/advice.  There's nothing I hate more than turning in something that is half-finished, so I have, and will continue to put a lot of work into it.  I have a few beta testers already at it, but I need someone who is more savvy to text adventures.  I have played through past entries, and read reviews, but these things are still difficult for me to judge, and are my main concerns:
 
1. Game length.  Having written all the puzzles, it's really difficult for me to tell how long the game would take.  There are things I can do to trim/ lengthen it.  This also applies to descriptions.

2. Hinting / giving a direction.  I am also not sure how heavy-handed my in-game hinting is vs. how it should be.  That goes for my 'hint' system as well.

3. Well, there are a few other things too, but they are more puzzle-specific.

The game setting is a post-apocalypse, zombie-infested hospital.

Thanks in advance for the help!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=958&start=0#p5095
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Comps with nearish deadlines...
User: Pe-ads / DateTime: 2010-02-04 05:27:56

Spring Thing looked interesting, but it said the entry cost could be anywhere between $7 and $100. $20 would probably be max on entry fee; it's my first game, and not that good.

The One Room comp looked interesting, but my game has [i]two[/i] rooms, albeit the second being only box room size. I could condense them into one room, but I don't really want to do that.

I guess I'll just release it outside of a comp. Perhaps I can get some publicity if Jay is Games decides to review it. It also means I'll have as much time as I want to test/edit it [emote];)[/emote] . I worked out I could probably have [i]just[/i] finished it for the Jay is Games comp, but it would have not been very well tested, and I would have had to work for 3 hours a day on it. Not good. Now I have a lot more time to make it better.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=958&start=0#p5096
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Comps with nearish deadlines...
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-02-04 05:38:05

[quote="Pe-ads"]Spring Thing looked interesting, but it said the entry cost could be anywhere between $7 and $100. $20 would probably be max on entry fee; it's my first game, and not that good.[/quote]
Actually it says the TOTAL of entry fees can be from $7 to more than $100. The entry fee for one game is $7 ("After hearing back from the organizer, you should then send a non-refundable entry fee of $7 US to the prize pool.")

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=958&start=0#p5097
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Comps with nearish deadlines...
User: Pe-ads / DateTime: 2010-02-04 07:31:59

@Nitku

Ah, that clarifies it a lot! I may enter it now, as seeing $7 is only about £5. However, I still think I'll release it privately, because as it's my first game I'll really want feedback on the puzzles and stuff, and whilst I know beta-testers can do that, I'm not about to rewrite the puzzles! I'm also a little tired of the project, so finishing my current game will be good.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=945&start=10#p5098
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New style system in Glulx
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-02-04 10:51:14

No, hyperlink *wouldn't* be one of the Glk styles. It *would* be controlled by the stylesheets, however, as the Glk styles are.

The current Glk hyperlink spec is only about doing things in-game. There's no facility for making a "real" browser-level href. That falls into the category of "full HTML output", which would be a new output mechanism, not an extension of Glk.

(However, I'm looking at the notion of HTML *windows* in Glk. Not going to be in the next revision, but maybe after that.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=945&start=10#p5099
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New style system in Glulx
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-02-04 11:12:17

I've already replied to some of vaporware's post on the newsgroup. 

The summary is: the suggestion of line-terminators is something that I had already planned to incorporate into the spec, and it will look more or less like that. The other suggestions are not going to become official Glk features (not even "optional features" in the spec), but I will reserve selector numbers for them, to prevent future collisions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=960&start=0#p5100
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Divis Mortis - general questions and beta testing
User: George / DateTime: 2010-02-04 11:20:00

hi, I'd be happy to test your game, feel free to PM.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=961&start=0#p5101
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: The Man in the Rain - Medieval Fantasy adventure
User: Terrier Games / DateTime: 2010-02-04 12:51:16

This game is the first game I have ever made in TADS.

It's a medieval fantasy adventure, in which you play a young warrior who is looking for the mystical wise man who will cure your dying queen. A bit cliche, I know but I tried to do something interesting with it...

Any comments are much appreciated! [emote]:D[/emote] 

[url=http://bedroomcoder.wordpress.com/2010/02/04/the-man-in-the-rain-text-adventure-puzzle/]Link.[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=962&start=0#p5102
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: A host of troubles (rantish)
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-02-04 13:45:28

Hey all. I've attempted to work on my I7 project for the last two days, the vast majority of which has been spent careening between frustration, obtuseness and bafflement. In fact, I'm nearing my wit's end; it seem that whenever I want to accomplish something seemingly trivial, Inform tells me it isn't possible, and during the ensuing attempt to fix the issue regardless of the warning I inevitably get smacked with new, completely incomprehensible roadblocks.

[code]A cage is a kind of container. A cage is transparent, openable, lockable, and enterable.

The Penitentiary is a room.
A cell is a kind of cage. A cell is closed and locked.

Nearness relates various things to various things. The verb to be close to implies the nearness relation.
Definition: a cell is the player's if it contains the player.
Definition: a cell is other if it does not contain the player.
Definition: a cell is closest if it is close to the player's cell and the number of cells close to the player's cell is not 2.
Definition: a thing is grabbable if the thing is close to the player's cell.

Understand "this" as a thing when the item described contains the player.
Understand "middle/center cell" as Cell Two.
Understand "left-most/left-hand/lefthand/leftmost/left cell" as Cell One.
Understand "right-most/right-hand/righthand/rightmost/right cell" as Cell Three.
Understand "closest/nearest/nearby" as a thing when the item described is closest.
Understand "farthest/distant/opposite" as Cell Three when the player's cell is Cell One.
Understand "farthest/distant/opposite" as Cell One when the player's cell is Cell Three.

The corpse is a thing. The corpse is in Cell Two.

Rule for printing the name of the player's cell when the reason the action failed is can't exit closed containers rule:
	say "the cell".

Cell One is close to Cell Two. Cell Two is close to Cell One. Cell Two is close to Cell Three. Cell Three is close to Cell Two.

Cell One is a cell. Cell Two is a cell. Cell Three is a cell. 
Cell One is in the Penitentiary. The printed name of cell one is "the left-hand cell". 
Cell Two is in the Penitentiary. The printed name of cell two is "the middle cell".
Cell Three is in the Penitentiary. The printed name of cell three is "the right-hand cell".

Ane is a woman. Ane is in Cell Three. The player is Ane. Understand "your cell" as Cell Three.[/code]

The first thing I started with was the creation of a prison. I wanted to allow the player to interact with things that were close to the door, therefore I decided there had to be cells with bars. Since I don't want to hard-code all the given items by hand, it being an ideal breeding place for bugs, I decided, "why not create objects that mimic this behaviour instead"?

My first attempt was to model any situation in which such cell cages could be stacked, wall to wall, in a line. It would have the following behaviours associated with itself:
[list][*][i]Close to[/i] was to mean [i]thing close enough to affect by someone in a given cell[/i]. Originally, the only reason for that was to that was handling cage-to-outside actions, but it gained an additional use in showing which other cell was in range.[/*:m][*]The occupied cell would be referred to, and understood as, "your cell", "this cell", and sensible variations thereof.[/*:m][*] "The closest cell" or "the other cell" would be understood as the cell closest to your own, but only as long as you were in a cell, and only as long as there was exactly one cell in contact with your cell. [/*:m][*] "the left-hand cell" or "the right-hand cell" was going to be understood as relative to the cell the player was inside, but only if there was in fact a cell to the right or to the left.[/*:m][/list:u]

So far, a veritable cavalcade of craziness has ensued. Some choice highlights:
[list]
[*] The word "other" defies any attempt at alteration by Understand statements, as far as I can see. I can find no documentation on this, but sadly, that makes it no different from most other issues. Once again, bringing out the trusty regular expression hacksaw seems the only way.[/*:m]
[*] "Your cell" as a word in the above text will never be properly capitalized during error messages and the like. It seems that the printed names of things aren't treated like proper names, for reasons beyond my understanding.[/*:m]
[*] On a similar note, I can find no clear way of affecting names echoed during certain rule failures. This means the parser will always say "your cell is closed and locked.", sans capitalization. If you do capitalize, the error instead crops up in the header and quite likely later on.[/*:m]
[*] Examining a translucent container will cause it to revert to the "search" action - unless, of course, you provide the container with a description. If you do so, the command will instead examine the container as usual; it does so even when the description text contains a list of its contents. Have found no explanation for this behaviour.[/*:m]
[*] Just an aside, but I still find it quite bizarre that we can declare "[action] is [x]", as in "talking to someone is disobedient behaviour", yet lack the ability to limit those conditions. Instead, we have to go the way of "instead of engaging in disobedient behaviour at the Inn" in order to box in the declaration and prevent it from wreaking havoc within the game world. I understand why it is so, but it is one more instance where the natural language approach hampers my progress.[/*:m]
[*] Largely defeated, I vowed to at least implement some measure of my idea. Accordingly, I scaled it down to three cells, and set the relations between them manually. This is where the vexation regarding printed name and "other" appeared, and neither would be appeased. Thus, it was also where I admitted defeat.[/*:m][/list:u]

Bitching about I7 isn't what I want to do, really. It's a marvellous system in so many ways, and it really has made me wish to learn all I can. I want to [i]create[/i], not throw tantrums. However, at this point, I feel trapped and unable to do anything else.

I don't know if the solution is to learn I6. I also don't know whether I should even try, because there's literally no way for me to know which parts of I6 is rendered redundant or explosive in an I7 context. I don't know what will happen if/when I manage to finish this room; without ability to encapsulate the code, it may wreak changes both far-reaching and fatal. I could create a wonderful 98% of a game before realizing (as I have before, in some shape or form) that it suddenly no longer works, and hasn't for quite some time. At which point, of course, the game is effectively beyond saving.

I don't know which things are impossible or which are dead simple (quite often, official solutions seem to consider a problem solved when it is solved once, in a way that can't easily be generalized). I don't know whether implementing a thing will take five minutes or five days. And I don't see myself improving on that score, either, because there's only so much reading of the manual and forums one can do before knuckling under.

"This was a simple room," I thought. "The player is imprisoned. There's another cell, and through the bars she can barely reach something in that other cell which will allow her to escape." That is, of course, where the complexity lay. But... still. Complexity, true, but overwhelming? Since I can specify its behaviour quite well using meta-code, that is not likely to be the issue.

So I guess a rather embarrassing diatribe now segues into these questions:

[list=1][*] Is I6 the only way out of this mire? [i]Is[/i] there a way at all?[/*:m]
[*] What parts and conventions of I6 will no longer work and/or destroy I7 when introduced to it?[/*:m]
[*] How do I make a printed name behave like an actual name?[/*:m][/list:o]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=946&start=10#p5103
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Graphical Interactive Fiction
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-02-04 16:14:00

[quote="Peter Pears"]Eye candy can't really ruin a game.[/quote]

oh, it can!

Mystery House
[img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/Mystery_House_-_Apple_II_render_emulation_-_2.png[/img]

King's Quest
[img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f2/Kings_Quest_Tandy.png[/img]

I don't know about you, but these depictions are truly crude and laughable, despite being the top "eye candy" for the time.  Even Myst suffers from that today.

This depiction on the other hand is as evocative and timeless as it ever was:

"YOU ARE IN A SPLENDID CHAMBER THIRTY FEET HIGH. THE WALLS ARE FROZEN RIVERS OF ORANGE STONE."

There's no substitute for words when it comes to make one's imagination roll on and I suspect those with "more visual inspired imaginations" actually lack imagination at all and have to rely on an artist's particular depiction.  Or perhaps it's just laziness as usual...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=962&start=0#p5105
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A host of troubles (rantish)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-02-04 16:30:38

Hi, Eleas. I don't think any of your problems stem from Inform's natural language syntax. Instead, I think they stem from unfamiliarity with portions of the library and of the system. This wouldn't be improved by switching to I6; the libraries are comparable. 

The main problem folks face in learning the intermediate and advanced aspects of in Inform is that there is no really *accessible* documentation of the I7 library code. The closest thing is Appendix A, which is an annotated version of the Standard Rules. It's good documentation of the code (which is all it aspires to be), but it doesn't really bridge the gap between the manual and what you'd get out of just reading the code.*  (Jeff Nyman is working on a manual, or series of mini-manuals, that should go a good way toward rectifying this; at least they will if the chapter he put together on descriptions and locales is an indication of what's to come.) For now, though, only asking questions, smart testing--using debugging commands such as RULES and ACTIONS, as well as the Rules and Actions tabs in the Index--and delving into the more obscure parts of the documentation (e.g., appendices, syntax crib, flow of play diagram) can get you over the hump.

The problem with "other", for example, is quite simple: the reason that "other" doesn't work as you want it to is that the player is constrained by the container she's in; the library, specifically the "can't reach outside closed containers rule", prevents her from doing anything to items outside, including examining them. Add this:

[code]The can't reach outside closed containers rule is not listed in any rulebook.[/code]

... and that problem will go away. (Actually, destroying the rule like this is probably overdoing it--you'd probably want to write rules that bypass the can't reach outside closed containers rule, but only in certain circumstances, such as when the player is in the Penitentiary.) 

So, how would you have found this on your own? The best way would be to go to Appendix A/the Standard Rules and read about containers. To discover that you need to do this, though, use the RULES and ACTIONS commands. Type both, then examine the middle cell. This will clearly indicate that the 

[code]>x middle cell
[examining the middle cell]
[Rule "examine undescribed containers rule" applies.]
[(1) searching the middle cell]
The right-hand cell isn't open.
[(1) searching the middle cell - failed the basic accessibility rule]

[Rule "report other people examining rule" applies.]
[examining the middle cell - succeeded][/code]

This clearly indicates that the "examine undescribed containers rule" has forwarded the action to the searching action. Look up both that rule and that action in the Standard Rules, and you'll find what you need to selectively disable the library behavior.

Similarly, as you'll see if you type "RULES" before examining a cell (this single technique is probably the most valuable for tracking down issues where you're getting output you don't understand), the reason that you get a list of the objects in a cell when you examine it is that same "examine undescribed containers" rule:

[code]>x middle cell
[Rule "examine undescribed containers rule" applies.]
[Rule "can't search unless container or supporter rule" applies.]
[Rule "can't search closed opaque containers rule" applies.]
[Rule "standard search containers rule" applies.]
In the middle cell is a corpse.[/code]

You ask why Inform forwards things to the searching action--it's because a listing of the contents makes sense as a response to examining a transparent (or open) container, and listing the contents of things is what the searching action does. And so a rule to forward the examining of containers to the searching action was written into the library. You can override this behavior, as you discovered, by giving a description to the container. (You can list the contents yourself in that description, which will give you more interesting prose in any case.) If you want a totally different, procedurally generated description, you'll need to bypass the examine undescribed containers rule to provide your own rule for describing a container.

--Erik

* Appendix B goes even deeper, into the I6 Template.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=799&start=0#p5106
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Tools for mapping interactive fiction games?
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-02-04 16:46:17

how about the brain?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=962&start=0#p5107
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A host of troubles (rantish)
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-02-04 18:01:34

[quote="ektemple"]Hi, Eleas. I don't think any of your problems stem from Inform's natural language syntax. Instead, I think they stem from unfamiliarity with portions of the library and of the system. This wouldn't be improved by switching to I6; the libraries are comparable.[/quote]

Hi, erik.

First, thanks simply for deciding to reply. Part of me had feared it wouldn't happen for a few more days at the very least. 

Yeah, I gather it's a matter of the libraries, and that they are comparable. This is also the reason why I considered whether it would be wise to [i]learn[/i] I6; not in order to switch systems, but in order to understand I7 better and on a deeper level, and hopefully break the deadlock.

That desire is tempered, though, by the niggling worry that I7 and I6 have already sufficiently diverged. I know that, for instance, I7 adds additional functionality in its libraries, so that methodology seen in DM4 will often be redundant, and not a few times destructive, if introduced into I7 code. 

Hence my worry - is it at all profitable to learn I6, in terms of time? How much can I [i]change[/i] in I7's behaviour (in terms of early-stage parsing or the illumination handling, say) by use of I6 code, when speaking of things that can't be readily changed by vanilla I7 programming?

As it is now, I don't have enough information to make a judgement call. During the last two weeks, I learned both VB.net and C#, so learning I6 should not be beyond me. It would be bitter, however, to discover that after I was done, what I wanted to do was in fact impossible.

[quote]The main problem folks face in learning the intermediate and advanced aspects of in Inform is that there is no really *accessible* documentation of the I7 library code. The closest thing is Appendix A, which is an annotated version of the Standard Rules. It's good documentation of the code (which is all it aspires to be), but it doesn't really bridge the gap between the manual and what you'd get out of just reading the code.* (Jeff Nyman is working on a manual, or series of mini-manuals, that should go a good way toward rectifying this; at least they will if the chapter he put together on descriptions and locales is an indication of what's to come.)[/quote]

I get the sense of this as well. It's still a beta, of course, but I recognize what you're saying - in fact, more or less I got the impression of Appendix A being more or less a glossary. There's that, and the way the text is disposed and structured, which tends to play havoc with ADD tendencies. 

I think the old idea of an "Inform 7 guide to programming" that I read about on rec.arts.int-fiction was a good suggestion, although I do recognize the need to break from old practises. You mention Jeff Nyman's new efforts, and judging solely by his previous work, I'm quite excited to see what he has in store.

[quote]For now, though, only asking questions, smart testing--using debugging commands such as RULES and ACTIONS, as well as the Rules and Actions tabs in the Index--and delving into the more obscure parts of the documentation (e.g., appendices, syntax crib, flow of play diagram) can get you over the hump.[/quote]

I'm doing this at the moment, albeit partially. I think the presence of I6 here remains a hampering influence. Understanding something that already requires new ways of thinking is difficult as it is. Knowing that there is a lot of stuff working behind the hood that kinda sorta almost is this other language that you might as well learn and which might work or destroy all you've made... well. That's a distraction, to put it mildly. When I don't understand something in I7, I tend to suspect it's buried in I6 code somewhere.

[quote]The problem with "other", for example, is quite simple: the reason that "other" doesn't work as you want it to is that the player is constrained by the container she's in; the library, specifically the "can't reach outside closed containers rule", prevents her from doing anything to items outside, including examining them. Add this:

[code]The can't reach outside closed containers rule is not listed in any rulebook.[/code]

... and that problem will go away.[/quote]

I hate to make this rejoinder, but that alteration doesn't work. It does in the code I sent earlier, surprisingly enough (I tried that technique earlier on without success; must have made changes later on that reenabled it, somehow). Regardless, the idea is good, but fails to work in the example below.

[code]
The can't reach outside closed containers rule is not listed in any rulebook.
A cage is a kind of container. A cage is transparent, openable, lockable, and enterable.

The Penitentiary is a room.
A cell is a kind of cage. A cell is closed and locked.
Nearness relates various things to each other. The verb to be close to implies the nearness relation.

Definition: a cell is the player's if it contains the player.

minë, atta, neldë, canta, lempë, enquë, and otso are cells in the Penitentiary.
Understand "other cell" as atta.

When play begins:
	let M be the list of cells in location;
	let num be the number of entries in M - 1;
	let y be a number;
	repeat with x running from 1 to num:
		let y be x;
		increase y by one;
		now entry x of M is close to entry y  of M.

Ane is a woman. The player is Ane. Ane is in minë.[/code]

Had I known [i]why[/i] things were this way, or where to look (I will now check the library, as per your recommendation, but I can't really grasp why the differences here should make for substantial difference), I'd have had a day to spend on developing story or characters, instead of cursing the interpreter. As you can tell from the above code, I figured even Quenya would fail to make the situation worse.

...and now, I'm suddenly getting the sinking feeling that must be the answer, regardless of previous testing on regular-looking cell names. Ah well.

[quote](Actually, destroying the rule like this is probably overdoing it--you'd probably want to write rules that bypass the can't reach outside closed containers rule, but only in certain circumstances, such as when the player is in the Penitentiary.) [/quote]

This is also something that I've really strained to do, but which I find massively difficult to attain in practise, because in the vast majority of cases, stacking conditions of that kind result in parser errors. In more than one instance, where it was really necessary, I had to nest Definition: or To Decide: statements in order to get an end result that the parser would accept.

[quote]So, how would you have found this on your own? 

<snip>

This clearly indicates that the "examine undescribed containers rule" has forwarded the action to the searching action. Look up both that rule and that action in the Standard Rules, and you'll find what you need to selectively disable the library behavior.[/quote]

I did this earlier, but left it out of my source code in the interests of brevity (and, to be honest, out of sheer exhaustion). One attempt that I managed to get to working used this, and was intended to allow for simply examining the cells, which was why I had to disable both reaching out and reaching in behaviours to get a transparent box description in the first place. Both actions and rules reporting were very helpful in that regard.

I will add (and this was of course not at all self-evident, for which I apologise) that I don't tend to post raw source code when an error crops up; I post a code that demonstrates the error. This one was a bit sloppy and wordy, because there was no single back-breaking error but several tiny issues, one of them being the printed name issue of which I still cannot make head nor tail.

[quote]You ask why Inform forwards things to the searching action--it's because a listing of the contents makes sense as a response to examining a transparent (or open) container, and listing the contents of things is what the searching action does. And so a rule to forward the examining of containers to the searching action was written into the library.[/quote]

Thank you, most interesting. One vexing aspect of traditional IF is that all these conventions are ubiquitous, yet largely unexplained to newcomers. Beginners first learn the meanings of the compass keywords, "up" and "down", inventory and taking. That's easy. However, though I'm past that stage, I still remain largely uncertain as to whether examining an object implies that I hold it or not, just to pick an example. The full (and unstated) implication of "search" was something I didn't know until just now.

This, I think, might be a useful thing to elaborate on in a manual, or maybe a companion piece. There's a real danger in refusal to make games accessible, and some time-honoured IF conventions [i]are[/i] cruft, despite praiseworthy efforts toward innovation. If we are to praise the power of natural language - and I think we should - how can we then praise the effort of neutering said language as a wonderful step toward "stringency" or "economy of language"? It does not scan. One can be stringent without being rabid about it.

</random tangent>

[quote]You can override this behavior, as you discovered, by giving a description to the container. (You can list the contents yourself in that description, which will give you more interesting prose in any case.) If you want a totally different, procedurally generated description, you'll need to bypass the examine undescribed containers rule to provide your own rule for describing a container.[/quote]

Thank you. The knowledge of what could be done was nice - the explanation, however, was of immense value. I think someone on the forum referred to the old adage about teaching a man to fish; that's rather how it feels. In order to do the programming equivalent, one must teach why something happens, not just simply that it does.

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to reply, and for putting up with no small amount of whining. I blame this week and my wavering journey between hard-case OOP and I7... and the fact that the syntax autocoloring in both editors looks somewhat alike. Regardless, however, I will reiterate - I'm not going to use this as part of some sinister or drive a wedge between practitioners of proper IF; I'm not (or so I would [i]like[/i] to think, at least) complaining for it's own sake. And as for my comments on newcomers and IF, I may well hope to offer some variation to the theme later on, but, in all honesty, right now I'm just trying to see what works best for me.


EDIT: Gah. Apologies for massively editing this, but, being tired, spelling errors and bizarre phrasing was abundant.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=962&start=0#p5108
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A host of troubles (rantish)
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-02-04 20:01:20

[quote="Eleas"]I think the old idea of an "Inform 7 guide to programming" that I read about on rec.arts.int-fiction was a good suggestion, although I do recognize the need to break from old practises.[/quote]The Programmer's Guide was moved to... well heck, why don't I just stick that into my sig? 

Voilá:

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=946&start=10#p5109
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Graphical Interactive Fiction
User: GameSmith / DateTime: 2010-02-04 21:23:47

It is a little ironic that you would post a screenshot from Mystery House as that is actually the type of graphics I am trying to emulate. Mystery House was actually huge success in it's time and I am sure it's not simply because it's audience lacked imagination as you suggest. I suspect there are a great many avid readers who can't get into interactive fiction not for lack of imagination but for the feeling of being lost without any visual reference as to your location.
I am hoping for a sort of hybrid with descriptive text matched with intentionally crude line drawings. The line drawings provide the bones so you don't feel lost, while the text can provide the meat for your imagination.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=962&start=0#p5110
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A host of troubles (rantish)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-02-04 21:29:10

[quote="Eleas"]Yeah, I gather it's a matter of the libraries, and that they are comparable. This is also the reason why I considered whether it would be wise to learn I6; not in order to switch systems, but in order to understand I7 better and on a deeper level, and hopefully break the deadlock.[/quote]

What I meant was that there's as much library to learn with I6 as there is with I7, so learning I6 wouldn't be any easier. The only real difference is that in I6, the entirety of the library code is written in the same language as the language you're programming in, whereas large parts of I7 is using a tweaked I6 under the hood. I'd say that learning I6 to understand I7 is a bit like learning Latin to understand English. Interesting, and you'd definitely gain a historical perspective on certain pecularities of Inform (e.g., the parser), but you there's no real reason to do it. The I7 library is its own thing, and now differs in many ways from I6. (Learning I6 to provide functionality not available in I7 is a different story--I've learned bits and pieces of the way I6 works in order to implement Glulx multimedia functionality, for example, or to hack the undo system--but you generally don't need to understand the entire system to do that.)

[quote="Eleas"]When I don't understand something in I7, I tend to suspect it's buried in I6 code somewhere.[/quote]

Well, I don't think anything you've mentioned in this thread has anything to do with the I6 library. The things you're having trouble with are fully implemented at the I7 level, and everything you want to do (if I read it correctly) is also possible in I7. I think you can safely concentrate on finding your way around I7. (On the other hand, you mentioned OOP; if you think you might be interested in switching to a more object-oriented language, you might have a look at TADS 3--just be aware that it has an even bigger standard library!)

Re the documentation: If you PM me with your email address, I'll send you a copy of the document of Jeff's that I mentioned. It comes close to touching on some of these topics; more importantly, I think there's a chance it might help you harmonize your thinking with the way Inform works.

[quote="Eleas"]I hate to make this rejoinder, but that alteration doesn't work. It does in the code I sent earlier, surprisingly enough (I tried that technique earlier on without success; must have made changes later on that reenabled it, somehow). Regardless, the idea is good, but fails to work in the example below.[/quote]

No, it works just fine (and it's not "surprising" that it works, either!  [emote];)[/emote] It's necessary, based on the way the rulebooks are structured). Compare these two examples of play:

Without removing the can't reach outside closed containers rule:

[code]Penitentiary (in minë)
You can see atta (closed and empty), neldë (closed and empty), canta (closed and empty), lempë (closed and empty), enquë (closed and empty) and otso (closed and empty) here.

>x atta
Minë isn't open.

>x canta
Minë isn't open.[/code]


Now we remove the can't reach outside closed containers rule:

[code]Penitentiary (in minë)
You can see atta (closed and empty), neldë (closed and empty), canta (closed and empty), lempë (closed and empty), enquë (closed and empty) and otso (closed and empty) here.

>x atta
Atta is empty.

>x canta
Canta is empty.[/code]

We can now look into the other cells, which we couldn't do before; before we disabled the rule, Inform was telling us, effectively, that we couldn't see beyond the walls of our own cage ("Minë isn't open").

As for ways of selectively "disabling" this and other rules (or writing around them), you mentioned piling up conditions or write nested definitions/to decide phrases. But in cases similar to those we've been discussing, you can do this with rules and particularly with the ordering of rules within rulebooks. For example, for the present situation, you need to allow the player to look and act outside her cell when she's in the penitentiary. But outside, maybe you have an elevator that's implemented as a container. You don't want her to be able to see or act outside of the elevator. So, we need a way to limit the exception to the penitentiary. The can't reach outside closed containers rule is in the "reaching outside" rulebook. We can just add a rule like this:

[code]A reaching outside rule when the location is the penitentiary:
	allow access.[/code]

The condition tacked onto the end makes this more specific than the can't reach outside closed containers rule, so it will be considered before that rule, and thus supersede it when the player is in the pentientiary. Note: it is important to use the phrasing "when the location is the penitentiary" rather than "when the player is in the penitentiary"  because Inform only looks one step up the object tree when we use "when the player is in"--in other words, Inform will see Ane as in the cell, not in the penitentiary. "Location" is always the room, and that's what we want here. (On the other hand, if only one of the cells was an open cage, while the others were closed chambers, we might wish to specify the cell, e.g. "A reaching outside rule when the player is in Atta". Now we can only look out of Atta.)

By the way, as you proceed with working on this scenario, you might find it useful to look at Jon Ingold's Far Away extension:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/Jon%20Ingold/Far%20Away/doc_0.html">http://inform7.com/extensions/Jon%20Ing ... doc_0.html</a>

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=962&start=0#p5111
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A host of troubles (rantish)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-02-04 21:52:09

By the way, if anyone has been itching to write an Inform 7 tutorial but couldn't figure out to write about: The number of questions posted both here and at rec.arts.int-fiction on topics like these strongly suggests that a guide to Inform interventions--ways of identifying and changing the standard library behavior--would be useful to a lot of folks...

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=799&start=0#p5112
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Tools for mapping interactive fiction games?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-02-05 02:58:00

I'd like to see your brain map an Eamon game. [emote]:)[/emote]

I use IFMapper myself - <a class="postlink" href="http://ifmapper.rubyforge.org/start.html">http://ifmapper.rubyforge.org/start.html</a>, for TADS and ZCode games. Those games output transcripts in real-time (as opposed to updating transcripts every X moves or something), and IFMapper uses those transcripts to guess an automap. It's actually fairly good at guessing, and when it gets it wrong, it's easy enough to correct.

For everything else, though, I also use GUEMap.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=946&start=10#p5113
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Graphical Interactive Fiction
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-02-05 03:03:46

Oh, that ruins it for you? It doesn't for me, especially when you consider - and you can't NOT consider - the state of technology back then. You happened to mentioned revolutionary, breakthrough games, even graphically speaking. That was the top of the tops.

I feel you're veering into another territory entirely - the territory of "Pictures age, descriptions don't". But everybody knows that by now. And honestly, does it matter if the game is fun? I must have replayed - and rewon - King's Quest I AGI at least ten times when I was a kid, and I still kinda like.

Maybe I should have put it another way. "Eye candy can't ruin a game, unless people aren't willing to look beyond it."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=962&start=0#p5114
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A host of troubles (rantish)
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-02-05 05:06:34

[quote="ektemple"]
What I meant was that there's as much library to learn with I6 as there is with I7, so learning I6 wouldn't be any easier. The only real difference is that in I6, the entirety of the library code is written in the same language as the language you're programming in, whereas large parts of I7 is using a tweaked I6 under the hood. I'd say that learning I6 to understand I7 is a bit like learning Latin to understand English. Interesting, and you'd definitely gain a historical perspective on certain pecularities of Inform (e.g., the parser), but you there's no real reason to do it. The I7 library is its own thing, and now differs in many ways from I6. (Learning I6 to provide functionality not available in I7 is a different story--I've learned bits and pieces of the way I6 works in order to implement Glulx multimedia functionality, for example, or to hack the undo system--but you generally don't need to understand the entire system to do that.)[/quote]

Oh. I see! Food for thought, indeed. I may find I6 fun to learn as a side project, then, and it [i]may[/i] in certain situations improve my understanding, but I should be fine with I7 as it is. That's fine. I can certainly work with that.

Question regarding I6 extensions and statements embedded into I7 source, though - do you you feel that practice is lessening? It seems to require knowledge of I6 in some shape or form.

[quote]Well, I don't think anything you've mentioned in this thread has anything to do with the I6 library. The things you're having trouble with are fully implemented at the I7 level, and everything you want to do (if I read it correctly) is also possible in I7. I think you can safely concentrate on finding your way around I7. (On the other hand, you mentioned OOP; if you think you might be interested in switching to a more object-oriented language, you might have a look at TADS 3--just be aware that it has an even bigger standard library!)[/quote]

Size is seldom a problem to me. Problems tend to crop up in terms of structure, legibility, and documentation, but size alone is just opportunity.

[quote]Re the documentation: If you PM me with your email address, I'll send you a copy of the document of Jeff's that I mentioned. It comes close to touching on some of these topics; more importantly, I think there's a chance it might help you harmonize your thinking with the way Inform works.[/quote]

Thank you! If it's the Well-Versed-Foundations.pdf file released on rec.arts.int-fiction recently, I downloaded it already, so you don't have to go to the trouble. If it's some other file, I'll happily PM you my address.

[quote][quote="Eleas"]I hate to make this rejoinder, but that alteration doesn't work. It does in the code I sent earlier, surprisingly enough (I tried that technique earlier on without success; must have made changes later on that reenabled it, somehow). Regardless, the idea is good, but fails to work in the example below.[/quote]

No, it works just fine (and it's not "surprising" that it works, either!  [emote];)[/emote] It's necessary, based on the way the rulebooks are structured). Compare these two examples of play:

Without removing the can't reach outside closed containers rule:

<snip>

We can now look into the other cells, which we couldn't do before; before we disabled the rule, Inform was telling us, effectively, that we couldn't see beyond the walls of our own cage ("Minë isn't open").[/quote]

I see the problem. We were talking about two different things. I (probably without being clear about it) talked about having implemented that already, but that when I did so, the understood statement "the other cell" or variations thereof including the word "other" failed to work. And that remains true, in the second example given. Understand "other cell" as atta will not be accepted. That was what I pointed out as failing to work, as it yields
[code]>x other cell
You can't see any such thing.

>x atta
Atta is empty.[/code]

whereas the first gives us
[code]>x other cell
(the middle cell)
the right-hand cell isn't open.[/code]

However, it outputs that [i]regardless[/i] of what you set "other" to be understood as, or even if you put in 'Understand "other cell" as [something]' [i]at all[/i]. And so, in point of fact, neither examples at all work the way they're supposed to, in the context of that pronoun.

[quote]As for ways of selectively "disabling" this and other rules (or writing around them), you mentioned piling up conditions or write nested definitions/to decide phrases. But in cases similar to those we've been discussing, you can do this with rules and particularly with the ordering of rules within rulebooks. For example, for the present situation, you need to allow the player to look and act outside her cell when she's in the penitentiary. But outside, maybe you have an elevator that's implemented as a container. You don't want her to be able to see or act outside of the elevator. So, we need a way to limit the exception to the penitentiary. The can't reach outside closed containers rule is in the "reaching outside" rulebook. We can just add a rule like this:

[code]A reaching outside rule when the location is the penitentiary:
	allow access.[/code]

The condition tacked onto the end makes this more specific than the can't reach outside closed containers rule, so it will be considered before that rule, and thus supersede it when the player is in the pentientiary.[/quote]

Yes indeed. But it isn't enough by far, because you could not be expected to let the character reach freely around the penitentiary from any cell. Thus the need to specify by words like "and the cell containing the player is close to the noun", and such things do seem to be hit and miss.

[quote]Note: it is important to use the phrasing "when the location is the penitentiary" rather than "when the player is in the penitentiary"  because Inform only looks one step up the object tree when we use "when the player is in"--in other words, Inform will see Ane as in the cell, not in the penitentiary. "Location" is always the room, and that's what we want here. (On the other hand, if only one of the cells was an open cage, while the others were closed chambers, we might wish to specify the cell, e.g. "A reaching outside rule when the player is in Atta". Now we can only look out of Atta.)[/quote]

I did not know that. Thank you; it'll come in handy.

[quote]By the way, as you proceed with working on this scenario, you might find it useful to look at Jon Ingold's Far Away extension:[/quote]

I hadn't realized, but yes, Far Away does seem to offer a step toward the solution.

Anyway, the remaining problems raised by the scenario are:
[list][*] The pronoun "other".[/*:m]
[*] The issue with understanding left/right relative to a given cell (I believe I can make that work myself).[/*:m]
[*] The issue with printed names not being treated as real names in terms of capitalization and the like.[/*:m][/list:u]

Where do I go toward solving at least the first and last issue?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=962&start=0#p5115
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A host of troubles (rantish)
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-02-05 05:08:03

[quote="Ron Newcomb"][quote="Eleas"]I think the old idea of an "Inform 7 guide to programming" that I read about on rec.arts.int-fiction was a good suggestion, although I do recognize the need to break from old practises.[/quote]The Programmer's Guide was moved to... well heck, why don't I just stick that into my sig? [/quote]

 [emote]:shock:[/emote] 

You guys rock. All that spare time will certainly come in handy now. [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=949&start=0#p5116
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: A sort of RPG?
User: Pe-ads / DateTime: 2010-02-05 05:34:09

I really like this idea.  It would be an actual RPG where you get to [i]choose[/i] what you do, not just get set a predefined set of actions you have to do. That works fine in a shooter, but in an RPG, I think it should be more free-form, as the method you have suggested implies.

However, the dilemma you have presented is a hard one. I think the way most RPGs where you develop your own class rather than picking a predefined one, is where you pick a few different skill points at the start. For example, if I had 4 skill points to allocate at the start, I might decide to opt for 1 archery, 2 thievery, and 1 diplomacy. Then I would probably work within those boundaries in the game, as I had chosen them earlier.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=949&start=0#p5117
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: A sort of RPG?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-02-05 06:05:11

I think it might be fruitful to take a look at which kind of role playing you're focusing on.

There's the cRPG convention, exemplified by games like Knights of the Old Republic, Dragon Age, or, if you'll go back a bit, Quest for Glory. Its underpinnings rest on simulating the action resolution of table-top role playing games. It does not focus on simulating the playing of a role to any perceptible degree.

Then we have the narrative games. A lot of new wave tabletop RPGs contain rules that aim for a rough-but-serviceable illusion of plausibility; this differs from the first lot in that the focus is not on displaying numbers, of on making the rules resemble the earliest war-gaming derivates. Instead, the rules of narrative games tend to be a lot slimmer, and focus on presenting [i]narratively significant choices and outcomes[/i]. A good example of the same thinking is Emily Short's [i]Glass.[/i]

Then there's a third type of game, in which RPG means and adventure (often with anime flavour) in which a protagonist and several side characters fight monsters, gather items, and solve problems. During the course of the game, they grow in stature and improve in various ways as they pursue a larger-scale quest, one that finally culminates in a climactic end battle.

(Note: Tired as I am, I'm aware that this is a gross simplification of RPG theory. I've barely scratched the surface, and have purposefully avoided mentioning a number of variant classifications. But I'll try to keep this brief and relatively focused.)



That said, some concessions have to be made at the outset. The first is, I'm afraid, the old and tired adage of computers being inferior to fleshy humans. Sadly it is in this instance mostly true - a computer game master will never be as flexible or innovative as a human would be. Those free choices will have to be hard-coded. In some games, that has been shown to work perfectly well.

Secondly, there must be some appeal to displaying the rules for their own sakes, or the D&D derivates would never have exposed the numbers so deliberately in all those PC titles. If that is what you want, then I believe you too should do it deliberately and without apology. If it is not what you want, however, then the numbers or pointless terminology might only hurt the story, and be no more useful than would have a health bar floating over the heads of the main cast would have been in the Lord of the Rings movies.

As a broad generalization, I think I agree with (my interpretation of) Graham Nelson and Emily Short's point regarding the benefits of a stripped-down library. The temptation with a large library lies in using them as-is, because they do work, and may provide useful and complex behaviour. It may just be behaviour that doesn't quite mesh with the vision you had, or does not support the tenor and mood of the story, or which subtly flavours the setting in ways you don't expect. And the choice then becomes to either work with the existing behaviour (easy) or override it (in some cases quite ambitious).

Inform 7 (as I understand it) requires you to build that toolbox yourself. That means it's not going to have all that lovely functionality at the outset. But conversely, the behaviour you do put in will be judged in terms of what you want the game to be. Now, this is not the I7 forum, and the principle surely applies to other languages as well (I cannot tell, as I'm only familiar with Inform 7, and barely at that).


In short, you have to decide on the effect you want. Many titles excel because they take a conventional concept, isolate the parts of it that promote their goal, and strip away the rest. That may be useful for, among other things, honing in on exactly what it is that you want, and despite what it may look like, such stripping rarely hurts the game. Generally, it's easier to add non-vital texture afterward, anyway.

Good luck.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=949&start=0#p5118
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: A sort of RPG?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-02-05 06:15:39

[quote="Pe-ads"]I really like this idea.  It would be an actual RPG where you get to [i]choose[/i] what you do, not just get set a predefined set of actions you have to do. That works fine in a shooter, but in an RPG, I think it should be more free-form, as the method you have suggested implies.

However, the dilemma you have presented is a hard one. I think the way most RPGs where you develop your own class rather than picking a predefined one, is where you pick a few different skill points at the start. For example, if I had 4 skill points to allocate at the start, I might decide to opt for 1 archery, 2 thievery, and 1 diplomacy. Then I would probably work within those boundaries in the game, as I had chosen them earlier.[/quote]

To expound on my earlier theme - because somehow I wasn't quite pompous enough the first time [emote]:)[/emote] - the danger of thinking in these terms is that you're back in the mire of "numbers = role playing". One could just as easily - and far more lucidly - represent such [i]role-playing[/i] decisions as precisely that: [i]choices[/i], taken by the player on behalf of the [i]character[/i] (the role) s/he plays. 

It does not have to be skillsets. We could, for instance, simply put it down as aspects (or "feats", I suppose, in the D&D parlance) of a kind, so that "Lady Protector of the Lofty Demesne" is the aspect of the character that you achieved during the course of one particular playthrough, while in the next game you instead gain the aspect "Feared Thief and Filcher of Things Unfilchable", gaining the appropriate abilities as a flat bonus. Other methods (again, see [i]Glass[/i]) involve creative use of relations, by which you might for instance "traverse" from one ability to the next, or from a weaker ability to a stronger ability, or from obscurity toward fame...

As you may notice (assuming I'm even being clear, here), there are endless possibilities. Most, to my admittedly biased mind, offer more promise as parts of a [i]game[/i] than would another Final Fantasy derivate (although those, too, can be great fun).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=799&start=0#p5119
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Tools for mapping interactive fiction games?
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-02-05 08:03:37

hmm, never heard of Eamon before...

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.lysator.liu.se/tolkien-games/eamon.html">http://www.lysator.liu.se/tolkien-games/eamon.html</a>

old inclement stuff I guess.  Perhaps even too many mazes of twisty little passages, all alike?  Fun back then, just gratuitous sadism now.  I don't think games forcing you to think like a rodent are worth of my time and brain. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=962&start=0#p5120
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A host of troubles (rantish)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-02-05 14:15:47

[quote="Eleas"]If it's the Well-Versed-Foundations.pdf file released on rec.arts.int-fiction recently, I downloaded it already, so you don't have to go to the trouble. If it's some other file, I'll happily PM you my address.[/quote]

No, it's a different file. Jeff had it up at his old website, but the site has gone down, and the file with it.

[quote="Eleas"]I see the problem. We were talking about two different things. I (probably without being clear about it) talked about having implemented that already, but that when I did so, the understood statement "the other cell" or variations thereof including the word "other" failed to work. And that remains true, in the second example given. Understand "other cell" as atta will not be accepted.[/quote]

Ah, I didn't even consider that you were talking about "other" here, since the effect of the can't reach outside closed containers rule really doesn't have anything to do with whether "Understand 'other' as" works or not. It's what I think of as a gatekeeper rule--it prevents the player from acting on anything outside the container. I guess you could say that bypassing the can't reach outside closed containers rule is a necessary but not sufficient condition for "other" to work.

The fact that "other" happened to work (or appeared to work) with your previous example blinded me to the reason that it doesn't work here. It turns out that "other", along with "another", is hardcoded directly into the parser (the hardcoding of certain words into the parser--which prevents them being redefined by authors--is one of the I6 legacies I was talking about before). I wasn't even aware that Inform parsed "other"; along with a few other words (such as "every"), "other" and "another" put the parser into a mode where it looks for indefinite matches for the noun, instead of a single, definite object. In other words, it handles such input as "Put another coin into the box." I think you can read more about this in the DM4 (another missing piece of documention for I7 would be the parser itself--what kinds of input does it understand?).

Anyway, now that we know that "other" is actually built into the parser, we also know that we need to work with Inform's definition of the word, which is doable. To get the equivalent of this to work (from your latest example):

[code]Understand "other cell" as atta when the player is in a cell.[/code]

you can do something like this:

[code]Understand "cell" as a cell.
Does the player mean doing something with atta: it is very likely.[/code]

The first line enables the player to type "cell" and have it refer to any cell. Prior to this, "cell" was not understood at all. (N.B. You could also just include "cell" in the names of each of the cells, which would have the same effect; this is in fact why "other cell" appeared to work in your first example.) Because "cell" is now a concept the parser understands, this means that "other", "another", "every", etc. will work with it. The second line ensures that when the player types "other cell", the parser will decide that she means Atta.

However, because the word "cell" is ambiguous, that "does the player mean" rule will also have the effect of directing the player's input to Atta not only when she types "examine other cell", but even when she types simply "examine cell." That's not desirable at all, since surely most of the time she'll be referring to her own cell when she types something like that. Since Inform doesn't have special parsing rules for the indefinite vs. definite situation (I don't think it does anyway--missing feature?), we need to do a little hacking:

[code]Understand "cell" as a cell.

Does the player mean doing something with the player's cell:
	if the player's command matches the text "other cell" or "another cell":
		it is very unlikely;
	it is very likely.

Does the player mean doing something with Atta when the player is in a cell:
	it is likely.[/code]

Thus, we direct the player's input to another cell if the word "other" has been used in the input; otherwise we assume that the player is referring to her own cell. We also suggest Atta as a likely candidate in any situation where "other cell" is used. This works nicely.

I think that should point you toward a solution for the "other" issue. I have other things that I'm neglecting, so I won't try to comment on the printed name issue, except to say that I think you'll either need to find ways to intervene with "rule for printing the name of" for various situations, or rewrite offending library messages to work as you want them to. However, I'm not positive about this; someone else might have better advice.

Given the length (in words) of this thread, though, you might want to start a new thread--we may well have lost some folks with the torrent of words here!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=957&start=0#p5121
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: The process of writing IF
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-02-05 15:08:54

Of the different design philosophies listed in Emily Short's blog article, the most effective ones appear to be those labelled "write the through-line first" and "transcript fully, then implement."  I've tried implementing right away several times, barely making progress, and I've also tried designing the game fully in written notes.  This time, I'm going to try writing a full transcript to serve both as an outline of the entire game structure and as a rough-draft for my writing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=959&start=0#p5122
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment!
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2010-02-05 15:41:59

Having it display cover art when starting a game would be nice. I especially like how Zoom does it on the Mac: the image appears, then fades away after about a second.

I found myself missing the ability to scroll back. Would it be possible to add a scrollbar to the frame?

A number of I7 games show where there's a lot of computation going on, but I don't know that you can do much to speed that up on the Javascript side.

Multiple undo would also be great.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=962&start=0#p5123
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A host of troubles (rantish)
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-02-05 16:33:51

[quote="ektemple"]
I think that should point you toward a solution for the "other" issue. I have other things that I'm neglecting, so I won't try to comment on the printed name issue, except to say that I think you'll either need to find ways to intervene with "rule for printing the name of" for various situations, or rewrite offending library messages to work as you want them to. However, I'm not positive about this; someone else might have better advice.

Given the length (in words) of this thread, though, you might want to start a new thread--we may well have lost some folks with the torrent of words here![/quote]

Absolutely. In all honesty, what you've given me seems more than sufficient alone to solve these problems, and your recommendations have opened quite a lot of different areas worthy of study. Most of all, I think, is that I can now move forward with a degree of confidence I couldn't summon up before. Instead of feeling as if my complaints were somehow self-invented and/or a natural consequence of IF, I now get the sense they're simply new aspects to play around with.

Thanks for getting me past this hurdle. I'll pop you a PM with my mail address.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=394&start=10#p5124
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: My first experiences with IF. How did you feel?
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-02-05 18:19:46

I don't quite remember how I got into this.  I think it was still in late 90's, while I was searching for old-school arcade games emulators.  In any case, I quickly hit ifarchive and TADS and Inform as well as becoming aware of the rich history of the genre (Infocom included) by reading those fantastic implementations manuals.  I got hooked in no time.

I know I tried (without completing) several games from the community back then:  Ditch Day Drifter, The Horror of Rylvania, Balances, Curses, Photopia, Metamorphoses, A Change in the Weather and Uncle Zebulon's Will.  Truth be told, back then the only one I was able to complete was Zebulon:  it just captured my imagination like no other and was pretty well paced and showed a vivid IF setting that just got me hooked in the media.  I also was not aware that Balances would be so short or that Photopia was pretty linear and puzzleless behind that dense script.

I don't really remember much guess-the-verb pain though, perhaps because I forced myself to learn the essential commands (and abbrevs) before playing;  perhaps because the community games were much better at not frustrating the player just so that the experience lasted longer;  or perhaps because I just tried not to stray too far from the script and current context, thus making sensible, expected choices...

In any case, I felt damn good to have a new, shiny, geeky hobby that looked like a forgotten treasure. [emote]:)[/emote]

Peter Pears, it's not a matter of looking like a book, it's a matter of having words alone making your imagination flow like no other medium.  Being passively submitted to imagery is not the same experience at all... and if I truly wanted that, I'd probably look into SCUMM rather than TADS... [emote];)[/emote]

hey, don't you guys beat Emily!  Love Metamorphoses, Savoir-Faire and Floatpoint -- amazing settings, fantastic prose and fair puzzles.  Galatea is not a game and shouldn't be judged like one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=959&start=0#p5125
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment!
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-02-05 18:39:16

[quote]I'm not aware of there being specs for the other systems you mentioned. It could amount to reverse-engineering another interpreter, something I am not going to even consider doing.[/quote]
I haven't seen this in action (or if I have, I've forgotten), but it's done heavily with client-side scripting, right? If so, then the easy way -- using GLK like Gargoyle does -- is probably not an option. The Hugo specs are there in the Hugo Book (manual) and I've thought about writing my own browser-based Hugo engine. But I'm too lazy these days to even try.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=946&start=10#p5127
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Graphical Interactive Fiction
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-02-06 03:07:22

[quote="Peter Pears"]does it matter if the game is fun? I must have replayed - and rewon - King's Quest I AGI at least ten times when I was a kid, and I still kinda like.[/quote]

Try playing it again, today.  Or perhaps you should spare ruining your good childhood memories...

play this on the other hand and you may be surprised:

<a class="postlink" href="http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/Advent.z5.js">http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/tru ... vent.z5.js</a>

if you never played it, it's a novelty; if you played it already back then you may be surprised at how much better it "looks":  years of experience later may positively make words and descriptions of places feel a lot more vivid rather than dull and pixelized...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=946&start=10#p5128
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Graphical Interactive Fiction
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-02-06 05:06:57

Even when Quest for Glory I first came out (with graphics similar to King's Quest), I didn't think them impressive or pretty. They were serviceable, but they were still mint-green. As a contrast, [url=http://www.anotherworld.fr/anotherworld_uk/page_reedition.htm]Another World[/url] will probably always be a beautiful game in my eyes, regardless of the state of current-generation graphics; moreso, I think, than its more technically impressive sequel, [url=http://www.abandonia.com/games/74/flashback.html]Flashback[/url].

IMHO, some graphics age well, and there are some descriptions that age poorly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=946&start=10#p5129
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Graphical Interactive Fiction
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-02-06 07:50:25

Actually, I have replayed both of them recently, as well as adventure. I suppose I just don't care much about the graphics as long as the game is good. It was a common POV at the AGS forum, and generally within the indie graphical adventure game community, and I expected to find it here. Apparently not. No sweat, different strokes for different folks and all that.

Personally, I have found, as a rule of thumb, that if I approach a game/film/novel/whatever with good knowledge of the time it was written, I'm more apt to enjoy it, rather than trying to measure everything by my modern eye. Also, I can get to discover some overlooked gem. It happens more often than you'd think.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=394&start=20#p5130
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: My first experiences with IF. How did you feel?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-02-06 07:55:44

[quote="namekuseijin"]Peter Pears, it's not a matter of looking like a book, it's a matter of having words alone making your imagination flow like no other medium.  Being passively submitted to imagery is not the same experience at all... and if I truly wanted that, I'd probably look into SCUMM rather than TADS... [emote];)[/emote][/quote]

Quite true. [emote]:)[/emote] But graphics and sound can enhance the experience, depending on how they're used. A simple description can be more evocative to me than an image, but who says the image has to illustrate what I'm supposed to be seing? Like Alabaster did.

Anyway, it was just a bit of a rant. I'm glad we have the tools to make our games the way we want them, and that's pretty much the bottom line.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=946&start=10#p5131
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Graphical Interactive Fiction
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-02-06 08:18:07

[quote="Peter Pears"]Actually, I have replayed both of them recently, as well as adventure. I suppose I just don't care much about the graphics as long as the game is good. It was a common POV at the AGS forum, and generally within the indie graphical adventure game community, and I expected to find it here. Apparently not. No sweat, different strokes for different folks and all that.

Personally, I have found, as a rule of thumb, that if I approach a game/film/novel/whatever with good knowledge of the time it was written, I'm more apt to enjoy it, rather than trying to measure everything by my modern eye. Also, I can get to discover some overlooked gem. It happens more often than you'd think.[/quote]

Oh, I'd certainly enjoy good gameplay or artistically used graphics regardless of whether they were monochrome or 32 bit; I do, however, consider the graphics and / or sound of some games to [i]contribute[/i] to the immersion more than that of others. I can still consider King's Quest a good game; in fact, I generally think that in purely mechanical terms Another World is fairly rudimentary. But graphics or sound can serve to [i]enhance[/i] the gameplay, just as, for instance, [i]Five Times A Stranger[/i] was enormously enhanced by the sounds of receding footsteps, the changing paintings, or the apparition in the bathtub. They weren't glitz; they had a definite purpose in mind, which they achieved brilliantly.

You could change the graphics of Flashback quite a lot, and it would still be the same game. One cannot say the same about Another World, because the mood and the unspoken story rested so heavily on its visual theme. It did help, of course, that we had never before that moment seen such large objects on the screen in motion, let alone with a fluidity that sprites or BOBs still struggle to match. But the point is that we can't ignore the graphics or put them in a box separate from the gameplay. Another World banked on being weird and cinematic and melancholy, and this new, seemingly impossible graphical style that Chiahi pioneered helped effect that.

At the same time, just as with classic movies, I do hold to the notion of judging a game by the standards of its time. That does not mean I can watch The Lawnmover Man without cringing. [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=949&start=0#p5132
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: A sort of RPG?
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-02-06 08:53:18

Everyone else made some good comments here, and thinking about what has already been said should be very helpful as you organize your ideas for your game.  Rather than offer any particular suggestions I'd like to just provide some food for thought that you may find useful as you think about what you'd like to do.

An important practical point to keep in mind is what ShaeSays wrote:

[quote="ShaeSays"]Maybe this is the kind of thing that calls for a tiny practice program. When I first put my hands on Inform7, I made a 4-room game in which the goal is to gather supplies and make a margarita. It was a valuable experience.[/quote]
in the context of Eleas' comment:

[quote="Eleas"]Inform 7 (as I understand it) requires you to build that toolbox yourself. That means it's not going to have all that lovely functionality at the outset.[/quote]
Implementing the ideas you proposed in your original post will require some complex programming, and time spent exploring simpler ideas in order to thoroughly learn the ins and outs of Inform 7 (or whatever language you'll be using) will have a large payoff later as you begin to implement more complex ideas.  

Two things that you may find useful as you think about what you'd like to do are:

1) Find and play the old IF game called [i]The Hound of Shadow[/i].  Although the gameplay and plot isn't that great in this title, the game mechanics used are in my opinion fascinating and very inspiring for a person interested in making rpg-style IF games; in fact this game is the best attempt at an rpg-style IF game I have ever seen.  Although the game content barely scratches the surface of the possibilities presented by its own game system, thinking about [i]The Hound of Shadow[/i] system provides one with a cornucopia of great ideas.

2) Read [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2008/02/13/emergent-puzzle-solutions/]this good article[/url] on the idea of emergent game design in an IF context.  In general you'll likely want to frame your thinking about your game in terms of this concept.

I think most of the "RP" in "CRPG" must be provided by the player's imagination; in this context the job of the game designer is to provide possibilities, and try to design in such a way that the player will be entertained regardless of the details of any particular style of play.

[quote="RedOrZed"]My problem is this: doesn't that become very limiting? Does it mean that the game will play out a certain way, because the player becomes locked into their "class"? They have more "killer" points than "talker" points, so they are less persuasive, so the next problem is best solved by killing, and so on and so on.[/quote]
I think this issue is less important than one may initially think.  For a player who brings their own imagination to a role-playing game, choices made by the player may to a large extent be taken as indications of the sort of game the player wishes to experience.  On the other hand while this concept of autocatalysis may partially underlie the ideals of "class" or "profession" based rpg systems, all such systems are in my opinion grossly inferior to "skill point" based rpg systems because the latter greatly enhance player freedom.  A look at the free [url=http://www.sjgames.com/GURPS/lite/]GURPS Lite[/url] ruleset may be helpful in thinking about general ways to organize how your game will work.

In general, then, I think that providing a system that enables the player great freedom of choice also entails that the player take responsibility for his own role in shaping the gameplay experience.  If I consistently choose to play a diplomat character over time, I won't be surprised when my character isn't invited to join the Barbarian Horde SWAT Team; in fact as a player I'm probably not interested in doing that even if presented with such an option under such circumstances.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=962&start=10#p5133
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A host of troubles (rantish)
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-02-06 09:17:02

[quote="Eleas"]Anyway, the remaining problems raised by the scenario are:
[list][*] The pronoun "other".[/*:m]
[*] The issue with understanding left/right relative to a given cell (I believe I can make that work myself).[/*:m]
[*] The issue with printed names not being treated as real names in terms of capitalization and the like.[/*:m][/list:u]

Where do I go toward solving at least the first and last issue?[/quote]
On the issue of capitalization, as far as I know the only way to address that is to write a general "to say" correction statement.  For example:

[code]To say capset for (modword - a thing):
	let modtext be indexed text;
	let modtext be "[modword]" in sentence case;
	say "[modtext]".[/code]
and then utilize it in every particular case where capitalization will be an issue.  For example say we have some body parts, whose names are printed according to a rule like:
[code]Before printing the name of a bodypart that is incorporated by a person (called owner):
	if owner is the player:
		say "your ";
	otherwise:
		say "[owner]'s ".[/code]
When a case occurs where the printed name of a part, then, will start a sentence it must be dealt with on a case by case basis:
[code]Carry out examining an ear that is incorporated by a person (called xee):
	if xee is the player:
		say "[capset for the noun] seems pretty normal.";
	otherwise:
		say "[The noun] seems pretty normal.".[/code]
Unfortunately I've never found a more general way to effectively deal with this issue myself.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=40#p5134
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-02-06 09:22:35

Have you considered uploading your game to the IF Archive?  Probably due to my stubborn use of outdated software, I'm not able to get that webpage to work properly (I get to the part with all the icons for the various games, but clicking on any particular icon doesn't do much for me).




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=962&start=10#p5135
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A host of troubles (rantish)
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-02-06 09:57:42

Ah. Yeah, I was attempting that route. What was bothering me was mainly that some error messages put the word in the beginning, others in the middle of the error message. Among other things, that means you get messages like "You can't get out of the closed the cell," which requires further workarounds.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=949&start=0#p5136
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: A sort of RPG?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-02-06 10:22:09

Excellent points, these. One small niggle, though:

[quote]On the other hand while this concept of autocatalysis may partially underlie the ideals of "class" or "profession" based rpg systems, all such systems are in my opinion grossly inferior to "skill point" based rpg systems because the latter greatly enhance player freedom.  A look at the free [url=http://www.sjgames.com/GURPS/lite/]GURPS Lite[/url] ruleset may be helpful in thinking about general ways to organize how your game will work.[/quote]

I don't see skill-based vs class-based as a given dichotomy. In many cases, the distinction blurs or evaporates entirely. 

On a personal note, I'd stay away from GURPS Lite for the purposes of crpg design. For one, it's not very mathematically solid; for another, while it uses a great many computations and a high resolution for [i]input[/i] it does not offer a corresponding level of meaningful output, or even close to that. Success or failure is a binary proposition, with the critical success being delegated solely to combat. But then again, while I love some of its supplements, I've never found it in me to like GURPS itself - your mileage may vary.

Personally, I'd much rather go with something a bit more [url=http://www.fudgerpg.com/fudge.html]FUDGE[/url]-like (also free), which would confer an additional benefit in that it's more flexible and teaches you to think in terms of words and qualities, as opposed to numbers. If it was very computation-heavy and you have the cash, I'd take a long hard look at [url=http://www.93gamesstudio.com/site/node/7]Twilight 2013[/url], which must rank among the most efficiently powerful rule systems I have ever seen (when your first nitpick is "hey, these nutrition values look a bit wrong to me" in a game focused on detailed high-resolution combat, that says something to me). Some lighter variants of Unisystem (Witchcraft is free, but not what I'd recommend) are pure awesome. And so on.

Of course, I do recognize that everyone has their own preferred system. As a suggestion, GURPS Lite isn't bad by itself. In the context of this thread, though, it seemed to continue the theme of unstated but unnecessary conventions, so I wanted to shake things up a bit, and ask questions like "are dice necessary," "why divide skills and abilities," or, in the case of GURPS, "what benefit does this great web of interdependent skills confer in practice?"

EDIT: To expound on this - because I love writing long, incoherent manifestos [emote]:)[/emote] - I'll attempt to explain how different systems can be, and why these differences suit different atmospheres and styles of play. 

Let's say you want a game set in Byzantium. It's going to be heavy on intrigue: poisoning, knives in the night, persuasion, seduction, and false smiles. In this game, you decide, you'd like some amount of simulated emergent behaviour (in other words, you don't want to script everything, because then, we wouldn't need to use any RPG system at all, yes?). 

Given all that, what are the actual rules of the drama? We can make a few guesses.
[list][*] Since assassination is central, we may want it to present a real threat - to anyone. Thus, we must have a lethal system. Strike D&D or any class-based system where sheer experience would let a mild-mannered academic shrug off repeated blows from a two-handed sword; just remember that some other class-based systems do quite well on this score.[/*:m]
[*] Heavy emphasis on social manoeuvring. Thus, if there is to be high resolution (i.e. a lot of different ways to be good at something), we may want to place it here, and fork the social skills into a lot of different areas - some games have skills as narrow as "innocent remark" or "innuendo". Looking at GURPS, we can see both good and bad things. Good, in that there are quite a lot of skills there; bad, because they depend on one another, and removing a large portion messes up its balance, which is shaky to begin with. Here, you may wish to look into a system that hinges on placing "bets" socially, so that you "gamble" with some sort of social "capital", risking a loss of influence or humiliation if the gamble does not succeed.[/*:m]
[*] Social position may be important. Thus, we'll need a system (vanilla or modified) that lets us track how the player is viewed by society at large, and perhaps also how other people are.[/*:m][/list:u]

And so on. When this is done, we can pick any (free) system that does the job, or appears to do the job. There are many such systems out there, some of which require assembly to start with.

Then again, of course, you may just want to create a bloody RPG and ignore my high-falutin contrarian ramblings. [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=962&start=10#p5137
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A host of troubles (rantish)
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-02-06 12:24:24

There is a better way of dealing with the capitalized "your" issue, and it is to include this:

The indefinite article of the cell is "your".

(See section 3.18 in the documentation.)

This deals with capitalization ("You're stuck in your cell" vs "Your cell is closed") and will also change to "The/the cell" if Inform is translating "[the cell]" rather than "[a cell]".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=962&start=10#p5138
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A host of troubles (rantish)
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-02-06 12:27:57

Also, incidentally: the thing of converting examine to search is a feature of the library we're revising to the next build. It made sense in the original implementation of Inform 6, sort of, but you're not alone in finding it a bit baffling, and there are a handful of cases where it produces actively stupid/erroneous output. (For instance, if I EXAMINE a closed glass box with things in it, that converts to a SEARCH, which then fails because the box is closed -- even though I can perfectly well examine the things in the box individually.)

So we've rewired the behavior of this and a few other legacy features of the library in the hope of making them a bit more friendly or sensible.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=962&start=10#p5139
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A host of troubles (rantish)
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-02-06 15:22:12

This is wonderful news. Thank you so much.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=962&start=10#p5140
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A host of troubles (rantish)
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-02-06 16:28:04

[quote="Endosphere"]On the issue of capitalization, as far as I know the only way to address that is to write a general "to say" correction statement.[/quote]
The extension "Mentioned in Room Description" has a few capitalization-related devices in it.  For example, the [^] say phrase that capitalizes whatever comes next.  The solution presented within doesn't used indexed text, it uses some stuff built-in to Inform 6, so it's much gentler with the Z-machine. 

Mind, capitalization issues are a hydra:  as soon as you think they're solved, a fresh problem rears its ugly head.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=946&start=10#p5141
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Graphical Interactive Fiction
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-02-06 20:39:03

I do agree about Another World, terrific game.

but Lawnmover Man was already bad enough even at the time... [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=963&start=0#p5142
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Instead of going in a direction
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2010-02-06 20:39:50

I have a single room with no doors. I like a friendlier message than "You can't go that way."

I tried

[code]Instead of exiting: say "There's no way out of here."[/code]

That worked but prevented the player from exiting a container.

The compiler didn't like any variation of:
[code]
Instead of going east or going west [etc]: say "There's no way out of here."[/code]

This compiled but didn't do anything:

[code]Instead of going in a direction: say "There's no way out of here."[/code]

Am I stuck with repeating "instead of going" for all 8 directions?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=40#p5143
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: C. Everett / DateTime: 2010-02-06 20:44:08

That depends.  I already know that I can't get it removed from the archive after I've submitted (right?  I think I read that somewhere else in the forums here), but can I "update" it afterward?  'Cause I've already made two updates to my game, and expect to make more, and I wouldn't want to have a non-up-to-date version in the Archive that I can't change.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=963&start=0#p5144
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Instead of going in a direction
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2010-02-06 21:14:36

[code]Instead of going, say "There's no way out."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=40#p5145
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-02-06 21:43:49

Yes you can submit updates to the archive. Using new revision numbers is nice when you do that (but wouldn't be needed for the comp now.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=900&start=40#p5146
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: C. Everett's Problems/Questions (1 PROBLEM+0 QUESTION)
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-02-06 22:04:23

As Dannii said, yes, you can submit updates to the Archive. However, if you're updating your game a lot at the moment, it might be a good idea to wait until it's more stable before you submit it - to save the Archive maintainers some work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=963&start=0#p5147
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Instead of going in a direction
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2010-02-06 22:26:54

Oh well duh. That worked, Kazuki. Thanks so much!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=803&start=0#p5148
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Popular MUD's
User: Terry / DateTime: 2010-02-07 04:35:47

At last after months of sporadic searching guessing at keywords and following links I have found what I was looking for, an active multiplayer sci-fi text game.
I don't think it's classified as a MUD, it's 'science fiction roleplaying'. The game is great, I thought other people here might be interested in checking it out.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.lazarus-project.net">http://www.lazarus-project.net</a>

The set up and interface are good, it's pretty impressive I have to say.

Best of all it's free, which is always a big plus!

Maybe I'll come across you in Alpha Colony  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=908&start=20#p5149
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Translating the Source Failed
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-02-07 05:11:32

Did you sort this problem out in the end?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=908&start=20#p5150
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Translating the Source Failed
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2010-02-07 08:01:23

Hi David!

Actually, I did not. I really did mean to file a report, but I kept wanting to try a few more things, and then I got busy and didn't get to it.

I did create an admin account, delete my user and add it back, but that didn't help either.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=964&start=0#p5151
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Room out of scope while in container
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2010-02-07 08:06:39

I've made a transparent open container that the player can step into. When she steps in, I want her to be able to see the things in the room but not touch them. I tested, and by default she can see [b]and[/b] touch things in the room.

This didn't work:
[code]After deciding the scope of the player:
  if the player is enclosed by the decanter
    place the dressing room out of scope.[/code]

Nor did a host of other variations, including "rule for deciding the scope of the player" in which I avoided using "out of" by explicitly defining the scope when one is in and out of the container.

I read the whole chapter in the documentation on scope, but it only shows how to put new things [b]in[/b] scope.

Maybe scope isn't even the right approach here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=954&start=0#p5152
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question: Combining items to create a new item
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2010-02-07 08:16:48

You can just move the NPC directly:

[code]After touching the magic peach:  
  move Bob to the location.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=964&start=0#p5153
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room out of scope while in container
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-02-07 09:03:09

I'm guessing that by "see things", you mean you want the player to be able to EXAMINE things outside of the container, correct? Because if the container is transparent, she can already see outside of it by default. There's no need for scope at all, because if it's transparent, things that are outside the container are [i]already[/i] in scope. However, the player is blocked by doing anything with them, including examining, by the "can't reach outside closed containers rule".

So, if you want the player to be able to examine objects outside of the container, but not do anything else with them, then something like this should work for you.

[code]A reaching outside rule when the player is in the decanter and the current action is examining:
	allow access;
	
A reaching outside rule when the player is in the decanter and the current action is searching and the noun is a container:
		say "You can't see into [the noun] from here.";
		deny access;
		
A reaching outside rule when the player is in the decanter:
	say "You can't reach through the glass.";
	deny access.[/code]

The first rule allows access for examining. The subsequent rules show how you can make the output more appropriate to the particular situation. 

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=964&start=0#p5154
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room out of scope while in container
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2010-02-07 10:16:38

Thanks Erik. That worked.

[code]Instead of smelling when the player is in the decanter: say "Smells delightful."[/code]

[quote]>Smell
You can't reach through the glass.[/quote]

Why doesn't my code override the other response?

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=964&start=0#p5155
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room out of scope while in container
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-02-07 10:34:32

The reaching outside rules take effect before the action rules. That's why I included examples of how to customize action responses using the reaching outside rules in my last post. Here's how you would do your smelling response using the same method I showed before:
[code]
A reaching outside rule when the player is in the decanter and the current action is smelling:
      say "Smells delightful.";
      deny access.[/code]

Another option would be to disable the "can't reach outside closed containers rule" entirely; you could then write instead rules for actions as you've tried to do with smelling. You'd have to be sure you covered all actions, though, or the behavior will be buggy (without the can't reach outside closed containers rule, the player will be permitted to do just about anything with the objects outside the container.)

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=964&start=0#p5156
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room out of scope while in container
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2010-02-07 14:43:44

Oh, sorry -- I failed to extrapolate your examples to the smelling action. 

Thanks!!!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=965&start=0#p5157
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Preview: Graphical automapping extension (I7 + Glulx)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-02-07 14:56:34

There's been quite a bit of interest in mapping, automapping, and roguelikes expressed recently, both here and on rec.arts.int-fiction, so I thought this would be a good time to share a preview of an extension I've just completed. This extension provides a graphical frontend (Glulx only, of course) to Mark Tilford's very nice Automap extension. It renders the map calculated by Automap in a Glulx graphics window using a set of image tiles. Authors can customize tilesets, and can create and distribute their own as I7 extensions (plus image files). Here's the example file:

<a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Glimmr%20Automap.gblorb">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Glimmr%20Automap.gblorb</a>

The player is provided with buttons for zooming the map (you can also type ZOOM IN or ZOOM OUT), as well as to query the map. To query the map, press the ? button, then click a room on the map. A tooltip will appear that displays the room's printed name. This example also includes custom functionality not included in the extension; click on a room in the map when the query button is not active to go to that room.

In order to provide a map that's both large in scale and reflects realistic game-play, I've used the geography of Emily Short's Bronze for this example (with a couple of modifications). I don't think there's much chance of having that game spoiled for you by this map, but if you're planning to play Bronze in the near future, you might want to refrain from trying out this example until you've done so.

Some features:

[list][*] Tilesets are packaged as extensions, so you can create and share[/*:m]
[*] Interface is fully--and easily--skinnable[/*:m]
[*] Abundant hooks in the code for further customization[/*:m]
[*] If your interpreter doesn't support graphics, should gracefully fall back to Automap's standard text interface[/*:m]
[*] Built on Flexible Windows, so you can have multiple text and graphics windows alongside the map[/*:m][/list:u]

Many thanks are due to Mark Tilford, not only for creating Automap, but for making it so easy to hook up an alternate output system--and for implementing a few changes that would allow graphical tilesets to be more flexible and aesthetically pleasing.

This graphical implementation of Automap is part of a larger, modular system of extensions tentatively called Glimmr. It will likely be released soon after the next release of Inform, but not before (the new build of Inform incorporates changes to the way images are stored internally, and I'll need to update Glimmr before it will work with the new build). Apart from implementing these changes, work on the existing Glimmr modules is all but complete. The major task remaining is to write documentation; since there are currently something like 13 Glimmr modules of varying complexity, this is not quite a trivial task (if anyone wants to help out, drop me a line!)

A few notes on interpreters: I've tested Glimmr Automap with Zoom and Spatterlight on the Mac, and with WinGlulxe, WinGit, and Gargoyle on Windows. I have not been able to test with a text-only interpreter. Speed comparisons: Zoom is much slower under Snow Leopard than under Leopard (likely to be fixed in an upcoming release), so it feels a little clunky (there is also a bug in Zoom that causes the query tooltip to be displayed as cyan rather than yellow). The latest version of Gargoyle for Windows is extremely fast. Spatterlight works is pretty slow with graphics and requires, as always, double-clicking rather than a single-clicking for mouse input.

Comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome, as are bug reports. I'd also like to hear how it works on different interpreters, especially on Linux and on text-only interpreters.

Thanks!
Erik


[i]Postscript[/i]

Some may be in interested in how much work it is to use Glimmr Automap. Below is the full source of the posted example, minus the worldbuilding and textual output. Minimally, all that's required is to define a window for displaying the map. This code also implements a simple command to allow the player to go to a room by clicking on it.

[code]
Include Glimmr Automap by Erik Temple.
Include Glimmr Automap Tileset by Erik Temple.

[Automap settings:]
Use automap reserved area of at least 800. [This looks like a minimum, but it is actually a maximum; specifically, the maximum number of map tiles that can be displayed on-screen at a time.]
Use automap hide paths through closed doors.

[Glimmr Automap settings:]
Use query explanation. [Allows the author to provide an overlay on the map to explain what happens when the map query button is pushed.]

First when play begins:
	activate UI-query. [Add the map query button to the interface]


Chapter - Map window

The map-window is a map-display window spawned by the main-window. The position is g-placeabove. The measurement of the map-window is 50. The associated canvas of the map-window is the map-canvas.

The map-canvas is a g-canvas. The associated canvas of a g-element is the map-canvas.


[We can specify the maximum width and/or height, in tiles, that will be displayed in our map window.]
The maximum map width of the map-window is 40.
The maximum map height of the map-window is 20.


Chapter - Clicking to move

[By default, Glimmr Automap responds to mouse input within the map by displaying a "tooltip" that shows the printed name of the room clicked on. However, we may also want to do other things with mouse input to the map, such as moving to the room clicked, or displaying what the player knows about the room, etc. In this case, we can either deactivate the query functionality altogether, or activate the query button, which allows the player to move between query and custom modes. That is the approach taken in this example. The primary map hyperlink mode is defined here, using the go to any room code from the Safari Guide example in the Inform documentation.]

Understand "go to [any room]" as going by name to. Understand "[any room]" as going by name to. Understand "[door]" as entering.

going by name to is an action applying to one thing.

Check going by name to:
	if the noun is the location, say "You're already in [the location]." instead.

Carry out going by name to:
	while the player is not in the noun:
		let heading be the best route from the location to the noun, using even locked doors;
		if heading is not a direction, say "You can't think how to get there from here." instead;
		let destination be the room heading from the location;
		say "(heading [heading])[command clarification break]";
		try going heading;
		if the player is not in the destination, rule fails.

Automap graphlink rule for a room (called the target):
	change glulx replacement command to "GO TO [the printed name of the target in upper case]";
	exit.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=964&start=0#p5158
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room out of scope while in container
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2010-02-07 14:59:36

Ok, more troubles. It seems that seeing/examining is not in scope after all, or at least not after writing these rules.

[code]A reaching outside rule when the player is in the decanter and the current action is smelling:
      say "Smells delightful.";
      deny access.

A reaching outside rule when the player is in the decanter and the current action is examining:
  allow access.

A reaching outside rule when the player is in the decanter and the current action is not smelling or examining:
   say "You can't reach anything in the room while trapped in the jar.";
   deny access.[/code]

I tried leaving the middle command out since it's redundant, and rearranging the syntax a few ways, but it isn't working:

[quote]>Get in jar
You get inside the jar.

>Open drawer 
You can't reach anything in the room while trapped in the jar [desired]

>Examine drawer 
You can't reach anything in the room while trapped in the jar [not desired][/quote]

I also tried changing the syntax of the middle block to:

[code]A reaching outside rule when the player is in the decanter and the current action is examining:
  say "test".[/code]

And as one might guess I never saw the word "test".

I'm sure I just need a minor tweak, but I can't seem to figure out what it is.

Thanks again for all your help, Erik.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=965&start=0#p5159
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Preview: Graphical automapping extension (I7 + Glulx)
User: George / DateTime: 2010-02-07 15:20:05

Wow, very cool!

I don't have much to report for bugs yet (I just tried it with WinGit), but the interface looks good! I'm curious if there's a way to customize the graphic for exit links as well? I'm guessing there is?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=966&start=0#p5160
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Guessing object of transitive verb
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2010-02-07 15:26:38

Someone helped me with this problem a long time ago, but I wasn't able to find the thread.

[code]The lab is a room. There is a jar in the lab. The jar is an enterable container. The description of the jar is "It's tempting to step inside."

The player is wearing some clothing.

Stepping into it is an action applying to one visible thing.
Understand "step inside [thing]" as stepping into it.
Understand "step into [thing]" as stepping into it.

Check stepping into it:
  If the noun is the jar, try entering the noun instead.

Carry out stepping into it:
  say "That's not something you can step into."

After entering the jar:
  say "You enter the jar." [/code]

[quote]>x jar
It's tempting to step inside.

>step inside
(the clothing)
That's not something you can step into.[/quote]

I remember that the answer has something to do with a rule for determining the object of the noun when the object is not specified. But I can't find the syntax.

Help appreciated as always.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=964&start=0#p5161
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room out of scope while in container
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-02-07 15:43:23

[quote]>Examine drawer
You can't reach anything in the room while trapped in the jar [not desired][/quote]

The drawer is probably a container for which you have not written a description, correct? Inform silently forwards the examining action to the searching action when you are looking at a container that is undescribed; in other words, when you EXAMINE a container that doesn't have its own description, you're actually SEARCHing. (This will change in the next build, according a post Emily Short left in a recent thread here.) For now, use this rule:

[code]A reaching outside rule when the player is in the decanter and the current action is searching and the noun is a container:
      allow access.[/code]

By the way, I just tested this stuff in Inform, and the rule about examining actually isn't needed at all, so you were right to get rid of it. In fact, it looks like examining is allowed from within a transparent container by default, which leaves me puzzled about what occasioned your initial post--perhaps smelling or some other action?. Anyway, this means that you can also remove the reference to examining from your third rule.

By the way, the third rule also isn't working as you intend. I'm actually a bit surprised that Inform allows it to compile. Anyway, it would be good practice to get in the habit of writing the full condition for each element when you have multiple conditions. So, this:

[code]A reaching outside rule when the player is in the decanter and the current action is not smelling and the current action is not examining:[/code]

instead of this:
[code]
A reaching outside rule when the player is in the decanter and the current action is not smelling or examining:[/code]

Again, though, in this case you don't need to mention examining in this rule. It already is allowed by default.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=965&start=0#p5162
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Preview: Graphical automapping extension (I7 + Glulx)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-02-07 15:45:36

Thanks! The tiles are individual PNG files; all you have to do to customize any of the tiles for your own project is replace the default tile file with your own design. (I don't much like the inside/outside graphic either--any ideas for something better?) 

If you want to create your own tileset entirely, I'll be distributing a template file to make this easier, whether you just want to use it for reference, or as a starting place for your own tiles. Here's that file in SVG format (originally created with Illustrator):

<a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Tileset%20template.svg">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Tileset%20template.svg</a>

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=965&start=0#p5163
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Preview: Graphical automapping extension (I7 + Glulx)
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-02-07 16:13:52

Excellent! Looks nice in Zoom.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=966&start=0#p5164
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Guessing object of transitive verb
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-02-07 16:26:54

You can get this to work with a parser disambiguation ("does the player mean") rule, if you eliminate the "it" from the action definition (use the it only when there are[i] two[/i] nouns in the player's input). This should work:

[code]The lab is a room. There is a jar in the lab. The jar is an enterable container. The description of the jar is "It's tempting to step inside."

The player is wearing some clothing.

Stepping into is an action applying to one visible thing.
Understand "step inside [thing]" as stepping into.
Understand "step into [thing]" as stepping into.

Check stepping into:
  If the noun is the jar, try entering the noun instead.

Carry out stepping into:
  say "That's not something you can step into."

After entering the jar:
  say "You enter the jar." 

Does the player mean stepping into the jar:
	it is very likely.[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=964&start=0#p5165
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room out of scope while in container
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2010-02-07 18:26:32

[quote]The drawer is probably a container for which you have not written a description, correct? Inform silently forwards the examining action to the searching action when you are looking at a container that is undescribed...[/quote]

Oh jeez. I knew that, I just didn't think of it in terms of this puzzle.

My room has very few items thus far, so I just picked the drawer to examine to test how it was working and then assumed it wasn't. But you are correct, when I examine a non-container I can see it just fine, with or without that redundant rule.

Thanks again Erik.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=966&start=0#p5166
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Guessing object of transitive verb
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2010-02-07 18:30:05

I forgot that "it is very likely" was available -- I was thinking that approach would cause me to have to name a million things that [b]weren't[/b] likely. Also, I didn't realize when to use "it" in a created verb and when not to. That was good information.

This will work, so I'll use it. It wasn't what I was thinking of though, which I'm going to try to track down just for curiosity's sake. It was something like, rule for deciding the object of stepping into when the object isn't specified: now the object is the jar. Or something.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=908&start=20#p5167
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Translating the Source Failed
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-02-07 23:30:12

If you fancy trying to dig into what's going wrong, send me an email (my email address is in the bug report form) and we'll take it from there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=967&start=0#p5168
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Puzzles which require several conditions
User: Azure / DateTime: 2010-02-08 11:17:02

Hi I'm getting familiar with Inform 7 by attempting to write a very short piece of IF, it's not meant to make any sense just an excuse for me to learn. The aim is to make some porridge and bribe a Knome with it but I'm not certain how to allow for multiple requirements.
To make the porridge I need the following things:
-The logs are in the fireplace.
-The pot is in/hanging in the fireplace.
- Once the pot is hanging over the fire, the player should then put the oats and the milk in the pot.
Which should then give me some porridge.

[b]This is as far as I've gotten that works:[/b]
The fireplace is a container. The fireplace is fixed in place. The fireplace is in Roran's house.  The fireplace can be empty or full. The fireplace is empty. The description is " It's your fireplace [if empty] you'll need to find some wood before you can light it [ end if]. [If full] It's stacked with logs [end if][if the pot is in the fireplace] A pot hangs above the fireplace ready for you to cook. [end if]".

Instead of inserting logs into fireplace:
	say " You put the logs in the fireplace where they ignite by magic.";
	move logs to fireplace;
	now the fireplace is full.

After inserting the pot into the fireplace:
	say " You hang the cooking pot into the fireplace. [if full] The flames from the fire gently heat the pot [end if].";

[b]This doesn't[/b]

Instead of inserting the oats into the pot:
	begin;
	if the fireplace is full, and the pot is in the fireplace;
	move the oats to the pot.
	end if.


Am I formatting wrongly? and how do I define multiple conditions to do something? My initial thought was to use the " full" property to cover both the logs and pot being in the fireplace, to then trigger the next part of the puzzle where the player needs to add the oats and milk, but I just can't get my head around scripting puzzles with multiple requirements.

Any help or advice would be appreciated.
Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=967&start=0#p5169
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Puzzles which require several conditions
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2010-02-08 12:05:38

[quote]
This doesn't

Instead of inserting the oats into the pot:
begin;
if the fireplace is full, and the pot is in the fireplace;
move the oats to the pot.
end if.[/quote]

It looks to me as if the problem is that you've got "begin" in the wrong place (and I suspect you're not allowed a comma before the "and" in your if statement). Also, you'd need a semi-colon, not a full-stop after "pot" (since it's followed by another statement). So I think what you meant was:

[code]
Instead of inserting the oats into the pot:
if the fireplace is full and the pot is in the fireplace begin;
move the oats to the pot;
end if.
[/code]

That said, since you only have only statement after the if condition you don't need to use "begin" and "end if" here, you could just have:

[code]
Instead of inserting the oats into the pot:
if the fireplace is full and the pot is in the fireplace then move the oats to the pot.
[/code]

That said, I'm not sure why you don't just make the pot a container so the player can insert the oats into it. Perhaps what you're trying to do is to stop the player inserting the oats into the pot before they're ready to, perhaps with something like:

[code]
Instead of inserting the oats into the pot when the fireplace is not full or the pot is not in the fireplace:
say "The pot isn't ready for the oats yet."
[/code]

-- Eric

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=967&start=0#p5170
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Puzzles which require several conditions
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-02-08 12:13:03

Eric beat me to it, but I'll just post (some of) this anyway. For the puzzle solution you described, I believe something more like this is in order:

[code]Every turn when the fireplace is full and the pot is in the fireplace and the oats are in the pot and the milk is in the pot:
    say "You have just made porridge!";
    move the porridge to the pot;
    remove oats from play;
    remove milk from play.
[/code]
This checks the puzzle condition at the end of every turn. It makes sure that the porridge is created regardless of the order in which the player does things (even when he puts the oats and the milk in the pot before hanging the pot over the fire.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=968&start=0#p5171
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7/Glulx: Other approaches to mapping
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-02-08 16:48:46

(This post is a follow-up of sorts to my [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=965]earlier post[/url], and includes more about graphics, maps, and I7 Glulx. It's cross-posted to the rec.arts.int-fiction newsgroup.) 

Automapping is one way to do IF maps; it's a good way to quickly provide an image of the game world to players, without too much investment of the author's time (and it's especially effective if your world is randomly generated). Glimmr (GLulx IMaging and Multimedia Resources), the  system of I7 extensions that I'm working on, was originally designed to enable a different approach to creating IF maps. Actually, it was designed to enable a range of approaches to maps, as well as to other kinds of graphical content, including user interfaces, composited scenes, card games, or what have you--but I want to concentrate on maps here. 

Basically, Glimmr allows complex compositions to be built up from individual images, with lots of scope for variation. Basically, you define your Glimmr elements, define some basics about how they should display, and--if you like--rules for showing, hiding, resizing, or otherwise manipulating them. All this makes it relatively easy to produce two types of maps:

(1) Maps that reveal themselves to the player by drawing new elements to the screen as the player discovers new rooms ("additive maps"):

<a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Castle%20of%20Sprites.gblorb">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Castle%2 ... tes.gblorb</a>


(2) Maps that reveal themselves through the progressive removal of elements that obscure a full map of the world ("subtractive maps").  

<a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Robner%20House_HYPERLINKS.gblorb">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Robner%2 ... NKS.gblorb</a>


These examples, by the way, were made with Graphical Window Sprites, a less powerful ancestor of Glimmr. In working with Graphical Window Sprites and early iterations of Glimmr, I found that I could put maps like these together quite quickly, especially their dynamic behavior. But there were two difficulties that I thought would get in the way of others using these tools. First, it's time-consuming to generate the images themselves (using Photoshop or Gimp or whatever); more on this later. Second, there is no program in which measuring and properly placing images isn't a real pain in the ass. In Photoshop, for example, you generally have to zoom in, figure out where the upper left corner (the coordinate origin) of an image is located, write those numbers down, and then transfer them to your definition of the Glimmr element. That is annoying.

I thought about how to make this more accessible and realized that the Glulx machine was the ideal place to build these compositions, since the Glulx machine was the place where they would be displayed. And so, I made an I7 graphics editor that lets you build compositions in a graphics window. When the composition is finished, you press a button and the Glimmr source code to recreate it is written to your hard disk. In case that sounds weird, here's a screenshot of it running in Zoom:

[url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Glimmr%20Canvas%20Editor.png][img]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Glimmr%20Canvas%20Editor.png[/img][/url]

(A portion of the source code output is also included at the bottom of this post.) I intend to release this editor in two ways. Primarily, it will be an extension; an author writes a list of figure names into a source file, includes the editor extension, and the editor gamefile is generated with the author's images in the library window on the right side of the screen, available to be used to generate a composition.

However, I also want to release a compiled gamefile version that goes a little bit of the way toward also helping authors create an additive map (see above), but who don't necessarily want to generate all of their own graphics. For this version, I'd like to include a bunch of elements that could be used for making maps: images that can be used for rooms, hallways, stairs, etc. 

This brings me (finally) to my reasons for writing this post:

[b]One[/b]
I'm looking for some help putting together a list of desired images. What kinds of things would you want to see in a set of images designed for making maps? I don't want to overwhelm users (or myself!), so maybe 20 to 30 images is all I'm looking to provide. A few things to keep in mind:

[list][*]These wouldn't be tiles; there's no need for them to fit to an arbitrary grid. They can vary in size and shape.[/*:m]
[*]Ideally, this set will be usable for many different types of games. What graphic style seems most appropriate?[/*:m]
[*]Glimmr can scale images arbitrarily, so the aspect ratio of images can change (not usually advisable from an aesthetic standpoint, but...)[/*:m]
[*]You can use Glimmr (and the editor) to draw arbitrary rectangles, boxes, and stroked rectangles, without having to create separate images. Glimmr can also draw a line in a single color between any two points, and paint text to the screen in two different ways. These latter operations are slower, however, and should not be overused (see the screenshot). So, users (authors) are not limited just to images. (Obviously, the ability to draw arbitrary rectangles makes subtractive maps like the Robner House demo linked above incredibly easy to do.)[/*:m][/list:u]

Any thoughts? If you're not someone who would design your own graphics, what kind of prefab graphics would you want to use?


[b]Two[/b]
If you're interested in testing/playing around with this mapset/editor combination once the tiles are made, please send me an email, or reply here. I would like to test both the image-set and the editor itself before releasing Glimmr, and this seems like a good way to do both.


Thanks, and apologies for the long post!

Erik


-----Source from the editor------

[code][The editor can also generate source code using tables to define elements. This is more concise and elegant, but doesn't survive internet postings well.]

Chapter - Sprites

The graphlink status of a sprite is g-inactive. The associated canvas of a sprite is graphics-window canvas. 

Cell_1 is a sprite. The image-ID is Figure of Cell. The origin is {241, 203}. The display-layer is 1. 

Player_1 is a sprite. The image-ID is Figure of Player. The origin is {272, 232}. The scaling factor is 0.8500. The display-layer is 1. 

Dungeon_title_1 is a sprite. The image-ID is Figure of Dungeon Title. The origin is {21, 20}. The display-layer is 1. 

Central_hall_1 is a sprite. The image-ID is Figure of Central Hall. The origin is {240, 289}. The display-layer is 1. 

Eastern_hall_1 is a sprite. The image-ID is Figure of Eastern Hall. The origin is {341, 290}. The display-layer is 1. 

Eastern_hall_2 is a sprite. The image-ID is Figure of Eastern Hall. The origin is {567, 290}. The display-layer is 1. 

Chapter - Line primitives

The graphlink status of a line primitive is g-inactive. The associated canvas of a line primitive is graphics-window canvas. 

Line_primitive_2 is a line primitive.  The origin is {257, 450}. The endpoint is {604, 407}. The line-weight is 1. The tint is g-white. The display-layer is 1. 

Chapter - Bitmap-rendered strings

The graphlink status of a bitmap-rendered string is g-inactive. The associated canvas of a bitmap-rendered string is graphics-window canvas. 

The_long_hallway_1 is a bitmap-rendered string.  The origin is {567, 266}.  The text-string is "The Long Hallway...". The associated font is Glimmr C&C. The_long_hallway_1 is center-aligned. The tint is g-white. The background tint is g-placenullcol. The display-layer is 1. 

Chapter - Image-rendered strings

The graphlink status of an image-rendered string is g-inactive. The associated canvas of an image-rendered string is graphics-window canvas. 

Cell_2 is an image-rendered string.  The origin is {299, 208}.  The text-string is "Cell". The associated font is Glimmr Lucida. Cell_2 is left-aligned. The background tint is g-white. The scaling factor is 0.3500. The display-layer is 1. 

[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=968&start=0#p5172
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7/Glulx: Other approaches to mapping
User: George / DateTime: 2010-02-08 17:00:47

Erik, my mind has just been blown.  [emote]:o[/emote] 

Regarding a stock image set and prefab graphics: there are so many available map graphics out there in the world (ranging from game art and tilesets to those made for mapping specifically, for example <a class="postlink" href="http://rpgmapshare.com/">http://rpgmapshare.com/</a> and <a class="postlink" href="http://autorealm.sourceforge.net/symbols.php">http://autorealm.sourceforge.net/symbols.php</a>), that I think it might be just easier to create a very small set yourself (wall, corners, outside floor, inside floor, door, doorway) and then make it easy for authors to plug in their own assets. 

And I definitely want to try this out.  [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=908&start=20#p5173
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Translating the Source Failed
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2010-02-08 18:34:13

I will definitely do it when I get a moment. Thanks for the reminder.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=968&start=0#p5174
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7/Glulx: Other approaches to mapping
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-02-08 19:39:05

George,

Thanks for the links! I had no idea that so much of that stuff was out there, particularly the kinds of things seen at  <a class="postlink" href="http://rpgmapshare.com/">http://rpgmapshare.com/</a> and being generated with Dundjinni. It's good to know that there are a lot of options out there for prefab assets, and makes me feel better about limiting what I provide. I would include the original PNG files in any distribution, so folks could easily mix and match my prefab stuff with other things, including their own work.

Given George's mention of those links, I'd like to widen the request--are there any other high-quality resources for mapping art that I should mention in the documentation for the editor?

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=967&start=0#p5175
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Puzzles which require several conditions
User: Azure / DateTime: 2010-02-09 09:10:30

Cheers, now that you've both explained it I see where I've gotten confused thanks! [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=81&start=10#p5176
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Text Editors for IF
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-02-09 18:55:33

You're insane.  I use vim.  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

Even on Windows, there's a fair amount of much better text editors for free, you don't need to be a masochist.

well, I used to use vim to program in I7 using the command-line interface to compile and run but recently I just moved to the Gnome IDE for I7, which is much more well suited for it anyway.  Still, vim and emacs are two of the most powerful and flexible general-purpose text editors out there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=81&start=10#p5177
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Text Editors for IF
User: George / DateTime: 2010-02-09 23:55:26

Just to add to the insanity...I recently took the plunge and started using vim as well (transitioning from SciTE). I still don't have it working fully as well as SciTE, but what it does do is pretty good. 

However for I7 I use the IDE too. It's probably the only IDE I've ever enjoyed using.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=47&start=10#p5178
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good games for beginners?
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-02-10 02:20:33

I mostly agree with Tropico.

Here's what I generally recommend to novices:  short, fun, straightforward engaging games with a fair bit more puzzles rather than huge maps or, indeed, prose.  The Dreamhold is a truly lovely game, but I think there's a bit too much prose to it, even as it try hard to guide the player and be as helpful as, well, a tutorial game.  Didn't quite work for me as a tutorial, but then I'm not a novice...

here's a few of my picks:
[url=http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/905.z5.js]9:05[/url], by Adam Cadre.  You wake up late and the boss is shouting at the phone.  Very, very short but worth a replay. [emote]:)[/emote]  I think it's the prototypical novice game for being so short and at the same time covering a good deal of IF mechanics.  More so than [url=http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/photopia.z5.js]Photopia[/url], which has dense prose and may seem to be a very, very long game... [emote]:)[/emote]

[url=http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ifarchive.org%2Fif-archive%2Fgames%2Fzcode%2FAisle.z5]Aisle[/url], by Sam Barlow.  A one-turn "game" that represents moments in the life of a man.  Is it possible not to just love this work and the backstory?  Short and yet very deep and engaging.

[url=http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ifarchive.org%2Fif-archive%2Fgames%2Fzcode%2Fshade.z5]Shade[/url], by Andrew Plotkin.  Like Aisle, it's a great one-room "game" but offers a more diverse range of action within its claustrophobic constraints.  I thought of adding [url=http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/Tangle.z5.js]Spider and Web[/url] instead, because as well as being a very solid game it's also very novice-friendly because of the way how it's narrated.  Either way, 2 mind-expanding zarf games...

[url=http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/Balances.z5.js]Balances[/url], is a small gem by Graham Nelson, originally only intended as a demo for Inform.  Holds up quite well as a surreal fantasy game itself, inspired by Spellbreaker.  Possibly one of the most difficult of the lot:  fair, logic contextual puzzles that demand a bit of attention, though.

[url=http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/devours.z5.js]All Things Devours[/url], by half sick of shadows.  A dark and somber game that is still pretty straightforward and fun to play.  You're set to enter a military base to seek to destroy a dangerous prototype.

[url=http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/FailSafe.z5.js]FailSafe[/url], By Jon Ingold.  This is engaging because of the way it addresses the dichotomy player-player character:  you as the player is contacted by the player character which is the sole survivor of a spaceship crash.  Your mission:  to help him by radio to regain control of the ship before it crashes on a nearby moon.

[url=http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/metamorp.z5.js]Metamorphoses[/url], by Emily Short.  I think it's kinda sad that she doesn't list this early work among her works in her blog, because early or not, it's still possibly one of her best novice-geared games.  Featuring poetic concise prose describing fantasy settings and delicious puzzles, it's a sure bet more for novices more so than the denser City of Secrets and I guess more engaging as a game than the dialogue with [url=http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/Galatea.zblorb.js]Galatea[/url].

too bad only zcode so far has gone web, which is a shame because I have lots of TADS recommendations and a few HUGO too... anyway, I think someone is much better off looking for recomentations at:

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/">http://ifdb.tads.org/</a>

[emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=81&start=10#p5179
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Text Editors for IF
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-02-10 02:36:25

No doubt.  vi is the simplest, easier-going text editor ever once people get past their bias against its minimalist interface, modal behavior and very particular way of dealing with text editing.  Vim is only a greatly enhanced vi.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=81&start=10#p5180
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Text Editors for IF
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-02-10 05:38:45

Getting rid of bias is one thing. But liking or disliking its modal behaviour must surely be a personal preference.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=81&start=10#p5181
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Text Editors for IF
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-02-10 15:22:08

I think it's simply bias because I was once a heavy emacs user.  Just got fed up of all the manual dexterity needed.  Far less such clutter with vi, despite hitting ESC so much... it was not a matter of preference for me:  just learning to use it and being more comfortable.

Other editors just offer menus instead, but power-users will generally bind most used commands to keycombos anyway, so turning it effectivelly into mini-emacs. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=970&start=0#p5186
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 : Well-Versed Guides
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-02-12 08:02:43

Hey all. In trying to get some wider acceptance for textual IF and Inform in particular (outside of the current community), I've been writing some "Well-Versed" guides. I have updated these to their most recent incarnation. They are located here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://plover.net/~jeffnyman/">http://plover.net/~jeffnyman/</a>

The reason I bring these up now is because these latest incarnations actually worked in getting Inform 7 accepted as part of some teaching curricula. I'm happy to have anyone look at those and critique them. They are not finished documents yet but they certainly should be useful and accurate and thus are certainly open to comments, questions, suggestions, etc.


I'm particularly interested in whether people find the documents hard to follow. I'm worried they are a bit "choppy" and I'd like to provide the basis for that worry, just so everyone has the context. One of the big challenges with these guides -- I've come to find -- is that I'm essentially attempting to rewrite sections of [i]Writing with Inform[/i] and trying to standardize on vocabulary or use terms consistently where the manuals do not. And since I'm never sure to what extent the official manual is going to change, I can't easily reference it in my guides. But that also means I can't "count on it" either. So I have to cover a lot of stuff that the official manuals may already provide.

The reason I'm taking this approach is that the official manual set that comes with Inform is, among my classes, universally disliked. That's the one constant I've been able to deal with. Whether people in the textual IF community feel this is right or wrong, it's the viewpoint of quite literally every single class I've given and the focal comment to quite literally every single attempt I've made to get Inform introduced as part of an actual curricula (for writing workshops). It essentially boils down to "We might give Inform a try, but the manual is going to have to be rewritten." So I've been in this weird position where I mentally try to "forget" what the official manuals say and just go down my own path -- but with the realization that every member of the class will have those manuals and can reference them. So it's been necessary for me to sync up the knowledge I present with the knowledge in the manuals, not least of which is because I have to make sure I know what the heck I'm talking about.

All of this is to say that I think this has led to a bit of choppy writing on my part, where in some cases I think I do successfully "forget" what I know and write accordingly, but where in other cases I am implicitly assuming knowledge from the official manuals, and writing accordingly. That's why I settled on the "Guide" format, where there can be guides of differing levels of detail. Some guides may be very mono-focused while others may be very broad in nature. The goal has always been to make the guides relatively easy to update pending changes in Inform 7 itself.

What I also want to do are a few of what I'm calling "Dissection Guides." These are going to be guides that take certain relatively complicated examples (probably from the official manuals) and use them as the basis for a full tutorial that essentially recreates that example. Another aspect of this is taking existing extensions and essentially "rebuilding" the logic as part of the tutorial. This is sort of where the Locale guide is going. I'm going to present, for example, Room Description Control. Then go through a series of logic that essentially "rebuilds" one of the already existing extensions that relies on Room Description Control. So in the end the reader can just use the extension if they want -- but now they have knowledge to not only tweak the existing extension if need be but also write their own.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=971&start=0#p5187
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: What evil may lurk in the cold heart of a snowman?
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-02-12 09:13:49

Does anyone know of or recall ever hearing about any legends/mythological stories/spooky tales about snowmen?  I'm not referring to "abominable snowmen" (i.e. bigfoot kin), but rather unnatural and mysterious snowfolk of the "Frosty the Snowman" variety.  I researched this topic for several hours yesterday but all I came up with was that a mystery writer once wrote a book in the 1940s in which some crazy killer person hides a corpse inside a snowman, which isn't what I was generally looking for (and no, that  [emote]:([/emote] "Jack Frost" movie about the killer snowman isn't what I had in mind either).

Perhaps this is an unusual place for such a discussion, but with the many literary-minded folks who frequent this forum I was hoping someone may have at some time been exposed to such myths/legends/stories, which surely must be floating around somewhere.

Basically I'm just looking for inspiration as I try to brainstorm some ideas for a story about some sort of (at this point) rather stereotypical "ancient evil/twisted cult/supernatural powers" story in which snowmen will play a prominent part that could plausibly form the basis of an IF project.  I'm envisioning a scenario in which the protagonist crashes his/her car during a blizzard on a desolate country road, and while trying to find somewhere to get warm comes across a remote motel where some great drama has evidently occurred.  The rooms and surrounding creepy woods are full of murder and suicide victims, and next to each corpse someone has built a small snowman.  A nearby trail leads to an old shack in the woods where a haggard witch-type lady recently lived, and next to a well in her yard is a large snowman.  The protagonist will be given some reason to go down the well, leading to some caves where some epic Lovecraftian hijinks and supernatural struggles will ensue and in which snowmen will play a prominent role.  I'm thinking one twist may be that the snowman idols weren't intended for evil purposes at all, but that the protagonist must assemble some quest objects into a snowman avatar to help fight the ancient evils encountered at the end of the story.

That's about all I've come up with so far, which is why I'm looking for some legends or other stories to explore for further inspiration.  Has anyone ever heard of such tales?  My project, if it proceeds, will likely be only for my own private use so if anyone else would like to use this general idea as well they should feel free to do so.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=970&start=0#p5189
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 : Well-Versed Guides
User: Smith-Corona / DateTime: 2010-02-12 10:25:15

Personally I find them invaluable... I like the detailed approach. I like the fact that you go through the code line by line, explaining each one. This is how I need to learn a programming language, I need to be sure of every single word and expression. I need it to be totally clear that this word is a variable, this one is built-in, this one you don't really need, it's just there for intelligibility, etc etc. (this is where some syntax colouring in I7 would help...). With the natural language "style" of Inform 7 you can sometimes forget that every word has to be right, the structure has to be programatically correct and logical. These are things I think the official manual brushes over at times.  

So I welcome the detail, and I don't mind at all that there is a kind of "customised" vocabulary. Eg when you talk about either/or properties as "behavior properties" - this is not maybe what I would have come up with or how the manual talks about them, but it's clear what you mean and it's good to have a typology laid out that you can work with.

Also, it fills a gap I find in Inform 7, which is a debugger - not from the point of view of catching errors, but of being able to see what is happening with every little thing in your code as it runs. A "watch variable" kind of tool, that lets you learn by observing the programme in action, changing part of it, now how does it run, what happens if I tweak this bit here... your examples are almost like that, they take a piece of code and are like "run this, OK, now change that line, see what happens." The examples in the manual by contrast seem like a fait accompli, something you have to puzzle out (which can also be useful as a way of learning).

Anyway, I'm glad you're continuing with it and I look forward to more!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=930&start=0#p5191
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Support for the Esperanto alphabet
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-02-12 16:52:25

If you get a font that can support Esperanto characters configured in Windows Gargoyle, it will properly display the characters.  Finding a good font might be a trick, but the interpreter's Unicode support is solid.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=971&start=0#p5192
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What evil may lurk in the cold heart of a snowman?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-02-12 16:59:01

This may not be exactly what you're after, but I believe Supernatural had a few episodes about effigies or statues coming alive (I believe one was a scarecrow, hearkening back to old legends of the Wicker Man persuasion). Those episodes were all centred on the idea of a very potent supernatural being (a god, generally) which would on certain holy days be able to enter a prepared and sanctified vessel. See Episode 11 in season One of Supernatural for a nice enough take on it.

True, the classical snowman isn't that scary. But what if the Snowman familiar to us is just a benign echo of something far older and nastier, sort of like the difference between Disney and the old Brothers Grimm tales? I suspect there might be something useful there, so long as you avoid falling into the trap of 80's B movies like The Leprechaun or The Wish. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=971&start=0#p5193
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What evil may lurk in the cold heart of a snowman?
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-02-13 10:34:18

[quote="Eleas"]This may not be exactly what you're after, but I believe Supernatural had a few episodes about effigies or statues coming alive (I believe one was a scarecrow, hearkening back to old legends of the Wicker Man persuasion).[/quote]
I looked this up, and it sounds like it was an interesting program (you were referring to a British television series from the late 1970s?).  I'll read some more about it.  Speaking of British horror, does anyone recall the name of an English film from the 1970s or early 1980s in which a man, his wife, and their daughter move into an old house near a wooded area and ominous supernatural events ensue?  For example, the little girl would hear the voices of children calling her to come play in the woods every time she walked past the area, and I believe these spirits of the woods took her in the end.  Sadly I don't remember any of the actors in the film, but I do remember enjoying it very much and finding it profoundly spooky.

[quote="Eleas"]But what if the Snowman familiar to us is just a benign echo of something far older and nastier, sort of like the difference between Disney and the old Brothers Grimm tales?[/quote]
I was indeed thinking along these lines.  Perhaps I'll look through my collection of Arthur Machen stories for something that could be adapted; if you're not familiar with this author, his work is very disturbing in a way that isn't even attempted these days.  In general I think in these contexts it's best to leave unexplained mysteries...mostly unexplained to the audience, although as author one must of course understand what's going on for oneself in order to form a coherent story.

[quote="Eleas"]I suspect there might be something useful there, so long as you avoid falling into the trap of 80's B movies like The Leprechaun or The Wish. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
I've always thought [i]Leprechaun: In Space[/i] was a very entertaining film, although sadly not nearly good enough to make up for the later disgrace of [i]Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood[/i]. [emote]:)[/emote]




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=972&start=0#p5194
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Graphical Adventures: SLUDGE
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-02-13 14:29:16

Hi!

Some of you may be aware of the cross-platform open source graphical adventure game engine called SLUDGE. It used to be Windows-only, but starting with version 2.0 it's available for Windows, Mac and Linux. (The 2.0 development kit is currently Mac-only, but games made with the 1.x dev kit in Windows can be run in the 2.0 engine, and there are plans to bring the new dev kit to all three platforms.) Version 2.0 is currently in beta, but it's reached the point where it's working well, so we want more people to try it to find any bugs that may be remaining.

Please let me know if you find any bugs or problems! I'm also interested to know the system requirements, so if you run this on an older computer, I'd appreciate it if you let me know how that works, too.

--

If you're interested in SLUDGE, you can find out more [url=http://www.adventuredevelopers.com/forum/index.php?board=14.0]at the official SLUDGE forum[/url].

--

[b]Edit:[/b] As stated below, now SLUDGE 2.0 is released.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=971&start=0#p5195
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What evil may lurk in the cold heart of a snowman?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-02-13 18:08:10

[quote="Endosphere"]
I looked this up, and it sounds like it was an interesting program (you were referring to a British television series from the late 1970s?).  I'll read some more about it.[/quote]

Oh. Um. Not so much. I'm talking about the American TV series from 2005 (ish). It's quite good, though occasionally prone to a few "monster of the week" episodes, and on rewatching it I'm actually convinced it's solid all the way through (despite the odd stinker, but you get those everywhere). 

[quote]I've always thought [i]Leprechaun: In Space[/i] was a very entertaining film, although sadly not nearly good enough to make up for the later disgrace of [i]Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood[/i]. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Argh... in all honestly, I'm close to a functional illiterate when it comes to horror movies.  [emote]:oops:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=970&start=0#p5196
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 : Well-Versed Guides
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-02-14 02:50:42

Truly outstanding work!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=973&start=0#p5197
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: 'pedagogical IF' and Voices from Spoon River
User: marxbert / DateTime: 2010-02-14 07:45:47

First, by pedagogical IF I mean interactive fiction written around 'the art of teaching.'  I am primarily interested in games/text adventures/interactive fiction that either introduces literature, or more importantly, includes interpretation of the literature or otherwise guides the reading in a particular way.

The only example I have found, and one that arguably only introduces the stories and does not attempt interpretation, is "Voices from Spoon River" (game available [url=http://cle.usu.edu/CLE_IF_learning.html]here[/url]).  I have only found the SPAG review; any other reviews or impressions of the game, feel free to share.  I will use the review on SPAG ([url=http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/v.html#spoon]here[/url]) to bring up some questions/comments I have on game design of IF in this genre.
[quote]Here enters the
didactic focus of the work in earnest, for in order to solve the game the player 
must grapple fairly intimately with the literary world Masters has created.

It is quite a clever conceit, actually, and it works quite well.  At its best,  
Spoon River gives the feeling of actually getting inside a work of literature 
and exploring in a way I have seldom if ever experienced before.  [/quote]
This is perhaps why "Voices of Spoon River" is most attractive.  But is the point of literary-pedagogical IF to be immersion into the world of the original work?  At most, this seems only a beginning--and not necessarily the best one.  It seems unlikely one can ever offer greater immersion into the text than simply rereading the text.  And thus, I think the content of pedagogical IF must not simply seek a recreation of the original work, but provide critical content.
[quote]
One could, however, argue that the IF work is not really true thematically to the original 
work it purports to celebrate.  After all, much of the power of Masters' poems 
arises from the pathetic futility of all these broken, unsatisfied lives.  The 
game, though, undermines that by giving the player the opportunity to tack happy 
endings of sorts on top of Masters' miniature tragedies, even though the very 
lack of tidy resolutions like these is sort of the point of Masters' work.  For 
Spoon River to work as a game, though, perhaps this conceit is necessary.
[/quote]
It should be said this review is several years old.  I think that perhaps IF has reached a point where an ending can be "a downer" and even have a somewhat unsatisfying resolution in terms of the character, but still be enjoyable to the player.
This quote addresses an important question, fundamental to any game/recreation with the intentions of "Voices of Spoon River": how closely must the plot/puzzles/endgame be involved with the thematic nature of the original text?  I think that Masters' thematic construction is weakened by this game.  Perhaps the player gains temporary immersion in the world of Spoon River, but the game does not promote any greater understanding of Masters' characters or themes.  The resolutions offered in "Voices of Spoon River" ultimately detract from Masters' entire project.
I think that adding on "happy endings" or other solutions that do not jive with the original content is not detrimental in itself; resolving puzzles in a way counter to the original work and/or its themes can result in endgames that, though "winning", is heavy-handed about missing the lesson.  This can be done either by strongly criticizing the particular action or solution to a puzzle or by encouraging the correct behavior in the "incorrect" endgames.  I believe that for pedagogical IF, the designer should probably be fairly heavy-handed and perhaps suggest the correct behavior in the incorrect endgame, simply for the sake of making the game playable in a short amount of time (classroom setting or at-home use).  A solution that displays an understanding of the work's theme (not just plot) can give a list of THINGS TO DO like in Infocom's hintbooks, and thereby get to read the other endgames, that may be somewhat amusing.
And a final quote:
[quote]Although implemented widely, Spoon River is not implemented very deeply.  
Scenery is generally non-manipulatible, and character interaction with the 
ghosts is rudimentary at best.  It does not really matter, though.  The 
implementation is generally good enough to accomplish the game's goals, and the 
player is never left at a loss for how to phrase a command or converse with 
others. [/quote]
I am curious what other people think regarding manipulation and game environment in a work of pedagogical IF.  I see no problem with a work being sparse in manipulation.  NPC interaction, in most cases, can add to immersion and to providing a method of interpreting the original work--so I am mainly talking about items and devices in terms of interaction.  For the most part, it seems like 'less is more' if you're trying to impart a lesson.  Certain devices could be necessary--an oven in Hansel and Gretel, a spinning wheel in Rumpelstilskin--but locked containers and hidden doors would almost certainly draw away from the pedagogical function of the work.

Are there thoughts on more-or-less decorative manipulation in pedagogical IF--its value or its dangers?

[should i post this at raif?]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=960&start=0#p5198
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Divis Mortis - general questions and beta testing
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2010-02-14 12:23:49

your post is somehow confusing on how completed your work already is, but feel free to pm me

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=973&start=0#p5199
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: 'pedagogical IF' and Voices from Spoon River
User: George / DateTime: 2010-02-14 13:06:20

[quote]It seems unlikely one can ever offer greater immersion into the text than simply rereading the text. [/quote]

I would disagree with that idea in its absolute terms. On the other hand it's kind of a setup, isn't it, since you'd presume that a master writer (assuming any IF you create in this vein would be to teach 'important' texts) created their work so that it works perfectly in its medium. Just like everyone says the book was better than the movie.

There've been a few Shakespearean IFs I think, that might add to the body of work you're looking at.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=972&start=0#p5200
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Graphical Adventures: SLUDGE
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-02-14 16:17:35

If have downloaded the Mac version, I have to apologise to you. There was a bug that prevented the game from starting at all. I have uploaded a fixed version.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=973&start=0#p5201
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: 'pedagogical IF' and Voices from Spoon River
User: marxbert / DateTime: 2010-02-14 18:15:31

[quote="George"][quote]It seems unlikely one can ever offer greater immersion into the text than simply rereading the text. [/quote]

I would disagree with that idea in its absolute terms. On the other hand it's kind of a setup, isn't it, since you'd presume that a master writer (assuming any IF you create in this vein would be to teach 'important' texts) created their work so that it works perfectly in its medium. Just like everyone says the book was better than the movie.
[/quote]
---
Well, it wasn't very absolute; the word unlikely isn't definitive.  But yes--it is a setup.  Anyone willing to spend enough time with a text to create pedagogical IF will probably choose a text of very high quality writing.  It seems naive to aspire to Faulkner, Pynchon, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Mishima, and on and on and on.

I don't think that the point of IF based on a novel/story should be immersion into the world of the story.  It should certainly not be the point of [i]pedagogical[/i] IF.  Can immersion into a story's setting really add to the understanding of the original work?  I think it may appeal to some people, but I don't think it can really serve a pedagogical function (with the possible exception of Shakespeare, Chaucer, etc--see below).

Let's take Raymond Chandler or Lovecraft/Cthulu-Mythos--you can base IF off of some detective fiction, gothic novel or Lovecraftian universe and it can be arguably more immersive than the original text.  Or, perhaps a classic example, "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy."  In all honesty, I remember the game as well, and in many scenarios better, than the original books.  I certainly spent more time on the damn game (especially if you don't give the dog a cheese sandwich).  But while perhaps the IF may further develop the type of plots and (if well-written) the type of language used in genre fiction, I don't think that there is any intention to "teach" the player anything.

I take a lot of exception to your last comment, and I don't think the discussion can be reduced to "the book is better than the movie."  How many movies are out there, based on books, that intend to give a better understanding of the themes of the original text?  (I'm going to bar film adaptation of plays, because that gets into a whole different subject.)  Most successful film adaptations try to follow the original plot, but there is rarely an attempt to emphasize the themes that were at play in a book.  In many cases, the thematic material of the original work is abandoned in the film in favor of a simpler, feel-good theme; perhaps the producers believe the book was successful because of its setting, characters and plot and not the writing or the theme.
I can only think of one movie on a moment's notice that is an example of my point:  Apocalypse Now, based on Conrad's Heart of Darkness.  Comparing Apocalypse Now with Heart of Darkness can be fruitful, but discussions of "which one is better" will probably come down to taste.  I think that pedagogical IF should take note of the relation between AN and HoD--instead of recreating a journey up the Congo, the same themes can be developed in the Nam.  Now, the statement you took issue with, that rarely could anything be more immersive than a rereading of the text remains true; watching AN is not the same as immersing oneself in Conrad's world.  Rereading Heart of Darkness would certainly give one a better sense of the setting, the characters, the plot, individual symbols, etc.  But watching AN after reading HoD highlights and reinforces several motifs from the text without trying to "immerse" the audience into the text.

I think immersion can be useful technique--a work of IF doesn't have to put the same themes in a new setting.  But, I think the emphasis of game design should be on conveying theme rather than creating an immersive environment.
And that leads me to the exceptions:
[quote]There've been a few Shakespearean IFs I think, that might add to the body of work you're looking at.[/quote]
I have not played much (any?) Shakespearean IF, but this is already somewhat distinct from Masters' Spoon River Anthology.  Most importantly, there is the use of language.  Pedagogical IF written on Shakespeare (Chaucer, the King James Bible) can focus on teaching vocabulary, for example ">SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN TO COME UNTO ME."  This may give the impression of being as immersive as the original works plays, but I think this comes because it is so difficult for today's students to immerse themselves thanks to a language barrier.

Rather than trying to recreate Richard III or one of the great tragedies by trying to be the most accurate to Shakespeare's vision, it would probably be more instructive to include 'puzzles' that can be solved according to Elizabethean manners/etiquette, as well as solutions that go against those same social mores.  Arguably, this would cut down the realism of/immersion into Shakespeare's world (allowing player to act outside of Shakespeare's roles)--but based on the solutions to the puzzles, the game author can be heavy-haned in how the player's actions do or do not fit into Shakespeare's world and consequences of these actions.  A more difficult task would be effectively taking Shakespeare's themes and transcribing them into a different setting; I have heard this done surprisingly well with radio drama, and it has worked with film (Kurosawa jumps to mind).  I think that pedagogical IF must find ways to teach, to encourage critical thinking and intepretation, rather than hoping that reproducing setting and characters will give students/players a better feel for the texts.

On that note, if you have any specific recommendations on Shakespearean-themed IF, I would love to see what they are all about.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=971&start=0#p5202
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What evil may lurk in the cold heart of a snowman?
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-02-14 19:26:18

[quote="Eleas"]I'm talking about the American TV series from 2005 (ish).[/quote]
Oops, I looked that up and it sounds like a somewhat successful program (I stopped watching television about fifteen years ago, and don't know much about what's happening with it these days).   It does sound like an interesting program, and I'll check out some on-line episode synopses.

[quote="Eleas"]Argh... in all honestly, I'm close to a functional illiterate when it comes to horror movies. [emote]:oops:[/emote][/quote]
In this case I was kidding, so take my word for it when I say there's no need for anyone to ever waste any time catching up on the [i]Leprechaun[/i] series.  In fact the only good thing that ever came from that whole series of films was that it provided Warwick Davis with his vehicle to stardom--had it not been for the six "Leprechauns," we likely would never have been given the privilege of seeing his haunting performance for the ages as the dinner-plate-throwing homicidal topside of a menacing Master/Blaster-esque duo in [i]Skinned Deep[/i] [size=50](yet more esoteric movie references, sorry)[/size].




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=799&start=0#p5203
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Tools for mapping interactive fiction games?
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2010-02-15 09:54:24

I bought GueMap and it's a great tool...
My only problem is that the last update was way back in 2007, and the programmer doesn't answer any of my e-mails.
But a great program I can really recommend.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=974&start=0#p5205
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Pure .NET Based IF Platform
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-02-16 00:23:36

I started working on an IF platform in .NET using VB.NET. Like many wishful thinkers, I got to the point where you have to start making serious decisions about how the parser, actions, and world model come together. My experience is with Inform 6 and 7 and I am by no means a string developer in either system.

I do, however, have a good grasp of the concepts involved. I could complete a workable system and spend time making a basic library for people to use. But then I switched gears.

I now want to think about ways we can leverage .NET (any of the languages) to create IF games. This includes using xml configuration files, an embedded sql database, winforms, silverlight, wpf, xaml, web services, blend, LINQ, and anything else we can come up with.

The other thing I've always believed, from the moment I gave up on Visual Inform back in 1998, was that IF has different problems that might be better served with varied tools. One syntax might not be the best way to offer authors a simple path to making great works. It seems there may be multiple problems with multiple solutions. The trick is to allow all of the solutions to point to a single result.

So those are my two main design requirements. Pure .NET and Domain Specific Tooling.

Some of the .NET things I've been thinking about include:

A declarative syntax that pre-loads a database with facts which is then managed by rules. The state of the game is contained in the database at all times. Each turn, a decision tree is created and once the entire path is determined, a transactional update to the database is made, including a list of things that need to be reported.

Some of the problems in .NET that appear to beg for a DST include:

- mapping (we have some visualization tools...the box and line style is okay, but it's also nice to see the floor map style too)
- conversation (let the author pick the style of conversation, and then develop a tool to enable the easiest way to edit that style)
- npc's (I see a tool that sort of looks at the world model from the npc's perspective and allows the author to make rules based on this view)
- automation (a tool to automate portions of the world model in interesting ways)
- output (no thoughts on this at the moment)
- rules (nothing to add here for the moment)

So anyway, I have a Subversion repo and a few Google Waves for people to peruse, but I thought I'd also bring the conversation over here.

If any one wants to chime in, feel free.

David C.
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.textfyre.com">www.textfyre.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=974&start=0#p5206
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Pure .NET Based IF Platform
User: George / DateTime: 2010-02-16 10:10:43

Just one comment -- are you familiar with language oriented programming (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.jetbrains.com/mps/index.html">http://www.jetbrains.com/mps/index.html</a>)? I'm not sure that anything useful has been created with that, but I was reading about it recently and there were some interesting ideas. 

Coincidentally I've been thinking about the same kinds of things lately, partly as a result of using Leo (<a class="postlink" href="http://webpages.charter.net/edreamleo/front.html">http://webpages.charter.net/edreamleo/front.html</a>). Because IF combines code and prose to an extent unlike most programming languages it seems especially suitable for development with a variety of tools. 

The Python library pyf (<a class="postlink" href="http://code.google.com/p/pyf/">http://code.google.com/p/pyf/</a>) separates the world model (as an xml file) from the game logic (as a Python file). To be honest editing xml by hand is not my favorite thing in the world but it does open up the possibility for a more user-friendly tool to create the same data.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=975&start=0#p5207
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Combination of Keyword Interface and Conversation Suggestion
User: Strainer / DateTime: 2010-02-16 11:39:05

Hello everyone.

I have discovered Inform 7 within the last few weeks and since then have tried different extensions and approaches for controlling the various games.

I really like the way Blue Lacuna handles the controls and would like to integrate the same into my own game.

The extension Keyword Interface by Aaron Reed supports nearly everything I need, with the exception of conversation topics. Therefore, I want to combine Conversation Suggestions by Eric Eve with this plugin.

I have already modified parts of Conversation Suggestions so that it prints the various ask- and tell-suggestions in the appropriate topic color, but in a very basic way:

[color=#0000FF]  if ask-suggs > 0 begin;
      [let sugg-rep be "[sugg-list-ask with definite articles]";
      replace the regular expression "\band\b" in sugg-rep with "or";]
      say "ask [it-them of the current interlocutor] about [t][the entry 1 of sugg-list-ask][x][if ask-suggs > 1] or [t][the entry 2 of sugg-list-ask][x][end if][if ask-suggs > 2] or [t][the entry 3 of sugg-list-ask][x][end if][if ask-suggs > 3] or [t][the entry 4 of sugg-list-ask][x][end if][if ask-suggs > 4] or [t][the entry 5 of sugg-list-ask][x][end if][if ask-suggs > 5] or [t][the entry 6 of sugg-list-ask][x][end if][if ask-suggs > 6] or [t][the entry 7 of sugg-list-ask][x][end if][if ask-suggs > 7] or [t][the entry 8 of sugg-list-ask][x][end if][if ask-suggs > 8] or [t][the entry 9 of sugg-list-ask][x][end if][if ask-suggs > 9] or [t][the entry 10 of sugg-list-ask][x][end if][if tell-suggs > 0]; or [end if]";
 end if;
[/color]

I completely got rid of the "sugg-rep" indexed text (that's why it is commented out) as I couldn't modify it in a way to only print certain topic words highlighted without also printing words like "or" in highlighted color. The method above works (at least for up to 10 keywords) but I'm sure there is a more efficient way of achieving this.

Another problem I have with the integration are the "other-suggestions". These are commonly used for things like "show him your sword" or "give him the key" within a conversation. The problem with these is also that only certain words should be highlighted, not the whole phrase. (in the example above, the output should be like: "show him your [color=#FF0000]sword[/color]")

I would appreciate any help with these problems. As soon as these things are worked out, I can release this Extension as an add-on for Eric Eve's Conversation Suggestions.

Thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=975&start=0#p5208
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combination of Keyword Interface and Conversation Suggestion
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2010-02-16 12:03:03

Have you come across [url=http://www.wigdahl.net/quern/2009/12/21/inform-7-development-integrating-aaron-and-eric/#more-1237]Matt Wigdahl's article[/url], which seems to be discussing much the same thing as you're attempting, and may save you from trying to reinvent this particular wheel?

I have in fact put together a new version of Conversation Suggestions which incoporates some of Matt's ideas. I've just sent it to the I7 Extensions site.

-- Eric

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=975&start=0#p5209
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combination of Keyword Interface and Conversation Suggestion
User: Strainer / DateTime: 2010-02-16 12:06:48

[quote="Eric Eve"]Have you come across [url=http://www.wigdahl.net/quern/2009/12/21/inform-7-development-integrating-aaron-and-eric/#more-1237]Matt Wigdahl's article[/url], which seems to be discussing much the same thing as you're attempting, and may save you from trying to reinvent this particular wheel?

I have in fact put together a new version of Conversation Suggestions which incoporates some of Matt's ideas. I've just sent it to the I7 Extensions site.

-- Eric[/quote]

Thanks a lot, didn't know that anyone was already working on this. I will regularly check the Extensions site from now on as I'm also working on a German translation of your fantastic conversaton package. Thanks for all your work.

Strainer

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=976&start=0#p5210
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: IF folk in NYC?
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2010-02-16 14:28:12

I'm attending a school in Manhattan (though I live north of Boston otherwise) and I was wondering whether other IF people operate in the city.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=976&start=0#p5211
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF folk in NYC?
User: olimay / DateTime: 2010-02-16 23:35:46

Hi Kazuki, I'm new to this community (hello!) and I [i]used[/i] to be local to New York (much love, Brooklyn). I've since moved back with family in Princeton, NJ. Most of my friends are still live in NYC and I come up to visit whenever I can! I'd be up for an IF-related meetup, if that could ever be organized. [emote]:-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=80#p5212
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: olimay / DateTime: 2010-02-17 00:23:40

Oliver here: I've technically been playing interactive fiction since 2001 or thereabouts, but have started playing--and harboring thoughts of authoring--only recently. Glad to be here! [emote]:D[/emote]

I'm a 25 year old NYC exile living in Central NJ. My favorite fiction authors include Jorge Luis Borges, Orhan Pamuk, Haruki Murakami, Kurt Vonnegut, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, Vernor Vinge, and Umberto Eco.

Recently, I've been enthusiastic about trying to author IF. Since I was young, I wanted to be a fiction author, among other things. The concept of story has regained some importance in my life recently, so I hope to find the right spirit soon. I do like puzzles (studied math & computer science when I was in school) but I'm most strongly drawn to the imaginative, storytelling side of IF. I also do some programming (and get paid for it occasionally), so IF seems like a natural meeting place.

Looking forward to learning from all of you!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=81&start=10#p5213
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Text Editors for IF
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-02-17 09:42:13

My favorite text editor is ConTEXT (Windows), which is completely free.  I even use it for writing text documents, sometimes.  It has an Inform 6 syntax highlighter file that can be downloaded from its archive of syntax highlighters:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.contexteditor.org/highlighters/">http://www.contexteditor.org/highlighters/</a>

I've been working on making a Hugo syntax highlighter.

However, I also use Implementor, a somewhat outdated IF programming environment that supports TADS 2, Inform 6, Hugo, and ALAN 2.  It can be configured to launch the compilers and interpreters.  It also seems to feature a spelling checker, but I've never used the feature.

Implementor is available on the IF Archive:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/programming/editors/Imp13Win.zip">http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/pro ... p13Win.zip</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=81&start=10#p5214
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Text Editors for IF
User: George / DateTime: 2010-02-17 09:58:14

What does Implementor do Bainespal?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=80#p5215
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2010-02-17 15:14:13

Welcome to the forum, Oliver! [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=977&start=0#p5216
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Implementing Trainable Skills
User: jedimattk / DateTime: 2010-02-17 21:12:14

Hi, I'm working on a new extension and have no idea where to begin! About a year ago, I made a rather clunky extension for combat; I've since made some improvements, but it's still rather awkward and breaks the "flow," so to speak, of a good game. (It's based on numbers and randomness and ... yeah, not good.)

My goal is to create two completely new extensions. The first one will be to implement skills into a game. For example, the player might have the  skill of swimming. These skills are learnable (as in, they must be learned before they can be used, unless they know them already at the beginning of the game) and trainable (as in, once the player has learned a skill, they can perform a certain action to get better at it.) The idea is that, using the swimming example, the player might learn how to swim by talking to an instructor, then go swim in a lake or something for a few turns to get better at it. The better they get, the longer/further/etc. they will be able to swim ... so then after training for awhile, they might be able to swim the ocean! [emote]:D[/emote]

(Oh, in case you're interested, the second one will eventually include a bunch of combat-related skills and some other goodies, like auto-corpses. But that's not really relevant.)

I haven't done any Inform programming for quite some time, so my syntax is more than a bit rusty, but so far I have defined skills as a kind of thing and given them a state of being either learned or unlearned. I'm just unsure about 1) how I should set up the whole learning action to make it as seamless as possible, and 2) how different levels of skill proficiency would even be implemented. I do know that I want to stay away from numbers as much as possible ... for preference, there would be text states describing skill levels.

Any help, guys? Maybe some sample code you could send my way to work from? That would help a lot!!


~Matt

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=977&start=0#p5217
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Implementing Trainable Skills
User: George / DateTime: 2010-02-18 00:01:20

Before going to sample code -- can you write 

1) a transcript of how the PC would learn the skill from a trainer

and 

2) describe how different skill levels affect game interactions, with some more specific examples?

With skill levels especially there are a bunch of ways you can go. Straight compares, percentile, binary, percentile [i]and [/i]binary, etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=978&start=0#p5218
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: very green.. question about a spin the bottle game
User: sqib / DateTime: 2010-02-18 00:14:35

hello all, started to try messing around a bit with I7 and what im trying to do is make a spin the bottle game that is random..I have no idea though after the initial part..heres some  code .

spinning is an action applying to one touchable thing and requiring light.
Understand "spin [something]" or "spins [something]" as spinning.

persuasion rule for asking people to try spinning:
persuasion succeeds.

after the actor spinning the empty wine bottle:
	say "[the actor] spins the bottle and it lands on [a random person in game room ]";
let N be the actor;
let P be the random person;
	say "now you two have to kiss...make it a good one".


/ now after the [a random person in game room] I just threw the let N be the actor and P the random person out of nowhere..what im trying to do is have the spinner and the random person who is chosen kiss but it is beyond me at the moment.  Thank you

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=978&start=0#p5219
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: very green.. question about a spin the bottle game
User: George / DateTime: 2010-02-18 01:00:04

That's close, the structure just needs to be reworked a bit, and fleshed out a little. 

A minimally tested example:

[code]
Game Room is a room. 

A NPC is a kind of person. Alice, Bob, Joe, Marlene, and Susie are NPCs in the Game Room.  

The wine bottle is in the Game Room. A thing can be spinnable. The bottle is spinnable. 

Spinning it is an action applying to one visible thing and requiring light. 
Understand "spin [something]" as spinning it. 

Persuasion rule for asking a NPC to try spinning: 
	if the noun is not spinnable:
		say "It's called spin THE BOTTLE.";
	else:
		persuasion succeeds. 

Check spinning:
	if the noun is not spinnable:
		say "It's called spin THE BOTTLE.";
		rule fails.

Report someone spinning:
	let L be the list of people in the location;
	sort L in random order;
	remove the person asked from L;
	let P be entry 1 in L;
	say "[the person asked] spins the bottle and it points to [P]!";
	say "Now [the person asked] and [P] must kiss. Make it a good one!"

Report spinning:
	let P be a random NPC in the location;
	say "You spin the bottle and it points to [P]!";
	say "Now you and [P] must kiss. Make it a good one!"

test me with "alice, spin the bottle / spin bob / spin the bottle / marlene, spin susie"
[/code]

Some explanation:

1) Making the people NPCs just makes it easier to handle them for this action

2) Making the bottle 'spinnable' makes it easier to write failure messages

3) Checking for a spinnable thing in the persuasion rule (rather than in a check rule) makes the failure message cleaner for NPCs

4) Inform does consider yourself a person in the location (who could be chosen randomly) so we can use the NPC kind to trap this when the player spins the bottle

Hope that helps some.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=978&start=0#p5220
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: very green.. question about a spin the bottle game
User: sqib / DateTime: 2010-02-18 10:37:27

Thank you very much for the quick response.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=81&start=10#p5221
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Text Editors for IF
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-02-18 11:08:42

[quote="George"]What does Implementor do Bainespal?[/quote]
When you unzip it, the archive is set up with directories where you can install put the executables for the compilers and interpreters and also the library files for the supported authoring systems.  However, you can also edit the configuration file (there's a different one for each IF system) to point it to the path on your hard drive where you have your compiler and interpreter, and you can set compiler switches in the configuration file to point to the IF system's library location, so you don't need to put everything in Implementor's directiory.  When you launch the compiler from Implementor, any error messages are saved and displayed in a pane below the source code.  The commands to compile or run the compiled gamefile are found in the menu produced when right-clicking.

Implementor also comes with indexes that explain the keywords, commands, library routines, ect. in each of the systems.  These are displayed when you press F1, or from the menu.  However, this reference material is probably not up to date with the latest versions.  It's definitely not current with the latest release of Hugo, but it's still helpful.

You can edit the configuration file for the system that you're working with inside of Implementor without needing to restart it.  There's a Configure command on the menu, which opens the configuration file.  You can make any changes necessary, and when you close it, Implementor displays "Configuration Updated", apparently having re-loaded the saved file.

Implementor has other features, but many of them are probably standard to programming text editors (commenting/uncommenting source code and increasing/decreasing indent, for instance).  It may have other features that I don't know how to use, but it's not really all that complicated.  Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be able to match braces.

Its interface is definitely retro; it looks like it could have been a GUI DOS program, or maybe Windows 3.1.  However, it has all the functionality of more modern applications, including re-sizable panes.

It's definitely a very capable piece of software, probably one of the best applications made specifically for creating IF.  I alternated between using Implementor and ConTEXT for "Dreary Lands", and I think for another Inform 6 project that I never finished.  I've also been using it for Hugo, but I'll probably switch to ConTEXT eventually, because I'm more comfortable with it in general.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=975&start=0#p5222
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combination of Keyword Interface and Conversation Suggestion
User: Strainer / DateTime: 2010-02-18 15:31:33

I'm currently working on the translation of Version 3 of your Conversation suggestion and have a problem:

All the replacements seem to work fine, the only problem I have is that the parts "Chapter 1a -  Listing Suggested Topics (for use with Complex Listing by Emily Short)" and "Chapter 1b -  Listing Suggested Topics (for use with Complex Listing by Emily Short)" don't work, as soon as I start a game without Complex Listing I'm running into errors and as soon as I use it, both topic suggestion lists are printed.

I have uploaded the extension here:

[url=http://www.mediafire.com/?qk3jtjtytlf]Download[/url]

I really don't know why the conditional Chapters 1a and 1b don't work in my translation.

Greets

Strainer

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=949&start=0#p5223
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: A sort of RPG?
User: RedOrZed / DateTime: 2010-02-18 16:41:26

Wow! Such a lot of replies here with so many good ideas!  [emote]:)[/emote] Thank you all very much for taking the time!

There ain't 'alf a lot of smart people around here  [emote]8-)[/emote] 

You've given me some serious food for thought. Most seriously how I want the game to play, but also how the game might [i]be played[/i], which is probably not the same thing.

I must admit the divergent endings of [i]Glass[/i] is one of the things that influenced me, but also presents it's own problems (for me). [i]Glass[/i] is played to >an< ending. then it stops. I want to kind of build on that PC to NPC interaction as the game goes along. Obviously not in anywhere near as great a depth, but just to add more interest. EG how much do you need to talk to a barman? But if you talk to him more, does he help more? If you say the /wrong/ thing, does he clam up or attack you or...?

Then, if the player gets into the habit of talking to people (or stabbing them, or just basically [i]interacting with them[/i]) do I then need to code responses for every damn NPC we come across [b]and modify those responses based on previous interactions[/b]? Am I making a very deep game or simply a very deep pit for myself? 

Hmm, thinking on this and Ron's point, could one code a table of "stock" responses for unimportant NPCs? Maybe the orange seller just says "eek you're scary" or "gosh you're quiet" as appropriate, and other avenues of interaction are blocked off? You go to stab any of these cardboard cutout people and you get carted off to prison. You try to rob them, you fail. And so on. 

Then, how does the player figure out who >I< (the programmer) felt was important enough to bother with? There'd need to be some 'trick' in the description I spose? Or they'd get quite annoyed...

There are a number of "choke points" in my initial game plan; crossing deserts, rivers, etc. The gamer needs to progress from one point to another, but there are limited ways of doing this otherwise I'd get too bogged down. It's like, multiple paths leading to one junction, then branching off from there, joining back up at the next spot, if that makes sense?

Cheers again all  [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=977&start=0#p5224
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Implementing Trainable Skills
User: RedOrZed / DateTime: 2010-02-18 16:43:57

Nothing to add from me, just I'm going to keep an eye on this thread and wonder how I could use such an extension  [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=977&start=0#p5225
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Implementing Trainable Skills
User: George / DateTime: 2010-02-18 20:13:03

Anyone interested in this should be sure to check out RAIF, the OP cross-posted there got some good responses.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=977&start=0#p5226
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Implementing Trainable Skills
User: jedimattk / DateTime: 2010-02-18 20:24:53

Sorry guys, I reposted this on rec.arts.int-fiction, which appears to be considerably more active than this forum. You can check out the new thread [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/f6532de175bd52d0#]here[/url], which already has 10 posts and a nice basic beta-version being tossed around.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=975&start=0#p5227
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combination of Keyword Interface and Conversation Suggestion
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2010-02-19 02:22:24

[quote]All the replacements seem to work fine, the only problem I have is that the parts "Chapter 1a - Listing Suggested Topics (for use with Complex Listing by Emily Short)" and "Chapter 1b - Listing Suggested Topics (for use with Complex Listing by Emily Short)" don't work, as soon as I start a game without Complex Listing I'm running into errors and as soon as I use it, both topic suggestion lists are printed.[/quote]

From this statement I'm guessing that the problem is in this Chapter heading:

[code]Chapter 1b - Listing Suggested Topics (for use with Complex Listing by Emily Short)[/code]

This should be:

[code]Chapter 1b - Listing Suggested Topics (for use without Complex Listing by Emily Short)[/code]

(Note change: with -> with[b]out[/b]

In your version, both Chapter 1a and Chapter 1b are compiled into the game when Complex Listing is present, and neither is when it isn't.

-- Eric

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=979&start=0#p5228
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Anyone know the guy/s trying to renew the Infocom trademark?
User: Sslaxx / DateTime: 2010-02-19 06:18:22

As seen in posts on rec.games.int-fiction:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.trademork.com/infocom/">http://www.trademork.com/infocom/</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.infocom-fiction.com/">http://www.infocom-fiction.com/</a>

Could make things interesting. Infocom reborn as a maker of German-language IF? And who lives on Folsom street, anyone here?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=975&start=0#p5229
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combination of Keyword Interface and Conversation Suggestion
User: Strainer / DateTime: 2010-02-19 06:19:53

Thanks Eric, but the bug still exists.

Here is the code as it is atm:


[code]Part 2 - The Listing Suggested Topics Action (in place of Part 2 - The Listing Suggested Topics Action in Conversation Suggestions by Eric Eve)
(...)

Chapter 1a -  Listing Suggested Topics (for use with Complex Listing by Emily Short)

Section 1 - Carry Out Listing

Carry out listing suggested topics:
	consider the suggestion list construction rules;
	let ask-suggs be the number of entries in sugg-list-ask;
	let tell-suggs be the number of entries in sugg-list-tell;
	let other-suggs be the number of entries in sugg-list-other;
	if ask-suggs + tell-suggs + other-suggs is 0 begin;
		say "[nothing specific]";
		rule succeeds;
	end if;
	say "[if topic-request is implicit]([end if]Du könntest ";
	if other-suggs > 0 then
		say "[sugg-list-other in topic format][if tell-suggs + ask-suggs > 0]; oder [end if]";
	if ask-suggs > 0 then
		say "[ihn the current interlocutor] über [sugg-list-ask in topic format] fragen[if tell-suggs > 0]; oder [end if]";
	if tell-suggs > 0 then
		say "[ihm the current interlocutor] von [sugg-list-tell in topic format] erzählen";
	say "[if topic-request is implicit].)[paragraph break][otherwise].[end if]";
 
Section 2 - Carry Out Listing Support Routines

To say (l - a list of objects) in topic format:
	set up l for topic printing;
	say "[the prepared list delimited in disjunctive style]";
 
To set up (l - a list of objects) for topic printing:
	repeat with item running through l:
		now the item is marked for special listing;
	register things marked for listing.

Chapter 1b -  Listing Suggested Topics (for use without Complex Listing by Emily Short)

[ This version uses regular expression substitution in indexed text to end the list with "or" rather than "and" ]

Carry out listing suggested topics:
  consider the suggestion list construction rules;
  let ask-suggs be the number of entries in sugg-list-ask;
  let tell-suggs be the number of entries in sugg-list-tell;
  let other-suggs be the number of entries in sugg-list-other;
  if ask-suggs + tell-suggs + other-suggs is 0 begin;
     say "[nothing specific]";
     rule succeeds;
  end if;
  let sugg-rep be an indexed text;
  say "[if topic-request is implicit]([end if]Du könntest ";
  if other-suggs > 0 begin;
     let sugg-rep be "[sugg-list-other]";
     replace the regular expression "und" in sugg-rep with "oder";
     say "[sugg-rep][if tell-suggs + ask-suggs > 0]; oder [end if]";
  end if;
  if ask-suggs > 0 begin;
      let sugg-rep be "[sugg-list-ask with definite articles]";
      replace the regular expression "und" in sugg-rep with "oder";
      say "[ihn the current interlocutor] über [sugg-rep] fragen[if tell-suggs > 0]; oder [end if]";
 end if;
 if tell-suggs > 0 begin;    
     let sugg-rep be "[sugg-list-tell with definite articles]";
     replace the regular expression "und" in sugg-rep with "oder";
     say "[ihm the current interlocutor] von [sugg-rep] erzählen";
end if;
say "[if topic-request is implicit].)[paragraph break][otherwise].[end if]"
[/code]

Any idea why this still doesn't work without complex listing and prints double when using it?

Thanks

Strainer

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=975&start=0#p5230
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combination of Keyword Interface and Conversation Suggestion
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2010-02-19 11:36:44

[code]Any idea why this still doesn't work without complex listing and prints double when using it?[/code]

What happens if instead of using "(in place of Part 2 - The Listing Suggested Topics Action in Conversation Suggestions by Eric Eve)" you make a copy of the my extension and physically replace my Part 2 with your version in that copy?

What I'm wondering is whether the compiler might be getting confused by "for use with" and "for use without" sections within an "in place of" section.

-- Eric

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=80#p5231
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-02-19 13:14:03

Browsing over these testimonials it becomes apparent why IF is a small niche:  most want to author IF, not play (or pay for) it.  Possibly the only literary/game genre with more avid authors than readers/players. [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=975&start=0#p5232
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combination of Keyword Interface and Conversation Suggestion
User: Strainer / DateTime: 2010-02-19 16:25:33

[quote="Eric Eve"]What I'm wondering is whether the compiler might be getting confused by "for use with" and "for use without" sections within an "in place of" section.
-- Eric[/quote]

I guess it's just that, but it's not so bad as I can just comment out the part I don't need in my extension for the moment.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=980&start=0#p5233
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: New, Inspired & Prepared TADS Programmer
User: Reyth / DateTime: 2010-02-19 20:20:31

I am very impressed by the TADS development system.  I've taken about a week and fully designed a complete IF game that will fit into the IFCOMP 2 hour limits.

Unfortunately now that I am implementing, I find that I cannot even code the simplest thing (ok, I CAN code a room/object  [emote]:lol:[/emote] ) and even more frustrating is finding information on what I need to code things correctly (so any tips for actually finding things in the documentation or documentation sources would be very helpful  [emote]:cry:[/emote] ).

Without human intervention I would be forced to give up, so I am very glad this forum is here.  [emote]:)[/emote] 

I have a basic understanding of computer programming (I can easily code my entire game in SUDS -- the lack of a parser is rather embarrassing however) but the TADS engine is posing a further level of difficulty that will require a significant amount of effort for me to overcome.

I think its worth it though. [emote];)[/emote]

Once I have learned how to effectively code in TADS I will be able to instantly & easily create any game idea that pops into my head (WITH a parser included  [emote]:lol:[/emote] ).

GOAL: To create a "passive passage" in an outdoor room that looks like the rest of the impassable scenery until the player types "SEARCH" (but not just LOOK) in that room.  This is important because it needs to appear as though there is nothing but impassable terrain there (just like normal).

I know of two possible methods but cannot find the proper syntax in the documentation:

METHOD A: Create vocabWords with the name of the room and implement a dobjFor(SEARCH) as part of the room.

METHOD B: modify (Search) to check if the player is in the room & the passage has not been previously found (else inherited;) and change the "east" property of the room to the intended location with appropriate message.

I prefer method "A" because it seems to be the most direct method.

Can anyone help me with the code on this?

Sorry and thanks in advance!  [emote]:oops:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=981&start=0#p5234
Forum: Competitions / Subject: 2009 XYZZY Awards
User: inky / DateTime: 2010-02-20 00:06:28

I'm pleased to announce the 2009 XYZZY Awards are finally rolling out. All games released in 2009 are eligible, and anyone can vote. Also, for the first time we've finally got an automated voting system, so voting (and counting votes) will be easier than ever. Interested? Great! Head over to <a class="postlink" href="http://xyzzyawards.org/">http://xyzzyawards.org/</a> -- the first round of voting will be open until March 4th (at which point we'll total the votes and announce the finalists in each category, and have a second round of voting).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=949&start=10#p5235
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: A sort of RPG?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-02-20 00:51:28

I was thinking of just spicing up the NPC's only response to something for one or two attributes at a time, such as, "[if the player is stealthy]Oh jeez! You scared me.  [end if]Yeah I think he's over by the fountain."   As opposed to making four completely distinct responses for every response they'd have had initially.  I think it's enough to just decorate a response here for stealth, a response there for strength, etc.   

That would also work if you allowed the PC any two traits out of a pool of five or so.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=980&start=0#p5236
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: New, Inspired & Prepared TADS Programmer
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-02-20 08:19:32

You're impressed by TADS without actually implementing anything?  Have you taken a look at other as featureful and complete authoring tools such as Inform, Hugo and Adrift?  Having only basic programming knowledge would hardly lead you much further into TADS.  Perhaps Adrift would be more suited.

In any case, the "search" instead of "look" sounds like truly lame and arbitrary guess-the-verb kind of puzzle:  it's been common knowledge for several years that no one enjoys that.  If there is a possibility for the player to find a passage, then it should be, even though just briefly, mentioned in the description.  Tease the player's curiosity, don't hide info from her.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=980&start=0#p5237
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: New, Inspired & Prepared TADS Programmer
User: Reyth / DateTime: 2010-02-20 08:21:55

God bless you & thank you for your post.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=980&start=0#p5238
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: New, Inspired & Prepared TADS Programmer
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-02-20 09:21:44

[quote="namekuseijin"]You're impressed by TADS without actually implementing anything?[/quote]
I don't think that's exactly impossible.  Every time Inform responds to a command with something like, "Which silver did you want to unlock the door with, the silver key or the silver necklace?" it highlights some of the ways which TADS makes things easier for players, even if it's a more difficult tool (sometimes needlessly, I think) from an author's perspective.

Similarly, the ability to use HTML formatting, or to compile straight to a Windows executable are both things that are evident to players who don't know the first thing about what the code is like.

[quote="Reyth"]GOAL: To create a "passive passage" in an outdoor room that looks like the rest of the impassable scenery until the player types "SEARCH" (but not just LOOK) in that room.  This is important because it needs to appear as though there is nothing but impassable terrain there (just like normal).[/quote]
I think a better route would be make the passage passable after the player examines a specific object.  The first description of the object would make it clear that it was hiding an exit, at which point the player would be able to move down that passage.  I just don't think typing "search" is something that players expect to have to do - unless you make it clear to them.  And even then, searching specific objects seems more interesting than just typing '"search" in each room.

[quote="Reyth"]METHOD B: modify (Search) to check if the player is in the room & the passage has not been previously found (else inherited;) and change the "east" property of the room to the intended location with appropriate message.[/quote]
An alternative method (better?) is just to use the Room object's RoomAfterAction method, which will also override the default response.  Here's some code I used to change the response to 'Wait' in my last game:

[code]
    roomAfterAction()
    {
        if(gActionIs(Wait))
        {
            if(waitCount==0)
                "Never mind doing things.  Maybe if I just give myself a moment of stillness,
                the clues will come to <i>me</i>. 
                <.p>Nate pokes me gently with the tip of his cane and I jump.
                <q>The crime won't solve itself,</q> he says. ";
            else
                "No waiting around for me. The crime won't solve itself. Apparently. ";
            waitCount++;
        }
    }
    waitCount=0
[/code]

[quote](so any tips for actually finding things in the documentation or documentation sources would be very helpful[/quote]
The TADS 3 Tour Guide is my usual first stop when I'm looking to see what TADS can do - it lists a lot of the different objects that are already in the library and shows how to use them.  After that, Learning TADS 3 demonstrates some of the more useful techniques you may need, like searching through all the objects in a location, or stuff like that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=975&start=0#p5239
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combination of Keyword Interface and Conversation Suggestion
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2010-02-20 09:34:53

I've just tried constructing a simple test case to verify that the cause is indeed as I suggested (namely that 'for use with/without' directives are ignored in 'in place of' sections). This does indeed seem to the be the case, so I've sent in a bug report to Graham Nelson (which may or may not be too late for it to be fixed in the next release).

-- Eric

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=980&start=0#p5240
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: New, Inspired & Prepared TADS Programmer
User: Reyth / DateTime: 2010-02-20 10:42:09

[quote="Pacian"] 
I think a better route would be make the passage passable after the player examines a specific object.[/quote]

I disagree.  I have a built in hint in the scenery configuration that would suggest something is hidden in the area, materials located elsewhere that specifically show that area as hiding something & a contextual help system that will give progressively more detailed hints with a warning before each level of detail increase.


[quote]An alternative method (better?) is just to use the Room object's RoomAfterAction method, which will also override the default response.[/quote]

Would this work if the "east" command accesses a noTravelDescription?  I have already defined a property in the room that I could use to check if the "passage" was found...  Wow thanks for the idea.  I like it because its directly associated with the room and therefore quite elegant. [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote](so any tips for actually finding things in the documentation or documentation sources would be very helpful[/quote]
The TADS 3 Tour Guide is my usual first stop when I'm looking to see what TADS can do - it lists a lot of the different objects that are already in the library and shows how to use them.  After that, Learning TADS 3 demonstrates some of the more useful techniques you may need, like searching through all the objects in a location, or stuff like that.

Well yes I use those resources...  I think the library could be improved to include programming examples and more specific info (beyond only the obscure hierarchical info that is present there now??)...  I'm just glad this forum is here so I can get excellent advice that I specifically need since I'm a newb.  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

Thanks for solving my problem.

Reyth

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=980&start=0#p5241
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: New, Inspired & Prepared TADS Programmer
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-02-20 11:13:05

[quote="Reyth"]Would this work if the "east" command accesses a noTravelDescription?  I have already defined a property in the room that I could use to check if the "passage" was found...[/quote]
Sure, just have the RoomAfterAction set this property.

[quote="Reyth"][quote="Pacian"] 
I think a better route would be make the passage passable after the player examines a specific object.[/quote]
I disagree.  I have a built in hint in the scenery configuration that would suggest something is hidden in the area, materials located elsewhere that specifically show that area as hiding something & a contextual help system that will give progressively more detailed hints with a warning before each level of detail increase.[/quote]
I think they'll pick up on the "something is hidden here" aspect, but it's going from realising that to typing "search" at the prompt which is what you may have to worry about.  Unless players realise that "search" is a weapon in their arsenal, I'd expect them to react using the verbs they usually type to find things out - examine, look behind, feel, even "search OBJECT"... that kind of thing.  Sometimes the last thing that players expect to have to type is the equivalent of "solve puzzle".

But don't let anyone convince you to do things in a way you don't want to.  If you think this will work, see how your beta testers react (especially without access to the hints)!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=980&start=0#p5242
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: New, Inspired & Prepared TADS Programmer
User: Reyth / DateTime: 2010-02-20 11:32:12

I will keep the above advice in mind as I code.

Thanks again.

Reyth

PS I've just realized (without even knowing it before) that the isolated command "SEARCH" [u]IS[/u] required in another aspect and is also explained before the game begins!  So thanks for the tips once again!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=979&start=0#p5243
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anyone know the guy/s trying to renew the Infocom trademark?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-02-20 17:38:19

Not to be cynical, but HTTP says:

Last-Modified: Fri, 06 Jul 2007 21:19:58 GMT

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=975&start=0#p5244
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combination of Keyword Interface and Conversation Suggestion
User: Strainer / DateTime: 2010-02-21 06:43:01

[quote="Eric Eve"]I've just tried constructing a simple test case to verify that the cause is indeed as I suggested (namely that 'for use with/without' directives are ignored in 'in place of' sections). This does indeed seem to the be the case, so I've sent in a bug report to Graham Nelson (which may or may not be too late for it to be fixed in the next release).

-- Eric[/quote]

Thanks Eric. Is there already a probable release date announced?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=979&start=0#p5245
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anyone know the guy/s trying to renew the Infocom trademark?
User: Sslaxx / DateTime: 2010-02-21 07:04:38

Noticed the discussion on r.a.i-f about this? Yeah, it's pretty obvious nothing is going to come of this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=975&start=10#p5246
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combination of Keyword Interface and Conversation Suggestion
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2010-02-21 13:33:58

[quote="Strainer"]Thanks Eric. Is there already a probable release date announced?[/quote]

Well, the word on RAIF last month was that the next I7 release would probably be in a few weeks time, which would make it some time this month, but that was with the caveat that no-one knew for sure, since it wasn't certain how long various things would take to do (such as checking the release for bugs and fixing them, I imagine). So, the next release seems to be due in the not too distant future, but there's no actual release date announced; I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

-- Eric

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=978&start=0#p5247
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: very green.. question about a spin the bottle game
User: sqib / DateTime: 2010-02-21 20:53:19

not to be a nudge but i have another question regarding scenes. Just want to key a action to be the catalyst to start a new scene..used this as a simple exercise to do so but it didnt work-


[color=#00BFFF]
game room is a room.

jack is a man in the game room.
jill is a woman in the game room.

first off is a scene.
first off begins when play begins.
first off ends when second act begins.

second act is a scene.
second act begins when the big red button is pushed.

Box is in game room. Big red button is part of box. The description of box is " A large box with a red button that says push me on it."   The description of big red button is "It is red and says push me on it."

persuasion rule for asking someone to try pushing something:
persuasion succeeds.[/color]




[color=#BF0080]the error-

Problem. In the sentence 'second act begins when the big red button is pushed'  , I was expecting to read a condition, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'the big red button is pushed'.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem. You wrote 'second act begins when the big red button is pushed'  : but 'begins when' and 'ends when' must be followed by a condition, which this does not seem to be.[/color]

I know this is bound to be something most likely obvious but at the moment I cant really figure out what that is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=978&start=0#p5248
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: very green.. question about a spin the bottle game
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-02-21 21:15:58

You just need to change 
[code]second act begins when the big red button is pushed.[/code]
to
[code]second act begins when we have pushed the big red button.[/code]

"when we have ..." means "when anyone has ...", so it doesn't matter whether it's Jack, Jill, or the player who pushes the button; the second act will start as soon as anyone pushes the button.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=978&start=0#p5249
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: very green.. question about a spin the bottle game
User: sqib / DateTime: 2010-02-21 22:07:48

excellent thank you so much.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=982&start=0#p5250
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Many NPCs but few conversations
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-02-22 07:43:04

I have ideas forming for a story. It will have many NPCs, but I don't want it to be a conversation-based or conversation-heavy story. That though must be common in stories with many characters.

I'm wondering if you can help me by telling me of some other stories and games which successfully have many characters but aren't conversation-based. What do they do? How do you react with the characters? What is the feel or vibe of the story?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=982&start=0#p5251
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Many NPCs but few conversations
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-02-22 10:29:56

Crysis has a lot of characters.  They shoot at you. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=80#p5252
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2010-02-22 11:22:39

Nah. Horror fiction is in about the same situation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=978&start=0#p5253
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: very green.. question about a spin the bottle game
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-02-22 13:37:57

[quote="Emerald"]"when we have ..." means "when anyone has ...", so it doesn't matter whether it's Jack, Jill, or the player who pushes the button; the second act will start as soon as anyone pushes the button.[/quote]
...and I just caught an error in the Programmer's Manual.  Thanks Emily.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=982&start=0#p5254
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Many NPCs but few conversations
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-02-22 23:41:14

You might try:

Kaged (Ian Finley) uses a system where you can only TALK TO a character, not specify what you're going to say. Consequently there's some conversation, but it's always context-appropriate, and because it's not very complex, the player can usually tell when he's used up the interesting chat and should focus on doing something else.

Textfire Golf (Adam Cadre) has a bunch of NPCs who have feelings about you, but you don't talk to them at all. Their reactions to you are all based on how well you did on your golf shots. This is a pretty extreme/unusual case for IF, but actually it highlights something that's fairly normal in commercial games. F'rinstance, in Halo ODST, you don't really control how you talk to the other characters, but they do have comments that they'll make in response to your fighting style while the gameplay is going on. In other words: focus the player on whatever form of interaction your game *is* about, but then make the NPCs responsive to what they see and hear.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=960&start=0#p5255
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Divis Mortis - general questions and beta testing
User: olimay / DateTime: 2010-02-23 02:31:01

I'm happy to be a tester. PM me with instructions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=572&start=0#p5256
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where Does Your Time Go?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2010-02-23 02:54:36

[quote="WayneMiller"]Where does most of your time go to writing IF?[/quote]

Flip (but not inaccurate) answer: making things even more random than they were yesterday.

Slightly Less Flip (but not inaccurate) answer: laughing at my own jokes, then feeling a bit embarrassed about that.

Not Flip (perhaps misleading) answer: Testing, followed by coding, followed by writing the stuff the player actually sees.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=90#p5257
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: olimay / DateTime: 2010-02-23 03:01:11

[quote="Eriorg"]Welcome to the forum, Oliver! [/quote]

Thanks!

[quote="namekuseijin"]Browsing over these testimonials it becomes apparent why IF is a small niche:  most want to author IF, not play (or pay for) it.  Possibly the only literary/game genre with more avid authors than readers/players. [emote]:P[/emote][/quote]

You probably get a [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias]strong selection effect[/url] if you look to these forums to get an idea about the audience or reach of IF. I didn't know it existed until I was interested enough to scrounge around for a while--basically until I wanted to do more than [i]just[/i] play.

I doubt that the set of authors is larger than the set of players--most authors I've seen review and therefore play many more games than they create. And I'm sure there are many more "aspiring" (read: wannabe) authors like me than actual authors. [emote]:D[/emote] 

But the community is rather tight isn't it? The structure reminds me somewhat of certain communities of software developers in the open source world. The nice part is the distance from reader to author is very close. The downside is the rest of the world missing out on a great experience!

My guess is that greatly expanding the audience would require some serious, coordinated effort to reach outside the community. I'm interested to see what [url=http://ifwiki.org/index.php/PAX_East_2010]panels and screening at PAX East[/url] does. And yet I think any piece of IF that succeeds for a larger market will probably be different from IF as it's put together (and enjoyed by us) at this moment.

Anyhow, don't want to push this too OT. Thanks for the welcomes!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=961&start=0#p5258
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Man in the Rain - Medieval Fantasy adventure
User: olimay / DateTime: 2010-02-23 03:14:17

Do you have the TADS game file for us non-Windows users? I'd like to try it out but it seems you only have the compiled exe on the blog post.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=961&start=0#p5259
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Man in the Rain - Medieval Fantasy adventure
User: Terrier Games / DateTime: 2010-02-23 05:58:35

Sorry! [emote]:oops:[/emote] 

I have added a link to a .gam file on the page...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=90#p5260
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-02-23 13:38:16

[quote="Sargent"]Nah. Horror fiction is in about the same situation.[/quote]

guess so. [emote]:)[/emote]

olimay, it was a joke with a tiny bit of truth.  and yeah, IF for the masses would be pretty different:  graphics instead of text, contextual button pressing instead of text input and story involving either zombies or aliens ready to be blasted away. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=90#p5261
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: olimay / DateTime: 2010-02-23 16:33:56

I knew it was a joke, but I bit anyway (bullets are tasty and full of nutritious lead!)

I do see some opportunities in reading devices, particularly if more come out that are based on platforms like Android. Mobile phones are another possibility. I imagine something that includes graphics for illustration but still most closely resembles an interactive storybook. The level of quality and coordination and attention to elegance of design (in all aspects) would just need to be on a different scale. And if successful, it'd probably have to people who aren't the usual gamer type. I'm thinking of broad audience of games like Myst (when it first game out) and even The Sims.

Vague, aimless dreaming on my part, not a business plan.  [emote]:)[/emote] Best for another thread.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=572&start=0#p5262
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where Does Your Time Go?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-02-24 14:24:22

I can't give percentages, because I jump between code, game text, and testing minute by minute.

Practically every line of code (or text) I write, I do a recompile to see how it looks in the context of the game so far. So testing must be the biggest share of the time, technically. But I don't split it out like that; it's part of the coding time or the writing time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=983&start=0#p5263
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: IF excerpting for a web page
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-02-24 14:35:42

Here's something I came up with (hastily) last night:

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/tmp/diffdemo.html">http://eblong.com/zarf/tmp/diffdemo.html</a>

The notional problem is this: say I want to write a blog post, talking about how I dealt with a particular IF design problem. I want to show off a piece of my game -- one scene, with a few different possible playing paths.

The current options are (a) post the game itself, with a save file, plus some suggested commands to type; (b) post several transcripts; (c) post source code. I'm not satisfied with any of these. (a) requires effort that a casual reader might not bother with; (b) is a whole lot of text; (c) is a pain to understand.

This demo is a few moves from the beginning of Adventure, with three possible paths (one of which is a small variation), and extra annotations in the right column. The left column is links to flip between the paths.

Obviously this was a very simple piece of Javascript. The hard problem is writing a tool to parse several transcripts and *generate* this Javascript structure. :) But, one step at a time -- I'd like to know if you think this is a useful format for critical discussion of IF.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=572&start=0#p5264
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where Does Your Time Go?
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-02-24 15:51:22

[quote="Pacian"]I'd say that, of the time that I explicitly set aside to sit down at the PC and write IF, by far the most time is spent playing Fallout 3.[/quote]

rotflmao

true.  I guess most of my time is spent either playing the great classics in the genre or commenting about them or trolling in web forums and newsgroups for them. ^^;

OTOH, I finally have my first IF ready to be published ASAP -- and by ASAP I mean in a few days or weeks.  Nothing ambitious, specially for someone who trolls so much for deep and engaging IF... [emote]:P[/emote]

like zarf, I too do it all at once.  As I play through to test it, I figure out things needing descriptions or alternate ways of doing something and edit the code right away then loop through it all over again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=983&start=0#p5265
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: IF excerpting for a web page
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-02-24 16:00:34

whoa!  Your domain is blocked here at work, categorized as "Games".  Thankfully, parchment.toolness.com is not... [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=983&start=0#p5266
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: IF excerpting for a web page
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-02-24 16:47:11

My idea was that a normal transcript but with a link to parchment for each turn (or maybe each significant turn) might work well.

But then I saw your demo, and loved it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=983&start=0#p5267
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: IF excerpting for a web page
User: George / DateTime: 2010-02-24 17:02:09

Agreed, this looks and works great. What would  be the specification for a general-purpose tool that does this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=983&start=0#p5268
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: IF excerpting for a web page
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-02-24 22:21:24

[quote="George"]Agreed, this looks and works great. What would  be the specification for a general-purpose tool that does this?[/quote]

I guess it's just javascript code that you'd drop into your page and follow a few guidelines on how to format the text into html.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=983&start=0#p5269
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: IF excerpting for a web page
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-02-24 23:57:47

The HTML has to be precisely set up -- doing it by hand isn't practical.

As I said, I'd like to start with transcripts, which are an easily-generatable currency of all IF systems. However, inferring a branched tree structure from a set of transcripts is not a trivial problem. (In fact it's a directed acyclic graph, not a tree.)

Once you have the graph, however, generating the HTML *is* pretty trivial.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=983&start=0#p5270
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: IF excerpting for a web page
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-02-25 00:19:07

For those using I7, could this be generated from the skene?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=803&start=10#p5271
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Popular MUD's
User: Terry / DateTime: 2010-02-25 12:36:16

Excellent! New open alpha 'RPI' role playing intensive Sci-fi MUD..

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.atonementrpi.com">http://www.atonementrpi.com</a>

The Open-ALPHA phase of Atonement takes place on a giant space-vehicle flying through deep space, AWESOME!!.. see you there  [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=983&start=0#p5272
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: IF excerpting for a web page
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-02-25 14:17:42

I was thinking about that, but the skein isn't a DAG. (In my example, the commands "get keys" and "get all" are a branch, but they merge right back together -- for the purpose of the example.)

Parsing transcripts and generating a skein-like tree is quite easy, so I don't think there's any advantage in starting with the skein itself. And I do think this tool needs to be platform-agnostic.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=978&start=0#p5273
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: very green.. question about a spin the bottle game
User: sqib / DateTime: 2010-02-26 00:52:06

another quick question, the word yourself seems kind of clunky. How would I go about having the bottle point to "you" instead of to yourself?  I know this is going to most likely be something very obvious.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=978&start=0#p5274
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: very green.. question about a spin the bottle game
User: George / DateTime: 2010-02-26 02:29:07

Probably the most straightforward would be an if check in the say phrase, like "[if P is yourself]you[else][P][end if]".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=978&start=0#p5275
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: very green.. question about a spin the bottle game
User: sqib / DateTime: 2010-02-26 20:56:37

much thanks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=984&start=0#p5276
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [solved] Turn off auto-description?
User: eyerouge / DateTime: 2010-02-27 08:46:32

When the player looks at a room or enters it Inform 7 adds a line of text after the room's description: "You also see a....", and then all objects in the room are listed.

1. How can I stop Inform from adding that extra piece of info, if I don't want to use that function in my story?

2. If I want to use that function as it is, but don't want Inform to mention an object in that list, how would I accomplish making that object "hidden" from this auto-description-list?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=970&start=0#p5277
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 : Well-Versed Guides
User: eyerouge / DateTime: 2010-02-27 08:48:02

Great work! Keep doing it. [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=984&start=0#p5278
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Turn off auto-description?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-02-27 12:35:12

To remove the functionality completely, [code]The you-can-also-see rule is not listed in any rulebook.[/code]But to remove it just from one object, such as the sun,[code]The sun is scenery.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=984&start=0#p5279
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Turn off auto-description?
User: eyerouge / DateTime: 2010-02-27 14:55:27

Thank you for the swift answer Ron. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=985&start=0#p5280
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: GUI editor for making maps for I7/Glulx
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-02-28 16:02:39

Hi all,

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about a project I'm working on, a GUI graphics editor written in I7-Glulx (<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=968">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=968</a>). Life intervened a bit, but I've finally put together a set of images (tiles isn't quite the right word) to enable folks to assemble floor plans that will be revealed as the player moves through your game's geography (links below). 

I originally solicited ideas about what kind of floor plans people might be interested in, but it was suggested that I not bother too much with prefab map tiles, since there were so many resources available online. So, I went with a simple set of images that would allow folks to create floor plans in the style of the maps Emily Short published with "Bronze" (<a class="postlink" href="http://inform-fiction.org/I7Downloads/Examples/bronze/map.pdf">http://inform-fiction.org/I7Downloads/E ... ze/map.pdf</a>); a few people have expressed admiration for the Bronze maps on RAIF in the past, and in any case they are simple enough to be useful in a number of contexts. 

A few folks have already said they would be interested in testing this (or at least in playing with it and giving me feedback). Basically, I'm looking for two kinds of help:

[list=1]
[*]Basic comments or ideas on working with the editor itself, regardless of the source code output (in other words, play and ). It's my hope that the editor will pretty much teach users how to use it--and in the process teach them the basic features of the Glimmr system--but it's probably not that well designed! (In any case, I know that there are a few concepts--"instances," "tags," and the way sub-kinds are treated among them--that will need to be discussed in the extension documentation, so it won't be entirely stand-alone.) So, any thoughts on how to make the thing more transparent are welcome, as are bug reports, questions, or any kind of feedback at all.
[/*:m]
[*]Others may like to go a bit farther and compile what they produce with the editor, or maybe even do some more advanced stuff with the code. (I'd love to see other folks produce custom editions of the editor, with different map tiles, perhaps, or optimized to produce something other maps--but it's probably too early for anything like that, since Glimmr is still without documentation and a way off from official release.) If you'd like to do this, please email me and I'll send you a link to all of the (still undocumented) extensions that make up the Glimmr system, as well as the original image files, etc. Oh, I'm emailing the link to all the folks who offered to test the last time around.[/*:m][/list:o]

(There are also some issues with Gargoyle that I'd like to hear from Windows and Linux users about. If you can, please check out the known issues below and see if you can reproduce the Gargoyle problems--I'm not positive that they would be issues for native users, since I am testing with Wine.)

Even if you're not interested in giving feedback on the editor, I hope you'll try it out. I think it provides a good illustration of what's possible with graphics in Glulx. (It also, of course, provides a good sense of the limitations of using Glulx for complex user interfaces--without double-clicking, click-and-drag, mouse hover, or keyboard + mouse modifications, fussy things like a graphics editor are a bit fussier...)

Thanks for checking it out!

Erik


Here is a link to the gblorb file which you can use to produce your own floor plans in this style (there's also a .ini file for Gargoyle users):

  <a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Basic%20Floorplan.gblorb">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Basic%20Floorplan.gblorb</a>
  <a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Basic%20Floorplan.ini">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Basic%20Floorplan.ini</a>

(I don't really expect that anyone will seriously attempt to create a game with Glimmr at this point, but if you are interested in going deeper with the Glimmr tools, please be sure to check the "known issues" section below before you begin in earnest...)

I've also created a simple example map and game file using the editor:

  <a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Basic%20Floorplan%20Example.gblorb">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Basic%20 ... ple.gblorb</a>

And here's a save file for the editor gblorb above that shows the same composition in the editor:

  <a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Basic%20Floorplan%20example.sav">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Basic%20 ... xample.sav</a>

For the completist--and because a bug in Inform will stop you doing it yourself--here is the raw source code generated by the editor from the save game, as well as the source for the example game file, which is a modified version of the raw source:

  <a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Basic%20Floorplan%20-%20RawOutputSource.txt">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Basic%20 ... Source.txt</a>
  <a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Basic%20Floorplan%20Example%20source.txt">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Basic%20 ... source.txt</a>

Finally, here is a list of brief commands (one-letter) available in the editor:

  <a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Canvas%20Editor%20shortcuts.txt">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Canvas%2 ... rtcuts.txt</a>



[u]Known issues:[/u]

[b]All platforms:[/b] You cannot output source code from a restored game if you have closed the original game window. Basically, after being created, the external file is not properly identifed with its glk reference after restoring. That is, if you save the game-state, close the program, reopen the gblorb, and then restore the original saved game, the game will end with a fatal error ("Reference to nonexistent Glk object"). Note that this means that you will not be able to output source from the saved game I posted here, since I output source before saving. (If you haven't output source before saving, then things will be fine. So for now, the best practice is to save before generating source code, then restore the game before doing further work.) 

[b]Gargoyle:[/b] Each time that text is appended to the external source file, Gargoyle adds an asterisk. This means that before using source output from Gargoyle, one must search and replace the external file, removing all asterisks. Note: I am running Gargoyle through Wine, and this may not be a problem when Gargoyle is running natively. If you are able to test this on a native installation, please let me know whether the asterisks appear--I will file a bug if they do.

[b]Zoom under OS X 10.6:[/b] Zoom under 10.5 ran quite quickly, but there is a very marked slowdown on Snow Leopard, particularly in the drawing times for primitives and painted text, and in the game saving. Saving in particular can take a *long* time--don't assume the game has crashed!

[b]Gargoyle: [/b]Gargoyle running under Wine is quite fast, except when image files are relatively large. Is this also the case when Gargoyle is running natively? If someone would like to test this and get back to me, please try comparing the following file, which includes a number of large images (~973,000 px each), with the example file listed above (where image files in the image library contain about 2500 px each):

  <a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Tour%20of%20the%20Glimmr%20Editor.gblorb">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Tour%20o ... tor.gblorb</a>

[b]All platforms:[/b] The help button is disabled, and pressing it will cause the cursor to disappear from the main window. (This is easy to fix; I just forgot to do it before creating this build.) Click on any other button or an image from the image library to get the cursor back.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=985&start=0#p5281
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: GUI editor for making maps for I7/Glulx
User: George / DateTime: 2010-02-28 16:45:32

A lot to digest here, so I may not be posting back soonish. But I am definitely checking it out!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=985&start=0#p5282
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: GUI editor for making maps for I7/Glulx
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-02-28 17:01:25

George points out that the original post was probably a bit too long to be approachable, so here's the quick version for those who just want to check things out.

Here's the editor game file:

<a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Basic%20Floorplan.gblorb">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Basic%20Floorplan.gblorb</a>

If you want to see something already set up, load this save game:

<a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Basic%20Floorplan%20example.sav">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Basic%20 ... xample.sav</a>

Type SHOW ALL to see the entire map, rather than just the initial game state.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=981&start=0#p5283
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: 2009 XYZZY Awards
User: inky / DateTime: 2010-03-01 01:02:23

Just a few more days left to vote! I'll be announcing the finalists and opening the second round sometime March 5th.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=985&start=0#p5284
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: GUI editor for making maps for I7/Glulx
User: Sslaxx / DateTime: 2010-03-01 07:16:27

Looks intriguing, might give it a go.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=972&start=0#p5285
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Graphical Adventures: SLUDGE
User: farvardin / DateTime: 2010-03-01 15:03:23

Hello

I played Frasse a few years ago, with the wine emulator on Linux. It worked pretty well, but I'm very happy to be able to play it natively today. 

I didn't know the Sludge engine had been opensourced recently!

I managed to compile it on Linux but I had to modify this part:


#include <libpng/png.h> 

on BACKDROP.CPP, SPRITES.CPP and SLUDGER.CPP

(I don't remember well what I did, I think I removed the libpng part if it was present, or the opposite.)

I planned to post this on the sludge forum, but couldn't register (I mean I tried to register, but haven't got any registration email, even in my bulk mail)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=959&start=0#p5286
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment!
User: farvardin / DateTime: 2010-03-01 15:11:16

the new release of parchment with the updated mouse wheel behavior and scrollback using page up and down is just wonderful!
I've added it to our French website, here is a sample of how it looks like, and I'm very satisfied with the result: <a class="postlink" href="http://ifiction.free.fr/parchment/parchment.html?story=http://ifiction.free.fr///concours2009/catapole/catapole.z5.js">http://ifiction.free.fr/parchment/parch ... pole.z5.js</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=972&start=0#p5287
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Graphical Adventures: SLUDGE
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-03-01 15:42:17

[quote="farvardin"]I played Frasse a few years ago, with the wine emulator on Linux. It worked pretty well, but I'm very happy to be able to play it natively today.[/quote]

You are not able to run Frasse natively today. (Please don't try! It'll be awful.) Unlike all other SLUDGE games, Frasse is not supported in the new engine. (We switched the sound system recently, and Frasse uses a format for its music that's no longer supported.) I'm working on a new "special edition" release of that game, though.

[quote="farvardin"]I managed to compile it on Linux but I had to modify this part:[/quote]

I only work with Windows and Mac myself (the Linux port is handled by Tobias Hansen), so I can't comment on that particular issue. (Other than to say it sounds strange.)

[quote="farvardin"]I planned to post this on the sludge forum, but couldn't register (I mean I tried to register, but haven't got any registration email, even in my bulk mail)[/quote]
Adventure Developers had a database crash recently, so that may be the reason for it. I suggest you try again.

--

Btw: I was slightly surprised to get a reply to this post. I thought it had been silently removed by a moderator or something as it just disappeared shortly after I'd posted.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=938&start=0#p5288
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Hugo: Getting the number of arguments in a routine
User: vamping / DateTime: 2010-03-01 19:55:27

[code]
! Based on code by Roger Firth
array randArgs[8]

routine rand(a1, a2, a3, a4, a5, a6, a7)
{   local n, r
    randArgs[1] = a1, a2, a3, a4, a5, a6, a7
    for (n=7; n>0; n--) {
        if (randomArgs[n])
            break
    }

    if (n>1)
        r = randArgs[( random[n] )]
    else
        r = random(a1)

    for (n=7; n>0; n--)
        randArg[n] = 0

    return r
}
[/code]

This may not work properly if you hand rand a false Hugo value (0, "", false, etc.).

[b]Somewhat patronising explanation.[/b] I think it's pretty clear, but really quick: 1. The arguments are passed into the array randArgs. 2. The array is checked from its end for a false value, in which case it [i]break[/i]s, and n is equal to the index of the last non-zero value. 3. If n is greater than one, a random element of the array, one of the arguments you passed rand, is assigned to r. Otherwise, if only one argument was passed, it behaves as if you just called random. 4. We flush the array, so that it's ready to use again. 5. We return r.

This will probably not play well if you hand it a single string or object. Improvements? This could be expanded to take up to 13 arguments; written to use randArg[] (to get the length of the array) in the for loops; written not to throw away randArg[0]; written to play nice with false values.

Unfortunately, I haven't needed any of that... I may have an improved version sitting around on some hard drive. I'll post it if that happens to be the case.

Well, good luck!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=986&start=0#p5289
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: days of the week on the status line
User: sqib / DateTime: 2010-03-02 00:31:15

is this even possible?  if so how?  Id like to have a day and time instead of just a time listed up there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=975&start=10#p5290
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combination of Keyword Interface and Conversation Suggestion
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-03-02 15:23:35

Just FYI, my extension linking Keyword Interface and Conversation Package has been released and is up at the Inform 7 webpage.  Thanks to Strainer for the kick in the pants to get it completed!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=972&start=0#p5291
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Graphical Adventures: SLUDGE
User: farvardin / DateTime: 2010-03-02 17:33:24

Hello,

get assured your post wasn't removed because I found it!

About Frasse, it was working well on Linux, but I haven't tried the sound, maybe the reason why I wasn't shocked [emote];)[/emote]
The only thing a bit strange I noticed, was the graphical elements (like Frasse's body) looked slightly separated, but it wasn't much noticeable.

I'll try soon to register again on the other forum.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=972&start=0#p5292
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Graphical Adventures: SLUDGE
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-03-02 17:53:21

[quote="Trumgottist"]Btw: I was slightly surprised to get a reply to this post. I thought it had been silently removed by a moderator or something as it just disappeared shortly after I'd posted.[/quote]
Merk just moved it to the new forum, "Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=983&start=0#p5293
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: IF excerpting for a web page
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-03-02 20:32:18

I think this is an excellent idea. As usual, I have a thought...

What if the left-hand side was a list of all of the future commands on path 1 (first transcript). Where there are forks, the commands would be highlighted somehow. You'd retain previous commands as well.

If the user clicks into a fork (transcript n), the list is rewritten downward with the future of transcript n. The previous commands remain the same.

I would also allow a limit, in the tooling automation, on how many previous commands are displayed.

The tool should allow any html in the right column, including images, links to external documents, etc.

David C.
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.textfyre.com">www.textfyre.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=81&start=10#p5294
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Text Editors for IF
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-03-02 20:34:55

Paying using of UltraEdit for over 10 years.

It has fantastic search/replace, handles huge files easily and fast, and has column mode, which is just freaky, but it's great.

David C.
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.textfyre.com">www.textfyre.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=81&start=20#p5295
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Text Editors for IF
User: George / DateTime: 2010-03-02 21:05:33

I thought for a second that column mode meant you could auto-reformat your code into columns. That [i]would [/i]be freaky.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=983&start=0#p5296
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: IF excerpting for a web page
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-03-03 00:30:07

Not sure what you're getting at. The list of future commands in the current transcript can be read *from* the transcript; it's what's in front of you. And commands in isolation don't tell you anything about what the game experience is like. The forks are what's interesting; that's why I gave them descriptive labels.

Anyhow, I've implemented what I originally described. Well, a very simple version, anyway. 

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/transmatte/">http://eblong.com/zarf/transmatte/</a>

There are a couple more examples on that web page, and the Python script I used to generate them. It's not entirely bug-free, but it's usable. If you want to upgrade it, go nuts.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=970&start=0#p5297
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 : Well-Versed Guides
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-03-03 13:22:13

I really like the guides, and I think I have the latest versions downloaded. One question, though - since the directory you linked to appears to be empty now, where can the latest versions of the documents be found?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=987&start=0#p5298
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Nuit Blanche
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-03-03 15:45:48

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.vimeo.com/9078364">http://www.vimeo.com/9078364</a>

Overwhelmingly beautiful short B&W movie about love at first sight.

the making-of for those surprisingly more touched by the technique than by the content:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.vimeo.com/9076775">http://www.vimeo.com/9076775</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=90#p5299
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Dracobolt / DateTime: 2010-03-03 20:47:20

Hello, just joined, so I'm introducing myself. Just call me Draco. I'm a female college student, and I love to write. This is really my first time getting involved with interactive fiction in any way. A friend of mine made a game in Inform on a whim, and when I asked her about it, she told me what program she was using, and so now I'm giving it a try. I joined here 'cause while I love writing, I'm not so hot at programming, though I have some experience with it, and I could use some help at figuring stuff out. Well, I have plenty of ideas I'd like to create, so I'll do my best!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=0#p5300
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: johnb820 / DateTime: 2010-03-04 00:02:02

Let me start by saying that my familiarity with IF is not incredibly deep. I have been reading off and on for the past 5 years but have yet to get very deep in the community. I have an opinion of the IF community but will choose to refrain from saying it. I will say that I deeply respect the authors who must have enormous talent and the guts to build such complex worlds while retaining all the rules of that world. Like an overly complex nondeterministic finite automaton, creating a game world, keeping track of the states of each object throughout the progression of the work, and how they interact is truly awe inspiring.

But to get to my real point here, I want to ask the community how it feels about interactive fiction as an art form and its goals. Like the ancient Greek sculptors or renaissance art movements, there were strict guidelines and a genuineness to recreate the world around us as close to perfection as possible. I feel this sort of realism has been become the standard and indeed most modern interpreted languages will lay out as many rules of the world before the author even writes a line of code. I understand the value of such a standardized world in order to help the "player" win the "game," but what about impressionism, cubism, or surrealism (analogous to a non standard world)? 

Of course it follows that to work in a non standard world, the "player" may be left questioning what to do to "win." Indeed this is the challenge that I feel IF has not yet risen to. But what if this "interactive fiction" had no "player" or there was no "game" to "win?" Can one not get the same satisfaction reading Dante's The Divine Comedy, as Dan Brown's The Davinci Code?

My biggest questions to the community are as follows; "Does IF have artistic credibility?" and "Why can't IF be more free form to allow more artistic freedom?"

This is by no means a complaint towards the community or the medium. I could write the most non conforming IF but would probably be interested in the community's input to help decide whether to release it or not or whether I will get hate mail, or worse, a bad review (just joking)!

~John Barker

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=0#p5301
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-03-04 01:14:51

Surrealism is not entirely neglected in the modern IF world. 

If I were you, I wouldn't confuse the *complexity* of standard IF development tools with *realism*. World models are abstractions to begin with. (And, to be sure, they aren't very realistic, except from particular narrow angles!)

I am not the kind of person who worries about artistic credibility. (Does IF have it? Sure. FPS games? Yes. Knitting? Also yes. That OK Go video that everybody's reposting this week? Definitely. Are you going to learn anything by asking me that question? Probably not.)

"Why can't IF be more free form to allow more artistic freedom?" That's not a question.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=0#p5302
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-03-04 04:33:19

[quote="johnb820"]Of course it follows that to work in a non standard world, the "player" may be left questioning what to do to "win." Indeed this is the challenge that I feel IF has not yet risen to. But what if this "interactive fiction" had no "player" or there was no "game" to "win?"[/quote]The IF genre/medium abounds with games and stories that defy, subvert and twist conventions, or tread completely new ground.  There are plenty of games that you can't win (with or without scare quotes), or where winning is undesirable, or which have non-standard world models or forms of interaction.  Zarf's own [url=http://wurb.com/if/game/920]The Space Under the Window[/url] springs to mind, as do [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=j49crlvd62mhwuzu]Aisle[/url] and [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=82mn545s8bt3csa4]Shrapnel[/url], but there are many more.

[quote="johnb820"]This is by no means a complaint towards the community or the medium. I could write the most non conforming IF but would probably be interested in the community's input to help decide whether to release it or not or whether I will get hate mail, or worse, a bad review (just joking)![/quote]If anything, I think people are [i]more[/i] likely to be positive towards non-standard works.  There are any number of puzzle-centric text adventures set in caves at this point, and I think it's people who want to contribute to that genre who need to properly set their expectations about what kind of reaction they will (or more likely, won't) get.

[quote="johnb820"]My biggest questions to the community are as follows; "Does IF have artistic credibility?"[/quote]Like anything, to some people it will, to others it won't.  But surely it's the author's confidence in their own expression that matters?

[quote="johnb820"]"Why can't IF be more free form to allow more artistic freedom?"[/quote]In what way do you feel an interactive medium that uses solely text is limiting?  If you can express something in words, what is to stop you putting it in an IF?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=982&start=0#p5304
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Many NPCs but few conversations
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-03-04 06:57:12

I played an RPG on the DS a while back, called "The World Ends With You." Now, a lot of it [i]was[/i] about conversations, but what struck me (although certainly not unique to that game) was that there were so many people around. You [i]couldn't[/i] talk to most of them, but every once in a while you could read their thoughts. Long story.

In IF, I'm not sure it'd be a good idea to write "You can see: a tall person #1, a tall person #2, a short person #1, a blonde woman #1, a blonde woman #2..." You may not be talking about a crowd -- just many NPC's -- but it's an idea. They could exist not to converse with, but to be scanned/mindread/something.

Another idea would be if the PC [i]can't[/i] communicate. Speaks a different language, for instance (one of my games sort of does this, but with very few NPC's and with no explanation until the end). Or for sci-fi, if the PC is "out of sync" with time/space, so that these people exist but can only be interacted with in some non-verbal way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=986&start=0#p5305
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: days of the week on the status line
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-03-04 07:05:59

I can't answer "how," but I'm pretty sure I've seen zcode games with alternate status bars at the top. I think you can put anything you want there. Are you talking about a date and time specific to the game, or the actual player's system date/time? If the former, my [i]guess[/i] is that it's possible. But somebody else would have to say how.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=90#p5306
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-03-04 11:45:05

Hey, [i]Draco[/i], welcome.  Best thing is learning by example.  If you're using Inform 7, it does indeed come with plenty of good examples.  The natural language subset it uses may also help you shred that fear of programming.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=0#p5307
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-03-04 12:11:58

I guess by [i]artistic freedom[/i] you mean no world model, just a bunch of text thrown in at the [i]player[/i].  No world model means shallow interaction:  the [i]player[/i] does little more than go to specific pages in a CYOA book or click links in a hypertext.

IF and no world model is not IF, it's one of those two.

That said, I believe there's plenty of room to use those standard world model tools to create very surreal worlds with unusual behavior.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=0#p5308
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: johnb820 / DateTime: 2010-03-04 12:27:24

[quote="Pacian"][quote="johnb820"]"Why can't IF be more free form to allow more artistic freedom?"[/quote]In what way do you feel an interactive medium that uses solely text is limiting?  If you can express something in words, what is to stop you putting it in an IF?[/quote]

It is not the fact that IF is solely text, it is the fact that the writing has the constraints in stating what the player wants to get as output. If a player examines a chair, it follows that there must be a description. Most IF's might sound something like, "A large comfy chair." And this same pattern of providing descriptions for rooms and objects begins to feel monotonous not only for the author but for the player.  Because it is a game, and because the player has to observe his/her world, I have to provide it. I believe this is limiting as it serves the player and thus has little artistic quality.

I might suggest that instead of IF taking place in a game world with a player, an IF may take the form of a thought or something abstract with a different set of verbs to get through a looser prose that is not tied down to a realistic world. But as I asked before, would something radically different be accepted in the community?

[quote="namekuseijin"]IF and no world model is not IF, it's one of those two.
[/quote]

So if I feel conforming to the standard world models created by the most popular languages does not give me as an author enough artistic freedom, I just have to come up with a different world model that is more friendly to creativity.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=986&start=0#p5309
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: days of the week on the status line
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-03-04 12:32:06

See section 8.3 of the I7 manual for the basic instructions for changing the status line. If you need more flexibility (a bigger status line, a 3-column rather than 2-column status line, etc.), see the Basic Screen Effects extension.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=0#p5310
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-03-04 13:02:59

[quote="johnb820"]
It is not the fact that IF is solely text, it is the fact that the writing has the constraints in stating what the player wants to get as output. If a player examines a chair, it follows that there must be a description. Most IF's might sound something like, "A large comfy chair." And this same pattern of providing descriptions for rooms and objects begins to feel monotonous not only for the author but for the player.  Because it is a game, and because the player has to observe his/her world, I have to provide it. I believe this is limiting as it serves the player and thus has little artistic quality.[/quote]

I guess you never heard of "unreliable narrator" before, huh?  You should drop the dungeon crawlers and find more up-to-date and experimental games out there...

[quote="johnb820"]I might suggest that instead of IF taking place in a game world with a player, an IF may take the form of a thought or something abstract with a different set of verbs to get through a looser prose that is not tied down to a realistic world. But as I asked before, would something radically different be accepted in the community?[/quote]

How about an IF haiku?  I don't know, this is supposed to be interactive [i]fiction[/i], not interactive poetry, sculpting or whatever.

[quote="johnb820"][quote="namekuseijin"]IF and no world model is not IF, it's one of those two.
[/quote]

So if I feel conforming to the standard world models created by the most popular languages does not give me as an author enough artistic freedom, I just have to come up with a different world model that is more friendly to creativity.[/quote]

Or you may just provide weird "instead of" rules to the world model.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=0#p5311
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-03-04 13:12:10

[quote="namekuseijin"]IF and no world model is not IF, it's one of those two.[/quote]
I disagree.  I think there's a great potential for IF where the interactions are modelled in forms of interaction other than with physical objects in a simulated world.  As John mention above, there are stories and games where being able to place one object on another would be completely unnecessary, and the focus is instead on expressing emotions or cutting through deception or manipulating motivations (someone attempted this one, I seem to recall).  

Note that John's point is not the technical mode of interaction (which is where I tend to think of CYOA and hypertext as differing), but its [i]nature[/i] - that existing IF systems emphasise finding keys to unlock doors, rather than, say, figuring out how divorce a spouse amicably (unless this is somehow served by unlocking a door).

[quote="johnb820"]I believe this is limiting as it serves the player and thus has little artistic quality.[/quote]
This is almost worthy of its own thread.  I see IF/games/etc. as being about either a dialogue between the player and the author, or the player's exploration of the author's work.  Ultimately, either way, authors have to serve themselves by serving the player.  You certainly can't ignore them.

[quote="johnb820"]But as I asked before, would something radically different be accepted in the community?[/quote]
Yes.  In fact a great many people who have wondered about making the kinds of games I mentioned above would very much like to see someone demonstrate ways to go about it.

[quote="namekuseijin"]How about an IF haiku? I don't know, this is supposed to be interactive fiction, not interactive poetry, sculpting or whatever.[/quote]
[url]http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=tag:poetry[/url]

Also, for the record, I really dislike people implying that creators shouldn't make stuff because it doesn't fit into a particular category (especially when they define that category through a very literal interpretation of the category's name).  If people want to make cool stuff, does it really matter what [i]kind[/i] of stuff it is?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=0#p5312
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-03-04 13:54:47

[quote="Pacian"][quote="namekuseijin"]IF and no world model is not IF, it's one of those two.[/quote]
I disagree.  I think there's a great potential for IF where the interactions are modelled in forms of interaction other than with physical objects in a simulated world.  As John mention above, there are stories and games where being able to place one object on another would be completely unnecessary, and the focus is instead on expressing emotions or cutting through deception or manipulating motivations (someone attempted this one, I seem to recall).[/quote]

I can sympathize with that.  I think you're talking about Varicella.

[quote="Pacian"]Note that John's point is not the technical mode of interaction (which is where I tend to think of CYOA and hypertext as differing), but its [i]nature[/i] - that existing IF systems emphasise finding keys to unlock doors, rather than, say, figuring out how divorce a spouse amicably (unless this is somehow served by unlocking a door).[/quote]

Possibly because IF is basically a stage play:  the author provides the script, the player is the actor playing a character and scenery and objects are provided as plot devices.

A simulation like that is much cheaper than trying to figure out appropriate AI for the job of mediating those kind of decisions in the plot or the author multibranching the narrative madly trying to account for all player actions.

[quote="Pacian"]Also, for the record, I really dislike people implying that creators shouldn't make stuff because it doesn't fit into a particular category (especially when they define that category through a very literal interpretation of the category's name).  If people want to make cool stuff, does it really matter what [i]kind[/i] of stuff it is?[/quote]

No.  It's just not IF and I wonder why would they go through pains learning a simulation authoring tool when all they want is hypertext and html is much simpler.  But it's their pain and if they dig it, then hey!, let them be happy.  It's just annoying when they begin to ask for the tool to get rid of the simulation aspect rather than use the proper tool for the job.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=0#p5313
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-03-04 14:23:23

[quote="namekuseijin"]I can sympathize with that.  I think you're talking about Varicella.[/quote]
Nope.  [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Delightful_Wallpaper]Delightful Wallpaper[/url].

[quote="namekuseijin"]No.  It's just not IF and I wonder why would they go through pains learning a simulation authoring tool when all they want is hypertext and html is much simpler.  But it's their pain and if they dig it, then hey!, let them be happy.  It's just annoying when they begin to ask for the tool to get rid of the simulation aspect rather than use the proper tool for the job.[/quote]
But I think the thing is they [i]do[/i] want a simulation aspect.  They (we, really, because I'd be interested, as would a lot of other people in IF) just want something other than a simulation of physical actions on physical objects.  Rather, a simulation of a character acting in a story.  Where there are still rules and states (unlike in CYOA and hypertext), but where the stories are more recognisably human.  If that isn't interactive fiction, I'm not sure what is.

I appreciate, as you say, that this seems a difficult task, but I think it's really just waiting on enough determined people to really try experimenting with it.  I certainly wouldn't say that this is necessarily, for example, something that would have to wait for the development of weak AI or anything like that.  Just a system that prioritises things other than physical actions and does so in an engaging and consistent fashion.  (I still don't understand what [url=http://curveship.com/]Curveship[/url] is doing, but it seems like a step in this direction.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=982&start=0#p5314
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Many NPCs but few conversations
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2010-03-04 14:49:22

The ifdb poll at <a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/poll?id=rladr7x9vqz5a5fx">http://ifdb.tads.org/poll?id=rladr7x9vqz5a5fx</a> may be of some help here.

Looking over the games in that list, the ones that aren't conversation-heavy mostly involve interactions via object manipulation and physicality. My own Child's Play avoids conversations because the protagonist and most of the NPCs are babies; Mystery House Possessed shows a lot of NPCs wandering around, one of whom is the killer who leaves behind clues; When In Rome 2 has a goal-seeking NPC whom you must work against. Four in One has the four Marx brothers running around and causing havoc, while Bad Machine involves robots. Any of those may be useful starting points for you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=0#p5315
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-03-04 14:53:34

[quote="Pacian"]I certainly wouldn't say that this is necessarily, for example, something that would have to wait for the development of weak AI or anything like that.  Just a system that prioritises things other than physical actions and does so in an engaging and consistent fashion.  (I still don't understand what [url=http://curveship.com/]Curveship[/url] is doing, but it seems like a step in this direction.)[/quote]

Thanks for the link.  I've seen Nick's paper about automatic narrative before, just didn't know it was release into a system already (or really soon).  However, its goal is automatic narration of events, not simulation of character behavior.

I used to think like that, but now tend to agree that such subtle aspects of behavior and character interaction should rely upon the author, not a simulation and AI.  For the same reason why a musical composition is art and a musical dump from a software programmed to compose is not.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=10#p5316
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-03-04 15:06:54

[quote="Pacian"]But I think the thing is they do  want a simulation aspect. They (we, really, because I'd be interested, as would a lot of other people in IF) just want something other than a simulation of physical actions on physical objects. Rather, a simulation of a character acting in a story. Where there are still rules and states (unlike in CYOA and hypertext), but where the stories are more recognisably human. If that isn't interactive fiction, I'm not sure what is.

I appreciate, as you say, that this seems a difficult task, but I think it's really just waiting on enough determined people to really try experimenting with it. I certainly wouldn't say that this is necessarily, for example, something that would have to wait for the development of weak AI or anything like that. Just a system that prioritises things other than physical actions and does so in an engaging and consistent fashion. (I still don't understand what Curveship is doing, but it seems like a step in this direction.)[/quote]

Yes, there is a world model in what you are describing; it just isn't (necessarily) about the relations among physical objects. I'm not convinced, though, that we need a new system. I also don't think there is any reason to expect--or even hope--that a new system will emerge, precisely because no one is ever able to say, with any specificity, what they'd actually like a new system, or a new kind of IF, to do. What would interactions look like? 

If someone is truly interested in moving IF away from a physical world model to a metaphysical (in any of multiple senses) model, then I think the best place to start would be with a transcript of how we'd like to see the new game play. With a transcript in hand, we can begin to look at specifics, with the most important issue perhaps being--can we make something like this in Tads, Inform, Hugo, probably after stripping away most of the standard library? Or would a new system truly be necessary? 

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=10#p5317
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: johnb820 / DateTime: 2010-03-04 15:38:24

I personally feel Inform, Tads etc. are too restrictive, and as namekuseijin suggested, it would have to be adapted and substituted if I was to use them. I think if I was to make a more metaphysical game world, it would come in the form of Java or Ruby, a high level Object Oriented language. The purposes of the systems out there are to eliminate the need for an author to make his/her own world and to make adding to the world relatively painless.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=10#p5318
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-03-04 16:17:57

I guess that depends on what you're interested in doing. Unless you're doing something that is *very* unlike IF (e.g., no complex parser), I tend to think that your ideas will be easier to produce using IF tools. But in the absence of specifics, it's tough to say whether this could be done in Inform or Tads or whatever. 

Be aware that if you do include an IF parser in your game and you write your game in Java, you'll have to code the parser yourself, and that will take months of work. Chances are it will also fall short of existing parsers. And while the radicality of your game's experimentation will not cause it to be rejected by the IF community, a substandard parser *will* turn people off. 

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=10#p5319
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-03-04 16:46:05

[quote="namekuseijin"]I used to think like that, but now tend to agree that such subtle aspects of behavior and character interaction should rely upon the author, not a simulation and AI.  For the same reason why a musical composition is art and a musical dump from a software programmed to compose is not.[/quote]
But I'm not talking about subtle aspects.  I'm talking about the broad structure.  And in any case it's usually up to the author to come up with the subtle aspects of physical interactions as well.

As an example of what I mean, one of the most useful functions I find in TADS is the afterAction methods that allow characters and locations to react to the player's actions.  For example it's a way to allow the author to provide reactions for all the NPCs in the room when the player character strips naked or lets off a gun (or something else, less over-the-top).  The TADS world model also includes a class of ropes that you can tie to stuff - that's an example of physical modelling.  But the afterAction stuff is about modelling on the level of narrative.  Similarly, the actorStates in TADS allow characters to enter states of behaviour that determine their responses to dialogue, their afterAction methods, their room description.

This is the kind of world model I mean - I'm not talking about the simulation of characters, but rather a simulation or world model (as opposed to a CYOA or hypertext) where the emphasis is on something other than physical containment and manipulation.  'Automatic narration of events', if that's what Curveship does, is a perfect example of the kind of thing I mean.

I just think there's a real possibility for coming up with IF which has more narrative-oriented actions than "take" or "unlock" and more narrative-oriented objects than "lamp" and "door".  To take an example that's already been done, the Ace Attorney games allow you to present evidence (which might consist of items or alibis or statements) to contradict testimony.  That doesn't mean you need an AI simulation of whether or not there is actually a contradiction there (although that would be nice).  What I'm talking about is the nature of the interaction itself.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=10#p5320
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-03-04 16:56:24

Pacian mentioned my _Delightful Wallpaper_, but that's not a great example of "non-physical world" IF. The conceit there is that abstractions are instantiated *as* physical objects, and are subject to the familiar get/drop/put-in semantics. It's almost a satire of the idea, in fact.

I've considered this subject -- other levels of verb abstraction for an IF game -- for years. I've never gotten it down to a finished game. (My plans for _DW_ started out more radical, in fact, but evolved the way they did as the design came together. There's even traces of the idea in _Dreamhold_, although you wouldn't recognize them even if I pointed them out.)

Design thumbnails I've thrown around:

- The comic operetta IF (think Gilbert and Sullivan). Actors move onto and off of the stage, and play out scenes. Your input is not to directly affect the actors, but to make statements about their relationships: "X fears Y". "X loves Y". "X is Y's twin brother / son / father".

- The Darwinian IF. Populations of creatures appear and disappear, as the environment slowly changes. Your input consists of bolstering or thinning groups with particular characteristics, causing mutations, pushing groups into different niches (so that they have to adapt or die).

In both of these cases, you have a relatively small number of "verbs" and another relatively small number of "nouns", but neither is the traditional IF set.

ektemple wrote: "can we make something like this in Tads, Inform, Hugo, probably after stripping away most of the standard library?"

Since the standard library of Inform is written *in* Inform, I'd say the answer is definitionally "yes". But, okay, I've never done it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=10#p5321
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: George / DateTime: 2010-03-04 17:01:45

[quote="johnb820"]I personally feel Inform, Tads etc. are too restrictive, and as namekuseijin suggested, it would have to be adapted and substituted if I was to use them. I think if I was to make a more metaphysical game world, it would come in the form of Java or Ruby, a high level Object Oriented language. The purposes of the systems out there are to eliminate the need for an author to make his/her own world and to make adding to the world relatively painless.[/quote]

However Tads [i]is[/i] a high-level OO language; and Tads and Inform are as close to a custom IF (regardless of what the IF work is, modeling [i]Conan the Barbarian[/i] or [i]Portrait of a Lady[/i]) language as you're ever going to get. 

I go back and forth with this language question a lot (between Python and Inform; I don't see much difference in this case between Python and Ruby, or Tads and Java really), and I don't agree that an IF DSL's purpose is solely to provide a world model and make it easy to extend it by adding new rooms or what have you. There main function IMO is to make [i]writing [/i]the IF easier, which means the IF language's developer has made decisions on how to marry prose and code in a way that reduces the friction of combining them. This goes beyond the question of the world model or even the parser, and it's not a trivial issue as far as I'm concerned.

However I think the earlier poster brings up a good point, which is that conventional IF insistently requests that the author 'fall in line' so to speak. I remember Chris Klimas (of [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=uva1vc6ico5u65zg]Blue Chairs[/url] -- cited as both surreal and narratively strong by the way) saying in an interview that part of the reason he drifted away from IF work was that expectation that you had to describe [i]everything[/i]. In static fiction no one calls up the author and requests a description of the toaster that's casually mentioned as sitting on the counter. But an IF player would be put out if they examined it and saw 'nothing special'. I do believe that this is not necessarily a good thing (though I'm as guilty as any tester of pestering the author that an item is undescribed), and new works that discarded these conventions would be a good thing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=10#p5322
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-03-04 17:13:55

[quote="zarf"]- The comic operetta IF (think Gilbert and Sullivan). Actors move onto and off of the stage, and play out scenes. Your input is not to directly affect the actors, but to make statements about their relationships: "X fears Y". "X loves Y". "X is Y's twin brother / son / father".[/quote]
Not quite what you mean, but: [url]http://www.increpare.com/2009/11/theatrics/[/url]

(Although it is a great example of a game with non-physical interactions.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=10#p5323
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-03-05 01:42:24

[quote="johnb820"]Let me start by saying that my familiarity with IF is not incredibly deep. I have been reading off and on for the past 5 years but have yet to get very deep in the community. I have an opinion of the IF community but will choose to refrain from saying it. I will say that I deeply respect the authors who must have enormous talent and the guts to build such complex worlds while retaining all the rules of that world. Like an overly complex nondeterministic finite automaton, creating a game world, keeping track of the states of each object throughout the progression of the work, and how they interact is truly awe inspiring.
[/quote]

Hi John, I'm Ron, and I'm newer than you are -- a little over 2 years.  I'm not a lurker though.  I am confused as to your feelings.  You say the interaction of I-F is "truly awe inspiring" but decry the tools that make that possible.  You say you wish to make works whose endings aren't a win/lose proposition, but most of the community has been bending that way for a while already.  You say you feel restricted by the expectations this particular community would have of your work ("examine", etc.), but then suggest full-blown programming languages would help you... do what?  Save you the trouble of writing [i]Instead of examining, say "Examine is not needed in this work."[/i] over hand-coding your own idiosyncratic parser that no one is familiar with?  And why would using a different tool behind-the-scenes change any audience's assumptions anyway? 

The I-F programming languages are programming languages like any other:  none will have all the exact features you need.  Pick one and go with it.  It really matters less than you think.  

Here's how to construct a hypertext-like CYOA in Inform 7, without any of that unnecessary simulation-y stuff getting in the way: 
[code]
"Firefly Feelings" by Ron Newcomb.

Act I is a scene.  Act I begins when the entire game begins.
When Act I begins: say "Once upon a time, you had to make a choice between [bold type]lightning bugs[roman type] and [bold type]fireflies[roman type]."
Act I ends with lightning when the player's command includes "lightning/bugs".
Act I ends with fire when the player's command includes "fire/firefly/fireflies/fireflys".


Act IIa is a scene. Act IIa begins when Act I ends with fire.
When Act IIa begins: say "Fireflies was always the better-sounding word..."
[etc.]

Act IIb is a scene. Act IIb begins when Act I ends with lightning. 
When Act IIb begins: say "Mother always called them 'lightning bugs' with a particular emphasis on the latter:  buuuugs."
[etc.]
[/code]
And add similar paragraphs to the first until your keyboard wears out.  I started the next two already.  Of course you'll likely want to remove the other trappings as well, such as the minimal bibliographic data, so:[code]
There is a room. Instead of looking, do nothing. Rule for printing the banner text: do nothing.  Understand "[text]" as inputting. Inputting is an action applying to one topic.  [And for this build of Inform 7 only: ]  This is the fix rule: fix. To fix: (- Fix(); -).  Include (- [Fix; players_command = 101; ]; -). The fix rule is listed before the start in the correct scenes rule in the startup rules.[/code]
And Inform has various TEST ME scripts you can write, plus the Skein and Transcript IDE features, all of which are optimized for I-F.  Python's isn't.  (Not to pick on Python specifically. It's supposed to be generic.)

My bottom line is, even I-Fers are people, and you will always have to manage your audience's assumptions regardless your audience and regardless the tool(s) you use.  If you want to start from scratch, as it were, that's awesome.  But resetting your  assumptions has nothing to do with resetting your tools' sophistication to the stone age.   Ignore what features don't suit your artistic purpose.  [u]Deadline Enchanter[/u] certainly did.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=10#p5324
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: johnb820 / DateTime: 2010-03-05 05:09:40

Well I will throw out what I have been thinking the last few days and you tell me if you are still confused with what I want.

Suppose I was to make a work that instead of having rooms, you have states of minds. Instead of having objects, you have emotions. Interaction does not just mean doing something to something else. If you can think something, or feel something, that constitutes player input and interaction. Suppose you are trapped in a recurring nightmare and the obvious solution would be to wake up, except you can't. A list of commands that may contribute a sense of interaction might include, "remember the dream," "grow angry" or "bend time." Any various input does not have to have a clear cut response like the player might expect.

If the player enters, "take red pill" the output might sound like, "Before the pills find themselves in your grasp, a little girl wanders by. Her devious smile triggers dark memories, beyond the scope of the nightmare which engulfs. A giggle and a skip sears into your consciousness as the red pill dissolves in mid air." And so on, until a new topic of focus orients the player and prompts them for the next logical input. What could happen is to have a continuous feed of narrative and cues given to the player to explicitly get them to the next piece of dialog. I don't deny that my ideas would certainly lack quality interaction. 

I just feel as if, whether I write or play IF, that I just go through the motions of a tedious and conforming medium and I began to question the artistic freedom of the author. I also feel my general opinions on these things are broad. To get down to the narrow topic of concern, I want to know if I was to make something pretty radical, whether it would be well received. Some posts indicate an interest, while others are questioning why I would want to do it when there are standards already in place.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=10#p5325
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-03-05 10:22:19

[quote="johnb820"]Suppose I was to make a work that instead of having rooms, you have states of minds. Instead of having objects, you have emotions. Interaction does not just mean doing something to something else. If you can think something, or feel something, that constitutes player input and interaction. Suppose you are trapped in a recurring nightmare and the obvious solution would be to wake up, except you can't. A list of commands that may contribute a sense of interaction might include, "remember the dream," "grow angry" or "bend time." Any various input does not have to have a clear cut response like the player might expect.[/quote]

Now that you've gotten down to specifics, this is all very standard stuff, and you should not hesitate to use an IF programming language such as Inform or Tads. You can use rooms to represent states of mind, no problem. You still have objects and a world model (I don't see how your example substitutes emotions for objects, I'm afraid.) Many interactions seem to proceed just as they would in standard IF. I'm not sure what you mean by "lack of clear cut response," but I'm pretty sure this would just mean writing your actions and responses with a certain prose style.

[quote="johnb820"]If the player enters, "take red pill" the output might sound like, "Before the pills find themselves in your grasp, a little girl wanders by. Her devious smile triggers dark memories, beyond the scope of the nightmare which engulfs. A giggle and a skip sears into your consciousness as the red pill dissolves in mid air." And so on, until a new topic of focus orients the player and prompts them for the next logical input. What could happen is to have a continuous feed of narrative and cues given to the player to explicitly get them to the next piece of dialog. I don't deny that my ideas would certainly lack quality interaction. [/quote]

What you're referring to is a standard IF technique for pacing. You would just be using it as the major mechanic for moving the plot forward, rather than as one of a number of mechanics. Again, this will not be difficult to code in any major IF system.

[quote="johnb820"]I just feel as if, whether I write or play IF, that I just go through the motions of a tedious and conforming medium and I began to question the artistic freedom of the author. I also feel my general opinions on these things are broad. To get down to the narrow topic of concern, I want to know if I was to make something pretty radical, whether it would be well received. Some posts indicate an interest, while others are questioning why I would want to do it when there are standards already in place.[/quote]

No, no one has said that you should hew to any "standards already in place" in favor of experimentation. You didn't explain what you were thinking, so people were forced to read into it, and some of them assumed you wanted to do something that wouldn't be made easier by IF authoring tools. You have simply misunderstood the conversation if you read any of the replies here as suggesting that you shouldn't try experimenting with IF.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=20#p5326
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-03-05 11:31:46

Now I feel positively right that you've either not played many IF and/or had the bad luck of only playing a couple of old dungeon crawls.  Come on!  Just to keep up with a very well-known work that describes pretty much what you're talking about: ever heard of [url=http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn-history/r172/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/photopia.z5.js]Photopia[/url]?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=20#p5327
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: johnb820 / DateTime: 2010-03-05 12:09:13

I would appreciate not being insulted. I played Photopia several years ago and it was a major inspiration for me to write my first IF which I released without any expectation of having anyone actually play it. Photopia is in fact the very first game I would recommend to anyone interested in this medium.

That example I posted was just a spur of the moment idea. I literally came up with those specifics in 5 minutes. My conceptual design that I would likely implement would be something completely different. I don't want this topic to grow out of control so I will state that I appreciate the input from those who responded and it definitely seems most would be interested in something innovative. I realize how challenging my goals are.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=989&start=0#p5328
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Roomless Comp
User: George / DateTime: 2010-03-05 12:48:56

We've never (as far as I know) hosted a competition at Intfiction. Discussion [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=988]in another thread[/url] gave me the idea of a Roomless Comp. 

Here's the proposal (open to revision):

[size=150][b]Roomless Comp[/b][/size]

[color=#008040][size=125][b]Rules[/b][/size][/color]

[b]1.[/b] No physical locations, interior rooms or exterior spaces are [i]modeled [/i]by the game. This includes places like living rooms, closets, dresser drawers, phone booths, outer space, underwater, in the air falling from an airplane, 'physical' locations in dream sequences, etcetera. The character can be in one or more locations, but there isn't any physical interaction with locations during the game. Atmospheric messages or descriptions based on the locations are OK. 

[b]2.[/b] What does this leave us?  Epistolary games, CYOA games, trials, radio communication, interior monologues, seduction, breaking up, wiretapping, development of cultures, discovering history based on artifacts, etcetera. 

[b]3.[/b] The game can be as long or as short as you wish. 

[b]4.[/b] The time limit will be about 1 month from when the comp starts. 

[quote][color=#008040][size=125][b]FAQ[/b][/size][/color]

[b]1. Can authors discuss the games prior to judging?[/b]

Yes. 

[b]2. Are there prizes?[/b]

We'll have community voting (rather than official scores assigned), with number of votes per judge based on the number of games entered.

[b]3. Can I use any IF development system?[/b]

Yes.

[b]4. If my PC is blind or with no sensation of the rooms they are in, does that count as roomless?[/b]

No -- if the PC is in a 'mapped' space, it's not roomless.
[/quote]


[size=125]This is a general survey of interest. Thoughts?[/size]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=20#p5329
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: George / DateTime: 2010-03-05 12:49:18

This makes me wonder about holding a Roomless Comp. [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=989#p5328]Going to split this[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=989&start=0#p5330
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Roomless Comp
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-03-05 14:24:59

Ah, I'm not sure I'd be able to take part, depending on when it starts, but I'd definitely be interested in participating.

[quote]The character can be in one of these spaces[/quote]
Just one, or any number?  Presumably as long as geography isn't mapped?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=989&start=0#p5331
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Roomless Comp
User: George / DateTime: 2010-03-05 14:51:27

[quote="Pacian"]Ah, I'm not sure I'd be able to take part, depending on when it starts, but I'd definitely be interested in participating.[/quote]

No problem, just out of curiosity, is a particular time frame better than another for you?

[quote]
[quote]The character can be in one of these spaces[/quote]
Just one, or any number?  Presumably as long as geography isn't mapped?[/quote]

Yes, any number. I'll revise the OP.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=20#p5332
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-03-05 19:23:58

No insult intended.

A roomless comp sounds like a novel concept.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=20#p5333
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: George / DateTime: 2010-03-05 20:07:20

No pun intended?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=20#p5334
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-03-05 20:46:21

First statement was to johnb820. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=989&start=0#p5335
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Roomless Comp
User: johnb820 / DateTime: 2010-03-05 21:02:40

I would definitely be interested although I couldn't commit to it until this school semester is over in a couple months from now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=20#p5336
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-03-05 23:15:22

[quote="johnb820"]Suppose I was to make a work that instead of having rooms, you have states of minds. Instead of having objects, you have emotions. Interaction does not just mean doing something to something else. If you can think something, or feel something, that constitutes player input and interaction. Suppose you are trapped in a recurring nightmare and the obvious solution would be to wake up, except you can't. A list of commands that may contribute a sense of interaction might include, "remember the dream," "grow angry" or "bend time." Any various input does not have to have a clear cut response like the player might expect.[/quote]
Hm. OK, you might be interested in [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2009/03/03/types-of-action-and-types-of-agency/]this blog post[/url] by Emily Short, in which she divvies up input into a few notable categories, one of which you seem to be less enamored with.  It sounds like you're interested in letting "expressive" actions -- SMILE, FROWN, CRY -- drive the story forward.  My last post's example had the reader entering nouns to drive it, (again, alas) but if you cue the reader with something like:[code]When play begins: change the command prompt to "[bold type]You feel [roman type]".[/code] and, say, tell the reader her input is restricted to a single word (via[code]After reading a command: if the number of words in the player's command is greater than one, say "(One word only, please.)" instead.[/code]) to keep down how much you have to parse, then I think you have a workable system there.  I-F yet not I-F. 

[quote="johnb820"]If the player enters, "take red pill" the output might sound like, "Before the pills find themselves in your grasp, a little girl wanders by. Her devious smile triggers dark memories, beyond the scope of the nightmare which engulfs. A giggle and a skip sears into your consciousness as the red pill dissolves in mid air."[/quote]
Regarding that, I think you might want to be careful about removing any sense of agency or control from the reader. If the unexpected happens every time the reader enters something, the reader will quickly begin to wonder why she's entering anything at all. I mean, what's the point of her making decisions at the prompt if it's always furglewitz one way and foobar the other?  

Also, anything involving a dream sequence?  Writer beware.  Dream sequences are the new mazes.  Confusing, easy for the lazy author to throw in, elicits much eye-rolling in players, etc.  I think I've read only one dream sequence in all of trad fic and int fic that actually worked for me.  (Donna Tartt, [u]The Little Friend[/u])

[quote="johnb820"]I just feel as if, whether I write or play IF, that I just go through the motions of a tedious and conforming medium[/quote]
Much of I-F is tedious, yes.  You're not alone in thinking that, and it's why I-F still stands in the long shadow of videogames. I think the number of works I've thoroughly enjoyed end-to-end I can count on my hands. One hand if it's not required I finish the game.  But like in any endeavor where you toss out everything and the cat, you'll be viewed with skepticism by those who have seem many other bright-eyed newcomers create something unsatisfying in, at best, whole new ways.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=981&start=0#p5337
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: 2009 XYZZY Awards
User: inky / DateTime: 2010-03-05 23:16:48

And the results are up for the first round! You can now vote for the finalists at <a class="postlink" href="http://xyzzyawards.org/">http://xyzzyawards.org/</a> through March 19th, and then show up on ifMUD (<a class="postlink" href="http://ifmud.port4000.com">http://ifmud.port4000.com</a>) on March 20th at 3pm EDT (7pm GMT) to find out who won. See you there!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=989&start=0#p5338
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Roomless Comp
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-03-06 12:28:39

I might be interested in this if it were held a few months on.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=970&start=0#p5339
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 : Well-Versed Guides
User: RedOrZed / DateTime: 2010-03-06 17:16:22

[quote="Eleas"]I really like the guides, and I think I have the latest versions downloaded. One question, though - since the directory you linked to appears to be empty now, where can the latest versions of the documents be found?[/quote]

hi, would you be able to send me a copy of the guides? I was reading them in a browser window instead of downloading them (doh) and now they've gone....

Cheers!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=960&start=0#p5340
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Divis Mortis - general questions and beta testing
User: lglasser / DateTime: 2010-03-06 19:13:50

I wanted to give a quick thank-you to everyone who has helped!  I've put a lot of work into fixing all those little niggling things, making it into a more complete game.  Sure do appreciate all of the great help and suggestions I've gotten so far.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=990&start=0#p5341
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Adrift Spring TIng competition
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2010-03-07 02:36:02

[b]The SPRING TING. 2010 [/b]
Notice.

The Adrift SPRING TING competition will be launched April 1st. 2010 .
Schedule:
[i]April 1st : the SPRING TING is official declared open.
April 30th :   Last chance for entering the competition.
May 1st  – May 31st Judging
June 1st : the winner is announced.[/i]

Please read the rules as there are a few newbie’s.
The competition is for unregistered members and the prize is a free registry.
If you want help evaluate the entries, please drop me a line either as a pm, or at my e-mail.
Have fun

Rules for this competition

* The author can use Adrift Version 4.0 unregistered, or  Adrift Version 3.90 which is available as freeware.
* All entries must be accompanied by a walkthrough. It can be a simple transcript from the runner. This must give the text that will allow a player to complete the game, from beginning to end, following the details given
* File sizes are unlimited (within the restrictions of the shareware version of course)
* Games may be passworded, but the organizer prefers them not to be so that others can learn from the techniques used.
* Games must not contain content of an offensive adult nature.
* Naturally enough the games should be a completely original work, although parody is allowed.
*Games must come with evaluation sheet for judging.
* No more than two entries will be accepted from each contributor.
* There must be at least three entries or the competition is void.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=989&start=0#p5342
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Roomless Comp
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-03-07 04:15:45

Although I can imagine that in a couple of months people will complain they're working on IFComp...

 [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=989&start=0#p5343
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Roomless Comp
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2010-03-07 07:08:18

Any specific generator, or can participants use what they desire. Tads - I7 - Adrift etc. ?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=989&start=0#p5344
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Roomless Comp
User: George / DateTime: 2010-03-07 09:57:07

[quote="Finn Rosenløv"]Any specific generator, or can participants use what they desire. Tads - I7 - Adrift etc. ?[/quote]

Yes, any development system.


[quote="Pacian"]Although I can imagine that in a couple of months people will complain they're working on IFComp...[/quote]

Yes, my thoughts exactly. It definitely won't happen before next month though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=986&start=0#p5345
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: days of the week on the status line
User: sqib / DateTime: 2010-03-08 00:23:48

just realized that the thank you I thought I wrote is missing..so Thank You.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=20#p5346
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-03-08 12:20:59

[quote="Ron Newcomb"][quote="johnb820"]I just feel as if, whether I write or play IF, that I just go through the motions of a tedious and conforming medium[/quote]
Much of I-F is tedious, yes.  You're not alone in thinking that, and it's why I-F still stands in the long shadow of videogames.[/quote]

oh good.  I thought it was because of graphics and fast button-mashing action.  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=20#p5347
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: johnb820 / DateTime: 2010-03-08 23:22:20

Neither reading a book or reading a visual novel is tedious. So why is IF so tedious? My guess is providing players a logical level of interaction while also being forced to provide output for illogical actions. Why does the player get to have so much freedom to try and pick up the 10 ton weight or try to put the 10 foot statue in their pocket? I want to forgo these silly time consuming actions by taking the game outside the real world.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=991&start=0#p5348
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Considering Actions
User: Acavado / DateTime: 2010-03-09 04:15:46

I've been trying to make a game little to no restrictions, so that if you wish to eat your couch or jump off the roof, you will do just that (with limited success and plenty of consequences, of course). So, instead of the game actually stopping you from doing rediculous things, I resolved to just add some action, called Considering. That is, typing "consider eating cabbage" will give you some text concerning the actors opinion on cabbage eating; likewise, "consider standing" will give you the actors sentiments on standing. 

Or in less words, I'm trying to make the ability to examine an action.

I began with: [code]An action has some text called the considerations. The considerations of an action is usually "Very simple."
Report considering something:
    if the considerations of the noun is "Very simple.":
        say "Why not?"
    otherwise:
        say "[the considerations of the action]"[/code]But I ran into trouble when I got to making what "considering" [i]is[/i]. I turned round and round "Considering is an action applying to an action", but I can'd find a way.

How could this be done [emote]:?:[/emote]   That is, without writing a new "consider" for each and every possible action in the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=946&start=10#p5349
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Graphical Interactive Fiction
User: jfm.lisaso / DateTime: 2010-03-09 06:33:22

Yo! There're many ways to use pictures on an interactive fiction in order to give the player a visual reference. I think that It can be achieved effectively without need for an image to each room and maintaining a greater weight of the text descriptions.

Here are some examples:

[spoiler][img]http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4003/4419123225_a2fb76fbaa.jpg[/img][img]http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4036/4419888820_917cecee36.jpg[/img][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=946&start=10#p5350
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Graphical Interactive Fiction
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-03-09 12:37:04

What game is the second one?  That's a great example of purely illustrative imagery in service of text.  Besides the beautiful artwork, the black&white blending of it all also evokes a marvelous baroque feel...

my spanish is not that rustyso I might give it a try...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=20#p5351
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-03-09 14:07:02

[quote="johnb820"]Neither reading a book or reading a visual novel is tedious. So why is IF so tedious? My guess is providing players a logical level of interaction while also being forced to provide output for illogical actions. Why does the player get to have so much freedom to try and pick up the 10 ton weight or try to put the 10 foot statue in their pocket? I want to forgo these silly time consuming actions by taking the game outside the real world.[/quote]

My guess for why IF can be tedious is that it's usually possible to get stuck for a long time, wandering around (or trying verbs) with no idea what to do next, and that the responses you get won't be engaging enough to stay non-tedious through the time that you're stuck. Books and visual novels don't get this because the way forward is clearly marked and you can't get stuck. (Well, some books are tedious and you can get stuck in them, but it isn't a feature of the medium.) And video games can provide you with more stimulation as you keep trying, so it's not as tedious to get stuck. (This is the graphics and button-mashing of which namekuseijin speaks. And of course getting stuck in a video game can be tedious too.) 

Photopia propels you along with almost no hope of getting stuck, so it isn't tedious, but it's a rare IF that has actual puzzles and that keeps you from getting stuck in this way. Especially since different people will get stuck on different puzzles. The payoff is when a puzzle's solution turns out to be satisfying enough to redeem the tedium or frustration -- which for me can happen even when I have to use the hints. 

Anyway, I don't think that the problem is the player's freedom to try to pick up the 10-ten statue or put the 10-foot statue in their pocket per se; it's easy enough to disable those actions with a curt default response, and that won't reduce the tedium for a player who tried them. The problem is that the player wants to try this sort of thing because they're not sure how to move forward. One way to make sure that the player doesn't waste time on silly actions would be to disable the freeform parser and have them select from a limited menu, which would seem to put us in the realm of the choose-your-own-adventure or hypertext rather than what I think of IF. Another way is to make the options extremely clear, but that requires very good game design, and may not even be what you want if you're writing a puzzly game -- though perhaps the point in question is partly whether IF needs to transcend puzzles.

John B, have you played Emily Short's conversation games like Galatea and Best of Three? Those seem like they direct you toward interaction on the emotional/conceptual level rather than interaction with objects. (As does Alabaster, perhaps, but I found that unlike the other two games I named it was possible to get very stuck in Alabaster.) 

[My first post, by the way. I'll head to the Introductions thread now.]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=90#p5352
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-03-09 14:13:53

Hi, I'm Matt Weiner (matt w for short, over on the left), and I just joined because, well, I like to talk about IF. And I'm thinking about writing some, if I ever make the time. Sometimes I post reviews and other stuff about IF at <a class="postlink" href="http://saucersofmud.wordpress.com">http://saucersofmud.wordpress.com</a>, as well as other nonsense (but there's a tag for IF entries, so you should be able to filter that out). I'm a philosophy professor at the University of Vermont, so my interests may tend more toward the theoretical side of things.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=30#p5353
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-03-09 14:33:18

[quote="johnb820"]Neither reading a book or reading a visual novel is tedious. So why is IF so tedious?[/quote]

Is it?  I wouldn't be here if it was, so many exciting literature and games out there...

[quote="johnb820"]My guess is providing players a logical level of interaction while also being forced to provide output for illogical actions. Why does the player get to have so much freedom to try and pick up the 10 ton weight or try to put the 10 foot statue in their pocket? I want to forgo these silly time consuming actions by taking the game outside the real world.[/quote]

Your first sentence sounds like as if you're telling IF as a work is tedious, but by reading the above you sound like as if you're telling that crafting an IF work is tedious.

In any case, if either crafting or playing IF is so tedious for you, what exactly are you doing here in the first place?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=30#p5354
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-03-09 15:11:07

[quote="matt w"]
Anyway, I don't think that the problem is the player's freedom to try to pick up the 10-ten statue or put the 10-foot statue in their pocket per se; it's easy enough to disable those actions with a curt default response, and that won't reduce the tedium for a player who tried them. The problem is that the player wants to try this sort of thing because they're not sure how to move forward.[/quote]

I have a feeling that a player who tries arbitrary insane actions like those is not the kind of audience IF authors should be courting.  Just give them the default stupid message and let it up to them for either to persist and get into the shoes of the protagonist or leave for greener pastures.  May be good for their bovine health.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=946&start=20#p5355
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Graphical Interactive Fiction
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-03-09 16:00:13

Agree. Beautiful imagery, more evocative than illustrative, probably the best way for images to accompany IF. Also, namekuseijin, if you like it, you might enjoy the graphics of "Beyond". If you haven't played it, do - I think you'll like it. [emote]:)[/emote] The story gets a bit overdramatic at the end, and the English isn't always perfect, but it's one of those games, you know...

...well, it was for me, at least.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=30#p5356
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: George / DateTime: 2010-03-09 18:50:48

I have no argument against squashing tediousness, but I would be careful about rejecting frustration in IF wholesale. It's a major part of the medium in my opinion; Espen Aarseth and Jeremy Douglass discuss this much better than I if you're interested.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=991&start=0#p5357
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Considering Actions
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-03-09 22:15:42

Understand tokens can't take whole actions like that, because the action and 2 nouns are stored in global variables.  Instead, you have to work around it.  Think of "consider" as a prefix.[code]
Currently considers is a truth state that varies.
What's being considered is a stored action that varies.

After reading a command:
      now currently considers is whether or not the player's command includes "consider";
      if currently considers is true, cut the matched text.

Before an actor doing something when currently considers is true:
     now what's being considered is the current action;
     try the actor considering instead.

Considering is an action applying to nothing. 

Check an actor considering when what's being considered is eating something inedible: say "Are you sure you want to eat [the noun part of what's being considered]?" instead.
[/code]
      
I didn't test that, but I assume you can figure it out from there?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=991&start=0#p5358
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Considering Actions
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-03-09 22:17:36

Ah, that should be:[code]Before an actor doing something except considering when currently considers is true:[/code] to prevent a loop.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=992&start=0#p5359
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 bug with Glulx external files
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-03-10 00:02:01

This is an interpreter bug, not a bug in the Inform compiler. But it showed up in *several* interpreters -- pretty much every interpreter except the Mac one -- so I wanted to post a quick summary.

Quick summary: if you try to write to an external file with the "append" flag, you'd get a lot of asterisks strewn through the file. (I7 tries to write an asterisk at the beginning of the file to mark it as fully written, but it wasn't properly positioned at the beginning.)

This turns out to be a mistake in my comments in the Glk spec, which everybody copied into their code -- including me -- except for CocoaGlk (the Mac library). I've posted fixed versions of the CheapGlk and GlkTerm libraries; other libraries (and the associated Glulxe and Git interpreters) will be updated soon.

Sorry for the hassle. I don't think anybody's used this I7 feature much; at least, Erik Temple's post last week was the first report of the problem! But if you run into it, now you'll know what it is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=30#p5360
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-03-10 04:47:13

[quote="namekuseijin"]
I have a feeling that a player who tries arbitrary insane actions like those is not the kind of audience IF authors should be courting.  Just give them the default stupid message and let it up to them for either to persist and get into the shoes of the protagonist or leave for greener pastures.  May be good for their bovine health.  [emote];)[/emote][/quote]

Tricky ground, there. IF isn't necessarily "the player is roleplaying as someone else", just as it isn't necessarily "the player is making his own choices as if he/she him/herself were there". What I love about IF, in fact, is that, today, it isn't necessarily anything. [emote]:)[/emote]

The trouble with giving the player curt messages for when he's trying insane things is... well, in puzzle games, sometimes you have to do non-standard stuff. And in order to solve those puzzles, you have to think a bit crazy - not too much, just a bit. And in order to do that, you have to feel confident that the game will be behind you, supporting you, as you try your crazy stuff. Not that the game has to *allow* you to do crazy stuff, but it should behave rather like the real world. The following is a spoiler for Hollywood Hijinx: [spoiler]hanging a full leaking bucket on a coathanger is hardly something you'd do every day, but[/spoiler] it was the puzzle that was the most gratifying for me to solve. It forced me to think outside the box, I tinkered with the elements of the puzzle a LOT and the game always felt as though it was encouraging me to tinker, even as I got things wrong; so that when I got it *right*, I felt insanely rewarded.

Tedium in IF is no different from tedium in graphical adventures, except that it can be even worse in IF games that aren't properly implemented. But people will complain about "a game in which anything I do seems not to matter" just as much as "a game in which there's so many puzzles I just can't go on, I want to see the story."

In fact, we have so many players nowadays. We have cave-explorerers, we have pure-puzzlers, we have Photopiers. We have people who want story, people who want puzzles, people who want old-school, people who want mixtures of these. We don't HAVE to accomodate for everyone, but we should acknowledge that they exist, and that the player who, upon finding a fork in a road tries to "eat spaghetti with fork", should not be punished. Maybe not rewarded, either, but if his action makes sense, it should at least be acknowledged. We're trying to model worlds in IF, after all. Maybe we don't want to go as far as to build the "toyworlds" that have been on discussion on RAIF, but we should make it at least deep enough for the player to say "Ok, I see, this is the gameworld. I feel perfectly at home in it, and as soon I get stuck on a puzzle I'll be ready to look at it in a three-dimensional way, looking for ways to solve the puzzle as I would in real life."

The biggest question isn't probably whether IF has artistic credibility, since in fact art can have so many definitions. The question is, to which definition of art do we want IF to adhere, and do we really want THAT definition? 

At any rate, IF is merely a genre. "The Twelve Monkeys" is more likely to be considered "art" than "Dumb and Dumber". Similarly, "Photopia" and "Anchorhead", "Bad Machine" and "The Gostak" are probably more "art" than, say, "69105 Keys".

Anyway:[quote]
Of course it follows that to work in a non standard world, the "player" may be left questioning what to do to "win." Indeed this is the challenge that I feel IF has not yet risen to. But what if this "interactive fiction" had no "player" or there was no "game" to "win?" Can one not get the same satisfaction reading Dante's The Divine Comedy, as Dan Brown's The Davinci Code?[/quote]

But the point in reading a book is that a book, like every art form, is a finite experience, structured carefully in, usually, three pieces - beginning, middle, end. It's carefully constructed so that it's a journey. Granted, the best part is the journey itself, and not the end - but if it didn't end, it wouldn't make sense. It wouldn't have the impact. There would be no catharsis. You claim that the "reader" doesn't have to "win" in order to experience a book. Well, I've read neither of the books you mentioned, but I can tell you that if I hadn't read "Moby Dick" all the way through, choosing to stop about three quarters of the book through, the experience would have been lost. I would not have "won", and neither would I have experienced it properly.

So it follows that IF must have an end. That end is usually victory. Doesn't have to be, though. But there must be an end, a feeling of conclusion.

Of course, there are more modern theories that go against this and the need for a narrative. Personally, I'm strictly against them. But if you're interested, you can read up on Chris Crawford's ideas. He's trying to make a narrative emerge from the player's actions. I don't like it because I don't feel it can ever be as passionate as the narrative an author came up with, but you might enjoy it.

Also, like many people said, IF is VERY free form. It merely has a standard to which many games adhere to. But there are plenty of games that do NOT. And they all lieve together in peace and harmony, even when they don't. [emote]:)[/emote] That's the beauty of IF.

********

My two cents, which will be familiar to people who have read my posts and reviews.

I have a very simple definition for "art". Art is something, created by someone or a group of someones, that makes you feel something. Simple as that. I can feel disgust, as I felt when, at a young age, I read "Brave New World". I can feel awe, as when I read "Moby Dick". I can question my motivations, as I did after recently playing Bioshock (Gasp! Consternation! Uproar! An FPS, art?! You know, for me, Bioshock is rather artistic, yes). I can feel infinitely sad, as after watching "El Labirinto del Fauno", aka "Pan's Labyrinth". I can feel very, very uplifted, as when I hear Puccini's "Nessun Dorma".

Some IF makes me feel like that. "Photopia" did. "Beyond" did. "A Mind Forever Voyaging" did. So did "Wishbringer". And many others.

Does IF have artistic credibility?

I don't think so, and don't give a damn, because "artistic credibility" nowadays seems to be a very warped thing, exclusive to an elite of people who have a very strange sense of art that seems to discount emotions altogether. I want no part of that.

Does IF have the potential for art?

By God, yes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=946&start=20#p5361
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Graphical Interactive Fiction
User: jfm.lisaso / DateTime: 2010-03-10 06:13:14

[quote="namekuseijin"]What game is the second one? That's a great example of purely illustrative imagery in service of text. Besides the beautiful artwork, the black&white blending of it all also evokes a marvelous baroque feel...[/quote]
Well, It's an incomplete interactive fiction about [url=http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dagon]Lovecraft's Dagon[/url] on which I have been working for some time. It has some design mistakes so I abandoned it for the moment. Perhaps some day...
I though that it was a good example, that's all. But I'm glad you like the look!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=90#p5362
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-03-10 06:40:46

Hi Matt! Welcome to the forum!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=946&start=20#p5363
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Graphical Interactive Fiction
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-03-10 10:50:51

[quote="jfm.lisaso"][quote="namekuseijin"]What game is the second one? That's a great example of purely illustrative imagery in service of text. Besides the beautiful artwork, the black&white blending of it all also evokes a marvelous baroque feel...[/quote]
Well, It's an incomplete interactive fiction about [url=http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dagon]Lovecraft's Dagon[/url] on which I have been working for some time. It has some design mistakes so I abandoned it for the moment. Perhaps some day...
I though that it was a good example, that's all. But I'm glad you like the look![/quote]

artwork from you too?  Pretty neat.

I'll try "Beyond" some day Peter.  yeah, evocative is a better term...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=30#p5364
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-03-10 11:51:08

[quote="Peter Pears"]The trouble with giving the player curt messages for when he's trying insane things is... well, in puzzle games, sometimes you have to do non-standard stuff.[/quote]

None of them involving eating a chair or pocketing an edifice.  Not even Grunk would think like that (nor Douglas Adams).  There's a difference between out-of-the-box thinking and insane thinking. [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote="Peter Pears"]The following is a spoiler for Hollywood Hijinx: [spoiler]hanging a full leaking bucket on a coathanger is hardly something you'd do every day, but[/spoiler] it was the puzzle that was the most gratifying for me to solve.[/quote]

Doesn't sound all that crazy, but then, I don't have the context.

[quote="Peter Pears"]It forced me to think outside the box, I tinkered with the elements of the puzzle a LOT and the game always felt as though it was encouraging me to tinker, even as I got things wrong; so that when I got it *right*, I felt insanely rewarded.[/quote]

I don't like it too those old games that relied too much on Rube Goldberg machinery... still, they have their logic in their own complicated manner, quite different from trying stupid actions like taking a tree.

[quote="Peter Pears"]Tedium in IF is no different from tedium in graphical adventures, except that it can be even worse in IF games that aren't properly implemented. But people will complain about "a game in which anything I do seems not to matter" just as much as "a game in which there's so many puzzles I just can't go on, I want to see the story."[/quote]

I can agree with that.

[quote="Peter Pears"]In fact, we have so many players nowadays. We have cave-explorerers, we have pure-puzzlers, we have Photopiers. We have people who want story, people who want puzzles, people who want old-school, people who want mixtures of these.[/quote]

people who want combat a la rogue or RPGs...

[quote="Peter Pears"]We don't HAVE to accomodate for everyone, but we should acknowledge that they exist, and that the player who, upon finding a fork in a road tries to "eat spaghetti with fork", should not be punished. Maybe not rewarded, either, but if his action makes sense, it should at least be acknowledged. We're trying to model worlds in IF, after all.[/quote]

Sure.  As long as there is any spaghetti around at all. [emote]:)[/emote]

How about having the protagonist be a hardened military protagonist entering the remains of a nursery, where he sees a pacifier.  Should we allow the player to make the hardened hero look silly with it in the mouth? [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote="Peter Pears"]So it follows that IF must have an end. That end is usually victory. Doesn't have to be, though. But there must be an end, a feeling of conclusion.

Of course, there are more modern theories that go against this and the need for a narrative. Personally, I'm strictly against them. But if you're interested, you can read up on Chris Crawford's ideas. He's trying to make a narrative emerge from the player's actions. I don't like it because I don't feel it can ever be as passionate as the narrative an author came up with, but you might enjoy it.[/quote]

Agreed 100%. [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote="Peter Pears"]
I have a very simple definition for "art". Art is something, created by someone or a group of someones, that makes you feel something. Simple as that. I can feel disgust, as I felt when, at a young age, I read "Brave New World". I can feel awe, as when I read "Moby Dick"...[/quote]

I can feel horny watching porn.  Is that art? [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=30#p5365
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-03-10 13:17:44

[quote]None of them involving eating a chair or pocketing an edifice. Not even Grunk would think like that (nor Douglas Adams). There's a difference between out-of-the-box thinking and insane thinking. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Ayuh, but a corteous "That's physically impossible." would be better than chastising the player. [emote]:)[/emote] Unless you want to chastise the player, of course. It's your prerogative as the author.

[quote]Sure. As long as there is any spaghetti around at all. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Heh, just to make sure you read it right - by "fork in the road" I didn't mean the utensil, I meant the place where the road forks into different paths. [emote]:)[/emote] I thought you'd balk at letting the player get away with something this crazy!

[quote]How about having the protagonist be a hardened military protagonist entering the remains of a nursery, where he sees a pacifier. Should we allow the player to make the hardened hero look silly with it in the mouth? [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Nice example. I, for one, would be cross if the game didn't let me do it without reason. If the game said "You're much too tough for that!", or "What would your comrades think?!", I'd be ok. If it said "You put it on, feel like a right tit, and remove it when you see a nearby baby staring at you. Great, you've embarassed yourself." If it just allowed it, I'd be ok.

But even when the game said "no", it would be acknowledging the action. That's all I ask for. [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote]I can feel horny watching porn. Is that art? [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

I thought someone would say something like this. [emote]:)[/emote] It's not a watertight definition, I wouldn't write an essay with it. But for the purposes of the discussion, this definition fits.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=991&start=0#p5366
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Considering Actions
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-03-10 13:41:36

Ron, your solution is very clever! 

Acavado, note that you will still need to do substantial work to get this acting how you want it. If you don't expand the grammar for all actions, input will have to look like this:
[quote]
>consider eat the pen

Are you sure you want to eat the pen?[/quote]

...which is pretty poor grammar. To get input like "consider eat[color=#FF0000]ing[/color] the pen", which is what you're after, the grammar of each command we want to be able to consider will need to be expanded to include the present participle (-ing). This code demonstrates, and fixes a minor issue with the "after reading a command" rule:

[code]Lab is a room. The pen is in the Lab.

Currently considers is a truth state that varies.
What's being considered is a stored action that varies.

After reading a command:
	now currently considers is false;
	if the player's command includes "consider", change currently considers to true;
	if currently considers is true, cut the matched text.

Before an actor doing something except considering when currently considers is true:
	now what's being considered is the current action;
	try the actor considering instead.

Considering is an action applying to nothing.

To decide whether we are considering:
	if currently considers is true, decide yes;
	decide no.

Instead of an actor considering when what's being considered is jumping:
	say "Wouldn't achieve much."
	
Check an actor considering when what's being considered is eating something inedible: say "Are you sure you want to eat [the noun part of what's being considered]?" instead.

Understand "jumping" as jumping when we are considering.
Understand "eating [something]" as eating when we are considering.

 [/code]

Adding all of these participles will be a lot of work, but I don't think there's you can get what you're after any other way. The index should help you track down all the grammar and input variations, though maybe someone else out there has already distilled the actions defined in the Standard Rules into a an easily referenced form?

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=30#p5367
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-03-10 13:56:10

[quote="namekuseijin"][quote="Peter Pears"]The trouble with giving the player curt messages for when he's trying insane things is... well, in puzzle games, sometimes you have to do non-standard stuff.[/quote]

None of them involving eating a chair or pocketing an edifice.  Not even Grunk would think like that (nor Douglas Adams).  There's a difference between out-of-the-box thinking and insane thinking. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Well, in the recent JayIsGames comp, there was one game where you had to TAKE CLOUD (maybe "touch cloud" worked as well). I see that both Peter and namekuseijin reviewed that game, so you know that it wasn't great, but it's hard to know in advance that the game won't ask you to do something like that. For that matter, in Dual Transform, which [i]was[/i] great, about the first thing you had to do was 

[spoiler]pick up the equation.[/spoiler]

The big difference was not in the craziness of the actions, but in how well they were clued. 

Anyway, I agree with what Peter has said about the right way to respond to these kinds of actions when they're not intended. 

[quote="Peter Pears"]But the point in reading a book is that a book, like every art form, is a finite experience, structured carefully in, usually, three pieces - beginning, middle, end. It's carefully constructed so that it's a journey. Granted, the best part is the journey itself, and not the end - but if it didn't end, it wouldn't make sense. It wouldn't have the impact. There would be no catharsis. You claim that the "reader" doesn't have to "win" in order to experience a book.[/quote]

This is nitpicky, because I agree with your general point, but I don't necessarily agree that even narrative artworks have to have ends. (Paintings, definitely not.) There are great books that are unfinished, or whose endings have been lost. There's debate about whether The Tale of Genji is finished in the form we have it in -- one translator (according to Wikipedia) thinks Murasaki had no ending planned and would have gone on as long as she could. And that's one of the greatest works of literature ever. Comic strips can be similar; they go on as long as the author keeps them up, without building to an overall conclusion, even though individual arcs may come to conclusions. 

And an artistically valid game might conceivably do something similar -- something like the Sims (as I understand it), where you start up characters, let them develop, and can follow them for as long as you want, without pushing toward a predetermined goal. Which I guess is the Chris Crawford ideal. 

Anyway, I'm largely in agreement about the many different kinds of players -- not every game should necessarily try to accommodate every player, but broader reach is probably better if you can do it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=30#p5368
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-03-10 14:32:17

[quote="matt w"][quote="namekuseijin"][quote="Peter Pears"]The trouble with giving the player curt messages for when he's trying insane things is... well, in puzzle games, sometimes you have to do non-standard stuff.[/quote]

None of them involving eating a chair or pocketing an edifice.  Not even Grunk would think like that (nor Douglas Adams).  There's a difference between out-of-the-box thinking and insane thinking. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Well, in the recent JayIsGames comp, there was one game where you had to TAKE CLOUD (maybe "touch cloud" worked as well). I see that both Peter and namekuseijin reviewed that game, so you know that it wasn't great, but it's hard to know in advance that the game won't ask you to do something like that.[/quote]

I don't remember that about the clouds.  If I knew it rewarded TAKE CLOUD, I'd give it -1 instead of 0. [emote]:)[/emote]

now that you mention it, it lets you "touch the cloud" and "feel nothing unexpected"... n00b author...

In any case, the action you tell about is not regarding the clouds:
[spoiler]>look at sun
You look up at the sun.  Though bright, it is not nearly as blinding as you expect.  It is, however, quite warm and seems almost close enough to touch.[/spoiler]

at least, the author hints at the possibility.  I had no problem with that.

[quote="matt w"]For that matter, in Dual Transform, which [i]was[/i] great, about the first thing you had to do was 

[spoiler]pick up the equation.[/spoiler]

The big difference was not in the craziness of the actions, but in how well they were clued.[/quote]

well, "An Open Field" was also clued, but is still a stinker for other reasons... [emote]:)[/emote]

and no, there's no craziness of actions in Dual Transform:  in the fiction, it is stated right upfront you're dealing with "true metasemanticity".  From there on, it's suspension of disbelief.  Also, you're not trying out crazy things:  they take physical form and you can inspect and get a hint of their purpose.

[quote="matt w"]
And an artistically valid game might conceivably do something similar -- something like the Sims (as I understand it), where you start up characters, let them develop, and can follow them for as long as you want, without pushing toward a predetermined goal. Which I guess is the Chris Crawford ideal.[/quote]

I have to say that watching the Sims live their little virtual sitcom lives does the same to me as watching/feeding fish in an aquarium.  Amusing, but not quite art.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=30#p5369
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-03-10 15:09:57

[quote]This is nitpicky, because I agree with your general point, but I don't necessarily agree[/quote]

I love to disagree. It's the basis of my conversations with namekuseijin. [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote](Paintings, definitely not.)[/quote]

Naturaly, since they are a different form of art. They are not, like films or opera or theater or books or even music, a sucession of scenes and moments that move linearly through time to construct an experience - be it narrative or completely f****d up.

[quote]There are great books that are unfinished, or whose endings have been lost.[/quote]

Those are unintentional - at least their authors didn't intend it to be that way. Turandot was finished by one of Puccini's students, and I personally stop listening to Turandot when Liu dies (the last bit Puccini wrote). It's a conscious decision of mine. But that's just an example to add to yours - bottom line, authors set out to write stories... and the stories are never complete until they're finished.

[quote]There's debate about whether The Tale of Genji is finished in the form we have it in -- one translator (according to Wikipedia) thinks Murasaki had no ending planned and would have gone on as long as she could. And that's one of the greatest works of literature ever.[/quote]

Never heard about it, to my shame. Nevertheless, it's an exception - and it's great that we can have exceptions. Also, it doesn't mean that, at some point, Murasaki would not finally find *the end to the story* (something most authors seem to agree is elusive and impossible to force - the story will end as it ends, when it ends, or so I read). But I know this is pure speculation. In effect, if he left it unfinished and he *meant* never to finish it, then he has accomplished it... except of course that, eventually, the story itself stops because there's simply no more. Less interesting than a real ending, I feel. But it was his choice. I like it when people do strange things. [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote]Comic strips can be similar; they go on as long as the author keeps them up, without building to an overall conclusion, even though individual arcs may come to conclusions.[/quote]

That's a cat of a different colour. Comic strips, like tv shows, are born of a certain premise and a handful of characters. They effectively exist because of the premise and the characters. House exists because of that medical team; Desperate Housewives exists because of those 5 women; Spiderman exists because a guy got bitten by a radioactive spider and now has spider powers.

And then, like you say, you have story arcs. You seem to undervalue the story arcs. I put it to you that the story arcs are probably the basis of the entire thing. [emote]:)[/emote] Characters aren't enough to drive a comic strip without a plot. I'm reminded of The Sandman graphic novels, which has individual stories which won prizes, and which nevertheless was also one big story.

With regular comic strips, you basically churn out new plots, some good, some bad, some so-so, and sometimes something absolutely genius and epic (I'm reminded of the whole Thanos, or Thanatos or whatever, saga). The fact that you're reusing characters isn't really all that important in terms of what we're discussing.

Regarding the Sims, I'm an example of someone who just doesn't see the point, because of the lack of narrative - but then, I'm a sucker for narrative, for a story, for a good yarn. I realize some works of art may eschew narrative in favor of something else, and I'm all for it. Just give me a good yarn when I'm done. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=30#p5370
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-03-10 19:20:45

[quote="namekuseijin"]I don't remember that about the clouds.  If I knew it rewarded TAKE CLOUD, I'd give it -1 instead of 0. [emote]:)[/emote]

now that you mention it, it lets you "touch the cloud" and "feel nothing unexpected"... n00b author...[/quote]

I could easily be misremembering it -- when I played it, "take all" was still enabled, and "take sun" had the same result as "touch sun," so I didn't see the cluing for that. But you're right that the eccentricities of this game are down to the author's noobiness, and that the odd action in "Dual Transform" isn't as odd in the given environment.

[quote]I have to say that watching the Sims live their little virtual sitcom lives does the same to me as watching/feeding fish in an aquarium.  Amusing, but not quite art.[/quote]

I actually haven't played the Sims at all, but it seems to me from reading Alice and Kev and Emily Short's description of Delores and Doofus that you definitely can get narrative out of it. It might not be very arc-y, but I wouldn't expect the narrative that comes out of something sandboxy to be like the narrative we get in other media, any more than a narrative you get from IF would be like a narrative you get from films (ohmigod why did the hero have to walk back and forth across these rooms so many times before finding how to get out what is wrong with the pacing of this thing). But it does sound like you'd have to add a lot more to it to get, on any regular basis, narrative or art or anything like that. Maybe I should check out Dwarf Fortress.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=40#p5371
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-03-10 23:50:49

[quote="matt w"][quote="namekuseijin"]I have to say that watching the Sims live their little virtual sitcom lives does the same to me as watching/feeding fish in an aquarium.  Amusing, but not quite art.[/quote]

I actually haven't played the Sims at all, but it seems to me from reading Alice and Kev and Emily Short's description of Delores and Doofus that you definitely can get narrative out of it.[/quote]

yes, just like you can get narrative out of events in an aquarium.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=993&start=0#p5372
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: New Game "1337" Released
User: Mark Fullmer / DateTime: 2010-03-11 10:30:23

[img]http://real1stgames.com/1337/img/1337-screenshot.jpg[/img]

[i]1337: A Game Novel[/i] is my new interactive serial novel. I use Facebook App functionality to integrate a player's personal information into the storyline and I employ RSS feeds to dynamically incorporate current events. Pretty neat stuff, I think.

[b]The story:[/b] an elite group of ubernerd gamers (your Facebook friends) are beta-testing an MMORPG called [i]1337[/i]. As the game unfolds, it begins to redefine traditional game elements of risk, agency, collaboration, and reward. 

Rather thank thinking of this as a straightforward IF, I'm trying to do something new with the traditional novel by incorporating IF elements. Don't expect all the "LOOK, EXAMINE, TOUCH" stuff, but do expect a few new twists.

[b]To watch the game trailer:[/b] [url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF8scNKsx9g[/url]

[b]To play:[/b] [url]http://apps.facebook.com/leetnovel[/url]

[b]To visit my website:[/b] [url]http://markfullmer.com[/url]

Thanks for reading!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=993&start=0#p5373
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: New Game "1337" Released
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-03-11 14:05:11

social IF... I knew that day was upon us.  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

can't be worse than FarmVille, I guess.  I'm not on Facebook, though.  I'm still expecting the social network for anti-social guys...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=993&start=0#p5374
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: New Game "1337" Released
User: George / DateTime: 2010-03-11 19:22:16

[quote="namekuseijin"]I'm still expecting the social network for anti-social guys...[/quote]

I thought that [i]was [/i]the Internet though... [emote];)[/emote] 

Looks interesting Mark, if I ever get on Facebook I'll try it out. Is there a 'gameplay' video too?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=993&start=0#p5375
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: New Game "1337" Released
User: Mark Fullmer / DateTime: 2010-03-11 20:36:13

[quote="George"]Is there a 'gameplay' video too?[/quote]

That's a good idea. I think I just might get around to making one. Any suggestions/requests?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=994&start=0#p5376
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Post-Comp-Comp -- get your votes in!
User: Lucea / DateTime: 2010-03-12 18:57:39

Played the Comp games? Liked the Comp games? Liked them, but would like them even more if they got even better? Well, the Post-Comp-Comp exists for just that! The authors of five games -- The Ascot, The Believable Adventures of an Invisible Man, Byzantine Perspective, Rover's Day Out and Snowquest -- have all submitted post-comp releases of their games to the competition, with changes ranging from bugfixes to reworked puzzles to entirely new endings. Prizes are $50 for first place and $25 for second. And you can help decide who these people are.

The deadline is March 15, and I'd love as many people to vote as possible. So just send your votes to me -- sarahcryst (at) gmail (dot) com, with your rankings from first to fifth place. There's been a lot of wonderful effort put forth by these authors, and it deserves to be rewarded.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=995&start=0#p5377
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Code to Limit Verb Guesses, with a bug
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-03-12 20:18:48

I wrote a bit of example code that was designed to put a cap on the number of times you guessed a verb -- but it has a bug, which I'll describe below. 

The idea is that, if there's a certain action that the player is supposed to perform with an object, after a certain number of attempts the game will just perform the action -- even if the player has been entering non-standard verbs that would ordinarily get an "I don't know how to do that" response. You can think of it as, if the PC struggles with the object enough, eventually they'll accidentally perform the right action. 

It has a bug I can't quite figure out, though, as you can see if you try "Test weird" on the code below. The game is supposed to print a message and end in victory once you try "Throttle thingummy" for the third time, but instead it prints a message and gives you a command prompt; then ends the game in victory as soon as you enter the next command. Any idea what's going on here? If it's something that only happens when you're ending the game in victory, that'd be easy to work around, but if it arises with other activities that could be very bad. 


Anyway, code follows:

[code]
"Fiddle."

The Bare Room is a room. "No apparent exit, nothing here but a thingummy sticking out of the floor."  The thingummy is scenery in the Bare Room. "It must have some purpose, but you can't tell what to do to it." The thingummy is fixed in place.

Twisting is an action applying to one thing. Understand "twist" as twisting.

Instead of twisting:
	If the noun is the thingummy:
		say "The thingummy twists around and locks into place with a loud click. You see the wall slide open and beyond it, sweet freedom.";
		end the game in victory;
	otherwise:
		say "That can't be twisted."

Instead of turning the thingummy:
	try twisting the thingummy.

The fiddle-count is a number which varies. The fiddle-count is usually 0.

Rule for printing a parser error when parser error is not a verb I recognise:
	if the player's command includes "[thingummy]":
		say "You struggle with the [thingummy].";
		try fiddling with the thingummy;
	otherwise:
		say "I'm not sure how to do that."


Before doing something other than turning or twisting or examining or fiddling with to the thingummy:
	say "You struggle with the thingummy.";
	try fiddling with the thingummy;
	stop the action.

Fiddling with is an action applying to one thing.

Instead of fiddling with the thingummy:
	increase the fiddle-count by 1;
	if the fiddle-count is 3:
		try twisting the thingummy;
		stop the action;
	otherwise:
		say  "It wiggles provocatively but doesn't move in any productive way.";
		stop the action.

Counting is an action applying to nothing. Understand "count" as counting.

Carry out counting:
	say "The fiddle-count is [the fiddle-count]."

Test me with "throttle thingummy/ count/ ride it/ count/ take it".
Test weird with "take thingummy/ count/ ride it/ count/ throttle it/ look".
test normal with "twist thingummy".[/code]

Of course, you should feel free to use this code if it's helpful and not irrevocably bugged. You could also use it for evil, by making fiddling result in failure -- "The thingummy breaks off in your hand. Guess you should've read the manual before starting to fiddle with it." But that would be evil.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=995&start=0#p5384
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Code to Limit Verb Guesses, with a bug
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-03-13 03:29:12

The problem is that when there is a parser error, the normal turn rules don't apply as they usually would. Those include for example every turn rules, advancing the turn count and checking whether to end the game, which is what's missing here. The game does the check during the next normal turn (the LOOK command). You could run the check manually but lacking the other rules would be a problem if you intend to do something else other than ending the game.

You could instead trap the non-understood commands with the "[text]" token:

[code]"Fiddle."

The Bare Room is a room. "No apparent exit, nothing here but a thingummy sticking out of the floor." The thingummy is scenery in the Bare Room. "It must have some purpose, but you can't tell what to do to it." The thingummy is fixed in place.

Instead of turning the thingummy:
	say "The thingummy twists around and locks into place with a loud click. You see the wall slide open and beyond it, sweet freedom.";
	end the game in victory;

Fiddling is an action applying to one topic. Understand "[text]" as fiddling.

The fiddle-count is a number which varies. The fiddle-count is 0.

Instead of fiddling:
	if the player's command includes "[thingummy]" and the player can touch thingummy:
		say "You struggle with the [thingummy].";
		increase the fiddle-count by 1;
		if the fiddle-count is 3:
			try turning the thingummy;
		otherwise:
			say "It wiggles provocatively but doesn't move in any productive way.";
	otherwise:
		say "I'm not sure how to do that."

Before doing something other than turning or examining to the thingummy:
	try fiddling.

Counting is an action applying to nothing. Understand "count" as counting.

Carry out counting:
	say "The fiddle-count is [the fiddle-count] and the turn count is [turn count]."

Test me with "throttle thingummy/ count/ ride it/ count/ take it".
Test weird with "take thingummy/ count/ ride it/ count/ throttle it/ look".
test normal with "twist thingummy".[/code]
This acts as if fiddling were an actual action and not a parser error, so it will run the appropriate rules as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=995&start=0#p5385
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Code to Limit Verb Guesses, with a bug
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-03-13 08:35:14

Thanks! That seems like a pretty bad bug in the original code -- if I'd paid attention to the status line I might have noticed that the turn-count wasn't advancing. 

If I may pick your brains a bit more:

We want fiddling to be an action applying to one [i]topic[/i] because we want to preserve the literal text of the command, right? So what this essentially does is make the null text the part of the command that tells you to fiddle, and then preserves the entire text of the command as the topic -- though I suppose we never use that topic. 

Also, the reason that more sensible commands don't get interpreted as fiddling even though they match the "[text]" template is that the parser tries to interpret commands in a more specific way before a less specific way, right? So an action defined by "Understand [text] as blahing" will always be invoked only when there isn't any more specific way to understand the text? I've been a little confused about how understanding works there.

Finally, is there any way to manipulate when the every-turn rules apply -- say, if I want some actions (like looking) not to take any in-game time -- or should I just create a new rulebook of "Every meaningful turn" rules that don't get invoked when you look, if that's the effect I'm going for?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=995&start=0#p5386
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Code to Limit Verb Guesses, with a bug
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-03-13 09:29:46

[quote="matt w"]We want fiddling to be an action applying to one [i]topic[/i] because we want to preserve the literal text of the command, right? So what this essentially does is make the null text the part of the command that tells you to fiddle, and then preserves the entire text of the command as the topic -- though I suppose we never use that topic.[/quote]
I think it might be more accurate to say that we just want to have any input parse as a command and [text] matches anything the player might type. Note that the drawback of this method is that now [i]everything[/i] the player types is considered an action, not just the something related to that one item.

[quote]Also, the reason that more sensible commands don't get interpreted as fiddling even though they match the "[text]" template is that the parser tries to interpret commands in a more specific way before a less specific way, right? So an action defined by "Understand [text] as blahing" will always be invoked only when there isn't any more specific way to understand the text? I've been a little confused about how understanding works there.[/quote]
That's the gist of it, yes.

[quote]Finally, is there any way to manipulate when the every-turn rules apply -- say, if I want some actions (like looking) not to take any in-game time -- or should I just create a new rulebook of "Every meaningful turn" rules that don't get invoked when you look, if that's the effect I'm going for?[/quote]
Check out the example [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/ex378.html#e378]"Timeless"[/url] in the manual, that should do just that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=995&start=0#p5387
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Code to Limit Verb Guesses, with a bug
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-03-13 09:53:37

[quote="Juhana"]I think it might be more accurate to say that we just want to have any input parse as a command and [text] matches anything the player might type. Note that the drawback of this method is that now everything the player types is considered an action, not just the something related to that one item.[/quote]

We can get around this problem by externalizing the internal conditions of the fiddling action to the circumstances of its being recognized by the parser. In other words, we only allow a topic to be understood as fiddling when the player can see the thingummy, and when the player's command actually refers to the thingummy--instead of checking for those conditions after converting an invalid command to fiddling. Here's what I mean:

[code]"Fiddle."

The Bare Room is a room. "No apparent exit, nothing here but a thingummy sticking out of the floor." The thingummy is scenery in the Bare Room. "It must have some purpose, but you can't tell what to do to it." The thingummy is fixed in place.

Test is north of the Bare Room.

Instead of turning the thingummy:
   say "The thingummy twists around and locks into place with a loud click. You see the wall slide open and beyond it, sweet freedom.";
   end the game in victory;

Thingummy-fiddling is a truth state variable. Thingummy-fiddling is false.

After reading a command:
	now thingummy-fiddling is false;
	if the player's command includes "[thingummy]":
		now thingummy-fiddling is true.

Fiddling is an action applying to one topic. Understand "[text]" as fiddling when thingummy-fiddling is true and the player can touch the thingummy.

The fiddle-count is a number which varies. The fiddle-count is 0.

Instead of fiddling:
	say "You struggle with the [thingummy].";
	increase the fiddle-count by 1;
	if the fiddle-count is 3:
		 try turning the thingummy;
	otherwise:
		 say "It wiggles provocatively but doesn't move in any productive way.";

Before doing something other than turning or examining to the thingummy:
   try fiddling.

Counting is an action applying to nothing. Understand "count" as counting.

Carry out counting:
   say "The fiddle-count is [the fiddle-count] and the turn count is [turn count]."

Test me with "throttle thingummy/ count/ ride it/ count/ take it".
Test weird with "take thingummy/ count/ ride it/ count/ throttle it/ look".
test normal with "twist thingummy".[/code]

Mark, this is a cool idea. One thing you'd probably want to do in a real game is inform the player somehow that their command wasn't actually understood. Otherwise, they may think they've found a command that works and be disappointed when it has no effect elsewhere in the game...

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=995&start=0#p5388
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Code to Limit Verb Guesses, with a bug
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-03-13 20:10:13

Thanks guys! Juhana, thanks for the pointer to "Timeless" -- I've only worked through chapter 17 of the documentation (as you may be able to tell from my example code), and that's exactly what I'm looking for. 

Erik, good point about the message to the player -- maybe something like "You're not sure how exactly how to [verb] the thingummy, but you struggle with it for a while." Which would probably require a little work to cut "thingummy" from the command text, and would yield results for things like "throw the thingummy at the recalcitrant epigone," but should be reasonable workable. Also, I see that your text gives default messages for actions like "hit thingummy" and "take thingummy"; if we want to suppress them (which I kind of do) I think we need to change "Before doing something other than turning or examining to the thingummy:" to an "Instead" rule.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=996&start=0#p5391
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: GUE Map
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2010-03-15 05:02:04

Hi..
Does any one know if Christopher Madsen is still active with the GUE Map?
I've purchased the program (can recommend it) but I can't get in touch with him
through e-mails.
Has anyone got a valid e-mail address?
Cheers

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=997&start=0#p5392
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Error:  No expression between brackets '(' and ')' if (())
User: Reyth / DateTime: 2010-03-16 02:35:07

I think there must be an I6 setting that relates to resources allocated for loops and that I need to set it higher.  I am getting the following compiler error:

[code]Translating the Source - Failed 
The application ran your source text through the Inform 7 compiler, as usual, and it found no problems translating the source. Something must have gone wrong all the same, because the second stage of the process - using the Inform 6 compiler to turn this translated source into a viable story file - turned up errors. This should not happen. The errors are written out on the Progress tab, but will only make sense to experienced Inform 6 users (if even to them).

The best option now is probably to reword whatever was last changed and to try again. Subsequent attempts will not be affected by the failure of this one, so there is nothing to be gained by restarting the application or the computer. A failed run should never damage the source text, so your work cannot be lost.

If you are using Inform 6 inclusions, these are the most likely culprits. You might be using these without realising it if you are including an extension which contains Inform 6 inclusions in order to work its magic: so if the problem only seems to occur when a particular extension is in use, then that is probably what is at fault, and you should contact the extension's author directly.

If not, then most likely the Inform 7 compiler is at fault. Please check that you have the currently distributed build of the system: if you have, please consider taking the time to fill out a bug report form and email it to the author. 


Sorry for the inconvenience.

The 39269-word source text has successfully been translated into an
    intermediate description which can be run through Inform 6 to complete
    compilation. There were 542 rooms and 319 things.
Inform 7 has finished.

C:\Program Files\Inform 7\Compilers\inform-631 \
    -wSDG +include_path=..\Source,.\ auto.inf output.ulx
Inform 6.31N for Win32 (29th March 2009)
auto.inf(33938): Error:  No expression between brackets '(' and ')'
>              if (())
Compiled with 1 error and 1905 suppressed warnings (no output)

Compiler finished with code 1[/code]

It seems like I have too many loops in my code and I6 is protesting...  [emote]:?:[/emote] 

I have been able to isolate the offending block (using remark brackets and process of elimination) and the block will code fine without an "if" loop but will reject if I use an "if" loop.

This is also a recurring error because I got rid of the original method of accomplishing what I wanted and used an alternate method and eventually got the same compiler results (but at first it coded fine (because there were less if loops)).

I'm thinking I can use a setting like MAX_STATIC_DATA or MAX_OBJECTS to fix this but I don't know what it would be.  Like MAX_LOOP_RAM or something  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

Help.  [emote]:geek:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=996&start=0#p5393
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: GUE Map
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-03-16 03:41:03

Not only I have no idea, I'm pretty sure I downloaded the registered version somewhere as abandonware...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=997&start=0#p5394
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error:  No expression between brackets '(' and ')' if (())
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2010-03-16 04:01:04

Are you using the "python style" indenting for your loops? If so, you can't exceed 9 tab stops. If you are, you'll need to switch to the "begin / end" style for the offending code block. (You can still use the indent style elsewhere -- i.e. you can mix styles in a single work, but not withing a single block of code.) Also, if you are indeed relying on loops with more than 9 levels of indentation, I'd recommend against it; there are certainly ways of coding them without doing so.

If that's not your issue, you'll probably need to post the offending code block for a better answer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=997&start=0#p5395
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error:  No expression between brackets '(' and ')' if (())
User: Reyth / DateTime: 2010-03-16 07:25:06

ok, this fails:

[code]fileCommand is an action applying to nothing.  Understand "next" and "back" and "stop" as fileCommand. 
carry out fileCommand:
	if the player's command matches "stop":
		now current topic is none;
		now bookmark is 1;
		say "[line break]You close the reference files.";
		now the highest cabinet north section is closed;
	if the player's command matches "next":
		if the current topic is history:
			if bookmark is 1:
				now bookmark is 2;
			if bookmark is 2:
				say "test";
			if bookmark is 3:
				say "test";
		if the current topic is geography:
			say "test";
	if the player's command matches "back":
		say "test";[/code]
[emote]:?:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=997&start=0#p5396
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error:  No expression between brackets '(' and ')' if (())
User: Reyth / DateTime: 2010-03-16 08:30:34

Here is the user-friendly version which also fails:

[code]limbo is a room.

current topic is a kind of value.  the current topics are history, geography and none.

bookmark is a number variable.

highest cabinet north section is an openable closed container.

fileCommand is an action applying to nothing.  Understand "next" and "back" and "stop" as fileCommand. 
carry out fileCommand:
	if the player's command matches "stop":
		now current topic is none;
		now bookmark is 1;
		say "[line break]You close the reference files.";
		now the highest cabinet north section is closed;
	if the player's command matches "next":
		if the current topic is history:
			if bookmark is 1:
				now bookmark is 2;
			if bookmark is 2:
				say "test";
			if bookmark is 3:
				say "test";
		if the current topic is geography:
			say "test";
	if the player's command matches "back":
		say "test";[/code]
 [emote]:cry:[/emote]

Well this blows my theory that it is some kind of "if loop buffer" limit.  It is funny how the system accuses itself of being wrong.  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=997&start=0#p5397
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error:  No expression between brackets '(' and ')' if (())
User: Reyth / DateTime: 2010-03-16 08:49:55

This also fails:

[code]limbo is a room.

current topic is a kind of value.  the current topics are history, geography and none.

bookmark is a number variable.

highest cabinet north section is an openable closed container.

fileCommand is an action applying to nothing.  Understand "next" and "back" and "stop" as fileCommand. 
carry out fileCommand:
	if the player's command matches "stop":
		now current topic is none;
		now bookmark is 1;
		say "[line break]You close the reference files.";
		now the highest cabinet north section is closed;
	if the player's command matches "next":
		if the current topic is history:
			say "test";[/code]

Now its looking like its just a nested if that's doing it.  [emote]:|[/emote]

[code]limbo is a room.

current topic is a kind of value.  the current topics are history, geography and none.

bookmark is a number variable.

highest cabinet north section is an openable closed container.

fileCommand is an action applying to nothing.  Understand "next" and "back" and "stop" as fileCommand. 
carry out fileCommand:
	if the player's command matches "stop":
		now current topic is none;
		now bookmark is 1;
		say "[line break]You close the reference files.";
		now the highest cabinet north section is closed;
	if the player's command matches "next":
		say "test";[/code]

And this will work.  So no nested if's with Inform 7  [emote]:cry:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=997&start=0#p5398
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error:  No expression between brackets '(' and ')' if (())
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-03-16 09:06:48

Well, you can definitely do nested "if"s in I7. I think the problem is more likely to be very specific, say something more like: "No nested if's in action rulebooks when the top-level 'if' is a reference to the player's command"--in other words, a bug rather than a limitation. (I'm not sure that's actually the limitation, but it provides a starting point for determining exactly what is needed to produce the error.)

As a side note, you would do better to break these up into separate actions (i.e., "back" "next" and "stop" implemented as separate actions). Parsing by hand in this way is not really to be recommended. 

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=997&start=0#p5399
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error:  No expression between brackets '(' and ')' if (())
User: Reyth / DateTime: 2010-03-16 09:10:52

Well I originally had them as separate actions but made a catchall because of the bug.

This is not normal parsing as these are specific commands that only apply when a certain file drawer is open.

I'm trying to figure out a way now to get around this "no nested if within an action" limitation...

If only I could manually call an action it would solve everything.  [emote]:cry:[/emote]

Hahaha, I've been actually thinking of trying to replace the player's command  with a command to call another action but I'm too afraid to get into that...  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=997&start=0#p5401
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error:  No expression between brackets '(' and ')' if (())
User: Reyth / DateTime: 2010-03-16 09:20:38

Yikes!  The user-friendly version is a standalone!  [emote]:o[/emote] 

Oh dear goodness...

What could this be??

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=997&start=0#p5402
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error:  No expression between brackets '(' and ')' if (())
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-03-16 09:27:10

Well, you can do things like this:

Understand "next" as file-continuing when the drawer is open.
Understand "next" as queueing missions when the drawer is closed.

So, the same command typed at the keyboard will lead to two different actions, depending on the state of the drawer.

Is that the kind of thing you're wanting to do? I can't tell from your description whether you're describing a circumstance that would force you to hand-parse using "the player's command," but it doesn't seem like it.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=997&start=0#p5403
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error:  No expression between brackets '(' and ')' if (())
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-03-16 09:35:21

Looks like this is actually a bug in both I7 and your code: you're testing whether a kind of value is something (like saying "if a number is 10..."), and I7 isn't catching it.

You're saying that 
[code]current topic is a kind of value.  the current topics are history, geography and none.[/code]
That just creates a kind of value, not a variable; you can't test whether a [i]kind of[/i] value is something. You have to create a variable that accepts that kind of values (just like you've done with bookmarks: "bookmark is a number variable".) So, just change the above line into something like:

[code]Subject is a kind of value. Subjects are history, geography and none.
Current topic is a subject variable. Current topic is none.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=997&start=10#p5404
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error:  No expression between brackets '(' and ')' if (())
User: Reyth / DateTime: 2010-03-16 09:45:23

Here is a direct quote from the Inform 7 manual:

[code](Thus far we have only given new properties to kinds, but in fact we can also give them to individual things, as here. It would be cumbersome to make a new kind called, say, "lamp" and then make the lantern the only lamp in the game, just as a way of attaching a number to it.) We could then set the brightness level to be 1, 2, 3 or 4 according to the strength of flame, and find some way of conveying this to the player. That would work, but is not very elegant. Brightness is not, in the end, a number, and it seems strange to have to pretend that it is. A much better solution is: 


Brightness is a kind of value. The brightnesses are guttering, weak, radiant and blazing. 


This makes "brightness" a kind of value on a par with (for instance) "number" or "text", except that there are only four possible values, named as above.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=997&start=10#p5405
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error:  No expression between brackets '(' and ')' if (())
User: Reyth / DateTime: 2010-03-16 09:50:32

What is freaking me out now is how stand-alone code fails on my machine but doesn't fail on another person's machine.  [emote]:!:[/emote]

This code should fail on everyone's machine, not just mine:

[code]limbo is a room.

current topic is a kind of value.  the current topics are history, geography and none.

bookmark is a number variable.

highest cabinet north section is an openable closed container.

fileCommand is an action applying to nothing.  Understand "next" and "back" and "stop" as fileCommand. 
carry out fileCommand:
	if the player's command matches "stop":
		now current topic is none;
		now bookmark is 1;
		say "[line break]You close the reference files.";
		now the highest cabinet north section is closed;
	if the player's command matches "next":
		if highest cabinet north section is open:
                          say "test";[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=997&start=10#p5406
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error:  No expression between brackets '(' and ')' if (())
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-03-16 10:09:20

[quote="Reyth"]Here is a direct quote from the Inform 7 manual:
...[/quote]

Yeah, but that doesn't mean what you probably think it means. It basically means that you can make new kinds of values, nothing more. (See also chapter 4.11.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=997&start=10#p5407
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error:  No expression between brackets '(' and ')' if (())
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-03-16 10:11:56

[quote="Reyth"]What is freaking me out now is how stand-alone code fails on my machine but doesn't fail on another person's machine.  :!:[/quote]
If you're talking about my previous message where I said that the examples worked fine with me and which I deleted almost immediately: sorry about that. The last complete example did in fact not compile on my machine when I tested it just after posting. I didn't think anyone had the time to read the post for the brief time it was up.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=997&start=10#p5408
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error:  No expression between brackets '(' and ')' if (())
User: Reyth / DateTime: 2010-03-16 10:32:24

can u try the new one I posted?  It has the double if in there...

[code]limbo is a room.

current topic is a kind of value.  the current topics are history, geography and none.

bookmark is a number variable.

highest cabinet north section is an openable closed container.

fileCommand is an action applying to nothing.  Understand "next" and "back" and "stop" as fileCommand. 
carry out fileCommand:
	if the player's command matches "stop":
		now current topic is none;
		now bookmark is 1;
		say "[line break]You close the reference files.";
		now the highest cabinet north section is closed;
	if the player's command matches "next":
		if highest cabinet north section is open:
                          say "test";[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=997&start=10#p5409
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error:  No expression between brackets '(' and ')' if (())
User: Reyth / DateTime: 2010-03-16 10:37:30

Omgosh... I think it IS that value thing...  One sec while I test this a bit...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=997&start=10#p5410
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error:  No expression between brackets '(' and ')' if (())
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-03-16 10:38:44

[quote="Reyth"]can u try the new one I posted? It has the double if in there...[/quote]

But there's no reason to try this one. The root problem hasn't been corrected, so if the code does work, it's a fluke. 

Juhana is correct that the problem is that you are using kinds of value incorrectly. You need to do something like this:

[code]Information-topic is a kind of a value. The information-topics are history, geography, and none.
Current topic is an information-topic that varies. Current topic is none.[/code]

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=997&start=10#p5411
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error:  No expression between brackets '(' and ')' if (())
User: Reyth / DateTime: 2010-03-16 10:53:47

Yup!  It works now!

WOW.  Great catch Erik!  [emote]:D[/emote] 

Well it just goes to show you that the Inform manual isn't perfect but I must say its much better thatn the TADS manual. [emote];)[/emote]

I think the TADS manual is good and took ALOT of effort to compile but unfortunately I just found it too hard to work with...  [emote]:cry:[/emote]

Thanks for your help everyone!  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=997&start=10#p5412
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error:  No expression between brackets '(' and ')' if (())
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-03-16 11:09:34

Well, it was actually Juhana's catch, not mine. [emote]:)[/emote]

The Inform manual actually seems to state this correctly and forthrightly to me, but maybe there's something in the larger context that I'm missing.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=997&start=10#p5413
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error:  No expression between brackets '(' and ')' if (())
User: Reyth / DateTime: 2010-03-16 12:47:41

Hahah yes, Juhana!  

Well I wasn't able to find reference to the fact that kinds of values are not state checkable themselves but that only variables of value kinds are!

I think this might just be one "weak" area of the documentation that might need further clarification.

Maybe because the the entire concept is new to me (I'm a BASIC hack programmer from the '80's) I am easily confused...  [emote]:oops:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=998&start=0#p5414
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Need help with descriptions in Inform 7
User: Blinx / DateTime: 2010-03-16 16:54:24

Hi there. 

Name's Mark Bauermeister. I'm the new one [emote]:)[/emote] 


I started programming in Inform 7 two days ago and so far, everything went swift and easy. However, I ran into a problem, lately. 
Basically, I want descriptions which are more like the ones in the Magnetic Scrolls games (without the whole "You see item 1, item 2, item 3, etc.") The text should read something like "Awoken by the sound of a thunderstorm, 
you find yourself in the middle of your living room. Tabby, your cat, is strolling around the floor, desperately looking for something to play with. A ball of wool is within the reach of Tabby. Closely examining your table, you find a buttercream cake conveniently placed around the center, while an apple is lying on the chair nearby"

Something along those lines. 

Now how would I do this without having any unnecessary line-breaks/paragraphs in between? The [no line break] command doesn't seem to work here.


My source code: 

[img]http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/623/picture8z.png[/img]



Does anyone see my mistake? Those paragraphs between the main room-description, "Tabby, your cat ..." and the "The ball of wool ..." are quite annoying.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=997&start=20#p5415
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error:  No expression between brackets '(' and ')' if (())
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-03-16 17:01:00

Yes, looks like the issue is only implied in the manual and I can see how the compiler not handling the error correctly adds to the confusion.

By the way, you might want to take a look at Jim Aikin's I7 handbook at [url]http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm[/url]. It's aimed for beginners with little or no programming background, so you might find it useful.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=988&start=40#p5416
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF's artistic credibilty?
User: hajenso / DateTime: 2010-03-16 22:01:56

[quote="namekuseijin"]yes, just like you can get narrative out of events in an aquarium.  [emote];)[/emote][/quote]
zing!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=998&start=0#p5417
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need help with descriptions in Inform 7
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-03-16 22:17:00

[quote="Blinx"]Basically, I want descriptions which are more like the ones in the Magnetic Scrolls games (without the whole "You see item 1, item 2, item 3, etc.") The text should read something like "Awoken by the sound of a thunderstorm, you find yourself in the middle of your living room. Tabby, your cat, is strolling around the floor, desperately looking for something to play with. A ball of wool is within the reach of Tabby. Closely examining your table, you find a buttercream cake conveniently placed around the center, while an apple is lying on the chair nearby"[/quote]

Hi Mark, 

Probably the easiest (and most blunt) is an Instead Of Looking rule. Typing from memory:[code]Instead of looking:
    say "[the description of the location]  ";
    repeat with item running through every thing in the location begin;
         unless the item is the player, say "[the initial appearance of the item]  ";
    end repeat;
    say line break.
[/code]

That obviously makes a lot of assumptions and excoriates much built-in functionality, but it's easy to understand, easy to modify with various special cases, and it gets the job done.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=997&start=20#p5418
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error:  No expression between brackets '(' and ')' if (())
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-03-16 23:11:21

[quote="Reyth"]Well it just goes to show you that the Inform manual isn't perfect but I must say its much better thatn the TADS manual. [emote];)[/emote] I think the TADS manual is good and took ALOT of effort to compile but unfortunately I just found it too hard to work with...  [emote]:cry:[/emote][/quote]

[i]That's[/i] something I haven't heard before.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=997&start=20#p5419
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error:  No expression between brackets '(' and ')' if (())
User: Reyth / DateTime: 2010-03-16 23:14:38

Hahaah!  I detect here a possible bit of sarcasm.  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

Anyway, I have downloaded the programmer's handbook in PDF and it is already starting to help me.  Even though much of it is very basic, there are some very basic things I yet don't understand. [emote]:D[/emote]

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=998&start=0#p5420
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need help with descriptions in Inform 7
User: Blinx / DateTime: 2010-03-17 03:48:23

Thank you, Ron. 

I can't really test it since class starts in a minute, but what I tested looks jolly good (the Tabby and ball of wool texts worked. Got a run-time error, because I did not define a initial appearance for some items, but that's fixable).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=998&start=0#p5421
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need help with descriptions in Inform 7
User: Blinx / DateTime: 2010-03-17 07:38:55

Ok. It solved part of the problem. But not without creating new ones. 

Instead of looking:
    say "[the description of the location]  ";
    repeat with item running through every thing in the location begin;
         unless the item is the player, say "[the initial appearance of the item]  ";
    end repeat;
    say line break.


Does work, as far as items in the room are concerned. However, it doesn't work for items placed on other items (the apple which is place on the chair. The cake which is placed on the table). Also, the picture vanished (I suppose it's tied to the look command, in some way).


EDIT: 

That's what the code looks like, as of yet. 

[quote] 


[media]

Figure of Tabbycat is the file "BlackTabby.jpg".
  	 
[room description]
The time of day is 3:00 AM

When play begins: change the right hand status line to "[time of day]".


Instead of looking:
    say "[the description of the location]  ";
    repeat with item running through every thing in the location begin;
         unless the item is the player, say "[the initial appearance of the item]  ";
    end repeat;
    say line break.

 Living Room is a room. 
"Awoken by the sound of a thunderstorm, 
you find yourself in the middle of your living room." Tabby cat is an animal in the Living room.
 
The initial appearance of a fireplace is ""

The initial appearance of the tabby cat is "Tabby, your cat, is strolling around the floor, desperately looking for something to play with.".
The initial appearance of a ball of wool is "A ball of wool, Tabby's favourite plaything, is lying under the table.".
The initial appearance of a small wooden table is "The table itself is made of sturdy oak wood. A fine craftsmanship you brought from Dover, several years ago.".
The initial appearance of a buttercream cake  is "Closely examining the table, you find a buttercream cake on it".
The initial appearance of an apple is "while an apple is lying on the chair nearby".
The initial appearance of a chair is "".

The room-illustration of Living Room is Figure of Tabbycat.


[room items]

A ball of wool is in the Living room. The ball of wool is fixed in place.
A small wooden table is in the Living room. The description of the wooden table is "Quite ancient".
A buttercream cake is in the Living room.
An apple is on the chair in the Living room.
A chair is in the Living room.
A fireplace is a scenery in the Living room.


Rule for printing the name of the buttercream cake while taking inventory: say "graciously tasty cake"

The buttercream cake is edible. After eating the buttercream cake, say "Hmm. That was tasty. What a fine example of glorified, English bakery.".

[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=998&start=0#p5422
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need help with descriptions in Inform 7
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-03-17 09:34:25

You are entering into rather complicated territory when you look at doing this kind of thing. Presumably, you're more interested right now in learning the breadth of Inform (rather than the depth), but if you want to explore that territory, I've posted some resources below. A potentially easier solution--though I don't have a copy of Inform on hand to verify this with-is to place a space after the final period of each of your initial appearance property texts. This may cause them to flow into a single paragraph, or it may simply remove the space between lines; I'm not sure exactly how the apparatus for printing object descriptions works. (You could also try using the "[run paragraph on]" token in place of that final space.)

Now, if you want to go the complicated route and learn about all the things Inform is doing under the hood to write room descriptions: There is an [url=http://inform7.com/write/extensions/]extension[/url] called Room Description Control that is designed to make it somewhat easier for you to change the way in which room descriptions are put together. Three other extensions, Ordinary Room Description, Single Paragraph Description, and Tailored Room Description, may help you better understand how Room Description Control works. In face, Single Paragraph Description may do exactly what you're looking for.

Also, Jeff Nyman has written a nice tutorial to understanding aspects of the room description system; almost none of what he discusses is covered in the I7 manual. I believe that it's no longer on the web (Jeff's reworking it, I think), but if you PM with your address I'd be happy to email you a copy. Again, it may be more detail than you're interested in right now, but you might like it later.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=998&start=0#p5423
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need help with descriptions in Inform 7
User: Blinx / DateTime: 2010-03-17 11:06:17

Thanks. 

Tried Tailored Room Description, Room Description Control and Single Paragraph Description. 

The first two seem nice, but are far too complex and take up too much valuable room IMHO. Heck, I used to program in object-based languages. I should be used to organize things in a certain grid, but handling those two extensions is too much for me  [emote]:oops:[/emote] 

Single Paragraph Description is exactly what I was looking for. Is look just as good as Ron's approach + graphics work now. 

The only thing I still couldn't figure out: How to include initial appearances of objects that are in the room but on another item, like the table? I tried all I could think of. Making the table an open container, writing 'An apple is in the room on the table' or 'An apple is on the table in the room'. But nothing of this works. Am I missing something? Don't say I need another extension  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=998&start=0#p5424
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need help with descriptions in Inform 7
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-03-17 12:26:12

The problem was in the way you had defined your apple and chair objects. See the revisions here:

[code]Include Single Paragraph Description by Emily Short.

Living Room is a room.
"Awoken by the sound of a thunderstorm, you find yourself in the middle of your living room." Tabby cat is an animal in the Living room.

The initial appearance of a fireplace is ""

The initial appearance of the tabby cat is "Tabby, your cat, is strolling around the floor, desperately looking for something to play with. ".
The initial appearance of a ball of wool is "A ball of wool, Tabby's favourite plaything, is lying under the table. ".
The initial appearance of a small wooden table is "The table itself is made of sturdy oak wood. A fine craftsmanship you brought from Dover, several years ago. ".
The initial appearance of a buttercream cake is "Closely examining the table, you find a buttercream cake on it".
The initial appearance of an apple is ", while an apple is lying on the chair nearby. ".
The initial appearance of the chair is "".

A ball of wool is in the Living room. The ball of wool is fixed in place.
A small wooden table is in the Living room. The description of the wooden table is "Quite ancient".
A buttercream cake is on the table.
The chair is a supporter in the Living room.
An apple is on the chair.
A fireplace is a scenery in the Living room.[/code]

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=998&start=0#p5425
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need help with descriptions in Inform 7
User: Blinx / DateTime: 2010-03-17 13:07:37

Whenever I place something on the supporter (chair) the whole text (chair + apple) places itself above all other descriptions. 

"Awoken by the sound of a thunderstorm, you find yourself in the middle of your living room. The chair itself bears the ornaments of the late Earl of York. while an apple is lying on the nearby chair Tabby, your cat, is strolling around the floor, desperately looking for something to play with. A ball of wool, Tabby's favourite plaything, is lying under the table. The table itself is made of sturdy oak wood. A fine craftsmanship you brought from Dover, several years ago. Closely examining the table, you find that a buttercream cake is on it,"

I'm quite sure the solution is easy. But I don't have any time left for this week (French & Economics exams). Damn.



EDIT: Never mind. Fixed it. Probably a typo or a mislead full stop or a gap between the quotation marks. Retyped those 2 initial appearances and now everything works as it should. 

Thanks again.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=970&start=0#p5426
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 : Well-Versed Guides
User: petit chou / DateTime: 2010-03-17 15:53:56

I'd love to see these, too.  I'm a programmer by trade and the Inform manuals, while *beautifully* written, are amazingly difficult to use as reference material when trying to find solutions to things (especially non-recipe book kinds of things) and are enough to drive me to drink.  Would you be willing to repost your work?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=970&start=0#p5427
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 : Well-Versed Guides
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-03-17 17:28:23

[quote="petit chou"]I'd love to see these, too.  I'm a programmer by trade and the Inform manuals, while *beautifully* written, are amazingly difficult to use as reference material when trying to find solutions to things (especially non-recipe book kinds of things) and are enough to drive me to drink.  Would you be willing to repost your work?[/quote]
There's a manual targeted at programmers specifically:

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=998&start=0#p5428
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need help with descriptions in Inform 7
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-03-17 17:29:59

[quote="Blinx"]Does work, as far as items in the room are concerned. However, it doesn't work for items placed on other items (the apple which is place on the chair. [/quote]

Oh, instead of "in the location" try "enclosed by the location".  (I think it's called "enclosed by".)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=981&start=0#p5429
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: 2009 XYZZY Awards
User: inky / DateTime: 2010-03-17 23:57:36

And just a few days left before voting closes! Get your votes in!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=998&start=0#p5430
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need help with descriptions in Inform 7
User: Blinx / DateTime: 2010-03-19 15:39:14

Thanks Ron. I appreciate it. 

Should the supporter code ever fail, I make sure to use the enclosed by command. 

I've actually mastered all direction commands I need, for now. 

Went on and created 4 other rooms and a door (fireplace). Experimenting with triggers right now. They seem to work well, the only thing I can't quite figure out: How to unlock the fireplace at precisely 3:09? The fireplace is basically the portal to another (quite fantasy-esque) dimension. I coded most of the world behind it, but I can't enter it since the fireplace stays locked. Tried "At 3:09 am: Unlock fireplace" but that doesn't work. 

I'm quite in a hurry, actually. 

I want to publish the demo at precisely 3:09 am this Sunday (as a marketing gag, obviously) and all that stands in my way is the fireplace (+ some additional work on behalf of my homepage/FTP server)


EDIT: Actually. Opening the fireplace shouldn't be a requirement. I could just describe the opening of the fireplace and then teleport my character right into the next scene, couldn't I?

EDIT: Me dummy  [emote]:lol:[/emote] "At 3:09 am: Move Player to Ancient Gate" is probably the smoothest solution. No need to leave the player in the room. Now I need to move Tabby the cat in there as well, and I'm all set.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=998&start=10#p5431
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need help with descriptions in Inform 7
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-03-19 20:42:28

"At 3:09 AM:
  move player to Ancient Gate;
  move Tabby to Ancient Gate."

should work, if I'm not mistaken. (Which is entirely possible." 

I think if you wanted to unlock the fireplace at 3:09 AM, you'd do it thus:
"At 3:09 AM: Now the fireplace is unlocked." 
"Unlock the fireplace" is an action, which is something the player does. So if you write something like "Try unlocking the fireplace," it'll fail if the player doesn't have a matching key, I think. To change the status of the fireplace at a given time you need to do it directly.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=999&start=0#p5432
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Need help getting an action to occur at a specific time...
User: johnmatthais / DateTime: 2010-03-19 23:33:24

Originally, I had wanted the action to occur at a time and I'd set the time, and try to get it to occur at a later time, but I don't know how to set times so I opted for something different.

Originally, I had wanted to do something like:
[code]The time of day is 4:40 PM.

...

The slender man goes at 4:45 PM.

At the time that the slender man goes, say: "<text here>"[/code]

But that always gave me an error with the whole "the slender man goes" part. Not that I think time would have progressed like it should have anyways.

Here's the code in question:
[code]At the time when the player looks at the painting: remove the slender man from play.

At the time when you remove the slender man from play: 
say "<text here>"[/code]

However, it won't do that. In fact, when the player looks at the painting, nothing out of the ordinary happens. This is a bit irritating, as it's not only the first scene, but the first room, and I have less than a page typed up and am already having issues. 

What am I doing wrong?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=999&start=0#p5433
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need help getting an action to occur at a specific time...
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-03-20 00:55:17

As you noticed, "at the time" can't be used to react to player actions or arbitrary events. Its use is limited to "X in Y turns/minutes from now" and "at the time when X: ..." (see ch. 9.11 in the manual)

If you want the event to be triggered by player action, you have to use one of the rules described in chapter 7, for example an after rule:

[code]After examining the painting:
    say "'Don't look at my paintings!' the slender man cries and runs away.";
    remove the slender man from play.[/code]

(as a side note, the original code would've worked if the timer had been in a rule: When play begins: the slender man goes at 4:45 PM.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=998&start=10#p5434
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need help with descriptions in Inform 7
User: Blinx / DateTime: 2010-03-20 07:09:31

Thanks Matt.

Already figured this out myself (see last edit). 

I'm working on my homepage, right now. The demo will hit at precisely 3:09 am (GMT), this Sunday.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=998&start=10#p5435
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need help with descriptions in Inform 7
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-03-20 08:58:02

Let us know where to find it! My curiosity is piqued now, and I'm all for cute pictures of kitties in games.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=998&start=10#p5436
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need help with descriptions in Inform 7
User: Blinx / DateTime: 2010-03-20 09:29:09

[quote="matt w"]Let us know where to find it! My curiosity is piqued now, and I'm all for cute pictures of kitties in games.[/quote]

Hehe. 

The kitty picture isn't mine, though. Found it on this mysterious thing those new age believers call THE INTERNET. Never heard of it before but now that I've tried it, it got me hooked  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

Joke aside, I'm probably going to paint my own using this google picture as a sample.



BTW: Why is it that neither Inform 7 (MacOSX) nor Zoom (MacOSX) support audio?


EDIT: Nothing but issues from the homepage front. 

Had to put a 2nd minus into the address, since the original name got overwritten shortly after registering the sub-domain and now I can't even log into cPanel. 

Might have to put it on Rapidshare, which is a lot slower (both download and upload).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=999&start=0#p5437
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need help getting an action to occur at a specific time...
User: johnmatthais / DateTime: 2010-03-20 11:26:56

Alright, thanks Juhana!

Mainly, I'm trying to use this part to start a moment that ends the scene. After you look at the painting, the main event of the first scene occurs. I was trying to use the slender man's removal to trigger that, and was trying to use looking at the painting to trigger his removal.

It's just an introductory scene, so there isn't much to it other than that...but I'm still having trouble, it seems. [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

I'll have to see what I can do with what you've told me. [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=999&start=0#p5438
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need help getting an action to occur at a specific time...
User: johnmatthais / DateTime: 2010-03-20 12:03:20

I finally got that part to work, with this:
[code]When play begins: the slender man goes at 4:45 PM.

...

The time of day is 4:40 PM.

...

At the time when the slender man goes: 
say "<text>";
remove the slender man from play.[/code]

Now, if you don't mind my asking, do I have to end the scene somehow (the scene would end when the slender man is removed from play, as well) or do I just start a new scene, setting it to start when the slender man is removed from play? 

EDIT: Okay, found my answer in the documentation. However, here's my issue. This is my code:
[code]The Dream is a scene.

The Dream begins when play begins.

...

The Dream ends when the slender man goes.[/code]

However, it gives me this error:
[quote]Problem. In the sentence 'The Dream ends when the slender man goes'  , I was expecting to read a condition, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'the slender man goes'.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem. You wrote 'The Dream ends when the slender man goes'  : but 'begins when' and 'ends when' must be followed by a condition, which this does not seem to be.
[/quote]

I've also tried saying "when the slender man is removed from play" and it gives me the same error. Ideas?

EDIT2: Also tried "The Dream ends at 4:45 PM." No dice...

EDIT3: Also tried changing it to "Dream" rather than "The Dream" and still no luck.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=998&start=10#p5439
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need help with descriptions in Inform 7
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-03-20 15:36:07

Would the IF archive be a place you could upload your thing? I don't know what kind of issues you're having, and I've never uploaded anything to it, but there's no way that it could be as big of a pain to use as Rapidshare. 

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifarchive.org/">http://www.ifarchive.org/</a>

Matt

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=998&start=10#p5440
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need help with descriptions in Inform 7
User: Blinx / DateTime: 2010-03-20 16:27:03

Rapidshare has never been my problem. My crappy domain provider was. 

I'm going to upload it to IFArchive and Rapidshare. 


Tinkering with the last big problem, right now. Inform simply won't take any "if" command as it is supposed to be. It won't take "If buttercream cake is carried by the player, say "Y.u.m.m.y. Troll likes cake" [otherwise] say "No cake! Troll angry! Troll slits you open!" 

It won't even take anything before the [otherwise] and if I simply type "If buttercream cake is carried by the player" all it does is adding an item named "If buttercream cake" to the inventory. 


What I simply want to do: The player meets a cake loving troll who will only let him pass if he carries a cake. If the player doesn't carry a cake or has eaten it, the troll exclaims and kills the player. After being killed, the player is moved to another room.

EDIT: 

Ok two of three possible outcomes.

Instead of eating the buttercream cake in the presence of a troll: say "Argh". 
Instead of giving the buttercream cake to troll: say "Thank you". 

Now how do I link the "move player to" command to each of those sentences? 

And how could the troll check if the player had a cake in his inventory?

Solved two out of three. Seems like I should better get used to colons [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=998&start=10#p5441
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need help with descriptions in Inform 7
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-03-20 21:45:45

I'm pretty new to all this, but I think you want something like:

Instead of eating the buttercream cake in the presence of a troll: say "Argh"; move the player to The Graveyard. 

The commands can be linked together with semicolons. (If you're doing very complicated stuff, you want to indent things with tabs -- I usually wind up doing that with a little trial and error.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=998&start=10#p5442
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need help with descriptions in Inform 7
User: Blinx / DateTime: 2010-03-20 22:10:44

Already did that, already did that. 

And now here's that damn demo. 

I hope you guys aren't too harsh in your critiques. 

<a class="postlink" href="http://rapidshare.com/files/366094376/A_room_by_the_fire.gblorb">http://rapidshare.com/files/366094376/A ... ire.gblorb</a>


BTW: It was precisely 3:09 am (GMT) by the time I uploaded the file. I'm proud of myself. Kept to a darn tight deadline. 

Time to go to bed now. *yawn.


EDIT: If anyone is puzzled by this kobold and why he's talking such gibberish. I got that idea after playing through the bar part of Secret of Monkey Island (Gob: "Ask me about Loom").

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1000&start=0#p5443
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Gushing Praise
User: Reyth / DateTime: 2010-03-21 10:56:10

Sorry, I can't help myself:

Inform is truly a hacker's paradise!  I mean you don't have to be elegant at all, you can just do whatever you want even if it looks ugly and Inform provides the means!

I LOVE IT!  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1001&start=0#p5444
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: INSTEAD
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-03-21 17:13:28

In the following thread

<a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/521979fb7f5b65b1#">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts ... b7f5b65b1#</a>

Stuart Moore brought up the existence of a swell-looking cross between CYOA, text adventure and point and click - sort of like SUDS - The Next Generation. I just thought I'd post it here to increase awareness, as I find it a very nice tool - at least from the player's point of view. Have no idea what it's like to author for it.

[quote]Just saw this one mentioned <a class="postlink" href="http://www.happypenguin.org/show?INSTEAD">http://www.happypenguin.org/show?INSTEAD</a>  at
the Linux Game Tome. Seems to have a website at
<a class="postlink" href="http://code.google.com/p/instead/">http://code.google.com/p/instead/</a> - in Russian though, though it has
some English docs.

Anyone know any more about it?[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1002&start=0#p5445
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Every turn & try rule
User: aszecsei / DateTime: 2010-03-21 17:17:59

I have defined a "shooting" action:
[code]Shooting is an action applying to one thing.  Understand "shoot [something]" as shooting.  The shooting action has an object called the weapon (matched as "with").  Setting action variables for shooting: now the weapon is a random gun carried by the actor.

A check shooting rule: if the weapon is nothing then say "You don't have a gun, sir."

Check shooting: if the noun is not a person, say "Wanton violence is frowned upon." instead.

Carry out shooting: remove the noun from play; award 10 points; say "[The noun] falls to the floor.  That must have hurt; as you step over the body you whisper 'Sorry about that.'  It makes you feel better."

Instead of shooting the player: say "You aren't so depressed as to consider suicide.  Yet."

Instead of someone shooting the player: end the game in death.[/code]

I also have a Guard kind, so that I can make lots of baddies scattered across the map without naming them (as they're supposed to be cardboard cutout-type villains.)  I want them to shoot the player whenever they are in the same room.  But the code [code]Every turn when the location of a Guard (called the baddie) is the location of the player: try the baddie shooting the player.[/code] isn't working.  Is there another way to do this?

Finally, I want all Guards to have shotguns (another kind).  Can I do this?  Inform doesn't like me saying "A Guard usually has a shotgun", because it's too vague.  What other way can I say this?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1002&start=0#p5448
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Every turn & try rule
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-03-21 19:16:28

[quote="aszecsei"]The error is 
[quote]Problem. You wrote 'try the Guard shooting the victim with the shotgun'  : but this is not an action I recognise, or else is malformed in a way I can't see how to sort out.[/quote][/quote]
That's because you've just named your action "shooting", but since it takes two nouns, you need to name it "shooting it with", like so:
[code]Shooting it with is an action applying to two things.[/code]
"It" is a placeholder that tells Inform where the first noun will go. Otherwise, Inform has no way of understanding "shooting the victim with the shotgun".

[quote="aszecsei"]Quick update: I changed "Guard" to a kind, so that I can make a bunch of them quickly and scatter them across the map.  But I want them all to have a gun (shotgun is a kind).  So how can I say "All Guards have shotguns"?  Or do I have to go through and, for each Guard I create, give them a shotgun?[/quote]
If the shotgun is already a kind, you can just say:
[code]Every guard carries a shotgun.[/code]

[quote="aszecsei"]More of an update: I got the shoot action working by making the "with" unnecessary.  But the "Every turn when the location of Guard is the location of player and the Guard carries something (called the shotgun), try Guard shooting player" is giving me problems.  Since I changed Guard to a kind, I put "Every turn when the location of a Guard (called the baddie) is the location of player, try the baddie shooting player."  But it looks like I can't use this with a kind.  Is there a better way to do this?[/quote]
Inform is being a little confusing here. The problem is that you can't talk about the "location" of a guard (or anything else) because "the location" always refers to the [i]player's[/i] location. Instead, use:
[code]Every turn when the location encloses a Guard (called the baddie), try the baddie shooting player.[/code]
You could also use:
[code]Every turn when a Guard (called the baddie) is in the location, try the baddie shooting player.[/code]
But that will only work if the guard is directly in the room, not if the guard is in a chair or on a bed or something.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1002&start=0#p5449
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Every turn & try rule
User: aszecsei / DateTime: 2010-03-21 19:24:45

Thank you!  That was giving me a lot of grief.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1002&start=0#p5450
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Every turn & try rule
User: aszecsei / DateTime: 2010-03-21 19:37:38

One more question: can I have the baddie wait 1 turn for the player to react to its presence?  There is no "Every other turn" rule... [emote]:roll:[/emote]  I would set a variable to be the time, then do some sort of statement of "at 1 minute after pause, if the location encloses the baddie, try the baddie shooting the player" but the baddie wouldn't be carried over into the if statement.  I could do a boolean, but I don't know how that'd work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1002&start=0#p5451
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Every turn & try rule
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-03-21 20:08:38

[quote="aszecsei"]One more question: can I have the baddie wait 1 turn for the player to react to its presence?  There is no "Every other turn" rule... [emote]:roll:[/emote]  I would set a variable to be the time, then do some sort of statement of "at 1 minute after pause, if the location encloses the baddie, try the baddie shooting the player" but the baddie wouldn't be carried over into the if statement.  I could do a boolean, but I don't know how that'd work.[/quote]

You could do it like this:
[code]A guard can be alert.
A guard is usually not alert.

Every turn when the location encloses a guard (called the baddie) and the baddie carries a shotgun and the baddie is not alert:
	say "[The baddie] spots you and points his shotgun at you!";
	now the baddie is alert.

Every turn when a guard (called the baddie) is alert (this is the guard kills player rule):
	now the baddie is not alert;
	if the location encloses the baddie and the baddie carries a shotgun (called the weapon), try the baddie shooting the player with the weapon.

The guard kills player rule is listed first in the every turn rules.[/code]
If you don't name the second rule and specify that it runs first, the other rule will run first because it's more specific. Then the game will go straight on to the "guard kills player" rule, instead of waiting until the next turn, causing the player to be killed immediately.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1003&start=0#p5452
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: The potential of simple ASK/TELL
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-03-22 19:50:59

With all the thought, discussion, and experimentation that has gone on about conversation systems in IF, I think the full potential of the basic system relying on ASK and TELL has rarely been realized.  Most games that use a simple ASK/TELL format, both old and new ones, simply have the player digging for information, making the NPCs essentially databases.  However, a game made with any of the primary authoring systems could be fairly convincing using only the out-of-the-box conversation functionality if the game treats TELL separately from ASK, allows for one word comments with a SAY or ANSWER command (especially YES and NO), responds to commands given to NPCs, and keeps track of what topics the player is aware of.

Consider the following example:

[color=#0000FF]
[b]Apartment[/b]
Your friend John's apartment is small and rather cluttered [....].

John is standing here, looking conversational.

>ASK JOHN ABOUT HIS AUNT
That's not something you can talk about.  [This response is given when the PC isn't yet aware of the topic, or when the player inputs a nonsensical topic].

>SAY SORRY
(to John)
John just shrugs.

>TELL JOHN ABOUT HIS SHOES
You don't know anything about John's shoes that is worth telling John about.  [Another default response.]

>ASK JOHN ABOUT HIS SHOES
John rolls his eyes. "My sister picked them out for me.  She saw them on a closeout, and they happened to be just my size."

>ASK JOHN ABOUT HIMSELF
You ask John how he has been doing, the great awkward cliche of conversation.

"Well, not too bad, I guess," he says. "But it's been hard to keep up with college and all.  I've been taking care of my great-aunt May from time to time."  He shrugs. "That's just life, you know."

>ASK JOHN ABOUT HIS AUNT
"Yeah, she's been in an out of the hospital; they don't know what exactly is wrong. She's just been really weak and frail, and they think she might have cancer somewhere.  Then there's her arthritis.  She doesn't have anyone to watch out for her, so my cousin and I take turns spending the day with her, and my sister often stays the night at her place."  [Now the player can ask about John's aunt because the PC has heard of her.]

>SAY NO
(to John)
John just shrugs.

>SAY SORRY TO JOHN
"I'm really sorry to hear about that," you say. "I'll be praying for you.  Let me know if there's anything I can do to help."

John nods and grunts. "I know. Thank you."

>ASK JOHN ABOUT HIS AUNT
"Yeah, she's been in an out of the hospital; they don't know what exactly is wrong. She's just been really weak and frail, and they think she might have cancer somewhere.  Then there's her arthritis.  She doesn't have anyone to watch out for her, so my cousin and I take turns spending the day with her, and my sister often stays the night at her place."
[/color]

Granted, the simple ASK/TELL is not right for every game, and there are certain failings of the system.  For instance, it's a little beyond the out-of-the-box system to implement multiple responses for asking/telling about the same topic multiple times.  Topic suggestions and conversation menus are better mechanisms for controlling the plot.  My point is only that the basic functionality of ASK/TELL can produce good NPC interaction if the conversation topics are thoroughly implemented.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1003&start=0#p5453
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: The potential of simple ASK/TELL
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-03-23 04:11:11

I don't disagree with anything you've written, but I hope you're not under the impression that nobody has done this kind of thing yet?   [emote]:P[/emote] 

[quote="Bainespal"]For instance, it's a little beyond the out-of-the-box system to implement multiple responses for asking/telling about the same topic multiple times.[/quote]
I'm feeling a lot like a stuck record lately, but while this may be true for whatever tool you're using, it's not true for TADS 3 - multiple/random responses in the same context and different responses in different contexts are both available from the library.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1003&start=0#p5454
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: The potential of simple ASK/TELL
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-03-23 07:09:19

I'm not sure what system Bainespal is using, but even I7's minimal conversation resources do in fact handle all of this. There are separate ask/tell commands, and it's not hard to write multiple responses for the same topic. Eric Eve's conversation extensions for Inform 7 bring the TADS 3 system to that platform as well, including topic lists and a number of other features. (And Inform 7 will soon, I think, have a second complete conversation system, also centered around ask-tell, that is quip-based and provides simple support for multi-threading.)

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1004&start=0#p5455
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Storytelling decks and the structure of IF
User: George / DateTime: 2010-03-26 01:21:40

In the past there have been a few connections made between the structural similarities of IF and comics. Tonight I found this page which made me think of it again:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.derekyu.com/storytelling/">http://www.derekyu.com/storytelling/</a>

That page reshuffles a 'deck of comics structures' -- for example, you can end up with a series like this:

[quote]
[b]Reveal #7[/b]

Use the same image for at least 3 panels in a row.

[b]Reveal #8
[/b]
Focus on a (seemingly) insignificant object (or objects).

[b]Reveal #9
[/b]
Have this character do something that reveals an important aspect of his/her personality.
[/quote]

While many of these are easily applicable across mediums (reveal #9, say) there are others more specific to comics like reveal #7. I think IF has its own structures (or building blocks of structure if you will) like this, but I'm not sure what they all might be. Some examples might be:

* Clear the screen

* Use a quotebox

* Switch player PCs

I think it's OK to be fairly loose in the definition of what a structure is. 

Of course, there is an important difference here too -- IMO the author shouldn't rely on specifying a linear sequence of structures. However that isn't a reason not to enumerate the structures available, since the author certainly can create situations and processes that lead to planned sequences of structures. 

Anyway, can anyone help to think of more of these little things?

*

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1005&start=0#p5456
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Handling of non-english characters
User: babissss / DateTime: 2010-03-26 20:53:30

Hi all,
I am desperately trying to write an Inform 6 application in Greek.
Before dealing with serious grammar/vocabulary issues, I am trying to sort out character set reading and printing.
Based on the very detailed instructions by Roger Firth ([url]http://www.firthworks.com/roger/informfaq/aa20.html[/url]) I am using the -C7 compiler switch inside my source file (!% -C7).
The interpreter I am using is Windows Frotz 1.15
As far as printing Greek characters is concerned I get the desired result since my messages and strings in Greek are printed successfully in the game screen. Also when I type in Greek in the game screen the characters also appear correctly. Both of the previous where not happening before I added the C7 switch. So that's good.
The problem is with the input. I have not succeeded in the program reading correctly the input. Whenever I write a command in the game screen in Greek the program fails to understand it (even the most basic ones like directions), even though I have made the necessary changes in the Grammar and English files.
The problem has not anything to do with understanding the command but, instead, with correctly interpreting the characters.
I tried the program "Unicode.inf" (attached) which comes together with Windows Frotz 1.15 after adding the -C7 switch. Still when I am typing a Greek character, I get back a question mark which means that the program does not understand my character...
Please let me know if anyone has any ideas on what I'm doing wrong...
Thanks,
Babis

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=831&start=0#p5457
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Computer Novel Construction Set
User: bjdette21 / DateTime: 2010-03-26 21:45:09

[quote="Eudoxia"][img]http://yois.if-legends.org/images/vault/hayden_cnconst.jpg[/img]

From Underdogs:

[quote]Arguably the world's first commercial text adventure authoring program for IBM PC, Hayden's Computer Novel Construction Set is a surprisingly versatile program that lets non-programmers create stand-alone text adventures in the Infocom tradition, complete with storyline and inventory-based puzzles.CNCS uses a series of DOS-based menus and pop-up windows for building rooms, objects, descriptions, etc. A nice touch is that the game you create is automatically presented with different windows for each game element, e.g. one window for your character's inventory, one for room description, one for commands, and so on. This is much more advanced than most early games from Hayden themselves (e.g. The Holy Grail), and this multiple-window presentation is a good format rarely seen in IF (with some exceptions, e.g. Infocom's Beyond Zork). The included tutorial file and mini-game give a good idea of what the program is capable of, and the most options are self-explanatory.

Overall, CNCS is definitely worth a look for anyone interested in writing interactive fiction games but don't want to spend (a lot of) time to learn the nitty-gritty of modern-day IF authoring languages (such as Inform or TADS). It is user-friendly, versatile, and stands up quite well with time -- more than a decade after its release. The parser seems to be more versatile than later freeware program Adventure Game Toolkit (AGT), although it is still largely limited by verb-noun construct. Here's hoping that we may soon see some new IF written using this early tool [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

I started out writing IF with this. It's limited, but with some trickery you can do semi-advanced stuff.

It includes a simple game and a more complex game (With the sources) to teach you everything you need to know.

Download: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.fileplanet.com/122087/120000/fileinfo/Computer-Novel-Construction-Set">http://www.fileplanet.com/122087/120000 ... uction-Set</a>

I wish I had the source code  [emote]:roll:[/emote][/quote]





That's great, that Hayden's Computer Novel Construction Set is a surprisingly versatile program that lets non-programmers create stand-alone text adventures in the Infocom tradition, complete with storyline and inventory-based puzzles. Hayden's computer novel construction set is more advanced than most early games from Hayden themselves. That is good for everyone, that they make their own even the non-programmer. Thank you for sharing that idea, this can help everyone.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1005&start=0#p5458
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Handling of non-english characters
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-03-27 03:27:39

At a guess, I'd suspect there is a mismatch between the character encoding you're using for the game's source file, and between what Inform is expecting. With '-C7' it expects ISO 8859-7, but I suspect what you're using is Windows CP1253, which I don't think is the same.

On the other hand, I would expect this to also mess up output strings, so possibly it isn't that. It may also be due to issues with the Zcharacter table (see the section "String packing" on Roger's page that you linked to). This sort of thing has been made to work, as someone did a Russian translation of Andrew Plotkin's Spider and Web.

Would you be prepared to put the source files somewhere I could have a look at it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1005&start=0#p5459
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Handling of non-english characters
User: babissss / DateTime: 2010-03-27 05:32:15

[quote="DavidK"]At a guess, I'd suspect there is a mismatch between the character encoding you're using for the game's source file, and between what Inform is expecting. With '-C7' it expects ISO 8859-7, but I suspect what you're using is Windows CP1253, which I don't think is the same. On the other hand, I would expect this to also mess up output strings, so possibly it isn't that. [/quote]

Hi David,
Thank you very much for your answer. With -C7 indeed Inform is expecting ISO 8859-7. You're saying that you suspect I'm using CP1253. What do you mean exactly? How can I look into that? I'm just running the game, switch the keyboard to Greek and hit the keys for the Greek Letters. I see the letters appearing correctly on my screen but then the program does not understand anything.

[quote="DavidK"]It may also be due to issues with the Zcharacter table (see the section "String packing" on Roger's page that you linked to). This sort of thing has been made to work, as someone did a Russian translation of Andrew Plotkin's Spider and Web.[/quote]

I'm afraid I did go through the string packing section but didn't get much out of it. It's too subtle for me...

[quote="DavidK"]Would you be prepared to put the source files somewhere I could have a look at it?[/quote]

Of course, I have the source files attached in this post but do not expect much, since I am not yet in a posision to proceed with any serious development. The zip file I have attached contains the following:
- GreekGame.inf: Nothing more than the sample game that I got with the directory structure from Roger's site, with the -C7 switch added and a string written in Greek (the description of the initial room)
- Greek.h, GrammarGr.h: copies of the english files. The only change is on Greek.h, the four basic compass objects (n, s, e, w) where the names have been switched to greek. Still when giving the greek names during gameplay it just doesn't work ("That's not a verb I recognize").
- GreekGame.bat: The string to compile the game (I know that the -C7 switch here is obviously reduntant)
- Unicode.inf: This is also one of the example games i got with the directory structure. In this program, when I add the -C7 switch and still when during runtime I am hitting Greek characters I get question marks...
- I have also included a screenshot of the GreekGame during gameplay where you can see that Greek characters are typed and presented correctly but when I give the east direction in Greek the program does not understand it...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1005&start=0#p5461
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Handling of non-english characters
User: babissss / DateTime: 2010-03-27 08:00:57

Problem solved. I did not know that the parser turns everything to lower case. I had written names in grammar library in uppercase greek.
Sorry for the confusion, case closed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1003&start=0#p5462
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: The potential of simple ASK/TELL
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-03-27 19:04:10

I was really just making the point that the "simple" ASK/TELL format is better than we normally give it credit for, and it may be all that some games require.  I didn't mean to belittle any games that have implemented this basic system well in the past.

The example is based on what I think Hugo's default conversation system would look like, if implemented thoroughly.  I'm aware that TADS 3 supports a much better system by default (I followed Eric Eve's tutorial some years ago).  TADS 3 and Inform 7 are both great systems, to be sure.  I like Hugo's default handling of conversation better than that of Inform 7, and I don't think that every IF author necessarily needs to implement a system as complicated as the one that TADS 3 sets up by default.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1004&start=0#p5463
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Storytelling decks and the structure of IF
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-03-27 19:28:28

Something like that does seem like an interesting way to brainstorm.

Here's some suggestions for an IF "storytelling deck":

*Block access to a part of the map that the player can see.

*Let the player find a portable container with a very large capacity.

*Imply that the PC knows something the player doesn't.

*Create an association between a class of static objects and transitions between scenes.
(slight spoiler for a famous game)[spoiler]The shadows in [i]So Far[/i], for instance.[/spoiler]

*Create multiple uses in solving puzzles for one of the portable objects introduced early in the game, causing the player to value it highly.

*Insert a flashback or a premonition, perhaps using a different tense (for instance, a flashback in a game written in the typical present tense might be in past tense).

*Create an alternate, faster route for the player to get to an important room or area where she has been before.

Most of those probably came to mind from "The Craft of Adventure" by Graham Nelson.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1004&start=0#p5464
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Storytelling decks and the structure of IF
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-03-27 22:08:18

Re: your spoiler. For a long time I thought that game was about watching a play, wandering around backstage, and then going home.

Well, not really, but I sure needed the hints to do anything else.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1005&start=0#p5465
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Handling of non-english characters
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-03-28 09:57:51

Glad to hear you figured it out [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1006&start=0#p5466
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Various problems. (unsolved)
User: BishyT / DateTime: 2010-03-28 19:08:57

Hi, i'm having problems with the Index tab in Inform7. It won't appear, the page is blank whenever I select it. It used to work when I first started using the program, but now it just appears blank everytime. I've tried re-installing, but that didn't work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1006&start=0#p5467
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Index has dissapeared.
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-03-28 19:22:44

Are you on OS X, Windows, or Linux?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1006&start=0#p5468
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Index has dissapeared.
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-03-28 19:27:44

You have to compile the source (hit the "go" button). Before that the index pages are blank.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1006&start=0#p5469
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Index has dissapeared.
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-03-28 19:34:46

[quote="Juhana"]You have to compile the source (hit the "go" button). Before that the index pages are blank.[/quote]

Yeah, that's probably the problem. There is also an issue with build 5Z71 on Mac OS X where the index will disappear if you use the back button. That usually only lasts until the project window is closed and reopened, though.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1006&start=0#p5470
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Index has dissapeared.
User: BishyT / DateTime: 2010-03-28 20:02:25

The index still won't show up for me, probably because there are some scripting errors stopping me from compiling.

Speaking of which...

I have an object called "Star Tattoo". The star tattoo is a part of every person (including the player). The star tattoo can be red, blue, green, yellow or black (this is the colour property).

I want to be able to set this property for each character (including the player), but Inform 7 won't have it. It claims that while it can test for such properties, it can't set them (and it sprouts an example about Dave being Visible).

So how would I go about setting this property?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1006&start=0#p5471
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Index has dissapeared.
User: George / DateTime: 2010-03-28 20:08:00

[quote="BishyT"]
So how would I go about setting this property?[/quote]

Go ahead and post your code here BishyT, it'll be easier to see exactly what you're looking for.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1006&start=0#p5472
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Index has dissapeared.
User: BishyT / DateTime: 2010-03-28 20:14:37

Ok, here it is.

A star tattoo is a kind of thing.
A star tattoo is a part of every person.
A star tattoo can be red, blue, green, yellow, black or purple (this is the colour property).
A star tattoo can be small, medium or large (this is the size property).

(then I create a character called Janice)

A person called Janice is here.
Janice's star tattoo is red and small.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1006&start=0#p5473
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Index has dissapeared.
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-03-28 20:48:41

Inform has trouble taking two properties connected by "and" in this kind of situation. This should work:

[code]A person called Janice is here. Janice's star tattoo is red. It is small.[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1006&start=0#p5474
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Index has dissapeared.
User: BishyT / DateTime: 2010-03-28 21:33:11

Thanks, that worked.

Another thing. The main character's tattoo is one his chest, which you can't see while he's wearing his shirt.

However, even if I write the rule about the tattoo being concealed, the player can still examine the tattoo without taking off the character's shirt. How do I fix this (or will I just have to use an "instead")?

EDIT: Also, how do I reference the star tattoo colour and size in a printed description?
EDIT: And how do I do an instead for the main character taking off his shirt, such as "Instead of taking off shirt, say 'It's too cold in here.'".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=971&start=0#p5475
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What evil may lurk in the cold heart of a snowman?
User: linger / DateTime: 2010-03-29 14:46:21

The only thing that comes to mind is the Calvin and Hobbes story arc where his snowmen came alive and tried to kill him. It stands out in my mind as pretty good, in how it plays with a child's imagination and provokes a surprisingly real feel of terror. Not sure what dates it ran from, but I know it's in the book "Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Snow Goons":

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.amazon.com/Attack-Deranged-Mutant-Killer-Monster/dp/0836218833">http://www.amazon.com/Attack-Deranged-M ... 0836218833</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=942&start=0#p5476
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: How do i change my display name?
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-03-29 15:26:45

I would also like a name change. I formerly used TassadarZeratul everywhere, but I'm trying to distance myself from StarCraft (the game which TassadarZeratul is from), so I'd like to use something else: "Biophysicist".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1007&start=0#p5477
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Puzzle feedback
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-03-29 16:46:29

I'm trying to design some puzzles for a game with a new (I think) magic system, but am not sure exactly how hard to make them, so I'm going to post one of my ideas and see what you guys think.

The premise of the game is this: the player can "link" items together, which causes both objects to take on some aspect of the other one. Object can be "unlinked" later. For example, if you link a piece of cheese to a pen, you end up with an edible pen and cheese that can be used to write with. (This example will probably never be in the game.) It is also worth noting that the player has some miscellaneous magic abilities, like talking to animals and the ability to sense the presence of magic.

One puzzle I was thinking of is this: You have a parrot, a playing card, and a bowling ball. There is a high-up shelf (that you can't reach) with something on it that you need. Can you guys try to solve this puzzle, and tell me if you think it was too hard/too easy/too stupid/etc? Here's the solution: [spoiler]Link the parrot to the playing card. This makes the card able to fly (and the parrot extremely thin). Tell the card to fly onto the shelf. Link the card to the bowling ball. This makes the card very heavy (and the bowling ball extremely thin), breaking the shelf, and causing the thing on it to fall down.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1008&start=0#p5478
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Need non-people to act like people
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-03-29 18:05:58

I need to be able to give an arbitrary thing the ability to act as if it was a person at an arbitrary point in the game. (The player can animate objects.) The thing needs to be able to respond to "try" and to respond to commands like "pen, n". Any suggestions?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1007&start=0#p5479
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle feedback
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-03-29 20:12:37

Hi Tassadar. The system you're describing is not totally new. In at least the broad outlines, it is similar to [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=p0cizeb3kiwzlm2p]Savoir-Faire[/url], by Emily Short. Savoir-Faire also has a magic system whereby items can be linked, but there are limitations and logical congruencies that need to be taken into account in order to link things, and to deal with them once they are linked. If you haven't played it yet, you definitely should, not only because of the magic system, but because it's a really good game  [emote]:D[/emote] 

Re your example: I would like to see you look a bit harder at the way you implement the linking, and specifically narrowing somehow the ways in which objects can take on one anothers' properties. Opinions may vary on this subject, but it seems as though there's a lot of potential here for behavior that looks arbitrary to the player. My feeling is that this is probably not a good thing, though one might argue that it also provides comedy and/or an element of surprise (and, hopefully, delight). YMMV. But here's how I responded to the example, which may help explain what I mean.

First, I don't understand why we would want to link the parrot to the card. Presumably if a card-parrot can fly and carry out commands, the parrot-parrot could do this to. So why would I bother linking the two? Wouldn't it make more sense to order the parrot to grab the card and carry it up to the shelf? 

More importantly: you mention that the parrot will become thin like the card when the two are linked. That's a perfectly understandable physical manifestation of the linkage. Yet there doesn't seem to be any physical explanation for the new abilities of the card. That is, without wings, the card can't fly like the parrot; without a brain, it can't cogitate like the parrot; without ears, it can't hear like the parrot. How is the player to predict what will happen when objects are linked? Also, how would communicate the new abilities of the card to the player? Unless the card actually turns into a thin parrot, how is the player going to know that it can now fly (or, even more extreme, understand commands)? And if the card becomes a thin parrot, the question is the same as the one I raised in the previous paragraph: why do we need to link the parrot and the card at all?

(In the same line: If any two objects can be linked, why bother with the card at all? Couldn't I just order the parrot to sit on the shelf and then link it to the bowling ball?)

The card (or the parrot) taking on the weight property of the bowling ball is a bit easier to get. But, in terms of my critique of the card-parrot link, is it also possible that the card can now "roll" like a bowling ball? Knock down things much bigger than itself? Physically, of course not. But if we apply the same non-physical transformations that apply in the parrot-card linkage, then yes...

To sum up: This is a cool idea with a lot of potential, but I think that your example would benefit from a bit more attention to the mechanics of the system, and your game (and the difficulty of implementing it!) will probably also be improved by placing limitations on the ability, as well as making it more "readable" to the player. What kinds of things can be linked together? Can anything be linked to anything else without bounds? Can only portable objects be linked? Does the player need to be able to touch both objects to link them, or only to see them? (Could linking be done through a mirror?) How will the player know what properties will transfer in advance of linking them? And so on...

Hope this helps!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1008&start=0#p5480
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need non-people to act like people
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-03-29 20:30:24

Cool. Shades of the Sorcerer's Apprentice...

Assuming you're using I7, here's the basic code you need:

[code]A thing can be animate or inanimate. The animate property translates into I6 as "animate".[/code]

This hooks you into the underlying Inform 6 library's concept of "animate," which is how I7 decides whether to treat an object as a person. To use it, you just treat it like any other property:

[code]
After casting the spell on the pen:
      now the pen is animate.[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1009&start=0#p5481
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Setting a variable to a specific number.
User: BishyT / DateTime: 2010-03-29 21:31:06

I know how to increase a variable, decrease a variable, and check if a variable is a certain number...but how do I set a variable to a specific number (i've tried "set subject to 1" but it doesn't work).

P.S A separate problem. A Star Tattoo is a kind of thing. Every person has a Star Tattoo. It can be red, green, yellow, black or whathaveyou (this is the colour value). It can also be big, medium or small (this is the size value).

How do I reference these values in a printed description (remember, EVERY person has one, and each one is a different colour or size).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1009&start=0#p5482
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Setting a variable to a specific number.
User: George / DateTime: 2010-03-29 22:15:00

You can set a variable just with 'x is y'. To get the color property you can do something like this:

[code]
"Star Tattoo" 

The Concholarium is a room. 

The arms of the star is a number that varies. The arms of the star is 1. 

A star tattoo is a kind of thing. A star tattoo is part of every person. A star tattoo can be red, black, or yellow (this is the tattoo color property). 

A person called Janice is here. The tattoo color of Janice's star tattoo is red.

The description of Janice is "You have a vague feeling that her star tattoo is [the tattoo color of Janice's star tattoo] with [arms of the star] arms."

test me with "x Janice".
[/code]

edit:

If you want to define a similar default description for all people, you could also do something like this:

[code]
The description of a person is "You have a vague feeling that [the noun] has a [color guess] star tattoo."

to say color guess:
	let item be the item described;
	let star be a random star tattoo which is part of the item;
	say the tattoo color of the star.
[/code]

That to say phrase is a bit of a twist-up, maybe someone else here can clean it up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1009&start=0#p5483
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Setting a variable to a specific number.
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-03-29 22:34:34

[quote="BishyT"]I know how to increase a variable, decrease a variable, and check if a variable is a certain number...but how do I set a variable to a specific number (i've tried "set subject to 1" but it doesn't work).[/quote]
[code]now subject is 1;[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=971&start=0#p5484
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What evil may lurk in the cold heart of a snowman?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-03-29 22:55:31

[quote="Endosphere"]Speaking of British horror, does anyone recall the name of an English film from the 1970s or early 1980s in which a man, his wife, and their daughter move into an old house near a wooded area and ominous supernatural events ensue?  For example, the little girl would hear the voices of children calling her to come play in the woods every time she walked past the area, and I believe these spirits of the woods took her in the end.  Sadly I don't remember any of the actors in the film, but I do remember enjoying it very much and finding it profoundly spooky.[/quote]

Is it perchance [i]The Watcher in the Woods[/i], featuring Bette Davis very late in her career, and Lynn-Holly Johnson in what is probably the worst performance I have ever seen in a movie?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1009&start=0#p5485
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Setting a variable to a specific number.
User: BishyT / DateTime: 2010-03-29 23:25:16

@George: Is there a way to do it so you examine the actual tattoo itself? Like...

>EXAMINE JANICE'S TATTOO
"Janice has a big, red star tattoo on her shoulder."

Where the base sentence would be something like "[person] has a [size], [colour] tattoo on her shoulder." ?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1007&start=0#p5486
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle feedback
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-03-30 03:24:51

I think this could work, as long as it really is a matter of simulated properties.  The solution you listed should not be the [i]only[/i] solution - for a start, any heavy object on the shelf should break it.

Because my thought is, why use the card at all?  Why not tell the parrot to fly onto the shelf and link the parrot to the bowling ball?  And if we can command things, why not just tell the parrot to fly onto the shelf, and to pick up the object?  On that note, players might worry that breaking the shelf might break the object they want as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1009&start=0#p5487
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Setting a variable to a specific number.
User: George / DateTime: 2010-03-30 10:50:43

I recommend looking up these kinds of questions on the Google Groups interface to RAIF, as usually you can find a similar question there. For example I searched for 'owner part' here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction</a>

And got the answer pretty quickly, which is:

[code]
Include Plurality by Emily Short

The description of a star tattoo is "[holder of the noun] has a [tattoo color of the item described] tattoo on [its-their] shoulder."
[/code]

The plurality thing is an extension. You'll need to say 'Janice is a woman' or 'A woman called Janice is here' for that to work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1008&start=0#p5488
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need non-people to act like people
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-03-30 14:13:12

Ah, thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1007&start=0#p5489
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle feedback
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-03-30 14:26:49

[quote]Hi Tassadar. The system you're describing is not totally new. In at least the broad outlines, it is similar to Savoir-Faire, by Emily Short. Savoir-Faire also has a magic system whereby items can be linked, but there are limitations and logical congruencies that need to be taken into account in order to link things, and to deal with them once they are linked. If you haven't played it yet, you definitely should, not only because of the magic system, but because it's a really good game [emote]:D[/emote] [/quote]I actually have played S-F, though I got frustrated/stuck very quickly (as usually happens when I play interactive fiction). I guess it could be considered an S-F ripoff, but I'm pretty sure that the systems are different enough for it to not be a problem. As far as I know (which isn't that far), in S-F you can't fundamentally change an object, but in my idea, you can. (Example: In S-F, a telescope and a torch couldn't be linked, but in my game, you can link them to produce what amounts to a laser.) Maybe I'm just arguing details, though...

[quote]Re your example: I would like to see you look a bit harder at the way you implement the linking, and specifically narrowing somehow the ways in which objects can take on one anothers' properties. Opinions may vary on this subject, but it seems as though there's a lot of potential here for behavior that looks arbitrary to the player. My feeling is that this is probably not a good thing, though one might argue that it also provides comedy and/or an element of surprise (and, hopefully, delight). YMMV. But here's how I responded to the example, which may help explain what I mean.

First, I don't understand why we would want to link the parrot to the card. Presumably if a card-parrot can fly and carry out commands, the parrot-parrot could do this to. So why would I bother linking the two? Wouldn't it make more sense to order the parrot to grab the card and carry it up to the shelf?

More importantly: you mention that the parrot will become thin like the card when the two are linked. That's a perfectly understandable physical manifestation of the linkage. Yet there doesn't seem to be any physical explanation for the new abilities of the card. That is, without wings, the card can't fly like the parrot; without a brain, it can't cogitate like the parrot; without ears, it can't hear like the parrot. How is the player to predict what will happen when objects are linked? Also, how would communicate the new abilities of the card to the player? Unless the card actually turns into a thin parrot, how is the player going to know that it can now fly (or, even more extreme, understand commands)? And if the card becomes a thin parrot, the question is the same as the one I raised in the previous paragraph: why do we need to link the parrot and the card at all?

(In the same line: If any two objects can be linked, why bother with the card at all? Couldn't I just order the parrot to sit on the shelf and then link it to the bowling ball?)

The card (or the parrot) taking on the weight property of the bowling ball is a bit easier to get. But, in terms of my critique of the card-parrot link, is it also possible that the card can now "roll" like a bowling ball? Knock down things much bigger than itself? Physically, of course not. But if we apply the same non-physical transformations that apply in the parrot-card linkage, then yes...[/quote]
Hm, interesting feedback. Some of that I realized for myself (like the card not being needed), but not all of it. I'm intrigued by the final paragraph of that quote. I'll try to take that into consideration.

[quote]To sum up: This is a cool idea with a lot of potential, but I think that your example would benefit from a bit more attention to the mechanics of the system, and your game (and the difficulty of implementing it!) will probably also be improved by placing limitations on the ability, as well as making it more "readable" to the player. What kinds of things can be linked together? Can anything be linked to anything else without bounds? Can only portable objects be linked? Does the player need to be able to touch both objects to link them, or only to see them? (Could linking be done through a mirror?) How will the player know what properties will transfer in advance of linking them? And so on...[/quote]
Hm... I was debating having any two arbitrary objects linked together, and eventually decided to keep it. However, linkages that will make the game unwinable (like linking a crucial object to a table, making it non-portable) will give the error message "Something tells you that that would be a bad idea." or similar. You only need to be able to see objects to link them. (However, in at least one case, an object is protected by an "antimagic field" that prevents it from being linked, and the player needs to find a way to break it. The result is probably the hardest puzzle in the game.)

@above: I'm a big believer in multiple solutions, so I'll make multiple solutions where possible.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1007&start=0#p5490
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle feedback
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-03-30 14:44:25

[quote]I actually have played S-F, though I got frustrated/stuck very quickly (as usually happens when I play interactive fiction). I guess it could be considered an S-F ripoff, but I'm pretty sure that the systems are different enough for it to not be a problem. As far as I know (which isn't that far), in S-F you can't fundamentally change an object, but in my idea, you can. (Example: In S-F, a telescope and a torch couldn't be linked, but in my game, you can link them to produce what amounts to a laser.) Maybe I'm just arguing details, though...[/quote]

Oh, I actually didn't mean to suggest that it was the [i]same[/i] system, just that it's somewhat similar to Savoir-Faire in conception. Yours is fairly different: Linking in S-F makes one object act on another, whereas linking in your system changes the objects so that they take on each other's characteristics (though I'm still not sure how that would work--does one always become the "child" of the other; i.e. if I link the card to the bowling ball, the card gets heavy, but if I link the bowling ball to the card, the bowling ball gets thin and lightweight? And nothing whatsoever happens to the "parent" in each interaction?)

I would still recommend playing S-F, even if you just do it using a walkthrough. Comparing the details of the behavior there may help you flesh out your design... 

Also, there is a short prequel of sorts to S-F that includes I7 source code. It might or might not be useful to look at:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/learn/eg/dm/index.html">http://inform7.com/learn/eg/dm/index.html</a>

Have fun!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=971&start=0#p5491
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What evil may lurk in the cold heart of a snowman?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-03-30 16:29:15

In Spenser's "Faerie Queene", a witch creates an imitation of her son's wife out of snow and brings it to life. I don't know the story beyond that, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=90#p5492
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Traviswf / DateTime: 2010-03-30 19:13:47

Hey everyone.  I sadly just discovered this "introducing ourselves" thread. 

My name is Travis, and I'm a writer living in Los Angeles.  No, I'm not famous nor am I the guy who created Mad Men (that's Matt Weiner... is it the same Matt Weiner on this board?  Who can say?). 

I've been following the IF community since 1997.  I had just moved to LA and learned that the Infocom Masterpieces disc was on sale for $20.  There was only one copy available at an EB Games and I hopped on the highway at night to go get it.  Being new to the city I ended up getting totally lost.  But - after making it back four hours later - I was able to dive in to some great old text adventures.  The competition games on the disk lead me to learn about the IF community, which lead me to failing a writing class because I couldn't stop playing Graham Nelson's Jigsaw.  I'm a sucker for time travel and that one grabbed me.  

I've not written a game, but I toy with the idea.  I've dabbled in TADS and Inform 6 and now Inform 7.  But being self-employed and a father, time isn't abundant.  Lately I've decided to get a bit more active in the community.  Since it's been going strong for the 13 years I've been following it - I figure it's going to be around a while.  And the events surrounding PAX East and Get Lamp have been pretty inspiring.

I've always been fascinated by the possibilities of the medium, and there have been moments in IF games that have hit me in a way that almost no other medium ever has.  So I look forward to talking about IF, playing IF, maybe even writing a little - and just doing what is we all do.  

Anyway - that's my story.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=90#p5493
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-03-30 21:32:43

So, I guess this is where all the cool kids hang out these days?

--Aaron Reed

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=90#p5494
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Traviswf / DateTime: 2010-03-30 21:44:54

[quote="aaronius"]So, I guess this is where all the cool kids hang out these days?

--Aaron Reed[/quote]

Well, there's only so many troll-jacked posts on RAIF you can read before running for the hills. 

Which at the moment, makes this The IF Hills. 

(which incidentally would be the worst rated MTV reality series of all time...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1010&start=0#p5495
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Pictures from PAX East IF community gathering
User: sussman / DateTime: 2010-03-30 23:11:05

I made a bunch of photos at PAX of IF goings-on, and they're all up here on Flickr:  

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/30695675@N07/sets/72157623738564802/">http://www.flickr.com/photos/30695675@N ... 738564802/</a> 

* I always put my photos under a Creative Commons license, so feel free to use however you wish (as long as you credit me) 

* I also made about 25 portraits of folks from our community;  I'd love to post them to a single page as a 'wall of faces', or perhaps attach them to indivdual's pages on ifwiki.  But I'm not going to do  any of that until I get specific opt-ins from each of those people.  (I'll contact you folks separately.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=100#p5498
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-03-31 08:56:47

[quote="Traviswf"]Hey everyone.  I sadly just discovered this "introducing ourselves" thread. 

My name is Travis, and I'm a writer living in Los Angeles.  No, I'm not famous nor am I the guy who created Mad Men (that's Matt Weiner... is it the same Matt Weiner on this board?  Who can say?). [/quote]

I can!

(whistles tunelessly)

(twiddles thumbs)

(looks innocent)

...OK, no I'm not, though I understand that that guy did major in philosophy among other things.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1011&start=0#p5499
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: question about a piece of code
User: sqib / DateTime: 2010-03-31 12:40:56

Heres the code (basically the van helsing example from recipe book)

Every turn during day 1 after school:
	if the location of Katie is not the location of the player: 
		let the way be the best route from the location of Katie to the location of the player, using doors;
		try Katie going the way.


Question is this. It works fine, I am using it in a way where you are walking someone home and when they get there they go inside and that's it..but the "Katie arrives from the south" doesn't seem natural. Is there a way to modify that to something a little more organic. or to have her follow silently I tried fiddling around with diff bits to have it do that but it would'nt compile.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1011&start=0#p5500
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: question about a piece of code
User: BishyT / DateTime: 2010-03-31 13:25:29

Usually if you want something to silently happen, you'd write:

try silently Katie going the way.

Though despite it's name it's not always silent. You'll still get failure messages (like if you "try silently" to remove an item from the player when they don't hold it, you'll still get the "you don't seem to be carrying that" or "you can't reach that item" failure messages).

Anyways, have you tried that yet?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1010&start=0#p5501
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Pictures from PAX East IF community gathering
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-03-31 13:26:01

I am slowly assembling a PAX report, so thanks.

(Also, I opt in.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1010&start=0#p5502
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Pictures from PAX East IF community gathering
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-03-31 18:26:10

Thanks for these updates!!

I'm among the "wish I could have gone" crowd. [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1010&start=0#p5503
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Pictures from PAX East IF community gathering
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-03-31 19:57:30

Here are my pictures: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/48310948@N03/sets/72157623607639899/">http://www.flickr.com/photos/48310948@N ... 607639899/</a> They're not as fancy, I took them with a cell phone. License is CC-BY, so use them any way you like.

Ben, I've tagged mine "PaxBostonIF". Maybe we could use that to pool all the pictures? On the other hand the InteractiveFiction tag doesn't have much other content either.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=100#p5505
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-03-31 21:56:16

Greetings. I'm Biophysicist. I'm a pretty good programmer, which is why I got into IF - I even wrote my own IF language before discovering Inform 7. (It's been lost, along with many other things, to a virus that forced me to format my hard drive. No big loss, though - it was very early in the development process when I lost it.) I'm horrible at puzzle design, though, which is my biggest weakness: I can write very complicated puzzles, but actually making them interesting is a challenge, to say the least. My other biggest weakness is actually finishing anything: I've started at least twelve IF projects, many StarCraft projects, three standalone RTS games, and two browser-based games, in addition to the above-mentioned IF language, and finished none of them.

Some random facts about myself, some of which I bring up because they /will/ affect how people deal with me on these forums, and some which I bring up for no good reason:

-I'm psychotic. I have hallucinations and get very angry randomly.
-I have a learning disability, which makes it nearly impossible for me to understand things unless I develop them myself.
-I have memory and processing issues, which frequently cause me to forget things, or misremember them. This, combined with the above two issues, means that I'm usually very hard to get along with.
-I'm 16.
-I am male.
-I am bisexual, though I refuse to accept this as immutable.
-I have a very weird sense of humor, possibly related to my psychosis.
-You may find me moping or trolling about personal issues. When this happens, it is usually best to ignore me, or a flame war will start.
-I am something of a Christian zealot.

So yah. That's me. Doacks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=100#p5506
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: bwochinski / DateTime: 2010-04-01 01:58:18

Just wanted to say a quick hello.

Just really came across IF (as far as authoring) a few months back and jumped into Inform7 as my language of choice.  My first experience with IF was probably about 20 years back when I was introduced to a MS DOS version of "Adventure".  I was younger so I never made it very far, but I'll never forget the way the descriptions of the caves evoked such strong imagery in my mind.

I'm now nearing completion on my first IF, a small "escape" style game that I've really learned a ton working on.  And I'm looking forward to participating in upcoming competitions or events as I'm able!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=100#p5507
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: George / DateTime: 2010-04-01 10:46:26

hey, welcome to all the new members!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1012&start=0#p5508
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Extension Census 2010
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-04-01 12:27:24

Two points that came up at PAX East were the need to better use the tools we have already, and the fog of war around extensions. Extension authors don't get much feedback about whether or how often their extensions are being used, and game authors don't often realize there are extensions available to do exactly the thing they're having trouble with. This is a problem because extension authors don't get much positive feedback, and game authors spend time reimplementing the wheel that could be spent on more interesting parts of their game.

I have an idea for a sort of "Extension Census," that would let people associate games and extensions in a way that archives this information from either side-- so you can see what extensions a certain game uses, and also what games use a certain extension. The idea would be to shine a spotlight on all the great extensions that exist for Inform 7 (and any other language with extensions).

To incentivize, I might offer goofy prizes to the person who tags the most within the run of the census (maybe 2-4 weeks), or the extension author whose extensions turn out to be most popular (probably excluding extensions distributed with a language). I would also encourage people to blog about favorite extensions during the run of the project. I envision the website staying active after the "Census" ends, so people can continue tagging with new games/extensions. 

At the moment, it seems like the best idea is to set up the tagging mechanism on its own website, then make the data available in a portable format for anyone who wants to import it into something else. If people wanted IFWiki, Baf's guide, or Inform7.com to have extension info on their game pages, the data would be there for the taking. Before I get started on any of this, though, I wanted to see if people see any flaws with this plan or have any better ideas-- maybe working with one of the aforementioned sites directly would be more effective. 

Anyone have any thoughts?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1012&start=0#p5509
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Extension Census 2010
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-04-01 13:18:09

As someone who has spent on an ambitious set of extensions that will probably explode into complete obscurity on release, I am definitely sympathetic to the attempt to expand the visibility / reward / feedback factor for extensions  [emote];)[/emote] .

To the cool idea of an extensions census, I would add that it would be nice to (somehow) get author-bloggers to review extensions; i.e., to make discussion of extensions more a part of the "culture" of IF authorship. Especially in the case of Inform 7, with its minimal standard library, extensions are a key component of the system, so the [url=http://inform7.com/news/]I7 news page[/url] really ought to make mention of at least the most newsworthy extensions. (There doesn't seem to be a TADS equivalent to the news page, unfortunately. I've also found it somewhat difficult to find TADS extensions.). 

(For me, extensions have also been extremely important central to learning the software. Want to really get into Inform 7? Write a complex extension, preferably one that has you scraping around in the I6 layer...)

Back to the census: it seems to me that it would be a lot less work for the organizer to simply use the IFDB. It already has a tagging system, and it would be easy to glom onto that. Of course, the tagging system isn't ideal for this purpose, but it's probably good enough. (It might be nice to segregate extension tags from others, though; maybe via a subcategory of authoring system tags?)

Following this model, the census site could be a check-offable list of games to be tagged, a list of official tag names (to prevent orphaned tags that are spelled differently and thus don't group with others), and maybe a discussion board...?

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1013&start=0#p5510
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Planner in I7
User: Bremagorn / DateTime: 2010-04-01 17:32:18

Hi, I'm a new member here and trying to suss out how to use Planner in an IF I'm starting to work on. If anyone has had any success with this, I might need to bounce a few ideas off of them.

Particularly,

Will Planner work appropriately for having a large number (say 8) goal seeking characters moving around or would that bog it down too much?

Do I need to create a separate table of plans for each of the NPCs or do they share the same one?

In Planner, if the primary goal is met early for one NPC, but then through other NPC actions becomes unmet, is there anything special I need to do to get the original NPC moving again or will it happen automagically?

Did any of you that used it have any special "a-ha" moments that made the whole thing suddenly click into place. Right now I'm a little stymied and am looking for shared a-has.

Thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1012&start=0#p5511
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Extension Census 2010
User: George / DateTime: 2010-04-01 17:42:13

I think this is a good idea in general, but Erik's suggestion of the IFDB made me wonder if a more ambitious proposal shouldn't be made to Mike -- to include extensions and development systems within the purview of the IFDB. 

Currently the IFDB hosts everything to do with playing IF, including clubs, lists, polls, etcetera. However this same infrastructure would be ideal for pages about extensions and even development systems, with instant support for tags, reviews, and ratings, allowing for searches of popular extensions, for including extensions along with lists of games for a particular list or poll. 

It would be ideal for making extensions first-class citizens along with the games they help create, and create a positive feedback loop for people who write good extensions. 

You could do the same thing on the IFWiki, but the infrastructure would be better supported on the IFDB IMO.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1012&start=0#p5512
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Extension Census 2010
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-04-01 18:19:34

George, this is an awesome idea, whether on IFDB or a new site.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1012&start=0#p5513
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Extension Census 2010
User: George / DateTime: 2010-04-01 20:15:13

Well, I've emailed Mike Roberts to ask regarding the IFDB.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1011&start=0#p5514
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: question about a piece of code
User: sqib / DateTime: 2010-04-01 22:01:45

yup it worked, thanks..amazing what one little slight change can a make.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1014&start=0#p5515
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: "How to Play IF" card
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-04-02 00:04:18

At PAX we debuted the "How to Play Interactive Fiction" postcard. If somebody is sitting down in front of an IF game for the very first time, this card should give him or her an idea of what commands are likely to work -- and what commands are *likely* to work. It's not trying to teach everything an IF expert would know; it's just conveying the pattern.

Was it a success? Heck if I know, but we gave away a couple hundred. People who looked at them seemed to exhibit varying degrees of "aha".

I came up with the text, and Lea Albaugh (of the Interactive Fiction Writing Month) did the design and layout.

This is a public resource, and therefore we have posted the document to the Archive under a Creative Commons (BY-SA) license. You can print it out, package it with a game, translate it, reformat it, remix it, whatever you want, as long as you keep the license and credit the original creators.

The package is currently in the if-archive/unprocessed directory, but will eventually move to... I'm not sure what directory. Somewhere. We will also host it on the PR-IF web site in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, you can check out the files at:

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/tmp/play-if-card/">http://eblong.com/zarf/tmp/play-if-card/</a>

There's a PDF, a bunch of image file formats, and then a plain HTML version. (The HTML version is an imperfect approximation of the PDF, but it should still be usable.)

(Note: the PAX postcard was two-sided, but this version only includes the business side. I figure if you're printing more of them for an event, you want to tag it with your web site, not the Boston one.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=971&start=0#p5516
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What evil may lurk in the cold heart of a snowman?
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-04-02 00:20:57

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone.  I haven't worked much more on this idea as I've been busy with another project, but it's still floating around in the back of my mind for me to come back to someday.

@linger
Anything with a title like "Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Snow Goons" is worth checking out just on general principles alone.  I'll take a look at that.

@matt w
That's not it, but thank you for the good guess.  I'm thinking the movie I was wondering about had Oliver Reed (or someone who looks like Oliver Reed), but that must be wrong because his wikipedia and imdb entries don't mention anything like the movie I was trying to recall.

@zarf
That sounds interesting.  I'll take a look at it as I'm not very familiar with that work.



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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1011&start=0#p5517
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: question about a piece of code
User: BishyT / DateTime: 2010-04-02 10:17:27

Yeah, Inform can be like that. The solution is always simple, but never obvious.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=100#p5518
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Chimakwa / DateTime: 2010-04-02 10:41:39

Hey, I'm Chris, 33 and living in Philadelphia.  I played the Zorks and Scott Adams games and various other Infocom titles back in the 80s on my trusty C64, and discovered Inform 6 back in the late 90s.  (Sordid confession of the day: [i]Nord & Bert[/i] was my favorite Infocom title back then.)  I had started a game in that but apparently without enough forward momentum to keep plugging away at learning I6 syntax. I'd found out about I7 a couple years ago but hadn't played with it much; I play IF off and on, depending on how much time school and work leave me for that sort of pursuit.

I got an iPhone recently and downloaded Frotz for it, and bored a a few weeks ago, played "Lost Pig" on it.  It kind of re-ignited my IF bug, so I'm exploring the latest version of I7 (which I appreciate so much after my I6 experiences) and having a go at converting the game I started in 2000.  (This is a bit hampered by the fact that I have lost the I6 source code for the game; I still had a .z5 file so I ran it through the Reform decompiler and am using that output to help me along -- it's not reader-friendly in any way but at least all my text strings are intact!)  I have a much better idea of how the conflict and plot might go and I love the scene features that I7 offers.  I might actually get somewhere this time.

Anyway, hi!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1012&start=0#p5519
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Extension Census 2010
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-04-02 11:00:47

Yeah, the IFDB is a great idea. I didn't think about the tagging system allowing two-way connections for free, which is great. Getting them even more integrated support is an even better idea. 

If we go with the IFDB, I don't think the project even needs its own site, at least not one with any custom back-end. We could maybe have a post here that people update with their progress-- "OK guys, I've done all the XYZZY nominees from 2005-2008." 

George, thanks for offering to put this in front of Mike. Let us know what you hear back. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1015&start=0#p5520
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Random Name Generation for NPCs
User: appleman / DateTime: 2010-04-02 13:50:03

I'm having a hair pulling experience of trying to achieve a random name generation routine for NPCs in Inform 7.  I am only 8 days into learning Inform, but I have been stuck on this one exercise for about 72 hours now and I still can't get it right.  Could anyone help?

Basically I have one room, and a button.  An NPC is in the room, and the idea is that when you press the button, the NPC's name changes to a randomly selected name from a list/table.  This happens everytime you press the button.

I have *just about* got it working using an indexed-text property to control the printed name of the NPC, (as opposed to changing the coded name of the NPC) but where I am really falling down is being able to UNDERSTAND the new name.  That is to say:

A man called Nameless is here.

>Press large button

PING!

>look

A man called Adam is here.

>examine Adam

I don't see such a thing.


.........please help?!  it's driving me insane!!

I tried Understand "[random name]" as the man.  

And a million other combinations but it doesn't work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1015&start=0#p5521
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Random Name Generation for NPCs
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-04-02 14:25:55

For complicated reasons, you can't use an understand line that way with a text property (which is what "printed name" is). Instead, you need to use an indexed text property. Here's a complete little example to illustrate how to do it, and a couple of ancillary issues that arise:

[code]Test is a room.

A person has an indexed text called the real name. Understand the real name property as describing a person.

Rule for printing the name of a person (called the being):
	say "[real name of the being]";

Wizgo is a man in Test. The real name is "Wizgo".[/code]

I use JUMP as my action of choice when I want to check out something quickly like this. Here, typing JUMP changes the real name of the NPC to "Billy":

[code]First instead of jumping:
	change the real name of Wizgo to "Billy";
	say "Name changed to [Wizgo].";[/code]

Because the name of an object is usually understood by the parser, we also need to prevent the game from referring to be Billy when the player types "Wizgo". One way to do that is to make NPCs "privately-named", which prevents the parser from understanding the name (it can still understand the real name property, though, because we've told it how to do that above):
[code]
A person is privately-named.[/code]

(If the player also has a name, you might want to revise that so the player is not included. For example, "Wizgo is privately-named.")

You might also want to give the player a bit more guidance when he types the wrong name. To do that, we can look at the player's command before we've actually parsed it:

[code]After reading a command when the player's command includes "wizgo" and the real name of Wizgo is not "Wizgo":
	if the player can see Wizgo:
		say "Wizgo is not here any longer. [Wizgo] is here now.";
		reject the player's command.[/code]

Hope that helps!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1015&start=0#p5522
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Random Name Generation for NPCs
User: appleman / DateTime: 2010-04-02 15:30:16

Many thanks for your speedy and extensive reply!  Your solution worked wonders and I have now finally got things working (as well as me understanding a little more about the way Inform works.)

Many thanks again!!
 [emote]:D[/emote] 

appleman.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1015&start=0#p5523
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Random Name Generation for NPCs
User: appleman / DateTime: 2010-04-02 18:31:56

This works really well, until it comes to the NPC's possessions and things that are a PART of the NPC.  At this point these parts are subsequently stored using the original coded name.  For example, SHOWME Billy might read:
[i]
Billy - man
    Wizgo's hair (part of Billy) - Hair
location: in the Computer Room
unlit; inedible; portable; singular-named; proper-named
printed name: Billy
printed plural name: men
male
carrying capacity: 100
real name: Billy[/i]

Notice the 'hair part' remains coded back to Wizgo.  I actually tried coding the following line to try and solve this:-

[color=#0040FF]change the printed name of wizgo's hair to "[real name of wizgo]'s hair";[/color]

Which worked in so far as SHOWME was concerned, but crucially, typing:

>examine billy's hair

resulted in a [i]no such thing exists[/i] again.  Although examining Wizgo's hair worked fine... (?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1016&start=0#p5524
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: NEXT - splitting a body of text (a cutscene if you will)
User: BishyT / DateTime: 2010-04-02 19:08:36

Just a simple one.

There's a particularly important event in my game. A cutscene if you will. It's a very large body of text that when printed all at once almost fills up the entire screen.

Not only does it look bad to suddenly have this huge body of text appear out of nowhere, if there's a major spoiler in the cutscene (such as "No Luke, I AM your father!") there's a good chance the player's eyes will catch it before they find the top of the cutscene.

So I want to be able to split it into separate parts that appear one after another when the player presses enter. Does Inform have such a feature built in, or will I have to code this in myself. I already have a theory of how to code such a thing myself (i've already got a Multiple Choice Conversation System running), but I just wanna check if there's a simpler way to do it first.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1011&start=0#p5525
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: question about a piece of code
User: sqib / DateTime: 2010-04-02 19:15:02

yeah that is a lesson I am learning more and more.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1016&start=0#p5526
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: NEXT - splitting a body of text (a cutscene if you will)
User: George / DateTime: 2010-04-02 19:26:42

There is a simpler way -- include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short, and check the documentation for it. It works like this:

[code]
Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short

Textdump is a room.

When play begins:
    say "first paragraph[paragraph break]";
    wait for any key;
    say "second paragraph".
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1015&start=0#p5527
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Random Name Generation for NPCs
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-04-02 21:13:25

[quote="appleman"]Notice the 'hair part' remains coded back to Wizgo. I actually tried coding the following line to try and solve this:-

change the printed name of wizgo's hair to "[real name of wizgo]'s hair";

Which worked in so far as SHOWME was concerned, but crucially, typing:

>examine billy's hair

resulted in a no such thing exists again. Although examining Wizgo's hair worked fine... (?)[/quote]

Remember, we haven't changed the name of the Wizgo object--that's not possible. We're only working out ways to refer to the Wizgo object as something else, both in the parser and in the output. SHOWME and particularly TREE generally work with the actual names of objects, and thus they are always going to be [i]able[/i] to refer to the object as Wizgo, even if in some cases they use the printed name instead (this is how the hair in your example was correctly referred to as "Billy" even though the hair was identified as Wizgo's).

So, here's how you can do this. The basic set-up is the same; just as we had to break the normal parsing of our NPC's name, we now have to break the normal parsing of hair and substitute our own:

[code]hair is a kind of thing. Hair is part of every person. Hair is privately-named. Understand "[something related by reversed incorporation] hair" as hair. The printed name of Wizgo's hair is "[Wizgo]'s hair".[/code]

Note that this understand line for hair will match "Billy hair", not "Billy's hair". That's because Inform needs a space between tokens to understand them, and the apostrophe + s won't be correctly matched. So, we need to hack a bit to get rid of the apostrophe-s from the player's input before we try to parse it:

[code]After reading a command when the player's command includes "hair":
	let T be indexed text;
	let T be the player's command;
	replace the regular expression "[apostrophe]s hair" in T with " hair";
	change the text of the player's command to T;[/code]

Veering aside: If your people are really going to be this complicated, you might want to consider just keeping a stable of precreated characters off-stage to be swapped in as needed, rather than messing around with changing the name as we've been doing. This is much easier:

[code]Test is a room.

North of test is TesTube.
	
Wizgo is a man in Test.

Adam is a man.
Billy is a man.

First instead of jumping:
	let candidate be a random off-stage person;
	remove Wizgo from play;
	move the candidate to the location;
	say "Wow, now his name is [candidate]!"[/code]

The only real advantage of the first method is that the name you give to the person can be *any* text; you can generate it randomly, or you can even ask the player to provide the name. The more complicated the person who's having his name changed is, the more work you'll have to do to hide the seams. This second method requires that all the possible names be spelled out in advance, and created as separate people, but it's otherwise far easier.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1017&start=0#p5528
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: TADS 3 development discussion moves to LiveJournal
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-04-02 22:19:51

I'm just cross-posting this from [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/691daad3844578a9#]r.a.i-f[/url], in case anyone here is interested and hasn't heard. 

[quote="Mike Roberts"]If you're a member of the tads 3 mailing list, or you were thinking about 
joining, I want to let you know that the list has been reborn as a 
livejournal community, at <a class="postlink" href="http://tads3.livejournal.com">http://tads3.livejournal.com</a>.  The server where 
the list was hosted can no longer accommodate us, so I had to find a new 
home for the list.  But rather than just move the list, I took the 
opportunity to consider about other approaches besides another mailing list, 
and came up with this.

I sent out a separate email message to everyone who was on the tads 3 list 
as of its recent demise, but I'm posting here as a backup in case anyone 
missed that email.  The mail forwarder has already been out of commission 
for a couple of weeks, so if you sent anything to the list recently, it 
probably never got distributed to the group.  If you think anything got 
lost, you can simply re-post it on the new system.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1016&start=0#p5529
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: NEXT - splitting a body of text (a cutscene if you will)
User: BishyT / DateTime: 2010-04-02 22:39:54

Thanks for that, really helpful.

Second thing. Something is a part of my main character. I want him to be able to show that part to an NPC, but when he does it says "that appears to be a part of yourself". How do I fix this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1016&start=0#p5530
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: NEXT - splitting a body of text (a cutscene if you will)
User: George / DateTime: 2010-04-02 23:13:00

[size=115][b]note[/b]: I wrote a rather long post at first and perhaps got a little carried away. A simple solution to this problem is just this:

[code]
Instead of showing a tattoo to someone:
	say "describe the tattoo here".
[/code]

If you're interested in the original post, it follows...[/size]


What I recommend for solving problems like this is using the 'rules' and 'trace' debug commands to find out what is going on under the Inform hood when you do a command. 

First, with this example code:

[code]
The Concholarium is a room.

A tattoo is a kind of thing. A tattoo is part of every person. 

Eco is a man in the Concholarium.

test me with "show my tattoo to eco"
[/code]

Consider this transcript:

[quote]
[b]Welcome[/b]
An Interactive Fiction
Release 1 / Serial number 100402 / Inform 7 build 5Z71 (I6/v6.31 lib 6/12N) SD

[b]Concholarium[/b]
You can see Eco here.

>rules
Rules tracing now switched on. Type "rules off" to switch it off again, or "rules all" to include even rules which do not apply.

>trace
[Trace on.]

>test me
[Parsing for the verb 'test' (2 lines)]
[line 0 * -> TestScript]
[line 1 * special -> TestScript]
[Line successfully parsed]
(Testing.)

>[1] [b]show my tattoo to eco[/b]
[Parsing for the verb 'show' (2 lines)]
[line 0 * creature held -> Show reverse]
[line 1 * held 'to' creature -> Show]
[Line successfully parsed]
(first taking your tattoo)
[Rule "can't take yourself rule" applies.]
[Rule "can't take other people rule" applies.]
[Rule "can't take component parts rule" applies.]
That seems to be a part of yourself.
[/quote]

So you see what is firing, and what causes that message, and this suggests a possible solution -- modifying the[i] can't take component parts rule[/i]. Where is this rule exactly? The first place to look is in the Index/Actions tab, for the taking action. And looking at the check rules for taking, we see the rule:

[quote]
[b]Rules controlling this action
[/b]

check   [i] an actor taking[/i]  [color=#BF4040]can't take yourself rule [/color]   

check    [i]an actor taking[/i]  [color=#BF4040]can't take other people rule [/color]  

check    [i]an actor taking[/i]  [color=#BF4040]can't take component parts rule[/color]
[/quote]

So, a quick way to modify this behavior is to modify that rule. For example:

[code]
A procedural rule: if the noun is a tattoo then ignore the can't take component parts rule.
[/code]

Which results in the following transcript:

[quote]
[b]Welcome[/b]
An Interactive Fiction
Release 1 / Serial number 100402 / Inform 7 build 5Z71 (I6/v6.31 lib 6/12N) SD

[b]Concholarium[/b]
You can see Eco here.

>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] [b]show my tattoo to eco[/b]
(first taking your tattoo)
Eco is unimpressed.

>
[/quote]

Now this solution doesn't seem very good to me, because of that (first taking your tattoo) message, which doesn't make any sense. I guessed that this message is printed as part of an activity rather than a rule, so I looked in the activities section of the docs (chapter 17), and found a likely candidate -- 17.32, Implicitly taking something, since that is basically what's happening with that message.

The docs say this:
[quote]
1. When it happens. When an action is tried which requires the actor (normally the player, of course) to be carrying something, but which is not in fact carried by that person. For instance, if the player types WEAR OVERCOAT in reference to a Moroccan overcoat currently draped over a chair. 


2. The default behaviour. To print text such as "(first taking the Moroccan overcoat)" and then silently try taking the object in question (the overcoat). If the take succeeds, the silence means that nothing else is printed: if it fails, it will say why. 
[/quote]

Modifying an activity is similar to the procedural rule, so the first thing to try is something like this:

[code]
Rule for implicitly taking something (called the target) when the target is a tattoo:
	try silently taking the target.
[/code]

And that gives us this better transcript:

[quote]
[b]Welcome[/b]
An Interactive Fiction
Release 1 / Serial number 100402 / Inform 7 build 5Z71 (I6/v6.31 lib 6/12N) SD

[b]Concholarium[/b]
You can see Eco here.

>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] [b]show my tattoo to eco[/b]
Eco is unimpressed.

>
[/quote]

At this point I'm satisfied, however there may be other gotchas involved that I haven't accounted for. I'll leave it to you to discover these, as well as maybe change what Eco thinks of your tattoo. [emote]:)[/emote]


[size=115][b]and an end note:[/b]  the thing that made me go back over the post was when I noticed an obvious thing -- allowing the implicit take ends up with the tattoo in your inventory, a less than desirable situation. So in this case allowing the show command to run may not be the best thing to do, but the instead rule probably can work for what you want to do.[/size]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1015&start=0#p5531
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Random Name Generation for NPCs
User: appleman / DateTime: 2010-04-03 05:59:39

Thanks - this worked wonders.

Yea I was trying to build up a huge stock of names (hundreds) within a table, so that a character's identity could genuinely be a surprise not just to the reader, but also to me the author.  I suppose one of the reason's I'm attracted to writing IF, is the idea that the author can enjoy the finished product just as much as the reader can -- with the random element being the central component.  Consider a whodunnit, where the culprit turns out to be [i]Howard Rivers, 68 years old, Occupation: Marine Biologist[/i] etc.  Rather than the author already having a preloaded idea that it's [i]got[/i] to be either Adam, Billy, or Christopher etc... [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1016&start=0#p5532
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: NEXT - splitting a body of text (a cutscene if you will)
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-04-03 09:15:59

Why not just change the tattoo back to being part of the player after showing it to Eco? This line should do it: [code]After showing a tattoo to someone: now the noun is part of the player.[/code] (Though, I'm one of those people who has to try everything three times to make it work right because I forget stupid things.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1007&start=0#p5533
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle feedback
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-04-03 09:24:04

On a related topic, I'm trying to code a special link (a mirror to the ceiling). The point is to make the ceiling reflective. I can't figure out what to make this do to the mirror, though - the only thing I can think of is making it non-reflective, which won't be acceptable.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1007&start=0#p5534
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle feedback
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-04-03 09:43:23

Do you want all of the changes to objects to be useful? If not, you could have the mirror's surface take on a texture appropriate to the ceiling, e.g. swirls of raised ridges like a plaster ceiling might have. It wouldn't really change the capabilities of the mirror (it could still reflect, though with distortion).

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1007&start=0#p5535
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle feedback
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-04-03 09:53:11

Ah, good idea. No, I don't need the mirror to gain any additional use from the link, so that works. Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1018&start=0#p5536
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: How long to make a game?
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-04-03 12:11:40

How long are typical works of amateur (by which I just mean non-commercial) IF? My game is either almost done or just getting started, and I honestly can't tell. I don't know how long it would take the average player to get through it, but it's around 5000 words of I7 code. (That's probably way to short to release, isn't it?)

EDIT: If it matters, I haven't coded the help system yet, and most room descriptions are very short.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1018&start=0#p5537
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How long to make a game?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-04-03 12:32:47

My experience is that when you think you're almost done, you're halfway there. And when you think you're all done and start beta testing, you're again only halfway there.

It's hard to say how much code is "required" before the game is ready to publish, but 5000 words does sound like there can't be content for a very long gameplay (an average IFComp-size game with 2 hours of gameplay is by my rough estimate at around 30 000-50 000 words.) Although it's not as much a question of the number of words, but how well the game works. The easiest way to find out is to get some testers to try it out and give feedback.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1018&start=0#p5538
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How long to make a game?
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-04-03 12:41:11

I was afraid of that, but thanks. I'm not sure I can get much more gameplay out of this concept, though... Hm. In retrospect, I should have thought my idea out more fully before I started coding. There just aren't that many puzzles I can create using it.

Maybe it's time to start over with a new concept?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1018&start=0#p5539
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How long to make a game?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-04-03 12:59:59

Short games aren't in no ways inherently inferior to longer ones. There are many well-liked games that are extremely short (for example Pick Up the Phone Booth and Die.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1018&start=0#p5540
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How long to make a game?
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-04-03 13:04:22

I know, but those short games probably have a lot of content in them, right? Mine has all of four puzzles, three of which are ridiculously easy and one of which is much harder.

I think I fail.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1016&start=0#p5541
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: NEXT - splitting a body of text (a cutscene if you will)
User: George / DateTime: 2010-04-03 13:15:03

That will work, but you do need to ensure the showing rule succeeds (by turning off the block showing rule in some manner).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1012&start=0#p5542
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Extension Census 2010
User: George / DateTime: 2010-04-03 13:21:41

Mike likes the idea and put it on his feature list for IFDB, but it may be a while before he rolls it out (I'm guessing here that he wants to distinguish extensions from games in the DB). In fact he had already thought of having IF development systems pages. Sounds good to me, unless Aaron wants to move faster given his own schedule?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1018&start=0#p5543
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How long to make a game?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-04-03 13:24:08

Nope. By short game I mean little content, and perhaps just one puzzle.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1019&start=0#p5544
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: "Custom Understanding" for I7 - Should I make it?
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-04-03 13:49:43

Random idea I had a while ago and am considering making: An extension which can be added to any Inform 7 game and lets the player make up their own synonyms for things and actions. For example, lets pretend that you're playing a game with Enchanter's memorization system, and dislike having to type out "memorize" all the time. If the game used this extension, you could type the command "understand m as memorize" and then use "m" for memorizing spells. Or, if a game had a rideable horse and no other rideable things, you could type "understand ride as ride horse", and then use "ride" to get on the horse. It will be prevented from overwriting existing vocabulary (eg. you can't use "s" for something).

So, should I make this? Would it be at all useful?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1019&start=0#p5545
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: "Custom Understanding" for I7 - Should I make it?
User: George / DateTime: 2010-04-03 14:32:35

I think alias systems like this are useful for text games in basically two situations, when the number of game verbs and interactions are huge, and when you are playing a game daily for a long time. For example, a mud qualifies in both these regards, and so alias systems are quite common (either implemented in the client, the game, or both). Furthermore muds are frequently real-time, where typing speed is critical, and aliases obviously help there. 

However there are relatively few IF works like that, and I'd say that if your players are finding themselves abbreviating common commands in your IF, you probably should catch that at the testing phase and just implement the alias yourself. 

Now if your IF [i]was [/i]huge and meant to be played a lot (like a big RPG perhaps) I can see the utility, and it'd be worth it to develop the extension for that kind of game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1014&start=0#p5546
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: "How to Play IF" card
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2010-04-03 16:33:26

Those are so cool. I'm going to get some printed to drop into packages when my WIP is finished - wWhen I do, I'll check with you and Emily to see how your supplies are. If you're at all running low I'll get some extras made and send them out. 

The "Uncle Zarf" bit is very cute. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1013&start=0#p5547
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Planner in I7
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-04-03 17:54:08

I wrote an article in SPAG that compared Planner to another extension.  It's an easier read than Planner's documentation, so it may help you:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/backissues/spag52.html#wisdom">http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/backissue ... tml#wisdom</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1018&start=0#p5548
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How long to make a game?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-04-03 18:08:55

I absolutely agree with Juhana. Make the game as long as it needs to be, and no longer.

To give an example, "Byzantine Perspective" from the last IFComp was basically one-and-a-half puzzles, and it won the XYZZY award for best individual puzzle. (Admittedly, some people said that it should have had more backstory, but those people were wrong.  [emote];)[/emote] [Also, thank heaven for custom smilies, which solve the "How do you put an emoticon in parentheses?" problem.])

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1019&start=0#p5549
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: "Custom Understanding" for I7 - Should I make it?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-04-03 21:49:04

Cool idea, though it would be even better if interpreters did this instead of the games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1020&start=0#p5550
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: 2 Second Pause In-Game
User: appleman / DateTime: 2010-04-04 11:17:47

Does anyone know of a way that a 2-second pause can be implemented within a project?

I've been playing around with Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short.  I like the 'Wait for Any Key' routine and I have been trying to modify it to wait for 2 seconds rather than a key-press, but alas, I'm not familiar with the source code and have had no luck thus far.

I like the idea of occasional timed pauses between paragraphs.  i.e:

You go west...

(2 second pause)

Gronbach is here!  He hits you over the forehead with the aluminium tongs.  Ouch!
You are dead.  Your score was 12/180.


etc etc

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1020&start=0#p5551
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 Second Pause In-Game
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-04-04 11:27:28

I've wondered about this, too. I'm not sure if it's exactly possible, but you can use the same trick I do on when programming my calculator: do some very complex math repeatedly. This will force the program to stop for a while, though timing it exactly will be a matter of trial and error. I usually use a bunch of nested trig functions on the calculator, but for I7, you would probably want to use something involving randomization. Something like this: [code]let the pause-time be 50;
while the pause-time is not 0:
	now the pause-time is the pause-time - 1;
	if a random chance of 1 in 500 succeeds:
		do nothing.[/code]

(I have absolutely no idea how long that code will pause for, and you'd probably want to start with smaller numbers to prevent an absurdly long pause that you can't break out of.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1014&start=0#p5552
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: "How to Play IF" card
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-04-04 12:15:04

Secretly I was thinking of "Uncle Shelby's ABZ" when I wrote that. My first draft had much wilder font changes, for that crazy vibe.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1020&start=0#p5553
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 Second Pause In-Game
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-04-04 12:22:05

I've written an extension that does this. I haven't submitted it to the extension archive yet (actually, I did, but long story...), but it's been posted on the net a couple of times:

<a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Real-Time%20Delays.i7x">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Real-Time%20Delays.i7x</a>

This is Glulx-only.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1020&start=0#p5554
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 Second Pause In-Game
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-04-04 12:22:23

It is possible, although I don't have the code right on me. You can set up a timer event. There's probably an extension somewhere.

(Definitely don't do a busy-wait loop, which is what biophysicist's code does. Sorry. It's horrible for the UI, and it guarantees that the interpreter will use up as much battery as possible on a laptop or mobile device.)

But timed pauses are very tricky, because everybody reads at a different speed. It is certain that some people will get frustrated waiting for the pause to end, and others won't even reach the break before the pause ends. (Yes, it is possible to get bored waiting two seconds. It is possible to get bored waiting *half* a second.)

At a mininum, be sure that the player can hit space to end the pause.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1020&start=0#p5555
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 Second Pause In-Game
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-04-04 12:23:46

Crossed posts, I see... I told you there was an extension.

But accepting any key is still better than requiring an escape.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1019&start=0#p5556
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: "Custom Understanding" for I7 - Should I make it?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-04-04 12:28:36

My early Mac (and X-windows) interpreters had a "macro" function -- you could set cmd-numberkey combos to specific commands or partial commands.

I wound up never using that functionality, however. I'm not sure anybody else did either. Command-history (up and down arrows) and copy-paste, combined with reasonable abbreviations in the game, seem to satisfy people.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1021&start=0#p5557
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Dipping into Inform 7, some questions
User: Defiant / DateTime: 2010-04-04 12:29:12

So I'm trying to dabble with using Inform 7, and I have some questions.   I started off with the complimentary peanuts example in the documentation, trying to explore conversation.  The code I've written is below.   I tried adding in the ability to ask quesitons (and make statements" of characters (eg, "Mr Green, Who is Professor Plum?", "green, Where is Plum?", "green, Where was plum at 3:30pm?", "green, where was the murder", "green, when was the murder?", "green, plum was in the study at 2pm").  

I have some of it working to a certain degree.  I look up in a table to try to determine what kind of question it is, which sends me to another table, where I can narrow down the question and return an answer.

1.  How can I refer to rooms?  eg, "Where is the study?"

2.  Some weirdness comes into referring to people.  I'm not sure if it's because the person is not visible, but I can refer to Mr Plum, but not Plum or Professor Plum (I can refer to green or Mr Green, who is in the room)

eg, "Green, who is Plum" does not work, but "Green, who is Mr Plum" does.

3.  My questions seem to work as long as I don't have a question mark in it.

eg, "green, where is green" works, but not "green, where is green?".  Changing the table so it has "Where is [person]?" doesn't fix this.

4. I wan't to be able to create events, where an event has a start time, an end time, a location and maybe a description.  How do I do this?

This is so that I can make the game understand "Wherewas the [event]" or "When was the [event]"

eg,  "Green, where was the party" (The party was in the ball room), "Green, when was the murder" (The murder was between 5pm and 6pm). 

5. Is there any way to get it understand multiple tokens in a table?  

eg.  "Where was [person] at [time]"  "Plum was in [room] at [time]"

6.  How do I modify time, apart from "to the nearest 10 minutes"  eg, say I have a time, say 4:20 pm, and I want to set one time to 4pm and another time to 5pm.

7. I'm trying to copy information from one table to another while modifying it at the same time, but having problems with it.  I save the information (in this case, the roomname entry) as locationOfPlum, and I want to add "I heard he was in the [locationOfPlum]") but I get an error message that it was expecting locationOfPlum to be something to say and it isn't.  This even though I'm able to use it to say something on the next line.

Thanks in advance.

[code]"Clue"

The Library is a room. "A room full of books, with some chairs and a desk." 
The study is a room.

Mr Green is a man in the Library.  Professor Plum is a man in the study. Professor plum is a person. Understand "plum" as professor plum.  Understand "Mr Plum" as Professor plum.  A book is  in the library.  A chair is in the library.  A desk is in the library. A box is in the study.  boddy is a person in the study.
Asking someone about something is speech.
Telling someone about something is speech.
Answering someone that something is speech.
Asking someone for something is speech.

Table 1 - Type of Question
topic	numnouns	tabname		commentary
"Hello"	0	Table 2	"'Why, hello there'"
"Who is [person]"	1	Table 2	-- [2 refering to Mr Plum works, but not professor plum or plum]
"Where is [room]"	1	Table 4	--  [1 why does this not work ?]
"Where was [person]"	1	Table 5	-- 
"Where is [person]"	1	Table 6	--
"Where is [thing]"	1	Table 4	--
"Where were you at [time]"		10	Table 10	"test succeeds"
"Where was plum at [time]"	10	Table 11	"test succeeds" [5 I'd prefer to have "Where was [person] at [time]", but that doesn't work]

Table 2 - subjects
topic	commentary
"green"	"'That's me!'"
"plum"	"'He's an absent minded professor'"

Table 4
topic	commentary
"library"	"'Why, this is the library'"
"the study"	"'The study is to the east'"

Table 5
topic	commentary
"green"	"'I was right here'"
"plum"	"'I'm not entirely sure'"

Table 6
topic	commentary
"green"	"'I'm right here'"

Table 10
timestart	timeend	commentary
3 pm	4 pm	"'I was reading in the study'"
4 pm	6 pm	"'I was playing pool in the billiards room.  Or is it billiards in the pool room?'"

Table 11
timestart	timeend	commentary
4 pm	6 pm	"'He was playing pool with me in the billiards room'"
with 20 blank rows

Table 100 - statements
topic	tabletochange	roomname
"plum was in the study at [time]"	Table 11	"study"	
"plum was in the billiards room at [time]"	Table 11	"billiards room"
"plum was in the lounge at [time]"	Table 11	"lounge"

The tablelookup is a table-name that varies.  The tablelookup is Table 1.

Instead of speech when the noun is Mr Green:
	repeat through Table 1:
		if the topic understood includes topic entry:	
			if numnouns entry is 0:
				 say "[commentary entry]";
				rule succeeds;
			if numnouns entry is 1:
				Change the tablelookup to tabname entry;
				repeat through tablelookup:
					if the topic understood includes topic entry:
						say "[commentary entry][paragraph break]";
						rule succeeds;
			if numnouns entry is 10:
				Change the tablelookup to tabname entry;
				repeat through tablelookup:
					if the time understood is after timestart entry and the time understood is before timeend entry:
						say "[commentary entry][paragraph break]";
						rule succeeds;
					if the time understood is the timestart entry:
						say "[commentary entry][paragraph break]";
						rule succeeds;
			say "'I don't know'";
			rule succeeds;
	repeat through Table 100:
		if the topic understood includes topic entry:
			let locationofPlum be the roomname entry;
			change tablelookup to tabletochange entry;
			choose a blank row in tablelookup;
			change timestart entry to time understood; [ 6 I want to set this to the start of the current hour]
			change timeend entry to time understood; [ 6 I want to set this to the end of the current hour]
			change commentary entry to locationofPlum;  [ 7 Why can't I change this to "I heard he was at the [locationofPlum] at that time"?]
			say "'Oh, he was in the [locationofPlum]?'"; [ 7 Why does this work? ]
			rule succeeds;
	say "'Hmmf,' says Mr Green.";
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1020&start=0#p5558
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 Second Pause In-Game
User: George / DateTime: 2010-04-04 12:33:59

[quote="zarf"]
But timed pauses are very tricky, because everybody reads at a different speed. It is certain that some people will get frustrated waiting for the pause to end, and others won't even reach the break before the pause ends. (Yes, it is possible to get bored waiting two seconds. It is possible to get bored waiting *half* a second.)

At a mininum, be sure that the player can hit space to end the pause.[/quote]

Have to agree there, and I think allowing space/enter to continue is considered 'good behavior' in timed dialogs in graphical games as well (i.e., of the sort where the character talks in a dialog box, and then after a bit a new box comes up with more dialog). Imagine if your player has played the game multiple times -- they may just want to skip through certain dialog. 

An 'average' reading speed is 4 words per second, though I'm guessing most IF readers will be well above that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1020&start=0#p5559
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 Second Pause In-Game
User: appleman / DateTime: 2010-04-04 13:46:58

Thanks for the help - the extension is just what I was looking for.

I can imagine that too much usage of timed pauses would be irritating.  For my purposes however, just now and again is perfect.  Or even just a 1.0 second pause after the player moves into a new room: to give a slight impression of movement.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1020&start=0#p5560
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 Second Pause In-Game
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-04-04 15:03:22

Good point about allowing Enter and Spacebar for delays of this kind. I threw this extension together for someone who asked for it on RAIF, cannibalizing code I had used to create delays for animation--i.e., delays I didn't [i]want[/i] the player to be able to stop. I distinctly remember that the original person who asked for this code didn't want the player to be able to "fast-forward," but as a fast reader I definitely think Zarf is right about the potential for boredom/annoyance, and in the context of this extension it makes a lot more sense to have multiple keys that can forward the action. For now, I've gone with Return, Enter, Space, and Escape, though I'd also be open to allowing any old key to do it. We'll see if any input rolls in from users/players.

I've updated the [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Real-Time%20Delays.i7x]extension[/url] to make this change, and I've also removed the need for Michael Callaghan's Fixed Point Maths extension--you now provide the time in milliseconds rather than seconds.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1020&start=0#p5561
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 Second Pause In-Game
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-04-04 15:21:01

In addition to points people have given above, one major problem with timed pauses is that when the pause ends and the game continues, the new text pushes the old higher in the screen. If the player is still reading the old text the jolt makes them lose the spot where they were and search it again so that they can continue reading. If there are several timed pauses in succession there's not much more to do than to stop reading, wait for the pausing to stop and read the whole thing when you know it's not bouncing around uncontrollably anymore.

I'm not saying timed pauses can't be done right, but if you're going to have them, it's pretty much mandatory to get other people to try the game out before the release to see what they think of the effect.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1021&start=0#p5562
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dipping into Inform 7, some questions
User: BishyT / DateTime: 2010-04-04 15:22:04

I'm fairly new to Inform too, so I can't help you for most of your questions.

For the events however (question 4), it looks like you'll have to create a new kind. Typing this from the top of my head (you'll probably have to do some additional stuff to get it to work the way you want to, though hopefully what i'm about to type will be enough to get the cogs turning):

[code]
A Happening is a kind of thing.
A Happening has a Location value.
A Happening can be dull, fun or shocking (this is the description property).

The Party is a Happening. Its Location is The Ballroom. It is fun.
The Murder is a Happening. Its Location is The Study. It is shocking.[/code]


Then when you want to refer to it, you use "Where was [happening]?". If the NPC isn't important, and you don't want to waste time typing out a unique response for every event, you can then say "Oh, [the noun]! [description of the item described] wasn't it? That took place in [location of the item described].", which can then generate either "Oh, the party! Fun wasn't it? That took place in The Ballroom." or "Oh, the murder! Shocking wasn't it? That took place in The Study."

Once you get comfortable with this, you could then even extend the Happening kind to include a time and date, allowing you to ask WHEN the Happening took place.

Hope this helps.


EDIT: Oh, and one more thing. You'll probably want to make sure it's impossible for the player to ask about a certain event before it's happened.
For this, we add to the above code:

[code]A Happening can be unrecorded, planned or recorded (this is the record property).[/code]

By placing "unrecorded" first on the list, all Happenings will be unrecorded by default. It's then just a matter of using the necessary checks to change the response based on the record property.

If the party is unrecorded, Green could say: "Party? What are you blathering on about?"
If it's planned, Green could say: "Oh, the Party? That'll be in the Ballroom as soon as Peacock gets her act together."
And finally, if it's recorded, Green could say: "Oh, the Party? That took place in the Ballroom. I don't blame you for forgetting, frightfully dull wasn't it?"

And then all you need to do to change the status would be to say:
[code]now The Party is planned.[/code]
During an event, and the record property we set will change.

So to recap, The Party (like all Happenings) start off "unrecorded" by default (due to it being first in the list). It hasn't happened yet.
In a later dialogue one of the characters suggests an impromptu party in The Ballroom. Now The Party is planned.
Later on (once Mrs.Peacock has gotten her act together, lol) the party happens. Now The Party is recorded.

So yes, this should stop the player from being able to ask about a Happening before it, well, happens. [emote]:P[/emote]

Good lord what a handful. I'm terrible at explaining things so I hope you got something from this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1020&start=0#p5563
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 Second Pause In-Game
User: BishyT / DateTime: 2010-04-04 15:50:52

While we're on the subject of delayed text (something I myself was looking for in the form of Emily Short's Basic Screen Effect's "wait for any key"), is there an extension that has the text "typed" to you rather than appear as a block?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1013&start=0#p5564
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Planner in I7
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-04-04 16:00:24

A fuller answer:

[quote="Bremagorn"]Will Planner work appropriately for having a large number (say 8) goal seeking characters moving around or would that bog it down too much?[/quote]

That should be fine.  It's the number of planning rules that will determine speed.  (Any rule, multiply the time it takes by the number of people you have.)   So if your model world doesn't use, say, locked doors as obstacles, then don't add the rules for locking / unlocking doors.   

Also, you can list what order you want your planning rules in.  Put the commonest early in the rulebook and the rarely-used last.  There might be some constraints on ordering to prevent problems that I get into below.

[quote="Bremagorn"]Do I need to create a separate table of plans for each of the NPCs or do they share the same one?[/quote]

IIRC, I believe they share the same one.  IIRC.

[quote="Bremagorn"]In Planner, if the primary goal is met early for one NPC, but then through other NPC actions becomes unmet, is there anything special I need to do to get the original NPC moving again or will it happen automagically?[/quote]

Automagic, but with a caveat.  Planner NPCs have no memory, so yes, if an NPC undoes another's task, the first one will ensure it is done again.  The problem is, NPCs do their task list in order, rather than seeing which one of a group of tasks would be efficiently accomplished if it is done next.  So if an NPC undoes another's task, the affected NPC will likely drop what he's doing to go re-do the earlier task.  That will likely look unnatural.  Example: if the middle task is to Open the Iron Gate, the NPC will do so, passing through it and doing whatever needs be done on the other side.  But if a later NPC closes the Gate after walking through -- even if it was simply because he's tidy -- the first NPC will immediately go back and open the gate, then return to what he was doing, even though whether the gate is open or closed is moot once you're on the correct side of it! 

Obviously, the AI programmer should state the first NPC's goal as "be in place X" rather than "open and go through door Y" to prevent those kinds of snafus; your planning rules will instruct him to do whatever needs be done for conquering obstacles.  You'll also need to write some rules for the purpose of debugging what all NPCs are doing, and look carefully for inefficiencies of that sort.  It's not enough to know [i]what[/i] an NPC is doing, which will be frequently correct, but you must also keep in mind [i]why[/i] he is doing it, because that's where many AI errors occur.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1021&start=0#p5565
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dipping into Inform 7, some questions
User: Defiant / DateTime: 2010-04-04 16:23:41

This was helpful.

Turns out, you can't call it a happening, presumably because it is a keyword.  Also, the event has to be in the room the player and green are in to be referred to.

So this almost works:

[code]
An event is a kind of thing.
An event has a text called event location. 
An event has a time called beginning time.  An event has a time called end time.
An event can be dull, fun or shocking.

The Party is an event. It has an event location "The Ballroom". It is fun.  It has a beginning time 8 pm.  It has an end time 11 pm.
The Murder is an event.  It has an event location "The Study". It is shocking.  It has a beginning time 1 am.  It has an end time 2 am.

The Party is in the library.
The Murder is in the library.
[/code]

[code]"where was the [event]"	20	--	"'Oh, [the noun]! It was in [event location of the noun].'"
"when was the [event]"	20	--	"'Oh, [the noun]! It was from [beginning time of the noun] to [end time of the noun].'"[/code]

Except that the events are physical objects in the actual library.

And you're right, I hadn't considered that one should take into account the before and after (and during) of an event.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1020&start=10#p5566
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 Second Pause In-Game
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-04-04 16:32:02

[quote="BishyT"]While we're on the subject of delayed text (something I myself was looking for in the form of Emily Short's Basic Screen Effect's "wait for any key"), is there an extension that has the text "typed" to you rather than appear as a block?[/quote]

I just posted an answer to this, but it seems to have been eaten... I've added an example to the [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Real-Time%20Delays.i7x]Real-Time Delay extension[/url] that shows how to do this.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1021&start=0#p5567
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dipping into Inform 7, some questions
User: Defiant / DateTime: 2010-04-04 16:39:19

[quote="Defiant"]
2.  Some weirdness comes into referring to people.  I'm not sure if it's because the person is not visible, but I can refer to Mr Plum, but not Plum or Professor Plum (I can refer to green or Mr Green, who is in the room)

eg, "Green, who is Plum" does not work, but "Green, who is Mr Plum" does.
[/quote]

Turns out that this ties in with the above issue.  Apparently it thinks the Mr in Mr Plum is Mr Green, but gives me the response for plum cause plum is in the question.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1013&start=0#p5568
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Planner in I7
User: Bremagorn / DateTime: 2010-04-04 17:00:31

Thanks for all your answers. I've made some headway, but may put this on a back burner for later right now. After reading your in depth review of the two and observing the Alchemy game Nate included, this may or may not be a tool I can use. Nevertheless, it's going to take quite a while to implement it fully and for the idea I was working on, I need some of the NPCs to start doing things right away. I think I'll shelve this particular idea until I'm more adept with I7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1021&start=0#p5569
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dipping into Inform 7, some questions
User: BishyT / DateTime: 2010-04-04 17:02:36

First of all, the problem of the events being actual physical objects.

Instead of "a kind of thing", try "a kind of backdrop", and then tell it that "an event is everywhere". Backdrops aren't items so they can't be picked up (you'd usually use backdrops for things such as a moon that you can see in every outdoor room), and they can be placed everywhere without problem (though i'm not sure of the exact wording you use).

As for the characters thing, try setting them up like this.

A man called Green is here.
Understand "Mr Green" or "Mr.Green" as Green.

A man called Plum is here.
Understand "Mr Plum" or "Mr.Plum" as Plum.

Now the player can type "Mr Plum" and it'll automatically be seen as Plum, and "Mr Green" as Green.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1021&start=0#p5570
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dipping into Inform 7, some questions
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-04-04 17:26:18

You'll probably need to do something about the periods in titles, as well. Otherwise, it breaks the command into two at the period.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1021&start=0#p5571
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dipping into Inform 7, some questions
User: Defiant / DateTime: 2010-04-04 17:56:18

[quote="BishyT"]First of all, the problem of the events being actual physical objects.

Instead of "a kind of thing", try "a kind of backdrop", and then tell it that "an event is everywhere". Backdrops aren't items so they can't be picked up (you'd usually use backdrops for things such as a moon that you can see in every outdoor room), and they can be placed everywhere without problem (though i'm not sure of the exact wording you use).
[/quote]

OK, this works.  Thanks.  (I had to make the descriptive text not a description, so the player couldn't examine the event.)

[quote]
As for the characters thing, try setting them up like this.

A man called Green is here.
Understand "Mr Green" or "Mr.Green" as Green.

A man called Plum is here.
Understand "Mr Plum" or "Mr.Plum" as Plum.

Now the player can type "Mr Plum" and it'll automatically be seen as Plum, and "Mr Green" as Green.[/quote]

Unfortunately, that's not the problem.  The problem is that I want Plum to be in a different location then green.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1021&start=0#p5572
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dipping into Inform 7, some questions
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-04-04 18:20:40

[quote](I had to make the descriptive text not a description, so the player couldn't examine the event.)[/quote]
If I'm understanding you right, you want to make it so that the player can't "x [an event]" or "take [an event]", etc. If this is the case, just use the following code: [code]Instead of doing anything to an event: say "You can't see any such thing."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1021&start=0#p5573
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dipping into Inform 7, some questions
User: George / DateTime: 2010-04-04 18:58:51

[quote="Defiant"][quote="BishyT"]First of all, the problem of the events being actual physical objects.

Unfortunately, that's not the problem.  The problem is that I want Plum to be in a different location then green.[/quote][/quote]

Do you mean you want to refer to, say, Plum when he's not in the room? Then you may need to change the scoping activity for the player. Look up deciding the scope of the player in the activities section of the docs. However you may be able to get around this by not rolling your own conversation code -- look at Eric Eve's conversation extensions, particularly Conversation Framework I think.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1021&start=0#p5574
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dipping into Inform 7, some questions
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-04-04 19:22:58

Actually, I think he means just having them in different rooms from each other, so the "events-as-physical-objects" approach wouldn't work (though using a backdrop fixes this nicely).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1021&start=10#p5575
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dipping into Inform 7, some questions
User: Defiant / DateTime: 2010-04-04 19:37:57

Backdrops does work for events, and increasing scope does work (to some extent) for people (and other objects), though I'm trying to figure out how to prevent the player from interacting with objects not in the same location as the player (except when asking questions).

[code]
After deciding the scope of the player:
	place the location of the player in scope;
	repeat with outside stuff running through things: 
		unless the outside stuff is in the location, place the outside stuff in scope;
		[instead of doing anything to outside stuff, say "You can't see any such thing.";]
	repeat with other place running through rooms: 
		unless the other place is the location, place the other place in scope;
[/code]



  It also has the benefit of addressing my first question, since all rooms, including the one the player is in, are now in scope.

Putting in the "instead of" line gives me the error message that it doesn't recognize it, even though it works for events.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1021&start=10#p5576
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dipping into Inform 7, some questions
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-04-04 20:03:06

[quote="Defiant"]Backdrops does work for events, and increasing scope does work (to some extent) for people (and other objects), though I'm trying to figure out how to prevent the player from interacting with objects not in the same location as the player (except when asking questions).[/quote]

George's advice on this point was good: check out Eric Eve's conversation system, which extends the very minimal system built into Inform. You don't necessarily have to use his extensions (though I'd recommend you at least give them some time to see how useful they'd be), but you can definitely learn something from them.

Like how to solve this scoping issue, for example. If you first tell Inform what "known" means (from Eric's Epistemology extension):

[code]A thing can be familiar or unfamiliar. A thing is usually unfamiliar.

Carry out examining something visible (this is the mark items as seen on examining rule):
 now the noun is familiar;
 now the noun is seen.

Definition: a thing is known if it is familiar or it is seen.

Definition: a thing is unknown if it is not known.

An event is familiar. [/code]

..then you don't need to have the events in the same room as the player any more (you can just create the even objects off-stage). This kind of grammar is really all you need to talk about things that are not in the room (from Conversation Framework):
[code]
Quizzing it about is an action applying to two visible things.
Understand "ask [someone] about [any known thing]" as quizzing it about.[/code] 

In the "any known thing" token, the "any" tells Inform that the grammar should match any object in the game, regardless of where it is--this happens separately from any scoping rules you might write (so you also don't need to mess with scoping rules when you do it this way). Meanwhile, the "known" allows the player to refer only to objects that he already knows about (either he's seen them in the course of the game, or the author has previously marked them as "familiar"). So now the player can in principle refer to anything in the game, but we restrict that by using the adjective "known".

(Note: the any known thing token will not work unless the grammar has been defined as referring to [i]visible[/i] things. "Visible" really means "in scope", and the "any" token will place all known things in scope--they thus become "visible" in this sense, even though the player can't actually see them. It's a bit confusing...)

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1021&start=10#p5577
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dipping into Inform 7, some questions
User: Defiant / DateTime: 2010-04-05 00:59:40

That conversational system works for "ask green about plum" or "tell green about plum", but AFAICT it doesn't work in the form of "green, [something]" like "green, where is plum"

As a side issue, if I try to get it to understand "green, tell me about [person]" (as an alternative to "who is [person]) or "green, describe the [event]" (instead of "how was the [event]")  they don't work.  I'm guessing this is because Inform thinks I'm commanding Green to do something rather than asking - where is this action defined in inform?    

Funnily enough, "green, describe [person]" works.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=235&start=0#p5578
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Ideas to turn a single player adventure into multi-player
User: Defiant / DateTime: 2010-04-05 01:32:46

There's actually a multiplayer game written in Inform 6 based on [url=http://www.ifarchive.info/if-archive/games/source/inform/werewolf.inf]Werewolf[/url].

A less interesting way (but still potentially useful) to make a single player adventure multiplayer is to let all but one player spectate (or perhaps to allow both of them to commands if they want to).  This would allow people to play together (as if they were in the same room), talk to each other to make decisions or suggestions of what to do, etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1018&start=0#p5579
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How long to make a game?
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-04-05 07:09:58

[quote="Juhana"]Short games aren't in no ways inherently inferior to longer ones. There are many well-liked games that are extremely short (for example Pick Up the Phone Booth and Die.)[/quote]

You mean shorter than my games? That's impossible. [emote];)[/emote] 

[quote]Nope. By short game I mean little content, and perhaps just one puzzle.[/quote]

Shortest puzzle ever: Pick up key in office and unlock exit door.

See my [i]demoroom_en.nx[/i] script in [url=http://www.devnode.freeforums.org/node-x-interpreter-v1-1-for-win32-linux-t3.html]Node-X v1.1 distribution package[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1021&start=10#p5580
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dipping into Inform 7, some questions
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-04-05 08:20:09

"tell me about [person]" doesn't work because of the "telling it about" action - It thinks you're asking Green to tell the player-character (who can be referred to as "me", in constructs such as "x me") about some text. Try this: [code]Understand the command "tell" as something new.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1021&start=10#p5581
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dipping into Inform 7, some questions
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-04-05 08:45:40

[quote="Defiant"]That conversational system works for "ask green about plum" or "tell green about plum", but AFAICT it doesn't work in the form of "green, [something]" like "green, where is plum"

As a side issue, if I try to get it to understand "green, tell me about [person]" (as an alternative to "who is [person]) or "green, describe the [event]" (instead of "how was the [event]") they don't work. I'm guessing this is because Inform thinks I'm commanding Green to do something rather than asking - where is this action defined in inform? [/quote]

You'll need to write new grammar for most or all of the new commands you want to create; things like "Green, where is Plum?" are used in very, very few games. I don't think anyone has written an extension to allow for the family of "who, what, when, where" questions. (These are very tied into the mechanics of the game itself in any case, so it's unlikely that a single approach would satisfy all or even most applications.)

See the Standard Rules extension (automatically included into every game created with the I7 IDE); that's where all of the conversation grammar that comes baked into Inform is defined. 

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1022&start=0#p5582
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: GET LAMP post-screening panel
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-04-05 10:28:26

Jason Scott just posted [url=http://inventory.getlamp.com/2010/04/04/pax-east-panel-video-rough-cut/]video[/url] (and [url=http://inventory.getlamp.com/2010/04/04/audio-only-version-of-get-lamp-pax-east-panel/]audio[/url]) of the panel discussion that followed the premiere of GET LAMP at PAX East. The panelists were: Don Woods, Dave Lebling, Brian Moriarty, Steve Meretzky, Nick Montfort, and (yikes) me.

I've also posted my [url=http://gameshelf.jmac.org/2010/04/pax-east-2010-zarfs-story.html]very long PAX convention report[/url]. Other people's reports and blog posts are linked on [url=http://ifwiki.org/index.php/PAX_East_2010]ifwiki[/url].

If you weren't in Boston last weekend, you missed a fantastic gathering of old and new IF folks. Keep an eye on PAX in Seattle this fall; plans are being noised about. :)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1023&start=0#p5583
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Spring Thing 2010 -- call for participation
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-04-05 12:08:56

I've been judging the Spring Thing since 2005.  This is my favorite community competition to vote in.  It has a lot of the fun of the Fall Comp but is more relaxed.

Anyways, voter participation always seems to be low for this competition, so I'd like to remind you guys about it.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1012&start=0#p5584
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Extension Census 2010
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-04-05 13:08:25

Hmm-- well, I think in this case waiting for official support would be more productive than trying to hack something together that wouldn't be as immediately useful. I'll e-mail Mike and see if we can stay in touch about his plans for this feature, and maybe try to coordinate the Extension Census for when it rolls out.

In the meantime, I may try to blog about extensions more regularly, and see if I can do other things to raise awareness.

Thanks all for the ideas and suggestions!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1023&start=0#p5585
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2010 -- call for participation
User: George / DateTime: 2010-04-05 13:09:59

Thanks Bainespal, I didn't realize games will be released in a few days.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1021&start=10#p5586
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dipping into Inform 7, some questions
User: BishyT / DateTime: 2010-04-05 13:54:24

Expanding ektemple's "Quizzing it about" idea, you can expand the 'Understand' method to include things like "[someone], where is [any known thing]?". Then you can use an instead method.

[code]Instead of Quizzing Green about The Party: try silently asking Green about The Party.[/code]

I know there's a way to expand this to make it more general (something along the lines off "try silently asking Green about [the noun]" or something like that), but for now that's the general idea.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1014&start=0#p5587
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: "How to Play IF" card
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-04-05 20:14:12

Very useful. I may print a few as well, although I don't often mention IF to the unfamiliar these days. I'd be interested in finding out how well the card helps a newbie really get into the flow of a typical game. At first glance it seemed like quite a lot of information, but it's all essential. I kept thinking maybe I had spotted something it [i]didn't[/i] cover (such as "x" as an abbreviation for "examine", or the "undo" command) but upon reading further, voila, there it all was.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1023&start=0#p5588
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2010 -- call for participation
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-04-05 20:16:33

I should really try. I've done nothing else productive IF-wise since last fall's reviews, so maybe a few fresh reviews would help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1025&start=0#p5590
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Finding distances in three-dimensional space
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-04-06 08:42:55

Okay, math time. I'm coding a game in which the relative positions of things are very important. I need to be able to find the distance between any two arbitrary objects in three-dimensional space. I know how to do this in something like C++, but implementing it in I7 has proven to be a challenge. I'm also going to need the trig functions. And I'll need to run these calculations many times per turn, so they'll need to be efficient. Any suggestions?

EDIT: I've gotten it working, but the extension I used is Glulx-specific. I'd prefer to stay in Z-Code if possible, but if it isn't, I can live with that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1025&start=0#p5591
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Finding distances in three-dimensional space
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-04-06 10:07:56

I assume you're using the Fixed Point Maths extension. I *believe* that the only reason that this extension requires Glulx only because numbers can be larger. If you're able to work with smaller numbers, e.g. one or two decimal places, you could get numbers as large as 3276.8 or 327.68. Try making a new copy of Fixed Point Maths and remove the "(for Glulx only)" from the title, and also change the settings in Chapter 1, Section 2 of the extension to reflect the new precision. Here's an example with 2-digit precision:

[code]Section 2 - Constants for precision

Precision is a number that varies.  Precision is 2.
Divisor is a number that varies.  Divisor is 100.
HalfDivisor is a number that varies.  HalfDivisor is 49.
Pi is a real number that varies.  Pi is 3.14.[/code]

There might be other things in the extension you'd have to change (I haven't looked too closely), but I think that should do it.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1025&start=0#p5592
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Finding distances in three-dimensional space
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-04-06 10:51:50

Oh, you'll also need to change the definition of the real number type, e.g.:

[code]Section 1 - Defining a fixed point number

A real number is a kind of value.  -999.99 specifies a real number with parts whole and fractional.[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1025&start=0#p5593
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Finding distances in three-dimensional space
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-04-06 10:58:43

Okay, I'll try that, but I'd rather get it working with the unmodified extension first. That way, if your method doesn't work for some reason, I'll at least have it working under Glulx. (Not that I doubt that you know what you're talking about: I just am always nervous about modifying other people's code, because it's never documented in a way that I can understand. (I am not saying that people don't document stuff well, just that I can never understand it. (Also, nested parenthesis ftw.)))

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1025&start=0#p5594
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Finding distances in three-dimensional space
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-04-06 11:04:23

OK. But I thought you said you already had it working under Glulx? There's an edit to your original post that says that you do...

To make you rest easier, I guess I should point out that the changes I suggested aren't changes to Michael's code. They're just changes to configuration variables he provided. (Of course, there might be other changes that are needed that I didn't look deep enough--and I barely skimmed--to see.)

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1025&start=0#p5595
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Finding distances in three-dimensional space
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-04-06 11:36:25

I meant that I got the part I had gotten enough of it working to be sure that the extension would work for my purposes. There's still a long way and a lot of trig to go.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1025&start=0#p5596
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Finding distances in three-dimensional space
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-04-06 12:20:09

I just did a brief test, and I think this would work under z-code, but you'd need to both make the changes I already suggested, and go through the extension and change all of the four-digit precision numbers (e.g. 1.0000) to whatever precision you might end up using (e.g. 1.0). 

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1025&start=0#p5597
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Finding distances in three-dimensional space
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-04-06 12:24:15

Okay, thanks. I'm still going to do that last, though, but at least now I know that I can stop looking for other extensions. You've saved me a lot of wasted time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1026&start=0#p5598
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Forced paragraph breaks?
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2010-04-06 16:39:47

how can I get the command that requires the player to press any key to continue displaying text? I think two variations should be possible, the one that erases the text displayed before pressing a key, and the one that doesn't...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1026&start=0#p5599
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forced paragraph breaks?
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-04-06 17:14:44

Use the extension Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short. It comes included with Inform 7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1026&start=0#p5600
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forced paragraph breaks?
User: George / DateTime: 2010-04-06 19:01:32

If you want to erase the text, you'll use a separate statement ('clear the screen') in conjunction with the statement to wait for a keypress ('wait for any key'). Alternatively you can use 'pause the game', which does both, but the player has to press space.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1027&start=0#p5601
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Misunderstanding (?) of new actions, rulebooks & tables
User: Bremagorn / DateTime: 2010-04-06 19:26:13

I'm attempting to define a new "holding something aloft" rule. The basic idea is there are a number of item sublclasses (talismans) that might be used at one or more locations. I want the check rule to ensure that we are actually holding a talisman aloft and that we are in (one of) the proper locations for that talisman to have an effect on the gameworld.

This code won't compile, I've marked the error. I'm sure it's a misunderstanding on my part of my understanding of tables, understanding of rules, or understanding of I7.

I'm not writing a bunch of instead rules because, the list of talismans and their locations is potentially long (25ish) and I had hoped defining the action, checking it against the table, carrying it out (as necessary) and reporting would be less keystrokes and prove a learning experience for me.

So, far it's failing on all counts. Any help is appreciated

[code]Holding it aloft is an action applying to one thing.
Understand "hold [something preferably held] aloft" or "hold up [something preferably held]" or "hold [something preferably held] up" or "lift up [something preferably held]" or "lift [something preferably held] up" as holding it aloft.

Table of Talisman Effects
item		location		effect
amulet		Thorns	"amulet passed"

A check holding it aloft rule:
	if the noun is an item listed in the Table of Talisman Effects
	begin;
		if the location matches the location entry [Error Here!]
		begin;
			say "[effect entry]!";
			continue the action;
		otherwise;
			say "Holding [the noun] aloft doesn't seem to work here.";
			stop the action;
		end if;
	end if;
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1027&start=0#p5602
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Misunderstanding (?) of new actions, rulebooks & tables
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-04-06 20:19:33

Try[code]if the location IS the location entry[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1027&start=0#p5603
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Misunderstanding (?) of new actions, rulebooks & tables
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-04-06 20:27:40

Changing "matches" to "is" seems to work. I guess that when I7 sees "matches" it's expecting to match snippets of text, and you need to write "is" to test whether a room is the same as what you've listed in the table.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1028&start=0#p5604
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Numpad navigation - can Inform 7 trap keypresses?
User: UncleSporky / DateTime: 2010-04-06 20:48:11

Exactly what it sounds like.  [emote];)[/emote] 

I was reading [url=http://www.necessarygames.com/reviews/anchorhead-game-free-download-independent-z-machine-interactive-fiction-fantasy-singleplayer]this "outsider" review of Anchorhead,[/url] which showed frustration with the game's classical navigation system (i.e., n, w, sw, open door, in, nw...).

His suggestion is to implement a "go to x location" command, which is excellent and useful when available, but potentially difficult to code, and potentially unwanted on the designer's part.

Regardless, it got me thinking about other input systems, and made me wonder if something like this was possible:

[img]http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/3817/testab.png[/img]

Ideally, you could just press a button on the numpad and it would execute the command without needing to press enter.  Is this possible to implement in Inform, without messing up the standard prompt in the process?

I understand that interactive fiction is not to be taken lightly - we're not meant to tap buttons quickly to explore the world.  But in larger games with many locations, I believe that this could be helpful.  I've often wanted a way to travel without needing to type specific directions every time, and the fact that the numpad is a perfect compass rose makes movement much easier to visualize.

What do you think?  You could even implement a way to change the "hotkeys" to whatever you want, such as in a game where you have to "drink water" or "cast spleckinham" often.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1027&start=0#p5605
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Misunderstanding (?) of new actions, rulebooks & tables
User: Bremagorn / DateTime: 2010-04-06 20:53:16

OMG. I fail at I7. Thank you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1028&start=0#p5606
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Numpad navigation - can Inform 7 trap keypresses?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-04-06 21:22:40

This is planned for Glulx but it's not available yet. It's possibly in Z-code. (I don't think number-pad keys are trappable, but function keys are.)

Taking a step back: I suspect that this idea would not satisfy the writer of that review; taking steps with the number keypad is not much less annoying than using the standard abbreviations.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1028&start=0#p5607
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Numpad navigation - can Inform 7 trap keypresses?
User: UncleSporky / DateTime: 2010-04-06 21:43:44

Alright, I'll keep an eye on developments.

And you're right, I didn't mean to imply that it would satisfy that particular reviewer, but that it would satisfy me.  [emote]:)[/emote]  I am tolerant of IF conventions, but this addition would help speed up my meanderings in the absence of a "go here" command.

One other question, and this could probably be answered easily by looking around, but while I'm here: could an image like that be clickable to achieve the same effect, such as in old LucasArts games?  Or perhaps more accurately, an interface like the one featured in Eric the Unready, minus the graphics:

[img]http://img688.imageshack.us/img688/8695/eric20the20unready2.gif[/img]

Not [i]just[/i] like it, because it is actually kind of gross, but I mean with at least some common verbs and nouns listed somewhere that are clickable.

I hope this sort of idea isn't considered in poor taste to the community, but there are many people who favor mouse-driven interfaces in their entertainment.  I hope this wouldn't be considered the sort of outreach that might be disruptive (ideally you could disable it at any time).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1028&start=0#p5608
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Numpad navigation - can Inform 7 trap keypresses?
User: George / DateTime: 2010-04-06 22:59:41

I could be wrong about this, but didn't someone release a Glulx game with a clickable compass rose?

...and here we are:

<a class="postlink" href="http://emshort.wordpress.com/2007/12/17/an-example-with-compasses/">http://emshort.wordpress.com/2007/12/17 ... compasses/</a>

which then refer to Erik Temple's graphical extensions. Given the Glulx paint program that Erik is working on, I think this is totally doable.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1028&start=0#p5609
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Numpad navigation - can Inform 7 trap keypresses?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-04-07 00:02:03

[quote="UncleSporky"]And you're right, I didn't mean to imply that it would satisfy that particular reviewer, but that it would satisfy me.  :)  I am tolerant of IF conventions, but this addition would help speed up my meanderings in the absence of a "go here" command.[/quote]
If a "go to" command would be even better, why not just implement that? It's not hard to code and there are even [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/commands/#Going,_Pushing_things_in_Directions]several extensions[/url] available that add the functionality automatically.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1006&start=0#p5610
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Various problems. (unsolved)
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-04-07 09:33:09

[quote]However, even if I write the rule about the tattoo being concealed, the player can still examine the tattoo without taking off the character's shirt. How do I fix this (or will I just have to use an "instead")?[/quote]
An Instead would probably be the best way to do it.

[quote]EDIT: Also, how do I reference the star tattoo colour and size in a printed description?[/quote]I'm pretty sure that you can just use [color] and [size] in the description to refer to the color and size of the described tattoo. Like this:[code]The description of a star tattoo is usually "It's [size], [color], and in the shape of a star.[/code]

[quote]EDIT: And how do I do an instead for the main character taking off his shirt, such as "Instead of taking off shirt, say 'It's too cold in here.'".[/quote][code]Instead of taking off the shirt, say "It[']s too cold in here."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1028&start=0#p5611
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Numpad navigation - can Inform 7 trap keypresses?
User: BishyT / DateTime: 2010-04-07 09:57:15

I actually quite like the interface in that screenshot you posted. I like the idea of being able to list all of the discovered items in a particular room, saving room for more narrative.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1006&start=10#p5612
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Various problems. (unsolved)
User: BishyT / DateTime: 2010-04-07 09:58:57

Thanks for your answers, but this topic is kinda outdated; i've already solved most of the problems I had. ^^"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1026&start=0#p5613
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forced paragraph breaks?
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2010-04-07 10:05:30

ok, explaining my problem on a broader scale:

interactive story, which means the game should run semi-automatic, the player isn't able to do anything than press space and choose from given dialogue options (that's problem #2); how can I achieve this the easiest?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1026&start=0#p5614
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forced paragraph breaks?
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-04-07 10:28:53

To detect when the player presses space, use Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short. Among other things, it lets you pause the game until space is pressed.

Detecting when the player selects a conversation is relatively easy. There are two ways: A menu (using another Short extension), or a new action. I'd recommend the new action method, because I find menus clunky for things other than help systems. Just create an action applying to one number and understand "[number]" as this action.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1026&start=0#p5615
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forced paragraph breaks?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-04-07 12:36:29

[quote="JC Denton"]
interactive story, which means the game should run semi-automatic, the player isn't able to do anything than press space and choose from given dialogue options (that's problem #2); how can I achieve this the easiest?[/quote]
There are a number of extensions that might help here: Simple CYOA, Adventure Book, Simple Chat, Quip-Based Conversation, and Questions.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1026&start=0#p5616
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forced paragraph breaks?
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2010-04-07 13:03:28

Simple CYOA quickly leads to WTF?, but Adventure book seems promising, gonna try that now...

but I'm pretty sure this should also work without extensions, it's just hard to figure out the parts I need without learning the whole thing

edit: ok the extension should cover all I need (unless I run into unexpected problems), but clearing the page isn't mentioned in the description, any advice on that? really need that feature...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1028&start=0#p5617
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Numpad navigation - can Inform 7 trap keypresses?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-04-07 13:51:34

[quote="UncleSporky"]One other question, and this could probably be answered easily by looking around, but while I'm here: could an image like that be clickable to achieve the same effect, such as in old LucasArts games? Or perhaps more accurately, an interface like the one featured in Eric the Unready, minus the graphics[/quote]

Yes, you can definitely do this in I7, compiling to Glulx. Using the Flexible Windows extension, you can have separate "windows" (really panes within the larger game window) that display either text or graphics. If you create one or more subsidiary text windows and use Emily Short's Basic Hyperlinks extension to hyperlink the items you print in those windows, you'll get something very like the verbs and noun lists of the Eric the Unready interface (including automatic handling of scrollbars when the text goes beyond the bounds of the window). Currently the exact look of the hyperlinks will be controlled by the interpreter used to play the game, but the forthcoming CSS-based Glulx style system will, I believe, allow you as the author to control the styling.

As for the compass rose, Emily released a game called City of Secrets a while back that included something like the compass rose interface you were discussing earlier. CoS displayed "mood" graphics, the location name, and a clickable compass rose in a graphics window(pane), and had a smaller text window beneath the main window that provided clickable text--mostly used for conversation and help menus. CoS was written in I6 but all of this is quite doable in I7.

George mentioned my extensions for adding graphics like compass roses and so on. There's an extension available now ([url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Erik%20Temple/Graphical%20Window%20Sprites/index.html]Graphical Window Sprites[/url]) that will let you do compass roses, clickable maps that reveal themselves as the player moves the game-world, etc., but only in a single graphics window. It also comes with a set of [url=http://www.sendspace.com/file/fowqkq]examples[/url], including a clickable compass rose.

I'm currently working on a set of extensions that will be a much more powerful version of Graphical Window Sprites, one that works with any number of graphical windows and includes lots of new features. Actually, I'm pretty well done with it, and am engaged in writing the documentation (pure drudgery, unfortunately). [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=985]This thread[/url] has more information.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1026&start=0#p5618
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forced paragraph breaks?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-04-07 15:44:46

Personally, I've found that extensions are one of the best ways to learn about how I7 works. If you study the code of these extensions (rather than just plug one in and use it), I bet you'll walk away with a good idea of how to write your own implementation. 

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1026&start=0#p5619
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forced paragraph breaks?
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-04-07 15:53:26

Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short lets you clear the screen.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1029&start=0#p5620
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: A non-player trying a stored action = boom
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-04-07 15:59:00

I have a subclass of person called "robot". Each robot has a stored action called the "current-command". I have a loop declared as follows: [code]repeat with robbie running through robots:[/code] In that loop, I have the following line: [code]try robbie trying the current-command of robbie;[/code] That line gives me an error. When I removed the "robbie trying" part, it worked fine (the player tries the current-command of robbie), leading me to believe that the problem is that I'm having a person besides the player try a stored action. Any way around this? This particular feature is crucial to the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1029&start=0#p5621
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A non-player trying a stored action = boom
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-04-07 16:14:20

On the face of it, this sounds like a bug in the way Inform is parsing "current-command of robbie". (You should report it!) There is no limitation on who can try a stored action.

On to solving the problem: What error do you get? 

When you remove the "of Robbie" in that loop, does each robot do its own thing, or do they all do the player's stored action (assuming the player is also a robot) ? There are situations where Inform can correctly infer the object of a property without an explicit "of object", and maybe the code will just work without the "of robbie"...

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1029&start=0#p5622
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A non-player trying a stored action = boom
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-04-07 16:19:06

[quote]On the face of it, this sounds like a bug in the way Inform is parsing "current-command of robbie". (You should report it!) There is no limitation on who can try a stored action.[/quote]
Ugh...

[quote]On to solving the problem: What error do you get?[/quote][code]Problem. You wrote 'try robbie trying the current-command of robbie': but this is not an action I recognise, or else is malformed in a way I can't see how to sort out.[/code]

[quote]When you remove the "of Robbie" in that loop, does each robot do its own thing, or do they all do the player's stored action (assuming the player is also a robot) ? There are situations where Inform can correctly infer the object of a property without an explicit "of object", and maybe the code will just work without the "of robbie"...[/quote]
I actually tried that and still got the error.

The player is not a robot, by the way. He's human, and as such does not have a stored-action.

EDIT: I tried creating an action "executing the command", which says "try the current-action of the lolbot" in its carry out rule. (The lolbot is a robot that varies, and is set to robbie at the start of the loop.) It compiles, but apparently robbie doesn't actually do anything when that action is run. I even tried manually telling a robot to execute the command (by giving it an understand and using a persuasion rule so other people always do what I say) - and nothing. If, however, I have the player-character execute the command, then it works fine.

EDIT2: Just to clarify, "robbie" is just a temporary value, not an actual robot. There is, however, an actual robot (dubbed the Testbot) in the same room as the player.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1028&start=0#p5623
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Numpad navigation - can Inform 7 trap keypresses?
User: UncleSporky / DateTime: 2010-04-07 16:34:01

Thanks for the replies, I'm glad to see the possibility has been explored.  I think it'd be a nice option to have, primarily for newcomers.

[quote="BishyT"]I actually quite like the interface in that screenshot you posted. I like the idea of being able to list all of the discovered items in a particular room, saving room for more narrative.[/quote]

I would lay it out differently, but I do like the idea of interactive items listed...except for the theoretical drawback of breaking immersion.  It's the same reason why most good games opt to say "a weathered shovel lies half-buried in the mud" rather than allow the default "there is a shovel here."  I wouldn't want to sacrifice colorful descriptions just to be explicit about interactive nouns, nor would I want players to get into the mechanical process of clicking the compass rose, scanning the noun list, and leaving.

You have to weigh your options!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1029&start=0#p5624
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A non-player trying a stored action = boom
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-04-07 16:36:19

[quote="Biophysicist"][quote="ektemple"]When you remove the "of Robbie" in that loop, does each robot do its own thing, or do they all do the player's stored action (assuming the player is also a robot) ? There are situations where Inform can correctly infer the object of a property without an explicit "of object", and maybe the code will just work without the "of robbie"...[/quote]
I actually tried that and still got the error.

The player is not a robot, by the way. He's human, and as such does not have a stored-action.[/quote]

I take back what I said about this being a bug, then. You said that you had tried the same syntax, minus "of robbie", with the player and it worked, so that's what I was going off of... Anyway, please don't report it!

The real problem is that the actor is already included in the stored action and so it's redundant to say "try the actor trying [stored action]". Here's the code you need:
[code]
try the current-command of robbie.[/code]

Inform knows which actor to try because the actor is automatically supplied when you make the stored action a property of an actor.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1029&start=0#p5625
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A non-player trying a stored action = boom
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-04-07 16:46:41

Now nothing whatsoever happens. I just realized a possible error elsewhere in the code, though, which I'm going to look into. Will get back to you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1029&start=0#p5626
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A non-player trying a stored action = boom
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-04-07 16:51:39

[quote="Biophysicist"]EDIT: I tried creating an action "executing the command", which says "try the current-action of the lolbot" in its carry out rule. (The lolbot is a robot that varies, and is set to robbie at the start of the loop.) It compiles, but apparently robbie doesn't actually do anything when that action is run. I even tried manually telling a robot to execute the command (by giving it an understand and using a persuasion rule so other people always do what I say) - and nothing. If, however, I have the player-character execute the command, then it works fine.[/quote]

Is the action you want the robot to do defined using the "carry out an actor jumping" syntax? It needs to be, or you probably won't get any output.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1029&start=0#p5627
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A non-player trying a stored action = boom
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-04-07 16:54:18

Well, I changed around some stuff, and now something happens. Oddly enough, the player, not the robot, carries out the action. One possibility is that you were wrong, but another is that it has to do with the way I assigned the current-command of robbie: The player types a particular command, then the action the robot should do, with this action being directly assigned to the robot's current-command. That would cause problems, wouldn't it?

EDIT: In response to your above post: I've just been using the standard verbs for testing, such as jumping and going.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1029&start=0#p5628
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A non-player trying a stored action = boom
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-04-07 16:55:12

[quote="ektemple"]
Inform knows which actor to try because the actor is automatically supplied when you make the stored action a property of an actor.
[/quote]

Oops, this is incorrect. To specify an actor other than the player, you need to define the stored action like so:

[code]The current-command of Death Bot is the action of Death Bot trying jumping.
[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1029&start=0#p5629
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A non-player trying a stored action = boom
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-04-07 17:01:57

[quote="Biophysicist"]EDIT: In response to your above post: I've just been using the standard verbs for testing, such as jumping and going.[/quote]

Check the Standard Rules extension (author=Graham Nelson) for your testing actions to see if they are defined properly. I know going is defined with "carry out an actor going", but jumping probably is not. For most actions (again, not going), you'll need customized report actions to see any output. But you can use the ACTIONS testing command to see who tries what action regardless of whether the command actually prints any output.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1029&start=0#p5630
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A non-player trying a stored action = boom
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-04-07 17:05:31

You misunderstood me, but that doesn't matter. I got it working, thanks in large part to your help. What I needed to do was just use "try the current-command of robbie" like you suggested, but I also needed to change the actor part of the current-command of robbie to robbie first (using an extension).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1026&start=0#p5631
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forced paragraph breaks?
User: BishyT / DateTime: 2010-04-07 17:10:46

I was able to create a makeshift CYOA style conversation system involving sh*tloads of scenes, a number variable, and three actions (Aing, Bing, and Cing). Very big and messy but it works.

Should probably try one of those extensions though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1028&start=0#p5632
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Numpad navigation - can Inform 7 trap keypresses?
User: BishyT / DateTime: 2010-04-07 17:14:49

Perhaps you could only have the items appear on the list after they have been examined once. Leaving important clues in the item descriptions as well would give players a reason to examine them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=999&start=0#p5633
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need help getting an action to occur at a specific time...
User: Chimakwa / DateTime: 2010-04-07 22:03:24

Aha! What you're looking for is:

[code]The Dream ends when the slender man is off-stage.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1026&start=10#p5634
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forced paragraph breaks?
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2010-04-08 06:59:42

[quote="Biophysicist"]Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short lets you clear the screen.[/quote]

yes I know that now but how do I combine it with the Adventure book syntax? I really don't have the time to learn everything just to come to a conclusion that is very easy to figure out who knows the software...

please...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1026&start=10#p5635
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forced paragraph breaks?
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-04-08 07:43:06

Whenever you want to clear the screen, you just invoke the phrase "clear the screen". You can do that in any rule. Simple.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1030&start=0#p5636
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: "Reading" Player Input
User: Carlos / DateTime: 2010-04-08 09:55:58

Hi folks--

I'm as newb as they get with Inform, so apologies in advance for stupidity. 

I am trying to design an IF for my students to help them learn grammar. To do so, I want them to type (not choose from a list) a sentence correctly, and then check to see if they got it right.

So here's some pseudo-code to show what I want:

1     Say, "Correct the comma splices in the following example: 'I came, I saw, I conquered.'"
2     If player types, 
3                  "I came. I saw. I conquered.", or
4                  "I came; I saw; I conquered.", or
5                  "I came, I saw, and I conquered.", or
6                  [a few more versions];
7     Say, "Correct!" and raise the player's score by one point;
8     Else, say "Sorry, that's incorrect." 

I'm pretty sure this is possible, but I missed it in the documentation, and a forum search (probably because of weak search-fu) yielded nothing. Any help would be greatly appreciated; paste-able code will endear me to you forever. Thanks in advance!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1030&start=0#p5637
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Reading" Player Input
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-04-08 10:13:53

There are a few ways to do this. Probably the easiest would be to use an "After reading a command" rule, like so:

[code]After reading a command:
	if the player's command matches <CORRECT ANSWER ONE> or the player's command matches <CORRECT ANSWER TWO> or the player's command matches <CORRECT ANSWER THREE>:
		say "Correct.";
	otherwise:
		say "Sorry, that's not correct."[/code]

Though, if I were you, I would try to learn the basics of I7. It will make things a lot easier than having to come here every time you want some new feature - and, more importantly, you won't have to wait for answers.

EDIT: Note that this code will run for EVERY command typed. That might be a problem. If you want to have multiple lessons in one "game", you'll need to use a variable to keep track of the current lesson, and only run the appropriate rules.

Also, I didn't provide a way for you to display your question, come to think of it. Just use an "Every turn" rule.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1030&start=0#p5638
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Reading" Player Input
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-04-08 10:22:59

There's an extension called Questions that can handle the question-asking machinery for you, and allow you to link questions together into a script.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1026&start=10#p5639
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forced paragraph breaks?
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2010-04-08 11:10:35

here's an example of the AB syntax, where would I place the clear the screen command?

The First Page is a page.
"   An evil magician known only as The Mad Hermit is causing terror throughout	the land of Placebo, and you're as good a person as any to put a stop to him.	So, laying aside your afternoon plans, you decide to head off on an adventure."
A choice called tfpa is for The First Page. "Journey forth!" It triggers YourHouse.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1026&start=10#p5640
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forced paragraph breaks?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-04-08 11:22:23

Looks like the [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Edward%20Griffiths/Adventure%20Book/doc_11.html]Running Inform code[/url] section in the documentation provides a hook for this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1026&start=10#p5641
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forced paragraph breaks?
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2010-04-08 14:13:33

[quote="Juhana"]Looks like the [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Edward%20Griffiths/Adventure%20Book/doc_11.html]Running Inform code[/url] section in the documentation provides a hook for this.[/quote]

this indeed does the trick! but it also clears the screen every time a new page is triggered, how can I bypass this to make only certain pages clear the screen?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1026&start=10#p5643
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forced paragraph breaks?
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2010-04-08 20:12:33

I've figured out to do almost all I need now, but:
-the interpreter (Frotz 1.14) eats the first two lines of every page displayed  [emote]:evil:[/emote]  

this obviously has to do with the aforementioned clearing the screen thing, and of course doesn't happen when the game is played in Inform

any non-manual way to fix it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1026&start=10#p5644
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forced paragraph breaks?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-04-08 20:36:08

Try putting something like this immediately after your "clear the screen" line:

say "[paragraph break][line break]";

I'm guessing that in Frotz your text is getting hidden under the status line.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1026&start=10#p5645
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forced paragraph breaks?
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2010-04-09 06:19:09

[quote="ektemple"]Try putting something like this immediately after your "clear the screen" line:

say "[paragraph break][line break]";

I'm guessing that in Frotz your text is getting hidden under the status line.

--Erik[/quote]

thanks, paragraph break is one too many for some reason, but line break does the trick!

btw, you have the same first name as my main character  [emote]:)[/emote] 

now to my final problem: Glulx Text Effects by Emily Short

what I need is pink text (in the 3 variants roman, bold and italics), but the technobrabble in the manual does not make the slightest sense to me (or is there a way to get pink text with z-code?)

tx

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1026&start=10#p5646
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forced paragraph breaks?
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2010-04-09 08:31:24

another issue: any chance of getting rid of this text that appears on startup

-- Created using Adventure Book for Inform 7 by Edward Griffiths
 Based on Adventure Book by Jon Ingold
 Command Summary:
 LOOK / L          Repeat the last page
 INVENTORY / I     Show player inventory
 SAVE / S          Save the game
 RESTORE / R       Restore the game
 QUIT / Q          Quit the game
 RESTART / X       Restart the game
 HELP / H          This text
 
 Select options by their number.  To use an object, type its name as it appears in the inventory list.

I guess it would have to be erased from the extension itself?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1032&start=0#p5647
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Question
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2010-04-09 08:59:05

...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1033&start=0#p5648
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: TADS 3: SuggestedTopic
User: lukematt / DateTime: 2010-04-09 09:04:25

I am working with TADS 3.  It’s a wonderful system.

However, I am beating my head against the wall with “SuggestedTopic” (or any of its variations).

I have coded a statement as follows:

[color=#FF0000]++ GetCoal : AskTellTopic, SuggestedTopic @BillySubjects[/color]

When I run the program, I only see:

[color=#FF0000](You could .)[/color]

Yes, I do not have the suggested topics list initialized—that’s the problem.  I cannot find [b][u]any[/u][/b] example in the documentation or on the Internet that shows how to initialize this list.

Can somebody help me, please?

Thanks.

Jeffrey W. Bowyer
<a href="mailto:jbowyer@seznam.cz">jbowyer@seznam.cz</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1032&start=0#p5650
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Question
User: George / DateTime: 2010-04-09 10:17:10

a good list of competitions is kept at the IFWiki -- look below the fold for Competition News.

Doesn't seem like there's an obvious choice from that list though. Maybe you should start a CYOA comp.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1026&start=10#p5651
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forced paragraph breaks?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-04-09 10:44:34

Glancing quickly at the source suggests that you could remove the intro with
[code]When play begins:
    now the current page is the First Page.
[/code]
but I haven't tested that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1032&start=0#p5653
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Question
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2010-04-09 12:31:29

...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1026&start=20#p5654
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forced paragraph breaks?
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2010-04-09 12:34:44

[quote="Juhana"]Glancing quickly at the source suggests that you could remove the intro with
[code]When play begins:
    now the current page is the First Page.
[/code]
but I haven't tested that.[/quote]

it doesn't quite fix it (does anything ever do that?) but it improves the situation! that's the way to earn yourself easy thanks to credits  [emote];)[/emote] 

that leaves only the extremely critical colour issue...

edit: ok I can kinda use the extension now to create any colour, but in the Glulxe interpreter setting the colour scheme to the usual white on blue causes coloured text to be displayed with an ugly white border, and it also screws up bold and italic text created with the usual [bold type] stuff - can't anything ever be easy!  [emote]:evil:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1026&start=20#p5655
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forced paragraph breaks?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-04-09 14:43:47

[quote="JC Denton"]ok I can kinda use the extension now to create any colour, but in the Glulxe interpreter setting the colour scheme to the usual white on blue causes coloured text to be displayed with an ugly white border, and it also screws up bold and italic text created with the usual [bold type] stuff - can't anything ever be easy!  [emote]:evil:[/emote][/quote]

I think that setting in Glulxe is meant to override whatever the author has requested in terms of color, so you shouldn't be surprised that it changes the display; I imagine the white border is intended to make sure that the colored text can still be read against the background color.

Anyway, it seems kind of silly to me to jump from z-code to glulx just to have pink text. The magenta that's built into z-code looks very pinkish--why not use that? This is as simple as including Basic Screen Effects and typing:

[code]say "[magenta letters]This is my pink text.[black letters] Now I'm back in black.";[/code]

Does that work?

If you can live with the color, you'll be able to stick with z-code, which has interpreters that can be played online, on lots of mobile devices (e.g., the iPhone, Nintendo DS, etc.). The range of platforms supported by glulx is a lot narrower.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1033&start=0#p5656
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3: SuggestedTopic
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-04-09 15:48:32

TADS just needs to know what to suggest the topic [i]as[/i].   [emote]:P[/emote] 

Try the following:

[code]++ GetCoal : AskTellTopic, SuggestedAskTopic @BillySubjects
    name='Billy'
;
[/code]
If BillySubjects is a physical object you could probably also use name=BillySubjects.theName or similar.

Edit: Also note that you should use SuggestedAsk/TellTopic depending on whether you want the suggestion to be to ask or tell about the subject.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1026&start=20#p5657
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forced paragraph breaks?
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2010-04-09 16:46:02

[quote="ektemple"][quote="JC Denton"]ok I can kinda use the extension now to create any colour, but in the Glulxe interpreter setting the colour scheme to the usual white on blue causes coloured text to be displayed with an ugly white border, and it also screws up bold and italic text created with the usual [bold type] stuff - can't anything ever be easy!  [emote]:evil:[/emote][/quote]

I think that setting in Glulxe is meant to override whatever the author has requested in terms of color, so you shouldn't be surprised that it changes the display; I imagine the white border is intended to make sure that the colored text can still be read against the background color.

Anyway, it seems kind of silly to me to jump from z-code to glulx just to have pink text. The magenta that's built into z-code looks very pinkish--why not use that? This is as simple as including Basic Screen Effects and typing:

[code]say "[magenta letters]This is my pink text.[black letters] Now I'm back in black.";[/code]

Does that work?

If you can live with the color, you'll be able to stick with z-code, which has interpreters that can be played online, on lots of mobile devices (e.g., the iPhone, Nintendo DS, etc.). The range of platforms supported by glulx is a lot narrower.

--Erik[/quote]

well the border makes the text especially hard to read, maybe there's some better interpreter for this kind of job?

you're a lifesaver!  [emote]:)[/emote]  I didn't know about magenta (first time I noticed there's a list of colours), it's pink enough in my eyes  [emote]8-)[/emote], shame there's no brown though 

hope I don't run out of space though, I haven't even 2/5 of my story implemented and already 188 kb  [emote]:roll:[/emote] 

OK, next problem: how to set flags by choices? can't find that in the adventure book manual

the intent is to have text in descriptions that is skipped if certain choices are taken

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1023&start=0#p5658
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2010 -- call for participation
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-04-09 16:49:22

Apparently, there was not a single entry! [emote]:shock:[/emote]  That's a little bit of a disappointment, to me.  I'll take this as a sign that I need to get off my lazy butt and write the game that I've been thinking about for Spring Thing 2011!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1035&start=0#p5659
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Bulleted List in a block of text
User: Bremagorn / DateTime: 2010-04-09 18:19:01

I have a fairly long block of text that if it were in a book would be either an unordered (bulleted) or ordered (numbered) list. I've checked all the documentation in the manual, in the recipe book and looked through extensions. I've not found something that would accomplish this.

With all that said, it's not going to be a game-breaker if I don't have it, but wondered if anyone knew of a way to do this or a source I missed somehow.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1035&start=0#p5660
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Bulleted List in a block of text
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-04-09 18:45:04

If you're compiling to glulx, you can use the Glux Text Effects extension to set indentation. You can set separate indentation for the first and subsequent lines, so you should be able to imitate something like a bulleted or numbered list. You'd set the first line to have less indent than subsequent lines, with the bullet or number filling the space. This likely won't be perfect, and may well not be treated exactly the same by every interpreter, but it should work acceptably.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1032&start=0#p5661
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Question
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2010-04-09 20:27:44

[quote="JC Denton"]IntroComp 2010 sounds [i]almost[/i] like a legit competition

Entry Deadline: Wednesday, June 30, 2010, 23:59 EST 
Voting Deadline: Saturday, July 31, 2009, 23:59 EST 

I mean, yeah sure  [emote]:roll:[/emote][/quote]
I've fixed it. It's July 31, [b]2010[/b], of course (see [url=http://www.allthingsjacq.com/introcomp.html]the official site[/url]).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1033&start=0#p5662
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3: SuggestedTopic
User: lukematt / DateTime: 2010-04-09 21:20:37

Pacian:

Thanks for your response.  Your suggestion was a first step in the right direction.

As you suggested, I coded:

[code]++ GetCoal : AskTellTopic, SuggestedAskTopic @BillySubjects
     name='Billy'
[/code]
Now, when I run the program, I see:

[color=#FF0000](You could ask him about .)[/color]

================================================================

1. The additional words "ask him about" result from changing SuggestedTopic to SuggestedAskTopic.

2.

[code]name='Billy'[/code]
seems to have no effect (i.e. the suggested topics list is still not initialized).

3. One more point of confusion regarding SuggestedTopic (and its variations)...

SuggestedAskTopic was added to the AskTellTopic statement, but the output that it generates appears in response to the HelloTopic statement.

================================================================

At the risk of making this reply too long, here's my full code for the NPC named "Billy":

[code]Billy : Person 'Billy' 'Billy'
  @outsideHouse
  "He is playing in the snow"  
  properName = 'Billy' 
  globalParamName = 'Billy'
  isHim = true
;

+ DefaultGiveTopic, ShuffledEventList
  [
    'Billy shakes his head, <q>No thanks.</q>',
    'He looks at it and smiles. <q>That\'s nice,</q> he remarks,
     handing it back to you. ',
    '<q>You should keep it,</q> he advises.'
  ]
;

+ DefaultShowTopic, ShuffledEventList
  [
    'He grins and says, <q>\"That\'s nice.</q>',
    '<q>Interesting,</q> replies Billy, yawning.',
    'Billy responds, <q>Thank you for showing me.</q>'
  ]
;

+ BillyTalking : InConversationState
  stateDesc = " and talking with you. " 
  specialDesc = "talking with you. "
;

BillySubjects: Topic 'eyes buttons eye button coal';

++ GetCoal : AskTellTopic, SuggestedTopic @BillySubjects
    "<q>The snowman needs some eyes and some buttons,</q> you say to Billy.
    <.p><q>You're right.  I'll fetch some coal to use.</q> "
    Name = 'Billy'
;

++ BillyWorking : ConversationReadyState
  stateDesc = ", rolling a snowball."
  specialDesc = ""
  isInitState = true
;
    
+++ HelloTopic
    "<q>Hi, Billy.</q><.p>
     <q>Hi,</q> he says, <q>I\'m happy you came outside.</q>"
;
[/code]

Again, thanks for any help that you can provide.

Jeffrey W. Bowyer
<a href="mailto:jbowyer@seznam.cz">jbowyer@seznam.cz</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1033&start=0#p5663
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3: SuggestedTopic
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-04-09 22:47:42

There are a couple of problems. Firstly, you need to use either "SuggestedAskTopic" or "SuggestedTellTopic", not just "SuggestedTopic". Secondly, "name" needs to be all lower-case. At the moment your code has "Name", with a capital "N". Since TADS is case-sensitive, it doesn't recognise that as the "name" property it's looking for.

So your amended code looks like this:
[code]++ GetCoal : AskTellTopic, SuggestedAskTopic @BillySubjects
    "<q>The snowman needs some eyes and some buttons,</q> you say to Billy.
    <.p><q>You're right.  I'll fetch some coal to use.</q> "
    name = 'the eyes'
;[/code]

Also notice that "name" means the name of the topic that will be suggested, so in this case, you want "name" to be something like "the eyes" or "coal".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1014&start=0#p5664
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: "How to Play IF" card
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-04-10 00:18:47

New (permanent) URL: <a class="postlink" href="http://pr-if.org/doc/play-if-card/">http://pr-if.org/doc/play-if-card/</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1033&start=0#p5665
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3: SuggestedTopic
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-04-10 04:00:15

[quote="lukematt"]3. One more point of confusion regarding SuggestedTopic (and its variations)...

SuggestedAskTopic was added to the AskTellTopic statement, but the output that it generates appears in response to the HelloTopic statement.[/quote]
The purpose of suggested topics is that they provide a list of topics that the player might like to use.  This list is presented when the player first speaks to the character, and can be recalled subsequently (having possibly changed) by typing 'topics'.

What exactly are you expecting to happen?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1036&start=0#p5666
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Singular Topic Matching Plural
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-04-10 06:37:01

This is something that keeps annoying me.  I have several instances where the player can ask about a broad, plural topic, or a specific instance.  For example, they could ask about 'cats' or about 'the missing cat'.

The trouble is, when I type, >ASK ABOUT CAT, I'm getting the response for 'cats'.  But I think a player doing this is likely to expect that the singular 'cat' would be a reference to the missing cat, and not to cats in general.  Obviously I can get around this by setting a higher matchScore for the AskTellTopic for the missing cat, but I don't want to do this for every single NPC.  I just want TADS to assume that 'cat' means 'cat' and 'cats' means 'cats'.  

Is there something I can do on the missing cat object to make more likely to be matched? Or is there some other way to get some sensible behaviour out of this?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1033&start=0#p5667
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3: SuggestedTopic
User: lukematt / DateTime: 2010-04-10 10:25:41

[img]http://i61.servimg.com/u/f61/12/91/04/49/i_ve_g10.jpg[/img]

Thanks!

Jeff

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1037&start=0#p5668
Forum: Competitions / Subject: List of competitions
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-04-10 11:59:38

I was wondering if anyone had a list of competitions. I'd like to know when the next comp I can enter is: I think something official like a competition would motivate me to actually finish something instead of going through dozens of ideas, coding a few lines of each, and then giving up and deleting them. So, does such a list exist?

(It is worth noting that the competition would have to be totally Internet-based. I've heard of some competitions at IF conventions, which I couldn't participate in.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1037&start=0#p5669
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: List of competitions
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-04-10 12:43:25

There's a list at IFWiki: [url]http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Current_events#Upcoming_Competitions[/url]. The list keeps up to date quite well. Most, but not all, comps are announced at [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction]RAIF[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1032&start=0#p5670
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Question
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2010-04-10 14:06:45

...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1030&start=0#p5672
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Reading" Player Input
User: Carlos / DateTime: 2010-04-10 14:36:34

Thanks to both of you for your replies. I thought I would try writing my own code (as opposed to using the Questions extension) so as to learn Inform better (following your advice, Bio). The code I have created now is giving me a "translating the source" error, where it says that there is a bug in the program that does not allow it to compile. I am fairly certain this is not the case, but that I am doing something wrong. Here is my code for trying to match the player's text to a predetermined answer:
[code]
A person can be wary or relaxed. A person is usually relaxed.

To decide whether accepting answers:
	if the scene is Monday afternoon, yes;
	no.
	
After reading a command when accepting answers:
	if the player's command matches "spell":
		award 1 point;
		say "[Text that isn't important to the code].";
		now the player is wary;
		reject the player's command;
	otherwise:
		award -1 point;
		say "[Text that isn't important to the code].";
		now the player is wary;
		reject the player's command.

Monday afternoon ends when the player is wary. Quiz time begins when Monday afternoon ends.
[/code]
Anyone see anything wrong with this? Much obliged!

P.S. Here is the error message I get from Inform:
[quote]
Translating the Source - Failed
The application ran your source text through the Inform 7 compiler, as usual, and it found no problems translating the source. Something must have gone wrong all the same, because the second stage of the process - using the Inform 6 compiler to turn this translated source into a viable story file - turned up errors. This should not happen. The errors are written out on the Progress tab, but will only make sense to experienced Inform 6 users (if even to them).

The best option now is probably to reword whatever was last changed and to try again. Subsequent attempts will not be affected by the failure of this one, so there is nothing to be gained by restarting the application or the computer. A failed run should never damage the source text, so your work cannot be lost.

If you are using Inform 6 inclusions, these are the most likely culprits. You might be using these without realising it if you are including an extension which contains Inform 6 inclusions in order to work its magic: so if the problem only seems to occur when a particular extension is in use, then that is probably what is at fault, and you should contact the extension's author directly.

If not, then most likely the Inform 7 compiler is at fault. Please check that you have the currently distributed build of the system: if you have, please consider taking the time to fill out a bug report form and email it to the author.

Sorry for the inconvenience.
[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1030&start=0#p5673
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Reading" Player Input
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-04-10 14:44:38

I believe the problem is with the "if the scene is Monday afternoon, yes;" line. You can have several scenes running at the same time so you can't ask what is "the scene". The correct phrasing is "if Monday afternoon is happening."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1030&start=0#p5674
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Reading" Player Input
User: Carlos / DateTime: 2010-04-10 15:11:24

Thanks Juhana! This is definitely closer: no more unexplained compile failure, at any rate. I guess correct phrasing is "going on" rather than "happening," but now I am getting this error:
[quote]
Problem. You wrote 'After reading a command if Monday afternoon is going on'  , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is 'if Monday afternoon is going on'. But that did not make sense as a description of an action. I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook.
[/quote]

Here is my code:
[code]
A person can be wary or relaxed. A person is usually relaxed.
	
After reading a command if Monday afternoon is going on:
	if player's command matches "spell":
		award 1 point; 
		say "[Words words words].'";
	          	now the player is wary;
	          	reject the player's command;
[/code]

Thanks much for the help, and sorry to be so hopeless. Just think of the students you'll be helping learn grammar! [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1030&start=0#p5675
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Reading" Player Input
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-04-10 15:46:49

[quote]
Problem. You wrote 'After reading a command if Monday afternoon is going on' [/quote]

That "if" should be "when".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1032&start=0#p5676
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Question
User: Bremagorn / DateTime: 2010-04-10 17:26:16

[quote="JC Denton"]so there is not ONE genuine competition announced anywhere I can enter?[/quote]

Wow...way to get the goodwill of everyone who's helped you over the past week or so...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1032&start=0#p5677
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Question
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-04-10 17:36:58

[quote="JC Denton"]so there is not ONE genuine competition announced anywhere I can enter?[/quote]
The middle of the year is a bit of a dead time for competitions.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1032&start=0#p5678
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Question
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2010-04-10 19:27:56

...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1038&start=0#p5679
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Announcing TWIFcomp (submissions due April 25, 2010)
User: dhakajack / DateTime: 2010-04-10 20:46:44

[b]TWIF[/b]comp is a competition for tweet-sized interactive fiction. Why? Because the world needs more strangely-themed interactive fiction competitions and this one requires little time to write, play, and judge. The idea grew out of a RAIF thread a few days back and seems like just the thing to take IF into the attention span-challenged future. The basic premise: write a complete game in [b]140[/b] characters. Example: [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/43]43[/url].

[u]Big prizes[/u] are in the offing: the first three places will take home a roll of duct tape, a package of ramen noodles, or a pair of lucky dice. Surely, you have it in your soul to crank out a mere 140 characters for a chance at fame and glory.
 
The complete rules are listed on my [url=http://blog.templaro.com/?page_id=118]blog[/url].

You should really read the full rules, as this whole competition business is trickier that you would think. However, in a nutshell: I must receive game submissions by 16:00 GMT, on Sunday, April 25, 2010. Voting starts as soon as the games are posted (see the same page listed above). Voting finishes at 16:00 GMT on Saturday, May 1, 2010, with results announced the next day.

- Jack

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1039&start=0#p5680
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: a buying question
User: sqib / DateTime: 2010-04-10 22:03:06

movie ticket is carried by ticket booth girl.The price of a movie ticket is $8.00. 

ok so with the above little snip of code, I can buy a movie ticket from the ticket booth girl. If I wanted to buy 2 tickets or 52 tickets (if I had the money to do so) how would I go about doing that?  I tried fishing around with something along the line of:

after buying movie ticket:
       Let P be a random movie ticket carried by ticket booth girl;
             Now the player carries P.


which of course didnt compile because I just pulled it out of my butt, but I think maybe I am somewhat on the right track but going about it incorrectly?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1038&start=0#p5681
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Announcing TWIFcomp (submissions due April 25, 2010)
User: George / DateTime: 2010-04-10 22:36:29

sounds great!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1039&start=0#p5682
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a buying question
User: George / DateTime: 2010-04-10 22:38:16

Are you talking about creating movie tickets while the game is playing? Z-code games need to declare all their objects in the source. I think there's an extension for glulx that allows run-time creation via a table.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1039&start=0#p5683
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a buying question
User: sqib / DateTime: 2010-04-10 23:12:43

It dosnt have to be while the game is playing, the ticket booth girl can have a endless supply of tickets to dispense in the source code from the start, I just need to find a way to have her have the tickets to sell to the player and not just a single ticket. If the player goes to the movies with another person then buying 2 tickets would be needed.

edited to say that this is glux

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1039&start=0#p5684
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a buying question
User: George / DateTime: 2010-04-10 23:51:10

It probably would be easier to side-step the issue and just don't have any tickets on the cashier. Then you can move the appropriate amount from the supply of tickets to the player when necessary.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1036&start=0#p5685
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Singular Topic Matching Plural
User: lukematt / DateTime: 2010-04-10 23:56:36

Hi, Pacian:

If I understand your question properly...

I just tested this code, and it works fine:

[code]questionSubjects1: Topic 'kid';

++ GoOutside1 : AskTellTopic @questionSubjects1
    "<q>Can I go outside to play in the snow with one kid?</q> you ask.
    <.p><q>Yes, but dress warmly.</q> "
;

questionSubjects2: Topic 'outside snow kids children friends';

++ GoOutside2 : AskTellTopic @questionSubjects2
    "<q>Can I go outside to play in the snow with the other kids?</q> you ask.
    <.p><q>Yes, but dress warmly.</q> "
;
[/code]

Jeff

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1040&start=0#p5686
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: TADS 3: Invoking a sound file from a link
User: lukematt / DateTime: 2010-04-11 00:28:40

When the user clicks on a link, I want to play a sound file.

This statement works:

[code]<a HREF=\'http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/10/13/2140959/Frosty/zing.mp3\'>
    Click to hear Frosty's voice</a>[/code]
It works because...

[quote="TADS 3/doc/htmltads/deviate.htm"]
    * http:
    * https:
    * ftp:
    * news:
    * mailto:
    * telnet: 

If your HREF text starts with one of the scheme identifiers above, the interpreter treats it as an internet hyperlink.[/quote]
============================================================

However, I want to play a sound file that resides on the user's computer.

This statement does [b]not[/b] work:

[code]<a HREF=\'file:zing.mp3\'>
    Click to hear Frosty's voice</a>[/code]
because...

[quote="TADS 3/doc/htmltads/deviate.htm"]Any HREF that doesn't start with one of the scheme identifiers listed above is a command hyperlink. When the player clicks on a command link, HTML TADS simply treats the HREF text as a new command, and enters it on the command line as though the user had typed that text.[/quote]
============================================================

Moreover, TADS 3 needs the <SOUND> tag to play a sound file.

============================================================

Thus, I'm stuck.

Please, does anybody know how to play a sound file when the user clicks on a link?


Thanks for your help.

Jeff

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1032&start=0#p5687
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Question
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-04-11 03:13:31

[quote="JC Denton"]wait a minute this comp is only for the BEGINNINGS of stories? and everybody can vote and therefore cheat like crazy?[/quote]
I don't see how this competition is more susceptible to cheating than any other competition. The prize money is paid only when and if the full game is released within a year after the comp has ended. In theory you could try to send in false votes to up your potential prize money a couple of dollars, but you would still have to finish the game.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1036&start=0#p5688
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Singular Topic Matching Plural
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-04-11 03:36:08

Now try this one:

[code]
+Someone: Person 'someone' 'someone'
    isProperName=true
;

++ GoOutside1 : AskTellTopic @topicElephants
    "<q>Can I go outside to play in the snow with the elephants?</q> you ask.
    <.p><q>Okay, but only if the bad elephant isn't there.</q> ";
;

++ GoOutside2 : AskTellTopic @topicBadElephant
    "<q>Can I go outside to play in the snow with the bad elephant?</q> you ask.
    <.p><q>No, she would steal your peanuts.</q> "
;

topicElephants: Topic 'elephants';

topicBadElephant: Topic 'bad elephant';[/code]
'Cat' and 'kid' were bad examples because they're only three letters, but TADS can potentially accept 'elephant' for 'elephants' (or for that matter 'elepha' or anything else more than five letters long).

For me the above code gives:

[quote]>a elephant
(asking someone)
“Can I go outside to play in the snow with the elephants?” you ask. 

“Okay, but only if the bad elephant isn't there.” 

>a elephants
“Can I go outside to play in the snow with the elephants?” you ask. 

“Okay, but only if the bad elephant isn't there.” 

>a bad elephant
“Can I go outside to play in the snow with the bad elephant?” you ask. 

“No, she would steal your peanuts.” [/quote]
Now here's where it gets really interesting - when I just made this example by changing your code, 'a elephant' asked about the bad elephant.  But by changing the order of the topics, I got it to stop working.  And in fact, changing which topic comes first and which topic is GoOutside1 or GoOutside2 (or whether they're anonymous or not) seems to change which topic is chosen as the response to 'elephant'.

Now it's possible I can do this kind of tweaking in my WIP, but can I expect it to behave consistently in other interpreters or on other people's computers?  I know that later AltTopics are given more precendence, is the opposite true of AskTellTopics?  Or as I suspect, is TADS just treating elephant and elephants as equivalent words, and it's a matter of pot-luck which topic gets set up as the favourite?

And back to my original question, what do I do to [i]reliably[/i] give a topic precedence for the singular form of its name, without having to set a higher matchScore on each individual AskTellTopic referring to it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1036&start=0#p5689
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Singular Topic Matching Plural
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-04-11 05:11:05

That sounds like a parser bug to me. You'd better [url=http://bugdb.tads.org/main_page.php]report it[/url]. (I know there have been other bugs with plurals and truncation.)

Until it's fixed, you can make TADS pay attention to the whole word by turning off truncation. Just set gameMain.parserTruncLength to nil.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1036&start=0#p5690
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Singular Topic Matching Plural
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2010-04-11 06:23:04

[quote="Pacian"]Now it's possible I can do this kind of tweaking in my WIP, but can I expect it to behave consistently in other interpreters or on other people's computers? I know that later AltTopics are given more precendence, is the opposite true of AskTellTopics? Or as I suspect, is TADS just treating elephant and elephants as equivalent words, and it's a matter of pot-luck which topic gets set up as the favourite?[/quote]

I would expect this to behave consistently across computers and interpreters, but like you, I'd be a bit wary of using source code order to determine the outcome. 

What's happening internally is that TopicDatabase.findTopicResponse() looks through all the available TopicEntries that could match the player input and returns the one with the highest matchScore. While it's running through the list of relevant topics it notes any TopicEntry that matches that has a matchScore higher than the previous best matchScore found, which means that in the event of a tied matchScore it'll return the first TopicEntry it finds with that matchScore. In this case which TopicEntry it'll end up choosing will thus depend on which order the TopicEntries are stored in the relevant list (e.g. of AskTopics and TellTopics), which in turn is probably dependent on source text order. I'd expect this behaviour to be determinate once a game has been compiled (and hence interpreter independent), but not something I'd particularly want to rely on when writing a game.

[quote="Emerald"]That sounds like a parser bug to me. You'd better report it. (I know there have been other bugs with plurals and truncation.)[/quote]

I'm not sure whether it's technically a bug or simply a consequence of the way parser truncation works. In this example 'elephants' isn't a plural so far as the parser is concerned (it doesn't follow an asterisk in the vocabWords property), it's simpler a longer noun than 'elephant', so it may be unrelated to other parser bugs with plurals. That said, this probably is worth reporting as a bug (even if a change might technically be a feature request) since the behaviour is clearly undesirable. What's less obvious to me is whether there's a clearly preferable behaviour, e.g. if truncation is allowed and the player can type (the obviously ambiguous):

>A ELEPHA

Should that be treated differently from

>A ELEPHANT
?

Well, perhaps it should: I suppose the ideal behaviour would be for the parser always to prefer an exact match over a truncated match. Would this be a bug-fix or a feature change?

[quote="Emerald"]Until it's fixed, you can make TADS pay attention to the whole word by turning off truncation. Just set gameMain.parserTruncLength to nil.[/quote]

That would seem to be the best approach (an alternative would be to set gameMain.parserTruncLength to a sufficiently large number to distinguish any objects that need to be distinguished in your game, which allowing the odd very long word to be abbreviated to, say, the first nine characters, but in practice you may as well disable truncation altogether).

-- Eric

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1036&start=0#p5691
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Singular Topic Matching Plural
User: lukematt / DateTime: 2010-04-11 06:44:12

Well, it might be overkill, but...

See the GameMainDef class

[quote="TADS 3/doc/libref/object/GameMainDef.html"]Each game MUST define an object called 'gameMain' to define how the game starts up. You can use GameMainDef as the base class of your 'gameMain' object[/quote]

GameMainDef includes a property parserTruncLength

[quote="TADS 3/doc/libref/object/GameMainDef.html#parserTruncLength"]Option setting: the parser's truncation length for player input. As a convenience to the player, we can allow the player to truncate long words, entering only the first, say, 6 characters. For example, rather than typing "x flashlight", we could allow the player to simply type "x flashl" - truncating "flashlight" to six letters.

We use a default truncation length of 6, but games can change this by overriding this property in gameMain. We use a default of 6 mostly because that's what the old Infocom games did - many long-time IF players are accustomed to six-letter truncation from those games. Shorter lengths are superficially more convenient for the player, obviously, but there's a trade-off, which is that shorter truncation lengths create more potential for ambiguity. For some games, a longer length might actually be better for the player, because it would reduce spurious ambiguity due to the parser matching short input against long vocabulary words.

If you don't want to allow the player to truncate long words at all, set this to nil. This will require the player to type every word in its entirety.

Note that changing this property dynamicaly will have no effect. The library only looks at it once, during library initialization at the very start of the game. If you want to change the truncation length dynamically, you must instead create a new StringComparator object with the new truncation setting, and call languageGlobals.setStringComparator() to select the new object. [/quote]

If you want to see the defaults used by TADS 3

[quote="en_us.t"]PreinitObject
    execute()
    {
        /* set up the main dictionary's comparator */
        languageGlobals.setStringComparator(
            new StringComparator(gameMain.parserTruncLength, nil, []));
    }
[/quote]
and

[quote="en_us.t"]    parserTruncLength = 6
[/quote]


Jeff

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1032&start=0#p5692
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Question
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2010-04-11 07:23:59

...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1026&start=20#p5693
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forced paragraph breaks?
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2010-04-11 07:26:26

[quote="JC Denton"]

OK, next problem: how to set flags by choices? can't find that in the adventure book manual

the intent is to have text in descriptions that is skipped if certain choices are taken[/quote]

this question is really important, so if anybody could come forward with a solution to this basic problem, it would be appreciated very much!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1032&start=10#p5694
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Question
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-04-11 07:36:25

[quote="JC Denton"]   [quote] In theory you could try to send in false votes to up your potential prize money a couple of dollars[/quote]

that's my point[/quote]

And my point is: how does a "genuine" competition you're looking for prevent this?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1036&start=0#p5695
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Singular Topic Matching Plural
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-04-11 08:51:26

[quote="Emerald"]That sounds like a parser bug to me. You'd better [url=http://bugdb.tads.org/main_page.php]report it[/url]. (I know there have been other bugs with plurals and truncation.)[/quote]
I will do so.

[quote="Emerald"]Until it's fixed, you can make TADS pay attention to the whole word by turning off truncation. Just set gameMain.parserTruncLength to nil.[/quote]
Thank you.  I did wonder if that might be possible.

[quote="lukematt"]Well, it might be overkill, but...[/quote]
Although the truncation always [i]seemed[/i] like a cool idea to me, it's not something I expect players to really use.  And I think it's kind of polite not to give items/people long names in the first place, just for those people who don't realise they can do this.

[quote="Eric Eve"]I suppose the ideal behaviour would be for the parser always to prefer an exact match over a truncated match.[/quote]
I think this is kind of what I expected TADS to do.  But as you say, useability issues frequently fall into a grey area of what's bug and what's feature.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1032&start=10#p5696
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Question
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2010-04-11 09:25:59

...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1026&start=20#p5697
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forced paragraph breaks?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-04-11 11:40:56

[quote="JC Denton"][quote="JC Denton"]

OK, next problem: how to set flags by choices? can't find that in the adventure book manual

the intent is to have text in descriptions that is skipped if certain choices are taken[/quote]

this question is really important, so if anybody could come forward with a solution to this basic problem, it would be appreciated very much![/quote]

[color=#4000FF]say "This is text that will be printed regardless of the state of the flag[if <flag name> is on], while this is text that will be printed only if the flag is on[end if]."[/color]

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1039&start=0#p5698
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a buying question
User: sqib / DateTime: 2010-04-11 11:48:23

Ill try to see if I can work that out somehow.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1020&start=10#p5699
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 Second Pause In-Game
User: BishyT / DateTime: 2010-04-11 12:33:02

Got around to trying out your teletype thing, and it won't work. I even tried directly copy and pasting the "To teletype" method, and it still errors.

The error is:

[code]Problem. The phrase or rule definition 'To teletype ( text-to-be-printed - an indexed text )'   is written using the 'colon and indentation' syntax for its 'if's, 'repeat's and 'while's, where blocks of phrases grouped together are indented one tab step inward from the 'if ...:' or similar phrase to which they belong. But the tabs here seem to be misaligned, and I can't determine the structure. The first phrase going awry in the definition seems to be 'repeat with N running from 1 to the number of characters in the text-to-be-printed'  , in case that helps. 

 This sometimes happens even when the code looks about right, to the eye, if rows of spaces have been used to indent phrases instead of tabs.
[/code]

This is with the copy and pasted version, so i'm using your indentations.

EDIT: Got it to work. I guess the indents weren't large enough. Made my own indents with the tab key and now it works. However, it seems as though no matter how low I set the wait number the text is typed extremely slowly, even at 3 milliseconds.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1020&start=10#p5700
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 Second Pause In-Game
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-04-11 12:57:54

Thanks for the report. I just tested it and it works fine. 

You say you're copying and pasting. That won't work, whether you're copying from the original text file or from the "Installed Extensions" page in the IDE. There's an extra tab in front of every line in the text file, so that will screw up Inform. The Installed Extensions is in HTML, so the tabs are converted to spaces, which will also confuse Inform. You need to press the blue-on-gray paste button next to the title of the example in the installed extension docs--if you do this, Inform will correctly convert spaces to tabs and paste automatically.

Let me know if that works. If it doesn't, there may be a bug in the IDE (I'm using the Mac IDE).

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1032&start=10#p5701
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Question
User: George / DateTime: 2010-04-11 12:59:01

I think nearly every IF competition uses public voting, with the possible exception of the Art Show. Can't remember for that one.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1020&start=10#p5702
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 Second Pause In-Game
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-04-11 13:04:14

[quote="BishyT"]EDIT: Got it to work. I guess the indents weren't large enough. Made my own indents with the tab key and now it works.[/quote]

It sounds like you didn't use the paste button and had to replace the spaces with tabs.

[quote="BishyT"]However, it seems as though no matter how low I set the wait number the text is typed extremely slowly, even at 3 milliseconds.[/quote]

I can see clear differences in speed between 3 and 20 millisecond delays (using Zoom in the Mac IDE), as well as other terps. A 3-millisecond delay is quite fast. What interpreter/IDE are you using? If your computer is very slow, or the interpreter (or the version of the terp that's in the IDE is slow), you may not get very good response. Try "releasing" a gamefile and opening it in a different interpreter. 

EDIT: Gargoyle (pre-release Mac build) is pretty slow whether you set it to 1 or 20 ms. I'll report this to the Gargoyle devs as a bug. 

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1020&start=10#p5703
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 Second Pause In-Game
User: BishyT / DateTime: 2010-04-11 13:13:22

I'm on a pretty powerful Windows PC (I can run Crysis on high settings), and i'm using Inform's own preview interpreter.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1026&start=20#p5705
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forced paragraph breaks?
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2010-04-11 13:26:30

[quote="ektemple"][quote="JC Denton"][quote="JC Denton"]

OK, next problem: how to set flags by choices? can't find that in the adventure book manual

the intent is to have text in descriptions that is skipped if certain choices are taken[/quote]

this question is really important, so if anybody could come forward with a solution to this basic problem, it would be appreciated very much![/quote]

[color=#4000FF]say "This is text that will be printed regardless of the state of the flag[if <flag name> is on], while this is text that will be printed only if the flag is on[end if]."[/color]

--Erik[/quote]

yeah I know that but how do I [b]trigger[/b] flags via choices? it is only explained for pages...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1020&start=10#p5706
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 Second Pause In-Game
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-04-11 13:28:14

[quote="BishyT"]I'm on a pretty powerful Windows PC (I can run Crysis on high settings), and i'm using Inform's own preview interpreter.[/quote]

Hm, I believe that would be a modified version of WinGlulxe. It sounds like not some interpreters are just not good at printing text quickly. There's not much to be done about it except bring it to the attention of the interpreter writers. (It's interesting to note that both Gargoyle and WinGlulxe are faster at displaying animated graphics than animated text...)

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1026&start=20#p5707
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forced paragraph breaks?
User: George / DateTime: 2010-04-11 13:39:31

[quote]
Most flags begin the game in the off position. To set a flag to the "on" position, add the line "It gives [the flag's name]." just after the page's description and before the list of choices:

    Turning on the Reading Lamp is a page.
    "You turn the reading lamp on."
    It gives TheReadingLampIsOn.

Now, whenever Turning on the Reading Lamp is read, the flag called TheReadingLampIsOn will be turned on.

To return a flag to the off position, add the line "It removes [the flag's name]." just after the page's description:

    Turning off the Reading Lamp is a page:
    "You turn the reading lamp off."
    It removes TheReadingLampIsOn.
[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1020&start=10#p5708
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 Second Pause In-Game
User: BishyT / DateTime: 2010-04-11 13:39:47

I also seem to have another problem.

I teletype one piece of text (20 ms for each letter), I wait for 2000 ms (two seconds), then teletype a second piece of text. During play, the two second delay is nonexistant; it continues to type at 20 ms each letter without stopping.

I even amped the number to 2 million, and the pause is still nonexistant.

I've tried using both Glulx interpreters that come with Inform (Glulxe and Git) with no improvement.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1020&start=10#p5709
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 Second Pause In-Game
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-04-11 13:40:33

You'll need to post your code, I think.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1020&start=10#p5710
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 Second Pause In-Game
User: BishyT / DateTime: 2010-04-11 13:45:13

Not really much to post. The teletype is the same as yours (using the same numbers).

Then during an Instead rule (examining the character of Cheif Buga), I have this happen:

teletype "The great and wise Cheif Buga stands before you on a pedistal, illuminated by the two torches on either side of him.";
wait 2000 ms before continuing;
teletype " He is a giant of a man (both in height and weight), with hands so large he could crush your skull like a paper cup.".

Inform seems to ignore that two second wait for some reason, yet no error appears.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1020&start=10#p5711
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 Second Pause In-Game
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-04-11 13:53:21

Hm, I can't really explain this either. It works fine for me in Zoom and Gargoyle on OS X. What happens at the line breaks in the original example? Do you get the extra pause (400 ms) there?

By the way, I've asked David Kinder (who maintains WinGit and WinGlulxe) to peek at this thread, so he may weigh in at some point.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1020&start=20#p5712
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 Second Pause In-Game
User: BishyT / DateTime: 2010-04-11 13:58:34

It doesn't slow down at the line break either.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1020&start=20#p5713
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 Second Pause In-Game
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-04-11 14:14:55

Well I'm out of ideas. All of the pauses work as they should for me in both WinGlulxe and WinGit--both the original line break delays and your 2 second pause--running in Wine (Windows emulator on OS X). I can't see why this would work in Wine but not on a native machine...

Try downloading my gamefile and testing with that:

<a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Bug%20Report.gblorb">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Bug%20Report.gblorb</a>

Any difference?

--Erik


P.S. Here's the code used to create the gamefile:
[code]
Include Real-Time Delays by Erik Temple.

When play begins:
	say "Type TURN ON COMPUTER to see animated text display. The desired delay in milliseconds between the printing of each character is initially 20 ms. You can change this by typing DELAY 2, for example, which would change the desired delay to 2 ms."

The Lab is a room. The computer is a device in the Lab.

Delay is a number variable. Delay is 20.

To teletype (text-to-be-printed - an indexed text):
	repeat with N running from 1 to the number of characters in the text-to-be-printed:
		if character number N in the text-to-be-printed is "[line break]":
			wait 400 milliseconds before continuing;
		say "[character number N in the text-to-be-printed][run paragraph on]";
		wait (delay) milliseconds before continuing, strictly.

Instead of switching on the computer:
	say "[line break]";
	teletype "The great and wise Cheif Buga stands before you on a pedistal, illuminated by the two torches on either side of him.";
	say line break;
	wait 2000 ms before continuing;
	teletype " He is a giant of a man (both in height and weight), with hands so large he could crush your skull like a paper cup.";
	say line break.
	
Setting the delay is an action applying to one value. Understand "Set delay at [number] ms" or "delay [number]" as setting the delay.

Carry out setting the delay:
	change the delay to the number understood;
	say "Delay is now [delay] milliseconds."
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1026&start=20#p5714
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forced paragraph breaks?
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2010-04-11 15:02:44

one more time:

Page =/= Choice  [emote]:!:[/emote] 

A choice called yes is for page y. "". It triggers page Z.
A choice called no is for page y. "". It triggers page Z.

Page Z is a page. "A choice is [[if flag X is on]not[end if] equal to a page."

now how do I get choice "yes" to trigger "flag X", while choice "no" doesn't trigger it? 

I really can't make it any more obvious...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1026&start=20#p5715
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forced paragraph breaks?
User: George / DateTime: 2010-04-11 18:00:07

It's there in the doc.

It's a little counter-intuitive, but you trigger the flag [i]on the page[/i], not on the choice. Does that make sense?

edit: do you want multiple choices to lead to the same page, and depending on the choice, trigger flags? Because I don't think that's how gamebooks work, and the extension isn't set up for that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1036&start=0#p5716
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Singular Topic Matching Plural
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-04-11 19:04:46

[quote="Pacian"][quote="Eric Eve"]I suppose the ideal behaviour would be for the parser always to prefer an exact match over a truncated match.[/quote]
I think this is kind of what I expected TADS to do.  But as you say, useability issues frequently fall into a grey area of what's bug and what's feature.[/quote]
It seems pretty clear to me that TADS should prefer an exact match - and in most cases it does, doesn't it? Suppose your game contains a button and a buttonhole and the user types X BUTTON. That will always select the button, rather than the buttonhole. If the player ASKs JOE ABOUT BUTTON: A) she almost certainly mean the button, not the buttonhole; and B) even if she doesn't (perhaps she hasn't noticed the button's existence) it should behave the same way as other cases.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1026&start=20#p5717
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forced paragraph breaks?
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-04-11 19:42:40

You could use a hacked "To say..." phrase to accomplish that effect.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1038&start=0#p5718
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Announcing TWIFcomp (submissions due April 25, 2010)
User: dhakajack / DateTime: 2010-04-11 23:51:02

Update: There's been good uptake on this proposal, and this evening the comp hit critical mass, with four entrants, some with multiple entries. It looks like I'm now obligated to make good on the four prize levels I'd proposed. Any one entering is now guaranteed of having some competition. Some of the writing is quite clever and thoughtful, and I'm looking forward to putting it on display in a couple weeks. Cheers! - Jack.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1041&start=0#p5719
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Best Methods...
User: appleman / DateTime: 2010-04-12 02:48:27

I'm in my third week of learning Inform, and already I have learned so much, but still have a long way to go.

I've been playing around with defining named rules, and also Scenes, and it got me thinking about the best method (in general) for globally testing conditions.  Which is better?  Rules or scenes.  I mean, what would be the best way to code the following scenario for example:

[color=#8040FF]If you are wearing the hawaiian shirt and Nancy strolls in, say "Nancy shrieks at the shirt you are wearing!".[/color]

As someone who has a bit of programming experience, my first instinct is just to write the IF statement on it's own, but I know that Inform won't let me do that.  So what would be the best way to invoke it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1026&start=30#p5721
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forced paragraph breaks?
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2010-04-12 04:45:34

@ George: I understand the extension is fairly primitive in the choice off options provided, but what I want to accomplish should not be too extraordinarily, in fact this should be extremely commonplace... but I guess the author doesn't update it any more

[quote="Biophysicist"]You could use a hacked "To say..." phrase to accomplish that effect.[/quote]

could you elaborate this for me please? the reason I'm doing a CYOA first is so I don't have to learn all the inform stuff right away...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1041&start=0#p5722
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Best Methods...
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-04-12 07:46:11

[quote="appleman"]I'm in my third week of learning Inform, and already I have learned so much, but still have a long way to go.

I've been playing around with defining named rules, and also Scenes, and it got me thinking about the best method (in general) for globally testing conditions.  Which is better?  Rules or scenes.  I mean, what would be the best way to code the following scenario for example:

[color=#8040FF]If you are wearing the hawaiian shirt and Nancy strolls in, say "Nancy shrieks at the shirt you are wearing!".[/color]

As someone who has a bit of programming experience, my first instinct is just to write the IF statement on it's own, but I know that Inform won't let me do that.  So what would be the best way to invoke it?[/quote]

I'm about as advanced as you, but my guess would be that you would want to do this with an "Every turn" rule. You'll need some way to define "Nancy strolls in," though. Another thing you could do is fold this into whatever code you're using to move Nancy into the location, or to print the message telling you that Nancy has moved into the location.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1042&start=0#p5723
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Standards for creating a competent, modern IF in Inform 7
User: UncleSporky / DateTime: 2010-04-12 08:58:17

I realize that everyone's requirements for their own IF are different, and some people don't mind seeing "a chair is here" or "as good looking as ever."  Default messages don't automatically make your game bad.  But it seems to me that the stories that really stick with you are the ones that go out of their way to provide unique flavor text.

To that end, I've been wondering if anyone has attempted to define a list of practices or extensions which are most useful towards creating a quality work of IF - code that provides the tools for reducing the amount of errant, awkward or default output.

I suppose there would be several categories of useful code, the first primarily dealing with getting rid of parser errors or awkward-looking output.  For example, the issue of "take all" including all the scenery and people, happily telling you that John doesn't want to be picked up and the trees are fixed in place.  I found the resolution buried in a post on this forum:

Rule for deciding whether all includes scenery: it does not.
Rule for deciding whether all includes backdrops: it does not.
Rule for deciding whether all includes people: it does not.

I'm not sure how easily I would've discovered this if I hadn't happened to browse to that thread.  I suppose a game could be designed that allows for portable people, but in general these few lines would be beneficial for most new authors.  Along these lines, what other simple additions are there that could be universally recommended?

Then you might have a category based on getting rid of default output, or descriptions that are not in error but could use some work.  This might include extensions such as David Fisher's Default Messages, or Emily Short's Room Description Control and Tailored Room Descriptions.  For general code toward this end, the verbose default enabled by the line "use full-length room descriptions" is something I notice that most all modern games include.  Another useful line that budding new users ought to take advantage of is:

The description of the player is "<something unique>."

Essentially what I'm looking for is a framework, a starting point where you can say, alright, if you begin by learning this code and these extensions, you're well on your way to making a nice memorable piece of interactive fiction.

For those who have created a fully-realized IF like this, what code do you consider the most helpful/useful which is also broadly portable to other games?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1020&start=20#p5724
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 Second Pause In-Game
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-04-12 11:12:12

[quote="ektemple"]By the way, I've asked David Kinder (who maintains WinGit and WinGlulxe) to peek at this thread, so he may weigh in at some point.[/quote]

The way that the interpreter in the Inform 7 application works means that it'll never respond that quickly to short timer events: Inform 7 runs the interpreter in a separate process so that it can recover if the interpreter crashes, but a side effect of that is that communication between the two is generally only checked about once every 100ms or so. In normal use this is fine, but the teletype effect makes it rather obvious.

There isn't much that can be easily done about this without compromising the stability of the Inform 7 front-end or quite a lot of re-working. At the moment there's too many other more important things to work on for this to be a priority, sorry.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1020&start=20#p5725
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 Second Pause In-Game
User: George / DateTime: 2010-04-12 12:00:56

I admit I haven't tested this myself, but it seems like even 10 FPS would be OK for teletype? Or is it unbearably too slow?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1020&start=20#p5726
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 Second Pause In-Game
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-04-12 12:29:53

[quote="George"]I admit I haven't tested this myself, but it seems like even 10 FPS would be OK for teletype? Or is it unbearably too slow?
[/quote]
I'm not sure about the performance BishyT is getting, whether it was 1/100ms or even worse. However, David's explanation suggests that one ought to see an increase in speed by "releasing" the gamefile and opening it in an external interpreter. Like David, I don't think this is a big deal--if performance is acceptable in the end user's experience, it doesn't really matter whether there's a bit of a lag in the IDE. (And there is some lag in most multimedia functions in the IDE, whether on Mac and Windows).

On to your question about 1/100ms. I think it [i]is[/i] pretty slow, but it's not excrutiating; certainly it ought to be good enough for testing. You can try it with the [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Bug%20Report.gblorb]gamefile[/url] I posted upthread. Type DELAY 100 to see what it looks like...

What I've found testing other terps was that Zoom was able to get significantly better speed than any of them (hence the name?). I estimate Gargoyle (Mac OS X) prints one letter every 50-90 ms, whereas Zoom seems to be able to do significantly better than 1/20ms, maybe even better than 1/5ms.

UPDATE: David Kinder has explained that the resolution of the timer for Windows Glk (which powers the WinGlulxe & WinGit interpreters) is such that the best possible temporal resolution is about 20ms, and for a "teletype" effect like this where the entire display must be re-rendered every time the timer "ticks", the best resolution will probably be around 50 ms. So there's an explanation for the lag on those interpreters.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1042&start=0#p5727
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Standards for creating a competent, modern IF in Inform 7
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-04-12 15:11:32

I prefer something like this.[code]Instead of going nowhere, try listing exits.[/code] There's several extensions that list exits available on the Inform website.  

I'm also fond of having a compass rose in the status bar.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1020&start=20#p5728
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 Second Pause In-Game
User: BishyT / DateTime: 2010-04-12 17:49:43

[quote="ektemple"]UPDATE: David Kinder has explained that the resolution of the timer for Windows Glk (the WinGlulxe & WinGit interpreters) is such that the best possible temporal resolution is about 20ms, and for a "teletype" effect like this where the entire display must be re-rendered every time the timer "ticks", the best resolution with probably be around 50 ms. So there's an explanation for the lag on those interpreters.

--Erik[/quote]

Well whaddaya know, it works! With the teletype set to 50 ms all the other waits work now.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1020&start=20#p5729
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 Second Pause In-Game
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-04-12 17:59:44

[quote="BishyT"]Well whaddaya know, it works! With the teletype set to 50 ms all the other waits work now.[/quote]

What was your setting before? Could you post the full code of the failed game? As I said, I couldn't replicate what you were seeing, but if there's a bug with timers in Windows Glk, I'd like to be able to track it down and submit it.

Thanks,
Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1020&start=20#p5730
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 Second Pause In-Game
User: BishyT / DateTime: 2010-04-12 18:17:37

Strange, it seems to have fixed itself. Now the pauses happen even if the teletype is set to 1 (though of course the teletype itself doesn't run that fast in the preview).

Also, I tried running my project in WinGlulxe, and everything worked perfectly fine (no lag).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1042&start=0#p5731
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Standards for creating a competent, modern IF in Inform 7
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-04-12 20:29:24

The worst thing you can do, in my mind, is create situations where the player must read your mind to solve a puzzle. Make sure all your puzzle solutions will make sense to your average IF player - or, more accurately, that at least one solution to every puzzle does. This does not mean that you can't make really hard puzzles, though.

As an example of what I mean: Consider a puzzle involving getting to the second floor of a house without going through the first floor, where the correct solution is to wear body armor and fire a ray gun at the ground, detonating a buried land mine. The mine's explosion throws you up into the air, and you just so happen to go flying through a window in the second floor of the house. The problem here is that most people don't go around firing ray guns at the ground for no apparent reason, making the puzzle unsolvable without an absurd amount of luck (or looking at the walkthrough).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1026&start=30#p5732
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forced paragraph breaks?
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-04-12 20:31:51

I could, but before that: Are the two possibilities reachable from the same page?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1043&start=0#p5733
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: TADS 3: inputLine
User: lukematt / DateTime: 2010-04-13 05:39:09

[code]+ mathproblem: Readable, Thing 'note/paper/message' 'note'
  "A piece of paper with writing on it"
    
    math_answer = nil
    
    dobjFor(Read)
    {
               
        action()
        {
            "<TABLE BORDER=1 CELLPADDING=15 WIDTH=\"25%\">
            <TR BGCOLOR=\"#5EE9FF\">
            <TD WIDTH=60% BGCOLOR=\"#EEDFCC\">
            If one person shovels, the snow pile can be cleared in 57 minutes.\b
            \b
            If three people shovel, how long will it take to remove the snow pile?\b
            \b
            </TD> 
            </TR>
            </TABLE>\b\b";
       /*     flushOutput(); */
            math_answer = inputLine();
        }
    }
;
[/code]

When this code executes, the following occurs:

1. The program pauses, waiting for the user's input;
2. After the user presses the "Enter" key, the table appears.

That's wrong.  I need the table to appear **first**.  Then, I need the program to pause for the user's input.

Note: I tried the flushOutput command...didn't fix the problem.

====================================================================

If inputLine is not the best way to handle an open-ended response from the user, I'm open to other suggestions.

Thanks.  Jeff

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1043&start=0#p5734
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3: inputLine
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-04-13 06:59:25

The easiest answer is to change
[code]math_answer = inputLine();[/code]
to
[code]math_answer = inputManager.getInputLine(nil, nil);[/code]
That way, inputManager will handle flushing the output for you.

You can find more information this in Eric Eve's article [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/techman/t3inout.htm]Some Common Input/Output Issues[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1043&start=0#p5735
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3: inputLine
User: lukematt / DateTime: 2010-04-13 08:45:03

You're right, Emily.  Thanks for the guidance.

Jeff

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1042&start=0#p5736
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Standards for creating a competent, modern IF in Inform 7
User: George / DateTime: 2010-04-13 10:31:21

Someone on RAIF just made a post that applies here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_frm/thread/fe3ea5c0e02921e3#">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts ... 0e02921e3#</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1018&start=0#p5737
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How long to make a game?
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2010-04-13 10:44:26

I don’t think you can put a time on how long it takes to create a game. There are so many variables to take into consideration. But as for my own games, well…
My first game: “Ghost town”, took me a little over two years to finish,  whereas my next one, “Through time” is still under way and will probably be so for one or two more years. 
On the other hand, I’ve finished, Camelot, in six month, and D-Day should be ready for release in June. Both games have taken less than a year to finish.
I believe it will take an average player about 3 – 6 hours to play the last two and 12 – 14 for “Through time”

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1042&start=0#p5738
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Standards for creating a competent, modern IF in Inform 7
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-04-13 12:44:13

FWIW, the next version of Inform will revise the way take all is handled to make this less necessary, and do some related things towards tweaking the world model.

That doesn't cover getting the protagonist's description right and guaranteeing interesting text about every object, though, of course.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1042&start=0#p5739
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Standards for creating a competent, modern IF in Inform 7
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-04-13 13:22:07

Aaron Reed's extension [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Aaron%20Reed/Small%20Kindnesses/index.html]Small Kindnesses[/url] implements a number of niceties, including some mentioned in this thread.

If you're thinking of making an extension out of your research into this topic, check out the way that Aaron has organized the extension--each piece of functionality is placed into its own section so that the user can eliminate that section if they don't want to use Aaron's implementation (see the extension documentation for more explanation).

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1018&start=0#p5740
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How long to make a game?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-04-13 20:17:00

The other day I wrote eight games for Jack Welch's TWIFcomp. Each game had a source code of 140 characters or less.

...that's not really helpful for any other kind of game, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=989&start=0#p5741
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Roomless Comp
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-04-13 20:41:29

I think it would be great to run a competition here at Intfiction.  I might even think about entering something short, spontaneous, and surreal (the only kind of game that I could perhaps finish in any specific time frame).  Otherwise, I'd enjoy casting my vote.  I'm still a little bummed about the Spring Thing, even though I suppose I have plenty of other things to do.


[quote="George"]
1. No physical locations, interior rooms or exterior spaces are modeled by the game. This includes places like living rooms, closets, dresser drawers, phone booths, outer space, underwater, in the air falling from an airplane, 'physical' locations in dream sequences, etcetera. The character can be in one or more locations, but there isn't any physical interaction with locations during the game. Atmospheric messages or descriptions based on the locations are OK.

2. What does this leave us? Epistolary games, trials, radio communication, interior monologues, seduction, breaking up, wiretapping, development of cultures, discovering history based on artifacts, etcetera.
[/quote]
I don't really understand exactly what counts as truly "roomless" for the purposes of the official rules.  I did read through the first three pages of the thread that inspired this proposed competition, but I'm not sure if I can picture what such a game would look like.

What about a game with a blind PC?  The game world would have to be described in terms of hearing and touch.  Would that count as "roomless"?

Also, are CYOAs allowed?  I think a good way to make a nonstandard IF game for a competition like this would be to use multiple-choice format and make the options different from standard imperative commands in some way.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=989&start=0#p5742
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Roomless Comp
User: George / DateTime: 2010-04-13 21:00:01

I should revise the OP to be more clear, I think roomless means that the world isn't mapped, basically. So a blind PC, but still with standard exits, doesn't count. A CYOA definitely fits, since usually you have no freedom of movement through a mapped space -- that is to say, a choice might lead you east, but usually you can't go back west. 

There's some hints of [url=http://www.inthecompanyofgrues.com/?p=57]another CYOA comp happening[/url], so I'm sort of holding off on this until I see what happens with that. Though I don't see this as just a CYOA comp of course, or one restricted to a single development system.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1026&start=30#p5743
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forced paragraph breaks?
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2010-04-14 01:39:58

yes, that would be the case - since if they are reachable from different pages, I can use the regular way that is implemented in the extension

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1040&start=0#p5746
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3: Invoking a sound file from a link
User: lukematt / DateTime: 2010-04-15 05:18:21

I've finished writing my first IF with TADS 3.  Just cleaning up loose ends now.

Jim Aikin on the rec.arts.int-fiction newsgroup provided the solution to this problem.  Here's the implementation in my code:

[code]<a HREF=\'voice1\'>Click to hear Frosty\'s voice</a>

DefineIAction(Voice1)
  execAction()
        {
        "<SOUND CANCEL><SOUND SRC=\"sound\\Track01.mp3\" LAYER=BACKGROUND>";
        }
;

VerbRule(Voice1)
  'voice1'
  : Voice1Action
  verbPhrase = 'Frosty\'s voice 1'
;[/code]

Tricky, but functional.  [emote]:)[/emote] 


Jeff

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1041&start=0#p5747
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Best Methods...
User: BishyT / DateTime: 2010-04-15 06:13:02

I'm essentially pulling this out of nowhere, but based on my rather limited knowledge could something like this work?

Instead of Nancy going to a room (called TEH ROOM) while player is wearing a Hawaiian shirt:
if TEH ROOM is the same room the player, say "Nancy shrieks at your shirt."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1041&start=0#p5748
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Best Methods...
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-04-15 06:28:16

[quote="BishyT"]
Instead of Nancy going to a room (called TEH ROOM) while player is wearing a Hawaiian shirt:
if TEH ROOM is the same room the player, say "Nancy shrieks at your shirt."[/quote]
Close, but what it would actually do is that Nancy would never move at all when the player wears the shirt (an instead rule stops the action - literally instead of doing x, do y.) Only if Nancy would be going to the player's location the message would print (but Nancy would still not move.) It would also not work if it's the player that moves and not Nancy. Plus you mean "location of" instead of "same room".

A solution with an every turn rule might be something like this:

[code]Every turn when the location of Nancy is the location of the player and the location of Nancy was not the location of the player:
	if the player is wearing the Hawaiian shirt:
		say "Nancy shrieks at your shirt."[/code]
Yes, it looks horrible but what it does is that it checks if Nancy and the player are in the same location [i]right now[/i] (location of Nancy [b]is[/b] the location...) but that they were in different rooms [i]last turn[/i] (location of Nancy [b]was not[/b] the location...) This works regardless of whether it was the player or Nancy who moved, or if they were moved to the same location by some other means. It also prints the message only once, not all the time when Nancy sees the shirt (except when they are separated and then moved into the same room again.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1044&start=0#p5749
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Getting ZPlet to work...
User: johnmatthais / DateTime: 2010-04-15 21:49:39

I can't seem to get ZPlet to work...

Can anyone give me a rundown of what I'm doing wrong?

Here's the code for the page that has it included (excluding arbitrary things like the text describing what's on the page):

[code]<html><head> 
<title>Isolation</title> 
</head> 
 
<body> 
 
<div align=center> 
 
<h1>Isolation</h1> 
<hr> 
<applet archive="ZPlet-20060707.jar" code="russotto.zplet.Zplet.class" width=512 height=387> 
	<param name="Foreground" value="white"> 
	<param name="Background" value="blue"> 
	<param name="StatusForeground" value="white"> 
	<param name="StatusBackground" value="black"> 
	<param name="StoryFile" value="./isolation.z8"> 
</applet>
 
</div> 
</body></html> [/code]

I built this looking at what other people had done with the code and at the example, and as you can tell by looking [url=http://brootalgames.webs.com/isolation.htm]here[/url], it still isn't working.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1018&start=10#p5750
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How long to make a game?
User: johnmatthais / DateTime: 2010-04-15 22:00:40

You make it as long as it needs to be, or as long as the story allows. [i]Pick Up the Phone and Aisle[/i] is a great example of how a short game doesn't always mean a bad game. 

Actually, as a lesson in game design, I've picked up the ideas behind its length in an attempt to create my own version of it. [emote]:lol:[/emote]

In terms of words, the above example could easily exceed tens of thousands, as it boasts over 200 endings. However, each session only lasts a matter of seconds. [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1045&start=0#p5751
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Ten twitter-length IFs released
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-04-15 22:27:35

I've released ten twitter-length IFs -- the Inform 7 source code for each is 140 characters or less (counting spaces but not tabs or carriage returns). The games, with links to their source codes and to Parchment for online playing can be found at [url]http://saucersofmud.wordpress.com/2010/04/14/ten-very-short-interactive-fictions/[/url].

Eight of them are in a linked series. Hope they provide you with about thirty seconds of amusement each! (They were mostly inspired by Jack Welch's TWIFcomp, though there are too many for me to enter them all.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1026&start=30#p5752
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forced paragraph breaks?
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2010-04-16 02:36:27

one more critical problem: to include credits per "about" command as in standard if7 - I tried everything but to no avail, it just doesn't work

[b][size=200]whoever can solve either this or the previous problem with the flags sufficiently will receive a FREE Promo-CD (genre: metal)[/size][/b] of my choice!!! (I also have some retail non-metal cds if necessary)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1044&start=0#p5753
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Getting ZPlet to work...
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-04-16 21:34:21

I can understand using Java terps for TADS and Glulx, but not for the Z-Machine. Have you tried Parchment?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1044&start=0#p5754
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Getting ZPlet to work...
User: johnmatthais / DateTime: 2010-04-16 21:50:53

I just know that .z5 files work frequently with ZPlet, so I just assumed .z8 would, too.

In any case, I have tried Parchment. I uploaded everything I needed, and all that displayed on the page when I had edited it all in was a single text box line that I could input and delete letters in/from, but couldn't submit them and nothing else showed up.

It could always be because it's hosted by Webs, but I sort of doubt it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1044&start=0#p5755
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Getting ZPlet to work...
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-04-16 22:07:11

Can you show me? Is it still online?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1044&start=0#p5756
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Getting ZPlet to work...
User: johnmatthais / DateTime: 2010-04-16 22:44:31

No, it's not. I removed everything and put up the ZPlet to try getting that running.

Any chance you can tell me what I need to do to get Parchment running and I'll try what you post and work from there?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1046&start=0#p5757
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Frosty the Snow Man
User: lukematt / DateTime: 2010-04-17 11:51:55

A tribute to the Little Golden Book [i]Frosty the Snow Man[/i] is now available for downloading at these URLs[b]:[/b]

.t3 file
[url]http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/10/13/2140959/Frosty/Frosty%20the%20Snow%20Man.zip[/url]

source files
[url]http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/10/13/2140959/Frosty/Frosty%20the%20Snow%20Man%20%28src%29.zip[/url]

1. Please feel free to tell me if you find any bugs or if you have any suggested enhancements.

2. Before I list this file on an IF archive, should I contact the publisher about “permission to use”?


Jeff
<a href="mailto:jbowyer@seznam.cz">jbowyer@seznam.cz</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1044&start=0#p5758
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Getting ZPlet to work...
User: George / DateTime: 2010-04-17 12:54:19

All it really takes to run a game with Parchment is to upload it to a web host of some kind, make sure it's publically accessible, then go here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/zcode.html">http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/zcode.html</a>

z5 and z8 usually run fine.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1044&start=0#p5759
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Getting ZPlet to work...
User: johnmatthais / DateTime: 2010-04-17 13:10:39

OH! I get what I was doing wrong now. Thanks for that link George. Seems I forgot to change it into JS. >.>

So, eh...what do I do to get it to show in the already created webpage?

EDIT: Using restart on the link that was created causes the entire screen to go blank. Given the format of the game...it's kinda irritating. Is there a workaround for this?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1044&start=0#p5760
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Getting ZPlet to work...
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-04-17 18:12:28

Unfortunately no, it's just another bug that needs fixing. I'm not sure why it happens either.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1044&start=0#p5761
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Getting ZPlet to work...
User: johnmatthais / DateTime: 2010-04-17 18:47:42

Alright, so what would I need to do to put it in the webpage for viewing? Other than the obvious frameset option.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1044&start=0#p5762
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Getting ZPlet to work...
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-04-17 21:59:52

I'm not sure what you mean... do you want to put it in a frame in another page? If so you shouldn't need to do anything to it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1044&start=10#p5763
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Getting ZPlet to work...
User: johnmatthais / DateTime: 2010-04-17 22:09:32

No, sorry, I went blank on the correct word for it for a while. I want to embed it in the page I already have set up, but don't know how. I could use a frameset, but that's not the same as embedding it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1047&start=0#p5764
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: where can I get ifarchive.org
User: zinookoo / DateTime: 2010-04-18 02:08:49

Is it possible to get a current snapshot of the ifarchive? It is impossible to get in touch with the maintainers, though they list that you can contact them if you are interested in a copy. Does anyone know about this?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1044&start=10#p5765
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Getting ZPlet to work...
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-04-18 04:14:38

<a class="postlink" href="http://github.com/curiousdannii/parchment/archives/c57e6201f3957d49386a93381fe42f9790e8d7d7">http://github.com/curiousdannii/parchme ... 9790e8d7d7</a>

Download that and unzip it. You'll need the lib folder, parchment.css and parchment.html. Then add this to your parchment.html:

<script>parchment_options = { default_story: './story.z5' };</script>

If you can base64 encode your file, use thus second option to specify
it as the backup (for older browsers which cannot directly load the
raw file.) 

<script>parchment_options = { default_story: [ './story.z5', './
story.z5.txt' ] };</script>

Test that it works, and then you can edit parchment.html or copy the code to another page etc.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1047&start=0#p5766
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: where can I get ifarchive.org
User: George / DateTime: 2010-04-18 05:30:25

How did you try to contact them? At least one of the maintainers posts regularly on RAIF, maybe start a thread there?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=970&start=0#p5767
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 : Well-Versed Guides
User: luvtinayothers / DateTime: 2010-04-18 12:25:24

The link is dead.  [emote]:([/emote]   Where can I get the guides?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1048&start=0#p5768
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: New: San Francisco Bay Area Interactive Fiction Meetup
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2010-04-18 16:01:59

We're starting a SF Bay Area Interactive Fiction group, and you're all invited. 

Our first meeting is scheduled for Saturday, May 1, at 1pm.  We'll introduce ourselves, talk about what we're playing and what we're working on, and discuss our plans for world domination.

Venue TBD.  (We need to figure out how many of us there will be and where we'll meet.) 

Please join our Meetup group here: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.meetup.com/sf-bay-area-interactive-fiction/">http://www.meetup.com/sf-bay-area-interactive-fiction/</a>

I look forward to meeting you!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1047&start=0#p5769
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: where can I get ifarchive.org
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-04-18 16:38:03

I read here as well.

My email records show nobody asking about an archive snapshot for the past several months. When did you email? What address?

The answer is, roughly, that if you want a one-off copy, you should use a web-downloading tool (like wget) -- just limit the download speed so that you don't block out other users.  And only download the directories you really need. Consider using a mirror near you rather than the main site.

If you want to stay synced with the archive forever, we prefer that you become a public mirror yourself -- that helps spread the load around. In that case, we can give you rsync access.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1048&start=0#p5770
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: New: San Francisco Bay Area Interactive Fiction Meetup
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-04-18 16:40:33

Ditto! [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1025&start=0#p5771
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Finding distances in three-dimensional space
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-04-18 18:45:07

Hey Biophysicist,

Just curious--did you get anywhere with this? Able to get it doing what you wanted?

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1025&start=0#p5772
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Finding distances in three-dimensional space
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-04-18 19:16:54

Like most of my projects, this one died because it wasn't fun. But I did get it working.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1026&start=30#p5773
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forced paragraph breaks?
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2010-04-19 01:08:56

if free cds don't do the trick, what does?  [emote]:roll:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1049&start=0#p5774
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Looking for writers
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-04-19 06:13:35

Ok, I hope I'm not getting in over my head. This was a spur-of-the-moment decision, which I hope I don't regret.

So here's the deal. I am not very good at coming up with stories, or puzzles, or even concepts. However, from time to time, I do get some flashes of what could be interesting. And occasionally I flesh them out, because they seem promising. And before long I have the rough layout of an entire game, even an idea of what some of the obstacles might be.

Now, it took me a long time to realise this, but realise it I must. It's not that I can't write - I can. But not well enough to carry a full-length game. I have two concepts in my head, one of them has been there for years. They're fairly epic (one moreso than the other), and mostly linear (but with a lot of space for development).

I've had it. I want to see these stories out there. But I can't do it myself. I simply lack the writing skill. At best, I tend to be verbose. At worst, I simply can't convey what I intended.

So I'm actively looking for writers who would be willing to, on a first bases, listen to these concepts - these outlines - and decide whether they would like to help me flesh them out. I would be glad to do the programming myself and write some of the more menial stuff like descriptions. I have very strong ideas on game design, but I'd like to to able to discuss them with whoever I would be working with, so as to arrive to some sort of middle ground if there are disagreements. I'm very bad at coming up with puzzles, so they'd also be mainly in the hands of my collaborator, though I'd be more than happy to brainstorm.

I do NOT want to split this equally in half, with me programming and someone else writing. I want to be a part of the creative process. However, my collaborator would be free to write as he/she pleased, and would be free to suggest anything. I'm not dumb - I know that, if I could do this by myself, I wouldn't need anyone else, and since I *do* need someone else, the intelligent thing to do is to give that "someone else" all the space they need. I promise space, as long as the collaborator understands that these concepts are my babies, and I'd like to see them grow and flesh out.

One of the stories, the biggest one, is fairly epic. It's Sci-Fi. It's, I think, a fair amount more interesting than most "epic sci-fi"s out there, but what do I know, I'm biased. [emote]:)[/emote]

The other one is more fantastical, and allows for episodic release, which was how I planned to release it (if I ever got anything done but the first couple of rooms and an outline, that is).

Ok, I know everyone has an outline, and everyone has a project of their own. But I also know that if you want to see a project through and you can't do it yourself, you should be humble enough to ask for help. It seemed harmless enough to try. [emote]:)[/emote] Anyone interested please e-mail me at <a href="mailto:peter_pears@hotmail.com">peter_pears@hotmail.com</a>, and we should be able to discuss the matter further.

Bottom line - I'm looking for partnership, not dictatorship. This goes both ways - I do not intend to be a dictator.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1049&start=0#p5775
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for writers
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2010-04-19 09:22:05

Sorry, I can't help you... But something you said surprised me:

[quote="Peter Pears"]It's not that I can't write - I can. But not well enough to carry a full-length game.
[...]
I would be glad to [...] write some of the more menial stuff like descriptions.[/quote]
You seem to imply that descriptions are easier to write than the rest, or maybe not as important. I really don't think that it's easy to write descriptions that are evocative and not too generic (detailed enough, with accurate vocabulary) but also not too long and, above all, not boring! And descriptions certainly are important in IF (except [i]maybe[/i] in purely conversational games, but apparently that's not the kind of game you want to write). I mean, if the room descriptions are bad and the descriptions you get with the "examine" command are bad, too, then most of the text in the game (without the cutscenes) will be bad, won't it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1026&start=30#p5776
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forced paragraph breaks?
User: George / DateTime: 2010-04-19 10:44:46

What did you try that didn't work?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1049&start=0#p5777
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for writers
User: George / DateTime: 2010-04-19 10:48:11

Just to clarify, is it that you don't want to write, or, you want to start working on the games now rather than working on the writing?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1049&start=0#p5778
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for writers
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-04-19 17:33:35

Eriorg: Oh, I expressed myself *very* badly, apologies. I didn't mean room descriptions, or descriptions of first-level nouns - I meant descriptions of 2nd, 3rd and 4th level nouns. I meant responses for various useless but possible interaction. I meant describing every small little unimportant thing, and allowing the player to fiddle with them, while the creative guy writes the important stuff. Such as, of course, room descriptions.

George: I've worked on the writing for a long time. In the end, I'm simply terrified by the blank page, and am never pleased with what I do, there are always too many different ways to tell a story and they're all better than one another and they're all worse than one another. And then I have to deal with my sometimes less-than-good English (I'm Portuguese), which never seems as bad as when I'm actually trying to *write*. So I've pretty much given up on *that*. It's just that I wouldn't like these stories to die away, because I think they have potential. At the very least I'd like to tell someone these stories and, even if I ended up having nothing to do with the project, I just wish they'd be picked up on.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1049&start=0#p5781
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for writers
User: johnmatthais / DateTime: 2010-04-19 23:45:20

You can do it, bro. If you get stuck, just use resources like [url=http://www.grammarbook.com/english_rules.asp]this[/url] and they can help you with some of the more difficult English rules. Remember, you've already got the hard part down by learning the vocabulary. Now you just have to learn to proofread your own work.

As an aside, just from reading your posts here, your writing is better than about 80% of America's youth. [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1026&start=30#p5782
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forced paragraph breaks?
User: JC Denton / DateTime: 2010-04-20 11:16:02

I said I don't know much about I7, so I tried to copy and paste stuff from the manual, but to no avail

whatever, I'm gonna finish my game without it... the cd rewards are pending indefinitely though, might need the solutions next time

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1049&start=0#p5783
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for writers
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-04-20 16:15:27

I was lucky enough to get two interested callers! So for the moment I have what I wanted, and none more need apply, and thanks all! If the situation changes, I'll post again (after all, skeptic as I was myself - it worked!)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1049&start=0#p5784
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for writers
User: George / DateTime: 2010-04-20 20:50:34

that's great Peter.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1018&start=10#p5785
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How long to make a game?
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-04-21 07:07:18

[quote="johnmatthais"]In terms of words, the above example could easily exceed tens of thousands, as it boasts over 200 endings. However, each session only lasts a matter of seconds. [emote];)[/emote][/quote]

That's the point. When discussing the appropriate length of a game one can analyze two types of length: The length of the actual playtime - which varies (!) from player to player - and/or the overall length of the entire game with all multiple endings and replayability factors considered.

A short adventure game may be played through in under 5 minutes. But if the author or game designer boosts up the replayability factor as high as possible, a short game may give players hours of playtime, providing that players replay the game multiple times.

An extreme but funny example of playtime length versus game length can be seen in the following videos:

[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apvnzxxOkAo&feature=related]Duke Nukem 3D Speedrun part 1 of 3[/url]
[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI5Z3MUxYC8&feature=related]Duke Nukem 3D Speedrun part 2 of 3[/url]
[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPAYZpu2YcQ&feature=related]Duke Nukem 3D Speedrun part 3 of 3[/url]

Here a Duke fan plays through all four episodes of Duke Nukem 3D in less than 30 minutes!  [emote]:shock:[/emote]  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote] 

So one can say two things about the length of a game. First, the playtime length is always shorter than the maximum game length. Second, the playtime decreases the more the player learns about the game, its puzzles, secrets and other stuff. Then there is also the possibility of cheating when players do tricks on the game (such as creating "shortcuts" to solve long puzzles), automatically reducing the playtime on its own.

Adventure games and RPGs are more complex than first person shooters ofcourse, but this concept should apply to any type of game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1052&start=0#p5787
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: XBox 360 development with XNA Game Studio?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-04-22 16:54:24

Anybody ever given thought -- even fleetingly -- to XBox 360 game development? The XNA Game Studio has a very low entry barrier compared to alternatives for other consoles. It's built on the .NET 3.5 framework and basically you code in C#. That's pretty much what I already do, day after day -- the C# development, I mean.

But I'm no artist. And only a hobbyist musician, almost twenty years out of practice.

I wonder how a collaborative effort might turn out? Maybe something based on interactive fiction, such as a graphic adventure re-imagining of an existing game? Or maybe Frotz (with bells and whistles) for running existing games (although you'd probably need to hook up a keyboard or chat pad, and then it becomes kind of a clunkier way to experience text-based IF). A few years ago I was collaborating with a group that was going to create a graphical version of Distress (fell through, I guess), and something like that might still be interesting.

It'd have to be commercial project -- even something like Frotz -- since the XBox Live store prohibits both free games and "demos" that exist solely to give away a full game for free. Personally, that's a plus for me. I'm open to ideas that might actually make money [i]and[/i] be useful as a stepping stone out of business software development and into video game development. Anyway, just brainstorming (and thinking wishfully) at the moment.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1052&start=0#p5788
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: XBox 360 development with XNA Game Studio?
User: johnmatthais / DateTime: 2010-04-22 17:24:11

I'd be interested in helping out. I've been trying to get into XNA development for some time now. However, I'm a writer, musician, designer and poet. I don't do graphics and I'm still a bit iffy on the programming. 

I also can't do game music. I play guitar. [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1056&start=0#p5799
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Maze generator extension for TADS 3 released
User: lukematt / DateTime: 2010-04-23 09:58:00

[i]Virtual Maze Generator for TADS 3[/i]

This extension to TADS 3 consists of two parts:

[list]
[*]JAVA component: Produces a perfect maze (i.e. only one solution path exists between any two points in the maze);
[/*:m]
[*]TADS 3 component: A new class for crawling the maze[/*:m][/list:u]

The Virtual Maze Generator is now available for downloading at this URL (122.2 Kb):

[url]http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/10/13/2140959/Maze%20Generator/Maze%20Generator.zip[/url]

(After “beta testing”, I will upload this extension to the IF archive.)


Jeff Bowyer
<a href="mailto:JeffBowyer@seznam.cz">JeffBowyer@seznam.cz</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1052&start=0#p5800
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: XBox 360 development with XNA Game Studio?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-04-23 21:18:10

Although it's much more primitive than I what have in mind, there is at least one text-based IF-like game (it's basically a CYOA) on the Indie Games marketplace.

It's called "Molly the Were-Zompire."

<a class="postlink" href="http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/games/media/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d802585503ab/">http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/games ... 2585503ab/</a>

(edit) Oh, and another, apparently by the same author. It's called "Epiphany in Spaaace!"

<a class="postlink" href="http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/games/media/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d8025855033d/">http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/games ... 25855033d/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1047&start=0#p5801
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: where can I get ifarchive.org
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2010-04-26 15:32:30

I read here as well, FWIW.

(Yes, yes, I'm far behind the times.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1057&start=0#p5802
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: What ever happened to this IF IDE?
User: Logomachist / DateTime: 2010-04-26 17:50:36

About a decade ago I read about an old school programmer starting a new GUI tool that was supposed to help non-programmers write interactive fiction. At the time, I was less than impressed... for one thing, it was the late 90s and he was trying to help people write adventure-type games, and for another the guy thought that the reason non-programmers had trouble with interactive fiction was that variables had a range of 0 to 1, and his solution was to use variables with a range of -0.5 to +0.5.  [emote]:roll:[/emote] That, and his other idea was an attempt to recover from illegal operations within scripts by letting the program change inputs until it attains workable results.

But the guy was famous for inventing something a few decades ago and I'm curious as to what this guy has done since. Does anyone know of the development tool I'm thinking of?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1057&start=0#p5803
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: What ever happened to this IF IDE?
User: George / DateTime: 2010-04-26 22:29:50

This is a longshot, but maybe you mean [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Crawford_(game_designer)]Chris Crawford[/url] and [url=http://www.storytron.com/index.php]Storytron[/url]?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1058&start=0#p5804
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7 Newbie question
User: Springroll / DateTime: 2010-04-27 05:55:04

I'm trying to apply the TADS 3 Heidi tutorial to Inform 7 just so that I can learn how to create stuff in Inform.
(I'm not well versed in TADS 3 either by the way).
And I've gotten stuck in the following area:
I just can't seem to get the chair as a supporter for the player to enable him/her to reach the bough.

[color=#BF0000]The plainChair is a enterable portable supporter in the insideCottage. The printed name of the plainChair is "chair". "A plain looking chair stands in one corner". The description is "A plain wooden chair.".
Understand "chair", "plain chair" as the plainChair.[/color]

[color=#BF0000]Instead of going up from the Clearing:
if the player is not on the plainChair, say "The bough is just out of reach".
Instead of going up from the Clearing:
if the player is on the plainChair, say "You stand on the chair and are thus able to reach the bough and pull yourself up.";
now the player is in topOfTree.[/color]

Probably (most likely) I'm a bit daft but could someone please help me with understanding this?

/Cheers!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1058&start=0#p5805
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Newbie question
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-04-27 09:33:16

The problem is that unlike most rules, instead rules will not "fall through", i.e. only one instead rule will run, even if it doesn't actually do anything. So you'll have to make sure they run only when the condition holds:

[code]Instead of going up from the Clearing when the player is not on the plainChair:
    say "The bough is just out of reach."

Instead of going up from the Clearing when the player is on the plainChair:
    say "You stand on the chair and are thus able to reach the bough and pull yourself up.";
    now the player is in topOfTree.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1058&start=0#p5806
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Newbie question
User: Springroll / DateTime: 2010-04-27 13:23:35

[quote="Juhana"]The problem is that unlike most rules, instead rules will not "fall through", i.e. only one instead rule will run, even if it doesn't actually do anything. So you'll have to make sure they run only when the condition holds[/quote]

Thank you so very much, now it works!   [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1059&start=0#p5807
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Works in one place but not in another
User: Carlos / DateTime: 2010-04-27 18:04:02

Thanks so far, everyone, for all the help I've received on the forums. Slowly, but surely--but slowly!--I'm catching on to Inform.

My problem this time is that things that work perfectly in one part of the game fail to activate in another, even though the code compiles. I have two examples.

1. I stole a custom notify score rule from some good soul on these boards. Works great--except, when I changed the scene, it seemed not to notify players when their scores rises anymore. Is there any reason a rule would not be global, even though I wrote in nothing to make the rule scene-specific?

2. This one is really frustrating. Maybe it's just better to show you some simplified version of it:

[code]A person can be relaxed, wary or ready. A person is usually relaxed.

The schoolhouse is a room.

The teacher is a woman in the schoolhouse. Understand "the teacher" and "teacher" as the teacher. The description of the teacher is "This teacher loves to give tests."

After examining the teacher, award 5 points.

Monday Morning is a scene. Monday Afternoon is a scene. Monday Testing is a scene. Monday Morning begins when play begins.

Monday Afternoon begins when Monday Morning ends. Monday Morning ends when the score is 5. 

Monday Testing begins when Monday Afternoon ends. Monday Afternoon ends when the player is ready.

When Monday Afternoon begins: 
	now the player is wary;
	say "The teacher asks you, 'What is the object of the sentence [']Wizards cast spells?[']'".

After reading a command while the player is wary:
	if player's command matches "spells":
		say "Correct!";
		now the player is ready;
		reject the player's command;
	otherwise:
		award -1 point;
		say "Wrong!";
      		reject the player's command.

When Monday Testing begins, say "Okay, it looks like you're ready for your test. Good luck!"
[/code] 

Test with "x teacher", "spells".

Is there any reason why the scene does not progress to Monday Testing? Thanks in advance for your help!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1059&start=0#p5808
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Works in one place but not in another
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-04-27 22:50:45

My guess is that it's something to do with the "After reading a command" rules -- they don't seem to invoke some of turn sequence rules (or something like that). For instance, I can't end the game within an "After reading a command." So my guess is that you can't make a scene end within an "After reading a command" rule either. Have I mentioned that this is a guess? It's a guess. 

One thing to note is that in your code fragment, the scene changes as soon as you enter another command -- try "x her/spells/ look." That's pretty similar to what I was getting.

You may be able to accomplish what you want with a [text] token, thus:

[code]A person can be relaxed, wary or ready. A person is usually relaxed.

The schoolhouse is a room.

The teacher is a woman in the schoolhouse. Understand "the teacher" and "teacher" as the teacher. The description of the teacher is "This teacher loves to give tests."

After examining the teacher, award 5 points.

Monday Morning is a scene. Monday Afternoon is a scene. Monday Testing is a scene. Monday Morning begins when play begins.

Monday Afternoon begins when Monday Morning ends. Monday Morning ends when the score is 5.

Monday Testing begins when Monday Afternoon ends. Monday Afternoon ends when the player is ready.

When Monday Afternoon begins:
	now the player is wary;
	say "The teacher asks you, 'What is the object of the sentence [']Wizards cast spells?[']'".

Question-answering is an action applying to one topic. Understand "[text]" as question-answering while the player is wary. 
Instead of question-answering:
	say "I didn't ask you a question; you'll have to type a command." [I don't think this actually ever gets invoked; I put it in because I wasn't actually expecting "Understand... while the player is wary" to work.] 
Instead of question-answering while the player is wary:
	if the topic understood matches "spells":
		say "Correct!";
		now the player is ready;
	otherwise:
		award -1 point;
		say "Wrong!".

When Monday Testing begins, say "Okay, it looks like you're ready for your test. Good luck!"[/code]

This actually gives me an idea for how I might be able to fix my game that tried to use "After reading a command" rules.

matt

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1060&start=0#p5809
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: 9 Phoenix conversions
User: ghira / DateTime: 2010-04-28 01:50:51

David Kinder has improved Graham Nelson's TSAL-to-zcode conversion script
to the extent that he, Richard Bos and I can now complete 9 of the 12 Phoenix games
for which source is still known to exist. For all we know the other 3 may be fine too,
but we haven't finished playing them yet.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXphoenixXgamesXzcode.html">http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-arc ... zcode.html</a>

The 3 games Graham released in 1999 have been rebuilt as the new conversion
script has various improvements. Acheton, released by David in Febuary, is also
being re-released to get the latest fixes, and the new games are Hamil, Murdac,
Spycatcher, BrandX (aka Philosopher's Quest in its commercial release in the 80s) and Avon.

Feedback should probably come to me, <a href="mailto:ghira@mistral.co.uk">ghira@mistral.co.uk</a>, in the first instance
and I'll pass things on to David Kinder if it seems necessary. I'll certainly field requests
for hints.

The most "significant" Phoenix game is Acheton, originally released in c. 1978, probably
making it the third mainframe text adventure (Colossal Cave and Zork being 1 and 2).

Anyone wanting an "introductory" Phoenix game should probably try Sangraal or Crobe,
which were two of the games Graham did in 1999. 

If people want to see the current builds of the remaining three games they
are on <a class="postlink" href="http://www.ghira.mistral.co.uk/">http://www.ghira.mistral.co.uk/</a> at the link "file for g4g9".

If you happen to be able to get your hands on the source for the 3 missing Phoenix games, please send it along!

Adam Atkinson, <a href="mailto:ghira@mistral.co.uk">ghira@mistral.co.uk</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=987&start=0#p5810
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Nuit Blanche
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2010-04-28 02:48:47

Thanks for the link!  [emote]:)[/emote] 
The movie was just spectacular.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=938&start=0#p5811
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Hugo: Getting the number of arguments in a routine
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2010-04-28 03:11:42

It was said in the Hugo Book (I can't remember where exactly) that Hugo only allows a certain number of arguments for routines. I can't remember the exact number, but I do remember it was a bigger number than that for Inform.

In any case, I'll check vamping's code out and see. Sorry for the delayed reply. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1059&start=0#p5812
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Works in one place but not in another
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-04-28 03:46:20

[quote="matt w"]My guess is that it's something to do with the "After reading a command" rules -- they don't seem to invoke some of turn sequence rules (or something like that). For instance, I can't end the game within an "After reading a command." So my guess is that you can't make a scene end within an "After reading a command" rule either. Have I mentioned that this is a guess? It's a guess.[/quote]
I think that's correct. When you reject the player's command, you skip most of the turn sequence rules: no action is generated, scenes don't change, time doesn't move forward, "every turn" rules don't run, light isn't adjusted, score change notifications don't appear, etc.

If you add "consider the scene changing rules;" before "reject the player's command;" then the scene will change as expected. If you want any of those other things to happen too, look at the turn sequence rulebook (under "The top level" in the Rules index) to see which rules you need.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1059&start=0#p5813
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Works in one place but not in another
User: Carlos / DateTime: 2010-04-28 05:34:39

Vaporware, your "consider [whatever] rule" advice fixed both of my immediate problems; everything is working now. And Matt K, your "question-answering" is more flexible and useful than what I had done, so I will probably rewrite my code to reflect your method. A tremendous thank you to both of you.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1001&start=0#p5814
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: INSTEAD
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2010-04-28 06:26:39

I would have probably tried it if the webpage for it wasn't all in Russian (and no, Google doesn't translate very well).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1001&start=0#p5815
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: INSTEAD
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-04-28 06:38:38

Well, there's always this - <a class="postlink" href="http://instead.pinebrush.com/wiki/en/doku.php?id=doc-en">http://instead.pinebrush.com/wiki/en/doku.php?id=doc-en</a>.

And it seems that every game file can be opened in a regular text editor, so that, as the documentation says, the best documentation is opening up games at looking at their innards.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1059&start=0#p5816
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Works in one place but not in another
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-04-28 07:59:31

[quote="vaporware"]If you add "consider the scene changing rules;" before "reject the player's command;" then the scene will change as expected. If you want any of those other things to happen too, look at the turn sequence rulebook (under "The top level" in the Rules index) to see which rules you need.[/quote]

vw, which set of rules would I consider in order to make sure that the game ends when I want it to? I looked back at the original discussion ([url]http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=995[/url]) where an issue like this came up for me, and my original attempt involved printing a parser error; the solution Erik came up with did involve "After reading a command," which I think worked because instead of rejecting the command it invoked another action, which wasn't going on in my other game.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1059&start=0#p5817
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Works in one place but not in another
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-04-28 10:17:13

Invoking an action is probably the easiest way to get what you want. Invent a question-answering action, and "try" it. Or use the regular "Understand" declarations to accept "spells" as a verb -- you can do this conditionally.

What you're doing now is trying to emulate a complicated bit of the parser (carrying out an action) inside a smaller piece (the "after reading a command" phase) and it will be a bit of work to make that work perfectly.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1061&start=0#p5818
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: works based on short stories or old video games
User: sfernald / DateTime: 2010-04-28 19:19:07

I am considering what interactive fiction I am going to write next and I'm considering two ideas:

1) A story either based on or a sequel to the short story I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. Now I understand that Harlan Ellison is a bit of a sue-happy guy when it comes to his ip, but do you think it would be ok for me to do a non-commercial work of interactive fiction (I can't really think of anything more non-commercial) based on his work? I would think it would fall into the "fan-fiction" category, so I don't think there would be any issue.

2) I have a great idea for a story based on the X-COM universe. X-COM, if you aren't familiar with it, is a classic pc game series, that I don't think they are currently making any new games for, but have probably recently.  It is a classic famous game though and I enjoyed it so much so many years ago that it would be fun to create something from that world.

So what do you think? I wouldn't want any trouble or have my games taken down from ifdb... Do you think anyone would notice or care if I picked one of these ideas and ran with it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1061&start=0#p5819
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: works based on short stories or old video games
User: George / DateTime: 2010-04-28 21:12:44

There's a difference between ideas being the same and details being the same, so while I wouldn't call the game 'X-COM: the text adventure", or likewise for the Ellison story, don't let that stop you from their ideas inspiring your own work.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1061&start=0#p5820
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: works based on short stories or old video games
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-04-28 21:58:38

There are fanfic works in the IF world (and on the Archive) already. As long as you don't copy text directly from the source into your work, there shouldn't be a problem.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1062&start=0#p5821
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7: Change log for the next build
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-04-29 02:06:27

The next build of Inform 7 is still a little distant, since the last bugs are being ironed out after fairly deep and extensive revisions to the internal code. However, those curious about the changes anticipated can now view the change log here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/news/2010/04/28/change-log-for-the-next-build/">http://inform7.com/news/2010/04/28/chan ... ext-build/</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1061&start=0#p5822
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: works based on short stories or old video games
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-04-29 04:27:27

The idea that copyright infringement should be okay as long as you don't make money has always seemed strange to me.  Certainly, making money from someone else's IP is obviously taking advantage of their hard work, but putting out free competition doesn't seem all that helpful to me either.  Not that I think you'll get sued, or that you'll really lose anyone any money, it's just that I hear this 'non-commercial' defence a lot, and I'm not sure where people got the idea.

[quote="sfernald"]2) I have a great idea for a story based on the X-COM universe. X-COM, if you aren't familiar with it, is a classic pc game series, that I don't think they are currently making any new games for[/quote]
That's what you think, [url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2010/apr/14/microsoft-games]is it?[/url]   [emote];)[/emote] 

I've only ever played the first game, but I don't remember it as having an especially detailed story.  As George said, why not just make a game inspired by it?  I've always assumed X-COM was inspired by Gerry Anderson's [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO_(TV_series)]UFO[/url] in the first place.

[quote="sfernald"]So what do you think? I wouldn't want any trouble or have my games taken down from ifdb... Do you think anyone would notice or care if I picked one of these ideas and ran with it?[/quote]
There are already fan games on the IFDB for, for example, Zelda and Metroid.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1061&start=0#p5823
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: works based on short stories or old video games
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-04-29 11:14:20

[quote]The idea that copyright infringement should be okay as long as you don't make money has always seemed strange to me.[/quote]

I didn't say it was legal (I Am Not A Lawyer) and I didn't say it was ethical (I am not your moral instructor either). The question was "Do you think anyone would notice or care...?" My opinion is that nobody will notice or care, as long as you don't copy text or images directly.

Also, Diane Duane wrote an excellent novel called _X-COM: UFO Defense_. The fact that the game had little storyline left plenty of room for her to invent one.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1062&start=0#p5824
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: Change log for the next build
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-04-29 11:18:02

Typo in change log: replace the regular expression “” in T with “”; -- missing some vowel-matcher expression.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1062&start=0#p5825
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: Change log for the next build
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-04-29 11:36:44

And now, my actually useful comment:

[quote]Inform ships with “Parchment” built in. At present this supports only
projects using the Z-machine story file format, but we have made every effort
to help Inform to accommodate future developments, and to enable it to be
used with other interpreters, too:[/quote]

The status report on Quixe, which will provide this support for Glulx story files:

The core VM is complete. (Thanks to Iain Merrick for pitching in to help with some of the more intricate features.) There are some optimizations to be done, but all Glulx code can execute correctly.

The UI layer is usable, for basic features (text and text windows). There is some infrastructure left to plumb in. The following advanced UI features do not yet work: graphics, sound, hyperlinks, text style-hints, and external files (for save/restore/transcript/etc.) The UI is also not properly tuned for iPhone/iPad/Android use.

Hyperlinks are nearly done -- that's what I've been doing this week. Save and restore are critical, so I'll work on that next. (I will be copying Parchment's save-to-URL-bookmark model, but I also want to look at HTML5 DOM storage.) I'd like to get the iPad stuff working, because, you know, it's hot. (And mine arrives tomorrow.)

At that point I will consider the thing shippable, and I'll work on doing a release that can be dropped into I7. Graphics and sound will have to wait. Not all games care about multimedia, but with the upcoming I7, I suspect *most* games will want to use dynamic lists, temporary relations, and indexed text. Z-code isn't dead, but it is increasingly uncomfortable.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1062&start=0#p5826
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: Change log for the next build
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-04-29 11:41:51

[quote="zarf"]The status report on Quixe, which will provide this support for Glulx story files[/quote]

Sweet! Thanks for the update.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1061&start=0#p5827
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: works based on short stories or old video games
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-04-29 12:34:01

[quote="zarf"]I didn't say it was legal (I Am Not A Lawyer) and I didn't say it was ethical (I am not your moral instructor either). The question was "Do you think anyone would notice or care...?" My opinion is that nobody will notice or care, as long as you don't copy text or images directly.[/quote]
Given that you didn't mention non-commerciality at all, what part of my post seemed directed at you and not at the OP, or the subject in general?  I don't at all dispute your stance that there would be no problem, which is why I said as much myself.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1062&start=0#p5828
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: Change log for the next build
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-04-29 13:33:04

Huge props to the I7 team for getting this on the verge of release.

I'm particularly pleased with some of the updates to the standard library. Huzzah for doors that finally open by themselves! [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1062&start=0#p5829
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: Change log for the next build
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-04-29 13:49:11

Awesome news, both for Inform 7 and Quixe!  Congratulations on the good work!

Matt

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1061&start=0#p5830
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: works based on short stories or old video games
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-04-29 15:51:50

[quote="sfernald"]A story either based on or a sequel to the short story I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. Now I understand that Harlan Ellison is a bit of a sue-happy guy when it comes to his ip, but do you think it would be ok for me to do a non-commercial work of interactive fiction (I can't really think of anything more non-commercial) based on his work? I would think it would fall into the "fan-fiction" category, so I don't think there would be any issue.[/quote]

This is not a good idea. Back in the 90s, Ellison produced [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_No_Mouth,_and_I_Must_Scream_(video_game)]a game based on that story[/url]. Evidently he felt differently about its commercial prospects.

Moreover, as you seem to recognize, you would be hard-pressed to find an author more litigious than Ellison. If you have any plans to distribute the finished product, stay well away from his content.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1062&start=0#p5831
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: Change log for the next build
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-04-29 16:09:01

The inform7.com site seems to be luffing, so I copied the document text to

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/tmp/i7-changelog.html">http://eblong.com/zarf/tmp/i7-changelog.html</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1062&start=0#p5832
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: Change log for the next build
User: George / DateTime: 2010-04-29 17:11:38

great work, thank you!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1062&start=0#p5835
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: Change log for the next build
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-04-30 00:29:27

[quote="zarf"]The status report on Quixe, which will provide this support for Glulx story files:

...[/quote]
Great news! I had no idea it was that far along.

I guess I better get to work integrating Quixe into Parchment now then, as a lot of it would be of benefit to Gnusto too, especially the savefile stuff.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1010&start=0#p5836
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Pictures from PAX East IF community gathering
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2010-04-30 11:11:12

[quote="Merk"]Thanks for these updates!!

I'm among the "wish I could have gone" crowd. [emote]:([/emote][/quote]

Thanks for posting the photos as well. Count me in that crowd as well, along with the "wish-we-had-one-here-too" people. [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1063&start=0#p5837
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Glk/Glulx threads
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-05-01 11:05:15

As the demand for more intuitive code continues the demands on our poor virtual machines increases too.

This has led me to wonder why we couldn't and shouldn't introduce some form of threading into Glk/Glulx. Currently the majority of the processing must be done in the minimal time. Can we usefully use the time the player is reading the response to their last command to do some forward planning?

On the VM front, what is stopping this from happening? What problems would there be in changing the behaviour of glk_select_poll() such that it returns all input events?

On the library front, what would be usefully served by threading? I never did any deep profiling of Fate (which its ridiculous start up time) but I suspect that in general conversation systems are slow. This was the case with Alabaster too (which lead to accelerated functions.) All conversation systems have some kind of algorithm to determine which "nodes" are accessible next, and they could quite feasibly be run while the player is reading the current node. I don't know how the new I7 features are implemented, but the new relations or functional programming features might also be slow if used a lot.

What I'm proposing isn't actually threading in Glulx... more so in Glk. Glk would need threads, one for Glulx, and the other for the UI it manages. Further proposals for threading purely within Glulx are left for the reader.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1063&start=0#p5838
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk/Glulx threads
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-05-01 12:24:27

While I would love being able to process some NPC AI while the player's cursor winks, I believe it is just the amount of work to be done that stops your idea coming to fruition.  Interpreters are supposed to be simple enough so they can be ported everywhere, and threading is definitely not simple.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1063&start=0#p5839
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk/Glulx threads
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-05-01 12:56:07

No, threading isn't simple, but most languages these days come with it built in (excepting perhaps C/C++?) But if we all worked together we could add it to Garglk too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1041&start=0#p5840
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Best Methods...
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2010-05-01 13:33:15

[quote="appleman"]I've been playing around with defining named rules, and also Scenes, and it got me thinking about the best method (in general) for globally testing conditions.  Which is better?  Rules or scenes.  I mean, what would be the best way to code the following scenario for example:

[color=#8040FF]If you are wearing the hawaiian shirt and Nancy strolls in, say "Nancy shrieks at the shirt you are wearing!".[/color]

[/quote]

I'm reading a little bit into your example paragraph. If you are moving Nancy around by making her "try" going actions (as opposed to using "move Nancy to" and "now Nancy is in" statements to move her by brute force), you could say:
[code]After Nancy going to a room:
   if the room gone to is the location of the player and the player is wearing the hawaiian shirt, say "Nancy shrieks at the shirt you are wearing!"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1064&start=0#p5841
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Table Unstable! (Should I relabel?)
User: Carlos / DateTime: 2010-05-01 13:56:13

So I am in the throes of trying to write a scene where a professor (of magic) asks students quiz questions. I am trying to use a table to cycle through the questions. I've gotten very close--parts of the code have compiled and worked--but I haven't been able to make the code do all of the following:

1. Ask questions one at a time.
2. Read the player's input.
3. Compare the player's input to an answer.
4. Either reward or punish the player for being right or wrong (respectively).
5. Move on to the next question, after a bit of colorful dialogue.

So here, in simplified form for easier reading, is my code. It does not currently compile, but I think the error message it is giving me about misaligning my "ifs" and "otherwises" isn't the issue. Please try not to faint at the code's inelegance:
[code]

The Dueling Pit is a room. "Scorch marks and dried blood adorn the Dueling Pit. Does the board of education know about this place?".

Professor Dimflame is a man in the Dueling Pit. "Professor Dimflame: the bane of all freshman at Margram Academy.".

Tyra is a woman in the Dueling Pit. "Your opponent for today is Tyra. She looks like she wants to set you on fire.".

Every turn during Monday Testing:
	 if the score is zero:
		say "I think you should study sentence objects a little more before you try to duel Tyra again. [paragraph break] GAME OVER";
		end the game in death.

When Monday Testing begins: 
	say "Professor Dimflame, his face somewhere between annoyed and amused, says, 'Well, for better or worse, it[']s time to begin the duel. Perhaps I should give you two football helmets to wear? Oh, but that wouldn't be nearly as funny. What was I thinking? Okay, [player's forename in title case], you're up. Here is your next question.'[paragraph break] Dimflame gives you a mean squint, then asks you,[paragraph break][Query entry in row one of the Table of Quiz Queries]'":
		if the player's command matches "[topic entry in row one of the Table of Quiz Queries]":
			award 1 point;
			consider the custom notify score changes rule;
			say "[Correct entry][paragraph break] Ready for the next one?";
			change the current challenge to the current challenge + 1;
			reject the player's command;
		otherwise:
			award -1 point;
			consider the custom notify score changes rule;
			say "[Incorrect entry][paragraph break] You'd better start getting more answers correct!";
			change the current challenge to the current challenge + 1;
			reject the player's command;
	consider the quiz problem rule. 
	
The current challenge is a number that varies. The current challenge is 1.

Before doing something during Monday Testing:
	say "Ready for the next one?";
	consider the quiz problem rule;
	reject the player's command.

This is the quiz problem rule:
	repeat through the Table of Quiz Queries:
		if the number entry is the current challenge: 
			say "[query entry]";
			consider the check answer rule;
		otherwise:	
			say "The quiz is over.".
			
This is the check answer rule:
	let N be the value of the current challenge;
	if the player's command matches the topic entry in row N of the Table of Quiz Queries:
		award 1 point;
		consider the custom notify score changes rule;
		say "[Correct entry][paragraph break]";
		change the current challenge to the current challenge + 1;
		reject the player's command;
		rule succeeds;
	otherwise:
		award -1 point;
		consider the custom notify score changes rule;
		say "[Incorrect entry][paragraph break]";
		change the current challenge to the current challenge + 1;
		reject the player's command;
		rule succeeds. 
	
Table of Quiz Queries
Number	Query	                                                                Topic	Correct	     Incorrect
1	        "What is the object of line five of the poem?"	        "it"	        "Correct!"	     "Wrong."
2	        "What is the object of line six of the poem?"	        "wand"	"Right!"	     "Quite wrong."
3	        "What is the object of line eight of the poem?"	"ground"	"Good!"	     "Wrong wrong wrong."
4	        "What is the object of line ten of the poem?"	        "prince"	"Well done!"  "Nope."
5	        "What is the object of line eleven of the poem?"	"none"	"Excellent!"   "Just plain wrong!"
--	--	--	--	--
[/code]

N.B. The table is correct in my code, but it is almost assuredly misaligned as pasted above.
 
Any/all help is greatly appreciated. I was thinking, as a small but earnest thank-you, to offer those who help with the game a cameo role in "Margram" (that's the IF I am working on) as one of the wizard-professors. If you have helped or are helping me now, let me know if you would like to be immortalized in the game! [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1063&start=0#p5842
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk/Glulx threads
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-05-01 17:20:32

Threading is possible in most languages (I think Javascript is coming).

I suspect it wouldn't be difficult to adapt most interpreters to work the way you suggest -- with a UI thread working in the foreground as the game runs in the background. (For ease of implementation, you'd want to switch into a "locked" mode where the game cannot do any I/O at all, until an event comes in or the game triggers one.)

However, *using* this capability in a safe way could be rather tricky for the game author.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1064&start=0#p5843
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table Unstable! (Should I relabel?)
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-01 17:33:15

[code]
When Monday Testing begins: 
	say "Professor Dimflame, his face somewhere between annoyed and amused, says, 'Well, for better or worse, it[']s time to begin the duel. Perhaps I should give you two football helmets to wear? Oh, but that wouldn't be nearly as funny. What was I thinking? Okay, [player's forename in title case], you're up. Here is your next question.'[paragraph break] Dimflame gives you a mean squint, then asks you,[paragraph break][Query entry in row one of the Table of Quiz Queries]'":		
[/code]
That should be a semicolon, not a colon. Try fixing that and see if other problems pop up ... I haven't looked through the whole thing.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1065&start=0#p5844
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: 3-way doors
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-01 17:37:02

In my very first game, more than 10 years ago, I had a few locations where 3-way doors were needed, because the door was in the corner of a walkway that ran around a central area in an open square. The 3-way doors were in the corners where the walkway turned from north to east and so on, so you could reach the northeast corner door from either the north side or the east side of the walkway. In Inform 6 this is not a problem.

Inform 7 doesn't allow 3-way doors, of course ... but just for fun, today I wrote an example of how to fake a 3-way door in Inform 7, using a backdrop. If anyone wants to see the code, let me know and I'll post it here.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1064&start=0#p5845
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table Unstable! (Should I relabel?)
User: Carlos / DateTime: 2010-05-01 17:45:26

Thanks Jim--

I've been fooling with semi-colons and colons all day. I settled on the structure in this post because it gave me the fewest errors (not that that means anything--either code compiles or it doesn't, right?). But when I made your change and then fixed the alignment of the tab-structure, here is the list of errors I got:
[quote]
Problem. In the line 'say "Professor Dimflame, his face somew [...] one of the Table of Quiz Queries]'"'  , I was expecting that 'Query entry in row one of the Table of Quiz Queries' would be something to 'say', but it didn't look like any form of 'say' that I know. So I tried to read 'Query entry in row one of the Table of Quiz Queries' as a value of some kind (because it's legal to say values), but couldn't make sense of it that way either.
 Sometimes this happens because punctuation has gone wrong - for instance, if you've omitted a semicolon or full stop at the end of the 'say' phrase.

Problem. In the sentence 'let N be the value of the current challenge'  , I was expecting to read a value, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'value of the current challenge'.
Problem. In the sentence 'if the player's command matches the topic entry in row N of the Table of Quiz Queries begin'  , I was expecting to read a topic, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'topic entry in row N of the Table of Quiz Queries'.
Problem. You wrote 'otherwise'  : but this is an 'else' or 'otherwise' with no matching 'if' (or 'unless'), which must be wrong.
 See the manual: 11.8 > Otherwise
Problem. I was unable to understand what you meant by the grammar token 'topic entry in row one of the Table of Quiz Queries' in the sentence 'if the player's command matches "[topic entry in row one of the Table of Quiz Queries]" begin'  .
 See the manual: 16.1 > Understand
[/quote]

I'm putting this here in case it helps someone smarter than me decipher just how many mistakes I've made and how to fix them.

Coding is hard.  [emote]:cry:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1065&start=0#p5846
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 3-way doors
User: Carlos / DateTime: 2010-05-01 17:50:04

As someone who is learning Inform, work-arounds are of keen interest. It'd be very helpful to see how you programmed something that the game engine isn't adept at accomplishing, so please do post it. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1065&start=0#p5847
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 3-way doors
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-01 18:10:58

Okay, here 'tis, complete with a few comments. I've tested it a bit, and it seems to be bug-free, but you never know.

[code]
"3-Way Doors" by Jim Aikin

Section 1 - Definition of doordrop object

[A doordrop is a backdrop that pretends to be a door. Because it's not a door, all of the handling (opening and closing, locking and unlocking, and travel through it) has to be handled manually.]

A doordrop is a kind of backdrop. A doordrop can be lockable. A doordrop is always lockable. A doordrop can be openable. A doordrop is always openable. A doordrop can be locked or unlocked. A doordrop can be open or closed. A doordrop is usually closed and locked. Understand "door" as a doordrop. The printed name of a doordrop is usually "door". The matching key of a doordrop is the master key.

Instead of locking a doordrop (called D) with the master key:
	if the player carries the master key:
		try locking keylessly D instead;
	otherwise:
		continue the action.
		
Instead of unlocking a doordrop (called D) with the master key:
	if the player carries the master key:
		try unlocking keylessly D instead;
	otherwise:
		continue the action.

Instead of opening a doordrop (called D):
	if D is locked:
		say "It seems to be locked.";
	otherwise if D is open:
		say "It's already open.";
	otherwise:
		now D is open;
		say "You open [the D]."
	
Section 2 - Locking & Unlocking with Implicit Key

[Inform's library doesn't understand "lock the door" or "unlock the door" without mention of a key, so we have to create two new actions to cover those commands:]

Unlocking keylessly is an action applying to one thing and requiring light. Understand "unlock [something]" as unlocking keylessly.
Check unlocking keylessly:
	say "That doesn't appear to be something that can be unlocked."

Instead of unlocking keylessly a doordrop (called D):
	if D is unlocked:
		say "It's not locked.";
	otherwise if the player does not carry the master key:
		say "You don't seem to have a key that fits the lock.";
	otherwise:
		now D is unlocked;
		say "You unlock [the D]."
		
Locking keylessly is an action applying to one thing and requiring light. Understand "lock [something]" as locking keylessly.
Check locking keylessly:
	say "That doesn't appear to be something that can be locked."
		
Instead of locking keylessly a doordrop (called D):
	if D is locked:
		say "It's already locked.";
	otherwise if the player does not carry the master key:
		say "You don't seem to have a key that fits the lock.";
	otherwise:
		now D is locked;
		now D is closed;
		say "You close and lock [the D]."
		
Section 3 - Rooms for Testing

The North Side of the Arcade is a room. "This covered walkway extends around all four sides of the arcade. From here you can proceed east, around a corner to the east side of the arcade. Above a door in the northeast corner is a sign that says 'TRAVEL AGENCY.'"

The East Side of the Arcade is east of the North Side of the Arcade. "This covered walkway extends around all four sides of the arcade. From here you can proceed north, around the corner to the north side of the arcade. Above a door in the northeast corner is a sign that says 'TRAVEL AGENCY.'" The North Side of the Arcade is north of the East Side of the Arcade.

[The Center of the Arcade is not part of the test, but we'll include it as its exits insure that going west from the East Side of the Arcade won't take you to the North Side of the Arcade, and so on. The Center of the Arcade overrides what Inform would normally do with these room exits.]

The Center of the Arcade is south of the North Side of the Arcade and west of the East Side of the Arcade. "You are standing in the center of the arcade."

The Travel Agency is a room. "Colorful posters showing vacation spots line the walls. The door is in the southwest corner."

The player carries the master key.

The Travel doordrop is a doordrop. The Travel doordrop is in the East Side of the Arcade, the North Side of the Arcade, and the Travel Agency. 

Section 4 - Travel Handling

[This section handles opening the door automatically if it's closed, and also handles unlocking it automatically if it's locked but you're holding the master key.]

Instead of going southwest in the Travel Agency:
	if the Travel doordrop is open:
		now the player is in the East Side of the Arcade;
	otherwise if the Travel doordrop is locked:
		if the player does not carry the master key:
			say "The door seems to be locked.";
		otherwise:
			now the Travel doordrop is open;
			now the Travel doordrop is unlocked;
			say "(first unlocking and opening the door)";
			now the player is in the East Side of the Arcade;
	otherwise:
		now the Travel doordrop is open;
		say "(first opening the door)";
		now the player is in the East Side of the Arcade.
		
Instead of exiting in the Travel Agency:
	try going southwest.
		
Instead of going northeast in the North Side of the Arcade:
	if the Travel doordrop is open:
		now the player is in the Travel Agency;
	otherwise if the Travel doordrop is locked:
		if the player does not carry the master key:
			say "The door seems to be locked.";
		otherwise:
			now the Travel doordrop is open;
			now the Travel doordrop is unlocked;
			say "(first unlocking and opening the door)";
			now the player is in the Travel Agency;
	otherwise:
		now the Travel doordrop is open;
		say "(first opening the door)";
		now the player is in the Travel Agency.
		
Instead of going inside in the North Side of the Arcade:
	try going northeast.
		
Instead of going northeast in the East Side of the Arcade:
	if the Travel doordrop is open:
		now the player is in the Travel Agency;
	otherwise if the Travel doordrop is locked:
		if the player does not carry the master key:
			say "The door seems to be locked.";
		otherwise:
			now the Travel doordrop is open;
			now the Travel doordrop is unlocked;
			say "(first unlocking and opening the door)";
			now the player is in the Travel Agency;
	otherwise:
		now the Travel doordrop is open;
		say "(first opening the door)";
		now the player is in the Travel Agency.
		
Instead of going inside in the East Side of the Arcade:
	try going northeast.
	
Test me with "drop key / ne / take key / ne / close door / sw / lock door / ne".
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1064&start=0#p5848
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table Unstable! (Should I relabel?)
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-01 18:26:23

I hate the syntax for accessing Tables. It's just horrible. I spent a few minutes on this, and got nowhere. All I can say is, read the manual, and good luck!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1066&start=0#p5849
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Two questions: 'unnecessary words' and how items are listed
User: Keltena / DateTime: 2010-05-01 18:49:00

Newbie TADS 3 author here with two key problems, most likely stemming from my complete lack of programming experience.

First off: Some words I use as nouns for objects, or part of nouns, do not seem to be working. Specifically, let's say I put something like this in:

[code]crprofiles: Thing, Container
    name = 'Court Record: Profiles'
    desc = "Part of my Court Record. It has info on everyone involved in the case, photos and all."
    noun = 'court record: profiles' 'court record' 'profiles' 'record'
    location = LloydIrving
    descContentsLister: thingContentsLister
    {
        showListPrefixWide(itemCount, pov, parent)
        {
            " It contains <<itemCount == 1 ? 'a profile' : 'profiles'>>  of <<theNameObj>>";
        }        
    }

;[/code]

The nouns are the problem here -- or, specifically, the word 'court', though I have no clue why that in particular. A couple examples:

[quote][b]>x court record[/b]
The word “court” is not necessary in this story.

>[b]x court record: profiles[/b]
The word “court” is not necessary in this story.[/quote]

If I try one of the other nouns, then... 

[quote]>[b]x record[/b]
Which record do you mean, the Court Record: Evidence, or the Court Record: Profiles?[/quote]

...it works fine. I am probably missing something big, but I cannot for the life of me figure out what is going on.

The same thing happens with some other nouns or parts of them -- if I try to examine [i]regal's profile[/i] or [i]regal bryant's profile[/i], I'm told that 'regal' is an unnecessary word; however, [i]byrant's profile[/i] and [i]defendant's profile[/i] work just fine. And so on, and so forth.

Second: I've looked all over, and I can't figure out exactly what to do to get rid of or change the 'a'/'an' before an item (e.g., change "I am carrying an attorney's badge" to "I am carrying my attorney's badge", or "I am carrying an autopsy report" to "I am carrying the autopsy report"). I'm fairly certain that, whatever I need to add, it starts with 'grammar', but I have no idea where to put that or what exactly it should say. Again, I'm sorry if this is an obvious question, but I really don't have any experience with TADS or programming at all.

Any help on either of these would be appreciated -- I'm really trying to make this game work. Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1066&start=0#p5850
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Two questions: 'unnecessary words' and how items are listed
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-05-01 19:39:26

[quote="Keltena"]The nouns are the problem here -- or, specifically, the word 'court', though I have no clue why that in particular. A couple examples:

[quote][b]>x court record[/b]
The word “court” is not necessary in this story.

>[b]x court record: profiles[/b]
The word “court” is not necessary in this story.[/quote]

If I try one of the other nouns, then... 

[quote]>[b]x record[/b]
Which record do you mean, the Court Record: Evidence, or the Court Record: Profiles?[/quote]

...it works fine.[/quote]
You're misusing the "noun" property. As far as I can tell, it should only be used with single words, not with phrases - that's why "profiles" and "records" work, but "court record: profiles" and "court record" don't. You really shouldn't be using the "noun" property at all - use "vocabWords" instead:

[code]crprofiles: Thing, Container
    name = 'Court Record: Profiles'
    desc = "Part of my Court Record. It has info on everyone involved in the case, photos and all."
    vocabWords = 'court record : profiles/record'
    location = LloydIrving
    descContentsLister: thingContentsLister
    {
        showListPrefixWide(itemCount, pov, parent)
        {
            " It contains <<itemCount == 1 ? 'a profile' : 'profiles'>>  of <<theNameObj>>";
        }        
    }

;[/code]

You'll notice that I've put a space between "record" and the colon. That's because the parser treats them as two separate words (because the colon is punctuation). We could force the parser to treat "record:" as a single word, but doing it this way is easier.

[quote="Keltena"]Second: I've looked all over, and I can't figure out exactly what to do to get rid of or change the 'a'/'an' before an item (e.g., change "I am carrying an attorney's badge" to "I am carrying my attorney's badge", or "I am carrying an autopsy report" to "I am carrying the autopsy report"). I'm fairly certain that, whatever I need to add, it starts with 'grammar', but I have no idea where to put that or what exactly it should say.[/quote]

How to do this depends on exactly what effect you want. If you want to change the pronoun to "my" or "the" in every situation, you can just change the object's aName (and, if necessary, theName):

[code]// for something always referred to as "the"
    aName = 'the ' + name[/code]

[code]// for something belonging to the player character
    aName = 'my ' + name
    theName = 'my ' + name
    owner = me[/code]

The owner property tells the game to let the player "X MY WHATEVER" as well as "X WHATEVER", and so on, but doesn't change how the name is printed.

If only want to change the pronoun in specific messages, not in general - well, how to do that depends very much on which messages you want to change.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1064&start=0#p5851
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table Unstable! (Should I relabel?)
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-05-01 20:18:17

A couple of general points before my suggested code:

1. The stuff about "reject the player's command" is usually reserved from meddling with the command before parsing, in the "After reading a command" phase. 

However, you probably don't want to use "After reading a command" for this, because in doing so, you're bypassing normal command and action processing. What that means is that when you "reject the player's command", Inform skips any attempt to do its normal per-turn rules, and you wind up never firing the every turn rules and before doing... rules you've created. So even if you get the topic lookup working right, you'll find your quiz not scoring itself properly.

What I suggest is making a legitimate verb to handle this, that -- during the duration of the quiz only -- treats all otherwise unidentifiable text as an attempt to answer the quiz.

2. You don't need to enumerate the rows of your table separately, because they're already accessible this way: you can say "row 2 of the Table of Quiz Queries" and have it select accordingly.

3.  "[Query entry in row one of the Table of Quiz Queries]" goes awry because of the word "entry", which should not be there. (I've approached this differently anyhow, in the code below.)

[code]
The Dueling Pit is a room. "Scorch marks and dried blood adorn the Dueling Pit. Does the board of education know about this place?".

Professor Dimflame is a man in the Dueling Pit. "Professor Dimflame: the bane of all freshman at Margram Academy.".

Tyra is a woman in the Dueling Pit. "Your opponent for today is Tyra. She looks like she wants to set you on fire.".

The player's forename is some indexed text that varies. The player's forename is "Jill".	

The current challenge is a number that varies. The current challenge is 1.

Monday Testing is a scene. Monday Testing begins when we have looked.

Every turn during Monday Testing:
	if the score is less than zero:
		say "I think you should study sentence objects a little more before you try to duel Tyra again. [paragraph break] GAME OVER";
		end the game in death;
	otherwise:
		choose row current challenge in the Table of Quiz Queries;
		say "[query entry]".

Before doing something other than quiz-guessing during Monday Testing:
	say "'Mind on the quiz!' snaps Dimflame." instead. 
	
Understand the commands "say" and "answer" as something new.
 
Understand "[text]" or "say [text]" or "answer [text]" as quiz-guessing when Monday Testing is happening. quiz-guessing is an action applying to one topic.
         
Carry out quiz-guessing:
	choose row current challenge in the Table of Quiz Queries;
	if the topic understood matches the topic entry:
		award 1 point;
		say "'[Correct entry]'[paragraph break]"; 
		change the current challenge to the current challenge + 1; 
	otherwise if the topic understood is a topic listed in the Table of Quiz Queries:
		say "'You may be thinking of the wrong line,' says Dimflame, as a hint." instead;
	otherwise:
		choose row current challenge in the Table of Quiz Queries;
		award -1 point;
		say "'[Incorrect entry]'[paragraph break]"; 
		change the current challenge to the current challenge + 1; 

When Monday Testing begins: 
	say "Professor Dimflame, his face somewhere between annoyed and amused, says, 'Well, for better or worse, it[']s time to begin the duel. Perhaps I should give you two football helmets to wear? Oh, but that wouldn't be nearly as funny. What was I thinking? Okay, [player's forename in title case], you're up. Here is your next question.'".
		
Monday Testing ends when the number of filled rows in the Table of Quiz Queries is less than current challenge.

When Monday Testing ends:
	if score is 5:
		say "'Well,' says Dimflame, beaming, 'You've certainly proven yourself today, [player's forename in Title Case]!'";
	otherwise if score is greater than 2:
		say "'Not perfect, but you're making progress,' Dimflame says grudgingly.";
	otherwise:
		say "'An uninspiring performance, but at least the quiz is now over,' grumbles DImflame. 'We can be grateful for small favors.'"
   
Table of Quiz Queries
Query	Topic	Correct	Incorrect
"What is the object of line five of the poem?"	"it"	"Correct!"	"Wrong."
"What is the object of line six of the poem?"	"wand"	"Right!"	"Quite wrong."
"What is the object of line eight of the poem?"	"ground"	"Good!"	"Wrong wrong wrong."
"What is the object of line ten of the poem?"	"prince"	"Well done!"	"Nope."
"What is the object of line eleven of the poem?"	"none"	"Excellent!"	"Just plain wrong!"
--	--		--	-- [/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1066&start=0#p5852
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Two questions: 'unnecessary words' and how items are listed
User: Keltena / DateTime: 2010-05-01 20:48:30

...well, I feel rather silly now. I wasn't entirely sure what the difference between the two was; thanks for clearing that up. It'll save me tons of future trouble, obviously. ^^;;

As for the second part, I think what you gave me there is all I need. Again, thanks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1062&start=0#p5853
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: Change log for the next build
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2010-05-01 20:59:01

[quote="zarf"]Save and restore are critical, so I'll work on that next. (I will be copying Parchment's save-to-URL-bookmark model, but I also want to look at HTML5 DOM storage.)[/quote]

I'd very much like to see save/restore via HTML5. At that point we're headed for JS interpreters being usable as a general-purpose solution.

When you reach the point of looking at speed issues, do please let me know. I've stumbled upon some I7 constructs that slow things to a crawl for Parchment running z-code; I'd be interested to see if the same thing occurs for Glulx.

[quote="zarf"]At that point I will consider the thing shippable, and I'll work on doing a release that can be dropped into I7. Graphics and sound will have to wait. Not all games care about multimedia, but with the upcoming I7, I suspect *most* games will want to use dynamic lists, temporary relations, and indexed text. Z-code isn't dead, but it is increasingly uncomfortable.[/quote]

Yeah, no kidding. At this point getting an I7-based game to fit in .z5 is difficult, and staying within a .z8 is hard.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1063&start=0#p5854
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk/Glulx threads
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-05-01 22:26:30

[quote="zarf"]Threading is possible in most languages (I think Javascript is coming).[/quote]Web Workers are available in Firefox 3.5+, Safari 4+, and Chrome. They can be emulated with timers in IE, though we'd have to experiment to see if we can still have the benefits of processing while the player reads without noticeably locking the browser's UI.

[quote]I suspect it wouldn't be difficult to adapt most interpreters to work the way you suggest -- with a UI thread working in the foreground as the game runs in the background. (For ease of implementation, you'd want to switch into a "locked" mode where the game cannot do any I/O at all, until an event comes in or the game triggers one.)[/quote]Good to hear you think this is feasible. Do you think the VM/Glk would need to enforce that, or could we just say that Outputing data while running background tasks would be undefined?

Also, why isn't this locking needed now with the events that can be polled for?

[quote]However, *using* this capability in a safe way could be rather tricky for the game author.[/quote]I see this as more of a library/standard rules kind of feature. A simple use of it would be a task queue, where tasks can be enqueued, with a certain priority. Each task would need to be broken down into small steps, and once it has determined it has finished, would remove itself from the queue. When input returns, the game can query the queue to determine if a task it depends on has finished, and if it hasn't, that task would be run non-stop until it has finished, just as it would be without threading.

Designing a queue like that wouldn't be hard at all. Adapting chat systems, planners or AIs to use it would be harder of course, but the difficulty of the task shouldn't stop us from setting this system up.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1062&start=10#p5855
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: Change log for the next build
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-05-02 00:09:53

[quote]I've stumbled upon some I7 constructs that slow things to a crawl for Parchment running z-code; I'd be interested to see if the same thing occurs for Glulx.[/quote]

Sight unseen, the answer is YES. The only question is how much slower will everything be.

(I haven't tested any I7-generated game code.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1063&start=0#p5856
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk/Glulx threads
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-05-02 00:17:48

Locking isn't a problem now because the only pollable event is the timer event. You can compute that without looking at the UI implementation -- it doesn't matter what you've printed or what the user has done with the UI since the last glk_select started.

For any UI-related event, it *does* matter, and specifying that interaction is not worth the effort. (Printing to a window where line input is occurring, e.g.) So yes, the library would have to enforce it.

Please note that I consider this idea, cool as it might be, way down the priority list.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1063&start=0#p5857
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk/Glulx threads
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-05-02 01:58:39

I have considered introducing threading into the Windows Glk implementation before, specifically to have one separate thread handling the computationally expensive task of decoding and scaling graphics images. (This was when looking at Alabaster performance.) This would mean that a Glk graphics call would only put a request on a queue and return straight away, with the image being shown some unspecified time later.

This wouldn't need any modification to the Glk specification, and would avoid an interpreter pause when graphics draw. In the end I haven't done this as other optimization work sped up the graphics drawing sufficiently for it to seem not worth the effort.

However, speaking as someone who writes multi-threaded C++ for a living, I think threading is just too difficult to expect game (or even I7 extention) authors to be able to cope with it. It is conceivable that I7, with its somewhat "functional programming" approach to things, could be made to parallelize its internal algorithms, but I suspect that that will be scary hard, too: much harder than actually adding threading to the interpreter.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1064&start=0#p5858
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table Unstable! (Should I relabel?)
User: Carlos / DateTime: 2010-05-02 07:38:01

I guess it's no surprise that your code compiled beautifully and did everything I hoped it would, Emily. Thank you so much for taking the time to fix my many errors. 

Thanks, too, for the explanation--I was pretty egregiously misusing the "reject the player's command" function.

On another note, Emily, would you like to be a professor in the Margram Academy of Magic? Jim, that goes for you too (and for the other folks who have helped me in other threads; I'll be contacting you separately). I'll be presenting Margram at a National Endowment for the Humanities Institute this summer, and I would, with your permission, like to memorialize you in-game, to complement the praise I will heap on the intfiction community in general, and you all in specific, for your patience and constant help. Help isn't even the right word--you all have written everything but the most basic parts of the code for me. Thanks again, everyone.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1066&start=0#p5859
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Two questions: 'unnecessary words' and how items are listed
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-02 11:01:56

I found Eric Eve's books invaluable when I was learning T3. I tended to skim them rather than work the examples in any methodical way, but that's just because I have a rabbity mind. There's a huge amoung of useful information in there. When I want to know how a class works, I can just scroll down the left side of the Tour Guide window and click on it. The information in the Tour Guide may be easier to digest than what's in the Library Reference Manual, or it may just offer a different perspective.

The other thing is, please feel free to keep posting questions! T3 is not an easy system to master, so don't be ashamed to ask. People here are glad to help.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1067&start=0#p5860
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: The Dreaded Inform Carriage Return Problem
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-02 11:53:54

I'm attempting to write a fairly complex agenda for an NPC. This consists of several if-statements in a row -- but not with otherwise/else, because I may need two of them (or possibly even three) to fire in a single turn.

It looks more or less like this:
[code]
Every turn:
     consider Betsy's agenda.

To consider Betsy's agenda:
    if (some complex condition):
        say "Boo.";
    if (another complex condition):
        say "Bah."
[/code]
What I'm finding is that if only one of the agenda items fires, the carriage returns in the output are fine. But if two of them fire in a single turn, there's a missing carriage return. The two messages are printed one below the other, without a blank line space between them:

Boo.
Bah.

I could fix this the stupid way, by adding a (global) truth state that would test whether another message had been printed from the routine this turn, and if so, add a "[line break]", but maybe there's a better way. Can anyone suggest a general solution to the problem?

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1067&start=0#p5861
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The Dreaded Inform Carriage Return Problem
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-05-02 13:53:48

Hopefully I'm understanding the question here instead of misusing electrons... but couldn't you end them all in "[run paragraph on]", then at the conclusion print a single "[line break]"?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1067&start=0#p5862
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The Dreaded Inform Carriage Return Problem
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-02 14:20:26

[quote="Eleas"]Hopefully I'm understanding the question here instead of misusing electrons... but couldn't you end them all in "[run paragraph on]", then at the conclusion print a single "[line break]"?[/quote]
Electrons are cheap ... but to answer your question, that would work if I wanted everything in one long paragraph. However, I don't. The outputs are intended to be rather separate in tone and topic, and require separate paragraphs.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1067&start=0#p5863
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The Dreaded Inform Carriage Return Problem
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-05-02 14:28:28

[quote="Jim Aikin"][quote="Eleas"]Hopefully I'm understanding the question here instead of misusing electrons... but couldn't you end them all in "[run paragraph on]", then at the conclusion print a single "[line break]"?[/quote]
Electrons are cheap ... but to answer your question, that would work if I wanted everything in one long paragraph. However, I don't. The outputs are intended to be rather separate in tone and topic, and require separate paragraphs.[/quote]

In that case, end each with a paragraph break rather than a line break.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1067&start=0#p5864
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The Dreaded Inform Carriage Return Problem
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-02 15:01:33

...also, on thinking about it, there are times when NO output will be printed. So you'd still have to test whether any output had been printed before you'd know whether to print the "[line break]".

What scares me is that this may be one of those places where the fundamental design of Inform sort of stutters and stumbles a bit. In TADS 3, this is never a problem, because (from what little I know about it ... I'm guessing here) T3 buffers and organizes its output in a different way before sending it to the screen. It looks to me as if that final blank line in the Inform 7 output is being inserted not by an output buffer manager but as a prelude to the next command prompt. Or something like that. This is one of those edge cases where it may make a difference.

But maybe if I wrote my "consider ... agenda" code differently, the problem would go away. I simply don't know.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1067&start=0#p5865
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The Dreaded Inform Carriage Return Problem
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-02 15:04:24

[quote="ektemple"]
In that case, end each with a paragraph break rather than a line break.

--Erik[/quote]
But each paragraph [i]does [/i]end with a paragraph break. It ends with this type of thing:

...last words.";

That's a paragraph break, as far as Inform is concerned, right? The problem seems to be what happens [i]after [/i]the paragraph break -- namely, that sometimes Inform adds an extra blank line, and sometimes it doesn't.

I could be wrong. I'll have to whip up a clear test case to explore the problem.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1068&start=0#p5866
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: T3 in a Browser
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-02 15:09:25

I'm contemplating developing a new game. I would personally prefer to use TADS rather than Inform. Trouble is, the Inform community is developing some good tools for running games in Web browsers.

I'm afraid this is going to kill T3.

If I want to write a game that can be played by casual users (those who are not committed enough to find and download an interpreter), it appears I have to write in Inform (either 6 or 7). I've made a comment to this effect on the TADS System Development forum, but after an initial flurry of conversation, the topic died down. I'm not seeing any indication that anyone is actively working on it.

Am I alone in seeing this as an issue?

I'm not a real programmer; I would have no way of writing a T3 terp in Javascript. I'm dependent on the kindness of strangers. But I'd sure like to develop a groundswell of sentiment on this subject, so as to encourage someone who has the ability to tackle the project. Can I get a witness?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1067&start=0#p5867
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The Dreaded Inform Carriage Return Problem
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-05-02 15:13:35

[quote="Jim Aikin"]But each paragraph [i]does [/i]end with a paragraph break. It ends with this type of thing:

...last words.";

That's a paragraph break, as far as Inform is concerned, right?[/quote]

Not quite. As I understand it: Within a single routine, the period is treated as running on--because a single routine should generally produce a single paragraph. The paragraph break token allows you to override this, hence my suggestion.

To showcase the distinction, here's some perfectly useless code, but with the two conditions broken out into two every turn rules:

[code]Test is a room.

Every turn:
	consider the agenda with regard to applesauce;
	
Every turn:
	consider the agenda with regard to mayonnaise;
	

To consider the agenda with regard to applesauce:
	if the player is a thing:
		say "Boo."
		
To consider the agenda with regard to mayonnaise:
	if the player is a person:
		say "Bah."[/code]

Now the line-ending periods produce line breaks, because each period is effectively the output of its own rule.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1063&start=0#p5868
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk/Glulx threads
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-05-02 15:13:55

Well, we've been talking about having the UI and the VM in separate threads, *not* having multiple VM threads. VM multithreading is a much, much trickier problem, and I'm not touching it, no sir.

(Some Glk apps are already written with the UI and VM in separate threads. Or do specific UI tasks in threads, as in your image-decoding idea. However, the spec is written to make this unnecessary, and the VM can't take advantage of it when it *is* the case. Dannii's proposal is a simple extension to let the VM take advantage of it.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1067&start=0#p5869
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The Dreaded Inform Carriage Return Problem
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-05-02 15:15:20

For what it's worth, this is one of those cases where I'd use a rulebook, like so:

[code]Every turn:
	consider Betsy's agenda rules.
	
Betsy's agenda rules are a rulebook.

A Betsy's agenda rule:
	if 1 > 0:
		say "Betsy waves."

A Betsy's agenda rule:
	say "Betsy frowns."[/code]

You get the paragraph breaks automatically, and if no rule prints anything, you get silence. You can give every character his/her own behavior rulebook and call them all automatically. I also find rulebooks more robust to work on if I've got a large number of possible cases in mind, vs. a really long if statement. This may be a matter of personal preference.

It would indeed be nice if we had an output buffer; this is something I wanted to add from the very early days of development. Unfortunately, as I understand it, it's not possible to do such a buffer systematically within the limitations of the z-machine. You can kind of fake a buffer in local cases -- Eric Eve's "Text Capture" extension demonstrates one way of doing this -- but for the specific task you're discussing it would be a case of killing a gnat with a shotgun.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1068&start=0#p5870
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3 in a Browser
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-05-02 15:51:33

I don't think there's actually any doubt that this would be a good and desirable thing; my impression was more that MJR had some pretty challenging, long-term idea about how to do it, and that while he was planning to take action, it might take a little while. I may be misreading, though.

If there's anything to be gained from expressions of "Yeah, that would be cool!", then: 

Yeah, that would be cool!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1067&start=0#p5871
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The Dreaded Inform Carriage Return Problem
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-02 15:53:00

[quote="emshort"]For what it's worth, this is one of those cases where I'd use a rulebook....[/quote]
Thanks, Emily. That's the solution I needed. It's only a tiny bit more verbose, and it keeps the outputs separate.

My one question is, will the rules in the rulebook always run in the order they're declared in the source code? That could be significant in some cases.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1068&start=0#p5872
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3 in a Browser
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-05-02 16:02:18

I don't have anything useful to add to the thread, but I'll chime in to say that I've been planning to introduce IF to people on a web forum that discusses speculative fiction (all kinds of science fiction and fantasy).  The easy availability of Z-code games on the web browser is definitely a plus, but there are also games that I've enjoyed and would like to recommend for beginners that run on other VMs.  This is a real unmet need, and we'd all be indebted to whoever is willing and able to fill this need.  Also, many thanks to Dannii, and everyone else who contributed to the existing Z-code web interpreters.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1068&start=0#p5873
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3 in a Browser
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-02 16:11:04

I believe MJR's idea involves running a server-side terp. That might indeed have advantages compared to a Javascript-based terp. I'm not technically minded enough to know.

At the moment he's involved in enhancing the basic language. His ideas are brilliant (as usual), but I wouldn't be surprised if that's where his main energy is going. And ... well, if nobody else has the time or the chops to do it, it won't happen for a while. Which will further shrink the user base of T3 authors, which will make any sort of development less urgent, and so forth. The melting snowball effect.

It's not that I couldn't do the game I'm designing in I7 (or in I6, for that matter). All a text game is, is a bunch of text, a bunch of variables and if-tests, and a containment hierarchy for holding in-game objects. You can do that in any decent language. (Adrift ... well, maybe, maybe not.) It just comes down to my personal style -- how my brain works. I [i]like [/i]an object-oriented system. Plus, I like splitting the source up into multiple files, I like starting with a big library rather than a small one, I like multiple inheritance.... I could do all that in I6, but then I wouldn't have an IDE. I'd be running the compiler from a batch file or a terminal shell, I wouldn't have syntax coloring, all that stuff.

It's a real conundrum. None of these choices is bad, though. I have to admit, I'm mostly just shilly-shallying because I'm in a crummy mood.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1067&start=0#p5874
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The Dreaded Inform Carriage Return Problem
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-05-02 16:18:45

They will run in the source order unless you add conditions to them (such as "when/while"), in which case they'll sort themselves by priority. 

Having the rulebook structure also allows you to specify some rules as "first" or "last", which can sometimes also be useful for grouping.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1068&start=0#p5875
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3 in a Browser
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-05-02 16:23:42

No, I agree with you that there'd be a real benefit to having a TADS 3 in-browser interpreter. The IF ecosystem needs at least two latest-gen languages available at a time; one of the reasons I'm not bothered that some people find I7 syntax alien is that there is a great, traditional-style alternative out there for them to use.

I'm not in a position to do anything about it myself, unhappily.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1069&start=0#p5876
Forum: Competitions / Subject: TWIFcomp Results
User: dhakajack / DateTime: 2010-05-02 17:42:05

Congratulations to TWIFcomp winners: 

First Place: Aaron Reed, “[url=http://dhakajack.templaro.com/node/43]> by @[/url]” 
Second Place: Adam Thornton, “[url=http://dhakajack.templaro.com/node/56]Mentula Macanus: Apocolocyntosis[/url]” 
Third Place: Andrew Plotkin, “[url=http://dhakajack.templaro.com/node/49]You See Chaos Here.[/url]” 
Fourth Place: Evgeny  Bychkov, “[url=http://dhakajack.templaro.com/node/90]SHOOT YOUR EVIL TWIN…[/url]” 
 
Scores are posted on the [url=http://dhakajack.templaro.com/twifentries]TWIFcomp website[/url] and a summary score spreadsheet can also be [url=http://templaro.com/games/TWIFcomp_Final.xls]downloaded[/url]. 

A compressed file containing all materials from TWIFcomp (including 
TWIFplus games -- it made sense to put everything into one big file) 
can also be [url=http://templaro.com/games/twifcomp_kitchen_sink.zip]downloaded[/url]. 
 
Thanks to everyone who participated and supported TWIFcomp — now, you 
better start work on your [url=http://www.allthingsjacq.com/introcomp.html]IntroComp 2010[/url] games!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1068&start=0#p5877
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3 in a Browser
User: George / DateTime: 2010-05-02 20:35:22

You could write a teaser in z5 and the full game in T3?...

Just to take a step back a minute, I don't think the lack of a T3 browser interpreter is especially dire (though like most people probably I'm fully in support of it, etc.). There are many examples in the independent game scene where game makers don't use browser-based platforms and people download their games. 

Admittedly those games have two big advantages -- screenshots, and gameplay videos. I know there've been some attempts by publishers to make trailers for books and put them on youtube...usually these are kind of dumb IMO, but that's no reason not to get creative with marketing. Take Aaron Reed's Blueful prelude to Blue Lacuna, for example. From what I've gathered Blueful attracted many more casual players than usual -- and as we know, you couldn't easily play Blue Lacuna in a browser when he released it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1068&start=0#p5878
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3 in a Browser
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-02 21:29:35

[quote="George"]You could write a teaser in z5 and the full game in T3?[/quote]
That's a great suggestion. Possibly I'm being too gloomy about this whole thing.

On the other hand, when people download a graphic game, that's [i]one [/i]piece of software. It's not an interpreter and a separate game file. Plus, I think there may be a widespread understanding that graphics on the internet tend to be slow, so wanting a local executable program is natural.

If I were a real programmer, I could do the work myself. But I'm strictly a hobbyist programmer -- mainly I'm a writer. So I'm trying to beat the drums here.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1068&start=0#p5879
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3 in a Browser
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-05-02 21:36:40

I think a lot depends on how casual a player you're trying to net. There are definitely people who just want to play something online, *period* -- no downloading. (I am one of those people when I'm looking to play something on a work machine during my lunch break, say.) 

There are also people who are willing to download, but prefer the process to be pretty smooth, or will only download things that they're pretty sure they'll enjoy.

For IF that I was trying to get to an audience outside the community, I've generally offered a zip file bundling the interpreter and the game. That way, they're downloading two things, but it's one click, so it doesn't feel like such a big deal. I think this works tolerably well, but is still inferior to having stuff online.

I'm guessing that people who really want to play something *only* online are also looking for shorter play experiences, while those who might be receptive to a multi-hour game are also more likely to be willing to download something. So I think the most dramatic gains in playership from posting online are likely to apply to comp-sized or smaller works.

However. None of my speculation is backed up by really hard market research. 

Something that might be: when John Bardinelli talked to us at PAX East about the Jay Is Games playership, he suggested that short, episodic works available online would have the greatest uptake from the JIG readership -- something people could get into, and come back to over the course of months, but where each individual game would be small to play.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1068&start=0#p5880
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3 in a Browser
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-05-02 22:22:54

Both MJR and DaveC have plans that would bring TADS to the web, but they would both use CGI servers. I've considered writing a TADS3 VM in Javascript, but it's far beyond me, and I don't really have the time. The TADS3 VM is very complicated, and there is currently only one implementation of it.

Doesn't T3 let you bundle your game and terp into one .exe already? If you market your game like that people won't even realise how it normally works.

And if the lack of an IDE is the main problem with I6... well I kind of just wanna say get over it. I mean that nicely. However there are syntax highlighters for I6 for a number of editors etc...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1068&start=0#p5881
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3 in a Browser
User: George / DateTime: 2010-05-02 22:39:05

I6 has a decent IDE, but the name is escaping me at the moment. I watched someone here write their PAX Boston speed-IF using it. It has an object browser and syntax highlighting, I'm not sure about compiling. I'll have to ask again what it was, but here are some possibilities from the archive at <a class="postlink" href="http://ifarchive.plover.net/indexes/if-archiveXprogrammingXeditors.html">http://ifarchive.plover.net/indexes/if- ... itors.html</a>:

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifarchive.plover.net/if-archive/programming/editors/imaginate1500.zip">http://ifarchive.plover.net/if-archive/ ... te1500.zip</a>

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifarchive.plover.net/if-archive/programming/editors/ifide06.zip">http://ifarchive.plover.net/if-archive/ ... fide06.zip</a>

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifarchive.plover.net/if-archive/programming/editors/Imp13Win.zip">http://ifarchive.plover.net/if-archive/ ... p13Win.zip</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1067&start=10#p5882
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The Dreaded Inform Carriage Return Problem
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2010-05-02 22:39:54

[quote="Jim Aikin"][quote="emshort"]For what it's worth, this is one of those cases where I'd use a rulebook....[/quote]
Thanks, Emily. That's the solution I needed. It's only a tiny bit more verbose, and it keeps the outputs separate.

My one question is, will the rules in the rulebook always run in the order they're declared in the source code? That could be significant in some cases.[/quote]

As Emily said, and also -- if you define this as a rulebook, you'll be able to examine it in the rules tab of the index, and see exactly how the rules were sorted out. You can then use explicit rule-listing statements to make fine adjustments if necessary.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1068&start=10#p5883
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3 in a Browser
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-05-02 23:14:18

[quote="George"]I6 has a decent IDE, but the name is escaping me at the moment. I watched someone here write their PAX Boston speed-IF using it. It has an object browser and syntax highlighting, I'm not sure about compiling.[/quote]

[url=http://wide.berlios.de/]Wide[/url], perhaps?

The TADS 3 IDE is more than decent, though; it borders on professional. (It's probably terrifying to newbies the first time they run it, too. [emote]:twisted:[/emote] ) But once you learn to use it, the debugging tools it provides are invaluable. When your code isn't working and you have no idea why, it's so convenient to set a breakpoint and step through the code line-by-line until you find your mistake. Wide looks like a nice IDE, but it doesn't offer anything like the TADS Workbench's debugging tools.

(To be fair, working with the huge adv3 library does require better debugging tools than an Inform game might.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1068&start=10#p5884
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3 in a Browser
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-02 23:28:45

[quote="Dannii"]Both MJR and DaveC have plans that would bring TADS to the web, but they would both use CGI servers. I've considered writing a TADS3 VM in Javascript, but it's far beyond me, and I don't really have the time. The TADS3 VM is very complicated, and there is currently only one implementation of it.

Doesn't T3 let you bundle your game and terp into one .exe already? If you market your game like that people won't even realise how it normally works.

And if the lack of an IDE is the main problem with I6... well I kind of just wanna say get over it. I mean that nicely. However there are syntax highlighters for I6 for a number of editors etc...[/quote]
Yes, the .exe is a good solution -- for Windows users. But even there, some people prefer not to run .exe's from unknown vendors. And Mac and Linux users are out of the picture.

The absence of a nice IDE is only one of the problems with I6. Overall, it's an old-fashioned language. I've written two long games with it (one of them 10 years ago, admittedly ... nothing recent). In principle it will do anything that I7 will do, that's obvious, but it lacks many of the powerful coding features of T3, such as the large class library and the multi-stage action checking.

I do understand that the T3 VM is probably far too complex for a Javascript implementation. The idea of a VM running on a server is surely a lot more practical. Even aside from the speed issues, the source code is already in C, so the job of creating the terp would surely be much, much easier. But I know nothing at all about PHP. The whole thing is way beyond me -- I'm a good writer, but strictly a hobbyist programmer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1063&start=0#p5885
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk/Glulx threads
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-05-02 23:28:46

[quote="zarf"]Locking isn't a problem now because the only pollable event is the timer event. You can compute that without looking at the UI implementation -- it doesn't matter what you've printed or what the user has done with the UI since the last glk_select started.

For any UI-related event, it *does* matter, and specifying that interaction is not worth the effort. (Printing to a window where line input is occurring, e.g.) So yes, the library would have to enforce it.[/quote]

Currently you could set up a timer, call glk_request_line_event(), do some processing, call glk_select_poll() and get the timer event, call glk_cancel_line_event() and check the buffer for a statement ending with a period and if it doesn't, start from the beginning again, recycling the buffer. Essentially the only thing special about evtype_LineInput is that it will work when you press return, rather than manually checking for a complete command ending with a period. We could write games now which use processor time after asking for line input, we'd just have to change how commands must be entered.

The Glk spec already states that you can't print to a window with a pending line input. Are there other potentially dangerous interactions?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1068&start=10#p5886
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3 in a Browser
User: George / DateTime: 2010-05-02 23:54:00

I'm a hobbyist too, but practically speaking (to the general community here), could you run QTads on a server and take over the I/O, such that you could take input from a web page, send it to the interpreter, then print the output back on the web page? This probably wouldn't be a scalable or fast way to handle things, but it could work I think. I believe there's even software that will handle the I/O part for you in relation to the interpreter (that is, this software acts like a human user typing into the interpreter on a desktop, but with input you provide). 

You would need to write some javascript to display the text on the web page and get input, but that's pretty simple actually. 

However I'm probably missing something major here.

edit: I suppose you'd also need a way to send the input to the mediating software on the server, but I don't think that would be complicated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1068&start=10#p5887
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3 in a Browser
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-03 02:11:37

[quote="George"]I'm a hobbyist too, but practically speaking (to the general community here), could you run QTads on a server and take over the I/O, such that you could take input from a web page, send it to the interpreter, then print the output back on the web page?[/quote]
Based on my [i]extremely [/i]limited understanding of this technology, I think the ingredient you're missing is that the program running on the server has to be able to manage multiple players at once, each playing a separate game (or, indeed, a different game entirely). Also, cookies for saved games have to be sent back and forth. It's not simple stuff.

--ja

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1070&start=0#p5888
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Review guidelines?
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2010-05-03 05:10:08

I have been thinking about the responsibility of reviewers after having read some of the reviews placed on the net, and it has struck me that the reviewer has a pretty powerful weapon where as the author is more or less a sitting duck.
Many of the reviews are actually quite discouraging for anyone who's been working hard on his/her game, and does absolutely NOTHING to spur the want to do better.
In my opinion reviewing in the “amateur” world of IF should be a help, constructive criticism that the author can use to improve his/her next game. ( I am talking about games where it's evident that the author has put a fair amount of work, and not the fast 30 minute, slap-together thingy that's not worth even opening.)

There are guidelines and articles for almost any aspect of IF writing published, but none (that I could find) when it comes to reviewing a game.
I have thought this over and come up with some guidelines for reviewing a game. 
Reviewing an IF game is not at all like reviewing a movie or a theater play. Mostly the making of the game is a hobby and done in the authors spare time, without the financial backup of a well established software company. S/he is very much dependent on volunteers when it comes to testing the game, and their thoroughness.
I've had quite a few testers myself, who were all “gung ho” to test the game, but after some weeks I never heard anything from them.
But that aside, let's assume that the game has been tested and released.

[*] First of all, before you even start reviewing a game.

[*] Make it clear that this is YOUR opinion, and keep in mind that other may like or dislike the game, although you did/did not.

[*] State whether you are reviewing the use of the IF program or the game itself, and if you are doing both, separate the two.

[*] Take into consideration the nationality of the author. Give some slack to a “foreigner” for whom English isn't his/her native language. (but expect at least the use of a text editor)

[*] If the author has provided an e-mail address, take time to write him/her and ask if there are things you have problems with. This way you at least give him/her the chance to explain his/her actions.

When it comes to the reviewing itself, I realize that each of us have our own standards regarding games, and the following is only meant to be a guide line for those who'd like to give a review but don't want to write an essay about the game they've just played.

[b]Atmosphere:[/b]  Was the game catching on?

[b]Puzzles:[/b] How was the puzzles, too hard, illogical, too easy, was there a fair amount of them?

[b]Descriptions:[/b] How was the various descriptions? Did the author use too many fancy words, was the descriptions sufficient, too much or too little.

[b]Objects:[/b] Was all essential objects mentioned in the text or picture, examinable? And was the object examinable to a satisfying degree?

[b]Cruelty:[/b] The Andrew Plotkin cruelty index is very useful:

[i]Merciful:[/i] Cannot get stuck.
[i]Polite:[/i] Can get stuck or die, but it's immediately obvious that you're stuck or dead. 
[i]Tough:[/i] Can get stuck, but it's immediately obvious that you're about to do something irrevocable. 
[i]Nasty:[/i] Can get stuck, but when you do something irrevocable, it's clear. 
[i]Cruel:[/i] Can get stuck by doing something which isn't obviously irrevocable (even after the act). 

[b]Overall game play:[/b] ( A short summery of the game, maybe things you liked and things you didn't like.)

[b]Recommendation.[/b] (Is this a game you would recommend to other people?)


Feel free to add to this list. The more the better...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1070&start=0#p5889
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Review guidelines?
User: Mick / DateTime: 2010-05-03 09:40:13

As with all writing, the audience is one of the most important factors to keep in mind. Are you writing the review for the potential player of the game, or are you writing a critical analysis for the author to learn from when writing his or her next game? If it is the later, I think it is better served as private feedback sent directly to the author, a public review should really be focused on informing, well.. the public.

I believe it's redundant to explicitly state in a review that it is your personal opinion. Of course it is; who's opinion would it be? Although I think the better reviews focus less on your own personal feeling toward the game, but more on telling the readers about what they can expect in the game so they can make an informed decision on if they want to play it. I think you did a good job outlining some of the bases that should be covered.

The author's personal feelings should not be left out entirely, because they can be a good measuring stick to a reader who feels his or her interests align well with that of the review author. I may find that I tend to really like the games that Alice reviews positively, and not like the things Bob* likes and ignore what he says. That doesn't necessarily mean I think Bob is a bad person or writes bad reviews, I would just recognize that he likes different things. In fact, there are a few "Bob" reviewers on IFDB whose 1-star reviews translate as a glowing recommendation in my eyes.

*(My apologizes to anyone named Bob.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1067&start=10#p5890
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The Dreaded Inform Carriage Return Problem
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2010-05-03 09:47:04

[quote="Michael Gentry"][quote="Jim Aikin"]My one question is, will the rules in the rulebook always run in the order they're declared in the source code? That could be significant in some cases.[/quote]

As Emily said, and also -- if you define this as a rulebook, you'll be able to examine it in the rules tab of the index, and see exactly how the rules were sorted out. You can then use explicit rule-listing statements to make fine adjustments if necessary.[/quote]

If you'd like to see something similar in action, I [url=http://granades.com/games/cplay/source_43.html]did similar things in Child's Play[/url]. All of the babies have rulebooks (like the "ZK Fussing Rules"), and in some cases I hand-sorted the rules to get the order right (as in the "ZK Cooperating Rules").

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1068&start=10#p5891
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3 in a Browser
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-05-03 10:59:42

I love TADS 3 for its conversation system, for the conciseness of its code and for the intelligence of its parser.  Inform 7 is antithetical to the way I work in so many ways, but I keep coming back to it.  I've started two games in I7, before switching back to T3.  Because I would love to release a browser game.  I see it in my own playing habits - clicking a link to play a game is so much smoother than clicking a link to save a zip file, then find it, extract it, double-click...

So yes, this is an issue for me too. But, as Jim said, there's nothing stopping me from using systems other than T3 - I've already got the germ of a keyword-style game implemented in Flash.  It's just a shame to have to reinvent the wheel.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1068&start=10#p5892
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3 in a Browser
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-03 11:20:09

[quote="Pacian"]I love TADS 3 for its conversation system, for the conciseness of its code and for the intelligence of its parser.  Inform 7 is antithetical to the way I work in so many ways, but I keep coming back to it.  I've started two games in I7, before switching back to T3.  Because I would love to release a browser game.  I see it in my own playing habits - clicking a link to play a game is so much smoother than clicking a link to save a zip file, then find it, extract it, double-click....[/quote]
Last night I was porting (basically, hand-copying) some material from an I7 version of a project into the T3 version. It's time-consuming and error-prone. I was trying to do the game in I7, but I was getting a little tired of declaring global variables with long names....

Here's a question: Would people be willing to contribute a few dollars (or more than a few) to a pool to be awarded to the first person (or team) that creates a fully viable, reasonably bug-free T3 player for the Web? Would that be enough to provoke the interest of a real programmer? How much would it take?

I don't mean paying a competitive wage for the work. There's no way we could raise that kind of money. But maybe we could raise enough to help the person feel appreciated.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1068&start=10#p5893
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3 in a Browser
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-05-03 11:22:57

[quote="Jim Aikin"]I do understand that the T3 VM is probably far too complex for a Javascript implementation.[/quote]
I'm not really sure I believe that. Reading through the T3 VM documentation, it's not [b]that[/b] complex, as these things go.

Of course, the real question would be whether such a beast would run at an acceptable speed or not, and probably the only really good way to check that is to try it and see. On the other hand, I didn't really think Javascript was fast enough for a Z-machine implementation, but Thomas Thurman proved that wrong with Gnusto (which is the engine behind Parchment). Modern Javascript implementations are getting faster very quickly, so it could well be feasible to write a T3 VM in Javascript and wait until browsers can run it quickly enough.

Once you've done all that, though, you still have to implement some sort of display model. You'd have that problem with the client-server way of doing things, too, though.

Personally I'd much prefer to see a Javascript T3 VM than a client-server solution: the former lets you just knock up a web page with a running game so easily. Of course, it's not like I'm volunteering to do any of the work  [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1070&start=0#p5894
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Review guidelines?
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2010-05-03 11:24:08

[emote]:lol:[/emote]  I'm sure Bob will forgive you …
I was thinking about a review intended for a potential player of the game. The critical analysis would, in my world, go under the term feedback (which is equally important, I admit.)
The reason I wrote about the personal view is that when I read reviews of movies, books, or theater plays. I very often find the reviewer making him/herself the judge and opinion maker as to whether the object of the review is worth seeing / reading. I personally find this very wrong since there are as many opinions as there are human beings, and like you put it yourself, Bob doesn't necessarily like the same things Alice does.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1068&start=10#p5895
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3 in a Browser
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-05-03 12:15:15

[quote="Jim Aikin"][quote="Dannii"]Doesn't T3 let you bundle your game and terp into one .exe already? If you market your game like that people won't even realise how it normally works.[/quote]
Yes, the .exe is a good solution -- for Windows users. But even there, some people prefer not to run .exe's from unknown vendors. And Mac and Linux users are out of the picture.[/quote]

I'd guess that, aside from the security issues, a lot of casual players would just rather play on the web than to download. This is certainly true of me, though I use a Mac anyway. But it does seem as though the browser games on JayIsGames get a lot more comments than the downloads.

(Of course, if you're releasing a bundled .exe, you could also release the .t3 separately for Mac and Linux users to run in their interpreters. Though releases that say "If you're using Windows, do this, and if you're using Mac, do this extremely complicated thing" may be almost as offputting to the casual user as downloads that are windows-only.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1063&start=0#p5896
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk/Glulx threads
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-05-03 13:56:02

[quote="Dannii"]All conversation systems have some kind of algorithm to determine which "nodes" are accessible next, and they could quite feasibly be run while the player is reading the current node. I don't know how the new I7 features are implemented, but the new relations or functional programming features might also be slow if used a lot.[/quote]

To add on to what David said: I think you can assume that Glk libraries will use threads as needed to perform complex computational tasks.

Gargoyle currently uses separate threads for audio playback; OGGs are handed off to a library that spawns a new thread to decode, buffer, and play each sound.  For that matter, UI events are generated in an external process with callbacks into the library as events occur.

Conceivably you could have a Glk call that would process an embedded script outside the VM, calculate the result on a separate thread, and then return the result as part of a new event type.  The problem would be encapsulating the logic in a standard format and getting a meaningful result to fit into two 32-bit return values, one of which would have to identify which script / invocation was returning a value.

This could work somewhat like shaders for a GPU, but in the AI / pathfinding space instead of with 3D graphics.  I have no idea how practical this is, though.  One issue is that it could quickly become a mandatory feature, if games relied on it exclusively to calculate NPC movements or quips.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=100#p5897
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-05-03 15:34:10

Hi, everybody!

Here's one more considering "running for the hills" as Traviswf put it. My name is Rikard Peterson, and I'm a relatively long-time (about ten years, I think) r*if reader (and occasional poster). I work as a music teacher. (Wind instruments, so you can probably guess how I got my internet nickname.)

The first piece of IF I played was [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=cpwktis6qwh9ydn8]Augmented Fourth[/url]. I had found the IF Archive and was browsing it at random when I saw a file name that caught my attention. Luckily, it was a great, and not too difficult, game. So here I am. [emote]:)[/emote]

I don't think I'll ever write IF, unless you define IF the way some people do, and include graphical adventure games. In that case, [url=http://trumgottist.com/frasse-and-the-peas-of-kejick/]I've already written one[/url]. (If you haven't played it, don't do so now. I'm hopefully only days away from releasing an updated special edition of it.) I've also ported the [url=http://www.adventuredevelopers.com/forum/index.php?board=14.0]game engine[/url] that my game uses to Mac OS X.

(I also tend to overuse parenthesis in my posts.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=100#p5898
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-05-03 15:55:26

Trumgottist! *You're* Rikard Peterson? Well who'd have thought. [emote]:)[/emote] I don't suppose you recognize me from the AGS forums, heh? Went by many names for a while, the latest being "Trovatore". Well, happy to see a familiar face! Enjoy your stay!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=100#p5899
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-05-03 16:01:25

No, sorry, I don't recognise you from the AGS forums (only from r*if). But I'm an infrequent visitor there anyway, which is not so strange considering that I don't use AGS.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=100#p5900
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-05-03 16:03:57

Oh? But we talked on the AGS forums, via PMs. I don't remember what about, but I think I'd asked you for some music for a project I never actually did anything with, quite (quite!) a while ago. You sent me some lovely midis.

Ah well. Maybe we should take this to PMs anyway. And it's still great to see a familiar face.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=100#p5901
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-05-03 16:09:59

(Looks at old AGS PMs.) Ah! Now I remember you. "Trovatore" just didn't mean anything to me. Had you said "Rui Pires", on the other hand... Now it's my turn to be surprised when connecting the dots.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1071&start=0#p5902
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Gargoyle for Mac
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-05-03 17:44:42

I finally have a native build of Gargoyle for Mac that's worth sharing.
[url]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2759298/gargoyle-2010.1-mac_pre3.dmg[/url]

Please note that this is still beta quality; use at your own risk!  It supports OS X 10.4+ on Intel and PPC.

You can report issues [url=http://code.google.com/p/garglk/issues/detail?id=100]here[/url], if you're inclined to take it for a test drive.

The main issues at the moment are:

[list]
[*] There is a considerable delay when Gargoyle is first launched, while fontconfig builds its font cache.  Give it a minute or two before pulling the plug.[/*:m]
[*] Gargoyle takes over all file types that it supports.  This is a minor convenience for testing and a major inconvenience for regular folks.  Sorry!  Removing and deleting the Gargoyle app will restore the previous default (e.g. Zoom).[/*:m]
[*] MOD playback is quite broken.  Attempting to play a MOD file will result in silence if you're lucky, horrible noise if you're not.[/*:m][/list:u]

For performance reasons, Gargoyle uses OpenGL to render screen updates on the Mac.  Depending on your hardware, this should range in speed somewhere between "adequate" and "absurdly fast."  If for some reason it seems inappropriately slow, I'm anxious to hear about it.  I am unable to test it on a wide range of hardware, so any feedback will be quite helpful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1071&start=0#p5903
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gargoyle for Mac
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-05-03 18:00:34

I just want to encourage everyone to give this a try. I've done some testing of earlier builds, almost exclusively related to Glulx multimedia. As far as Glulx goes, I have no reservations about saying that Gargoyle is the best, prettiest, and fastest interpreter available for OS X. Unlike Zoom, the runner-up, it has great sound support (except for MOD, as Ben said). The graphics-drawing speed is lightning fast on my five-year old MacBook, and the timer-code is vastly improved. If you've been playing around with Glulx multimedia, definitely give it a spin.

Gargoyle looks just as good on the Mac as it does on Windows and Linux. Previous Mac builds have been very stable, so also consider downloading Gargoyle to play just about anything else, from z-code to (text-only) Tads 3 games. File some bug reports and help Ben make Gargoyle an even better interpreter than it already is!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1020&start=20#p5904
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Timer in Glulx games
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-05-03 18:08:01

If the timer limitations in other interpreters have turned you off from using this or other Glulx multimedia tricks, there is a cross-platform solution with very nice performance coming:

Ben Cressey (the driving force behind the Gargoyle interpreter) has been working on new timer code solutions as well as display-speed enhancements for both text and graphics. The beta Mac build (see [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1071]here[/url]) showcases both of these improvements, but I think you can expect to see them expand to the Windows and Linux versions of Gargoyle before too awfully long.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1071&start=0#p5906
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gargoyle for Mac
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-05-03 19:37:45

I was under the impression that Spatterlight was actually "Gargoyle for Macs"... [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1068&start=10#p5907
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3 in a Browser
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-05-03 19:58:42

I can help in the "*.exe bundle for Macs" issue. I could modify QTads so that it loads the first Tads game it finds from a specific directory inside the application bundle. This wouldn't even require installation, just downloading the *.dmg and running it.

I have to say though that even if I think that web-based interpreters are "cool" for what they provide and also eagerly await news from Mike Roberts about this, introducing casual, non IF-aware players to the medium through a web-browser can backfire: "browser-based games suck!" That's a phrase I had to hear often when showing others some web game I discovered (be it Open Arena or Tribal Wars.) "Browser-based" is a term that for many implies some form of inferiority (or more widely known as "suckage", depending on your target audience.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1068&start=10#p5908
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3 in a Browser
User: George / DateTime: 2010-05-03 20:06:23

[quote="Jim Aikin"]
Here's a question: Would people be willing to contribute a few dollars (or more than a few) to a pool to be awarded to the first person (or team) that creates a fully viable, reasonably bug-free T3 player for the Web? Would that be enough to provoke the interest of a real programmer? How much would it take?
--JA[/quote]

Jim, I'd be in for 50 USD. Remember Greg B. proposed a similar offer for the T3 Mac OS interpreter, and eventually someone announced CocoaTADs -- I think the developer mentioned Greg's original thread, so perhaps it was some motivation? In any case, there's little chance an experienced programmer would be adequately compensated by a pool of contributions, but maybe it would be the spark that would get someone going on it. 

One of the problems right now is that there's a bit of a negative feedback loop with the visibility of T3 and the number of capable people who might happen upon such an opportunity and run with it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1071&start=0#p5911
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gargoyle for Mac
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-05-03 20:42:17

[quote="RealNC"]I was under the impression that Spatterlight was actually "Gargoyle for Macs"... [emote]:P[/emote][/quote]

Spatterlight is a very fine Glk implementation, but it is not the same as Gargoyle.  I don't believe they share very much code at the library level, though I am not very familiar with the Spatterlight source.  They have a similar set of interpreters, though Gargoyle's are more current since Spatterlight is not maintained.

Gargoyle uses Freetype to display fonts where Spatterlight and Zoom use native OS X font rendering.  As a consequence, its output looks identical across platforms, and is more faithful to the font's design.  It substitutes certain ligatures and replaces quotes with smart quotes.  It uses subpixel rendering on LCD monitors and adds a lot of whitespace to make reading easier.

Because it doesn't use native text capabilities, some common UI features (such as scrollbars) are either implemented differently or not at all.  This makes it difficult to compare to other libraries, which typically target one and only one UI toolkit.  Readability is enhanced but at some cost to usability.  Whether or not you find the program worthwhile will depend on which area you emphasize.

If you haven't used it before, it's worth downloading it to take a look.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1071&start=0#p5912
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gargoyle for Mac
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-05-03 20:49:47

w00t! All our pestering paid off!   [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1071&start=0#p5918
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gargoyle for Mac
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-05-03 21:13:14

[quote="bcressey"]If you haven't used it before, it's worth downloading it to take a look.[/quote]
Gargoyle is the terp I use actually. I'm on Linux. I was just surprised to see this thread since both Gargoyle and Spatterlight seem to have originated from the same person and, so I assumed, shared the same code.

Well, I was wrong.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1073&start=0#p5919
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: QTads 2: Multimedia TADS for Linux and Mac
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-05-03 21:28:35

The next major update of QTads, a cross-platform TADS (2&3) interpreter, supports Multimedia TADS games (aka "HTML TADS"). The final version (2.0) is not released yet, but development is shaping up pretty nicely and in its current state can be used to play through all games I and others tested with no features missing:

[url=http://qtads.sourceforge.net/threnody.png][img]http://qtads.sourceforge.net/threnody_small.png[/img][/url]

Binaries for Linux and Mac OS X, more screenshots and the source code can be found at:

  <a class="postlink" href="http://qtads.sourceforge.net">http://qtads.sourceforge.net</a>

And here's a [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/search?sortby=rcu&newSortBy.x=0&newSortBy.y=0&searchfor=tag%3Agraphics+system%3Atads]list of multimedia games[/url] you can use with it (some of them actually worth playing, some others... well.)

I'm also considering a Haiku (BeOS clone) version, but not sure how much interest there is in that one.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1070&start=0#p5926
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Review guidelines?
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2010-05-04 08:32:45

That's inherent in reviews, though. There are no unbiased reviews, and there is no objective scale against which art can be measured. If you read enough of someone's reviews, you can figure out where their tastes overlap with yours and calibrate accordingly.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1074&start=0#p5927
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: As-yet-unnamed IF Players/Readers' Group, meets June 27 at M
User: metoikos / DateTime: 2010-05-04 10:45:47

An as-yet-unnamed IF readers/players group will meet for the first time on Sunday, June 27, from 2-4pm in room 66-380 on the MIT campus. Contact me if you would like to attend so that I may give you directions. 

Perhaps to go with Grue St. we could call this Grue Feed (aka hapless adventurers) ( : 

Post your ideas for what we should play/read here:
<a class="postlink" href="http://tinyurl.com/bif-pg-wishlist">http://tinyurl.com/bif-pg-wishlist</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1075&start=0#p5928
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Announcing CYOA competition
User: Aina Grey / DateTime: 2010-05-04 13:09:44

[u]CYOA competition[/u]

judges and participants for my Choose Your Own Adventure competition wanted! every participant receives a freebie!

you don't have to enter a completely new game as long as long as you wrote it and it hasn't participated in any competition before. don't be a cheater!  [emote];)[/emote] 

length and genre of the game doesn't matter - the only important thing is that it's CYOA.

the games will be rated by a jury rather than public voting, judges are supposed to have completed at least one game of IF (any style, not only CYOA)

so if you scribble down a game in 5 minutes that has only one branch you still get a prize - how can you lose!  [emote]:)[/emote] 

winners get nice [b]Metallica[/b] stuff!!!

PM or email me!

full rules below

-----
full rules:
1. Dates

I must receive your game (source code not required!) by email or pm by 17:00 GMT on Sunday, May 30, 2010.

2. Game

Your game must be a Choose your own adventure game playable with an interpreter, preferably Frotz. In the event that the CYOA-ness of a game is disputed by at least one jury member, the jury (see below) will decide whether it is eligible to participate in the competition.

The game must be written in the English language to an amount bigger than 50%. There is no required length or any other requirement. A game of any nature can participate.

All games that have never before participated in any competition of any kind are eligible to take place in this one. In other words it is not important when they have been written. Just be honest!

3. Game Submission Procedure 
After extensively testing your game, send me an email or pm including the following:

- Your real name 
- A short description of your work
- Indicate the programming language/version in which the game was programmed. 
- Attach a copy of your game in whatever format you’d like it to be distributed 
- Up until the submission deadline you can send updated versions of your game. 
- No more than five game submissions per author.

4. Veto right

I have the final say on any aspect of the competition.

5. Jury

The first four people to apply are recruited into the jury. Jury rules will be discussed internally. If less than four people apply for jury duty, just those who did perform the voting. The jury will judge the submitted games via a point system discussed internally.

Everybody who has written at least one game of Interactive fiction in his life and can prove this is accepted into the jury. Every jury member receives a free CD or tape (as below).

6. Prizes

Every participant receives a free CD or cassette! (participant can choose between a limited selection of stuff)

plus:

1st prize: Metallica - Dutch Magnetic double CD set

2nd prize: Metallica - Pounding out aggression CD

3rd prize: Metallica - One 7" single

7. "Copyright"

Don't submit games you didn't write yourself! I mean that should go without saying...

8. Email address

<a href="mailto:ainagrey@gmail.com">ainagrey@gmail.com</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1076&start=0#p5929
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Defeating the ExitLister
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-04 16:44:34

In a particular room in my WIP, I need the ExitLister not to function. Specifically:

a) It should not say "There are no obvious exits" when the player tries 'nw' or whatever. I'm handling that information myself, in a more interesting way, in the cannotGoThatWay message.

b) Should the player type 'exits' while in that room, I will need to provide a special text output. I don't know where to put it.

c) The status line must not say "Exits: None" while in this room, because that's not the case. There are indeed exits, but they're not [i]directional [/i]exits. So I need to override that text in this particular room.

So I'm looking at the definition of the Room class in the LRM, and I can't see where a Room has its own ExitLister object. Thus I don't know where to intervene in order to override the behavior in this particular room.

Can anyone advise how to manage this? Thanks!

--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1076&start=0#p5930
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Defeating the ExitLister
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-05-04 18:28:09

[quote="Jim Aikin"]So I'm looking at the definition of the Room class in the LRM, and I can't see where a Room has its own ExitLister object. Thus I don't know where to intervene in order to override the behavior in this particular room.[/quote]
You could modify the exitLister object itself.  Also explicitExitLister is where the "There are no obvious exits." message lives, which I've messed with for my own WIP.  Obviously, it would be nice to set this stuff on the Room object, but for a unique case maybe it wouldn't be too messy to set some exceptions in those places.

The following [i]seems[/i] to work for when the player is in startRoom:

[code]
modify exitLister
    showExits(actor)
    {
        /* show exits with our standard lister */
        if(actor.getOutermostRoom==startRoom)
            "The only <q>Exit</q> here is a song by U2. ";
        else
            showExitsFrom(actor, actor.location);
    }
    showStatuslineExits()
    {
        /* if statusline exit displays are enabled, show the exit list */
        if (exitsMode.inStatusLine)
        {
            if(gPlayerChar.getOutermostRoom==startRoom)
                "\nExits: musical!";
            else 
                showExitsWithLister(gPlayerChar, gPlayerChar.location,
                                statuslineExitLister,
                                gPlayerChar.location
                                .wouldBeLitFor(gPlayerChar));
        }
    }
;

modify explicitExitLister
    showListEmpty(pov, parent)
    {
        if(gActor.getOutermostRoom==startRoom)
            "Only the power of Bono can help you now. ";
        else
            inherited(pov, parent);
    }
;
[/code]
Maybe someone has a more elegant solution than this.  In particular I worry about using gActor and gPlayerChar in these kinds of methods.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1074&start=0#p5931
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: As-yet-unnamed IF Players/Readers' Group, meets June 27 
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-05-04 20:17:36

Is this a separate group from the PR-IF? Why not coordinate and meet with them?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=110#p5932
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Roody_Yogurt / DateTime: 2010-05-04 20:30:16

Hi, this is Jonathan Blask, author of Death To My Enemies and hopefully something better at some point. It is nice to see Trumgottist here. Frasse and the Peas of Kejick was a cool game. I was happy when I saw it featured on an episode of Cinematech on the now-defunct TechTV.

I've been checking this place out lately and decided it was time to finally register. Nice job, Merk, on setting this up.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1077&start=0#p5933
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Considerations for CYOA XML file format
User: Rudism / DateTime: 2010-05-04 20:55:46

I'm not really sure how much demand there will be for this, but I am working out an XML file format specification for CYOA-style interactive novels, and plan on developing a number of tools for authoring and reading them (probably focusing on mobile apps and Kindle support for reading, initially).

I've been an IF-lurker for quite some time, and have great respect for the community that has been built around the hobby. As such, I am interested in any feedback or suggestions anyone here might have. I've roughed up a brief page describing the file format and its goals/limitations here: [url]http://inml.rudism.com/[/url].

I know that there's been some controversy around whether or not CYOA even counts as IF in the past. My primary reason for considering this as a free-time project is that, while I do enjoy classic parser-based IF, I yearn for IF that's a little less cerebral that can be comfortably read on an eReader or mobile phone without having to deal with typing on tiny thumb or on-screen keyboards. I feel that CYOA-style stories with simple hyperlinking would lend themselves very nicely to that purpose, and have been unable to find any existing system or tools geared specifically towards publishing those in a way that would provide maximum portability between platforms.

I did stumble across [url]http://ifml.sourceforge.net/[/url] during my googlings, which seems similar to what I would like to achieve, only on a grander scale (defining parser-based IF in XML). It also appears to be abandoned, which I feel is a shame.

Anyway, like I said, this idea is still just forming in my mind and I'm looking for feedback from the IF community (even if it's that I'm crazy and this is a waste of time).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1075&start=0#p5934
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Announcing CYOA competition
User: George / DateTime: 2010-05-04 20:56:35

Sounds cool JC, but is there a reason you made a new account for this compo?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1076&start=0#p5935
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Defeating the ExitLister
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-04 20:57:11

Thanks! That works. I didn't realize the exitLister was a global preinit object.

If I should happen to implement a maze, I'll have to modify these modifications further, but now that I have the basic hooks in place, that should be easy.

--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1074&start=0#p5936
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: As-yet-unnamed IF Players/Readers' Group, meets June 27 
User: George / DateTime: 2010-05-04 20:59:24

I think it's a spin-off.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1077&start=0#p5937
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Considerations for CYOA XML file format
User: George / DateTime: 2010-05-04 21:17:38

The one thing I would consider carefully with a system like this is who you would like your target author audience to be. Because  INML deliberately avoids scripting in its design (unlike other systems, for example Twee or Choicescript, which are javascript based), extending the system beyond choice-based narrative is going to get pretty difficult. From my experience the more interesting games include some amount of scripting. Of course you can write great works with CBN alone, but I think the perception may be that the INML system is simpler and so some people will not consider it seriously when choosing a development environment. 

I'm not sure how portable javascript-based systems are compared to INML, but since many mobile platforms do include a web browser, the possibly greater portability of INML may be moot in the end. 

While I have a gut aversion to writing/editing XML, lately I've come around to the idea of structured content -- so with a good front-end writing tool (or even just an XML editor of course) I could see how writing works for INML would be cool. 

Anyway, just my 2 c., take it for what it's worth.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1074&start=0#p5938
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: As-yet-unnamed IF Players/Readers' Group, meets June 27 
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-05-05 01:45:33

It is the PR-IF people (and, similarly, anyone who happens to be in Boston is welcome to show up), but it is distinct from the monthly PR-IF meet-up event.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1075&start=0#p5939
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Announcing CYOA competition
User: Aina Grey / DateTime: 2010-05-05 07:05:41

...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1076&start=0#p5940
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Defeating the ExitLister
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-05-05 07:55:23

Although Pacian's suggestion should work, it's sub-optimal because the code that checks for the current location will be executed regardless of the PC's actual current location. Adding more and more code that gets executed regardless is one of those things that can slow down the game. Remember the weird lag between player input and response time in "Max Blaster and Doris de Lightning" for example? I strongly suspect that this was the result of a lot of code getting executed at all times, even when not needed.

Best is to always keep code localized to places where it's actually needed. In this case, if you take a look at travel.t, and search in it for the places where gExitLister is used (a simple text search should do), you will find the methods that use gExitLister to perform their work.  For example, BasicLocation defines the following method:

[code]    /*
     *   Show a list of exits from this room as part of failed travel
     *   ("you can't go that way"). 
     */
    cannotGoShowExits(actor)
    {
        /* if we have an exit lister, ask it to show exits */
        if (gExitLister != nil)
            gExitLister.cannotGoShowExits(actor, self);
    }[/code]

Instead of modifying BasicLocation itself, you can simply override all the methods that delegate their work to gExitLister with either your custom code, or make them delegate their work to a custom ExitLister that contains Pacian's modifications. For example, instead of:

[code]        if (gExitLister != nil)
            gExitLister.cannotGoShowExits(actor, self);[/code]

your BasicLocation subclass could do:

[code]            gMyCustomExitLister.cannotGoShowExits(actor, self);[/code]

That way, no code that checks for the current location needs to be executed every time in all locations.

Of course, you will need to also override the rest of the BasicLocation methods where you need custom behavior. Also note that BasicLocation might not be the only place that needs modifications. A text search for "gExitLister" over all *.t files of the adv3 library should be enough to get an idea of where to override (or modify) the default methods.

Hope that helps.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=0#p5941
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: George Shannon / DateTime: 2010-05-05 07:56:44

I also really like using Frotz on the iPhone.  I really wish I had a list of games that play well on it - there are quite a few where it's really only enjoyable if you sit down and can draw a map and such.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1068&start=20#p5942
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3 in a Browser
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-05-05 08:18:45

Right now this might result in duplication of effort, considering that Mike announced a while ago his intentions to provide a web-based interpreter as part of TADS itself. On the other hand of course, more options are always nice to have.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1026&start=30#p5943
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forced paragraph breaks?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-05-05 08:27:10

Okay, here's a solution to your triggering-flags-from-choices problem. I think. I haven't tested it extensively, so there might be problems I missed.

[code]Switching relates various choices to various flags.
The verb to switch (it switches, they switch, it switched, it is switched, it is switching) implies the switching relation.

Carry out choosing a number (called N) (this is the handle flags for choices rule):
	if there is an option in row N of the Table of Options:
		let comm be the option in row N of the Table of Options;
		repeat with F running through flags switched by comm:
			now F is on.

The handle flags for choices rule is listed first in the carry out choosing rules.[/code]

And then, for any choice that triggers a flag:
[code]ChoiceNameHere switches FlagNameHere.[/code]

It'd be cleaner if we could use "gives" for both pages and flags, but the way the giving relation is defined precludes that, sadly.

Don't worry about sending me a CD, by the way. Abject gratitude will do just fine.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1075&start=0#p5944
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Announcing CYOA competition
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-05-05 09:00:20

Bravo, "Aina", very mature.

Incidently, Denton, changing accounts like wild to avoid getting recognized isn't going to change what people think of you. You're not even that hard to recognise (though I admit I wouldn't have known it from your PMs).

Back on topic now, the competition seems fair enough. God knows CYOA doesn't have a very good rep, a comp might well boost it up a bit.

Just lose rule 9 if you want any sort of credibility at all.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1075&start=0#p5945
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Announcing CYOA competition
User: George / DateTime: 2010-05-05 10:21:39

I agree, the competition sounds totally fine. JC, if you want to host a competition and enter it, that's cool. Just go ahead and do it, changing user account isn't necessary.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1076&start=0#p5946
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Defeating the ExitLister
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-05 11:04:28

I think what you're saying (I may not have a chance to try it out until tonight) is that because Room inherits from BasicLocation, I can search for all of the places where gExitLister is mentioned in classes from which Room inherits, and then override those methods in the particular room I'm creating.

I'll have to puzzle out whether that will also work with the status line exit list. Probably it will.

Thanks for the nudge. I was sort of vaguely aware of the issue with slowing down the game, but wasn't sure how to avoid it.

--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1076&start=0#p5947
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Defeating the ExitLister
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-05-05 11:12:58

Another solution (we can keep coming with better mouse traps all day long) would be to not override anything in BasicLocation, but instead replace gExitLister with your customized ExitLister upon entering the room, and restoring it to the default upon leaving it again. This would be quite simpler and perhaps more solid.

As for the speed issue, this one check would not slow anything down by any noticeable amount of time. I just raised the issue since it's a general one; if more and more similar checks are added, this adds up in the end.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1078&start=0#p5948
Forum: Competitions / Subject: IF competition at @party - remote entries welcome
User: metoikos / DateTime: 2010-05-05 12:41:55

Hello everyone!

There will be an interactive fiction competition at @party, a computer art festival in Harvard, Massachusetts. 

    * Games cannot be more than approximately a half-hour in play length.
    * All formats are acceptable, but entries that can be played in Z-Machine are   
      preferred.

The remote entry deadline is June 7, 2010 (email us at atparty dot demoscene09 at g mail dot com for ftp info, or submit via email). 

If you attend, your submission will be due 12:30 PM on Saturday, June 19, so that other attendees will have some time to play your game on their own; we will also have a designated interactor demonstrate the game for an audience of attendees and visitors from the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab during our compo showing that evening. 

Please visit our website for additional information about the event.
[url]http://atparty-demoscene.net/details.html[/url]

Hope to see you -- or your work -- at the event!

Best
Metoikos / Val

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1075&start=0#p5949
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Announcing CYOA competition
User: Aina Grey / DateTime: 2010-05-05 12:43:30

[quote="Peter Pears"]Bravo, "Aina", very mature.

Incidently, Denton, changing accounts like wild to avoid getting recognized isn't going to change what people think of you. You're not even that hard to recognise (though I admit I wouldn't have known it from your PMs).

Back on topic now, the competition seems fair enough. God knows CYOA doesn't have a very good rep, a comp might well boost it up a bit.

Just lose rule 9 if you want any sort of credibility at all.[/quote]

what people think of me is more like what YOU think of me, I never heard anybody else complain

almost got you, didn't I?  [emote]:twisted:[/emote] 

"hard to recognise" - you'll never learn, do you?  [emote]:roll:[/emote] 

---

anyway, the competition is [b]completely legit[/b]. I doubt many people will enter since there are hardly any people ON this forum to begin with, but if I get 2-3, that's enough. I will post pictures of the prizes later.

End of competition date might change if necessary.

ok, everybody can participate. even peter.  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

---

how can I get this to show up on if wiki?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1079&start=0#p5950
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Chicago IF Group - Kickoff Meeting
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-05-05 13:35:34

We're starting a new Chicago IF group on Monday, May 10th. All the details are at:

<a class="postlink" href="http://chicago-if.ning.com">http://chicago-if.ning.com</a>

David C.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1080&start=0#p5951
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Zifmia - A Client/Server Multi-Platform System
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-05-05 13:47:28

As mentioned in my blog at <a class="postlink" href="http://chicagodave.wordpress.com">http://chicagodave.wordpress.com</a>, I started a new project to implement IF in a client/server architecture.

The main page for the project is at <a class="postlink" href="http://zifmia.plover.net">http://zifmia.plover.net</a>.

I'm likely to move this to a codeplex or sourceforge project in the future.

I'm also very likely to change the license for FyreVM to a Creative Commons license or something appropriate for wider, less restricted use.

The goal of the project is to get stateless server implementations of each platform (Inform 6, Inform 7, Hugo, TADS 3) with abstracted output layers that can be repurposed as standard HTML, AJAX, CSS, and such.

I'm working on porting FryeVM to a stateless object. We need others to pitch in to create stateless objects for the other platforms, including somehow converting Glk output to some abstract output layer.

I suggest each output abstraction use a standard service contract or schema to define itself.

If you're interested in pitching in, let me know.

NOTE: This project is not in any way associated with my work on Textfyre. All work will be open source and share a common OSS license.

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1080&start=0#p5952
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Zifmia - A Client/Server Multi-Platform System
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-05-05 14:18:38

Thanks for starting the project! I could port TADS to this, but I'm not sure where to start.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1080&start=0#p5953
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Zifmia - A Client/Server Multi-Platform System
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-05-05 15:00:58

I've talked to Mike about porting the TADS 3 VM to something that could use Channel IO and he said it's doable, but not trivial.

You need to first look at the I/O interfaces. All of that would need to be reconstructed to go out as a package of different types of data. It might help to look at <a class="postlink" href="https://www.textfyre.com/fyrevm">https://www.textfyre.com/fyrevm</a> to get an understanding of Channel IO.

The next step is to make a stateless object that can be created and destroyed on a server. The logic is simple:

1. Create VM object.
2. Load game file.
3. Restore last known state. (save game file)
4. Execute command.
5. Retrieve packaged output
6. Retrieve new state. (save game file)
7. Release VM object.

In C#:
    public interface IZifmiaVM {
        void Load(byte[] gameFile, byte[] gameState);
        void Execute(string command);
        byte[] GameState { get; }
        string OutputPackage { get; }
    }

Given such an object, a server process (CGI, ASP.NET, PHP, Perl, Ruby, JSP) would be able to do the rest of the "interpreter" work, which would be to format the output in HTML and return to the client.

The saved game file would be stored locally, preferably in a database, as would all commands and output, but the main work here is to create an object that implements the above interface.

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1080&start=0#p5954
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Zifmia - A Client/Server Multi-Platform System
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-05-05 15:25:53

Does that mean I'd need to code in C# or use .NET, or are there plain C or C++ bindings for this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=0#p5955
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-05-05 15:43:14

Good cell phone games might be found by perusing one of these IFDB lists:

[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/poll?id=w20yzxhrzx5f7bry]One Room Non-Escape Games[/url]

[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/poll?id=gd1m635v7z4xg405]No Map necessary[/url]

Enjoy! [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1080&start=0#p5956
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Zifmia - A Client/Server Multi-Platform System
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-05-05 15:44:08

That depends on if you start with the existing TADS 3 source and work from there or if you completely write a new VM from scratch. If you use the current source, I believe it's in generic C. If you rewrite it, you can use anything you want.

Zifmia is designed to contain any VM platform built on any platform. The trick is to encapsulate the VM object with a web service in a compatible platform. Once that's implemented, anything can talk to it.

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1080&start=0#p5957
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Zifmia - A Client/Server Multi-Platform System
User: George / DateTime: 2010-05-05 18:20:58

Just out of curiosity, can you explain what you mean by 'stateless' in this context?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1076&start=0#p5958
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Defeating the ExitLister
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-05 19:18:15

[quote="RealNC"]Another solution (we can keep coming with better mouse traps all day long) would be to not override anything in BasicLocation, but instead replace gExitLister with your customized ExitLister upon entering the room, and restoring it to the default upon leaving it again. This would be quite simpler and perhaps more solid.[/quote]

More solid, perhaps, but not, in this particular room, simpler. The entrances and exits from this room are very tricky; that's why I needed to mess with the exitLister in the first place. There are 11 ways to get in and 2 ways to leave ... but the two exits may take you to any of the 11 entrances, depending on what else is going on.

[quote="RealNC"]As for the speed issue, this one check would not slow anything down by any noticeable amount of time. I just raised the issue since it's a general one; if more and more similar checks are added, this adds up in the end.[/quote]
Yeah, I got that. If anyone were actually to write a Javascript T3 VM, however (whimper...), the speed difference would probably become noticeable a lot sooner.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1070&start=0#p5959
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Review guidelines?
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-05-05 19:19:38

From what I've learned, a critical review can focus on any or all of three questions:
[list=1]
[*]What did the author say? (interpretation)[/*:m]
[*]How did the author say it? (analysis)[/*:m]
[*]Was what the author said worthwhile? (evaluation)[/*:m][/list:o]

It sounds like you don't like reviews that are heavy on the evaluation element.  I agree that it's not appropriate for a reviewer to be extremely judgmental in evaluation.  Even though evaluation is somewhat subjective, it should have an objective basis for the [i]way[/i] in which the work is either worthwhile or not worthwhile.  For instance, I think it would be perfectly fair to conclude that an IF game with extremely difficult puzzles, or very amateur writing, etc., is not likely a very satisfying or worthwhile thing to spend an afternoon playing.  On the other hand, it wouldn't be fair to say that the game should [i]never[/i] have been written in the first place, and that the author was stupid to have released it.

Also, all criticism should center on the work rather than on the author.  I'm honestly not sure whether it's fair to comment on the quality of the work based on the author's past history in other works, which I think is frequently done.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1080&start=0#p5960
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Zifmia - A Client/Server Multi-Platform System
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-05-05 20:41:02

Sure.

In a normal interpreter, the virtual machine is a constantly running object. In a stateless environment, the object is created and destroyed every time. The state is maintained externally through whatever means the implementor uses. The state could be maintained by serializing/deserializing the VM object on every turn, or as suggested, by loading the game file and last game save file every turn. We can save all of the non-game data too, like the commands, the output, date, time, user information, and store that in a database.

But none of those things matter to the stateless VM. As long as it gets a valid game file and an optional save state, and a command, it can go about its business. The resulting output properties are the result, but whether a consumer actually reads them is unimportant to the VM object as well.

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1081&start=0#p5961
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: ZILF 0.3
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-05-05 20:56:55

Version 0.3 of ZILF was released recently and is available at its [url=http://sourceforge.net/projects/zilf/]SourceForge project page[/url].

ZILF is a compiler for ZIL, targeting Z-machine versions 3, 4, 5, and 8, and also includes ZAPF, a Z-machine assembler.

ZIL is Infocom's Zork Implementation Language, which was used to write all of the classic Z-code games. ZIL was based on MDL, a derivative of Lisp that was used to write the original mainframe Zork. The language implemented by ZILF is an approximation of the original ZIL, as historically accurate as possible given the limited surviving documentation and snippets of code.

There's no complete manual for the language yet, but see [url=http://www.xlisper.com/zil.pdf]Steve Meretzky's ZIL guide[/url] and the [url=http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/programming/mdl/manuals/]MDL manuals[/url]. ZILF also comes with some sample source code, including a parser/world library (implementing a slightly changed subset of the features Meretzky describes) and a port of Cloak of Darkness.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1080&start=0#p5962
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Zifmia - A Client/Server Multi-Platform System
User: George / DateTime: 2010-05-05 21:32:42

OK, that's what I thought, so I'm guessing the size of IF games are such that time taken loading/saving is a fairly trivial operation?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1080&start=0#p5963
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Zifmia - A Client/Server Multi-Platform System
User: weiju / DateTime: 2010-05-06 00:11:13

I am just speaking from my own experience with ZMPP, which follows a similar model (for a different reason). It's not necessarily a trivial/cheap operation, but it does not take too much time to persist the state (in addition, you usually need to store at least one undo state, at least on Z-machine and Glulx). I think the idea of being stateless relates to scalability - if you have many players at the same time and everyone would have an in-memory session, you can't have that many players, given the story data sizes of today's IF. You also do not know how long players take between turns. Therefore you would at least need to swap out the state to disk if memory gets low.

Wei-ju

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1070&start=0#p5964
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Review guidelines?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-05-06 03:51:45

Well, it's a bit subjective, that. While it's true that a certain game should stand alone, it's also true that, in order to get where it was (if it's not the author's first game), the author had to go through certain steps, in other certain games. If a review made comparisons with the author's previous game/s and bashed/praised accordingly, it would also be helpful for the author AND for players. In fact, players would know more about the author. If reviews can have a bit of context to them, doesn't that make them a bit richer? A review of Adventure might well have the summary of the Bishop story, which would be fine. Wouldn't it be fine for a review of A Mind Forever Voyaging to mention Spellbreaker or Zork Zero as "typical" Meretzky games, and then explain what AMFV does that is so unlike (and what it does that is so like) those two games?

I thought of adding my two cents to the discussion, but on the other hand, I've written plenty of reviews - and it should be obvious from reading them what I think a review should do. For the record, though, I do believe reviews must be impartial and polite. And if the game was exasperating, the review has the right to sound exasperated. The reviewer should give the game a fair shot. The reviewer should also be aware that he's writing a) for people who never heard of the work, and so there is some basic info he has to give out; b) for people who heard about it and want to know more, and so he has to, well, review the thing; and c) for the author, letting him know what he did that was great and what he did that was not so great. And yes, letting him know how better/worse he's gotten in puzzles/prose/whatever.

Sure, c) is not all that important if you review for a gaming magazine, but here we're revieweing games we're making ourselves. We're in direct contact with the authors. We might as well show them the courtesy of acknowladging that we're all sitting at the same table, praising/criticising whatever the guy next to us has written *while he's still sitting right beside us*.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1073&start=0#p5965
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Multimedia TADS for Linux and Mac
User: farvardin / DateTime: 2010-05-06 06:11:19

Hello,

it's working really well on my system (Archlinux), it's good you've updated qtads, thank you.
I'll add it to my livecd "esclinux" as soon as there is an official release.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=0#p5966
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: George Shannon / DateTime: 2010-05-06 07:32:11

Awesome idea, thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1082&start=0#p5967
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Appendix A (noob question)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-05-06 07:38:17

Reading an old thread, I came across a reference to Appendix A (to Inform 7), an annotated version of the Standard Rules. Where can I find Appendix A? It doesn't seem to be in an obvious place in the documentation or on the website, though it's always possible that I've overlooked it.

I'd also probably be interested in other appendices.

Matt

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1082&start=0#p5968
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Appendix A (noob question)
User: Mick / DateTime: 2010-05-06 07:59:16

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/sources/src/stdrules/Woven/index.html">http://inform7.com/sources/src/stdrules ... index.html</a>

Is this what you're looking for?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1080&start=0#p5969
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Zifmia - A Client/Server Multi-Platform System
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-05-06 08:16:29

The size of the save files are likely to be trivial. The game load and save load times I've seen for FyreVM are close to nothing. I estimate we could easily have thousands of users on a small server playing cient/server IF games.

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1082&start=0#p5970
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Appendix A (noob question)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-05-06 10:34:58

[quote="Mick"]http://inform7.com/sources/src/stdrules/Woven/index.html

Is this what you're looking for?[/quote]

Yes, thanks!

I tend to not complain about I7 much, but boy is that well hidden.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1077&start=0#p5971
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Considerations for CYOA XML file format
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-05-06 10:46:14

[i]Post deleted by Retro.[/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1077&start=0#p5972
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Considerations for CYOA XML file format
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-05-06 12:00:30

[quote]If you intend to continue developing your so-called INML format I urge you to make it appear less similar to my NodeScript. This way you can avoid copyright infringement problems between you and me in the future![/quote]

You don't want to go down that road. Computer languages always copy ideas, and even syntax, from each other. It's a good thing. That's why Inform 6 looks a lot like C, and Hugo looks a lot like Inform 6, and so on.

Furthermore, if two people are trying to solve the same problem, they're likely to invent similar solutions even if they never see each other's work.

Legally, copyright applies to a manual or reference document that you write -- but not to the structure of what you're documenting. You could patent your language's structure, but I wouldn't recommend that either.

(Note: I am not a lawyer. I am, however, a programmer.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1077&start=0#p5973
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Considerations for CYOA XML file format
User: Mick / DateTime: 2010-05-06 12:18:18

I'm having trouble imagining any COYA script language that would [i]not[/i] be structurally similar to the two above examples. You are not the inventor of the concept of hyper-linking, and the syntax isn't even remotely similar. There is no copyright violation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1077&start=0#p5974
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Considerations for CYOA XML file format
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-05-06 12:34:33

[quote="Mick"]I'm having trouble imagining any COYA script language that would [i]not[/i] be structurally similar to the two above examples. You are not the inventor of the concept of hyper-linking, and the syntax isn't even remotely similar. There is no copyright violation.[/quote]

Similarity between programming/scripting languages cannot be avoided. I have to agree with that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=972&start=0#p5975
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Graphical Adventures: SLUDGE
User: farvardin / DateTime: 2010-05-06 12:41:12

I've tried again to register, but didn't get any email for activating my account (even in the spam folder).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=972&start=0#p5976
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Graphical Adventures: SLUDGE
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-05-06 12:54:55

The correct way to specify an include directory for libpng on Linux is using the command:

libpng-config --cflags

You then append that output to the compile command. For example, on my system, it's "/usr/include/libpng12", so "#include <libpng/png.h>" will NOT work. The correct way is to keep "#include <png.h>" and use 'libpng-config --cflags' to get the correct -I option for GCC.

Similarly, you need to use 'libpng-config --ldflags' to get the linker flags that should be appended in the link command.

You might want to pass the above along to the person who's maintaining the Linux port [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=972&start=0#p5977
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Graphical Adventures: SLUDGE
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-05-06 13:17:57

[quote="RealNC"]You might want to pass the above along to the person who's maintaining the Linux port [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Thanks, I will.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1077&start=0#p5978
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Considerations for CYOA XML file format
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-05-06 14:22:15

[i]Post deleted by Retro.[/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1077&start=0#p5979
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Considerations for CYOA XML file format
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-05-06 15:02:08

[i]Post deleted by Retro.[/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1083&start=0#p5980
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: The "undescribed" property, its rule, and code speed.
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-05-06 15:54:14

I'm trying to fix some speed problems in a big WIP primarily by whittling down the number (and kinds) of rules in it.  One rule I come across during a LOOK is the "don't mention undescribed items in room descriptions rule".   All it does is check to see if the object has the "undescribed" property set, and the only thing that property is used for is the player-character.  

It bugs me to have that rule in there, executed once per object in the room, for every LOOK in the game, for such a one-off use.  So I've de-listed it, and done this: [code]The player is scenery, not fixed in place. 
The don't mention undescribed items in room descriptions rule is not listed in any rulebook. 
The can't pull people rule is listed before the can't pull what's fixed in place rule in the check pulling rulebook. 
The can't push people rule is listed before the can't push what's fixed in place rule in the check pushing rulebook.
The can't turn people rule is listed before the can't turn what's fixed in place rule in the check turning rulebook. 
[/code]

Everything seems to work, but, does anyone foresee any complications I'm likely to run into?  I seem to remember this property & rule coming about around the time we could name the player, like "The player is Bob.", due to problems with "your former self" cropping up.  But is there any aspect here I'm missing?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1077&start=0#p5981
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Considerations for CYOA XML file format
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-05-06 16:04:47

You know, I really wish you had stumbled upon someone like yourself when you started your work on NodeScript. You'd be starting your own project, and someone else would come along and say "Hey, besides the fact that your language looks suspiciously like mine, mine can do all the things your thingy can do, and much more besides, and it's innovative, and in fact it's the best thing next to sliced bread". I really wish that had happened.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1077&start=0#p5982
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Considerations for CYOA XML file format
User: Rudism / DateTime: 2010-05-06 16:30:02

While I can appreciate the similarities between NodeScript--which honestly was off my radar prior to reading about it here--and INML (as has been mentioned, different solutions to the same problem are bound to have similarities), I believe that one of the core differences with the approach I want to take is maximum portability. This includes the ability to publish to any number of existing e-book formats to be read on devices that may or may not support javascript, and may or may not have any kind of session/state management capabilities. I foresee even the ability to generate a printed manuscript suitable for dead-tree publication. To that end, its simplicity and lack of support for more advanced concepts such as custom interfaces and inventory management is by design.

I wouldn't perceive INML as a competitor to NodeScript, but rather a storage medium and (ideally) a suite of user-friendly authoring tools for simple CYOA-style stories which could easily be transformed into NodeScript format (or Inform, or TADS, or <insert your favorite system here>) if desired.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1077&start=10#p5983
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Considerations for CYOA XML file format
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-05-06 17:03:11

[quote="Retro"]However, I can not imagine which format my NodeScript could be similar too. When I created the NodeScript format I did not base it on any existing format. In my opinion NodeScript is innovative. You can prove me wrong if you can...[/quote]
Looks a lot like an INI file to me. The basic structure of choices and linking scenes to each other by ID is, as others have said, pretty much inherent in the problem that both formats were invented to solve.

One difference between INML and yours is that INML doesn't have blocks consisting of nothing but opaque IDs: the choices are part of the scenes, everything is described in complete words, and IDs are only used to link to scenes. That makes it more readable, in my opinion. For example, I have no idea what "EC", "NJ", "PN", "NC", and "DN" stand for, although I can guess at the others; the INML version is self-explanatory. But maybe that's not a big deal if the NodeScript file is meant to be edited with a customized program (is it?).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1077&start=10#p5984
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Considerations for CYOA XML file format
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-05-06 18:26:50

[quote="Retro"]And I have published my Node-X Interpreter which demonstrates how NodeScript works practically, not just in theory. Unless ofcourse the author of INML has coded and published a browser plugin (e.g. for Internet Explorer) or standalone interpreter for his format. You know, a demo or something which can demonstrate this INML in action...[/quote]

Bonus points if the INML interpreter also tells me to disable my antivirus scanner. Or is that another trade secret?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1083&start=0#p5985
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "undescribed" property, its rule, and code speed.
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-05-06 19:34:31

This will probably affect the disambiguation of commands that refer to the player. I can only think of arcane cases where it matters.

You are right that it affects player-switching. If you switch to a different player object during the game, "your former self" will be left as scenery, and therefore invisible. If you don't do that, never mind.

I will assert that a rule which is executed once per nearby object, during LOOK, is not your speed problem. Speed problems are caused when something happens hundreds of times.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1077&start=10#p5986
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Considerations for CYOA XML file format
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-05-06 19:39:18

[quote="Peter Pears"]You know, I really wish you had stumbled upon someone like yourself when you started your work on NodeScript. You'd be starting your own project, and someone else would come along and say "Hey, besides the fact that your language looks suspiciously like mine, mine can do all the things your thingy can do, and much more besides, and it's innovative, and in fact it's the best thing next to sliced bread". I really wish that had happened.[/quote]

Then ask yourself why it didn't happen to me and maybe you'll find the answer...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1077&start=10#p5987
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Considerations for CYOA XML file format
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-05-06 19:52:14

[quote="vaporware"]But maybe that's not a big deal if the NodeScript file is meant to be edited with a customized program (is it?).[/quote]

Yes, a NodeScript editor is planned. But for now a simple text editor (e.g. Notepad in Windows) should do the job.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1077&start=10#p5988
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Considerations for CYOA XML file format
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-05-06 20:16:56

[quote="Retro"]Yes, a NodeScript editor is planned. But for now a simple text editor (e.g. Notepad in Windows) should do the job.  [emote];)[/emote][/quote]
Well, technically yes, since it is a text file. But if you expect people to use a text editor, I encourage you to reconsider some of the cryptic syntax. As it is, it seems more like an intermediate format that humans shouldn't view or edit except in an emergency.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1077&start=10#p5989
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Considerations for CYOA XML file format
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-05-06 20:47:36

[quote="vaporware"][quote="Retro"]Yes, a NodeScript editor is planned. But for now a simple text editor (e.g. Notepad in Windows) should do the job.  [emote];)[/emote][/quote]
Well, technically yes, since it is a text file. But if you expect people to use a text editor, I encourage you to reconsider some of the cryptic syntax. As it is, it seems more like an intermediate format that humans shouldn't view or edit except in an emergency.[/quote]

Already done. View NodeScript.NINI format.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1084&start=0#p5990
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Weekend beta testers
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-05-07 03:48:11

Greetings all!

If anyone is interested in doing some quick beta-testing for the example game in my Inform 7 book, shoot me a gmail at aareed. 

I'd need the feedback by around Tuesday, but it's a short game and should only take an hour or so to play. 

A little info here (top game): <a class="postlink" href="http://aaronareed.net/interactive-fiction.html">http://aaronareed.net/interactive-fiction.html</a>

Thanks,

--Aaron

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=0#p5991
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: Rudism / DateTime: 2010-05-07 06:16:36

There are/were at least three different interpreters available for Windows Mobile based PocketPCs and smartphones, but I think all of the projects are long dead and abandoned: PocketFrotz, FrotzCE, and ZipCE.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1039&start=0#p5992
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a buying question
User: Jayberwock / DateTime: 2010-05-07 11:31:03

I know this is probably an old question but it's handy.

To make multiples, you make a "kind" of thing.

A ticket is a kind of thing.  A movie admission is a ticket.

The clerk carries 10 movie admissions.

Instead of buying a ticket:
   move a random ticket carried by the clerk to the counter.

(not tested, but the idea)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=0#p5993
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: Alcibiades / DateTime: 2010-05-07 12:57:09

I've recently been ferreting under fungus for a working version of TADS 3 that will run on Mac OSX, which isn't exactly the most obscure platform on the planet, but so far I've drawn a blank.

Cocoa TADS, which is only available in "pre-beta" form, won't even compile the elementary starter game (nor anything else, so far as I can see), while QTads, described by some webpages as the [b]only[/b] (text limited) version of the language available to OSX, curtly tells me on launching that it is "[i]not supported on this system[/i]".  This system being a 400MHz PowerPC G4 running OSX 10.4.11

I'm busy developing a game which will make use of the wider capabilities TADS3 affords, and my life or death struggle with the arcane syntax is enough of an obstacle to concentrating on fashioning a clever, amusing and original game, without having to play hide and seek for a simple compiler.  I'm hoping one of you more experienced types will know of a simple solution.

I don't want to install a Windows shell just for the purposes of writing a TADS game, and it would be disappointing in the extreme to find that Mac users are completely unsupported.  Any ideas?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=0#p5994
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: George / DateTime: 2010-05-07 13:41:37

You can't run the current T3 Workbench on Mac without Windows emulation of some kind. I think FrobTads allows you to work with your text editor of choice though. However I'm a little confused, are you concerned about playing T3 games on Mac, writing them, or both? What are you using now?

edit: also, Cocoa Tads isn't meant for compiling, but for playing games, though maybe the latter is what you mean anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=0#p5995
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-07 13:51:54

If you want to write a TADS 3 game using the Mac as your authoring environment, you have two choices: You can run Workbench in a Windows shell (or using an emulator such as Crossover), or you can use the FrobTads compiler, which is a command-line compiler. Neither choice is ideal, but both are workable.

There is no Mac-native version of Workbench, unfortunately, nor is one likely to appear in the near future.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1039&start=0#p5996
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a buying question
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2010-05-07 14:24:40

You've got some of the right ideas, but you have to lay some groundwork first.

First, if you want there to be multiple tickets, you need to define a ticket as a "kind" of thing, so that you can declare things about tickets in general. The code for this is pretty straightforward:
[code]A ticket is a kind of thing.[/code]

Also, you can't just declare things about the "price of a ticket," because first you need to define what price is and how to express it in the game:

[code]Price is a kind of value. $10.99 specifies a price. [That just explains how prices are formatted: a dollar sign, up to two digits, a decimal point, and two more digits.] A thing has a price. The price of a thing is usually $0.00. The price of a ticket is usually $8.00. [The last two statements set the default price for things in the game: everything defaults to $0.00, except for tickets, which default to $8.00.][/code]

Now, as some people have already mentioned, having a potentially infinite supply of tickets will be problematic. There is an extension that helps you do it, but it may be more complicated than you want or need. So the question to ask is: are infinite tickets really necessary for your game? Would it destroy your design if, after the player purchases 100 tickets, the ticket booth girl says, "Sorry, that was the last ticket?" 

Let's assume you can live with the ticket booth girl having 100 tickets.

[code]The ticket booth girl carries 100 tickets.[/code]

Let's move on to buying tickets. The default response for the buying action is simply, "There is nothing for sale here." You'll need to write rules to change that behavior.

[code]
Instead of buying something, say "[The noun] isn't for sale." [This sets the default behavior for buying most things.]

Instead of buying a ticket:
    if the noun is not carried by the ticket booth girl:
       say "That ticket has already been purchased.";
    otherwise:
       "You hand over $8.00, and the girl in the booth hands you a ticket.";
       let P be a random ticket carried by the ticket booth girl;
       now P is carried by the player;
    end if.
[/code]

One problem you will immediately discover is if you have a ticket, and the ticket booth girl has tickets, the game won't know which you mean when you just say "BUY TICKET." In fact, it will assume you mean the one you're carrying. So you'll want to include a rule that makes the game assume the opposite:

[code]Does the player mean buying a ticket carried by the ticket booth girl: it is very likely.[/code]

One final thing to note: in your example, you mentioned buying 2 or 52 tickets. In Inform, the buy action is designed to only understand one format: BUY [noun]. It won't understand BUY 2 TICKETS unless you create some new grammar lines for that action, which is getting beyond the scope of this post.

I would strongly recommend you check the Inform Recipe Book, Chapter 9.4, "Money," and in particular example 249, "Frozen Assets." It's a complete, playable example that implements a cash system like the one you describe. Study that code, play around with it, see what you can come up with.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=0#p5997
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-05-07 14:25:56

[quote="Alcibiades"]while QTads, described by some webpages as the [b]only[/b] (text limited) version of the language available to OSX[/quote]They still refer to the older version of QTads, which didn't support multimedia.

[quote]tells me on launching that it is "[i]not supported on this system[/i]".  This system being a 400MHz PowerPC G4 running OSX 10.4.11[/quote]I was not aware that PPC-based Macs are still used, which is why I targeted Intel-based Macs with OS X 10.5 and higher. If PPCs are really still used out there, I could look into coming up with a version compatible with them, but I'd need someone who actually owns a PPC to test whether whatever I come up with works at all.

[quote]I don't want to install a Windows shell just for the purposes of writing a TADS game, and it would be disappointing in the extreme to find that Mac users are completely unsupported.  Any ideas?[/quote]Does the following work for anyone?

<a class="postlink" href="http://zathras.de/angelweb/macapplications.htm">http://zathras.de/angelweb/macapplications.htm</a>

If not, you could also try to contact its author (Uli Kusterer) and hope for an update. Jim, you mentioned in the past that you would be interested in getting together people to donate some cash for a Mac IDE. You might want to target Uli on this and see if he's interested.

Perhaps several people could try to get in contact with him; people tend to abandon their projects if they feel that no one's using them or no one's interested in them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1083&start=0#p5998
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "undescribed" property, its rule, and code speed.
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-05-07 14:44:44

thanks zarf.  The PC isn't changed in this work. 

And while I normally agree that a rule executed a couple of times isn't usually a performance issue, I have a chase scene running through a series of heavily-implemented rooms -- like, most every one of the dozen or so nouns in each room description has a scenery object -- so the player is likely to be entering one-letter compass directions as fast as he/she can type.   Add to this that the "don't mention player's supporter in room descriptions" rule was also removed per the Mentioned In Room Description extension, and that's approximately 100 rule invocations saved within a few seconds.  It could be disastrous for the player if the game missed one of the inputted compass directions due to not being able to keep up with the typing.  

So, performance stickler, but only for arcane reasons.  

thanks again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=0#p5999
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-05-07 15:00:58

PPC Macs still exist in the wild. (I have one.) A five-year-old machine is not sparkly-new but could still be used for an IF-playing workhorse, so it's worth supporting PPC for as long as you're targetting 10.5.

(My desktop machine is almost *ten* years old, and I will probably ditch it soon. But the PPC line laster longer than that.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1086&start=0#p6000
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: A new, easy-to-learn library for TADS3
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-05-07 15:32:16

There's a fascinating conversation from TADS's own Mike Roberts over at [url]http://community.livejournal.com/tads3/1202.html[/url] about creating an easy-to-learn-and-use alternative to TADS3's built-in library, a library sizeable enough that it has its own name and acronym, "adv3".  

The conversation is restricted to livejournalers, so I'll quote Mike's opening salvo here before putting in my two cents: [quote]
The other, other area I've been working on - and this is a heck of a lot more speculative than the system features I've been talking about - is a new library.  This isn't a new adv3 version, and it's not a replacement for adv3.  It's a whole new library that I intend to sit alongside adv3, as a different option for developing games.

The "high concept" for the new library is pretty simple and compelling: it's the tads 3 library for tads 2 users.  My feeling is that there's a portion of the community that's been kind of left out in the cold as TADS and Inform have evolved.  These are the people who want a relatively simple and traditional system, something on the level of TADS 2 or Inform 6 in terms of learning curve and overall complexity and programming style.  But they also want to know that what they're using is still being actively developed, so that they can expect ongoing new features and bug fixes and so on, and that there are other game writers out there for technical support.  Adv3 is off the deep end in terms of complexity - not gratuitously, since you get a lot of power in return for the work of learning it, but for people who don't need all that power that's not an appealing bargain.  And Inform 7 is a radical departure in its own way; while the bulk of Inform 6 users and a lot of newbies have embraced the new approach enthusiastically, there are some people out there who'd be happier with a "normal" programming language. 

Hypothetical user base aside, the real impetus that got me working on this is that I count myself in that disenfranchised tads 2 camp.  When you're working for free I've found it's best to work on the stuff you'd like to use yourself.  Adv3 is really cool in a lot of ways, but whenever I use it I find myself battling with the layers of details and wanting something simpler.

So I'm thinking of calling it something like Mercury: the smaller, lighter, faster option, compared to the Mega-Jupiter that is Adv3.  Any other ideas for names?  It's still very much a WIP and an experiment, so I don't know if it'll ever see the light of day; but I really hope it does because there are (in my opinion, anyway) some cool new ideas in it.[/quote]

I'm not a user of TADS (2 or 3 -- but not for a lack of trying), but observe a few rough corners after working elbow-deep in Inform's.

1) Inky made the observation that simulating darkness isn't really needed nowadays, and I agree.  We have a larger contingent of sight-impaired players to whom darkness-as-impediment is a joke.  Inform has something like 5 Activities dedicated to what is, at the most basic, a boolean property on a room.  Talk about swatting a fly with a Buick.

2) Inform's library irritates me in that it doesn't keep sight & sound differentiated.  Just because an NPC is trapped in a container doesn't mean the player can't [i]talk[/i] to them, but it's a pain in Inform.  The built-in conversation actions are geared toward seeing/touching, not hearing.  Sense-passing has been important to TADS, and dialogue depends on one of those senses.

3) TADS's strong suit is having some sort of dialogue system that's ready to go. I think that's crucial for any I-F system worth its salt, and while I understand Inform's hands-off approach, I would definitely want that even in a pared-down library. 

4) My personal WIP uses command history, and I code normal inform stuff using "if we have Xed the Y" all the time, which is basically the same thing. Except TADS's is more generalized -- one could imagine the equivalent of "if we have Xed the Y after Xing the Z" as being built-in to TADS.  Such if-statements are crucial to adapting text to player agency.

5) Anything that understands more of what the player enters. See Aaron Reed's Inform extensions regarding a kinder, smarter parser hand.  Parsing possessives is an oft sticking point for Inform coders -- especially since they theoretically are just a hint to disambiguation routines. 

6) Inform's LOOK command has always seem too large and opaque to me. Jeff Nyman wrote a tutorial that only dealt with it, IIRC.  Aaron Reed called for a modification to LOOK I enshrined in the Mentioned In Room Description extension.  I don't know how complicated TADS's LOOK is, but, yeah. 

7) Working with writers, I see a common pattern of they wanting a piece of text to appear right around time X in any plausible method.  I recently had an issue in that I wasnt' supposed to have NPC follow the PC, but the NPC should deliver important quip Q 2 turns after NPC#2 said something to PC & NPC, but if the PC immediately left before the 2-turn timer triggered then he'd miss it. So the writer says 'well it's ok to follow a little while until Q is delivered'.  So I find myself rather that working from cause (the circumstances) toward effect (the quip) like in a sim, I'm working from effect (the quip) and only using fancy coding to insert/narrate a linking, plausible cause (following if not in location, deduction if trigger was never set, simple say otherwise).   (I realize that's a verbose and vague complaint, but its the best I could do.)

I don't know how TADS wants to position itself. If it wants to be the simulation-heavy dev tool, then perhaps a leaner library isn't appropriate.  But it has a lot of programming features such as the dynamic stuff which make possible new kinds of interaction.  

Theoretically.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1086&start=0#p6001
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: A new, easy-to-learn library for TADS3
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-05-07 16:01:10

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]I don't know how TADS wants to position itself. If it wants to be the simulation-heavy dev tool, then perhaps a leaner library isn't appropriate.[/quote]
TADS is not only the library. The language is geared towards people who want "C++ or Java for IF". IMO, that's its strongest point. These languages are well known by the majority of programmers.

On the other hand, it could also be its weakest point; popularity of text adventures is still declining it seems, and people who write them these days aren't programmers and they're usually on their own (as opposed to several people working together to create the story, prose, [i]code[/i], graphics, music, etc; which I suppose is the reason today's games use an extremely plain presentation.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1080&start=10#p6002
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Zifmia - A Client/Server Multi-Platform System
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-05-07 16:18:52

[quote="DavidC"]As mentioned in my blog at <a class="postlink" href="http://chicagodave.wordpress.com">http://chicagodave.wordpress.com</a>, I started a new project to implement IF in a client/server architecture.

The main page for the project is at <a class="postlink" href="http://zifmia.plover.net">http://zifmia.plover.net</a>.
[/quote]

The project is now located on sourceforge.net along with FyreVM (which is now under an MIT open source license).

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1086&start=0#p6003
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: A new, easy-to-learn library for TADS3
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-07 17:36:15

My guess is that in crafting a more compact library, Mike is hoping to draw in a few people who don't mind the C-style code but get lost trying to figure out how to handle, oh, Listers and such things. I can't say whether that's a good idea or not. I agree, however, that one of the strengths of T3 is its library!

I'm still firmly of the opinion that the best way to get more people interested in writing games in T3 would be to roll out a nice browser-based interpreter. [emote]8-)[/emote] 

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1086&start=0#p6004
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: A new, easy-to-learn library for TADS3
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-05-07 17:46:20

[quote="Mike Roberts"]My feeling is that there's a portion of the community that's been kind of left out in the cold as TADS and Inform have evolved. These are the people who want a relatively simple and traditional system, something on the level of TADS 2 or Inform 6 in terms of learning curve and overall complexity and programming style. But they also want to know that what they're using is still being actively developed, so that they can expect ongoing new features and bug fixes and so on, and that there are other game writers out there for technical support[/quote]
I think I fit into this category.  I'm not a programmer, and I prefer to use the standard, out-of-the-box method whenever possible.  However, I kind of like a traditional object oriented approach to IF implementation, and there are a few very minor annoyances that I have with Inform 7, even though it is an excellent system in every way.  TADS 3 is just way to heavy for me.

The first IF language I learned to a significant extent was Inform 6.  Recently, I've been studying Hugo after finding that neither I7 nor T3 were quite to my personal tastes.  Although I feel very comfortable with Hugo, it is a shame that it's no longer developed.  I think Hugo has some of the same basic strengths as TADS, and a simpler TADS 3 library might be just the thing to fill the gap.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1087&start=0#p6005
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: help tracking down a pair of experimental games
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-05-07 18:37:54

I have a clear memory of a pair of "thought experiment" games that were posted and discussed on rec.arts.int-fiction a few years back. IIRC it was while I was living in Hawaii, which would mean sometime in the first few months of 2007. The games were called something like "the black game" and "the white game"; the first would not understand anything you typed, and the second would respond to anything you said with a message like "Yes, that's brilliant! You do exactly that!" 

The useless Google Groups search has not turned up anything when looking for these. Can anyone help me track down the discussion or info about the games? (Specifically, I'd like to cite them in a paper, so I need the author and ideally date of the original post.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1087&start=0#p6006
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: help tracking down a pair of experimental games
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-05-07 18:44:49

That's a coincidence. I was just thinking about those games a few weeks ago, and tried unsuccessfully (but not very hard) to track them down.

I do remember that they were written in TADS (TADS 2, I believe), and I think they were by a Russian author? I remember they had some rather awkward phrasings and some typos, which I put down to the author not being quite fluent in English.

EDIT: Aha! Gotcha! [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/933481ae44ad6f6d/26672281e1d867bb]Suprematism in IF[/url]. Turns out I still had the games on my hard drive - I just had to browse the library until I found a name that looked familiar.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1087&start=0#p6007
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: help tracking down a pair of experimental games
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-05-07 18:54:05

These look more like joke-games to me [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1087&start=0#p6008
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: help tracking down a pair of experimental games
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-05-07 20:05:43

As a wise man once said, any sufficiently avant-garde artwork is indistinguishable from a joke.

(Oh, he didn't say that? Never mind.)

There definitely is an element of jokiness in "Suprematism in IF". At the same time, it does have a point, and it generated an interesting discussion on r.g.i-f when it was released. Suprematism was a visual art form that focused on basic geometric shapes; so does "Suprematism in IF" imply that a "basic geometric shape" of IF is not interactivity, but the illusion of interactivity? After all, most IF doesn't give the player much opportunity to shape the plot. Being able to wander freely around the map, examine objects, pick them up, drop them again, and so on gives a sense of agency, but generally the plot won't advance until the player performs a few specific actions decided by the author.

In any case, I like that Andrey Grankin didn't write an essay about his IF theories - he embodied them in a pair of games instead!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1086&start=0#p6009
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: A new, easy-to-learn library for TADS3
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-05-07 21:07:43

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]7) Working with writers, I see a common pattern of they wanting a piece of text to appear right around time X in any plausible method.  I recently had an issue in that I wasnt' supposed to have NPC follow the PC, but the NPC should deliver important quip Q 2 turns after NPC#2 said something to PC & NPC, but if the PC immediately left before the 2-turn timer triggered then he'd miss it. So the writer says 'well it's ok to follow a little while until Q is delivered'.  So I find myself rather that working from cause (the circumstances) toward effect (the quip) like in a sim, I'm working from effect (the quip) and only using fancy coding to insert/narrate a linking, plausible cause (following if not in location, deduction if trigger was never set, simple say otherwise).   (I realize that's a verbose and vague complaint, but its the best I could do.)[/quote]

Would this be a fair summary: You want a way to trigger an event so that you can make sure that the player knows it's happening?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=0#p6010
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: Alcibiades / DateTime: 2010-05-07 22:51:27

Thanks to all above for a very speedy response.

George asks [quote]I'm a little confused, are you concerned about playing T3 games on Mac, writing them, or both? What are you using now?[/quote]

See para 3. I haven’t used TADS in a couple of years, at which point I was still more interested in authoring than playing the games. It seems to me that “IF” is unique in computer gaming in that its success rests less on programming or graphical skills than on writing talent. The hook lies not in the puzzles or mazes, but in the flavour of the narrative which will intrigue or amuse the player. And if Cocoa TADS is strictly for playing, not writing, games, that was anything but clear on the TADS page I downloaded it from. Will look into FrobTads.

Jim says [quote]There is no Mac-native version of Workbench, unfortunately, nor is one likely to appear in the near future[/quote] – which is blunt enough I suppose. The next question would be why? Why should it be necessary to run a Windows shell on a system that doesn’t require them? What happened to cross-platform portability?

RealNC is astonished to discover that poor people have not all been melted down for glue yet, and some are even using Power PC desktops. It’s a scary world out there, NC.  The first computer I used had 1k of RAM, no hard drive, no storage device and a flatpad printed keyboard. I cut my teeth with text adventures on a BBC micro (32k) so I’m unimpressed with hardware one-upmanship. Computers have a longer lifespan than the ecology of relentless software upgrades implies.

Thanks again for your initial responses.  As I said, I’m more interested in fashioning an original game and wrassling the bugs out of it than making my Mac conform to some spurious homogeneity. If I cannot write it in TADS, I’ll just have to seek another language, but that’s a pity, as the parser is both subtle and flexible.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1086&start=0#p6011
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: A new, easy-to-learn library for TADS3
User: lukematt / DateTime: 2010-05-07 23:27:08

Every bum in the gutter has an opinion.  Here are mine:

1. Mike Roberts is a genius.  When I first started to learn TADS 3, I kept saying to myself, "I can't believe one person created this whole system."

2. As RealNC wrote, TADS
[quote]is geared towards people who want "C++ or Java for IF". IMO, that's its strongest point.[/quote]
Agreed!  Please don't change it!  Transference of knowledge from Java to TADS 3 and vice versa is huge.

3. I think the effort to create a new library that caters to TADS 2 users in an attempt to boost the user base is misguided.  (Sorry, Mike!)

Instead, I see these problems with TADS 3...

[b]DOCUMENTATION[/b]
[list]
[*]There are too many different manuals.[/*:m]
[*]The same information appears in multiple manuals, yet...[/*:m]
[*]I can never find a complete description of any topic (e.g. a class) in one place[/*:m]
[*]The [i]TADS3 Library Reference Manual[/i] should be the Bible for TADS 3 programming.
However, too often I find the words "no description available".[/*:m][/list:u]

In short, I long for the days of a complete and concise Borland Turbo Pascal or C++ manual.

[b]EXTENSIONS[/b]

If you want to attract more users to TADS 3, give us [b]MORE[/b] capabilities.

[list]
[*]Is HTML TADS complete?[/*:m]
[*]if-archive/programming/tads3/library/contributions needs [b]MORE[/b] modules like

compass.zip (make a banner displaying a compass)
londoncabs.zip (to simulate the cabbie system [yes, the description should be more generic.])
SunTracker.t (to provide tracking of the sun)
xactor.zip (to help write adult-themed games)

It is [b]our[/b] responsibility, not Mike's!

[Additional note: If any of the other contributions have been incorporated into a newer
version of TADS, delete them from if-archive/programming/tads3/library/contributions.][/*:m][/list:u]

Have I alienated everyone yet?  [emote]:D[/emote]  Please say "No" because I still have programming questions to ask.

Jeff

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=0#p6012
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-07 23:43:28

[quote="RealNC"]Does the following work for anyone?

<a class="postlink" href="http://zathras.de/angelweb/macapplications.htm">http://zathras.de/angelweb/macapplications.htm</a>

If not, you could also try to contact its author (Uli Kusterer) and hope for an update. Jim, you mentioned in the past that you would be interested in getting together people to donate some cash for a Mac IDE. You might want to target Uli on this and see if he's interested.

Perhaps several people could try to get in contact with him; people tend to abandon their projects if they feel that no one's using them or no one's interested in them.[/quote]
This project appears to be about 5 years old. The docs refer to TADS 3.0.8, so I'm doubtful it will work with a current project. I'll send Uli a message and see if he's still interested in doing anything with it. I would urge others to do the same!

My offer of money wasn't for a MacOS Workbench, however; it was for a browser-based T3 terp.

It isn't Workbench in the same visual sense as the Windows version, but it seems to have most of the basics in place. There's a code editor with syntax coloring, for instance, and a Build & Run command. What interpreter it will use I don't yet know, as the project I have lying around on the Mac uses a more recent library, so it won't compile.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1088&start=0#p6013
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: TADS 3: Two Programming Questions
User: lukematt / DateTime: 2010-05-07 23:43:47

Two TADS 3 programming questions:

1. I have a vector.  Each element in the vector has this basic structure:

[1,[1,1,1,1],[1,1,1,1],[1,1,1,1],[1,1,1,1],'x','x']

I would like to refer to each item in an element by a symbolic name, not by an index. Is it possible?  If yes, how?

For example, instead of

vector[1][1]

I want to write something like

vector[1].store_number

2. When I read a Text file, the first line (and only the first line) is prepended with three characters...'\uFFFD\uFFFD\uFFFD'.  Why?  How do I turn it off?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1087&start=0#p6014
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: help tracking down a pair of experimental games
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-05-07 23:53:55

Oh, fantastic! Thanks so much, this is exactly what I was thinking of. [emote]:)[/emote]

Prepare to be cited, Andrey Grankin!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=0#p6015
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-07 23:53:59

[quote="Alcibiades"]
Jim says [quote]There is no Mac-native version of Workbench, unfortunately, nor is one likely to appear in the near future[/quote] – which is blunt enough I suppose. The next question would be why?[/quote]
The easy answer is, "Because Mike Roberts doesn't own a Macintosh."

This is accurate, I believe, but of course there's more to the story than that. To refine the answer, I would note that the community of TADS users is not large, and the subset of that community that has professional-level coding skills is even smaller, so if it's going to happen, Mike is probably going to have to do it himself. Mike does not get paid for his work on TADS, so his enthusiasm for the idea of rushing out and buying a Mac, and then spending weeks learning the MacOS API, in order to support an expanded user base that would consist of, oh, eight or ten new authors at most (I'm guessing) is probably not great.

I agree that it would be swell if older computers continued to be supported. (My first computer was a Kaypro, BTW.) Everything in modern life has become sort of throw-away, hasn't it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1086&start=0#p6016
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: A new, easy-to-learn library for TADS3
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-05-08 01:05:10

[quote="lukematt"][b]DOCUMENTATION[/b]
[list]
[*]There are too many different manuals.[/*:m]
[*]The same information appears in multiple manuals, yet...[/*:m]
[*]I can never find a complete description of any topic (i.e. a class) in one place[/*:m]
[*]The [i]TADS3 Library Reference Manual[/i] should be the Bible for TADS 3 programming.
However, too often I find the words "no description available".[/*:m][/list:u][/quote]
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the TADS 3 manuals are unwieldy. (As a group, that is - the individual manuals are mostly excellent.) Every so often, I think to myself that I should write a tutorial on how to use the TADS 3 manuals. Then I realise how fundamentally absurd the idea of a manual for the manuals is.

I'm not sure what the answer is. There are a few obvious things that would help. Hyperlinking between manuals would be very useful - but it's hard to link to the Library Reference Manual because it uses frames. The VM documentation should be moved from the Technical Manual into the System Manual (or out of the user manuals altogether) and the Technical Manual should be renamed to something that more clearly reflects its nature as a bunch of useful articles on various subjects. The HTML documentation should be cleaned up and the references to TADS 2 removed.

But that's mostly surface stuff. I suspect the problems lie a bit deeper. As you said, there are too many manuals. And it's not at all clear to new users which manual is for what.

One thing I think is good about the TADS 3 manual system is that the reference manuals are mostly separate from the tutorials. Maybe the manuals should be integrated into a few larger, more comprehensive manuals. The Getting Started Guide and Learning TADS 3 would become a single tutorial manual, and the System Manual, Library Reference Manual and the Introduction to HTML TADS would become a single reference manual. I don't know what you'd do with the Tour Guide and the Technical Manual; they're both tutorial and reference. (With the Technical Manual, some articles are more tutorial-oriented and some more reference-oriented...)

Of course, if Mike does bring out an alternative library, the Library Reference Manual would have to stay separate from the system reference manuals...

[quote="lukematt"]The TADS3 Library Reference Manual should be the Bible for TADS 3 programming.
However, too often I find the words "no description available".[/quote]
The Library Reference is automatically generated from the comments in the library source code. The code is very well commented, but the automatic generation does cause problems sometimes. Usually when you get "no description available", it's because the generator has tripped over some code like this (pseudo-code):
[code]/* comment */
thingy1;
thingy2;
thingy3;[/code]
To a human, it's obvious that the comment applies to all three thingies, but the generator assumes it belongs to the first thingy. So if you look up the second or third thingy, you'll get "no description available". The best thing to do when you stumble across a "no description available" is follow the link to the source code and scroll up a bit, to see if there's a comment that the generator missed.

[quote="lukematt"]Have I alienated everyone yet?[/quote]
I don't think so. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1088&start=0#p6017
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3: Two Programming Questions
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-05-08 03:59:47

[quote="lukematt"]I would like to refer to each item in an element by a symbolic name, not by an index. Is it possible?  If yes, how?[/quote]
My gut instinct is not to use a vector like that, but to store the values in an object.  As well as being easier to understand, you'll avoid opaque runtime errors where you accidentally access the wrong element.  Are you generating this vector from a file?  Even if it's unavoidable to have this vector at one point, I think the only thing you should ever do with it is stick its values into a more usable object.  i.e.

[code]
class: LoadedData: Object
     store_number=0
     list_of_something=[]
     [...]
     initialiseFromList(inList)
     {
          if(inList.length()==0)
               return;
          store_number=inList[0];  //can't remember if TADS lists are zero-based
          [...]
     }
[/code]
[quote="lukematt"]2. When I read a Text file, the first line (and only the first line) is prepended with three characters...'\uFFFD\uFFFD\uFFFD'.  Why?  How do I turn it off?[/quote]
A little googling suggests it represents a character that couldn't be converted to unicode.  I'm not sure exactly what's happening for you (hopefully someone else can help) but it might help to make sure you only ever edit the text file in a plain text editor (if you weren't already).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1086&start=0#p6018
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: A new, easy-to-learn library for TADS3
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-05-08 05:31:05

I'd love to see not so much a pared down T3 library as a decoupled one, that would make it easier to use some advanced features while easily disabling others.  I seem to spend a lot of time trying to get T3 to [i]not[/i] do things, or to accept that I want to do things a little differently from the house style.  Writing conversations that [i]don't[/i] feature explicit or implicit greetings (at least not in a way that the TADS library would recognise) proves to have a few pitfalls, for example.

Then again, just removing a lot of excess complications would probably amount to the same thing.  I mean, I'm sure all that complex Connector code enables all sorts of cool stuff, but I've never used it, only ever encountered it when I've been trying to do something that I could probably do a lot more simply without it.  For me, I'd be happy if TADS could get a straightforward and simple library, while still keeping these advanced features:

[list][*]The conversation system. Perhaps a bit more adaptable, as I mentioned above, but generally the system of topics, alternative topics, conversation nodes and conversation agendas is awesome - especially given that the code pretty much consists of the topic type, plusses, quotation marks and a semicolon to finish it off.  I know Inform 7 claims to be big on the 'writing' aspect, but so much of that writing is really coding.  Writing a complex conversation in T3, almost all of your writing is actually dialogue.[/*:m]
[*]The before and after methods in rooms and NPCs for actions and travelling.  Being able to have the game world react to the player's behaviour in this way works really well.  TADS 2 didn't have this, but I think any IF system worth its salt can't do away with it.[/*:m]
[*]Actor states.  Designating behaviour and conversation as occuring only within a certain context is really powerful.[/*:m]
[*]Not sure if this is adv3 or the standard library, but the logical ranking is great, although I've only just found out about it.  When you have a pretty good idea what the player's going to say, and what they're going to mean, it's important to be able to bias the parser.[/*:m][/list:u]

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]1) Inky made the observation that simulating darkness isn't really needed nowadays, and I agree.  We have a larger contingent of sight-impaired players to whom darkness-as-impediment is a joke.  Inform has something like 5 Activities dedicated to what is, at the most basic, a boolean property on a room.  Talk about swatting a fly with a Buick.[/quote]
I love the idea of sense simulation, even for light.  I've messed around with the idea of different light levels allowing you to see different things in a room.  And I found that it was way too complicated for me to get to grips with.  And then delving into the other senses, I've been disappointed to find out that a lot of it seems to be just hard-coded, and not as simulationist as I expected.

[quote="RealNC"]popularity of text adventures is still declining it seems[/quote]
This is a popular opinion among people in the old IF community, it seems, but what I see is IF now pretty much accepted in the wider communities of indie/hobbyist/art game makers and players.  IF games are appearing pretty regularly in events like Ludum Dare, TIGSource Competitions, Pirate Karts - and places like JayIsGames and Metafilter are holding their own IF making events.  No, I don't think many people are crazy obsessed with IF, but I do think a very substantial number of people now see it as a part of small-scale gaming as much as, say, platform games or roguelikes.

[quote="Emerald"][quote="lukematt"][b]DOCUMENTATION[/b][/quote]It is a truth universally acknowledged that the TADS 3 manuals are unwieldy. (As a group, that is - the individual manuals are mostly excellent.) Every so often, I think to myself that I should write a tutorial on how to use the TADS 3 manuals. Then I realise how fundamentally absurd the idea of a manual for the manuals is.[/quote]
I'd love to write a tutorial or manual at some point.  I think the existing manuals are great as either a reference for what TADS can do (the Tour Guide) or an instructional piece on general TADS programming (Learning TADS 3) but I think there's a need for more of a How-To kind of manual that's not so interested in what TADS can do, as what [i]authors[/i] would want it to do.  

There's plenty of things that are pretty standard things an author might want to do, where you'll have to dive into the library and try to figure out the correct 'modify' statement to use.  Modifying the vocab of an existing verb, changing the behaviour of an existing verb and creating new directional systems are all things that I've had to do through a combination of searching and trial and error.  Similarly, getting started using HTML is pretty hard.  It's not immediately clear where you can find a list of valid tags (for the record, it's divided between "Getting Started with HTML TADS" and "HTML TADS additions to and deviations from standard HTML"), and the most obvious thing an author (or at least an author that's me) would want, a command hyperlink, is barely mentioned at all.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1075&start=0#p6019
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Announcing CYOA competition
User: Aina Grey / DateTime: 2010-05-08 05:31:26

ok we have 2 entries and 2 judges now, so the competition is on the way

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1080&start=10#p6020
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Zifmia - A Client/Server Multi-Platform System
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-05-08 06:04:52

[quote="DavidC"]As mentioned in my blog at <a class="postlink" href="http://chicagodave.wordpress.com">http://chicagodave.wordpress.com</a>, I started a new project to implement IF in a client/server architecture.[/quote]

Not to discourage your project or something, but implementing IF in a client/server architecture has already been done to a great extent. It's called MUD (Multi User Dungeon).

Which brings me to my question: What advantages will Zimfia have over existing MUDs and Massive Multiplayer Online Games?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1075&start=0#p6021
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Announcing CYOA competition
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-05-08 08:37:34

[quote="Aina Grey"]
1st prize: Metallica - Dutch Magnetic double CD set

2nd prize: Metallica - Pounding out aggression CD

3rd prize: Metallica - One 7" single[/quote]

If it's about Metallica then don't expect me to take part in this comp. [emote]:P[/emote] 

Forget about Metallica. Give me rockin' Techno beats mixed with hypersonic sounds or electronic guitar!
Give me something from Astrix!!! He's a cool PsyTrance DJ from Israel.

Listen to these samples and enjoy:

Astrix - Artcore 06 - On Fire: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMPE3KrOFyY">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMPE3KrOFyY</a>
Astrix - Artcore 04 - Techno Widows: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAsW6H4RG0I">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAsW6H4RG0I</a>
ASTRIX LIVE AT MILLENIUM TRANCE: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrNPF785CpQ">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrNPF785CpQ</a>
Astrix Adventure Mode live at the Gathering 2006: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsM0j9_lUVg">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsM0j9_lUVg</a>

More PsyTrance linked on my youtube music channel: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/bitgroove">http://www.youtube.com/bitgroove</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=0#p6022
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-05-08 09:33:45

[quote="Jim Aikin"][quote="Alcibiades"]
Jim says [quote]There is no Mac-native version of Workbench, unfortunately, nor is one likely to appear in the near future[/quote] – which is blunt enough I suppose. The next question would be why?[/quote]
The easy answer is, "Because Mike Roberts doesn't own a Macintosh."[/quote]
The more correct answer is that TADS suffers from the same problem as Inform: the main developer isn't using a portable toolkit to write the IDE. Instead, they opt to use only the native APIs of the platform they happen to be on, making porting to other platforms impossible.

This is quite sad, considering that portable APIs (be it Java, .Net, or if you prefer native, non-emulated applications, Qt, Gtk, FLTK and wxWorks) have been around for more than a decade by now. For Inform at least, there are people who took on the task of writing their own Windows and Linux IDE (though I hear they're not as good as the Mac IDE, which is the result of not using a portable API in the first place.) Since TADS isn't as popular as Inform (probably even by orders of magnitude less popular), the potential pool of developers to write an IDE for other platforms is extremely small.

And yes, the above was a rant. If you care a little about portability, pick a portable API to write your app so others can port it easily instead of writing everything from scratch. It's not rocket science. And, most importantly, your users will thank you.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1080&start=10#p6023
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Zifmia - A Client/Server Multi-Platform System
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-05-08 09:34:29

[quote="Retro"][quote="DavidC"]As mentioned in my blog at <a class="postlink" href="http://chicagodave.wordpress.com">http://chicagodave.wordpress.com</a>, I started a new project to implement IF in a client/server architecture.[/quote]

Not to discourage your project or something, but implementing IF in a client/server architecture has already been done to a great extent. It's called MUD (Multi User Dungeon).

Which brings me to my question: What advantages will Zimfia have over existing MUDs and Massive Multiplayer Online Games?[/quote]

This is not a mud. The intent is to host games created with single player authoring tools/platforms. A user will come to a host that has implemented zifmia and see a portal. The portal allows users to upload new games and to play uploaded games. It also allows authors to develop games where the output can be implemented in HTML, JavaScript, AJAX, and CSS.

Another feature will be for testing. If the author elects to, the host can save all input and output in a database and offer reports on how testers faired in their game. So the author could login and view a particular room and see all of the commands tried in that room and all of the responses. Instead of a bunch of transcripts, they have cumulative data to respond to.

In an education setting, a teacher could host a game and use the reports to observe progress of their students.

This isn't to say that a MUD couldn't do all of these things, but the purpose is to allow authors to use any platform to create their games, but have one interface for output...a browser.

David C.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1080&start=10#p6024
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Zifmia - A Client/Server Multi-Platform System
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-05-08 10:00:46

[quote]If the author elects to, the host can save all input and output in a database and offer reports on how testers faired in their game.[/quote]

Some of us have been discussing about standardising a way for story files to request transcripts. If you like I can include you next time I send an email about it? My preferred way to specify these would be an extension to a blorb's iFiction record.

[quote]This isn't to say that a MUD couldn't do all of these things, but the purpose is to allow authors to use any platform to create their games, but have one interface for output...a browser.[/quote]I know Channel IO is your baby, but have you considered using Glk instead? After all most IF systems have been converted for use with Glk already, and Zarf has a working Glk JS implementation. It would be a lot quicker to use that and as pretty much all that would need creating now is the AJAX communication layer. You could always extend it to use Channel IO in the future.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=0#p6025
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-08 10:02:35

[quote="RealNC"]If you care a little about portability, pick a portable API to write your app so others can port it easily instead of writing everything from scratch. It's not rocket science. And, most importantly, your users will thank you.[/quote]
This is certainly true. On the other hand, if you have a project that (for whatever reason) you failed to start using a portable API, and if you now have years of legacy code that forms the core of the system ... at what point are you going to be motivated enough to bite the bullet and port the entire project over to a portable API?

I use a great music production program called FL Studio. It's Windows-only. However, some users have reported success running it under Wine. The fact that it wasn't developed using a portable API doesn't seem to have stopped them.

On a related subject:

Uli Kusterer tells me he's not interested in pursuing development of his Mac Workbench project. However, if anyone would like to take it over, he will make the source code available.

--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1080&start=10#p6026
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Zifmia - A Client/Server Multi-Platform System
User: weiju / DateTime: 2010-05-08 10:29:21

Hi,

[quote]Some of us have been discussing about standardising a way for story files to request transcripts. If you like I can include you next time I send an email about it? My preferred way to specify these would be an extension to a blorb's iFiction record.[/quote]

could you please include me too ? I'd be interested to know more about this.

Wei-ju

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1075&start=0#p6027
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Announcing CYOA competition
User: Aina Grey / DateTime: 2010-05-08 11:14:37

I'm not really content with you spamming my thread, but for the record, I [b]can[/b] provide alternative prices including techno crap cds

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=10#p6028
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-05-08 12:00:51

[quote="RealNC"]
The more correct answer is that TADS suffers from the same problem as Inform: the main developer isn't using a portable toolkit to write the IDE. Instead, they opt to use only the native APIs of the platform they happen to be on, making porting to other platforms impossible.
[/quote]

Well, to be fair, many portable toolkits kind of suck.  At least that's what I found when I set about porting Gargoyle.  I had in mind to try to use Gtk, only to discover that it didn't support the OS X protocol needed to open more than one file at once.

You could invoke it correctly with the [i]first[/i] game you tried to launch, of course, because Launch Services would correctly figure out that the file was associated with the app and fire it up.  But the second (and each subsequent) file open request would be silently discarded, because the toolkit simply wasn't set up to respond to those events.

The UI standards for the Mac may make it enough of a special case that this is common to all the portable toolkits.  I'd be interested to know if you encountered this problem with the QTads Mac port.  I didn't look at QT since it was fairly heavyweight for my purposes.

In any case, remember that QT's licensing was problematic a few years ago when the IDEs first appeared: either GPL or commercial, and the GPL can really tie your hands when it comes to third party libraries.  Gtk was LGPL but its Quartz port was even more dreadful back then.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=10#p6029
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-05-08 12:10:29

[quote="Jim Aikin"]There is no Mac-native version of Workbench, unfortunately, nor is one likely to appear in the near future.[/quote]

I have an Xcode plugin for TADS on my to-do list.  I don't think there's a public API for Xcode yet, but the existing API has been reverse-engineered to the point where this seems superficially feasible.

This would provide syntax highlighting, various build options, and so on.  I've never installed TADS workbench for Windows so I'm not clear on what the other must-have features would be.  Your thoughts?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=10#p6030
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-05-08 12:26:50

[quote="bcressey"]Well, to be fair, many portable toolkits kind of suck.  At least that's what I found when I set about porting Gargoyle.  I had in mind to try to use Gtk, only to discover that it didn't support the OS X protocol needed to open more than one file at once.[/quote]
When something isn't supported by the toolkit, you can treat it as a special case and use platform-specific code only in those cases. And that's what's done in practice by other projects. Don't code the whole app in a platform specific way; just the non-portable details.

[quote]The UI standards for the Mac may make it enough of a special case that this is common to all the portable toolkits.  I'd be interested to know if you encountered this problem with the QTads Mac port.  I didn't look at QT since it was fairly heavyweight for my purposes.[/quote]
I didn't deal with any file associations yet. But the docs contain information about how to handle file open events and that OS X is treated specially. (Btw, I didn't actually need to port it; it happens to run as-is from the same source.)

[quote]In any case, remember that QT's licensing was problematic a few years ago when the IDEs first appeared: either GPL or commercial, and the GPL can really tie your hands when it comes to third party libraries.  Gtk was LGPL but its Quartz port was even more dreadful back then.[/quote]
True. But I believe there were some other choices too (wxWidgets for example; I mistakenly referred to it as "wxWorks" above.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1086&start=0#p6031
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: A new, easy-to-learn library for TADS3
User: George / DateTime: 2010-05-08 13:37:57

Sounds like T3 could use something like a cookbook or idiom site.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=10#p6032
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: George / DateTime: 2010-05-08 13:44:17

As Workbench doesn't run on Linux either, what about porting Workbench to a portable framework that would run on Linux and Mac? Or is it generally the case that Linux users wouldn't want Workbench?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1080&start=10#p6033
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Zifmia - A Client/Server Multi-Platform System
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-05-08 14:10:52

[quote="Dannii"]I know Channel IO is your baby, but have you considered using Glk instead? After all most IF systems have been converted for use with Glk already, and Zarf has a working Glk JS implementation. It would be a lot quicker to use that and as pretty much all that would need creating now is the AJAX communication layer. You could always extend it to use Channel IO in the future.[/quote]

That question seems to entirely miss the point of Channel IO. Glk is a hardened output layer. All of the windowing features are controlled by the VM and game file. With Channel IO, the output implementation is completely separate from the game file outside of labeling the output by context (main, location name, time, turn count, score, prologue, inventory, help, hints, etc).

This then leaves all of the output; the layout, the style, colors, fonts, sound, everything is done in HTML separately from the game.

Separating layout from data is one of the basic reasons for the web and HTML. I'm trying to push IF to do the same thing.

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=10#p6034
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-05-08 14:13:42

[quote="RealNC"]I didn't deal with any file associations yet. But the docs contain information about how to handle file open events and that OS X is treated specially. (Btw, I didn't actually need to port it; it happens to run as-is from the same source.)[/quote]

This is true for Gargoyle as well; its Glk implementation is completely portable, as are the interpreters.  (Setting aside a host of 64-bit issues which continue to vex me.)  All of the libraries had already been ported as well.  The system-specific bits are encapsulated in two files, and those were the only ones I needed to adapt.

For an application with less modest UI needs, QT is easily the best cross-platform UI toolkit out there by leaps and bounds.  It's tempting to speculate that if it had been available at the current level of polish and with a more flexible license ten years ago, much of the software in the IF world might have a QT interface.

As it stands, many of the critical components (like compilers and interpreters) are fully and easily portable.  It's a shame the UI side gives entirely the opposite impression.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1080&start=10#p6035
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Zifmia - A Client/Server Multi-Platform System
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-05-08 14:35:14

[quote="DavidC"]With Channel IO, the output implementation is completely separate from the game file outside of labeling the output by context (main, location name, time, turn count, score, prologue, inventory, help, hints, etc).

This then leaves all of the output; the layout, the style, colors, fonts, sound, everything is done in HTML separately from the game.

Separating layout from data is one of the basic reasons for the web and HTML. I'm trying to push IF to do the same thing.[/quote]
The problem here is how do you let the game control the screen? Now I know why Mike Roberts said it's "non trivial" [emote]:P[/emote] For example, how would you run the following on Channel IO:

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1080&start=10#p6036
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Zifmia - A Client/Server Multi-Platform System
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-05-08 15:03:23

[quote="DavidC"]That question seems to entirely miss the point of Channel IO. Glk is a hardened output layer. All of the windowing features are controlled by the VM and game file. With Channel IO, the output implementation is completely separate from the game file outside of labeling the output by context (main, location name, time, turn count, score, prologue, inventory, help, hints, etc).[/quote]

One of the quibbles I had with Channel IO was this notion that the list of contexts is predefined.  If you are going to abstract out the implementation details, it seems as though you should also abstract the context mechanism.

Having a means to declare a new channel along with its key properties (label, output type) would be quite useful.  You could define an XML schema that provides a standard syntax, and then each game could be bundled with an XML document that sets up the default channels - probably exactly the ones that Channel IO defines.

It's not that your list of channels is unsuitable, just that it's a fairly narrow view of IF that's rooted in what games have done before.  It's natural to expect most games to stick to the mold, but I would not want to see the status quo become any more ossified.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1080&start=10#p6037
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Zifmia - A Client/Server Multi-Platform System
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-05-08 15:28:40

[quote="bcressey"]One of the quibbles I had with Channel IO was this notion that the list of contexts is predefined.  If you are going to abstract out the implementation details, it seems as though you should also abstract the context mechanism.[/quote]

This must be bad communication on my part. The list of "channels" is somewhat hardened, but very easily changed. And the FyreVM Support file defines I7 usage for each channel, which also can easily be modified.

It deserves a second pass in order to allow for dynamic channel definitions, but some channels make up the "base" interface, like the main output, location name, score, turns, and prompt.

Since this conversation is in the context of zifmia, we'd probably want to figure out a way to have the base interface defined in a schema and additional, author-defined channels easily added without changing the FyreVM library.

The code is open and available. Feel free to make suggestions.

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1080&start=10#p6038
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Zifmia - A Client/Server Multi-Platform System
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-05-08 15:42:23

[quote]The problem here is how do you let the game control the screen? Now I know why Mike Roberts said it's "non trivial" [emote]:P[/emote] For example, how would you run the following on Channel IO:[/quote]

You identify the contextual elements in your game file. Then when you unpackage the output from the VM, you can place each part where it belongs on the screen. All of the graphics can be laid out and if they change, you would use channels to tell when and to what they should change. So as the map changes, a map channel might relay some text or image name that can be used to complete the layout.

It's important to realize that the game file does not need to know about the background image (unless it changes). It doesn't need to know about the buttons (unless they change). Anything that's static is laid out automatically and the things that are dynamic are laid out from the output package from the VM.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=10#p6039
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-08 16:12:53

[quote="bcressey"]I've never installed TADS workbench for Windows so I'm not clear on what the other must-have features would be.  Your thoughts?[/quote]
Different people find different features essential, I'm sure. My personal list would include, in no particular order:

A tabbed multi-document interface. Automatic indentation (and un-indentation) in the text editor, along with other editor niceties such as bracket/brace matching and block commenting/uncommenting. A search feature with three radio buttons so you can search (a) the current file; (b) all user files in the project, but no library files; or (c) all code files. Replayable game records in their own window (right-click on "Auto 129" and Workbench will compile the project and then re-run that game). Breakpoints and watch variables for debugging.

The text editor does not, at present, have code folding. That would be nice too. It doesn't have auto-completion, but I don't miss that.

In Windows, I use a program called Auto Hot Key to run keyboard macros. For instance, I type the tilde/back-accent key, and that produces the string <./s>, which is a curly apostrophe. I haven't found anything similar to Auto Hot Key for MacOS; if there isn't any such utility, then I would say keyboard macros of this sort would be highly desirable.

That's my rough and ready guide to desirable features. I'm sure I'm leaving out some items.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1080&start=20#p6040
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Zifmia - A Client/Server Multi-Platform System
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-05-08 16:15:11

This assumes the author of the game is aware of Channel IO. I thought this was about running existing (and feature) games, that don't know anything about Channel IO, on the web. Maybe I misunderstood the whole concept.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=10#p6041
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: Alcibiades / DateTime: 2010-05-08 16:55:21

I feel as though I've wandered back into the playroom and found the groan-ups have taken it over.  Certainly you're now discussing techy questions way above my pay grade.

Since asking the initial question, I've discovered I had already downloaded and installed Ulli Kusterer's Workbench (dense of me to forget it) and that is half of the battle perhaps. 

My next questions are liable to be elementary programming ones, so perhaps this is not the correct room for those, but I do have a global question before I start to code what should and should not be done with Brazen Bits and Frothy Glaziers, or Pharoah Tooting Common.  

What are the respective pro's and cons of Inform and TADS3 to the dilettante games author?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1080&start=20#p6042
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Zifmia - A Client/Server Multi-Platform System
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-05-08 17:10:44

Well, that's a trick. We'd have to implement a way to convert Glk calls to Channel IO for "standard" games. Games that use the windowing feature heavily wouldn't make it through zifmia.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1080&start=20#p6043
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Zifmia - A Client/Server Multi-Platform System
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-05-08 17:13:12

Here's a sample XML Schema of what is in the output package after every "turn".

We don't actually use XML, the output package is tightly coupled to the consuming interface in the standard FyreVM c# code. But I think for Zifmia we would move to a soft interface using XML.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=10#p6044
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-05-08 17:37:53

[quote="Alcibiades"]What are the respective pro's and cons of Inform and TADS3 to the dilettante games author?[/quote]
I think you are looking for this:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.brasslantern.org/writers/iftheory/tads3andi7.html">http://www.brasslantern.org/writers/ift ... andi7.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=10#p6045
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-08 18:45:45

[quote="Alcibiades"]Since asking the initial question, I've discovered I had already downloaded and installed Ulli Kusterer's Workbench (dense of me to forget it) and that is half of the battle perhaps. 

My next questions are liable to be elementary programming ones....[/quote]
This is a good forum for asking any sort of elementary programming questions -- please feel free to post as many as you like, as often as you like!

The issue with Uli's Workbench, I believe, is that it doesn't bundle the current adv3 library. The library is only 3.0.8. I'm sure you can download the current library and copy it into the directory where Uli's Workbench expects to find it ... but what I don't know, without testing, is whether Uli's version of the compiler will choke and spit up when handed certain new items in the latest library.

I would definitely recommend that you try this, as the newer library may include things you'll find useful. Also, the docs (again, they're downloadable) will refer to the newer features of the library without alerting you to what version they were added in, so the docs might be confusing here or there if you're using the old library.

I'm speculating here, I haven't tried any of this. But it's a possible complication to be aware of if you're going to use that Workbench.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=10#p6046
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-05-08 21:31:59

[quote="Jim Aikin"]In Windows, I use a program called Auto Hot Key to run keyboard macros. For instance, I type the tilde/back-accent key, and that produces the string <./s>, which is a curly apostrophe. I haven't found anything similar to Auto Hot Key for MacOS; if there isn't any such utility, then I would say keyboard macros of this sort would be highly desirable.[/quote]

Typinator, TextExpander, and others on OS X provide this kind of text-expansion macro. 

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1089&start=0#p6047
Forum: Competitions / Subject: IntroComp 2010
User: Jacqueline / DateTime: 2010-05-08 21:42:44

Just a quick reminder that intents to enter IntroComp 2010 are being accepted through the end of May.

Deadlines and rules can be found at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.allthingsjacq.com/introcomp.html">http://www.allthingsjacq.com/introcomp.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=20#p6048
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-05-08 22:02:06

[quote="George"]As Workbench doesn't run on Linux either, what about porting Workbench to a portable framework that would run on Linux and Mac? Or is it generally the case that Linux users wouldn't want Workbench?[/quote]

I don't know the answer to the general question, except that I can't recall seeing anyone ask for Workbench on Linux.  TADS Workbench is based on Scintilla, which suggests that it could perhaps be made to work for Linux.  Scintilla's GTK-based, though, so there's not much hope for Mac users on that front.

Creating a TADS plugin for Eclipse would be another option, since Eclipse runs virtually everywhere.  I don't really like the Eclipse UI but I suppose it must have fans.  Google's Android SDK is Eclipse-based.

The Xcode plugin idea was inspired by the XNA Game Studio framework on the Windows side, which slots into Visual Studio.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1086&start=0#p6049
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: A new, easy-to-learn library for TADS3
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-08 22:06:34

I agree with most of the comments. It would be swell if the library were simpler ... but: If you're using a simpler library and you happen suddenly to need one of the more advanced features, you're sort of up a creek.

Instead of a simpler library, I think what TADS needs is a cookbook. Something that says, "Here are the 20 (or 30, or 50) things you're most likely to want to do by way of customizing your game, and here's how to do them, step by step, complete with alternatives and cross-references."

The LRM is usable, though not great. I agree that "no description available" is annoying. The Tour Guide attempts to fill in the blanks in the LRM, but it isn't comprehensive by any means. I often search Learning T3 for a particular word. The System and Technical Manuals are very much a grab bag, and it's hard to remember where to look in them to find what you need.

Maybe after I get done with version 2.0 of my Inform 7 Handbook, I'll decide to tackle a cookbook project. It would need input from lots of users....

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1080&start=20#p6050
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Zifmia - A Client/Server Multi-Platform System
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-05-08 22:26:47

[quote="DavidC"]That question seems to entirely miss the point of Channel IO. Glk is a hardened output layer. All of the windowing features are controlled by the VM and game file. With Channel IO, the output implementation is completely separate from the game file outside of labeling the output by context (main, location name, time, turn count, score, prologue, inventory, help, hints, etc).

This then leaves all of the output; the layout, the style, colors, fonts, sound, everything is done in HTML separately from the game.

Separating layout from data is one of the basic reasons for the web and HTML. I'm trying to push IF to do the same thing.

David C.[/quote]I approve of this goal whole heartedly! I plan to develop a new IO system myself, so eventually you'll have some competition.

But my point is that this project could have a beta release far quicker if you started with Glk, as we wouldn't need to write the JS client, nor would the backend VMs need patching. You could complete the stateless AJAX system and get people finally playing TADS3 games on the net, while working on the Channel IO implementation after that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=20#p6051
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-05-08 22:43:59

[quote="bcressey"][quote="George"]As Workbench doesn't run on Linux either, what about porting Workbench to a portable framework that would run on Linux and Mac? Or is it generally the case that Linux users wouldn't want Workbench?[/quote]

I don't know the answer to the general question, except that I can't recall seeing anyone ask for Workbench on Linux.[/quote]
[url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/msg/1c1988452c5e1042]I have[/url]. I don't know about anyone else.

For me, the thing that makes the Workbench indispensable is its plethora of debugging tools. Text highlighting and auto-indent for TADS 3 are easy enough to add to any good text editor - I have it working (slightly buggily) in jEdit. But debugging a TADS 3 project, with the vast and wildly complex adv3 library, is much harder without Workbench's debugging tools. Being able to set a breakpoint in a misbehaving function, add watch expressions for some key properties, and step through the code to see where it's going wrong, for instance, just makes debugging so much easier.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1086&start=10#p6052
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: A new, easy-to-learn library for TADS3
User: lukematt / DateTime: 2010-05-09 00:57:07

Everyone has good comments related to the TADS documentation.

[quote="Jim Aikin"]It would need input from lots of users....[/quote]
Me first!  Me first! ( [emote]:)[/emote] )

Can I begin with a shriek?

[quote="Emerald"]Every so often, I think to myself that I should write a tutorial on how to use the TADS 3 manuals.[/quote]
[quote="Pacian"]I'd love to write a tutorial or manual at some point.[/quote]
[quote="George"]Sounds like T3 could use something like a cookbook[/quote]
[quote="Jim Aikin"]Maybe...I'll decide to tackle a cookbook project.[/quote]
I'm on my knees, begging.  [b]Pleeeeeease[/b] not another TADS manual.  Please.

Overall, the existing manuals have the necessary content.  They need...

[list]
[*]Swallow pride of authorship[/*:m]
[*]Grab an axe or a chainsaw[/*:m]
[*]Consolidate, back and fill, reorganize...2,3,4[/*:m]
[*]Consolidate, back and fill, reorganize...2,3,4[/*:m]
[*]Consolidate, back and fill, reorganize...2,3,4[/*:m][/list:u]

More specific whining from me...

[list]
[*]The manuals need more bullets, less prose.
(I want to get in, grab the necessary information, and get out--back to programming, [b]not[/b] slog through reams of narrative.)
[i]Getting Started in TADS 3[/i], [i]TADS 3 System Manual[/i], [i]TADS 3 Technical Manual[/i], and [i]Learning TADS 3[/i] are especially evil culprits.
.[/*:m]
[*]More examples, please.  Many, many, many more examples, please.
(Then, I won't need to ask [insert your favorite expletive] questions such as "How do I use SuggestedTopic?"  See my previous post in this forum.)[/*:m][/list:u]

[quote="Jim Aikin"]The System and Technical Manuals are very much a grab bag, and it's hard to remember where to look in them to find what you need.[/quote]
Amen, Brother Jim!  I have the same problem with these manuals.  One more whine...

[list]
[*]A "table of contents" needs to have clear, meaningful, well-organized contents.
("Fundamental Datatypes", I like.  "Reflection", does nothing for me.)[/*:m][/list:u]

[b]CONCLUSION[/b]

Truly, in the depths of my heart, I believe that the TADS documentation is the single greatest impediment to attracting new users.  Fix the documentation.  Don't muck with the library.


I'll crawl back under my rock now.

Jeff

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1086&start=10#p6053
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: A new, easy-to-learn library for TADS3
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-05-09 02:36:55

[quote="lukematt"]
I'm on my knees, begging.  [b]Pleeeeeease[/b] not another TADS manual.  Please.
[/quote]
There is no such concept as too many manuals. I don't think it's considered a fault for languages like C++ to have hundreds of different textbooks availale. I do understand that the amount of documentation might feel overwhelming, but you don't have to read the ones you don't need (I for example skipped Getting Started in TADS 3 because as I see it there's nothing there that couldn't be found in other manuals.) The solution to your complaints is exactly what's been proposed -- a new manual that presents the information differently. 

[quote](I want to get in, grab the necessary information, and get out--back to programming, not slog through reams of narrative.)
[/quote]
And this is exactly why it's better to have more manuals than less. Some people actually learn better from narrative than from examples or bullet points. If the existing manuals would be changed to what you would find perfect, many others would complain that they've been ruined for them. People have different ways of learning and there is no fit-for-all solution which is why different textbooks with different perspectives are needed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1090&start=0#p6054
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: [Graphical] New release: Frasse and the Peas of Kejick
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-05-09 05:23:22

(I don't know if point-and-click games are off topic in this forum, but if they are, I expect a moderator to move it to a more suitable location.)

Some of you are familiar with my point-and-click game [url=http://trumgottist.com/frasse-and-the-peas-of-kejick/]Frasse and the Peas of Kejick[/url]. (I was very lucky to get some great beta testers for it from the IF-crowd, as well as [url=http://inky.org/if/reviews.html#frasse]the first review of the original edition[/url].) It's a fairy-tale style story about a blue, hairy monster named Frasse.

[img]http://trumgottist.com/images/frasse1.jpg[/img]

The new special edition has the following additions:
[list][*]An updated game engine: It now runs on Mac OS X as well as Windows. (And even Linux, if you get the [url=https://sourceforge.net/projects/opensludge/]game engine[/url] separately.)[/*:m]
[*]Voice acting.[/*:m]
[*]Improved music![/*:m]
[*]Graphics are also improved a bit.[/*:m]
[*]Hungarian and Swedish translations included.[/*:m][/list:u]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=20#p6055
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: Alcibiades / DateTime: 2010-05-09 05:26:30

[quote="RealNC"][quote="Alcibiades"]What are the respective pro's and cons of Inform and TADS3 to the dilettante games author?[/quote]
I think you are looking for this:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.brasslantern.org/writers/iftheory/tads3andi7.html">http://www.brasslantern.org/writers/ift ... andi7.html</a>[/quote]

Thanks for that.  Having read Eric Eve's thorough (not to say exhausting) article on the relative strengths and felicities, it may well be that I7 is more appropriate to an author (such as myself) who is intimidated by the non-intuitive C++ syntax of TADS3.  Which in itself is a pity, since the game I'm developing will be fairly epic in scope (as befits The Bartoks themselves) and will need to implement a good deal of NPC conversation and response logic. But as Dirty Harry once observed, "A man should always know his limitations".

[quote="Jim Aikin"]
This is a good forum for asking any sort of elementary programming questions -- please feel free to post as many as you like, as often as you like! [/quote]

Too kind.  And perhaps what you say below anticipates my first pratfall, in that the Workbench as supplied contains no debug tool. When I compile and run an intro+1 room/no objects starter file for my game, no error is generated but the game fails to launch.  Feel free to regard me as a simpleton, and be gentle.

[quote="Jim Aikin"]
The issue with Uli's Workbench, I believe, is that it doesn't bundle the current adv3 library. The library is only 3.0.8. I'm sure you can download the current library and copy it into the directory where Uli's Workbench expects to find it ... but what I don't know, without testing, is whether Uli's version of the compiler will choke and spit up when handed certain new items in the latest library.

I would definitely recommend that you try this, as the newer library may include things you'll find useful. Also, the docs (again, they're downloadable) will refer to the newer features of the library without alerting you to what version they were added in, so the docs might be confusing here or there if you're using the old library.

I'm speculating here, I haven't tried any of this. But it's a possible complication to be aware of if you're going to use that Workbench.

--JA[/quote]

And just to reassure you you are not wasting time on such a neophyte, a little about myself. I was a fan of the Level 9 games in the mid-80s, and set about writing (overly ambitious) projects on the BBC B. My programming skills are slight, but my grasp of logic is not, and I developed an extremely powerful text compacting routine by which all text messages in the main program body were encyphered to a vocab store at the end using, instead of a simple decimal increment for each element of the cypher - £e$Y&tt - a 255 character increment from base ASCII. This reduced redundancy in the text messages by 80% and allowed a fair bit of flavouring narrative within the constraints of 32k RAM.

A few years back I spent some while trying to implement a stranded pirate ship game in TADS2 - the chief hook of which was that all game descriptions, and all responses to player commands, were written in a parboiled Long John Silver English.  The fun of a text game lies wholly in the flavour of the text (in my view) and not the cunning of the puzzles themselves.  Unfortunately the C++ syntax just defeated my efforts at every turn. My poor brain is locked into pre-OOP mode.

I suppose the optimum solution for me would be a collaboration - I write all the fun stuff (rooms/players/objects/NPCs/conundrums) and get a supine friend to generate the code from that - but I don't have any slaves in my basement right now with the necessary programming skills.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1086&start=10#p6056
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: A new, easy-to-learn library for TADS3
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2010-05-09 05:29:13

[quote=lukematt]I'm on my knees, begging. [b]Pleeeeeease[/b]  not another TADS manual. Please.[/quote]

Of course, if Mike does release a new simplified library (which, I understand, is intended as an alternative to, not a replacement for the existing adv3 library), there'll have to be some manuals relating to that: at the very least a Mercury LRM to sit alongside the adv3 LRM, and possibly Mercury versions of [i]Learning TADS 3[/i] or the Technical Manual.

[quote=Juhana]Some people actually learn better from narrative than from examples or bullet points. If the existing manuals would be changed to what you would find perfect, many others would complain that they've been ruined for them. People have different ways of learning and there is no fit-for-all solution which is why different textbooks with different perspectives are needed.[/quote]

Quite so; that's why, for example, there's both [i]Learning TADS 3[/i] and [i]Getting Started in TADS 3[/i]; the idea is that you use one or the other, not both.

I don't know how imminent the appearance of the Mercury Library is, but if it's going to appear in the next year or so it may not be worthwhile anyone doing much work on TADS 3 documentation until the Mercury library is available. At that point, it may be worth someone writing a fresh introduction to TADS 3 based on the Mercury Library, which may be a more manageable way in for people who find the adv3 library a bit overwhelming.

-- Eric

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1086&start=10#p6057
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: A new, easy-to-learn library for TADS3
User: lukematt / DateTime: 2010-05-09 05:57:40

Given the inclination towards proliferation of manuals, I'm just curious...

When will Braille versions of each manual become available?


Jeff

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=0#p6058
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: farvardin / DateTime: 2010-05-09 10:41:15

pocketzax is pretty recent (well, 1 year only for the latest release)
But it doesn't support accented letters.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.adamdawes.com/windowsmobile/winmob_pocketzax.html">http://www.adamdawes.com/windowsmobile/ ... etzax.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=20#p6059
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-09 10:48:21

[quote="Alcibiades"]Having read Eric Eve's thorough (not to say exhausting) article on the relative strengths and felicities, it may well be that I7 is more appropriate to an author (such as myself) who is intimidated by the non-intuitive C++ syntax of TADS3.  Which in itself is a pity, since the game I'm developing will be fairly epic in scope (as befits The Bartoks themselves) and will need to implement a good deal of NPC conversation and response logic. But as Dirty Harry once observed, "A man should always know his limitations".[/quote]
Eric's conversation extensions for I7 add much of the TADS functionality to I7. I agree that the deeper levels of TADS syntax take a while to get used to!

[quote="Alcibiades"]And perhaps what you say below anticipates my first pratfall, in that the Workbench as supplied contains no debug tool. When I compile and run an intro+1 room/no objects starter file for my game, no error is generated but the game fails to launch.[/quote]
In my Mac, the error messages show up in a Terminal window, not in Workbench itself.

[quote="Alcibiades"]I suppose the optimum solution for me would be a collaboration - I write all the fun stuff (rooms/players/objects/NPCs/conundrums) and get a supine friend to generate the code from that - but I don't have any slaves in my basement right now with the necessary programming skills.[/quote]
There's a collaborator search/announcement list on this forum. I myself collaborated on a game with Eric Eve, and I think the process went pretty well.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1086&start=10#p6060
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: A new, easy-to-learn library for TADS3
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-09 11:04:36

[quote="lukematt"]Truly, in the depths of my heart, I believe that the TADS documentation is the single greatest impediment to attracting new users.[/quote]
I understand where you're coming from. Without disrespecting Eric in any way -- without his weeks and months of hard work, TADS 3 would be entirely impenetrable! -- I can recall getting very confused and frustrated when I was first tackling TADS. That was before "Learning T3" was added to the package ... but still.

That said, the Inform documentation is not thrilling either. My observations on that point led me to write the Inform 7 Handbook, and I've had a lot of positive feedback from users indicating that it filled the gap for them.

Perhaps it's best to think of learning the TADS docs as a separate exercise to learning the language and the library. Sometimes the information I need (and I need information often!) is in the LRM. From there I may have to click a link to read the library file itself. If I'm still confused, I search Learning T3 for a text string. From time to time I scroll down the page list in the Tour Guide to see if there's a page on the class that I'm researching. Sometimes I'm still baffled, and have to post questions to the newsgroup, or to this forum.

I'm happy to report that after a while the fog [i]does [/i]start to lift. But I'm not entirely sure that the solution, for newcomers, would be to toss the documentation up in the air and redo it all as one coherent manual -- even if someone had time to do that, and even if it were [i]possible [/i]to do that.

If I had infinite time on my hands, what I would do would be three things. First, I'd build up the Library Reference Manual so that the discussion of each and every class was a lot more thorough. I would also add cross-links from it to the other docs.

Second, I'd integrate the System Manual and Technical Manual (somehow), perhaps adding the coding basics from Getting Started to the mix.

Third, I'd write a strictly task-oriented cookbook.

But in the real world, I've started working on a TADS game that I set aside a year ago. It is beyond huge, and it's going to keep me fully occupied for the foreseeable future.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1086&start=10#p6061
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: A new, easy-to-learn library for TADS3
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-05-09 11:37:12

I'm probably sounding like an alien or something when saying this, but the best way to understand how to work in T3 is to look at the library files themselves. The code is very well commented; adv3 consists of 85.131 lines (not counting blanks), and 50.000 of those lines are documentation! The code itself is about 35.000 lines. This can give insight at how "stuff works." The library is not a black box.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1086&start=10#p6062
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: A new, easy-to-learn library for TADS3
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-09 15:09:06

[quote="RealNC"]I'm probably sounding like an alien or something when saying this, but the best way to understand how to work in T3 is to look at the library files themselves.[/quote]
Well, yeah. I often sound like an alien too, though perhaps for slightly different reasons.

I think the method you're recommending would work well for about 5% of aspiring TADS authors -- mainly those who already have some serious programming chops. That works out to about 1.25 aspiring authors at any given time. The other 23.75 authors would probably be better advised to read [i]Learning T3[/i].

I do sometimes read the library files themselves. The difficulty, for me, is tracing down all of the calls that various methods in the library are making to other objects. The library is [i]heavily [/i]nonlinear. (This is not a complaint, it's just a statement of fact.) A book that introduces you to the basic concepts in a rational manner, building from simpler code to more complex or special cases, is a better fit for me as a learner.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1086&start=10#p6063
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: A new, easy-to-learn library for TADS3
User: George / DateTime: 2010-05-09 15:17:32

More manuals are better for people like myself. When I'm learning something new I prefer to read/skim three or four introductory texts. Even if they cover the same subject matter, the repetition and the variation really help. 

However a cookbook wouldn't really be 'another manual', but more like a wiki I think. 

An IF cookbook could be cool, something like the Cloak of Darkness site but for many small examples. I think the [url=http://ifwiki.org/index.php/Past_raif_topics]past RAIF topics article[/url] at the IFWiki is like that, just not specialized/categorized enough for the purposes of a cookbook.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=20#p6064
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: George / DateTime: 2010-05-09 16:05:06

[quote="Emerald"]
For me, the thing that makes the Workbench indispensable is its plethora of debugging tools.[/quote]

I wonder if the Workbench debugger could be de-coupled easily from the Workbench and then used externally in a text editor?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=20#p6065
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-05-09 18:07:04

[quote="George"][quote="Emerald"]
For me, the thing that makes the Workbench indispensable is its plethora of debugging tools.[/quote]

I wonder if the Workbench debugger could be de-coupled easily from the Workbench and then used externally in a text editor?[/quote]
The debugger, like the VM, is pretty much a stand-alone entity. You don't need to decouple it. You need to write something that uses it [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=20#p6066
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-09 18:36:49

[quote="ektemple"][quote="Jim Aikin"]In Windows, I use a program called Auto Hot Key to run keyboard macros. For instance, I type the tilde/back-accent key, and that produces the string <./s>, which is a curly apostrophe. I haven't found anything similar to Auto Hot Key for MacOS; if there isn't any such utility, then I would say keyboard macros of this sort would be highly desirable.[/quote]

Typinator, TextExpander, and others on OS X provide this kind of text-expansion macro.[/quote]
Neither of these is free. Nor is TypeIt4Me. (Auto Hot Key is free.) Also, I run Workbench under Crossover, which is a Windows emulator. I suppose I could ping these manufacturers to find out whether any of their programs will operate in a pseudo-Windows environment. I've tried Auto Hot Key in Crossover, and it doesn't function.

Oh, well. I have a Windows laptop I can run Workbench on. It isn't as nice as the Mac, that's all. No wireless access to the modem, for instance. </whine>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1086&start=10#p6067
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: A new, easy-to-learn library for TADS3
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-05-09 18:51:14

[quote="matt w"]Would this be a fair summary: You want a way to trigger an event so that you can make sure that the player knows it's happening?[/quote]

Hi Matt.  No, it has nothing to do with timers; it's much broader than that, and goes off into the areas of Holy Grails and Fundamental Re-designs, so it's probably off-topic.  What I was looking for there was a way of attaching pre-conditions and post-conditions to a piece of prose, and the authoring tool would use AI-like intelligence on the sim model to figure out how to deliver that prose while observing those conditions.  I.e., the tool would not just check the conditions and complain if they're not met (which is possible with the tools as-is), but rather, would arrange matters so that they are [i]guaranteed[/i] to be met.  Or throw a complier error if it's impossible. 

I don't know if such a thing would be possible in imperative languages such as TADS and Inform, though.  So, Holy Grail, I guess.  A.I. would be easy enough to do, and already is at run-time thanks to RAP and similar extensions, but I'd nearly require such an intelligence be in the compiler itself! 

Perhaps I shouldn't have bothered the TADS people with the point.  But to continue my post:

8) The ability to parse full sentences, not just imperative sentences.  I blogged about the possibilities the words could, would, and should may open in sentential-controlled games such as I-F, and when combined with command history, there's a lot of artistic possibilities there to explore especially vis-a-vis interactive dialogue.  But parsers are difficult to write, and getting all those tenses correct like progressive past-perfect is a chore, but it's a chore that, since English is fairly immutable, is a prime candidate for enshrinement in a library.   (Contrast & compare magic systems, which are necessarily idiosyncratic and possess few traits in common other than the name.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1086&start=10#p6068
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: A new, easy-to-learn library for TADS3
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-05-09 18:58:01

[quote="Ron Newcomb"][quote="matt w"]Would this be a fair summary: You want a way to trigger an event so that you can make sure that the player knows it's happening?[/quote]

Hi Matt.  No, it has nothing to do with timers; it's much broader than that, and goes off into the areas of Holy Grails and Fundamental Re-designs, so it's probably off-topic.  What I was looking for there was a way of attaching pre-conditions and post-conditions to a piece of prose, and the authoring tool would use AI-like intelligence on the sim model to figure out how to deliver that prose while observing those conditions.  I.e., the tool would not just check the conditions and complain if they're not met (which is possible with the tools as-is), but rather, would arrange matters so that they are [i]guaranteed[/i] to be met.  Or throw a complier error if it's impossible.[/quote]
Can you give an example here? Pre-conditions can be used to perform actions without the player needing to explicitly state them. You can even have the parser solve puzzles on its own this way, and this is the reason the author must put emergency breaks there if the parser tries to get smart in order to avoid such spoilers. But I'm not sure that's what you mean.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1086&start=20#p6069
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: A new, easy-to-learn library for TADS3
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-05-09 20:11:51

[quote="Ron Newcomb"][quote="matt w"]Would this be a fair summary: You want a way to trigger an event so that you can make sure that the player knows it's happening?[/quote]

Hi Matt.  No, it has nothing to do with timers; it's much broader than that, and goes off into the areas of Holy Grails and Fundamental Re-designs, so it's probably off-topic.  What I was looking for there was a way of attaching pre-conditions and post-conditions to a piece of prose, and the authoring tool would use AI-like intelligence on the sim model to figure out how to deliver that prose while observing those conditions.  I.e., the tool would not just check the conditions and complain if they're not met (which is possible with the tools as-is), but rather, would arrange matters so that they are [i]guaranteed[/i] to be met.  Or throw a complier error if it's impossible. 

I don't know if such a thing would be possible in imperative languages such as TADS and Inform, though.  So, Holy Grail, I guess.  A.I. would be easy enough to do, and already is at run-time thanks to RAP and similar extensions, but I'd nearly require such an intelligence be in the compiler itself! [/quote]

Hm. To drag this really far off topic, I can see some philosophical problems with how to implement this. What I mean is something like this (farfetched analogy coming): One of the most common analyses of counterfactual sentences like "If TADS Workbench ran on the Mac, three times as many authors would use it" involves what's called nearby possible worlds. To evaluate the sentence, you look at the possible world (which basically means a way that the history of the world could be) that's the most like ours, but in which it's true that TADS Workbench runs on the Mac. But there's a real problem in defining "the most like ours." In one way the world that's the most like ours would be one in which TADS Workbench runs on the Macintosh, but absolutely nobody uses it. But that's not the world we're looking for when we're contemplating this counterfactual.

OK, here's how I see it coming up: It sounds to me as though you'd like the sim model to bend itself so that the conditions on a piece of prose are met. In your original example, the condition is that the PC and the NPC be in the same room when the NPC utters the significant quip that follows on a little bit after the prose you've printed. But that seems like a nearest possible world problem -- we want the smallest possible deviation from the course of events that would follow if we didn't have to obey these conditions, but just which deviation is smallest? Is it a bigger deal to push the PC back into the room with the NPC, or to drag the NPC into the PC's room, or to open up a listening hole between them? Depends on the situation, and seems like it needs to be coded by hand anyway. So the grail you're after seems to me very holy indeed, at least as far as including it in a library.

OTOH you mentioned RAP, and I think I read a piece of yours comparing Planner to one of Aaron Reed's extensions, and extensions like that might go a long way to getting the sort of thing you want. Maybe we could have a sort of impersonal agent behind the scenes manipulating thing so that the conditions have met. -- I don't know, I've never written a game with more than 140 characters source code, let alone messing around with Planner.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1086&start=20#p6070
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: A new, easy-to-learn library for TADS3
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-05-09 20:14:43

[quote="RealNC"]Pre-conditions can be used to perform actions without the player needing to explicitly state them. You can even have the parser solve puzzles on its own this way, and this is the reason the author must put emergency breaks there if the parser tries to get smart in order to avoid such spoilers.[/quote]

Have you played The Nemean Lion?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=20#p6071
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: George / DateTime: 2010-05-09 20:30:37

[quote="RealNC"]
The debugger, like the VM, is pretty much a stand-alone entity. You don't need to decouple it. You need to write something that uses it [emote]:P[/emote][/quote]

Oh cool -- then for an editor with an interactive console it should be possible to get a (albeit non-graphical) debugger working. With a syntax file then you'd be in good shape.

edit: probably this is what FrobTads does?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=20#p6072
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-05-09 23:28:30

[quote="George"][quote="RealNC"]
The debugger, like the VM, is pretty much a stand-alone entity. You don't need to decouple it. You need to write something that uses it [emote]:P[/emote][/quote]

Oh cool -- then for an editor with an interactive console it should be possible to get a (albeit non-graphical) debugger working. With a syntax file then you'd be in good shape.

edit: probably this is what FrobTads does?[/quote]

FrobTADS does not offer a debugger  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1086&start=20#p6073
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: A new, easy-to-learn library for TADS3
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-05-10 01:45:24

[quote="George"]An IF cookbook could be cool, something like the Cloak of Darkness site but for many small examples. I think the [url=http://ifwiki.org/index.php/Past_raif_topics]past RAIF topics article[/url] at the IFWiki is like that, just not specialized/categorized enough for the purposes of a cookbook.[/quote]
I had an idea a while back of having a repository like this where you could post links to intfiction.org and r.a.i-f posts, blogs and online manuals and tag them by the language and topic. The site would then build an index (or a cookbook) of every question and solution in the web. For example, if someone posted a question here about how to make doors in TADS 3 that are locked only on the other side, it would go under TADS 3 > World-building > Doors > Locking and unlocking (or some other similar path.) I dropped the project when I realized I didn't really have the time to keep it up to date.

I still have the rough but somewhat working proof-of-concept code I baked when I was thinking about this. If people are interested (and especially if there's someone interested in taking the job of administering the site) I can put it online as a demo.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1086&start=20#p6074
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: A new, easy-to-learn library for TADS3
User: lukematt / DateTime: 2010-05-10 02:31:53

Title: Beating a Dead Horse
Subtitle: More [b][u]Constructive[/u][/b] Comments about the TADS Documentation

[quote="Jim Aikin"] I can recall getting very confused and frustrated when I was first tackling TADS. That was before "Learning T3" was added to the package[/quote]
We agree again.  [i]Learning TADS 3[/i] is the best manual in the bunch.  Why?
[list]
[*]It has the most detailed content on the most topics[/*:m]
[*]Interestingly enough, it is the only TADS manual (that I use, anyway) in .pdf format.[/*:m][/list:u]

Why is .pdf format important?
[list]
[*]For me, personally, it is very esthetically pleasing to the reading eye.
(I tried to control myself, but I can't...I really don't want to hear from the detractors, "What's pleasing for one person may not be pleasing for another person."  Tell it to Adobe.)[/*:m]
[*][quote="Jim Aikin"]If I'm still confused, I search Learning T3 for a text string.[/quote]
Me, too.  Because it's possible with a .pdf file.  It ain't possible with a manual that's broken into 100 html files.  (...and no, I don't want to hear any kludge-y ways to meld html files together.)[/*:m][/list:u]

[b]Constructive Comment #73[/b]: Put TADS documentation into .pdf format

*********************************************************************

[quote="Jim Aikin"]The System and Technical Manuals are very much a grab bag, and it's hard to remember where to look in them to find what you need.[/quote]
Yesterday, I tried to nail down in my mind the fundamental problem with [i]TADS 3 System Manual[/i] and [i]TADS 3 Technical Manual[/i].  Besides they're not searchable and their "Table of Contents" are nebulous.

It relates to your word [i]grab bag[/i] and to your comment...

[quote="Jim Aikin"]A book that introduces you to the basic concepts in a rational manner, building from simpler code to more complex or special cases, is a better fit for me as a learner.[/quote]
Look at the [i]TADS 3 Technical Manual[/i] for an example.  Why does "Programming Conversations with NPCs" come after "Using Build Configurations"?  "Programming Conversations with NPCs" is [b][u]fundamental[/u][/b].  "Using Build Configurations" is, in general, geek material.

[b]Constructive Comment #74[/b]: In [i]TADS 3 System Manual[/i] and [i]TADS 3 Technical Manual[/i], move geek material to an appendix (and better organize everything).
[I know.  I know.  What's geek material to one person is fundamental to another person.  So put the geek material in an appendix and entitle it, "Fundamentals for Geeks".]

[b]CONCLUSION[/b]

1. Jim's comments about TADS documentation are [b][u]spot on[/u][/b].  Jim writes documentation for [i]Inform[/i].  Which user base is larger: TADS or Inform?  (Yes, I already know the answer.)

2. Lest we lose sight of the important issue here.  Mike Roberts knows that TADS' user base is dwindling, and he wants to regain lost TADS  2 users (who moved to [i]Inform[/i]?).

TADS is a one-person show in terms of programming the system.  How should Mike most effectively use the next year of his life:
[list]
[*]Writing a dummied-down version of the TADS library
OR
[/*:m]
[*]Working on enhancements to the existing system[/*:m][/list:u]

From my perspective, TADS is a better product than [i]Inform[/i].  It just needs better..."advertising".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1080&start=20#p6075
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Zifmia - A Client/Server Multi-Platform System
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-05-10 06:16:18

[quote="DavidC"][quote="Retro"][quote="DavidC"]As mentioned in my blog at <a class="postlink" href="http://chicagodave.wordpress.com">http://chicagodave.wordpress.com</a>, I started a new project to implement IF in a client/server architecture.[/quote]

Not to discourage your project or something, but implementing IF in a client/server architecture has already been done to a great extent. It's called MUD (Multi User Dungeon).

Which brings me to my question: What advantages will Zimfia have over existing MUDs and Massive Multiplayer Online Games?[/quote]

This is not a mud. The intent is to host games created with single player authoring tools/platforms. A user will come to a host that has implemented zifmia and see a portal. The portal allows users to upload new games and to play uploaded games. It also allows authors to develop games where the output can be implemented in HTML, JavaScript, AJAX, and CSS.

Another feature will be for testing. If the author elects to, the host can save all input and output in a database and offer reports on how testers faired in their game. So the author could login and view a particular room and see all of the commands tried in that room and all of the responses. Instead of a bunch of transcripts, they have cumulative data to respond to.

In an education setting, a teacher could host a game and use the reports to observe progress of their students.

This isn't to say that a MUD couldn't do all of these things, but the purpose is to allow authors to use any platform to create their games, but have one interface for output...a browser.

David C.[/quote]

Okay, I see. 

Thanks for the detailed explanation and good luck with your project.

Emilian K.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1091&start=0#p6076
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Can you imagine playing a German entry in IFcomp 2010?
User: Mikawa / DateTime: 2010-05-10 07:51:31

Hi all,

so this is just an information for German IF authors:

Can you imagine playing German IF?
How do you rate your reading skills?

Hope I'll get some answers ...

Regards
Michael

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1091&start=0#p6077
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Can you imagine playing a German entry in IFcomp 2010?
User: George / DateTime: 2010-05-10 09:26:55

Is there a German --> English playing card or something like that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1086&start=20#p6078
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: A new, easy-to-learn library for TADS3
User: George / DateTime: 2010-05-10 09:37:30

[quote="Juhana"]I had an idea a while back of having a repository like this where you could post links to intfiction.org and r.a.i-f posts, blogs and online manuals and tag them by the language and topic. The site would then build an index (or a cookbook) of every question and solution in the web. For example, if someone posted a question here about how to make doors in TADS 3 that are locked only on the other side, it would go under TADS 3 > World-building > Doors > Locking and unlocking (or some other similar path.) I dropped the project when I realized I didn't really have the time to keep it up to date.
.[/quote]

Yeah, IMO keeping up with adding and tagging threads wouldn't last without IFWiki-caliber maintainers, since I don't think the idea of the site alone would attract maintainers on the scale of the IFDB for example. 

If we weren't committed to keeping up with threads but just adding small examples, that might make it more accessible. 

Just waving my hands around here, but what if the Intfiction forums got a mod that allowed posting/tagging from within a thread here on the forums? That would require some PHP I guess?

My .02 on TADS manuals -- I can't stand manuals in PDF format ;D.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1091&start=0#p6079
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Can you imagine playing a German entry in IFcomp 2010?
User: Mikawa / DateTime: 2010-05-10 09:44:19

What do you exactly mean by "playing card" ?

I'm thinking about a quick reference guide added to the game, to give you an overview how the English standard verbs translate into German, because I guess verb-guessing and problems with the parser are the most obvious reason to quit the gameplay at once ...

-- MI

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1091&start=0#p6080
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Can you imagine playing a German entry in IFcomp 2010?
User: Mick / DateTime: 2010-05-10 10:03:32

I'd have no problem playing a German IF that was translated into English, but since I don't know German, I would not bother with an untranslated version. Is that what you are asking?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1092&start=0#p6081
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: NodeScript.NINI - alternative & self-explanatory CYOA format
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-05-10 10:40:28

Hi,

today I decided to add an alternative CYOA file format for Node-X Interpreter v2.x (to be released) and higher versions.

It is called NINI ("Node INI file", pronounced "Ninny"). This alternative format (*.nini) has the same functionality as the current file format (*.nx) documented [url=http://www.devnode.freeforums.org/nodescript-layout-and-command-vars-t8.html]here[/url] but has a different layout. All short abbreviations for INI section names, section keys (command vars) and enumeration values were replaced with self-explanatory long names. Both formats will be supported by the Node-X Interpreter, giving authors the option to choose their desired layout.

I originally intended to implement this format in 2007 when I started the Node-X project, but I dropped the idea back then, because I thought it would be easier and faster not to type so much. However, this alternative format has Pros and Cons aswell.

Basic example of [b]NodeScript.NINI[/b] layout and Pros/Cons:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.devnode.freeforums.org/nodescript-nini-alternative-cyoa-file-format-t14.html">http://www.devnode.freeforums.org/nodes ... t-t14.html</a>

Feel free to post your thoughts on this format.

Regards,
Emilian K.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1086&start=20#p6082
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: A new, easy-to-learn library for TADS3
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-05-10 10:58:52

[quote="RealNC"][quote="Ron Newcomb"][quote="matt w"]Would this be a fair summary: You want a way to trigger an event so that you can make sure that the player knows it's happening?[/quote]

Hi Matt.  No, it has nothing to do with timers; it's much broader than that, and goes off into the areas of Holy Grails and Fundamental Re-designs, so it's probably off-topic.  What I was looking for there was a way of attaching pre-conditions and post-conditions to a piece of prose, and the authoring tool would use AI-like intelligence on the sim model to figure out how to deliver that prose while observing those conditions.  I.e., the tool would not just check the conditions and complain if they're not met (which is possible with the tools as-is), but rather, would arrange matters so that they are [i]guaranteed[/i] to be met.  Or throw a complier error if it's impossible.[/quote]
Can you give an example here? Pre-conditions can be used to perform actions without the player needing to explicitly state them. You can even have the parser solve puzzles on its own this way, and this is the reason the author must put emergency breaks there if the parser tries to get smart in order to avoid such spoilers. But I'm not sure that's what you mean.[/quote]
Well I gave an example with the ensuring the timed quip isn't missed. And I am aware of the problem of a parser's implicit actions accidentally solving the game for the player; Eric Eve brought it up to me in an Inform consultation document thread when I'd mentioned his NPC Implicit Actions extension (for Inform) could be used for general AI.  I'm looking to push that kind of AI into the compiler, so it could ensure winnable games, ensure or list any unwinnable states the game could get locked into, ensuring all prose is reachable by some path through the game, etc.   If that sounds too holy, well, Prolog answers questions of that sort as a matter of course.  

(Incidentally, a modern, OO, compileable flavor of Prolog is also called Mercury: [url]http://www.mercury.csse.unimelb.edu.au/index.html[/url])

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1086&start=20#p6083
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: A new, easy-to-learn library for TADS3
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-05-10 11:09:51

[quote="matt w"]It sounds to me as though you'd like the sim model to bend itself so that the conditions on a piece of prose are met. In your original example, the condition is that the PC and the NPC be in the same room when the NPC utters the significant quip that follows on a little bit after the prose you've printed. But that seems like a nearest possible world problem -- we want the smallest possible deviation from the course of events that would follow if we didn't have to obey these conditions, but just which deviation is smallest? Is it a bigger deal to push the PC back into the room with the NPC, or to drag the NPC into the PC's room, or to open up a listening hole between them?[/quote]
I presume the alternatives would be tried in order, backtracking if one led to further complications.  Or, a breadth-first search, the one which solves the problem in the least #/steps.  Or, explicit directives mentioning favored alternatives, perhaps tie-able to particular situations.  Whichever. 
[quote="matt w"]OTOH you mentioned RAP, and I think I read a piece of yours comparing Planner to one of Aaron Reed's extensions, and extensions like that might go a long way to getting the sort of thing you want. Maybe we could have a sort of impersonal agent behind the scenes manipulating thing so that the conditions have met.[/quote]But this stuff really needs to happen during compilation, so the author can be informed immediately of unreachable prose, or prose that can't be guaranteed to be said at some point or another.  As-is, much of I-F exhibits an anti-pattern called [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tester_driven_development]Tester-Driven Development[/url] (not to be confused with Test-Driven) because we just have to compile and play the game to see if quip X can be reached, etc.

Perhaps the idea's a little too holy.  I still stick to my guns regarding the other, much more practical points I made about the possible new TADS library.  I believe that prose generation + AI is a better avenue for the future of I-F than more detailed physical world simulations.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1092&start=0#p6084
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: NodeScript.NINI - alternative & self-explanatory CYOA fo
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-05-10 12:13:47

Below is an example of a simple Node-X adventure in Nini's format. It is a conversion of the original [i]demoroom_en.nx[/i] script file from the Node-X 1.1 distribution package (see IFComp 2009 entry "Trap Cave"):

[code]; -------------------------------------------------------------------
; demoroom_en.nini (conversion of demoroom_en.nx)
; 
; Node-X Interpreter (NXI) v2.x or higher required to run this file!
; (not yet released)
; 
; NodeScript and NINI format by Emilian Kowalewski (C) 2007-2010
;--------------------------------------------------------------------
[NodeScript.NINI]
Generation=1
EngineClass=NodeJumper

[FileInfo]
Date=09/26/2009
Time=19:00

[GameInfo]
Title=Demo: One Room Adventure
Author=Emilian K.
Version=1.0
Language=English

[NetInfo]
Email=@
URL=%

[GameInterface]
LineStyle=Single

[FileInterface]
SaveFile=demoroom

[Inventory]
ElementName=Body
SubElementName=hand
SubElementLeftName=left
SubElementRightName=right
SubElementLeftAbbr=LH
SubElementRightAbbr=RH

[PlayerStart]
bInventory=False
Node=1

[Locations]
1=Description
2=Office
3=End

[Choices]
1=examine chair
2=look around
3=examine desk
4=walk to door
5=open drawer
6=close drawer
7=take key
8=put key in drawer
9=go to desk
10=open door
11=unlock door

[NodeText1]
1=^This script demonstrates how to write a basic one room
2=^adventure with one exit to be unlocked with one item.
4=^This text shows how to center a line on the screen.
5=^For documentation, tutorials and/or help please visit
6=^the Node-X Forum (see URL).

[Node1]
Location=1
NodeText=1
NodeType=JumpNode
NodeJump[1]=2

[NodeText2]
1=You are inside an office and sit on a chair.

[Node2]
PreCallAction=ShowInventory
Location=2
NodeText=2
NodeType=PathNode
NodeChoice[1]=1
NodeChoice[2]=2
NodeJump[1]=3
NodeJump[2]=4

[NodeText3]
1=It's a black leather chair which can be rotated 360 degrees.

[Node3]
Location=2
NodeText=3
NodeType=JumpNode
NodeJump[1]=2

[NodeText4]
1=You look around the office. In front of you is a desk and a door behind it.

[AltText4]
1=You rotate the chair and take a look around the office.
2=There is a desk in front of you and a door behind it.

[Node4]
PreCallAction=AltFlag
PreCallFlag=3
Location=2
NodeText=4
AltText=4
NodeType=PathNode
NodeChoice[1]=3
NodeChoice[2]=4
NodeJump[1]=5
NodeJump[2]=8

[NodeText5]
1=It's a white wooden desk with a drawer on the front.

[AltText5]
1=You are in front of the desk.

[Node5]
Location=2
NodeText=5
AltText=5
NodeType=PathNode
NodeChoice[1]=5
NodeChoice[2]=4
NodeJump[1]=6
NodeJump[2]=8

[NodeText6]
1=You have opened the drawer.

[Node6]
Location=2
NodeText=6
NodeType=ItemNode
NodeChoice[1]=6
NodeJump[1]=7
NodeItem=1
bItemFlag=False
FlagSetChoice=7
FlagUnsetChoice=8

[ItemText1]
1=A modern silver key to open office doors.

[Item1]
ItemType=Standard
ItemName=key
ItemText=1

[NodeText7]
1=You have closed the drawer.

[Node7]
Location=2
NodeText=7
NodeType=PathNode
NodeChoice[1]=5
NodeChoice[2]=4
NodeJump[1]=6
NodeJump[2]=8

[NodeText8]
1=You stand in front of the office door.

[Node8]
PreCallAction=ItemJump
PreCallJump=10
Location=2
NodeText=8
NodeItem=1
NodeType=PathNode
NodeChoice[1]=10
NodeChoice[2]=9
NodeJump[1]=9
NodeJump[2]=5

[NodeText9]
1=You can't open the door. It's locked!

[Node9]
Location=2
NodeText=9
NodeType=JumpNode
NodeJump[1]=8

[Node10]
Location=2
NodeText=8
NodeType=PathNode
NodeChoice[1]=9
NodeChoice[2]=11
NodeJump[1]=5
NodeJump[2]=11

[NodeText11]
1=You have unlocked the door and left the office. Game solved!

[Node11]
Location=3
NodeText=11
NodeType=DeadNode

; End of script[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1086&start=20#p6085
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: A new, easy-to-learn library for TADS3
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2010-05-10 12:31:01

[quote="lukematt"]We agree again. [i]Learning TADS 3[/i]  is the best manual in the bunch. Why?

    * It has the most detailed content on the most topics
    * Interestingly enough, it is the only TADS manual (that I use, anyway) in .pdf format.[/quote]

Also, it's the manual I wrote most recently, in the light of the most experience with TADS 3 and feedback on the other documentation!  [emote]:)[/emote]

But it's not the only manual available in .pdf format. [i]Getting Started in TADS 3[/i] and [i]The TADS 3 Tour Guide[/i] are also provided in .pdf as well as HTML format (so people can use which they prefer).

-- Eric

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1086&start=20#p6086
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: A new, easy-to-learn library for TADS3
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-05-10 14:04:37

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]But this stuff really needs to happen during compilation, so the author can be informed immediately of unreachable prose, or prose that can't be guaranteed to be said at some point or another.  As-is, much of I-F exhibits an anti-pattern called [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tester_driven_development]Tester-Driven Development[/url] (not to be confused with Test-Driven) because we just have to compile and play the game to see if quip X can be reached, etc.[/quote]

Mm, this sounds tough (though I'm not a programmer so I don't know how hard it'd be to implement). There are a lot of subtle unreachable quips. For instance, in ex. 400 of the I7 documentation, "The Cow Exonerated," you can never get the response "The match goes out," because it triggers only when there are zero burnt visible s-matches, but it's in an if-statement that can only be triggered if a visible s-match has just become burnt. And there are other tricky issues even in that short example -- I'm pretty sure that there are some quips that would never trigger if the player only started with one lit match, because then two matches would never burn out on the same turn, and there are other quips that may never trigger because there's only one room in the world model. But in the latter case, we don't want to throw a compiler error whenever we've coded for an eventuality that never actually takes place. (In fact, I could imagine coding something that I never wanted to reach -- for instance something that asked the player to e-mail me if they had found a way to exceed the maximum score.) Is there a way to catch this other than by having the compiler do an automatic beta-test?

I do hear you about having to constantly compile, though -- sometimes I'd really like to see what objects would be in the index if my code compiled, but it won't compile, because I haven't defined an object the way I thought I was, but I can't tell that because I can't see the index....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1068&start=20#p6087
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3 in a Browser
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-05-10 19:33:56

Back to the original topic of this thread:

<a class="postlink" href="http://community.livejournal.com/tads3/4250.html">http://community.livejournal.com/tads3/4250.html</a>

It seems TADS 3 is trying to take "online IF" pretty much to the same place it tries to take everything else too, to the extreme [emote]:)[/emote] (Dunno how else to describe an IF language that would allow you to [i]write networking code[/i] in your game, if you so wish...) Hopefully all will work out on the end.

[quote]I think this makes TADS the first IF-specific language in which you can write a Web server.[/quote]
I suppose that means one could now actually even write a MUD in TADS. (Edit: well, when it's ready, at least.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1068&start=20#p6088
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3 in a Browser
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-05-10 20:06:54

Mike's post maybe makes Jim's funding pool less urgent (I'm not sure; I don't get a sense of whether the thing is 3 months or 3 years from release...) but I wanted to mention that Kickstarter might be a good platform for this sort of thing. In my experiences with it, people are willing to donate more money than they would otherwise, because of the (very real) possibility that the funding goal won't be met and they won't have to pay. But then if the funding goal is in fact met, everybody is happy (the fundraiser for getting the money, the donators because they pledged the money a long time ago and have forgotten about it, but now they get something they wanted and feel good about contributing). 

Longwinded way of saying: yes, browser-based TADS is much needed, and I'd be willing to contribute to a bounty, too, if we think that'll help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1075&start=0#p6089
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Announcing CYOA competition
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-05-10 20:43:55

[quote="Aina Grey"]I'm not really content with you spamming my thread, but for the record, I [b]can[/b] provide alternative prices including techno crap cds[/quote]

I don't care whether you like hiphop, psytrance, electro, techno music or not. And for my record, I loved Metallica and listened to it a lot when I was a teenager back in the 90s. Believe it or not. I'm just not interested in hardrock or metal music anymore, because I try to go with the times. In the words of Marilyn Manson: "Rock is dead."

Oh and I think it's impolite to call me a "spammer", just because I express my own opinion here. I believe in the first ammendment of the U.S. constitution and in free speech. Have I already mentioned that I'm a fan of Alex Jones on Infowars.com? I know my God-given rights! However, I didn't expect a neutral reaction from a guy like you anyway. Although I don't know you and I have never heard of you, your reaction and the reaction of other posters here show me that you are not the type of guy I could get along with. I'm glad that it happened, because now I know that I should never seriously take part in your CYOA comp. Too bad for you, because I try to revolutionize the CYOA genre with my ongoing and permanent development of the Node-X engine. I don't say that you need me or that my CYOA system is important, but you shouldn't make me dislike you.

So let me give you a good advice from my own life experience: React less aggressive to criticism and you will have a more pleasant time here.

Thank you and have a nice day. Bye.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1068&start=20#p6090
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3 in a Browser
User: George / DateTime: 2010-05-10 22:13:32

As RealNC/Nikos said, more options are good, especially because Jim is talking about a client-side interpreter (I think?) and the other one definitely is server-side.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1091&start=0#p6091
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Can you imagine playing a German entry in IFcomp 2010?
User: George / DateTime: 2010-05-10 22:17:38

Yes, quick reference guide == playing card. My German is poor to non-existent, but I'd give it a go if I had some help (I voted Maybe).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1075&start=10#p6092
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Announcing CYOA competition
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-05-11 10:09:12

[quote="Retro"]Oh and I think it's impolite to call me a "spammer", just because I express my own opinion here. I believe in the first ammendment of the U.S. constitution and in free speech.[/quote]Three things, though, before this goes much further.

One, to my knowledge, the U.S. Constitution applies to U.S. citizens. I'm not sure that this extends to Germany, although I admit I'm not an expert.

Two, the first amendment isn't a free pass to behave foolishly, although it is commonly misconstrued to be. We get protections against government censorship, to some degree. That's all. This freedom does not apply to anything privately-owned, which is pretty much everything else (stores, web sites, other people's homes, etc). In short, "free speech" has no bearing in most places where people believe they have a right to [i]exercise[/i] free speech. This is usually just an attempt to shield and justify disruptive behavior. Be more concerned about the standards of whatever community or establishment you take part in, because that's the true extent of how far you are able to go.

Three, "Aina Grey" is just baiting you, and you're biting. Biting is usually a bad idea.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1093&start=0#p6093
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Promotional CD and Outreach
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-05-11 12:23:47

After talking with a few people at the Chicago IF Group, it's clear we have opportunities to spread the word. The one nagging issue is that we need the promotional CD to be a dual boot (MAC/PC) disc.

Is there anyone that can volunteer to develop a run-from-cd MAC image that we can marry to the PC one?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=20#p6095
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: Alcibiades / DateTime: 2010-05-11 12:43:44

I wanted to thank Jim and NC for their guidance on my initial question. Having now looked into Inform7, I believe I'm going to have to defect.  It does appear at first and second sight as though TADS3 is configured and structured for those who are already familiar with C++ coding, and is rather forbidding to everyone else. Inform7 appears to have been designed for maximum accessibility to non-programmers, allowing one to focus more on the project itself, and not at every turn on the precise syntax to achieve X, Y or Z.

I'm still impressed with the power and scope of the TADS parser, but my technical skills are simply too limited to cope with its internal structure. "Buttock-Up: An Avencher" will have to appear in Inform7, to delight and amaze the planet Arf. But I thank you for the help meanwhile.

I abandon this thread to the mysteries of the "debugger" tool. I have yet to find a program which supplies a "bugger" tool in the interests of fairness and balance.

Off to the Inform room I go.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=30#p6096
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: Alcibiades / DateTime: 2010-05-11 12:47:54

By the bye, every single time I have tried to log out from this site, the logout button crashes (in Safari).  I'm assuming I can't be the only one to trip in this way on leaving the board.

Just FYI.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1075&start=10#p6097
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Announcing CYOA competition
User: Mick / DateTime: 2010-05-11 12:59:14

That's a shame, because I thought a CYOA competition sounded interesting - and I'm not being sarcastic.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1093&start=0#p6098
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Promotional CD and Outreach
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-05-11 13:56:35

It looks like we could simply create a bootable image that opens Zoom.

The required work from an interested volunteer would be to create a zoomrc configuration file that had the list of games on the current promotional CD. (The idea is to promote, not overwhelm).

Anyone?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=30#p6099
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-05-11 14:27:35

[quote="Alcibiades"]I wanted to thank Jim and NC for their guidance on my initial question. Having now looked into Inform7, I believe I'm going to have to defect.  It does appear at first and second sight as though TADS3 is configured and structured for those who are already familiar with C++ coding, and is rather forbidding to everyone else.[/quote]
People are not born being familiar with C++ coding [emote]:P[/emote] It's not forbidding to anyone. Such a claim is just wrong.

[quote]Inform7 appears to have been designed for maximum accessibility to non-programmers, allowing one to focus more on the project itself, and not at every turn on the precise syntax to achieve X, Y or Z.[/quote]
You're in for a quite a surprise [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1093&start=0#p6100
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Promotional CD and Outreach
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-05-11 14:43:21

List of games with approval to be promoted and shared:

[code]
9:05				Adam Cadre
Adventure			Will Crowther and Don Woods
Ad Verbum			Nick Montfort
Alabaster				Emily Short and Company
All Roads				Jon Ingold
All Things Devours			Half Sick of Shadows
ASCII and The Argonauts		J. Robinson Wheeler
At Wit's End			Mike Sousa
Babel				Ian Finley
Bad Machine			Dan Shiovitz
A Bear's Night Out			David Dyte
Being Andrew Plotkin		J. Robinson Wheeler
Blue Chairs			Chris Klimas
Blue Lacuna			Aaron A. Reed
Bronze				Emily Short
Broken Legs			Sarah Morayati
Centipede			J. Robinson Wheeler
A Change in the Weather		Andrew Plotkin
Child's Play			Stephen Grenade
Curses!				Graham Nelson
The Dreamhold			Andrew Plotkin
Dungeon (Mainframe Zork)	             Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling
Earth and Sky			Paul O'Brian
Earth and Sky 2: Another Earth, Another Sky
				Paul O'Brian
Earth and Sky 3: Luminous Horizon
				Paul O'Brian
The Edifice			Lucian P. Smith
Fallacy of Dawn			Robb Sherwin
The Fire Tower			Jacqueline Lott
For a Change			Dan Schmidt
Fragile Shells			Stephen Grenade
The Frenetic Five versus Sturm und Drang
				Neil deMause
Galatea				Emily Short
Guilty Bastards			Kent Tessman
Heroes				Sean Barret
Hunter, In Darkness		Andrew Plotkin
I-O				Adam Cadre
Jigsaw				Graham Nelson
Kaged				Ian Finley
Losing Your Grip			Stephen Grenade
Lost Pig				Admiral Jota
Metamorphoses			Emily Short
The Meteor, The Stone And A Long Glass of Sherbert
				Graham Nelson
Moments Out of Time		L. Ross Raszewski
The Mulldoon Murders		Jon Ingold
The Mulldoon Legacy		Jon Ingold
Muse: An Autumn Romance		Christopher Huang
Necrotic Drift			Robb Sherwin
Photopia				Adam Cadre
Pytho's Mask			Emily Short
Risorgimento Represso		Michael J. Coyne
Savoire Faire			Emily Short
Scavenger			Quintin Stone
Shade				Andrew Plotkin
Shrapnel				Adam Cadre
So Far				Andrew Plotkin
The Space Under the Window	Andrew Plotkin
Spider and Web			Andrew Plotkin
Square Circle			Eric Eve
Sting of the Wasp			Jason Devlin
Sunset Over Savannah		Ivan Cockrum
Textfire Golf			Adam Cadre
The Traveling Swordsman		Mike Snyder
Varicella				Adam Cadre
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1094&start=0#p6101
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Support for larger font sizes?
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2010-05-11 14:59:14

Any chance we might be able to support something like, say, a font size of 200? I'm going to have a major meltdown in a few days and I'd like the forum to be [i]prepared.[/i]

tia

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1094&start=0#p6102
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Support for larger font sizes?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-05-11 15:04:26

You mean like a skin for using the forum, or just when posting? If when posting, you can bump the font size up in the post you make. If you mean a skin for the forum, there might be a large alternate theme out there. Haven't looked...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1094&start=0#p6103
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Support for larger font sizes?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-05-11 15:21:56

Merk, Jonsey's referring to the followup to your post in the CYOA thread...

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1094&start=0#p6104
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Support for larger font sizes?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-05-11 15:51:36

Ooooh. Right. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1093&start=0#p6105
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Promotional CD and Outreach
User: George / DateTime: 2010-05-11 19:27:18

What are the kinds of organizations/people these would be given out to? Also, will the games be framed or categorized in any way, with a booklet or something like that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1093&start=0#p6106
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Promotional CD and Outreach
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-05-11 23:30:37

Well Ed talked about handing them out at the Printer's Row Book Fair in Chicago.

I think having the ability to make a "packet" from online materials (flyers, books, CD's) and dropping them off at libraries is an excellent idea.

I'd like to get to the point where we can get it all in a single provider where you pay $X and they send Y bundles to you or anyone you want.

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1100&start=0#p6107
Forum: Feedback / Subject: How to cope with racist issues in the forum?
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-05-12 02:20:38

In the past 12 years which I was active in the web community I have never before came across such a level of hate speech displayed towards me and other folks on a public gaming-related discussion forum. Quoted below.

I hope the forum management does everything necessary, so that users with racist and/or anti-semitic attitude get no opportunity to spread their fascist ideology and poison this community. I understand that this a privately-owned forum with its own terms of use, but never the less such behaviour is just over the edge and unacceptable, even in a heated discussion.

Sincerely,
Emilian

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[rant=Moderated: The following quote may be objectionable to some users.][quote="Aina Grey"]FUCK YOU Retro, and especially [size=200][size=200]FUCK YOU[/size][/size] Merk you fucking retarded piece of shit

if I knew you two motherfuckers personally i would fucking beat the crap out of you subhumans[/quote][/rant]

Posted on May 11th, 2010 in [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=6094#p6094]Announcing CYOA competition[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1100&start=0#p6108
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: How to cope with racist issues in the forum?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-05-12 06:12:37

I see that the post in question has been deleted. I fully understand the reasoning behind that action, but I wonder whether deletion might not be that good a principle?

Make no mistake - I believe that the post which originated this thread was, simply, past all limits of acceptable; offensive; senseless. Nevertheless, I'm always uncomfortable with plain deletion of information. 

When you delete things, they disappear. People can no longer learn from them - they can no longer see what reaction they'll get to some attitudes; they can no longer even see that such attitudes are dealt with as they should. If you *lock* a topic, on the other hand, everyone can see what happened, and how it was dealt with. It's out in the open. It's much better to deal with things out in the open.

Even things such as racism, which the Retro brings up. I honestly see absolutely no racism in the offensive post - just a very, very, very offensive post - but it's a fair question: how to deal with it? Again, I don't believe deleting is the answer.

I've been in the AGS Forums for quite a while. It's not the best ever place in the whole wide world, granted, but it's very nice. Very fairly moderated. A very nice place to hang out, even if you do have you share of not-really-helpful-or-even-useful posters (but you get those everywhere). I've never seen anyone banned - as far as I know, they never have, and CJ is very proud of that. I've never known threads or topics to be deleted. That's because they'd rather instruct by *punishing mistakes*, not by making the mistakes go away - which is what deleting is. They also prefer to take turn between gently coaching the offender and, if he's being an ass, being sarcastic. Some of the offenders are laughed to death. Some others learn what they did wrong and turn their act around. All of this without deleting anything, or banning anyone.

Now let's be realistic - AGS is a place for adventure-game lovers, and it gets all sort of people, of all sort of ages. IF is a bit more elitist by its very nature, and we're much more unlikely to get the sort of dreadful, childish behaviour I've seen in a few posts over there. But if they can handle it efficiently and transparently, why shouldn't we?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1100&start=0#p6109
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: How to cope with racist issues in the forum?
User: Mick / DateTime: 2010-05-12 06:43:36

It's always a tough call to determine how much moderation should be applied to a forum. Too little and you can drive the non-abusive posters away, too much and .. well, I guess that's bad too. I don't go out of my way to say offensive and insulting things so it doesn't bother me personally.

I do think that deleting posts should be extremely rare, it's like removing history and does more to cover up the problem rather than deal with it. Also, it makes the posts that follow it appear out of context. I think people should have to own their words, and others should be able to make judgement by those words.

I say smack them with a 48-hour ban to cool off, and after three strikes make it permanent.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1100&start=0#p6110
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: How to cope with racist issues in the forum?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-05-12 07:10:16

Some members privately objected to the post, and so it was deleted. I was initially going to let it stand, but ultimately agreed that it was incredibly out of place, not only in that particular discussion but on the board as a whole. Even now, I have no idea what it was in response to. I had not replied to that poster, there or elsewhere, to my knowledge. Its only purpose seemed to be to spark this very chain of events -- to force administrator action, and then watch the fallout.

I can take somebody telling me off. Wouldn't be the first time. But the post in question was a red-faced tirade that crossed the line into being a personal threat.

Another poster and well-known IF contributor actually warned me a few days ago that something like this seemed to be brewing. Now is probably the time to get this straightened out. Having no policies at all isn't going to work, except maybe for those who enjoy going off on umprompted, red-faced tirades. Realizing that opinions will vary from the need for heavy moderation to the need for no moderation whatsoever, I'd like for this to be the result of defining the community standards. But let's discuss in a different topic. If outright deletion is offensive, then maybe a special board for trolling and attacking is called for, where such posts could be moved.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1100&start=0#p6112
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: How to cope with racist issues in the forum?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-05-12 08:13:59

I've posted some additional thoughts here:
<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=1096">viewtopic.php?f=27&t=1096</a>

As for coping with racist issues, I've seen no racist issues here. The only thing I've seen, Emilian, is you claiming that there are. So that's kind of a separate matter at this point.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1100&start=0#p6113
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: How to cope with racist issues in the forum?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-05-12 08:14:56

The post I'd written here is now at <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=1096&p=6114#p6114">viewtopic.php?f=27&t=1096&p=6114#p6114</a>, a much better place for it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=30#p6119
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: Alcibiades / DateTime: 2010-05-12 08:54:01

[quote="RealNC"]People are not born being familiar with C++ coding [emote]:P[/emote] It's not forbidding to anyone. Such a claim is just wrong.[/quote]
People are not born familiar with Shakespeare or Quantum Mechanics. Therefore they are "not forbidding to anyone"?  Such a claim is just fatuous.

[quote]You're in for a quite a surprise [emote];)[/emote][/quote]
Do I detect a hint of schadenfreude? The objective (I would have assumed) is to produce good, innovative and stimulating new "IF" - the means to that end is secondary. Turf wars between alternate browsers, mpg players or parser languages is a bit too adolescent.

I don't want to embroil myself in a quarrel about syntax and coding semantics. You will just have to take my word for it that many of the conventions TADS employs are counter-intuitive even to those familiar with this kind of program writing. You guys are comfortable with the language and that's perfectly fine.  I would have liked to use it. I just don't want to divert 12 months into learning C++ (or any other language) before I can grapple with TADS. User friendliness is still a good benchmark to aim for.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1100&start=0#p6124
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: How to cope with racist issues in the forum?
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-05-12 09:17:21

[quote="Peter Pears"]Again, I don't believe deleting is the answer.[/quote]

I can neither agree nor disagree with that statement, because I know that forum administrators usually decide themselves how to act in situations like these where postings are being reported. This is their exclusive right which we, as the forum users, may have an opinion about but have no influence on.

[quote="Merk"]Some members privately objected to the post, and so it was deleted.[/quote]

Ah okay, I've just clicked on the topic again and noticed that you deleted Aina Grey's post. Thanks for the alertness, Merk.

[quote]I can take somebody telling me off. Wouldn't be the first time. But the post in question was a red-faced tirade that crossed the line into being a personal threat.[/quote]

I think you did what you decided was the best solution for maintaining order on your forum. I would probably have done the same on my forum if I had to decide in a similar situation.

[quote]As for coping with racist issues, I've seen no racist issues here. The only thing I've seen, Emilian, is you claiming that there are. So that's kind of a separate matter at this point. [/quote]

Aina Grey called you a "subhuman". When someone calls you a "subhuman" then it's no racist issue to you? That's odd, because I know people who would be very upset if someone called them "subhumans". For example, if someone called a group of Jews "subhumans" in a public forum then this someone would had to face some dire consequences, such as deletion or suspension from the forum. But who am I to tell you what is racist and what not. As I told Peter Pears, as the board adminstrator you usually have the exclusive power to decide how to respond to a specific action on your forum. You did what you had to do and deleted Aina Grey's post. The motives behind your action, frankly don't matter to me, as the outcome remains the same for me. Why should I complain how you judged the situation after all?

[quote]I've posted some additional thoughts here:
viewtopic.php?f=27&t=1096[/quote]

Alright, I'm going to read your thoughts and/or comment in the other topic now...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1100&start=0#p6128
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: How to cope with racist issues in the forum?
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-05-12 10:14:22

[quote="Retro"]Aina Grey called you a "subhuman".[/quote]

There's a larger point. Even if there was a racist posting, creating a new topic called "How to cope with racist issues in the forum?" is an inappropriate response. If you think someone is out of line, that's what the "report this post" is for...to notify the admin that someone is out of line.

I think most people see that title and are psychological put-off.

I would prefer this topic be moved and renamed to "Issues with name-calling on the forums" or something more appropriate.

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1077&start=10#p6131
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Considerations for CYOA XML file format
User: Rudism / DateTime: 2010-05-12 10:27:58

I have started working on an authoring tool to read and save stories in INML format, and have already come across a few deficiencies in the initial specification (for anyone who is interested in following my progress):

Since a Scene's id attribute is defined as an XML ID in the DTD, it must conform to certain rules (essentially it must be a valid XML node descriptor) which is not very friendly to human authors (more prone to auto-generation by authoring tools). Because of this, I've added a "name" attribute to Scene elements which would be a human-friendly short description of the scene. This value would never actually be displayed to a reader of the story, but would rather be used by authoring tools to allow the author to label scenes.

I've also decided to disallow HTML formatting for Prompt and Choice elements (only for Description elements). My main reasoning behind this is that the Choices are essentially hyperlinks, so allowing the author to place his own conflicting hyperlinks and other HTML elements in the choice option could pose problems when rendering them to a reader.

Another thing I am currently considering is a way to allow the author to specify page breaks within a Scene Description while keeping away from the added complexity of multiple Description elements within a scene. My first thought is some kind of control character or string like \p or \clear, but I don't particularly like that very much either. Anyone have any thoughts on how that could be achieved elegantly?

--edit: I actually came up with an idea I like better, which is to allow a <PageBreakSeq> element in the Meta section, where the author/authoring program could specify its own escape or character sequence that represents page breaks within the Description elements, thus allowing for page breaks while shifting the onus of coming up with a viable system to include them out of the specification itself.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1097&start=0#p6135
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Waiting and Whining
User: Roger / DateTime: 2010-05-12 13:03:20

A thread for whining while we wait for the latest release of a Popular Authoring System.

I'll start it off:  ennnnhhhhhhgggggrrrrggggnnnnnn


Cheers,
Roger

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1098&start=0#p6139
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Looking for writer / designer of graphical adventure game
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-05-12 14:03:47

As the title says, I'm looking for someone to write and design my next point and click adventure game. More details here: <a class="postlink" href="http://trumgottist.com/2010/05/12/whats-next/">http://trumgottist.com/2010/05/12/whats-next/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=30#p6141
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-05-12 15:05:03

You're still wrong: you don't need to learn C++ fist, nor Java. Nor Pascal. Or BASIC. Or...

You only need to learn TADS 3. Just because T3's language is somewhat similar to other languages, it does not mean you have to go and learn them first. It also does not mean that the learning curve is the same as those other languages. Compared to C++ for example, TADS 3 is pretty much a trivial child's play.

It's interesting how you interpreted my response as schadenfreude, btw. It was a remark about I7's fuzzy language where getting the right syntax can be more difficult, especially since it can allow the syntax but might not behave as you intended (which is worse than spitting out an error right away.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1097&start=0#p6144
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Waiting and Whining
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-05-12 16:08:40

Jeez, calm down. Erasmatron will be ported to the Palm 3 soon enough without you complaining about it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1092&start=0#p6149
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: NodeScript.NINI - alternative & self-explanatory CYOA fo
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-05-12 17:18:02

The NINI version of the Demoroom example will be more helpful for learning Node-X than the NX version.  I have a feeling that the new format will catch on, but the smaller file size might make the NX script style worthwhile for users who are fluent with all the Node types, etc.  At any rate, it's good to have choices (heh, no pun intended [emote];)[/emote] ),

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1077&start=10#p6150
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Considerations for CYOA XML file format
User: George / DateTime: 2010-05-12 17:19:14

A page break seems pretty fundamental though, wouldn't you want that in the spec?

With regard to styling links -- I guess that raises the question of styling in general, are you allowing authors to write a CSS file or something like that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1097&start=0#p6151
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Waiting and Whining
User: George / DateTime: 2010-05-12 17:34:12

Yeah, sorry guys, I've been kind of slacking on this. I only have 6500 more verbs to add to the Knowledge Tree though, so I'm thinking by next Wednesday we'll have Balance of Power 4.0 running smoothly on Palm OS and Android 2.0.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=30#p6152
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: Alcibiades / DateTime: 2010-05-12 17:36:41

[quote="RealNC"]You're still wrong.... [/quote]
You must get out of the habit of announcing that people who think differently from you are "wrong".  Learn to disagree with good grace.

[quote]It's interesting how you interpreted my response as schadenfreude, btw. It was a remark about I7's fuzzy language where getting the right syntax can be more difficult, especially since it can allow the syntax but might not behave as you intended (which is worse than spitting out an error right away.) [/quote]
That's another matter, and the proof of the pudding will be, and so forth. Maybe in a few months time I will be speaking harshly of the clunky semantics of I7. For the time being I just want to get on with cooking, without having to hunt all over the kitchen for the garlic press and cheese grater.

A few days back I observed - "By the bye, every single time I have tried to log out from this site, the logout button crashes (in Safari). I'm assuming I can't be the only one to trip in this way on leaving the board.  Just FYI."

And that is still the case.  Clunkiness comes in all shapes and sizes, I guess.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1097&start=0#p6153
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Waiting and Whining
User: Roger / DateTime: 2010-05-12 17:55:28

But I neeeeeeeeeeeed it.

This Tom Petty song isn't helping AT ALL.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=424&start=0#p6155
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: TADS 2 game in production
User: Alcibiades / DateTime: 2010-05-12 18:04:30

Not sure if this comment will be much help to you, but to my mind one of the crucial first choices when writing this kind of game is to decide on a "voice" - a style of language in which the game will interact with the player. Since "IF" is a kind of extended conversation, rather than a broadcast in the radio or TV sense, the voice in which you speak to the player dictates the whole mood and tone of the game.

In another room I mentioned writing a TADS game a few years back where the primary setting was a stranded pirate ship.  Regardless of the puzzles or plot trajectories, the primary hook of the game was that every description, every response to a player instruction, came in a thick Long John Silverrrrr drawl which (I hoped) would keep the player amused even when he was making little actual progress.  The voice dictated many of the objects and situations I wove into the story.

So to your own project I'd say, pick your metier and hook it onto a film type. Are you writing an Indiana Jones style story?  A "Heart of Darkness" story? A "Mosquito Coast"?  Once you can see it in those terms a voice will probably suggest itself to you.  The trick (and I'm certainly no expert in this genre, just an interested outsider) is only half what happens in your story - what the player sees and does.  The other half is how those things are told to him.  A lot of "IF" is very bland and generic, precisely because it lacks an individualised voice.

An SF game where the narrator is a Dalek, or Yoda, or Spock, will be far more entertaining than any standardised "you are in", "you can see" line of commentary.

Just my two pence worth (but they still buy more than two cents).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=30#p6156
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-05-12 18:28:17

[quote="Alcibiades"][quote="RealNC"]You're still wrong.... [/quote]
You must get out of the habit of announcing that people who think differently from you are "wrong".  Learn to disagree with good grace.[/quote]
I sense some form of negativity or hostility here. I'm not trying to step on your toes. I'm only trying to make it clear that "TADS equals C++" is false. Other people read these posts and they will get the wrong idea when they read that. This is what "you're still wrong" refers to.

[quote]A few days back I observed - "By the bye, every single time I have tried to log out from this site, the logout button crashes (in Safari). I'm assuming I can't be the only one to trip in this way on leaving the board.  Just FYI."[/quote]
I guess you can report that in the "Feedback" section. Note that you don't need to actually logout of the forum. It happens automatically if you're idle for a few minutes. (Unless of course you're using a public computer, where manually logging out is a good idea.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1099&start=0#p6157
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Early Glitches
User: Alcibiades / DateTime: 2010-05-12 18:37:56

Just starting to convert a game that I was initially constructing (or trying to) in TADS3. Inform7 (and its documentation) looks so much more inviting and user-friendly, but it will not be without its hiccups at the start.

For example, I have not properly understood the syntax of definition. I attempted to give you/the player a proper name, but this was rejected (I was trying to say "Tarzan is Jane", the compiler tells me). I have attempted to define new classes or types of person, but those too are rejected. I wanted the game (for one example) to differentiate between adult and child NPCs, but this presumably involves defining a class in the hierarchy between "person" and "man/woman" to be "adult".  There may be a bolt-on which does the work for me, but it would be helpful to know how to make my class definitions stand up.

Is there some special syntax to force a para break in long descriptive texts?  

From the documentation I've read thus far, it seems the parser doesn't require every valid exit to be explicitly defined for every room (as in TADS). If X is East from Y, that implies Y is West from X.  Am I right in that assumption?

With your forbearance, I will keep all my early head-scratching queries to this one thread.  I7 looks terrific at first and second sight (for the writer), but I have yet to make my first rock cakes with it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=30#p6158
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: Alcibiades / DateTime: 2010-05-12 18:49:22

Hmm.  I did think of posting a few illustrations clipped verbatim from the TADS Guide - curly braces galore - to demonstrate how the syntax to accomplish a fairly simple check/enable sequence would be baffling to lesser mortals.  Counter-intuitive was the polite way I put it. But there would be little sense my posting examples to prove the point, when those scanning this thread are overwhelmingly those who are familiar and comfortable with the syntax.  

There are people in the world who do not speak Mandarin.  It seems easy enough to those who speak it. QED.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1099&start=0#p6160
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Early Glitches
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-05-12 19:05:21

[quote="Alcibiades"]I have not properly understood the syntax of definition. I attempted to give you/the player a proper name, but this was rejected (I was trying to say "Tarzan is Jane", the compiler tells me).[/quote]

Had you previously defined the person you were trying to equate with the player? If you wrote, for instance, "Jane is a woman. The player is Jane." -- that ought to work, because then the compiler knows what Jane is. (If on the other hand you wrote "Yourself is Jane" or "Jane is yourself", that will *not* work, because "yourself" is a specific object created by default by Inform if you don't give it some other object to be the player. In programming terms, "player" is a variable and "yourself" is the object that is the default setting of that variable.)

[quote]I wanted the game (for one example) to differentiate between adult and child NPCs, but this presumably involves defining a class in the hierarchy between "person" and "man/woman" to be "adult".[/quote]

In the currently public version of Inform, it is not possible to add kinds to intermediate spots in the pre-defined kind tree. That's about to change, though: in the new release you'll be able to do that by writing "An adult is a kind of person. A man is a kind of adult. A woman is a kind of adult." -- and the "adult" class will be sandwiched in.

[quote]Is there some special syntax to force a para break in long descriptive texts?[/quote]

"[paragraph break]". [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote]From the documentation I've read thus far, it seems the parser doesn't require every valid exit to be explicitly defined for every room (as in TADS). If X is East from Y, that implies Y is West from X.  Am I right in that assumption?[/quote]

Yes. You can override that assumption if you need to (e.g. by explicitly writing "Y is west from nothing" or "Y is west from Z", but otherwise, all directions are reciprocal.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=30#p6161
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-12 19:27:41

My general observation about I7's syntax is similar to RealNC's observation, but the way I usually put it is this:

The learning curve for T3 is convex. The learning curve for I7 is concave.

That is, I7 initially appears much easier ... and in some ways it is. But as you begin trying to do more complex things, you'll find that you're grappling with fuzzy syntax and a multi-layered system (I7 being built atop I6). In T3, it's kind of the other way around. Initially it appears quite daunting, but as you begin to learn your way around, it actually gets easier.

Each language is right for some people. No one can tell you what's right for you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=424&start=0#p6162
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: TADS 2 game in production
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-05-12 19:31:59

[quote="Alcibiades"]In another room I mentioned writing a TADS game a few years back where the primary setting was a stranded pirate ship.  Regardless of the puzzles or plot trajectories, the primary hook of the game was that every description, every response to a player instruction, came in a thick Long John Silverrrrr drawl which (I hoped) would keep the player amused even when he was making little actual progress.  The voice dictated many of the objects and situations I wove into the story.[/quote]

I agree that voice can be important, though it's not usually elevated to the level of crucial.  In fact, many IF games are quite content to leave the default, neutral second person voice in place.

You have only to look at [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=uwnfzme9h7jmoeaz]Yon Astounding Castle![/url] to see that a distinctive voice can be a significant barrier for many players.  Done poorly, it can compound the frustration of dealing with the parser: not only do you not know what to do next, you can't even be sure that responses are meaningful and not a clever joke at your expense.

[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=t6lk8c2wktxjnod6]Shelter from the Storm[/url] presents the player with a choice of voices, in what I thought was a fairly successful way.  To an extent, this also argues against prioritizing voice as a concern: because the game works even without a consistent voice, it suggests that its merits lie elsewhere.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=30#p6163
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-05-12 19:37:21

[quote="Alcibiades"]Hmm.  I did think of posting a few illustrations clipped verbatim from the TADS Guide - curly braces galore[/quote]
The braces allow you to tell where code begins and ends without actually having to even read that code. And since braces are symbols rather than words, they make begin-end code blocks visually more apparent. This is a tremendous help and allows for better visualizing code structure (again, without having to actually read the code.)

This of course assumes the user is not visually impaired.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=30#p6164
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 on the Mac OSX
User: George / DateTime: 2010-05-12 19:52:28

[quote="Alcibiades"]Hmm.  I did think of posting a few illustrations clipped verbatim from the TADS Guide - curly braces galore - to demonstrate how the syntax to accomplish a fairly simple check/enable sequence would be baffling to lesser mortals.  Counter-intuitive was the polite way I put it. But there would be little sense my posting examples to prove the point, when those scanning this thread are overwhelmingly those who are familiar and comfortable with the syntax.  [/quote]

While I'm familiar with T3 syntax, I'd still be interested in such illustrations if you have the time and inclination to post them. One of the problems I think in developing IF systems is that the people who develop them don't have that beginner's perspective most of the time. 

On the other hand, there's always a period of getting to grips with a new skill, whether you're learning syntax, hand-eye movements, or whatever. I agree that I7 is successful in making this transition a little easier.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1077&start=10#p6166
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Considerations for CYOA XML file format
User: Rudism / DateTime: 2010-05-12 20:42:05

[quote="George"]A page break seems pretty fundamental though, wouldn't you want that in the spec?

With regard to styling links -- I guess that raises the question of styling in general, are you allowing authors to write a CSS file or something like that?[/quote]

Well, the spec now supports page breaks, while leaving implementation details (ie, how to represent a pagebreak in the content) up to the individual story. I think flexibility is better than defining a standard in this situation, since picking some arbitrary universal way to represent a pagebreak (for example "***") could interfere with an author's content (in this example, if they wanted to use the string "***" in their story without representing a pagebreak). This way, they can specify their own pagebreak string and guarantee that there won't be parts of the story that will be incorrectly interpreted.

As for styling, CSS is definitely a possibility for HTML formatted stories (either through inline <style> tags or including an external stylesheet when exporting to HTML format--or any format that inherently supports HTML). In the case of prompts and choices, it would likely be styled as a generic template, as opposed to individually styling each prompt and choice (which is part of my thinking behind disallowing HTML formatting in that content--the other more important part is that wrapping an <a> tag around arbitrary author-generated HTML code will break in a lot of situations, and detecting/managing that could become nightmarish).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1097&start=0#p6168
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Waiting and Whining
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-05-12 22:14:36

I happen to have Inside Information that the delay is only caused by the addition of more Awesomeness. Can't say more - NDA - but just wait till you see it!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1010&start=0#p6169
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Pictures from PAX East IF community gathering
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-05-12 22:41:17

And mine:

<a class="postlink" href="http://picasaweb.google.com/david.cornelson/PAXEast#">http://picasaweb.google.com/david.cornelson/PAXEast#</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://picasaweb.google.com/david.cornelson/Imps#5453200129112234386">http://picasaweb.google.com/david.corne ... 9112234386</a>

And video:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMjZdByphrE">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMjZdByphrE</a>

David C.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1097&start=0#p6170
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Waiting and Whining
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-05-12 22:52:10

I hear Inform 8 will have 3D capabilities.

DC

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1099&start=0#p6171
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Early Glitches
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2010-05-13 05:50:00

[quote="emshort"][quote="Alcibiades"]
I wanted the game (for one example) to differentiate between adult and child NPCs, but this presumably involves defining a class in the hierarchy between "person" and "man/woman" to be "adult".[/quote]

In the currently public version of Inform, it is not possible to add kinds to intermediate spots in the pre-defined kind tree. That's about to change, though: in the new release you'll be able to do that by writing "An adult is a kind of person. A man is a kind of adult. A woman is a kind of adult." -- and the "adult" class will be sandwiched in.
[/quote]

Note that in the interim, you could always just say "An adult is a kind of person," and use the "male" and "female" properties to differentiate between sexes -- so, "Tarzan is a male adult. Jane is a female adult."

Of course -- assuming all is going well -- "the interim" is only going to be a few more weeks at the most.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1100&start=0#p6174
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: How to cope with racist issues in the forum?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-05-13 07:15:26

Well, that didn't work. I created a new topic called [color=#0000FF]Archived: "How to cope with..." topic[/color], added a header giving the original topic title, the current status (archived/locked), and the reasons why. Then I merged the two topics, thinking my new post would appear first. No such luck; it was last.

I agree with you that to new users or those not following the discussion, the topic alone is misleading and seems to state a fact that wasn't really true. Hopefully, though, anybody with a concern over racism will catch up rather than taking the topic title at face value. But I [i]did[/i] put the re-posted quote in a "rant" tag.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1099&start=0#p6177
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Early Glitches
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-05-13 08:11:22

[quote="Michael Gentry"][quote="emshort"][quote="Alcibiades"]
I wanted the game (for one example) to differentiate between adult and child NPCs, but this presumably involves defining a class in the hierarchy between "person" and "man/woman" to be "adult".[/quote]
In the currently public version of Inform, it is not possible to add kinds to intermediate spots in the pre-defined kind tree. That's about to change, though: in the new release you'll be able to do that by writing "An adult is a kind of person. A man is a kind of adult. A woman is a kind of adult." -- and the "adult" class will be sandwiched in.
[/quote]
Note that in the interim, you could always just say "An adult is a kind of person," and use the "male" and "female" properties to differentiate between sexes -- so, "Tarzan is a male adult. Jane is a female adult."[/quote]
Or you could create a property: A person is either adult or child. Tarzan is an adult man. Jane is an adult woman.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1101&start=0#p6193
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Seattle IF meet-up this Saturday the 15th at 3:30 PM
User: George / DateTime: 2010-05-13 21:19:27

hi, hope no one minds this crosspost from RAIF/RGIF, but perhaps there are some lurkers here who don't read the newsgroups:

The Seattle IF group meets this Saturday the 15th at 3:30 PM, and all are invited. Our building is at the University of Washington, in the Health Sciences Building F.

<a class="postlink" href="http://bit.ly/Seattle-IF-HQ">http://bit.ly/Seattle-IF-HQ</a>

Last month about 15 people attended, and you can read the minutes:

<a class="postlink" href="http://bit.ly/SEAIF-April-minutes">http://bit.ly/SEAIF-April-minutes</a>

In the spirit of Seattle IF our agenda is usually up in the air. There are many TWIFComp games to play. Feel free to come with more ideas for games to play on the projector, your own IF work to discuss, or questions about anything in the greater IF world as well. 

A more detailed map with our building marked as I Court is here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://bit.ly/I-Court">http://bit.ly/I-Court</a>

The doors are locked, but someone inside will let you in. 

And for the May meeting mailing list thread, go here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://bit.ly/9zjK6Q">http://bit.ly/9zjK6Q</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1103&start=0#p6195
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: checking if a player has visited every room in a region
User: killgoblin / DateTime: 2010-05-14 04:33:43

How do you check to see if a player has visited every room in a region?

The code below doesn't throw up any errors but doesn't work either and the player doesn't receive the message when all grottoes have been visited.

[code]Grottoes is a region.
Damp Grotto and Dank Grotto and Dripping Grotto and Flooded Grotto and Slimy Grotto are in Grottoes.

Spelunking is a scene.
Spelunking begins when player has been enclosed by every room in Grottoes.
When Spelunking begins: say "You've explored all the grottoes there are to discover now."[/code]

Help appreciated, thank you.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1103&start=0#p6196
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: checking if a player has visited every room in a region
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-05-14 06:46:56

Try: Spelunking begins when every room in Grottoes is visited.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1103&start=0#p6197
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: checking if a player has visited every room in a region
User: killgoblin / DateTime: 2010-05-14 07:11:09

That works, cheers!

I was trying to work the player into the coding as I've a wandering troglodyte and didn't want it to print the message when the troglodyte had visited all the grottoes but that coding only relates to the player.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1104&start=0#p6198
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: SUDS??
User: RacingDog / DateTime: 2010-05-14 10:34:23

So I found SUDS. I installed it and went through the Tutorials and thereby created the example game, (correcting the odd typo in the process). I have to see this has to be one of the most user friendly systems going. What a shame then that there are only a handful of published games and no apparent activity on the game's home forum, and no response to e-mails.

Does anyone know the current maintainer? Can you find out what the situation is? It would be a shame if such a good system died. Perhaps if there was a rash of SUDS games published on the SUDS site it could all be kicked started again.

Anyone else like the system?

The only thing I found was a slight instability in that the occasional spurious internal error would be reported. But this could be cured by an occassional re-install, which is thankfully quick to happen.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1104&start=0#p6199
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: SUDS??
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-05-14 11:20:27

The thing about SUDS is that, in Andy Elliot's time, it was just as powerful and versatile as the current version - but without some of the hindrances the current version has. For instance, the text parser (as opposed to the point and click mode) isn't exactly top notch, and never feels as natural as a real parser. There are tons of icons for verbs - the icons are somewhat cartoony, and it's not always easy to understand what they're for, and there's just so MANY of them, it's unwieldy. It used to be five or six. 

The REAL deal-breaker with the current version of SUDS, though, is that every object you implement as being available for interaction, even if it's just scenery, gets its own line. If you write "You are in a garden by a large orchard" as a room description and implement an object called "orchard", it will read "You are in a garden by a large orchard. There is an orchard here." And there's no way around this.

Also, this is just me... I found that in Andy Elliot's time, SUDS was a more serious project. Looking at it now feels as though someone found it, liked it, and tried to enhance it willy-nilly without really thinking things through. The rather over-enthusiastic tone I see on the present website is simply a far cry from the sober discourse of Andy Elliot. Even though, to be fair, the core of SUDS seems unchanged.

Now that THAT's out of the way... what I remember from Elliot's system (which I actually registered) is that it was powerful, versatile, and came with a wonderful tutorial and very interesting thoughts on game design, ideal for beginners.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1104&start=0#p6200
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: SUDS??
User: RacingDog / DateTime: 2010-05-14 12:00:20

Hmmm. I see.

Well then, may I ask what is the closest alternative in your view?

As not much seems to be happening at the moment, I wonder if he would consider passing on the sources? Which comes back to my other question,  is anyone in contact with the maintainer?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1103&start=0#p6201
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: checking if a player has visited every room in a region
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-05-14 12:29:39

[quote="killgoblin"]How do you check to see if a player has visited every room in a region?

The code below doesn't throw up any errors but doesn't work either and the player doesn't receive the message when all grottoes have been visited.

[code]Grottoes is a region.
Damp Grotto and Dank Grotto and Dripping Grotto and Flooded Grotto and Slimy Grotto are in Grottoes.

Spelunking is a scene.
Spelunking begins when player has been enclosed by every room in Grottoes.
When Spelunking begins: say "You've explored all the grottoes there are to discover now."[/code]

Help appreciated, thank you.[/quote]

I believe the reason that your original code doesn't work is that it tests to see whether the player has ever been enclosed by every grotto at once. (From 9.13 of the documentation: "the present perfect: 'if X has been Y ...' is true if it has ever been the case that "X is Y" at the start of any turn (or any action).") So it doesn't act the way it would idiomatically act in English. 

Is there any way to get tenses to accomplish something like what killgoblin wants to accomplish, or do we have to use flags like "visited"? Something like this will work:

[code]Chairatorium is a room.
A chair is a kind of supporter. A chair is enterable. A chair can be sat-on. A chair is usually not sat-on.
The blue chair, the yellow chair, the red chair, and the green chair are chairs in chairatorium.
Musical Chairs is a scene. Musical Chairs begins when every chair is sat-on.
When Musical Chairs begins:
	say "Music begins to play."
Every turn when the player is enclosed by a chair (called the seat):
	now the seat is sat-on.[/code]

but I had to set the "sat-on" flag myself, with the "every turn" rule. (I used "every turn" instead of "after entering" to cover hypothetical cases in which a different rule moves the player to the chair.) Is there a way to do this without setting a flag manually, if it's not a case like Juhana's, where the "visited" flag is automatically set?

[This post has been edited, because the first time it posted it didn't actually include any of the stuff I wrote -- automatic logout follies.]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1104&start=0#p6202
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: SUDS??
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-05-14 18:05:51

In my view? Well, I know of no similar point-and-click tool for creating IF games that isn't commercial - ADRIFT, RAGS and QUEST, and there're probably others but these spring to mind. Frankly, having tried ADRIFT for a long time and having looked at RAGS and QUEST *and* the userbase and games that have been made with them... none of these three seem worth the price of registration, at least for me (opinions may vary), though ADRIFT is, by far, the worthiest of the three.

For ease of use and power, I have settled on AGS for graphical games and Inform 7 for interactive fiction. I7 may not be point-and-click programming as SUDS is, but with all the extensions which even allow for automapping, it does everything SUDS does and more (as it should, it's been around longer). The documentation is, game-design-wise, also very interesting. And it's remarkably easy to learn and use.

Regarding the sources, I'm not sure he'd be willing - the new maintainer seems very fond of SUDS and what he added to it, even if he seems to be lacking in maintenance lately. Nevertheless, you could always ask... but short of asking in the forums, I don't really know how. Maybe if you try taking a look in the documentation (which I believe is still largely written by Elliot, but it must have some differences?...), or in the games Matt released himself?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1105&start=0#p6203
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: using the player sleeping during a scene to trigger
User: sqib / DateTime: 2010-05-14 22:20:04

the start of a new scene.

so if  there is a scene called   day 1 late night. that ends when the new scene begins.

and a location called  "your bedroom"

how would you word it to have the scene end when you sleep in that location during that scene?

compiler seems to be a lil fussy atm.

heres is some applicable code:

check sleeping:
	if the player is not in your bedroom:
		say "You cant just sleep anywhere, better off heading to your bed.";
	stop the action.

The block sleeping rule is not listed in any rulebook.

day 2 morning is a scene.
day 2 morning begins when the player sleeps during day 1 late night.

which gives this output:

Problem. In the sentence 'day 2 morning begins when the player sleeps during day 1 late night'  , I was expecting to read a condition, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'the player sleeps during day 1 late night'.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem. You wrote 'day 2 morning begins when the player sleeps during day 1 late night'  : but 'begins when' and 'ends when' must be followed by a condition, which this does not seem to be.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1106&start=0#p6204
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: TADS Q - Examine Afteraction
User: Xiphos / DateTime: 2010-05-15 02:09:25

Hi all,
hopefully this is the right place to ask this sort of question..
I'm writing an adventure where the Player has a special ability to change certain game objects into alternate versions (eg. light to dark). And so far, it's been fine for normal Thing objects where I hide the old object and show the new one using the sightPresence attribute.
However, it hasn't been going so well for roomParts. 
So I have a roomPart (a ceiling) that is initially invisible (I used sightPresence = false).
Then when I perform another action, it makes this object (the dark ceiling) visible and hides the existing ceiling (the light ceiling).
Up to here, things work..
However, the dark ceiling is a special case in that as soon as it's examined, it needs to become invisible again and the light ceiling replaces it (Player did not have enough power to transform the light ceiling permanently).

Here's my code - TADS won't allow it to compile unless I remove the sightPresence = false; statement.
[code]darkCeiling: RoomPart 'dark ceiling' 'dark ceiling'
    "The ceiling is now clear glass.  You can make out a figure above. Are they watching you? The rather 
            hideous lion mask they are wearing makes it hard to tell. But before you can get a better look, 
        the ceiling shimmers and frosts over. "
    sightPresence = false;
    dobjFor(Examine)
    {
        afterAction()
        {
            inherited();
            sightPresence = false;
            lightCeiling.sightPresence = true;
        }
    }
[/code]

Am I going about this the right way?

It seems TADS doesn't think that I can examine the invisible ceiling in it's declaration (even though I can change that attribute in another object's actions)

This is in TADS 3 by the way.

Any advice welcome! [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1105&start=0#p6205
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: using the player sleeping during a scene to trigger
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-05-15 02:13:17

Scenes can't be triggered by player action directly, only by a state change. I've used an awake/asleep property below:

[code]A person can be asleep or awake. A person is usually awake.

The block sleeping rule is not listed in any rulebook.

check sleeping when the player is not in your bedroom:
	say "You cant just sleep anywhere, better off heading to your bed.";
	stop the action.

Carry out sleeping:
	now the player is asleep.
	
Report sleeping:
	say "You go to sleep."

Day 1 late night ends when the player is asleep.

day 2 morning is a scene. day 2 morning begins when day 1 late night ends.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1107&start=0#p6206
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Three Extensions for TADS 3 released
User: lukematt / DateTime: 2010-05-15 03:06:35

[i]Playing Cards for TADS 3[/i]

This extension to TADS 3 allows a programmer to work with a standard deck of 52 playing cards.  Classes include Card_In_Hand, Hand_of_Cards, and Deck_of_Cards.  Functions include “shuffleSound”.  The .zip download file also provides a simple game of “War” as an example.


[i]Playing Cards for TADS 3[/i] is now available for downloading at this URL (678.4 Kb):

[url]http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/10/13/2140959/Playing%20Cards/Playing%20Cards.zip[/url]

======================================================================

[i]Subtitles Processing for TADS 3[/i]

This extension to TADS 3 allows a programmer to work with a subtitles file.  In version 1 of [i]Subtitles Processing for TADS 3[/i], SubRip (.srt) files are supported.


[i]Subtitles Processing for TADS 3[/i] is now available for downloading at this URL (49.4 Kb):

[url]http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/10/13/2140959/Subtitles%20Processing/Subtitles%20Processing.zip[/url]

======================================================================

[i][u]Virtual[/u] Maze Generator for TADS 3[/i] (version 2)

Version 2 includes these new features:

[list]
[*]‘msolve’ command in the TADS 3 component displays a map of the entire maze, including your current position, the location of the maze's exit, and [b][color=red]the solution path[/color][/b];
[/*:m]
[*]Ability to create user-defined motifs in the TADS 3 component.  The .zip download file provides three examples—cityStreetsMaze, mountainMaze, underworldMaze;
[/*:m]
[*]‘graphicsDisplayMaze’ property in the TADS 3 component allows the player to display a map of the maze that is composed of graphics images or ASCII characters;
[/*:m]
[*]Similarly, the Java component now provides two commands to display a generated maze with ASCII characters or with 2D graphics.[/*:m][/list:u]


The [u]Virtual[/u] Maze Generator (version 2) is available for downloading at this URL (578.6 Kb):

[url]http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/10/13/2140959/Maze%20Generator/Maze%20Generator.zip[/url]


======================================================================

Jeff Bowyer
<a href="mailto:JeffBowyer@seznam.cz">JeffBowyer@seznam.cz</a>

(After “beta testing”, I will upload these extensions to the IF archive.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1106&start=0#p6207
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS Q - Examine Afteraction
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-05-15 03:45:20

(Btw, it's better if you write code using code tags.)

Normally, when you need to swap an object for another one, you don't mess with sight (or other senses) but simply put one object out of scope entirely and bring the other in. The easiest and probably safest way to put an object out of scope is to move it to the 'nil' location. This needs to happen with the help of the baseMoveInto() method, since that method makes sure not to trigger any travel side-effects (you don't want side-effects since you effectively need to make an object just disappear without any other objects noticing.) To replace the light ceiling with the dark ceiling, you would do:

[code]
  lightCeiling.baseMoveInto(nil);  // Remove the light ceiling from play.
  darkCeiling.baseMoveInto(kitchenRoom); // Replace it with the dark ceiling.
[/code]
Normally, that would be enough. However, since the ceilings are RoomPart objects, there's two additional methods that need to be called: moveOutOf() for removing a RoomPart from its location, and moveIntoAdd() for adding a RoomPart to a location (I discovered those two methods while looking at the RoomPart definition in travel.t.) So the correct procedure for RoomParts is:

[code]
  lightCeiling.moveOutOf(kitchenRoom); // Not a part of the kitchen room anymore.
  lightCeiling.baseMoveInto(nil);  // Remove the light ceiling from play.
  darkCeiling.baseMoveInto(kitchenRoom); // Put the dark ceiling into the kitchen.
  darkCeiling.moveIntoAdd(kitchenRoom); // Make it a part of the kitchen.
[/code]
And vice versa when you need to swap them again. The darkCeiling needs to have an initial 'location' of nil. When you define the darkCeiling:

[code]
  darkCeiling: RoomPart
  // ...
  location = nil
  // ...
[/code]

To make the dark ceiling disappear again when it's examined, you would do the swap in its description:

[code]
  desc()
  {
      "As soon as you raise your head up to look at the ceiling, it disappears in a
      cloud of orange smoke. ";
      // Remove dark ceiling from play.
      darkCeiling.moveOutOf(kitchenRoom);
      darkCeiling.baseMoveInto(nil);

      // Bring the light ceiling back.
      lightCeiling.baseMoveInto(kitchenRoom);
      lightCeiling.moveIntoAdd(kitchenRoom);
  }
[/code]
In this case, you're using 'desc' as a method rather than a property. This is allowed and in fact very useful.

Using the above means you don't need to mess around with sightPresence. Hope that helps.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1106&start=0#p6208
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS Q - Examine Afteraction
User: Xiphos / DateTime: 2010-05-15 03:49:54

thanks! - I knew there had to be something better than just making things hidden. just wasn't sure what. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1107&start=0#p6209
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Three Extensions for TADS 3 released
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-05-15 04:10:47

The SRT extension sounds interesting. What exactly does it do?

Btw, you might want to remove the "Thumbs.db" file from the "Playing Cards" ZIP and to provide a makefile for the example games so people can build them easily. Also, including torrents for warez scene releases in the SRT extension might not be the smartest thing to do [emote]:P[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1107&start=0#p6210
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Three Extensions for TADS 3 released
User: lukematt / DateTime: 2010-05-15 04:47:55

RealNC, thanks for your comments.

[quote="RealNC"]Btw, you might want to remove the "Thumbs.db" file from the "Playing Cards" ZIP[/quote]
Done.

[quote="RealNC"]The SRT extension sounds interesting. What exactly does it do?[/quote]
It initializes a vector with the contents of a SubRip (.srt), one subtitle per element of the vector.  During initialization, it performs some validation on the subtitles.

What to do with the vector?

[list]
[*]I want to see the ideas that other TADS programmers develop for using a subtitles vector;[/*:m]
[*]My idea--IF...interactive film...with TADS as the development system...but it will take time.[/*:m][/list:u]

[quote="RealNC"]Also, including torrents for warez scene releases in the SRT extension might not be the smartest thing to do [emote]:P[/emote][/quote]
Yeah, I thought about it, too.  I came to this conclusion...I wanted to show that [i]Subtitles Processing for TADS 3[/i] has been tested on a real-world SubRip (.srt) file.  The torrent is part of documenting my sources.  Ultimately, a torrent is not piracy.  Using a torrent is.

Thanks again for your comments.

Jeff

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1107&start=0#p6211
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Three Extensions for TADS 3 released
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-05-15 04:53:04

[quote="lukematt"]Ultimately, a torrent is not piracy.  Using a torrent is.[/quote]
That's what Pirate Bay thought too :)

There are .srt subtitles for movies that can be distributed freely, for example [url]http://www.starwreck.com/download_subtitles.php[/url]. That would dodge the moral gray ground of distributing torrents to illegal shares.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1107&start=0#p6212
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Three Extensions for TADS 3 released
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-05-15 05:01:11

I've found a bug in the IMG and SOUND tags. The images are not able to display and the sounds not able to play on Macs and Linux because you're using backslashes ("\") as directory separators. For example, you're generating URLs like "graphics\C4.jpg". This is wrong. URLs need to use forward slashes ("/"), like "graphics/C4.jpg". This is true for every resource, be it images, sounds, or whatever. This is documented here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/htmltads/res.htm#RelativePaths">http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/htmltads/res. ... ativePaths</a>

So instead of URLs like:

[code]"<IMG SRC=\"graphics\\<<BACKDESC>>_back_vertical.jpg\">";[/code]
you need to use:
[code]"<IMG SRC=\"graphics/<<BACKDESC>>_back_vertical.jpg\">";[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1092&start=0#p6213
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: NodeScript.NINI - alternative & self-explanatory CYOA fo
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-05-15 06:34:42

[quote="Bainespal"]I have a feeling that the new format will catch on, but the smaller file size might make the NX script style worthwhile for users who are fluent with all the Node types, etc.[/quote]

Right. NINI is intended for beginners and NX is for advanced users. However, I'm planning to code a little tool with which users can convert between those two formats. So even if you are a beginner you can write your game script in NINI and then convert it to NX with the tool. Or you can convert an existing game script written in NX to NINI in order to better understand it.

As you mentioned, it's about having choices. It's a "Choose Your Own File Format" type thing (no pun intended aswell).  [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1105&start=0#p6214
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: using the player sleeping during a scene to trigger
User: sqib / DateTime: 2010-05-15 09:27:49

ahhh!

thank you Juhana.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1107&start=0#p6215
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Three Extensions for TADS 3 released
User: lukematt / DateTime: 2010-05-15 09:52:58

[quote="RealNC"]The images are not able to display and the sounds not able to play on Macs and Linux[/quote]
Fixed in...

[i]Playing Cards for TADS 3[/i]
[i]Virtual Maze Generator for TADS 3 (version 2)[/i]
and even [i]Frosty the Snow Man[/i]

Not applicable to...

[i]Subtitles Processing for TADS 3[/i]


Thanks RealNC.

Jeff

P.S. Yes, I'm a Windows heathen.  [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1108&start=0#p6219
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Clothing
User: DavidTurner / DateTime: 2010-05-15 12:37:23

I was wondering how i could make a clothing system, so that the player could could wear clothing and then when they examine themselves or look in a mirror, the top layer of clothing is reflected.

I am also trying to work out how to stop the player from wearing multiple items of the same type of clothing. So they cant put on four shirts and five pairs of trousers and so on.

I have managed to construct a very poor implementation of stopping the multiple clothing, but i would prefer something better.

[code]Slot is a kind of value. The slots are head,torso and neck.
Clothing is a kind of thing. Clothing is always wearable. Clothing has a slot.

A necklace is a kind of clothing. The slot of a necklace is neck.
A shirt is a kind of clothing. The slot of clothing is torso.

The collar is a necklace. The collar is in the town. 
The pendant is a necklace. The pendant is worn by the player.

check wearing:
	repeat with item running through things worn by the player:
		if the slot of the noun is the slot of the item:
			try taking off the item;
			if the item is worn by the player, stop the action;
			try wearing the noun instead.
[/code]
Any and all ideas are apprciated.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1108&start=0#p6221
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Clothing
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-05-15 14:32:35

[quote="DavidTurner"]I was wondering how i could make a clothing system, so that the player could could wear clothing and then when they examine themselves or look in a mirror, the top layer of clothing is reflected...

Any and all ideas are apprciated.[/quote]

The documentation provides a couple examples of clothing systems; the most powerful, which I think covers everything you have mentioned wanting, is called "What Not to Wear". You can find it (and the other related examples, and some discussion) in the Recipe Book under the section 	Chapter 9: Props: Food, Clothing, Money, Toys, Books, Electronics > Clothing. See

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rdoc70.html">http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rdoc70.html</a>

if you'd like to look at it online.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=179&start=0#p6223
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Remebering login details?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-05-15 14:49:54

I'm having this problem now. (I think it started with the last upgrade, but I may be mistaken as I didn't visit here that regularly before.)

Safari on Mac, in case it matters, and I visit <a class="postlink" href="http://www.intfiction.org">www.intfiction.org</a> and not any variation of it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=179&start=0#p6224
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Remebering login details?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-05-15 16:32:09

How often is it happening? [i]Everybody[/i] had to log back in two or three days ago after my web host changed physical server hardware (moved to a new facility). If you haven't been by in two or three days and it has only happened once, then that's probably why.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1073&start=0#p6225
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Multimedia TADS for Linux and Mac
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-05-16 01:24:32

A version for PowerPC-based Macs running OS X 10.5 is now available:

<a class="postlink" href="http://qtads.sf.net/snapshots/QTads-ppc-2010-05-16.dmg">http://qtads.sf.net/snapshots/QTads-ppc-2010-05-16.dmg</a>

I don't have a PowerPC Mac, but it seems to run OK with Rosetta on Intel CPUs.  Please feel free to contact me if you come across any weird bugs with it.

(For other systems, see <a class="postlink" href="http://qtads.sf.net/downloads.shtml">http://qtads.sf.net/downloads.shtml</a>).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=179&start=10#p6226
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Remebering login details?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-05-16 03:46:58

Every time. I've tried clearing the intfiction.org cookies, but that made no difference.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1100&start=0#p6227
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: How to cope with racist issues in the forum?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-16 11:15:33

I would certainly have deleted that post. In a nanosecond. But I wouldn't call it even faintly racist. Calling one person "subhuman" is not racist. Calling an entire ethnic group "subhuman" would be racist.

Personally, I'm convinced that Rush Limbaugh is subhuman, but that doesn't mean I dislike or shun white people in general.

The term I usually use when referring to those individuals whom the genetic lottery has not bequeathed a full set of intellectual faculties is "knuckle-dragger." It means the same thing, but it's more graphic.

--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1109&start=0#p6228
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: We tried an IF Writers' Workshop...
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-05-16 17:35:21

At the last PR-IF (Boston) group meetup, Nick Montfort suggested a writers'-workshop event, and we did it this afternoon. This is a quick write-up of the event -- in case anybody else wants to try to organize such a thing.

Summary: it was a good idea.

The ground rules were: it's open to anybody, but you *must* bring an in-progress IF work to show and allow everyone to discuss. (Because, first, everyone will be more open to criticism if they are all engaged at the same level -- everybody is appearing as an IF creator, everyone has something at stake. And second, everyone has a motivation to sit down and get some damn IF code written in the preceding week. :)

We didn't lay out formal "constructive criticism, say something nice" rules, but that was the intent and I think we all stuck to it. We also presumed that what's presented in the group stays in the group -- it's not a public release.

We wound up with seven people and six games (one was a collaboration of two writers). The meet-up lasted three hours, so more or less thirty minutes per work. They were all shortish -- introductory scenes of games -- so it was really about ten minutes of play and twenty minutes of discussion.

We met at a coffeeshop, which was pleasant in terms of muffinry but somewhat cramped in terms of table space. Everyone had laptops etc, but it proved more effective to put the largest laptop at one end of the table and load all the games onto it. (Hint: everyone bring your game on a USB drive.) It would have been even nicer if someone had had an external keyboard, to prevent having to reach across the laptop to type. 

We looked at a little bit of source code for one game, but that was not a big focus of activity. Nor were programming questions -- we talked about interactivity, game design, and prose, not how to do any given thing in I7 or etc.

Everybody came away satisfied and we will try this regularly, probably monthly. Next time we're going to try to grab an MIT room with a screen projector.

A logistical twist of the "you must bring work" rule is that one person can't organize it every month. (Maybe you're working on a giant game and will have more WIP every month for the next year, but I certainly won't. :) So an important step at each meeting, or on a mailing list, is for someone to step up and say "I will be there next month and I will take care of naming a date/time/location."

Does that cover it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1109&start=0#p6229
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: We tried an IF Writers' Workshop...
User: George / DateTime: 2010-05-16 18:09:37

Thanks for the report. I definitely encourage the use of a projector, I think it's been a real plus at the Seattle IF meetings in general and worked great when we workshopped one of our member's games a few months ago.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1109&start=0#p6230
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: We tried an IF Writers' Workshop...
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-05-17 03:40:38

I don't often wish I lived on the other side of the atlantic, you know. It only happens in times like these. Sigh...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1093&start=0#p6231
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Promotional CD and Outreach
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2010-05-17 10:14:42

I would definitely categorize the games and suggest ones to begin with. Despite their historical place, Dungeon or Adventure would be a daunting start for new players.

In terms of permission, I'm certainly happy for you to use my games on the CD, though note that my last name is spelled "Granade".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1093&start=0#p6232
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Promotional CD and Outreach
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-17 10:51:22

If you're going to hand them out at libraries, you should definitely consider putting Varicella (and perhaps one or two others, I haven't played them all) in a "Parental Advisory" folder.

--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1093&start=0#p6233
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Promotional CD and Outreach
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-05-17 11:19:11

[quote="Sargent"]I would definitely categorize the games and suggest ones to begin with. Despite their historical place, Dungeon or Adventure would be a daunting start for new players.

In terms of permission, I'm certainly happy for you to use my games on the CD, though note that my last name is spelled "Granade".[/quote]

Yeah, in typing up that list from the current CD, I find the whole thing daunting. I would want to make a hierarchical menu that starts with the simpler games. The user can drill down into other games as they wish.

Sorry - I swear I double-check your name-spelling all the time and always get it wrong. My bad.

David C.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1110&start=0#p6234
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Domain Specific Languages and IF
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-05-17 11:28:57

I'm one of the insane people in the IF Community who loves the idea of creating a new platform to make IF games. I've been thinking about it for years, if not decades.

One of the concepts that I graviate to is the idea that there are domain specific languages. The current platforms for IF development are all DSL's. The problem I have is that I think IF itself is really multiple DSL's. I believe that a true IF platform would have different DSL's for different aspects of IF development, such as mapping, setting, conversations, npc automation, etc.

Well one of my favorite technical authors is nearing completion of a book about DSL's and I thought everyone should know about it. Martin Fowler is coming out with a book called, you got it, Domain Specific Languages ([url]http://martinfowler.com/dslwip/[/url]), and in the book he breaks down the processes involved in developing a DSL.

The online content will disappear soon, but I think it's worth perusing now if you have time.

David C.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1110&start=0#p6235
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Domain Specific Languages and IF
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-05-17 13:51:26

[quote="DavidC"]I'm one of the insane people in the IF Community who loves the idea of creating a new platform to make IF games. I've been thinking about it for years, if not decades.[/quote]
Hey, who doesn't?

[quote]Well one of my favorite technical authors is nearing completion of a book about DSL's and I thought everyone should know about it. Martfin Fowler is coming out with a book called, you got it, Domain Specific Languages ([url]http://martinfowler.com/dslwip/[/url]), and in the book he breaks down the processes involved in developing a DSL.[/quote]
Here's another book on domain specific languages I read a long time ago: [url=http://www.amazon.com/Constructing-Language-Processors-Little-Languages/dp/0471597546]Constructing Language Processors for Little Languages by Randy Kaplan[/url]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=179&start=10#p6236
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Remebering login details?
User: Mick / DateTime: 2010-05-17 16:57:58

This is a problem I've had quite often myself - only on Safari on my Mac. I have to log in fresh at least once a day.

iPhone works fine, as does my PC at work.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1110&start=0#p6237
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Domain Specific Languages and IF (Mapping IF)
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-05-17 18:46:25

DSL for mapping.

In Inform 7, you create the map of your game by simple declaring rooms and how they relate to each other, as so:

The Kitchen is a room.
The Hall is east of the Kitchen.
The Living Room is south of the Hall.
The Dining Room is north of the Hall.
The Foyer is east of the Hall.

As DSL's go, I can't see how this could be any clearer.

Does anyone think there's a different syntax that declares rooms and their relationships better than Inform 7? Your example doesn't need to come from an existing DSL.

David C.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1093&start=0#p6238
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Promotional CD and Outreach
User: edchicago / DateTime: 2010-05-17 20:26:29

so hey, i'm ed, the guy dave mentioned in an above post.
i'm currently working on a sort of brief pamphlet(or zine, depending on which side of the gap you're on) attempting to act as a sort of manual for the CD in question.  brief history of IF, brief general guide to playing, and maybe some more in-depth stuff on a couple of "intro" games.  maybe couple of annotated transcripts, stuff like that.  the plan is to hand this out at the printer's row book fair in chicago as a sort of first-wave of IF outreach, with a more polished package being made for libraries and suchlike.  

can we divide the games into different sections, and create a menu that doesn't overwhelm the first time user before the book fair?  i'm no techy, so i'm afraid i haven't the faintest where to start with that, but it seems like that's a really good idea.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1110&start=0#p6239
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Domain Specific Languages and IF
User: George / DateTime: 2010-05-17 21:53:34

IMO one thing to think about is whether a DSL necessarily implies you're dealing directly with text. 

Coincidentally I've got more into this stuff recently too, when I talked to a guy at one of the Seattle meet ups who happens to work at [url=http://www.intentsoft.com/]Intentional Software[/url], where they're working on a language workbench. Anyway, the point being that while the I7 syntax is probably as simple as you can go if you're using cardinal directions, I think it's possible a better DSL than I7 wouldn't use text at all. 

About language workbenches...looking back at the original position papers for I7, it seems like the big ideas were to create a natural language-ish IF system, with a book metaphor for the IDE, and using a literate programming methodology. But it seems, maybe just by accident, that the I7 team sort-of created the first language workbench for IF. You can look at the skein, the index, and so on as sort-of DSLs for those problem domains, and real DSLs if their functionality was extended.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1110&start=0#p6240
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Domain Specific Languages and IF
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-05-17 22:57:37

Yes, arguably a graphical mapping tool might be more convenient for some people. I've never really been in favor of it. I don't even really care for the mapping feature in the index of I7. It seems...unnecessary.

And yes, the index, the skein, those are DSL's too.

The one DSL no one has really figured out (at least in my book) is conversations. It's such an awful thing to try to map in text, in grids, in tables, or code. I've often thought that those mind-mapping graphical tools looked close to how conversations might be drawn, but it would have to have controls to alter the view so you can see the conversation branching well.

David C.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1093&start=0#p6242
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Promotional CD and Outreach
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-05-18 22:28:52

I'm trying to organize the games into buckets. I've also started reworking the web page from which the games are launched on the Windows side of things. I need help though....I have not played all of these games. The list at the top are unorganized. The buckets I've come up with are at the bottom. If anyone wants to bucket some games, please do so.

Thanks,

David C.

9:05                      Adam Cadre
Ad Verbum                 Nick Montfort
Alabaster                 Emily Short and Company
All Roads                 Jon Ingold
All Things Devours        Half Sick of Shadows
ASCII and The Argonauts   J. Robinson Wheeler
At Wit's End              Mike Sousa
Being Andrew Plotkin      J. Robinson Wheeler
Blue Chairs               Chris Klimas
Blue Lacuna               Aaron A. Reed
Bronze                    Emily Short
Broken Legs               Sarah Morayati
Centipede                 J. Robinson Wheeler
A Change in the Weather   Andrew Plotkin
Curses!                   Graham Nelson
The Dreamhold             Andrew Plotkin
Earth and Sky             Paul O'Brian
Earth and Sky 2: Another Earth, Another Sky
                          Paul O'Brian
Earth and Sky 3: Luminous Horizon
                          Paul O'Brian
The Edifice               Lucian P. Smith
Fallacy of Dawn           Robb Sherwin
The Fire Tower            Jacqueline Lott
For a Change              Dan Schmidt
Fragile Shells            Stephen Granade
The Frenetic Five versus Sturm und Drang
                          Neil deMause
Galatea                   Emily Short
Guilty Bastards           Kent Tessman
Heroes                    Sean Barret
Hunter, In Darkness       Andrew Plotkin
I-O                       Adam Cadre
Jigsaw                    Graham Nelson
Losing Your Grip          Stephen Granade
Metamorphoses             Emily Short
The Meteor, The Stone And A Long Glass of Sherbert
                          Graham Nelson
Moments Out of Time       L. Ross Raszewski
Muse: An Autumn Romance   Christopher Huang
Necrotic Drift            Robb Sherwin
Pytho's Mask              Emily Short
Risorgimento Represso     Michael J. Coyne
Scavenger                 Quintin Stone
Shade                     Andrew Plotkin
Shrapnel                  Adam Cadre
So Far                    Andrew Plotkin
The Space Under the Window
                          Andrew Plotkin
Spider and Web            Andrew Plotkin
Square Circle             Eric Eve
Sting of the Wasp         Jason Devlin
Sunset Over Savannah      Ivan Cockrum
Textfire Golf             Adam Cadre
The Traveling Swordsman   Mike Snyder

Thriller
Babel                     Ian Finley
Kaged                     Ian Finley

Puzzlefest
Savoire Faire             Emily Short

Mystery
The Mulldoon Murders      Jon Ingold
The Mulldoon Legacy       Jon Ingold

Whimsical
A Bear's Night Out        David Dyte
Child's Play              Stephen Granade
Lost Pig                  Admiral Jota

Narrative
Photopia                  Adam Cadre

Classic
Adventure                 Will Crowther and Don Woods
Dungeon (Mainframe Zork)  Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling

Difficult
Bad Machine               Dan Shiovitz
Varicella                 Adam Cadre

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1093&start=10#p6243
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Promotional CD and Outreach
User: Mick / DateTime: 2010-05-19 09:27:20

I definitely agree with the comments above of providing a short-list of recommended introduction games. Some of the games on the list, while very good, are not going to give the best first impression. A good starting game will provide in game hints, a more modern standard of parser flexibility, and simple goals. If I were to pick my top three recommendations, they would probably be Lost Pig, Bronze and Dreamhold - in that order. 

It's difficult to fit some games into a single bucket, but here are some of my recommendations:

9:05  -> Slice of Life
Alabaster, Galatea-> Conversation-based
Being Andrew Plotkin -> Whimsical
Curses!, Jigsaw -> Puzzlefest/Difficult
Earth and Sky 1/2/3 -> Whimiscal? (These are also very good beginner recommendations)
Fire Tower -> Narrative
I-O -> Narrative (sorta)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1093&start=10#p6244
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Promotional CD and Outreach
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-05-19 09:32:47

[quote="Mick"]It's difficult to fit some games into a single bucket...[/quote]

If it can be avoided, I don't think games should be restricted to a single bucket. That does a disservice both to the game and to the person perusing the games--for example, if the user is more interested in a given category, such as "fantasy", and Lost Pig is in "beginner", they'll miss that game.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1093&start=10#p6245
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Promotional CD and Outreach
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-05-19 09:48:23

I agree that some games will fit in more than one bucket. I wanted to come up with buckets that were not strictly genre based to avoid this, but that seems impossible. Here's take 2:

Still 35 uncategorized.

Ad Verbum Nick Montfort
All Roads Jon Ingold
All Things Devours Half Sick of Shadows
ASCII and The Argonauts J. Robinson Wheeler
At Wit's End Mike Sousa
Blue Chairs Chris Klimas
Blue Lacuna Aaron A. Reed
Broken Legs Sarah Morayati
Centipede J. Robinson Wheeler
A Change in the Weather Andrew Plotkin
Fallacy of Dawn Robb Sherwin
For a Change Dan Schmidt
Fragile Shells Stephen Granade
The Frenetic Five versus Sturm und Drang Neil deMause
Guilty Bastards Kent Tessman
Heroes Sean Barret
Hunter, In Darkness Andrew Plotkin
Losing Your Grip Stephen Granade
Metamorphoses Emily Short
The Meteor, The Stone And A Long Glass of Sherbert Graham Nelson
Moments Out of Time L. Ross Raszewski
Muse: An Autumn Romance Christopher Huang
Necrotic Drift Robb Sherwin
Pytho's Mask Emily Short
Risorgimento Represso Michael J. Coyne
Scavenger Quintin Stone
Shade Andrew Plotkin
Shrapnel Adam Cadre
So Far Andrew Plotkin
The Space Under the Window Andrew Plotkin
Square Circle Eric Eve
Sting of the Wasp Jason Devlin
Sunset Over Savannah Ivan Cockrum
Textfire Golf Adam Cadre
The Traveling Swordsman Mike Snyder

Introductory
Lost Pig Admiral Jota
Bronze Emily Short
The Dreamhold Andrew Plotkin
Earth and Sky Paul O'Brian
Earth and Sky 2: Another Earth, Another Sky Paul O'Brian
Earth and Sky 3: Luminous Horizon Paul O'Brian

Philisophical
The Edifice Lucian P. Smith
Spider and Web Andrew Plotkin

Slice of Life
9:05 Adam Cadre

Conversational
Alabaster Emily Short and Company
Galatea Emily Short

Thriller
Babel Ian Finley
Kaged Ian Finley

Mystery
The Mulldoon Murders Jon Ingold
The Mulldoon Legacy Jon Ingold

Whimsical
A Bear's Night Out David Dyte
Child's Play Stephen Granade
Lost Pig Admiral Jota
Being Andrew Plotkin J. Robinson Wheeler
Earth and Sky Paul O'Brian
Earth and Sky 2: Another Earth, Another Sky Paul O'Brian
Earth and Sky 3: Luminous Horizon Paul O'Brian

Narrative
Photopia Adam Cadre
The Fire Tower Jacqueline Lott
I-O Adam Cadre

Classic
Adventure Will Crowther and Don Woods
Dungeon (Mainframe Zork) Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling

Difficult
Bad Machine Dan Shiovitz
Varicella Adam Cadre
Curses! Graham Nelson
Jigsaw Graham Nelson
Savoire Faire Emily Short

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1093&start=10#p6246
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Promotional CD and Outreach
User: George / DateTime: 2010-05-19 10:05:14

IFDB will save you some work here.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1093&start=10#p6247
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Promotional CD and Outreach
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-05-19 10:49:51

I don't know what the timeline is for this project:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.inthecompanyofgrues.com/?p=123">http://www.inthecompanyofgrues.com/?p=123</a>

...but it might be worth checking in with them to see whether it might be available to put on the CD.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=283&start=0#p6248
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Q. About Lost Pig (hint request)
User: Tiddy Ogg / DateTime: 2010-05-20 04:43:23

Trying to get in-game hints crashes my machine, so please...
How do I get the paper?  It said the brick was slightly sticky, so I tried sticking this on the pole and fishing for it, but that didn't work.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1046&start=0#p6249
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Frosty the Snow Man
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-05-20 05:26:25

If you use copyrighted material, then yes, you are obligated to ask for permission.

(Btw, it would probably be a good idea to bundle the graphics and sounds into the game file. Or at least create a multimedia resource file for them.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1046&start=0#p6250
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Frosty the Snow Man
User: lukematt / DateTime: 2010-05-20 08:31:59

[quote="RealNC"]If you use copyrighted material, then yes, you are obligated to ask for permission.[/quote]
I did send a letter to the "publisher".

First, a little history...

Little Golden Books are icons in the world of literature (at least to me [emote]:-)[/emote]).  I was surprised at their recent history.  Published by Western Printing and Lithographing Company in Racine, Wisconsin.  Mattel (the toy company) bought Western in 1984 and sold it the same year. Golden Books Family Entertainment was acquired by Classic Media Inc. and Random House in a bankruptcy auction in 2001.
(data from Wikipedia)

Take a look at the website for Classic Media Inc. ([url]http://www.classicmedia.tv/[/url]).  I was shocked at the extent of their portfolio.

In any case, I sent an email to Classic Media, requesting permission to use text and graphics from the [i]Frosty the Snow Man[/i] Little Golden Book.  After one month, I haven't received a response.

Questions for the forum:

[list]
[*]How long should I wait for a response?[/*:m]
[*]How do I eventually interpret no response?  Silence means assent?[/*:m][/list:u]

====================================================================

Now, on to my soapbox...

I picked a Little Golden Book as my first TADS 3 project for several reasons, including...

I've read many comments about the slow death of interactive fiction.  If IF wants to gain wider popularity, I think the path lies [b]not[/b] in creating new works but rather in bringing to life old classics such as Little Golden Books.

====================================================================

[quote="RealNC"](Btw, it would probably be a good idea to bundle the graphics and sounds into the game file. Or at least create a multimedia resource file for them.)[/quote]
Yeah, I thought about it, too.  [emote]:)[/emote]

I haven't decided on the preferred way to package a TADS 3 creation yet.  [i]Frosty[/i]'s .zip file includes a .t3 file because I wanted to try it.  In the future, however, I'll probably settle on keeping [b]everything[/b], even the source code, unbundled.  For the sake of "openness".  So other TADS 3 programmers can modify whatever they want.

Again, thanks for your comments, RealNC.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1046&start=0#p6251
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Frosty the Snow Man
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-05-20 09:06:40

I mentioned the resource bundle because right now some images will not load on Linux and Mac. Same reason as this:

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1107">viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1107</a>
(Second-to-last post.)

Using bundles makes this a non-issue.

Also, putting loads of stuff in a zip is not exactly user-friendly, IMHO. Perhaps a separate "*.src.zip" would be more appropriate [emote]:)[/emote] Anyway, that's just my own opinion.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1046&start=0#p6252
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Frosty the Snow Man
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-20 10:35:17

With respect to the copyright issues, I have a couple of suggestions.

First, make sure you used the right email address to send your request. In other words, try to nail down the question of whether the message was received and read by a human. That probably means making a phone call (or two, since these days no one ever answers the phone).

Second, make sure they understand that your intended usage is (a) very limited in distribution and (b) non-commercial.

Third, in your follow-up email, state specifically, "If I don't hear from you by [date], I'll assume you have no objections to the usage."

Then, if you don't hear from them within a few weeks, go ahead. You will have exercised what lawyers call "due diligence," which means (in the U.S., at least) that if their lawyers ever come at you with a claim for damages, you just smack the ball right back into their court.

--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1106&start=0#p6253
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS Q - Examine Afteraction
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-20 10:37:52

...also, I don't know if anyone in the thread mentioned it, but "false" is not a defined constant in T3. You want to say "nil".

--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1106&start=0#p6254
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS Q - Examine Afteraction
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-05-20 11:39:48

Oops, Jim is right. My brain is so wrapped around C++ that I totally missed that TADS uses 'nil' instead of 'false'.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=283&start=0#p6255
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Q. About Lost Pig (hint request)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-05-20 12:12:25

[quote="Tiddy Ogg"]Trying to get in-game hints crashes my machine, so please...
How do I get the paper?  It said the brick was slightly sticky, so I tried sticking this on the pole and fishing for it, but that didn't work.[/quote]

Do some more experimenting to see how the pole works -- it's not by stickiness.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=283&start=0#p6256
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Q. About Lost Pig (hint request)
User: Mick / DateTime: 2010-05-20 13:01:26

I loved Lost Pig, but I hated the solution to the paper puzzle. I understood how the pole worked, but I didn't really agree that the solution should actually work the way it did.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=110#p6257
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-05-20 22:20:05

Forum, hello.

I'm Lea.  My IF-cred consists of organizing last year's IF Writing Month, writing "Byzantine Perspective" (which was in the 2009 Comp), and doing the layout for the PAX East "How to Play IF" postcard.

As much as it makes sense to draw these distinctions (which is to say: not much), I am an "artist," not a programmer.  The computer languages I know are Inform 6/7 and Processing/Arduino.  My official training is in architecture and tangible design -- making real actual physical things at the human scale, for people to touch, wear, and inhabit -- which doesn't really sound a lot like IF, until you think about both of them in terms of implicit narrative through interactions with objects and spaces.  [Secretly, as I say in the hints for the post-Comp release of "Byzantine Perspective,"
[spoiler]this game was written as a brief meditation on the sensory dissociations afforded by contemporary telecommunications and the relative emphasis on visual cues in the literary perception of architectural space, and as a gentle mockery of Beaux Arts values in architectural planning.[/spoiler]]

...But I also love IF because I am intrigued by games but have neither the skill nor patience to play anything that is not turn-based and fairly short.  (Seriously, I had to pester my housemate to play [i]Braid[/i] in front of me because it took me multiple minutes to hop on the first Goomba-equivalent. Similarly for [i]Super Paper Mario[/i].  And I didn't even attempt [i]Portal[/i]. [i]The Majesty of Colors[/i] is more my speed.)  Also, I live in the same city as the IF Archive; how cool is that?

My favorite IF game is "The Gostak," and the only game I've played all the way through without hints or walkthrough was "Suveh Nux."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=110#p6258
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-05-20 22:58:21

Welcome! Is it "tove" as in Tove Jansson or as in rhymes-with-borogove? Or something else?

Also, don't forget your TWIFPlus entry, which totally beat me out for "shortest code in the comp."

mw

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=110#p6259
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: G.D. Lascelle / DateTime: 2010-05-21 03:13:17

Hi everyone,
My name is Giles.  I've been lurking around here for a while now, and on r*if (generally keeping my head down and avoiding the trolls).  I'm probably a bit older than most people here, being in my late 40s.
My first introduction to IF was back in the early 80s playing the Hobbit and a few others on the BBC/Acorn and Sinclair ZX81 and then some of the Magnetic Scrolls titles.
Some guys I knew back then wrote an early commercial IF authoring system called Graphic Adventure Creator (which was really just text adventures with illustrations).  I wrote some of the user manual for that, and also wrote a couple of GAC games that sank without trace - mainly because they weren't very good  [emote]:)[/emote] and also because round about then the (at the time mind-boggling) power of the new 16 bit machines like the Amiga and Atari ST, were making other sorts of games the flavour of the month.
Then a couple of years ago I was looking for something to play that captured the flavour of those old text adventures and discovered a thriving IF community, complete with brand new and improved authoring systems.
I've been tinkering around, familiarising myself with Inform, and have at last embarked on the process of writing an absurdly over-ambitious game (working title: Incursion).
I'll probably be asking a whole bunch of stupid noob/senile questions over the next few months, and thought it was only polite to introduce myself (my mother brung me up proper).
Looking forward to getting to know you all
Giles

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=110#p6260
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-05-21 04:07:58

[quote="tove"]My official training is in architecture and tangible design -- making real actual physical things at the human scale, for people to touch, wear, and inhabit -- which doesn't really sound a lot like IF, until you think about both of them in terms of implicit narrative through interactions with objects and spaces.[/quote]
Actually, I was just thinking today that one thing glaringly missing from academic IF theory is study of space in IF, and that architecture could be an excellent lens for considering how space/place works in IF. Not that I know enough about architecture to attempt such a thing.

[quote="matt w"]Is it "tove" as in Tove Jansson or as in rhymes-with-borogove?[/quote]
And are you slithy?

Anyway, welcome to both you and Giles!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1111&start=0#p6261
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7 hype in 2010?
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-05-21 09:10:55

Hi,

I have a question, just for curiosity. I've heard that Inform 7 is going to be hyped up very high this year, because of its new release, and that most IF authors and players will focus on writing and playing Inform 7 adventures.

Anything true about that or are there any authors out there who are currently developing games with other IF systems?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1111&start=0#p6262
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 hype in 2010?
User: George / DateTime: 2010-05-21 09:31:24

Where did you hear that?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1111&start=0#p6263
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 hype in 2010?
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2010-05-21 09:59:02

I haven't seen anything to suggest that the upcoming release has been hyped more than previous releases, or that Inform developers are significantly more excited about this release than previous releases (inasmuch as they're always excited about new releases, for obvious reasons). I definitely haven't seen anything to suggest that the upcoming release will mark any sort of sea change in the number of developers using Inform 7 as opposed to other systems. 

As far as I know some people are still using TADS, some people are still using HUGO, some people are still using other systems, and some people are still homebrewing their own entirely new systems. Inform still represents the majority of released games, with TADS in second place and everything else as increasingly distant runners up. That's been more or less the status quo for at least a decade.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1111&start=0#p6264
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 hype in 2010?
User: Mick / DateTime: 2010-05-21 11:01:45

Emphasis added:

[quote="Retro"]Hi,

I have a question, just for curiosity. I've heard that Inform 7 is going to be hyped up very high this year, because of its new release, and that most IF authors [u][b]and players[/b][/u] will focus on writing [b][u]and playing[/u][/b] Inform 7 adventures.

Anything true about that or are there any authors out there who are currently developing games with other IF systems?[/quote]

As a player of Interactive Fiction, I play games that sound interesting, and run in my interpreter of choice. The choice of language used to create the game doesn't matter to me. I don't understand why a new Inform release would change this for anyone.

This post kind of seems like a loaded question.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1112&start=0#p6265
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: IF Archive upgrade tonight
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-05-21 11:54:27

This evening (starting 7pm Eastern) we will be shifting ifarchive.org to a newer, slightly shinier, slightly smaller server. (Smaller in physical size, that is. It's the size of a lunchbox. Twice as much disk space as the old server. Yay technology.)

We're switching the DNS from one live server to another, so you should see no change whatsoever during the transition or after it. If you do notice a difference, please let us know.

Coming attractions: some time soon after the new server, we will be adding an RSS feed for new Archive additions.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=110#p6266
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-05-21 12:30:30

[quote="matt w"]Welcome! Is it "tove" as in Tove Jansson or as in rhymes-with-borogove? Or something else?[/quote]
As in rhymes-with-borogove...

[quote="Emerald"]And are you slithy?[/quote]
...and I've started playing up the mock-offense when someone asks me this.  What a scandalous question! [emote];)[/emote] 

[quote="Emerald"]Actually, I was just thinking today that one thing glaringly missing from academic IF theory is study of space in IF, and that architecture could be an excellent lens for considering how space/place works in IF.[/quote]
There is definitely some writing out there that ponders the conventions of IF spaces -- [url=http://www.brasslantern.org/writers/iftheory/roomasmetaphor.html]this article[/url] springs to mind -- and a lot of [url=http://jacl.game-host.org:8080/dfisher/ifgems/gems_5.html]firmly held opinions[/url] about the right way to design "maps" (that is, the usually-highly-planar world layouts that are common in IF).  Undoubtedly many of these are from people who "don't know a lot about architecture," so don't let that stop you from sharing your own thoughts about the matter.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=110#p6267
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-05-21 13:43:47

[quote]...and I've started playing up the mock-offense when someone asks me this. What a scandalous question![/quote]

*I see nothing scandalous about it.*

(signed, erkyrath)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1111&start=0#p6268
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 hype in 2010?
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-05-21 16:39:29

[quote="Michael Gentry"]Inform still represents the majority of released games, with TADS in second place and everything else as increasingly distant runners up. That's been more or less the status quo for at least a decade.[/quote]

Ok, that's what I wanted to know.

Thanks for the replies, guys.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=110#p6269
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: vivdunstan / DateTime: 2010-05-21 16:47:33

Hi everyone,

I'm Viv, in eastern Scotland. I've played text adventures since about 1980, though I started very young. During my computer science degree in the 90s I dabbled with MUDs and coding adventures for them in LPC. Then when Inform was developed I started converting my MUD adventures into Inform. Generally though I'm more of a player than a coder, and also more of a programmer than a writer so I can be short of ideas. But I'm determined to give things a bash. I've recently completed my history PhD, so have a bit more spare time on my hands at the moment, and am going to have another go at learning Inform 7 properly.

I also took part in the Interactive Fiction Writing Month last year, which helped a lot. But I have much more still to learn, so am going to have a proper go now.

Viv

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1113&start=0#p6270
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: [Glk] Multiple concurrent input requests
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-05-22 10:16:26

Based on my reading of the Glk spec it should be possible to have multiple concurrent input requests in different windows. Is this correct?

Secondly, has anyone actually used such functionality? Or do you plan to in the future?

I'm asking because with the hassle of maintaining keyboard focus on the iPhone I'd love to be able to limit games to only having one keyboard input request at a time.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1113&start=0#p6271
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: [Glk] Multiple concurrent input requests
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-05-22 10:46:02

Yes, you should be able to have any number of windows waiting for input. Off hand I can't think of a game that uses simultaneous line or character input in more than one window, but there probably is one out there.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1114&start=0#p6272
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: help me find sources for weekly interactive fiction news?
User: George / DateTime: 2010-05-22 12:53:05

For the last couple of months or so I've been collecting IF links and posting them weekly at [url=http://ifurls.wordpress.com]IFURLs[/url]. It started with a desire to have an inclusive feed more relevant to IF than Planet IF (which is great, but it seems like half of it isn't IF-related sometimes), and to have an outward-facing feed for people who don't follow IF feeds regularly (as I and I guess most IF people do). It's slowly been morphing into a weekly IF news site, though I still don't know where it's going to end up, so it's very simple for now, just a hosted Wordpress blog. 

I've advertised it on 3 or 4 non-IF game sites and gotten a decent response. I'm posting to ask if anyone has ideas for sources that I should follow -- this is what I currently look at:

* Twitter "interactive fiction" and #interactivefiction searches.
* RAIF and RGIF
* Boston PRIF and Seattle IF lists
* this forum of course
* Jolt Country forums
* JACL forums
* Adrift forums
* IFWiki recent changes
* Planet IF feed
* IFDB feed

Any others?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1115&start=0#p6273
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: A New LIfe: Getting Back On Track?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-05-22 21:09:20

Is there any way to 

[spoiler]bring the dragon back after you've already talked to it once?[/spoiler]

Because if not, that would be extremely cruel, in the technical sense.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1113&start=0#p6274
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: [Glk] Multiple concurrent input requests
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-05-23 01:46:12

What David said.

I don't think I have a Glulx game file that tests multiple-window input. I suppose I should put one together, since variations of the idea seem to be arising in several directions.

For the iPhone setup, I assume we're still in the model where a single HTML input field is moved around the screen. If so, I guess the answer is that if there are two windows asking for keyboard input, and the player taps one, you move the input field to that window, update its content, and (perhaps) leave a fake (non-interactive) text string behind in the other window to represent the unfinished line input.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1113&start=0#p6275
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: [Glk] Multiple concurrent input requests
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-05-23 02:50:54

Would character input also need to be scoped to a particular window?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1114&start=0#p6276
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: help me find sources for weekly interactive fiction news
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-05-23 03:34:16

If you go for a wander through the IFComp game pages on IFWiki and look at the review links, you'll find a few IF blogs that aren't on Planet IF - although most of them don't update much.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1112&start=0#p6277
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: IF Archive upgrade tonight
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-05-23 03:50:14

[quote="zarf"]We're switching the DNS from one live server to another, so you should see no change whatsoever during the transition or after it. If you do notice a difference, please let us know.[/quote]
I do notice that <a class="postlink" href="http://mirror.ifarchive.org">http://mirror.ifarchive.org</a> seems to be returning a 403 forbidden for me now.  The main site seems fine though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1113&start=0#p6278
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: [Glk] Multiple concurrent input requests
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-05-23 04:59:37

[quote]Would character input also need to be scoped to a particular window?[/quote]

Yes, it will.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1116&start=0#p6279
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Inform7: Shortcuts
User: jango / DateTime: 2010-05-23 10:31:49

hi,
i'm totally new to inform or interactive fiction at all, but i am a little experienced in general programming. though i still have little trouble using the right syntax with inform7.

what i want to do, is to give the user the possibility to make "shortcuts". so that the user can not only go from one room to the next via a [direction] but also to a totally different location or room if that should exist (and there is a connection).

endlessly thankful for any help,
  jango

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1116&start=0#p6280
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inform7: Shortcuts
User: Mick / DateTime: 2010-05-23 10:39:07

Emily Short's [i]Bronze[/i] had a GO TO command that did something similar to what you seem to be looking for.

The source code is public:
[url]http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7Downloads/Examples/bronze/source_35.html[/url]

You might want to take a look over that and see if gives you any insight on how to solve your problem.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1116&start=0#p6281
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inform7: Shortcuts
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-05-23 10:55:24

There's also two examples in the manual chapter 16.10, [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/ex88.html#e88]Misadventure[/url] and [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/ex225.html#e225]Safari Guide[/url], that show how to do this.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1116&start=0#p6282
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inform7: Shortcuts
User: jango / DateTime: 2010-05-23 11:30:09

wow, thanks. i will look into those.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=110#p6283
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-05-23 12:06:09

Hi Viv, welcome to our corner of the internet.  

So you have degrees in both CS [i]and[/i] History?  Wow. That's not only very impressive, but sounds like you might one of those rare individuals who have both sides of the brain needed for authoring IF.   If you need any help getting your bearings with them, just ask!

Congratulations on completing the PhD!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1112&start=0#p6284
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: IF Archive upgrade tonight
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-05-23 12:33:09

Yes, the mirror domain was broken last night, but it's fixed now. Thanks.

We managed to screw up the DNS for <a class="postlink" href="http://ifcomp.org/">http://ifcomp.org/</a> as well. It's currently pointing at an empty site - sorry about that. It will be back soon.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=110#p6285
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-05-24 04:34:14

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]So you have degrees in both CS [i]and[/i] History?  Wow. That's not only very impressive, but sounds like you might one of those rare individuals who have both sides of the brain needed for authoring IF.[/quote]
Oh no you di'nt!   [emote]:o[/emote] 

To say nothing of how the notion of a left/right brained logical/creative dichotomy is largely pseudoscience, as someone with a computer science degree I've always found the notion that I must therefore be an emotionless android incapable of creativity to be rather offensive.

And then there's the fact that the "logical" left side of the brain is the only hemisphere with a significantly lateralised function - that function being language, something you might expect to be useful to both IF and history, if not computer science.  [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1117&start=0#p6286
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: How to list available exits?
User: killgoblin / DateTime: 2010-05-24 05:55:24

After printing a room's description I would like to list the available exits (with the name of the room that the direction leads to included if the player has visited it before).

Something standard like "You can go north to the Gypsum Grotto, south to the Echoing Grotto and west to somewhere unexplored." With the rooms north and south having previously been visited and the room west unvisited so displaying "somewhere unexplored" by default.

Also I would like to have this happen automatically whenever a player enters a room or looks, rather than pasting the code at the end of each room description.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1117&start=0#p6287
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to list available exits?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-05-24 08:26:23

[quote="killgoblin"]After printing a room's description I would like to list the available exits (with the name of the room that the direction leads to included if the player has visited it before).

Something standard like "You can go north to the Gypsum Grotto, south to the Echoing Grotto and west to somewhere unexplored." With the rooms north and south having previously been visited and the room west unvisited so displaying "somewhere unexplored" by default.

Also I would like to have this happen automatically whenever a player enters a room or looks, rather than pasting the code at the end of each room description.[/quote]

Probably the easiest way to do this is to include one of the Exit Lister extensions -- there are several at

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/all-extensions-by-title/#E">http://inform7.com/extensions/all-exten ... y-title/#E</a>

From what you describe, it sounds like Gavin Lambert's might be a good fit for you; Eric Eve's Exit Lister is more about putting exits in the status bar. I think Lambert's is the most powerful of the ones that do exit listing in a room description.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1119&start=0#p6289
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Changing and exchanging objects
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-05-24 15:08:41

It's been a while since I last posted. I've been busy trying to learn I7, and for the most part, been having increasing amounts of high-grade fun with it. 

Right now, the problem I have isn't a roadblock. The last project of mine involves changing one object into another, and I threw together a solution that (to me) looks fairly economical. But it did make me wonder, because it looked like a textbook example of things that ought to have been done before.

So, to anyone more versed in Inform, how does this solution work? Are there already extensions that can handle this? Am I missing something obvious in my code that will cause weeping and gnashing of teeth later on? How can I, in short, improve on the code?



[code]"Omelets" by Björn Paulsen

The Hall of Statues is a room. 

The display pillar is a supporter. It is in the Hall of Statues. "In the center of the Hall, flanked by a tasteful array of spotlights, rises a display pillar."

The Ming vase is a container. The description is "This pale china vase embodies the purest artistry in one fragile vessel." It is opaque. It is closed. It is unopenable. The Ming vase is on the display pillar.

Some Ming vase shards are a thing. "On the floor, a handful of delicately fractured shards are all that remains of the ming vase." The description is "Science marches ever forward."

The ancient pickled egg is a thing. It is in the Ming vase. The description is "Preserved throughout the ages inside the Ming vase, this ancient pickled egg can finally be revealed to the world."



To switch (original - a thing) for (replacement - a thing):
	let place be an object;
	let place be the holder of the original;
	if the original holds something:
		repeat with item running through things enclosed by the original:
			if the replacement is a container or the replacement is a supporter:
				now the item is held by the replacement;
			otherwise:
				now the item is held by the place;
	remove the original from play;
	now the replacement is held by the place.

[Some handling rules]

After printing the name of the ming vase:
	omit contents in listing.

After dropping the ming vase:
	say "[italic type]Crack![roman type] You drop the vase, with predictable results.";
	switch the ming vase for the ming vase shards.

After taking the ancient pickled egg:
	say "(Taken.)";
	say "At last! You have discovered the last great secret of the old masters of culinary art - the ability to create an egg that can stand the test of time."

[End handling rules]


Test me with "get vase/drop vase/look/get egg".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1119&start=0#p6290
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing and exchanging objects
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-05-24 15:31:55

I would create this not by changing the object, but simply by describing it differently after it's been broken. You could create a property with an assertion like "The ming vase can be broken." but in this case it seems we could just use whether it's open or closed to keep track of that.

[code]
The Ming vase is a closed unopenable container on the display pillar. "[if open]On the floor, a handful of delicately fractured shards are all that remains of the ming vase.[else]A delicate ming vase is here." The description is "[if open]Science marches ever forward.[else]This pale china vase embodies the purest artistry in one fragile vessel." 

Understand "shards" as ming vase when ming vase is open.

The ancient pickled egg is a thing. It is in the Ming vase. The description is "Preserved throughout the ages inside the Ming vase, this ancient pickled egg can finally be revealed to the world."

After printing the name of the ming vase:
   omit contents in listing.

After dropping the ming vase:
   say "[italic type]Crack![roman type] You drop the vase, with predictable results.";
   now ming vase is open.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1119&start=0#p6291
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing and exchanging objects
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-05-24 15:44:42

Um... correct me if I'm wrong, but does work with the idea of actually smashing the vase into something that can no longer be a container? Surely "put egg in Ming shards" would put the egg back inside the shards, which I can't really parse mentally.

I know I often tend to leave out bits and pieces in my posts, things that would have been relevant to the context, so I'll try to explain. What I'm after is a facility that is as generalized as possible, allowing for reuse, and I also want it to be as efficient as possible, because that adds to its utility. The Ming vase was a test subject to show the process of switching something and having its contents reacting realistically.

But such solutions don't always behave in sensible ways. For instance, in this case, I suspect if we were to switch a supporter for a container, the objects on the supporter would suddenly be inside the container. It's those implications, not to mention whatever bugs (possibly game-breaking) that this sort of code could generate in other games, that I wonder about.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1119&start=0#p6292
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing and exchanging objects
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-05-24 20:41:53

[quote="Eleas"]What I'm after is a facility that is as generalized as possible, allowing for reuse, and I also want it to be as efficient as possible, because that adds to its utility. The Ming vase was a test subject to show the process of switching something and having its contents reacting realistically.”[/quote]

I think the code you posted is pretty good general solution. It sounds like you might be thinking of it as something that could be elaborated into extension. I hope you do that.

[quote="Eleas"]But such solutions don't always behave in sensible ways. For instance, in this case, I suspect if we were to switch a supporter for a container, the objects on the supporter would suddenly be inside the container. It's those implications, not to mention whatever bugs (possibly game-breaking) that this sort of code could generate in other games, that I wonder about.[/quote]

The way you've handled containers and supporters makes sense--this is probably the best default behavior. But there is at least one missing implication: Right now, if the objects you change is a person, the things carried by the person will be dropped on the floor, when they really ought to become possessions of the new object.

If you are thinking of strongly generalizing this solution, along the lines of an extension, you might consider making the main switching routine into an activity. This would allow easy customization. Here's one way to do this:

[code]
A thing has a thing called the replacement.
	
Replacing something is an activity.

For replacing something (called the original):
	let place be the holder of the original;
	let replacement be the replacement of the original;
	if the original holds something:
		if the replacement is a repository:
			repeat with item running through things enclosed by the original:
				now the item is held by the replacement;
		otherwise:
			repeat with item running through things enclosed by the original:
				now the item is held by the place;
	remove the original from play;
	move the replacement to the place.
	
To decide whether (item - an object) is a repository:
	if the item is a container, yes;
	if the item is a supporter, yes;
	if the item is a person, yes;
	no.
	
[Some command variations to allow flexibility for users]
	
To switch (original - a thing) for its replacement:
	carry out the replacing activity with the original.

To switch (original - a thing) for (replacement - a thing):
	change the replacement of the original to the replacement;
	carry out the replacing activity with the original.

[Examples of customization]

[A chest that is wired to explode, destroying everything inside it]
The chest is a container. The replacement is debris.

Before replacing the chest:
	repeat with item running through things contained by the chest:
			remove item from play.
	
[We have containers that become supporter-containers--a chest that is transformed into a sideboard, for example, with a drawer as part of the sideboard. We prefer that any contents in the chest go into the drawer, rather than onto the top of the sideboard (i.e., onto the supporter)]

Before replacing a container (called the original):
	if the replacement of the original is not a container:
		if the replacement of the original incorporates a container:
			repeat with item running through the things contained by the original:
				move item to a random container incorporated by the replacement of the original.

[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1120&start=0#p6293
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: IF at Pax Prime, Sept. 3rd-5th
User: George / DateTime: 2010-05-25 01:25:40

Apologies for the crosspost from RAIF, but for those who won't see that:

Following on the singular IF summit at PAX East, our Seattle IF group is planning to host an IF summit at PAX Prime this September; the main planning page (currently in its early stages) is at <a class="postlink" href="http://ifwiki.org/index.php/PAX_Prime_2010">http://ifwiki.org/index.php/PAX_Prime_2010</a>. If you're thinking of attending or have ideas/suggestions, I encourage you to check it out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1117&start=0#p6294
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to list available exits?
User: killgoblin / DateTime: 2010-05-25 19:24:27

Okay, thanks I tried the Gavin Lambert one and it works fine now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1119&start=0#p6295
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing and exchanging objects
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-05-26 16:12:55

Thank you very much for the input, both of you. Erik's was closest to the response I was aiming for (not that one would know that by reading my initial post [emote]:P[/emote]), and the idea of making it an extension fits neatly with my plans. I may eventually add relations to connect object(s) to one another as well, as soon as I manage to judge the strengths and weaknesses of that possibility.

Lately, though, I feel I've dithered enough with mechanics and code. I've had a lot of fun during these months of exploring I7, and I've learned a great deal, but recently I'm starting to suspect I've been putting things off. So now, before anything else, I've resolved to make myself write a game and actually finish it, however small that game might be. The likelihood is pretty high I'll get nothing done, otherwise.

Again, thanks to you both for taking the time to help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1121&start=0#p6298
Forum: Competitions / Subject: IFComp 2010 - Open for Business, and You?
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-05-27 08:01:28

Hi forum,

[quote]http://www.ifcomp.org/
25 May: The web site is open for business. Authors may sign up, while those who are interested can learn more about how to judge in the competition or can donate prizes.[/quote]

"Neues Jahr, Neues Glück", as we say in Germany. It's a new year in the competition and a new chance for CYOA to take over the world! No, don't panic, I was just kidding about the last point. CYOA won't take over the world and I would fail again if I submitted another half-translated CYOA game to the comp this year.  [emote];)[/emote] 

But let's not speak about me and my crazy ideas. What will YOU do?
Sign up and submit entry, judge the comp, donate prize/s or ignore?
Take your time and vote in the poll above...

This poll ends September 1st when authors must have signed up by this date, according to the [url=http://www.ifcomp.org/comp10/schedule.html]competition schedule.[/url]

[b]P.S. Please note that I myself do not vote in this poll.[/b]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1122&start=0#p6301
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Chicago IF Group Moving Out of Ning.Com
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-05-28 15:38:16

The Chicago IF Group is leaving ning.com.

Ning is going to start charging and the interface was a bit goofy anyway.

We now have a Google Group at <a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/chicago-if">http://groups.google.com/group/chicago-if</a>.

A new website, <a class="postlink" href="http://chicago-if.org">http://chicago-if.org</a> will also be created soon to share more information.

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1123&start=0#p6302
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Latest Inform status update
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-05-28 20:51:52

...can be found here:

[url]http://inform7.com/news/2010/05/28/inform-7-update/[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1080&start=20#p6303
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Zifmia - A Client/Server Multi-Platform System
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-05-29 01:07:24

As mentioned on the Textfyre blog at <a class="postlink" href="http://chicagodave.wordpress.com">http://chicagodave.wordpress.com</a>, I now have a functional client/server implementation of FyreVM, including emittng hyperlinks in Inform 7 and being able to click them on a web page.

Check out the sample game at <a class="postlink" href="http://zifmia.plover.net">http://zifmia.plover.net</a>.

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1124&start=0#p6304
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: SPAG #58 is now available
User: JimmyMaher / DateTime: 2010-05-29 03:10:49

Hi, folks...

The latest issue of IF's journal of record, SPAG, is available at
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/backissues/spag58.html">http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/backissues/spag58.html</a>. This is the
largest issue ever published in the magazine's 16 year history. I hope
there is something for everyone inside.

Editorial
IF News

IF at PAX East 2010:
    How Suite it was by Harry Kaplan
    The Storytelling in IF Panel by Duncan Bowsman
    Two Panels at the IF Suite by Harry Kaplan
    A PAX Story by Robb Sherwin

Revisiting the Phoenix Games:
    Phoenix Rises Again by Adam Atkinson
    Crobe Review by Marius Müller

Lines and Rectangles: Navigating within a Textual Virtual World by
Jimmy Maher

The Story of JACL by Stuart Allen

An IF Exhibition by Fabien Vidal

Jay is Games Casual IF Competition Reviews
    Basic Train-ing
    The Blueprint
    Containment
    Couch of Doom
    Critical Breach
    The Cube
    Drama Queen 7: Mother Knows Best
    Dual Transform
    Escape in the Dark
    Escape into Fiction
    Fragile Shells
    Golden Shadow
    Heavenly
    Hoosegow
    I Expect You to Die
    Into the Open Sky
    Ka
    Lurid Dreams
    The Manor at Whitby
    Monday, 16:30
    An Open Field
    Paint
    Party Foul
    Roofed
    Survive
    Terminal
    The Usher
    Virtuality
    Zegrothenus
    A Zeroeth Dimension

A Survey of the TWIFComp Entries by Valentine Kopteltsev

Other Game Reviews:
     Raising the Flag on Mount Yo Momma

Last Lousy Points:
    Working with Beta Testers: Some Guidelines for Authors by Al
    Some Comments on Love is as Powerful as Death, Jealousy is as
Cruel as the Grave by Michael Whittington

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=946&start=20#p6305
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Graphical Interactive Fiction
User: Sslaxx / DateTime: 2010-05-29 07:17:00

It'd be interesting to play something like, say, one of the "Ben Jordan" games except instead of the cursor modes you use a parser. The problem with AGS is it's parser system by default is very crude. It'd be nice to have a parser system with, say, TADS 3 or Inform 7's level of sophistication available for AGS. Could it be done? Most likely, the only issue would be of value.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1111&start=0#p6306
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 hype in 2010?
User: Sslaxx / DateTime: 2010-05-29 07:19:05

[quote="Mick"]Emphasis added:

[quote="Retro"]Hi,

I have a question, just for curiosity. I've heard that Inform 7 is going to be hyped up very high this year, because of its new release, and that most IF authors [u][b]and players[/b][/u] will focus on writing [b][u]and playing[/u][/b] Inform 7 adventures.

Anything true about that or are there any authors out there who are currently developing games with other IF systems?[/quote]

As a player of Interactive Fiction, I play games that sound interesting, and run in my interpreter of choice. The choice of language used to create the game doesn't matter to me. I don't understand why a new Inform release would change this for anyone.

This post kind of seems like a loaded question.[/quote]
Perhaps it's just referring to the fact that, if you're playing a new Z-Machine or Glulx game, odds are it's been created with Inform 7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=946&start=20#p6308
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Graphical Interactive Fiction
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2010-05-29 07:31:32

[quote="namekuseijin"][quote="Peter Pears"]Eye candy can't really ruin a game.[/quote]

oh, it can!

Mystery House
[img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/Mystery_House_-_Apple_II_render_emulation_-_2.png[/img]

King's Quest
[img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f2/Kings_Quest_Tandy.png[/img]

I don't know about you, but these depictions are truly crude and laughable, despite being the top "eye candy" for the time.  Even Myst suffers from that today.

This depiction on the other hand is as evocative and timeless as it ever was:

"YOU ARE IN A SPLENDID CHAMBER THIRTY FEET HIGH. THE WALLS ARE FROZEN RIVERS OF ORANGE STONE."

There's no substitute for words when it comes to make one's imagination roll on and I suspect those with "more visual inspired imaginations" actually lack imagination at all and have to rely on an artist's particular depiction.  Or perhaps it's just laziness as usual...[/quote]

Although I will agree with you regarding the Mystery house as being a joy killer, I can’t agree with you regarding the Kings Quest graphics.
First of all you have to take into consideration that Kings Quest I was made way back in the late 80’s when computers didn’t have the incredible graphic power they do today.
Maybe we (yes I AM that old  [emote];)[/emote]  ) were not so “spoiled” back when. I remember having a lot of fun playing Sierra  on-Line games. And the Space Quest series was a lot of fun even though the graphics was "crude"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1080&start=20#p6309
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Zifmia - A Client/Server Multi-Platform System
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-05-29 08:32:29

[quote="DavidC"]As mentioned on the Textfyre blog at <a class="postlink" href="http://chicagodave.wordpress.com">http://chicagodave.wordpress.com</a>, I now have a functional client/server implementation of FyreVM, including emittng hyperlinks in Inform 7 and being able to click them on a web page.

Check out the sample game at <a class="postlink" href="http://zifmia.plover.net">http://zifmia.plover.net</a>.

David C.[/quote]

When I type "look" and hit return, the page refreshes (anyway, I get the banner text and kitchen description). This may be something to do with Firefox (3.0.5) -- there's this horrible, horrible setting I've been unable to turn off where if you hit delete when focus isn't in a text box, it treats it as a back button, and I think return might do something similar -- but anyway, I thought you should know.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1091&start=0#p6310
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Can you imagine playing a German entry in IFcomp 2010?
User: Mikawa / DateTime: 2010-05-29 09:21:24

The poll has been running now since a few weeks, and we have now over two hundred views and 16 votes:

I guess this failed to turn out as a representative majority of this community.
Hope I get some more votes.

Regards
Michael

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1061&start=0#p6311
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: works based on short stories or old video games
User: Sslaxx / DateTime: 2010-05-29 09:32:40

[quote="bcressey"]Moreover, as you seem to recognize, you would be hard-pressed to find an author more litigious than Ellison.[/quote]
JK Rowling?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1080&start=20#p6312
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Zifmia - A Client/Server Multi-Platform System
User: weiju / DateTime: 2010-05-29 09:55:33

[quote="DavidC"]As mentioned on the Textfyre blog at <a class="postlink" href="http://chicagodave.wordpress.com">http://chicagodave.wordpress.com</a>, I now have a functional client/server implementation of FyreVM, including emittng hyperlinks in Inform 7 and being able to click them on a web page.

Check out the sample game at <a class="postlink" href="http://zifmia.plover.net">http://zifmia.plover.net</a>.

David C.[/quote]

Hi David,

how about printing the hyperlinks with an (empty) href and a descriptive title ? You'd get a changing mouse pointer and a tool tip automatically from most browsers.

Wei-ju

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1080&start=20#p6314
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Zifmia - A Client/Server Multi-Platform System
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-05-29 12:19:26

[quote="matt w"][quote="DavidC"]As mentioned on the Textfyre blog at <a class="postlink" href="http://chicagodave.wordpress.com">http://chicagodave.wordpress.com</a>, I now have a functional client/server implementation of FyreVM, including emittng hyperlinks in Inform 7 and being able to click them on a web page.

Check out the sample game at <a class="postlink" href="http://zifmia.plover.net">http://zifmia.plover.net</a>.

David C.[/quote]

When I type "look" and hit return, the page refreshes (anyway, I get the banner text and kitchen description). This may be something to do with Firefox (3.0.5) -- there's this horrible, horrible setting I've been unable to turn off where if you hit delete when focus isn't in a text box, it treats it as a back button, and I think return might do something similar -- but anyway, I thought you should know.[/quote]

This is just a test page implementatin. The default button is the start game button.

Properly implemented, there would be one button, but underneath it will handle whether it's a start game or send command.

I'm going to work the demo of Shadow into Zifmia with AJAX and hopefully some nice styling.

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1124&start=0#p6316
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: SPAG #58 is now available
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-05-29 13:11:42

Sweet -- thanks for this, Jimmy and all the other contributors!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1097&start=0#p6317
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Waiting and Whining
User: Sslaxx / DateTime: 2010-05-29 13:21:16

[quote="DavidC"]I hear Inform 8 will have 3D capabilities.

DC[/quote]
Really? I hope AGS 4'll have natural language abilities!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=946&start=20#p6318
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Graphical Interactive Fiction
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2010-05-29 16:41:57

I'll offer perspective on King's Quest, as owners of the PCjr have been rightfully shamed by history due to terrible nature of the platform. (Kidding.) (Not kidding.) (Sort of kidding.)

When someone, anyone in IT releases a new version of something, there's an unspoken social agreement that the new hardware or software is going to be demonstrably better than what came before. If it isn't - if someone is making a "Lite" version of a product, it's labeled as such and cheaper. Or else it's going to make a lot of people angry and disappointed. The PCjr left a lot of people angry and disappointed.

For whatever reason, IBM didn't take the original PC and improve it with zero downsides when they released the PCjr. Much has been written about the keyboard the PCjr came with, and its lack of expandability, but the most damning aspect of its release was that the BIOS was not 100% backwards compatible with the PC - although the graphical capabilities of the PCjr were far superior to the PC, IBM was asking developers to specifically code for what was fast becoming an unpopular, bastard platform. I don't know how many IBM games my family bought that had to be returned because they simply didn't run. 

IBM did want something that was coded for the PCjr from the ground up, and that game is King's Quest. And it was GORGEOUS. Okay, Mystery House looks like pants - yeah, it's an important game historically and so forth and maybe the game that's underneath the stick figure drawings is fine, but it looks like something somebody's kid put together. AGS games are routinely made in this century that don't look anywhere near as crisp and vibrant as King's Quest. The screenshot linked up above just popped off the screen in 1985. And in the same way that games for the 2600 eventually relied upon the fuzzy nature of a television's pixels to give their graphics a warmth that wasn't captured by the first few revs of the Stella emulator, a simple King's Quest screenshot doesn't completely capture what it meant for PCjr owners to have what was the best-looking game on the planet for a few months. It really did just burst with color. And I think the true genius of King's Quest is that the pace and movement speed for Sir Graham was juuuuust right to handle the marriage of a joystick with a text parser.

I don't want to come off as this huge Royalist here or anything, but King's Quest probably single-handedly kept the PCjr as just a normal disaster, instead of a giant disaster along the lines of the Virtual Boy or Coleco Adam. I know it's BS to appeal to how the game "felt" on its original system and configuration, but I think a little something has been lost in its emulation.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1121&start=0#p6319
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2010 - Open for Business, and You?
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-05-29 20:09:18

Well, I have three WIPs (one of which only exists on paper) plus another simple game concept that I haven't started implementing at all.  If I can finish any one of these, the Comp would be the ideal place for me to release it, with the exception of the one WIP that would probably be too long.

Included among these unfinished projects is the short CYOA game that I originally intended only as an exercise to learn Node-X.  However, I decided to make the implementation [i]slightly[/i] more thorough than I was going to initially, and to release the game, if I ever finish it.  There were two periods of time when I was actively working on this little CYOA -- back in March, and just a couple weeks ago.  I've laid the project aside again, since I'm sort of stuck.  But maybe I'll manage to find away to reach my planned ending, come September.  This is probably my best chance of being able to enter the Comp.  My other works in progress are not CYOAs.

If I don't enter, I'll surely judge the games, unless an unforseen tragedy or disaster of some sort prevents me from doing so (which happened in 2008).

Since I like to read mainstream high fantasy novels and some science fiction, I'd consider donating a gently-used paperback, if I had the money to ship it.

So, I could vote in most of the categories.  I guess I'll vote for entering a CYOA, but there's a very good chance that it won't work out.  And there's a very small chance that I might enter a non-CYOA game.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1061&start=0#p6320
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: works based on short stories or old video games
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-05-29 20:11:02

No.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1080&start=20#p6321
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Zifmia - A Client/Server Multi-Platform System
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-05-29 21:25:54

Well done! Obviously needs a lot of work, but this is very encouraging!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1125&start=0#p6322
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Offering: A scene-based tutorial for CYOA-like works
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-05-29 21:34:58

A few months ago I tentatively began another documentation project for Inform 7, one centered on scenes and CYOA-ish works rather than physical simulation.  While the tutorial is still in an unfinished state, it might be good reading material for a rainy Sunday.  

Comments and such are welcome. It's found at <a class="postlink" href="http://xyzzy.plover.net/~pscion/">http://xyzzy.plover.net/~pscion/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1080&start=30#p6323
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Zifmia - A Client/Server Multi-Platform System
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-05-29 21:52:14

[quote="The Textfyre Blog"]
[color=#000000]The Bedroom is east of the Kitchen.[/color] [color=#0000FF]“You are in the bedroom. The kitchen is <a onclick=’javascript:command([']west[']);’>west</a> and the bathroom is <a onclick=’javascript:command([']north[']);’>north</a>.”[/color]
[/quote]

It should be easily possible to make a segmented text substitution to neaten that up for client code, so you could use something like: [quote]
[color=#000000]The Bedroom is east of the Kitchen.[/color] [color=#0000FF]“You are in the bedroom. The kitchen is [/color][color=#00FFFF][link][/color][color=#0000FF]west[/color][color=#00FFFF][end link][/color][color=#0000FF] and the bathroom is [/color][color=#00FFFF][link][/color][color=#0000FF]nearby[/color][color=#00FFFF][to][/color][color=#0000FF]north[/color][color=#00FFFF][end link][/color][color=#0000FF].”[/color]
[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1121&start=0#p6324
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2010 - Open for Business, and You?
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-05-30 08:18:29

[quote="Bainespal"]Included among these unfinished projects is the short CYOA game that I originally intended only as an exercise to learn Node-X.[/quote]

If your project is only an exercise to learn how to build CYOA adventures for my Node-X system then you should NOT submit it to the IFComp in my humble opinion, unless you want to take all the heat, ridicule and criticism for it, as I received in 2008 and 2009.

After all, it was me who orginally came into this community and presented the Node-X project. So it's my job to convince this community that one can design cool CYOA games/adventures with Node-X, not yours. Don't expect people to like your Node-X based CYOA game, just because you are not me! They will hate your game the same way they hate my games, simply because your game will run on a WIP-state (Work In Progress) engine. Node-X has already some very bad reputation in the IF scene. As I mentioned, it's my job to make Node-X get a better reputation and prove the judges wrong... It's my challenge, not yours! I started this, so now I have to finish it. And I usually work alone on projects that I started.

[quote]I guess I'll vote for entering a CYOA, but there's a very good chance that it won't work out.  And there's a very small chance that I might enter a non-CYOA game.  [emote];)[/emote][/quote]

If you intend to submit a CYOA game, I recommend to write it in Inform. Some author did this in the last competition and gained some good votes.

Again, just a good advice of mine: [b]DO NOT write a CYOA game for my system Node-X at this stage of its development![/b] It's still work in progress and you will get only bad/low votes for your game. Just so you know.

However, you can do whatever you intend to do. I don't care. But don't expect people to get excited about your Node-X based game, as I said, unless you believe that you can do a better job than me in writing a convincing CYOA game for my own system.  [emote];)[/emote] That's really strange, you know. I don't know if I should feel flattered or pissed off by your intentions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1121&start=0#p6325
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2010 - Open for Business, and You?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-05-30 08:48:36

I've considered entering my WIP - IF, not CYOA. It was originally intended as an Art Show entry, but since the Art Show hasn't run for a few years now, the IF Comp seems as good a way as any to release it. However, since the IF Comp deadline is just about the same time as the deadline for my honours dissertation (and probably a couple of other university assignments as well) I suspect it won't happen. Not unless I get a [i]lot[/i] of work done on it during the winter holidays, but my plans for the winter holidays mostly involve study, theatre, and more study...

The last couple of IF Comps, I've been too busy with university stuff to do more than check out the games, but since I have no exams this year, maybe I'll be able to judge the thing properly for a change.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1121&start=0#p6326
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2010 - Open for Business, and You?
User: Mick / DateTime: 2010-05-30 10:46:00

[quote="Retro"] I don't know if I should feel flattered or pissed off by your intentions.
[/quote]

I suggest flattered.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1123&start=0#p6327
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Latest Inform status update
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-30 18:10:50

This all sounds very good. Thanks for posting the link.

While considering odd phraseology that you might want to deprecate and later remove, can I nominate "remove ... from play"? My issue with this is that "play" is not a place or an object. "Now ... is nowhere" would be more consistent with the normal I7 syntax.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1121&start=0#p6328
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2010 - Open for Business, and You?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-05-30 18:41:06

[quote]After all, it was me who orginally came into this community and presented the Node-X project. So it's my job to convince this community that one can design cool CYOA games/adventures with Node-X, not yours. Don't expect people to like your Node-X based CYOA game, just because you are not me! They will hate your game the same way they hate my games, simply because your game will run on a WIP-state (Work In Progress) engine. Node-X has already some very bad reputation in the IF scene. As I mentioned, it's my job to make Node-X get a better reputation and prove the judges wrong... It's my challenge, not yours! I started this, so now I have to finish it. And I usually work alone on projects that I started.[/quote]

Almost every technology in the IF world is still a WIP to some extent. As long as the engine will run people will try it. Your problem before was with the works you submitted, not Node-X.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1080&start=30#p6329
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Zifmia - A Client/Server Multi-Platform System
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-05-30 18:43:14

Wiki style links would make even more sense:

[code]The Bedroom is east of the Kitchen. “You are in the bedroom. The kitchen is [west] and the bathroom is [nearby to the north|north].”[/code]

There are some wiki processors in JS already, so the job would be half done.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1123&start=0#p6330
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Latest Inform status update
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-05-30 19:21:17

[quote="Jim Aikin"]This all sounds very good. Thanks for posting the link.

While considering odd phraseology that you might want to deprecate and later remove, can I nominate "remove ... from play"? My issue with this is that "play" is not a place or an object. "Now ... is nowhere" would be more consistent with the normal I7 syntax.

--JA[/quote]

I disagree -- unless I'm mistaken, you can't type "remove ... from x" where x is a place or object, or anything other than "play." So there isn't really a false parallel with other I7 syntax -- it's a special phrasing, which is appropriate because removing from play is really a special case. 

Matt

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1121&start=0#p6331
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2010 - Open for Business, and You?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-05-30 19:48:34

[quote="Retro"]If you intend to submit a CYOA game, I recommend to write it in Inform. Some author did this in the last competition and gained some good votes.[/quote]

It was ADRIFT rather than Inform, actually ("The Ascot" by Duncan Bowsman); which actually stopped me from playing it because the ADRIFT plug-in for my interpreter didn't seem to run any of the games. For what it's worth, in the past a lot of IFComp judges seem to have been very critical of ADRIFT when reviewing ADRIFT games.

I'd say that people ought to write games in whatever system they're interested in working with, but different systems may produce games that are more or less accessible to people. No one's going to play a game that won't run on their computer. z-code is probably maximally accessible; not only will most people interested in IFComp have some interpreter that plays z-code games, they'll be playable on the web. I don't know how many other people play ADRIFT games, but if you publish a game that's only playable in Windows then people who don't run Windows won't play it. (I'm not specifically thinking of Node-X here; there were a bunch of game in TWIFComp that didn't run on OS X, I think some of them CYOAs, and I didn't play them. Actually for TWIFComp I only played online.) And then there's ChoiceScript, which I think only runs online, which would probably turn off a lot of IFComp folk -- but the "Choice of" games are probably the most broadly popular of all!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1121&start=0#p6332
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2010 - Open for Business, and You?
User: George / DateTime: 2010-05-30 20:40:32

[quote="matt w"] And then there's ChoiceScript, which I think only runs online, which would probably turn off a lot of IFComp folk -- but the "Choice of" games are probably the most broadly popular of all![/quote]

You can play a ChoiceScript game locally with your browser. 

Agreed that ADRIFT unfortunately has acquired a bad reputation over the years, despite some very good ADRIFT games out there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1121&start=0#p6333
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2010 - Open for Business, and You?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-05-30 21:31:43

[quote="George"][quote="matt w"] And then there's ChoiceScript, which I think only runs online, which would probably turn off a lot of IFComp folk -- but the "Choice of" games are probably the most broadly popular of all![/quote]

You can play a ChoiceScript game locally with your browser. 

Agreed that ADRIFT unfortunately has acquired a bad reputation over the years, despite some very good ADRIFT games out there.[/quote]
Systems aimed at beginners tend to be used a lot by... beginners. Which results in more bad games than good games. Which in turn results in the system itself getting the heat.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1123&start=0#p6334
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Latest Inform status update
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-30 22:43:39

Well, it's a one-of-a-kind syntax. That's my issue with it. The fewer one-of-a-kind statements a language has, the better.

All you're doing when you use "remove X from play" is removing the object from the containment hierarchy. In other words, the object still exists -- you're moving it to nowhere. So the syntax "now X is nowhere" would be more consistent.

 You [i]can [/i]currently test, "if X if nowhere", just as you can test, "if X is in the dungeon," so "move X to nowhere" would be parallel to "move X to the dungeon".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1121&start=0#p6335
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2010 - Open for Business, and You?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-05-31 03:49:08

[quote="RealNC"]Systems aimed at beginners tend to be used a lot by... beginners. Which results in more bad games than good games. Which in turn results in the system itself getting the heat.[/quote]
I'd say the bigger issue with Adrift is that it's aimed at beginners, but it takes an expert at the system to overcome the parser's limitations.  "You push, but nothing happens."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1126&start=0#p6336
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I6] Is there a way to get the system date?
User: Dataflashsabot / DateTime: 2010-05-31 05:57:33

I'd like the date shown at the start of my game to be the player's 'tomorrow'- that is, one day later than the system date. I have searched quite a bit, but 'date' is a hard thing to search for! I'm doubting it's possible, but I'd love to be proven wrong.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1123&start=0#p6337
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Latest Inform status update
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-05-31 07:50:55

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Well, it's a one-of-a-kind syntax. That's my issue with it. The fewer one-of-a-kind statements a language has, the better.

All you're doing when you use "remove X from play" is removing the object from the containment hierarchy. In other words, the object still exists -- you're moving it to nowhere. So the syntax "now X is nowhere" would be more consistent.

 You [i]can [/i]currently test, "if X if nowhere", just as you can test, "if X is in the dungeon," so "move X to nowhere" would be parallel to "move X to the dungeon".[/quote]

Well, I just checked to see if you can test "if X is out of play" and you can't -- but it throws a helpful compiler error telling you to use "If X is off-stage" instead. But this seems like a difference of taste between a programmer (you) and a non-programmer (me); one-of-a-kind syntaxes may be bad in general, but in this case removing an item from play really is fundamentally different from moving it to nowhere in game terms, even if it isn't in programming terms, so I think it's OK to have a special syntax for it. And you can always say "Move X to nowhere" if you like, can't you? 

Another thing is that deprecating "Remove X from play" would require a whole lot of changes in code -- over two dozen of the examples use it, and I'm sure many more games do. And I just don't see making the syntax more uniform as a benefit that's worth that inconvenience. (Whereas procedural rules, it seems, really do cause a lot of havoc in processing.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1126&start=0#p6338
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Is there a way to get the system date?
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-05-31 08:20:21

No, there's no way to find out the current date or time from within Z-code (or Glulx, for that matter).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1126&start=0#p6339
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Is there a way to get the system date?
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-05-31 09:59:52

Out of curiosity, if it [i]were[/i] possible to get the system time, what would your game do if the player took more than one day to play it?  I could see either 1) maintain the same date, which would rapidly cease to be the future, or 2) continue to bump the date into just-slightly-the-future; these would both be somewhat jarring.

Anyway, you could always just state the date as "Tomorrow," or [url=http://secretlab.com.au/blog/posts/ipad-day-941-am/]try to pull something clever[/url] where you pick a date which you hope the players have played the game before; for a Comp game you could pick the day after the end of the judging period, for example.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1123&start=0#p6340
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Latest Inform status update
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-31 10:40:35

[quote="matt w"]And you can always say "Move X to nowhere" if you like, can't you? [/quote]
No, you can't. That doesn't compile. This fact illustrates what I'm talking about: The syntax for doing an extremely common, useful manipulation on the object containment hierarchy is non-standard.

Also, after "remove X from play", X isn't actually out of play at all, because the code could later return it to the containment hierarchy, making it part of the game again. It's only temporarily or provisionally out of play.

And thanks for the compliment, but I'm only a programmer by courtesy. I can write adequate hobbyist-level code, but I try to avoid doing anything fancy, because it makes my head hurt.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1123&start=0#p6341
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Latest Inform status update
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-05-31 10:45:48

It may also be worth pointing out that in 5Z71, the error message if you try "now X is nowhere" is entirely unhelpful. One of the examples on the page to which the befuddled author is directed does indeed contain the line "remove ... from play", but this useful code is not mentioned anywhere on that page.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1123&start=0#p6342
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Latest Inform status update
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2010-05-31 12:37:16

[quote="matt w"]But this seems like a difference of taste between a programmer (you) and a non-programmer (me); one-of-a-kind syntaxes may be bad in general, but in this case removing an item from play really is fundamentally different from moving it to nowhere in game terms, even if it isn't in programming terms, so I think it's OK to have a special syntax for it.[/quote]

I have to agree with this. "Move X to nowhere" satisfies a need for formal consistency, but in terms of natural language it's crazy robot talk that makes no sense outside the context of the formal structure of the object tree. (If someone in real life asked me to move something to nowhere, I would assume they wanted me to leave it exactly where it is.)

"Off-stage" is a much more intuitive descriptor that is more consistent with its usage in natural language, I think. You can declare that a thing is now off-stage, you can test whether a thing is off-stage, and you can use off-stage as part of a description ("the list of off-stage people" is surely better than "the list of nowhere people" and at least more succinct than "the list of people that are nowhere.")

As far as "remove X from play" specifically goes, I don't see how it's a problem. The universal badness of one-of-a-kind syntax is not self-evident to me. The state of being outside the containment tree is in fact somewhat uniquely different from being anywhere else within it. Is the idea of being "out of play" misleading? No more so than being "nowhere" -- one could argue that the object is not really nowhere, it is still within the collection of objects that the code can manipulate.

I wouldn't have a problem with [b]adding[/b] the syntax "move X to nowhere," of course, although I don't think I would ever use it. But I would not like to see "remove X from play" deprecated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1123&start=0#p6343
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Latest Inform status update
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-05-31 13:50:12

I believe the plan is not to revisit the deprecation issue further for the present build, but to focus on finishing the bug fixes and release. In any case, the thread here suggests that this is an issue that might bear a little more discussion. 

To that end, I've added the suggestion to our suggestion database for the forum that is destined to go live alongside the build; perhaps that will help clarify how what preference users have about this issue.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1126&start=0#p6344
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Is there a way to get the system date?
User: Dataflashsabot / DateTime: 2010-05-31 16:37:33

I was suspecting that, oh well.
My first thought was to use 'tomorrow', but that seemed too 'meta' and jarring. The game is indeed for the IFComp, so I might just set it to after the voting period.
...actually! The date is only used once, at the very beginning, to show when a meeting is taking place. I'll proably just completely omit it, it would make no difference. Thanks for the help, anyway!
@tove: As I said, it's only used at the start and never mentioned again, so you could just assume that time is passing as normal (the character is unlikely to be tired, given his predicament). The game is quite short.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1127&start=0#p6345
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Quixe beta-test
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-05-31 23:18:25

After a holiday-weekend's worth of pounding the punchcards, I have a demoable version of Quixe, the pure-javascript Glulx interpreter.

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/</a>

A few Glulx games are set up for play.

The big feature still missing is save and restore. (Undo works, however.) You can type "save", and choose a save slot, and then type "restore", and look through the saved games. However, restoring will always fail. (The data that gets written to the slot is meaningless.)

Other unimplemented features: sound, graphics, stylehints. (Also line input in grid windows, but I don't think any games use that.) There is no iPhone/Android support.

It isn't all that fast. Reliques of Tolti-Aph, in particular, has a miserably long startup time. There are some debugging lines and assertions that will be trimmed out in the final release, and I haven't implemented the Glulx acceleration opcodes. But you can assume that anything which is slow now will be pretty slow in the future as well.

To run any other Glulx game using Quixe, you'll have to convert it to Javascript data by hand. (Sorry! I will eventually use Parchment's tricks of loading data files directly, but that isn't in place yet.) You'll need the zcode2js tool from the Parchment project. (Yes, even though the tool is called "zcode2js" and not "glulx2js". Just use it.) Run that on your .ulx or .gblorb file to generate a .js file. Put that up on a web server, and then drop it into the "story=" part of the URL.

Let me know how it works.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1127&start=0#p6346
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe beta-test
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-05-31 23:30:52

That's very neat!

Though the slowness with I7 games is certainly something that spoils the experience a bit; and that's on a 3.4GHz, quad core machine :-/

But otherwise, it's quite impressive.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1123&start=0#p6347
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Latest Inform status update
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-06-01 23:16:05

Adding "move X to nowhere" would save a bit of confusion for some users, who would otherwise have to search for a nonstandard syntax. I see no reason to remove or deprecate "remove X from play".

Where I'm coming from on this ... I only realized it yesterday ... is from T3. In T3, the syntax is this:

myObject.moveInto(nil);

This removes myObject from play, and it's exactly the same syntax as

myObject.moveInto(upstairsHallway);

I would hazard a guess that the thinking behind "remove X from play" harks back to the repeated admonition, in the DM4, that [i]nothing is not an object[/i]. Indeed, the DM4 is explicit that "move X to nothing" is not allowed in I6. So "remove X from play" in I7 is consistent with the earlier design of I6.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1123&start=10#p6348
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Latest Inform status update
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-02 07:31:41

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Where I'm coming from on this ... I only realized it yesterday ... is from T3. In T3, the syntax is this:

myObject.moveInto(nil);

This removes myObject from play, and it's exactly the same syntax as

myObject.moveInto(upstairsHallway);[/quote]

That's what I was thinking of when I called you a "programmer" -- you understand stuff that looks like this.

(Well, I might be able to pick T3 up with a fair amount of effort. But it certainly looks more programmery.) 

Anyway I completely agree with this:

[quote]Adding "move X to nowhere" would save a bit of confusion for some users, who would otherwise have to search for a nonstandard syntax. I see no reason to remove or deprecate "remove X from play".[/quote]

So, consensus?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1123&start=10#p6349
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Latest Inform status update
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-06-02 11:10:20

I agree that the slew of non-standard syntax for common tasks is one of my least favorite parts about Inform 7.  Embarrassingly, I didn't even know about "remove X from play" until this very thread.  I tried "move X offstage" or something similar the first few times I wanted to do so, since I remembered the syntax being something like that in Inform 6, and the compiler message was not especially useful, so since then, I've created a room called Nowhere or Offstage (with no map connections) and stowed things there.

The only problem with adding "move X to nowhere," of course, is that if the author wants an actual room called Nowhere, they're going to have to make it privately-named and such, and that seems like one of the things that new authors are less good at knowing they can do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1123&start=10#p6350
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Latest Inform status update
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-02 12:51:09

[quote="tove"]I agree that the slew of non-standard syntax for common tasks is one of my least favorite parts about Inform 7.  Embarrassingly, I didn't even know about "remove X from play" until this very thread.  I tried "move X offstage" or something similar the first few times I wanted to do so, since I remembered the syntax being something like that in Inform 6, and the compiler message was not especially useful, so since then, I've created a room called Nowhere or Offstage (with no map connections) and stowed things there.

The only problem with adding "move X to nowhere," of course, is that if the author wants an actual room called Nowhere, they're going to have to make it privately-named and such, and that seems like one of the things that new authors are less good at knowing they can do.[/quote]

Well, I don't seem to be able to make a room called "nowhere" anyway -- I typed "nowhere is a room" and got "Problem. You wrote 'Nowhere is a room'  : but 'nowhere' cannot be made specific, and so cannot have specific properties or be of any given kind." -- Which means adding "move X to nowhere" doesn't even have that problem.

Could it be that you're calling the room "offstage," and that's working because I7 uses "off-stage" instead?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=81&start=20#p6351
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Text Editors for IF
User: cconroy / DateTime: 2010-06-02 13:40:15

I've been using JIF for Inform 6 development.  It has syntax highlighting and it keeps track of all the functions, object declarations, etc. to make it easier to jump around.  You can also launch the compiler and interpreter from within the program.  So, more or less a full-featured IDE.  

[url]http://www.slade.altervista.org/[/url]

JIF has its quirks but most of the time they don't get in the way.  I'm going to give the above-mentioned Implementor a shot for the sake of comparison.  

I'm also curious, does anyone have experience writing Eclipse plugins?  I'm wondering what would be involved to set one up for I6 with syntax highlighting and compilation, and whether it would also be able to support object references, renaming/refactoring, etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1123&start=10#p6352
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Latest Inform status update
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-06-02 13:50:12

Aha, you're right; I was misremembering the problem I had.  According to 8.10 in the Documentation, "on-stage" and "off-stage" are properties, but not ones that can be explicitly set by saying "now the X is off-stage."  Of course it is easy to see why the compiler must dismiss "now the X is onstage" as too vague (onstage where?), but I probably saw an example with "off-stage" being checked, and was confused as to how to employ it.  

Anyway, yes, my Room of Undesired-Right-Now Objects is called Offstage, which works just fine because I'm not writing another [i]Broken Legs[/i].  I [i]thought[/i] at one point I had a Nowhere, but I'm clearly fabricating that memory.  It could have been something sillier like Nohow or Noway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1128&start=0#p6353
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Starting out. With a door.
User: KennyMan666 / DateTime: 2010-06-02 14:01:06

So I figured that I would try my hand at writing a text adventure and got Inform 7.

I understood the basics, created a few rooms, but ran into an issue with how I wanted the door out of the starting room in my test quest to work. It's a quite simple setup: The door is nailed shut and there is a crowbar in the room, so the crowbar needs to be used on the door to open it.

I can't for the life of me find how I can get a "use crowbar on door" command to work anywhere in the documentation. I can't seem to get any "use" command to work, for that matter...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1128&start=0#p6354
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Starting out. With a door.
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-06-02 15:24:04

[quote="KennyMan666"]I can't for the life of me find how I can get a "use crowbar on door" command to work anywhere in the documentation. I can't seem to get any "use" command to work, for that matter...[/quote]
"Use" is not included in the standard library, so if you want such a command in your game you have to create it yourself. Creating new actions is covered in manual chapter 12.7. Basically you need to create the new action and define which commands it responds to, for example:

[code]Using it on is an action applying to two things. Understand "use [something] on [something]" as using it on.[/code]
(USE is often considered a non-standard command, so don't forget to take into account other wordings: pry door with crowbar, open door with crowbar etc.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1128&start=0#p6355
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Starting out. With a door.
User: KennyMan666 / DateTime: 2010-06-02 16:24:15

Thanks. That makes sense. 

But "use" not being a standard command does confuse me a tad, as it's a command one would expect to use a lot in text games.

It now works with both use and pry, and the relevant code is now this:

[spoiler][code]The Entrance is a room. "You are standing in a nondescript room. A door is on the western wall."
The wooden door is west of the Entrance and east of the Corridor.
The wooden door is a door.
The wooden door is scenery in the Entrance.
The crowbar is a thing.
The crowbar is in the entrance.
The description of the crowbar is "A standard crowbar."

Prying is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "pry [something]" as prying.
Using it on is an action applying to two things. Understand "use [something] on [something]" as using it on.

Check prying wooden door: if the crowbar is not carried then say "With what?" instead.
Check prying wooden door: if the wooden door is open then say "No need to do that again." instead.
Check using [crowbar] on wooden door: if the crowbar is not carried then say "You don't have a crowbar." instead.
Check using [crowbar] on wooden door: if the wooden door is open then say "No need to do that again." instead.
Report prying a wooden door: say "You pry the door open with the crowbar."
Report using [crowbar] on wooden door: say "You pry the door open with the crowbar."
Carry out prying: change the wooden door to open.
Carry out using crowbar on wooden door: change the wooden door to open.

Instead of opening the wooden door: If the door is closed, say "You attempt to open the door, but to no avail. It has been nailed shut."
[/code][/spoiler]

What I also would like to do is make the player not see the crowbar without first having looked around... but that's a later question.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1123&start=10#p6356
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Latest Inform status update
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-02 18:38:43

[quote="tove"]Anyway, yes, my Room of Undesired-Right-Now Objects[/quote]

I think I just had a great idea for a place to set an IF.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1073&start=0#p6357
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Multimedia TADS for Linux and Mac
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-06-02 21:08:52

A final 2.0 release draws nearer. There are a few things left to do before that happens. One of them was the configuration dialog. The most needed functionality, like changing fonts, sizes, colors, hyperlink appearance and enabling/disabling media functionality is now provided. The visual glitches of that dialog on the Mac should now be fixed too.

Also, the application now follows local desktop standards and guidelines. For example, on Gnome and XFCE, changes apply instantly and there's only a "Close" button. On KDE, changes don't apply instantly, and there are OK/Apply/Cancel buttons. The behavior changes at runtime, according to which DE the interpreter is running in, which means there's no need to have different binaries for each DE.

On the Mac, there are no buttons at all and changes apply instantly.

I hope to provide "Defaults/Undo" buttons at some point.

There were other changes and bugfixes as well. The new build (2010-06-02) can be found at the usual location:

<a class="postlink" href="http://qtads.sourceforge.net/downloads.shtml">http://qtads.sourceforge.net/downloads.shtml</a>

I consider the Linux version very solid at this time. Unfortunately, there are a few strange bugs still present in the Mac version, which I'm trying to fix. (For example, the input window loses focus at times when scrolling or for no apparent reason.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1128&start=0#p6358
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Starting out. With a door.
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-06-02 21:13:57

"Use" has never come into general... er, general use (sorry) because it's too... useful. (Wow, that sentence sucks.)

If you implement "use" for one object, the player is really going to expect it to work for every object -- why should it only mean *some* usages? And if you're writing that game, why would the player use any other verb?

This may sound like pointless cruelty -- hiding verbs behind a curtain. Maybe it is. But it's a general game-design principle that the range of interesting commands should reflect the range of choices. If you're building a point-and-click game (in which click means "do something"), you design around the objects. If you're building a game with verbs, you design around the verbs and objects together.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1128&start=0#p6359
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Starting out. With a door.
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-06-02 21:34:36

I consider "use" very useful (er...) actually. If implemented correctly. Which means going through every object in the game and making sure it provides a reasonable response for it. I guess that's a lot of work, and if you can't do that, then you shouldn't implement "use" at all.

When is "use" useful? When the use of an object is obvious but non-trivial, and you don't want the player to resort to guess-the-verb in order to solve a task.

For example, imagine you have a computer in your game. The player is supposed to unlock and open the bank's safe with it. "use computer" would then bring up a menu with possible actions, or "use computer to open the safe"; this is preferable here compared to trying to explain to the player how to do that using out-of-game messages that explain the verb syntax. Because really, "activate computer" (which probably is what most authors would have done) has nothing to do with using the computer.

Other examples would be:

>USE PHONE
Whom do you want to call?

>USE NORTH DOOR
[remap to N]

>USE FRIDGE
The refrigerator has no obvious use other than placing something inside it.

The last example is what makes this difficult to implement; if you can't provide these messages for all objects in the game, then better don't provide "use" at all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1128&start=0#p6360
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Starting out. With a door.
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-06-03 01:12:49

I've always considered USE to be too vague to be, uh, useful. For example the crowbar: does USE CROWBAR WITH TABLE mean that you want to move the table with the crowbar, or hit it, or lift it, or put the crowbar on it, or something else? The game could make a guess, but it usually frustrates the player if the game's guess is different to what the player intended.

One solution that I've used (similar to RealNC's above) is to have USE by default say something like "USE is too vague, please be more specific" but have the game respond to obvious actions appropriately (for example USE DOOR usually means that you want to go through it) or give hints on how to use the object ("You could PRY or HIT something with the crowbar.")

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1128&start=0#p6361
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Starting out. With a door.
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-06-03 01:21:08

[quote="KennyMan666"][code]
Check using [crowbar] on wooden door: if the crowbar is not carried then say "You don't have a crowbar." instead.
Check using [crowbar] on wooden door: if the wooden door is open then say "No need to do that again." instead.
Report using [crowbar] on wooden door: say "You pry the door open with the crowbar."[/code][/quote]
Just a quick comment on the code: These lines don't work as intended. If you use square brackets outside strings, they're considered a comment which is ignored by the parser. So Check using [crowbar] on wooden door is considered as Check using on wooden door, which in turn means that any object triggers these rules (try picking up the crowbar and then USE YOURSELF ON DOOR or USE DOOR ON DOOR.) Just remove the square brackets to fix this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1123&start=10#p6362
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Latest Inform status update
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-06-03 01:56:11

[quote="Jim Aikin"]I would hazard a guess that the thinking behind "remove X from play" harks back to the repeated admonition, in the DM4, that [i]nothing is not an object[/i]. Indeed, the DM4 is explicit that "move X to nothing" is not allowed in I6. So "remove X from play" in I7 is consistent with the earlier design of I6.[/quote]
That design is presumably modeled on the Z-machine, where @insert_obj and @remove_obj are two separate opcodes, and @insert_obj with a destination of 0 is illegal. If the "remove" statement didn't exist, "move" would have to be dispatched at runtime.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1128&start=0#p6363
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Starting out. With a door.
User: KennyMan666 / DateTime: 2010-06-03 04:12:25

Ah, gotcha. I think I added those when it gave me errors, but it must have been wording elsewhere that caused said problems.

And, yeah, I understand how "use" isn't a specific enough command, but it's the kind of command one would assume anyone would try when playing a text adventure.

Well, most of my quest is working now. Left to do is figure out how to a) make a device in one room enable access to other device in another room, b) make said other device unlock a door in yet another room, and c) make exiting through said door into the winning condition of the game. Then I shall share my game with you to laugh at my newbie code! But we all have to start somewhere!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1127&start=0#p6364
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe beta-test
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-06-03 11:10:52

Anyone who's interested should try the new Parchment with Glulx support. It's not live, but you can download and run it locally: <a class="postlink" href="http://github.com/curiousdannii/parchment/archives/quixe">http://github.com/curiousdannii/parchme ... ives/quixe</a>

It should run any glulx file on the net (smaller than 1MB!), just add the story file's URL to parchment.html?story=

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1127&start=0#p6365
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe beta-test
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-06-03 12:21:46

[quote="Dannii"]It should run any glulx file on the net (smaller than 1MB!), just add the story file's URL to parchment.html?story=[/quote]

That was quick! Some issues I encountered:

Both .ulx and .gblorb files will run from my hard drive and from the net, but without a status line window. I can also run Zarf's quixe demos (e.g., parchment.html?story=http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/demo/stories/Rover.gblorb.js ); they also do not have status lines. (Is multi-windowing broken, or is there just an issue with the CSS, say, for the status line?)

The 1 MB limit makes a lot of games inaccessible. Is that a limit that can/will be done away with?

Good work--this whole wing of endeavor is progressing beautifully.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1127&start=0#p6366
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe beta-test
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-06-03 13:48:50

I haven't looked yet at Dannii's changes. but it sounds like a CSS issue.

The 1-meg limit is a serious problem. (It affects some .zblorb files too.) Fixing it is a high priority, but I'm not sure who's tackling it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1129&start=0#p6367
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: IF Archive RSS feed
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-06-03 13:50:11

It has one now. The URL is <a class="postlink" href="http://ifarchive.org/indexes/archive.rss">http://ifarchive.org/indexes/archive.rss</a> . Or you can go to the front page and look for your browser's RSS indicator.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1130&start=0#p6368
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Making a door to apear
User: sepehr / DateTime: 2010-06-03 13:56:48

hi, i,ve downloaded inform 7 yesterday and im trying to make a game.

i want that when the player asks the wizzard, the wizzard makes a door to apear.

but how can make the door be made after that the player asks the wizzard?

thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1123&start=10#p6369
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Latest Inform status update
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-06-03 14:04:11

Actually, I'd guess that it was an attempt to keep the "is" verb from getting even more complicated than it already is. Think about the various cases:

  R is a room that varies.
  ...now R is nowhere. [R now refers to nowhere]

  R is a thing that varies.
  ...now R is nowhere. [the object that R refers to is now off-stage]

I think it's a solvable problem, because "nowhere" is not actually a room reference, so the first case shouldn't be legal. (I think.) But you can see why you might not want to tackle it.

(Supporting "X is *in* nowhere" would be easier, but it's awkward phrasing -- nobody would want that.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1130&start=0#p6370
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Making a door to apear
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-06-03 14:16:09

The easiest way is to download and install the Secret Doors extension from <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/Andrew%20Owen/Secret%20Doors/doc_0.html">http://inform7.com/extensions/Andrew%20 ... doc_0.html</a> and reveal the door when needed (see chapter 2.10 on installing extensions.) For example:

[code]Include Secret Doors by Andrew Owen.

The library is a room. The magical door is a secret door. The magical door is west of the library and east of the wizard's laboratory. The wizard is a man in the library. 

Instead of asking the wizard about "door" for the first time:
    say "'Oh yeah, the door. It's here,' he says and pulls the door from his sleeve.";
    now the magical door is revealed.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1128&start=0#p6371
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Starting out. With a door.
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-06-03 14:51:17

[quote="KennyMan666"]it's the kind of command one would assume anyone would try when playing a text adventure.[/quote]
I'm guessing you haven't played much IF, so I'd like to suggest that you play a bunch of games, and then see if you still feel the same way. 

I'm not saying that your point of view is invalid (even though I disagree with it), and sometimes conventions should be challenged, but becoming familiar with the conventions is usually a good idea before heading off in another direction. That way the decision to head off into another direction is an informed one.

Are you trained on graphical adventure games, btw? This makes me recall [url=http://vimeo.com/10853366]Dave Gilbert's experience[/url] on how new users didn't think to "use the crowbar on the door". Something he, and every seasoned (graphical) adventure gamer thought was obvious.

Edit once more: Just keep in mind that seasoned players of IF will probably not consider to use "use" so don't forget to allow "open door with crowbar" and other variations as well as "use". Unless you design the game around the "use" verb and let the player know that clearly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1130&start=0#p6372
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Making a door to apear
User: sepehr / DateTime: 2010-06-03 15:07:34

thanks. it solved my problem!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1131&start=0#p6373
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Making a door closed
User: sepehr / DateTime: 2010-06-03 15:55:52

hi,

how can i make a door close after entering the door?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1128&start=0#p6374
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Starting out. With a door.
User: KennyMan666 / DateTime: 2010-06-03 16:01:18

(Har man sett, en svensk!)

I have indeed not played many text-based adventure games. Haven't played any Inform ones at all. Point&click games like Monkey Island have been favourites of mine, however.

But, I mean, I totally understand how certain commands that you might be used to from adventure games just won't work in the Inform engine. And so one wanting to design a game with is needs to take it into account.

I weren't ever planning to write any long, involved games where there could be a dozen different valid commands to take into account, mostly some short scenarios related to a story me and some friends are making. Seasoned IF players will not be in my target audience there. And the game I'm writing with the help of this topic right is just my "Mess around with Inform 7 to understand the program". Thanks to everyone that has helped me, by the way. I'm starting to get the hang of this (yeah, right). Just need to read up on how devices work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1123&start=10#p6375
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Latest Inform status update
User: Roger / DateTime: 2010-06-03 16:42:31

While we're kicking around syntaxes, I wouldn't mind something like:

  now R is a thing out of world



Cheers,
Roger

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1128&start=10#p6376
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Starting out. With a door.
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-06-03 17:33:42

[quote="Juhana"]One solution that I've used (similar to RealNC's above) is to [...] give hints on how to use the object ("You could PRY or HIT something with the crowbar.")[/quote]


Ohh, I like this.  I wonder if you could even have something autogenerate from what each object's defined interfering (Before/Instead/After) rules. Or have a Table of Notable Verbs matching verbs with interesting effects to various objects.

Something like, "Well, there sure are a lot of things a crowbar can do! Do you want to SMASH the door, PRY the door, SLIDE the crowbar under the door, try to UNLOCK the door with the crowbar (unlikely to work!) or what?" would be friendly to newbs (or those more familiar with clickable graphic adventures) while pointing out the reason why we have the "unlikely to recognize USE" convention in the first place.


...You should put it in the IF Trainer.   [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1131&start=0#p6377
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Making a door closed
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-03 18:42:02

[quote="sepehr"]hi,

how can i make a door close after entering the door?[/quote]

You could try this (which has only been very lightly tested):

[code]
After going through a door (called passageway): 
	say "(closing [the passageway] behind you)";
	Try closing passageway;
	continue the action.[/code]

Or you might want to generate a different set of messages.
"continue the action" seems to be necessary for you to look after going through.

"Try closing the noun" doesn't work because Inform thinks the noun is the direction you just went.

Hope this helps!

Matt

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1127&start=0#p6378
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe beta-test
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-06-03 19:42:54

[quote="ektemple"]Both .ulx and .gblorb files will run from my hard drive and from the net, but without a status line window. I can also run Zarf's quixe demos (e.g., parchment.html?story=http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/demo/stories/Rover.gblorb.js ); they also do not have status lines. (Is multi-windowing broken, or is there just an issue with the CSS, say, for the status line?)[/quote]
Mmm, that is serious. I'm not sure of its cause.

[quote]The 1 MB limit makes a lot of games inaccessible. Is that a limit that can/will be done away with?[/quote]
It can and will be. It's not quite as high a priority for me as it is for Zarf though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1132&start=0#p6379
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: questions about specific programming languages
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-06-03 20:46:37

Just a friendly note to new members: questions about a specific programming language should be posted on the board for that language, rather than here. So if you want to ask a question about how to do something in Inform 7, for instance, it should go on the Inform 6 and 7 board, not here. The Getting Started part of this board is more intended for general questions like "Which programming language should I use?"

It's not a problem, it just makes it easier for people to find the topics they're interested in reading. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1132&start=0#p6380
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: questions about specific programming languages
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-06-03 20:58:33

Why not also move the existing topics to the appropriate section?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1132&start=0#p6381
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: questions about specific programming languages
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-06-03 21:14:57

I would if I were a mod. But I'm not, just a bossy person.  [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1073&start=0#p6382
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Multimedia TADS for Linux and Mac
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-06-04 00:00:30

The input focus bug on Mac OS X should be fixed now [emote]:)[/emote] A few other bugs were fixed as well (like being able to insert weird looking, non-printable characters in the edit field, and a crash that occurred in some rare cases when clicking on links.)

I've uploaded the new build (2010-06-04) for Linux and Mac to the [url=http://qtads.sourceforge.net/downloads.shtml]download page[/url].

Please give this build a try. If you find any bugs or even just weird behavior, please report it; I'm going to wrap this up for a 2.0 release soon.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1132&start=0#p6385
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: questions about specific programming languages
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-06-04 03:25:47

I was going to answer one of the questions with TADS 3 code, but now someone's mentioned it, it would seem cussed.

 [emote]:|[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1132&start=0#p6386
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: questions about specific programming languages
User: KennyMan666 / DateTime: 2010-06-04 03:59:37

Ohh, I'm guilty of this one!

The board descriptions aren't totally clear about it, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1132&start=0#p6387
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: questions about specific programming languages
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-06-04 04:39:07

Maybe just "General game design" or "Game design" would be a better name for the board. Getting started -questions would probably find their way there either way.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1131&start=0#p6388
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Making a door closed
User: sepehr / DateTime: 2010-06-04 04:51:30

...

and for locking?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1131&start=0#p6389
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Making a door closed
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-06-04 05:09:38

[quote="sepehr"]and for locking?[/quote]
You can use the "now" structure (see manual chapter 8.11): now the passageway is locked.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1131&start=0#p6390
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Making a door closed
User: sepehr / DateTime: 2010-06-04 05:19:10

"now" works for both. but why "try" won't work?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1131&start=0#p6391
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Making a door closed
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-06-04 05:26:12

Which try? If you had "try locking the passageway," it won't work because there's no "locking" action (unless you've defined one yourself or use an extension that does that), only "locking it with". "Try" means that the player character actually tries the action in the game as if the player would've typed it and it might or might not succeed, depending on the situation. "Now" makes the change directly and it doesn't need an action attached to it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1131&start=0#p6392
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Making a door closed
User: sepehr / DateTime: 2010-06-04 05:31:31

got it! thanks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1132&start=0#p6393
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: questions about specific programming languages
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-06-04 05:42:39

[quote="KennyMan666"]The board descriptions aren't totally clear about it, though.[/quote]
I know. Don't worry, you're not the first person to be confused about it.

[quote="Juhana"]Maybe just "General game design" or "Game design" would be a better name for the board. Getting started -questions would probably find their way there either way.[/quote]
I agree. Maybe also add a note to the board description, mentioning that it's an appropriate place for "which language should I use"-type questions. (Otherwise they might end up down in the Tools board...)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1061&start=0#p6394
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: works based on short stories or old video games
User: Samwise / DateTime: 2010-06-04 07:26:23

Regarding the permission for an IF treatment of Harlan Ellison's work, why not ask him directly through the [url=http://harlanellison.com/heboard/unca.htm]Art Deco Dining Pavilion[/url] at the Harlan Ellison Webderland site.  I'm sure he'll leave you very little doubt on his feelings either way ...

Sam.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=10#p6395
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: Dataflashsabot / DateTime: 2010-06-04 08:10:58

Best if you have a QWERTY phone, but works on others: [url=http://sites.google.com/site/zaxmidlet/]ZaxMidlet[/url]. Recently fixed so the font is no longer horrible, it's the only J2ME 'terp I'm aware of that can actually load games from the phone.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1131&start=0#p6396
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Making a door closed
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-04 08:33:09

[quote="Juhana"]Which try? If you had "try locking the passageway," it won't work because there's no "locking" action (unless you've defined one yourself or use an extension that does that), only "locking it with". "Try" means that the player character actually tries the action in the game as if the player would've typed it and it might or might not succeed, depending on the situation. "Now" makes the change directly and it doesn't need an action attached to it.[/quote]

You can get "try" to work thus:

[code]Definition: A thing is player-carried if the player carries it.

After going through a door (called passageway): 
	say "(closing [the passageway] behind you)";
	Try closing passageway;
	if passageway is closed:
		if the player carries a thing that unlocks passageway:
			let locker be a random player-carried thing that unlocks passageway;
			say "(locking [the passageway] with [the locker])";
			try locking passageway with locker;
	continue the action.[/code]

(There's probably a better way to handle "player-carried." I had to do that because Inform is tetchy about handling multiple that-clauses; if you type "let locker be a random thing that unlocks passageway that is carried by the player," it thinks "that is carried by the player" modifies "passageway." This is one of the cases where I think the natural-language syntax works a bit poorly.) 

One advantage this might have over the "now" phrasing is that the "now" phrasing will lock the door even if the player doesn't carry the key -- so it'll be easy for players to lock themselves out. Or maybe that's what you want. Another warning is that players often resent having to manually unlock and open every door they go through. (At least I do.) Making every door close and lock automatically could aggravate that. But if there's a horde of slavering zombies on the other side of the door, it's a good thing.

Matt

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1131&start=0#p6397
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Making a door closed
User: Mick / DateTime: 2010-06-04 08:58:44

I'm wondering what the intentions are on this. Is the original poster trying to set up a game in which players automatically close and lock every door they go through? The more likely scenario is that sepehr is asking how to close and lock a particular door after the player goes through it. (I'm making an assumption here so please correct me if I'm wrong.) 

If that is case, you really don't want to use the 'try' phrases, because that is making the player character perform the actions.

[code]
After going through the haunted door:
    say "After you step into the room, the heavy wooden door slams shut and you hear a soft click.";
    now the haunted door is closed;
    now the haunted door is locked.
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1133&start=0#p6398
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: making a portable object not be described in description?
User: sepehr / DateTime: 2010-06-04 10:14:25

hi,

how can i make an object that can be taken but not described in the room description?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1131&start=0#p6399
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Making a door closed
User: sepehr / DateTime: 2010-06-04 10:39:10

the story is so that when you get into a room, the door behind you closes and you have to escape.It's just for the beginning of the game!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1130&start=0#p6400
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Making a door to apear
User: sepehr / DateTime: 2010-06-04 11:08:03

you can do that also by placing a door a the start of the game in a unreachable place and then moving it to the desired place!
[size=120]
[code]Magical door is a door west of the unreachable room.

Instead of asking the wizard about "door" for the first time:
    say "'Oh yeah, the door. It's here,' he says and pulls the door from his sleeve.";
    now the magical door is mapped east of the room1 and west of the room2[/code][/size]
wasn't it better when the texts in the code box were a little bit bigger?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1133&start=0#p6401
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: making a portable object not be described in description
User: Mick / DateTime: 2010-06-04 11:38:26

Let's say the object in question is the bell.

[code]
Before listing nondescript items: 
    if the bell is marked for listing: 
        now the bell is not marked for listing;
[/code]

Adapted from example #335: Rip, in the Inform manual -- if you want a bigger example.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1133&start=0#p6402
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: making a portable object not be described in description
User: sepehr / DateTime: 2010-06-04 12:25:43

huh?

I'm new to i7, as i copied and pasted it over there, the following error happens:
[quote]
Problem. The phrase or rule definition 'Before listing nondescript items'   is written using the 'colon and indentation' syntax for its 'if's, 'repeat's and 'while's, where blocks of phrases grouped together are indented one tab step inward from the 'if ...:' or similar phrase to which they belong. But the tabs here seem to be misaligned, and I can't determine the structure. The first phrase going awry in the definition seems to be 'if the stone is marked for listing'  , in case that helps. 

 This sometimes happens even when the code looks about right, to the eye, if rows of spaces have been used to indent phrases instead of tabs.[/quote]
if i type it like so:
[size=120][code]Before listing nondescript items:
    now the bell is not marked for listing;[/code][/size]
it has no errors but that object is still listed

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1133&start=0#p6403
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: making a portable object not be described in description
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-06-04 12:46:38

Make sure everything that looks like about five spaces in a row is actually a tab, so:

[code]Before listing nondescript items:
{tab}if the bell is marked for listing:
{tab tab}now the bell is not marked for listing;[/code]

Often, code with proper tabs gets reformatted by the message board or email clients to have spaces instead.  This is actually a problem if you copy-and-paste from the documentation itself, too -- at least in my IDE, which is the OSX version -- but if you use the little button that looks like a tiny screen with tinier words on it (or a box full of dotted lines) next to the example, it will automatically insert the code from that example into your text, with proper formatting.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1131&start=10#p6404
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Making a door closed
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-04 14:05:16

[quote="sepehr"]the story is so that when you get into a room, the door behind you closes and you have to escape.It's just for the beginning of the game![/quote]

Oh, then you definitely want Mick's approach. I've been talking about something that makes the player automatically close and lock every single door in the game behind him.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1134&start=0#p6405
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: a door with 2 keys?!
User: sepehr / DateTime: 2010-06-04 14:37:44

how can i have a door with tow keys? It seems that when i make two keys for a door it shows an error massage...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1126&start=0#p6406
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Is there a way to get the system date?
User: sepehr / DateTime: 2010-06-04 14:42:59

...

maybe you can update your game each day?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1135&start=0#p6407
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: a lighting dress?
User: sepehr / DateTime: 2010-06-04 14:45:25

hi,

what's a good name for a wearable lit object?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1135&start=0#p6408
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a lighting dress?
User: Mick / DateTime: 2010-06-04 15:06:19

A mining cap

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1135&start=0#p6409
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a lighting dress?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-06-04 15:20:53

[quote="sepehr"]what's a good name for a wearable lit object?[/quote]

As a kid, I read a movie review in the Reader's Digest. The highlight was a duel fought between combatants wearing glow-in-the-dark condoms.

I recall thinking a condom must be something like a light saber. This had rather mortifying consequences in health class a few months later.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1135&start=0#p6410
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a lighting dress?
User: George / DateTime: 2010-06-04 20:41:56

That's a tried and true trope of cinema Ben:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S25Zf8svHZQ">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S25Zf8svHZQ</a>


On-topic: head lamp.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1135&start=0#p6411
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a lighting dress?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-06-04 22:37:49

[quote="George"]That's a tried and true trope of cinema Ben:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S25Zf8svHZQ">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S25Zf8svHZQ</a>
[/quote]

Fascinating. I've never seen Spaceballs, though.

After a bunch of Googling, I discovered that the movie in question was probably:
[spoiler][url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ky5u6vm44ak&feature=player_embedded#!]Skin Deep[/url][/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1135&start=0#p6412
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a lighting dress?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-06-05 01:57:35

[quote="sepehr"]hi,

what's a good name for a wearable lit object?[/quote]

"Seattle I-F T-shirt"

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1136&start=0#p6413
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Beta Testers Needed: "Flight of the Hummingbird"
User: Michael Martin / DateTime: 2010-06-05 04:11:46

After a lengthy hiatus, my second full-length work of interactive fiction - [i]Flight of the Hummingbird[/i] - is ready for beta-testing. This is expected to be my entry in IFComp 2010.

It's gone through an "alpha test" pass already, and I'm looking to now have it tested by some people who can look at it with fresh eyes now that it's had its most egregious issues dealt with.

It's nominally a superhero game, but its main interaction theme is exotic movement and navigation mechanics.

Reply or PM if you're interested.

Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1135&start=0#p6414
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a lighting dress?
User: George / DateTime: 2010-06-05 12:39:32

And there's still a few left. If anyone is going spelunking, send me a PM and we can work something out.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1136&start=0#p6415
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Beta Testers Needed: "Flight of the Hummingbird"
User: George / DateTime: 2010-06-05 13:04:25

Sounds fun -- I'm happy to test, feel free to PM.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1123&start=10#p6416
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Latest Inform status update
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-06-05 15:51:55

In the new release, you'll be able to say both "now X is off-stage," and "now X is on-stage" (which moves X to the player's current location). So yeah, you won't need "remove from play" any more.

Roger, are you talking about syntax for creating an object? If so, you can make something that's not in the object tree with an assertion like "X is a thing."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1123&start=10#p6417
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Latest Inform status update
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-05 16:53:32

[quote="aaronius"]In the new release, you'll be able to say both "now X is off-stage," and "now X is on-stage" (which moves X to the player's current location). So yeah, you won't need "remove from play" any more.[/quote] 

Cool.

If suggestions are still being taken, maybe allow "offstage" and "onstage" as synonyms?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1137&start=0#p6418
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7/Linux - problem running stories in Inform
User: Jaek / DateTime: 2010-06-05 22:34:03

I'm having a small problem with the Linux build of Inform 7 (5Z71) running on Ubuntu 10.04 64 bit. I'm not sure if this is already known but I've not been able to find anything about this.

If I have more than one Inform project open, I am unable to "run" the story file in any of them within Inform. The story compiles fine, but the Game tab remains blank (grey) as if the interpreter isn't attempting to run.

If I only have one project open then it runs fine, and if I already have a story running and open another project then the first will stay running (though subsequent ones won't run).

This isn't a show-stopping problem but does take away some of the convenience for running a second story file to test things out. I can still just run the output.z5 file from the Build directory though.

Edit: Here are some steps which should make this more clear...
- Open Project 1
- Run Project 1 (story runs)
- Open Project 2
- Run Project 1 again (story still runs)
- Run Project 2 (story will not run)
- Run Project 1 again (story will not run)
- Close Project 2
- Run Project 1 again (story runs)

If anyone has heard of this before and know of a solution, any pointers would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1135&start=0#p6419
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a lighting dress?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-06-05 23:58:36

[quote="George"]And there's still a few left. If anyone is going spelunking, send me a PM and we can work something out.[/quote]
The "IFComp in Public" t-shirts, with the cute picture of the kids in the dark, you mean? 'Cause if you still have some of those left, I'm definitely interested.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1138&start=0#p6420
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Moving a Trackball
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-06-06 13:04:03

Working in TADS 3 there are often times when I find myself faced with something that I know the system can already do, but I can't figure out exactly how to get my hands on the functionality.  Usually I can muddle through, but this time I'm stumped.  I've searched the various docs, looked in the technical manual...

Okay, what I have is a machine with a trackball, which the player can move to produce a certain result (this result is not, of course, the actual relocation of the trackball).  I've also, for completely separate reasons, implemented the directions "left" and "right" in the game.  It seems to me that using existing verbs I should be able to handle the following player commands:

[quote]>MOVE/PUSH TRACKBALL LEFT
>MOVE/PUSH TRACKBALL TO THE LEFT[/quote]
But... how?

The best I've been able to do so far is:

[quote]>move trackball left
I move the trackball to... 

>move trackball to left
I see no left here.

>move trackball to the left
The story doesn’t understand that command. [/quote]
In the first case I've got the action method for the PushTravel verb, but how do I find out what direction the player is trying to move it in?

In the second case, how do I tweak the parser to understand PUSH (object) TO (object) in the same fashion as PUSH (object) (direction)?

And having solved the second case, will the third just fall out?  I notice that T3 in general doesn't seem to like articles being used with directions (for example, >GO TO THE NORTH results in "You see no the north here.")

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1137&start=0#p6421
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7/Linux - problem running stories in Inform
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2010-06-06 13:49:00

I have this problem too, and I know of no solution. I have some other issues, too. Inform 7 tends to become slower and slower as I use it, for example, and it gets to be so that I have to wait a couple minutes after writing a sentence for it to appear in the source pane. And sometimes when I compile I get an error message telling me that translating the source failed for unknown reasons, and that I shouldn't see that message even if my source text was "complete gibberish." Simply compiling again usually works, though. I wonder if any of these problems have anything to do with the current package having been made for an earlier version of Ubuntu.

At this point, though, I'm hesitant to report these issues, because I know the next version of Inform 7 is undergoing finishing touches.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1137&start=0#p6422
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7/Linux - problem running stories in Inform
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-06 14:01:23

I think I recall mention of some Linux slowdown problems, and that the IDE maintainer was looking into them. 

There's no harm in reporting these problems, though -- the IDEs can be updated separately from the main build of Inform, so it's not the case that this will necessarily hold up the imminent release.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1137&start=0#p6423
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7/Linux - problem running stories in Inform
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-06-06 14:39:11

[quote="Jaek"]If I have more than one Inform project open, I am unable to "run" the story file in any of them within Inform. The story compiles fine, but the Game tab remains blank (grey) as if the interpreter isn't attempting to run.[/quote]

If you launch Inform 7 from a Terminal window, it should print error messages there.  Can you give that a try and see if anything useful appears?  It won't solve the problem but it may help pinpoint the issue.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1137&start=0#p6424
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7/Linux - problem running stories in Inform
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2010-06-06 14:41:50

[quote="bcressey"]If you launch Inform 7 from a Terminal window, it should print error messages there.[/quote]

Tried it just now. No messages in the terminal.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1137&start=0#p6425
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7/Linux - problem running stories in Inform
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2010-06-06 14:44:23

[quote="Kazuki Mishima"]No messages in the terminal.[/quote]

Uh, hang on. After I closed Inform 7, a bunch of stuff came up in the terminal.

This was after a few failed attempts to compile and run:

[code]lunasspecto@lunasspecto-laptop:~$ gnome-inform7

(gnome-inform7:2783): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_text_buffer_delete_mark: assertion `GTK_IS_TEXT_MARK (mark)' failed

(gnome-inform7:2783): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_text_buffer_delete_mark: assertion `GTK_IS_TEXT_MARK (mark)' failed

(gnome-inform7:2783): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_text_buffer_delete_mark: assertion `GTK_IS_TEXT_MARK (mark)' failed

** (gnome-inform7:2783): CRITICAL **: gtk_terp_get_running: assertion `GTK_IS_TERP(terp)' failed

** (gnome-inform7:2783): CRITICAL **: gtk_terp_get_running: assertion `GTK_IS_TERP(terp)' failed

(gnome-inform7:2783): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_unref: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed

(gnome-inform7:2783): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: instance of invalid non-instantiatable type `<invalid>'

(gnome-inform7:2783): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_signal_emit_valist: assertion `G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE (instance)' failed

** (gnome-inform7:2783): CRITICAL **: gtk_terp_get_running: assertion `GTK_IS_TERP(terp)' failed

** (gnome-inform7:2783): CRITICAL **: gtk_terp_get_running: assertion `GTK_IS_TERP(terp)' failed

** (gnome-inform7:2783): CRITICAL **: gtk_terp_get_running: assertion `GTK_IS_TERP(terp)' failed

** (gnome-inform7:2783): CRITICAL **: gtk_terp_get_running: assertion `GTK_IS_TERP(terp)' failed

** (gnome-inform7:2783): CRITICAL **: gtk_terp_get_running: assertion `GTK_IS_TERP(terp)' failed

** (gnome-inform7:2783): CRITICAL **: gtk_terp_get_running: assertion `GTK_IS_TERP(terp)' failed

** (gnome-inform7:2783): CRITICAL **: gtk_terp_get_running: assertion `GTK_IS_TERP(terp)' failed

** (gnome-inform7:2783): CRITICAL **: gtk_terp_get_running: assertion `GTK_IS_TERP(terp)' failed

** (gnome-inform7:2783): CRITICAL **: gtk_terp_get_running: assertion `GTK_IS_TERP(terp)' failed

** (gnome-inform7:2783): CRITICAL **: gtk_terp_get_running: assertion `GTK_IS_TERP(terp)' failed

** (gnome-inform7:2783): CRITICAL **: gtk_terp_get_running: assertion `GTK_IS_TERP(terp)' failed

** (gnome-inform7:2783): CRITICAL **: gtk_terp_get_running: assertion `GTK_IS_TERP(terp)' failed

** (gnome-inform7:2783): CRITICAL **: gtk_terp_get_running: assertion `GTK_IS_TERP(terp)' failed

** (gnome-inform7:2783): CRITICAL **: gtk_terp_get_running: assertion `GTK_IS_TERP(terp)' failed

** (gnome-inform7:2783): CRITICAL **: gtk_terp_get_running: assertion `GTK_IS_TERP(terp)' failed[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1137&start=0#p6426
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7/Linux - problem running stories in Inform
User: Jaek / DateTime: 2010-06-06 17:02:30

[quote="Kazuki Mishima"]I have this problem too, and I know of no solution. I have some other issues, too. Inform 7 tends to become slower and slower as I use it...[/quote]
I was having a similar slowdown problem after a couple of minutes when cutting and pasting text, but turning off "use elastic tabstops" in the intelligence tab of the preferences fixed it for me.

[quote="bcressey"]If you launch Inform 7 from a Terminal window, it should print error messages there.  Can you give that a try and see if anything useful appears?[/quote]
I don't get any messages when attempting to run the multiple stories, but I do get a similar set of error messages to the ones Kazuki posted when I quit Inform, and I've also noticed that the process doesn't terminate in this case. When running just one story it exits cleanly with no messages and terminates properly.

[quote="emshort"]There's no harm in reporting these problems, though -- the IDEs can be updated separately from the main build of Inform...[/quote]
Should we formally report them through the I7 site somewhere or are these posts sufficient?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1137&start=0#p6427
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7/Linux - problem running stories in Inform
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-06 18:54:10

The best approach to reporting IDE bugs is to contact the IDE authors by email. In this case that would be Philip Chimento: pchimento at users dot sourceforge dot net .

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1137&start=0#p6428
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7/Linux - problem running stories in Inform
User: farvardin / DateTime: 2010-06-06 21:08:08

I have this too on Linux, I just think it's just the Inform 7 IDE using an old version of Gargoyle/Garglk, I had this from the beginning (I mean from when it was using garglk), just click "stop" on the running story you don't use right now and you'll be able to run a second story.
Maybe it'll be different in the new release?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1139&start=0#p6429
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7 if with multiple items
User: timeconsumer44 / DateTime: 2010-06-07 02:10:08

How do I make an if-statement that will end the game if the player is carrying certain items after going to a certain room?  Any help is appreciated.

Thank You.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1063&start=10#p6430
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk/Glulx threads
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-06-07 03:43:28

I'd like to keep things moving if I can.

It seems odd to me that the threading should happen in Glk rather than Glulx, but I guess that's how it goes.
To use Quixe in a Worker thread I guess this would mean we would have Quixe+Glk in the Worker and GlkOte in the main thread (rather than Quixe/Glk+GlkOte as I had thought originally.)

It's possible that different implementations may want to put the thread division in a slightly different place (maybe in the dispatch layer for example). I think that is ok as it shouldn't impact on the user. The precise place where this division occurs won't be at a level which Glulx can act upon. Because of this my proposal is not specific about the way that it should be coded, just how it will be used.

My proposal:
A new event function: glk_select_poll_all(), which as its name suggests, will poll and return any waiting event.
Two glk gestalt selectors: gestalt_PollAll and gestalt_SafeThreading. gestalt_PollAll only indicates that the function exists. gestalt_SafeThreading will return true only if it's safe to do heavy calculations whilst there are waiting input events. Both gestalts must return true to use Glk threading. I thought about having only one gestalt selector for this, but its possible that glk_select_poll_all() could be useful without using the threading functionality.

Further questions:
Writing to a window with a waiting input request is already forbidden. Are there any other potentially dangerous interactions?
Will other IO systems (FyreVM) have problems with this proposal? Which really means... can they make their own comparable changes to allow concurrent threading?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1137&start=0#p6431
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7/Linux - problem running stories in Inform
User: Jaek / DateTime: 2010-06-07 06:10:31

[quote="farvardin"]...just click "stop" on the running story you don't use right now and you'll be able to run a second story.[/quote]
That does the trick, thanks!

I'll see about sending a bug report to Philip.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1138&start=0#p6432
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Moving a Trackball
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-06-07 10:04:13

Does the following accomplish what you want?

[code]DefineTAction( MoveLeft );
DefineTAction( MoveRight );

VerbRule( MoveLeft )
	('move' | 'push') singleDobj ( | 'to' 'the') 'left'
	: MoveLeftAction
	verbPhrase = 'move/moving (what) left'
;

VerbRule( MoveRight )
	('move' | 'push') singleDobj ( | 'to' 'the') 'right'
	: MoveRightAction
	verbPhrase = 'move/moving (what) right'
;

modify Thing {
	dobjFor(MoveLeft)
	{
		preCond = [touchObj]
		verify()
		{
			illogical('There\'s no obvious way to do that. ');
		}
	}

	dobjFor(MoveRight)
	{
		preCond = [touchObj]
		verify()
		{
			illogical('There\'s no obvious way to do that. ');
		}
	}
}[/code]


Edit:
As to T3 not accepting GO TO THE NORTH and MOVE OBJ TO THE NORTH, it's rather easy to enable that, since all that needs to be done is to modify the VerbRule for the actions in question. For GO:

[code]// The default is: 'go' singleDir | singleDir
modify VerbRule( Travel )
	'go' ( | 'to' 'the') singleDir | singleDir
	:
;[/code]

And for MOVE:

[code]// The default is: ('push' | 'pull' | 'drag' | 'move') singleDobj singleDir
modify VerbRule( PushTravelDir )
	('push' | 'pull' | 'drag' | 'move') singleDobj ( | 'to' 'the') singleDir
	:
;[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1140&start=0#p6433
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Default font for [code] tag
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-06-07 10:55:26

Currently, the forum seems to enforce Courier New as the font for text within code tags rather than what I have set in my browser to be the default monospace font.

Can this be changed? The CSS font family for this is "monospace".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1141&start=0#p6434
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: D-Day trailer released
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2010-06-07 10:58:47

I have released a trailer for my next game: D-Day
[color=#FF0000]It is  written in Adrift V.4.51[/color]
The game is best played on a windows platform, using the Adrift runner.


[i]You find yourself on board a landing craft. The date is Tuesday June 6. 1944 and you are heading for the Normandy coast. 
It’s not a complete adventure, but you should get a pretty good idea of what to expect. 
Can you survive? Thousands could not!![/i]
You can pick it up here: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.adrift.org.uk/cgi/new/adrift.cgi">http://www.adrift.org.uk/cgi/new/adrift.cgi</a>
Click on [i]Adventures,[/i] and choose category [b]Demos[/b]
Comments are welcome.
Have fun

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1139&start=0#p6435
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 if with multiple items
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-06-07 11:21:02

You can separate different conditions with "and". 

[code]After going to the treasure room when the player is carrying the enraged badger and the player is carrying the solar panel and the player is carrying the box of ping pong balls:
    end the game in victory.[/code]
Note that you have to repeat the "player is carrying" part, so you can't say "when the player is carrying X and Y and Z."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1139&start=0#p6436
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 if with multiple items
User: timeconsumer44 / DateTime: 2010-06-07 11:51:38

Thank you! I've been trying to find out the right way to say it.  However, once I put more than 4 items in the statement it gives me an error message.  Any thoughts on that?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1139&start=0#p6437
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 if with multiple items
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-07 12:08:24

If you need to check a big collection of items, you could break that condition out into its own decision phrase, like:

To decide whether collection is complete:
  if the player does not carry the red ball:
    no;
  if the player does not carry ...:
    no;
  yes.

And then ask

After ... when the collection is complete...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1139&start=0#p6438
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 if with multiple items
User: timeconsumer44 / DateTime: 2010-06-07 12:33:29

Awesome! That worked, thanks a lot, I appreciate it

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1142&start=0#p6439
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Adrift game beta tester needed
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2010-06-07 13:01:38

I am looking for a beta tester for my entry to the Adrift summer Comp. 2010.
[color=#FF0000]Deadline is the end of July.[/color]
The game is not very big, and with a little bit of luck, you should be able to finish it in an hour or two.
You have, finally, gotten a job at the local library, which means that your days as a member of the much celebrated club of unemployed has been terminated.
The job isn’t too hard, and it gives you a reason to get out of bed in the morning. You work station is in the library cellar, cataloging books, quite boring.
But if you use your wit, and curiosity, who knows what can happen.
Let me know if you're interested.
Thanks in advance.  [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1063&start=10#p6440
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk/Glulx threads
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-06-07 14:06:38

[quote="Dannii"]A new event function: glk_select_poll_all(), which as its name suggests, will poll and return any waiting event.
Two glk gestalt selectors: gestalt_PollAll and gestalt_SafeThreading. gestalt_PollAll only indicates that the function exists. gestalt_SafeThreading will return true only if it's safe to do heavy calculations whilst there are waiting input events. Both gestalts must return true to use Glk threading. I thought about having only one gestalt selector for this, but its possible that glk_select_poll_all() could be useful without using the threading functionality.
[/quote]

The disadvantage I see to glk_select_poll_all() is that the interpreter is not able to take advantage of the platform-specific functions that park the calling thread in an idle state while waiting on input.

Forgive me for being dense, but I don't see how to avoid busy-waiting in this scenario. I thought that was the reason that glk_select_poll() excluded input events in the first place: so authors would not be tempted to incorporate these loops in the game code, where they would be necessarily less efficient.

A different approach would be to give the Glulx interpreter a way to register callback functions, for instance a glk_select_notify(&function, glui32 type) call. Then you could set up the glk_select() loop as normal, and the Glk functions that generated that event type would pass it back to the interpreter directly instead of queuing it for later dispatch.

You would also need a glk_select_cancel() call to break the library out of a running input loop. This could be somewhat harder to do, as the Glk library would have to contrive a means of unblocking itself, having already called the OS function that suspended its thread until input was available. But Glk at least has direct access to OS functions, where the interpreter does not, so it would be easier to tackle the problem at the library level.

At that point, the glk_select() call would end prematurely. It would have to return some event type other than evtype_None, since that is disallowed; perhaps evtype_Cancel instead? The interpreter would see that event, realize it had computation results available, then do something about it before invoking glk_select() again.

I think this would give you the execution model you're after:

[list=1]
[*] interpreter registers a callback for compute events[/*:m]
[*] interpreter queues up some asynchronous data processing functions[/*:m]
[*] interpreter parks itself in a standard glk_select() loop[/*:m]
[*] library generates a compute event, notifies interpreter[/*:m]
[*] interpreter handles the compute event[/*:m]
[*] interpreter calls glk_select_cancel()[/*:m]
[*] loop ends prematurely[/*:m]
[*] interpreter regenerates game state[/*:m]
[*] interpreter queues up more asynchronous data processing functions[/*:m]
[*] interpreter returns to the glk_select() loop[/*:m][/list:o]

This assumes that callbacks from Glk to the interpreter are possible or even meaningful. Perhaps that's where the whole idea falls apart; I simply don't know.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1138&start=0#p6441
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Moving a Trackball
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-06-07 15:41:56

[quote="RealNC"]Does the following accomplish what you want?[/quote]
Thanks for trying, but unfortunately not.

[quote]>move trackball to the left
I move the trackball to the left. 

>move trackball to left
I see no left here. 

>move trackball left
The trackball cannot be moved. [/quote]
Regardless, even if it did, I'd have to include equivalent verbs for every other direction, otherwise the parser might come up with "The trackball cannot be moved." when it obviously can, just because they tried moving it "north" or "starboard".  (I could just have one verb for all directions I don't want covered, but I'd still have to make sure to include all their abbreviations etc.)

And in any case, this is kind of like admitting defeat.  The handling is already there.  The PushTravel verb exists, as does the MoveTo verb.

Library diving time, I guess.

UPDATE:

Getting somewhere:

[quote] *   A "TravelPushable" is an object that can't be taken, but can be moved
 *   from one location to another via commands of the form "push obj dir,"
 *   "push obj through passage," and the like.
 *   
 *   TravelPushables tend to be rather rare, and we expect that instances
 *   will almost always be special cases that require additional
 *   specialized code.  This is therefore only a general framework for
 *   pushability.  
 */
class TravelPushable: Immovable[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1138&start=0#p6442
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Moving a Trackball
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-06-07 16:23:00

[quote="Pacian"][quote="RealNC"]Does the following accomplish what you want?[/quote]
Thanks for trying, but unfortunately not.

[quote]>move trackball to the left
I move the trackball to the left. 

>move trackball to left
I see no left here.
[/quote][/quote]
That's because I explicitly didn't allow that in the example VerbRule, since "move trackball to left" doesn't look like correct English to me. But nonetheless, it can be allowed with:

[code]('move' | 'push') singleDobj ( | 'to' ( | 'the')) 'left'[/code]
Btw, if the nesting is too confusing, you can also state every possible syntax explicitly. The above is equivalent to:

[code]('move' | 'push') singleDobj ('to' 'the' 'left' | 'to' 'left' | 'left')[/code]
[quote]>move trackball left
The trackball cannot be moved. [/quote]
That shouldn't happen; it works correctly here with the above VerbRule.

[quote]Regardless, even if it did, I'd have to include equivalent verbs for every other direction, otherwise the parser might come up with "The trackball cannot be moved." when it obviously can, just because they tried moving it "north" or "starboard".  (I could just have one verb for all directions I don't want covered, but I'd still have to make sure to include all their abbreviations etc.)

And in any case, this is kind of like admitting defeat.  The handling is already there.  The PushTravel verb exists, as does the MoveTo verb.

Library diving time, I guess.[/quote]
It's not admitting defeat, because "left" and "right" are not travel directions. At least that's how I understand it. When you say MOVE TRACKBALL LEFT, I assume you mean [i]rotating[/i] the trackball counter-clockwise instead of moving the trackball to the Room left of the current location. Because "left" in this context is not a travel direction, the standard PushTravelDir action should not be used for this because it doesn't seem logical.

But if you still want to do it using travel directions, then you can implement a PushTravel handler in your trackball object like this:

[code]
	dobjFor(PushTravel)
	{
		verify()
		{ }
		
		action()
		{
			switch (gAction.getDirection()) {
			  case northDirection:
				// ...
			  case southDirection:
				// ...
			  // Similar for eastDirection, northwestDirection, etc.
			}
		}
	}
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1138&start=0#p6443
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Moving a Trackball
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-06-07 17:19:20

Now we're getting somewhere!   [emote]:D[/emote] 

I just found the gAction.getDirection(), myself.  Think I came pretty close to crush depth on my dive...  Ultimately I only found it because I stumbled on the ThrowDir verb and it handles the specific case of "throw down".  My complete solution is now:

[code]
modify VerbRule(PushTravelDir)
    ('push' | 'move') singleDobj (| 'to' | 'to' 'the') singleDir
    :
;

//elsewhere, nested in another object:
++Trackball: Component 'track trackball/ball' 'trackball'
    "Pretty old-school, but it serves a purpose. "
    dobjFor(PushTravel)
    {
        verify(){}
        check(){}
        action()
        {
            //more handling here, obviously
            "I move the trackball <<gAction.getDirection().name>>. ";
        }
    }
;
[/code]
[quote="RealNC"]That's because I explicitly didn't allow that in the example VerbRule, since "move trackball to left" doesn't look like correct English to me.[/quote]
Ah, but we allow players to type "take coin" even though the correct English is "take the coin".   [emote]:P[/emote] 

But the main reason I want to include this phrasing is because the T3 library has default handling for "push/move (object) to (object)" - meaning that unless we handle this case the player will get the "I see no left here." response - something that will only confuse them.

[quote="RealNC"]It's not admitting defeat, because "left" and "right" are not travel directions. At least that's how I understand it. When you say MOVE TRACKBALL LEFT, I assume you mean [i]rotating[/i] the trackball counter-clockwise instead of moving the trackball to the Room left of the current location. Because "left" in this context is not a travel direction, the standard PushTravelDir action should not be used for this because it doesn't seem logical.[/quote]
[quote="Pacian"]I've also, for completely separate reasons, implemented the directions "left" and "right" in the game.[/quote]
It may not seem logical in terms of the internal logic of the game as privy to the coder, but in terms of the actions we're teaching the player to use, it is.  The player can [i]already[/i] type "push X left" in other contexts, and creating an additional context only creates the possibility for confusion, misunderstandings and bugs.  It's similar to how "press button" and "press murder suspect" are very different actions, but having two different "press" verbs floating around is just asking for trouble.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1138&start=0#p6444
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Moving a Trackball
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-06-07 17:28:44

Glad you solved it.

Though now you have to deal with players trying to ROTATE TRACKBALL RIGHT (and TURN, ROLL, maybe more?) [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote] That won't fit nicely with travel directions. So you'll probably end up implementing those verbs anyway.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1138&start=0#p6445
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Moving a Trackball
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-06-07 17:39:00

[quote="RealNC"]Glad you solved it.

Though now you have to deal with players trying to ROTATE TRACKBALL RIGHT (and TURN, ROLL, maybe more?) [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote] That won't fit nicely with travel directions. So you'll probably end up implementing those verbs anyway.[/quote]
If players want to roll things in travel directions, who am I to criticise their phrasing.   [emote]:D[/emote] 

And...  I hate to be yet another TADS user asking this kind of question, but... how did you know you know about gAction.getDirection()?  Is it just a case of being really experienced with the library or is there an obvious process to take to see how verbs with directions work?  As I mentioned, I only reached it by stumbling onto a similar but unrelated verb.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1142&start=0#p6446
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Adrift game beta tester needed
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-06-07 17:49:34

[quote="Finn Rosenløv"]I am looking for a beta tester for my entry to the Adrift summer Comp. 2010.
[color=#FF0000]Deadline is the end of July.[/color]
The game is not very big, and with a little bit of luck, you should be able to finish it in an hour or two.
You have, finally, gotten a job at the local library, which means that your days as a member of the much celebrated club of unemployed has been terminated.
The job isn’t too hard, and it gives you a reason to get out of bed in the morning. You work station is in the library cellar, cataloging books, quite boring.
But if you use your wit, and curiosity, who knows what can happen.
Let me know if you're interested.
Thanks in advance.  [emote];)[/emote][/quote]

I may be, though these days I'm often strapped for time. But feel free to pop me a PM and/or mail. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1138&start=0#p6447
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Moving a Trackball
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-06-07 18:12:13

[quote="Pacian"][quote="RealNC"]Glad you solved it.

Though now you have to deal with players trying to ROTATE TRACKBALL RIGHT (and TURN, ROLL, maybe more?) [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote] That won't fit nicely with travel directions. So you'll probably end up implementing those verbs anyway.[/quote]
If players want to roll things in travel directions, who am I to criticise their phrasing.   [emote]:D[/emote] 

And...  I hate to be yet another TADS user asking this kind of question, but... how did you know you know about gAction.getDirection()?  Is it just a case of being really experienced with the library or is there an obvious process to take to see how verbs with directions work?  As I mentioned, I only reached it by stumbling onto a similar but unrelated verb.[/quote]
I didn't know about it beforehand. Since I needed to know how the "move <obj> <direction>" action is defined, I looked it up in actions.t, where all actions are defined. I opened that file and did a text search for "(Move". Only three matches, none of them what I wanted, so I searched "(Push" next. One of the matches was "DefineTAction(PushTravel)" and directly below it another match, "DefineAction(PushTravelDir, PushTravelAction)". And there was the definition of getDirection(): "getDirection() { return dirMatch.dir; }"

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1063&start=10#p6448
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk/Glulx threads
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-06-07 19:51:23

[quote="Dannii"]Will other IO systems (FyreVM) have problems with this proposal? Which really means... can they make their own comparable changes to allow concurrent threading?[/quote]
FyreVM's input model is closer to the Z-machine's than Glk's: the game makes a system call to read a line (or character), and control doesn't return to the game until the input is ready. Something entirely new would have to be designed in order to allow the game to do background processing while waiting for input.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1141&start=0#p6449
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: D-Day trailer released
User: George / DateTime: 2010-06-07 20:15:34

Cool, checking it out now. 

The direct download link is <a class="postlink" href="http://www.adrift.org.uk/cgi/new/download.cgi?1195">http://www.adrift.org.uk/cgi/new/download.cgi?1195</a> for anyone who wants it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1138&start=0#p6450
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Moving a Trackball
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-07 21:44:44

[quote="Pacian"]it handles the specific case of "throw down".[/quote]

>THROW DOWN
Violence isn't the answer to this one.

[No, I don't have anything to contribute. Carry on.]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1063&start=10#p6451
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk/Glulx threads
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-06-08 00:47:59

[quote="bcressey"][quote="Dannii"]A new event function: glk_select_poll_all(), which as its name suggests, will poll and return any waiting event.
Two glk gestalt selectors: gestalt_PollAll and gestalt_SafeThreading. gestalt_PollAll only indicates that the function exists. gestalt_SafeThreading will return true only if it's safe to do heavy calculations whilst there are waiting input events. Both gestalts must return true to use Glk threading. I thought about having only one gestalt selector for this, but its possible that glk_select_poll_all() could be useful without using the threading functionality.
[/quote]

The disadvantage I see to glk_select_poll_all() is that the interpreter is not able to take advantage of the platform-specific functions that park the calling thread in an idle state while waiting on input.[/quote]
The assumption I'm working with is that the same amount of computation will be needed whether threading is available or not. What this proposal would allow is for that computation to be performed while the user is reading the response to their last command, rather than directly after entering a command. (This will probably mean that algorithms will need to be altered slightly so that they are pre-emptive.) Unless the user has very fast reflexes the computations would be finished before they enter a command, Glulx would stop calling glk_select_poll_all() and call glk_select() instead, letting you set the thread to idle etc.

[quote]Forgive me for being dense, but I don't see how to avoid busy-waiting in this scenario. I thought that was the reason that glk_select_poll() excluded input events in the first place: so authors would not be tempted to incorporate these loops in the game code, where they would be necessarily less efficient.[/quote]
I'm not sure what you mean by a busy-waiting scenario. But if the Glk library can't guarantee that its UI will remain responsive (letting the user enter commands etc.) while Glulx is performing calculations then it must set gestalt_SafeThreading to false. This could even be changed as the program runs... we could suggest that each time before using the threading functionality the gestalt be checked.

[quote]A different approach would be to give the Glulx interpreter a way to register callback functions, for instance a glk_select_notify(&function, glui32 type) call. Then you could set up the glk_select() loop as normal, and the Glk functions that generated that event type would pass it back to the interpreter directly instead of queuing it for later dispatch.

You would also need a glk_select_cancel() call to break the library out of a running input loop. This could be somewhat harder to do, as the Glk library would have to contrive a means of unblocking itself, having already called the OS function that suspended its thread until input was available. But Glk at least has direct access to OS functions, where the interpreter does not, so it would be easier to tackle the problem at the library level.

At that point, the glk_select() call would end prematurely. It would have to return some event type other than evtype_None, since that is disallowed; perhaps evtype_Cancel instead? The interpreter would see that event, realize it had computation results available, then do something about it before invoking glk_select() again.

I think this would give you the execution model you're after:

[list=1]
[*] interpreter registers a callback for compute events[/*:m]
[*] interpreter queues up some asynchronous data processing functions[/*:m]
[*] interpreter parks itself in a standard glk_select() loop[/*:m]
[*] library generates a compute event, notifies interpreter[/*:m]
[*] interpreter handles the compute event[/*:m]
[*] interpreter calls glk_select_cancel()[/*:m]
[*] loop ends prematurely[/*:m]
[*] interpreter regenerates game state[/*:m]
[*] interpreter queues up more asynchronous data processing functions[/*:m]
[*] interpreter returns to the glk_select() loop[/*:m][/list:o]

This assumes that callbacks from Glk to the interpreter are possible or even meaningful. Perhaps that's where the whole idea falls apart; I simply don't know.[/quote]
That's a much more complicated proposal. I'm not sure if it's possible either... if Glulx had interrupts I think something like this might be.
But it would take a lot more to implement that what I'm suggesting. I think some Glk implementations are already set up in such a way that they would support this threading, so they'd only need to add the functions and gestalts.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1134&start=0#p6452
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a door with 2 keys?!
User: DavidTurner / DateTime: 2010-06-08 11:49:39

Do you mean a door that requires two keys to open it? or a door that only requires one key but there are two keys?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1063&start=10#p6453
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk/Glulx threads
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-06-08 13:10:24

[quote]I'm not sure what you mean by a busy-waiting scenario. But if the Glk library can't guarantee that its UI will remain responsive (letting the user enter commands etc.) while Glulx is performing calculations then it must set gestalt_SafeThreading to false. This could even be changed as the program runs... we could suggest that each time before using the threading functionality the gestalt be checked.[/quote]

What I am worried about are cases where this becomes the default game loop:

[code]
do
{
    partial_calculation();
    glk_select_poll_all(event);
}
while (event->type != evtype_None);
[/code]

Once the calculation finishes, the loop will continue aggressively polling the OS for events. Absent timers, UI events are unlikely to fire more than once every 10-20 ms, so this becomes a tight loop that spikes the CPU and makes the battery cry. I realize that this isn't what you intend, but there's nothing to stop careless game authors or extension writers from abusing this call.

Right now you can't write a functional game that does this, because in order to actually receive UI events, you need to call glk_select() which will yield CPU time until an event comes in.

I would point you to the way sound notify events work, since I think they are a useful example of a long-running procedure that may end at any time, even during user input. However, I don't think they work particularly well as it stands, at least not in Gargoyle.

In a multi-threaded library, a notification event can be generated in the background, can even be queued up for dispatch, but the thread that needs to return the event to the VM - the one that called glk_select() - is suspended until a UI event comes in. Once that occurs, the thread wakes up, processes the input, checks the event queue, sees the sound notification, and returns it to the VM.

To see where this breaks down, imagine a sequence of sound effects chained together, e.g. a voice-acted conversation. You don't want to hold the player hostage, so you call glk_select() so that they can move around, examine things, or even initiate a different conversation - in technical terms, you are receiving and processing line events while the sounds play.

Because of the way the OS suspends the main thread, there will almost always be a delay between the end of one sound and the start of another. The delay is controlled by the user - if he presses a key, clicks the mouse, or resizes the window, the UI thread will unblock, the sound notification will be dispatched, and the VM will play the next one.

This isn't really a big deal for background, ambient music where you can just fade out to silence and the user may not be consciously aware of when it starts or stops. But it would be really weird for NPC barks.

Hmmm. Even with callbacks / interrupts into the VM, you'd need to be able to unblock the suspended thread somehow. And if that can be done, it probably should be done with sound notify events today. In other words, it's a library bug. [emote]:oops:[/emote] 

So given that glk_select() already returns all events of interest, and does it in a way that doesn't lead to busy-waiting, it seems like the ideal solution would be to somehow pass off the computation to Glk and wait for the evtype_Compute event to tell you when it's finished. No?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1134&start=0#p6454
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a door with 2 keys?!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-08 13:59:32

[quote="DavidTurner"]Do you mean a door that requires two keys to open it? or a door that only requires one key but there are two keys?[/quote]

Can't speak for the OP, but I'm interested in the second question.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1063&start=10#p6455
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk/Glulx threads
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-06-08 17:10:25

[quote="Dannii"]That's a much more complicated proposal. I'm not sure if it's possible either... if Glulx had interrupts I think something like this might be.[/quote]

Glk does have the concept of an [url=http://www.eblong.com/zarf/glk/glk-spec-070_1.html]interrupt handler[/url], which I'd forgotten about since Gargoyle ignores it.

Which in turn suggests a callback model is at least technically feasible. The interpreter could pass a function to the Glk call that took no arguments, returned no result, and just flipped a volatile bit to indicate that events were waiting.

Then, in the interpreter process space, you would be free to do as much internal processing as you desired, so long as you checked the status of that bit every so often.  Once you saw it, or once you ran out of processing to do, you could break out of your processing loop and call glk_select() to fetch the event.

It requires some changes at the library level. You would need a call that would spawn a new thread and return immediately, so that the interpreter could get on with its business of calculating.

That new thread would be pretty basic: it would just immediately call the OS function that suspended it pending new UI events.  When it unsuspended, it would queue the event it had retrieved, call the handler, and exit.

The library would need some locks in place around the event queue, and some way to kill off the spawned thread, if the interpreter finished its calculations before a UI event appeared and called glk_select().

You could probably get away with a single new Glk call:
glk_select_notify(void (*func)(void));

Calling it with a NULL value would kill off the current listener thread, if any, then return.  Calling it with any other value would kill off the current listener thread and start up a new one.  Make it illegal to call glk_select() while a glk_select_notify() call was running, just to be safe.  Then your code becomes:

[code]
volatile int events = 0;

void listener(void)
{
    events = 1;
}

void main(void)
{
    // set up event listener
    glk_select_notify(&listener);

    // start the work loop
    int result;
    do
    {
        result = partial_calculation();
    }
    while (!events && !result);

    // work finished or event waiting
    glk_select_notify(NULL);

    // fetch next Glk event
    glk_select(&event);
}
[/code]

Seems doable to me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1063&start=10#p6456
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk/Glulx threads
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-06-08 20:34:15

I think you're objecting to a problem, which although possible, is unlikely to ever occur. How many people do you know who have rewritten the main game loop? Who actually deals with Glk events at such a low level? It's only the core library, or extension, writers. If this proposal gets accepted I'll write a tasks extension because I'm not proposing this expecting individual authors to figure out how to add support for it themselves, I'd want to give them a complete system to use. And if careless authors do make a silly mistake, then it will most likely be caught later by testers/players. Authors could do a lot of stupid things. Do you check if they're resizing huge images in a loop like that?

I have no doubt that an interrupt system could allow threading to be used safely. But again, it's a huge change.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1097&start=0#p6457
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Waiting and Whining
User: Jekylls / DateTime: 2010-06-08 21:17:07

HaHA! I have already seen the great thing!!!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1063&start=10#p6459
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk/Glulx threads
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-06-08 23:59:33

[quote="Dannii"]I think you're objecting to a problem, which although possible, is unlikely to ever occur. How many people do you know who have rewritten the main game loop? Who actually deals with Glk events at such a low level?[/quote]

Every Glk interpreter deals with events at this low level. I'm actually less concerned about the Inform side, for the reasons you mention, but Inform is only one of many possible consumers for a Glk library.

[quote="Danni"]Authors could do a lot of stupid things. Do you check if they're resizing huge images in a loop like that?[/quote]

Generally Glk disallows stupid things by declaring them illegal. And you don't have to look very far in the Glk spec to find the concerns I've mentioned. In [url=http://www.eblong.com/zarf/glk/glk-spec-070_1.html#s.1]Section 1.1[/url], after showing code for the most basic Glk program, we find this note:

[quote]However, this program does not spin wildly and burn CPU time. The glk_select() function waits for an event it can return. Since it only returns events which you have requested, it will wait forever, and grant CPU time to other processes if that's meaningful on the player's machine.[/quote]

I guess I also don't see where new threads come in under your proposal. The library won't spawn a new thread when glk_select_poll_all() executes, it will just poll the OS once for new events, repeating this whenever your extension relinquishes the CPU long enough to call it. And that decision about when and how often to poll becomes crucial: too frequently, and the efficiency hit is more pronounced; too infrequently, and the user may become frustrated at the unresponsiveness.

By adding a Glk call that explicitly spawns a thread, and a handler function that tracks new events, you also don't add any new interpreter threads. But you do get full access to the main execution thread, plus a guarantee that a compliant library is listening for events on a secondary thread.

Plus a reasonable expectation that certain other functions (image resizing, sound decoding & playback) are taking place in independent threads, and that the library is responsible for synching up all those threads and maintaining a coherent event queue.

That seems to be about as threaded as you can make it without actually adding threads at the virtual machine level.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1063&start=10#p6460
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk/Glulx threads
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-06-09 00:46:56

[quote="Dannii"]As the demand for more intuitive code continues the demands on our poor virtual machines increases too.

This has led me to wonder why we couldn't and shouldn't introduce some form of threading into Glk/Glulx. Currently the majority of the processing must be done in the minimal time. Can we usefully use the time the player is reading the response to their last command to do some forward planning?
[/quote]

Is threading necessary? If the VM and UI were setup properly, a hidden interface could allow a "background" call to be made to the VM to continue working. When the player actually enters a command, a stop working call is sent to the VM and when that's completed, the new command is sent to the VM. The state of the VM could have changed dramatically while the player was snoozing.

You don't need threading for this.

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1063&start=10#p6462
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk/Glulx threads
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-06-09 04:40:02

[quote="bcressey"][quote="Dannii"]I think you're objecting to a problem, which although possible, is unlikely to ever occur. How many people do you know who have rewritten the main game loop? Who actually deals with Glk events at such a low level?[/quote]

Every Glk interpreter deals with events at this low level. I'm actually less concerned about the Inform side, for the reasons you mention, but Inform is only one of many possible consumers for a Glk library.[/quote]
The number of interpreter/custom-glk-consuming authors must surely be even smaller than the number of Inform/Superglus/Snack/Jacl authors! They would also be more switched on technology-wise. I don't think we need to be too worried about them making such mistakes.

[quote="Danni"]Authors could do a lot of stupid things. Do you check if they're resizing huge images in a loop like that?[/quote]

Generally Glk disallows stupid things by declaring them illegal. And you don't have to look very far in the Glk spec to find the concerns I've mentioned. In [url=http://www.eblong.com/zarf/glk/glk-spec-070_1.html#s.1]Section 1.1[/url], after showing code for the most basic Glk program, we find this note:

[quote]However, this program does not spin wildly and burn CPU time. The glk_select() function waits for an event it can return. Since it only returns events which you have requested, it will wait forever, and grant CPU time to other processes if that's meaningful on the player's machine.[/quote][/quote]
I don't really see how this is relevant. Once you finish your computations you'd stop using glk_select_poll_all() and just call glk_select(). Also check <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=5885#p5885">viewtopic.php?p=5885#p5885</a> if people wanted to misuse Glk they could already!

[quote]I guess I also don't see where new threads come in under your proposal. The library won't spawn a new thread when glk_select_poll_all() executes, it will just poll the OS once for new events, repeating this whenever your extension relinquishes the CPU long enough to call it. And that decision about when and how often to poll becomes crucial: too frequently, and the efficiency hit is more pronounced; too infrequently, and the user may become frustrated at the unresponsiveness.

By adding a Glk call that explicitly spawns a thread, and a handler function that tracks new events, you also don't add any new interpreter threads. But you do get full access to the main execution thread, plus a guarantee that a compliant library is listening for events on a secondary thread.

Plus a reasonable expectation that certain other functions (image resizing, sound decoding & playback) are taking place in independent threads, and that the library is responsible for synching up all those threads and maintaining a coherent event queue.

That seems to be about as threaded as you can make it without actually adding threads at the virtual machine level.[/quote]
You're correct, this isn't a proposal for new threads. But some (many?) Glk implementations already call their respective VMs in a thread. This proposal aims to make it easy to take advantage of that. For Glk imps. which are set up like that it won't take long to add the new functions. Those that don't call Glulx etc in a new thread won't need to do anything, as the gestalts will return false automatically.

A proposal to add new VM-level threads might be something to aim for in the future, but the advantage of my proposal is that is should be achievable with very little effort, very soon.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1063&start=20#p6463
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk/Glulx threads
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-06-09 05:24:16

Have you thought about how the code of a game that does background processing might look? That's an important consideration, since the low-level details will have consequences for compiler authors, library/extension authors, and game authors.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1143&start=0#p6464
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Parchment page bouncing
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-06-09 05:32:46

I downloaded a local copy of Parchment from github, but it seems that every time a command is given the page jumps to the beginning where it stays until all the text has been printed and another prompt appears. This is usually just a quick flash but especially in I7 games where printing the response might take a bit longer the jump is noticeable and quite annoying to the point where it makes the game unplayable. This doesn't happen with the version that's in Google Code. Is there a quick fix for this or does someone have any pointers on where to start looking for the problem?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1143&start=0#p6465
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment page bouncing
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-06-09 09:00:29

Yeah... I just haven't fixed that bug yet. Thanks for the reminder.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1063&start=20#p6466
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk/Glulx threads
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-06-09 09:25:47

[quote="DavidC"][quote="Dannii"]As the demand for more intuitive code continues the demands on our poor virtual machines increases too.

This has led me to wonder why we couldn't and shouldn't introduce some form of threading into Glk/Glulx. Currently the majority of the processing must be done in the minimal time. Can we usefully use the time the player is reading the response to their last command to do some forward planning?
[/quote]

Is threading necessary? If the VM and UI were setup properly, a hidden interface could allow a "background" call to be made to the VM to continue working. When the player actually enters a command, a stop working call is sent to the VM and when that's completed, the new command is sent to the VM. The state of the VM could have changed dramatically while the player was snoozing.

You don't need threading for this.

David C.[/quote]
That is essentially what Ben is suggesting, an interrupt system. While it would work, I think it's a much bigger change than what I'm suggesting. And I don't think it would really provide much more than what I'm proposing either...

And to keep the UI responsive, you would need the VM to run in a separate thread.

[quote="vaporware"]Have you thought about how the code of a game that does background processing might look? That's an important consideration, since the low-level details will have consequences for compiler authors, library/extension authors, and game authors.[/quote]
Good question.

My idea is for a tasks extension. You could register a task, or a function to run, with a certain priority. When its time for the background processing, the task manager would run through the tasks in order of the priority you give them. Each task should be broken down into small steps, so that when the function returns glk_select_poll_all() can be called. Once the task decides it's complete, it removes itself from the list. If all the tasks get completed then glk_select() is called.

If an input event returns before all the tasks are completed, or if threads/background processing isn't available, then the game can look at the list and decide which ones are essential, and run them then. If threads aren't available then you're really no worse off than you are now.

What could be turned into a task? One example would be path-finding, which can be noticeably slow. Now the algorithm would need changes to be more predictive, but it would mean that all "go to ..." commands would be very snappy. I don't know the specifics of Alabasters conversation model, but I'm sure some of its computations could be performed as a task. Possibly even some table initialisations (I think the startup of Fate suffers from this?) If the conversation tables aren't needed from turn one, then why initialise them then?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=0#p6467
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-09 09:35:44

Emily has a very interesting discussion [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/06/07/so-do-we-need-this-parser-thing-anyway/]here[/url] of why she thinks the command prompt/parser has to go. Her argument, essentially, is that it promises to understand any input, but most input in fact is not understood, and this keeps new players away. The prompt doesn't tell the player about the affordances of the system, as she puts it.

It's very interesting and there's a lot of discussion on it -- you should go read it.

A few thoughts:
1. I don't have that much of a problem with doing something esoteric as a hobby -- I play NetHack, and some of the CDs I listen to don't even have their track titles entered in the database of that sort of thing. But it does seem sad to do something that only a few people can participate in, especially something with "interactive" in the title, which doesn't exist without an interactor. So I'm all for greater accessibility; though we should consider the costs.
2. But cutting off the free-form parser seems like it'd have some costs -- there can be a great satisfaction of thinking of just the right thing to do as opposed to having the options laid out for you. Though Emily's envisioning a system where you have enough choices that the way forward isn't obvious.
3. That can be a problem, too, though. The troll on the thread has a point that the usual IF paradigm of going around, picking up objects, and using them in a few different ways is on its face pretty constraining. Explicitly restricting the verb set to a few things would seem to just reinforce that paradigm even more -- unless we make the move to USE, or to keywords that have different (and possibly contextual) effects, or menu-based choices. (Conversation games are the ones I can think of that most break out of this paradigm -- and a lot of them are menu-based or keyword-based.)
4. This would require some totally new frontends. The demo Emily posted, where you type a keyword and then it gives you some verbs to type, just doesn't work for me at all (partly because the command window is too small, but I don't think that's all). You'd really want to click on the keywords and then use a dropdown menu. And then you're practically doing point-and-click games with words instead of pictures.
5. Point-and-click games are an interesting comparison in general. Why are they more accessible than IF?

Anyway, an interesting discussion.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=0#p6468
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: Mick / DateTime: 2010-06-09 10:15:50

I thought that article was interesting. I do feel the open ended parser stands in the way of bringing in a wider audience, but I don't want to see it gone, nor do I think that a parser is essential for every piece of Interactive Fiction. I feel it's an interface decision similar to choosing what conversation system to use, it depends strongly on the context of the game. Some existing games would probably have been stronger with a select-the-verb interface (essentially ones that don't have a lot of choices to begin with), but that is by no means universal.

I do think it's important to educate new players on the limitations of the parser interface. Saying "just type anything and it will understand you" is clearly a lie. It's similar to a command line interface for your operating system -- it's going to have more "power" than point-and-click, it will have a steeper learning curve, and to some people it will be more "fun" to use. Personally, I don't want to see it go away, but I think authors should definitely feel encouraged to explore other options. Interactive Fiction does not need a one-true-interface.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=0#p6469
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-06-09 10:18:30

[quote="matt w"]Emily has a very interesting discussion [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/06/07/so-do-we-need-this-parser-thing-anyway/]here[/url] of why she thinks the command prompt/parser has to go. Her argument, essentially, is that it promises to understand any input, but most input in fact is not understood, and this keeps new players away. The prompt doesn't tell the player about the affordances of the system, as she puts it.[/quote]
Uhm, what? There are already games without a parser. Emily can go write one of those; they already have been invented though so she can't claim the honor.

Furthermore, why would I care about new players? If the parser goes away, then I won't play it, but the new players will. Now how does that help me exactly?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1063&start=20#p6470
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk/Glulx threads
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-06-09 10:21:04

[quote="Dannii"]That is essentially what Ben is suggesting, an interrupt system. While it would work, I think it's a much bigger change than what I'm suggesting. And I don't think it would really provide much more than what I'm proposing either...

And to keep the UI responsive, you would need the VM to run in a separate thread.[/quote]

Even if you have a UI thread separate from your VM thread, you still can't guarantee responsiveness during heavy calculations on the VM side.

[list=1]
[*] The player could press return, queueing a line event.[/*:m]
[*] The player could resize a graphics window, queueing a redraw event.[/*:m]
[*] The player could click the mouse, queueing either a hyperlink or mouse event.[/*:m][/list:o]

All of these events need to be claimed in about 10 ms, to give you time to process them before the user perceives a delay. They must be handled by the VM; the library lacks the information necessary to provide a response.

You could do as you propose and run glk_select_poll_all() many times in quick succession, but that is poor application design: it is comparatively expensive to go out to the OS and request events in a one-off manner.

My proposal does nothing to address the responsiveness concern. The only way around that is to either have separate VM threads, or have the library run the code on behalf of the VM. But the callback / notification model does greatly reduce the expensive calls.

I also don't think it's a big change. If it works at all, it would work today at the VM level. Libraries would have to adapt, but I would rather make those changes and wind up with a more efficient, performant implementation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=0#p6471
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-06-09 10:46:32

[quote="matt w"]Emily has a very interesting discussion [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/06/07/so-do-we-need-this-parser-thing-anyway/]here[/url] of why she thinks the command prompt/parser has to go.[/quote]
Respectfully, I think the post is more about why she is moving away from the traditional parser herself, rather than a call for everyone to ditch something that obviously has a community of vocal supporters.

[quote="matt w"]5. Point-and-click games are an interesting comparison in general. Why are they more accessible than IF?[/quote]
Arguably a point and click game game has just one verb - "click".  As much as the IF community likes to claim that "guess the verb" is an issue of the past, the fact remains that people still find the enormous range of potentially valid commands to be overwhelming.

[quote="RealNC"]Furthermore, why would I care about new players? If the parser goes away, then I won't play it, but the new players will. Now how does that help me exactly?[/quote]
The parser is not going away.  People are still making silent films and hand-drawn animations in cinema - the same is true for video games.  Artforms are rarely forgotten, and even then can be reinvented.

This kind of thing [i]is[/i] of interest to people who want to create games with text output and input, but who feel that the IF parser pushes them to make a kind of game they don't want to.  It's of interest to people who are, as Emily writes in the article, more interested in devoting their development time to providing nuanced responses to actions within a specific framework than worrying about what response the game gives to >TASTE FIRE.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=0#p6472
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-09 11:09:53

To clarify this a little further: I have a couple of WIPs for which this wouldn't be a possible strategy, so I'll likely release some more standard-parser games myself. All the same, I think I've hit a wall in terms of how friendly I can make those, and if I want to create text-based games that I can offer to new players, I need to think about an alternative to the bare command-line prompt.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1063&start=20#p6473
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk/Glulx threads
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-06-09 11:18:23

I'm much more concerned with UI responsiveness than VM responsiveness. You should be able to scroll, type a command, copy text etc while the VM is doing heavy computations.

The VM may not respond, but that's the same as it is now, with the delay between entering commands and whatever it outputs next. In many games the delay is perceivable. I want to reduce that by doing as much calculations while the player is reading as possible. Now unlike input events which could and do trigger large conversation computations etc, resizing a window isn't likely to do that. So I guess resizing windows may be less responsive that before... but that's surely not a common occurance. I don't think we should worry if it takes 100ms, 200ms or even more to redraw the window.

What do you mean that glk_select_poll_all() would have to go to the OS to request events? Isn't it Glulx/whatever going to Glk to request events? How is the OS involved?

Does garglk already start its VMs in new threads?

Can you please explain what you meant by this?
[quote]For that matter, UI events are generated in an external process with callbacks into the library as events occur.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=0#p6474
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-06-09 11:19:47

In that case, you are not trying to make text adventures more "beginner friendly"* but instead are simply moving away from the genre. A text adventure (or IF, if you like that term better) would not be a text adventure anymore if you take away the parser. For example, CYOA games are not text adventures.


* Which IMO isn't needed; they're playable enough for everyone who's interested.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1143&start=0#p6475
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment page bouncing
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-06-09 11:40:07

Do you have any idea what might cause it? I'd be very interested in fixing this (and then sharing the fix, of course.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=0#p6476
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-09 12:07:23

[quote="RealNC"]In that case, you are not trying to make text adventures more "beginner friendly"* but instead are simply moving away from the genre. A text adventure (or IF, if you like that term better) would not be a text adventure anymore if you take away the parser. For example, CYOA games are not text adventures.


* Which IMO isn't needed; they're playable enough for everyone who's interested.[/quote]

Out of curiosity, are you responding to what I actually wrote, or to the summary of it? 

I've talked to many, MANY people in the last couple years who said some variation of "I love the idea of interactive fiction, but I can't stand the parser." In my experience, that's the standard response among gamers and designers who like story-heavy games but don't play IF; it's a much more common response than "oh, I don't want to read text when I'm playing a game" or "I'm not interested in a game unless there is graphics" or "The only thing I want to do in a game is combat/racing/whatever". So I don't have scientifically collected data, but I'd estimate that the audience for a friendlier variation of the parser is at least an order of magnitude larger than the hardcore IF audience.

In any case, what I describe in the blog post isn't about throwing away parser-style input entirely, but about providing enough help that it's clear what you can do from moment to moment. 

(I'm also not trying to claim credit for inventing anything. I do work on graphical games for a living these days, so I have plenty of outlets for that. But I think there are things that can and should be done with text that our current structure does not serve well, and that we could preserve many of the neat things about the parser while still engaging a broader audience *and* enabling some new kinds of work and new authors, if we adjusted our methods a bit.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=0#p6477
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-09 12:21:10

[quote="Pacian"][quote="matt w"]Emily has a very interesting discussion [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/06/07/so-do-we-need-this-parser-thing-anyway/]here[/url] of why she thinks the command prompt/parser has to go.[/quote]
Respectfully, I think the post is more about why she is moving away from the traditional parser herself, rather than a call for everyone to ditch something that obviously has a community of vocal supporters.[/quote]

Well, I think Emily wasn't just talking about her personal taste but saying that the parser has objective problems. (Thinking of the comment "We’ve tried to train players.") She can speak for herself, though. I'll admit that my summary was kind of stark.

[quote="matt w"]5. Point-and-click games are an interesting comparison in general. Why are they more accessible than IF?[/quote]
Arguably a point and click game game has just one verb - "click".  As much as the IF community likes to claim that "guess the verb" is an issue of the past, the fact remains that people still find the enormous range of potentially valid commands to be overwhelming.[/quote]

I think that's a little bit of an oversimplification for most (of what I'm thinking of as) point-and-click games. You can click a spot on the screen, click an item in the inventory to use it on a spot of the screen, double-click an inventory item or click a special box or some other interface to examine it more closely, do various things with the item once you're in the examine screen (move it around, use another item on it, etc.) Some games have a special combine tool, so you click somewhere and then click on two inventory items -- which usually is a big pain. But there's at least a little variety in the verbs that can be executed by clicking; to say that you do everything in the game by clicking isn't necessarily any different to say that you do everything in IF by typing. And that's not to mention the ones where you click on an object and it brings up three actions for you (usually "examine," "take," and a joke it seems). 

But! I think you're right that the clicking interface is much more manageable than the typing interface. Point-and-click games naturally present a lot more information than IF and allow you simpler ways to act on it. Which is maybe why the standard complaint about point-and-click is "hunt the pixel" (where in this vast field of things can I apply my few modes of action?) while the standard complaint about IF is "guess the verb" (which of the many possible verbs can I apply to the few things that have been described to me?). And, coming to point-and-click cold, clicking on the most obvious things will get you a lot farther than typing the most obvious things in IF would, coming to that cold. 

Still, point-and-clicks have their own barrier. If you don't know that you have to click the sides and undersides of things to look at them, you'll hit a wall pretty fast -- let alone if you don't know that you can act on things your examining. (Without even getting into the cliches of the genre.) I think the reason I found point-and-clicks more accessible initially is partly that it was just more engaging to follow walkthroughs and see what they're up to in point-and-clicks; perhaps because you're actually translating text into action rather than just typing the text that's in the walkthrough. 

Anyway, that's part of what I was thinking of with the point-and-click comparison. (Also, the IF community likes to claim that guess-the-verb is a thing of the past? srsly?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=0#p6478
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-09 12:44:00

I'd say I've come to the conclusion that there are essential problems, that I think they might be addressable without completely losing the current benefits of a parser, but that I don't at all expect everyone to agree with me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1063&start=20#p6479
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk/Glulx threads
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-06-09 13:43:39

[quote="Dannii"]What do you mean that glk_select_poll_all() would have to go to the OS to request events? Isn't it Glulx/whatever going to Glk to request events? How is the OS involved?[/quote]

Well, the question is where and when does Glk get those events?

On Windows, Gargoyle registers a callback function to handle messages when it opens the game window. glk_select() retrieves UI events using the [url=http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms644936(VS.85).aspx]GetMessage[/url] call. glk_select_poll() uses the [url=http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms644943(v=VS.85).aspx]PeekMessage[/url] call instead. The former will suspend the Glk thread until a UI message comes in; the latter will return immediately, whether or not a message exists. The message is then handed back to the OS, which invokes the callback function.

On Linux, Gargoyle registers various callback functions for the OS events it wants (keystrokes, clicks, resizes, etc). Then glk_select() and glk_select_poll() call [url=http://www.gtk.org/api/2.6/gtk/gtk-General.html#gtk-main-iteration]gtk_main_iteration[/url], which checks if events are waiting and invokes the appropriate callback function to dispatch those events.

On Mac, Gargoyle has a completely separate launcher process that hosts the UI and stores all events for all game windows. (This allows me to keep the same execution model from the other two platforms, at the cost of some self-respect and the occasional sleepless night.) When new events come in, the launcher signals the appropriate interpreter process to let it know that it's OK to ask for events. glk_select() and glk_select_poll() then retrieve the OS event and handle it in much the same way as the other platforms, minus the callback functions.

In all three cases, Gargoyle doesn't handle any events until the VM tells it to, by calling glk_select() or glk_select_poll(). Apart from internally spawned events like sound notifications and perhaps timers, it doesn't even know whether events are available until it polls the OS to ask.

Windows Glk and Cocoa Glk use native text controls, so quite probably they don't have to be inside a glk_select() or glk_select_poll() call to display characters. I'm not sure if there are restrictions around this; presumably there needs to be some way to ensure that the OS and the VM are not updating the same window at the same time. But perhaps the execution model is different enough that this never comes into play.

[quote]Does garglk already start its VMs in new threads?[/quote]

Every VM has its own process, and therefore at least one thread. Possibly more, if sounds are playing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=0#p6480
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-06-09 13:53:36

I do wonder to what extent a game could just change people's expectations of the parser without changing the thing itself at all.  I'd love to figure out how to disable the libraries in an IF system and just write a game with three explicitly stated standard verbs (plus some easter eggs) - and everything else just says, "Sorry, try one of these three verbs:"

[quote="matt w"]Well, I think Emily wasn't just talking about her personal taste but saying that the parser has objective problems. (Thinking of the comment "We’ve tried to train players.") She can speak for herself, though. I'll admit that my summary was kind of stark.[/quote]
Yeah, I did re-read the post after I wrote that and then kind of regretted it. I think we both overstated a little.   [emote]:P[/emote] 

[quote="matt w"](Also, the IF community likes to claim that guess-the-verb is a thing of the past? srsly?)[/quote]
Well, not quite.  Sometimes I see IF come up somewhere it doesn't normally, someone complains that they never know what to type, and an IF veteran appears to inform them that this is called "guess the verb" and is now considered bad design, and good modern games don't have it.  And using the strict definition they have in mind - you have to pry the padlock off with the crowbar, but PRY PADLOCK WITH CROWBAR doesn't work - they're right.

What they don't realise is that the players they're talking to are referring to a situation where they've encountered the padlock and have a bunch of items in their inventory other than the crowbar, and know a bunch of standard verbs, and are thinking, "Is there something I could type [i]right now[/i] to open this door?  How would I know?"

[quote="emshort"]I've talked to many, MANY people in the last couple years who said some variation of "I love the idea of interactive fiction, but I can't stand the parser."[/quote]
I discussed Walker & Silhouette with some indie game devs while I was working on it, and this was what pretty much each of them said - some of them also referred to having tried to write IF but getting bogged down handling actions they didn't care about.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1134&start=0#p6481
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a door with 2 keys?!
User: DavidTurner / DateTime: 2010-06-09 15:01:18

A door that only needs one key but has two to open it:
[code]
A door has an object called backup key.

The Corridor is a room.
The Private Study is a room.
The red door is east of the Corridor and west of the Private Study. The red door is a door. the red door is lockable and locked. The description of the red door is "Leads from the upstairs corridor into the private study."

The Brass Key unlocks the red door. It is in the corridor.
The backup key of the door is the white key. It is in the corridor.

Instead of unlocking a door with the backup key of the noun:
	Now the noun is unlocked;
	say "You unlock the door using its spare key."

Instead of locking a door with the backup key of the noun:
	Now the noun is locked;
	say "You lock the door using its spare key."
[/code]
Each door is given a property called backup key. Then when a person trys to unlock/lock the door with that key, it forces the door to do so.
You can even have a skeleton key using this code:
[code]A skeleton key is a kind of thing.
The Skull Key is a skeleton key.
Instead of unlocking a door with a skeleton key:
	Now the noun is unlocked;
	say "You unlock the door with a skeleton key."

Instead of locking a door with a skeleton key:
	Now the noun is locked;
	say "You lock the door with a skeleton key."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1063&start=20#p6482
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk/Glulx threads
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-06-09 15:26:54

[quote="Dannii"]
My idea is for a tasks extension. You could register a task, or a function to run, with a certain priority. When its time for the background processing, the task manager would run through the tasks in order of the priority you give them. Each task should be broken down into small steps, so that when the function returns glk_select_poll_all() can be called. Once the task decides it's complete, it removes itself from the list. If all the tasks get completed then glk_select() is called.[/quote]
Having to break the tasks into small steps seems like a weakness of the polling model. Something that takes one or two lines of I7 code to do all at once -- like a huge object loop or pathfinding request -- might take much more code to do in small steps, split across multiple phrases or rules, which could discourage authors from using this feature.

On the whole, I think we might be better served by a VM-based threading model, where the main VM starts a parallel VM to handle some background task while it's waiting for line input, and is then notified through a Glk event when the task is complete. The background task wouldn't need to be rewritten, and the input loop would only need to handle a single additional event (rather than switching between glk_select and glk_select_poll based on whether a task is pending).

We could avoid the complexity of thread safety by placing some restrictions on the parallel VM to make it more like fork() than true threading: e.g. memory is copied rather than shared, except for a known region used to return values once the task is finished.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=10#p6483
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-06-09 16:32:47

[quote="emshort"]I've talked to many, MANY people in the last couple years who said some variation of "I love the idea of interactive fiction, but I can't stand the parser." In my experience, that's the standard response among gamers and designers who like story-heavy games but don't play IF; it's a much more common response than "oh, I don't want to read text when I'm playing a game" or "I'm not interested in a game unless there is graphics" or "The only thing I want to do in a game is combat/racing/whatever".[/quote]

Not to be the guy that interjects smug literary pretension into an otherwise interesting discussion, but my perspective on this owes a great deal to Umberto Eco, who wrote in his [i]Postscript to the Name of the Rose[/i]:

[quote]Entering a novel is like going on a climb in the mountains: you have to learn the rhythm of respiration, acquire the pace; otherwise you stop right away.[/quote]

The context is an extended discussion about how his publisher had pressured him to overhaul the first 90 pages of that novel, which are replete with ornate description, literary allusion, medieval politics, and eschatological references: a far cry from the immediate gratification that so many commercial readers expect.

Despite a strong interest in the milieu and the structural parallels to the Sherlock Holmes tales of my childhood, it took me three tries before I was able to crest those first few chapters and set off into the story in earnest.

This is not dissimilar to my initial experiences with IF. Back in the 80s, I played [i]Planetfall[/i] for  ten unproductive moves and quit, never to return. It wasn't until [i]Anchorhead[/i] that I found a game compelling enough to draw me through the initial learning curve. After finishing that game, I had all the tools I needed to play any other IF game I cared to try.

I imagine that when books first appeared, when reading and writing were tools of the elite, illiterates must have regarded them the way modern gamers regard parsers. What could possibly be worth the countless hours of agony and frustration necessary to master the written word? Learning to deal with a parser requires the merest fraction of the effort children spend learning to read, and once mastered the ability can deliver commensurate joy.

The task for the IF author is to produce works of such brilliance as to compel reluctant players to engage the work. This is hard. For certain players, and indeed certain authors, it may be impossible. But it can and has been done; I hear [i]Bronze[/i] cited repeatedly in this context, and [i]Lost Pig[/i] at least as often.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=10#p6484
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-09 16:47:15

[quote="Pacian"]I do wonder to what extent a game could just change people's expectations of the parser without changing the thing itself at all.  I'd love to figure out how to disable the libraries in an IF system and just write a game with three explicitly stated standard verbs (plus some easter eggs) - and everything else just says, "Sorry, try one of these three verbs:"[/quote]

How about (I7):

[code]After reading a command:
    if the player's command does not include "verb1" and the player's command does not include "verb2" and the player's command does not include "verb3" and the player's command does not match "undo" and the player's command does not match "save" and the player's command does not match "q" and the player's command does not match "quit":
         say "Sorry, try one of VERB1 or VERB2 or VERB3;
         stop the action.[/code]

I haven't tested this and it's crude as all get-out, not to mention that if one of the verbs shows up somewhere else it's a problem (which could be got around with regexes I guess), but it might work.

[quote="matt w"]Well, I think Emily wasn't just talking about her personal taste but saying that the parser has objective problems. (Thinking of the comment "We’ve tried to train players.") She can speak for herself, though. I'll admit that my summary was kind of stark.[/quote]
Yeah, I did re-read the post after I wrote that and then kind of regretted it. I think we both overstated a little.   [emote]:P[/emote][/quote]

No worries.

[quote="Pacian"]
Well, not quite.  Sometimes I see IF come up somewhere it doesn't normally, someone complains that they never know what to type, and an IF veteran appears to inform them that this is called "guess the verb" and is now considered bad design, and good modern games don't have it.  And using the strict definition they have in mind - you have to pry the padlock off with the crowbar, but PRY PADLOCK WITH CROWBAR doesn't work - they're right.

What they don't realise is that the players they're talking to are referring to a situation where they've encountered the padlock and have a bunch of items in their inventory other than the crowbar, and know a bunch of standard verbs, and are thinking, "Is there something I could type [i]right now[/i] to open this door?  How would I know?"[/quote]

Hee. That sounds familiar -- I was actually thinking of editing the [url=http://nethack.wikia.com/wiki/Text_adventure]Nethack wiki article on text adventures[/url] to point out that you have to make an effort these days to write a game in which "pick up shovel" doesn't work. And that random one-turn deaths are deprecated too. This will be the least efficient IF outreach ever, especially because nethackers probably like random one-turn deaths.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1134&start=0#p6485
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a door with 2 keys?!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-09 16:52:06

Thanks! 

I'm hoping that the "matching key" business will be deprecated in a future I7 release -- I don't see why "unlocks" can't relate one door or container to various things.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=10#p6486
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-09 17:30:04

[quote="bcressey"]
The context is an extended discussion about how his publisher had pressured him to overhaul the first 90 pages of that novel, which are replete with ornate description, literary allusion, medieval politics, and eschatological references: a far cry from the immediate gratification that so many commercial readers expect.

Despite a strong interest in the milieu and the structural parallels to the Sherlock Holmes tales of my childhood, it took me three tries before I was able to crest those first few chapters and set off into the story in earnest.
...
The task for the IF author is to produce works of such brilliance as to compel reluctant players to engage the work. This is hard. For certain players, and indeed certain authors, it may be impossible. But it can and has been done; I hear [i]Bronze[/i] cited repeatedly in this context, and [i]Lost Pig[/i] at least as often.[/quote]

Mmmmyeah maybe. But if we're going that route, I want to be really, really sure it's worth it. Is the current raw unaided parser really giving us so many options that it's worth sticking out for? Would the possibility and enjoyment really be completely undermined by something with a bit more support for the player? 

When I stand back and look at this from the perspective of other kinds of game design I've been doing and/or studying over the past couple of years, the command line seems to stick out as an almost perverse bit of misdesign: it doesn't lend itself to easy discovery, it doesn't remind the user of what possibilities are available from moment to moment, it relies on expert-level familiarity with the commands, it makes a lot of work for the game creator, it's very hard to make "juicy", and it often creates moments of frustrating stuckness. Even in work by accomplished authors, I still sometimes run into moments where I can't communicate a (correct) solution to the game because of guess-the-verb issues, dialect differences, etc. 

I've had some great moments when I typed in something unexpected and it worked -- I'm not trying to deny those experiences -- but I'm wondering whether it mightn't be possible to retain some of the parser's freedom and potential for surprise while also making the experience more accessible.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=10#p6487
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-06-09 18:08:40

In your blog post, you mentioned and even provided screenshots of games like "Gateway." Those games did make themselves more accessible. Not sure if you know about this, but the "Legend" games were context sensitive; the list of verbs change according to the current situation. They're not static. Another thing about them was that by pressing F4 (or maybe F5, it's been a while) all of that went away, giving you a classic interface.

If I were to design a new system however, I would probably build upon where Legend arrived at. A graphical game with the illustrations being interactive (in Gateway and other Legend games, you could actually click on the objects in the graphics to open doors, take items, etc.) But I would never get rid of that ">" at the bottom [emote]:P[/emote] It just wouldn't be the same without it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=10#p6488
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-06-09 18:47:17

[quote="emshort"]Mmmmyeah maybe. But if we're going that route, I want to be really, really sure it's worth it. Is the current raw unaided parser really giving us so many options that it's worth sticking out for? Would the possibility and enjoyment really be completely undermined by something with a bit more support for the player?[/quote]

Well, maybe it would be. Take the case of a game that is predominantly about investigation or exploration: [i]Anchorhead[/i], or [i]King of Shreds and Patches[/i], or [i]Bronze[/i]. The enjoyment comes from not knowing what you will find. There is a certain mechanical unity here between game and parser, where you do not know what commands will work and the pleasure comes from finding one that does.

It may be possible to retain some vestiges of that joy with a different interface. I started playing [i]Alan Wake[/i] the other day, and it seems cool so far. But the instant I stumbled across a manuscript page, I thought - how much cooler would this be as IF? Where finding those pages might require an intuitive leap, might force me to fully embrace the narrative, instead of merely undertaking an exhaustive exploration of a bounded 3D space?

Or take the case of a game that is about performing a sequence of carefully planned actions at the correct moment. Where the thrill is that of choreography, or dance. I would put [i]Spider and Web[/i] in this category, and [i]All Things Devours[/i]. Both can be brutal and unforgiving, and the parser only makes it more excruciating. But once you know the sequence of commands, once you have grasped the point and the goal, the parser becomes your best friend. Because it will allow you to take your time, and it will always respond to the correct sequence in the expected way. Again there is unity between the mechanism and the game; precision and consistency are demanded, but they are likewise rewarded.

I finished [i]Assassin's Creed 2[/i] the other day. I rather liked it, up until the end, but the emotional response that lingers is one of frustration bordering on rage. The game contains tombs which require increasingly more elaborate and sustained levels of finesse to solve. Even when I understood precisely what was necessary, it often took dozens of attempts to execute the solution correctly. The controller and my reaction time created an obstacle far more difficult than any IF "guess the verb" moment I have ever experienced, because they lacked the requisite precision and consistency.


[quote]I've had some great moments when I typed in something unexpected and it worked -- I'm not trying to deny those experiences -- but I'm wondering whether it mightn't be possible to retain some of the parser's freedom and potential for surprise while also making the experience more accessible.[/quote]

I think most people find parsers and prompts accessible. Google does pretty well for itself, despite a default UI that presents users with a giant prompt tied to a parser complex beyond mortal comprehension. They are only unfamiliar in the context of games, and that lack of familiarity gives rise to discomfort and fear.

My son is two and he loves books. But he really only likes books with big pictures and very little text. Open a book with more than 50% text on the page, even one with a compelling cover that he picked out himself, and he pushes it away and finds a different one to read. Because the text is meaningless to him, and because reading means something more (and less) than words to him.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=10#p6489
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-06-09 18:57:31

[quote="bcressey"]It may be possible to retain some vestiges of that joy with a different interface. I started playing [i]Alan Wake[/i] the other day, and it seems cool so far. But the instant I stumbled across a manuscript page, I thought - how much cooler would this be as IF? Where finding those pages might require an intuitive leap, might force me to fully embrace the narrative, instead of merely undertaking an exhaustive exploration of a bounded 3D space?[/quote]

I meant to draw a parallel between the task of collecting journal pages in [i]King of Shreds and Patches[/i] and the task of finding manuscript pages in [i]Alan Wake[/i].

The IF version demands intuition, logical deduction, and environmental manipulation.

The triple A title version requires only mechanical persistence.

If the parser is the price I have to pay for hands-down better gameplay, so be it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=10#p6490
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-09 19:08:16

[quote="bcressey"]

The IF version demands intuition, logical deduction, and environmental manipulation.

The triple A title version requires only mechanical persistence.

If the parser is the price I have to pay for hands-down better gameplay, so be it.[/quote]

Sure. But the adjustment I'm suggesting neither throws the parser away entirely nor gets rid of intuition. You still have to think how you want to manipulate things; the point is to whittle the player's interactions down *to* those manipulations, instead of including also huge amounts of flailing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=10#p6491
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-09 19:16:15

[quote="bcressey"]I think most people find parsers and prompts accessible. Google does pretty well for itself, despite a default UI that presents users with a giant prompt tied to a parser complex beyond mortal comprehension.[/quote]

Yeah but, Google's parser is complex enough that whatever you type in is very likely to work. (And if you aren't doing fancy stuff with quotation marks and the like, I don't think its parser is that complex -- isn't it mostly glomp-the-keyword? It's what it does with those keywords that's amazingly complex.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1134&start=0#p6492
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a door with 2 keys?!
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-06-09 19:50:13

You could equally have one key related to many doors. To be fully general, it would have to be a many-many relationship.

However, I don't think the library really needs to strive to be fully general. The solution above is six lines of code, and it works. You could also write an extension that replaces two rules (the "can't lock/unlock without matching key" rules), using the existing lock-fitting relation, and that would work (in about ten lines of code).

Handling actions and replacing action rules are not supposed to be last-ditch maneuvers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1063&start=20#p6493
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk/Glulx threads
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-06-09 20:37:15

[quote="bcressey"][quote="Dannii"]What do you mean that glk_select_poll_all() would have to go to the OS to request events? Isn't it Glulx/whatever going to Glk to request events? How is the OS involved?[/quote]

Well, the question is where and when does Glk get those events?

On Windows, Gargoyle registers a callback function to handle messages when it opens the game window. glk_select() retrieves UI events using the [url=http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms644936(VS.85).aspx]GetMessage[/url] call. glk_select_poll() uses the [url=http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms644943(v=VS.85).aspx]PeekMessage[/url] call instead. The former will suspend the Glk thread until a UI message comes in; the latter will return immediately, whether or not a message exists. The message is then handed back to the OS, which invokes the callback function.

On Linux, Gargoyle registers various callback functions for the OS events it wants (keystrokes, clicks, resizes, etc). Then glk_select() and glk_select_poll() call [url=http://www.gtk.org/api/2.6/gtk/gtk-General.html#gtk-main-iteration]gtk_main_iteration[/url], which checks if events are waiting and invokes the appropriate callback function to dispatch those events.

On Mac, Gargoyle has a completely separate launcher process that hosts the UI and stores all events for all game windows. (This allows me to keep the same execution model from the other two platforms, at the cost of some self-respect and the occasional sleepless night.) When new events come in, the launcher signals the appropriate interpreter process to let it know that it's OK to ask for events. glk_select() and glk_select_poll() then retrieve the OS event and handle it in much the same way as the other platforms, minus the callback functions.

In all three cases, Gargoyle doesn't handle any events until the VM tells it to, by calling glk_select() or glk_select_poll(). Apart from internally spawned events like sound notifications and perhaps timers, it doesn't even know whether events are available until it polls the OS to ask.

Windows Glk and Cocoa Glk use native text controls, so quite probably they don't have to be inside a glk_select() or glk_select_poll() call to display characters. I'm not sure if there are restrictions around this; presumably there needs to be some way to ensure that the OS and the VM are not updating the same window at the same time. But perhaps the execution model is different enough that this never comes into play.[/quote]

So I'm looking at your source code, and the crucial parts are I think: gtk_events_pending(), winpoll() and PeekMessage(). You said that it was expensive to go to the OS, so are these calls really expensive? What sort of times are we talking about here?

[quote="vaporware"]Having to break the tasks into small steps seems like a weakness of the polling model. Something that takes one or two lines of I7 code to do all at once -- like a huge object loop or pathfinding request -- might take much more code to do in small steps, split across multiple phrases or rules, which could discourage authors from using this feature.

On the whole, I think we might be better served by a VM-based threading model, where the main VM starts a parallel VM to handle some background task while it's waiting for line input, and is then notified through a Glk event when the task is complete. The background task wouldn't need to be rewritten, and the input loop would only need to handle a single additional event (rather than switching between glk_select and glk_select_poll based on whether a task is pending).

We could avoid the complexity of thread safety by placing some restrictions on the parallel VM to make it more like fork() than true threading: e.g. memory is copied rather than shared, except for a known region used to return values once the task is finished.[/quote]
You make a good point in regard to splitting up a task. I'm sure there will be some where that will be hard and awkward. I see the value in a further proposal for VM-level threads or an interrupt system.

But as I keep saying, that will be a huge change, while what I'm proposing is both small and achievable now. It won't be suitable for everything, but I think it would be of benefit enough. The only concerns I see about it are that there be no dangerous interactions (printing to a window with an input request etc) and that the polling functions are too slow.

Also, even if you had to use a big single task function, the user wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a delay in calling glk_select() and the processing that would take place afterwards. And if possible we should keep the I7 code simple, and make these changes at the I6 level.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1134&start=0#p6494
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a door with 2 keys?!
User: DavidTurner / DateTime: 2010-06-09 20:50:15

Im still trying to work out a door that needs two keys, but im sure ill get there ^^

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1134&start=0#p6495
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a door with 2 keys?!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-09 21:27:16

[quote="zarf"]You could equally have one key related to many doors. To be fully general, it would have to be a many-many relationship.

However, I don't think the library really needs to strive to be fully general. The solution above is six lines of code, and it works. You could also write an extension that replaces two rules (the "can't lock/unlock without matching key" rules), using the existing lock-fitting relation, and that would work (in about ten lines of code).

Handling actions and replacing action rules are not supposed to be last-ditch maneuvers.[/quote]

Well, "the matching key" isn't so bad, since the formulation suggests that there's only one matching key, but to throw an error for "Alice's key unlocks the front door. Bob's key unlocks the front door" is highly unintuitive. Nor is the error all that helpful, since that code doesn't look like it's setting the same property twice. 

The workaround, as you say, is pretty easy to do once you figure out what's going on (assuming you don't have any "after unlocking" rules or such). I think the problem isn't that the library doesn't cover the extra case, it's that the natural readable code doesn't work. But it's not such a big deal, particularly if making "unlocks" many-many would add a lot of overhead. 

I would also say that replacing action rules is a fairly advanced maneuver, if only because the Standard Rules are not easy to find without a walkthrough. I put in a request for the documentation to include a link to Appendix A, so hopefully that'll change in the next build.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1134&start=0#p6496
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a door with 2 keys?!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-09 22:11:49

[quote="DavidTurner"]Im still trying to work out a door that needs two keys, but im sure ill get there ^^[/quote]

I figured that a door that needs two keys should have two locks, so I wrote this up. It's pretty crude and wound up being longer than I expected, so I'll spoiler it [EDIT: changed the quote tag to a code tag, which is what it was supposed to be]:

[spoiler][code]"two locks" by Matt Weiner

A lock is a kind of thing. A lock is usually scenery. A lock has a thing called the unlocker. A lock can be locked or unlocked. A lock is usually locked.

Instead of locking a lock with something:
	If the noun is locked:
		say "[The noun] is already locked."; 
	otherwise if the second noun is not the unlocker of the noun:
		say "[The second noun] doesn't fit [the noun].";
	otherwise:
		say "You lock [the noun].";
		now the noun is locked.
		
Instead of unlocking a lock with something:
	If the noun is unlocked:
		say "[The noun] is already unlocked."; 
	otherwise if the second noun is not the unlocker of the noun:
		say "[The second noun] doesn't fit [the noun].";
	otherwise:
		say "You unlock [the noun].";
		now the noun is unlocked.

	
Check opening a door:
	if a locked lock is part of the door:
		let snag be a random locked lock that is part of the door;
		say "[The snag] still seems to be locked.";
		stop the action.

Front Hall is a room. 
Corridor is a room.
A door called the front door is north of Front Hall and south of Corridor. The top lock is a lock. The top lock is part of the front door. The description of the front door is "It has a top lock and a bottom lock." The bottom lock is a lock. The bottom lock is part of the front door.
The unlocker of the top lock is the brass key. The unlocker of the bottom lock is the silver key. The player carries the brass key. The player carries the silver key.
Closet is a room. A door called the closet door is north of corridor and south of closet. The closet door is lockable. The closet door is locked. A thing called the closet key is in Corridor. The closet key unlocks the closet door. [/code][/spoiler]

I just threw in the business with the closet so I could test that I hadn't broken ordinary locking/unlocking behavior. The "check opening" rule is really fugly, since it only tells about one locked -- it shouldn't be too hard to come up with a list of all the locked locks, though making sure it handles is/are properly seemed annoying enough for me not to try. Also, attempts to unlock and lock the front door directly will give unhelpful results; presumably you'd want to catch those and disambiguate which lock you meant.

My tentative conclusion is that double locks are as annoying in IF as in real life. Though, I'm a novice coder, there are probably better ways.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1134&start=0#p6497
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a door with 2 keys?!
User: DavidTurner / DateTime: 2010-06-09 22:32:37

I was working with a simmilar idea to that, so great minds think alike ^^

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1063&start=20#p6498
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk/Glulx threads
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-06-09 23:36:54

[quote="Dannii"]So I'm looking at your source code, and the crucial parts are I think: gtk_events_pending(), winpoll() and PeekMessage(). You said that it was expensive to go to the OS, so are these calls really expensive? What sort of times are we talking about here?[/quote]

I am somewhat shamed to admit that I don't have precise numbers, just a gut sense that it is slow: expensive in terms of execution time rather than processor usage, since you have to call out to the window manager each time.

I think I understand your point better now, though. If you just look at Cocoa Glk / Windows Glk behavior, where the user can type merrily away in a standard text control that the OS manages while the interpreter chugs along, then your proposal makes a lot more sense.

The only time the user would notice a delay is if they happened to press return before you were done, or if they resized the window, and then the delay would last only until the next glk_select_poll_all() call.

However, with the way Gargoyle does it, the individual keys composing the line are not processed until the interpreter requests events. So there would potentially be delays after each keystroke, inconsistent delays depending on how close they were to the next glk_select_poll_all() call.

My objection was that you'd have to call glk_select_poll_all() a lot to keep the event processing smooth. You could get away with a much looser polling interval for the other Glk libraries, though, because you are really only doing it to catch the odd line event that happens before you're finished processing.

With Gargoyle, you'd have to do it to catch every keystroke, because the big text buffer you sent to keep the user distracted might toss up a MORE prompt, and you need to hurry back to glk_select_poll_all() every few milliseconds or the user will notice that the window hasn't responded to his spacebar press.

But when you call that poll function a lot, 99 times out of 100 the event queue is empty and you are just burning time and CPU in useless context switches. This is the expense I was referring to: the accumulated cost of all those wasted calls.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=10#p6499
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-06-10 04:30:15

[quote="bcressey"]The context is an extended discussion about how his publisher had pressured him to overhaul the first 90 pages of that novel, which are replete with ornate description, literary allusion, medieval politics, and eschatological references: a far cry from the immediate gratification that so many commercial readers expect.[/quote]
Now imagine that he [i]had[/i] been interested in writing something for immediate gratification, or just something simpler or more poetic, or more succinct, that expected the reader to expand on it with their own imagery and research, and it was the publisher pressuring him to add those 90 pages.  Would that be any better?

Even accepting your IF/literacy analogy, is it so terrible to create a spectrum of games from the elaborate to the more straightforward?  Is it even terrible to accept that most people would [i]prefer[/i] the straightforward?

Or to put it another way, if I told you you had to learn how to ride a unicycle before you could read my book, would you read it, or would you read something else?  If you chose to just read something else, I don't think it would reflect badly on you, or the book, it would just show you had different priorities for how to spend your time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1145&start=0#p6500
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Boston GameLoop unconference August 28th
User: George / DateTime: 2010-06-10 09:25:11

I just wanted to put this on the radar:

<a class="postlink" href="http://gameloop.eventbrite.com/">http://gameloop.eventbrite.com/</a>

Last year it was 75 or so game developers who organize panels/talks the day of the event, sounds fun.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1145&start=0#p6501
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Boston GameLoop unconference August 28th
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-06-10 10:29:36

I am signed up (and I went to the last one) but I should warn you, it is not exactly open to the public. It says "industry types", meaning game industry types. I apparently count because the organizers think IF is cool.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=10#p6502
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-06-10 10:35:15

[quote="Pacian"]Even accepting your IF/literacy analogy, is it so terrible to create a spectrum of games from the elaborate to the more straightforward?  Is it even terrible to accept that most people would [i]prefer[/i] the straightforward?[/quote]

I find it hard to classify any creative act as terrible. As a parent, I cherish children's books - but how many centuries went by before books targeted to and tailored for children's abilities appeared?

I don't much care for [i]Harry Potter[/i] or [i]Twilight[/i], but undeniably the content is compelling for broad swathes of the population who might otherwise be completely oblivious to the charm of books. With apologies to Admiral Jota, is [i]Lost Pig[/i] the closest that IF authors can get to that sort of content? Probably not, although it is clearly more accessible and more entertaining than most IF.

Setting aside the legal difficulties, I believe a Harry Potter fanfic IF that garnered critical praise would do more to raise the profile of IF than any number of fiddly interface improvements.

[quote]Or to put it another way, if I told you you had to learn how to ride a unicycle before you could read my book, would you read it, or would you read something else?  If you chose to just read something else, I don't think it would reflect badly on you, or the book, it would just show you had different priorities for how to spend your time.[/quote]

Playing IF is nowhere near as hard as riding a unicycle, learning to read, or mastering a foreign language. It isn't even as hard as [i]Assassin's Creed 2[/i], where I spent two hours on the third scene trying to beat someone in a pointless footrace. Only its glowing endorsement from my brother saved it from an immediate return. This from a commercially successful game with an enormous budget and players numbering in the millions.

I have tremendous respect for your games in particular, but I do think it is somewhat hubristic to suggest that people avoid IF because of the incredible complexity of typing stuff into a prompt.

It's not as if people are born knowing how to use search engines. It would be one thing if the discussion centered around how to make IF accessible to the people who find Google too intimidating. But it's quite another to take as gospel the word of people who are perfectly capable of making their intentions understood to a parser.

I don't suggest that they are lying, simply that they can't be bothered to make the effort to learn this new way of controlling games. It's like that ridiculous Xbox 360 game with the full-sized skateboard controller. Its control scheme is very much an obstacle; I would repeatedly fail my dexterity check just trying to stand on it. But if instead of being wedded to a pedestrian skateboarding sim, it was somehow a means whereby I could navigate a Cthulhu Mythos story, I might be compelled to make the effort.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=20#p6503
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-06-10 12:21:00

[quote="emshort"]Sure. But the adjustment I'm suggesting neither throws the parser away entirely nor gets rid of intuition. You still have to think how you want to manipulate things; the point is to whittle the player's interactions down *to* those manipulations, instead of including also huge amounts of flailing.[/quote]

Well, OK. I guess I don't care about getting rid of flailing, because flailing in games is commonplace: the inevitable and unavoidable consequence of requiring skill that the player may not possess.

I play 3D shooters like [i]Modern Warfare 2[/i] and flail around, firing at bushes and trees while unseen snipers gun me down. I play RTS games like [i]Starcraft 2[/i] and flail around, trying to decide what to build while fending off a zergling rush. Same deal with [i]World of Warcraft[/i] raids, where the content is designed to be unfair and unforgiving until your group invests a large amount of collective flailing.

I don't see why the parser should function like an auto-aim bot in a FPS, or a build order wizard in an RTS.

Where IF differs is that once I start flailing, I am far more likely to quit forever than to doggedly stick with it. I think that has at least as much to do with the single-player nature of the games, though. Flailing is more fun in a group setting: if I spend five minutes uselessly firing into trees and drawing sniper fire, and my brother jumps out and guns down the enemy with a single precise shot, I feel as though we have both accomplished something meaningful within the game.

For me this is the charm of the annual IF Comp: the sense that other people are playing the same games at approximately the same time. That we are all flailing on the games together. And if I begin to waver in my commitment to a particular game, I can glance at reviews to see if people think the end justifies the pain.

The core failing of the modern IF parser is not in game mechanic terms but in technical ones: it presupposes a keyboard that is pleasant to use. There are many potentially great IF platforms - Android devices, iPads, iPhones, etc - that are downright horrible to type on.

Some way to identify significant nouns and auto-complete appropriate verbs would go a long way toward alleviating this, but it is not the only way. Voice input is another possibility; my father-in-law uses that for Google searches on his iPhone. The results are often hilariously inaccurate but he prefers it, only switching to keyboard input after repeated parser failures.

Overcoming this failure with assistive interfaces would be a fantastic step forward, but I would rather see it done in a way that retains the need for the player to compose a coherent command as the dominant interaction model.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=20#p6504
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-10 12:35:05

[quote="bcressey"]
I don't much care for [i]Harry Potter[/i] or [i]Twilight[/i], but undeniably the content is compelling for broad swathes of the population who might otherwise be completely oblivious to the charm of books. With apologies to Admiral Jota, is [i]Lost Pig[/i] the closest that IF authors can get to that sort of content? Probably not, although it is clearly more accessible and more entertaining than most IF.

Setting aside the legal difficulties, I believe a Harry Potter fanfic IF that garnered critical praise would do more to raise the profile of IF than any number of fiddly interface improvements. [/quote]

One of the things (in my opinion) that would make for more compelling stories for a broader audience would be stronger character content: more interactions involving people, fewer involving locks and keys. And that is something I think a different interface would directly help with, because it would make it less necessary to rely on the same conventional verb set.

I don't think anyone is arguing that the general public is too dumb overall to learn to play IF. I do think that, at the moment, the parser offers enough of a challenge that you need one hell of a hook to get novices to regard learning it as a good use of their entertainment time -- and, in particular, because it does a poor job of communicating what sorts of things the player is going to be doing in the game, it makes it very hard to offer the player a *gameplay* hook.

I had trouble with that same race in Assassin's Creed 2 (though not quite two hours' worth) -- but I did have a pretty clear idea almost from the beginning of what <em>kind</em> of game experience was being offered, and that was part of what hooked me. It wasn't the story intro, which is frankly terrible. But "game where you parkour around a surprisingly accurate version of Renaissance Florence" was something I was willing to invest some effort to play. What's more, I was always clear on what exactly I was supposed to be doing with Assassin's Creed 2; I was just having trouble executing the plan of "be faster". An IF prompt doesn't offer nearly that much information: it's easy to get in a situation in IF where you have no idea even generally what you're supposed to be trying to accomplish, what sort of input is desired, and what you should attempt next in order to attempt to break the log jam. In the AC2 case, you have a process you can iterate with some expectation that it will eventually lead to success. Not being sure even of that much makes it even harder to justify the time.

Anyway, that was partly a tangent: my main point was, IF in its current format doesn't necessarily give the player much of an idea of what the game is going to be like to play.

So if we're stuck for communicating what the gameplay experience is going to be like, we're left with setting and story as ways to get people invested a given game. Not impossible -- Peter Nepstad has, to the best of my knowledge, done a better job than anyone else in actually selling IF games recently, and I'd guess it's because he picked a strong setting that was of particular interest to a small but active community, then devoted himself to rendering that setting accurately and marketing the results to the relevant group. But this is not easy, especially when working with a setting that isn't a historical reproduction with an existing core of followers. 

If you don't have something external to show to players, then you have about two paragraphs of text in which do the job -- not only to get them to keep reading into the third paragraph, which is what the first two paragraphs of a book in the bookstore have to do -- but get them to persevere at the task of learning HOW to keep reading. 

So I do think there's a lot to be gained by certain kinds of marketing effort: showcasing our games better, giving them art and a website that sets the tone and builds interest, getting reviews and articles published in more mainstream places. All that is important if we want to get people to want to play, and we want to give them more to go on than they'll get by reading the intro text. I just don't think it's enough.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=20#p6505
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-06-10 13:12:29

[quote="bcressey"]I do think it is somewhat hubristic to suggest that people avoid IF because of the incredible complexity of typing stuff into a prompt.[/quote]
I read your post at work, then came home and found Emily has said what I was going to say above, but just to be clear: this is not my opinion.  People - even people who have never played IF - often have an idea what commands they can type.  They know the syntax, they know some of the standard verbs, they can see the nouns in the text.  Their complaint is not "What are valid commands to type?" but "Given the enormous number of potentially valid commands, how the hell do I figure out what I'm supposed to be doing?"

The verbs in Metal Gear Solid are: run, crawl, wrestle, shoot, punch.  But the game also makes it clear through the story, through level design and through the interface, that the game is about [i]avoiding[/i] combat.  (And before you mention the way a parser allows unexpected interactions, MGS also features sections where you have to do something completely different - a direct firefight, resisting torture, abseiling down a building, figuring out how to defeat an opponent who can read your mind...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=20#p6506
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-10 13:46:48

[quote="emshort"]What's more, I was always clear on what exactly I was supposed to be doing with Assassin's Creed 2; I was just having trouble executing the plan of "be faster". An IF prompt doesn't offer nearly that much information: it's easy to get in a situation in IF where you have no idea even generally what you're supposed to be trying to accomplish, what sort of input is desired, and what you should attempt next in order to attempt to break the log jam. In the AC2 case, you have a process you can iterate with some expectation that it will eventually lead to success. Not being sure even of that much makes it even harder to justify the time.[/quote]

This. I started the below comment and never posted it, but to pile in:

The learning curve for games like Assassin's Creed is a lot different from the IF learning curve, at least what Emily's talking about. In reflexy video games, you usually start being able to do something, and even when you fail, you can see why you did and how close you came to not failing. I'm currently stuck at the final bosses for [i]Cave Story[/i] (medium ending), but I can at least do something in this fight, and before that I had lots of running around and jumping and stuff before the difficulty started to kick my ass. Which gave me the incentive to keep playing, so that I was eventually able to learn how not to get my ass kicked on some of the earlier fights. -- In fact, what almost made me quit at the beginning was a sort of IFfy moment; before any of the really arcadey stuff happens, you have to push the plot along by finding something and giving it to someone, and I had no idea what to do. Actually, what really almost made me quit was that on the loading screen I couldn't figure out that you had to press "Z" to start. 

Anyway, in IF, if you start from scratch, you don't know what to do at all. It's not that you eventually get your butt kicked by the Babelfish puzzle, it's that (to take an example from Brian Moriarty's talk) you have someone type "Where am I" and give up when they don't get an answer. Not to mention the games I've stalled out on because I forgot about "search." 

Another thing -- going back to reading and video games -- is that there's a huge audience that's spent a lot of time practicing video games, and a lot of money that's gone into helping them practice. Even more so for reading. IF doesn't have that luxury, so saying "Learning IF is no harder to learn than learning platformers or reading" is neither here nor there. IF doesn't start with those games' built-in advantages.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=20#p6507
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-06-10 14:06:56

[quote]I don't think anyone is arguing that the general public is too dumb overall to learn to play IF. I do think that, at the moment, the parser offers enough of a challenge that you need one hell of a hook to get novices to regard learning it as a good use of their entertainment time -- and, in particular, because it does a poor job of communicating what sorts of things the player is going to be doing in the game, it makes it very hard to offer the player a *gameplay* hook.[/quote]

I take your point, but you only need that kind of hook once per player: to get them to invest the time and energy overcoming the shallow learning curve in pursuit of content that they want. At that point, they are initiated into the ways and perfectly capable of engaging other IF works, which need not be compelling to the same degree.

FPS players are not born knowing how to mouse look and keyboard strafe. It may take a game like Half Life or Counterstrike to force them to acquire that skill, but once acquired it serves them well in any FPS game available. Most of which will not be very good, and few of which could compel the uninitiated potential player to bother learning how to play.

That's OK; not all games have to be accessible and amazing, so long as some few are.

[quote]I had trouble with that same race in Assassin's Creed 2 (though not quite two hours' worth)[/quote]

 [emote]:oops:[/emote] I eventually asked my brother how in the world he had beaten that part. He had no idea what I meant and had to struggle to recall it.

[spoiler]It turns out you can just completely ignore the other guy and run straight to the church and climb up, instead of chasing him up ladders and across rooftops.[/spoiler]


[quote]What's more, I was always clear on what exactly I was supposed to be doing with Assassin's Creed 2; I was just having trouble executing the plan of "be faster".[/quote]

Really? I felt like the tomb sequences were fairly opaque. Like the one in the church where the only goal you are given is to climb to the top. There are random, unmarked checkpoints along the way, but there is nothing in the way of specific guidance.

[quote]An IF prompt doesn't offer nearly that much information: it's easy to get in a situation in IF where you have no idea even generally what you're supposed to be trying to accomplish, what sort of input is desired, and what you should attempt next in order to attempt to break the log jam. In the AC2 case, you have a process you can iterate with some expectation that it will eventually lead to success. Not being sure even of that much makes it even harder to justify the time.[/quote]

I don't see this as a parser issue so much as a game design issue: how and when is information presented to the player? It would be weird in AC2 if the controller tried to guide you toward the objective by vibrating when you deviated from the path. The parser is the IF player's controller; why should it be responsible for telling the player what to do?

I understand that there are aesthetic objections to cluttering game prose with cardinal directions, or out-of-world references to verbs. But there are also aesthetic problems with popping up a flashing red RT trigger icon during [i]Mass Effect 2[/i] cutscenes, to alert the player to the possibility of a special action, and commercial video games don't shy away from that behavior.

It may not be artful but it is practical, because the Xbox controller is rather complicated. It has a lot of buttons and they do different things in different games. The player accepts the complexity because it offers greater potential for fun interactions, not because they enjoy discovering new things for the blue X button to do.


[quote]Anyway, that was partly a tangent: my main point was, IF in its current format doesn't necessarily give the player much of an idea of what the game is going to be like to play.[/quote]

Well, that doesn't have to be the case. More windows and more graphics can help with that. [i]Alabaster[/i] uses a changing graphic of Snow White to draw the player's attention to her and to highlight her emotional state. That seems to be a good way of focusing the player's efforts. If you can get them thinking, "She looks angry - I should try to calm her down" then you have nudged them away from the standard IF verbs into a more conversational mindset.

Erik Temple sent me a demo with a very nice graphical map, with a blinking light marking the player's position in the city. In a game about exploration, that suggests to the player that if they're not sure what to do, they can always wander to a different location. Add a second blinking light to the map, and you allow the player to visualize a destination and by implication a goal.

Both of these are ways to suggest a game experience in ways that mainstream gamers will readily grasp.

[quote]So I do think there's a lot to be gained by certain kinds of marketing effort: showcasing our games better, giving them art and a website that sets the tone and builds interest, getting reviews and articles published in more mainstream places. All that is important if we want to get people to want to play, and we want to give them more to go on than they'll get by reading the intro text. I just don't think it's enough.[/quote]

Absolutely. But none of that hinges on a better parser, and I don't think a better parser necessarily serves that goal.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=20#p6508
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-06-10 15:07:14

[quote]Anyway, in IF, if you start from scratch, you don't know what to do at all. It's not that you eventually get your butt kicked by the Babelfish puzzle, it's that (to take an example from Brian Moriarty's talk) you have someone type "Where am I" and give up when they don't get an answer.[/quote]

My son can pick up an Xbox controller and input random commands. I am confident that none of the games I play would reward this interaction such that he would continue to do it for more than a few minutes.

In your example, typing "where am I" is much like hitting buttons at random. It is not a command that anyone experienced with the activity would bother trying, except as a way to abuse the simulation. Catering to this sort of abuse is counterproductive.

Do people put searches like that into Google? Undoubtedly. Does Google cater to them? [url=http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=where+am+i]Sort of.[/url] But Google has an advantage in that it can tell how popular a search is, and it can roll out a targeted service if it deems it worthwhile.

It would be more productive to adopt this practice than to meddle with the parser. Give authors a way to track all commands that players enter, and some way to capture whether or not the game responded appropriately. Then give them a way to add new responses to those commands in a seamless way, without disrupting the progress of current players.

This doesn't help players that hit the wall before the update, any more than Google's new mobile locator service helps the hapless person that queried "where am I" five years ago. 

[quote]Another thing -- going back to reading and video games -- is that there's a huge audience that's spent a lot of time practicing video games, and a lot of money that's gone into helping them practice. Even more so for reading. IF doesn't have that luxury, so saying "Learning IF is no harder to learn than learning platformers or reading" is neither here nor there. IF doesn't start with those games' built-in advantages.[/quote]

Yes, but so? It doesn't matter that there's a giant audience with FPS skills, because IF does not use FPS skills. If you had an illiterate child that excelled at playing the drums, would you entice him to read by making it more like playing the drums? 

Even if you were in a village in rural Africa where no one could read and everyone could play the drums, that still does not mean that the best way to introduce reading is to turn it into drumming, or suggest that you should borrow concepts from drumming to make it more palatable.

All I am saying is that IF is a distinct activity with its own learning curve. Like any activity, it succeeds or fails on its own merits. The existence of other, more popular activities is at best irrelevant and at worst a distraction, even if they appear to the outside observer to occupy the same conceptual space. People learn new activities all the time. Learning is not the problem. Motivation is the problem.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=20#p6509
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-06-10 15:20:30

On [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1128]another thread[/url] a discussion arose about the "use" verb. Most people think that "use" makes the game too easy. But while following this discussion it occurred to me that "use" might be one of the tools to make the parser more accessible. Especially since I see other games mentioned that pretty much provide "use" as the only interaction. In FPS games (or most RPGs, even), you press the "use" button to open doors, take items, flip switches, etc. There are no buttons for "open", "close" and "take".

Could a game that only needs a few general-purpose verbs (say, "use", "take", "talk" and "go") to be playable (the rest of the verbs would be optional) be the "Beginner Friendly" piece of IF this discussion is about?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=20#p6510
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-06-10 16:04:40

[quote="Pacian"]I read your post at work, then came home and found Emily has said what I was going to say above, but just to be clear: this is not my opinion.  People - even people who have never played IF - often have an idea what commands they can type.  They know the syntax, they know some of the standard verbs, they can see the nouns in the text.  Their complaint is not "What are valid commands to type?" but "Given the enormous number of potentially valid commands, how the hell do I figure out what I'm supposed to be doing?"[/quote]

Again, I see this as a game design problem, not a controller problem: the character and the setting should channel the player toward a specific set of actions. If they don't, more explicit suggestions in the form of UI elements or text in the game window can prod them forward.

If the player sees a painting in the room, the game is responsible for communicating the appropriate set of actions. Characterizing the player as a master art thief suggests one approach: steal it. Casting the player as an investigator searching for clues suggests another: examine it.

You could even add a status line that read "Paintings: 0/1". Tacky and heavy-handed, to be sure, but a player that cannot be bothered to come up with at least one valid input under such circumstances is not a player worth having. At least, I'm not interested in writing IF for players like that. It'd be like playing an RPG with someone who refuses to talk or roll dice. What's the point?

I am more sympathetic to Emily's argument, since the space of the possible interpersonal actions is so much greater than a few noun / verb pairs. But you seem to be making a more general argument against the IF parser, and I don't really accept it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=20#p6511
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-10 17:28:27

[quote="bcressey"]
Again, I see this as a game design problem, not a controller problem: the character and the setting should channel the player toward a specific set of actions. If they don't, more explicit suggestions in the form of UI elements or text in the game window can prod them forward.[/quote]

"More explicit suggestions in the form of UI elements" is pretty much exactly what I'm advocating.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=20#p6512
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-06-10 17:30:06

[quote="bcressey"]Again, I see this as a game design problem, not a controller problem[/quote]
I don't see it as a problem for either, but I do think that changes to either the design or the method of control (or both) could be the key to changing this from a challenging element of a game, into a transparent element - depending on where in the game you want the challenge to lie.

[quote="bcressey"]Characterizing the player as a master art thief suggests one approach: steal it.[/quote]
I'm assuming we're not simply talking about using the verb 'steal' here.  Maybe alarms have to be disabled, so it's a game about meddling with gadgets?  Or it's an Ocean's Eleven style heist, and we have to deceive the NPCs?  We're a cat burglar and the aim is to move unseen?  Or it's an armed robbery and I have to defeat the guards in combat?

In each of those cases I could come up with standard or semi-standard verbs to use, but I think it would very difficult to distinguish between them purely based on the in-game text.  The game's responsibility to communicate the appropriate actions becomes a rather direct one, I think (unless, as above, you want figuring out the action set to be part of the challenge), and why shouldn't that be a part of the UI rather than something in the About text?

[quote="bcressey"]You could even add a status line that read "Paintings: 0/1".[/quote]
Funnily enough...  From an early prototype of Walker & Silhouette:

[img]http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/4899/wandsprototype.png[/img]

[quote="bcressey"]But you seem to be making a more general argument against the IF parser, and I don't really accept it.[/quote]
I think the parser is fine.  I think games with parsers are fine, and so are the people who want to write and play such games.  But there's a very stark line between parser IF and more static CYOA on the one hand, and completely graphical games on the other.  I think this should be a fuzzy line all round.

To be absolutely clear: my stance is not a stance [i]against[/i] the parser, but [i]in favour of[/i] additional modes of all-text game.

[quote="bcressey"]Well, that doesn't have to be the case. More windows and more graphics can help with that.[/quote]
I find it interesting that both you and RealNC seem to feel that IF must have a parser to be IF and have all its benefits, but you don't blink at incorporating graphics into the game at a fundamental level (RealNC suggested even making them interactive).  To me, it's [i]this[/i] that's moving towards a different genre.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=30#p6513
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-06-10 17:43:25

[quote="Pacian"][quote="bcressey"]Well, that doesn't have to be the case. More windows and more graphics can help with that.[/quote]
I find it interesting that both you and RealNC seem to feel that IF must have a parser to be IF and have all its benefits, but you don't blink at incorporating graphics into the game at a fundamental level (RealNC suggested even making them interactive).  To me, it's [i]this[/i] that's moving towards a different genre.[/quote]
I'd say W&S is "less" of a text adventure than Gateway because of the keywords vs traditional parser approach. (This isn't meant as criticism; W&S was awesome.) Putting graphics in text adventures was a very popular practice in order to attract new players. Graphics doesn't mean a move away from IF; it means enhancing it (it shouldn't replace the textual description but rather complement it.) I believe that whatever the new "IF for the Masses" would end up to be, media would play an important role. Even for me - and I consider myself "text adventure hardcore" - some text games tend to get boring because there's no artwork and no music (to this day, I still have to find a piece of IF that that I enjoyed as much as Gateway.) I can imagine J. Random Gamer getting bored much faster than me. Making IF popular would, IMO, involve both accessibility as well as presentation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=30#p6514
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-06-10 17:54:36

[quote="emshort"]"More explicit suggestions in the form of UI elements" is pretty much exactly what I'm advocating.[/quote]

Ah. I tried your [i]Jade[/i] demo, but when I typed something the prompt just disappeared. Based on that, I thought you were trying to dispense with the command prompt, and by extension the parser behind the command prompt.

After resizing my game window so that it actually shows everything, I am much less confused.

The references to parsers seem misleading, though. If I understand correctly, you are arguing for a better [i]prompt[/i], one that provides more explicit suggestions.

I like that idea.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=30#p6515
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-10 17:55:20

[quote="RealNC"]On [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1128]another thread[/url] a discussion arose about the "use" verb. Most people think that "use" makes the game too easy. But while following this discussion it occurred to me that "use" might be one of the tools to make the parser more accessible. Especially since I see other games mentioned that pretty much provide "use" as the only interaction. In FPS games (or most RPGs, even), you press the "use" button to open doors, take items, flip switches, etc. There are no buttons for "open", "close" and "take".

Could a game that only needs a few general-purpose verbs (say, "use", "take", "talk" and "go") to be playable (the rest of the verbs would be optional) be the "Beginner Friendly" piece of IF this discussion is about?[/quote]

It seems to me that you don't even really need the verbs. The direct objects are pretty much exclusive -- "use" applies to objects that are fixed in place or in your inventory, "take" applies to portable objects that aren't in your inventory, "talk" applies to people, "go" applies to directions and rooms. So you'll have a keyword-based game. In other words, you'll have Walker and Silhouette. 

Now, this will limit the puzzles you can do. Sometimes you don't want it to be absolutely obvious how you use this thing you just picked up, or you want to make sure the player uses the thing on the correct other thing. But that's part of making it a beginner's game, I guess.

(Now, in FPSes, I'm guessing that "use this" is mostly flavor in between and around the real gameplay. There's a nice bit in Cave Story that uses some "go here and press the down arrow" play as pacing before a big boss fight. In IF using things would be pretty much all the gameplay. But point-and-clicks effectively have "use" as the only thing you can do with fixed objects and objects in your inventory -- they basically only have "use," "take," "go," "examine," and sometimes "combine" -- and that is all of their gameplay. So that could be another model for "use"-based IF.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=30#p6516
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-06-10 17:57:01

[quote="emshort"]"More explicit suggestions in the form of UI elements" is pretty much exactly what I'm advocating.[/quote]

How do we reconcile that with "I prefer not to have the window of text forced into a small corner of the screen while the rest of the territory is taken up with interaction helps."   I agree with both, but.. 

(I tried Jade, but is there a particular interpreter I should use for it?  I found it bewildering, but used it on a fairly old version of Windows Gargoyle.)  

On the thread as a whole:  the parser should out-of-the-box recognize when the player is asking a question and instruct him to phrase all his questions as commands:  "READ SIGN" not "WHAT DOES THE SIGN SAY?"   Even if the programming is no more complicated than the equivalent of a one-liner -- Understand "who/where/what/are/is/can/should..<etc.>.." as a mistake.... -- it alone would go a long way to improving new player experience.  It is better than a menu which has to be explicitly consulted because as soon as the player's attention breaks from the prose to reach for a UI widget, the CLOSE PROGRAM button is just as accessible as the HELP button.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=30#p6517
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-06-10 18:02:53

[quote="matt w"][quote="RealNC"]Could a game that only needs a few general-purpose verbs (say, "use", "take", "talk" and "go") to be playable (the rest of the verbs would be optional) be the "Beginner Friendly" piece of IF this discussion is about?[/quote]
It seems to me that you don't even really need the verbs. The direct objects are pretty much exclusive -- "use" applies to objects that are fixed in place or in your inventory, "take" applies to portable objects that aren't in your inventory, "talk" applies to people, "go" applies to directions and rooms. So you'll have a keyword-based game. In other words, you'll have Walker and Silhouette.[/quote]
I was actually thinking of something like USE X WITH Y. Well, now that I think about it, the only thing this does is emulate point&click adventures with text, so meh [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=30#p6518
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-10 18:18:20

[quote="Ron Newcomb"][quote="emshort"]"More explicit suggestions in the form of UI elements" is pretty much exactly what I'm advocating.[/quote]

How do we reconcile that with "I prefer not to have the window of text forced into a small corner of the screen while the rest of the territory is taken up with interaction helps."   I agree with both, but.. [/quote]

Make the UI elements small and textual, and put them with the prompt. [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote="Ron Newcomb"](I tried Jade, but is there a particular interpreter I should use for it?  I found it bewildering, but used it on a fairly old version of Windows Gargoyle.)[/quote]

I don't know of a reason that it shouldn't run on that, but several people have mentioned that their windows were sized small enough that they didn't get the lower pane clearly, in which case it wouldn't make sense. So maybe try resizing the window to be larger?

I may try rereleasing it in a less-easy-to-screw-up form when I have a little time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=30#p6519
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-06-10 18:35:22

(This is not a reply to anyone in particular.)

In this thread "Gateway" has been mentioned a couple of times. I suppose some people here have never played it and therefore don't know what it is all about. So here goes:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXgh2dQf3bM">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXgh2dQf3bM</a>

Note in particular how well cut-scenes were presented (well, for 1993 standards anyway.) "IF for the General Public" could draw some ideas from that one game alone, but with a more modern approach, like less clutter in the GUI (endless lists of verbs aren't that helpful) and making sure the presentation keeps players interested. All that combined with a more helpful parser prompt could "bring IF back". Of course I'm aware that something like that isn't something a single individual can attempt at his spare time; it would either have to be several people collaborating or a commercial entity doing it (/me looks at Textfyre...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=30#p6520
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-10 18:45:23

[quote="RealNC"][quote="matt w"][quote="RealNC"]Could a game that only needs a few general-purpose verbs (say, "use", "take", "talk" and "go") to be playable (the rest of the verbs would be optional) be the "Beginner Friendly" piece of IF this discussion is about?[/quote]
It seems to me that you don't even really need the verbs. The direct objects are pretty much exclusive -- "use" applies to objects that are fixed in place or in your inventory, "take" applies to portable objects that aren't in your inventory, "talk" applies to people, "go" applies to directions and rooms. So you'll have a keyword-based game. In other words, you'll have Walker and Silhouette.[/quote]
I was actually thinking of something like USE X WITH Y. Well, now that I think about it, the only thing this does is emulate point&click adventures with text, so meh [emote]:P[/emote][/quote]

Bah, when I was talking about point-and-click games I somehow forgot that they're usually about USE X WITH Y rather than just USE X. Anyway, I like point-and-click games, but I worry that some of the innovations Emily is suggesting could push us to basically emulating point-and-click games with text. (Even the social verbs -- as I said at Emily's blog, Raising the Flag on Mount Yo Momma implements the social verb "INSULT," and it could easily be done as one of those point-and-click where you get three verbs when you click on something -- click on a person and you'd get "examine," "talk," and "insult".)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=30#p6521
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-10 20:00:11

[quote="bcressey"][quote]Anyway, in IF, if you start from scratch, you don't know what to do at all. It's not that you eventually get your butt kicked by the Babelfish puzzle, it's that (to take an example from Brian Moriarty's talk) you have someone type "Where am I" and give up when they don't get an answer.[/quote]

My son can pick up an Xbox controller and input random commands. I am confident that none of the games I play would reward this interaction such that he would continue to do it for more than a few minutes.[/quote]

...come to think of it, this is why in the past I've occasionally given up on xbox games after a few seconds. Braid had those nice things showing you which button to push where. Flower was completely incomprehensible until someone told me what to do. I don't actually have a console, as you may have gathered.

Which means that I was thinking of Flash-based games, and in a lot of those I can pretty much start from scratch with the arrow keys, and if there's some other command I do expect them to let me know what it is. 

[quote="bcressey"]In your example, typing "where am I" is much like hitting buttons at random. It is not a command that anyone experienced with the activity would bother trying, except as a way to abuse the simulation. Catering to this sort of abuse is counterproductive.[/quote]

Well, it's actually Brian Moriarty's example, which went like this:

“I remember going to a trade show to exhibit Beyond Zork back in fall of 1987. The story was always the same. Some curious retail executive would sit down in front of a computer loaded with BZ. I would explain that you typed ‘real English sentences’ to interact. They would nod, turn to the keyboard and type WHERE AM I? End of demo.”

And, as Emily pointed out in this discussion, the moral is not to say that you type "real English sentences" to interact. I mean, as recounted that's basically a demonstration that it hurts when I do this. 

(Here's where I switch sides on the argument for a little bit.)

So, shouldn't we really try a better explanation of what you do? Say that you can go directions, examine things, pick them up, and if you can think of some other stuff you might want to do it's worth trying that verb -- e.g., if you see a button you press or push it. But that not every verb will work. I understand that people don't want to read the instructions, but we could do a better job of presenting this than we do. 

[quote][quote]Another thing -- going back to reading and video games -- is that there's a huge audience that's spent a lot of time practicing video games, and a lot of money that's gone into helping them practice. Even more so for reading. IF doesn't have that luxury, so saying "Learning IF is no harder to learn than learning platformers or reading" is neither here nor there. IF doesn't start with those games' built-in advantages.[/quote]

Yes, but so? It doesn't matter that there's a giant audience with FPS skills, because IF does not use FPS skills. If you had an illiterate child that excelled at playing the drums, would you entice him to read by making it more like playing the drums? ...

All I am saying is that IF is a distinct activity with its own learning curve. Like any activity, it succeeds or fails on its own merits. The existence of other, more popular activities is at best irrelevant and at worst a distraction, even if they appear to the outside observer to occupy the same conceptual space. People learn new activities all the time. Learning is not the problem. Motivation is the problem.[/quote]

The point about the giant audience is that it doesn't matter if IF is no harder to learn than FPSes or reading. People are motivated to get over the hump for those, they aren't for IF. And you can't separate motivation from learning -- it takes a certain amount of motivation to get you through a certain amount of learning. If FPSes were eleventy-billion times harder to do anything in, people wouldn't be motivated to learn them. 

Also, as someone who teaches a subject that a lot of students aren't very good at or very motivated for, I think making it more like something they're better at would be a great approach. Specifically, I teach logic, and I've realized that a big problem with all my textbooks is that they don't introduce the new elements gradually enough, the way a game will introduce elements one at a time. I think logic textbooks could learn a hell of a lot from level design in games. (Though I'm still relying on "you have to pass the class" for the motivation.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=30#p6522
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-06-10 21:30:11

[quote="emshort"]I don't know of a reason that it shouldn't run on that, but several people have mentioned that their windows were sized small enough that they didn't get the lower pane clearly, in which case it wouldn't make sense. So maybe try resizing the window to be larger?[/quote]

I think the problem is simply that the text input window is proportional rather than fixed. On my laptop, I couldn't expand it to any greater than about 1.3 rows. If you set it to a fixed height of 2 or 3 rows (is that enough to fit all of the features of the demo?) it should be easier to work with.

However, to get somewhere polished with it, you may want to consider doing an extension/hack of one of the javascript interpreters--this would give a lot more control over the behavior.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1014&start=0#p6532
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: "How to Play IF" card
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-06-11 08:28:31

Hahaha, sorry, but that's the most amusing spam I've seen in a long time.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1014&start=0#p6533
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: "How to Play IF" card
User: Mick / DateTime: 2010-06-11 08:31:49

[quote="Dannii"]Hahaha, sorry, but that's the most amusing spam I've seen in a long time.[/quote]

It's definitely more clever than other attempts. I read it pre-coffee, and read quite more than I'd care to admit before it really clicked that something wasn't right. At first I thought the poster was just hopelessly off-topic.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1014&start=0#p6534
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: "How to Play IF" card
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-06-11 08:58:11

[quote="Dannii"]Hahaha, sorry, but that's the most amusing spam I've seen in a long time.[/quote]
"Of all the reasons to get labeled as a bad player, I find bad play to be the highest on the gross offenses list." [i]So true.[/i]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1014&start=0#p6535
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: "How to Play IF" card
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-06-11 09:16:30

At first I thought it [b]was[/b] on topic... they thought there should be more about maps on the card! But then I read the next few words... and laughed [emote]:P[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1146&start=0#p6536
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Suppressing (open) and (closed) in container names
User: mattbarton.exe / DateTime: 2010-06-11 17:57:54

I've been searching for an answer to this for hours and have been unable to find it. How can I suppress the (closed) that shows up as the printed name of a clock? I still want the clock to be mentioned, but I don't want the player to know right away that it can be opened and closed. Thanks for your help.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1147&start=0#p6537
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Looking for Programmer
User: cunctator / DateTime: 2010-06-11 21:57:52

Hello,

I've tried to do little games in the past, but I am not a very good programmer. So, for my first official game, I'm searching for one. I'm also searching for someone with some experience making games, as I have an idea that could use some critiquing.

I'm mostly interested in telling stories, like Photopia. My idea is to make a game about living under Stalin during the first part of the 20th Century. It will consist of mini-vignettes, kind of like Photopia, starting from the peasants to the very top officials. Unlike many of the recent games coming out that emphasize choice and freewill, this game will emphasize how oppressive Stalin's regime was. There will be many ways to die, or "disappear" in this game.

The game will utilize historical fact to make people realize what living in Stalinist-era Russia was like. The game will also offer numerous "chances" to rebel, but the inability to successfully do so will also show people how hard it is to speak out in oppressive regimes.

The different social classes will showcase Stalin's hypocrisy, and will also show how paranoia and fear was everywhere. It will also show how the hierarchy of society contributed to the trickling down of oppression, and the game will end with the player controlling Stalin himself.

It will be called "Gigantomania."

The programming is probably not going to be complicated, as there won't be many puzzles, but the concept is. I need a programmer to help me refine the details. When this has been done, I can probably type out all the descriptions and such in a month, and (possibly) the game can be finished by September, for IFComp.

Thank you for reading all this, and if you're interested, please reply!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1146&start=0#p6538
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Suppressing (open) and (closed) in container names
User: George / DateTime: 2010-06-11 22:27:08

The answer is not exactly in an obvious place in the documentation unfortunately; look in "17.15. Printing room description details of something".

An example:

[code]
The player is in a room called Sichotense. A moose, birdhouse, and frumplesnitch are in Sichotense. The birdhouse and the frumplesnitch are closed containers. 

Rule for printing room description details of a birdhouse: stop. 
[/code]

I only found this myself by searching "suppressing open container name" on [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction]RAIF[/url]. 

Also Jim Aikin's I7 handbook is a good reference for this sort of thing, and to quote from it:

[quote]
[b]Stealthy Containers
[/b]
The logic shown above is fine as a basic way of designing a game, but you may run into situations in
which it doesn’t work well. For instance, you might want it to be less than obvious that a closed
openable container is actually a container at all. Getting rid of the “(closed)” text would solve that.

Here’s how:

[color=#0040FF]Rule for printing room description details of a closed container: stop.
[/color]
Once the closed container is picked up by the player, however, the “(closed)” will reappear when the
player takes inventory. To prevent that, we need another few lines:

[color=#0040FF]Rule for printing the name of a closed container (called C) while taking inventory:
    say "[printed name of C]";
    omit contents in listing.[/color]
[/quote]

Note that the last two lines of code there should be indented with tabs.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1147&start=0#p6540
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for Programmer
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-06-11 22:30:53

I'd be interested in helping.

I think it's great to have teams working on games/stories. I think you're right that the concept is solid. But what about writing? Is that something you would cover? A lot of people work from a mock transcript, have you written one?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1146&start=0#p6541
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Suppressing (open) and (closed) in container names
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-11 22:51:33

Besides what George said, look at the documentation for "omit contents in listing" in 17.10; it not only omits the contents, but also omits the (open) or (closed) tag. I forget how I found it -- I think just a general sense that we wanted something to do with "Printing the name of something."

This seems to be a more general way of doing what you want -- I added a bit of code to make sure that once you open (or close) the clock, it does appear with (open) or (closed), since now you know it can be opened:

[code]

Hall is a room. The clock is a container in Hall. The clock is openable. The clock is closed.

A container can be covert or overt. A container is usually overt. The clock is covert.

Rule for printing the name of a covert container (called coverture):
	say "[printed name of coverture]";
	omit contents in listing.

After opening a covert container:
	now the noun is overt;
	continue the action.
	
After closing a covert container:
	now the noun is overt;
	continue the action.[/code]

"Continue the action" in the "after" rules seems to be necessary in order to get the default message for opening and closing things, and perhaps anything else you've programmed for the opening and closing

Interesting fact: if you type [coverture] instead of [printed name of coverture], I7 will set up an infinite loop when you try to compile, and it will freeze the I7 IDE, and if you aren't quick it'll freeze whatever else you're doing, and there will be much weeping and gnashing of teeth, thus:  [emote]:([/emote]  [emote]:shock:[/emote]  [emote]:o[/emote]  [emote]:evil:[/emote]. BLUH. (Another interesting fact: "coverture" doesn't mean that.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1147&start=0#p6542
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for Programmer
User: cunctator / DateTime: 2010-06-12 02:22:16

I'll cover all the writing.

I haven't started yet, because I was interested in getting feedback so that I know 100% what I'm going to do, and not have to significantly change something later.

It was going to be similar to Photopia in terms of gameplay: mostly story, little puzzles, mini-vignettes. I was very certain of my story until I recently played Blue Lacuna. The complexity of that game severely undermined any self-esteem I had, so I wanted to know people's opinions.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1147&start=0#p6543
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for Programmer
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-06-12 03:33:50

I'm not an expert, but I would suggest first to plan the plot - divide it into scenes, what will happen in each, how they'll progress etc. For the comp you probably want an ideal play time of an hour or less as it will inevitable take many players a lot longer. I haven't played much of Blue Lacuna, but I wouldn't suggest aiming for anything bigger than just one of its chapters.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1147&start=0#p6544
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for Programmer
User: cunctator / DateTime: 2010-06-12 06:45:12

My e-mail is at [spoiler]melleberry@gmail.com[/spoiler]. Can you tell me what your e-mail is?

I'll try to finish the entire transcript by the end of the month.

Thank you for your input!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1148&start=0#p6545
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: "now the player is in..." always verbose? (I7)
User: Jaek / DateTime: 2010-06-12 06:48:04

I have a puzzle which requires the player to be standing on an object (an enterable supporter) in order to access another room. I'm making use of "now the player is in..." to do this, but when the player arrives in the new room in this manner, they are always shown the verbose room description, regardless of whether the room is already visited or not.

This is only a minor thing but I'd like it to behave as normal movement. Is there a setting I can change or some way I can code round this?

Thanks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1146&start=0#p6546
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Suppressing (open) and (closed) in container names
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-12 07:43:44

Oh, if you just want something to apply to the clock and don't want to mess around with extra properties like "covert," this seems to work:

[code]Hall is a room. The clock is a container in Hall. The clock is openable. The clock is closed.

Rule for printing the name of the clock:
	unless the clock has been open:
		say "[printed name of the clock]";
		omit contents in listing;
	otherwise:
		continue the action.[/code]

This may even be more general, because it works if the clock is opened by something other than the player, I think. I'd been trying something like this before, but didn't succeed, either because I forgot about "unless" or because I got confused by my infinite loop or because I hadn't figured out about "omit contents in listing" yet.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1148&start=0#p6547
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "now the player is in..." always verbose? (I7)
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2010-06-12 08:23:36

See 8.9 in the manual. It looks like what you want is:
[code]move the player to the Antechamber, printing an abbreviated room description.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1148&start=0#p6548
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "now the player is in..." always verbose? (I7)
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-06-12 08:25:16

I would recommend to solve the problem by turning verbose room descriptions on because players are likely to do that anyway (and the next version of Inform has been in fact changed to do this by default.) But if you want to keep the brief room descriptions you can do this:

[code]This is the don't describe body text when moved to a supporter rule:
	if the holder of the player is not a supporter or the player was on the holder of the player, follow the room description body text rule.
	
The don't describe body text when moved to a supporter rule is listed instead of the room description body text rule in the carry out looking rulebook.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1148&start=0#p6549
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "now the player is in..." always verbose? (I7)
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-06-12 08:28:10

[quote="jacksonmead"][code]move the player to the Antechamber, printing an abbreviated room description.[/code][/quote]
Beat me by a minute - and yes, that looks like a cleaner solution :)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1148&start=0#p6550
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "now the player is in..." always verbose? (I7)
User: Jaek / DateTime: 2010-06-12 08:46:43

Thanks for the replies. The "move the player..." solution does exactly what I need.

I should get back onto reading the documentation, though there's so much to take in I can usually only retain about 3 chapters' worth before I start forgetting things. [emote]:P[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1146&start=0#p6551
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Suppressing (open) and (closed) in container names
User: mattbarton.exe / DateTime: 2010-06-12 16:02:49

[quote="matt w"]Oh, if you just want something to apply to the clock and don't want to mess around with extra properties like "covert," this seems to work:

[code]Hall is a room. The clock is a container in Hall. The clock is openable. The clock is closed.

Rule for printing the name of the clock:
	unless the clock has been open:
		say "[printed name of the clock]";
		omit contents in listing;
	otherwise:
		continue the action.[/code]

This may even be more general, because it works if the clock is opened by something other than the player, I think. I'd been trying something like this before, but didn't succeed, either because I forgot about "unless" or because I got confused by my infinite loop or because I hadn't figured out about "omit contents in listing" yet.[/quote]

Thanks, everyone. Works beautifully!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=784&start=0#p6552
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Adrift ?
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2010-06-14 07:50:38

I've been known to use it, once or twice...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1149&start=0#p6553
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Expired Member ID?
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2010-06-14 07:59:37

If I look at this thread: [url]http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=84[/url] I see that I posted before, but the user looks to have been expired.  Anyone know why?  I had to re-register today, but it appears I was able to pick the same username.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1149&start=0#p6554
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Expired Member ID?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-06-14 08:30:41

When Merk upgraded the forum to a more recent version of phpBB, a couple of years ago now, we couldn't import the database of users. So everyone had to sign up for new accounts. (Details [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=376]here[/url].) But if you send Merk a PM, he can link your old posts to your current account.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1149&start=0#p6555
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Expired Member ID?
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2010-06-14 11:37:21

Ah, fab.  Thanks. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=0#p6556
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: 6E59 is going live
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-14 13:29:39

The new build of Inform, 6E59, is now available for the Mac; other versions to follow soon.

The change log and downloads are available at 

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/">http://inform7.com/</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=0#p6557
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59 is going live
User: Sslaxx / DateTime: 2010-06-14 16:07:25

Windows version is now up.

Waiting on the .deb packages here...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=0#p6558
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59 is going live
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-06-14 16:12:42

[quote="Sslaxx"]Windows version is now up.
Waiting on the .deb packages here...[/quote]
Dammit, I was going to post that the Windows build is available [emote]:D[/emote]
I believe that Philip is having some computer troubles, which may mean that the Linux builds are a little delayed, sorry about that. Hopefully in a week or so they'll be up.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=0#p6559
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59 is going live
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-06-14 17:18:39

Aw, you disabled F7 being a shortcut for Refresh Index in the Windows build? I used that all the time! It was a very quick way of checking whether the code I'd just written was legal!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=0#p6560
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59 is going live
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-14 20:27:08

[quote="emshort"]The new build of Inform, 6E59, is now available for the Mac; other versions to follow soon.

The change log and downloads are available at 

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/">http://inform7.com/</a>[/quote]

w00t! 

I'm about halfway through the explanation of the new logo. [EDIT: Which may be what Graham spent most of the last year on.  [emote]:)[/emote] ]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=0#p6561
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59 is going live
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-06-14 22:48:21

[quote="matt w"]I'm about halfway through the explanation of the new logo.[/quote]
I am unreasonably thrilled with the new logo. After 2+ years of wrestling with this creative tool Inform 7, I had developed a kind of love/hate relationship with the old icon. 

Suddenly, mosaics are cool now.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=0#p6562
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59 is going live
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-06-14 23:45:47

Er, I cannot get the build to run on my machine.  I mean, I can run the IDE and all, but when I try to compile, I get an error when it's handing off from Inform 7 to 6: 

[code]
Inform 7 has finished.
/Applications/Inform.app/Contents/Resources/Compilers/inform-6.31-biplatform \
	-kE2SDwv8 +include_path=/Applications/Inform.app/Contents/Resources/Library/Natural,.,../Source /Users/ronnewcomb/Desktop/test2.inform/Build/auto.inf /Users/ronnewcomb/Desktop/test2.inform/Build/output.z8 
Launching: inform-6.31-biplatform "-kE2SDwv8" "+include_path=/Applications/Inform.app/Contents/Resources/Library/Natural,.,../Source" "/Users/ronnewcomb/Desktop/test2.inform/Build/auto.inf" "/Users/ronnewcomb/Desktop/test2.inform/Build/output.z8"
2010-06-14 21:40:00.192 Inform[14334] *** NSTask: Task create for path /Applications/Inform.app/Contents/Resources/Compilers/inform-6.31-biplatform failed: 8, "Exec format error".

Compiler finished with code 5[/code]

I tried making a new project and compiling, as well as opening an old (but small) project and compiling. Same thing. 

Help?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1151&start=0#p6563
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Compilation Issue with New Build
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-06-15 00:13:57

[Already posted in the newsgroup -- this is a duplicate posting.]

I opened up the source for "Heavenly" (written in 5Z71) and tried compiling it in 6E59. The compiler fails with code 10.

My first thought was, an extension needs to be updated. So I created a short test game that includes all five of the extensions used by "Heavenly," and dummied up a little code that actually uses some feature of each extension. The test game compiles.

Without testing and/or removing every feature I've used in each extension, it's difficult to be sure what is going wrong. The five are:

Plurality by Emily Short.
Conversation Framework by Eric Eve.
Adaptive Hints by Eric Eve.
Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short.
Pronouns by Ron Newcomb.

My question is, has anyone else encountered a problem compiling a game with any of these extensions? If they all work for other people, then the compiler's error has to lie elsewhere, and I'll file a bug report.

--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1152&start=0#p6564
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Simplest way to disallow most actions involving an item?
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-06-15 00:18:01

I have an object that the player should only be able to interact with via the EXAMINE command. I thought I could do something like this:

[code]
The player carries an open container called the emotional baggage. Before doing anything other than examining to emotional baggage: instead say "It's not real, bro."
[/code]

But then testers discovered people could insert things into it, necessitating the addition of this:

[code]
Before inserting anything into emotional baggage: instead say "It’s not real, bro."
[/code]

...and then there's a legal throwing action in my game, so now I've had to add:

[code]
Before doing anything other than examining with emotional baggage: instead say "It's not real, bro."
[/code]

...but I have zero confidence that these rules are actually enough to catch all possible places that this item could appear in player commands.

Is there a simpler, ideally single-rule method I can use to disallow all attempts to interact with item except via examining?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1152&start=0#p6565
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simplest way to disallow most actions involving an item?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-15 01:02:13

[quote="aaronius"]I have an object that the player should only be able to interact with via the EXAMINE command. I thought I could do something like this: 
...
...but I have zero confidence that these rules are actually enough to catch all possible places that this item could appear in player commands.

Is there a simpler, ideally single-rule method I can use to disallow all attempts to interact with item except via examining?[/quote]

Yup.

[code]House is a room.

Daddy's cake is a thing in House. The description is "Covered all over with chocolate frosting and candied cherries."

Instead of doing something other than examining when the current action involves the cake:
	say "WE ARE SAVING IT FOR DADDY."
	
Test me with "x cake / eat cake / tie me to cake".[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=0#p6566
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59 is going live
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-06-15 02:25:45

[quote="Peter Pears"]Aw, you disabled F7 being a shortcut for Refresh Index in the Windows build? I used that all the time! It was a very quick way of checking whether the code I'd just written was legal![/quote]
I did some tidying up of the shortcuts - possibly rather too much tidying up. I'll add that one back in.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=0#p6567
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59 is going live
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-06-15 02:42:14

Heh. Thanks.  [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=0#p6568
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59 is going live
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-15 02:50:38

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Er, I cannot get the build to run on my machine.  I mean, I can run the IDE and all, but when I try to compile, I get an error when it's handing off from Inform 7 to 6: 

...

I tried making a new project and compiling, as well as opening an old (but small) project and compiling. Same thing. 

Help?[/quote]

This appears to be the result of a slightly embarrassing error in the build creation. I quote from Graham's email to a couple of other reporters of the problem:

[quote]A silly mistake
on my part; when experimenting here, I compile Intel only
binaries because this is so much faster to compile, and
I remembered to recompile the main compiler as Universal
before the release, but not to recompile cblorb or i6n.
I've now done so, remade the .dmg, and refreshed the
website, so the bug should be fixed.[/quote]

So the good news is, if you download the build again, it should work now.

(Sorry.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=10#p6569
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59 is going live
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-06-15 09:03:41

[quote="matt w"]
I'm about halfway through the explanation of the new logo.[/quote]

Me too, and I had to laugh about "I’m not sure what the metal claw-tool on Dashcode’s icon is, but I’m pretty clear that it does something permanent." Well, it's a [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-square]t-square[/url]... (This is not to say that I haven't felt the desire to cause permanent damage with one, but it's not really the intended use.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1151&start=0#p6570
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compilation Issue with New Build
User: Mikawa / DateTime: 2010-06-15 09:58:14

[already posted at r.a.i.f., too]

"code 10" has obviously nothing to do with the extensions.
Can the memory management be the problem?

"Test" by Mikawa

Testroom is a room. "For testers only.".

A Ipad is a kind of thing. in the Testroom are 99 Ipads.
A Ipod is a kind of thing. in the Testroom are 99 Ipods.
A Imac is a kind of thing. in the Testroom are 99 Imacs.

This short example works with Ipads and Ipods but when I added the
Imacs it failed with code 10.

-- MI

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1152&start=0#p6571
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simplest way to disallow most actions involving an item?
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-06-15 11:25:00

Aha! I had thought it was something like that, but I searched for "involved" instead of "involves" in the docs, oops!

Many thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=10#p6572
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59 is going live
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-06-15 12:09:31

[quote="emshort"]So the good news is, if you download the build again, it should work now.[/quote]
Thanks Em.  I was panicking about still running 10.4 Tiger.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1152&start=0#p6573
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simplest way to disallow most actions involving an item?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-15 12:54:29

Would "Instead of doing something when the noun is the baggage or the second noun is the baggage" have any issues other than prolixity? Frex, would it take more time or memory? (I suppose it misses cases where the baggage is the actor, but that doesn't seem like it'd be a big problem.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=40#p6574
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-06-15 14:16:33

[quote="matt w"]Emily has a very interesting discussion [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/06/07/so-do-we-need-this-parser-thing-anyway/]here[/url] of why she thinks the command prompt/parser has to go. Her argument, essentially, is that it promises to understand any input, but most input in fact is not understood, and this keeps new players away. The prompt doesn't tell the player about the affordances of the system, as she puts it.[/quote]

HA! It seems the IF community finally realizes what CYOA fans and programmers like us knew for ages, that parser-based systems are out of fashion!  [emote]:roll:[/emote] 

That's why CYOA is the perfect bringer of the new IF style in my opinion, to give players all available options (choices) during gameplay instead of forcing the player to guess verbs. Text adventures should focus on the game experience itself and not on the boring process of verb guessing. That's why I propagate CYOA since 2008! You all know about Node-X. You all know my policy. You know I'm right.  [emote]8-)[/emote] 

This is so freaky. It reminds me of the 2002 scenario. For all of you who don't know what this is... In 2002 a couple of techno music composers and especially I propagated on certain internet forums that Trance, which was very popular at that time, will get out of fashion and that Electro with all its subgenres (Electro House, Electro Pop) will become the new style in the techno scene. We made some enemies at that time and we were called trolls and whatnot.

But in the end we were right. We were alternative thinkers and had a vision. Everything happened as we have foreseen. Now you have Lady Gaga in the music charts making Electro Pop and mixing it with other styles (e.g. rock). You have DJ David Guetta playing Electro House in trendy clubs and all the party people going crazy about it.

The same will happen with CYOA and other alternative genres of Interactive Fiction. You will see......

[quote="RealNC"]For example, CYOA games are not text adventures.[/quote]

Oh yes, they are. You want to argue with me again?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=40#p6575
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-06-15 14:28:53

CYOAs are CYOAs. As their name says. Text adventures are text adventures. They're related, but not the same. If they were the same, they wouldn't need a different name.

I'm not trying to degrade CYOAs, mind you. Nor any other genre. I'm only saying that a "text adventure" is defined by its parser that's accepting verbs and objects as input. Just because a CYOA uses text as its medium doesn't make it a text adventure.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=40#p6576
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-06-15 14:40:35

[quote="RealNC"]CYOAs are CYOAs. As their name says. Text adventures are text adventures. They're related, but not the same. If they were the same, they wouldn't need a different name.

I'm not trying to degrade CYOAs, mind you. Nor any other genre. I'm only saying that a "text adventure" is defined by its parser that's accepting verbs and objects as input. Just because a CYOA uses text as its medium doesn't make it a text adventure.[/quote]

Well, I can accept that. To be honest, it's not that bad actually that CYOAs are not fully viewed as text adventures. Since the IF gaming scene is beginning to move on and the momentum is slowly switching, we should put CYOA under a different label. For instance, we could put it under AF (Alternative Fiction). People can coin another name for it. It doesn't matter.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1152&start=0#p6577
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simplest way to disallow most actions involving an item?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-06-15 15:11:07

It would be fine (except for not checking the actor, as you say). It would take fractionally less time. The "current action" requires a little bit of array-reading to locate, whereas "noun" and "second noun" are global variables and very fast to access.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=40#p6578
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-15 16:31:44

If you read what I actually wrote, I wasn't advocating CYOA, in the end.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1153&start=0#p6579
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Running Hoosegow through the 6E59 grinder
User: sussman / DateTime: 2010-06-15 17:35:48

Hooray, a new Inform!  Time to spend hours getting our existing games to compile!  It's a yearly ritual.  [emote]:-)[/emote]

My first big stumbling block is this bit of code, used heavily in Hoosegow (and likely Rover and other games):

if the action-name part of the current action is:
		-- the playing action:
		-- the asking it for action:
                ...

Error is:

In the sentence 'if the action-name part of the current action is begin'  , it looks as if you intend 'action-name part of the current action' to be a description, but an action name cannot be an object, so this must be incorrect.
I was trying to match one of these phrases:

1. if (action-name part of the current action - word value) is: 
2. if (action-name part of the current action is - a condition): 
This was what I found out:

action-name part of the current action = an object matching a description
action-name part of the current action is = something unrecognised

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1154&start=0#p6580
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 6E59 - weird Index>Kinds properties listing
User: sarganar / DateTime: 2010-06-15 22:00:06

Hi!
Thanx for the new 6E59!

I have a doubt:
When I compile a minimal story (in Windows), I see in Index>Kind panel, something like:


[code]man, a kind of person (plural men)
Represents a man or boy.
Always female not male.

woman, a kind of person (plural women)
Represents a woman or girl.
Always male not female.
[/code]

I mean, exactly the opposite that Standar Rule set (and that ocurr with all the kinds).
A man is always male!
I guess is a display problem, cause 'showme' comand in the game shows that man is male, and so.
Can you reproduce it?

Sarganar

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1153&start=0#p6581
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Running Hoosegow through the 6E59 grinder
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-06-15 22:41:24

Remove the hyphen:

... the action name part ...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=10#p6582
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59 is going live
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-06-15 22:44:03

Er, well, I got a brand new project to compile, but now I get: 

[code]Problem. An internal error has occurred: Bad index documentation reference. The error was detected at line 452 of "Chapter 3/Index File Services.w". This should never happen, and I am now halting in abject failure.[/code]

This is on TextFyre's WIP, which is huge.  Any chance of a quick-fix for this too?  

FWIW, the same WIP compiled without problems on 6E36.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=10#p6583
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59 is going live
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-15 23:19:46

That, I'm afraid, I have no idea about, but an internal error is always bug report time.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=10#p6585
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59 is going live
User: Sslaxx / DateTime: 2010-06-16 04:45:19

Really stupid question, but what is the bug tracker's URL? Can't seem to find it anywhere...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=10#p6586
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59 is going live
User: Mick / DateTime: 2010-06-16 05:30:42

[quote="Sslaxx"]Really stupid question, but what is the bug tracker's URL? Can't seem to find it anywhere...[/quote]

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/">http://inform7.com/mantis/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=10#p6587
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59 is going live
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-06-16 11:39:18

[quote="emshort"]That, I'm afraid, I have no idea about, but an internal error is always bug report time.[/quote]
Done. I'll spend this evening trying to isolate the problem. (I presume I can edit my own bug report?) Hopefully I find a fix or workaround.  In the meantime I asked Dave to try the same project on his Windows machine to see if it's Mac specific or not. 

thx

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=10#p6588
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59 is going live
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-06-16 13:04:41

[quote="Mick"][quote="Sslaxx"]Really stupid question, but what is the bug tracker's URL? Can't seem to find it anywhere...[/quote]

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/">http://inform7.com/mantis/</a>[/quote]
Wouldn't "bugs.inform7.com" make more sense?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=10#p6589
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59 is going live
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-16 13:06:45

[quote="RealNC"][quote="Mick"][quote="Sslaxx"]Really stupid question, but what is the bug tracker's URL? Can't seem to find it anywhere...[/quote]

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/">http://inform7.com/mantis/</a>[/quote]
Wouldn't "bugs.inform7.com" make more sense?[/quote]

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/bugs/">http://inform7.com/bugs/</a> redirects to the same place, fwiw.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=10#p6590
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59 is going live
User: ptomato / DateTime: 2010-06-16 13:26:10

[quote="DavidK"][quote="Sslaxx"]Windows version is now up.
Waiting on the .deb packages here...[/quote]
(...)
I believe that Philip is having some computer troubles, which may mean that the Linux builds are a little delayed, sorry about that. Hopefully in a week or so they'll be up.[/quote]

Computer troubles are indeed the reason. I'll try to have them up on Saturday or Sunday.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1156&start=0#p6591
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Replacing procedural rules
User: Prolixic / DateTime: 2010-06-16 15:44:49

With procedural rules now deprecated and marked for removal in the next major release of Inform 7, what is the best way to deal with procedural rules that apply only during certain activities, ie, those beginning "Procedural rule when XXX:"

I would like to update my patrollers extension to remove the deprecated phrases it uses but I cannot see an elegant way to do this.  Would it be better to wait until the next major release on the basis that there will be a new mechanism to achieve this result?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1156&start=0#p6592
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Replacing procedural rules
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-16 16:18:20

Part of the point of deprecating procedural rules (rather than simply abolishing them) is precisely to find out where they provide functionality that we need to replace somehow.

The approach we've taken with Procedural rule when XXX: ... is to replace the rule that the Procedural rule was going to ignore, and build in the conditions into the replacement. (You can see an example of this happening in the built-in Locksmith extension.)

If this doesn't work or isn't enough for some reason, we'd like to hear about your problems doing away with procedural rules, as these will likely guide syntax for future builds. If you have ideas you'd like to share about this, you can email me and Graham, or add a suggestion at the suggestion forum (<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/">http://inform7.uservoice.com/</a>)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1157&start=0#p6593
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Limits in IF libraries
User: jstrom / DateTime: 2010-06-16 20:48:48

I'm looking into how IF libraries work and the trade-offs involved.  Does anyone have some examples of effects which are either difficult to produce (or have many gotchas) when working with Inform or TADS?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1157&start=0#p6594
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Limits in IF libraries
User: George / DateTime: 2010-06-16 23:22:34

That's a very broad question, but one place to start might be the [url=http://ifwiki.org/index.php/Past_raif_topics]past RAIF topics collected at the IFWIki[/url]. There is [url=http://ifwiki.org/index.php/Past_raif_topics:_Development:_part_2#IF_libraries]a section specific to IF libraries[/url] but I'd say all of it is worth skimming. 

I guess when people say IF libraries they're usually asking about rules for physical simulation, but it seems to me that the question should be much broader than that -- encompassing all the effects of presentation and content that you might want to deal with. Just look at the [url=http://inform7.com/write/extensions/]range of I7 extensions[/url] for an example of what people naturally come up with when presented with a (in comparison to TADS, say) 'lightweight' IF framework such as Inform 7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1156&start=0#p6595
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Replacing procedural rules
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-16 23:39:22

Because this seems to be a widespread concern, I've written up some notes on it on the Inform news feed, here: 

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/news/2010/06/16/6e59-deprecating-procedural-rules/">http://inform7.com/news/2010/06/16/6e59 ... ral-rules/</a> . 

There is also already a suggestion on the uservoice forum proposing some alternate syntax. It can be found here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/837651-a-way-to-change-the-condition-of-an-existing-rule?ref=title">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... ?ref=title</a>

User thoughts on this continue to be welcome.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1157&start=0#p6596
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Limits in IF libraries
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-16 23:40:44

You may also be interested in Eric Eve's article here: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.brasslantern.org/writers/iftheory/tads3andi7.html">http://www.brasslantern.org/writers/ift ... andi7.html</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1158&start=0#p6597
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7: 6E59 fragility issues
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-16 23:50:41

As several people have discovered, release 6E59 produces a Code 10 compilation error on some (not all) large Windows (not Mac, and not to the best of our knowledge Linux) projects. Particularly vulnerable are builds with large numbers of duplicate objects.

As this is a mission-critical issue, I imagine that a replacement build will be posted as soon as reasonably possible after the bug is found and dealt with. Those interested in tracking progress on the bug, or able to contribute more information, may find the details here: 

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=36">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=36</a>

(Note: this is not related to the [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=0]problem[/url] that the original build of the compiler failed on pre-Intel Macs due to a lack of universal binary tools. That issue has already been resolved and a new build posted, so if you are encountering that issue, you may fix it by re-downloading 6E59 for the Mac.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1158&start=0#p6598
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: 6E59 fragility issues
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-06-17 00:51:05

[quote="emshort"]
(Note: this is not related to the [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=0]problem[/url] that the original build of the compiler failed on pre-Intel Macs due to a lack of universal binary tools. That issue has already been resolved and a new build posted, so if you are encountering that issue, you may fix it by re-downloading 6E59 for the Mac.)[/quote]
Don't you mean 6E60? Or 6E59.1? It's not usual in the software world to issue two releases with the same version number -- and there are, I'm sure, very good reasons for that. Like, for instance, avoiding confusion in your user base as to what version they're running.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1158&start=0#p6600
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: 6E59 fragility issues
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-17 04:04:59

No: there was nothing about the core of Inform that changed, only a feature of the format of the tools included. I imagine it would have been at least equally confusing to release under a different build number, since that would raise questions about how the Mac version related to the Windows and Linux versions. (Which said, it wasn't my call. But I believe this to have been Graham's rationale.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1154&start=0#p6601
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 6E59 - weird Index>Kinds properties listing
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-06-17 13:27:14

Please make a bug report at <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/">http://inform7.com/mantis/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=20#p6602
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59 is going live
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-06-17 13:31:19

[quote="Ron Newcomb"][code]Problem. An internal error has occurred: Bad index documentation reference. The error was detected at line 452 of "Chapter 3/Index File Services.w". This should never happen, and I am now halting in abject failure.[/code][/quote]
For the curious, the issue was in my code:

    To say bold type (documented at foobar):  

Removing the "documented at" parenthetical cleared the issue right up.   Sorry for the Oh Noes moment.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1156&start=0#p6603
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Replacing procedural rules
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-06-17 14:08:56

So I have a kind called dispensers.  They dispense an unlimited quantity of another object.  For example, a lake may dispense cupfuls of water.  A stack of paper dispenses single sheets of paper.  Etc.  (The dispensed item -- the "prize" -- is a singleton.  Denial messages of the form "You already took one" appear if taking a second prize is attempted, so I don't bury the world in single sheets of paper.)

Some actions, such as TAKE, are redirected from the dispenser to the prize.  This involves surreptitiously moving the prize from off-stage to on-stage, then "try taking the prize instead".   However, for the purposes of nice messages, I actually want most of the Check Taking rules ran for the dispenser before handing off to the prize.  This is because, for example, if the whole pile of things is unreachable for some reason -- on a high shelf, or the PC is tied up, etc. -- I want the denial message to say "You can't reach the lake from here." rather than "You can't reach the handful of water from here."  So I do the re-direct from "Last check taking a dispenser".  But, that Last Check rule won't be hit because of the can't take what's fixed in place rule (among one or two others, I think).  So I've been using a procedural rule to ignore some of the check rules for dispensers, knowing it'll be re-directed to the prize which won't have problems of being fixed in place. 

Secondly, but less convincingly, I have several light-up pushbuttons on a thing.  (Think of the Caps Lock and Num Lock buttons on your keyboard.)  Since each light-up button can be on or off, each button is itself a device.  (The keyboard itself, to which they're attached, is just a Thing.)  But a player won't enter SWITCH ON BIG RED BUTTON, they will enter PUSH BIG RED BUTTON.  So I implement the pushing action for the device kind, a carry out rule calling the switching on or switching off actions as appropriate. 

The tricky part is that, unlike Caps Lock, pressing some buttons affects other buttons, possibly switching them off/on. (Why yes, it is a part of a puzzle, how did you know?)   I want reporting the changes to be in one seamless, well-narrated paragraph, so it is easiest to write a single Report Pushing rule that narrates the whole result regardless what button was pushed and which direction its being switched. (The report uses past tenses, like "if the big red button was switched off...", to know what changed.)  

However, I also use the pushing action normally, for pushing around crates and furniture, which obviously requires the pushed item not be fixed in place.  My pushbuttons are fixed in place, so, when pushing a device, ignore the can't push what's fixed in place rule.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1156&start=0#p6604
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Replacing procedural rules
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-06-17 14:25:21

I should add that I rewrote the pushbutton case as follows.  "First check pushing a device" will re-direct to the appropriate switching action "instead", and the master Report rule was named so it could be listed in two rulebooks simultaneously: report switching on & report switching off.

It's probably cleaner that way, hence a less convincing case for Ignore.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1157&start=0#p6605
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Limits in IF libraries
User: jstrom / DateTime: 2010-06-17 16:07:09

Many thanks.  The "Tricky objects" section in the RAIF page looks almost exactly like what I'm looking for.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1158&start=0#p6606
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: 6E59 fragility issues
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-06-17 17:54:46

We have a fix for this: now all the test cases I've got compile without failing. As a quick fix I've updated the Windows build of 6E59 on the web site.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1158&start=0#p6607
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: 6E59 fragility issues
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-06-18 00:09:16

Was it a screwup in the Windows build, or a bug in "ni" which was only manifesting on Windows?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1159&start=0#p6608
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: 6E59: Fixing the examine supporters rule
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-06-18 01:02:09

Just for kicks, I'm trying to fix the bug in the examine supporters rule. Replacing the rule with my own version of the rule is as far as I've gotten. The original rule says, "issue library message looking action number 4 for the noun". That message may be where the problem is. 

It appears this message is in Language.i6t. This seems to be the code:

[code]Look: switch (n) {
        1:  print " (on ", (the) x1, ")";
        2:  print " (in ", (the) x1, ")";
        3:  print " (as ", (object) x1, ")";
        4:  print "On ", (the) x1, " ";
            WriteListFrom(child(x1),
              ENGLISH_BIT+RECURSE_BIT+PARTINV_BIT+TERSE_BIT+CONCEAL_BIT+ISARE_BIT);
            ".";[/code]

My first guess was that the player is concealed but not scenery or vice-versa, as that might run afoul of the conditions ... but that appears not to be the case, because if I edit the rule like this...

[code]if something which is not concealed is on the noun:
	if something which is not scenery is on the noun:[/code]

...nothin' changes. The bug is still there. So maybe I'm totally misunderstanding the situation. Can anyone enlighten me? Thanks!

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1159&start=0#p6609
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59: Fixing the examine supporters rule
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-06-18 01:07:49

Okay, there's a really easy solution:

[code]The player is scenery.[/code]

So my next question is, will that code cause problems elsewhere?

For reference, in case you haven't run into this bug: If the player is on an enterable supporter and there is nothing else on the supporter, 'x supporter' produces an extra line of bogus text.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1159&start=0#p6610
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59: Fixing the examine supporters rule
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-06-18 01:29:23

Scenery is usually fixed in place, so perhaps "The player is scenery, not fixed in place." 

I'm using that line, and haven't had a problem so far. 

BTW, didn't Emily fix that bug?  I thought she or someone posted the new code for it in response to Al.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1158&start=0#p6611
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: 6E59 fragility issues
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-06-18 02:26:45

[quote="zarf"]Was it a screwup in the Windows build, or a bug in "ni" which was only manifesting on Windows?[/quote]
The latter: there were a few lines of code before a conditional statement that should only be executed if the conditional holds, so it could appear on other platforms too. It was only during index construction, though, so it's not like there's a danger of silently producing a corrupted game file.

The plan is to fix the more serious issues and push a new release out soon, but this seemed nasty enough to deserve a new Windows build straight away.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1160&start=0#p6612
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Spam postings
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-06-18 02:29:58

There was a spate of spam messages posted on the 11th June from users "jonusb" and "two0426" - could we get these deleted? Would it be a good idea to have a few people with admin rights to delete obvious spam like this? (I'll volunteer, as I'm suggesting this.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1157&start=0#p6613
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Limits in IF libraries
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-06-18 03:26:15

Conversations between three characters are something I've found tricky in TADS 3.  It may be simpler than I think, but until recently I've just avoided it altogether.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1161&start=0#p6614
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: ZMPP/Glulx update
User: weiju / DateTime: 2010-06-18 04:06:50

Hi,
just wanted to let you know about some progress for the Glulx version of ZMPP. As previously posted on RAIF, the demo site is on

[url]http://zmpp.sourceforge.net/games/index.html[/url]

For the members who do not read RAIF: ZMPP is an interpreter for the Java Virtual Machine, which can currently run either as a browser applet or as a Swing application. Originally a pure Z-Machine interpreter, I've now started to add Glulx support for revision 2 and used Scala 2.8.0 as implementation language.

The new additions include
[list]
- sound playback
- timer events
- Glulx filtered output
- string decoding with references
- undo
[/list:u]

While there is still quite a bit to do on the Glk part (especially on the event system), the Glulx feature set is fairly complete (except save/restore).

I have now also made the source code available as a Github project (BSD License):

[url]http://github.com/weiju/zmpp2[/url]

Wei-ju

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1162&start=0#p6619
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Deep Copy Failed- Destination Empty
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-06-18 08:11:43

I am trying to open a seperate window where it will display the basics of the room you're in- the obvious exits, visible NPCs, and obvious takeable items.

This works in many rooms. Some rooms give the error message "***deep copy failed--- destination empty***". I don't know if this is because there are too many possible objects, or if the parser is confused as to whether an item qualifies. When you leave the room, it works again, and when you re-enter the room, again it does not. 

Any thoughts? I wish i could be more specific.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1163&start=0#p6620
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Thoughts on Extra Windows
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-06-18 08:13:56

What do people think about having seperate windows for games, which would include either an automatically refreshing inventory, or a status screen, or the room description, a list of available spells, or something like that? Do people think having alternate windows would leave things cluttered, or would the convience of not having to repeatadly take inventory make it worth it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=543&start=10#p6621
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Unwinnable states
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-06-18 08:26:32

For me this is a question of player freedom.

In the example of keys being flushed down the toilet- I know plenty of people who get upset when simple stupid commands aren't implemented. "Why can't i burn my spellbook with the lighter? It's paper, right?" This obvious self-destructive act shouldn't be assumed valid because it produces a result.

That being said, some actions seem correct, but screw you over. Flushing the keys down the toilet is bad, but flushing poop down the toilet seems like the right thing to do- until you find the magic spell that turns poop into a horse which you need to ride after the bad guys. That kind of thing is much more cruel. Likewise, having inventory limits when you have areas you can't return to can be a pain in the butt, because you may need specific items but not have enough room to bring them there, however, going out of your way to lock a key behind the door it unlocks should leave it unreachable.

It comes down to: how much free will should the player have to screw himself over, and how hard to you want the game to be? Not everyone has Zork-style patience anymore.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1154&start=0#p6622
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 6E59 - weird Index>Kinds properties listing
User: sarganar / DateTime: 2010-06-18 08:41:15

ok, done.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=543&start=10#p6623
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Unwinnable states
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-06-18 08:57:04

[quote="tggdan3"]In the example of keys being flushed down the toilet- I know plenty of people who get upset when simple stupid commands aren't implemented. "Why can't i burn my spellbook with the lighter? It's paper, right?"[/quote]
I think the friendly response is for the PC, a wizard with a pressing need to cast spells, to say "I can't burn the spellbook! I need it to defeat the dark lord!"  You've acknowledged that the action is logically possible, but disallowed it as out of character.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1159&start=0#p6626
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59: Fixing the examine supporters rule
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-06-18 11:19:06

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]
BTW, didn't Emily fix that bug?  I thought she or someone posted the new code for it in response to Al.[/quote]
It's still there. It only appeared in the new build, I believe, so it probably won't be fixed for at least a year.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=543&start=10#p6627
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Unwinnable states
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-06-18 11:20:50

[quote="Pacian"][quote="tggdan3"]In the example of keys being flushed down the toilet- I know plenty of people who get upset when simple stupid commands aren't implemented. "Why can't i burn my spellbook with the lighter? It's paper, right?"[/quote]
I think the friendly response is for the PC, a wizard with a pressing need to cast spells, to say "I can't burn the spellbook! I need it to defeat the dark lord!"  You've acknowledged that the action is logically possible, but disallowed it as out of character.[/quote]


You have a point there- but this can become a free will issue too. "Don't tell me what my character would do" scenario could arise. Also you might not know that you will need something- but should suspect it. Maybe you aren't the wizard but the wizard's assistant or something. There are plenty of scenarios where a player who chooses to be destructive can ruin it for himself. 

It's a matter of opinion at that point, however. Killing random NPCs is usually blocked, but should it be? Throwing items off cliffs.

I agree there are plenty of outright mean scenarios (Spellbreaker was horrible about your spellbook getting wet without you knowing you were about to go somewhere that would make it wet), and these should be generally avoided, though I don't know that I have a problem punishing the player for being rediculous either.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=799&start=0#p6628
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Tools for mapping interactive fiction games?
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-06-18 11:28:55

[quote="jens198"]Hi folks,

what tools do you use for mapping interactive fiction games? Back in the 80s I used a pencil and a piece of paper. But, well today I got this fancy notebook and I want to to it the elctronic way.

While searching the web I found this tool
[url]http://www.cjmweb.net/GUEmap/[/url]
I also tried mapping with MS Powerpoint and various other tools. 

So, what do you use?

Jens[/quote]


Wow. Lots of tools here- I just used MS paint. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1159&start=0#p6629
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59: Fixing the examine supporters rule
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-18 11:40:04

It is likely that there will be a maintenance build in a month or two to address some of the issues in 6E59. Things that are listed as "resolved" in the bug tracker should appear then. ("Closed" happens when we've decided that something isn't a legitimate bug, or else it has already appeared in a released build.)

In the meantime, exempting the player specifically is, I think, enough to resolve this issue; the patch I submitted to the standard rules is as follows:

===

Carry out examining (this is the examine containers rule):
	if the noun is a container:
		if the noun is open or the noun is transparent:
			if something which is not scenery is in the noun and something which is not the player is in the noun:
				issue library message searching action number 7 for the noun;
				now examine text printed is true; 
			otherwise if examine text printed is false:
				if the player is in the noun:
					make no decision;
				issue library message searching action number 6 for the noun;
				now examine text printed is true;

Carry out examining (this is the examine supporters rule):
	if the noun is a supporter:
		if something which is not scenery is on the noun and something which is not the player is on the noun:
			issue library message looking action number 4 for the noun;
			now examine text printed is true.

===

"Concealed" in I7 refers to the concealing relation -- it's no longer a flag as in I6 -- so it means something different here. What *was* the concealed flag in I6 is now not used except that, in the core of the list-writer, it is still shorthand for "don't mention the player himself". 

A little twisty, but we've tested the patch against all of our examples and test cases, and added a new test case that tests a variety of examining-objects-you're-inside situations. So I think this should be solid.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1161&start=0#p6630
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ZMPP/Glulx update
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-06-18 14:26:02

Thank you Weiju! 

Hope to see you tomorrow!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1160&start=0#p6631
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Spam postings
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-06-18 14:32:18

Sorry. I think it's all taken care of now. 

I had a heart attack on the 7th, triple bypass surgery on the 8th, and was pretty much out of it until the 15th (home now). I do need to set up some moderators. Give me a couple days and I'll do it. Any other volunteers, not for policy enforcement but just for deleting spammer accounts and posts?

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1160&start=0#p6632
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Spam postings
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-06-18 14:50:16

[quote="Merk"]I had a heart attack on the 7th, triple bypass surgery on the 8th, and was pretty much out of it until the 15th (home now).[/quote]

Oh man, that sucks. Glad to hear you pulled through! Let us know if there's anything we can do for you.

[quote]Any other volunteers, not for policy enforcement but just for deleting spammer accounts and posts?[/quote]

Sure, I can help with that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=543&start=10#p6633
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Unwinnable states
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-06-18 15:20:06

[quote="tggdan3"]You have a point there- but this can become a free will issue too. "Don't tell me what my character would do" scenario could arise. Also you might not know that you will need something- but should suspect it. Maybe you aren't the wizard but the wizard's assistant or something. There are plenty of scenarios where a player who chooses to be destructive can ruin it for himself.[/quote]

If you don't block the action outright, or end the game immediately, you are forced to account for its consequences on all subsequent turns. So it becomes a content generation issue, which is fine if the author cares about that content, but otherwise just adds complexity and mediocrity.

Also, unless the character starts as a blank slate, it is perfectly reasonable for the narrator to tell you what the character is willing to do. Or else how would you know?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1160&start=0#p6634
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Spam postings
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-18 15:41:24

[quote="Merk"]Sorry. I think it's all taken care of now. 

I had a heart attack on the 7th, triple bypass surgery on the 8th, and was pretty much out of it until the 15th (home now). I do need to set up some moderators. Give me a couple days and I'll do it. Any other volunteers, not for policy enforcement but just for deleting spammer accounts and posts?

Thanks.[/quote]

Gah! I'm so sorry to hear that, Merk, and glad you're still with us.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1160&start=0#p6635
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Spam postings
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2010-06-18 15:42:54

Holy cow! I'm glad you're back, and hope you have a speedy recovery.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1163&start=0#p6636
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Thoughts on Extra Windows
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-06-18 15:53:07

[quote="tggdan3"]What do people think about having seperate windows for games, which would include either an automatically refreshing inventory, or a status screen, or the room description, a list of available spells, or something like that? Do people think having alternate windows would leave things cluttered, or would the convience of not having to repeatadly take inventory make it worth it?[/quote]

I would try out [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=q5el4dphbf7q6e5y]Dead Cities[/url] and see what you think of the dedicated inventory window.

One advantage is that it lets you immediately call the player's attention to certain objects at the start of the game, without mentioning them in the opening text or requiring the player to pick them up first. One disadvantage is that it places a lot of emphasis on the inventory and its contents, which may not be appropriate if your game is not primarily about what you are carrying.

Also, if part of the challenge of solving a puzzle is remembering that you have a certain item, you may not wish to have it listed on the screen at all times. I could see this being the case for spells as well.

I don't think there's a hard and fast rule. My instinct is that unless the player would otherwise have to take inventory every few turns, having a dedicated window for that purpose is probably overkill. Conceivably you could have a situational inventory window that only appears when seated at a desk or working in the alchemy lab, giving you a useful overview of the contents without unduly privileging that information. The map in [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=9ntef9expou18abv]King of Shreds and Patches[/url] follows this model.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1160&start=0#p6637
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Spam postings
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-06-18 16:38:01

Wow. That was quite a trial. Glad to hear you're OK now. Speedy recoveries, y'hear?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=543&start=10#p6638
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Unwinnable states
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-18 19:36:46

[quote="tggdan3"]I agree there are plenty of outright mean scenarios (Spellbreaker was horrible about your spellbook getting wet without you knowing you were about to go somewhere that would make it wet), and these should be generally avoided, though I don't know that I have a problem punishing the player for being rediculous either.[/quote]

One thing to think about is why the player is being ridiculous. Often it's because they have no idea what to do and are trying all sorts of brute force "Try this on that" approaches. My thought is that this is usually a problem with a game rather than the player, so instead of punishing the player you should give them some help. 

But it depends on the kind of game you're making -- I've been thinking lately about a pretty great point-and-click game called Kafkamesto, which has an NPC that will take any object that you give him, remarking that it's not what he needs. And then the object, which you might need for some puzzle, is gone gone. Obviously this game is trying to mess with your head in a certain way, which you can probably guess from the title.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1165&start=0#p6639
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: merk -- get well soon!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-18 19:41:29

In one of the threads Merk mentioned that he had a heart attack and bypass operation about a week ago, and just got home from the hospital. Get well soon Merk! I really appreciate all you've done with this board -- now take it easy, and we'll try not to annoy you too much for a little while. 

Matt

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=799&start=10#p6640
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Tools for mapping interactive fiction games?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-06-18 20:25:42

Popplet is a new web app (I believe there's also an ipad app) that you might find useful for map-making. The web app is in closed beta right now, but I have some invites to give away if anyone's interested (PM me).

<a class="postlink" href="http://popplet.com/">http://popplet.com/</a>

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1165&start=0#p6641
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: merk -- get well soon!
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-06-18 22:20:54

Second!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1166&start=0#p6642
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Measured Liquids 1: 5Z71? 6E59?
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-06-19 00:09:29

I'm trying to use Emily Short's Measured Liquids extension.  My code is a fairly simple version of the "Lakeshore" example she included, like so:
[code]
Include Measured Liquid by Emily Short.

The Attic is a room. 

On the table is a fluid container called the carafe.  The fluid capacity of the carafe is 10.0 fl oz.  The description of the carafe is "Shiny."

The rain is a liquid stream in the Attic.
[/code]

Under 5Z71, the compiler complained that "The sentence 'The liquid-mixing rules are a volume based rulebook producing a liquid' appears to say two things are the same - I am reading 'liquid-mixing rules' and 'volume based rulebook producing a liquid' as two different things, and therefore it makes no sense to say that one is the other[...]"  

I took this to mean that maybe Measured Liquid had already been updated for 6E59 (as Em's blog post does imply) with some sort of fancy kinds-usin' that allowed phrases like "volume based rulebook producing a liquid" -- I admit I haven't really examined 6E59 yet -- so I downloaded 6E59 and tried again.  It compiled fine, but the game opens up with the less-than-charming proclamation that "[** Programming error: tried to read from -->18804 in the array "multiple_object", which has entries 0 up to 159 **]" (four times in a row).

So, which version of the compiler is Measured Liquid 1 intended for? What am I doing wrong?  I [i]am[/i] willing to just make my liquids from scratch if necessary, but I'd been hoping to avoid coding the pouring/filling/etc syntax.

Edit: I'm on OSX if it makes any difference.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1166&start=0#p6643
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Measured Liquids 1: 5Z71? 6E59?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-19 00:37:57

Measured Liquids is definitely intended for 6E59, and won't run under anything previous.

Testing at home: it looks like this problem arises when compiling the z-machine and not under Glulx. It also is something that wasn't arising during earlier phases of testing the extension, but the final set of double-testing I did on the extension examples I did once, under Glulx settings. So something appears to have arisen late in the process that messes up this extension for Z-machine.

One solution would be to post it as "for Glulx only", but I'd rather not do that. I'll try to see what could be going wrong that would be z-specific, and post a followup.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1165&start=0#p6644
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: merk -- get well soon!
User: weiju / DateTime: 2010-06-19 01:00:47

Best wishes to you, Merk, hope you will get better soon ! Thanks for putting the work into maintaining this forum !

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1167&start=0#p6645
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Floating-point math in Glulx
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-06-19 01:08:13

We've wanted floating-point numbers in Glulx for a while now. I7 can handle fixed-point numbers, if you set up the units and the number of decimal places that you want. But floats are more familiar in the programming world.

Floats are a moderate nuisance for Glulx, because all of its variables and data handling are for 32-bit integers. So we need a way to store a float in an integer, which, conveniently, has been defined for decades now -- it's called IEEE-754. We also need some code to convert from native float values to this standardized form. After letting the idea gather dust, I mean percolate, for the past several years, I finally went Googling and found that code.

Thus, I can finally move forward with the plan, which is to add a passel of floating-point opcodes to the Glulx spec.

numtof -- convert an int to a float of equal value (or as close as possible)
ftonum -- convert a float to the nearest integer

As you have gathered already, integer values do not match float values. You can't feed floats to the regular arithmetic opcodes and expect to get meaningful answers. You'll have to convert back and forth, using ftonum and numtof.

(Or allow the language to do it for you. I7's type system will eventually encompass floats and do all the conversion for you magically.)

Clearly we need a bunch of float-specific opcodes, and here they are:

fadd, fsub, fmul, fdiv, fmod -- ordinary arithmetic
ceil, floor -- round up or down, to the nearest integral value (but return that as a float; this does not convert to int format)
sqrt, exp, pow, log -- old math warhorses
sin, cos, tan, acos, asin, atan, atan2 -- trigonometry
jflt, jflte, jfgt, jfgte -- jump if less than (etc)
jfeq -- jump if equal to. This takes *three* arguments (X, Y, epsilon) and tests whether X and Y are within epsilon of each other. I suspect this will be more useful than straight-up equality, but you can always pass epsilon=0.0.
jfne -- jump if not equal to; same gimmick.
jisnan -- jump if the value is Not A Number. NaN is a magical value that results from certain illegal operations, like 0/0.
jisinf -- jump if the value is infinity (or negative infinity). Yes, the floating-point spec lets you compute with infinities. 1/0 is infinity, -1/0 is negative infinity. Roll with it.

Opcodes that I'm *not* including:

fneg -- it happens to be true that the sign bit of float values is 0x80000000, just like for integers. So the regular neg opcode will work here.
fabs -- similarly, you can get the absolute value by squashing the top bit.
sinh, cosh, tanh -- does anybody care? Also, Javascript's math library doesn't have them. 

Opcodes that I'm not sure about, feel free to make an argument for or against them:

fhypot (pythagorean distance) -- easy enough to synthesize, but maybe it's common enough to use
jfz -- jump if (exactly) zero. This would be identical to jz except for NaN values and negative zero. Yeah, there's a negative zero. Anyhow, you can use jfeq for this, but there's an integer jz so why not this one?
isfinite, isnormal -- these exist in the C library so maybe somebody wants them.
log10 -- ditto.
streamfloat -- print a float value. I don't much want to do this because I'd have to define the formatting in a stable way (across libc and Javascript), and is that even possible? But leaving it out sucks too. Should there be some format-control arguments?

Other notes:

The low-level math libraries on some computers can return NaN values with extra information encoded in them. IEEE-754 can represent these, but Glulx will not. (Because, first, there's no C standard for getting at them. And second, Javascript can't get at them at all.)

Float math will be distinctly slower than int math. This is not because of the low-level operations (which are trivial), but because the interpreter has to keep converting back and forth between IEEE-encoded floats and native floats. A C interpreter can usually do this fast (because most computers *use* IEEE-encoded floats natively) but Javascript has to go through a whole bit-fiddling process. And of course Javascript is where the speed concerns are.

I have not yet done enough testing to know whether float math will produce bit-identical results between Javascript and C interpreters. I suspect it won't.

When will I get to this? Not before Quixe is out the door, that's for sure. The implementation work is not too bad, but there will have to be a cyclopean pile of unit tests before I trust it.

I'll post a draft Glulx spec update in the next few weeks, I hope, but it won't be definitive until I have the code all working and tested.

Any comments on any of this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1166&start=0#p6646
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Measured Liquids 1: 5Z71? 6E59?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-19 01:24:07

Okay. Having now stripped this down to essentials, it appears to be a compiler bug rather than a Measured Liquids bug (and the very strangest compiler bug I have *ever* seen, because it comes and goes in response to source spacing, among other things). 

I'm going to post the compiler bug; then I'll try to see whether I can make the extension not do this in spite of the bug. If I get a solution, I'll send it to be posted. If you want to do something about it before then, either

a) compile to Glulx, if you don't mind having that as your target (easy)
b) if you don't feel you're likely to need mixable liquids that are finicky as to the component quantities in a liquid, open up the extension, find "recipe quantities", and bracket out as follows:

[code][The liquid-mixing rulebook has a list of volumes called the recipe quantities. ]
 
First liquid-mixing rule for a volume (called the poured volume) (this is the assign quantities while mixing rule): 
	now the destination container is the second noun;
	add the liquid of the noun to the recipe contents;
	add the liquid of the second noun to the recipe contents;
	sort the recipe contents; 
	[repeat with item running through the recipe contents:
		if the item is the liquid of the noun:
			add the poured volume to the recipe quantities;
		otherwise:
			add the fluid content of the second noun to the recipe quantities. ][/code]

(For the technically curious: the problem seems to be specifically to do with having a rulebook that has two list variables associated with it; getting rid of one of the lists also does away with the problem.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1165&start=0#p6647
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: merk -- get well soon!
User: George / DateTime: 2010-06-19 01:41:08

Take care of yourself Merk, and here's to a fast recovery [emote]:)[/emote].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1166&start=0#p6648
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Measured Liquids 1: 5Z71? 6E59?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-19 02:01:19

At the risk of spamming the thread: I have now sent in version 2 of this extension; it will likely appear on the site soon. V2 is just very slightly less capable than version 1, but the functionality removed is likely to be valuable only under rare circumstances, and then can still safely be achieved by compiling to Glulx. In exchange, it appears to reliably compile for Z-machine without programming errors. 

Please let me know if you need an email copy of the extension before it goes live on the website, or if you successfully download but still have trouble with it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1165&start=0#p6649
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: merk -- get well soon!
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-06-19 04:42:55

Hear hear! Speedy recovery!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1160&start=0#p6650
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Spam postings
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-06-19 04:50:39

Hope you're recovering okay. Take it easy!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1165&start=0#p6651
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: merk -- get well soon!
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-06-19 08:37:57

Best wishes, Merk. And if it's between the forum and your health, choose health.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=784&start=0#p6652
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Adrift ?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-06-19 08:38:29

[quote="Finn Rosenløv"]I'm a sworn "Drifter" and I just discovered this forum not so long ago...
Just out of curiousity I wonder how many besides me in this Forum actually use Adrift?
Cheers[/quote]

I only use it when I'm betaing. [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1168&start=0#p6653
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7 6E59: Flexible Windows extension (ver. 8) troubles
User: SamWood / DateTime: 2010-06-19 08:41:21

Jon Ingold's Flexible Windows extension version 8 doesn't compile in 6E59 unless the following is removed:

[code]Include
(- with rock_value 0, ref_number 0, direct_parent 0, -) when defining a g-window.[/code]

After removing that I ran into another problem. The images displayed by glk_image_draw_scaled(g.ref_number, figure, w_offset, h_offset, w_total, h_total) as used in one of the examples do not display in the correct order. That is, the figure that is supposed to display does not display, but another unintended image does.

Maybe this problem is not isolated to the Flexible Windows extension - perhaps any time glk_image_draw_scaled is used it's not showing the correct figure.

Has anyone else run into this problem?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1167&start=0#p6654
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Floating-point math in Glulx
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-06-19 08:44:48

[quote="zarf"]
Float math will be distinctly slower than int math. This is not because of the low-level operations (which are trivial), but because the interpreter has to keep converting back and forth between IEEE-encoded floats and native floats. A C interpreter can usually do this fast (because most computers *use* IEEE-encoded floats natively) but Javascript has to go through a whole bit-fiddling process. And of course Javascript is where the speed concerns are.
[/quote]
Essentially, shouldn't IEEE-encoding only be done on load/save/restore? What about at other times keeping them as native floats? The VM numbers could be either a form of pointer, or the VM could keep a cache of native floats (if you refer to an address which hasn't been decoded yet it would decode it then, otherwise it would refer to the cache. There could also be @decodefloat addr, @decodefloats min max, @writefloat addr and @writefloats min max, which would be run on load/save/restore. Accessing the original data without writing from the cache would be strongly discouraged, perhaps even with a compiler warning?)

[quote]I have not yet done enough testing to know whether float math will produce bit-identical results between Javascript and C interpreters. I suspect it won't.[/quote]
I think JS numbers are IEEE-754 Doubles, so hopefully that means they'll work fine for Single maths. You'll have to check for out-of-bounds stuff etc.

[quote]Any comments on any of this?[/quote]
Presumably people will want to use floats to say "You have $78.62 in your wallet, broken 2.3 hearts today but are still 100095.3774 lightyears from home."
You have @ftonum, but how about some opcode to give you the fraction to x decimal places. Then you could go print @ftonum number, ".", @ftonumfrac number 3; to give you "123.456".
I think this would be fairly common, but sufficiently complex to do as if.
(What would you do? Take the mod of 1, multiple by 10/100/1000/10000 etc, then round it?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1169&start=0#p6655
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Inventory Limits
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-06-19 08:47:41

What are thoughts on inventory limits?

Like Zork, my games tend to include many items which don't have a direct use in the game, or at least are not needed for solving puzzles. (Such as the leaflet in Zork, which introduces the game, but has no purpose to take). So the inventory can get easily bogged down with many items.

On the other hand, I can see how it would be frustrating having a limited amount of items, especially if you don't know what you're going to need ahead of time.

On the third hand, it's usually not reasonable for a player to be carrying a ton of items around.

What are inventory limit thoughts? 
What are thoughts on useless takeable items in general?  [emote]:?:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1019&start=0#p6656
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: "Custom Understanding" for I7 - Should I make it?
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-06-19 08:55:54

Beyond Zork had a system like this, where you could name your weapons and some NPCs. So if you didn't want to type "ride pterodactyl" all the time, you could say "Name pterodactyl 'bob'" and then refer to him as bob.

It seems like for naming objects, this could be done. Something along the lines of (I'm not 100% on this but...)

Horses-name is some text that varies.
After reading a players command, search for text that matches the variable of horses-name and replace it with "horse".

Naming is an action applying to one visible thing.
Understand "name [something] [text]".
Carry out- now the horses-name is the text understood.

Or something to that degree. or maybe saying "every thing has some text called a given-name". 
This could allow them to change some things names. The given-name of a thing is usually "blank"

For your verbs, you might try:
definition, a thing is named if the given-name of the thing is not "blank".
does the player mean doing something to a named thing: it is very likely
does the player mean doing something to a thing which is not named: it is unlikely.

>ride
(the horse)
You ride the horse.

you could also put in rules for printing the name of a named thing: 
     say "[given-name of the thing]" instead.

For actions, it might be on the programmer to make actions easier. 

Understand "r [something]" as riding.
understand "k [something]" as killing.
Etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1170&start=0#p6657
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: I probably know the answer to this, but...
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-06-19 09:00:16

I wish....

If there was a way in Inform 7 to make collapsable boxes in the Source Code.

perhaps having an arrow next to volumes and chapters so that you could hide that portion of the source code from yourself. This way when you're quickly scanning your code (and you know where in the work it is) you don't need to go through pages and pages. 

I run into this a lot when I need to go back to a room and see exactly what I called an object, or to look at my [notes] to see how I inteded a character to react to something, or to find a table. With 50+ pages of code on an game only 1/2 done, it can be exhausting just scanning.

Anyone know of any way to accomplish this, or am I just living an a fantasy world?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1167&start=0#p6658
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Floating-point math in Glulx
User: weiju / DateTime: 2010-06-19 09:12:35

Hi Zarf,

that does not sound too hard for the JVM either, floats are IEEE-754 32 and the standard library provides enough means for conversion from and to 32 bit int values.

Interestingly, a while ago I was thinking, if Glulx had floating point support, one could probably write a nice Scheme compiler for it (not that you'd necessary need it in order to write one) [emote]:D[/emote] 

Wei-ju

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1168&start=0#p6659
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 6E59: Flexible Windows extension (ver. 8) troub
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-06-19 09:13:18

These are due to changes in Inform since the last release. A new version of Flexible Windows will be submitted to the extensions library soon.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1165&start=0#p6660
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: merk -- get well soon!
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-06-19 09:19:44

Holy moly!  Ditto to all the above.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=543&start=20#p6661
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Unwinnable states
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-06-19 09:20:31

[quote]
One thing to think about is why the player is being ridiculous. Often it's because they have no idea what to do and are trying all sorts of brute force "Try this on that" approaches. My thought is that this is usually a problem with a game rather than the player, so instead of punishing the player you should give them some help. [/quote]

I would generally agree with this statement. I guess sometimes I do things to test the parser's limit in games also. Some of the fun I had in zork was trying to get the parser to give me weird results. 

And the player free will issue had a good point above where they mention that you need to tell the player what the character would do. 

I think a good example here is Suveh Nux. If you try to break an item, the game tells you that you shouldn't break your masters things. However, there are way with spell combinations to destroy items. Now, you already know that you "shouldn't" destroy items, but you're attempting to break them anyway by roundabout ways. In this case, if the player destroys an item that makes the game unwinnable, he should be allowed to. (Though Suveh Nux does indicate that the game has now become unwinnable). 

Likewise, Zork's jewelled egg, indicates that it is fragile and has delicate hinges and latches. You can't open it because you "lack the tools and expertise". However, if you break the egg, you can get it open, though the game is unwinnable, because you damage the item inside. Likewise, if you drop the egg from the top of the tree, it breaks.

I would agree that smashing the egg to get at the item inside is a fair way to make the game unwinnable (since it hints in the item description that it should be opened delicately), though I think it's not as fair to demolish the egg for dropping it on the tree top, when drop is accepted as an alternate verb for "put down", and you might be thinking that your character will put the egg back in the nest or something. 

Meanwhile, Zork II is frequently unwinnable because the wizard can randomly show up and cast spells on you, which can become a problem if he paralyzes you in the balloon, near a bomb, in the bank, makes you clumsy on a ledge, makes you attack a dragon, etc. This is completely random and utterly frustrating. Even with the game solution the randomness can make the game unwinnable on any given playthrough. I would say this should generaly be avoided altogether. 

Alternately, Zork III is very cruel in that the Royal Puzzle seems to have a solution, which turns out to be the incorrect one involving a door leading out. You go on thinking you solved this correctly, then figure out (eventually- maybe) that you did something wrong. That one is pretty unfair, since the action implies that you did something correct (and your score increases also). 

Personally, I see a difference between the Zork examples and flushing keys down a toilet or attempting to burn your own spellbook. I have a hard time thinking that the player should expect these actions to be constructive.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1169&start=0#p6662
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inventory Limits
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-06-19 09:39:56

[quote="tggdan3"]On the third hand, it's usually not reasonable for a player to be carrying a ton of items around.[/quote]
Michael Roberts wrote something rather pithy on this subject:

[quote]A word of caution on these is in order.  Many authors worry that it's unrealistic if the player character can carry too much at one time, so they'll fiddle with these properties to impose a carrying limit that seems realistic.  Be advised that authors love this sort of "realism" a whole lot more than players do.  [...]  Don't fool yourself about this -the thoughts in the mind of a player who's tediously carting objects back and forth three at a time will not include admiration of your prowess at simulational realism.  In contrast, if you set the carrying limit to infinity, it's a rare player who will even notice, and a much rarer player who'll complain about it.[/quote]
That said, I don't think there's anything intrinsically wrong with an inventory limit.  It's only a pain for traditional text adventure style games that involve grabbing everything not nailed down (also, weirdly, the kind of game the most likely to do this kind of thing).  A good use of an inventory limit might be in a game where items have very significant uses, and the items the player is carrying are meant to define the PC's role and abilities.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1165&start=0#p6663
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: merk -- get well soon!
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-06-19 09:40:50

Yes!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1169&start=0#p6664
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inventory Limits
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-19 09:45:55

[quote="tggdan3"]What are thoughts on inventory limits?

Like Zork, my games tend to include many items which don't have a direct use in the game, or at least are not needed for solving puzzles. (Such as the leaflet in Zork, which introduces the game, but has no purpose to take). So the inventory can get easily bogged down with many items.

On the other hand, I can see how it would be frustrating having a limited amount of items, especially if you don't know what you're going to need ahead of time.

On the third hand, it's usually not reasonable for a player to be carrying a ton of items around.

What are inventory limit thoughts? 
What are thoughts on useless takeable items in general?  [emote]:?:[/emote][/quote]

I don't like inventory limits as a rule. One goal in designing a game is to maximize the ratio of cool stuff to boring stuff that the player has to do. Trekking back across the map because you realize you need that object that you had to drop back in the first room is definitely boring stuff. There's a reason [url=http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/annoy.z5.js]Annoyotron[/url] (parchment link) was designed the way it was.

-- More seriously, the problem here is that the player has to type a long sequence of commands to do one thing, and there isn't any novelty in how they're doing it. I think of it as something like an act-to-command ratio; once the player figures out what to do, how many commands do they have to type to accomplish a single thing? If they have to, say, drop the fish to get the kitty to move off the comfy chair, that's one command if they're holding the fish, but twelve commands if they had to drop the fish, and that's twelve commands that the player is not enjoying. Sometimes it's impossible to avoid this sort of thing, like when you have a big map (though, you can include a "go to room" command) or a puzzle with lots of moving parts, but an inventory limit seems like it's just throwing obstacles in the way of the player. 

About the command-to-act ratio, I think [url=http://pissylittlesausages.wordpress.com/2009/04/25/spring-thing-09-jim-aikins-a-flustered-duck/]this rant of Jenni Polodna's[/url] about Jim Aikin's A Flustered Duck is worth reading -- spoiler-tagged for massive spoilers and also for swears:

[spoiler]You know what this game could use?  Automated stufferating.  Like, you know how every time you want to go south across the gorge, you have to tie your pig to the Volkswagen, dismount, lean right (or left) four times, then lean forward and dismount?  Maybe you could friggin’ not have to friggin’ do that every friggin’ time.  It’s just, y’know – okay, have you ever lived in a cold climate, and winter is just a pain in the ass because there’s all this shit you have to do before you can even go anywhere?  All having to put on your coat and your gloves and your hat and long johns and three pairs of socks and turn your car on and brush the snow off of it and scrape the fucking ice off the fucking windshield and then when spring happens and you don’t have to do that anymore it is such a relief. I am looking forward to not playing this game anymore the same way I used to look forward to spring.  That strikes me as less than ideal.[/spoiler]

I liked that game, by the way -- awesome hint system -- but I definitely agreed with her about that.

Anyway, you can design interesting puzzles around inventory management, I guess, but realism isn't a great reason to have an inventory limit. I will happily suspend disbelief about how much I can carry if it means I don't have to spend time worrying about managing my inventory. 

As for useless takeable items, they're OK, I guess. Depends on how much atmospheric purpose they have, or how much of a distraction they provide from the main solution (and distractions can be a good thing, if the puzzle is still fair). Though no object is really useless in Zork, is it? You can drop them on the floor to help you map the maze.

Oops, SPOILER.

(Before posting, I agree with everything Pacian said. Like, you could use the limit to make a player choose between fighting and magic -- you can't carry both the sword and the wand.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1169&start=0#p6665
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inventory Limits
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-06-19 10:35:32

I like the thoughts here between sword and wand.

And I suppose you're correct on the realism aspect.

I was thinking more specifically about inventory management as a puzzle in itself.

Example: Your character is weak and cannot carry much, though he can eventually find a way to increase his own strength. (Which is necessary to solve puzzles that involve moving heavy things). Alternately he may come across a spell that summons a small hole where he can store things he doesn't need. (Like a the zipper in spellbreaker). You will probably get to a puzzle that requires more items present than you can carry, so you would need to either tediously cart them there a piece at a time, (manually or via teleporting), or have increased your strength to have a greater load capacity (or have the hole spell) to get them all there at once. 

I can definately see the frustration with having to run to the other side of the map to grab an item. (Though I have included a "find [item]" command and a teleport spell, so running around wouldn't be QUITE AS tedious).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1166&start=0#p6666
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Measured Liquids 1: 5Z71? 6E59?
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-06-19 10:45:34

[quote="emshort"]
b) if you don't feel you're likely to need mixable liquids that are finicky as to the component quantities in a liquid, open up the extension, find "recipe quantities", and bracket out as follows:
[/quote]

Ah, I was thinking something like that would work, but I [url=http://nitku.net/blog/2009/10/ifcomp-2009-review-byzantine-perspective-by-lea/]caught some flak last time I did so[/url].  [emote]:P[/emote]

I definitely don't need mixable liquids -- the only in-game liquid is water -- so this should be fine.

Thanks so much for your speedy and thorough response!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1167&start=0#p6667
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Floating-point math in Glulx
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-06-19 10:56:06

One correction to my post: you don't negate floats with neg, you negate them with xor $80000000.

[quote="Dannii"]Essentially, shouldn't IEEE-encoding only be done on load/save/restore? What about at other times keeping them as native floats?[/quote]

That would require putting type-checking code on every opcode, including the integer ones. (E.g., @add would have to check and encode any float back to int before adding, because while the result is going to be meaningless, it's well-defined and deterministic meaninglessness. May sound like a quibble, but bit arithmetic *is* meaningful on floats, as I said above.) Do you think that would be worth it? My gut says no, and while it's worth testing someday, it's on the pain-in-the-ass side.

(Maybe less ugly if combined with the store-all-memory-as-words refactoring?)

Giving up on main memory for the moment: Quixe *could* track local-variable and stack-position use, and prove that some values are used only as floats. That should be worthwhile, but it's not currently that smart. I would leave that for future work.

[quote]I think JS numbers are IEEE-754 Doubles, so hopefully that means they'll work fine for Single maths. You'll have to check for out-of-bounds stuff etc.[/quote]

Yeah. It's the conversion I'm most worried about. My notes are full of lines like

(a & 0x7fffff | 0x800000) * 1.0 / Math.pow(2,23) * Math.pow(2,  ((a>>23 & 0xff) - 127))

and who knows whether the rounding will come out the same. (Answer: I will know, after I get the tests written.)

[quote]Then you could go print @ftonum number, ".", @ftonumfrac number 3; to give you "123.456".[/quote]

fmod 0.001 will do this. Well, it will if I upgrade it to return both the modulo and remainder, which I think I want to.

Actually ftonum rounds towards the nearest integer... You know, I want *both* round-towards-zero and round-towards-nearest, so make that ftonumz and ftonumr.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1170&start=0#p6668
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: I probably know the answer to this, but...
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-06-19 11:00:22

The IDE can do this, although the metaphor is cutting out sections for you to work with, not collapsing sections. Click the "contents" button above the source tab.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1167&start=0#p6669
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Floating-point math in Glulx
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-06-19 11:32:54

[quote="zarf"]One correction to my post: you don't negate floats with neg, you negate them with xor $80000000.

[quote="Dannii"]Essentially, shouldn't IEEE-encoding only be done on load/save/restore? What about at other times keeping them as native floats?[/quote]

That would require putting type-checking code on every opcode, including the integer ones. (E.g., @add would have to check and encode any float back to int before adding, because while the result is going to be meaningless, it's well-defined and deterministic meaninglessness. May sound like a quibble, but bit arithmetic *is* meaningful on floats, as I said above.) Do you think that would be worth it? My gut says no, and while it's worth testing someday, it's on the pain-in-the-ass side.
[/quote]
Are you saying that even though it would be meaningless to use @add on a float it must still use the live data, not stale data? I guess that would might be wise for consistency's stake.

Okay so the cache idea sucks, but what about still storing them outside the main memory map? There would have to be a block of memory for them to be initialised from and saved to, but there would be no pretence that that block of memory is in any way reflective of the current state of the floats, no more than it would be in a program that periodically uses @mcopy. If you wanted the data you would have to specifically request it immediately prior to when you want it.

Or would making floats be objects be too expensive?
What about a new memory segment? Would make type checks considerably cheaper.

All of these options would probably mean that bit opcodes would need special float versions too. But in a way, opcodes are cheap.

[quote]
fmod 0.001 will do this. Well, it will if I upgrade it to return both the modulo and remainder, which I think I want to.
[/quote]
That would only turn 111.1111 to 111.111 right? How will you turn that into something you can print? Binary fractions aren't the friendliest things. *1000, convert to int, convert to string, insert the decimal point manually? Ick. Maybe a very simple formatting function would be good.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1171&start=0#p6670
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: IF URLs
User: George / DateTime: 2010-06-19 12:23:03

I've been updating IF URls for a couple of months now, and moved it to a new home this week, so I wanted to make a proper announcement:

[size=125][url=http://ifurls.tumblr.com][b]ifurls.tumblr.com[/b][/url][/size]

[b] [url=http://www.twitter.com/ifurls]@IFURLs[/url]
[/b]
IF URls is weekly IF links. Basically I hand filter RAIF, RGIF, Intfiction, Planet-IF, and many other sites for IF links that I hope are of general interest to people who might want to keep up with IF, but not every day, or even those IF enthusiasts who would like a concise weekly summary of the IF news.

In the last few weeks I've also started to add links to the Russian and Spanish IF communities, and I hope to expand this  in the future -- in-browser translation doesn't do too bad a job of it IMO [emote]:)[/emote]. 

This is a work in progress; the site is very simple right now, but I'm interested in expanding its features, and feedback and/or collaborators are most welcome.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=544&start=30#p6671
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Override Built-in Synonyms?
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-06-19 12:56:07

I had a lot of issues when referring to the player as well.

Does the player mean doing something to the player's face

is better typed:

"Does the player mean doing something to yourself's face"

The player's name is yourself.

I had issues with this too when trying [list of things carried by the player] (which would return nothing), but [list of things carried by yourself] always worked.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1019&start=0#p6672
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: "Custom Understanding" for I7 - Should I make it?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-19 13:09:28

It's slightly more complex to name things than what you just posted, because you need the name to be indexed text. But it is possible; see the example called "Fido" under Recipe Book > Vehicles, Animals, and Furniture > Animals.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1166&start=0#p6673
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Measured Liquids 1: 5Z71? 6E59?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-19 13:24:05

Well, if you want, you could replace the section of Measured Liquid that deals with this, which is to say, Chapter 3 - Basic Mixtures. You'd copy the extension section into your own code, make the modifications suggested (or just slice out the commented bits entirely), and then head your code section with something like

Chapter X - Less Buggy Mixtures (in place of Chapter 3 - Basic Mixtures in Measured Liquid by Emily Short)

This is the Officially Approved way of making such changes. But I promise not to be offended if you feel like doing it the faster way.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1165&start=0#p6674
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: merk -- get well soon!
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-06-19 14:10:36

Thanks all. I'm going to be home for a few weeks recovering, but should be feeling back to my old self soon. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1160&start=0#p6675
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Spam postings
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-06-19 14:12:22

It's pretty brutal what they do to get access to your heart. I won't go into it. But it does leave one pretty sore for days to come. Ha ha.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1165&start=0#p6676
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: merk -- get well soon!
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-06-19 14:16:37

Get-well vibes ~~~~~~~ coming your way! 

(Take care of yourself!! That stuff is scary.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1019&start=0#p6677
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: "Custom Understanding" for I7 - Should I make it?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-06-19 14:44:22

[quote="Biophysicist"]Random idea I had a while ago and am considering making: An extension which can be added to any Inform 7 game and lets the player make up their own synonyms for things and actions. For example, lets pretend that you're playing a game with Enchanter's memorization system, and dislike having to type out "memorize" all the time. If the game used this extension, you could type the command "understand m as memorize" and then use "m" for memorizing spells. Or, if a game had a rideable horse and no other rideable things, you could type "understand ride as ride horse", and then use "ride" to get on the horse. It will be prevented from overwriting existing vocabulary (eg. you can't use "s" for something).

So, should I make this? Would it be at all useful?[/quote]
Seems like it'd be more useful if it didn't require the player to define the unknown words, but rather, parser errors would define any unknown words by the next valid command. 

Of course, that's easy to say but a hard problem.  

Even as suggested, it would be nice to have a few games that explicitly experimented with player naming, just to see what kinds of experiences an author could construct using them.  Allowing the player to name his own possessions, or the characters he meets if he doesn't speak their language, invests the player in his world.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1167&start=0#p6678
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Floating-point math in Glulx
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-06-19 17:00:17

[quote="Dannii"]Are you saying that even though it would be meaningless to use @add on a float it must still use the live data, not stale data? I guess that would might be wise for consistency's stake.[/quote]
It's not meaningless: there's a [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_inverse_square_root]famous inverse square root algorithm[/url] that depends on treating floats as integers.

[quote]Okay so the cache idea sucks, but what about still storing them outside the main memory map? There would have to be a block of memory for them to be initialised from and saved to, but there would be no pretence that that block of memory is in any way reflective of the current state of the floats, no more than it would be in a program that periodically uses @mcopy. If you wanted the data you would have to specifically request it immediately prior to when you want it.[/quote]
This sounds way too complicated for something that's really just a platform-specific optimization: the slow conversion between IEEE and native floats is a quirk of today's JavaScript implementations, one that may even be fixed someday by improvements in browser engines or additions to the language. Native Glulx interpretations should not be burdened because of that.

I think it should be dealt with in the interpreter, not the spec. For example, you could use a sparse array to cache floating-point versions of whichever memory locations have been used as floats, trapping accesses to those locations to invalidate the cache, and that would be transparent to the game.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1167&start=0#p6679
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Floating-point math in Glulx
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-06-19 18:23:41

[quote="zarf"]fmod 0.001 will do this. Well, it will if I upgrade it to return both the modulo and remainder, which I think I want to.[/quote]

[quote="Dannii"]That would only turn 111.1111 to 111.111 right? How will you turn that into something you can print?[/quote]

fmod(3.14159, 0.01) => (314.0, 0.00159)

Or, better for printing decimals:

fmod(3.14159, 1.0) => (3.0, 0.14159)
fmod(0.14159, 0.01) => (14.0, 0.00159)

Convert the 3 and the 14 to integers and print. (Add a few lines to deal correctly with negative numbers and 0-padding on the right of the decimal point.)

[quote="vaporware"]I think it should be dealt with in the interpreter, not the spec.[/quote]

I agree with this.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1168&start=0#p6680
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 6E59: Flexible Windows extension (ver. 8) troub
User: SamWood / DateTime: 2010-06-19 19:03:43

Great! Thanks for the quick reply.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1167&start=0#p6681
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Floating-point math in Glulx
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-06-19 23:08:58

[quote="vaporware"]This sounds way too complicated for something that's really just a platform-specific optimization: the slow conversion between IEEE and native floats is a quirk of today's JavaScript implementations, one that may even be fixed someday by improvements in browser engines or additions to the language. Native Glulx interpretations should not be burdened because of that.

I think it should be dealt with in the interpreter, not the spec. For example, you could use a sparse array to cache floating-point versions of whichever memory locations have been used as floats, trapping accesses to those locations to invalidate the cache, and that would be transparent to the game.[/quote]
IEEE encoding will be slow everywhere.

I agree now though it should be a terp issue. Speed probably won't be a big issue for most uses of floats anyway.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1167&start=0#p6682
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Floating-point math in Glulx
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-06-20 01:30:10

[quote="Dannii"]IEEE encoding will be slow everywhere.[/quote]
Not really. It's supported in hardware on many CPUs, including x86 and PowerPC.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1169&start=0#p6683
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inventory Limits
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-06-20 02:59:45

That doesn't sound too terrible to me.  There are a lot of things that have been done a certain way in certain games, and IF critics tend to just blanket say, "Those things are bad!"  

But everything has a context, and I think IF is capable of a really wide variety of experiences.  Something that might be a tedious chore in one game might be very compelling in another.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1167&start=0#p6684
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Floating-point math in Glulx
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-06-20 04:38:21

[quote="vaporware"][quote="Dannii"]IEEE encoding will be slow everywhere.[/quote]
Not really. It's supported in hardware on many CPUs, including x86 and PowerPC.[/quote]
I did not know that. Cool, I guess.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=544&start=30#p6685
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Override Built-in Synonyms?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-06-20 04:47:03

Most sensible would be 
"Does the player mean doing something to their face"

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1169&start=0#p6686
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inventory Limits
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-20 07:25:13

I agree with Pacian on this too -- those sound like good reasons to have inventory limits. Completely different genre, but in my current game of SLASH'EM I'm very aware that I have to choose what I'm going to haul around with me and where I'm going to leave my stashes, so I'm not wandering around burdened all the time. (Though, well, I'm currently trying to move all my stashes down in the dungeon and it is a bit boring.)

The find + teleport thing seems like a nice feature independent of the inventory limit. As usual, it's nice to make sure there's some kind of cue there, so we know that the reason you can't carry too many items is that you're weak and need to be stronger, as opposed to because the author is being sadistic [emote];-)[/emote].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1167&start=10#p6687
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Floating-point math in Glulx
User: nitfol / DateTime: 2010-06-20 07:56:57

Unfortunately the CLR doesn't seem to provide an efficient (i.e., not requiring memory allocation) way of converting between floating point numbers and their bit representations.  So I'll use that crazy conversion formula you posted.

I was thinking you could require locals to be marked as floating point values to allow efficient use while inside functions.  But this adds complication to an interpreter that otherwise doesn't care, and, as you point out, a JIT could infer this from usage.

This inference will need to be smart enough to recognize certain "bitxor" and "bitand" operations are really code for "fneg," "fabs," etc.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1172&start=0#p6688
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Version 9 of Flexible Windows available
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-06-20 08:09:58

A new version of [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Jon%20Ingold/Flexible%20Windows/index.html]Flexible Windows[/url] has been posted in the I7 extensions library. This version works with 6Exx, and also provides some other new features:

[list]
[*]Built-in support for receiving individual keypresses (char input) in any window.[/*:m]
[*]Built-in support for hyperlinks in any window.[/*:m]
[*]Control over which windows' output is written to the transcript.[/*:m]
[*]You can now classify windows using kinds rather than properties, e.g. "the image-window is a graphics g-window spawned by the main-window" or "the terminal-window is a text-grid g-window" or "the inventory-window is a text-buffer g-window".[/*:m][/list:u]

This release will require some changes to existing source code (reveal spoiler for instructions).

[spoiler]In previous versions of Flexible Windows, the drawing rules for windows other than the main window and the status window were specified using the "drawing rule" property of a window. With version 9, we are now using an object-based rulebook. The following changes to existing source code may be necessary:

[list]
[*]The "drawing rule" property for windows no longer exists. References to this property should be removed.[/*:m]
[*]The rule preamble for drawing rules should be changed to the form:
[list][color=#0000FF]A window-drawing rule for the side-window[/color][/list:u][/*:m]
[*]Specific invocations of drawing rules should read as follows:
[list][color=#0000FF]follow the window-drawing rules for the side-window[/color][/list:u][/*:m][/list:u]

If you have written custom I6 code for displaying images, or modified the custom code from the Flexible Windows example, you will need to change this to reflect the new methods for accessing blorb resources (see the [url=http://inform7.com/learn/logs/6E59.txt]6E59 change log[/url]).[/spoiler]

I have taken over basic maintenance of Flexible Windows from its author, Jon Ingold, so please send any bug reports to me at ek[dot]temple[at]gmail[dot]com.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1173&start=0#p6689
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 6E59 - bug?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-06-20 08:57:23

So I bit the bullet and installed 6E59. It's a lot faster, which is good. However, a problem reared its head pretty soon. I reproduced it as follows:

[code]The tiny model house is a thing.

A detail is a kind of thing. A detail has some text called alternative. The alternative is usually "a miniature [noun]".
A window is a detail. A porch is a detail. A roof is a detail. The window, the porch, and the roof are parts of the house.


The Mess Hall is a room. The player is in the Mess Hall. The model house is in the Mess Hall.
The description of the tiny model house is "[alt-text]".

To say alt-text:
	repeat with item running through things part of the model:
		say "[alternative of the item] ([item])[line break]".

test me with "x model".[/code]

To clarify, I can list the name of an item. But when I try to access the properties of said item, they seem to apply to the thing incorporating the item.

Am I doing something wrong, or is this a bug?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1173&start=0#p6690
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 6E59 - bug?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-06-20 09:14:24

The problem is your code. You want this for your property text:

[code]The alternative is usually "a miniature [item described]".[/code]

The [noun] token refers to the noun typed by the player, whereas [item described] refers to whatever object is currently being described.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1173&start=0#p6691
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 6E59 - bug?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-06-20 09:22:29

[quote="ektemple"]The problem is your code. You want this for your property text:

[code]The alternative is usually "a miniature [item described]".[/code]

The [noun] token refers to the noun typed by the player, whereas [item described] refers to whatever object is currently being described.

--Erik[/quote]

...I should have known. Um. Does it count as a bug report when the bug is in one's own code? [emote]:([/emote]

More seriously, thanks a lot. This'll let me move forward.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=454&start=0#p6692
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: TAB (ThinBasic Adventure Builder)
User: catventure / DateTime: 2010-06-20 10:28:53

Released a minor update today.

<a class="postlink" href="http://tab.thinbasic.com/">http://tab.thinbasic.com/</a>

Regards,
catventure.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1168&start=0#p6693
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 6E59: Flexible Windows extension (ver. 8) troub
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-06-20 10:46:37

And it's now been released: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1172">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1172</a>.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1174&start=0#p6694
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Help with a new text I/O extension
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-06-20 10:57:09

Hi all,

I have a new extension ready for release. It's a Glulx extension that works atop version 9 of Flexible Windows and allows authors to accept input in a separate window, or to redirect output to windows other the main window. (Input and output windows can be changed during play.)

I'm just looking for someone to give the documentation and examples the once-over before I submit it to the library. Mostly, I want to be sure that the documentation makes sense and is relatively accessible.

If you've got five or ten minutes to spare to give it a look, you can download the extension here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Text%20Window%20Input-Output%20Control.i7x">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Text%20W ... ontrol.i7x</a>

Thanks!

Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1167&start=10#p6695
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Floating-point math in Glulx
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-06-20 13:29:29

[quote="nitfol"]Unfortunately the CLR doesn't seem to provide an efficient (i.e., not requiring memory allocation) way of converting between floating point numbers and their bit representations.[/quote]
Well, there are a couple options:

1. BitConverter.ToSingle() and BitConverter.GetBytes(float). The former converts 4 bytes from an existing byte[] to a float; the latter allocates a new array containing the bytes of the float. Allocating a temporary 4 byte array could still be more efficient than doing a bunch of computations to encode the number.

2. BitConverter.Int64BitsToDouble() and BitConverter.DoubleToInt64Bits(). These convert between long and double, so you'd need to do some bit shifting to extend the float bits to double bits and then cast the converted value from double back to float, but it's less involved than doing all the encoding yourself and requires no allocations.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1167&start=10#p6696
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Floating-point math in Glulx
User: nitfol / DateTime: 2010-06-20 18:03:11

[quote="vaporware"]
Allocating a temporary 4 byte array could still be more efficient than doing a bunch of computations to encode the number.[/quote]
Yeah, I'll have to try it both ways and see.  In a micro-benchmark outside the context of glulx, the formula is 40% faster than the allocation.

[quote="vaporware"]
2. BitConverter.Int64BitsToDouble() and BitConverter.DoubleToInt64Bits(). These convert between long and double, so you'd need to do some bit shifting to extend the float bits to double bits and then cast the converted value from double back to float, but it's less involved than doing all the encoding yourself and requires no allocations.[/quote]
Maybe Microsoft's implementation is smarter, but Mono's Int64BitsToDouble just calls GetBytes and ToDouble, resulting in even more allocation.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1167&start=10#p6697
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Floating-point math in Glulx
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-06-20 18:16:35

[quote="nitfol"]Yeah, I'll have to try it both ways and see.  In a micro-benchmark outside the context of glulx, the formula is 40% faster than the allocation.[/quote]
Huh! How are you testing it? The allocation itself should be very cheap, it's the GC where you end up paying, and in practice I'd expect that the GC will usually take place while the terp is waiting for user input anyway.

[quote]Maybe Microsoft's implementation is smarter, but Mono's Int64BitsToDouble just calls GetBytes and ToDouble, resulting in even more allocation.[/quote]
Indeed, according to Reflector, Microsoft's implementation is:
[code][SecuritySafeCritical]
public static unsafe double Int64BitsToDouble(long value)
{
    return *(((double*) &value));
}[/code]
In fact, you could use something similar in your own code to go directly between int and float, although including unsafe code would make your assembly unverifiable. (Alt: you could put the unsafe part in a separate assembly, and replace it with a less direct version for platforms that require verifiable code.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1175&start=0#p6698
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: New I7 extension: Inline Hyperlinks
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-06-20 20:39:03

Another extension announcement:

Inline Hyperlinks provides a simple, HTML-inspired syntax for adding hyperlinks within say phrases. It's pretty simple to use; there is no need to manually create a list of hyperlinked commands, as this is handled automatically by the extension. Unless you're going for some special effect, all that is required to use the extension is to provide links like so:

    say "It appears that the only thing to do here is to [link]jump[end link]."
    say "There is only one exit, to the [link]north[as]go north[end link]."

The latter displays "north" on screen as a hyperlink, and clicking on it will paste "go north" to the command line, while the former is a simple link that pastes the underlined text to the command line.

The extension has a few examples that illustrate various effects. 

As luck would have it, an error crept into the third example ("Systematic Derangement of the Inner Compass"), and wasn't caught until after submission. It's easily fixed, so I won't submit a new version of the extension until it. In the rule "hyperlink processing rule when the player is deranged and the current hyperlink ID is less than 13", delete these two lines:

[code]if the player is deranged:
     say "[command prompt][run paragraph on]";[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1165&start=10#p6699
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: merk -- get well soon!
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2010-06-21 03:19:37

Just saw this. I hope all is well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1169&start=0#p6700
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inventory Limits
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-06-21 07:25:56

[quote="matt w"]As usual, it's nice to make sure there's some kind of cue there, so we know that the reason you can't carry too many items is that you're weak and need to be stronger, as opposed to because the author is being sadistic [emote];-)[/emote].[/quote]

Yeah, the character is not human, and it starts out ugly, stupid, small, and without any gender, and as the game goes on you increase your intelligence (so you can read and perform more complex tasks), get stronger, so you can carry more and deal with large objects, become attractive and gain a gender, so you can communicate better with NPCs, and learn to cast spells to overcome puzzles. 

I was thinking of giving each object a weight and limiting you by weight rather than by # of objects. (So you could carry tons of scrolls around, but maybe not so many heavy objects). When you gain in size/strength (or shrink your items) you can carry more, and you can hide them in a pocket dimension which you can access from anywhere once you get that spell.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1176&start=0#p6701
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: NPC Depth
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-06-21 07:29:17

Are there any good examples of games with strong NPCs which have their source code available? 

I was thinking of NPCs that do things on their own- walk around, pick stuff up, use them, have goals, start convestations with other NPCs, etc. I don't know if that was ever really done before, but NPC coding is certainly a weak point of mine.

Any suggestions?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1176&start=0#p6702
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: NPC Depth
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-06-21 10:31:41

There's probably some debate on what makes a strong NPC... I personally would doubt that having them pick stuff up or talk to other NPCs will be very interesting.

But you should check Alabaster, for a very strong NPC.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1176&start=0#p6703
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: NPC Depth
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-21 11:13:15

There are a bunch of games with active NPCs on [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewlist?id=fhhuzw1ehvq3syv2]this list[/url]. Some of them have source code available; I'd especially recommend Child's Play for NPCs who interact with each other and the game world to help and/or hinder the player.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=120#p6704
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-06-21 14:42:12

Dan Doyle, 29 year old Michigan gamer. Got stuck on Zork I-III and forbidden castle in the early years, then discovered Enchanter series just a year ago. Since then I've been heavily back into IF and was very excited to discover Inform 7.

Back in the day my cousin and I used to make simple IF games in GWBasic- Inform is much better! I'm really excited to get a few games under my belt here, and any feedback any time would be great. 

1 down!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1176&start=0#p6705
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: NPC Depth
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-06-21 15:41:04

[quote="Dannii"]There's probably some debate on what makes a strong NPC... I personally would doubt that having them pick stuff up[/quote]
Fill in the blanks!

[color=#0000FF][b]Freight Company Warehouse[/b]
While two of his thugs hold you back, Kaspar Gutman stands over the Maltese Falcon.

>wait
You can only watch as Gutman BLANK the Maltese Falcon.[/color]

[quote="Dannii"]or talk to other NPCs will be very interesting.[/quote]
If two NPCs wander into the same location, what would be interesting about them somehow failing to notice one another?

[color=#0000FF][b]Motel Room[/b]
Laura's husband, Sam, sits on the edge of the bed.  He looks nervous.

>remove tie
Slowly you undo Sam's necktie, brushing your fingers over his stubble.  "Relax sweetie," you whisper, "no-one ever needs to know."

Laura enters from the north.[/color]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1176&start=0#p6706
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: NPC Depth
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2010-06-21 15:55:12

I also wrote up my thoughts on and experiences with creating the Child's Play NPCs. You can read the write-up at <a class="postlink" href="http://brasslantern.org/writers/iftheory/autonomousnpcs.html">http://brasslantern.org/writers/iftheor ... snpcs.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1169&start=0#p6707
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inventory Limits
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2010-06-21 15:59:30

There's a big difference between an inventory limit for purposes of realism and an inventory limit for in-game reasons that both illuminate your character and lead to decent puzzles.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1176&start=0#p6708
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: NPC Depth
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-06-21 20:10:32

Pacian has some good examples there. I think though that they would usually be scripted plot and conversation events.

I more meant that I doubt loading up some NPCs with some form of AI and then hoping for interesting emergent behaviour will work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1169&start=0#p6709
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inventory Limits
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-21 21:16:33

Yeah, your ideas sound intriguing to me. Again, implementing weight limits just for the sake of weight limits would just be annoying for you and the player; but implementing it so that a player can carry lots of some objects and none of another could give you a good way of controlling the flow of the game. Like, there's a puzzle that involves digging, and a lot of puzzles that involve combining scrolls in various ways, and the player can carry lots of scrolls but needs to level up before carrying the shovel -- so the scroll puzzles get solved first.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1177&start=0#p6710
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Hoist Sail for the Heliopause and Home
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-06-22 00:30:18

I've posted my @party entry, "Hoist Sail for the Heliopause and Home": <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/if.html#heliopause">http://eblong.com/zarf/if.html#heliopause</a>
Parchment link: <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/zweb/heliopause/">http://eblong.com/zarf/zweb/heliopause/</a>

It's a short science-fictional I7 game.

@party was a demoscene event which occurred near Boston this weekend. It was attended by IF folks, including Jason Scott and Nick Montfort. I didn't go, but I entered this game in their IF competition category.

See: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.atparty-demoscene.net/compos.html">http://www.atparty-demoscene.net/compos.html</a>

The other entry was "Every Day the Same Dream", by Luis Gonzalez -- an IF re-interpretation of the Flash art game of that title.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1169&start=0#p6720
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inventory Limits
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-06-22 07:58:47

[quote="matt w"]Yeah, your ideas sound intriguing to me. Again, implementing weight limits just for the sake of weight limits would just be annoying for you and the player; but implementing it so that a player can carry lots of some objects and none of another could give you a good way of controlling the flow of the game. Like, there's a puzzle that involves digging, and a lot of puzzles that involve combining scrolls in various ways, and the player can carry lots of scrolls but needs to level up before carrying the shovel -- so the scroll puzzles get solved first.[/quote]


Yeah that's kind of the idea. One of the major goals is to repair a broken time machine, and you need to be able to carry around a large pod to fix it. So you can't do that until you become strong. 

Meanwhile, you have several spell scrolls, each coded in a different way (ex: one has the spell as a watermark so you have to get it wet to see it), and you can go around adding spells to your spellbook while you solve the puzzles of making yourself stronger and such. 

Relistically, the limits won't come up very much, as most of the early items are fairly low in weight anyway (keys, wallets, money, scrolls, etc), but the later items require more strength (pods, giant jars of fluid, etc).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1176&start=0#p6721
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: NPC Depth
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-06-22 08:02:53

This is good information.

I'm trying to make a puzzle where you need to stop a bunch of people from playing dungeons and dragons. The solution is- if you can get all but one of them to cancel, the last one can't play.

Each person has a set of circumstances that will make him not show up- one won't go if his girlfriend can get theater tickets, for example. 

But I want the D&D game to evolve based on the people who actually show up. 

Also you have a spell that allows you to summon NPCs to your location. I want them to be able to react to summoning and get back to their spots, etc. Having them walk back home is one thing. Summoning Sarah into Jen's room should evoke reactions from each.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1170&start=0#p6722
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: I probably know the answer to this, but...
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-06-22 08:08:37

Yeah, after I posted this I found that. Not exactly what I was looking for- but I guess it'll have to do.   [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1176&start=0#p6723
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: NPC Depth
User: Mick / DateTime: 2010-06-22 09:56:20

[quote="tggdan3"]
I'm trying to make a puzzle where you need to stop a bunch of people from playing dungeons and dragons. The solution is- [/quote]

> CALL MORAL GUARDIANS

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1169&start=10#p6724
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inventory Limits
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-06-22 11:43:38

You might want to divide the world into light objects, which have no weight at all, and heavy objects, which are specifically called out in the failure message. ("You're not strong enough to pick up the X while you're carrying the Y...")

If you lead the player down the path of emptying his wallet so he can pick up the water cooler tank, it's fiddly, not very realistic, and possibly breaks your puzzle logic.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1169&start=10#p6725
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inventory Limits
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-06-22 13:44:52

[quote="zarf"]You might want to divide the world into light objects, which have no weight at all, and heavy objects, which are specifically called out in the failure message. ("You're not strong enough to pick up the X while you're carrying the Y...")

If you lead the player down the path of emptying his wallet so he can pick up the water cooler tank, it's fiddly, not very realistic, and possibly breaks your puzzle logic.[/quote]

As it is now, objects have a numbered "size", which affects what kind of container they can be put in (so you don't fill the wallet with books), and whether or not you can lift them. Keys, money, etc has a size of 0. 

Objects weighing 5 or more cannot be lifted unless you are strong. You can only carry one such object.

A shrinking/growing spell allows you to affect the size of objects. 

This is effectively the same thing you said, it just has the size to allow certain containers to hold certain objects.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1176&start=0#p6726
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: NPC Depth
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-06-22 14:29:51

[quote="Mick"][quote="tggdan3"]
I'm trying to make a puzzle where you need to stop a bunch of people from playing dungeons and dragons. The solution is- [/quote]

> CALL MORAL GUARDIANS[/quote]


Lol. One of the gamers has an object you need in his car. You have to follow him to the car when the game "ends" to learn which car is his and to get the object out. The game will go on until you can get all the players to stop playing. 

It's based on our own D&D group too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1174&start=0#p6727
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with a new text I/O extension
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-06-22 21:47:00

The extension is now available from the extensions library:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/Erik%20Temple/Text%20Window%20Input-Output%20Control/index.html">http://inform7.com/extensions/Erik%20Te ... index.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=120#p6728
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2010-06-23 06:36:20

Hello everyone,

[b]Name:[/b] Stephan "Joey" Cottrell
Also known as: "The Foxaroo", "Michael Sauerpüss" and "Sebastian."
[b]Location:[/b] Sydney, Australia
[b]Age:[/b] 40 this year (born 1969).
[b]Profession[/b]: Client Service Officer grade 1 (and I hate it).
[b]Tertiary qualifications:[/b] 1991 Associate Diploma of Data Processing AKA "[i]That utterly useless TAFE course which was 5 years out of date when I graduated[/i]."
[b]Handicap:[/b] Dyslexic - V*e*r*y slow learner.

First started playing IF with colossal cave and was enthralled at the descriptions such as "[i]walls that are frozen rivers of orange stone[/i]" and the Sorceror's Lair where "[i]incandescant blue light drips from above and evaporates before hitting the floor[/i]" (or it was something like that).  Then I moved onto Zork and the other Infocom games including Deadline, Suspended, A Mind Forever Voyaging, Hitchhiker's Guide,Bureaucracy, Leather Goddesses of Phobos (not all of which I was able to finish).

Wanted to write my own games, but didn't get very far since I needed to program them from scratch.  Recently found Inform 7 and have embarked on my first project that I hope will be fairly simple.  Already I'm running into problems already and hope to find people who can give me advice.  I'll post my immediate difficulties in another thread.

My first project is taken from the Dr Who series where the player is a young Time Lord/Lady whose Tardis has crashed and needs to scavenge for tools and components to get it working again.  My hope is that the linear nature of the puzzles will make this not too difficult a project to complete.

My long-term goal is to write an IF based on The Goon Show, which will be highly challenging due to the laws of physics being almost completely ignored in the style of that show.

I'm a fair writer of prose and programming, though I've had no formal training whatsoever in Object-Oriented Programming.  I'm in the very shallow part of the learning curve at present and would really appreciate some help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=809&start=10#p6729
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: beginner questions/programming
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2010-06-23 06:44:22

This is my first question on the forum.  As I'm new here I wasn't certain exactly where I should be posting, but here goes:

My player-character needs to start the game with a coat that has a pocket full of various items.  I've followed the Inform 7's manual for making the pocket part of the coat, but during game play it isn't describing the conents unless you "Look at coat" or "Look in pocket."  Any advice on how to fix this?

[b]CODE: (Inform 7)[/b]
A coat is a kind of thing.  A coat is wearable.  A pocket is a kind of container. A pocket is usually openable and closed. 

The player is wearing a brown cotton coat.  The brown cotton coat is a coat.  The deep pocket is part of the brown cotton coat.  The deep pocket is a pocket.  Inside the deep pocket is a compass and a frost projector.  The description of the brown cotton coat is "a brown cotton coat, [If the deep pocket is open]with a pocket containing [a list of things inside the deep pocket][end if]."

[b]SAMPLE PLAY:[/b]
>inventory
You are carrying:
  a brown cotton coat (being worn)
  a handkerchief

>open pocket
You open the deep pocket, revealing a compass and a frost projector.

>inventory
You are carrying:
  a brown cotton coat (being worn)
  a handkerchief

>look in pocket
In the deep pocket are a compass and a frost projector.

>drop coat
(first taking the brown cotton coat off)
Dropped.

>look
Console Room
Your are in what serves as the control deck of your time machine, or rather what remains of one.

You can see a brown cotton coat here.

>look at coat
a brown cotton coat, with a pocket containing a compass and a frost projector.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=809&start=10#p6730
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: beginner questions/programming
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-06-23 07:48:30

[quote="thefoxaroo"]This is my first question on the forum.  As I'm new here I wasn't certain exactly where I should be posting, but here goes:

My player-character needs to start the game with a coat that has a pocket full of various items.  I've followed the Inform 7's manual for making the pocket part of the coat, but during game play it isn't describing the conents unless you "Look at coat" or "Look in pocket."  Any advice on how to fix this?

[b]CODE: (Inform 7)[/b]
A coat is a kind of thing.  A coat is wearable.  A pocket is a kind of container. A pocket is usually openable and closed. 

The player is wearing a brown cotton coat.  The brown cotton coat is a coat.  The deep pocket is part of the brown cotton coat.  The deep pocket is a pocket.  Inside the deep pocket is a compass and a frost projector.  The description of the brown cotton coat is "a brown cotton coat, [If the deep pocket is open]with a pocket containing [a list of things inside the deep pocket][end if]."

[b]SAMPLE PLAY:[/b]
>inventory
You are carrying:
  a brown cotton coat (being worn)
  a handkerchief

>open pocket
You open the deep pocket, revealing a compass and a frost projector.

>inventory
You are carrying:
  a brown cotton coat (being worn)
  a handkerchief

>look in pocket
In the deep pocket are a compass and a frost projector.

>drop coat
(first taking the brown cotton coat off)
Dropped.

>look
Console Room
Your are in what serves as the control deck of your time machine, or rather what remains of one.

You can see a brown cotton coat here.

>look at coat
a brown cotton coat, with a pocket containing a compass and a frost projector.[/quote]


Rule for printing the name of the brown cotton coat while taking inventory:
   if the number of things in the deep pocket > 0:
      let L be the list of things inside the deep pocket;
      repeat with n running through L:
         say "   [n][line break]".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1178&start=0#p6731
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Forcing disambiguation in the second noun
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-23 08:02:53

A game I'm beta testing has a newspaper and a scrap of paper. It'd be nice if "x paper" works on the newspaper when the scrap of paper isn't around (that is, that was the first thing I did when I encountered the newspaper, and the author agreed that it should work); but it would be annoying if "x paper" required a disambiguation when the paper was around. I've tried this:

[code]Understand "paper" as the newspaper. Does the player mean doing something with the paper when the player's command includes " paper": it is very likely.[/code]

which works fine for "x paper," but when the paper is the second noun you get "Which do you mean, the paper or the newspaper?" How can I force the parser to choose the paper when "paper" is used as the second noun? ("Doing something involving the paper" doesn't work.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=809&start=10#p6732
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: beginner questions/programming
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2010-06-23 08:15:42

[quote="tggdan3"][quote="thefoxaroo"]This is my first question on the forum. 
...
...
...
>look at coat
a brown cotton coat, with a pocket containing a compass and a frost projector.[/quote]Rule for printing the name of the brown cotton coat while taking inventory:
   if the number of things in the deep pocket > 0:
      let L be the list of things inside the deep pocket;
      repeat with n running through L:
         say "   [n][line break]".[/quote]
[b]Inform 7 replies:[/b][color=#FF0000]Problem. The phrase or rule definition 'Rule for printing the name of the brown cotton coat while taking inventory'   is written using the 'colon and indentation' syntax for its 'if's, 'repeat's and 'while's, where blocks of phrases grouped together are indented one tab step inward from the 'if ...:' or similar phrase to which they belong. But the tabs here seem to be misaligned, and I can't determine the structure. The first phrase going awry in the definition seems to be 'If the number of things in the deep pocket > 0'  , in case that helps. 

 This sometimes happens even when the code looks about right, to the eye, if rows of spaces have been used to indent phrases instead of tabs.[/color]
=======

The person who originally introduced me to Inform 7 did warn me that indentation is tricky.  What's the correct way to indent here?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1179&start=0#p6733
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Noticed bug?
User: i-k / DateTime: 2010-06-23 09:14:30

I hadn't the time until yesterday to download and experiment with the new Inform build, and I haven't been following the discussion too closely (once again, no time!), so I was wondering, has this bug been reported already (for Windows).

For example you might write:

A person has a room called homeroom.
The homeroom of Tarzan is Treehouse.


This works fine like this. But when you have 101 rooms (like my WIP) it won't compile unless you assign every homeroom to a region.

The error is:
[...]but that tries to set the value of the 'homeroom' property to an object - which must be wrong because this property has to be a room.

Once you put every homeroom in a region or another, Inform sees no problem!

I wouldn't know how many rooms you need to have to fail compiling.

Anyone else seen this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=809&start=10#p6734
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: beginner questions/programming
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-06-23 09:56:29

[quote="thefoxaroo"]The person who originally introduced me to Inform 7 did warn me that indentation is tricky.  What's the correct way to indent here?[/quote]

Try it like this, but replace the indenting spaces with tabs: one tab for the second line, two tabs for the third and fourth lines, and three tabs for the last.

[quote="tggdan3"]
[code]
Rule for printing the name of the brown cotton coat while taking inventory:
    if the number of things in the deep pocket > 0:
        let L be the list of things inside the deep pocket;
        repeat with n running through L:
            say "   [n][line break]".
[/code]
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1180&start=0#p6735
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Parchment in I7 - problem with Chrome - [resolved]
User: sarganar / DateTime: 2010-06-23 10:17:15

Hi!

I'm trying this new I7 release feature.
But my problem is: the playable site generated does not work with my Chrome 5.0.375.70 (x86 XP machine).
And with the quixe template: same result.

The page set: "Please wait while Parchment loads." and the waiting is eternal.

PN: In my Firefox 3.6.4 appears a msg box saying something like "The script jquery.min.js:30 is lagging". I push Continue button and the game starts to run wihtout problem.

Any help?

Saludos!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1180&start=0#p6736
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment in I7 - problem with Chrome
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-06-23 10:30:13

Looks like [url]http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=40[/url] has discussion on this and a link to a fixed version.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1181&start=0#p6737
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Respectively
User: moromis / DateTime: 2010-06-23 10:35:06

Ok, this game no longer needs any beta testers, so thanks for the help, and I'm done.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1179&start=0#p6738
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Noticed bug?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-23 11:05:52

[quote="i-k"]I hadn't the time until yesterday to download and experiment with the new Inform build, and I haven't been following the discussion too closely (once again, no time!), so I was wondering, has this bug been reported already (for Windows).

For example you might write:

A person has a room called homeroom.
The homeroom of Tarzan is Treehouse.


This works fine like this. But when you have 101 rooms (like my WIP) it won't compile unless you assign every homeroom to a region.

The error is:
[...]but that tries to set the value of the 'homeroom' property to an object - which must be wrong because this property has to be a room.

Once you put every homeroom in a region or another, Inform sees no problem!

I wouldn't know how many rooms you need to have to fail compiling.

Anyone else seen this?[/quote]

I don't think so; if you'd like to report it, or scout around the reports to see if you can find anything that might be related and that I missed, the bug tracker is at

[url=http://inform7.com/mantis/]http://inform7.com/mantis/[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1178&start=0#p6739
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forcing disambiguation in the second noun
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-23 11:08:16

[quote="matt w"]A game I'm beta testing has a newspaper and a scrap of paper. It'd be nice if "x paper" works on the newspaper when the scrap of paper isn't around (that is, that was the first thing I did when I encountered the newspaper, and the author agreed that it should work); but it would be annoying if "x paper" required a disambiguation when the paper was around. I've tried this:

[code]Understand "paper" as the newspaper. Does the player mean doing something with the paper when the player's command includes " paper": it is very likely.[/code]

which works fine for "x paper," but when the paper is the second noun you get "Which do you mean, the paper or the newspaper?" How can I force the parser to choose the paper when "paper" is used as the second noun? ("Doing something involving the paper" doesn't work.)[/quote]

It's probably possible to rig more "does the player mean" rules to do this, but generally instead I put a condition on the understand line, like "Understand "paper" as the newspaper when the scrap of paper is not visible."

You want to be a bit careful about this, because lots of visibility checking during the parse phase will affect performance, but one line of it won't kill you -- and it's much cleaner than the other way.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1178&start=0#p6740
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Forcing disambiguation in the second noun
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-23 11:22:01

Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1181&start=0#p6741
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Respectively
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-06-23 11:27:55

Try:  <a class="postlink" href="http://if.game-testing.org/">http://if.game-testing.org/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1180&start=0#p6742
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment in I7 - problem with Chrome
User: sarganar / DateTime: 2010-06-23 11:58:12

yeah!

I downloaded the fixed template from git.
It works now.
Thanks Juhana!!

PN: I forgot check in I7 bug tracker. My fault.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1182&start=0#p6743
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: An internal error has occurred
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-06-23 13:03:54

I wonder if anyone can help me out here. I just tried compiling a project with a single room and... well, a lot of code stashed away in an extension of mine. It's basically an extension where I keep things that I'd like to be present in every project I may work on, such as the inclusion of Numbered Disambiguation. Things is, it's also got a lot of code of my own. I didn't think it was anything much, but today for the first time I tried compiling a single room with my extension (which includes a LOT of extensions) and I got this error.

[quote]Problem. An internal error has occurred: Bad index documentation reference. The error was detected at line 452 of "Chapter 3/Index File Services.w". This should never happen, and I am now halting in abject failure.

What has happened here is that one of the checks Inform carries out internally, to see if it is working properly, has failed. There must be a bug in this copy of Inform. It may be worth checking whether you have the current, up-to-date version. If so, please report this problem via <a class="postlink" href="http://www.inform7.com/bugs">www.inform7.com/bugs</a>. 

 As for fixing your source text to avoid this bug, the last thing you changed is probably the cause, if there is a simple cause. Your source text might in fact be wrong, and the problem might be occurring because Inform has failed to find a good way to say so. But even if your source text looks correct, there are probably rephrasings which would achieve the same effect.
[/quote]

[quote]C:\Inform 7\Compilers\ni \
    -rules "C:\Inform 7\Inform7\Extensions" -package "C:\Documents and Settings\rui\Os meus documentos\Inform\Projects\Tut tut tutorialistic.inform" -extension=z8
Inform 7 build 6E59 has started.
I've now read your source text, which is 16 words long.
I've also read Standard Rules by Graham Nelson, which is 39384 words long.
I've also read My Private Initialization by Peter Pears, which is 3195 words long.
I've also read Plurality by Emily Short, which is 2270 words long.
I've also read Approaches by Emily Short, which is 3875 words long.
I've also read Epistemology by Eric Eve, which is 1485 words long.
I've also read Remembering by Aaron Reed, which is 1110 words long.
I've also read Smarter Parser by Aaron Reed, which is 3837 words long.
I've also read Poor Man's Mistype by Aaron Reed, which is 1051 words long.
I've also read Modified Exit by Emily Short, which is 1519 words long.
I've also read Small Kindnesses by Aaron Reed, which is 1249 words long.
I've also read Postures by Emily Short, which is 2184 words long.
I've also read Object Response Tests by Juhana Leinonen, which is 2760 words long.
I've also read Numbered Disambiguation Choices by Aaron Reed, which is 714 words long.
I've also read Implicit Actions by Eric Eve, which is 9833 words long.
I've also read Assumed Conversers by Michael Martin, which is 401 words long.
I've also read Disambiguation Control by Jon Ingold, which is 7515 words long.
I've also read Extended Grammar by Aaron Reed, which is 527 words long.
I've also read Menus by Emily Short, which is 2015 words long.
I've also read Locksmith by Emily Short, which is 4307 words long.
I've also read Text Capture by Eric Eve, which is 1210 words long.
I've also read Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short, which is 2155 words long.
  >--> An internal error has occurred: Bad index documentation reference. The
    error was detected at line 452 of "Chapter 3/Index File Services.w". This
    should never happen, and I am now halting in abject failure.

Compiler finished with code 1[/quote]

Yeah, I know. Lots of extensions. They seem to work together well - apart from having had to modify a bit of wording in "Modified Exits" to work with "Implicit Actions".

I tried commenting out several parts of my extension, to figure out where the problem is. Trying to include all the extensions and leave out *my* code compiles with no problem, so it's definitely something wrong at my end. But my code is so dependant on so many extensions, it's really hard to figure out where to hunt. And I'm hunting blindly, because I have no idea what can be causing this issue. I don't know where to look. 

Any help at all would be appreciated. I'm not even sure how to report this bug - the only way to reproduce it is with all these extensions, including mine own. Which makes for a big, unwieldy and unrealistic bug report.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1182&start=0#p6744
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: An internal error has occurred
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-23 13:10:07

This sounds similar to a problem Ron Newcomb reported, and that turned out to be something going on with his own code (see <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=47">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=47</a> ). If your problem is the same as his, perhaps you also copied something from the standard rules with a "documented at..." portion?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=809&start=10#p6745
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: beginner questions/programming
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-06-23 13:17:52

[quote="bcressey"][quote="thefoxaroo"]The person who originally introduced me to Inform 7 did warn me that indentation is tricky.  What's the correct way to indent here?[/quote]

Try it like this, but replace the indenting spaces with tabs: one tab for the second line, two tabs for the third and fourth lines, and three tabs for the last.

[quote="tggdan3"]
[code]
Rule for printing the name of the brown cotton coat while taking inventory:
    if the number of things in the deep pocket > 0:
        let L be the list of things inside the deep pocket;
        repeat with n running through L:
            say "   [n][line break]".
[/code]
[/quote][/quote]

Copy and past doesn't translate well into inform because it replaces tabs with spaces. Sorry.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1182&start=0#p6746
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: An internal error has occurred
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-06-23 13:22:59

Indeed! I *had* tried to browse the bug tracker, but I found it a bit hard to use, and I ended up thinking it wasn't there. I do have this code:

[code]To say p -- running on:
	(- DivideParagraphPoint(); new_line; -).
To say l -- running on
	(documented at ph_lbreak):
	(- new_line; -).
To say b -- running on
	(documented at ph_types):
	(- style bold; -).
To say i -- running on:
	(- style underline; -).
To say r -- running on:
	(- style roman; -).
To say rpo -- running on:
	(- RunParagraphOn(); -).
To say rpol -- running on:
	(- RunParagraphOn(); new_line; -).[/code]

The "documented at" bit did puzzle me, but I assumed it was necessary.

And of course, you have solved my problem completely. Many many thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1182&start=0#p6747
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: An internal error has occurred
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-23 13:39:20

No problem!

For future reference, and/or others reading the thread: It's less obvious than we'd like, and I think we can't change the configuration, but the bug tracker does have a search box on this page: [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view_all_bug_page.php]http://inform7.com/mantis/view_all_bug_page.php[/url]. (Look under that first table for the search box, next to a button that says "apply filter".)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1181&start=0#p6748
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Respectively
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-06-23 15:35:54

Or ask users here to post or private message you their email addresses, then send them your game along with info about what you're trying to achieve with the game and what kind of feedback you're looking for.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1180&start=0#p6750
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment in I7 - problem with Chrome - [resolved]
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-06-23 16:34:55

Someone said this also occurs with the Quixe template?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=809&start=10#p6751
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: beginner questions/programming
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2010-06-23 16:53:07

[quote="tggdan3"][quote="bcressey"][quote="thefoxaroo"]The person who originally introduced me to Inform 7 did warn me that indentation is tricky.  What's the correct way to indent here?[/quote]Try it like this, but replace the indenting spaces with tabs: one tab for the second line, two tabs for the third and fourth lines, and three tabs for the last.

[quote="tggdan3"]
[code]
Rule for printing the name of the brown cotton coat while taking inventory:
    if the number of things in the deep pocket > 0:
        let L be the list of things inside the deep pocket;
        repeat with n running through L:
            say "   [n][line break]".
[/code]
[/quote][/quote]Copy and past doesn't translate well into inform because it replaces tabs with spaces. Sorry.[/quote]No need for an apology; you've both been of imeasurable help to me and it's very much appreciated.  [emote]:)[/emote]

I've edited my post because I've slightly improved the code since before.  It now reads thus:

[code]After printing the name of the brown cotton coat while taking inventory:
	If the number of things in the deep pocket > 0:
		Say "[line break]  the brown cotton coat's deep pocket contains:";
		Let L be the list of things inside the deep pocket;
		Repeat with n running through L:
			Say "[line break]      [a n]".[/code]

Which produces this result:

[color=#0000FF]>i
You are carrying:
  a brown cotton coat
  the brown cotton coat's deep pocket contains:
      a compass
      a frost projector (being worn)
  a handkerchief[/color]

(Somehow changing the last little bit [A n] to [a n] corrected the problem of the coat being described as "An brown cotton coat")

Still no idea on how to shift "(being worn)" to the end of the coat's description where it belongs.  I've also tried using "Instead of printing the name of the brown cotton coat ..." but Inform 7 didn't like that. [emote]:([/emote]  Is there a way to re-word the rule so that it takes effect after the words "(being worn)" are printed for the coat?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=20#p6752
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59 is going live
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-06-23 18:19:51

I stopped working with Inform 7 over the winter because my project couldn't proceed until a few various 5Z71 bugs/limits were addressed.

One of the major stumbling-blocks to my progress was the [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=828]"limit of fifty kinds of value"[/url] bug.  I was considering downloading the new version of Inform and starting my IF work again, but while looking through the changelog I didn't see any clear reference to whether or not this particular problem had been fixed.  One possibly relevant line refers only to kinds rather than kinds of value:

[quote="[url=http://inform7.com/learn/logs/6E59.txt]6E59 Changelog, Section 19.14[/url]"](*) Bug fixed whereby defining more than 50 new kinds could sometimes cause
Inform 6 errors or other aberrant behaviour, in a not-very-repeatable way.[/quote]
Does this statement mean the "limit on kinds of value" problem was fixed, does it refer to some unrelated problem, or was the "limit on kinds of value" bug otherwise fixed but simply overlooked in the changelog?  I did receive a response to my bug report saying this issue would be taken care of in the latest release, but since the changelog is a bit vague about the whole matter I wanted to be sure before I look at the 6E59 since I wouldn't be able to accomplish much unless this problem was fixed.

Thanks in advance for any answer to this question.




-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=20#p6753
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59 is going live
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-06-23 18:23:15

Post a minimal program showing the bug, and we can try it out and see.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1181&start=0#p6754
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Respectively
User: moromis / DateTime: 2010-06-23 18:50:19

Thanks for the help. I edited my post and put it on if.game-testing. Thanks again!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=20#p6755
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59 is going live
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-06-23 19:07:51

@Ron

Here's the example I sent in to the Inform staff in my bug report about that particular problem:

[code]The testarea is a room.

alphaalpha is a kind of value.  The alphaalphas are aa and ab.
betaalpha is a kind of value.  The betaalphas are ac and ad.
charliealpha is a kind of value.  The charliealphas are ae and af.
deltaalpha is a kind of value.  	The deltaalphas are ag and ah.
echoalpha is a kind of value.  The echoalphas are ai and aj.
foxtrotalpha is a kind of value.  The foxtrotalphas are ak and al.
gammaalpha is a kind of value.  The gammaalphas are am and ann.
henryalpha is a kind of value.  The henryalphas are ao and ap.
indigoalpha is a kind of value.  The indigoalphas are aq and ar.
javelinalpha is a kind of value.  The javelinalphas are au and av.
kempoalpha is a kind of value.  The kempoalphas are aw and ax.
larryalpha is a kind of value.  The larryalphas are ay and az.
mondayalpha is a kind of value.  The mondayalphas are ba and bb.
needlealpha is a kind of value.  The needlealphas are bc and bd.
omegaalpha is a kind of value.  The omegaalphas are bf and bg.
peteralpha is a kind of value.  The peteralphas are bh and bi.
quakealpha is a kind of value.  The quakealphas are bj and bk.
redalpha is a kind of value.  The redalphas are bl and bm.
sierraalpha is a kind of value.  The sierraalphas are bn and bo.
tangoalpha is a kind of value.  The tangoalphas are bp and bq.
underalpha is a kind of value.  The underalphas are br and bs.
vegasalpha is a kind of value.  The vegasalphas are bt and bu.
wateralpha is a kind of value.  The wateralphas are bv and bx.
xerxesalpha is a kind of value.  The xerxesalphas are bz and ca.
yellowalpha is a kind of value.  The yellowalphas are cb and cc.
zippidydodaalpha is a kind of value.  The zippidydodaalphas are cd and ce.
alphabeta is a kind of value.  The alphabetas are cf and cg.
betabeta is a kind of value.  The betabetas are ch and ci.
charliebeta is a kind of value.  The charliebetas are cj and ck.
deltabeta is a kind of value.  The deltabetas are cl and cm.
echobeta is a kind of value.  The echobetas are cn and co.
foxtrotbeta is a kind of value.  The foxtrotbetas are cp and cq.
gammabeta is a kind of value.  The gammabetas are cr and cs.
henrybeta is a kind of value.  The henrybetas are ct and cu.
indigobeta is a kind of value.  The indigobetas are cv and cw.
javelinbeta is a kind of value.  The javelinbetas are cx and cy.
kempobeta is a kind of value.  The kempobetas are cz and da.
larrybeta is a kind of value.  The larrybetas are db and dc.
mondaybeta is a kind of value.  The mondaybetas are dd and de.
needlebeta is a kind of value.  The needlebetas are df and dg.
omegabeta is a kind of value.  The omegabetas are dh and di.
peterbeta is a kind of value.  The peterbetas are dj and dk.
quakebeta is a kind of value.  The quakebetas are dl and dm.
redbeta is a kind of value.  The redbetas are dn and do.
sierrabeta is a kind of value.  The sierrabetas are dp and dq.
tangobeta is a kind of value. The tangobetas are dr and ds.
underbeta is a kind of value.  The underbetas are dt and du.
vegasbeta is a kind of value.  The vegasbetas are dv and dw.
waterbeta is a kind of value.  The waterbetas are dx and dy.
xerxesbeta is a kind of value.  The xerxesbetas are dz and ea.
yellowbeta is a kind of value.  The yellowbetas are eb and ec.
[/code]

This wouldn't compile under 5Z71, although different folks got different sorts of error messages regarding the nature of the problem.  If anyone could check if it works under 6E59, that would be great and very much appreciated.  Thanks.




-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=20#p6756
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59 is going live
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-06-23 19:09:03

[quote="Endosphere"]This wouldn't compile under 5Z71, although different folks got different sorts of error messages regarding the nature of the problem.  If anyone could check if it works under 6E59, that would be great and very much appreciated.  Thanks.[/quote]
Works for me under 6E59 on Windows.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=20#p6757
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59 is going live
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-06-23 19:12:43

Thanks (as always) for your help, vaporware.  I guess I'll dl the new version and take it for a test drive. [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=20#p6758
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59 is going live
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-06-23 20:10:39

Works on Mac as well. 

Even the index is pretty.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=20#p6759
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59 is going live
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-06-23 22:04:46

@Ron

Thanks for verification on that code.

@vaporware

I got the 6E59 and was playing around a little, installing extensions and such.  Before I was relying heavily on your Dynamic Objects extension (which requires your Dynamic Tables to work); thus those were the first supplements I grabbed after installing the Windows 6E59.  Is there a newer version of Dynamic Tables available (compared to that found on the Inform website)?  I found a slight compatibility problem--a game consisting of only these two lines (set of course to compile to glulx):

[code]Include Dynamic Tables by Jesse Mcgrew.

The testarea is a room.[/code]
won't compile with the following error message:

[quote="Inform 7"]Problem. In 'To decide which table-name is a new table with columns (CS - a list of table-columns) and (N - a number) blank row/rows'  , the text 'a list of table-columns' after the hyphen should tell me what kind of value goes here (like 'a number', or 'a vehicle'), but it's not something I recognise.

 See the manual: 11.3 > Pattern matching[/quote]
The relevant full line of code from Dynamic Tables is:

[code]To decide which table-name is a new table with columns (CS - a list of table-columns) and (N - a number) blank row/rows: (- DT_NewTable({N}, {-pointer-to:CS}); -).[/code]
Thanks for any help on this issue.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=20#p6760
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59 is going live
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-06-23 22:10:01

[quote="Endosphere"]I got the 6E59 and was playing around a little, installing extensions and such.  Before I was relying heavily on your Dynamic Objects extension (which requires your Dynamic Tables to work); thus those were the first supplements I grabbed after installing the Windows 6E59.  Is there a newer version of Dynamic Tables available (compared to that found on the Inform website)?[/quote]
Not yet. I updated it during private testing, but it looks like I'll have to update it again for 6E59. I should be able to post that soon.

Dynamic Objects will take a while longer, since the internals of relations have changed significantly.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=20#p6761
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59 is going live
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-06-23 22:16:33

They're both great tools and worth the wait.  I haven't really looked at Inform for several months in any case, and it will be a bit before I get back up to speed enough to start writing code using Dynamic Objects.

Thanks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=30#p6762
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59 is going live
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-06-23 22:27:24

OK, try this new version of Dynamic Tables: [url=http://hansprestige.com/inform/dyntab-v3.zip]link[/url]

I'll submit it within a few days if no problems crop up.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1183&start=0#p6763
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Comments on the re-designed phrasebook (in the Index)
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-06-24 01:27:56

I'm polishing an extension, and have recently become aware of its presentation in the Index. 

1) I use alternate phrasings a lot, and not just in the obvious places like is/are/am, all/each/every, and plurals, but also related grammars when I can help it.  For example, I would allow long constructions like "do/does/-- not/doesn't include/includes all/each/every/-- of/-- the/an/a/-- future/scheduled/pending/-- event/events". If that's pathologically forgiving, well, I remember well first learning Inform and how frustrating it is to miss the exact wording all the time.  Plus, I've spent so much time flipping through C++ library manuals for OS APIs looking for yet another name, defined value, etc. that "it should be guess-able" became my philosophy.  That philosophy works much better in Inform's syntax than C++.  

But if someone could not guess the syntax and is already looking something up in the index, surely just one phrasing would suffice?  I worry that by making the exact wording more guessable I may actually scare away authors with the mere look of the thing in the phrasebook.

Perhaps a, what do you call it, a pop-up hint, a tooltip, that shows all the possibilities?  Or only show it in the details box via clicking the plus icon? 

2) Section headings from my extensions appear as section headings in the phrasebook.  I'm torn on this.  Obviously I like defining headings for use in there.  But, I usually put in many, many section headings in my extensions to facilitate per-heading replacement, and also to narrow down an author's search for bugs should a clash between her code and my extension happens. The latter I feel is quite important as the extension's code will be unfamiliar to her, and much harder to track down bugs.

Perhaps do this with chapter headings instead of section headings?  Generally, in the index one does not need the finest-grained heading to find the phrase, as there's a hyperlink that goes straight to it anyway.   The finest-grained headings are most useful in the (blessedly improved!) Problem messages, which bracket where the problems lie.  Hence I would have only chapter headings appear in the phrasebook, not the headings larger or smaller than that.  (Or, the heading next larger than chapter, as it is probably used less enough that it is free to be put in, or left out, according to little else besides documentation concerns.)

3) Clicking the plus icon beside my new phrases brings up... not much. Is it possible to define specification text to go in there?  Just a thought. Seems silly to have the icons there but they not really do much, for non-built-in phrases.

4) (I just learned that the "unindexed" word only works for sections, not chapters or anything larger.  I was surprised. And filed a documentation clarification on Mantis.)

5) Sometimes I feel a newly defined phrase should be slipped under an existing heading.  For example, if I define a new "repeat" loop, I might like it to appear with the others, or the say phrase "time as a time period" with its brethren.  (Possibly while also including it in the extension-specific section of the phrasebook, so the author could still tell what all possibilities were added.)  Just a thought.

All in all, I like the new phrasebook and hope it renders the separate syntax document obsolete.  With the improving search capabilities on the documentation (plus my having at least a vague idea of the word or words to search for), I haven't used the syntax document for about a year.  As for the above points, 1 and 2 are really the only ones I would defend if called to do so.  But #2 I feel very strongly about.  A mere "section" is too small, at least for extensions written with a mind toward flexibility.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=30#p6764
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59 is going live
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-06-24 02:04:54

@vaporware

Thanks for the link.  I installed the updated Dynamic Tables and a small test project compiles fine; I didn't actually try to do anything with it yet, but if there's any unexpected functional issue I'll let you know.

@all

I was toying with the Windows version of I7 6E59 and noticed a few minor things:

--In the source code text panel, if I press the "end" key on my keyboard the cursor jumps to the end of the current paragraph rather than the end of the current line of text (as I would have expected based on the way all text editors work and the way I7 5Z71 worked)

--If I copy some text from the source code panel of I7 and paste it into Windows Notepad, I see all these weird square thingies wherever there's a tab or line break in the pasted text; on a positive note, in the past I couldn't paste text from a text editor into the I7 source code pane under some circumstances but that seems to be fixed now;

--I guess (according to the changelog) I'm in a small minority in that I often made extensive use of procedural rule manipulations, which are now to be phased out; life goes on, I guess

--Using the new "Use no deprecated features" parameter results in an error in Emily Short's "Plurality" extension.  A line in the extension should (presumably, not functionally tested) be changed to:

[code]After printing the name of an ambiguously plural thing (called the suspect):
	if the manual pronouns option is active, do nothing;
	otherwise notice the plurality of the suspect.[/code]
--On another positive note, I'm now able to change the font size/displayed text size of text in the I7 source code pane; in 5Z71 that never worked for me, and the only size of text I could have in the past was "smaller."

--There's some minor issue with word wrapping in the source code pane; a punctuation mark at the end of a sentence may be shifted to the next line.  For example I had something that looked like this:

[code]The printed name of the southunderpond is "Pond (Underwater)"
.  The description of the southunderpond is "The pond-bottom, an
oozing muck of primordial darkness, is barely visible through the murky 
water."[/code]




-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1183&start=0#p6765
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Comments on the re-designed phrasebook (in the Index)
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-06-24 02:25:40

Sorry I don't have anything to say about your main point, but I have a tangential comment on this:

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]I use alternate phrasings a lot, and not just in the obvious places like is/are/am, all/each/every, and plurals, but also related grammars when I can help it.  For example, I would allow long constructions like "do/does/-- not/doesn't include/includes all/each/every/-- of/-- the/an/a/-- future/scheduled/pending/-- event/events". If that's pathologically forgiving, well, I remember well first learning Inform and how frustrating it is to miss the exact wording all the time.  Plus, I've spent so much time flipping through C++ library manuals for OS APIs looking for yet another name, defined value, etc. that "it should be guess-able" became my philosophy.  That philosophy works much better in Inform's syntax than C++.[/quote]

I see your point: I've struggled with things like "When the play begins" vs "When play begins" which just should be smoother, but personally I'm for the one function, one name philosophy. It's all nice and handy to be able to guess syntax when you're learning the language or a new library, but in the long run it starts to become a burden because if you read other people's code, [i]you have to learn every available wording[/i] to be able to understand the code. For example, your construction could be written as "does not include every future event" or "doesn't include all of the scheduled events". Is it the same function? Or a different one with a similar name? Are future events the same as scheduled events? The ease of writing comes with a cost of harder reading. If C++ had synonyms to everything it would be a nightmare to work with in a team of programmers (even more than it is right now.)

Inform 7 is possibly an exception in some ways with its natural-language-like syntax, but I'm still happy that I don't have to flip through the syntax document every time someone uses a feature I know but with a different wording than how I've learned it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1075&start=10#p6766
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Announcing CYOA competition
User: David Welbourn / DateTime: 2010-06-24 02:58:32

Hi all. I'm just checking in from IFWiki -- I'm an admin there -- and I'm curious about the current status of this competition.

From what I can tell, the entry deadline has passed; however, there was a comment about possibly extending the deadline. Also, I see a comment that two games were entered, but I don't see any announcement saying that they were released or if the judges are currently playing them or what. I also see some snarking about whether this is a real competition or not. So I'm a bit confused on the current status.

A little clarification on what's currently happening with this competition would be welcome. Thanks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=30#p6767
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59 is going live
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-06-24 03:13:27

Please report bugs at [url=http://inform7.com/bugs]the bug tracker[/url]. The problem with copying line breaks on Windows and the use of deprecated features in Plurality have been reported there previously.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1180&start=0#p6768
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment in I7 - problem with Chrome - [resolved]
User: sarganar / DateTime: 2010-06-24 07:55:28

yes, I had that (unresolved) problem.
The generated web just shows the waiting gif and hang (always in Chrome).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=809&start=10#p6769
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: beginner questions/programming
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-06-24 10:19:35

[quote="thefoxaroo"]Is there a way to re-word the rule so that it takes effect after the words "(being worn)" are printed for the coat?[/quote]

Another approach would be to implement the coat itself as a container. The drawback is that your player can't open the coat and the pockets separately, but unless you need this capability, you are better off faking the existence of the pocket. That way you don't have to write so much code just to get back to the standard behavior.

[code]
A coat is a kind of container. A coat is wearable. A coat is usually openable and closed.

The player is wearing a brown cotton coat. The brown cotton coat is a coat. The brown cotton coat contains a compass and a frost projector.

Understand "pocket/pockets" as the brown cotton coat.

Instead of searching the closed brown cotton coat:
        try opening the noun.
	
Instead of examining the brown cotton coat:
        say "Lightweight and mud-colored, the coat has several deep pockets[if the noun is open], in which [is-are a list of things inside the noun][end if]."
	
After printing the name of a closed coat:
        omit contents in listing.

After opening the brown cotton coat:
        say "You search through the coat pockets, turning up [a list of things inside the noun]."

After closing the brown cotton coat:
        say "You close the pocket flaps."
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=30#p6770
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59 is going live
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-06-24 11:39:16

I think the Home and End keys were also reported previously.  Almost immediately, IIRC. 

The dev team is attempting to remove the procedural rules for performance concerns, but are interested in applications that have been found for them.  For instance, on the suggestions forum (<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general</a>), adding a condition to a pre-existing rule is ranked #2 out of about 100 suggestions, as it will gain back 90% of what the procedural rules have been used for. 

We have a thread in this forum regarding stories or explanations for what uses we've found for procedural rules: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1156">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1156</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1075&start=10#p6771
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Announcing CYOA competition
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-24 12:35:20

[quote="David Welbourn"]Hi all. I'm just checking in from IFWiki -- I'm an admin there -- and I'm curious about the current status of this competition.

From what I can tell, the entry deadline has passed; however, there was a comment about possibly extending the deadline. Also, I see a comment that two games were entered, but I don't see any announcement saying that they were released or if the judges are currently playing them or what. I also see some snarking about whether this is a real competition or not. So I'm a bit confused on the current status.

A little clarification on what's currently happening with this competition would be welcome. Thanks.[/quote]

Aina Grey flipped out, in a comment which has been deleted (in between Merk's and Mick's), and stalked off in a huff. I would guess that the competition is not happening.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=809&start=10#p6772
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: beginner questions/programming
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-06-24 13:33:07

[quote="thefoxaroo"]
Still no idea on how to shift "(being worn)" to the end of the coat's description where it belongs.  I've also tried using "Instead of printing the name of the brown cotton coat ..." but Inform 7 didn't like that. [emote]:([/emote]  Is there a way to re-word the rule so that it takes effect after the words "(being worn)" are printed for the coat?[/quote]


Rule for printing the name of the brown cotton coat while taking inventory:
    if yourself is wearing the brown cotton coat, say "(being worn)[line break]";
    if the number of things in the deep pocket > 0:
        let L be the list of things inside the deep pocket;
        repeat with n running through L:
            say "   [n][line break]" instead.

Putting the instead will stop it from printing again at the end.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1007&start=0#p6773
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle feedback
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-06-24 13:36:33

[quote="Biophysicist"]I'm trying to design some puzzles for a game with a new (I think) magic system, but am not sure exactly how hard to make them, so I'm going to post one of my ideas and see what you guys think.

The premise of the game is this: the player can "link" items together, which causes both objects to take on some aspect of the other one. Object can be "unlinked" later. For example, if you link a piece of cheese to a pen, you end up with an edible pen and cheese that can be used to write with. (This example will probably never be in the game.) It is also worth noting that the player has some miscellaneous magic abilities, like talking to animals and the ability to sense the presence of magic.

One puzzle I was thinking of is this: You have a parrot, a playing card, and a bowling ball. There is a high-up shelf (that you can't reach) with something on it that you need. Can you guys try to solve this puzzle, and tell me if you think it was too hard/too easy/too stupid/etc? Here's the solution: [spoiler]Link the parrot to the playing card. This makes the card able to fly (and the parrot extremely thin). Tell the card to fly onto the shelf. Link the card to the bowling ball. This makes the card very heavy (and the bowling ball extremely thin), breaking the shelf, and causing the thing on it to fall down.[/spoiler][/quote]


Why can't you just have the parrot go up, then link the parrot to the bowling ball?
Or throw the bowling ball onto the shelf?
Or have the parrot go up and push the item off the shelf?
Or link yourself to the parrot and fly up?
Or link the shelf to the card, making the shelf thin enough to either break, or thinner than the item so it falls off?
Or link the shelf to the bowling ball so it's heavy and breaks itself?

I worry that a system like this forces the puzzle solutions to be arbitrary because there are WAY too many possibilities and chances are they won't all work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1143&start=0#p6774
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment page bouncing
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-06-24 14:07:49

Looks like the _scrollBottomWindow function in web_zui.js tries to scroll the window to a position determined by _lastSeenY, which I assume is supposed to be the screen's height during the last turn so that if the text is longer that one screenful it doesn't scroll to the bottom but only one screenful down. It seems the bug is that _lastSeenY never updates and is always 0, so _scrollBottomWindow actually scrolls to the top of the window. The function wouldn't work as intended anyway because the focus is then returned to the text input field which scrolls the screen to the bottom. I solved the problem temporarily by replacing _lastSeenY with 100000 which scrolls the screen all the way down.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1156&start=0#p6775
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Replacing procedural rules
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-06-24 14:18:16

I was curious about how much I actually use procedural rule manipulation, so I looked at the main project I was working on several months ago.  Searching for the word "procedural" in the source text (in a project perhaps only fifty-percent complete) turned up the following:

[code]Procedural rule for examining a backdrop: ignore the general report examining rule.

Procedural rule for an actor searching an underside: ignore the standard search containers rule.

Procedural rule for examining a bodycomponent that is embodied by a person: ignore the standard examining rule; ignore the general report examining rule.

Procedural rule for examining a gemstone: ignore the general report examining rule.

Procedural rule for examining a person: ignore the standard examining rule; ignore the general report examining rule.

Procedural rule for examining a backdrop (called cfaroff):
	unless cfaroff is backdropinteractive:
		ignore the general report examining rule;
	otherwise:
		continue the activity.

Procedural rule for someone examining when the person asked is vision-impaired or the person asked is hearing-impaired: substitute the diminished xing capability rule for the report other people examining rule.

Procedural rule for an actor taking something when the noun is enclosed by a broke person (this is the corpse-looting rule): ignore the can't take people's possessions rule.

Procedural rule while eating something (called AA) (this is the skip stupid eating restrictions rule):
	if the player can touch AA:
		if AA is not enclosed by something worn by a not broke person and AA is not enclosed by something carried by a not broke person and AA is not worn by a not broke person and AA is not carried by a not broke person:
			ignore the carrying requirements rule.

Procedural rule for an actor putting something on a subpole: ignore the can't put onto something being carried rule.

Procedural rule for an actor connecting something to a subchain: ignore the broke check for connecting second part rule.

Procedural rule for trying entering a subchain: ignore the how many angels can dance on the head of a pin rule.

Procedural rule for someone trying entering a subchain: ignore the how many npcs can dance on the head of a pin rule.

Procedural rule for examining a subchain: ignore the after xing a supporter rule.

Procedural rule for examining a bodycomponent (called thegoods) that is embodied by a person:
	ignore the general report examining rule;
	unless thegoods is a skinsign:
		ignore the standard examining rule;
	otherwise:
		continue the activity.

Procedural rule for an actor drying a person with something:
	ignore the report drying rule.

Procedural rule for an actor connecting a power-plug to a power-socket: ignore the generic connectblock rule.

Procedural rule for an actor disconnecting a power-plug from a power-socket: ignore the generic disconnectblock rule.

Procedural rule for an actor connecting a beltish thing to a belt: ignore the generic connectblock rule.

Procedural rule for an actor putting something on an idholder: ignore the can't put onto something being carried rule.

Procedural rule for an actor putting something on a dtchain1:
	ignore the limiting keychains rule.

Procedural rule for examining a dtchain1:
	ignore the list included keys rule.

Procedural rule for an actor putting something on a belt: ignore the can't put onto something being carried rule.

Procedural rule for an actor disconnecting a beltish thing from a belt: ignore the generic disconnectblock rule.

Procedural rule for an actor connecting a riflestrap to a firearm: ignore the generic connectblock rule.

Procedural rule for an actor disconnecting a riflestrap from a firearm: ignore the generic disconnectblock rule.

Procedural rule for an actor connecting a gpq47 to an msgrifle: ignore the generic connectblock rule.

Procedural rule for an actor disconnecting a gpq47 from an msgrifle: ignore the generic disconnectblock rule.

Procedural rule for examining a closed folding pocket knife: ignore the check that blade rule.

A procedural rule for an actor touching a biometric scanner:
	ignore the report touching things rule.

Procedural rule for examining a lipstick: ignore the general report examining rule.

Procedural rule for an actor wearing a lipstick: substitute the lipstick-wearing step-1 rule for the standard wearing rule; ignore the standard report wearing rule.

Procedural rule for an actor unlocking the prddoor4-2 with something: ignore the can't unlock without the correct key rule.

Procedural rule for an actor ringing the prfdbell: ignore the std useless ringing rule.

Procedural rule for an actor ringing the prfdkno: ignore the std useless ringing rule.

Procedural rule for an actor unlocking the prdentrance-2 with something: ignore the can't unlock without the correct key rule.

Procedural rule for an actor searching the prfdpeep: ignore the can't search unless container or supporter rule.

Procedural rule for examining the prstairs1: ignore the xing a door rule. 

Procedural rule for examining the vjboxfiller: ignore the general report examining rule.

Procedural rule for an actor folding the pratticladder: ignore the general block useless folding rule.

Procedural rule for an actor unfolding the pratticladder: ignore the general block useless unfolding rule.

Procedural rule for examining the hubstairs: ignore the xing a door rule.[/code]
The above is intended as an example of how often I use this sort of syntax, and for what purposes; I'm not looking for any help rewriting or redesigning anything.

Although I don't really understand the mechanics of the "enhancing performance" angle (we're not talking about developing <[i]insert title of latest blockbuster 3D twitch-gaming clickfest here[/i]>), I can see why the developers may want to get rid of procedural rule manipulation for aesthetic purposes.  Procedural rule manipulation horribly clutters the rulebooks; if you want a rule to function differently than its default state, just rewrite the relevant rule.  Simple, right?

The problems with this development change are all on the end-user's side, and I think mainly fall into two categories.

The first is that working with rulebooks is in my view the most sophisticated sort of use of I7, and far out of reach of beginners or even those with intermediate-level skills.  Procedural rule manipulation is a quick and easy tool that's very helpful in allowing those with a non-expert understanding of I7 to affect changes to unhelpful or unattractive (from the perspective of the particular end-user) aspects of the Standard Rules.  Attempting to explain to someone with only a moderate I7 skillset why and how they must comprehensively rewrite some portion of the Standard Rules for what may seem like a minor effect may result in some potential end-users writing the program off as too abstruse and not fulfilling its promise of being an easy and simple coding platform.  I think it's a mistake to understimate these sorts of concerns.

Related to but distinct from this first point is the reality that, even for advanced end-users, the prospect of extensively rewriting large sections of the Standard Rules to incorporate changed functionality or allow small exceptions of the sort Ron mentioned above is tedious at best and daunting at worst.  For example, consider several lines from the example I posted above:

[code]Procedural rule for examining a backdrop: ignore the general report examining rule.

Procedural rule for examining a bodycomponent that is embodied by a person: ignore the standard examining rule; ignore the general report examining rule.

Procedural rule for examining a gemstone: ignore the general report examining rule.

Procedural rule for examining a person: ignore the standard examining rule; ignore the general report examining rule.

Procedural rule for examining a backdrop (called cfaroff):
	unless cfaroff is backdropinteractive:
		ignore the general report examining rule;
	otherwise:
		continue the activity.

Procedural rule for examining a bodycomponent (called thegoods) that is embodied by a person:
	ignore the general report examining rule;
	unless thegoods is a skinsign:
		ignore the standard examining rule;
	otherwise:
		continue the activity.

Procedural rule for examining a lipstick: ignore the general report examining rule.

Procedural rule for examining the vjboxfiller: ignore the general report examining rule.[/code]
We can quickly begin to see the sort of serpentine form that my rewritten "general report examining rule" will take, with many exceptions both for broad categories of objects as well as individual items.  While it's trivially true that I was in fact already "rewriting" the rule anyway with each procedural exception, the experience will now be quite different as I will need to do the work formerly performed for me by Inform.  Each time I require another changed consideration, I will have to rewrite an increasingly lengthy and complex rule rather than just add a simple "Procedural rule for..." line to the section of code I'm currently working on; just because I have the ability to do such a thing doesn't mean I'll look fondly upon the prospect of so doing.

Another example of this concern can be found at the link posted above by emshort, with:

[code]Procedural rule when putting something on a keychain:
	ignore the can’t put onto something being carried rule.[/code]
to now be replaced with:

[code]The keychain-aware carrying requirements rule is listed instead
of the carrying requirements rule in the action-processing rules.

This is the keychain-aware carrying requirements rule:
if locking or unlocking something with something which is on a keychain which is carried by the actor:
continue the action;
abide by the carrying requirements rule.[/code]
A requirement to now write 51 words where 17 words would formerly do certainly doesn't seem like a very worthwhile improvement or enhancement from the average end-user's perspective.

While eliminating procedural rule manipulation may streamline the rulebooks from the perspective of a disinterested observer, any particular end-user is much less likely to have trouble deciphering what may be considered (to an onlooker) an abstruse (i.e. filled with procedural exceptions) rulebook from their own particular project.

In general, then, I think the phase-out of procedural rule manipulation is a step away from user-friendliness (which is stipulated as a major feature of Inform 7).  While I personally will be able (with extra effort) to work within these new constraints, I think this change will present yet another stumbling-block to encouraging potential new end-users to make the leap from toying around with I7 for a few days to create a small project rather than delving in and creating something truly interesting.  I can appreciate that the decision has been made, though, so having now aired my opinion I'll be quiet about the whole thing.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1156&start=0#p6776
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Replacing procedural rules
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-06-24 14:33:08

[quote="Endosphere"]Although I don't really understand the mechanics of the "enhancing performance" angle (we're not talking about developing <insert title of latest blockbuster 3D twitch-gaming clickfest here>), I can see why the developers may want to get rid of procedural rule manipulation for aesthetic purposes. [/quote]

The performance angle is--every time *any* rulebook is run (which is many times per turn, e.g. before, during, after every activity, every action, etc.), Inform has to check *every one* of your procedural rules to see whether it applies. It's a lot of overhead, especially when the vast majority of things that people do with procedural rules are more cleanly done by directly targeting the rules they want to change.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1156&start=0#p6777
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Replacing procedural rules
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-24 15:04:28

Thanks for the feedback -- this is an interesting angle.

Two comments:

First, the performance is definitely an issue: while it's not a problem for downloaded interpreters, it's one of the major reasons why I7 games run more slowly on browser interpreters, and in particular the current maintainer of Parchment believes he could significantly improve behavior there if he doesn't have procedural rules to contend with. This is a fairly widespread concern, since more and more people are interested in sharing their games in a context which does not require the user to download or install anything.

Second, I'm interested in the line that procedural rules make things easier for new authors; what we have mostly heard about this is that procedural rules are a bit mystifying, and that they introduce further complications in the rulebook handling (what's the difference between consider and follow? where can I safely use "ignore" and "move" to control rules?) that new users find completely opaque. I've gotten quite a few questions from novices that turned out to be due to a misunderstanding or misapplication of procedural rule syntax. Getting rid of the procedural rule layer would reduce the total amount of syntax to learn and the complexity of the way the system fits together. So I'd definitely be interested to hear whether there are other authors who share your experience of the learning curve.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1180&start=0#p6778
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment in I7 - problem with Chrome - [resolved]
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-06-24 15:30:06

I looked at Dannii's fix -- I'll do the same thing in Quixe. (But possibly not until this weekend.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1156&start=0#p6779
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Replacing procedural rules
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-06-24 16:26:39

I've never used procedural rules, and honestly I am kind of relieved that they are being phased out -- one less thing for me to feel bad about not understanding.  My games are arguable fairly simple, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1099&start=0#p6780
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Early Glitches
User: Alcibiades / DateTime: 2010-06-24 18:40:20

Thanks to those of you who responded already. Apologies for the delay, but I've been offline for a few weeks.

I've tried a work-around to designate children as sub-classes of "man" and "woman", and that may or may not work.  It also seems difficult to designate the player as - for example - a frog, an astronaut, or a tree. I get an error report to the effect that the definition of the player pre-exits my code and cannot be altered.  I'm sure there is a work-around for this I have not encountered yet in the documentation. Any ideas?

My grasp of the syntax is still shaky it seems.  Here are a couple of simple examples of code lines which look fine to me but trip up immediately:

[color=#408080]Extent is south of 'More Trees'. InTent is a room inside of extent.[/color] = "The sentence 'InTent is a room inside of extent'  appears to say two things are the same - I am reading 'InTent' and 'room inside of extent' as two different things..."

[color=#408080]The tent is scenery and enterable. [/color] = "You wrote 'The tent is scenery and enterable'  : but the property enterable for the tent is not allowed to exist, because you haven't said it is."

More generally, I am lampooning the opening configuration of "Colossal Cave", but the initial rooms will have a deal of scenery described as trees, alongside 3 or 4 separate climbable entities also known as trees.  I want to assign separate descriptions/remarks to the scenery trees in different rooms, without the parser accusing me of defining items twice.

Similarly, the tent above can be viewed from all contiguous rooms, and is therefore scenery, but having defined tent as scenery for the purpose of those rooms, it is difficult to define it as an enterable thing in the single location from which it can be entered.

And finally, is "listen" not recognised as a valid action verb?

Some of these will seem paltry questions no doubt. Tricksier stuff like tagging my own cartoons to specific locations and objects will come later.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1099&start=0#p6781
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Early Glitches
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-06-24 19:27:46

[quote="emshort"][quote="Alcibiades"]I wanted the game (for one example) to differentiate between adult and child NPCs, but this presumably involves defining a class in the hierarchy between "person" and "man/woman" to be "adult".[/quote]

In the currently public version of Inform, it is not possible to add kinds to intermediate spots in the pre-defined kind tree. That's about to change, though: in the new release you'll be able to do that by writing "An adult is a kind of person. A man is a kind of adult. A woman is a kind of adult." -- and the "adult" class will be sandwiched in.[/quote]

You can now do this in the current build of Inform (6E59), just as Emily presented it.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1099&start=0#p6782
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Early Glitches
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-24 19:38:43

That is to say, while you were off-line the new inform build was released, so you probably don't need the workaround for "child."

UPDATE: For your other two problems, you just need to say "InTent is inside of Extent" -- you don't need "a room." I think that only containers and supporters can have the property enterable by default, so the problem with the tent is that you haven't defined it as one of those. Given what you're saying here, I suspect that you don't want the tent to be enterable; how about:

[code]Instead of entering the tent: 
    if the player is in Extent:
        try going in;
    otherwise:
         say "You need to go around to its front." [or whatever][/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1099&start=0#p6783
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Early Glitches
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-06-24 19:55:48

I've only tentatively looked into the updated (6E59) version of Inform 7 and can't say if things have been changed now, but in the older version (5Z71) you were likely using when you started this thread I found that the easiest way to deal with different classes of living things was to pay no mind to Inform's pre-made categories and just make every living thing a kind of animal.  This will provide a lot of benefits down the road that won't be apparent until your simulation incorporates much more detail, so it's good to work from that point at the start.

On the age issue, you may want to just allow the player to refer to people differently based on their age rather than trying to make people of different ages different kinds of things.  This is much easier than expanding classes of very similar objects/beings.

Putting that all together might look like this:

[code]The testarea is a room.

A human is a kind of animal.  Understand "human" as a human.

A guy is a kind of human.  A guy is male.  Understand "man" or "guy" as a guy.

A gal is a kind of human.  A gal is female.  Understand "woman" or "lady" as a gal.

A person has a number called age.  The age of a person is usually 25.

Understand "child" or "kid" as a human when the item described is a human and the age of the item described is less than 18.

Dale is a guy in the testarea.  The age of Dale is 36.  The player is Dale.  The description of Dale is "It's Dale."

Dawn is a gal in the testarea.  The age of Dawn is 34.  The description of Dawn is "It's Dawn."

Debbie is a gal in the testarea.  The age of Debbie is 9.  The description of Debbie is "It's little Debbie.  How cute."

A marble is in the testarea.  The description of the marble is "A shiny jade-colored marble."

Test me with "x dale / x dawn / x debbie / x woman / x kid / x marble".[/code]
Your tent issue involves a few different aspects.  The first involves simple syntax--you could say that

[code]InTent is a room.  InTent is inside Extent[/code] 
or just that

[code]InTent is inside from Extent.[/code]
(Inform will figure out InTent is a room on its own in that case).

However, rooms can't be put inside of containers and rooms can't contain things in exactly the same way that containers do; one of those is what Inform thinks you're trying to do when you write "InTent is a room inside of Extent." (Oops, matt w already posted that while I was writing this response)

It's not clear whether with "The tent is scenery and enterable" you're trying to refer to a tent scenery object you've created elsewhere or you're trying to refer to the room representing the inside of the tent.  Usually only containers and supporters are enterable things, but you'll have to tell Inform which of those you had in mind for the tent before it can create the item.  For example:

[code]
The tent is a container.  It is enterable and scenery.[/code]
On the other hand it sounds like you actually want the tent to be a backdrop, as only backdrops can be "present"/viewable from several different rooms at once.  In that case you may want to just say:

[code]The tent is a backdrop.  The tent is everywhere.[/code]
You could then simulate entering the tent by writing a rule to pre-empt any attempt to do so and directly move the player-character to their destination.  For example:

[code]Instead of entering the tent:
	move the player to InTent.[/code]
You could then modify that rule to prevent the player going straight from up in a tree into the tent, etc, if you like.

The main point is that not everything in your world has to actually be a "thing" that "exists."  All that matters is that things appear to exist from the player's perspective.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1099&start=0#p6784
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Early Glitches
User: Alcibiades / DateTime: 2010-06-24 21:36:26

[quote="ektemple"][quote="emshort"]In the currently public version of Inform, it is not possible to add kinds to intermediate spots in the pre-defined kind tree. That's about to change, though: in the new release you'll be able to do that by writing "An adult is a kind of person. A man is a kind of adult. A woman is a kind of adult." -- and the "adult" class will be sandwiched in.[/quote]

You can now do this in the current build of Inform (6E59), just as Emily presented it.

--Erik[/quote]

Thanks to both of you.  I've cut and pasted Emily's syntax to replace my own interim fix. 6E59 is the build I'm using.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1099&start=0#p6785
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Early Glitches
User: Alcibiades / DateTime: 2010-06-24 21:44:43

[quote="matt w"]For your other two problems, you just need to say "InTent is inside of Extent" -- you don't need "a room." I think that only containers and supporters can have the property enterable by default, so the problem with the tent is that you haven't defined it as one of those. Given what you're saying here, I suspect that you don't want the tent to be enterable..[/quote]

My fault Matt, I wasn't clear enough. Extent is the exterior of the tent (in the direction from which it must be entered) and Intent the nested room. I was using contracted room titles because (if I understand it right) Inform7 only recognises the first 9 characters of any room or item title.  Obviously the tent must be recognised from other directions as a scenery item, even where it cannot be interacted with, and different report messages will be appropriate according to which side you approach it from.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1099&start=10#p6786
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Early Glitches
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-24 21:57:17

Inform 7 recognizes more than 9 letters in its internal code names for things, so you can certainly call something the "tent exterior" and have that distinguished from other similar items.

The 9-letter limit applies to the player's input -- and then, to the letters in a single word, not to the total set of words applying to a single object. So for instance Inform 7 would be able to parse the difference between

>X NEWSPAPER SUBSCRIPTION BILL

and

>X NEWSPAPER CLIPPING

but not between

>GO NORTHWEST

and 

>GO NORTHWEST-BY-NORTH

Even then, this limit is not an absolute restriction. You can lift it under Glulx directly by changing a constant: add the line

Use DICT_WORD_SIZE of 15. (or whatever you want the new number to be).

Compiling to the z-machine makes this tougher, but you can follow the guidance of the North by Northwest example (Recipe Book > Adaptive Prose > Varying what is read) will find it. This provides a hacky workaround.

Long story short: the nine letter limit does not have to affect your source much, and rarely arises as a problem in play; if it does, it's usually possible to get around even so.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1099&start=10#p6787
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Early Glitches
User: Alcibiades / DateTime: 2010-06-24 22:10:16

And to Endosphere -

Your age property solution is smart and I should have thought of it. Obviously I want the player to be able to access some areas as an adult but not as a child, and other areas vice versa.

 Your solution "InTent is a room.  InTent is inside Extent" yields the following error: "[color=#8000FF]You wrote 'InTent is inside Extent'  , but in another sentence 'InTent is a room'  : but this looks like a contradiction, which might be because I have misunderstood what was meant to be the subject of one or both of those sentences.[/color]"

While "InTent is inside from Extent" doesn't throw up any protest. The syntax "inside from" isn't grammatically obvious, but once you see it you recognise the utility value. Thanks.

[quote="Endosphere"]It's not clear whether with "The tent is scenery and enterable" you're trying to refer to a tent scenery object you've created elsewhere or you're trying to refer to the room representing the inside of the tent.  Usually only containers and supporters are enterable things, but you'll have to tell Inform which of those you had in mind for the tent before it can create the item.  For example:

[code]
The tent is a container.  It is enterable and scenery.[/code]
On the other hand it sounds like you actually want the tent to be a backdrop, as only backdrops can be "present"/viewable from several different rooms at once.  In that case you may want to just say:

[code]The tent is a backdrop.  The tent is everywhere.[/code]
You could then simulate entering the tent by writing a rule to pre-empt any attempt to do so and directly move the player-character to their destination.[/quote]

Again I'm not explaining myself adequately. Some important objects need to be visible before the player reaches them. The tent is not a backdrop then, or everywhere, but a physical object present in four locations (the cardinal directions from which it can be approached) with one of them containing the entrance. Since it is mentioned in the descriptions of all adjacent rooms, it has to be identified as scenery to prevent the player trying to enter it before he reaches it, and in any case preventing attempts to remove it when he does reach it.  

By the way, it's a tent older than Stonehenge or the Pyramids, and located in the Nice Cheek of The Bartoks (sometimes erroneously known as The Sun), and you can't enter it anyway (because it's privit) without wearing the right outfit.  But perhaps that's too much information at this stage. Have I mentioned Bintok's Kitten Plantation?  It's just behind the tent...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1099&start=10#p6788
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Early Glitches
User: Alcibiades / DateTime: 2010-06-24 22:18:28

[quote="emshort"]The 9-letter limit applies to the player's input -- and then, to the letters in a single word, not to the total set of words applying to a single object. ...Even then, this limit is not an absolute restriction. You can lift it under Glulx directly by changing a constant: add the line

Use DICT_WORD_SIZE of 15. (or whatever you want the new number to be).

Long story short: the nine letter limit does not have to affect your source much, and rarely arises as a problem in play; if it does, it's usually possible to get around even so.[/quote]

OK. The documentation was far from clear on that point, but I'm writing the game to Gluix and will bear what you said in mind. It isn't such a problem if the limit only applies to player input.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1099&start=10#p6789
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Early Glitches
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-24 23:54:38

After I wrote that, I wondered whether we'd done a bad job of explaining, so I went back and updated the Recipe Book and the North by Northwest example to explain a little further and mention the Glulx use option.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1156&start=0#p6790
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Replacing procedural rules
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-06-25 01:28:58

[quote="emshort"]Second, I'm interested in the line that procedural rules make things easier for new authors;[/quote]
It's a simple concept: "I like the dogs can't talk rule, but I'd like it to be ignored when Timmy falls down a well."   That's a natural way to think, and "ignore" is pretty clear. However, when he casts it as a procedural rule, his across-the-board assertion becomes "The dogs can't talk rule is ignored when Timmy falls down a well [i]and the procedural rules are now in effect[/i]."  Well, when is that?  

Then we read the manual, and there's consider and follow and oh boy how complicated it all is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=30#p6791
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59 is going live
User: ptomato / DateTime: 2010-06-25 01:37:52

[quote="ptomato"][quote="DavidK"][quote="Sslaxx"]Windows version is now up.
Waiting on the .deb packages here...[/quote]
(...)
I believe that Philip is having some computer troubles, which may mean that the Linux builds are a little delayed, sorry about that. Hopefully in a week or so they'll be up.[/quote]

Computer troubles are indeed the reason. I'll try to have them up on Saturday or Sunday.[/quote]

Famous last words! Uh, I meant [i]this[/i] Saturday. They're actually early.

Fedora and Ubuntu packages are available at [url]http://inform7.com[/url], and also at the [url=http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnome-inform7]Sourceforge site[/url]. The source code is also available there of course.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1120&start=0#p6792
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF at Pax Prime, Sept. 3rd-5th
User: George / DateTime: 2010-06-25 02:01:38

Just a brief update, from a recent message to the Seattle IF list:

We've submitted our panels and are waiting to hear back (the end of the 
submission period is this Saturday, so I'm guessing we'll know next 
month). You can see what we submitted at the organizing page on the wiki 
(<a class="postlink" href="http://ifwiki.org/index.php/PAX_Prime_2010#PAX_ideas">http://ifwiki.org/index.php/PAX_Prime_2010#PAX_ideas</a>). 

One panel is a reprise of the PAX East panel, and with the other two 
we've proposed a conversation between IF authors, adventure game 
developers, and cRPG writers, which we hope will be an interesting 
continuation of the conversations we've had in the IF community up to now. 

As with PAX East we're planning discussions in the IF suite too. An 
evolving list of panel ideas is on the wiki, so please add to it if an 
idea comes to you; all other ideas and suggestions are welcome too of 
course. 

With the IF suite it looks like we'll be reserving a room just a little 
bigger than PAX East's (but not a 'suite' I think); we'll have more 
details on that as it's finalized.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1099&start=10#p6793
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Early Glitches
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-25 07:27:18

Disclaimer for this whole post: I talk as though I'm less newby than I am. So take things with a grain of salt or two. Also, I'm still working with the old Inform build.

[quote="Alcibiades"]Your solution "InTent is a room.  InTent is inside Extent" yields the following error: "[color=#8000FF]You wrote 'InTent is inside Extent'  , but in another sentence 'InTent is a room'  : but this looks like a contradiction, which might be because I have misunderstood what was meant to be the subject of one or both of those sentences.[/color]"

While "InTent is inside from Extent" doesn't throw up any protest. The syntax "inside from" isn't grammatically obvious, but once you see it you recognise the utility value. Thanks.[/quote]

I think the way to think of this is that "in" and "out" (or "inside" and "outside") in this case are just directions like "north" or "up." So just as you might say "Extent is south of more trees," you can say "InTent is inside of Extent"; and "from" also works in both cases, even though it's syntactically weird for "inside." 

[quote="Alcibiades"][quote="Endosphere"]It's not clear whether with "The tent is scenery and enterable" you're trying to refer to a tent scenery object you've created elsewhere or you're trying to refer to the room representing the inside of the tent.  Usually only containers and supporters are enterable things, but you'll have to tell Inform which of those you had in mind for the tent before it can create the item.  For example:

[code]
The tent is a container.  It is enterable and scenery.[/code]
On the other hand it sounds like you actually want the tent to be a backdrop, as only backdrops can be "present"/viewable from several different rooms at once.  In that case you may want to just say:

[code]The tent is a backdrop.  The tent is everywhere.[/code]
You could then simulate entering the tent by writing a rule to pre-empt any attempt to do so and directly move the player-character to their destination.[/quote]

Again I'm not explaining myself adequately. Some important objects need to be visible before the player reaches them. The tent is not a backdrop then, or everywhere, but a physical object present in four locations (the cardinal directions from which it can be approached) with one of them containing the entrance. Since it is mentioned in the descriptions of all adjacent rooms, it has to be identified as scenery to prevent the player trying to enter it before he reaches it, and in any case preventing attempts to remove it when he does reach it.[/quote]

No no, I think you explained yourself the first time, but I really don't think making the tent an enterable object will do what you want it to. (Here's where I really exceed anything I've programmed.) An enterable object will be a container or a supporter -- something like a large cardboard box or a stool -- that you can be in and still be in the location. So if you code 
[code]The cardboard box is an enterable container in Extent. The stool is an enterable supporter in Extent.[/code]
then the player can say
[code]>ENTER BOX
You get into the cardboard box.
>LOOK
Extent (in the cardboard box)
[description]
>EXIT BOX. ENTER STOOL
You get out of the cardboard box.
You get on the stool.
>LOOK
Extent (on the stool)
[description][/code]
So when you enter one of these enterable things, it doesn't take you to a different room, it just puts you somewhere else in the room. Unless I'm massively confused, you want >ENTER TENT to take you to a different room. To accomplish this, use an "Instead of entering the tent" rule; then you don't need to make the tent enterable.

As for the backdrop issue, I think Endosphere is right and you want the tent to be a backdrop. A backdrop is a scenery item that's visible from more than one location; that's what you want, right? See section 3.9 of the 5z71 documentation. You can say 
[code]The tent is a backdrop. It is in Tent's North Side, Tent's South Side, Tent's East Side, and Tent's West Side.[/code]
and (unless I've goofed the syntax) that will create a scenery object in those four rooms. Again, you can use an "Instead of entering the tent" rule to make sure that the player can't try to enter the tent from the wrong side.

[UPDATE: Actually I think backdrops don't have to be scenery, but they are by default, and it sounds like you want them to be.]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1184&start=0#p6794
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Checking value in every object carried? [SOLVED]
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2010-06-25 08:34:05

Hi there!

[i]First things first: I'm new both to the forum and to writing IF. I've stumbled upon Inform7 and absolutelly loved it from the very beggining.[/i]

Now for the "help me please" part: I'm in the process of writing my first IF work, a short game that I'm using mainly to learn how to work with the language.

I've been having some issues, but the tons of documentation (examples, how-tos, etc) have been helping me. But now I'm stuck.

The situation:
I want the player to have four hooks with him that have a tension value. Through the game, events will result in the tension value going up or down. In every turn, I want the game to check what is the tension in each of the four hooks. If that tension reaches zero, the hook falls off and the remaining cables pull the player to the center again. 

[code][----- things -----]

A hook is a kind of thing.
Understand "cable" as hook.
Hooks have a number called tension. The tension of a hook is usually 3.

[----- the different hooks -----]

The bronze hook is carried by the player. The bronze hook is a hook. The description is "Lets see... [if the tension of the noun is 5]The hook helds you tight in place[otherwise  If the tension of the noun is 4]The hook gives you a firm, hardly bearable, pull[otherwise if the tension of the noun is 1]The hook hardly pulls you[otherwise]The hook pulls you gently[end if]."

[----- check the hooks tension -----]

Every turn:
	if the tension of the bronze hook is 0:
		say "The bronze hook detaches itself from you and you loose the only mean to find the bronze room. You're back in the center room";
		remove the bronze hook from play;
		move the player to the center room.

[----- rooms and things in rooms -----]

The center room is a room. "Just a center room."
The bronze room is north from the center room. "Just a bronze room."

The bronze lever is in the bronze room.
Instead of pushing the bronze lever:
	decrease the tension of the bronze hook by 1;
	if the tension in the bronze hook is not 0, say "You feel the tension in the bronze hook diminish."

[/code]

I've managed to create a code that checks the tension in one hook. I could just copy+paste that code and change the bronze hook to the copper hook, etc, but I think it's a clumbsy way to do it. Is there an alternative?

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1184&start=0#p6795
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Checking value in every object carried?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-06-25 08:39:48

The most generally applicable way to do this is with a loop:

[code]Repeat with item running through hooks carried by the player:
     if the tension of the item is 0:
          remove the item from play;
          [etc.][/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1184&start=0#p6796
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Checking value in every object carried?
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2010-06-25 10:11:24

It worked and it taught me something new.

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=30#p6797
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59 is going live
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2010-06-25 13:53:15

Thanks a bunch for the Linux GUI update.

Is there any way to install the Ubuntu i386 package on x86-64 Ubuntu? 'Cause GDebi tells me I can't install it.

[code]Error: Wrong architecture 'i386'[/code]

I really don't know anything about compatibility between the two architectures.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=0#p6798
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Genstein / DateTime: 2010-06-25 14:03:16

What ho,

This is a bit of a cut and paste from rec.games.int-fiction for those who prefer this fine forum over the newsgroups.

I'd like to announce the 1.0 release of Trizbort for Windows. Trizbort is a simple point and click IF mapper which lets you drop rooms onto an infinite* canvas and connect them together with simple connectors which bind to room edges. Rooms can each have a list of objects which "docks" to any room edge or can appear inside the room. Colours and fonts can be customised, and the whole shebang can be exported as a PDF file or PNG image for posterity or printing.

Rather than ineptly cribbing from its solitary web page any further, I'll just direct anyone there who would like to try it. 

[url]http://trizbort.genstein.net[/url]

The page also hosts a wide range** of sample maps in Trizbort, PDF and/or PNG format.

It's a lot simpler and less powerful than it may sound, but it hopefully doesn't suck so mightily as to make anyone actually weep. Feel free to let me know here or at the e-mail address which can be found via the bottom of the aforementioned web page.

That's all really. Thanks for reading.

    -eg.

(* Quite large. Experiments to test the bounds of Trizbort's universe may result in singularities, rains of surprising wildlife or, rarely, messages from the powers that, much to everyone's shagrin, Trizbort appears to have encountered an unexpectedly sticky calculation and has had to be shut down.)

(** For given definitions of "wide" and "range". More specifically, wrong ones.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=799&start=10#p6799
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Tools for mapping interactive fiction games?
User: Genstein / DateTime: 2010-06-25 14:19:45

Trizbort is a new, simple mapping tool for Windows. There's a more detailed post in the general forum of this board. [url]http://trizbort.genstein.net[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1186&start=0#p6800
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Extension request on the Suggestions forum
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-06-25 14:27:24

I saw a suggestion at the forum for a "Extensions Wanted" website.  I decided to try using the forum itself as such a website. 

Can anyone improve the Run-time Problem information via writing an extension that [url=http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/859775-extension-request-expose-the-callstack?ref=title]exposes the callstack[/url]?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1186&start=0#p6801
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Extension request on the Suggestions forum
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-06-25 15:02:06

The VM's callstack isn't directly accessible, so it can't be traced in this way.

You could display the stack of invoked rulebooks (rulechange_stack). But I'm not sure it has enough information to do what you want.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=0#p6802
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-06-25 15:06:51

What an interesting tool. I trust you plan on adding features and such? Because as it is, it won't get me to stop using GUEMap... but it might, because I like it, and because I like supporting new projects, and because I'm a bit tired of the random errors that crash GUEmap when I delete a room (50-50 chance that it will crash).

There's a few features that you really have to add before it becomes as easy to use as it should. Think about the following features from GUEMap that make using it so much easier:

- Pressing a numerical keypad button while a room is selected automatically creates a room in the appropriate direction (i.e., east for 6, north for 8, and so on), and we can optionally fill in its name at once instead of having to select it to add the name. If there already IS a room, then the selection moves to the appropriate room.

- Creating up and down connections is possible, as well as in-out connections and dotted lines, and it does not require creating *then* editing the connection (or mode toggling).

- It allows for taking notes, which is different from your - very useful - object list. It also allows for taking notes on the entire map. I tend to use it like a notebook, which is most handy.

These are the features I think are necessary for a practical and useful mapping tool, and it's the first time I have to chance to tell an author, in hopes of seeing them implemented. So I'm taking that chance. [emote]:)[/emote] I like the style. I would like to use it more.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=982&start=0#p6803
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Many NPCs but few conversations
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-06-25 15:30:04

Child's play has a bunch of NPCs.

One group talks to each other.
The other group is babies and doesn't talk at all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=809&start=10#p6804
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: beginner questions/programming
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2010-06-25 16:50:34

[quote="tggdan3"][quote="thefoxaroo"]
Still no idea on how to shift "(being worn)" to the end of the coat's description where it belongs.  I've also tried using "Instead of printing the name of the brown cotton coat ..." but Inform 7 didn't like that. [emote]:([/emote]  Is there a way to re-word the rule so that it takes effect after the words "(being worn)" are printed for the coat?[/quote]Rule for printing the name of the brown cotton coat while taking inventory:
    if yourself is wearing the brown cotton coat, say "(being worn)[line break]";
    if the number of things in the deep pocket > 0:
        let L be the list of things inside the deep pocket;
        repeat with n running through L:
            say "   [n][line break]" instead.

Putting the instead will stop it from printing again at the end.[/quote]
It was interesting seeing that; I didn't know that the "instead" command could be put at the end of a sentence (I have a lot to learn about the syntax of Inform 7).

However it didn't work, this was the result:

[color=#0000FF]You are carrying:
  a (being worn)
 compass
 (being worn)
  a handkerchief[/color]

The coat's name is missing, along with the frost projector's name and the "(being worn)" generated by Inform 7 is still there regardless.

I replaced "rule for" with "After" to bring the coat's name in, but that "(being worn)" is still confounding me. [emote]:([/emote]

[quote="bcressey"]Another approach would be to implement the coat itself as a container. The drawback is that your player can't open the coat and the pockets separately, but unless you need this capability, you are better off faking the existence of the pocket. That way you don't have to write so much code just to get back to the standard behavior.[/quote]Yes that approach occured to me early on as well.  Strictly speaking I guess it's not necessary to have the open/close feature, except that the player here will be gathering a lot of objects and it would have been convenient to shorten the inventory listing by closing the pocket.  It's dissapointing that such a limitation exists when you'd think that clothing with pockets would be a very common feature in interactive fiction. [emote]:([/emote]

Thanks guys. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1099&start=10#p6805
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Early Glitches
User: Alcibiades / DateTime: 2010-06-25 18:52:43

Call me dense, but so far every line of code I enter which is intended to deal with a valid user input is rejected for bad syntax:  Examining the garden gnome: "xxxx"; Listening: "xxxx"; Taking the frog: "xxxx"; Eating it: "xxxx"...

I've used the "instead of" syntax for disallowing actions, but is it really necessary to use that same syntax for every allowed action too? Having defined and described an edible item, why is it not permitted to write- eating it: "xxxx" ?

I don't simply want to cut and paste my way around these elementary roadblocks, but understand what I'm doing wrong.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=809&start=10#p6806
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: beginner questions/programming
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-25 21:22:56

Clothing is fairly common; this specific inventory format is not something I've seen asked for much, though. 

Using the "rule for printing the name" hook works in many respects, but it has a few problems. The "(being worn)" tag shows up where it does because, from Inform's point of view, all that other stuff you've printed about the coat is still part of the coat's name. You can suppress it by hand using "omit contents in listing", like this:

[code]After printing the name of the brown cotton coat while taking inventory:
	if the brown cotton coat's pocket is open and the brown cotton coat's pocket contains something:
		say ", [if the brown cotton coat is worn]worn and [end if]containing in the pocket: ";
		repeat with item running through things in the brown cotton coat's pocket:
			say "[line break]    [a item]";
		omit contents in listing.[/code]

I should add, though, that the things that are in the pocket will be listed differently than the things out of the pocket, because our "[a item]"-style list doesn't include inventory information such as "(providing light)" or "(closed)". We could get around that by writing

[code]After printing the name of the brown cotton coat while taking inventory:
	if the brown cotton coat's pocket is open and the brown cotton coat's pocket contains something:
		say ", [if the brown cotton coat is worn]worn and [end if]containing in the pocket: [line break]";
		list the contents of the brown cotton coat's pocket, with newlines, indented, giving inventory information, including contents, with extra indentation;
		omit contents in listing.[/code]

But the problem here is that the formatting doesn't work right because we've called the listmaker while we were already in the middle of an existing list, so it loses track of how much it needs to indent. It's possible to fix that too, but it would require considerably more fiddly hackery.

Here are some other suggestions, from easiest to trickiest:

1) put the pocket contents all in-line:

[code]After printing the name of the brown cotton coat while taking inventory:
	if the brown cotton coat's pocket is open and the brown cotton coat's pocket contains something:
		say ", [if the brown cotton coat is worn]worn, [end if]with [a list of things in the brown cotton coat's pocket] in the pocket";
		omit contents in listing.[/code]

2) generate a second segment to the inventory list, like this:

[code]After taking inventory:
	if the player encloses the brown cotton coat and the brown cotton coat's pocket contains something and the brown cotton coat's pocket is open:
		say "In the pocket of the brown cotton coat: [line break]";
		list the contents of the brown cotton coat's pocket, with newlines, indented, giving inventory information, including contents, with extra indentation.[/code]

which would produce output like

[quote]You are carrying:
  a Swiss army knife
  a brown cotton coat

In the pocket of the brown cotton coat: 
  a folded map
  a whistle[/quote]

with the whole pocket segment vanishing if the pocket is closed. 

3) Use the hack of making the coat itself "openable" and then disguising the fact, as suggested up-thread.

4) Go to a more natural-English inventory listing, and use Jon Ingold's Written Inventory extension to customize your inventory output just about however you like.

5) Write your own custom inventory output code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1099&start=10#p6807
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Early Glitches
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-25 21:43:42

[quote="Alcibiades"]Call me dense, but so far every line of code I enter which is intended to deal with a valid user input is rejected for bad syntax:  Examining the garden gnome: "xxxx"; Listening: "xxxx"; Taking the frog: "xxxx"; Eating it: "xxxx"...

I've used the "instead of" syntax for disallowing actions, but is it really necessary to use that same syntax for every allowed action too? Having defined and described an edible item, why is it not permitted to write- eating it: "xxxx" ?

I don't simply want to cut and paste my way around these elementary roadblocks, but understand what I'm doing wrong.[/quote]

The issue is that there isn't just one thing that happens when the player types a command. Instead, Inform follows a whole *set* of rules: Check to decide whether the action is possible, Carry out to do some default behavior, and Report to tell the player about what just happened.

Before, Instead, and After are provided as extra hooks that the author can use to act in between these stages.

The chart in Advanced Actions, 12.2. How actions are processed, shows the structure of this; if you want an even more detailed breakdown, check out the big chart of rules [url=http://inform7.com/learn/documents/Rules%20Chart.pdf]here[/url] and look for the section called "action processing rules".

Okay, so what does that mean? It means that you have to decide where in the action handling you want to make changes. The hooks you're most likely to want to use when you're starting out:

Instead... can be useful not only when an action fails but when it succeeds in some way that is completely unlike the normal behavior of the action. Like this:

[code]  Instead of wearing the Flying Cape:
     say "As you don the Flying Cape, it melds seamlessly into your body! Your back and upper arms are now bright red. Oh, and you have the power of unaided flight.";
     now the player is ready for flight;
     remove the Flying Cape from play.[/code]

If you would like to register that that action succeeded (which normally doesn't matter, but can affect the outcome of checks such as "if we have worn the Flying Cape"), we can write the rule this way:

[code]  Instead of wearing the Flying Cape:
     say "As you don the Flying Cape, it melds seamlessly into your body! Your back and upper arms are now bright red. Oh, and you have the power of unaided flight.";
     now the player is ready for flight;
     remove the Flying Cape from play;
     rule succeeds.[/code]

If what you want is not to change what happens to the world model but only what gets reported to the player, Report is your friend, as in

[code]Report eating the red apple:
  say "You've always preferred green apples, but you manage to eat the thing and not mind too much that it's mealy and dry." instead.[/code]

The regular behavior of eating still occurs -- that is, the red apple is removed from play -- but now there's a new message describing how that happened. Notice the "instead" that ends this rule: if you omit that, Inform will print that and then go on *also* to print the regular report rule about how you enjoyed eating the apple.

Alternatively, if you want to add an extra detail to the default behavior, Carry out is a good place to put that. For instance

[code]Carry out eating the red apple:
  now the player is poisoned.[/code]

would add the poisoning behavior to all the existing behavior of eating. The red apple is still removed from play, and the action report is the same as always (unless we've also made a new report rule), but the player has also gained the quality of being poisoned in the process.

Finally, if you want the default behavior PLUS new behavior PLUS a new report, the fastest way to do that is with After. If we wanted our apple to get eaten but then wanted the player to be poisoned AND see a message saying so, we might write

[code]After eating the red apple:
  now the player is poisoned;
  say "You eat the red apple, but now you're feeling a bit ill."[/code]

So, to sum up:

No default behavior + custom response -> Instead rule 
No default behavior + custom behavior + custom response -> Instead rule, "rule succeeds" to mark that that was a success
Default behavior + custom response -> Report rule
Default behavior + custom behavior + default response -> Carry out rule
Default behavior + custom behavior + custom response -> After rule

(Yet further complexity is possible, but the rules of thumb I just gave cover the vast majority of situations I run into when coding.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1156&start=10#p6808
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Replacing procedural rules
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-06-25 22:40:55

As I try to wean myself from using procedural exceptions, I was hoping someone could verify that I'm using an optimal technique (as demonstrated by the following).

I intensely dislike implicit actions of any sort (others disagree, and that's fine; I'm not trying to argue about that issue here).  I don't ever want any sort of implicit actions in any project I'm creating, and thus was instantly unsatisfied with the change in the new version of the Standard Rules governing the behavior of doors (unlocked openable doors are now implicitly opened when the player attempts to enter them).  Therefore instead writing "Procedural rule for..." as I would have in the past, I wrote the following after spending a few minutes trying to figure out which particular rulebook held the relevant standard rule:

[code]The closed doors are closed rule is listed instead of the can't go through closed doors rule in the check going rulebook.

This is the closed doors are closed rule:
	if the door gone through is not nothing and the door gone through is closed:
		say "[The door gone through] is closed.";
		stop the action;
	otherwise:
		continue the action.[/code]

Is there a better way of going about this whole thing (whether in general or in some particular detail), or does the method I used seem to cover all bases?

Thanks.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1156&start=10#p6809
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Replacing procedural rules
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-06-26 00:33:37

You got it right.  A more succinct version might be:[code]
The closed doors are closed rule is listed instead of the can't go through closed doors rule in the check going rulebook.

This is the closed doors are closed rule:
   if the door gone through is not nothing and the door gone through is closed, say "[The door gone through] is closed." instead.
[/code]

Alternately, if the new rule needs to have conditions attached, such as making it only apply to the player or to NPCs, then it could be very slightly different:[code]
The closed doors are closed rule is listed instead of the can't go through closed doors rule in the check going rulebook.

Check an actor going when the actor is not a ghost (this is the closed doors are closed rule): if the door gone through is not nothing and the door gone through is closed, say "[The door gone through] is closed." instead.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1150&start=30#p6810
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E59 is going live
User: ptomato / DateTime: 2010-06-26 01:48:06

[quote="Kazuki Mishima"]Is there any way to install the Ubuntu i386 package on x86-64 Ubuntu? 'Cause GDebi tells me I can't install it.[/quote]

GDebi is right, there is no way. Usually a 64-bit package gets built by volunteers before too long. If you don't want to wait, you can download the source code and compile it yourself (not too hard, and I can help you out), or you can be one of those volunteers and build the package for everyone else to enjoy too (quite easy if you have already managed to compile the source code, and again, I can help you out.)

If you're interested in either of those options, please let me know by e-mail.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1156&start=10#p6811
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Replacing procedural rules
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-06-26 02:37:38

Thanks, Ron.

Here's a different sort of issue where I may have formerly used a procedural exception, intended mainly as another example since it's not something with which I actually need help.

Let's say I have device that is sort of like a "glow-stick" or lantern, whose function is intended to be (very slightly) mysterious until the player succeeds in turning it on for the first time (sorry for the crytpic item names found below).

[code]A lightstick01 is in the whitebox01.  The lightstick01 is a device.  The lightstick01 is privately-named.  The printed name of the lightstick01 is "cylinder filled with viscuous green liquid".  Understand "lightstick" or "light stick" or "light-stick" or "light" or "cylinder" or "green liquid" as the lightstick01.  The description of the lightstick01 is "[unless the lightstick01 has been lit]A transparent cylinder, apparently made of an ultra-hard polymer material.  The cylinder is about eight inches long and filled with what seems to be a viscuous green liquid.  A small sealed seam runs around the middle of the cylinder[otherwise]A light-stick made of a very hard and transparent polymer material.  Twisting the ends of the cylinder either causes the thick gel inside to emit a dull green light, or causes the device to stop emitting light if it is currently so doing[end if]."

Instead of an actor turning the lightstick01:
	if the lightstick01 is switched on:
		try the actor switching off the lightstick01;
	otherwise:
		try the actor switching on the lightstick01.

Carry out switching on the lightstick01:
	now the lightstick01 is lit.

Carry out switching on the lightstick01 for the first time:
	now the printed name of the lightstick01 is "light stick".

Carry out switching off the lightstick01:
	now the lightstick01 is unlit.[/code]
I've never cared much for the way the standard examine devices rule works, and I always delist it (I usually like to build a comment about whether a device is on or off into the actual description of said device).  In actuality for this particular item I've now written:

[code]The examine devices rule is not listed in any rulebook.

Report examining the lightstick01:
	if the lightstick01 has been lit:
		say "[The noun] is currently [if switched on]turned on, emitting a pale green glow[otherwise]turned off[end if]."[/code]
so its nature won't immediately be revealed after examining it the first time or two.

Let's say, however, that I generally thought the examine devices rule was fairly groovy but didn't want it to apply in the particular case of this glow-stick (since its purpose is intended to be vaguely mysterious).  In the past I may have just written:

[code]Procedural rule for examining the lightstick01:
	ignore the examine devices rule.[/code]
And made some variation of my own report examining rule as shown above, or else simply incorporated the current status of the item into its normal description.  Now however, according to my understanding I would need to find the examine devices rule and begin rewriting it in the following manner:

[code]The full of exceptions device rule is listed instead of the examine devices rule in the carry out examining rulebook.

This is the full of exceptions device rule:
	if the noun is a device:
		now examine text printed is true;
		if the noun is the lightstick01:
			say "[The noun] is currently [if switched on]turned on, emitting a pale green glow[otherwise]turned off[end if].";
		otherwise:
			issue library message examining action number 3 for the noun.[/code]
I would then continue adding more clauses to this rule for each new kind of device or individual device for which I wanted a custom reporting option.

I think this example illustrates one of the points I was making earlier--while an I7 user with moderate skills may have little trouble identifying the "examine devices rule" from the Actions Index and writing a procedural rule to ignore it in certain cases, it seems somewhat unreasonable to expect such a person to open the Standard Rules, find the relevant rule, and quickly understand what is meant by obscure phrases such as "now examine text printed is true" or "issue library message examining action number 3."  Much more importantly, it seems quite unreasonable to expect such an intermediate-level user to quickly comprehend [i]how such statements interact with other statements and rules in the Standard Rules[/i], which is necessary to avoid making a terrible mess of things when one starts modifying/customizing the rule.  The end result may well be that such a person says "This is too complicated" if (i.e. when) they get themselves into trouble, causing them to set I7 aside completely.

Hopefully any future redesign of the I7 architecture will take such considerations into account, as they seem to me just as important as optimizing the program's output for play in web-based javascript interpreters (I've never used one of those, but I'll gladly accept ektemple's and emshort's evaluations regarding the technical issues associated with such).  Such innovations for players won't have much purpose if new content creators fail to find I7 generally appealing, or if they aren't able to easily climb the learning curve to the point where they can create compelling content.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1099&start=10#p6812
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Early Glitches
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-06-26 03:24:39

You have no idea how helpful your post was, just now. *Finally* I now understand when it's best to use Instead and when it's best to use Carry Out and when it's best to use After.

Now all I have to do is figure out Activities and I'll be all set for world mastery.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1156&start=10#p6813
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Replacing procedural rules
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-26 04:11:20

I take your point, but there's a less maddening way to deal with this problem. Any time you have a situation where you are likely to issue lots of individual custom messages, it's time to break out an activity. Like this (simplified down from the "Aftershock" example in the Manual):

[code]Lab is a room.

The lightstick is a switched on device. The lamp is a switched on device. The player carries the lightstick and the lamp.

Showing action of something is an activity.

Rule for showing action of the lightstick:
         say "[The noun] is currently [if switched on]turned on, emitting a pale green glow[otherwise]turned off[end if]."

Rule for showing action of something (called item): 
	if the item is switched on, say "[The item] is switched on."; 
	otherwise say "[The item] is switched off."
	
The new described devices rule is listed instead of the examine devices rule in the carry out examining rules.

This is the new described devices rule: 
	if the noun is a device: 
		carry out the showing action activity with the noun; 
		now examine text printed is true.
[/code]

This has some advantages over the procedural rule method. One, it's briefer to substitute new text for old (because you only have to write the activity rule, not text-printing rule + procedural rule to swap it into place); two, it means your index contains an orderly list of all the rules that affect the device description, rather than a big swamp of different procedural rules.

(I grant you it requires a tiny bit of knowledge about what else is going on in the Standard Rules to set the activity up in the first place, but in fact this particular example is already written up for you, and the majority of SR actions are simpler than this one.)

Does that help? If not, what do you see as still being the major design concerns?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1099&start=10#p6814
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Early Glitches
User: Alcibiades / DateTime: 2010-06-26 12:08:46

As Peter says, you're being very patient with me Emily, and taking the trouble to explain at length.

I understand of course that the parser needs to follow a series of disambiguation and verification procedures with any input. What I don't follow is why bespoke text responses are not straightforward and (reasonably) intuitive. Having defined and described an item as "edible", I don't see why a supplement along the lines "eating it: say 'xxxx' " should create hassles, if no special parameters or object handling are involved. Naturally one needs to confirm the player is holding the item (or a means to eat it with), but I'm assuming the parser has a default message for when this simple test fails. The player command "listen" involves no conditions or parameters at all (unless you've defined him as deaf, or put him in an oxygen-free environment), but my code "listening: 'xxxxxxx'" also fails to pass the syntax check. That's my central point Emily - in a text based adventure surely the default behaviour is ENTER PLAYER INPUT - PRINT APPROPRIATE MESSAGE. All of the additional layers of grammar checking and behaviour validation are secondary to the basic loop WHEN HE SAYS THIS, SAY THIS BACK.

The early chapters of the documentation do lead the reader to believe (for example) that an explicit "the description is..." or "say ..." is generally redundant, but I now find they are mandatory. It's not a problem, once you realise they are, but I'm reasonably bright, with some experience in writing text adventures, but I formed the wrong conclusion from the "easy peasy" instructions of the early chapters.

(What I'm doing now is siphoning my code through a mirror game to find exactly how much of it the program has understood, and the errors do seem to be largely a question of syntax, rather than logic handling. )

Thanks again for the time you're taking to respond.  Don't think it's not appreciated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1187&start=0#p6815
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: rules with multiple conditions don't work anymore (solved)
User: farvardin / DateTime: 2010-06-26 12:47:09

I can't find in the documentation the reason why this kind of code, which was working in the previous release, is not accepted any longer:

[code]"Lounge"

Lounge is a room.
Rob is a man in lounge.

Instead of exiting when the location is lounge and when Rob is in location, say "It wouldn't be polite to leave now.".

[/code]

then I get:

[quote] Problem. In the sentence 'Instead of exiting when the location is lounge and when Rob is in location'  , it looks as if you intend 'when Rob is in location' to be a condition, but that would mean applying the containment relation (between an object and an object) to kinds of value which do not fit - something unrecognised and an object - so this must be incorrect. Problem. You wrote 'Instead of exiting when the location is lounge and when Rob is in location'  , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only 'when the location is lounge and when Rob is in location'. But this condition did not make sense, so I am unable to accept this rule. [/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1187&start=0#p6816
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: rules with multiple conditions don't work anymore
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-06-26 13:07:12

You only want one "when," like so:
[code]Instead of exiting when the location is lounge and Rob is in location, say "It wouldn't be polite to leave now."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1187&start=0#p6817
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: rules with multiple conditions don't work anymore
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-26 13:10:01

Fixing-problem answer: if you get rid of the second "when", your conditions stuck together with "and" should do what you want.

Comprehension answer: I don't know why that would have changed from working to not-working. I never ever used that syntax myself, and probably would have thought it didn't work, if asked. But in your place, I'd go check the [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view_all_bug_page.php]bug tracker[/url] and see if something like that has been mentioned, and if not, file a report. That way Graham can either fix it, if it was intended behavior all along, or refine the problem message to be better about saying you can't use two whens in conjunction.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1099&start=10#p6818
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Early Glitches
User: Alcibiades / DateTime: 2010-06-26 13:14:57

Here's one specific case:

E[color=#008000]xtent is sarf of 'More Trees'. "The Old Tent is a bit titchy as a dwelling place for all eternity, but you'd be surprised how much they cram into it. It seems in pretty good nick after untold billions of years. There's some spare ground behind the tent, and the stream burbles by to the Sarf. The rest is trees. [if unvisited] Xxxxx Zzzzz Yyyyy? [end if]"[/color] 

When you enter the room for the first time the "if unvisited" condition is ignored.

However, enter the same code, with a line break before "if unvisited" and it works correctly. I haven't read an instruction anywhere that the line break is critical, but it is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1099&start=20#p6819
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Early Glitches
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-26 13:42:26

[quote="Alcibiades"]That's my central point Emily - in a text based adventure surely the default behaviour is ENTER PLAYER INPUT - PRINT APPROPRIATE MESSAGE. All of the additional layers of grammar checking and behaviour validation are secondary to the basic loop WHEN HE SAYS THIS, SAY THIS BACK.[/quote]

Hm. You can do this in a single line with a Report (whatevering)... rule; if you mean you'd like to change the default library messages, you can get at those with the Default Messages extension by David Fisher. So I don't think the current system requires terribly much more work than what you're asking for. The syntax is different, but the syntax that you want would I think actually be less clear as users start to learn the more sophisticated behavior.

I strongly disagree with the claim that "surely the default behaviour is ENTER PLAYER INPUT - PRINT APPROPRIATE MESSAGE", though. Inform needs to figure out what the appropriate message *is*, and how the player input should affect the world model (if at all); that's not a simple process, and having multiple points at which we can influence the outcome is very useful.

(Of course, if you truly want to take a string of text and assign output without checking or changing the world model at all, you could do this with an After reading the command... rule, and never go through I7's action processing. The Activities chapter discusses some approaches. But I think that's not quite what you're asking for.)

[quote]The early chapters of the documentation do lead the reader to believe (for example) that an explicit "the description is..." or "say ..." is generally redundant, but I now find they are mandatory.[/quote] 

What in particular gives the impression that "say" is not needed? The early chapters are meant to lead into features gently, but they shouldn't be misleading outright.

[quote](What I'm doing now is siphoning my code through a mirror game to find exactly how much of it the program has understood, and the errors do seem to be largely a question of syntax, rather than logic handling. )[/quote]

Ooh, hm. So you wrote a whole bunch of code at once and then tried compiling it? I can see why that might be frustrating.

I generally recommend compiling as you go along -- it makes it a lot easier to catch errors. (This is still useful even if you're an expert user and know all the syntax you're using -- it is still nice to catch typos soon after they're made, rather than trying to ferret it out much later on.) 

For further robustness, I also recommend writing tests for expected behavior as you go along, especially if it's complicated. So for instance, at the same time that you're writing a bunch of rules about the apple, you also write 

[code]Test apple with "eat apple / polish apple / dust apple".[/code]

Then compile, then type TEST APPLE to see that you got it to do what you wanted it to do. And keep the test command around in your source so that it's easy to check later that it's still doing what you expect.

Specifically on your "if unvisited" example: spacing should not make a difference, and I am unable to reproduce a case where it does, using what you typed plus a few definitions. If you can isolate an example of this, I recommend submitting it to the [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view_all_bug_page.php]bug tracker[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1156&start=10#p6820
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Replacing procedural rules
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-06-26 13:53:22

@emshort

The activity-based approach you suggested is good idea and easier to implement over a large number of cases than the example I looked at in my last post.  A technique I have often used in the past when writing novel actions that only apply to a few particular items was to make a simple check rule to block the new action in all cases and then make individual exception rules for the things to which the action was meant to apply.  This technique will no longer be very practical under the new design scheme, but the activity-based approach is an effective substitute that is conceptually similar and has the many of the same advantages.

One of my main concerns is that I often make extensive use of automated text in a variety of contexts, and that I also frequently make large numbers of general and specific exceptions to such usage.  For example in one project I had a rule called the "general report examining rule" that looked like this (the latest version of this rule is even more complex and much longer, but I'll spare everyone the tedium of browsing through its cryptic verbiage as I'm not looking for any suggestions about improving it):

[code]Report examining something (this is the general report examining rule):
	let runondesc be 0;
	let addondesc be "";
	let rsummary be a list of text;
	let rsummary be {};
	unless the noun is a backdrop:
		if the noun is colorish:
			if the noun is submaterialish:
				say "[The noun] [is-are] [color of the item described]-colored and made of [unless the submaterial of the item described is smundef][submaterial of the item described][otherwise]an unknown substance[end if][run paragraph on]";
			otherwise:
				say "[The noun] [is-are] [color of the item described]-colored and generally made of [propermaterial for the noun][run paragraph on]";
		if the noun is not colorish:
			if the noun is submaterialish:
				say "[The noun] [is-are] made of [unless the submaterial of the item described is smundef][submaterial of the item described][otherwise]an unknown substance[end if][run paragraph on]";
			otherwise:
				say "[The noun] [is-are] generally made of [propermaterial for the noun][run paragraph on]";
	if the noun provides the property open or the noun provides the property closed:
		if the noun is open:
			change addondesc to "currently open";
			add addondesc to rsummary;
		if the noun is closed:
			change addondesc to "currently closed";
			add addondesc to rsummary;
	if the noun is broke:
		change addondesc to "broken";
		add addondesc to rsummary;
	if the noun is soiled:
		change addondesc to "[currentsoilstate of the item described]";
		add addondesc to rsummary;
	if the noun provides the property switchreportable:
		if the noun is switched on:
			change addondesc to "currently turned on";
			add addondesc to rsummary;
		if the noun is switched off:
			change addondesc to "currently turned off";
			add addondesc to rsummary;
	if the temperature of the noun is less than 32:
		change addondesc to "very cold";
		add addondesc to rsummary;
	if the temperature of the noun is greater than 149:
		if the temperature of the noun is greater than 149 and the temperature of the noun is less than 201:
			change addondesc to "scalding hot";
			add addondesc to rsummary;
		otherwise if the temperature of the noun is greater than 200 and the temperature of the noun is less than 401:
			change addondesc to "dangerously hot";
			add addondesc to rsummary;
		otherwise if the temperature of the noun is greater than 400:
			change addondesc to "glowing hot";
			add addondesc to rsummary;
	if rsummary is empty:
		unless the noun is a backdrop:
			say ".";
	if rsummary is not empty:
		unless the noun is a backdrop:
			say ".  [Cap it-they of the noun] [is-are] [rsummary].";
		otherwise:
			if the noun is backdropinteractive:
				say paragraph break;
				say "[Cap it-they of the noun] [is-are] [rsummary].".[/code]
The rule was utilized for a large number of things, but an equally large number of things either had their own unique examine rule (usually with similarly complex clauses) or used the standard report examining rule.  The prospect of combining this "general report examining rule" with other particular examining rules as well as the standard report examining rule into one epic rule, and then doing similar patch-work for a large number of other actions and contexts, and then keeping in mind a clear idea of how each of these epic rules function when the time comes for further modification seems like something that may require more time than I'd care to devote to the matter.  Hopefully it will be much easier and manageable to adapt the activity-based approach you've suggested than ponder revised Standard Rules that run for hundreds of lines.


off-topic p.s.:
I didn't look at the current bug-list thingy to see if this was already reported (feel free to just smack me), but both your Locksmith and your Deluxe Doors extensions require a number of syntax changes in order to work with 6E59 while the "Use no deprecated features" option is active.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1156&start=10#p6821
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Replacing procedural rules
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-26 14:13:32

Burble. Yeah, I wouldn't want to keep track of that either.

Partly I think this is a question of coding instincts which are different for I7 than for many other languages. My aesthetic/design sensibility for Inform 7 says that if I have a rule that runs to more than 10-20 lines, or has numerous if-statements like that, it's time to break out into a rulebook or activity.

I use activities for printing variable text, because they come with some neat hooks, like
-- the ability to say "rule for printing the name of the apple while showing the device operation of the apple corer" 
-- the ability to add text or processing right before or after the activity, as in "before showing the device operation of the apple corer: play the electric device sound" or "after printing the name of Mr Beebe: say ", Esq.".

I use rulebooks for many other tasks involving detailed decision-making, because they let you bind together a collection of prioritized rules and track variables that last for the duration of the rulebook processing. 

The "Tilt 2" example, which analyzes a group of five cards to see what value it has as a poker hand, is a good example of the kind of very exception-filled, fiddly analysis that would simply be too awful to contemplate as a single continuous piece of code. The discipline of thinking about it in terms of rulebooks helps me figure out what to do:

-- consider what variables are going to be important in making this calculation; for instance, in the poker rules, I want to know whether all the cards are the same suit, because that will be important for several decisions later on. Make those into rulebook variables. Make the first rule(s) of my new rulebook calculate the value of those variables.

-- create the rulebook to identify (usually) the most specific/complex cases first (a royal flush is a very specific kind of poker hand, so we want to identify it and get it out of the way before we go on to other kinds of straight flush, other kinds of straight, other kinds of flush...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1099&start=20#p6822
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Early Glitches
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-06-26 14:28:50

[quote="Alcibiades"]Have I mentioned Bintok's Kitten Plantation? It's just behind the tent...[/quote]
I'm usually not opposed to cat death in general, but this sounds a bit brutal even to me. [emote]:D[/emote] 

@alcibiades

I'm not sure I quite understand what you're trying to do, but emshort's point

[quote="emshort"]
I strongly disagree with the claim that "surely the default behaviour is ENTER PLAYER INPUT - PRINT APPROPRIATE MESSAGE", though. Inform needs to figure out what the appropriate message *is*, and how the player input should affect the world model (if at all); that's not a simple process, and having multiple points at which we can influence the outcome is very useful.[/quote]
is important and seems fairly relevant to what you've discussed.  If you were to write "The apple is a thing.  Eating it: "Mmmm, that hit the spot," I don't see how one could expect a consistently reliable derivation of your intentions to be performed by I7.  Eating it when? where? how?

I can see your other point, though, that the I7 documentation is fairly misleading (at least until one proceeds far into it) in regard to the practical level of specificity required in assertions.  One only has to browse a few questions from those new to Inform posted in this forum before a clear pattern emerges showing that the inexperienced unanimously give examples full of the word "it," and that such vagary often plays an unwitting role in their problem or issue.




-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1099&start=20#p6823
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Early Glitches
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-06-26 14:59:49

[quote="Alcibiades"]Here's one specific case:

E[color=#008000]xtent is sarf of 'More Trees'. "The Old Tent is a bit titchy as a dwelling place for all eternity, but you'd be surprised how much they cram into it. It seems in pretty good nick after untold billions of years. There's some spare ground behind the tent, and the stream burbles by to the Sarf. The rest is trees. [if unvisited] Xxxxx Zzzzz Yyyyy? [end if]"[/color] 

When you enter the room for the first time the "if unvisited" condition is ignored.

However, enter the same code, with a line break before "if unvisited" and it works correctly. I haven't read an instruction anywhere that the line break is critical, but it is.[/quote]

It worked for me perfectly.[code]The plains are south of the old tent. 

The old tent is a room. "The Old Tent is a bit titchy as a dwelling place for all eternity, but you'd be surprised how much they cram into it. It seems in pretty good nick after untold billions of years. There's some spare ground behind the tent, and the stream burbles by to the Sarf. The rest is trees. [if unvisited] Xxxxx Zzzzz Yyyyy? [end if]" 

The player is in the plains.

Test me with "north / look".
[/code]Produces..[quote="transcript"]
tst
An Interactive Fiction by Ron Newcomb
Release 1 / Serial number 100626 / Inform 7 build 6E59 (I6/v6.31 lib 6/12N) SD

plains

>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] north

old tent
The Old Tent is a bit titchy as a dwelling place for all eternity, but you'd be surprised how much they cram into it. It seems in pretty good nick after untold billions of years. There's some spare ground behind the tent, and the stream burbles by to the Sarf. The rest is trees.  Xxxxx Zzzzz Yyyyy? 

>[2] look
old tent
The Old Tent is a bit titchy as a dwelling place for all eternity, but you'd be surprised how much they cram into it. It seems in pretty good nick after untold billions of years. There's some spare ground behind the tent, and the stream burbles by to the Sarf. The rest is trees. 

>
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1156&start=10#p6824
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Replacing procedural rules
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-06-26 15:23:45

[quote="Endosphere"]I've never cared much for the way the standard examine devices rule works, and I always delist it.
[code]The examine devices rule is not listed in any rulebook.[/code][/quote]
OK, so far so good. (And as a player, thank you for implementing TURN on that lightstick. I love that.)

But this:[code]
Report examining the lightstick01:
	if the lightstick01 has been lit:
		say "[The noun] is currently [if switched on]turned on, emitting a pale green glow[otherwise]turned off[end if]."[/code]
Has two issues. One, the say phrase needs to end in "instead" so that once this message is printed,  no other Report rules will run and say stuff. And two, that if-condition needs to be moved into the rule header, so the rule is listed before more general rules, such as "Report examining the lightstick01" or "Report examining a device":[code]
Report examining the lightstick01 when the lightstick01 has been lit:
	say "[The noun] is currently turned [if switched on]on, emitting a pale green glow[otherwise]off[end if]." instead.[/code]   
Since the conditions on this rule are very specific, it will be considered before the examine devices rule. And since the rule uses "instead", the examine devices rule (among others) won't be considered afterward, either.  So you [i]never[/i] need to do that full-of-exceptions business.  This is why Inform is rule-based.  Exceptions like that lightstick occur constantly.  So we write rules that apply specifically to the lightstick, and Inform will re-order all those report rules so that the specific rules are consulted first.  And, via that "instead", that lightstick-specific rule can also say yea or nay to whether the rest of the report rules are even given a chance to run, let alone print.

The procedural rules are problematic in that new users frequently try them when they don't really need to.  Partly this may be the documentation. I myself was un-listing standard report rules before someone told me to just tack on "instead".  I don't feel that say...instead (or any other time instead can be appended) have really been stressed like it should be.  The one place most people are aware of its use is in Check rules.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1156&start=10#p6825
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Replacing procedural rules
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-26 15:38:20

[quote="Endosphere"] off-topic p.s.:
I didn't look at the current bug-list thingy to see if this was already reported (feel free to just smack me), but both your Locksmith and your Deluxe Doors extensions require a number of syntax changes in order to work with 6E59 while the "Use no deprecated features" option is active.[/quote]

I'm chagrined about the Locksmith thing -- I thought we'd tested that, but it turns out that we had only tested after stripping procedural rules and not a second time after the change to use options. I've sent Graham new copies of the built-in extensions for the upcoming build.

The non-built-in extensions, I'm working my way through: there are a lot of them, and I don't have enough time to do them all at once, so it's a slow process. If Deluxe Doors is a priority for you, I'll try to get to it sooner rather than later; alternatively, if you (or anyone, really) want to make the adjustments and send me an updated version, I'll post it gratefully.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1099&start=20#p6826
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Early Glitches
User: Alcibiades / DateTime: 2010-06-26 16:44:04

Emily and Ron - 

I'm even more mystified now, because the code I posted was (xxx yyy aside) verbatim, and the parser certainly did ignore the {if univisited] test until I inserted a line break. I'm working on a Dual 867 MHz Power PC G4 running OSX 10.5.8, and the I7 software is  (1.2 6.31/6E59), or the most recent public edition. I've checked the preceding code for trailing unclosed [ ]s, but there are none, and the parser wouldn't miss an error of that sort, I think.  So how do we account for that? 

And Emily - I am not making criticisms of the subtlety and intricacy of the I7 parser, which of course needs to sift complex ambiguities in coloquial usage. Where I7 trumps TADS is principally that it is designed to be writer-friendly, not programmer-friendly, and so a certain intuitiveness is actually expected of it. Certainly the more customisable such a program is, the greater its value - and I hope to make good use of that expansion capability further down the line - but it is not impossible that the labyrinthine complexities of deeper level coding/customising could distract the makers from ambiguities and confusions at the playpen level.

Meanwhile back to my homework. Perhaps these will seem dumb questions to me before I've finished. But then again perhaps not..

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1099&start=20#p6827
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Early Glitches
User: Alcibiades / DateTime: 2010-06-26 16:49:42

[quote="Endosphere"][quote="Alcibiades"]Have I mentioned Bintok's Kitten Plantation? It's just behind the tent...[/quote]
I'm usually not opposed to cat death in general, but this sounds a bit brutal even to me. [emote]:D[/emote] [/quote]

Tisk.  Bintok plants his kittens (very gently) with a view to harvesting a bumper crop in due coarse - he waters them EVERY DAY and puts a fresh saucer of milk down for each - but his grasp of horticultural principles is shaky.  "Cat death"?  Bintok would declare war on you, and then you'd be in a right fix.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1099&start=20#p6828
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Early Glitches
User: Alcibiades / DateTime: 2010-06-26 17:05:28

More doltish examples (sorry about this) - all from the start room to the game -

[color=#004000]Before going northeast / southeast / northwest / southwest say "Tch! We don't fiddle with fractions in THE BARTOKS. We like our compost headings kept simple." instead.
[/color]
is syntactically invalid.

[color=#004000]The trees are scenery. The description is "If you've scene one tree you've scene 'em all, but that's just MY opinion."[/color]

No such item exists when you run it.

[color=#004000]The stream is scenery. Understand "babbling", "brook" and "jumping fish" as stream. The description is "It's behind you, are you deaf?  Can't you hear it babbling? Go Sarf."[/color]

Ditto.


[color=#004000]Scrambled egg is an edible thing. The printed name is "two plates of smashing scrambled egg (still warm)". The description is " 'Eggs marks the spot' as Bartok always quips (the scamp). Scrambled egg is the technical pterm for a yummy hot brekfuss. It's even better with baked beans, but they make your bottom burp something shocking. Plates are what you have to put it on so your knees don't get all messy. Bintok's scrambled egg is shaped like bunny rabbits, while Bartok's is shaped like a Sherman tank (just so they know whose is witch). Anyway that's what that is, in pterms of a morning meal, as such."

Understand "brekfuss" and "nosh" as scrambled egg. [/color]

Ditto ditto

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1099&start=20#p6829
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Early Glitches
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-26 17:09:48

[quote="Alcibiades"]Emily and Ron - 

I'm even more mystified now, because the code I posted was (xxx yyy aside) verbatim, and the parser certainly did ignore the {if univisited] test until I inserted a line break. I'm working on a Dual 867 MHz Power PC G4 running OSX 10.5.8, and the I7 software is  (1.2 6.31/6E59), or the most recent public edition. I've checked the preceding code for trailing unclosed [ ]s, but there are none, and the parser wouldn't miss an error of that sort, I think.  So how do we account for that?[/quote]

I really don't know. 

I did recently have a similarly mystifying experience where a line break made a critical difference for no valid reason, but when I pasted the source code to a text editor and then pasted it back into the IDE, it compiled properly again. My best guess is that there might inadvertently have been some kind of gremlin character -- some strange escaped thingy that messed with compilation behavior in that case, but didn't show up on screen. (Have you tried pasting your source code from a text editor or webpage back into the IDE and seeing what happened?)

[quote="Alcibiades"]And Emily - I am not making criticisms of the subtlety and intricacy of the I7 parser, which of course needs to sift complex ambiguities in coloquial usage. Where I7 trumps TADS is principally that it is designed to be writer-friendly, not programmer-friendly, and so a certain intuitiveness is actually expected of it. Certainly the more customisable such a program is, the greater its value - and I hope to make good use of that expansion capability further down the line - but it is not impossible that the labyrinthine complexities of deeper level coding/customising could distract the makers from ambiguities and confusions at the playpen level.[/quote]

That's a totally valid point: I know we're not able to see the language through the eyes of novices. I frequently have interactions where I explain something that seems straightforward to me, then go back to check out what the documentation says about that feature and discover that from a novice standpoint it is potentially confusing. So this feedback is useful, and is taken seriously. 

That said, the problem of which complexity to conceal is a bit thorny. The manual starts off with "Instead of (action)" because that is the least complex possible way of doing things: if you are willing to re-state the default action behavior where necessary for your "Instead of..." cases and you don't care about Inform's internal representation of whether actions succeeded or failed, then you can do just about everything I outlined above with just Instead rules. It's not the most elegant or efficient way, and it's not the way that plays most nicely in extensions with other people's code, but for the most elementary purposes, it works. And it's conceptually straightforward: I am making a replacement for what the game normally does when I type EAT APPLE. So that's why we start there and then build up to a more complicated view of the action rulebook. 

Some people like that. Some people find it really confusing, and would rather have the whole picture up front. Learning styles differ. And I could be wrong, but it's not clear to me that changing the names of the rules involved would help make things clearer, while the downsides (breaking every single piece of legacy code currently in existence) would be enormous.

I'd say the manual is probably not (currently) ideal even for the people whose learning style it matches, and it needs a rewrite, but even when it's had that, it won't work for everyone. Some people prefer to learn by working through a tutorial game that adds features slowly; some people like a really programmer-centric approach, or one that explains fundamental aspects of the language first in theoretical terms and then gets down to specifics. Ron Newcomb has even written a tutorial that starts with the idea of scenes and works its way up to action handling and movement features later on.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1099&start=20#p6830
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Early Glitches
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-26 17:11:40

[quote="Alcibiades"]More doltish examples (sorry about this) - all from the start room to the game -

[color=#004000]The trees are scenery. The description is "If you've scene one tree you've scene 'em all, but that's just MY opinion."[/color]

No such item exists when you run it.

[color=#004000]The stream is scenery. Understand "babbling", "brook" and "jumping fish" as stream. The description is "It's behind you, are you deaf?  Can't you hear it babbling? Go Sarf."[/color]

Ditto.


[color=#004000]Scrambled egg is an edible thing. The printed name is "two plates of smashing scrambled egg (still warm)". The description is " 'Eggs marks the spot' as Bartok always quips (the scamp). Scrambled egg is the technical pterm for a yummy hot brekfuss. It's even better with baked beans, but they make your bottom burp something shocking. Plates are what you have to put it on so your knees don't get all messy. Bintok's scrambled egg is shaped like bunny rabbits, while Bartok's is shaped like a Sherman tank (just so they know whose is witch). Anyway that's what that is, in pterms of a morning meal, as such."

Understand "brekfuss" and "nosh" as scrambled egg. [/color]

Ditto ditto[/quote]

Unless I'm missing something, you haven't said where any of these things *are*, so they'll be created sort of floating in limbo, waiting to be brought on-stage later in the action. (Objects that legitimately start out of play and then show up partway through the game in response to player actions are actually quite common, so there's a reason why the compiler doesn't complain if you don't give them a home.) 

Anyway, you need "The scrambled egg is an edible thing in Bartok's Breakfast Nook", or something along those lines.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1099&start=20#p6831
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Early Glitches
User: Alcibiades / DateTime: 2010-06-26 17:29:32

OK Em, but again - nowhere have I seen (as yet) that an explicit declaration of location is actually required. Ergo: it is presumed to exist in the location where it is initially defined. And expressly so when you define an object as "scenery" immediately below the room description which mentions that object. Sorting the scenery from the actionable objects intuitively belongs immediately below the room description. (I would have thought.)

Years ago when I was coding in BBC basic (32k), I kept room definitions and object definitions explicitly separate in the data store, but it is far handier to have them grouped together where they physically occur in the game.

Are you getting ready to email a dunce cap yet?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1099&start=20#p6832
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Early Glitches
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-06-26 17:32:32

[quote="emshort"]I did recently have a similarly mystifying experience where a line break made a critical difference for no valid reason, but when I pasted the source code to a text editor and then pasted it back into the IDE, it compiled properly again. My best guess is that there might inadvertently have been some kind of gremlin character -- some strange escaped thingy that messed with compilation behavior in that case, but didn't show up on screen.[/quote]

FYI, I have had this happen a few times in the Mac IDE. Rarely, line endings (or other characters) seem to go bad and generate spurious compiler errors. As you found, passing the text through an external editor and pasting it back in clears up the issue.

I have never reported it as a bug because I can't find any way to reproduce the problem...

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1099&start=30#p6833
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Early Glitches
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-06-26 17:41:50

[quote="Alcibiades"]OK Em, but again - nowhere have I seen (as yet) that an explicit declaration of location is actually required. Ergo: it is presumed to exist in the location where it is initially defined. And expressly so when you define an object as "scenery" immediately below the room description which mentions that object. Sorting the scenery from the actionable objects intuitively belongs immediately below the room description. (I would have thought.)[/quote]

I'm not sure you aren't being willfully obtuse now... I mean, [i]of course[/i] it's required to say where you want something, at least if you want the item to go somewhere (as Emily said, if you don't say where you want it, it will go nowhere). All of the examples show this, so regardless of whether it's expressly stated (and I'm sure that in fact it is), it's certainly well communicated.

Now, if you want Inform to put a defined item in the last room you mentioned, there is a shortened syntax for that. It is given multiple times on the [i]first page[/i] of the Things chapter:

[code]The Cobble Crawl is a room. "You are crawling over cobbles in a low passage. There is a dim light at the east end of the passage."
A wicker cage is here. "There is a small wicker cage discarded nearby."[/code]

If you are indeed serious about this and not just pulling our legs(?), I suspect that you may have seen this syntax and merely forgot about the "is here" part...

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1188&start=0#p6834
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Code problem
User: jcdf / DateTime: 2010-06-26 18:04:35

I am new and still learning IF Inform 7. What I want to do is create a container that can only hold a number of specified items and nothing else. I am bit frustrated having difficulty implementing something that should be quite simple.

The container is called a wallet. The player should be able to deposit a student card, a fifty dollar bill and a rental card in the wallet without difficulty. If the player tries to place the fire extinguisher or chair into the wallet then the action should be stopped and a message provided to support this fact. The following is a sample of code that illustrates the problem.

[quote]
"Game 1" by jcdf

The Hall is a room. In the Hall is a container called a wallet. In the Hall is a thing called a student card. In the Hall is a thing  called a fifty dollar bill. In the Hall is a  thing called a rental card. In the Hall is a thing called a fire extinguisher. In the  Hall is a thing called a chair.

Instead of inserting something that is not a student card into a wallet, say "That cannot be placed in the wallet."
Instead of inserting something that is not a fifty dollar bill into a wallet, say "That cannot be placed in the wallet."
Instead of inserting something that is not a rental card into a wallet, say "That cannot be placed in the wallet."

test me with "pick up wallet / pick up student card / pick up rental card / pick up fire extinguisher / put student card in wallet /   put rental card in wallet / put fire extinguisher in wallet".
[/quote]

I also tried substituting the three "Instead of inserting something" lines with the following:

[quote]
Before inserting a noun into the wallet:
    if the noun is not a fifty dollar bill or a student card or a rental card, say "You cannot put a [noun] into your wallet!"   instead.
[/quote]

None of them worked. The player was unable to put the items "student card or fifty dollar bill or rental card" into the wallet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1188&start=0#p6835
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Code problem
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-06-26 18:21:05

[quote="jcdf"]Instead of inserting something that is not a student card into a wallet, say "That cannot be placed in the wallet."
Instead of inserting something that is not a fifty dollar bill into a wallet, say "That cannot be placed in the wallet."
Instead of inserting something that is not a rental card into a wallet, say "That cannot be placed in the wallet."
[/quote]
The problem here is that these rules overlap so that nothing is allowed to be inserted: If you try to insert the student card, the first rule passes but because it's not a bill or a rental card, the two other rules stop it from being inserted and so on.

[quote]
Before inserting a noun into the wallet:
    if the noun is not a fifty dollar bill or a student card or a rental card, say "You cannot put a [noun] into your wallet!"   instead.
[/quote]
This should work better, but you have to write the different parts of the condition in full and use "something" instead of "a noun" on the first line:

[code]Before inserting something into the wallet:
    if the noun is not a fifty dollar bill and the noun is not a student card and the noun is not a rental card, say "You cannot put [a noun] into your wallet!" instead.[/code]

(note also "and" instead of "or".)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1156&start=10#p6836
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Replacing procedural rules
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-26 19:03:18

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]The procedural rules are problematic in that new users frequently try them when they don't really need to.  Partly this may be the documentation. I myself was un-listing standard report rules before someone told me to just tack on "instead".  I don't feel that say...instead (or any other time instead can be appended) have really been stressed like it should be.  The one place most people are aware of its use is in Check rules.[/quote]

One potential issue is that it's pretty hard to find the documentation for tacking on "Instead" if you don't know where to look. That formulation shows up a fair amount in the examples, but searching for "instead" in the documentation to find it is pretty futile -- even searching for "instead." it just took me a fair amount of paging through to get to the "Named outcomes" documentation.

Matt

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1156&start=10#p6837
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Replacing procedural rules
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-26 19:05:45

Okay, interesting point. Where do people feel would be a natural place to introduce the explanation of "instead"? I feel like it's sufficiently basic that it ought to be somewhere early (and I thought it *was* mentioned somewhere early, but possibly in a casual/in passing kind of way). Where did you want to learn it and/or where are you looking for it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1156&start=20#p6838
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Replacing procedural rules
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-06-26 19:35:47

@Ron

You bring up several useful technical points that everyone should always keep in mind.  In the case of the example I used of the light-stick, though, that device already functions exactly as I intended--the player is meant to discover that the item is a device, and only after such occurs is an update of its on/off status appended to its description.  In other words, it's by intention that the item was designed to utilize the special "report examining the lightstick01 rule" in addition to (rather than instead of) the standard report examining rule.  For example, an interaction with the item may (hopefully) play out like this (demonstrating why tacking an "instead" on to the end of the report rule would interfere with its intended behavior):

[code]>x cylinder
A transparent cylinder, apparently made of an ultra-hard polymer material.  The cylinder is about eight inches long and filled with what seems to be a viscuous green liquid.  A small seam runs around the middle of the cylinder.

>get cylinder
Taken.

>i
You are carrying:
  a cylinder filled with viscuous green liquid[/code]
Although the item was culled from my scratchpad rather than an actual game, if it were included in a real project my intention at this point would be for the player to think (perhaps prodded by some additional clue found elsewhere) "Hmm... what's this seam thing on there?  Maybe I could twist the ends?"

[code]>twist cylinder
You switch the light stick on.

>x cylinder
A light-stick made of a very hard yet transparent polymer material.  Twisting the ends of the cylinder either causes the thick gel inside to emit a dull green light, or causes the device to stop emitting light if it is currently so doing.

The light stick is currently turned on, emitting a pale green glow.[/code]
On the other hand if the "report examining the lightstick01" rule was written as you suggested, the player would initially see:

[code]>x cylinder
A transparent cylinder, apparently made of an ultra-hard polymer material.  The cylinder is about eight inches long and filled with what seems to be a viscuous green liquid.  A small seam runs around the middle of the cylinder.

The cylinder filled with viscuous green liquid is currently turned off.[/code]
thereby giving away its true nature too soon.

In any case I only used that example in the context of furthering the discussion about replacing procedural rules, rather than as something I was struggling with (although we can discuss that code if you like, since you're the OP in this thread and may take it in any direction you like).

I've admittedly forgotten a few things after not looking at I7 for several months.  Although your points about tacking an "instead" on to a reporting rule are useful for everyone even though they didn't apply to the particular example I raised, I seem to recall there is some potential pitfall associated with disrupting the turn sequence when "instead" is used in a report rule.  At the moment, though, I can't recall the nature of any such problem.  Does anyone else know what I may be talking about on that issue?


@emshort

There's no need to rush anything on my part, as I already fixed both extensions for my own use.  I think the only change required for Deluxe Doors was to rewrite the paragraph:

[code]Setting action variables:
	if the noun is a door which is a half-door of a door (called real target)
	begin;
		if real target is in the location of the actor, change the noun to real target;
	end if;
	if the second noun is a door which is a half-door of a door (called real target)
	begin;
		if real target is in the location of the actor, change the second noun to real target;
	end if.[/code]
as:

[code]Setting action variables:
	if the noun is a door which is a half-door of a door (called real target)
	begin;
		if real target is in the location of the actor, now the noun is real target;
	end if;
	if the second noun is a door which is a half-door of a door (called real target)
	begin;
		if real target is in the location of the actor, now the second noun is real target;
	end if.[/code]
In regard to the more general issue of the I7 documentation, I think the issue isn't that "instead" rules are introduced too early--rather the issue is that they're the [i]only[/i] sort of action rules discussed at all until one proceeds quite far into the documentation.  Hence when I have answered questions in the past on this forum from inexperienced folks who are still struggling with the basics, I have usually found myself trying to explain why their posted examples (full of "instead" rules) may not be the best way of going about things.  Typically any discussions of check/carry out/report rules elicit the response "Really?  I'm only on chapter (3, 4, 5, etc) in the instructions, and I never heard about that stuff."




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1156&start=20#p6839
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: tacking "instead" on the end
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-26 20:32:43

[quote="emshort"]Okay, interesting point. Where do people feel would be a natural place to introduce the explanation of "instead"? I feel like it's sufficiently basic that it ought to be somewhere early (and I thought it *was* mentioned somewhere early, but possibly in a casual/in passing kind of way). Where did you want to learn it and/or where are you looking for it?[/quote]

Just personally, I encountered it in "Entrapment" (which was example 154 but probably isn't anymore), in this rule:

[code]Instead of embarrassing behavior: 
    if the player is nervous, now the player is embarrassed; 
    if the player is confident: 
        say "Before you can act, you hear movement from the inner office. You freeze, not quite ready to be discovered in this situation. But no one comes out, and you begin to breathe more easily."; 
        now the player is nervous instead; 
    continue the action.[/code]

This was in section 10.2. So then I was wondering what that "...instead" syntax meant until I hit the explanation in chapter 18. But chapter 10, which is about scenes, clearly wouldn't be the place to introduce it -- a forward reference would be the most I could expect. 

By the way, is there any difference between this and "stop the action," other than that this fits on one line?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1156&start=20#p6840
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Replacing procedural rules
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-06-26 21:13:45

@matt w

[quote="matt w"]By the way, is there any difference between this and "stop the action," other than that this fits on one line?[/quote]
The distinction is usually fairly literal--do we want to do something instead of something else, or quit if we can't have our first choice?.  There are many cases where the two can be used interchangeably, but there are other cases where one or the other is more appropriate.  For example consider the following rules (culled from an old project), which use both:

[code][Filtering out the cryptic verbiage, this is a check for wearing corrective lenses]

Check an actor wearing an ocular (this is the broad-sweeping check ocular wearing rule):
	if the noun is broke:
		if the actor is the player or the player can see the actor:
			say "[The noun] [is-are] badly damaged, and unlikely to be of any use." instead;
		otherwise:
			stop the action;
	if the noun is trinketish:
		if the noun is monocle:
			unless the actor embodies a zeye:
				if the actor is the player or the player can see the actor:
					say "[if the actor is the player]You don't[otherwise][The actor] doesn't[end if] have any eyes, and therefore won't benefit in any way from wearing [the noun]." instead;
				otherwise:
					stop the action;
			otherwise:
				try the actor trinketwearing the noun on a random zeye embodied by the actor instead;
		otherwise:
			unless the actor embodies a zgeyes:
				if the actor is the player or the player can see the actor:
					say "[The noun] isn't designed to fit [if the actor is the player]your[otherwise][the actor]'s[end if] anatomy." instead;
				otherwise:
					stop the action;
			otherwise:
				try the actor trinketwearing the noun on a random zgeyes embodied by the actor instead.

*****

[This is a check for plugging a corded appliance into an electrical source]

Check an actor connecting something to something (this is the general check precursors for connecting rule):
	if the noun is the second noun:
		if the actor is the player or the player can see the actor:
			say "That's irrational." instead;
		otherwise:
			stop the action;
	unless the actor is intelligent-life:
		if the actor is the player:
			say "You try to concentrate, but the task seems too hard and you are quickly distracted." instead;
		otherwise:
			if the player can see the actor:
				say "Such tasks are beyond [the actor]'s mental capacity." instead;
			otherwise:
				stop the action;
	if the actor is movement-restricted:
		if the actor is the player:
			say "You're not currently able to move well enough to try that." instead;
		otherwise:
			if the player can see the actor:
				say "[The actor] can't move well enough right now to try that." instead;
			otherwise:
				stop the action;
	if the noun is a backdrop:
		unless the noun is backdropinteractive:
			if the actor is the player or the player can see the actor:
				say "That's highly implausible." instead;
			otherwise:
				stop the action;
	if the second noun is a backdrop:
		unless the second noun is backdropinteractive:
			if the actor is the player or the player can see the actor:
				say "That's highly implausible." instead;
			otherwise:
				stop the action.

*****

[Here's a check for whether food is too hot or too cold to eat]

Before an actor eating something (this is the temperature check for eating rule):
	if the temperature of the noun is less than -50:
		if the actor is the player:
			say "[The noun] is too cold to even pick up; attempting to eat it at this time would injure you." instead;
		otherwise:
			if the player can see the actor:
				say "[The noun] is too cold for [the actor] to even handle at this time; eating it is out of the question." instead;
			otherwise:
				stop the action;
	otherwise if the temperature of the noun is greater than 149 and the temperature of the noun is less than 201:
		if the actor is the player:
			say "[The noun] is scalding hot, and trying to eat it at this time would certainly injure you." instead;
		otherwise:
			if the player can see the actor:
				say "[The noun] is scalding hot, and [the actor] is unable to safely eat it at this time." instead;
			otherwise:
				stop the action;
	otherwise if the temperature of the noun is greater than 200 and the temperature of the noun is less than 401:
		if the actor is the player or the player can see the actor:
			say "[The noun] is literally burning hot; attempting to eat or even handle it at this time would definitely result in a serious injury." instead;
		otherwise:
			stop the action;
	otherwise if the temperature of the noun is greater than 400:
		if the actor is the player or the player can see the actor:
			say "[The noun] is heated to a temperature of several hundred degrees; touching it at this time would certainly result in a serious injury, and ingesting it could result in an agonizing death." instead;
		otherwise:
			stop the action.[/code]
Basically an "instead" usually redirects the current action to some other action, while a "stop the action" does exactly what its name implies.  In the above examples, for the most part "instead" is used where we want to stop the current action and then do something else (namely, print some message).  On the other hand "stop the action" is used above for actors behaving independently in a different room than the player-character; since the player-character can't see these actors, the player isn't given an update regarding their current activities (or failure to perform activities).

While this is only one sort of distinction between "instead" and "stop the action," hopefully it will give you some idea of the ways in which they differ.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1156&start=20#p6841
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Replacing procedural rules
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-26 21:21:11

But would this behave any differently than the corresponding part of your code?

[code]Check an actor wearing an ocular (this is the broad-sweeping check ocular wearing rule):
   if the noun is broke:
      if the actor is the player or the player can see the actor:
         say "[The noun] [is-are] badly damaged, and unlikely to be of any use.";
      stop the action;[/code]

Unless I've goofed up, "Stop the action" will get called whenever the noun is broke, but the "say" phrase will only get called when the actor is the player or the player can see the actor -- is that right?

(Don't mean to disparage the trailing "instead," just trying to get clearer on how it works.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1156&start=20#p6842
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Replacing procedural rules
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-06-27 00:24:51

@matt w

You're not misunderstanding anything (maybe in fact I misunderstood your original question).  In the narrow sense we're talking about here, there isn't much difference between adding an "instead" on to the end of a sentence and following a sentence up with "stop the action."  In this context "instead" is simpler if a clause in your rule only has one line, while "stop the action" allows for easier design if a clause considers several lines.  As I mentioned before, the main difference is that you must use an "instead" if you wish to redirect to another action ("stop the action," as implied, won't handle that).  In a case where the redirection is simply to print some text (as it often is in the examples I posted), preferring either "instead" or "stop the action" is a trivial choice.

Depending upon how heavily you rely on the default library messages ("X is unable to do that" and so forth), here's either a mildly useful example or else a highly contrived example where "instead (at the end of a line)" and "stop the action" are truly used for different purposes:

[code]The Hallway is a room.  The Office is a room.

A door called the office door is east of the hallway and west of the office.  The office door is locked and not lockable.  The description of the office door is "An ancient door with rusty hinges.  It seems to be jammed."

The matching key of the office door is the silver key.  The the silver key is in the hallway.

Eddie is a man in the hallway.

Persuasion rule: persuasion succeeds.

Knocking is an action applying to one thing.  Understand "knock on [something]" as knocking.

Report an actor knocking:
	say "[if the actor is the player]You knock[otherwise][The actor] knocks[end if] on [the noun]."

Check someone opening a door (called blocker):
	if the noun is locked:
		let tool be the matching key of the blocker;
		if the person asked has tool:
			try the person asked unlocking blocker with tool;
			unless blocker is unlocked:
				stop the action;
		otherwise:
			try the actor knocking the noun instead.

Test door with "eddie, open door / eddie, get key / eddie, open door / x door".[/code]
I'm sure you get this already, but for the benefit of any others who may be having trouble following along we're definitely not talking at all about "instead rules" in the sense of:

[code]Instead of xxxx:
	do yyyy.[/code]
written by themselves, which of course have many dramatic effects on the turn sequence.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1156&start=20#p6843
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Replacing procedural rules
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-06-27 01:11:54

[quote="matt w"]By the way, is there any difference between this and "stop the action," other than that this fits on one line?[/quote]
I don't think there's any functional difference. The phrase "stop the action" (from the Standard Rules) and this form of "instead" (which seems to be internal to the compiler) both translate to "rtrue" in I6.

[quote="Endosphere"]As I mentioned before, the main difference is that you must use an "instead" if you wish to redirect to another action ("stop the action," as implied, won't handle that).[/quote]
Actually, "try singing; stop the action" works just like "try singing instead".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1187&start=0#p6844
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: rules with multiple conditions don't work anymore
User: farvardin / DateTime: 2010-06-27 04:03:39

thank you both, I didn't know it was possible to use the other, shorter, syntax. I've posted a bug report, as suggested:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=134">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=134</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1188&start=0#p6845
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Code problem
User: jcdf / DateTime: 2010-06-27 05:23:14

Thanks a lot Juhana for your help!  [emote]:P[/emote]


I should have seen that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1156&start=20#p6846
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Replacing procedural rules
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-27 07:42:18

[quote="Endosphere"]@matt w

You're not misunderstanding anything (maybe in fact I misunderstood your original question).  In the narrow sense we're talking about here, there isn't much difference between adding an "instead" on to the end of a sentence and following a sentence up with "stop the action."  In this context "instead" is simpler if a clause in your rule only has one line, while "stop the action" allows for easier design if a clause considers several lines.  As I mentioned before, the main difference is that you must use an "instead" if you wish to redirect to another action ("stop the action," as implied, won't handle that).  In a case where the redirection is simply to print some text (as it often is in the examples I posted), preferring either "instead" or "stop the action" is a trivial choice.

Depending upon how heavily you rely on the default library messages ("X is unable to do that" and so forth), here's either a mildly useful example or else a highly contrived example where "instead (at the end of a line)" and "stop the action" are truly used for different purposes:

[code]The Hallway is a room.  The Office is a room.

A door called the office door is east of the hallway and west of the office.  The office door is locked and not lockable.  The description of the office door is "An ancient door with rusty hinges.  It seems to be jammed."

The matching key of the office door is the silver key.  The the silver key is in the hallway.

Eddie is a man in the hallway.

Persuasion rule: persuasion succeeds.

Knocking is an action applying to one thing.  Understand "knock on [something]" as knocking.

Report an actor knocking:
	say "[if the actor is the player]You knock[otherwise][The actor] knocks[end if] on [the noun]."

Check someone opening a door (called blocker):
	if the noun is locked:
		let tool be the matching key of the blocker;
		if the person asked has tool:
			try the person asked unlocking blocker with tool;
			unless blocker is unlocked:
				stop the action;
		otherwise:
			try the actor knocking the noun instead.

Test door with "eddie, open door / eddie, get key / eddie, open door / x door".[/code]
I'm sure you get this already, but for the benefit of any others who may be having trouble following along we're definitely not talking at all about "instead rules" in the sense of:

[code]Instead of xxxx:
	do yyyy.[/code]
written by themselves, which of course have many dramatic effects on the turn sequence.[/quote]

Ah, this is very helpful: the difference is that "stop the action" can be used without an accompanying effect, as the sole result of a conditional or something, and "instead" needs to be attached to something. Which makes sense given the syntax.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=971&start=0#p6847
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What evil may lurk in the cold heart of a snowman?
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-06-27 15:31:33

Thanks for tip,  kangyutai.  I often hire escorts (because, like, I don't have a girlfriend and stuff) and I've always yearned to theologize with them after we "take care of bidness," but the working girls in my area don't seem very versatile in their interests.  Just the other day for example, after spending three or four minutes demonstrating the wide range of my herculean sexual prowess with a young lady from the local escort service, I told her that while playing Pac-Man I often have holy visions that the little dots are people and that Pac-Man is eating their souls as he whooshes through the mazes.  I asked her what she thought these visions mean in the context of the prophecies of Ezekiel, but for some reason she quickly just counted her money and rushed out the door without even bothering to put her shoes back on.

Therefore as a kindred spirit who values both theological discussion and escort services as much as I do, I respect your opinion a lot.  Your recommendation that New York call girls really satisfy means a lot to me, and I am now planning to move to New York as soon as my parole ends in order to spend some quality time with these fine ho's.

Thanks again, you've changed my life.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1189&start=0#p6848
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Animate vs. Inanimate
User: moromis / DateTime: 2010-06-27 21:12:58

I'm trying to make it so that if you talk to something inanimate, it will prompt a funny reply.
This is the code:

Instead of talking to [something]:
	if the noun is not animate:
		say "Houston, we've got a problem in the ol['] coconut.";
		rule succeeds;
	otherwise:
		continue the action;

But this does not work. When I run the program it says:

Problem. In the sentence 'if the noun is not animate begin'  , I was expecting to read a condition, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'noun is not animate'.

So if I can't say "not animate", what would I use instead?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1190&start=0#p6849
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Quixe beta-testing
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-06-27 21:13:40

The save-restore code is in -- thanks Iain -- and I'm ready to call this a beta release.

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/</a>

Test links on that page; also an updated Quixe template for I7. Let me know any problems you have.

There's one fix on the page which is not yet in the template (or checked into source control). I'm hoping that it fixes a startup problem on IE. If it does, I'll check it in.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1189&start=0#p6850
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Animate vs. Inanimate
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-27 23:25:41

I think you want "If the noun is not a person." Looking at (the old) Appendix A, "person" is meant to cover anything animate enough to talk to, and includes animals. It shows up in error messages but I don't think it's defined as a default in code itself. 

(It appears that "animate" does have a meaning in I6 code, but I don't do I6.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1156&start=20#p6851
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Replacing procedural rules
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-06-28 03:38:04

I was fooling around some more, trying out 6E59 by going through the documentation and writing some sample code as I move along in an effort to determine what syntax has changed.  I'm trying to write code at the level of the material found only up to the point where I'm at in the documentation (currently chapter 6), but it's hard to limit things that way and I'm not really succeeding on that point.  In any case I found myself (unwittingly) making an example that seems relevant to the discussion we've been having here about replacing procedural rules.  Perhaps the example may also be generally useful to anyone browsing through the various posts of the forum.

The general idea of the test project is that the player-character has been abducted by <aliens, a baleful government agency, the girl scouts, whatever> and wakes up in a strange complex where, it would seem, his intelligence and reasoning skills are being tested by a serious of (very) simple puzzles that must be solved before moving further into the complex (and presumably toward an eventual door with an "exit" sign above it).

The example puzzle discussed here involved several cases where I may formerly have used a procedural rule, but now declined to do so since I've got the "Use no deprecated features" option active.  The example involves a hallway with a door at one end; a mathematical notation is written on the door.  At the other end of the hallway is a room with a numeric keypad.  The player must enter the solution to the (very simple) equation into the keypad to remotely open the door.  Sorry for the rough edges (deviating from the provided "test stuff" will quickly break things) and disorganized presentation of code, but after all it's only an example in a test project (intended for my own use) rather than something from a polished game:

[code]Chapter 8 - Dark Hallway

There is a room called the Hallway Junction. [Description omitted as too confusing to post here]

There is a room called the Eastern Lab.

The door04 is a door.  The door04 is north of the Hallway Junction and south of the Eastern Lab.  The description of the door04 is "A doorway set in the wall at the northern end of the corridor.  The door itself [if closed ]appears to be [otherwise]is[end if] a mechanical sliding hatch that retracts sideways into the wall when open.  [unless open]Something is written on the surface of the door in dark red letters[otherwise]The door is currently open.[end if]."  The door04 is privately-named.  The printed name of the door04 is "sliding door".  Understand "door" or "sliding door" or "hatch" as the door04.  The door04 is locked and not lockable.  The door04 is scenery.

Some password01 are scenery in the Hallway Junction.  The password01 are privately-named.  The printed name of the password01 is "red numbers".  Understand "numbers" or "red numbers" or "writing" or "painted numbers" as the password01.  The description of the password01 is "Written or painted on the door in large characters with some sort of dark red ink or dye is the following:[paragraph break]62 + 43[command clarification break]".

Understand the command "read" as something new.

Reading is an action applying to one thing.  Understand "read [something]" as reading.

Instead of reading the door04:
	if the door04 is closed:
		try examining the password01;
	otherwise:
		say "The door has retracted into the wall.".

Instead of reading the password01:
	try examining the password01.

Chapter 9 - Keypad Room

A room called the Device Room is south of the Hallway Junction.  [The Device Room is a dark room.]  The description of the Device Room is "A dark, square-shaped room, about twenty feet wide.  The walls are made from a dense white material the with the consistency of very thick, hard rubber that nonetheless reflects light as though it were polished metal.  A small device of some sort is built into the eastern wall about three feet off the floor."

A keypad01 is in the Device Room.  The keypad01 is scenery.  The keypad01 is privately-named.  The printed name of the keypad01 is "key pad".  Understand "small device" or "device" or "keypad" or "key pad" as the keypad01.  The description of the keypad01 is "A numeric keypad, made of the same odd white material found throughout the area, is built into the eastern wall of this room.  The keypad consists of eleven buttons as well as a small display of some sort set over the keys.  This display currently reads: [kp01text of the keypad01]."  The keypad01 has some indexed text called the kp01text.

[I'll come back to fix that display for cases when the text string is empty at a later point in writing, likely using a simple say statement] 

Report examining the keypad01 for the first time:
	say "All but one of the buttons of the keypad are labelled with a numeral; the remaining button is labelled with the word 'Send.'  The buttons are laid out in the following configuration:[paragraph break][fixed letter spacing]1   2   3[line break]4   5   6[line break]7   8   9[line break]0   Send[variable letter spacing][paragraph break]"

Instead of reading the keypad01:
	try examining the noun.

An alphanumkey is a kind of thing.  An alphanumkey has some text called the aklabel.  The aklabel of an alphanumkey is usually "".  The description of an alphanumkey is usually "A button on a numeric keypad.  This key is labelled: [aklabel of the item described]."  Understand "key" or "button" as an alphanumkey.

Instead of reading an alphanumkey:
	try examining the noun.

An alphanumkey called a one key is part of the keypad01.  The aklabel of the one key is "1".
An alphanumkey called a two key is part of the keypad01.  The aklabel of the two key is "2".
An alphanumkey called a three key is part of the keypad01.  The aklabel of the three key is "3".
An alphanumkey called a four key is part of the keypad01.  The aklabel of the four key is "4".
An alphanumkey called a five key is part of the keypad01.  The aklabel of the five key is "5".
An alphanumkey called a six key is part of the keypad01.  The aklabel of the six key is "6".
An alphanumkey called a seven key is part of the keypad01.  The aklabel of the seven key is "7".
An alphanumkey called an eight key is part of the keypad01.  The aklabel of the eight key is "8".
An alphanumkey called a nine key is part of the keypad01.  The aklabel of the nine key is "9".
An alphanumkey called a zero key is part of the keypad01.  The aklabel of the zero key is "0".
An alphanumkey called a send key is part of the keypad01.  The aklabel of the send key is "Send".

Carry out pushing the send key:
	if kp01text of the keypad01 exactly matches the text "105":
		now the door04 is open;
		now the door04 is not openable;
		remove the password01 from play;
	otherwise:
		now the kp01text of the keypad01 is "".

Report pushing the send key:
	if the kp01text of the keypad01 exactly matches the text "105":
		say "You press the 'Send' key.  Off to the north, you briefly hear a soft metallic clank." instead.

[It was particularly hard to discern the syntax necessary for the next rule, since the "change x to y" formulation has been deprecated and "now" seems to be very sensitive when working with texts]

Carry out pushing an alphanumkey which is incorporated by the keypad01:
	unless the noun is the send key:
		let mendru be indexed text;
		let mendru be "[kp01text of the keypad01][aklabel of the noun]";
		now the kp01text of the keypad01 is mendru.

Report pushing an alphanumkey which is incorporated by the keypad01:
	unless the noun is the send key:
		say "You press [the noun], causing a '[the aklabel of the noun]' to appear on the small display above the keypad." instead.

Inputting it into is an action applying to one topic and one thing.  Understand "input [text] on [something]" as inputting it into.  Understand "input [text] into [something]" as inputting it into.  Understand "type [text] on [something]" as inputting it into.  Understand "type [text] into [something]" as inputting it into.  Understand "enter [text] on [something]" as inputting it into.  Understand "enter [text] into [something]" as inputting it into.

A thing can be input-compatible.  A thing is usually not input-compatible.  The keypad01 is input-compatible.

Check inputting it into:
	unless the second noun is input-compatible:
		say "That doesn't make sense in this context." instead.

Check inputting into the keypad01:
	let keycheck be indexed text;
	let keycheck be "[the topic understood]";
	unless keycheck exactly matches the regular expression "send", case insensitively:
		if keycheck matches the regular expression "\D":
			say "Apart from the 'Send' button, only the numbers 1-9 and 0 are available on the keypad," instead;
	otherwise:
		try pushing the send key instead.

[It was particularly hard to discern the syntax necessary for the next rule, since the "change x to y" formulation has been deprecated and "now" seems to be very sensitive when working with texts]

Carry out inputting into the keypad01:
	let weldru be indexed text;
	let weldru be "[kp01text of the keypad01][the topic understood]";
	now the kp01text of the keypad01 is weldru.

Report inputting into the keypad01:
	say "You enter [the topic understood] using the keypad.  The display above the buttons now reads: [the kp01text of the keypad01]."

Test stuff with "x door / read door / s / press one button / type 05 on keypad / press send key".[/code]
The things that stood out in regard to the discussion here were:

a) In the past, I might have made exceptions to the Standard "report an actor pushing" rule for the keypad buttons; however tacking on an "instead" to the end of each unique report pushing rule was easy enough and seemed to take care of things in this case;

b) In the past, I would have designed the custom "inputting" action with a blocking check rule, such as

Check inputting it into (this is the general block useless inputting rule):
	say "That doesn't make any sense in this context." instead.

and then made individual exceptions for kinds or things to which I wanted the inputting action to apply.  I briefly considered applying emshort's "activities" approach discussed earlier in the thread, but decided it wouldn't be a true test of efficiency as "inputting" is only relevant for one device at this point.  Writing one line giving the keypad an "input-compatible" property that all other things (at this point) lack and considering this property in the general blocking rule seemed to be an effective solution in this case.

A minor related point is that while it may seem like an aesthetically attractive idea not to go on a wild property-creating spree, something I learned while trying to work around some bugs in 5Z71 is that there's no practical reason to be stingy with either/or properties.  I had (by the standards of an average IF comp game) a shockingly large project where every single item (of which there were several thousand in existence due to heavy use of automatic generation) in the game world literally had scores of (mostly unused and inapplicable) either/or properties.  I never saw any sort of performance degradation whatsoever related to such an approach (and I usually work on an old computer less powerful than a top-of-the-line cellphone).  Thus using an either/or property as a foundation for simple blocking rules would seem to be yet another way to avoid using procedural exceptions.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1132&start=0#p6852
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: questions about specific programming languages
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-06-28 03:44:00

Maybe we could sticky this post?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1188&start=0#p6853
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Code problem
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2010-06-28 09:52:05

As you, I'm also learning I7, but I had a similar issue recently, and I think you have a better solution by giving objects a number and allow the wallet to only accept items with that number. That makes it easier for you to decide, in the future, if a created thing can be putted in the wallet or not, without having to find the line of code and add the thing's name to that line.

It would work somehow like this (although I can't test it now, for I'm not in a computer with I7):
[code]Things have a number called walletable. The walletable is usually 0.

Before inserting something into the wallet:
if the walletable of the noun is not 1, say "You can't put [a noun] in the wallet." instead.

The student card is in the example room. The wallatable is 1. The description is "The stundet card reminded you of days past. The long hair, the parties that stole study time... oh, those were the days."
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1189&start=0#p6854
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Animate vs. Inanimate
User: moromis / DateTime: 2010-06-28 10:43:30

Ah. Thanks. It just seems like I would be able to fix it via what the error reports say... Right? Guess not.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1099&start=30#p6855
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Early Glitches
User: Alcibiades / DateTime: 2010-06-28 11:25:28

Consider this case then. The compiler accepted it fine on the first two or three run-throughs, but now it coughs up an error on scenery items and their descriptive texts. Texts which it printed fine the first two or three times. I've taken Emily's advice and rinsed the text through an external simple text editor to remove any invisible tokens, but that has made no difference.

[color=#404000][ ROOM 2 ]

'Outside the Old Tent' is sarf of 'More Trees'. "Blah blah" 

The flap is scenery in 'outside the Old Tent'. "Blah blah"

Stream2 is scenery in 'outside the Old Tent'. Understand "stream" as stream2. "Burble burble, goes the stream."

Trees2 are scenery in 'outside the Old Tent'. Understand "trees" and "tree" as trees2. "Here a tree, there a tree, everywhere a tree tree."

The spare ground is scenery in 'outside the Old Tent'. "Blah blah"

Oldtent is scenery in 'outside the Old Tent'. Understand "tent" as 'oldtent'. The description is "Blah Blah." 

The 'nails, pegs and anchors' are scenery in 'outside the Old Tent'. Understand "nails", "pegs" and "anchors" as 'nails, pegs and anchors'. "The nails, pegs and anchors stop the tent from sailing away to pastures new. They can't stop pastures new from sailing under the tent however, but we have to take such things in our stride, here in THE BARTOKS." [/color]

Whether I make "the description is" explicit or not doesn't affect the outcome.  The compiler kicked up an error first on the "oldtent" line (but passed the others), and then in subsequent passes found the same error in lines above that one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1188&start=0#p6856
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Code problem
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2010-06-28 11:45:36

[quote="lribeiro"]As you, I'm also learning I7, but I had a similar issue recently, and I think you have a better solution by giving objects a number and allow the wallet to only accept items with that number. That makes it easier for you to decide, in the future, if a created thing can be putted in the wallet or not, without having to find the line of code and add the thing's name to that line.

It would work somehow like this (although I can't test it now, for I'm not in a computer with I7):
[code]Things have a number called walletable. The walletable is usually 0.

Before inserting something into the wallet:
if the walletable of the noun is not 1, say "You can't put [a noun] in the wallet." instead.

The student card is in the example room. The wallatable is 1. The description is "The stundet card reminded you of days past. The long hair, the parties that stole study time... oh, those were the days."
[/code][/quote]

There's no need to make this a number. You can do something like this (untested code):

[code]A thing can be walletable or nonwalletable. A thing is usually nonwalletable.

Before inserting a nonwalletable thing into the wallet . . .

The student card is a walletable thing in the example room.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1099&start=30#p6857
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Early Glitches
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-28 11:55:48

[rant]Have you tried deleting the single quotes?[/rant]

UPDATE: Never mind, that didn't have anything to do with it. After tinkering around with the code some I am thoroughly confused, and am halting in abject failure. 

I can say that, if I delete enough stuff that the code can compile (in 5Z71), it seems that when you declare the 'nails, pegs and anchors' are scenery in etc., you create three scenery objects named "'nails" "pegs" and "anchors'" respectively. Since there isn't a thing called "nails, pegs and anchors" your "understand" line fails. When I try to force the object to be named "nails, pegs and anchors" 5Z71 objects to the idea of a name with a comma in it. So perhaps the way to handle that is to give the object another name (perhaps privately-named) and have "nails" "pegs" and "anchors" all understood as that.

UPDATE 2: OK, the following compiles on 5Z71, with the desired behavior:

[spoiler][code]'Outside the Old Tent' is a room. "Here we are!"

The flap is scenery in 'outside the Old Tent'. "Flap flap"

Stream2 is scenery in 'outside the Old Tent'. "Burble burble, goes the stream." Understand "stream" as stream2. 

Trees2 are scenery in 'outside the Old Tent'. "Here a tree, there a tree, everywhere a tree tree." Understand "trees" and "tree" as trees2. 

The spare ground is scenery in 'outside the Old Tent'. "Spare."

'Oldtent' is scenery in 'outside the Old Tent'. The description is "Tenty." Understand "tent" as 'oldtent'.

The attachments are scenery in 'outside the Old Tent'. "The nails, pegs and anchors stop the tent from sailing away to pastures new. They can't stop pastures new from sailing under the tent however, but we have to take such things in our stride, here in THE BARTOKS."  Understand "nails" as attachments. Understand "pegs" as attachments. Understand "anchors" as attachments.[/code][/spoiler]

Basically, besides changing the name of the "nails, pegs and anchors," I moved all the quoted descriptions next to the object declarations. Having "Understand" declarations between the object declarations and the quoted descriptions seems to cause trouble. You could also say 
[code]The description of stream2 is "Burble burble."[/code]
and then I think you can put it as far away from "stream2 is scenery in 'Outside the old tent'" as you like.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=40#p6858
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2010-06-28 12:52:46

Well, I'm new to genre and, as so, I think my two cents are worthwhile as someone that is not part of the community.

From what I've played so far, I think the parser isn't the main issue.  I was pretty much unaware of the IF convenctions (l to look at the room, x to examine, etc) when I started playing and, so far, I only felt the parser to be in the way when the game itself was poorly designed. Good examples:

[b]Violet, by Jeremy Freese[/b]
It's written in such a clever way! The hint system really works well and Violet herself is really good at pointing you in the right direction without serving you the solution to the puzzles. I think it's a great game to start playing IF. I never felt the need to throw verbs at random and I never felt frustrated into giving up the game.

[b]Blue Lacuna, by Aaron Reed[/b]
The way it handles the parser difficulty is brilliant! The different colors, the bold nouns, the suggestions when the player does nothing for a number of turns, etc, these are very inteligent tools that don't get in the way of a veterane IF player, but that prevent the begginer from giving up. Also it does something that I found to be very clever: it takes the time it needs to hook the player without rushing him. What do I mean? Someone mentioned before that an IF work needs to hook the player in the first few lines - the game's presentation, so to speak -, right before the player needs to write the first command and get frustrated, but blue lacuna proves this not so true. The first lines of the game won't hook you, but the player is asked to give very simple commands at first, and the story breaks as slowly as the game's mechanism. When one gets to the place where it has to solve complex situations, one is already familiar with the "way things work" - and hooked.

So, I think that what alienates new gamers is not the parser itself, but the way games are written - and most IF is written from and to people of the community, who share conventions that outsiders don't know about; but if a writer want's to, he can make an IF-traditional-parser-game that is non-IF-community-member friendly.

But such is not to say that the parser can't be reinvented, and a funny example pops to mind:

[b]Llama adventure, by John Cooney[/b]
The game itself has not seen the best of implementations, but I think it to be a nice (maybe something like what Emily Short had in mind?) way to handle the parser. Also, from what I've read in the commentaries, It has also been quite well accepted by non-IF players.

I would like to end this already long post with a note about verbs:
I don't know all the verbs that a parser has stored for me - and I don't need to or want to know! I expect the game to be natural enough so this isn't a problem (even with not-so-common verbs!), and if it is I'll surely give up*; but I think that a list of verbs, as in "Gateway", can be as confusing as no list at all when the game is poorly constructed. Take graphic adventure games: some have a long list of verbs to click, and others only a few (or none, in some cases), and that doesn't diminish the experience or the dificulty of the puzzle. I don't have a stronger exploration experience just because I have twenty verbs at my disposal - mainly if only 18 give me an interesting feedback in 90% of the game. I don't see why an immerse gaming experience, with tough puzzles, can't be accomplished with a handfull of verbs. The exploration potencial must be in the scenery, not in the verbs; the dificulty of the puzzle must be in the puzzle itself, not in the way the player handles the game to solve it**.

[size=85]
* As an example, I'll use Short's very own Savoir-Faire. The first time I tried the game, I gave up frustrated in the kitchen. Why? Because I downloaded the game, together with many others from IFDB, without reading much about it. I just started to play and I didn't know that "linking" was a verb I could use. Only after playing other games and reading so much praise about S-F, I decided to read the feelies and then - only then! - I found out I could link objects. Then I noticed the "Type HELP even if you have played IF before" line. I didn't see it before because it was in that "author, title, version" heading that I pay little atention to.

** Unless that is the objective of the author, as in Aisle: a game that lives (and very well!) of the player finding which commands result in resolutions for the plot.[/size]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1188&start=0#p6859
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Code problem
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2010-06-28 13:01:41

Yupe, that seems even better!

Just a remark: In this case, couldn't "Before..." be an "Instead..."? Since you wrote "nonwalletable object" after.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=120#p6860
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2010-06-28 13:47:40

Well, this won't be my first post, but only now I found this corner [emote]:)[/emote]

My name is Leandro Ribeiro and I'm a physics teacher in Portugal.

I remember playing text only games when I was a kid (something for the ZX Spectrum), but I never got to know and love the genre fully. I read/played alot of Fighting Fantasy books (Aventuras Fantásticas, in Portugal) and I'm a graphic adventure game lover.

Recently I found myself playing a game called Violet. Beeing both an adventure game and a literature lover, I thought that the IF world had much to give me. I also thought I could give writing an IF work of my own a try.

And now I'm learning two things: Inform7, to code the game, and correct english, so that I can write the game as I would in portuguese.

I'll need help, of course; I'll pest you about it, of course [emote]:)[/emote]

Regards,
Leandro

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1099&start=30#p6861
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Early Glitches
User: Alcibiades / DateTime: 2010-06-28 14:27:15

That's extremely helpful Matt. I appreciate the trouble you took to look at it.  But I hope this vindicates a little the line I've been taking that ostensibly straightforward code lines seems to kick up errors for no detectable reason, and this is inevitably baffling and disheartening to the newcomer.

Still, I believe I'm making progress now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1099&start=30#p6862
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Early Glitches
User: Alcibiades / DateTime: 2010-06-28 14:43:53

Bingo!

OK - this is now definitive. Single inverted commas surrounding property names throw the compiler, without it recognising this.  As in "T[color=#8000FF]he pegs are scenery in 'outside the Old Tent'. Understand "pegs" as 'nails'.[/color]"  Removing the single commas around 'nails' clears the blockage (although the compiler will report a bogus 'fault' on the [b]subsequent[/b] code line, which is misleading.)

I think you were also right, Matt, in guessing that a comma within a property name will cause a similar stumble. I got around that with:

[color=#8000FF]The nails are scenery in 'outside the Old Tent'. "The nails, pegs and anchors stop the tent from sailing away to pastures new. They can't stop pastures new from sailing under the tent however, but we have to take such things in our stride, here in THE BARTOKS." 

The pegs are scenery in 'outside the Old Tent'. Understand "pegs" as nails. 

The anchors are scenery in 'outside the Old Tent'. Understand "anchors" as nails.[/color]

Thanks again.  Moving on...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1099&start=30#p6863
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Early Glitches
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-28 16:06:19

You should report the bogus problem messages as a bug, so we can try to clear that up. (But yes, in general, throwing quotes around things that aren't printed or understood text is likely to cause problems.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=120#p6864
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-06-28 16:36:17

Would you believe I had almost the entire Aventuras Fantásticas collection? [emote]:)[/emote]

Welcome aboard!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1191&start=0#p6865
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Syntax highlighter question
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-06-28 17:49:54

As I've been expanding upon my Hugo syntax highlighter for ConTEXT, I've run into a dilemma in categorizing different types of keywords that will colored differently in the editor.  Should I categorize highlighter keywords according to their classification in the language itself (i.e., constants, compiler commands, globals, routines, etc.), or should I group some different kinds of Hugo code together according to the way that they are used and appear aesthetically?

Specifically, the main application of this question is about constants and globals.  Some globals are capitalized much like constants conventionally are, but they are definitely modifiable by the user in the game source code (for instance, [b]TEXTCOLOR[/b]).  I can't decide whether to group them together with non-capitalized global variables (such as [b]score[/b]), along with library properties, attributes, and arrays (I think I can only have five categories of keywords in the syntax highlighter file); or to include them with the library constants.

The specific issue of the capitalized global variables is further complicated by my observation that Hugo is not case sensitive (discovered by testing, not by anything I read in the documentation).  However, it is clearly the convention to capitalize the identifier names of all constants and those select globals; that's how they appear in [i]The Hugo Book[/i].

Any advice would be appreciated.  Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1099&start=30#p6866
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Early Glitches
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-06-28 18:11:23

I suspect one of several things may be behind your troubles:

a) You're trying to do too much too fast, and haven't gotten very far into the I7 documentation;

b) You've read some of the I7 documentation, but not very attentively;

or

c) You haven't really tried to read the I7 documentation; perhaps you looked at a few simple examples and then set the documentation aside (perhaps because you have experience with some other methods of writing text games and think such experience will suffice in place of some diligent rtfm sessions).

I have recently been trying to re-read the I7 documentation myself, and these latest issues you were struggling with are mentioned fairly early on.  For example:

[quote="In Chapter 3.2 Rooms and the map, [i]Writing with Inform[/i]"]

A problem which sometimes arises when laying out maps is that Inform allows short forms of room names to be used as abbreviations. This is usually a good idea, but has unfortunate results if we write: 

The Airport Road is west of the Fish Packing Plant. The Airport is west of the Airport Road. 

...because "Airport" is taken as a reference to "Airport Road", so Inform makes only two locations, one of which supernaturally leads to itself. We can avoid this by writing: 

The Airport Road is west of the Fish Packing Plant. A room called the Airport is west of the Airport Road. 

Using "called" is often a good way to specify something whose name might give rise to confusion otherwise. It always makes something new, and it is also neatly concise, because we can establish something's kind and name in the same sentence. As another example, suppose we want to create a room called "South of the Hut", to south of the Hut. We can't do so like this: 

South of the Hut is a room. South of the Hut is south of the Hut. 

...because Inform will read that first sentence as placing a (nameless) room to the south of a room called "Hut". Once again "called" can save the day: 

South of the Hut is a room called South of the Hut. 

It is best to use "called" in the simplest way possible, and in particular, best not to use "called" twice in the same sentence. Consider: 

The kitchen cabinet contains a container called a mixing bowl and a portable supporter called a platter. 

It is unlikely that anyone would want to name something "a mixing bowl and a portable supporter called a platter", but not impossible, and Inform tends not to be a good judge of what is likely.[/quote]
I don't really see where you might have picked up the odd idea that using an apostrophe/single quote constructs some sort of "phrase" from a string of words; it just doesn't work that way, and I don't think the documentation ever implies otherwise.

The error message given by Inform when trying to make an item called "nails, pegs, and anchors" is very explicit.  I don't really any see any room for interpretation or misunderstanding in:

[quote="Inform 7"]Problem. I've made something called 'nails, pegs, and anchors'   but it has a comma in its name, which is forbidden. Perhaps you used a comma in punctuating a sentence? Inform generally doesn't like this because it reserves commas for specific purposes such as dividing rules or 'if' phrases.[/quote]
Very early in the documentation (Chapter 3.11, Example 18), the use of the "privately-named" and "printed name" qualifiers is discussed.  Thus one way to approach your "nails, pegs, and anchors" item should have been apparent:

[code]There is a room called More Trees.

A room called Outside the Old Tent is sarf of More Trees.

Some nailthingies are scenery in Outside the Old Tent.  The nailthingies are privately-named.  The printed name of the nailthingies is "nails, pegs, and anchors".  Understand "nails" or "pegs" or "anchors" as the nailthingies.[/code]
If you try to write

[code]Understand "nails, pegs, and anchors" as the nailthingies.[/code]
The error message at compile time is again very explicit, telling you the exact nature of the problem:

[quote="Inform 7"]Problem. You wrote 'Understand "nails, pegs, and anchors" as the nailthingies'  : but 'understand' text cannot contain literal punctuation, or more specifically cannot contain any of these: . , ! ? : ; since they are already used in various ways by the parser, and would not correctly match here.[/quote]
I'm somewhat reluctant to mention--because it may inspire considerable confusion--that if you really want to allow the player to type "nails, pegs, and anchors" this can be done by manipulating the text of the player's command; however that's hardly something you're likely to want to tackle right now given the troubles you're having.  For example you could add to the above example:

[code]Understand "nails pegs and anchors" as the nailthingies.

After reading a command:
	let playerwrote be indexed text;
	let playerwrote be the player's command;
	if playerwrote matches the regular expression "nails\, pegs\, and anchors", case insensitively:
		replace the text "nails\, pegs\, and anchors" in playerwrote with "nails pegs and anchors";
	change the text of the player's command to playerwrote.[/code]

This would allow the player to type commands such as "get nails, pegs, and anchors."  However you would still be prohibited from using the phrase 

[code]nails, pegs, and anchors[/code]
in your source code.

If you (or any others new to Inform) are finding the I7 documentation very troublesome, a good alternative would be:

1) Stop everything you're doing

2) Download Jim Aikin's [url=http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm][i]Inform 7 Handbook[/i][/url]

3) Read [i]The Inform 7 Handbook[/i] from beginning to end.  It's written in clear and simple language, and you can probably read the entire thing in two or three hours.  This resource explains in concise but easy-to-understand terms nearly everything you're likely to want to know about using Inform 7 (at least for the forseeable future) using a format and method very different from the I7 documentation.

4) Return to work on your project, almost certainly making drastic changes due to things you've learned from reading [i]The Inform 7 Handbook[/i].

5) After doing steps 1 through 4, feel free to resume asking as many questions as you'd like about any aspect of I7 that you're still having difficulty with.

I don't mean to discourage questions or discussions, but it seems that you're having a lot of trouble that can't be justified by saying the I7 documentation (which I often criticize myself) is inadequate or the whole program is too eccentric to use.  Read [i]The Inform 7 Handbook[/i].  It will help you.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1169&start=10#p6867
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inventory Limits
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-06-28 18:29:32

I'm probably unusual in that I have occasionally wished for an inventory limit in a few games, even as a player; however, I certainly don't like to go through many boring repetitive steps when playing IF than anyone else.  Part of the reason of my acceptance of inventory limits is that I have experience playing extremely realistic, roleplay-absolutely-enforced MUDs.  In the roleplay intensive MUD I played the most, you could only hold two items (or groups of like items) at a time -- one in each hand!  The very thought of such a limit is enough to infuriate IF players, but RPI MUDers generally see the strict limits of such a detail-oriented implementation as an aide to roleplay and immersion.  It would be out of character for anyone to walk around town all day with an armload of junk, after all.

I tend to play IF with a roleplaying mentality, thinking about what would be in-character for the PC to do.  Although roleplaying isn't necessarily a goal of modern IF, immersion and storytelling are.  I think "mimesis" is really the IF version of "in character."  In order to immerse oneself in any story, one needs to invest some time and energy.  An IF game should make it as easy as possible for the player to become immersed, but ultimately it is the player's decision whether or not to choose to suspend her disbelief and get into the story.  An inventory limit makes it harder for the player to immerse herself in some ways, but easier in others.

It [i]is[/i] unrealistic to carry a dozen objects around, even if they are small.  After all, most people don't carry more than a few trinkets in their pockets, right?  Therefore, a player who wants to become immersed in the character to a great degree will have to willfully choose not to make the PC pick up more objects than would seem reasonable.  Doing so is certainly not as hard as the frustration of having to decide what item to drop, and where; however, it is also risky.  The author of the game may have chosen not to impose an inventory limit, expecting players to take everything "not nailed to the floor" in order to solve the puzzles.  The player who chooses to limit the PC's inventory in order for the sake of immersion is even putting herself at risk of making the game unwinnable.

Therefore, I believe that the best solution is simply not to require the PC to transport any more objects than he/she would reasonably be able to carry (or else, it's not too hard to supply a sack object  [emote]:!:[/emote] ), while imposing an inventory limit on the higher end of "realistic."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1169&start=10#p6868
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inventory Limits
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-28 18:58:33

[quote="Bainespal"]It [i]is[/i] unrealistic to carry a dozen objects around, even if they are small.  After all, most people don't carry more than a few trinkets in their pockets, right?  Therefore, a player who wants to become immersed in the character to a great degree will have to willfully choose not to make the PC pick up more objects than would seem reasonable.[/quote]

I disagree with the "therefore." It's actually incredibly unrealistic for people to talk the way that dialogue is depicted in, well, anything -- even so-called realistic works of fiction. But this doesn't break immersion at all, not nearly to the extent that an accurate transcription of dialogue would. I think I've heard it said that if you write out a word-for-word transcript of any real-life conversation, it will read as though the participants are completely insane. (Have you ever seen the Saturday Night Live [url=http://snltranscripts.jt.org/78/78tnixon.phtml]sketch[/url] in which Dean and Nixon hold up a sign that says "Let's talk in incomplete sentences" and then recite the transcripts word-for-word, falling over themselves laughing?)

Anyway, the reason that the stylization of "realistic" dialogue doesn't break immersion is partly because it's a lot less work to interpret that way; whereas in real life, a lot of the interpretation is done by non-verbal cues and shared background knowledge and things like that, which just doesn't come across in prose. Similarly, stylizations in interactive fiction can actually help immerse you in the character rather than break immersion. If you constantly have to drop something to pick up something else that you need to use, it'll focus your intention on inventory management rather than on what you're doing with the inventory. And it's [i]not[/i] mimetic to make people do this. In an actual situation, even if we can't always hold as many objects as we like, we don't make a big deal about picking up and putting down what we need, so a situation in which you can always have what you need mimics our experience better than one in which you always have to consciously think about how to get it. Maybe it would be more mimetic still to have any easily accessible object magic its way into your inventory whenever you wanted to use it. But I think adhering to an inventory limit breaks immersion in the character rather than the reverse.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1190&start=0#p6869
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe beta-testing
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-06-28 22:09:39

Made one small fix, which should allow save/restore to work correctly in IE8.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1169&start=10#p6870
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inventory Limits
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-06-29 03:10:06

[quote="Bainespal"]It [i]is[/i] unrealistic to carry a dozen objects around, even if they are small.  After all, most people don't carry more than a few trinkets in their pockets, right?[/quote]
Hang on a second...

[code]>inventory
I am carrying:
   a blue shirt (being worn)
   a pair of jeans (being worn)
   black shoes (being worn)
   a mobile phone
   a wallet
      (which contains four ten pound notes
      a fifty pence piece
      four ten pence pieces
      and two five pence pieces)
   a card holder
      (which contains two loyalty cards
      a photo ID
      a credit card
      and a debit card)
   a Rocha John Rocha bag
      (which contains a book
      a diary
      a packet of Hula Hoops
      an umbrella (closed)
      a box of painkillers
      a bottle of antibacterial hand gel
      a packet of tissues
      and a bus timetable)[/code]

But maybe I'm just weird.   [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1169&start=10#p6871
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inventory Limits
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-06-29 04:19:25

[quote="Bainespal"]I think "mimesis" is really the IF version of "in character."  In order to immerse oneself in any story, one needs to invest some time and energy.  An IF game should make it as easy as possible for the player to become immersed, but ultimately it is the player's decision whether or not to choose to suspend her disbelief and get into the story.  An inventory limit makes it harder for the player to immerse herself in some ways, but easier in others.

It [i]is[/i] unrealistic to carry a dozen objects around, even if they are small. [/quote]

You just reminded me of something that a game did. Can't remember which game. Not even sure it was IF. In fact, I'm pretty sure it was a graphical adventure, and I'm reasonably sure it was made in AGS. The more I think about it, the more I think it might be a commercial AGS game, which narrows it down even further.

Anyway. I digress terribly. The point is, this game - whichever it was - addressed this issue by adding the "idea" of the object to your inventory. The object itself remained in the game world. And you could use the "idea" of the inventory item as you'd use a normal item. Whenever you actually needed it - and I mean really needed it for something useful, as opposed to needing it to randomly trying using it everywhere - then the character went and got it. The game instantly cut to a scene showing the PC taking the object, and then back again at the current scene, in a sequence short enough not to get on one's nerves.

If you're concerned with realism, this is a thought. Nothing actually changes in gameplay - your inventory still gets quite, quite full. But if you tell yourself you're juggling "ideas", and that if you need the actual object you'll just go and get it... maybe it'll feel differently?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1191&start=0#p6872
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Syntax highlighter question
User: Stew / DateTime: 2010-06-29 05:41:48

I would say try grouping some different kinds according to how they are used. [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=971&start=10#p6873
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What evil may lurk in the cold heart of a snowman?
User: Stew / DateTime: 2010-06-29 06:51:34

That's one of the best responses to spam I've seen. [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

As for this evil snowman stuff, I haven't heard any stories about it. But I do remember being afraid of the song [i]Frosty the Snowman[/i] as a kid. I remember thinking, "Who says that the magic in the old silk hat they found was good magic? What if it was a trick? And he ran away from the traffic cop!"  [emote];)[/emote] 

This probably stems from the fact that as a kid, I thought that the abominable snowman was made completely of snow. "What's abominable?" I asked my parents. "Bad," they said.  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1190&start=0#p6874
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe beta-testing
User: sarganar / DateTime: 2010-06-29 08:09:35

Now the story is loaded correctly in Chrome (from I7 template; Release process). Thanx!

But the SAVE command doesn't work.

[code]>save
Save failed.[/code]

I made the upgrade with /src/quixe from github, unsuccesfully.

I tested your "loaded the way I7 releases it" story from eblong.com, and the save/restore commands works perfect.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1169&start=10#p6875
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inventory Limits
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-29 08:22:14

[quote="Peter Pears"][quote="Bainespal"]I think "mimesis" is really the IF version of "in character."  In order to immerse oneself in any story, one needs to invest some time and energy.  An IF game should make it as easy as possible for the player to become immersed, but ultimately it is the player's decision whether or not to choose to suspend her disbelief and get into the story.  An inventory limit makes it harder for the player to immerse herself in some ways, but easier in others.

It [i]is[/i] unrealistic to carry a dozen objects around, even if they are small. [/quote]

You just reminded me of something that a game did. Can't remember which game. Not even sure it was IF. In fact, I'm pretty sure it was a graphical adventure, and I'm reasonably sure it was made in AGS. The more I think about it, the more I think it might be a commercial AGS game, which narrows it down even further.

Anyway. I digress terribly. The point is, this game - whichever it was - addressed this issue by adding the "idea" of the object to your inventory. The object itself remained in the game world. And you could use the "idea" of the inventory item as you'd use a normal item. Whenever you actually needed it - and I mean really needed it for something useful, as opposed to needing it to randomly trying using it everywhere - then the character went and got it. The game instantly cut to a scene showing the PC taking the object, and then back again at the current scene, in a sequence short enough not to get on one's nerves.

If you're concerned with realism, this is a thought. Nothing actually changes in gameplay - your inventory still gets quite, quite full. But if you tell yourself you're juggling "ideas", and that if you need the actual object you'll just go and get it... maybe it'll feel differently?[/quote]

This seems like it shouldn't be [i]too[/i] hard to implement in IF, actually. Just put every item you've discovered in scope, add an inventory-like command for which item you've discovered, and when the player types "DIG GROUND WITH SHOVEL" toss in a sentence about how you go back to the shed and get the shovel.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1190&start=0#p6876
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe beta-testing
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-06-29 13:09:48

Quite right, my fault. The Quixe.zip package doesn't contain all the latest files. I'll fix that tonight.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1169&start=10#p6877
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inventory Limits
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-06-29 14:21:51

Even easier, you wouldn't have to change a thing - just make sure the player knows that "inventory" is also where you store the "ideas" of objects, and have a suitable message appear when the player "takes" an object, and move *an* object to his inventory while keeping the original in place. Because this, interestingly enough, does not change gameplay one bit - what it changes is how the game is perceived by the player. It is, in short, a placebo. Which is quite cool, actually.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1183&start=0#p6878
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Comments on the re-designed phrasebook (in the Index)
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-06-29 17:16:59

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]2) Section headings from my extensions appear as section headings in the phrasebook.  [...] Perhaps do this with chapter headings instead of section headings?[/quote]
Ah, another thing on that point.  I sometimes have two different versions of the same phrase, one that requires a particular extension and one that doesn't.  When I use the heading phrases (for use with Plurality by Emily Short) and (for use without Plurality by Emily Short), this allows me to give a single phrase to the author regardless whether he's including the other extension or not.  However, phrases done this way are always listed in little subsections by themselves in the phrasebook rather than being grouped with the rest of its herd.  

[quote="the Phrasebook"]
   outputting the known-by column, not for release
   [+] say "[represent the people who know about row [color=#0000FF]number[/color]]"  
   [+] say "[represent [color=#0000FF]number[/color] who know]"  

   Section
   [+] say "[represent any reasons for [color=#0000FF]number[/color]]"  
[/quote]
So again, please don't show the Section headers in the phrasebook, just the Chapter headings and/or larger.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=971&start=10#p6879
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What evil may lurk in the cold heart of a snowman?
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-06-29 17:27:17

Thanks, Hoais.  I'm glad at least one other person around here has a sense of humor.

[i](--To save time, I'll go ahead and make the Anticipated Official Community response right now:

We'll be glad to gleefully giggle like a gaggle of little girls as soon as you post something that's actually funny, Endosphere.--)[/i]

I'm not actively working on the snowman story right now, but I'd like to come back to it in the future.  I'm usually a fairly effective researcher, and was therefore very surprised that I couldn't turn up any lore, fiction, or other accounts of even slightly menacing snowfolk (horror-parody like the Jack Frost movies don't really count).  Surely if there are people who are afraid of [url=http://www.joshuahoffine.com/horror-photography/balloons-spring-2004-4_6_37.html]clowns[/url], there must be people who are afraid of snowmen and have presented their fears to others in writing, art, film, etc--or at least publicly discussed the matter on the Art Bell/Coast-to-Coast radio program.

I think it's difficult to place snowfolk in a sinister context due their generally innocent modern associations with things like childhood fun and Frosty, so your reflexive suspicion of Frosty was an interesting observation.  I can see your logic--surely any creature with its face permanently disfigured into a broad artificial grin (Frosty the Snowman, Barney the dinosaur, Nancy Pelosi the [url=http://paranormal.about.com/library/weekly/aa112000a.htm]hag[/url]) is up to no good.

That abominable snowman thing was always confusing for me too.  If he's part of the Bigfoot clan, why not just call him Bigfoot?  And it's not like the abominable snowman generally prefers snow, either.  He lives high up in the mountains, which are only coincidentally snowy due to their altitude.  Wouldn't it be better to call him the abominable mountain man, to distinguish him from his forest-dwelling cousins?  Another thing to consider is--what if there's only one Bigfoot dude?  Maybe because of all that heavy fur rural Arkansas gets too hot for him in the summertime, so he migrates to a snowy mountain top for six months out of the year to cool off.  Therefore referring to him by a different name during that time only serves to foment unnecessary hysteria about humanity being overrun by these monstrous creatures, by making the Bigfoot population appear much larger than it actually is.  This convention of calling Bigfoot "the abominable snowman" may actually be part of a larger Bigfoot propoganda campaign, an attempt by the hairy one to use psychological warfare to intimidate humanity.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1183&start=0#p6880
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Comments on the re-designed phrasebook (in the Index)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-06-29 21:39:32

I agree that it would be nice to for the phrasebook to show a single, simple version, and give us the complex version only on mouseover (provided that is properly accessible to screenreaders). But I agree because I tend to write phrases like this:

[code]To draw a line (hue - a number) in (win - a g-window) from (x1 - a number) by (y1 - a number) measuring/of (distance - a number) pixel/pixels/-- long/-- at (angle - a number) deg/degree/degrees/-- angle/-- with (wgt - a number) pixel/pixels/px/-- line-weight/stroke:[/code]

I also want to take this opportunity to say that removing "change ____ to ______" from the language, as will happen in an upcoming release, is annoying. The phrase that should be gotten rid of is "now the _____ is _____". The former is a strong, verb-centered assertion that says exactly what it does, while the latter is weak and just...silly sounding. In my own work, I'll definitely have to add "change..." back in, but I'm really not looking forward to clearing it out of my extensions...

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1183&start=0#p6881
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Comments on the re-designed phrasebook (in the Index)
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-06-29 21:56:00

The issue with change is that it does exactly a subset of what "now" does. Now is more generally powerful because it is a compact way of asserting most things that could be declared as a game-starting assertion, short of object creation; it doesn't make sense to say "change the sticker to part of the noun", whereas "now the sticker is part of the noun" does make sense (and circumlocutions with change would be ugly: "change the sticker to be a part of the noun"? Ugh.)

Our impression is that having change as a slightly-less-able form of "now" may sound good some of the time -- and I admit I'm going to have to retrain myself as well, because I habitually do use it for some things -- but is in general confusing. But, as always, feedback is welcome.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1183&start=0#p6882
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Comments on the re-designed phrasebook (in the Index)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-06-29 22:09:08

[quote="emshort"]The issue with change is that it does exactly a subset of what "now" does. Now is more generally powerful because it is a compact way of asserting most things that could be declared as a game-starting assertion, short of object creation; it doesn't make sense to say "change the sticker to part of the noun", whereas "now the sticker is part of the noun" does make sense (and circumlocutions with change would be ugly: "change the sticker to be a part of the noun"? Ugh.)

Our impression is that having change as a slightly-less-able form of "now" may sound good some of the time -- and I admit I'm going to have to retrain myself as well, because I habitually do use it for some things -- but is in general confusing. But, as always, feedback is welcome.[/quote]

The direction of my work with Inform so far hasn't taken me toward needing to do anything with parts, and I haven't run into that situation. I guess it makes sense, then, to see "now..." as the superset. (On the other hand, "change the sticker to be part of the noun" sounds OK--not great, but better I think than "now the car is blue".) 

I suspect that there will be an extension (in fact, I may write it) to reintroduce "change..." to the language when it goes away. I'd like to see the decision to retire it reconsidered, but I guess it's not really that big a deal. There are lots of other things I consider more important.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=809&start=20#p6883
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: beginner questions/programming
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2010-06-29 23:50:11

If you end up wanting your own inventory-fiddling code, Emily's recommendation of Jon Ingold's Written Inventory extension is a good one. If you need further hacking (as I did), you might find my Fragile Shells source (<a class="postlink" href="http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/source/inform/FragileShells.txt">http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/s ... Shells.txt</a>) helpful. Look for "Chapter 4 - Updated Inventory".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1183&start=0#p6884
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Comments on the re-designed phrasebook (in the Index)
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-06-30 00:49:33

"now" covers more than parts; it covers all relations. "now all coins are in the bag", "now the phone booth is off-stage", "now Steve loves pie" (with the appropriate loving relation), etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1190&start=0#p6885
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe beta-testing
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-06-30 00:55:49

Uploaded the latest files. This should resolve the problem with Opera and IE8 failing to load the "loaded directly" test case.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1169&start=10#p6886
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inventory Limits
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-06-30 02:28:43

[quote="Peter Pears"]Even easier, you wouldn't have to change a thing[/quote]

I'm not so sure about that. In a graphical game, those imaginary objects are needed in order to be able to express "DIG GROUND WITH SHOVEL", but it seems a bit odd to me to require taking the idea of a shovel before being allowed to type "DIG GROUND WITH SHOVEL". What would the reply be? "You don't remember a shovel"? Yes I do! I just typed it, you silly game! So at least the "put every item you've discovered in scope" part of it seems needed to me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1169&start=10#p6887
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inventory Limits
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-06-30 04:48:02

You could make "remember shovel", "note shovel" and "get shovel" synonims (sp?). For smaller objects, you could be told "Taken.", for larger objects you could be told, the first few times, "You make a note of its location. If you ever need it, you'll know where to come for it.", and "remembered" or "noted" the rest of the time. Remembered items could appear in the inventory in italics.

I'm wary about having all things in scope at all times because it seems to me inneficient and prone to unexpected behaviour galore, not to mention unnecessary...

The response for something you'd seen (for I7 users, Epistemology would come in useful) but hadn't made a note of could be "You do remember seeing something like that, but you don't really remember where", allowing gameplay to remain the same. If we create the illusion that every single object in the game world can be used anywhere and everywhere without first ensuring that it fulfills some basic condition (i.e., that we carry it, or remember it, or some such), we could risk frustration when that illusion breaks down. That is usually taken care of by disallowing taking and other actions at the time when the object is taken - if the player doesn't have to do that, we suddenly have to deal with trickier issues. For instance, if we do it the way I just thought off, it would be trivial to disallow the player making a note of an item wich can't be removed before another puzzle is solved, and the gameplay mechanics remains recognizable to every IF player.

DISCLAIMER: I'm not actually supporting this system, I'm just trying it out in my head. Personally, I think it's a gimmick, and think it's best to suspend disbelief and allow the player to carry a ridiculous amount of items, because of suspension of disbelief. The one game which I've played which was realistic to the extreme was the graphical game Conspiracy, a.k.a. KGB. I hated that constraining experience, and would rather suspend disbelief than actually go through all the drudging steps of real life.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1190&start=0#p6888
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe beta-testing
User: sarganar / DateTime: 2010-06-30 07:03:21

it works perfect.

muchas gracias!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1169&start=20#p6889
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inventory Limits
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2010-06-30 08:06:31

In later Level 9 games, the "GO TO <room>" and "RUN TO <room>" commands made you go to any accessible room (I don't remember if it only worked for rooms you'd already visited or not); "RUN TO" was much faster because the game didn't describe the rooms in-between.

But you could also use "GO TO <object>" and "RUN TO <object>" to find any accessible object on the map (again, I don't remember if you had to have seen it before): it just moved you to the room in which the object was. That system (well, with "RUN TO <object>", "TAKE <object>", then "RUN TO <the room in which you want to use the object>") was actually very similar to Peter Pears' idea, wasn't it? And it seems to me that if the game automatically remembers all the objects (and rooms) you've found, it's far less frustrating than having to explicitly type "REMEMBER <object>"!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1183&start=0#p6890
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Comments on the re-designed phrasebook (in the Index)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-06-30 09:00:21

[quote="zarf"]"now" covers more than parts; it covers all relations. "now all coins are in the bag", "now the phone booth is off-stage", "now Steve loves pie" (with the appropriate loving relation), etc.[/quote]

Yes, looking over some old code I notice that I certainly use "now" for those kinds of things, and I also use it once in a great while for simple variable assignments ("now the sky is blue"), where it hits better on the ear.

This doesn't really change my preference though--"now" may be more comprehensive in its uses, but "change" is not a mere cosmetic variation: from the standpoint of clear and direct natural-language syntax, "now" is really the variation, used because there are lots of things that don't sound good with "change." That is, "change" + "now" makes sense idiomatically, whereas the other phrases that are being eliminated are being eliminated because they truly are duplicative: "award 5 points", for example, duplicates the far more general "increase the score by 5".

One might even argue that *more* idioms should be introduced that translate into "now", e.g.:

make the sticker part of the noun.
change the sticker to be part of the noun.
move all the coins into the bag.
place all the coins in the bag.
move the phone booth off-stage.
make Steve love pie. [this one is maybe a bit silly...]

This kind of thing definitely doesn't fit into the dev team's plans, but I think at least a few users would appreciate the flexibility.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1169&start=20#p6891
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inventory Limits
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-06-30 12:36:28

Another approach that hasn't been discussed here is to occassionally remove the player's treasure hoard through plot devices.  Such an approach certainly wouldn't be practical for many storylines, but this alternative form of inventory limit can be very effective in maintaining game balance under some circumstances while also addressing some of the issues already discussed--namely "lots of items is fun/realistic" vs "carrying lots of items is unrealistic/not fun."

This approach need not always consist of aggressive plot developments such as "You are captured by orcs/aliens/the police and tossed into a cave/cylinder filled with green liquid/jail cell.  Your possessions are nowhere in sight."  For example I am currently making a small test project to try out the new build of Inform 7 and used this approach in a way that (to me) seems fairly integrated into the "plot" of my sample project.  I have an initial area where I was testing out some simple concepts, and am now ready to move on to a constructing a second area where I'll begin testing more complex issues.  I don't want any of the items from initial area to be available in the second area, and I certainly don't want any of the items from the second area to be available in the first area (as their expected complexity may break its simple functionality).  My design approach in enforcing this division was to make a locked door separating the areas which cannot be opened by any means.  At the "end" of the initial area, the player-character finds a small device which allows him to become semi-corporeal and therefore walk "through" the door in question.  The device is described in pseudo-scientific terminology appropriate to the sci-fi setting; in a high-fantasy setting this item may have been described as a potion of gaseous form or ethereal travel.  The duration of the device's effect is clearly described as very brief--long enough to pass through a door, but not long enough to safely go wandering through walls in general without knowing a clear space for rematerialization will be nearby.  A side-effect (in design terms the primary desired effect) of noncorporeality, however, is of course that any objects the player-character was carrying can no longer be held and any worn items can no longer be worn; all such items simply fall to the floor as the pc's body becomes ethereal.  Thus as the player advances from the first area to the second, all items from the first area are effectively removed from play in a way in a way that seems integral to the (very simple) story.

Such an approach must of course be used only after giving careful thought to how the overall story will develop.  This approach would be unsuitable in a game like the old [i]Planetfall[/i], where much of the gameplay consists of simply carting objects back and forth across a huge map in a serious of timed fed-ex quests.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=0#p6892
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Genstein / DateTime: 2010-06-30 16:58:39

Thanks Peter, that's very useful to know. Believe it or not I never discovered any key-based room creation/navigation in GUEMap; I gave up before resorting to pressing keys or (gasp) reading documentation. I'll definitely bear those features in mind for the next release if they're useful. Comments/notes are definitely on the cards. I've got a prototype of similar room creation/navigation working happily already, but I'm not sure how to back it up with usable UI yet. Experimental UI designs have come up a bit short of any good. I could add the feature just as keyboard only, but that feels wrong, as I'd like Trizbort to be as amazingly obvious to use as possible.

-eg.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1192&start=0#p6893
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Enclosure in 5Z71 and 6E59?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-30 20:14:18

I haven't downloaded 6E59 yet, and was trying to help with some code to allow "Bob's hat" to refer the hat Bob wears, and also to allow "Bob's nose" to refer to the nose that is part of Bob, and "Bob's stick" to refer to the stick Bob carries. This is the code I came up with (mostly due to some suggestions from Jim Aikin and Jesse McGrew in response to an earlier question of mine, and incorporating a little of Al's original code):

[spoiler][code]"possessions" by Matt Weiner

Section 1 - Of Hats

clothing is kind of thing.
a hat is kind of clothing.
clothing is always wearable.

understand "hat" as a hat.

The fuschia hat is a hat. The bright red hat is a hat. The bright blue
hat is a hat. The purple hat is a hat.
The indefinite article of a hat is usually "a". The description of a
hat is usually  "It's [indefinite article of the noun] [printed name
of the noun].".

Section 2 - Of Sticks

The swagger stick is a thing. The description is "It seems confident,
if not arrogant." The walking stick is a thing. The description is
"Sturdy and mostly straight, it looks like it might help you walk."

Section 3 - Of Noses

A nose is a kind of thing. Every person incorporates a nose.
The description of a nose is usually "[Random person enclosing the
noun][']s nose is noselike."

Section 4 - Of Enclosures

After reading a command:
        let X be indexed text;
        let X be the player's command;
        replace the text "'s" in X with " [']s";
        change the text of the player's command to X.

Understand "[something related by reversed enclosure] 's" as a thing.
Understand "my" as a thing when the player encloses the item
described.

Section 5 - Scenario

Starter is a room.

Bob and Mike  are men in Starter.

Barbie and Sandie are women in Starter.

When play begins: Now Bob wears the red hat. Mike wears the blue hat.
Barbie wears the fuschia hat. Sandie wears the purple hat. Sandie
carries the swagger stick. Mike carries the walking stick.

Persuasion rule: persuasion succeeds.

Test me with "x bob's hat/x bob's nose/x sandie's stick/bob, drop hat/
mike, doff hat/x mike's hat/mike, take hat/x mike's hat/bright blue
hat/x mike's blue hat/mike, wear red hat/mike, drop blue hat/take hat/
x my hat". [/code][/spoiler]

Except for some weirdness at lines 8 and 9, this behaves well
in 5E71, but apparently it doesn't in 6Z59; for instance, line 3
yields "I only understood you as far as wanting to examine Sandie's
nose." Has the definition of "enclose" changed between 5E71 and
6Z59? I don't see anything relevant about enclosure in the changelog,
but I noticed that the relevant documentation about enclosing in
3.25 (which is the same in both) doesn't actually mention 
a person's possessions as something they enclose.

Matt

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1192&start=0#p6894
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Enclosure in 5Z71 and 6E59?
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-06-30 21:20:59

I'm a bit confused (probably my fault rather than yours).  The example code you posted fails to compile at all (the dreaded "Translating the Source Failed" Error of Vaguely Sinister Doom) in Inform 7 6E59 due the line:

[code]The description of a nose is usually "[Random person enclosing the noun][']s nose is noselike."[/code]
While that line deserves its own attention, let's initially stay on course and change it to something mundane like:

[code]The description of a nose is usually "A bridge and two nostrils.  Yep, it's a nose."[/code]
This allows the project to compile in 6E59.  Line 3 of the "test me" works fine, demonstrating:

[code]>x sandie's stick
It seems confident, if not arrogant.[/code]
The trouble with lines 8 and 9 of "test me" is that you've said in the source:

[code]Understand "[something related by reversed enclosure] 's" as a thing.[/code]
Therefore when Mike is carrying two hats, a disambiguation option is the natural result (in other words, the code performs its function as written).

There's certainly much to be said about this example, but before discussing it we should all be on the same page.  Is there more to the code than was posted, or are you relying on second-hand accounts from another person?  I'd hate to spend time examining the wrong problem(s).

A possibly relevant thread involving a somewhat similar question is over [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=868]here[/url].




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1192&start=0#p6895
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Enclosure in 5Z71 and 6E59?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-06-30 21:34:19

[quote="Endosphere"]I'm a bit confused (probably my fault rather than yours).  The example code you posted fails to compile at all (the dreaded "Translating the Source Failed" Error of Vaguely Sinister Doom) in Inform 7 6E59 due the line:

[code]The description of a nose is usually "[Random person enclosing the noun][']s nose is noselike."[/code]
While that line deserves its own attention, let's initially stay on course and change it to something mundane like:

[code]The description of a nose is usually "A bridge and two nostrils.  Yep, it's a nose."[/code]
This allows the project to compile in 6E59.[/quote]

Well, it did compile in 5Z71 as is, so that's another question. Does it compile for you if you change "enclosing" to "incorporating"?

[quote] Line 3 of the "test me" works fine, demonstrating:

[code]>x sandie's stick
It seems confident, if not arrogant.[/code]
The trouble with lines 8 and 9 of "test me" is that you've said in the source:

[code]Understand "[something related by reversed enclosure] 's" as a thing.[/code]
Therefore when Mike is carrying two hats, a disambiguation option is the natural result (in other words, the code performs its function as written).

There's certainly much to be said about this example, but before discussing it we should all be on the same page.  Is there more to the code than was posted, or are you relying on second-hand accounts from another person?  I'd hate to spend time examining the wrong problem(s).[/quote]

Second-hand reports on 6Z59, so we need never speak of that again. The disambiguation option with line 8 was expected and wasn't the problem; the problem is that in line 9, on typing "bright blue hat" or something similar, I get "I only understood you as far as wanting to examine the bright blue hat." Which it ought not to say, I think. What do you get after disambiguating?

(I wonder if this has something to do with the after-reading-the-command combined with a disambiguator.)

Anyway, what I posted was the whole code, modulo some inconsequential tweaks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1192&start=0#p6896
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Enclosure in 5Z71 and 6E59?
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-06-30 22:11:38

[quote="matt w"]Well, it did compile in 5Z71 as is, so that's another question. Does it compile for you if you change "enclosing" to "incorporating"?[/quote]
That doesn't work either; the built-in relations aren't understood that way, plus you've got the word "noun" in there when you actually want "the item described".  There are many other ways to approach that line, though:

[code]To say noseowner for (nasal - a nose):
	let bearer be the holder of nasal;
	say "[bearer]'s".

The description of a nose is usually "[noseowner for the item described] nose is noselike."[/code]
That seems contrived, though (to me).

You could just write:

[code]The description of a nose is usually "[The holder of the item described][']s nose is noselike."[/code] 
Which is simple enough, but may become inadequate later if a serial nose collector arrives on the scene with a pair of scissors.  The most rigorous way to handle body parts is to make a specific relation, as described in that other thread I linked to in my last post.  For example:

[code]Embodiement relates one person (called the bodifier) to various things.  The verb to embody (he embodies, they embody, he embodied, it is embodied, he is embodying) implies the embodiement relation.

The description of a nose is usually "[the bodifier of the item described]'s nose is noselike."

When play begins:
	repeat with nosesetup running through people:
		let nasal be a random nose enclosed by nosesetup;
		now nosesetup embodies nasal.[/code]
Now Mike's nose will remain Mike's nose, even if Barbie chops it off with a hatchet.

An unrelated note to this is that your "When play begins" line isn't functioning as apparently intended.  All it really says is:

[code]When play begins:
	now Bob wears the red hat.[/code]
Not that this really matters as far as I can tell; the hats are still properly assigned by declaring them to to be worn by particular people, without any "when play begins" line needed.


[b][Edited, updated contents below:][/b]


In answer to the general question in your OP, I don't think the definition of enclosure has changed much.

If for some reason you're unhappy with your rule:

[code]Understand "[something related by reversed enclosure] 's" as a thing.[/code]
There are lots of other ways to approach the same functionality that offer additional room for develoopment.  For example you could make an "ownership" relation:

[code]Ownership relates one person (called the owner) to various things.  The verb to own (he owns, they own, he owned, it is owned, he is owning) implies the ownership relation.

Carry out an actor taking:
	now the actor owns the noun.

Carry out an actor dropping:
	if the actor owns the noun:
		now the actor does not own the noun.

Understand "[something related by reversed ownership]'s" as a thing.

When play begins:
	repeat with mineallmine running through people:
		repeat with deedset running through things enclosed by mineallmine:
			if mineallmine is carrying deedset or mineallmine is wearing deedset:
				now mineallmine owns deedset.[/code]
That's more work, but could allow you to do other things playing on the ideas of "possession" and "ownership."

On the general issue of parser confusion, deviating from the "test me" script shows a few new minor confusions.  These are mostly solved by adding a few rules such as:

[code]Does the player mean asking someone to try taking off a hat that is worn by the person asked: it is very likely.

Does the player mean asking someone to try dropping a hat that is carried by the person asked: it is very likely.

Does the player mean asking someone to try dropping a hat that is worn by the person asked: it is likely.[/code]
The confusion in regard to the bright blue hat vs the bright red hat is troublesome.  Although it can be solved by encouraging the player to make more specific references in the first place, such as:

[code]Does the player mean doing something to the bright red hat: it is likely.[/code]
that doesn't really address the underlying issue.  The same problem occurs if someone carries both of the sticks (for example, Bob):

[code]>x bob's stick
Which do you mean, the swagger stick or the walking stick?

>swagger stick
I only understood you as far as wanting to examine the swagger stick.[/code]
I'm sure I've seen this issue before, but I can't remember the details.  I experimented a bit, but couldn't find the underlying problem in the time I had available.  One particularly frustrating discovery was that writing:

[code]There is a hat called a bright red hat.
There is a hat called a bright blue hat.[/code]
did not solve the problem, but that redundantly adding:

[code]There is a hat called a bright red hat.  Understand "bright red hat" as the bright red hat.
There is a hat called a bright blue hat.  Understand "bright blue hat" as the bright blue hat.[/code]
does resolve the entire matter.  If no one else helps you out on this, I'll come back to it when I have time just for the benefit of fully understanding the problem myself.




-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1192&start=0#p6897
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Enclosure in 5Z71 and 6E59?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-01 08:03:47

[quote="Endosphere"][quote="matt w"]Well, it did compile in 5Z71 as is, so that's another question. Does it compile for you if you change "enclosing" to "incorporating"?[/quote]
That doesn't work either; the built-in relations aren't understood that way,[/quote]

Eh? Isn't "incorporating" a relation between a thing and its parts anymore?

[quote]plus you've got the word "noun" in there when you actually want "the item described".[/quote]

Good catch; this, as I said, compiled perfectly well in 5Z71, but it's possible to make it produce undesired results (by making a command that prints the description of Mike's nose even though the command didn't mention the nose). If 6E59 won't compile it, that's probably a good thing.

[lots of workarounds snipped]
 
Section 13.4 of the 6E59 documentation still lists the incorporation relation. Assuming I don't want "Mike's nose" to refer to a nose that has been detached from Mike and held by Barbie, why should I need to write "holder of the nose" rather than "random person incorporating the nose"? Are you sure that this doesn't compile and work when you change "noun" to "item described"?

[quote]An unrelated note to this is that your "When play begins" line isn't functioning as apparently intended.  All it really says is:

[code]When play begins:
	now Bob wears the red hat.[/code]
Not that this really matters as far as I can tell; the hats are still properly assigned by declaring them to to be worn by particular people, without any "when play begins" line needed.[/quote]

Thanks; that was one of the changes I've made in the code I'm actually running.


[quote]In answer to the general question in your OP, I don't think the definition of enclosure has changed much.

If for some reason you're unhappy with your rule:
[code]Understand "[something related by reversed enclosure] 's" as a thing.[/code][/quote]

Nah, as I said the problem was that the guy on RAIF who was testing it in 6E59 reported that "x Sandie's stick" didn't work. But he may just have been doing something mysterious. I like my rule fine.  [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote]On the general issue of parser confusion, deviating from the "test me" script shows a few new minor confusions.  These are mostly solved by adding a few rules such as:

[code]Does the player mean asking someone to try taking off a hat that is worn by the person asked: it is very likely.

Does the player mean asking someone to try dropping a hat that is carried by the person asked: it is very likely.

Does the player mean asking someone to try dropping a hat that is worn by the person asked: it is likely.[/code]
[/quote]

This looks helpful. I'd thought that something similar (obviously not for hats per se, but for things) was already built in, but perhaps not. And it seems to account for some of the problems that the RAIF guy reported ("Mike, doff hat" led Mike to pick up the red hat from the floor and try taking it off, and then "Mike's hat" referred to the red hat, and then other weird stuff happened. Now that I think of it, it's possible he may have changed my code a little before running it. Tsk, tsk.)

Out of curiosity, which commands are leading to trouble? 

[quote]The confusion in regard to the bright blue hat vs the bright red hat is troublesome.  Although it can be solved by encouraging the player to make more specific references in the first place, such as:

[code]Does the player mean doing something to the bright red hat: it is likely.[/code]
that doesn't really address the underlying issue.  The same problem occurs if someone carries both of the sticks (for example, Bob):

[code]>x bob's stick
Which do you mean, the swagger stick or the walking stick?

>swagger stick
I only understood you as far as wanting to examine the swagger stick.[/code]
I'm sure I've seen this issue before, but I can't remember the details.  I experimented a bit, but couldn't find the underlying problem in the time I had available.  One particularly frustrating discovery was that writing:

[code]There is a hat called a bright red hat.
There is a hat called a bright blue hat.[/code]
did not solve the problem, but that redundantly adding:

[code]There is a hat called a bright red hat.  Understand "bright red hat" as the bright red hat.
There is a hat called a bright blue hat.  Understand "bright blue hat" as the bright blue hat.[/code]
does resolve the entire matter.  If no one else helps you out on this, I'll come back to it when I have time just for the benefit of fully understanding the problem myself.[/quote]

Yeah, this is the thing that looked like a bug to me. Making it more likely that the player means the bright red hat doesn't seem like a good idea, since he might not. It might be worth filing a report if we can isolate the problem a little. 

Matt

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1193&start=0#p6898
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 6E72 maintenance release
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-01 11:06:12

The Mac OS X version of Inform release 6E72 is [url=http://inform7.com/download/]now available[/url], to be followed by versions for other platforms. This version offers no new features, but fixes a number of bugs from the 6E59 release that were deemed critical or serious. (Some bugs considered mild or cosmetic remain.) 

The [url=http://inform7.com/learn/logs/6E72.txt]change log[/url] lists the bugs fixed, and more detail about them can be found [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/changelog_page.php]at the bug tracking site[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1193&start=0#p6899
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6E72 maintenance release
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-07-01 11:59:49

Thank you very much, Em.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1194&start=0#p6900
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Yet another 'intro to IF' page.
User: sussman / DateTime: 2010-07-01 16:01:48

I've been giving talks about IF at various unconferences, and people are really interested.  They've been nagging me to provide them with links.  So, just like everyone else, I've made my own (opinionated) page for newbies:

   <a class="postlink" href="http://www.red-bean.com/sussman/if/">http://www.red-bean.com/sussman/if/</a>

Hope it helps others!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1192&start=0#p6901
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Enclosure in 5Z71 and 6E59?
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-07-01 20:43:37

We don't seem to be writing about quite the same thing; I probably misunderstood your original point.  The idea of a relation, called enclosure--which includes containment and incorporation--hasn't changed.  On the other hand using syntax such as "random person enclosing noun" is a horrible idea as it diffuses certainty into mere coincidence.  For example:

[code]Include Rideable Vehicles by Graham Nelson.

The Playroom is a room.
A horse is a kind of rideable animal.
Pokey is a horse in the playroom.
Gumby is a person in the playroom.
A person called Mr Mouse is in the playroom.  Mr Mouse carries a piece of taffy.

When play begins:
	move Mr Mouse to Gumby;
	silently try Gumby mounting Pokey.

The description of the taffy is "It's melting in [random person enclosing the noun]'s hand."

The description of a person is usually "It's [item described].  He's holding [a list of things enclosed by the item described]."[/code]
A "random person enclosing the taffy" could be any of Pokey, Gumby, or Mr Mouse in this example.  Sure the line compiles fine and works as exactly as expected--but it's a bad idea to write such nebulous code.  Such poor practices should always be avoided, lest they become habits.  On the other hand "list of things enclosed by..." can only ever have a very specific outcome and is therefore a very different sort of rule, despite the fact that both rules use the same terminology.

[quote="matt w"]Assuming I don't want "Mike's nose" to refer to a nose that has been detached from Mike and held by Barbie, why should I need to write "holder of the nose" rather than "random person incorporating the nose"?[/quote]
Folks are certainly free to write whatever they want.  My main point is that writing rigorously from the start in a way that encompasses the broadest conceivable circumstances rather than the narrow exigencies of the moment is a best practice, and allows one to easily make major design changes later without reviewing one's code line by line to update all the work one has already done.  An accidental benefit of using this approach is that one generally learns (at a much faster rate) much more about how to efficiently and effectively use I7 than those who try to implement one highly specific scenario at a time.  The way I look at the matter is "My hobby time is limited, and I don't want to waste it doing everything 'the hard way' and constantly revising stuff I thought was finished."

I didn't experiment any more yet with the odd

[code]There is a hat called a bright red hat. Understand "bright red hat" as the bright red hat.[/code]
thing yet, but it's brewing somewhere in my mind.  The solution will pop out on its own any time now; that's just the way things work for me, and I've never been a disciple of the Thomas Edison "99% perspiration, 1% inspiration" approach.  In the mean time there's an extension of the Inform web site called "disambiguation control" that you might look into; I've never tried it, but it sounds like it could be very helpful in these circumstances.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1192&start=0#p6902
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Enclosure in 5Z71 and 6E59?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-01 21:40:18

Good point about generality, although it applies equally to the "ownership" business, which will start producing bugs as soon as you allow an item to enter or leave someone's inventory without explicitly being dropped or taken. (Try purloining Bob's hat and then "x bob's hat.") 

But we still haven't addressed the mystery here, which is why

[code]The description of a nose is usually "[Random person enclosing the noun][']s nose is noselike."[/code]

didn't compile for you. Is it that you can't use "noun" in there anymore?

Disambiguation Control looks like a good thing to look into, and in fact there are some other weirdnesses that I ought to fix if I ever plan to use this (examining Barbie's stick and Bob's hat when they don't have one can yield ambiguous results). But the disambiguation behavior still looks like a bug that shouldn't require a workaround -- if the parser asks you "bright red hat or bright blue hat," it should take "bright blue hat" for an answer -- and perhaps should be reported if it's still happening in the most recent (now new!) build.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1193&start=0#p6903
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6E72 maintenance release
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-01 22:12:34

Unfortunately, there appears to be an issue in the IDE under pre-10.6 versions of the Mac OS, such that Inform refuses to run the compiled game in the IDE or to release it properly. This appears to be intermittent and has a workaround (closing a newly-made project and opening it again) under 10.5; in one case on a PPC for 10.4, the workaround does not work.

For more background on this issue, see these bug reports: [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=154&nbn=2#bugnotes]1[/url] [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=153]2[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1193&start=0#p6904
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6E72 maintenance release
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-07-01 22:36:09

The workaround also does not work for me on 10.5 (reported on the bug tracker).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1195&start=0#p6905
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Alabaster - Question
User: marxbert / DateTime: 2010-07-01 23:06:49

went to replay this nice little game and read a few more endings.  it seems like i've covered about 16 of them.  i am not sure if i can do what i'm trying to do...i do not want to spoil the fun of this game by using a walkthrough to find out (1) i can't do what i'm trying to do or (2) i am off by a word or two.

spoilers...

[spoiler]Is there anyway I can show my blood to Snow White/Lilith?  If so, is there a different response to showing blood before knowing Snow White is possessed by Lilith and after knowing she is possessed?
I have tried showing my wound to Snow, wiping my wound on Snow, filling the box with blood and showing it to Snow, etc.  Nothing works, and if it wasn't for the first sentence after the command to cut self ("If you drew blood, would it attract her to feed?), I wouldn't be trying so hard.

Please tell me either the correct words to use or if this task is impossible.[/spoiler]

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1195&start=0#p6906
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Alabaster - Question
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-01 23:23:32

Sorry, no -- there's not really a way to go with that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1195&start=0#p6907
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Alabaster - Question
User: marxbert / DateTime: 2010-07-01 23:43:27

thanks for the prompt answer.
5 minutes of gametime wasted--but you know it is a good game when probably ten times that amount of time was spent thinking about the situation while not in front of the computer screen...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1192&start=0#p6908
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Enclosure in 5Z71 and 6E59?
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-07-02 00:06:13

--My scratchpad with the code you originally posted was littered with so many alternatives and examples I forgot about that nose line not compiling originally.  I found the problem--when I first started looking at the issues raised in your post, I copied the example code you posted and pasted it into I7.  In your OP, the line:

[code]The description of a nose is usually "[Random person enclosing the
noun][']s nose is noselike."[/code]
as originally posted contains a (hidden) line break after the second instance of the word "the."  In another thread there's a notice of an updated build of 6E59 (not yet available for my platform, Windows) which contains the following comment:

[quote="[url=http://inform7.com/learn/logs/6E72.txt]6E72 (1 Jul 2010)[/url]"]
Bug fixed (0000064) whereby hard line breaks typed in the middle of text
with substitutions would cause problems.[/quote]
I wasn't aware of this bug, and it looks like it hit me while looking at your originally posted example.  My later example with Gumby didn't trigger the bug because it contained no line break in the middle of my text substitution.

So that's that; apparently this 6E59 bug is to be fixed in a forthcoming update.

--I briefly raised the "ownership" example only to illustrate an alternative way of looking at something; certainly to make it function acceptably a number of practical refinements would need to be added.

--I think, then, all we have left is the problem of:

[code]There is a hat called a bright red hat. Understand "bright red hat" as the bright red hat.[/code]
Is that assessment accurate?  It's your thread, and despite my wandering mind (sorry, I'm old, it happens [emote]:lol:[/emote] ) you deserve to have all your questions answered if possible; everyone else will also likely benefit from an explanation of this unusual problem.


[b]Edited:[/b]

Here's a different way to resolve the hat problem (without using "understand 'bright red hat' as the bright red hat" etc):

[code]Understand "hat" as "[tophat]".  Understand "[tophat]" as a hat.

Understand "[something related by reversed enclosure] 's [tophat]" as a hat.[/code]
Sadly that still doesn't explain the origin of the problem.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1160&start=0#p6909
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Spam postings
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2010-07-02 07:32:07

I hope you're getting better, Merk! Good luck!

I e-mailed rioshin (the other forum admin): he gave moderator rights to DavidK and bcressey.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1192&start=0#p6910
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Enclosure in 5Z71 and 6E59?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-02 08:33:55

[quote="Endosphere"]In your OP, the line:

[code]The description of a nose is usually "[Random person enclosing the
noun][']s nose is noselike."[/code]
as originally posted contains a (hidden) line break after the second instance of the word "the."  In another thread there's a notice of an updated build of 6E59 (not yet available for my platform, Windows) which contains the following comment:

[quote="[url=http://inform7.com/learn/logs/6E72.txt]6E72 (1 Jul 2010)[/url]"]
Bug fixed (0000064) whereby hard line breaks typed in the middle of text
with substitutions would cause problems.[/quote]
I wasn't aware of this bug, and it looks like it hit me while looking at your originally posted example.  My later example with Gumby didn't trigger the bug because it contained no line break in the middle of my text substitution.[/quote]

Oh, mea maxima culpa; I copied the code from a thread on RAIF (to make sure you were getting the version Al had, not the one with the tweaks I'd made) and didn't bother to eliminate the line breaks. I wonder if some of his issues came from things he did to tweak non-compiling code. Of course this is a case where pretty much any tweak you make will work, because while you're tweaking you'll eliminate the hard line break. 

[quote]--I think, then, all we have left is the problem of:

[code]There is a hat called a bright red hat. Understand "bright red hat" as the bright red hat.[/code]
Is that assessment accurate?[/quote]

Yes. I think I've found the underlying issue; I added this to the end of the "After reading a command":
[code]say X;
	say "[line break]". [/code]

and steps 8 and 9 produced:

[code]>[8] x mike's hat
x mike 's hat

Which do you mean, the bright red hat or the bright blue hat?

>[9] bright blue hat
x bright blue hat mike  's hat
I only understood you as far as wanting to examine the bright blue hat.[/code]

A little more experimentation shows that what you enter in response to the disambiguation prompt gets put in front of the entire phrase getting disambiguated; for instance if (at the beginning) you enter "x bright hat/bright blue hat," the player's command after the response is considered to be "x bright blue hat bright hat". Which works because any old word salad consisting of the words "bright blue hat" is understood as "bright blue hat." Also, "x mike's hat bright blue hat" works if entered as is (whether or not Mike also has another hat) but if you put something (besides "x") before "mike's hat" it doesn't. 

I'm not sure whether I think someone should file a bug report in 6E** for this, if it's still happening. It seems to me that disambiguation ideally ought not to work this way, but it looks like changing the behavior would be a big pain.If someone does want to submit a report, here's some shorter code that produces the same behavior:

[code]
After reading a command:
	let X be indexed text;
	let X be the player's command;
	replace the text "'s" in X with " [']s";
	change the text of the player's command to X. 
Understand "[something related by reversed possession] 's" as a thing.

Starter is a room. Chris is a person in Starter. Chris carries a red hat. Chris carries a blue hat.

Test me with "x chris's hat/red".[/code]

BTW any "After reading a command" code will get executed after a disambiguation response as well as after the original command; as you can see above after the disambiguation response there are two spaces before the "'s," but it doesn't matter. This seems like something you have to watch out for if you're writing "After reading a command," rather than a bug.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1196&start=0#p6911
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: images in inform7
User: crane / DateTime: 2010-07-02 11:46:54

hi,
I just tried to put images in a gluxl file using inform7. From the docs I tried things like.
"include Location Images by Emily Short.
Figure of Mona is the file "monalisa.png".
Gallery is a room. The room illustration is Figure of Mona.
Rule for starting the virtual machine:
    now the current graphics drawing rule is the standard placement rule.
The graphics window pixel count is 378.
Carry out looking:
    change currently shown picture to the room illustration of the location;
    follow the current graphics drawing rule.
garden is a room.
garden is south of Gallery."
but I get a box and no image.

clues appreciated.

cheers

mick

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1196&start=0#p6912
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: images in inform7
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-07-02 12:10:52

Do you have the file in the right place? It should be in a directory called X Materials/Figures where X is the file name of your project (see ch. 22.4. in the documentation).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1196&start=0#p6913
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: images in inform7
User: crane / DateTime: 2010-07-02 12:31:24

yes inform finds the image OK.
it is in index/contents/list of figures

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1192&start=0#p6914
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Enclosure in 5Z71 and 6E59?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-02 13:46:20

OK, this is completely bizarre. In 5Z71 (as ever), the following yields the bug:

[code]"Hats"

A hat is a kind of thing. Understand "chapeau" as a hat.

Lab is a room. The Stetson is a hat in lab. The fedora is a hat in lab.

Color is a kind of value. The colors are brown, red, and purple. A hat has a color. A hat is usually brown. 
After reading a command:
	say the player's command;
	say "[line break]".
Understand the color property as describing a hat. Understand "brown" as brown. Understand "red" as red. Understand "purple" as purple.

Test me with "take brown chapeau/stetson".[/code]

The following does [i]not[/i] yield the bug:

[code]"Hats"

A hat is a kind of thing. Understand "chapeau/hat" as a hat.

Lab is a room. The Stetson is a hat in lab. The fedora is a hat in lab.

Color is a kind of value. The colors are brown, red, and purple. A hat has a color. A hat is usually brown. 
After reading a command:
	say the player's command;
	say "[line break]".
Understand the color property as describing a hat. Understand "brown" as brown. Understand "red" as red. Understand "purple" as purple.

Test me with "take brown chapeau/stetson".[/code]

The following yields the bug again:

[code]"Hats"

A hat is a kind of thing. Understand "chapeau" as a hat. Understand "hat" as a hat.

Lab is a room. The Stetson is a hat in lab. The fedora is a hat in lab.

Color is a kind of value. The colors are brown, red, and purple. A hat has a color. A hat is usually brown. 
After reading a command:
	say the player's command;
	say "[line break]".
Understand the color property as describing a hat. Understand "brown" as brown. Understand "red" as red. Understand "purple" as purple.

Test me with "take brown chapeau/stetson".[/code]

This can't possibly be desired behavior.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1196&start=0#p6915
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: images in inform7
User: crane / DateTime: 2010-07-02 14:33:06

ok the problem seems to be something to do with.

if I have a project

include Location Images by Emily Short.
include Simple Graphical Window by Emily Short.
The graphics window proportion is 40.
Figure 2 is the file "monalisa.jpg".
Gallery is a room. The room illustration is Figure 2.
Figure 3 is the file "red.jpg".
garden is a room. The room illustration is Figure 3.
garden is south of Gallery.

If I go south of Gallery I am in garden which has an illustration of monalia.jpg instead of red.jpg
what is missing ?

cheers


mick

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1192&start=10#p6916
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Enclosure in 5Z71 and 6E59?
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-07-02 14:44:25

[quote="matt w"]OK, this is completely bizarre. In 5Z71 (as ever), the following yields the bug:

[code][...] Understand "chapeau" as a hat. [...][/code]

The following does [i]not[/i] yield the bug:

[code][...]Understand "chapeau/hat" as a hat.[...][/code]
[/quote]
In 6E59, at least, these yield two different versions of the same bug. The first one allows "brown stetson chapeau" or "stetson chapeau brown" but [i]not[/i] "stetson brown chapeau". The second [i]only[/i] allows "stetson brown chapeau", but not "brown stetson chapeau" or "stetson chapeau brown", or even "chapeau brown stetson".

This appears to be an issue with the generated parse_name routine only accepting various parts of the name (created by the various Understand statements) in a certain order, and that order changes depending on which types of Understand statements are used.

As you discovered, disambiguation exposes the bug because it works by putting the new words in front of the ambiguous words, which works fine in simple cases where the order doesn't matter, but doesn't work in this case. I believe this is a bug in the generated parse_name routine: if you define something called the "brown Stetson chapeau", the player can type those words in any order, but the parse_name version imposes an undocumented restriction on the order. I recommend filing a bug report.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1196&start=0#p6917
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: images in inform7
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-02 16:14:24

The way that figure numbers work changed in 6E59. I updated Simple Graphical Window to account for it; do you have the latest version (version 8) installed?

If so, it's possible that there's some deeper bug still to be addressed, but that would be a good place to check first.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1192&start=10#p6918
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Enclosure in 5Z71 and 6E59?
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-07-02 17:13:20

Good job on nailing this problem down, matt w.

As vaporware suggested, you should send in a bug report about this issue now that it's been sufficiently explored.  If you haven't done that before the process may seem either slightly intimidating or slightly onerous (or both), but in reality it's neither of those; I sent one in for 5Z71 and lived to tell about it [emote]:)[/emote] .  Sending in a bug report is now better than ever, in fact, since it seems the Inform staff may have changed their approach and may be open to the idea of releasing incremental bug-fix updates.  Therefore sending in a bug report now means you can help yourself and others avoid a situation like I found myself in over the winter, where I had to set Inform aside because I couldn't continue working until some bugs were fixed, and the prospect of a new version with bugs fixed was many months away.




-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1196&start=0#p6919
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: images in inform7
User: crane / DateTime: 2010-07-02 17:13:24

Ah! thanks. yes I had V6 for some reason. I works properly now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1192&start=10#p6920
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Enclosure in 5Z71 and 6E59?
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-07-02 17:17:24

Graham is out of town for the week, so if you want your report to be posted immediately, you can file it yourself at [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/]the bug tracker site[/url]. (Which is a good idea in general now anyway because, among other reasons, the tracker lets you enter more information than the old bug report form.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1192&start=10#p6921
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Enclosure in 5Z71 and 6E59?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-02 18:24:42

Thanks. I was reluctant to file a bug report because I hadn't verified it myself in 6E, but I'll do so. (I'm even registered on the forum, though I've probably forgotten my password.) 

vaporware, thanks for the explanation. The one where the disambiguation doesn't work seems like a harsher error to me, because the parser asks the player "Stetson or fedora?" and then doesn't accept the answer, but the "brown stetson hat" one is also mildly bad. 

(Though I should really be calling the Stetson a "stetson hat" anyway, as that's what Staggerlee classically shot Billy Lyons over. I believe its color is not recorded, though its price is.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1160&start=0#p6922
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Spam postings
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-07-03 11:24:55

[quote="Eriorg"]I e-mailed rioshin (the other forum admin): he gave moderator rights to DavidK and bcressey.[/quote]Thanks for that: I've been away on holiday but now I'm back I've deleted the outstanding spam posts I can see.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1160&start=10#p6923
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Spam postings
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2010-07-04 00:33:57

Hi Merk...
A good luck from Denmark too... Take it easy... whatever it is, it's not worth the risk...  [emote];)[/emote] 
Enjoy the summer...
Cheers

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1197&start=0#p6924
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Climbing trouble
User: unInformed / DateTime: 2010-07-04 06:06:03

I started an Inform project a while ago and have now returned to it after a year or so to find that some of the things I had written no longer work (likely due to an update in versions); climbing seems to be one of them.

I have a drainpipe that I wish to climb. The drainpipe is a supporter. I would like the player to 'climb drainpipe' and have the following take place:
[code]Instead of climbing drainpipe when player is in Garden:
say "You climb up the drainpipe until you are on the roof.";
move player to the Rooftop;
move drainpipe to Rooftop[/code]

Instead, when I state 'climb drainpipe' I get told "I don't think much is to be achieved by that."

I have the following in place:
[code]Understand "climb [something]" as climbing. [/code]
[code]Instead of going up when player is in Garden:
Say "You climb up the drainpipe until you reach the roof.";
move player to Rooftop;
move drainpipe to Rooftop.[/code]

Though the player moves up to the roof when I stand in the garden and type "Up" , the climbing drainpipe text does not appear, and the drainpipe no longer moves to the rooftop.

I'm sure there's something very obvious I'm doing wrong, but can't for the life of me figure out what.  Any ideas?

Thanks

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1197&start=0#p6925
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Climbing trouble
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-07-04 07:02:16

My best guess is that the rules don't fire because the player is not "in" the garden: "in" means being directly in something, so if the player is for example on a bench that's in the garden, the player is not in the garden but in the bench. Try changing the rules to "Instead of climbing drainpipe when the location is the Garden" and see if that works better.

[code]Understand "climb [something]" as climbing. [/code]
This is not in fact necessary; the same line is already defined in the standard library.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1197&start=0#p6926
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Climbing trouble
User: unInformed / DateTime: 2010-07-04 08:26:26

Thanks for your response; the error does certainly appear to be location based and I am in the correct location, i.e. not on a bench.  I'm assuming Regions do not play into this?

When I try and remove the conditions for where I am and simply state:
[code]Instead of climbing drainpipe:
say "You climb up the drainpipe until you are on the roof.";
move player to the Rooftop;
move drainpipe to Rooftop.[/code]

I get the following response:
[quote]
>climb drainpipe
You climb up the drainpipe until you are on the roof.

[** Programming error: tried to "move" yourself to <illegal object number 992> **]
[/quote]

My location stays in the garden. 

Thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1193&start=0#p6927
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6E72 maintenance release
User: Karen Vogel / DateTime: 2010-07-04 10:13:52

I'm coming to Inform from a series of discussions in indie gaming. I've heard it's the most accessible system to use. So I was initially surprised when I went to the download page (<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/download/">http://inform7.com/download/</a>) and saw there was no Windows version. Then I realized that "6E72" seems to be a bug fix release.

There is a Windows version for "6E59". So does this mean that none of the fixes were relevant for Windows? There's no indication on the download page that an updated verison for Windows is needed. Is that accurate? (The only indication seems to be in this thread here, which luckily hasn't moved too far down the list, that other versions are coming.) This seems like a confusing way to expect people to know what version is okay.

I'll assume it's logical to start playing around with "6E59" on Windows but I wanted to make sure.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1193&start=0#p6928
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6E72 maintenance release
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-07-04 10:55:47

What it means is that the maintainer of the Windows version of Inform 7 hasn't finished getting it ready yet - it will come eventually. You should start with 6E59 for now, and hopefully the 6E72 version will both come soon and not require you to change any of your code. I agree it's not the best situation, but it's how it is...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1193&start=0#p6929
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6E72 maintenance release
User: Karen Vogel / DateTime: 2010-07-04 11:05:21

Okay that's not an issue for me. I actually don't mind if one is in the works and a little delayed. It's just not the most friendly way to present things to someone coming at it for the first time. "6E59" investigation begins ...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1197&start=0#p6930
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Climbing trouble
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-07-04 11:45:13

I tested with the following and it works ok:

[code]The garden is a room. The rooftop is a room. The drainpipe is in the garden.
	
Instead of climbing drainpipe when player is in Garden:
	try going up.
	
Instead of going up in the Garden:
	say "You climb up the drainpipe until you are on the roof.";
	move player to Rooftop;
	move drainpipe to Rooftop.[/code]
The error message suggests that there might be something wrong with the room definitions. Can you see them in the index? In the index page's World tab there should be an "A to Z" list. In the list there should be "Garden ... room" and "Rooftop ... room".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1193&start=0#p6931
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6E72 maintenance release
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-04 11:49:35

The [url=http://inform7.com/news/]news section[/url] of the Inform site also tracks this kind of thing.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1197&start=0#p6932
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Climbing trouble
User: unInformed / DateTime: 2010-07-04 12:02:51

Thanks Juhana

Breaking it in two as your example above is seems to have done the trick for allowing me to move from room to room without errors, though it's missing the following 'say' command and movement of the drainpipe.

The rooms are fully set out in the index; I'm thinking there may have been some annoying (though necessary) changes to the way Inform works from the version I was using last year to the new one; I've now got 12,000 words of this project to go though to see what is all broken in this manner [emote]:([/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1197&start=0#p6933
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Climbing trouble
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-07-04 13:07:06

If you don't see the message, it means the rules don't fire and you're just moving around normally (you can try removing the rules altogether and I suspect it won't affect the game.) Hopefully you get the project working.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1197&start=0#p6934
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Climbing trouble
User: paranoidrandroid / DateTime: 2010-07-04 13:25:12

For this example, would it be more natural to treat the drainpipe as a door?

[code]
"Drainpipe"

The Garden is a room. The Roof is a room.

The drainpipe is an open door. The drainpipe is up from the garden and down from the roof.

Instead of climbing the drainpipe:
	say "You climb [if the player is in the garden]up[otherwise]down[end if] the drainpipe.";
	try entering the noun.

Instead of going up when the player is in the garden, try climbing the drainpipe.
Instead of going down when the player is in the roof, try climbing the drainpipe.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1193&start=0#p6935
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6E72 maintenance release
User: soukie / DateTime: 2010-07-04 13:32:24

I think this should be improved because for a newcomer landing on inform7.com, reading through it, deciding to give it a go and clicking on the Download link there is really no indication that the software exists on Windows platform.

Maybe a placeholder for Windows with a link to the page with the previous version or something else would help. I don't think many people would experiment further by clicking on the rather arcane sounding links 6E59 etc.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1193&start=0#p6936
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6E72 maintenance release
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-04 13:40:26

Yeeah, possibly. For what it's worth, it's rare for there to be a discrepancy in release platforms of more than a few days, so this is not a common state of affairs.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1193&start=10#p6937
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6E72 maintenance release
User: Karen Vogel / DateTime: 2010-07-04 14:54:39

It probably brings up a better question: why is there a discrepancy in releases at all? Isn't Inform one common platform? I get that there's different IDE's but from what I read here (<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/sources/">http://inform7.com/sources/</a>), it seems like the IDE is just an interface to the underlying Inform 7 system.

Either way, probably doesn't matter. As you say, if the releases for the common system are rarely out of whack, this probably doesn't matter too much. (I do like that there is a history of the releases available on the download page.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1193&start=10#p6938
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6E72 maintenance release
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-04 15:15:57

Inform is designed to be distributed as a unified application. People who really want to play with an IDE-free command line version are welcome to do so, but for a large part of the audience, that would be a mystifying and unfriendly experience.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1193&start=10#p6939
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6E72 maintenance release
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-07-04 15:51:21

[quote="emshort"]The Mac OS X version of Inform release 6E72 is [url=http://inform7.com/download/]now available[/url], to be followed by versions for other platforms.[/quote]The Windows build of 6E72 is now available from the above linked page.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1198&start=0#p6940
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Quixe 1.0.0 is released
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-07-04 18:47:26

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1193&start=10#p6941
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6E72 maintenance release
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-07-04 21:01:41

[quote="Karen Vogel"]It probably brings up a better question: why is there a discrepancy in releases at all? Isn't Inform one common platform? I get that there's different IDE's but from what I read here (<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/sources/">http://inform7.com/sources/</a>), it seems like the IDE is just an interface to the underlying Inform 7 system.

Either way, probably doesn't matter. As you say, if the releases for the common system are rarely out of whack, this probably doesn't matter too much. (I do like that there is a history of the releases available on the download page.)[/quote]
Each of the IDEs is made by different people. I'm not sure how the code sharing happens among them, but when a new release comes it often takes a few days for all the IDEs to be ready, though as the releases have usually been quite separated, it doesn't prove a problem for long. I guess Graham likes to get it out as soon as he can, even if that means it's Mac only at first?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1199&start=0#p6942
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Problems with lists of rules under 6E*
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-07-05 00:55:44

I'm trying to figure out how to fix a few older extensions to work with the newest build, partially as a learning exercise and partially because I'm mentioning them in my book.

One of these is Tutorial Mode by Emily Short, which currently wigs out on all the phrases related to "the completed instruction list," a list of objects to which the one-time only tutorial rules are added as they are completed. 

[quote]
Problem. You wrote 'if the teach looking rule is listed in the completed instruction list, make no decision'  , but 'completed instruction list' has the wrong kind of value: a lists of values based rule producing values rather than a list of values.
I was trying to match this phrase:

(teach looking rule - value) is listed in (completed instruction list - list of values) 
This was what I found out:

teach looking rule = a values based rule producing values
[/quote]

I'm trying to wrap my head around what ought to be done to correct this. I get that the old "rule" kind has been supplemented by more complex/variable terminology, but I'm not sure what you'd have to do to make this all work again. I tried something like this:

[code]
The completed instruction list is a list of values based rules producing values that varies.
[/code]

...without success. Any insights?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1199&start=0#p6943
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problems with lists of rules under 6E*
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-05 02:01:32

Hm. This post confused me, since I thought I'd checked this extension; and indeed when I go back and run the extension example under 6E72, it compiles and runs as I would expect. There are a few things that appear to be cosmetic bugs that have cropped up through various changes, and I'm working on those. But I'm not getting a compiler error.

If you're testing under 6E59, then my best guess is that it relates to a now-closed bug in core Inform.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1200&start=0#p6944
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Variable unavailable for this action, activity, or rulebook
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2010-07-05 10:24:39

Argh. I'm getting the run-time error message, "Variable unavailable for this action, activity, or rulebook: internal ID number 20009/0."

I understand that this error, or a variation of it, can occur when you try to declare an action variable that's already being used by another action. However I'm not sure if that's what's happening here. I don't have any actions with action variables in my WIP. What's more, the error message occurs at the end of every turn, no matter what action the player actually performs. I've tried commenting out different rulebooks from the action-processing and turn-processing rules, but can't seem to narrow it down.

There once was a way to access the I6 code that Inform generated from the story.ni file, wasn't there? I can't seem to find the I6 code anywhere now. I was hoping that if I could look at the I6 code, I might be able to track down where this error is coming from with the internal ID number.

Any suggestions? I'm just about at the headbanging stage.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1200&start=0#p6945
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Variable unavailable for this action, activity, or ruleb
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-07-05 10:50:30

[quote="Michael Gentry"]There once was a way to access the I6 code that Inform generated from the story.ni file, wasn't there? I can't seem to find the I6 code anywhere now.[/quote]At least on Windows, the generated Inform 6 source is in "Build/auto.inf" in the project directory. It's deleted by default when the project is closed, though, unless this is disabled from the preferences.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1200&start=0#p6946
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Variable unavailable for this action, activity, or ruleb
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2010-07-05 11:11:16

That did the trick! Thank you. 

[b]Important safety tip:[/b] don't use action variables in conditions involving the past tense.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1200&start=0#p6947
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Variable unavailable for this action, activity, or ruleb
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2010-07-05 11:26:54

[quote="Michael Gentry"]Important safety tip: don't use action variables in conditions involving the past tense.[/quote]
Could you give an example of this, so I know how to avoid it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1200&start=0#p6948
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Variable unavailable for this action, activity, or ruleb
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2010-07-05 11:50:07

[quote="Skinny Mike"][quote="Michael Gentry"]Important safety tip: don't use action variables in conditions involving the past tense.[/quote]
Could you give an example of this, so I know how to avoid it?[/quote]

[code]After exiting:
     if Batman was in the container exited from, say "As soon as Batman gets out of [the container exited from], you scramble out after him."[/code]

"The container exited from" is an action variable for the exit action. Using it in the past tense like that ("if Batman [b][i]was[/i][/b] in the container exited from") will cause problems, but the compiler won't stop you from doing it, and the run-time error message you do get is maddeningly vague.

(The compiler SHOULD catch it, because you're not supposed to use temporary variables of any kind in the past tense. I've already reported the problem as a bug.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1193&start=10#p6949
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6E72 maintenance release
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-07-05 12:39:28

A question about the Windows version of 6E72:

Obviously it's recommended to just follow the instructions.  However if one already has 6E59 installed, would any problems be forseeable if one were to just open the installer shell with 7zip or a similar program and place the update files in the appropriate folders rather than uninstalling 6E59/running the installer for 6E72?

Thanks.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=971&start=10#p6950
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What evil may lurk in the cold heart of a snowman?
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-07-05 13:00:16

For the benefit of posterity let the record show that in the elapsed time between my posts to this thread dated 2 April 2010 and 27 June 2010, an alleged peddler of alleged shady dealings calling himself "kangyutai" posted an alleged advertisement for an alleged escort service (allegedly based in New York) that was interlaced (in a rather vapid yet slightly endearing manner) with a brief alleged sermon allegedly expounding some obscure theological principles of the Christian religion.  My post of 27 June 2010 was offered as facetious response to said message.  On or about 1 July 2010 the original message under consideration was deleted by the forum staff (likely a shrewd decision under the circumstances).

In reality although I may at various times have maintained an intimate personal relationship with a woman who may or may not have formerly been employed by an alleged escort service, any such former association as may or may not have existed on her part occurred prior to our initial time of acquaintance; moreover to my knowledge I have never actively retained the services of any firm engaged in any enterprise even tangentially related to escort services.  Furthermore I presently have no intention of moving to (or even visiting) the state of New York under any forseeable circumstances.  Finally, I am not currently subject to any term of parole or other court-ordered supervision of my activities.

Much more importantly, in regard to any alleged notion that I occassionally entertained ominous metaphysical musings while playing Pac-Man I would like to categorically state that I presently have no recollection of any such contemplations; nor, on the advice of counsel, would I be disposed to discuss any such ominous metaphysical contemplations of Pac-Man if they had in fact occurred.

*******

And now back to the discussion of evil snowfolk: I had an interesting new thought about this concept.  What if, amidst the depths of World War II, Adolf Hitler had authorized research into a top-secret super soldier program involving the animation of snowy creatures who would subsequently be trained in the martial arts by operatives from his Japanese allies?  These [i]Nazi Snowman Ninjas[/i] could be accidently rediscovered by ill-fated partying teenagers and accidently set free after spending decades hidden in snow-cone machines at an abandoned mountain-top skiing resort, after which the snowfolk would naturally seek to wreak havoc upon an unsuspecting world.  I think there could be a story in there, perhaps a sequel to the snowfolk idea I originally presented (once Marketing steps in on the sequel project, any artistic credibility the original may have had will of course be obliterated in the quest to cash in on all residual evil snowman hype, so I may as well plan ahead).




-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1193&start=10#p6951
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6E72 maintenance release
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-07-05 13:25:19

[quote="Endosphere"]However if one already has 6E59 installed, would any problems be forseeable if one were to just open the installer shell with 7zip or a similar program and place the update files in the appropriate folders rather than uninstalling 6E59/running the installer for 6E72?[/quote]That should work fine: the installer doesn't really do much beyond copying the files and setting up icons.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=971&start=10#p6952
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What evil may lurk in the cold heart of a snowman?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-05 15:45:20

I got your sinister snowman right [url=http://mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=003167]here[/url]. (Sound, really quite squicky cartoon violence, complete incomprehensibility to anyone who hasn't already been following for the past 413 days, though the [url=http://mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=003168]next page[/url] will at least tell you which one is Snowman.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1200&start=0#p6953
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Variable unavailable for this action, activity, or ruleb
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2010-07-05 16:46:40

I see. Thanks, Michael.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1201&start=0#p6954
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Where are the persuasion and unsuccessful attempt rules?
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2010-07-05 17:28:36

I can't find persuasion or unsuccessful attempt rules listed anywhere in the index. Am I dense? I could have sworn they used to be somewhere in the rules tab.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1201&start=0#p6955
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Where are the persuasion and unsuccessful attempt rules?
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2010-07-05 17:31:33

Nevermind. I am just dense.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=971&start=10#p6956
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What evil may lurk in the cold heart of a snowman?
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-07-05 22:48:13

@matt w

Ooh, that's pretty [emote]8-)[/emote] .  After looking at the flash short I played the first twenty or so moves of "Homestuck."  While it does have its rustic charms, I don't think I'll give up [i]Zak McKracken[/i] (or even [url=http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/games.php?action=detail&id=584][i]Jessica Plunkenstein and the Dusseldorf Conspiracy[/i][/url]--which at least had yodelling and llamas) for it.  Any chance you could very grossly summarize how the stir-crazy armless boy got out of his room and got mixed up with the weird gang of billiard-ball fetishists present in the groovy clip you linked to here?

Sorry though, it doesn't really count as substantially snowman-related (but at least you're trying).

If there are any movie producers reading this thread, I am now seriously thinking we can make this Nazi Snowman Ninja thing work as next year's summer blockbuster.  Imagine the universal appeal of:

[color=#0000FF][size=150][url=http://www.12hotwomen.com/]Twelve Hot Women[/url][/size][/color] versus the [color=#FF0000][size=150]Nazi Snowman Ninjas[/size][/color]

I'm thinking we could give it a retro style, sort of like the early episodes of the old Lynda Carter Wonder Woman television program--but with a smokin' original soundtrack by Lady Gaga.  It's like a license to print money.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=971&start=10#p6957
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What evil may lurk in the cold heart of a snowman?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-05 23:09:20

[quote="Endosphere"]After looking at the flash short I played the first twenty or so moves of "Homestuck."  While it does have its rustic charms,[/quote]

Well, it starts off a little slow (as a matter of pacing) before it explodes into pure awesome insanity. You didn't get to the music yet, did you?

[quote]Any chance you could very grossly summarize how the stir-crazy armless boy got out of his room and got mixed up with the weird gang of billiard-ball fetishists present in the groovy clip you linked to here?[/quote]

Well, not in any way that makes sense. I think the shortest version is that the fellow who winds up with the cigarette holder in his eye is an alternate-universe version of the main villain of the story, created when a bunch of suspiciously humanoid aliens played their own session of the video game that John is eagerly awaiting, though perhaps I should also point out that the sexy number 8 lady was supposed to be the main villain but some of John's friends got hold of a hack (mod? I'm not really a gamer) that bugged things up a little, and also that the billiard-ball folk all seem to be the products of a time-traveling demon that was summoned up by a particularly tricky code, which was only supposed to run on the end of the universe, except it didn't matter because, you know, time travel. Which is odd, because the billiard-ball folk seem like relatively nice people, except for the one who goes around sticking cigarette holders in people's eyes.

Anyway, that's more or less the short version.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1193&start=10#p6958
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6E72 maintenance release
User: ptomato / DateTime: 2010-07-06 04:37:49

[quote="emshort"]The Mac OS X version of Inform release 6E72 is [url=http://inform7.com/download/]now available[/url], to be followed by versions for other platforms.[/quote]

Packages for Fedora 13 and Ubuntu 10.04 are now available there also. They will be followed by packages for other distributions in the coming days.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1193&start=10#p6959
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6E72 maintenance release
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-07-06 05:34:56

I'm having some trouble with the new Windows build... the following test code 

[code]"Test" by Me

Roomy is  a room.[/code]

returns:

[quote]Translating the Source

     This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6E72) on its most recent run through:


Problem. An internal error has occurred: Bad index documentation reference. The error was detected at line 452 of "Chapter 3/Index File Services.w". This should never happen, and I am now halting in abject failure.

What has happened here is that one of the checks Inform carries out internally, to see if it is working properly, has failed. There must be a bug in this copy of Inform. It may be worth checking whether you have the current, up-to-date version. If so, please report this problem via <a class="postlink" href="http://www.inform7.com/bugs">http://www.inform7.com/bugs</a>. 

 As for fixing your source text to avoid this bug, the last thing you changed is probably the cause, if there is a simple cause. Your source text might in fact be wrong, and the problem might be occurring because Inform has failed to find a good way to say so. But even if your source text looks correct, there are probably rephrasings which would achieve the same effect.[/quote]

[quote]C:\Interactive Fiction\Tools and Interpreters\Inform 7\Compilers\ni \
    -rules "C:\Interactive Fiction\Tools and Interpreters\Inform 7\Inform7\Extensions" -package "C:\Documents and Settings\rui\Os meus documentos\Inform\Projects\Tut tut tutorialistic.inform" -extension=z8
Inform 7 build 6E72 has started.
I've now read your source text, which is 7 words long.
I've also read Standard Rules by Graham Nelson, which is 39384 words long.
  >--> An internal error has occurred: Bad index documentation reference. The
    error was detected at line 452 of "Chapter 3/Index File Services.w". This
    should never happen, and I am now halting in abject failure.

Compiler finished with code 1[/quote]

The only thing I did different was, I previously installed Inform 7 where it wanted to (C:\Inform 7). This time, I decided to install it with my other IF stuff, in C:\Interactive Fiction\Tools and Interpreters\Inform 7. That's the only difference. Can this have caused it somehow? Is anyone else experiencing this?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=971&start=10#p6960
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What evil may lurk in the cold heart of a snowman?
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-07-06 10:28:05

Ah, of course--the old time-travelling demon ploy [emote]:idea:[/emote] .  I didn't play far enough for any soundtrack to start (I stopped right before fiddling with the instant messenger program for the third time), but I may go back to [i]Homestuck[/i] based on the synopsis you gave.  At the very minimum it can't be any worse than [url=http://realityonthenorm.info/games.php?sort=1&index=10][i]Davy Jones C'est Mort[/i][/url] (note: unless you're planning to play [i]all[/i] the games on that page, don't bother with this on its own); I find that having generally low expectations of everything means I seldom have to experience disappointment.

So the boy's name has to be "John"?  That's pretty funny in itself--I thought there was a problem when I couldn't type a name for him.  It's reminiscent of the scene/fact/fiction/whatever (they're all the same thing) from that movie [i]Man in the Moon[/i] where the comedian guy whose name I can't recall wanted to disrupt the vertical stabilization signal of his tv special, because it would be funny for millions of viewers to simultaneously get up and try to adjust their televisions in the mistaken belief that something was wrong with their equipment.  I appreciate that kind of fly-in-the-ointment humor, but not everyone does.  I remember having a conversation with someone about that particular movie wherein I was trying to explain why the lounge-singer character was funny, but their reaction was very similar to that of the tv executives in the film when the comedian dude was explaining why disrupting the television signal would be funny.  [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diderot]Mr. Diderot[/url] was mistaken when he (apocryphally) mused:

[quote]Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest[/quote]
as any such drama at high noon would just be a warm-up for a struggle against the bureaucrats--the sort of person whom (apocryphally) [url=http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde]Oscar Wilde[/url] may have generally had in mind when he stated:

[quote]Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.[/quote]




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1201&start=0#p6961
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Where are the persuasion and unsuccessful attempt rules?
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-07-06 10:35:59

As a general FYI, if you're going to be working with persuasion and unsuccessful attempts on a related note I noticed that the new (and sensible, in my opinion) Standard Rules excluding people, scenery, etc from "take all" attempts don't apply to actors other than the player.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1193&start=10#p6962
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6E72 maintenance release
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-07-06 14:59:16

[quote="Peter Pears"]The only thing I did different was, I previously installed Inform 7 where it wanted to (C:\Inform 7). This time, I decided to install it with my other IF stuff, in C:\Interactive Fiction\Tools and Interpreters\Inform 7. That's the only difference. Can this have caused it somehow? Is anyone else experiencing this?[/quote]I can't see any particular reason for installing in a different directory making any difference. Try installing it in the default location and if that works, we have a bug...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=971&start=10#p6963
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What evil may lurk in the cold heart of a snowman?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-06 15:02:13

[quote="Endosphere"]So the boy's name has to be "John"?  That's pretty funny in itself--I thought there was a problem when I couldn't type a name for him.[/quote]

An important thing that I forgot to tell you is that this is mostly a webcomic pretending to be a game, rather than a game. Some of the pages have interactive Flash thingies, but pretty much you click the links to go forward. 

(In previous MS Paint Adventures the commands came from reader suggestions, to some extent, and I think that was going on a little at the beginning of Homestuck, but by now the reader-author loop has become more complicated in a way that I don't understand, although it definitely involves the forums. One thing the author mentioned is that there are so many readers now that someone is bound to suggest the thing he was going to do anyway. "John Egbert" and other similar things were reader suggestions, though.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1193&start=10#p6964
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6E72 maintenance release
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-07-06 15:49:40

Well, unsurprisingly, it didn't change a thing - I still get the error, wherever I installed it. In fact, I only mentioned the different installation drive because it's the only thing I changed.

The weird thing is, you'd expect other people to have this problem. I have seen no mention of it elsewhere. And yet I have just re-downloaded and re-installed, am using the most minimalist legal code possible, and I still get an error.

If there is any information I can give you about my system specs that might help you track this down, do let me know.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1193&start=20#p6965
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6E72 maintenance release
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-07-06 16:09:10

[quote="Peter Pears"]If there is any information I can give you about my system specs that might help you track this down, do let me know.[/quote]Compile a project and then, without closing Inform 7, look in the "Build" directory of the project. There should be a file in there called "Debug log.txt": open it in a text editor and have a look for any lines starting

    Bad ref was 

If there are any, paste them and then following few lines: this should be printed in the debug log as the result of that internal error.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1193&start=20#p6966
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6E72 maintenance release
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-07-06 16:12:54

Wow. Indeed there is. And it's quite a lot.

[quote]Bad ref was <TIMEDEVENTS>. Known references are:[/quote]

And here they go:

EDIT - I'm sorry, there's just too many lines, it makes the thread hard to browse. I'll PM it to you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1193&start=20#p6967
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6E72 maintenance release
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-07-06 16:20:58

[quote="Peter Pears"]Bad ref was <TIMEDEVENTS>. Known references are:[/quote]Hmmm, unfortunately, I have to conceed that I don't know what that means: it seems to be a problem coming from somewhere deep in the compiler.

The only thing I can suggest is that this might come from the compiler trying to index extension documentation - try removing the extensions you've got in "My Documents" and see if that helps.

This is worth filing as a bug in Mantis (mention the "Bad ref was" line, but you don't need what comes after it, as that doesn't seem too interesting). Hopefully Graham might shed some light on it. (Though he's currently on holiday.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1193&start=20#p6968
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6E72 maintenance release
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-07-06 16:41:09

Thank you very much, you've helped me locate the problem.

I have every extension in My Documents. Even built-ins. I know it's considered bad form to move the built-ins to the My Documents folder, but with new versions coming out, and me never knowing which version Inform will pick, I prefer to have it all in one place.

And it seemed there was a clash between the standard rules I had and the standard rules in the newly installed directory. See, I thought only the three reported extensions in the change log had been changed, and so I didn't move any other extension. Never crossed my mind that I also had to move Standard Rules.

So I guess that's that. Thank you very much for helping me fix my problem, you were a lifesaver. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1202&start=0#p6969
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Problems with "now" vs. "change" in I7 (6E72)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-07-06 21:13:24

A warning for folks who are trying to get their older I7 stuff to compile with the "Use no deprecated features" option:

One of the deprecated features is the "change X to Y" syntax; all "change" phrases must be changed to "now X is Y".

Unfortunately, Inform's ability to interpret object properties in the "now" format is not equal to its ability to interpret them using "change". Specifically, when using "now", Inform's ability to infer the object to which a property pertains disappears, making for more verbose code. For example, in the following code, Inform can infer which object is being referred to in the context of the "testing rules" object-based rulebook:

[code]A testing-entity is a kind of thing. A testing-entity has a number called X1.

The test-object is a testing-entity. The X1 is 12.

When play begins:
	follow the testing rules for the test-object.
	
The testing rules are an object-based rulebook.
	
A testing rule for a testing-entity (called the subject):
	let dx be the X1 - 6;
	change the X1 to the X1 - dx;
	say "X1: [X1 of the subject].";
	
Test is a room.[/code]

But change the "change" in the testing rule to read

[code]now the X1 is the X1 - dx;[/code]

and you get a compiler error, because Inform can't do this equally well with conditions (which is how "now" parses things).

I've filed a [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=181]bug report[/url] and hopefully we'll see better parsing for "now" with the next release, but for the time being you may want to think twice unless you're certain you haven't used this kind of shortcut.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1193&start=20#p6970
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6E72 maintenance release
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-07-07 03:06:17

[quote="Peter Pears"]And it seemed there was a clash between the standard rules I had and the standard rules in the newly installed directory. See, I thought only the three reported extensions in the change log had been changed, and so I didn't move any other extension. Never crossed my mind that I also had to move Standard Rules.[/quote]Phew, glad we found it. In general you can expect the standard rules to change [b]every[/b] version.

As an aside, you can direct Inform to use a particular location for extensions etc. by creating a "home.txt" file (see the help under "Windows Inform Notes" on the help menu) that can be useful if you want multiple versions installed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1160&start=10#p6971
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Spam postings
User: farvardin / DateTime: 2010-07-07 12:24:52

I hadn't read this thread until now. I wish you are better now Merk!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1191&start=0#p6972
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Syntax highlighter question
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-07-07 12:32:43

[quote="Hoais"]I would say try grouping some different kinds according to how they are used. [emote]:D[/emote][/quote]
Thank you, Hoais.  I think that's what I will end up doing.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1169&start=20#p6973
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inventory Limits
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-07-07 12:41:00

That's a good point and a good example, Endosphere.  I think that the very best situation would be one in which the PC simply won't acquire an unrealistic number of portable objects.  In cases where this is not possible, I don't see why the game author can't give the player a sack object, which is smart enough not to contain huge or oddly-shaped items.  This thread hasn't really broached the topic of rucksacks/backpacks, etc.  Is a fairly low inventory limit really that bad, if the PC can carry all the miscellaneous stuff that the player may feel the need to take in a backpack?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1169&start=20#p6974
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inventory Limits
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-07-07 16:29:30

[quote="Bainespal"]Is a fairly low inventory limit really that bad, if the PC can carry all the miscellaneous stuff that the player may feel the need to take in a backpack?[/quote]
Not if surplus items are [i]automatically[/i] placed in the bag.  (Both Inform 7 and TADS 3 have classes for this kind of thing in their default libraries.)

If you have to put things in manually then it's still tedious busywork that's far more appealing to authors than players.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1193&start=20#p6975
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6E72 maintenance release
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-07-07 17:16:46

[quote="DavidK"]
As an aside, you can direct Inform to use a particular location for extensions etc. by creating a "home.txt" file (see the help under "Windows Inform Notes" on the help menu) that can be useful if you want multiple versions installed.[/quote]

Actually, I tried that as soon as the feature came out. It didn't work very well, for some reason, so I just neverminded it. Anyway, thanks for the help again. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1204&start=0#p6977
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Problem with new directions (among other difficulties)
User: DrWorm / DateTime: 2010-07-07 19:32:16

I posted this in the wrong forum earlier, so here's a new thread.

Like many other long-time players of IF, I have recently decided to try my hand at writing some myself. I'm using Inform 7 because it's supposed to be easy and intuitive for non-programmers. I've found this to be true--but I've also been having a few problems, and I would appreciate any help or input on what caused them and how I can prevent them.

1. When I try to test the game by clicking the "Go" button, the Error tab comes up and tells me that the source was successfully translated. However, the Game tab won't open, preventing me from trying out the game. Sometimes the Game tab comes up after I click the Go button multiple times, but sometimes I also get a message saying that the source translation failed for apparently no reason.

2. I'm currently writing a game that takes place on a ship, so I have created new directions: Fore, Aft, Port, and Starboard. The directions work, but Inform fails to recognize opposites (even though I specifically wrote that Fore was the opposite of Aft and Port the opposite of Starboard). Thus, when I write that a room is Fore of another room, once I go into the latter room and try to go Aft (the opposite of Fore), it doesn't work and I can't return.

3. Finally, I just want to know if there's any way to start the game off with the player inside of an enterable container.

Oh, and I'm using a computer running Mac OS X. Thanks in advance for any help!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1205&start=0#p6978
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: new question
User: sqib / DateTime: 2010-07-07 19:34:05

Can anyone fill me in on why this wouldnt compile. ( first a little background) there is a scene called day 1 morning and a scene called day 2 morning.

code - 

at 7:52 am:
	if day 2 morning is happening:
		say "Time to head to school, You walk out your front door turn west onto Main street and make the long walk down toward school.[line break]You finally arrive at the school grounds where you see people milling about and talking.";
	change the time of day to 7:59 am;
	now the player is in school grounds. - this does not work

-

at 7:52 am:
	if day 1 morning is happening:
		say "Time to head to school, You walk out your front door turn west onto Main street and make the long walk down toward school.[line break]You finally arrive at the school grounds where you see people milling about and talking.";
	change the time of day to 7:59 am;
	now the player is in school grounds.   - this does.

I put the scenes tracking on and the scene "day 2 morning" is playing. why would it not do what I said for the day 2 scene but do it on the day 1?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1204&start=0#p6979
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with new directions (among other difficulties)
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-07 19:58:25

1. It sounds like you may be running into a bug in Inform's Mac OS X IDE that shows up only under some versions of the OS X. There are some details over [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=153]here[/url]. If that's the case, it's annoying and we're sorry. There may be a workaround that will let you get past it in the short term, depending on which old OS version you happen to be using.

2. That's a little mysterious; I can't help without looking at some code. You could post a small sample of what is failing to work for you, or alternatively you could compare what you've done with the [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rex153.html#e153]example on shipboard directions[/url] and see whether that suggests anything.

3. Sure. Just include an assertion such as "The player is in the hammock." as part of your world definition.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1204&start=0#p6980
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with new directions (among other difficulties)
User: DrWorm / DateTime: 2010-07-07 20:53:48

Thanks for the link to the bug page. At least now I know that what I'm seeing is a genuine bug and not the result of something I did wrong. Regardless, it is, as you said, only an annoyance, and doesn't prevent me from working altogether.

Here's the source code for a portion of the game's map:
[code]The Pod Room is a room.

The Middle Hallway is a room. It is fore of the Pod Room.[/code]
Here's the code defining the new directions:
[code]Fore is a direction. The opposite of fore is aft.
Aft is a direction. The opposite of aft is fore.
Port is a direction. The opposite of port is starboard.
Starboard is a direction. The opposite of starboard is port.
[/code]

And here's the result when I try to go return to the Pod Room.
[quote][b]Pod Room[/b]

>fore

[b]Middle Hallway[/b]

>aft
You can't go that way.[/quote]

And finally, the container assertion works. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1202&start=0#p6981
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problems with "now" vs. "change" in I7 (6E72)
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-07-07 21:23:50

Thanks for the heads-up.  I have to say, though, when I initially read your example code it immediately looked like the sort of syntax that I wouldn't expect to work anyway due to vague construction.  For example the following use of "now," written with a bit more care, compiles and works fine (in terms of the example posted):

[code]A testing-entity is a kind of thing. A testing-entity has a number called X1.

The test-object is a testing-entity. The X1 of the test-object is 12.

When play begins:
	follow the testing rules for the test-object.
   
The testing rules are an object-based rulebook.
   
A testing rule for a testing-entity (called the subject):
	let dx be the X1 of the subject - 6;
	now the X1 of the subject is the X1 of the subject - dx;
	say "X1: [X1 of the subject].";
   
Test is a room.[/code]
I'd say then that the whole matter is less a bug than an eccentricity of syntax, but that the eccentricity was actually in the original way you wrote your example (which, as I said, looked immediately odd to me).  On the other hand, I believe that your main point was simply:

[quote="ektemple"]Specifically, when using "now", Inform's ability to infer the object to which a property pertains disappears, making for more verbose code.[/quote]
in which case I guess my revised example simply demonstrates your point.  Perhaps I'm saying I personally wouldn't have expected I7 to reliably make such inferences in the first place.

In general however I agree with the points you've made elsewhere about the phase-out of "change... to..." and think that the practical value of the "change" terminology to end-users should carry more weight than any aesthetic design considerations on the development side.  I think it's strange that "move... to..." isn't being eliminated at this time, although the same arguments presented as reasons for eliminating "change" apply with equal relevance to "move."




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1205&start=0#p6982
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: weird compiling problem.
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-07-07 21:34:22

When you say "this does not work/this does," do you mean the entire rule seems to fail in one case, or just that some component line doesn't work?

Without seeing more of your code, my initial guess at a general cause for the problem as you've framed it in your OP is that you haven't actually specified conditions for starting the scene called "day 1 morning" or that you've specified conditions for starting that scene which aren't actually met in the desired context.

For example:

[code]There is a scene called Day 1 Morning.  Day 1 Morning begins when play begins.[/code]




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1202&start=0#p6983
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problems with "now" vs. "change" in I7 (6E72)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-07-07 21:48:03

[quote="Endosphere"]Thanks for the heads-up.  I have to say, though, when I initially read your example code it immediately looked like the sort of syntax that I wouldn't expect to work anyway due to vague construction.  For example the following use of "now," written with a bit more care, compiles and works fine (in terms of the example posted):

[code]A testing rule for a testing-entity (called the subject):
	let dx be the X1 of the subject - 6;
	now the X1 of the subject is the X1 of the subject - dx;
	say "X1: [X1 of the subject].";[/code][/quote]

Yes, but that's a whole lot longer, and what have you gained by the length? Trust me, in a real world example like the ones that failed in my WIP, you don't want to have to write out the property's object reference every time. The example isn't very well written, though (I was intending to show how things fail only with "now", while "let" assignments work correctly--that is, they infer from the context which object we are talking about). Realistically, I'd refer to the subject once, and then not again, e.g.:

[code]A testing rule for a testing-entity (called the subject):
	let dx be the X1 of the subject - 6;
	now the X1 is the X1 - dx;
	say "X1: [X1 of the subject].";[/code]

[quote]Perhaps I'm saying I personally wouldn't have expected I7 to reliably make such inferences in the first place.][/quote]

But Inform does make them reliably, and has a pretty nicely set up internal mechanism for doing so, one that I take advantage of all the time. The stuff I'm working on isn't "normal" IF, though--here's a typical example:

[code]change the win-x of the grid to win-x - (bitmap-width * dot-size) / 2[/code]

Now imagine stacks of those kinds of commands, one after another. I think unnecessary "of the ____"'s impede code readability in that situation. There is no doubt in my mind that this is a feature worth keeping (my perhaps poorly constructed example aside), but it isn't one that the average user is ever going to be aware of.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1204&start=0#p6984
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with new directions (among other difficulties)
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2010-07-07 21:50:14

Put the direction definitions before your first use of the directions. Not sure why exactly it makes a difference, but it seems to. Just a wild guess, but maybe the exit is made at your first mention of "fore", and at that point, it doesn't know that fore has an opposite, so it doesn't make automatically make the opposite exit in the other room, and then once it does know about fore and aft, it doesn't go back to check and fill in anything that came before it.

To those more experienced than I: Is this a bug? Or just the way the compiler has to work?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1205&start=0#p6985
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: weird compiling problem.
User: sqib / DateTime: 2010-07-07 22:36:17

day 1 morning does begin when play begins... day 2 morning begins after the player is asleep during day 1 late night.

what I wanted to happen was at a certain time during day 2 morning, I was going to move a person to a room. This would be a trigger to end day 2 morning and start the following scene.  

so at 7:52 am on day 2 morning...nothing happens ..the say phrase is never triggered. Here is the actual code for the scenes as far as how they start/ end:

day 1 morning is a scene. day 1 morning begins when play begins.Day 1 morning ends when Day 1 before class begins.

day 2 morning is a scene.
Day 2 morning begins when the player is asleep for the first time.
Day 2 morning ends when day 2 before school begins.

day 2 before school is a scene.
day 2 before school begins when blinky is in out of world for the first time.

at 7:52 am:
	if day 2 morning is happening:
		say "Time to head to school, You walk out your front door turn west onto Main street and make the long walk down toward school.[line break]You finally arrive at the school grounds where you see people milling about and talking.";
	change the time of day to 7:59 am;
	now blinky is in out of world;
	now the player is in school grounds.

If i change the above code to say if day 1 morning is happening it works..but not day 2

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1205&start=0#p6986
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: weird compiling problem.
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-07-08 00:45:41

This is pretty interesting, sqib; there's more to this problem than meets the eye.  First to solve your immediate troubles, though.  Instead of using those timer rules, write your checks for events at a certain time of day this way:

[code]Every turn when the time of day is 7:52 am:
	if day 1 morning is happening:
		say "Time to head to school, You walk out your front door turn west onto Main street and make the long walk down toward school.[line break]You finally arrive at the school grounds where you see people milling about and talking.";
		change the time of day to 7:59 am;
		now the player is in school grounds;
	otherwise:
		if day-2-morning is happening:
			say "Time to head to school, You walk out your front door turn west onto Main street and make the long walk down toward school.[line break]You finally arrive at the school grounds where you see people milling about and talking.";
			change the time of day to 7:59 am;
			now the player is in school grounds.[/code]
There seems to be an underlying issue with these "At [time]" timers.  They only fire once (I never knew this myself until experimenting just now).  It's hard for me to say whether that's a bug or not.  The I7 documentation (Chapter 9.11) doesn't mention this limitation, which would thus seem to imply to the average reader that there is no such limitation; but that's not really an indicator either way.  At the very least, if the timers are intended to work only once then perhaps a clarifying line should be added to Chapter 9.11 of the I7 documentation.

If you eliminate/comment out the 7:52 event for Day 1 in your code, then the Day 2 event occurs as expected.  Or consider this example (based on your own posted code), which might be clearer because it has events that don't all use the same time of day:

[code]There is a room called Front Porch.

There is a room called School Grounds.

There is a scene called Day 1 Morning.  Day 1 Morning begins when play begins.

There is a scene called Day 1 Events.  Day 1 Events begins when the player is in the School Grounds for the first time.  Day 1 Events ends when the player is asleep for the first time.

Day 1 Morning ends when Day 1 Events begins.

There is a scene called Day-2-Morning.  Day-2-Morning begins when Day 1 Events ends.  Day-2-Morning ends when the player is in the School Grounds for the second time.

There is a scene called Day 2 Events.  Day 2 Events begins when Day-2-Morning ends.  Day 2 Events ends when the player is asleep for the second time.

When play begins:
	now the time of day is 7:50 am;
	now the right hand status line is "[time of day]".

When Day 1 Events ends:
	now the time of day is 7:50 am;
	now the player is in Front Porch.

Every turn when the time of day is 7:52 am:
	if day 1 morning is happening:
		say "Time to head to school, You walk out your front door turn west onto Main street and make the long walk down toward school.[line break]You finally arrive at the school grounds where you see people milling about and talking.";
		change the time of day to 7:59 am;
		now the player is in school grounds;
	otherwise:
		if day-2-morning is happening:
			say "Time to head to school, You walk out your front door turn west onto Main street and make the long walk down toward school.[line break]You finally arrive at the school grounds where you see people milling about and talking.";
			change the time of day to 7:59 am;
			now the player is in school grounds.

At 8:02 am:
	say "The bell rings.  Time to go to class."

At 8:04 am:
	say "'If you don't hurry inside, you'll get a tardy slip."

A person can be asleep or awake.  A person is usually awake.

Instead of sleeping:
	now the player is asleep;
	say "You doze off into dreamland."

The player wears a watch.  The description of the watch is "According to your watch, it's [time of day]."

Test timestudy with "z / z / z / z / z / z / z / z / sleep / z / z / z / z / z / z / z"[/code]
The sample game output shows that the 8:02 and 8:04 events happen on the first day, but don't happen on the second day.

The bottom line is you'll want to either a) use every turn rules with a time of day check, as I mentioned above, or b) make a recurring scene called "Trip to School" (or something like that) to repetitively move the player to school each day at 7:52.  There are certainly other ways to accomplish what you'd like as well, but one of the two methods I mentioned should be enough to get you started.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1089&start=0#p6988
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IntroComp 2010
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-07-08 07:02:40

An unofficial note that 9 games have been released as a part of this comp.

You can find them [url=http://www.allthingsjacq.com/introcomp/more.php]here[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1205&start=0#p6989
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: weird compiling problem.
User: sqib / DateTime: 2010-07-08 11:13:26

Endosphere, thank you for your time in trying to help me out. I will give this a whirl a little later and try it out. Again thank you, much appreciated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1207&start=0#p6990
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Player input syntax for names
User: mischief / DateTime: 2010-07-08 14:51:02

I was sifting through the manual and here, on the forum, but couldn't come up with an answer for this one. Perhaps I overlooked it, but I want the player to have the ability to input a variable, such as age and the correct syntax to call it when needed. 

[color=#0000BF]For example, at the beginning of the game, I want the game to ask the player for their name. [/color]

Later during game play, a NPC should be able to call them by name (ex: "Hello [player name], how are you?")

Could someone help me with this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1207&start=0#p6991
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Player input syntax for names
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-08 15:05:22

The "Fido" example shows how make an action that would let the player name a dog. 

You'd probably want to keep some aspects of that (taking input, setting up a property for the character with its name, making that property parse-able), but take out the "name" action that applies at any time during play, and instead ask the player for their name preference right at the beginning of the game in a When play begins: ... rule.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1207&start=0#p6992
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Player input syntax for names
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-07-08 15:34:29

You might want to check out Michael Callaghan's Questions extension, which can take care of asking the question and validating the player's response for you. After setting up your question, you'd just drop the player's response into a global variable or (better) a property of the player object, e.g.:

[code]    now the first-name of the player is the current answer.

    [later]

    say "Hello [first-name of the player], how are you?"[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1205&start=0#p6993
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: weird compiling problem.
User: sqib / DateTime: 2010-07-08 21:37:25

indeed the switch to "every turn" did the trick. I would have been banging my head up against the wall awhile if you didnt figure out that the way I had it only fires once. Again thank you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1208&start=0#p6994
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: A 'Printed Name' for Value Assignments?
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-07-08 23:25:02




Can a value-state be assigned something analagous to a "printed name" property?  Is there a simple way to restate a particular value (as opposed to an overall KOV) for printing purposes [i]other than using a "to say" statement[/i]?  Consider the following example:

[code]Material is a kind of value.  The materials are steel, iron, admantium, aluminum, copper, bronze, brass, gold, silver, lead, cherry-wood, oak-wood, maple-wood, hickory-wood, pine-wood, particle-board, drywall, granite, sandstone, basalt, limestone, cement, concrete, plaster, kevlar, cotton, wool, silk, nylon, rayon, leather, canvas, lpaper, cardboard, tissue, ceramic, glass, crystal, soft-plastic, hard-plastic, rubber, earth, flesh, goo, aether, and oddmaterial.  A thing has a material.  Understand the material property as referring to the thing.  A thing is usually oddmaterial.

Definition: a thing is metallic if its material is steel or its material is iron or its material is admantium or its material is aluminum or its material is copper or its material is bronze or its material is brass or its material is gold or its material is silver or its material is lead.

Understand "metal [thing]" or "metallic [thing]" as a thing when the item described is metallic.

Definition: a thing is wooden if its material is cherry-wood or its material is oak-wood or its material is maple-wood or its material is hickory-wood or its material is pine-wood or its material is particle-board or its material is drywall.

Understand "wood [thing]" or "wooden [thing]" as a thing when the item described is wooden.


The testarea is a room.

A rod is in the testarea.  The material of the rod is steel.  The description of the rod is "A cylindrical [material] bar, about eight inches long."

After taking a metallic thing:
	say "You pick up the metallic [item described]."

A board is in the testarea.  The material of the board is pine-wood.  The description of the board is "A 1['] by 8['] [material] plank, about six feet long."

After taking a wooden thing:
	say "You pick up the wooden [item described].".

A placebo is in the testarea.  The description of the placebo is "A small object, the size of a button, made of [material]."[/code]
Let's say I'm not happy with the "material description-style" of the "placebo" item, and would generally rather objects made of "oddmaterial" be described as made of "an unknown substance."

Of course I could easily make a "to say" substitution, such as:

[code]To say zmaterial for (composee - a thing):
	unless the material of composee is oddmaterial or the material of composee is aether or the material of composee is goo:
		say "[material of composee]";
	otherwise:
		say "an unknown substance".[/code]
which will work just fine, except that I now have to do more typing for the example item descriptions:

[code]A rod is in the testarea.  The material of the rod is steel.  The description of the rod is "A cylindrical [zmaterial for the item described] bar, about eight inches long."

After taking a metallic thing:
	say "You pick up the metallic [item described]."

A board is in the testarea.  The material of the board is pine-wood.  The description of the board is "A 1['] by 8['] [zmaterial for the item described] plank, about six feet long."

After taking a wooden thing:
	say "You pick up the wooden [item described].".

A placebo is in the testarea.  The description of the placebo is "A small object, the size of a button, made of [zmaterial for the item described]."[/code]
As a simple matter of convenience it's less effort to type "[material]" as opposed to "[zmaterial of the item described]" in these cases, but that would require some method for assigning "an unknown material" as the printed name of "oddmaterial."

Is there a way to achieve this narrow effect which requires less overall effort than using the "to say" substitution?  It would be nice if one could simply say something equivalent to:

[code]Rule for printing the [????] of oddmaterial:
	say "an unknown substance."[/code]
Thanks.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1169&start=20#p6995
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inventory Limits
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-07-09 08:05:58

What if the inventory had "soft" limits? Like, you could hold as many things as you wanted, but there might be consequences for holding toom uch?

Possible Examples: 

-After a certain limit, there is a small chance that you will randomly drop an item due to carrying too much.
-NPCs remark on or act upon the strange behaviour of carrying around many objects, perhaps offering to help you carry something.
-You find yourself unable to operate doors or stationary objects due to having your hands full.
-Traversing ladders/stairs/slides/etc becomes hazardous when you carry too much

As much as players seem to hate INV limits, it seems like some of the best puzzles included them- the coal mine puzzle from Sorcerer could only be solved by removing all your held items, for example. The diamond puzzle from zork required you to move items through the basket so you could get past the drafty room. 

I can see the frustration when puzzles seem to have arbitrary solutions based on objects you can't expect that you'll need to carry around (such as the welcome mat in mainframe zork, when a newspaper should have worked just as well). Lack of inventory limits can get pretty comical at times too (such as in Leisure Suit Larry 2 where the player picks up a garbage can sized cola and puts it in his pocket- with no lid, and safely carries it around). 

Perhaps if the player had some kind of APPRAISE command, where his experience as an adventurer could tell him how useful a given item is likely to be? That might have an effect to tone down the difficulty of a puzzle game, but might ease the frustration of carrying around useless items.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1209&start=0#p6996
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Illustrator?
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2010-07-09 08:52:18

Where do I go to look for an artist for my game?
A silly question? Probably, but I’m serious…
I’m writing a game and illustrations will be a part of the location descriptions and puzzles.
Any ideas?
Thanks in advance

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1209&start=0#p6997
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Illustrator?
User: George / DateTime: 2010-07-09 09:32:36

Maybe try the adventure game AGS forums, or a more general game forum such as TIGSource?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1169&start=20#p6998
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inventory Limits
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-07-09 10:20:44

[quote]As much as players seem to hate INV limits, it seems like some of the best puzzles included them[/quote]

Both of your examples (and their predecessor, Adventure's Plover Room) are severe, short-term inventory limits. You can carry zero or one objects, in one location, for the purpose of one puzzle.

This goes along with the up-thread example of a game with a few heavy objects, where you can't carry two heavy objects but there's no limit on light ones.

In all these cases, the effect is *supposed* to be intrusive and highly limiting, but it's also brief. It doesn't apply to the general course of the game. That's why it works.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1208&start=0#p6999
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: A 'Printed Name' for Value Assignments?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-07-09 10:22:10

No.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1210&start=0#p7000
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: [Hugo] New syntax highlighter for ConTEXT editor
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-07-09 10:40:26

Well, I finally finished combing through the Hugo libraries to fill out the file template that I made to provide syntax coloring for Hugo on the excellent freeware ConTEXT editor for Windows.  I'm not completely satisfied with how I grouped different keywords, since it's impossible to make the editor understand the context in which they are used (accidental pun  [emote];)[/emote] ), but I think the syntax coloring if effective, overall.

[url=http://www.contexteditor.org/]Here's the website for the ConTEXT editor.[/url]  An Inform 6 highlighter file already exists for ConTEXT.  I began my work a long time ago by editting the Inform file, but I ended up grouping keywords together very differently.

[b]EDIT:[/b]  The highlighter file is now available from the Highlighters page on the ConTEXT website: <a class="postlink" href="http://cdn.contextstatic.org/downloads/highlighters/Hugo.chl">http://cdn.contextstatic.org/downloads/ ... s/Hugo.chl</a>

[b]2ND EDIT:[/b]  Now available from the IF Archive:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/programming/editors/Hugo.chl">http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/pro ... s/Hugo.chl</a>

I don't expect many people to have a use for this highlighter, but if anyone can use it, I hope it proves helpful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1169&start=20#p7001
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inventory Limits
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-07-09 10:51:17

[quote="tggdan3"]What if the inventory had "soft" limits? Like, you could hold as many things as you wanted, but there might be consequences for holding toom uch?

Possible Examples: 

-After a certain limit, there is a small chance that you will randomly drop an item due to carrying too much.
-NPCs remark on or act upon the strange behaviour of carrying around many objects, perhaps offering to help you carry something.
-You find yourself unable to operate doors or stationary objects due to having your hands full.
-Traversing ladders/stairs/slides/etc becomes hazardous when you carry too much
[/quote]

That might be an even better way to enforce realism and immersion than to create an arbitrary inventory limit.  It would cause the player's adventuring habits to have an observable in-character effect, which would probably help the player to get into the story and identify with the PC.  Probably many players would simply stop making the poor PC lug around everything they want.  It would be hard to implement consistently and probably wouldn't fit stylistically for every game out there, but for many games this could be a good solution.

Good thinking!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1208&start=0#p7002
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: A 'Printed Name' for Value Assignments?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-07-09 11:17:54

Well, the rule for printing the name of something stuff ultimately uses a say phrase in there anyway, so it's say phrases or nothing.  But to answer your question, yes: [code]"test" by Ron Newcomb

Material is a kind of value.  The materials are steel, iron, admantium, aluminum, copper, bronze, brass, gold, silver, lead, cherry-wood, oak-wood, maple-wood, hickory-wood, pine-wood, particle-board, drywall, granite, sandstone, basalt, limestone, cement, concrete, plaster, kevlar, cotton, wool, silk, nylon, rayon, leather, canvas, lpaper, cardboard, tissue, ceramic, glass, crystal, soft-plastic, hard-plastic, rubber, earth, flesh, goo, aether, and oddmaterial.  A thing has a material.  Understand the material property as referring to the thing.  A thing is usually oddmaterial.


To say (X - material): if X is oddmaterial, say "an unknown substance"; otherwise say X.

When play begins:
	repeat with X running through materials:
		say "[X]."


Spot is room.[/code]That doesn't look like it should work but it does.  Whether I'm exploiting a bug or not is anyone's guess.  [quote="The transcript"]



steel.
iron.
admantium.
aluminum.
copper.
bronze.
brass.
gold.
silver.
lead.
cherry-wood.
oak-wood.
maple-wood.
hickory-wood.
pine-wood.
particle-board.
drywall.
granite.
sandstone.
basalt.
limestone.
cement.
concrete.
plaster.
kevlar.
cotton.
wool.
silk.
nylon.
rayon.
leather.
canvas.
lpaper.
cardboard.
tissue.
ceramic.
glass.
crystal.
soft-plastic.
hard-plastic.
rubber.
earth.
flesh.
goo.
aether.
an unknown substance.

test
An Interactive Fiction by Ron Newcomb
Release 1 / Serial number 100709 / Inform 7 build 6E72 (I6/v6.31 lib 6/12N) SD

Spot

>[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1208&start=0#p7003
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: A 'Printed Name' for Value Assignments?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-07-09 11:29:44

Well there's a bug.  This works just fine: [code]"test" by Ron Newcomb

Material is a kind of value.  The materials are steel, iron, and oddmaterial.  

To say (X - oddmaterial): say "an unknown substance".

When play begins:
	repeat with X running through materials:
		say "[X]."

Spot is room.[/code]But that didn't work in the earlier example because, according to the generated I6, I7 had interpreted oddmaterial as an object rather than a kind of value. The line "A thing has a material." seems to break I7 somehow. But it works if you use "A thing has a material called make." 

I'll submit a bug report. The example in this post should be all that's required. 

(Tested all this on Windows 6E72.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1208&start=0#p7004
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: A 'Printed Name' for Value Assignments?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-07-09 11:58:33

Sorry about the unwarranted pessimism. I didn't realize the compiler could handle the "To say X ... say X" logic.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1208&start=0#p7005
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: A 'Printed Name' for Value Assignments?
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-07-09 12:53:13



@zarf

No problem, thanks.  I was fairly pessimistic about a solution as well, but figured one never knows until one asks.

@Ron

Thanks.  That's an interesting find on the unexpectedly legal (to me) generic use of "to say."  If there's an underlying problem involving I6 stuff it wouldn't do any good to try explaining it to me in detail since I don't comprehend I6 stuff, but I read your second post as saying I needed to assign the "material" kind of value to things with the alternate method "A thing has a material called..."  However under some circumstances this doesn't seem to work in item descriptions, unless I've misunderstood you.  For example:

[code]Basematerial is a kind of value.  The basematerials are steel, iron, cherry-wood, pine-wood, and oddmaterial.  A thing has a basematerial called material.  Understand the material property as referring to the thing.  The material of a thing is usually oddmaterial.

To say (valword - oddmaterial): say "an unknown substance".

Definition: a thing is metallic if its material is steel or its material is iron.

Understand "metal [thing]" or "metallic [thing]" as a thing when the item described is metallic.

Definition: a thing is wooden if its material is cherry-wood or its material is pine-wood.

Understand "wood [thing]" or "wooden [thing]" as a thing when the item described is wooden.

The testarea is a room.

A rod is in the testarea.  The material of the rod is steel.  The description of the rod is "A cylindrical [material] bar, about eight inches long."

After taking a metallic thing:
	say "You pick up the metallic [item described]."

A board is in the testarea.  The material of the board is pine-wood.  The description of the board is "A 1['] by 8['] [material] plank, about six feet long."

After taking a wooden thing:
	say "You pick up the wooden [item described].".

A placebo is in the testarea.  The description of the placebo is "A small object, the size of a button, made of [material]."[/code]
The above code provides the output:

[quote][b]testarea[/b]
You can see a rod, a board, and a placebo here.

>x rod
A cylindrical steel bar, about eight inches long.

>get wooden board
You pick up the wooden board.

>x placebo
A small object, the size of a button, made of oddmaterial.[/quote]
The description of the placebo item, in that case, isn't working as intended.

On the other hand (unexpectedly after the failure of the first example), the following does give the desired output:

[code]Basematerial is a kind of value.  The basematerials are steel, iron, cherry-wood, pine-wood, and oddmaterial.  A thing has a basematerial called material.  Understand the material property as referring to the thing.  The material of a thing is usually oddmaterial.

To say (valword - oddmaterial): say "an unknown substance".

Definition: a thing is metallic if its material is steel or its material is iron.

Understand "metal [thing]" or "metallic [thing]" as a thing when the item described is metallic.

Definition: a thing is wooden if its material is cherry-wood or its material is pine-wood.

Understand "wood [thing]" or "wooden [thing]" as a thing when the item described is wooden.

The testarea is a room.

A thing has some text called the descriptor.

The description of a thing is usually "[descriptor of the item described][paragraph break][The item described] is made of [material of the item described]."

A rod is in the testarea.  The material of the rod is steel.  The descriptor of the rod is "A cylindrical bar, about eight inches long."

After taking a metallic thing:
	say "You pick up the metallic [item described]."

A board is in the testarea.  The material of the board is pine-wood.  The descriptor of the board is "A 1['] by 8['] plank, about six feet long."

After taking a wooden thing:
	say "You pick up the wooden [item described].".

A placebo is in the testarea.  The descriptor of the placebo is "A small object, the size of a button."[/code]
resulting in:

[quote][b]testarea[/b]
You can see a rod, a board, and a placebo here.

>x rod
A cylindrical bar, about eight inches long.

The rod is made of steel.

>get wooden board
You pick up the wooden board.

>x placebo
A small object, the size of a button.

The placebo is made of an unknown substance.[/quote]
Would this variance/success (compared to the first example) be explained by the bug you found, or is it a separate problem?

Thanks as well for filing a bug report on the assignment of a kind of value, as I likely wouldn't have been able to either define or articulate the problem (since I don't know much about the I6 stuff, and honestly am not very interested in learning about I6 stuff unless absolutely necessary).




-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1208&start=0#p7006
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: A 'Printed Name' for Value Assignments?
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-07-09 14:43:49

[quote="zarf"]Sorry about the unwarranted pessimism. I didn't realize the compiler could handle the "To say X ... say X" logic.[/quote]
I believe the way it works is (1) for an ambiguous call in an overloaded phrase definition, I7 will always try to resolve it as a call to a different overload rather than a recursive call to the one you're defining, and (2) when you replace a phrase like this, you're just defining a new overload that happens to be identical to an existing one, and I7 prefers it because it was defined later.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1208&start=0#p7007
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: A 'Printed Name' for Value Assignments?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-07-09 17:59:45

Change this line: [code]A placebo is in the testarea.  The description of the placebo is "A small object, the size of a button, made of [material]."[/code]to this[code]A placebo is in the testarea.  The description of the placebo is "A small object, the size of a button, made of [material of the item described]."[/code] and your first example will function like your second example. 

@Jesse: very interesting, that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1208&start=0#p7008
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: A 'Printed Name' for Value Assignments?
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-07-09 19:54:49

@ vaporware

Thanks.  Your observation actually explains a number of other odd things I've seen at various times, as I seem to have a natural talent for writing I7 code that relies heavily on ambiguous calls in overloaded phrase definitions. [emote]:)[/emote] 

@ Ron

Thanks.  If you hadn't found a hidden problem/bug in the assignment of KOVs, I might have stuck with my first example ("To say zmaterial for (composee - a thing)...") in this case as the original goal was simply to save a few words' wear on my keyboard.  In light of your comments though, I think the prudent course is to proceed ahead from my second example (as modified by your lastest post) as that approach will be generally helpful in a number of ways I'll not bore everyone by detailing here.  My third example, although it works fine, begins to creep too far for comfort away from my goal of simplifying my project by taking advantage of new features in 6Z72.




-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1211&start=0#p7009
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 6E72: Table Problem
User: joncgoodwin / DateTime: 2010-07-09 20:30:56

I'm sure there's a simple solution to this, but it's beyond me.

I have a simple table with two columns. One of the columns is labeled "topic." When I try: 

[code]choose a random row in the Table of Example;
say "[topic entry], for instance.";

Table of Example
topic       reply
Infinite Jest   "Heavily influenced by my End Zone."

[/code]

I get:

[code]
Problem. You wrote 'say "[topic entry], for instance."'  , and in particular 'topic entry': but this asked to say something of a kind which can't be said, or rather, printed. Although this problem can arise when you use complicated text substitutions which come in variant forms depending on the kinds of value used, far more often what this means is just that you tried to use a substituted value (e.g., in 'say "The dial reads [V]."') of a kind which could not be printed out. For instance, if V is a number or a piece of text, there is no problem: but if V is a parsing topic, say an entry in a 'topic' column of a table, then this problem will arise.
I was trying to match one of these phrases:

1. say "topic entry - text" 
2. say "[topic entry - number]" 
3. say "[topic entry - unicode character]" 
4. say "[topic entry - sayable value]" 
5. say "", for instance." - text" 
This was what I found out:

topic entry = a table entry, holding a topic
[/code]

I thought there might be some ambiguity in the word "topic" there that was throwing things off, so I've tried to change the column heading, but this results in a fatal compiler error:

[code]
Problem. An internal error has occurred: compiled a generic specification. The current sentence is Infinite Jest [I've changed this to match the above] ; the error was detected at line 89 of "Chapter 16/Compiling from Specifications.w". This should never happen, and I am now halting in abject failure.[/code]

There's also a line that reads: "instead of asking Don DeLillo about a topic listed in the Table of Example: say "[reply entry][paragraph break]". (That's formatted properly in the code itself.) I think that the word "topic" there has a syntactical meaning independent of the column heading, but the fatal error results if I change the column heading without changing it. (If I do change it to the new column heading, it doesn't seem to recognize it.)

Thank you in advance.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1211&start=0#p7010
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 6E72: Table Problem
User: joncgoodwin / DateTime: 2010-07-09 21:27:48

I can see now that I misunderstood the special nature of the topic column.

If you do have a long table with a topic column, however, and you want to grab a random entry from that topic column, is there a way to do it without copying the table?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1211&start=0#p7011
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 6E72: Table Problem
User: George / DateTime: 2010-07-09 21:38:51

I could be misunderstanding what you want here, but if you want a random entry from a topic table, you can just say for example [reply entry] after choosing a random row.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1211&start=0#p7012
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 6E72: Table Problem
User: joncgoodwin / DateTime: 2010-07-09 21:43:41

I want(ed) a random topic from a topic table.

I've made another table to handle this now, but I would guess that there would be a way to avoid duplication. The problem, even if so, is that the topic column has a lot of "this/that" and "the thing" or "thing" or "the purple thing" type of entries, which I would imagine would be a problem to parse even if they are accessible. So the cleaner table is probably simpler.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1212&start=0#p7013
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Creating an event
User: WinterSpice432 / DateTime: 2010-07-09 23:36:59

I'm new to I7 and I have been self teaching. I've done pretty well until i ran into this problem:

Basically, I have the player starting at the beginning of a maze and if they go north a rabbit will appear in certain rooms. same if the go either east or south. i want it to make it look as if the rabbit is leading the player through the maze so i can't have the rabbit appearing in other rooms if the player decides to side track. Well here is a copy of what i have:

[b]Follow the Rabbit is a Scene. 

Follow the Rabbit begins when the player enters either Hedge1, Hedge15 or Hedge3.
	if the player enters Hedge1, say "You see the white rabbit disappears down the path heading north." 
		After entering Hedge9, say "The white rabbit waits for you impatiently and upon seeing you, disappears to the path going east." 
		after entering Hedge11, say "The white rabbit motions at you and hops down the path heading south." ;
	if the player enters Hedge15, say "The white rabbit waits for you impatiently and, upon seeing you, disappears to the path going north."
		After entering Hedge17, say "The white rabbit motions at you and hops down the path heading south." ;
	if the player enters hedge3, say "You see the white rabbit disappears down the path heading east." 
		After entering Hedge16, say "The white rabbit waits for you impatiently and upon seeing you, disappears to the path going north." 
		After entering Hedge17, say "The white rabbit motions at you and hops down the path heading south." 

Follow the Rabbit ends when the player is in the Clearing.[/b]

Can anyone help? I am really really lost and i looked over new rules, if, text and such in the manual in the program but it doesn't help.

-Spice

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1211&start=0#p7014
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 6E72: Table Problem
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-07-10 03:16:54

Right. A topic cannot be printed for exactly that reason.  A topic is a function that asks a question, not an inert piece of text to be manipulated by functions.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1212&start=0#p7015
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating an event
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-07-10 05:15:56

Being a novice myself, what I venture is mainly guesswork. That said, I think the problem you have here is conceptual in nature. First, I'll just formalize the problem to remove ambiguities.

You want:
[list][*]A maze of some sort.[/*:m]
[*]A rabbit in the maze. The rabbit leads the player through the maze.[/*:m]
[*]The rabbit will only be visible when the player is in one of the rooms constituting the proper path.[/*:m]
[*]As for hinting, the rabbit will do so by exiting in the correct direction.[/*:m][/list:u]

Given that, I think you would be better off defining the path the rabbit wants you to take - in other words, where it would appear - and then (during the "find-the-way" scene) create some type of function or activity to make the rabbit act as it should in the appropriate rooms. The way you're doing it right now is basically to abandon the world model and print messages disconnected from it. That can work, but it's often unnecessarily hard work, and can be difficult to bug-test.

You might as well concatenate the description text, as well, like so (you'd need to define the "chosen exit" term):

[code]Table of lagomorphic communion
Byline
"You see the white rabbit disappearing down the path heading [chosen exit]."
"The white rabbit waits for you impatiently and upon seeing you, disappears to the path going [chosen exit]."
"The white rabbit motions at you and hops down the path heading [chosen exit]."[/code]

...that is, if you even need a table for something like that. But in case you want to vary the descriptions, there you go. Plus, I like lagomorphs.




(NOTE: This is all off the top of my head. I can't get to my I7 at the moment, otherwise I'd have error-checked by compiling it. Hopefully, it'll be instructive in some way, regardless.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1212&start=0#p7017
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating an event
User: WinterSpice432 / DateTime: 2010-07-10 10:18:20

Thank you i will try that.
Just one question, Well, two actually.

What do i do with the Chosen exit part?

And how do i say what exit i wish to use and which room i wish this to appear?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1213&start=0#p7018
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: ZMPP/Glulx - complete feature set
User: weiju / DateTime: 2010-07-10 10:55:25

Hi,

just wanted to let you know that ZMPP/Glulx should now have the complete  Glulx instruction set and Glk functions implemented. For this part of ZMPP,  only usability tweaks and bug fixes are planned.

I have also added another game to the preview list (Dead Cities) to demonstrate a game with a more complex layout (haven't found one with a more complicated one so far).

As always, the preview is under

<a class="postlink" href="http://zmpp.sourceforge.net/games/">http://zmpp.sourceforge.net/games/</a>

The source code is available on

<a class="postlink" href="http://github.com/weiju/zmpp2">http://github.com/weiju/zmpp2</a>

Best, Wei-ju

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1212&start=0#p7019
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating an event
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-07-10 12:52:02

[quote="WinterSpice432"]Thank you i will try that.
Just one question, Well, two actually.

What do i do with the Chosen exit part?

And how do i say what exit i wish to use and which room i wish this to appear?[/quote]

Gah. Sorry about that. The thing is, I skimmed past a lot of things that I thought you'd do anyway. Since this wasn't the Inform 7 part of the forum, I thought I'd keep things reasonably brief. But that meant I couldn't be very precise or informative. I'll try to do better in this post, and hope it's okay with Merk.

The first term, "chosen exit", was something I came up with. The idea is, you create a term called "chosen exit" (you can of course call it something entirely different). "Chosen exit" is of the [b]direction[/b] type - that is, it can be north, south, etc.. It represents, at any given time it's used, the direction the rabbit wants you to go.

This demonstrates the technique:

[code]"Maze" by Björn Paulsen

[the rooms of the maze]

Origin is a room. The player is in Origin.


[Borrowed from Example 125 - Bee Chambers]

A Maze Chamber is a kind of room. The printed name of a Maze Chamber is usually "A section of maze". The description of a Maze Chamber is usually "You are in a forest maze, surrounded on all sides by tall, green hedges.[paragraph break][the exits]"


Maze 1, Maze 2, Maze 3, Maze 4, and Maze 5 are Maze Chambers.

[Nothing incredibly arcane here, all the magic in 125 was actually cut]





[Setting the path manually because I'm too tired to do it procedurally]

Maze 1 is west of Origin and south of Maze 2. Maze 3 is east of Maze 2 and west of Maze 4. Maze 5 is north of Maze 4.

Destination is a room. Destination is east of Maze 5.




[Some magic, courtesy of Example 103 - Bumping into Walls]

Definition: a direction (called thataway) is viable if the room thataway from the location is a room. 

To say the exits:
	let count of exits be the number of viable directions;
	if the count of exits is 0, say "You appear to be trapped in here.[run paragraph on]";
	if the count of exits is 1, say "From here, you can only go [list of viable directions].[run paragraph on]";
	otherwise say "From here, you can go [list of viable directions].[run paragraph on]" 

[This lists the available exits, which may be useful]



Pathing is an action applying to nothing. Understand "path" as pathing.


Carry out pathing:
	say "[chosen exit]".




[Now, the bunny path]

Golden Path relates various rooms to various rooms. The verb to lead to (he leads to, they lead to, it will lead to, she has lead to) implies the Golden Path relation. 



Origin leads to Maze 1. 
Maze 1 leads to Maze 2. 
Maze 2 leads to Maze 3. 
Maze 3 leads to Maze 4. 
Maze 4 leads to Maze 5. 
Maze 5 leads to Destination.

[This is a poor way of doing it. Better would probably be to create a maze programmatically in some way, instead of by hand, then track a good path, then have the rabbit traverse the path one step at a time, only continuing as long as it can see you.]





To say chosen exit:
	let M be the next step via the Golden Path relation from the location to Destination;
	let way be the best route from location to M;
	say "You should go [way].".
	
	
	

Test me with "path/w/path/n/path/e/path/e/path/n/path/e".[/code]


As I indicated in the comments, it's a pretty bad way of doing it. If you want the rabbit to lead your character, but not backtrack, consider having the rabbit implemented as an animal. You define a new relation similar to the golden path, but you only define the start ("origin" in my example) and the end ("destination" in my example).

Now. Every turn when the rabbit can see you, have the rabbit use a "next step" type of connection to move one room closer to its goal. Report this so the player can see that the rabbit was there, but is no longer present. That way, the rabbit will see the player, say something, and then move on. 

As you can see above, I didn't bother creating the rabbit, but created a "path" command that more or less created a compass. The technique is the same, though, and I thought this way would be easier to demonstrate that yes, you can link together rooms by relations, and the relations can then be used in path-finding.

Is this something along the lines of what you wanted?


EDIT:
As for the maze itself - what I mean by programmatical creation is that you probably don't want to create the entire maze by hand. It should be much more effective to make a program loop so the computer places the rooms. But that's probably something for another time, so I did it by making the rooms by hand.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1212&start=0#p7021
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating an event
User: WinterSpice432 / DateTime: 2010-07-10 15:17:22

Yes! this would work! THANK YOU!

To say I'm a noob would be an understatement. This is my very first story. My father introduced this to me just a couple of months ago (with Zork 1) and i wanted to try writing one. 

Thank you so much for your help. You explained in very nicely and even showed me how to go on with the next steps. Plus you taught me a new techinque. Thank you!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1205&start=0#p7022
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: weird compiling problem.
User: sqib / DateTime: 2010-07-10 16:03:43

got 1 more for ya, didnt want to start a new thread for it.

heres the code in question:

every turn when the time of day is 11:01 am:
	if day 2 lunch is happening:
		say "";
		rex arrives happens in 1 turns from now;
		the outcome happens in 2 turns from now.

at the time when rex arrives happens:
	if the player does not enclose brass knuckles:
		say "some text";
		display Figure of rex punching me;
		now the player is in football field;
	otherwise:
		if the player encloses brass knuckles:
			say "some other text.";
			display figure of rex punched;
			display figure of rex knocked out;
			now the player is in principals office.
/ code

the problem is I only want the player sent to the principals office  when he has the brass knuckles, if not I would like him to stay where he is "football field"  the way it is now he goes to the principals office both ways

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1212&start=0#p7023
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating an event
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-07-10 16:24:11

[quote="WinterSpice432"]Yes! this would work! THANK YOU!

To say I'm a noob would be an understatement. This is my very first story. My father introduced this to me just a couple of months ago (with Zork 1) and i wanted to try writing one. 

Thank you so much for your help. You explained in very nicely and even showed me how to go on with the next steps. Plus you taught me a new techinque. Thank you![/quote]

No problem, I'm happy that I could help. I've yet to finish my first game (practise game or real one), but I've learned a lot from the good people on the forum. Don't be afraid to experiment, and if you want to know something, just ask around on the [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=7]Inform 6/7 section[/url] of the forum. You'll be in good hands there.

A tip, by the way: if you find that I7 behaves weirdly, and you want to ask about that, see if you can make a game that demonstrates the problem. Post that as an example.

Take myself, for instance. A few months back, I had a problem with possessive pronouns. If you made something a part of a person, you couldn't refer to the part as being (for example) John's part. So when I asked for help, I described the problem as follows:

[code]"Written on the body"
A body part is a kind of thing.
A face is a kind of body part. A face is part of every person.
A pimple is a kind of body part. A pimple is part of every man.

Definition: a person is other if it is not the player.
Definition: a thing is selfish if it is part of the player and the player can see an other person.
Does the player mean doing something when the noun is a selfish thing: it is very unlikely.

The Hall of Testing is a room. "This place is curiously empty."
Manny is a man in the Hall of Testing. The player is Manny.
Jane is a woman in the Hall of Testing. "Jane is here. She's, most emphatically, not you."

Test me with "look at Jane's face/look at your face/look at pimple"[/code]

Thing is, this is just an example; no game I've written would focus on whether people had pimples or not. But since I had the little "test me" command at the end, anyone who wanted to answer my question or see what was wrong could simply copy the text into Inform 7, start the game, and then type "test me" to see the problem themselves. 

That sort of thing can be a big help. It'll also let other people play with the code easier, and respond much faster.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1204&start=0#p7025
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with new directions (among other difficulties)
User: DrWorm / DateTime: 2010-07-10 17:46:21

Yup, that's it. I hate to keep asking questions, but I've been perusing the documentation for the answer to this one and I can't find it. How to I move something to the room that the player is currently in? For example, how would I do something like
[code]If the player is wet:
         move the frog to X[/code]

In place of X, I've tried "occupied room", "currently occupied room", and "room where the player is", as well as many other similar phrases, but the compiler doesn't recognize any of them.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1212&start=0#p7026
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating an event
User: WinterSpice432 / DateTime: 2010-07-10 18:17:49

ok technically there is no problem (the program is working) but i can't get the the rabbit to appear in any of the rooms. I am trying to figure out what i am missing to get it to work.

can you explain the purpose of this part?

[code]To say chosen exit:
   let M be the next step via the Golden Path relation from the location to Destination;
   let way be the best route from location to M;
   say "You should go [way].".[/code]

i don't fully understand it so i don't know what i am missing

This is my current variation of that:

[code]To say chosen exit:
   let M be the next step via the GoldenPath relation from the current location to Clearing;
   let way be the best route from location to M;
   say "The white rabbit waits impatiently for you and at your arrival, hops down the path heading [chosen exit]."[/code]

I also don't understand the purpose of this either:

[code]Pathing is an action applying to nothing. Understand "path" as pathing.

Carry out pathing:
   say "[chosen exit]".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1204&start=0#p7027
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with new directions (among other difficulties)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-10 18:35:29

[quote="DrWorm"]Yup, that's it. I hate to keep asking questions, but I've been perusing the documentation for the answer to this one and I can't find it. How to I move something to the room that the player is currently in? For example, how would I do something like
[code]If the player is wet:
         move the frog to X[/code]

In place of X, I've tried "occupied room", "currently occupied room", and "room where the player is", as well as many other similar phrases, but the compiler doesn't recognize any of them.[/quote]

"move the frog to the location," I think.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1212&start=0#p7028
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating an event
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-07-10 18:38:38

[quote="WinterSpice432"]ok technically there is no problem (the program is working) but i can't get the the rabbit to appear in any of the rooms. I am trying to figure out what i am missing to get it to work.[/quote]

That's because I didn't put in a rabbit. What I posted was a demonstration of pathfinding. In other words, if you're ON the path, the chosen exit is the path you take to go in the direction of the exit.

Your own game would require additional work.

[quote]
can you explain the purpose of this part?

[code]To say chosen exit:
   let M be the next step via the Golden Path relation from the location to Destination;
   let way be the best route from location to M;
   say "You should go [way].".[/code]

i don't fully understand it so i don't know what i am missing[/quote]

That's the part you're going to need. It means:
[list]
[*] the variable named "M" now means [i]the next step[/i] from where the player is right now (the location) toward the room called "Destination". The next step uses the Golden Path relation, which I described just above that code. So basically, the first row makes M become the nearest room you should go to in order to get closer to the Destination.[/*:m]
[*] Now that we have the room, we have to find the direction it's in. So now, we let the variable named "way" become the best route from the location (where we are) to M.[/*:m]
[*] The last row simply prints this direction.[/*:m][/list:u]


But you'll need a variation of the code that actually returns not indexed text (a "say" phrase) but an actual direction. Then, as soon as the rabbit is in the same room as the player (while in the maze), move the rabbit in the direction you just calculated. Then, you should be able to write a "report the rabbit exiting" rule that looks like what you wanted.


[quote]
This is my current variation of that:

[code]To say chosen exit:
   let M be the next step via the GoldenPath relation from the current location to Clearing;
   let way be the best route from location to M;
   say "The white rabbit waits impatiently for you and at your arrival, hops down the path heading [chosen exit]."[/code]
[/quote]


Well... I suppose you could make this work in that way, but I'd recommend instead that you try to use the code above not to say the direction. Instead, you'd want to create an actor, and then make it move in the correct direction as soon as the player is in the same room. As it is now, the rabbit isn't really there at all.


[quote]
I also don't understand the purpose of this either:

[code]Pathing is an action applying to nothing. Understand "path" as pathing.

Carry out pathing:
   say "[chosen exit]".[/code][/quote]

True, that's not going to do exactly what you want, either. Essentially, I created a command. In my example, I didn't want to mess about by creating an animal and asking it to move around (I was tired), so I just made a command to allow the player to find the correct direction they should go by typing "path".

An "action applying to nothing" is simply a command in the game. When you type "look" in Zork, that's an action applying to nothing. The next statement, "understand", means that when someone types "path", the command will activate.

Carry out is a rule telling what happens when we use the command. It uses the "to say chosen exit" code.


Anyway, my point is, the quick example has elements of the same thing as what you want. You're not going to be able to do what you want by copying my code; you're probably going to have to change a few things. But essentially, this is how finding the way through a maze can be done.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1205&start=0#p7029
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: new question
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-10 18:39:04

The indentation is important here -- can you copy your source in, complete with the indents, within a "code" tag? I suspect that what's happening is that you haven't indented "now the player is in principal's office" enough; everything under "otherwise" should be one indentation level deeper than the "otherwise," I think.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1205&start=0#p7030
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: new question
User: sqib / DateTime: 2010-07-10 19:12:13

[code]
at the time when rex arrives happens:
	if the player does not enclose brass knuckles:
		say "some text.";
		display Figure of rex punching me;
		now the player is in football field;
	otherwise:
		if the player encloses brass knuckles:
			say "some more text.";
			display figure of rex punched;
			display figure of rex knocked out;
			now the player is in principals office.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1205&start=0#p7031
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: new question
User: sqib / DateTime: 2010-07-10 19:37:50

hmm I think the problem was actually in  "the outcome happens in 2 turns from now."
 tweaked a lil bit of code there and it seems to work now.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1215&start=0#p7034
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: OT: tip for making a ZIP file of extensions, on Mac
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-07-10 21:25:03

So I shuttle extensions I work on between computers, one being a Mac and one being Windows, via email. But when I select two dozen .i7x files in Mac's Finder and "Create Archive", the resulting file is like 2MB in size!  For two dozen text files!  

At the risk of sounding like an advertisement, I just installed [url=http://free.abracode.com/cmworkshop/grim_ripper.html]GrimRipper[/url] which can "delete the resource fork" of a Mac file.  Right-clicking on an .i7x file that seems a little sizable for text -- 50KB or more per file, for example -- will show an option in the pop-up menu to "Delete Resource Fork".  And voilá, the .i7x file is now 4KB or 8KB in size.  

And the resulting .ZIP archive is barely over 100K in size, less than one tenth of its earlier size. 

Just thought I'd share.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1212&start=0#p7035
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating an event
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-07-10 23:31:19

[quote="WinterSpice432"]Ok creating a person (in this case the rabbit because i make him talk later - maybe) is easy.
But how do I make him change rooms and how do i connect him to the goldenpath?[/quote]

A person works. Three subtypes of person is man, woman and animal, so you could use an animal too, I guess. Anyway, you might create an "every turn" rule for that. 

Anyway, since I couldn't sleep, I thought I'd try writing up something along the lines of what you wanted. Bear in mind that there are probably bugs here and there. Anyway, here's my attempt.

[code]"Rabbitato" by Björn Paulsen


Section One - Maze Plantation

[the rooms of the maze]

Origin is a room. The player is in Origin. The description of Origin is "Not much to see here, really."


A Maze Chamber is a kind of room. The printed name of a Maze Chamber is usually "A section of maze". The description of a Maze Chamber is usually "You are in a forest maze, surrounded on all sides by tall, green hedges."


Maze 1, Maze 2, Maze 3, Maze 4, and Maze 5 are Maze Chambers.
Maze 6, Maze 7, Maze 8, Maze 9, and Maze 10 are Maze Chambers.



[Rooms placed by hand.]

Maze 1 is west of Origin and south of Maze 2. Maze 3 is east of Maze 2 and west of Maze 4. Maze 5 is north of Maze 4.

[Creating random passages.]

Maze 6 is north of Maze 2 and east of Maze 7.
Maze 8 is south of Maze 4 and west of Maze 9.
Maze 10 is west of Maze 5.

[Finally, the destination]

Destination is a room. Destination is east of Maze 5. The description is "This is the wondrous place of Destination, where all your dreams come true."






Section Two - Printing available exits


[Some magic, courtesy of Example 103 - Bumping into Walls]

Definition: a direction (called thataway) is viable if the room thataway from the location is a room.

To say the exits:
	let count of exits be the number of viable directions;
	if the count of exits is 0, say "You appear to be trapped in here.";
	if the count of exits is 1, say "From here, you can only go [list of viable directions].";
	otherwise say "From here, you can go [list of viable directions]."

Every turn:
	say "[the exits][run paragraph on]".







Section Three - Bunnies Behaving Oddly


[Now, the activity. This finds the path, and each time it's triggered, the rabbit goes one step closer to the goal.]

Rabbit-stepping is an activity.

For rabbit-stepping:
	if the location is not Destination:
		let chosen path be the best route from the location to the Destination;
		try the rabbit going the chosen path.




[The rabbit]

The white rabbit is an animal. The rabbit is in Origin. The description is "White, fluffy, and gifted with an incredible sense of direction."



[The scene. The idea is that we restrict the rabbit's wandering to only happen until we're through the labyrinth.

Scenes are awesome. You can hook anything into the scene. For instance, you can trigger behavior by the ending of a scene.]

Dances-With-Bunnies is a scene. 
Dances-With-Bunnies begins when the player is in Origin. 
Dances-With-Bunnies ends when the player is in Destination.


[Restricting the behavior to only happen during the scene]

Every turn during Dances-With-Bunnies:
	if the white rabbit is in the location:
		carry out the rabbit-stepping activity.

[Example of triggering behavior]

When Dances-With-Bunnies ends:
	say "The white rabbit nods gravely at you, then hops off into the sunset.";
	now the rabbit is off-stage.



[Replacing the "Report going" text with our own requires us to get the direction to where the rabbit went. So we have to repeat the instruction for finding directions earlier, more or less. It's a bit ugly, but I could find no better way on short notice.]

Report the rabbit going:
	let the chosen exit be the best route from the location to the holder of the rabbit;
	say "[one of]You see the white rabbit disappearing down the path heading [chosen exit].[or]The white rabbit waits for you impatiently and upon seeing you, disappears to the path going [chosen exit].[or]The white rabbit motions at you and hops down the path heading [chosen exit].[at random]" instead.[/code]


Was this more along the lines you wanted?



[b]Edit:[/b] Odd - I answered a post you made, but that post seems to have disappeared. Regardless, I hope this is something you can find a use for.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1215&start=0#p7036
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: OT: tip for making a ZIP file of extensions, on Mac
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-07-11 02:27:46

I prefer using [url=http://www.yellowmug.com/yemuzip/]YemuZip[/url] that just leaves out all that metadata. I'm not too comfortable with deleting system files that I don't know what they're for.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1216&start=0#p7037
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Removing an entire rulebook without a procedural rule
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-07-11 06:47:21

I have a WIP that does this:

[code]A procedural rule (this is the eliminate looking rule):
	ignore the carry out looking rules.
	
A procedural rule (this is the eliminate the does the player mean rule):
	ignore the does the player mean rules.[/code]

Is there a way to delist entire rulebooks that doesn't use (deprecated) procedural rules?

Thanks,
Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1216&start=0#p7038
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Removing an entire rulebook without a procedural rule
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-07-11 07:08:47

You might want to do something more advanced where it's actually necessary to not have the rules listed, but for most purposes you can skip all rules in a rulebook with:

[code]First carry out looking rule:
	rule succeeds.

First does the player mean rule:
	rule succeeds.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1216&start=0#p7039
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Removing an entire rulebook without a procedural rule
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-07-11 07:19:50

Thanks, that will work just fine for me. (As a general replacement for this aspect of the functionality of procedural rules, though, it does seem a bit hacky. I wonder if this is a situation where a new, special syntax to remove rulebooks might be needed.)

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1217&start=0#p7040
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Disambiguating between scenery and objects
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-07-11 10:46:04

It seems that Inform always gives preference to objects when disambiguations. I find that that behaviour is seriously hindering me, and I can't seem to override it.

The specific problem is that with this code:

[code]Field is a room. Some grain_scenery is in the field. The grain_scenery is privately-named. Understand "grain" as the grain_scenery. The printed name of the grain_scenery is "grain".

A bag of grain is a kind of thing. The plural of bag of grain is bags of grain. There are 20 bags of grain.

Harvesting is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "harvest [things]" as harvesting.

Check harvesting something (this is the block harvesting rule):
	say "I can't harvest that.".

Does the player mean harvesting a bag of grain: it is very unlikely.
Does the player mean harvesting grain_scenery: it is very likely.

Instead of harvesting grain_scenery:
	say "I harvest some grain.";
	now the player carries a random bag of grain.[/code]

...I get this output:

[quote]Field
You can see some grain here.

>harvest grain
I harvest some grain.

>harvest grain
(the grain)
I harvest some grain.

>i
You are carrying:
  two bags of grain

>[/quote]

...where "grain" gets listed when I don't want it to be lsited. But if I change that line of code and say "Some grain_scenery is scenery in the field", I get:

[quote]Test
An Interactive Fiction
Release 1 / Serial number 100711 / Inform 7 build 6E72 (I6/v6.31 lib 6/12N) SD

Field

>harvest grain
I harvest some grain.

>harvest grain
(the bag of grain)
I can't harvest that.

>i
You are carrying:
  a bag of grain

>[/quote]

...in which my attempt at disambiguation breaks down.

How can I work around this?

EDIT - While I'm on the subject, when harvesting I'd also like to get rid of "(the grain)". How would I go about doing that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1217&start=0#p7041
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguating between scenery and objects
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-07-11 11:14:50

It seems to work if you change 'Understand "harvest [things]" as harvesting' to 'Understand "harvest [thing]" as harvesting.' Then you lose the ability to harvest multiple things at once of course. This might have something to do with the action looking for multiple objects and finding an anonymous instance of a kind of which there could potentially be multiple instances, but this is all guesswork. It would be worth submitting a bug report though.

[quote]While I'm on the subject, when harvesting I'd also like to get rid of "(the grain)". How would I go about doing that?[/quote]
[code]Rule for clarifying the parser's choice of grain_scenery while harvesting:
	do nothing.[/code]
(Manual chapter 17.28.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1217&start=0#p7042
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguating between scenery and objects
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-07-11 11:27:24

[quote]It seems to work if you change 'Understand "harvest [things]" as harvesting' to 'Understand "harvest [thing]" as harvesting.' Then you lose the ability to harvest multiple things at once of course. This might have something to do with the action looking for multiple objects and finding an anonymous instance of a kind of which there could potentially be multiple instances, but this is all guesswork. It would be worth submitting a bug report though.[/quote]

Thank you. Unfortunately, I do need the ability to harvest more than one thing - or at least, give a suitable response to "harvest grain and potatoes", which, if I just have "Understand "harvest [thing]" as harvesting.", says "You can't use multiple objects with that verb" - unsuitable.

Re my second question - thank you. I've been staring at the disambiguation problem so bloody long I couldn't be trusted to find anything on the manual anymore. Frustration build-up when things stop going as they should, you know.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1217&start=0#p7044
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguating between scenery and objects
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-11 12:00:01

This might work for now: Don't make the grain_scenery scenery, and add

[code]For printing a locale paragraph about the grain_scenery:
	Set the locale priority of the grain_scenery to 0.[/code]

It's a hand-rolled version of the (5E71) Standard Rules' don't mention scenery in room descriptions rule. You'd also have to assert that the grain_scenery is fixed in place. 

Also, you probably want:

[code]Instead of harvesting grain_scenery:
	if a bag of grain is off-stage:
		say "You harvest some grain.";
		now the player carries a random bag of grain that is off-stage;
	otherwise:
		say "The field is all harvested out."[/code]

as otherwise you'll sometimes wind up moving a random bag of grain that you're carrying to yourself, or worse yet, one that you've already dropped.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1217&start=0#p7045
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguating between scenery and objects
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-07-11 12:10:46

Thank you very much. [emote]:)[/emote] For both suggestions.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1212&start=0#p7046
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating an event
User: WinterSpice432 / DateTime: 2010-07-11 13:35:25

I was try you activity but i couldn't get it to work so i had to delete it. So i had to create something different (based off of the Odyssey example in the inform recipe book) However 
[i]that[/i] wouldn't work with the scene so i have to delete that too. (which is a shame)

Well anyway this is what i have.

[code]
Table of White Rabbit's Movements
Hedge Maze Entrance
Hedge1
Hedge7
Hedge8
Hedge9
Hedge10
Hedge11
Hedge12
Clearing

Every turn when White Rabbit is active:
	Repeat through the table of White Rabbit's Movements
		Let the Last space be the location of White Rabbit;
		If White Rabbit  can be seen by the player, say "[one of]You see the white rabbit disappearing down the path heading [chosen exit].[or]The white rabbit waits for you impatiently and upon seeing you, disappears down the path going [chosen exit].[or]The white rabbit motions at you and hops down the path heading [chosen exit].[at random]"
		Move White Rabbit to destination entry;
		Blank out the whole row;
		Rule succeeds.
				
White Rabbit can be active or passive. White Rabbit is passive.

[b]Every turn the white rabbit can be seen by the player:
	Change White rabbit to active.[/b]

[b][i](this part won't work for me)[/i][/b][/code]

I am trying to make the rabbit only be active when it is seen by the player but i don't know how to do it.

Can you help?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1212&start=10#p7047
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating an event
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-07-11 14:37:45

[quote="WinterSpice432"]I was try you activity but i couldn't get it to work so i had to delete it. So i had to create something different (based off of the Odyssey example in the inform recipe book) However 
[i]that[/i] wouldn't work with the scene so i have to delete that too. (which is a shame)

Well anyway this is what i have.

[code]
Table of White Rabbit's Movements
Hedge Maze Entrance
Hedge1
Hedge7
Hedge8
Hedge9
Hedge10
Hedge11
Hedge12
Clearing

Every turn when White Rabbit is active:
	Repeat through the table of White Rabbit's Movements
		Let the Last space be the location of White Rabbit;
		If White Rabbit  can be seen by the player, say "[one of]You see the white rabbit disappearing down the path heading [chosen exit].[or]The white rabbit waits for you impatiently and upon seeing you, disappears down the path going [chosen exit].[or]The white rabbit motions at you and hops down the path heading [chosen exit].[at random]"
		Move White Rabbit to destination entry;
		Blank out the whole row;
		Rule succeeds.
				
White Rabbit can be active or passive. White Rabbit is passive.

[b]Every turn the white rabbit can be seen by the player:
	Change White rabbit to active.[/b]

[b][i](this part won't work for me)[/i][/b][/code]

I am trying to make the rabbit only be active when it is seen by the player but i don't know how to do it.

Can you help?[/quote]

Well, firstly, you lack a lot of colons and semicolons in the syntax. That would make the program impossible to run. Is that the problem?

Secondly, I'm not sure what you're saying. If the code doesn't do what you want, then of course you may need to write something else. If you can't get the code I wrote to run at all, the problem can be two things: either you pasted the code I wrote without correcting the tabs (this forum converts tabs to spaces, which ruins the code), or you're running an older version of Inform 7.

Does the code I sent compile on your computer at all? What version of Inform are you running?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1217&start=0#p7048
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguating between scenery and objects
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-07-11 15:28:59

It sounds like you basically want a "dispenser," with "harvest" as a variant of "take."  Example 362, "Pizza Prince," in the documentation has a pizza buffet from which you can take a certain number of slices of pizza, and includes some cleaning-up of the implicit-take behavior.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1217&start=0#p7049
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguating between scenery and objects
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-07-11 15:34:31

Thank you, but I had an idea with how to achieve the effect I wished. My issue was with the disambiguation, which was not behaving as expected. Matt told me exactly what to do, and it worked wonders.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1212&start=10#p7050
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating an event
User: WinterSpice432 / DateTime: 2010-07-11 17:27:57

I'm running  GNU General Public License, version 3 on a Linux.

And your scene [i]did[/i] work. The activity didn't and i am such a noob that without a working example i don't know how to fix it. Also i've corrected my code since my last posting so that part at lest works. what i have currently is that the rabbit only moves when it is active. i'm trying to make it so that the rabbit is only active when the player can see him. ( that way the rabbit wouldn't run off without the player.)

[code]Every turn:
	If the white rabbit can be seen by the player then change white rabbit to active;
	Otherwise:
		the rabbit is passive.[/code]
any ideas? right now i am combing through the manual/recipe book for examples/ideas i can use.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1212&start=10#p7051
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating an event
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-07-11 18:23:03

[quote="WinterSpice432"]I'm running  GNU General Public License, version 3 on a Linux.[/quote]

Allright, but which version number? If you're using the very latest, that should be 6E72. If you have an earlier version, especially 6E59, that may be the reason why things fail to work.

[quote]And your scene [i]did[/i] work. The activity didn't and i am such a noob that without a working example i don't know how to fix it. [/quote]

Wait, maybe we're saying different things. I'm saying the last example I gave is a complete one. I.e., in my version of Inform (6E72 running in Windows 7), what I presented to you is the full example game, and (for me) it compiles without error. If you copy and paste the code I submitted into an empty Inform project, that code ought to run without error message.

So this is a bit weird and interesting. When you try to run the code, what error messages do you get? Does it happen when you try to compile, or does something odd happen at runtime (in the game itself)? Did you try using the entire code I gave you, or did you only use pieces? Alternatively, did you add your own modifications right away, before trying to see if it works? 

Any of those things might change the result. Since I can't tell what you have, I can't really give much in the way of advice, I'm afraid.

[quote]Also i've corrected my code since my last posting so that part at lest works. what i have currently is that the rabbit only moves when it is active. i'm trying to make it so that the rabbit is only active when the player can see him. ( that way the rabbit wouldn't run off without the player.)[/quote]

I see. If you want that, you don't have to switch between active and passive. Really, all you have to do is something like this:

[code]Definition: the rabbit is active if the player can see it.
Definition: the rabbit is passive if it is not active.[/code]

That means you can do something along the lines of "every turn when the rabbit is active...", without having to manually check whether it's in the same room.

Easier, maybe, to use a simple phrase, something like "every turn when the player can see the rabbit and Follow-the-Rabbit is happening..." followed by getting the right direction and moving the rabbit thataway. But not having seen the code you have right now, I can't be sure if that's what you're looking for.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=946&start=20#p7052
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Graphical Interactive Fiction
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2010-07-11 18:41:53

[quote="jfm.lisaso"][quote="namekuseijin"]What game is the second one? That's a great example of purely illustrative imagery in service of text. Besides the beautiful artwork, the black&white blending of it all also evokes a marvelous baroque feel...[/quote]
Well, It's an incomplete interactive fiction about [url=http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dagon]Lovecraft's Dagon[/url] on which I have been working for some time. It has some design mistakes so I abandoned it for the moment. Perhaps some day...
I though that it was a good example, that's all. But I'm glad you like the look![/quote]


The artwork is very good. Congrats! I would love to see more IF with good ilustration.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=989&start=10#p7053
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Roomless Comp
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2010-07-11 18:45:16

What a great way to test the few things of I7 I've learned so far that would be [emote]:)[/emote]

I'll go for it if I'm home by the time the comp starts.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=989&start=10#p7054
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Roomless Comp
User: George / DateTime: 2010-07-11 19:14:40

Now that we're squarely in IFComp writing season I wasn't planning to run this myself any time soon.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1218&start=0#p7055
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: My talk on "IF for Writers"
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-07-11 23:47:53

I gave a talk on IF at Readercon this weekend. Readercon is a science fiction convention focussed tightly on written SF; but one of the organizers is interested in IF (he's quoted in Get Lamp!) so he was willing to run some IF events, including a Get Lamp showing and my talk.

Given the venue, I tried to describe IF for writers (and readers) of traditional fiction.

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/essays/if-for-writers.html">http://eblong.com/zarf/essays/if-for-writers.html</a>

(Some of this is cribbed from my Gameshelf post from last week: <a class="postlink" href="http://gameshelf.jmac.org/2010/07/if-and-the-hitchhikers-guide-b.html">http://gameshelf.jmac.org/2010/07/if-an ... ide-b.html</a> . Which you can also, y'know, read if you want.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=829&start=0#p7056
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Ferret
User: Ferret / DateTime: 2010-07-12 05:33:28

A new release of Ferret is being planned. If there are any new features you would like included please post a reply.
Ferret Authors.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1212&start=10#p7057
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating an event
User: WinterSpice432 / DateTime: 2010-07-12 09:16:11

umm... i'm using 5Z71. (is that what you mean? when i go to About it says GNOME inform 7 5Z71)

and i tried out your code first (i don't use copy and paste but i do copy it). Afterwards i start to mess with it, building off of it. (fixing if it doesn't work- or trying to)

oh and earlier i just copied the error thing down for you to see. it is in one of my earlier posts. I can copy another one down though.

by the way, how do i can i make the rabbit push the player down a hole?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1219&start=0#p7058
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Unofficial Beta Testers
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-07-12 09:29:55

How would you reccommend going about getting beta testers? Most of my friends aren't IF gamers, and I've had them test IF games (and it has been helpful), but many errors continue to come up.

For competions, they want games never "released" online. So where can you go to get beta testers without posting your game online?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1217&start=0#p7059
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguating between scenery and objects
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-07-12 09:42:58

I have a lot of issues with the scenery thing also.

For example, I wanted NPCs to randomly take items dropped in a public room. NPCs would be running off with the sky or the doors or even the PC. 

Basically I created an unattended object type.

Definition: an thing is unattended:
if it is a person, decide no;
if it is scenery, decide no;
if it is a backdrop, decide no;
if a person has it, decide no;
if it is in a container, decide no;

and so forth.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1219&start=0#p7060
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Unofficial Beta Testers
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-07-12 09:51:04

Try here: [url=http://if.game-testing.org]if.game-testing.org[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1212&start=10#p7061
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating an event
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-07-12 12:29:41

[quote="WinterSpice432"]umm... i'm using 5Z71. (is that what you mean? when i go to About it says GNOME inform 7 5Z71)[/quote]

Oh yes indeed. [emote]:)[/emote] That's good news. I'd actually recommend you install the newest version. There's been a lot of improvement, and (at least on the Windows 7 version) I feel 6E72 runs [i]significantly[/i] faster (as in, compiling in less than half the time compared to before).

Come to think of it, that could be the reason: it's quite possible that the examples I gave you won't run on 5Z71. I'd recommend installing the latest version, really; it doesn't take long, and I for one was very impressed with the changes.

[quote]and i tried out your code first (i don't use copy and paste but i do copy it). Afterwards i start to mess with it, building off of it. (fixing if it doesn't work- or trying to)[/quote]

That's a good solution. Expanding on that, a good technique for when you have a project is to make a small game with just that functionality and nothing else. That way, you can quickly isolate how it's done and what works. When it works, you paste it into the real game.


[quote]oh and earlier i just copied the error thing down for you to see. it is in one of my earlier posts. I can copy another one down though.

by the way, how do i can i make the rabbit push the player down a hole?[/quote]

I think that may be it. If there was an error and you put the tabs right, the problem is probably because something changed between 5Z71 and 6E72 (or 6E59). In other words, it's quite possible you're doing everything right at your end.

As for making the rabbit push a player down the hole... hm. It depends. If you don't need to let the player try to stop the rabbit or react in anyway, the push is basically "unblockable," right? If so, it's probably easiest just to make the "rabbit pushes you" event something that would move the player to the new location (bottom of hole, maybe?), while at the same time printing a message saying what happened. Again, you can fire this sort of event when the player is in the same room as the rabbit, when that room is the room with the hole in it.

You don't really have to model any complex behaviour if this is the case. Describing how the player falls down and lands with a thump at the bottom of a dark hole would do the trick, yeah? Then the player finds himself/herself at the bottom of the hole. And then the next turn begins.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1219&start=0#p7062
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Unofficial Beta Testers
User: vivdunstan / DateTime: 2010-07-12 14:52:08

Or alternatively <a class="postlink" href="http://plover.net/~textfire/beta.html">http://plover.net/~textfire/beta.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1218&start=0#p7063
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: My talk on "IF for Writers"
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-07-12 15:57:59

This essay is really helpful and interesting, one of the best explanations of IF that I've ever read.  I've been looking for a way to introduce novel people to IF.  Can I have permission to link to "A Writer's Guide to Interactive Fiction" from other forums?

Thanks for putting it together.  It must have been really effective as a speech.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1218&start=0#p7064
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: My talk on "IF for Writers"
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-07-12 19:25:23

You may link it, absolutely.

It wasn't a big crowd, but they seemed interested and asked good questions afterwards. Unfortunately I didn't have a projector, so I was reduced to reading the bits of transcript off my laptop.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1220&start=0#p7065
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: have the parser notice?
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-07-13 00:50:19

Does anyone know what's up with this phrase? VW told me it's been removed from the language, but I have a very odd situation. A large WIP containing "have the parser notice" compiles just fine and appears to work as expected, but when I try to use the phrase in isolation in a test project, I get a problem message saying it's unrecognized.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1220&start=0#p7066
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: have the parser notice?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-13 00:58:44

It's defined in Plurality, not in the core language; and it is only useful or necessary if you're using the concept of "ambiguously plural". Otherwise, you want "set pronouns from <foo>", which *is* in the core language.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1220&start=0#p7067
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: have the parser notice?
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-07-13 01:50:05

Aha! Thanks, that's what I was missing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1221&start=0#p7068
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: City of Secrets Hint Request
User: IcyChoc / DateTime: 2010-07-13 03:42:51

Hello all! I'm new to this forum, but not to IF, and I've been reviewing on IFDB for a while. 

I am stuck a little way into Emily Short's game [i]City of Secrets[/i], and I can't find walkthroughs or hints anywhere, so I've come running here. [emote]:D[/emote] I'm spoilering my question below, just in case, though I don't think it's too spoilery. 

[spoiler]I'm in the stage area of the Old Vic in the Malta District, with the fire, rain cloud and tornado. I've been told that "the word is under the fire", but I can't figure out a way to see under the fire, move it or put it out, and I'm loath to leave without solving this. How does one solve this issue? I have the pendant, if that helps, but I'm not sure what it's good for.[/spoiler]

Thanks for your help! If it's obvious and I've just missed something, I apologize. 

~ IcyChoc

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=47&start=20#p7069
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good games for beginners?
User: IcyChoc / DateTime: 2010-07-13 04:04:26

I started with Adventure itself. My second game - and the one that hooked me on IF - was [i]The Plant[/i] by Michael J. Roberts. I used walkthroughs for both of them, which probably means they're not really that good for beginners. 

Whenever I recommend IF to someone, I start them on the [i]Earth and Sky[/i] trilogy, or Emily Short's [i]Floatpoint[/i]. [i]Blue Lacuna[/i] has a good tutorial mode, but the length is intimidating. [i]An Act of Murder[/i] is reasonably easy, uses fairly simple commands, and has a good hint system. Those are my picks, anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1222&start=0#p7070
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Ares release 2 - betatest
User: Mikawa / DateTime: 2010-07-13 05:30:42

Hello out there,

I have to announce that my WIP "Ares", release 2, is now in early betaish-stage, ready to shoot for the latest bugs, gameplay issues, language improvements and so on!
Please pm me, if you are williing to enter the final test round!

It provides:
- exploration of Mars surface as part of the European Mars Mission
- a dark secret of it's humanoid civilization
- the full truth about the mission's background
- various endings on the way to solve the mystery
- the keyword interface from Aaron Reed

Ares, release 1, was lucky to win the German Text Fire Grand Prix 2010, and is - how can it be another way? - completely in German ...
If you have good knowledge in German, no problem. If not and you are nonetheless willing to give it a try, just tell me - I'll provide you with the best informations as possible, e.g. a complete parser reference sheet, maps, walkthrough, and so on ...

Kind regards
-- MI

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1223&start=0#p7071
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Tutorial Game within game - a suggestion/discussion.
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2010-07-13 10:23:49

Hi there!

I've tried to see how begginer friendly my first game was becoming with my wife (who had never played IF or any adventure game before) by just sitting her and telling "Go ahead, try to play, I won't tell you anything" - and the results were not good. I tried other games and she started to get the hang of things the more she played, but she would have quited long before if I hadn't... err... forced her to try for a bit longer.

One thing striked me as curious: she never typed HELP or ABOUT in any of the games I gave her. When I suggested her to do it (to read the "New to IF?" kind of pages in the HELP/ABOUT menus, with example actions and all), she read it diagonaly and told me that it was all too confusing and boring.

I started to think that a tutorial mode, as in Blue Lacuna, in which the parser gives hints along the ride (Try to type EXAMINE SOMETHING to examine an object --> that sort of hints), was probably a good idea; but then I thought that what I wanted for my game would be somehow lost If I "tutorialized" the intro any more than I was already doing. I also thought that many games would "loose" something If they had a tutorial mode in them for the first turns of the game.

So, the two issues are:
1) A new to IF player may find the texts in HELP/ABOUT menus, with small explanations and lists of regular verbs, to be boring and confusing;
2) A tutorial mode in the beggining of the game may not always be a good idea, since, for several reasons, it may damage the mood/ambience/challenge/etc that the author is trying to achieve.
 
This morning I found myself thinking about this and bumped into an idea. I decided to put some work into it and tell you about it. I don't know if this has been done or discussed before, so forgive me If I'm presenting an old something as a new something.

The idea:
A game (any game) starts and, before the player is in the first room, an instruction would arise:

[If you never played Interactive Fiction before, please try the TUTORIAL GAME first: type TUTORIAL and press ENTER]

Then the player would begin a short game (3 min to 5 min), completely unrelated to the main game, that would teach the player the main instructions common to many IF work. After the player completes the small task, he could explore the tutorial world a bit further or just go and play the main game.

What would this accomplish:
About issue 1: the player learns by playing, so it diminishes the chances that he would get bored and confused.
About issue 2: it allows the author to begin a game as he wishes, without having to think of a tutorial intro.

What would be great:
1) that such a tutorial game would be the work of the community;
2) that it would be written so that the source code could be inserted into any game with small chances of conflit with the source of the main game;
3) that it exists in all IF language (TADS, I7, etc)

I've written a short game (Hotel Tutorial) that ilustrates what I have in mind:
[url]http://42hooks.weebly.com/if-works.html[/url]

So, in this game I've tried to:
-- create a simple, short plot with a simple task.
-- guide the player ALL the way, covering some of the more basic commands.
-- use names for things and rooms that would be difficult to conflict with any game - I've called everything the tutorial thing (tutorial room, tutorial key, etc).
-- leave room to create more explorable things, rooms and puzzles.

What would follow:
-- to make it so the game could fit into any game (I don't know how to do this other than just copying the code to another game).
-- to make the Hotel Tutorial more explorable after the Hallway (community driven content).
-- to discuss what guidance is the best possible and what guided actions are the best options.
-- to port the idea to another language (I only know I7 and I'm just learning it!).
-- to clean the code (I imagine, beeing a newbie, that this same game is possible with much more elegant code).

So for now I would love to know what you think of the idea.

Hugs and kisses,
Leo

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1221&start=0#p7072
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: City of Secrets Hint Request
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-13 10:48:39

In order of increasing explicitness:

[spoiler]The fire is a stage illusion, but it's designed to behave "realistically" with the other stage props.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]It's possible to put out the illusion fire with the illusion rain cloud.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]Of course, you can't take the rain cloud directly.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]Can you see something else that might be projecting or causing the cloud?[/spoiler]

[spoiler]There should be a cube (or similar -- it's been long enough that I can't remember exactly what it's called in-game) under the rain cloud. Try moving that onto the fire.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1223&start=0#p7073
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Tutorial Game within game - a suggestion/discussion.
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-07-13 18:57:53

I just tried the tutorial game, and my opinion is that this is an excellent idea!

Before I was half-done reading the post, it struck me that many MUDs do something very similar.  Many MUDs have a tutorial area, where the player learns about the peculiarities of the game world and game mechanics before entering the MUD proper.  This is achieved by guiding the player through a series of tasks with scripted messages, sometimes starting with teacher her how to use the text parser.  Often, different rooms in the tutorial will teach different things.  One room might have the player experiment with emoting and using social commands, and another might demonstrate the MUD's combat system by having the PC attack a low-stat NPC.  Usually, the player will be told about the rules of the game, and advised on how to behave in the MUD.  If the MUD is focused on roleplaying, one part of the tutorial will probably show off the background of the game world, with example NPCs of various races or factions, and information about the traditions of various cities and kingdoms, etc.  Often, this MUD tutorial is completely optional, and the player has the option to skip it after character generation.  Other times, the tutorial goes hand-in-hand with character generation, so the player actually writes the description of her PC, and chooses the PC's race/gender/home city while working through the tutorial.  Usually, the tutorial can be aborted at any time by the player with a command, if the player feels confident enough and wants to start the MUD right away.  Usually, the tutorial area can never be accessed again by the same character once it has been finished or otherwise left.  Often, players are rewarded for completing the whole tutorial by gaining levels/experience or receiving gold or equipment.

Since the concept of a completely separate tutorial works so well in MUDs, why can't it work in IF?  I don't know that it has never been done in IF, but now that I think about it, I'm almost surprised that it's not more common.

Good thinking!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1221&start=0#p7074
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: City of Secrets Hint Request
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2010-07-13 19:20:18

[quote="IcyChoc"]I am stuck a little way into Emily Short's game [i]City of Secrets[/i], and I can't find walkthroughs or hints anywhere, so I've come running here.[/quote]
There are a few hints [url=http://gamingphilosopher.blogspot.com/2008/07/city-of-secrets-hints.html]on that page[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=0#p7075
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-07-13 19:20:30

I also gave Trizbort a try.  I found in useful in many ways.  The greatest hindrance for me was the inability to designate up/down map connections in a clear way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1221&start=0#p7076
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: City of Secrets Hint Request
User: IcyChoc / DateTime: 2010-07-13 19:48:21

[quote="emshort"]In order of increasing explicitness:[/quote]

Thanks so much! *slaps forehead* I saw the cube, but my mind didn't make the connection. Now back into it! By the way, congratulations on writing such a great game. I love the conversation system. 

Eriorg, thanks for that link! I'm sure I'll need hints again, so it'll be very handy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1224&start=0#p7077
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Disambiguation between "all" and enumerated objects
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-07-13 19:50:49

Sorry for being a nuisance, still going around my harvesting piece of code. I've actually got it all working very well, thanks chiefly to Matt, Juhana and the new way in which Inform indexes phrases. I've just stumbled upon a slight hiccup which I'd, nevertheless, like fixed.

The problem is that disambiguation - yes, again it's disambiguation - seems to behave as expected when I type "harvest all", but not so well when I type "harvest grain and potatoes." Here's full working code which summarizes my harvesting scenario:

[code]"Test"

Unharvested food is a kind of thing. Unharvested food is always fixed in place.

Field is a room. Some grain_scenery is unharvested food in Field. Some potatoes are unharvested food in Field. Field has a number called unharvested grain. The unharvested grain of Field is 16. Field has a number called unharvested potatoes. The unharvested potatoes of Field is 8. The grain_scenery is privately-named. The printed name of the grain_scenery is "grain". Understand "grain" as the grain_scenery.

A bag of potatoes is a kind of thing. The plural of bag of potatoes is bags of potatoes. There are 8 bags of potatoes. 

A bag of grain is a kind of thing. The plural of bag of grain is bags of grain. There are 16 bags of grain. 

Instead of harvesting grain_scenery:
	if unharvested grain of Field > 0:
		say "I harvest some grain.";
		now the player carries a random bag of grain that is off-stage;
		decrease unharvested grain of Field by 1;
	otherwise:
		say "There is no more grain."

Instead of harvesting potatoes:
	if unharvested potatoes of Field > 0:
		say "I harvest some taters.";
		now the player carries a random bag of potatoes that is off-stage;
		decrease unharvested potatoes of Field by 1;
	otherwise:
		say "There are no more taters."

Section 2 - Harvesting

Harvesting is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "harvest [things]" as harvesting.

Check harvesting something which is not unharvested food (this is the block harvesting rule):
	say "I can't harvest that.";
	stop the action.
		
Rule for deciding whether all includes anything (called harvest material) while harvesting (this is the deal with ALL and HARVESTING rule):
	if the harvest material is unharvested food:
		it does;
	otherwise:
		it does not.
			
Does the player mean harvesting a bag of grain: it is very unlikely.
Does the player mean harvesting unharvested food: it is very likely.

Does the player mean harvesting a bag of potatoes: it is very unlikely.

Rule for clarifying the parser's choice while harvesting:
   do nothing.[/code]

Everything works perfectly, even "harvest all", which gives the following output:

[quote]>harvest all
grain: I harvest some grain.
potatoes: I harvest some taters.[/quote]

It's simply wondrous to see it working. However, if the player happens to write it differently...

[quote]>harvest potatoes and grain
bag of potatoes: I can't harvest that.
bag of grain: I can't harvest that.

>harvest grain and potatoes
bag of grain: I can't harvest that.
bag of potatoes: I can't harvest that.[/quote]

Bang! There it goes again.

Also, in my last thread I took the opportunity to ask a second, lesser question, and I'll take the same liberty now. I wonder if anyone could tell me - I'm sure it's in the manual, but I can't easily find it - how to edit (i.e., get rid of) the enumeration when doing multiple things. I mean output like - 

>harvest all
I harvest some grain.
I harvest some taters.

Of course, if I could do it with one sentence, such as "I harvest [list of unharvested food in the location]", it would be even better. The best I could find was "Rule for printing the name of unharvested food while harvesting" to replace it with a blank string, which of course gave the expected, laughable result:

>harvest all
:I harvest some grain.
:I harvest some taters.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1225&start=0#p7078
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: New "Default Messages" extension
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-07-13 22:30:07

Though I don't envy whoever might take up David Fisher's offer (plea?) to take over maintenance on his extension Default Messages, I wrote a new Default Messages extension to hopefully ease the burden on his popular one.  Mine isn't at all compatible with David's, but rather, starts afresh, and utilizes Inform features that didn't exist when David started his well over two years ago.  It's smaller and more lenient on memory.  The Z-machine would like it.  

The largest difference between the two extensions is that mine doesn't attempt to name every one of the 300+ messages in the library.  I had found when writing Grouped Messages As Dialogue that all those names tend to cause annoying name clashes.  (And slowing down compilation speed too, I believe.)   And, the documentation is short.  That's always a win. 

Opinions and such would be appreciated.  It is found [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Ron%20Newcomb/Default%20Messages/index.html]here[/url] (though with a curiously incorrect blurb).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1223&start=0#p7079
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Tutorial Game within game - a suggestion/discussion.
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-07-13 22:46:34

[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=bxio01ferbyxr4rk]The Sleeping Princess[/url] has an optional tutorial section which is completely unrelated to the main game.

My instinct is that this kind of tutorial won't work very well. Sleeping Princess's tutorial area is pretty boring, and since it's optional, most people will skip it even if they're new to IF. If someone wants to play an IF, they generally want to jump straight into the game, not fiddle about in an unrelated mini-game. Even when the tutorial is part of the main game, if it's optional, players might not bother with it.

The idea of having a standard tutorial level as an extension that authors can just drop into their game is also problematic. Your Hotel Tutorial does a good job of teaching a few basic IF commands, but it's focused on simple physical interactions - open, get, unlock. What about IF that's more about conversation, for instance? Players will expect the tutorial level to reflect the main kind of gameplay in the game.

That said, a standard tutorial level might be sufficient for many games, since most IF uses roughly the same set of commands. Making it somewhat modular might help, so that the author has some way of tailoring it to the specific game - for instance, including the travel and ask/tell conversation sections, but not the unlocking tutorial. I think the main problem is convincing the player to use the tutorial - in my experience, new players don't bother with optional tutorials any more than they bother to type HELP or ABOUT.

I think the best option is a tutorial designed specifically for (and as part of) the game it's in, and turned on by default. (There could be a default command to turn off the tutorial, so experienced players would know how to turn off the tutorial messages.) Obviously, this is more work for the author, but it means the tutorial can teach the precise skills that the particular game needs, the player is already getting into the story while learning to play, and players who need the help are unlikely to skip the tutorial.

What I think would be particularly helpful is an extension which gives the author a [i]framework[/i] for a tutorial, so that it's easier for the author to build a tutorial that's specific to his/her game. It would include the ability to give a tutorial script - first teach this action; when that's done, teach that action - and perhaps the ability to change the script on the fly - if the player uses this action before it's taught, skip that step (or simplify the explanation); if the player already knows this abbreviation, don't bother mentioning it. The ability to add explanatory text to error messages would also be helpful - for instance, if the player uses a word that the game doesn't recognise, explain the OOPS command. And if you wanted to, you could build on the framework to create a standard tutorial level that authors could include in their IF.

[quote="Bainespal"]Since the concept of a completely separate tutorial works so well in MUDs, why can't it work in IF?[/quote]
I don't know much about MUDs, but they wouldn't be [i]completely[/i] separate, would they? They'd still be set in the same world as the rest of the MUD, and have the same sort of feel to them, writing style and so on - and the same PC, of course, your new character.

All that said...

[quote="lribeiro"]I started to think that a tutorial mode, as in Blue Lacuna, in which the parser gives hints along the ride (Try to type EXAMINE SOMETHING to examine an object --> that sort of hints), was probably a good idea; but then I thought that what I wanted for my game would be somehow lost If I "tutorialized" the intro any more than I was already doing. I also thought that many games would "loose" something If they had a tutorial mode in them for the first turns of the game.[/quote]
It's true that some IF wouldn't work so well if it were redesigned to have a tutorial at the beginning. My initial reaction was that maybe these are just better for experienced IF players, but that limits the audience unnecessarily, and would discourage people who might otherwise enjoy the game in question. Maybe a separate-but-built-in tutorial level would be a good idea for these games. In any case, don't let my negativity discourage you!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1223&start=0#p7080
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Tutorial Game within game - a suggestion/discussion.
User: George / DateTime: 2010-07-13 23:17:39

[quote="Emerald"]
What I think would be particularly helpful is an extension which gives the author a [i]framework[/i] for a tutorial, so that it's easier for the author to build a tutorial that's specific to his/her game. [/quote]

I think this is the best idea, but in general I'm not convinced that most IF works need a tutorial per se. The analogy with muds is tough because muds are designed for many hours of gameplay; a discrete tutorial makes sense for that, but not for an IF game which may take a couple of hours or less. I guess you could say that playing many IF games is like playing one mud, but I think the analogy gets stretched a little there. 

A bigger issue might be that while many IF works don't integrate all the standard verbs into their main story and gameplay, the verbs are still available. I don't know if it's a good general solution simply to limit the verbs, though that seems to work well for many games with a strong central theme and/or mechanic.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1223&start=0#p7081
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Tutorial Game within game - a suggestion/discussion.
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-07-14 00:12:36

[quote="George"]in general I'm not convinced that most IF works need a tutorial per se. The analogy with muds is tough because muds are designed for many hours of gameplay; a discrete tutorial makes sense for that, but not for an IF game which may take a couple of hours or less.[/quote]
That's true; a lot of IF is so short that a full tutorial would be nearly as long as the game.

What do you think of Jon Ingold's approach in [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=q5el4dphbf7q6e5y]Dead Cities[/url], a very short game? Rather than explaining how to play, it suggests a few possible commands every turn; the player can use a suggested command or type in something else entirely. It gives an idea of what kind of commands are possible without explicitly directing the player, and it can also offer a nudge in the right direction if the player isn't sure what to do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1225&start=0#p7082
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New "Default Messages" extension
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2010-07-14 02:40:06

This looks potentially useful. I did encounter a problem with the second example, though, but I think it may be a problem with Inform rather than with your code.

When I click the paste button for the second example, the statement:

[code]To say miscellaneous library message (N - a number):  (- L__M(##Miscellany,{N}); -).[/code]

Is posted into the code window as:

[code]To say miscellaneous library message (N - a number): (--)   L__M(##Miscellany,{N}); -) .[/code]

This, of course, won't compile since the spurious extra -) immediately after the opening (- causes the rest of the I6 inclusion to not be recognized as such.

You might want to look into this out to check whether my analysis is correct here and if so submit a bug report.

-- Eric

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1223&start=0#p7083
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Tutorial Game within game - a suggestion/discussion.
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-07-14 05:02:17

[quote="Emerald"]My instinct is that this kind of tutorial won't work very well. Sleeping Princess's tutorial area is pretty boring, and since it's optional, most people will skip it even if they're new to IF. If someone wants to play an IF, they generally want to jump straight into the game, not fiddle about in an unrelated mini-game. Even when the tutorial is part of the main game, if it's optional, players might not bother with it.[/quote]


On a gut level, I mostly agree with you. This does not have to be the fault of it being a tutorial, though. Recent mainstream titles have managed (the words "recent" and "mainstream" being relative) to create fairly unobtrusive tutorial levels that contribute to the story and are fun in their own right. For those familiar with the Hitman series of 3d games, the last installation (Blood Money) had a very well done introduction level - the hints were not particularly intrusive, the pacing was good, and the location (an abandoned amusement park occupied by gangbangers) memorable.

To hit the sweet spot, in other words, the IF tutorial section can't be allowed to postpone the player's enjoyment and/or immersion. The solution could be to shape the first area around clean, logical puzzles, and then add a very simple hint system on top of that (a system that only works in this area, and can be disabled by commands such as "hints off"). If the first things the player can see suggests a particular course of action, then the player won't feel cheated if you tell her exactly how to perform it. After the first successful commands, a context will start to emerge, and at that point the instructions could gradually grow more general. But there would be no reason not to couch what we're doing in terms of the story from the get-go.

At any rate, I think a tutorial level in IFs is a great idea. It's obvious that they can be made to detract from the enjoyment, but also, I think, that they don't have to. After all, there's a reason why so many games begin in an enclosed area with as little ambiguity as possible, and why the prologue often concludes by taking us out into the game world proper. I consider pacing of that kind to be a kind of tutorial in itself. It teaches the ropes of the game and only afterwards adds layers of confusion. I like it because it doesn't just build trust in the game engine (or parser), but also establishes the internal consistency of the game itself. 

That way, even if we turn off the newbie hints, the sequence's still going to be something that contributes to the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1213&start=0#p7084
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ZMPP/Glulx - complete feature set
User: weiju / DateTime: 2010-07-14 08:42:15

Please report issues you might find on:

<a class="postlink" href="http://github.com/weiju/zmpp2/issues">http://github.com/weiju/zmpp2/issues</a>

Thank you

Wei-ju

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1223&start=0#p7085
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Tutorial Game within game - a suggestion/discussion.
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2010-07-14 09:37:01

[quote]In any case, don't let my negativity discourage you![/quote]

You encorage me just by replying [emote];)[/emote]

I agree with most of what has been said, and I would like to adress some of it:

[quote]Your Hotel Tutorial does a good job of teaching a few basic IF commands, but it's focused on simple physical interactions - open, get, unlock.[/quote]

Yes, but that's part of the reason I made it a Hotel: it has rooms. Those rooms could have other gameplay aspects explored. I thought of adding a janitor to the hallway to guide the player through some of the character interaction possibilities, but I don't know how to code NPCs yet, and I just wanted to code a short example to get the idea across and then see if anybody else would like to jump onboard.

[quote]Players will expect the tutorial level to reflect the main kind of gameplay in the game.[/quote]

Every player - beeing an experienced one or not - will have to work his way through a [i]new[/i] kind of gameplay, so I don't think this kind of tutorial is pointing at that. If an author wants to create a game with different mechanics, he will expect the player to be lost at first and he will have to guide him - unless, of course, figuring out the mechanics IS part of the game.

But the idea for the proposed tutorial is only to give a feel of how the game world interacts with the player in regular IF games. What I got from watching my wife play was that when she got to the ">" thing, she had no idea what to do - AT ALL!

Let me give you a better example:
If I go and play Hitman I expect the arrow keys to move the player, the mouse to make it look around, the click of the mouse to do something, etc. I may not know that I can run in a given way, or jump, or jump and hold, or aim with the crosshair, etc. The tutorial will teach me that, but it expects from me, at least, the knowledge of holding the mouse and move it around.

Well, these basic concepts won't come so easly in IF - hence the tutorial idea.

[quote]I think the best option is a tutorial designed specifically for (and as part of) the game it's in[/quote]

I agree, but that has the problem I've already adressed and that you ended up refering:
[quote]some IF wouldn't work so well if it were redesigned to have a tutorial at the beginning. My initial reaction was that maybe these are just better for experienced IF players, but that limits the audience unnecessarily, and would discourage people who might otherwise enjoy the game in question.[/quote]

As for this:
[quote]the IF tutorial section can't be allowed to postpone the player's enjoyment and/or immersion.[/quote]

I'm afraid of this also. A tutorial could be a boring thing to do when what the player wants is to play the game itself - mainly if it's non related to it.

So, let's sumarize this:
1) big games, or any games that develop slowly, can (should?) have a tutorial level that is built into the game's setting. Thosed wouldn't need a side-tutorial.

2) games with very specific mechanics will have to teach any player anyway - not just non-IF-regular ones. Those wouldn't also need a side tutorial.

3) small games or games that want to achieve a given effect from the first action, but that rely on basic IF mechanisms, can benefit from a side tutorial.

4) writting a good tutorial is hard and it could be non-rewarding, since many players may skip it the same way they skip the HELP/ABOUT menus. Possible solutions?


Well, I've enjoyed the discussion so far. Shall we keep this going? [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1225&start=0#p7086
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New "Default Messages" extension
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-07-14 10:04:04

Looks very cool, Ron!  I particularly like your discovery mechanism.  That should be very useful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1219&start=0#p7087
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Unofficial Beta Testers
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-07-14 10:08:03

Also, as I understand it, you _can_ have a game up on a website somewhere for beta testers to download, as long as you don't publicize the location and you take reasonable precautions to hide it from casual observation.  The emphasis here is on "released", not "online", if you get my drift.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1223&start=0#p7088
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Tutorial Game within game - a suggestion/discussion.
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-07-14 10:33:03

[quote="lribeiro"]So, let's sumarize this:
1) big games, or any games that develop slowly, can (should?) have a tutorial level that is built into the game's setting. Thosed wouldn't need a side-tutorial.

2) games with very specific mechanics will have to teach any player anyway - not just non-IF-regular ones. Those wouldn't also need a side tutorial.

3) small games or games that want to achieve a given effect from the first action, but that rely on basic IF mechanisms, can benefit from a side tutorial.

4) writting a good tutorial is hard and it could be non-rewarding, since many players may skip it the same way they skip the HELP/ABOUT menus. Possible solutions?


Well, I've enjoyed the discussion so far. Shall we keep this going? [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Good summary, that. Question 4 made me wonder, though: is it actually the case that many people "skip" either HELP or ABOUT menus? I'd argue that it isn't - most IF I've seen tend to throw you into the fray, and then you're sometimes told (as a side note) that there exists HELP or ABOUT menus. As a beginner player, I sometimes ventured to type "help", but that was the real choice - i.e. admitting you needed to be rescued. The tutorial as a default or honourable choice is something I associate with graphical adventures.

Maybe that could be dismissed as quibbling over syntax, but I'd argue it's significant. To make players use the tutorial, it has to be attractive. If we show the player that the tutorial isn't just a tutorial, nor a sign of weakness on the player's part, and make it a fun part of the experience, then people will play the tutorials.

Hell, look at Portal. That whole game is a tutorial, an almost picture-perfect example of learning by doing. That doesn't stop it from being both insanely addictive and eminently quotable.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1223&start=0#p7089
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Tutorial Game within game - a suggestion/discussion.
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-07-14 11:05:51

Why not just have a tutorial extension. You write the tutorial once, and it's the same tutorial for all your IF games. Part of an INTRO exnension where you can include your abouts and tutorial game and whatnot. 

Seems like generally a good idea. People might skip it, but people might skip all the little side things you put in the game. Suveh Nux was half game and half little side things you can do, which most players will probably miss. 

On the other hand, how many new IF players are there? The format is archaic, most people play and write because they played the genre when they were younger, right? Or were introduced by someone, in which case they were already given a game to play.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1223&start=0#p7090
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Tutorial Game within game - a suggestion/discussion.
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-07-14 11:36:41

[quote="tggdan3"]Why not just have a tutorial extension. You write the tutorial once, and it's the same tutorial for all your IF games. Part of an INTRO exnension where you can include your abouts and tutorial game and whatnot. 

Seems like generally a good idea. People might skip it, but people might skip all the little side things you put in the game. Suveh Nux was half game and half little side things you can do, which most players will probably miss. 

On the other hand, how many new IF players are there? The format is archaic, most people play and write because they played the genre when they were younger, right? Or were introduced by someone, in which case they were already given a game to play.[/quote]

On the third hand (the possession of which may be a reason people on the street look at me strangely), how many new IF players [i]were[/i] there - potentially? How many of those actually wanted to continue? I know all of my friends have tried. None, apart from myself, stuck with it, for various reasons. Their common opinion was that IF was just too hard to get into; it was too user-unfriendly.

Plus, as was mentioned above, there are tutorials and then there are tutorials. Teaching basic commands like examine and look is only part of it; teaching smooth use of the mechanics found in the particular game may also need it. 

Continuing the example of Portal, that game does teach WASD, jumping, and manipulating objects. Simultaneously, it also teaches the elements unique to Portal - first how portals work, then using portals to travel, then the use of portals to achieve higher velocity, and so on. It does not separate the common commands from the game-specific ones, because everything is supposed to blend.

Therefore, while I do support a tutorial extension in any language out there, I'd advise against making it static. A tutorial that teaches things that won't lead anywhere in the game can actually be detrimental to play, IMO.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1223&start=10#p7091
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Tutorial Game within game - a suggestion/discussion.
User: eladnarra / DateTime: 2010-07-14 12:34:03

[quote]On the other hand, how many new IF players are there? The format is archaic, most people play and write because they played the genre when they were younger, right? Or were introduced by someone, in which case they were already given a game to play.[/quote]
*raises hand* I thought I might comment on this, since I'm a new IF player who didn't play the genre when younger and wasn't introduced to it by someone. Not sure how many other people are out there like me, but we do exist, and we do appreciate authors thinking about this stuff. :)

Some things that have helped me as I learn the ropes are:

1) A question at the beginning of the game asking whether the person has played IF before. If you answer "yes" you get an explanation of the basic mechanics involved in most IF, as well as some things more specific to the particular game. If you say "no" you get a brief comment that HELP or ABOUT will bring up hints, actions specific to the game, etc. Not ideal, perhaps, and not a tutorial, but I'd venture that even the "no" response indicates that typing HELP is an "honourable choice," and not simply giving up and asking for help. The basic actions outlined in the "yes" response also give a beginner a starting point, and an insight into how to phrase possible actions not included.

I can't think of the games that actually used this, since a lot have merged together in the past month or so, but I think some by Emily Short do.

2) A tutorial mode (not a separate section at the beginning, unrelated to the story), like that in "The Dreamhold." Something that explains what is going on, suggesting actions as you progress through the story. Able to be turned off for experienced players, but default so that beginners can get a handle on things.

3) A good hints system. When you first start playing a game, it's not just actions that don't occur to you (such as trying EAT BREAD), it's using them all together to solve a puzzle. Progressive hints (when the player asks for them) can go a long way in teaching the types of actions you can do and the puzzles you can solve.

Basically, I agree that the key is keeping things interesting-- a tutorial part that is tacked on to the beginning, and not specific to the game (which, correct me if I'm wrong, is what tggdan3 is suggesting, an extension that is the same for each game) probably won't hold a new player's interest, no matter how much they need to use it. It will either get skipped, or the game abandoned completely. On the other hand, tutorial modes or well-written ABOUT pages (such as the one for "Violet," in which Violet explains the game to you in character) make things even more enjoyable for those of us just starting out. :)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1204&start=0#p7092
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with new directions (among other difficulties)
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2010-07-14 12:46:13

[quote="matt w"][quote="DrWorm"]Yup, that's it. I hate to keep asking questions, but I've been perusing the documentation for the answer to this one and I can't find it. How to I move something to the room that the player is currently in? For example, how would I do something like
[code]If the player is wet:
         move the frog to X[/code]

In place of X, I've tried "occupied room", "currently occupied room", and "room where the player is", as well as many other similar phrases, but the compiler doesn't recognize any of them.[/quote]

"move the frog to the location," I think.[/quote]

As a side note, "location" used by itself is synonymous with "location of the player". I don't know if this has any impact on execution speed or memory (it would be negligible if any, I assume), but the latter might make the code slightly more readable.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=120#p7093
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: eladnarra / DateTime: 2010-07-14 12:46:18

Hi!

Not much to say about me, just that I'm a newbie to IF. I like to write (although I don't do nearly enough), so I'm working my way through the i7 manual in the hopes that eventually I'll be able to take a stab at writing my own games. :)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1223&start=10#p7094
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Tutorial Game within game - a suggestion/discussion.
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2010-07-14 12:52:29

Well, I'll have to raise my hand two times:

1) I wasn't an IF player when I was young and now I'm trying to write an IF game [emote]:)[/emote] So, the genre has present potential.

2) I also loved the ABOUTs in Violet! I think that if the menus are more like that, players will read them. After all, everything in the ABOUT menu was, actually, part of the game! Amazing.

Finally: I'm actually starting to dislike my own idea of a side tutorial (main game unrelated) as I read your opinions [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1226&start=0#p7095
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: "All", animals, and the multiple object list
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-07-14 13:48:52

Hey all. I discovered a bit of an odd thing. I'm not sure, but it could possibly relate to [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1224]Peter's current conundrum[/url].

My current test project includes takeable animals. That's all well and good, but they won't show up in the multiple object list, even when specifically included by the "deciding whether all includes".

However, oddly enough, taking all [i]from[/i] a container nabs the animals as well, as long as you permit the player to pick up living creatures. I'll illustrate:



[code]The Forest Glade is a room. "The forest rises around you, all indistinct shadows and soft mist."

The pool is a container. "Before you, the pool lies dark and still." The pool is fixed in place. The pool is in the Forest Glade.

A frog is a kind of animal. Two frogs are in the pool. The description is "The frog blinks blearily at you."
A firefly is a kind of animal. Ten fireflies are in the Forest Glade. The description is "Tiny motes of light dance in slow circles among the trees."

Check taking animal: ignore the can't take other people rule.
Rule for deciding whether all includes animals: it does.


A stone is a kind of thing. Five stones are in the pool. "A small, smooth pebble, strangely bright in the gloom."

test first with "get all/get all from pool".  
test again with "get all from pool". [assuming you have restarted][/code]

I'm running 6E72 on Windows 7, latest build (or so I assume). Can this be worked around in some way, or is there some behaviour or rookie mistake that I failed to take into account?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1226&start=0#p7096
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "All", animals, and the multiple object list
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-07-14 14:18:48

Actually, the fireflies and frogs are all being added to the multiple objects list. You can test this by setting the parser trace level to 6 and then typing TAKE ALL. (You set the parser trace by typing TRACE 6 at the command line). The real problem is that the rule that prevents taking people is more specific than your all including animals rule, and so supercedes it. Just change the rule to this:

[code]For deciding whether all includes animals while taking: it does.[/code]

And it should work. The "while taking" makes the rule more specific than the Standard Rules people-blocking rule.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1226&start=0#p7097
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "All", animals, and the multiple object list
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-07-14 14:31:38

[quote="ektemple"]Actually, the fireflies and frogs are all being added to the multiple objects list. You can test this by setting the parser trace level to 6 and then typing TAKE ALL. (You set the parser trace by typing TRACE 6 at the command line). The real problem is that the rule that prevents taking people is more specific than your all including animals rule, and so supercedes it. Just change the rule to this:

[code]For deciding whether all includes animals while taking: it does.[/code]

And it should work. The "while taking" makes the rule more specific than the Standard Rules people-blocking rule.

--Erik[/quote]

Thank you! Just moments ago I got it to work with that exact rule ("while taking"). Knowing why it happened, let alone the other techniques you mentioned, is going to be quite useful, I suspect.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1226&start=0#p7098
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "All", animals, and the multiple object list
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-07-14 14:45:44

By the way, if you want "all" to include animals always, not just while taking, you can bump the rule up to the head of the line by marking it "first":

[code]First for deciding whether all includes animals: it does.[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1223&start=10#p7099
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Tutorial Game within game - a suggestion/discussion.
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-07-14 14:49:25

Several people have mentioned wanting a generic tutorial extension.  Emily Short has written [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Emily%20Short/Tutorial%20Mode/index.html]Tutorial Mode[/url], which is useful for this type of thing.  I'm using it in my WIP (albeit in a pretty hacked-up mode) and it works well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=0#p7100
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Genstein / DateTime: 2010-07-14 15:14:19

Thanks for the feedback. Apologies for the lack of documentation. If you double click a connection, or select (click) it and then choose Properties from the Edit menu, you can set it to be an up/down, in/out connection or add your own custom text at the start, end or middle of the line. You can also choose the line style, though this is available on the tool bar as well. Or perhaps you already found this and it  wasn't any use to you?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1223&start=10#p7101
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Tutorial Game within game - a suggestion/discussion.
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-14 18:37:35

If people are using that extension, I'd be happy to hear about it -- I have very little feedback from in-practice applications, so knowing whether it's useful and/or what problems people encounter would let me refine it a bit.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1223&start=10#p7102
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Tutorial Game within game - a suggestion/discussion.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-14 20:07:01

[quote="tggdan3"]On the other hand, how many new IF players are there? The format is archaic, most people play and write because they played the genre when they were younger, right? Or were introduced by someone, in which case they were already given a game to play.[/quote]

Another person here who didn't play it when i was young, here. I got started with the link to Andrew Plotkin's games at JayIsGames, and really appreciated The Dreamhold. I remember hitting a big bump in Metamorphoses with the first time that examining something revealed another object (also with how the resizing thing worked) and another with A Flustered Duck the first time I had to use the "search" command, so those are things that might be worth putting in a tutorial, if appropriate.

One potential idea for a tutorial extension would be to have features the author could toggle on and off depending on whether they were required in the game. For example, you could set a "lookunder" flag, and if it was true the game would have you look under the bed. Or if the "search" flag was set you'd have to search the bed and find something in the covers. Etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1227&start=0#p7103
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Without Hints
User: joncgoodwin / DateTime: 2010-07-14 21:30:44

I know this has come up on the newsgroups a few times in the past, but it's a topic I'd like to revisit. How many games have you solved completely without hints? (If this is a large number, perhaps just mention those that made you especially proud.)

I've solved a lot,* but I've also lost willpower and looked at hints for several I was determined to solve on my own. (Curses, for instance.)

I sometimes have wondered in vain or cynical moments if anyone has ever solved certain large and difficult games without hints. (Jigsaw, say. Or The Mulldoon Legacy or Savoir-Faire.) If so, valued group members, please share your triumphs. Another reason I'm asking about this is that I'm working on a game of my own, and it has become clear that I significantly underestimated how difficult its puzzles are, which I suspect is a universal tendency.
 

*Well, some. Zork III, Spider and Web, So Far, The Elysium Enigma, Hollywood Hijinx, and Infidel come to mind.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1225&start=0#p7104
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New "Default Messages" extension
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-07-14 21:37:11

This looks very nice and lightweight. I'd wondered if those stub phrases in the Standard Rules were actually connected to the template layer, and now I know! 

One thing that I think is missing from the extension is a hook before and after message-printing. For example, if said hooks were provided with an activity, an author could write:

[code]Before printing a miscellaneous message:
     say "[italic type][run paragraph on]";

After printing a miscellaneous message:
     say "[roman type]";[/code]

A number of folks are interested in styling error messages differently, printing them in a separate window, etc.; this kind of before/after hook would allow that.

I like your library message alerts, including the idea that an author could quickly scan transcripts returned by testers to look for the curly-braced alerts that indicate a message that is still the default. In that vein, it might also be nice to allow the library message alerts to print to the transcript only--that is, not appear in-game, but only in the transcript. That way, an author could see the alerts in transcripts returned by testers without subjecting them to curly braces and number signs. In Glulx, this can be done like so:

[code]To say transcript only:
	(- if (gg_scriptstr) { glk_stream_set_current( glk_window_get_echo_stream(gg_mainwin) ); } -)
	
To say standard output:
	(- glk_set_window(gg_mainwin); -)

...say "[transcript only]**Message**[standard output]".[/code]

I'm not sure how you'd do it in z-code, but I assume that it's possible.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1225&start=0#p7105
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New "Default Messages" extension
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-07-15 00:29:26

@Eric Eve

Thanks, Eric.  It means a lot to me that a veteran author finds a place for it in his toolbox.  

 I'll report the bug, and see if I can arrange things to avoid the bug in the first place. 

@mwigdahl

Thank you.  I intend to add one more example to the extension which lists the whole table, fully re-written in Inform 7, so an author would be able to simply search the example rather than hunting around in the first place.  

@Erik Temple

I had considered those hooks, but the After hook in particular was neither simple nor elegant.  Besides, most of the time the extension would only be used for its main job, and I didn't want to complicate matters.  (I almost had the thing consult a table that varies, but I figured the one or two authors that wanted that could alter the extension themselves.)

I'm looking into doing David's other extension Custom Library Messages similarly, and for that I will use an activity. (Plus, if one is committed to changing all messages, the pre-existing ones can be removed with a single line of code, gaining back a cool 10K of Z-machine memory.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1224&start=0#p7106
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation between "all" and enumerated objects
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-07-15 03:52:24

You'll likely continue to suffer all these disambiguation troubles until you define all your terms/items more precisely; Inform often isn't savvy enough to work these things out on its own.  Consider the following modification of your example, which does not exhibit either the present problem or the disambiguation problem you previously posted about.  Replace all your code posted here with:

[code]Unharvested food is a kind of thing. Unharvested food is always fixed in place.

Field is a room. Some grain_scenery is unharvested food in Field. Some potatoes are unharvested food in Field. Field has a number called unharvested grain. The unharvested grain of Field is 16. Field has a number called unharvested potatoes. The unharvested potatoes of Field is 8. The grain_scenery is privately-named. The printed name of the grain_scenery is "grain". Understand "grain" as the grain_scenery.

A potatobag is a kind of thing. The printed name of a potatobag is "bag of potatoes".  The printed plural name of a potatobag is "bags of potatoes".  Understand "bag of potatoes" as a potatobag.  Understand "bags of potatoes" as the plural of a potatobag.  There are 8 potatobags. 

A grainbag is a kind of thing.  The printed name of a grainbag is "bag of grain".  The printed plural name of a grainbag is "bags of grain".  Understand "bag of grain" as a grainbag.  Understand "bags of grain" as the plural of a grainbag.  There are 16 grainbags.

Instead of harvesting grain_scenery:
	if unharvested grain of Field > 0:
		say "I harvest some grain.";
		now the player carries a random off-stage grainbag;
		decrease unharvested grain of Field by 1;
	otherwise:
		say "There is no more grain."

Instead of harvesting potatoes:
	if unharvested potatoes of Field > 0:
		say "I harvest some taters.";
		now the player carries a random off-stage potatobag;
		decrease unharvested potatoes of Field by 1;
	otherwise:
		say "There are no more taters."

Section 2 - Harvesting

Harvesting is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "harvest [things]" as harvesting.

Check harvesting something which is not unharvested food (this is the block harvesting rule):
	say "I can't harvest that.";
	stop the action.
      
Rule for deciding whether all includes anything (called harvest material) while harvesting (this is the deal with ALL and HARVESTING rule):
	if the harvest material is unharvested food:
		it does;
	otherwise:
		it does not.
         
Does the player mean harvesting something enclosed by the player: it is very unlikely.

Rule for clarifying the parser's choice while harvesting:
	do nothing.[/code]

Regarding your second question, the underlying trouble is that 'harvest grain and potatoes" is considered by Inform to be two separate action requests (hence the individual reports, even though they are displayed on the same turn of the test game).  The complexities to be considered in a rewriting of this behavior of the Standard Rules is likely why you received no response at all to your second question despite asking it several times.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1224&start=0#p7107
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation between "all" and enumerated objects
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-07-15 04:03:14

So essentially, change "bag of X" to "Xbag"... well, thank you for your reply, but I have to say it saddens me a bit that I have to do something "hacky" like that. Inform is supposed not to need such "hackery" for such cases - a "bag of potatoes" is not a "bag of grain" and it's not "potatoes" or "grain", and I defined the grain as grain_scenery precisely to avoid such problems, but defining "potatoes" showed me that Inform could cope. And it coped all the way through, until I tried something more obscure, and was all the time left wondering why it was working one way and not working the other way. Most disheartening. Would it be worth a bug report?

Re: the second question, thank you. The question I'd asked in the previous post was another one, and it was very politely answered. This was another question altogether, and your reply is enlightening. Would it be worth a feature request to make this behaviour more easily adaptable? I understand it's not oft-used, but Inform prides itself of the author being able to customize everything... and here's something that doesn't lend itself to customizing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=0#p7108
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-07-15 04:04:49




Zombies are generally portrayed in our times as the street thugs of the horror genre--as the dregs of damnation, as brutish packs of monsters motivated only by a desire to consume living flesh for reasons or purposes rarely examined.  No such examination is usually thought necessary in what passes for modern horror art--zombies are simply wild beasts to be eliminated for the maintenance and advancement of human civilization.  Who cares why they want to eat our brains?  Just blast 'em and lets get on with fighting the real villains--ghosts, vampires, alien fungi, evil organizations, etc.

While compiling some design notes for a potential "[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_horror]Survival Horror[/url]" IF game, amidst my drawing of maps and conception of ingenious puzzles I began to ponder my chosen antagonists, zombies.  Since one may rather easily justify zombies these days as [url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0289043/]deranged mutants suffering from a virulent disease[/url] rather than bothering to think up some truly unnatural genesis for the creatures, they're the perfect baleful fall-guys for our decadent science-obsessed age.  The conventional wisdom would seem to be: why tinker with zombies?  They already perform their duties competently, and everything there is to say about them has already been said well enough.  However, the more I pondered the situation the less satisfied I became.

What's so scary about zombies, as portrayed in recent mainstream horror fiction (art, literature, film, games)?  [i]Not much[/i].  Just what exactly is the bug up their rotting behinds?  Where do they come from, why are they here, and why are they rudely wreaking such terrible havoc?  [i]No one really cares[/i].  The zombie is a mindless monstrosity, doing what any mindless monstrosities would do under the circumstances.  Zombies are sent in from central casting because... hey, it's a fast-paced horror story and we need some zombies wandering around.  [i]Sketch zombie, get paid, go home[/i].  Such usage of zombies as a standard thematic/plot/character device unfortunately reduces them to little more than preternatural predators while setting aside an examination of their unnatural state, which is the far better source of justifying their intended horror and inducing lasting unease in one's audience.  The "animalistic" zombie, sadly used by many artists as means to pass off relatively easy-to-create "exploring the unknown" fiction in lieu of hard-to-create "horror" fiction (that actually lives up to the name), has in my opinion contributed to the general poverty of the modern horror genre.

There are few true frontiers left in our modern world, and no ferocious swarms of natural menaces (other than our own kind, of course) remain to physically predate humans on a scale ambitious enough for us to express much concern.  Zombies are thus generally portrayed naively as substitute monsters who want to eat us.  In this sense, as antagonists they are hardly different from bears, dinosaurs, sharks, or other carnivorous beasts.  While zombies helpfully fill a role in modern art as vaguely plausible supposedly visceral threats from the frontier/unknown, their portrayals aren't terrifying or even very disturbing these days.  Certainly they may be grotesque creatures, and certainly we may fear them because they want to kill us (and they roam in packs which outnumber us in the remote locations where we typically encounter them).  However the objective of protagonists in modern zombie horror works (generally, not just in the Survival Horror subgenre) is simply to destroy these creatures after obtaining a sufficiently well-stocked cache of arms, ammunition, and arcane knowledge.  As the janitorial staff later sweep away ashes from fading bonfires of vanquished undead, no further thought is given to these fallen foes.  They're gone, and now it's Miller Time.  While we may casually call these creatures "the undead," there is never much satisfying exploration of the key aspects of zombie nature.

As I thought about my game project I began thinking about how one might rehabilitate zombies (particularly after listening to this [url=http://www.reprobateshour.com/2007/12/13/s2-e7-bob-price-on-horror]interesting[/url] but only tangentially-related discussion) to make them truly terrifying--rather than just the horrible and vicious creatures they are generally thought to be.  By "terrifying" I mean that sense of inconsolable dread explored by H.P. Lovecraft in his non-fiction essay "[url=http://www.yankeeclassic.com/miskatonic/library/stacks/literature/lovecraft/essays/supernat/supern00.htm]Supernatural Horror in Literature[/url]."  Although Lovecraft was able to helpfully articulate and examine this concept, in my opinion his own entertaining writings never attained a mastery of consistently engendering such terror (but that is a discussion for another day).

A promising avenue for enhancing the terror credentials of zombies may be an exploration of their fundamental nature in contrast to our own human condition.  The fundamental nature of human beings is that we are mortal creatures aware of our own mortality.  These two factors, consciously or not, shape most of the activities with which we fill our daily lives; our reactions to them shape our sense of life and plans for the future (and even the desire to plan a future at all).

Death is the final frontier, the great unknown--and much more importantly, a great [i]unknowable[/i].  Although we may conjecture all we like, the only way to know anything substantially meaningful about this enigma is to explore it first-hand.  Once we have taken the first step on that journey, however, we cannot turn back nor can we share any insight or experience (nor, if you prefer, can our post-mortem nonfound nonexistence report an absence of any experience to be gained) with those who remain in the realm of the living.

Zombies are human beings who have made a journey into the land of Death and have (by some unnatural means) resumed occupancy of our land of the Living.  While we may posit that zombies are simply mindless mounds of reanimated flesh, that their souls are lost in the realm beyond, and that the shambling creatures shuffling toward us are essentially unrelated to the deceased "persons" whose visages the zombies have procured, this course ultimately leads to their unsatisfactory (for our purposes of expressing them as cogently terrifying) reduction to beasts discussed above.  Unfortunately, this has been the course chosen by mainstream horror fiction over the course of the last century.

What if, however, the zombie--appearing to us as the re-animated flesh of our fallen comrade (let's call him [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_of_the_Dead_(1985_film)]Bub[/url])--fully is that fallen comrade, who has resumed habitation of his own formerly-inert corpse?  What if it's not "a zombie" who wants to eat our brains--what if good old Bub wants to eat our brains?  Why would he want that?  What happened to him on the Other Side, to produce such a monstrous change in formerly honorable and congenial Bub?  How has it come to be that Bub now, in light of his experiences after death, thinks so little of us that he refuses to even acknowledge us as something other than prey to feed his insatiable bloodlust?

I think this particular conception may be the angle needed to give credibility to zombies as truly-worthy material for the induction of hysteria.  Whether the thought is novel or not, I cannot say; I can only say that I haven't seen this view of zombies promulgated before, and I generally consider myself fairly well-versed with the modern (i.e. 20th century) horror genre.

If we observe the typical behavior of zombies, we see that they appear to be less than us--mere human bodies carrying out a degenerated animal existence.  They seem to lack any moral sentiment or ability to conceive of the universe as existing differently than it does as they perceive it at any particular moment.  Zombies seem driven by primal instincts; they feel hunger, so they wish to eat us simply because we are there.  Beyond that, they don't seem to care much about making a better life for themselves, creating art, or pondering the nature of things.  They don't seem to have a conception of the passage of time; for the zombie all that seems to matter are the few seconds on either side of right now.  While human beings may also live this way, we can do more if we care to; thus we see ourselves as superior to zombies, in that they appear to lack capacities we possess.  Zombies also seem to lack any sense of fear; they plod forward toward our machine-gun nest, apparently either unaware or unconcerned that we shall at any moment let loose a volley of 7.62 mm gunfire that will immobilize them as we blow off their limbs or debilitate them as we score a lucky hit on their foreheads.  The living fear when they perceive they may lose something of value.  Do zombies seem to lack fear because they value little, because they value things we can't perceive in preference things familiar to us, because they don't perceive any plausible risk of loss, or because they simply are truly mindless?

While zombies seem to prefer taking sustenance from human flesh and some commentators may thus posit that either they are insane or vengeful beings who resent us and our spirited status or that the we possess something the zombies lack or desire which may be hopefully gained by eating us, the stipulation of such zombie preference may be due to limited chances for observation (i.e. limited imagination on the part of authors).  Zombies may indeed fill their days feasting on cows and sloths when we're not around to notice; when we are around, we're usually too busy paying attention to the zombie horde chasing us to notice the other horde of zombies chasing a varmint.  Or it may be that zombies focus on human prey simply because we're numerous and we're easy to catch--we can't fly away like a bird, nor can we outrun them like a horse or powerful cat, nor can we dive deep like a fish to escape the zombie's grasp.

My theory (that is, proposed means for making zombies genuinely terrifying) is that while based on their observed behavior zombies may indeed seem like the ravenous beasts they are usually portrayed to be, perhaps something else is going on with them related to their new perspective of having died, of having experiences which we have not, and then of returning to us and our realm.  Rather than lacking our wisdom, is it possible these undead are more wise than we the not-yet-dead?  I firmly believe that a genius is simply a persuasive madman.  While we may consider zombies to be insane (if indeed we bother at all to consider them as more than mere beasts), perhaps they possess all our faculties but have freely decided upon returning to our own realm to change their behavior to the lifestyle we observe them pursuing.

This gives rise to several important questions.  

Firstly, what experiences could these zombies have had on the Other Side that would universally motivate them to exist, upon their return to this world, as little more than highly aggressive packs of [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolves_of_Paris]wolves[/url]?  Did the experience simply drive the zombies insane--or did it (much more interestingly and disturbingly) lead them to be indifferent to those things we value under the rubric of "humanity"?  Is there any meaningful distinction between insanity and utter indifference to generally accepted beliefs?  

More importantly our second question should be: if the behavior we observe in zombies is (from the zombie perspective) a desirable way to exist--based upon knowledge which the zombies (having died) possess and we lack--what does this mean for us the living,  for the things and sentiments we value, and for the way we live our lives?  What if, from the perspective of the zombie (who has a fuller range experience than we) we are the fools for affirming the values they reject and for engaging in the behaviors they formerly valued, but no longer sustain?  Is the cosmic joke actually on us as we struggle to survive the zombie hordes and hold on to the perspective with which we are comfortable--the perspective of the not-yet-dead?  If our entire way of life and everything we believe are lies yet we are unable (short of leaping into the unknown realm of death) to directly experience truth, isn't that more horrifying than being eaten for lunch by something?

Ultimately, why do we flee the zombies rather than join them?  [i]If we knew what the zombie knows, would we still believe our fight to cling to our present form is a cause worthy of our striving?[/i]  Consider a situation in which one of our re-imagined zombies sees us holding a shotgun.  He knows perfectly well he won't be able to sink his teeth into us before we disable him with our weapon.  Yet he approaches anyway.  What could possibly be his motivation for such vapid (from our vantage point) behavior?  Should we change our own behavior based on that we observe in the zombie, or should we resist what the zombie may represent?  

Other, less immediate, questions may be in order as well as we ponder the nature of the zombie.  In stories where the emphasis strays from a tight focus on true horror, our own fictional brethren often become zombies themselves when bitten by a zombie and we (if we identify with the protagonist) may ponder the traditional choice of killing ourselves rather than face the fate of becoming zombies.  This seems like an unfortunate way to develop the zombie mythos, however, as it implies in some way that zombification may be similar to a plague which is at least partially comprehensible to us (in that we may identify a process or cause to which "victims" are "subject").  Comprehensibility fosters delusions of rationality, and rationality stifles our sense of the horrific.  If we stipulate the living become zombies only after they are actually slain (rather than just "infected") by zombies, we advance the cause of zombie terror very little; yet if we stipulate that all who die (by any means) after the initial rising of the undead will (choose to?) become zombies we seem to set ourselves on a fast-train to nihilism (which may be our destination in any case--but any such story is likely to be much more effective if we take the scenic route).  This approach was taken in the generally novel film [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shatter_Dead]Shatterdead[/url], with the result that the living seem a bit pathetic in their doomed effort to remain not-yet-dead (although not nearly as pathetic as the undead who strive to maintain the civilization of the living).  The question, then, is this: is a terrible yet inevitable fate as truly horrifying as the terrible yet hardly inevitable result of a failure (whether of action, of knowledge, or of character) on the part of the protagonist?  While I further believe little is to be gained by conflating zombies with vampires (who clearly transmit their own condition to victims via direct attack), this detail of zombie genesis seems difficult to adequately formulate in a way that will satisfy all qualms about suspending disbelief in regard to the story-world under construction.

Whether zombies place any value on individuality is unknown.  While they are often seen as anonymous members of massive undead hordes, it seems likely that zombie crowds initially form in response to the appearance of prey, and that these congregations would quickly disperse if prey were locally plentiful.  Members of zombie hordes seem to have little meaningful interaction with each other, and never seem to coordinate their hunts by setting ambushes while kin flush prey from cover, etc.  Whether this behavior stems from indifference or an inability/reluctance to socialize seems difficult to determine, as does an answer to the question of whether lone zombies experience loneliness, relief, or indifference when separated from their kin.  Will a zombie society ever develop, and if so what forms would such a society present to the eldritch anthropologist?  

A question perhaps unexpectedly more helpful to the cause of enhancing the terrifying credentials of zombies is that of what happens to humans who die leaving no physical remains (as a result of explosions, fires, visiting slippery walkways placed over vats of acid, etc) to possibly be subjected to zombification.  Are these individuals the "lucky ones" who have escaped a terrible fate, or are they instead the truly damned--forever locked out of our world, never to return?

This latter question has some interplay with the larger mystery of why zombies have arisen in the first place.  While we have stated that after finding themselves in their former bodies they likely conduct their affairs in a way sensible to themselves, we have not touched at all on the question of how they came to be reanimated in the first place.  Did they choose to return?  Did they fail or "die" in the next realm, thus returning to ours?  Were they sent, directed, or otherwise expelled from what lies beyond?  Were they recalled from beyond by one of us?  I see this last as the least interesting possibility--sadly it is also the explanation usually chosen by authors of zombie fiction.  Does this phenomenon have any relationship to their predilection for living flesh (while we might suppose zombies enjoy dead flesh as well, if such were the case they would likely do very little but sit about and lazily gnaw on themselves).

Some may say that with these re-imaginings I am unhelpfully confusing the idea of zombies with the idea of vampires.  Let zombies be mindless beasts, either soulless reanimated tissue or else individuals driven mad by a forced return to their decaying corpses; we already have the perfectly fine concept of vampires to allow for reasonable undead who rationally pursue their own goals.  Nonetheless I am attempting to say the traditional vampire is a far less alien creature than the zombie.  It seems to me that vampires are beings who simply skip the (what we see as) inconvenience of death.  They go from mortal to quasi-immortal without ever having meaningfully experienced death itself as a permanent proposition; from our wistful perspective vampirization would seem to increase the vampire's range of freedoms rather than attenuate them.  Vampires traditionally pursue agendas very similar to our own--seeking wealth, power, comfort, and also evidencing a considerable concern for self-preservation.  Sure they want to suck our blood, be we can understand vampires; their behavior remains coherent, and they behave as we grant we ourselves might if placed into their situation.  The horror of the zombie is that we cannot comprehend his behavior at all; we therefore dismiss it as mindlessness or insanity because we cannot discern any circumstances which would cause us to choose to exist as the zombie does.  In our odd modern way we would likely lock the apprehended vampire in jail for crimes of violence, whereas the apprehended zombie we would likely place in a sanitarium for further study.

A more influential argument is that while this re-imagining of the zombie may provide fertile ground for an outpouring of universal horror in an intimate setting (namely a story with few characters who can each be explored at great depth), the complex zombie character is unsuited to an ambitious theme of big-budget Survival Horror in which large numbers of these enigmas will be present as obstacles to be overcome by the protagonist.  I do see this as a potential pitfall of my approach, although the solution (create some other, more original menace from scratch) is much easier said than done.

While this may seem an unpromising forum for such musings, the fact is that there are a fair number of zombie or more generally horror-themed IF games; this observation would seem to indicate a fair level of interest in the subject amongst the writers of the IF community.  What then are your thoughts:

--what I have written above?

--on zombies generally?  (For example, does my re-imagining of the zombie mythos suffer from serious flaws I haven't considered, or are my views too harshly stained with Romero-esque notions about the creatures)?

--on the overall craft of horror writing (for example, does what I have written above seem trite rather than terrifying?)--whether within the context of an IF project or for broader purposes?




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1204&start=0#p7109
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with new directions (among other difficulties)
User: DrWorm / DateTime: 2010-07-15 07:15:33

Thanks, but should I use a colon (as posted above) to determine the rule, or can I just say 
[code]If the player is wet, move the frog to location.[/code]
?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1204&start=0#p7110
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with new directions (among other difficulties)
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-07-15 07:25:01

[quote="DrWorm"]Thanks, but should I use a colon (as posted above) to determine the rule, or can I just say 
[code]If the player is wet, move the frog to location.[/code]
?[/quote]
It makes no difference, but if you're having trouble getting this to work it's because if-phrases need a context, for example:

[code]Every turn:
    if the player is wet, move the frog to location.[/code]
Or you could have the move command in the same place where the player becomes wet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1227&start=0#p7111
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Without Hints
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-07-15 08:05:04

Sorcerer- I had to use hints only for a guess the verb issue.
Suveh Nux-
Forbidden Castle- no hints available
Don't Sh*t your pants- yes, it's a real game on IF archinve
Eric The unready-
Galtea/Glass/Photopia/Magic Travels/9:05/Shrapnel - if these can be considered "won"
I-0- at least one of the endings

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1223&start=10#p7112
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Tutorial Game within game - a suggestion/discussion.
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-07-15 09:30:08

[quote="emshort"]If people are using that extension, I'd be happy to hear about it -- I have very little feedback from in-practice applications, so knowing whether it's useful and/or what problems people encounter would let me refine it a bit.[/quote]

Emily, when I get a bit of time (hopefully tonight, but we'll see) I'll write up a little bit of postmortem on the way I'm using it and the manner in which I had to change it.

I can say that although it provides a great structure for doing inline tutorials, I wanted/needed to make enough changes that I ended up effectively re-implementing it in my code (still crediting you, of course).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1223&start=10#p7113
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Tutorial Game within game - a suggestion/discussion.
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-07-15 09:34:11

[quote="matt w"][quote="tggdan3"]On the other hand, how many new IF players are there? The format is archaic, most people play and write because they played the genre when they were younger, right? Or were introduced by someone, in which case they were already given a game to play.[/quote]

Another person here who didn't play it when i was young, here. I got started with the link to Andrew Plotkin's games at JayIsGames, and really appreciated The Dreamhold. I remember hitting a big bump in Metamorphoses with the first time that examining something revealed another object (also with how the resizing thing worked) and another with A Flustered Duck the first time I had to use the "search" command, so those are things that might be worth putting in a tutorial, if appropriate.

One potential idea for a tutorial extension would be to have features the author could toggle on and off depending on whether they were required in the game. For example, you could set a "lookunder" flag, and if it was true the game would have you look under the bed. Or if the "search" flag was set you'd have to search the bed and find something in the covers. Etc.[/quote]

"Search" is a pet peeve of mine.  In most cases it's equivalent to "examine thoroughly", and I see little reason to force the player to effectively use an adverb.  Same with puzzles that require you to examine something more than once without obvious clueing (A Bear's Night Out, I'm looking at you...)

And Emily's extension works in much the mode you're describing.  You set up certain tutorial commands in a certain order, and the game prompts you to perform the appropriate action, then gives you immediate feedback after you've done it.  It's easy to change the order, change the text, add new commands, or remove commands altogether.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1223&start=10#p7114
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Tutorial Game within game - a suggestion/discussion.
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-07-15 10:04:03

Strangely, I don't remember having [i]too[/i] much trouble learning how to play IF when I was first introduced to it.  And, by the way, I was not introduced to IF by anyone.  I first experienced IF in an anthology called Adventure Blaster, which was on a CD of freeware and shareware software (I think those CDs were commonly distributed back in the 90s, and I remember playing with several of them as a child).  I think my introduction to IF occurred almost eight years ago, but that estimate could be about a year off.

Adventure Blaster contained ten Inform and TADS games, ranking them with a difficulty rating.  A Windows front-end application would automatically launch the games with WinFrotz or WinTADS.  There was extensive documentation in Windows help-file format, including an explanation of IF for beginners, and instructions for downloading and running interpreted games from the old IF Archive ftp site.  I think the helpfile also included solutions and hints for all the games.  (By the way, Adventure Blaster is still available on the Archive, in the "starters" directory -- <a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/starters/AB10.exe">http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/starters/AB10.exe</a>.)

Anyways, Adventure Blaster must have done something right, because I picked up the text parser pretty quickly, and I'm [i]not[/i] a person that easily figures things out.  Although a lot of the credit for getting me hooked on IF goes to the front-end and helpfiles, the games themselves, particularly the first two that I tried, were also very accomadating.  Both [i]Theatre[/i] and [i]Wearing the Claw[/i] have built-in hints.  I know that the [i]Wearing the Claw[/i]'s hint system guided me through the entire game.  I had a lot fun trying to figure out what to do, and then going back to the hints, and I loved the fantasy story.  I had well and truly caught the "IF bug", as one of the helpfiles put it.

The front-end material is pretty much irrelevant to this thread.  I guess the point from my story is that a game should ensure that it has some mechanic in place -- whether built-in hints, or a tutorial mode, or something else -- that can fully guide the newbie while allowing him or her to really play the game and experience IF first-hand.

Interestingly enough, I've tried to introduce some people to IF personally, showing them how to play.  And it didn't work!  I never got anyone interested in IF (although I did get one friend to play a MUD a few years ago, which he still occasionally logs onto, last I've heard).  Oh, too know someone in real-life who also likes text-adventures!  [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1227&start=0#p7115
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Without Hints
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-07-15 10:07:53

[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=5e23lnq25gon9tp3]All Things Devours[/url] was the first non-trivial game I solved without recourse to hints.

I happened to start it while grounded in an airport for a few hours with no Internet access, or else the temptation to find a walkthrough would likely have been too great.

Since then I strive to finish a game without hints where possible, with the exception of IF Comp games where I cheat at the slightest excuse. Sometimes I even look at the walkthrough before I play the game, to see if the bulk of the actions are repetitive and soul-crushing.

I have [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=g0hz9mn5hir35b67]GATOR-ON, Friend to Wetlands![/url] and [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=b5elofytngocc3u5]Condemned[/url] to thank for that habit.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1227&start=0#p7116
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Without Hints
User: joncgoodwin / DateTime: 2010-07-15 10:15:56

I did everything but the outcropping without hints in Spellbreaker, but I once I resorted to the invisiclues for Sorcerer, I couldn't stop myself. 

Just as a matter of historical interest, do we have any evidence that difficult games released without walkthroughs or hints were ever solved? I assume that someone must have done this for Curses, for instance, based on the usenet history, but there could have been hinting from the author or even decompilation of the code, etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1227&start=0#p7117
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Without Hints
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-15 10:31:49

A pretty common thing is for a group of people to play a hard game together and discuss it. I played Curses this way in college: a group of us were all playing, and over meals in the college dining hall we'd talk about what we'd solved and what we still had to go. We didn't have recourse to [b]outside[/b] hints, as I recall*, but we gave one another a lot of help, and between us we were able to figure the thing out. 

I know there were people who played Savoir-Faire the same way, trading ideas on ifMUD. Which was fine with me: S-F was a tribute to Curses and other games of its ilk, and I intended to produce a similar kind of experience. I didn't feel like I'd made the game "too hard" or that people were ruining it by discussing it, since that was part of the point. 

* Note: it is possible that I'm forgetting something and/or that one of my friends checked out a walkthrough without notifying me. But what I recall is chatting with people, not walkthrough-reading.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=0#p7118
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-07-15 10:47:06

[quote="Genstein"]Apologies for the lack of documentation. If you double click a connection, or select (click) it and then choose Properties from the Edit menu, you can set it to be an up/down, in/out connection or add your own custom text at the start, end or middle of the line.[/quote]
I hadn't discovered these features.  They would have solved the majority of my problems.  I'll try it.  I never used GUEmap or any other IF mapping software, so I don't have any expectations about what it should do.

[quote="Genstein"]You can also choose the line style, though this is available on the tool bar as well. Or perhaps you already found this and it wasn't any use to you?[/quote]
Yes, I've been using the line style settings.  I've been a solid line to indicate a traditional two-way connection, and a dotted line to indicate a one-way connection, using the arrows especially when the rooms don't line up neatly, to indicate the direction of one-way paths.  However, now I'm thinking that a better method would be to always use the arrows to indicate the direction(s) of possible travel, so a two-way connection would have arrows pointing to both rooms, and a one-way connection would point toward the room that the player can enter in that direction.  That would free up dotted lines for special cases, such as portals that can be entered without traveling in any direction and lead to another room.  I haven't tried this method on Trizbort, yet, so I don't know if I'd be able to make it work.

I've been mapping one of the many ports of the original [i]Adventure[/i] with Trizbort.  Here are my very rough maps, representing different levels based on altitude, since I didn't know how to make up/down connections.  I wish it were possible to eliminate all the whitespace when exporting to an image file.

(Although I don't think anyone would be very concerned about being spoiled for [i]Adventure[/i], I hid the pictures behind spoiler tags just in case, and also not to clutter the thread.)

[spoiler][url=http://uploadingit.com/view/vk39sbeudtofcdxf/Forest%20area.png][img]http://uploadingit.com/thumb/large/vk39sbeudtofcdxf/Forest%20area.png[/img][/url][/spoiler]


[spoiler][url=http://uploadingit.com/view/sdzyi3axw5gcdhlz/Cave%20level%201.png][img]http://uploadingit.com/thumb/large/sdzyi3axw5gcdhlz/Cave%20level%201.png[/img][/url][/spoiler]

[spoiler][url=http://uploadingit.com/view/ahmimllq5nfit9io/Cave%20level%202.png][img]http://uploadingit.com/thumb/large/ahmimllq5nfit9io/Cave%20level%202.png[/img][/url][/spoiler]


[spoiler][url=http://uploadingit.com/view/58u5iiqxohejnwoc/Cave%20level%203.png][img]http://uploadingit.com/thumb/large/58u5iiqxohejnwoc/Cave%20level%203.png[/img][/url][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1224&start=0#p7119
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation between "all" and enumerated objects
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-15 10:49:40

Slightly less hacky solution:

[code]"Test"

Unharvested food is a kind of thing. Unharvested food is always fixed in place.

Field is a room. Some grain_scenery is unharvested food in Field. Some potatoes are unharvested food in Field. Field has a number called unharvested grain. The unharvested grain of Field is 16. Field has a number called unharvested potatoes. The unharvested potatoes of Field is 8. The grain_scenery is privately-named. The printed name of the grain_scenery is "grain". Understand "grain" as the grain_scenery.

A bag of potatoes is a kind of thing. The plural of bag of potatoes is bags of potatoes. There are 8 bags of potatoes. 

A bag of potatoes is privately-named. Understand "bag of potatoes" as a bag of potatoes. Understand "potatoes/potato" as a bag of potatoes when the potatoes are not visible.

A bag of grain is a kind of thing. The plural of bag of grain is bags of grain. There are 16 bags of grain. 

A bag of grain is privately-named. Understand "bag of grain" as a bag of grain. Understand "grain" as a bag of grain when the grain_scenery is not visible.

Instead of harvesting grain_scenery:
	if unharvested grain of Field > 0:
		say "I harvest some grain.";
		now the player carries a random bag of grain that is off-stage;
		decrease unharvested grain of Field by 1;
	otherwise:
		say "There is no more grain."

Instead of harvesting potatoes:
	if unharvested potatoes of Field > 0:
		say "I harvest some taters.";
		now the player carries a random bag of potatoes that is off-stage;
		decrease unharvested potatoes of Field by 1;
	otherwise:
		say "There are no more taters."

Section 2 - Harvesting

Harvesting is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "harvest [things]" as harvesting.

Check harvesting something which is not unharvested food (this is the block harvesting rule):
	say "I can't harvest that.";
	stop the action.
      
Rule for deciding whether all includes anything (called harvest material) while harvesting (this is the deal with ALL and HARVESTING rule):
	if the harvest material is unharvested food:
		it does;
	otherwise:
		it does not.
         
Does the player mean harvesting a bag of grain: it is very unlikely.
Does the player mean harvesting unharvested food: it is very likely.
Does the player mean harvesting a bag of potatoes: it is very unlikely.

Rule for clarifying the parser's choice while harvesting:
   do nothing.[/code]

That said, I'm not sure why the Does the player mean... rules are not handling this situation correctly, and that is something that might be worthy of report.

On your second question: this is tricky, but not completely impossible. The thing to watch out for is the case where the game can't harvest one of the items; it's challenging to make a set of report rules flexible enough that they will account for some arbitrary members of the group being disallowed, if for instance the player typed >HARVEST GRAIN AND POTATOES AND MARIE CURIE.

Several examples treat multiple-object action reporting. You will find them [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rdoc43.html]in the Recipe Book under Commands > Actions on Multiple Objects[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1227&start=0#p7120
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Without Hints
User: joncgoodwin / DateTime: 2010-07-15 10:59:51

I guess this brings up another point. I got stuck in Savoir-Faire around, as far as I remember, needing to do something about the basement doors and also probably not having translated the diary or letter or whatever it was. Without really looking for hints, I came across references to these puzzles in a usenet thread or somewhere else and then lost motivation to finish the game. The same thing happened with Make It Good, actually. I had the theory, but I was lacking the practical details. Then I saw the discussion of it on Emily Short's blog and got spoiled again. (The discussion was ROT-13'd, but I am exactly the type to have a ROT-13 Firefox extension. Maybe I should password-protect it and hide the password on a random page of a biography of John Dulles.)

I've been stuck in Rhem 2 for five years. I haven't looked at the hints, and I know I have the theory about what needs to be done more-or-less down. It's just a matter of fiddling with some things. Now the game doesn't work on 10.6, and I'd have to play it on my office computer to finish it when I am supposed to be conducting philological inquiries or pedagogical innovations. But I like the tension.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1229&start=0#p7121
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Bug in Secret Doors, not sure who to contact
User: Ragzouken / DateTime: 2010-07-15 13:01:57

The extension "Secret Doors" by Andrew Owen has a small problem because a few places in the source have "when when" instead of "when". The site says extension bugs should to be reported to the maintainer but there in no email address given for Andrew Owen so I am posting it here.

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/Andrew%20Owen/Secret%20Doors/source.html">http://inform7.com/extensions/Andrew%20 ... ource.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1225&start=0#p7122
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New "Default Messages" extension
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2010-07-15 14:03:34

Thanks, Ron. I especially appreciate that if you were originally using David Fisher's extension, it takes very little rewriting replace it with yours. I just slotted it into my WIP and it works perfectly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=0#p7123
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-07-15 16:47:48

Great topic. Thanks for writing this and starting up the discussion.

[quote]What if, however, the zombie--appearing to us as the re-animated flesh of our fallen comrade (let's call him Bub)--fully is that fallen comrade, who has resumed habitation of his own formerly-inert corpse? What if it's not "a zombie" who wants to eat our brains--what if good old Bub wants to eat our brains?[/quote]

Nearly every zombie movie hero has a friend or sidekick character that succumbs to the zombie plague and reanimates. The hero then speeds through the stages of grief and winds up killing that zombie like all the rest. It serves the function you propose - it personalizes the horror for the protagonist - but it is not a particularly unique twist.

I see what you are aiming at, though: devising a reason apart from mindlessness for zombies to attack humans. The difficulty lies in making that unfamiliar motivation clear in an otherwise familiar scenario. Say the zombies are attacking humans to spare them from exposure to terrible cosmic forces, killing them because death is the best outcome for them. How does the protagonist distinguish deadly but altruistic attacks from mindless ones? In the heat of the moment, the difference evaporates. Killing is killing.

It might be better to modify the zombies' behavior. Instead of relentless attacks, perhaps they spend their time excavating graves or erecting bizarre structures. They might still attack humans that get too close, or wipe out population centers near their construction site, but they also do something unexpected and inexplicable. What are they looking for? What are they building?

There's a scene in [i]I Am Legend[/i] where the zombies move a mannequin that the hero has set up. Definitely the creepiest moment in the movie. Why did they do that?  I can't remember the last time a zombie movie made me ask a question like that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1230&start=0#p7124
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Can the "printing a parser error" activity be renamed?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-07-15 18:19:06

This has always been too wordy:[code]Rule for printing a parser error when the latest parser error is the I beg your pardon error:
	say "I beg your pardon?"[/code]Can we instead rename the activity like so:[code]Parsing something is an activity on command parser errors.

Rule for parsing the I beg your pardon error: 
	say "I beg your pardon?"[/code]This does compile, by the way, and we just recently had to re-word the parser errors anyway since they all now (thankfully) end in the word "error".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=0#p7125
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-07-15 18:41:20

One thing that almost defines the nature of the zombie is that it is Other. Mary Shelly got this, I think. In Frankenstein's Monster, the story effectively builds on that central premise: that it is not the creature - the zombie, or the vampire, or whatever - that is the monster.

The monster is everyone else. And it's terrifying, if done right.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1227&start=0#p7126
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Without Hints
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-15 19:37:48

[quote="joncgoodwin"]I know this has come up on the newsgroups a few times in the past, but it's a topic I'd like to revisit. How many games have you solved completely without hints? (If this is a large number, perhaps just mention those that made you especially proud.)[/quote]

Not many, for me. Aside from some pretty brief competition entries or similar short games, and some more-or-less puzzleless games, I did Gun Mute without hints (but with a fair amount of dying). Even with Shade I had to look at a walkthrough, because I got snarled up by doing something out of order, so I didn't realize I had to redo my previous action. I feel pretty much no shame about using hints, anyway; if I can't figure out what the author is thinking once or three times, I can still enjoy the rest of the game if I need a boost past a puzzle or three. 

Part of this may be that I've never played with other people. But contra Ben Cressey's experience, even in a really good game I find that there can be those one or two puzzles whose solution makes me say, "Was I supposed to come up with that on my own?" (For instance, The Firebird is a great game, but I had to read the ClubFloyd transcript for exactly one set of puzzles, I think, and when I did I found that the author commented that one was rightfully criticized as a guess-the-verb; which made me feel good about having cheated.)

...anyway, Jonathan, since I was one of your testers, you should probably adjust for the fact that I can't solve anything without hints.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1223&start=10#p7127
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Tutorial Game within game - a suggestion/discussion.
User: George / DateTime: 2010-07-15 20:54:27

Bainespal, I'm curious about whether you played muds before IF?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1230&start=0#p7128
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can the "printing a parser error" activity be renamed?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-15 21:24:17

Put it on the suggestion forum, perhaps?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1231&start=0#p7129
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: 6E72 changes behavior of "the current action"--intentional?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-07-15 21:52:44

In 5Z71, the "current action" stored action was not set until after a command was parsed. This meant that you could refer to the previous turn's command in the "after reading a command" activity of the current turn. This was handy if you had a two-stage command, since you could use the "current action" to find out which command precipitated the second stage, e.g.:

[code]Carry out being impertinent:
     say "Ralph turns to you and asks who the hell you think you are.";
     change the command prompt to "Who the hell do you think you are?";
     now question mode is true.

After reading a command when question mode is true:
     now the current answer is the player's command;
     follow the question rules.

A question rule when the current action is being impertinent:
     if the current answer is "":
           say "Your silence only enrages Ralph. He asks again:[line break]"[/code]

In 6E72, however, the current action is set to "waiting" (i.e., the waiting action) before "after reading a command". Does anyone know (or care to speculate) whether this is 1) an intentional change, and 2) why it might have been done? 

Thanks,
Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=0#p7130
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-07-16 00:29:37

Thanks for the interesting comments.

@ bcressey

[quote="bcressey"]I see what you are aiming at, though: devising a reason apart from mindlessness for zombies to attack humans. The difficulty lies in making that unfamiliar motivation clear in an otherwise familiar scenario.[/quote]
This is always one of the central problems of writing horror literature of the sort that interests me (the sort that fulfills the aspirations of effective horror according to the criteria discussed by Lovecraft in his essay I mentioned earlier).  To effectively provoke unease in the audience, the chosen horrific device must be shocking in a way that upsets at least some of the firmly settled beliefs of the audience.  Likely this means the device (whether it be a character, a setting, a theme, or other element) will function by intruding some plausible hint of irrationality into the consciousness of the audience.  For example, we normally have no doubt that what we observe on television is a fantasy and the "world" we see "there" is fundamentally removed from us--until we witness, in [i]The Ring[/i], a vengeful spirit emerge from a television image.  Nonetheless if the device is utterly irrational, the author likely will not be able to describe its nature, form, or function at all in words.  This problem arises solely as a result of the chosen (verbal/written) medium; a visual artist or a musical artist may be able to overcome this limitation (as in [i]The Ring[/i]), but the writer cannot.  Thus pushing the envelope of this limitation to deliver a maximum effect is in my opinion the most difficult task of the horror writer.

In terms of what I wrote earlier, the particular problem (on which you were able to focus right away) with my re-imagining of zombies is how to convey the creatures' terrible motivation to the reader or player.  The audience must be able to form at least enough of an idea of this motivation to be disturbed; yet if all is exposed it's just as unlikely the audience will be disturbed because the "logic" or "rules" of the zombie will become apparent, and thus dismissed as not disturbing (since they are fully comprehensible).

Coming down from the heights of abstraction, a common horror device then is to take the familiar and make it behave in very unfamiliar and unsettling ways.  For example one may employ a group of children (aw, how cute) who are murderous and wicked (ruhroh) as seen in the films [i]Village of the Damned[/i] or [i]The Sailor who Fell from Grace with the Sea[/i] (I consider the latter a fine horror film, regardless of what others may think).  This was indeed one of the devices I had in mind for zombies by changing them from mindless re-animated tissue to intact individuals returning from an experience terrible enough to fundamentally alter their senses of self.  In such a case the protagonist may be able to communicate to the reader/player some subtle outlines of the central horrific theme by observing subtle changes (from familiar to unfamiliar) in persons well-known to the protagonist (familiar people who now seem fundamentally unfamiliar).

I was very intrigued by your suggestion about some unusual zombie behavior.  The image of zombies digging up graves is very novel--they may be trying to free their brethren, they may be trying to prevent the buried from resurrecting, or they may have something else entirely in mind.  Very interesting.

I hazily recall the scene you described from [i]I Am Legend[/i], and that phenomenon is a good example of another aspect of the general approach I'd like to take.  We may observe the zombies engaging in unexpected or puzzling behavior; but the audience should not be quite certain whether this behavior is sinister, commendable, generally purposeful, or even comprehensible.

@ Eleas

That's a good point.  I'm proposing to build upon or perhaps even transcend that premise removing "the monster" entirely.  The zombies simply are each of us--a future us, with a different perspective.  While there may be some question as to whether the zombie's behavior is a result of an individualized reaction to The Beyond or a universal reaction to which we're all fated due to human nature, the zombie is our friend or neighbor who is now behaving monstrously after experiencing something (death) which we ourselves must experience as well someday (but have not yet).  We may then surmise that the zombie's behavior is a result of whatever he knows that we don't.  The question then is how we (through our avatar, the protagonist) should live in light of this revelation.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1120&start=0#p7131
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF at Pax Prime, Sept. 3rd-5th
User: George / DateTime: 2010-07-16 01:30:24

Breaking PAX news: I'm happy to report that PAX accepted one of our panels, 'Making stories worth playing' (though I should note that the panelists will change a bit, as it looks like Adam Cadre won't be able to make it). It's scheduled for Friday. 

Also we've reserved an IF suite at the Sheraton, roughly the same size as the room in Boston I believe. 

In the next month we'll be organizing things for the IF suite, and keeping notes at [url=http://ifwiki.org/index.php/PAX_Prime_2010]the PAX Prime page at the IF wiki[/url]. 

Finally, I wanted to re-post this, from the PAX homepage:

[quote]
[b]07-14-10  We're Very Close to Selling Out of 3-Day Badges
[/b]
We’ve been pretty up front that badges will sell out again this year, and it looks like despite the convention center bumping up the number we can sell, we’re going to hit that “no badge” milestone sooner than we ever have. Our guess is that we’ll run out of 3-day badges in the next 2-4 days, so get them while you can!
[/quote]

[i]edit to add:[/i] scratch that, [b]3-day passes are sold[/b] out according to the PAX website. Individual day tickets are still available.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1231&start=0#p7132
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E72 changes behavior of "the current action"--intention
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-07-16 09:18:35

A bit more on this:

First, if you want to test this behavior yourself, compile the following in 5Z71 and 6Exx:

[code]After reading a command:
	say "Current action (after reading command): [current action]."
	
Every turn:
	say "Current action (end of turn): [current action]."

Test me with "look / jump / wave / look"[/code]

Again, I can't see any utility in reverting to "waiting" every turn, so I'm guessing that this is not intentional and is the by-product of some other change. Evidently "wait" is the fallthrough result for "the current action," which is a decide phrase rather than a variable, so I'm guessing that the change in question occurs in this routine. Unfortunately, I'm not familiar enough with the code to really see where this could creep in. Here is the code for the decide phrase from each of the two builds:


5Z71:
[code]To decide which stored action is the current action:
(- STORED_ACTION_TY_Current({-pointer-to-new:STORED_ACTION_TY}) -)


[ STORED_ACTION_TY_Current stora at text_of_command;
	if ((stora==0) || (BlkType(stora) ~= STORED_ACTION_TY)) return 0;
	BlkValueWrite(stora, 0, action);
	BlkValueWrite(stora, 1, noun);
	BlkValueWrite(stora, 2, second);
	BlkValueWrite(stora, 3, actor);
	if (act_requester) BlkValueWrite(stora, 4, true); else BlkValueWrite(stora, 4, false);
	at = FindAction(-1);
	if ((at) && ((ActionData-->(at+AD_NOUN_KOV) == UNDERSTANDING_TY) ||
			(ActionData-->(at+AD_SECOND_KOV) == UNDERSTANDING_TY))) {
		text_of_command = BlkValueRead(stora, 5);
		if (text_of_command == 0) {
			text_of_command = INDEXED_TEXT_TY_Support(CREATE_KOVS);
			BlkValueWrite(stora, 5, text_of_command);
		}
		INDEXED_TEXT_TY_Support(CAST_KOVS, players_command, SNIPPET_TY, text_of_command);
	} else BlkValueWrite(stora, 5, 0);
	return stora;
];[/code]


6E72:

[code]To decide which stored action is the current action:
(- STORED_ACTION_TY_Current({-pointer-to-new:stored action}) -)

[ STORED_ACTION_TY_Current stora at text_of_command;
	if ((stora==0) || (BlkType(stora) ~= STORED_ACTION_TY)) return 0;
	BlkValueWrite(stora, 0, action);
	at = FindAction(-1);
	if (ActionData-->(at+AD_NOUN_KOV) == OBJECT_TY) BlkValueWrite(stora, 1, noun);
	else BlkValueWrite(stora, 1, parsed_number);
	if (ActionData-->(at+AD_SECOND_KOV) == OBJECT_TY) BlkValueWrite(stora, 2, second);
	else BlkValueWrite(stora, 2, parsed_number);
	BlkValueWrite(stora, 3, actor);
	if (act_requester) BlkValueWrite(stora, 4, true); else BlkValueWrite(stora, 4, false);
	if ((at) && ((ActionData-->(at+AD_NOUN_KOV) == UNDERSTANDING_TY) ||
			(ActionData-->(at+AD_SECOND_KOV) == UNDERSTANDING_TY))) {
		text_of_command = BlkValueRead(stora, 5);
		if (text_of_command == 0) {
			text_of_command = INDEXED_TEXT_TY_Support(CREATE_KOVS);
			BlkValueWrite(stora, 5, text_of_command);
		}
		INDEXED_TEXT_TY_Support(CAST_KOVS, players_command, SNIPPET_TY, text_of_command);
	} else BlkValueWrite(stora, 5, 0);
	return stora;
];
[/code]


Does the answer pop out at anyone?

Thanks,
Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1227&start=0#p7133
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Without Hints
User: joncgoodwin / DateTime: 2010-07-16 10:22:47

I've been interested for a while in the notion that solving puzzles (without hints--but does anyone do this? Has anyone ever done it in the era of widespread net availability? The evidence I have suggests not) is similar in some ways to literary interpretation. Jigsaw is not as hard as <i>Pale Fire</i> or "Seven American Nights," for instance; but is it fair to say that interpreting what you have read when you can see all the text in Jigsaw is as easy reading the sequential pages in the other texts, but that understanding the latter is even harder than solving the puzzles required to "read" the former? Is there some useful analogy between this understanding and the type of mind-reading or lateral-thinking required to solve puzzles? If so, does it extend beyond self-evidently puzzle-based texts?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1232&start=0#p7134
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Part of every man
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-07-16 11:45:03

Test is a room.  Jim is a man in Test.  Barbara is a woman in Test.  The player is Jim.

A nose is a part of every person.  A mustache is a part of every man.  A bosom is a part of every woman.

--------------------------

It doesn't seem to matter which order I arrange these lines, but the compiler finds a way to get it wrong.  If I compile the lines as given, it never attempts to instantiate "mustache" at all.  Under the Index, under "Kinds," it says mustache: 0 instances.  It does successfully instantiate "your nose" and "Barbara's bosom," however.

If I declare the body parts first, and the room and people second, it still gets it wrong:  it instantiates "your nose" and "Barbara's bosom" but it creates "Jim's mustache" and doesn't recognize that it's [i]your[/i] mustache.

What do I have to do differently?  Is this a bug?

[sub]P.S.  I posted this last night on rec.arts.int-fiction, but I figure I'd get more eyeballs here.[/sub]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1223&start=10#p7135
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Tutorial Game within game - a suggestion/discussion.
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-07-16 12:13:51

[quote="George"]Bainespal, I'm curious about whether you played muds before IF?[/quote]
No, actually, I discovered MUDs some time after I got hooked on IF.  I don't remember how I found out about MUDs -- probably just browsing websites about text adventures.

Except... my friends in junior high introduced me to a text-based MMORPG about a year or two after I started with IF, and that game is very similar to a MUD, except it doesn't have a text parser.  The differences and similarities between MUDs, MMORPGs, and IF are interesting.  Probably many of the people who play roleplaying-enforced MU*s would make good IF players.  For some reason, my impression is that most IF'ers and MUD'ers know little of the other kind of game, and generally both make fun of the other.  But that impression is not based on hard facts.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1231&start=0#p7136
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E72 changes behavior of "the current action"--intention
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-07-16 13:01:18

I don't see anything in that routine that would explain the difference. Perhaps "action" itself is being reset.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1231&start=0#p7137
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E72 changes behavior of "the current action"--intention
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-07-16 13:04:36

Thanks for the confirmation. I think you're probably right. I'll try to hunt down where that happens before I report this.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1223&start=20#p7138
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Tutorial Game within game - a suggestion/discussion.
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-07-16 14:02:34

[quote="mwigdahl"][quote="emshort"]If people are using that extension, I'd be happy to hear about it -- I have very little feedback from in-practice applications, so knowing whether it's useful and/or what problems people encounter would let me refine it a bit.[/quote]

Emily, when I get a bit of time (hopefully tonight, but we'll see) I'll write up a little bit of postmortem on the way I'm using it and the manner in which I had to change it.

I can say that although it provides a great structure for doing inline tutorials, I wanted/needed to make enough changes that I ended up effectively re-implementing it in my code (still crediting you, of course).[/quote]

(checking off the item on my to-do list labeled "Emily post"...)

Looking at the code in my WIP, the main reason I reworked it was to include support for displaying keyword highlighting a la Aaron Reed's extensions within the tutorial text.  I ended up changing some of your tutorial strings and adjusting the order of presentation based on my opening sequence, but really, the structure seemed fine and worked very well for me.  I just looked at it and realized that I was going to have to override about 80% of your extension's rules to put the keyword formatting tags in, and it ended up being less effort overall to just move it over and modify it from within my application.

You're still mentioned in the credits, of course!  It's a great idea and a great extension!  The only thing that might make it easier for others to customize would be to provide hooks for formatting rather than hardcoding it to italics in the rules.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=120#p7139
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-07-16 14:20:38

Hi there, I'm Mike. I've been on and off raif for years, but I decided to step into the modern world and check this site out.

So hello! If you don't know me from over there, I'll mention a couple marginally relevant things:

Right now I've sort of given up on ever producing anything substantial, but I'm enjoying being an armchair IF developer. I am a computer programmer in the field of computational linguistics, so IF is never far from my mind.

I'm just barely old enough to have been an Infocom fan when Zork was new, but I'm really pleased with the direction IF has taken in modern times. I'm still working my way through the Masterpieces, though, and I will probably post a few more Infocom reviews.

I'm also a musician and I have an interest in audio for IF or even audio-only IF.

I live in Philadelphia.

Nice to meet you all!

- Mike

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1224&start=0#p7140
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation between "all" and enumerated objects
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-07-16 15:22:07

Thank you very much. I've corrected it according to your suggestions, and I'm checking out the extension. Thank you all for your input.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1232&start=0#p7141
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Part of every man
User: Luci / DateTime: 2010-07-16 15:29:16

The problem is with assigning parts to the player, whoever they are. The error arose for Barbara-as-player with bosom as well. Here's the way I fixed it, kind of a cheesy workaround, but:
[code]Bodypart is a kind of thing. A nose, mustache, and bosom are kinds of bodyparts.

A nose, mustache, and bosom are a part of every person.

Test is a room. Jim is a man in Test. Barbara is a woman in Test.

When play begins:
  repeat with x running through every person:
    if x is female:
      now every mustache that is part of x is off-stage;
    if x is male:
      now every bosom that is part of x is off-stage.

When play begins:
  now every bodypart that is part of Jim is off-stage;
  now every bodypart that is part of the player is part of Jim;
  now the player is Jim.[/code]

Basically, this will give you a bit more latitude when assigning body parts ( you could now do a slight rewrite to make the bearded lady archetype ( woman with mustache, or whatnot  [emote]:P[/emote]  ).

The second 'when play begins' is pretty self-explanatory, but it also gives you a bit of room to repeat the option later in other ways, if you need.

( I'm sorry about the 'indent' phrases, I just didn't know how to make it appear, and I wasn't sure if it would be obvious as-is )

Edit: You will also most likely need to put the old 'yourself' character off-stage with the second 'when play begins' event as well.

Edit the 2nd: Having just noticed the code tag (  [emote]:roll:[/emote]  ), I made the example more presentable.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1223&start=20#p7142
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Tutorial Game within game - a suggestion/discussion.
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2010-07-16 16:40:17

Emily,

My suggestion was to those games that won't benefit (for any reason) from a tutorial in the beginning. To those that do benefit of such, your tutorial extension seems to be a great option.

Anyway, I've kind of dropped the idea for all the reasons discussed in this thread, and also because there already is a beginner's game in progress (although with a different philosophy: it's a stand-alone project with a much longer playtime): this [url=http://www.inthecompanyofgrues.com/iftrainer/index.php?title=Main_Page]IF Trainer[/url] someone in the MUD told me about.

(but now I kind of fell in love with the idea of a community Hotel game, in which everyone can code a room with a challenge... hmmm, I wonder...)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1225&start=0#p7143
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New "Default Messages" extension
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-07-16 17:11:04

Version 2 is now up, and I consider the thing done.  This is what changed:

* It is now compatible with builds 6E72, 6E59, 5Z71, 5U92, and 5T18.  This was accomplished mainly by changing "action name" to "action-name".   Some of the examples might be a bit fussy on older builds, but the core functionality works perfectly.   For the oldest two builds, rename the extension from "Default Messages.i7x" to just "Default Messages" before installing. 

* A new section heading was added to keep the index clean.

* If the Use Option isn't used, it will not be compiled into either build. Formerly it was in the debug build whether it was used or not.

* The odds & ends example was expanded, showing how to re-implement a few of the trickier messages in the game, including the error message, "I don't know the word '[misunderstood word]'."

* A new example, "The Complete Table" shows an I7 implementation of every single library message.  It can be used for reference or for pasting directly into your WIP. 

Eric: I couldn't find a workaround for that paste bug, so I removed the paste icons and will report the bug today. 

Mike: Thank you Mike!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1232&start=0#p7144
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Part of every man
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-07-16 17:34:33

Thanks!  It's hard to believe this is intended behavior, but if one must work around it, then one must.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1233&start=0#p7145
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 for OS 10.5.8?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-07-16 17:51:37

I've been sitting on my hands for a couple of weeks, waiting to see if a maintenance release would appear that would allow the I7 IDE to run 6E72 under MacOS 10.5.8.

As of this afternoon, there still doesn't seem to be such a release. I just downloaded it again from the Inform site and tried running it. Same behavior as before. It's a doorstop.

This is bumming me out, because I'd like to start working on updating the Handbook. I would prefer to do the work sitting here with my laptop on my lap rather than sitting in the office using the PC (yeah, yeah, I know -- I'm spoiled, I've got too many computers). Just as significant, in my opnion, there's a whole slice of the authoring community that can't use 6E72 at all, because, like me, they haven't upgraded to 10.6. This makes me less enthusiastic about doing the work. I mean, if a bunch of people can't use the software, why should I put in a lot of work supporting it?

Sure, I could upgrade to 10.6. It's only $29. But (and this is a big but): I have an upcoming freelance project for which I'm going to have to use the Mac. My current software installation works fine, so I'm just plain not going to up grade until I get this project done.

I'd sure appreciate it if someone who is in the know would enlighten us as to whether there will be a maintenance release for the older (but still completely viable) MacOS, or whether I'm just shit outta luck until sometime next year.

Should I be bugging Andrew Hunter unmercifully about this? Or is the next release only days away?

--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1233&start=0#p7146
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 for OS 10.5.8?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-07-16 18:23:18

I have no information about this at all, except that the bug report database indicates that the ball is in Andrew's court.

I've mentioned this in a couple of fora, but if it might help at all, I'm happy to mention it again: The notion has arisen that there is a workaround for this issue, and it may well be that this workaround functions on some machines. However, most folks who have posted to the bug tracker report that in fact there is [b]no workaround[/b] on 10.5 or 10.4. This has also been my experience, and it sounds like it's Jim's situation as well.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=0#p7147
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-07-16 18:31:06

[quote="Endosphere"]
I hazily recall the scene you described from [i]I Am Legend[/i], and that phenomenon is a good example of another aspect of the general approach I'd like to take.  We may observe the zombies engaging in unexpected or puzzling behavior; but the audience should not be quite certain whether this behavior is sinister, commendable, generally purposeful, or even comprehensible.
[/quote]

What I liked best about it was the fleeting sense that the zombies moved the mannequin for some sentimental reason: a simple appreciation for beauty, or a wish to see people outside in daylight again. Something that would underscore just how terrible it is to find yourself in that state, unable to rise above bestial urges but equally unable to forget them.

In the context of the movie, of course, the reason was far less subtle. [spoiler]The main point of the scene was to set up a direct confrontation by trapping the hero, and also to foreshadow the ending by demonstrating how cunning the zombies could be.[/spoiler] But I can forgive that because it [i]might[/i] have been more sublime and thrilling, if handled differently or not explained at all.

Back in the video game realm, [i]Left 4 Dead[/i] does something interesting by adding "special" zombies alongside the rank-and-file mindless swarms. Granted, the specials share the goals and presumptive motivations of the swarms, but that doesn't have to be the case. You could have mindless attack zombies clustered around worker zombies doing something inscrutable and sinister, and when Bob reanimates the question becomes which type is he and why?

[i]Alan Wake[/i] also introduces a variation along these lines, where you have a handful of different zombie types that recur throughout the game. I'm a little hazy on the identity of these zombies, but since at least a few of them are named, it's possible that they were meant to be the literally the same zombie every time they returned. Certainly that was my impression, and the narrative structure of the game lends some credence to the notion.

The nice thing about that is it allows you to evolve the zombie attacks over time: Bob's attacks might become increasingly desperate and self-destructive, or he might opt to attack the player under certain circumstances but not others: not inside the soup kitchen, or not after the player unknowingly contracts the virus. The player's goal might remain static - kill Bob every time - but if you change Bob's parameters you can make his behavior more interesting. Why is he doing this now when he did that before?

I think it would be kind of awesome to have a game where the player manages to fend off a series of increasingly vicious zombie attacks, and winds up defending a group of survivors in the final showdown - only to discover that the zombies have lost interest in him, and ignore his attacks as they kill off the others. The infected hero is a bit of a cliche, but it could just be a recognition of the player's mastery: they've learned that they can't kill him, so they concentrate on easier prey, negating his existence just as effectively. The player survives, but does he want to?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=40#p7148
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: virtron / DateTime: 2010-07-16 18:34:02

Speaking as someone that is (at best) on the periphery of IF but would like to get more into both playing and writing, I have a couple of things to add:

- I can say that the parser has been a huge turn off in my attempts to get more into the scene. There is nothing more frustrating than having solved a game puzzle long ago, only to have to then laboriously solve the "parser puzzle." This is an interface problem for graphical games as well... really anything puzzle based. 

- I'm honestly surprised that the idea of a split-paned interface with separate command and output panes would be considered any one of: innovative, controversial or unusual. Maybe I spend too much time in text-based interfaces for programming but this kind of split between contextually aware command prompt/buffer and output buffer/pane has been around for a long time. I'm not trying to be critical, but this is exactly the interface I would have *expected* from a contemporary text-based game. Does this mean that I would have to code up my own interpreter to use this for my own games? Disappointing.

V

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=0#p7149
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-07-16 18:48:08

[quote="Endosphere"]This was indeed one of the devices I had in mind for zombies by changing them from mindless re-animated tissue to intact individuals returning from an experience terrible enough to fundamentally alter their senses of self.  In such a case the protagonist may be able to communicate to the reader/player some subtle outlines of the central horrific theme by observing subtle changes (from familiar to unfamiliar) in persons well-known to the protagonist (familiar people who now seem fundamentally unfamiliar).[/quote]

This evokes more of a body snatchers or demonic possession scenario in my mind, and also suggests Lovecraft's [i]The Shadow Out of Time[/i]. Those might be slightly better jumping off points for your theme, unless you're specifically aiming to reinvent zombies, which is of course commendable.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1232&start=0#p7150
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Part of every man
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-16 19:11:29

Does it help to say "A nose is a kind of thing," "A mustache is a kind of thing," etc.? In 5Z71 that generated appropriate noses, mustaches, and bosoms on Barbara and Jim, though the behavior of "yourself" was still somewhat messy. (And without that, the code doesn't even compile in 5Z71.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1232&start=0#p7151
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Part of every man
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-07-16 19:44:29

[quote="matt w"]Does it help to say "A nose is a kind of thing," "A mustache is a kind of thing," etc.? In 5Z71 that generated appropriate noses, mustaches, and bosoms on Barbara and Jim, though the behavior of "yourself" was still somewhat messy. (And without that, the code doesn't even compile in 5Z71.)[/quote]

It seems the behaviour has changed quite a lot. Given this code:

[code]A body part is a kind of thing.

A head is a kind of body part. A torso is a kind of body part. A bosom is a kind of body part. A stylish beard is a kind of body part.

A head and a torso are part of every person. A bosom is part of every woman. A stylish beard is part of every man.

The hall is a room. John is a man in the hall. The player is John. Sally is a woman in the hall.

Test me with "x head/x beard/x my beard/x your beard/x my head/x my bosom"[/code]

we get the following output:

[quote="output"]
[b]hall[/b]
You can see Sally here.

>[b]test me[/b]
(Testing.)

>[1] [b]x head[/b]
Which do you mean, John's head or Sally's head?

>[2] [b]x beard[/b]
You see nothing special about John's stylish beard.

>[3] [b]x my beard[/b]
You see nothing special about John's stylish beard.

>[4] [b]x your beard[/b]
You can't see any such thing.

>[5] [b]x my head[/b]
You can't see any such thing.

>[6] [b]x my bosom[/b]
You see nothing special about Sally's bosom.

>
[/quote]


Looks like when parsing "my" in this example, what the parser understands is actually "any one instance of the kind when only one instance of the kind is in view." Otherwise it fails to match entirely.

Adding another woman and another man substantiates this. Now, "my" anything no longer counts as valid either.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1231&start=0#p7152
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E72 changes behavior of "the current action"--intention
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-07-16 19:58:51

Well, I've found where the action is set, and it looks like it is fully intentional--action is quite explicity set to ##Wait at the beginning of every turn. in Main(). I can't imagine why we'd want to put a totally bogus action into the "current action" variable at the beginning of every turn (it would make a whole lot more sense to me to make it null, but that isn't possible in I7). 

Anyway, here's the new Main() as of 6E59:
[code][ Main;
	#ifdef TARGET_ZCODE; max_z_object = #largest_object - 255; #endif;
	ProcessRulebook(STARTUP_RB);
	#ifdef DEBUG; InternalTestCases(); #endif;
	while (true) {
		while (deadflag == false) {
			EarlyInTurnSequence = true;
			action = ##Wait; meta = false; noun = nothing; second = nothing;
			actor = player;
			FollowRulebook(TURN_SEQUENCE_RB);
		}
		if (FollowRulebook(SHUTDOWN_RB) == false) return;
	}
];[/code]

I guess the path of least resistance for my WIP is to just hack Main() and get that reassignment out of there.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1232&start=0#p7153
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Part of every man
User: Luci / DateTime: 2010-07-16 20:07:46

I've been using i7 for about a year and a half, and I honestly can say I've never gotten 'my' to work with anything ( sensibly ) without some form of sneaky workaround ( not much unlike the example I gave above ).  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1232&start=0#p7154
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Part of every man
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-07-16 20:25:22

[quote="Luci"]I've been using i7 for about a year and a half, and I honestly can say I've never gotten 'my' to work with anything ( sensibly ) without some form of sneaky workaround ( not much unlike the example I gave above ).  [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Hmmm... now that you mention it, "my" has always been more than a little odd. I've been using I7 for upwards of 8 months now, off and on, and I just finished an absurdist little test game that I had to subject to mercy killing before it managed to escape. But if there's anything I learned to do in short order, it's playing with regex.

I did faff about a fair bit with body parts to begin with, and wrote some longish code in 5Z71 loosely based on the cave troll example. It was supposed to handle all contained items (worn, held, or incorporated), redirecting "my" to yourself, "his" to the same for all men in the room, and "her" was intended to do the same thing. Only, of course, with the slight problem of "her" being both possessive and personal pronoun, so it had to change [i]that[/i] pronoun only if the form "her [something]" was valid, where [something] would be a legal object.

And then disambiguation issues gave me a thorough beatdown, after which I discovered how to work the understanding by relations bit as demonstrated in the Inform manual. I settled for that then, but now, it might just be necessary to dust off some old concepts...

(God, I hope not. That thing was a nightmare.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=0#p7155
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-07-16 21:19:36

I'm definitely exploring a significant re-imagining of zombies, one which will hopefully make them far removed from the "zombie-beast" conceptions discussed earlier.

Your mention of Lovecraft's [i]Shadow Out of Time[/i] brings up another interesting idea, albeit a minor enhancement.  Perhaps zombies are initially confused or disoriented when they first find themselves back in possession of their corpses, and their behavior may change over time as they "remember" more of where they've been--similar in a way to the protagonist in [i]Shadow Out of Time[/i].  Perhaps recently reanimated zombies are somewhat passive (or even physically slow-moving as they reorient themselves to control their corpses), but grow increasingly aggressive and hostile (or even faster-moving/more dextrous) as they recall the terrible cosmic secrets they discovered during their time in the Other Realm.  This general idea is highly amenable to the idea of variation in zombie behavior or purpose you mentioned as well.  In general the idea of some sort of individualization for zombies is something I'd like to see, as it nicely supports the general idea I'm exploring of "It's Bub, now a zombie," or even "That zombie in the blue shirt is crafty, but that one with the baseball cap is dim-witted," rather than "It's another zombie, part of a horde of mindless beasts."
 
[quote="bcressey"]I think it would be kind of awesome to have a game where the player manages to fend off a series of increasingly vicious zombie attacks, and winds up defending a group of survivors in the final showdown - only to discover that the zombies have lost interest in him, and ignore his attacks as they kill off the others. The infected hero is a bit of a cliche, but it could just be a recognition of the player's mastery: they've learned that they can't kill him, so they concentrate on easier prey, negating his existence just as effectively. The player survives, but does he want to?[/quote]
A further interesting development of this idea would be if the zombies, having learned not to play with fire so to speak, are in fact leaving the protagonist alone (because he's grown too dangerous for them, because their god in the realm beyond has ordered it, etc).  However, one could allow/lead the reader/player to believe that the old [i]Alien3[/i] ploy is use (namely, when the aliens refused to attack Ripley because she was incubating their future queen).  Although I want to move far away from the modernistic "disease/victim" model of zombies, the prospect of being somehow "infected" or otherwise on the road to inevitable zombification (or perhaps even just the prospect of being the last non-zombie/"Omega Man") could lead a hopeless protagonist to opt for suicide--based on mistaken information.  In terms of a game, this is easily presented as a variant ending (whereas if the player-character had only read the dusty old book in the crypt he could have known the true signs of impending zombification and kept his wits about him later rather than sinking into despair, etc).  In general any device allowing increased freedom for a player to experience the story that interests that particular player makes for a much more compelling game.

[Added in edit]

On the other hand, perhaps my whole effort with zombies is misguided or unnecessary.  Are there those of us for whom the horror of the zombie does in fact consist mostly of the idea of a person reduced their basest animal nature, and/or stripped of individuality to exist a mere component part of an anonymous horde?  Those elements are certainly present in the modern conception of the zombie, although I think they are not often highlighted by recent (i.e. from the past two decades) popular zombie fiction.  Does anyone disagree with my contention that, for example, the zombie of the [i]Resident Evil[/i] games is essentially lacking in terror-inducing credibility?

Just recently I was watching the movie [i]Resident Evil Extinction[/i] with the producer commentary turned on.  At one point the producer was discussing how "effective horror" is of the (what I consider to be) "cheap thrill" variety that causes the audience to be startled or experience a (very) brief bout of emotional distress.  While I generally enjoy that entire franchise of films, I see them as action films and fundamentally disagree with the notion that a work of horror is successful if it causes the audience to jump out of their seats a few times.  I instead side with Lovecraft (as discussed earlier), and believe that an effective piece of horror should strive to inspire an honest sense of intellectual and spiritual dread in its audience.  In the audio clip I linked to earlier, one line of the discussion consists of something like (paraphrasing heavily):

[quote]Horror is when you see a pack of wild dogs eating your friend.
Terror is when you realize all the dogs are turning your way, and they're still hungry.[/quote]
I'm essentially arguing, then, that while the traditional zombie may be an effective vehicle for inducing "horror," the zombie is not very effective in inducing "terror."  However, if anyone is largely satisfied with zombies as they are usually portrayed in recent games/films/other fiction, feel free to explain your views or describe how their portrayals have terrorized you.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1227&start=0#p7156
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Without Hints
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-07-16 22:21:44

[quote]Has anyone ever done it in the era of widespread net availability?[/quote]

Sure. Many of us adventure fans solve many puzzles without hints. Maybe even *most* of them.

What's rare is for someone to *refuse* to use hints for *any* puzzle -- even the annoying illogical one in that one game that makes no sense. (As it were.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1231&start=0#p7157
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E72 changes behavior of "the current action"--intention
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-07-16 22:28:03

[quote]I can't imagine why we'd want to put a totally bogus action into the "current action" variable at the beginning of every turn (it would make a whole lot more sense to me to make it null, but that isn't possible in I7).[/quote]

I think you've come at the answer from both sides: it is deliberately putting a null value in there, and the best choice for a "null action-name" (given I7's policy towards null values) is Waiting.

Leaving the previous turn's value in there is confusing for most users -- it is much more likely to be an apparently-random starting value than a desired reference to the previous turn. It's also not the best way to *deal* with the previous turn, because it gets reset by meta actions. Better to store the value in a global, and explicitly reset it "every turn" (which is bypassed for meta actions).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1231&start=0#p7158
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E72 changes behavior of "the current action"--intention
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-07-16 22:28:56

(This is not to say you shouldn't hack Main -- that will do what you want. But consider cases such as meta actions or failed actions.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1231&start=0#p7159
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E72 changes behavior of "the current action"--intention
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-07-16 23:50:11

[quote="zarf"]I think you've come at the answer from both sides: it is deliberately putting a null value in there, and the best choice for a "null action-name" (given I7's policy towards null values) is Waiting.[/quote]

Actually, when I say "null" would be better, I mean a true null. "Waiting" is not a null value, even if Inform wants to try to use it as one. (It can serve as a null, but only when the player hasn't typed WAIT; since we can't ever be sure of that, the value is useless for testing. The same is true of the use of "Figure of Cover" as the "null" for figure names. You can't really use it as a null, because someone may want to draw the cover art, and so you have to hack something else up in order to get real null behavior.)

I realize that from the standpoint of I7's current design--default values instead of nulls--this is the orthodox thing to do. It's just that the design is not really useful to anyone but the designer. 

[quote="zarf"]Leaving the previous turn's value in there is confusing for most users -- it is much more likely to be an apparently-random starting value than a desired reference to the previous turn.[/quote]

Maybe, but at least using the previous turn is useful--the starting value is [i]never[/i] useful (again, because you can't be sure it didn't originate with the player). 

[quote="zarf"]It's also not the best way to *deal* with the previous turn, because it gets reset by meta actions. Better to store the value in a global, and explicitly reset it "every turn" (which is bypassed for meta actions).[/quote]

Meta-actions aren't a problem for my WIP--entering a meta-command cancels the two-stage action, so it's entirely appropriate that the current action variable is reset (the current action is being used to interpret specialized parsing--maybe the player is entering a number, or a real number, or arbitrary text, and we have to deal with that input in some way). That said, if I were starting this anew, I probably would have just stored the action in a global--but since I'm just trying to convert this thing to work with 6E72 and shove it out the door, I  really don't feel like manually editing nearly half of the actions in my WIP to get them working again [emote]:)[/emote]

I also feel a real deep-seated need to denounce the lack of null values in I7 whenever I can. Maybe one day some impressionable soul with agree with me and we can start a movement... [emote];)[/emote]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1232&start=0#p7160
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Part of every man
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-17 00:41:09

[quote="Eleas"][quote="matt w"]Does it help to say "A nose is a kind of thing," "A mustache is a kind of thing," etc.? In 5Z71 that generated appropriate noses, mustaches, and bosoms on Barbara and Jim, though the behavior of "yourself" was still somewhat messy. (And without that, the code doesn't even compile in 5Z71.)[/quote]

It seems the behaviour has changed quite a lot. Given this code:

[spoilered for brevity -- mw]
[spoiler][code]A body part is a kind of thing.

A head is a kind of body part. A torso is a kind of body part. A bosom is a kind of body part. A stylish beard is a kind of body part.

A head and a torso are part of every person. A bosom is part of every woman. A stylish beard is part of every man.

The hall is a room. John is a man in the hall. The player is John. Sally is a woman in the hall.

Test me with "x head/x beard/x my beard/x your beard/x my head/x my bosom"[/code]

we get the following output:

[quote="output"]
[b]hall[/b]
You can see Sally here.

>[b]test me[/b]
(Testing.)

>[1] [b]x head[/b]
Which do you mean, John's head or Sally's head?

>[2] [b]x beard[/b]
You see nothing special about John's stylish beard.

>[3] [b]x my beard[/b]
You see nothing special about John's stylish beard.

>[4] [b]x your beard[/b]
You can't see any such thing.

>[5] [b]x my head[/b]
You can't see any such thing.

>[6] [b]x my bosom[/b]
You see nothing special about Sally's bosom.

>
[/quote][/spoiler]


Looks like when parsing "my" in this example, what the parser understands is actually "any one instance of the kind when only one instance of the kind is in view." Otherwise it fails to match entirely.

Adding another woman and another man substantiates this. Now, "my" anything no longer counts as valid either.[/quote]

Pretty much the same thing happens in 5Z71. But if you delete "the player is John" you get reasonable responses, except that "x my beard" gets you something about John's stylish beard and "x my bosom" about Sally's bosom -- it's as though it ignores "my" if it can find a match without it. 

My conjecture is that a lot of the issues here have to do with the mysterious "yourself" object -- it's a person rather than a man or woman, which is why it doesn't get a mustache or bosom or whatever, and it seems to be catching some of the "my" references. (Try "showme yourself" and "showme me.") It's supposed to represent "yourself," and it's off-stage, but even when I put it in scope "x my head" doesn't work, so I'm not sure what's going on there. But the parsing for "my" seems to be kind of goofed up, and this seems to be exacerbated when you're using "the player is whosit." 

Oh, I looked at an old RAIF thread on this and vaporware suggested (basically)

[code]Understand "my" as a thing when the item described is part of the player.[/code]

That helps fix "x my head," I think.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1227&start=0#p7161
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Without Hints
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-07-17 06:50:39

What are "hints"?

Only those outside the game? What of works of IF that extend outside the game?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1231&start=0#p7162
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E72 changes behavior of "the current action"--intention
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-07-17 09:04:01

A sometimes-meaningful value can lead to worse code than a consistent null value. I have no sympathy there. :)

I *do* have sympathy with the null-value problem. There's an entry on the suggestion forum ("Provide a special "nothing" constant") which covers this, which you can throw your weight on. (I see you've commented there, but not voted.)

The particular wrinkle for I7 is that type-polymorphic values break many assumptions of the compiler. So you can't just go and decide that "nothing" is a null value for all types. (It would be impossible to compile "say nothing" or "let localvar be nothing".) It will have to be a bunch of type-specific nothings: "nothing as an action-name", "nothing as a room", etc.

Even were that not adopted, it would make sense for the library to define a nothing-doing to use in this particular case (instead of waiting). I see some headaches if the compiler defines an extra first-class value for user-defined types, and some *different* headaches if the compiler defines a typed synonym for 0 (for user-defined reference types). But the library defines a big pile of action-names, and one more won't hurt anything.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1231&start=0#p7163
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E72 changes behavior of "the current action"--intention
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-07-17 09:36:22

[quote="zarf"]A sometimes-meaningful value can lead to worse code than a consistent null value. I have no sympathy there. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

I continue to think that it's just as logical for the underlying variables to remain as the old values (the last turn) until actively reset by new values, but I have no problem ceding the point--I am a definite newbie in this weird world of code... 

In any case, for my WIP I have discovered that in fact there is a way for me to change all of my actions to use a stored action variable with a single search and replace, so I've done that. (For code maintenance reasons--if Main changes again in the next build of Inform, I won't have to change my hacked Main too.)

[quote="zarf"]I *do* have sympathy with the null-value problem. There's an entry on the suggestion forum ("Provide a special "nothing" constant") which covers this, which you can throw your weight on. (I see you've commented there, but not voted.)[/quote]

Thanks for pointing out that I hadn't voted on my own request! I've reneged on a vote for something else (sorry, friend) to vote this one up.

[quote="zarf"]Even were that not adopted, it would make sense for the library to define a nothing-doing to use in this particular case (instead of waiting). I see some headaches if the compiler defines an extra first-class value for user-defined types, and some *different* headaches if the compiler defines a typed synonym for 0 (for user-defined reference types). But the library defines a big pile of action-names, and one more won't hurt anything.[/quote]

Yes, that would make sense. (It's how I dealt with the Figure of Cover Art problem I mentioned, by defining a separate null-figure and using that to test nullness.)

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=40#p7164
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-07-17 10:28:51

[quote="virtron"]I'm honestly surprised that the idea of a split-paned interface with separate command and output panes would be considered any one of: innovative, controversial or unusual. Maybe I spend too much time in text-based interfaces for programming but this kind of split between contextually aware command prompt/buffer and output buffer/pane has been around for a long time. I'm not trying to be critical, but this is exactly the interface I would have *expected* from a contemporary text-based game. Does this mean that I would have to code up my own interpreter to use this for my own games? Disappointing.[/quote]
I feel the same disappointment, I think. The current authoring tools are strongly command-prompt-centric. The moment you envision a more 21st century UI, you're pretty much on your own.

I'm a writer. I can't draw. Any type of graphic enhancement of the UI is not going to happen in my next game, nor the one after that, unless (vanishingly unlikely) I happen to run into a graphic artist who has time to spare helping me implement my vision.

But I would happily embrace a more sophisticated text-only UI -- something with the command prompt in one window, the output text in another window, maybe words in bold in the output text that can be clicked on, stuff like that.

Such a system is at least two steps away, I think. The first step would be an authoring system that allows me to set that up without too painful gymnastic gyrations. The second step would be an interpreter that can run the more modern UI in a seamless way. [i]Both [/i]have to happen, and together. Either by itself is not useful.

TADS 3 has a nice hyperlink capability, for instance -- but Zoom is not an HTML TADS interpreter, so in Zoom, a T3 game defaults back to text-only. The author does all that extra work, and then the player doesn't even know it exists.

After trying a couple of games using Parchment, I'm drifting away from the idea that a browser-based interpreter is the right way to move forward. It's just too darn slow! Imagine an FPS in which you pull the trigger and have to wait five seconds to see the result. Not good.

I'm starting to think that what's needed is a new system that's built from the ground up -- a cross-platform interpreter with modern features, coupled with an authoring system that allows me to make full use of those features.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1234&start=0#p7165
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: HTML TADS Limitations
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-07-17 11:05:43

After reading the long thread on how to make IF more approachable (mainly by adapting the UI so as to downplay the old-school command prompt), I'm trying to figure out how close one might be able to get to a modern UI by using HTML TADS.

In looking at the docs, I find a feature called "banners," which I gather can be positioned around the edges of the window so as to provide non-scrolling display panes. That's one piece of the puzzle, but other pieces are not so obviously available. I'm hoping someone who knows the system will be able to enlighten me as to what the possibilities and limitations are.

1) Can a banner include the input text area (command prompt)?

2) Can the author choose what to send or not send to the main text output window? That is, could parser error messages be routed to a separate banner window?

3) Just out of curiosity -- not saying it's a good idea, necessarily -- can the main text output window be altered and updated without scrolling upward, teletype-style, and without blanking out existing text?

4) Are pop-up tooltips possible within the HTML TADS UI?

Thanks in advance for any insight on these points.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=40#p7166
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-07-17 12:06:55

[quote="Jim Aikin"]I would happily embrace a more sophisticated text-only UI -- something with the command prompt in one window, the output text in another window, maybe words in bold in the output text that can be clicked on, stuff like that.[/quote]

You can do all of these things right now with a Glulx game, and the results will be playable in both desktop interpreters and Quixe. Here's a bare-bones demo with hyperlinks and dual-window I/O:

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quixe/play-remote.html?story=http%3A%2F%2Fdl.dropbox.com%2Fu%2F947038%2FOn%2520the%2520Edge.gblorb&enter=Play+it%21">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quix ... Play+it%21</a>

And here's one that goes back and forth between single window and dual window I/O (type TURN ON TERMINAL):

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quixe/play-remote.html?story=http%3A%2F%2Fdl.dropbox.com%2Fu%2F947038%2FTerminal.gblorb&enter=Play+it%21">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quix ... Play+it%21</a>

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1232&start=0#p7167
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Part of every man
User: Mopquill / DateTime: 2010-07-17 12:10:39

I'm very new to inform, but, could it perhaps help to indicate that the player is male if the player is Jim/John?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1227&start=10#p7168
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Without Hints
User: joncgoodwin / DateTime: 2010-07-17 12:13:24

I thought it would be neat to create an IFDB poll on this issue: [url]http://ifdb.tads.org/poll?id=98p583h5vlrswxmo[/url]

And I appreciate the definition of illogical puzzles as those you can't or don't want to solve. How often is there agreement, though? I would suspect that a significant number of players who worked on Spellbreaker without hints got stuck exactly where I did: [spoiler]THROW BOX at OUTCROPPING (or whatever it was, I'm sure you know what I mean).[/spoiler] I'd be curious to know where people got stuck in The Plant, if they did. I suspect it would be in the early part of the game, which seemed to me to have the most difficult puzzles, but I doubt that the author designed it that way intentionally.

As for "But, what are hints?," I'm reluctant to engage in precise definitional exercises. There are philosophers here, after all, who do this sort of thing for a living. Are you thinking of something like the way that Save/Restore was handled in Slouching towards Bedlam, but with hints? I'd love to hear about it, if so.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1235&start=0#p7169
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Games in Turkish
User: Derfel / DateTime: 2010-07-17 13:43:21

I have searched and couldn't find any games in Turkish. I saw one or two Turkish game name but all the links were broken. Is there any platform which I can search for Turkish games or players/authors?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1232&start=0#p7170
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Part of every man
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-07-17 15:00:51

This variation of "Night Before Christmas" is the best I can come up with after fiddling a few hours. It's hardly perfect, but so far, we can avoid doing [i]unnecessary[/i] regexing (which I understand is detrimental to performance). Parsing by hand can be fun to do, true, but it's often overkill, so I like to keep it in store for those occasion where nothing less would do.

[code]Definition: a person is other if it is not the player.
Definition: a thing is selfish if it is part of the player and the player can see an other person.

A body part is a kind of thing. 

A head is a kind of body part. A torso is a kind of body part. Arms are a kind of body part. Legs are a kind of body part. A tail is a kind of body part.

A mystique is a kind of body part.
A beer gut is a kind of body part.
A club foot is a kind of body part.


A head, a torso, and some legs are part of every person.

Some arms are part of every man. Some arms are part of every woman.
A tail is part of every animal. A mystique is part of every woman. A beer gut is part of every man.


Understand "my" as a thing when the item described is selfish.
Understand "her" as a thing when the item described is part of an other woman.
Understand "his" as a thing when the item described is part of an other man.
Understand "its" as a thing when the item described is part of a neuter thing.

Lisa is a woman. Anna is a woman. 
Brian is a man. 

Toby is a man. One club foot is part of Toby.

Fido is an animal. Fido is neuter.


[Just some stuff for easier testing]

Becoming is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "become [a person]" as becoming.

Check becoming:
	if the noun is not a person, say "That's not a valid person." instead.

Carry out becoming:
	say "You are enveloped by a sparkling light, and when it clears, you are in the body of [noun]!";
	now the player is the noun.


The Arena is a room. Anna, Lisa, Brian, Toby, and Fido are in the Arena. The player is Anna.
The commode is a container. A stain is part of the commode. The commode is in the Arena.

Test me with "x head/x torso/x his torso/x her torso/x gut/x her gut/x her mystique/x my gut/x foot/x my foot/x my head"[/code]

Running the "test me" gives the following output:

[quote][b]Arena[/b]
You can see Lisa, Brian, Toby, Fido and a commode (empty) here.

>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] [b]x head[/b]
Which do you mean, Lisa's head, Anna's head, Brian's head, Toby's head or Fido's head?

>[2] [b]x torso[/b]
Which do you mean, Lisa's torso, Anna's torso, Brian's torso, Toby's torso or Fido's torso?

>[3] [b]x his torso[/b]
Which do you mean, Brian's torso or Toby's torso?

>[4] [b]x her torso[/b]
You see nothing special about Lisa's torso.

>[5] [b]x gut[/b]
Which do you mean, Brian's beer gut or Toby's beer gut?

>[6] [b]x her gut[/b]
You can't see "her" (Lisa) at the moment.

>[7] [b]x her mystique[/b]
You see nothing special about Lisa's mystique.

>[8] [b]x my gut[/b]
You can't see any such thing.

>[9] [b]x foot[/b]
You see nothing special about the club foot.

>[10] [b]x my foot[/b]
You see nothing special about the club foot.

>[11] [b]x my head[/b]
You see nothing special about Anna's head.

>[/quote]

(choice of body part is thoughtfully kept in strict adherence to stereotypes)

This works as a starting point, I'd say. We still have the old "I don't see 'her' (name) at the moment" malarkey, to which Endosphere found a solution workable under 5Z71 (I have yet to check if it works under 6E72). Then there is the problematic matter of the parser ignoring the difference between pronouns in certain cases, so that "x its club foot" will happily point you toward both men and women without any mention of that fact. And finally, there is the disambiguation between parts to address.

At any rate, IMO this is not noticeably different in behaviour from 5Z71.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1232&start=10#p7171
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Part of every man
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-07-17 16:20:18

And, presumably,
[code]Understand "your" as a thing when the item described is part of the person asked.[/code]
for commands such as
Toby, examine your bellybutton

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1232&start=10#p7172
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Part of every man
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-07-17 16:29:23

[quote="Hertz"]And, presumably,
[code]Understand "your" as a thing when the item described is part of the person asked.[/code]
for commands such as
Toby, examine your bellybutton[/quote]

Indeed. 

Also I looked up Endosphere's hack for 5Z71 [s]and it no longer works in 6E72. Basically, Endosphere discovered that simply restating the parser error rule for can't find any such thing would produce the correct error message for failing to find something incorporated into a woman ("x Lisa's beer gut", in this example).[/s] (EDIT: I screwed up the transcription, is all. It still works well. Here's the code).

[code]Definition: a person is other if it is not the player.
Definition: a thing is selfish if it is enclosed by the player and the player can see an other person.

A body part is a kind of thing. 

A head is a kind of body part. A torso is a kind of body part. Arms are a kind of body part. Legs are a kind of body part. A tail is a kind of body part. A mystique is a kind of body part. A beer gut is a kind of body part. A club foot is a kind of body part.

A head, a torso, and some legs are part of every person.
Some arms are part of every man. Some arms are part of every woman.
A tail is part of every animal. A mystique is part of every woman. A beer gut is part of every man.


Understand "my" as a thing when the item described is selfish.
Understand "her" as a thing when the item described is enclosed by an other woman.
Understand "his" as a thing when the item described is enclosed by an other man.
Understand "its" as a thing when the item described is enclosed by a neuter thing.

Rule for printing a parser error when the latest parser error is can't see it at the moment error:	say "You can't see any such thing.".


Lisa is a woman. Anna is a woman.  Brian is a man. Toby is a man. One club foot is part of Toby. Fido is an animal. Fido is neuter.


The Arena is a room. Anna, Lisa, Brian, Toby, and Fido are in the Arena. The player is Anna.
The commode is a container. A stain is part of the commode. The commode is in the Arena.

Test me with "x head/x torso/x his torso/x her torso/x gut/x her gut/x her mystique/x my gut/x foot/x my foot/x my head"[/code]


With this change, Lisa is no longer considered to be absent. Strange, but there it is.

I would submit this to the bug tracker, but I am leery of doing so, as I've never done it before, and I fear that somehow I'll just introduce confusion instead of helping matters. Maybe it's silly of me, but still...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1234&start=0#p7173
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: HTML TADS Limitations
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-07-17 20:39:17

[quote="Jim Aikin"]In looking at the docs, I find a feature called "banners," which I gather can be positioned around the edges of the window so as to provide non-scrolling display panes.[/quote]You can also have banners that scroll normally.

[quote]1) Can a banner include the input text area (command prompt)?[/quote]No. The prompt is always displayed in the main window and it's not possible to move it or have another one elsewhere.

[quote]2) Can the author choose what to send or not send to the main text output window? That is, could parser error messages be routed to a separate banner window?[/quote]Yes, since messages are generated by the T3 library and thus can be altered. I don't know whether there are any utility functions that would make that easier though.

[quote]3) Just out of curiosity -- not saying it's a good idea, necessarily -- can the main text output window be altered and updated without scrolling upward, teletype-style, and without blanking out existing text?[/quote]No. The behavior of the main text window is fixed. It can be hidden, however (like the hint system does.)

[quote]4) Are pop-up tooltips possible within the HTML TADS UI?[/quote]Nope.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=40#p7174
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-07-17 21:13:52

[quote="ektemple"]You can do all of these things right now with a Glulx game, and the results will be playable in both desktop interpreters and Quixe. [snip]

And here's one that goes back and forth between single window and dual window I/O (type TURN ON TERMINAL):

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quixe/play-remote.html?story=http%3A%2F%2Fdl.dropbox.com%2Fu%2F947038%2FTerminal.gblorb&enter=Play+it%21">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quix ... Play+it%21</a>[/quote]
The latter game crashes. When I try turning on the terminal, I get this: "Quixe run: Error: Invalid argument. Invalid argument. Error -2147024809".

I need to investigate Glulx further. My impression is that it's rather primitive in some respects compared to a nice 21st century UI ... and of course I'd need to work in I6, since the !@#$%^&* 6E72 release of Inform 7 IDE still doesn't run on my Mac. (I emailed Andrew Hunter yesterday, asking about the status of this. Haven't heard from him yet. But maybe he's taking a well-deserved vacation.)

--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=40#p7175
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-07-17 21:23:15

[quote="Jim Aikin"]The latter game crashes. When I try turning on the terminal, I get this: "Quixe run: Error: Invalid argument. Invalid argument. Error -2147024809".[/quote]

Could you give more details on your setup? I haven't been able to make it crash in Firefox or Safari, so this is probably a bug in Quixe.

Thanks,
Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1234&start=0#p7176
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: HTML TADS Limitations
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-07-17 21:56:16

<sighs heavily>

I wish I was a real programmer. Tonight I was reading through the T3 VM spec, and while I understand a lot of it in a vague, general way, I would be at a complete loss to implement anything that used it.

What would be ideal, I think, would be a device that embodied the T3 VM but provided a more robust, modern I/O system. The VM, the parser, the library -- all of that seems absolutely rock-solid to me. But the I/O layer is still tied far too solidly to 1970s-era command line interfaces.

We can debate about whether the CLI is a good or a bad thing, and different authors can have different opinions (or a single author can have different opinions while writing different games). The point is, an authoring system ought ideally to give the author those choices. It ought not to enforce one particular (and, in this case, very dated) I/O model.

--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1236&start=0#p7177
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Docs on I6 Use of Glulx?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-07-17 22:00:25

I'm trying to find the documentation on how to implement multiple windows and hyperlinks in Glulx ... not for I7 (since the current version of I7 won't run on my Mac) but for I6.

I've looked on Zarf's pages, specifically here (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.eblong.com/zarf/glulx/">http://www.eblong.com/zarf/glulx/</a>), and I can't find anything. The page called "The Game Author's Guide to Glulx Inform" doesn't include any information on these topics, and I'm not seeing any other links on the hub page that look promising. I also checked in the DM4, and of course there's nothing there.

I'm sure this information is out there somewhere. Hope someone can tell me where to find it.

--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=50#p7178
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-07-17 22:02:22

[quote="ektemple"]Could you give more details on your setup? I haven't been able to make it crash in Firefox or Safari, so this is probably a bug in Quixe.[/quote]
The crash happened in IE8 running in Windows 7.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1234&start=0#p7179
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: HTML TADS Limitations
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-07-17 23:19:37

Well, you can do fancy stuff with HTML TADS in its current state. It seems your main concern is the main window. You can hide it completely and implement your own input prompt in a banner window. This is not optimal, however. The input prompt is implemented by the interpreter, not by the game code, so it's impossible to provide the exact same behavior using game code. The best solution for this would be for TADS to provide a way to place the input prompt inside banners.

For what it's worth though, I don't think that separating input from output is a good idea. Having a dedicated "box" where you type commands doesn't make any sense to me. I don't remember when, but I did come across a few text adventures that did this. It totally sucked; that system didn't try to solve a problem. It was just providing an "input box" for no apparent reason. This is in contrast with graphical adventures that had such an input box (early Sierra games, I think); they needed this because the game was purely graphical.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1237&start=0#p7180
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: TAG Engine v0.12pa Released
User: ultimatebuster / DateTime: 2010-07-17 23:29:54

Hi,

I'm currently developing an interactive fiction game engine with python. When it's all complete, it should be able to allow game development in XML and basic Python. It should also have the potention of GUI and even graphics!

However it's a lot of work to do it all by myself. So if there's anyone who's interested in helping out, please give me an request at <a class="postlink" href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/tagengine/">https://sourceforge.net/projects/tagengine/</a>

Thanks guys! =D

Edit: version 0.12 has been released. It's much more stable and capable now. Also, a [url=https://sourceforge.net/projects/taggen/]GUI game maker[/url] is in the making

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1236&start=0#p7181
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Docs on I6 Use of Glulx?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-07-17 23:44:09

[quote="Jim Aikin"]I'm trying to find the documentation on how to implement multiple windows and hyperlinks in Glulx ... not for I7 (since the current version of I7 won't run on my Mac) but for I6.[/quote]

I ran across [url=http://adamcadre.ac/gull/]Gull[/url] a while back. It might be a useful jumping off point.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1237&start=0#p7182
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: TAG Engine
User: George / DateTime: 2010-07-17 23:53:33

Are you familiar with the other Python systems such as Ren'Py, Pyf and PAWS? They may save you some work or give ideas. Pyf for example uses XML and Python scripts as well. 

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.renpy.org/">http://www.renpy.org/</a>

<a class="postlink" href="http://code.google.com/p/pyf/">http://code.google.com/p/pyf/</a>

<a class="postlink" href="http://home.fuse.net/wolfonenet/PAWS.htm">http://home.fuse.net/wolfonenet/PAWS.htm</a>

While it may seem like a good idea to develop an IF system in a general purpose language like Python, there are a lot of problems specific to IF that most programming languages weren't designed to deal with. I'm curious what your thoughts are in this regard.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1236&start=0#p7183
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Docs on I6 Use of Glulx?
User: George / DateTime: 2010-07-18 00:19:16

There's also <a class="postlink" href="http://www.iffydoemain.org/glkdunces/index.htm">http://www.iffydoemain.org/glkdunces/index.htm</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1236&start=0#p7184
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Docs on I6 Use of Glulx?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-07-18 01:19:06

Those links are helpful, thanks. Doe's unglklib file looks to be very useful ... except that it Includes infglk. And the latter extension seems to have vanished. It ain't in the archive, as far as I can see.

Any hints about where it might be found? Does anyone have a copy they'd care to email me?

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1234&start=0#p7185
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: HTML TADS Limitations
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-07-18 01:31:47

[quote="RealNC"]For what it's worth though, I don't think that separating input from output is a good idea. Having a dedicated "box" where you type commands doesn't make any sense to me.[/quote]
One issue is, if the user tries six or eight things that don't lead to any useful output, the room description or whatever was the most recent relevant text will scroll up off the screen. This is very bad -- not for experienced IF players, but for newcomers. And it loses the immersion factor even for experienced players. In a graphic game, the vision of the current landscape doesn't dissolve when you try stuff that doesn't work!

It seems to me (and I haven't tested it, because I don't have a system that will allow it) that a hybrid I/O structure would work well. If the player types something sensible (such as 'N') it's copied to the main window, and the main window text scrolls upward. The main window text will then include both the input and the output, exactly as if the command prompt were in that window. However, if the player types 'please tell me what to do next', the error message (which might be either "I don't know the word 'please'" or "For instructions, type 'help'") does NOT appear in the main text window -- it shows up in an Error Message window, thus leaving the relevant game text visible.

In other words, there's a differentiation between interacting with the parser and interacting with the model world. Error messages such as, "Briefly you consider setting fire to the orangutan, but on further reflection that seems needlessly cruel," would go in the main window, even though nothing has happened, because the parser is responding to the PC without breaking the immersion. On the other hand, a default "You can't set fire to that" might (depending on the author's preference) go into an Error Message window.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1236&start=0#p7186
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Docs on I6 Use of Glulx?
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-07-18 03:18:29

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Those links are helpful, thanks. Doe's unglklib file looks to be very useful ... except that it Includes infglk. And the latter extension seems to have vanished. It ain't in the archive, as far as I can see.
[/quote]
<a class="postlink" href="http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXinfocomXcompilersXinform6XlibraryXcontributionsXglulx.html">http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archive ... glulx.html</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1234&start=0#p7187
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: HTML TADS Limitations
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-07-18 05:47:21

I [i]have[/i] to butt it at this point and mention - because I'd never realized it until you just described it - that Infocom's "Arthur" does exactly that same thing. Lots of "that doesn't work" messages, and parser errors, are shown in a pop-up box, while more relevant commands take place in the main window. Also, that game also a split-window where the upper half could show any number of things - including a graphical OR textual description of the current location.

Is that the sort of thing you're trying to achieve? Because I have to say, if it is, it's a) not new at all, b) slick, c) practical, and d) might well enhance the gaming experience, indeed. And it's always a bit easier to end your comments with "You know, like 'Arthur' did". Makes it easier to visualize. [emote]:)[/emote]

I believe this is fully possible in I7. I know nothing of TADS, but what I've read so far in this thread makes me wonder... what if you have a banner occupy the top half of the screen, and let the bottom half keep the main window and prompt? Then you wouldn't need having to fake a prompt in a banner, and changing the text of the banner should be possible, right? Then, if TADS allows banners to pop up and to be removed the next turn, the other half of what you're trying to achieve - reserving error messages for a pop-up box - could also be solved by popping up a banner with the error message, and then removing it the next turn.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=0#p7188
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-07-18 06:24:25

[quote="Endosphere"]Does anyone disagree with my contention that, for example, the zombie of the [i]Resident Evil[/i] games is essentially lacking in terror-inducing credibility?[/quote]
I want to take part in this conversation, but I haven't had a chance to sit down and read much of what you've written.  Latching onto this sentence: yes, I disagree.  Especially with regard to the way they were handled in the Gamecube remake of the first game.

For me, Resident Evil has always been more about the scary atmosphere than any kind of horrifying or terrifying event.  Zombies play into that nicely with a sense of risk and panic.  You might know that you'll only have to pass through this room once, so you don't want to waste ammo removing the zombie(s) in it, but that then means you have to avoid them while completing your work there.  

Something you might be interested in is the Half Life 1 mod [i]They Hunger[/i].  It shows more of a continuum between mindless zombies, those with some vestige of self (but still an overwhelming desire to eat people) and those with a calculating intelligence.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1236&start=0#p7189
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Docs on I6 Use of Glulx?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-07-18 08:17:05

[quote="Jim Aikin"]I'm trying to find the documentation on how to implement multiple windows and hyperlinks in Glulx ... not for I7 (since the current version of I7 won't run on my Mac) but for I6.[/quote]

It will be a lot more painful to experiment with this stuff in I6 than I7. Dual window I/O, for example, requires hacking the library in numerous places, and this is already done for you by the I7 extension Text Window Input-Output Control. Sending parser error messages to a separate window may also require hacking the I6 library; I'm not sure if there's a nice hook as there is in I7's "printing a parser error" activity. And there are simple hyperlink extensions in I7 (Inline Hyperlinks should make experimenting with hyperlinks especially simple) that make using hyperlinks more straightforward than it would be in I6.

The Mac OS problems with 6E72 are not really an obstacle to experimenting with this stuff. 6E59 works fine on 10.5, and the major issues with that release are unlikely to cause you problems (the most severe affects constant lists of more than 127 entries, which don't crop up in most peoples' use of the system). All of the extensions I've mentioned work under 6E59.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1234&start=0#p7190
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: HTML TADS Limitations
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-07-18 08:42:32

[quote="RealNC"]The best solution for this would be for TADS to provide a way to place the input prompt inside banners.[/quote]
I wish it would. I've been meaning to ask Mike to add this, but never quite got around to it. It would open up a lot of new possibilities - not just the interface Jim suggests, with error messages hidden after they've been read, but things like [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=r67ofzas8p6y0ay4]My Angel[/url]'s "Novel Mode". I'm not sure Novel Mode worked very well in My Angel, but it was an interesting idea and I'd love to see more authors explore its possibilities.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1237&start=0#p7191
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: TAG Engine
User: ultimatebuster / DateTime: 2010-07-18 09:14:22

I'm not exactly sure on the problems that you are referring to. Maybe you can clarify on that regard?

Also the TAG Engine is not exactly an authoring system. Sure, it's a game development framework for developing text-based games, but it's really something that people who have a lot of experience in programming can build upon. For example, I have used the game engine to create an application that would generate the XML files for the game. It shows that the engine can be thoroughly customized to address many problems. 

Also, the engine is not limited to text adventure games. With customization, it's certainly possible to build a text based RPG game out of it.

As to my thoughts about many of the problems I have encountered during the way of building this engine, I proposed different plans to solve them, write some pseudo-code down, and find the most efficient and effective way then translate them into python.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1234&start=0#p7192
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: HTML TADS Limitations
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-07-18 09:42:56

[quote="Peter Pears"]I [i]have[/i] to butt it at this point and mention - because I'd never realized it until you just described it - that Infocom's "Arthur" does exactly that same thing. Lots of "that doesn't work" messages, and parser errors, are shown in a pop-up box, while more relevant commands take place in the main window. Also, that game also a split-window where the upper half could show any number of things - including a graphical OR textual description of the current location.[/quote]
All of that is possible with TADS too. Note that a "pop-up box" is not the same as a "pop-up tooltip."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1234&start=0#p7193
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: HTML TADS Limitations
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-07-18 09:44:31

Yes, I presumed it was. That's why I devoted the rest of my post to wondering aloud how it could be achieved. [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1237&start=0#p7194
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: TAG Engine
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2010-07-18 09:51:15

A little remark: I think "TAG" may not be the best choice of name, because there's already [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/T.A.G.]an IF authoring system[/url] (in German only, but there are several games made with it) called "T.A.G."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1237&start=0#p7195
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: TAG Engine
User: ultimatebuster / DateTime: 2010-07-18 09:55:52

Stands for Text Adventure Game (definitely not creative), combined it makes Text Adventure Game Engine

Can't put this in source forge but it's actually the <TAG> Engine (<> for the XML tags =D)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1236&start=0#p7196
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Docs on I6 Use of Glulx?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-07-18 11:47:01

[quote="ektemple"]It will be a lot more painful to experiment with this stuff in I6 than I7. 

The Mac OS problems with 6E72 are not really an obstacle to experimenting with this stuff. 6E59 works fine on 10.5, and the major issues with that release are unlikely to cause you problems (the most severe affects constant lists of more than 127 entries, which don't crop up in most peoples' use of the system). All of the extensions I've mentioned work under 6E59.[/quote]
My goal isn't really "experimenting with this stuff." My goal is to have a system with which I can do creative work. Using a non-current release of I7 would not feel good.

Right at the moment I'm trying to work out a way to help Andrew Hunter diagnose the problem in 6E72. I'm downloading XCode (which will take all day), and I'm going to see if I can find an XCode programmer here in town who can spare an hour or two helping me set it up and creating a stack trace or whatever the heck I need (clueless: me).

In any event, though, I'm not 100% sure Glulx is what I'm looking for, because with Glulx you're still dependent on the features of the interpreter, which may be sub-optimal in various ways. I don't think what I'm looking for exists, actually, and I don't have the skills I'd need to create it myself.

Kinda bummed about that.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1232&start=10#p7197
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Part of every man
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-07-18 12:39:38

...ho-kay, I'm being silly, and probably misinterpreting Endosphere's fix. The changed error rules threw me, I suppose. Anyway, I just bit the bullet and reported the strange behaviour of "her" to the bug tracker.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1236&start=0#p7198
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Docs on I6 Use of Glulx?
User: George / DateTime: 2010-07-18 12:46:09

You could always target a specific interpreter, and then offer the game as a packaged download?

eta: nevermind, I think I misunderstood you -- you're saying none of the interpreters can do what you're looking for?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1237&start=0#p7199
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: TAG Engine
User: George / DateTime: 2010-07-18 13:01:51

[quote="ultimatebuster"]he TAG Engine is not exactly an authoring system. Sure, it's a game development framework for developing text-based games, but it's really something that people who have a lot of experience in programming can build upon. For example, I have used the game engine to create an application that would generate the XML files for the game. It shows that the engine can be thoroughly customized to address many problems. [/quote]

Thanks, that clears things up; I did assume by 'game engine' you meant authoring system. I don't see your XML generator in SVN, is it available?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1238&start=0#p7200
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: check() and verify() output to separate windows?
User: hajenso / DateTime: 2010-07-18 13:13:33

I've seen the idea floating around in different places of putting game output in one window and the command prompt in another.  For TADS3, would this mean that check() output would go in the game window and verify() in the prompt window?  My understanding of the purpose of check() and verify() is that verify() catches input that is parseable but nonsensical in the game world, whereas check() catches input that could make sense but is disallowed for in-game reasons, for instance that it goes against the character's personality.  Is this accurate?  Would it be accurate to think of verify() as operating on the conversation between player and parser, whereas check() operates on the conversation between player and character?

} kenji

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=0#p7201
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Genstein / DateTime: 2010-07-18 15:09:12

[quote="Bainespal"]I hadn't discovered these features.  They would have solved the majority of my problems.  I'll try it.  I never used GUEmap or any other IF mapping software, so I don't have any expectations about what it should do.[/quote]
I've never used any other IF mapping software in earnest either, mostly since I couldn't work out how to use it. Trizbort is pretty undocumented, for which I apologise, but one thing is true: there's nothing you can do with it that you can't find on the main set of menus. Edit->Properties on rooms and connections is probably the most "hidden" feature.
[quote="Bainespal"]I'm thinking that a better method would be to always use the arrows to indicate the direction(s) of possible travel, so a two-way connection would have arrows pointing to both rooms, and a one-way connection would point toward the room that the player can enter in that direction.[/quote]
That's in fact pretty much what I intended - sorry if it's not obvious (which it clearly isn't). The only difference being that two way directions have no arrow, whereas one way directions have one arrow. The Infocom printed maps used to do this, and those are the conventions I've been following since I rather like them.
[quote="Bainespal"]I wish it were possible to eliminate all the whitespace when exporting to an image file.[/quote]
Yes, that's my bad. A somewhat arbitrary amount of white space is added all the way around the image since it's very possible to route connections between rooms in a way which otherwise would get cut off by a tighter crop. If I'd been less lazy I'd have implemented a proper algorithm for this. You can of course trim this in any paint package, though I appreciate this is less than ideal.

              -eg.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1237&start=0#p7202
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: TAG Engine
User: ultimatebuster / DateTime: 2010-07-18 15:59:41

unfortunately the XML generator is no longer working due to enormous changes to the engine itself from the time that I created the xml generator as a proof of concept til now.

Basically the xml generator has a custom generator file that imports the main tag engine library. It has another class that inherits from the Player class and has customized actions like createnode, appenddata, save, and so on.

Example: (not generated from the xml generator as it's broken right now, this is what it should do)

[code]
>> createnode item
item name >> pen
new item variable "pen" created!
>> appenddata destructible to item
destructible value: 0
item pen cannot be destroyed! Data entered
>> save
filename: demo.xml
file saved to demo.xml in the same directory as this creator is!
[/code]

I know it's not that intuitive, but it's just a concept.

I would create another one , but i have little time. There's still a lot of things to do with this engine, <cough>and that's why i'm asking for help =) </cough>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1237&start=0#p7203
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: TAG Engine
User: George / DateTime: 2010-07-18 16:48:10

I saw a short todo list in main.py, but is there a more detailed list or roadmap somewhere that describes your vision for the engine?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1237&start=0#p7204
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: TAG Engine
User: ultimatebuster / DateTime: 2010-07-18 17:20:55

I did made one sometime ago, just uploaded to google docs.

<a class="postlink" href="http://docs.google.com/View?id=dgjtkz7g_16chtfdjf8">http://docs.google.com/View?id=dgjtkz7g_16chtfdjf8</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=0#p7205
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-07-18 17:46:54



[quote="Pacian"]I want to take part in this conversation, but I haven't had a chance to sit down and read much of what you've written. Latching onto this sentence: yes, I disagree... For me, Resident Evil has always been more about the scary atmosphere than any kind of horrifying or terrifying event.[/quote]
There may not be any disagreement at all here, as I'm reading your comments as saying the zombies in [i]Resident Evil[/i] don't [i]essentially[/i] contribute to the game as a work of horror art, a sentiment I share.  The grotesque appearance of zombies may offer a gross-out factor, and they may induce tension as opponents; however the zombie qua zombie of those games isn't uniquely scary in the sense that its function in the game world couldn't be equally well fulfilled by the t-virus infected dogs or spiders also present.  If you're saying something other than that, feel free to elaborate.

My basic points so far have been:

A) The idea of the zombie as usually presented in modern times is little more than that of a wild carnivorous beast; as such it's no more inherently terrifying than a bear or a lion.

B) The [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_Dead]modern model of zombification[/url] that presents zombies as "victims" "subjected" to a "disease" is highly unsatisfying.  This model is a natural application of our modern scientific-rationalistic world view to offer an explanation for the enigmatic observed behavior of the zombie.  The assumption is that healthy individuals would never choose to behave as monstrous cannibal beasts; therefore anyone exhibiting such behavior is either insane or under the influence of some irresistable compulsion.

A + B =

C) Therefore zombies are pathetic.  They are lesser beings than we; perhaps we must destroy them due to the immediate menace they present, but if we had time we'd prefer to study them and attempt to "cure" them.  Zombies can broadly fit into our understanding of the universe and of ethics without any need to adjust our comfortable views of reality, and therefore they are not a true source of any terrifying revelations that may disturb us from our materialistic stupor.

Regarding the essential nature of horror fiction in [url=http://www.yankeeclassic.com/miskatonic/library/stacks/literature/lovecraft/essays/supernat/supern01.htm][i]Supernatural Horror in Literature[/i][/url],

[quote="H.P. Lovecraft"]A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain -- a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daeligmons of unplumbed space.[/quote]
I'm arguing that the zombie can and should be significantly re-imagined in a way that frees it from the constraints of scientific comfort in which it is usually expressed, as such a re-imagining is the best way to give the creatures power to induce terror in the modern audience.  I'm also arguing that an effective way to approach this re-imagining may be to stipulate that the zombie is a human being freely choosing to behave in a certain manner, and to stipulate this choice is (from the zombie perspective) fairly uncontroversial based on new information obtained by the undead actor after death.  As we are not privy to the zombie's perspective (which is greater than our own, based on information not available to us since we haven't yet died), we cannot write the zombie off as insane or mindless.  Therefore we must respond directly to the challege to our understanding of reality that the zombie represents.  Finally, I'm saying that our need to offer a serious response at all to the zombie is much more horrifying than the prospect of simply having our brains gobbled by a mindless beast, as the existence of the zombie implies a number of disturbing notions (the very least of which is that everything we believe is wrong).

Thus the questions I'm asking are:

--Is my enterprise needed at all, or are zombies already horrifying to everyone but me?
--Is the new model of the zombie I'm proposing likely to be an effective horror device?
--Is my model of horror fiction in general (the Lovecraft model) well-suited to a goal of inducing a terrifying reaction in the audience?
--What's the best way to work out the details?  Certainly I have a number of ideas already, but these ideas can only benefit from public discussion.
--What's the best way to implement these details in a game (whether in general, or in a work of interactive fiction)?

One of the nicer things about the zombie metaphor is that it allows us to have fun while discussing the serious matters of life, death, metaphysics, morality, the art of crafting effective literature, and the art of game design.  Anyone should feel free to offer comments here on any of those subjects, as long as such discussion is presented in a way that substantially concerns zombies.




-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1232&start=10#p7206
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Part of every man
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-07-18 17:53:05

I'm confused, but since my name came up I thought I'd chime in.  Are the questions of this thread answered, or does anyone still need help on something?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1234&start=0#p7207
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: HTML TADS Limitations
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-07-18 18:04:40

[quote="RealNC"]For what it's worth though, I don't think that separating input from output is a good idea. Having a dedicated "box" where you type commands doesn't make any sense to me. I don't remember when, but I did come across a few text adventures that did this. It totally sucked; that system didn't try to solve a problem. It was just providing an "input box" for no apparent reason. This is in contrast with graphical adventures that had such an input box (early Sierra games, I think); they needed this because the game was purely graphical.[/quote]
Real-time text-based games really need to separate the input from the output.  When the game is not turns-based, new messages may appear while you are typing, and if the commands are typed at the bottom of the same window as the output messages, your input will be cut off by the incoming game message.  This why MUD clients have a separate input box/window for typing commands, even though the MUD itself may print a prompt in the output window.

[quote="Jim Aikin"]One issue is, if the user tries six or eight things that don't lead to any useful output, the room description or whatever was the most recent relevant text will scroll up off the screen. This is very bad -- not for experienced IF players, but for newcomers. And it loses the immersion factor even for experienced players. In a graphic game, the vision of the current landscape doesn't dissolve when you try stuff that doesn't work![/quote]
I haven't been following the recent discussion about the parser.  Sorry if I'm derailing this thread by posting comments that have probably already been discussed to death elsewhere, but this is the first I've heard of such and idea.  And it [i]is[/i] a great idea!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1232&start=10#p7208
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Part of every man
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-07-18 18:11:25

[quote="Endosphere"]I'm confused, but since my name came up I thought I'd chime in.  Are the questions of this thread answered, or does anyone still need help on something?[/quote]

I think I ought to explain: few months back when I was just starting out, I made [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=927]a certain thread[/url] on the same subject, in which [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=927&start=4]you posted[/url] a solution. Your solution, I now understand, was to overwrite the "You can't see "her" ([person]) at the moment" rule. Back then, I got it a bit wrong, and assumed you had simply restated the "you can't see any such thing" rule, and that somehow, that made things work due to buggy behaviour. Stranger things have happened, and I assumed this was one of those things.

Anyway, I've reported the error on the bug tracker, and it stands to reason that the feminine pronoun would be a special case (since "her" can refer directly to a person, unlike "his" and "its"). I still don't understand why Inform accepts "x her scrotum" without complaint, as long as there is a [i]man[/i] in the room with the requisite incorporated object. I find it annoying on a personal level, and in this instance it does seem misleading, but is it a bonafide bug?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1237&start=0#p7209
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: TAG Engine
User: George / DateTime: 2010-07-18 19:41:44

A GUI XML generator is an interesting idea (I sure know I wouldn't want to hand-edit the XML! [emote]:)[/emote] ). There are general purpose XML generators, and visual editors. There also are a few MUD area creation programs that output to XML. Here's one I can remember:

<a class="postlink" href="http://avae.sourceforge.net/">http://avae.sourceforge.net/</a>

Perhaps it could be re-purposed or provide some ideas. 

What would make a good GUI generator is a broader topic and it's been discussed some on the rec.arts.int-fiction list. Some people have made similar tools for other IF systems but it doesn't seem like any of them have ever caught on, maybe because most iF maps aren't that complicated. But if you're making more of a RPG, and it seems like you're going that direction, a GUI generator sounds like something that would be helpful.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1232&start=10#p7210
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Part of every man
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-07-18 20:07:54

Definitely a bug!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1232&start=10#p7211
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Part of every man
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-07-18 20:24:48

[quote="Dannii"]Definitely a bug![/quote]

So I should report that one as well, then? Sorry it I'm being slow on the uptake. For some reason I feel compelled to be as careful as possible before issuing a bug report, as I don't want to spam the maintainers with unnecessary and/or annoying requests.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1237&start=10#p7212
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: TAG Engine
User: ultimatebuster / DateTime: 2010-07-18 20:40:14

again, all those can be implemented easily once an engine is up and running.

and the XML format i have designed is very simple, as you can see from under the data folder in the SVN

---------------

Done implementing all that's in the goals for v0.1. All i need is make a documentation and an example game. (right now there's only a demonstration game)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1238&start=0#p7213
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: check() and verify() output to separate windows?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-07-18 22:20:54

I think that's a reasonable description of the differences between the text output from verify() and check(). Of course, it's up to the individual author to do it that way. Nothing prevents your doing something like this -- let's say you're writing a first-person past-tense game:

verify() { if (fishingPole.location != me) illogicalNow ('I thought about going fishing, and realized I didn\'t have my pole. '); }

If TADS were set up to output verify messages to an error window (and I don't know if it can be), the above would look wrong, because the content would belong in the main window.

--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1239&start=0#p7214
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Transcripts collection proposal
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-07-18 22:37:13

There have been quite a few discussions this year about automatically collecting transcripts from testers/players, as some of the following links show. I'd like to make a more formal proposal now of a set of technologies which hopefully will meet everyone's desires. I will make three largely independant proposals here, the protocol, a metadata extension, and a Glulx/Glk extension for tagged output.

[list]
[*] [url]http://groups.google.com/group/parchment/browse_thread/thread/6fe4c5bb7ba4aa8f[/url][/*:m]
[*] [url]http://nitku.net/blog/2010/06/collecting-real-life-gameplay-data-with-parchment/[/url][/*:m]
[*] [url]http://github.com/sgranade/parchment[/url][/*:m][/list:u]

[size=150][b]The transcript protocol[/b][/size]

I've wanted the protocol to be simple and extensible. It should be easily implemented in all languages, and useful for all IF systems. I think JSON sent over HTTP POST requests will fulfil these needs. In the following descriptions, almost everything is optional, though the more that is sent the more useful a transcript will be, of course. Remember that within an object {} the order of elements does not matter, and that each key can be used only once.

[b]The handshake[/b]

Firstly, the interpreter sends a message to the server giving the details of the story file. Either an IFID or a URL must be sent, with an IFID being strongly preferred. The other items are all optional, though as much information should be given as is possible. The interpreter must have the user's permission to send contact details.

[code]{
	"ifid": "ZCODE-2-080406-A377",
	"url": "http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/LostPig.z8",
	"release": 2,
	"serial": "080406",
	"contact": "Dannii <curiousdannii@gmail.com>",
	"interpreter": "Gargoyle 2009-08-25 (Git 1.2.6)"
}[/code]

The server then replies with a session ID and a list of supported transcript types. If the server sends a HTTP code other than 200 or a non-JSON response, or it does not reply with both a session ID and at least the "input" type, then the client must not attempt to send any transcripts. Due to the protocol's extensible nature the client can send more data than the server supports, but that just wastes bandwidth. An example response is as follows:

[code]{
	"session": 7253,
	"input": 1,
	"response": 1,
	"tagged": 0,
	"time": 1
}[/code]

If the client returns both a session ID and at least the "input" transcript type, then the client may proceed to send transcripts. Note that the "tagged" item could have been left out, with no difference to client behaviour.

[b]Sending transcripts[/b]

Again, the client sends transcripts over HTTP POST requests, but after the handshake, it does not need to listen to the response. A fairly full example is as follows, with an explanation of the elements after that:

[code]{
	"session": 7253,
	"log": [
		{
			"time": "2010-07-18T03:04:12",
			"input": "x fsih",
			"response": "You can't see any such thing.",
			"response-type": "libmsg",
			"response-code": 30
		},
		{
			"time": "2010-07-18T03:04:48",
			"input": "x fish",
			"response": "Looks tasty."
		}
	]
}[/code]

A client first sends its session ID, followed by the logged commands. A client may send one command, or 100, and the server must be able to accept as many as it sends.

If the server indiciates that it supports time stamps, please send them with the following ISO 8601 format: YYYY-MM-DDTHH-MM-SS. If timestamps are not sent then the server should do its best to keep commands in order, and may use the time of the HTTP request instead. As JSON arrays are ordered structures, these timestamps must be strictly increasing.
The input command will always be sent, and if the server indicates that it supports response, the corresponding response may be sent too.
If the client has a way of detecting response types and codes it may send those too. Suggested types are "libmsg" for library messages, "parser" for parser errors and "runtime" for runtime errors. Again, check the server supports "tagged" logs first.

Here is an example of a minimal log, which may always be sent, even if the server supports more detailed logs:

[code]{
	"session": 7253,
	"log": [
		{"input": "x fsih"},
		{"input": "x fish"}
	]
}[/code]

[b]Hanging questions[/b]
[list]
[*]What to do with key/mouse/hyperlink etc input?[/*:m]
[*]Have an explicit exit code?[/*:m][/list:u]

[size=150][b]Metadata extension[/b][/size]

An custom interpreter may be set up for sending transcripts, or the transcript server may be specified with a querystring parameter (for web interpreters). But in most cases it will be useful to keep the server info with the story file itself, so that it may be used with any terp which supports transcripts. I propose a simple extension to the iFiction XML record, which in most cases will be included in a blorbed story file. Both <url> and <lastdate> are required. <url> must use the HTTP protocol, and <lastdate> must be in the format of "3-letter-month-name day, four-digit-year" eg, "Aug 9, 2010". The <lastdate> is required so that terps won't attempt to send transcripts long after the author has stopped wanting them (or after the web server has been taken offline), it may be set to many years or even centuries into the future (but don't do that unless you can guarantee your server's uptime!)

[code]<transcripts>
	<url>URL</url>
	<lastdate>DATE</lastdate>
</transcripts>[/code]

[size=150][b]Glulx/Glk extensions[/b][/size]

This part of the proposal is actually where I really need help. Basically it would be good to be able to compile Glulx games which output tagged responses (with a type and code) so that the terps may then easily capture that information for the logs. Juhana's proposal emitted stuff like "#ERROR:[parser error code]#" to the normal output streams, which is a simple option we could add, with a gestalt check so that other terps don't see this nasty message. One advantage of this is that it could also be used with other VMs (in the Z-Machine for example, by first checking for a new previously unused interpreter number.) But it might be better to use new Glk streams. I don't really know.

Suggestions?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1238&start=0#p7215
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: check() and verify() output to separate windows?
User: hajenso / DateTime: 2010-07-18 23:06:14

[quote="Jim Aikin"]verify() { if (fishingPole.location != me) illogicalNow ('I thought about going fishing, and realized I didn\'t have my pole. '); }

If TADS were set up to output verify messages to an error window (and I don't know if it can be), the above would look wrong, because the content would belong in the main window.[/quote]

I thought illogicalNow() called check(), not verify()?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1240&start=0#p7216
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: More Quixe testing -- paging
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-07-18 23:09:56

I have gotten paging to work, more or less, in the GlkOte library. That is, if the output in a buffer window is more than a page's worth, it will pop up a "MORE" prompt and let you hit a key to page down.

This is not yet integrated into Quixe, because it could use some testing at the library level. The test page is:

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/demo/glkote-demo.html">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/demo ... -demo.html</a>

The easiest way to see the effect is to shrink the window fairly small, and then type "?" or "help". ("long" will also work, but it actually doesn't produce as many lines as the help text.)

For multi-window paging, type "split" followed by "bothlong".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1167&start=10#p7217
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Floating-point math in Glulx
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-07-18 23:34:59

I've started updating the Glulx spec to include this floating-point feature. The new sections are excerpted here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/tmp/floatspec.txt">http://eblong.com/zarf/tmp/floatspec.txt</a>

Nothing much has changed since the last time I posted about it. You'll see some incomplete bits. But it's incomplete by definition until the first implementation is done, anyhow. I haven't started to work on that yet.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1167&start=10#p7218
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Floating-point math in Glulx
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-07-19 01:45:32

[quote="zarf"]I've started updating the Glulx spec to include this floating-point feature. The new sections are excerpted here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/tmp/floatspec.txt">http://eblong.com/zarf/tmp/floatspec.txt</a>.[/quote]
Cool.

In the description of fadd/fsub/fmul/fdiv, it says:
[quote]Overflows produce infinite values (with
the appropriate sign); underflows produce zero values (ditto). 0/0 is NaN.
Inf/Inf, or Inf-Inf, is NaN. Any finite number added to infinity is
infinity. Any nonzero number divided by an infinity, or multiplied by zero,
is a zero. Any nonzero number multiplied by an infinity, or divided by zero,
is an infinity.[/quote]
What happens with Inf+Inf (possibly PositiveInf+NegativeInf) and Inf*Inf (ditto)?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1234&start=10#p7219
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: HTML TADS Limitations
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-07-19 02:04:16

[quote="Bainespal"][quote="RealNC"]For what it's worth though, I don't think that separating input from output is a good idea. Having a dedicated "box" where you type commands doesn't make any sense to me. I don't remember when, but I did come across a few text adventures that did this. It totally sucked; that system didn't try to solve a problem. It was just providing an "input box" for no apparent reason. This is in contrast with graphical adventures that had such an input box (early Sierra games, I think); they needed this because the game was purely graphical.[/quote]Real-time text-based games really need to separate the input from the output.  When the game is not turns-based, new messages may appear while you are typing, and if the commands are typed at the bottom of the same window as the output messages, your input will be cut off by the incoming game message.  This why MUD clients have a separate input box/window for typing commands, even though the MUD itself may print a prompt in the output window.[/quote]
That's not true. At least in TADS. After the game prints something, the prompt is still at the bottom and nothing gets erased.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1239&start=0#p7220
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Transcripts collection proposal
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-07-19 04:46:37

Yes, this looks very good!

Have you thought of what the session ID should be? I realize this is just an example but 4 digits are not enough to prevent collisions. Perhaps it would be good to give some recommendations on what kind of ID the interpreter should generate.

I would also like to see an option to add the player's name and contact information to the handshake. This could be used for beta-testing games online and the player's information would be for the author to credit them and contact them for additional feedback.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1239&start=0#p7221
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Transcripts collection proposal
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-07-19 04:50:13

Also, I don't particularly like the "#ERROR:[error code]#" way of doing it. The problem with that is that you have to make two versions of the game, one for online play and one for off-line interpreters. If there's a way to hide the codes from interpreters that don't support this feature it would of course be the best way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=0#p7222
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-07-19 08:44:33

[quote="bcressey"]Nearly every zombie movie hero has a friend or sidekick character that succumbs to the zombie plague and reanimates. The hero then speeds through the stages of grief and winds up killing that zombie like all the rest. It serves the function you propose - it personalizes the horror for the protagonist - but it is not a particularly unique twist.[/quote]
Are you saying that nearly every zombie movie is actually just a retelling of Old Yeller?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=10#p7223
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-07-19 08:59:35

Endosphere, I like your conception of a more terrifying zombie, and I hope it does produce something - I think it would be well-thought-out and I might really like it. But I have to say that I'm pretty happy with the modern scientific-animal-disease zombie. Pure horror is not my goal - I'd like to explore the frailty of flesh and the animal nature of thinking beings. Eating is such an important, and yet brutal, part of life, and sometimes I feel like people have lost sight of that.

For me, the key emotion that zombies produce is not fear, but revulsion. Cannibalism, dismemberment, decay - these are taboo topics even if they're not as scary as the "unknowable." And yet, they're surprisingly common in Nature. For me, a great work of horror explores our alienation from the natural world. Perhaps what zombies know about civilization is like this: Environmental journalist Richard Manning believes that our creative works are an attempt to regain the fullness of life that we experienced when we were hunters. Novelist Daniel Quinn suggests that the Forbidden Fruit was the power over life and death - "wild" creatures kill only for food, with a clear conscience because they accept their own death in the jaws of others.

Perhaps the horror is not human-like creatures that smash our heads open to eat our brains fresh and raw. Perhaps the horror is unrecognizable packaged cubes of meat sitting in a sanitized supermarket refrigerator. Talk about the unknowable...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=10#p7224
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-07-19 09:30:37

[quote="Endosphere"]A) The idea of the zombie as usually presented in modern times is little more than that of a wild carnivorous beast; as such it's no more inherently terrifying than a bear or a lion.[/quote]
More like a rabid dog, which in my opinion is scarier. A couple reasons:

--A familiar creature, like a dog or a human, may enter the "uncanny valley" more easily than a bear or a lion. This is a place where zombies win over vampires - vampires are too clean and "sexy" to really inhabit the uncanny valley.

--Rabies is contagious. To me, there's something scarier about a contagious threat, even if you'll be just as dead from a bear. It's also possible to cast the contagion in the form of a meme in order to make a social comment. I haven't seen it done with zombies, but then most of my zombie knowledge is from discussion and not from actual zombie stories. Perhaps it's done in World War Z?

Upon reflection, I've decided that most zombie stories ARE about rabies, and it IS Old Yeller. After all, there's no cure for rabies.

Regarding Lovecraft:

I endured many years of low-grade horror due to a gluten intolerance. For me, being "glutened" is like being on drugs all the time. I never had any desire to take recreational drugs because I was already "under the influence." Some descriptions of autism sound similar to me, and from stories (Erich Zann comes to mind) and biographical information about Lovecraft, I think he suffered from something similar.

Since then I have been trying to reconcile the horror of not knowing what "drugs" I'm on with the horror of disemboweling blameless creatures and consuming their flesh and organs. To me, the latter has been far preferable, but I regularly gross people out with the way I eat. I'd love to see a zombie story that takes THAT gross-out factor and turns it into something really interesting, something that causes people to reflect on the way they live and the little horrors they experience every day.

So there's another perspective to place against your conclusion C: Maybe zombies are animalistic, but that doesn't necessarily make them pathetic. Maybe zombies are actually choosing the lesser evil. Now you have a much greater evil to fill your story with, and if you manage THAT, please let me know because that's the story I want to tell!

[quote="Endosphere"]--Is my enterprise needed at all, or are zombies already horrifying to everyone but me?[/quote]
Yes! Yes! It is needed!
[quote="Endosphere"]--Is the new model of the zombie I'm proposing likely to be an effective horror device?[/quote]
It depends a lot on the execution, but I think it has real potential.
[quote="Endosphere"]--Is my model of horror fiction in general (the Lovecraft model) well-suited to a goal of inducing a terrifying reaction in the audience?[/quote]
I don't know. I think in some ways Lovecraft missed the mark. For me, Philip K. Dick is scarier (I confess I haven't read anything, but I'm basing this on the movies). What Dick does is to make the known into the unknown by shedding doubt upon your ability to perceive reality.

I'm going to have to beg off on your last two questions for now. I'm not ready to get into that level of detail, but I hope I will be at some point because I'd really like to see a project like this come about.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=10#p7225
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-07-19 10:05:50

[quote="capmikee"]Endosphere, I like your conception of a more terrifying zombie, and I hope it does produce something - I think it would be well-thought-out and I might really like it. But I have to say that I'm pretty happy with the modern scientific-animal-disease zombie. Pure horror is not my goal - I'd like to explore the frailty of flesh and the animal nature of thinking beings. Eating is such an important, and yet brutal, part of life, and sometimes I feel like people have lost sight of that.[/quote]

I think the concept of zombie-as-horror needn't necessarily be exclusive. Your interpretation works for the purpose of horror, I don't doubt, as can Endosphere's. It's all in the wrist.

But I will say that I feel zombies differ from ghosts, vampires, and the like, in that they're a physical fear, something wholesome and commonplace twisted into malevolence. Zombies represent [i]a need to eat[/i], a primal and carnal hunger. The horror stems partly from the fear of being touched, eaten, consumed - revulsion, as you put it - and that feeling is a lot more visceral on some levels than would be terror of the unknown. But that doesn't mean zombies couldn't inspire that, as well.

My take on it is that such archetypal monsters work best if they attack something central to our way of life. To best destroy our equilibrium, monsters must hit us where it hurts, and attack those things we unquestioningly assume will be [i]safe[/i]: our individuality and sense of self (body snatchers, the Borg, communism as depicted in the US), our bodies (Alien), our reliance upon senses and preconceptions of time and space (cthulhu mythos), causality (many movies create horror by inexplicable, but seemingly significant, events around the main characters). So in a sense, what I'm saying is that in order to create something truly original, you might do it by sacrificing an unquestioned belief. You must take something that the readers would take for [i]granted[/i], and then subvert it.

When it comes to Zombies, for instance, one remaining assumption (even in this thread) seems to be that of us versus the Other. The Other is the bad thing, and we compare ourselves against it. It's something everyone does, and it's still pretty much SOP everywhere.

What if the player is the zombie? What if the zombies do what they do not because they're crazy, but because now, their outlook is such that this makes the most sense?

What if, in other words... they're right? Zombies represent an all-devouring [i]need[/i], whatever that is. What if that need is made perfectly understandable?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=10#p7226
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-07-19 10:42:09

[quote="Endosphere"]The grotesque appearance of zombies may offer a gross-out factor, and they may induce tension as opponents; however the zombie qua zombie of those games isn't uniquely scary in the sense that its function in the game world couldn't be equally well fulfilled by the t-virus infected dogs or spiders also present.  If you're saying something other than that, feel free to elaborate.[/quote]
I don't want to derail the discussion more than I have, but I don't think RE zombies are equivalent to other RE monsters.  Spiders and dogs are almost always (depending on the context) dangerous enough that it's worth expending valuable ammunition to kill them on sight.  Zombies are slow and ungainly enough that the risk of evading instead of attacking always seems worth it.  So while the stronger enemies often provide a brief shock and then are removed from play, the zombies are a constant low level threat in the background.

The zombies in Resident Evil are a part of the scary ambience of the whole game.  This benefits from their human nature - the zombies in the police station can be wearing police uniforms, the zombies in the lab labcoats etc.  So I think that the fact they're zombies is important, and I think they're used well.   But they're also supporting actors.  Zombies are not the focus of a classic RE game, but are a key component of the backdrop.

[quote="Eleas"]What if, in other words... they're right? Zombies represent an all-devouring [i]need[/i], whatever that is. What if that need is made perfectly understandable?[/quote]
This is an increasingly prevalent theme in Romero's films - that things wouldn't be so bad if we'd only get over ourselves and give the zombies what they [i]want[/i].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1239&start=0#p7227
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Transcripts collection proposal
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-07-19 11:07:21

The server generates the session ID, not the client, and can generate anything it likes: increasing integers, random numbers, IP addresses, timestamps, names of fruit. Anything can be used, and the client will just send it back again.

I like your idea of a contact field. How about "contact": "Name <email>"? Leave it up to the terp to collect the name before the handshake.

We do of course need a way for compatible terps to be detected. With Glulx this is very easy, we can just have a new gestalt value. If we also want Z-Machine support then it would be possible to do by checking the interpreter number... which is not nearly as good a solution as doing so would preclude other extensions. Perhaps we could have a new interpreter number and a new custom gestalt opcode? Then if we ever wanted to extend the Z-Machine again we could use the gestalt opcode.

However even once we've detected that we're using a compatible terp, we still need to send the data somehow. Just printing out #ERROR etc is probably the simplest, but it's definitely not a clean solution... that's why I'd like feedback about Glk streams.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1238&start=0#p7228
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: check() and verify() output to separate windows?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-07-19 11:12:28

[quote="hajenso"]I thought illogicalNow() called check(), not verify()?[/quote]
Check out the article "Action Results" in the Technical Manual. The illogical macros are used inside a verify() block. They don't call _either_ check or verify.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=10#p7229
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-07-19 11:14:01

[quote="Pacian"][quote="Eleas"]What if, in other words... they're right? Zombies represent an all-devouring [i]need[/i], whatever that is. What if that need is made perfectly understandable?[/quote]
This is an increasingly prevalent theme in Romero's films - that things wouldn't be so bad if we'd only get over ourselves and give the zombies what they [i]want[/i].[/quote]

Interesting. I've watched fewer Romero movies than I should, it seems. My notion, in any case, is to make the zombies no more reasonable and erudite and civilized than feral humans would be. Identification, not reconciliation, would be the goal. Ideally, it would be some sort of personal horror game in which that final luxury we cling to - the ability to separate ourselves from the Monster and its actions - is taken away.

Or, in far more eloquent terms: 

[quote="Repercussions of Evil"]"No! I must kill the demons" he shouted
The radio said "No, John. You are the demons"
And then John was a zombie.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1239&start=0#p7230
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Transcripts collection proposal
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-07-19 11:49:15

[quote="Dannii"]There have been quite a few discussions this year about automatically collecting transcripts from testers/players, as some of the following links show. I'd like to make a more formal proposal now of a set of technologies which hopefully will meet everyone's desires. I will make three largely independant proposals here, the protocol, a metadata extension, and a Glulx/Glk extension for tagged output.

[size=150][b]The transcript protocol[/b][/size]

[code]{
	"session": 7253,
	"input": 1,
	"response": 1,
	"tagged": 0,
	"time": 1
}[/code]

[/quote]

In order to allow more detailed review of transcript data, I think the "location" should also be added to the basic response call. This allows someone to write all of the responses to a database and then query based on location.

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1230&start=0#p7231
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can the "printing a parser error" activity be renamed?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-07-19 12:29:24

Submitted.  Found some renamings that would allow both the old invocation syntax AND the new to work simultaneously. 

1) rename the new kov "command parser error" to "parser error"
2) rename the "printing a parser error" activity to "printing"
3) the new activity takes the kov as a parameter:  "Printing something is an activity on parser errors."
4) the old invocation "printing a parser error when.." still works, understood as "printing (any parser error) when..."
5) the new invocation works as well:  "printing (the I beg your pardon error):"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1239&start=0#p7232
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Transcripts collection proposal
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-07-19 12:36:27

I'd also suggest a way to capture the version of the interpreter / library running the story file.

Certain bugs can cause otherwise valid player input to be flagged as errors. Glk libraries that lack Unicode support, for instance, will often display such parser errors. This could be frustrating for authors to troubleshoot without some way to group transcripts by interpreter.

On a related note, an exit code field could allow authors to distinguish sessions that ended normally from those that ended in a crash.

[quote]The server generates the session ID, not the client, and can generate anything it likes: increasing integers, random numbers, IP addresses, timestamps, names of fruit. Anything can be used, and the client will just send it back again.[/quote]

I'd encourage you to specify a more rigorous session ID mechanism. I often play games over the course of days or weeks. Any transcript session ID should be valid for an arbitrary duration, and not result in different transcripts being interleaved.

Unless you add a TTL field for the session ID, which may be useful for its own reasons: it provides a way to mark otherwise active transcripts as complete.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1241&start=0#p7233
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Scheduling problems (and "now scene is happening")
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-07-19 13:30:11

Seems like I'm always asking questions these days. [emote]:)[/emote] This time, the issue is with scheduling events. Or rather, with what happens when I turn back the clock, expecting an event to repeat itself.

This code will illustrate my problem.

[code]"Test"

Bigroom is a room. The description is "Nothing to do but wait for 5 o'clock...".

When play begins:
	now the time of day is 3 PM.
	
At 5 PM:
	say "Congratulations, it's five o'clock! Do it again!";
	now the time of day is 3 PM.
	
At 4 PM:
	say "Halfway there!".
	
Carry out waiting:
	increase the time of day by 20 minutes;
	say "You wait a bit. It's now [time of day]".[/code]

On my first playthrough, everything fires as correctly. But when the clock is set back to 3 PM, none of the schedule events re-fire. I can sort of understand why this would be a design choice, but I would very much like the ability to reset certain scenes in the project I'm working on - scenes which rely heavily on scheduling.

Of course, maybe I'm just missing something in the manual where it said "Scheduled events will only fire once. If you want to override this behaviour, here's the magic word."

Incidently, on the off-chance that this is a bug - could I ask that someone report it? I'm having trouble logging onto the bug reporter thingamajig. Through a CAPTCHA error and it being late at night, I ended up registering two usernames and receiving no confirmation e-mail for either.

And PS - could I ask about whether some syntax like "now scene X is happening" and "now scene X ends" is likely to be implemented? I've always sorely missed its existence. Since time and again it is a problem that doesn't seem to be addressed, I was wondering - why? Is it hard to implement? Does it bring other sort of problems? I can understand that. It's just that if you think there's no demand - well, there's demand. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1241&start=0#p7234
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scheduling problems (and "now scene is happening")
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-07-19 13:47:16

[quote="Peter Pears"]This time, the issue is with scheduling events. Or rather, with what happens when I turn back the clock, expecting an event to repeat itself.[/quote]
This is either a bug or undocumented feature. There's discussion and workarounds in this thread: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1205">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1205</a>

[quote]And PS - could I ask about whether some syntax like "now scene X is happening" and "now scene X ends" is likely to be implemented? I've always sorely missed its existence. Since time and again it is a problem that doesn't seem to be addressed, I was wondering - why? Is it hard to implement? Does it bring other sort of problems? I can understand that. It's just that if you think there's no demand - well, there's demand. :)[/quote]
It is not likely because it would encourage bad design. The manual chapter 10.9. explains the reasoning behind this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1241&start=0#p7235
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scheduling problems (and "now scene is happening")
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-07-19 13:59:44

Thank you imensely for your help. That other thread did shed light, and so did re-reading 10.9 with a more careful eye.

The time issue might be worth reporting as a bug. Unfortunately, I can't do it myself, as I said...

Incidently, regarding the scenes, if anyone of the development team is interested: I've tried to use scenes as a way to see what is going on, and act upon that information. I've tried to use scenes to replace a variable I always used - something like story=0 for the game's beginning, story=1 for the next day... and then simply check "if story==1 then etc etc etc".

I suppose I can't do it like this with scenes. Sure, I can check if a certain scene is happening, but changing a scene involves changing other things - whereas I want *other things* to change *because of* the scene changes. Heh, I've been fooling myself all this time. [emote]:)[/emote] Ah well, just in case you're interested in my experience with "scenes", developers.

**********
EDIT

Dreadfully sorry, but the method I was using, which is saying "Every turn when the time of day is X:XX", doesn't work. I mean, it works, but I have actions which take longer than others, and therefore it's possible - even likely - that although I may schedule events for five o'clock, the ingame clock may well jump from 4:56 to 5:06, thus skipping this entirely.

So I still need help...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=10#p7236
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-07-19 14:35:13

[quote="H.P. Lovecraft"]A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain -- a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daeligmons of unplumbed space.[/quote]

One difficulty with applying Lovecraft's dictum to zombies is that the living dead [i]already[/i] embody a suspension of the laws of Nature, albeit a fairly conventional one. Dead people don't really come back to life as shambling corpses. Except they do, with astonishing regularity, in genre fiction. So you need a second hook to evoke actual horror, but asking readers to accept a further embellishment risks upsetting the verisimilitude of the construct, as you venture farther into the land where anything goes.

[quote="Endosphere"]I'm arguing that the zombie can and should be significantly re-imagined in a way that frees it from the constraints of scientific comfort in which it is usually expressed, as such a re-imagining is the best way to give the creatures power to induce terror in the modern audience.  [/quote]

The advantage of a zombie rooted in plausible science is that you can get away with only one hook. We know that new viruses appear from time to time, and they can have effects ranging from death (Ebola) to derangement (tertiary syphilis). Accepting a new virus with the desired storytelling properties is not a major commitment for the reader.

Viruses aren't the only possible scientific explanation for zombies. Extraterrestrial travel is one option; [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_Horizon_(film)]Event Horizon[/url] uses this mechanism. Cryogenic thawing could be another. You could eschew SF scenarios altogether and just use an artificial lung on a comatose worker rescued from a coal mine collapse. He recovers and seems almost normal, but who knows what he encountered during that week in the underground darkness?

You raise the not-quite-dead but do it in a way that seems likely to leave psychological damage, after possible exposure to supernatural influences. It may seem like we are multiplying the requisite premises but really the point is to dodge the question of what it means to bring the dead back to life. It is fraught with philosophical problems, not least of which is that the very notion of death implies irreversible finality. (A point Eric Eve makes in [url=http://www.amazon.co.uk/Healer-Nazareth-Eric-Eve/dp/0281060010]The Healer from Nazareth[/url].)

[quote="Endosphere"]Therefore we must respond directly to the challege to our understanding of reality that the zombie represents.  Finally, I'm saying that our need to offer a serious response at all to the zombie is much more horrifying than the prospect of simply having our brains gobbled by a mindless beast, as the existence of the zombie implies a number of disturbing notions (the very least of which is that everything we believe is wrong).[/quote]

I agree, but I think the scientific approach invites a more serious, considered response from the reader. Especially given that scientific advances have already blurred the line between life and death, and promise to make it ever fuzzier as we edge closer to the dream of immortality. Poisoning that dream strikes me as very much in the vein of Lovecraft, who gave the dream of space travel and alien contact the same treatment.

By contrast, there is never any need to exercise the rational part of the brain in contemplating the terrible origin of undead zombies. We know that the dead cannot come back to life, so questions of what might happen to us in the imaginary time between death and resurrection are necessarily abstract and impersonal. But anyone can be infected by a virus, or code in the OR during a minor surgery. Short of extreme precautions, we cannot be certain it will not happen to us, and uncertainty is the essence of terror.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1241&start=0#p7237
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scheduling problems (and "now scene is happening")
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-19 15:56:31

If you want to, you can have a variable attached to a scene that tells it to be over, and change that. ("The Long Vacation Scene ends when the endflag of Long Vacation Scene is true.")

This is still different from allowing "now the Long Vacation Scene is over", because it forces scene changes to occur at specific places in the action sequence; otherwise, things can get pretty tangled up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1241&start=0#p7238
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scheduling problems (and "now scene is happening")
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-07-19 16:00:56

Hmmm, what a curious thought. Of course, it's not really different from just having a numeric variable, and yet it [i]is[/i] a nice compromise that allows me to take full advantage of Inform's features. Thanks for the tip!

Incidently, my original problem is still unsolved. I point this out because, since I edited my post, it might not have been obvious...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1241&start=0#p7239
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scheduling problems (and "now scene is happening")
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-07-19 16:13:09

You can take Emily's suggestion one step further and write your own phrase that will set the scene's flag. As Emily mentioned, the scene won't end immediately, but it will end as soon as the scene-changing mechanism allows it to. This is what I mean:

[code]A scene has a truth state called the endflag.

To end (S - a scene) as soon as possible:
	now the endflag of S is true.[/code]

So now you can say "end the Long Vacation Scene as soon as possible" (substitute your preferred phrasing).

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1242&start=0#p7240
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: some common prepositions?
User: ultimatebuster / DateTime: 2010-07-19 16:23:42

What are some common prepositions used in text adventures when giving commands?

so far i have with, to, as, in, on

anything else?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1242&start=0#p7241
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: some common prepositions?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-07-19 17:45:37

about, as in ASK and TELL
onto, into,

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1241&start=0#p7242
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scheduling problems (and "now scene is happening")
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-07-19 17:49:43

[quote="Peter Pears"]Incidently, my original problem is still unsolved. I point this out because, since I edited my post, it might not have been obvious...[/quote]

If you mean the events not firing twice, you have to re-schedule them from within the event itself (coding from memory):[code]At the time when all heck breaks loose: say "The fan, the feces, the flinging it at action."; All heck breaks loose at 4 pm.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1241&start=0#p7243
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scheduling problems (and "now scene is happening")
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-07-19 19:17:30

Oh my, what an ingenious workaround - I never would have thought of that. Not as convenient as "At 4PM", of course, but then, it [i]is[/i] a workaround.

It's too late right now, but I'll be sure to try it tomorrow and edit this post with the results.

EDIT - How curious. It sort of worked.

I mean, what happened was, if I edited my the code on my first post to implement Ron's suggestions, I ended up with odd behaviour... the timer fired *every turn* after 4 PM, with the 4 PM warning, instead of just at 4 PM.

But a simple flag took care of that, and as far as I can see, it's working wonders. [emote]:)[/emote] Whew, this was a lengthy process. Thanks to everyone for their input.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1239&start=0#p7244
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Transcripts collection proposal
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-07-19 19:17:58

DavidC, what kind of location do you mean?

In any case, you could always add it to your own terps/servers. If other people think it would be useful to them too, then I'll consider adding it to the recommended handshake.

Ben, sending the terp and terp version is a great idea! Should it be a bunch of items, or more like "Gargoyle 2009-08-25 (Git 1.2.6)"

I also like the idea of an exit code. But, what about if you want to pick it up later from a savefile?

I still don't think that we need to specify how to generate session IDs. Wouldn't it solve the situation you describe if the session ID gets stored in the savefile? However that makes me think of another issue... what if the server has already cleared the original log? If you have a session ID you should send it with the handshake, but then use whichever ID the server returns.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=10#p7245
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-07-19 19:24:23

Lots of good thinking here. I'd just like to add a little something that I'd already thought about.

One of the *really* creepy things about zombies, in my view, is not just that they're dead - it's how the guy who was hanged walks around with his head hanging bonelessly. How the guy who was shot still looks like a regular guy, apart from being grey-faced, not very talkative and having a small bullet entry on his chest and a gaping hole on his back. How the guy that was drowned to death is still dripping wet.

And sometimes, how they seem to want to take you to where they've been. The drowned zombie, all wet, who seems to say to you "Come on, it's not that bad lying in the bottom of the ocean, you'll like it."

Zombies trying to kill you the way they died, zombies that display the full effect of what killed them, zombies that aren't all that different from regular joes [i]except that they're dead[/i]. Three separate things, really. Put them together... and I'm getting the creeps just picturing it.

Zombies had their gory fame. Time for their psychological fame.

Incidently, an example of the three instances I was talking about is clearly visible in a scene in Stephen King's and Romero's "Creepshow". Those drowned zombies - masterpiece. They look and sound as though they're still underwater. I mean, it's just perfect. And in that particular case, they're exacting revenge. How much scarier does it get when you're threatened by someone you've wronged?

EDIT - Oh, and of course let's not forget - just for the sake of completeness - the "real zombies". I'm hazy about the details, but I'm sure everyone knows what I mean. There's a certain substance (which was the basis for the film "Serpent and the Rainbow", which I saw at a rather impressionable age) which can, supposedly (not sure how well documented it is), slow your body down as to approach a state of death... and when eventually the body retains control, there has been severe mind damage. Something like that, anyway. It might well be what caused the whole zombie mythos, the way that porfiria was probably responsible for introducing the vampire mythos (that and other blood diseases, as well as just some plain sick people). Can't really have a discussion about zombies without mentioning that, at some point.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1242&start=0#p7246
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: some common prepositions?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-07-19 19:30:32

"Up" and "down".

Not the directions, the prepositions. Get up, get down, stand up...

Also "through" (look through and climb through, usually windows). And does "over", "behind" and "under" count?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=10#p7247
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-07-19 21:05:16



Thanks to all for the thoughtful comments.

[b]@ capmikee[/b]

[quote="capmikee"]But I have to say that I'm pretty happy with the modern scientific-animal-disease zombie... For me, the key emotion that zombies produce is not fear, but revulsion. Cannibalism, dismemberment, decay - these are taboo topics even if they're not as scary as the "unknowable."[/quote]
I think this is an interesting aspect of the traditional portrayal of zombies.  I don't find the phenomena you mentioned particularly disturbing, but I am keen on hearing from others who do.  By way of analogy, I think I like enough individual Bollywood films to say I am generally a fan of Bollywood films.  However, I mostly like the (relatively uncommon) dramas and tragedies; I could also often do without the song and dance numbers.  In speaking with several folks from India, however, I have observed that comedies are universally preferred by them, and that the musical aspects of Bollywood films are one of the most essential and most beloved elements of these films amongst their intended audience.  In the same way then that a tragic Bollywood film directed by me and not containing any singing or dancing would likely be rejected by audiences, I'd hate to make a zombie game that is rejected by zombie enthusiasts because it ignores the aspects of zombies that the intended audience finds most compelling.

Broadly speaking, I think humans are animals too.  I see human behavior as a subset of general animal behavior, and don't think any honest examination of general animal behavior could ever support the (admittedly common) idea that animals other than humans don't kill for a variety of reasons unrelated to nutrition and self-defense.  The difference in this case between ourselves and other animals is only that we often experience and attach ethical notions to our own behavior, while presumably other animals simply go about their business unaware of or unaffected by such concerns.  Perhaps this is why I don't experience the idea of the zombie as carnivorous beast as horrible; carnivorous beasts are a common natural phenomena, and while of course I may defend myself against them if they attack me, I don't view their behavior as immoral.  Without will there can be no moral agency, and without moral agency there can be no culpability.

I believe you're saying that it is the carnivorous act itself that you find horrifying, while I'm saying such behavior is only potentially horrifying to me if it was willful and chosen in preference to alternatives which were well-comprehended by the carnivorous actor.  I certainly don't mean to imply that either of these views is "right" or "wrong," and I think this discussion can generally benefit if we explore the differences between these views.  As Eleas noted in discussing a similar notion, these ideas aren't mutually exclusive and whether or not a work of horror is successful in terms of inducing terror in its audience is largely a matter of implementation.  

[quote="capmikee"]I think in some ways Lovecraft missed the mark.[/quote]
I think Lovecraft's fiction writings are very entertaining, but usually not particularly terrifying.  Furthermore in cases where I do find his fiction disturbing, I think the effect is usually serendipitous.  For example I always feel somewhat disturbed after reading [i]Whisperer in Darkness[/i], but not because I find the idea of winged lobster-men from Pluto or disembodied brains in metal canisters scary.  There's something very subtle in the cadence of Lovecraft's prose in this story that produces his intended result in me, and although I haven't been able to determine the details of this "technique" I'm fairly sure it was accidental on Lovecraft's part.  On the other hand, I do think Lovecraft's ideas as a "philosopher of horror arts" are very meaningful and very cogent.  The essay of his I have mentioned several times serves as a foundation for my own thinking about the creation of horror fiction.


[b]@ Pacian[/b]

[quote="Pacian"]I don't want to derail the discussion more than I have, but I don't think RE zombies are equivalent to other RE monsters. Spiders and dogs are almost always (depending on the context) dangerous enough that it's worth expending valuable ammunition to kill them on sight. Zombies are slow and ungainly enough that the risk of evading instead of attacking always seems worth it. So while the stronger enemies often provide a brief shock and then are removed from play, the zombies are a constant low level threat in the background.[/quote]
No need to worry about derailing anything; your comment is just as interesting as the more philosophical musings also occuring here.  A well-designed game should anticipate a variety of skill levels amongst its players.  I think you're saying then that in addition to adding general ambiance and providing a means to personalize the horror of the setting for the player, the zombies of [i]Resident Evil[/i] function as a sort of pressure valve in allowing the game to adapt to various styles of play and for accomodating players of varying skill levels.  I think that's a very interesting point, one which hadn't ever occurred to me but seems obvious now that you've pointed it out.

I think one way in which non-mindless zombies may enhance gameplay is in removing the artificiality or contrivance of the "boss" battle.  Just as not-yet-dead people vary in ambition and intelligence, so it seems likely that the undead would vary in these attributes as well.  Therefore we need not necessarily have boss zombies who are larger, stronger, and faster than their comrades (requiring that we find a bigger gun to dispatch them); we can instead have smarter, more devious boss zombies (another idea you mentioned previously) whom we as players will have to outsmart rather than out-gun.  The "boss device," framed in these terms, can likely be presented in a more seamless and sensible way.


[b]@ Eleas[/b]

[quote="Eleas"]When it comes to Zombies, for instance, one remaining assumption (even in this thread) seems to be that of us versus the Other. The Other is the bad thing, and we compare ourselves against it. It's something everyone does, and it's still pretty much SOP everywhere.[/quote]
Could you elaborate on this point?  You've mentioned it several times now, which leads me to believe you're trying to say something other than my own main point.  I consider my central thesis so far to be:

[quote="Endosphere"]The modern model of zombification that presents zombies as "victims" "subjected" to a "disease" is highly unsatisfying. This model is a natural application of our modern scientific-rationalistic world view to offer an explanation for the enigmatic observed behavior of the zombie. The assumption is that healthy individuals would never choose to behave as monstrous cannibal beasts; therefore anyone exhibiting such behavior is either insane or under the influence of some irresistable compulsion.[/quote]
or perhaps even:

[quote="Endosphere"]The living fear when they perceive they may lose something of value. Do zombies seem to lack fear because they value little, because they value things we can't perceive in preference things familiar to us, because they don't perceive any plausible risk of loss, or because they simply are truly mindless?[/quote]
I think you're trying to say something other than this, but I'm not getting your idea and if that's the case I would like to better understand your views


[b]@ bcressey[/b]

You raise a number of very interesting points, made even more compelling because you've thus far been able to very precisely discern what I myself consider to be some of the major weaknesses of my proposals for zombies.

I see your main points in your latest post as:

a) My re-imagination risks simply complicating rather than adding complexity to the zombie; I may be building a house of cards, which will quickly be left in tatters as the strong breeze of audience sensibility blows past.

b) In your view of the zombie its (potentially) terrifying nature lies in the initial moment of its resurrection rather than its subsequent behavior, and the revivification of the zombie is in fact so unnatural and fantastic that this phenomenon can't be taken seriously (or at least can't be taken seriously by a constituent of our modern scientifically-minded society) unless we can sensibly accout for it.  Perhaps then my efforts would be better spent in pondering the moment of the zombie's resurrection than in attempting to construct the zombie as a moral agent (whose values are offensive or disturbing to us, because they are genuinely rooted in the zombie's experience).

I don't want to misstate your views, so if you're saying something else please elaborate.  On the other hand, this alternate conception I've attributed to you is very interesting as it adds yet another fertile field to be explored in our examination of the nature of the zombie.  In a sense you're saying (as I understand you) that the traditional idea of the zombie could satisfy my Lovecraftian sensibilities based solely on the fact that the zombie is here, standing before us; but that further development of the idea of the zombie is likely to be more effective (i.e. more horrifyingly productive) if we use the framework of the modern psyche to refine the zombie's threat into something more plausible and comprehensible.

[quote="bcressey"]Viruses aren't the only possible scientific explanation for zombies. Extraterrestrial travel is one option; Event Horizon uses this mechanism. Cryogenic thawing could be another. You could eschew SF scenarios altogether and just use an artificial lung on a comatose worker rescued from a coal mine collapse. He recovers and seems almost normal, but who knows what he encountered during that week in the underground darkness?[/quote]
I've avoided any mention of the particulars of the framework I've tentatively laid out for my game project because I didn't want to constrain the discussion by suggesting any goal of fitting our musings into some limits or that we must move toward some practical goal with particular details of implementation.  I'd rather talk about zombies in general than any particular project on which I'm working.  In general though I'm envisioning a rather standard-fare potential zombie apocalypse scenario, which will hopefully be made more interesting by its details rather than its general structure.  The setting is to be in a recreational woodland area on the outskirts of an otherwise mundane modern-day American small town, and the player's general goal will be simply to survive the scenario by escaping the area before an inevitable military response by government officials to growing zombie hordes results in the obliteration of the greater geographical area.  The "substance" of the gameplay, other than those activities that contribute directly to the main goal of survival by the player-character, will focus on unravelling the enigma of the zombies (what are they, why are they here, is their current rising a unique event, etc) as well as a more familiar goal of rescuing a loved-one residing in the area who may or may not be more involved in the zombie phenomenon than the protagonist initially suspects.

I mention this general structure now not because I want to focus our overall discussion, but on the contrary because I wish to encourage even more speculation like you've done here.  However I suspect it may be easier for others who may be reticent to philosophize with us to consider the nature of zombies and join the discussion if they have a less ethereal prism through which to organize their observations.  Overall however, this is already the most truly interesting discussion of zombies I've ever encountered, and hope everyone will continue to offer their thoughts on the creatures.


[b]@ Peter Pears[/b]

I'm generally understanding your comments as a more sophisticated affirmation of the "zombies are grotesque = zombies are horrifying" model, with an emphasis on the personification of the zombie.  You raise some interesting notions, particularly since as I've said I'm more interested in generally exploring the topic of the horrific nature of the zombie than in promoting or defending my own particular view.

We haven't mentioned at all so far (until you brought it up) the traditional idea of the voodoo-created zombie.   I see this variant of zombie as compelling both to those of more traditional mindset (a few steps removed from our shiny scientific society where the inexorable progress of object-oriented knowledge is seen as an aspiration of salvation) for whom the notion of magic still carries some weight, as well as to those for whom the horror of the zombie lies primarily in the estrangement of the individual from ego and uniqueness.

In regard to the former audience, in [url=http://www.yankeeclassic.com/miskatonic/library/stacks/literature/lovecraft/essays/supernat/supern09.htm][i]Supernatural Horror in Literature[/i][/url],

[quote="H. P. Lovecraft"]It may be well to remark here that occult believers are probably less effective than materialists in delineating the spectral and the fantastic, since to them the phantom world is so commonplace a reality that they tend to refer to it with less awe, remoteness, and impressiveness than do those who see in it an absolute and stupendous violation of the natural order.[/quote]
Is there anything to the notion (which seems contrary to all I have been espousing) that the modern "diseased" zombie is actually a better horror device than the traditional "undead" zombie?  I think perhaps this may be what bcressey has essentially been saying, although I could be wrong on that count.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1242&start=0#p7248
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: some common prepositions?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-07-19 21:56:19

"For", as in ASK BOB FOR THE WATCH.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1242&start=0#p7249
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: some common prepositions?
User: George / DateTime: 2010-07-19 22:18:16

[quote="Peter Pears"] And does "over", "behind" and "under" count?[/quote]

I think they do, but only sometimes. 

An OK looking reference: <a class="postlink" href="http://rwc.hunter.cuny.edu/reading-writing/on-line/prep-def.html">http://rwc.hunter.cuny.edu/reading-writ ... p-def.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1242&start=0#p7250
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: some common prepositions?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-19 22:31:19

[quote="Peter Pears"]"Up" and "down".

Not the directions, the prepositions. Get up, get down, stand up...[/quote]

I think those count as adverbial uses. Prepositional uses would have objects, like "up the strand," "down the hatch," etc. Those aren't very common in IF.

To the original question: "from," as in TAKE ALL FROM TABLE. (Edit: and I assume you meant "at," not "as"?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=10#p7251
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-07-19 23:06:28

Not having read Lovecraft, I'm not in a position to comment on the theory, but I think it may be interesting to look at zombies from the point of view of the zombie himself. I mean, being a zombie has to be more horrifying than being attacked by them, right?

Apropos of which, I wrote a short story a couple of years ago on this precise theme. You can read it at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.musicwords.net/stories/gulf.htm">http://www.musicwords.net/stories/gulf.htm</a>. I was unable to sell it to the main SF/fantasy magazines. In fact, Sheila Williams at Asimov's sent me a note saying, "Please -- no more zombies!" I think the problem they had with the story was that it's too downbeat and depressing.

Anyhow, this story is pretty much everything I know about zombie horror, which is not a whole lot, so there you go. If anyone wants to adapt it as IF, contact me.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=10#p7252
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-07-20 01:25:45

[quote="Endosphere"]I think Lovecraft's fiction writings are very entertaining, but usually not particularly terrifying.[/quote]

Well, Lovecraft was very much about setting: creating a mental space in which the reader could ponder certain awful yet inevitable assumptions about the cosmos. In that he suffers by comparison with the more vivid settings afforded by film and games. His choice of an archaic style also undermines the terror to a large degree, as his stories are very much rooted in an era before faith in science was forever blighted by concentration camps and nuclear war. 

[quote="Endosphere"]
b) In your view of the zombie its (potentially) terrifying nature lies in the initial moment of its resurrection rather than its subsequent behavior, and the revivification of the zombie is in fact so unnatural and fantastic that this phenomenon can't be taken seriously (or at least can't be taken seriously by a constituent of our modern scientifically-minded society) unless we can sensibly accout for it.  Perhaps then my efforts would be better spent in pondering the moment of the zombie's resurrection than in attempting to construct the zombie as a moral agent (whose values are offensive or disturbing to us, because they are genuinely rooted in the zombie's experience).
[/quote]

Well, if you put it that way, I have to admit that I don't tend to find zombie origin stories interesting or especially plausible. I would liken it to the conventional acceptance of unscientific notions such as time travel or FTL communication in otherwise grounded SF. A certain amount of hand-waving on the subject is tolerated, provided that the story is about the characters rather than the science. Arguably the tolerance is greater if you stick to the cliches: wormholes, ansibles and the like.

By that token, if your story is mostly about what happened to the zombies in the unknowable state between life and undeath, you probably do want to have a vividly imagined origin story at hand. Even if this is never fully revealed, you can design the zombie behavior to evoke certain aspects of the horrible truth underlying their existence. This would work best if the player's goal is to investigate and understand the zombies.

Contrariwise, if your story is mostly about what the zombies actually do, you can probably rely on one of the standard origins, ideally but not necessarily one that explains their behavior to some degree. Infected zombies might have ordinary human vulnerabilities to extreme heat, cold, or violence. Undead zombies might be vanquished by sunlight or banished through arcane rituals. Here the player's goal might simply be to oppose or thwart the zombies.


[quote="Endosphere"] In a sense you're saying (as I understand you) that the traditional idea of the zombie could satisfy my Lovecraftian sensibilities based solely on the fact that the zombie is here, standing before us; but that further development of the idea of the zombie is likely to be more effective (i.e. more horrifyingly productive) if we use the framework of the modern psyche to refine the zombie's threat into something more plausible and comprehensible.[/quote]

Yes, although I believe zombies or ghouls in the Lovecraft tradition were more likely to be degenerate humans. This accords well with his usual effort to puncture the comfort of institutions like scientific laws or family lineage by showing them to be hopelessly riddled with misplaced and dangerous assumptions.

You can start with the comprehensible and slowly make it incomprehensible. A doctor might travel to a rural town overrun by zombies, intent on curing the virus; only when he contracts it himself does he realize that the virus does not cause the condition, it is merely an opportunistic infection. It accounts for the pallid skin and the shambling gait but not the malign motives.


[quote="Endosphere"]The "substance" of the gameplay, other than those activities that contribute directly to the main goal of survival by the player-character, will focus on unravelling the enigma of the zombies (what are they, why are they here, is their current rising a unique event, etc) as well as a more familiar goal of rescuing a loved-one residing in the area who may or may not be more involved in the zombie phenomenon than the protagonist initially suspects.[/quote]

This all sounds pretty awesome to me. In its basic contours it resembles the plot of [i]Anchorhead[/i], substituting zombies for deranged cultist townsfolk, which is certainly a reasonable template to choose. The difficulty (as you recognize) is making the zombies as mysterious in their way as cultists would be. Vampires would be at least as problematic, for the same reasons.

The trouble is that players understand zombies, even if they don't truly understand yours, so they won't be inclined to investigate. To the extent that they do, they may treat it as engaging backstory rather than crucial plot advancement. The easiest way to emphasize the detective aspects of gameplay is probably to force the player to the task, by making direct confrontations with zombies messy and fatal. But for that to work well you have to have something juicy for them to investigate, such as intriguing origins or unusual behaviors.

My own Lovecraft-themed WIP includes zombies after a fashion, so I have these issues very much in mind. My solution at the moment is for the player to be nominally investigating something else, and to belatedly recognize the presence of the zombies, only after he is well and truly surrounded and perhaps on his way to a similar fate.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1243&start=0#p7253
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Calculating a property?
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-07-20 01:37:43

I'm trying to assign actors a Strength property, from which is automatically calculated their carrying capacity.  I have already specified the weight property earlier in the code.  However, adjusting the person's strength does not adjust their carrying capacity.
[code]A person has a number called strength.  
The strength of a person is normally 10.

A person has a weight called maximum capacity.
The maximum capacity of a person is normally 50kg.

To decide what weight is the maximum capacity of (the lifter - a person):
		let Z be the maximum capacity of the lifter;
		let N be the strength of the lifter;
		let M be N * N / 8;
		decide on Z.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1243&start=0#p7254
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Calculating a property?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-07-20 01:51:19

If you use a to decide phrase, you shouldn't assign it as a property, because you can't use both methods at the same time. So remove these lines:

[code]A person has a weight called maximum capacity.
The maximum capacity of a person is normally 50kg.[/code]
Secondly, there's something wrong with the algorithm that calculates the maximum capacity. The first line assigns the property value of maximum capacity to Z. The next two lines do calculations with N and M, but in the end you discard the results and return Z unchanged. Should the last line read "decide on M"?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1243&start=0#p7255
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Calculating a property?
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-07-20 02:13:57

Interesting!  I hadn't noticed that I had made that variable switch.  After some tinkering, I got it to work!  Woohoo.

Now if I can get it to play nice with Bulky Items by Juhana Leinonen.  Right now, it's performing the "drop everything to make room" action before checking the weight of the bulky thing you're trying to lift.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1243&start=0#p7256
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Calculating a property?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-07-20 02:35:16

[quote="Hertz"]Now if I can get it to play nice with Bulky Items by Juhana Leinonen. Right now, it's performing the "drop everything to make room" action before checking the weight of the bulky thing you're trying to lift.[/quote]
You can put your rule before the built-ins with the word "first":

[code]First before taking a bulky thing:
    say "I can't be bothered." instead.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1233&start=0#p7257
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 for OS 10.5.8?
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-07-20 03:30:20

Andrew Hunter has posted a fixed IDE on the bug tracker. It only includes the 6E59 compiler, but I suppose you could try swapping in the 6E72 compiler.

I don't have any other news, but I think you can expect this to be fixed soon. You're certainly not the only one running pre-10.6, especially since PPC Macs only support 10.5 at the latest.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=20#p7258
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-07-20 05:02:59

[quote]I'm generally understanding your comments as a more sophisticated affirmation of the "zombies are grotesque = zombies are horrifying" model, with an emphasis on the personification of the zombie.[/quote]

Rereading my post, I guess I was, though that wasn't my intention. I intended to focus on the way zombies are a constant reminder of mortality, and that the zombies I was talking about actually display, for all the world to see, all the horrors of the death they had. As though Death were a curtain beyond which we know nothing. The scary thing, I intended to imply, is when the Zombies (or anything - generally speaking, this is out fear of the unknown) come back from the other side of the curtain with the consequences of their death (tempering the unknown with just enough "known" to make it scary). I mean, it's not that they're grotesque per se, and it's not that they're just the unknown danger... it's all of those things combined with them having been one of us, and having suffered a dreadful fate [i]whose consequences are still all too visible[/i].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1244&start=0#p7259
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Parameter passing in i6/i7
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2010-07-20 07:19:55

When you pass parameters to a routine in i6 or i7 you pass their value, not their reference (at least that's what i've understood).

When writing i6 code from within i7, you can however specify that you want to process the reference instead of the value by using
(- ...{-pointer-to:parameter} ... -).

But is it possible to accomplish something similar with i7 ?

For example, see the following code that implements (probably in a bad way) a feature that allows me to add some indexed text to another indexed text:
[code]
Part - Concatenating indexed texts

Chapter - Concatenation

Concatenation_A is some indexed text that varies.
Concatenation_B is some indexed text that varies.
To decide what text is the concatenation of (A - indexed text) and/with (B - indexed text) (this is concatenation):
	change concatenation_a to A;
	change concatenation_b to B;
	decide on "[concatenation_a][concatenation_b]";

Section - Synonyms

To decide what text is (A - indexed text) + (B - indexed text):
	decide on the concatenation of A and B;

Section - I6 Bindings

Concatenation_phrase is a phrase (indexed text, indexed text) -> indexed text that varies.
When play begins:change concatenation_phrase to concatenation;

Include(- Global concatenation_phrase; -) after "Definitions.i6t".
The concatenation_phrase variable translates into i6 as "concatenation_phrase".




Chapter - Adding indexed text to indexed text

To add (T - indexed text) to (target - indexed text):	
	(- BlkValueCast({-pointer-to:target}, INDEXED_TEXT_TY, TEXT_TY, (concatenation_phrase-->1)({target}, {T}));  -).

[/code]

Is it possible to rewrite the last function in i7 ?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1205&start=10#p7260
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: new question
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-07-20 08:38:45

Being new to inform and lazy, I have a way around the "2 turns from now" stuff.

Basically I have "

A person has a number called patience. John is a person. The patience of john is 10. 

Scene 1 begins when the player can see John and the patience of John is 10. Scene 1 ends when the patience of john is 0. 

Every turn during scene 1:
   decrease the patience of john by 1;
   [do other stuff]
   if the patience of john is 3: say "John is getting impatient!";

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=20#p7261
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-07-20 09:22:12

[quote="capmikee"]I endured many years of low-grade horror due to a gluten intolerance. [/quote]

Not to trivialize your post, which does genuinely sound horrifying, but I first read this (in the context of, you know, George Romero) as "I endured many years of low-grade horror [novels and movies] due to a gluten intolerance."  Because, you know, all really good literature is made of wheat.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=20#p7262
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-07-20 10:23:59

Regarding voodoo zombies: I think I saw a PBS show about it where they said the drug/poison was made from the pufferfish. The show did a comparison between Haitian and Japanese uses of the pufferfish ("fugu" in Japanese.) In both cases, it's very hard to control the dosage of toxin that you receive, making both the gourmet and the occult applications risky and unpredictable.

It's all about food, baby.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=20#p7263
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-07-20 10:26:19

[quote="tove"][quote="capmikee"]I endured many years of low-grade horror due to a gluten intolerance. [/quote]

Not to trivialize your post, which does genuinely sound horrifying, but I first read this (in the context of, you know, George Romero) as "I endured many years of low-grade horror [novels and movies] due to a gluten intolerance."  Because, you know, all really good literature is made of wheat.[/quote]
 [emote]:lol:[/emote]  [emote]:lol:[/emote]  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

That's strangely appropriate.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=20#p7264
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-07-20 10:29:51

[quote="Peter Pears"]The scary thing, I intended to imply, is when the Zombies (or anything - generally speaking, this is out fear of the unknown) come back from the other side of the curtain with the consequences of their death (tempering the unknown with just enough "known" to make it scary). I mean, it's not that they're grotesque per se, and it's not that they're just the unknown danger... it's all of those things combined with them having been one of us, and having suffered a dreadful fate [i]whose consequences are still all too visible[/i].[/quote]

You know what I thought of when I read your post? Ghost Whisperer. All the ghosts on that show start out looking like they just died, and then they "evolve" into healthy people by the end. I have to confess that I liked that show for taking things that are scary and turning them into warm fuzzies. It's almost an original concept.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1239&start=0#p7265
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Transcripts collection proposal
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2010-07-20 10:48:37

One possibility would be to extend the initial handshake to include not only story file information but also previous session ID, if available. That would allow interpreters to provide that information to the server if it's stored in a persistent cookie (for web interpreters) or in save game information. The server, of course, is welcome to ignore the previous session information, and at the very least would need to make sure the story file information matches that of the actual previous session.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=20#p7266
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-07-20 11:05:38

[quote="Endosphere"]I believe you're saying that it is the carnivorous act itself that you find horrifying, while I'm saying such behavior is only potentially horrifying to me if it was willful and chosen in preference to alternatives which were well-comprehended by the carnivorous actor.[/quote]
I think you understand, but maybe you underestimate the effect it has on others. 

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/55635034@N00/sets/72157623953202940/">http://www.flickr.com/photos/55635034@N ... 953202940/</a>

These photos that I posted caused several of my friends to recoil in horror and some of them even said it made them want to become vegan.  Out of consideration to my friends, I omitted the photo of myself ripping the tongue out of the skull with my teeth because of my unreasonably gleeful expression. I regret that I can't share it with you now for purposes of discussion. [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote] 

My theory is that the amount of horror that food can cause in a person is related to the amount of alienation from Nature that they experience. For me, it's the alienation itself that is most horrifying, not the killing and eating. But to truly confront death every time you sit down at the table (or check on your livestock) can be a challenge to the spirit.

[quote="Endosphere"] The setting is to be in a recreational woodland area on the outskirts of an otherwise mundane modern-day American small town, and the player's general goal will be simply to survive the scenario by escaping the area before an inevitable military response by government officials to growing zombie hordes results in the obliteration of the greater geographical area.  The "substance" of the gameplay, other than those activities that contribute directly to the main goal of survival by the player-character, will focus on unravelling the enigma of the zombies (what are they, why are they here, is their current rising a unique event, etc) as well as a more familiar goal of rescuing a loved-one residing in the area who may or may not be more involved in the zombie phenomenon than the protagonist initially suspects.[/quote]
That calls to mind The Andromeda Strain - a story where the last-resort destruction of the area would actually have resulted in a greater disaster, the spreading of the contagion. I can see how that might resonate very strongly with a current audience - consider the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, for example. It might be an opportunity to cast the zombies as the "lesser evil" if you wanted to tell that kind of story.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1245&start=0#p7267
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: [Boston] Come play Zork with us
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2010-07-20 12:04:03

Sorry for the short-ish notice. This is our second attempt at an IF
playing group to complement our IF writing group.

[quote]The People’s Republic of Interactive Fiction Presents: ZORK

July 25th, 2 - 5 pm
MIT Campus: Bulding 66 Room 480.

Come and play Zork where it all started. We will be venturing together into the dungeons of the Great Underground Empire.

Inspired by Adventure / Colossal Cave, Zork was one of the first text adventure games, developed by a team of students at MIT back in 1977 on a PDP-10. If you’ve never played a text adventure game, this is your chance to experience the joys of playing through the command prompt by joining others in the adventure. If you’re an old Zork hand, help us track down in-jokes and historic references.[/quote]

Also, we’ll be trying to broadcast the session on Ustream:
[url]http://www.ustream.tv/channel/people-s-republic-of-interactive-fiction-zork[/url]

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1242&start=0#p7268
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: some common prepositions?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-07-20 13:15:42

It's verb-specific, of course. Looking over old code, I see I have

get out/off/up
get out/off of X
get in/into/on/onto X
put X in/inside/into Y
put X on/onto Y
go to/toward/towards X
go out/outside/outward/outwards
throw X at/against/on/onto/in/onto Y

Even some obscure cases like "throw rock down chasm". (I agree that "down" isn't grammatically a preposition, but for the purposes of IF parsing it's the same thing -- a fixed word in a grammar line.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1167&start=10#p7269
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Floating-point math in Glulx
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-07-20 13:22:12

+Inf + +Inf = +Inf. 
+Inf + -Inf = NaN (I was trying to imply this with the Inf-Inf line... Subtraction is always addition with the opposite sign.)
Multiplications produce infinity with the appropriate sign bit.

I'm going by Javascript's behavior, when writing the spec. You can do the tests yourself. If I find cases where libc varies, I'll rethink them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1244&start=0#p7270
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parameter passing in i6/i7
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-07-20 13:36:09

No.

Last time I answered an I7 question "no", I was wrong... I think it's no, though.

*However*, you shouldn't need call-by-reference to do what you want -- assuming I'm reading your example correctly. Indexed text objects are mutable. You can use one of the "replace ... in TEXT with ..." phrases to change the *contents* of an indexed text that you were passed (by value).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1244&start=0#p7271
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parameter passing in i6/i7
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-07-20 14:28:21

Another way to simplify the same code is with the bit [code]((+ concatenation +)-->1)({target}, {T})[/code], freeing you from using [code]Section - I6 Bindings

Concatenation_phrase is a phrase (indexed text, indexed text) -> indexed text that varies.
When play begins:change concatenation_phrase to concatenation;

Include(- Global concatenation_phrase; -) after "Definitions.i6t".
The concatenation_phrase variable translates into i6 as "concatenation_phrase".

[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1239&start=0#p7272
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Transcripts collection proposal
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-07-20 14:45:00

[quote="Dannii"]Ben, sending the terp and terp version is a great idea! Should it be a bunch of items, or more like "Gargoyle 2009-08-25 (Git 1.2.6)"[/quote]

The latter, I think. I have something like the browser UA string in mind.

[quote="Dannii"]
I also like the idea of an exit code. But, what about if you want to pick it up later from a savefile?[/quote]

Well, you could probably just ignore the save / restore question, since it should be mostly clear from the transcript where the player is in the game world. Restoring from a save within a single game would append to the current transcript. Restoring it at the start of a new game would print the introductory text through the first prompt, but there would be an early [b]save[/b] command to signal the transition.

[quote="Danni"]
I still don't think that we need to specify how to generate session IDs. Wouldn't it solve the situation you describe if the session ID gets stored in the savefile? However that makes me think of another issue... what if the server has already cleared the original log? If you have a session ID you should send it with the handshake, but then use whichever ID the server returns.[/quote]

I'm not sure how I feel about storing the session ID in the save file, if it's meant to be a temporary variable tied to the individual player. In theory save files could be shared by any number of people, though in practice I doubt this happens often.

It might make more sense to task the interpreter with generating a UUID for each transcript session and ask the server to validate that identifier. It could either reject (non 200 code) or reply with the session ID. Then the interpreter can just write out <UUID>_<session>.txt somewhere and submit at a convenient time.

The session ID would function as a shared secret; the server will only accept updates for that UUID if the client also sends the correct session ID. In the event we wind up with a single community server hosting these transcripts, we want to avoid the situation where a malicious user or spammer could corrupt valid submissions by sending text fragments to random UUIDs. This is especially important if the transcripts would be available for search engines to index.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1227&start=10#p7273
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Without Hints
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2010-07-20 15:05:03

[quote="zarf"][quote]Has anyone ever done it in the era of widespread net availability?[/quote]

Sure. Many of us adventure fans solve many puzzles without hints. Maybe even *most* of them.

What's rare is for someone to *refuse* to use hints for *any* puzzle -- even the annoying illogical one in that one game that makes no sense. (As it were.)[/quote]

This.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1243&start=0#p7274
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Calculating a property?
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-07-20 16:25:07

Hmmm.  I'm playing with the Bulky Items extension, hoping to get it to play nicely with the idea of Strength and carrying capacity.  In particular, I hope to say "if the player is strong enough to pick it up with one arm, the item is not bulky; if the player must use two arms to pick it up, it is bulky; if the player cannot pick it up with two arms, it is too heavy.  If it's bulky, follow the bulky rules; if it's too heavy, follow the too heavy rules."

At what stage in the "actor taking a thing" do I assign these properties?  Is this a "Before" or a "Check" thing?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1242&start=0#p7275
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: some common prepositions?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-20 16:50:23

[quote="zarf"]Even some obscure cases like "throw rock down chasm". (I agree that "down" isn't grammatically a preposition, but for the purposes of IF parsing it's the same thing -- a fixed word in a grammar line.)[/quote]

Getting deeper into the weeds of grammar nitpickery, "down" [i]is[/i] a preposition there, I think, because it has an object ("chasm").

I think the IF forms most commonly seen are:
VERB ("wait") 
VERB NOUN ("get lamp")
VERB NOUN PREPOSITION NOUN ("unlock door with key") 
VERB PREPOSITION NOUN ("look under desk")
VERB ADVERB NOUN/VERB NOUN ADVERB ("pick up lamp"/"pick lamp up") -- I'm not actually that confident that "up" is an adverb here, but I think if it were a preposition it couldn't go after the noun in this formulation
VERB NOUN NOUN ("give Terry lamp") -- here the first noun is the indirect object, the second the direct object
VERB ADVERB ("get down," "walk north," "examine north") 
ADVERB ("north")

...and any of the nouns can have adjectives (or other complex parts of the descriptions) involved, as in "open bronze door." I can't think of a common situation in which you get an adjective that isn't part of a noun name ("PAINT WALL RED"?) but that's probably because, well, I can't think of it. 

Pretty much all the adverbs seem to be directions, some of which ("up," "down," "in," "out") can also be prepositions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1243&start=0#p7276
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Calculating a property?
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-07-20 16:55:17

I tried tinkering with the Bulky Items extension a bit to make it do what I wanted, namely removing the line "A thing can be bulky.  A thing is usually not bulky."

I couldn't get a definition to work properly, though.

To decide if a thing is bulky when an actor (called the lifter) is taking the noun:
let N be the one-armed capacity of the lifter;
let M be the maximum capacity of the lifter;
if the noun is heavier than N and the noun is lighter than M, decide the noun is bulky.

Would that work?  (I'm at work, away from my Inform compiler.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1246&start=0#p7277
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Unlocking Keywords
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-07-20 16:59:13

So.  Keywords in TADS.  I did it.  But I did it badly.  And now before I make another game using them, I want to see if I can do them properly.

Basically, I used exactly the same method to implement keywords that Aaron Reed did in Blue Lacuna - namely, I implemented an action like this:

[code]
VerbRule(Keyword)
    singleDobj | 'keyword' singleDobj | 'use' singleDobj
    : KeywordAction
    verbPhrase = 'keyword (what)'
;[/code]
I was surprised that lifting code from Inform 7 to TADS worked as well as it did.  But it has a lot of problems.

Say you're in a location which is empty except for a single takeable object.  A coin, maybe.  A desirable exchange would be:

[quote]>take
(the coin)
Taken.[/quote]
At the very least you'd like to see:

[quote]>take
What do you want to take?

>coin
Taken.[/quote]
But what you actually see is:

[quote]>take
I see no take here. [/quote]
Whoops.  Obviously, the parser is matching this to the keyword action.  It sees the command as ">singledobj" where singledobj is "take", which is not a visible object.

I should add that this confusion is not universal, typing "take coin" explicitly will work.  It just seems that the parser assumes that a valid command is more likely than a command for a non-existent object, which is more likely than an incomplete or implicit command.

Inform seems to prioritise the last two situations (at least when it comes to keywords) the other way around, which isn't without [url=http://www.wigdahl.net/quern/2010/04/26/inform-7-tips-keyword-disambiguation-for-verbnoun-conflicts/]its problems[/url], but at least allows authors to implement keywords without also sabotaging the standard behaviour of the parser.

Is there a way around this?  Ideally I'd like to be able to use keywords and retain normal commands.  Hell, I'd like to be able to use keyword actions to refer to topics, but I can only imagine the mischief that would cause (I got around this using conversation nodes and special topics, but that comes with its own headaches).  

Alternatively, if I can't rehabilitate the parser, I want to euthanise it.  Could I use the TADS parser's matching and disambiguation without first checking for verbs?  Essentially just skip straight to searching for a direct object or topic that's in scope/known about and then call a method on it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1246&start=0#p7278
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Unlocking Keywords
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-07-20 18:05:46

Looks to me like the VerbRule you've written will match any single word that doesn't have other grammar -- 'take', 'wear', 'use', 'hit', and so on. Essentially, the parser is doing what you requested by defining the grammar of that VerbRule.

Another way to implement keywords would be by making them verbs. For instance, if you want 'coin' to be a valid keyword, with the implicit action 'take', write a VerbRule (CoinTake) with an an execAction that first checks whether the coin object is in scope and then, if it is, causes the indicated action, otherwise printing out a suitable error message, such as mainReport('You see no coin here. ');.

This is more work, but it strikes me as easier to control. You could spiff it up in various ways -- for instance, if the coin is already in the player's possession, the same command might trigger an examine action instead. Or, if the player is in the room with the vending machine, 'coin' might translate to 'insert coin in slot'.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1244&start=0#p7279
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parameter passing in i6/i7
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-07-20 19:12:19

[quote="Phonatacid"]Is it possible to rewrite the last function in i7 ?[/quote]
Sadly, no.

There are probably enough standard phrases (defined using I6) to do all the indexed text manipulations you'd want, but this limitation really hurts when you're working with lists or dynamic relations.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1247&start=0#p7280
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Application for downloading new Inform7 Extensions
User: Tristano / DateTime: 2010-07-20 19:57:05

Hello,

I am looking for an application for Windows that can detect new Inform7 extensions and automatically download them -- possibily, even save them in the correct folder of the author.

Chances are that an RSS oriented application might exist that could check the I7 extensions RSS page and download all extensions released after such and such a date.

Is anyone aware of any application that could be set up for the task?

Thanks a lot,

Tristano (Italy)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1243&start=0#p7281
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Calculating a property?
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-07-20 20:23:13

There, got it.
[code]First before taking a thing (this is the is it bulky rule):
	let N be the one-armed capacity of the player;
	let M be the maximum capacity of the player;
	if the noun is heavier than M, now the noun is too heavy;
	if the noun is heavier than N and the noun is lighter than M, now the noun is bulky;
	if the noun is lighter than M, now the noun is not too heavy;
	if the noun is lighter than N, now the noun is not bulky;
	continue the action.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1243&start=0#p7284
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Calculating a property?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-20 21:02:00

[quote="Hertz"]I tried tinkering with the Bulky Items extension a bit to make it do what I wanted, namely removing the line "A thing can be bulky.  A thing is usually not bulky."

I couldn't get a definition to work properly, though.

To decide if a thing is bulky when an actor (called the lifter) is taking the noun:
let N be the one-armed capacity of the lifter;
let M be the maximum capacity of the lifter;
if the noun is heavier than N and the noun is lighter than M, decide the noun is bulky.

Would that work?  (I'm at work, away from my Inform compiler.)[/quote]

I haven't used these much, but don't you want "decide yes" instead of "decide the noun is bulky"? That seems like it might let you hook the definition in in a more general way, which could work more generally than using a rule that applies only to taking.

Or perhaps you could do a "To decide" phrase that wraps up the definitions for bulky, too heavy, and whatever the other thing is in one. But I think that might require defining bulkiness as a kind of value with values bulky, too heavy, and manageable, and that'd probably play very poorly with the extension. I'm somewhat out of my depth here, though, so these are just suggestions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1239&start=0#p7285
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Transcripts collection proposal
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-07-20 21:20:52

You make some sense Ben. Although I would hope no one would feel the need to be malicious, we should be thinking of it anyway. Can you outline in full how you suggest sessions be managed?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=20#p7286
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-07-20 21:28:50



@capmikee

Interesting pictures; after all we can't have a proper zombie thread without some actual portrayal of gore.  I'd say that head mainly looks unappetizing because it doesn't look like it has much meat on it (unless you were aiming to eat the [url=http://ihatemymessageboard.com/2009/03/29/pork-brains-in-milk-gravy/]brains[/url], which one isn't really supposed to eat as brains can be a source of weird prion diseases--yet another possible angle on brain-eating zombies).  Presumably I'm immune to the effect you mentioned the photos have on others, because as a child a favorite pastime was to go fishing with my grandfather.  After we had caught our limit for the day, we would clean (cut, eviscerate) the fish so we could later eat them for dinner.  I suppose the sight of blood, guts, and brains just doesn't bother me since I was innoculated from this "taboo" (as you called it) at a young age.

[quote="capmikee"]My theory is that the amount of horror that food can cause in a person is related to the amount of alienation from Nature that they experience.[/quote]
This is a sound idea.  For those (including myself) living in the comfy fantasy-land of the US, Canada, and Western Europe it is relatively easy to experience a lifestyle (truly unprecedented in human history) of complete estrangement from nature and natural sensibilities, allowing all manner of odd ideas to blossom (the oddest of which is the naive belief that such a lifestyle is not odd in any way).  As implied by your observations, one can now live an entire lifetime subsisting on neatly-packaged food purchased at a supermarket; hence the unusual "revulsion" experienced by some folks when forced to ponder the ultimate source of their neatly-packaged food.  I'm saying then that this feeling of revulsion is unnatural, not its trigger.

This sort of thinking holds relevance for the zombie metaphor as well.  Western societies are, compared to most human societies elsewhere and throughout history, almost unimaginably peaceful utopias.  The average member of these societies rarely (sometimes never) squarely faces brutal violence or death.  Death consists of people "going away" (to a hospital, to an old-age home, to a gas chamber); one day we are informed by messenger that we won't be enjoying a person's company again, but their death isn't something we experience in an immediate sense.  Even more commonly, the personalized prospect of violent unexpected death at the hands of another is usually quite far removed from the life-experience of the average westerner.  The zombie is a means to facilitate pondering both of these possibilities which are, for many, remote in daily life.


@ all

So far we've been able to suggest that the zombie metaphor is indeed a fertile field for inducing horror, for in sketching its outline we've seen that the zombie metaphor contains a number of distinct aspects that offer a sort of "buffet of terror" to a variety of potential audiences:

--for some, the grotesque presentation of the zombie is a source of revulsion (don't those oozing sores hurt?);
--for some, the brutal behavior of the zombie is a source of anxiety (violence--particularly random violence--and apparent cannibalism);
--for some, the very existence of the zombie is a source of spiritual disquiet or the collapse of scientific certainty (The Dead walk the Earth?  How can this happen?)
--for some, the metaphysical implications of the zombie may be a potential source of dread or hopelessness (the view I've been espousing)
--for some, the de-personalized lifestyle of the zombie is a source of anguish (mindless constituent of an indistinguishable zombie horde)
--for some, the abolition of will is a source of consternation (voodoo zombies)
--for some, the zombie is terrifying because it behaves in an unnatural way (you can't go around engaging in rapine and murder all the time);
--for some, the zombie is terrifying because it behaves in a perfectly natural way, similar to an animal who has lost its human sensibilities (how uncivilized; can't we talk this over?);
--for some, the zombie is threatening because it represents a source of infection against which no precaution may be adequate (therefore we are powerless to resist);
--for some, the zombie is feared because it has lost its sanity; this is worse than being an animal, because at least animals are often predictable and seem to have comprehensible reasons for behaving a certain way (how can we defeat a foe we can't understand?);
--for some, the zombie is an in-your-face reminder of one's own mortality, which we'd rather try to forget about until the last possible moment (so much so that in a sense we've organized our civilization around hiding the personal prospect of death);

Does that summary leave anything out, or can some of the principles be further generalized?  Do some of these ideas merit closer examination than we've thus far given them?

Another idea we've been hinting at is that the zombie may be less worthy as an object of horror than as a means to examine our own potentially horrifying nature or behavior.  Eleas and capmikee mentioned this, and the conception of a game I proposed certainly seems to offer this idea as well (even if the player survives the zombie hordes, he then still has to survive the even more destructive activity of his own elected government officials).  As we're striving here to enhance the terror credentials of the zombie qua zombie, perhaps we should acknowledge this possibility but leave it for another time unless we think that it is indeed the most compelling facet of the zombie metaphor.

Regardless of the nature of the zombie, we've also explored a few principles for presenting the zombie to the audience (mostly thanks to the observations of bcressey):

--an air of enigma will help sustain feelings of tension regarding the creatures; perhaps the zombies engage in familiar activities to an unfamiliar end, or perhaps they engage in strange rituals of their own design, or perhaps there is an indication that zombification affects individuals in slightly different ways due to some mysterious process that we should investigate further.
--some means of further personalizing the horrific nature of the zombie (whatever that may be) will enhance the impact of the zombie device on the audience; a friend of the protagonist or the protagonist himself should directly face the possibility of zombification
--unless we can find a truly compelling vision of the genesis of the zombie that can comprehensibly be presented (or least partially revealed) to the audience, we may be better off relying on a wink from the audience that they are now switching suspension of disbelief mode to "on."

Can we determine other devices which will help us successfully (i.e. in a manner conducive to horrifying the audience) portray the zombie?

We've also mentioned some principles for constructing an effective horror game in general:

--Atmosphere is vital; if the player can be made to feel generally uneasy amidst the background upon which the drama plays out, the player will be much more susceptible to our specific efforts to be shocking or disturbing at or in regard to certain points.  To further stress this important principle, we might consider Lovecraft's expansive comment:

[quote="[url=http://www.yankeeclassic.com/miskatonic/library/stacks/literature/lovecraft/essays/supernat/supern00.htm]H. P. Lovecraft[/url]"]Atmosphere is the all-important thing, for the final criterion of authenticity is not the dovetailing of a plot but the creation of a given sensation. We may say, as a general thing, that a weird story whose intent is to teach or produce a social effect, or one in which the horrors are finally explained away by natural means, is not a genuine tale of cosmic fear; but it remains a fact that such narratives often possess, in isolated sections, atmospheric touches which fulfill every condition of true supernatural horror-literature. Therefore we must judge a weird tale not by the author's intent, or by the mere mechanics of the plot; but by the emotional level which it attains at its least mundane point. If the proper sensations are excited, such a "high spot" must be admitted on its own merits as weird literature, no matter how prosaically it is later dragged down. The one test of the really weird is simply this -- whether of not there be excited in the reader a profound sense of dread, and of contact with unknown spheres and powers; a subtle attitude of awed listening, as if for the beating of black wings or the scratching of outside shapes and entities on the known universe's utmost rim.[/quote]
--Some effort should be made to accomodate variations in audience ability.

I would expand and modify this last principle as saying that the overall objective of a well-designed game is to satisfy its audience.  Perhaps others believe that the overall objective of a well-designed game should be to clearly communicate the artistic vision of the designer to the audience.   Even if that is the case, however, the practical means of communicating that vision must still be to provide a game that satisfies the audience.  If the audience rejects the game, quits playing half-way through, finishes but feels strongly dissatisfied enough to never again think of the experience and dissuade others from playing, etc, then the artist has failed to fully express any artistic vision using the chosen medium--in other words, the artist has failed as an artist as well as a game-designer.

Some general techniques for satisfying the game audience may be:

--Providing a rich environment for the player to explore something (an idea, a theme, a technique, a characterization, an intellectual challenge, etc) which uniquely satisfies that particular player;
--Avoiding contrivance that jars the player from immersion in the fantasy-escapism of which the gaming experience largely consists;
--Providing an opportunity for the player to feel satisfaction in being an active participant in resolving the game in a way that is satisfactory to the player;
--Avoiding obscurity (whether in conception, in presentation, or in the mechanics of gameplay) that may estrange the player from the experience potentially offered by the game.

"Satisfaction" here is a carefully chosen term that can signify a broad range of experiences.  In a horror game, I believe satisfaction in the audience will above all else consist of their experience of genuine feelings of terror.  This design goal is justified by the likely fact that the audience has chosen to play our horror game at all rather than play [i]Tetris[/i], and we may safely presume therefore that they'd like to be horrified.

While we continue to move toward a better understanding of the zombie itself, we should also continue thinking about how we will express the zombie metaphor using our chosen medium of a game.  We've already seen a number of innovative ideas in this regard.  What are some other general considerations of game design we should keep in mind, with a view to effectively applying them to the horrific tale of the zombie?

For example, in the conception of a game I proposed the main objective of the player is survival of various threats of which zombies are only one category.  Bcressey rigthly noted that the player may then have no compelling reason to even explore the depths of zombification I will take great effort to provide.  While my "hook" in this case to draw the player into involvement with the zombies is to present another character with whom the protagonist has an emotional attachment, one who will attempt to pull the player-character into the zombie mystique, in my case I'm not too worried that other than in some scenes of direct confrontation the player-character may minimize any involvement with the zombie phenomenon.  It's there if the player wants to explore it, but on the other hand if that doesn't strike the player's fancy there's no compulsion to do so in the basic structure of the game narrative.  What are some other methods one might use to attract the player to a suggested but not mandatory direction for the story?


@Jim Aikin

Presumably you were experimenting in your short story with the frenetic "run-on sentence" style found therein.  If this was indeed intentional, what overall effect were you hoping to achieve with that device?

The question of whether it's more terrifying to be a zombie than to be attacked by a zombie is indeed one of the central questions I'm hoping to explore here.  I'm saying the answer isn't certain, and perhaps that the answer can't be known with any certainty.


@bcressey

You made a good observation about the nature of Lovecraft's written medium.  I too think film or visual imagery is a potentially superior medium for the expression of horror art (so much so that I honestly don't usually take much of an interest in written horror tales compared to my interest in horror films).  Perhaps by examining Lovecraft's less-than-successful efforts to consistently convey through writing something he obviously (in my view) understood very well, we can learn some important lessons.  For example Lovecraft had tremendous respect for the works of Arthur Machen; presumably he closely studied these works in an effort to discern how to supercede or at least duplicate their success (in terms of being horrifying).  Yet in my view Lovecraft never wrote anything that approaches the creepiness of Machen's better works.  There may then be something to looking more closely into the differences and similiarities between the work of the two authors.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1243&start=0#p7287
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Calculating a property?
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-07-20 22:04:12

I think the "first before taking" rule works just fine, because a thing can become bulky, or not bulky, depending on who is holding it.  Every time it someone attempts to take it, it changes hands, so it should change states.  It will remain in that state even after it's dropped ... until the moment someone needs it again.

The "bulky" attribute in the Bulky Items basically tells the player to drop everything to make room for one massive inventory item:  a sofa, perhaps, or a boulder.  It is separate from the "bulk" attribute in Eric Eve's Bulk Limiter (which is designed to prevent putting a sofa into a handbag, or a planet into a shoe).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1243&start=0#p7288
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Calculating a property?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-07-20 22:40:45

I think we need more games where putting a planet in a shoe is a desirable course of action...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1230&start=0#p7289
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can the "printing a parser error" activity be renamed?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-07-20 22:41:47

Per zarf's feedback, I modify the suggestion to only request the activity accept a parameter, because this syntax is already valid in 6E59+[code]Rule for printing a parser error FOR: [...].  [/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1248&start=0#p7290
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: GlkNew
User: George / DateTime: 2010-07-21 01:17:25

Anyone else seen this yet?

<a class="postlink" href="http://glknew.org/">http://glknew.org/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1239&start=10#p7291
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Transcripts collection proposal
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-07-21 01:40:08

[quote="Dannii"]You make some sense Ben. Although I would hope no one would feel the need to be malicious, we should be thinking of it anyway. Can you outline in full how you suggest sessions be managed?[/quote]

Tweaking the session handshake should be fine.

From the interpreter, UUID generated per [url=http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4122]RFC 4122[/url]:
[code]
{
   "ifid": "ZCODE-2-080406-A377",
   "url": "http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/LostPig.z8",
   "release": 2,
   "serial": "080406",
   "contact": "Dannii <curiousdannii@gmail.com>",
   "interpreter": "Gargoyle 2009-08-25 (Git 1.2.6)",
   "uuid": "f81d4fae-7dec-11d0-a765-00a0c91e6bf6"
}
[/code]

The server should perform minimal validation on the UUID, to ensure that a "future" UUID has not been requested. This prevents the (improbable) case where an uncommonly dedicated attacker decides to bombard the server and claim all possible UUIDs, which could otherwise produce a denial-of-service scenario.

Assuming a database-backed transcript store, a further sanity check would query the DB to make sure that the UUID was not already in use. Failing either check would result in a non-200 HTTP result. A UUID that passed these checks would be added to the list of claimed UUIDs, along with the randomly generated session key.

Then from the server:

[code]
{
   "session": 7253,
   "input": 1,
   "response": 1,
   "tagged": 0,
   "time": 1
}
[/code]

Where session represents the "secret" key that any subsequent transcript submissions must include alongside that UUID. Per your original proposal, this could be virtually anything with at least a few bits of entropy. 

Subsequent client submissions then look like this:

[code]
{
   "uuid": "f81d4fae-7dec-11d0-a765-00a0c91e6bf6",
   "session": 7253,
   "log": [
      {
         "time": "2010-07-18T03:04:12",
         "input": "x fsih",
         "response": "You can't see any such thing.",
         "response-type": "libmsg",
         "response-code": 30
      },
      {
         "time": "2010-07-18T03:04:48",
         "input": "x fish",
         "response": "Looks tasty."
      }
   ]
}
[/code]

Upon receipt, the server would immediately check the UUID and session keys. Invalid ones would cause that submission to be discarded, ideally without any further processing since the remaining content should be considered malicious.

Certainly this is overkill, given the overwhelmingly polite behavior of the IF community, but remote transcript logging presents a somewhat unique case of two-way trust. Both the client and the server deserve a way to determine that the other side plays by the rules. Otherwise the value of the data being exchanged is sufficiently low that there's no reason for either party to accept the risk.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1233&start=0#p7292
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 for OS 10.5.8?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-07-21 02:00:57

[quote="vaporware"]Andrew Hunter has posted a fixed IDE on the bug tracker. It only includes the 6E59 compiler, but I suppose you could try swapping in the 6E72 compiler.[/quote]
Your suggestion of swapping the compiler seems to work fine. I'm now running the 6E59 IDE with both 6E72 compilers. This is a huge relief, as it allows me to get busy updating the Handbook.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1244&start=0#p7293
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parameter passing in i6/i7
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2010-07-21 02:43:17

[quote]*However*, you shouldn't need call-by-reference to do what you want -- assuming I'm reading your example correctly. Indexed text objects are mutable. You can use one of the "replace ... in TEXT with ..." phrases to change the *contents* of an indexed text that you were passed (by value).[/quote]

[code]
When play begins:
	let t be some indexed text;
	let t be "hello";
	test_add "X" to t;
	say t;
	say "[line break]";
	replace the text t in t with "[t]X"; 
	say t;

To test_add (T - indexed text) to (target - indexed text):
	replace the text target in target with "[target][T]"; 
[/code]

This produces:
[quote]
hello
helloX
[/quote]

Hence the impossibility to implement the aforementioned "add" text routine. For the same reason,

[code]
To decide what indexed text is pointer to (T - indexed text):
	(- {-pointer-to:T} -).
[/code]

won't work. I guess it's because at the i6 level {-pointer-to:x} variables are translated as values. Everything in i6 is passed  by value except objects (at least that's what the following piece of code seems to imply)

[code]
A test object is a kind of thing.
It has some indexed text called the test string. The test string of a test object is usually "FAIL".

The tested object is a test object;

When play begins:
	launch_test_on the tested object;
	say the test string of the tested object;

To launch_test_on (O - test object):
	change the test string of O to "SUCCESS".
[/code]

produces

[quote]
SUCCESS
[/quote]

So if you want to directly process a variable by its reference (i.e. without using a "change x to y"), you'll have to use i6 inline code. 
IMO a feature that would allow the author to write I7 "phrases" not as i6 routines but as i7 inline expansions would be much welcomed.

For example my "add" text routine would read as follow:
[code]
Expand add (T - indexed text) to (target - indexed text):
	replace the text target in target with "[target][T]";
[/code]

and thus,
[code]
When play begins:
	let t be some indexed text;
	let t be "hello";
	add "X" to t;
[/code]
would be (strictly ?) equivalent to
[code]
When play begins:
	let t be some indexed text;
	let t be "hello";
	replace the text t in t with "[t]X";
[/code]

If i7 had a system of that sort I think less people would need to use i6.

Also,
[quote]
Another way to simplify the same code is with the bit
[code]
((+ concatenation +)-->1)({target}, {T})
[/code]
[/quote]

thanks ! I knew i could write stuffs like this, but hell, it was totally out of my mind.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=20#p7294
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-07-21 05:51:56

Sorry for the delay; I got caught up in IRL stuff.

[quote="Endosphere"][quote="Eleas"]When it comes to Zombies, for instance, one remaining assumption (even in this thread) seems to be that of us versus the Other. The Other is the bad thing, and we compare ourselves against it. It's something everyone does, and it's still pretty much SOP everywhere.[/quote]
Could you elaborate on this point?  You've mentioned it several times now, which leads me to believe you're trying to say something other than my own main point.  I consider my central thesis so far to be:

[quote="Endosphere"]The modern model of zombification that presents zombies as "victims" "subjected" to a "disease" is highly unsatisfying. This model is a natural application of our modern scientific-rationalistic world view to offer an explanation for the enigmatic observed behavior of the zombie. The assumption is that healthy individuals would never choose to behave as monstrous cannibal beasts; therefore anyone exhibiting such behavior is either insane or under the influence of some irresistable compulsion.[/quote]
or perhaps even:

[quote="Endosphere"]The living fear when they perceive they may lose something of value. Do zombies seem to lack fear because they value little, because they value things we can't perceive in preference things familiar to us, because they don't perceive any plausible risk of loss, or because they simply are truly mindless?[/quote]
I think you're trying to say something other than this, but I'm not getting your idea and if that's the case I would like to better understand your views[/quote]

I think I'm trying to expand on what seemed to be your earlier desire - i.e., to take the Zombie archetype new places, to reinvent it so that it becomes a fresh source of terror. My central argument is that all the classical horror archetypes were devised during past decades, and that all of them attack something that makes us feel psychologically [i]safe[/i], in one way or another. The shocking thing about the Victorian-era vampire, for instance, was its ability to subvert the social order, to bridge the gap between men and beast, to induce Unspeakable Lusts into once-virginal women, and to [i]contaminate the very blood of socity[/i]... all those qualities mirrored very real thoughts and fears. To speak them out loud and to give them [i]form[/i], as Le Fanu and later Stoker did, made for an intensely frightening creature that, so to speak, invaded the foundations of the reader himself. As I see it, it's a fictionalized meditation on the issues of a given age. When those issues settle or abate, so does the power of the monster itself to induce terror.

Zombies, too, subvert the natural order. They transgress boundaries of their own - they eat flesh (a taboo), they are dead when they should be alive (an impossibility), they make more of their kind (a perversion of reproduction), and they are eternally and unreasoning in their hunger (a perversion of appetite). And so, they invoke the spectre of overpopulation, famine, disease, and savagery. Those are fears that are no longer as fresh as they once were.

As a consequence, I feel that yeah, you can take past tropes and conventions and devise something bloody frightening from it. But in order to make something truly terrifying to the reader, it's almost always necessary to look not to what frightened people in the past - those issues that we are [i]now[/i] able to look at with a measured stare, with our equanimity intact - but the issues that we have [i]ourselves[/i]. Such as, for instance, one that we still haven't done away with in the context of horror, or at least not enough to make it comfortable. 

Monsters are questions. They are questions that we don't really wish to answer. Once you introduce an issue that still bleeds and screams, you'll have immediacy and terror.

And so, I thought scapegoating would be as good a sacred cow as any. Because we do, instinctively, scapegoat, and we do naturally and in order to feel safe. 

We admire magnificent bad guys, but we don't support them; Darth Vader, Rakoth Maugrim, Ozymandias, the Joker, Mr Morden, Scorpius, Lijah Cuu, they are all brilliant, are all edgy, and are [i]all[/i] on the [i]wrong side[/i] because they dare to be unreservedly bad. And because we [i]know[/i] they are bad, because they are perfect antipodes to the shining light, we can love our heroes and invest more in the beautiful hopelessness of their task. The heroic struggle gains depth.

Sympathetic villains have been done before, and that's not where I'm going with it. Instead, I'm proposing taking it a step further, that the whole structure of the heroes (average joes!) versus the villains (flesh-eating zombies!) should be done away with at the root level. The object is not to "shake things up" for "added variety", but to remove the ability of the player to instinctively label the zombies "other"... while still retaining the classically voracious and lethal behaviour that zombies are known for. This is not making the zombies sympathetic. It is about making them flawed, dirty, and [i]real[/i].

The Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark are villains. They're scenery. The Nazis in [url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1034303/]Defiance[/url], in contrast, are entirely believable... and all the more horrible because of it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1246&start=0#p7295
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Unlocking Keywords
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-07-21 07:07:04

That certainly is one solution, and one I used for some keywords in Walker & Silhouette, but it is a lot more work.  

I like to define consistent actions on whole classes of objects, which this method precludes.  And if I'm going to have to change my game-making process to implement the world in a rules based fashion, I might as well just use Inform 7 (which, funnily enough, in this case would allow me to use more OOP).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1239&start=10#p7296
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Transcripts collection proposal
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-07-21 08:59:12

Having both a UUID and a session ID mean the session ID could be shown on the web (in URLs etc)? I guess that's an advantage.

What would get associated with a savefile? And do you think it should be stored externally to the savefile?

You suggest using the old type of UUIDs which were based on time and MAC address rather than version four which is almost entirely purely random? Why?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1239&start=10#p7297
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Transcripts collection proposal
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-07-21 09:27:45

[quote="Dannii"]DavidC, what kind of location do you mean?

In any case, you could always add it to your own terps/servers. If other people think it would be useful to them too, then I'll consider adding it to the recommended handshake.
[/quote]

The room location in the game. I'm not sure what part of your proposal is "required" and what parts are fluid, but I assume the actual JSON object that's logged by the client can any number of elements, as long as the "well known" elements are assigned to the proper names.

So if I wanted to have a client report:

{
   "uuid": "f81d4fae-7dec-11d0-a765-00a0c91e6bf6",
   "session": 7253,
   "log": [
    {
        "time": 1
        "input": "x fish",
        "response": "You can't see any such thing.",
        "location": "The Kitchen",
        "inventory": "You are carrying a knife, a wooden spoon, and a small crystal.",
        "score": 45,
        "max-score": 100,
        "score-ranking": "amatuer"
    }
}

I would think "input" and "response" are "required" and everything else is optional.

I would say that I would prefer "command" or "user-command" over "input", but I'm just being picky.

I'm sure it's also obvious that using this as a transcript logging feature is only one use. This methodology could also be used to implement Channel IO.

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1239&start=10#p7298
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Transcripts collection proposal
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-07-21 09:42:11

Room name would be very useful. That way if you see an error message you can pinpoint the problem to where in the game that happens.

Maybe it would be wise to leave that part of the specification open, so that you could add whatever info you want to the client's response? Room name, current scene, inventory items, debugging data...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1243&start=10#p7299
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Calculating a property?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-21 09:52:35

[quote="Hertz"]I think the "first before taking" rule works just fine, because a thing can become bulky, or not bulky, depending on who is holding it.  Every time it someone attempts to take it, it changes hands, so it should change states.  It will remain in that state even after it's dropped ... until the moment someone needs it again.

The "bulky" attribute in the Bulky Items basically tells the player to drop everything to make room for one massive inventory item:  a sofa, perhaps, or a boulder.  It is separate from the "bulk" attribute in Eric Eve's Bulk Limiter (which is designed to prevent putting a sofa into a handbag, or a planet into a shoe).[/quote]

Yeah, I guess to do what I was thinking in the general case you'd have to make bulkiness into a relation, and that almost certainly wouldn't play nice with the extension. I'm not even sure if you could make such a relation, or only in 6Exx, or what.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1239&start=10#p7300
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Transcripts collection proposal
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-07-21 10:00:32

Ahh room location! I thought you meant some real world location.

Well the minimal example I gave had only the session info and the bare list of commands entered, the "input" item. But you could definitely include everything sent over all channels. I'd encourage you to implement a compatible log protocol in the FyreVM, though I'm sure you'll understand that the particulars of the channel IO wouldn't be part of the recommended standard (just because no other system uses the data in the same way).

While you could use this as some sort of IO transport layer (and I would plan to use something similar for my web IO system if I ever get around to making it) I'd hesitate to make it too complicated. I don't think it would be appropriate for it have rich media (ie, formatted text, windows, images etc.), but instead represents the plain text transcripts that most terps can produce.

You've both raised something though which I think could be worth putting in the standard: how about submitting the status line when errors are logged (leave it out for the rest.) Now the question is, log the status line as it was before the command was entered, or after (as sent with the response)? Are they likely to be different?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1239&start=10#p7301
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Transcripts collection proposal
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-07-21 10:20:38

[quote="Dannii"]While you could use this as some sort of IO transport layer (and I would plan to use something similar for my web IO system if I ever get around to making it) I'd hesitate to make it too complicated. I don't think it would be appropriate for it have rich media (ie, formatted text, windows, images etc.), but instead represents the plain text transcripts that most terps can produce.
[/quote]

I wasn't suggesting your proposal turn into Channel IO...I was just pointing out the similarities and secondary usage possibilities. I like JSON and RESTful stuff. I've been playing with Comet lately and am trying to figure out if there's an IF usage with it.

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1239&start=10#p7302
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Transcripts collection proposal
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-07-21 10:25:20

I wouldn't think there'd be too much use for Comet (server push) technologies... unless you're doing a lot with timed events etc. Standard HTTP would work fine for non-timed stuff. Though perhaps there are uses surrounding IF but not in IF itself... you could have live chat for others playing a story for example.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1239&start=10#p7303
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Transcripts collection proposal
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-07-21 10:38:30

[quote="Dannii"]Having both a UUID and a session ID mean the session ID could be shown on the web (in URLs etc)? I guess that's an advantage.[/quote]

I would probably use the UUID as the public field, since that is the one that should be reasonably unique. Guaranteed unique, if the server disallows reuse of the same UUID, which I think it should.

[quote="Dannii"]
What would get associated with a savefile? And do you think it should be stored externally to the savefile?
[/quote]

I would be inclined to not store anything with the save file, or at least make that optional and up to the library author. Clever libraries could track UUID / session ID across different game launches, appending transcripts from a restored game to the previous session. Regular libraries could just generate a new UUID / session ID every time they launched the story file, even if the player subsequently restored from a save that had a transcript underway.

I'm not sure there's a lot of value in one monolithic transcript versus several partial ones. Authors that have been through the testing process might disagree. One thing I would like to see on the server is some sort of automated transcript processing that builds on zarf's demo of interactive transcripts, posted to raif a while back. For that to work you'd have to match and interleave heterogenous script fragments, so it should be OK for clients not to guarantee one transcript per game played.

Another reason to favor multiple transcripts is that if you have exit code tracking, plus some way to get at the location per David's suggestion, you can see if there's a high rate of abandonment at a certain part of the game. That could point to content problems with that area.

[quote="Dannii"]
You suggest using the old type of UUIDs which were based on time and MAC address rather than version four which is almost entirely purely random? Why?[/quote]

Well, time-based UUIDs could be validated based on the encoded time, where random ones cannot be. But that validation isn't that useful, and I guess it must be easier to use the random UUIDs from the JS interpreters. So that's probably a better direction.

An additional security feature would be to have the initial client request send a checksum of the story file alongside the story UUID. The server would have to store a list of valid checksums for a given story file, and compare that against the client submission. Invalid checksums could be blocked outright or cause the transcript to be graylisted, pending moderator review.

This would prevent the case where a malicious author publishes a new IF game claiming the same UUID as a prior IF work, causing players to unwittingly corrupt the transcript pool for the earlier game. It doesn't stop an individual from spoofing both the checksum and the UUID on his own system, but it does more or less prevent him from getting other players to participate.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=20#p7304
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-07-21 11:16:07

[quote="Endosphere"]Interesting pictures; after all we can't have a proper zombie thread without some actual portrayal of gore.  I'd say that head mainly looks unappetizing because it doesn't look like it has much meat on it (unless you were aiming to eat the [url=http://ihatemymessageboard.com/2009/03/29/pork-brains-in-milk-gravy/]brains[/url], which one isn't really supposed to eat as brains can be a source of weird prion diseases--yet another possible angle on brain-eating zombies).[/quote]

The little meat that was on the jowls was incredibly tasty and well worth it. The tongue was also very, very good. I did indeed eat the brains (not my favorite part) and the eyeballs too. And I used the skull to make a broth, which formed the base of a delicious curried stew.

Now I'm afraid I'm [i]really[/i] derailing this thread: It's my opinion that the "prion diseases" threat is a phantom, fueled by the very fears we've been discussing here. There are other explanations for BSE and vCJD but they don't get much press. I consider brains a health food - they are one of the world's best sources of DHA, the body's most critical omega-3 fatty acid, as well as Vitamin B12 and Vitamin K2.

I would never eat pork brains in milk gravy, however. I don't eat dairy. Nice to see that they're gluten-free, though.  [emote]:D[/emote] 

[quote="endosphere"]Western societies are, compared to most human societies elsewhere and throughout history, almost unimaginably peaceful utopias.  The average member of these societies rarely (sometimes never) squarely faces brutal violence or death.  Death consists of people "going away" (to a hospital, to an old-age home, to a gas chamber); one day we are informed by messenger that we won't be enjoying a person's company again, but their death isn't something we experience in an immediate sense.  Even more commonly, the personalized prospect of violent unexpected death at the hands of another is usually quite far removed from the life-experience of the average westerner.  The zombie is a means to facilitate pondering both of these possibilities which are, for many, remote in daily life.[/quote]
In my mind, this is the reason that Western societies crave horror. Industrialization has left holes in our experience that we fill with some pretty ghastly stuff. I'm not an expert on this, but it seems to me that what passes for horror in pre-industrial societies takes the form of particularly gory fairy tales. They're filled with violence and sometimes cruelty, but they're not really scary.

There's a parallel here - the most frightening monster is the one we never clearly see - and at the same time the most frightening things in our lives have been removed from our experience so that we can't easily confront them.

[quote="[url=http://www.yankeeclassic.com/miskatonic/library/stacks/literature/lovecraft/essays/supernat/supern00.htm]H. P. Lovecraft[/url]"]We may say, as a general thing, that a weird story whose intent is to teach or produce a social effect, or one in which the horrors are finally explained away by natural means, is not a genuine tale of cosmic fear[/quote]
I don't want to discount this, because I think it's important. But I'm reminded of a statement I've heard from many people interested in science: They feared that learning about a mysterious phenomenon would ruin the sense of wonder they experience at it, but after they have learned all they can, their sense of wonder only increases at the further mysteries their learning reveals. So perhaps the goal is not to avoid explanations altogether, but to provide true-to-life explanations that present more questions than they answer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1248&start=0#p7305
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: GlkNew
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-07-21 11:28:38

I hadn't, actually. Thanks.

This is a Glk library (written in C, as most of them are) attached to a web-app back end. That's a model which I've thought about, but I haven't implemented -- I've been focussed on the browser-only model of Parchment/Quixe. So this is good.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1249&start=0#p7306
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Game clubs?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-07-21 11:30:57

I'm wondering what exists currently in the way of game-playing clubs. Is Club Floyd still going on?

I'd also be interested in a non-realtime game playing club - kind of like what Emily was saying about Curses in the "Without Hints" thread. It could be as simple as choosing a game and starting a thread for it on this forum.

Does anything like that exist, and if not, is anyone interested in starting it? I recently finished LGOP and am looking for another largish game to play - possibly Infocom, possibly raif-classic, possibly recent. A group of people would not only be fun for discussing the story and sharing hints, but also for choosing a game...

- Mike

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1250&start=0#p7307
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Combat handled as a conversation
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-07-21 11:37:13

In examining the needs of this game, a big burly Conan-meets-Gor style sword-and-sandal adventure, I'm taking a look at combat.  You're only ever going to be fighting one person at a time, and I want it to be more complicated than "attack Thog with sword / g / g / g / g" until Thog is dead, repeat.  First, you should be able to BOAST before or after combat; you should be able to TAUNT, MOCK, SLANDER or INSULT an enemy before or during combat to enrage him; you should be able to DEFY an enemy, LAUGH AT him or SPIT ON him.  After the combat is done you can choose to SUBDUE or SLAY your enemy, say SORRY, whatever.  (Actual combat mechanics, like blocks and ripostes and feints, I don't know yet.)

I'm therefore trying to think of structures that can be applied to a combat, and Eric Eve's conversations came to mind.  They have a current interlocutor; I could use a current combatant.  They have an implicit greeting; I can use an implicit [i]en garde[/i].  If you leave the room during a conversation, it has an implicit goodbye; I could have an implicit retreat.

Is there a better structure to handle combat?  Scenes, perhaps?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1250&start=0#p7308
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat handled as a conversation
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-07-21 11:46:18

I think the analogy is pretty strong.  Matter of fact you could probably implement it with Eric's extension, with a few tweaks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1244&start=0#p7309
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parameter passing in i6/i7
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-07-21 11:56:04

Looking at your first example -- okay, I see what you mean. I thought that would work, but indexed variables have weirder semantics than I thought.

Arguably it *should* have worked. The documentation on "replace" doesn't give warnings about scope.

Returning to your general suggestion: many programming languages get along fine without call-by-reference parameters. I am not a big fan of them myself. I see the "inline" behavior of I6 inclusions as a hack of necessity, not a feature that should be expanded.

This doesn't mean it's a disastrous idea -- but I do think it's potentially very confusing. I7 already has a lot of value-reference confusion to go around.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1239&start=10#p7310
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Transcripts collection proposal
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-07-21 12:02:52

[quote="Dannii"]You've both raised something though which I think could be worth putting in the standard: how about submitting the status line when errors are logged (leave it out for the rest.) Now the question is, log the status line as it was before the command was entered, or after (as sent with the response)? Are they likely to be different?[/quote]

I'm not sure if it's a good idea to send the status line as it is. Inform default is room name on the left, score and turn count on the right, but the author can change this to whatever else. Perhaps the client could send the status line as a backup if the game doesn't specify the current room's name, but it shouldn't be trusted to contain any useful information.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1248&start=0#p7311
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: GlkNew
User: weiju / DateTime: 2010-07-21 12:10:10

Very interesting, thanks !

Wei-ju

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1244&start=0#p7312
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parameter passing in i6/i7
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-07-21 12:11:32

[quote="Phonatacid"]Hence the impossibility to implement the aforementioned "add" text routine. For the same reason,[code]
To decide what indexed text is pointer to (T - indexed text):
   (- {-pointer-to:T} -).[/code]won't work. I guess it's because at the i6 level {-pointer-to:x} variables are translated as values. Everything in i6 is passed by value except objects (at least that's what the following piece of code seems to imply)[/quote]
Usually when Inform starts dealing with pointers and such, it always passes it to one of the Blk*() functions which... works some sort of magic.  I do know that Inform 7 has a mantra of "one block [of memory], one pointer" which is how it avoids issues with garbage collection and memory leaks, and the pointer-to stuff is something of a workaround. 
I'd love to have a primer on the details of how that works, if only for knowledge. I haven't experimented with pointer-to, but I do know just from C coding that your above code wouldn't work, because a pointer-to-indexed-text isn't the same thing as indexed text itself.
If you've the time & inclination, try creating, say, a new unit called pointer that's written with a @ in front of it.  And have the {-pointer-to:T} phrase return that unit. Like this:[code]A pointer is a kind of value. @99999 specifies a pointer. 

To decide what pointer is the pointer to (T - indexed text): (- {-pointer-to:T} -).

Space is some indexed text that varies.

WHen play begins, say pointer to space.[/code]Then try writing the same phrase using indexed text directly, and using the pointer directly, and see how the generated I6 differs.  You might be able to figure something out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1250&start=0#p7313
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat handled as a conversation
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-21 12:14:29

I like this. D&D-derived systems (as in the Reliques of Tolti-Aph) without positional maneuvering or multi-party dynamics or something turn into the "g/g/g" problem you mentioned.  A better stat-based system for IF would be something like the turn-based battle systems that most CRPGs seem to have (I've played it in flash games like Sonny, Monsters' Den, and Kongai, which I guess is a trading card game), where you have a selection of moves that tend to have a certain power cost, may give status effects instead of just damage, interact with other attacks/defenses, and sometimes have a certain cool down. Which means the big thing is giving a transparent menu of choices, and conversation menus seem like just the thing. 

Your taunt/insult/defy ideas sound like a good way of introducing status effects. Some other spitballed ideas: a successful PARRY leaves the opponent open to a big attack next round; or a successful TRIP could do that, but if the opponent chooses the right move against it you could be vulnerable yourself; DODGE avoids STAB while PARRY avoids SLASH, but not vice versa, and maybe an opponent who dodges against a feint is in trouble. Actually feints could work well with cooldowns; if PARRY and STAB both have a cooldown of one turn, but FEINT doesn't, then when you play FEINT vs. PARRY the opponent is wide open the next turn (he can't PARRY but you can SLASH). 

Victor Gijsbers has written some interesting stuff about [url=http://gamingphilosopher.blogspot.com/2008/08/rethinking-combat.html]initiative[/url] in a combat system; basically one fighter or another could be taking the offense, and then there could be something that changes the initiative (a successful parry or shield block, perhaps?) This again could work well with the conversation menu idea, as you'd get a different menu depending on whether you have the initiative.

Anyway, I look forward to seeing more of this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1244&start=0#p7314
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parameter passing in i6/i7
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-07-21 12:16:19

[quote="Phonatacid"][code]
When play begins:
	let t be some indexed text;
	let t be "hello";
	test_add "X" to t;
	say t;
	say "[line break]";
	replace the text t in t with "[t]X"; 
	say t;

To test_add (T - indexed text) to (target - indexed text):
	replace the text target in target with "[target][T]"; 
[/code][/quote]Which, by the way, this code works if you remember to return the answer.[code]
When play begins:
   let t be some indexed text;
   let t be "hello";
   say test_add "X" to t;
[   say t;]
   say "[line break]";
   replace the text t in t with "[t]X";
   say t;

To decide which indexed text is test_add (T - indexed text) to (target - indexed text):
   let X be indexed text;
   let X be "[target][T]";
   decide on X. [/code]It produces: 
helloX
helloX
...as you aimed for.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1249&start=0#p7315
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Game clubs?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-21 12:18:43

Club Floyd is definitely still going on -- still posting transcripts of games that've been released a couple weeks ago. The transcripts are [url=http://www.allthingsjacq.com/interactive_fiction.html#clubfloyd]here[/url]. 

I'm not on IFMud myself, though, so I would totally be interested in playing a game on the forum. Infocom might raise copyright issues, but this would be the best way to get me to play a really hard game. Would Make It Good be a good choice, or would playing it in a forum spoil the whatever it is that there is to be spoiled?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1250&start=0#p7316
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat handled as a conversation
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-07-21 12:29:42

When I first envisioned the project I wondered if I should create a whole extension for codifying mechanics for an enemy's response to maneuvers.  For instance, if a person had a strong Ego, they would be easier to Slander, but harder to Intimidate.  If a person had a strong Impulse, they'd be easier to Feint or lure out of position, but more likely to take advantage of openings in your defenses.  Or something.

I came to realize ... why bother?  I'm not trying to set up a full-blown system whereby you can attack absolutely everyone and anyone in the game; I'm trying to set up a system that enables combat to happen at certain specified moments with chosen, named enemies that are part of the plot.  Each enemy can be coded individually.

That is:  Thog is easy to Feint against, but Zyznar isn't.  Thog and Zyznar can't be Intimidated, but Grignr can be.

The advantage here is that combats aren't [i]random[/i], they're predictable, and they can be tested (eg, you can always defeat Grignr with BOAST, DRAW SWORD, INSULT GRIGNR, INTIMIDATE GRIGNR, ATTACK GRIGNR; the same tactics do not work on Thog, however).  The disadvantage is that replay value suffers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1239&start=10#p7317
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Transcripts collection proposal
User: joningold / DateTime: 2010-07-21 12:34:03

From the point of view of an author who's keen on this, the most useful things to receive would be a printout/transcript, which you could read through looking for errors/improvements which don't necessarily look like bugs; and some kind of "replayable input transcript" - just a list with line breaks of everything the player inputted, so you could replay to the error point yourself.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1251&start=0#p7318
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: From Save to Transcript to Session
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-07-21 12:35:11

So dannii's proposed transcript logging system has me thinking one step further. I'm wondering of a specification could be made for session management.

The idea that a game is played over time could have many save files, transcripts, but it's really all one session.

Or maybe a there's something that encapsulated the play of an entire game and from there we have multiple sessions, and optionally one or more transcripts in a session.

David c

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1250&start=0#p7319
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat handled as a conversation
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-21 13:06:35

Well honestly I don't know if the kind of system I envisioned would be worth replaying much even with randomized outcomes and more portability in the system. You'd probably need more procedural generation or customization of your character to make it worth replaying (in the games I was thinking of, Sonny might be replayable with different character builds, but honestly isn't that much; Monster's Den is replayable partly because of different character builds and partly because of different loot drops; Kongai has wildly varying opponents, and on random wildly varying party builds, and anyway is very short and the AI is really stupid so it's pretty much a snack-sized thing). 

So I think your individual-coding idea is a good thing. It does seem to me that it'd be fairer to the player if the different outcomes tended to have similar effects, though; at least, if boasting makes Thog run away but turns Zyznar into an unstoppable rage machine, there should be clues.

Anyway, I was partly taking off from your idea to things that I might be interested in.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1250&start=0#p7320
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat handled as a conversation
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-07-21 13:24:32

[quote="matt w"]So I think your individual-coding idea is a good thing. It does seem to me that it'd be fairer to the player if the different outcomes tended to have similar effects, though; at least, if boasting makes Thog run away but turns Zyznar into an unstoppable rage machine, there should be clues.[/quote]
I should think that the outcome of a certain maneuver could be success, no effect, or counterattack — but not something completely unpredictable.

> INTIMIDATE THOG
Thog laughs at your pitiful attempt and redoubles his attack.

versus:

> INTIMIDATE GRIGNR
Grignr recoils in fear!  Now's your chance!

but not

> INTIMIDATE ZYZNAR
Zyznar immediately surrenders and hands you the key to the iron gate.

Regarding whether there should be clues to the enemy's likely behavior, I rather feel there should be some — before the combat.  Examining the opponent, for instance, or interacting with him.  If the player is going to leap into every encounter with weapon drawn, that's his own problem.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1250&start=0#p7321
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat handled as a conversation
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-07-21 13:45:00

I would like to see this tried *with* the actual combat mechanics. It makes as much sense as the D&D-style dice race.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1244&start=0#p7322
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parameter passing in i6/i7
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-07-21 13:49:42

That last example is not what we're talking about. We already know that I7 handles the "pass an argument in, return a result back" pattern. The question is, why doesn't the "replace" phrase for indexed text act to mutate the text in the (perhaps) obvious way?

Maybe indexed texts are supposed to *not* be mutable, and "replace" is behaving analogously to "increase X by 1". But I don't know whether that's the plan, or whether this is a bug.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1250&start=0#p7323
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat handled as a conversation
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-21 14:30:58

Hertz, that seems right to me.

zarf, do you mean trying it with the hacking and slashing as opposed to the talk before (or during) the combat? That's more or less what I was thinking of:

[Initiative: Gringr]
Gringr presses forward with a flurry of blows!

1: DODGE
2: PARRY
3: TRIP
4: FEINT
>1

Gringr feints as you dodge to the side! His sword remains ready for another attack

[DODGE: available in 1 turn]
2: PARRY
3: TRIP 
4: FEINT
> 2

Gringr's stab passes by your attempt to parry and pierces your chest!
***You have died***
>RESTORE

[Initiative: Gringr]
Gringr presses forward with a flurry of blows!

1: DODGE
2: PARRY
3: TRIP
4: FEINT
>4

Both you and Gringr make a few inconclusive passes with your swords. Both your swords are still ready.

1: DODGE
2: PARRY
3: TRIP
4: FEINT
>2

Gringr attempts to slash you, but you block his blade! He falters and steps back.

[Initiative: You]

You press forward, as Gringr waves his sword defensively.

1: SLASH
2: STAB
3: KICK
4: FEINT
>4 

Gringr brings his sword up to parry you, but at the last moment you pull your sword back. Gringr is left holding his sword at an awkward angle.

[Now PARRY is on cooldown for Gringr and DODGE is his best available maneuver, so we can SLASH him.]


1: SLASH
2: STAB
3: KICK
4: FEINT
>1

Gringr tries to dodge to the side, but your sword cuts deeply into him. He falls to the ground and expires.

Obviously this rock-paper-scissors gameplay is way too simplistic, and Gringr's pattern is unclued, but it seems more appealing than the dice race to me. You can add some randomization of outcomes -- most of the games I mentioned have their attack do a standard amount of damage, with a chance to miss and/or a chance for a critical hit. And rock-paper-scissors isn't such a bad basis for a system like this, if you vary the effects; maybe one of the attacks is a one-hit kill if it succeeds, but otherwise automatically loses initiative or stops your cooldown timer or something. It'd need playtesting. (If I still had my old En Garde sourcebook that might give me some ideas.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1249&start=0#p7324
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Game clubs?
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-07-21 14:32:09

[quote="capmikee"]I'd also be interested in a non-realtime game playing club - kind of like what Emily was saying about Curses in the "Without Hints" thread. It could be as simple as choosing a game and starting a thread for it on this forum.

Does anything like that exist, and if not, is anyone interested in starting it? I recently finished LGOP and am looking for another largish game to play - possibly Infocom, possibly raif-classic, possibly recent. A group of people would not only be fun for discussing the story and sharing hints, but also for choosing a game...
[/quote]

As a part of Zifmia I was thinking it would be possible to implement a shared session game play. So you log into a site and see sessions of games and some summary of where the game is....then you select a session and possibly join others in continuing the game in that session. When you need to leave, you just log out. The session remains and anyone can come and go. We could even make it so a moderator has to be on call to guide the session. This would make it possible to play a larger game, with other people, in a real-time setting, but not be required to do it all at once or even with the same people all the time.

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1250&start=0#p7325
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat handled as a conversation
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-07-21 15:06:00

A rock-paper-scissors style of combat — or, if you prefer, Karateka — could possibly be handled this way:

[u]ATTACKS[/u]
Aggressive Attacks (lunge, hack)
Regular Attacks (thrust, swing)
Defensive Attacks (stab, slice)
Deceptive Attacks (feint)

[u]DEFENSES[/u]
Aggressive Defenses (riposte, counter)
Regular Defenses (block, parry)
Defensive Defenses (guard, dodge)
Deceptive Defenses (lure)

[u]POSITIONS[/u] (states assigned by the computer)
Helpless (cannot attack or defend; this is the point where the battle ends)
Undefended (cannot defend)
Unprepared (cannot attack)
Ready (centered position:  regular and deceptive attacks, regular and deceptive defenses available)
Extended (forward position:  aggressive and regular attacks, aggressive and regular defenses available)
Withdrawn (back position:  regular and defensive attacks, regular and defensive defenses available)

[u]MOVES[/u]
Advance (move forward from withdrawn to ready; move forward from ready to extended)
Withdraw (move backward from extended to ready; move backward from ready to withdrawn)

Then we can set up your X beats Y beats Z beats X conditions, and the states they create.  Aggressive attacks to a deceptive defense will always fail; defensive defenses to a deceptive attack always fail.  Aggressive moves always leave you undefended the next round so you cannot defend; defensive moves always leave you unprepared the next round so you cannot attack.  And so on.

Then each opponent can be given a primitive AI:  How good are they at detecting a feint?  How good are they at defending against aggressive attacks?  That way, each opponent can respond uniquely.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1239&start=20#p7326
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Transcripts collection proposal
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-07-21 15:26:32

[quote="joningold"]From the point of view of an author who's keen on this, the most useful things to receive would be a printout/transcript, which you could read through looking for errors/improvements which don't necessarily look like bugs; and some kind of "replayable input transcript" - just a list with line breaks of everything the player inputted, so you could replay to the error point yourself.[/quote]
Yeah, the title of this thread made me think "email some text to the author" and that was that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=20#p7327
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-07-21 16:03:35



That's great stuff, guys.  I think now we're starting to get to the heart (brain?) of the matter, namely how best to recast the somewhat tired zombie cliche so that it may continue to be a compelling source of terror in the future (which is indeed my general interest and the reason I started this discussion).

At the risk of disrupting our discussion by making it even more obscure (which I hope won't happen--zombies for the people!), based on the many thoughtful comments everyone has offered so far I'd like to restate my initial argument in a different way that I hope will inspire even more novel thinking about the zombie.  In the end, though, hopefully everyone realizes that to some extent we have tongue-in-cheek here and aren't really trying to [i]argue[/i] about anything other than the best way to do something entertaining--namely, make a cool zombie game. 

[quote="Eleas"]But in order to make something truly terrifying to the reader, it's almost always necessary to look not to what frightened people in the past - those issues that we are now able to look at with a measured stare, with our equanimity intact - but the issues that we have ourselves.[/quote]
Eleas did a fine job of analyzing the Gothic vampire, in a way that clearly allows us to transfer his method of analysis to the zombie.

Based simply on the volume of treatment that artists continue to crank out in all forms of media which is then eagerly consumed by audiences who find it compelling, apparently one of the major concerns of denizens of modern western civilization is the idea that Science, that shiny stainless-steel practical application of Reason on which we have quite literally constructed every aspect of our current society, has already or will very soon run utterly amok.  For some time there has been an awareness among the thoughtful sort of folk, which has been slowly filtering out to the rest of us, that the very foundation of our society almost certainly also contains the seeds of our destruction and will be the source of our undoing.

The urge to construct every aspect of life and society according to orderly rational principles threatens to utterly destroy all notions of freedom and joy (both of which are utterly irrational and inefficient phenomena) to make way for safety and predictability.  We are often now faced with demands that even the simple sensation of pleasure itself must give way to order and scientifically-determined convention.  Each time we open a news magazine or listen to a news broadcast, we are literally overwhelmed by a flood of junk science created by the paycheck-seekers of the modern science industry.  As scientific sub-disciplines multiply and the volume of our knowledge becomes far too great for any individual to even consume let alone comprehend, the primary practical effect of this deluge of pseudoscience is that the masses, unable to genuinely distinguish fact from fiction even if they make a sincere attempt, are shamelessly manipulated by the powerful (who naturally sign the paychecks of those working in their science mills).  Finally in the fields where honest scientific progress does occur, the products of this progress clearly offer us increasingly quasi-arcane and horrible powers that we just as clearly lack the wisdom to use in a beneficent manner even if we wished to do so (unlikely given human nature).

Or so say the artists.  I would never be so bold as to proclaim such as novel thoughts on my part.

Whether we agree with these conceptions or not, I don't think anyone will deny that many find them compelling.  In terms of the zombie, then, I believe we need look no further for any justification of the appeal of the modern "disease" model of zombification, with its theme of science run amok (and in which the fantastic traditional notion of undeath is increasingly excluded altogether).  That this notion of the zombie has become increasingly intermingled with the amenable yet relatively distinct idea of the "zombie apocalypse" which destroys our civilization makes the bases of both metaphors even more clear.  They both speak directly to the fears that an increasingly large number of people often experience but rarely speak of except through the parable of fiction or the incoherent ramblings of solipsistic modern philosophers, as the power establishment in our society allows little serious critique of the fundamental scientific nature of our civilization to go unpunished (lest its allegedly scientific right to rule be potentially undermined).  This observation is hardly novel either, though, as bcressey has (leaving aside the political notions) been making this point all along.

If we take what may be called the "antimodern" critique of society outlined above seriously, however, the question of how we shall live quickly devolves into uncertainty, as the final outcome of the civilization of science is yet to be determined.  Although we may generally be suspicious of any optimism regarding the future, a broad range of equally plausible futures may prevail--the future of [i]The Matrix[/i], the future of [i]Blade Runner[/i], the future of [i]Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome[/i], or any number of other future scenarios whose main commonality is their gloom and certainty of misery.  

Regardless of which side we may personally find most compelling in the debate between law (currently clothed in the garb of science) and freedom (the newest incarnation of which in our society has no definite form yet, although I think clearly something is brewing), the fact is that this debate is an ancient one, an overarching struggle which has perhaps more than any other factor formed the general plot of human history.  The pendulum between these opposite urges has been swinging for ages, and will continue to sway for ages more.  More recently in western civilization, the Romantic movement of the 18th and 19th centuries was a reaction to the early stirrings of a rational reorganization of all aspects of human life proposed by Enlightenment which preceded it, just as the latter was itself a reaction to the unconstrained irrationality and barbarism of the Reformation era.

Of more particular interest to our discussion here is that aspect of the Romantic movement generally referred to as Gothic literature, which provided many of the most compelling icons of horror (Frankenstein, Dracula, a fascination with exotic yet isolated locales containing dusty labyrinths and crypts holding eldritch horrors, etc) that still see heavy service today.  As the pendulum of civilization swung away again from the Romantics in the late 19th century and into the early 20th century, there was an increasing interest in the development of optimistic (indeed, almost evangelical) science fiction which promised a future wherein unfettered reason would allow mankind to construct a scientifically-ordered utopia (this movement continues today in forms such as [i]Star Trek[/i] and similar popular fiction).  As bcressey noted earlier, H. P. Lovecraft was part of a vanguard seeking to move away from such optimism; he took the language of science fiction and infused it with Gothic notions of irrationality and terror.  However, we have seen in quoted excerpts that Lovecraft was essentially a Romantic even more than a horror writer, as he ultimately saw the primary objective of his writings as the production of an emotional response in the audience (which only coincidentally happened to be the emotion of terror according to his particular interests).

We ourselves are too close to Lovecraft's time to know where precisely our society [i]at this minute[/i] is on its ever-swaying path between the polar opposites of order and chaos, of law and freedom, of Enlightenment and Romanticism.  Nonetheless based on the notion of history I outlined above, I am arguing that as we are currently in a period where Reason predominates, our society certainly shall at some point shift into a clear counter-movement consisting of a massive rejection of rationalism.  What does this mean for the hero of our current discussion, the zombie?

As our current understanding of all things (including ourselves) begins to change during this movement away from science, so likely shall many of our fears and our manner of expressing those fears change.  I believe there will be a movement away from the "disease" model of the zombie back to the traditional "undead" model of the zombie, with all the concomitant unreason that the very notion of undeath implies resuming its former importance.  In fact I, as thoroughly modern a citizen of our scientific world as any, already find the disease model of the zombie unsatisfying for reasons variously noted in our discussion.  Others have noted, however, that the current zombie model still holds a great deal of effectiveness for them.  Neither impression is right or wrong, as each is a description of an individual state of mind.  I am in the end only saying that when the next inevitable facet of civilization ferments, perhaps we can already have a cutting-edge zombie ready to unleash upon it.  As this coming return of Romanticism will likely generally favor emotion over rationality, I believe Lovecraft's model of horror as working to inspire irrational dread in the audience will provide a useful template, at least initially.

In those terms, then, what form might an imagined zombie of the future take?  We've done a fine job in sketching a fairly thorough portrait of the zombie as he is generally portrayed today.  How can we build upon the best the zombie currently has to offer (which will likely remain at least somewhat compelling for some time) while also constructing novel (or resurrecting ancient) aspects of the zombie metaphor?

Of course I'm only seeking to provide fuel for a growing discussion rather than narrow and limit our scope.  Everyone should also feel free to continue discussing the considerable pile of zombie meat we've already stacked upon our plate in this thread.

A few other possibly fertile ideas I threw out earlier that no one else has yet mentioned:

--We sometimes think of the zombie as a creature driven insane either by its resurrection into a decaying corpse or perhaps by some other experiences it had after death.  I argued, however, that perhaps the zombie just doesn't share our values (based on knowledge he has but we don't) and is otherwise behaving in a way that seems sensible to himself.  At the core of my contention was the broader question: is there any meaningful distinction between insanity and utter indifference to generally accepted beliefs?

--I mentioned a range of possibilities for the creation of zombies--victims become zombies when a zombie bites them, victims become zombies when a zombie kills them, or everyone who dies after the initial rising of the zombies will become a zombie if they leave any physical remains.  This aspect of the zombie metaphor explores the question of whether a horrible inevitable fate (all will become zombies) is more or less terrifying than facing a horrible fate as a result of our own failure (we failed to defend ourselves, and the zombies tore into us).  Which of these possibilities is more terrifying to you?

For those not that interested in rarefied theories, basic discussion of favorite zombie movies, games, or stories (along with an explanation of why these are favorites) is always welcome.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1239&start=20#p7328
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Transcripts collection proposal
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-07-21 16:33:01

[quote="Ron Newcomb"][quote="joningold"]From the point of view of an author who's keen on this, the most useful things to receive would be a printout/transcript, which you could read through looking for errors/improvements which don't necessarily look like bugs; and some kind of "replayable input transcript" - just a list with line breaks of everything the player inputted, so you could replay to the error point yourself.[/quote]
Yeah, the title of this thread made me think "email some text to the author" and that was that.[/quote]
Surely a literal transcript of each play is trivial to create from the data collected ([url=http://parchment.game-testing.org/demo/html/live.php]here's an example made with my current Parchment hack[/url]), but even going with a pessimistic estimate it's reasonable to assume a good game will get at least a 100 plays during some stretch of time and I doubt any author will go through that many or more full transcripts by hand searching for error points. That's where the extra data comes in -- if the system flags error points automatically, the author doesn't have to wade through parts where everything works as expected.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1250&start=0#p7329
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat handled as a conversation
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-07-21 16:41:07

Also then the TAUNT, INTIMIDATE, and so forth ... they have purposes.  If you make somebody angry you're trying to lure them into an aggressive posture; if you make somebody fearful you're trying to push them into a defensive posture.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1239&start=20#p7330
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Transcripts collection proposal
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-07-21 18:58:13

[quote="Juhana"]I'm not sure if it's a good idea to send the status line as it is. Inform default is room name on the left, score and turn count on the right, but the author can change this to whatever else. Perhaps the client could send the status line as a backup if the game doesn't specify the current room's name, but it shouldn't be trusted to contain any useful information.[/quote]
But if the game has changed the status line that's exactly what we should send! If scores and turns are irrelevant, don't send them. If room names aren't important (one room game etc) then why send it? The status line might have the current problem being worked on (Violet) or an indication of some other game variables (Hoist sail...). I think it would be very odd to have a game where rooms are important with a large map but which doesn't display that in the status line. Can you think of any?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1250&start=10#p7331
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat handled as a conversation
User: George / DateTime: 2010-07-21 20:04:35

I think one of Gregory Weir's recent games has a similar system (without as many actions though):

<a class="postlink" href="http://ludusnovus.net/my-games/backup/">http://ludusnovus.net/my-games/backup/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1250&start=10#p7332
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat handled as a conversation
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-21 23:33:06

[quote="George"]I think one of Gregory Weir's recent games has a similar system (without as many actions though):

<a class="postlink" href="http://ludusnovus.net/my-games/backup/">http://ludusnovus.net/my-games/backup/</a>[/quote]

That's funny -- I have that on my hard drive but had never got around to playing it. It's basically a rock-paper-scissors system, with I think some variations on who wins a tie. Probably wouldn't sustain a lot of individual fights without more options, though

[spoiler]the point is at least partly to sneak around without fighting anyone.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=30#p7333
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-07-22 01:14:03

[quote="Endosphere"]We ourselves are too close to Lovecraft's time to know where precisely our society at this minute is on its ever-swaying path between the polar opposites of order and chaos, of law and freedom, of Enlightenment and Romanticism. Nonetheless based on the notion of history I outlined above, I am arguing that as we are currently in a period where Reason predominates, our society certainly shall at some point shift into a clear counter-movement consisting of a massive rejection of rationalism.[/quote]

The true horror of modern society is that we cannot turn back the clock. Science and progress have come too far to unwind. Though science has damned us, it is the only god left to worship, even as permanent resource depletion, abrupt climate change, carcinogens in the water and neurotoxins in the air lead to population collapse and extinction.

Science may save us for a time, but at what greater cost? Make no mistake: we are addicts and science is the drug. Withdrawal and rehab would kill us, so all that's left is the next clever fix.

And when our ingenuity fails us at last, when we have followed the sinking star down into the grave, the zombies will be waiting. As they are waiting now, for the medicine to run out and the crops to fail. The only difference between us is that the zombies no longer believe the two great lies. That we know what we are doing, that we have time to figure it out.

Maybe I'm wrong to suggest an involved explanation for zombies. Maybe it's as simple as a retirement home or an elementary school not getting the requisite shipment of drugs for a few weeks. Maybe the horror is close enough to the surface that all we have to do is peel back a layer of skin.


[quote="Endosphere"]I believe there will be a movement away from the "disease" model of the zombie back to the traditional "undead" model of the zombie, with all the concomitant unreason that the very notion of undeath implies resuming its former importance.[/quote]

I would argue that the viral zombie already functions as a rejection of rationalism, and its enduring popular appeal derives from the audience's eagerness to dispense with the overwhelming complexity of modern society. Or why else are so many zombie scenarios post-apocalyptic ones? We want to see humanity, or at least a few humans, prevail against the zombies and survive the prolonged collapse of the machine-state.

But this is not terror; this is wish fulfillment.

Undead zombies, by contrast, are supernatural creatures of the darkness that science thought to banish. Their existence does not represent the failure of science; to the contrary, it reaffirms the importance of science, for in our quest to know everything we will ultimately negate the unknowable.

Again, this is not terror, merely bad luck to be born in the time before science conquers all.

I do not think undead zombies will come back into favor before the balance tilts the other way for a time, long enough for the perils of science to fade from popular memory and for faith in its promises to be restored. And as outlined above, I doubt we could survive such a transition, even supposing we had the collective will to try.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1239&start=20#p7334
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Transcripts collection proposal
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-07-22 03:10:39

[quote="Dannii"]I think it would be very odd to have a game where rooms are important with a large map but which doesn't display that in the status line. Can you think of any?[/quote]
Blue Lacuna.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1239&start=20#p7335
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Transcripts collection proposal
User: joningold / DateTime: 2010-07-22 04:32:08

[quote="Juhana"][quote="Ron Newcomb"][quote="joningold"]From the point of view of an author who's keen on this, the most useful things to receive would be a printout/transcript, which you could read through looking for errors/improvements which don't necessarily look like bugs; and some kind of "replayable input transcript" - just a list with line breaks of everything the player inputted, so you could replay to the error point yourself.[/quote]
Yeah, the title of this thread made me think "email some text to the author" and that was that.[/quote]
Surely a literal transcript of each play is trivial to create from the data collected ([url=http://parchment.game-testing.org/demo/html/live.php]here's an example made with my current Parchment hack[/url]), but even going with a pessimistic estimate it's reasonable to assume a good game will get at least a 100 plays during some stretch of time and I doubt any author will go through that many or more full transcripts by hand searching for error points. That's where the extra data comes in -- if the system flags error points automatically, the author doesn't have to wade through parts where everything works as expected.[/quote]

If it's trivial, great; it's still more functionality than I have access to right now!

But I think my point is the value that a transcript can add goes way above "errors" - text games in general have very few alpha issues but tons of beta issues: very few crashes, but lots and lots of missing responses, alternate solutions, typos... 

cheers
jon

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1245&start=0#p7336
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: [Boston] Come play Zork with us
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2010-07-22 07:05:17

Due to the non-existence of a projector at the previous room, we've acquired a new room at MIT for this event. We'll be playing in Building 1 Room 135. This will obviously not affect the streaming video.

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1250&start=10#p7337
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat handled as a conversation
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-07-22 11:32:37

I believe I'll simplify it a little; the positions (extended, withdrawn, centered) aren't necessary.  You always have four attacks and four non-attacks available to you:  aggressive, regular, defensive, and deceptive.

The first three of each would print one of two standard scripts; the deceptive version could look like [i]any[/i] of them.  Deceptive maneuvers work best when they cause the enemy to be heedlessly aggressive, but can be turned inside out if the enemy's maneuver is defensive.  In fact, you never know if your enemy's attack was deceptive.

Every turn:  you see what your enemy's move looks like, and you ask yourself "is that real or deceptive?"  You choose your move.  Immediately you find out the result of your move, which damages him, damages you, hits both of you, or hits neither.

Then your enemy moves, and he's got the same problem:  was your move regular or deceptive?  He makes his move and again damage is assigned.

Here's how it would look:

Thog circles warily with his sword low.  [we can't tell if this is a defensive defense or a deceptive defense]
> STAB THOG WITH SWORD [we choose a defensive attack]

You make a cautious move to stab Thog, keeping your defenses up.
As you move in, Thog springs his trap and tries to slice at you, but you were ready for it.  Thog grimaces and backs away with a new scar.  [it turns out Thog's move had been deceptive; had we used a different attack, we'd have taken damage]

Thog charges you, his sword flashing.  [Now Thog's AI can't tell if our attack was defensive or deceptive; assuming it was a defensive attack, he chooses aggression; nevertheless, we're still in a [i]defensive[/i] attack maneuver from last turn]
His sudden charge manages to pierce your defensive posture and you have a new cut for your troubles.  [Thog's aggressive attack beats our defensive attack]
>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1250&start=10#p7338
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat handled as a conversation
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-07-22 11:51:50

I feel like the real win of a conversation-style engine is to *not* have an underlying regularized mechanics. You want to keep track of some states, but any given exchange should be contextual, not the same as the previous exchange.

I'm particularly thinking of Alabaster rather than dialogue trees. The game should be suggesting obvious replies (ripostes!) but still allow you to jump conversational tracks, and either surprise the opponent or leave yourself flatfooted -- depending on how the combat has gone so far.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1250&start=10#p7339
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat handled as a conversation
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-07-22 12:06:18

That is where we bring in the other elements, though.

First, the conversational model:  combat can be divided into nodes.  In the "opening gambits" node, the attacker can say different things and behave differently than in the "desperate and losing" node.

Second, the conversational effects:  if you use TAUNT or MOCK, you're hoping to lure the enemy into an aggressive attack posture, so you know how to respond.  You're basically prodding them into making a move you can predict.

How would you model it instead?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1244&start=0#p7340
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parameter passing in i6/i7
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-07-22 12:28:47

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Usually when Inform starts dealing with pointers and such, it always passes it to one of the Blk*() functions which... works some sort of magic.  I do know that Inform 7 has a mantra of "one block [of memory], one pointer" which is how it avoids issues with garbage collection and memory leaks, and the pointer-to stuff is something of a workaround. 
I'd love to have a primer on the details of how that works, if only for knowledge.[/quote]
It's kind of depressingly simple. Every location that can hold a block-type value (local variables, global variables, properties, table entries (*)) stores a pointer to a unique heap block. When you assign a new value, it's copied from the old block to the new one, and the new one is resized if necessary - I7's memory manager can even fragment the block if there isn't enough space at the original location.

This greatly simplifies memory management. No two I7 variables ever point to the same heap block, so every block value can be mutated or freed independently, with no need for reference counting or garbage collection. But the price for that simplicity is inefficient use of memory (especially painful on the Z-machine) and wariness of pass-by-reference.

(* but, IIRC, not list entries, where an assignment frees the old value and replaces it with a pointer to a new copy of the value)
[quote]I haven't experimented with pointer-to, but I do know just from C coding that your above code wouldn't work, because a pointer-to-indexed-text isn't the same thing as indexed text itself.[/quote]
Actually, in I7, it is. {-pointer-to:T} just stops I7 from creating a copy of the indexed text, as it normally does with plain {T} in some cases. For example:
[code]To print pointer to (T - indexed text):
	(- INDEXED_TEXT_TY_Say({-pointer-to:T}); -).
 
To print plain old (T - indexed text):
	(- INDEXED_TEXT_TY_Say({T}); -).

When play begins:
	let T be indexed text;
	let T be "hello";
	print pointer to T;
	print plain old T;[/code]
Generates:
[code]      ! [3: print pointer to t]
       INDEXED_TEXT_TY_Say(t_0); 
      ! phrase 4
      ! [4: print plain old t]
       INDEXED_TEXT_TY_Say(BlkValueCopy((blockv_stack-->(I7BASPL+1)), t_0)); [/code]
So with {-pointer-to:T} the I6 routine receives the address of the same indexed text heap object that is in "T", whereas with {T} a copy is made first.

Whether or not a copy is made also seems to depend on the context in which the code is expanded:
[code]To decide which indexed text is pointer to (T - indexed text): (- {-pointer-to:T} -).

To decide which indexed text is plain old (T - indexed text): (- {T} -).

To print (T - indexed text): say T.

When play begins:
	let T be indexed text;
	let T be "hello";
	print pointer to T;
	print plain old T;
	say pointer to T;
	say plain old T;[/code]
Even without {-pointer-to:T}, no copy is made when the resulting value is passed to "say":
[code]      ! [3: print pointer to t]
      (PHR_741_r3 (BlkValueCopy((blockv_stack-->(I7BASPL+1)),  t_0 )));
      ! phrase 4
      ! [4: print plain old t]
      (PHR_741_r3 (BlkValueCopy((blockv_stack-->(I7BASPL+2)),  BlkValueCopy((blockv_stack-->(I7BASPL+3)), t_0) )));
      ! phrase 5
      ! [5: say pointer to t]
      say__p=1;ParaContent();  print (INDEXED_TEXT_TY_Say)  t_0 ;  .L_Say1; .L_SayX1;
      ! phrase 6
      ! [6: say plain old t]
      say__p=1;ParaContent();  print (INDEXED_TEXT_TY_Say)  t_0 ;  .L_Say2; .L_SayX2;[/code]

[quote="zarf"]The question is, why doesn't the "replace" phrase for indexed text act to mutate the text in the (perhaps) obvious way?[/quote]
It does - it mutates "target". But that's not the same indexed text value as the one that was passed in; it's a copy, and it's deallocated as soon as the phrase exits.

[quote]Maybe indexed texts are supposed to *not* be mutable, and "replace" is behaving analogously to "increase X by 1". But I don't know whether that's the plan, or whether this is a bug.[/quote]
They are mutable. "replace" is implemented by IT_ReplaceText in IndexedText.i6t, which modifies the value in place.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1244&start=10#p7341
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parameter passing in i6/i7
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-07-22 13:45:40

Okay, thanks for the explanation.

This seems like it deserves some category of its own -- pass-by-reference, pass-by-value, pass-by-a-different-value...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1250&start=10#p7342
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat handled as a conversation
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-07-22 13:53:52

I like the idea of "extended, withdrawn, centered" and "aggressive, defensive"; I just wouldn't assume that any combination always has the same result. Imagine the classic cinema pirate-swordfight. The combatants are constantly moving up stairs, across tables, along balconies, etc. Every position offers some special options (SWING ON CHANDELIER!), and you could even set up some multi-action chains -- that's what conversation libraries are *good* at.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1250&start=10#p7343
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat handled as a conversation
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-07-22 14:27:18

I certainly don't want the same combination of moves to have the same result every time, against every opponent — that's one thing I'm trying to actively avoid.  I want each opponent to fight in unique ways, and respond differently to social commands (TAUNT, MOCK, PRAISE, INSULT, DEFY, FLIRT, et al).  In order to be replayable, it has to fall out differently each time; but in order to be [i]testable[/i] you have to know what you're expecting to have happen.

I'd love to include the environment in various fight sequences — a fight that takes place in a public plaza with a crowd of enchanted onlookers, for instance, or a fight on a cliff, or a fight in the lair of a sleeping beast — where every location has something different to play with.  I can see KICK OVER TABLE or GET ON TABLE, LEAP OVER RAILING, HIDE BEHIND STATUE, or even CLOSE DOOR having unique effects in certain situations; there will be certain fixed-in-place objects that are basically playground props for the fight.  It's very easy to do this, since each fight is going to be specifically placed based upon the needs of plot, rather than random encounters of faceless mooks to be mowed down before an interchangeable backdrop.  It's more Errol Flynn than Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Of course, this means those unique moves won't be universally applicable, so they're not part of a "combat mechanics" in general terms, just "special effects" as it were.

What it gets down to, for me, is that the commands should have a predictable [i]range[/i] of possible effects or the player is just button-mashing (picking random command words).  An extended posture and an aggressive maneuver [i]should[/i], in the player's mind, be more likely to cause his opponent damage, but at the risk of [i]taking[/i] some damage.  A defensive posture should be likely to protect him — if it doesn't reliably do so the player will be baffled and angry, and rightly so.

The original "Dragon's Lair" videodisc game by Don Bluth is an example of unpredictable contextual maneuvers.  You pick what you're going to do at each junction.  Move up, move left — sometimes you die, sometimes you live — and you just have to memorize the pattern and start again.  This is not good game design.  The player has to know that certain actions will [i]probably[/i] lead to a certain range of results.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=30#p7344
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-07-22 14:27:54



@ bcressey

Thanks for the thoughtful response, which raises some interesting ideas.  On one level, a Romantic might respond to the notions you raised by simply adding "So says the scientist."

On the other hand it seems likely that, as has always been the case previously, whatever follows will build upon and adapt to its own ends what came before.  I think it's difficult to utterly reject the rationalistic "progress" notion of history in the basic sense that in fact the classical Romans didn't live like cavemen, and we don't live like the classical Romans; however each later snapshot of civilization contains some aspects familiar from the previous snapshot.  Even in a case of profound apocalyptic doom, the urges of reason and unreason are basic aspects of human nature, both present at all times even though one or the other seems to cyclically predominate.  Therefore if any survive an apocalypse at all, while they may recoil from Reason for a time Reason will also continue to prevail upon them in some degree.  In the standard "Mad Max" post-nuclear apocalyptic scenario, for example, while survivors find new ways to live that are unfamiliar to us they also rely heavily upon relics of technology from our time.  Their new societies are in a way based upon a struggle to salvage such technologies which over time become increasingly rare, and can't be recreated as no one knows how to make them anymore.  Presumably at some point science will take hold again (an excellent exploration of this theme is the fine novel [i]A Canticle for Leibowitz[/i]).

If one were making a post-apocalyptic zombie story (a double dose of misery, so to speak), perhaps a take-off point could be a subtext of the struggle between the old and new civilizations.  Imagine very broadly a scenario like the 70s film [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Earth_(TV_pilot)][i]Planet Earth[/i][/url] where a small remnant of high-science civilization survives hidden away amidst a larger society of survivors reduced to barbarism.  Normally, as in that film and in scenarios such [i]The Omega Man[/i], it is the barbarians (mutants) who are the antagonists.  However the tables could easily be turned, with the high-science group portrayed as the zombies due to some manner of technology which allows them to transfer their consciousness and prolong their existence by taking residence in a corpse (procured from the outsiders) when their current body deteriorates to the point of uselessness.  In addition to the larger clash of values between law and freedom separating the societies, perhaps this mind-transfer excites increasing blood-lust and subtle madness in its users.  That would give us a battle between "humans" and "zombies" with a great deal of complexity.


*****


There seems to be a considerable problem for us in utilizing the "undead" aspect of the zombie in a compelling way.  Although it doesn't fit into the game I was envisioning, for general consideration would a [i]Silent Hill[/i] approach be a good way around the difficulties associated with the notion of undeath?  I was replaying a classic AGS game called [url=http://www.bigbluecup.com/games.php?action=detail&id=736][i]Trilby's Notes[/i][/url] which uses a similar "two worlds" approach and began thinking that this might be in fact the only way to facilitate an exploration of living vs dead.  The player is transported at times between his own reality and a "land of the dead" whose inhabitants have a very different perspective on things.  Is there still any novelty left in this approach, or has it been explored to the point of exhaustion by the [i]Silent Hill[/i] games and film?


*****


Perhaps we can shed further light on the terror of the zombie if we compare it to another fearsome icon of the modern horror genre, the "serial killer."  Unlike the zombie with its source in the ancient metaphor of the ghoul, I think the serial killer is largely a modern phenomenon (commonly supposed to have gained prominent notoriety in the popular imagination with the "Jack the Ripper" murders in England in the later 19th century).  Setting aside the obscure view that ancient myths (like the ghoul and the zombie) may have some actual basis in reality, the serial killer mythos fundamentally differs from the zombie mythos in that the former is an embellishment of undeniably real behavior by undeniably real actors.  

While I am mainly examining the imagined serial killer of fiction in what follows, in real life I suppose most actual serial killers are simply career criminals who have tallied a large number of victims as they go about their criminal enterprise of obtaining wealth and power.  As such these individuals have always been with us (well before they were given a moniker and a special place in the modern popular imagination), but they're not whom we're referring to when we refer to the notion of the "serial killer."  We'll also not be considering the ilk of serial murderer who, despite having an often incomprehensibly-large number of victims, is shrouded in the sovereign power of the State at the height of his bloodlust.  Whether such murderers are ultimately commended or reviled is largely a result of whether they retain power long enough to choose authors for writing histories of their reigns; such controversy has little to do with our examination of zombies.

The violence of the zombie is never incidental to the pursuit of any other goal; it simply devours because it must.  Likewise the serial killer of popular imagination kills out of an inherent interest in murder, and doesn't use murder as a means to obtain some end other than his own satisfaction.  Occasionally the modern serial killer may be imagined as a very complex character.  Dr. Hannibal Lecter seemed to kill for a variety of reasons including at times revenge and complex subterfuge, but on the other hand perhaps such complexity is why his character is one of the more famed fictional villains of our day.  For the most part, these sorts of characters usually seem overwhelmed by an obsession to kill, and while their individual "delusion" may provide them with a unique angle on the whole they're largely stock antagonists (like the zombie).

As conventionally imagined, the serial killer is a loner who rejects our social norms.  While the zombie often appears as part of an overwhelming ravenous horde (each member of which rejects our social norms), I earlier raised the question of whether this is essential to the zombie's nature.  The zombie seems to be simultaneously a member of a horde and an alienated individual--unable to relate, communicate, or otherwise interact with its own monstrous kin.

The zombie devours our body (resulting in our death), while the serial killer mutilates our body (resulting in our death) but may also torture our mind or spirit before he dispatches us.  Both the zombie and the serial killer have an insatiable bloodlust, which we see as being rooted in insanity.  Is the zombie just a mindless animal rather than an intellect fallen into insanity?  An important difference between the portrayed threats might seem to be that the zombie is an unnatural creature while the serial killer is clearly one of us, although as we've noted the unnatural nature of the zombie is increasingly de-emphasized in recent conceptions of the creature.

The threat of the zombies is contagious, and the power of the zombies grows with each new victim until their menace is too great to be overcome.  The threat of the serial killer lingers as he eludes capture, and while he may inspire increasingly fearsome legends with each new crime he remains a discrete, identifiable threat.  Each time the serial killer commits a crime, we have a fresh opportunity to catch and stop him; thus in a sense he grows weaker by risking satisfaction of his terrible appetites.  Related to these notions, the zombie is immortal--its threat will grow over time as it spawns more zombies; the serial killer is mortal--even if we never catch him, eventually he will grow old and too weak to continue his crime spree.  Likewise we can envision a final end to our struggle with the serial killer--once we find him we will capture or kill him, ending his threat.  Even if we stop the zombie menace today, depending on its genesis we may need to maintain a state of eternal vigilance against a re-emergence of the creatures.  The serial killer may stop killing for his own mysterious reasons (or is that unlikely?); although we may continue to fear him, it's possible such fear may have no object if he has indeed retired from a life of crime.  The zombie will never stop for any reason short of having already destroyed everything within its grasp.

The zombie is easily identified, even from afar, due to its grotesque appearance and blatantly odd behavior.  The serial killer (outwardly appearing as one of us) is able to lurk among us.  He may be eyeing us right now, pondering our suitability as a victim, without our being aware that he is pondering our doom.  I think that may be a clear horrific advantage for the serial killer--perhaps someone disagrees with me on that count?

The zombie definitely "chooses" its victims randomly in the sense that it indiscriminately attacks all who happen across its path.  Some serial killers may choose victims randomly, while others may be drawn to victims matching a certain profile that seems sensible to the killer.  Overall, as we mentioned earlier, it seems likely that the serial killer is compelled to kill in the same way the zombie is compelled to devour (and coincidentally kill).  Nonetheless a profound difference here seems to be that for the serial killer the act of murder seems to hold some symbolic significance, while presumably the zombie is not directly aware its actions are murderous (as it merely wants to consume flesh until no flesh remains to be consumed, at which time it will move on to search for its next meal).  

The zombie seems to be a mindless beast.  The serial killer is usually (in fiction at least) profoundly clever and devious.  The zombie does not use tactics, other than its natural technique of overwhelming us by sheer numbers.  Our struggle against the zombie is purely a physical struggle.  Our struggle against the serial killer may have moments of physical confrontation, but largely consists of the intellectual challenge of determining a pattern in his behavior and motivations so that we may either escape him or close our dragnet in upon him before he kills again.

The zombie is a monster.  The serial killer is monstrous.  The zombie has a grotesque appearance; the serial killer has a grotesque soul.  The zombie horde is like a pack of hyenas; the serial killer is like a spider, a lone hunter meticulously hiding in the shadows waiting for a chance to pounce on its prey.

Is the threat of the serial killer less personalized than that of the zombie?  We rely on The Authorities to apprehend the serial killer, and our own response may be simply to stay in for the evening rather than visiting dark alleys in unfamiliar parts of town.  On the other hand we must defend ourselves against the zombies.  The Authorities won't believe our initial report in the early days of the zombie plague, and by the time they do ponder a heavy-handed response it may be too late as institutions and even society itself will be on the verge of destruction at the hands of rampaging zombie hordes.  For this reason protagonists in serial-killer fiction are often detectives or civil servants, while the protagonist of the zombie tale can more broadly be anyone.

What are some other differences between the metaphor of the zombie and the metaphor of the serial killer?  Is the serial killer more, or less, terrifying than the zombie--or are two simply sources of different kinds of terror?  What does a comparison with the serial killer tell us about the zombie and its power to horrify?




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1244&start=10#p7345
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parameter passing in i6/i7
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-07-22 14:31:35

[quote="zarf"]Okay, thanks for the explanation.

This seems like it deserves some category of its own -- pass-by-reference, pass-by-value, pass-by-a-different-value...[/quote]
Well, it's not much different from the way structs are passed by value in C: the entire struct is copied to a new location, and the called function can freely mutate it without affecting the caller's copy. The difference is that in I7 the structures live on the heap instead of the stack.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1250&start=10#p7346
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat handled as a conversation
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-07-22 14:56:42

I agree, but this is generally true in conversations as well.

One difference is that conversations aren't, well, life-and-death at every stage -- you usually feel free to try a question *without* having any idea how the NPC will react. To achieve the same thing in a combat, the player has to either feel confident that death is excluded (so that experimentation is acceptable), or be comfortable with a lot of "undo".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1250&start=10#p7347
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat handled as a conversation
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-07-22 15:15:42

One potential pitfall of any complex conversation-based combat system is that one must give the player a very detailed status update on each turn regarding all revelant aspects of the situation; the positions of the combatants, their relative positions to each other, a reminder on the state of the battle-site or room description, an update on the haleness of the combatants, and so forth.  I believe it may be unfair to expect the player to simply formulate and maintain a vivid mental image of all those factors and keep them constantly in mind while also attempting formulate and carry out a tactical plan.  This isn't to say that such a system can't be fun; I'm merely saying you'll have to take great care to ensure that it remains fun, and doesn't seem unfair to the player in the sense that the opponent will be much more able than the player simply by virtue of the fact that the opponent is coded to have a detailed constant awareness of all relevant factors, while the player must attempt to remember them from turn to turn while also "distracted" by the activity of carrying out the gameplay mechanics.

For example:

>slash bluebeard

From his vantage point atop the table, Bluebeard leaps to avoid your slashing attack and drives his cutlass into your neck.

**You have died**

[Player: Oh man, he was on a table?  I guess that was mentioned five turns ago, but how am I supposed to remember all this?  I'm going to find some other game to play.]




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1244&start=10#p7348
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parameter passing in i6/i7
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-07-22 15:15:50

[quote="vaporware"]
It's kind of depressingly simple. Every location that can hold a block-type value (local variables, global variables, properties, table entries (*)) stores a pointer to a unique heap block. When you assign a new value, it's copied from the old block to the new one. [...] This greatly simplifies memory management. No two I7 variables ever point to the same heap block, so every block value can be mutated or freed independently, with no need for reference counting or garbage collection. But the price for that simplicity is inefficient use of memory (especially painful on the Z-machine) and wariness of pass-by-reference.[quote="Ron Newcomb"]I know just from C coding that your above code wouldn't work, because a pointer-to-indexed-text isn't the same thing as indexed text itself.[/quote]Actually, in I7, it is.[/quote]Oh-ho!  That is interesting. Thanks for the braindump, Jesse.
[quote="vaporware"]Whether or not a copy is made also seems to depend on the context in which the code is expanded. Even without {-pointer-to:T}, no copy is made when the resulting value is passed to "say"[/quote]"Say" being an exception doesn't surprise me, as Say is a macro that expands to a sequence of functions, rather than being a function itself.

Thanks again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1250&start=10#p7349
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat handled as a conversation
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-07-22 15:22:14

Zarf, it seems that you're suggesting something like a node-based combat system, where you [i]never[/i] face immediate death unless you make choices that place you in an untenable strategic position:

Node 1:  Opening Moves.  After you manage to damage the enemy, close Node 1 and move to Node 2.  Special moves available:  CLOSE DOOR (to prevent reinforcements).

Node 2:  The Enemy Gets Angry.  If you get the enemy below 50% health, move to Node 3.  If you get below 50% health, move to Node 4.  Special moves available:  TAUNT, MOCK, PRAISE, KICK OVER TABLE (with candeabra on it).  If you kicked over the table, the room catches fire.

Node 3:  The Advantage is Yours.  If you kicked over the table, you may HIDE BEHIND TABLE.  You may now HIDE BEHIND TABLE.  From here the enemy must come around to get you, and you move to Node 5.  If you get the enemy below 10% health, move to Node 5.  Special moves:  LAUGH, MOCK, SWING ON CHANDELIER.

Node 4:  The Advantage is His.  If you didn't close the door, now the reinforcements arrive.  However, you are in a poor position, so the only move you have that [i]doesn't[/i] lead to death is HIDE BEHIND TABLE (which lets you recover into Node 5).  Special moves:  DEFY, SPIT ON, INSULT, SURRENDER.

Node 5:  Close of Battle.  Among the special moves, you finally get the option to SLAY or SUBDUE, once you reduce the enemy to 0 health.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=30#p7350
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-07-22 15:50:48

[quote="Endosphere"]
The player is transported at times between his own reality and a "land of the dead" whose inhabitants have a very different perspective on things.  Is there still any novelty left in this approach, or has it been explored to the point of exhaustion by the [i]Silent Hill[/i] games and film?
[/quote]

This sounds similar to the scheme that [i]Alan Wake[/i] employs, cutting between narrative-heavy scenes during the day and scare-oriented ones at night. There is only one "world" but its essential character changes drastically between the two states. I haven't played any of the [i]Silent Hill[/i] games, mostly because I heard about the better ones only after the heyday of the console on which they appeared. An IF take on that structure sounds reasonable; it may be done but it hasn't been done to death.

The caveat there is that the big reveal at the end, if any, should not vitiate the play experiences from either realm. The dark and scary place can't be just a dream. I spent the first half of [i]AW[/i] on mental eggshells, prepared to hurl the game across the room if it so much as hinted at that kind of payoff. I don't think it's a spoiler to say the game doesn't cheat; I found the ending quite satisfying, even sublime.

[quote="Endosphere"]What are some other differences between the metaphor of the zombie and the metaphor of the serial killer?  Is the serial killer more, or less, terrifying than the zombie--or are two simply sources of different kinds of terror?  What does a comparison with the serial killer tell us about the zombie and its power to horrify?[/quote]

Serial killers are a source of terror and zombies are a symptom.

Spoilers for [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=djxktpw8m6rph2iy]All Alone[/url] follow. It's a quick game, so it's worth playing if you haven't seen it and want an IF take on serial killers. Highly recommended.

[spoiler]The terror for me in the game came when, having been hunted and harrowed through my apartment, I resolved to stop hiding and to embrace death by running headlong into the room where I believed the serial killer to be waiting. Even a poor outcome like *** YOU HAVE DIED *** would have been a relief, because it would have meant I was back in control of the game, able to choose an ending on my terms. And then to undo, telling myself that I'd seen the worst and could only go up from there.

Except my plan didn't work. The living room was empty. The apartment was empty. I was trapped there, all alone, until I had played the role of victim to its preordained end.[/spoiler]

For me, zombies present a binary choice: resist or die. Serial killers offer no real choice. You can resist, but resistance only gives them what they want. You can die, but only when they let you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1250&start=20#p7351
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat handled as a conversation
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-07-22 16:46:56

And I note that in such a system, the next battle — every battle, in fact — is different.  In one fight, you're up against an arrogant and experienced captain, who mockingly shunts aside everything you do [i]except[/i] a feint (except that even a feint doesn't work on the first round).  In order to impress him and get to the second stage of combat, you feint; and once you do, you've engaged his interest and the fight [i]really[/i] starts.

In the next fight, you're battling a drunken brawler in a tavern, whom you're trying to question; you need him alive.  But he charges dumbly on every round, clumsily trying to tear you limb from limb, and you have to fend him off with special moves, trips, insults, not letting him harm you but not harming him either.

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of a narrative combat system based on ... for lack of a better term, a CYOA model.  I was right the first time:  I don't need a combat mechanics model, I need a [b]narrative[/b] model.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1250&start=20#p7352
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat handled as a conversation
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-22 17:54:20

I did a small, unambitious version of this with the endgame of Pytho's Mask: I wanted the scene to feel like swashbuckling, not like rolling dice, so I was pretty sure that a more simulationist combat mechanic wouldn't feel right. So the player's choices are all about the taunts and emotional exchanges of the fight, and the engine takes care of narrating for you what physical maneuvers you make. 

It didn't go as far as what you're describing, in that the fight wasn't really meant to feel like a *puzzle*. I wanted an interactive showdown, but I wanted it to be easy, because having to replay that scene would have disrupted the pacing when I wanted the player to move on smoothly to the denouement.

But I think the mechanic has potential for the more elaborate arrangements that you're talking about, especially if you want the fight challenges to tie in with what the player knows about the NPC personalities involved. That sounds like a game I'd like to play.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1250&start=20#p7353
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat handled as a conversation
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-07-22 18:47:26

The best recommendation I can think of for a narrative combat system, where combat progresses through nodes based on your choices, is that it doesn't require [i]balance[/i] in the traditional sense of dice mechanics, to-hit rolls, average damage per strike, or any of that nonsense.  A narrative node-based combat scheme could work as easily with guns, knives, rapiers, spears, rocks, bottles, shovels, barroom furniture, bows, flintlock rifles, or [b]anything[/b], without regard to genre, or even whether the player has access to only one weapon, one character, or has several of either to choose from.  It could even accommodate a battle with multiple mooks or a single difficult villain.

You could get disarmed in the middle of combat and fight with a [b]chair[/b].  Now that's boss.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1250&start=20#p7354
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat handled as a conversation
User: George / DateTime: 2010-07-22 20:31:46

There was an interesting example of narrative combat in the old [url=http://www.gamebooks.org/show_series.php?id=469][i]Way of the Tiger[/i][/url] gamebooks. Unfortunately I don't have one at hand, but it might be fairly simple to track one down on alibris or something for research. Shouldn't be more than a couple of bucks. 

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.alibris.com/booksearch?qwork=6975419&matches=23&keyword=way+of+the+tiger&cm_sp=works*listing*title">http://www.alibris.com/booksearch?qwork ... ting*title</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=30#p7355
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-07-23 10:18:01

[quote="Endosphere"]Regardless of which side we may personally find most compelling in the debate between law (currently clothed in the garb of science) and freedom (the newest incarnation of which in our society has no definite form yet, although I think clearly something is brewing), the fact is that this debate is an ancient one, an overarching struggle which has perhaps more than any other factor formed the general plot of human history.  The pendulum between these opposite urges has been swinging for ages, and will continue to sway for ages more.  More recently in western civilization, the Romantic movement of the 18th and 19th centuries was a reaction to the early stirrings of a rational reorganization of all aspects of human life proposed by Enlightenment which preceded it, just as the latter was itself a reaction to the unconstrained irrationality and barbarism of the Reformation era.[/quote]
This is a very fertile imagining of the fundamental conflict. I can see a few different variations on it:

I'm reminded of "Cryptonomicon," where the conflict is described as a war between Mars and Athena. In other words, it's [i]not[/i] between law and freedom, but between arbitrary authority and structured reason. Both sides have aspects of both law and freedom - Mars is hierarchical, and yet decisions are made at the whims of a leader. Athena is more democratic in the sense that any individual has the opportunity to succeed, but all are bound by the constraints of reason and technology.

I've heard of an interesting book on this subject, called "Revolution in Time" which describes how the invention of accurate timekeeping devices took power away from monarchs (the Emperor will see you when the Emperor is ready) and subjected all to the ultimate authority of the clock (The King's audience begins at noon).

I'm not sure this is relevant to what you're trying to achieve, but I feel obliged to mention another idea presented by philosopher Ken Wilber: the "pre-trans fallacy." We speak easily of the pendulum between Romantic and Enlightenment ideas, but Wilber suggests that there is a third way. Both advocates of reason and mysticism assume that there are only two states of mind, which Wilber refers to as "rational" and "pre-rational." The pre-rational state is viewed as childlike or even baby-like, which is either a good or a bad thing depending on which side you're on. But Wilber sees a third state called "trans-rational" where one is capable of using reason as a tool, but is also capable of leaps of faith or intuition - a tool we must have if we are able to solve problems that computers can't solve, such as the Halting Problem.

I think brilliant scientists and great theologians have a lot in common with each other, whereas mediocre scientists and theologians have very little in common. I've heard that atheism is quite common among scientists, but the very greatest scientists are deeply religious, for the most part. It fits well in my mind with this "pre/trans" distinction. You could certainly base a story around the hero being able to use such a quality to resolve a conflict between rational and mystical forces. But perhaps the conspicuous [i]absence[/i] or even the total failure of such a third way would make for a more terrifying story.

[quote="Endosphere"]A few other possibly fertile ideas I threw out earlier that no one else has yet mentioned:

--We sometimes think of the zombie as a creature driven insane either by its resurrection into a decaying corpse or perhaps by some other experiences it had after death.  I argued, however, that perhaps the zombie just doesn't share our values (based on knowledge he has but we don't) and is otherwise behaving in a way that seems sensible to himself.  At the core of my contention was the broader question: is there any meaningful distinction between insanity and utter indifference to generally accepted beliefs?[/quote]
I thought we'd touched on this at least tangentially. I think it's central to what you're trying to achieve, but I'm not sure what more to say about it. It's more a question that must remain at the back of our minds than a point that needs to be clarified before we go on.

[quote="Endosphere"]--I mentioned a range of possibilities for the creation of zombies--victims become zombies when a zombie bites them, victims become zombies when a zombie kills them, or everyone who dies after the initial rising of the zombies will become a zombie if they leave any physical remains.  This aspect of the zombie metaphor explores the question of whether a horrible inevitable fate (all will become zombies) is more or less terrifying than facing a horrible fate as a result of our own failure (we failed to defend ourselves, and the zombies tore into us).  Which of these possibilities is more terrifying to you?[/quote]
I think inevitable is scarier. The latter is just tragedy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=30#p7356
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-07-23 10:32:01

[quote="bcressey"]The true horror of modern society is that we cannot turn back the clock. Science and progress have come too far to unwind. Though science has damned us, it is the only god left to worship, even as permanent resource depletion, abrupt climate change, carcinogens in the water and neurotoxins in the air lead to population collapse and extinction.

Science may save us for a time, but at what greater cost? Make no mistake: we are addicts and science is the drug. Withdrawal and rehab would kill us, so all that's left is the next clever fix.[/quote]
I think you're right in the sense that we can't voluntarily go back. But after the Singularity, we may have no other choice.

Civilizations have been set back before - consider the Babylonians and the Anasazi. And there have certainly been localized manifestations of high and low tech.

The thing that always bugged me about the Matrix - not as an allegory but as a story - was that if the crops fail (because the sun has been blotted out), then all life is useless as an energy source. Life depends on the sun for energy. Even fossil fuels got their energy from the sun at one point. Every civilization has hard-and-fast limits like that, which no technology can overcome. And that's where the point of collapse comes. Coming back to the Anasazi: analyzing the wood used in their dwellings shows that they used local trees for a long time, and then started building with wood from farther away. Soon afterwards, they disappeared. They were destroyed by deforestation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1249&start=0#p7357
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Game clubs?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-07-23 10:38:44

[quote="DavidC"]As a part of Zifmia I was thinking it would be possible to implement a shared session game play. So you log into a site and see sessions of games and some summary of where the game is....then you select a session and possibly join others in continuing the game in that session. When you need to leave, you just log out. The session remains and anyone can come and go. We could even make it so a moderator has to be on call to guide the session. This would make it possible to play a larger game, with other people, in a real-time setting, but not be required to do it all at once or even with the same people all the time.[/quote]
That sounds great. It would be nice to have more than just the one Club Floyd, and it would be good to be able to do it outside ifMud.

At the moment, I think I'd actually prefer to play individually and discuss communally, though. I've never heard of Make It Good, but I'd be willing to join if there's enough interest.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1249&start=0#p7358
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Game clubs?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-07-23 11:10:41

[quote="capmikee"]At the moment, I think I'd actually prefer to play individually and discuss communally, though.[/quote]

I've never used it, but would Google Wave be a good format for the kinds of multilevel conversations that are likely to result?

[quote="capmikee"]I've never heard of Make It Good, but I'd be willing to join if there's enough interest.[/quote]

A very good game, and also a good one to talk to other people about as you play.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1252&start=0#p7359
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Extra Challenges
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-07-23 11:51:37

Sometimes with video games they do special challenges like beating a CRpg with only 1 guy or something. Can we have anything like that for IF?

Example:

Zork I- bring the lantern into the machine room (difficult because of the gas room).
or 
Zork I- beating the game without killing the troll OR the cyclops. 
 or
Zork III- finding the robot.

What do people think? I imagine there's something similar for a lot of the old, larger games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1253&start=0#p7360
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Saving a file
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-07-23 12:08:55

Is there a way you can have the IF game save data to a special file so you could transfer information between 2 IF games.

For example, in Wizardry 2 you can use the same characters you beat wizardry 1 with. 

If I wanted to make a game where you can load up information from the previous story into the sequel, would that be possible, and how would it be done?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1253&start=0#p7361
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Saving a file
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-23 12:37:25

[quote="tggdan3"]Is there a way you can have the IF game save data to a special file so you could transfer information between 2 IF games.

For example, in Wizardry 2 you can use the same characters you beat wizardry 1 with. 

If I wanted to make a game where you can load up information from the previous story into the sequel, would that be possible, and how would it be done?[/quote]

It would be a pain with the z-machine, but not too hard in Glulx. [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/ex207.html#e207]This example[/url] is probably closest to what you want, though the other examples in the same area may also be useful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1254&start=0#p7362
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Putting an interactive scene in AMUSING?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-23 13:14:06

Is there a simple way to have one of the amusing a victorious player options (UNDO, RESTART, RESTORE, QUIT, AMUSING, AFTERWORD, etc.) allow the player to play an extra scene? A deleted scene, as it were? If not, one way around it would be to give them a password to unlock the scene.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1254&start=0#p7363
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Putting an interactive scene in AMUSING?
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-07-23 13:48:58

Instead of using "end the game saying" or whatever, just emulate this with the "say" command, giving them the specific options.

If [conditions for victorious]
move the player to End Game;
say "*** YOU HAVE WON***[paragraph break]You have a score of [score] out of 350.[line break]Would you like to UNDO, RESTART, RESTORE, AMUSING?".

instead of doing anything other than amusing while the player is in End Game, say "Please choose UNDO, RESTART, RESTORE, or AMUSING.".

Amusing is an action applying to nothing. Understand "amusing" as amusing.

Check amusing: if player is not in end game, say "That is not a verb I recognise." instead.

Carry out amusing: [do whatever]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1253&start=0#p7364
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Saving a file
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-07-23 13:51:06

Thanks. Glulx is probably the system for it anyway. I was considering porting over the Lone Wolf novels to IF format, so that the parser took care of the combat and the inventory automatically. Basically an advanced CYOA game. If that worked out well I might consider trying some of my own. As is- I would need Glulx to show the pictures anyway.

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1250&start=20#p7365
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat handled as a conversation
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-07-23 14:34:29

Right now I'm combing through the documentation of Conversation Nodes, to see how it's structured.  I see a number of different structural differences that I'm going to have to modify in any proposed Narrative Combat extension.  Comments and suggests are welcome, I'm still new at Inform!
[list][*]The current-node global variable matches the current-node in the person you're speaking to, tracked by a single variable within current-interlocutor.  A similar current-combatant construction might be awkward for combat, where you may be fighting two or three actors at once.  Perhaps a combatant could have a List of Allies (which may be empty) and a List of Enemies (always including the player, sometimes including those who assist the player).  This would help disambiguate vague commands such as "attack" (which could then choose from among the current-combatant's List of Allies).  Or would it be better to create a thing called Combat, with a List of Participants?[/*:m]
[*]Conversation nodes are either open or closed; Combat is essentially closed and [i]very[/i] closed.  Although you can attack, defend, feint, flee, examine, and use commands such as insult, taunt, or mock, you probably shouldn't be "insert X into Y" or "go north" or "sleep" or "open Z" or "drop sword" at will during most combats.  Somehow I'll have to trap and reject all commands not part of the standard combat maneuvers — but on some occasions, allow certain very specific commands to slip through (swing on chandelier, kick over table, leap over railing, etc).  On other occasions I'll want very [i]very[/i] limited responses (perhaps the enemy issues an ultimatum and demands yes or no).  What's the best way to do this without a pile of Instead rules that affect performance?  Can I say something like "only when the current-combat node is X, swinging on the chandelier [i]is[/i] a combat move?"[/*:m][/list:u]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1252&start=0#p7366
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Extra Challenges
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-07-23 14:38:14

Is there really a robot in Zork III?

Weren't there extra points for things like that in many versions of Adventure?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1252&start=0#p7367
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Extra Challenges
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-07-23 15:44:59

I added some optional challenges to Dreamhold. It came out a little murky, though. Some players saw them as poorly-integrated parts of the main game, rather than being optional side bits.

It's tricky. If you offer an obvious possibility, a player might feel he has to complete it and get "stuck" working on the optional challenge rather than continuing the game. If the possibility isn't obvious, it won't be distracting, but the player won't even try it until he reaches the end and types "AMUSING" (or whatever).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1252&start=0#p7368
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Extra Challenges
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-23 15:55:33

Something I've kicked around for one of my WIPs is to have XBox-style achievements, separate from the score/other forms of progress, to track cool stuff the player did. (No achievements on the scale of "you completed the tutorial", though. That's just lame.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1254&start=0#p7369
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Putting an interactive scene in AMUSING?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-07-23 16:17:11

It might well be that you'll find what you're looking for in the Inform Recipe Book, 11.6 - Ending the story.

[quote]What happens next is normally that the player is invited to RESTART, RESTORE (from a saved game), QUIT or UNDO the last command. The presence of the question can somewhat undercut a tragedy, and Battle of Ridgefield shows another way to go out. 


If we do leave the question in, the text is formed by the Table of Final Question Options, which by default looks like this: 

[code]
Table of Final Question Options 
final question wording    only if victorious    topic    final response rule    final response activity    
"RESTART"    false    "restart"    immediately restart the VM rule    --    
"RESTORE a saved game"    false    "restore"    immediately restore saved game rule    --    
"see some suggestions for AMUSING things to do"    true    "amusing"    --    amusing a victorious player    
"QUIT"    false    "quit"    immediately quit rule    --    
"UNDO the last command"    false    "undo"    immediately undo rule    --    [/code]



Because this is a table, we may alter the behavior by changing entries or continuing the table. Finality shows how we might take out the option to UNDO the last command, for instance. [/quote]

The table is severely messed up in this post, of course, but it gives you a general idea. It seems as though it would be as easy as adding entries to the aforementioned table.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1254&start=0#p7370
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Putting an interactive scene in AMUSING?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-23 16:53:26

Peter Pears is on the right track about how to do this if you don't want to just fake the ending. You may also want to know about the "resume the game" phrase, which tells Inform to let the player continue playing after achieving a death state. There's an example [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rex201.html#e201]here[/url]. So you'll probably want to

-- add an option to the death options, possibly one that is only triggered when the player wins the game
-- have that option kick off a rule
-- have the rule change the world state around a bit to set up the "deleted" scene so it's ready for the player to play
-- "resume the game" so that the game becomes interactive again and the player isn't stuck in the end-question state.

One caveat: I suspect that if you do this, after the player has tried the deleted scene, UNDO from the final question state will put him back in that deleted scene again, not let him re-enter the main game right before he won. I don't know if that's likely to be a problem.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1254&start=0#p7371
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Putting an interactive scene in AMUSING?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-07-23 16:58:07

Oh, so *that's* the sort of situation in which "resume the game" is useful. I was wondering about that!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=30#p7372
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-07-23 16:59:01



@bcressey

[quote="bcressey"]Serial killers are a source of terror and zombies are a symptom.[/quote]
Do you mean this simply in the metaphysical sense that zombies are ideas/imagined metaphors while murderous people exist in our world, or are you saying something more with this analogy?

[quote="bcressey"]For me, zombies present a binary choice: resist or die. Serial killers offer no real choice. You can resist, but resistance only gives them what they want. You can die, but only when they let you.[/quote]
Serial-killer fiction often presents the view that these fiends crave attention, are lonely but too socially inept to relate to others except through killing, or are otherwise somehow seeking to impress us with their behavior or some symbolic design motivating their behavior (e.g. the film [i]se7en[/i]).  Thus the killer forms some sort of odd "relationship" with the detective pursuing him consisting of a perilous game of cat-and-mouse in which the adversaries switch positions over time.  In essence, the detective is somehow satisfying the killer by paying attention to the villain and taking the threat of the villain seriously during the detective's investigation.  I think this is mainly a device to add some complexity to the antagonist's character, but I'm not sure it's a truly essential characteristic of the serial killer qua serial killer.


@capmikee

[quote="capmikee"]I've heard of an interesting book on this subject, called "Revolution in Time" which describes how the invention of accurate timekeeping devices took power away from monarchs (the Emperor will see you when the Emperor is ready) and subjected all to the ultimate authority of the clock (The King's audience begins at noon).[/quote]
Books like these have become increasingly common in recent years as historians have found the general idea of looking at how innovation creates a context for changed perceptions of reality is a great way to sell books.  I'm not trying to disparage the idea, as a number of these works are indeed quite fascinating even if in the end it seems unwise to assent to the truly expansive notions these authors sometimes present.  I haven't read the book you mentioned, but if the general concept interests you some others I have read, thought were interesting, and may have a direct relevance to the nature of zombies are:

[i]Plagues and Peoples[/i] (1976) by the very distinguished William H McNeill; a general treatment of the history of plagues and how the introduction of novel diseases affects societies;

[i]Rats, Lice, and History[/i] (1935) by Hans Zinsser; a more detailed look at a plague which thankfully is rare today but was dreadfully common in the past, typhus;

[i]Poisons of the Past: Molds, Epidemics, and History[/i] (1989) by Mary Matossian; I don't mean to trivialize this fine book, but its essential argument (supported by scholarly evidence) is that in the past unsanitary food storage conditions frequently sent an awfully large number of people on bad acid trips, leading to a number of unusual developments in society and profoundly effecting a number of historical events;

I'm very wary of junk science, but the aforementioned books are all serious works written by historians generally recognized as serious scholars.


The notion of history I proposed isn't all that novel as a number of serious historians have examined the idea over the years, perhaps most comprehensively as the metaphor of [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollonian_and_Dionysian]Apollo and Dionysus[/url].  The idea you raised of rationalism and mysticism is a bit more complex than the one I initially raised of order and freedom, as the former is a metaphysical debate while the latter are conflicting reactions to metaphysics by living beings.

As it possibly bears upon the nature of the zombie, I think the central question of the idea you proposed would be whether a leap of intuition is mainly a novel connection between obscured but otherwise rational aspects of a generally rational multiverse (perhaps a form of revelation) or a different sort of revelation clearly identifying an undeniable irrational element of existence.  If there is at least one element of reality that is truly irrational, then reality is irrational and reason can never hope to fully comprehend reality.  If that's the case, then human beings are incapable of fully comprehending reality (except possibly through mysticism).  This isn't to say that the mystic rejects reason as a tool, or that the rationalist doesn't value serendipity; the general problem is more foundational than that.  I'm not familiar with the author you mentioned, but I think ultimately he would have to choose a side as the notions of rationalism and mysticism are fundamentally incompatible in a way that has serious consequences for human beings (zombies too) and how we should live.

[quote="[url=http://thesecondpass.com/?p=876]Stephen King[/url]"]I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader... But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I’ll go for the gross-out. I’m not proud.[/quote]
I haven't decided yet whether my own conception of zombie will require return to the first principles I mentioned, but it may.  Therefore the ideas you raised are very relevant and welcome.  Our analysis of the zombie metaphor has so far been strictly limited to a rationalistic-materialistic perspective, which may be stifling in that the mystic perspective casts the zombie in a quite different light.  The problem in discussing mysticism, however, is that if the particular gnostic insights of the conversants aren't a shared viewpoint or don't quickly command unanimous assent, it may be difficult to sketch a universally compelling portrait of the horror of the zombie.  You mentioned the Anasazi, so let's construct an analogy on that basis.  If our general question is "what lessons may we learn from the collapse of Anasazi civilization?" but some of us are arguing that their civilization declined due to natural resource depletion while others argue it collapsed due to infertility and disease, we may get somewhere.  On the other hand if some are arguing the notions mentioned while others are arguing that the Anasazi civilization collapsed because many were taken by strange beings (perhaps from another world), our argument must (if we take its ends seriously) quickly change from a discussion of what happened to the Anasazi to an exclusive discussion of the nature of these abductors.


You mentioned that you find the inevitability of zombification the more compelling of the alternatives to zombie genesis.  The major emphasis of that aspect of the zombie metaphor would be universal dread and hopelessness; if all who die become zombies, then since all humans are mortal when each human dies he will become a zombie.  One of the difficulties in this view (again we're seeking to understand rather than argue in this discussion) is that there isn't much room for exploring any sort of conflict that is meaningful (because stakes are involved) in our implementation of the zombie metaphor.  There's no reason for our protagonist to struggle against the zombie in an affirmation of life or his own particular life, apart from delusion.  Likewise, there seems to be no fundamental motivation for the zombies to pursue the protagonist as he will join them eventually even if they remain in their graves and do nothing.  I mentioned an example of this approach, the film [i][url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shatter_Dead]Shatterdead[/url][/i], and mentioned that it was ultimately unsatisfying to me.  Once we've committed ourselves to nihilism, I think anything less than the fullest committment is profoundly dishonest and therefore will lead the audience to devalue our assertions.

What would be some compelling ways to address these issues?  I've noted that I'm more interested in the Romantic notion of inducing an emotional response in the audience.  Do you think the "all will become zombies" notion is more, or less, conducive to that goal?




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1254&start=0#p7373
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Putting an interactive scene in AMUSING?
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-07-23 17:09:42

[quote="emshort"]-- "resume the game" so that the game becomes interactive again and the player isn't stuck in the end-question state.[/quote]
This totally makes me want to have a game where you die in the first 5 moves, and get reincarnated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1254&start=0#p7374
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Putting an interactive scene in AMUSING?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-23 18:05:58

(Much) older games used to do this kind of thing more often: you couldn't UNDO the turn that killed you, but you'd be transported to an afterlife area, penalized in some way, but allowed to resume the game with a reduced score or some items missing that you had to retrieve or something along those lines.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1254&start=0#p7375
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Putting an interactive scene in AMUSING?
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-07-23 18:18:02

There are still games that do that, though not IF games.

I was thinking more of a game where dying and being reincarnated is part of the plot.  The first scene of the game is essentially inescapable; then, after you die, you come back as somebody else.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1254&start=0#p7376
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Putting an interactive scene in AMUSING?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-23 19:11:48

Thanks Peter and Emily -- I'd seen 11.6 but wasn't sure what could be done with it. "Resume the story" seems like an especially nice way to do it. You can throw a flag or something to start the bonus scene when you resume the story, and you could also set a password so a player could trigger the bonus scene from within the game.

Hertz: I'm going to have to spoiler the game title (though this aspect of the game becomes clear very quickly), but have you played

[spoiler]Adam Cadre's Shrapnel?[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1252&start=0#p7377
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Extra Challenges
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-23 22:09:34

[quote="emshort"]Something I've kicked around for one of my WIPs is to have XBox-style achievements, separate from the score/other forms of progress, to track cool stuff the player did. (No achievements on the scale of "you completed the tutorial", though. That's just lame.)[/quote]

Jenni Polodna's IFComp reviews always have the title "Author's Game!" Like "Sarah Morayati's Broken Legs!" Anyway, last comp, she posted a lot of scores about halfway through, under the title "Almost Half-way Mark's Scoring Bonanzathon!" Which for a while I thought was an actual game called "Scoring Bonanzathon" by someone writing as "Almost Half-Way Mark," in which the player gets points for absolutely everything. Finishing the tutorial, taking inventory, whatever. Like John Cooney's Achievement Unlocked but in IF. It would've been awesome, if done right, which it wouldn't have been if I'd done it. (Coincidentally, "Virtuality" by Mark in the JayIsGames comp seemed to have a pretty similar scoring system, though I didn't understand it or pretty much anything else about that game.) 

...anyway, a lot of achievements in games seem to be pretty much the same as AMUSING things. I was playing a platformer where I got an achievement for shooting myself in the face, which was not productive from a strictly goal-directed standpoint. (Though it did take some work to get to the point where I could shoot myself in the face.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1252&start=0#p7378
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Extra Challenges
User: Janka / DateTime: 2010-07-24 06:07:48

May I chime in? (my first post, that's why I ask)

While I occassionally restore an RPG to find better possibillities to win the game -- usually I try to beat the bosses just at a lower character level --, I only once have done it with IF, with Alabaster. The reason was I had known in advance Alabaster has many different outcomes and many different paths to get to them. But I would not bother playing a game again and again just for finding the single fork where I should walk the non-obvious way to unlock a single hidden puzzle. Such things rip off the whole storytelling from the game and leave just the game mechanics expsoed, which is a real turn-off to me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1252&start=0#p7379
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Extra Challenges
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-07-24 09:24:02

Yes, that's a real factor for adventure games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1255&start=0#p7380
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: How to handle hallways and also a Q on doors
User: livens / DateTime: 2010-07-24 11:55:52

Hello,

Quick question about hallways. My IF has a long hallway with many doors coming off of it. So I need a lot of rooms that are named Hallway. But how can you name 2 rooms the same? For eample:

[code]
The Access Door is an closed door. The Access Door is east of the Control Room.

H1 is a room. The Description is "The main hallway". H1 is east of Access Door.

H2 is a room. The Description is "The main hallway". H2 is east of H1.[/code]

But on screen the user sees the H1 and H2 in bold, then under that the description. I want the all of the hallway rooms to be named "Main Hallway" or something, and not have to number them.

Also a question on doors. above I have room called Control Room, and a door called Access Door which leads to the hallway. Is it right to have to put the door East of the Control Room and the Hallway East of the Access Door? I tried making both the door and hallway east of the Control Room (made since to me that way) but got an error about how can both be east...

Thanks for reading,

Jeremy

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1255&start=0#p7381
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to handle hallways and also a Q on doors
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-07-24 12:01:33

The room name displayed in bold is the "printed name" property. So you could say:

H1 is a room. The Description is "The main hallway". The printed name is "Main Hallway". H1 is east of Access Door.
H2 is a room. The Description is "The main hallway". The printed name is "Main Hallway". H2 is east of H1.

You could also define hallway as a kind of room, and define the description and printed name for all hallways. Same result, but it saves typing.

[quote]Is it right to have to put the door East of the Control Room and the Hallway East of the Access Door? [/quote]

Yes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1255&start=0#p7382
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to handle hallways and also a Q on doors
User: livens / DateTime: 2010-07-24 12:35:35

Thanks zarf! Exactly what I was looking for.

I wish it was easier to find this type of thing in the documentation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1251&start=0#p7383
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: From Save to Transcript to Session
User: George / DateTime: 2010-07-24 12:54:48

Could you describe some ways this spec would be useful?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1256&start=0#p7384
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Gameshelf #8: Modern Interactive Fiction
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2010-07-24 12:59:33

Just out is Episode #8 of an occasional video series about games, the Gameshelf. It's a YouTube-sized chunk introducing people to what modern interactive fiction is. Probably not much new to anyone reading this, but it could be worth checking out:

<a class="postlink" href="http://gameshelf.jmac.org/2010/07/episode-8---modern-interactive.html">http://gameshelf.jmac.org/2010/07/episo ... ctive.html</a>

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1256&start=0#p7385
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Gameshelf #8: Modern Interactive Fiction
User: George / DateTime: 2010-07-24 14:44:58

Entertaining and well-produced Kevin. I read your note about how you cut a 30 minute script to 10, and I feel that was a good decision.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1257&start=0#p7386
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: A community site for text/choice-based/whatever-you-call-it?
User: George / DateTime: 2010-07-24 15:03:13

Every so often I look around for a forum/site for choice-based/IF games (like anything created with Inform, TADS, Twee, ChoiceScript, Undum, etc.), but I've never really found anything. In other words, a community independent of platform that deals mostly with text-based games (if there's a term for this more concise than a couple of rambling sentences, please let me know!). 

I wonder if this is just unlikely to come together due to some community-forming rules, like it's both too specific (text-based kind-of narrative works) and too general (not about one platform or one genre/medium)?

Sometimes there are threads here and at other IF sites about choice-based games of course, but IF is strong enough in terms of tradition, history, and community for those discussions to feel more like branches from an IF tree, rather than all of these tools branching off the central trunk of 'mostly single-player text games', if that makes sense. 

Just like game developers in general are free to choose any one of a number of programming languages, game creation toolkits, engines, and so on (for example, consider TIGSource), and in theory benefit from exposure to a wide variety of tools, people writing for this IF/choice-based/text medium could do the same. 

Does this sound like something people here would be interested in?

/Weekend-rambling.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1256&start=0#p7387
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Gameshelf #8: Modern Interactive Fiction
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2010-07-24 15:20:50

Sorry I didn't make myself clear, but this is the work of Jason McIntosh, not me. I'm just getting the word out [emote]:-)[/emote]

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1252&start=0#p7388
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Extra Challenges
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-24 16:54:24

[quote="Janka"]I would not bother playing a game again and again just for finding the single fork where I should walk the non-obvious way to unlock a single hidden puzzle.[/quote]

My point in adding an achievements feature wouldn't be to make people replay to look for easter eggs, but to reward them for trying some inventive things that aren't strictly required to win the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1257&start=0#p7389
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A community site for text/choice-based/whatever-you-call
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-07-24 20:55:55

The only choice-based games/stories (not sure which they go by) that I'm really familiar with are those that were released to the IF community, assuming a "choice-based game" is something along the lines of a CYOA.  I wouldn't mind discussing IF and CYOAs together at all, even though I'm not so familiar with the latter.

I also think IF should be freely discussed alongside the MUD family, in the same community.  People interested in developing both kinds of things would learn from the strengths of the other kind.  The same goes for IF/choice-based (or IF/choice-based/MUDs, of course  [emote];)[/emote] ).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1258&start=0#p7390
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Looking for beta testers for new game: The Promise
User: SeanHuxter / DateTime: 2010-07-24 22:07:09

Allow me to (re)introduce myself. Sean Huxter here. I have been a long-time fan of IF since my first INFOCOM game back when I bought my C64 in 1983. In 2008 I discovered Inform 6 and wrote "Piracy 2.0" which took fifth place in the 2008 IF Comp, thanks to some very good testers.

I took a year off to write a version of "Bejeweled" for the Commodore 64 in the GEOS operating system.

I'm back at IF, this time using Inform 7, and this time with a larger story in three acts.

I'm hoping to enter it into 2011's Spring Thing.

I am currently wrapping up Act 1 and will soon be ready for testing. Here is the opening blurb. I hope it will recruit a few testers.

[b]The Promise[/b]
An Interactive Folk Tale by Sean Huxter

Today is a cold day in the village. You have always been cold, for as long as you can remember, whenever you are outside. Warmth is something you know only from sitting around the fire in woolen blankets, enwrapped in your mother's warm arms.

Yesterday, in years gone by, when your father was still alive, you remember the three of you huddling near the fire, playing games, talking about your father's many hunting adventures, and generally feeling warm, regardless of the temperature.

Tomorrow you will be ten years old.

Today you have work to do. You are only nine; you cannot do much of the hard labour your fellow villagers do. Too young to hunt, too young to fish, too young to do any heavy lifting, but you try to be useful. You run errands, do chores, and you hope that one day you can do more. Perhaps this is that day.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring? But today holds such promise.


If you're interested in helping me test the game, please contact me at <a href="mailto:sean@huxter.org">sean@huxter.org</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1239&start=20#p7391
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Transcripts collection proposal
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-07-24 23:04:11

[quote="bcressey"][quote="Dannii"]Having both a UUID and a session ID mean the session ID could be shown on the web (in URLs etc)? I guess that's an advantage.[/quote]

I would probably use the UUID as the public field, since that is the one that should be reasonably unique. Guaranteed unique, if the server disallows reuse of the same UUID, which I think it should.
[/quote]I've realised this is really a non-issue... the server can use any kind of internal ID, whereas the session ID should be cryptographically random.

As to your other suggestions for the handshake, I really think we only need one session ID. This is an open and anonymous protocol, so no matter what we do, it won't be possible to protect it from abuse. I think security and sanity checking really belongs in the server software (ie, unspecified.) What I am planning is that game authors will upload versions of their games to the server first, and then can see the transcripts grouped according to game version. (Including the checksum is a good idea, even if only for distinguishing between different releases made on the same day.) Any transcripts submitted for a game that hasn't been uploaded first will be listed separately, with appropriate warnings to the author.

Juhana, I don't like the idea of always sending the room title, when it just may not be relevant. The status line is likely to have the state information which the author thinks is most relevant. But we could also have a "status" item with which the game can send additional state data to the transcript server. This could include the room title if the author needs it, or any other internal variables. How does that sound?

joningold, those beta issues are really what this proposal is all about. Sarah Morayati has made a convincing case that authors need to clean up their act in respect to custom library and parser messages. This proposal would make it easier to detect those. That in return will allow the authors to fix the missing responses and consider adding alternative solutions.

(Edit: It was Sarah not Juhana who made the [url=http://selfasfractal.blogspot.com/2010/06/default-parser-messages-do-they-need.html]blog post[/url] abut error messages.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1252&start=0#p7392
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Extra Challenges
User: Janka / DateTime: 2010-07-25 03:47:38

It could be an easter egg, but it must be possible to look for it with the information the story told me so far. And, to qualify as an easter egg, it should be hilarious. At least ingenious.

For example, the scenery in some machine rooms could have the line "You hear a monotonous hum". Ok, the player could take that for granted: "I'm in a machine room, it just sounds that way". The story continues and the player gets the ability to shut down the machinery. He does it, but the hum doesn't go away. An experienced player is tricked here to think the game mechanics is exposed and that's just a bug. But a newbee may have the idea to find the real source of the hum, which is some beehive (with honey, yummy!) in the air conditioning. Or a cage of hummingbirds if the author likes bad wordplay. Of course the loose panel to get to the bees should be hard to stumble upon for the experienced player, the author has to fool him twice.

To me, a good easter egg should fool only experienced players. That's a really hard requirement. Playing with the fact experienced players accept the game as a piece of software is a good way to do it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1259&start=0#p7393
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Problem with David Fisher's "Custom Library Messages"
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-07-25 11:39:44

So, I don't know how to contact David Fisher, and I know that he's posted in RAIF saying that, basically, he wouldn't be continuing work on CLM, for whatever reasons. Which puts me in a bit of a pickle, as I've run across a bug in that very same extension. I'm posting this here so that maybe someone can tell me what the problem is and let me know how to modify the extension to solve it. Or maybe Ron Newcomb, who's already updated a Fisher extension, migth read this and be interested. Hey, who knows.

Basically, lists seem to get a bit screwy. I haven't been able to find a simpler example in which this problem occurs, but here's the particular example in which I saw this error.

[code]"Test"

Include Custom Library Messages by David Fisher.

The cabinet is a supporter. It is in Place. The description is "[describe_cabinet][run paragraph on]".

The encyclopedia is on the cabinet.
A fantasy novel is on the cabinet.

Place is a room.

To say describe_cabinet:
	say "This is a cabinet";
	if the encyclopedia is on the cabinet and the fantasy novel is on the cabinet:
		say ". I have 2 books here.";
	otherwise:
		if the encyclopedia is on the cabinet:
			say ". The encyclopedia is off to one side.";
		otherwise if the fantasy novel is on the cabinet:
			say ". A fantasy novel is off to one side.";
		otherwise:
			say ".";
	now everything supported by the cabinet is marked for listing;
	let FRUSTRATION be the number of things supported by the cabinet;
	if the encyclopedia is on the cabinet:
		now the encyclopedia is not marked for listing;
		decrease FRUSTRATION by 1;
	if the fantasy novel is on the cabinet:
		now fantasy novel is not marked for listing;
		decrease FRUSTRATION by 1;
	unless FRUSTRATION is zero:
		say "[line break]I can also see ";
		list the contents of the cabinet, listing marked items only;
		say ".[line break]"	[/code]

(why FRUSTRATION? Because I had a horrible time with that particular bit. Before I finally settled on "list the contents of the cabinet, listing marked items only;", I kept trying 'say "[line break]I can also see [a list of the things on the cabinet which are marked for listing]", which compiled and never worked, for some reason I ignore)

The output is:

[quote]
Test
An Interactive Fiction
Release 1 / Serial number 100725 / Inform 7 build 6E72 (I6/v6.31 lib 6/12N) SD

Place
You can see a cabinet (on which are an encyclopedia and a fantasy novel) here.

>x cabinet
This is a cabinet. I have 2 books here.

On the cabinetare an encyclopedia and a fantasy novel.

>[/quote]

See the "cabinetare"? Can also be "cabinetis". And the problem goes away when I remove the extension.

Any thoughts? I wish I could just e-mail the author, but again, I don't know where, and he seems to have discontinued it...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1121&start=10#p7394
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2010 - Open for Business, and You?
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-07-25 12:39:59

[quote="Dannii"]Your problem before was with the works you submitted, not Node-X.[/quote]

Actually I think my works were okay, except the fact that Project Delta was unfinished and Trap Cave was partially translated into english. As always, my only problem was time. I found a nice poem about time which describes my situation perfectly:

[quote][b]Time poem[/b]
by Amy Darnbrook

Time goes fast
Time goes slow
Time sees people die
Time sees the grass grow
Time does not forget
Time does not forgive
Time crushes and kills
Time takes all you have to give
Time rushes past
Time ticks and tocks
Time is shown by the sun
Time is on the kitchen clock
Time is going slowly
Time tells you what must be done
Time is running out
Time waits for you to have fun
Time is impatient
Time is kind
Time is cruel
Time doesn't mind
Time is a second
Time is forever
Time is right this minute
Time is now or never[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1256&start=0#p7395
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Gameshelf #8: Modern Interactive Fiction
User: George / DateTime: 2010-07-25 14:31:58

Somehow I just completely spaced that right after watching it [emote]:)[/emote].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1257&start=0#p7396
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A community site for text/choice-based/whatever-you-call
User: George / DateTime: 2010-07-25 14:35:18

I'm with you on that Bainespal (being active in muds myself), though I have a feeling from my IF experience that many IF players aren't as interested in the kind of play found on muds. I'm not sure if it's a majority though or exactly how the demographics fall out. It does seem like there's very little cross-over currently, at least in public discussion. Many mud developers aren't knowledgeable at all about IF and vice-versa.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1260&start=0#p7397
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Simple default-message changes
User: ChrisFederico / DateTime: 2010-07-25 15:07:10

I'd like to do something that seems extremely simple: change a few of the standard messages to read more closely to those in old Infocom comes. These would apply throughout the game, and would never require any exceptions, special conditions, tense-changes, etc.

For instance:

You can see a frozen moonbeam here.

Would instead read as:

There is a frozen moonbeam here.

The attempt at picking up a piece of scenery would return "What a concept!" and so forth...it doesn't seem as if I'd need an extension, considering that it was relatively simple in I6; so I'm hoping that there's a way to do it from within the source.

I've scoured the manuals and documents, but the closest I've come is to encounter references to a list of rulebook names, supposedly found under a couple of the tabs above the source window ("Action" and a few others); but clicking on those tabs just gives me blank windows.

While I'm at it, I'd also like to remove the score from the banner and return any "score" input with "This game does not involve a score."

Thanks so much for any assistance. I sure appreciate it.

Chris

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1259&start=0#p7398
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with David Fisher's "Custom Library Messages"
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-07-25 15:19:14

Hey Pete, find this line in the extension:[code]LibMsg <say things on>			"On [the main object][what's on %]."[/code]and add the space in:[code]LibMsg <say things on>			"On [the main object] [what's on %]."[/code]The line appears twice in the extension: once in the documentation (which is already correct) and once in the code.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1259&start=0#p7399
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with David Fisher's "Custom Library Messages"
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-07-25 15:30:06

Beautiful. [emote]:)[/emote] I'd guessed it would be something of the sort, but had no idea where to go looking, and don't like to mess blindly about in other people's extensions (especially I6-heavy ones). Needless to say, it worked wonders.

Also, I suppose this serves as a warning to people using that extension right now. Always useful.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1260&start=0#p7400
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple default-message changes
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-07-25 15:37:01

For removing the score, simply add "no scoring" to your story options list up at the top.  For example, my default story options are: "Use full-length room descriptions, American dialect, no scoring, and the serial comma."  (The available options are listed in 2.12 in the Documentation.)  With "no scoring," the message in response to "score" is "There is no score in this story."  To change that, of course, brings us to...

The easiest way to change the default messages is with an extension; I've found [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/David%20Fisher/Default%20Messages/index.html]David Fisher's Default Messages[/url] to be useful.  It does seem like overkill, but changing library messages is known-complicated in I7.  There doesn't currently seem to exist a good list of which messages fire when, so unless you want to dig around in the Standard Rules for that, Default Messages is probably the way to go.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1261&start=0#p7401
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Looping a sound file for background music?
User: livens / DateTime: 2010-07-25 16:06:46

Hello again,

I need help looping a sound file so that the sound plays the entire time you are in a room. I can play a sound during an event, like when play begins, but cannot find any method of making it loop so it keeps playing.

Also is there an event for entering a room? So I can say something like:

[code]When you enter the Control Room:
  Play the Sound of mySound.[/code]

Thanks again [emote]:)[/emote]

Jeremy

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1260&start=0#p7402
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple default-message changes
User: ChrisFederico / DateTime: 2010-07-25 16:15:02

I understand. I suppose I'll just try that extension. Thanks very much! I'm extremely grateful for the help.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1260&start=0#p7403
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple default-message changes
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-07-25 16:15:32

[quote="ChrisFederico"]I'd like to do something that seems extremely simple: change a few of the standard messages to read more closely to those in old Infocom games. [...] ...it doesn't seem as if I'd need an extension, considering that it was relatively simple in I6; so I'm hoping that there's a way to do it from within the source.[/quote]There is a way, for most of the messages anyway, but each is done in a different way.  The 19 or so parser errors use the "printing a parser error" activity; the individual actions use Check & Report rules, the former which would need to be rewritten in their entirety, etc.

David Fisher is trying to deprecate his message extensions, so I wrote a Default Messages extension that's small and simple which should get the job done.  You can get it [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Ron%20Newcomb/Default%20Messages/index.html]here[/url].

Also, I have a small request, if you wouldn't mind too much. 

At the last [url=http://groups.google.com/group/seattle-if/topics]Seattle I-F[/url] group meeting, the subject of Inform's default  messages cropped up, specifically in response to Sarah Moyarati's [url=http://selfasfractal.blogspot.com/2010/06/default-parser-messages-do-they-need.html]blog post[/url] which criticizes the confusion of voice in those messages, among other things.  George Oliver hypothesized different genre-specific collections of default messages: just include them so messages like, "Must you draw attention to yourself?" would be, in a horror work for example, "Nothing benevolent heard you." 

If you do a serious job of re-creating the Infocom messages, could you release them as an extension?  I think there would be some demand for it, and I think George's idea of genre-specific messages that could be dropped in with minimal work is a very good idea (speaking as a player).  If you would, your extension would look something like:
[code]
Original Infocom Default Messages by Chris Federico begins here.

"Restores the standard messages used in Infocom's games."

Include Default Messages by Ron Newcomb.

Table of custom library messages (continued)
library-action	library-message-id	library-message-text
taking action	11	"What a concept!"
[... and so on ...]

Original Infocom Default Messages ends here.
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1261&start=0#p7404
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Looping a sound file for background music?
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-07-25 16:40:40

I don't know about looping sound, but for triggering on entering a room, you can say
[code]After going to the Control Room:
  Play the Sound of mySound.[/code]
Chapter 7.13 has some more detailed examples.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1261&start=0#p7405
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Looping a sound file for background music?
User: George / DateTime: 2010-07-25 18:15:20

I think you need to track down the Damusix extension for looping. Unfortunately it's not yet easy to get as far as I know (maybe someone here can help? I know some folks have been testing it).

Look up Eliuk Blau (the author) at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.caad.es/eliukblau/index.html">http://www.caad.es/eliukblau/index.html</a> for his email address.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1121&start=10#p7406
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2010 - Open for Business, and You?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-07-25 18:24:41

[quote]Actually I think my works were okay, except the fact that Project Delta was unfinished and Trap Cave was partially translated into english.[/quote]
Exactly what I meant... unfinished half-translated games are [i]not[/i] okay.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1261&start=0#p7407
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Looping a sound file for background music?
User: livens / DateTime: 2010-07-25 19:41:02

Thanks for the tips [emote]:)[/emote]

I did find a small I6 code snippet that was posted elsewhere by Eliuk Blau and seemed to be part of a I6 Damusix extension, but just the looping and stop functions:
[url]http://rec.arts.int-fiction.free-usenet.eu/Simple-Sounds-in-I7_T23205391_S1[/url]

[code]{code} <- change back to square brackets

Include (-
[ SoundPlayExt sound channel loop;
if (channel == 1 or 2) {
if (channel == 1) { channel = gg_backgroundchan; }
else { channel = gg_foregroundchan; }
}
else { "ERROR: Bad channel (1 or 2, no others)."; }
!------------------------------------------------------------------------
if (glk_gestalt(gestalt_Sound,0) && glk_gestalt
(gestalt_SoundMusic,0)) {
glk_schannel_play_ext(channel,sound,loop,0);
}
else { "Sound feature is unsuportted by your interpreter."; }
];

[ SoundStopExt channel;
if (channel == 1 or 2) {
if (channel == 1) { channel = gg_backgroundchan; }
else { channel = gg_foregroundchan; }
}
else { "ERROR: Bad channel (1 or 2, no others)."; }
!------------------------------------------------------------------------
if (glk_gestalt(gestalt_Sound,0) && glk_gestalt
(gestalt_SoundMusic,0)) {
glk_schannel_stop(channel);
}
else { "Sound feature is unsuportted by your interpreter."; }
];
-).

To sound-play (SND - sound-name) in channel (CHN - number):
(- SoundPlayExt({SND},{CHN},1); -)

To sound-play (SND - sound-name) in channel (CHN - number) with loop:
(- SoundPlayExt({SND},{CHN},-1); -)

To sound-stop channel (CHN - number):
(- SoundStopExt({CHN}); -)


{/code}[/code]

Then

[code]Sound of Music is the file "music.ogg".

sound-play the sound of Music in channel 1 with loop.[/code]

Compiles OK, but no sound [emote]:([/emote]. Ill have to familiarize myself with the glk/glux? stuff to see why its not working for me.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1260&start=0#p7408
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple default-message changes
User: ChrisFederico / DateTime: 2010-07-25 21:28:48

I'd love to be able to offer such a thing; I'll do my very best to create something efficient, once I learn about how the extensions work to begin with. My programming experience thus far involves BASIC, 8-bit assembly (remember that?) and Inform 6 (along with numerous other "high level" tools that require interpretation -- i.e. comparatively easy stuff like I6), so I don't think that creating such a module is out of my scope, to use IF hyperbole...but I'll have to really study up on the details, and I'm just beginning to learn I7. The elegance of the language, and its conformity to consistent grammar, have attracted me to it, after a few years' break from writing IF.

I'm really looking forward to checking out each of these Default Messages extensions. Thank you!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1262&start=0#p7409
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: LIMBO (XBox Live Summer of Arcade)
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-07-25 21:30:57

It's not exactly interactive fiction, but if you're a 360 owner and a fan of puzzles (the kind that are are progressively more challenging, but rewarding when solved), I highly recommend LIMBO, an XBox 360 downloadable "arcade" game that was just released this past week. It's not very long (I started it yesterday and beat it today) and at $15 it might not be substantial enough for some, but I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.

Many of the puzzles are physics-based. It's about a little boy traveling through Limbo, and it's all black and white, flickering, surreal. It's definitely something unique -- something that might appeal to fans of other artsy-type puzzle-ish games like Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, or maybe Braid (which was another XBLA downloadable). There is no dialogue and no real music -- just some moody background sound. Anyway, I really enjoyed it, and I think any fan of IF with a crossover interest in video games would enjoy it as well. Plus, the demo's free.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1260&start=0#p7410
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple default-message changes
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-25 23:21:55

[quote="Ron Newcomb"] 
At the last [url=http://groups.google.com/group/seattle-if/topics]Seattle I-F[/url] group meeting, the subject of Inform's default  messages cropped up, specifically in response to Sarah Moyarati's [url=http://selfasfractal.blogspot.com/2010/06/default-parser-messages-do-they-need.html]blog post[/url] which criticizes the confusion of voice in those messages, among other things.  George Oliver hypothesized different genre-specific collections of default messages: just include them so messages like, "Must you draw attention to yourself?" would be, in a horror work for example, "Nothing benevolent heard you." [/quote]

I'd love seeing some genre-specific variant libraries. That would be pretty cool.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1261&start=0#p7411
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Looping a sound file for background music?
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-07-26 00:10:26

You can't get sounds to repeat without a little Inform 6 work. However, not much is required, as nearly all of it is already available in the Standard Rules. From the 6E72 Standard Rules, we have
[code]To play (SFX - sound name), one time only
	(documented at ph_playsf):
	(- PlaySound(ResourceIDsOfSounds-->{SFX}, {phrase options}); -).
[/code]
PlaySound is defined in the I6 template layer, in "Extensions/Reserved/Figures.i6t":
[code][ PlaySound resource_ID one_time;
	if (resource_ID == 0) return; ! The "silence" non-sound effect
	if ((one_time) && (ResourceUsageFlags->resource_ID)) return;
	ResourceUsageFlags->resource_ID = true;
	VM_SoundEffect(resource_ID);
];
[/code]
Finally, VM_SoundEffect is defined in the same layer, in the file "Extensions/Reserved/Glulx.i6t":
[code][ VM_SoundEffect resource_ID;
	if (glk_gestalt(gestalt_Sound, 0)) {
		glk_schannel_play(gg_foregroundchan, resource_ID);
	} else {
		print "[Sound effect number ", resource_ID, " here.]^";
	}
];
[/code]
That "glk_schannel_play()" call is a Glk call that makes the sound actually play: what we need to do is to create a new action that ends up making a slightly different Glk call to "glk_schannel_play_ext()", as that call does allow repeats.

Something like the following should work (not tested, but you get the idea):
[code]To loopplay (SFX - sound name):
	(- PlaySoundLoop(ResourceIDsOfSounds-->{SFX}); -).

(-
[ PlaySoundLoop resource_ID;
	if (resource_ID == 0) return;
	ResourceUsageFlags->resource_ID = true;
	if (glk_gestalt(gestalt_Sound, 0)) {
		glk_schannel_play_ext(gg_foregroundchan, resource_ID, -1, 0);
	}
];
-)
[/code]
It's that "-1" in the "glk_schannel_play_ext()" call that makes the sound repeat.

Incidentally, recent I7 builds introduced the need for that "ResourceIDsOfSounds-->{SFX}" bit of logic to get the resource identifier of sounds and pictures: I suspect that that is why that old code from Eliuk no longer works.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1260&start=0#p7412
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple default-message changes
User: ChrisFederico / DateTime: 2010-07-26 02:43:57

I was studying Emily Short's source for [i]Bronze, [/i]and some things that are only vaguely mentioned in the documentation clicked into place when I encountered her changes to the default messages. If one wants to alter just a few things in very simplex ways, wouldn't this work:

The feather is a thing in the Courtyard. "There is a feather here."

...and onward to the rest of the object's information? Would "You can see..." be replaced with that message, as it is in [i]Bronze [/i](i.e. regarding the appearance of the helmet)? If this were done with each object in the story, it seems as if it might well work -- unless I haven't experimented enough to know why not, of course.

For the taking an object to simply return "Taken." -- wouldn't something like this work, even if I haven't gotten the syntax down verbatim yet:

Every turn while taking something, say "Taken."

(Perhaps the "carrying out" variant would be better?)

Thanks again!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1252&start=0#p7413
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Extra Challenges
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-07-26 10:04:53

I was thinking more from a player perspective than a design one.

For example, you get nothing in Zork I for brining the lantern to the machine room, but it requires you to be really tricky in order to get it to work. Or defeating the game without killing the cyclops or troll requires you to navigate the world in a different way than you might be used to.

Rather than as an easter egg thing, I was thinking about how RPGs will have single character challenges where you beat the game with 1 PC rather than 4, the ending is no different, but the challenge is higher. Are there any games you can do that with?

I assume it would be more of a deal in the large infocom games, since newere games seem smaller and more concise and aware of the player trying to break the system. 

For example, in sorcerer there are 2 ways to defeat the glass maze, one requires magic, and one requires going back through the maze. Both bypass the puzzle. However if your challenge was "beat sorcerer without the <specific spell name>" then the game would be more challenging, but without any easter egg perk or anything. Likewise you could say "beat zork I without touching the sword" forcing you to bypass the troll with the knife instead. 

I was wondering if anyone had any examples of that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1263&start=0#p7414
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Puzzle v Plot
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-07-26 10:18:01

I'm sure everyone has a different opinion, so I guess this is more of a poll- but what do people prefer, the story-heavy IF, or the puzzle-heavy one.

For puzzle lovers, how important is the story? If you're just thrown into the game Zork style with no explination, is that fine if the puzzles are well developed? What if the plot is against your moral code (you play an evil person or whatever).

For plot lovers, how important is the mechanics? If the choices you make don't make any difference in the game, like Photopia, is that okay as long as the story is well developed? Would you get easily frustrated and quit a game if there were difficult puzzles involved?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1252&start=10#p7415
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Extra Challenges
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-26 10:52:39

In the games I play on Newgrounds there are often a few different kinds of achievements -- achievements for dying in a particular way and other non-constructive things and easter eggs, achievements for completing a certain part of the game, and achievements for doing something a difficult way. It sounds like you're looking for the latter. 

It seems to me that some of these things are easy to obtain given existing IF tropes. If you have a score, that's like an achievement for accomplishing a particular task (and sometimes getting the Last Lousy Points are another kind of achievement); the AMUSING can challenge you to get easter eggs or to manipulate the game in weird ways (for instance, IIRC Suveh Nux in the AMUSING points out that you can kill yourself); and some games use the score or some afterword text to challenge you to do things the hard way. For example, I think Attack of the Robot Zombies challenges you to use as few bullets as possible, and Backup points out that you can finish the game without killing anyone (which is something I'd tried to do anyway, because the game makes you feel bad about killing people, especially the first person you're likely to encounter).

So I think what you're looking for might be best accomplished with post-game text. "You've beaten the game; can you try doing this?"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1263&start=0#p7416
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle v Plot
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-26 11:09:57

I generally prefer story, if only because I suck at puzzles. Or I like puzzles I can deal with. If a game is going to be a story-free puzzlefest, it should at least get me from puzzle to puzzle quickly. I think this was part of the reason I like Gleaming the Verb better than other folks; at least it didn't make me wander around a big map to find the word puzzles. Coincidentally, I was just playing Letters from Home, which was the opposite; a huge map I had to wander around to find the puzzles, though looking at the walkthrough revealed that "GO TO room" was implemented (it also revealed that there was a totally unclued bit of zarfian cruelty, where prematurely solving a puzzle locked off another one, but that's another complaint). 

Even in a puzzlefest, a story that violates my moral code is a problem. I was really put off by the part at the opening of Earl Grey where the game forces you to do something gratuitously nasty for no other reason than to allow the story to progress (and it then has unforeseeably horrible consequence) -- that was part of the reason I gave up on it when the puzzles got really hard. (Though I also had problems with the puzzle design.) A Flustered Duck had something of that problem too, though for some reason I had a little less problem there -- perhaps it established early on that the characters were pretty flat and the way to deal with them was through comic sociopathy, especially because they were often pretty horrible to the PC anyway. Also, what you do to the leprechauns is funny. 

For story-centric games, I love Photopia, but I don't think I've got as much out of any other game that railroads you to the same extent. I'd rather be allowed to discover things and move around on my own. (I didn't feel railroaded in the same way in Rover's Day Out, perhaps because you have freedom within the apartment even if you have a constrained list of tasks to do.) If there are difficult puzzles, I do get easily frustrated and consult the hints. Then I consult the walkthrough. Only then do I quit.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1252&start=10#p7417
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Extra Challenges
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-26 11:38:15

[quote="tggdan3"]I was thinking more from a player perspective than a design one.

For example, you get nothing in Zork I for brining the lantern to the machine room, but it requires you to be really tricky in order to get it to work. Or defeating the game without killing the cyclops or troll requires you to navigate the world in a different way than you might be used to.[/quote]

I did get what you meant here, but kind of went on a tangent because of the designer perspective anyway.

It's hard for me to think of good examples of what you're asking for on the play side because there aren't many games I've played enough times to have discovered tricky routes through. 

The closest thing I can think of in the games I've written is that it might be possible to play through Metamorphoses while avoiding some of the material settings on the dragon furnace. (It lets you convert object materials to other materials, and there's enough flexibility in the puzzles that you might not need to use all the materials in a given playthrough.) But I haven't gone back to test and make sure that's possible, so I wouldn't want to suggest it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1264&start=0#p7418
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Different default response for each character
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-07-26 11:47:32

I have this IF concept where you start off as a main character, a detective; as you interview each suspect to learn his alibi for the murder, you switch perspective to play through that character's alibi.  At the same time, the voice changes from second-person present to first-person past, as follows:

[code]The dame definitely looks like trouble.  Dames usually are.
> LANA, SIT

Lana sits in your leather chair and crosses her long legs. She coolly lights a cigarette.
(You can ask her about the victim, or ask her or the night of the murder.)

> ASK LANA ABOUT THE NIGHT OF THE MURDER

Murphy's Diner (in the booth)
"I was waiting for Tom at Murphy's Diner.  He was late."

> LOOK
Murphy's Diner (in the booth)
"It's a greasy little place on 44th, with the kind of chairs you hated to sit in, and the kind of food you'd never come back for, but it was quiet and out of the way.  I took one of the booths at the back and nursed a cup of coffee.
"I don't remember seeing anybody else in the diner except Murph."

> EXAMINE MURPH
"He was leaning on the counter, chewing on a cigar and reading the paper.  I couldn't see what he was reading from where I was sitting."

> GET UP
"No, I stayed in that booth the whole time until Tom arrived.  I'm sure of that.

"Around nine o'clock, Tom came in off the street.  He came in and sat down in my booth."
("I remember asking him about our date, or about his wife Cybil.")

> ASK TOM ABOUT CYBIL[/code]
And then, at other times, you'll play through the alibis of the various other suspects, each in first-person past tense, but with different messages for each.  You might later play Tom, and get messages such as "I remember telling her about our date, and about my wife Cybil."  Instead of treating the moves as commands, the response will make them seem more like questions:  TAKE THE WILL would be read as "Did you take the will?" and print the suspect's answer.  (The player will have great flexibility in [i]creating[/i] the alibi himself, but some choices will have to be limited for sanity's sake.)

Is it possible to make the parser messages identity-dependent?

The tricky part is going to be getting the quotation marks in the right places.  Every paragraph should begin with a quotation mark, but only the final paragraph should end in one, and only in first-person mode.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1264&start=0#p7419
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Different default response for each character
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-26 11:53:23

[quote="Hertz"] 
Is it possible to make the parser messages identity-dependent?

The tricky part is going to be getting the quotation marks in the right places.  Every paragraph should begin with a quotation mark, but only the final paragraph should end in one, and only in first-person mode.[/quote]

David Fisher's Custom Library Messages extension lets you set person and tense, so I'd start there to get the basic flexibility of default response you want.

You'll need to do some additional tweaking in order to wrap the quotation marks, though. One way might be to add a quote tag like [q] that only prints " when the player is set to be certain characters. Alternatively, you could trap and filter all outgoing text; if you try that route, then Ron Newcomb's Output Filtering extension might be for you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1260&start=0#p7420
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple default-message changes
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2010-07-26 11:54:24

[quote="ChrisFederico"]For the taking an object to simply return "Taken." -- wouldn't something like this work, even if I haven't gotten the syntax down verbatim yet:

Every turn while taking something, say "Taken."[/quote]Well, taking an object already prints "Taken" by default, but if you want to change it to something else, there are several ways of accomplishing that. Using an every turn rule is not one of them. (Ok, one [i]could[/i] craft an every turn rule with the proper conditions to achieve the desired effect, but even then it would be a bad idea for reasons beyond the scope of this post.) It looks like you edited your posted code slightly, but among other things this rule will still fire after the standard report taking rule has already fired, which means that after taking something, "Taken" prints twice.

What you need is a rule that fires [i]after[/i] the taken action has been successfully executed (which happens in the carry out taking rules), but [i]before[/i] it has been reported (which happens in the report taking rules). As illustrated in ch. 12.2 -- "How actions are processed," there is an entire rulebook sandwiched between those two -- the after rules. Also, as implied in ch. 7.5. -- "After rules," when an after rule fires, the report rules are ignored altogether, so you don't have to worry about double messages. This is the easiest way to change the standard messages for successful actions and presumably the reason why it is recommended. Here I've changed the standard message from "Taken" to "Ok":[code]After taking:
	say "Ok.".[/code]Now (just to confuse you more [emote]:)[/emote] ) unlike the check / carry out / report rules which are separated by individual action, the after rules (as well as "before" and "instead") are shared by all the actions. This basically means that before / instead / after rules can get unwieldy if you have quite a few of them. For this reason, there are several I7 authors -- myself included -- who avoid them when possible. The method I would generally use get the same effect as the above is:[code]First report taking:
	say "Ok.";
	rule succeeds.[/code]The word "first" here tells inform to put that rule first in the report taking rules and the phrase "rule succeeds" tells inform, "We're done here so there's no need to check any of the other report taking rules" -- effectively removing the standard report taking rule from the picture. Also, you could do this:[code]First report taking:
	say "Ok." instead.[/code]The word "instead" in this context achieves the same result as "rule succeeds", although they do not mean the same thing.

As you can see, understanding the order of the basic rulebooks is pretty critical to achieving even simple tasks in I7. For this, the index is indispensable, which brings me to the next point. You mentioned blank panels in the index -- a common complaint which I don't think is clearly addressed in the docs. The index is based on the latest [i]successfully compiled[/i] version of the current project; it always starts out blank. What I always do when beginning a new project is create one room only and hit go to compile it. Now I'll have an index to work with as I program. Also, by default this index is "cleaned" (erased) every time you exit inform. In windows, this option can be changed under Edit-->Preferences. Just uncheck the box that says "Also clean out index files" (this is how mine is set).

Hope that helps.

Edited to add: In my case, that's [i]unpublished[/i] authors.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1264&start=0#p7421
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Different default response for each character
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-07-26 12:16:34

For the last, the extension "Dialogue Punctuation" is probably closer to the mark than Output Filtering.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=30#p7422
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-07-26 13:44:10

[quote="Endosphere"]@bcressey
[quote="bcressey"]Serial killers are a source of terror and zombies are a symptom.[/quote]
Do you mean this simply in the metaphysical sense that zombies are ideas/imagined metaphors while murderous people exist in our world, or are you saying something more with this analogy?
[/quote]

No, I meant that, while they create horror of themselves, the terror that zombies induce derives from their origin. Something has caused them to appear, be it supernatural influence or science run amok. That thing is the source of terror; the existence of zombies is symptomatic of a broader suspension in the natural order.

I am working from the sense that horror is situational and terror is omnipresent. In other words, it is horrible when a zombie jumps out of a closet, and terrible that you will never again inhabit a world in which zombies do not jump out of closets.

Serial killers are terrible because they are enough like us that they can understand, predict and even control our behavior, but they are alien enough that we cannot do likewise. Serial killers are commonly thought to be wired differently from normal people: not simply someone who decides one day to begin killing strangers, but someone who has been an unnatural outsider since birth. A normal human birth, rather than a blasphemous rebirth.

Moreover, unlike zombies, serial killers are not readily identifiable through external markers. Defeating a zombie requires only perception, reflexes, and a shotgun. Surviving a serial killer forces you to unmask and ultimately to understand them, which may not be desirable or even possible.

[quote="bcressey"]Thus the killer forms some sort of odd "relationship" with the detective pursuing him consisting of a perilous game of cat-and-mouse in which the adversaries switch positions over time.  In essence, the detective is somehow satisfying the killer by paying attention to the villain and taking the threat of the villain seriously during the detective's investigation.  I think this is mainly a device to add some complexity to the antagonist's character, but I'm not sure it's a truly essential characteristic of the serial killer qua serial killer.[/quote]

I agree that it is a common device but not an essential one. Generally the point seems to be to justify the serial killer's interest in engaging an adversary that could defeat him, either because he craves an audience or seeks to prove his intellectual superiority. These motives suffice for mainstream audiences precisely because they are readily understood, but at the same time, it reduces the potential terror to a series of shocking, horrible demands for attention or recognition. 

This is the serial killer as artist rather than alien. We know what he is after, even if we do not know quite why he picked that way to go about it, and we wish he could have taken up something less grisly, like watercolors.

[quote="Endosphere"]Once we've committed ourselves to nihilism, I think anything less than the fullest committment is profoundly dishonest and therefore will lead the audience to devalue our assertions.[/quote]

You can hedge the commitment somewhat; Lovecraft's vision of the universal is only nihilistic insofar as humanity is concerned, not least because we are bound by laws of time and space that other entities can conveniently ignore.

[quote="Endosphere"]What would be some compelling ways to address these issues?  I've noted that I'm more interested in the Romantic notion of inducing an emotional response in the audience.  Do you think the "all will become zombies" notion is more, or less, conducive to that goal?[/quote]

With the above in mind, you could demonstrate that zombies have a way to win out over nihilism: either because their lofty ambitions have been channeled into mere consumption, at which we excel; or because freedom from death and environmental hazard empowers them to overcome checks on progress that mankind cannot.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1264&start=0#p7423
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Different default response for each character
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-26 13:52:35

Ah! point. I'd forgotten about that one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1264&start=0#p7424
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Different default response for each character
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-07-26 14:08:41

Since you'll be spending most of the game playing the various first-person-past suspects, and not much playing the second-person-present detective, it sounds as if I'll need to set the basic default messages to first-person-past and override as necessary.

The investigator will mostly be in his office and won't have many commands at his disposal except to interview the suspects.  He'll be able to say "ASK JANE ABOUT THE MURDER," "SIT IN CHAIR" or "EXAMINE JANE," but for the most part he won't be traveling, taking items, searching, reading, turning lights on and off, wearing clothes, and whatnot.  Those few commands the investigator can do can be captured individually; those he [i]can't[/i] do can be rejected with a few generic "keep your mind on the case" and "you're not leaving this guy alone in your office" messages.

I think the punctuation will do what I need, also.  Thanks for the tip.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=30#p7425
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-07-26 15:16:44

[quote="Endosphere"][i]Poisons of the Past: Molds, Epidemics, and History[/i] (1989) by Mary Matossian; I don't mean to trivialize this fine book, but its essential argument (supported by scholarly evidence) is that in the past unsanitary food storage conditions frequently sent an awfully large number of people on bad acid trips, leading to a number of unusual developments in society and profoundly effecting a number of historical events;[/quote]
That sounds like my kind of book. I've heard a couple things about ergotism that sound like they would fall in this area, and I even heard allegations that the Beowulf story is about an ergot cult (Beowulf apparently means barley-wolf). It seems like fungus is Nature's chemistry lab - nowhere else will you find such a wide variety of chemicals produced by a living thing for no apparent purpose at all. Michael Pollan has a few choice musings on mushrooms, and of course where would we be without yeast?

A friend of mine has been working on a card-based game in which the players take on the role of diseases and compete to infect or kill the most humans. He got the idea for the game from "Plagues and Peoples" and "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond. They've both been on my reading list for a while.

[quote]You mentioned that you find the inevitability of zombification the more compelling of the alternatives to zombie genesis.  The major emphasis of that aspect of the zombie metaphor would be universal dread and hopelessness; if all who die become zombies, then since all humans are mortal when each human dies he will become a zombie.  One of the difficulties in this view (again we're seeking to understand rather than argue in this discussion) is that there isn't much room for exploring any sort of conflict that is meaningful (because stakes are involved) in our implementation of the zombie metaphor.  There's no reason for our protagonist to struggle against the zombie in an affirmation of life or his own particular life, apart from delusion.  Likewise, there seems to be no fundamental motivation for the zombies to pursue the protagonist as he will join them eventually even if they remain in their graves and do nothing.  I mentioned an example of this approach, the film [i][url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shatter_Dead]Shatterdead[/url][/i], and mentioned that it was ultimately unsatisfying to me.  Once we've committed ourselves to nihilism, I think anything less than the fullest committment is profoundly dishonest and therefore will lead the audience to devalue our assertions.[/quote]
That certainly casts the question in a different light. But does it really kill the story if there is truly no avoiding our destiny? Maybe that puts us back in the realm of tragedy again, but we still have an inner story to tell - whether we cling to hope even when there's no reason for it.

I think I'm out of my depth now. What scares me is often random images that didn't seem like they were supposed to be scary. I think someone mentioned Raiders of the Lost Ark. Nothing before or since has ever scared me as much as the angry angels and the melting faces. I was 9 years old, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1252&start=10#p7426
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Extra Challenges
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-07-26 15:43:54

Øyvind Thorsby's [i]Attack of the Yeti Robot Zombies[/i] begins with the following:

[quote]This is a try-to-win-on-the-first-attempt game. The point of the game is to try to win on the first attempt. Or, failing that, to win in as few attempts as possible. You are not supposed to use "undo" or "restore" if things are going badly. (Though it is OK to use "save" and then later "restore" if you have to leave the game for a while. And it is OK to save the game as often as you like.)[/quote]
And explains further:

[quote]Say you are playing a game where you start in a burning building. If this were a normal game maybe you would want to search the building. Maybe you would find things. If you died you could just restart. But if you where playing a try-to-win-on-the-first-attempt game, you would probably want to run out, otherwise you might burn and die and then you would probably not win on the first attempt.[/quote]
Which is kind of the thing you mean, since it's not enforced by the game's design at all, but it's also kind of not what you mean because it's really just the author saying how he thinks you should approach the game rather than a new challenge devised by players.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1260&start=0#p7427
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple default-message changes
User: ChrisFederico / DateTime: 2010-07-26 18:32:39

[quote="Skinny Mike"]Well, taking an object already prints "Taken" by default...[/quote]

Oops! That's a bit embarrassing. In my brain, the sentence communicated "other than 'Taken.'," but my typing wasn't properly notified. [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote="Skinny Mike"]The method I would generally use get the same effect as the above is:[code]First report taking:
	say "Ok.";
	rule succeeds.[/code]
The word "first" here tells inform to put that rule first in the report taking rules and the phrase "rule succeeds" tells inform, "We're done here so there's no need to check any of the other report taking rules" -- effectively removing the standard report taking rule from the picture. Also, you could do this:[code]First report taking:
	say "Ok." instead.[/code]The word "instead" in this context achieves the same result as "rule succeeds", although they do not mean the same thing.[/quote]

Wow. That is [i]extremely [/i]helpful information about the order of processing -- I truly appreciate your taking the time to explain that. I'm clearly going to have to go over and over the process by which rules are carried out until I know it like the back of...well, I6, rather than just assuming that everything has "this particular bit of code to worry about, and that's it" -- there's clearly a lot of spider-web influence between everything Inform does, and the importance of learning [i]why [/i]things happen the way they do has finally sunk in.

[quote="Skinny Mike"]The index is based on the latest [i]successfully compiled[/i] version of the current project; it always starts out blank. What I always do when beginning a new project is create one room only and hit go to compile it. Now I'll have an index to work with as I program. Also, by default this index is "cleaned" (erased) every time you exit inform. In windows, this option can be changed under Edit-->Preferences. Just uncheck the box that says "Also clean out index files" (this is how mine is set).[/quote]

That explains it! I was a bit worried that (don't laugh) my version wasn't working right or something.

Thanks SO much for the help, guys. It's definitely made my learning experience a heck of a lot more enjoyable! Now I'm excited to get back to the source window. Comprehension is such a relieving door to kick in...[emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1261&start=0#p7428
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Looping a sound file for background music?
User: livens / DateTime: 2010-07-26 19:26:30

Thanks DavidK! It worked great!

Just had to add an Include before that second part and it worked as is [emote]:)[/emote]

But now that Ive tried it Im not sure I like having a background sound looping all the time. After testing it I got tired of it after a minute or so. I think Ill limit it to one or 2 rooms, like an engine room with a low background, then as some point we lose power and that noise is gone... Also defiantly have to program in some user commands to turn it off and on.

Thanks again 

Jeremy

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1264&start=0#p7429
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Different default response for each character
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-07-27 00:21:18

[quote="Hertz"]Is it possible to make the parser messages identity-dependent?[/quote]

(On the subject, that was the intent of the extension "Grouped Messages as Dialogue", which also grouped related game messages together by the tone of their interaction.  For example, "inserting something into itself" and "closing something [already] closed" would both be tagged as 'redundant'.  The extension allowed the author to create one message for any redundant interaction, like "'Feeling absent-minded today?'", so the author could replace most-to-all of the game's default messages with NPC dialogue [i]without[/i] having to write 300 unique messages [i]per character[/i], many of which would never be read.  The grouping mechanism saved work. 

I intend to fix the extension by the end of the year, but I must get a few other things off my plate first.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1265&start=0#p7430
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Disambiguation problem using certain extension combinations
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-07-27 08:09:56

I'm using some extensions from Aaron Reed in my WIP, including Keyword Interface, Numbered Disambiguation Choices, Remembering, and Smarter Parser.

I'm running into a problem when I try to examine something that would normally require disambiguation that isn't in the current location.  The Remembering extension kicks in and tells me it's not visible (there's a specific rule for that whose purpose is to suppress disambiguation).  There's also code (the prevent remembering disambiguation problems rule) that is supposed to throw the parser a do-nothing action to "eat" the disambiguation command that would normally be expected.

Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be working for me, and I'm not sure why.  A multi-word command such as "go south" will work, but just typing, say, "s" gives the response "you can't see anything by that name here".

Any help or advice anyone has on tracking this down would be appreciated.  I have so many extensions (and modifications of extensions) in play here that it could easily be something I've done, but it's proving tough to debug, and it's not particularly clear to me what activities are involved in the disambiguation question process.

Here's an example of the type of output I get.  "Clumps" should require disambiguation, and I'm in a different location from where they are located.

>clumps
You can't see that any more.

>clumps
You can't see anything by that name here.

>clumps
You can't see that any more.

>clumps
You can't see anything by that name here.

****

Also, I get this:

>clumps
You can't see that any more.

>s
I only understood you as far as wanting to s.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1263&start=0#p7431
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle v Plot
User: joncgoodwin / DateTime: 2010-07-27 11:03:35

[quote]Even in a puzzlefest, a story that violates my moral code is a problem. [/quote]

I think this is interesting. Do you feel the same way when reading fiction? Is it worse for first-person fiction? I generally only find morally objectionable behavior repugnant in fiction when it's clear to me that the author intends me to be sympathetic to it. (Jerzy Kosinski is probably the most loathsome writer I can think of it in this regard, though there are lots of writers where it's much worse, but I can't take it seriously at all. Certain strands of American SF are clear offenders here.)

Have you played Varicella? If so, what did you think of it morally?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=543&start=20#p7432
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Unwinnable states
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-07-27 12:20:25

There's really no excuse to create a game with an un-endable state that doesn't advise the player he's getting himself into trouble.  The author should be aware of all the ways the player can play himself into a corner.  I'd say most of the time, unwinnable states are just poor design — a lack of forethought, time, attention span, or budget.  Even if the player doesn't know what unwinnable states there are, the author does.

In business, I've always said you can't train customers to do business [i]your way.[/i]  The same is true for games; you can't make players have fun [i]your way.[/i]  If you're trying to force a particular path, one arbitrary solution without variation, then maybe you should stick to writing novels.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1169&start=20#p7433
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inventory Limits
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-07-27 13:05:57

[quote="Bainespal"]I think that the very best situation would be one in which the PC simply won't acquire an unrealistic number of portable objects.  In cases where this is not possible, I don't see why the game author can't give the player a sack object, which is smart enough not to contain huge or oddly-shaped items.  This thread hasn't really broached the topic of rucksacks/backpacks, etc.  Is a fairly low inventory limit really that bad, if the PC can carry all the miscellaneous stuff that the player may feel the need to take in a backpack?[/quote]
This is the solution I'm implementing in my Big Manly Adventure, the Conan-Meets-Gor kind of sword-n-sandal world.  You don't see those guys dragging around a life raft filled with wands, trinkets, swords, lanterns, newspapers, matches, teapots, zorkmids, leaflets, paintings, and lumps of clay with string.  No, you see 'em in a loincloth with a sword.

Therefore, the game won't allow the player to carry around big handfuls of items.  However, the player shouldn't notice, because the game won't [i]have[/i] big handfuls of items to be carried.  The puzzles and obstacles won't be solved by management of magic keys, or manipulation of trinkets.  There [i]will[/i] be puzzles about carrying big things with both hands — carrying a slave princess with one arm, fighting off guards with a sword in the other; or perhaps trying to figure out how to climb a ladder with the Gold Statuette of Rang-Ko in your inventory — but I'm designing around the need for Conan to carry a Sears Roebuck & Co around with him.

For the few times the player will need to carry small things around, he'll get a (automagical) sporran or something that can fit the tiny doodads he wants to take with him.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1263&start=0#p7434
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle v Plot
User: Janka / DateTime: 2010-07-27 14:59:23

[quote="tggdan3"]I'm sure everyone has a different opinion, so I guess this is more of a poll- but what do people prefer, the story-heavy IF, or the puzzle-heavy one.
[/quote]
Both are bad. To me, IF is like a thriller where the puzzles are the culmination points. If there is too much plot between the puzzles, the game turns into an ordinary fiction. Then the author tries to make the few puzzles very elaborated and sucks badly at it. They won't get elaborated this way, they only get complicated and boring. On the other hand, if there are too many puzzles the thriller turns into a scary movie. Then the puzzles get shallow and illogical.

Good IF has to maintain the balance between story and puzzles.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1263&start=0#p7435
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle v Plot
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-07-27 16:52:31

[quote="tggdan3"]For plot lovers, how important is the mechanics? If the choices you make don't make any difference in the game, like Photopia, is that okay as long as the story is well developed? Would you get easily frustrated and quit a game if there were difficult puzzles involved?[/quote]
I like plot.  Mechanics aren't generally too important to me because I'm looking for I-F that engages my reader's mind.  I generally don't care for linear narrative in I-F, esp. where the usual choices are whether and how much to explore.  (Exploration feels like a side quest.)  I want choices, that matter both in the large and in the small, including during the story not just at the climax or ending.  Difficult puzzles turn me off.  

Referencing past choices could be as simple as frequent and numerous if-statements that slip in an extra qualifying clause or so into otherwise static prose.

_Best of Three_ did a good job of engaging my reader's mind.  And I'm not even sure what it means to engage such a thing, or what it entails.  But it does feel different than "solving" things.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1263&start=0#p7436
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle v Plot
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-07-27 17:07:08

[quote="Janka"]If there is too much plot between the puzzles, the game turns into an ordinary fiction.[/quote]
How so?  Are the only two options a linear plot with puzzles and a linear plot?  

I like to make choices in a story, or to explore it (literally or otherwise).  I'd say the difference between IF and "static" fiction is whether or not I get to do anything meaningful in the story.  That could be solving a difficult task in order to save the day, or it could be making a simple choice that will have serious ramifications in the characters' lives.

Personally, I find that I don't enjoy or have much of a knack for puzzles, so I tend to only wait a minute or so before turning to the hints.  I want the story to keep going, and having to figure out [i]how[/i] to make it keep going is not something that I enjoy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1263&start=0#p7437
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle v Plot
User: Janka / DateTime: 2010-07-27 17:50:27

[quote="Pacian"][quote="Janka"]If there is too much plot between the puzzles, the game turns into an ordinary fiction.[/quote]
How so?  Are the only two options a linear plot with puzzles and a linear plot?  
[/quote]
I think this is depending solely on the reader's perception of the work.

I try to dive into the story when I play IF, really become a part of it. That's one of the reasons I like IF. For fictional books, the last time I'd dived into one was in my childhood. After that, diving into non-fictional books took over. If there is too few interaction, I fall back into an outsider's view, just track the clues in the story and try to beat the puzzles a mechanical way. To me, more story has the odd effect of making me skip through it as fast as possible. It's the same reason I usually don't like to play a game again, even if it was really good.

[quote]
I like to make choices in a story, or to explore it (literally or otherwise).  I'd say the difference between IF and "static" fiction is whether or not I get to do anything meaningful in the story.  That could be solving a difficult task in order to save the day, or it could be making a simple choice that will have serious ramifications in the characters' lives.
[/quote]
So you are playing it just the opposite than I do. You like the possibility to fiddle with the game world. Am I right?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1263&start=0#p7438
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle v Plot
User: Janka / DateTime: 2010-07-27 19:15:05

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]
_Best of Three_ did a good job of engaging my reader's mind.  And I'm not even sure what it means to engage such a thing, or what it entails.  But it does feel different than "solving" things.[/quote]
And it quotes itself: [emote]:ugeek:[/emote] 
“There are certain authors for whom I feel a great affinity, because in what they write 
there is not only sense and information, but wit and warmth and personality, and all the 
things that convey the whole of a person, not merely the mechanism of a mind.”

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1263&start=0#p7439
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle v Plot
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-27 20:14:17

[quote="joncgoodwin"][quote]Even in a puzzlefest, a story that violates my moral code is a problem. [/quote]

I think this is interesting. Do you feel the same way when reading fiction? Is it worse for first-person fiction? I generally only find morally objectionable behavior repugnant in fiction when it's clear to me that the author intends me to be sympathetic to it. (Jerzy Kosinski is probably the most loathsome writer I can think of it in this regard, though there are lots of writers where it's much worse, but I can't take it seriously at all. Certain strands of American SF are clear offenders here.)

Have you played Varicella? If so, what did you think of it morally?[/quote]

Yeah, I should be clearer here -- I generally don't have a problem with this in fiction, except in the sort of case you describe. Even when the author clearly does mean me to sympathize with a moral view that's very different from mine, I can still find it bracing when it's presented with enough complexity and force, for lack of a better word. I felt that way about [i]The Golden Compass[/i] (but not the later books -- I got turned off with "He is a murderer," which seemed pretty cheap). Or in Gene Wolfe, a lot of his stories seem based on political views I strongly disagree with, but it doesn't bother me with "The Hero as Werwolf" and "The Eyeflash Miracles" and does with "How the Whip Came Back" and "Petting Zoo." 

Also I think it's [i]less[/i] of a problem with the first person, because I can more easily treat that as the projection of a character -- it creates a distance from me. The narrator can always be unreliable. Whereas in IF I'm actually doing it, so even with a sharply defined narrator I don't have that distance. 

I haven't played Varicella (see sucking at puzzles, above), but I don't think the morality would be a problem for me, because it's clearly not endorsed. And I think there's room for powerful moments in IF where you can trap the player into complicity with something awful the PC does. (The two best examples I can think of aren't in textual IF -- there's one in the Trapped series of point-and-click games and there's one in a puzzle platformer called "The Company of Myself." I hear The Shadow of the Colossus is good at this too. "Backup" does something like this effectively, except it's possible to evade doing the something awful, and "Slouching toward Bedlam" might've had that effect if I'd been able to figure out how to do anything besides get myself killed. Oh wait, "The Baron," duh.) 

The problem I have tends to be in puzzley games, where something repugnant has to happen to advance the plot. And it's not that I think those authors have radically different moral systems from mine, except that Jim Aikin may genuinely be less fond of cute furry animals than I am. It's that we're supposed to ignore what's going on for the sake of the puzzles. (Maybe not a coincidence that the protagonist of Earl Gray is an AFGNCAAP, and the protagonist of A Flustered Duck isn't super deeply characterized, so I don't even have that distance from them.) That sticks in my craw. The closest analogue in fiction is the brutal slapstick or humilation-based comedy you get in some movies, where you're not really supposed to care about what happens to the characters, because it's funny. Which it is, sometimes (and I did like some of the jokes in A Flustered Duck).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1169&start=20#p7440
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inventory Limits
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-27 20:20:37

[quote="Hertz"]carrying a slave princess with one arm, fighting off guards with a sword in the other[/quote]

I am totally looking forward to this game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1169&start=20#p7441
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inventory Limits
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-07-27 21:53:26

You had me at "automagical sporran".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1121&start=10#p7442
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2010 - Open for Business, and You?
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2010-07-28 03:14:11

[quote]I'd say the bigger issue with Adrift is that it's aimed at beginners, but it takes an expert at the system to overcome the parser's limitations.  "You push, but nothing happens."[/quote]

I can't agree with you on that statement. 
Adrift is not aimed at beginners. Adrift is just so easy to use that almost anyone can write a game using it. Which, unfortunately, also means that a lot of crap is being released.
 Adrift is aimed at people, like myself, who haven't got the time, or interest, in learning a programming language, but would rather concentrate on the story and puzzles.
I agree with you totally, that Adrift 4 has its flaws, but I have the feeling that when people are judging an Adrift game, they often attack Adrift, rather than judging the game. It's like “if I can't find anything on the game, I can always shoot at the generator.”
I'm looking forward to see what Campbell gets out of the V.5. Hopefully people will change their attitude towards Adrift when the V.5 is released, but that remains to be seen.
Oh, and by the way .. The "You push but nothing happens." can easily be overcome by using the ALR (Adrift Language Resource)  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1263&start=0#p7443
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle v Plot
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-07-28 05:43:14

[quote="Janka"]So you are playing it just the opposite than I do. You like the possibility to fiddle with the game world. Am I right?[/quote]
Maybe.  I just don't see that interaction has to mean puzzles.

(Just realised that you're the Chancellor... or is it Yakra?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1263&start=10#p7444
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle v Plot
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-07-28 11:29:28

My tastes of games changed when I started gamemastering GURPS instead of D&D.  Without dragging the mechanics of those specific games into the argument, I'll just say that I grew dissatisfied with D&D because the universe consisted of a known palette of approved monsters, each with known strengths and weaknesses, who were nearly always of a fixed alignment, with known treasure types.

At that time, I liked games of the predictable, almost autistically mechanical style, which mirrored the tactical certainties of D&D:  if you have fire, then you can defeat trolls.  If you fight zombies, don't cast [i]sleep.[/i]  Certain strategies always worked in certain situations against certain enemies.  Similarly, if you have the newspaper and the matches, then you can fly the balloon; if you have the lamp, you can go through the dark room.

GURPS could be filled with people — people with flaws, with weaknesses, with great strength of character, each of whom was different, with different motivations and equipment.  The RPGs I ran for my players became less about how to get the Magic Trinket to defeat Enemy X, but how to gather allies against him; how to discove what Enemy X wants and why; how to interpret something mysterious that your friends or foes did.  If you want Ally Y on your side, you must do A, B or C, but A is horrific, B is impossible, and C is conciliatory.  What do you choose to do?

I began to prefer games like Baldur's Gate over games like Diablo, where the game is as much about tactics as about political harmony within your team.  It makes it more real, and more tense, to know that Edwin and Minsc [i]will[/i] come to blows eventually if you try to put them together, or to know that sometimes there [i]isn't[/i] a happy ending where all of your followers get what they want.

I prefer people-puzzles to trinket-puzzles, I guess, because there's more narrative strength in people.  The newspaper doesn't care if it gets burned or not.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1263&start=10#p7445
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle v Plot
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-07-28 12:07:55

I don't think this has to be an either/or.  I think generally, the puzzles should be in service to the plot.  That is, they should be in character, make sense in the world, and reveal something about you or the story or the world.  Thus, a "find the silver key for the silver door" puzzle is not a strong one unless says something.

There's nothing wrong with a plot paying service to a mechanic - I think we've had strong examples of this, but it shouldn't *feel* like the plot is merely there to service the mechanic.  Violet was strongly puzzle heavy - the story is not terribly robust - but the puzzles all played into a sense of yourself, her, and your relationship.  (Well, okay, many of the puzzles only did this tangentially through text, rather than directly through your actions, but still.)  

A game world that feels solid is important to me, insofar as it helps my suspension of belief.  Grammar, typos, responses to actions - all of these take me out of the experience.  For me personally, getting hard stuck on a puzzle with no idea what to do is the same thing.  It's an irritation, not a bonus.  

Good writing is something I sort of automatically lump into the story side of the equation, which I'm not sure is entirely fair.  Often I think the "story" in a game is a scenario, but not one that's taken anywhere.  I'd like to see more games in which your actions do influence events, rather than you going through the motions of puzzles to get through the pre-determined plot.  I think that's a much more interesting direction than "now figure out how to open the vault with a stick of gum, a coke bottle, and three bars of sealing wax."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1263&start=10#p7446
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle v Plot
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-28 13:15:59

[quote="gravel"]I'd like to see more games in which your actions do influence events, rather than you going through the motions of puzzles to get through the pre-determined plot.  I think that's a much more interesting direction than "now figure out how to open the vault with a stick of gum, a coke bottle, and three bars of sealing wax."[/quote]

If you're interested in this kind of thing and you haven't tried Make It Good, you should -- it's hard, and getting a "good" outcome is a prodigious amount of work, but it offers a very fluid world with responsive NPCs, where you can make your own complicated plans and watch them take effect. Of course, there's a strong chance your plan will be thwarted by something you didn't anticipate... but it doesn't exactly feel like puzzle-solving in the usual sense.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1266&start=0#p7447
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Lists of table columns in 6E72
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2010-07-28 14:12:56

[code]"A test area"

Include Dynamic Tables by Jesse McGrew.

Table of Test
character	sentence
a man	an indexed text

When play begins:
	let T be a new table with columns { character, sentence } and 1 blank row;
	

The testroom is a room.
[/code]

This code will compile under 5Z71 but won't under 6E72 and will produce the following error

[quote]
Problem. The constant list 'character, sentence'  contains an entry 'sentence' whose kind is 'an indexed texts valued table column', but that's not compatible with the kind I had established from looking at earlier entries ('an objects valued table column').
 See the manual: 20.2 > Constant lists
[/quote]

It seems that a list of table columns can only hold table columns that hold values of the same kind. If I change the character entry to hold indexed text, then the code will compile.

Also, lists of table columns cannot be stored in gv, temporary variables and such whereas it was possible with 5Z71, and constant lists of tables columns are impossible unless all the table columns hold values of the same kind. This is quite problematic when you're using the Dynamic Tables extension.

So the only workaround I found is the following (list of table columns are considered as list of numbers)




[quote]"A test area"

Include Dynamic Tables by Jesse McGrew.

Table of Test
character	sentence
a man	an indexed text

A man has some text called name.
Joe is a man.
The name of joe is "joe".
What joe says is some indexed text that varies.
What joe says is "We don't take kindly to your types round here !".

When play begins:
	let L be a list of numbers;
	add the id of character in Table of Test to L;
	add the id of sentence in Table of Test to L;
	let T be a new table with columns L and 1 blank row;
	change the character in row 1 of T to Joe;
	change the sentence in row 1 of T to what joe says;
	repeat with N running from 1 to the number of rows in T:
		choose row N in T;
		say "[bold type][name of the character entry][roman type] says [italic type][sentence entry][roman type]";

Chapter - Workaround
		
To decide what number is the id number/-- of (C - table column) in (T - table name):
	(- ((({T}--> TableFindCol({T}, {C}))-->1) & TB_COLUMN_NUMBER) -).

To decide which table name is a new table with columns (CS - list of numbers) and (N - number) blank row/rows: (- DT_NewTable({N}, {-pointer-to:CS}); -).
	

The testroom is a room.
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1267&start=0#p7448
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Choosing your starting character?
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-07-28 17:45:26

What are your sentiments, as a player and as an author, regarding the choice of your starting character?  I can see two sides to this argument when it comes to IF.

On one side, if you present the player with a choice of character, the choice should have meaning.  The various characters available should have some definite effect on the game world, opening some part of the game world that is closed to other character choices, giving the player some unique options while taking away others (or at least rendering them more difficult).  Choice of characters can enhance replayability; it can give the player an avatar with whom he identifies so he isn't called upon to portray somebody with a different moral character.  Choice of characters means women can have a starting avatar more identifiable to them.

The other side argues that it's difficult for a player to make a choice unless the choice is [i]informed[/i]; at the beginning of a game he can't yet know the nature of the game, or what effect his choices will have.  Choice of characters increases playtesting time; it increases the number of things which might go wrong.  It also increases the design requirements, making you come up with unique paths or solutions for each.

My assessment:  more work, but worth the effort.  What do you think?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1267&start=0#p7449
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Choosing your starting character?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-28 18:00:02

Depends a lot on the game and story. "Rameses", "Violet", and "Varicella" would none of them have made sense with any protagonist but the one provided. On the other hand, I could imagine, say, "Make It Good" with a different lead character who faced the same basic premise but had different motivations (or, to come at it another way, I could imagine a version of "Make It Good" in which the player could play one of the NPCs, each of whom has his/her own goal). 

Of course, adding that option would render the game even more mindboggling huge than it already is, so perhaps it's just as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1266&start=0#p7450
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lists of table columns in 6E72
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-07-28 18:09:01

Could you declare the list explicitly to be of something like "value valued table column", as "value" is a kind of super-type which accepts person, text, stored action, etc.?

[code]
let X be a list of value valued table columns;
let X be { ... }
let T be a new table.......
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1267&start=0#p7451
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Choosing your starting character?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-28 18:49:54

I don't know, Emily; I would play the hell out of Rameses and I-0 if I could switch their protagonists.

...actually, isn't "Violet" an example of what the OP was talking about, since it lets you choose your gender?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1267&start=0#p7452
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Choosing your starting character?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-07-28 19:03:47

I'm having trouble wrapping my head around your question (so pardon me if my post is a bit scattered).  I think you're coming at this from some kind of skill-based game-of-tactics angle?  (You said "starting character" rather than "character" or "protagonist", and mention as a result the variable difficulty of particular tasks.)  For example, choosing among characters in a D&D video game actually means the player is choosing different tactical options and play styles. Some players have an easier time with some tactical packages than others, so the player needs to know details about the gameplay before they've even played (as you implied).  And that's what confuses me.  That isn't choosing a character: that's choosing a class.  It's a wholly different animal than choosing a protagonist.  One never needs to know gameplay details to choose a protagonist.  

I think by choosing different protagonists the player is fundamentally choosing different stories.  (Calling that "replayability" seems a bit... off... to me.  "Re-readability", perhaps, or some flavor of unputdownable.)  Asking whether or not the player should be granted a choice of two or three stories, chosen at the beginning, is an unusual thing to ask.  

You mention gender (by implying that, if choice is not granted, the protag will always be male!)  Well, whether or not the reader identifies with the protagonist is yet again a separate question than the can-s/he-or-can't-s/he tactical issue you'd brought up.  How important is reader identification or self-insertion in the work?  If it isn't important, then you don't need choice of protag.  If it is, well, you don't necessarily need to create completely distinct protags, either. Sometimes a little pre-game player-editing will give you 90% of the benefit for 10% of the work.  _Blue Lacuna_ did this, and I believe the option was appreciated. (Even if the characters were a little more bland because of.)  So did _Violet_.  While you can't edit the titular NPC, the PC can be either gender. It worked better there because the PC isn't characterized hardly at all beyond their roles: as grad student, as a significant other, as a lover of zombie festivals.

So I guess that's my answer: who's the story about?  The player, or the character?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1268&start=0#p7453
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Quixe 1.0.1 is out
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-07-28 20:04:41

I've uploaded Quixe 1.0.1 to my web site:

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/</a>

Also GlkOte 1.2.0, which is included. The I7 template file and all the sample game pages have been refreshed.

(Except for <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/demo">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/demo</a>, which was a testbed, and has now been deleted.)

Changes in this release:

  - Included GlkOte 1.2.0 ("more" paging).
  - Added a "rethrow_exceptions" option, which should make browser
    debugging easier.
  - Fixed the inconsistent font size for the input line (I7 template).

Onward to floating point...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1266&start=0#p7454
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lists of table columns in 6E72
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2010-07-28 20:08:43

[quote]You wrote 'let L be a list of value valued table columns'  : but this is a value which can't be given a temporary name, using 'let'.[/quote]

Should I report it on mantis or is it a normal behavior ?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1267&start=0#p7455
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Choosing your starting character?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-28 20:28:48

[quote="matt w"]I don't know, Emily; I would play the hell out of Rameses and I-0 if I could switch their protagonists.[/quote]

*Scary.*

[quote="matt w"]...actually, isn't "Violet" an example of what the OP was talking about, since it lets you choose your gender?[/quote]

Hrm. I don't think so: whichever gender you pick, you still have a strongly defined past that belongs to a specific character, together with certain personality quirks and flaws that pervade the whole game. There are interesting tweaks to the backstory depending on which gender you pick, and a certain puzzle has an extra solution if you're a man, I believe, but I would say the character is really not essentially changed either way.

(Then again, maybe I'm misinterpreting what Hertz was getting at with his question.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1268&start=0#p7456
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe 1.0.1 is out
User: George / DateTime: 2010-07-28 21:13:02

Thanks for the paging, that's a nice addition.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1267&start=0#p7457
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Choosing your starting character?
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-07-28 21:42:00

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]I'm having trouble wrapping my head around your question (so pardon me if my post is a bit scattered).  I think you're coming at this from some kind of skill-based game-of-tactics angle?[/quote]
The general assumption in most interactive fiction that I've played seems to be universal competence.  That is, if you have the required magic trinkets, you can accomplish the task; without them, you cannot (i.e., lighting the newspaper with the matches will make the balloon rise; the PC is assumed to have the skill to steer, manage the flame, descend, etc).  There are some exceptions, usually dead-end verbs that the game wants the player to know are pointless (such as KILL as a solution to NPC interaction problems).

In the "puzzle vs. plot" thread, some interesting points came up about the moral imperative of the character with which the player is saddled, and it got me to thinking that perhaps it might be better to allow the player to [i]choose[/i] a persona that fits his particular style.  Some players may be sickened by a seemingly sociopathic protagonist; others may be disgusted by the saccharine do-gooder persona.  Certainly I would argue that it is easier for a player to see a solution when it aligns with his thinking, and harder to see the solution the further away it deviates.  Perhaps to you this is the point:  you may sometimes wish to compel the reader to find [i]your[/i] solution that tells the story of [i]your[/i] character.

And that's a valid answer for some.  It's not my answer; I don't see much distinction between enforced characterization with a linear railroad plot, and a novel dispensed one paragraph at a time.  IF is by definition interactive; choosing a persona is surely one way to interact.  In the "puzzle vs. plot" thread some players indicated that they would prefer to see their choices have some larger effect on the game world.
[quote]How important is reader identification or self-insertion in the work?  If it isn't important, then you don't need choice of protag.[/quote]
Of course there is room for a game that is about a [i]specific[/i] character, and making the player complicit with that character's behavior.  Just as naturally, you might be limiting your audience if that character is abhorrent to some players; you might find players get frustrated when they don't "see" a solution themselves that your character would see instantly.

There's value to that; some players enjoy that.  There's also value to accommodating a wider audience.
[quote]So I guess that's my answer: who's the story about?  The player, or the character?[/quote]
I tend to think in world-building, creating situations and universes filled with characters and interactions, and I would generally allow the player to choose how he interacts with that world.  My story-brain generally [i]doesn't[/i] start with the personality of the protagonist.  Everybody's a bit different, though, which is why I ask.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1267&start=0#p7458
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Choosing your starting character?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-28 23:02:56

It now sounds as though you're moving towards "I want the game to be accessible for people who come at the puzzles in different ways". But the thing is, with IF you don't have to make the player choose one possible puzzle-approach over another; you can just build all the puzzles with multiple solutions and then let the player steer his own course through those puzzles as they arrive. (In fact there are a couple of games that provide the multiple-solution puzzles and then try to derive some information about the player character's personality based on what solutions he uses. But they don't start out by defining the PC's ability system, really. Metamorphoses does this quietly and in a way probably not noticed by most players; [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=il36qu5o26ipvwzs]The Erudition Chamber[/url] does it explicitly.)

I think this is not quite the same problem as balancing a combat system, where combat might simply be broken if you let the player simultaneously equip the Longbow of Ranged Damage-Dealing AND the Melee Bat of Ultimate Headthwacking AND the Stinkbomb of AOE Smackdowns -- because combat is about trading off different strengths and weaknesses in the tools you have available and/or your personal stats. Most types of puzzle don't offer enough granularity to be tuned that way.

Of course, I'd be pretty interested in seeing an example that proved me wrong, so hey.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1266&start=0#p7459
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lists of table columns in 6E72
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-07-29 00:16:06

I don't know, so I'd say go ahead and report it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1263&start=10#p7460
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle v Plot
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-07-29 01:24:44

[quote="matt w"]Also I think it's [i]less[/i] of a problem with the first person, because I can more easily treat that as the projection of a character -- it creates a distance from me. The narrator can always be unreliable. Whereas in IF I'm actually doing it, so even with a sharply defined narrator I don't have that distance. [/quote]I found this very interesting.  In traditional fiction, the most distant POV is omniscient third person, then limited third.  First person is generally one of the least distancing, the most personal.  Here you've inverted it (yes?), treating first person as more distancing than omniscient third.  And it makes sense to me:  if I enter KILL KITTEN and an omniscient narrator non-person reports "The kitten dies," I feel like a heel.  But if the response to KILL KITTEN is a first person "'And so it had to die.  The little eyes, the pointy tail, the mewling:  no longer would they mock me.'", then I feel there is additional distance between my command and its result.  [i]I[/i] didn't kill that kitten; [i]the narrator[/i] did -- you all heard him.  The insertion of someone else's voice in there explaining the result makes all the difference.  

That contrast between int fic & trad fic I find really interesting.

(Did I, in fact, understand you correctly?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1267&start=0#p7461
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Choosing your starting character?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-07-29 02:04:52

[quote="Hertz"]In the "puzzle vs. plot" thread, some interesting points came up about the moral imperative of the character with which the player is saddled, and it got me to thinking that perhaps it might be better to allow the player to [i]choose[/i] a persona that fits his particular style.  Some players may be sickened by a seemingly sociopathic protagonist; others may be disgusted by the saccharine do-gooder persona.  Certainly I would argue that it is easier for a player to see a solution when it aligns with his thinking, and harder to see the solution the further away it deviates.[/quote]

I agree it's easier for a player to see solutions in line with their own thinking, but there's still two issues I have. One Emily just brought up:  on a pure mechanics level, why instruct the player to choose a line of thinking (as embodied by a protag) in the opening, and then remove off-thought solutions, than to do as she suggested and leave all solutions open all the time, skipping the character choice.  The latter seems more robust in that not everyone really understands their own thinking clearly, and also that they may for whatever reason concoct a solution which isn't from their normal mode of thinking.  Using protag-choice just seems unnecessary here.

The other issue I have is on a narrative level:  if the protag can be substituted with a saint or a sinner at will, then the protag is obviously not very important to the core of the story.  In which case, why characterize strongly at all?  Generally, if a protag has something which offends a player (for any reason, moral or otherwise), it's usually because the author really needs it for the story.  Since the offense is there for a reason, you can't swap out the characters without also swapping out chunks of the plot, possibly damaging the theme, and goodness knows what else.

Maybe in a D&D game characters are easily interchanged modules, but not in a story.   I would rather offend a reader than dilute the work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1267&start=0#p7462
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Choosing your starting character?
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-07-29 08:12:26

I'm trying to program a puzzle right now, and this one puzzle might be as much lines of code as the rest of the game. There are 6 D&D characters, and you need to stop 5 of them from playing. Each has their own special way of quitting. 

Now, you have spells, including a summon spell used for a different puzzle, so as an alternate solution, you can summon one of them into a locked room, then teleport out. 

Also, you can change gender, so you can become an attractive female and seduce one away.

This puzzle, because of its various solutions, is becoming probably the biggest thing I've had to implement yet. What if you summon away the GM? What if you get rid of all 6? What if you cause Mark to get his phone call to quit gaming but you've already locked him in the locked room?

I can only imagine if every puzzle had to have multiple solutions based on a choice of protagonist. Imagine even a simple game like Zork if you had to play as a pacifist- no killing the thief or troll. How do you program around that? What other way gets the thief's treasures back? Or Zork 2 if your character is religious and against summoning demons? Or Suveh Nux when your character hates magic, or is illiterate and can't learn the spells? 

You're really asking for the same WORLD, but with almost sandbox like gameplay, where the PC can do anything and there isn't a definate endgame in mind, or if there is, it's a very basic one. (Get rich). Games like grand theft auto have over 50 programmers to keep the game open. IF usually has 1. And it's given away for free. The odds that someone is that dedicated and has the time and energy is pretty slim. 

The closest thing I can think of is Leather Goddess of Phobos, where you choose gender and that changes the gender of a few NPCs, but little else in the plot or puzzles. Mostly irrelevant changes are one thing, but asking for 10 different stories in one title is a lot. I think Heroes tried to do this, but I haven't gotten around to playing it through yet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=543&start=20#p7463
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Unwinnable states
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-07-29 08:28:20

[quote="Hertz"]There's really no excuse to create a game with an un-endable state that doesn't advise the player he's getting himself into trouble.  The author should be aware of all the ways the player can play himself into a corner.  I'd say most of the time, unwinnable states are just poor design — a lack of forethought, time, attention span, or budget.  Even if the player doesn't know what unwinnable states there are, the author does.

In business, I've always said you can't train customers to do business [i]your way.[/i]  The same is true for games; you can't make players have fun [i]your way.[/i]  If you're trying to force a particular path, one arbitrary solution without variation, then maybe you should stick to writing novels.  [emote];)[/emote][/quote]

This is a good point. I guess it comes down to what is more satisfying for you or the player.

>BURN SPELLBOOK
This dangerous act would achieve little.

>BURN SPELLBOOK
You set fire to your spellbook and watch the flames eat away your ability to cast spells. I hope you don't need them!

Also, for me it's always been kind of precedent. I started with Forbidden Castle and Zork. Forbidden Castle was tough to make unwinnable (though possible), and there were many cheap deaths. Zork had many unwinnable states and cheap deaths, and a lantern that would go out if you took too long. Zork was also mean in that even though you were given extra lives, some versions left the game unwinnable if you died even once. 

I guess the format has evolved a lot since I started playing, but in some ways its no different then blocking off the "optimal" ending in some way. No game is un-endable.

Galtea is just a conversation game, but without warning you might talk your way out of a preferred ending by your converstion choices, especially not knowing what you're "supposed" to ask. So Far won a bunch of awards, and even the author admits in the beginning that you should have multiple save files and it's easy to make the game unwinnable. I run D&D a lot, and I know players hate when you try to drive them on a specific path, ruining their character's freedom, and they never seem to blame the DM when a player does something silly like attacking a main NPC, or selling the Artifact of Evil Slaying and now they can't win. I'm surprised most people don't SAVE before trying to burn a spellbook or do something silly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1267&start=0#p7464
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Choosing your starting character?
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-07-29 08:55:54

I believe that we're first story-tellers and second world model providers. I think one of the greatest and most consuming aspects of IF is immersion into another character, even if the character is the nameless faceless adventurer. Is it possible that I'm attracted to IF because of an empathic streak? Or is it because I want to temporariliy suspend reality? I've never been interested in choosing a character scenarios because it's sort of like writing my own story. I've never liked the metaphor of IF being like writing your own story. I've always thought of it in the literal sense. That someone has written a story with a world model and I get to live the story.

On the other hand, I do like the idea of playing a game from different perspectives, so clearly I'm confused. There may be significant replayability if a game were developed so that you could pick one of N characters and all unpicked characters become NPC's. But to me that's just another "gimmick". It's a lot of work that might pay off, but I'm not sure it's worth it outside of the egocentric prospect of having created it.

In the end, I'd rather play a game where the character was chosen for many reasons and the interactivity was developed so that I could explore who that character is and what motivates them. If there are many choices, it's unlikely to have any depth.

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1269&start=0#p7465
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: How many puzzles should there be in one game?
User: DrWorm / DateTime: 2010-07-29 10:38:48

I know that works of IF can come in many different lengths, so this question is a little bit subjective. How many puzzles are appropriate to have in one mid-length game? Alternatively, what is a good "story-to-puzzle ratio"? Should story and puzzle be evenly balanced or is one more important than the other?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1270&start=0#p7466
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Telling actor to perform action
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-07-29 10:52:17

Hey, all!

I'm playing around a bit with code, and got to the point where I wanted to allow the player to order about another character to do something. The format, however, is a bit hard. Is there a facility to enable wildcards of this kind, on the format of 

[code]tell [someone] to [perform action][/code]

?

As always, the fallback of Regex remains. Still, if there's a better way than to manually reshape the text from "tell (someone) to (something)" into "(someone), (something)", I'd be very glad to hear it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=543&start=20#p7467
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Unwinnable states
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-07-29 11:03:54

[quote="tggdan3"]I run D&D a lot, and I know players hate when you try to drive them on a specific path, ruining their character's freedom, and they never seem to blame the DM when a player does something silly like attacking a main NPC, or selling the Artifact of Evil Slaying and now they can't win. I'm surprised most people don't SAVE before trying to burn a spellbook or do something silly.[/quote]

I can see a distinct difference here - the parser in your typical P&P role playing game is arguably perfect, where even the best IF game is decidedly less so. This matters, because the IF parser is a lot less accomplished at following the [i]intent[/i] of the player's statement.

For instance, say that it's a Wild West game. You're an inventor who's had a bit of bad luck: you're holding a jar of nitroglycerine just as the villain bursts through the door and fires wildly. The only protection you have is to get down. What do you do?

[code]>drop
(the jar of nitroglycerine)

Bemusedly, you watch the flask fall to the ground. The glass shatters, then the rest of the world. Your legacy becomes a gigantic mushroom cloud. Boy, that was pretty stupid.

*** YOU HAVE DIED ***[/code]

I don't love it when that happens in any game, and it's virtually unheard of in tabletop gaming.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1270&start=0#p7468
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Telling actor to perform action
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-29 11:08:26

The example "Northstar" shows how to do exactly this. (ETA: it is a regexp solution, but fairly tidy and pre-written. Wildcards of the kind you describe are not possible because you'd be nesting a whole new set of parsing inside the [perform action] part.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=543&start=20#p7469
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Unwinnable states
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-07-29 11:24:06

[quote="Eleas"][quote="tggdan3"]I run D&D a lot, and I know players hate when you try to drive them on a specific path, ruining their character's freedom, and they never seem to blame the DM when a player does something silly like attacking a main NPC, or selling the Artifact of Evil Slaying and now they can't win. I'm surprised most people don't SAVE before trying to burn a spellbook or do something silly.[/quote]

I can see a distinct difference here - the parser in your typical P&P role playing game is arguably perfect, where even the best IF game is decidedly less so. This matters, because the IF parser is a lot less accomplished at following the [i]intent[/i] of the player's statement.

For instance, say that it's a Wild West game. You're an inventor who's had a bit of bad luck: you're holding a jar of nitroglycerine just as the villain bursts through the door and fires wildly. The only protection you have is to get down. What do you do?

[code]>drop
(the jar of nitroglycerine)

Bemusedly, you watch the flask fall to the ground. The glass shatters, then the rest of the world. Your legacy becomes a gigantic mushroom cloud. Boy, that was pretty stupid.

*** YOU HAVE DIED ***[/code]

I don't love it when that happens in any game, and it's virtually unheard of in tabletop gaming.[/quote]


Well, yes. That's a big issue with parser "intelligence", and I would agree- I hate that. Likewise
>GET DOWN
You can't see any down here.

But as far as
>THROW NITROGLICERINE OUT AIRPLANE DOOR
You watch as the jar falls out of sight and then watch the explosion as it hits the ground below you.

The 2nd example shows that the player intended to do this, though if he needs the jar later, he is out of luck and the game may be unwinnable. 

How do you deal with the unwinnable scenario?

1) Prevent the action
>THROW NITRO OUT AIRPLANE DOOR
You might need that later, so you decide against it.

I just have a personal distaste for the parser telling me what I do and don't WANT to do. If it can't be done, for example, the door is stuck closed, that's one thing, but if I am prevented by my own PC, I get annoyed. 

2) Allow unwinnable scenario
>THROW NITROGLICERINE OUT AIRPLANE DOOR
You watch as the jar falls out of sight and then watch the explosion as it hits the ground below you.

3) Make unwinnable actions immediately end game.
>THROW NITROGLICERINE OUT AIRPLANE DOOR
You watch as the jar falls out of sight and then watch the explosion as it hits the ground below you. Unfortunately, you weren't flying high enough to avoid the explosion yourself.

***YOU HAVE DIED***

I-0 uses this a lot with getting you busted or sent to the hospital. I don't mind this one as much, as it allows the action, and as long as the deaths are interesting, it may be worth doing anyway to see the death scene. Still, it can make the game seemed like it's "too easy to die". 

4) Alert character to unwinnable state
>THROW NITROGLICERINE OUT AIRPLANE DOOR
You watch as the jar falls out of sight and then watch the explosion as it hits the ground below you.
[The game has now become unwinnable. You may continue playing or UNDO.]

This is fine, but it almost seems like it is forcing the player to use hints, and it "breaks character" a bit. It may be difficult to program properly as well- if there are 2 ways to solve a puzzle, one which uses nitro and another that uses a gun, you have to make sure to check upon distruction of either to make sure BOTH are gone before displaying the message. In complex games, this might be a difficult situation to foresee. 

5) Make no possible unwinnable state
>THROW NITROGLICERINE OUT AIRPLANE DOOR
The door to the airplane is closed! You throw the nitro- luckily it doesn't explode- this time!

This is a difficult illusion to master, depending on the game. Some games this works well with, but in some it could be a nightmare to implement. In this scenario you don't block the actions, but the actions can't render the game unwinnable- every NPC is too strong for you to kill, or unreachable, or there are no NPCs, etc. 

If there are other options I'm missing, let me know. What would be the best way to prevent an unwinnable scenario?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1269&start=0#p7470
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How many puzzles should there be in one game?
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-07-29 11:38:27

This is kind of along the lines of the puzzle v plot thread but...

As long as the puzzles seem reasonable to the goal of the PC, to me any number can be fine. What I hate are "soup can puzzles", puzzles that are there just to be there. I mean, how many people actually guard their mysterious magic white cube by throwing in 11 other magic white cubes in hopes that someone will use the mysterious teleport spell on the wrong one? (Spellbreaker). However, if the PC needs to get past the reservoir, and you need to operate Flood Control Dam 3 to lower the water level, that makes sense.

Also, the puzzle solutions should be reasonable also. Requiring the player to get a magnet on a stick to retrieve the key from the top of the fridge is silly if he could jump up, move a chair, or tip the fridge, unless there's some good in game reason why those things don't work. (Why does my brightly glowing sword not ward away grues again?)

As far as the number of puzzles, if those first 2 rules are followed, any number could fall into place. The length of the game will be based on how difficult the puzzles are and how much effort it takes to solve them. (The coal mine in Zork I required the screwdriver, the lamp- with battery power, the torch- which is a treasure and may be randomly stolen by the thief and requires puzzle solving to get, the garlic, and the coal- which requires 2 trips through the coal maze, as well as a lot of intuition and thinking to figure out how to use the basket and such. By contrast, getting into the house involves walking around it until you find an open window.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1267&start=10#p7471
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Choosing your starting character?
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-07-29 11:47:32

[quote="emshort"]It now sounds as though you're moving towards "I want the game to be accessible for people who come at the puzzles in different ways". But the thing is, with IF you don't have to make the player choose one possible puzzle-approach over another; you can just build all the puzzles with multiple solutions and then let the player steer his own course through those puzzles as they arrive.[/quote]
That depends on what you call a "protagonist" and what you call a "puzzle."  If the puzzle is LIGHT NEWSPAPER WITH MATCH, then no, there isn't any granularity to solving that particular puzzle with any personality.  If the puzzle is rather more complex and human — for instance, you're in a Cold War epionage tale and a Russian agent has information you need — some solutions will be more satisfying (and obvious) than others if you know something about who "you" are.  Am I a double agent?  Am I Russian?  Am I male or female, is the agent male or female?  Can I just kill him and loot the body, and what happens if I do?

If you allow all solutions, then some pretty wild swings can and will happen, which (to me) isn't satisfying as an author.  The player-character becomes an unpredictable force, a remote-controled psychotic drone, and it's harder to write forcefully about a character with no innate personality.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1267&start=10#p7472
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Choosing your starting character?
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-07-29 11:55:46

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]The other issue I have is on a narrative level:  if the protag can be substituted with a saint or a sinner at will, then the protag is obviously not very important to the core of the story.  In which case, why characterize strongly at all?[/quote]
Because the game can be about the world, rather than about the protagonist.  For better or worse, I tend to imagine first a world where stories can happen, and only then think of people those stories should happen to.  My mind just works that way, and I get excited about the world I want to communicate, rather than about the personality I want to impose on the player.

I feel that if you allow the player to choose how he's going to approach that world, you can make him feel more as if [i]he's[/i] the hero, rather than just a puppeteer for somebody else's hero.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1269&start=0#p7473
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How many puzzles should there be in one game?
User: DrWorm / DateTime: 2010-07-29 12:08:49

*notices puzzle v plot thread*

*facepalms*

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1267&start=10#p7474
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Choosing your starting character?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-29 12:09:57

There are other things that IF can do besides letting the player feel he's the hero, though. I mean, it's true that this is a very standard thing for game designers to want to do, and clearly it does appeal to a broad audience, so that's great. 

But it's not the *only* thing: I had a lot of fun playing dumb, not-me characters in both Lost Pig and Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom, where part of the charm and humor value came from play-acting this silly characterization. 

And then there are many interactive stories to tell where no one is a hero in the classic sense (Rameses, say), or where the interaction is about learning to take a particular view on things (Common Ground, Ribbons, Exhibition, and assorted others to a smaller degree). Or about struggling against the constraints of the universe and learning to accept that the world is the way it is. Or... you get the picture.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=543&start=20#p7475
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Unwinnable states
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-07-29 12:40:29

(Quick scribble, as I'm heading out the door)

There's at least one option, I think - the "do you really want to perform this clearly stupid/suicidal act? (Y/N)" query. I'm uncertain as to whether it's a good idea, TBH.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1267&start=10#p7476
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Choosing your starting character?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-29 13:02:17

[quote="Hertz"][quote="emshort"]It now sounds as though you're moving towards "I want the game to be accessible for people who come at the puzzles in different ways". But the thing is, with IF you don't have to make the player choose one possible puzzle-approach over another; you can just build all the puzzles with multiple solutions and then let the player steer his own course through those puzzles as they arrive.[/quote]
That depends on what you call a "protagonist" and what you call a "puzzle."  If the puzzle is LIGHT NEWSPAPER WITH MATCH, then no, there isn't any granularity to solving that particular puzzle with any personality.  If the puzzle is rather more complex and human — for instance, you're in a Cold War epionage tale and a Russian agent has information you need — some solutions will be more satisfying (and obvious) than others if you know something about who "you" are.  Am I a double agent?  Am I Russian?  Am I male or female, is the agent male or female?  Can I just kill him and loot the body, and what happens if I do?

If you allow all solutions, then some pretty wild swings can and will happen, which (to me) isn't satisfying as an author.  The player-character becomes an unpredictable force, a remote-controled psychotic drone, and it's harder to write forcefully about a character with no innate personality.[/quote]

I get that, but it sounds as though in practice you may be headed towards a solution that is just as constraining/easy to get stuck in as a very linear arc (since only "in character" solutions are supposed to be available to the player at a given time, and I'd bet you will have cases where people can think of valid solutions but not valid in-character ones). But you also have many of the disadvantages of an undercharacterized protagonist as well. If you are forcing yourself to write the story so that it can apply with a few tweaks to any man or woman anywhere on the sinner/rogue/saint scale, you're likely to wind up with something a bit generic.

I think in this case I might tend to go for a mechanic that doesn't define the player at the start and isn't completely constraining, but that tends to reinforce patterns established by the player's early behavior -- something a bit Fable-esque. In RPGs, this is sometimes done by offering the player different types of XP, so if you use ranged weapons a lot, you get better at ranged weapon use and will probably continue to specialize in that direction; it doesn't mean you *can't* switch to melee if you want to. 

In IF, I think I would handle that instead by tweaking which options are explicitly hinted to the player and which are left as an exercise in ingenuity. For instance, if you play the first few scenes as a femme fatale luring enemy agents back to your hotel room, your conversation hints might start to be more heavily stacked in that direction, and descriptions of characters might start to shift towards noticing whether they looked susceptible. If you played a different way, the same actual actions would still be available, but maybe instead the prose would hint at the ease with which you could puncture the agent's jugular with your fork.

Of course, this is still assuming a pretty hefty machinery behind the scenes, tracking what the player is doing and then morphing the text appropriately. But I think it would leave the player with more freedom (and a better chance not to get stuck, always important), while still encouraging people to adopt a consistent persona.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=543&start=20#p7477
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Unwinnable states
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-29 13:04:39

[quote="Eleas"](Quick scribble, as I'm heading out the door)

There's at least one option, I think - the "do you really want to perform this clearly stupid/suicidal act? (Y/N)" query. I'm uncertain as to whether it's a good idea, TBH.[/quote]

Alternatively: have some sort of autosave mechanism that saves at the moment you are about to make the game unwinnable, and some kind of marker that indicates when unwinnability has happened. (At least a few games have had a WINNABLE command, allowing the player to check whether it was still possible to get through.)

Probably not a good solution for everything either, but it would help prevent situations where the player ruined a game completely by accident.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1267&start=10#p7478
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Choosing your starting character?
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-07-29 13:26:23

[quote="emshort"]But it's not the *only* thing: I had a lot of fun playing dumb, not-me characters in both Lost Pig and Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom, where part of the charm and humor value came from play-acting this silly characterization.[/quote]
Naturally.  If this is the kind of story you wish to tell, then the engine can accommodate it, and some players — certainly not all, but no game accommodates everyone — will enjoy fitting themselves into that persona.  I never suggested there can be value in a character-driven IF story; I just don't find my brain susceptible to writing them that way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1267&start=10#p7479
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Choosing your starting character?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-07-29 14:02:04

As a player, I may be able to choose characteristics of my character, but rarely the whole character.  The narrative structure is such that everything I read about the story is pre-filtered - it's not exactly like a live role-playing game where I can say "Bos Ogrerampage admires the fine architecture."  I can look at the architecture, but the game will either:
- not implement the architecture
- describe the architecture
- tell me how I feel about the architecture
None of these are my choice.  Sure, maybe these are well-implemented, but the author is always going to be framing the character.  Within that frame, I can interpret the results, but that's much easier in, say, Fallout, where I'm freer to interpret the world than in a pure text format.  Thus, I'd much rather have one strongly written character than several outwardly different characters.  

[quote]For better or worse, I tend to imagine first a world where stories can happen, and only then think of people those stories should happen to.[/quote]

Which is great, but as soon as you start the story, the character begins to matter.  Harry Potter would look completely different if the Boy Who Lived was actually Hermione or Dudley. Characters may come out of the story, or you may want to explore how a story develops differently with a different protagonist, but they're not separate from the story itself.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1267&start=10#p7480
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Choosing your starting character?
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-07-29 14:15:33

[quote="tggdan3"] Or Suveh Nux when your character hates magic, or is illiterate and can't learn the spells?[/quote]

Man, what's she doing as the wizard's apprentice?  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1267&start=10#p7481
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Choosing your starting character?
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-07-29 14:34:31

[quote="tove"][quote="tggdan3"] Or Suveh Nux when your character hates magic, or is illiterate and can't learn the spells?[/quote]

Man, what's she doing as the wizard's apprentice?  [emote];)[/emote][/quote]

Could be a servant rather than apprentice.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1269&start=0#p7482
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How many puzzles should there be in one game?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-07-29 14:48:39

I'm not a "vs" person. Puzzles are what you use to convey the story and give it its proper weight and pacing. (Sometimes this means "use very easy puzzles".)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1263&start=10#p7483
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle v Plot
User: Janka / DateTime: 2010-07-29 16:10:07

[quote="Pacian"][quote="Janka"]So you are playing it just the opposite than I do. You like the possibility to fiddle with the game world. Am I right?[/quote]
Maybe.  I just don't see that interaction has to mean puzzles.
[/quote]
Hmm. Maybe I got that wrong. Or it's just that tggdan3 has asked the original question that way.

[quote]
(Just realised that you're the Chancellor... or is it Yakra?)[/quote]
The Chancellor. I like him dropping his jaw when Chrono's party escapes through the timehole before his eyes. All the other time he's just obnoxious but in that scene he actually shows some real emotion. I never expected that to happen. Not that person. Not that way. Was a big laugh for me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1267&start=10#p7484
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Choosing your starting character?
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-07-29 17:07:06

[quote="gravel"][quote]For better or worse, I tend to imagine first a world where stories can happen, and only then think of people those stories should happen to.[/quote]Which is great, but as soon as you start the story, the character begins to matter.  Harry Potter would look completely different if the Boy Who Lived was actually Hermione or Dudley. Characters may come out of the story, or [b]you may want to explore how a story develops differently with a different protagonist[/b], but they're not separate from the story itself.[/quote]
Yes, this is what I want (bolding mine).  I create a world, but worlds have complexities that are larger than a single protagonist.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1270&start=0#p7485
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Telling actor to perform action
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-07-29 18:23:28

[quote="emshort"]The example "Northstar" shows how to do exactly this. (ETA: it is a regexp solution, but fairly tidy and pre-written. Wildcards of the kind you describe are not possible because you'd be nesting a whole new set of parsing inside the [perform action] part.)[/quote]

Thank you very much. Now I do feel silly, though; all along it was right before my eyes, and yet every time my eyes just skipped over it to the Cave Troll example.

I've never quite grasped why the workings of the ask/tell system is kept separate from the rules core (in that all such parsing occur before the visible rulebooks kick in). Is this fundamental to I7's nature, or will it someday change?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=543&start=20#p7486
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Unwinnable states
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-07-29 18:33:19

[quote="emshort"]
Alternatively: have some sort of autosave mechanism that saves at the moment you are about to make the game unwinnable, and some kind of marker that indicates when unwinnability has happened. (At least a few games have had a WINNABLE command, allowing the player to check whether it was still possible to get through.)

Probably not a good solution for everything either, but it would help prevent situations where the player ruined a game completely by accident.[/quote]

A notion I'm toying with is similar to that; essentially, it would set up checkpoints to which the player could return. The function could be purely mechanical (a command like any other), or it could be couched in purely in-game terms ("Hey Sarge, remember when we took that left turn?" "Yeah?" "I'm just saying...")

It would, I guess, depend on the needs of a given game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1263&start=10#p7487
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle v Plot
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-29 18:54:51

[quote="Ron Newcomb"][quote="matt w"]Also I think it's [i]less[/i] of a problem with the first person, because I can more easily treat that as the projection of a character -- it creates a distance from me. The narrator can always be unreliable. Whereas in IF I'm actually doing it, so even with a sharply defined narrator I don't have that distance. [/quote]I found this very interesting.  In traditional fiction, the most distant POV is omniscient third person, then limited third.  First person is generally one of the least distancing, the most personal.  Here you've inverted it (yes?), treating first person as more distancing than omniscient third.  And it makes sense to me:  if I enter KILL KITTEN and an omniscient narrator non-person reports "The kitten dies," I feel like a heel.  But if the response to KILL KITTEN is a first person "'And so it had to die.  The little eyes, the pointy tail, the mewling:  no longer would they mock me.'", then I feel there is additional distance between my command and its result.  [i]I[/i] didn't kill that kitten; [i]the narrator[/i] did -- you all heard him.  The insertion of someone else's voice in there explaining the result makes all the difference.  

That contrast between int fic & trad fic I find really interesting.

(Did I, in fact, understand you correctly?)[/quote]

That is exactly what I meant about int fic, and in fact it applies even with a specifically characterized second-person PC, I think. Though I think even a very specifically characterized second-person PC wouldn't wash away the bad taste of having to do something I dislike, which the author doesn't mean me to take as a big deal -- that's more intimate than any degree of involvement with trad fic narrators, in a way. I can't think of any specific examples I've played that have this problem, though, where the PC is much more finely drawn than in A Flustered Duck, say. (Maybe "Survive" from the JayIsGames comp, where I kept wanting to say, "Dude, the PC is a Nazi, I don't particularly want him to escape," but that game had enough other problems.)

About trad fic, I meant something pretty specific -- that the first-person narrator gives me more distance from the author when the fiction seems to be expressing views that I find repugnant. The author gets more deniability when everything is filtered through a narrator than when obnoxious things are being said in a third-person omniscient voice. For example, I put down [i]The House of Mirth[/i] when one character was described in a way that seemed pretty anti-Semitic (not that I didn't mean to pick it up again, though I haven't, but it was off-putting). If it had been written in the first person I'd have felt like Edith Wharton had some deniability about that description, but since it wasn't I didn't. (This was the "blond Jewish type" with "small sidelong eyes," I think.) 

This doesn't mean that first person can't be more intimate -- when I read a first person narrative I may be more inclined to shout GET AWAY FROM ME YOU AWFUL PERSON than in a third-person narrative. Not sure. But that'll be primarily a reaction to the character rather than the author, or at least the third person can give me that reaction to the author too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1270&start=0#p7488
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Telling actor to perform action
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-29 18:55:15

[quote="Eleas"][quote="emshort"]The example "Northstar" shows how to do exactly this. (ETA: it is a regexp solution, but fairly tidy and pre-written. Wildcards of the kind you describe are not possible because you'd be nesting a whole new set of parsing inside the [perform action] part.)[/quote]

Thank you very much. Now I do feel silly, though; all along it was right before my eyes, and yet every time my eyes just skipped over it to the Cave Troll example.

I've never quite grasped why the workings of the ask/tell system is kept separate from the rules core (in that all such parsing occur before the visible rulebooks kick in). Is this fundamental to I7's nature, or will it someday change?[/quote]

I assume you're not talking about >ASK COUNT DRACULA ABOUT RED WINE (which is accessible enough) but about >COUNT DRACULA, DRINK WINE -- that is, why there's no rulebook allowing you to fiddle with addressing commands to other characters. 

I think the answer is that (a) this part of the parser is a thicket of complexity and (b) Inform 6 provided few or no hooks into it, so Inform 7 by default didn't either. The regexp solution is actually MASSIVELY easier than what you had to do in I6 to turn TELL DRACULA TO DRINK WINE into DRACULA, DRINK WINE. 

That doesn't mean that there could never be changes here. If you have something in mind for how this portion of the system could be made more accessible and more I7y, please do put it on the suggestions site, and we can talk about whether it's feasible.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1263&start=10#p7489
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle v Plot
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-29 18:59:41

Totally a tangent:

[quote="matt w"]For example, I put down [i]The House of Mirth[/i] when one character was described in a way that seemed pretty anti-Semitic (not that I didn't mean to pick it up again, though I haven't, but it was off-putting). If it had been written in the first person I'd have felt like Edith Wharton had some deniability about that description, but since it wasn't I didn't. (This was the "blond Jewish type" with "small sidelong eyes," I think.) [/quote]

I'm afraid that particular characterization continues to be wince-worthy throughout the book. Which is a shame, because it's otherwise a good story, and in other areas actively challenges contemporary prejudices about class and background.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1210&start=0#p7490
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: [Hugo] New syntax highlighter for ConTEXT editor
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-07-29 21:08:11

I've never even heard of the ConTEXT editor (granted, I haven't heard of quite a number of cool things), but if I used it, I'd certainly give this a shot. I haven't worked on anything in a while, but will probably get back into it sooner or later.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1252&start=10#p7491
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Extra Challenges
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-07-29 21:29:06

FWIW, I enjoy Achievement-collecting in XBox 360 games (prompted by emshort's comment). I prefer it to the PS3's "trophy" system, which doesn't seem to carry with it an overall gamer score. I guess many works of IF have used the game's [b]>score[/b] for tracking mandatory as well as optional actions, but there's just something about that little "Achievement Unlocked" pop-up that will make me at least aim towards the obtainable ones.

There are a couple things that make this really resonate with me -- one easy to achieve in IF, and the other maybe not so easy.

One is, you usually have some idea of what must be accomplished in order to unlock the achievements. Most 360 games these days have "secret" achievements too (they're listed, but without any clues), but in general, the locked non-secret achievement states that it's for (for instance) killing 100 enemies with the plasma gun, or finishing a level in under 5 minutes. That kind of thing. Any more, I browse the list of potential achievements before doing much of anything, so I can play in a way that maximizes my chance at obtaining as many as possible.

The other thing is that on XBox Live, you can see and compare your Achievements with all your friends. It's a way to see how far along a buddy is in the game he's currently playing (especially when some of the achievements are based on the completion of level), and it's just all-around fun to get Achievements that your buddy missed or vice-versa. [i]This[/i], I don't know how you'd do in IF, unless it was built into one of the web-based interpreters, supported by the games, and required user log-ins. It would be cool to see something like that integrate with the IFDB, for instance, but it doesn't seem very likely.

In games on other platforms, I hardly ever go for the extra content. I think I got all the stars in the first Super Mario Galaxy, but in general, that was more to enjoy all the levels. Translating that into Interactive Fiction, I don't know how enthusiastic I'd be about getting extra Achievements that were isolated just to my own game experience, beyond the completion of the game itself. Hopefully others feel differently, because it sounds like an interesting idea.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1263&start=10#p7492
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle v Plot
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-29 21:32:19

[quote="emshort"]Totally a tangent:

[quote="matt w"]For example, I put down [i]The House of Mirth[/i] when one character was described in a way that seemed pretty anti-Semitic (not that I didn't mean to pick it up again, though I haven't, but it was off-putting). If it had been written in the first person I'd have felt like Edith Wharton had some deniability about that description, but since it wasn't I didn't. (This was the "blond Jewish type" with "small sidelong eyes," I think.) [/quote]

I'm afraid that particular characterization continues to be wince-worthy throughout the book. Which is a shame, because it's otherwise a good story, and in other areas actively challenges contemporary prejudices about class and background.[/quote]

I do mean to pick it back up sometime (if only to plunder the setting), it's just that as a blondish Jewish type myself I needed to do something else for a little while after reading that passage.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1267&start=10#p7493
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Choosing your starting character?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-29 22:06:51

I'd like to see more different kind of stuff, so this idea of replaying as different characters is interesting to me. And one thing in particular is that I don't agree with the judgment that there always ought to be one story with one character (not that anyone said that, exactly). It can be interesting to explore a world with different characters, or see how different characters fulfill a quest with basically the same shape, which is what Heroes seems to do (at least at first). It seems to me that there are a few different things you can do with a choice of PC:

--Use preset characters to change up some of the puzzles because the characters have different physical abilities. One character may be big enough not to need to climb on anything to reach the high shelf, but they also can't fit through the confined space, or cross the rickety bridge, or something. Or there could be more general techniques available to one character or another, if it's that kind of game (thinking of a combat-based game as we were talking about earlier). This is more like what Ron said about character classes, but not necessarily invalid for that. 

--Use preset characters to change up some of the puzzles or interactions because NPCs react to the characters differently because of who they are. I just played through a little of Heroes -- one quest and a bit of another -- and one of the guards who was completely faceless to one character was known to another character, and someone he could talk to. I'm assuming that will have a big effect on how the game moves forward. Or, in my I-0/Rameses example, I imagine playing as Tracy Valencia would open up different solutions to the quite difficult "telling these jerks where to stick it" puzzle (actually I never solved that). 

--Use preset characters to change some of the available paths, because there are some things the PC just won't do. This can be tricky -- having the PC flat out refuse to do something can be annoying -- but if the character and world are well-defined enough it could be motivated. For instance, in Kevin Jackson-Mead's "Waker" from the IntroComp (spoilered because I give away the solution to the entire intro),

[spoiler]Maybe you could play either as Vel or the high priest. The high priest is so bound by tradition that he would never smash the cryosleep coffin, but he knows the combination so he doesn't need to. But his code of tradition could become more restrictive later.[/spoiler]

And in that case the different codes of conduct would be part of exploring a world. Or imagine solving a mystery as a straight-arrow cop who would never do certain underhanded things, or a seedy private detective who has no such scruples but who also doesn't have the badge that'll get him through certain locked doors.

All these seem like they could increase replayability, in that you can wind up doing things over again with a few different challenges, and maybe gain new insight into the world of the IF. Though this isn't going to make things as replayable as in games where you can go through a new set of random encounters with a completely different skill tree.

--Use a dynamic sense of how the player plays to restrict options. I don't like the idea of using a predetermined character to lock the player out of solutions they might consider immoral (or the opposite, as Hertz seemed to suggest); if you have multiple paths and they're well hinted enough, players will try to find the path they want to. But you could try and highlight solutions that are in accord with the way the player's been playing so far. Another, trickier thing to do would be to have the gameworld evolve so as to close off some solutions -- after you shoot someone who's running away, people react so as to keep you from using the straight-arrow solutions. 

--Just change the reactions the PC gets from NPCs, and the way things are described, and the way the PC does things, in a way that doesn't necessarily change the puzzles but might affect how the player sees them. Imagine a game like Galatea where you have several different PCs that can talk to your NPC, which each of them coming up with more or less tactful ways of framing their quips, or coming up with different information when they tell her things, or just eliciting different reactions because she perceives them differently. Wouldn't that be interesting? 

Anyway, I can see a concern that these things would be a lot of effort which might best be put into other areas. But I like the idea of using different characters to explore a world as another way of using IF, in addition to having stories driven by a particular character.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1270&start=0#p7494
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Telling actor to perform action
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-07-30 06:09:27

[quote="emshort"]I assume you're not talking about >ASK COUNT DRACULA ABOUT RED WINE (which is accessible enough) but about >COUNT DRACULA, DRINK WINE -- that is, why there's no rulebook allowing you to fiddle with addressing commands to other characters. [/quote]

Yeah, that's what I meant. I should have been more precise in my phrasing.

[quote="emshort"]I think the answer is that (a) this part of the parser is a thicket of complexity and (b) Inform 6 provided few or no hooks into it, so Inform 7 by default didn't either. The regexp solution is actually MASSIVELY easier than what you had to do in I6 to turn TELL DRACULA TO DRINK WINE into DRACULA, DRINK WINE.[/quote]

Interesting. That makes a fair amount of sense, to be honest.

[quote="emshort"]That doesn't mean that there could never be changes here. If you have something in mind for how this portion of the system could be made more accessible and more I7y, please do put it on the suggestions site, and we can talk about whether it's feasible.[/quote]

Allright. I hope I'm not being too annoying by asking a follow-up question: how do I go about phrasing such a request? I mean, blithely asking someone to rewrite that entire section of the parser would be vague enough to be disrespectful, IMHO. Would it be better if I supplied a rules suggestion or two (such as adding a persuasion stage rulebook, for instance)?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=543&start=20#p7495
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Unwinnable states
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-07-30 07:46:53

[quote="emshort"][quote="Eleas"](Quick scribble, as I'm heading out the door)

There's at least one option, I think - the "do you really want to perform this clearly stupid/suicidal act? (Y/N)" query. I'm uncertain as to whether it's a good idea, TBH.[/quote]

Alternatively: have some sort of autosave mechanism that saves at the moment you are about to make the game unwinnable, and some kind of marker that indicates when unwinnability has happened. (At least a few games have had a WINNABLE command, allowing the player to check whether it was still possible to get through.)

Probably not a good solution for everything either, but it would help prevent situations where the player ruined a game completely by accident.[/quote]

I really like the WINNABLE idea. It would allow the player to do whatever, but, similar to a hint system, allow him to figure out whether or not the game is winnable. Now, depending on the complexity of the game- how to program that...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1267&start=20#p7496
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Choosing your starting character?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-07-30 10:40:31

[quote]if you have multiple paths and they're well hinted enough, players will try to find the path they want to.[/quote]

Man, *that* theory has wounded a hundred IF games...

I don't mean it never happens. But my rule of thumb is, think about what happens if the player finds the path he *least* wants to. Because it's even odds that will happen.

[quote]But you could try and highlight solutions that are in accord with the way the player's been playing so far.[/quote]

I like this idea, however. Try and shift the odds. I don't recall a game that's tried that approach.

[quote]Another, trickier thing to do would be to have the gameworld evolve so as to close off some solutions -- after you shoot someone who's running away, people react so as to keep you from using the straight-arrow solutions.[/quote]

As Emily said, it doesn't matter *why* you close off solutions. If it's a cause the player won't revisit (initial character selection, finishing the previous chapter, whatever) then it's a one-solution puzzle. Which is fine, of course; just be aware of what you're building.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1252&start=10#p7497
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Extra Challenges
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-07-30 10:45:40

With the advent of web interpreters, it's not implausible to imagine online achievement lists for IF. Or speed-run lists, IF win scores...

Yes, it's cheesy. But we waft around all day wondering how to make IF popular -- look, *I* do -- and these are classic strategies for making games popular.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1263&start=10#p7498
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle v Plot
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-07-30 11:01:39

Back to distancing. In books, we distinguish between omniscient third-person and tight third-person. The latter is from a particular character's point of view (despite pronouns), it can include internal thoughts, and we expect it to reflect the character's prejudices just like first-person.

When I play standard second-person IF, I process it the same way. Ditto when I write it. It is tight second-person. (I don't think we have a model of omniscient second-person.)

I won't deny that IF *feels* closer (because of the interactivity, not the pronouns) and it's easier to be squicked by an action I'm typing in than by an action I'm reading. But I get thrown out of books, too, if I don't like the protagonist. The difference is that I'm willing to finish the book (because skimming is low-effort), whereas I'm more likely to drop the IF as not worth the effort.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=543&start=20#p7499
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Unwinnable states
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-07-30 11:19:14

[quote="emshort"]Alternatively: have some sort of autosave mechanism that saves at the moment you are about to make the game unwinnable, and some kind of marker that indicates when unwinnability has happened. (At least a few games have had a WINNABLE command, allowing the player to check whether it was still possible to get through.)[/quote]
Steal a mechanism from video games and implement a checkpoint system.  The author can choose a number of places in the game where it auto-saves (first time entering the Reactor Control Room, every time before crossing the Rickety Rope Bridge, before attempting the Carnival Ring Toss, after defeating the Troll King in combat).  Disable the checkpoint auto-saves after the game becomes unwinnable.

This may be the best of all worlds; the player gets a way to retreat back to [b]a[/b] winnable state, whether or not he saved intentionally.  It may not be the most [b]recent[/b] winnable state, as with UNDO; it doesn't tell him that he's done any of the [i]right[/i] things, but at least he knows he hasn't done any of the wrong ones; and he may have to cover some ground again to make up for his error.  He can still save manually at any time, but he doesn't have any guarantee that [i]his[/i] choice of save is a winnable state.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1271&start=0#p7500
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: New German IF Magazine
User: ifwizz / DateTime: 2010-07-30 11:19:22

Hello!

ifwizz will publish an IF journal called 'The Parser' in mid-august. It is the first german magazine for interactive fiction. Among other topics the first issue will contain interviews with Christian Blümke and Michael Baltes - the winner of the german IF competition 2010. And of course news from the international IF community will come with each issue. 

'The Parser' will be published as a PDF Newsletter and is for free. Check the following website, if you would like to subscribe the magazine:

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifwizz.de/if-journal.html">http://ifwizz.de/if-journal.html</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1267&start=20#p7501
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Choosing your starting character?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-07-30 11:35:23

[quote="zarf"][quote]if you have multiple paths and they're well hinted enough, players will try to find the path they want to.[/quote]Man, *that* theory has wounded a hundred IF games...

I don't mean it never happens. But my rule of thumb is, think about what happens if the player finds the path he *least* wants to. Because it's even odds that will happen.[/quote]Speaking as just a player I agree (with zarf). When it comes to puzzle solutions, or even just plain obstacles that aren't complex enough to be deemed puzzles, the road oft taken is almost always the road first stumbled onto.  I can think of only one instance where I skipped an obvious way to push the story forward because I didn't like where it would lead:  the elephant harness in _Bronze_.  It's important to note that by that time in the game, the game had already firmly and clearly established itself as a multiple-paths, multiple-solutions game, and the description of said harness was clearly foreshadow-y.  I was sure in my hunch that there would be another way.    

Most I-F are way too opaque to support that.  And if Bronze had tossed me a "Belle isn't heavy enough to make a difference" in response to my JUMPing onto something it would have reduced my belief in my ability to [i]choose[/i], and hence, I would've thought twice about choosing to skip taking that elephant harness.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1270&start=0#p7502
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Telling actor to perform action
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-30 11:36:32

The most useful suggestions are not necessarily those that suggest how the change should be implemented, but the ones that are clear about what you as an author would like to be able to do, what syntax you want to use, and how that would be helpful in actual real-world game situations. 

So "it would be great if, instead of the parser automatically preparsing commands of the form Blah, blah blah... into a direction to another player, there was a rulebook of command preprocessing rules which included that rule, and it could be delisted." -- or whatever it is you do want -- perhaps followed by suggestions for the syntax you'd imagine seeing and a brief description of a case where that would be useful.

I can't guarantee that you'll get what you ask for this way, but the specific requests are much easier to evaluate and act on. Vague requests often wind up in a heap labeled "this sounds like it might be useful somehow but we'd have to spend a while figuring out what the specs even are before we start so let's do it later."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1271&start=0#p7503
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: New German IF Magazine
User: weiju / DateTime: 2010-07-30 11:57:26

This is great news, can't wait to read it !

Wei-ju

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1267&start=20#p7504
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Choosing your starting character?
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-07-30 12:05:31

[quote="matt w"]--Use preset characters to change up some of the puzzles because the characters have different physical abilities. One character may be big enough not to need to climb on anything to reach the high shelf, but they also can't fit through the confined space, or cross the rickety bridge, or something.[/quote]
This is one class of variant-solution puzzle I'd like to implement, where you're actually gating parts of the map between one character and another — or you're changing the [i]method[/i] for getting to that part of the map.  If you're playing the Russian agent, you can get into the Russian embassy through the front door; if you're the Chinese agent, you can access the lobby openly, but getting to the back rooms requires subterfuge (climbing through a window, let's say).  [i]Neither[/i] of them can get into the janitor's closet without the key, so that's a puzzle common to both characters.

Depending on who you're playing, one solution is obvious and natural, and another not so.  For the most part, I'm not talking about [i]closing off[/i] out-of-character solutions.  If a puzzle has multiple solutions worth implementing, err on the side of leaving them all in (the Russian agent can also climb in the back window, but he doesn't [i]have[/i] to).
[quote]--Use preset characters to change up some of the puzzles or interactions because NPCs react to the characters differently because of who they are.[/quote]
This is what I mean about allowing the PC to be the hero of his choosing.  If he wants to play the dark, mysterious stranger that everybody's afraid of, fine; if he wants to play the noble, honest, forthright friend; fine.  It's more about changing the way the NPCs of the world react to you, than about changing the physics of puzzles.  The golden key still opens the golden cage; it's how you get that key that varies.  The mysterious stranger can get it through trade, theft, misdirection, and intimidation; the honest friend can get it through trade, theft, misdirection, and camaraderie.
[quote]--Use preset characters to change some of the available paths, because there are some things the PC just won't do.[/quote]
Agreed; useful but tricky, and not to be abused.  If the character is well-defined and the few restrictions intuitive, this shouldn't be too much of a problem, because the player won't find himself trying those things (the noble knight won't execute his captives, but he doesn't have to; the barbarian can execute prisoners if he chooses, but it isn't necessary).
[quote]--Use a dynamic sense of how the player plays to restrict options. I don't like the idea of using a predetermined character to lock the player out of solutions they might consider immoral (or the opposite, as Hertz seemed to suggest)...[/quote]
I am going to try that in one game, but that has a very different structure.  You play six suspects being interviewed about a murder, and you play their alibis in flashback.  Depending on how you play the first alibi, it sets up certain conditions and facts about the murder — the time of the murder, the time the body was discovered, the murder weapon, and so on.  For instance:
[spoiler]You start by playing the housemaid; one task is to bring the morning newspaper to the master of the house.  If you meet up with him before you fetch the newspaper, he slaps your bottom (and you can react to [i]that[/i] in a number of ways); if you fetch the newspaper and give it to him, there's a lead story that incriminates one of the other suspects; if you fetch the newspaper but withhold it, it incriminates [i]you[/i], under the assumption that you're trying to hide a specific story from him).[/spoiler]
[quote]Another, trickier thing to do would be to have the gameworld evolve so as to close off some solutions -- after you shoot someone who's running away, people react so as to keep you from using the straight-arrow solutions.[/quote]
If I did it this way, I would rather close off avenues that reflect ways the player [i]doesn't[/i] choose.  If you shoot a guy in the back, people henceforth wouldn't respond when you try to play nicey-nicey.  The player is telling me which paths he prefers; why close off the avenues he seems to like the most?
[quote]--Just change the reactions the PC gets from NPCs, and the way things are described, and the way the PC does things, in a way that doesn't necessarily change the puzzles but might affect how the player sees them.[/quote]
This is primarily what I mean by character choice.  It describes things to the player through a filter of his choosing, especially NPC reactions.  Some people take it personally when the NPCs treat the PC badly — as if the player is a fool, or dishonest, or whatever.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1272&start=0#p7505
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Out of World Commands
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-07-30 12:09:12

Emily had a good point in the unwinnable states thread about a WINNABLE command the player can type in to see if the game is still winnable.

What other out of world commands have you implemented for your own games, or did you like?

Listing Exits, Calling up a help menu, seeing credits, taking score/full score, Undo/Save/Restore, etc are pretty commonplace, but is there anything else?

I was considering a GOALS command that told the PC what he was trying to accomplish- the current game is fairly long and puzzle-heavy, so if the PC knew what he was trying to get done (or could easily remember) it might help him. 

Anyone have any other good ideas?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1273&start=0#p7506
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Convenience Commands
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-07-30 12:14:23

Games have come a long way since Zork. What commands have you made easier that used to be tedius?

For example, I've seen good use of a GO TO [room] command to avoid the maze trekking, or even:

[code]
>N
(first unlocking the bronze door with the bronze key)
(first opening the bronze door)

Next Room[/code]

as opposed to
[code]
>N
The bronze door is in the way.

>OPEN DOOR
what door, the bronze door or the iron door?

>BRONZE DOOR
The bronze door is locked

>UNLOCK BRONZE DOOR
what do you want to unlock the bronze door with?

>BRONZE KEY
Which key did you want to bronze?
[/code] And so forth..

Similarly, having players automatically put/retrieve things from a bag as needed, or auto-displaying contents of a container when it is examined/opened. What other tedium have been avoided by your clever programming skills?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1273&start=0#p7507
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Convenience Commands
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-07-30 12:20:52

[code]> WIN GAME
(first going east)
(first getting the bronze key)
(first going west)
(first unlocking the bronze door with the bronze key)
(first opening the bronze door)
(first going north)
(first taking the glimmering Elvish sword)
...[/code]
Wouldn't that be hilarious?  [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1273&start=0#p7508
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Convenience Commands
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-07-30 12:23:05

[quote="Hertz"][code]> WIN GAME
(first going east)
(first getting the bronze key)
(first going west)
(first unlocking the bronze door with the bronze key)
(first opening the bronze door)
(first going north)
(first taking the glimmering Elvish sword)
...[/code]
Wouldn't that be hilarious?  [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

HA HA That is hilarious!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1272&start=0#p7509
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Out of World Commands
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2010-07-30 12:23:32

I like the way Emily Short herself put this in her game "Floatpoint"

When you THINK it lists off things you have to do, which is very helpful since the game can take so many turns for its small size.

I think instead of requiring the player to type WINNABLE every other turn to make sure they haven't shot themselves in the foot, I think taking a page from Blue Lacuna would help - make the player hesitate and throw up a warning when something that seriously affects the game is about to happen.

"As you reach out to feed the flamingo food to the flamingo, you pause for a moment and think that somehow, somewhere, this flamingo food might serve a higher purpose."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1273&start=0#p7510
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Convenience Commands
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2010-07-30 12:26:34

[quote="Hertz"][code]> WIN GAME
(first going east)
(first getting the bronze key)
(first going west)
(first unlocking the bronze door with the bronze key)
(first opening the bronze door)
(first going north)
(first taking the glimmering Elvish sword)
...[/code]
Wouldn't that be hilarious?  [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

I think something like that was in Suveh Nux, wasn't it?
Although it didn't detail out the steps taken, IIRC.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1273&start=0#p7511
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Convenience Commands
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-07-30 12:30:03

[quote="Hertz"][code]> WIN GAME
(first going east)
(first getting the bronze key)
(first going west)
(first unlocking the bronze door with the bronze key)
(first opening the bronze door)
(first going north)
(first taking the glimmering Elvish sword)
...[/code]
Wouldn't that be hilarious?  :)[/quote]
You should try [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=z69xitgxqpj96jwx]The Nemean Lion[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1273&start=0#p7512
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Convenience Commands
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-07-30 12:35:58

Also, [url=http://gamingphilosopher.blogspot.com/2009/09/nemean-lion.html]Yon Astounding Castle[/url] from the most recent Comp had a WIN command that ended the game with your current number of points/treasures, and gave a cute little obituary.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1272&start=0#p7513
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Out of World Commands
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-30 12:58:26

Along the same lines, J. Robinson Wheeler's "First Things First" had a device that you could point at something to find out whether it was useful for a puzzle or was just some scenery (useful because it was a big game with lots of flavoring items); "Jigsaw" had a device that told you whether you'd found all the maguffins in a particular area before you left that area, because sometimes it wasn't going to be easy to get back.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1272&start=0#p7514
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Out of World Commands
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-07-30 13:14:55

Re the "winnable" thing -- I don't know if anyone's mentioned the idea of freezing the "undo" history when the game becomes unwinnable. So there's no explicit warning as you play, but "undo" always rewinds to the last *winnable* move. (Probably with some kind of warning that you were jumping back many turns.)

I don't know whether this would come off feeling more or less artificial than the "winnable" command.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1272&start=0#p7515
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Out of World Commands
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-07-30 13:16:05

Actually, I see this is already in the "Unwinnable" thread, close enough. :)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1272&start=0#p7516
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Out of World Commands
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-30 13:29:08

"City of Secrets" also had commands to list and identify the people you'd met (since there were a lot of NPCs, and it would be possible to put the game down and come back later having forgotten who was who), and a thing that, instead of score, listed the chapters you'd experienced so far.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1274&start=0#p7517
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Dynamic color changes in glulx
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2010-07-30 13:34:52

I'm trying to make it so that a few pages in a book are written in different colors.
My book is actually a list of text, and when reading it, a number is incremented to show which entry in the list we're reading.
In my reading check, I want to make it so that if we're reading an arbitrary entry in the list, to change the color as noted below:

Table of User Styles (continued)
style name	justification	obliquity	indentation	first-line indentation	boldness	fixed width	relative size	glulx color 
special-style-1	left-justified	no-obliquity	0	0	regular-weight	proportional-font	0	12530621

I'm fairly sure this is correct, but here's my problem:

I have this buried in a tab and colon block (check reading:, if entryNum is 4) and so the table fails to be read as such. If I try to hug it to the left side so the table works, the tab and colon block fails.

Is there a way to put a color style changing table inside an if block?
I'd like to do this six times with different colors, so I can't just set special-style-1 and special-style-2 and leave it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1272&start=0#p7518
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Out of World Commands
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-07-30 14:04:27

I grew very fond of Broken Legs' >WHO IS system.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1267&start=20#p7519
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Choosing your starting character?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-07-30 14:18:06

Exploring the world with different characters doesn't necessarily mean the *same* situation/game, though.  Think about multi-viewpoint novels, where you get slices of different POVs.  (The most recent example I've read is the A Song of Ice and Fire series, but there are lots out there.)  That can be a way of focusing attention on a given scene in a way that's character focused.  This way, you're still revealing different viewpoints, but without necessitating replay to get them.  

As a player, I find that far more compelling than a choice of who to play through a particular scenario with.  For one thing, it gives you more story to play with.

Switching characters mid-story is a potential downside - I generally dislike that sort of thing, but it can be done well, and it can be very compelling.  You can even structure it in such a way that it's got a layer of artificiality on it. I think the usual device is Chaucer's - you have a bunch of people come together and tell stories, and each story is from that character's POV, and maybe you wrap the stories up in a little extra something just to give a start/ending to the book.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1274&start=0#p7520
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dynamic color changes in glulx
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-07-30 15:00:38

[quote="Joel Webster"]I'd like to do this six times with different colors, so I can't just set special-style-1 and special-style-2 and leave it.[/quote]

You can change Glk style settings at any time, but the changes only apply to new windows. Furthermore, only 11 styles are defined, and the bulk of these are used for styling conventional IF output.

Unless you're displaying the book pages in a dedicated window, you probably don't want to change anything except the two user styles. If you're careful, you can modify styles that would otherwise not be used, like BlockQuote. Overriding the defaults for Emphasized, Note, and Alert would bring you to six, though you'd need to avoid italics elsewhere, turn off score messages, and change the way end-game text is printed.

The forthcoming Glk CSS spec promises to make this somewhat less painful.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1274&start=0#p7521
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dynamic color changes in glulx
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2010-07-30 15:20:21

[quote="bcressey"]You can change Glk style settings at any time, but the changes only apply to new windows. Furthermore, only 11 styles are defined, and the bulk of these are used for styling conventional IF output.

Unless you're displaying the book pages in a dedicated window, you probably don't want to change anything except the two user styles.[/quote]

Yes, this is exactly what I want to do, now how do I do it in the condition I detailed above?
Can I change the text color of the two user styles without using a table?
Or how do I put a table inside of an if block?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1274&start=0#p7522
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dynamic color changes in glulx
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-07-30 16:03:17

A table is a standalone structure. You can't put one inside of an if block, because tables don't go inside any execution blocks at all. As Ben said, Glulx limits you to two custom styles. To get a few more styles, you can repurpose some of the built-in styles (such as blockquote). This is an especially good option if you're using a dedicated window--which it sounds like you are--because the chances that the second window will need all the styles is fairly slim. If you're not accepting input in the new window, you won't need the Input style for example. You may not need the Header style if you aren't showing room descriptions in it, etc.

Another good thing about using a second window is that you can reboot the styles: If you change the definition of those styles before you open the new window, then the old window will retain the original style (because a window's styles can't change once it has been opened), but the new window will use the new styles. You can even close and immediately reopen the second window, changing the styles before you reopen it.

How to change the styles, though? Glulx Text Effects is really designed for one-window work. A small tweak will make it work much better for your purposes. Open up GTE and change the first line of this block of code (the bold type indicates what's to be changed):

[quote]To initialize user styles:
     repeat through the [b]current style table[/b]
     begin; 
          if there is a justification entry, apply justification of (justification entry) to (style name entry);
          if there is an obliquity entry, apply obliquity (obliquity entry) to (style name entry);
          if there is an indentation entry, apply (indentation entry) indentation to (style name entry);
          if there is a first-line indentation entry, apply (first-line indentation entry) first-line indentation to (style name entry);
          if there is a boldness entry, apply (boldness entry) boldness to (style name entry);
          if there is a fixed width entry, apply fixed-width-ness (fixed width entry) to (style name entry);
          if there is a relative size entry, apply (relative size entry) size-change to (style name entry);
          if there is a glulx color entry, apply (assigned number of glulx color entry) color to (style name entry);
      end repeat.[/quote]

Then add this line to your code (or to GTE, if you like):

[quote]The current style table is a table name variable. The current style table is the Table of User Styles.[/quote]

Now you can make as many tables as you want (with different names, call them whatever you want); they all will have to have the same format. Before opening a new window with Flexible Windows, switch to the table you want to apply to that window, then reset the styles. For example:

[code]Carry out opening the book:
      now the current style table is the Table of Book Styles;
      initialize user styles;
      open up the book-window.[/code]

Caveat: I haven't tested any of this, so I may have left out a detail or two, but the overall method ought to be sound.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1274&start=0#p7523
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dynamic color changes in glulx
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2010-07-30 16:21:01

Thanks for the replies, it's very helpful.
However, I'm reading that I can't do what I want to do.
Here's what I want to happen:


> read book
Here is the text of the first page
There are more pages in the book.

> g
[color=#FF0000]Here is the text of the second page[/color]
There are more pages in the book.

> g
[color=#0000FF]Here is the text of the third page[/color]
There are more pages in the book.

> g
[color=#008000]Here is the text of the fourth page[/color]
This is the last page of the book.

But it looks like that can't happen in glulx. It looks like that might be possible in a z-code game, but unfortunately, my project is too large to fit in a z8.(I'm only about 10% done with the game and it's 380K)
Oh, well. I'll have to just abandon this idea then.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1274&start=0#p7524
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dynamic color changes in glulx
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-30 17:01:26

As a further elaboration: the restrictiveness of text coloring in Glulx is something that a lot of people dislike, and there has been some discussion about changes to the specs to allow more options. So it may change down the line, but things aren't settled yet, and you're probably wise not to expect this feature to appear in the very near future.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1267&start=20#p7525
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Choosing your starting character?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-30 17:45:41

[quote="Hertz"][quote="matt w"]Another, trickier thing to do would be to have the gameworld evolve so as to close off some solutions -- after you shoot someone who's running away, people react so as to keep you from using the straight-arrow solutions.[/quote]
If I did it this way, I would rather close off avenues that reflect ways the player [i]doesn't[/i] choose.  If you shoot a guy in the back, people henceforth wouldn't respond when you try to play nicey-nicey.  The player is telling me which paths he prefers; why close off the avenues he seems to like the most?
[/quote]

Just to clarify, I think we mean the same thing here -- by "straight-arrow" I mean law-abiding, upstanding, etc.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1263&start=10#p7526
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle v Plot
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-30 17:59:46

[quote="zarf"](I don't think we have a model of omniscient second-person.)[/quote]

Well, some of Homestuck is written in this style. The [url=http://mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=004212]first of today's updates[/url] reads 

[spoiler]But at the onset, you would know nothing of the queen's aversion to an amphibious likeness, or about her orbs twelvefold, or any such details. You were informed of her disadvantage, and would act accordingly. You and your red teammates would work to dethrone the queen in your session, while the blue team members would take on the entirely separate set of royal adversaries in their own session. This was to be a competition, after all.

Or so you thought.[/spoiler]

(Spoilered in case anyone's been following along and doesn't want to read the update here. If you should read the spoiler and then go back and read Homestuck later, it won't spoil anything, because it won't make the slightest bit of sense until about two-thirds of the way through Act 5, by which time you will have forgotten it. That past sentence was not in omniscient second person. Also, I should say that Homestuck is a webcomic sort of thingy that's a parody of adventure games of various sorts, because the last time I sent someone over there I think he tried to enter commands and got very confused, which also happened to me the first time I visited MS Paint adventures.)

[quote]I won't deny that IF *feels* closer (because of the interactivity, not the pronouns) and it's easier to be squicked by an action I'm typing in than by an action I'm reading. But I get thrown out of books, too, if I don't like the protagonist. The difference is that I'm willing to finish the book (because skimming is low-effort), whereas I'm more likely to drop the IF as not worth the effort.[/quote]

Well, I don't think it's a question of disliking the protagonist, necessarily; Ruth Rendell has some books written (at least partly) from the third-person point of view of rather unlikeable serial killers, and while it's deliberately an uncomfortable read, it doesn't throw me out of the book. But actually having to type in their actions would be pretty unbearably squicky. Agreed that it's not the pronouns, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1273&start=0#p7528
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Convenience Commands
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-30 18:14:10

[url=http://www.spatch.net/games/play.cgi?game=ddyte]Pick Up The Phone Booth And Aisle[/url] also recognizes WIN, though I shan't spoil its response.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1272&start=0#p7529
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Out of World Commands
User: jfm.lisaso / DateTime: 2010-07-30 19:45:58

As suggested by a blind acquaintance, the command CLEAR (or something similar) to erase the text buffer window.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1275&start=0#p7530
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Setting rocks in Flexible Windows extension
User: sussman / DateTime: 2010-07-30 22:31:22

Hey Erik (or Jon?)... not sure who maintains Flexible Windows these days...

Thanks to the wonders of zarf's quixe interpreter, I recompiled Rover's Day Out and managed to release a standalone quixe website for it here:

   <a class="postlink" href="http://www.red-bean.com/sussman/if/rover/">http://www.red-bean.com/sussman/if/rover/</a>

zarf helped me manually tweak the glk CSS so that custom-style-1 was blue and monospaced, as all the meta-speak is supposed to be.  I'm thrilled that it works!  

I then set out to make the temporary BSOD g-window have a blue backround.  The proper way to do this is by addressing the rock-number in CSS, i.e.

  .WindowRock_210 {
    background-color: blue;
  }

This is working for me, only because in my particular glulx binary the rock number just happens to be 210.  But zarf and I agreed it would be a lot more elegant if I could *set* the rock number on the g-window to a known quantity, and thereby know exactly how to create the CSS.  I tried to do "The BSOD-window is a g-window.  The rock-value of the BSOD-window is 1729."... and it compiled.  But apparently the rock-value property is read-only?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1267&start=20#p7531
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Choosing your starting character?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-30 22:56:53

[quote="zarf"][quote]if you have multiple paths and they're well hinted enough, players will try to find the path they want to.[/quote]

Man, *that* theory has wounded a hundred IF games...

I don't mean it never happens. But my rule of thumb is, think about what happens if the player finds the path he *least* wants to. Because it's even odds that will happen.[/quote]

Yeah, that was a stupid thing for me to say. I guess when I was playing Backup, after killing someone for the first time i restarted in order to find a way through without killing anyone. But that was partly because I'd already half found it.

[quote][quote]But you could try and highlight solutions that are in accord with the way the player's been playing so far.[/quote]

I like this idea, however. Try and shift the odds. I don't recall a game that's tried that approach.[/quote]

I guess what Metamorphoses did was something like this? I vaguely recall Emily saying that, depending on how you played, the game might force you to repeat a command more or less times. That's kind of inverted, though (and I'm not overly fond of being forced to repeat a command several times before the parser accepts it).   

[quote][quote]Another, trickier thing to do would be to have the gameworld evolve so as to close off some solutions -- after you shoot someone who's running away, people react so as to keep you from using the straight-arrow solutions.[/quote]

As Emily said, it doesn't matter *why* you close off solutions. If it's a cause the player won't revisit (initial character selection, finishing the previous chapter, whatever) then it's a one-solution puzzle. Which is fine, of course; just be aware of what you're building.[/quote]

Well, it needn't be one solution. There could be several solutions, one or more of which may be closed off; and hopefully it's apparent why your previous choice has been closed off. "Jimmy the Rat says, 'You're the crooked cop who shot Billy Bags, ain'tcha? I ain't believin' nothing you say about how you'll go easy on me.' He clams up until his mouthpiece shows up and tells you you got no reason to hold him any more." 

This isn't so different from a structure I've seen elsewhere -- in "A New Life" I bought something that wasn't the lamp, and then I got to a dark room and realized that if I had the lamp I could solve that puzzle easily. Then on subsequent playthroughs I bought the lamp. (Still haven't finished that game, but combining the hints, the walkthrough, and some stuff I figured out for myself I think I'll be able to do it next time.) I think we're talking about doing something similar, except with choices that have to do with your character rather than choices about what to take with you. It'd have to be a game that encourages replay, though, which might just be a game in which it's easy to get stuck. (But then you wouldn't choose the character you wanted, you'd choose the character you could get unstuck with.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1267&start=20#p7532
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Choosing your starting character?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-07-30 23:02:21

Adding, one possible mechanism that might avoid the pitfall of the generic story -- one you can play through with any kind of character -- would be that of alliances. I think Emily and Ron have talked about this as a possible substitute for the simplistic good/evil karma meter you get in some games. If certain kind of actions alienate some factions of NPCs and endear yourself to others, you could find your choices guiding you down different paths -- steal the Russian ambassador's car at the beginning, and later you'll find yourself having to avoid the Russian guards, but the Americans will help you. Of course it'd be a lot of work to program this well.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1275&start=0#p7533
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting rocks in Flexible Windows extension
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-07-30 23:11:53

Hey Ben, the rock-value property isn't read-only, but you can't change it until after the allocate rocks rule runs (in "when play begins"). This is all it should take:

[code]When play begins:
	now the rock-value of the BSOD-window is 1729.[/code]

Of course, you also need to be sure that you've changed it (1) before opening the BSOD-window for the first time, while (2) ensuring that your manual rock number doesn't conflict with a number assigned to another window by the automatic routine (that is, the allocate rocks rule mentioned above). As long as you don't have 10 or more custom windows, any number 300 or above will be enough to guarantee that. If you only have the one custom window, then even 210 would be OK.

(The allocate rocks rule starts at 200 for custom windows and goes up by 10's: 220, 230, 240, etc.)

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1267&start=20#p7534
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Choosing your starting character?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-07-30 23:13:46

[quote="matt w"]I guess what Metamorphoses did was something like this? I vaguely recall Emily saying that, depending on how you played, the game might force you to repeat a command more or less times. That's kind of inverted, though (and I'm not overly fond of being forced to repeat a command several times before the parser accepts it).   [/quote]

Yeah, this is not something I would do again now. 

The deal was that, if you did enough puzzle solutions that involved determination rather than cleverness -- that is, breaking things, sacrificing things of value to you, risking minor pain -- then future similar actions would go through with less hesitation. There was always a puzzle solution that did *not* require repeated actions. 

But I've still come around to the idea that this is usually not a fair thing to do to the player, unless you are *very* clear in your parser response that you're merely checking to see whether the player is sure, and that repetition might work.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=30#p7535
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-07-30 23:50:18



Thanks for the responses.  I was off-line all week due to IRL business but haven't forgotten about this highly stimulating discussion, which due to the very thoughtful input of a number of people is quickly turning into one of the most interesting and wide-ranging examinations of zombies I've ever seen in any medium.

To recap where we are in this discussion (mostly for my own benefit as I organize my thoughts), I've been arguing that the disease-crazed-monster aspect of the zombie metaphor (which has in recent times been so thoroughly over-emphasized by most horror artists that it has now become a point of [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fido_(film)]satire[/url]) significantly undervalues the horrific credentials of the zombie.  Nonetheless we've discovered that these aspects of the zombie metaphor still hold considerable terrible potential and truly are a source of fright for many, so perhaps I initially overstated my case.  In the course of a fairly thorough analysis we've explored many core aspects of zombie nature and I've argued that a fertile field for reinvigorating the zombie may be an exploration of its undead-ness.  We've also seen, however, that the reason many horror artists have recently moved away from this aspect of the zombie phenomenon is the difficulty of inspiring terror with the notion of undeath--particularly in our increasingly secularized western society where the very idea of undeath itself no longer holds the disturbing religious implications many folks found compelling in times past.

I think that latest idea is an important conclusion, something I haven't seen discussed anywhere else as I researched the zombie metaphor.  That the notion of undeath is difficult to implement in a coherent way for the jaded modern horror audience explains much about how the idea of the zombie evolved to its current state, and where the zombie may be headed in the immediate future.  We've decided that unless we can find a satisfactory way (that avoids appeal to religious conviction) to make the notion of undeath compelling, comprehensible, and scary we may be better off to set the notion aside.

I think I've found (due to inspiration from a number of comments in this thread) a satisfactory resolution to that problem which also allows us to continue making full use of all the other terrible aspects of the zombie; for the discerning reader my thinking on the matter is currently heading in this general direction:

[quote="In [i]Shadow Out of Time[/i], H. P. Lovecraft"]It was evident that the coming doom so desperately feared by the Great Race - the doom that was one day to send millions of keen minds across the chasm of time to strange bodies in the safer future - had to do with a final successful irruption of the elder beings.[/quote]
Nonetheless I think there are still a number of questions to be explored regarding the nature of the zombie and the nature of the zombie horror tale.  Until we thoroughly understand the threat of these grotesque malefactors, any proposal for significantly advancing their cause would be premature and almost certainly too inadequate to be very satisfying.

*****

A question that naturally flows from our previous discussion concerns the nature and use of tragedy in horror fiction and particularly in zombie fiction.  In real life, the enormity of dread and despair engendered in most of us if we are forced to ponder an inevitable and utter doom can be quite overwhelming.  Yet I've argued that in a work of horror fiction this device may be unsatisfactory in that it likely reduces our tale to a mere description of the particular doom faced by the protagonist, perhaps along with a description of the actual moment of doom.  To the degree that the audience empathizes with the protagonist and we succeed in outlining the menace in a plausible way, a temporary sense of unrest may thus be inspired in their minds; however I think this effect is unlikely to be long-lasting once the audience leaves the constraints of the imagined universe of the tale.

The alternative device would seem to be a horrible fate faced by the protagonist to which he may or may not succumb.  Yet unless we take care to clearly elaborate under what circumstances the protagonist may meet his doom, we risk turning our tale of horror into a didactic play of manners and morals--which would be unfortunate if our goal is to inspire profound terror in the audience.     

Are there other alternatives I haven't mentioned?  Which device is likely to give us a maximum payload of horror in the medium of a game--particularly a game consisting solely of text?

More generally, is the tale of zombie horror more effective with a "downer" ending?  Assuming we're not bland mass-media entertainment executives who believe the primary theme of all entertainment must pander to the Disney crowd by dictating that every story must have an optimistic ending where "They all lived happily ever after," can a theme of true terror be successfully explored in a story where the protagonists are victorious and proceed to return to a mundane existence with no lingering effects (apart perhaps from a few physical and mental scars) of their encounter with the monstrous?  What are the clear hazards to be avoided in such an approach?  Is the audience more, or less, likely to be satisfied with such an ending?  In pondering this concept, I should state again that I'm presuming in a horror tale satisfaction of the audience means we succeed in horrifying them.


*****

A related area we haven't explored yet is the question of zombie character.  Are zombies evil, or are they just adversaries and opponents whose objectives conflict with our own goals?  The idea of "evil" is beset by many of the difficulties that plague the notion of undeath--namely, I think the term "evil" is heavily loaded with religious connotations.  In real life evil ensues from people pursuing goals that cause direct and significant harm to others, and from these actors selfishly continuing their pursuits once that harm becomes evident.  In other words, I think evil is a process.  On the other hand there is a long and robust tradition in literature--particularly in horror literature--of portraying the antagonist as "evil" in some absolute sense, as if evil were a fundamental trait of character or state of being.

If we were to say "zombies are evil," what exactly would we be saying?  Is it anything worth saying?  Is saying such likely to assist our endeavor of terrifying the audience?  Is a characterization of the zombie as evil more or less disturbing than portraying the creatures as "mere" enemies?  Is the idea of an evil enemy more or less profound than the idea of an enemy with sincerely held beliefs which are simply offensive to us--or is that all we're really saying anyway when we use the word "evil"?  Perhaps finally, is it not at all the beliefs of the zombie that disturb us, but more simply the actions the zombie takes as it implements its beliefs and carries out its agenda?


*****


I already have a number of other zombie topics I'd like to present for everyone's examination and discussion, but I don't think we can proceed much further until we look into the issues I've raised in this current post.  Once we've worked out these theorhetical issues at the heart of the zombie metaphor, I think we'll reap a handsome dividend when we return to our examination of more mundane topics such as rotting zombie flesh and whether zombies find our guts or our brains tastier.  As always, for those not interested in discussing such epic issues more general observations or thoughts on zombie games and movies are also welcome.


*****


@bcressey

[quote="bcressey"]I am working from the sense that horror is situational and terror is omnipresent. In other words, it is horrible when a zombie jumps out of a closet, and terrible that you will never again inhabit a world in which zombies do not jump out of closets.[/quote]
Very well said.

[quote="bcressey"]Serial killers are commonly thought to be wired differently from normal people: not simply someone who decides one day to begin killing strangers, but someone who has been an unnatural outsider since birth. A normal human birth, rather than a blasphemous rebirth.[/quote]
Is this more, or less, terrifying than the idea of a killer who rationally pondered all the options and decided that becoming a killer would be the most satisfying way to live?


@capmikee

I have always refused to eat mushrooms of any kind; most fungi are our enemies. [emote]:idea:[/emote]   Perhaps Lovecraft was on to something there.  In fact, many fungi exhibit behavior that is also commonly seen (on a much larger scale and in a more aggressive manner) in zombies.

[quote="capmikee"]What scares me is often random images that didn't seem like they were supposed to be scary.[/quote]
I myself often find that even images with a clearly innocuous theme can instantly inspire mildly disturbing feelings if they demonstrate a particular color scheme that I can only (unhelpfully, sorry) describe as "unnatural."  I know it when I see it, but I've never been able to work out the details of how these color combinations work or how to design them, and I think the whole effect is accidental in all cases where it is displayed.  Nonetheless, it's an interesting subject because it's rarely even articulated (let alone discussed).  Several examples of this phenomenon can be found amongst the production design of several scenes in the horror film [url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095488/][i]Lair of the White Worm[/i][/url], although even in that case I don't think the effect was intentional (or even comprehended) on the part of the director and production designer.




-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1275&start=0#p7536
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting rocks in Flexible Windows extension
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-07-31 00:04:07

Would it make sense for the allocate rocks rule to leave rocks alone if they're already set to a nonzero value?

This is going to be a standard way to associate styles with windows in the CSS.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1272&start=0#p7537
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Out of World Commands
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-07-31 00:05:36

If that's desirable for people using screen-readers, then it should be an interpreter feature, not a game feature.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1276&start=0#p7538
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Trouble viewing forum pages, "General Error"
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2010-07-31 00:45:43

With increasing frequency I'm having a problem--when I try to view a page on the forum (randomly, not any page in particular) I'm rewarded with a screen that says:

General Error
SQL ERROR [ mysqli ]

Out of memory (Needed 1048544 bytes) [5]

An SQL error occurred while fetching this page. Please contact the Board Administrator if this problem persists.

Is anyone else having a problem with this, or am I perhaps trying to use some incompatible browser settings (in MS Internet Explorer)?  I never saw this problem until about a month ago, but now it seems to happen often.  Sometimes I can't go "back" to the previous forum page, and simply have to wait a few minutes before trying to use the forum again.




-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1276&start=0#p7539
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Trouble viewing forum pages, "General Error"
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-07-31 04:40:28

Can't remember the exact wording, but I do get an SQL error from time to time.  I doubt it's a browser issue.  (I use Opera and Firefox.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=0#p7540
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: The Z-Machine Standard 1.2 (draft)
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-07-31 06:21:10

Effectively the only Z-Machine extension to ever gain traction was the introduction of the unicode opcodes. The 1.1 proposal wasn't ever fully ratified, possibly in part because there was no way to detect the new opcodes other than by checking whether the VM set the version to 1.1, which it couldn't do unless it fully implemented the new spec. There was no way to partially implement the proposal.

I suggest that we introduce a feature testing function, ie, a gestalt opcode. It would have the same syntax as Glulx's @gestalt, and an opcode number of EXT:127: @"EXT:127S". Opcodes EXT:128-255 would then be available for further extensions.

But, how can we detect whether this gestalt opcode will exist or not?

Following [url=http://groups.google.com/group/parchment/browse_thread/thread/c5979ee5b8bc79dd/1bd8049c7574525e?#1bd8049c7574525e]David Kinder's suggestion[/url] we will set the VM interpreter number to 20, but only for games with a serial number of 100000-820000 (ie, from 2010 until 2082, when serial numbers will start overlapping with the original infocom ones.) This means that old games which actually cared about interpreter numbers will not run the risk of getting confused.

Now, I just need to decide where a good place for a registry of gestalt selectors and new opcodes should be. I'll be taking submissions and will be happy to assign codes to those with reasonable extension proposals.

I intend to implement this in Gnusto. I hope other VM maintainers will get on board too.

[b]Edit[/b]: The draft proposal has been posted at <a class="postlink" href="http://curiousdannii.github.com/if/zspec12.html">http://curiousdannii.github.com/if/zspec12.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1275&start=0#p7541
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting rocks in Flexible Windows extension
User: joningold / DateTime: 2010-07-31 07:00:09

I don't see why not. The important thing about rocks is they need to be deterministic, which of course, setting them by hand would be.

jon

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1275&start=0#p7542
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting rocks in Flexible Windows extension
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-07-31 07:07:47

[quote="zarf"]Would it make sense for the allocate rocks rule to leave rocks alone if they're already set to a nonzero value?

This is going to be a standard way to associate styles with windows in the CSS.[/quote]

Here is a new version of the rock-allocation routine, which I've added to my working copy:

[code]When play begins (this is the allocate rocks rule):
	let cnt be 200;
	repeat with item running through g-windows:
		if the rock-value of item is 0:
			set item rock to cnt;
			increase cnt by 10;
		now the direct parent of item is the direct-parent of item;
	set main-window ref.[/code]

The only thing that gives me pause is that you can now screw up your rock numbers, since some of them can be assigned manually while others might be assigned automatically. Since Glk doesn't complain when two windows are created with the same rock, so you could very possibly overlook this. Maybe we might add something like this in a not-for-release section:

[code]When play begins (this is the rock validation rule):
	repeat with item running through g-windows:
		let L be the list of g-windows;
		remove item from L;
		repeat with compared running through L:
			if the rock-value of item is the rock-value of compared:
				say "***Warning: There appears to be a conflict in the rock numbers of the g-windows '[item]' and '[compared]'. Assign rock-values manually to 210 and above to avoid conflicts.";
				stop.[/code]

There is probably a more elegant way to compare properties, but I'm not sure what it would be.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1276&start=0#p7543
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Trouble viewing forum pages, "General Error"
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-07-31 07:24:28

Yes, I see this too. It's not browser-related. Sometimes it is momentary, and sometimes it persists for a stretch of a few minutes.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1276&start=0#p7544
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Trouble viewing forum pages, "General Error"
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2010-07-31 10:30:08

I've also had the same problem (I don't remember if it was exactly the same message, but it was certainly similar) a few times lately, although not very often. I use Opera on Windows.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1276&start=0#p7545
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Trouble viewing forum pages, "General Error"
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-07-31 10:50:57

It's a problem with the server, and not with anyone's browsers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1275&start=0#p7546
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting rocks in Flexible Windows extension
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-07-31 11:09:21

It's technically legal (for the Glk library) for two windows to have the same rock value, but the I6 library code can't cope with that. So a check like that is reasonable. Sadly N^2, but most games won't have a *lot* of windows, and it's just once.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1202&start=0#p7547
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problems with "now" vs. "change" in I7 (6E72)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-07-31 13:20:13

Another problem with "now" vs. "change" (making this transition is a pretty big headache, one I keep putting off):

"Now" can't handle assignments of the same complexity that "change" can. This, for example, compiles using "change" but not "now":

[code]now sprite-x is x-temp real times the scaling factor of current window real times the scaling factor of the current-sprite as an integer;[/code]
or, if we show the grouped terms:
[code]now (sprite-x) is ( ( ( (x-temp) real times (the scaling factor of current window) ) real times ( the scaling factor of the current-sprite ) ) as an integer );[/code]

I've seen simpler conditions* fail too, fixable by just putting parentheses around one of the terms. That approach doesn't work here.

I don't want to split these into multiple phrases, but even if I do, "now" can't handle it:

[code]let x-calc be x-temp real times the scaling factor of current window real times the scaling factor of the current-sprite as an integer;
now sprite-x is x-calc;[/code]

This produces the compiler error:

[quote]In the sentence 'now sprite-x is x-calc'  , it looks as if you intend 'sprite-x is x-calc' to be a condition, but that would mean comparing two kinds of value which cannot mix - a numbers valued property and a number - so this must be incorrect.[/quote]

This has got to be a bug--I other set numbered properties to numbers all the time. It really seems like conditions parsing is really not ready to take over all assignments yet. This is partly due, I would guess, to problems with the recent overall of types, but also to weaknesses in parsing conditions.

Anyway, does anyone have any advice about how to get the complex condition to compile w/o splitting it into pieces? (There are undoubtedly pieces that would work, but it seems silly to clutter the code with temporary variables and extra lines that shouldn't be necessary.)

Thanks,
Erik


* FYI, "change" is implemented as an assignment of a value to a "storage", whereas "now" reads the entire block as a condition and makes it true:

To change (S - storage) to (w - value)
	(- {-assignment}; -).

To now (cn - now-condition)
	(- {cn} -).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1275&start=0#p7548
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting rocks in Flexible Windows extension
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-07-31 14:29:22

OK, I've uploaded a new interim version of Flexible Windows here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Flexible%20Windows.i7x">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Flexible%20Windows.i7x</a>

In addition to the two routines described above, this includes a couple of other minor fixes. I'd like to wait a bit before submitting this to the library, to see if any bug reports roll in as people use the previous version. What do you think, Jon?

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1278&start=0#p7549
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Creative Scope and I7
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-07-31 21:30:13

I'm in the process of updating Secret Letter. Graeme did a great job with the code, but some of the things we asked him to do made the code somewhat difficult to update. We made a ton of changes to the story based on feedback for a 2.0 release and we were able to implement all except the changes to the concluding chapter.

We decided to open up the ending with more interactivity. Its original form was nearly entirely on rails. It was bad.

In my 5th attempt to make these changes, I decided to simply create a new project and redo the final chapter by itself. I've pulled code from the main project as needed.

In doing this, something is bugging me. I'm almost tempted to believe that code may be better off segregated, even if it means rewriting things several times. It might just be easier to read. For example, we have a half dozen descriptions for a character. This is really annoyingly ugly. What if instead, we could implement a new description of a character in a different part of the code?


Bobby is a man. "Bobby is a cool dude."

During the fight scene, the description of Bobby is "Bobby is weak from fighting and clearly in need of help."

During the flight scene, the description of Bobby is "Bobby looks determined."

I don't know I7 as well as I should, but I'm starting to think it would be easier to maintain a large piece of code if it were partitioned completely. The dependencies can really get out of hand, similar to an old-school hierarchical domain model in the world of object-orientation.

Thoughts?

David C.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1276&start=0#p7550
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Trouble viewing forum pages, "General Error"
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-07-31 22:31:43

Short:

The server doesn't have enough memory, and an unrelated process keeps killing everything else.

Long:

I used to lease a dedicated server. But it was about $225 a month, and with the decline in subscriptions to my online game, it wasn't an out-of-pocket expense I wanted to keep. So I moved to a VPS (Virtual Private Server) with an offshoot of the same company that previously hosted the dedicated server. This offshoot, though, proved to be a nightmare. I had numerous problems with them, including three server crashes (which many of you may still remember). So a few months ago I shopped around for similarly-priced VPS packages elsewhere, and chose Spry.com.

At first, everything seemed good. Allowed transfer/bandwidth is fine. Plenty of hard drive space for my needs. And even though it's a VPS (not a dedicated server, where I'd actually have the entire machine to myself), it seemed to perform well enough. But something I didn't pay enough attention to is that it only has 512 MB of RAM. I'm not sure if that's fully allocated to me, or if it's 512 MB shared among all the VPS containers on the same machine. Either way, it's not NEARLY enough.

The culprit is a process called SpamAssassin. It's what I've used in the past, and without it, I'd be bombarded with Spam. I've had my prowler-pro.com email address for around a decade, and at this point, I'm probably on every spammer list imaginable. SpamAssassin is written in Perl, but unfortunately, it's a memory hog. I've tried to optimize it, change settings, etc, but to no avail. If the incoming traffic was lighter, there probably wouldn't be a problem. But there are thousands of messages -- more than 99% spam -- coming in daily, and the work SA does to keep up seems to be too much.

The process keeps dying. If it's down for even an hour, I can expect a couple hundred spam emails. When I don't catch it for a day, I can expect a few thousand. So I try to keep it running. But this, as far as I can tell, is pretty much destroying everything else, including the memory available to the rest of the site, like, oh, say, MySQL (the database that drives the forum, my games, etc).

So, it's probably time for me to see about upgrading. With this VPS, I might just be able to upgrade and have them move the whole thing over to different hardware. I haven't checked into any of that yet.

Alternately, I can dump my primary email address, make up something else, and probably solve the problem for quite a while. And that's something I'm also considering. One way or another, I'll make sure things get taken care of so the site's reliability is back to normal soon.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1279&start=0#p7551
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Attempting to compare indexed text to table entries
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-07-31 23:20:40

I have some indexed text, that I got by performing various regex stuff on the "topic understood," and now I want see if that indexed text matches some text in a table.  But I can't seem to make that comparison, since they are different types (and honestly I'm a little shaky on "matches" versus "is listed" for this case).

So, here's a simplified example:
[code]
Table 1
Topic
"duck"
"boat/skiff/sailboat"
"flower/daisy/posy"

Floobling is an action applying to one topic.
Understand "flooble [text]" as floobling.

Carry out floobling:
	let thingtoflooble be indexed text;
	let floobler be indexed text;
	if the topic understood matches the regular expression ".*((?= with)":
		let thingtoflooble be "[text matching regular expression]";
		if the topic understood matches the regular expression "(?<=with )).*":	
			let floobler be "[text matching regular expression]"; [alternate forms of the flooble grammar would be here]
	[here's the part that doesn't work:]
	if thingtoflooble is a topic listed in Table 1:
		say "Now there's a thing I know how to flooble!";
	else:
		say "If such a thing exists, I don't know how to flooble it."
[/code]

The compiler complains, naturally, that [quote]thingtoflooble = a [i]temporary named value[/i], holding an [i]indexed text[/i]
a topic listed in Table 1 = a [i]table entry[/i], holding a [i]topic[/i][/quote]

I know that indexed text can't just be magically turned back into text (or at least, the docs emphasize this), but it seems like there should be a way to compare the two, so I'm clearly missing something.  Telling the table it contains indexed text also seems not to work.

[As a side question: I can "Carry out floobling" but could not figure out how to "Instead of floobling [i]something[/i]" -- "instead of floobling some text" and "instead of floobling a topic" also seem not to work.  What's the generic "instead" for an action involving text?]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1279&start=0#p7552
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Attempting to compare indexed text to table entries
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-07-31 23:53:12

[code]
	[here's the part that doesn't work:]
	if thingtoflooble is a topic listed in Table 1:
		say "Now there's a thing I know how to flooble!";
	else:
		say "If such a thing exists, I don't know how to flooble it."
[/code]Have you tried an explicit repeat loop?[code]
	repeat through table 1:
		if thingtoflooble matches the topic entry....[/code]I didn't test that, as I've never mixed topics & indexed text before.


[quote="tove"][As a side question: I can "Carry out floobling" but could not figure out how to "Instead of floobling [i]something[/i]" -- "instead of floobling some text" and "instead of floobling a topic" also seem not to work.  What's the generic "instead" for an action involving text?][/quote]
It's just «Instead of floobling, say "No flooble for you!"»  The parameter 'topic understood' is implicit.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1278&start=0#p7553
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creative Scope and I7
User: George / DateTime: 2010-08-01 01:13:05

[quote="DavidC"] For example, we have a half dozen descriptions for a character. This is really annoyingly ugly. 
[/quote]

I'm a little confused by this example, and by what you mean by partitioning. 

Are you talking about something like, 'the description of John is "this [if this]this [if that] that"' etcetera?

Also, what dependencies are you talking about exactly?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1276&start=0#p7554
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Trouble viewing forum pages, "General Error"
User: Janka / DateTime: 2010-08-01 03:20:34

Merk, we had this problem over a long time with one of our servers. It had only 256MB of RAM. The culprit were some PHP processes (introduced by phpBB) which had serious memory leaks. Once we upgraded to a newer PHP version, the problem vanished. SpamAssassin was involved but as far as I remember, not the real culprit. I can ask our admin about the details if you like.

BTW, $225/month sounds terribly overpriced to me. You could get an AMD Opteron 2x2,6 GHz, 4GB RAM, 2x400GB HD, unlimited traffic for ~$80/month. These are the current prices of the data centre one of our servers is in.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1278&start=0#p7555
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creative Scope and I7
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-08-01 03:54:13

Have you considered implementing characters as different objects in different parts of the game? You could have Bobby a kind and derive different Bobbies from that. If you have something that applies to Bobby everywhere in the game you can refer to the kind. For example:

[code]Bobby is a kind of man. The description of a Bobby is usually "Bobby is a cool dude." The printed name of a Bobby is always "Bobby".

Instead of attacking a Bobby: [this applies to Bobby everywhere]
    say "He's your ally!"

Fighting-Bobby is a Bobby. The description of fighting-Bobby is "Bobby is weak from fighting and clearly in need of help."
Fleeing-Bobby is a Bobby. The description of fleeing-Bobby is "Bobby looks determined."[/code]

Another way is just overriding the descriptions:

[code]Bobby is a man. "Bobby is a cool dude."

Instead of examining Bobby when the fight scene is happening:
    say "Bobby is weak from fighting and clearly in need of help."

Instead of examining Bobby when the flight scene is happening:
    say "Bobby looks determined."[/code]
The catch in the latter method is that if you use Bobby's description as a substitution ("Bobby's status: [description of bobby]") you'll get the original description.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1275&start=0#p7556
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting rocks in Flexible Windows extension
User: joningold / DateTime: 2010-08-01 07:24:34

[quote="ektemple"]OK, I've uploaded a new interim version of Flexible Windows here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Flexible%20Windows.i7x">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Flexible%20Windows.i7x</a>

In addition to the two routines described above, this includes a couple of other minor fixes. I'd like to wait a bit before submitting this to the library, to see if any bug reports roll in as people use the previous version. What do you think, Jon?

--Erik[/quote]

Looks good to me.

The only thing I'd say is, in the documentation, we should probably advise people to manually assign rock values ending in a "5", since it's harmless to do so, and it'll somewhat lower the possibility of a rock-clash.

We may also need a quick sentence explaining what a rock is..!

cheers
jon

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1275&start=0#p7557
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting rocks in Flexible Windows extension
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-08-01 08:58:15

[quote="joningold"]Looks good to me.

The only thing I'd say is, in the documentation, we should probably advise people to manually assign rock values ending in a "5", since it's harmless to do so, and it'll somewhat lower the possibility of a rock-clash.

We may also need a quick sentence explaining what a rock is..!
[/quote]

Good points both. I've incorporated them into the docs.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1275&start=0#p7558
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting rocks in Flexible Windows extension
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-01 10:14:48

Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1278&start=0#p7559
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creative Scope and I7
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-01 10:25:27

You can split it up by getting it into a rule structure. (A phrase is not a rulebook, but you can define a multi-rule phrase like this.)

The description of the rock is "[rock-desc location][run paragraph on]".

To say rock-desc (R - room):
	say "It's a rock." [general case]

To say rock-desc (R - Kitchen):
	say "It's a kitchen rock."

To say rock-desc (R - Bathroom):
	say "It's a bathroom rock."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1278&start=0#p7560
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creative Scope and I7
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-08-01 10:44:14

[quote="zarf"]You can split it up by getting it into a rule structure. (A phrase is not a rulebook, but you can define a multi-rule phrase like this.)

The description of the rock is "[rock-desc location][run paragraph on]".

To say rock-desc (R - room):
	say "It's a rock." [general case]

To say rock-desc (R - Kitchen):
	say "It's a kitchen rock."

To say rock-desc (R - Bathroom):
	say "It's a bathroom rock."[/quote]


Quite nice. How does it compare in terms of speed? I know that liberal use of Before/Instead/After can bog things down pretty quick, but I've also heard (I believe Jeff Nyman demonstrated it) that the compiler is able to optimize to some degree when such rules have no chance of firing. So what the best solution would be is confuzzling at times.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1279&start=0#p7561
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Attempting to compare indexed text to table entries
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-08-01 12:12:49

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]
Have you tried an explicit repeat loop?[/quote]

I hadn't tried it, but I tried it just now and it fails, for the same reason as before.

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]It's just «Instead of floobling, say "No flooble for you!"»  The parameter 'topic understood' is implicit.[/quote]

Aha, thanks! I'd gotten turned around because of the Fido example, which is "naming it with" instead of just "naming," and therefore has "naming the dog with something."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1279&start=0#p7562
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Attempting to compare indexed text to topics
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-08-01 14:07:26

Then I'm thinking that indexed text and topics do not mix.  Maybe Jesse could prove me wrong. I dunno.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1278&start=0#p7563
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creative Scope and I7
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-01 15:49:48

The problems with before/instead/after came up because (in some earlier release) *every* such rule was checked on *every* action -- even the rules that had nothing to do with the current action. That's the kind of speed issue you have to worry about.

That doesn't apply here; the tests for which string to print are only checked when you actually print the rock description.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1278&start=0#p7564
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creative Scope and I7
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-08-01 19:22:51

[quote="zarf"]You can split it up by getting it into a rule structure. (A phrase is not a rulebook, but you can define a multi-rule phrase like this.)

The description of the rock is "[rock-desc location][run paragraph on]".

To say rock-desc (R - room):
	say "It's a rock." [general case]

To say rock-desc (R - Kitchen):
	say "It's a kitchen rock."

To say rock-desc (R - Bathroom):
	say "It's a bathroom rock."[/quote]

This is interesting, but I was thinking more like namespaces, where code is entirely cut off from other namespaces unless explicitly referenced.

I don't want to pester people too much about this. I am not a good I7 programmer and I spent most of my programming hours on C#.

At some point in the next few months I should have time to get back into writing games and I will have more thoughts on the subject.

David C.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1260&start=0#p7565
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple default-message changes
User: ChrisFederico / DateTime: 2010-08-02 00:29:40

Since you fellow IFanatics have been so graciously helpful thus far, I suppose it couldn't hurt to pose this one: No "Instead of," "When" or "Understand" instruction I've been playing with seems to be able to do the hopefully simple thing below, and I've really searched through the Syntax text, as well as the three main docs (including the Handbook), to get some sort of clue as to what sort of instructions I should even begin experimenting with.

>drop all

None at all are available!

[Hoping instead for:]

You're not carrying anything.

I know it seems like a trivial thing; perhaps I'm just a bit over the line in the thrill-of-writing-my-own-Infocom-sounding-story department. [emote]:)[/emote]

Thanks again for any help.

[Edit: Typed "Infocom" too quickly, rendering a misspelling. Which figures, in light of the context. [emote]:)[/emote]]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1267&start=20#p7566
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Choosing your starting character?
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2010-08-02 08:24:19

After reading this discussion I've thought of some games (non IF) that are good examples of some of the discussed options.

Postal2, in which the PC is someone with history, background, skills, etc., but that doesn't mean the player itself can't move around levels in different ways: you can kill everyone, just kill the "bad guys" or don't kill anyone - if you have patience for it, which the game promptly tests. But you don't have to choose a "bad, good or ugly" guy at the beginning: you choose what you choose when you choose it. 

An IF game could be set the same way, so that the player fills the blanks of the PC with his/her own traits - or just fill the blanks with the traits of anybody else - while playing.

Another example that poped into mind was the graphic adventure "I have no mouth, and I must scream". In it you play four or five PCs (you choose each one in turns), each with a different background and personality, but you can make moral choices with any of them that go against their traits. This can result in NPCs regarding you as a bad person, as a good person, as a predictable person or as a person who is trying to change their ways.

But, of course, we're talking about games, and different options lead to different gaming experiences, so the first thing to do should be to decide what gaming experience does the author wants to give the player. I believe any of the options discussed before has already seen good, solid and interesting games, either by forcing the player to play with a very strong-will character, or a game where the PC is supposed to be the player itself.

Someone wrote something about an IntroComp example, and it made me think of another entry with a very interesting effect regarding the PC and the player itself: Memento Moratori, in which the player does not [i]play[/i] the PC, it rather tries to [i]manipulate[/i] him. So, so nice.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=0#p7567
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Z-Machine extensions proposal
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-08-02 10:12:18

The 1.1 specification did tail off rather, but (after some pushing from Graham) I did get round to just removing all the controversial features from 1.1 and calling that (which is the version on the IF-Archive) final. I don't think a minimal implementation of the 1.1 specification (excluding anything V6 related) is at all a bad idea: most of the non-V6 parts of it are really just clarifications of the 1.0 specification.

After some more thought, the really elegant way to implement this would be to have your opcode be part of a "1.2" specification, so that games could test the header fields to see if the opcode was there. Adding 1.1 to Parchment would be a good idea and should not be significant work.

However, the real question is whether there's any real demand for this, now there's a web-based Glulx interpreter.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1280&start=0#p7568
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: if on Facebook
User: sarganar / DateTime: 2010-08-02 11:04:04

Hi!
just for say that some of our spanish if fellows tried publish their games on facebook, with some sucess.

Using parchment:
[url=http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=147779901902714]Pan de Ajo[/url]
[url=http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=104075892979223]Ofrenda a la Pincoya[/url]
[url=http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=132202130155305&ref=search&v=wall]Hierba tras el cristal[/url]

Other system: 
[url=http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=137547672938949&v=wall]Vampiro[/url]

Enjoy it!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1260&start=10#p7569
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple default-message changes
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-08-02 11:19:50

Take a look at the Custom Library Messages extension by David Fisher.  (You're looking at changing LibMsg <no objects available>.)  There's a lighter weight extension by the same author that does the same thing, I think.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1252&start=10#p7570
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Extra Challenges
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-08-02 13:10:10

[quote="zarf"]With the advent of web interpreters, it's not implausible to imagine online achievement lists for IF. Or speed-run lists, IF win scores...

Yes, it's cheesy. But we waft around all day wondering how to make IF popular -- look, *I* do -- and these are classic strategies for making games popular.[/quote]

Well, especially since beginners find interaction kind of frustrating - rewarding interaction, even with cheese, could well get people over the hump.  A well-tailored list of accomplishments could also help reveal inside mechanics that the author wants to show off - either by hinting at other courses of action through locked achievement names (ie "Peacenik" for a non-violent playthrough), or by rewarding actions the player might not expect the game to notice ("Procrastinator" for a certain amount of waiting or what not).  

Sort of like the AMUSE lists, but perhaps available up front, or with a little more structure (say, unlock messages).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1260&start=10#p7571
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple default-message changes
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-08-02 13:48:06

[quote="gravel"]Take a look at the Custom Library Messages extension by David Fisher.  (You're looking at changing LibMsg <no objects available>.)  There's a lighter weight extension by the same author that does the same thing, I think.[/quote]

ISTM you probably want to make sure that you don't wind up saying "You aren't carrying anything" when you try "take all" in a room with no objects, as well.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1276&start=0#p7572
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Trouble viewing forum pages, "General Error"
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-08-02 13:55:01

[quote="Merk"]The culprit is a process called SpamAssassin. It's what I've used in the past, and without it, I'd be bombarded with Spam. I've had my prowler-pro.com email address for around a decade, and at this point, I'm probably on every spammer list imaginable. SpamAssassin is written in Perl, but unfortunately, it's a memory hog. I've tried to optimize it, change settings, etc, but to no avail. If the incoming traffic was lighter, there probably wouldn't be a problem. But there are thousands of messages -- more than 99% spam -- coming in daily, and the work SA does to keep up seems to be too much.[/quote]

You might want to look into Postini as a front-end filtering service for your domain. Cost is $1 per user per month, which might be competitive if you only have a few addresses that receive mail.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=30#p7573
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-02 14:57:28

[quote="Endosphere"]More generally, is the tale of zombie horror more effective with a "downer" ending?  Assuming we're not bland mass-media entertainment executives who believe the primary theme of all entertainment must pander to the Disney crowd by dictating that every story must have an optimistic ending where "They all lived happily ever after," can a theme of true terror be successfully explored in a story where the protagonists are victorious and proceed to return to a mundane existence with no lingering effects (apart perhaps from a few physical and mental scars) of their encounter with the monstrous?  What are the clear hazards to be avoided in such an approach?  Is the audience more, or less, likely to be satisfied with such an ending?  In pondering this concept, I should state again that I'm presuming in a horror tale satisfaction of the audience means we succeed in horrifying them.[/quote]
Perhaps an important element of a "happy" horror ending is that we feel the scars that the protagonists bear at the end - as bcressey described it, "never again living in a world where zombies do not jump out of closets." Sometimes the twist on this is that in defeating an evil, we have incorporated some of the evil into our souls.

Presuming that what you are producing is a work of [i]interactive[/i] fiction, your question raises the possibility of multiple endings. It might be a worthwhile experiment to use the players choices in the game to determine what sort of ending would scare them most. In other words, while most multiple-endings games base the type of ending on a cause-and-effect chain from the player's actions (showing compassion towards an NPC results in the NPC coming to your aid later), you could instead base the ending on some measure of the player's internal experience (showing compassion towards an NPC results in an ending that would more greatly disturb a compassionate person). Kind of cruel, really, in that the logic presented in the story will most likely appear to be based on random chance or a perversion of normal cause-and-effect.

I'm not sure if we mentioned before, but in the "downer" ending, it's important to hold out a sense of false hope. In the crudest sense, it could be a bit like the ending of Infidel, where you succeed in the task that has been set before you, but the result is unexpected disaster.

[quote="Endosphere"]A related area we haven't explored yet is the question of zombie character.  Are zombies evil, or are they just adversaries and opponents whose objectives conflict with our own goals?  The idea of "evil" is beset by many of the difficulties that plague the notion of undeath--namely, I think the term "evil" is heavily loaded with religious connotations.  In real life evil ensues from people pursuing goals that cause direct and significant harm to others, and from these actors selfishly continuing their pursuits once that harm becomes evident.  In other words, I think evil is a process.  On the other hand there is a long and robust tradition in literature--particularly in horror literature--of portraying the antagonist as "evil" in some absolute sense, as if evil were a fundamental trait of character or state of being.

If we were to say "zombies are evil," what exactly would we be saying?  Is it anything worth saying?  Is saying such likely to assist our endeavor of terrifying the audience?  Is a characterization of the zombie as evil more or less disturbing than portraying the creatures as "mere" enemies?  Is the idea of an evil enemy more or less profound than the idea of an enemy with sincerely held beliefs which are simply offensive to us--or is that all we're really saying anyway when we use the word "evil"?  Perhaps finally, is it not at all the beliefs of the zombie that disturb us, but more simply the actions the zombie takes as it implements its beliefs and carries out its agenda?[/quote]
I think there's some overlap in your definitions of evil, in a state you might call "psychosis" - the serial killer takes pleasure from the suffering of others, so the goals they are pursuing are not coincidentally related to the harm caused by their means. I can picture some very devious villains who do this at a high level - manipulating people into causing harm to themselves or loved ones in the belief that they are doing good. I get the impression that the Saw movies do this in a contrived way by offering difficult and painful choices to the protagonists. Maybe not very zombie-like, unless you have a more intelligent "zombie master."

That leads to the possibility of zombies who mindlessly follow an evil master. Building on the discussion of endings, this could involve a scenario where the protagonist gains control of the zombies to destroy the enemy, and subsequently the zombies turn to the protagonist asking "what next, Master?"

It's hard for me to imagine zombies as being themselves evil. Perhaps that's a sign that if you could pull it off, it would be frightening because of its novelty. If zombies take pleasure not just in the eating of their victims, but in the fear and agony that they cause, perhaps that has potential. I think I've seen a few stories in which the monster "feeds on" fear and pain (even Monsters, Inc!). I'm not quite sure this convincingly represents evil in every case, but it's a possibility. Maybe the reason it doesn't always work is that using suffering as pure sustenance still falls under the category of purely physical animal needs. It might be better for the monsters to need only killing for "life", but to enjoy causing suffering as pure recreation.

In the case where zombies are not evil, they can either be deeply incomprehensible in a Lovecraftian way, or they can be sympathetic to our own "darker" sides, indulging needs we don't want to admit we have.

[quote="Endosphere"]I have always refused to eat mushrooms of any kind; most fungi are our enemies. [emote]:idea:[/emote]   Perhaps Lovecraft was on to something there.  In fact, many fungi exhibit behavior that is also commonly seen (on a much larger scale and in a more aggressive manner) in zombies.[/quote]
Interesting! I suppose fungus represents a level of the food chain that is above the highest predators, where we prefer to picture ourselves. Every animal that dies is food for the great kingdom of fungus, organisms that seem like plants superficially but thrive in the dark and are closer to states of decay than of fruition.

My friend who created a game based on "Plagues and Peoples" gave players a choice of whether to be viral or bacterial. We discussed whether to provide a fungal option for a long time, but too many fungi are either not lethal or not communicable, so it didn't fit well with the victory goals of infecting or killing the most people.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1260&start=10#p7574
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple default-message changes
User: ChrisFederico / DateTime: 2010-08-02 15:46:42

Okay; it's clear that I can't continue avoiding the use of an extension for these changes. [emote]:)[/emote]

Thanks very much for the advice!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1260&start=10#p7575
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple default-message changes
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-08-02 16:24:12

Well, you [b]could[/b] avoid using an extension--but the extension route is much easier than intervening in every rule that you want to change. You might have a look at Ron Newcomb's new Default Messages extension, which is very lightweight.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1260&start=10#p7576
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple default-message changes
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-08-02 16:29:30

[quote="ektemple"]Well, you [b]could[/b] avoid using an extension--but the extension route is much easier than intervening in every rule that you want to change. You might have a look at Ron Newcomb's new Default Messages extension, which is very lightweight.

--Erik[/quote]

Anything's possible, of course, but it's easy to miss cases.  Changing the library messages is much less prone to unfortunate errors.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1281&start=0#p7577
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Room short names
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-08-02 17:24:51

I've been trying to notice the conventions of room short names, the heading printed above the room description and in the status line.  I've been playing [i]Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy[/i], which uses very terse room names of one or two words, while [i]Adventure[/i] and [i]Zork[/i] seem to use both prepositional phrases and noun phrases.

I wonder if players pay much attention to the style that a game uses for its rooms' names.  I would think consistency in the same game would be important, at least.  Do terse room names make the game feel less professional?  For my part, I kind of like long room names in full phrases, with adjectives where applicable.  They sound more atmospheric, and give a mental sketch that the paragraph of the room description develops.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1281&start=0#p7578
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Room short names
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-08-02 17:31:40

I'd say, you know, "whatever is most appropriate to the writing style of the rest of the game," but will note that the middle of the road seems the most natural to me.  The really brief names don't so much sound unprofessional as uncreative.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1260&start=10#p7579
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple default-message changes
User: ChrisFederico / DateTime: 2010-08-02 17:37:48

Understood, and thank you. I guess I'll have to let go of some of that old-programming "Can't I just change the guts?" mindset! I suppose that tends to work against the whole principle of I7 being such an easy to understand language, rhetoric-wise.

Considering that the extension was written by Mr. Newcomb himself, the prospect of using it is certainly much less daunting than, for instance, things that might just cause even more complications than one has started out with (one's usual experience with extensions and modules). I won't put off experimenting with this one any further!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1252&start=10#p7580
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Extra Challenges
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-08-02 17:42:07

[quote="emshort"][quote="Janka"]I would not bother playing a game again and again just for finding the single fork where I should walk the non-obvious way to unlock a single hidden puzzle.[/quote]My point in adding an achievements feature wouldn't be to make people replay to look for easter eggs, but to reward them for trying some inventive things that aren't strictly required to win the game.[/quote]
Achievement nothing, I'd want a feelie. 

I have replayed shorter IFs to see more, always cued by AMUSING.  Violet, Snack Time...  I've replayed entire RPGs beginning to end just because I wanted to spend some more time with the characters (plus the additional challenge of keeping XP levels low to spice up the game side).  Legend of Dragoon...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1281&start=0#p7581
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Room short names
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-08-02 18:02:45

As it happens, I've been thinking about this lately too.

I think a preposition is a weak lead for a heading. Most of the time it's just verbiage and should be omitted. 

I'm fine with the participle example you used only because it gives information beyond "standing".  If the location is a cave or kitchen, you're standing there, but if you're fifty feet in the air, the participle specifies falling or flying. 

I'm fine with the one-word headings as well if the space is common enough. If you're in your kitchen, and it's the only kitchen in the game, "The Kitchen" is fine. 

One thing that does bother me is reading room names in Inform 7 Source Code that's capitalized like it's in A Heading.  That just looks stupid in the code, and further more screws up prose from[code]Instead of going nowhere, try listing exits.[/code]and getting something like[quote]To the north is The Kitchen and Vast Cavern is inside of here.[/quote]because the coder wrote it the way headings appear[code]The Kitchen is south of Backyard. Backyard is outside of Vast Cavern.[/code]not appreciating that headings are a special case (pun intended)[code]The kitchen is south of the backyard. The backyard is outside of the vast cavern.[/code][quote]To the north is the kitchen and the vast cavern is inside of here.[/quote](For the record, I use a printing-the-name-of rule for room headings that puts room names into title caps.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1280&start=0#p7582
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: if on Facebook
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-08-02 19:30:15

Very cool!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1279&start=0#p7583
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Attempting to compare indexed text to table entries
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-08-02 19:30:31

Correct - topics can only be matched against snippets, which always refer to part of the player's command. You can't directly match a topic against indexed text.

You can, however, change the player's command temporarily and then match the topic against that:
[code]To decide whether (txt - indexed text) matches (top - topic):
	let tmp be indexed text;
	let tmp be the player's command;
	change the text of the player's command to txt;
	let result be whether or not the player's command matches top;
	change the text of the player's command to tmp;
	decide on result.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1279&start=0#p7584
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Attempting to compare indexed text to table entries
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-08-02 20:28:56

...that's simultaneously horrible and very helpful. [emote]:P[/emote]  

Thanks so much!  I probably never would have thought of it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1281&start=0#p7585
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Room short names
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-08-02 20:38:32

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]getting something like[quote]To the north is The Kitchen and Vast Cavern is inside of here.[/quote][/quote]

True story: in [i]Byzantine Perspective[/i], all of the room names start with "the," and have printed names that leave off the first "t," like "he Chalice Room."  This is so that I could hardcode the proper case in the descriptions that referred to other rooms, which were largely generative, such as (spoiler for [i]BP[/i]) [spoiler]"Though you can see t[the truename of the room the way from Over There] in front of you, you are stopped by an invisible wall."[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1281&start=0#p7586
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Room short names
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-08-03 00:13:03

[quote]True story: in [i]Byzantine Perspective[/i], all of the room names start with "the," and have printed names that leave off the first "t," like "he Chalice Room."  This is so that I could hardcode the proper case in the descriptions that referred to other rooms, which were largely generative[/quote]
Just out of curiosity - why didn't Inform's own system work for you? "The"s are correctly capitalized if I try the following:

[code]The foyer is a room. "This is [the foyer]. [The foyer] leads to [the Grand Theatre]."
Grand Theatre is a room.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=0#p7587
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: George / DateTime: 2010-08-03 01:23:28

I just started using this (not for IF, for mapping mud zones actually) and it's really nice! I love that making maps is easy and quick, the UI feels very smooth, and mass-editing via the XML file is simple to do. 

One thing I'm curious about is if anyone has noticed a performance drop on their CPU when this is running; it seems like this busy waits when it's running but I don't know if that's a big deal or not.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1281&start=0#p7588
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Room short names
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-08-03 03:17:41

Whatever works best for the game.  A noir thriller might benefit from terse titles; a lavish historical drama might beguile you with long, detailed place names; a game less interested in geography might include different information altogether.

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]One thing that does bother me is reading room names in Inform 7 Source Code that's capitalized like it's in A Heading.  That just looks stupid in the code, and further more screws up prose from[code]Instead of going nowhere, try listing exits.[/code]and getting something like[quote]To the north is The Kitchen and Vast Cavern is inside of here.[/quote][/quote]Similarly, in TADS 3 it's important to set the DestName of a room, or listing exits will get you something like, "You could go west to the trafalgar square."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1281&start=0#p7589
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Room short names
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2010-08-03 08:08:48

[quote="Bainespal"]I would think consistency in the same game would be important, at least.[/quote]
I'm not so sure; or at least, a bit of variety in the length or syntax of room names can't hurt, can it? If every room has a one-word name, or if every room name is article-adjective-noun, it's too monotonous -- unless you actually want the setting to be monotonous with very similar rooms, because it suits the story.

But I don't think I like [i]very[/i] long room names. First, they make mapping more awkward: either you write the full room names on the map (and it's longer to write and harder to make the map look pretty), or you don't (and the map is incomplete, and sometimes you can confuse two rooms with similar but not identical names). Second, if you really have so much to say about your room, why not just put it in the room description? Room names should be summaries, not whole descriptions of what is or what happens in a room. I've already seen (very rarely) a room with a name longer than the (very short!) description, and that's just ludicrous.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1281&start=0#p7590
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Room short names
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-08-03 11:06:34

Room names are the only thing about the room that players will see when they play using "brief" or "terse" mode, and the player character has already been in that location.  They also stand out in the mind more clearly than the long description.  Therefore, I think room names should be descriptive enough to give a general sense of the room.  The preposition or participle in the beginning of the room name helps to convey relative direction and position without very many words, and I think it's helpful to see that in the status line header, when appropriate.

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]I think a preposition is a weak lead for a heading. Most of the time it's just verbiage and should be omitted.

I'm fine with the participle example you used only because it gives information beyond "standing". If the location is a cave or kitchen, you're standing there, but if you're fifty feet in the air, the participle specifies falling or flying. [/quote]
But I pretty much agree with this.  In general, useless words are a hindrance to any kind of writing, and the preposition in a room name like "In the Kitchen" is pretty useless.  The only reason to include the word "in" there would be to be consistent in style because other room descriptions have good reason to begin with prepositions.  But I gather from this thread that consistency in the format of room name's isn't a great concern to anyone, which is good for the prospective IF author to know.

An example where the verbose room name with a prepositional phrase would be greatly superior to a shorter name would be something like "In Front of the Great Gates".  The relative position expressed makes it more atmospheric.  Even something like "Upon the Mountain Plateau" sounds better to me than just "Mountain Plateau" even though the word "upon" doesn't do much.  It just makes the landscape seem somehow bigger and grander, to me.  But there are many times when the prepositions truly add nothing, I admit.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1281&start=0#p7591
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Room short names
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-08-03 11:26:28

[quote="Juhana"]Just out of curiosity - why didn't Inform's own system work for you?[/quote]

It was never entirely clear.  I suspect it was a mixture of 1) possibly Doing it Wrong and 2) having such text substitutions working a couple of layers deep (for example, [spoiler]the printed name of a room was defined by the "truename" of a different room[/spoiler]), and at any rate for whatever reason it wasn't working and I didn't know how else to fix it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=543&start=30#p7592
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Unwinnable states
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-08-03 14:07:02

[quote="tggdan3"]
1) Prevent the action
>THROW NITRO OUT AIRPLANE DOOR
You might need that later, so you decide against it.

I just have a personal distaste for the parser telling me what I do and don't WANT to do. If it can't be done, for example, the door is stuck closed, that's one thing, but if I am prevented by my own PC, I get annoyed. [/quote]

I don't mind that, but I've seen enough people saying the same as you that I realise that it's worth keeping in mind. I would however really dislike ending up in an unwinnable state, and I don't like the autosave suggestions either. (I'm not brought up on nasty Infocom games or the like.)

So my suggestion would be to prevent the action, but preferably give a reason for it other than that the PC don't want to do it. (Being told by an NPC that it's a bad idea, perhaps.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=543&start=30#p7593
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Unwinnable states
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-08-03 14:39:11

[quote="Trumgottist"]
So my suggestion would be to prevent the action, but preferably give a reason for it other than that the PC don't want to do it. (Being told by an NPC that it's a bad idea, perhaps.)[/quote]

What if you forced the player to say the command multiple times?

[code]
>THROW NITRO OUT AIRPLANE DOOR
"Hey!" says the pilot, "What do you think you're doing? You'll start an international incident doing that!"

>THROW NITRO OUT AIRPLANE DOOR
Bob taps you on the shoulder. "Are you sure you want to throw that nitro away? How will we get into the bank vault?"

>THROW NITRO OUT AIRPLANE DOOR
Ignoring the advise of the pilot and your trusty servant Bob, you throw the nitroglicerine out the airplane door and delight in the fireshow that follows. 
[/code]

I guess I could see this- but if there were no NPCs handy, the parser itself would have to fill that roll, and since the parser may very well be the voice of God, it could be considered blocking free will.

[code]
>BURN SPELLBOOK
Hmm, burning your spellbook does sound like fun, but then you'd be without spells. You might want to avoid that, you know.

>BURN SPELLBOOK
Ah yes! Caution to the wind, and all that. Well, you burn it. Technically I suppose you're still a wizard, but what kind of a wizard? Perhaps you can make a career in alchemy or something. In any case, I hope you don't find further need for that REZROV spell.
[/code]

It doesn't seem as bad- as it allows the player to be distructive if he desires, making the game appear deeper. With NPCs it doesn't bother me as much, but depending on how personified your parser is, it might not fit the writing style of what you're doing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1278&start=0#p7594
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creative Scope and I7
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-08-03 15:59:45

[quote="zarf"]The problems with before/instead/after came up because (in some earlier release) *every* such rule was checked on *every* action -- even the rules that had nothing to do with the current action. That's the kind of speed issue you have to worry about.

That doesn't apply here; the tests for which string to print are only checked when you actually print the rock description.[/quote]

Interesting. While I agree with David in that it'd be nice to have namespace-like ways of partitioning the code, I have one tangential question that confuses the heck out of me regarding the code you demonstrated. It works when it comes to locations (an object that varies, I think), but I tried creating a mood property for my character and basing the character's description on that instead. If I do that, the "to say" block defaults to outputting the general text every time. What gives?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1281&start=0#p7595
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Room short names
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-08-04 10:13:13

[quote="Bainespal"]
An example where the verbose room name with a prepositional phrase would be greatly superior to a shorter name would be something like "In Front of the Great Gates".  The relative position expressed makes it more atmospheric.  Even something like "Upon the Mountain Plateau" sounds better to me than just "Mountain Plateau" even though the word "upon" doesn't do much.  It just makes the landscape seem somehow bigger and grander, to me.  But there are many times when the prepositions truly add nothing, I admit.[/quote]

Atmosphere is a fine reason to include something.  I generally think there's a lack of variation that's an issue, though.  There's only so many places you can be in a forest - in the forest, on a narrow path, under a great oak - eventually, you're going to be recycling stuff.  A series of rooms where you're "In a Cottage", "In a Meadow", "In the Kitchen" - it's boring.  

Generally, I want the room to give me the "feel" of a place.  "Kitchen" doesn't do that nearly as well as "Sunny Kitchen" or "Cramped Kitchen", so I generally vote for room names that convey a sense of the description, and how the description would be interpreted.  

You could include player state to make things a little more interesting: "Bleeding Out in the Emergency Room", "Apoplectic in Control Dam #3".  That could be kind of fun, in a "here's your status report" kind of way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1281&start=10#p7596
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Room short names
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-08-04 11:14:19

[quote="gravel"]
Atmosphere is a fine reason to include something.  I generally think there's a lack of variation that's an issue, though.  There's only so many places you can be in a forest - in the forest, on a narrow path, under a great oak - eventually, you're going to be recycling stuff.  A series of rooms where you're "In a Cottage", "In a Meadow", "In the Kitchen" - it's boring.  

Generally, I want the room to give me the "feel" of a place.  "Kitchen" doesn't do that nearly as well as "Sunny Kitchen" or "Cramped Kitchen", so I generally vote for room names that convey a sense of the description, and how the description would be interpreted.  

You could include player state to make things a little more interesting: "Bleeding Out in the Emergency Room", "Apoplectic in Control Dam #3".  That could be kind of fun, in a "here's your status report" kind of way.[/quote]

I like the idea. In most games, I think I might have an easier time seeing that in the status line, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1167&start=10#p7597
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Floating-point math in Glulx
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-08-04 11:27:29

Just checking, your proposal is not only compatible with JS floats, but also with C floats correct? Firefox 4 will have support for typed arrays, so if they could be used that would obviously be wonderful. We'd want to use an DataView, which would provide access to ints of all lengths and 32bit floats, all referencing one compact ArrayBuffer.

<a class="postlink" href="https://cvs.khronos.org/svn/repos/registry/trunk/public/webgl/doc/spec/TypedArray-spec.html">https://cvs.khronos.org/svn/repos/regis ... -spec.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1281&start=10#p7598
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Room short names
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-08-04 12:04:23

[quote="Eleas"]I like the idea. In most games, I think I might have an easier time seeing that in the status line, though.[/quote]I would prefer it if the prose carried all information.  And this isn't just because Club Floyd and many interpreters and transcripts cannot display status lines. Frequently, I simply don't see it because I'm not in the habit of constantly checking the top of a page when reading a book.  

The status line is too game-y. Granted, this is an aesthetic judgment on my part.  Although I appreciated Bronze's compass rose (which was part of the status line), I can't remember anything else of importance being up there.  The rose was the only thing I remember ever needing it for.  And, usually, I prefer works that dispense with a map entirely, obviating the need even for the rose.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1167&start=10#p7599
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Floating-point math in Glulx
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-04 12:28:44

I've nearly finished the C (Glulxe) implementation.

It should be possible to use that spec, and keep main memory (and local variable blocks) as an ArrayBuffer. Won't know for sure until we try it, of course.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1281&start=10#p7600
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Room short names
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-08-04 13:15:42

I've had a few more thoughts on the subject, and I've come up with a rule for formatting room names that I think I'll use for myself, in my many projects that probably will never get finished.

First of all, when a room name is simply a noun (with or without modifiers), the assumed relationship between the PC and the noun given in the room title is that the character is [i]in[/i] the named noun.  So, obviously, a room called "The Kitchen" means that the player is in the kitchen, and a room called "A Field" means that the player can be anywhere within that field, and it doesn't matter where.  For these situations, which probably make up the majority of room names, there is no good reason to insert the word "in", or any other preposition, in front of the noun.  The player mentally supplies the preposition.  The room names make imply sentences like "(You are in) the kitchen."

[quote="gravel"]There's only so many places you can be in a forest - in the forest, on a narrow path, under a great oak - eventually, you're going to be recycling stuff.[/quote]
Right.  In the example, it wouldn't be good style to name all your forest rooms "The Forest."  Therefore, some rooms in most games will instead be named after a feature in the PC's vicinity.  However, it would be inconsistent to simply use nouns for these titles as well.  If the same rule were applied "The Oak Tree" would literally be saying that the PC is completely enclosed within the tree's girth.  Although the player is unlikely to come to that conclusion, and the long description should give the true relationship of the oak tree to the area being described, "The Oak Tree" as a header is still too vague to give any sense of the PC's location.  Therefore, a preposition is needed to clarify the PC's space-relationship to the tree.  "Under the Oak Tree" or "Near an Oak Tree" would both be appropriate.  Now, the rule for forming an implied sentence out of the room name is a little different.  If there's no preposition or participle before the noun, then "You are in" is mentally added, as I noted above; but when a preposition or participle comes at the beginning of the room name, it overrules the absent "in".  The assumed sentence would be "(You are) under the oak tree."

Following this rule, if you're implementing a house, you could name every room simply "The/A Room."  However, if you wanted to let the player climb up the chimney and stand on the roof, the room representing the roof would have to be something like "On the Rooftop"; simply "The Roof" wouldn't be adequate.

Does that sound reasonable?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1281&start=10#p7601
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Room short names
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-08-04 14:01:49

Is the oak tree important?  If it isn't, then it's "a" oak tree, and so "under" or "by" would be fine.  But if it's important, meaning it's "the" oak tree, then leave the preposition off.  Because if an important plot point is getting to the mana tree, describe the place as "The Mana Tree", rather than "At the Mana Tree" which reduces the important of being there.

::shrug::

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1282&start=0#p7602
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Help finding old IF (or graphic adventure?)
User: livens / DateTime: 2010-08-04 15:03:39

Hi,

I used to play a game on a Atari 2600. It was text based but did have simple EGA(maybe VGA) graphics. You played an alien on a spaceship. There was a supply room with important objects to get, I do remember 2 or 3 different colored screwdrivers being there. There was a control room with a teleporter you could use to visit different planets, one being a jungle planet. On this planet the goal was seemingly to get lost then eaten by some wild alien monster... or at least thats what always happened to me [emote]:)[/emote] 

That is all I remember. I was 7 or so at the time, so this was in the early eightes. My older brother owned the 2600 and was a member of an Atari club at his high school that had a large library of software and games. We got to copy as many as we wanted [emote]:)[/emote]

Thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=0#p7603
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Teaching IF to new players
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2010-08-04 15:06:41

Okay, so I'm wondering how common this experience is: You just made a game and it's so awesome.  You just need someone to play it.  Unfortunately, the only potential players available to you are your computer illiterate aunt, a little brother, plus his friends, and maybe a goldfish.  You decide to press them into service, anyway, only to find that what you took for granted as common sense in IF is actually much less intuitive than you thought.  Or maybe the experience only managed to make an imprint of your palm on your forehead that wouldn't disappear for a week.  Either way, I'm guessing we could all share something on this topic.

If you have any stories along those lines, this thread would be the place to share them.  Maybe we can come up with some common lessons in teaching IF, a list of common assumptions on the side of both authors & players, or maybe just share a chuckle or two at the expense of either party.

I'll go ahead and get the ball rolling...

It seems like every new player has the same first reaction to seeing a screen full o' text with that little command prompt: they say, "What do I do now?"  Even in the case where help is offered on the screen (like a message saying, "If you don't know how to play, type [b]HELP[/b] and press enter."), the result is practically inevitable.  You might as well sing along when you start up a game for a newbie.  This might just be a result of having an author peering over their shoulder, though... I would assume new players on their own tend to experiment a little more, but I have no way to prove or disprove that.

Just the other day I had an interesting experience with a new player.  "So, what do I do?" he asked, and I directed him to check out the help message that the game offered him.  As it turns out, this particular IF had a verb list attached, complete with syntax, and the player figured out first how to move.

But then I think he probably retained only one or two verbs from the list he had seen.  Maybe it was too much to take in.  I say this because-- oh, boy-- he expected movement alone to solve everything.  When moving around didn't work, he kept walking back and forth between rooms and typing >LOOK over and over again.  When I asked what he was doing and what his plan of action was, he said he was getting frustrated because the room descriptions weren't changing!  He expected time to pass and events to take place that would either solve things on their own or tell him how to do what he needed to do.

Just goes to show, new players and veterans probably make a lot of different assumptions about typing >LOOK.  I've also had a hard time getting new players to examine things in room descriptions (have you ever heard, "I've looked at everything!" when the player has yet to examine a single object?)... but perhaps I'll delve into that later, since I don't want to hog the thread.  Maybe you have a similar story to share?

What have you seen new players do?  Have they tried anything weird or different from what you'd expect?  Where do you see them having trouble?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1281&start=10#p7604
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Room short names
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-08-04 15:15:36

[quote="Bainespal"]The room names make imply sentences like "(You are in) the kitchen."

-snip-

Does that sound reasonable?[/quote]

I'm not sure I agree.  I would never see "The Great Tree" and think I must be in it.  "At" might be a better preposition for how I interpret room names.  Unless I've just gone in from an outside location, "The Great Tree" is a landmark, not a containing object.

Also, I think it can invite some confusion - if you're "Near the Great Tree", do you need to move closer to do stuff?  I don't know, I think it usually works, and sometimes it's necessary, but normally I think context is enough.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1281&start=10#p7605
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Room short names
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-04 16:09:36

I don't necessarily write room names as implied "you are..." phrases. (I also title-case them, consistently.) It's essentially a section title:

[quote]Rooftop
You are standing on the rooftop...[/quote]

If I have to use the room name in a sentence, then of course I have to adjust the capitalization. I don't think I've done this much; if I did, I'd add a separate "sentence-name" property. That could be lowercase *and* use appropriate prepositions, or any other variation I needed to fit into a sentence.

I guess I think of room names as their own set of things, to be disambiguated (for reading, not for typing). "Rooftop" might make sense if the game was focussed around a single building. "Roof" probably wouldn't work, but "Gymnasium Roof" might, or "Roof of Gymnasium". There are some subtle connotations about how important the locale is, how interesting or exciting it is to be there, whether the roof (as an object) was interactable in any other locale... etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=0#p7606
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-08-04 16:57:55

A few things I've frequently noticed in new player transcripts:

-- Lots of newbies get totally lost once the initial room description scrolls off the screen. They don't know to type LOOK to get it back, and as soon as any objects they were trying to manipulate vanish, they're left with a screen full of error messages and no clues about what to do next.

-- As Duncan mentioned, examining is very unintuitive. I've very rarely seen anyone type this on their own without prodding (sometimes people try LOOK AT, but in my experience this is usually only if they have vague memories of playing IF in the past.) Newbies will have trouble with any game that requires examining items to gain details necessary to advance the plot.

-- People who are not experienced adventure gamers will often move about at random without seeming to build up a coherent picture of the environment or exhausting all the available rooms. The fuzzy little animal in Blue Lacuna who sometimes appears scampering towards an unexplored room was a response to numerous elderly testers who were stuck for days because they simply never tried visiting certain rooms.

-- Be sure to implement verbs commonly associated with various objects. I've lost track of the variants I've heard on this story: "Well, I tried to play interactive fiction once but I wasn't very impressed. There were these stairs and they didn't work. I tried CLIMB STAIRS and GO UP THE STAIRS and USE THE BLOODY STAIRS and it had no idea what I meant." (The author probably meant for people to type UP. Authors have gotten a lot better at this, but it's still a common blind spot for old hands.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=0#p7607
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-08-04 18:31:06

[quote="aaronius"]People who are not experienced adventure gamers will often move about at random without seeming to build up a coherent picture of the environment or exhausting all the available rooms. The fuzzy little animal in Blue Lacuna who sometimes appears scampering towards an unexplored room was a response to numerous elderly testers who were stuck for days because they simply never tried visiting certain rooms.[/quote]
Awesome. And we thank you for that little fuzzy animal, else I never would have found Progue's sleeping spot.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1281&start=10#p7608
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Room short names
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-08-04 20:11:21

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Is the oak tree important?  If it isn't, then it's "a" oak tree, and so "under" or "by" would be fine.  But if it's important, meaning it's "the" oak tree, then leave the preposition off.  Because if an important plot point is getting to the mana tree, describe the place as "The Mana Tree", rather than "At the Mana Tree" which reduces the important of being there.[/quote]
Hmm... I can sort of see how a preposition might de-emphasize the noun in the room name somewhat.  But "At the Mana Tree" more correctly gives an identity to the location itself, because "The Mana Tree" is not the name of the area that the PC is inhabitting when he can interact with the tree in the same way as "The Kitchen" is indeed the name of [i]that[/i] area.  What I was sort of trying to say in my previous post is that, in my opinion, a room name should be prefixed by a relevant preposition when it's given in terms of an important object in that area, rather than as a pseudo-propper name for the area of the PC.

[quote="gravel"]I'm not sure I agree. I would never see "The Great Tree" and think I must be in it. "At" might be a better preposition for how I interpret room names. Unless I've just gone in from an outside location, "The Great Tree" is a landmark, not a containing object.

Also, I think it can invite some confusion - if you're "Near the Great Tree", do you need to move closer to do stuff? I don't know, I think it usually works, and sometimes it's necessary, but normally I think context is enough.[/quote]
What about a room called "The River"; would the title alone suggest that the PC is standing or swimming in the water, or that he is merely by the bank?  This might be a situation where genuine confusion could be possible, if the game had both a location in which the PC is near the riverbank, and another location in which the PC is in the middle of the river, especially when the game is being played in Brief mode.

But I think you're right that "at" would be a much better preposition than "near" in reference to any sort of landmark.  "Near" coudl indeed be ambiguous.  It sort of implies that there's another room closer to our tree.  The only point I kind of disagree with is that context is usually enough.  I guess it comes back to what you want the room title to achieve.  I prefer it to create a skeleton image of the room itself, since it's much more memorable than the room description, but others would rather leave all description to the... description. [emote];)[/emote]

[quote="zarf"]I guess I think of room names as their own set of things, to be disambiguated (for reading, not for typing). "Rooftop" might make sense if the game was focussed around a single building. "Roof" probably wouldn't work, but "Gymnasium Roof" might, or "Roof of Gymnasium". There are some subtle connotations about how important the locale is, how interesting or exciting it is to be there, whether the roof (as an object) was interactable in any other locale... etc.[/quote]
But yes, getting the right connotations into room names is more important than formatting them all according to some formula.  Whatever form gives the best impression, according to the effect that the author is trying to produce, is really the best for any given room in any game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1284&start=0#p7609
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [Announce] Glimmr
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-08-04 22:12:04

Hi all,

I've finally released Glimmr, a modular system of extensions for doing graphics in I7. I won't say too much about it here, since I've both previewed it and mentioned it a few times over the last few months, but here's a quick blurb for those who don't know what it is:

In its simplest form, Glimmr supplies commands for drawing images files (PNG or JPEG), simple primitives (rectangles, boxes, lines), arbitrary bitmap images, and painted text. Through additional extensions, Glimmr also provides a full system for managing display of complex, dynamic compositions in a graphics window. These might include maps that progressively reveal themselves as the player moves through them, card games, etc.

Glimmr also includes the Glimmr Canvas Editor. Include it in an empty project, add some images, and you have a full GUI graphics editor. Lay out your scene visually and press the Source Code button, and a file of Inform 7 source code will be generated. Just paste this code into your project and your composition is reproduced exactly, with only a few lines of code.  

You can download Glimmr, including image files for the code examples, a toolkit for map-making, and so on, here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://code.google.com/p/glimmr-i7x/downloads/detail?name=Glimmr%20Full%20Release%20r2.zip">http://code.google.com/p/glimmr-i7x/dow ... e%20r2.zip</a>

The extensions should also show up individually (and without image files) on the Inform extensions page.

If you'd like to get a quick sense of the sorts of things Glimmr can do without installing the extensions, you can get a hold of compiled versions of the extension examples [url=http://code.google.com/p/glimmr-i7x/downloads/detail?name=Glimmr%20Compiled%20Examples%20r1.zip]here[/url]. The examples are pretty modest, but hopefully they will be useful.

(I know that some folks are interested in the Glimmr Automap extension. That one will be released sometime in the near future.)

A final note: If you have anything you'd like a tutorial on, drop a note here. I've got a little blog set aside for that kind of thing, but I probably won't do anything in that line unless I know I've got at least one interested reader!

Cheers,
Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=0#p7610
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-08-05 04:47:55

I've done better than most, I think, but I still know of people who got stuck and gave up on all my games, including the one you can play entirely by clicking hyperlinks.

Perhaps the most interesting is the game I released which includes a sequence where you're descending on a parachute and can only wait several turns (which you can do by typing "wait" or by using any other valid command).  Someone I knew who'd never played IF before managed to reach this point with the ABOUT text and in-game hints, but when the hints told her to "WAIT" she only thought to enter the command once.  When nothing else seemed to happen, she had no idea what to do.

Another player playing [i]Dead Like Ants[/i] had no trouble interacting with the game and making progress, but became frustrated when the game kept leading to [spoiler]the PC's death.[/spoiler] The fact the hints lead her directly to this in numerous ways only made her decide the game was extremely cruel and unfair.  Realising the "trick" I was pulling did nothing to change this view.

[quote="aaronius"]-- Lots of newbies get totally lost once the initial room description scrolls off the screen. They don't know to type LOOK to get it back, and as soon as any objects they were trying to manipulate vanish, they're left with a screen full of error messages and no clues about what to do next.[/quote]
One bug report I got for [i]Walker & Silhouette[/i] was that the player had "run out" of keywords.  Before I even saw the report, he retracted it - I'd placed the LOOK command as a hyperlink on a banner on the bottom of the window, for just this situation (and also mentioned it in this context in a couple of different places, mostly because [i]Blue Lacuna[/i] did the same) - but he still thought that having to click it every so often was rather strange.  I think he's right, but I'm not sure what else you can do with a text-based game about interacting with an environment.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1121&start=10#p7611
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2010 - Open for Business, and You?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-08-05 05:27:03

I'm neither for nor against ADRIFT. I have a lot of respect for the community, the program and Campbell. However, you can't deny that any system which yields the following result is still lacking in very important ways, and in some levels not as robust as it should be.

From the new game Aegis.

[quote]Drake Stables
[...]
>talk to Janai
At the sound of your voice...

[...]

..."why don't you go ahead and saddle Oxblood?"

>saddle oxblood
You take the saddle...

[...]

..."now go ahead and mount oxblood."

>mount it
(Oxblood's whistle)
You whistle a little tune.[/quote]

I say again, I'm not against Adrift. I point these issues so that they can be ironed out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=0#p7612
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-08-05 07:54:35

I tried beta testing with some new players:

I've had players try "GO TO KITCHEN" when in a house, without knowing whether or not a kitchen was there, just because they figured a house should have a kitchen. They've also tried the "LOOK FOR [person/object]" instead of looking at/under things. 

Another player spent a lot of time with an NPC dog with fairly randomized behavior- petting it, calling it, yelling at it, hitting it, etc.

GO THROUGH DOOR was another common one, when there were no "doors" but directions.

I think back to how I learned to play Zork. I had an instruction book with common commands and sample transcripts, I had the hints for Zork I which were in-game as a HINT command, and I had someone else to play with- which helped out a lot. 

I've seen an IF beginner's card- that should be standard included in ALL if games. Also the in-game help/hints command is a good idea. Newer players get frustrated much more than veterans.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=0#p7613
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2010-08-05 08:33:30

The >GO TO KITCHEN bit reminds me of when I had an old roommate try something I was working on... he'd be standing in the bedroom with the dresser and type >GO TO DRESSER.  Or in the kitchen he would type >GO TO FRIDGE, even though those things were already in the room with him.  Still, he assumed that he would have to approach them before he could interact with them, which makes sense, but it's just not how IF worlds are generally structured.  Everything's just sort of "in the room with you."  Movement around a room is often assumed, but not always significant.

Still another roommate of mine tended to type improper commands.  I tried to teach him, but he had another method: when his input failed, he would just try the same phrase again, but with more cuss words.  >___ING GO TO THE ___ING KITCHEN ____ ____.  He also tended to ragequit fairly quckly when he was chastised for his potty mouth.

But sometimes new players aren't all frustration.  Several times some new player I've dragged to my computer will start laughing and hooting and generally enjoying themselves... and then I realize they're not actually making any progress.  They're just having fun with the default responses!  (Though how I might get them back on track tends to be a whole 'nother beast.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1281&start=10#p7614
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Room short names
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-08-05 09:20:40

[quote="Ron Newcomb"][quote="Eleas"]I like the idea. In most games, I think I might have an easier time seeing that in the status line, though.[/quote]

I would prefer it if the prose carried all information.  And this isn't just because Club Floyd and many interpreters and transcripts cannot display status lines. Frequently, I simply don't see it because I'm not in the habit of constantly checking the top of a page when reading a book.  

The status line is too game-y. Granted, this is an aesthetic judgment on my part.[/quote]

Somewhat OT: I agree, except that I don't think it's a question of being game-y or strictly an aesthetic judgment. It's a question of where my attention is, and that happens in games as well as books. I'm looking at the prose, not the top of the screen, and if something happens at the top of the screen I'm not going to see it. Sometimes literally; in the Reliques of Tolti-Aph, in which a song pops up at the top of a screen in a new window, I wouldn't have noticed it if I hadn't been reading a hint file that told me a song was supposed to be there, and even then I had to scan around a bit.

This is a lot easier when the change in the status line is visually drastic enough that it forces itself into my peripheral vision; I just played a bit of ROTA in quixe, and that wasn't a problem, because the song shows up in a different color and with a border. (Which didn't happen in my original interpreter, Spatterlight I think.) Similarly, when I'm playing Nethack I'm usually watching what's happening around the @ sign, and I notice changes in the status line when the number of digits in something changes and pushes everything to the right or left. 

But in general, the principle is that when I'm driving, I don't notice the odometer, because my eyes are on the road. If a light goes on on the dashboard, that usually catches my eye. (I do like the compass rose, as in e.g. A New Life, because that's something I can quickly look up and check when I get to a new room.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=0#p7615
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2010-08-05 10:15:08

[quote="Pacian"]One bug report I got for [i]Walker & Silhouette[/i] was that the player had "run out" of keywords.  Before I even saw the report, he retracted it - I'd placed the LOOK command as a hyperlink on a banner on the bottom of the window, for just this situation (and also mentioned it in this context in a couple of different places, mostly because [i]Blue Lacuna[/i] did the same) - but he still thought that having to click it every so often was rather strange.  I think he's right, but I'm not sure what else you can do with a text-based game about interacting with an environment.[/quote]

I'm relatively new to IF, so I don't know if this has been done or not, but what about keeping the room description in a separate window, so that it's always there? The commands and responses could scroll by, but you've always got a window where it shows you your current location. It's kind of like the old graphical adventures with text input, but instead of always having a picture of the location, you always have the description.

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=0#p7616
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-05 10:26:24

The Scott Adams games did that (and they predated Zork I on the store shelves).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=0#p7617
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-08-05 10:30:37

Perhaps the best way to teach a new person would be to download a game that's new to both of you and play it for the first time together. That should get them used to the phrasing and such.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1284&start=0#p7618
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Announce] Glimmr
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-08-05 12:36:10

Thanks for all the work you put into creating this. Glimmr is amazing!

I've had to hold back on talking it up at the Seattle IF meetings since you hadn't released any of the example files.  [emote]:D[/emote] 

I found the roguelike especially interesting since it offers a way to model positioning within a room without a lot of awkward phrasing, and without any radical changes to the standard world model. Also, roguelikes are cool.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1121&start=10#p7619
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2010 - Open for Business, and You?
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-08-05 14:16:16

I'll be entering the Comp with an I7/Glulx game again this year.  It'll be nice to be able to offer a Quixe web-play option this time!

Does anyone know if there is going to be a central repository for web packages, or are we on our own for hosting?  I hope there's going to be central hosting -- my game requires custom CSS for proper display and I'm unsure whether hosting it on my home web site will be feasible or not from the perspective of providing good download speeds for players.

Also, I notice that the authors' forums from last year seem to be down.  Is there any plan to replace these?  If not, I can set up phpBB on my server and give it a whirl.

Matt

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1278&start=0#p7620
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creative Scope and I7
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-05 14:56:47

I have no explanation. Apparently the compiler can build this kind of phrase-rule structure for a kind of thing, but not for a kind of value.

You could probably get it to work by switching over to an activity.

(And for those keeping track at home, *this* is why I think I7 needs a unified underlying rule mechanism.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1278&start=0#p7621
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creative Scope and I7
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-08-05 15:27:06

[quote="Eleas"]I have one tangential question that confuses the heck out of me regarding the code you demonstrated. I tried creating a mood property for my character and basing the character's description on that instead. If I do that, the "to say" block defaults to outputting the general text every time. What gives?[/quote]
Maybe you're bumping up against bug [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=199]#199[/url]?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1278&start=10#p7622
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creative Scope and I7
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-05 16:13:38

It might be related in the depths of the compiler, but it's not the same symptom. If you look at the generated I6 code, you can see that compiler is building an appropriate tree of "if"s for one case (rooms) but not for the other case (kinds of value).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=40#p7623
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-08-05 19:16:08

[quote="Endosphere"]To the degree that the audience empathizes with the protagonist and we succeed in outlining the menace in a plausible way, a temporary sense of unrest may thus be inspired in their minds; however I think this effect is unlikely to be long-lasting once the audience leaves the constraints of the imagined universe of the tale.[/quote]

You can get some additional mileage from the fear and unease if the fictional situation is familiar, one in which the audience may find themselves at a future date. I am not ordinarily afraid of the dark, but I have found myself jumping at shadows after a late night session of [i]Left 4 Dead[/i]. So much of the game takes place inside houses that it is difficult not to carry something of the tension away.

[i]The Ring[/i] also made a strong impression on me, probably because every scene involving a certain device becomes a vehicle for horror. [spoiler]I expect I will never look at a television tuned to static in quite the same way again. The shift to digital television means fewer chances for this, of course, but that only enhances the terror.[/spoiler]

[quote="Endosphere"]Can a theme of true terror be successfully explored in a story where the protagonists are victorious and proceed to return to a mundane existence with no lingering effects (apart perhaps from a few physical and mental scars) of their encounter with the monstrous?[/quote]

I thought the ending for [i]Anchorhead[/i] worked really well, somewhat better the one for [i]The King of Shreds and Patches[/i]. [spoiler]In both, I think the intent is to undermine or negate the player's victory. [i]Anchorhead[/i] lets you save Michael, then suggests that he is not quite free from dark influences. [i]Shreds and Patches[/i] lets you save Lucy, then foreshadows the eventual return of Hastur's cult, long after you both are dead. Clearly the first is more terrible; the second may as well be happily ever after: it holds out the possibility of an exciting sequel, but does nothing to diminish the player's sense of triumph.[/spoiler]

[quote="Endosphere"]In real life evil ensues from people pursuing goals that cause direct and significant harm to others, and from these actors selfishly continuing their pursuits once that harm becomes evident.  In other words, I think evil is a process.  On the other hand there is a long and robust tradition in literature--particularly in horror literature--of portraying the antagonist as "evil" in some absolute sense, as if evil were a fundamental trait of character or state of being.[/quote]

It seems hard to pull off moral absolutism these days. An evil character, to me, is one that shares the same relative morals as the audience, but who chooses to act in an immoral fashion. By that standard, the main character in [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=weac28l51hiqfzxz]De Baron[/url] is perhaps the most monstrous in all of IF.

If your zombies are intended to say something about what it really means to be a monster, then you cannot really avoid a discussion of evil. But it may be more convenient to simply treat zombies as amoral, and let the terror come from interacting with creatures that shrug off human norms.

An interesting approach might be to make a player character with a strong moral compass, like a priest, who undertakes to save and purify the zombies. Perhaps he succeeds in cleansing them, but certain zombies subsequently relapse and resume feeding on human flesh. The question becomes whether these are simply immoral degenerates, or if the others have the same urges but more self-control. The player must decide whether he will kill the zombies or redouble his efforts to save them.

Whatever the outcome, the terror comes from the need to act, then to live with the uncertainty. Has the player perpetrated a great evil, or allowed a great evil to flourish?

[quote="Endosphere"]Is the idea of an evil enemy more or less profound than the idea of an enemy with sincerely held beliefs which are simply offensive to us--or is that all we're really saying anyway when we use the word "evil"?[/quote]

The average player accepts the necessity of killing zombies without much trouble. It could be rather fascinating to get the player to question that fundamental assumption, and to ask when it becomes OK to kill someone for being different.

If you move the struggle to a level beyond "kill or be killed", if the zombies pose no direct physical threat even as they work to summon a hostile cosmic power, if it is the player that must initiate violence against the unresisting zombie horde, what is the ethical choice?

Perhaps good and evil only apply to human conflicts; here zombies are uniquely well-suited to showing us what counts as human. Perhaps it is evil and yet must be done; here the terror comes from inhabiting a world that forces this duty upon us.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1284&start=0#p7624
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Announce] Glimmr
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-08-05 20:02:17

Thanks! The roguelike example's movement is strictly visual--there's not any real collision checking going on or really any game-state tracking at all--but I think you're right that the basic method could be developed into something. I hope someone picks up the gauntlet and releases a real project!

(As a side note, the tiles I used are from a tileset called [url=http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=8970.0]LoFi Roguelike[/url] that is freely usable for noncommercial projects.)

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1278&start=10#p7625
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creative Scope and I7
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-08-05 20:05:11

[quote="zarf"]I have no explanation. Apparently the compiler can build this kind of phrase-rule structure for a kind of thing, but not for a kind of value.

You could probably get it to work by switching over to an activity.[/quote]
That's quite intriguing. I was halfway convinced the error would be something elementary that I'd overlooked.

[quote="zarf"](And for those keeping track at home, *this* is why I think I7 needs a unified underlying rule mechanism.)[/quote]
Oh, yes. I've read some of your posts on the subject. It's undeniably interesting, even though (or perhaps [i]because[/i]) some of it sounds like black magic: powerful, yes, but more than a little mind-bending.

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Maybe you're bumping up against bug [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=199]#199[/url]?[/quote]
I fear I may have to reach some higher plane of knowledge in I6 before I'm qualified to present an answer on that one. Such as actually being able to understand it, just for starters. [emote]:)[/emote]

(In this respect I7's success may actually be a detriment. Teaching myself I6 at this point puts me in mind of trying to bridge a slowly widening chasm using matchsticks and glue.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1121&start=10#p7626
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2010 - Open for Business, and You?
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-08-06 00:14:06

[quote="Peter Pears"][quote]
>mount it
(Oxblood's whistle)
You whistle a little tune.[/quote]
[/quote]

In ADRIFT's defense, Inform 7 games certainly struggle with this problem, too. (See the notes in the latest release about changing how pronouns works with regards to inventory listings.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1285&start=0#p7627
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Preventing line breaks before "objects here"
User: ChrisFederico / DateTime: 2010-08-06 00:22:22

It's going very well with Mr. Newcomb's Default Messages extension! Again, thanks for the help with that, guys.

I'm attempting to describe non-held objects according to rather old-fashioned Infocom norms, by overriding each object's normal appearance upon being encountered, like so:

First Object is a thing. "There is a first object here."

So far, so good. Chiefly, I'd like to stop I7 from printing a line break before notifying the player of currently seen objects. In other words, this...

==========
Testing Room
You are standing in a featureless room. How unadventurous of you!

There is a first object here.

You can also see the second object here.

>
==========

...would instead read:

==========
Testing Room
You are standing in a featureless room. How unadventurous of you!
There is a first object here.
There is a second object here.

>
==========

I've tried every combination of periods/no periods and "[run paragraph on]" additions, and I just can't get rid of those pre-object blank lines. Is there a "move cursor up one row" command, such as in BASIC, that's not covered in the docs?

I'd also -love- to get rid of "You can also see," just as I've excluded it in my wish-readout above, and simply have the game print my object's description as I've typed it, even if it's been picked up and dropped. I've tried this:

==========
Every turn:
now every thing is unmentioned.
==========

...but it's not working. I'm at a loss! Thanks for reading, all. The assistance I've received here thus far has been invaluable, and much appreciated.

[Edits were for extra clarification.]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1121&start=10#p7628
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2010 - Open for Business, and You?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-08-06 01:45:26

They do? When the string of commands is as simple as "saddle oxblood/mount it"? Anyway, that's not the only problem. ADRIFT, in this case, first misconstrued my command then misconstrued my [i]meaning[/i]. It turned "mount it" into "mount Oxblood's whistle", and it replied to "Oxblood's whistle" with the reply for the command "whistle". That's the really odd bit.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1284&start=0#p7629
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Announce] Glimmr
User: weiju / DateTime: 2010-08-06 01:52:42

Wow, that looks pretty cool !

I have tried your compiled demos on ZMPP  and put some of them online as a demo, I hope you are fine with that:

<a class="postlink" href="http://zmpp.sourceforge.net/games/index.html">http://zmpp.sourceforge.net/games/index.html</a>

Wei-ju

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1284&start=0#p7630
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Announce] Glimmr
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-08-06 08:40:50

[quote="weiju"]I have tried your compiled demos on ZMPP  and put some of them online as a demo, I hope you are fine with that:

<a class="postlink" href="http://zmpp.sourceforge.net/games/index.html">http://zmpp.sourceforge.net/games/index.html</a>[/quote]

Very cool, thanks for doing this. I was wondering how Glimmr would perform under ZMPP--it's better than I expected. (Glimmr is optimized for flexibility and ease of use over performance, though in practice the trade-off seems pretty small. I guess we'll see a true test when and if someone makes a full-size game with it.)

Congratulations on ZMPP's very nice handling of the graphic display and mouse input--very impressive!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1249&start=0#p7631
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Game clubs?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-08-06 10:21:59

[quote="ektemple"]I've never used it, but would Google Wave be a good format for the kinds of multilevel conversations that are likely to result?[/quote]
Google Wave will soon be no more.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=40#p7632
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-06 10:40:02

[quote="bcressey"]An interesting approach might be to make a player character with a strong moral compass, like a priest, who undertakes to save and purify the zombies. Perhaps he succeeds in cleansing them, but certain zombies subsequently relapse and resume feeding on human flesh. The question becomes whether these are simply immoral degenerates, or if the others have the same urges but more self-control. The player must decide whether he will kill the zombies or redouble his efforts to save them.[/quote]
Zombies on a diet! I love it!

Apologies for descending into satire again...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1121&start=10#p7633
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2010 - Open for Business, and You?
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2010-08-06 13:31:07

[quote]..."now go ahead and mount oxblood."

>mount it[/quote]

It says very clearly in the text: mount oxblood. English is not my native language, so pardon me if I'm wrong here, but by saying "Saddle oxblood and mount it" doesn't that mean you mount the saddle, rather than oxblood?

I have just run the game, very briefly. Oxblood is a male in the character setup and when you read the text it clearly states that he is a "he." So it would be apropriate to refer to it as a he, instead of an "it"
I tried "Saddle oxblood" and then "[i]mount him[/i]" and it worked just fine.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1121&start=10#p7634
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2010 - Open for Business, and You?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-08-06 13:59:23

[quote]It says very clearly in the text: mount oxblood.[/quote]

...which is a recurring theme in ADRIFT. Gamers try pronouns, they backfire, gamers give up, and then they learn that they had the right idea but the pronoun wasn't being picked up properly. This has happened to me SO often. And then the authors say "it said in the text what you had to type". To which I reply "But what I typed in was equivalent, and should have worked." And you can say that it's the author, not the system, who is to blame. Not so. Often did I ">examine dresser" and ">open it" to be treated to a "You can't open that" message, and then went to type ">open dresser", which worked.

In this particular case - I admit I was just skimming over the game, just before I called it a night and went to bed, and in skimming over the text Oxblood looked like an animal - and really, you can't blame me. He acts like one. I wouldn't saddle and mount a person. He didn't say anything yet, just snorted. And in this case, it would be, indeed, more of the author's responsibility to allow "it" to be referrable to Oxblood.

But let's make one thing clear. Ok, the text says "mount Oxblood". But if I type something equivalent, which I did, and the game doesn't recognize it, that's a problem.

And you're also missing the major point. Even if I HAD typed "mount Oxblood's whistle", the game's reply, which is the reply to "whistle", is woefully incorrect. It's replying as though I'd typed "whistle". It picked up a noun in the command and interpreted it as a verb. That's the really major point.

One final thing - if I have to run over the game code to see how a character is defined in order to know what pronoun to use... well, [i]something[/i] is wrong.

EDIT - Took me this long to realize what you meant by "mounting the saddle". Well, no, not at all. If "saddle <something>" and "mount it" meant "mount the saddle", then it would all have to be redefined, in a nightmarish way, all the pronouns in all IF environment. THe structure is verb-noun. If the noun is "it", it refers to the last noun.

Also, to be honest, no, it doesn't sound as though it can really be interpreted as "mount the saddle" at all.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1285&start=0#p7635
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Preventing line breaks before "objects here"
User: livens / DateTime: 2010-08-06 14:14:51

I too would like to be rid of the pre object spaces. Something about them just doesnt look right.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1285&start=0#p7636
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Preventing line breaks before "objects here"
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-06 14:45:09

To reset an object to its not-yet-picked-up appearance, you want to make it "not handled".

However, it's easier to define the appearance with a "rule for writing a paragraph about..." That's permanent -- it's not affected by whether the object has been handled.

I can't help you with the blank lines. Inform's blank-line rules are hard to mess with.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1121&start=10#p7637
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2010 - Open for Business, and You?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-08-06 18:09:29

[quote="Finn Rosenløv"][quote]..."now go ahead and mount oxblood."

>mount it[/quote]

It says very clearly in the text: mount oxblood. English is not my native language, so pardon me if I'm wrong here, but by saying "Saddle oxblood and mount it" doesn't that mean you mount the saddle, rather than oxblood?[/quote]

As a native English (USian) speaker, that's not the most natural reading. "Saddle" is a verb and pronouns almost always refers to a noun that has been mentioned. Incidentally I'd think "mount saddle" ought to work if the saddle is on Oxblood, but that would be something for the programmer to take care of. (And the confusion with Oxblood's gender is also the author's responsibility, I think.) But "Whistle" certainly seems like the built-in parser's fault.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=120#p7638
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Stew / DateTime: 2010-08-07 00:08:52

Hello,

Steven Westwood here. I go by the name username Ste. I used to be called Hoais (due to an accident when I was registering) Anyway, I'm mostly new to this board and like IF. Correction. I like it a lot. 

The first IF I ever played was Supernova by Apogee Software. (It's now freeware and is still available.) I was completely captivated by it. I played it on an old TravelPro Notebook in the family's garage one summer. Ah, those were the days... [emote]:)[/emote] 

I never was able to finish it, though. However, I did finish Beyond the Titanic, by the same author. 

I am trying to learn as much as I can about Inform and make a game. It's my dream to make a game on the caliber of Infocom. Also, one of my goals is to promote the awareness of IF and get people interested in it.

Anyway, I am glad to be here! [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1285&start=0#p7639
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Preventing line breaks before "objects here"
User: ChrisFederico / DateTime: 2010-08-07 02:05:56

Thanks for the tip about object descriptions!

My obstacle is this. The only solution I've found is to include these extensions:

========
Include Room Description Control by Emily Short.
Include Single Paragraph Description by Emily Short.
========

(The latter evidently requires the former to work, if I've read the documentation correctly.)

This works beautifully, as [line break] merely has to be added before the initial appearance of each object (initial appearances are all I'd like to see, outside the player's inventory). The line breaks are added because, again, I'm trying to list each room's object(s) on separate lines under the room's description, but include no blanks between them:

Test-Like Room
There is a first object here.
There is a second object here.

With the extensions included, this transpires perfectly upon initial room entry. However, for subsequent entries into the same room, the following new rule, which worked before the extensions were included, is now apparently ignored or overridden:

========
Rule for writing a paragraph about a thing (called item): say "[the initial appearance of the item]".
========

Before the extensions were included, this successfully kept "You can also see..." from replacing my initial appearances.

The extensions also cause verbosity, even if a room has been entered before -- although I have == Use BRIEF room descriptions. == in my code, which also worked before the extensions were included.

Any help would be extremely thanked and thanked. [emote]:)[/emote]

[Edits were again made for extra clarity.]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1121&start=20#p7640
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2010 - Open for Business, and You?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-08-07 03:32:23

[quote="Finn Rosenløv"]I have just run the game, very briefly. Oxblood is a male in the character setup and when you read the text it clearly states that he is a "he." So it would be apropriate to refer to it as a he, instead of an "it"
I tried "Saddle oxblood" and then "[i]mount him[/i]" and it worked just fine.[/quote]
To be fair, the problem with he, she, it and them not necessarily referring to the last in-game object you referred to (depending on whether it's defined as male, female, neuter or plural) is common to all the major parsers.  I know I've encountered Inform and TADS games where I've got frustrated trying to use "it" on a "them" etc.  As Matt says, it's the author's (sometimes unfair) responsibility to make sure the player knows what pronouns they can use (or to enable several when things are unavoidably ambiguous).

That said, I agree with Peter that Adrift does seem to have more problems with pronouns than I'd expect, in particular the way it sticks doggedly to what the player refers to.  As an example, if I "talk to Lisa" in one room, and then go into another room with "Cathy" in it, "talk to her" should try to talk to Cathy and not Lisa.  It should also talk to Cathy even if I've never referred to a female before in a command.

[quote="Finn Rosenløv"]I agree with you totally, that Adrift 4 has its flaws, but I have the feeling that when people are judging an Adrift game, they often attack Adrift, rather than judging the game. It's like “if I can't find anything on the game, I can always shoot at the generator.”[/quote]
I think people do tend to separate the two.  There are several Adrift games I like a lot, but playing them does mean wrestling with the parser.  Playing even the best Adrift game still often means having a few anecdotes about the game asking questions you couldn't answer, or performing unexpected actions.  These complaints aren't something the author should take personally.

[quote="Finn Rosenløv"]I'm looking forward to see what Campbell gets out of the V.5. Hopefully people will change their attitude towards Adrift when the V.5 is released, but that remains to be seen.[/quote]
I hope so too, although if it's still shareware I don't see it uprooting Inform 7 any time soon as the non-programmer's tool of choice.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1121&start=20#p7641
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2010 - Open for Business, and You?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-08-07 06:44:14

There's an infamous example of a game where the exchange could go something like this: (paraphrasing)

[quote]You can see a parrot here.

>TALK TO PARROT
The room has a strange smell.[/quote]
What happened here was that the parrot was called Smelly, and under the hood the parser changed the player's command to TALK TO SMELLY and scanned it for commands it would understand. It found SMELL in there and interpreted the command as that.

You could argue that the above example is the game designer's fault because I'm sure there is a way to avoid this with careful programming, but it does no good to ADRIFT to pretend that its parser has no problems at all. ADRIFT has a very important place among IF development systems in that it takes a very user-friendly and unintimidating approach to game development and it'd be great to have it lose the reputation of having such a limited parser, but that's not going to happen by pretending that there are no problems. The only solution is to acknowledge the limitations and then fix them.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=120#p7642
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-08-07 06:52:04

I didn't know Apogee had made IF. (I think of Wacky Wheels when I see their name.) Looking the game up, I see that it's by Scott Miller. Producer and co-designer of  Wolfenstein 3D, Raptor, Terminal Velocity, Max Payne and Prey, according to Wikipedia. Interesting.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=0#p7643
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-08-07 16:01:23

I realize that this answer is platform- and language-dependent, but perhaps every game engine should have a NEWBIE command.  We provide lovely Zork-inspired commands such as VERBOSE and BRIEF for the old hands, but what about the newbies?

I think there ought to be a module or extension to handle that, really.

The NEWBIE module/interface could do many things:
[list][*]In the first room, it can show a list of suggested commands like GO WEST and TAKE ENVELOPE.  (A list of suggested newbie commands can be supplied by the author.)[/*:m]
[*]It should recognize overly-verbose commands such as GO TO THE NORTH or PICK UP THE ENVELOPE or LOOK AT THE ROOM and suggest briefer alternatives.[/*:m]
[*]It should contain a real-time clock; if there is no input for a significant time, it should ask if the player is new, and if he needs instructions.[/*:m]
[*]It should intercept commands such as WHERE AM I?[/*:m]
[*]While in newbie mode, the first few rooms can contain objects with "suggestion flags."  For instance, an examine-me flag will encourage a new player with a standard line like "(You might wish to try the command EXAMINE THE JAR OF PICKLES.)" while a take-me flag responds with "(You might wish to TAKE THE CLASSIFIED ADS. You may need them later.)"  The author can choose which items are flagged for a newbie's convenience, but the engine just picks a random suggestion-flagged thing in the room.[/*:m]
[*]It could also have objects with "clue flags."  If you have spent more than 20 moves in the kitchen and you haven't opened the refrigerator, it could prompt the player with "(You haven't tried to OPEN THE REFRIGERATOR yet.)"[/*:m]
[*]It could contain a text-formatting script so that interactive objects are [b]bolded[/b] in the room description text.[/*:m]
[*]It should recognize and acknowledge unnecessary commands such as GO OVER TO THE [fixed scenery object], or GO THROUGH DOOR, providing an appropriate response.[/*:m]
[*]The first time you go more than 10 turns without typing LOOK, it can prompt you "(If you want to see where you are, type LOOK.)" [/*:m]
[*]It could count the number of times you try to interact with unimportant scenery, and provide a default response.  After the third time you try to do anything with the AQUARIUM, it can say, "The aquarium isn't really important.  The author put it here to make the room more interesting.  Isn't it nice?" or something.  Actually making scenery objects for all of those items is the author's problem.  [emote]:)[/emote][/*:m][/list:u]

If making a module or extension is out of the question, then perhaps a focus on writing a few extremely newbie-friendly [b]games[/b] could help a great deal.  If you want to get somebody involved playing IF, you can start 'em off gently with a game designed to give the player as much help as possible, before getting them into the harder stuff.  (I seem to remember an Infocom game ... Seastalker? ... that had a bunch of hints built-in.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=10#p7644
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-08-07 16:19:38

You can get most of these by merely downloading and including the following extensions:

[code]
Include Smarter Parser by Aaron Reed.
Include Tutorial Mode by Emily Short.
Include Keyword Interface by Aaron Reed.
[/code]

This would get you all of the following:

[quote="Hertz"]
[*]It should intercept commands such as WHERE AM I?
[*]It should recognize and acknowledge unnecessary commands such as GO OVER TO THE [fixed scenery object], or GO THROUGH DOOR, providing an appropriate response.
[*]While in newbie mode, the first few rooms can contain objects with "suggestion flags."  For instance, an examine-me flag will encourage a new player with a standard line like "(You might wish to try the command EXAMINE THE JAR OF PICKLES.)" while a take-me flag responds with "(You might wish to TAKE THE CLASSIFIED ADS. You may need them later.)"  The author can choose which items are flagged for a newbie's convenience, but the engine just picks a random suggestion-flagged thing in the room.
[*]It could contain a text-formatting script so that interactive objects are [b]bolded[/b] in the room description text.
[/quote]

The remaining are all good ideas, too.

[quote="Hertz"]
If making a module or extension is out of the question, then perhaps a focus on writing a few extremely newbie-friendly [b]games[/b] could help a great deal.  If you want to get somebody involved playing IF, you can start 'em off gently with a game designed to give the player as much help as possible, before getting them into the harder stuff.[/quote]

And I should also mention the project Juhana and Drew are working on to do just this: <a class="postlink" href="http://inthecompanyofgrues.com/iftrainer/index.php?title=Alpha_testing">http://inthecompanyofgrues.com/iftraine ... ha_testing</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1249&start=0#p7645
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Game clubs?
User: sarganar / DateTime: 2010-08-07 19:06:03

or play a game in real time (and collaborative mode) using [url=http://aventuras.presi.org/rebot/]Rebot[/url]; a perl script that allows play games over MSN, IRC, Jabber , telnet or mud.

[url=http://wiki.caad.es/Rebot]Wiki[/url]

Saludos!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1286&start=0#p7646
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Half-Finished Game: Need Programmer
User: cunctator / DateTime: 2010-08-08 03:43:12

Hello,

I posted on this forum a few months ago looking for a programmer for my game, Gigantomania. Since then I've been working with one, and the game is about half done. 

However, he became busy with work, and now I need someone to help me finish programming the game. 

All the writing is done, and programming is done for half the game. I'm interested in entering this game for IFComp, so I need someone who can help me finish the game quickly.

If you're interested, please contact me.

Thank you. [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1286&start=0#p7647
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Half-Finished Game: Need Programmer
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-08-08 06:36:13

You probably should mention what language it is written in. Very few (if any) people are well versed in all IF programming languages.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1286&start=0#p7648
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Half-Finished Game: Need Programmer
User: cunctator / DateTime: 2010-08-08 11:11:16

It's in Inform, and it's also quite simple, as the storyline is very linear. And I'm very very interested in finishing it in time for IFComp.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1287&start=0#p7649
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Hint Request -- The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-08-08 20:51:55

I'm nearly done with [i]The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy[/i], having a score of 350 out of 400.

Here's my explanation of my current game state:
[spoiler]I've done just above everything there is to do onboard the Heart of Gold, and I've been to all the areas that you get transported to by using the improbability drive.  I'm fairly certain that I've accomplished all the goals in those areas and gotten all the necessary objects.  Now the The Heart of Gold has landed on Magrathea, and I need Marvin's help to open the hatch, to get out of the ship.  Marvin will go to the Access Space to fix the hatch, but I have to bring the one tool that he needs.  I can only bring one object, and the hints confirmed that Marvin will [i]never[/i] ask for the one tool that I happen to be carrying.

The hints complicated matters for me.  The question about opening the hatch directs me to another hint topic, about the fluff.  I have all four pieces of fluff that the hints imply that I need.  The Guide entry about fluff gives the impression that I can somehow put the four pieces of fluff together to create a seed or a plant.  I don't know how to do this, and the hint topic tells me not to go on until I've found the flower pot.  But I've never come across a flower pot.

Did I miss the pot at some point, making the game unwinnable?  I think Infocom hates me.  [emote];)[/emote][/spoiler]

Thank you.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1249&start=0#p7650
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Game clubs?
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-08-08 20:55:36

I don't think I could ever gather enough motivation to finish a difficult game like [i]Make it Good[/i] on my own, as much as I might like to.  I'd be happy to participate in community play-through, especially of some of the harder and longer games.  There are many longer puzzle games that I've given up on, and this might be a way for me to finally see the end of some of them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1249&start=0#p7651
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Game clubs?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-08-08 21:40:40

[quote="Bainespal"]I don't think I could ever gather enough motivation to finish a difficult game like [i]Make it Good[/i] on my own, as much as I might like to.  I'd be happy to participate in community play-through, especially of some of the harder and longer games.  There are many longer puzzle games that I've given up on, and this might be a way for me to finally see the end of some of them.[/quote]

This is pretty much exactly my feeling.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1089&start=0#p7652
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IntroComp 2010
User: maga / DateTime: 2010-08-08 23:13:09

Due to an error in the spanky new automated vote-tally system, the Introcomp deadline kicked in several hours too early. Oops.

If you tried to vote some time between the True Deadline and the erroneous False Deadline, we ask that you refrain almost completely from rioting, filing lawsuits and mounting lamentably ineffective protest demonstrations, because [b]THE DEADLINE FOR VOTING HAS BEEN EXTENDED BY 24 HOURS.[/b] Or, y'know, if you just forgot, or if you are violently awoken tomorrow morning by the realisation that you have naively failed to appreciate a game's hidden genius and only by changing your vote to a 10 can you make amends. We're not fussy.

If you entered your votes before all that, rest assured that they're safe, have been located and will continue to their proper destination just as soon as we can extract them from the grip of the resourceful if overenthusiastic baggage-handlers of Ouagadougou.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1249&start=0#p7653
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Game clubs?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-08 23:15:58

[quote="Bainespal"]I don't think I could ever gather enough motivation to finish a difficult game like [i]Make it Good[/i] on my own, as much as I might like to.  I'd be happy to participate in community play-through, especially of some of the harder and longer games.  There are many longer puzzle games that I've given up on, and this might be a way for me to finally see the end of some of them.[/quote]
Would you care to list them? We can put together a queue perhaps...

I had a look at the intro of Make It Good. I would be willing to start a thread here for new players of it (or at least people who haven't finished it yet) if there is interest.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1287&start=0#p7654
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Hint Request -- The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-08 23:19:11

[quote="Bainespal"]I'm nearly done with [i]The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy[/i], having a score of 350 out of 400.

Here's my explanation of my current game state:
[spoiler]I've done just above everything there is to do onboard the Heart of Gold, and I've been to all the areas that you get transported to by using the improbability drive.  I'm fairly certain that I've accomplished all the goals in those areas and gotten all the necessary objects.  Now the The Heart of Gold has landed on Magrathea, and I need Marvin's help to open the hatch, to get out of the ship.  Marvin will go to the Access Space to fix the hatch, but I have to bring the one tool that he needs.  I can only bring one object, and the hints confirmed that Marvin will [i]never[/i] ask for the one tool that I happen to be carrying.

The hints complicated matters for me.  The question about opening the hatch directs me to another hint topic, about the fluff.  I have all four pieces of fluff that the hints imply that I need.  The Guide entry about fluff gives the impression that I can somehow put the four pieces of fluff together to create a seed or a plant.  I don't know how to do this, and the hint topic tells me not to go on until I've found the flower pot.  But I've never come across a flower pot.

Did I miss the pot at some point, making the game unwinnable?  I think Infocom hates me.  [emote];)[/emote][/spoiler]

Thank you.[/quote]
I think that's about where I got stuck, but I eventually got through it (I think I had to use some hints).

[spoiler]Have you been inside the whale yet? I don't remember where the flower pot comes from, but I know that the whale is involved in this puzzle.[/spoiler]

Oh, and by the way, I think there is some help available about this puzzle in the footnotes, if you know where to look. I didn't, and only found out about them after the fact.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1249&start=10#p7655
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Game clubs?
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-08-09 12:55:24

[quote="capmikee"]
Would you care to list them? We can put together a queue perhaps...
[/quote]
I've started many games that I haven't finished.  Here are some of the ones that I made serious attempt at solving, and that I would interested to finish some day:  [i]Curses[/i], [i]Jigsaw[/i], [i]Trinity[/i], [i]Border Zone[/i], [i]Beyond Zork[/i], [i]Adventure[/i], [i]Zork[/i], [i]Anchorhead[/i], [i]The King of Shreds and Patches[/i], [i]Without a Clue[/i]... that should be enough. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1287&start=0#p7656
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Hint Request -- The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-08-09 12:56:53

No, I haven't seen that.  I think I'll check the hints about that part and see what I missed.  I really appreciate your help. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1287&start=0#p7659
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Hint Request -- The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-09 23:16:55

[quote="Bainespal"]No, I haven't seen that.  I think I'll check the hints about that part and see what I missed.  I really appreciate your help. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
[spoiler]My memory is a little fuzzy, but I think you might need to complete all the other episodes connected to the Infinite Improbability Drive first. I think there's a way to control where you end up - have you figured that out?[/spoiler]
I mentioned the footnotes before. I think I meant the Guide itself, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1249&start=10#p7660
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Game clubs?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-09 23:22:13

[quote="Bainespal"][quote="capmikee"]
Would you care to list them? We can put together a queue perhaps...
[/quote]
I've started many games that I haven't finished.  Here are some of the ones that I made serious attempt at solving, and that I would interested to finish some day:  [i]Curses[/i], [i]Jigsaw[/i], [i]Trinity[/i], [i]Border Zone[/i], [i]Beyond Zork[/i], [i]Adventure[/i], [i]Zork[/i], [i]Anchorhead[/i], [i]The King of Shreds and Patches[/i], [i]Without a Clue[/i]... that should be enough. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
I've already been through Curses, Beyond Zork, Zork, Adventure and Anchorhead with varying degrees of hints and walkthroughs. Trinity I'm saving for when I can convince my wife to play with me. But I'd be interested in the remainder:

Jigsaw

Border Zone

The King of Shreds and Patches

Without a Clue


...Anyone else?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=0#p7661
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Z-Machine extensions proposal
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-08-10 01:03:16

I like what you're suggesting, and have started working to add 1.1 support to Gnusto. Well, firstly by writing test cases for it (<a class="postlink" href="http://github.com/curiousdannii/gnusto/commit/8cc4f990a0a66927a1ce0fe920750c411c93d417">http://github.com/curiousdannii/gnusto/ ... 411c93d417</a>)

Do we need to check that we're running on a 1.1 terp for the updates/clarification section? I ask because I haven't found any terps that return 0 for @get_prop_len 0.

I think there might still be use for extensions to the Z-Machine, even though Quixe is useable. For the moment the Z-Machine is still quite popular, and the lack of mobile support for it is a problem. And the extensions that we'll make will probably be quite small, such as the gestalt selector in the transcripts proposal.

Was there a Z-Machine developers mailing list? I thought there was one (hosted at feelies.org?) but I can't find it anymore.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=0#p7662
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Z-Machine extensions proposal
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-08-10 02:20:13

Test cases are a good thing [emote]:-)[/emote] I did create a test Z-code file for Windows Frotz for this work: it's in the Windows Frotz zip file on the Archive.

I don't think games really need to test for 1.1 for the updates/clarifications bit: it's just making absolutely clear a few bits that were left vague in the 1.0 spec. I suspect if you dig around the really old interpreters in the Archive you can find some with odd behaviour on these points, but at this stage they're so archaic that it's not really an issue any more: everyone is using something Frotz-based or Gnusto-based [emote]:-)[/emote]

There was a Z-machine mailing list, but I can't remember where: I'd have to check my old emails at home. In any case it's pretty much dead - I don't recall getting a message from it for a few years.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=120#p7663
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Stew / DateTime: 2010-08-10 03:02:15

Yes. Apogee was started by Scott Miller out of his house. [emote]:)[/emote] As far as I know, those were the only two IF games they made. Tip: Run Beyond the Titanic in DOSBox (a free dos emulator at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.dosbox.com/">http://www.dosbox.com/</a>) or it will crash with an error.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1288&start=0#p7664
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Quixe IE issue
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-08-10 09:36:47

I've been working with Quixe a bit for my WIP as it approaches beta.  It's awesome, by the way.  Looks great, works great!  Performance under modern browsers (Firefox, Chrome, and IE8) is pretty good -- not what you'd get with a dedicated interpreter, of course, but decently responsive.  IE7 and IE6 are ridiculously slow -- to the point that I'm considering putting in detection code into the page to wave the user off if they're using those browsers.

I'm having a problem in the otherwise-snappy IE8, though, that's due to the stupid way Microsoft configured their long-running script termination message.  It could probably be fixed with some changes to Quixe, but I'm not a skilled JS developer so I don't know how to do it myself.

Since IE4, MS has had a registry setting that controls how many Javascript statements they'll let you run before throwing the "slow script" messagebox.  This means that for slow, old comps running IE7, the script might run (and appear to hang) for 30+ seconds before hitting the statement limit and getting the messagebox, but it also means that if I run IE8 on a Core i7 machine I can get this messagebox in 1-2 seconds, which seems ridiculous.  It's totally unscalable -- effectively, beyond a certain level of complexity an IE user will always get this messagebox no matter how efficient their JS engine is and how fast their computer is!  The default statement limit is 5,000,000, I believe.

The limit can be adjusted in the registry, but that's hardly reasonable to require users to change.  Another tactic involves releasing control back to the browser during long operations, a la this article:  [url]http://www.picnet.com.au/blogs/Guido/post/2010/03/04/How-to-prevent-Stop-running-this-script-message-in-browsers.aspx[/url].

I think with a modification along these lines in Quixe, IE8 will be quite usable alongside Firefox and Chrome (and I assume Opera and Safari -- haven't tested them yet).  Without it, IE8 is just unviable in general for works beyond a certain level of complexity.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=0#p7665
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Z-Machine extensions proposal
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-08-10 10:24:42

[quote]I don't think games really need to test for 1.1 for the updates/clarifications bit: it's just making absolutely clear a few bits that were left vague in the 1.0 spec.[/quote]
That was my thinking, that the clarifications part of the 1.1 spec should be followed by all 1.0 terps while it was only the 1.1 terps that would implement the new stuff. But I guess the ones who ship, win, and the de facto standard is still Frotz, whatever it actually implements. (Though Gargoyle stating it's a 1.1 terp while not supporting the new opcodes is a worry...)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1278&start=10#p7666
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creative Scope and I7
User: WMWade / DateTime: 2010-08-10 10:58:31

There may be a more elegant way, but something like this would work:

[code]The description of Bobby is "Bobby is a cool dude. [Bobby status] [Bobby mood]"

Bobby-status and Bobby-mood are texts that vary.

To say Bobby status: say Bobby-status.

To say Bobby mood: say Bobby-mood.

When the fight-scene begins:
  Now Bobby-status is "Bobby is weak from fighting and clearly in need of help,";
  Now Bobby-mood is "but he still looks determined."

When the fight-scene ends:
  Now Bobby-status is "Bobby is weak from fighting,";
  if Bobby is injured:
    Now Bobby-mood is "and stoic against the pain.";
  otherwise:
    Now Bobby-mood is "but almost euphoric with relief."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1287&start=0#p7667
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Hint Request -- The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-08-10 12:44:09

[quote="capmikee"][spoiler]My memory is a little fuzzy, but I think you might need to complete all the other episodes connected to the Infinite Improbability Drive first. I think there's a way to control where you end up - have you figured that out?[/spoiler]
I mentioned the footnotes before. I think I meant the Guide itself, though.[/quote]
[spoiler]No, I haven't figured out how to control the improbability drive, if there's a way to do that.  I've been assuming that I've been to all the regions assosciated with the drive, since I've collected all the tools and all the fluff.  I've tried flipping the switch on the drive some more, but it just sends me back to a random region that I've already completed, and I get "killed" instantly, only to be sent back to the Heart of Gold.  Maybe if I keep trying, the drive will randomly take me to the whale's region, but I don't think so.  I probably have to do something to the drive first.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1286&start=0#p7668
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Half-Finished Game: Need Programmer
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-08-10 13:07:39

[quote="cunctator"]It's in Inform, and it's also quite simple, as the storyline is very linear. And I'm very very interested in finishing it in time for IFComp.[/quote]
As a non-programmer, I'd like to encourage you to try to learn how to implement a game using one of the several systems that the IF community has developed.  You don't have to be a real programmer in order to learn the syntax of an IF language.  It's not easy, and I'm not claiming to have become an expert with any of the systems, myself, but I think if a non-programmer is determined enough, he can put a game together.  Basically, if you know how to use the out-of-the-box features of an IF system, you can implement your game ideas as long as you don't try to do anything that requires original programming.  If a certain feature is essential to your game, choose a system that allows you to include that feature to your specifications using built-in functionality or extensions by other users.

You might want to learn a system like Inform 7 or ADRIFT, both of which prevent the game designer from the necessity of working with cryptic computer code.  I'm sure you already know about Inform 7's natural language and ADRIFT's graphical user interface.  Another thing to consider would be to use a simpler IF language that lets you use implement basic games without worrying about advanced features, like ALAN, or maybe Hugo, or ADRIFT (again).

For now, though, I hope you'll find a programmer partner in order to finish your game for the comp.  By the way, I hope I didn't come across too snobishly, or anything.  I can't really program at all, and I've probably gotten stuck with code-related issues on most of my aborted WIPs.  Hmm... maybe I should look for a programmer to collaborate with, too.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1289&start=0#p7669
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Quick Actions and Slow Actions
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-08-10 13:14:12

Really a 2 part question.

1) Wait: In zork wait advances the turn count by 3, unless something happens. How can I have the wait command advance the turn count further, but also stop if something happens. (IE Wait is 3 rounds, but if the pipe will burst in 2, it will stop when the pipe bursts).

2) Examine: I would like the examine command to not advance the turn count at all, since it takes very little time to glance at an object, and I would hate the player to not examine anything during a timed puzzle. 

So, I guess, how do I make various actions take a various number of turns, and how do I make the longer actions interrupt by outside forces?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1249&start=10#p7670
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Game clubs?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-08-10 13:26:30

I'm interested in any of those four (plus Make It Good). I haven't tried any of them at all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1289&start=0#p7671
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Quick Actions and Slow Actions
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-08-10 13:34:49

I highly recommend Variable Time Control.  

For various reasons, it's not quite right for me, and I just completed a chunk of code for the first part of this.  It's not final by any means, but what worked for me was basically this:

1) Create a new action (waiting for awhile)
2) Classify all my scenes as urgent or nonurgent, and allow the player to know about urgent scenes or not
3) It's basically a big loop: for X turns, repeat through:
  - if an urgent known scene is happening, stop (or at least ask the player if she wants to stop)
  - otherwise, follow the turn sequence rules, or if you don't have a reason to follow the turn rules, advance the time of day by a minute

From there, it's just a matter of setting up which scenes are important enough to break actions for, setting checks for waiting during urgent scenes, and printing out text refusals to continue if necessary.

What I haven't figured out is how to work this loop into more normal actions - if, say, I was taking 12 pens and something dramatic happened at turn 4, would I be able to stop with 3 pens?  I'm basically ignoring that now, since most of the actions that will take a significant portion of time are ones I'm making, so it's easy enough to do the loop myself.  Otherwise, I ask the game to silently wait an appropriate number of turns after the action. 

Variable Time Control is really clean in this way, and worth looking at.  It's lightweight and easy to use - I'd only recommend the alternative if you have no choice.  (I'm not entirely sure where my code is incompatible with VTC - it's definitely not working with McGravin's Weather, and it's not quite right with a couple other things I've done, but for smaller/less extension intensive projects it would be ideal.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1289&start=0#p7672
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Quick Actions and Slow Actions
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-08-10 13:40:18

The I7 example "Timeless" shows you how to make an action take no game time (you interrupt the turn sequence rulebook with a "rule succeeds" command before the every turn rules fire in the turn sequence rulebook). The next example, "Endurance," is supposed to show how to make different actions take different lengths of time, but it doesn't look very useful for your purposes; maybe you want to do a loop that repeats the turn sequence rules but halts when something significant happens? That seems a little trickier to do.

(I've still got 5Z71; my documentation has the examples as no. 391 and 392 in section 18.17, but maybe it moved. Anyway, look for the turn sequence rules.)

...or that extension Gravel mentions sounds cool.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=0#p7673
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Z-Machine extensions proposal
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-08-10 14:10:57

[quote="Dannii"]Though Gargoyle stating it's a 1.1 terp while not supporting the new opcodes is a worry...[/quote]Is that something specific that you know of, or just a vague concern? Without actually looking at the Frotz code in Gargoyle, I know that Ben imported the work done from Windows Frotz to get Unicode support, which should (or at least could) have provided 1.1 support too. If it claims 1.1 but fails on the opcode, we should definitely hassle Ben to fix it one way or the other.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=0#p7674
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Z-Machine extensions proposal
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-08-10 19:06:08

[quote="DavidK"]Is that something specific that you know of, or just a vague concern? Without actually looking at the Frotz code in Gargoyle, I know that Ben imported the work done from Windows Frotz to get Unicode support, which should (or at least could) have provided 1.1 support too. If it claims 1.1 but fails on the opcode, we should definitely hassle Ben to fix it one way or the other.[/quote]

I did just import all your work from Windows Frotz, and it seems rather likely that I missed the fact that it now claims to be a 1.1 terp as a consequence.

Is this governed by these values in [url=http://code.google.com/p/garglk/source/browse/trunk/terps/frotz/main.c#80]main.c[/url]?

[code]
zbyte h_standard_high = 1;
zbyte h_standard_low = 1;
[/code]

If so I will patch the source right away. I haven't done an official release based on the changes yet, so there should be relatively few instances of this in the wild.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=0#p7675
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Z-Machine extensions proposal
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-08-10 21:12:36

Well someone commented out the two opcodes in [url=http://code.google.com/p/garglk/source/browse/trunk/terps/frotz/process.c]process.c[/url], so if it wasn't you... [emote];)[/emote]

I think those lines are the ones that matter, but David could tell you for sure.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1290&start=0#p7676
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Action that take any string as argument?
User: welkin / DateTime: 2010-08-10 22:02:05

Hi all,

I am very new to IF development (started yesterday), and I am trying to make an IF that involves some word puzzles. So I'd like to be able to define an action like "answer XXX", where "XXX" can be any string that is to be validated. I looked at a couple TADS tutorials, but it seems like the actions all expect the name of an object. Is there a way to get around this, where I can let the user enter any arbitrary string as input? Thanks to all in advance, your help's greatly appreciated!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1287&start=0#p7677
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Hint Request -- The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-10 22:22:32

[quote="Bainespal"][spoiler]No, I haven't figured out how to control the improbability drive, if there's a way to do that.  I've been assuming that I've been to all the regions assosciated with the drive, since I've collected all the tools and all the fluff.  I've tried flipping the switch on the drive some more, but it just sends me back to a random region that I've already completed, and I get "killed" instantly, only to be sent back to the Heart of Gold.  Maybe if I keep trying, the drive will randomly take me to the whale's region, but I don't think so.  I probably have to do something to the drive first.[/spoiler][/quote]
Okay, then, here's a hint for you:
[spoiler]You can't control the improbability drive itself, but you CAN control where you end up.

I just checked this against the Invisiclues. I was only half right about not being able to control the Improbability drive. You may be missing something related to that.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1290&start=0#p7678
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Action that take any string as argument?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-08-10 22:25:56

Sure. There's an [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/techman/t3verb.htm]article on creating verbs[/url] in the TADS 3 Technical Manual. Scroll down to the section "Verbs with a "literal" object", which explains how to create verbs that take a string of text instead of an object. You might also want to read the section "Verbs with no objects", since these two kinds of verbs are very similar.

If you still have questions after reading that article, just ask!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1290&start=0#p7679
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Action that take any string as argument?
User: welkin / DateTime: 2010-08-10 22:53:13

[quote="Emerald"]Sure. There's an [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/techman/t3verb.htm]article on creating verbs[/url] in the TADS 3 Technical Manual. Scroll down to the section "Verbs with a "literal" object", which explains how to create verbs that take a string of text instead of an object. You might also want to read the section "Verbs with no objects", since these two kinds of verbs are very similar.

If you still have questions after reading that article, just ask![/quote]
Super! That worked perfectly, thank you so much!!!  [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=0#p7680
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Z-Machine extensions proposal
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-08-10 23:12:39

[quote="Dannii"]Well someone commented out the two opcodes in [url=http://code.google.com/p/garglk/source/browse/trunk/terps/frotz/process.c]process.c[/url], so if it wasn't you... [emote];)[/emote][/quote]

Well, I'm sure it was me. I figured I had not implemented @set_true_colour or @buffer_screen, so it was safe to comment them out.

I did consider trying for full 1.1 support, but the requisite changes to @set_text_style put me off. Combining text styles would require even more mangling on the Glk side, though the functionality would admittedly be useful for other interpreters (such as Hugo) which expect an equivalent level of control.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1291&start=0#p7681
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Room Listings - Things, and Person's
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2010-08-10 23:24:43

I am new to TADs and have been scouring the references etc. looking for ways of having things and people that are present in the current Room NOT be mentioned when the room does its listing. With things I've been able to use a blank initSpecialDesc to avoid it being mentioned:

[code]
handheldLookingGlass: Thing 'Looking Glass/Handheld Looking Glass' 'Looking Glass' @rabbitHole
    "The handheld looking glass is polished silver, very ornate. It is a very beautiful piece of craftsmanship."
    initSpecialDesc = ""
;
[/code]

But this doesn't seem to work for Person objects. - and this seems a bit hacky. I don't want them to be hidden, I just want to have more control over when/how they are described when the player does a 'look' etc.


Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1290&start=0#p7682
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Action that take any string as argument?
User: welkin / DateTime: 2010-08-10 23:34:34

[quote="Emerald"]Sure. There's an [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/techman/t3verb.htm]article on creating verbs[/url] in the TADS 3 Technical Manual. Scroll down to the section "Verbs with a "literal" object", which explains how to create verbs that take a string of text instead of an object. You might also want to read the section "Verbs with no objects", since these two kinds of verbs are very similar.

If you still have questions after reading that article, just ask![/quote]
Actually I do have a second question now, so I've made my action that takes a single literal, now if the user types just "answer" without any parameter, I get "invalid index operation". I guess the code wasn't smart enough to handle the empty string case, or something like that. So what should I do? Try catch? Make yet another action Answer that takes no argument at all? (ideally i just want to print "what do you want to answer")

Thanks again for any help!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=0#p7683
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Z-Machine extensions proposal
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-08-10 23:49:46

[quote="bcressey"]I did consider trying for full 1.1 support, but the requisite changes to @set_text_style put me off. Combining text styles would require even more mangling on the Glk side, though the functionality would admittedly be useful for other interpreters (such as Hugo) which expect an equivalent level of control.[/quote]
Demona allows combining text styles - between my color patch and the full set of Glk styles, I think there should already be enough functionality.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1167&start=10#p7684
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Floating-point math in Glulx
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-10 23:58:31

This is now implemented in Glulxe and Quixe. You can see the test suite, or rather be dazzled by its blizzard of opaque numbers and operators:

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/test/play.html">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/test/play.html</a>

(Type "allfloat" to run just the float tests.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1285&start=0#p7685
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Preventing line breaks before "objects here"
User: ChrisFederico / DateTime: 2010-08-11 00:12:39

I've modified the Single Paragraph Description extension to no longer consider whether or not an object has been handled before its initial appearance is printed. (You might want to try this extension, Livens; it squishes everything together nicely, and you can just decide where the carriage returns are by inserting [line break] in the right places.)

Now I'm just trying to figure out how to keep the extension from overriding BRIEF.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1291&start=0#p7686
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Room Listings - Things, and Person's
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-08-11 00:13:58

For things, you can set the "isListed" or "isListedInContents" property to nil. "isListedInContents" controls whether the item is mentioned after the description of the thing it's in/on. "isListed" controls whether the item is mentioned after a room description. By default "isListed" uses the value of "isListedInContents", so if you don't want the item mentioned in either the room description or container/surface descriptions, you can just set "isListedInContents = nil".

For people, you have to set the "useSpecialDesc" property to nil. (Since people are special, TADS 3 gives them all a simple specialDesc by default; that way you never get told things like, "You see Bob and a ball here.")

In both cases, you can use a function instead of a simple nil value, if you want the object to be listed in some cases but not all. For instance, if you want Bob to be listed normally in all cases except when he's in his armchair:

[code]useSpecialDesc() {
    if (isIn(armchair))
        return nil;
    else
        return true;
}[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1290&start=0#p7687
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Action that take any string as argument?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-08-11 00:22:36

Using the example code in the Technical Manual, I don't get that problem. If I enter "say" on its own, it asks me what I want to say, as it should. Can you post your code?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=10#p7688
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Z-Machine extensions proposal
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-08-11 00:50:29

[quote="vaporware"]Demona allows combining text styles - between my color patch and the full set of Glk styles, I think there should already be enough functionality.[/quote]

You're right, of course. I'd been thinking that the permutations of fixed, italic, bold, and reverse pushed it outside the 11 style bounds. But since reverse gets treated differently, we only need 8 static styles.

Which should have been obvious, since Gargoyle only allows 8 font styles in the first place. [emote]:oops:[/emote] 

All of a sudden, it looks like support for the 1.1 standard will make the next release after all. Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=10#p7689
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Z-Machine extensions proposal
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-08-11 01:02:26

[quote="bcressey"]I did just import all your work from Windows Frotz, and it seems rather likely that I missed the fact that it now claims to be a 1.1 terp as a consequence.[/quote]Ah, that makes sense. Yes, it's controlled by [b]h_standard_high[/b] and [b]h_standard_low[/b]: changing the latter to 0 will fix the problem. Having said that...
[quote="bcressey"]I did consider trying for full 1.1 support, but the requisite changes to @set_text_style put me off. Combining text styles would require even more mangling on the Glk side, though the functionality would admittedly be useful for other interpreters (such as Hugo) which expect an equivalent level of control.[/quote]Having full 1.1 support (at least for everything other than V6) with a minimal implementation should be possible without much work. From the section on @set_text_style:[quote="spec 1.1"]If the interpreter is unable to provide the requested style combination, it shall give precedence first to the styles requested in the most recent call to @set_text_style, and within that to the highest bit, making the priority Fixed, Italic, Bold, Reverse.[/quote]It would be nice to have Gargoyle on spec 1.1, as that makes the idea of having a spec 1.2 for Dannii's gestalt opcode more feasible: if Gargoyle won't support it, it won't get that far. [emote]:-)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1291&start=0#p7690
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Room Listings - Things, and Person's
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2010-08-11 01:16:01

Thank you so much! I'll try these solutions!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1290&start=0#p7692
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Action that take any string as argument?
User: welkin / DateTime: 2010-08-11 07:35:55

[quote="Emerald"]Using the example code in the Technical Manual, I don't get that problem. If I enter "say" on its own, it asks me what I want to say, as it should. Can you post your code?[/quote]
Ahhhhh I see! I did not define my verbPhrase correctly. Now I finally know what this parameter is used for! Thanks again [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=10#p7693
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Z-Machine extensions proposal
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-08-11 10:12:59

[quote="DavidK"]Having full 1.1 support (at least for everything other than V6) with a minimal implementation should be possible without much work. From the section on @set_text_style [...][/quote]

Oh, I see. The earlier wording threw me off the track:

[quote="spec 1.1"]However, Standard 1.1 does now require such combinations in a single opcode to be supported, as they are in some of Infocom's later interpreters - see below.[/quote]

I assumed that "supported" meant "honored" rather than simply allowed, and that "see below" referred to a list of Infocom interpreters that had included such support.

Clearly the whole episode was not a shining moment in the annals of reading comprehension, but I can make amends.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1293&start=0#p7694
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Glulx VM spec 3.1.2
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-11 21:59:05

I've posted the complete Glulx 3.1.2 spec: <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/</a>

The floating-point opcodes are the big change. Minor changes, collected over the last several months:

  Deprecated 8-bit and 16-bit locals. Also deprecated the use of the copyb and copys opcodes with a local-variable operand.
  Noted that opcodes 0x1000 to 0x10FF are reserved for FyreVM; also gestalt selectors 0x1000 to 0x10FF, and I/O system 20.
  Clarified that you may not use @setmemsize when the memory heap is active.
  Clarified that glk_put_string() cannot accept encoded Glulx strings.

Please take a look (if you're the spec-reading type) and tell me if you see anything obviously stupid.

The I6 compiler support for this float stuff is linked on the web page. (You'll have to compile your own I6 binary, until this patch makes it into the official Inform distribution.)

The interpreter support (Glulxe and Quixe) is ready to go, but I don't have it posted yet. I'll try to do it tomorrow.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1293&start=0#p7695
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx VM spec 3.1.2
User: weiju / DateTime: 2010-08-12 02:20:34

Great !

I just added the floating point instructions to ZMPP:

> 68 tests failed overall: floatmod (27), floatexp(6), fjump (30), fprint (6)

oh well, I guess, I still have some debugging ahead of me [emote]:D[/emote] 

Wei-ju

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1294&start=0#p7696
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Defining a Bottle to Drink From
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2010-08-12 04:30:32

I am trying to define a bottle for Alice to drink from so that she can shrink. I've found documentation on food, and the dobjFor(Drink) - but when I use this I get the 'this is not something you can drink' message. How would I define a bottle full of liquid that could be drunk by the player's character? - here is the bottle definition I have so far (I don't have all my checks in there yet - like is Alice taller than two feet? or has she already drunk the liquid? - I'll add these etc once I get it drinkable):

[code]
drinkMeBottle : Thing 'Drink Me Bottle' 'bottle marked drink me' @foyer
    "The small bottle is made up of dark glass. It is filled with some sort of liquid. A paper label tied with dainty string to the neck of the bottle reads 'Drink Me'"
    isListed = nil
    isUsed = nil
    dobjFor(Drink)
    {
        preCond = [objHeld]
        action()
        {
            "You pick up the little bottle, all the while telling yourself that it is good advice not to do so. Then again, the bottle doesn't appear to
            be marked poison. Oh how many times have you given yourself good advice yet not headed it? You pull the cork from the bottle. It lets out a faint
            pop and greenish whisps of steam slowly rise then dissipate. You take a drink of the strangely tasty liquid. You become dizzy and the world seems to spin a
            bit. When your head clears so see that you are now smaller than the little door at the end of the hall. How very curious.";
            drinkMeBottle.isUsed = true;
            me.height = 2;
        }
    }
;
[/code]


Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1294&start=0#p7697
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Defining a Bottle to Drink From
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-08-12 05:03:33

The "not something you can drink" message is coming from the "verify" stage of the action. All you have to do to get rid of the message is to add an empty "verify()" method to the "dobjFor(Drink)" section, like so:

[code]drinkMeBottle : Thing 'Drink Me Bottle' 'bottle marked drink me' @foyer
    "The small bottle is made up of dark glass. It is filled with some sort of liquid. A paper label tied with dainty string to the neck of the bottle reads 'Drink Me'"
    isListed = nil
    isUsed = nil
    dobjFor(Drink)
    {
        preCond = [objHeld]
        verify() { }
        action()
        {
            "You pick up the little bottle, all the while telling yourself that it is good advice not to do so. Then again, the bottle doesn't appear to
            be marked poison. Oh how many times have you given yourself good advice yet not headed it? You pull the cork from the bottle. It lets out a faint
            pop and greenish whisps of steam slowly rise then dissipate. You take a drink of the strangely tasty liquid. You become dizzy and the world seems to spin a
            bit. When your head clears so see that you are now smaller than the little door at the end of the hall. How very curious.";
            drinkMeBottle.isUsed = true;
            me.height = 2;
        }
    }
;[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1295&start=0#p7698
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Going Fishing
User: edwinmcrae / DateTime: 2010-08-12 05:50:49

I'm a relative newbie at IF, trying to find an example somewhere in Inform 7 of how to fish a key out of a vent using fishing rod.  Any help is most most welcome! [emote]:shock:[/emote]

Edwin
[url]http://www.edwinmcrae.com[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1295&start=0#p7699
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Going Fishing
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-08-12 06:50:31

I don't think there's an example that's exactly about fishing things with other things, but basically you would need to create a new action (chapter 12.7. in the manual) for fishing stuff with the rod, and you would need to prevent the player from taking the key without the rod (Instead of taking; see ch. 7.2). What have you tried and where are you having problems?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1293&start=0#p7700
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx VM spec 3.1.2
User: nitfol / DateTime: 2010-08-12 07:50:23

From the spec itself, I'd never get all the special cases right.  So maybe either refer to the unit tests from the spec or add tables of some more of the special cases.

For example, ceil(-0.5).  My man page actually says, [quote]ceil(-0.5) is 0.0[/quote] which doesn't match the behavior of the ceil function or the expected unit test behavior.  It does happen to match what mono implements for the ceil function, which means I needed to add a test for this case.  The Java spec describes how the ceil function is supposed to behave, which seems to agree with the unittests: [url]http://download-llnw.oracle.com/javase/1.5.0/docs/api/java/lang/Math.html#ceil%28double%29[/url]

In the places where you do talk about the special cases, you write like [quote]+-pi[/quote] which seems obvious now, but somehow confused me greatly when I first read it (is that a hyphen between the positive and the pi?).  If you could write this as [quote]±pi[/quote] or [quote](+/-) pi[/quote] it might be a little clearer.

You might add a justification for fmod returning two values, as it seems kind of weird (fmodf only returns one value; it doesn't match the integer opcode; in my implementation I end up calculating the mod twice, once for the mod and once for the quotient).  And apparently "remainder" means something different from "modulus," so you might not want to refer to "remainder" when describing this function.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1295&start=0#p7701
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Going Fishing
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-08-12 08:21:40

Fishing is an action applying to one thing. Understand "fish for/out [something]" and "fish for/out [something] with rod" as fishing. [INCLUDE OTHER UNDERSTANDS]

Check fishing:
    if the player does not carry the rod, say "You have nothing to fish with." instead.
 
Carry out fishing:
   if the noun is the key and the key is in the grate, say "You fish out the key.";
   now the player carries the key.

Instead of taking something which is in the grate, say "You can't reach."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1278&start=10#p7702
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creative Scope and I7
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-08-12 09:49:54

[quote="WMWade"]There may be a more elegant way, but something like this would work:[/quote]

That doesn't address the issue, I'm afraid. The solution you propose creates cross-dependencies that would scale exponentially with the size of the game. We want to reduce the number of potential breaks and keep the code manageable, whereas this does the opposite.

Zarf's solution, had it worked for an object, would have been easy enough to extend:

[code]
A state is a kind of value. The states are humming, blipping, blopping, crashing, and burning.
The computer has a state. The computer is humming.

The description of the computer is "[comp-desc state][run paragraph on]".

To say comp-desc (R - state):
say "The machine moves." [general case]

To say comp-desc (R - humming):
say "The computer hummmmms in gentle reproach."
[/code]

Adding a new description would simply entail entering a new comp-desc, which would override the default state.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1295&start=0#p7703
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Going Fishing
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-08-12 11:16:11

You'll also need a default response for fishing out other things with the rod.  I'd put fishing the key under a check condition:

Check fishing:
if the noun is the key and the key is in the grate, say "You fish out the key.";
now the player carries the key instead.

And use something generic for "carry out":

Carry out fishing:
say "You can't fish [that-those]!".

(You'd need Plurality to do [that-those] - otherwise, you'll need to come up with a generic refusal.)

Consider also that people may want to fish wish, fish in, fish around, etc.  You'll need to add these clauses for a smooth play experience.

Something like this (not compiled - sorry!) would properly address the situation when someone types >FISH IN GRATE (assuming you've added the appropriate "understand" clauses.)

Check fishing a container:
if there is something in the noun:
try fishing a random thing in the noun instead.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1293&start=0#p7704
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx VM spec 3.1.2
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-12 11:35:50

Referring to the unit test seems like bad form, but you're right, it's probably necessary.

However, I can say that ceil and floor retain the sign of their argument. Which the libc ceil function *does*, on my Mac. I guess I'll have to do some Linux tests before I release this.

(Not to mention, my makefile doesn't include -lm, 

Remainder vs modulus: I think it *is* the remainder, actually. A modulus would always have the same sign as the second argument.

The +- thing is copied straight from the Mac (that is, BSD) man pages. Sure, I'll make it ±, I just have to dig into this twelve-year-old text-formatter program... :)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1296&start=0#p7705
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: What do you do when you have more ideas than time?
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-08-12 12:18:45

I've just begun getting back into IF, checking out the Inform language, after several false starts with other languages.  The trouble is, I find I have more ideas for interactive fiction games and settings than I have time to execute them.

What do you do when you have a surplus of ideas?  Are there people out there who have the IF-coding skills but few game ideas?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1295&start=0#p7706
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Going Fishing
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-08-12 12:35:37

[quote="gravel"]You'll also need a default response for fishing out other things with the rod.  I'd put fishing the key under a check condition:[/quote]
I wouldn't do that: while it works, it's the complete opposite of what the check and carry out rules are designed to do. Check rules should stop unsuccessful attempts and carry out/report should be used when the action is successful.

[code]Fishing it with is an action applying to one visible thing and one carried thing. [+ understands]

Check fishing something with the rod when the noun is not the key: [unsuccessful attempts]
    say "You can't fish [that-those]!" instead.

[+ checks for fishing with something other than the rod, fishing the key after the first time etc]

Carry out fishing with: [the outcome of fishing]
    now the player carries the key.

Report fishing with: [report of successful fishing]
    say "You fish out [the noun]."[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1296&start=0#p7707
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you do when you have more ideas than time?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-12 12:56:01

If you more ideas than time to execute them, you're in the same boat with every other writer and artist on the planet.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1295&start=0#p7708
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Going Fishing
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-12 13:03:02

Nah, I use check rules that way all the time.

It wrecks the compiler's built-in notion of "if we have fished", since check outcomes don't count as successful actions. But then, I don't use those.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1295&start=0#p7709
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Going Fishing
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-08-12 13:44:46

Juhana, I agree with you in most cases; you should follow the intent of the rule structure in general (particularly if you're using extensions like Aaron Reed's Intelligent Hinting, which depend on proper action success/failure behavior), but there are often problems with the placement of report text in the output, as well as problems with complex condition tests where the initial conditions that obtained in the check rule no longer do after the "carry out" phase.  In those cases, lumping your logic into Check rules might be the best way to go.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1295&start=0#p7710
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Going Fishing
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-08-12 13:51:11

[quote="mwigdahl"]Juhana, I agree with you in most cases; you should follow the intent of the rule structure in general (particularly if you're using extensions like Aaron Reed's Intelligent Hinting, which depend on proper action success/failure behavior), but there are often problems with the placement of report text in the output, as well as problems with complex condition tests where the initial conditions that obtained in the check rule no longer do after the "carry out" phase.  In those cases, lumping your logic into Check rules might be the best way to go.[/quote]
Sure, but that's what instead rules are for, right?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1296&start=0#p7711
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you do when you have more ideas than time?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-08-12 13:55:01

Sometimes I'm struggling with that as well, but think about it this way: if you have only one idea, you're stuck with that. If you have 10 ideas, you can pick the best of them to work with.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1295&start=0#p7712
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Going Fishing
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-08-12 14:03:48

[quote="mwigdahl"]Juhana, I agree with you in most cases; you should follow the intent of the rule structure in general (particularly if you're using extensions like Aaron Reed's Intelligent Hinting, which depend on proper action success/failure behavior), but there are often problems with the placement of report text in the output, as well as problems with complex condition tests where the initial conditions that obtained in the check rule no longer do after the "carry out" phase.  In those cases, lumping your logic into Check rules might be the best way to go.[/quote]

Assuming I understand what you mean (e.g., that the report rule is tricky because it requires printing something based on information that has since changed): the official solution (whether you want to use it or not) is to add action variables and store that information for the duration of the action processing.

They're probably overkill for a one-off exception, but useful if you want to do complex things systematically, like have a lot of different exceptions about what gets fished from what.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1296&start=0#p7713
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you do when you have more ideas than time?
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-08-12 14:20:48

I'm trying to look at it this way:  if I've got multiple ideas, I can design modules with all of their needs in mind.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1296&start=0#p7714
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you do when you have more ideas than time?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-08-12 14:23:30

[quote="zarf"]If you more ideas than time to execute them, you're in the same boat with every other writer and artist on the planet.[/quote]
Except for those who find lack of ideas the biggest obstacle.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1296&start=0#p7715
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you do when you have more ideas than time?
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2010-08-12 14:27:24

The problem I see with trying to "outsource" a surplus of ideas is this:
It's [b]your[/b] idea. I find that trying to implant my ideas in other people's heads seldom works at all.
I've found that the best bet is just to write down extra ideas and get to them later.
I can't imagine what would have happened if I tried to convey my ideas for a game to someone else. 99% of the time I get the seed of an idea, and it evolves as I write it. I rarely get a full-fledged game suddenly pop into my head.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1295&start=0#p7716
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Going Fishing
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-08-12 14:57:41

@Juhana -- yes, but Check rules are action-specific, so they don't bloat up the Instead rulebook that gets evaluated for every action.  I know these can be automatically optimized in some circumstances, but I've been trying to speed up a slow WIP under Quixe lately, so please forgive my performance anxiety.  [emote]8-)[/emote] 

@Emily, you did understand me and your point is well-taken.  I've used standalone variables for this also, but action variables would certainly be cleaner.

Matt

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1296&start=0#p7717
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you do when you have more ideas than time?
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-08-12 14:59:21

[quote]99% of the time I get the seed of an idea, and it evolves as I write it. I rarely get a full-fledged game suddenly pop into my head.[/quote]

QFT.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1295&start=10#p7718
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Going Fishing
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-08-12 15:20:33

[quote="mwigdahl"]@Juhana -- yes, but Check rules are action-specific, so they don't bloat up the Instead rulebook that gets evaluated for every action.  I know these can be automatically optimized in some circumstances, but I've been trying to speed up a slow WIP under Quixe lately, so please forgive my performance anxiety.  8-)[/quote]
Yes, I've been hearing talk about this but I'm extremely sceptical about how much the instead rules actually slow the game down. How many insteads does it take for the difference to be noticeable? 10? 50? 1000? Is the limit anywhere within realistic boundaries? Has anyone ever actually measured this? Because just that they are evaluated doesn't automatically mean that they actually slow the game down any more than milliseconds. I might be wrong about this, but I've heard people removing instead rules because they show up in the RULES ALL list, but the "lag between turns halved after I did this" stories are conspicuously missing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1296&start=0#p7719
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you do when you have more ideas than time?
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-08-12 15:28:58

I find that the problem isn't having ideas, it's figuring out which ones are the "good" ones -- that is, the ones that I (at least) think are worth throwing my time after.

Outsourcing ideas is problematic in my mind because (aside from the difficulty of finding someone with more time than ideas, or the monetary toll of paying someone else to foster your idea) by the time you've adequately defined your idea such that someone else can act on it in precisely the way that you've envisioned it, you've more or less instantiated the idea yourself.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1295&start=10#p7720
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Going Fishing
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-08-12 15:47:40

I can't answer that; I've not run hard test numbers.  That sounds like a great experiment to try, though, so I'll try to work up a test under Quixe and give it a shot.  Just off the cuff I'd suspect that you're right, that you'd need a lot of (unoptimized) Instead rules to see marked slowdowns, but hard numbers would be nice.

I do know that Eric Eve implemented Conversation Responses at least partially for this reason.  From his documentation:
[quote]
This may seem to have little advantage over writing rules like "After asking Bob about life", but it also allows the following forms for ask/tell or give/show:

    Response of Bob when asked-or-told about "life":
    Response of Bob when asked-or-told about the wallet:
    Response of Bob when given-or-shown the gold coin:

It also avoids using the After rulebook, since all these Response rules are triggered from the action-specific Report rules (which may be more efficient when there would otherwise need to be a lot of action-generic after rules to cater for a large number of conversational responses). [/quote]

I'll try to see if I can run a quick Quixe test tonight and let you know the results.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1293&start=0#p7721
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx VM spec 3.1.2
User: nitfol / DateTime: 2010-08-12 16:21:50

[quote="zarf"]
However, I can say that ceil and floor retain the sign of their argument. Which the libc ceil function *does*, on my Mac. I guess I'll have to do some Linux tests before I release this.
[/quote]

The ANSI C draft that I have just says, "The ceil functions return the smallest integer value not less than x, expressed as a floating-point number." which doesn't seem to mandate positive or negative zero.  Most of the floating point functions seem to be similarly vague about what happens in the corner cases, unlike your man pages which spell them out. 

In the case of the ceil function, my libc behaves like yours, but my man page is wrong.  I've switched to using the ceil(x) = -floor(-x) trick that the Java spec mentions.

I do see 5 test failures with the latest glulxe (running on Debian amd64): floatexp (1), floattrig (3), floatatan2 (1).

[quote="zarf"]
Remainder vs modulus: I think it *is* the remainder, actually. A modulus would always have the same sign as the second argument.
[/quote]

Apparently the IEEE 754 spec calls out a special remainder function.  There's some examples of the difference between remainder and modulus at [url]http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.math.ieeeremainder.aspx[/url].  The unit tests are expecting the values described as "modulus" on that page.  Java has a similar function (but without examples in their API docs).  The wording here isn't a big deal, but it's one false path I took when trying to get my fmod opcode to match the unit tests.

Additionally, I don't think the rules listed in the spec for the signs work out.  Is the following right?
[code]
fmod -40.5 -3.5 m q
-> m = -2
-> q = -11
-> q * (-3.5) + m = 36.5, not -40.5
[/code]
Perhaps the quotient shouldn't copy the sign of the dividend?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1297&start=0#p7722
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Glulx game - betatesters needed
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2010-08-12 16:32:51

Hello everyone, I'm Joel Webster (you probably guessed that much) and I have a game for you to tear apart (you probably guessed that part, too).

The part you probably haven't guessed is that you've already played it - I'm remaking a classic adventure game into an IF game. I don't want to spoil too much more.

It's not finished, it's only about 20% done, but a major section of the game is ready for your abuse, and I want to make sure I'm doing it right before I go much further.

Oh, also this is my first crack at writing IF, so it's going to have lots of rough spots that need to be smoothed out.

I need betatesters who will go at my game like monkeys on a cupcake.
Have you got the chops to mercilessly slaughter a newbie's work of IF?
j.n.webster at gmail dot com.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1297&start=0#p7723
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Glulx game - betatesters needed
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-08-12 17:15:07

Many cupcake-starved monkeys bang on typewriters at <a class="postlink" href="http://if.game-testing.org/">http://if.game-testing.org/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1298&start=0#p7724
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Find beta-testers at http://if.game-testing.org/
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-08-12 17:34:52

Authors looking for beta-testers could try [url=http://if.game-testing.org/]http://if.game-testing.org/[/url]

(Merk, could you sticky this post?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1293&start=0#p7725
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx VM spec 3.1.2
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-12 19:32:28

I've added the comment about the unit test, the comment about ceil/floor, and the +- change to the spec document. I'm still looking at the modulo thing.

The problem on AMD64 appears to be very small (least-significant-bit) shifts when the underlying library is 64-bit. I see similar errors on OSX 10.6. I think the answer is just to admit that answers are not bit-identical between platforms, and adjust the tests to allow for this. (But I have not yet done that.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1299&start=0#p7726
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: something like "drop 3 coin" isn't working?
User: welkin / DateTime: 2010-08-12 21:10:05

the definition of coin looks like (parts XXXed out because I am writing this in Chinese):

class Coin : Thing 'coin' 'XXX (coin)'
  "XXX" 
   isEquivalent = true 
   aName = 'XXX'
;

but when I try to "drop 3 coin", I get the message "there are no 3 coin here".
"drop 1 coin" worked fine, so I suspect it's something to do with pluralization.

I also have modified Thing (to comply with Chinese language):

modify Thing
	theName() {return name;}
	pluralName() {return name;}
;

But when I took out the pluralName override, I still get the same error. Does anyone have any idea what i could be doing wrong here? Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1299&start=0#p7727
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: something like "drop 3 coin" isn't working?
User: welkin / DateTime: 2010-08-12 22:23:30

Should've looked harder before posting, I needed to define vocab with *. Thanks still to everyone. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=10#p7730
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Z-Machine extensions proposal
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-08-12 23:19:42

I am basically done with the necessary changes to support 1.1:

[list]
[*]@set_true_colour is fully supported[/*:m]
[*]@buffer_screen does nothing and stores 0[/*:m]
[*]@set_text_style supports all combinations of styles, either all at once or from a succession of calls[/*:m][/list:u]

The remaining hurdle is @set_font; the 1.0 standard implies that it's optional, though the 1.1 standard appears to assume it is supported.

[quote="spec 1.1"]Font 4 (or Fixed Pitch style) should be used instead. Infocom did not use the fixed-pitch bit after Version 4, and it is not implemented in at least some of their later interpreters.[/quote]

Is it OK to punt and just store 0 for all @set_font calls? @set_text_style seems to offer a superset of the functionality and the interactions between the two are not rigorously specified in the 1.0 standard.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1294&start=0#p7731
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Defining a Bottle to Drink From
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2010-08-13 02:37:18

Wow thank you SO much! That worked like a charm!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1300&start=0#p7732
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: About making objects "glow" just a little bit in darkness
User: Stew / DateTime: 2010-08-13 02:42:19

Hello,

I am trying to write a routine that makes objects "glow" a little bit in darkness. Here's what I have so far. It will allow the player to examine "glowing" objects which give off enough light to be visible, but not enough to illuminate the whole location. Containers aren't implemented yet. If the orb is put in an open box, for example, it will not show up in the dark.

Code:
[code]
"What Gloweth Must Be Seen" by Steve Westwood

Part 1 - Set-Up

Rule for printing the description of a dark room:
	say "Your eyes can barely make anything out." instead. 
	
After printing the description of a dark room:
	repeat with glorb running through things in location:
		if glorb is a glowing thing:
			place glorb in scope;
			if the initial appearance of glorb is not "":
				say "[line break][initial appearance of glorb][paragraph break]"	
			
After deciding the scope of the player while in darkness:
	repeat with glorb running through things in location:
		if glorb is a glowing thing, place glorb in scope;
		
Visibility rule when examining something:
	if the location is a dark room:
		if the thing is a glowing thing, there is sufficient light;
	
Part 2 - Rooms and Objects

The Lit Place is a room with printed name "The Lit Room". The description of the Lit Place is "Sunlight filters through the windows that make up the walls and reflects off the white panelling of the frames."

The player is in the Lit Place.

Before going to the Lit Place when the location of the orb is the Lit Place:
	say "You think about being blinded again, and decide not to go into the Lit Room after all.";

After going to the Lit Place when the location of the orb is the Lit Place:	
	if the orb is carried by the player:
		now the dark place is lit;
		move the orb to the Lit Place;		
		say "As you enter the room while carrying the orb, a blinding flash sears your retina. Instinctively, you close your eyes and cover them with your hands, dropping the orb. You stumble back through the door to the east.";
		try the player going east;

The Dark Place is a dark room with printed name "The Dark Room". The description of the Dark Place is "There are no windows in this room. The walls are cedar, giving the room a very rustic atmosphere. Low benches line the walls.[if the location of the orb is the Lit Room][paragraph break]Light filters in from the Lit Room, illuminating this room very well.[end if]". The Dark Place is east of the Lit Place.

The benches are a supporter in the Dark Place. The benches are enterable. The benches are plural-named.

Understand "bench" as the benches.

A thing can be glowing or plain. A thing is usually plain. 

The orb is a glowing thing in the Dark Place. "There is an orb here, glowing gently." The description of the orb is "This orb is made out of crystal and glows in the dim light.".

Understand "glowing" and "crystal" as the orb.
[/code]
Any suggestions on how to accomodate containers? So that if a glowing orb is in a small glass case which is itself in an open cardboard box, that the case and the box can be seen as well as the orb? But that if the case with the orb is removed from the box, the box is no longer put into scope?

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1296&start=0#p7733
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you do when you have more ideas than time?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-08-13 08:10:09

I've started a million and one projects and finished about half a dozen.  I still have no idea which ones are going to prove fruitful - although it's often indicated by the "completeness" of the idea after I've been working on the project for a while.  If after a couple of weeks I haven't figured out where the end is, I typically won't get there.

But although it's good to know when to cut your losses on a project that's going nowhere, never consider an idea lost.  You may be able to incorporate it into another project, or it may come back with a vengeance and much better formed than last time.  My current WIP is something I've been trying to get started for a couple of years now - but I could never figure out a good implementation or story arc.  A few weeks back, a combination of unrelated ideas suddenly inspired the perfect way to do it.

EDIT:  Or to address the OP specifically: [i]write down your ideas[/i].  Keep a notebook or a ring binder or a database or a scrapbook.  Just because you can't get it done [i]right this minute[/i], doesn't mean that you need to panic (although I know just where you're coming from).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=10#p7734
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Z-Machine extensions proposal
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-08-13 08:12:26

[quote="bcressey"]Is it OK to punt and just store 0 for all @set_font calls?[/quote]I think you can get away with that under the specification, but I'd be surprised if no games make use of it. Most Frotz ports respect the call, I think: Windows Frotz uses the fixed width font if either the font has been set by @set_font, or the style has been set, or the header bit has been set.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1301&start=0#p7735
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: How to prevent player from examining items on NPCs?
User: welkin / DateTime: 2010-08-13 08:33:16

I think the title pretty much says it all... like when a NPC is carrying an item (by + in NPC declaration), or if I give the NPC something (item.moveInto), I can still examine and otherwise interact with the items. Why is that the case? Or is there a separate "hide it from others' view" property on items? Thanks!

Edit: For my particular use case I was able to use class Hidden and "discover" the item when the NPC gives it to the player; just wondering if there's any better way to achieve this... after all, it doesn't make sense that one can examine things someone else is holding.

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1287&start=0#p7736
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Hint Request -- The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-08-13 10:09:22

Alright, I finally got it!  I've finished the game now.  Thank you, Mike.

[spoiler]I actually did try using the tea as the source of brownian motion the first time I played through that part, but I did pay close enough attention to the Dark messages to realize that it made any difference.[/spoiler]

I suppose Infocom never finished the sequel.  Too bad. [emote]:|[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1296&start=0#p7737
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you do when you have more ideas than time?
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-08-13 12:17:48

[quote="Pacian"]But although it's good to know when to cut your losses on a project that's going nowhere, never consider an idea lost.  You may be able to incorporate it into another project, or it may come back with a vengeance and much better formed than last time.  My current WIP is something I've been trying to get started for a couple of years now - but I could never figure out a good implementation or story arc.  A few weeks back, a combination of unrelated ideas suddenly inspired the perfect way to do it.[/quote]
This sounds like good advice.  I've been trying to combine my many unsuccessful ideas to come up with a plan for one game.  Twice now, doing so has produced another concept with more potential than the others.  The first of these combinations didn't work out, and I no longer think I can make an IF game out of it.  However, I still like the story and theme that I came up with.  Only God knows if I'll ever be able to do anything with it one day.  Now, I'm sort of working on a fantasy-themed game, and I've designed the setting based on many ideas I've had in the past -- not just failed IF projects, but also maps of imaginary worlds that I drew when I was younger, dreaming of the epic struggles of good and evil within them.  And I'm pleased to report that I can call this project my current WIP, because I now have four rooms implemented! [emote]:D[/emote] 

Hertz, go back to your personal motivation for wanting to create anything at all, and then look for all the genuine nuggets of potential in your many ideas.  Eventually, you and I will come to our breakthroughs, I think. [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1293&start=0#p7738
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx VM spec 3.1.2
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-13 12:25:46

The deal with modulo is that I wanted to unify the libc notions of fmod() and modf(). Probably wrongheaded, but they are both useful constructs and I figured there ought to be a clear parent function.

modf(x) returns the integer and fractional parts of x, both with the sign of x. fmod(x,y) returns x-ny, where n is (x/y) rounded towards zero.

(The Mac/BSD man pages explain fmod() terribly, which contributed to me getting this confused.)

When y is positive I'm fine. When y is negative, the problem you describe pops up, and your solution makes sense.

fmod(5.125, -2) => (-2, 1.125)
fmod(-5.125, -2) => (2, -1.125)

I will fix this tonight. Anybody implementing the spec, be aware that I'm changing @fmod out from under you. :)

Thanks for noticing this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=10#p7739
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Z-Machine extensions proposal
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-08-13 13:52:37

[quote="DavidK"]I think you can get away with that under the specification, but I'd be surprised if no games make use of it. Most Frotz ports respect the call, I think: Windows Frotz uses the fixed width font if either the font has been set by @set_font, or the style has been set, or the header bit has been set.[/quote]

OK, I've added support for @set_font as well.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1036&start=0#p7740
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Singular Topic Matching Plural
User: mjroberts / DateTime: 2010-08-13 14:25:30

This is a tricky one.  The basic problem is that topic match ranking order is by design done on the Topic (database) side rather than the input side.  The parser explicitly treats truncation as irrelevant for topic matching because of this - the input matching doesn't get to do any ranking of topics, so the parser's choices for a given word match are "keep" or "discard", and it always chooses "keep" so that the topic database ranker will have a chance to decide when we get to that point.

The topic database ranking is all oriented around the strength of the contextual match - that's what the matchScore is meant to represent.  It's difficult to also incorporate the strength of the textual match, since that introduces a second dimension of rankings.

My proposal would be something like this.  Currently, in the topic database searcher, the first step is that we look for the active Topics that match the input, and we keep the active Topic with the highest matchScore.  In the situation we're talking about here, there are multiple topics (the "elephant" match and the "elephants" match) with equal scores.  When there are ties, the searcher currently just picks the first one it finds, which is why you've observed that it's sensitive to source order.  My proposal is to make a list of the Topics that are tied for best score, and then submit these to a game-defined tie-breaker function.

My reason for going this route, rather than adding general-purpose truncation ranking, is that I don't think truncation is necessarily going to be a sufficiently general selection principle for cases like this.  I think it's more likely that you'll want to check for the presence or absence of certain words, the order of the words, etc - things that would be really hard to encode into a general framework.  I think it'll be a lot easier as an author if you can just write some one-off custom code to handle cases as they come up.

Assuming this is the right approach, the next question is where to put the tie-breaker function.  It could just be a top-level function that takes a list of topics and the input vocabulary, and returns the winner.  Or, it could be a method on the individual Topic objects: we'd call it (with the same arguments as for the function) on each Topic in the list; the method could return an object to propose a winner, or return nil to say it doesn't care.  The question is what happens if we get two or more different winners.  I suppose if we just pick one arbitrarily we'll be no worse off than we are now, and in all likelihood this just won't come up since it's going to be custom code to tweak a special situation anyway.

Let me know what you think.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1302&start=0#p7741
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Choose Your Own Adventure
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-08-13 14:59:27

I see a few IFs out there that are basically choose your own adventure games. The problems with CYOA books was that the books have no memory- who knows if you met the Goblin on page 3, or if you got to page 12 through some other means.

The Lone Wolf gamebooks were CYOA where you built a character and used a chart to track inventory, combat, etc. That was the next level. It seems like IF could be used to improve this process.

Would there be interest in a CYOA format IF if the parser remembered your previous choices, perhaps kept some kind of inventory for you, and allowed previous choices to influence later choices. I know the flowchart on such a thing could get outrageous, but assuming it could be done, how much interest is there out there for something like this.

For example, I considered porting the Lone Wolf books into IF format, to track your powers and inventory for you, and to do combat automatically. Likewise, I considered a seperate CYOA adventure, but one that graded you on the end by your previous choices, rather than forgetting all choices except those required to reach a given ending. (Example, you might loop around in scenarios, but the game changed on what branch you took to get to your current scenario). 

Any thoughts?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1303&start=0#p7742
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Colored Text, distracting or helpful?
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-08-13 15:01:41

I wonder what people think about using colors in text of IF games.
I've seen this done well, such as Quest for Lost Sheep, where item names were one color, exits were another, and NPCs were yet another.
I've also seen this done well in Photopia where each color shows a different part of the story (though some of the colors can be hard to read on screen). 

Any thoughts on colored text? How can it be enriching to the experience?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1169&start=30#p7743
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inventory Limits
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-08-13 15:04:17

Perhaps rather than a rucksack they need a Nodwick- an NPC who carries all their stuff for them to follow them around and hand them items as needed. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1302&start=0#p7744
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Choose Your Own Adventure
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-08-13 15:42:23

There are some CYOAs that are more than simply going through a static flowchart. For example the [url=http://www.choiceofgames.com/]ChoiceScript games[/url] are quite elaborate. I assume having a "memory" in CYOA is no more complex than having one in parser IF, but I'm sure it has its own pitfalls.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1287&start=0#p7745
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Hint Request -- The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-08-13 15:58:04

Your reply makes me think you aren't aware of the following. In which case, you'll probably be very interested.

<a class="postlink" href="http://waxy.org/2008/04/milliways_infocoms_unreleased_sequel_to_hitchhikers_guide_to_the_galax/index.shtml">http://waxy.org/2008/04/milliways_infoc ... ndex.shtml</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1304&start=0#p7746
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Following a Star - Glulx game in need of testing
User: Kivie / DateTime: 2010-08-13 17:04:50

Hello,
I've already posted a call at if.game-testing, but if anyone here is interested, I have a game that I'd like to enter into IFComp that is now ready for beta-testing. It's kind of an old school text adventure based on the 'three magi' aspect of the nativity story. It has lots of optional amusing sections, lots of NPCs to talk to and a lot of historical background to it.

If you're interested, do send me a quick PM or e-mail and I'll send it over. The game has images, but they're not necessary to complete it (just a visual compass and context-sensitive banner image).

Justin.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1305&start=0#p7747
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Asking someone to do something ... in another language
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-08-13 18:57:24

How would you implement a person who will obey your commands, but only when you speak in her language?

For instance, if you say NINA, GLOBT SWONK, she'll interpret that as NINA, GET SWORD... But if you type GLOBT SWONK yourself, the parser should say, "Wha?"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1303&start=0#p7748
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Colored Text, distracting or helpful?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-08-13 20:04:57

[quote="tggdan3"]I wonder what people think about using colors in text of IF games.
I've seen this done well, such as Quest for Lost Sheep, where item names were one color, exits were another, and NPCs were yet another.
I've also seen this done well in Photopia where each color shows a different part of the story (though some of the colors can be hard to read on screen). 

Any thoughts on colored text? How can it be enriching to the experience?[/quote]

Here's my 2 öre (adjust for inflation as appropriate): I see coloured text as filling much the same function as outlining a shape would in a more visually oriented medium. 

It is a contrivance, yes, but not so glaring that it forces you out of immersion. It lends an emphasis to areas and things, but still (hopefully) remains unobtrusive enough to blend with the prose. Of course, I don't doubt it can be misused and give rise to horrors of which Lovecraft could only dream, but then that is true of most narrative techniques.

Coloured text as markup may also help with the problem of areas that sport a good main description, but still end up feeling either cluttered or strangely barren (this is often the case when the player can't easily envision the objects present in the room). Seeing that colour, a player is reassured that yes, there are in fact things and objects in the room that she can affect and manipulate.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1305&start=0#p7749
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Asking someone to do something ... in another language
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-08-13 22:09:34

This is interesting, because you can't use "Understand" rules with conditions based on the actor, since the actor isn't known yet at the time the grammar is parsed. However, by the time you get around to running action rules, the player's command has already been converted to an abstract object representation not relying on the original vocabulary.

Here's one approach to solving this, which relies on setting the "active language" at the time of parsing, and then using rules to only allow actions by actors who speak the active language. This would allow for any number of languages, and for actors to speak multiple languages, although it wouldn't account for the possibility of mixing words from various languages in a single command.

[code]
The Linguist Institute is a room. The Linguannex is east of the institute.

Zora is a woman in the institute. There is an apple in the institute.

A language is a kind of value. The languages are English, Zubian, and Perplexish.

Speaking relates various people to various languages. The verb to speak (he speaks, they speak, he spoke, it is spoken, he is speaking) implies the speaking relation.

The player speaks English. Zora speaks Zubian.

Persuasion rule: persuasion succeeds.

Understand the command "globt" as "go". Understand the command "zerk" as "examine". Understand the command "grurb" as "take".

Understand "swonk" as the apple. Understand "furb" as yourself. Understand "glik" as east.

Understand "globt/zerk/grurb/swonk/furb/glik" as "[Zubian vocabulary]".

The active language is a language variable.

After reading a command:
	if the player's command includes "[Zubian vocabulary]":
		now the active language is Zubian;
	otherwise:
		now the active language is English.
		
Before doing anything when the player does not speak the active language: instead say "Wha?".

Persuasion rule for asking people to try doing anything when the actor does not speak the active language: say "[The actor] just looks confused.";  persuasion fails.
	
test me with "grurb swonk / zora, grurb swonk / zora, go east / zora, globt glik / glik / east".
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1169&start=30#p7750
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inventory Limits
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-08-14 10:24:06

Actually, I'm making my list of non-item puzzles, and there's actually quite a lot of things you can do in the scope of that world to challenge a player, all without requiring keys and material goodies.  That'll help keep inventory to a bare minimum.

Although a companion isn't a bad solution either.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1305&start=0#p7751
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Asking someone to do something ... in another language
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-08-14 10:37:04

That's a pretty ingenious solution.  And fast, too!  I'm glad I didn't try to tackle that myself; clearly I don't know enough about Inform's parsing sequence.  I would've frustrated myself.

Now I just implement some rules so if your command to Zora has a known verb, but the object is in question (because it's not visible, because it's not available, or whatever) she can try that verb randomly on some other item, and ask you quizzically if that's the object you really meant.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1293&start=0#p7752
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx VM spec 3.1.2
User: nitfol / DateTime: 2010-08-14 11:56:12

For the jfeq opcode, [quote="Glulx Spec"]If any of the arguments are NaN, this will not branch[/quote]

The unit test appears to be missing a test_jfeq(M_INF, M_INF, M_NAN), which should not branch, but it looks like glulxe is coded to take a branch.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1293&start=0#p7753
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx VM spec 3.1.2
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-14 13:00:27

You are right again, about jfeq/jfne.

I have updated the spec, the unit test, and Glulxe/Quixe to fix (and test) all the problems mentioned so far.

New lines in the spec:

"Float operations which produce inexact results are not guaranteed to be identical on every platform. That is, 1.0 plus 1.0 will always be 2.0, because that can be represented exactly. But acos(-1.0), which should be pi, may generate either 40490FDA (3.14159250...) or 40490FDB (3.14159274...). Both are approximations of the correct result, but which one you get depends on the interpreter's underlying math library."

"Speaking of special cases: I have tried to describe all the important ones for these operations. However, you should also consult the Glulxercise unit test (available on the Glulx web site). Consider it definitive if this document is unclear."

@ceil/@floor: "The result keeps the sign of L1; in particular, floor(0.5) is 0 and ceil(-0.5) is -0. Rounding -0 up or down gives -0. Rounding an infinite value gives infinity."

@fmod: "Perform a floating-point modulo operation. S1 is the remainder (or modulus); S2 is the quotient. S2 is L1/L2, rounded (towards zero) to an integral value. S1 is L1-(S2*L2). Note that S1 always has the same sign as L1; S2 has the appropriate sign for L1/L2."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1295&start=10#p7754
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Going Fishing
User: edwinmcrae / DateTime: 2010-08-14 17:19:37

Thank you so much everyone!  I'll tackle the fishing problem asap and let you know how it all goes.  And groovy that I even managed to spark a debate about it!

BTW, although I can't off much in return advice on the technical front, I'm going to start a thread about storytelling and offer knowledge in that way (have been a full-time pro screenwriter now for four years).  So any story or writing questions you have - fire away!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1306&start=0#p7755
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Ye Olde Shoppe 'o Story Stuffe
User: edwinmcrae / DateTime: 2010-08-14 17:22:43

Hi all - since I got some great advice on the technical side of things I thought I'd return the favour by offering my expertise as a storyteller (been a pro screenwriter for a while now - have picked up a few tricks along the way).

So any writing or story structure questions you might have, fire away!  [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1295&start=10#p7756
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Going Fishing
User: edwinmcrae / DateTime: 2010-08-14 17:37:16

Hi all - I've just tried Grave's code and it's [i]almost[/i] working  [emote];)[/emote]  The only problem is that it's not recognising when the player is carrying the rod.  Is there a line I need to put in, something about allowing the action if the player carries the rod?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=40#p7757
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: Stew / DateTime: 2010-08-14 20:15:32

Hi there!

Clark Ashton Smith has a different take on zombies in some of his stories. Maybe you've heard of him, he was a contemporary and friend of H. P. Lovecraft.

This is a story he wrote called "The Empire of The Necromancers":
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/61/the-empire-of-the-necromancers">http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/sh ... cromancers</a>

and "Necromancy in Naat":
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/151/necromancy-in-naat">http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/sh ... cy-in-naat</a>

(This is a legal site, it's approved by his estate.) He wrote quite a few other stories about Zothique, the last continent.

In older stories, zombies weren't completely mindless. That's just a hollywood thing, I guess.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1302&start=0#p7758
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Choose Your Own Adventure
User: edwinmcrae / DateTime: 2010-08-14 21:49:23

There's a Fighting Fantasy gamebook, Scorpion Swamp which allowed you to do three different missions (Good, Neutral & Evil) and also enabled you to revisit sites (something not generally done in other FF books).  Could be worth a look as a classical model (if you can track a copy down).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1296&start=10#p7759
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you do when you have more ideas than time?
User: edwinmcrae / DateTime: 2010-08-14 21:55:19

Trying to combine a multitude of ideas into one project is fraught with peril.  Usually what happens is a confused story that doesn't know what it is or what it wants to be.  One strong idea should survive the others (ideas are Darwinian in nature).

As far as out-sourcing goes, it requires a change of perspective.  It's no longer [i]your[/i] idea.  It now belongs to your team - you and the programmer.  This is the way I work with artists when writing a children's book - that way both people are invested and give their best.  And it's amazing how another brain can help strengthen an idea.
 [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1303&start=0#p7760
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Colored Text, distracting or helpful?
User: edwinmcrae / DateTime: 2010-08-14 22:00:09

I think coloured text works if it's built into your story.  At it's simplest form, if you're in King Midas' throne room it makes perfect sense for the text to be gold.  If there's a red, green and blue door choice - cool.  But if you're simply making the interactive elements stand out by using a different colour that risk is that your adventure becomes to obviously artificial (like reading a blog post festooned with links).  You undermine the suspension of disbelief.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1303&start=0#p7761
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Colored Text, distracting or helpful?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-08-15 02:27:34

I've used colored text very occasionally (especially to mark unexplored rooms on the Bronze compass), and I found it all right in Blue Lacuna, where there were blue and green words to mark objects worth manipulating and directions the player could go. I've also played several games where I found the colored text completely eye-searing. So I guess I can see a point to using some color for accent, but I prefer to see only one or two accent colors at a time.

Past that point, the effect starts to be so cartoonish that it distracts me from the text rather than helping me pick out important details.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=7&start=10#p7762
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: How does ADRIFT's parsing work?
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2010-08-15 06:10:09

[quote="rioshin"]Well, looking at the ADRIFT 5 page, it looks like the current estimate for release is in Q4 of this year.[/quote]

Umm, yes about that....   [emote]:?[/emote] 

Anyway, ADRIFT 5 should be available in an open beta very soon.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1295&start=10#p7763
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Going Fishing
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-08-15 10:32:30

[quote="mwigdahl"]I can't answer that; I've not run hard test numbers.  That sounds like a great experiment to try, though, so I'll try to work up a test under Quixe and give it a shot.  Just off the cuff I'd suspect that you're right, that you'd need a lot of (unoptimized) Instead rules to see marked slowdowns, but hard numbers would be nice.[/quote]
I tested this last month. By now I don't remember details, but I found that when the compiler sees more than eight or ten Instead rules, it optimizes the code, so that they're not ALL consulted.

In other words, it appeared from my tests that while the manual tells you (on p. 12.2) that there is one Instead rulebook, in games of any size there will be separate Instead rulebooks for various actions.

If you want to test it, write a test game and then start adding Instead rules, one at a time, while running the game with 'rules all'. At some point you'll stop seeing consultation of all of your Instead rules in response to irrelevant actions. Now, this _could_ be because 'rules all' is suppressing information, but that seems less likely to me than that the compiler is performing optimization.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1295&start=10#p7764
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Going Fishing
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-08-15 10:51:53

[quote="edwinmcrae"]Hi all - I've just tried Grave's code and it's [i]almost[/i] working  [emote];)[/emote]  The only problem is that it's not recognising when the player is carrying the rod.  Is there a line I need to put in, something about allowing the action if the player carries the rod?[/quote]
The short answer: Yes. The longer answer: This is why using check rules in the canonical way is better. Inserting a bunch of conditions into a check rule, and in the desired order, is the graceful way to handle complex actions. Here's some code. I tested it a bit, and it seems to work. Obviously you'd need to add more synonyms.

[code]The Patio is a room. The grate is a container in the patio. The key is in the grate.

Instead of taking something when the noun is in the grate, say "You can't. The bars of the grate get in the way."

The player carries a fishing pole and a nickel.

Fishing it out with is an action applying to two things and requiring light. Understand "fish [something] out with [something]" and "fish out [something] with [something]" as fishing it out with.

Check fishing it out with:
	if the second noun is not the fishing pole:
		say "You can't fish with that." instead;
	otherwise if the player does not carry the fishing pole:
		say "You need to be holding the pole to do that." instead;
	otherwise if the player carries the noun:
		say "You're already holding [the noun]." instead;
	otherwise if the noun is not in the grate:
		say "Why not just pick up [the noun]?" instead;
	otherwise if the noun is not the key:
		say "[The noun] is too slippery. The hook on the end of the fishing line can't hook it." instead.
		
Carry out fishing it out with:
	now the player carries the key.

Report fishing it out with:
	say "Using the fishing pole, you retrieve a key from the grate."
	
Fishing for is an action applying to one thing and requiring light. Understand "fish for [something]" and "fish out [something]" as fishing for.

Check fishing for:
	if the player does not carry the fishing pole:
		say "You have nothing to fish with." instead;
	if the player carries the noun:
		say "You already have [the noun]." instead;
	otherwise if the noun is not in the grate:
		say "Why not just pick up [the noun]?" instead.
		
Carry out fishing for:
	try fishing the noun out with the fishing pole instead.[/code]
The point is, by writing a check rule in this way, you can stuff all sorts of conditions in it, and put them in the most desirable order.

I've added a couple of enhancements. I created a 'fish for X' action, because that's an input that a player might use. You'll want to add other synonyms to both actions. I also made it so that if the player puts something else in the grate, such as a nickel, the pole can't retrieve it. Here again, I would want to enhance that code for a real game. Among other things, the grate should refuse to accept large objects! As it stands, the game can be made unwinnable by putting the pole in the grate (which is a command a player might try first...).

Hope that helps.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1301&start=0#p7765
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How to prevent player from examining items on NPCs?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-08-15 13:20:38

[quote="welkin"]I think the title pretty much says it all... like when a NPC is carrying an item (by + in NPC declaration), or if I give the NPC something (item.moveInto), I can still examine and otherwise interact with the items. Why is that the case?[/quote]
Much of the behaviour for interacting with items in an NPC's inventory is disallowed by their afterAction method.  If you've overriden this method in the NPC or any of their ActorStates, make sure you call inherited().  I've been caught out by that before...

That said, examining, and other actions that don't involve taking the item off the NPC are not disallowed by default.

[quote="welkin"]For my particular use case I was able to use class Hidden and "discover" the item when the NPC gives it to the player; just wondering if there's any better way to achieve this...[/quote]
If the desired behaviour is that the NPC should "give" the player character something that the player will [i]not[/i] previously have seen in their inventory, why not start with the item in nowhere instead of in the NPC who gives it?  (Place the declaration for the item at the very top or bottom of the file, or otherwise outside any nested +s.)

[quote="welkin"]after all, it doesn't make sense that one can examine things someone else is holding.[/quote]
Wwwwwwwwwwwhy not?

[quote]>x Dirty Harry
Dirty Harry is carrying a .44 magnum.

>x magnum
A powerful revolver that can hold six bullets.  I hope you've been counting how many times he shot at you![/quote]
If there's something about it that you want to hide until after the player is holding the item, you can use IF statements.

[code]
desc()
{
    if(location==RentACop)
        "The rent-a-cop is brandishing a huge taser. I wouldn't mess with him while he's got this thing. ";
    else if(location==gPlayerChar)
        "With big tasers come big responsibility. Try not to zap any innocents. ";
    else
        "Who left this lying around?  Seems pretty dangerous.  You should pick it up before someone gets hurt. ";
    //note this doesn't account for the situation where this is in a container that is held by the player
}[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1303&start=0#p7766
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Colored Text, distracting or helpful?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-08-15 13:53:51

I've found one place in particular where I want to use coloured text - similar to what Eleas said about fighting clutter.  In certain kinds of games players can get multiple strands of text appearing at once.  Every turn, say, they might get a response to their command, an update to some ongoing situation, and perhaps a footnote like a tutorial message or score notification.  Making these different strands different colours is a simple way to make all this text seem less overwhelming to the player, while also highlighting which parts they might want to skim or skip.

[quote="edwinmcrae"]At it's simplest form, if you're in King Midas' throne room it makes perfect sense for the text to be gold.[/quote]It makes a logical kind of sense, yes, but I'm not sure it adds that much, especially if you wind up hurting readability.

Although on a similar note, I do think colour can be a way to try to denote changes in the narrative voice.  I considered inverting the colours when switching PC in one game (but then decided against it when trying to figure out an in-character way to allow the player to turn this off).  And although I'm not so keen on making a vampire game now that they've become the new zombies, one game I stopped working on had you controlling a vampire where, as the desire to nom on throats increased, the text gradually turned from black to red.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1295&start=10#p7767
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Going Fishing
User: edwinmcrae / DateTime: 2010-08-15 16:04:51

Beautiful, thank you JA!  I'll try this code out as soon as I can this afternoon.  Am itching to see this puzzle finally fall into place!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1293&start=0#p7768
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx VM spec 3.1.2
User: nitfol / DateTime: 2010-08-15 17:41:21

I'm passing the unit tests now, though my confidence that all the special cases work identically is small (... negative odd integers, negative zero, negative NaN, ...).

I put together a small demo of floating point in Glulx at [url]http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/nitfol/changeset/231[/url].  Nitfol (allocating gobs of memory for every floating point operation) is about twice as slow as glulxe running this.

On the unit tests, glulxe still shows 2 failures, both of them because there needs to be tolerance on the answers:
[code]log e=1.00000 or $3F800000 (should be 0.99999 or $3F7FFFFF FAIL)
atan2(2,-0.5)=1.81578 or $3FE86B50 (should be near 1.81578 or $3FE86B51 FAIL)[/code]

With floating point in Glulx, and Glulx in Javascript, how far away can HTML5 canvas support be to replace graphics windows?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1293&start=10#p7769
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx VM spec 3.1.2
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-15 21:41:38

Yes, the tolerance there is too small -- less than one ULP. I'll adjust the tests.

I'm pretty sure I hit all the important cases in the test. (Except negative NaN, which I hope is not important.) If you think of any that I left out, let me know.

As for HTML5 canvas, I have a notion for getting inline HTML (or SVG) windows into the spec and changing events with the game. However, I need to hash through some blorb issues to make it feasible.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1293&start=10#p7770
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx VM spec 3.1.2
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-15 21:49:34

I've also posted the I6 compiler patch that lets you use floating-point constants in your I6 code. See my web site.

They use a "$+" or "$-" prefix, with the sign being mandatory: $+1, $-1, $+1.0, $-1.0e+0, $+1.0e+0

I've also defined constants FLOAT_NAN, FLOAT_INFINITY, FLOAT_NINFINITY. 

(All of this is only when compiling a Glulx game.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1296&start=10#p7771
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you do when you have more ideas than time?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-08-16 00:31:35

[quote="edwinmcrae"]Trying to combine a multitude of ideas into one project is fraught with peril.  Usually what happens is a confused story that doesn't know what it is or what it wants to be.[/quote]
Generally true, but sometimes not ... and you won't know until you've tried combining things! Two years ago I sold a story to Asimov's ("Leaving the Station") that started out as two separate stories. It was the collision between them that set off sparks.

In IF, a couple of times I've had puzzles from an abandoned work that found their way into a game that I completed.

Never throw away your notes on any game or story idea! If it isn't working, set it aside and maybe come back to it later. (I have 30-year-old notebooks in the garage that I really ought to run through the shredder before I die....)

Right now I'm developing an idea for a game that I first looked at at least 3 years ago. I couldn't figure out what to do with it -- it went wandering through a lot of tangled bits and tied itself in knots.  [emote]:o[/emote] Now suddenly it's making a lot of sense, because I turned it sideways and pruned away some of the accumulated deadwood.  [emote]8-)[/emote]

My motto has always been: Ideas are cheap and plentiful. What's neither cheap nor plentiful is the time and energy (and the insight) with which to develop them into completed works. 

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1306&start=0#p7772
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Ye Olde Shoppe 'o Story Stuffe
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-08-16 00:36:47

Here's a somewhat cynical (but not really) question. With respect to action movies, it strikes me that there are only three kinds of characters: good, evil, and good but weak. And I suspect the screenwriter needs to tip us pretty early in the script to which category a given character is in.

This insight came from reading an Ayn Rand novel, many years ago. She was a pretty bad novelist, all things considered ... but she had some success as a screenwriter along the way.

I don't know what this has to do with game design, if anything. It's just an off-the-wall question.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1202&start=0#p7773
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problems with "now" vs. "change" in I7 (6E72)
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-08-16 00:44:12

Just out of curiosity ... would it be easier for you to hack the Standard Rules so as to restore the functionality of "change"? Or would that be impossible for some reason? Ordinarily I would avoid hacking the Standard Rules, but something this basic ... or do you even have to hack that file? Could you restore the usability of the "change" syntax in your own game code?

I'm really curious about this.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=0#p7774
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2010-08-16 01:00:48

I use the tool and is pretty happy abouty it...
But I would have liked it better if it was possible to get in touch with the guy who created it...  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1296&start=10#p7775
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you do when you have more ideas than time?
User: edwinmcrae / DateTime: 2010-08-16 02:33:02

[quote]My motto has always been: Ideas are cheap and plentiful. What's neither cheap nor plentiful is the time and energy (and the insight) with which to develop them into completed works.[/quote] 

Absolutely agree.  Fusing one, two, even three ideas can work.  Any more...that's where the trouble starts.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1306&start=0#p7776
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Ye Olde Shoppe 'o Story Stuffe
User: edwinmcrae / DateTime: 2010-08-16 02:42:34

There's always a fine line between cynical and astute.  That's a good summation of the action movie characters, and that's what an audience expects.  The classic action movie genre is more of a theme park attraction than a piece of artistic cinema.

It's when an action movie blends with thriller, or comedy, that interesting things start to happen.  It's when character arcs come into play.

Die Hard.

McLean starts out as a weak everyman on the brink of divorce.  Through the course of the movie he comes to terms with the extreme situation he's in and throws himself into hero mode.

In parallel his sidekick (the black cop outside) grows from a tubby, gormless stereotype into a man confident enough to challenge his lieutenant and take down a major bad guy.

Good, Bad and Weak characters are dull if they don't change.  Look at the terminator's arc in T2.  That's good storytelling.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1307&start=0#p7777
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: What to do when you lack ideas?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-08-16 03:21:34

This is a sort of counterpoint to the other ideas-thread. My problem is the opposite, as I find it very difficult to come up with ideas. Working to implement them is fun (I know that from my previous game), but the earlier part is where I get stuck.

I have the basic setting for the game I'm currently working on. I know how it starts, very vaguely how it ends and I have a few things I want to put into it, but I'm having trouble getting the ideas that would make it something.

Last time I solved the problem by basically letting the story be about a journey. I simply put puzzles in that prevented the characters from getting to the next location on the way to their goal. I don't want to do that this time. This time, it's more about the characters and having them (and the player) figuring out what's going on and how to fix it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1306&start=0#p7778
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Ye Olde Shoppe 'o Story Stuffe
User: djfletch / DateTime: 2010-08-16 05:20:05

[quote]With respect to action movies, it strikes me that there are only three kinds of characters: good, evil, and good but weak.[/quote]
Reminds me of a Saki story - this one:

[url]http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/Fore.shtml[/url]

"There were three dominant types of manhood to be taken into consideration in working out his classification; there was Hugo, who was strong, good, and beautiful, a rare type and not very often met with; there was Sir Jasper, who was utterly vile and absolutely unscrupulous, and there was Nevil, who was not really bad at heart, but had a weak mouth and usually required the life-work of two good women to keep him from ultimate disaster."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1303&start=0#p7779
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Colored Text, distracting or helpful?
User: Janka / DateTime: 2010-08-16 05:27:14

As a player, I'd find a different color for

* prompt
* commands typed
* speech inserts (each person gets his/her own color)
* events ("meanwhile, in another room")
* achievements, scoring and other out-of-world actions

very useful while not distracting at all. For colored or bold-printed words within the paragraphs, my feelings are mixed. Boldprinting is usually abhored because you immediately trip over such words, in the literal sense while reading the text. Italic would be the far better choice.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1293&start=10#p7780
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx VM spec 3.1.2
User: nitfol / DateTime: 2010-08-16 06:41:38

[quote="zarf"]I've also posted the I6 compiler patch that lets you use floating-point constants in your I6 code. See my web site.[/quote]

When writing the Mandelbrot code, the mistake I made the most was forgetting to call @numtof when I was introducing an integer to a floating point calculation.  The philosophy of Inform seem to lack any type classification, but if you have any clever ideas for complaining about or coercing integers within floating point expressions, that would be great.  This is a mistake that I can't make in pretty much any language other than assembly, so it's not one that I'm used to avoiding.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1293&start=10#p7781
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx VM spec 3.1.2
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-08-16 06:48:49

I think nitfol was more referring to implementing the existing Glk functionality with <canvas> than introducing anything new...

I do think we need a new "webby" IO system, and I'd like there to be some competition in its design. That's one reason why I'm keen to extend the Z-Machine, so we can also easily prototype new IO systems with Gnusto.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1293&start=10#p7782
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx VM spec 3.1.2
User: nitfol / DateTime: 2010-08-16 07:35:07

[quote="Dannii"]I think nitfol was more referring to implementing the existing Glk functionality with <canvas> than introducing anything new...[/quote]

The Glk graphics window is very limited... draw filled rectangles or entire scaled images.  That's it.  You [i]can[/i] draw anything using lots of 1 pixel rectangles, but it's not very nice.  To my implementation, I've added line drawing, tooltips, and masked image drawing (all for map drawing, not exposed to Glulx).  Things like text, gradients, anti-aliasing, curves, etc., would all be nice.  If we're focusing on a replacement for graphics windows, something like Cairo, Canvas, SVG, ... seems like it would be a good match.  These APIs put the pixels half-way between integers, so the lack of floating point in Glulx was a roadblock until now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1202&start=0#p7783
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problems with "now" vs. "change" in I7 (6E72)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-08-16 08:29:31

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Just out of curiosity ... would it be easier for you to hack the Standard Rules so as to restore the functionality of "change"? [snip] ... or do you even have to hack that file? Could you restore the usability of the "change" syntax in your own game code?[/quote]

I think it would be quite easy to define the necessary phrases in my own code. There are three phrases that define "change ... to ...", and it ought to be straightforward enough to create a new extension that reimplements them. Effectively, that's what I've decided to do, at least if "now ... is ...." isn't fixed: I released the extensions without changing "change" to 
"now", so when the next version of Inform hits, they will be broken. (I just couldn't bring myself to put in the hours to convert the deprecated syntax.)

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1303&start=0#p7784
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Colored Text, distracting or helpful?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-08-16 09:36:51

I'm not a big fan of colored text.  For one thing, even commonly used colors can make readability much more difficult.  Blocks of bright blue text does nothing good for me.  I'd like to encourage presentation experimentation - I'm sure it could work sometimes, but most of the time I find it distracting or painful or both.

If I'm playing a fast-tracked real-time game, I appreciate the color changes because all I really need is that red "-50 HP".  My brain can pick out the necessary info.  One of the things I enjoy about IF is that I have time to savor the experience.  I find that associations between color and text work best for me in situations of intense pressure.  I find color in IF hard to hold onto - I'm always reminding myself that color X means Y.  

An additional issue I had with Blue Lacuna was that some other part of my brain was trying to parse out all the combinations, make sure I typed in everything, make sure no stone was left unturned.  In a way, this is a good thing, especially for beginners.  But I found it really took me out of the experience of just trying things.  It increased the sense of limitation to the play, which isn't always a bad thing, but sort of an unintended consequence.

There's a place for non-textual information and cues, but I'd vote for limiting color to peripheral things - the status line, possibly exit listings (preferably not in the paragraph text), and possibly ultra-urgent warnings ([color=#BF0000]"You are starving."[/color]).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1233&start=0#p7785
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 for OS 10.5.8?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-16 09:44:46

I'm glad this thread is here. It never occurred to me that downloading the latest I7 would cause any problems.

Can someone tell me where to find this fix?

Hmm... I wonder if I have the same problem or a different one. Clicking "Go" seems to trigger a successful compilation, but then the game never starts. Is that a different situation?

I tried doing a release. The IDE claims the release was successful, and it creates a Release folder in the Materials, but there are no files in the Release folder.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1233&start=0#p7786
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 for OS 10.5.8?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-08-16 09:52:13

[quote="capmikee"]I'm glad this thread is here. It never occurred to me that downloading the latest I7 would cause any problems.

Can someone tell me where to find this fix?

Hmm... I wonder if I have the same problem or a different one. Clicking "Go" seems to trigger a successful compilation, but then the game never starts. Is that a different situation?[/quote]

That sounds like the same issue. This thread on the bugs site seems to offer a solution:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=153">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=153</a>

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1307&start=0#p7787
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What to do when you lack ideas?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-08-16 09:59:41

When I'm stuck, world-building is usually my go-to.

(Is there some taboo about talking about game specifics?  People never do, so please let me know if I'm violating the Unwritten Code.)

One of my shelved ideas was essentially a post-apocalyptic mystery.  That was it.  All I had, except for some specific imagery involving visiting a house and having it be all overgrown and creepy.  I knew I wanted a sense of isolation, that travel was tremendously dangerous.  That was it.

You could kind of start anywhere with that - what's creepy about the house, or what the main character would be like, or a scene I wanted to have.  I could have started with game mechanics - anything special or unique.  Instead, I thought about what would cause isolation, not just for the main character, but the world.  I wanted a place without a sense of "safe", so nothing like a space station where the main character just needed to get to Earth and it would be all okay.  Supernatural creatures could do it.  Hordes of vampires or zombies.  Constant dragon attacks.  Or it could be something more mundane - radiation outside, or disease.  I liked the disease idea, since I've got a pretty solid biology background, and went with fungus because you can see it, and fungal diseases can be seriously creepy.  I thought about thrush, and posited a fungus like that, only faster and meaner.  An open wound would be completely colonized with fuzzy white stuff within hours.  Breathing the spores would cause quick death.

It would make sense for a population to stay contained and sterile.

From there, it gets easier.  Where would people live?  Would some places be safer than others?  Would dry, hot Arizona be a haven for the wealthy, while Latin America was taken over?  What kind of government would pop up?  Who would grow food?  Who would do the investigating of crimes - it would have to be someone outside the community, but someone who's taking tremendous risks by traveling outside.  What sort of things would become taboo (eating mushrooms, say)?  

Once you have a world, then it makes it easier to move the character through it, and it may shape the story.  Once I had a sense of the world, I knew I wanted the opening scene to emphasize the dangers of the outside vs. the sterility and perceived safety of the inside, so it was a scene where the character entered an outpost.  This was an automated but complicated process involving bleach, verifying identity, destruction of contaminated items, etc.  From there, it was a matter of building a realization that the inside, while apparently safe, was just as dangerous as the outside, which became easier as I understood what was scary in that place and what wasn't.  

If world-building isn't a part of your WIP, you could do the same sort of thing with plot or character or mood.  That is: what's compelling about your idea?  What would accent those parts, or contrast against them?  How do you want the player to experience the story?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1233&start=0#p7788
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 for OS 10.5.8?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-08-16 11:38:58

[quote="ektemple"]That sounds like the same issue. This thread on the bugs site seems to offer a solution:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=153">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=153</a>[/quote]
That solution may work, but someone said it's intermittent. My solution works for me, and seems reliable:

Download and install 72. Rename the package in Applications to "Inform 6E72" so it won't be overwritten by the next step. Then download and install 59.

Copy the 72 compiler into the original location in the 59 install, overwriting the 59 compiler. Just to be safe I also copied all of the files from Resources > Extensions > Reserved, and the Standard Rules from Resources > Extensions > Graham Nelson.

At this point the IDE thinks it's running 59, but the compiler and the Standard Rules are 72.

I don't know that this method is free of side effects. There may also be changes, for instance, in Unicode Character Names, which I didn't bother to copy. But it seems to do the job. I can run 6E72 (with all of its charming quirks) in OS 10.5.8.

If this doesn't work for you, please let us know!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1293&start=10#p7789
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx VM spec 3.1.2
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-16 11:42:32

[quote]When writing the Mandelbrot code, the mistake I made the most was forgetting to call @numtof when I was introducing an integer to a floating point calculation. The philosophy of Inform seem to lack any type classification, but if you have any clever ideas for complaining about or coercing integers within floating point expressions, that would be great.[/quote]

The second patch will help a little, as you can now say

@fadd x $+1.0 x;

That saves a @numtof and it's at least a little more readable. 

Anything beyond that requires adding a true type system to I6, which is not amenable to "a clever idea" -- it's a big, big change to the compiler. Vaporware worked through the problem a few years ago, but nobody's used his code, as far as I know.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1233&start=0#p7790
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 for OS 10.5.8?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-16 11:55:22

[quote="Jim Aikin"][quote="ektemple"]That sounds like the same issue. This thread on the bugs site seems to offer a solution:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=153">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=153</a>[/quote]
That solution may work, but someone said it's intermittent. My solution works for me, and seems reliable:[/quote]
It seemed to be working for me, but I wanted to try getting 6E72 working, so I tried your solution:

[code]$ cd /Applications/Inform\ 6E72.app/Contents/Resources/Inform7/Extensions/
$ cp -r Reserved Graham\ Nelson /Applications/Inform.app/Contents/Resources/Inform7/Extensions/
[/code]

I may have started out with the wrong version (it appears to be 6E58) but it's the one I downloaded from Andrew's link here:

<a class="postlink" href="https://files.me.com/logicalshift/2001gx">https://files.me.com/logicalshift/2001gx</a>

Trying to compile my game, I got this:

[quote]Translating the Source

    	
This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6E58) on its most recent run through:

In Part SR2 - Variables and Rulebooks, Section SR2/1 - Situation in the extension Standard Rules by Graham Nelson:

Problem. An internal error has occurred: Unknown {-call:...} function in I6 segment. The current sentence is 'The time of day -- documented at var_time -- is a time that varies'  ; the error was detected at line 811 of "Chapter 26/I6 Template Interpreter.w". This should never happen, and I am now halting in abject failure.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1228&start=40#p7791
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: On the Notoriety of Zombies
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-16 12:00:06

All this discussion has inspired me to start something. I'm not sure where it's going yet. I'm hoping it will be grim and disturbing, but it probably won't be scary. I can't seem to avoid a certain amount of tongue-in-cheek...

[quote]Ever since you died, your migraines have been getting worse. At first you tried the usual - aspirin, caffeine, screaming - but you quickly learned that the type of migraine caused by having a large part of your brain eaten by an undead creature does not respond well to medication. The only known remedy is nutritional.

The brains of lower animals will work, partially, for a short time, but only human brains have the right balance of vitamins, essential fats and amino acids necessary to hold off the searing, throbbing agony long enough to make it to your next meal.  And they taste surprisingly good. Unfortunately, while you were busy figuring all this out, the rest of the zombie world was finishing off the last of the human race, leaving you with...

A Killer Headache
A Distasteful Situation by Captain Mikee
Release 1 / Serial number 100816 / Inform 7 build 6E58 (I6/v6.31 lib 6/12N) SD[/quote]

I just searched for "headache" on ifdb and came up with 2 results: Ecdysis, which I've been using as a model for horror over the past couple weeks, and... a zombie game!

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=zo7hc5kq5cxykf7o">http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=zo7hc5kq5cxykf7o</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1302&start=0#p7792
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Choose Your Own Adventure
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-08-16 13:04:25

[quote="Juhana"]There are some CYOAs that are more than simply going through a static flowchart. For example the [url=http://www.choiceofgames.com/]ChoiceScript games[/url] are quite elaborate. I assume having a "memory" in CYOA is no more complex than having one in parser IF, but I'm sure it has its own pitfalls.[/quote]

Wow, those are complicated! I love it!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1307&start=0#p7793
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What to do when you lack ideas?
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-08-16 13:09:27

With IF, sometimes I work backwards. I try to think of puzzle ideas I want in the game, and try to incorporate a reasonable reason for them there. That gives you a lot more story than you would think. 

For a screenplay, I knew the jist of what the movie would be about, and I had some ideas for action scenes, then there's just thinking of a logical way to string them together. 

It sounds cheap I guess, but it works. So if I want a puzzle involving tying a string around a mouse and having the mouse pull the string through a hole...

Why? I must need to thread something through a hole. What, for what purpose? Why can't I accomplish this some other way? Why is it important to do this? What scenario would give me a mouse. To what other purpose can the mouse be put? Once this is done, what will open up for me? Where did the mouse come from? Where did the string come from?

It works out pretty well for me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1303&start=0#p7794
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Colored Text, distracting or helpful?
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-08-16 13:11:58

I like the feedback here.

From a programming standpointe (inform 7), is there a way to have score notification or other out of world messages print in another text by default, or do I need to manually change the color of every piece of text?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1300&start=0#p7795
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: About making objects "glow" just a little bit in darknes
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-08-16 13:14:13

Seems like you might need to re-define "dark room" to accomidate only the kinds of actions you want to allow. Or to specifially tag certain objects back in scope.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1307&start=0#p7796
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What to do when you lack ideas?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-16 13:26:42

I wouldn't say that I start with puzzles, but I *do* often start with puzzle *interactions* -- the question of what the player is doing (versus what he's not doing) at the crucial point. 

Then I think about how the player learned that action; what earlier scenes contained the clues that led up to it. And what later scenes benefit from that experience. Hopefully that gives me a whole cluster of scenes and actions.

This process leads to puzzle design in one direction, and -- as tggdan3 says -- to story design in the other direction.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1303&start=0#p7797
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Colored Text, distracting or helpful?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-16 15:09:49

Score notifications are already printed in a custom style. In Glulx that's called "note", although there's no consistent interpreter agreement on how it's displayed. (The game can add style hints about that.)

The Z-code library is set up to print score notifications in "roman", same as the regular output font. However, it would only take a small I6 replacement to change that to italic or bold.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1306&start=0#p7798
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Ye Olde Shoppe 'o Story Stuffe
User: edwinmcrae / DateTime: 2010-08-16 15:29:29

Interesting, and all of which is based on nature over nurture principles.  A man is born with a certain character, whether it be fine or foul, and nothing can change that intrinsic nature.

Modernism allows characters to change - they are defined by what they do, not what they are.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1307&start=0#p7799
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What to do when you lack ideas?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-08-16 19:04:34

[quote="Trumgottist"]This is a sort of counterpoint to the other ideas-thread. My problem is the opposite, as I find it very difficult to come up with ideas. Working to implement them is fun (I know that from my previous game), but the earlier part is where I get stuck.[/quote]
Maybe this technique will help. I've used it with some success over the years. The first time I used it was when I was writing my first novel. There was some money in a vault, and I had a character who was a thief, but I had no idea how he was going to get anywhere near, let alone into, a guarded vault, since the vault was on a military base.

So I pulled out a blank piece of paper and wrote at the top, "Ten ways for Pye to break into the vault." And then I started listing possibilities. Somewhere around number 7 or 8, I came up with something that I was able to use.

The essence of this technique is, [b]you're not allowed to censor yourself[/b]. ANY idea that pops into your head, no matter how stupid or outlandish, you have to write it down. What this does is, it unblocks your unconscious. What usually happens (in my experience, anyway), when we're having trouble coming up with ideas is that every time an idea pops into our head, we say, "Nah, not good enough." After this happens a few times, the unconscious shrugs and says, "Okay, if you're not interested in anything I have to say, I think I'll take a nap now."

That's the mental plumbing clog, right there. The human mind is naturally creative and playful. We just have to rediscover our sense of playfulness and fun.

...and now that I've reminded myself of this technique, I'm going to use it on an especially thorny puzzle design concept in the game I'm planning!

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1295&start=10#p7800
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Going Fishing
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-08-16 19:07:37

If you're going to have "Fish out key with rod" as the command that yields the desired behavior, you should also allow "take key with rod/get key with rod/etc." or at least answer that with a hint that the player ought to be using "fish." Otherwise you're likely to create a guess-the-verb situation. Or you could provide explicit instructions when you introduce the rod -- "(To fish for something with the rod, type FISH OUT whatever WITH ROD)", though even then I think it'd be user-friendly to allow TAKE KEY WITH ROD as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1233&start=0#p7801
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 for OS 10.5.8?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-08-16 19:16:45

I don't think there's a 6E58 release. More to the point, though, I have no idea what sort of code you're running there. Terminal? I just dragged some stuff around from within Finder, or rather, I selected files with the mouse and used Cmd-C and Cmd-V.

To do this from within Finder, you have to use the Show Package Contents command in the utility menu.

It appears, if I understand the Terminal lines, that you copied the Extensions but not the compiler. The compiler is in (pause while he turns on his MacBook) Applications > Inform 6E72 > Contents > Resources > Compilers. There are three items there -- cBlorb, inform-6.31-biplatform, and ni. You need to copy and paste them all into the identical location in your Inform 6E59 package.

If that doesn't make sense, or doesn't work, let us know.

--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1233&start=0#p7802
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 for OS 10.5.8?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-08-16 20:05:44

[quote="Jim Aikin"]I don't think there's a 6E58 release.[/quote]

There wasn't any 6E58 [i]release[/i], but it's the version of the compiler that Andrew Hunter had available to test with, and so it's what's linked on the bug report page. 

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1295&start=10#p7803
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Going Fishing
User: edwinmcrae / DateTime: 2010-08-16 21:17:11

A good point!  I'll suss that out.

My current problem now is getting the game to recognise that the player is carrying the fishing rod.

Have had to use this to allow the character to construct the rod out of three items:

[color=#0080FF]Limbo is a container.  Limbo contains a hookless fishing rod, a hooked line, and a complete fishing rod.[/color]

Of course now it won't allow me to have [color=#0080FF]Player carries the fishing rod[/color].

Is there a way of moving the rod from limbo to being carried or do I have to rewrite some other stuff first?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1293&start=10#p7804
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx VM spec 3.1.2
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-16 21:54:23

I've fixed the tolerance on the atan2 and log tests.

Also removed those debugging print statements from the I6 patch (inform631n-floatconst.patch) on my web site. Whoops.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1295&start=10#p7805
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Going Fishing
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-08-17 01:51:35

Yes, with "now". "Now the player carries the complete fishing rod." (Manual chapter 2.2). Although it might be easier to not use separate objects: you could do

[code]
The fishing rod is a thing. The hooked line is a thing.

Definition: the fishing rod is complete rather than incomplete if the hooked line is part of it.

Instead of tying the hooked line to an incomplete fishing rod:
    say "Now it's a complete fishing apparatus.";
    now the hooked line is part of the fishing rod.[/code]
and then test the complete or incomplete status wherever needed.

(Also note that you don't necessarily need a special limbo container; you can just say "A hookless fishing rod is a thing. A hooked line is a thing. A complete fishing rod is a thing." Things are out out of play (in a "limbo") if they aren't specifically designated anywhere.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1303&start=0#p7806
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Colored Text, distracting or helpful?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-08-17 01:56:27

[quote="zarf"]Score notifications are already printed in a custom style. In Glulx that's called "note", although there's no consistent interpreter agreement on how it's displayed. (The game can add style hints about that.)[/quote]
This raises another question: If I'm using a custom scoring system in my game, how do I tell Inform to use the note style for score notifications?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1307&start=0#p7807
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What to do when you lack ideas?
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-08-17 03:45:45

Right now, my process for designing puzzles is to let the story lead me to them.  In my sword-and-sandal Conan-meets-Gor game, I began with the mental picture of the big burly warrior with a loincloth and a greatsword.  (Yes, never mind that he should have armor on.  Work with me.)  He's the player's character; what is he like?  What kind of problems will he encounter?  What obstacles will he face, and how can I imagine he would solve it?

It occurred to me that this character would be very direct.  He is not the kind of person who tries to solve the Gordian knot; instead, he chops it in half.  He wouldn't unlock a door if he could break it down.  He wouldn't bother grubbing in the dirt for a coin, to buy the Maguffin he needs, if he could just kill the merchant and steal it (or threaten to).  In fact, he probably wouldn't need the Maguffin either.  Immediately it occurred to me that this is not a character who needs a large inventory of little items.  He needs a small inventory of [i]multi-purpose[/i] items.

Aha!  I said.  I'll make that the central theme of the game:  designing puzzles that don't require items (or as few as possible).

So I made a list of the [i]kinds[/i] of puzzles I would be left with.  Under "Puzzles That Prevent Movement" I said, "Okay, assuming you never need any actual key to get through any door, what other ways could a door become open?  You could break it down.  You could burn it.  You could sneak in while somebody else has opened it ... or maybe someone could open it for you.  Ah, but why do they open it for you?  Because they like you.  Or because you have something they want ... no, that requires an item, forget that.  So you do something to make the door ward like you.  That fits right into the style of the game:  'Verily, brothers, I vouch that this is Grignr, the mighty warrior.  It is he who slew the bandit king that captured my sister,' or whatever.  Perfect!"  The puzzle becomes clearer in my mind as I follow my logical conclusions.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=10#p7808
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Z-Machine extensions proposal
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-08-17 04:15:06

I've published my draft 1.2 proposal: <a class="postlink" href="http://curiousdannii.github.com/if/zspec12.html">http://curiousdannii.github.com/if/zspec12.html</a>

Comments, concerns etc?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1307&start=0#p7809
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What to do when you lack ideas?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-08-17 04:46:11

Thanks! I see several things posted here that may be useful. And it's good to know that I'm not the only one getting stuck like this. Lately, I've been feeling as imaginative as a refrigerator, staring at my design document without writing anything in it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1307&start=0#p7810
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What to do when you lack ideas?
User: vivdunstan / DateTime: 2010-08-17 06:29:44

My current technique hasn't been posted yet, so here goes. I bought a deck of storytelling game cards (Once Upon A Time, by Atlas Games). I was initially planning to shuffle them by hand, but then I was able to get hold of a list of all the cards, so went for a more programm-y approach. I randomly reorder the cards, using a Mac Unix command, and look at the first page or so of results. If it sparks off some ideas for me I take a copy of the first page of results, otherwise I abandon it and rerun. That way I can come up with quite a lot of core ideas for games, and see which I want to explore.

Mind you it hasn't resulted in a completed game yet. But it has got me started, which given how severe my lack of ideas can be is quite something [emote]:lol:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=10#p7811
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Z-Machine extensions proposal
User: nitfol / DateTime: 2010-08-17 07:09:00

[quote="Dannii"]I've published my draft 1.2 proposal: <a class="postlink" href="http://curiousdannii.github.com/if/zspec12.html">http://curiousdannii.github.com/if/zspec12.html</a>[/quote]

I guess the @gestalt is super-minimal to encourage its implementation?  But without any reason to actually call the @gestalt opcode, no game would ever include it, even if it were widely implemented.  And if no game ever includes it, why should an interpreter implement it?

Collect some of the extensions that have been implemented and add selectors for them.  The benchmark opcodes from Zoom come to mind.  I'm sure there's been others.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=10#p7812
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-Machine Standard 1.2 (draft)
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-08-17 07:59:56

Well there should be a few new selectors quite soon actually. The [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1239]transcripts collection proposal[/url] for example will need one, and I'm planning on adding some for experimenting with Parchment.

It would make sense to add selectors for existing extensions (it would also be good to have a list of them in one place!) I'll go looking for the Zoom ones you mentioned, but I'm unaware of any others. If you know of more, please do share them.

Hmm, ok, so it looks like Zoom adds EXT:128-132. It also has @sound_data, an opcode removed from the final 1.1 spec, though it looks like a nop. I'll change the range referred to in the private use area so that there's no possibility of conflicts. And if we assign selectors for the Zoom opcodes then other interpreters could add them too, which might be good.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1308&start=0#p7813
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Initial description of something in a container.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-17 09:34:29

I'm sure this has been asked before, but hopefully there's a quick answer.

Is there a way to make the initial description of something appear when it is revealed in a container?

[code]
"Potty Mouth"

The bathroom is a room.

The toilet is a closed openable container in the bathroom. "[toilet status].". The description is "[toilet status].". It is fixed in place. Understand "seat/lid/bowl" as the toilet.

To say toilet status:
	say "The toilet lid is [if the toilet is open]up[otherwise]down[end if]"

A toothbrush is in the toilet. "The end of a toothbrush is sticking out of the toilet drain. Thankfully, there's no water in the toilet."[/code]

[quote]
Potty Mouth
An Interactive Fiction
Release 1 / Serial number 100817 / Inform 7 build 6E58 (I6/v6.31 lib 6/12N) SD

bathroom
The toilet lid is down.

>open toilet
You open the toilet, revealing a toothbrush.

>x toilet
The toilet lid is up.

In the toilet is a toothbrush.

>look in toilet
In the toilet is a toothbrush.

>x toothbrush
You see nothing special about the toothbrush.
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1303&start=10#p7814
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Colored Text, distracting or helpful?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-17 10:33:16

I don't see a standard I7 way to do it, so:

To say note-style type: (- VM_Style(NOTE_VMSTY); -).

Switch it off with the normal "[roman type]" phrase.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1303&start=10#p7815
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Colored Text, distracting or helpful?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-17 10:34:36

Whoops, silly. There is a standard I7 way to do it -- it's in Glulx Text Effects.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1309&start=0#p7816
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Author's Forum for 2010 IFComp
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-08-17 11:04:20

For the last two IFComps, there has been a private forum for authors involved in the Comp where they can discuss the comp, reviews, etc. with each other without violating Rule 5.  Unfortunately, it looks as if the forum previously used for this is offline now.  I've heard no plans for resurrecting this forum on a different site, but I'm convinced it would be a good thing to have.  There was a lot of camaraderie and excitement generated by being able to speak freely with the other entrants about our freshly-completed works.

I've talked with Stephen Granade and his preference is that it be here if possible.  Would it be possible for intfiction.org to host a private forum for this purpose?  If not, I'd be happy to set one up myself.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1308&start=0#p7817
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Initial description of something in a container.
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-08-17 11:18:50

Good question! I'd like to know the answer. And for supporters as well as containers. You'll need to modify some of the Standard Rules -- and this is complicated by a couple of factors. Mainly, the rules in question are set up to build a list. If your player puts five more things into the toilet, your game is going to have to be able to construct an appropriate list ... yet your toothbrush will need to be mentioned before the list, and the list will need to start, "Also in [the item] you can see...."

I think this is a worthwhile enhancement to tuck away in an Extension. Maybe someone more experienced than I with the inner workings of the Standard Rules will be motivated to tackle it.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1308&start=0#p7818
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Initial description of something in a container.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-17 11:24:45

Maybe the most practical solution in this case would be to put the text in an "after opening the toilet for the first time" rule.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1307&start=0#p7819
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What to do when you lack ideas?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-08-17 11:30:06

[quote="Jim Aikin"]The essence of this technique is, [b]you're not allowed to censor yourself[/b]. ANY idea that pops into your head, no matter how stupid or outlandish, you have to write it down. What this does is, it unblocks your unconscious. What usually happens (in my experience, anyway), when we're having trouble coming up with ideas is that every time an idea pops into our head, we say, "Nah, not good enough." After this happens a few times, the unconscious shrugs and says, "Okay, if you're not interested in anything I have to say, I think I'll take a nap now."[/quote]
Agreed, especially with the direct quote from the subconscious.  

Another thing I try is called "mind-mapping". Write and circle a word in the center of the page, then write what word(s) the original brings up, connecting them with lines.  Repeat, with whatever word or words that spark the brain.  After five minutes, you'll have a snarled little web of associated ideas.   After twenty minutes, you might learn something about yourself.

It's important to write quickly and without thinking, racing by your inner critic before he knows what's what.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1303&start=10#p7820
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Colored Text, distracting or helpful?
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-08-17 11:42:36

I like to color-code things that I'm working on for quick reference, so I'm a huge fan of color, but I would say that an Interactive Fiction game is not the place for this.  I'd even be tempted to say that 50% of the time, colored text is a substitute for good writing.

You shouldn't [i]have[/i] to put your item names in color in order to give clues to an experienced player.  You shouldn't [i]have[/i] to put your dialogue in different colors if you've properly attributed who's speaking — even if there's a long passage when multiple people are talking, it's still your job to maintain clarity.  You shouldn't have to color-code a multitude of urgent in-game events; that's usually a sign you're trying to take an IF engine outside its strengths.  If nobody who plays your game can figure out a puzzle because nobody can recognize the properties of an interactive object, it's not because the clue wasn't in color; it's because you overestimated your own cleverness.  [emote]:)[/emote]

If you really feel your name requires color, take a moment and ask yourself how a color-blind person would play it.  Is it still necessary?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1303&start=10#p7821
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Colored Text, distracting or helpful?
User: Janka / DateTime: 2010-08-17 12:38:03

Hertz, the reason I find different colors for different characters and "meanwhile" sequences helpful is because I often scroll back and reread. That's a hundred times easier when the text is color-coded. Same for prompt and entered commands.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1303&start=10#p7822
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Colored Text, distracting or helpful?
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-08-17 12:53:06

I don't see how color necessarily makes it easier to read the second time — though I admit it might make it easier to find a specific event that you're looking for.  "What did I do with that pencil again?"

A word search, an index of previous moves, or an index of previously visited locations that ties to the gamelog, might be equally useful for [i]all[/i] gamers, not just the color-sighted ones.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1307&start=0#p7823
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What to do when you lack ideas?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-08-17 12:58:44

Something I find useful at a slightly later stage of the process: if something feels not quite right about the design and I just can't think of a fix for it, I first write down exactly what the problem is as though I were trying to explain it to someone else. 

That usually forces me to think about the problem specifically enough that solutions become easier to find.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1303&start=10#p7824
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Colored Text, distracting or helpful?
User: vivdunstan / DateTime: 2010-08-17 14:56:10

I've a neurological disease, and enough difficulties reading as a result. I find colour coding very distracting. It certainly doesn't make things easier for me to read.

I don't mind if writers use it in games, so long as I'm given the option to switch it off.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1310&start=0#p7825
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Unsuccessful attempts
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-17 15:23:35

I'm having trouble figuring out how to report unsuccessful attempts correctly. The manual says something about using check and report rules, but I can't find the relevant information about how to use them.

Apologies if this example is a little contrived - I've altered it to avoid spoilers in the hope that I'll actually finish the game I've started:

[code]"Unsorted"

The Hall is a room.

The Sorting Hat is a neuter person in the Hall. The Sorting Hat is wearable.

Before taking the Sorting Hat, ignore the can't take other people rule.

Understand "sort [something touchable]" as waking.

Persuasion rule for asking the hat to try waking the player: Persuasion succeeds.

Before the hat trying waking the player:
	if the hat is not held:
		say "The hat can't sort you from where it is now.";
	otherwise:
		try wearing the hat instead.

Unsuccessful attempt by the hat waking the player:
	if the reason the action failed is the can't wear what's already worn rule:
		say "The hat is already on your head. It will give you an answer in a minute.";
	otherwise:
		say "There is some kind of problem."
		
test me with "hat, sort me/get hat/hat, sort me/hat, sort me"[/code]

[quote]Unsorted
An Interactive Fiction
Release 1 / Serial number 100817 / Inform 7 build 6E58 (I6/v6.31 lib 6/12N) SD

Hall
You can see a Sorting Hat here.

>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] hat, sort me
The hat can't sort you from where it is now.

There is some kind of problem.

>[2] get hat
Taken.

>[3] hat, sort me
You put on the Sorting Hat.

>[4] hat, sort me
You're already wearing that!

The hat is already on your head. It will give you an answer in a minute.
[/quote]

So you see that in the case of failure, I get two messages. If the failure happens because of the Before rule, I get the default message from the hat's action. If the failure happens because of the "can't wear what's already worn" rule, I get the default message from the player's action. I don't want either of these messages - I want just my custom message.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1310&start=0#p7826
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unsuccessful attempts
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2010-08-17 15:32:34

Looks like you need to stop the action when applicable and only test for the case where the hat isn't worn..
[code]Before the hat trying waking the player:
   if the hat is not held:
      say "The hat can't sort you from where it is now.";
      stop the action;
   otherwise if the hat is not worn by the player:
      try wearing the hat instead.

Unsuccessful attempt by the hat waking the player:
   if the reason the action failed is the can't wear what's already worn rule:
      say "The hat is already on your head. It will give you an answer in a minute.";
      stop the action;
   otherwise:
      say "There is some kind of problem.";
      stop the action;[/code]
Although there might be more to it than that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1310&start=0#p7827
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unsuccessful attempts
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-17 15:34:05

[quote="Joel Webster"]On second thought, that's probably not it at all.[/quote]
You're right - that didn't work. Thanks for the idea, though!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1310&start=0#p7828
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unsuccessful attempts
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-08-17 15:35:53

It looks like that's because your Before rule asks the player to put on the hat whether or not it's already worn.  Try changing the before rule so it only tries putting the hat on if it's not already worn (otherwise, it doesn't need to do anything.)

Edit: Or am I missing the point?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1310&start=0#p7829
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unsuccessful attempts
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2010-08-17 15:36:44

Man, you're too quick for me.
I edited my reply to include another idea I had, but you caught my post before I edited.
Try it with the testing for if the hat is worn, and let me know.

**Edit: Wow, gravel is quick, too!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=10#p7830
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Z-Machine extensions proposal
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-08-17 15:46:11

[quote="Dannii"]I've published my draft 1.2 proposal: <a class="postlink" href="http://curiousdannii.github.com/if/zspec12.html">http://curiousdannii.github.com/if/zspec12.html</a>[/quote]A minor point: the canonical link for the 1.1 spec should probably be [url]http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/infocom/interpreters/specification/ZSpec11.txt[/url]

More fundamentally, are you planning on assigning ranges of opcodes to have a particular meaning if some given selectors return a non-zero value? It seems to me that pretty soon you'll run out of spare opcodes that way. Glulx handles this rather neatly by isolating the VM layer from the I/O layer with the use of a single @glk opcode. Any such Z-machine system should probably be very cautious about assigning away more than a few of the remaining opcodes.

I also have to disagree with nitfol's suggestion of including any other past Z-machine extensions that a trawl of interpreters drags up. If it's to be of real use, rather than historical interest, a specification has to contain stuff that people will use, and the fact that no-one has used such past attempts suggests to me that the demand really isn't there for them. The specification shouldn't be a dumping ground for past ideas - if the 1.1 spec business has any lesson for us, it ought to be that specs based around hopeful guesses about what will be useful don't get much support.

I still have my doubts about whether any of this will be useful. If it is to be useful, though, the only way I can see this working is if you use Parchment to prototype ideas, and once you've got something that people are actually using in games, then codify it in a spec. Doing the spec first won't work.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1307&start=10#p7831
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What to do when you lack ideas?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-08-17 16:06:29

[quote="emshort"]Something I find useful at a slightly later stage of the process: if something feels not quite right about the design and I just can't think of a fix for it, I first write down exactly what the problem is as though I were trying to explain it to someone else.[/quote]
Oh yeah: acquire a [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging]rubber duck[/url].  Best tool ever.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1310&start=0#p7832
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unsuccessful attempts
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-17 16:13:59

[quote="Joel Webster"]Man, you're too quick for me.
I edited my reply to include another idea I had, but you caught my post before I edited.
Try it with the testing for if the hat is worn, and let me know.

**Edit: Wow, gravel is quick, too![/quote]
I'm not sure I understand. I changed the Before rule to:

[code]Before the hat trying waking the player if the hat is not worn:[/code]

And got this result with rules on:
[quote]>hat, sort me
[Rule "Persuasion rule for asking the hat to try waking the player" applies.]
[Rule "block waking rule" applies.]
[Rule "Unsuccessful attempt by the hat waking the player" applies.]
There is some kind of problem.
[/quote]

So that doesn't cause it to say "the hat is already on your head..." and it still gives two responses in the case where the hat is not held.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=20#p7833
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Z-Machine extensions proposal
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-08-17 16:40:51

[quote="DavidK"]I still have my doubts about whether any of this will be useful.[/quote]
Agreed. A gestalt system is handy for keeping track of extensions, but where are the extensions? And where will they be specified, if not in a future revision of the Z-Machine Standards Document for which we'd increment the standard number anyway? For example, Glulx's gestalt codes are listed in the Glulx spec and used to test for the presence of optional features which are also described in the spec. If you have Z-machine extensions in mind, like the transcript submission feature, why not wait until you can put those in the spec too?

One extension which has proved useful on Glulx, and may also be useful on Z-code, is veneer acceleration. Z has opcodes for low-level object manipulation, but Inform games have still become increasingly reliant on veneer routines for property access and bounds checking.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1295&start=20#p7834
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Going Fishing
User: edwinmcrae / DateTime: 2010-08-17 18:29:22

It works! "You now carry the brass key."  [emote]:D[/emote] 

Thank you so much.  That puzzle has been the bane of my novice life for several weeks now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=20#p7835
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Z-Machine extensions proposal
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-08-17 19:05:54

[quote="DavidK"][quote="Dannii"]I've published my draft 1.2 proposal: <a class="postlink" href="http://curiousdannii.github.com/if/zspec12.html">http://curiousdannii.github.com/if/zspec12.html</a>[/quote]A minor point: the canonical link for the 1.1 spec should probably be [url]http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/infocom/interpreters/specification/ZSpec11.txt[/url][/quote]
Thanks, will change that. For the 1.0 spec should I reference the inform 6 site, graham's site, or the archive?

[quote]More fundamentally, are you planning on assigning ranges of opcodes to have a particular meaning if some given selectors return a non-zero value? It seems to me that pretty soon you'll run out of spare opcodes that way. Glulx handles this rather neatly by isolating the VM layer from the I/O layer with the use of a single @glk opcode. Any such Z-machine system should probably be very cautious about assigning away more than a few of the remaining opcodes.[/quote]I would be expecting those requesting a selector and opcode to both have a solid implementation planned, as well as being economical in the opcode use. I for example plan to use a single opcode for all of my future Parchment experiments. And if things get in very dire straights, then we could start specifying sub-opcodes: set one unused opcode to EXT_LONG, have it's first operand be the subopcode, and the remaining operands be the arguments for that.  We'd then have another 2^16 extra opcodes if needed.

[quote]I also have to disagree with nitfol's suggestion of including any other past Z-machine extensions that a trawl of interpreters drags up. If it's to be of real use, rather than historical interest, a specification has to contain stuff that people will use, and the fact that no-one has used such past attempts suggests to me that the demand really isn't there for them. The specification shouldn't be a dumping ground for past ideas - if the 1.1 spec business has any lesson for us, it ought to be that specs based around hopeful guesses about what will be useful don't get much support.

I still have my doubts about whether any of this will be useful. If it is to be useful, though, the only way I can see this working is if you use Parchment to prototype ideas, and once you've got something that people are actually using in games, then codify it in a spec. Doing the spec first won't work.[/quote]It's important to fully document what has actually been done. You can see this in the new HTML5 spec, which documents the previously unknown errors that browsers make. Similarly, I'd want to document all of the unofficial extensions that people have made, even if they're not any real use anymore. It's important because if some new extension is highly popular we don't want to exclude Zoom for supporting it because it already has a custom opcode of that value. Instead we document what Zoom has, and ensure that any new extensions will use unique opcodes. Just like the original 1.0 standard really... there's a whole lot of useless stuff there, some of it only relevant for one game or one interpreter, but it's still been documented.

[quote="vaporware"]Agreed. A gestalt system is handy for keeping track of extensions, but where are the extensions? And where will they be specified, if not in a future revision of the Z-Machine Standards Document for which we'd increment the standard number anyway? For example, Glulx's gestalt codes are listed in the Glulx spec and used to test for the presence of optional features which are also described in the spec. If you have Z-machine extensions in mind, like the transcript submission feature, why not wait until you can put those in the spec too?[/quote]
They can be specified wherever, and I'll refer to them in the registry (which I'll be keeping up to date.) Just like how FyreVM is referenced in the Glulx spec. There isn't really any need for Zarf to keep incrementing the Glulx version. I guess the version number is more for interpreters than the code itself, as it means interpreters can go "there's no way I can support enough of what this game needs so I just won't try." With the gestalt system anything could have a work around, but a too high version number means writing work arounds would have been too much work.

[quote]One extension which has proved useful on Glulx, and may also be useful on Z-code, is veneer acceleration. Z has opcodes for low-level object manipulation, but Inform games have still become increasingly reliant on veneer routines for property access and bounds checking.[/quote]Agreed, although I'm also interested in trying pattern matching.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=20#p7836
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-Machine Standard 1.2 (draft)
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-17 19:17:41

[quote]There isn't really any need for Zarf to keep incrementing the Glulx version.[/quote]

I agree, in principle -- I could just use gestalt from here on out. I've been bumping the minor version number (which doesn't affect any terp or game behavior), and I plan to keep doing that. For debugging, is the only real reason.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1310&start=0#p7837
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unsuccessful attempts
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-08-17 19:21:36

It looks to me as though the can't wear what's already worn rule automatically gives you the message "You're already wearing that!" when it fires, so your "unsuccessful attempt" rule is bound to give you two messages in that case. In order to stop the first message from appearing, I think you'll want to replace it:

[code]The can't wear what's already worn rule is not listed in any rulebook.

Check an actor wearing (this is the new can’t wear what’s already worn rule): 
     if the actor is wearing the noun:
         if the noun is the sorting hat:
              say "The hat is already on your head. It will give you an answer in a minute." instead;
         otherwise: 
               stop the action with library message wearing action number 3 for the noun. [/code]

Or something like that; didn't test it. And then you can drop the corresponding part of your unsuccessful attempt rule. 

You could do something similar to replace the can't take other people rule instead of ignoring it sometimes (the 5Z71 documentation recommends only using "ignore" in procedural rules, which are now deprecated).

For the other part, does Joel's suggestion of adding "stop the action" to the before rule work?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1305&start=0#p7838
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Asking someone to do something ... in another language
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-08-17 19:29:02

Aaron, will your solution let "zora, go glik" through? Preventing that might require a more annoying check -- the way I can think of to do it would be to convert the command to indexed test, clip every name and everything that is in the active language, and see whether any letters are left. But that seems awful in any number of ways. (Or you could let "zora, go glik" through.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1311&start=0#p7839
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Novice Friendly extension
User: maga / DateTime: 2010-08-17 20:07:46

In the last few months there has been a renewed focus on making IF accessible to players who are entirely or partly unfamiliar with the form. While a lot of discussion has revolved around high-level changes ('can we live without the parser', that sort of thing), I've also run across many, many suggestions for smaller, less earth-shaking changes that wouldn't affect experienced players much, but could make a good deal of difference for novices.

There are problems with this: there have been so many ideas of this kind that I can't remember them all. And all these good ideas don't help the novice much if they only appear scattered across a handful of games, each of which only use a few of those ideas. And some of the ideas, while simple, are such a pain in the arse to actually code that the grunt work should only ever have to be done once. (I mention this because, in the light of Sarah Morayati's eminently sensible [url=http://selfasfractal.blogspot.com/2010/06/default-parser-messages-do-they-need.html]post on default parser messages[/url], I was going through Custom Library Messages to make sure that everything out-of-world was consistently bracketed. And good weasels in a basket but it's an unpleasant chore.)

So I'm wondering about the utility of collating a big grab-basket of novice-friendly, low-impact tweaks into a single bloated extension. This would be a fairly big-tent approach, written with the understanding that authors can strip out individual features that don't agree with them. In general, though, these should be features that will work just fine without the author doing anything further to them.

Here are some things that might make sense: I'm mostly feeling out how this might work at this point.
[list]
[*] Use David Fisher's Custom Library Messages to bracket (or otherwise consistently distinguish) all out-of-world text.[/*:m]
[*] Gank or integrate a quite embarrassing number of Aaron Reed extensions: Keyword Interface, Remembering, Extended Grammar, Small Kindnesses, Smarter Parser, and Poor Man's Mistype look like candidates.[/*:m]
[*] Use Juhana Leinonen's Reversed Persuasion Correction.[/*:m]
[*] No-input commands (when the player just hits ENTER) default to... something. WAIT or HELP?[/*:m][/list:u]

Thoughts very much appreciated; this is extremely speculative at the moment.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1311&start=0#p7840
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Novice Friendly extension
User: Flourish / DateTime: 2010-08-17 20:34:31

This makes tons of sense, and is more or less what I'm trying to implement in my game - but yeah, just as you said: making sure that everything that's out-of-game is bracketed completely stinks.

No-input commands defaulting to LOOK was one of the things I thought was most useful about Blue Lacuna's various attempts at making things easier for new players.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1312&start=0#p7841
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: checking to see if a sound file is playing
User: aaronbell10 / DateTime: 2010-08-17 23:33:23

(I searched and I couldn't find any mention of this issue before)
How do I check to see if a sound file is playing for use in a conditional?  For instance, I want to say something like:

Instead of listening to room:
     If sound of dial tone is playing, say "Can't you hear that?";
     If sound of dial tone is not playing, say "The room is silent.";

Any suggestions?

PS
Is there anyway to define a smell for an object, the way that you define a description, or do you have to always use the "Instead of smelling x, say "text about smell of x."?

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1293&start=10#p7842
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx VM spec 3.1.2
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-18 00:26:31

I've posted Quixe-1.0.2 and Glulxe-0.4.6, which support the floating-point operations. On my web site, and in the Archive unprocessed directory.

The Glulx 3.1.2 spec seems to be fully baked. I added a couple of lines reserving opcodes for Dannii's ideas, but there haven't been any changes in specced interpreter behavior since the @fmod problem last week. I'm calling it done unless some other blatant mistake turns up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1293&start=10#p7843
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx VM spec 3.1.2
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-08-18 01:57:14

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quixe/play.html">http://www.eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quixe/play.html</a>

That Quixe has some errors:
mod(-0,1)=rem 0.00000 or $0 (should be -0.00000 or $80000000 FAIL) quo -0.00000
mod(-0,-1)=rem 0.00000 or $0 (should be -0.00000 or $80000000 FAIL) quo 0.00000
mod(-0,1)=rem 0.00000 or $0 (should be -0.00000 or $80000000 FAIL) quo -0.00000
mod(-0,-1)=rem 0.00000 or $0 (should be -0.00000 or $80000000 FAIL) quo 0.00000

Browser info:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.5) Gecko/20091102 Firefox/3.5.5 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

And are those tests actually identical? Or is there something different which it doesn't output?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1312&start=0#p7844
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: checking to see if a sound file is playing
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-08-18 02:00:52

[quote="aaronbell10"]Is there anyway to define a smell for an object, the way that you define a description, or do you have to always use the "Instead of smelling x, say "text about smell of x."?[/quote]
You could make the smell a property of things and write a rule that prints it:

[code]
A thing has some text called smell. The smell of a thing is usually "".

Instead of smelling when the smell of the noun is not "":
    say the smell of the noun;
    say line break.

The blue cheese is a thing. The smell of the blue cheese is "Yuck."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1311&start=0#p7845
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Novice Friendly extension
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-08-18 02:13:56

Yeah, that's a great idea. My plan was to create a tutorial extension when the tutorial game is finished, but that wouldn't be an all-in-one solution, just for detecting when the player is stuck and for giving advice on how to play. 

[quote="maga"]No-input commands (when the player just hits ENTER) default to... something. WAIT or HELP?[/quote]
Aaron Reed's Whom the Telling Changed transcripts and other people's experiences suggest that many new players just hit enter when they don't know what to do or they want the plot to advance (like WAIT). Something like this might work, with the action tips being context-sensitive:

[quote]>
No input.

[You could for example OPEN DOOR, EXAMINE something or LOOK. If you don't want to do anything special, you can command WAIT.][/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1313&start=0#p7846
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: checking player input
User: aaronbell10 / DateTime: 2010-08-18 02:38:22

I'm writing a game where the player has to interact with a phone.  I need them to be able to dial a number, but the only number that I care about them being able to dial is "911."

So all I need the phone to do is be something that they can use or dial (I created a dial action) and then prompt them to input a number.  Then I just need to check that input, and if it is equal to "911" or "9 11" or "9 1 1" or other variations, print some dialog and transition to another level. 

Alternatively, maybe they could "talk" to the phone?  I don't want the player to have a list of dialog options though, or any clue about what number they should dial.  It should be clear from the context and I don't want to be hand-holdey.

I'm very new to Inform 7 and I'm really struggling with this.  Any suggestion would be greatly appreciated!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1293&start=10#p7847
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx VM spec 3.1.2
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-08-18 04:19:41

[quote="Dannii"]That Quixe has some errors:[/quote]All tests pass for me with the latest Firefox:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.9.2.8) Gecko/20100722 Firefox/3.6.8 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1303&start=10#p7848
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Colored Text, distracting or helpful?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-08-18 05:59:24

[quote="Hertz"]You shouldn't have to color-code a multitude of urgent in-game events; that's usually a sign you're trying to take an IF engine outside its strengths.[/quote]Not what I was saying.  Also I agree that colour is never necessary, and it should be possible to disable it.

But bear in mind that people don't read IF the same way they read books.  Often text is repeated - it's just there to serve as a flag that your action succeeded or failed or to update your status.  This is why players often fail to notice information given in implicit actions or room descriptions.  

The following is a transcript I'd be unsurprised to see:

[quote][b]Enormous Hall[/b]
I am standing in the Magnificent Hall of Magnificence, which I shall now describe at length...

>take emerald
I remove the emerald from its place in the great statue.  It is surprisingly heavy.

>s
I head back south, down the shadowed Hallway of Ancestors.  The emerald is too heavy to carry far, and I replace it in the statue.

[b]Epic Courtyard[/b]
Oh, what an epic courtyard, allow me to mention its numerous details!  [...]

A merchant plies his wares here.

>give emerald to merchant
I see no emerald here.[/quote]
Which is not to say that the implicit action should be a different colour - in fact, I think that would be needlessly distracting.  But the fact is that players disregard most of the text they read in an IF game because they think they've already read it.  Colour is an obvious way to highlight important aspects of the text that can be skimmed for changes ("Hey, there's an extra blue thing!"), or, conversely, for marking text that can be safely disregarded.

[size=85](This is aside from my point, but I think the solution to the above situation would be to use an [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/tourguide/unthing.htm]Unthing[/url] that would explain what happened to the emerald.)[/size]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1314&start=0#p7849
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Rulebook variables
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2010-08-18 06:01:00

Basically I'm trying to modify the variable of a K based rulebook by:
1. following the rulebook on a subK A.
...2. following the rulebook on a subK B (from within the subK A rule).
.......3. changing the rulebook variable (we'currently in the subK B rule).

[code]"A test area"

There is a room.

An animal has some indexed text called the name.

A cat is a kind of animal.
A frog is a kind of animal.

The test cat is a cat. The name of the test cat is "cat".
The test frog is a frog. The name of the test frog is "frog".



The Animal Testing rules is an animal based rulebook.
The Animal Testing rulebook has some indexed text called the current animal's name.


Animal Testing for the test cat:
	say "[bold type]begin cat[roman type][line break]";
	say "             ";
	showme the current animal's name;
	follow the Animal Testing Rules for the test frog;
	say "[line break]             ";
	showme the current animal's name;
	say "[bold type]end cat[roman type]";
	
Animal Testing for the test frog:
	say "             [bold type]begin frog[roman type][line break]";
	say "                          ";
	showme the current animal's name;
	say "                          [italic type]change the current animal's name to the name of the test frog;[roman type][line break]";
	change the current animal's name to the name of the test frog;
	say "                          ";
	showme the current animal's name;
	say "             [bold type]end frog[roman type]";
	
When play begins:
	follow the Animal Testing rules for the test cat.[/code]

executes as follow
[quote]
[b]begin cat[/b]
............."current animal's name" = indexed text: 
.............[b]begin frog[/b]
.........................."current animal's name" = indexed text: 
..........................[i]change the current animal's name to the name of the test frog;[/i]
.........................."current animal's name" = indexed text: frog
.............[b]end frog[/b]
............."current animal's name" = indexed text: 
[b]end cat[/b]
[/quote]

A quick look at the generated i6 code shows that
[code]
! [5: change the current animal's name to the name of the test frog]
       BlkValueCopy((MStack-->MstVO(365,0)), GProperty(OBJECT_TY, O33_test_frog,p13_name)); 
[/code]
and the last
[code]! [7: showme the current animal's name]
       #IFDEF DEBUG;print "~current animal's name~ = indexed text: ", (INDEXED_TEXT_TY_Say) (MStack-->MstVO(365,0)), "^";#ENDIF;[/code]

seem to share the same memory address : MStack-->MstVO(365,0)


what is happening ?

(it also works top down):
[spoiler][code]"A test area"

There is a room.

An animal has some indexed text called the name.

A cat is a kind of animal.
A frog is a kind of animal.

The test cat is a cat. The name of the test cat is "cat".
The test frog is a frog. The name of the test frog is "frog".



The Animal Testing rules is an animal based rulebook.
The Animal Testing rulebook has some indexed text called the current animal's name.


Animal Testing for the test cat:
	say "[bold type]begin cat[roman type][line break]";
	say "             [italic type]change the current animal's name to the name of the test frog;[roman type][line break]";
	change the current animal's name to the name of the test frog;
	say "             ";
	showme the current animal's name;
	follow the Animal Testing Rules for the test frog;
	say "[line break]             ";
	showme the current animal's name;
	say "[bold type]end cat[roman type]";
	
Animal Testing for the test frog:
	say "             [bold type]begin frog[roman type][line break]";
	say "                          ";
	showme the current animal's name;
	say "             [bold type]end frog[roman type]";
	
When play begins:
	follow the Animal Testing rules for the test cat.[/code][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=0#p7859
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: strelok / DateTime: 2010-08-18 06:52:40

[quote="George"]One thing I'm curious about is if anyone has noticed a performance drop on their CPU when this is running; it seems like this busy waits when it's running but I don't know if that's a big deal or not.[/quote]

Yes, its the reason that I don't use this tool. It uses 90-100% of CPU time...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=20#p7860
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Z-Machine extensions proposal
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-08-18 07:29:38

[quote="Dannii"]Thanks, will change that. For the 1.0 spec should I reference the inform 6 site, graham's site, or the archive?[/quote]The Inform 6 site or the Archive: probably the former, as the spec is browsable there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1311&start=0#p7861
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Novice Friendly extension
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-08-18 08:28:08

*  Use David Fisher's Custom Library Messages to bracket (or otherwise consistently distinguish) all out-of-world text.
    * Gank or integrate a quite embarrassing number of Aaron Reed extensions: Keyword Interface, Remembering, Extended Grammar, Small Kindnesses, Smarter Parser, and Poor Man's Mistype look like candidates.
    * Use Juhana Leinonen's Reversed Persuasion Correction.
    * No-input commands (when the player just hits ENTER) default to... something. WAIT or HELP?

Those are all great ideas!  I'm trying to do something similar in this year's Comp entry, but it isn't formalized out into a single extension.  I've used Aaron Reed's Blue Lacuna convention of ENTER equating to LOOK, but that's because I'm using highlighted keywords in the text, so the user is presented with at least some things to do when they hit ENTER.  Juhana's suggestion sounds great also.

Emily Short's Tutorial Mode extension also looks very promising as something that could be added to an omnibus extension like you propose -- I've adapted quite a bit of it along with many of the Aaron Reed extensions you indicate above in my current WIP and they all work well together.

I have stumbled over a few incompatibilities between Keyword Interface, Remembering, and Smarter Parser.  I'll try to summarize them when I get home and give you a heads up on them -- there was a bit of code required to get them all to work seamlessly, but I can't remember right now whether that was because of my inclusion of Eric Eve's conversation engine or not.  I'll check and let you know.

I will also say that Keyword Interface is about as far from "low impact" as you can get.  As it is, it can change the startup sequence of the game, and without significant modifications to the source code it looks really odd (no keywords in room descriptions except for items that get default text printed -- keywords are always highlighted in inventory listing unless you have any custom text, in which case they're not unless you specifically set that up).  It's a great extension, but requires significant work to get value from.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1311&start=0#p7862
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Novice Friendly extension
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-08-18 08:41:05

These all sound like good ideas. Note that as extensions can require other extensions, the "Novice Friendly extension" wouldn't have to be long, it could just consist of a list of other extensions it requires.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=20#p7863
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-Machine Standard 1.2 (draft)
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-08-18 09:15:45

Okay, I've added Zoom's opcodes.

Does anyone know of any other extensions out there in the wild? I've checked Frotz, Nitfol, Gnusto (obviously), Zplet, ZLR and ZMPP and haven't found any yet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1310&start=0#p7864
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unsuccessful attempts
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-18 09:22:47

No, "stop the action" didn't work.

I'm wary about unlisting rules. I tried looking in the manual some more - it seems like I'm supposed to give my own rules names in order to announce them as reasons for unsuccessful attempts. This now works correctly in the case of failure. Unfortunately, success is impossible!

[code]"Unsorted"

The Hall is a room.

The Sorting Hat is a neuter person in the Hall. The Sorting Hat is wearable.

Before taking the Sorting Hat, ignore the can't take other people rule.

Understand "sort [something touchable]" as waking.

Persuasion rule for asking the hat to try waking the player: Persuasion succeeds.

Check the hat waking the player (this is the can't wake what's already awake rule): if the hat is worn, stop the action.

Check the hat waking the player (this is the can't wake remotely rule): if the hat is not held, stop the action.

Carry out the hat waking the player:
	try wearing the hat.
	
Unsuccessful attempt by the hat waking the player:
	if the reason the action failed is the can't wake what's already awake rule:
		say "The hat is already on your head. It will give you an answer in a minute.";
	otherwise if the reason the action failed is the can't wake remotely rule:
		say "The hat can't sort you from where it is now.";
	otherwise:
		say "Something is wrong with my code."
		
test me with "rules/hat, sort me/get hat/hat, sort me/wear hat/hat, sort me"	[/code]
[quote]Unsorted
An Interactive Fiction
Release 1 / Serial number 100818 / Inform 7 build 6E58 (I6/v6.31 lib 6/12N) SD

Hall
You can see a Sorting Hat here.

>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] rules
Rules tracing now switched on. Type "rules off" to switch it off again, or "rules all" to include even rules which do not apply.

>[2] hat, sort me
[Rule "Persuasion rule for asking the hat to try waking the player" applies.]
[Rule "can't wake what's already awake rule" applies.]
[Rule "can't wake remotely rule" applies.]
[Rule "Unsuccessful attempt by the hat waking the player" applies.]
The hat can't sort you from where it is now.

>[3] get hat
[Rule "Before taking the Sorting Hat" applies.]
[Rule "can't take yourself rule" applies.]
[Rule "can't take component parts rule" applies.]
[Rule "can't take people's possessions rule" applies.]
[Rule "can't take items out of play rule" applies.]
[Rule "can't take what you're inside rule" applies.]
[Rule "can't take what's already taken rule" applies.]
[Rule "can't take scenery rule" applies.]
[Rule "can only take things rule" applies.]
[Rule "can't take what's fixed in place rule" applies.]
[Rule "use player's holdall to avoid exceeding carrying capacity rule" applies.]
[Rule "can't exceed carrying capacity rule" applies.]
[Rule "standard taking rule" applies.]
[Rule "standard report taking rule" applies.]
Taken.

>[4] hat, sort me
[Rule "Persuasion rule for asking the hat to try waking the player" applies.]
[Rule "can't wake what's already awake rule" applies.]
[Rule "can't wake remotely rule" applies.]
[Rule "block waking rule" applies.]
[Rule "Unsuccessful attempt by the hat waking the player" applies.]
Something is wrong with my code.

>[5] wear hat
[Rule "can't wear what's not clothing rule" applies.]
[Rule "can't wear what's not held rule" applies.]
[Rule "can't wear what's already worn rule" applies.]
[Rule "standard wearing rule" applies.]
[Rule "standard report wearing rule" applies.]
You put on the Sorting Hat.

>[6] hat, sort me
[Rule "Persuasion rule for asking the hat to try waking the player" applies.]
[Rule "can't wake what's already awake rule" applies.]
[Rule "Unsuccessful attempt by the hat waking the player" applies.]
The hat is already on your head. It will give you an answer in a minute.
[/quote]
Is it possible to write a check rule that overrides the "block waking rule" for the hat, or do I have to unlist the "block waking rule" for all cases? Or can I do it with a Before rule like I did before?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1310&start=0#p7865
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unsuccessful attempts
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-08-18 10:07:38

I think you're farther along than I am, but for the record, here's what I got after some twiddling (I had to change "Check the waking the player" into "Check the hat trying waking the player"; that might be a 5Z thing, since I'm still running 5Z):

[code]"Unsorted"

The Hall is a room.

The Sorting Hat is a neuter person in the Hall. The Sorting Hat is wearable.

Before taking the Sorting Hat, ignore the can't take other people rule.

Understand "sort [something touchable]" as waking.

Persuasion rule for asking the hat to try waking the player: Persuasion succeeds.

Check the hat trying waking the player (this is the must hold hat rule):
	if the hat is not held and the hat is not worn:
		stop the action;
	otherwise:
		try wearing the hat instead.

Check wearing the sorting hat (this is the can't wear a worn hat rule):
	if the hat is worn:
		stop the action.
	

Unsuccessful attempt by the hat trying waking the player:
	if the reason the action failed is the can't wear a worn hat rule:
		say "The hat is already on your head. It will give you an answer in a minute.";
	otherwise if the reason the action failed is the must hold hat rule:
		say "The hat can't sort you from where it is now.";
	otherwise:
		say "There is some kind of problem."
      
test me with "hat, sort me/get hat/hat, sort me/hat, sort me"[/code]

Which yields:

[spoiler][quote]Unsorted
An Interactive Fiction
Release 1 / Serial number 100818 / Inform 7 build 5Z71 (I6/v6.31 lib 6/12N) SD

Hall
You can see a Sorting Hat here.

>rules
Rules tracing now switched on. Type "rules off" to switch it off again, or "rules all" to include even rules which do not apply.

>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] hat, sort me
[Rule "Persuasion rule for asking the hat to try waking the player" applies.]
[Rule "must hold hat rule" applies.]
[Rule "Unsuccessful attempt by the hat trying waking the player" applies.]
The hat can't sort you from where it is now.

>[2] get hat
[Rule "Before taking the Sorting Hat" applies.]
[Rule "can't take yourself rule" applies.]
[Rule "can't take component parts rule" applies.]
[Rule "can't take people's possessions rule" applies.]
[Rule "can't take items out of play rule" applies.]
[Rule "can't take what you're inside rule" applies.]
[Rule "can't take what's already taken rule" applies.]
[Rule "can't take scenery rule" applies.]
[Rule "can only take things rule" applies.]
[Rule "can't take what's fixed in place rule" applies.]
[Rule "use player's holdall to avoid exceeding carrying capacity rule" applies.]
[Rule "can't exceed carrying capacity rule" applies.]
[Rule "standard taking rule" applies.]
[Rule "standard report taking rule" applies.]
Taken.

>[3] hat, sort me
[Rule "Persuasion rule for asking the hat to try waking the player" applies.]
[Rule "must hold hat rule" applies.]
[Rule "can't wear a worn hat rule" applies.]
[Rule "can't wear what's not clothing rule" applies.]
[Rule "can't wear what's not held rule" applies.]
[Rule "can't wear what's already worn rule" applies.]
[Rule "standard wearing rule" applies.]
[Rule "standard report wearing rule" applies.]
You put on the Sorting Hat.

>[4] hat, sort me
[Rule "Persuasion rule for asking the hat to try waking the player" applies.]
[Rule "must hold hat rule" applies.]
[Rule "can't wear a worn hat rule" applies.]
[Rule "Unsuccessful attempt by the hat trying waking the player" applies.]
The hat can't sort you from where it is now.
[/quote][/spoiler]

Almost there, but the last fershlugginer step doesn't work. It seems to me that "the reason the action failed" probably reports the name of any check rule that caused the action to fail -- step 1 didn't work until I changed the "must hold hat" rule from a before rule to a check rule. I see you've done that already with the "can't wake remotely" rule.

 Unfortunately, at step 4, the "must hold hat" rule is the check trying the hat waking rule that calls the "can't wear a worn hat rule", so it looks like the reason the action failed is still coming up as "must hold hat". At least that's my theory; I don't know a lot about checks and unsuccessful attempts. (Also, I had to change the condition on the must hold hat rule because a worn hat isn't held. UPDATE: Your solution of breaking it up into two check rules solves the problem, since now when the hat is worn, it's a check waking rule that leads to the failure. And anyway it's more elegant.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1233&start=10#p7866
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 for OS 10.5.8?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-18 10:12:35

[quote="Jim Aikin"]I don't think there's a 6E58 release. More to the point, though, I have no idea what sort of code you're running there. Terminal? I just dragged some stuff around from within Finder, or rather, I selected files with the mouse and used Cmd-C and Cmd-V.

To do this from within Finder, you have to use the Show Package Contents command in the utility menu.[/quote]
Argh! Horrifying!  [emote];)[/emote] 

It's funny - some people are afraid of the command line, but I have a greater fear of GUI interactions - you can never tell for sure what's happening behind the scenes. And hey, with the command line, you can copy and paste the entire operation right from your browser to your terminal!

[quote="Jim Aikin"]It appears, if I understand the Terminal lines, that you copied the Extensions but not the compiler. The compiler is in (pause while he turns on his MacBook) Applications > Inform 6E72 > Contents > Resources > Compilers. There are three items there -- cBlorb, inform-6.31-biplatform, and ni. You need to copy and paste them all into the identical location in your Inform 6E59 package.[/quote]
Aha! That's what I was missing. Trying it now:

[code]$ cd /Applications/Inform\ 6E72.app/Contents/Resources/
$ cp -r Compilers /Applications/Inform.app/Contents/Resources/[/code]

It works! Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1293&start=20#p7867
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx VM spec 3.1.2
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-18 10:18:58

It works for me in 3.0.19 (Ubuntu) and 3.5.10 (Mac). Can you upgrade to 3.5.10 and see if that helps?

The two pairs of tests are not identical; one uses localvar arguments (@fmod var1 var2), the other uses constant arguments (@fmod M_N0 M_1). I do that a lot, since Quixe sometimes optimizes constant arguments and I want to test both code paths.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1315&start=0#p7868
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Unlisting rules
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-18 10:23:52

A discussion of a specific problem has led me to a question about unlisting rules.

Suppose I want to override the "block waking rule" in some specific case. What are the consequences of unlisting the block waking rule? (a quick check reveals that "wake [someone]" produces no output at all. Not good!) If I want to preserve its behavior in other cases, do I have to reimplement it in a more specific form?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1293&start=20#p7869
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx VM spec 3.1.2
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-08-18 10:26:04

That was at uni, so I can't upgrade. I can however try to confirm it again on some other computers there.

It works fine for me at home on FF 3.6.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1310&start=0#p7870
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unsuccessful attempts
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-08-18 10:33:20

Hm, I thought I had something else about the "block waking" rule, but I seem to have deleted it when I tried to update my post. Anyway, my suggestion was to redirect "waking" to a new action, "hatwaking," but then I realized that a much easier thing to do would just be to understand "sort" as hatwaking instead of waking. Then you don't have to worry about the standard block waking rule at all. 

If you want to allow "hat, wake me" as well as "hat, sort me," this seems to work:

[code]Instead of asking the Sorting Hat to try waking yourself:
	try asking the sorting hat to try hatwaking yourself.[/code]

Not sure how well it generalizes (or why I couldn't accomplish that using an "understand" phrase, though the answer may be my incompetence.)

So here's what I've got, which I think does what you want:

[code]"Unsorted"

The Hall is a room.

The Sorting Hat is a neuter person in the Hall. The Sorting Hat is wearable.

Before taking the Sorting Hat, ignore the can't take other people rule.

Understand "sort [something touchable]" as hatwaking.

Hatwaking is an action applying to one thing. 
Persuasion rule for asking the hat to try hatwaking the player: Persuasion succeeds.

Instead of asking the Sorting Hat to try waking yourself:
	try asking the sorting hat to try hatwaking yourself.
	
Check the hat trying hatwaking the player (this is the can't wake what's already awake rule): if the hat is worn, stop the action.

Check the hat trying hatwaking the player (this is the can't wake remotely rule): if the hat is not held, stop the action.

Carry out the hat trying hatwaking the player:
	try wearing the hat.
   
Unsuccessful attempt by the hat trying hatwaking the player:
	if the reason the action failed is the can't wake what's already awake rule:
	 	say "The hat is already on your head. It will give you an answer in a minute.";
	otherwise if the reason the action failed is the can't wake remotely rule:
		say "The hat can't sort you from where it is now.";
	otherwise:
		say "Something is wrong with my code."
      
test me with "rules/hat, sort me/get hat/hat, sort me/wear hat/hat, sort me/hat, wake me"[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1316&start=0#p7871
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: I need a good hint! - 'The Seven Doctors'
User: livens / DateTime: 2010-08-18 10:33:58

Hi,

I hope there are a few fellow Doctor Who fans out there, and prehaps a few who have played the IF game 'The Seven Doctors' by David Burke. This game has been really fun, and frustrating. It has many bugs in it, but mostly they can be ignored. Bugs like entering a room by going south, but then you cant go north from in the room, you have to go south again to get out. And some of the complex commands are VERY specific in how you have to word them. 

But I think I am close to completing the game...

Im at the Seafort (from the beach/minefield area), and have gotten down into the lower floor where the cell is (and where I though the Dcotro should be) but in the cell is only an empty chair. There is a Sea Devil that patrols the upper balcony, I have found no way to do anything to/with him. Also there is a small hole in the balcony at one spot, Ive tried everything with that...

Also once you get here you cannot leave until you rescue the doctor (i think), at least you cannot get back into the boat to leave the seafort...

Anyone have a suggestion as what you are suppose to do here?

Thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1310&start=10#p7872
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unsuccessful attempts
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-18 10:39:39

I've got it!

Reviewing the guidelines for action rules, I noticed that redirecting an action should be done in a Before rule. Makes sense. So I have check rules to explain why the hat can't be worn, and a very specific Before rule to override all the blocking rules. Putting all the same conditions in the Before rule seems redundant, but it works:

[code]"Unsorted"

The Hall is a room.

The Sorting Hat is a neuter person in the Hall. The Sorting Hat is wearable.

Before taking the Sorting Hat, ignore the can't take other people rule.

Understand "sort [something touchable]" as waking.

Persuasion rule for asking the hat to try waking the player: Persuasion succeeds.

Check the hat trying waking the player (this is the can't wake what's already awake rule): if the hat is worn, stop the action.

Check the hat trying waking the player (this is the can't wake remotely rule): if the hat is not held, stop the action.

Before the hat trying waking the player when the hat is held and the hat is not worn:
	try wearing the hat instead.
	
Unsuccessful attempt by the hat waking the player:
	if the reason the action failed is the can't wake what's already awake rule:
		say "The hat is already on your head. It will give you an answer in a minute.";
	otherwise if the reason the action failed is the can't wake remotely rule:
		say "The hat can't sort you from where it is now.";
	otherwise:
		say "Something is wrong with my code."
		
test me with "hat, sort me/get hat/hat, sort me/wear hat/hat, sort me"[/code]

I added "trying" in the hopes that this will run in your 5Z version...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1315&start=0#p7873
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unlisting rules
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-08-18 10:48:15

You are correct. 

Or, ensure all your new rules are listed before the block, and use "instead" or "rule succeeds" so they preempt the block.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1310&start=10#p7874
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unsuccessful attempts
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-18 10:50:03

[quote="matt w"]Hm, I thought I had something else about the "block waking" rule, but I seem to have deleted it when I tried to update my post. Anyway, my suggestion was to redirect "waking" to a new action, "hatwaking," but then I realized that a much easier thing to do would just be to understand "sort" as hatwaking instead of waking. Then you don't have to worry about the standard block waking rule at all. [/quote]
That's a nice, elegant solution - not as redundant as mine. I was irrationally afraid of creating a new verb, but I think that's actually a good course of action in this case.

Although it does run into the same problem as unlisting the block waking rule:

[quote]
> sort hat
>
[/quote]

I'd need to write a more general "carry out hatwaking" rule, or a more specific "check hatwaking" rule to cover situations like that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1314&start=0#p7875
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rulebook variables
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-08-18 10:55:31

An easier workaround may be to return the name from rulebook B to rulebook A. 

The Animal Testing rules is an animal based rulebook producing indexed text.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1310&start=10#p7876
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unsuccessful attempts
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-08-18 10:57:39

Yeah, default behavior for hatwaking is needed. On a quick check, a "carry out hatwaking" rule seems to work without messing with any of the other behavior.

My instinct is that it's generally better to try to create new actions than repurpose old ones, just because when you're repurposing old actions you may run into Standard Rules that you don't want and are a pain to work around. (But this is me acting like I'm not a noob again.)

UPDATE: Your solution works too. And apparently worn things do count as held, so I don't know what I was doing there.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1313&start=0#p7877
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: checking player input
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-08-18 10:59:12

I think your original method is just fine:  a dialing action for DIAL 911 which prints up a canned cutscene.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1311&start=0#p7878
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Novice Friendly extension
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-08-18 11:09:35

After reading the recent newbie thread, I agree that LOOK rather than "I beg your pardon" seems most sensible.  It's also a win for the author, as it's one less message to customize.

Maga, I still have a half-finished modern version of Custom Library Messages on my hard drive, so if you'd like me to canonize your weasel-herding into a CLM extension, I'd be happy to do so.

I've already integrated a few of Aaron's extensions into the next Textfyre game. (With his permission, of course.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1313&start=0#p7879
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: checking player input
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-08-18 11:18:17

Off the top of my head (untested), if you only want them to be able to dial 911, you need to provide a sensible response to any other number. If you define your new action like this:

Calling-911 is an action applying to nothing. Understand "911" and "call 911" and "dial 911" as calling-911.

...then you're not going to get a smooth in-game response if the player types 'call 411'. You need an action of the form:

Calling-number is an action applying to one number. Understand "[number]" and "call [number]" and "dial [number]" as calling-number.

But I'll bet you a nickel that's not the right way to do it, and a quick glance through the TOC for the chapter on Advanced Actions reveals nothing about using numbers as input to actions. There's an example in the Recipe Book on using a telephone ... but it doesn't seem, on a quick skim-read, to tackle this obviously important issue.

Short answer: I don't know.

--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1293&start=20#p7880
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx VM spec 3.1.2
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-18 11:21:20

I believe this is Firefox bug <a class="postlink" href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=503595">https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=503595</a>

As it's an obscure corner case, and fixed in the current Firefox 3.5 and 3.6 streams, I don't think it's necessary to patch Quixe to work around it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1315&start=0#p7881
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unlisting rules
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-18 11:25:08

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Or, ensure all your new rules are listed before the block, and use "instead" or "rule succeeds" so they preempt the block.[/quote]
How does this work exactly? "Rule succeeds" seems to get me farther than I was getting with "continue the action," but now I get no output:
[code]"Waking"

Bedroom is a room.

Rip Van Winkle is a man in the bedroom.

Check waking rip van winkle (this is the okay to wake rip van winkle rule): Rule succeeds.

Carry out waking rip van winkle:
	Try jumping.[/code]
[quote]
>wake rip van winkle
>jump
You jump on the spot, fruitlessly.

>wake me
That seems unnecessary.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1311&start=0#p7882
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Novice Friendly extension
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-08-18 11:31:43

I'd love to see an extension that bundled up a big bunch of novice mode helpers. I have two concerns. First, it needs to be author-customizable to a high degree, in case the author needs or wants to do something that would conflict with it. Second, I'm a little hazy about exactly what such an extension would do.

Correcting obvious spelling errors if possible.

Responding to complete gibberish (such as the player typing 'what do I need to do here?') with a friendly all-purpose message.

Silently (or with a printed-out suggestion) stripping 'please' and 'I want to' from the beginning of inputs.

What else?

In the past I've included a big slab of 'here's how to play IF' text in my games, but I'm starting to think that's not as friendly as it ought to be. One way to make it easier to read would be by implementing 'help with commands/input', 'help with travel/navigation/movement/going', 'help with handling/manipulating/using/- objects/things', and so forth as separate commands leading to separate short tutorials. But that only works if the player knows what to type in order to find the help topic.

--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1317&start=0#p7883
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: New to Inform 7, need someone's help!
User: gamerbeauty86 / DateTime: 2010-08-18 11:34:40

Hello!

I need someone's help. I am extremely new to creating IF, and finally getting my feet wet with a Fantasy game (using a story I put so much effort into creating the world for, so I decided to just use that...). 

Now, I am trying to make a certain action unlock a door, instead of a key unlocking the door. But, I keep getting the same error message. Can someone help? 

Here is the code I have so far :

The Underworld is a room.  "You stand in the depths of the Underworld. The darkness and blackness surrounds you. Moving around the room, you sense a door ahead of you. The cold metal tells you that before you is the Gates of the Underworld. But you can feel that the spirits of the Underworld have grown restless. You hear something awaken. It wants you to listen." 

The Gates of the Underworld is a door. The Gates of the Underworld is scenery.  The Gates of the Underworld is lockable and locked. The action listen unlocks the Gates of the Underworld. The Gates of the Underworld is north of The Underworld and south of the Dark Ridge River.

Instead of going through the Gates of the Underworld:
	if the Gates of the Underworld is closed:
		if the Gates of the Underworld is locked:
			say "(first trying to open the Gates of the Underworld) Wait, the dark spirits say. You must listen. [paragraph break]."
	otherwise if the player listens:
		say "(first opening the Gates of the Underworld) You feel pulled towards the open gates. Your connection to this awakening spirit disturbs you, yet it is intriguing at the same time. You desire to know more, but almost as if waking from a dream, you feel yourself wondering if what you have just witnessed was real or if you have been asleep the whole time...[paragraph break]"
			now the Gates of the Underworld is unlocked;
			now the Gates of the Underworld is open.

Now, here's the error message I keep getting over and over again:

Problem. The phrase or rule definition 'Instead of going through the Gates of the Underworld'   is written using the 'colon and indentation' syntax for its 'if's, 'repeat's and 'while's, where blocks of phrases grouped together are indented one tab step inward from the 'if ...:' or similar phrase to which they belong. But the phrase 'if the Gates of the Underworld is locked'  , which ought to begin a block, is immediately followed by <no text> at the same or a lower indentation, so the block seems to be empty - this must mean there has been a mistake in indenting the phrases.


I also have another question...can I have certain "rules" I create, only when the player is in this certain area?  Because later, the player may end up being in the Underworld again, and opening up the gates will be easier in that portion (much later in the game). I only want the player to have to unlock the door by listening during this scenario. So far, I have separated this section into being "Chapter 1 - Part 1 - The Beginning".

Thanks for everyone's help!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1317&start=0#p7884
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New to Inform 7, need someone's help!
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2010-08-18 11:49:30

[quote="gamerbeauty86"]
Problem. The phrase or rule definition 'Instead of going through the Gates of the Underworld'   is written using the 'colon and indentation' syntax for its 'if's, 'repeat's and 'while's, where blocks of phrases grouped together are indented one tab step inward from the 'if ...:' or similar phrase to which they belong. But the phrase 'if the Gates of the Underworld is locked'  , which ought to begin a block, is immediately followed by <no text> at the same or a lower indentation, so the block seems to be empty - this must mean there has been a mistake in indenting the phrases.[/quote]
You might want to separate the listening into a separate action, otherwise it won't work, like so:
[code]Instead of going through the Gates of the Underworld:
    if the Gates of the Underworld is closed:
        if the Gates of the Underworld is locked:
            say "(first trying to open the Gates of the Underworld) Wait, the dark spirits say. You must listen. [paragraph break].";

Instead of listening in the Underworld:
    say "(first opening the Gates of the Underworld) You feel pulled towards the open gates. Your connection to this awakening spirit disturbs you, yet it is intriguing at the same time. You desire to know more, but almost as if waking from a dream, you feel yourself wondering if what you have just witnessed was real or if you have been asleep the whole time...[paragraph break]";
    now the Gates of the Underworld is unlocked;
    now the Gates of the Underworld is open;[/code]
You need the semicolons after your text strings end to indicated the end of that particular line.
Also I think your tabs may have been cleaned out by the message board (at least I hope you tabbed)

[quote]I also have another question...can I have certain "rules" I create, only when the player is in this certain area? Because later, the player may end up being in the Underworld again, and opening up the gates will be easier in that portion (much later in the game). I only want the player to have to unlock the door by listening during this scenario. So far, I have separated this section into being "Chapter 1 - Part 1 - The Beginning".[/quote]
Yes, once the door is unlocked, it will remain unlocked for the duration of the game. After this point, you can open the door at will.
Also, separating your code into chapters and parts only makes it easier to read, it doesn't affect how the game runs at all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1317&start=0#p7885
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New to Inform 7, need someone's help!
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-08-18 11:52:43

You're getting that error message because of a wrong indentation in your code. If you use the [code] button at the top of the forum input area when pasting your code into the message, we'll be able to find the error. (You may also want to download my Handbook, from <a class="postlink" href="http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm">www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm</a>, as it talks about indentation.)

Separating your text into chapters is mainly for your convenience while writing. If you want to have certain things be possible only during certain parts of the game, you need to define Scenes. That works like a charm.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1317&start=0#p7886
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New to Inform 7, need someone's help!
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-18 11:58:13

[b]Edit[/b]: Sorry, a lot of this is redundant with all the quicker posters, but you can see some variations on how to do things here if you want.

There is definitely something wrong with your formatting, but there are also some problems with your code. I think it would be easier to start over with something like this:

[code]The Underworld is a room. "You stand in the depths of the Underworld. The darkness and blackness surrounds you. Moving around the room, you sense a door ahead of you. The cold metal tells you that before you is the Gates of the Underworld. But you can feel that the spirits of the Underworld have grown restless. You hear something awaken. It wants you to listen."

The Gates of the Underworld is a door. The Gates of the Underworld is scenery. The Gates of the Underworld is lockable and locked. The action listen unlocks the Gates of the Underworld. The Gates of the Underworld is north of The Underworld and south of the Dark Ridge River.

Instead of going through the locked Gates of the Underworld:
	say "(first trying to open the Gates of the Underworld) Wait, the dark spirits say. You must listen. [paragraph break]."

Instead of listening when the location is Underworld and the Gates is locked:
	say "(first opening the Gates of the Underworld) You feel pulled towards the open gates. Your connection to this awakening spirit disturbs you, yet it is intriguing at the same time. You desire to know more, but almost as if waking from a dream, you feel yourself wondering if what you have just witnessed was real or if you have been asleep the whole time...[paragraph break]";
	now the Gates is unlocked;
	now the Gates is open.
[/code]

Unfortunately since part of your problem involves indentation, that might not work when you paste it in. You might have to turn the indentations back into actual tabs. But in my version, you never need more than one tab on a line.

A couple points to consider:

When using colon-and-indentation formatting, make sure every line before the last line ends in a semicolon. The last line may end in a period.

The sentence "the action listen unlocks the Gates of the Underworld" doesn't do anything that I know of. I wouldn't attempt to guess how Inform is interpreting it. It's probably better just to use an Instead rule like the one here, and remove that sentence.

I think you have more paragraph breaks than you need. Inform usually adds a paragraph break any time a string ends with a period.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1293&start=20#p7887
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx VM spec 3.1.2
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-08-18 12:04:40

Yeah I don't think so either. Cause well... -0 == 0 in reality [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1317&start=0#p7888
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New to Inform 7, need someone's help!
User: gamerbeauty86 / DateTime: 2010-08-18 12:08:29

I realized that I forgot to mention...there is someone else in the room with the player. It is the "awakening spirit" and the player must "listen to the awakening spirit" and that is when the door will be unlocked...is that possible? 

By listening to the awakening spirit, the awakening spirit has a message for the player...so opening the door and leaving the room will have a certain message and listening to the awakening spirit will have a message. And listening to the awakening spirit unlocks the door. Is that possible?

Here's the code for the entire room: 

[code]Chapter 1 - Part 1 - The Beginning

The Underworld is a room.  "You stand in the depths of the Underworld. The darkness and blackness surrounds you. Moving around the room, you sense a door ahead of you. The cold metal tells you that before you is the Gates of the Underworld. But you can feel that the spirits of the Underworld have grown restless. You hear something awaken. It wants you to listen." 

The Gates of the Underworld is a door. The Gates of the Underworld is scenery.  The Gates of the Underworld is lockable and locked.  The action listen to the awakening spirit unlocks the Gates of the Underworld. The Gates of the Underworld is north of The Underworld and south of the Dark Ridge River.

Instead of going through the Gates of the Underworld:
	say "(first trying to open the Gates of the Underworld) Wait, the dark spirits say. You must listen. [paragraph break].";
			
Instead of listening when the location is Underworld and the Gates is locked:
	say "(first opening the Gates of the Underworld) You feel pulled towards the open gates. Your connection to this awakening spirit disturbs you, yet it is intriguing at the same time. You desire to know more, but almost as if waking from a dream, you feel yourself wondering if what you have just witnessed was real or if you have been asleep the whole time...[paragraph break].";
		now the Gates of the Underworld is unlocked;
		now the Gates of the Underworld is open.
	

many dark spirits are here. Instead of examining dark spirits, say "The dark spirits are the souls of the dead and the souls that have succommed to the powers they have used for darkness. They have grown restless with your presence." Instead of touching the dark spirits, say "The spirits move away from you. They know you do not belong here. You are not completely of darkness like they are. They can sense your power and they are disturbed by something awakening in this Underworld. These spirits want you to listen to the evil that you have awakened." Instead of touching the dark spirits twice, say "The move away from you further. They want you to listen."


After examining the player, say "You are a spirit of dark and of light. This disturbs the dark spirits of the Underworld. They are distrubed by your bond with this awakening spirit. They sense something has awakened with the Underworld."

The awakening spirit is here.  After examining the awakening spirit, say "You feel an unexpected bond with this other spirit. Something feels familiar. As if you have waited long for this spirit. Although you still see darkness, you feel this awakening spirit reaching closer for you. It wants you to listen." 

Instead of listening to the awakening spirit, say "If I could explain to you the importance of what and who I am, I wouldn’t know where to begin.   I believe what I do is as important as the sun and the moon.  I am of evil. I watch and I follow the light to help this power make the greatest decision of all of humanity, even of my existence.  Of course, even when the choice is made, there is always a way for the light to decide again once more.  That is why I exist.  There are some children’s tales that say the one that follows the light is the greatest of all evil, but that is not true.  I am not entirely of evil, you see. I am part of the One being that can not only destroy me…but make me alive!" 

Instead of touching the awakening spirit, say "It wants you to move closer. This awakening spirit wants you to become a part of it, but it knows you will not stay within the Underworld long. It has awakened, as you will. As you must." Instead of touching the awakening spirit twice, say "Awaken, Talia, dear TrueOne. It it is time. The sun rises, as you must."  [/code][/code]

Mainly, I want the player to listen to the awakening spirit before they leave the room. I think I may just be doing this the most complicated way possible...

Instead of the Gates of the Underworld being lockable and locked...then, can I make the player have to hesitate before they leave if they haven't listened to this other spirit?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1307&start=10#p7889
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What to do when you lack ideas?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-18 12:09:01

[quote="Ron Newcomb"][quote="emshort"]Something I find useful at a slightly later stage of the process: if something feels not quite right about the design and I just can't think of a fix for it, I first write down exactly what the problem is as though I were trying to explain it to someone else.[/quote]
Oh yeah: acquire a [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging]rubber duck[/url].  Best tool ever.[/quote]
Real people can also be used for this purpose.  [emote]8-)[/emote] This is one of my favorite techniques. I occasionally use it online in a forum such as this, but I prefer to do it in person.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1311&start=0#p7890
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Novice Friendly extension
User: maga / DateTime: 2010-08-18 12:24:54

[quote="mwigdahl"]I will also say that Keyword Interface is about as far from "low impact" as you can get. As it is, it can change the startup sequence of the game, and without significant modifications to the source code it looks really odd (no keywords in room descriptions except for items that get default text printed -- keywords are always highlighted in inventory listing unless you have any custom text, in which case they're not unless you specifically set that up). It's a great extension, but requires significant work to get value from.[/quote]

Yeah, I'm assuming more something like making >NOUN default to >X NOUN without further fanciness, (although I've been warned that this might be risky too), but since this is very much Aaron's bailiwick I thought I'd look at his approach first.

I considered Tutorial Mode, but it's intrusive enough on player experience that I'm not sure that everybody would want to include it. The aim is to include mostly features that an experienced player will never notice are there.

[quote="Dannii"]These all sound like good ideas. Note that as extensions can require other extensions, the "Novice Friendly extension" wouldn't have to be long, it could just consist of a list of other extensions it requires.[/quote]

Possibly, although I don't know how much that would encourage people to actually use it. And in some cases it might be more efficient to combine things to make them play nicely together, or for efficiency purposes.

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]After reading the recent newbie thread, I agree that LOOK rather than "I beg your pardon" seems most sensible. It's also a win for the author, as it's one less message to customize.[/quote]
This feels like the best option, I agree.

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Maga, I still have a half-finished modern version of Custom Library Messages on my hard drive, so if you'd like me to canonize your weasel-herding into a CLM extension, I'd be happy to do so.[/quote]

At the point where I have it all straightened out, that would be a fine idea; I started out by just going through the list and bracketing everything that wasn't bracketed, but there are special cases ('I only understood you as far as wanting to') that aren't amenable to this kind of brute-force approach.

[quote="Jim Aikin"]First, it needs to be author-customizable to a high degree, in case the author needs or wants to do something that would conflict with it.[/quote]
One of the things I was thinking about was allowing the player to dismiss all these features with a NOVICE OFF command, although (hopefully) it wouldn't be intrusive enough that this would ever really be necessary for an experienced player. But if that functionality could be put in (and I'm not sure how easy it would be, for certain elements) then it would be relatively simple to allow an author to grab the omnibus and then switch off individual features by means of simple Use-like statements.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1311&start=0#p7891
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Novice Friendly extension
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-08-18 12:35:27

Here's another suggestion:

Assistance-requesting is an action out of world applying to (oh, whatever the correct syntax is for text). Understand "who [text]", "how [text]", "what [text]", and "where [text]" as assistance-requesting.

My suspicion is that a lot of novices may type 'how do I find the sword?' and such things. Intercepting all inputs that start with query-words and providing guidance, such as "For help with commands, type 'help with commands'." would be useful.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1311&start=0#p7892
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Novice Friendly extension
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-08-18 12:49:29

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Here's another suggestion:

Assistance-requesting is an action out of world applying to (oh, whatever the correct syntax is for text). Understand "who [text]", "how [text]", "what [text]", and "where [text]" as assistance-requesting.

My suspicion is that a lot of novices may type 'how do I find the sword?' and such things. Intercepting all inputs that start with query-words and providing guidance, such as "For help with commands, type 'help with commands'." would be useful.

--JA[/quote]

Good idea, but I think Aaron Reed's Smarter Parser does a lot of this already.  There may be additional cases that could be added to augment the ones that are already there -- his extension is very extensible.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1315&start=0#p7893
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unlisting rules
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-08-18 13:06:23

"Rule succeeds" in the check rule means the entire action ends in success, so is the same as "stop the action" except that the action is considered successful. My general advice is this:

[list][*]If the default outcome of an action is success, use the check rules to close off exceptions and carry out/report rules to handle the general case. For example, if there's a door that can't be opened in some cases even though it's not locked, use a check rule to prevent opening it.[/*:m]
[*]If the default outcome is failure, use a check rule to block all actions by default (as most of the standard library actions do) and use instead rules to allow exceptions.[/*:m][/list:u]
So I'd recommend that you use an instead rule to wake up van Winkle. If you want to use the check-carry out-report rules, you'll have to remove the block waking rule (which is nothing more than printing the default message and stopping the action) and rewrite the check rules to suit your purposes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1317&start=0#p7894
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New to Inform 7, need someone's help!
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-18 13:07:12

[code]The action listen to the awakening spirit unlocks the Gates of the Underworld.[/code]
I figured out what this sentence does. It creates a key called "action listen to the awakening spirit":

[quote]Underworld
You stand in the depths of the Underworld. The darkness and blackness surrounds you. Moving around the room, you sense a door ahead of you. The cold metal tells you that before you is the Gates of the Underworld. But you can feel that the spirits of the Underworld have grown restless. You hear something awaken. It wants you to listen.

You can see an action listen to the awakening spirit and many dark spirits here.

>take action
Taken.

>unlock gates with action
You unlock the Gates of the Underworld.
[/quote]
Probably not what you want... but as I said before, you can remove this line and everything will still work.

[quote="gamerbeauty86"]I realized that I forgot to mention...there is someone else in the room with the player. It is the "awakening spirit" and the player must "listen to the awakening spirit" and that is when the door will be unlocked...is that possible? 

By listening to the awakening spirit, the awakening spirit has a message for the player...so opening the door and leaving the room will have a certain message and listening to the awakening spirit will have a message. And listening to the awakening spirit unlocks the door. Is that possible?

Mainly, I want the player to listen to the awakening spirit before they leave the room. I think I may just be doing this the most complicated way possible...

Instead of the Gates of the Underworld being lockable and locked...then, can I make the player have to hesitate before they leave if they haven't listened to this other spirit?[/quote]

As for listening to the Awakening Spirit, all you need is to add the unlocking effect to the Instead rule for that. It sounds like you actually want the player to open the gate manually, but you want the spirit to unlock it first. And you want a special message to print the first time you successfully go through the gates. Is that right? Here's one way to do that, using a "first time" rule:

[code]Chapter 1 - Part 1 - The Beginning

The Underworld is a room.  "You stand in the depths of the Underworld. The darkness and blackness surrounds you. Moving around the room, you sense a door ahead of you. The cold metal tells you that before you is the Gates of the Underworld. But you can feel that the spirits of the Underworld have grown restless. You hear something awaken. It wants you to listen."

The Gates of the Underworld is a door. The Gates of the Underworld is scenery.  The Gates of the Underworld is lockable and locked. The Gates of the Underworld is north of The Underworld and south of the Dark Ridge River.

Instead of going through the locked Gates of the Underworld:
   say "(first trying to open the Gates of the Underworld) Wait, the dark spirits say. You must listen. [paragraph break].";

After going through the Gates of the Underworld for the first time:
	say "You feel pulled towards the Gates of the Underworld. Your connection to this awakening spirit disturbs you, yet it is intriguing at the same time. You desire to know more, but almost as if waking from a dream, you feel yourself wondering if what you have just witnessed was real or if you have been asleep the whole time...[paragraph break].";

many dark spirits are here. Instead of examining dark spirits, say "The dark spirits are the souls of the dead and the souls that have succommed to the powers they have used for darkness. They have grown restless with your presence." Instead of touching the dark spirits, say "The spirits move away from you. They know you do not belong here. You are not completely of darkness like they are. They can sense your power and they are disturbed by something awakening in this Underworld. These spirits want you to listen to the evil that you have awakened." Instead of touching the dark spirits twice, say "The move away from you further. They want you to listen."


After examining the player, say "You are a spirit of dark and of light. This disturbs the dark spirits of the Underworld. They are distrubed by your bond with this awakening spirit. They sense something has awakened with the Underworld."

The awakening spirit is here.  After examining the awakening spirit, say "You feel an unexpected bond with this other spirit. Something feels familiar. As if you have waited long for this spirit. Although you still see darkness, you feel this awakening spirit reaching closer for you. It wants you to listen."

Instead of listening to the awakening spirit:
	say "If I could explain to you the importance of what and who I am, I wouldn’t know where to begin.   I believe what I do is as important as the sun and the moon.  I am of evil. I watch and I follow the light to help this power make the greatest decision of all of humanity, even of my existence.  Of course, even when the choice is made, there is always a way for the light to decide again once more.  That is why I exist.  There are some children’s tales that say the one that follows the light is the greatest of all evil, but that is not true.  I am not entirely of evil, you see. I am part of the One being that can not only destroy me…but make me alive!";
	now the Gates of the Underworld is unlocked.	

Instead of touching the awakening spirit, say "It wants you to move closer. This awakening spirit wants you to become a part of it, but it knows you will not stay within the Underworld long. It has awakened, as you will. As you must." Instead of touching the awakening spirit twice, say "Awaken, Talia, dear TrueOne. It it is time. The sun rises, as you must."  [/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1311&start=10#p7895
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Novice Friendly extension
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-08-18 13:11:21

[quote="maga"][quote="mwigdahl"]I will also say that Keyword Interface is about as far from "low impact" as you can get. As it is, it can change the startup sequence of the game, and without significant modifications to the source code it looks really odd (no keywords in room descriptions except for items that get default text printed -- keywords are always highlighted in inventory listing unless you have any custom text, in which case they're not unless you specifically set that up). It's a great extension, but requires significant work to get value from.[/quote]

Yeah, I'm assuming more something like making >NOUN default to >X NOUN without further fanciness, (although I've been warned that this might be risky too), but since this is very much Aaron's bailiwick I thought I'd look at his approach first.

I considered Tutorial Mode, but it's intrusive enough on player experience that I'm not sure that everybody would want to include it. The aim is to include mostly features that an experienced player will never notice are there.
[/quote]

It would probably be sufficient to set the Keyword Interface "use keyword highlighting", "use topic highlighting", and "use location highlighting" options to off, as well as suppressing the opening selection screen.  At that point, it would be effectively a drop-in keyword examination extension.  Then if an author wanted more, they'd have the full extension right there to work with.

There were two things I found that bite you with the single-keyword examination technique, whether you use Aaron's extension or roll your own:

[list]* The first problem hits if you have a noun like "drill", and also an action "drill [something]" with which you'd like to use noun inference (allowing the player to just type "drill" and get the action to occur).  In those cases you have to provide a specific Understand statement for the single word "drill" (and, likely, an alternate action definition that invokes the general one) in order to make the parser resolve it as an action rather than a generic examine statement.

* You can also run into issues with making single-keyword examination work with the Remembering extension if you have objects that potentially require disambiguation (even if they're not actually ever in the same location).  The way this extension handles trying to examine something that isn't there when you have disambiguation issues is to suppress the usual disambiguation message and print a "You can't see that here" message.  Unfortunately, the mechanics of disambiguation are hard-wired deep within the parser and can't be worked around easily.  Even though it doesn't ask you to disambiguate, it still expects it to happen.  In order to get proper behavior when the following command is a single-word examination of some other object (or even a single-word movement request), there's a lot of special-case code involved in the "reading a command" and "printing a parser error" activities.  It's doable, but moderately painful.
[/list:u]

When you get the point where you're working on integrating all the extensions together, let me know and I'll be happy to share what I learned so you can see whether or not you want to include it.

And as long as we're talking about disambiguation, you might want to look at Numbered Disambiguation Choices (by Aaron Reed, of course) as well -- it makes the whole disambiguation whole process clearer and gets you around certain problems where you're trying to disambiguate certain similarly-named nouns that won't work cleanly the normal way.  It's another fire-and-forget extension.

Good luck with this!  Let me know if I can help in any way!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1315&start=0#p7896
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unlisting rules
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-18 13:12:27

[quote="Juhana"]"Rule succeeds" in the check rule means the entire action ends in success, so is the same as "stop the action" except that the action is considered successful. My general advice is this:

[list][*]If the default outcome of an action is success, use the check rules to close off exceptions and carry out/report rules to handle the general case. For example, if there's a door that can't be opened in some cases even though it's not locked, use a check rule to prevent opening it.[/*:m]
[*]If the default outcome is failure, use a check rule to block all actions by default (as most of the standard library actions do) and use instead rules to allow exceptions.[/*:m][/list:u]
So I'd recommend that you use an instead rule to wake up van Winkle. If you want to use the check-carry out-report rules, you'll have to remove the block waking rule (which is nothing more than printing the default message and stopping the action) and rewrite the check rules to suit your purposes.[/quote]
Thanks for explaining that. I think I have a much better picture of how check rules work now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1303&start=10#p7897
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Colored Text, distracting or helpful?
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-08-18 13:19:13

I think for new players, various colors for item/people names can be helpful while they're learning the system, so they have an idea of what to refer to, espeically for beginner style games.

I like the idea of having NPC text a different color. It's helpful that in inform the text in [] and in "" is in different colors. Also the out of world comments may be nice in a different color. (Such as the score notifications or in-game hints of some kind). 

Of course I'm not suggesting it necessary, nor that there should be no way to disable it. Much like lock & key's use of the dungeon map is helpful, rather than irritating, so to should the option of colored text. Even something as simple as (being worn) or (providing light) in a slightly lighter font can make the transcript easier to browse.

Obviously this can be taken to extremes- a treasure room with all gold text, but photopia showed that this can be helpful to the storytelling experience. Likewise, red WARNINGS might be helpful also. (I'm a big fan of video games that change the HP color when it gets low).

I've also seen some games that make a small audible blip when the score increases, or when you're damaged (like in Beyond Zork), and I find this to be helpful also, though not necessary.

In-game minimaps, exit listers, inventory displaying in alternate windows- of course none of them are NECESSARY, nor are convienance commands like GO TO [any visited room] or the OPEN BOX (first unlocking the box with the golden key) option. I guess it's a question of what would be appropriate and inappropriate uses of the colors. 

I guess the IF community may be divided when it comes to pictures, alternate windows, even the way parsers handle commands, so there is no RIGHT answer. I've seen games where this works well, especially for a beginning programmer/player who may not know what items can be interacted with. (Experts may cheat and use the "take all" command to see what's available to mess with). 

Oh well, silly rant of mine. I guess I would chime in and say that some use of color is distracting and supurfluous, while others can enhance the experience.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1163&start=0#p7898
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Thoughts on Extra Windows
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-08-18 13:22:59

I see what you mean there.

I have a game where the player has a spellbook- and one of the spells can be used to reverse all the others. (Such as locking a door instead of unlocking it). One of the puzzles involving spells is timed, as well as involves an NPC animal that moves around, so taking time to check which way your spells are can be a pain in the butt, and it seems like having a spells window can be useful.

I've also seen games like Beyond Zork where the room description prints off in a seperate area, away from the command history, alleviating your need to LOOK over and over. (This window changes to an inventory window when you take inventory).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1318&start=0#p7899
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Possessive Apostrophe
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-18 13:36:48

I think I heard that there was an extension for this, but I'm not sure what it does...

[code]"The Crux of the Biscuit"

The Town is a room.

John James Jingleheimer Schmidt is a man in the Town.

ears are a kind of thing. Some ears are a part of every person.
[/code]
[quote]Town
You can see John James Jingleheimer Schmidt here.

>x ears
Which do you mean, your ears or John James Jingleheimer Schmidt's ears?

>john's
You can't see any such thing.

>x ears
Which do you mean, your ears or John James Jingleheimer Schmidt's ears?

>schmidt's
You see nothing special about John James Jingleheimer Schmidt's ears.[/quote]

It seems Inform is happy with your apostrophe as long as it comes where Inform put it, at the very end of a name. But if you use some other combination of words to name something, it doesn't like your apostrophe. What should I do?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1313&start=0#p7900
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: checking player input
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-08-18 13:38:23

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Calling-number is an action applying to one number. Understand "[number]" and "call [number]" and "dial [number]" as calling-number.[/quote]
You could side-step the issue and make the calling action apply to a topic. It's equally possible that the players type something like "call police" or "call for help" or "call home".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1313&start=0#p7901
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: checking player input
User: aaronbell10 / DateTime: 2010-08-18 14:17:25

UPDATE:

I've almost got it working.  

@Jim Aikin: Thanks!  I used your second suggestion to get as far as I have with this!  

@Juhana: Thanks for the suggestion.  I really only want the action to succeed if they get 911 though.  It's an important transition in the game and I don't want anything about the action to be vague or generic.

The scene begins with the phone off the hook.  There is a phone cradle object and a phone receiver object.
The code for "dial [number]" is:
[code]Dialing is an action applying to one number.
Understand "dial [number]" as dialing.[/code]

The code looks like this for the dialing action:
[code]Instead of dialing when the player does not carry the receiver:
	if receiver has not been on cradle, say "You can't dial the number without reseting the call.";
	if receiver is on cradle, say "You can't dial a number without picking up the receiver.";
	else say "How do you expect to make a call without holding the receiver?";
Instead of dialing when the player does carry the receiver:
	if receiver has not been on cradle: 
		say "test, fail to reset call.";
		stop the action.;
	if number is 911, say "test, number success.";
	else say "test, number fail.";[/code]
Everything works fine except the most important part-- whatever number the player dials by using the command "dial [number]" leads to a success.  Something is failing when it hits the "if number is 911, say "test, number success.";" line, and I can't figure out what it is.  Why is every number causing a success?!

Thanks for the help!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1318&start=0#p7902
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Possessive Apostrophe
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-18 14:30:59

I just discovered something else weird about this situation, which involves object disambiguation. It seems that the parser has no problem disambiguating an object from its parts when it is in the location, but when the object is in a container, it has to ask:

[code]"The Wood for the Trees"

a head is a kind of thing. a head is a part of every person.

The Woods is a room.

the trap is an open container in the woods

A grizzly bear is a person in the trap

A whitetail deer is a person in the woods

test me with "x bear/x grizzly/x whitetail"[/code]
[quote]>[1] x bear
You see nothing special about the grizzly bear.

>[2] x grizzly
Which do you mean, the grizzly bear or the grizzly bear's head?

>[3] x whitetail
(the whitetail deer)
You see nothing special about the whitetail deer.[/quote]

This seems to resolve this particular mystery:
[code]Does the player mean doing something with a person when the person is in a container: It is very likely.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1317&start=0#p7903
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New to Inform 7, need someone's help!
User: gamerbeauty86 / DateTime: 2010-08-18 14:32:01

Thank you!!!!

Now I can finally get out of this freakin' room!!!!! HA HA! WOO. That took me three days to get through that. YES.

Okay, now I have one final questin and this time it is much simpler.

I have a description for when the player is in the "Underworld..." And that is that first statement...

But, when I did a test run...when I say 'examine the underworld' it says in the game that there is no such thing...why is that?  Can't you examine a room as a player and have it give a response. Or since I have labeled the Underworld as a "room" there is nothing to examine.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1318&start=0#p7904
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Possessive Apostrophe
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-08-18 14:33:24

This issue is a bit of a mess. Simply saying "Some ears are a part of every person" creates an object called "[whatever the person's name is]'s ears" -- in this case "John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt's ears," and I do believe that's the last time I'll type that out in full -- so "John's ears" doesn't work, because "John's" isn't a word in the name of the ears. Note that "x john ears" does work. Which is unsatisfactory, since we'd like to allow "John's" to refer to parts of John, as well as synonyms ("x boy's ears," if "boy" is understood as a synonym for JJJS). 

This bit of code gets at least part of the way there; it inserts a space before 's in any command, so the 's can be processed as a separate word, and then takes the "[name] 's" to refer to anything that the named thing encloses. (If you just want to refer to parts, you can change "enclosure" to "incorporation.")


[code]After reading a command:
        let X be indexed text;
        let X be the player's command;
        replace the text "'s" in X with " [']s";
        change the text of the player's command to X.

Understand "[something related by reversed enclosure] 's" as a thing.
Understand "my" as a thing when the player encloses the item
described.[/code]

But then some other potentially screwy stuff can happen. See the discussion around [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=6910#p6910]here[/url]; that's where the bug comes in. You might also want to read some of the previous discussion (though the first piece of code I posted there was somewhat buggy on its own terms and also copied in wrong, and then Endosphere and I talked past each other for a while). 

[url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1232]Here's[/url] another relevant discussion; it seems that if you combine this with "The player is Sally" you get a whole bunch of new issues, thanks to the mysterious "yourself" object. And [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=868]here's[/url] a thread relevant to that (I think that's the one with Endosphere's solution to the problem mentioned in the previously linked thread.

...anyway, hopefully the first bit of code I posted is enough to get you started.

[Your second post went up while I was typing -- that's odd.]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1317&start=0#p7905
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New to Inform 7, need someone's help!
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2010-08-18 14:42:04

[quote="gamerbeauty86"]when I say 'examine the underworld' it says in the game that there is no such thing...why is that?[/quote]That is because rooms aren't objects.
You could create a scenery object or a backdrop like so:[code]The underworldBackdrop is a backdrop in the Underworld. The description of the underworldBackdrop is "The underworld is rather more frightening than you previously imagined." Understand "underworld/under/world" as the underworldBackdrop.[/code]By using a backdrop instead of scenery, you can reuse it in more rooms without running into instance errors. Other than that, backdrops and scenery behave basically identically.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=868&start=0#p7906
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Newbie] Parts and description thereof
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-08-18 14:46:21

[quote="Endosphere"][quote="Eleas"]Well, I tried, for instance, to echo "[name of object]", and the virtual machine died.[/quote]
If that's exactly what you wrote, "[name of object]" doesn't have a valid referent as far as I know.[/quote]

Oh, I just noticed this -- I pulled something similar once. I believe that I had tried to use a [name of object] token in a phrase to determine the name of the object, which led to an infinite loop and crashed the virtual machine. "[printed name of object]" worked, I think.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1317&start=0#p7907
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New to Inform 7, need someone's help!
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-08-18 15:01:38

[quote="Jim Aikin"]You're getting that error message because of a wrong indentation in your code. If you use the [code] button at the top of the forum input area when pasting your code into the message, we'll be able to find the error. (You may also want to download my Handbook, from <a class="postlink" href="http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm">http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm</a>, as it talks about indentation.)

Separating your text into chapters is mainly for your convenience while writing. If you want to have certain things be possible only during certain parts of the game, you need to define Scenes. That works like a charm.

--JA[/quote]

Jim, you might want to put the link to the handbook in your forum signature, like I do the programmer's manual below.  You never know who might discover it while reading posts about other stuff in which you've posted.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1317&start=0#p7908
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New to Inform 7, need someone's help!
User: gamerbeauty86 / DateTime: 2010-08-18 15:08:31

Yay, thank you everyone!!

I'm very very very sure i will be back. Creating IF is fun...I feel like I am doing a very long math problem (not a bad thing though, I like math...) yet doing something creative at the same time (which i also love)...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1163&start=0#p7909
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Thoughts on Extra Windows
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-08-18 15:08:42

On one hand, it makes the game easier for newbs to play.  OTOH, I feel it makes the work too game-like.  I forget even to check the status line on most games, and prefer the prose do as much work as possible.

I guess I should say: it depends on the kind of work it is.  I thought offering dialogue options in a bottom window in Pytho's Mask was pretty elegant, but having a separate window for every bit of information just says to me that the author is more comfortable with videogames than with story.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1303&start=10#p7910
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Colored Text, distracting or helpful?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-08-18 15:18:13

Color is something to which it's easy to give a meaning, but difficult to find instances that really need the differentiation that color provides.  Frequently bold, italic, or bracketed text can do the same job less problematically. 

FWIW, the one instance in printed books where I've seen color used was in Ralph Manheim's English translation of Michael Ende's The Neverending Story.  It's a framed story.  The outer story, of Bastian reading a book in the school attic, is printed in purple. The inner story's events, set in Fantastica, are written in green.  It's a children's book in which the outer story's character enters the inner story's world, so perhaps color was used to emphasize who did what where.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1313&start=0#p7911
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: checking player input
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-08-18 15:38:35

[quote="aaronbell10"]UPDATE:

I've almost got it working.  

@Jim Aikin: Thanks!  I used your second suggestion to get as far as I have with this!  

@Juhana: Thanks for the suggestion.  I really only want the action to succeed if they get 911 though.  It's an important transition in the game and I don't want anything about the action to be vague or generic.

The scene begins with the phone off the hook.  There is a phone cradle object and a phone receiver object.
The code for "dial [number]" is:
[code]Dialing is an action applying to one number.
Understand "dial [number]" as dialing.[/code]

The code looks like this for the dialing action:
[code]Instead of dialing when the player does not carry the receiver:
	if receiver has not been on cradle, say "You can't dial the number without reseting the call.";
	if receiver is on cradle, say "You can't dial a number without picking up the receiver.";
	else say "How do you expect to make a call without holding the receiver?";
Instead of dialing when the player does carry the receiver:
	if receiver has not been on cradle: 
		say "test, fail to reset call.";
		stop the action.;
	if number is 911, say "test, number success.";
	else say "test, number fail.";[/code]
Everything works fine except the most important part-- whatever number the player dials by using the command "dial [number]" leads to a success.  Something is failing when it hits the "if number is 911, say "test, number success.";" line, and I can't figure out what it is.  Why is every number causing a success?!

Thanks for the help![/quote]

I haven't tested this, but I think you want "If the noun is 911" -- "the noun" is (usually?) the direct object of the command, so it'll be whatever number was entered. "If number is 911" I think checks whether 911 is a number, which is always true.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1303&start=10#p7912
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Colored Text, distracting or helpful?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-08-18 15:47:41

A couple of other cases where color is used in printed books -- in some editions of the New Testament, anything Jesus says is printed in a special color. Mark Danielewski's House of [strike]Pancakes[/strike] Leaves prints the word "House" in blue, at least in some editions. (That seemed like an unfortunate transition.)

Deadline Enchanter had an effective use of colored text I think; part of the general mind-screw. Similar to Photopia's, I guess.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1313&start=0#p7913
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: checking player input
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-08-18 16:05:19

[quote="aaronbell10"]@Juhana: Thanks for the suggestion.  I really only want the action to succeed if they get 911 though.  It's an important transition in the game and I don't want anything about the action to be vague or generic.[/quote]
That's not what I meant. Other input should be taken into account, otherwise you get misleading error messages:
[quote]>CALL POLICE
I didn't understand that sentence.

>CALL MOM
I didn't understand that sentence.[/quote]

Optimally you'd want something like this:
[quote]>CALL MOM
This is no time to call random people. You need to alert the authorities.[/quote]

(Also, if you requre a certain wording it's important to clue the player in really carefully, especially in this case because 911 is not used outside North America.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1313&start=0#p7914
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: checking player input
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-08-18 16:08:52

[quote="matt w"]I haven't tested this, but I think you want "If the noun is 911" -- "the noun" is (usually?) the direct object of the command, so it'll be whatever number was entered.[/quote]
"If the number understood is 911." Noun refers always to things, never to values.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1319&start=0#p7915
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 and svn?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-18 16:09:11

I just tried to add my I7 projects directory to my personal svn repository. It looked like everything went okay, but now I'm having a weird problem:

[code]
$ svn ci
svn: Working copy '/Users/mike/eyeballsun/i' locked
svn: run 'svn cleanup' to remove locks (type 'svn help cleanup' for details)

$ svn cleanup
svn: 'headache.inform/Build' is not a working copy directory
[/code]

What it looks like is that instead of just updating files within the Build and Source directory of a project, the IDE is completely replacing those directories, including the .svn subdirectories that Subversion uses to keep track of them. This could be a really nasty situation.

Has anyone actually managed to keep their I7 work in Subversion? Got any tricks for me?

Thanks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1319&start=0#p7916
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 and svn?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-08-18 16:13:04

Yeah, that's exactly what's happening. What I'm doing right now is that I run a script that copies the relevant files to another folder before submitting that folder to SVN. It's one extra step but on the other hand at the same time I have the script to do other stuff like copy the relevant extensions to the same folder to be stored in the repository with the source code.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1313&start=0#p7917
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: checking player input
User: aaronbell10 / DateTime: 2010-08-18 16:17:13

UPDATE:

I fixed the problem!
[code]...
Instead of dialing when the player does carry the receiver:
	if receiver has not been on cradle:
		say "[placeholder]test, fail to reset call.";
		stop the action.;
	if the player's command does not match "dial 911":
		say "[placeholder]number fail";
		stop the action;
	if the player's command matches "dial 911":
		say "[placeholder]success.";
		move player to Dream #1.[/code]
Now if the player gets the right number, it transitions, and if they get the wrong number they get feedback that explains the situation.  

@Juhana I've avoided using call for a reason, to narrow the input to numbers.  I also have put in a "mistake" for the dial action, so that if someone types in [text] they will receiver an error.  I will probably put in a rule to handle if the player attempts to "call," probably something like "If you want to call someone, you need to dial a number first."

Thanks for the reminder that we only use 911 in North America.  I'll have to decide what I'm going to do about that.  My phone also has .ogg sounds, all of which are local to North America.  I'll have to think about some way of cluing in the player that is not from NA.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1319&start=0#p7918
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 and svn?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-08-18 16:56:39

Yes, it's a known headache, specific to Mac.  I do copy-fu but should probably automate it like Juhana.

It seems svn does not respect the Mac's "bundle" type as being opaque, instead treating it like any ol' folder.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1320&start=0#p7919
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: A possibly neater implementation of ALL in Inform 7
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-08-18 17:06:33

It seems Inform can't distinguish between TAKE ALL and TAKE ALL BOOKS.  I believe I found a neater way to re-implement how ALL is handled in Inform 7, and simplifies the language to boot.  Here's the crux:[code]A thing can be all. A thing is usually all. The player is not all.
Understand the all property as describing a thing.[/code]And that's about it. Here's a compile-able sample, using ALLL (with an extra L to avoid complications) that shows Inform picks up the appropriate things.[code]
"all as adj" by Ron Newcomb

A thing can be alll. A thing is usually alll. The player is not alll.
Understand the alll property as describing a thing.

Heroism, Courage, and Loyalty are in the library.
Heroism, Courage, and Loyalty are undescribed, not alll.

A book is a kind of thing. Understand "book/books" as a book.

A Time To Kill, The Great Gatsby, and Lord Jim are books in the library. 

A bookmark and a candle are in the library.

The library is room. 

Test me with "take alll / take alll books"
[/code]produces:[quote="Transcript"]all as adj
An Interactive Fiction by Ron Newcomb
Release 1 / Serial number 100818 / Inform 7 build 6E72 (I6/v6.31 lib 6/12N) SD

library
You can see a Time To Kill, The Great Gatsby, Lord Jim, a bookmark and a candle here.

>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] take alll
Which do you mean, the Time To Kill, The Great Gatsby, Lord Jim, the bookmark or the candle?

>[2] take alll books
Which do you mean, the Time To Kill, The Great Gatsby or Lord Jim?

>[/quote]

Obviously the final implementation would perform the action on each item rather that as which-do-you-mean. This is just for illustration purposes. 

Anyone foresee problems with this idea?  If adopted, then the rulebook "deciding whether all includes" can go away, objects being set at compile time or at runtime as "all" just like any other property.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1320&start=0#p7920
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A possibly neater implementation of ALL in Inform 7
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-08-18 17:09:48

Forgot to add:  implications like "Scenery is usually not all." would exist so scenery is not by default affected by TAKE ALL (or whatever) but can, again, be changed categorically or only in special circumstances like any other object's property.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1313&start=0#p7921
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: checking player input
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-08-18 18:59:30

[quote="Juhana"][quote="matt w"]I haven't tested this, but I think you want "If the noun is 911" -- "the noun" is (usually?) the direct object of the command, so it'll be whatever number was entered.[/quote]
"If the number understood is 911." Noun refers always to things, never to values.[/quote]

Oops. Thanks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1310&start=10#p7922
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unsuccessful attempts
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-08-18 19:12:00

[quote="matt w"]And apparently worn things do count as held, so I don't know what I was doing there.[/quote]
You're right, although the manual doesn't quite articulate that fact. Page 3.20 says this:

"(When we come to asking questions about the current situation, we will need to remember that "to carry" and "to wear" are different. Thus "if Lancelot carries the plate armour" will not be true if he is wearing it rather than carrying it under his arm. As we will later see, we can instead vaguely say "if Lancelot has the plate armour" to mean either carrying or wearing.)"

This passage doesn't address the question of whether "held" is the same thing as "carried," however.

It's not -- even though, to a native English speaker, the two words mean the same thing. "Carried" means the object is positioned within the player object in the object tree, but not worn. "Held" means "either carried or worn" -- another little Inform idiosyncrasy.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1310&start=10#p7923
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unsuccessful attempts
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-08-18 20:17:36

[quote="Jim Aikin"]This passage doesn't address the question of whether "held" is the same thing as "carried," however.

It's not -- even though, to a native English speaker, the two words mean the same thing.[/quote]

That's not quite true. If I have a book in my backpack, I'm carrying it but not holding it. Of course that cuts the opposite way from the actual distinction. (For that matter, if I were holding anything right now, I wouldn't be carrying it, because I'm sitting down and not moving.) But the manual definitely doesn't explain the distinction very well -- there's a bit where it mentions "held" as meaning "in inventory," but that's very indirect.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1312&start=0#p7924
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: checking to see if a sound file is playing
User: aaronbell10 / DateTime: 2010-08-18 21:57:13

bump for sound check?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1319&start=0#p7934
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 and svn?
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-08-18 23:33:05

You may want to consider using a VCS that keeps all of its metadata in a single top-level folder, like Mercurial or Git.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1319&start=0#p7935
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 and svn?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-18 23:39:47

Ugh! What a drag. Thanks for the suggestions - I'll probably do something like Juhana's solution.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1321&start=0#p7936
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Bug with "regionally in" or in Index?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-08-19 00:13:48

In 6.11 "A Word About In" in the manual, it describes the "regionally in" test.[code]if the croquet box is regionally in the mystery value, ...[/code]where "the mystery value" is an object that varies.  But the Standard Rules defines [code]The verb to be regionally in implies the reversed regional-containment relation.[/code]The Standard Rules do NOT define that relation. How it is defined is a mystery to me.  But in the Relations section of the Index's Phrasebook, the regional-containment relation is defined as room-to-room, which seems wrong.  Why isn't it region-to-room or room-to-region?  Or even object-to-something?

Is this a bug?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1311&start=10#p7937
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Novice Friendly extension
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-08-19 03:05:55

In general, I definitely agree with the frustration that a lot of these problems have been solved over and over again and yet most authors still aren't adding the extensions to their own games. Creating a single uber-extension-- ideally one that's polished and useful enough it might be included as one of the default I7 extensions-- could be a big step towards solving this.

(This all relates to the larger problem of extensions not getting enough visibility. I see a lot of posts everywhere with people wishing that there was some way to do something that there's already an extension for. But I think this is another discussion.)

I would be very wary of including Keyword Interface in a package like this, though. It fundamentally shifts the IF paradigm to something a little different: and, as was just mentioned, breaks the low-level parser assumption that "first word equals verb." I found with Blue Lacuna this led to a lot of extremely-difficult-to-diagnose-and-fix type errors. 

What might be better is an instructional message: rather than actually trying an action, tell the player that the story expects verbs to come before nouns. 

Smarter Parser also has issues, too: I'm quite fond of it, but it can slow stories down fairly significantly, since it's doing a ton of regular expression matching. This only happens for misunderstood commands, but in Javascript interpreters it's a point to consider.

In fact, a lot of the extensions under discussion here have some tradeoffs that make me a little wary of lumping them all together in one big package. Sometimes certain features conflict with the way a particular game works: letting people pick and choose by cherry picking which extensions to include has advantages. However, at the end of the day I think the benefits of such a package probably outweigh the gotchas: we can start for a baseline of "Hey, include this one extension, and if you have problems, you can just include the individual components instead."

Other questions that arise: who maintains the uber-extension? If people keep updating the included extensions, do they have to update them in two places? If an author wants to take one of these extensions off in a more experimental/computationally-expensive direction, does it just fork? I guess none of these are really serious problems. Ideally there could be some sort of collaborative maintenance, so the individual authors could update their own segments, but we'd need an infrastructure for something like that.

One big advantage of the uber-extension is that it would make it easier to solve compatibility problems between newbie-assisting extensions. For instance, I just in the last day noticed that Implicit Actions and Modified Exit (both candidates for being added to the initial list, by the by) are currently incompatible with each other, since they both have a rule by the same name. These things would be a lot easier to catch and fix if people were actively trying to combine them.

Let's keep this discussion going... I think good things can come out of this.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1311&start=10#p7938
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Novice Friendly extension
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-08-19 03:08:59

[quote]Smarter Parser also has issues, too: I'm quite fond of it, but it can slow stories down fairly significantly, since it's doing a ton of regular expression matching. This only happens for misunderstood commands, but in Javascript interpreters it's a point to consider.[/quote]
Regular expressions are something I think would be a prime example for acceleration. Can you provide more details about their performance (perhaps in another topic)?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1322&start=0#p7939
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Does IF need man pages?
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-08-19 03:51:00

Something I've been noticing in processing some Sand-dancer feedback (and that certainly many others have noticed before): IF default messages don't do a very good job at telling the player what sorts of commands would work better than the ones they just tried. 

Take, for example, this scenario:

[quote]>GET OUT OF TRUCK
I only understood you as far as wanting to get outside.[/quote]

IF vets know what this means, but I've almost never seen a newbie respond to this by typing "GET OUT". Instead, imagine if we had something like this:

[quote]>GET OUT OF TRUCK
I only understood the "get out" part of that. The exiting action doesn't expect a noun, so try just typing GET OUT if that's what you're trying to do.[/quote]

This isn't perfect, and would probably fall apart in this common scenario:

[quote]>I WANT TO GET OUT DAMMIT
I only understood the "i" part of that. The taking inventory action doesn't expect a noun, so try just typing I if that's what you're trying to do.[/quote]

...but on the other hand, there's at least some indication of how the parser misinterpreted the command now.

Extending this farther, while the IF parser has often been unfavorably compared to a UNIX command line, even UNIX has man pages: if a command doesn't work the way you thought it did, you can type MAN COMMAND to get the full specs. There's absolutely no way to get this information out of an Inform game. What if you could do things like this:

[quote]>THROW BALL THROUGH WINDOW
I didn't understand that command. Here are all the ways I know how to use THROW:

-- I know THROW (or DISCARD or DROP) any number of things you're holding as a way to drop them.
-- I know THROW (or DISCARD or DROP) something you're holding AT/AGAINST/ON/ONTO as a way to throw it at something.
-- I know THROW (or DISCARD or DROP) something IN/INTO/DOWN as a way to insert it into something.
-- I know THROW (or DISCARD or DROP) something ON/ONTO as a way to put it onto something.

>[/quote]

Essentially, this is just a gussied up form of the testing command SHOWVERB. But how lovely! Now we see that we'll be understood if we type "THROW BALL AT WINDOW" instead, and maybe we've learned a bit more about the world model: that there are things can stuff can be put on or inserted into. Also, we've demonstrated that we do understand THROW, just not the particular usage of it.

Man pages are not exactly cutting edge UI technology, either, but hey, they're better than nothing.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1323&start=0#p7941
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: what tools do you use for mapping interactive fiction ga
User: Janka / DateTime: 2010-08-19 04:52:24

Seriously, I expect you are already doing it with your rolex replica.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1163&start=0#p7942
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Thoughts on Extra Windows
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-08-19 05:20:20

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]the author is more comfortable with videogames than with story.[/quote]Would you complain that a film director using certain effects (say, a pseudo-documentary style) was "more comfortable with movies than with story"?  Aren't you confusing medium with content?  

Things don't need to look and behave like books in order to tell a good yarn.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1163&start=0#p7943
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Thoughts on Extra Windows
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-08-19 07:34:55

[quote="Pacian"][quote="Ron Newcomb"]the author is more comfortable with videogames than with story.[/quote]Would you complain that a film director using certain effects (say, a pseudo-documentary style) was "more comfortable with movies than with story"?  Aren't you confusing medium with content?  

Things don't need to look and behave like books in order to tell a good yarn.[/quote]

I guess you could say the same thing about a parser input...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1322&start=0#p7944
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Does IF need man pages?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-08-19 07:50:01

This seems like a great idea, particularly with THROW, where it seems like everyone implements a different syntax and I often spend a lot of turns trying to figure out the right one. (Or maybe I just tend to try THROUGH when no author does.) Another pet peeve is that I don't think THROW should be a synonym for DROP -- has anyone ever typed THROW KNIFE when they wanted to drop it? -- but that's another issue. 

How hard would it be to write something that matched any possible verb in it and offered a choice of man pages, so I WANT TO GET OUT DAMMIT gave you the explanation for "I" but also said "If you want to know how to use 'GET,' type 'HELP GET'; if you want to know how to use 'OUT,'; type 'HELP OUT'"? That's not the best syntax, but one of the challenges would be letting people know how to use this (other than by triggering an "I only understood you as far as knowing how to" error). 

One caution would be making sure that you don't wind up lying about exceptional cases: "I know DROP any number of things you're holding as a way to put them down, unless one happens to be a particular fragile item, in which case it means smash it against the ground with great force." The solution may be not to design puzzles like that. Yeah, I'm still kind of ticked off about it. (Incidentally, I think "put them down" is much clearer than "drop them.")

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1319&start=0#p7945
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 and svn?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-19 09:11:53

I'm wondering - The svn repository has hooks so you can do various things on the server before and after committing. But does the svn client have any hooks so you can do anything with the working directory before committing or checking out (like copying your Inform files into your working directory?)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1323&start=0#p7946
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: what tools do you use for mapping interactive fiction ga
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-08-19 09:30:43

I usually don't, but when I need to, I find pen and paper still better than any computer program I've used.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1316&start=0#p7947
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: I need a good hint! - 'The Seven Doctors'
User: livens / DateTime: 2010-08-19 09:31:18

I got it. Looks like it was a glitch, the Doctor should have been sitting in the chair. Appearently you have to complete the 6 areas in order, even though it never says you have to. I went through the game from scratch going through each area in the order of the doctors; First incarnation, Second...

I spent a good deal of time trying to get through that, even went so far as to decompile the game file using Reform. After reading all of the dialog in the game I found that there was nothing else to do in that area except rescue the doctor.

I would still recommend the game to any serious DW fans [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1319&start=0#p7948
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 and svn?
User: George / DateTime: 2010-08-19 09:49:21

Ben Collins-Sussman wrote this in RAIF some time back:

[quote]
Version control is key here, as others have said.   But be careful 
using Inform and Subversion! 

On the mac in particular, each time Inform "saves", it completely 
destroys and re-creates your project.inform/ folder.  This means all 
the .svn/ folders are destroyed as well.  The same goes for .git/ 
or .hg/ if you're using a distributed version control system. 

The solution that Jack and I came up with for collaboration: 

1.  Put a directory under version control (in our case, we were using 
mercurial, so it had an .hg/ directory at the top.) 

2.  Use inform to create mystory.inform/ 

3.  Put mystory.inform/Source/story.ni explicitly under version 
control as well, but nothing else. 

Then, when you get a collaborator: 

1. Have them checkout a working copy (or clone) of the project. 

2. Move mystory.inform/ to somewhere *outside* the sandbox. 

3. Use inform to create a new mystory.inform/ within the sandbox 
again. 

4. Copy the original mystory.inform/Source/story.ni back on *top* of 
the story.ni within the sandbox. 

Now you're set to go.  Modify the story within the Inform IDE, then 
'commit' your changes to the server.  Likewise, 'updating' will modify 
the story file. 

THE BIG CAVEAT:  be sure to update ONLY when the Inform IDE is NOT 
running.  Else it will clobber your newly-updated file and you'll lose 
your collaborator's changes.  [emote]:-)[/emote] 
[/quote]

There's also some information in the Rover's Day Out README (on the Google project page: <a class="postlink" href="http://code.google.com/p/rovers-day-out/">http://code.google.com/p/rovers-day-out/</a>)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1320&start=0#p7949
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A possibly neater implementation of ALL in Inform 7
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-08-19 09:51:02

One of the nice things about the current rule is that you can specifically rule out certain objects for certain actions - if you don't want clothes to be part of all when taking, then that's easy enough.  

It's clearly possible in the extension, too, but more complicated.  

I suspect there's some trickier stuff, but that's off the top of my head, given recent interactions.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1321&start=0#p7950
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Bug with "regionally in" or in Index?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-19 10:31:58

It looks like an index bug; the relation should be shows as "region to room".

Hm. Maybe it's deeper than that. I'm getting weird errors with


The RRR is a relation that varies.
... now RRR is the regional-containment relation.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1308&start=0#p7951
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Initial description of something in a container.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-19 10:34:27

I'm bumping this topic because now I have a supporter with the same problem. In this case "for the first time" isn't going to work because it's not an issue of opening and closing.

I'm considering lying about the object being on the supporter, and having it actually just be in the location. I think I've noticed others doing the same thing.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1322&start=0#p7952
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Does IF need man pages?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-08-19 11:17:24

<jumps up and down and makes wheeping noises>

Great idea! Should definitely be included, not just in a 'for beginners' extension, but in your Smarter Parser extension.

I would also agree with Matt that having 'throw' be a synonym for 'drop' is beyond old-school. That dates clear back to Adventure, IIRC. A modern library should detach it.

It's hard for me to imagine a story situation in which 'throw the knife' would make sense as a command. That's a curiously aimless command -- and literally so. Most stories would need a second noun for the action -- 'throw knife at Betty' or whatever. So the default response for 'throw knife' should probably be something like, "You'll need to mention the intended target as part of a throwing action. Try THROW XXX AT YYY."

Ditto for 'toss' and 'hurl' as synonyms for 'throw.' However, 'throw away xxx' and so forth [i]are [/i]equivalent to 'drop'.

--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1308&start=0#p7953
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Initial description of something in a container.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-08-19 11:19:22

Creating a special report rule for the toilet seems to work up to a point:

[code]"Potty Mouth"

The bathroom is a room.

The toilet is a closed openable container in the bathroom. "[toilet status].". The description is "[toilet status].". It is fixed in place. Understand "seat/lid/bowl" as the toilet. The toilet can be viewed or unviewed.

To say toilet status:
	say "The toilet lid is [if the toilet is open]up[otherwise]down[end if]"

A toothbrush is in the toilet. "The end of a toothbrush is sticking out of the toilet drain. Thankfully, there's no water in the toilet."

A rubber ducky is in the toilet. "There's a rubber ducky in the toilet, too."

Report an actor opening the toilet (this is the first description of the toilet rule):
	if the toilet is unviewed:
		repeat with item running through every thing in the toilet:
			say "[initial appearance of item] ";
		now the toilet is viewed;
		rule succeeds;
	otherwise:
		continue the action.[/code]

And if I'm not mistaken, it'd be pretty easy to generalize this to every container/supporter, or to every container/supporter that has a certain flag set (though if you did that you might have to manually list this rule before the reveal any newly visible interior rule, which I didn't have to do here).

However, this rule is bugged; if the toilet contains an item that isn't given an initial appearance, then it'll produce a run-time error. You need a way to check whether the item has the initial appearance property, and I don't know how to do that. Hopefully someone does.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1308&start=0#p7954
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Initial description of something in a container.
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-08-19 11:31:06

[quote="matt w"]However, this rule is bugged; if the toilet contains an item that isn't given an initial appearance, then it'll produce a run-time error. You need a way to check whether the item has the initial appearance property, and I don't know how to do that. Hopefully someone does.[/quote]

All things have the initial appearance property, so in nearly all situations you'd only need to check whether that property has anything in it:

[code]unless the initial appearance of the item is "":[/code]

If you wanted to have non-things (say, a direction) in the toilet, you'd need to first check whether it provided the property at all:

[code]if the item provides the property initial appearance:[/code]

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1308&start=0#p7955
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Initial description of something in a container.
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-08-19 11:53:23

Looks like the initial appearance property is used only in the "use initial appearance in room descriptions rule".  Which only runs during LOOK. 

The Opening actions has the "reveal any newly visible interior" rule which sounds promising. It does this.[code]
Report an actor opening (this is the reveal any newly visible interior rule):
   if the actor is the player and the noun is an opaque container and the first thing held by the noun is not nothing and the noun does not enclose the actor,
        stop the action with library message opening action number 4 for the noun.
[/code]

And that message is[code]4: print "You open ", (the) x1, ", revealing ";
if (WriteListFrom(child(x1), ENGLISH_BIT+TERSE_BIT+CONCEAL_BIT) == 0) "nothing.";
".";[/code]
...which just names the things in there ("toothbrush"), not print any description. 

If you wanted initial appearance to fire on response to Examine instead, then, the examine containers rule is[code]
Carry out examining (this is the examine containers rule):
if the noun is a container:
if the noun is open or the noun is transparent:
if something which is not scenery is in the noun:
issue library message searching action number 7 for the noun;
now examine text printed is true;
otherwise if examine text printed is false:
issue library message searching action number 6 for the noun;
now examine text printed is true;
[/code]

Which message #7 is [code]7: print "In ", (the) x1, " ";
WriteListFrom(child(x1), ENGLISH_BIT+TERSE_BIT+CONCEAL_BIT+ISARE_BIT);
".";[/code]

which again only prints names.

I don't know on which command you're wanting initial appearance to appear, but there's a starting point.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1163&start=0#p7956
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Thoughts on Extra Windows
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-08-19 11:58:38

[quote="Pacian"]Would you complain that a film director using certain effects (say, a pseudo-documentary style) was "more comfortable with movies than with story"?[/quote]

If the effects get in the way of the story, then yes. Like Ron said, these kinds of things can be used well, but if they're overused or just used badly, it can pull the attention away from the main thing. Interfaces and special effects shouldn't take the focus.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1311&start=10#p7957
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Novice Friendly extension
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-08-19 12:00:41

[quote="aaronius"]Smarter Parser also has issues, too: I'm quite fond of it, but it can slow stories down fairly significantly, since it's doing a ton of regular expression matching. This only happens for misunderstood commands, but in Javascript interpreters it's a point to consider.[/quote]
Having recently optimized a large WIP for speed, I haven't had any issues with it so far.  As long as it only hiccups on invalid input it's great.   Mind, I can sorta call that speedbump a feature, as it gains the user's attention that something outside the story needs attention.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1163&start=0#p7958
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Thoughts on Extra Windows
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-08-19 12:15:38

[quote="Pacian"]Would you complain that a film director using certain effects (say, a pseudo-documentary style) was "more comfortable with movies than with story"?  Aren't you confusing medium with content?[/quote]
I'd say Tetris's content is all videogame, no story.

I dunno. I'm just telling you how I feel about multiple windows.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1321&start=0#p7959
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Bug with "regionally in" or in Index?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-08-19 12:19:57

I submitted a cosmetic bug.  We'll let wiser heads figure it out.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1311&start=10#p7960
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Novice Friendly extension
User: maga / DateTime: 2010-08-19 13:14:52

[quote="aaronius"]What might be better is an instructional message: rather than actually trying an action, tell the player that the story expects verbs to come before nouns. [/quote]
In theory I feel a little bit uneasy about throwing instructions at the player unbidden, because it's intrusive; but this is more of a vague prejudice on my part than a coherent objection, and I am coming round to it.
[quote="aaronius"]In fact, a lot of the extensions under discussion here have some tradeoffs that make me a little wary of lumping them all together in one big package. Sometimes certain features conflict with the way a particular game works: letting people pick and choose by cherry picking which extensions to include has advantages. However, at the end of the day I think the benefits of such a package probably outweigh the gotchas: we can start for a baseline of "Hey, include this one extension, and if you have problems, you can just include the individual components instead."[/quote]
Right. Opt-out is better here than opt-in, I think. In the final analysis, authors can always go into an extension with a machete and take out the one bit they don't like, and it would be a good idea if the code was organised and documented in a way that would make this easier; it would be extra specially nice if they could do this without needing to break the machete out at all ('Disable smart parsing', that sort of thing), but I'm not sure how feasible this would be.
[quote="aaronius"]
Other questions that arise: who maintains the uber-extension? If people keep updating the included extensions, do they have to update them in two places? If an author wants to take one of these extensions off in a more experimental/computationally-expensive direction, does it just fork? I guess none of these are really serious problems. Ideally there could be some sort of collaborative maintenance, so the individual authors could update their own segments, but we'd need an infrastructure for something like that.[/quote]
Yeah, I thought about that as I was nodding off last night, and it was not conducive to tranquil sleep. I guess the really important issue here is how much compatability work needs to be done and how much benefit could be gained from streamlining; if the answer is 'actually, not all that much' then maintenance isn't such a major issue. This means that the more distinctively useful the package is, the more maintenance load there's likely to be. Grmf.

[quote="aaronius"]One big advantage of the uber-extension is that it would make it easier to solve compatibility problems between newbie-assisting extensions. For instance, I just in the last day noticed that Implicit Actions and Modified Exit (both candidates for being added to the initial list, by the by) are currently incompatible with each other, since they both have a rule by the same name. These things would be a lot easier to catch and fix if people were actively trying to combine them.[/quote]
Oh, man, Implicit Actions. That is an excellent example of an issue which I wouldn't think to implement because everybody was in perfect agreement about it five or ten years ago, so in my head it's a solved problem.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1311&start=10#p7961
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Novice Friendly extension
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-08-19 13:37:33

[quote="maga"]Right. Opt-out is better here than opt-in, I think. In the final analysis, authors can always go into an extension with a machete and take out the one bit they don't like, and it would be a good idea if the code was organised and documented in a way that would make this easier; it would be extra specially nice if they could do this without needing to break the machete out at all ('Disable smart parsing', that sort of thing), but I'm not sure how feasible this would be.[/quote]

It's not too feasible right now for things of this complexity. I would like to see a form of conditional compilation, where you could write:

[b]Section - Keywords (for use with the keywords option)
[code here][/b]

If the author writes "Use keywords", this section would be included in the story, otherwise not. (I thought there was something like this on the uservoice site, but I can't find it now.)

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1311&start=10#p7962
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Novice Friendly extension
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-08-19 14:00:24

[quote="ektemple"](I thought there was something like this on the uservoice site, but I can't find it now.)[/quote]
Yeah, that uservoice site is too delete-happy with comments.  Thirty days or so pass, and you can't look up what comments you've written on what suggestions, making it very hard to find suggestions you're keeping an eye on but not voting for.  Makes it a pretty poor place for discussion.

Meanwhile, the uservoice devs keep screwing around with how one logs in.  Annoying, and a waste of their time.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1314&start=0#p7963
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rulebook variables
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-08-19 14:13:02

[quote="Phonatacid"]
A quick look at the generated i6 code shows that
[code]
! [5: change the current animal's name to the name of the test frog]
       BlkValueCopy((MStack-->MstVO(365,0)), GProperty(OBJECT_TY, O33_test_frog,p13_name)); 
[/code]
and the last
[code]! [7: showme the current animal's name]
       #IFDEF DEBUG;print "~current animal's name~ = indexed text: ", (INDEXED_TEXT_TY_Say) (MStack-->MstVO(365,0)), "^";#ENDIF;[/code]

seem to share the same memory address : MStack-->MstVO(365,0)


what is happening ?[/quote]
Each invocation of the rulebook has its own copy of the variables. The code to access them is the same, but MstVO(365,0) will return different values depending on how far down the invocation stack you are.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1324&start=0#p7964
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Initial appearance
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2010-08-19 15:06:05

I'm running into a sticky issue that I know I'll only exacerbate if I try and do it without your help.

I want to have the initial appearance only print once. From there on out, I want it to be the regular "You can see a...here" message.
Here is what I've set up:[code]Every turn:
    repeat with item running through every thing in the location begin;
        now item is handled;
    end repeat;[/code]But it doesn't work after the turn when play begins. I start the player in a room with an object. The initial appearance prints fine, but then whenever the player does anything, the initial appearance prints a second time, causing the baseball to come crashing through the window and land on the player a second time. However, the third time, everything prints like I want it to.

The best I can figure is that the "every turn" doesn't fire at the very first turn, because it must not count as a full turn (i.e. the player didn't do anything to bring the game to this point). How do I make something happen at this point?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=10#p7965
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-08-19 15:06:55

For fun, here's a transcript a non-IF-playing friend sent me of encountering release 1 of Sand-dancer (where I'd accidentally, but usefully for our purposes here, left out all of the newbie-friendly extensions I meant to include.) Warning: foul language.

[quote]
Middle of Nowhere (in the pickup truck)
You've smashed up against a tall Saguaro, which is all you can see out the windshield except a few feet of desert sand, then blackness. Hell, you must have driven off the road and crashed. Ocean keeps telling you this night commute on this lonely highway's gonna kill you; maybe you should start listening.
Through the windshield, you see a little lizard clinging frantically to the tall Saguaro.
In the pickup truck you can see a glove box (closed) and a piece of jade.

>inspect jade
I didn't understand that sentence.

>inspect
I didn't understand that sentence.

>jade
I didn't understand that sentence.

>look at jade
Grandma said it will bring you luck, which hasn't really been working out. You can't remember now how it
ended up in your pickup truck. Maybe someday you'll see someone lucky and you can throw it at him.

Something about the piece of jade makes you want to brood about grandma's stories.

>brood about grandma's stories
There are dark spirits who roam the earth, little Knock. Grandma used to say that, holding you tight and stroking your hair. There are dark spirits who roam the earth, but you're not alone. Oh, no. I'm here. (She'd kiss your head and you'd squeeze her back.) But others are watching out for you too. You have three animal guardians, hmm? Spirits who are always watching over you. Oh, you can't always trust them to know what's best. Remember that, Knock. But when you need help, they'll come, and protect you from the worser things in the world.

Mom would yell at Grandma a lot for filling your head with that new-age bullshit. Grandma grew up white and midwestern and Baptist, but had started wearing things with feathers and playing the pan flute by the time you were born. She seemed to really like having a son-in-law who was Native American or American Indian or Indigenous Peoples or whatever she'd decided the term was that week, and she was pretty pissed when mom left him. Anyway. Her stories were mostly BS, you guess, but some of them stuck with you. When it's dark you still wonder if your spirit animals are out there somewhere, and what the hell is taking them so long to find you.

>what are my spirit animals?
I didn't understand that sentence.

>spirit animals
I didn't understand that sentence.

>open glove box
You open the glove box, revealing a pack of cigarettes.

>take cigarettes
Sure thing, man.

>give them back
I'm not sure what "them" refers to.

>give me back my cigarettes
Uh, not sure about the noun there, dude.

>may i have a cigarette?
I didn't understand that sentence.

>smoke cigarettes.
You pull out a cigarette and flick it into life. Thoughts tumble through your head.

Well, you're still stuck here. It's dark outside the beam of your headlights. Maybe you could start by getting out of this truck.

And you still haven't quit smoking. You've got five cigs left.

>look at cactus
The cactus seems totally undamaged. Go figure.

>get out of truck
I only understood you as far as wanting to get outside.

>leave the truck
I only understood you as far as wanting to leave.

>open truck door
The door creaks open with difficulty, rusted joints straining.

>look at truck
You can't tell what the damage is from in here.

In the pickup truck are a glove box and a piece of jade.

>get out of the truck
I only understood you as far as wanting to get outside.

>go outside
You can't go that way.

>fuck you
I only understood you as far as wanting to fuck.

>me too
I didn't understand that sentence.

>why not?
I didn't understand that sentence.

>Shut up, Hal
You can't use multiple objects with that verb.

>I just did. So sue me
I only understood you as far as wanting to take inventory.

>My god, you're annoying.
You seem to want to talk to someone, but I can't see whom.

>Alexei... this is YOUR DOING!
I didn't understand that sentence.

>Of course you didn't.
I didn't understand that sentence.

>GAHHHHH!
I didn't understand that sentence.

>Dear Jesus...
I didn't understand that sentence.

>OKay...
I didn't understand that sentence.

>Look in glove box
The glove box is empty.

>roll down window
I didn't understand that sentence.

>escape truck
I didn't understand that sentence.

>Beep Beep
I didn't understand that sentence.

>turn on headlights
They're already on.

>then turn them off!
I didn't understand that sentence.

>*sigh* Turn off the fucking headlights
I didn't understand that sentence.

>TURN OFF THE HEADLIGHTS!
You click the headlights offand blackness swallows you up.

It is now pitch dark in here!
>Smoke a cigarette.
You pull out a cigarette and flick it into life. Thoughts tumble through your head.

Well, you're still stuck here. It's darker than you can remember it ever being. Maybe you could start by getting out of this truck.

And you still haven't quit smoking. You've got four cigs left.

>get out of this truck
I only understood you as far as wanting to get outside.

>go outside
You can't go that way.

>which way can I go?
I didn't understand that sentence.

>exit truck
I only understood you as far as wanting to exit.

>shoot myself.
I didn't understand that sentence.
[/quote]

As far as extensions that would have improved this experience: "Modified Exit" recognizes things like "Get out of truck," "Smarter Parser" would have responded to several of the questions asked with helpful instructions, and stripped some of the words getting in the way (">then switch them off" would have become "switch them off"), and "Extended Grammar" would have gotten some of the verb synonyms like "inspect" and "escape."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1311&start=10#p7966
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Novice Friendly extension
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-08-19 15:14:45

[quote="ektemple"]
If the author writes "Use keywords", this section would be included in the story, otherwise not. (I thought there was something like this on the uservoice site, but I can't find it now.)
[/quote]

Found it: <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/750974-add-use-options-to-control-compilation?ref=title">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... ?ref=title</a>

This would be ideal, but I don't think missing it is a show-stopper. It would require more work, but all the rules could be put into rulebooks that could then be globally turned on and off based on use options. I do something like this in the latest release of Smarter Parser to allow for quickly disabling all the built-in rules. This wouldn't work in 100% of cases (you can't make an Understand line a rule, for instance) but should be workable.

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]
As long as it only hiccups on invalid input it's great. 
[/quote]

Not to be continually condemning my own extension here, but I'm not sure I buy this assumption. Remember, newbies are likely to be seeing MORE invalid input than valid input. I just threw up a transcript a newbie friend sent me ([url]http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&p=7965#p7965[/url]): it's 40 moves with 28 misunderstood commands. If each invalid input means a six-second delay (which is quite possible on a mid-range computer running a Javascript interpreter) frustration is going to kick in sooner.

I've sent Dannii some Smarter Parser stuff for testing: maybe regex handling can get some of the optimization magic and this won't be as much of a concern in the future.

Something that's needed also is a large corpus of valid input that these compound extensions could be tested against, to make sure they don't break anything as they continue to improve and evolve. I find that many many times an addition which seems to improve the new user experience in one way actually breaks some existing corner of IF implementation. One of the reasons that more of these things aren't incorporated into standard distributions anyway is that solving them is often more complex than it appears. I know Graham and Emily have some scripts they use to test new Inform builds against a pile of test cases: if this moves ahead, we could see if the uber-maintainer could get access to this.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=10#p7967
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-08-19 15:26:15

This isn't the first time I've seen evidence to show that the "I only understood you as far as…" error message isn't so easy to understand if you don't already know what it means. Does anyone have a better wording for it, or another way of handling the error of the player that's supplying too much information?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1308&start=0#p7968
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Initial description of something in a container.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-19 15:30:00

Ideally, I'd like the initial appearance to fire both when opening a container and when printing the room description when the item is visibly supported or contained in the location.

Is there an accessible property that can be used to mimic the initial appearance behavior (such as "touched" or "moved")?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=10#p7969
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2010-08-19 15:59:50

Maybe things like this are what prevent IF from gaining wider acceptance?

I know there are threads in this forum talking about this, but (and I'm speaking ignorantly here) maybe this should be the next major thrust of IF development, making IF accessible to non-IF players.

Although I'm sure most will react the same way my wife did the first time I asked her to play a game.[quote="My wife"]You mean I have to read? I hate reading! This is supposed to be [i]fun[/i]?[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1324&start=0#p7970
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Initial appearance
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-19 16:51:09

It looks like you didn't post all of the relevant code, but that doesn't sound like the proper use for initial appearance. As I understand it, the initial appearance is supposed to stay until the object is moved. I'm guessing you need something like this:

After going in the living room for the first time, say "A baseball crashes in through the window!"

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1324&start=0#p7971
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Initial appearance
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-19 16:58:45

Hmm.. this is trickier than I thought. To have this happen in the right order on the first turn, you can use an "after looking in the living room for the first time" rule that prints the message and moves the baseball into place. But if you want the initial appearance to print right after that, I'm not sure of the right phrase to use.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1308&start=0#p7972
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Initial description of something in a container.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-08-19 18:36:07

[quote="ektemple"][quote="matt w"]However, this rule is bugged; if the toilet contains an item that isn't given an initial appearance, then it'll produce a run-time error. You need a way to check whether the item has the initial appearance property, and I don't know how to do that. Hopefully someone does.[/quote]

All things have the initial appearance property, so in nearly all situations you'd only need to check whether that property has anything in it:

[code]unless the initial appearance of the item is "":[/code]

If you wanted to have non-things (say, a direction) in the toilet, you'd need to first check whether it provided the property at all:

[code]if the item provides the property initial appearance:[/code]

--Erik[/quote]

Hm. Is this new in 6E? When I ran my code in 5Z, adding "A cardboard tube is in the toilet," I got (after "open lid")

[quote]*** Run-time problem P11: Although the cardboard tube is allowed to have the property "initial appearance", no value was ever given, so it can't now be used.[/quote]
UPDATE: But "item provides the property" was exactly what I was looking for, thank you. I changed it to:

[code]Report an actor opening the toilet (this is the first description of the toilet rule):
	if the toilet is unviewed:
		repeat with item running through every thing in the toilet:
			if item provides the property initial appearance:
				say "[initial appearance of item] ";
			otherwise:
				say "[An item] is in the toilet.";
		now the toilet is viewed;
		rule succeeds;
	otherwise:
		continue the action.[/code]

and it works even when an undescribed item is in the toilet. Well, the output is ugly, but that's more of a writing problem than a programming one.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1308&start=0#p7973
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Initial description of something in a container.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-08-19 19:41:44

I think I have the supporter problem solvedish. You only automatically get the contents of scenery supporters anyway, thanks to the "describe what's on scenery supporters in room descriptions rule," which the documentation describes as controversial and which might not even be in 6E -- I can't remember. Anyway, the way the rule was written, I seemingly had to drop the code into it, and use the resulting rule instead of the preexisting rule. The result is not pretty; someone else may be able to do better.

Big wodge of code below the spoiler tag; it's in 5Z, again.

[spoiler][code]"Potty Mouth"

The bathroom is a room.

The toilet is a closed openable container in the bathroom. "[toilet status].". The description is "[toilet status].". It is fixed in place. Understand "seat/lid/bowl" as the toilet.

A container can be viewed or unviewed. A container is usually unviewed. A supporter can be viewed or unviewed. A supporter is usually unviewed.

To say toilet status:
	say "The toilet lid is [if the toilet is open]up[otherwise]down[end if]"

A toothbrush is in the toilet. "The end of a toothbrush is sticking out of the toilet drain. Thankfully, there's no water in the toilet."

A rubber ducky is in the toilet. "There's a rubber ducky in the toilet, too."

A cardboard tube is in the toilet.

Report an actor opening a container:
	if the toilet is unviewed:
		repeat with item running through every thing in the noun:
			if item provides the property initial appearance:
				say "[initial appearance of item] ";
			otherwise:
				say "[An item] is in [the noun].";
		now the noun is viewed;
		rule succeeds;
	otherwise:
		continue the action.
		
The kitchen is west of the bathroom. A counter is in the kitchen. The counter is scenery. Some shards are on the counter. "Someone must have been clumsy or angry, because the shards of a broken bowl are scattered over the counter." A glass is on the counter.

For printing a locale paragraph about a thing (called the item)
	(this is the complex describe what's on scenery supporters in room descriptions rule):
	if the item is not undescribed and the item is scenery and the item does not enclose the player:
		set pronouns from the item;
		if a locale-supportable thing is on the item:
			[here's the start of the new stuff]
			if the item is unviewed:
				repeat with possibility running through things on the item:
					if possibility is not mentioned:
						if the possibility provides the property initial appearance:
							say "[initial appearance of possibility]";
							say paragraph break;
						otherwise:
							say "[A possibility] is on [the item].";
				now the item is viewed;	
				[what's below this is the standard rule again]
			otherwise:
				repeat with possibility running through things on the item:
					now the possibility is marked for listing;
					if the possibility is mentioned:
						now the possibility is not marked for listing;
				increase the locale paragraph count by 1;
				say "On [the item] ";
				list the contents of the item, as a sentence, including contents,
				giving brief inventory information, tersely, not listing
				concealed items, prefacing with is/are, listing marked items only;
				say ".[paragraph break]";
	continue the activity.	
	
The describe what's on scenery supporters in room descriptions rule is not listed in any rulebook.

test me with "open lid/close lid/open lid/w/ look".[/code][/spoiler]

BTW, when you open a viewed container, the "report an actor opening" rule falls through to the "repeat any newly visible interior" rule that Ron mentioned. It was because that rule was firing that I did it as a "report an actor opening" rule.

I haven't been able to figure out how to do this when walking into a room with a transparent or open container.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=20#p7974
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-Machine Standard 1.2 (draft)
User: cas / DateTime: 2010-08-19 20:23:03

If there is going to be a 1.2 release, is there interest in correcting/clarifying sticking points from 1.1?  In implementing my interpreter I've found a couple of issues that I think would be good to fix in the standard (including one clear defect); I imagine other interpreter authors have run into issues as well.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=10#p7975
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-08-19 20:33:14

[quote="Joel Webster"]Maybe things like this are what prevent IF from gaining wider acceptance?

I know there are threads in this forum talking about this, but (and I'm speaking ignorantly here) maybe this should be the next major thrust of IF development, making IF accessible to non-IF players.[/quote]
I think that's exactly right. I know Aaron has done a lot of work on this already, with Smarter Parser and so forth, but I haven't yet put it through the torture test, so I'm not sure what may remain to be done. (Nor would I be the right person to torture-test it....)

Ultimately, though, we can hope that an expanded Smarter Parser will be bundled with Inform by default. An extension is only useful if authors know that they should use it.

--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1308&start=10#p7976
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Initial description of something in a container.
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-08-19 20:35:13

[quote="matt w"]

Hm. Is this new in 6E? When I ran my code in 5Z, adding "A cardboard tube is in the toilet," I got (after "open lid")

[quote]*** Run-time problem P11: Although the cardboard tube is allowed to have the property "initial appearance", no value was ever given, so it can't now be used.[/quote][/quote]

I don't think it's new, but maybe there was a bug in 5Z71 that kept it from working properly. It certainly works in 6E.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1324&start=0#p7977
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Initial appearance
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-08-19 20:43:44

If I understand the problem correctly, I think you could put it in the room description:

[code]The Living Room is a room. "Your comfy living room[ball-crash]."

After looking in the Living Room for the first time:
	now the baseball is in the Living Room.

Ball-crash-printed is a truth state that varies. Ball-crash-printed is false.

To say ball-crash:
	if ball-crash-printed is false:
		now ball-crash-printed is true;
		say ". A baseball comes crashing through the window! Broken glass is everywhere"
		
The baseball is a thing. 
[/code]
--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1325&start=0#p7978
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: New hugo site
User: Gerynar / DateTime: 2010-08-19 21:10:15

Howdy all,

Just a quick note about a new Hugo site I'm working on. It's a wiki that will (hopefully) help out authors/programmers learn how to use hugo by example. It's located at [url]http://hugo.gerynarsabode.org[/url]. It's an open wiki, anyone can help. All I ask is that you keep it civil and not be mean. It's still very new so there are few pages available at the moment. But hopefully it will grow and be a useful resource for aspiring authors for this under-appreciated tool.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=20#p7979
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-Machine Standard 1.2 (draft)
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-08-19 22:09:28

I'm not intending to have anything like that in the standard, though it could be a good idea for a separate document. What was the defect?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1326&start=0#p7980
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: i7 in Ubuntu 9.04/9.10
User: Luci / DateTime: 2010-08-19 22:18:50

I've been searching around for awhile and really can't find any information on this, so I figured I would pose the
question here.

Is the i7-in-Gnome IDE going to be packaged for Ubuntu 9.04/9.10 at any time ? I really would hate to update to 10.04 -just- so I could use this one-and-only program that I can't get to work right now.  [emote]:P[/emote] 

For what it's worth, I have actually tried the generic Debian Lenny package, and it works up to the point of trying to test or release anything.

Edit: Also, just to add, this isn't a -critical- issue for me; since I've started working with i7 6E72 CLI I've slowly grown to like it quite a bit. I'm mostly just pining for some of the really useful features of the IDE.  [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1167&start=20#p7981
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Floating-point math in Glulx
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-08-19 22:28:15

[quote="zarf"]This is now implemented in Glulxe and Quixe.[/quote]I've got Glulxe running and passing the tests on Windows, and I'm some of the way through producing a patch for Git. (On Git some tests pass, and some blow up the interpreter - damned preprocessor macro cleverness/madness). A few thoughts:

The math functions used mean that the compiler must pretty much support C99. This isn't entirely unreasonable, but might be worth mentioning in the README, at least.

The code in exec.c presumes that the C99 math functions get all the special cases right. Unfortunately the pow() function in the GCC build I'm using doesn't get a few special cases right, resulting in me having to do preprocessor macro nastiness to call my own pow() function first. Looking around online, I can see that this won't be uncommon on other platforms. Is there a case for a glulx_pow() function in osdepend.c?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1327&start=0#p7982
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Profiling
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-08-19 23:03:46

I'd like to build a profiling version of Gnusto. Now what would be really helpful is if inform (6) could output to a file the names and offsets of every function, including the veneer. Is such a thing already possible?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1301&start=0#p7983
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How to prevent player from examining items on NPCs?
User: welkin / DateTime: 2010-08-19 23:10:57

I guess I just had the idea that "examine" is supposed to be looking at the item at close distance, hence if the npc has something on them, it could very well be inside their pocket or otherwise hidden from view, so that the player cannot see them.

However, I took your advice and simply initiated the object to be nowhere, and everything worked great. Thanks a lot!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1311&start=10#p7984
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Novice Friendly extension
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-08-19 23:50:50

Just for fun I profiled that transcript using release 3. 6 minutes 44 seconds of processor time. Ick. 12.4 million function calls. At least the responses were better, though a few were really strange:

[quote]>Shut up, Hal
(retrying as if you'd typed "grandma'sshutgrandma's grandma'supgrandma's, grandma'shalgrandma's.")You can't talk to grandma's stories.

>OKay...
I didn't understand that sentence.[/quote]The second one (as well as a plain "ok") should probably be caught, maybe synonyms for "yes".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1311&start=10#p7985
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Novice Friendly extension
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-08-20 01:35:50

Yeah, I tried this too! This is obvious a Smarter Parser bug that should be fixed. It needs more field testing. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1327&start=0#p7986
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Profiling
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-08-20 02:39:08

You can get that information in a variety of formats: have a look at the -k and -a switches. Glulxe can be compiled with profiling support: have a look at how the profile-analyze.py script (that comes with Glulxe) does it. Note that the documentation in profile-analyze.py isn't quite right: the -a switch now does output veneer functions (in the latest Inform 6.31N).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1309&start=0#p7987
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Author's Forum for 2010 IFComp
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2010-08-20 03:30:17

[quote="mwigdahl"]For the last two IFComps, there has been a private forum for authors involved in the Comp where they can discuss the comp, reviews, etc. with each other without violating Rule 5.  Unfortunately, it looks as if the forum previously used for this is offline now.  I've heard no plans for resurrecting this forum on a different site, but I'm convinced it would be a good thing to have.  There was a lot of camaraderie and excitement generated by being able to speak freely with the other entrants about our freshly-completed works.

I've talked with Stephen Granade and his preference is that it be here if possible.  Would it be possible for intfiction.org to host a private forum for this purpose?  If not, I'd be happy to set one up myself.[/quote]
All right, I took the idea and ran with it.

1. I separated the normal IF Competition talk board from Playing into a new category Competitions - where, if needed, more boards can be added, for example for the next Spring Thing. This one is available to everyone.

2. I created a new user group for IF Comp authors.

3. I added another board to the Competitions category, which can only be accessed by administrators, global moderators and if comp authors. This is for the private talk between authors.

4. I added Stephen Granade as the leader of the group, so any author who wants to be able to see that private board can contact him for access to it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1163&start=0#p7989
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Thoughts on Extra Windows
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-08-20 05:04:42

[quote="Trumgottist"]If the effects get in the way of the story, then yes. Like Ron said, these kinds of things can be used well, but if they're overused or just used badly, it can pull the attention away from the main thing. Interfaces and special effects shouldn't take the focus.[/quote]But these are the means by which a movie tells a story.  The way the camera moves (or remains static) can enhance or detract the story, but its an unavoidable part of making a movie.  

Being comfortable with your medium is how you learn to use it well for storytelling (or anything else).  To state that someone is more comfortable with their storytelling medium than with storytelling just seems like a really weird statement to me.

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]I'd say Tetris's content is all videogame, no story.[/quote]And that's because it doesn't do any storytelling, not because it tries to tell a story with multiple windows.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1301&start=0#p7990
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How to prevent player from examining items on NPCs?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-08-20 05:08:45

[quote="welkin"]I guess I just had the idea that "examine" is supposed to be looking at the item at close distance, hence if the npc has something on them, it could very well be inside their pocket or otherwise hidden from view, so that the player cannot see them.[/quote]I know what you mean.  A synonym for 'examine' is actually 'look at' or 'l at', which seems more apt to me, but also requires more typing.

I think most modern games use it to really mean "describe [object] to me".

[quote="welkin"]However, I took your advice and simply initiated the object to be nowhere, and everything worked great. Thanks a lot![/quote]You're welcome.  [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1328&start=0#p7991
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Needing help in coding a dream (and some other minor stuff)
User: Roadcrosser / DateTime: 2010-08-20 05:19:24

Hey, I'd like to know how to get the player to be able to sleep (and dream). Here is what I'd like to happen.

The player is in a room which is currently locked. The key to unlock the door is in his dreams (Which I have made separate rooms for). The player can only sleep when he:

a) is lying on a bed
b) has taken at least 1 sleeping pill

For the sleeping pills, there will be 2 hidden in the room. When the player finds and eats one, his dream will last for 10 turns and he will then wake up on the bed again. When he eats the second pill, he sleeps for <an undecided amount that is more than 10> turns. When he goes to sleep, he will loose everything in his inventory and retain it when he wakes up. In his dreams, he can only retain the key. Everything has to be reset (except the key) when he wakes up. Seeing I have had no experience in this whatsoever, I also need to accomplish these:

1) A prologue (Doing a few actions will trigger the title to appear (Something like the begining of [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=6a23xff9er4s83pl]Child's Play[/url]))

2) Transition text (When moving to another room, it reads "You wade through the water" before moving to the next room (Only applicable to certain rooms))

3) Having rooms adjacent to the one you were locked in. (Enterable containers)

4) Possibly the talk engine in [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ju778uv5xaswnlpl]Photopia[/url]

5) Being able to turn something upside down

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=10#p7992
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-08-20 05:38:36

I find this part interesting:
[quote]>open glove box
You open the glove box, revealing a pack of cigarettes.

>take cigarettes
Sure thing, man.

>give them back
I'm not sure what "them" refers to.

>give me back my cigarettes
Uh, not sure about the noun there, dude.[/quote]
I just can't wrap my head around this. Why did they write "give me back my cigarettes"? Who is "me"? Did the player consider himself being a separate person in the game world, as someone other than the PC, even though the story is narrated in second person? Maybe the "Sure thing, man" response gave the impression that the PC took the cigarettes from the player?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1324&start=0#p7993
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Initial appearance
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-08-20 05:43:36

The easiest way would be to just blank out the initial appearance property after it's been displayed once.

[code]The phonebooth is a room.
The phone is here. "A probably broken phone hangs on the wall."
The phonebook is here. "The phonebook has most of its pages torn off."

After looking:
	repeat with X running through every thing in the location:
		now the initial appearance of X is "";
	continue the action.

Test me with "look/look"[/code]

(Although if the purpose is just to avoid having action descriptions print more than once, then using initial appearances is actually not the best way to do it; you should use scenes or some other mechanism.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1309&start=0#p7994
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Author's Forum for 2010 IFComp
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-08-20 07:34:05

Fantastic!  Thank you very much!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1324&start=0#p7995
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Initial appearance
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2010-08-20 08:23:46

Thanks everyone for the tips! I knew I wasn't doing it right, I just couldn't get my brain to think about it the right way.
I'll try these suggestions and let you know which worked.
I do agree, now that I'm looking at it after a good night's sleep, that initial appearance is the wrong way to go.

**EDIT:
I tried the suggestions and I just modified Jim Aikin's idea.
I got rid of the Every turn code, and replaced it with an After looking for the first time, move the... and it works perfectly.
Thanks a lot for your help!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1167&start=20#p7996
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Floating-point math in Glulx
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-20 08:48:00

Which functions are C99? signbit() and any others? I'd be willing to rewrite them out, if it's easy, and for signbit() it should be.

(I already got rid of isless() and friends for that reason -- they weren't on my Ubuntu machine. I didn't realize there were intermediate classes of availability.)

Yeah, glulx_pow() makes sense. Send me what you have when you get it working.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1308&start=10#p7997
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Initial description of something in a container.
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-20 08:52:05

Yes, that's new (as of 6E59). Noted in the changelog:

"Previously, certain core Inform properties had the anomalous behaviour that if they were not explicitly defined then they could be read but not written..."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1167&start=20#p7998
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Floating-point math in Glulx
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-08-20 08:56:24

[quote="zarf"]Which functions are C99? signbit() and any others? I'd be willing to rewrite them out, if it's easy, and for signbit() it should be.[/quote]Errm, well, all of them, really: signbit(), isnan(), isinf(), truncf(), roundf(), ceilf(), floorf(), sqrtf(), expf() and so on ... ceil(double) and friends are C89, but the float forms like ceilf(float) are C99.

[quote]Yeah, glulx_pow() makes sense. Send me what you have when you get it working.[/quote]Will do.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1311&start=20#p7999
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Novice Friendly extension
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-08-20 08:59:23

[quote="aaronius"][quote="ektemple"]
If the author writes "Use keywords", this section would be included in the story, otherwise not. (I thought there was something like this on the uservoice site, but I can't find it now.)
[/quote]

Found it: <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/750974-add-use-options-to-control-compilation?ref=title">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... ?ref=title</a>

This would be ideal, but I don't think missing it is a show-stopper. It would require more work, but all the rules could be put into rulebooks that could then be globally turned on and off based on use options. I do something like this in the latest release of Smarter Parser to allow for quickly disabling all the built-in rules. This wouldn't work in 100% of cases (you can't make an Understand line a rule, for instance) but should be workable.[/quote]

That's true--the hardest things to deal with in this way are kinds and properties, I think, and those may not be important for these extensions. Of course, doing it with rules as you suggest can get hairy if you've got a lot of different options, but it probably wouldn't be too bad. And Understand lines are actually pretty easy to take care of as long as there is a use option or global variable to use as a hook:

Understand "[noun]" as examining when the keyword-examining option is true.

Another idea: if the uber extension were to act largely as a nexus for a bunch of other extensions, making them more compatible, etc., it could be up to the user to include those extensions to turn the attendant functionality on and off. Then we'd have section-level hooks, as well as the ability to nest them. For example:

[code]Chapter - Keyword interface stuff (for use with Keyword Interface by Aaron Reed)
[...] 

     Section - Special functionality when used with Smarter Parser (for use with Smarter Parser by Aaron Reed)
     [...]
[/code]

This kind of thing can get hairy too, but it does have advantages...

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1308&start=10#p8000
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Initial description of something in a container.
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-08-20 09:01:27

Ah, that explains why I'd never run into it before--I do that kind of thing all the time, but probably hadn't tried it with any of the properties that were problematic.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1329&start=0#p8001
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Authors' Forum for 2010 IFComp
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-08-20 09:32:16

In case you missed it on the Feedback forum:

Since the forum that was used for the last couple of years for IFComp authors to discuss their works during the voting period seems to be down, rioshin, the admin here at intfiction.org, has kindly set up a forum we can use here.

More details are at:  <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1309">viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1309</a>, but the gist is that there will be the capacity for multiple private boards, for other comps aside from just the IFComp.  Authors should contact Stephen Granade (the administrator of IFComp) for access to that board.

Thanks, rioshin, for setting this up!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1163&start=0#p8002
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Thoughts on Extra Windows
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-08-20 10:35:43

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]
I'd say Tetris's content is all videogame, no story.
[/quote]

In Tetris Worlds the Tetrite People are facing natural disasters and they have to complete various tetris challenges to unlock portals to alternate worlds that they can live on. 

Not much of a story- but a story.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1308&start=10#p8003
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Initial description of something in a container.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-08-20 11:41:46

Good to know. I expect that means my code will need a tweak for 6E, to check whether the initial description is "" rather than whether it's provided.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1293&start=20#p8004
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx VM spec 3.1.2
User: weiju / DateTime: 2010-08-20 11:48:02

Hi,

ZMPP now passes all float tests as well. Somehow the glulxercise version in the glk-dev repository (100811) shows 8 errors (which are sign-related and glulxe reports them as well), but the one in quixe (100816) shows zero for glulxe and ZMPP (I might as well have made a mistake in pulling,  I took it from the float branch).

Best,

Wei-ju

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=10#p8005
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-08-20 11:52:35

[quote="Juhana"]I just can't wrap my head around this. Why did they write "give me back my cigarettes"? Who is "me"? Did the player consider himself being a separate person in the game world, as someone other than the PC, even though the story is narrated in second person? Maybe the "Sure thing, man" response gave the impression that the PC took the cigarettes from the player?[/quote]
Looks like it.  The narration resembles dialogue, so it's natural (I think) to assume it is a character speaking, not a disembodied narrator. 

Another interesting little minefield which authors must circumvent.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1163&start=10#p8006
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Thoughts on Extra Windows
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-08-20 11:54:20

[quote="Trumgottist"]Interfaces and special effects shouldn't take the focus.[/quote]
Quoted for George Lucas.

It's not just visual effects that take on gimmick status and overwhelm the story.  Syrupy strings are used to make up for wooden dialogue and stiff acting; a cat leaping from off-camera is used to spice up a leaden pace; television cliffhangers are used to inject tension at the end of the show, rather than construct actual tension during it; fast cuts are used to seal plot holes and mask an incoherent plot that the protagonists should've solved in the first 3 minutes.  In fact, it's pretty easy to let the gimmick take over.

I dunno about a second window in this case; I think it's an assist to gameplay rather than a gimmick.  Maybe include a pair of commands for the player:  "If you wish to review your current spells, use SPELL LIST.  If you'd rather see a list of your current spells in a separate window, use the command SPELL WINDOW."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1330&start=0#p8007
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Extension Compatibility Problem
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-08-20 11:58:42

If I include David Fisher's Custom Library Messages version 28 in my WIP, the compiler chokes on a line in Conversation Framework version 8 by Eric Eve. Without CLM, CF compiles as expected. This same collision happens in a one-room test game. Both extensions are the current versions.

This happens on the line 'now the current interlocutor is nothing', which seems innocuous. It's preceded by the code "To reset the interlocutor", so I checked CLM -- neither "interlocutor" nor "reset" is used in that extension, so I don't think it can be a namespace clash. CLM does, however, use the value nothing quite extensively.

Can anyone see what the problem is? Thanks!

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1328&start=0#p8008
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Needing help in coding a dream (and some other minor stu
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-20 11:58:56

That's a pretty complex problem, but there are a couple of good examples in the documentation. "Space Patrol" (example 158 in my edition) is a simpler one, which uses scenes to create a commercial break. There's also a more detailed one called "Pine" that contains a flashback. I think "Pine 3" is the best one to look at - example number 165. The key is to use a location variable and a possessions container to preserve the player's previous state, then move the player to the dream location and start the dream scene.

Some relevant bits of the code:

[code]Poverty flashback is a recurring scene. Poverty flashback begins when family circumstances is current. When poverty flashback begins: strip the player; move the player to the Woodcutter's Shack.[/code]

[code]Saved location is a room that varies. Locker is a container. Wardrobe is a container.
To strip the player: 
     now every thing carried by the player is in the locker; 
    now every thing worn by the player is in the wardrobe; 
    now saved location is location.
To restore the player: 
    now every thing carried by the player is in the location; 
    now every thing in the locker is carried by the player; 
    now every thing in the wardrobe is worn by the player; 
    move the player to saved location.
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1163&start=10#p8009
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Thoughts on Extra Windows
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-08-20 12:06:54

[quote="Pacian"]To state that someone is more comfortable with their storytelling medium than with storytelling just seems like a really weird statement to me.[/quote]
I would agree as far as storytelling mediums it's a weird statement.  But videogames aren't a storytelling medium: they are something broader. (Proof of that statement: Tetris does not attempt a story and succeeds admirably, Bioshock does attempt, and also succeeds.)  So I think it makes sense to say one can be comfortable with making videogames but not with storytelling.  To me (and this is the subjective part), multiple windows indicates the creator is, or is currently operating as, a Tetric creator.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1328&start=0#p8010
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Needing help in coding a dream (and some other minor stu
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-20 12:15:22

[quote="Roadcrosser"]2) Transition text (When moving to another room, it reads "You wade through the water" before moving to the next room (Only applicable to certain rooms))[/quote]
Something like this?

[code]The Living Room is a room.

The Dining Room is north of the Living Room.

Before going north in the Living room, say "You stride ceremoniously through the archway."
[/code]

But you need to watch out if there are possible obstacles - you don't want that message to appear if something else (like a locked door) is going to prevent going.

[quote="Roadcrosser"]3) Having rooms adjacent to the one you were locked in. (Enterable containers)[/quote]

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Like a cage?

[quote="Roadcrosser"]5) Being able to turn something upside down[/quote]

How about this?
[code]An inversion is a kind of value. The inversions are right-side-up and upside-down.
The hourglass has an inversion.

Understand "invert [something touchable]" as turning.
Understand "turn [something touchable] over" as turning.

Instead of turning the hourglass:
	If the inversion of the hourglass is right-side-up:
		Now the inversion of the hourglass is upside-down;
	Otherwise:
		Now the inversion of the hourglass is right-side-up;
	Say "You turn the hourglass over. Now it is [the inversion of the hourglass]."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1309&start=0#p8011
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Author's Forum for 2010 IFComp
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-20 12:44:41

I have a question. I just started working on a game. I'd like to enter it - having a deadline seems like a good idea - but what happens if I don't finish it in time? Do I withdraw my entry? Submit something potentially buggy and incomplete?

I've never completed a game or entered a comp before, and unfortunately, I posted the intro text to my game before realizing there were restrictions against that sort of thing (or even that there was a comp coming up). Does that disqualify my current work?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1293&start=20#p8012
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx VM spec 3.1.2
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-08-20 12:50:19

It occurs to me that it'd be nice if the opcode numbers were listed with the descriptions of the opcodes, instead of (or in addition to) in a separate table.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1308&start=10#p8013
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Initial description of something in a container.
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-08-20 13:05:30

[quote="matt w"]Good to know. I expect that means my code will need a tweak for 6E, to check whether the initial description is "" rather than whether it's provided.[/quote]

This should be error-free in both 5Z and 6E:

[code]if the item provides the property initial appearance:
        unless the initial appearance of the item is "":[/code]

The first line will prevent 5Z from ever reaching the second (error-throwing) line.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1331&start=0#p8014
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Verb Definition Based on Actor
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-08-20 13:53:24

Here's a little puzzle I don't know how to solve. After reading Aaron's transcript of a newbie playing a game, it occurred to me that this would be useful:

Understand "give me [things]" as taking.

If the player is addressing the parser, that works just fine. But it fails disastrously with the input 'bob, give me the wrench', as that will be translated into 'bob, take the wrench'.

So the question is, is there an easy way to peel off the grammar for commanding an npc from the grammar for the PC?

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1331&start=0#p8015
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Verb Definition Based on Actor
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-20 14:05:57

Personally, I'd rather have something like this:

Before giving something to yourself, say "If you want to take [the noun], just say 'take [the noun]'" instead.

I'd rather not encourage the player to address the parser as an intermediary between the PC and the game world.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1328&start=0#p8016
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Needing help in coding a dream (and some other minor stu
User: Luci / DateTime: 2010-08-20 14:09:16

[quote="capmikee"][quote="Roadcrosser"]2) Transition text (When moving to another room, it reads "You wade through the water" before moving to the next room (Only applicable to certain rooms))[/quote]
Something like this?

[code]The Living Room is a room.

The Dining Room is north of the Living Room.

Before going north in the Living room, say "You stride ceremoniously through the archway."
[/code]

But you need to watch out if there are possible obstacles - you don't want that message to appear if something else (like a locked door) is going to prevent going.[/quote]

I usually find this sort of thing is done better by making the actual message attach itself to a 'kind of door' that is suitable for that purpose.

[code]A water-path is a kind of door. A water-path is usually open, not openable, unlocked, not lockable, privately-named, scenery.

Before going through a water-path:
        say "you wade through the water."

One Side Of The Puddle is a room. A water-path called water1 is east of One Side Of The Puddle. Other Side Of The Puddle is east of water1.[/code]

Granted, there are probably better ways to do this, especially if you need to actually go through a real door and still get the message ( a quick thought would be 'before going to a room while in a region', or something similar ), but this seems to be the simplest, and a variant on a method I'm using for a similar effect.


Edit: Modified a statement to read how I initially meant it to appear.

Edit, part 2: here's an example of using a by-region method:

[code]Water-filled Locations is a region.

Basement is a room. Cellar is north of Basement. Foreboding Stairs is west of Basement. Basement and Cellar are in Water-filled Locations.

Before going a direction while in Water-filled Locations:
        if going to a room in Water-filled Locations:
                say "You wade through the water."[/code]

One advantage of this method is that it only works if both the room you're in now and the destination are within the region-in-question, and you could easily use a similar 'before' statement to make a slightly different message appear when the current location is water-filled, but the destination is dry land ( and vice versa ).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1309&start=0#p8017
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Author's Forum for 2010 IFComp
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-08-20 14:20:07

[quote="capmikee"]Submit something potentially buggy and incomplete?[/quote]
Don't do that. It'll just make people annoyed with you and your game. If you find that you won't hit the deadline, you can always release it outside the comp, or if you really want to do the comp thing, there's the Spring Thing, or even next year.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1309&start=0#p8018
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Author's Forum for 2010 IFComp
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-08-20 14:20:45

[quote="capmikee"]Submit something potentially buggy and incomplete?[/quote]
Please don't! That's a sure way to get reviews that totally slam your work and make sure you never want to publish another game again. It's unfair to the players as well if you submit something you know isn't ready to be published.

If the game isn't ready to be published when the deadline hits, you can just withdraw your intent. There's basically three options: 1) If you have the patience, wait for the next year's IFcomp and you'll have plenty of time to finish and polish the game; 2) Submit to another comp. There's 6 months until Spring Thing, for example. 3) Finish the game and release outside competitions.

(edit: or, uh, what Trumgottist just said.)

[quote]I've never completed a game or entered a comp before, and unfortunately, I posted the intro text to my game before realizing there were restrictions against that sort of thing (or even that there was a comp coming up). Does that disqualify my current work?[/quote]
I don't think that's enough to disqualify the work, but if you want to be sure you could ask the comp organizers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1309&start=0#p8019
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Author's Forum for 2010 IFComp
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-20 14:32:52

[quote="Juhana"][quote="capmikee"]Submit something potentially buggy and incomplete?[/quote]
Please don't! That's a sure way to get reviews that totally slam your work and make sure you never want to publish another game again. It's unfair to the players as well if you submit something you know isn't ready to be published.

If the game isn't ready to be published when the deadline hits, you can just withdraw your intent. [/quote]
It's a relief to hear that I could withdraw my entry. I certainly wouldn't want to ruin my reputation that way!

[quote="Juhana"]There's basically three options: 1) If you have the patience, wait for the next year's IFcomp and you'll have plenty of time to finish and polish the game; 2) Submit to another comp. There's 6 months until Spring Thing, for example. 3) Finish the game and release outside competitions.[/quote]
6 months doesn't seem so long. Maybe I'll save it for Spring Thing. I'm having trouble figuring out how big the game is going to be...

I think what's more important to me right now than a deadline or a chance to compete is having a community of authors to discuss design and writing with. I don't want to share spoilers with the wider world, so the idea of a private authors forum sounded appealing.

Is there a chance there might be more things like that on this site?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1293&start=20#p8020
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx VM spec 3.1.2
User: weiju / DateTime: 2010-08-20 14:43:45

[quote="vaporware"]It occurs to me that it'd be nice if the opcode numbers were listed with the descriptions of the opcodes, instead of (or in addition to) in a separate table.[/quote]

I agree, maybe somewhat like in the Z-Machine specification.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1332&start=0#p8021
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: What Rulebook?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-08-20 16:02:48

This is the kind of thing that drives me crazy about Inform 7.

What I'm trying to do is produce an action from the command 'bob, give me the wrench'. First I set up a persuasion rule:

Persuasion rule for asking Bob to try giving something to the player: persuasion succeeds.

But of course that doesn't work, because the block giving rule gets in the way before the persuasion rule has a shot at it. So then I look in the manual to try to figure out how to override the block giving rule. The manual has several examples that show how to get rid of the block giving rule [i]entirely[/i], but that's not what I want to do. I couldn't find an example that shows how to override the rule in one specific case.

So I figure I need to write a new block giving rule that will be listed instead of the block giving rule. I know how to do that -- except, what rulebook is the block giving rule in?

I search for it in the Standard Rules. I have no trouble finding it. But -- what rulebook is it in??? The Standard Rules don't seem to contain this nugget of information. It isn't in the check giving rulebook -- there is no such rulebook. If the error messages the compiler is giving me are to be believed, there [i]is [/i]in fact a check rulebook -- but the block giving rule isn't in that rulebook. Nor is it in the action-processing rulebook. Nor is it in the specific action-processing rulebook.

Really, I need to ask two separate and distinct questions here.

First, where is the block giving rule? What rulebook is it in?

Second, how on [i]Earth [/i]would the average author ever figure that out?

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1331&start=0#p8022
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Verb Definition Based on Actor
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-08-20 16:09:31

This was asked recently in the guise of speaking to an NPC in another language.  A partial solution: [code]Understand "lo siento" as saying sorry when the person asked is Maurice.

Maurice and Bob are men in the library.

Persuasion for asking maurice to try saying sorry: say "No problemo." instead.[/code]
Gives:[quote="The transcript"]>sorry
Oh, don't apologise.

>maurice, lo siento
No problemo.

>bob, sorry
Bob has better things to do.

>bob, lo siento
There is no reply.
[/quote]
To finish the solution, the pre-existing Understand rules need be flagged as gibberish to Maurice.  Either 1) removing all grammar lines, then re-adding them with a "when the person asked is not Maurice" clause, or 2) create a To Decide Whether clause which sets a global Is Spanish boolean (and returns true), used on just the Spanish lines, with the global being re-initialized to false Before Reading A Command.   

A Persuasion rule for Bob that rejects Is-Spanish, and a Persuasion rule for Maurice which rejects not-Is-Spanish.

And probably a Saying Gibberish action that both guys will use for responding to such.  ("What?" / "Que?")

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1305&start=0#p8023
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Asking someone to do something ... in another language
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-08-20 16:11:03

[quote="Hertz"]How would you implement a person who will obey your commands, but only when you speak in her language?

For instance, if you say NINA, GLOBT SWONK, she'll interpret that as NINA, GET SWORD... But if you type GLOBT SWONK yourself, the parser should say, "Wha?"[/quote]

Well, 

  Understand "lo siento" as saying sorry when the person asked is Maurice.

is a start.  I wrote extensively about this at <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1331&p=8022#p8022">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1331&p=8022#p8022</a> so sorry for the late reply.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1332&start=0#p8024
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What Rulebook?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-08-20 16:15:01

[quote="Jim Aikin"]First, where is the block giving rule? What rulebook is it in?[/quote]
The action's name is "giving it to". So the rulebook is called check giving it to.

[quote]Second, how on [i]Earth [/i]would the average author ever figure that out?[/quote]
You can find the rules in the action tab of the index. There's even an "unlist" button that copies the correct wording to the source: if you click on it a line that says "The block giving rule is not listed in the check giving it to rulebook" appears in the source.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1332&start=0#p8025
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What Rulebook?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-08-20 16:26:51

You say you found this in the Standard Rules:

[code]Check an actor giving something to (this is the block giving rule):
         stop the action with library message giving it to action number 3 for the
		second noun.[/code]

So, it's in the check giving it to rules. (The action is called "giving it to", not "giving".) If you're not good at mentally stripping the actor information from rule headers to get the rulebook name, you can just use the action rulebook to find the name of the action, and the associated rulebook will always be "check + action name", e.g. check giving it to.

At present though, you don't really have to delist the rule. If you create a more specific check rule, you can suppress the block giving rule momentarily:

[code]Check Bob giving the wrench to:
	ignore the block giving rule.[/code]

...but I'm not sure whether using "ignore" is frowned upon.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1332&start=0#p8026
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What Rulebook?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-08-20 16:38:27

[quote="Juhana"][quote="Jim Aikin"]First, where is the block giving rule? What rulebook is it in?[/quote]
The action's name is "giving it to". So the rulebook is called check giving it to.[/quote]
Yeah, I figured that out after posting the message. But....

[quote="Juhana"][quote]Second, how on [i]Earth [/i]would the average author ever figure that out?[/quote]
You can find the rules in the action tab of the index. There's even an "unlist" button that copies the correct wording to the source: if you click on it a line that says "The block giving rule is not listed in the check giving it to rulebook" appears in the source.[/quote]
Since I was looking for the name of a rulebook, I looked in the Rules tab instead of the Actions tab. Silly me.

My more general comment, after playing around with this action for a while longer, is that the rules governing it are just too tangled up. Transactions among characters should be among the easiest things to write in modern IF, not the most difficult.

This would be a dynamite thing to put in an extension. The author ought to be able to write stuff like:

Let Bob give things (except the wrench) to the player.
Let the player give the purse to Dorothy when Dorothy is amenable.
Let Steve receive the shirt and the motorcycle from anyone except David.
Let Dorothy refuse to take things from Bob saying "Oh, but your hands are too dirty. I'm afrraid you've soiled [the thing being offered]."

It really shouldn't be any more complex than that, at the author code level.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1309&start=0#p8027
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Author's Forum for 2010 IFComp
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2010-08-20 17:56:49

[quote="capmikee"]I think what's more important to me right now than a deadline or a chance to compete is having a community of authors to discuss design and writing with. I don't want to share spoilers with the wider world, so the idea of a private authors forum sounded appealing.

Is there a chance there might be more things like that on this site?[/quote]

Currently, we of course have the authoring boards, but they are public, and it's intended they stay that way. Of course, mwigdahl's question about the possibility of opening a board specifically for authors in the IF comp got me to act and do it - any other corresponding requests (for example for the Spring Thing once that gets a bit closer) are very likely to be approved as well. But what I don't want to do is open a new board for general authoring discussion that would be hidden from anyone.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1332&start=0#p8028
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What Rulebook?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-08-20 18:23:46

[quote="ektemple"]
At present though, you don't really have to delist the rule. If you create a more specific check rule, you can suppress the block giving rule momentarily:

[code]Check Bob giving the wrench to:
	ignore the block giving rule.[/code]

...but I'm not sure whether using "ignore" is frowned upon.

--Erik[/quote]

I think it is -- in the (5Z) docs it says that "ignore" should only be used in procedural rules, which of course are now deprecated. I'm not sure what's wrong with using them in non-procedural rules. 

Anyway, I agree with Jim about the obscurity of the rulebook names; if you find a rule in the index page, there ought to be something telling you what rulebook it's in (short of clicking the "unlist" button, which is a non-obvious hack if you don't actually want to unlist the rule). When I was tinkering with [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=7973#p7973]this[/url] I had the devil's own time figuring out what rulebook the "describe what's on scenery supporters..." rule was in, before realizing that I didn't need to know. And the rulebook often has a weird name (mine is "for printing a locale paragraph about"), so figuring out from the rule is non-trivial, at least the first time.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1328&start=0#p8029
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Needing help in coding a dream (and some other minor stu
User: Roadcrosser / DateTime: 2010-08-20 19:54:20

Thanks for the help. The adjacent rooms would usually take the syntax
>enter roomA3

I doubt Inform 7 has the verb enter.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1332&start=0#p8030
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What Rulebook?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-08-20 20:33:52

[quote="matt w"][quote="ektemple"]
At present though, you don't really have to delist the rule. If you create a more specific check rule, you can suppress the block giving rule momentarily:

[code]Check Bob giving the wrench to:
	ignore the block giving rule.[/code]

...but I'm not sure whether using "ignore" is frowned upon.

--Erik[/quote]

I think it is -- in the (5Z) docs it says that "ignore" should only be used in procedural rules, which of course are now deprecated. I'm not sure what's wrong with using them in non-procedural rules.[/quote]

I'm not either, though probably ignoring a single rule is the least problematic case. I really hope that I7 retains something like this, because there really isn't any reason why, returning to Jim's example, you should have to replace the block giving rule just to make a single exception to it. But because a check rule's success causes the [i]entire action[/i] to stop (not just the check rules), that becomes necessary--you can't write "check Bob giving the wrench to: rule succeeds" or you skip the carry out/report rules. "Ignore the block giving it to rule" really fits the bill, and I'd like to see it stay in the language even if it's reduced in scope to, say, working only on rules in the same rulebook.

[quote="matt w"]Anyway, I agree with Jim about the obscurity of the rulebook names; if you find a rule in the index page, [b]there ought to be something telling you what rulebook it's in[/b] (short of clicking the "unlist" button, which is a non-obvious hack if you don't actually want to unlist the rule). When I was tinkering with [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=7973#p7973]this[/url] I had the devil's own time figuring out what rulebook the "describe what's on scenery supporters..." rule was in, before realizing that I didn't need to know. And the rulebook often has a weird name (mine is "for printing a locale paragraph about"), so figuring out from the rule is non-trivial, at least the first time.[/quote]

I don't think that's an accurate description of the index: if you've found the rule in the index, you've found the rulebook name too. Here's the index entry that contains the "describe what's on scenery supporters in room descriptions rule":

[quote]Printing a locale paragraph about  ... activity
for    a thing (called the item)  don't mention player's supporter in room descriptions rule   name  unlist
for    a thing (called the item)  don't mention scenery in room descriptions rule   name  unlist
for    a thing (called the item)  don't mention undescribed items in room descriptions rule   name  unlist
for    a thing (called the item)  set pronouns from items in room descriptions rule   name  unlist
for    a thing (called the item)  offer items to writing a paragraph about rule   name  unlist
for    a thing (called the item)  use initial appearance in room descriptions rule   name  unlist
for    a thing (called the item)  describe what's on scenery supporters in room descriptions rule   name  unlist
default outcome is success[/quote]

For my money, the real problem is finding the rule names in the first place. If both the Standard Rules and the index were searchable—and the manual emphasized this search as something that authors should develop a habit of using—that would go a long way toward ameliorating the perennial "how do I block/unblock the default behavior?" problem. Here are some ways I'd like to see the index improved to address the broader issues that you and Jim are raising:

[list=1]
[*] Make the index searchable as part of the documentation search. When I type something into the search box, the list that comes up should include hits to the index even before hits to the manual or the recipe book. Search results should be subdivided by source (Index, Writing with Inform, Recipe Book, extensions, whatever) so you can go where you want to go at a glance.[/*:m]
[*] Link to the Actions Index from within the Rules Index. I've been burned, like Jim, in hunting through the Rules Index tab for action rules. It makes sense to list actions in their own tab, but it also makes sense to cross-link them from the Rules tab.[/*:m]
[*] The Rules tab is a bit confused at present. I usually stare at the subheadings for a while before making a choice, and I rarely pick the right one. I'm not sure what scheme would be better, but I haven't found the current scheme particularly helpful.[/*:m][/list:o]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1332&start=0#p8031
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What Rulebook?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-08-20 20:59:56

[quote="ektemple"]I don't think that's an accurate description of the index: if you've found the rule in the index, you've found the rulebook name too. Here's the index entry that contains the "describe what's on scenery supporters in room descriptions rule":

[quote]Printing a locale paragraph about  ... activity
for    a thing (called the item)  don't mention player's supporter in room descriptions rule   name  unlist
for    a thing (called the item)  don't mention scenery in room descriptions rule   name  unlist
for    a thing (called the item)  don't mention undescribed items in room descriptions rule   name  unlist
for    a thing (called the item)  set pronouns from items in room descriptions rule   name  unlist
for    a thing (called the item)  offer items to writing a paragraph about rule   name  unlist
for    a thing (called the item)  use initial appearance in room descriptions rule   name  unlist
for    a thing (called the item)  describe what's on scenery supporters in room descriptions rule   name  unlist
default outcome is success[/quote][/quote]

I did find the rule, but I still wasn't able to come up with the rulebook name -- I didn't realize that I had to add the thing just after the doohickey ("for") to the thing before the question mark ("printing a locale paragraph about"; the doohickey and question mark are visible in the index but not in Erik's post, for those following along at home). 

Anyway, as a newish I7 programmer, I can report that the way the index gives the rulebook name isn't explicit enough for at least one newish programmer, even once you've found the right entry. Needs more idiot-proofing. (I confess that I didn't even notice the "unlist" button, though I probably wouldn't have used it anyway, since I was trying to come up with "The rule with the even longer annoying name is listed instead of the rule with the long annoying name in the convoluted name rulebook," and I just used "is not listed in any rulebook" to unlist.)

I agree with you about making the index easier to search, tho' the Standard Rules are searchable using a simple "find" once you've brought them up (which was something else I couldn't figure out how to do for a while). I'm not sure I'd like them to come up in the documentation search; on my computer the documentation search is slow enough as it is (and annoyingly works backward through the examples when I usually want things in the main documentation). Maybe if you could turn the various components off and on it'd be good; in fact if you could turn off searching the examples that'd make me happy.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1328&start=0#p8032
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Needing help in coding a dream (and some other minor stu
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-08-20 21:18:34

[quote="Roadcrosser"]Thanks for the help. The adjacent rooms would usually take the syntax
>enter roomA3

I doubt Inform 7 has the verb enter.[/quote]

It does, but it's generally used for going into containers or doors. You can fiddle with it so that it allows you to go to adjacent rooms, though:

[code]After deciding the scope of the player while entering: 
	repeat with dummyroom running through all rooms:
		place dummyroom in scope. 
[This means that it'll accept "Enter kitchen" if kitchen is the name of a room; otherwise it'd tell you that you can't see the kitchen.] 

Instead of entering a room (called destination):
	if the destination is adjacent to the location: [the location is the room where the player is; destination is a dummy variable]
		let passway be the best route from the location to the destination; [this just tells you which direction the destination is]
		if passway is a direction:
			try going passway; [if you can't go into the next room, this'll give you the usual errors]
		otherwise:
			say "You can't get there from here."; [You may not even need this, since if the rooms are adjacent, the best route should be a direction, but better safe than sorry]
	otherwise:
		say "That's not close enough to go to from here." [if you tried entering a nonadjacent room]
[/code]

Note that (experienced) IF players usually navigate by compass directions, though allowing "enter [roomname]" is nice. Note also that this doesn't allow "go to [roomname]," which you probably want to allow if you're allowing "enter [roomname]." There are some extensions that implement "go to [roomname]" one way or another.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1332&start=0#p8033
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What Rulebook?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-08-20 21:45:17

[quote="matt w"]I did find the rule, but I still wasn't able to come up with the rulebook name -- I didn't realize that I had to add the thing just after the doohickey ("for") to the thing before the question mark ("printing a locale paragraph about"; the doohickey and question mark are visible in the index but not in Erik's post, for those following along at home). [/quote]

Yeah, I guess you have to be familiar with activities to know that what you are seeing is the rulebook name (each activity has three rulebooks: for, before, and after). Ideally, of course, you [i]would[/i] be familiar with activities before you have to start hacking them, but clearly it doesn't work out that way in practice!

I'm not sure there's an easy way to idiot-proof this, though; I wouldn't like to see the index gummed up with a full restatement of the activity name each time, for example:

[quote]for [b]printing a locale paragraph[/b] about a thing (called the item)  don't mention player's supporter in room descriptions rule   name  unlist
for [b]printing a locale paragraph[/b] a thing (called the item)  don't mention scenery in room descriptions rule   name  unlist
for [b]printing a locale paragraph[/b] a thing (called the item)  don't mention undescribed items in room descriptions rule   name  unlist[/quote]

That just doesn't seem like a good tradeoff to me. But maybe the full name could be provided using DHTML? A hyperlinked ellipsis maybe, and when you click on the link, the phrase expands:

[quote]for [color=#0000FF]...[/color] about a thing (called the item)  don't mention player's supporter in room descriptions rule
        ->
for [b]printing a locale paragraph[/b] about a thing (called the item)  don't mention player's supporter in room descriptions rule[/quote]

Or maybe supplement the "unlist" button with a "replace" button that would paste in something like this "The XXX rule is listed instead of the describe what's on scenery supporters in room descriptions rule in the for printing a locale paragraph about rules"? That's less than elegant, given that the paste function has no way of providing the name of the replacement rule, but do you think it might help?

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1328&start=0#p8034
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Needing help in coding a dream (and some other minor stu
User: Roadcrosser / DateTime: 2010-08-20 22:46:28

Thanks for the help. Now I need to get the sleeping pills working. My thought is that the 1st sleeping pill is easier to find than the second one.

EDIT: I also need help for the prologue and also does this work?

[code]Instead of going south of CrowdedArea say "You wouldn't want to go back there"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1167&start=20#p8035
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Floating-point math in Glulx
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-20 22:59:34

Oh. Hm. I was (somehow) assuming that C99 was a previous standard, and we were now on some new one.

I'll add a note.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1293&start=20#p8036
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx VM spec 3.1.2
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-20 23:05:09

The float branches are dead now. I fixed some bugs (in glk-dev, quixe, and glulxe) after I merged to master.

(I haven't merged in the inform6 project yet, because that tracks the official release.)

As for the spec formatting, maybe. :) I'm more worried about getting the numbers wrong myself.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1309&start=0#p8037
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Author's Forum for 2010 IFComp
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-08-21 02:07:37

There's always the possibility to start a writer's club and set up a private forum or mailing list for it. The web is full of free services to do that. I think Jim Aikin ran a group like that a while back.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=10#p8038
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-08-21 02:26:11

It occurs to me that currently the parser tries very hard to pretend that it understands more of the player's input than it actually does. It might be best to drop that pretense completely and just be brutally honest with the player, otherwise the newcomer has no way of knowing what input is expected. Something like this:

[quote]>My god, you're annoying.
The game understands only a very limited set of instructions, for example LOOK, TAKE KEYS or PUT BLOCK IN HOLE. Anything besides the basic command will make the input incomprehensible to the game. For example, PLEASE TAKE KEYS or TAKE KEYS QUIETLY will not be understood. Right now I tried to read "MY" as a verb, but that is either not in my dictionary or not a verb at all.

>escape truck [the second time the parser doesn't understand]
The game doesn't understand that command. Right now I tried to read "ESCAPE" as a verb, but that is either not in my dictionary or not a verb at all.

>get out of this truck
The game doesn't understand that command. I understood the verb "GET", as in taking something, but "OUT OF THIS TRUCK" is not a name of an object that you can see.
[/quote]
That's just a quick draft but I do believe that if you make the parser's logic transparent the player catches on much quicker. In Aaron's example script you can see that the player tried to have a conversation with the parser and acted as if they were talking with a human ("*sigh*" or "TURN OFF THE HEADLIGHS!") all the way to the end of the script. "I didn't understand that sentence" or "I only understood you as far as..." contains zero information on how to actually modify the command to make the game understand it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1333&start=0#p8039
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Simply Use an Item
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2010-08-21 03:47:57

In my story Alice is still in the Wonderland foyer. - I've created a fan that the player can pick up. But when I try to use the fan I get this message:

The word "use" is not necessary in this story.

How can I set the fan to simply let the player use it? I will go back in later and define my own verbs etc to give the player more flexibility in what they can type in to do certain things. Here is my fan definition:

[code]
rabbitFan : Thing 'White Rabbit\'s Fan' 'little fan' @foyer
    "The little fan is ornate and delicate. It was dropped by the white rabbit."
    isListed = nil
    isUsed = nil
    dobjFor(Use)
    {
        preCond = [objHeld]
        verify() {
            if (isHeldBy(me))
            {}
            else
            {
                "Don't let's be silly, you can't possibly fan yourself with a fan that you are not holding. Silly girl.";
                exit;
            }
        }
        action()
        {
            if (me.height > 2)
            {
                "You begin to fan yourself. As soon as the cool air begins to brush against your face you begin to rapidly shrink until the fan is too large and heavy for you to hold.";
                me.height = 1;
                rabbitFan.isUsed = true;
                achieve_RabbitFan.awardPoints();
            }
            if (me.height == 2)
            {
                finishGameMsg('Oh my! Why on Earth did you do such a thing? As you fan yourself you begin to rapidly shrink until you\'ve gone entirely out like a candle.', [finishOptionUndo,finishOptionFullScore]); 
            }
        }
    }
;
achieve_RabbitFan : Achievement { +1 "using the white rabbit's fan" };
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1333&start=0#p8040
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Simply Use an Item
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-08-21 06:01:29

TADS 3 doesn't have a "use" verb built-in, so you'll have to define it yourself. The Technical Manual has an article on [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/techman/t3verb.htm]how to create verbs[/url]; scroll down to the section on "Verbs with one object". You'll have to think about what should happen when the player tries to use things other than the fan. Probably the simplest and best option is to have a message asking the player to be more specific.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1328&start=0#p8041
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Needing help in coding a dream (and some other minor stu
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-08-21 06:06:19

[quote="Roadcrosser"]Thanks for the help. Now I need to get the sleeping pills working. My thought is that the 1st sleeping pill is easier to find than the second one.

EDIT: I also need help for the prologue and also does this work?

[code]Instead of going south of CrowdedArea say "You wouldn't want to go back there"[/code][/quote]

You want to say "going south in" or perhaps "going south from" -- see section 7.13 of the documentation for the difference. Basically, "from" only works if there is actually a room south of CrowdedArea.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1332&start=0#p8042
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What Rulebook?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-08-21 06:26:20

The "replace" button sounds nice (though that doesn't get us "the blah rule is listed before the blah rule in the blah rulebook"); you could have the cursor hop to the place where you need to type in the new name. 

I agree that restating the activity name each time is ugly and actually I'm not sure it would be that helpful, since you'd still have to know that this is the rulebook name. What I'd really like would be for the index to explicitly say "rulebook" at the top of each of those panels; but this might be a problem, because the panel can actually contain up to three rulebooks. Perhaps it could name the rulebook at the top of each segment. So instead of 

	
[quote]Printing the locale description  activity
 b  f  a
before    initialise locale description rule   name  unlist
before    find notable locale objects rule   name  unlist
for    interesting locale paragraphs rule   name  unlist
for    you-can-also-see rule   name  unlist
default outcome is success[/quote]

you'd get

[quote]	
Printing the locale description  activity
 b  f  a
Before printing the locale description rulebook:
    initialise locale description rule   name  unlist
    find notable locale objects rule   name  unlist
For printing the locale description rulebook:   
   interesting locale paragraphs rule   name  unlist
   you-can-also-see rule   name  unlist
default outcome is success[/quote]

Or there could just be some better explanation in the documentation. Section 18.5 actually seems to suggest that the rulebook name comes at the top, but that's actually the activity name. You can realize what's going on with enough study of the documentation, I guess, but that seems less than ideal.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1286&start=0#p8043
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Half-Finished Game: Need Programmer
User: cunctator / DateTime: 2010-08-21 06:59:16

Hello,

As of today I haven't received any offers for help. I'm still very very very much interested in finishing this game for IFComp, and with the deadline coming closer I am starting to panic.

I tried to write the rest, like what Bainespal said, but I got stuck multiple times within ten minutes. I don't think I can finish the game on my own before IFComp.

The game has very simple mechanics, so I do not think it will take long to finish it. So please, if anyone has any expertise with Inform 7 at all, [b][i]please please[/i][/b] reply or PM me as soon as possible. 

Thank you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1334&start=0#p8044
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Simple Chat for an entire scene
User: cunctator / DateTime: 2010-08-21 08:33:18

Hi,

How do you start and conduct an entire part (not the entire game, just a very specific part...like the different parts in Photopia) with Simple Chat by Mark Tilford? As in, the entire part is all dialogue, and the player just chooses responses for the entire part. No mention of the room, no other way to interact than just typing 1, 2, 3, etc.

Also related to Simple Chat by Mark Tilford: when I add it in, there's an error relating to Standard Rules by Graham Nelson: 
[code]In Part SR3 - Activities, Section SR3/2 - Final Question in the extension Standard Rules by Graham Nelson:

Problem. You wrote 'if the serial comma option is active, say ","'  , but 'serial comma option' has the wrong kind of value: a use option rather than a chat node.

I was trying to match this phrase:

(serial comma option - chat node) is active 

This was what I found out:

serial comma option = a use option
[/code]

In short, there's something wrong with the 'if the serial comma option is active, say ","' part.

Thank you!  [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1334&start=0#p8045
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple Chat for an entire scene
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-08-21 10:20:49

[quote="cunctator"]Also related to Simple Chat by Mark Tilford: when I add it in, there's an error relating to Standard Rules by Graham Nelson: 
[code]In Part SR3 - Activities, Section SR3/2 - Final Question in the extension Standard Rules by Graham Nelson:

Problem. You wrote 'if the serial comma option is active, say ","'  , but 'serial comma option' has the wrong kind of value: a use option rather than a chat node.
[/quote]
I'm guessing, but the most likely issue here is that the compiler is giving you a bogus error message. Try changing the Settings page to the .z8 story format and recompile. I've seen situations where adding an extension caused an out-of-memory error that was incorrectly identified by the compiler.

Also, check to make sure you're using the most recent version of Simple Chat. That might solve it.

There are also sometimes weird conflicts between extensions, for no apparent reason. This may be one of those situations.

--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1328&start=0#p8046
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Needing help in coding a dream (and some other minor stu
User: Roadcrosser / DateTime: 2010-08-21 11:41:34

I can't really start until I get a prologue starting with intro-text. Then some actions and the title shows up.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1333&start=0#p8047
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Simply Use an Item
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2010-08-21 13:43:38

Thanks! I had found this article later last night but I just now got it to work! I may be able to use something similar to improve the syntax for drinking from the 'Drink Me' bottle too - like "drink from the bottle" etc.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1309&start=0#p8048
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Author's Forum for 2010 IFComp
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-21 14:20:07

[quote="Juhana"]There's always the possibility to start a writer's club and set up a private forum or mailing list for it. The web is full of free services to do that. I think Jim Aikin ran a group like that a while back.[/quote]
That was my inspiration. I think maybe he did it on email, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1323&start=0#p8049
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: what tools do you use for mapping interactive fiction ga
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-21 14:23:41

[quote="gravel"]I usually don't, but when I need to, I find pen and paper still better than any computer program I've used.[/quote]
Definitely pen and paper.

However, with games that have a lot of names or other factual details to keep track of, I make sure to always keep scripting on, and use vi to extract relevant bits from the transcript and store them in a notes file.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1169&start=30#p8050
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inventory Limits
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-21 14:45:40

How would you compare holdall puzzles to light source puzzles?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=10#p8051
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-08-21 15:14:43

Just this past week, I had the experience of playing IF with my young cousin, who had only been introduced to IF by me the year before, and only for a brief time.  I was reading the game out loud to him, and asking him what to do, so obviously that eliminated most of the problems he would have had with the parser, since I was interpreting his commands.  However, I did notice that he repeatedly wanted to go towards something in the same room.  That is, when I read a room description, including the list of the objects and NPCs in the room, his first reaction was often to tell me to go to the object or NPC that caught his attention the most, for instance, "GO TO GIRL" or "WALK TOWARD GIRL".  He also sometimes wanted me to do things that can't really be expressed in typical IF commands very well, such as standing in a particular direction or getting in front of something/someone.

So, it seems one thing that newbies may not catch on to right away is the IF convention of spacial relationships within rooms.  And it makes sense that wouldn't assume that the PC's movements within a room would be implied, when you're supposed to be telling the PC what to do.  Other than these difficulties, my seven-year-old cousin seemed to understand IF fairly well, though it's hard to say, since he was only interacting with the parser through me.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=10#p8052
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-08-21 16:57:10

Here's an example of just the misunderstood commands from the first transcript and the first part of the new response, with some of the existing newbie-friendly extensions turned on:

Include Extended Grammar by Aaron Reed.
Include Smarter Parser by Aaron Reed. 
Include Poor Man's Mistype by Aaron Reed. 
Include Modified Exit by Emily Short.
Include Small Kindnesses by Aaron Reed. 

I've actually revised some of these heavily in the last few days: the new version should show up on the extensions page momentarily. Most notably, I've revised the output style for Smarter Parser to be more streamlined: when attempting to reparse a command it reprints the new version in caps in front of a new prompt.

[quote]
>inspect jade
Grandma said it will bring you luck, which hasn't really been working out...

>inspect
What do you want to inspect?

>jade
Grandma said it will bring you luck, which hasn't really been working out...

>what are my spirit animals?
You can't ask direct questions to the game. Type a verb - noun command like EXAMINE FLOWER, for example to interact with the story world.

>spirit animals
I didn't understand that sentence.

>give them back
I'm not sure what "them" refers to.

>give me back my cigarettes
Try a different noun with that command.

>may i have a cigarette?
(You can just begin your command with the verb.)
>HAVE A CIGARETTE.
You pull out a cigarette and flick it into life. Thoughts tumble through your head.

Well, you're still stuck here. It's dark outside the beam of your headlights. Maybe you could start by getting out of this truck. 

And you still haven't quit smoking. You've got five cigs left.

>get out of truck
You get out of the pickup truck.

>leave the truck
You get out of the pickup truck.

>go outside
You couldn't go that way even if you weren't in the pickup truck.
[/quote]

The above response seems incongruous due to the way Modified Exits handles something-- I've made a suggestion to Emily that this ought to work a little differently if the exit in question is "outside."

[quote]
>fuck you
I'm sorry if you're feeling frustrated. If you like, you can type SAVE to store your progress to a file (in most interpreters), then RESTORE to come back to it later. In the meantime, you might try searching the web to see if there are hints available.

>me too
I didn't understand that sentence.

>why not?
You can't ask direct questions to the game. Type a verb - noun command like EXAMINE FLOWER, for example to interact with the story world.

>shut up, hal
You can't use multiple objects with that verb.

>i just did. so sue me
Please rephrase your command to start with an imperative verb, like LOOK.

>my god, you're annoying.
You seem to want to talk to someone, but I can't see whom.

>Alexei... this is YOUR doing!
Please rephrase your command to start with an imperative verb, like LOOK.

>Of course you didn't.
I didn't understand that sentence.

>GAHHHHH!
I didn't understand that sentence.

>Dear Jesus...
I didn't understand that sentence.

>OKay...
I didn't understand that sentence.

>roll down window
I didn't understand that sentence.

>escape truck
You get out of the pickup truck.

>Beep Beep
I didn't understand that sentence.

>then turn them off!
I didn't understand that sentence.

>*sigh* Turn off the fucking headlights
>*SIGH* TURN OFF HEADLIGHTS
I didn't understand that sentence.

>get out of this truck
You get out of the pickup truck.

>which way can I go?
You can't ask direct questions to the game. Type a verb - noun command like EXAMINE FLOWER, for example to interact with the story world.

>exit truck
You get out of the pickup truck.

>shoot myself
I didn't understand that sentence
[/quote]

So out of the original 31 errors, we've turned 9 of them into correctly parsed commands, and given more helpful error messages for 6 more. This still leaves 16 inputs the same (or in one case slightly worse) than they were, but many of these are just a frustrated player messing around, which weren't expected to have responses anyway.

(Note that this is a blatantly unfair and unscientific comparison, since this was one of the data sets I was using to improve the extensions. I'm hoping to do some tests with some other collected newbie-friendly input soon. But my general sense is that these extensions should recognize something like 15-30% more newbie input than the baseline parser.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1309&start=10#p8053
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Author's Forum for 2010 IFComp
User: George / DateTime: 2010-08-21 18:41:02

Maybe start a local IF meetup to meet other IF writers and players, form a workshop, etc.?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1335&start=0#p8054
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: Replacing Library Messages
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-08-21 21:03:28

I want to rewrite quite a lot of the messages in LanguageLM ... but I'm having trouble seeing how to do this in my own source code, and none of the documentation I've consulted (including DM4, Roger Firth's resources, and so forth) seems to explain how to undertake this obviously desirable activity.

I've made a copy of the entire LanguageLM routine. The question is where to put it. It's in a file by itself, and I want to Include that file at some point in my .inf file. But no matter where I put it, the compiler doesn't like it. The compiler (6.31, running in Windows 7) complains, "Error: Expected routine name but found LanguageLM." The keyword 'replace' gives me a whole slew of error messages, so I'm pretty sure it isn't what's needed.

I can, of course, hack verblibm.h in order to redirect L___M, but I don't like to resort to that sort of trickery. There must be a way to do this....

Suggestions? Thanks in advance!

--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1309&start=10#p8055
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Author's Forum for 2010 IFComp
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-21 22:03:00

I've always wanted to do that too, but I don't know of any in Philadelphia. Any takers?

I've tried roping some of my friends into it, but so far no one's gotten the bug.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1332&start=0#p8056
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What Rulebook?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-21 22:20:05

[quote="ektemple"]Or maybe supplement the "unlist" button with a "replace" button that would paste in something like this "The XXX rule is listed instead of the describe what's on scenery supporters in room descriptions rule in the for printing a locale paragraph about rules"? That's less than elegant, given that the paste function has no way of providing the name of the replacement rule, but do you think it might help?[/quote]
I like the idea of a "replace" button simply for the fact that it gives you a good hint about what you need to do.

I've been confused about check rules, and I think I have an idea about why. Please correct me if any of this is wrong:

Before rules will override each other, with the most specific Before rule replacing any more general ones.

But Check rules are [i]always[/i] in effect. If [i]any[/i] check rule stops an action from happening, then the action cannot be permitted by another check rule. So all of the "block action" rules must be replaced with new Check rule, or overridden with a Before rule in order for an action to succeed. I'm not even sure if an Instead rule can do it.

I think of it in terms of Apache permissions protocols. Check rules have a "deny, allow" precedence where all of the "deny" conditions are checked first.

Am I right that Check rules and Before rules have fundamentally different ways of interacting with each other?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1311&start=20#p8057
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Novice Friendly extension
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-21 23:18:53

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Here's another suggestion:

Assistance-requesting is an action out of world applying to (oh, whatever the correct syntax is for text). Understand "who [text]", "how [text]", "what [text]", and "where [text]" as assistance-requesting.

My suspicion is that a lot of novices may type 'how do I find the sword?' and such things. Intercepting all inputs that start with query-words and providing guidance, such as "For help with commands, type 'help with commands'." would be useful.[/quote]
Aha! Now I see why you were asking about verbs changing their meaning depending on the actor. Just as with "sorry" and "hello," these pseudoverbs have a habit of reversing their meaning when they are addressed to an NPC (e.g. "Phil, where is my luggage?" might get interpreted as asking Phil to request assistance about the player's luggage).

I was thinking about this situation, and was wondering if it would be useful to maintain the notion of the narrator-character. For example, "sorry" wouldn't be considered as asking the PC to perform the action "saying sorry," but asking the narrator to perform the action "accepting apologies." The narrator-character would still have to distinguish whether commands were directed at the PC or the narrator-character, but at least each individual verb would be more consistent. Maybe conversational verbs could be a third category after in-world and out-of-world, where in-world verbs are addressed to the PC by default, out-of-world verbs are addressed to the interpreter by default, and conversational verbs are addressed to the narrator by default.

Not sure if any of this is useful, I'm just brainstorming.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=20#p8058
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-08-22 02:08:58

[quote="Bainespal"] I did notice that he repeatedly wanted to go towards something in the same room.  That is, when I read a room description, including the list of the objects and NPCs in the room, his first reaction was often to tell me to go to the object or NPC that caught his attention the most, for instance, "GO TO GIRL" or "WALK TOWARD GIRL".[/quote]
Fantastic observation -- thanks! I've just implemented a way to handle that type of command in the game I'm starting to work on, using a newbie-friendly instructional message.

--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1336&start=0#p8059
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Git 1.2.7 released
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-08-22 03:57:10

I've updated Git to support the new Glulx 3.1.2 floating-point opcodes, and a source release is available here:
[url]http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/programming/glulx/interpreters/git/git-127.zip[/url]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1337&start=0#p8060
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Need setting for course in html
User: littlemathteacher / DateTime: 2010-08-22 04:00:46

You awake in a classroom, sitting at the teacher's desk. Suddenly a bunch of kids, presumably german high school studends, enters the room. A girl with short dark hair and glasses asks if this was the course on html. You agree and consider that they won't want to start with php and javascript, so it might be an idea first to show them the essential features of hypertext, using html and designing a text adventure game, including fake websites and so on. You explain your plan to the kids. The huge boy in the back asks you which editor to use. Suddenly it's again the girl with the glasses, shouting that it should not be too complicated to use. And right in front of you someone whispers: "Bitte plattformübergreifend, weil ich zuhause Linux habe." which means "Cross-plattform please, I am using linux."

> ...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1332&start=10#p8061
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What Rulebook?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-08-22 04:30:52

Here's a quick overview of action rules:

The action sequence, the order in which the game runs the rules, is the following:

[list][*]Before rules[/*:m]
[*]Instead rules *[/*:m]
[*]Check rules[/*:m]
[*]Carry out rules[/*:m]
[*]After rules *[/*:m]
[*]Report rules[/*:m][/list:u]

Instead and after rules, marked with a star above, stop the action by default. What this means is that the first instead/after rule the action sequence encounters will block everything that would come after it, unless the rule instructs otherwise. If there is an instead rule, only before rules and the instead rule will run and all others are skipped. If there is an after rule, all report rules are skipped. 

You can make any of the rules stop the action sequence with "instead" or "stop the action". This is most commonly done in the Check rules. Almost if not all standard library block rules ("block cutting", "block drinking" etc) are check rules that have "stop the action".

If there are multiple applicable rules of any kind, [b]all of them will run[/b], unless any of them stop the action sequence. This applies to every rule in every rulebook. (Remember that instead and after rules stop the action by default, but the others continue by default, including before and report rules.) Stopping the action sequence means stopping right there, without consulting any other action rules, so in practice it looks like as if the game would only follow the most specific instead rule. The order in which the rules run is decided by the specificity, this is discussed in manual chapter 18.18. The specificity rule of course applies only within the same type of rules, so a more specific carry out rule will never run before a less specific check rule.

Now, here's a quick and dirty overview of how the rules "should" be used. In the end they're just a bunch of rules in a specific order, so you could work with them however you want, but there are big benefits if the rules are used as they are designed to be used in that the design becomes more robust, easier to maintain and less error prone.

[b]Before rules[/b]: The before rules are the first in the sequence so they are the strongest of them all. For the same reason they should be used with special care because they can easily introduce hard-to-notice bugs into the game. The common way to use before rules is to create implicit actions or redirect the action to another:

[code]
Before taking off the shirt when the player is wearing the jacket:
    say "(first taking off the jacket)[command clarification break]";
    try taking off the jacket.

Before pushing a person:
    say "(attack [the noun])[command clarification break]";
    try attacking the noun;
    stop the action.[/code]
(Note how the second rule stopped the pushing action after the action had been directed to the attacking action.)

The before rules are also handy for restricting actions en masse:

[code]Before doing something when the player is in the elaborate death trap and the action requires a touchable noun:
    say "You can't do that when your hands are tied!";
    stop the action.[/code]

[b]Check/carry out/report rules[/b]: These are the core action rules: check whether the action should be blocked; if not, carry out the game mechanics, then report to the player what happened. Note that none of these rules stop the action by default, so you have to remember to have "instead" or "stop the action" in the check rules that prevent the action and if you have multiple report rules make sure they don't show the wrong messages. The core rules should handle [i]only the general case[/i].

[b]After rules[/b]: The after rules override the report rules, so they are mostly used to give custom reports if the game mechanism is the same (for example, describing the taste of an edible thing after the eating action.)

[b]Instead rules[/b]: The instead rules skip all rules except before rules, so they are used for [i]exceptions[/i]. Literally, instead of doing what you would normally do with this action, do this instead.

So usually the action sequence is like this for the general case:
[list]
[*](before rules)[/*:m]
[*]Check rules <-- if they pass, continue[/*:m]
[*]Carry out rules <-- make changes to the world model[/*:m]
[*]Report rules (or an after rule, if applicable) <-- tell the player what happened[/*:m][/list:u]
And when there's something that should be handled differently:
[list]
[*](before rules)[/*:m]
[*]Instead rule <-- choose the most specific applicable instead rule, run it, stop the action[/*:m][/list:u]

Now when it comes to replacing rules in the action sequence rulebooks, I very rarely do that. This might be a personal preference in design but I've preferred to build up and on top of the standard rules instead of replacing them and starting with an empty table. The only place where I mess around with the standard rules is the looking action where there's a bunch of rules that print the room description, but even there the rules I modify are rarely part of the actual action sequence.

I hope that clarifies it a bit rather than messing it up even more.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1336&start=0#p8062
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Git 1.2.7 released
User: nitfol / DateTime: 2010-08-22 07:17:25

When I try compiling this for 64-bit mode, either with gcc 3.4 or 4.4, glulxercise crashes when it tries to do the undo test.  Is there some special option I need to use to compile it?  It doesn't look like this problem is new to this version.

[code]
Interpreter claims to support undo.

Restore without saveundo: 1
Undo saved...
Restoring undo...
*** fatal error: Illegal instruction ***
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1336&start=0#p8063
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Git 1.2.7 released
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-08-22 07:35:14

[quote="nitfol"]When I try compiling this for 64-bit mode, either with gcc 3.4 or 4.4, glulxercise crashes when it tries to do the undo test.  Is there some special option I need to use to compile it?  It doesn't look like this problem is new to this version.[/quote]There was a problem in Git that the undo test case revealed, with the undo information incorrectly being discarded on a restore. This was fixed in Git 1.2.7 by deleting a line of code, so possibly there is some other problem there. Unfortunately I don't have a 64-bit system to test with, so I can't offer much guidance.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1332&start=10#p8064
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What Rulebook?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-08-22 10:20:32

[quote="capmikee"]Am I right that Check rules and Before rules have fundamentally different ways of interacting with each other?[/quote]
Basically, no. The rulebooks are run in a specific order, as Juhana indicates. If any of them ends with a "rule succeeds" or "rule fails", then nothing else will happen after that. Each type of rule has a default outcome, which may or may not be one of those. You pretty much have to study Chapter 12 carefully to get it all sorted out in your head.

If two rules of the same type can apply to the same action, the compiler will put them in what it thinks is the correct order, with the more specific rule first. You can override the compiler's decisions in various ways ... but since you don't get to see what it did, you have to guess about whether it made the right decisions based on what happens when you run your game. The rulebook assembly process and results are a "black box" from the author's vantage point.

--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1163&start=10#p8065
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Thoughts on Extra Windows
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-08-22 10:42:20

[quote="Ron Newcomb"][quote="Pacian"]To state that someone is more comfortable with their storytelling medium than with storytelling just seems like a really weird statement to me.[/quote]
I would agree as far as storytelling mediums it's a weird statement.  But videogames aren't a storytelling medium: they are something broader.[/quote]Exactly which medium is this untrue for?  Are books only used for storytelling?  Movies?  Radio shows?  Every medium is used for all sorts of things - and those other things often produce interesting tools that can be appropriated for storytelling purposes.  Which is why I asked if a fictional film shot in a pseudo-documentary style provokes the same response from you.

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]So I think it makes sense to say one can be comfortable with making videogames but not with storytelling.[/quote]I agree as well.  I just don't see why this is unique to videogames.  One can be comfortable with writing or making movies, or singing, or roleplaying, and still be uncomfortable with storytelling.

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]To me (and this is the subjective part), multiple windows indicates the creator is, or is currently operating as, a Tetric creator.[/quote]And was JJ Abrams acting as a documentarian when he made Cloverfield?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1332&start=10#p8066
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What Rulebook?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-08-22 10:46:52

[quote="Jim Aikin"]You can override the compiler's decisions in various ways ... but since you don't get to see what it did, you have to guess about whether it made the right decisions based on what happens when you run your game. The rulebook assembly process and results are a "black box" from the author's vantage point.

--JA[/quote]

If it compiles, can't you see the order by looking at the Index? Assuming you can find the rule in the Index.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1332&start=10#p8067
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What Rulebook?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-08-22 11:21:39

[quote="matt w"][quote="Jim Aikin"]You can override the compiler's decisions in various ways ... but since you don't get to see what it did, you have to guess about whether it made the right decisions based on what happens when you run your game. The rulebook assembly process and results are a "black box" from the author's vantage point.

--JA[/quote]

If it compiles, can't you see the order by looking at the Index? Assuming you can find the rule in the Index.[/quote]

Exactly. This is the main reason for the existence of the Index. It not only tells you exactly how your rulebooks were ordered, but also how rooms were placed, how object names were interpreted, etc.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1338&start=0#p8069
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: looking for an editor of html
User: littlemathteacher / DateTime: 2010-08-22 11:54:01

Please pardon my bad english.

I've even installed the wine environment on my linux, just to be able to run any arcane and obsolete software, because I am looking for a html-editor that uses near to zero functions other than opening and saving html-files and hyperlinking them by one click or hit on a key.

I need a pure html writing-and-linking software, WYSIWYG. You are the hypertext experts! Please show me your treasures. 

You should be able to write on in the linked-to file without having to do many clicks or inventing a new name and so on. You shoul be able to keep up the flow or assocoative succession or whatever you may call it.

Understand? Or is anyone able to customizew an up-to-date editor, say Open Office or KompoZer, to get that smooth handling for creative writing? MEMPAD is quite good, but it doesn't use or export html

Thanks a lot.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1338&start=0#p8070
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: looking for an editor of html
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-08-22 12:56:52

Actually, you're thinking of [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext_fiction]hypertext fiction[/url] and we're more of the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_fiction]parser-fiction[/url] types. I'm sure there might be one or two of us who have experience in writing hypertext fiction in pure HTML, but most of us don't. Maybe you should ask for recommendations on a web developer forum?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1336&start=0#p8071
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Git 1.2.7 released
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-08-22 13:05:32

Further thoughts:[list]
[*]Does it work in 32-bit mode? From your original message I'm not clear if you've tried it.[/*:m]
[*]Did you use the USE_DIRECT_THREADING option in the makefile? This is a bad idea except with GCC 2.95, I think.[/*:m]
[*]Are you compiling to x86_64 or 64-bit PPC? In the latter case you need the USE_BIG_ENDIAN_UNALIGNED option in the makefile, I believe.[/*:m][/list:u]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1339&start=0#p8072
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Windows Glulxe and Windows Git updated
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-08-22 13:11:19

I've made new releases of the Windows Glulxe and Windows Git interpreters, available from here
[url]http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXprogrammingXglulxXinterpretersXglulxe.html[/url]
[url]http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXprogrammingXglulxXinterpretersXgit.html[/url]
[url]http://www.davidkinder.co.uk/glulxe.html[/url]

Changes are:[list]
[*]Updated the core interpreters to the latest versions, which are Glulxe 0.4.6 and Git 1.2.7. Both these support the new floating point logic Zarf added to the Glulx 3.1.2 specification.[/*:m]
[*]The window can be made to fill the entire screen; press Alt+Enter to toggle this full screen mode on and off.[/*:m]
[*]A new configuration file option, "FullScreen", also makes the window fill the entire screen.[/*:m]
[*]During line input, Ctrl+Left moves the cursor to the start of the current word, and Ctrl+Right moves to the end.[/*:m]
[*]The logic when scaling alpha-blended images has been improved, so there should no longer be artifacts round the edges of such images. (Thanks to Erik Temple for pointing this one out.)[/*:m]
[*]Data being written to files is now flushed whenever input is requested from the user. This allows, for example, transcript files to update as a game is being played, and not only when the interpreter closes the file. (Thanks to Peter Pears for pointing this one out.)[/*:m][/list:u]

There's also a new release of the underlying Glk library, Windows Glk, which is here:
[url]http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXprogrammingXglkXimplementations.html[/url]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1338&start=0#p8073
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: looking for an editor of html
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-08-22 13:55:38

I was going to suggest [url=http://gimcrackd.com/etc/src/]Twine[/url], but I believe it uses Javascript on a single webpage, rather than links to multiple pages.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1336&start=0#p8074
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Git 1.2.7 released
User: nitfol / DateTime: 2010-08-22 17:01:36

[quote="DavidK"][list]
[*]Does it work in 32-bit mode? From your original message I'm not clear if you've tried it.[/*:m][/list:u][/quote]

It works fine in 32-bit mode.

[quote="DavidK"][list]
[*]Did you use the USE_DIRECT_THREADING option in the makefile? This is a bad idea except with GCC 2.95, I think.[/*:m][/list:u][/quote]

That doesn't seem to make a difference for this problem.

[quote="DavidK"][list]
[*]Are you compiling to x86_64 or 64-bit PPC? In the latter case you need the USE_BIG_ENDIAN_UNALIGNED option in the makefile, I believe.[/*:m][/list:u][/quote]

x86_64.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1340&start=0#p8075
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Glulx Inform 7: How to restart line input after canceling
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-08-22 17:29:34

I'm trying to figure out a good way to allow real-time events to interrupt command line input. For example, you have a bomb wired to go off in 30 seconds--every second, the status line is updated to show the time remaining. If the player can't stop the bomb in time, it goes off. When it does, we want the text announcing the bomb to print a blank line at the command prompt to show that the command was interrupted, then (if the player survives) request new input:

[quote]>

The bomb explodes! Lucky you weren't in the room. So what do you do now?

>HIDE[/quote]

It's that last part that's the rub. It's illegal in Glulx to print text to a window while input is being accepted, so you need to cancel the line event at the first prompt in order to call the bomb's output routine. And that's easy enough, but once canceled, how do we [b]restart[/b] line input nicely? The timed event has intervened and we are now running a new rulebook (in the I6-level HandleGlkEvent routine), but presumably when this rulebook ends, we will be back in whatever routine we were in while the game was awaiting input, but with no input. The result is that the game freezes: with no input, the player is unable to do anything. (Note that the game doesn't crash--there's just no way to enter input.)

Does anyone know how to get the parser to re-request input? Would it be necessary to hack the parser/keyboard routines with checks for a flag, like [url=http://ifarchive.plover.net/if-archive/infocom/compilers/inform6/library/contributions/inform-realtime-hack-610.zip]these guys[/url] did a decade ago? (In other words, pepper the keyboard routines with checks for a flag set by the real-time event; if ever the flag is true, immediately return to restart the process? I'd like to do this without hacking the parser, but if it's necessary I guess it's necessary! 

Here's some code, in case it helps:

[code]Include Glulx Entry Points by Emily Short.

Test is a room.

To decide whether the event is text-producing:
     decide on produces-text.

Produces-text is a truth state variable.

The button is a device in Test.
	
Instead of pushing the button:
	say "Click. Is that a clock ticking?";
	start a 2000 millisecond timer.

A glulx timed activity rule:
	if the reading a command activity is going on:
		cancel line input in the main window;
		cancel character input in the main window;
		say "[line break][line break]";
		say "Boom! There's an explosion somewhere else in the complex.";
		stop the timer;
		[Do something to get a new prompt;]
	now produces-text is false;
	
To start a/-- (T - a number) millisecond/ms timer:
	(- if (glk_gestalt(gestalt_Timer, 0)) glk_request_timer_events({T});  -)

To stop the/-- timer:
	(- if (glk_gestalt(gestalt_Timer, 0)) glk_request_timer_events(0); -)[/code]

Any ideas welcome!

Thanks,
Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1328&start=0#p8076
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Needing help in coding a dream (and some other minor stu
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2010-08-22 19:18:10

[quote]Now I need to get the sleeping pills working[/quote]

I started to code this, but then I had to do something else. Here are some notes:

State, chapter 4.6:
A player can be either asleep or awake. A player is usually awake.

Scene, chapter 10:
The Dream is a scene. The Dream begins when the player is asleep. The Dream ends when the player has been asleep for ten turns.

Stuff to do:
Check for both conditions and if they're true, the player is asleep.
Convert the player to awake again on the 10th turn of the dream.
Create the series of rooms belonging to the dream and just move the player to them and back out of them as the dream begins and ends.

It's a start. Sorry I've gotta go...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1340&start=0#p8077
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx Inform 7: How to restart line input after cancelin
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-08-22 20:00:02

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glk/glk-spec-070_4.html#s.2">http://eblong.com/zarf/glk/glk-spec-070_4.html#s.2</a>

You'll need to save the buffer and then pass it back again, setting initlen. This will almost certainly involve changes to the Parser, but probably not very big ones.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1332&start=10#p8078
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What Rulebook?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-23 00:29:24

[quote="Juhana"]Here's a quick overview of action rules:[/quote]
That was a great explanation. It's been a while since I read about rules in the manual, but if something like that is not in there already, it should be.

So the reason I'm getting the behavior I saw is not because of anything intrinsically special about Check rules, it's just that the "block action" check rules are stopping the action. If such a rule exists that stops the action in every case, then it is impossible for a carry out rule to ever run for such an action. Hence the desire for an "ignore" line.

It may be reasonable to do all overriding of "blocked" actions with a Before or Instead rule, but there's something unsatisfying about that. The case where I found this to be a problem was when an NPC is performing the action - because stopping the action for any reason produces an "unsuccessful attempt." But I can imagine cases where normally blocked actions might become a more important part of a particular game. In such a case, you might want to write carry out and report rules. Maybe this would be a good time to unlist those block rules, but it would be nice to have some way to fall through to the block rule if something more specific fails to produce a successful attempt. Since every rule runs until something stops the action, this is currently impossible without "ignore".

Perhaps there is some elegant way to say "proceed directly to the Carry Out rules now..." It could be limited to Check rules if that would make things safer.

Looking at this from the other direction, perhaps "block" rules could have some sort of "if no other check rule applies, stop the action with library message X..." clause.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1336&start=0#p8079
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Git 1.2.7 released
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-08-23 01:44:13

I can't see anything that would obviously be 32/64- bit sensitive in that area, so ummm, I don't know. Sorry. If you get anywhere looking into this let me know.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1341&start=0#p8080
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Bug in: Understand "! [text]" as a mistake ("Noted.")?
User: Jhaierr / DateTime: 2010-08-23 02:12:30

The documentation (6E72, 16.20) recommends using this phrase:
[code]Understand "! [text]" as a mistake ("Noted.").[/code]
to incorporate the common beta-testing 'note' command to use in transcripts. But it appears that it doesn't work. I get this Problem message:
[quote]You wrote 'Understand "! [text]" as a mistake ("Noted.")'  : but 'understand' text cannot contain literal punctuation, or more specifically cannot contain any of these: . , ! ? : ; since they are already used in various ways by the parser, and would not correctly match here.[/quote]
Is this a bug in 6E72 or an error in documentation? If this is just an error in the documentation, how does one create the beta-testing command? [emote]:)[/emote]

(I've also tried using a '[' as the command, but it doesn't understand [bracket] in this context.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1271&start=0#p8081
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: New German IF Magazine
User: ifwizz / DateTime: 2010-08-23 02:47:36

The first issue has been released now. You may download the PDF file (8 MB) which is in German.

For translation purposes (translate.google is a quite good tool) all articles are available online:
<a class="postlink" href="http://ifwizz.de/1">http://ifwizz.de/1</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1328&start=10#p8082
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Needing help in coding a dream (and some other minor stu
User: Roadcrosser / DateTime: 2010-08-23 03:25:53

Thanks. Gonna start when I find out how to do a prologue and also make a raffle item (only obtainable when the player wins the raffle).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1341&start=0#p8083
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Bug in: Understand "! [text]" as a mistake ("Noted.")?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-08-23 03:50:52

It looks like a mistake in the documentation. "* [text]" seems to work, and the asterisk is more commonly used as a comment marker in transcripts anyway. Example 403 Alpha shows a way to use regular expressions to allow other punctuation.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1271&start=0#p8084
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: New German IF Magazine
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2010-08-23 09:09:11

[quote="ifwizz"]The first issue has been released now. You may download the PDF file (8 MB) which is in German.

For translation purposes (translate.google is a quite good tool) all articles are available online:
<a class="postlink" href="http://ifwizz.de/1">http://ifwizz.de/1</a>[/quote]

Awesome! Anyone out there want to do a translation into English and share? (I assume this would be OK with the ifwizz team?) Google Translate is OK for getting a general idea and for translating single words, but it's not all that good at doing a real comprehensible translation.

-Kevin

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=0#p8085
Forum: Competitions / Subject: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2010-08-23 09:43:28

This competition has recently ended.  Its results are posted on IFWiki and the ADRIFT Forum for any interested.  The competition consisted of 7 games (1 of which was disqualified) and received 5 votes.  So, the [url=http://www.adrift.org.uk/cgi/f/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST&f=1&t=7487&st=0#entry86567]question floating around the ADRIFT Forum at the moment[/url] is... in a competition with 7 games that allowed authors to vote, why didn't we only see 5 votes?

Information on the competition was available on IFWiki, the #ADRIFT bulletin board on ifMUD, and IFDB.  Many 'DRIFTers were also personally encouraged to vote, but obviously even few of them participated.  We'd like to encourage more participation from our own members in ADRIFT Competitions as well as the wider community.  Is there a way to do that?  What do you think it requires?  Or, on a more personal level, when you see a competition, what brings you out to vote in it?  How do you make that decision?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1340&start=0#p8086
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx Inform 7: How to restart line input after cancelin
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-08-23 11:51:15

[quote="Dannii"]http://eblong.com/zarf/glk/glk-spec-070_4.html#s.2

You'll need to save the buffer and then pass it back again, setting initlen. This will almost certainly involve changes to the Parser, but probably not very big ones.[/quote]

Thanks; this reminded me that I'd actually gotten part of the way there a few months ago. Input "freezes" because we are trapped in the following loop  in VM_ReadKeyboard():

[code][snip]
glk_request_line_event(gg_mainwin, a_buffer+WORDSIZE, INPUT_BUFFER_LEN-WORDSIZE, 0);

    while (~~done) {
        glk_select(gg_event);
        switch (gg_event-->0) {
          5: ! evtype_Arrange
            DrawStatusLine();
          3: ! evtype_LineInput
            if (gg_event-->1 == gg_mainwin) {
                a_buffer-->0 = gg_event-->2;
                done = true;
            }
        }
[snip][/code]

So enabling input again should really be as simple as re-requesting line input, using initlen as Dannii suggested. This seems to work perfectly in Zoom:

[code]To re-request line event in main window:
(-  glk_request_line_event(gg_mainwin, buffer + WORDSIZE, INPUT_BUFFER_LEN - WORDSIZE, buffer->1); -)[/code]

However, it doesn't work in anything else. To get other interpreters to work (I'm testing with Gargoyle and Quixe), you have to change the address in one of two ways, either adding another WORDSIZE, or removing the WORDSIZE addition entirely:

[code]glk_request_line_event(gg_mainwin, buffer + (WORDSIZE * 2), INPUT_BUFFER_LEN - WORDSIZE, buffer->1);
glk_request_line_event(gg_mainwin, buffer, INPUT_BUFFER_LEN - WORDSIZE, buffer->1);[/code]

Unfortunately, neither of *these* works in Zoom. Am I making a fundamental mistake here, or is there a bug in Zoom (or possibly in the other terps)? Doe's [url=http://web.archive.org/web/20070606232237/members.aol.com/doepage/summary.txt]infglk summary[/url] says that "Pointers (addresses) need to be incremented by WORDSIZE on successive calls to the same function." I'm not sure whether this counts as second call to the same function (since the first request was canceled), but possibly this is where the problem lies?

The other difficulty I'm having is that I want to print the buffered input to the new command line for the player's benefit, e.g.:

[quote][b]Test[/b]
You can see a button here.

>press button
Click. Is that a clock ticking?

>[color=#0000FF]loo[/color] [player managed to type three letters of the command before the real-time event intervened]
Boom! There's an explosion somewhere else in the complex.

>[color=#0000FF]loo[/color]k [game repeats the three letters from the previous prompt, the player types the final letter and hits return] 
[b]Test[/b]
You can see a button here.[/quote]

Zoom does this itself, but while the other terps keep the "loo" in the buffer so that the player needs only to type "k" at the new prompt to complete the command, it looks like this:

[quote]>loo
Boom! There's an explosion somewhere else in the complex.

>k
[b]Test[/b]
You can see a button here.[/quote]

Clearly, that's less than ideal. The [url=http://eblong.com/zarf/glk/glk-spec-070_4.html#s.2]spec[/url] implies that the library ought to reprint the "loo" itself. At least, that's the only way I can make sense of the parenthetical's statement that the player can delete the pre-entered input from initlen: 

[quote]If initlen is nonzero, then the first initlen bytes of buf will be entered as pre-existing input -- just as if the player had typed them himself. [The player can continue composing after this pre-entered input, or delete it or edit as usual.][/quote]

But again, only Zoom does this. For the other interpreters, it looks like I'll need to print the contents of the buffer myself. How can I do that? I've tried iterating through the buffer array and print (char) entries, but I've gotten no where with that. I can't even get the number of characters in the buffer, as this code never returns anything but zero:

[code]To decide what number is the buffer length:
	(- buffer->1; -)[/code]

Can anyone give any insight into any of these issues?

Thanks!
Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=20#p8087
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2010-08-23 11:53:26

[quote]I've just implemented a way to handle that type of command in the game I'm starting to work on, using a newbie-friendly instructional message.[/quote]
What's the message?  (Is it a secret?)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1271&start=0#p8088
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: New German IF Magazine
User: ifwizz / DateTime: 2010-08-23 12:04:31

Yes, of course, that would be great. We could add the english version to the ifwizz website (if this would be OK for the translator) I guess the two interviews, the editorial and the review jashpur are most interesting articles for a translation.

Ingo

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1340&start=0#p8089
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx Inform 7: How to restart line input after cancelin
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-08-23 12:05:16

Sorry for the quick follow-up. It only seems courteous to post some example code to contextualize all the specifics in the previous post. Here it is:

[code]Include Glulx Entry Points by Emily Short.

Test is a room.

The button is a device in Test.
	
Instead of pushing the button:
	say "Click. Is that a clock ticking?";
	start a 2000 millisecond timer.

A glulx timed activity rule:
	if the reading a command activity is going on:
		cancel line input in the main-window;
		say "[line break]";
		say "Boom! There's an explosion somewhere else in the complex.";
		stop the timer;
		say "[line break]";
		say "[command prompt][run paragraph on]";
		[Print output for ]
		re-request line event in main window.
		

[Zoom only:]
To re-request line event in main window:
(-  glk_request_line_event(gg_mainwin, buffer + WORDSIZE, INPUT_BUFFER_LEN - WORDSIZE, buffer->1); -)

[Other terps only:]
To re-request line event in main window:
(-  glk_request_line_event(gg_mainwin, buffer, INPUT_BUFFER_LEN - WORDSIZE, buffer->1); -)
		

To cancel line input in the/-- main-window:
	(- glk_cancel_line_event(gg_mainwin, GLK_NULL); -)
	
To start a/-- (T - a number) millisecond/ms timer:
	(- if (glk_gestalt(gestalt_Timer, 0)) glk_request_timer_events({T});  -)

To stop the/-- timer:
	(- if (glk_gestalt(gestalt_Timer, 0)) glk_request_timer_events(0); -)[/code]

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1335&start=0#p8090
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Replacing Library Messages
User: jfm.lisaso / DateTime: 2010-08-23 12:14:22

I would recommend you to use the [i]LibraryMessages[/i] object instead of [i]LanguageLM[/i] routine as is explained in DM4: [url]http://www.inform-fiction.org/manual/html/s25.html[/url]

To use the [i]LanguageLM[/i] routine in your own code, you should do a simple hack in [b]english.h[/b] first. The trick consists on omit the entire original routine when compile; for example, placing it between [i]#Ifdef WITHOUT_MESSAGES; / #Endif;[/i] statements (as does the spanish library [url=http://www.caad.es/informate/infsp/infsp6_index.htm]INFSP[/url]). Then, in your code, you must declare a WITHOUT_MESSAGES constant and write your own [i]LanguageLM[/i] routine after including [b]Parser.h[/b] and before including [b]Verblib.h[/b]. And that should work!

PS: Sorry for my english if it's not very good.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1169&start=30#p8091
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inventory Limits
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-08-23 12:25:55

[quote="capmikee"]How would you compare holdall puzzles to light source puzzles?[/quote]

Actually that question, while it may have been rhetorical, got me thinking.

The light source puzzle, at least in Zork, was twofold:
1) It stopped players from wandering in the dark and possibly bypassing puzzles or getting lost permanently (especially with the trapdoor being barred)
2) It imposed a timelimit on the game (number of turns until lantern popped out).

They did the same as #2 with the hunger puzzle in Sorcerer/Enchanter.

It seems like what these puzzles SHOULD be used as, whether they're hunger, inventory, etc, is as a method of pacing the story.

The reason we stop them from carrying around everything is to slow them down- by forcing them to move through familiar areas. This might have the benefit of making the rooms more "memorable." For example, I can now go thruogh Zork without a map, partially because you had to move through these rooms so often on the trek back to the trophy case. Likewise, I'm overly familiar with the carosel room in Zork 2, but not as much with the further away rooms, because that was a good "central" location to deposit goods. That made the need of the map a bit lesser as a consequence.

A light puzzle would be one of the tools used to keep people out of a given area until later in the game, or to put in a sense of "danger". If your light could go out at any time, you'd better be very careful about what you do down there. However, if you have a permanent Frotz spell, then light is mostly irrelevant. In many ways, this is like a "need a key to get into a door" type thing, though there were nice light puzzles- (Such as the gas room in Zork, forcing you to go back to your lantern- hope it still works!, or using the grue repellent instead of light). 

Secondary to these are actual inventory based PUZZLES, like the long slide in Sorcerer/Mainframe Zork or the Drafty Room in Zork I, where the puzzle was getting items into places when you COULDN'T carry them. Those I think were much better than arbitrary limits. 

I think the main issue here is seperating the current IF game from the typical D&D Dungeon Crawl for the main purpose of gathering treasure items. In the latter case, encumbrance was much more of an issue to be overcome, where in the former, perhaps it shouldn't be relevant.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1343&start=0#p8092
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Edges of the World
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-08-23 12:26:57

I've got a couple WIP that take place outdoors, and I've been thinking about how to delineate the edges of the world - the points at which the player can go no farther.

As a player or author, how do you like this to be handled?  

I can think of a few ways:
1) Just not implement exits in directions you care about, and let the default handle errors, even if it makes sense the player would be able to follow a highway farther north.  Easy, but potentially frustrating for the player.
2) Create reasons a player doesn't want to go that way.  Can be nonsensical, in addition to dictating motivations.
3) Create physical blocks to head the player off: rivers, canyons, roadblocks, etc.  Not bad assuming the responses make it clear that player shouldn't direct energy toward the blocks.
4) "Fake" movement, so it appears the player is wandering farther into the woods or down the road, when in fact they're not.

I tend to hate 1 and 4, and find 2 and 3 threadbare but acceptable.  Is there a better option anyone's encountered, or a game that just handles this with total grace?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1163&start=10#p8093
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Thoughts on Extra Windows
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-08-23 12:34:11

There is a difference too between the story IF and the puzzle IF.

In a story IF, there may not be need for extra windows. Photopia sure wouldn't have benefited from it. However, it would have been nice in Enchanter to see your spells and spells memorized up at all times. Likewise the Beyond Zork minimap is great (even if not a seperate window). Lock & Key would have been a huge Pain in the Butt if not for the minimap to the side. 

Overall the seperate window is basically a more advanced Status Line, it need not be a seperate window as much as a break in the current one. And it need not break storytelling.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1343&start=0#p8094
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Edges of the World
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-08-23 12:42:04

I-0 did this nicely by reminding the player of the dangers of wandering aimlessly in the middle of the desert:

>E
The circling vultures overhead give you second thoughts.

Enchanter created the illusion of walking away from the castle by making the path neverending in one direction, which was cute but annoying when you realized it and had to walk back.

Spellbreaker did the infinate directions with the sky and middle of the ocean, where you effectively just get lost. 

Sorcerer made every other direction deadly. Probably not the way to go with it. 

You might change the error message somewhat.

[code]
Large Plain
You are in a large plain. To the south there appears to be some kind of city. To the north is the wreckage of your plane.
>E
There doesn't seem to be anything worth exploring to the east.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1343&start=0#p8095
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Edges of the World
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2010-08-23 12:43:52

I don't have any useful alternate suggestions, but I wanted to say that, as a player, I find 2 and 3 just fine, and I think a combination of them is probably the way to go (unless you hit upon some novel way to deal with it).

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1167&start=20#p8096
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Floating-point math in Glulx
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-23 13:13:21

I just noticed that one @ceil test fails on Mac OSX 10.5.8 (Intel):

ceil -0.9=0.00000 or $0 (should be -0.00000 or $80000000 FAIL)

Git has the same bug (presumably from the same implementation). I'll get a fix out soonish.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1340&start=0#p8097
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx Inform 7: How to restart line input after cancelin
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-23 13:19:31

Whoo. This is a nest of different issues, most of which I can't diagnose off the top of my head. I will try to investigate tonight.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1340&start=0#p8098
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx Inform 7: How to restart line input after cancelin
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-08-23 13:24:20

Zarf, TIA. I neglected to mention that the issue seems to be interpreter independent--that is, Zoom behaves the same whether we are using glulxe or git under the hood, and ditto for Gargoyle. So the differences are likely to be at the glk level.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1343&start=0#p8099
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Edges of the World
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-23 13:56:53

I've only played The Edifice for a couple of turns, but I was kind of fond of this response:

[quote]
>s
You wander back into the forest.

    *** You have resumed your simple existence. ***

You had visited no levels of the Edifice and solved none of them.  You were extremely content at the end of the game.[/quote]

In effect, going the wrong way ends in losing the game, but instead of describing it as death, it's as mundane as it would be if you refused a challenge in real life. On the other hand, maybe it discouraged me from playing more.

I tried something like this in a game I was working on years ago. It was something like:

[quote]
The road to the west leads into town.

> w

You head into town for a while, then you come home again.
[/quote]

At the time I believe I thought this was reasonable, but now I think it messes with the idea of time passing in the game too much.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1335&start=0#p8100
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Replacing Library Messages
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-08-23 14:07:18

[quote="jfm.lisaso"]I would recommend you to use the [i]LibraryMessages[/i] object instead of [i]LanguageLM[/i] routine as is explained in DM4: [url]http://www.inform-fiction.org/manual/html/s25.html[/url].[/quote]
Aha! Thank you! I knew there was a way to do it, I just didn't remember what it was.

--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1167&start=20#p8101
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Floating-point math in Glulx
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-08-23 14:35:48

[quote="DavidK"]Unfortunately the pow() function in the GCC build I'm using doesn't get a few special cases right, resulting in me having to do preprocessor macro nastiness to call my own pow() function first. Looking around online, I can see that this won't be uncommon on other platforms. Is there a case for a glulx_pow() function in osdepend.c?[/quote]

For some reason, trying to call out from op_pow to glulx_powf(valf1, valf2) resulted in those values getting scrambled. Could be a quirk of GCC 4.5, but I could not get the correct values to come through.

I ended up having to add your conditions directly to the op_pow code:

[code]
      case op_pow:
        valf1 = decode_float(inst[0].value);
        valf2 = decode_float(inst[1].value);
        if (valf1 == 1.0f)
            value = encode_float(1.0f);
        else if ((valf2 == 0.0f) || (valf2 == -0.0f))
            value = encode_float(1.0f);
        else if ((valf1 == -1.0f) && isinf(valf2))
            value = encode_float(1.0f);
        else
            value = encode_float(powf(valf1, valf2));
        store_operand(inst[2].desttype, inst[2].value, value);
        break;
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1334&start=0#p8102
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple Chat for an entire scene
User: StJohnLimbo / DateTime: 2010-08-23 15:08:41

Hi,

regarding the error: Messages like the one you got can indicate that there is a name conflict between the Standard Rules and your code or an extension's code. The latter is the case here, since the Standard Rules and Simple Chat use the term "active" for different things.

I don't know whether there's a more elegant solution, but you can fix the problem by hacking the extension:

1. Extensions are simple text files, so you can open the file "Simple Chat.i7x" in a text editor.

2. Search the extension's source code for "active" and replace both occurrences with another name, for example "chat-active". Save the modified extension.

3. Install the modified extension from within the Inform IDE (overwriting the installed version).

-- Michael

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1340&start=0#p8103
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx Inform 7: How to restart line input after cancelin
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-23 15:09:23

I know that Zoom has at least one Glk-level incompatibility (concerning what's echoed after interrupted line input). 

The rest is probably various I6 library and veneer code, disagreeing about array formats. Which *should* be consistent between implementations, but maybe the Zoom problem is amplifying it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1328&start=10#p8104
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Needing help in coding a dream (and some other minor stu
User: StJohnLimbo / DateTime: 2010-08-23 15:15:35

Hi,

take a look at example 367 "Bikini Atoll" (Chapter 17.35 in the documentation) to see how to do such a prologue.  

-- Michael

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1340&start=0#p8105
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx Inform 7: How to restart line input after cancelin
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-23 15:21:12

...I'm not ruling out a Quixe bug, by the way.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1340&start=0#p8106
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx Inform 7: How to restart line input after cancelin
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-08-23 15:32:18

Gargoyle's behavior is the same as Quixe's (at least at the level of output), so it doesn't *look* like a Quixe problem. I'll fire up Windows tonight and try WinGlulxe and WinGit to see whether they follow the same pattern; I'm guessing they will.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1167&start=20#p8107
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Floating-point math in Glulx
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-08-23 16:29:09

[quote="bcressey"]For some reason, trying to call out from op_pow to glulx_powf(valf1, valf2) resulted in those values getting scrambled. Could be a quirk of GCC 4.5, but I could not get the correct values to come through.[/quote]Hmmm, I can't see anything wrong in the glulx_powf() logic [emote]:-([/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1328&start=10#p8108
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Needing help in coding a dream (and some other minor stu
User: ShaeSays / DateTime: 2010-08-23 17:34:31

For the raffle, are you trying to do randomness?

[quote]

The lab is a room. The prize is a thing in the lab.

A thing can be either unobtainable or obtainable. A thing is usually obtainable. The prize is unobtainable.

The Raffle is a scene. The Raffle begins when the player is in the lab for the second turn.

When the Raffle begins:
  let the winning ticket be a random number between 1 and 3; [small # for ease of testing]
  say "The Raffler draws ticket number [winning ticket]";
  if winning ticket is 2, now the prize is obtainable.

Instead of taking something that is unobtainable:
  say "That's not yours to take."

test me with "take prize / wait / take prize".

[/quote]

Of course for realism, you could make the raffler a person, assign a number to the player's ticket and a number to the raffler's ticket, and then check if they match, and so forth -- though you'd probably want to make the span small to make winning practical.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1336&start=0#p8109
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Git 1.2.7 released
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-08-23 17:42:23

[quote="DavidK"]I can't see anything that would obviously be 32/64- bit sensitive in that area, so ummm, I don't know. Sorry. If you get anywhere looking into this let me know.[/quote]

Here's a fix for the undo issue on x64.

In saveundo.c, change line 43:
[code]
    git_uint32 stackSize = sizeof(git_sint32*) * (sp - base);
[/code]

To:
[code]
    git_uint32 stackSize = sizeof(git_sint32) * (sp - base);
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1167&start=20#p8110
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Floating-point math in Glulx
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-08-23 19:03:29

[quote="DavidK"]Hmmm, I can't see anything wrong in the glulx_powf() logic [emote]:-([/emote][/quote]

The same glulx_powf() code works fine if it's defined in exec.c instead of osdepend.c.

I've tried to get around this a number of ways and I've basically given up. GCC 4.5 / MinGW seems to have trouble passing float values correctly between functions in different source files. No idea why this should be so, but there you go.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1336&start=0#p8111
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Git 1.2.7 released
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-23 19:09:51

Oh, good catch, Ben. Thanks.

I just made the following change to the Glulxe code for the @ceil opcode. Git should pick up the equivalent, since the same problem arises. (Only on OSX 10.5.8 Intel, so far.)

[code]
       case op_ceil:
         valf = decode_float(inst[0].value);
         value = encode_float(ceilf(valf));
+        if (value == 0x0 || value == 0x80000000) {
+          /* When the result is zero, the sign may have been lost in the
+             shuffle. (This is a bug in some C libraries.) We'll set the
+             sign by hand, based on the original argument. */
+          value = inst[0].value & 0x80000000;
+        }
         store_operand(inst[1].desttype, inst[1].value, value);
         break;
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1340&start=0#p8112
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx Inform 7: How to restart line input after cancelin
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-08-23 20:09:43

[quote="ektemple"]Gargoyle's behavior is the same as Quixe's (at least at the level of output), so it doesn't *look* like a Quixe problem. I'll fire up Windows tonight and try WinGlulxe and WinGit to see whether they follow the same pattern; I'm guessing they will.[/quote]

WinGlulxe and WinGit both act as Quixe and Gargoyle do, with either of these working:

glk_request_line_event(gg_mainwin, buffer, INPUT_BUFFER_LEN - WORDSIZE, buffer->1)
glk_request_line_event(gg_mainwin, buffer + (WORDSIZE*2), INPUT_BUFFER_LEN - WORDSIZE, buffer->1)

but this not working:

glk_request_line_event(gg_mainwin, buffer + WORDSIZE, INPUT_BUFFER_LEN - WORDSIZE, buffer->1)

I'm still not sure which form of addressing is correct according to spec, but it seems clear that Zoom is the odd man out when we look at de facto rather than de juris "correctness".

Hope this helps with the diagnosis...

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1167&start=20#p8113
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Floating-point math in Glulx
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-23 21:54:04

I've checked in David's glulx_powf change (to the master branch). 

I rearranged it a little bit -- the VM now always calls glulx_powf(), and osdepend.c compiles that function differently if the FLOAT_COMPILE_SAFER_POWF symbol is defined. (This is closer to the way glulx_random() works. It shouldn't act any differently from what David had.)

I don't understand the Windows build problem. But then, I wouldn't. 

My only idea is this: the header is compiling the line "typedef float gfloat32;" without including math.h. Maybe float is defined to a different type when you've got math.h included? You could test this by throwing an #include math.h line at the top of glulxe.h.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=20#p8114
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-08-23 22:25:12

Smarter Parser's message for this is "Usually, you don't need to worry about the exact positioning of things. You can get more detail about something with the EXAMINE command, or use compass directions like [get direction example] to change your location."

([get direction example] prints a random connection from the player's location.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1340&start=10#p8115
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx Inform 7: How to restart line input after cancelin
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2010-08-23 22:25:22

Erik,

I'm not sure I understand what you want to do, but as luck would have it, i'm currently working on a real time implementation in Gluxl.

Here's a little example
[url]http://www.sendspace.com/file/7tikra[/url]
1. the download link is at the bottom of the page (don't pay attention to the other links)
2. Why can't I upload gblorbs to this forum ? I thought there were known to be virtually virus-free.

Walkthrough:
[spoiler]open box
x device
x button
push button[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1340&start=10#p8116
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx Inform 7: How to restart line input after cancelin
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-23 22:35:04

Got it. Here you go:

[code]
To re-request line event in main window:
	(-  glk_request_line_event(gg_mainwin, buffer + WORDSIZE, INPUT_BUFFER_LEN - WORDSIZE, buffer-->0); -)

To cancel line input in the/-- main-window:
	(- glk_cancel_line_event(gg_mainwin, gg_event); buffer-->0 = gg_event-->2; -)
[/code]

I've tested this in the IDE, Zoom, Quixe, and GlkTerm.

I don't know where you got "buffer->1" from, but it wasn't right. 

The deeper problem was that your cancel routine was throwing away information: specifically, the number of characters in the incomplete input. It's a library convention that that number lives in buffer-->0. So it's the library's responsibility to store that value there; you can see VM_ReadKeyboard() doing it. The cancel-line-input phrase must do it too.

Once that's done, the re-request phrase can pull the value out, and pass it to glk_request_line_event().

That leaves the Zoom problem that I mentioned, but it's merely cosmetic. Zoom doesn't echo the partial input on the (original) command prompt line. Other interpreters do echo it. Zoom is wrong here (sorry!). However, a future Glk revision will allow the *game* to specify whether that echo occurs, and then hopefully we can all get back onto the same page.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1340&start=10#p8117
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx Inform 7: How to restart line input after cancelin
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-08-23 23:34:12

[quote="zarf"]Got it. Here you go:

[code]
To re-request line event in main window:
	(-  glk_request_line_event(gg_mainwin, buffer + WORDSIZE, INPUT_BUFFER_LEN - WORDSIZE, buffer-->0); -)

To cancel line input in the/-- main-window:
	(- glk_cancel_line_event(gg_mainwin, gg_event); buffer-->0 = gg_event-->2; -)
[/code][/quote]

Thanks! This is definitely closer (and teaches me something about what you can do with events in these calls--very flexible!), but unfortunately it isn't right either. We aren't distinguishing between the length of the buffer (defined by the previous input) and the number of characters typed into the interrupted line. Here's the output I get using this code:

[quote]Test
You can see a button here.
 
>press button
Click. Is that a clock ticking?
 
>loo
 
Boom! There's an explosion somewhere else in the complex.
 
>looss button [this should just be "loo"][/quote]


[quote="zarf"]I don't know where you got "buffer->1" from, but it wasn't right. [/quote]

I don't remember where I got it either, but my understanding was that buffer->1 is the number of characters typed in the interrupted input, whereas buffer->0 is the length of the buffer, which in practice is set by the previous *completed* command. It seems that that is wrong, but conceptually that's the problem we're be dealing with--we're still getting the wrong value. I think that the information being stored by the cancel event code is really just 0--you'll note that the game reacts exactly the same if you get the fourth entry from the event array (gg_event-->3) instead of from gg_event-->2. According to the spec, gg_event-->3 in this case returns 0.

I'll keep futzing--and try to figure out where I got the idea that buffer->1 stores the number of characters typed--tomorrow.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1340&start=10#p8118
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx Inform 7: How to restart line input after cancelin
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-23 23:58:43

[quote]We aren't distinguishing between the length of the buffer (defined by the previous input) and the number of characters typed into the interrupted line.[/quote]

Yes I am. One is INPUT_BUFFER_LEN-WORDSIZE, the other is gg_event-->2.

I've pasted my whole program below. The phrase "show the buffer" displays what's really going on inside the system. After the "cancel line input", the length of the interrupted input is pushed into buffer-->0, and then "show the buffer" prints it.

[quote]
Test
You can see a button here.

>press button
Buffer contains 12 chars: p r e s s   b u t t o n 
Click. Is that a clock ticking?

>
Buffer contains 3 chars: l o o 
Boom! There's an explosion somewhere else in the complex.

>loo
[/quote]

[code]
"Test Case" by Andrew Plotkin

Include Glulx Entry Points by Emily Short.

Test is a room.

The button is a device in Test.
   
Instead of pushing the button:
    show the buffer;
    say "Click. Is that a clock ticking?";
    start a 2000 millisecond timer.

A glulx timed activity rule:
    if the reading a command activity is going on:
        cancel line input in the main-window;
        say "[line break]";
        show the buffer;
        say "Boom! There's an explosion somewhere else in the complex.";
        stop the timer;
        say "[line break]";
        say "[command prompt][run paragraph on]";
        re-request line event in main window.

Include (-

[ DebugShowBuffer  ix len ch;
    len = buffer-->0;
    print "Buffer contains ", len, " chars: ";
    for (ix=0 : ix<len : ix++) {
        ch = buffer->(4+ix);
        if (ch < 32)
            print "(", ch, ") ";
        else
            print (char) ch, " ";
    }
    new_line;
];

-).

To show the buffer:
    (- DebugShowBuffer(); -).

To re-request line event in main window:
    (-  glk_request_line_event(gg_mainwin, buffer + WORDSIZE, INPUT_BUFFER_LEN - WORDSIZE, buffer-->0); -)

To cancel line input in the/-- main-window:
    (- glk_cancel_line_event(gg_mainwin, gg_event); buffer-->0 = gg_event-->2; -)

To start a/-- (T - a number) millisecond/ms timer:
    (- if (glk_gestalt(gestalt_Timer, 0)) glk_request_timer_events({T});  -)

To stop the/-- timer:
    (- if (glk_gestalt(gestalt_Timer, 0)) glk_request_timer_events(0); -)

[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1336&start=0#p8119
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Git 1.2.7 released
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-08-24 02:19:54

[quote="bcressey"]Here's a fix for the undo issue on x64.[/quote]Ouch, thanks for that. I'll give it a week or so for any more bugs to show up and then push out a new Git version with this and Andrew's ceil() fix.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=0#p8120
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-08-24 02:42:27

[quote="bowsmand"]Or, on a more personal level, when you see a competition, what brings you out to vote in it?[/quote]When I see a competition, my first instinct is to head in the opposite direction ... When I'm looking for a game to play in the little free time I have, I want to play something that can genuinely claim to be worth the time and effort. I suggest that the best games of the last few years have been ones that people have worked on outside of competitions: Blue Lacuna and Make It Good, for example. We do see some good games in the IFComp, but I don't have the time these days to plough through them all - I prefer to play the best half-dozen or so afterwards. The Introcomp often has interesting entries, but then that's something slightly different, and at least all entries are, by definition, short.

From my perspective as someone outside the Adrift community, it seems to have lots of little competitions that encourage a number of games from beginners that are, to be frank, pretty bad. While encouraging beginners is in itself a laudable goal, I don't particularly want to spend my time playing the results.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1163&start=10#p8121
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Thoughts on Extra Windows
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-08-24 02:42:59

[quote="tggdan3"]In a story IF, there may not be need for extra windows. Photopia sure wouldn't have benefited from it.[/quote]
Mentioning Photopia in this context is an interesting choice (even though the original question was about extra [i]text[/i] windows): The game (the Glulx version) makes relatively heavy use of graphics and colors and the text area is lined with windows that show the game's title colored according to the current scene. You could argue that they add nothing to the text-only version, but I'm sure Adam had [i]some[/i] reason to include them.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1328&start=10#p8122
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Needing help in coding a dream (and some other minor stu
User: Roadcrosser / DateTime: 2010-08-24 04:12:04

Hmm, Raffler is planned to be a person. The number you take will be 696 and the number the raffler takes out is 969. The player just turns it upside down to claim the item. If the player didn't, some other guy gets it and the crowd clears... Getting the robbers to kill you.

I still have to know how to make sand dispensers (to power the raffled device to teleport the player) and a beach (as a puzzle to collect sand). How do I only enable the undo function if the player is holding the prize?

EDIT:

[quote="StJohnLimbo"]Hi,

take a look at example 367 "Bikini Atoll" (Chapter 17.35 in the documentation) to see how to do such a prologue.  

-- Michael[/quote]
Thanks, that works. But how would I go about making some introductary text BEFORE starting at the room?

EDIT2: Tried this:

[code]An inversion is a kind of value. The inversions are right-side-up and upside-down. Inversion is usually right-side-up.
The hourglass has an inversion.

Understand "invert [something touchable]" as turning.
Understand "turn [something touchable] upside-down" as turning.

Instead of turning the hourglass:
	If the inversion of the hourglass is right-side-up:
		Now the inversion of the hourglass is upside-down;
	Otherwise:
		Now the inversion of the hourglass is right-side-up;
	Say "You turn the hourglass over. Now it is [the inversion of the hourglass]."


After turning the hourglass for the first time: say "As you turn the hourglass around, the sand inside it slowly disappears and Everything flashes white before your eyes [banner text]"; move the player to the Cell

Rule for printing the banner text when the hourglass is not upside-down : do nothing. [/code]

I coded in the rooms already, but when I turned the hourglass upside down the banner text did not show up. I tried replacing [code]Rule for printing the banner text when the hourglass is not upside-down : do nothing.[/code]
with [code]Rule for printing the banner text when the hourglass is right-side-up : do nothing.[/code]\

But to no avail... (It didn't work)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1344&start=0#p8123
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Hint system?
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2010-08-24 05:15:52

I have brought this up earlier in another thread, but I guess this is the right place for it, so I'll post it again.

Has anyone ever thought about creating a hint system that allows the author to write hints for his / her games?  Something like the UHS, <a class="postlink" href="http://www.uhs-hints.com/">http://www.uhs-hints.com/</a> but for us ordinary mortals and without the money involved.
It's all about getting our games played, and keeping the player interested in playing our games. Nothing is more frustrating than being stuck in a game without a clue on how to proceed. An otherwise great game will be dropped. Best case scenario: The player will move on to another game, Worst case scenario: The player will lose interest in playing IF altogether.

Often we hear the cries for walk-troughs or hint-sheets and it is my belief that more games would be played and enjoyed if there was some way the player could get help, or a hint that would lead him / her on the right track.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1328&start=10#p8124
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Needing help in coding a dream (and some other minor stu
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-08-24 05:16:08

[quote="Roadcrosser"]Thanks, that works. But how would I go about making some introductary text BEFORE starting at the room?[/quote]
When play begins: ... (chapter 9.1 in the manual)

[quote]I coded in the rooms already, but when I turned the hourglass upside down the banner text did not show up.[/quote]
You have turning the hourglass in an instead rule, which stops the action and the game never gets to the after rule. You could add the after rule inside the instead rule:
[code]Instead of turning the hourglass:
	If the inversion of the hourglass is right-side-up:
		Now the inversion of the hourglass is upside-down;
	Otherwise:
		Now the inversion of the hourglass is right-side-up;
	Say "You turn the hourglass over. Now it is [the inversion of the hourglass].";
	if the cell is unvisited:
		say "As you turn the hourglass around, the sand inside it slowly disappears and Everything flashes white before your eyes [banner text]";
		move the player to the Cell.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1328&start=10#p8125
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Needing help in coding a dream (and some other minor stu
User: Roadcrosser / DateTime: 2010-08-24 05:29:01

Now to have a machine that put sand it the hourglass. When there is sand in the hourglass, it will teleport you. if not, It doesn't do anything. Also you use it multiple times.

And uh, can anyone proof-read this?
[rant]After picking on a group of what looks like gangsters, they start chasing you. You notice a tattoo on one of their forearms as the unmistakeable logo of the Rediar Thieves, known for the recent raiding of Area 51 and their aquiration of a teleportation device. Since you got a headstart when you ran, they simply teleported in front of you. You dodge and run towards a crowd in the alley. Even though the teleporter takes time to recharge, you are no longer safe. It will only be a matter if time until they get you for good.[/rant]

EDIT: Trying to turn the raffle ticket over.

[code]Instead of turning the Raffle Ticket:
	If the inversion of the Raffle Ticket is right-side-up.
		Now the inversion of the Raffle Ticket is upside-down;
		Say "You turn the Raffle Ticket around. It now reads 696.";
	Otherwise:
		Now the inversion of the Raffle Ticket is right-side-up;
	Say "You turn the Raffle Ticket around. It now reads 969.";[/code]

Gives the error 
[quote]You wrote 'say "You turn the Raffle Ticket around. It now reads 696."'  : but I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with, so I am ignoring this sentence altogether.[/quote]
I probably made a dumb mistake there, I can't seem to find it even.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1344&start=0#p8126
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hint system?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-08-24 05:30:37

Many/most IF has built-in hints these days. I6/I7 and probably TADS should make it easy.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1344&start=0#p8127
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hint system?
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2010-08-24 05:44:02

[quote="Dannii"]Many/most IF has built-in hints these days. I6/I7 and probably TADS should make it easy.[/quote]

I know.. and Adrift has too, although not a very good one in V.4.
I didn't know that I6/7 and TADS had built-in...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1340&start=10#p8128
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx Inform 7: How to restart line input after cancelin
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-08-24 06:37:21

Ugh, very sorry about that! When I pasted this new code in, I forgot that my example code was now using the input cancellation phrase that is built into Glulx Entry Points, so the new one (the one that saves the information about the length of the buffer) was not being used.

Fixing that, this code works great for me too.

Thank you so much for the help!

Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1328&start=10#p8129
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Needing help in coding a dream (and some other minor stu
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-08-24 07:37:20

The second line should end in a colon, not in a period.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1328&start=10#p8130
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Needing help in coding a dream (and some other minor stu
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-24 09:55:07

[quote="Roadcrosser"]And uh, can anyone proof-read this?[/quote]
I can fix a couple minor errors:
[spoiler]After picking on a group of what looks like gangsters, they start chasing you. You notice a tattoo on one of their forearms as the [color=#FF0000]unmistakable[/color] logo of the Rediar Thieves, known for the recent raiding of Area 51 and their [color=#FF0000]acquisition[/color] of a teleportation device. Since you got a [color=#FF0000]head start[/color] when you ran, they simply teleported in front of you. You dodge and run towards a crowd in the alley. Even though the teleporter takes time to recharge, you are no longer safe. It will only be a matter if time until they get you for good.[/spoiler]

Another change to consider:

[spoiler]"After picking on..." Grammatically, the subject "picking on" is "they," so if "they" is supposed to refer to the gangsters, you are saying they were picking on themselves. "After you pick on..." might be what you're trying to say, but I'm not sure.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=20#p8131
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-08-24 10:33:27

[quote="bowsmand"][quote]I've just implemented a way to handle that type of command in the game I'm starting to work on, using a newbie-friendly instructional message.[/quote]
What's the message?  (Is it a secret?)[/quote]
No, but I'm using Inform 6, so I doubt anyone would be interested. It needs more refinements; at the moment, it looks like this:
[code]Extend 'go'
	* 'to'/'toward' noun			-> Approach
	* 'over' 'to' noun				-> Approach;
Extend only 'move'
	* 'to'/'toward' noun			-> Approach;
Verb 'approach'
	* noun					-> Approach;

! Note: Approach needs further modification to allow 'go to <distant but visible object>.
[ ApproachSub;
	if (noun in player) {
		print "You're already about as close to ", (the) noun, " as you're
			going to get, since you're ";
		if (noun has worn) print "wearing";
			else print "holding";
		if (noun has pluralname) " them.";
			else " it.";
	}
	else "An understandable impulse, but that command is not necessary.
		Except in special circumstances, everything that you can see in an
		interactive fiction story is essentially in the same location you're
		in. If you can see it, you don't need to do anything special to get closer to
		it -- and in fact you can't get any closer to it (though the command TOUCH <the
		object> may have an effect).^^The
		special circumstances would include situations such as if you're lying in a
		hammock. In that case, you'd be able to see nearby objects, but you would need to
		use the command STAND UP in order to be able to touch them or pick them up.";
];[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=0#p8132
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-08-24 11:08:03

[quote="bowsmand"]Information on the competition was available on IFWiki, the #ADRIFT bulletin board on ifMUD, and IFDB.  Many 'DRIFTers were also personally encouraged to vote, but obviously even few of them participated.  We'd like to encourage more participation from our own members in ADRIFT Competitions as well as the wider community.  Is there a way to do that?  What do you think it requires?  Or, on a more personal level, when you see a competition, what brings you out to vote in it?  How do you make that decision?[/quote]

I have less and less time, so I concentrate on individual games that hit some sweet spot in terms of my own interests (the blurb offers a cool story hook, appealing setting, or interesting gameplay style) or sound like they'll have merits worth knowing about (major works by any author, any work by authors I'm a fan of, experimental pieces with surprising gimmicks). 

A competition is a bigger time commitment with less guarantee of specific value. I do enjoy playing things that a lot of other people are playing and talking about at the same time, because that feeds into the community spirit. But that's hard to capture: the main IF comp consistently offers that. Few of the others do. 

Where it's a case of trying something in order to help the authors/community by providing feedback, I try to concentrate that where it seems most likely that the feedback will be valuable. Introcomp games are sometimes a bit frustrating, but the time commitment is low, and the potential to provide useful feedback for a WIP is an incentive. Lots of other comps fall somewhere in the middle; I tend to like Spring Thing because, typically, people submit items they've put a major effort into.

ADRIFT comps fall at the wrong end of the spectrum for me. In the past, I've generally found them a struggle to play because of interpreter incompatibilities; the games are often of uneven quality with few standouts; and then the authors resent being told, "hey, this wasn't that great, because the limitations of the ADRIFT parser got in the way (again)." 

So I tend to place these games in the same category with un-beta'ed games in the main IF Comp: the authors are trying to do something different from what I'm trying to do with IF. More power to them if they enjoy writing these games, and if I hear rave reviews for a game on IFDB, say, then sure, I may try it. But I don't have a lot of incentive to go through all the entries myself.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1344&start=0#p8133
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hint system?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-08-24 11:35:43

I7 has several extensions.  The more tailored you want it, the harder it gets.  (Shocker.)
A simple UHS-style list is downright easy-ish, with all questions available whenever the player wants to ask.  A system favored these days is one that only reveals questions the player is facing at the given moment, which is more complicated and tends to be much more buggy.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1344&start=0#p8134
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hint system?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-24 12:11:41

[quote]Often we hear the cries for walk-troughs or hint-sheets[/quote]

One possibility is to include a walk-through or hint sheet with the game.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=20#p8135
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-Machine Standard 1.2 (draft)
User: cas / DateTime: 2010-08-24 12:46:05

[quote="Dannii"]I'm not intending to have anything like that in the standard, though it could be a good idea for a separate document. What was the defect?[/quote]
Well, I think multiple attempts at updating the standard would be more of a problem than letting slide a few issues, so I don't figure there's much point, especially since the issue I've run across aren't exactly earth-shattering.

The defect was that output streams 3 and 4 are listed as V5+ in the 1.1 standard (1.0 is self-contradictory on this point), but many Infocom stories that are V3 and V4 made use of stream 3 and/or 4.  This doesn't affect interpreters because they (at least the ones whose source I've looked at) don't bother doing the version check.  The only reason I found out about this defect is because I [b]did[/b] do a version check, and Trinity failed almost immediately.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=0#p8136
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-08-24 12:54:28

I didn't know about it.  I don't hang out at any of the places listed.  

I'm not sure I'd have time to play and vote - I feel obligated to play all or almost all the games on offer before voting, and put actual time/energy into it.  Since after more than two games, it can be hard to remember first impressions and such, that means taking notes, writing out impressions before/during/after, etc.  I didn't even get that done for IntroComp, and that was a few short games.  

I haven't had much contact with ADRIFT, but what I have had has been discouraging.  It absolutely could be poor luck, but I'm less likely to buck the trend without some reason.  If I'm judging an offering, I feel like I should be giving it more time to shine than I would off a randomly downloaded offering off the IFDB.  

I'm not really in the community enough to speak to what might help, but what would encourage me:
- Seeing recommendations on other people's blogs.  If Sarah or Emily or Pissy Little Sausages encourages me to go play a thing, I'll try it out. 
- If I hear comments about a particular game, or the author otherwise seems to be doing things that interest me (ie posts frequently on storytelling techniques or whatnot), I'll be more likely to check out the work.  

The above don't help you much, except to recommend to reviewers and authors to get their blogs (if they have them) posted to planet-if.  An ADRIFT-review blog might make interesting reading.  Of course, this doesn't really help with the comp so much as individual entries.   For the comp - a pithy list of offerings with good tag-lines might help.  So might talking about the comp in spaces I hang out in.  (This sounds sort of snide, but I don't mean it that way - I just am not really part of the groups you advertised to.)  Make postings here, or on the rec.arts group.  

Playing IF can be a significant time-sink, especially for a comp.  Why is this particular group of games worth it?  That could be gameplay, social aspects, encouraging new writers, really good writing, unusual genres - any number of things.  If the particular comp doesn't seem to have any of that, then maybe it needs to be tweaked or redesigned.  The social part of IF-comp is pretty inspiring - I played all sorts of things I wouldn't normally because I was anticipating reviews from others.  And in some cases, I was very grateful.  (I never would have chosen Earl Grey out of a line-up of games - the concept/tag/title didn't appeal to me at all.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1343&start=0#p8137
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Edges of the World
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-08-24 13:08:51

The alternate endings are interesting.  I kind of like that, especially if there's enough foreshadowing that the player isn't just blindsided.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1167&start=20#p8138
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Floating-point math in Glulx
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-08-24 13:08:52

[quote="zarf"]My only idea is this: the header is compiling the line "typedef float gfloat32;" without including math.h. Maybe float is defined to a different type when you've got math.h included? You could test this by throwing an #include math.h line at the top of glulxe.h.[/quote]

Well, it worked with the latest Glulxe code from the Git repository. It was the extern definition of glulx_powf() in glulxe.h that did the trick. [emote]:oops:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1345&start=0#p8139
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: User Friendly Ask/Tell Topic Definition
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2010-08-24 13:33:23

I am now working on my first 'interactive' conversation in my first IF game. At this point Alice is there with Dodo and others and (mainly as a learning experience) I want the player to be able to tell Dodo about getting dry. This will simply be a trigger that begins scripted conversations about drying, but the player gets to initiate different points of the conversation. My question is with topic definitions:

[code]gettingDryTopic : Topic 'getting dry';[/code]

Is there a way to use ONE Topic object, but allow the player to use different phrases to 'trigger' that topic? So in the case above if the player types "tell dodo about getting dry" it works, but if they type "tell dodo about drying off" it doesn't. Is there a way to extend this Topic object, or do I have to define multiple Topics then somehow use them all in my ask/tell object? Here is my full ask/tell code:

[code]
gettingDryTopic : Topic 'getting dry';

dodo : Person 'dodo bird/dodo' 'dodo bird' @seaOfTears
"The dodo bird is entertaining and a bit confused. He thinks he knows quite a lot, but he doesn't."
    isHim = true
    properName = 'Dodo Bird'
    globalParamName = 'dodo'
;
+ dodoDefault : ActorState
    isInitState = true
    specialDesc = "The dodo bird is staring at you, waiting for you to supply an answer."
;
+ AskTellTopic @gettingDryTopic
"
    You think about it a moment.
"
;
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=20#p8140
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-24 13:50:48

[quote="Jim Aikin"][code]
	else "An understandable impulse, but that command is not necessary.
		Except in special circumstances, everything that you can see in an
		interactive fiction story is essentially in the same location you're
		in. If you can see it, you don't need to do anything special to get closer to
		it -- and in fact you can't get any closer to it (though the command TOUCH <the
		object> may have an effect).^^The
		special circumstances would include situations such as if you're lying in a
		hammock. In that case, you'd be able to see nearby objects, but you would need to
		use the command STAND UP in order to be able to touch them or pick them up.";
[/code][/quote]
That's nice, but how come you mention the not-very-common "touch" command without explaining "examine?" If I remember my IF beginnings correctly, that's what I was really trying to do when I attempted to get closer to an object in the room.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=20#p8141
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-Machine Standard 1.2 (draft)
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-08-24 13:57:16

I would love to see an updated, unified standard instead of separate documents that correct each other.

Another defect in 1.0 that comes to mind: section 6.4.1 says V4 has a maximum of 3 routine arguments, but V4 defines @call_vs2 which allows 7 arguments.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1346&start=0#p8142
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Summary of Z-Machine Version Differences
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-08-24 14:02:25

I've put together a (hopefully) comprehensive survey of the differences between Z-machine versions, with the aim of making it easy to add additional version support to version-limited terps like mine:

[url=http://hansprestige.com/inform/zmachine_versions.html]HTML[/url]
[url=http://hansprestige.com/inform/zmachine_versions.pdf]PDF[/url]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1167&start=30#p8143
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Floating-point math in Glulx
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-24 14:36:01

David's version had that extern definition too. I *thought* the #ifdefs around it were correct.

But, if mine version is working correctly, that's good enough. :)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1340&start=10#p8144
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx Inform 7: How to restart line input after cancelin
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-08-24 15:06:19

[quote="zarf"]
I don't know where you got "buffer->1" from, but it wasn't right.[/quote]

I figured out where I got this: in the section on buffers in the DM4 (section 2.5):

[quote]You must already have set text_array->0 to the maximum number of characters you will allow to be read. (If this is N, then the array must be defined with at least N + 3 entries, the last of which guards against overruns.) The number of characters actually read, not counting the carriage return, will be placed into text_array->1 and the characters themselves into entries from text_array->2 onwards. [/quote]

I assumed that this must be the structure of all buffers, but I'm guessing now that it's the structure of text_array only...

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=0#p8145
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-08-24 15:14:45

[quote="bowsmand"]Information on the competition was available on IFWiki, the #ADRIFT bulletin board on ifMUD, and IFDB.  Many 'DRIFTers were also personally encouraged to vote, but obviously even few of them participated.  We'd like to encourage more participation from our own members in ADRIFT Competitions as well as the wider community.  Is there a way to do that?  What do you think it requires?  Or, on a more personal level, when you see a competition, what brings you out to vote in it?  How do you make that decision?[/quote]

I missed the competition since I don't check those sites. If it's not on the IF blogs, raif, or intfiction, I am not likely to hear about it. You should start a blog and plug your releases on that. [i]The Ascot[/i] and [i]Yon Astounding Castle![/i] were easily in the top half of last year's IF Comp entries, at least by my reckoning.

The ADRIFT focus is off-putting since I have the feeling that the games don't work very well under Gargoyle / SCARE, or perhaps in general. The line between poor coding and poor interpreter support can be blurry, but I can't recall a single bug report from an ADRIFT author in two years of working on the project.

That adds to my impression that those authors do not care very much about the player experience, certainly not on platforms other than Windows where it's SCARE or nothing. For example, one game on the competition page includes this cheerful notice at the beginning:

[quote="Motion"]This game is meant to be played using the ADRIFT Runner, full screen, and Arial size 12 font. Any other configurations may have unintended results.[/quote]

When I read that, I figure why bother?

I have the sense that the ADRIFT community is excited about the forthcoming version 5. What would be exciting to me is someone taking over SCARE and making it the reference ADRIFT implementation. Then you could put those disclaimers to rest. The expected value of Windows-only interpreter code has got to be nearly zero at this point.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1343&start=0#p8146
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Edges of the World
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-08-24 15:14:57

Set your game inside a sphere.  Wander too far in one direction and you arrive at the farthest point in the other direction.

Well, okay, not something that will work for every game, but I think that linear or circular co-ordinate systems can be a way to create "soft" boundaries.  Your world isn't infinite, but the directions the player uses reach every part of it in a naturalistic fashion.

Alternatively, get rid of directions altogether and just have a list of locations to visit or paths to take.  There's no sense of "I might be able to go north" and instead a more natural sense of "I'm in a city, at the hospital, and I might learn of another important location at any time," or "I'm in a room with a door, stairs and a fire exit."

[quote="capmikee"]In effect, going the wrong way ends in losing the game, but instead of describing it as death, it's as mundane as it would be if you refused a challenge in real life. On the other hand, maybe it discouraged me from playing more.[/quote]Yeah, I think this can work well if it's done right, but, as an example, a similar situation in Legion was presented as a winning ending.  I believe I'm not the only person who stopped playing at that point under the impression that I'd seen everything.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1167&start=30#p8147
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Floating-point math in Glulx
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-08-24 15:23:03

[quote="zarf"]David's version had that extern definition too.[/quote]

Ah. The Windows Glulxe source package doesn't include the core Glulxe files, so I missed his change to glulxe.h.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1345&start=0#p8148
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: User Friendly Ask/Tell Topic Definition
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-08-24 15:30:36

[code]gettingDryTopic : Topic 'getting dry';[/code]
The 'getting dry' text is actually a set of vocabwords in the same way as 'dodo bird/dodo'.

Although, if you change it to 'getting drying dry/off' the topic will respond to "tell dodo about getting off", so I'd suggest creating two different topics:

[code]gettingDryTopic : Topic 'getting how to get dry'; //etc.

dryingOffTopic : Topic 'drying dry off';[/code]
And then including both in the topic list like so:

[code]+ AskTellTopic [gettingDryTopic, dryingOffTopic]
"
    You think about it a moment.
"
;[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1344&start=0#p8149
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hint system?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-08-24 15:37:06

[quote="gravel"]A system favored these days is one that only reveals questions the player is facing at the given moment, which is more complicated and tends to be much more buggy.[/quote]
The TADS 3 default library includes a pretty nifty hint menu that allows you to set conditions on which hints are shown when.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1343&start=0#p8150
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Edges of the World
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-24 15:38:42

[quote="Pacian"]Alternatively, get rid of directions altogether and just have a list of locations to visit or paths to take.  There's no sense of "I might be able to go north" and instead a more natural sense of "I'm in a city, at the hospital, and I might learn of another important location at any time," or "I'm in a room with a door, stairs and a fire exit."[/quote]
I was thinking about setting a game in the city at one point, but I couldn't get over the idea of how many places a PC in a city might think to visit. Has anyone done this successfully?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1344&start=0#p8151
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hint system?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-08-24 15:46:30

I've had some remarkably buggy experiences with TADS games that use that feature, though, so it's definitely an option that requires more than a straight out list.

Of course, having one of these does not prevent an author from adding others - there is no reason a game couldn't have a print-out hint list, a walkthrough, context-sensitive help, and a clue-bat with which you could hit various items to find out their secrets.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1345&start=0#p8152
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: User Friendly Ask/Tell Topic Definition
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2010-08-24 15:51:15

Thank you! I'll play around with this some more tonight. And thanks for including the code to refer to multiple topics that would have been my next question!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1343&start=0#p8153
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Edges of the World
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-08-24 17:02:33

In graphical adventure games, it's not uncommon to link locations with a map (with locations added to it during the game when the PC get a reason to visit another place) instead of having a fully connected world. I guess something similar could be done in IF, if you don't want to abandon the cardinal directions altogether:

> SOUTH

You leave the park. Where do you want to go? (CAFÉ, HOSPITAL or HOME)

> HOSPITAL

Hospital Reception

This is a busy place, with people lining up at the reception desk. Some doctors are walking down a corridor to the west, there's a restaurant to the north and toilets to the south. The exit is right where you came in, to the east.

--

Or connect the places by subway and have the PC refuse walking along the street.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1344&start=0#p8154
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hint system?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-08-24 17:13:14

[quote="Finn Rosenløv"]Nothing is more frustrating than being stuck in a game without a clue on how to proceed. An otherwise great game will be dropped. Best case scenario: The player will move on to another game, Worst case scenario: The player will lose interest in playing IF altogether.[/quote]

To me, the best case scenario is when a player send me an e-mail and ask for help. (But I agree that a built-in hint system is generally a good thing, and I will probably put one in my next game.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1343&start=0#p8155
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Edges of the World
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-08-24 19:52:44

[quote="capmikee"][quote="Pacian"]Alternatively, get rid of directions altogether and just have a list of locations to visit or paths to take.  There's no sense of "I might be able to go north" and instead a more natural sense of "I'm in a city, at the hospital, and I might learn of another important location at any time," or "I'm in a room with a door, stairs and a fire exit."[/quote]
I was thinking about setting a game in the city at one point, but I couldn't get over the idea of how many places a PC in a city might think to visit. Has anyone done this successfully?[/quote]

[i]Slouching Toward Bedlam[/i] did something like this; it's set in London, but the PC is kind of disturbed and will only go to a few places. There are about four main regions with several locations each; you travel between the regions in a chauffeured hansom cab.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=0#p8156
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-08-24 20:04:16

I'm in the same boat as Ben, if possibly on a lower deck. I didn't hear about the competitions, and might have been interested -- but I didn't hear about it, and don't have the software to run it on my Mac. There seemed to be a Zoom plugin that claimed to run ADRIFT games, but when I tried it (your games from the IFComp looked interesting) it didn't work. I guess I can download Spatterlight if I really want to run ADRIFT games? But what would really get me to try them out is a Parchment-like online terp.

(BTW, the IFWiki entry for SCARE gives a dead link for its homepage.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1340&start=10#p8157
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx Inform 7: How to restart line input after cancelin
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-24 20:47:04

Aha -- right.

That describes the behavior of the I6 "read" statement, which generates the Z-code @aread opcode. In Glulx, the "read" statement doesn't compile at all. (Line-reading is too complicated for the compiler to handle without library support.) So there's no exact equivalent to that section in the Glulx world. The library's code, as you've seen, uses buffer-->0 (a four-byte length value) followed by one-byte characters.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=20#p8158
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-08-24 21:08:58

[quote="capmikee"]That's nice, but how come you mention the not-very-common "touch" command without explaining "examine?" If I remember my IF beginnings correctly, that's what I was really trying to do when I attempted to get closer to an object in the room.[/quote]
Good point. I hadn't thought of that.

My guess is, it's a losing battle trying to put together a system that will address the misunderstandings that all new players may have. I've expanded on that code already to allow the player to 'go to' distant but visible objects, and now I'm working on a way to allow the player to follow NPCs when they've left the room. It ain't simple....

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1347&start=0#p8159
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Force-ending a turn?
User: Lucea / DateTime: 2010-08-24 21:24:52

I'm pretty much finished with a massive revision to my Basic Real Time extension, thanks largely to Erik Temple and Andrew Plotkin. Everything works like it should, with one minor issue: ending the game does not work, as this check is done at the end of the turn. So the player has to type an incongruous command before he/she can win/be killed.

I suppose I can cheat by tossing in a meta "[Type any command.]" in there, but I really don't want to. Is there a way to force-end the turn so that ending the game can work properly once the rest of the action happens?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1348&start=0#p8160
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: if using html tads images, need to export them separately?
User: welkin / DateTime: 2010-08-24 22:12:28

i.e. do I need to zip up everything with the correct folder structure and then export it? or is there a way to compile so that the images become part of the exe (so i only need to export one file)?

Thanks a lot for your help in advance!

(I am hoping I don't need to expose the images, otherwise I need to take special care not to put spoilers in the images...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=0#p8161
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-08-24 22:30:48

[quote="bcressey"]I missed the competition since I don't check those sites. If it's not on the IF blogs, raif, or intfiction, I am not likely to hear about it. You should start a blog and plug your releases on that. [i]The Ascot[/i] and [i]Yon Astounding Castle![/i] were easily in the top half of last year's IF Comp entries, at least by my reckoning.[/quote]

Agreed: I just didn't hear about it.  I personally don't have negative associations with ADRIFT, but that may be because the only ADRIFT games I've knowingly* played were [i]The Ascot[/i] and [i]Yon Astounding Castle![/i], and there certainly weren't quality issues there.

Anyway, perhaps next week (after my deadline for costuming people for Burning Man is past, oh goodness) I will take a look at this Comp's games.

*I open everything with Spatterlight, and it pretty much all works, so I don't actually tend to notice what system a game was made in.  Actually, [i]Cryptozookeeper[/i] didn't exactly work [i]well[/i] -- the text and background colors were the same in the command line, which made it pretty hard to type -- but I did at least get the gist of it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=0#p8162
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-24 23:10:53

[quote="tove"]Anyway, perhaps next week (after my deadline for costuming people for Burning Man is past, oh goodness) I will take a look at this Comp's games.[/quote]
Do a lot of IFers go to Burning Man? Whenever someone tells me they're going, I recommend that they play Shade... but I never thought to ask if Zarf has been there...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=0#p8163
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-08-24 23:51:03

[quote="capmikee"]Do a lot of IFers go to Burning Man?[/quote]

Not this year but yes, yes indeed. Maybe we should start Camp Zork in 2011?

I wonder if basing the comp around the platform is a factor: there's nothing about "ADRIFT games" (or "TADS games" or whatever) that generates interest except to people invested in that language. I expect this was why the IF Comp got rid of its "Best z-code Game" and "Best TADS game" categories long ago-- usually the language used is not a very interesting part of the final product.

Presumably the ADRIFT competitions are meant to help promote ADRIFT, of course, so this may not be a very useful thought. But perhaps if the energy were spent on organizing a comp with a more attention-grabbing theme, friendly to ADRIFT entries but open to entries in other languages, there would be more interest from both authors and players.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1347&start=0#p8164
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Force-ending a turn?
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-08-24 23:53:31

Have you looked into writing a "for reading a command" rule that applies only when you've set a custom "end game now" flag? I've used this trick before to "skip" turns.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=0#p8165
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-08-25 02:31:08

[quote="capmikee"]Do a lot of IFers go to Burning Man? Whenever someone tells me they're going, I recommend that they play Shade... but I never thought to ask if Zarf has been there...[/quote]

I will quickly point out that I am not going myself (I am whatever the opposite of outdoorsy is, and not a fan of crowds), just making clothes for people who are.  And yes, I've pointed my BM-going friends at [i]Shade[/i], especially when one of them was complaining that he couldn't find his ticket.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=20#p8166
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-Machine Standard 1.2 (draft)
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-08-25 03:01:30

[quote="vaporware"]I would love to see an updated, unified standard instead of separate documents that correct each other.[/quote]
That would be wonderful, but who knows enough of the edge cases to do so?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1346&start=0#p8167
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Summary of Z-Machine Version Differences
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-08-25 03:07:29

I've never been able to get to your site... and now is no different. Always times out. Any ideas?

Edit: Used a proxy. Looks good.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1344&start=0#p8168
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hint system?
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2010-08-25 05:52:49

[quote]To me, the best case scenario is when a player send me an e-mail and ask for help. (But I agree that a built-in hint system is generally a good thing, and I will probably put one in my next game.)[/quote]

I totally agree with you, but often players want to be able to solve their problem right away, and not wait for the author to get back to them...
I remember in the old days (Yes, I [u]am[/u] that old) when the computer magazines had a help section. You had to write your question and then hope to heaven that your problem was answered in the next issue... (We're talking the 80's here  [emote];)[/emote] ) The difference is that then you paid money for the games, so you were more willing to wait since you wanted your moneys worth. Today, if a game gets too tough, people are more likely to drop it and move on to the next one.

A hint-sheet would be preferble, imo, since a walk-through gives away too much... If I've had the trouble of making a game, I want the player to work solving it.. but that's just me  [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1349&start=0#p8169
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Betatesters needed
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2010-08-25 06:01:35

I've also posted this on if.game-testing.org already, but to be safe:

I've got a short and easy z-code game (if you take all optional detours, maybe half an hour) which I'd like to enter in this year's IF Comp. It's not a 'good' game by common standards. A rough familiarity with Paul Panks and his games (and non-hate towards his person) will help appreciate the game.

Obviously, the game needs testing. Any help would be greatly appreciated. My e-mail address is my name @yllr.net.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1347&start=0#p8170
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Force-ending a turn?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-08-25 10:02:26

Sarah, I suspect that the real problem is the need to escape from the input loop. In a typical game, the vast majority of real-time events are going to fire while a line event is pending, simply because a line event is pending most of the time. When the event fires, the game is still in the standard input loop, defined in the VM_ReadKeyboard() routine in Glulx.i6t. In most situations, this isn't a problem--the player will still be able to enter commands after the event fires. When the game ends as a consequence of a real-time event, though, we do have a problem: The game is still waiting for input, but we don't want the player to have to give any.

Off the top of my head, I think that the way out of this is probably to hack the parser to check for the deadflag from within the input loop in VM_ReadKeyboard, and use this to escape the loop. There are multiple levels in the library's call to that routine though, and this method will probably also require handling the deadflag appropriately in these routines as well. But maybe someone else has a more elegant suggestion.

N.B. I don't think that Inform waits until the end of the turn to end the game. I believe it checks the deadflag (the I6-level variable) whenever it processes a rulebook--or something like that. (Otherwise the every turn rules would fire, for example, even if the game was ended from within the action rules, which run earlier. This doesn't happen.)

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1337&start=0#p8171
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Need setting for course in html
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-08-25 10:47:20

Good luck with that one. Seriously, though, I think a CYOA game/story implemented as a hypertext-linked set of web pages would be a lot of fun! By the time you add a few images and Javascript widgets, you could have a very professional-looking production.

All you need is a good story to tell. But I'm sure the students will be able to come up with something.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1346&start=0#p8172
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Summary of Z-Machine Version Differences
User: weiju / DateTime: 2010-08-25 11:13:17

Very nice !

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1340&start=10#p8173
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx Inform 7: How to restart line input after cancelin
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-25 11:38:55

I just found a bug in this setup. Unfortunately, fixing it will be ugly.

When Inform goes into a *disambiguation* prompt, it's actually working off of a different character array. (buffer2 rather than buffer.) It's also at a different point in the main turn loop. 

The result is that if you add "The red ball is in Test. The blue ball is in Test." to my game, and then do "push button" followed (quickly) by "get ball", the event will hang up -- it won't reach the timer event. If you either complete the disambig, or type a completely new command, the event will fire during the *next* input prompt. (Merely hitting Return isn't enough to move forward, since the parser is still waiting.)

(I have not diagnosed exactly what's going on in the library guts in this case.)

Entering a YesOrNo input also freezes the event.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=10#p8174
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-25 13:01:15

Never been to Burning Man. I hate camping. I know. I'm sorry.

I've never done any caving, either. (Real caving, I mean. I've been in plenty of the done-up-for-tourists caves.) I get claustrophobic when the world is piled up above my head. Maybe you could have guessed that from _Hunter_.

I've never stolen military secrets from a foreign power, either.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1340&start=10#p8175
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx Inform 7: How to restart line input after cancelin
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-08-25 13:49:20

Ah.

The YesNo() routine uses buffer rather than buffer2, so the yes-no problem is really caused by the line that checks to see whether or not the reading a command activity is going on, not by any deeper issue.

Would it be possible to solve the buffer2 issue by hacking VM_ReadKeyboard to store a reference to the passed array as a global? (VM_ReadKeyboard is also used for the disambiguation questions. The temporary variable that represents the buffer array in VM_ReadKeyboard is a_buffer.) These two lines could then refer to that global:

To re-request line event in main window:
    (-  glk_request_line_event(gg_mainwin, [color=#0000FF]global[/color] + WORDSIZE, INPUT_BUFFER_LEN - WORDSIZE, [color=#0000FF]global[/color]-->0); -)

To cancel line input in the/-- main-window:
    (- glk_cancel_line_event(gg_mainwin, gg_event); [color=#0000FF]global[/color]-->0 = gg_event-->2; -)

I'm not sure how to do this, though--would it be a pointer? (This--pointers, stacks, memory management--is where my lack of knowledge of C and real programming in general *really* ducks in to bite me!)

Alternatively, surrounding the code that generates disambiguation input with flags and then testing for those when the timed event fires might also work, e.g.:

[code]disambiguating = true;
answer_words=Keyboard(buffer2, parse2);
disambiguating = false;[/code]

When disambiguating is true, we use alternate versions of the cancel line input and re-request input phrases.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1350&start=0#p8176
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: is there a cyoa style of interactive fiction?
User: clear / DateTime: 2010-08-25 14:32:51

i don't like the idea of puzzles or inventory. i mainly enjoy the reading and the travel parts of cyoa. i did try basic if (the pig story) but i didn't find it enjoyable because it really was more problem solving then traveling. like asking questions, matching inventory, and solving puzzles. i just want to read the story, and go wherever it takes me. i don't know if there's a cyoa (or whatever its called in the hobby) but it would be really nice if a cyoa aspect of if existed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=10#p8177
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-08-25 14:56:33

Agreed with Aaronius Lacunaius.  Tool-specific and platform-specific comps are [i]so[/i] twentieth century.  Today's sophisticated interpreters partly hide the distinction of what tool created a work, and that's a good thing.  I wouldn't like to read a Stephen King with Wordperfect's stamp all over it.

I hadn't heard of that particular comp because when ADRIFT appears in a subject line, I immediately skip to the next topic.  I do that with TADS, too. 

I also don't need more than two or three comps a year, if that many.  

I had a wee bit of interest in TADS a few months ago when the official TADS blog posted a couple entries on Planet IF.  Granted, they were dry, technical things with little connection to authoring, so the interest wasn't much more than, "I shall read these posts."  If a new version of ADRIFT is coming, it really needs to start getting the word out now. I presume there's an ADRIFT (I'm getting so tired of CAPITALIZED ACRONYMS) group blog that is/should be there? Where's the posts for it going?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1350&start=0#p8178
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: is there a cyoa style of interactive fiction?
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-08-25 15:30:14

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1302">viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1302</a>

This thread has a link in it for an in-depth CYOA style internet game. 
Also Zork Caverns of Doom is CYOA on the IF Database.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1340&start=10#p8179
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx Inform 7: How to restart line input after cancelin
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-25 15:49:44

Either strategy will work. (You just declare an ordinary global. I6 doesn't *have* memory management.)

However, I'm still worried about running arbitrary code inside the disambig prompt or the yesorno prompt. As long as you're just printing text, it's fine. If you rearrange the world (move objects around), you could produce some funky results. (Imagine having both the red and blue balls explode in a timed event... I think the worst outcome is an incongruous "You see no such thing" error, but I'd have to do a lot of code tracing to prove it to myself.)

The scariest situation is trying to end the game (set deadflag) in a timed event. Test that very carefully.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1350&start=0#p8180
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: is there a cyoa style of interactive fiction?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-08-25 16:09:02

If you're looking for general puzzlelessness, rather than a strict CYOA format, you might also enjoy games like The Baron or Ecdysis, which are tightly focused on story, and may eschew traditional "puzzles" altogether.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1334&start=0#p8181
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple Chat for an entire scene
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-25 16:09:44

Are there any plans to fix this in the extension? I just downloaded it and ran into the same problem.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1351&start=0#p8182
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Direct read/write to strings in modern I6?
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-08-25 17:04:33

So I'm writing some code to output game data to an XML file. At its core, it's based on three routines:

[code]
active-XML-file is an indexed text variable.

To open a tag called (tag - an indexed text):
	now active-XML-file is "[active-XML-file]<[tag]>".
		
To make a tag called (tag - an indexed text) with contents (contents - an indexed text):
	now active-XML-file is "[active-XML-file]<[tag]>[contents]</[tag]>".
		
To close the tag (tag - an indexed text):
	now active-XML-file is "[active-XML-file]</[tag]>".
[/code]

This works okay, but it starts to slow down for XML files larger than a few hundred characters. My impression is that this is caused by the need to continuously recreate the active-XML-file variable each time something is added to it.

So to speed things up, I want to make a string variable with a set size, and directly append strings to it in I6. (I'm aware this involves a certain amount of bookkeeping re: current cursor position and not overrunning the allocated space.) But my I6 is rusty enough I'm running into troubles remembering how to do this. (I think things are complicated by the fact that I never worked with Glulx in I6.) The DM4's stuff on how to do this is z-machine based, so it's not helpful. Also, the various sources I've looked at to try to see what to do-- Jesse's old "String Buffers" extension, the I7 "Appendix B" template layer, the Glulx spec-- all seem to be using totally different routines and styles. I gather there are a few different front-ends in place for some of this low-level stuff, but I'm unsure which if any are used by modern Inform 7.

So my question is: what's the current, 2010-era way to do string operations in Glulx under I6/I7? How would you write the I6 equivalent of:

[code]
To append (txt - some indexed text) to the string buffer:
     now string-buffer is "[string-buffer][txt]".
[/code]
(except not actually creating a new string, but really appending to the old one? Or is there a better way to get faster speed out of something like this?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1343&start=0#p8183
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Edges of the World
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2010-08-25 17:54:22

As a gamer I would prefer to see an unambiguous message if I try to go somewhere beyond the scope of the game.  It should make me say, "Aha!  The solution to this game does not incorporate leaving in this direction."

From the example of the highway —
BAD:  "It's too far to walk to the next town."
GOOD:  "It's many miles to the next town."
BETTER:  "You couldn't get to the next town in time to bring help.  You'd better concentrate on finding a solution here."

The first answer makes me think, "Aha, I could get to the next town if I could find a ride!" and I'd start to search for a bicycle, a horse, or maybe I'd hitchhike.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1347&start=0#p8184
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Force-ending a turn?
User: Lucea / DateTime: 2010-08-25 18:33:06

Hm. I wonder if it's possible to do this from I7? Not speaking from total experience here, but it doesn't seem like it'd be that catastrophic to do. (Famous last words!)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=10#p8185
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-08-25 19:18:20

[quote="zarf"]Never been to Burning Man. I hate camping. I know. I'm sorry.

I've never done any caving, either. (Real caving, I mean. I've been in plenty of the done-up-for-tourists caves.) I get claustrophobic when the world is piled up above my head. Maybe you could have guessed that from _Hunter_.

I've never stolen military secrets from a foreign power, either.[/quote]

I notice that reassembling your memory by wearing variously colored masks is not on this list of denials.

...on-topic, Ron makes a good point; if the comp were announced on something that syndicated to planet-IF, I'd have seen it. (And since I just downloaded Spatterlight to play Yon Astounding Castle, I'd have been able to play the games, though I'd still be a lot more likely to play them online.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1340&start=20#p8186
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx Inform 7: How to restart line input after cancelin
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-08-25 20:28:31

Thanks for correcting my overthinking of global variables in I6--I don't know why I started thinking that they were values rather than references (sheesh)--and also for the good points about the dangers of firing real-time events during disambiguation. I think you're right that the worst anyone is likely to see out of it is "you can't see that here," but users should be aware of it all the same (some version of this code will end up in the next version of Sarah Morayati's Basic Real-Time extension, which is why I'm phrasing this in terms of users).

I can think of a lot of reasons not to end the game from a real-time event. What happens if the player types UNDO during the final question, for example?

Anyway, here's a beefed-up version of the sample code that will work across both disambiguation and yes-no questions (spoilered for length):
[spoiler][code]Include Glulx Entry Points by Emily Short.

Test is a room. The red ball is in Test. The blue ball is in Test.

The button is a device in Test.
   
Instead of pushing the button:
    say "Click. Is that a clock ticking?";
    start a 2000 millisecond timer.

Instead of waving hands:
	say "Do you want to press the button?";
	if player consents:
		say "Well, push it. No one's stopping you.";
	otherwise:
		say "Don't, then."

A glulx timed activity rule:
	cancel line input in the main window, preserving keystrokes;
	say "[line break]";
	say "Boom! There's an explosion somewhere else in the complex.";
	stop timer;
	say "[line break]";
	say "[if we are disambiguating]Which?[end if]";
	say "[command prompt][run paragraph on]";
	re-request line event in main window.
	

To re-request line event in main window:
    (-  glk_request_line_event(gg_mainwin, stored_buffer + WORDSIZE, INPUT_BUFFER_LEN - WORDSIZE, stored_buffer-->0); -)

To cancel line input in the/-- main window, preserving keystrokes:
    (- glk_cancel_line_event(gg_mainwin, gg_event); stored_buffer-->0 = gg_event-->2; -)

To decide whether we are disambiguating:
	(- stored_buffer == buffer2 -)


[Timer code: pulled from Real-Time Delays]

To start a/-- (T - a number) millisecond/ms timer:
    (- if (glk_gestalt(gestalt_Timer, 0)) glk_request_timer_events({T});  -)

To stop the/-- timer:
    (- if (glk_gestalt(gestalt_Timer, 0)) glk_request_timer_events(0); -)




Include (-

[ VM_KeyChar win nostat done res ix jx ch;
    jx = ch; ! squash compiler warnings
    if (win == 0) win = gg_mainwin;
    if (gg_commandstr ~= 0 && gg_command_reading ~= false) {
        done = glk_get_line_stream(gg_commandstr, gg_arguments, 31);
        if (done == 0) {
            glk_stream_close(gg_commandstr, 0);
            gg_commandstr = 0;
            gg_command_reading = false;
            ! fall through to normal user input.
        } else {
            ! Trim the trailing newline
            if (gg_arguments->(done-1) == 10) done = done-1;
            res = gg_arguments->0;
            if (res == '\') {
                res = 0;
                for (ix=1 : ix<done : ix++) {
                    ch = gg_arguments->ix;
                    if (ch >= '0' && ch <= '9') {
                        @shiftl res 4 res;
                        res = res + (ch-'0');
                    } else if (ch >= 'a' && ch <= 'f') {
                        @shiftl res 4 res;
                        res = res + (ch+10-'a');
                    } else if (ch >= 'A' && ch <= 'F') {
                        @shiftl res 4 res;
                        res = res + (ch+10-'A');
                    }
                }
            }
       		jump KCPContinue;
        }
    }
    done = false;
    glk_request_char_event(win);
    while (~~done) {
        glk_select(gg_event);
        switch (gg_event-->0) {
          5: ! evtype_Arrange
            if (nostat) {
                glk_cancel_char_event(win);
                res = $80000000;
                done = true;
                break;
            }
            DrawStatusLine();
          2: ! evtype_CharInput
            if (gg_event-->1 == win) {
                res = gg_event-->2;
                done = true;
                }
        }
        ix = HandleGlkEvent(gg_event, 1, gg_arguments);
        if (ix == 2) {
            res = gg_arguments-->0;
            done = true;
        } else if (ix == -1)  done = false;
    }
    if (gg_commandstr ~= 0 && gg_command_reading == false) {
        if (res < 32 || res >= 256 || (res == '\' or ' ')) {
            glk_put_char_stream(gg_commandstr, '\');
            done = 0;
            jx = res;
            for (ix=0 : ix<8 : ix++) {
                @ushiftr jx 28 ch;
                @shiftl jx 4 jx;
                ch = ch & $0F;
                if (ch ~= 0 || ix == 7) done = 1;
                if (done) {
                    if (ch >= 0 && ch <= 9) ch = ch + '0';
                    else                    ch = (ch - 10) + 'A';
                    glk_put_char_stream(gg_commandstr, ch);
                }
            }
        } else {
            glk_put_char_stream(gg_commandstr, res);
        }
        glk_put_char_stream(gg_commandstr, 10); ! newline
    }
  .KCPContinue;
    return res;
];

[ VM_KeyDelay tenths  key done ix;
    glk_request_char_event(gg_mainwin);
    glk_request_timer_events(tenths*100);
    while (~~done) {
        glk_select(gg_event);
        ix = HandleGlkEvent(gg_event, 1, gg_arguments);
        if (ix == 2) {
            key = gg_arguments-->0;
            done = true;
        }
        else if (ix >= 0 && gg_event-->0 == 1 or 2) {
            key = gg_event-->2;
            done = true;
        }
    }
    glk_cancel_char_event(gg_mainwin);
    glk_request_timer_events(0);
    return key;
];

[ VM_ReadKeyboard  a_buffer a_table done ix;
    if (gg_commandstr ~= 0 && gg_command_reading ~= false) {
        done = glk_get_line_stream(gg_commandstr, a_buffer+WORDSIZE,
        	(INPUT_BUFFER_LEN-WORDSIZE)-1);
        if (done == 0) {
            glk_stream_close(gg_commandstr, 0);
            gg_commandstr = 0;
            gg_command_reading = false;
            ! L__M(##CommandsRead, 5); would come after prompt
            ! fall through to normal user input.
        }
        else {
            ! Trim the trailing newline
            if ((a_buffer+WORDSIZE)->(done-1) == 10) done = done-1;
            a_buffer-->0 = done;
            VM_Style(INPUT_VMSTY);
            glk_put_buffer(a_buffer+WORDSIZE, done);
            VM_Style(NORMAL_VMSTY);
            print "^";
            jump KPContinue;
        }
    }
    done = false;
    stored_buffer = a_buffer;
    glk_request_line_event(gg_mainwin, a_buffer+WORDSIZE, INPUT_BUFFER_LEN-WORDSIZE, 0);
    while (~~done) {
		glk_select(gg_event);
        switch (gg_event-->0) {
          5: ! evtype_Arrange
            DrawStatusLine();
          3: ! evtype_LineInput
            if (gg_event-->1 == gg_mainwin) {
                a_buffer-->0 = gg_event-->2;
                done = true;
            }
        }
        ix = HandleGlkEvent(gg_event, 0, a_buffer);
        if (ix == 2) done = true;
        else if (ix == -1) done = false;
    }
    if (gg_commandstr ~= 0 && gg_command_reading == false) {
        glk_put_buffer_stream(gg_commandstr, a_buffer+WORDSIZE, a_buffer-->0);
        glk_put_char_stream(gg_commandstr, 10); ! newline
    }
  .KPContinue;
    VM_Tokenise(a_buffer,a_table);
    ! It's time to close any quote window we've got going.
    if (gg_quotewin) {
        glk_window_close(gg_quotewin, 0);
        gg_quotewin = 0;
    }
    #ifdef ECHO_COMMANDS;
    print "** ";
    for (ix=WORDSIZE: ix<(a_buffer-->0)+WORDSIZE: ix++) print (char) a_buffer->ix;
    print "^";
    #endif; ! ECHO_COMMANDS
];

-) instead of "Keyboard Input" in "Glulx.i6t"


Include (- Global stored_buffer = 0 ; -) after "Definitions.i6t"[/code][/spoiler]


To really make this work nicely, a few more features would be nice: allow for the repetition of the disambiguation question (could be done by printing it to a buffer, or using the Text Capture extension) and for the use of custom prompts for yes/no questions so that it will be obvious to the player that the game is still awaiting special input. It would probably also be good if we could distinguish line input from char input, to treat things differently in the timer event rulebook. This would probably require setting more flags in the I6 code.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=10#p8187
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2010-08-25 21:30:16

Okay, I have a few bits to answer, here.  I promise I’ll try to keep up with the site better in the future to avoid these God-awfully long posts…

[quote]From my perspective as someone outside the Adrift community, it seems to have lots of little competitions that encourage a number of games from beginners that are, to be frank, pretty bad.
[/quote]Most ADRIFT output is based around competitions which are community-inclusive.  I can’t speak for the entire community, but there does seem to be a belief that releasing games outside of competitions is a formula only for being ignored.  Perhaps 2009 calls for an update to this mentality.

I should mention, though, that the definition of “beginner” may be debatable.  Of entrants in this competition, the only new authors are Simply Ryan (“Just Another Day”) and Hensman Int’l (“Ba‘Roo!”-- though Hensman has released one game in ADRIFT’s IntroComp before).  Other than that the authors involved in 2010’s Summer Comp all have some experience writing and publishing IF.  Their visibility as experienced authors has been a problem, but that seems typical of ADRIFT authors, as does the measure of their experience.  They may receive quite varied degrees of feedback (though most see little, if any), which could impact the quality of their work.  FWIW, I did think there were a few good games in there, though.

[quote]Make postings here, or on the rec.arts group.[/quote] I really need to make checking intfiction more of a habit, admittedly.  I tend to be a bit shy about making public announcements on the internet, so I have that to overcome.  But is raif the best place to post for visibility’s sake?  Every time I check raif, I see pages’ worth of spam.  I imagine it would be easy to get messages buried under that.

[quote]The ADRIFT focus is off-putting since I have the feeling that the games don't work very well under Gargoyle / SCARE, or perhaps in general.[/quote]This may be true-- I haven’t tested all of the games using Gargoyle/SCARE or Zoom/Spatterlight or anything else.  One goal of mine has been to encourage ADRIFT authors to release multi-platform friendly versions of their games.  Tiberius Thingamus, at least, has offered two separate versions of his game in this comp, one for ADRIFT and one for Gargoyle.  It would be nice to see more ADRIFT authors picking up on that trend.  It would be even better if Campbell Wild were to focus on making ADRIFT more translatable, if that’s the right word.  I’d really like to see a version of ADRIFT that could be adapted to Java or Flash or something for online play, without having to download an interpreter.

[quote]I wonder if basing the comp around the platform is a factor: there's nothing about "ADRIFT games" (or "TADS games" or whatever) that generates interest except to people invested in that language.[/quote]As far as I can tell, there is one main reason that ADRIFT games aren’t more integrated into wider community comps. There is a perception amongst ‘DRIFTers that their games stand no chance in wider competitions and will only be bashed for, as Emily mentions, the limitations of the parser and interpreter incompatibilities.  Of course, if ‘DRIFTers never advance their work outside of what is too often ADRIFT’s gated community, they might never improve or even change their writing.  But there probably need to be more “good” ADRIFT games out there before they get played regularly… and there need to be more games out there receiving critical attention so authors can improve so that good games could be produced regularly… seems a bit of a Catch-22, but I think it could be done.

How is probably another question, but one that’s taking a lot of consideration at the moment.

[quote]If a new version of ADRIFT is coming, it really needs to start getting the word out now. I presume there's an ADRIFT (I'm getting so tired of CAPITALIZED ACRONYMS) group blog that is/should be there? Where's the posts for it going? [/quote]There is currently no blog for ADRIFT that I know of, though I could ask Campbell Wild about it.  My own blog (with its occasionally ADRIFT-related things) hasn’t been active for a while, and probably looks like a mess.  But should that change, I’ll register it with Planet IF.

[quote](And since I just downloaded Spatterlight to play Yon Astounding Castle, I'd have been able to play the games, though I'd still be a lot more likely to play them online.)[/quote]Online playability without an interpreter download is my own personal pipedream for ADRIFT, though I don’t think it’s headed in that direction.

If it matters, though, I happen to know an author who would be interested in your evaluation of Yon Castle.  He can be reached at tiberiusthingamus (at) yahoo (d0t) com.  Are you playing the IFComp release or the Post-Comp release?

[quote]I've never stolen military secrets from a foreign power, either.[/quote]As far as [i]we[/i] know.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1350&start=0#p8188
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: is there a cyoa style of interactive fiction?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-25 23:27:24

Ecdysis doesn't have much exploration in it, though - it's very linear.

What you're describing sounds like what the original Colossal Cave might have been, before it became an Adventure.

I don't know of anything off the top of my head that has a big map but not too much puzzle, but then I'm not familiar with the CYOA stuff.

You might try Redemption, though, which mainly consists of a branching conversation.

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=59d0udoc5ofsg7fj">http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=59d0udoc5ofsg7fj</a>

And Galatea, of course.

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=urxrv27t7qtu52lb">http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=urxrv27t7qtu52lb</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=10#p8189
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-25 23:40:03

Now I have been tempted to provide my personal views on Burning Man:

I think it's something I would have liked 10 or 15 years ago, if I'd known folks who were going. I'm not against camping, but I've reached a point in my life where the desert (much as it is portrayed in Shade) represents an enemy of life. Camping is one thing, where you could theoretically get everything you need from your immediate environment. But the desert is not like that.

If I go to the desert, it's more likely to be for something like the Badwater 135-mile ultramarathon in Death Valley. (Not that I think I could ever run it, but maybe I would crew for somebody who did). Unlike Burning Man, which to me is like tempting Death while staying safely out of its reach, Badwater is like running directly into Death's jaws with your middle finger extended.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1350&start=0#p8190
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: is there a cyoa style of interactive fiction?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-08-26 01:14:38

If you prefer pure CYOA, here's a link to CYOA games in IFDB: <a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/search?sortby=ratu&newSortBy.x=0&newSortBy.y=0&searchfor=tag%3Acyoa">http://ifdb.tads.org/search?sortby=ratu ... tag%3Acyoa</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1326&start=0#p8191
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: i7 in Ubuntu 9.04/9.10
User: Platinum / DateTime: 2010-08-26 02:20:18

Not sure that it ever will be packaged for 9.04 or 9.10 TBH, as much of the Ubuntu world has moved on to 10.04

I myself use 10.04 and find it far better than 9.10 (I've used Ubuntu since the 8's) - and so I'd definitely recommend the upgrade.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1350&start=0#p8192
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: is there a cyoa style of interactive fiction?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-08-26 03:33:46

Based on your preferences, I'd suggest [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=fcm1ikz9ttr6i99a]The Fire Tower[/url], which is a written trek through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ju778uv5xaswnlpl]Photopia[/url] is the quintessential puzzle-less IF game.  Maybe not the first one, but the first one that people really noticed.

[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=0stz0hr7a98bp9mp]Ramases[/url] is also puzzle-less, but may be an acquired taste.

[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=zws1j2x2yiqywywi]Masquerade[/url] is a romance game that [i]tries[/i] to be puzzle-less, but the implementation may still leave you stuck in places.

Adam Cadre has made a few games with no or simple puzzles such as [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=a3ym4ipix7sjsfrf]Interstate Zero[/url] and [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=82mn545s8bt3csa4]Shrapnel[/url] (adult content in both).

[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=joahn3xg3fcr2w5p]Centipede[/url] is an exercise in Starship Troopers style science fiction.  It's short and unwinnable, so the fun comes from trying to find different branches and examining your surroundings.

[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=j49crlvd62mhwuzu]Aisle[/url] is a one-move game with no right or wrong answers.

[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ezqljtd04d1dnukf]Whom the Telling Changed[/url] is apparently very choice based, although I've never played it.

[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=3a4kqs374jqu2li6]Nightfall[/url] has simple puzzles, but also accessible hints, and is very focused on exploration.

And then there's the entire [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchbar=tag%3Aconversation&searchGo.x=0&searchGo.y=0]conversation[/url] sub-genre, which usually emphasises interacting with characters and following the flow of conversation.  (I'm partial to Galatea, August and Pythos's Mask - although I did get stuck towards the end of that last one.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=454&start=0#p8193
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: TAB (ThinBasic Adventure Builder)
User: catventure / DateTime: 2010-08-26 05:34:27

Hi,

Just a line to say that the Latest Release is posted.
03 Aug 2010 (Alpha Release 58)

thinBASIC Adventure Builder (aka T.A.B.) is my adventure creator project for Windows 98/2000/ME/XP/Vista/7 currently at Alpha stage. 

thinBASIC Adventure Builder Home Page. ScreenShots. Download the TAB Editor, the TAB Player and some games and demos. (3.48mb zip)

<a class="postlink" href="http://tab.thinbasic.com/">http://tab.thinbasic.com/</a>

TAB is not meant to compete with the likes of INFORM, TADS, HUGO, ADRIFT etc. It is a personal project which I am sharing free with the Interactive Fiction community at large.
TAB operates on similar principles to popular retro adventure creators such as STAC, GAC, CAT, Quill, PAW or ACE. It has an IDE to enter adventure data and interprets parser commands using a condition/action 'language'. It is being developed with the thinBASIC scripting language.

Even though TAB is still in development it is perfectly possible to create a standard text adventure right now using it. A few are currently so doing.
I think it will appeal more to 'home- grown' adventure makers esp. those who dabbled with Quill, PAW or GAC in the eighties. With some thought, games made with those could be converted to run under TAB fairly easily.

TAB  is one of a few variants or alternative tools that might be considered by the aspiring adventure writer who may prefer or be happier using/working with a different authoring system...
There is certainly plenty of room for these other creators like SUDS, ADRIFT, QUEST, JACL or the CYOA-type makers to co-exist alongside INFORM - and I understand a new system called CURVESHIP is on the horizon too. It's all good. [emote]:)[/emote]

Some Screenshots here: <a class="postlink" href="http://tab.thinbasic.com/">http://tab.thinbasic.com/</a>

Version History Change Log here: <a class="postlink" href="http://tab.thinbasic.com/history.txt">http://tab.thinbasic.com/history.txt</a> 

Only the freely distributable 'TAB Player' is needed to run any TAB games made using the TAB Editor.

Sound and music supported: mp3, ogg, wav, aiff, mod.
Graphics supported: jpg, gif, bmp, png.

There is also a FORUM and a Yahoo email user group.

Some Youtube videoclips here: 
TAB Player - <a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDzqQv2L35w&NR=1">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDzqQv2L35w&NR=1</a> 
TAB Editor - <a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq1ZYS7TAJQ&NR=1">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq1ZYS7TAJQ&NR=1</a> 
Graphic Mode - <a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1Z72QpLTIE">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1Z72QpLTIE</a> 

If forum members wish to try out an example game which was entered into the IF "Spring Thing" Comp in 2009 by Amy Kerns download "Realm of Obsidian" (old skool retro text adventure) from here:
<a class="postlink" href="http://amethystgames.wordpress.com/92/">http://amethystgames.wordpress.com/92/</a>

Best wishes,
catventure.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1350&start=0#p8194
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: is there a cyoa style of interactive fiction?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-08-26 07:10:45

That's a good list, but I would cross Interstate Zero off. The puzzles may be simple, but they're there, and based on the OP's post I suspect s/he would find some of them pretty annoying -- there's several instant game overs, and at least one that involves inventory matching 

[spoiler]where you're pretty unlikely to have found the object, though you can always achieve the same effect by screwing an NPC.[/spoiler] 

I can't remember whether [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=01efmfsk4r79mtks]Floatpoint[/url] has any puzzles, but if they do they're not much past Masquerade-level, and it's definitely about exploring the world and then choosing what to do. But I guess it might present some obstacles in interaction. 

Another one that might be worth looking into is [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=zsmf6odrnyxp3unh]Into the Open Sky[/url] from the recent JayIsGames comp. I think there's a simple puzzle or two, but it's mostly about exploring the world and uncovering the story. (The author isn't a native English speaker, and it sometimes shows, but the worldbuilding is nicely done.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=10#p8195
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-08-26 08:15:38

[quote="bowsmand"]
[quote]I wonder if basing the comp around the platform is a factor: there's nothing about "ADRIFT games" (or "TADS games" or whatever) that generates interest except to people invested in that language.[/quote]As far as I can tell, there is one main reason that ADRIFT games aren’t more integrated into wider community comps. There is a perception amongst ‘DRIFTers that their games stand no chance in wider competitions and will only be bashed for, as Emily mentions, the limitations of the parser and interpreter incompatibilities.  Of course, if ‘DRIFTers never advance their work outside of what is too often ADRIFT’s gated community, they might never improve or even change their writing.  But there probably need to be more “good” ADRIFT games out there before they get played regularly… and there need to be more games out there receiving critical attention so authors can improve so that good games could be produced regularly… seems a bit of a Catch-22, but I think it could be done.

How is probably another question, but one that’s taking a lot of consideration at the moment.
[/quote]

I think you've already figured out the solution to that problem, Duncan.  Do you best and shoot for the main IFComp.  If you don't push your limits, you won't achieve anything.  Your games did well in last year's Comp -- I certainly came away thinking that ADRIFT was a viable platform for IF, and I'd never played an ADRIFT title before IFComp '09.  Heck, the IFComp seems to get a raw windows EXE-based game or two every year, and they still get played and rated.  As long as ADRIFT authors do the basic finish and testing work required to ensure their titles run on standard interpreter packs like Gargoyle, etc. I don't see why they can't compete in the wider world like everyone else does.

As far as parser issues, I wouldn't know about that.  It may be that Inform and TADS provide better implementation of basic parsing mechanics out of the box.  But speaking only for myself:  I may have strong opinions on my chosen tools as an implementor, but as a [b]player[/b] the only thing that matters to me is the quality of the finished product I'm playing.  If a game fails to recognize standard, simple syntax or gives me problems with recognizing legitimate input, it's flawed and deserves the criticism it gets regardless of whether it was written in Inform, TADS, or ADRIFT.  Those problems are always correctable with enough testing and attention to detail.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1334&start=0#p8196
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple Chat for an entire scene
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-26 09:39:23

I can confirm that the "chat-active" fix solves the problem. In fact, there were only two instances of "active" in the source.

Is there a place where I could upload the fix in order to expedite its inclusion on the inform website?

- Mike

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=10#p8197
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-08-26 10:36:20

Adrift's parser issues are issues.  It's not clear to me that they *can* always be fixed by authors.  If authors want public feedback on their game, they should probably expect some negative feedback based on the player experience, and the parser could be part of that.

I wonder if someone would consider a regular review blog with a policy of gentle reviewing, and a comment policy to match.  I'd make games by relatively new authors a focus, irregardless of platform.  You could either target the blog toward the authors (constructive criticism) or players.  I would read such a thing, although my own review tastes as a player run to a little more bald-faced analysis.  That might give authors a safe space to stay, and some hook for the players.  If authors didn't want to read harsher criticism, they could still get feedback from reviews and comments.  I think games would have a higher likelihood of getting played if there was already someone playing.  (Ironic, but there you go.)

Wider circulation will help with Adrift's reputation, just because its quirks will become more anticipated. 

Other than that - yeah, enter games in the comp that are polished to a mirror shine.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1352&start=0#p8198
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Complicated holdall
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-26 10:51:41

I have a complicated object. Part of it is a container, and I would like to use that container as a player's holdall. Unfortunately, because it's only a part of the object, and not held directly by the player, the "use player's holdall..." rule won't do anything with it. Do I have to rewrite the whole rule to get this to work, or is there a simpler solution?

I'd also like the game to ignore the holdall if it is "unknown." How the heck would I do that?

[code]The Cargo Hold is a room.

The Spacinator is a device in the cargo hold.

A rocket engine, a cup of cold tea, a toy dinosaur, and a motorcycle helmet are in the cargo hold.

The carrying capacity of the player is 2.

A thing can be known or unknown. The inner space is unknown.

The inner space is a player's holdall. It is closed. Understand "hole" as the inner space. It is part of the spacinator.

Before inserting anything into the Spacinator, try inserting the noun into the inner space instead.

Before removing anything from the Spacinator, try removing the noun from the inner space instead.

Instead of switching on the spacinator:
	say "A hole, black as ink, opens up in the side of the Spacinator.";
	Now the inner space is open;
	Now the inner space is known.

Instead of switching off the spacinator:
	say "The hole on the side of the Spacinator shrinks down to a pinpoint and disappears.";
	Now the inner space is closed.

test me with "get spacinator/switch it on/get engine/put engine in spacinator/get tea/get dinosaur"[/code]

By the way, I just noticed that the "before removing anything from the spacinator..." rule doesn't do anything useful to "get engine from Spacinator."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1352&start=0#p8199
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Complicated holdall
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-26 11:23:27

Maybe it makes more sense for the container to be the "main" object and have the other things (such as devices) be parts of that?

I still have the known/unknown issue, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1352&start=0#p8200
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Complicated holdall
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-26 11:52:08

Rewriting and replacing the "use player's holdall" rule is the easiest solution as far as I can tell. It's not very long.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1350&start=0#p8201
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: is there a cyoa style of interactive fiction?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-08-26 12:23:00

[quote="clear"]i don't like the idea of puzzles or inventory. i mainly enjoy the reading and the travel parts of cyoa. i did try basic if (the pig story) but i didn't find it enjoyable because it really was more problem solving then traveling. like asking questions, matching inventory, and solving puzzles. i just want to read the story, and go wherever it takes me. i don't know if there's a cyoa (or whatever its called in the hobby) but it would be really nice if a cyoa aspect of if existed.[/quote]

"Best of Three" is a conversation in a coffee shop.  You don't do much as a player but select 1, 2, or 3.   The dialogue meanders nicely.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=10#p8202
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-08-26 12:23:27

[quote="gravel"]I wonder if someone would consider a regular review blog with a policy of gentle reviewing, and a comment policy to match.  I'd make games by relatively new authors a focus, irregardless of platform.[/quote]

One thing that I think might be useful, for new authors in general and for ADRIFT authors concerned about the reception of the games, is a regular comp run like the JayIsGames comp -- encouraging new authors, providing quick feedback forms, and (most importantly) allowing rolling updates. That way, if a game has an issue that's caught by a player early, the author can patch it, rather than having it spoil everyone's experience of the game. 

Of course the JIG comp was z-code only, but it could be made cross-platform (though online-playable games will still get more feedback -- yeah, I'm a bit of a broken record here).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1352&start=0#p8203
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Complicated holdall
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-26 13:15:45

[quote="zarf"]Rewriting and replacing the "use player's holdall" rule is the easiest solution as far as I can tell. It's not very long.[/quote]
Am I the only person that would want a "replace this rule" button next to the "unlist" button in the Index?

It would automatically paste:

[code]
The foo rule is not listed in the bar rulebook.

Rule for frobbing the glitch (this is the new foo rule):
    [copy of foo rule]
[/code]

[edit]I think the pasted code would also have to establish the right rule order somehow (in this case, the "use player's holdall" rule must come before the "can't exceed carrying capacity" rule.) I don't know how that's traditionally done.[/edit]

Maybe I'm just intimidated by looking for rule text in source files, but it seems like this convenience would be eminently useful.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1352&start=0#p8204
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Complicated holdall
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-26 13:26:24

Speaking of looking through source files, is there an Inform 7 plugin for MacVim?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1352&start=0#p8205
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Complicated holdall
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-26 14:13:07

Thanks for your encouragement, Andrew. Here is the new (rather long), semi-working code with the player's holdall rule replaced:

[spoiler][code]The Cargo Hold is a room.

The Spacinator is a device in the cargo hold.

A rocket engine, a cup of cold tea, a toy dinosaur, and a motorcycle helmet are in the cargo hold.

The carrying capacity of the player is 2.

A thing can be known or unknown. The inner space is unknown.

The inner space is a player's holdall. It is closed. Understand "hole" as the inner space. It is part of the spacinator.

The use player's holdall to avoid exceeding carrying capacity rule is not listed in the check taking rulebook.

The new use player's holdall rule is listed before the can't exceed carrying capacity rule in the check taking rulebook.

check an actor taking (this is the new use player's holdall rule):
	if the number of things carried by the actor is at least the
		carrying capacity of the actor:
		if the actor encloses a known player's holdall (called the current working sack):
			let the transferred item be nothing;
			repeat with the possible item running through things carried by
				the actor:
				if the possible item is not lit and the possible item is not
					the current working sack and the possible item does not enclose the current working sack, let the transferred item be the possible item;
			if the transferred item is not nothing:
				issue library message taking action number 13 for the
					transferred item;
				silently try the actor trying inserting the transferred item
					into the current working sack;
				if the transferred item is not in the current working sack, stop the action;
					
Before inserting anything into the Spacinator, try inserting the noun into the inner space instead.

Before removing anything from the Spacinator, try removing the noun from the inner space instead.

Instead of switching on the spacinator:
	say "A hole, black as ink, opens up in the side of the Spacinator.";
	Now the inner space is open;
	Now the inner space is known.

Instead of switching off the spacinator:
	say "The hole on the side of the Spacinator shrinks down to a pinpoint and disappears.";
	Now the inner space is closed.

test me with "get spacinator/get engine/get tea/switch spacinator on/get tea/get dinosaur/put engine in spacinator"
[/code][/spoiler]

I say semi-working because Library Message 13 seems a little confused (do I have to dig through source code again? Crikey!). It says "(putting the rocket engine into nothing to make room)" - sounds like it's lost track of the object of the command.

No matter, though, simple enough to change that to a "say" phrase instead.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=120#p8206
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: joeym / DateTime: 2010-08-26 14:56:09

Hello!!!

My name is joseph and I am an IF newbie. I first found ADRIFT and thought it was cool. Then I found Inform 7 and was blown away. I am an electrical engineer and 38 years of age. I live in Southern California. I am currently learning the ropes of I7. I do my best to find the time it takes to learn I7 and to create IF as my two sons keep my on my toes. But I would not change that for anything.

I am glad to have found the forum and to be here among other fans of IF!!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1352&start=0#p8207
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Complicated holdall
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-08-26 15:03:28

[quote="capmikee"][quote="zarf"]Rewriting and replacing the "use player's holdall" rule is the easiest solution as far as I can tell. It's not very long.[/quote]
Am I the only person that would want a "replace this rule" button next to the "unlist" button in the Index?

It would automatically paste:

[code]
The foo rule is not listed in the bar rulebook.

Rule for frobbing the glitch (this is the new foo rule):
    [copy of foo rule]
[/code]

[edit]I think the pasted code would also have to establish the right rule order somehow (in this case, the "use player's holdall" rule must come before the "can't exceed carrying capacity" rule.) I don't know how that's traditionally done.[/edit]

Maybe I'm just intimidated by looking for rule text in source files, but it seems like this convenience would be eminently useful.[/quote]

I think all you need to do here is something like:

[code]
This is the new foo rule:
    [whatever you want the new foo rule to do]

The new foo rule is listed instead of the foo rule in the bar rulebook.
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=130#p8208
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: George / DateTime: 2010-08-26 20:16:21

Welcome Joseph!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1353&start=0#p8209
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Quick UI test for mobile devices?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-26 22:38:35

Could people with iPhone/iPad/Android devices try this page?

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/tmp/glkote/sample-demo.html">http://eblong.com/zarf/tmp/glkote/sample-demo.html</a>

This is GlkOte (part of Quixe). I just tried to fix the bug that made it impossible to enter commands on some iPhones and Android browsers. (The Enter key just didn't work.)

There are plenty of problems left, I know. You'll have to tap on the (nearly invisible) input form field to bring up the screen keyboard, and you'll have to do it again after every command. But it should be *possible* to enter commands.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1353&start=0#p8210
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quick UI test for mobile devices?
User: Alex / DateTime: 2010-08-26 23:23:20

It works on iPhone 4 but annoyingly it zooms in when entering a command, and you have to manually zoom out again after pressing Return to read the output.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1353&start=0#p8211
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quick UI test for mobile devices?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-08-26 23:28:51

Adding the following will probably help with that:

[code]<meta name = "viewport" content = "width = device-width, user-scalable = no">[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=10#p8212
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-08-26 23:43:18

[quote]Tiberius Thingamus, at least, has offered two separate versions of his game in this comp, one for ADRIFT and one for Gargoyle.  It would be nice to see more ADRIFT authors picking up on that trend.[/quote]

What is it that distinguishes the Gargoyle version from the regular one? Separate releases to work around interpreter bugs are an ugly business for all concerned. If there's something straightforward that can be done to fix SCARE, let me know and I will fix it.

I did find one bug in "Pirate's Plunder", though I don't know whether the interpreter is to blame:

[spoiler]If you type "dig" on the beach more than once, it replays the ghost ship event text, even if the ghost ship has been destroyed. If you do it after moving the chest to the totem area, the chest disappears and the game is left in an unwinnable state.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=10#p8213
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2010-08-27 01:11:14

[quote]Adrift's parser issues are issues.  It's not clear to me that they *can* always be fixed by authors.  If authors want public feedback on their game, they should probably expect some negative feedback based on the player experience, and the parser could be part of that.[/quote]

Risking the terrible wrath of the IF people, I must say that it's getting just a little tiresome to keep reading bad reviews of Adrift games where the parser is blamed.
Adrift and its parser problem has been around for at least 10 years now. I would think that we all know the limitations, and whether we like them or not, they're there.
I can understand that new players will complain about not being able to this or that, or getting a strange response in this or that situation, but seeing veteran players and reviewers constantly drawing the “bad parser” card is incredible.
We all know that  the Adrift parser has problems, and that the player can't: “take the red ball and place it inside the other object I stole from the old lady down the road”  [emote];)[/emote]  So work around it when you play, and judge the game for the game, and not for what developer system it's made from.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=20#p8214
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-08-27 01:59:07

In general, I feel like complaints about a game's parser should be addressed to the creator of the platform (or its default library), not the game. Criticizing ADRIFT's parser seems a bit like complaining about the grain in an 8-mm film: it's probably less interesting than what the thing's actually about.

This isn't to say that the parser's not an integral part of the experience of playing IF, just that it's not one most authors are in a position to improve.

(It's also not to say that the choice of the right tool isn't part of the author's job. Perhaps ADRIFT authors need to communicate more clearly to players what sorts of commands the ADRIFT parser is likely to understand, so players aren't going into what they think is 3D IMAX and getting 8mm instead.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1354&start=0#p8215
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: ADRIFT Adventure Reviews RSS
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2010-08-27 04:10:04

I've created an RSS feed for the ADRIFT adventure reviews.  You can subscribe to it at [url]http://www.adrift.org.uk/adriftreviews.rss[/url] if you are interested.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=20#p8216
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-08-27 05:27:54

Re. the ADRIFT parser:

[quote]I would think that we all know the limitations, and whether we like them or not, they're there.[/quote]

This is the thing, though, for me: the ADRIFT parser is bad in ways that produce results I *don't* anticipate, and which actively throw me off when I'm playing. It routinely doesn't recognize sensible subsets of an item's name, for instance, so if I can't interact with an object, I have to try just noun, noun + adjective, etc. And that behavior is not consistent from one verb to the next, so if I've figured out what to call the object in one context, I have to figure it out anew in another. For that matter, the parser feedback is so vague that I can't always tell whether the problem is that the action is unrecognized, the noun is unrecognized, or the whole thing is recognized but has no interesting results defined. This has bitten me over and over again.

So the result is, parser problems in ADRIFT actively interfere in my enjoyment of a game in ways that are difficult for me to work around. There are limitations in other systems too, but they are, I feel, usually more predictable with experience, which makes me more willing to put up with them. (This is not to say that I won't still criticize an Inform or TADS game for failing to override some default behavior of the system when that behavior is a bad fit for the particular game.)

Once you put on top of that the fact that I usually have to play these games on an unofficial emulator and that any bugs I encounter might or might not be the emulator's fault, and it becomes pretty frustrating.

I'm sure this *is* annoying to ADRIFT authors to hear these complaints again and again, but it's also annoying to me as a player to experience again and again. In answer to the question, "can't you just ignore the system and critique what's unique about the game?", though, the answer is no, I can't. I've tried in several previous comps to set this issue aside, but the system routinely screws up my experience of the game such that I can't tell whether my problems are down to the parser, the interpreter, or the author's own additions. If it's not useful to ADRIFT authors to hear the whole of my experience (including the crash that I don't know the origin of, and the puzzle that drove me crazy because it recognized PUSH BUTTON but not PUSH WHITE BUTTON or PRESS BUTTON or PRESS WHITE BUTTON), then I don't have useful criticism to offer them. And in contexts where I'm writing reviews for people outside the core community, I'm not going to give a glowing review to a game that I think is fundamentally broken.

So, bottom line: it's the author's choice to use ADRIFT, but by selecting this system, he is signaling to me that he isn't trying to produce the kind of game I'm interested in playing. These days it takes a strong positive review from a third party (incidentally, one that *does* mention that the parser is above-average) to counteract that signal and make me want to play. Sorry about that, but at least I'm no longer writing reviews that ADRIFT authors find infuriating, I hope.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=20#p8217
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-08-27 11:31:10

As far as the ADRIFT parser's limitations being insurmountable, the authors in the discussion here: [url]http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=7[/url] seem to indicate that it would be possible to configure parsing tasks to work in a way that conformed more to the Inform/TADS approach, although it could be a significant amount of work.

Whether individual ADRIFT authors are willing to do this, and whether they think it's worthwhile making such an effort to gain more traction in the wider IF community, is another question.  Maybe when ADRIFT 5 comes out with its improvements it will improve the cost/benefit ratio on such efforts.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1353&start=0#p8218
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quick UI test for mobile devices?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-08-27 11:46:29

I tried it on my iPhone 3G, and yes, input works.

Issues besides those already mentioned:

It doesn't seem to be possible to scroll back? And longer pieces of output (such as typing help in landscape mode) scrolls past without a more prompt.

The top windows are too small for their content. Both status window and quotation box only show a small part of the second line.

After a while, the input line drops down, out of view, and becomes unuseable. Sometimes. It happened on my first try, but I can't seem to reproduce it. (A while later: ) Now I reproduced it. Turns out that happens if I turn the device. Apparently the changing height / width confuses it. (Update again: ) That's not the whole story. Now it happened to me again without me having turned it. I don't know why, but there was some scrolling involved (because I have to zoom in to read the text).

The "map" isn't aligned. (It's not displaying fixed-width.)

Slow didn't take long. About a second. (Don't know if that's an issue or not.)

Other than that, it seems to work ok. (I tried everything listed by help.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=20#p8219
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2010-08-27 11:53:34

I have to disagree with Finn on this one.  I don't think people have played enough ADRIFT games to understand how its parser works, and I don't think they *could* get to understand it that way, either, because 1) there's no standard for writing tasks in ADRIFT-- different authors prefer different methods-- and 2) about a quarter of ADRIFT games are produced by authors who write one game and run, without learning the ins-and-outs of the system.  So, players might learn some of the default error messages ("You push, but nothing happens" being a repeat offender), but that's not always helpful enough to guide a player toward a correct command.  What's more, new authors might write things in ways that make it unnecessarily difficult to get the right command, as Emily pointed out.

I can think of a recent game, [i]Ba'Roo![/i], by an author still relatively new (his second game).  It has a situation very similar to Emily's example.  The player looks at some lights and sees a set of "push buttons".  >PUSH BUTTONS doesn't work, so one might then want to >X BUTTONS.  Then you get these coloured buttons.  So you might, say, >PUSH YELLOW BUTTON-- "You push, but nothing happens."  To even an experienced ADRIFT player, this would mean push probably wasn't implemented, but it doesn't say what will work.  Plus, if you then type >PRESS YELLOW BUTTON, you get a different message-- "Nothing happens."  So does it work?  How?  These are avoidable errors, but authors don't always go out of their way to accommodate them.

Then you get games like [i]Escape from Camelot[/i] which have all of 21 tasks implemented, each with excruciatingly exact and non-obvious syntax... five of which kill the player.  Sadly, it's pretty easy to see why people have little confidence in ADRIFT.  Hopefully that can change, but we'll see.  It'll certainly take some work.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1354&start=0#p8220
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT Adventure Reviews RSS
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-08-27 12:05:34

Most of us interested in RSS of reviews use IFDB's feed.  

EDIT: Oh, I guess you were adding it to Planet IF, of course. Sorry

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=20#p8221
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-08-27 12:39:43

...and all this ignores the fact that Inform & Tads's parsers aren't good enough, either.  People new to IF consistently trip over it.  So for *IFers* to criticize Adrift's parser really says something.  Assuming Adrift has a parser.  Just going by Emily's description of issues, it doesn't sound like it has one.  It sounds like every single recognized input is a special case written by the individual author.  

As a programmer, I feel that the Adrift authoring tool is a bad piece of software with a good community.  Conrad's versioning problem with his Lair Of Cybercow springs to mind.  That wasn't Conrad's fault, if I understand things correctly.  The Adrift interpreter software can't even tell if it's capable of running a particular Adrift game?  Wow.

Perhaps Adrift should target CYOA?  CYOAs written in Adrift seem to do well.  I don't know.  Something needs to improve.  If the software improves, then I feel a lot of other problems will vanish on their own.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1353&start=0#p8222
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quick UI test for mobile devices?
User: weiju / DateTime: 2010-08-27 12:48:12

Quick test on Android (HTC MyTouch, Android 1.6):

- layout works well in both horizontal and vertical mode as long as it is display-only
- enter key on soft keyboard works
- the input field sometimes disappears until I click on it, but most of the time it is displayed after a turn
- when in input mode (vertical), the soft keyboard covers up the input field, but will appear as soon as you enter input, in horizontal mode, the input field just takes up all available space, so the output is invisible.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1353&start=0#p8223
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quick UI test for mobile devices?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-27 13:04:25

Thanks all.

I will adjust the viewport eventually -- I've done it for Parchment sites, I just need to transfer the knowledge over. And I'll adjust the fixed-width font.

I don't know how I'm going to deal with scrolling and paging. Ensuring that the window scrolls to the bottom on resize (device-rotate) will patch a few of the problems. But I don't know if it's possible to give an HTML div (as opposed to the whole document) the standard touchscreen drag-scroll behavior.

Input focus is biting my unmentionables. The ideal is: tap on a window to focus the input field (and open the screen keyboard, if the platform has one). But Safari makes this very difficult. But not impossible. It works right now (iPhone/iPad) if you tap on a *different window* and then tap on the window that's expecting input. But if you tap the window where you just entered a command, nothing happens. There is some magic going on with default event handlers, and I really wish I understood it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1355&start=0#p8224
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Possible I7 bug (?) defining multiple connections at once
User: StJohnLimbo / DateTime: 2010-08-27 14:02:22

Hello everyone,

I stumbled across a somewhat puzzling behaviour in Inform 7 (6E72). The following code doesn't compile:

[code]Chapter 1 - Kitchen

The Kitchen is a room.

Chapter 2 - Cellar

The Cellar is south and down from the Kitchen.[/code]

The problem message is [quote]"You wrote 'The Cellar is south and down from the Kitchen': but no location is under discussion to be the origin of this map connection, so this is like starting with 'North is the Aviary': I can't tell where from."[/quote]

However, to make it compile, it's sufficient to [i]either[/i] take out just the heading "Chapter 2 - Cellar" [i]or[/i], while keeping the heading there, to take out either direction (south or down). The latter option, of course, results in not having both connections.

To be sure, it's not a big deal, since I can easily say: 

The Cellar is south from the Kitchen. The Cellar is down from the Kitchen.

Nevertheless, should I report this as a bug? (Also, I'm not exactly sure what the desired and canonical behaviour is.)

Regards,
Michael

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1355&start=0#p8225
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Possible I7 bug (?) defining multiple connections at onc
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-27 14:37:55

It's some kind of bug, because removing a section header should not change the compilation. (Unless there's some kind of ambiguous phrase in your code. But "Kitchen" is not ambiguous.)

I didn't think this kind of phrasing was supported, but it clearly works (without the section header). So it's worth reporting as sometimes not working.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1355&start=0#p8226
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Possible I7 bug (?) defining multiple connections at onc
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-27 14:48:45

Okay, I see what's going on. I tried this:

[code]
The Kitchen is a room.

The Pantry is a room.

The Cellar is south and down from the Kitchen.
[/code}

The Cellar winds up south of the *Pantry*. So it's obviously parsing it as something like "The Cellar is south. The Cellar is down from the Kitchen." The first half relies on a recently-mentioned room, and recently-mentioned stops being true across section headers.

So it's definitely a phrasing to avoid -- it will generally not do what you expect. You should still report it, but in the category "this did something confusing". It may not be fixable.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=20#p8227
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-27 16:18:53

TADS and Inform parsers have problems (which we love to discuss) but they share some deep assumptions that make them intelligible to IF regulars. Basically, a deep dedication to breaking down player input into an abstract action and a list of abstract objects. 

That is, they separate the tasks of parsing action phrasing, parsing object names, and reacting to the parsed command. More importantly, they ensure that the *game author* keeps those tasks separate.

That's why "push button" and "press the button" work the same, in nearly all TADS/Inform games, whether the game author is experienced or a beginner. That's what we-as-players accept and rely on. When that assumption breaks, the game experience goes to hell.

(I am a little worried about this assumption in I7, actually. With the advent of regexps, I'm seeing code questions -- and answers -- that rely on (e.g.) matching "get all" as a substring. This could be poisonous in the long term. Remember that because we're used to the "standard" parser, we don't always *test* these variations... A game in which "the" is illegal in half its commands wouldn't cause *me* any trouble, because I never type "the". But it would cause unwarranted trouble for some unknown number of newcomers, and we might never know it.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1355&start=0#p8228
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Possible I7 bug (?) defining multiple connections at onc
User: StJohnLimbo / DateTime: 2010-08-27 19:54:30

That makes sense, thank you for investigating and explaining! I reported it just now ([url]http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=268[/url]).

-- Michael

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1356&start=0#p8229
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: beta tester for a first game 40k words, inform, etc etc
User: invadertim / DateTime: 2010-08-27 22:29:50

i just need a few people to run through a game (built in hint/walkthrough) and let me know about any bugs/suggestions for endings for the if comp.  plz let me know, i'm alll sorts of new to this but want to make something that doesn't suck.  it's built in inform 7, so there's that.

it's not crazy and mind blowing, just a straight puzzle adventure.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1353&start=0#p8230
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quick UI test for mobile devices?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-27 22:31:57

I've updated the viewport and made the display non-zoomable.

The not-exactly-monospace font turns out to just be the way iPhones are. Blah!

I'm still thinking about resizing and scrolling. But, bonus feature discovery! You can scroll a part-visible div using a two-finger drag gesture. So you can work your way to the bottom of a misaligned buffer window, albeit not comfortably.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1355&start=0#p8231
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Possible I7 bug (?) defining multiple connections at onc
User: Luci / DateTime: 2010-08-28 00:16:28

[quote="zarf"]The Cellar winds up south of the *Pantry*. So it's obviously parsing it as something like "The Cellar is south. The Cellar is down from the Kitchen." The first half relies on a recently-mentioned room, and recently-mentioned stops being true across section headers.[/quote]

It's definitely this. Except in instances where it's being used to end a series of commas, 'and' should only be used to combine complete ideas:

[code]The Cellar is south of the Kitchen and down from the Kitchen.[/code] 

... is about the shortest way you can make the statement work. Everything after 'is' and 'and' should roughly echo each other in most assertions.

I actually don't believe this is [i]entirely[/i] a bug for reasons of making map connections like the following:

[code]The Kitchen is a room. The Cellar is down. The Pantry is north and south from the Kitchen.[/code]

... Not to say that my example really makes sense, but it demonstrates that the option makes 'redirected' pathways a bit simpler to design.



Edited to correct an error in the second code example. Twice.  [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=20#p8232
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-08-28 01:19:22

[quote="bowsmand"]Okay, I have a few bits to answer, here.  I promise I’ll try to keep up with the site better in the future to avoid these God-awfully long posts…[/quote]It's OK. We've one foot in the fiction world. We like to read.[quote][quote]Make postings here, or on the rec.arts group.[/quote]I really need to make checking intfiction more of a habit, admittedly.[/quote]I'm pretty sure RAIF is entering its twilight. I check it regularly still, but things with RSS feeds like here, Planet IF, IFDB, and Club Floyd are easier to attend to.
[quote]One goal of mine has been to encourage ADRIFT authors to release multi-platform friendly versions of their games.[/quote]Wouldn't it be easier for an author to go straight to the other platform to begin with? 

Rhetorical question.
[quote]As far as I can tell, there is one main reason that ADRIFT games aren’t more integrated into wider community comps. There is a perception amongst ‘DRIFTers that their games stand no chance in wider competitions and will only be bashed for, as Emily mentions, the limitations of the parser and interpreter incompatibilities.[/quote]This is reasonable, but then you say...[quote]Of course, if ‘DRIFTers never advance their work outside of what is too often ADRIFT’s gated community, they might never improve or even change their writing.[/quote]...which seems to blame Drifters for the tool's failure.  I mean, if just one or two Drifters were consistently bashed in the IFcomp, your statement holds weight. But when they all are, well, the only common thread there is the tool.  [i]There is nothing wrong with Adrift authors.[/i]  The worst one could say about them collectively is that they don't kick Campbell Wild in the knees for such a crappy parser.  Most likely, this is because they don't have a clear idea what a parser is or why it's bad.  They use a graphical tool so parser issues [i]are someone else's job.[/i]

This isn't just rhetoric on my part.  From the Adrift Manual:[quote="Adrift Manual v4.0"]An example would clarify this to make it easier to understand.  In the example above, you might have a command like: [code][get/take/pick up] {the} [{green} apple from] {the} {large} [box/crate][/code]You can see here, from the example commands above, the only one that would succeed is “get the apple from the box” [/quote]This part comes after the explanation of how to add synonyms and adjectives to the apple object, including adjectives like "an".  All of them were just thrown away by this example, and green was added regardless whether it was there earlier or not.  "From" is hard-coded; there is no "off of".  Is it so hard for Campbell to add a syntax for the apple object?  Is it so hard for Campbell to create a verb as an object so its synonyms need only be listed once?  Is[code]!take !apple [from/off of] !box[/code] so unimportant to him that his users are afraid to enter popular events?  

And Campbell charges money for that?  Really?  [i]Really?![/i]

[quote]There is currently no blog for ADRIFT that I know of, though I could ask Campbell Wild about it.[/quote]Don't need Campbell for a group blog.  The Adrift community should just create a Wordpress blog, attach to Planet IF, and post there semi-regularly.  Even if there are only twelve Drifters in the community, each person only needs to post there once a year to create mindshare in the IF community once a month.  Posts to their personal blogs can be copied & posted there as well, including "backissues" if relevant.
[quote]Online playability without an interpreter download is my own personal pipedream for ADRIFT, though I don’t think it’s headed in that direction.[/quote]We don't all use PDF files cause Adobe Reader costs money and isn't integrated into web browsers. 

Just sayin'.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=20#p8233
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2010-08-28 02:05:21

Looks like I'm a few quotes behind here.  Oh, dear.  Allow me to briefly catch up.
[quote]What is it that distinguishes the Gargoyle version from the regular one?[/quote]Mostly display issues.  For example, in the ADRIFT version, if you push the cannon around it displays the next room description, but the room description doesn't have the cannon in it.  So it has to manually print "The cannon is here, too," at the end of the room description.  In Gargoyle, that would be redundant because the cannon would already appear in the room description.  Also, whereas ADRIFT reports "You take X," Gargoyle reports "You pick up X."  As far as I can tell, it's just things like that.  They're basically all easy to fix using ADRIFT's ALR (text replacement), but a couple require remodeling tasks a bit-- not so much it creates a lot of work for an author, unless their game is really big, but enough to justify making two versions IMO.

[quote]I did find one bug in "Pirate's Plunder", though I don't know whether the interpreter is to blame[/quote]Pardon me for not addressing this earlier.  I checked it out and, personally, would blame the author for that one.  It appears the task is flagged as repeatable, when obviously it should not be.  I shall inform Tiberius... I know he is already planning a post-comp release.  I'm sure he'll be grateful for the help.

[quote]Perhaps ADRIFT authors need to communicate more clearly to players what sorts of commands the ADRIFT parser is likely to understand[/quote]I think this is true for IF in general, what with the outreach goal and all, and so it goes without saying that includes ADRIFT.  Indeed.

[quote][quote]Of course, if ‘DRIFTers never advance their work outside of what is too often ADRIFT’s gated community, they might never improve or even change their writing.[/quote]...which seems to blame Drifters for the tool's failure.[/quote]Believe me, it's not my intention to bash on 'DRIFTers, especially seeing as I am one.  But I meant only to refer to their writing as regards the craft of writing: making sweet narratives with grammatical polish and all.  I suppose it's impossible, in retrospect, to divorce that from game design when the medium is IF, though.  Still, more expansive criticism helps people improve their art and I stand by this point.

[quote]This part comes after the explanation of how to add synonyms and adjectives to the apple object, including adjectives like "an". All of them were just thrown away by this example, and green was added regardless whether it was there earlier or not.[/quote]All the bracketing and stuff (I believe the manual refers to it as "advanced construction" or some such) tends to create tasks that are too specific.  Personally, I prefer to use wildcards for things like "* get * apple *" (though getting is already understood without tasks, so maybe it's a bad example... if I wanted to do something with an apple being held, I'd create an event-task combo to check if the apple is held; I've released a module that 'DRIFTers can import to do things like this even if they don't already know how).  I realise being wildcard-heavy can lead to an overly keywordy sort of play, but 1) I think players would prefer to accidentally do something right than fail to hit on a syntax-too-specific, especially after trying several that "should have worked," and 2) I have a friend who cusses at the parser with every other word he types, without fail.  So I just imagine those asterisks being my censors... this livens up my design process a bit.

[quote]Don't need Campbell for a group blog. The Adrift community should just create a Wordpress blog, attach to Planet IF, and post there semi-regularly. Even if there are only twelve Drifters in the community, each person only needs to post there once a year to create mindshare in the IF community once a month. Posts to their personal blogs can be copied & posted there as well, including "backissues" if relevant.[/quote]Prompted by this thread, Campbell has made an RSS feed for the ADRIFT Adventures page, which is where new games and reviews are posted on the main site.  I don't know if he has them hooked up with Planet-IF, yet.

I have my own blog, too, but I don't think it's quite in the shape where anyone would be interested in reading it, at the moment.  Maybe I'll try to give it some TLC and get it associated with Planet-IF soon.  I just need to move across the country, first.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1353&start=0#p8234
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quick UI test for mobile devices?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-08-28 03:40:00

The two finger scroll was useful to know.

I'm not so sure about the non-zoomable thing. It means a lot of scrolling back and forth since the window is wider than the screen, regardless of the orientation of the screen. If it matched the screen in wide mode, I think I'd be happy with it. Now it's too narrow in both modes to be pleasant to use, and IMO too big in wide. It doesn't have to be readable from the other side of the room.

Best would of course be if it worked like Frotz and always adapted the width to the actual width of the screen (while keeping the size of the letters the same), but I don't know if that's possible in a browser?

Windows seem to be the right size, except immediately after turning the device. It fixes itself when a command is entered.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=20#p8236
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-08-28 10:47:45

[quote]
Risking the terrible wrath of the IF people, I must say that it's getting just a little tiresome to keep reading bad reviews of Adrift games where the parser is blamed.
Adrift and its parser problem has been around for at least 10 years now. I would think that we all know the limitations, and whether we like them or not, they're there.[/quote]

I'm torn on this.  On the one hand, the author has enough to be responsible for without the parser.  On the other hand, expecting the player to know the ins and outs of an engine well enough to decide what's engine specific is kind of dicey.  I have issues with Neverwinter Nights 2's engine, and they're the same issues in every game that uses it, and they may not precisely be the fault of the game designers/programmers, but that doesn't precisely make the play experience easier.  

I'm a relatively new player/writer, so perhaps I'm just not used to the limitations of the Adrift parser yet, but I'm not sure the *player* needs to apportion blame and/or praise properly.  Clearly it's unfair to expect something completely unusual in the genre, like a full OST and a facebook tie-in.  But it feels weird to be told that the fundamental interface shouldn't be critiqued, especially when it's stopped the game in its tracks.

On the other other hand, I don't want to write off an entire group of games along semi-arbitrary lines.  What to do?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=20#p8237
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-08-28 11:09:56

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]We don't all use PDF files cause Adobe Reader costs money and isn't integrated into web browsers.[/quote]

This is entirely OT, but I thought Adobe Reader was free, and I can read PDFs in my browser. Am I missing something obvious?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=30#p8238
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-08-28 12:21:40

[quote="gravel"][quote]
Risking the terrible wrath of the IF people, I must say that it's getting just a little tiresome to keep reading bad reviews of Adrift games where the parser is blamed.
Adrift and its parser problem has been around for at least 10 years now. I would think that we all know the limitations, and whether we like them or not, they're there.[/quote]

I'm torn on this.  On the one hand, the author has enough to be responsible for without the parser.  On the other hand, expecting the player to know the ins and outs of an engine well enough to decide what's engine specific is kind of dicey.  I have issues with Neverwinter Nights 2's engine, and they're the same issues in every game that uses it, and they may not precisely be the fault of the game designers/programmers, but that doesn't precisely make the play experience easier.  

I'm a relatively new player/writer, so perhaps I'm just not used to the limitations of the Adrift parser yet, but I'm not sure the *player* needs to apportion blame and/or praise properly.  Clearly it's unfair to expect something completely unusual in the genre, like a full OST and a facebook tie-in.  But it feels weird to be told that the fundamental interface shouldn't be critiqued, especially when it's stopped the game in its tracks.

On the other other hand, I don't want to write off an entire group of games along semi-arbitrary lines.  What to do?[/quote]

More on-topic, I think we have to review the games we're given to play. I'm also relatively new, but if something about a game interferes with my enjoyment I think it's only fair to mark it down for that. At least, the review can serve as a warning for other players who might not know what to expect. Also, it seems to me that some of the parser problems may be surmountable -- at least, in Yon Astounding Castle! I'm not encountering any terrible parser problem that I can think of -- and letting players know when there's a problem can encourage them to fix it. 

That said, IF players all have to make allowances for the parser one way or another, and if you've played enough ADRIFT games maybe you can learn your way around the holes in the parser. But I don't think ADRIFT authors can expect everyone else to accept flaws in their parser, when there are other games out there that don't have such flaws. To pick an analogy from point-and-click games, there are probably some engines in which the cursor doesn't change on a hotspot and some where it does, but I think it's legitimate to complain about pixel-hunting in the former games, because whether it's the engine or the author that makes you do it it's still f'in annoying.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1353&start=0#p8239
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quick UI test for mobile devices?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-28 12:48:32

Hm. I tested it on iPhone (original) and iPad, plus the simulators, and it *was* always the right window size. Maybe your browser had some size information cached? I've seen that happen in iOS Safari.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1358&start=0#p8240
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Games on "mainframes" outside the USA/UK/Sweden?
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2010-08-28 13:03:51

[i]Adventure[/i], the very first text adventure game, was on "mainframes", these huge computers which already existed before there were any home computers, but were rather in universities etc.

It seems that there were (relatively!) many people in the United States and UK who played it (or its imitations) on mainframes: among others, the founders of Infocom and of Level 9 and the authors of [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Acheton]Acheton[/url], and I've seen people on the R*IF newsgroups or in interviews who said they had played it at the time. I also know that there were also people from Sweden, who then authored [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ocrx4yc2l5znoqfs]Stuga[/url]. But I never heard of, for instance, French people who played it on mainframes -- neither in the current French IF community nor anywhere else...

So, I'm curious: do you know about people from anywhere else than the USA/UK/Sweden, especially from non-English-speaking countries, who played [i]Adventure[/i] on mainframes at the time? ([i]Were[/i] there even mainframe computers in these countries, and were there any games on them?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1353&start=0#p8241
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quick UI test for mobile devices?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-28 13:14:59

...try sample-demo2.html in the same directory. It's the same layout, but a different URL, so you might get a different result.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1353&start=10#p8242
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quick UI test for mobile devices?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-08-28 15:46:52

Yep, that fixed the width. (And changed the colours.) Height of status window is still wrong when turning until a new command is entered, but the way it is now, there seems to be no reason for turning it to widescreen anymore. It appears to be in a state where it could be used to play a game now. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1348&start=0#p8243
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: if using html tads images, need to export them separatel
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-08-29 04:19:34

You embed all resources (sounds, images) into the t3 file itself. You then only need to distribute that.

As for an exe, I think there might be a bug currently; not sure. Someone who uses Windows will probably know.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1348&start=0#p8244
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: if using html tads images, need to export them separatel
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-08-29 05:52:42

If you're using Workbench, add your images to the project as Resource files; that way the compiler will know to include them in the .t3/.exe. If you aren't using Workbench, you'll have to add them to the project file manually. I don't know what the syntax is off-hand; I'd have to look it up.

[quote="RealNC"]As for an exe, I think there might be a bug currently; not sure.[/quote]
There's a bug with sound files, but Mike released a patch for it. Details [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/msg/61a345cc81579842]here[/url]. It doesn't affect images, anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1359&start=0#p8245
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Documentation for built-in extensions
User: DrWorm / DateTime: 2010-08-29 09:30:43

I've been trying out some extensions lately. The downloadable extensions on the Inform 7 website have documentation on the website, but if similar documentation exists for built-in extensions (such as Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short), I can't find it. Is there documentation available for built-in extensions and, if there is, where can I find it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1359&start=0#p8246
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Documentation for built-in extensions
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-08-29 10:10:54

The documentation for installed extensions (including the built-ins) can be viewed in the application: go to the Documentation tab, to the main contents page; scroll to the bottom and click Installed Extensions; then select the extension you want to view.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1284&start=0#p8247
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Announce] Glimmr
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-08-29 13:34:30

I've posted a tutorial on building a dynamic map with the Basic Floorplan Toolkit that ships with Glimmr. You can find it at the Glimmr blog: <a class="postlink" href="http://glimmr.wordpress.com">http://glimmr.wordpress.com</a>. The tutorial is intended for folks who have read very little (none) of the Glimmr docs, and should be good for anyone hoping to use Glimmr's GUI graphics editor as a first approach to the system.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1360&start=0#p8248
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Beyond Zork, Tandy, and colors
User: cas / DateTime: 2010-08-29 16:14:19

Does anybody know anything at all about Infocom's Tandy interpreter?  I discovered something rather interesting today when you tell Beyond Zork that you're running on a Tandy (interpreter number 11).  Try typing “color” at the prompt; for a few interpreters it cycles through 4 or 6 color schemes.  For the Tandy, it cycles through 518.  The interesting bit is the values passed to @set_colour.  It's called with values such as 43, 224, 67, 72, etc etc etc.  Lots of “illegal”, as far as the standard is concerned, color values.

This is, of course, not an especially pressing concern.  But I haven't been able to find any information at all on this and was hoping someone could shed a little light.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=30#p8249
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2010-08-30 02:44:10

[quote="gravel"]An ADRIFT-review blog might make interesting reading.[/quote]
As mentioned in another thread (and indeed this one), I have created an RSS feed for the ADRIFT reviews.  I've requested that these are added to Planet IF, altho I don't know how it normally take Christopher to respond.

[quote="bcressey"]The ADRIFT focus is off-putting since I have the feeling that the games don't work very well under Gargoyle / SCARE, or perhaps in general.[/quote]
Once I have made more progress with ADRIFT 5, it is my intention to look into creating multi-platform support for Runner.  My plan is to make use of the Mono project for this.

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]If a new version of ADRIFT is coming, it really needs to start getting the word out now.[/quote]
I haven't started spreading the word properly, as ADRIFT 5 is still in closed alpha testing.  I anticipate that it will move into an open Beta within the next couple of releases, at which point I will make information more widely available.

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]I presume there's an ADRIFT (I'm getting so tired of CAPITALIZED ACRONYMS) group blog that is/should be there?[/quote]
Acronyms are supposed to be capitalised.  I personally get tired of people dropping the capitalisation when it is supposed to be there. [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote="emshort"]This is the thing, though, for me: the ADRIFT parser is bad in ways that produce results I *don't* anticipate, and which actively throw me off when I'm playing. It routinely doesn't recognize sensible subsets of an item's name, for instance, so if I can't interact with an object, I have to try just noun, noun + adjective, etc. And that behavior is not consistent from one verb to the next, so if I've figured out what to call the object in one context, I have to figure it out anew in another. For that matter, the parser feedback is so vague that I can't always tell whether the problem is that the action is unrecognized, the noun is unrecognized, or the whole thing is recognized but has no interesting results defined. This has bitten me over and over again.
[/quote]
There is quite a lot of talk of the ADRIFT parser in this thread.  I recognised that it was fundamentally flawed back in 2005 when I first started development of ADRIFT 5 (has it really been that long?!).  I am confident that most of the issues you have with the parser will be resolved with the new version.

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]From the Adrift Manual:[quote="Adrift Manual v4.0"]An example would clarify this to make it easier to understand.  In the example above, you might have a command like: [code][get/take/pick up] {the} [{green} apple from] {the} {large} [box/crate][/code]You can see here, from the example commands above, the only one that would succeed is “get the apple from the box” [/quote]This part comes after the explanation of how to add synonyms and adjectives to the apple object, including adjectives like "an".  All of them were just thrown away by this example, and green was added regardless whether it was there earlier or not.  "From" is hard-coded; there is no "off of".  Is it so hard for Campbell to add a syntax for the apple object?  Is it so hard for Campbell to create a verb as an object so its synonyms need only be listed once?  Is[code]!take !apple [from/off of] !box[/code] so unimportant to him that his users are afraid to enter popular events?  
[/quote]
This is quite a similar approach to how tasks work with ADRIFT 5.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=30#p8250
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2010-08-30 05:30:52

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]If a new version of ADRIFT is coming, it really needs to start getting the word out now. I presume there's an ADRIFT group blog that is/should be there? Where's the posts for it going?[/quote]
Ok, I have created a blog for ADRIFT 5, so anyone who is interested can keep up to date.  [url]http://adrift5.blogspot.com/[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1354&start=0#p8251
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT Adventure Reviews RSS
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2010-08-30 05:33:42

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]EDIT: Oh, I guess you were adding it to Planet IF, of course. Sorry[/quote]

Yep, I sent a request to have this and the ADRIFT News RSS added, altho I don't know how long it normally takes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=30#p8252
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-08-30 07:24:36

Thought about making the runner open source? You could still keep the compiler closed source/for $.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=30#p8253
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2010-08-30 07:29:13

[quote="Dannii"]Thought about making the runner open source? You could still keep the compiler closed source/for $.[/quote]

It has crossed my mind, yes.  If the Mono route doesn't work out then I think that's what I'll probably end up doing.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=30#p8254
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-08-30 15:47:36

[quote="Campbell"]Once I have made more progress with ADRIFT 5, it is my intention to look into creating multi-platform support for Runner.  My plan is to make use of the Mono project for this.[/quote] 
[emote]:)[/emote]

[quote="Campbell"]There is quite a lot of talk of the ADRIFT parser in this thread.  I recognised that it was fundamentally flawed back in 2005 when I first started development of ADRIFT 5 (has it really been that long?!).  I am confident that most of the issues you have with the parser will be resolved with the new version.[/quote]
[emote]:D[/emote]

(That's basically all I had to say.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1361&start=0#p8255
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Look in not the same as examine?
User: kalignos / DateTime: 2010-08-30 21:07:15

These are the lines that are messing me up:



A thing is usually undescribed.

Instead of examining an open container(called holder):
	say "Inside [the holder] you see [the list of things in the holder].".


I wanted to make it so that it didn't show all of the stuff in the room in the description so I did the undescribed thing.  Then I wanted it to show stuff when you examined an open container, so I put in the second part from above.

BUT, you can "examine" and it works fine, you can "look at" and it works fine, but if you "look in" you get the container is empty.  Why?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1361&start=0#p8256
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Look in not the same as examine?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-08-30 21:14:51

Looking inside a container is implemented as the searching action. From the Index entry:

[quote]Searching something (requires light) (past tense searched)
Searching looks at the contents of an open or transparent container, or at the items on top of a supporter. These are often mentioned in room descriptions already, and then the action is unnecessary, but that wouldn't be true for something like a kitchen cupboard which is scenery - mentioned in passing in a room description, but not made a fuss of. Searching such a cupboard would then, by listing its contents, give the player more information than the ordinary room description shows.

The usual check rules restrict searching to containers and supporters: so the Standard Rules do not allow the searching of people, for instance. But it is easy to add instead rules ('Instead of searching Dr Watson: ...') or even a new carry out rule ('Check searching someone (called the suspect): ...') to extend the way searching normally works.

Typed commands leading to this action

"look inside/in/into/through [something]"
"search [something]"[/quote]

A better way to handle what you're trying to do might be to redirect examining to the searching action, e.g.

Instead of examining an open container (called the holder):
      try searching the holder instead.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1361&start=0#p8257
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Look in not the same as examine?
User: kalignos / DateTime: 2010-08-30 21:36:35

Right idea, but backwards.  The examining works.  The searching is where it reads everything as empty because everything is undescribed.  It fixed my issue. Thank you.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1362&start=0#p8258
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: N00b having problems.
User: Bristol_Palin / DateTime: 2010-08-31 05:41:28

This is the first story I ever wrote.
I want a character to react to being asked something by the player by taking a key she stores in her jacket, unlocking the door to her house, and entering it and shutting the door. Well, that's easier said than done. So far I've tried to get her to unlock the door, so the player can enter the room, just to test it. Because that isn't even working so far, I'm not even bothering with I'll copypaste what's relevant.

There's two rooms:

[code]The heavy grey painted door is a door. The heavy grey painted door is east of the hallway of my apartment and west of the house of the neighbor. The description of the door is "This is the grey painted door of my neighbor." 
The Heavy grey painted door is lockable and locked. The key of the grey painted door unlocks the heavy grey painted door.[/code]

Then I create the woman and her clothes and her key:

[code]In the hallway of my apartment is a woman called the old lady that lives next to you. The dark green skirt is worn by the old lady that lives next to you. The grey shirt is worn by the old lady that lives next to you. The old fashioned grey jacket is worn by the old lady that lives next to you. A container called the left pocket is part of the old fashioned grey jacket. The left pocket is openable. The left pocket is closed. The key of the grey painted door is inside the left pocket. The description of the old lady that lives next to you is "'This is the old lady who lives next to me. She has gray hair and wrinkled skin. I could ask her for help. I probably should.' You can ask her about a subject by typing: ask about 'subject'." [/code]

Then I have a bunch of code about what should happen when the player asks this old lady about the salon:
[code]
After asking the old lady that lives next to you about "salon", 
	say "You ask her about the hair salon. blablablablabla".
After asking the old lady that lives next to you about "salon", 
	try The old lady that lives next to you trying opening The left pocket.
After asking the old lady that lives next to you about "salon", 
	try The old lady that lives next to you trying taking The key of the grey painted door.
After asking the old lady that lives next to you about "salon", 
	try The old lady that lives next to you trying unlocking The grey painted door with The key of the grey painted door.
[/code]
Well, guess what, when i type "ask old lady about salon" I do get "You ask her about the hair salon. blablablablabla". However, the door is not unlocked, because I can't open it. She doesn't even open her left pocket, which I tested by opening her pocket after talking to her. What am I doing wrong? She does say something. Could anyone explain what I'm doing wrong?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1362&start=0#p8259
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: N00b having problems.
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-08-31 05:54:22

[quote="Bristol_Palin"]Then I have a bunch of code about what should happen when the player asks this old lady about the salon:

[code]
After asking the old lady that lives next to you about "salon", 
	say "You ask her about the hair salon. blablablablabla".
After asking the old lady that lives next to you about "salon", 
	try The old lady that lives next to you trying opening The left pocket.
After asking the old lady that lives next to you about "salon", 
	try The old lady that lives next to you trying taking The key of the grey painted door.
After asking the old lady that lives next to you about "salon", 
	try The old lady that lives next to you trying unlocking The grey painted door with The key of the grey painted door.
[/code]
Well, guess what, when i type "ask old lady about salon" I do get "You ask her about the hair salon. blablablablabla". However, the door is not unlocked, because I can't open it. She doesn't even open her left pocket, which I tested by opening her pocket after talking to her. What am I doing wrong? She does say something. Could anyone explain what I'm doing wrong?[/quote]

What you've done is set up four separate rules, only one of which will trigger. Inform looks for an After rule, finds the first most specific one the applies, and (since it's an after rule) ends the action after that rule fires. Since the first rule takes care of all the actions, the other three rules are never used at all. 

You want a single rule that does all this. That's done on the following form:

[code]
After asking the old lady that lives next to you about "salon", 
	say "You ask her about the hair salon. blablablablabla";
	try The old lady that lives next to you trying opening The left pocket;
	try The old lady that lives next to you trying taking The key of the grey painted door;
	try The old lady that lives next to you trying unlocking The grey painted door with The key of the grey painted door.[/code]

[url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1332&start=10]Juhana's post[/url] not too long ago illustrates how rules interact, which could be useful to know.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1362&start=0#p8260
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: N00b having problems.
User: Bristol_Palin / DateTime: 2010-08-31 06:11:54

Thanks for the quick answer.
I've replaced this:

[code]After asking the old lady that lives next to you about "salon", 
	say "You ask her about the hair salon. 'Good morning Mrs. Parker.' You say. 'I want to visit a hair salon called 'So Fabulous, but I don't know the adress.' 'So Fabulous? Oh I often go there. The adress is Pearl Street 15, it's easy to find, but it's quite a ride from here. But what's a young lad like you got to do there?' 
	The question makes you a little nervous, and you notice that your neighbor can tell that you're getting nervous. 'I'm picking up a girl who works in the salon to go on a date.' 'Oh a date, how lovely, which of the girls are you dating?' Your neighbor asks delighted.'Sally' You answer, picking the first female name that entered your head. 'Sally eh?' The woman answers. 'Isn't she a little old for you? Besides, does she really still work at the salon? I thought she quit ages ago.' 
	You're getting increasingly nervous before you manage to utter 'It's nice talking to you Mrs. Parker, but I really have to go now.' That's not a lie. You should really get going now, and take a cab. 'Ok Steven, now you two have fun, and don't do anything stupid dear!' The woman says to you as she walks to the door of her apartment. You can't help but feel that she treats you as her teenage son. You don't like it.".
After asking the old lady that lives next to you about "salon", 
	try The old lady that lives next to you opening The left pocket.
After asking the old lady that lives next to you about "salon", 
	try The old lady that lives next to you tr taking The key of the grey painted door.
After asking the old lady that lives next to you about "salon", 
	try The old lady that lives next to you trying unlocking The grey painted door with The key of the grey painted door.[/code]
With this:

[code]After asking the old lady that lives next to you about "salon",
   say "blabla";
   try The old lady that lives next to you trying opening The left pocket;
   try The old lady that lives next to you trying taking The key of the grey painted door;
   try The old lady that lives next to you trying unlocking The grey painted door with The key of the grey painted door.[/code]
But now inform gives the following errors:
[quote]Problem. You wrote 'After asking the old lady that lives next to you about "salon", say "blablabla"'  : but I can't find a verb that I know how to deal with, so can't do anything with this sentence. It looks as if it might be a rule definition, but if so then it is lacking the necessary colon (or comma). The punctuation style for rules is 'Rule conditions: do this; do that; do some more.' Perhaps you used a full stop instead of the colon?

 See the manual: 18.3 > New rules
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem. You wrote 'try The old lady that lives next to you trying opening The left pocket'  : but I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with, so I am ignoring this sentence altogether.

 See the manual: 2.17 > Review of Chapter 2: The Source Text

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem. You wrote 'try The old lady that lives next to you trying taking The key of the grey painted door'  : again, I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem. You wrote 'try The old lady that lives next to you trying unlocking The grey painted door with The key of the grey painted door'  : again, I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with.
[/quote]
I've seen these errors before, and thus I made the four separate rules, because that made the errors disappear, but Inform only carries out the first. However, I don't understand this error or how to fix it. Inform says it can't find a verb. The verbs are there though. Opening the pocket, taking the key, and unlocking the door. What do I do to get rid of the errors?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1362&start=0#p8261
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: N00b having problems.
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-08-31 06:28:36

No problem, I'm happy to help. If I was of any help, heh.

I think you're taking too large steps between checking. Consider this as me speaking with my programmer hat on, but generally, you want to keep things simple. As soon as you make a change, test it to see that it doesn't break the program. Don't add things and actions you don't need. Always test, test, test. Do you need the pocket for the key, is it relevant for the world model? Or can you simply describe the key as being held by the lady? And so on.

Naming a person "The old lady that lives next to you" in the code strikes me as a bit hard to follow. It could be a source of bugs, particularly since I'd wager "you" already represents something. This can be worked around by referencing the printed name of the person. The same danger arises when you have names like "the key of the painted green door." It's hard to tell, without looking at the rest of the code, what Inform will make of it, but I'd not be surprised if it's checking for "the painted green door" and trying some kind of relation.

I think you'll gain a lot by simplifying everything to the basics of what you want to see happening in the game, instead of trying to script the details of every motion. For instance, a made-up example from a recent movie: 

[code]
   now Anakin readies his lightsaber;
   say "'You will [italic type]try[roman type]...'";
   now Anakin ignites his lightsaber;
   now Anakin bends his knees;
   now Anakin straightens his knees;
   carry out the Force Jump activity with Anakin;
   carry out the Landing activity with Anakin and Obi-Wan;
   carry out the Lightsaber Cut activity with Anakin and Obi-Wan;
   [...repeat until driven into exhausted coma.]
[/code]

I'd argue that this is a case of overthinking it. You don't need to model everything, especially not cause-and-effect relationships the player won't be able to notice. When you write the code itself, and its objects, you're really describing properties (i.e. how things [i]act[/i], not what they're actually supposed to be seen as in the game). A lot of how these things are [i]perceived[/i] is just going to be inferred. Creating objects and assigning them special characteristics means you choose to make them significant in some way. Otherwise, you may want to show it happening in the description text itself.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=30#p8262
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-08-31 06:39:12

[quote="matt w"][quote="Ron Newcomb"]We don't all use PDF files cause Adobe Reader costs money and isn't integrated into web browsers.[/quote]

This is entirely OT, but I thought Adobe Reader was free, and I can read PDFs in my browser. Am I missing something obvious?[/quote]

It's a proprietary format I believe. Ron may also talk about crating one's own PDFs, the utility of which is reduced if you don't buy fairly expensive Adobe software.

As for readers, a decent in-browser alternative (and substantially faster) is [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KPDF]KPDF[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1344&start=0#p8263
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hint system?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-08-31 06:55:15

[quote="Finn Rosenløv"][quote]To me, the best case scenario is when a player send me an e-mail and ask for help. (But I agree that a built-in hint system is generally a good thing, and I will probably put one in my next game.)[/quote]

I totally agree with you, but often players want to be able to solve their problem right away, and not wait for the author to get back to them...
I remember in the old days (Yes, I [u]am[/u] that old) when the computer magazines had a help section. You had to write your question and then hope to heaven that your problem was answered in the next issue... (We're talking the 80's here  [emote];)[/emote] )[/quote]

Hah! Yeah. I remember those, too. For Amiga owners in Denmark and Norway (I think), it got particularly obnoxious because the only published magazine as I can recall was a Swedish one. That, coupled with the abject pleading commonly adopted when you posted, well, that was a sight to see. "Please help me, Läsarlotsen! You're my only hope at beating Xanthar!" [emote]:P[/emote]

As for hint systems, I greatly admire the ones that path-find solutions (so that the game itself, in a way, can fluidly keep track of clues and their relationship in the game world). I realize it's not a universal solution, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1363&start=0#p8264
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Quixe transcripts
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-08-31 07:00:42

It appears the transcript function in Quixe works, but is saving to DOM storage.  Is this correct?  Is there a good way to pull a full transcript out of storage so it can be sent via email?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1362&start=0#p8265
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: N00b having problems.
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-08-31 07:02:44

[quote="Bristol_Palin"][code]After asking the old lady that lives next to you about "salon",
   say "blabla";
   try The old lady that lives next to you trying opening The left pocket;
   try The old lady that lives next to you trying taking The key of the grey painted door;
   try The old lady that lives next to you trying unlocking The grey painted door with The key of the grey painted door.[/code][/quote]
The problem with this code is that you've put a comma after the title of the rule ("After asking the old lady that lives next to you about "salon"") instead of a colon. As you discovered, you can only use a comma there when the rule has a single instruction; any more, and you need to use a colon instead. You'll probably find it's easiest to use a colon for all rules, in case you want to add an instruction later.

I haven't tested it, but this code should compile:
[code]After asking the old lady that lives next to you about "salon":
   say "blabla";
   try The old lady that lives next to you trying opening The left pocket;
   try The old lady that lives next to you trying taking The key of the grey painted door;
   try The old lady that lives next to you trying unlocking The grey painted door with The key of the grey painted door.[/code]

Eleas gives good advice, though. Unless there's a possible situation where the old lady won't be able to unlock the door (she lost the key, or the lock is jammed, or whatever), you can probably just unlock the door directly, like so:
[code]After asking the old lady that lives next to you about "salon":
   say "blabla";
   now the grey painted door is unlocked.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1362&start=0#p8266
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: N00b having problems.
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-08-31 07:10:21

[quote="Emerald"]
The problem with this code is that you've put a comma after the title of the rule ("After asking the old lady that lives next to you about "salon"") instead of a colon. [/quote]

Gah, I didn't even catch that! Knew I should have tried compiling any advice I gave. Well spotted, sir/ma'am.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=30#p8267
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2010-08-31 09:01:48

PDF is actually an open format, standardised as ISO 32000.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1362&start=0#p8268
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: N00b having problems.
User: Bristol_Palin / DateTime: 2010-08-31 09:04:57

Thanks guys. I've replaced the comma with a colon. I've also followed Eleas advice of simplifying the names because they could confuse inform. "The old lady who lives next to me" is now simply called "the old lady" throughout the code. the grey door is now simply called "the grey door" and it's unlocked by "the grey key".

This is what I tried first:

[code]In the hallway of my apartment is a woman called the old lady. The dark green skirt is worn by the old lady that lives next to you. The grey shirt is worn by the old lady that lives next to you. The old fashioned grey jacket is worn by the old lady that lives next to you. A container called the left pocket is part of the old fashioned grey jacket. The left pocket is openable. The left pocket is closed. The grey key is inside the left pocket. The description of the old lady is "'This is the old lady who lives next to me. She has gray hair and wrinkled skin. I could ask her for help. I probably should.' You can ask her about a subject by typing: ask about 'subject'."

After asking the old lady about "salon":
   say "blabla";
   try The old lady trying opening the left pocket;
   try The old lady trying taking the grey key;
   try The old lady trying unlocking The grey door with the grey key.
[/code]
This won't work, the old lady refuses to do anything. However, I've also tried this:

[code]After asking the old lady about "salon":
   say "blabla";
   now the grey door is unlocked.[/code]
This does work, because when I use this, I can open the door as the player, so it does get unlocked.
I then turned it into:
[code]After asking old lady about "salon":
   say "blabla";
   now the grey door is unlocked;
   try old lady going east.[/code]
This worked:
[code]
hallway of my apartment
You can see a grey door, a green door and the old lady here.
>ask old lady about salon
blabla
The old lady goes east.[/code]
This is the first time I've managed to make a character successfully try something, so I was happy I finally got it to work.
She leaves the door open (I tested it by trying to open the door myself as the player):

[code]>open grey door
That's already open.[/code]
I made the full code of the segment:

[code]After asking old lady about "salon":
   say "blabla";
   now the grey door is unlocked;
   try old lady going east;
   now the grey door is closed;
   now the grey door is locked.[/code]
And tested it:
[code]>ask old lady about salon
blabla
The old lady goes east.

>open grey door
It seems to be locked.[/code]
Thus the old lady stops bothering the poor player, and the player can't chase after her into her room in the apartment either. I've finally gotten rid of her. [emote]:lol:[/emote]  Thanks guys, you helped me solve this problem that I couldn't get figured out.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1362&start=0#p8269
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: N00b having problems.
User: Luci / DateTime: 2010-08-31 09:54:07

If you were really set on the old lady being named 'the old lady that lives next to you' during gameplay, you could always add the following stand-alone line into your program:

[code]The printed name of the old lady is "the old lady that lives next to you".[/code]

This way you could leave the code as is, while still using the phrasing you had originally intended during in-game events.  [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1363&start=0#p8270
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe transcripts
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-08-31 10:12:41

No good way. Sorry! 

The bad way involves typing "localStorage['content:transcript::foo']" in a Javascript debugging console (Firebug on Firefox, or Safari's built-in error console). Replace "foo" with the transcript name that you entered when you saved it. The interpreter will dump out a string that looks like "[83,116,97,114,116,32,...]" -- a bracketed list of character codes. You can write a script to decode that, or do this in Javascript:

  String.fromCharCode.apply(this, eval(localStorage['content:transcript::foo']))

The dialog library would be much improved if there were a way to browse "files", display the text ones, and delete files (or groups of files) to recover "disk space". Anybody feel like writing it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1362&start=0#p8271
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: N00b having problems.
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-08-31 10:40:14

In general, it's not necessary to have an NPC actually carry out a string of actions like this. You can simply change the state of the game yourself, by executive order as it were, and then TELL the player that the NPC did a bunch of stuff.

Something like this (untested):

[code]Instead of asking the old lady about "salon":
    say "The old lady unlocks the door, goes inside, and slams the door.";
    now the old lady is in the entry hall.[/code]

--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1352&start=0#p8272
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Complicated holdall
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-31 10:40:29

That looks great! Is there an official place for feature requests?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1364&start=0#p8273
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Bugs in the behavior of the player's holdall?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-31 11:11:34

I've identified two possible bugs (or at least undesirable features) in the behavior of the player's holdall:

[code]The Cargo Hold is a room.

The ordinary sack is a player's holdall in the Cargo Hold.

A bauble, a bubble, a kaboodle and a fish are in the Cargo Hold.

The carrying capacity of the player is 2.

test me with "take sack and bauble and bubble/take all"[/code]

Transcript spoilered to save space:
[spoiler]Welcome
An Interactive Fiction
Release 1 / Serial number 100831 / Inform 7 build 6E72 (I6/v6.31 lib 6/12N) SD

Cargo Hold
You can see an ordinary sack (empty), a bauble, a bubble, a kaboodle and a fish here.

>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] take sack and bauble and bubble
ordinary sack: Taken.
bauble: Taken.
bubble: (putting the bauble into nothing to make room)
Taken.

>[2] take all
kaboodle: (putting the bubble into the ordinary sack to make room)
Taken.
fish: (putting the kaboodle into the ordinary sack to make room)
Taken.
bauble: (putting the fish into the ordinary sack to make room)
Taken.[/spoiler]

On the first turn, the holdall is mistakenly referred to as "nothing," although by the second turn it is correctly identified as "the ordinary sack."

I'm guessing the difference is that the sack is not held by the player at the beginning of the first turn, but that's not enough to repeat the error later in the playthrough. So it's something to do with the first time the sack is taken?

Secondly, "all" should not normally refer to anything carried by the player, whether directly or indirectly - should it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1352&start=0#p8274
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Complicated holdall
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-08-31 12:14:03

[quote="capmikee"]That looks great! Is there an official place for feature requests?[/quote]
<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/">http://inform7.uservoice.com/</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1365&start=0#p8275
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Partitioning a room
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-08-31 12:20:31

Hey all. I'm attempting the sectioning off of a room into multiple areas, similar to what zarf used in Shade. The problem is, I feel as if I'm failing to see the forest for all the trees. It is as if I'm overlooking obvious solutions.

Hopefully, the code below illustrates things. How can it be improved, and are there any bugs I have missed?


[code]
Rule for printing the name of a room: say "[printed name in title case]" instead.

An area is a kind of thing.

the window is an area.
the middle of the room is an area.
the wall is an area.
the doorway is an area.

Placement relates various things to one area. The verb to be situated in implies the placement relation. The verb to grant (it grants, she is granting) implies the reversed placement relation.

[a kludge, yes. "It grants" not expressive at all, but I was at a loss as to what else to call it.]


The tacky sofa and the cushy chair are enterable containers.
The hardwood table and the windowsill are enterable supporters.
The bookcase is a container.

The sofa, the chair and the table are situated in the middle of the room.
The bookcase is situated in the wall.
The windowsill is situated in the window.
The player is situated in the doorway.


Before doing something when the action requires a touchable noun:
	consider the implicitly pass through other barriers rule;
	let M be a random area granting the noun;
	let N be a random area granting the actor;
	if M is not N:
		now the actor is not situated in an area;
		now the actor is situated in M;
		say "You cross over to [the M].".


The lounge is a room.

The sofa, the chair, the table, the bookcase and the windowsill are in the lounge.[/code]


Any takers? *hopeful smile*

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1366&start=0#p8276
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Keeping track of success and failure
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-31 12:34:40

I can't seem to find any documentation that will tell me how to determine if an action succeeded. I'd like to do something like this:

[code]The factory is a room.

The getting things done rule is listed instead of the advance time rule in the turn sequence rules.

This is the getting things done rule:
	If the action succeeded, increment the turn count.
[/code]
But this does not compile. Is there a phrase that means "the action succeeded" (or failed?)

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1365&start=0#p8277
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Partitioning a room
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-31 12:52:35

Why not use "situates" instead of "grants?"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1365&start=0#p8278
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Partitioning a room
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-08-31 13:08:16

[quote="capmikee"]Why not use "situates" instead of "grants?"[/quote]

Dropped me brain, is why. [emote]:P[/emote] But yes, that's a good suggestion. "Situates" makes it far more symmetric.

I think my main problem is deciding on where to take this. For instance, is it more logical to make the areas actual objects within the room as opposed to leaving them vague? What about slowdown? There's going to be a lot of relations floating about, after all.

Also, I'm wondering what else would be needed in terms of functionality. I.e. picking something up, moving somewhere else, then dropping the item.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1367&start=0#p8279
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Record/Check Room Navigation Path
User: carsonb / DateTime: 2010-08-31 13:15:30

Hi everyone.

I'm trying to create a game that requires the player to navigate a grid of rooms in the correct path (e.g.: north, north, east, south, east). Creating the rooms and their connections is the easy part, but now I am at a loss on how to record or verify the path the player takes through the rooms.

Does anyone have any ideas on how this could be done in Inform 7? Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1367&start=0#p8280
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Record/Check Room Navigation Path
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-08-31 13:23:29

[quote="carsonb"]Hi everyone.

I'm trying to create a game that requires the player to navigate a grid of rooms in the correct path (e.g.: north, north, east, south, east). Creating the rooms and their connections is the easy part, but now I am at a loss on how to record or verify the path the player takes through the rooms.

Does anyone have any ideas on how this could be done in Inform 7? Thanks![/quote]

Hi!

There are a number of ways of doing this. Do you want to store the entire path, force the exact path the player takes (without deviations), or simply that the player has reached the end of the path?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1365&start=0#p8281
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Partitioning a room
User: Luci / DateTime: 2010-08-31 13:24:55

I think the only thing I would maybe add is something to define any enclosed object as being in the same area as the container/supporter/person in question rather than placing each enclosed object individually in an area, even if just for the sake of word economy. 

However, when I did add this line:

[code]The book is in the bookcase. It is situated in the wall.[/code]

... it produced the following result:

[quote]> >get book
   Lounge                                                    0/2
  (getting into the bookcase)
  
  You cross over to the wall.
  
  That's not something you can enter.
  
  Taken.[/quote]

When I comment out all the placement rules, this issue doesn't happen... so I'm not sure I can help that much with it right now, but I figured I could point it out.  [emote]:)[/emote] 

Also, you might want to make sure that carried items move between areas along with the player. I added the following:

[code]The backpack is a container in the Lounge. It is situated in the wall. The book is in the backpack. It is situated in the wall. 
[/code]

... which produced:

[quote]> >get backpack
   Lounge                                                    0/2
  You cross over to the wall.
  
  Taken.
  
> >sit in chair
   Lounge                                                    0/3
  You cross over to the middle of the room.
  
  You get into the cushy chair.
  
> >get book
   Lounge                                                    0/4
  (getting out of the cushy chair)
  (getting out of the Lounge)
  But you aren't in anything at the moment.
  You cross over to the wall.
  
  Taken.[/quote]

It's probably pretty easy to fix that, as well. If I get more free time, I'll see if I can help at all ( assuming you don't already have it ironed out by then  [emote]:P[/emote]  ).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1367&start=0#p8282
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Record/Check Room Navigation Path
User: carsonb / DateTime: 2010-08-31 13:28:01

[quote="Eleas"]
Hi!

There are a number of ways of doing this. Do you want to store the entire path, force the exact path the player takes (without deviations), or simply that the player has reached the end of the path?[/quote]

Thanks for responding so quickly! I'd be happy with knowing if the player has taken the [i]exact[/i] path I've already decided on (hard coded into story). That is, the exact series of rooms from start of play to end of play.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1367&start=0#p8283
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Record/Check Room Navigation Path
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-08-31 13:45:04

[quote="carsonb"][quote="Eleas"]
Hi!

There are a number of ways of doing this. Do you want to store the entire path, force the exact path the player takes (without deviations), or simply that the player has reached the end of the path?[/quote]

Thanks for responding so quickly! I'd be happy with knowing if the player has taken the [i]exact[/i] path I've already decided on (hard coded into story). That is, the exact series of rooms from start of play to end of play.[/quote]

Not a problem, it's instructive for me as well. Anyway, I suspect you'll be wanting to review [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/ex174.html#e174]this example[/url], in which an exact path is stored in a list.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1367&start=0#p8284
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Record/Check Room Navigation Path
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-08-31 13:48:24

This seems to work, although you should be aware that any deviation is going to cause issues, and it doesn't reset, so you'll need tweakage.  There are a lot of ways of doing this, and this is probably the least sophisticated, so if you find you need more, there are other options.


[code]"The Path Not Taken" by Gravel

The Proper Path is a list of directions that varies.  The Proper Path is usually {north, north, east, east}.  [The exact path you want the player to follow.]
The Chosen Path is a list of directions that varies. [The exact path the player does follow.]

The Maze Entrance is a room.  
Twisty Maze is north of the Maze Entrance.
Turny Maze is north of Twisty Maze.
Topsy Maze is east of Turny Maze.
Turvy Maze is east of Topsy Maze.

After going:
	add the noun to the Chosen Path. [This will always be a direction, and will only trigger for successful travel - if you want to track where the player tries to go, this should be a before rule instead.]

Every turn: [Just basic testing demo]
	say "Your chosen path is [Chosen Path].";
	if Chosen Path is the Proper Path:
		end the game saying "You have chosen wisely.";
	
test me with "n / n / e / e".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=30#p8285
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-08-31 15:43:40

I think Ron's point was that we [i]do[/i] all use PDFs because Adobe Reader [i]is[/i] free and integrated with browsers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1365&start=0#p8286
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Partitioning a room
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-08-31 15:52:59

Thank you. That is hugely helpful, and illuminates a few snags I didn't consider. Specifically, that invoking the [i]implicitly pass through other barriers[/i] rule (which I found so handy earlier) seems to throw a spanner in the works. Not to mention the fact that said rule is now called [i]twice[/i] every time we try to physically touch something. [emote]:([/emote]

I do know now that I'll probably change the syntax to be "near" an area. Also, it may be smarter to change the area idea so that certain things can behave as landmark, and optionally.

If, for instance, the notion holds that 

[code]A thing can be a landmark. A thing is usually not a landmark.[/code]
then I'm figuring this'll allow me to declare certain things (whether they are in the room or not) to be one of these landmarks, and allow other items be defined by their proximity to said landmarks. Some landmarks might be abstract (such as "the middle of the room"), so it feels sensible to allow for landmark items that aren't present.

I only wish I could make heads or tails of the handling of implicit actions and the whole container/supporter business. Every time I try to wrap my mind around how I'd do this, I feel more stupid. If anyone here has any tips on where to start, I'd be indecently grateful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1367&start=0#p8287
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Record/Check Room Navigation Path
User: carsonb / DateTime: 2010-08-31 16:17:06

[quote="gravel"]This seems to work, although you should be aware that any deviation is going to cause issues, and it doesn't reset, so you'll need tweakage.  There are a lot of ways of doing this, and this is probably the least sophisticated, so if you find you need more, there are other options.[/quote]

That works for my needs [i]perfectly[/i]. Thanks gravel!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1368&start=0#p8288
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Dynamically accessing property stored values
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2010-08-31 16:25:54

I'm trying to dynamically change properties,
for instance i'd like to write

[i]a new object cloned from the man prototype with "George" as printed name and 72kg as weight[/i]

[code]
To decide what K is (O - value of kind K) with/and (V - L) as (P - value of kind L valued property):
	change the P of O to V;
	decide on O;
[/code]

but i get the following error upon calling this phrase from another part of the source code

[i]Problem. In the sentence 'change the P of O to V'  , I was expecting to read an object, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'P of O'.
I was trying to match one of these phrases:

1. change (p of o - object) to (v - property) 
2. change (p of o - text wrapper) to (v - indexed text) 
3. change (p of o - a [color=#FF0000]stored value[/color]) to (v - value) 
4. change (p of o - object) to (v - enumerated value) 
This was what I found out:

P of O = something unrecognised
V = a temporary named value, holding a text
[/i]


I tried to use

[i]To decide what K is (P - value of kind K valued property) property of (O - object):
	(- {O}.{P} -).[/i]

I can "showme" it but I can't change it as this phrase returns a value, not a reference.


Is there a way to dynamically process properties with i7 ?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1365&start=0#p8289
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Partitioning a room
User: Luci / DateTime: 2010-08-31 18:28:14

I'm not sure how helpful this will be, but one thing I've been using to let the player's situation change has been recurring scenes. As a bit of a alternate take on the Areas of your initial code, you could try to work with something like this:

[code]Mobility is a kind of value. The plural of mobility is mobilities. The mobilities are wandering, exploring, lounging, and observing. Every person has a mobility. A person is usually lounging.

The Middle Of The Room is a recurring scene. The Middle Of The Room ends when The Window begins. The Middle Of The Room ends when The Wall begins. The Middle Of The Room ends when The Doorway begins. The Middle Of The Room begins when the player is lounging.

The Window is a recurring scene. The Middle Of The Room begins when The Window ends. The Window begins when the player is observing.

The Wall is a recurring scene. The Middle Of The Room begins when The Wall ends. The Wall begins when the player is exploring.

The Doorway is a recurring scene. The Middle Of The room begins when The Doorway ends. The Doorway begins when the player is wandering.

The Doorway begins when play begins.

Before going a direction:
        now the player is wandering.[/code]

... and then just associate various searching and action verbs with the 'mobility' value, which will trigger any given scene to begin. I've used this to varying degrees of success lately, though mostly with a Silent-Hill-themed game I'm working on ... but the scenarios aren't that much different from what I can tell.

Edit: Also, the above is -really- useful if you want to make a special trigger between certain locations... for example: if you want to set an event ( a trap, maybe ) to occur between the window and the bookshelf; this makes it fairly easy to code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=30#p8290
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-08-31 19:18:10

[quote="Pacian"]I think Ron's point was that we [i]do[/i] all use PDFs because Adobe Reader [i]is[/i] free and integrated with browsers.[/quote]

Oh, I see how that parses now: "The reason we all use PDFs is not because Reader isn't free and isn't integrated with browsers." I was attaching the negation to "use" rather than "because."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1367&start=0#p8291
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Record/Check Room Navigation Path
User: Luci / DateTime: 2010-08-31 19:54:29

While not -exactly- what you asked for ( this template doesn't record the outcome so much as it works as a permission/obstruction system ), here's a variant using the classic Legend Of Zelda forest 'maze' as an example:

[code]The Graveyard Entrance is a room. The Forest is east. a room called Forest Clearing is east. The player is here. The Forest is north of the forest and west of the Forest.

The Forest has a number called the golden path. The golden path of the Forest is 1.

Before going a direction ( called the path chosen ) while in the Forest:
        Let N be the golden path of the Forest;
        if the path chosen is ( the correct direction in row N of the Table of Right Pathways ):
                increase the golden path of the Forest by 1;
                now the ( correct connection in row N of the Table of Right Pathways ) is mapped west of the Forest;
        otherwise:
                now the golden path of the Forest is 1;
        if N is 4:
                now the golden path of the Forest is 1.

Before going to the Forest when the location is the Graveyard Entrance:
        now the Forest is mapped west of the Forest;
        now the golden path of the Forest is 1.

Table 1.1 - Right Pathways
correct direction       correct connection
North                   Forest
West                    Forest
South                   Forest
West                    Graveyard Entrance[/code]

It's designed as shown mostly just to build a fake pathway that keeps reusing the same room repeatedly, but you could easily modify it to use multiple rooms, and you could put as many lines as you wanted in the table to make dozens of rooms line up in an exacting order.

( I'm sorry to have posted this long after it would be useful. I did have almost 90% of the code ready about 4 hours ago when life and stuff sort of got in the way. Here it is in any case. [emote]:P[/emote]  )

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1368&start=0#p8292
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dynamically accessing property stored values
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-08-31 19:56:28

There are I6 functions like WriteGProperty() and SetEitherOrProperty() that probably cover it.  Compile any non-trivial project of yours and search the I6 source for how they're used.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1366&start=0#p8293
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keeping track of success and failure
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-08-31 20:18:15

This is tricky for a couple of different reasons.

I may be forgetting something, but as far as I can determine there's no simple built-in way to tell whether an action failed or not. Part of this may be due to complications: what if one action triggered another, or multiple characters are performing actions, or the player combined several actions into one command like TAKE ALL?

One approach is to check what the value of the "reason the action failed" variable is. Try something like this:

[code]
Every turn: showme reason the action failed.
[/code]

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that there's a way to check whether the value of this variable indicates a failed action or not. If the action succeeds, it seems to be set to "procedural rulebook". I'm not sure why this is, exactly: the default value for rulebooks according to the Index panel should be the "little-used do nothing rule." At any rate, since procedural rules are not long for the tooth, something like this (which currently more or less* works) seems dangerous:

[code]
This is the getting things done rule:
	If reason the action failed is procedural rulebook, increment the turn count.
[/code]

* I say more or less because the issue of whether an action succeeded or failed is sometimes an unexpectedly gray area. The library rules that most actions which do nothing, like "jump" ("You jump on the spot, fruitlessly") are actually failures, even though the text seems to imply the player's intentions have been carried out. (Waiting, conversely, is counted as successful, even though it likewise does nothing.) Likewise, anything you create a custom successful behavior for with an "instead" rule will be marked as having failed, so something like this would not count as a success:

[code]
 Instead of touching the control panel:
     say "It lights up-- success!";
     now control panel is activated.
[/code]

One solution is to add "rule succeeds" to the end of any rules like this that appear.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1351&start=0#p8294
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Direct read/write to strings in modern I6?
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-08-31 20:23:06

I may have scared everyone off by mentioning XML. Forget I mentioned it. I was not here. I did not say this.

More simply: can someone point me to an example of a 6E72-compatible way of doing direct, character-by-character string manipulation on the I6 level?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1351&start=0#p8295
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Direct read/write to strings in modern I6?
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-08-31 20:50:46

The simplest way is to use indexed text, which already has a bunch of low-level functions defined in IndexedText.i6t. Something like this:
[code]To append (Y - indexed text) to (X - indexed text): (- IT_Append({-pointer-to:X}, {-pointer-to:Y}); -).

Include (-
[ IT_Append indt newt  i len1 len2;
	if ((indt == 0) || (BlkType(indt) ~= INDEXED_TEXT_TY)) return;
	if ((newt == 0) || (BlkType(newt) ~= INDEXED_TEXT_TY)) return;
	len1 = IT_CharacterLength(indt);
	len2 = IT_CharacterLength(newt);
	if (BlkValueSetExtent(indt, len1+len2+1) == false) {
		print "*** Can't extend indexed text block ***^";
		return;
	}
	for (i=0: i<len2: i++)
		BlkValueWrite(indt, len1+i, BlkValueRead(newt, i));
	BlkValueWrite(indt, len1+len2, 0);
]; -).[/code]

This will still slow down as the strings get long, though: indexed text is null-terminated, so IT_CharacterLength has to count the characters. But it should be faster than appending with "[foo][bar]", which has to allocate a new string and copy both old strings into it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1351&start=0#p8296
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Direct read/write to strings in modern I6?
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-08-31 21:00:15

A faster but more complicated way would be to build an unencoded (E0) Glulx string, possibly using the allocation functions from Dynamic Tables to obtain the memory.

Pros: if you use the first few bytes for a length counter, it'll be faster than having to count characters to find the length of the first string; you can still use "say" to print the string, since it will be a plain text value.

Cons: you have to do your own memory management.

A third way in this particular case might be to just print tags to the file as they're generated, instead of building up a giant string in memory.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1351&start=0#p8297
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Direct read/write to strings in modern I6?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-08-31 21:12:41

Is there any reason you can't just append the text to the end of the file directly, rather than passing through the text variable? This would bypass the need to keep the entire file in a single indexed text variable. If you need to get the text back out, you can use "text of the file of XML", so the current state of the file is always accessible as a indexed text if you need it.

If for some reason that doesn't work, could you use Eric Eve's Text Capture? That would let you just use say statements, e.g.:

[code]To open a tag called (tag - an indexed text):
      say "<[tag]>".
To close a tag called (tag - an indexed text):
      say "<[/tag]>".

To create the XML file:
     start capturing text;
     say "[XML file header]";
     open a tag called "XML";
     ....
     close a tag called "XML";
     stop capturing text;
     write the captured text to file of XML.[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1366&start=0#p8298
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keeping track of success and failure
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-08-31 22:47:31

Wow, that's much more complicated than I expected!

I had already thought of using "rule succeeds," although that might end up just as messy as manually advancing the time for each action.

Perhaps it would be better to wipe out the advance time rule completely and then add something like this:

[code]After time-consuming behavior:
    increment the turn count;
    continue the action.
[/code]

... and then define lots of actions as time-consuming behavior.

I guess that wouldn't work with Instead rules for "successful" actions at all, though...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1368&start=0#p8299
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dynamically accessing property stored values
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2010-09-01 03:20:09

Then, I'd probably have to treat normal values and block values separately as well as create a phrase for handling text to indexed text casting (or is it the opposite ?).


But unfortunately i have to write:

[i]pv = ConstantListPointers-->0; ConstantListPointers-->0 = BlkValueCreate(LIST_OF_TY,pv,KD5_list_of_numbers);[/i]

in the InitialHeapAllocation routine if I want to write

[i]      ! [5: change the test_list_of_numbers of x to { 3 , 4 }]
       BlkValueCopy(GProperty(OBJECT_TY, t_0,p33_test_list_of_numbers), ConstantListPointers-->0);[/i]


A quick look at the "To change..." phrase

[i]To change (S - storage) to (w - value) (deprecated)
(assignment operation) (documented at ph_change_dep): (- {-assignment}; -).[/i]

shows everything is handled by the assignment invocation label. Also I don't see how i could build a "storage" from a property and an object. I don't even see this type's description in Load-Core.i6t.
I only see a wall. A big high wall

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1365&start=0#p8300
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Partitioning a room
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-09-01 05:19:45

[quote="Luci"]I'm not sure how helpful this will be, but one thing I've been using to let the player's situation change has been recurring scenes. As a bit of a alternate take on the Areas of your initial code, you could try to work with something like this:[/quote]

That technique makes for a great way to transition between rooms, but otherwise it's not quite what I'm looking for. I'm looking at something that may need several rooms, and the functionality should ideally allow for expansion without the workload expanding at a geometric rate. While scenes are a great idea, I'm not sure how to use them for that purpose, nor how it would solve the in-room transitioning problem.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1365&start=0#p8301
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Partitioning a room
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-09-01 05:29:51

I myself would approach this from the other direction: don't subdivide a room into multiple "area" objects, but build a narrative room out of several code rooms. Then instead of the problem of figuring out how to prohibit access, you have the problem of putting things from adjacent areas in scope and automatically describing them; this is not completely trivial, but it is doable, and there are several examples in the Recipe Book under Place > Continuous Spaces and the Outdoors.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1365&start=0#p8302
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Partitioning a room
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-09-01 06:47:17

[quote="emshort"]I myself would approach this from the other direction: don't subdivide a room into multiple "area" objects, but build a narrative room out of several code rooms. Then instead of the problem of figuring out how to prohibit access, you have the problem of putting things from adjacent areas in scope and automatically describing them; this is not completely trivial, but it is doable, and there are several examples in the Recipe Book under Place > Continuous Spaces and the Outdoors.[/quote]

That sounds like an awesome idea. I do have to wonder, though, if this would work with the implicit actions I spoke of. The idea would be that any character trying to physically interact with an item in the room would implicitly approach it if necessary. Is this model a good way to handle such things?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1365&start=0#p8303
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Partitioning a room
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-09-01 07:42:46

[quote="Eleas"]That sounds like an awesome idea. I do have to wonder, though, if this would work with the implicit actions I spoke of. The idea would be that any character trying to physically interact with an item in the room would implicitly approach it if necessary. Is this model a good way to handle such things?[/quote]

That exact behavior is covered in some of the examples.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1368&start=0#p8304
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dynamically accessing property stored values
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-01 11:32:51

[quote="Phonatacid"]Then, I'd probably have to treat normal values and block values separately as well as create a phrase for handling text to indexed text casting?[/quote]
::nods solemnly::

I know nothing of the Dynamic extensions, but the 6Exx builds can distinguish between "word values" and "pointer values" which you'd use in the declaration of the To phrases, not unlike in your original post.  (Pointer value == block value, if that isn't already clear.)  So I'm pretty sure what you're after is do-able, if a bit obscure to figure out.  

Might make a nice little extension when you're done, though. If for no other reason than so others needn't figure it out later.  Plus, reading tricky extensions is a good way for anyone to learn the finer points of I7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1351&start=0#p8305
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Direct read/write to strings in modern I6?
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-09-01 12:10:38

Thanks guys-- Jesse's first method runs faster than what I was trying originally, but writing directly to the file is (surprisingly to me) much faster. I was expecting a turn with hundreds of hits to a file would be slow, but my complex test case finishes in less than a second (whereas the original method took over thirty). Jesse's IT_Append takes about five seconds.

I haven't yet tried implementing Jesse's unencoded string method, which I expect would be faster still-- but the direct file i/o seems to work for the sizes I'm dealing with.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1342&start=40#p8306
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 2010 Summer Comp
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-09-01 15:36:30

[quote="matt w"]Oh, I see how that parses now: "The reason we all use PDFs is not because Reader isn't free and isn't integrated with browsers." I was attaching the negation to "use" rather than "because."[/quote]
You were not alone in misreading it. I reacted the same way you did.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1365&start=10#p8307
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Partitioning a room
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-09-02 05:10:39

[quote="emshort"][quote="Eleas"]That sounds like an awesome idea. I do have to wonder, though, if this would work with the implicit actions I spoke of. The idea would be that any character trying to physically interact with an item in the room would implicitly approach it if necessary. Is this model a good way to handle such things?[/quote]

That exact behavior is covered in some of the examples.[/quote]

I tried the Rock Garden example. It is quite snazzy, but as far as I can tell, it requires the presence of the player for the connections to work. I need something that would work for any actor, even if the player is not present, and I'm given to understand other actors don't have a scope concept in quite the same way as the player.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1365&start=10#p8308
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Partitioning a room
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-09-02 09:16:29

Scope mostly works the same way for other people as for the player; the thing you need to watch out for is backdrops, which are single objects moved around the map so that the player can see them wherever he goes (and because they track the player, they intentionally *don't* track other characters -- otherwise the sun would be constantly winking out of the player's room in order to go attend the rooms where NPCs were).

In other respects, though, you can still use scope if you write the rules more generally, using "after deciding the scope of someone" for instance.

Here's a revised version of Rock Garden that allows for an NPC to play along:

[code]"Rock Garden"

Section 1 - General Rules

Intervisibility relates rooms to each other in groups. The verb to be connected with implies the intervisibility relation.

Definition: a room is inter-visible if it is connected with more than one room.

After deciding the scope of the someone (called the scoper) when the location of the scoper is an inter-visible room:
	repeat with other place running through rooms which are connected with the location of the scoper:
		unless the other place is the location of the scoper, place the other place in scope.

Rule for reaching inside a room (called target) which is connected with the location of the person reaching:
	let way be the best route from the location of the person reaching to the target;
	if the way is not a direction:
		if the person reaching is the player:
			say "You can't get over to [the target] from here.";
		deny access;
	if the person reaching is the player:
		say "(first heading [way])[command clarification break]";
	try the person reaching trying going way;
	if the person reaching is in the target, allow access;
	otherwise deny access.

After an actor looking when the location of the person asked is an inter-visible room:
	repeat with other place running through rooms which are connected with the location of the person asked:
		if the other place is not the location of the person asked:
			describe locale for other place.

Section 2 - The Scenario

Rock Garden West is west of Rock Garden East. Rock Garden East contains a rake. Rock Garden West contains a bench and a maple leaf. The bench is an enterable supporter.

Rock Garden West is connected with Rock Garden East.

Bob is a man in Rock Garden West. A persuasion rule: persuasion succeeds.

Report someone going:
	if the room gone from is connected with the location and the room gone to is the location:
		say "[The actor] comes over to you from [the room gone from]." instead;
	if the room gone from is the location and the room gone to is connected with the location:
		say "[The actor] heads off to [the room gone to], and is still visible from a distance." instead.

Test me with "get rake / drop rake / sit on bench / get rake / drop rake / bob, get rake / bob, sit on the bench".
[/code]

Aside from rewriting the scope rules, the only quirky bit is that the standard library does not expect you to be able to see both the starting and the ending locations when an NPC walks from one room to the next. So you need to add your own report rule (exemplified here) in order to make that look right.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1369&start=0#p8309
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Interactive Fiction and other videogames
User: jfm.lisaso / DateTime: 2010-09-02 10:13:43

Hello everybody. After a discussion with some friends (about if the usual interactive fiction player also plays other conventional video games commonly), I thought it would be interesting to make the following quick poll among yourselves. So, do you play other conventional video games in addition to interactive fiction?

Thank you in advance for your answers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1369&start=0#p8310
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction and other videogames
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-02 12:58:55

I used to play a lot of video games, but I eventually decided it was an addiction and it was cutting into the rest of my life.

Now I only play turn-based games, which I find easier to stop and start. In addition to IF, I play Lexulous on Facebook and occasionally Othello at iothello.net.

Two aspects of video games seemed to be especially damaging to my psyche: One was the fast pace of realtime games, which would get me wound up and was very hard to come down from. The other was the graphical display of information. I think I have a somewhat Aspergery way of processing visual information - it's hard for me to ignore details and it's hard to focus on the relevant parts of an image. I've always been bad at finding stuff, for example. I like linear things because I get distracted easily.

Now what else was I going to say? I got distracted...

Oh yeah. I used to be the maintainer for <a class="postlink" href="http://xarchon.seul.org/">http://xarchon.seul.org/</a>, a sadly languishing project. Archon was one of my favorite games ever. I've never quite understood why all the newer efforts to revive it have failed, but sometimes I think it's mainly the lack of double joysticks on PCs.

The other day I was thinking about the possibility of rebuilding XArchon for game consoles and maybe for mobile devices. Some discussion on the now dead Archon:Evolution website talked about how network lags had a much more serious effect on 2D battle play than they did in physics-based 3D shooters, and it would probably never be possible to play it over a WAN.

Looking at the site now, it looks like game consoles and mobile devices ARE working out for Archon...

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.itunes.com/app/archon">http://www.itunes.com/app/archon</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.archonclassic.com/">http://www.archonclassic.com/</a>

...and the 2D battleground appears to have been replaced by a physics-based 3D environment.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1369&start=0#p8311
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction and other videogames
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-09-02 14:31:06

About all I do is play video games. I get through two to three full-sized games a month -- anything from new releases to older classics. At present, I'm playing Alan Wake, Deus Ex: Invisible War, Super Mario Galaxy 2, and Star Ocean: Second Evolution.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1369&start=0#p8312
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction and other videogames
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-09-02 15:10:55

I enjoy a wide variety of other genres of video game.  I'm working my way through Starcraft 2 when I need downtime from coding IF, and have really enjoyed FPS titles (Left 4 Dead 2, Batman: Arkham Asylum) and RPG-style games (Dragon Age, Mass Effect) as well.  And Rock Band!  I try to stay away from MMO games, although I have a lot of friends playing WoW.  Now [i]that's[/i] an addiction!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1369&start=0#p8313
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction and other videogames
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-09-02 15:58:59

I mostly play adventure games (am currently enjoying the current season of Sam and Max) but have occasionally tried games in other genres. (They tend to be too difficult for me though.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1369&start=0#p8314
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction and other videogames
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-09-02 16:15:50

I think I don't see it as a natural divide between interactive fiction and other video games, honestly. Sure the presentation is different, but to me the difference between (say) Master of Orion 2 and Mount & Blade would be far more significant.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1352&start=0#p8315
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Complicated holdall
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-02 16:30:58

Uh oh, this situation is worse than I thought. Here's a new twist:

[spoiler][code]The Cargo Hold is a room.

The Spacinator is a device in the cargo hold.

A rocket engine, a cup of cold tea, a toy dinosaur, and a motorcycle helmet are in the cargo hold.

The carrying capacity of the player is 2.

A thing can be known or unknown. The inner space is unknown.

The inner space is a player's holdall. It is closed. Understand "hole" as the inner space. It is part of the spacinator.

The new use player's holdall rule is listed instead of the use player's holdall to avoid exceeding carrying capacity rule in the check taking rulebook.

[b][edit][/b]Oh dear. Pardon me. "You haven't got that" is the [i]standard[/i] library message for trying to drop something that you're not carrying, [i]whether or not you're carrying it indirectly[/i]. Sheesh!

I guess I will be rewriting the "can't drop what's not held" rule.

This is the new use player's holdall rule:
	if the number of things carried by the actor is at least the carrying capacity of the actor:
		if the actor encloses a known player's holdall (called the current working sack):
			let the transferred item be nothing;
			repeat with the possible item running through things carried by the actor:
				if the possible item is not lit and the possible item is not the current working sack and the possible item does not enclose the current working sack, let the transferred item be the possible item;
			if the transferred item is not nothing:
				issue library message taking action number 13 for the transferred item;
				silently try the actor trying inserting the transferred item into the current working sack;
				if the transferred item is not in the current working sack, stop the action;
               
Before inserting anything into the Spacinator, try inserting the noun into the inner space instead.

Before removing anything from the Spacinator, try removing the noun from the inner space instead.

Instead of switching on the spacinator:
   say "A hole, black as ink, opens up in the side of the Spacinator.";
   Now the inner space is open;
   Now the inner space is known.

Instead of switching off the spacinator:
   say "The hole on the side of the Spacinator shrinks down to a pinpoint and disappears.";
   Now the inner space is closed.

test me with "get spacinator/turn spacinator on/get engine/put engine in spacinator/drop engine"[/code][/spoiler]
This is essentially the same code, but I've changed the test to show this problem:
[quote]>[1] get spacinator
Taken.

>[2] turn spacinator on
A hole, black as ink, opens up in the side of the Spacinator.

>[3] get engine
Taken.

>[4] put engine in spacinator
You put the rocket engine into the inner space.

>[5] drop engine
You haven't got that.[/quote]
It appears that something that's inside a part of an object that the player carries doesn't count as something that the player has.

I haven't looked at the code for the check dropping rule yet, so I'm not sure where I'll be able to change the code...

Or perhaps I should go back to making the container the main object, and the device a part of it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1352&start=10#p8316
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Complicated holdall
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-02 16:40:15

Oh dear. Pardon me. "You haven't got that" is the [i]standard[/i] library response anytime you drop something you're not holding, [i]regardless[/i] of whether you're holding it indirectly.

I guess I'll be rewriting the "can't drop what's not held" rule.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1369&start=0#p8317
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction and other videogames
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-09-02 17:15:09

I play mainstream games on the PC, Wii and DS.  I also sometimes play Flash games, and I try to keep up-to-date with the Freeware games coming from the TIGSource and AGS crowds - but usually fail.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1369&start=0#p8318
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction and other videogames
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-09-02 17:51:12

I am seemingly physically incapable of playing real-time games.  The control schemes always freak me out (especially in 3D games), and I can never quite get the jumping-at-exactly-the-right-time that platformers require.  Seriously; I tried playing [i]Braid[/i] because I'd seen a few levels of it and was intrigued, and when it took me more than ten tries to pounce the first goomba-equivalent, I figured I'd never make it through the rest of the game, even if it [i]is[/i] technically impossible to lose.  I also find that playing games of any kind (including board games, card games, and games like Capture the Flag [with or without Stuff]) is usually more stressful than fun to me.  I like watching other people play, though, and I really enjoyed watching [i]Portal[/i] and [i]Super Paper Mario[/i] as well as [i]Braid[/i]; I also liked the visual style of [i]Team Fortress 2[/i] and [i]Bioshock[/i].  I did play [i]The Majesty of Colors[/i] all the way through, and I tend to play at least a few minutes of all of increpare's in-browser games, as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1369&start=0#p8319
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction and other videogames
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-09-02 18:51:20

I play Flash games, and the occasional free download -- only occasional for the most part because indie developers generally don't write for Macs. (Macs are so far off their radar that they don't even mention that the download on their page unzips to a .exe.) I'm pretty bad at platformers but through stubbornness I can often bull my way through, though I'm stuck on the last boss rush of Cave Story (medium ending). I like roguelikes (basically nethack and this thing called Legerdemain, which might be of general interest to the board because it's supposed to be a game with roguelike gameplay but also a story), but I wish they were shorter. Partly for that reason I play something called Magic Realm, which is actually a port of a boardgame I had as a kid -- it plays a lot like an RPG. 

I used to like to watch other people play, like tove, but the way my life is configured now I never do that anymore. The last videogame I spent money on was probably Yars' Revenge. (Well, I may have put some quarters in arcade machines since then.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1369&start=0#p8320
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction and other videogames
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-09-02 18:55:40

[quote="tove"]I tend to play at least a few minutes of all of increpare's in-browser games, as well.[/quote]

Did you play the one that crashes your browser? 

I'd recommend [url=http://armorgames.com/play/4850/small-worlds]Small Worlds[/url] to you -- it's a move-and-jump platformer, but you can't die, there isn't anything much that involves split-second timing (you might have to repeat some parts if you miss a jump, but that's it, and even with repeats it doesn't take very long), it's extremely short, I think it goes very well with your interest in architectural spaces, and it's amazing. No spoilers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1369&start=10#p8321
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction and other videogames
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-03 00:06:45

[quote="tove"]I am seemingly physically incapable of playing real-time games.  The control schemes always freak me out (especially in 3D games), and I can never quite get the jumping-at-exactly-the-right-time that platformers require.[/quote]
I was so hooked on those in the early 90s. I loved the iD games before they got into 3D - Commander Keen, Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure, the original 2D Duke Nukem. I wasn't super-great at those crazy jumps, but I never got so frustrated with them that I gave up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=0#p8322
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-09-03 00:22:54

Now that we know there's potentially interest in adding semantic code highlighting to the Inform 7 IDEs, it seems like some discussion is in order over how this would look and what exact functionality it would offer.

I started playing around with some ideas for how this might look and what exactly it would do, taking a subset (highlighting objects) of the initial idea:

[url]http://aaronareed.net/if/semantic-test.html[/url]

[b]Edit: Updated version here:[/b] [url]http://aaronareed.net/if/semantic-test2.html[/url]

(This all assumes that some sort of background compiling is taking place.)

Essentially, what's proposed here is:

-- Highlight all the words understood as a new object in an assertion sentence.
-- Highlight words understood as referring to a previously created object in a different, much more subtle color.
-- Highlight articles in assertion sentences when they're understood as meaningful.
-- Hover-over to reveal problem messages with misunderstood sentences, and full names of referenced objects.

Any feedback is welcome-- if other people want to take the other sections and run with them, or offer counter-proposals, that would be great too. Feel free to grab the styles off my page as a start.

Also, I should add that I don't know what's technically possible with the current infrastructure, or what the IDE maintainers are willing to add-- this is in no way a promise of future functionality, just a discussion over what sort of more specific proposal we might want to make to the Inform team.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=0#p8323
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-03 00:52:33

This looks great!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=0#p8324
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-09-03 00:58:19

I like the idea. My concern is that I wouldn't want it to look jumbled. Syntax coloring I like. Highlighting with a virtual Magic Marker I'm not so sure about. Maybe it would be best to have a button that would turn all this stuff on or off, so that the author could just write and not be distracted by a lot of graphic hoo-hah.

I like the idea of having the IDE perform a preliminary compilation pass (in the background, more or less continuously, like a spell-checker) to identify new objects, previously referenced objects, and so forth. I like the idea that a hovering tooltip might give you some useful information about a meaningful word (such as an object or variable name).

I'd like to see a command that would open a sort of search window that would list all of the places in the source text where a given object was mentioned. Then you could jump to any of those items by double-clicking.

Ultimately, I think syntax highlighting may not be the place where the primary development effort should go at present. I would tend to want to see a higher priority given to eradicating library bugs, improving the documentation, and creating some sort of namespaces for extensions. My personal view is that the latter efforts would pay bigger dividends for more authors. But I could be entirely wrong about that -- that's just an off-the-cuff thought.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1369&start=10#p8325
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction and other videogames
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-09-03 01:19:38

[quote="matt w"]Did you play the one that crashes your browser? [/quote]

I actually did, but I am in the habit of reading the comments first for his games (for exactly that sort of reason!) and had moved over to not-my-primary-browser for it.

[quote="matt w"]I'd recommend [url=http://armorgames.com/play/4850/small-worlds]Small Worlds[/url] to you[/quote]

Indeed -- I just played it ([i]and won[/i]) and loved it.  Easy/short enough for me (there were a couple of jumps I found frustrating, but not too bad), and that art was just wonderful.  Thanks for the recommendation!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1343&start=10#p8326
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Edges of the World
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2010-09-03 01:44:46

[quote="Hertz"]From the example of the highway —
BAD:  "It's too far to walk to the next town."
GOOD:  "It's many miles to the next town."
BETTER:  "You couldn't get to the next town in time to bring help.  You'd better concentrate on finding a solution here."[/quote]

SOMETIMES BETTER STILL: Check the design to see if the highway even needs to be mentioned. Sometimes, a little tweak to the writing can simply remove elements that draw attention to the artifice. Doesn't work for every game, but it would work for an awful lot of games out there that provide false apparent choices with neither game nor story payoff :/

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1296&start=10#p8327
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you do when you have more ideas than time?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2010-09-03 01:46:54

[quote="Hertz"]What do you do when you have a surplus of ideas? [/quote]

Every good professional writer I've ever worked with lives with this "problem." Most of us pretty-happily so ... it means you cherrypick the most worthy ones and lament your mortality [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=0#p8328
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-09-03 04:05:07

I like the idea!

Jim, this would probably be mainly on the IDE side, whereas the problem areas you identified are parts of the core/common I7. So different people would be working on different things. Now whether the IDE maintainers have the time or inclination to do this is another question...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=0#p8329
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-09-03 04:23:14

I'm not really identifying much of anything that would qualify as an unresolved "library bug" on Mantis at the moment (that is, something indicating flaws in the Standard Rules rather than to the compiler). If the bug database is missing information, by all means please add it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1368&start=0#p8330
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dynamically accessing property stored values
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2010-09-03 04:31:16

here 's (one of) the extension I'm working on:
[spoiler][code]
Easier Dynamic Objects by Phonatacid begins here.

Include Dynamic Objects by Jesse McGrew.

Use thriftiness translates as (- Constant EDO_THRIFTINESS; -).

Part 1 - New objects

Chapter 1 - Pools for alive and dead objects

An abstract pool is a kind of container.

The object_alive_pool is an abstract pool.
The object_dead_pool is an abstract pool.	   
   
Chapter 2 - The 'New K' phrase

[will trigger a series errors at compilation time if it is applied to a non-object value]
To decide what K is a new (name of kind of value K):
	let D be the default value of K;
	if the thriftiness option is active:
		if there is a K contained by the object_dead_pool:
			let RV be a random K contained by the object_dead_pool;
			follow the Object Resuscitation rulebook for RV;
			[copy the properties of the default value of K to RV]
			decide on RV;
		else:
			let RV be a new object cloned from D;
			move RV to the object_alive_pool;
			decide on RV;
	else:
		decide on a new object cloned from D;

Section 1 - The Object Resuscitation rulebook

[this rulebook can be used for resetting the object's properties to their default values.]
The Object  Resuscitation rules is a thing based rulebook.

First Object Resuscitation for a thing (called O)
(this is the default resuscitation rule):
	move O to the object_alive_pool;

Chapter 3 - Destroying Objects

To destroy (O - object):
	move V to the object_dead_pool;



Part 2 - Properties management

Chapter 1- Creating objects along with their properties

[For instance,
let x be a new man with "george" as printed name and 28kg as weight;

Unfortunately it won't compile but this willl
let x be (a new man with "george as printed name) and 28kg as weight;]

To decide what K is (O - value of kind K) with/and (V - L) as (P - value of kind L valued property):
	change the P property of O to V;
	decide on O;

To change the (P - word value of kind K valued property) property of (O - object) to (V - K):
	(- WriteGProperty(OBJECT_TY, {O}, {P}, {V});  -).

To change the (P - pointer value of kind K valued property) property of (O - object) to (V - K):
	(- BlkValueCopy(GProperty(OBJECT_TY, {O}, {P}), {V}); -).

To change (P - indexed text valued property) property of (O - object) to (V - text):
	(- BlkValueCast(GProperty(OBJECT_TY, {O}, {P}), INDEXED_TEXT_TY, TEXT_TY, {V}); -).

Chapter 2 - Copying properties from object to object

[To copy the properties of (SRC - value of kind K) in/into/to (DST - K):
	(- EDO_CopyProperties({SRC}, {DST}); -).

Include(-
[ EDO_CopyProperties src dst;
];-).
]

Easier Dynamic Objects ends here.
[/code][/spoiler]

[b][u]How it works :[/u][/b]
Based on a suggestion I received from Jesse, this extension now allows objects to  be (pseudo) destroyed :
-when an object is destroyed, it is pooled to an off-stage container
-when an object of kind K is created, the system looks for a (unused) K in the aforementioned container instead of blindly creating a new object.

[b][u]A few problems[/b][/u]
-I haven't been able to create a routine that copies the properties from one K to another (so that the properties of a K are reinitialized to the properties of the default value when resuscitating an object. As a workaround, you can write an Object Resuscitation rule for K;
-You can now set several properties with one line only:
[i]let x be a new man with "George" as printed name;[/i]
but
[i]let x be a new man;
let x be x with "George" as printed name;[/i]
is also possible.
you can change multiple properties at once:
[i]let x be a new man with "George" as printed name and 92kg as weight;[/i]
If you want to change/set more than 2 properties, you'll have to help the compiler with a few parenthesis
[i]let x be (a new man with "George as printed name and 92kg as weight) and 5 as strength;[/i]
I thought I could overcome this problem by using line breaks, but unfortunately, line break aren't considered as parenthesis by the compiler. Maybe that would make for a good suggestion ?

edit: oh and sorry for the previous jazz. you were right about the GProperty routines.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1369&start=10#p8331
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction and other videogames
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-09-03 06:08:33

[quote="tove"][quote="matt w"]Did you play the one that crashes your browser? [/quote]

I actually did, but I am in the habit of reading the comments first for his games (for exactly that sort of reason!) and had moved over to not-my-primary-browser for it.

[quote="matt w"]I'd recommend [url=http://armorgames.com/play/4850/small-worlds]Small Worlds[/url] to you[/quote]

Indeed -- I just played it ([i]and won[/i]) and loved it.  Easy/short enough for me (there were a couple of jumps I found frustrating, but not too bad), and that art was just wonderful.  Thanks for the recommendation![/quote]

Likewise. That was beautiful.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1343&start=10#p8332
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Edges of the World
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-09-03 06:37:09

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="Hertz"]From the example of the highway —
BAD:  "It's too far to walk to the next town."
GOOD:  "It's many miles to the next town."
BETTER:  "You couldn't get to the next town in time to bring help.  You'd better concentrate on finding a solution here."[/quote]

SOMETIMES BETTER STILL: Check the design to see if the highway even needs to be mentioned. Sometimes, a little tweak to the writing can simply remove elements that draw attention to the artifice. Doesn't work for every game, but it would work for an awful lot of games out there that provide false apparent choices with neither game nor story payoff :/[/quote]

This feels as if I'm stepping off into that very same trackless territory called Digression, but I'd be very wary with this. A game world needs context in order to feel alive, and it actually - I'd argue - [i]needs[/i] these areas that point toward a horizon and a surrounding (complete) environment. Mostly, computers being what they are, these surrounding areas cannot be reached (the only games I know where this is untrue is Elite and, to a lesser extent, Morrowind), but I still need them to be there. Otherwise, it gives me the impression of a big nothingness where something ought to be.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1366&start=0#p8333
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keeping track of success and failure
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-09-03 06:43:30

Belatedly, part of the trick here is that any given turn might have seen multiple actions happen: the player's action might have expanded out to several actions (TAKE ALL; EAT with an implicit TAKE; etc.), and one or more NPCs might also have taken action. So while it might seem that this is something that could be tracked unambiguously, it's actually trickier than it sounds in the general case.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1366&start=0#p8334
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keeping track of success and failure
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-09-03 06:48:44

[quote="capmikee"]I can't seem to find any documentation that will tell me how to determine if an action succeeded. I'd like to do something like this:

[code]The factory is a room.

The getting things done rule is listed instead of the advance time rule in the turn sequence rules.

This is the getting things done rule:
	If the action succeeded, increment the turn count.
[/code] [/quote]

Even if there were an ambiguous idea of what single action happened during the turn (see my previous post), this is probably still not the best approach to the problem, because *some* failed attempts could take time ("You step out onto the rope bridge, but a quarter of the way across it starts to sway dangerously, sending you back hastily the way you came..."), while some actions trigger subsidiary actions that might also take time. (Are we counting taking something as time-consuming? Should it be just as time-consuming to take something implicitly as to take it explicitly?)

So I recommend having a look at Eric Eve's [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Eric%20Eve/Variable%20Time%20Control/doc_0.html]Variable Time Control[/url] extension, which lets you easily tag actions or pieces of actions with the amount of time they should take, and then adds everything up at the end.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1369&start=10#p8335
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction and other videogames
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-09-03 07:22:02

I really can't fanboy enough about Small Worlds.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1371&start=0#p8336
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Ability to mark topics resolved
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-09-03 07:46:12

I don't know whether this would be easy to do, but I've seen some forums where a topic can be marked as "resolved" once the questioner's request has been successfully fulfilled. Is there a way to do this under phpBB? It would obviously be irrelevant for some categories, but it would be nice to be able to eyeball the Inform forum and see which topics represent still-outstanding problems.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=0#p8337
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-09-03 08:34:14

[quote="aaronius"]Essentially, what's proposed here is:

-- Highlight all the words understood as a new object in an assertion sentence.
-- Highlight words understood as referring to a previously created object in a different, much more subtle color.
-- Highlight articles in assertion sentences when they're understood as meaningful.
-- Hover-over to reveal problem messages with misunderstood sentences, and full names of referenced objects.

Any feedback is welcome-- if other people want to take the other sections and run with them, or offer counter-proposals, that would be great too. Feel free to grab the styles off my page as a start.[/quote]

I like the idea of what would be highlighted and how; personally, I would also prefer to have that information shown in a more subtle way, with colored text rather than highlighter markup.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=0#p8338
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-09-03 08:53:07

Many IDEs that support this type of semantic analysis are quite configurable, allowing you to choose the foreground and background colors you want.  I think if we can agree on what categories of entities are available for distinction, folks will be able to come up with color schemes that please themselves.

I like the categories proposed; I also feel it would be helpful to do inline spell-check on any non-token text inside double-quotes, but this might cross into a separate feature request.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1366&start=0#p8339
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keeping track of success and failure
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-03 09:35:57

Thanks! That looks useful.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1371&start=0#p8340
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Ability to mark topics resolved
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-09-03 10:07:35

[quote="emshort"]I don't know whether this would be easy to do, but I've seen some forums where a topic can be marked as "resolved" once the questioner's request has been successfully fulfilled. Is there a way to do this under phpBB? It would obviously be irrelevant for some categories, but it would be nice to be able to eyeball the Inform forum and see which topics represent still-outstanding problems.[/quote]

A quick Google search showed [url=http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=1996875]this[/url] fix. I don't know if it's an ideal solution, though, since it would probably still involve a moderator at some point.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=0#p8341
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-09-03 10:15:18

Love this, although I would hope it would customizable/easily turn-offable.  I like the spell check idea as well.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=0#p8342
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-03 10:36:15

This is good for objects, but much, much less than what semantic highlighting should cover.

I want to be able to see any multiple-word phrase that the compiler decides is a thing. That includes phrases, definitions, relations, activities...

I realize there's a best-is-enemy-of-the-good problem here (a partial solution has real value). But I *don't* think it's safe to say that the majority of compiler confusions are object-vs-object. The "active" discussion (see other thread) is an example. What kind of highlight/tooltip model would allow the user to point at "active" and discovery that this error is a conflict between his Boolean property and the library's definition on use options?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=0#p8343
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-03 10:38:24

(I just re-read and saw that you were explicitly proposing a subset of the original idea. Sorry if I got ranty about it.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=10#p8344
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-03 10:49:43

I do have some presentation ideas, but I'm at PAX without a decent HTML editor. I'll try to post something next week.

Let me explicitly disagree with Jim, by the way. This is an important topic and worthy of core development tine.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=10#p8345
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-09-03 10:58:32

[quote="zarf"]Let me explicitly disagree with Jim, by the way. This is an important topic and worthy of core development tine.[/quote]

The Uservoice users have it as their top priority by a good margin. While the popularity of a suggestion doesn't always guarantee that it can be done, we do take that seriously.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1371&start=0#p8346
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Ability to mark topics resolved
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-09-03 11:15:00

There should be some mod that can be installed. It would make sense for emily to be a moderator of the inform board too.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1120&start=0#p8347
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF at Pax Prime, Sept. 3rd-5th
User: George / DateTime: 2010-09-03 11:19:04

If you haven't been following this and are in the Seattle area, you're invited to stop by the IF room at PAX (whether you're going to PAX or not). 

Schedule is here: <a class="postlink" href="http://if.seattle.wa.us/pax-2010/schedule/">http://if.seattle.wa.us/pax-2010/schedule/</a>

Twitter is here: <a class="postlink" href="http://twitter.com/SeattleIF">http://twitter.com/SeattleIF</a>

We'll know the [url=http://www.starwoodhotels.com/sheraton/property/area/map.html?propertyID=460]Sheraton[/url] room # in a few hours and we'll post it then. Hope to see you there!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=10#p8348
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-09-03 11:52:40

[quote="emshort"]I'm not really identifying much of anything that would qualify as an unresolved "library bug" on Mantis at the moment (that is, something indicating flaws in the Standard Rules rather than to the compiler). If the bug database is missing information, by all means please add it.[/quote]
Not to be snarky or anything ... but I just went up to the I7 site, and the current version is still 6E72. I seem to recall that there was a flurry of bug reporting after that release. Was I wrong? Have no bugs been reported, other than compiler bugs?

I seem to recall that in testing last month, I learned that while game titles can now contain word-ending apostrophes, they can't contain double-quotes. Thus, a game can't be named this:

"Repent, Harlequin!" Cried the Tick-Tock Man

That's a trivial example, and I didn't bother to report it ... but are you telling us that you believe the library to be entirely free of bugs?

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1372&start=0#p8349
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Some help please with "Instead"
User: Oakesbrae / DateTime: 2010-09-03 12:14:42

As a huge fan of IF (played it a lot as a child), I was excited to download Inform 7 yesterday. I had to download one of the previous builds because I have 10.5.8, and couldn't get it to work (but thanks to the kind folks here I found out how to make it work). I'm not sure if that's relevant to the problem I have, but I'll share it just in case.

Okay, so I do a lot of things that require "putting something in something else". For instance, an egg. However, because the egg is a container (due to the necessity of hiding a red key in it), when you try to put the egg into the egg carton and mistype it, you can end up putting the egg carton in the egg. Which is obviously less than ideal. 

So, I have
[code]An egg carton is a closed openable container. Understand "box", "carton" as the egg carton. Inside the egg carton are 11 eggs.

Instead of putting something inside the egg, say "You can't put the carton in the egg"[/code]

But Inform doesn't seem to like it. I've tried saying "putting something in the egg, putting something into the egg" etc. The only thing that seems to go through the parser okay is putting something on the egg, but that obviously doesn't catch someone putting the egg carton into the egg, as I did when I mistyped it in testing.

Please help me figure out the "Instead of putting something into" issue? I've needed to use it a few times and I've found workarounds for other things, but this one is making me a little bit insane.

Thank you in advance, you guys are great and I've learned a ton already!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1368&start=0#p8350
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dynamically accessing property stored values
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-03 12:25:31

(Since PAX starts in a few hours, it'll be close to a week before I can begin exploring this.  Just a heads-up, especially if someone else can chime in.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1372&start=0#p8351
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Some help please with "Instead"
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-03 12:26:49

oh, it's "inserting... into.." not "putting ... in ...".   Check the Actions tab of the Index for the official names of actions.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1369&start=10#p8352
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction and other videogames
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2010-09-03 12:52:14

MMOs are generally what I play away from the IF world with World of Warcraft being the cream of the crop. Strange how you can play a game for the best part of 4 years and still not have seen everything it has to offer.

Before I got hooked on MMOs, I played Baldur's Gate 1 & 2,  Diablo 2 and the like. Still have very fond memories of them and the forthcoming Diablo 3 is perhaps the only game that might pull me away from WoW for a time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=10#p8353
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-09-03 13:08:20

[quote="Jim Aikin"]That's a trivial example, and I didn't bother to report it ... but are you telling us that you believe the library to be entirely free of bugs?[/quote]

That's certainly not what I wrote, no.

If your irritation is because you think I shouldn't be nitpicking your use of the term "library bug," I did so because I was trying to discover whether you meant "I think developer time is best spent on fixing bugs, full stop" or "I think developer time is best spent on a set of missing features, syntax oddities, et alia that I personally find frustrating and contrary to common sense." If the former, then, well, we do try to work through the bug database. If the latter, then that's a set that is hard to identify unless you are willing to report those issues individually. 

The double-quote issue you raise would be a compiler bug, unless it's a missing feature. (The documentation looks ambiguous on this point, so I could imagine people arguing that part either way.) Feel free to report it at either Mantis or Uservoice, but it's not something that can be fixed with a tweak to the Standard Rules.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1371&start=0#p8354
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Ability to mark topics resolved
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-09-03 13:26:16

[quote="Dannii"]It would make sense for emily to be a moderator of the inform board too.[/quote]

That, I did not ask for. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=10#p8355
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-09-03 13:35:05

[quote="gravel"]Love this, although I would hope it would customizable/easily turn-offable.  I like the spell check idea as well.[/quote]

I agree -- it seems like it'd be nice to be able to type in monochrome and then turn the colors on and off again when you wanted to check something.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=10#p8356
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-09-03 13:41:44

This would absolutely have to be an option that could be turned off, yes -- not only to avoid driving people crazy with the dancing colors (though that's a valid issue), but also because it would require background compilation that would be draining for laptops.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1369&start=10#p8357
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction and other videogames
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-03 13:57:46

Gads, I've been an action videogamer since Colecovision at least.  Ladybug, War Room, Venture, and Donkey Kong Jr. made up a lot of my early youth.  And in the 8-bit and 16-bit Nintendo era I played just about everything, in any genre.  I spent so much time with Street Fighter I reached tournament-level play during the SF2:CE / SF2:HF days.  To this day I feel a little weird when around videogamers that play only one or two genres and know little of the other ones.  

(So yes, I greatly liked Archon on my Commodore, though the AI back then relied on its perfect reflexes too much. But I couldn't ever find someone to play against, cause they either couldn't deal with the action aspect (Dad) or the chess aspect (best friend).  (Dad had taught me chess when I was 9.))

Nowadays I still loosely keep up with Zelda, Castlevania, Street Fighter, and Final Fantasy, but I haven't sunk much time into videogames since my late twenties.  There's a few indies I love, notably BreakQuest, but most Flash games leave me cold.  After cutting my teeth on so many games, especially some unrealistically hard NES ones, the simplicity of most Flash games seem insipid to me.  (Not that I didn't enjoy Canabalt for twenty minutes, but I wouldn't ever pay money for it.)  Even when they're as pretty as Orisinal's flash games.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1120&start=0#p8358
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF at Pax Prime, Sept. 3rd-5th (Room 2516)
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-03 14:39:30

Sheraton room 2516

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1372&start=0#p8359
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Some help please with "Instead"
User: Oakesbrae / DateTime: 2010-09-03 14:40:18

Thank you!

I swear I tried that, but perhaps I said "in" instead of "into" or something silly like that - you know how it gets when you're trying things multiple ways [emote]:)[/emote] Glad it was a simple problem! I'm sure I'll come up with more complex ones as I get further into this. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=10#p8360
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-09-03 14:40:42

[quote="emshort"]This would absolutely have to be an option that could be turned off, yes -- not only to avoid driving people crazy with the dancing colors (though that's a valid issue), but also because it would require background compilation that would be draining for laptops.[/quote]

Personally, I don't see the value in dynamic syntax highlighting for Inform (the feature itself I think is important—I just don't see any compelling reason for it to be dynamic). I definitely don't relish the thought of [i]writing[/i] with a riot of color going on, because I feel like it will be somewhat harder to grok syntax-colored I7 than the primarily keyword- and punctuation-based highlighting of a traditional programming or markup language. In the same way I avoid the red underlines of dynamic spell-checking and instead use the manual "check spelling now" command, I would want to see syntax highlighting only when it's likely to be useful to me.

So, toggling the feature needs to be not only possible, but effortless—say, with a button on the main toolbar rather than a checkbox buried in the preferences. That way, you can manually toggle highlighting when you have a particular question at hand. 

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=10#p8361
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-03 14:59:25

While I'm warm to Jim's general interest in prioritizing other stuff, we're clearly in a small minority.  

I would like to praise an existing feature:  the spellchecker in Inform's IDE (at least on Mac).  It puts a dotted green underline under a misspelled word shortly after you type it, and I have found that to be very useful.  I certainly wouldn't mind the corresponding dotted red underline under a grammar error, as many word processors work this way. (I think MS Word uses a squiggly line instead of a dotted line, but the same colors.)  And unlike a word processor's grammar complaints, this one would carry a lot of weight!  

Question: should the syntax coloring color according to programming construct (object, scene, etc.) or grammar category (noun phrase, participial phrase, assertive statement)?  There's something of an unwritten rule that certain constructs "belong" in certain categories. For example.

object names, scene names, To Decide Which phrases = noun phrase

actions, activities = participial phrase

To phrases = assertive statement (usually imperative statement, except for ones like "To (P - person) ponders (O - object): ...")

To Decide Whether = as independent clause, but to be transformed into a dependent clause via prepending if, unless, when, whether or not, etc.

And so on.  There are a couple of gotchas in the language if you don't name a construct within the particular English category.  (See the programmer's manual, Grammar Gotchas, with regard to naming Activities after a noun phrase.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1372&start=0#p8362
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Some help please with "Instead"
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-09-03 15:26:38

Just as a quick style point -- and you may already have this covered and just posted a simplified version here, but I figure it can't hurt to point it out -- you probably don't want a response to be more specific than the rule triggering it.  So for example,[code] Instead of inserting something into the egg, say "You can't put the carton in the egg."[/code] could lead to an exchange like:
[code]>put key in egg [if a player for some reason thought they should put it back in]
You can't put the carton in the egg.[/code]
which is obviously not quite the right response.  You should probably either have (the more general)
[code] Instead of inserting something (called the inserted-object) into the egg, say "You can't put [the inserted object] in the egg."[/code] or (the more specific) [code] Instead of inserting the egg carton into the egg, say "You can't put the carton in the egg."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=10#p8363
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-03 16:09:43

I think I've found a bug in the Standard Library. I tried to report it at uservoice, but I'm not sure I formatted my suggestion correctly:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/1035627-sometimes-holdall-is-referred-to-as-nothing-">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... s-nothing-</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=10#p8364
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-09-03 16:23:15

The bug-reporting site is <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/bugs">http://inform7.com/bugs</a>. Uservoice is for suggesting new features.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1343&start=10#p8365
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Edges of the World
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2010-09-03 16:31:54

[quote]A game world needs context in order to feel alive[/quote]

I did not suggest otherwise. I think you've misunderstood my post.

[quote]and it actually - I'd argue - [i]needs[/i] these areas that point toward a horizon and a surrounding (complete) environment.[/quote]

I agree, and did not suggest otherwise.

[quote]Mostly, computers being what they are, these surrounding areas cannot be reached (the only games I know where this is untrue is Elite and, to a lesser extent, Morrowind), but I still need them to be there.[/quote]

I agree, and did not suggest otherwise.

[quote]Otherwise, it gives me the impression of a big nothingness where something ought to be.[/quote]

I have not advocated constructing a world without such details.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=20#p8366
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-09-03 17:11:07

Some thoughts:

[b]Re: look and feel[/b]: The example I made was definitely garish, to make it very obvious what was being proposed. I feel there's a danger in making the effect too subtle, though, which might make differences between correctly and incorrectly declared things too easy to miss. However, a middle ground can certainly be found.

I put up a version that lets you swap out a number of different stylesheets (including colored text, styles, underlines, a more subtle version of the original highlighting, etc) here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://aaronareed.net/if/semantic-test2.html">http://aaronareed.net/if/semantic-test2.html</a>

Colored text is the way most IDEs with this feature go, but it looks somehow awkward to me in this context. Maybe it's that, in combination with the existing color changes, it's just much more colorful than we're used to looking at. Interested to hear other people's thoughts.

[b]Re: spell/grammar check[/b]: I like the metaphor of copying the red/green underlines for spelling and grammar errors, although it's not as obvious how you'd extend this to cover more cases (object highlighting etc.) As was mentioned, the Mac IDE already does spelling correction (I think it's built-in to the OS); getting this standardized across platforms would be cool (although probably a different feature request).

[b]Re: turning on and off[/b]: I agree this should be easy to do at will, perhaps with a hot key? Although I think this should be seperate from turning on/off background compilation. The highlighting would be most useful if you could very quickly switch it on to verify something, without having to wait for a compile.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=20#p8367
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-09-03 19:28:28

[quote="aaronius"][b]Re: spell/grammar check:[/b] I like the metaphor of copying the red/green underlines for spelling and grammar errors, although it's not as obvious how you'd extend this to cover more cases (object highlighting etc.) As was mentioned, the Mac IDE already does spelling correction (I think it's built-in to the OS); getting this standardized across platforms would be cool (although probably a different feature request).[/quote]

The spelling/grammar checking also represents a problem: the new syntax highlighting will have to coexist peacefully with both the current minimalist highlighting and the spelling and grammar check underlining. (I'm not convinced of the utility of the latter—but then I don't ever use it, in any application...)

I'm afraid that this syntax highlighting thing is going to have to be pretty darn ugly if it's going to be useful...

[quote="aaronius"][b]Re: turning on and off:[/b] I agree this should be easy to do at will, perhaps with a hot key? Although I think this should be seperate from turning on/off background compilation. The highlighting would be most useful if you could very quickly switch it on to verify something, without having to wait for a compile.[/quote]

Good point. Background compilation could have a checkbox in the preferences, while highlighting has a button and/or hotkey.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=20#p8368
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-09-03 23:20:27

[quote="emshort"][quote="Jim Aikin"]That's a trivial example, and I didn't bother to report it ... but are you telling us that you believe the library to be entirely free of bugs?[/quote]

That's certainly not what I wrote, no.

If your irritation is because you think I shouldn't be nitpicking your use of the term "library bug," I did so because I was trying to discover whether you meant "I think developer time is best spent on fixing bugs, full stop" or "I think developer time is best spent on a set of missing features, syntax oddities, et alia that I personally find frustrating and contrary to common sense." If the former, then, well, we do try to work through the bug database. If the latter, then that's a set that is hard to identify unless you are willing to report those issues individually. [/quote]
Rmph.... I just re-read my post, and I don't think I was sounding irritated. I wasn't irritated, in fact. I was just making a suggestion about how I thought the limited time of a group of volunteer developers might best be prioritized. Sorry if it came off as irritation.

With respect to the double-quote bug, this was caused, I'm sure, by a fix for the apostrophe-at-the-end-of-a-word-in-the-title bug, which has indeed been resolved. I was very happy to see it fixed! And being lazy, I decided that the new bug was about 10% as likely to trip anybody up as the old one, so I might as well leave well enough alone.

Not to split hairs, but I can see another interpretation of what you wrote. What you wrote was this: "I'm not really identifying much of anything that would qualify as an unresolved 'library bug' on Mantis at the moment." That could mean, and probably does mean, "All of the library bugs that were reported following the release of 6E72 have been resolved."

But if that's what it means, then I will confess to being, if not irritated, at least perplexed. If there are no more outstanding library bugs, why not release a new version? Because there are still compiler bugs, I would guess. Okay, fair enough.

I've returned to I6, so it's not a big deal for me either way. I was just chipping in on the subject of highlighting, and offering an unsolicited opinion about priorities. The reason for the latter opinion, however, was left implicit, so I should make it explicit.

In general, I feel that improvements in functionality are more important than improvements in the IDE. The IDE is already pretty darn good! What will aid authors most directly, I feel, are improvements in functionality. The rest is just icing on the cake. IDE improvements may save authors some time, but I'm not sure they'll actually lead to better games.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1371&start=0#p8369
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Ability to mark topics resolved
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-09-03 23:50:37

I'll have to check out the mentioned add-on. So far we're running without anything custom, but if it looks pretty straightforward I could probably get it set up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1316&start=0#p8370
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: I need a good hint! - 'The Seven Doctors'
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-09-04 00:03:02

I'm a fan. I've been Netflixing my way through them chronologically. I'm almost up to the point that got me hooked as a kid: I've started the Tom Baker years. Already seen every episode for the 9th and 10th doctors. A few years ago, BBC publishing put out a long run of books (may still be going on, but they don't seem to be coming to the States if so), half of them featuring the first seven incarnations and half featuring the only-from-the-TV-movie 8th docotor. I have probably 60 or 70 of those, but have only made time to read a couple.

It sounds, though, like the game is neither licensed nor very stable. In high school I wrote a series of four Doctor Who "games" (not IF) which were pretty bad, and I've come to realize that that type of thing is better left to people who are actually authorized to do it. [emote]:)[/emote]

I don't see a listing for this on the IFDB. Is there a website?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1298&start=0#p8371
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Find beta-testers at http://if.game-testing.org/
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-09-04 00:05:49

Nearly a month late, but now stickied.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=20#p8372
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-09-04 01:57:55

[quote="Jim Aikin"]But if that's what it means, then I will confess to being, if not irritated, at least perplexed. If there are no more outstanding library bugs, why not release a new version? Because there are still compiler bugs, I would guess. Okay, fair enough.[/quote]

I think there's a basic but profound reason for this confusion: you have different definitions for "library bug". A library bug is a mistake in the Standard Library, something that affects the model world. For example if the player would be able to pick up scenery, that would be a library bug. Your definition for a library bug is apparently wider than this, so you're talking about two different things.

I searched the bug database for world model bugs and there were none - it's not that the library bugs have all been fixed, it's that none have been found. The first library bug I've seen after the previous release is <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1364">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1364</a> and it hasn't been reported yet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1371&start=0#p8373
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Ability to mark topics resolved
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-09-04 07:31:19

[quote="emshort"][quote="Dannii"]It would make sense for emily to be a moderator of the inform board too.[/quote]

That, I did not ask for. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

As usual, the reward for doing well at a given work is... more work! [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1343&start=10#p8374
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Edges of the World
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-09-04 07:38:39

[quote="Ghalev"][quote]A game world needs context in order to feel alive[/quote]

I did not suggest otherwise. I think you've misunderstood my post.[/quote]

Conceded. I think I meant it not as a refutal but rather as a cautionary note. The technique you described is sound, and I mainly agreed (in that it should be used judiciously, or so I interpreted your words to mean). As an author, you often want people to notice something but still not make it accessible, simply to add the sense that the world is large and varied. 

Does that make more sense?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1298&start=0#p8375
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Find beta-testers at http://if.game-testing.org/
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2010-09-04 08:20:33

I didn't even know it was still active  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1373&start=0#p8376
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: File management for I7 collaboration
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-04 08:23:02

Is there a "best practice" for sharing story files when two or more people are collaborating on an I7 project?

The only way I know to do it is to copy the story.ni file into the project in the Terminal shell. Jim Aikin mentioned an option where you can show the contents of a package folder in the Finder, but that's not intuitive for me. I am foremost a programmer but my collaborator is not, so I'm not always sure what method would be easiest for my collaborator.

Personally, sharing files without using version control makes me itch, but I'm not sure if there's a VCS that would be convenient for both participants in this case. I'm open to recommendations.

Thanks,

Mike

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=20#p8377
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-04 08:44:31

Thanks - it has been reported now (and I deleted the bug report on Uservoice). Let me know if I did this one right:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=278">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=278</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1233&start=10#p8378
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 for OS 10.5.8?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-04 08:46:41

Has this been reported in Mantis?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1374&start=0#p8379
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Studying Blue Lacuna source code
User: jfm.lisaso / DateTime: 2010-09-04 09:58:53

Hello. I'm trying to compile [url=http://www.lacunastory.com/source.html]Blue Lacuna project file[/url] with Inform build 5Z71 to experiment and study it (thanks a lot for publishing it Aaron!). I've unchecked the "Release as blorb file" in the settings panel as README.txt file says, but all I've obtained are the following errors:

[spoiler][...]
++ 98% (Generating code)

  The 35380-word source text has successfully been translated into an
    intermediate description which can be run through Inform 6 to complete
    compilation. There were 138 rooms and 2270 things.
Inform 7 has finished.
Inform 6.31N (29th March 2009)
::####################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################
File "auto.inf"; Line 296406	# Error:  Expected constant but found <expression>
> Constant BLK_DATA_OFFSET = 2*WORDSIZE;
File "auto.inf"; Line 296408	# Error:  Expected constant but found <expression>
> Constant BLK_DATA_MULTI_OFFSET = 4*WORDSIZE;
####
File "auto.inf"; Line 296807	# Error:  Expected constant but found <expression>
>     2: #Iftrue (WORDSIZE == 2);
File "auto.inf"; Line 296833	# Error:  Expected constant but found <expression>
>     2: #Iftrue (WORDSIZE == 2);
##########
File "auto.inf"; Line 297849	# Error:  Expected constant but found <expression>
> Constant RE_PACKET_SIZE_IN_BYTES = WORDSIZE*RE_PACKET_SIZE;
######################

File "auto.inf"; Line 16002	# Error:  No such constant as "SC_112"
File "auto.inf"; Line 22077	# Error:  No such constant as "Parse_Name_GV273"
File "auto.inf"; Line 33214	# Error:  No such constant as "SC_615"
File "auto.inf"; Line 38932	# Error:  No such constant as "Parse_Name_GV776"
File "auto.inf"; Line 57536	# Error:  No such constant as "Parse_Name_GV1119"
File ""; Line 3495	# Error:  No such constant as "text_routine_1553"
File ""; Line 11924	# Error:  No such constant as "false"
*** glibc detected *** /usr/lib/gnome-inform7/gnome-inform7/inform-6.31-biplatform: double free or corruption (out): 0x093241f8 ***
======= Backtrace: =========
/lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6(+0x6b591)[0xb77591]
/lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6(+0x6cde8)[0xb78de8]
/lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6(cfree+0x6d)[0xb7becd]
/usr/lib/gnome-inform7/gnome-inform7/inform-6.31-biplatform[0x8071c12]
/usr/lib/gnome-inform7/gnome-inform7/inform-6.31-biplatform[0x807e788]
/usr/lib/gnome-inform7/gnome-inform7/inform-6.31-biplatform[0x80699c5]
/usr/lib/gnome-inform7/gnome-inform7/inform-6.31-biplatform[0x8069e67]
/usr/lib/gnome-inform7/gnome-inform7/inform-6.31-biplatform[0x806b02c]
/lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6(__libc_start_main+0xe6)[0xb22bd6]
/usr/lib/gnome-inform7/gnome-inform7/inform-6.31-biplatform[0x8048c01]
======= Memory map: ========
00528000-00529000 r-xp 00000000 00:00 0          [vdso]
0057c000-00599000 r-xp 00000000 08:02 122211     /lib/libgcc_s.so.1
00599000-0059a000 r--p 0001c000 08:02 122211     /lib/libgcc_s.so.1
0059
Compiler finished with code -1[/spoiler]
Is anything I could do to avoid that and compile the source code sucessfully? Does anybody knows?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1373&start=0#p8380
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: File management for I7 collaboration
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-09-04 10:51:15

Showing the contents of a package is non-intuitive only because Apple chose to obfuscate in the interest of pseudo-user-friendliness. In Windows, the contents are browsable just like the contents of any other folder. (Score one for Windows!)

The tools menu has a Show Package Contents command. It's hard for me to see that that isn't intuitive -- but I'm in a cranky mood this morning, so please forgive me for being brusque. I've just been arguing with a conservative friend, attempting to pull his head out of his ass on some basic issues of how government works.

What's non-intuitive is that Inform 7 won't let you name your source code file. This makes versioning a good deal more difficult.

If your email program preserves tab characters, you could always do a Select All and email the source text back and forth. That would work, I think.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1373&start=0#p8381
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: File management for I7 collaboration
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-09-04 11:05:55

I would recommend that you create a symlink of story.ni, or better yet the .inform file, and share the symlink via a Dropbox shared folder. Dropbox will automatically resolve the symlink, so you and your collaborator(s) will be able to work directly from the .inform project in the Dropbox folder. Dropbox will also store all older versions of the project, so you have at least some version control (though without metadata).

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1373&start=0#p8382
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: File management for I7 collaboration
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-09-04 11:11:37

Jim, I think it is unintuitive -- I've been using Macs for a couple decades and I didn't know about "Show Package Contents" until someone (possibly you) explained to me how to find the I6 code for a project. In fact it just took me a full minute to find it even though I knew what I was looking for; ctrl-clicking on a file in the Finder is just not something I'm used to doing, and I think if Apple really expected me to be doing it a lot they would've given me a right mouse button. 

Adding to the confusion, I think almost everything in the ctrl-click menu [i]but[/i] "Show Package Contents" is in the File Menu; this may be the can't do without ctrl-clicking in the Finder. (I'm almost certainly going to be wrong about that.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1373&start=0#p8383
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: File management for I7 collaboration
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-09-04 11:13:22

Also, this may be a really stupid question, but why is it necessary to extract story.ni instead of sending the whole thing that appears in the Finder?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1373&start=0#p8384
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: File management for I7 collaboration
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-04 11:40:35

Sending the whole thing works, but (1) you have to zip it up to send to another Mac, which is an extra step; (2) it's like a hundred times larger than the bare .ni file.

(Size not actually measured, as I don't have the compiler in front of me.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1233&start=10#p8385
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 for OS 10.5.8?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-04 11:46:18

Yes, ektemple posted the link:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=153">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=153</a>

It's marked as fixed; I don't know when a new build will show up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1343&start=10#p8386
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Edges of the World
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2010-09-04 11:48:42

[quote="Eleas"]As an author, you often want people to notice something but still not make it accessible, simply to add the sense that the world is large and varied. Does that make more sense?[/quote]

Absolutely. The trick (if we dare call it a trick) is to present it as a view of the larger world without specifically presenting it as a tease or false choice.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1372&start=0#p8387
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Some help please with "Instead"
User: Oakesbrae / DateTime: 2010-09-04 13:14:44

You guys are the best, thank you! That really helps me in my journey to figure out what's what.

What's really interesting is that writing it is just as fun as playing it....it requires the same type of thought, exploration and adventure.

Thanks again!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1375&start=0#p8388
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: my first game experience
User: syburn / DateTime: 2010-09-04 13:20:39

hi- just got started on the Glulxe interpreter playing Ferrous Ring.

Its great - especially the menu mode that you can select.......

Are there any better interpreter ?

Cheers

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1376&start=0#p8389
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Before first turn
User: Janka / DateTime: 2010-09-04 15:50:31

I want to start a game with an arbitrary text instead of a room description. "When play begins" doesn't help me much as that's printed before the story title,  and there I already have some text. I experimented with scenes, "Instead of looking" and turn count but had no luck. It seems the game starts with turn count 1 and after first player input, it is still turn 1.

Is there any canonical way to achieve what I want? Is there any way at all?

Janka

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1376&start=0#p8390
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Before first turn
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-09-04 15:58:05

Try "Instead of looking for the first time".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1376&start=0#p8391
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Before first turn
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-09-04 15:59:31

The hook you are looking for is "after printing the banner text":

[code]After printing the banner text:
	say "[line break]Howdy!"[/code]

However, that won't suppress the room description on the first turn, it will merely add some text between the title and the initial room description. To suppress the first room description, you can do this:

[code]Instead of looking for the first time:
	do nothing. [/code]

(A "look" command is generated at the beginning of the game, which is what generates the room description, so we can get rid of it by just suppressing the look.)

If you need to suppress the room description anyway, then you might as well put your initial text in the "instead of looking" rule and forget about the "after printing the banner text", e.g.:

[code]Instead of looking for the first time:
	say "[line break]Howdy!". [/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1376&start=0#p8392
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Before first turn
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-09-04 16:04:45

[quote="ektemple"][code]After printing the banner text:
	say "[line break]Howdy!"[/code][/quote]
There's a potential SNAFU here: the intro is not the only place where the banner is displayed. This method will show the text also when the player commands VERSION or when they start recording a transcript.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1376&start=0#p8393
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Before first turn
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-09-04 16:09:03

Ah, that's right. Thanks for pointing that out. The proper way to do this without suppressing the first room description is:
[code]Before looking for the first time:
     say "Howdy!";
     continue the action.[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1376&start=0#p8394
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Before first turn
User: Janka / DateTime: 2010-09-04 16:28:05

Ahh, thanks.

Janka

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1377&start=0#p8395
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Incrementally adding things?
User: Oakesbrae / DateTime: 2010-09-04 20:10:41

You guys have been so helpful so far, I really appreciate it!

Okay, so what I'm trying to do is have a hen lay multiple eggs in a nest. When the number of eggs gets to 10, I'd like the hen to be empty (more or less).

The issue is, in order to add eggs to the nest, I have to move random eggs...which means that sometimes eggs get moved back to the hen (I suppose) and then back to the nest, or out of my inventory and back to the nest. This is not good.

I'm searching through the documentation, and I can't seem to find anything other than incrementing properties, scores etc. I tried enumeration using number of eggs in the nest + 1, but it doesn't seem to like number of eggs in the nest except in the description ifs.

Is there a way to do this? Here's my code to date:

[code]The Chicken Coop is a room. "You see chickens around the chicken coop."

A hen is a portable animal. A hen is in the chicken coop. A nest is a container in the chicken coop. 

An egg is a kind of thing. The plural of egg is eggs. An egg is edible.

Hens wear 10 eggs. 

Rule for deciding the concealed possessions of the hen: yes.

Procedural rule while taking the hen:
   ignore the can't take other people rule.

After inserting the hen into the nest:
	if the hen is wearing eggs:
		say "The hen clucks and squawks, [if the number of eggs in the nest is 0]and all of a sudden she has laid an egg![end if] and protests!";
		now a random egg is in the nest;
	otherwise:
		say " Sadly, the hen shakes her head. She can lay no more eggs";[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1377&start=0#p8396
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Incrementally adding things?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-09-05 01:53:09

Unless there's another reason for the hen to "wear" the eggs, you can start with the eggs out of play and check for the property "off-stage".

[code]The Chicken Coop is a room. "You see chickens around the chicken coop."

A hen is an animal. A hen is in the chicken coop. A nest is a container in the chicken coop.

An egg is a kind of thing. An egg is edible. There are 10 eggs.

This is the can't take non-hen people rule:
	if the noun is not the hen:
		abide by the can't take other people rule.
		
The can't take non-hen people rule is listed instead of the can't take other people rule in the check taking rulebook.

After inserting the hen into the nest:
	if the number of off-stage eggs is greater than 0:
		say "The hen clucks and squawks, [if the number of eggs in the nest is 0]and all of a sudden she has laid an egg![end if] and protests!";
		now a random off-stage egg is in the nest;
	otherwise:
		say " Sadly, the hen shakes her head. She can lay no more eggs";[/code]
The say phrase doesn't work as expected and I don't know what it's trying to do. Is the hen not supposed to lay eggs if there's one in the nest already?

(Also note that procedural rules are deprecated, so I've used another method of allowing to take the hen.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1343&start=10#p8397
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Edges of the World
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-09-05 05:20:45

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="Eleas"]As an author, you often want people to notice something but still not make it accessible, simply to add the sense that the world is large and varied. Does that make more sense?[/quote]

Absolutely. The trick (if we dare call it a trick) is to present it as a view of the larger world without specifically presenting it as a tease or false choice.[/quote]

Right, I see your point. It's like some of those graphical adventures that saw hundreds of players consistently trying to get past one given piece of scenery, simply because they [i]knew[/i] (without reason) that there had to be something significant on the other side. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1373&start=0#p8398
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: File management for I7 collaboration
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-09-05 07:15:47

Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1378&start=0#p8399
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: (Resolved?) Phrases revisited
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-09-05 13:44:02

Some may remember [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1278&start=0]this fairly recent thread[/url], where a technique [b]zarf[/b] submitted seemed to work inconsistently. 

I reported it to [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=246]the Mantis bug tracker[/url], and it's now been reviewed. To recap:

[code]The kitchen is a room. The lounge is north of the kitchen. The rock is held by the player. The description 
of the rock is "[rock-desc location][run paragraph on]". 

Glitziness is a kind of value. The glitzinesses are swanky, smart, smooth and neato.
The sculpture is in  the lounge. The sculpture has a glitziness. The description of the sculpture is 
"[sculpt-desc glitziness][run paragraph on]". The sculpture is smooth.

To say rock-desc (R - room):
say "It's a rock." [general case]

To say rock-desc (R - Kitchen):
say "It's a kitchen rock."

[Trying the same thing for values:]
To say sculpt-desc (G - glitziness):
say "It's just kinda nice."

To say sculpt-desc (G - smooth):
say "It's actually kind of smooth."[/code]

[quote="EmacsUser"]Confirmed, with "x rock / n / x rock / x sculpture." The I6 code is as described; there is no resolve procedure.[/quote]

Graham has now taken a look at the issue, and it doesn't seem to be a proper bug.

[quote]It took me quite a while to track down this bug, because it isn't a bug at all: Inform is behaving correctly. In the definition "To say sculpt-desc (G - smooth)", "smooth" is read as an adjective which G must satisfy. Since "smooth" applies only to the sculpture, this is a definition applicable to objects, not to glitzinesses. It therefore doesn't enter into contention as a possible way to supply "[sculpt-desc glitziness]", because that applies to the glitziness of the sculpture (which is not smooth), not to the sculpture (which is).[/quote]

With that in mind, I've tried to resurrect the technique, but I'm simply not proficient enough to create a technique similar to Zarf's but using values or properties. So far, it's not worked, and I think I'm missing something basic in how values operate. Given what Graham said, is zarf's technique even applicable for values in this way, or am I going at it completely wrong?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1379&start=0#p8400
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: I need a hint for 'An Act of Misdirection'.
User: cbernard / DateTime: 2010-09-06 07:29:12

I'm in the basement of the hattery, and I've moved the crate to the side, leaving the shelves open. What am I supposed to do next?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1380&start=0#p8401
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Vintage Text Adventures
User: knight37m / DateTime: 2010-09-06 11:15:06

I have several vintage text adventures I'm looking to sell. Is it okay to list them in this forum somewhere? It is stuff like Magnetic Scrolls and Infocom adventures.

If anyone wants me to email them a list feel free to email me. Thanks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1380&start=0#p8402
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Vintage Text Adventures
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-09-06 16:41:58

I don't have a problem with you listing them here, although a venue like eBay might get better results.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1356&start=0#p8403
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: beta tester for a first game 40k words, inform, etc etc
User: lglasser / DateTime: 2010-09-06 17:40:33

I will test it.

Grats on your first attempt!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1381&start=0#p8404
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Instead of doing something other than taking inventory...
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-09-06 21:24:44

I'm trying to block everything other than looking, waiting, examining, and taking inventory, thus:
[code]
Lab is a room. A banana is in Lab.
The player carries an apple and a pear.
	
Instead of doing something other than looking, taking inventory, examining, and waiting:
	say "All you can do is look at stuff, including stuff in your inventory."[/code]

But I wind up blocking taking inventory too; when I type "i" I get the block message. With rules and actions on:

[quote]>i
[taking inventory]
[Rule "Instead of doing something other than looking , taking inventory , examining , and waiting" applies.]
All you can do is look at stuff, including stuff in your inventory.
[taking inventory - failed][/quote]

Any idea what's happening? (I'm using 5Z71, in case this is a bug that's been fixed.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1381&start=0#p8405
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Instead of doing something other than taking inventory..
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-06 22:07:28

Fixed in 6E59.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1381&start=0#p8406
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Instead of doing something other than taking inventory..
User: Luci / DateTime: 2010-09-06 22:10:21

I'm using command line i7 6E72 for Linux, and it seems to work perfectly fine. Here's my output for the same code under the same conditions:

[quote]> >i
   Lab                                                       0/2
  [taking inventory]
  [Rule "print empty inventory rule" applies.]
  [Rule "print standard inventory rule" applies.]
  You are carrying:
    an apple
    a pear
  
  [Rule "report other people taking inventory rule" applies.]
  [taking inventory - succeeded][/quote]

( ignore the first line of output, that's just how the command-line interpreter prints the status line )

I do remember having problems with similar rules in 5Z71. In fact, I remember there being an example in the documentation that used a similar structure that I couldn't reproduce in it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=20#p8407
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-06 23:18:37

(Upon checking, the current Mac IDE puts a [i]red[/i] dotted underline beneath misspelled words, not green. So green is for grammar.)

Any suggestions for which Problem messages that will appear as some kind of markup in the source text, and how? Here's a few.

[quote="Problem"]You wrote 'Instead of doing something except breathing when the player is in the cage and the player is in outer space', which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only 'when the player is in the cage and the player is in outer space'. But this condition did not make sense, so I am unable to accept this rule.[/quote]would stick a green dotted underline beneath 'when the player is in spot and the player is in outer-space' of course.  There's a similar problem message that, for conditions with multiple pieces connected by AND but the compiler still understands a few of the smaller pieces, tacks on something like "..the part ... was OK, the part ... I couldn't understand, the part ... was OK...", would of course underline only the incomprehensible piece of the complex conditional. 

[quote="Problem"]You wrote 'Intsead of doing something': but the punctuation here ':' makes me think this should be a definition of a phrase and it doesn't begin as it should, with either 'To' (e.g. 'To flood the riverplain:'), 'Definition:', a name for a rule (e.g. 'This is the devilishly cunning rule:'), 'At' plus a time (e.g. 'At 11:12 PM:' or 'At the time when the clock chimes') or the name of a rulebook, possibly followed by some description of the action or value to apply to (e.g. 'Instead of taking something:' or 'Every turn:').[/quote]which would underline from the first word to the colon that the problem message says it found. 

[quote="Problem"]You wrote 'Instead of doing something except taking, loking, or examining when the player is in spot'  , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is 'doing something except taking, loking, or examining when the player is in spot'. The part after 'when' (or 'while') was fine, but the earlier words did not make sense as a description of an action. This looks like a list of actions to avoid: 'taking' was okay; 'loking' did not make sense; 'examining' was okay; so I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook.[/quote]is very specific, and could underline only the 'loking' if it wanted. 

[quote="Problem"]You wrote 'Instead of doing something except taking inventory, looking, or examining something when the player is in spot'  , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only 'doing something except taking inventory, looking, or examining something when the player is in spot'. But this is a combination of actions which cannot be mixed. The only alternatives where 'or' is allowed are cases where a choice of actions is given but applying to the same objects in each case. (So 'taking or dropping the CD' is allowed, but 'dropping the CD or inserting the CD into the jewel box' is not, because the alternatives there would make different use of objects from each other.)[/quote]could underline the action list, from and including the "except", to, but not including, the "when".

For "Every turn: Daphne ponders the computer." [quote="Problem"]You wrote 'Daphne ponders the computer'  : but this is a phrase which I don't recognise, possibly because it is one you meant to define but never got round to, or because the wording is wrong (see the Phrasebook section of the Index to check). Alternatively, it may be that the text immediately previous to this was a definition whose ending, normally a full stop, is missing?[/quote]Underlines the whole invocation, as it doesn't match any of the To phrases in the game. I see a lot of underlines starting with a semicolon and ending at the next semicolon, within rule bodies. 

So that's just a sampling of the ones I see a lot, with some concrete examples of how it could work. Aaron's idea of hovering the mouse over the underlined portion for the Problem message in a tooltip is nice. 

(Of course, the feature this thread is on calls for "color syntax highlighting" which is a little different from the "Problem message highlighting" I'm talking about here.  But just as, for example, objects are written in one color and scene names in another color, so can invalid code be in another "color". )

(And sometimes, one of the IDEs *does* highlight a problem paragraph -- the whole paragraph -- in reverse red (very hard to read!) rather than a more targeted piece-of-phrase. I think it does this when I click the orange hyperlink arrow the Problem message provides.  I do not like that red-reverse very much, it is hard to read, though it does narrow things down a little bit when jumping to a whole new section of code.)


(Cap. Mikee: your bug has been fixed for the next release according to the site.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1381&start=0#p8408
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Instead of doing something other than taking inventory..
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-09-06 23:20:00

Thanks. This particular example can be solved by a kludge, so I guess I won't have to worry about it after I update. 

Just out of curiosity, anyone know what the bug was? Which I guess means "Can you explain what was causing it in a way I'd understand?"

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1375&start=0#p8409
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: my first game experience
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-09-06 23:29:09

Glulx interpreters are tied to OS-specific display libraries.

[url=http://code.google.com/p/garglk/]Gargoyle[/url] runs natively on Windows, Linux, and Mac. [url=http://zmpp.sourceforge.net/games/index.html]ZMPP[/url] supports the same platforms and uses Java.

For single platform players, there's [url=http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/programming/glulx/interpreters/git/wingit-127.zip]Windows Git[/url] on the Windows side and [url=http://www.logicalshift.co.uk/unix/zoom/]Zoom[/url] on the Mac side.

(Zoom also runs under Unix / X Windows but I'm not sure if anyone uses it this way, or whether packages exist for recent Linux distributions.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1381&start=0#p8410
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Instead of doing something other than taking inventory..
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-07 00:46:58

[quote="matt w"]Just out of curiosity, anyone know what the bug was?[/quote]Not a clue, beyond "bad code". [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1378&start=0#p8411
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: (Resolved?) Phrases revisited
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-07 00:51:49

That's an unfortunate collision of syntax, and I wish it were possible to say what I was trying to say (in "To say sculpt-desc (G - smooth)".)

You can work around this, but it's fairly awful and probably not worthwhile:

[code]
An exemplar is a kind of thing. A glitziness has an exemplar called exemplification.

Swanky-ex, smart-ex, smooth-ex, and neato-ex are exemplars.
The exemplification of swanky is swanky-ex.
The exemplification of smart is smart-ex.
The exemplification of smooth is smooth-ex.
The exemplification of neato is neato-ex.

To say sculpt-desc (G - glitziness):
	say "[sculpt-desc-ex exemplification of G]".

To say sculpt-desc-ex (E - exemplar):
	say "It's just kinda nice".

To say sculpt-desc-ex (E - smooth-ex):
	say "It's actually kind of smooth".

[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1382&start=0#p8412
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Word processors as the IDE
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-07 01:12:52

So I was talking quite awhile with Dan Fabulich of ChoiceOfGames.com at the I-F freeplay room at PAX two days ago.  In trying to pull in Real Writers™ to write games for him, he teaches them ChoiceScript, a minimal programming language for writing CYOA.  ChoiceScript looks like an outline that gets indented insanely far if you try a dialogue tree of any length.  (Dan recommends a "stack of bushes" shape for his style of games as a result.)  Anyhoo, Dan told me that many writers were asking him the same question while he was training them on his tool:  why can't I just use MS Word? 

ChoiceScript, like most every programming language including Inform and TADS, requires an ASCII text editor, like Notepad or (on Mac) TextEdit.  ChoiceScript doesn't have an integrated one with an IDE like Inform et al, so perhaps it is less of an issue here -- you want to write int fic, you use the int fic tools, not a word processor.  Dan said that many of his writers didn't know the difference between ASCII editors and word processors: it's all just text, right?  

Of course it chilled me to the bone to hear writers not knowing the difference between .txt and .doc, but once I got over myself, it made perfect sense.  Why [i]isn't[/i] int fic creation done by a word processor plug-in?  

I had, just a few moments ago, been reading up on [url=http://www.scintilla.org/]Scintilla[/url], the text-editor component that the Inform 7 IDE uses (as of 6E59).   Scintilla.org says, "The biggest problem with Richedit and other similar controls is that they treat styling changes as important persistent changes to the document so they are saved into the undo stack and set the document's dirty flag. For source code, styling should not be persisted as it can be mechanically recreated."  

OK, so, styling changes are "input" in the word processing world, but "output" in the coding world.  Still, is it hard for a compiler to ignore such stuff when compiling the words in a .doc file? 

Anyone know of any sort of compiler being a plug-in for a modern (GUI-native) word processor?  (Emacs and vi don't count!)  Has such a thing been conceived of in the I-F world?  Any writers have opinions on this sort of thing?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1382&start=0#p8413
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Word processors as the IDE
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-09-07 02:03:03

Why writers would want to use word is probably beyond my understanding, but it should be possible to make some extension which would link between the word processor and an IF compiler. Open Office would be quite easy I'm sure, MS Word maybe not...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1382&start=0#p8414
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Word processors as the IDE
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-09-07 04:19:23

I think the main advantages of a Word Processor - formatting text nicely, in a way that's representative of the printed page - typically won't actually amount to anything in the final IF game that you get out at the end.  

While the kind of things you want in an IDE - compiler options, the ability to include files, intellisense, automatic formatting of reserved words and quoted strings, the ability to set breakpoints and step through code - seem like they'd be a huge pain to work into any existing Word Processor.

I certainly think there [i]is[/i] something to be said for making an IDE that takes the look and feel of a word processor, but I also think the Inform 7 IDE has already largely done this.  

I guess I just don't see what the benefits would be to a Word Processor plugin besides placating a fear of different technology - and if they're hoping to write interactive prose, they'll have to get over that sooner or later.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1382&start=0#p8415
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Word processors as the IDE
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-09-07 05:01:27

Embarrassing admission: for a little while when I first started with Inform 6, I knew so little about text editors that wrote my source code in my then-word processor (not MS Word, but something Mac-specific... MacWrite Pro? something like that. It's been a while) and then saved as text, which added a fun extra step to each compilation. I'd done other programming before, but always within an integrated editor, and didn't know what to do when required to produce my own text files. 

This said, I think I agree with Pacian. If someone is frightened off by "we use this other tool because it handles the special requirements of this work better", what are they going to do when they hear about variables and loops?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1382&start=0#p8416
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Word processors as the IDE
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-09-07 10:02:31

[quote="Pacian"]I guess I just don't see what the benefits would be to a Word Processor plugin besides placating a fear of different technology - and if they're hoping to write interactive prose, they'll have to get over that sooner or later.[/quote]

This is an unproven theory that may or may not hold true.

Textfyre has been able to design games in MS Word entirely using a template highly similar to a screenplay. Whenever there's detailed logic associated with an action or response, we've been able to get by with statements like "one of six random responses" or "these responses in order, repeated" and similar types of codeless descriptions.

The primary flaw in our experiences to date are that all of our designers are experienced IF Authors. They're aware of how IF works and so they know how to communicate logic without code (although Mike Gentry admits to cheating and doing proof of concepts in code before nailing down a scene in Word).

I still hold out hope that non IF writers can be brought into the IF world through the design in a Word Processor process and be successful.

I've considered making a document template for Word to follow the process we've used within Textfyre, but at this point I don't think anyone would use it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1382&start=0#p8417
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Word processors as the IDE
User: djfletch / DateTime: 2010-09-07 13:50:23

Without actually using a word processor, an IDE could allow WYSIWYG styling inside strings:

dragon_question = "[i]What[/i], with your [b]bare hands[/b]?"

(Assuming IDEs aren't already doing this - I haven't looked at any for a while.)

The styles would be displayed, and could also be applied as in a word-processor - select the text and hit ctrl-b or whatever.

The IDE couldn't always determine what style a string would end up being printed in, but if you did simple substrings like the above, plus a special case for room names, that would cover most of the styling in most games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1318&start=0#p8418
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Possessive Apostrophe
User: AlienHunter / DateTime: 2010-09-07 14:41:03

See my note on Mantis <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=162#c522">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=162#c522</a> for some success in this area with output such as:

Welcome
An Interactive Fiction
Release 1 / Serial number 100907 / Inform 7 build 6E72 (I6/v6.31 lib 6/12N) SD

Lab
You can see a straw hat, a machine, Bob and Caitlin here.

>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] x bob's hat
Which do you mean, the small red hat or the large red hat?

>[2] small
You see nothing special about the small red hat.

>[3] x bob's machine
The machine is currently switched off.

>[4] x it's dial
Which do you mean, the speed dial or the frequency dial?

>[5] speed
You see nothing special about the speed dial.

>[6] bob, give me your hat
Which do you mean, the small red hat or the large red hat?

>[7] small
Bob gives the small red hat to you.

>[8] x nose
Which do you mean, Alice's nose, Bob's nose or Caitlin's nose?

>[9] my
You see nothing special about Alice's nose.

>[10] x nose
Which do you mean, Alice's nose, Bob's nose or Caitlin's nose?

>[11] his
You see nothing special about Bob's nose.

>[12] x nose
Which do you mean, Alice's nose, Bob's nose or Caitlin's nose?

>[13] caitlin's
You see nothing special about Caitlin's nose.

>[14] take caitlin's hat
(the straw hat)
Taken.

>[15] give it to caitlin
You give the straw hat to Caitlin.

>[16] x hat
Which do you mean, the large red hat, the straw hat, the small yellow hat, the large yellow hat, the small red hat or the blue hat?

>[17] caitlin's
Which do you mean, the straw hat, the small yellow hat or the large yellow hat?

>[18] yellow
Which do you mean, the small yellow hat or the large yellow hat?

>[19] large
You see nothing special about the large yellow hat.

>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1232&start=10#p8419
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Part of every man
User: AlienHunter / DateTime: 2010-09-07 14:41:38

See my note on Mantis <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=162#c522">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=162#c522</a> for some success in this area with output such as:

Welcome
An Interactive Fiction
Release 1 / Serial number 100907 / Inform 7 build 6E72 (I6/v6.31 lib 6/12N) SD

Lab
You can see a straw hat, a machine, Bob and Caitlin here.

>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] x bob's hat
Which do you mean, the small red hat or the large red hat?

>[2] small
You see nothing special about the small red hat.

>[3] x bob's machine
The machine is currently switched off.

>[4] x it's dial
Which do you mean, the speed dial or the frequency dial?

>[5] speed
You see nothing special about the speed dial.

>[6] bob, give me your hat
Which do you mean, the small red hat or the large red hat?

>[7] small
Bob gives the small red hat to you.

>[8] x nose
Which do you mean, Alice's nose, Bob's nose or Caitlin's nose?

>[9] my
You see nothing special about Alice's nose.

>[10] x nose
Which do you mean, Alice's nose, Bob's nose or Caitlin's nose?

>[11] his
You see nothing special about Bob's nose.

>[12] x nose
Which do you mean, Alice's nose, Bob's nose or Caitlin's nose?

>[13] caitlin's
You see nothing special about Caitlin's nose.

>[14] take caitlin's hat
(the straw hat)
Taken.

>[15] give it to caitlin
You give the straw hat to Caitlin.

>[16] x hat
Which do you mean, the large red hat, the straw hat, the small yellow hat, the large yellow hat, the small red hat or the blue hat?

>[17] caitlin's
Which do you mean, the straw hat, the small yellow hat or the large yellow hat?

>[18] yellow
Which do you mean, the small yellow hat or the large yellow hat?

>[19] large
You see nothing special about the large yellow hat.

>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1383&start=0#p8420
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Promises that parsers can keep
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-07 16:21:28

So at our PAX freeplay room, we had this older gamer named Tom wander in.  Tom wore a T-shirt from a triple-A zombie game, carried a newly purchased boardgame adaptation of D&D's Castle Ravenloft campaign setting, and sought us out merely on the strength of our flyers. Clearly, Tom is a renaissance geek: steeped in many traditions, and always learning more. We dutifully got him going on one of the freeplay machines, and he spent about an hour with Alabaster, with only occasional help. 

Once when I went to check in on him, I discovered he'd migrated from Alabaster to... the sample game we'd made especially for PAX?!  The sample game's purpose was to illustrate Inform 7 source code, to give the ordinary gamer a taste of computer programming and specifically that of I-F programming.  Tom was actually playing the game, and floundering around, trying to EAT JELLYBEANS and DRINK A COKE because these things were in the real room, but not of course in the sample game.  

But while scanning his transcript something else caught my eye. In the game, I had changed the command prompt from the > to "You decide to " partly to show that the prompt could be changed, and partly as a way to flag what input was accepted.  Tom had entered something like ASK FOR INFORMATION and got a parser question in response -- ask who?  Unfortunately, then the command prompt appeared beneath, YOU DECIDE TO, and that threw him off, and he was unable to complete the "simple" game for the lack of a noun between ASK and FOR. 

Later I grumbled in private that questions that the parser tosses up shouldn't print my prompt at all.  Heck, they should [i]be[/i] the prompt.  And then it occurred to me that maybe I could make that so.  It took all of five minutes.  Here's the resulting transcript, with the code beneath...
[quote="Transcript"]
[b]Prompting Plus[/b]
An Interactive Fiction by Ron Newcomb
Release 1 / Serial number 100907 / Inform 7 build 6E72 (I6/v6.31 lib 6/12N) SD

You're nursing a Scotch in the corner of the billards hall.  It seems a game of snooker over yonder got a bit rowdy.  The players search the floor for missing balls.

You can see a red ball and a green ball here.

[b]You decide to[/b] test me
(Testing.)

[b]You decide to [/b][1] take the ball
[b]Which do you mean, the red ball or the green ball?[/b] [2] red
Taken.

[b]You decide to[/b] [3] examine yourself
As good-looking as ever.

[b]You decide to [/b][4] drop the ball
(the red ball)
Dropped.

[b]You decide to [/b][5] take the ball
[b]Which do you mean, the red ball or the green ball? [/b][6] asdf
You can't see any such thing.

[b]You decide to [/b][7] check yourself
As good-looking as ever.

[b]You decide to [/b][8] take
[b]Which will you take? [/b][9] red
Taken.

[b]You decide to [/b][10] drop it
Dropped.

[b]You decide to [/b][11] take ball
[b]Which do you mean, the red ball or the green ball? [/b][12] both
red ball: Taken.
green ball: Taken.

[b]You decide to [/b][/quote]

[code]
"Prompting Plus" by Ron Newcomb

Include Default Messages by Ron Newcomb. 

The billiards hall is a room. "You're nursing a Scotch in the corner of the billards hall.  It seems a game of snooker over yonder got a bit rowdy.  The players search the floor for missing balls."  A red ball and a green ball are in the billiards hall.

Table of custom library messages (continued)
library-action	library-message-id	library-message-text
--	49	"[blank command prompt][bold type]Which will you [library message verb]?[ignore library line break][run paragraph on]"
--	46	"[blank command prompt][bold type]Which do you mean, [ignore library line break]"
--	57	"?[roman type][ignore library line break][run paragraph on]"

When play begins, now the command prompt is "[bold type]You decide to ".

Command prompt cold storage is some text that varies. 

To say blank command prompt:
	if command prompt cold storage is "":
		now command prompt cold storage is the command prompt;
		now the command prompt is " ".
		
After reading a command when the command prompt cold storage is not "":
	now the command prompt is the command prompt cold storage;
	now the command prompt cold storage is "".
	
Every turn when the command prompt cold storage is not "":
	now the command prompt is the command prompt cold storage;
	now the command prompt cold storage is "".

Test me with "take the ball/red / examine yourself / drop the ball / take the ball/asdf / check yourself / take/red / drop it / take ball / both".

The room description heading rule is not listed in any rulebook. [bold is for prompts; the room description informs the reader of the setting ][/code]

My purpose in bringing this up is this:  though parsers cannot deliver on the promise that they understand whatever you type, merely changing the > minimalistic default prompt, after which nearly anything from HI MOM to WHAT'S UP to WHAT DID YOU SAY TO ME all seem equally likely to work, to a prompt which is either a direct question or an unfinished statement, gives a very strong indicator as to what is expected.  This is especially true for the expected part of speech, such as the root form of a verb with or without nouns, or a single adjective like RED. 

And that seems like a good way to help the parser keep its promises.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1382&start=0#p8421
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Word processors as the IDE
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-09-07 16:54:04

[quote="djfletch"]Without actually using a word processor, an IDE could allow WYSIWYG styling inside strings:

dragon_question = "[i]What[/i], with your [b]bare hands[/b]?"

(Assuming IDEs aren't already doing this - I haven't looked at any for a while.)

The styles would be displayed, and could also be applied as in a word-processor - select the text and hit ctrl-b or whatever.

The IDE couldn't always determine what style a string would end up being printed in, but if you did simple substrings like the above, plus a special case for room names, that would cover most of the styling in most games.[/quote]

Actually this is often problematic -- at least, I commonly use styling to 

-- italicize or change the shading of certain prompts or information I want the player to read as outside the game (parser errors, conversation hints)
-- make bold the printing of object names as a way to highlight for newbies what they can interact with
-- automatically italicize the titles of all Book-class objects in a game

...and other things like this, where the styling is happening procedurally and often in some rule far away from the text string to which it applies.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1378&start=0#p8422
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: (Resolved?) Phrases revisited
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-09-07 19:18:03

[quote="zarf"]That's an unfortunate collision of syntax, and I wish it were possible to say what I was trying to say (in "To say sculpt-desc (G - smooth)".)

You can work around this, but it's fairly awful and probably not worthwhile:[/quote]

<snip>

So I see. [emote]:([/emote] It's good to know, though, so thank you. That sort of extensibility would be fairly useful to my mind, so much so that I'm considering dipping into I6 on the off chance of a solution being found there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1356&start=0#p8423
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: beta tester for a first game 40k words, inform, etc etc
User: Irfon-Kim / DateTime: 2010-09-07 21:24:26

I'd be up for that. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1383&start=0#p8424
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Promises that parsers can keep
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-07 22:29:50

I like this as an extension to the "You decide to" prompt style. It's pretty much necessary, as you observed.

Small concern: the player can break out of a disambig prompt and type a complete new command. I don't think the prompt style needs to change because of this, but it's worth putting in the documentation. Or maybe reminding the player once?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=20#p8425
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-07 22:34:52

I think it's worth splitting the "semantic highlighting" feature request into "semantic highlighting of all code" and "semantic highlighting of problems". The latter is much easier, obviously, and would probably be implemented first. But I don't want to lose the pony for the trees.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1384&start=0#p8426
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Fifty times fifty times fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover
User: PaulSharke / DateTime: 2010-09-07 22:45:37

Okay not THAT many.

I need help thinking a problem through. I've come up with a couple preliminary solutions but I want to make sure I'm doing this in a flexible manner.

What I'd like is something like what you see in Bronze. (I'm going to be vague here to avoid spoilers.) Once you've reached a certain point in the game, you're able to hear the thoughts of another character as you visit rooms in the castle.

I'd like to be able to provide an NPC's thoughts as the player progresses through an area -- but the real catch here is that the way the player solves puzzles and interacts with her environment affects the NPC's disposition, and therefore affects what the NPC will say in many if not all situations.

I think I'd also like to be able to have the player "poke" the NPC to evoke their response -- though there will be moments when the NPC volunteers information without the player's prompting.

One of my solutions so far provides two new values, mood (encouraging, flirtatious, suspicious) and passion (idly, nominally, effulgently). (The idea here is that a player can behave in a way to make the NPC suspicious, but there are certain kinds of behavior that are more suspicious than others.)

Then I create two verbs: one for getting general information ("What are you thinking?") and another for getting specific info ("What do you think about THIS?") So call them something like "poking" and "poking about [something]".

Then I create two tables.

[code]Table of General Reactions
location	passion	mood	response
Test Room	idly	encouraging	"blah"
Test Room	nominally	encouraging	"--"
Test Room	effulgently	encouraging	"--"
Test Room	idly	flirtatious	"--"
Test Room	nominally	flirtatious	"--"
Test Room	effulgently	flirtatious	"--"
Test Room	idly	suspicious	"--"
Test Room	nominally	suspicious	"--"
Test Room	effulgently	suspicious	"--"
Another Room (and so on)[/code]

And then a Table of Specific Reactions for each item or concept the player can 'poke about'.

However, this seems really unwieldy. Also, I can't figure out the proper syntax for sorting through the tables to make sure that, when the player pokes, we're choosing the right row for the NPC's current mood & disposition for the right location.

Are tables even the best solution here? I feel like they probably are but maybe I'm missing something obvious. Anyway... any suggestions?

EDIT: I should add that there will only ever be 1 NPC whose thoughts will be communicated to the player.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1343&start=10#p8427
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Edges of the World
User: PaulSharke / DateTime: 2010-09-08 00:12:20

A satisfying solution to this problem will depend entirely on the context of the work. We can procedurally generate rooms, create artificial obstacles, bend the PC's will -- and experiment with combinations thereof. The best solution will be one that complements the work.

As long as we don't cue the player toward an unimplemented room, then we can take comfort in the fact that most players aren't going to be upset when they can't travel any direction at any given moment. Reasonable readers are willing to suffer the genre's limitations as long as we do so with a modicum of grace. (This is why creating artificial obstacles is always more satisfying than letting the default parser response block the player's movement.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1375&start=0#p8428
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: my first game experience
User: Kivie / DateTime: 2010-09-08 04:55:50

Hello,
Are you playing version 2 of Ferrous Ring? It's available [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=wslmqnf2axgpihge]here[/url] (don't worry if you already started with the older version though because saved games won't be compatible).

As that game's author, I'm glad you're enjoying it, although I certainly wouldn't have recommended it to a first-time IF player!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1384&start=0#p8429
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Fifty times fifty times fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-09-08 09:36:43

Bronze's source is online, IIRC, so that might be a place to look.

I'm not sure I fully understand the problem, to be honest, so I'm going to reiterate a bit and you can tell me where I went wrong.

1)  The player needs to be able to check the general status of the NPC.  I'd use a to say phrase here:

[code]to say NPC-status:
  if the NPC is furious:
     say "I am furious!";
  etc.[/code]

2) The player needs to be able to ask the NPC's position on certain things.  I'd say this varies a lot - a relation might work, if how the NPC feels about different things is varying constantly.  A simple way to do it would be to write a topic table, where the responses vary a bit depending on the NPC:

[code]Table of Responses
topic    response
black   "That's an [if NPC is furious]appropriate [otherwise]awfully dark [end if]color."[/code]

3) The NPC will say things in preset areas at preset times.  If these are the same things as hir status or responses, it's easy enough.  Otherwise, it's a bit tougher - as you note, the permutations are what'll get you.  If the things zhe says are based solely on hir emotional status, I think say statements are your friend again.

[code]To say Test-Room-response:
  if NPC is furious: 
    if NPC is suspicious:
      say "I am suspicious and furious!";
etc.[/code]

If the NPC is responding to puzzle solving: you might be able to cut way down on this stuff with making puzzles scenes, and then have them end in different ways.

[code]To say Test-Room-response:
  if Taking Out the Trash ended badly:
    say "'You can't even be trusted to take out the garbage?'";[/code]

You might be able to get away with writing a sort of outline phrase and then inserting appropriate modifiers or verbs at specific times:

[code]say "'I [if NPC is not suspicious]love[otherwise]am going to kill you[end if], Dave.' HAL[if NPC is furious]'s red eye bores into you[otherwise] murmurs calmly[end if]."[/code]

These short substitutions can save time, although they're essentially the same thing as above.

If you decide you have to do the nested say phrases, you can set up a template ahead of time with all the permutations and fill it in as you go, which is helpful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1384&start=0#p8430
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Fifty times fifty times fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-09-08 09:59:48

[quote="PaulSharke"]Okay not THAT many.

I need help thinking a problem through. I've come up with a couple preliminary solutions but I want to make sure I'm doing this in a flexible manner.

What I'd like is something like what you see in Bronze. (I'm going to be vague here to avoid spoilers.) Once you've reached a certain point in the game, you're able to hear the thoughts of another character as you visit rooms in the castle.

I'd like to be able to provide an NPC's thoughts as the player progresses through an area -- but the real catch here is that the way the player solves puzzles and interacts with her environment affects the NPC's disposition, and therefore affects what the NPC will say in many if not all situations.

I think I'd also like to be able to have the player "poke" the NPC to evoke their response -- though there will be moments when the NPC volunteers information without the player's prompting.

One of my solutions so far provides two new values, mood (encouraging, flirtatious, suspicious) and passion (idly, nominally, effulgently). (The idea here is that a player can behave in a way to make the NPC suspicious, but there are certain kinds of behavior that are more suspicious than others.)

Then I create two verbs: one for getting general information ("What are you thinking?") and another for getting specific info ("What do you think about THIS?") So call them something like "poking" and "poking about [something]".

Then I create two tables.

[code]Table of General Reactions
location	passion	mood	response
Test Room	idly	encouraging	"blah"
Test Room	nominally	encouraging	"--"
Test Room	effulgently	encouraging	"--"
Test Room	idly	flirtatious	"--"
Test Room	nominally	flirtatious	"--"
Test Room	effulgently	flirtatious	"--"
Test Room	idly	suspicious	"--"
Test Room	nominally	suspicious	"--"
Test Room	effulgently	suspicious	"--"
Another Room (and so on)[/code]

And then a Table of Specific Reactions for each item or concept the player can 'poke about'.

However, this seems really unwieldy. Also, I can't figure out the proper syntax for sorting through the tables to make sure that, when the player pokes, we're choosing the right row for the NPC's current mood & disposition for the right location.

Are tables even the best solution here? I feel like they probably are but maybe I'm missing something obvious. Anyway... any suggestions?
[/quote]

It's possible to do this with a set of tables; if you have a complete set of room/passion/mood filled in, you can check that you're on the right row something like this:

[code]repeat through the Table of General Reactions:
  if the location entry is the location and the passion entry is the passion of NPC and mood entry is the mood of NPC: [this is the right row]
    say "[response entry][paragraph break]"[/code]

This isn't how I'd do it myself, however. If your writing approach is like mine, odds are good that you won't actually have unique text for every passion/mood combination for every item and room in the game. Sooner or later, you may find yourself wanting to consolidate, with some default reactions and then a couple of specialized ones.

Using text substitutions as gravel suggests might be useful if the text you've got in mind is short and the variations are easy to understand; for long passages or for very complex conditions it can get hard to parse.

So my inclination would be to rely on rulebooks instead, which are great for combining defaults and specialized reactions, and do the sorting for you. YMMV, but here's what I'd do:

[code]Living Room is a room. It contains a silver beanbag chair, a coffee table, and an art book. The description of the art book is "It's a collection of Rothko plates. You don't really get this stuff but it makes you feel good to have it out on the table."

Maya is a woman in the living room. Maya can be happy, suspicious, or jealous. Maya is happy. 

Reporting emotions about something is an activity.

Rule for reporting emotions about something:
	say "'I don't care about that.'"

Rule for reporting emotions about something (called target) when Maya is jealous:
	say "'What, is [target] a gift from your ex too?'"
	
Rule for reporting emotions about the silver beanbag chair:
	say "'It's a little over the top, isn't it?'"
	
Rule for reporting emotions about the art book:
	say "'Yeah, I know that was a gift from your ex.'"

Rule for reporting emotions about the art book when Maya is suspicious:
	say "'I don't know why you're so obsessed with that thing. You don't even like art! I bet it's because your ex gave it to you.'"

Rule for reporting emotions about the art book when Maya is jealous:
	say "'I swear, if we have one more conversation about your ex's [']cosmopolitan tastes,['] I'm going to leave you.'"
	
After doing something other than poking about with the art book:
	if Maya is suspicious, now Maya is jealous;
	if Maya is happy, now Maya is suspicious;
	continue the action.

Understand "poke about [something]" as poking about. Poking about is an action applying to one thing.

Report poking about something:
	carry out the reporting emotions about activity with the noun.
	
Test me with "poke about art book / poke about beanbag chair / poke about table / x art book / poke about art book / get art book / poke about art book / poke about table".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1383&start=0#p8431
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Promises that parsers can keep
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-08 13:13:21

I think it ok the disambig prompt quietly understands more than it says it does. It's the opposite situation which causes problems.  I personally wouldn't tell the player anything along the lines of, "but you can ignore what it's asking and enter whatever you'd like" because it sets bad precedent. 

(I'm curious now how to make setting different parser modes and setting different prompts a single operation.  For example, a prompt that only wants "male/female", or only wants one topic from a list of them a la dialogue tree.  Typically it's a two-step operation:  write whatever rules & code to make the prompt only understand what you need, then write rules to change, and later un-change, the command prompt to the necessary text.  A lot of the code in the example I gave deals with un-setting the prompt in various situations (answer given, parser error) and that's messy to do for each case.  Even ensuring a CYOA matching typed numbers to what the menu shows can be a pain when only parts of the game are CYOA. Hm.  Maybe a valid command prompts as a kind-of-value, and all parser-altering rules key off of the "current command prompt" rather than the scene or variable or whatever they'd normally watch for? Hm.)

Speaking of, zarf, how is that CSS/Glk/Glulx or whatever proposal coming along, if I may ask?  (I've totally forgotten the name for it.) You know, the one where the game would be able to tell the interpreter to avoid echoing the Enter key the player presses at the end of the command, so the game could stitch together several prompts and text into a single paragraph?  I'm still very excited about that tiny feature.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1382&start=0#p8432
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Word processors as the IDE
User: djfletch / DateTime: 2010-09-08 13:46:10

[quote="emshort"]
Actually this is often problematic -- at least, I commonly use styling to 

-- italicize or change the shading of certain prompts or information I want the player to read as outside the game (parser errors, conversation hints)
-- make bold the printing of object names as a way to highlight for newbies what they can interact with
-- automatically italicize the titles of all Book-class objects in a game

...and other things like this, where the styling is happening procedurally and often in some rule far away from the text string to which it applies.[/quote]
After I posted I was thinking you don't need to restrict styling to constant strings - you could allow it in any expression that's generating a string:

"This is a [[b]severity of the hint[/b]] hint: why not try [[i]description of the hint[/i]]?"

msg = "The book is called" + [i]book.title[/i]

It still isn't WYSIWYG everywhere - where the literal book titles appear they aren't italic. It's the same principle as capitalization in I7, when you have [The object] or [the object] and the capitalization of the expression in the source is applied to its result.

Ideally you'd like the IDE to have enough type information to prevent you from styling bits of the source outside string expressions.

Anyway. I don't really know if this idea is sensible but it would clearly be super neat.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1382&start=0#p8433
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Word processors as the IDE
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-08 13:51:45

I think it's more a question of time and comfort than fear. I've used the wrong programming language for a task because I just didn't want to learn the right language. I'm not afraid of language B, I just didn't want to invest my time. 

I'm not simply suggesting we use the word processor as a glorified text editor. I'm assuming we have a programming language specifically designed with that in mind.  Rather than placing prose "in" the code (usually corralled between double quote marks), do it the other way around:  the code is "in" the prose (like Inform 7's say phrases -- all code is corralled between square brackets).    I can easily imagine creating I-F through say-phrases like [color=#000080][interaction beat][/color] or [color=#000080][press any key][/color] or [color=#000080][wait for reader to type "refuse/no/disagree"][/color].   (If I could reference the prose via excerpts like ...question of time... and allow properties on prose like "read", "chosen", "offered", then say phrases like [color=#000080][if ...question of time... was read before ...disagree because IDEs... was chosen][/color] are feasible.)

Granted, I did that scene-centric tutorial, which is a unusual way to conceive a game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=0#p8434
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: PaulSharke / DateTime: 2010-09-08 19:02:36

Didn't see a thread like this elsewhere. Figured we could use a place to talk about specific bits of code we're especially proud of, or milestones, or frustrations, etc.

I hit 10,000 words in my source code today. I think the final product will be around 50K. I've finally pushed past my urge to beta-test every single thing as I create it, which has really let me open up creatively. I'm also really happy that more and more of the I7 syntax is coming naturally to me, and I'm having to look up less and less as I code.

What about you all?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1384&start=0#p8435
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Fifty times fifty times fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-08 20:36:24

[quote="PaulSharke"]Then I create two verbs: one for getting general information ("What are you thinking?") and another for getting specific info ("What do you think about THIS?") So call them something like "poking" and "poking about [something]".[/quote]
My suggestion here is to have a single poking about action, and re-direct the nounless one to it:[code]Understand "poke" or "poke about" as poking about.
Rule for supplying a missing noun while poking about: change the noun to nothing in particular.
There is an object called nothing in particular.[/code]This gives benefits down the road, for example, when using constructions like "when we have poked about the art book" or "when we have poked".  (Or perhaps you'd change the noun to the location, whichever.)

[quote="PaulSharke"]One of my solutions so far provides two new values, mood (encouraging, flirtatious, suspicious) and passion (idly, nominally, effulgently).[/quote]To extend Em's example, if those adjectives are on the same person, I think your rules can combine adjectives like "when Maya is idly suspicious" which would save typing. I think.

[quote="PaulSharke"]Then I create two tables.[/quote]
I recommend one table, the first column being of type "object" rather than the more specific room and thing. You can stick both rooms and things into an object column.  Again, makes the code neater. But yeah, I am fond of the table, possibly in conjunction with the rulebook idea -- say, the first rule checks the table for a super-specific response, then the other rules try various combinations.  Finally a last rule that says something regardless. And I don't see the need for making a separate activity/rulebook for it.  The Report Poking About rulebook should suffice. Off the top of my head, with copy-pasta for dessert:[code]
First report poking about: 
     repeat through the Table of General Reactions:
            if the subject entry is the noun and the passion entry is the passion of NPC and mood entry is the mood of NPC: 
                   say "[response entry][paragraph break]" instead.   [ remember the "instead"! ]

Last report poking about:
   say "'I don't care about that.'" instead.

Report poking about the art book when Maya is suspicious:
   say "'I don't know why you're so obsessed with that thing. You don't even like art! I bet it's because your ex gave it to you.'" instead.

[..and so on..]
[/code]

[quote="PaulSharke"]I'd like to be able to provide an NPC's thoughts as the player progresses through an area --  there will be moments when the NPC volunteers information without the player's prompting.[/quote]

Perhaps an Every Turn rule that fires if Poking About hadn't happened recently.  I'm unsure if "Every turn when we have not poked about for 10 turns: try NPC poking about a random thing in the location." would work, but if it did it should suffice.  (If it doesn't work, it's probably cause of the "not". In which case, use a variable that increases by one every turn.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=20#p8436
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-08 21:45:30

Try this: <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/tmp/highlight.html">http://eblong.com/zarf/tmp/highlight.html</a>

It doesn't try to color every bit of code on the screen; only the construct you've moused over. But then it shows *all* the construct you've moused over, up to the sentence level.

This is totally a mockup UI, obviously. In real life you'd want a tooltip-style delay before the popup appeared. Also the popup should stick around if you mouse down into it, so that you can click the doc and source links.

EDIT-ADD: Use this URL instead: <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/i7index/highlight-example.html">http://eblong.com/zarf/i7index/highlight-example.html</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1380&start=0#p8437
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Vintage Text Adventures
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2010-09-09 00:00:15

Please send me a private email 
ZUrlocker at hotmail

I'm trying to rebuild an Infocom collection...
--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=0#p8438
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-09-09 04:03:34

[quote="PaulSharke"]I've finally pushed past my urge to beta-test every single thing as I create it[/quote]

Heh, I never really get past that urge. Which is hard to keep up as your WIP grows larger and larger...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1386&start=0#p8439
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Planet IF
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2010-09-09 06:01:40

Is this still being maintained does anyone know?  I've sent a couple of emails to Christopher Armstrong for additions, and haven't heard anything back.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=20#p8440
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-09-09 09:56:37

[quote="zarf"]Try this: <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/tmp/highlight.html">http://eblong.com/zarf/tmp/highlight.html</a>

It doesn't try to color every bit of code on the screen; only the construct you've moused over. But then it shows *all* the construct you've moused over, up to the sentence level.[/quote]

I like this—it provides the functionality without the visual clutter. 

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1387&start=0#p8441
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: New multimedia magazine looking for for IF submissions, etc
User: 60secondsmagazine / DateTime: 2010-09-09 10:16:57

Howdy folks, 
I just wanted to pop in and point people over to a new multi-media magazine that me and a few others are starting called 60 Seconds. It's an iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch magazine focusing on narrative/media in 60 Seconds or less. We're looking to get some interactive fiction in if possible, although the majority of the content is being built in webkit and HTML5, which seems a little buggy still, at least when using Inform and Quixe for exporting (does Parchment work better?)

But it doesn't have to built in Inform -- it can be build entirely in HTML5 if you want, and doesn't have to necessarily even be narrative, as long as it's 60 seconds of content and somewhat interesting, that's all we're really looking for. 

Anyway, if this sounds interesting to anyone the full details can be found here: <a class="postlink" href="http://60seconds.mcbya.net">http://60seconds.mcbya.net</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1386&start=0#p8442
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Planet IF
User: George / DateTime: 2010-09-09 10:24:23

I think there was a recent addition to the planet (Jim Aikin's blog?) but I could be wrong about that. Just keep trying I guess. It seems like it would be better if there wasn't a single point of approval for something like that too.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=20#p8443
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-09-09 11:27:42

I like this too, as long as there's also a way to indicate compile-time errors in some way without having to mouseover the text.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=30#p8444
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-09 12:40:00

[quote="zarf"]I think it's worth splitting the "semantic highlighting" feature request into "semantic highlighting of all code" and "semantic highlighting of problems". The latter is much easier, obviously, and would probably be implemented first. But I don't want to lose the pony for the trees.[/quote]

This already kinda exists in uservoice: <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/861875-ide-compiler-mark-errors-in-the-source-code-with">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... -code-with</a>

(I love the pony for the trees line.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1388&start=0#p8445
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: question for Uservoice admins
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-09 12:41:26

Is there a way to combine two suggestions into one, consolidating their votes?  These two are basically identical, for a combined total of 11 votes:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/751870-default-messages-absorb-david-fisher-s-default-m?ref=title">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... ?ref=title</a>

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/884749-ide-extensions-bundle-david-fisher-s-library-mes?ref=title">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... ?ref=title</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=30#p8446
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-09 12:46:28

Yeah -- like I said, it's worth treating "highlight problem code" and "highlight semantic features of all code" as separate features. (I will add a uservoice entry.) EDIT-ADD: Ah, there already is one, right. Thanks.

My sample incidentally demonstrates that this is a *whole friggin' lot* of semantic information. Rendered in HTML (which is how I7's index pages work), I've inflated 60 characters of source code to over 6 kilobytes of markup. If it's integrated into the editor app, it would be more efficient, but there would still be a large lump of info for the editor to digest on every compile.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1388&start=0#p8447
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: question for Uservoice admins
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-09 12:57:25

Also 

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/1005415-ide-insert-the-matching-closing-bracket-automati?ref=title">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... ?ref=title</a>

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/751048-ide-add-smart-bracketing-to-ides">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... ng-to-ides</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=30#p8448
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-09-09 13:27:41

Ooh, yes, this is very slick. I like.

The only thing I think is lost from my version is the ability to see at a glance that you've done something wrong. (Take the "Old Man and the Sea" example, where you think you've created one object but have actually made two). It feels like this would only help out if you already suspected something was wrong and were trying to work out what it was.

Perhaps after each background compile, it could highlight-and-fade the names of newly created objects? 

On the other hand, maybe I'm overstating the importance of this.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=30#p8449
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-09 13:40:24

I thought about having a highlight color scale for phrase nesting. So each sentence would be pale yellow, a phrase within the sentence would be slightly darker yellow, subphrases would be darker, and so on -- the same block structure I have now, but always visible.

That would distinguish a single object from two objects, at a glance. But it would also turn the source into a mosaic of colored bands. I guess I'll toss up a modified demo, just to see.

I saw your comment about "newly-created" objects but I don't think I understood it. Do you mean the earliest declaration of each object in the source code? Or objects added since the last compile?

I'm doubtful about the latter, because I compile a lot -- and I'm looking at the right-hand pane, either to notice compiler errors or test what I just typed. Throwing in *transient* information on the left feels like a mistake. I'm losing information if I recompile, which means I'd either hesitate to recompile or ignore the information. Neither is great.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=0#p8450
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-09-09 13:43:34

I'm kind of in an ebb period, so I've been working a lot on [url=http://gravelgamedesign.blogspot.com/]my map[/url] (most recent two posts).   Which I am unreasonably proud of, considering how politely it was panned at a forum consisting of real fake mapmakers.  Still, it makes me very happy and is actually helping set down some details that were kind of nebulous for awhile.  (It's also unfinished, but at least it's in recognizable map-like form, which it wasn't for kind of a long time.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=0#p8451
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-09 14:21:20

Very nice, Gravel. Are you on the Planet IF?  And what's this about fake mapmakers denigrating your map?  Was it not fake enough?  (I am genuinely confused.)

"Not Inform code, where lines seem to multiply like bunny rabbits when you look the other way.."

But they're [i]carnivorous[/i] bunnies!!

More on-topic: whenever I get a piece of code to do something tricky via very elegant code, I jump outta my chair and parade around like Rocky.  Yes, I live alone.  Anyhoo, getting I6 code to directly call some I7 code with parameters, without go-betweens, makes me very happy.  Also, anytime my complex parsing or AI routines do something intelligent I hadn't anticipated restores my faith in technology.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=30#p8452
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-09 14:34:08

[quote="zarf"]My sample incidentally demonstrates that this is a *whole friggin' lot* of semantic information. Rendered in HTML (which is how I7's index pages work), I've inflated 60 characters of source code to over 6 kilobytes of markup. If it's integrated into the editor app, it would be more efficient, but there would still be a large lump of info for the editor to digest on every compile.[/quote]
That is a lot of info. I got confused, at least until I figured out it's putting, say, the whole "let...be.." line in every pop-up, at the bottom.  I guess cause that line moves around so much -- sometimes its at the top, alone, sometimes it's at the bottom, etc., made it look like there was even more info than there was.   Can you make a similar where the "largest" line is always at top, so they don't shuffle their order as I slowly drag the mouse cursor from left to right? 

Anyway, I think that amount of info should probably require a right-click.  (That's the "intellisense" that Pacian mentioned, right?) It'd be annoying to have all these auto-popups happening all the time. 

I liked your shaded gradations idea, though I think maybe two would suffice for me: the words of the invoked To-phrase be black, the parameters to it be in almost-black.  It would strengthen the resemblance of to-phrases to those fill-in-the-blank ad-libs.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=0#p8453
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-09-09 14:40:17

Thanks!  There are some *really* accomplished cartographers out there, working on maps for all kinds of fictional things - D&D, games, stories.  Stunningly accomplished.  There were a number of areas sent up for improvement in mine, which is why I asked for help, after all, but I also think it's a style issue - super realistic pseudo-satellite images are really in right now, and while I'm hard pressed to identify a style for my map, it's definitely not super realistic.

And, the blog's not up because it's mostly a personal dev journal.  People are more than welcome to read it, of course, but I've got the general sense that People Don't Talk About Details of their games, and that's essentially what it's there for.  I have no great wisdom or deep thoughts to pass down on IF - it's pretty strictly "Aarrgh, why can't I get anything to WORK?" and "Here's the general plan for X detail."  Oh, and occasionally I promise myself that I'll play bunch of competition games and then don't.

I have a big mega-goal for the future: to get some emergent story or gameplay out of my game.  If that ever happens, I'll have to set off fireworks or something.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1388&start=0#p8454
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: question for Uservoice admins
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-09-09 15:19:21

Not unless we upgrade to a paid plan for Uservoice; the free service doesn't offer that ability to admins.

(We've talked about doing that, but it doesn't feel like it's worth $19/month to do so, at the moment.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1388&start=0#p8455
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: question for Uservoice admins
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-09 15:37:10

Ah. Yeah, prolly not worth the $.  No problem. People like Erik & myself don't mind trolling through every so often, sussing out duplicates.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1386&start=0#p8456
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Planet IF
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-09-09 15:59:53

[quote="Campbell"]Is this still being maintained does anyone know?  I've sent a couple of emails to Christopher Armstrong for additions, and haven't heard anything back.[/quote]

I've heard from Christopher recently. He's still in charge and paying attention.

David C.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=0#p8457
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-09-09 16:29:55

[quote="gravel"]I have no great wisdom or deep thoughts to pass down on IF - it's pretty strictly "Aarrgh, why can't I get anything to WORK?" and "Here's the general plan for X detail."  Oh, and occasionally I promise myself that I'll play bunch of competition games and then don't.[/quote]

It's a shame there's not more discussion about IF design in general. I tend not to talk about my creative efforts for idiosyncratic reasons: on some level, it satisfies the inner urge to tell the story in the first place. Sharing the cool parts up front lessens the joy of setting it down in a fixed form.

I'd always assumed this was a factor for others, but if not, by all means share away!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1389&start=0#p8458
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Noobie question about "understand"
User: peladovii / DateTime: 2010-09-09 17:17:02

Hello, im new here, and already seeking for help xD. Probably is a really stupid question .

Well, i created an action (Nosing). 

[code]
Room1 is a room. here is a banana and a screw.

nosing is an action applying to one thing.
understand "nose [screw]" as nosing.
instead of nosing the screw, try smelling the screw.

instead of smelling anything, say "Smells like a [noun]".
[/code]

It works fine...
[code]>nose screw
Smells like a screw[/code]

but Inform tends to try to supply the noun if user dont give any:
[code]
>nose
(the screw)
Smells like a screw
[/code]

Which is a feature i dont want (with any other objects or such)

i can "fix" with [code]understand "nose [anything]" as nosing.[/code] but then ill have to write exceptions for all objects i dont want to "nose" or viceversa...

is there a command or something to disable ANY attempt to supply ANY missing word?

thx!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1390&start=0#p8459
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Blue Lacuna question/request
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-09 18:55:34

I'm looking at the "Legacy extensions" extension on the site, but in there, the part that re-implements NounDomain() has all of its tabs stripped out, so is unreadable.  Anyone have a readable copy of that section?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1389&start=0#p8460
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Noobie question about "understand"
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-09 18:59:01

Yep:[code]Understand "nose" as a mistake ("Nose what?  Try again.")[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1389&start=0#p8461
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Noobie question about "understand"
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-09 19:34:59

You may get the right result if you use

[code]
Understand "nose [something]" as nosing.
[/code]

Since more than one object is now acceptable for the nosing action, the parser won't assume one.

You'll have to write a rule to handle the default case ("nose banana", "nose player", etc). But that's a good thing overall. Players learn the game's verbs by experimenting, and that only works if all verbs can be parsed with all objects.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=30#p8462
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-09 19:45:36

I originally tried the lines in the other order. The problem is that the *highlighted* construct -- the most specific one the user is pointing at -- winds up on the bottom, and in an inconsistent location to boot. I wanted that to be on top; it's what you're actually looking at.

The shifting is annoying, I agree. On the other hand, if you're right-clicking, it might not matter. Also remember that this is one line of code, which is an artificial example. If you had a screenful of the stuff, you'd be moving the mouse more vertically, which would produce random changes no matter what.

I tried the gradation idea, but it's not practical. Four shades of yellow are almost indistinguishable when next to each other. I had to go from white to dark orange to get clear distinctions, and even that wouldn't be enough with six or eight nesting levels.

I don't think your notion of two shades will work either. You say "the invoked to-phrase", but which one? The top-level one? That's only going to be interesting to the player in a minority of cases. (It would do nothing for our canonical "old man and the sea" case.) In this one, only "let" and "be" would be highlighted. For top-level assertions, nearly every highlighted word would be an "is".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=0#p8463
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: PaulSharke / DateTime: 2010-09-09 20:39:36

[quote]It's a shame there's not more discussion about IF design in general.[/quote]

I think what happens is that there will be a flurry of discussions, which will die down as people begin to implement what they've learned in those discussions into their own work. Then, as those new works are released, they generate new discussions.

It's not that there isn't a lot of discussion; we're just percolating at the moment.

EDIT: But that's getting off-topic. Another brag: I told my sister I was writing interactive fiction. She and I used to play Commodore 64 games together when we were little, and when I reminded her of Hitchhiker's Guide and told her that interactive fiction was still alive and kicking she got all excited and demanded to see my work when it's done. Sisters are the best!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1391&start=0#p8464
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Getting multiple choice player input.
User: cottccid / DateTime: 2010-09-09 21:22:44

Greetings all,

I am having a hard time figuring out how to do player input.  For example, an NPC asks "What is your favorite color?"  Is there a way to set up a "Response required" thing ala "if the player consents" but for non-yes/no questions?

Thanks in advance.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1389&start=0#p8465
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Noobie question about "understand"
User: peladovii / DateTime: 2010-09-09 21:54:59

first of all: thanx guys for replying! and so fast!

@Zarf: I've tried your solution before but the problem is if i want to "understand" a built in verb with a specific item, lets say "take", it would cause troubles.

for example.

[code]
Understand "nose [something]" as taking.
[/code]

On the other hand, I guess Ron's approach would fit. Im not in my PC so could not try it yet, but tomorrow hopefully ill try it.

Thx guys!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1383&start=0#p8466
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Promises that parsers can keep
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-09 22:23:49

I sent the Glk stylesheet proposal off to Graham in April, knowing that he'd be too busy to look at it until the new I7 release was done. I figured that his schedule would clear up at the beginning of May... obviously, it didn't work out that way.

He hasn't given me an opinion on it, but Emily has recently said that they want to get back to that stuff soon.

I want to spend September working on game design rather than infrastructure. (August was floating-point month.) So hopefully I'll be back on the infrastructure track later in the fall.

I realize that's not much of an answer (or rather, it's the same answer I gave last year). And the input-echo proposal is orthogonal to the stylesheet work -- I'm not blocked on it. It's just not happening this month.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1390&start=0#p8467
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Blue Lacuna question/request
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-09-09 23:27:08

Yeah, this came from copy-and-pasting it out of the Appendix PDF, probably. I think there's only one changed line in there, though?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=0#p8468
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2010-09-10 05:12:53

[quote="PaulSharke"]Another brag: I told my sister I was writing interactive fiction. She and I used to play Commodore 64 games together when we were little, and when I reminded her of Hitchhiker's Guide and told her that interactive fiction was still alive and kicking she got all excited and demanded to see my work when it's done. Sisters are the best![/quote]

Well.  I started writing ADRIFT about 14 years ago so my sister could make me a text adventure.  I'm still waiting...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1391&start=0#p8469
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting multiple choice player input.
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2010-09-10 08:10:48

Im not exactly certain what you want, but (if you are using Inform 7) you could çheck out the following extensions:

Questions: <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/Michael%20Callaghan/Questions/index.html">http://inform7.com/extensions/Michael%2 ... index.html</a>
Simple Chat: <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/Mark%20Tilford/Simple%20Chat/index.html">http://inform7.com/extensions/Mark%20Ti ... index.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1389&start=0#p8470
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Noobie question about "understand"
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-10 10:25:11

What problems does that example cause? I've done it.

(To exactly match the library's behavior you would want 

[code]
Understand "nose [things]" as taking.
[/code]

...because the taking action accepts multiple objects. Most other actions don't, though, so stick with [something] for your own actions.)

Or did you mean the other way around?

[code]
Understand "take [wrench]" as nosing.
[/code]

You can do this, but it's almost never the right way to customize an action. Better to write an instead rule:

[code]
Instead of taking the wrench:
    try nosing the wrench.
[/code]

That will catch all synonyms ("get wrench", "pick up wrench", etc.) I think it also gives better disambiguation behavior.

You might use an Understand declaration if you *don't* want to catch synonyms. For example, 

[code]
Understand "take [pill]" as medicating.
[/code]

That would not catch "get pill" or "pick up pill". That might be what you want, but it still risks confusing players.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1383&start=0#p8471
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Promises that parsers can keep
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-10 11:36:09

Thanks zarf.  (And to the dev team too.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1392&start=0#p8472
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Can unset pronouns cause a which-did-you-mean question?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-10 11:44:13

So I'd like to change the default behavior from this:

[quote="Transcript"]> EXAMINE HIM
I'm not sure what 'him' refers to.[/quote]
to this:
[quote="Transcript"]> EXAMINE HIM
Who did you mean, Bob, Charlie, or Daniel?[/quote]

This seems much more helpful for the player and gives the author one less thing to customize.  I tried coding this myself but cannot: apparently whether the parser is in a WDYM state isn't something exposed to Inform 7, and is nasty to do even in Inform 6, assuming it's possible without breaking stuff.  

I created and [url=http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/1049999-unset-pronouns-cause-a-wdym-question?ref=title]voted for such a suggestion[/url], but does anyone foresee problems with this idea?

(I would eventually use my question-is-prompt trick from [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1383]that other thread[/url].)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1392&start=0#p8473
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can unset pronouns cause a which-did-you-mean question?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-10 13:03:26

The WDYM handling is a terrible knot in the Inform parser; it hasn't changed since the Inform 5 days.

For this case, the easy way out is to munge the input (after-reading-command) to replace "HE"/"HIM" with "MAN". Then ensure that all your male characters respond to "MAN".

(Up to you whether to *always* do this, or only do it when the current pronoun is unset or out of scope.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1389&start=0#p8474
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Noobie question about "understand"
User: peladovii / DateTime: 2010-09-10 13:05:21

hello zarf, thanks again, you have been very helpful!

I didnt explain myself well, (not native english speaker)

but still you gave me the correct answer [emote]:D[/emote].

What I tried to explain is that i wanted to assing differnt  "nosing" depending on the object being "nosed" xD.

I thought it as:

understand "nose [wrench]" as nosing.
understand "nose [Fred] as talking. (yah nonsense)

but the right way to do it (i suppose) is like you told me:
[code]
understand "nose [something]" as nosing.
instead of nosing the wrench, try smelling the wrench.
instead of nosing Fred, try talking to Fred.
etc.
[/code]

of course what i try to achieve its not related with "nosing" xD but i get the idea now.

Thank you mate!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1383&start=0#p8475
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Promises that parsers can keep
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-09-10 13:11:27

I was replaying forbidden castle, a 1980's IF game.

What it seems to do is understand keywords in the text.

For example.

Getting is an action applying to some text. Understand "take [text]" as getting.

Check getting:
   if the topic understood includes "sword", try taking the sword instead.
...

This allows:

>TAKE SWORD
Taken

>TAKE THE SWORD FROM THE DESK
Taken

>TAKE THE STUPID SWORD 
Taken

This seems to apply to almost all verbs. What's more, if an NPC is present, any command it doesn't understand, it tries to interpret as speech to the NPC, and has the NPC respond.

Place
The innkeeper is here. A sword is here.

>BLAH BLAH BLAH
Innkeeper: Boy, I don't understand a thing you're saying!

>GET SWORD
Taken.

>YELL AT INKEEPER ABOUT SWORD
Innkeeper: Man that sure is a mighty nice sword you have there...

I wonder if there's a way to parse things through a "get [text]" command as an alternate as a "get [something]".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=0#p8476
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-09-10 14:19:56

Gravel-
I've also been working on a map for my work-in-progress, and I borrowed a trick from a friend, which is that I computer-generated a random fractal pattern for my coastlines.  It gives them a sort of detailed look without having to make up detail by hand (which can be hard to do on a computer without a tablet), and gave me a chance to step away from Illustrator for a bit.  The original is a couple lines of Processing code, and then my friend helped me re-write it in ML (SMLNJ) as a learning project for me, so if you're handy with either of those languages and want some code that outputs pdf or ps respectively, send me an email (my name, as below, at instamatique dot com).  I'll be back to the computer with that code on it late Tuesday night.

Also just some general (unsolicited  [emote];)[/emote] ) advice, which you should certainly feel free to ignore: if I were you, I'd pick a final size that you want your map to be -- printable on a standard paper size, viewable in a standard browser window, whatever -- and occasionally view it at that size.  It'll help you make decisions about font size and the amount of detail to put into the trees and such that can be hard to focus on when you're spending all your time zoomed way in, especially if you're not trying for a hyper-realistic style (and the style it looks like you're going for seems perfectly appropriate to me).

-Lea

[On the topic of this thread: I finished my re-design of my portfolio website!  Now my IF is actually listed in my portfolio, along with, you know, everything else I've done in the three years since I last updated.  And better pictures of some of the older stuff.]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1393&start=0#p8477
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Z-Machine re: set_text_style
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-09-10 15:26:00

From ZSpec 1.0, section [url=http://www.inform-fiction.org/zmachine/standards/z1point0/sect08.html]8.8.3.2.3[/url]:

[quote]The text style is set just as in Version 4, using set_text_style (which sets that for the current window).[/quote]

On the surface this appears to say that in V6, text styles behave "just as" they do in V4. Is the parenthetical remark an elaboration of the V4 behavior or an extrapolation into V6 behavior?

In other words, in the V4 model, are text styles set for the current window, or for all windows?

Border Zone appears to expect the latter, and that is what Windows Frotz implements. Tor went the other way with Glk Frotz, presumably owing to the ambiguity of the spec.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1394&start=0#p8478
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: New GoogleGroup for opensource/collaborative projects
User: QueenoftheCapes / DateTime: 2010-09-10 16:36:12

Hi, guys.  I hit a wall so hard that I couldn't reduce it to a "How do I X?" question, so I decided to just put the entire code up for people to pick apart, use, and comment on as they see fit. 

It is here:  [url]http://groups.google.com/group/open-source-projects-for-tads3[/url]

You can also feel free to put your own opensource/collaborative projects there, if you want to.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1395&start=0#p8479
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: question about Emily Short's "Status Line Removal" extension
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-10 19:05:24

The blurb says it's for both Glulx & Z-machine as of version 2, but it no workie for Glulx.  

I tried looking in Jon Ingold's Flexible Windows extension (which doesn't compile in my WIP for some reason), and Erik Temple's Glulx Status Line Control.  So I put this bit into my WIP: [code]Include (-
[ InitGlkWindow winrock;
	return (winrock == GG_STATUSWIN_ROCK);
];
-) after "Definitions.i6t".  [/code]
which seems to do the job.  Is there a reason Emily's extension doesn't include this?  Am I incurring some subtle bug?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1395&start=0#p8480
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: question about Emily Short's "Status Line Removal" exten
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-09-10 19:21:34

Status Line Removal works fine for me under Glulx. It sounds like maybe you already have an InitGlkWindow routine in your WIP—? That's the only thing I can think of that would kill both Flexible Windows and Status Line Removal...

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1395&start=0#p8481
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: question about Emily Short's "Status Line Removal" exten
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-10 22:17:44

How does it run fine under Glulx?  It won't even compile. The whole extension is marked "for z-machine only"
[quote]Version 3 of Status Line Removal (for Z-Machine only) by Emily Short begins here.[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1395&start=0#p8482
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: question about Emily Short's "Status Line Removal" exten
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-09-10 23:15:57

Ah, looks like you pulled a little switcheroo. Your original post suggests that you're using version 2, but couldn't get it to work. Version 2, which is what I have installed, works just fine with Glulx. But it looks like Emily has made the extension z-machine only again for v3. Maybe because there are two other extensions that do the same thing for Glulx? I don't know.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1393&start=0#p8483
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Z-Machine re: set_text_style
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-09-11 02:24:16

In V4, there's no concept of different styles for different windows: there's just the current style, which applies wherever the output appears. V6 introduces 8 windows, each with their own style, and V6 @set_text_style then operates on the current window, which is I believe what the parenthetical remark is trying to say.

This is also how the core Frotz code implements it, not just Windows Frotz.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1395&start=0#p8484
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: question about Emily Short's "Status Line Removal" exten
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-09-11 02:52:36

I changed it because after some changes under the hood, the extension no longer did what I wanted it to under Glulx; but on the other hand it didn't seem important to spend time solving the problem since, as you say, there are other extensions to handle it.

Sorry for the confusion.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1383&start=0#p8485
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Promises that parsers can keep
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-09-11 10:06:49

On the one hand I'm all for keywords, on the other hand I think it's a recipe for disaster to encourage players to type words that will be disregarded.  For all we know, those words may provide a context that means the game does [i]exactly the opposite[/i] of what the player intended.

>REFUSE TO KISS THE UGLY FROG
You kiss the frog and it turns into a handsome prince!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1396&start=0#p8486
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: The Lost Sheep - Z Code game in need of testing
User: Celestianpower2 / DateTime: 2010-09-11 12:16:30

Hello,

I've already posted this on if.game-testing, but I thought I'd post it here too just in case.

The game is a short, light-hearted puzzle-type adventure where you are cast as a shepherd who has lost one of his sheep. Richly implemented, with many unnecessary actions catered for and many amusing extras. I'm intending to enter IFComp (last minute decision - hence the lateness of this request...)

If you're interested, send me a quick PM and I'l send the file over. Thank you!

Ben.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=0#p8487
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: PaulSharke / DateTime: 2010-09-11 17:19:05

[quote]Well.  I started writing ADRIFT about 14 years ago so my sister could make me a text adventure.  I'm still waiting...[/quote]

Oh my... I hope it's not writer's block!

Brag: I wrote about 800 words at work yesterday in Notepad, and when I c/p'ed the code into Inform, it worked perfectly!

Bummer: I'm worried that, now that everything's falling into place and I'm getting the chance to take a hard look at the game, the tone and the approach is ALL WRONG.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1396&start=0#p8488
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Lost Sheep - Z Code game in need of testing
User: PaulSharke / DateTime: 2010-09-11 17:22:18

Sounds a little like Lost Pig.

I'll help you test it. I'll shoot you a PM.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1386&start=0#p8489
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Planet IF
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-09-12 00:16:23

How much does the non-IF stuff annoy other people? I was thinking of collecting the urls for more specific subsets of the blogs, so that it won't get filled up with other stuff (most blogs allow you to get the feed of only a certain tag). Good idea?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1386&start=0#p8490
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Planet IF
User: George / DateTime: 2010-09-12 00:28:20

Getting the relevant feeds by tag definitely would be an improvement IMO.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1386&start=0#p8491
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Planet IF
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-09-12 01:32:49

Maybe we could collect a list here of the particularly obnoxious ones.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1397&start=0#p8492
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Sorting a List?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-09-12 06:36:12

Are there any accessible methods in TADS 3 for sorting a list?

I see plenty of documentation on [i]outputting[/i] lists in a given order, but I want to do other stuff with the (sorted!) elements first.

If I could just use whatever sorting method the various Lister objects use, without having to output a list, that'd be awesometacular.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1397&start=0#p8493
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Sorting a List?
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2010-09-12 09:01:12

Do you just mean this, or am I missing something?
[code]myLittleList = myLittleList.sort();[/code]
There are optional parameters, too: see [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/searchGo.php?d=doc/sysman/list.htm]the documentation for List[/url] (search for "sort") for more details. On the same documentation page, there are also many other cool methods for lists.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1386&start=0#p8494
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Planet IF
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-09-12 09:58:14

[quote="Dannii"]How much does the non-IF stuff annoy other people? I was thinking of collecting the urls for more specific subsets of the blogs, so that it won't get filled up with other stuff (most blogs allow you to get the feed of only a certain tag). Good idea?[/quote]

I like it, actually, but that's probably just me being idiosyncratic.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1397&start=0#p8495
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Sorting a List?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-09-12 11:39:33

Thank you muchly.   [emote]:D[/emote] 

I find the equivalent page for strings so useful, I don't know why I didn't think to look for the one for Lists.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1386&start=0#p8496
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Planet IF
User: PaulSharke / DateTime: 2010-09-12 11:55:57

[quote="Dannii"]How much does the non-IF stuff annoy other people? I was thinking of collecting the urls for more specific subsets of the blogs, so that it won't get filled up with other stuff (most blogs allow you to get the feed of only a certain tag). Good idea?[/quote]

Depends on how far off-topic the material is, to be honest. If it's still about gaming or traditional literary theory, then I don't mind at all. If it's about a new stray cat someone has adopted, then that's perhaps inappropriate. Cute, but inappropriate.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1386&start=0#p8497
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Planet IF
User: vivdunstan / DateTime: 2010-09-12 15:56:59

[quote="PaulSharke"][quote="Dannii"]How much does the non-IF stuff annoy other people? I was thinking of collecting the urls for more specific subsets of the blogs, so that it won't get filled up with other stuff (most blogs allow you to get the feed of only a certain tag). Good idea?[/quote]

Depends on how far off-topic the material is, to be honest. If it's still about gaming or traditional literary theory, then I don't mind at all. If it's about a new stray cat someone has adopted, then that's perhaps inappropriate. Cute, but inappropriate.[/quote]

I agree totally. I'm fascinated by gaming and literary theory, so that stuff's fine as well as the more obviously IF stuff. Usually what I see on there is fine with me.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1398&start=0#p8498
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: IF Theory book?
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2010-09-12 16:52:18

So I recently read Twisty Little Passages for the first time, and I was reminded of the IF Theory book (<a class="postlink" href="http://iftheory.com/">http://iftheory.com/</a>). Does anyone know the current status of this? It looks like the website hasn't been updated since 2005 (except to be vandalized with various links). Are any/all of the articles written for it? Is it possible/useful to resurrect this or something like it? I guess this could have been an email to Dave and Emily, but I thought I'd see what other people know about this.

-Kevin

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1398&start=0#p8499
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Theory book?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2010-09-12 16:57:31

I haven't heard about the IF Theory Book in years, at least not from anyone saying they were stil working on it. This project seems to be completely dead... which is a shame. But do by all means contact one of the original organisers! Perhaps they can work out something, and not let those essays go to waste.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1398&start=0#p8500
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Theory book?
User: George / DateTime: 2010-09-12 17:42:43

Totally OT, but how [i]does [/i]somebody inject links into a static web page like that?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1398&start=0#p8501
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Theory book?
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2010-09-12 17:57:30

[quote="jacksonmead"]I was reminded of the IF Theory book (<a class="postlink" href="http://iftheory.com/">http://iftheory.com/</a>). Does anyone know the current status of this?[/quote]
Emily Short answered that question [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/01/25/status-of-projects/]in her blog[/url] last January. Here are the relevant excerpts:

[quote="Emily Short"][b]Whatever happened with the Theory Book?[/b]

The IF Theory book is on a semi-permanent hiatus, having never quite recovered its organizational direction since our original publishing plans fell through and various other issues came up. Again, this is dependent on how things go for me over the next year; it is possible I’ll have time to return to it. I do have a volunteer to help who knows a lot more than I do about the practical aspects of editing and type-setting a book. But there are no guarantees about this, and it’s lower priority than lots of other things. Many of the originally intended articles are available on line, which is a partial consolation. 

I do apologize to the people who put work into the project that it has dragged out so long; at the same time, I’m very conscious that starting it up again would require a lot of reassessment of content, because IF has moved on very substantially since 2003 or so. 

[b]The iftheory website is broken — did you know that?[/b]

Yes. The original website for the theory book has been hacked to contain spam links to random junk sites. 

This is not something I can fix. As far as we can tell, what happened is that the domain lapsed and was bought up by a spammer, who then reproduced the original page… but with spam links in it. Which is despicable, but I don’t have any real recourse. If I get the project up and running again, I’ll make a new website.[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1398&start=0#p8502
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Theory book?
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2010-09-12 18:27:25

[quote="Eriorg"]
Emily Short answered that question [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/01/25/status-of-projects/]in her blog[/url] last January. Here are the relevant excerpts:[/quote]

Ah, thanks. And now that I'm reminded of it, I do remember reading that.

-Kevin

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1398&start=0#p8503
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Theory book?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-09-12 19:42:37

Is it something that we could have on Lulu or another POD?

I know LaTeX and would be willing to help.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1386&start=0#p8504
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Planet IF
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-09-12 19:46:10

What do people think about each of the following?

<a class="postlink" href="http://eis-blog.ucsc.edu/2010/09/making-sense-with-answer-set-programming-im-into-nuggets-yall/">http://eis-blog.ucsc.edu/2010/09/making ... gets-yall/</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://corvus.zakelro.com/2010/09/honeycomb-engine-behind-the-design/">http://corvus.zakelro.com/2010/09/honey ... he-design/</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://nickm.com/post/2010/09/an-electronic-literature-directory-comparison/">http://nickm.com/post/2010/09/an-electr ... omparison/</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://eis-blog.ucsc.edu/2010/09/infinite-adaptive-mario/">http://eis-blog.ucsc.edu/2010/09/infini ... ive-mario/</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://corvus.zakelro.com/2010/09/post-pax-processing/">http://corvus.zakelro.com/2010/09/post-pax-processing/</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.tiltfactor.org/?p=1810">http://www.tiltfactor.org/?p=1810</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1386&start=10#p8505
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Planet IF
User: George / DateTime: 2010-09-12 20:12:25

I would keep nickm.com in the Planet (many of his posts are, if not IF-related, at least on elit), but since probably 95% of the posts from the other sites have very little to do with IF, I think their feed should be changed to an IF/elit tag, or if that's not possible they should be removed; after all, people can always subscribe individually to those blogs. If the authors aren't tagging posts we could contact them and ask, too.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1399&start=0#p8506
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Glimmr Automap released
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-09-12 20:26:36

Hi all,

Glimmr Automap has been released. Announcement on the Glimmr blog [url=http://glimmr.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/glimmr-automap-released/]here[/url].

[img]http://glimmr.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/glimmr-automap-screenshot1.png[/img]

--Erik

EDITED: Added the image.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1386&start=10#p8507
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Planet IF
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-12 20:47:30

[quote="Dannii"]What do people think about each of the following?

<a class="postlink" href="http://eis-blog.ucsc.edu/2010/09/making-sense-with-answer-set-programming-im-into-nuggets-yall/">http://eis-blog.ucsc.edu/2010/09/making ... gets-yall/</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://corvus.zakelro.com/2010/09/honeycomb-engine-behind-the-design/">http://corvus.zakelro.com/2010/09/honey ... he-design/</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://nickm.com/post/2010/09/an-electronic-literature-directory-comparison/">http://nickm.com/post/2010/09/an-electr ... omparison/</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://eis-blog.ucsc.edu/2010/09/infinite-adaptive-mario/">http://eis-blog.ucsc.edu/2010/09/infini ... ive-mario/</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://corvus.zakelro.com/2010/09/post-pax-processing/">http://corvus.zakelro.com/2010/09/post-pax-processing/</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.tiltfactor.org/?p=1810">http://www.tiltfactor.org/?p=1810</a>[/quote]

I'm generally fine with them, as I don't mind a little e-lit, paper RPG, and academic fooferall just to stay well-rounded, and we don't have a whole lot coming through the planet as-is. The only real objection I have is Ben Weber's posts at <a class="postlink" href="http://eis-blog.ucsc.edu/">http://eis-blog.ucsc.edu/</a>.  He's the one with all the Mario level generators and Starcraft AIs, and very little else.  I think *once* he did a post on Heavy Rain, but IIRC it was more on the girl's costume than anything.   I like the other posters at <a class="postlink" href="http://eis-blog.ucsc.edu/">http://eis-blog.ucsc.edu/</a> though.  Corvus's posts are frequently vague or so what-i-had-for-lunch-today they're not worth the bother, and we're only seeing the relevant parts of the thing!  Every once in a while he'll write something halfway interesting though. 

I'd rather we have more of our community authors and player's blogs on there, even if it's just "got 500 words today". 

::shrug::  Not all of my own posts are IF or even narrative-related, so I can't complain too much.  Gamasutra doesn't allow me to tag posts.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1386&start=10#p8508
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Planet IF
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-09-12 21:33:43

What bothers me is brasslantern's twitter feed. I don't need to know that Quantumnauts has been released, or if I do, a twitter entry won't tell me why. 

The Sherol Chen entry is definitely of interest, and I think the connections to IF are pretty clear, but I do resent her trying to get that Nuggets theme into my ear. I've only just figured out what Corvus is doing, but his awesome name and mustache alone make him worthy of inclusion, and on a more serious note <a class="postlink" href="http://corvus.zakelro.com/2010/08/ludowhereigive-what-now/">http://corvus.zakelro.com/2010/08/ludow ... -what-now/</a> was pretty great. Tiltfactor... OK, I don't see what tiltfactor has to do with anything.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1386&start=10#p8509
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Planet IF
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-09-12 21:40:22

It doesn't look like we're getting any consensus here...

Another possibility would be to start up another planet for pure IF feeds. This is quite easy to do with yahoo pipes, and I could manage it if others were interested. Using pipes would also let us implement custom filters for the blogs without tags (or those that don't use them in a useful way!) Who'd be interested in that?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1386&start=10#p8511
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Planet IF
User: George / DateTime: 2010-09-12 21:54:20

Very interesting idea, I'd appreciate something like that.

eta: can we just pipe the Planet, so everything is synced as far as new blogs added and so on?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1386&start=10#p8512
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Planet IF
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-09-12 22:03:34

I don't think that would work well because then we'd have even less way to filter stuff out. I'll probably respond quicker than Chris though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1386&start=10#p8513
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Planet IF
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-09-12 22:31:04

Okay, I've started one here: <a class="postlink" href="http://pipes.yahoo.com/dannii/ifdwarfplanet">http://pipes.yahoo.com/dannii/ifdwarfplanet</a>

I've added a few pure IF blogs (or close to it... do we like Emily's non-IF posts?) and have shown how we can filter the Brass Lantern twitter. It can be tweaked with other keywords, if you have suggestions.

Obviously there is a whole lot more to add.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1400&start=0#p8514
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Can't Even Begin
User: eyesofautumn / DateTime: 2010-09-12 22:43:48

I have just started trying to use Inform 7. I downloaded it and wrote a bit of test code. I didn't think I'd run into problems so soon. My Source screen currently says thus: 
[code]"The First Room" by Matthew *my last name*

The Sewing Room is a room.
There is a Sewing Machine in The Sewing Room.[/code]
I can click the Go button and it will show me the compiling progress code. However, it does not switch the right side of the screen to Game mode. Clicking the Game tab button yields no result. The same goes for the Index tab. Am I doing something wrong, or is something wrong with my copy of the compiler?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1400&start=0#p8515
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can't Even Begin
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-12 22:47:55

This is a Mac interpreter bug. See the thread: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1233">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1233</a>

For now, it's easiest to download the previous version (6E59). Or you can follow the instructions in that thread to produce a Frankencompiler.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1400&start=0#p8516
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can't Even Begin
User: eyesofautumn / DateTime: 2010-09-12 22:50:46

Thank you so very much for the quick answer, and I'm sorry for repeating the thread... I tried to find if there was another one, but they all seemed like more complicated problems, I'm not much good at understanding all of that I7IDE6E72os10.5.8 jargon. I'm off to get my slightly-previous version.  [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1386&start=10#p8517
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Planet IF
User: George / DateTime: 2010-09-12 23:38:16

It looks like most of the posts at emshort.wordpress are categorized well enough that we could filter on that category ('interactive fiction'). Is this pipe publically editable btw? When I view the source it gives the impression it is.


eta: nm, I see you can clone pipes, maybe that was it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1399&start=0#p8518
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glimmr Automap released
User: George / DateTime: 2010-09-12 23:59:15

Excellent! From the extension it seems like it would be easy to size the automap however you like (say if you want to put it in a sidebar rather than a top banner); are there any examples of that? Also, if you wanted to make something like a roguelike or RL/IF hybrid, would Automap be the right extension or would it be better to go straight to Glimmr?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1386&start=10#p8519
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Planet IF
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-09-13 00:24:38

Frankly, I don't see the point of creating a "pure-if" aggregator. Isn't Planet IF supposed to be one already? Wouldn't it be better to "fix" Planet IF than to create a new one? I'm sure that the non-IF blogs aren't included on purpose and that Christopher is open for discussion on what blogs should be added to or removed from the feed.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1386&start=10#p8520
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Planet IF
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2010-09-13 02:08:10

Personally, I don't mind skipping over any posts if they don't interest me, but I do appreciate all of the information that's currently being presented.  I don't think it's far enough off-topic that we need to start busting out axes.

I wouldn't mind seeing a function on Planet IF to go back to older posts, though, or maybe a search function.  That way if something gets pushed out of the feed, I don't have to flail at my feeble memory to remember what it was and where it came from.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1386&start=20#p8521
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Planet IF
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-09-13 03:17:07

[quote="George"]after all, people can always subscribe individually to those blogs[/quote]
Kind of my view.  I don't mind them being there, but if it bugs other people I won't miss them too much.

Having said that, I think posts about gameplay and interactive narrative are still relevant to IF even if they're not [i]specifically[/i] about IF.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1386&start=20#p8522
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Planet IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-09-13 04:36:59

I actually love seeing those slightly-non-IF posts. Sometimes they're about game design. Infinite Adaptive Mario is an experiment on adaptive difficulty, and that's always interesting - mayube not so for IF, but for game design, as a whole, and who knows where it might lead. I love seeing the brasslantern twitter, because I do care what telltale is releasing and don't feel like checking ITS site every month, not when Grenade does me the favour of twitting about it.

Change its name from PlanetIF if you must, I agree sometimes there's not so much IF. But don't change the content. I'm glad to see I'm not the only person to enjoy the non-IF posts so much.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1386&start=20#p8523
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Planet IF
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-09-13 08:05:48

[quote="bowsmand"]Personally, I don't mind skipping over any posts if they don't interest me, but I do appreciate all of the information that's currently being presented.  I don't think it's far enough off-topic that we need to start busting out axes.[/quote]

Quoted for agreement. As Ron (I think) said, it's not like there's so much stuff coming through planet-IF that I can't just ignore the stuff I want to ignore. (That goes for the brasslantern twitter, too -- that was just an expression of my preferences, not a request for axing if other people like it.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1386&start=20#p8524
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Planet IF
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-09-13 08:20:44

I do wonder why some of the posts are up.  The narrative and game design stuff is welcome, but it's not like there's no other feeds for technical game stuff out there.  It doesn't bug me that much, honestly, and if other people are cool with the Mario level generators (only for download!), then that's fine.  On the other hand, I wonder if there are more game design reflection posts/blogs that we could accumulate.  Someone's out there right now blogging about story structure in games that allow free movement, and I'd like to see it, even if it's aimed at FPS and not IF.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1399&start=0#p8525
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glimmr Automap released
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-09-13 09:17:45

[quote="George"]Excellent! From the extension it seems like it would be easy to size the automap however you like (say if you want to put it in a sidebar rather than a top banner); are there any examples of that?”[/quote]

I didn't foreground reconfiguring the graphics window in any of the examples, because that's really a Flexible Windows operation rather than anything specific to Glimmr Automap. Here's a new version of the minimal example from the extension docs that opens the window to the right of the main screen instead of above it:

[spoiler]"Minimal Automap"

Include Glimmr Automap by Erik Temple.
Include Glimmr Automap Tileset by Erik Temple.

Cavern is a room. North of Cavern is Cave. South of Cavern is Deep Tunnel. Down from Deep Tunnel is Pit. Southeast of Deep Tunnel is Underground Lake.

Outside from Cave is Cliffside. East of Cliffside is Foothills.

The player is in Foothills.

The map-window is a map-display window spawned by the main-window. The position is g-placeright. The measurement of the map-window is 40. The associated canvas of the map-window is the map-canvas.

The map-canvas is a g-canvas.

When play begins:
	follow the opening up the map window rules.[/spoiler]


[quote="George"]Also, if you wanted to make something like a roguelike or RL/IF hybrid, would Automap be the right extension or would it be better to go straight to Glimmr?[/quote]

I guess that depends on how you define roguelike, or even more to the point, how you define an IF/RL hybrid [emote]:)[/emote]. Glimmr Automap produces your standard IF "flowchart" or "box-and-whisker" style maps: one box per room, with lines marking connections for other rooms. So, if you want the map to depict only discontinuous IF-style movement, where each move on the map represents a room, Glimmr Automap would work. If, on the other hand, you want continuous movement like you have in RPGs and most (all?) roguelikes, you'd be better off building something, probably using image-maps, with Glimmr Canvas-Based Drawing. (Of course, the real difficulty with continuous movement isn't the graphics--it's creating the underlying system to handle continuous movement...)

If you want to show characters on the map—PC and NPCs—Glimmr Canvas-Based Drawing is also your best bet, regardless of whether your model is continuous or discontinuous movement. Glimmr Automap is not designed for that sort of thing.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1386&start=20#p8526
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Planet IF
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-13 13:29:20

Oh yeah, those Brass Lantern twitters bother me too. If something isn't worth writing a paragraph or three about, it isn't worth the time. If I wanted release schedules for commercial games, I'd go to the publisher's RSS/twitter feed.  A release schedule is not about story in games even if the game that's being released might be. 

@Peter: Mario levels generators aren't "slightly-non-IF".  They are extremely non-IF. And difficult to ignore because they are huge and insert all manner of pictures.  Grr. The twitter feeds may be all but unreadable due to the punctuation, but at least they're short.

My favorite blog is Critical Distance.  It might be worth adding, as it is someone taking the time to collect (and link to) above-average blog posts on design & narrative from around the net. 

I know nothing of "pipes" but prefer we fix what we've got if possible.  (Oh, my memory is bad too. Can we not view old posts on the Planet?)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1383&start=0#p8527
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Promises that parsers can keep
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-09-13 13:51:46

Depends on the keywords.

You might tag words like refuse, not, no, etc as words that create an opposite effect.

This same game gave forced yes/no choices, by the way.

Fairy: You must kiss the frog. Will you?
Y/N>Y
You kiss the frog and turn it into a prince.

Not necessarily recommended, but could be a work around.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1386&start=20#p8528
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Planet IF
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-09-13 14:13:05

I forgot to say that I read planet-if in a browser on a laptop, so people who read it other ways might find extraneous chaff more annoying. I can definitely see how the Mario stuff might be worse on other platforms. (Could one solution be to have Planet IF chop off everything it posts, or do things not work that way? Or just to ask nicely that GTA set up a truncated feed?)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1383&start=0#p8529
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Promises that parsers can keep
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-09-13 14:15:28

[quote="tggdan3"]Depends on the keywords.

You might tag words like refuse, not, no, etc as words that create an opposite effect.[/quote]

You'd be guaranteed to miss something, though, along the lines of "TURN SMOOTH DUCK DOWN." (From Stephen Granade's Walkthrough-Comp winner.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1401&start=0#p8530
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Special Inventory and Taking rules
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-09-13 14:15:44

I'm trying out a CYOA port of the Lone Wolf stories.

The game has special inventory rules (you can only have 2 weapons, you have a list of spells, 8 backpack items, infinite Special items, etc).

Now it's easy to designate items as special, backpack, weapon, etc.

I want to make sure the game knows:
1) if you try to take a weapon and already have 2, you need to get rid of one
2) backpack items are automatically placed in the backpack and cannot be held seperately
3) gets around "shortcuts" which take items. Example

[code]
> TAKE LETTER
You don't have enough room in your backpack for the letter.
> READ LETTER
(taken)
Blah blah, letter text.
[/code]

I considered having weapons be "held" and the carrying capacity being 2, with a worn backpack rucksack, but I don't want the items to be interchangable (drop sword, take vial from backpack).

Also, I want the inventory screen to separate weapons from backpack items. (Worse yet is gaining the herb pouch which in many ways functions as a separate backpack). 

Any suggestions?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1401&start=0#p8531
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Special Inventory and Taking rules
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-09-13 15:26:21

Are there non-weapon, non-backpack items?  Do the special items go somewhere, or are they generally held?

The example covers in broad strokes what you want (or seems to, although I didn't test extensively).  #3 should be caught if you're using "try taking X" rules for your other actions.  For an example of this, try eating the box of chocolates in the example if your backpack is full.  (I would argue against this particular instance as a player, given that you'd have to drop something, pick up the chocolate, eat the chocolate, and then pick the thing up again, so tweakage may be advised.)

[code]"Inventory Management" by Gravel

Include Plurality by Emily Short.

Section - The Backpack

The player is wearing a container called a backpack.

Instead of taking off, dropping the backpack:
	say "You can't bring yourself to leave behind your trusty backpack!"

Definition: a backpack is loaded if the number of things contained by it is greater than 7.

After taking a storable thing (called the target) (this is the stow storables rule):
	now the target is in the backpack;
	say "You put [the target] in your backpack.";
	
Check taking something enclosed by the backpack:
	say "You can do whatever you need to with that while it's in your pack." instead.
	
Check dropping something enclosed by the backpack:
	now the player is holding the noun;
	try dropping the noun;
	if the player is holding the noun:
		now the noun is in the backpack;
		say "Unable to drop [the noun], you reinsert [it-them] into your pack." instead;
	otherwise:
		do nothing instead.

Section - Storable Things		

A thing is either storable or not storable.  A thing is usually storable.    
Check taking a storable thing when the backpack is loaded:
	say "Your backpack is stuffed to bursting already." instead.

The dagger, spear, and sword are in the Equipment Room.
A box of chocolates is in the Equipment Room.  A box of chocolates is edible.

Section - Weapons

A weapon is a kind of thing.  The dagger, the spear, and the sword are weapons.   A weapon is usually not storable.

Check taking a weapon (this is the weapon limitation rule):
	if the player encloses more than one weapon:
		say "You can only carry two weapons at a time." instead.
		
Section - Plot Items

A plot item is a kind of thing.  The Wand of Opening is a plot item in the Equipment Room.  A plot item is never storable. 

Section - Release

The Equipment Room is a room.  A statue, a coin, a duck, some junk, a balloon, a can, a bottle, a glass, and an old phone are in the Equipment Room.

Instead of dropping the glass, say "It might break!" 
[/code]

Things in containers automatically separate out in inventory, so it's always going to look sort of like:

weapon
weapon
backpack:
  stuff
herb pouch:
  more stuff

Assuming you do implement the pouch as a container.  You might also look at "Persephone" as far as inventory management goes.

You're going to need rules to address the fact that you'll usually be manipulating stuff from your pack; you can see a kludgy workaround for the drop action above.  Fortunately, there's not too many of these.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1395&start=0#p8532
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: question about Emily Short's "Status Line Removal" exten
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-13 16:30:08

@Erik: er, well, yeah I had the most current version, 3, but I took the blurb on the website to mean "as of version 2, supports Glulx"

@Emily: Perhaps the change was temporary, cause it seems to work again?  (Hm. Maybe I oughtta test it on actual 'terps. Or search the archives! I'll do that!)

Anyway, the other options are heavy as lasagna, requiring pulling in two or three extensions just to [i]remove[/i] something.

EDIT TO ADD: I think I found it: <a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_frm/thread/19255de681986e61/c4b75deda69db958?lnk=gst&q=%22Status+line+removal%22#c4b75deda69db958">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts ... eda69db958</a>
Seems the reason was: the simple way of removing it is the way that breaks other windowing extensions like the two I mentioned above.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1386&start=20#p8533
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Planet IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-09-13 17:19:06

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]@Peter: Mario levels generators aren't "slightly-non-IF".  They are extremely non-IF.[/quote]

I don't recall saying that it was. I recall saying that many things were, and I recall saying that the mario generator was an interesting experiment in game design, even if not apparently usable in IF.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1395&start=0#p8534
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: question about Emily Short's "Status Line Removal" exten
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-09-13 17:31:23

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]@Erik: er, well, yeah I had the most current version, 3, but I took the blurb on the website to mean "as of version 2, supports Glulx"[/quote]

That blurb needs to be changed, if nothing else.

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Seems the reason was: the simple way of removing it is the way that breaks other windowing extensions like the two I mentioned above.[/quote]

If that's the reason, then it would be better if Status Line Removal went ahead and removed it for Glulx too, indicating that it might not be compatible with other extensions. The method used is the same one that Flexible Windows and Glulx Status Window control use, so it seems like it's pretty well tested.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1395&start=0#p8535
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: question about Emily Short's "Status Line Removal" exten
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-09-13 17:36:11

I am completely, totally snowed under workwise, so I am not going to do anything about this soon. If someone else wants to tweak and send in a new version of the extension, I won't object, however.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1402&start=0#p8536
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Indentation error?
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2010-09-13 17:37:23

Hello,

I am fairly new here and am struggling my way through Inform 7. I have read up on my problem and just can't get it to work.

This is my code:

[code]	After examining the Book:
		Unless the player carries the Book:
			Say "Unfortunately you just don't have the time to read all of it now, but you will take it with for now.";
			Now the player carries the Book.
			Say "[line break]You now carrry the Book.";	
		Otherwise if the player carries the Book:
			[Something else....][/code]

This is the error message:

Problem. The phrase or rule definition 'After examining the Book'   is written using the 'colon and indentation' syntax for its 'if's, 'repeat's and 'while's, where blocks of phrases grouped together are indented one tab step inward from the 'if ...:' or similar phrase to which they belong. But the tabs here seem to be misaligned, and I can't determine the structure.... and so on.

Where am I making a mistake in the Indentations?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. [emote];)[/emote]


BiB

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1395&start=0#p8537
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: question about Emily Short's "Status Line Removal" exten
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-09-13 17:51:00

[quote="emshort"]I am completely, totally snowed under workwise, so I am not going to do anything about this soon. If someone else wants to tweak and send in a new version of the extension, I won't object, however.[/quote]

Funny, I was just about to post again to say that I'd be happy to update it (or write a new Glulx-only removal extension), if that were wanted. I'll slap something together and post it here for testing.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1402&start=0#p8538
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indentation error?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-09-13 18:09:48

[quote="BigBonsai"]Hello,

This is my code:

[code]	After examining the Book:
		Unless the player carries the Book:
			Say "Unfortunately you just don't have the time to read all of it now, but you will take it with for now.";
			Now the player carries the Book.
			Say "[line break]You now carrry the Book.";	
		Otherwise if the player carries the Book:
			[Something else....][/code]

Where am I making a mistake in the Indentations?

[/quote]

The mistake is probably the period after "Now the player carries the Book"; you want a semicolon there. You might also want to/need to (I'm not sure) indent everything after "after examining the book" by one tab stop.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1395&start=0#p8539
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: question about Emily Short's "Status Line Removal" exten
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-09-13 18:26:38

OK, here's a draft version 4 of Status Line Removal. I've tested it by itself in Zv5, v6, and v8, and on the Glulx side with Flexible Windows, Simple Graphical Window, alone, and on on a couple of terps (using git and glulxe under the hood), as well as Quixe. It seems to work fine.

Download and test on your own machine if you have the inclination:

<a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Status%20Line%20Removal.i7x">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Status%2 ... emoval.i7x</a>

Thanks,
Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1386&start=20#p8540
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Planet IF
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-09-13 18:30:21

[quote="Peter Pears"][quote="Ron Newcomb"]@Peter: Mario levels generators aren't "slightly-non-IF".  They are extremely non-IF.[/quote]I don't recall saying that it was. I recall saying that many things were, and I recall saying that the mario generator was an interesting experiment in game design, even if not apparently usable in IF.[/quote]
Funny.  I could see something like that being a great addition to my WIP.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1402&start=0#p8541
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indentation error?
User: PaulSharke / DateTime: 2010-09-13 18:44:25

It looks like the problem is that period, like ektemple said. Otherwise, the indentation looks as though it should work just fine. (You've got some code that prevents the player from dropping the book, I assume?)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1403&start=0#p8542
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Room isn't capitalizing?
User: lglasser / DateTime: 2010-09-13 19:10:35

It's the weirdest thing, and I have no idea what's causing it, but the display at the top shows "basement" instead of "Basement".   All of my rooms are capitalized ("Kitchen", "Room of Records") except the Basement and Janitor Closet.


[code]
The Basement is a room.  The Basement is dark.
The Janitor Closet is a dark room.
The Kitchen is a room.
Room of Records is a dark room.[/code]

Is there, just some way to force the room at the top of the program to display as "Basement"?  or is it doomed forever as "basement."?

Thanks in advance!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1403&start=0#p8543
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room isn't capitalizing?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-09-13 19:30:06

Do you mention the basement earlier without capitalization?  Or fiddle with the printed names?

Does "there is a room called The Basement" change anything?

You can always change the printed name, but I suspect it's fixable without resorting to that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1386&start=20#p8544
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Planet IF
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-09-13 20:29:39

[quote="Juhana"]Frankly, I don't see the point of creating a "pure-if" aggregator. Isn't Planet IF supposed to be one already? Wouldn't it be better to "fix" Planet IF than to create a new one? I'm sure that the non-IF blogs aren't included on purpose and that Christopher is open for discussion on what blogs should be added to or removed from the feed.[/quote]
Answering to everyone really:

It would be better to "fix" Planet IF but as has been shown in this topic everyone has very different ideas about how to fix it. I'm going to continue working on the IF Dwarf Planet and if I'm the only one who uses it that's okay. I think that it's easier to follow two feeds than ignore half of one.

Pipes also has a few advantages. Those who are really committed could clone and customise it themselves. I think it also lets us do far more advanced filtering than a planet would, which will be good for those blogs which don't tag things reliably.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1403&start=0#p8545
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room isn't capitalizing?
User: lglasser / DateTime: 2010-09-13 20:38:49

Aha, I did a case-sensitive find and replace for basement and Basement, replaced em all.  Don't know which fixed it, but that did it.  Thanks, it was pretty annoying.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1386&start=20#p8546
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Planet IF
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-09-13 20:44:24

Just to add to the diversity of opinion, I also enjoy seeing a wider range of stuff on planet IF. I think restricting ourselves to "pure IF" (whatever that means) would cut us off from a wider range of opinion in the larger game design, game theory, and experimental narrative worlds. I'd much rather waste a few seconds determining that an article is not of interest to me than have never gotten the chance to see all the fascinating tangentially-related-to-IF articles I've encountered on Planet IF.

(Full disclosure: I'm currently doing interactive narrative work with the EIS lab at UCSC, whose blog is among the accused.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1403&start=0#p8547
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room isn't capitalizing?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-13 22:54:59

You probably had a line like "The basement is below the kitchen." If that's the first mention of the Basement, it sets the capitalization.

An alternate solution -- a little silly, but valid -- is to add:

The printed name of the Basement is "Basement".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1395&start=10#p8548
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: question about Emily Short's "Status Line Removal" exten
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-13 23:50:00

Beautiful! Post it. 

Em: hope the work is worthwhile, even fun.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1402&start=0#p8549
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indentation error?
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2010-09-14 06:28:56

Ok, obviously I still don't exactly know the difference between "." and ";" totally.

Thanks for your input!!!  [emote]8-)[/emote] 

Well, I changed my mistake into this:

[code]   After examining the Book:
      Unless the player carries the Book:
         Say "Unfortunately you just don't have the time to read all of it now, but you will take it with for now.";
         Now the player carries the Book;
         Say "[line break]You now carrry the Book.";   
      Otherwise if the player carries the Book:
         [Something else....][/code]

Guess what: I still get just the same error message. Strange... any other ideas [emote]:?:[/emote]

And "yes", I want the player to keep the book for now.


BiB

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1402&start=0#p8550
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indentation error?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-09-14 06:54:47

Do you have a tab before the first line, "After examining the book"? There shouldn't be one there. It's hard to tell because the forum doesn't preserve the tabs correctly but the snippet looks like it's indented one tab too much. The tabs should go like this:

After examining the Book: [color=#FF0000][NO tab][/color]
[color=#0080FF][tab][/color]Unless the player carries the Book:
[color=#0080FF][tab][/color][color=#0080FF][tab][/color]Say "Unfortunately you just don't have the time to read all of it now, but you will take it with for now.";
[color=#0080FF][tab][/color][color=#0080FF][tab][/color]Now the player carries the Book;
[color=#0080FF][tab][/color][color=#0080FF][tab][/color]Say "[line break]You now carrry the Book.";   
[color=#0080FF][tab][/color]Otherwise if the player carries the Book:
[color=#0080FF][tab][/color][color=#0080FF][tab][/color][Something else....]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1402&start=0#p8551
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indentation error?
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2010-09-14 07:18:21

[quote="Juhana"]Do you have a tab before the first line, "After examining the book"? There shouldn't be one there. It's hard to tell because the forum doesn't preserve the tabs correctly but the snippet looks like it's indented one tab too much. The tabs should go like this:

After examining the Book: [color=#FF0000][NO tab][/color]
[color=#0080FF][tab][/color]Unless the player carries the Book:
[color=#0080FF][tab][/color][color=#0080FF][tab][/color]Say "Unfortunately you just don't have the time to read all of it now, but you will take it with for now.";
[color=#0080FF][tab][/color][color=#0080FF][tab][/color]Now the player carries the Book;
[color=#0080FF][tab][/color][color=#0080FF][tab][/color]Say "[line break]You now carrry the Book.";   
[color=#0080FF][tab][/color]Otherwise if the player carries the Book:
[color=#0080FF][tab][/color][color=#0080FF][tab][/color][Something else....][/quote]

Thanks for that Tip. I don't have a tab after the first lne, but I have one before it. Now, your post just gave me the idea to remove that tab and the code works. Strange. Is there a logical reason for that?

I indented all the text after the room definition ("The Bedroom is a dark room. ...") for better readability and thought it wouldn't be a problem. Must I remove all the preceding Tabs?

Thanks you guys and gals. [emote]:)[/emote] I almost feel embarrassed to ask such newb questions. [emote]:)[/emote]


BiB

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1401&start=0#p8552
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Special Inventory and Taking rules
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-09-14 08:23:42

Thanks I will try this.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1402&start=0#p8553
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indentation error?
User: George / DateTime: 2010-09-14 09:22:14

[quote="BigBonsai"]
Thanks for that Tip. I don't have a tab after the first lne, but I have one before it. Now, your post just gave me the idea to remove that tab and the code works. Strange. Is there a logical reason for that?[/quote]

As far as I know, as long as your code blocks are 'relatively indented' you can tab before the first line as much as you want (in other words, you'd need to tab before the following lines as well to keep the relative spacing consistent). Indents before room descriptions are OK too. There probably was a different problem that you corrected.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1402&start=0#p8554
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indentation error?
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2010-09-14 10:04:43

[quote="George"]
As far as I know, as long as your code blocks are 'relatively indented' you can tab before the first line as much as you want (in other words, you'd need to tab before the following lines as well to keep the relative spacing consistent). Indents before room descriptions are OK too.[/quote]
I made just that experience. That s why I had all these indents before everything but the opening definitions and the room descriptons. I removed them now.[/

[quote="George"]There probably was a different problem that you corrected.[/quote]
Well, maybe. I am just not sure what sinced that's the only thing I changed before retesting it.

Thank you to all of you for assisting me!  [emote]8-)[/emote]  [emote]8-)[/emote]  [emote]:geek:[/emote] 


BiB

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1402&start=0#p8555
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indentation error?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-09-14 11:12:56

[quote="George"]As far as I know, as long as your code blocks are 'relatively indented' you can tab before the first line as much as you want[/quote]
I don't think that's true: I've tried to indent the first line and I can't get it to work with any combination. As far as I can tell the indented block's header must start at base level or you get an error. Indentation doesn't matter if you don't have any indented blocks inside the main block or if you use the begin...end method.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1404&start=0#p8556
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Glulx timekeeping in Git
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-09-14 17:54:13

I'm running Git on a linux server, and see that there is apparently no "glulx timekeeping" support. Is this perhaps because cheapglk does not support real-time events? If so, will recompiling using glkterm instead help? (I'm asking rather than just trying because I don't have write access to the directory where Git is...)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1404&start=0#p8557
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx timekeeping in Git
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-09-14 18:16:36

Checking the source code for the two, this appears to be the case.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1231&start=10#p8558
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 6E72 changes behavior of "the current action"--intention
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-14 18:55:03

I think I found the reason for this change: 

[quote="6E59 change log"]
(*) Bug fixed whereby out of world actions in one pass of the turn sequence
rules could sometimes cause the next pass of the turn sequence to begin
as if we were still out of world, making it difficult to try in-world
actions before a command had been typed; this caused the following not
to work -

	This is the Luciano's actions rule: try Luciano singing.
	The Luciano's actions rule is listed before the parse command rule
	in the turn sequence rules.

- in the turn after a command like VERSION or VERBOSE.
[/quote]

Just FYI

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1395&start=10#p8559
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: question about Emily Short's "Status Line Removal" exten
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-09-14 19:54:44

OK, I've submitted it to the library. Thanks, Emily and Ron!

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1405&start=0#p8560
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Quixe not compiling
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-09-14 20:08:14

I'm using inform7. When I say "Release along with the "Quixe" interpreter. " I get:

Problem. I don't know how to release along with '"Quixe" interpreter'  : the only forms I can accept are - 'Release along with cover art', '...a website', 'the solution', 'the library card', 'the introductory booklet', 'the source text', 'an existing story file' or '...a file of "Something Useful" called "Something.pdf"'.

What's going on?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1405&start=0#p8561
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe not compiling
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-09-14 20:24:39

You're using 6E72?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1386&start=30#p8562
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Planet IF
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2010-09-14 22:59:55

[quote="DavidC"]

I've heard from Christopher recently. He's still in charge and paying attention.

David C.[/quote]
Do you perhaps have a different address for him? Still no response, despite another email...  [emote]:?[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1404&start=0#p8563
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx timekeeping in Git
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-15 01:00:23

Correct on all counts.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1395&start=10#p8564
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: question about Emily Short's "Status Line Removal" exten
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-09-15 04:12:29

Thanks for the help, Erik!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1334&start=0#p8565
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple Chat for an entire scene
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2010-09-15 08:20:09

Tentative release of version 3 at <a class="postlink" href="http://pastebin.com/4ycjZJ52">http://pastebin.com/4ycjZJ52</a>  It has the "active" fix, but is mainly a style update (chat-specific stuff is moved to chat-related rulebooks instead of Instead).  It should be a drop-in replacemen

As for having an extended section using Simple Chat:

1)  Have each chat node in that section forbid exiting on zero (or use the Default Forbid Exiting on Zero option).
2)  Finding Responses To should always find at least one result (until it's time for the scene to end).

The phrase "Run a conversation from ..." won't return until the current chat node has zero active responses.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1386&start=30#p8566
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Planet IF
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-15 11:44:14

Adrift's blog is now on Planet IF.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1386&start=30#p8567
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Planet IF
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2010-09-15 11:45:11

Yep, Chris emailed me this afternoon. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1406&start=0#p8568
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Custom "You can't see any such thing" messages.
User: SimonChris / DateTime: 2010-09-15 12:42:21

I know how to replace "You can't see any thing" with a custom message, but i would very much like to have different custom messages for different actions. Is there any way to do this? I have tried using the usual parser error rule and then checking the current action, but that doesn't seem to work.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1407&start=0#p8569
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Writing the game text to a file
User: SimonChris / DateTime: 2010-09-15 12:44:43

In I6 it was possible to get the compiler to write the entire text of the game to a file, for proofreading purposes. Is there anything similar in I7?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1406&start=0#p8570
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Custom "You can't see any such thing" messages.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-09-15 13:08:01

There's quite likely a solution that I'm overlooking, maybe using one of the extensions, but would this do what you want?

[code]To decide what action-name is the action-to-be: (- action_to_be -).

Rule for printing a parser error when the parser error is can't see
any such thing and the action-to-be is taking:
        say "Can't take what ain't here."

Rule for printing a parser error when the parser error is can't see
any such thing and the action-to-be is eating:
        say "Can't eat what ain't here." [/code]

etc.

(zarf showed me the action_to_be thing.) 

NB I don't recommend these error messages; they're those unfriendly-to-newbie error messages people complain about, which assume the player and not the parser is making a mistake.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1408&start=0#p8571
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Adding properties to Simple Chat nodes
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-15 13:44:42

I have a roughly linear conversation I'm trying to create using Simple Chat. Since most of the choices at each stage of the conversation are the same, I thought it would be helpful to say something like:

[code]Instead of finding responses to a level-3 chat node:[/code]

I discovered I can do this:

[code]A chat node can be level-0, level-1, or level-2.[/code]

But this seems like it would quickly get out of hand. I'd rather do this:

[code]A chat node has a number called level.[/code]

Unfortunately, neither of these work:

[code]Instead of finding responses to a chat node with level 3:
Instead of finding responses to a level 3 chat node:[/code]

And although this syntax works, I find it unreadable:

[code]Instead of finding responses to a 3 chat node:[/code]

Any suggestions?

Some source for you to play with:
[spoiler][code]Conversation is a room.

Include Simple Chat by Mark Tilford.
Use default forbid exiting conversations.
	
a chat node can be innocuous, questionable, rude, or innocence-asserting. a chat node is usually innocuous.

a chat node can be level-1, level-3, or level-5.

hello is an innocuous level-1 chat node.

goodbye is a rude level-3 chat node.

why, wherefore, and how are questionable level-5 chat nodes.

Instead of giving text for hello, say "hello."

Instead of finding responses to hello:
	link to goodbye;

Instead of giving link to goodbye, say "goodbye."

Instead of giving text for goodbye, say "well, I never!"

Instead of finding responses to a level-3 chat node:
	link to why;
	link to wherefore;
	link to how;
		
Instead of giving link to how, say "How?"

Instead of giving text for how:
	say "however.";
	end the game saying "end";
	
Instead of giving link to why, say "Why?"

Instead of giving text for why:
	say "whyever.";
	end the game saying "end".
	
Instead of giving link to wherefore, say "Wherefore?"

Instead of giving text for wherefore:
	say "whereforever";
	end the game saying "end";
	
When play begins:
	run a conversation from hello.
[/code][/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1409&start=0#p8572
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Giving properties to scenes
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2010-09-15 15:02:04

We're supposed to be able to assign properties to scenes now, yes?

I can't figure out why this won't work:

[code]Right Here is a room.

Timer is a scene. Timer has a number called the tick. The tick of the Timer is zero. Timer begins when play begins.

Every turn when Timer is happening:
	increase the tick of the Timer by one;
	say "Timer is at [tick of the Timer]."[/code]

This causes a run-time error. Am I doing something wrong, or is this a bug that I should report?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1409&start=0#p8573
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Giving properties to scenes
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-09-15 15:04:26

Should this be:

[code]Timer is a scene. Timer has a number that varies called the tick. The tick of the Timer is zero. Timer begins when play begins.[/code]

?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1408&start=0#p8574
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Adding properties to Simple Chat nodes
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2010-09-15 15:10:10

Method 1:
Create a table with three columns, one with a chat node, one a chat level, one politeness level.
Have a "carry out finding responses to" rule that looks for the appropriate line in the table.
Have that routine choose the responses based on those values.

Method 2:
[code]
chat level is a number that varies.
chat politeness is a politeness that varies.

To say set level (new level - a number): now chat level is new level.
To set politeness (new level - a politeness): now chat politeness is new level.

Before giving text for: now chat politeness is innocuous.

Carry out finding responses to when chat level is 3: link to why; link to wherefore; link to how.

Report giving text for ...:
    instead say "[set level 3][set politeness rude]...".
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1408&start=0#p8575
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Adding properties to Simple Chat nodes
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-09-15 15:18:35

If all you want is more readable code, you could try adding a definition that acts as a shortcut of sorts (not tested):

[code]To decide whether (target - a chat node) is level (x - a number) chat node:
    if the level of target is x, decide yes;
    decide no.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1410&start=0#p8576
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: [Boston] People's Republic of IF Meetup, Monday, September 2
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2010-09-15 15:51:16

Our September meetup will be on Monday, September 27, at the usual time (6:30, with migration to CBC for food/drink around 8 or so) and at the usual place (the Trope Tank, aka 14N-233 on the MIT campus). We don’t have any kind of official agenda as of yet, but here are some things we might discuss:

    * Aaron Reed’s book is out, so we’ll probably discuss it some.
    * The Tufts University IF month is coming up (October), and various of us are helping out in various ways, so we’ll probably discuss that.
    * And, as usual, we’ll likely just yammer on about IF in particular and games in general.

Everyone is welcome, no matter your experience level with IF. If you have something particular you’d like to discuss or share with the group, feel free to do so. Note that we also have a mailing list, which is linked from our website (<a class="postlink" href="http://pr-if.org/">http://pr-if.org/</a>).

-Kevin

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1408&start=0#p8577
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Adding properties to Simple Chat nodes
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-15 15:58:32

[quote="Juhana"]If all you want is more readable code, you could try adding a definition that acts as a shortcut of sorts (not tested):

[code]To decide whether (target - a chat node) is level (x - a number) chat node:
    if the level of target is x, decide yes;
    decide no.[/code][/quote]
That would be great, but I'm back to this message:
[quote]Problem. You wrote 'Instead of finding responses to a level 3 chat node'  , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is 'finding responses to a level 3 chat node'. But that did not make sense as a description of an action. I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook.[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1409&start=0#p8578
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Giving properties to scenes
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-15 16:06:22

Changing it to "a number that varies" causes a compilation error.

Certainly looks like a bug to me. If nothing else, it should cause a compilation error instead of a runtime error.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1409&start=0#p8579
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Giving properties to scenes
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-15 16:21:55

That's a bug, so do this: 
[code]A scene has a number called the tick.[/code]
instead of naming Timer in there specifically.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1411&start=0#p8580
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Simple Chat: Forcing conversation exit
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-15 16:26:44

I have another Simple Chat question. I'm using the Forbid Conversation Exiting default, but at a certain point during the conversation, the game ends. Since normal conversation doesn't take up any turns, the game doesn't end until the conversation ends. What's the best way to end the game right away?

I've done it here by deactivating every single chat node, but that seems dangerous and inefficient:

[code]Include Simple Chat by Mark Tilford.
Use default forbid exiting conversations.
	
Classroom is a room.

The key is in the classroom.

Teacher is a man in the classroom.

raise-hand, bathroom, and key-please are chat nodes.

Talking to is an action applying to one thing. Understand "talk to [someone]" as talking to.

Carry out talking to:
	run a conversation from raise-hand;
	
Instead of giving text for raise-hand, say "'Yes, student?'"

Instead of finding responses to raise-hand:
	link to bathroom;
	
To say win:
	repeat with c running through all chat nodes:
		deactivate c;
	End the game saying "What a relief!"

Instead of giving link to bathroom, say "'May I be excused to use the bathroom?'"

Instead of giving text for bathroom when the player carries the key:
	say "'off you go, then!'[win]"
	
Instead of giving text for bathroom, say "'Not without the bathroom key.'"

Instead of finding responses to bathroom:
	link to bathroom;
	link to key-please;
	
Instead of giving link to key-please, say "'May I please take the key?'"

Instead of giving text for key-please, say "'Go ahead.'"
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1407&start=0#p8581
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Writing the game text to a file
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-15 16:34:32

I could swear I once saw this in one of the "Error" panes, but now I can't find it.

The only way i know to do this is to re-run the I6 compilation step, by hand, in a terminal window, adding the -r argument. You can see the I6 invocation in the Error/Progress tab.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1411&start=0#p8582
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple Chat: Forcing conversation exit
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2010-09-15 17:20:36

[code]Instead of finding responses to when the end conversation flag is set: do nothing.[/code]

And make sure this rule is set up so it will come before any other finding responses to rule.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1408&start=0#p8583
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Adding properties to Simple Chat nodes
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2010-09-15 17:23:34

How about "Instead of finding responses to when the chat node understood is a level 3 chat node:

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1408&start=0#p8584
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Adding properties to Simple Chat nodes
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-15 18:01:13

[quote="ralphmerridew"]How about "Instead of finding responses to when the chat node understood is a level 3 chat node:[/quote]
That works... [b]if[/b] the "To decide" phrase is edited slightly:

[quote]To decide whether (target - a chat node) is [b][i]a[/i][/b] level (x - a number) chat node:[/quote]

Thanks for leading me to the right syntax. You don't need the "to decide" phrase if you do it this way:

[code]Instead of finding responses to when the level of the chat node understood is 1:[/code]

But as far as readability goes, I think the original enumerated type solution was best. I think I'll stick with that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1411&start=0#p8585
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple Chat: Forcing conversation exit
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-15 18:07:01

[quote="ralphmerridew"][code]Instead of finding responses to when the end conversation flag is set: do nothing.[/code]

And make sure this rule is set up so it will come before any other finding responses to rule.[/quote]
You mean by "listing it first?" Do Instead rules show up in the Index or some other place where I can figure out what rulebook they're in?

And is it possible to access deadflag so I don't need to manage my own "end conversation flag?"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1400&start=0#p8586
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can't Even Begin
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-15 18:27:36

No, no, thank YOU for bringing up this issue. Hopefully if enough people complain, it will get fixed.

Speaking of complaining, is this listed in Mantis?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1403&start=0#p8587
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room isn't capitalizing?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-15 18:32:56

That happened to me one time when I defined a region and listed the rooms in it in lower case.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1402&start=0#p8588
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indentation error?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-15 18:40:58

I keep hoping that Inform will one day handle tabs as elegantly as Python. However, I'm not optimistic since Python is normally edited in fixed-width displays, and actual tab characters are replaced by spaces in most Python-aware editors.

Sure makes it easier to post Python code online...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1411&start=0#p8589
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple Chat: Forcing conversation exit
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2010-09-15 19:14:55

[code]if the story has ended[/code]

1)  I think that the Instead rulebook is run before the Carry out or Report rules, so if you put most of the SC rules into those books, it should work.
or
2)  There's a syntax along the lines of "The ... rule is listed first in the ... rulebook."
or
3)  Inform tries to arrange things so that more specific rules are tried before less-specific rules.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1411&start=0#p8590
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple Chat: Forcing conversation exit
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-09-15 19:35:30

All Instead rules are in the "instead rulebook"; there's only one.  (I think that's your question?) So you can say "The blah rule is listed first in the Instead rulebook," I think.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1402&start=10#p8591
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indentation error?
User: George / DateTime: 2010-09-15 19:42:47

Juhana, does this compile for you?

[code]
"Indentation"

At Night is a room. 
	"The stars are out."

The sky is a backdrop which is everywhere.

	After doing anything:
		say "You bump your head."
[/code]

It works for me, but I'm still using the old build on Windows.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1411&start=0#p8592
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple Chat: Forcing conversation exit
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-15 20:47:45

Excellent! Perfect! Thank you!

[code]Instead of finding responses to when the story has ended (this is the exit conversation when the story is over rule):
	do nothing;
	
The exit conversation when the story is over rule is listed first in the instead rulebook.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1400&start=0#p8593
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can't Even Begin
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-09-15 22:02:22

[quote="capmikee"]No, no, thank YOU for bringing up this issue. Hopefully if enough people complain, it will get fixed.

Speaking of complaining, is this listed in Mantis?[/quote]
I don't know about Mantis, but I had private correspondence with Andrew Hunter about it weeks ago. It's not a mystery. What's a mystery to me, frankly, is why such a major stumbling block hasn't been fixed with an interim maintenance release of Inform.

In the meantime, if you [i]need [/i]to run 6E72 on a Mac, you can use the workaround I documented, again weeks ago -- installing the 6E59 IDE and then replacing the compiler and Standard Rules.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1412&start=0#p8594
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Listing Initial Appearances Inline
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-15 22:16:58

I think this problem covers several areas of I7 that I don't understand well.

I'd like to be able to list the initial appearances of several objects all in one line (e.g. things supported by a table, or things that are edible). The setup might look something like this:

[code]The Study is a room.

The Desk is a supporter in the Study. The description is "A solid desk.[desk-notable]"

Notes are on the desk. "Scattered bits of notepaper are strewn about on the desk"

Pens are on the desk. "A jumble of pens lies about"

To say desk-notable:
    if the desk supports something that is not handled:
        say "[paragraph break]Well look at this. [list of initial appearances of items supported by the desk that are not handled]."[/code]

If this were to compile, I would expect desk-notable to print "Well look at this. Scattered bits of notepaper are strewn about on the desk, and a jumble of pens lies about."

But I'm afraid I'm not that good with lists, and I'm not that good with phrases. Capitalization is a whole other issue I'm not ready to get into - but I've been able to fudge that one so far.

I'm embarrassed to even post my attempts at making this happen. Any recommendations would be appreciated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1412&start=0#p8595
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Listing Initial Appearances Inline
User: George / DateTime: 2010-09-16 01:01:54

This is too tricky for me (and I suspect having the new build with the list's map function would be very handy here), but here is a start anyway:

[code]
The Study is a room.

The Desk is a supporter in the Study. The description is "A solid desk.[desk-notable]"

notes are on the desk. "scattered bits of notepaper are strewn about on the desk"

pens are on the desk. "a jumble of pens lies about"

To say desk-notable:
	let L be a list of text;
	repeat with item running through the list of not handled things on the desk:
		add the initial appearance of item to L;
	if L is not empty:
		say "[paragraph break]Well look at this: [run paragraph on]";
		say "[L].".

test me with "x desk / get notes / put notes on desk / x desk / get pens and notes / x desk"
[/code]

which returns

[quote]
>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] x desk
A solid desk.

Well look at this: scattered bits of notepaper are strewn about on the desk and a jumble of pens lies about.


>[2] get notes
Taken.

>[3] put notes on desk
You put notes on the Desk.

>[4] x desk
A solid desk.

Well look at this: a jumble of pens lies about.


>[5] get pens and notes
pens: Taken.
notes: Taken.

>[6] x desk
A solid desk.

>
[/quote]

Still not sure how to capitalize that sentence appropriately though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1413&start=0#p8596
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Calling actions applying to two things
User: cottccid / DateTime: 2010-09-16 01:04:07

How do I call actions that have two variables?  For example, I am making a shoot command:

Shooting it with is an action applying to two things.  Understand "shoot [person] with [gun]" as shooting it with.

If I want to have an NPC do this action, how do I call it?  

Try silently Jill shooting Jack with the pistol;
try silently "Jill, shoot jack with pistol";
shooting it with (Jack, pistol);

I cant find any examples in the database that call an action without player involvement.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1402&start=10#p8597
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indentation error?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-09-16 02:16:21

Yes it does, but so does this:

[code]At Night is a room. "The stars are out." The sky is a backdrop which is everywhere.

    After doing anything:
    say "You";        say " see";
            say " stars";
say " everywhere."[/code]
And that's because the indentation here doesn't carry any relevant information. If you add another indentation level (i.e. the indentation signifies which block the phrases belong to) it doesn't compile:

[code]At Night is a room. "The stars are out." The sky is a backdrop which is everywhere.

    After doing anything:
        if the current action is jumping:
            say "You bump your head."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1413&start=0#p8598
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Calling actions applying to two things
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2010-09-16 03:26:02

I'm tempted to say that "Try Jill shooting Jack with the pistol" should work; doesn't it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1414&start=0#p8599
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Question keeps looping endlessly / Action without rule
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2010-09-16 04:42:25

Hello again,

thought I'd be fine, but here I run into another problem. [emote]:?[/emote]

I guess to answer this question one will need a bit experience with the Extension "Questions by Michael Callaghan".

I am trying to establish a conversation and have been fairly successful. Basically it is just one person talking and asking the player a number of questions. The conversation begins when entering a specific room.

Sounds simple. Most likely it is. I chose a complicated path, most likely. This is what I did in a simplified example:

[code]
Include Questions by Michael Callaghan

The Bedroom is a room. "It is ridiculously boring."

A question is a kind.
A question is either answered or unanswered.
A question is usually unanswered.

Question1 is a question.
Question2 is a question.

Every turn:
	If player is in the Bedroom:
		If Question1 is unanswered:
			Now the current question is "How much is 1 x 12?";
			Now current question menu is { "1", "12", "24" };
			Ask a closed question, in menu mode;
		Otherwise if Question2 is unanswered:
			Now the current question is "How much is 2 x 12?";
			Ask a closed question, in text mode.

A menu question rule:
	if the current question is "How much is 1 x 12?":
		If the number understood is 2:
			Increase Score by 5;
			Say "You are a math genius!";
			Now Question1 is answered.

A text question rule:
	if the current question is "How much is 2 x 12?":
		If the current answer is "24":
			Increase Score by 5;
			Say "You are unbeatably brilliant!!!";
			Now Question2 is answered.[/code]

My problem here is that I cannot get past the text question. The line "You are unbeatably brilliant!!!" is shown, but then the game gives me the prompt for answering the question again.

How can I exit the loop?

Also: Is there a more elegant way to trigger the conversation? At the moment I use the "Every turn" rule, but what if I want to do that later and there is no action I could bind a rule (like "after", "before" or "instead") to?

This also applies if I want to "Say" something, but have no rule I could put the "If" clause in. What can be done?

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance for your input.


BiB

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1413&start=0#p8600
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Calling actions applying to two things
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2010-09-16 08:48:25

This should work:

[code]Try Jill shooting Jack with the pistol.[/code]

You can write rules about an NPC's actions the same way:

[code]Instead of Jill shooting Jack with the pistol:
After Jill shooting Jack with the pistol:
Before a good guy shooting an innocent with the pistol:[/code]

etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1402&start=10#p8601
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indentation error?
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2010-09-16 09:33:45

Wouldn't it be helpful for the editor to be able to actually visually display the Tabstops? The Windows Explorer shows this nicely in its tree structure (via vertical, dotted lines) or many other coding editors which display various characters like spaces, paragraphs etc.

Just an idea.


BiB

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1412&start=0#p8602
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Listing Initial Appearances Inline
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-16 09:54:41

[quote="George"]This is too tricky for me (and I suspect having the new build with the list's map function would be very handy here), but here is a start anyway:[/quote]
I got about that far, but what I'd like to have is a general function for listing initial appearances for [i]any[/i] collection of objects. I'm not sure if there's a "to decide" or "to say" phrase that will take the description of the collection as an argument, or what the syntax for that might be.

In addition, it would be nice to have customized item introductions, such as:

[quote]One dish on the counter is a steaming souffle, just out of the oven. Another morsel is a roast turkey, impressively laid out on a massive wooden carving block. A third delight is a raspberry tart, gleaming in the soft light of the kitchen. The last thing you see is a platter of liver and onions, still dripping with moisture from the frying pan.[/quote]

... where the "one/another/third/last" comes from one list, and gets lined up with the initial appearances of a varying number of objects.

I wonder if this is fancy enough to make an extension, or if an extension exists to make it easier.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1415&start=0#p8603
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Zoom / CocoaGlk crash
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-09-16 10:11:02

My WIP has been running fine in the Windows IDE, in Windows Gargoyle, in Filfre, and in Quixe.  However, a friend of mine tested it on Zoom and got the following crash:

[quote]
Zoom CocoaGlk Plugin
Will read data from: /Users/ggoebel/Aotearoa.gblorb
Launching client: git-client
Glk client has started
Git interpreter version 1.2.4
Glulxe VM version 3.1.0
Client warning: glk_window_get_stream called with a NULL winid
Glk client has terminated
Client crashed with code 10[/quote]

This happens about halfway through the game, when the player drops an object.  There is nothing odd in the code with respect to dropping the object in that room, except that there's an action-checking rule after the report rulebook completes that compares the current action to a number of different action possibilities and outputs some text based on what the player did.  

I also have some window-manipulation code for a status line exit lister that might also be implicated, I guess, but that seems more farfetched as a cause since that window has been manipulated many times before we get to this point, and the exit list, size, and styles are unchanging at that point.

Does anyone have any idea what might be underlying this issue?  I would be grateful for any pointers.

(EDIT:  I downloaded the Zoom source code and can't find any references to glk_window_get_stream at all -- not sure if I need another source package to find where this is coming from...)

(EDIT 2:  Checked CocoaGlk and found the reference to the glk_window_get_stream call, and it looks like this probably happened very early in the run, and was probably not the proximate cause of the crash...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1402&start=10#p8604
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indentation error?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-16 10:18:03

[quote="BigBonsai"]Wouldn't it be helpful for the editor to be able to actually visually display the Tabstops? The Windows Explorer shows this nicely in its tree structure (via vertical, dotted lines) or many other coding editors which display various characters like spaces, paragraphs etc.

Just an idea.[/quote]
I think that's a good idea, at least as an option.

Also, one thing that makes good Python editors work is that they force initial space to be just spaces, not a mixture of spaces and tabs. Since after 40 years of computing, there is still no reasonable standard for where tab stops lie, it's never a good idea to mix them. Since the Inform IDE uses variable-width fonts, it should probably use tabs and not spaces. I would like it very, very much if it automatically converted initial spaces to tabs in a smart way, at least when pasting (and maybe convert them back to spaces when copying - does it already?). It should also complain if it can't find an unambiguous way to convert spaces to tabs. In my opinon.

I've never gotten into the guts of a GUI paste function, so I'm sure there are lots of pesky details, but I would imagine the algorithm to be something like this:

[code]
When pasting text or opening up a new document:
    Measure the whitespace at the beginning of every line.
        If there is a mixture of tabs and whitespace, use a preference setting to determine how many spaces equal a tab (probably 8 by default). Convert the tabs to spaces.
        If any line does not have a multiple of four spaces at the beginning, issue a warning, but assume that one tab-stop is the least-common-multiple of all the space counts.
            If you want to be nice, allow a small percentage of lines to have a different multiple, and announce their non-conformance.
            If you want to be extra nice, try to guess what the indentation should be, e.g. a line after a colon should be indented. Of course if it does not conform, don't silently fix it a la Microsoft, just complain!

        Convert the tab stops to actual tabs.
        If the first line of any new block is indented, complain.
[/code]

Obviously there are a lot of things that can go wrong here. Perhaps they could be announced after the paste, probably as compilation errors... "The line 'After leaving everything in the dust' does not appear to be indented correctly because it has spaces instead of tabs/comes at the beginning of a block/etc..."

There could also be an Edit menu option such as "convert initial spaces to tabs with tab stops at [8]", or "Find suspicious indentation".

I can see this working well with syntax highlighting...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1414&start=0#p8605
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question keeps looping endlessly / Action without rule
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-16 10:28:40

Have you considered using Simple Chat by Mark Tilford?

It has recently been updated to fix a conflict with the latest I7 library. The update is here:

[url]http://pastebin.com/4ycjZJ52[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1408&start=0#p8606
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Adding properties to Simple Chat nodes
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-16 10:40:07

I was just looking at the source code for Simple Chat, and realized you can create new instances of a kind of value! I did not know that, but in fact a chat node is a kind of value, and that's just how Simple Chat works!

I'm very happy with this:

[code]
conversation-level is a kind of value. The conversation-levels are level-0.
a chat node has a conversation-level. The conversation-level of a chat node is usually level-0.

level-1 is a conversation-level.
raise-hand, bathroom are level-1 chat nodes.
key-please is a chat node.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1377&start=0#p8607
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Incrementally adding things?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-16 10:59:11

I don't think it's necessary to have the eggs be out of play, but the important point that Juhana included is that you must specify where the random egg comes from. You could just as well have said "a random egg worn by the hen."

Also, a point about chickens: Birds like to lay a clutch of eggs so they can set on several at once. If there is an empty nest and a nest with eggs in it, they will prefer to lay in the nest that has eggs, even if the eggs came from a different chicken, are a different color, or are made of wood! In fact that's what the term "nest egg" refers to - a fake egg used to persuade chickens to lay in a particular place.

Please don't let me ruin your game, though...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1402&start=10#p8608
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indentation error?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-09-16 11:08:14

I don't have much interest in marking tab stops with symbols or lines, but there are a couple of uservoice suggestions that relate to this issue:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/854615-ide-facility-for-converting-spaces-to-tabs">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... es-to-tabs</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/984425-allow-the-use-of-spaces-instead-of-tabs?ref=title">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... ?ref=title</a>

I could be missing some--the uservoice search function is not the best.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1414&start=0#p8609
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question keeps looping endlessly / Action without rule
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2010-09-16 11:14:23

This is actually a good idea. The downside of this is extension is that it only allows for a menu based chat.

Every now and then I need an answer in open text. I could change all answers to multiple choice, but I'd rather not.

I will use it if nothing else comes up...

Thanks for the tip!  [emote]:)[/emote] 


BiB

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1414&start=0#p8610
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question keeps looping endlessly / Action without rule
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-09-16 11:18:08

BigBonsai, the problem with asking questions about extensions on the forum is that folks don't necessarily have much experience with a particular extension. So, you might try contacting the author of Questions directly. If his email address isn't listed in the extension, I can PM you his email address.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1414&start=0#p8611
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question keeps looping endlessly / Action without rule
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2010-09-16 11:22:00

Yes, I figured that.

Sure, PM me. Then I can send the author a link to this thread. See what happens. [emote];-)[/emote] Thanks.


BiB

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1415&start=0#p8612
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Zoom / CocoaGlk crash
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-16 11:43:35

What extensions are you using?

(glk_window_get_stream is probably being called by the game or extension code, not by the interpreter. It's worth figuring out that warning, even if it's not the cause of this problem, because that warning can be a fatal error on some interpreters.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1415&start=0#p8613
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Zoom / CocoaGlk crash
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-16 11:44:51

I note that Git is up to version 1.2.7, so you might be running into a fixed bug. There were a couple of obscure but crash-worthy bugs in the Glk interface handling, back in earlier versions.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=30#p8614
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Z-Machine extensions proposal
User: Fox  Cutter / DateTime: 2010-09-16 12:08:53

[quote="Dannii"]I've published my draft 1.2 proposal: <a class="postlink" href="http://curiousdannii.github.com/if/zspec12.html">http://curiousdannii.github.com/if/zspec12.html</a>

Comments, concerns etc?[/quote]

This might be a bit of jumping the gun to comment on this as my first post, but I have something I want to bring up. I'm currently about 80% done implementing a Z-machine, which is about the extent of my background.

Over all the idea of this seems pretty sound, but I think that the use of a number to ID the different extension to the interpreter has the potential for trouble.

One thing I've seen in the world is that this sort of thing can cause problems really quickly, especially if they catch on. Not only do you need to officiate the 'official' selector codes you have to worry about unofficial ones. While the spec does allow for a range of private codes the odds are pretty good that any private extension will have a 50/50 chance of using $F000 instead of a random number. Collisions in this space can and will cause a problems.

So, if I might make a different suggestion. Why not try using a string. It's not much harder to do then anything numbers, it could eithor follow the same embedding rules as @print and @print_ret with the optional argument before the embedded string or be a paddr to the string. The upshot of this is you can use something like mime types or URIs to ID the extensions, which can be be descriptive and lower the chance of collisions (I would also suggest lower case string comparisons).

For example you could have things like:
Standard Version: "Standard-Version" "uri://curiousdannii.github.com/if/zspec12.html"
Transcript: "Transcript-Protocol" "uri://curiousdannii.github.com/if/transcripts.html"
Zoom: "Zoom-Profiling" "uri://www.logicalshift.co.uk/unix/zoom/Profiling"
Zoom: "Zoom-StackDump" "uri://www.logicalshift.co.uk/unix/zoom/StackDump"
Private: "X-Whatever" "url://whatever.com/"

I have some other thoughts on the interpreter number, but as that's not part of your proposal I'll wait on that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1402&start=10#p8615
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indentation error?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-16 12:24:39

Thanks for posting those.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1415&start=0#p8616
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Zoom / CocoaGlk crash
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-09-16 12:58:00

Thanks!  I'm using Flexible Windows and the usual Glulx Text Effects, and my code itself uses quite a few I6 inclusions that work with the secondary grid window I'm using for my exit lister.  I'll look through there and see if I can figure out where that warning is coming from.

Is there a good way to display runtime warnings like that using the I7 IDE?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1416&start=0#p8617
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: How does "mentioned" work?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-16 16:02:27

I was trying to figure out how to stop default descriptions of various things from appearing (especially items on top of supporters). I thought if I set them as "mentioned" it would stop their display, but that didn't seem to work.

Actually, the "handled" part doesn't work as I expected in this example either. Help!

[code]The Study is a room.

The Desk is a supporter in the Study. The description is "A solid desk. [desk-notable]". It is not described.

To say desk-notable:
	repeat with item running through things supported by the desk that are not handled:
		say "[paragraph break][initial appearance of item]";
		now item is mentioned;
	repeat with item running through things supported by the desk that are handled:
		say "[an item] is also on the desk.";
		now item is mentioned;
			
The Notes is on the desk. "Scattered bits of notepaper are strewn about on the desk."

Pens are on the desk. "A jumble of pens lies about.".

test me with "x desk/get pens/put pens on desk/x desk"[/code]
[quote]>[1] x desk
A solid desk. 

Scattered bits of notepaper are strewn about on the desk.

A jumble of pens lies about.

On the Desk are a Notes and Pens.

>[2] get pens
Taken.

>[3] put pens on desk
You put Pens on the Desk.

>[4] x desk
A solid desk. 

A jumble of pens lies about.

Scattered bits of notepaper are strewn about on the desk.

On the Desk are Pens and a Notes.

>[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1405&start=0#p8618
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe not compiling
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-09-16 16:21:53

I'm not sure which version of inform 7 i'm using, but I downloaded it about a year ago.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1405&start=0#p8619
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe not compiling
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-09-16 16:41:28

If you downloaded a year ago, you do not have a version that supports releasing with interpreters. Upgrading may help.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1416&start=0#p8620
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How does "mentioned" work?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-09-16 17:23:36

As I recall, you need to "write a paragraph about" to use the mentioned thing effectively.  Basically, "mentioned" isn't a global property (or not a meaningful one outside the writing a paragraph about rulebook, because of the order of when things happen in the turn), and I think you only need to use it when you want to not mention objects *other than* the one you're writing a paragraph about.

Take a look at the Timeless example.  It only uses the mentioned property to unlist the other zombie wolves - I believe if there was only one, you could just say "Rule for writing a paragraph about" alone.  Should be easy enough to test, in any case.

Edit: I'm a little surprised by the 'handled' thing as well - but then that's never worked the way I expect, so I just don't use it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1416&start=0#p8621
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How does "mentioned" work?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-09-16 17:34:44

A basic misapprehension here: "mentioned" is only used for tagging things to mention during the LOOK action. It does not affect what happens during EXAMINE.

If you want to customize the way contents are reported for a supporter or container, you may want to tweak the "examine containers" and "examine supporters" rules. (Or, if fancy customized containment description is not meant to be a systematic feature of the whole game, the short and sweet way is to write an "Instead of examining the desk" rule.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1412&start=0#p8622
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Listing Initial Appearances Inline
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-09-16 18:12:16

Well, sort of. There's no extension to do exactly this, but the built-in Complex Listing extension lets you control the way things are named in lists and the way lists are delimited, which gets you partway there. Then some tweaking with indexed text will help you control the sentence case and strip out the punctuation in order to join short sentences together.

I've done the example so that it works for both LOOK and EXAMINE, but you could turn this off again by making the desk once more undescribed.

As it stands, this example will glue the initial appearances together into one sentence. If you want to see it with individual enumerated sentences (more like your second request), change 

let N be "[prepared list delimited in appearance style]";

to 

let N be "[prepared list delimited in elaborate style]";

[code]Include Complex Listing by Emily Short. Use the serial comma.

The Study is a room.

The Desk is a supporter in the Study. The description is "A solid desk."

The Notes is on the desk. "Scattered bits of notepaper are strewn about on the desk."

Pens are on the desk. "A jumble of pens lies about.".

To say trimmed appearance of (target object - a thing):
	let N be indexed text;
	let N be "[initial appearance of the target object]";
	while N matches the regular expression "\.":
		replace the regular expression "\." in N with ""; 
	say N.

Rule for writing a paragraph about a supporter (called target) which supports something:
	say "Well look at this. ";
	let N be indexed text;
	if a not handled thing is on the target:
		repeat with item running through not handled things which are on the target:
			now the item is marked for special listing;
		register things marked for listing;
		let N be "[prepared list delimited in appearance style]";
		if a handled thing is on the target:
			let N be "[N]; you also see"; 
	otherwise if a handled thing is on the target:
		let N be "On [the target] you see";
	if a handled thing is on the target: 
		repeat with second item running through handled things which are on the target:
			now the second item is marked for special listing;
		register things marked for listing;
		let N be "[N] [prepared list]"; 
	let N be "[N in sentence case]";
	say "[N]."
	
The examine containers rule is not listed in any rulebook.
The examine supporters rule is not listed in any rulebook.

Instead of examining a container:
	carry out the writing a paragraph about activity with the noun.
Instead of examining a supporter:
	carry out the writing a paragraph about activity with the noun.

Table of List Style Assignments (continued)
list style	first delimiter	second delimiter	alternate second delimiter	indefinite name phrase	definite name phrase
appearance	", "	"[if the serial comma option is active],[end if] and "	" and "	"[trimmed appearance of current listed object]"	"[trimmed appearance of current listed object]"
elaborated	". "	". "	". "	"[current enumeration in counting terms][trimmed appearance of current listed object]"	"Finally, you see [trimmed appearance of the current listed object]. " 

To say (N - a number) in counting terms:
	if N is:
		-- 1: say "One thing you see is ";
		-- 2: say "The second is ";
		-- 3: say "Third, there's ";
	[add more here until your patience runs out]

test me with "look / x desk/get pens/put pens on desk/ look / x desk / get notes / put notes on desk / look / x desk".[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1412&start=0#p8623
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Listing Initial Appearances Inline
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-09-16 18:15:18

Also, re this specifically:

[quote="capmikee"]I'm not sure if there's a "to decide" or "to say" phrase that will take the description of the collection as an argument, or what the syntax for that might be.[/quote]

Yes, that can be done. 21.2. Descriptions as values discusses how to set this up, and the Complex Listing extension shows it in practice in the header of such phrases as "To prepare a/the/-- list of (selection - description of objects):".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=30#p8624
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-Machine Standard 1.2 (draft)
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-09-16 19:57:06

Thanks for your comments. While we could use strings instead, I don't think the overhead would be worth it. For both the Z-Machine and Glulx there have been so few extensions made that I wouldn't expect this to be a common problem - I don't really expect it to catch on. The age of javascript interpreters may change that, but we would also expect custom interpreters to be locked to playing only certain files.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1417&start=0#p8625
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: The IF Dwarf Planet
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-09-16 20:46:15

<a class="postlink" href="http://pipes.yahoo.com/dannii/ifdwarfplanet">http://pipes.yahoo.com/dannii/ifdwarfplanet</a>
Direct link to feed: <a class="postlink" href="http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=bbfb183f14d522b51142e68dc18791dd&_render=rss">http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_ ... render=rss</a>

The IF Dwarf Planet now covers all of the IF blogs which Planet IF does, and a few extras. It doesn't aggregate other e-lit blogs. Use it if you want [emote]:)[/emote]

If you'd like to see other IF blogs included, please reply and tell me!

Btw, I don't know who runs it, but I also like the IF URLs blog: <a class="postlink" href="http://ifurls.tumblr.com/">http://ifurls.tumblr.com/</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1416&start=0#p8626
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How does "mentioned" work?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-16 21:49:27

This is yet another situation when I would want to take a quick peek at the source of the Standard Rules to see how something should be done without missing any exceptional cases. I never remember the path to the Standard Rules, and of course on the Mac the contents of an app are hidden in the Finder by default, so finding the source is not trivial. I suppose in time it will become a habit, but my personal preference is for it to be available from the IDE.

By the way, I went looking for the source of Simple Chat, which I have installed, but I could not find it anywhere within the app. Where are extensions installed to?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1416&start=0#p8627
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How does "mentioned" work?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-16 21:57:08

I made the Desk in this example "not described" instead of "scenery", more or less by mistake. But I learned something:

A scenery supporter will have its contents listed in room description, but an undescribed supporter will not.

I always thought that scenery was a simple combination of undescribed and fixed-in-place, but I guess I was wrong!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1416&start=0#p8628
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How does "mentioned" work?
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2010-09-16 22:06:50

Try File -> Open Extension -> Mark Tilford -> Simple Chat.

Or go to the extensions page on the Inform 7 site and view it there.

Or view the link to the tentative version 3 I posted the other day.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1418&start=0#p8629
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Examining a collection of objects
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-16 22:41:45

This is not enough of a problem to warrant a robust solution, but I thought it was a bit amusing that it works, but only so far:

[code]Exhibition is a room. "Many pictures line the walls."

A painting is a kind of thing. It is usually undescribed. Understand "picture/painting" as a painting.

The Gnome is a painting in Exhibition. The description is "A little man with crooked legs."

The Castle is a painting in Exhibition. The description is "A forbidding old castle."

The Hut is a painting in Exhibition. The description is "Baba Yaga's Hut on Fowl's Legs"

paintings-set is scenery in Exhibition. The description is "There is a painting of a gnome, a castle, and a witch's hut."

Multi-examining is an action applying to two visible things.
Understand "examine [things]" as multi-examining.
Understand "x [things]" as multi-examining.

Carry out multi-examining:
	say "You can't examine all those things at once."
	
Instead of multi-examining a painting when paintings-set is visible:
	try examining paintings-set.
	
test me with "x paintings/x all paintings/x painting/all"[/code]
[quote]>[1] x paintings
There is a painting of a gnome, a castle, and a witch's hut.

>[2] x all paintings
There is a painting of a gnome, a castle, and a witch's hut.

>[3] x painting
Which do you mean, the Gnome, the Castle or the Hut?

>[4] all
Sorry, you can only have one item here. Which exactly?[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1416&start=0#p8630
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How does "mentioned" work?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-16 22:47:26

[quote="ralphmerridew"]Try File -> Open Extension -> Mark Tilford -> Simple Chat.

Or go to the extensions page on the Inform 7 site and view it there.

Or view the link to the tentative version 3 I posted the other day.[/quote]
Simple enough!

It's nice to know that it's there... but Heaven knows how I would learn to use Inform without you guys around!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1412&start=0#p8631
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Listing Initial Appearances Inline
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-16 22:50:47

Thank you! That looks like it will more than take care of my needs.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1415&start=0#p8632
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Zoom / CocoaGlk crash
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-09-17 03:26:07

I believe Zoom lets you switch between using Glulxe and Git as the Glulx interpreter: try switching to Glulxe to see if the crash goes away. If your game uses indexed text, the most likely cause is a bug fixed fairly recently in Git, see [url]http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=257[/url]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1418&start=0#p8633
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Examining a collection of objects
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-09-17 07:39:28

"x gnome and hut" yields an odd response. I guess it's trying to multi-examine both of them?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1418&start=0#p8634
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Examining a collection of objects
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-09-17 07:50:40

Possibly overkill answer: Jon Ingold's Multi-examine extension used to be pretty cool for this kind of thing, and let you define a group definition for a kind, which would automatically be used if the player tried to examine multiple objects of that kind. 

It looks like it doesn't compile under current Inform, but if there's a lot of interest in this, it might be worthwhile someone finding the necessary bugfixes to make it go again.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1418&start=0#p8635
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Examining a collection of objects
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-09-17 07:54:27

The reason why the last command doesn't work is because the parser is trying to find a match for "all painting" and there isn't one. You can fix that with Understand "all painting" as the paintings-set, but that will fix only that specific situation. (The player is just as likely to type "everything" or "each of them" or "gnome and castle". The convention is that if the parser asks to choose one, it accepts only one of the given set so I'm not sure how big of a problem this is.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1417&start=0#p8636
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The IF Dwarf Planet
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-09-17 08:05:33

[quote="Dannii"]Btw, I don't know who runs it, but I also like the IF URLs blog: <a class="postlink" href="http://ifurls.tumblr.com/">http://ifurls.tumblr.com/</a>[/quote]
It's run by our own [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=60]George[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1415&start=0#p8637
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Zoom / CocoaGlk crash
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-09-17 08:36:52

[quote="DavidK"]I believe Zoom lets you switch between using Glulxe and Git as the Glulx interpreter: try switching to Glulxe to see if the crash goes away. If your game uses indexed text, the most likely cause is a bug fixed fairly recently in Git, see [url]http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=257[/url][/quote]

I do use indexed text, so that's definitely something to check.  I just got ahold of a friend's Mac, so I will test Zoom/Glulxe to see if it works better there.  I do know the original tester that reported the issue was able to successfully get past that point in Spatterlight, so there's another datapoint.

Thanks for your help!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1419&start=0#p8638
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Web Hosting
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-09-17 08:47:06

Maybe a little off topic.

My goal is to have a webpage from which I can host my IF games using the Quixe interpreter (or parchment if i can write them small enough for the z-machine). In any case, I'm not a very savvy programmer. Are there free webpages that will do this? How do I set it up? Can anyone help with this?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1412&start=0#p8639
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Listing Initial Appearances Inline
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-17 09:13:34

I've put it into action, and it's working well, but there is an issue with "sentence case." I have some capitalized words in the intitial appearances (and in the handled object names), which are getting flattened by the sentence case. What I really need is to just change the case of the first character of the initial appearance. I would also be happy to do it this way:

[code]The Notes is on the desk. "[S - in listing case]cattered sheets of notepaper from the Bronze Hotel are strewn about on the desk."[/code]
That way, you could even use:
[code]Bronze Hotel notepaper is scattered about on the desk[/code]

or even:
[code]bell hooks really likes the way the notepaper is scattered on the desk.[/code]

It seems like something I should be able to figure out, but the answer isn't coming to me...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1419&start=0#p8640
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Web Hosting
User: George / DateTime: 2010-09-17 09:57:16

If you don't care about the layout of the page, I think all you need is a place to host files; in that case, Google sites will work (just upload to Sites and then go to the Parchment Google code site to get the game link, which you then post back to the Sites page). 

If you want the layout to be consistent (i.e. between your homepage and the game-playing page) you'll need space to set up Quixe/Parchment. In that case maybe nearlyfreespeech.net would be a good option -- pretty cheap hosting.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1419&start=0#p8641
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Web Hosting
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-09-17 10:07:26

Github and Google App Engine are also options for free hosting, though they have their complexities. Github would mean using git to upload, and having your code visible to all (though if you use Parchment or Quixe it's not like you have anything to hide... it's all open source already) and app engine would mean using it's SDK to upload.

But you could always just use the normal Parchment and link people to it. No shame in that!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1418&start=0#p8642
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Examining a collection of objects
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-09-17 10:13:01

[quote="Juhana"]The reason why the last command doesn't work is because the parser is trying to find a match for "all painting" and there isn't one. You can fix that with Understand "all painting" as the paintings-set, but that will fix only that specific situation. (The player is just as likely to type "everything" or "each of them" or "gnome and castle". The convention is that if the parser asks to choose one, it accepts only one of the given set so I'm not sure how big of a problem this is.)[/quote]

I don't think this is true -- "x all painting" gives a different error, "There are none at all available!" (And "x all" gives "You must supply a second noun.") I think, and someone else certainly knows whether this is true, that "Sorry, you can only have one" is a library message specifically for responding "all" to disambiguation requests. I put in an "after reading a command" to echo which command was being read, and when you type "x painting/all" no command is echoed after "all," indicating that it's not even trying to process that as a command.

PS Can we do strikethrough text on this board?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1418&start=0#p8643
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Examining a collection of objects
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-17 10:50:52

Would it be simpler to use "Understand 'paintings' as paintings-set when examining" instead of creating a multi-examine action? I tried that first, but the problem is that it then redirects ALL actions on "paintings" to the paintings-set. Even adding "does the player mean..." lines didn't help.

After seeing that horrible repeating "you must supply a second noun," I'm sort of going sour on the multi-examine idea...

Now I'm thinking of a number of games I've played where I inadvertently discovered an object because of a disambiguation question (or even a misunderstood noun description). Wouldn't it be nice to have a way to force the player to view the most general level of the object detail hierarchy before doing anything with more fiddly things deeper in? That's partly the point of this example anyway - you don't want to view an automatically-generated list of the paintings before seeing the paintings-set description.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1420&start=0#p8644
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: How do I write if(condition1 OR condition2 OR ...)
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2010-09-17 12:32:26

Hello.

Man, am I not reading the manual properly? Why do I not see such simple things?  [emote]:oops:[/emote] 

I got this after expecting a user input:
[code]If the current answer is "dust":[/code]
What I want is this:
[code]If the current answer is "dust" or "Dust" or "dirt" or "Dirt" or ... or ...:[/code]
Now this doesn't work. How can I anticipate more than just one answer from the user?

Ok, I guess this is exceedingly simple, but I can't see it... thanks in advance, guys. [emote]:)[/emote]


BiB

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1420&start=0#p8645
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do I write if(condition1 OR condition2 OR ...)
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-09-17 13:15:30

Because of the possibility for syntactic confusion, you can't use "or" like this in Inform 7. (There's a [url=http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/751480-programming-inclusion-of-or-in-conditions?ref=title]feature request[/url] for this currently active, that explains some of the difficulties involved.) In the meantime, you need to write out your request in full:
[code]If the current answer is "dust" or current answer is "Dust" or current answer is "dirt" or current answer is "Dirt"...[/code]
However, you might want to instead use the tools for matching text strings to do this. (See the chapter "Advanced Text" in the docs.) So, for instance, you could use a regular expression:
[code]
if current answer matches the regular expression "(dust|dirt)", case insensitively:
[/code]
(Also note that in z-code games, the player's input is going to be all lower-case anyway; you can only preserve the casing of a player's command in Glulx.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1420&start=0#p8646
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do I write if(condition1 OR condition2 OR ...)
User: PaulSharke / DateTime: 2010-09-17 13:25:53

This is completely off the top of my head as I don't have Inform 7 in front of me, and I don't know what extension you're working with (if any), but I think the correct syntax might be:

[code]if the current answer is "dust" or the current answer is "dirt":[/code]

I don't think you need to worry about capital letters when it comes to user input, either.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1420&start=0#p8647
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do I write if(condition1 OR condition2 OR ...)
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2010-09-17 13:47:43

[quote="PaulSharke"][code]if the current answer is "dust" or the current answer is "dirt":[/code]

I don't think you need to worry about capital letters when it comes to user input, either.[/quote]
Unfortunately, under Glulx I need to worry about that. thanks for that solution (also to aaronius).

[quote="aaronius"]However, you might want to instead use the tools for matching text strings to do this.[/quote]
I tried it and it works fantastically. Man, I really searched and couldn't find it in the Docs.

Thank you a lot y'all! [emote];)[/emote]

The "Condition1 or Condition2 or ..." Syntax would be helpful. [emote];-)[/emote]


BiB

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1421&start=0#p8648
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Kinds of action
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-17 15:09:09

Chapter 7.15 in the manual describes "Kinds of Action." But these aren't really kinds, are they?

[code]appropriate behavior is a kind of action[/code]
...does not compile.

I'd like to do something like this:

[code]A scene has a kind of action called the purpose. A scene has a text called the objection.

Prologue is a scene. The purpose of prologue is early behavior. The objection of prologue is "It's too early for that!"

Waiting or looking or examining is early behavior.

Before doing something during a scene (called the moment):
    unless the purpose of the moment:
         say "[the objection of the moment]" instead.[/code]

Or possibly:

[code]Propriety relates various actions to various scenes. The verb to be appropriate to implies the propriety relation.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1422&start=0#p8649
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: End-of-game options
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-17 17:25:28

Is there supposed to be an Inform 7 Reference Book? I feel a bit foolish asking, but if there is, I don't know how to find it.

I based this attempt on two examples, #138 "Big Sky Country," and #370, Jamaica 1688.

[code]
Tale is a room.

achievement is a truth state that varies.

Winning is an action applying to nothing. Understand "win" as winning.

Carry out winning: now achievement is true.

Report winning:
	say "You made it!";

Losing is an action applying to nothing. Understand "lose" as losing.

Carry out losing: end the game in death.

Table of Final Question Options (continued) 
final question wording   	only if victorious   	topic   	final response rule   	final response activity
"REPLAY [the current episode]"	false	"replay"	restart the current episode rule	--

This is the restart the current episode rule:
	resume the story;
	reset the current episode;
	try looking;
	
The current episode is a scene that varies.

Every turn: say "The current episode is [the current episode]."

When a scene (called the moment) begins:
	say "[the moment] is beginning.";
	reset the moment;

To reset (the installment - a scene):
	Now achievement is false;
	Now the current episode is the installment;

Prologue is a scene. Prologue begins when play begins. Prologue ends when achievement is true. 

Middle is a scene. Middle begins when Prologue ends. Middle ends when achievement is true.

Epilogue is a scene. Epilogue begins when Middle ends. Epilogue ends when achievement is true.

When Epilogue ends: end the game in victory.


test me with "lose/replay"[/code]
[quote]>[1] lose


    *** You have died ***


In that game you scored 0 out of a possible 0, in 1 turn.


Would you like to RESTART, RESTORE a saved game, QUIT, UNDO the last command or REPLAY Prologue?
> [2] replay
Tale
Would you like to RESTART, RESTORE a saved game, QUIT, UNDO the last command or REPLAY Prologue?
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1421&start=0#p8650
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Kinds of action
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-09-17 20:30:21

Good question. Offhand I don't see a way to make it work. Even if we assume that "kind" is, in this case, merely a synonym for "category" and doesn't refer to the actual kind construct, there still seems to be no way to assign a category of behavior to a scene. Nor am I able to see how to construct a before rule that works as you seem to want, even with reference to a specific scene.

I tried this:

[code]Waiting is early behavior.
Looking is early behavior.
Examining something is early behavior.

A scene has a text called the objection.

Prologue is a scene. The objection of prologue is "It's too early for that!"

Before doing something during  prologue:
	if the current action is not early behavior:
		say "[the objection of prologue]" instead.[/code]

This compiles, but it doesn't work. Even when I try the action 'jump', for instance, I get the default library response, not the objection of the prologue.

Hopefully, smarter people than me will be able to sort it out.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1420&start=0#p8651
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do I write if(condition1 OR condition2 OR ...)
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-17 21:53:47

Isn't there an extension that allows this?  I seem to be remember it being written by one of the Erics. "Alternatives" or some such? 

..ah yes,  [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Eric%20Eve/Alternatives/index.html]Alternatives by Eric Eve[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1422&start=0#p8652
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: End-of-game options
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-17 22:01:53

You wrote "REPLAY [the current episode]" in the table, but your test command only says "REPLAY".  

I'm actually surprised Inform allowed you to require a parameter there. I tried something like "RESTART [text]" and it thwacked my hands with a ruler.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1421&start=0#p8653
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Kinds of action
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-17 22:21:55

Yeah, they're not kinds at all, just a to-decide-whether phrase under the hood.[code][ NAP_0;
    if ((action ==##Wait)) rtrue;
    if ((action ==##Look)) rtrue;
    if ((action ==##Examine) && ((noun ofclass K2_thing))) rtrue;
    rfalse;
];[/code]

You can get what you want...[code]A scene has a rule called the appropriate behavior.  

When play begins, now the appropriate behavior of the prologue is early behavior as a rule.

To decide what rule is (C - a condition) as a rule: (- {C} -).[/code]...but you have to initialize it when play begins, and since there's no such thing as "the current scene", then we can't say "...when doing the appropriate behavior of the current scene.." which undercuts the usefulness of such a property.  (Or do you have a trick up your sleeve, Mikee?) 

Given that, it's usually easiest to tie the scene & koa together via rule: [code]Before early behavior during  prologue:[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1422&start=0#p8654
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: End-of-game options
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-09-17 22:39:54

That should be OK -- the text substitution is only used in the display of the REPLAY option.  The actual expected text is in the third column: "replay".

I don't know the answer to the original poster's question, though...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1420&start=0#p8655
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do I write if(condition1 OR condition2 OR ...)
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-17 23:28:00

Topics should match case-insensitively even under Glulx. Regexps may be different. I thought the input line was downcased before any processing, but maybe that's gotten more complicated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1402&start=10#p8656
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indentation error?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2010-09-18 04:34:27

Veering just slightly OT, I've found a trick to make cut-n-pasting in this forum a little less painful. This works for me on Vista running IE 8. Take the following code, which compiles fine and has been pasted from the windows IDE:
[code]
Lab is a room.

When play begins:
	if the location is Lab:
		say "LAB!";
	otherwise:
		say "BOO!".
[/code] If I copy this code from the forum and paste it back into the IDE, it fails to compile because the tab stops have been converted to spaces. Instead, I hit the quote button at the bottom of the message. Then a text box opens for my reply which includes the entire original message, including the code. If I copy and paste the code [i]from the text box editor[/i], the original tab stops are preserved and the code compiles just fine. Of course this only works if the OP copy-n-pasted rather than retyped. Also, you have to remeber to hit cancel or you end up prematurely posting a response consisting of merely a requote.  [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1422&start=0#p8657
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: End-of-game options
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-09-18 06:24:04

EDIT: As per zarf's answer, my speculation was totally wrong, so I'm hiding it beneath a rant tag for posterity.

[rant]I don't know the answer to the original poster's question either, but I'll speculate: Is it possible that the game is considering the scene-changing rules as soon as you resume it? The documentation for "resume the game/story" says it causes play to resume exactly as if no ending had been reached. Since play ended in the middle of a Carry Out rule, I can convince myself that the rules chart says that you should resume in (or just after) the generate action rules, which means the scene changing rules would fire right away -- and since achievement is true, that would mean that all the scenes end at once, and the game with it. Not sure why it wouldn't print "You have won" but this seems like a place where a corner case would arise. 

So one thing that I might suggest would be setting achievement to false before you resume the game. Another might be just switching "reset the current episode" and "resume the game." How are you setting "The current episode," by the way? I can't see where it gets set in your code.
Matt[/rant]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1422&start=0#p8658
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: End-of-game options
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-18 10:13:54

What you're trying to do just isn't supported. Once you get into the final question, there is no code path out. (The only way to leave the question loop is to wallop the VM state, by restart/restore/undo/quit.)

(When the documentation says "resume exactly", it's not promising anything magical -- it just sets a flag that requests a new turn to start as normal. That flag is checked before the final question, not during it.)

Here's the logic that does what you want:

[code]
This is the zarf's ask the final question rule:
	ask the final question replayably.

To ask the final question replayably: (-
	print "^";
	while (true) {
		CarryOutActivity(DEALING_WITH_FINAL_QUESTION_ACT);
		DivideParagraphPoint();
		if (resurrect_please) {
			RulebookSucceeds();
			rtrue;
		}
	}
-).

Zarf's ask the final question rule is listed instead of the ask the final question rule in the shutdown rulebook.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1363&start=0#p8659
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe transcripts
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2010-09-18 12:59:34

If I'm the admin of the site where the quixe game lives, is there a way (good or bad) for me to access the saved transcript of someone else's game? Or does the transcript vanish when the player's session ends?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1423&start=0#p8660
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Help me modify the SCRIPT command, for science
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-09-18 13:34:39

I'm going to be showing Blue Lacuna at the IndieCade games festival in L.A. next month. I'd like to do something similar to what I did at Slamdance four years ago with Whom the Telling Changed, and record a transcript of all the people who interact with the game at the festival. This would provide an interesting, semi-empirical comparison to see if highlighted keywords make IF less frustrating.

For Slamdance, I'd paid a friend of mine to modify the Gargoyle source code to hack this in. I'm no longer in touch with him, however, so I'm trying to roll something myself in I7 this time. This is as far as I've gotten:

[code]
Include (-

[ SWITCH_TRANSCRIPT_ON_R  newFileName;
	if (actor ~= player) rfalse;
	if (gg_scriptstr ~= 0) rfalse; !return GL__M(##ScriptOn, 1);
	newFileName = "bl-" + (string) random(10000000) + "-script";
	if (gg_scriptfref == 0) {
		!gg_scriptfref = glk_fileref_create_by_prompt($102, $05, GG_SCRIPTFREF_ROCK);
		print (string) newFileName;
		gg_scriptfref = glk_fileref_create_by_name($102, newFileName, GG_SCRIPTFREF_ROCK);
		if (gg_scriptfref == 0) jump S1Failed;
	}
	! stream_open_file
	gg_scriptstr = glk_stream_open_file(gg_scriptfref, $05, GG_SCRIPTSTR_ROCK);
	if (gg_scriptstr == 0) jump S1Failed;
	glk_window_set_echo_stream(gg_mainwin, gg_scriptstr);
	!GL__M(##ScriptOn, 2);
	!VersionSub();
	return;
	.S1Failed;
	return;
	!GL__M(##ScriptOn, 3);
];

-) instead of "Switch Transcript On Rule" in "Glulx.i6t".
[/code]

The idea is supposed to be that each time this routine runs, it creates a new file with a random number in its name, without showing any messages to the user at all regardless of success or failure. (Yeah, this is a nasty hack, etc., etc... it's just for one computer at one venue.) What I've got so far is broken for apparently a couple of reasons: I guess you can't dynamically create strings this easily in I6, and also apparently I'm not giving the glk_fileref_create_by_name function the sort of string it expects.

(Oh, and I need to compile Blue Lacuna with build 5Z71, in case that makes a difference.)

Any pointers?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1424&start=0#p8661
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Placement of messages
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2010-09-18 13:44:43

Hello. 

Just a brief question:

How can I place messages I print with "Say" at the end of everything. I want to use this for printing little Tutorial messages to the screen, best at the end of all descriptions.

Is there a way to control the placement of messages?


BiB

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1414&start=0#p8662
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question keeps looping endlessly / Action without rule
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2010-09-18 13:55:43

The author was very kind and has replied.

His (working!) solution is to add "Exit;" to the respective rules. This will end the question.

I also had the problem that when asking a number of questions consecutively, the score count would not be increased, since time did not advance. To solve this, the lines
[code]Follow the notify score changes rule;
Follow the advance time rule;[/code]
must be added as well.

So this is what the code will look like corrected:

[code]A text question rule:
   if the current question is "How much is 2 x 12?":
      If the current answer is "24":
         Increase Score by 5;
         Say "You are unbeatably brilliant!!!";
         Follow the advance time rule;
         Follow the notify score changes rule;			
         Exit;
         Now Question2 is answered.[/code]

Thanks to the author!  [emote]8-)[/emote]


BiB

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1402&start=10#p8663
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indentation error?
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2010-09-18 14:03:18

Nice!  [emote]8-)[/emote] 

Good idea! Works with Opera as well.


BiB

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1424&start=0#p8664
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Placement of messages
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-09-18 14:34:38

"Before reading a command" is a good place to do this kind of message, because it happens after everything else has been printed and just before the command prompt. This, for instance, will print its nonsense every turn:

[code]Foo is a room. Before reading a command: say "Blargh."[/code]

You can then add conditions to the before reading a command rule to decide whether it should print tutorial text, and if so, what.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1423&start=0#p8665
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help me modify the SCRIPT command, for science
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2010-09-18 14:42:58

What happens if you use the code:

[code]
Array Output_File_Name -> 'b' 'l' '-' 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 '-' 's' 'c' 'r' 0;

[ Build_Name num;
	for (num = 3; num < 11; ++ num)
		Output_File_Name->num = random(10) + '0' - 1;
];
[/code]

Call Build_Name() and pass Output_File_Name to the function?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1424&start=0#p8666
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Placement of messages
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2010-09-18 14:56:23

Thanks.

I didn't know about the "Before reading a command" rule. Unfortunately it prints its message at the beginning of the game (before the first command of the game), yet I want to print a message at the end of regular text output of a command a user has input.

Am I overlooking something?


BiB

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1421&start=0#p8667
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Kinds of action
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-18 14:57:08

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Yeah, they're not kinds at all, just a to-decide-whether phrase under the hood.[/quote]

That raises a number of interesting possibilites. Can you create your own "to decide" rule and then use it as a condition for an Instead rule?

[code]To decide whether an action (called the attempt) is universally acceptable:
    If the attempt is early behavior, decide yes;
    If the attempt is late behavior, decide yes;
    Decide no;[/code]

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]To decide what rule is (C - a condition) as a rule: (- {C} -).[/code]...but you have to initialize it when play begins, and since there's no such thing as "the current scene", then we can't say "...when doing the appropriate behavior of the current scene.." which undercuts the usefulness of such a property.  (Or do you have a trick up your sleeve, Mikee?)[/quote]

Glad you asked...
[code]The current episode is a scene that varies.

A scene can be episodic.

When an episodic scene (called the installment) begins: Now the current episode is the installment.
[/code]

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Given that, it's usually easiest to tie the scene & koa together via rule: [code]Before early behavior during  prologue:[/code][/quote]
I suppose so. Oh well.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1386&start=30#p8668
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Planet IF
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2010-09-18 14:58:44

Today, Planet IF seems to be taking a daring step forward towards diversification by hosting a video link to AdultFriendFinder. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1422&start=0#p8669
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: End-of-game options
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-18 15:08:19

[quote="zarf"]What you're trying to do just isn't supported. Once you get into the final question, there is no code path out. (The only way to leave the question loop is to wallop the VM state, by restart/restore/undo/quit.)[/quote]
I thought it might be something like that, when I realized Big Sky Country avoids the final question completely.

Thanks for the fix!

By the way, is there more detail about the Table of Final Question Options anywhere in the documentation? Or should I just read the source code if I want to change the wording or order of existing questions?

Maybe I just need to review the documentation on tables...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1422&start=0#p8670
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: End-of-game options
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-18 15:17:06

By the way, what's really the difference between a regular scene and a recurring scene? Does a recurring scene have to end before it can begin again? What happens when the start condition of a non-recurring scene becomes false and then true again after the scene ends? Is it the same when it's a regular condition and when it's an "X scene ends" condition?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1423&start=0#p8671
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help me modify the SCRIPT command, for science
User: djfletch / DateTime: 2010-09-18 15:21:10

I think you also need $E0 as the first byte of the array to tag it as a Glulx unencoded string object.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1423&start=0#p8672
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help me modify the SCRIPT command, for science
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-09-18 15:58:59

You might try using the function Glulx_ChangeAnyToCString(). I believe this is how the external files template handles strings.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1386&start=30#p8673
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Planet IF
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-18 16:21:06

That was a spam post on the gnusto livejournal page. It was deleted off LJ, but the planet-if software apparently doesn't purge posts in that situation.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1363&start=0#p8674
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe transcripts
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-18 16:29:20

The data is stored in the user's browser. It doesn't expire, but it may get wiped if the user does a "clear cookies" or "clear cache" command.

You could write a tiny web app which listed the transcripts, and let the user display one or email it to you. It's essentially the same work, but it doesn't have to be part of the Quixe app -- it just has to be hosted on the same server.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1422&start=0#p8675
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: End-of-game options
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-09-18 16:43:58

[quote="capmikee"]By the way, what's really the difference between a regular scene and a recurring scene? Does a recurring scene have to end before it can begin again? What happens when the start condition of a non-recurring scene becomes false and then true again after the scene ends? Is it the same when it's a regular condition and when it's an "X scene ends" condition?[/quote]

A recurring scene will start over if the conditions for it happen and the scene has ended. A regular scene will not, even if the start conditions become true again -- regardless of what those start conditions are.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1422&start=0#p8676
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: End-of-game options
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-09-18 16:48:18

[quote="capmikee"][quote="zarf"]What you're trying to do just isn't supported. Once you get into the final question, there is no code path out. (The only way to leave the question loop is to wallop the VM state, by restart/restore/undo/quit.)[/quote]
I thought it might be something like that, when I realized Big Sky Country avoids the final question completely.

Thanks for the fix!

By the way, is there more detail about the Table of Final Question Options anywhere in the documentation? Or should I just read the source code if I want to change the wording or order of existing questions?[/quote]

It's covered in moderate detail (including a full list of the default table contents) at <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rdoc96.html">http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rdoc96.html</a> . Tweaking it can be done with any of the things you can do with tables otherwise.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1424&start=0#p8677
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Placement of messages
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-09-18 16:55:08

Well, the end of one turn is just before the beginning of the next. [emote]:)[/emote] You want to add some conditions to this to make it only fire when you want it to (e.g., the turn count is greater than 1, or whatever). 

It would also be possible to manually add another rule to the turn sequence rules that would fire only at the actual end of the turn sequence, but it's probably less work to use the existing reading a command hook and just use conditions to prevent it firing on the first turn, which is why I suggested that route.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1239&start=20#p8678
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Transcripts collection proposal
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2010-09-18 19:09:23

[quote="joningold"]
But I think my point is the value that a transcript can add goes way above "errors" - text games in general have very few alpha issues but tons of beta issues: very few crashes, but lots and lots of missing responses, alternate solutions, typos... [/quote]

Precisely. As an author, I'm looking for commands and synonyms that the player tries that I didn't think to implement, missing or miscued responses, typographical and spelling errors, areas with poor gameplay or prose that just doesn't "read" well. None of which would be flagged by an interpreter.

I have happily read through, okay maybe not hundreds, but at least dozens of transcripts looking for issues like these, and would do so again. It's a pretty essential tool for beta-testing and THE main reason why I want an easy way for testers to send the transcript to me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1425&start=0#p8679
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Repeating time
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-18 20:52:34

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding how scheduling works, but this example does not do what I would expect:

[code]"Groundhog Minute" by Captain Mikee

Gobblers Knob is a room.

At 9:01 AM:
	say "Punxutawney Phil pops his head up out of his hole, and[if a random chance of one in two succeeds], seeing his shadow, disappears back into his hole.[otherwise], not seeing any shadow, ventures out in hopes of an early spring."
	
At 9:02 AM:
	now the time of day is 9:00 AM.
	
Every turn:
	say "the time is now [the time of day]"
	
test me with "z/z/z/z/z/z"[/code]
[quote]>[1] z
Time passes.

the time is now 9:00 am
>[2] z
Time passes.

the time is now 9:01 am
Punxutawney Phil pops his head up out of his hole, and, not seeing any shadow, ventures out in hopes of an early spring.

>[3] z
Time passes.

the time is now 9:02 am
>[4] z
Time passes.

the time is now 9:01 am
>[5] z
Time passes.

the time is now 9:02 am
>[6] z
Time passes.

the time is now 9:03 am
>[/quote]

Is there some way to get something to happen [i]every time[/i] it is a particular time of day?

In case I'm asking the wrong question, this issue relates to the "checkpoints" model that the game I'm working on uses: each stage of the game should be completely repeatable until the player gets past it (see my post about the Final Question if you're wondering how that repetition works) If there's an overall philosophy that would work better than the one I'm using, perhaps I don't need this fiddling with time of day so much...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1422&start=0#p8680
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: End-of-game options
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-18 21:01:37

I see I need to get more familiar with the Recipe Book. Thanks for the link!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1239&start=20#p8681
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Transcripts collection proposal
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-09-18 21:12:06

The proposal we're working on here will make it possible for interpreters to flag some of those things, such as unknown commands and missing responses. Poor gameplay and prose isn't really something that can be detected automatically... you'll still need to rely on beta tester comments for that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1425&start=0#p8682
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Repeating time
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-09-18 22:36:25

I ran into this one a while back, too.  Apparently, times set with "at such-and-such a time" are single-fire events.  

However, "Every turn when the time of day is 9:01 AM" should work as expected.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1424&start=0#p8683
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Placement of messages
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2010-09-19 02:20:28

Ok. That was quite helpful.

So this is what I have tried successfully:
[code]Before reading a command when the player is in the Small Bathroom:
	Say "BlaBla."[/code]
Now this works. The downside is that it prints the message [i]every time[/i] a command is entered in the Bathroom. To circumvent this I tried this:
[code]Before reading a command when the player is in the Small Bathroom for the first time:
	Say "BlaBla."[/code]

"for the first time" doesn't have any effect. How must I write this so the message shows up only the first time the player enters the Bathroom and after that never again (or possibly only every time after he steps through the door leading to the Bathroom?)?


BiB

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1073&start=0#p8684
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Multimedia TADS for Linux and Mac
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-09-19 04:52:46

Vacation's over.  Back to work I guess [emote]:)[/emote]

I've uploaded new builds (2010-09-19) of QTads 2 for Linux (32bit/64bit) and Mac (Intel/PowerPC, OS X 10.5 and newer):

  <a class="postlink" href="http://qtads.sourceforge.net/downloads.shtml">http://qtads.sourceforge.net/downloads.shtml</a>

A "Recent Games" menu has been added, as well as a game meta-info viewer.  The configuration dialog has seen some changes too, like the ability to specify arbitrary font sizes and more native color button appearance (KDE/Gnome/Mac.)  There's also the usual assortment of bug fixes.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1073&start=0#p8685
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Multimedia TADS for Linux and Mac
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-09-19 06:28:33

I ran [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=u0fzm0lxlt9vb4fi]Walker & Silhouette[/url] and played through the first scene quickly just to test that the new QTADS build was working for me. It is, but I noticed a small bug.

At the end of each scene, the game pauses to wait for a keypress, asking the user to "Press space", and the word "space" is an apparently empty hyperlink. In HTML TADS for Windows, clicking "space" is treated as pressing a key and continues the game, but in QTADS nothing happens.

I've uploaded a save game so you can check it out. Type (or click) "door" to end the scene, then click "space".

Thanks for your work on QTADS!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1426&start=0#p8686
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Source line order: defining kinds.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-19 08:18:20

This code works just fine:
[code]"Santa's List" by Captain Mikee

The Living Room is a room.

[move this line to the end of the source and it will no longer compile.]
A reward is a kind of thing. A punishment is a kind of thing.

The player carries a reward called a Christmas present. The player carries a punishment called a lump of coal.

There is a woman called Little Sally in the living room.

Instead of giving a reward to sally:
	say "Oh, thank you Santa!";
	
Instead of giving a punishment to sally:
	say "Sally bursts into tears.";
[/code]
But if I put the definitions of reward and punishment at the end, the compiler can't find them anymore:
[quote]Problem. You wrote 'The player carries a reward called a Christmas present'  : but I can only make 'a something called whatever' when the something is a kind I know, possibly qualified with adjectives. For instance, 'an open door called the Marble Door' is fine because 'door' is the name of a kind and 'open' is an adjective which means something for doors. But 'a grand archway called the Great Gates' would not normally mean anything to me, because 'archway' is not one of the standard kinds in Inform. (Try consulting the Kinds index.)
Problem. You wrote 'The player carries a punishment called a lump of coal'  : again, I can only make 'a something called whatever' when the something is a kind I know.[/quote]
Is this how things are supposed to be, or is it a bug?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1239&start=20#p8687
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Transcripts collection proposal
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2010-09-19 08:28:55

[quote="Dannii"]The proposal we're working on here will make it possible for interpreters to flag some of those things, such as unknown commands and missing responses. Poor gameplay and prose isn't really something that can be detected automatically... you'll still need to rely on beta tester comments for that.[/quote]

Yes. 

In fact, poor gameplay and prose are things that even beta-testers can't always detect. I have to read through their transcripts to find it for myself. Thus my desire for testers to have the ability to easily and instantly send me their transcripts in a readable format.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1073&start=0#p8688
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Multimedia TADS for Linux and Mac
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-09-19 08:31:24

Thanks, I was able to confirm.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1424&start=0#p8689
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Placement of messages
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-09-19 08:51:00

Brute-force, but it'll work:

[code]First-bathroom-turn is a truth state that varies.  First-bathroom-turn is true.

Before reading a command when the player is in the Small Bathroom and first-bathroom-turn is true:
    say "BlaBla.";
    now first-bathroom-turn is false;
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1426&start=0#p8690
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Source line order: defining kinds.
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-09-19 08:56:24

Inform is pretty tolerant about the order of code in a lot of cases, but kind definitions aren't one of them.  If you don't declare what a "reward" is before you define an object that is a reward, Inform doesn't know what you're talking about.

This is covered in the manual -- Chapter 4, Section 2:  [url]http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc56.html[/url]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1424&start=0#p8691
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Placement of messages
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2010-09-19 09:30:06

[quote="mwigdahl"]Brute-force, but it'll work:

[code]First-bathroom-turn is a truth state that varies.  First-bathroom-turn is true.

Before reading a command when the player is in the Small Bathroom and first-bathroom-turn is true:
    say "BlaBla.";
    now first-bathroom-turn is false;
[/code][/quote]
It works indeed! Congrats!

Man, I have a lot to learn. [emote];-)[/emote] Thank you. Will make programming tutorial and help-statements a lot easier!

Thanks a bundle!


BiB

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1426&start=0#p8692
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Source line order: defining kinds.
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-09-19 10:32:15

[quote="mwigdahl"]Inform is pretty tolerant about the order of code in a lot of cases, but kind definitions aren't one of them.  If you don't declare what a "reward" is before you define an object that is a reward, Inform doesn't know what you're talking about.

This is covered in the manual -- Chapter 4, Section 2:  [url]http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc56.html[/url][/quote]
It's covered in the manual if you're adept at reading between the lines and using a little imagination, yes. The example that the manual gives doesn't [i]quite [/i]spell out the problem that Mikee ran into. The example shows an object being successfully created, but not being what you expected.

It's easy to reproduce the problem by adding this to the example in the manual:

[code]In the Crypt is an open coffer called the vampire's resting place. 

A coffer is a kind of container.[/code]

My own feeling (and yes, I've written manuals) is that a manual should always provide every detail that may be needed. A manual should not skimp. Inform's manual not infrequently takes the opposite tack. Presumably in the interest of brevity, so as not to intimidate the novice with thorny details, it sometimes fails to explain important stuff.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1426&start=0#p8693
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Source line order: defining kinds.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-19 11:37:09

[quote="Jim Aikin"]My own feeling (and yes, I've written manuals) is that a manual should always provide every detail that may be needed. A manual should not skimp. Inform's manual not infrequently takes the opposite tack. Presumably in the interest of brevity, so as not to intimidate the novice with thorny details, it sometimes fails to explain important stuff.[/quote]
I think of the O'Reilly Learning X/Programming X manuals in this situation. The "introductory" manual doesn't give you all the details, but it's enough to get you started. It's intended to be read once, as a tutorial. Then the detailed manual can be used as a reference - it never needs to be read straight through, because the introductory manual should teach you how to find things in it.

Maybe the Recipe Book is aiming to be the reference - I haven't read enough of it to know for sure yet.

Where does your Handbook lie in relation to these examples, Jim? I started reading it, but it seemed more like an introduction and less like a reference, and I really need a reference right now.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1426&start=0#p8694
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Source line order: defining kinds.
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-09-19 12:52:16

[quote="capmikee"]Where does your Handbook lie in relation to these examples, Jim? I started reading it, but it seemed more like an introduction and less like a reference, and I really need a reference right now.[/quote]
The Handbook (which in any case hasn't been updated to cover 6E72) is not a reference, no. It's a "here's how to do useful stuff" guide.

I've only glanced at Aaron's book, so I can't say how well it would meet that need.

The Recipe Book is definitely not a reference either.

I'd like to see the existing "Writing with Inform" significantly expanded, to cover numerous details that are now being swept under the rug. But it would be difficult for a 3rd party to do the rewrite, because of the way the underlying HTML is structured. What appears in the IDE as a single page is actually several pages that are kept in sync somehow during rewrites. Each time you open a different example within a page, you're switching to an entirely new HTML page that has the same basic text, augmented by the text in the example.

This has to be a headache to maintain. I'm pretty sure there are easier ways to do it in HTML. I've never asked why they did it that way.

Ron Newcomb has written a document called, I believe, "Inform 7 for Programmers." But it's not exactly a reference either.

If someone would like to give the Handbook more reference-like features ... hey, go for it! The .odt file is available for download from my web page. Naturally, I'd appreciate being kept in the loop, but you're free to do what you like, as long as you credit me for my work.

--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=130#p8695
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Silas Greenback / DateTime: 2010-09-19 14:25:28

Hello all,

I've been playing IF for a couple years. The first game that I really sunk my teeth into was the Adrift game "The PK Girl"  by Robert Goodwin, which turned out to be a great introduction to IF.

As far as platforms, I really have no preference and even enjoy playing older AGT games.

Having my introduction out of the way, I'm looking forward to delving deeper into the forums and am hoping that I may have something useful to add when the time comes.

P.S., I really don't have a decent explanation as to why I've been a member for a year without posting. I'm surprised I haven't.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1423&start=0#p8696
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help me modify the SCRIPT command, for science
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-09-19 15:25:58

Thanks, everyone, got it working. If anyone else needs to do something similar in the future, here's the final code:

[code]
Section - New Switch Transcript On rule

First when play begins: try switching the story transcript on.

Include (-

Array Output_File_Name -> $E0 'b' 'l' '-' 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 '-' 's' 'c' 'r' 0;

[ Build_Name num;
   for (num = 4; num < 11; ++ num)
      Output_File_Name->num = random(10) + '0' - 1;
];

[ SWITCH_TRANSCRIPT_ON_R  newFileName tmpStr;
	if (actor ~= player) rfalse;
	Build_Name();
	gg_scriptfref = glk_fileref_create_by_name($102, Glulx_ChangeAnyToCString(Output_File_Name), GG_SCRIPTFREF_ROCK);
	if (gg_scriptfref == 0) jump S1Failed;
	gg_scriptstr = glk_stream_open_file(gg_scriptfref, $05, GG_SCRIPTSTR_ROCK);
	if (gg_scriptstr == 0) jump S1Failed;
	glk_window_set_echo_stream(gg_mainwin, gg_scriptstr);
	return;
	.S1Failed;
	return;
];

-) instead of "Switch Transcript On Rule" in "Glulx.i6t".
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1426&start=0#p8697
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Source line order: defining kinds.
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-09-19 19:42:49

[quote="Jim Aikin"][quote="mwigdahl"]Inform is pretty tolerant about the order of code in a lot of cases, but kind definitions aren't one of them.  If you don't declare what a "reward" is before you define an object that is a reward, Inform doesn't know what you're talking about.

This is covered in the manual -- Chapter 4, Section 2:  [url]http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc56.html[/url][/quote]
It's covered in the manual if you're adept at reading between the lines and using a little imagination, yes. The example that the manual gives doesn't [i]quite [/i]spell out the problem that Mikee ran into. The example shows an object being successfully created, but not being what you expected.

It's easy to reproduce the problem by adding this to the example in the manual:

[code]In the Crypt is an open coffer called the vampire's resting place. 

A coffer is a kind of container.[/code]

My own feeling (and yes, I've written manuals) is that a manual should always provide every detail that may be needed. A manual should not skimp. Inform's manual not infrequently takes the opposite tack. Presumably in the interest of brevity, so as not to intimidate the novice with thorny details, it sometimes fails to explain important stuff.[/quote]

How adept at reading between the lines do you have to be?  You're given these statements:

[quote]Inform often doesn't mind in what order it is told about the world, but it may need to know the name of a kind before that kind can be used. [/quote]

and

[quote]
Problem. You wrote 'The player carries a reward called a Christmas present' : but I can only make 'a something called whatever' when the something is a kind I know, possibly qualified with adjectives. For instance, 'an open door called the Marble Door' is fine because 'door' is the name of a kind and 'open' is an adjective which means something for doors. But 'a grand archway called the Great Gates' would not normally mean anything to me, because 'archway' is not one of the standard kinds in Inform. (Try consulting the Kinds index.)[/quote]

It seems like a very simple 2+2 to take these two statements and conclude that you need to declare the kind 'reward' before using it.  The only issue is knowing the first statement exists, which is why I pointed the original poster to the correct place in the documentation.

Matt

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1427&start=0#p8698
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Unofficial Inform 7 documentation index
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-20 10:17:50

A many years ago, when Inform was wee, nothings put together an index page linking to the manual's pages: <a class="postlink" href="http://nothings.org/misc/i7index.html">http://nothings.org/misc/i7index.html</a>

It hasn't been updated recently, however, and the links are all dead. I've now re-munged the index file so that they work again:

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/tmp/i7index.html">http://eblong.com/zarf/tmp/i7index.html</a>

I'm still using his index data (mostly), so some of the links may no longer be accurate. It's definitely missing all the features that have been added since 2007. But I will try to incrementally improve it over the course of this week. If I don't, well, at least the links work.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1426&start=0#p8699
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Source line order: defining kinds.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-20 10:40:54

[quote="mwigdahl"]
It seems like a very simple 2+2 to take these two statements and conclude that you need to declare the kind 'reward' before using it.  The only issue is knowing the first statement exists, which is why I pointed the original poster to the correct place in the documentation.[/quote]
I agree that no reading between the lines is necessary in this case. But finding the relevant information in the documentation remains a challenge.

In regards to the introduction/tutorial model, it occurred to me that [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_C_Programming_Language_%28book%29]Kernighan & Ritchie[/url] does a great job at being both. It doesn't hurt that C is a very straightforward language, but being well organized and having a good index helps too. After reading many computer manuals, (and trying to write a little documentation), I've realized how hard that is to do. The Inform manual doesn't really have an index, just a keyword search. I don't like the keyword search because it hits so many irrelevant sections. A topic search, or even an anachronistic browsable Index, would go a long way towards making things findable. But fundamentally I think the ordering of chapters and the placement of information within them is deeply sub-optimal. Even within a single section, I think the presentation of information could often be improved:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc15.html">http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc15.html</a>
[quote]A sentence which is the only one in its paragraph and which begins with any of the words "volume", "book", "part", "chapter" or "section" is considered to be a heading or a sub-heading. It must not contain a typed line break, and in order to stand alone in its paragraph there should be a skipped line both before and after it. For instance:
[code]

Section 2 - Flamsteed's Balloon 

[/code]
Headings can be written in any format, provided they start with one of the five indicator words, and they are hierarchical: a "Part ..." heading is considered more significant than a "Chapter ..." heading but not so significant as a "Book ..." heading, and so on. (We do not need to use all five kinds of heading.) [/quote]

The list of headings and the information about their hierarchy are in two separate paragraphs. Why not write something like this?
[quote]The headings that can be used, in order of hierarchical significance, are:

Volume
Book
Part
Chapter
Section

- with Volume being the highest and most general level of organization and Section being the most minor and most specific.

Headings can be written in any format, and we do not need to use all five kinds. The only requirement is that they start with one of the indicator words listed above. A sentence which begins with one of the indicator words is considered to be a heading. It must not contain a typed line break, and in order to stand alone in its paragraph there should be a skipped line both before and after it. For instance:

[code]Field is south of Flamsteed's House and west of Stream.

Section 2 - Flamsteed's Balloon

Flamsteed's Balloon is an enterable container in Field.[/code][/quote]

Taking a more general view is harder for me, but I'll make an attempt: I'm not sure The Source Text should be chapter 2 at all, and I'm not sure the sections of Chapter 2 even belong together. A lot of this stuff (like use options) could be dealt with much later. To get started with a simple game, you don't need headings or use options. This seems to be a chapter about syntax, but shouldn't the syntax of each kind of statement belong in a chapter about that statement?

"Things" sounds more like a chapter that should come first, but even there I see something strange. Section 3.5 is called "Kinds." That's the name of the next chapter! If I'm looking through the contents, which of these sections should I read to learn about kinds of things? Maybe kinds should come before things? Maybe they should be in a chapter together?


After Things, I would expect to see Actions. But there are two chapters I have to read first before I get there, Text and Descriptions. Are those really chapters about things? Maybe the chapters need to be grouped into parts (why is part above chapter and section below chapter? I never get that one right.) Text looks like a combination of things we need to know really early on (maybe even before Things!) and stuff that I really don't want to look at right at the beginning.

5.2 is "How Inform reads quoted text" - very important! So important, in fact, that the first line acknowledges that we had to cover some of this in Chapter 2 already. 5.2 introduces the syntax for text substitutions - but those were introduced in 5.1, "Text With Substitutions." Already we're caught in a maze of twisty little cross-references.

Then in the same chapter we have Unicode. Certainly relevant to quoted strings, and perhaps to names of things in the source, but definitely not as fundamental as Things and Actions, and it could come much later, in a more reference-oriented section of the manual. There's already a split-up chapter for Advanced Text... oh wait, that's a chapter about indexed text. Why doesn't it say so?

Sorry, I'm getting out of control here... I hope I'm not sounding too cranky. Say, does Inform need volunteers to help with writing the next edition of the manual?   [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1296&start=10#p8700
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you do when you have more ideas than time?
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2010-09-20 11:08:58

[quote="Ghalev"][ it means you cherrypick the most worthy ones and lament your mortality [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Immortality would just increase this problem exponentially [emote]8-)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1427&start=0#p8701
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unofficial Inform 7 documentation index
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-20 11:25:58

Thanks- I'm bookmarking that!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1426&start=0#p8702
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Source line order: defining kinds.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-20 11:31:37

Well, one of my prayers was answered:

Inform 7 Documentation Index
<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/tmp/i7index.html">http://eblong.com/zarf/tmp/i7index.html</a>

Thanks, Zarf and Nothings!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1371&start=0#p8703
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Ability to mark topics resolved
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2010-09-20 11:37:43

In many Linux forums this is done by editing and add [SOLVED] to the subject of the original post. It can be done both by the original poster (who is encouraged to do so) or by a moderator.

It is simple and it won't require any add-ons, but I don't know if you wanted something "more".

Ps.: I've just tried it in one of my cries-for-help: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1184">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1184</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1296&start=10#p8704
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you do when you have more ideas than time?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-09-20 11:46:25

[quote="lribeiro"][quote="Ghalev"][ it means you cherrypick the most worthy ones and lament your mortality [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Immortality would just increase this problem exponentially [emote]8-)[/emote][/quote]

Everything would still get done eventually, though.  [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1296&start=10#p8705
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you do when you have more ideas than time?
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2010-09-20 11:53:40

[quote="matt w"]Everything would still get done eventually, though.  [emote];)[/emote][/quote]

It's kind of the "infinity plus one" problem: by the time you worked out all of your ideas, enough time had passed for you to pile up some more. It's madness, I tell you, pure madness!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1405&start=0#p8706
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe not compiling
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-09-20 11:57:14

Okay- I updated.

I had to make some slight changes to the source as my game wasn't compiling due to some new issues. That aside- now I can compile it. I get my Glulx file, but I can't find any webpage or html or any special file to upload for the Quixe interpreter.

Do I have to release along with a webpage too? I have the "Release along with the 'Quixe' Interpreter" sentence by itself.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1427&start=0#p8707
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unofficial Inform 7 documentation index
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-20 12:00:26

The "/tmp/" indicates that your bookmark will eventually break. :) I'll update this thread as I go.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1296&start=10#p8708
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you do when you have more ideas than time?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-09-20 13:16:00

[quote="lribeiro"][quote="matt w"]Everything would still get done eventually, though.  [emote];)[/emote][/quote]

It's kind of the "infinity plus one" problem: by the time you worked out all of your ideas, enough time had passed for you to pile up some more. It's madness, I tell you, pure madness![/quote]

Right, but every idea you have would get worked out at some time or other -- there just wouldn't be a time when you didn't have an increasingly large number left. 

Not that I need to worry about this anytime soon (or even later).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1428&start=0#p8709
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Source line order: kinds of action
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-20 13:37:16

I discovered another problem with line order. Is this one documented somewhere?

[code]Parlor is a room.

Kissing Mr Carr is unmaidenly behaviour.

Mr Carr is a man in Parlor.[move this line up to make the example compile successfully.][/code]

The compilation error is even less helpful this time:
[quote]The sentence 'Kissing Mr Carr is unmaidenly behaviour'   appears to say two things are the same - I am reading 'Kissing Mr Carr' and 'unmaidenly behaviour' as two different things, and therefore it makes no sense to say that one is the other: it would be like saying that 'Choucas is Hibou'. It would be all right if the second thing were the name of a kind, perhaps with properties: for instance 'The Hall is a lighted room' says that something called The Hall exists and that it is a 'room', which is a kind I know about, combined with a property called 'lighted' which I also know about.[/quote]

I don't blame the compiler for getting confused here, but this really should be documented, probably in 7.15 of the manual.

Actually, I'm going to venture out on a limb here, since I don't know anything about how the compiler works... but... if the compiler encounters a problem that would be resolved if something in it were defined elsewhere (like Mr Carr), wouldn't it be possible to postpone processing that block until the end of the source, in case it ended up making sense afterwards?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1428&start=0#p8710
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Source line order: kinds of action
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-09-20 14:09:50

Isn't this already documented in section 7.15?

[quote](Note that we were only allowed to say that "Kissing Mr Carr is unmaidenly behaviour." because Inform already knew from earlier sentences - see the example below - that Mr Carr was a person, and therefore that "kissing Mr Carr" made sense as a description of an action.)[/quote]

The documentation for kinds of action is not nearly as clear as it should be -- it should explain that the only way to define a KoA is by specifying an example, and probably that a KoA is a disguised "decide" phrase rather than a real kind -- but I do think they give us fair warning that line order can make a difference.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1429&start=0#p8711
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Conditional locale descs with multiple player characters
User: Rhian / DateTime: 2010-09-20 14:15:30

I'm having some trouble with objects appearing in room descriptions under certain conditions. What I want is for items with the incorporeal property to only be visible - and therefore listed in a room description - if the player is also incorporeal. I plan for the player to be able to switch between two people: one corporeal, the other not.

I thought about moving all incorporeal objects to a secret room whenever the player becomes the corporeal character, but decided it might be overly complicated with multiple rooms and multiple locations to which to return them. My solution was to have these incorporeal objects in their usual positions, but to make them privately-named (with a conditional 'Understand' phrase so the incorporeal character can interact with them) and to give them a locale priority of 0 when the player is incorporeal, preventing them being listed at all.

It works perfectly with the test command (I appropriated the 'sing' verb to try out switching between incorporeal and corporeal) but when I use the possess verb to switch between other people, the item (here, the pen) is still listed in the room description. The privately-named part worked fine, suggesting that the player has successfully become corporeal.

Beginning as the incorporeal character, singing to change to corporeal and [i]then[/i] possessing the corporeal character results in the correct behaviour, so I assume I've made a mistake in the possessing action. Trouble is, I can't see it for looking.

Here's my code and the resulting transcript. Any pointers would be very much appreciated.

[code]"Test" by Rhian

A thing can be corporeal or incorporeal. A thing is usually corporeal.
A thing can be revealed or hidden. A thing is usually revealed.

Definition: a thing is hidden:
    if it is incorporeal and the player is corporeal, yes;
    no.

After choosing notable locale objects:
    if something (called the object) is hidden:
        set locale priority of the object to 0.

Instead of singing:
    if the player is corporeal:
        now the player is incorporeal;
        say "You are now incorporeal.";
        rule succeeds;
    if the player is incorporeal:
        now the player is corporeal;
        say "You are now corporeal.";
        rule succeeds.
[For testing only.]

Possessing is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "possess [something]" as possessing.

Check possessing:
    if the noun is not a person, say "You can't possess inanimate objects." instead.

Carry out possessing Sarah:
    now the player is Sarah;
    now the player is corporeal;
    move Diana to the Repository;
    say "You claim Sarah's corporeal form."

Instead of possessing the player:
    if the player is Diana:
        say "You can't possess yourself.";
    otherwise:
        say "You're already possessing this form."
        
Departing is an action applying to nothing. Understand "depart" as departing.

Check departing:
    if the player is Diana, say "You can't depart from yourself." instead.

Carry out departing:
    if the player is Sarah:
        move Diana to the location of the player;
        now the player is Diana;
        now the player is incorporeal;
        say "You return to your incorporeal form."

The player is a woman called Diana. Diana is incorporeal.

The Hall is a room. 

The pen is in the Hall. The pen is incorporeal and privately-named. Understand "pen" as the pen when the player is incorporeal.

Sarah is a woman in the Hall.

The Repository is a room.

Test me with "x pen / possess sarah / l / x pen / depart / sing / l / possess sarah / l"[/code]

[quote][b]Hall[/b]
You can see a pen and Sarah here.

> x pen
You see nothing special about the pen.

> possess sarah
You claim Sarah's corporeal form.

> look
[b]Hall[/b]
You can see a pen here. [color=#FF0000](This is the bit that's wrong.)[/color]

>x pen
You can't see any such thing.

>depart
You return to your incorporeal form.

>sing
You are now corporeal.

>look
[b]Hall[/b]
You can see Sarah here.

>possess sarah
You claim Sarah's corporeal form.

>look
[b]Hall[/b]

[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1428&start=0#p8712
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Source line order: kinds of action
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-20 15:51:54

[quote="matt w"]Isn't this already documented in section 7.15?

[quote](Note that we were only allowed to say that "Kissing Mr Carr is unmaidenly behaviour." because Inform already knew from earlier sentences - see the example below - that Mr Carr was a person, and therefore that "kissing Mr Carr" made sense as a description of an action.)[/quote]

The documentation for kinds of action is not nearly as clear as it should be -- it should explain that the only way to define a KoA is by specifying an example, and probably that a KoA is a disguised "decide" phrase rather than a real kind -- but I do think they give us fair warning that line order can make a difference.[/quote]
Well, not as fair as the explanation of kinds mentioned in the other thread. I think this may be a minor case of reading between the lines, but I have to confess that my disordered brain skipped over this statement completely. It just wasn't where I expected it to be.

From my brief experiments, it appears that it is [i]not[/i] possible to use a "To decide whether" phrase in the condition for an action rule, despite the impression that I got from learning that a kind of action is itself really a "to decide whether" phrase. Personally, I would be happy to dispense with kinds of action completely if I could only use my own "to decide whether" phrase. But it seems there are concerns that make it impossible for action conditions to have such flexible definitions. It's pretty amazing that they work at all, but if someone could explain why they have such conditions, I might feel less frustrated about the restrictions. For example, I just read through Chapter 7 and didn't see any mention about why you can't list multiple noun alternatives in the condition, or even the fact that you can't. Am I being blind again? The only hint I found was in 7.13:

[quote]This may be a good place to mention a small restriction on the ways we can specify an action for a rule to apply to, and how it can be overcome. The restriction is that the action should only involve constant quantities, so that the following does not work:

    The Dome is a room. The Hutch is north of the Dome. The rabbit is in the Hutch. Before going to the location of the rabbit, say "You pick up a scent!" 

because "the location of the rabbit" is a quantity which changes in play (the player can pick up the rabbit and take him to the Dome, for instance). However, we can get around this restriction by defining a suitable adjective, like so:

    The Dome is a room. The Hutch is north of the Dome. The rabbit is in the Hutch. Definition: a room is rabbit-infested if it is the location of the rabbit. Before going to a rabbit-infested room, say "You pick up a scent!" [/quote]
Here's a very useful hint about how to get around the restriction, but it's in a section titled "Going from, going to" - no hint that it also tells you how to specify the noun for an action in a more flexible way.

This is also confusing because "a rabbit-infested room" isn't any more constant than "the location of the rabbit" - why is Inform willing to evaluate one thing at runtime and not the other?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1429&start=0#p8713
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conditional locale descs with multiple player characters
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-20 16:01:21

[quote="Rhian"][code]A thing can be corporeal or incorporeal. A thing is usually corporeal.
A thing can be revealed or hidden. A thing is usually revealed.

Definition: a thing is hidden:
    if it is incorporeal and the player is corporeal, yes;
    no.
[/code][/quote]
Your code is redundant, and I think that's causing the problem. You've created a property that has the values hidden or revealed, and then you've created an adjective that shares the same name as one of the values. Try this instead:
[code]A thing can be corporeal or incorporeal. A thing is usually corporeal.
Definition: a thing is hidden:
    if it is incorporeal and the player is corporeal, yes;
    no.
Definition: a thing is revealed if it is not hidden.

[not tested]
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1405&start=0#p8714
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe not compiling
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-20 16:14:56

That should be all you need.

Look in the "Materials" / "Release" folder.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1428&start=0#p8715
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Source line order: kinds of action
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-09-20 19:16:09

Those [i]are[/i] some of the places where I find Inform mysterious. About the kind of action as a "to decide whether," maybe it's that they compile to the same sort of thing in Inform 6? And my speculation would be that that the rabbit-infested issue has to do with the way this compiles -- for some reason Inform has to evaluate the value of a noun at compile-time, but it can evaluate adjectives at run-time. There might even be a hint of this in the phrase "quantity which changes" -- except that "quantity" is definitely not a term that's defined in the I7 documentation, at least not in any obvious way. So yeah.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1427&start=0#p8716
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unofficial Inform 7 documentation index
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-09-20 19:26:55

This is great-- let us know when you settle on a permanent URL, and I'll link to it from the website for my book.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1427&start=0#p8718
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unofficial Inform 7 documentation index
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-09-20 20:14:11

Whenever a new release of I7 comes out won't all the links break? It looks like the page numbers are just increasing numbers, so if an extra page is added early they'll all be put out of sync. Ick.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1427&start=0#p8719
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unofficial Inform 7 documentation index
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-20 21:35:36

The first script scans the I7 doc pages and generates a mapping of page titles to filenames. The second script uses that mapping and the index file to generate the final output. So when a new I7 comes out, I just have to re-run both of them. 

(And then adjust for any pages whose names have changed. But this is a small fraction. Even between 3L95 and 6E72, most of the index data and page titles remained usable.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1427&start=0#p8720
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unofficial Inform 7 documentation index
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-20 21:36:17

(I will post the scripts presently, but I haven't yet.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1429&start=0#p8721
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conditional locale descs with multiple player characters
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-09-20 22:47:25

This rule doesn't work as it should:

[code]After choosing notable locale objects:
    if something (called the object) is hidden:
        set locale priority of the object to 0.[/code]
It's basically looking for just one hidden thing and setting its locale priority. You need to loop through all hidden things in the location.

[code]After choosing notable locale objects:
	repeat with X running through hidden things in the location:
		set locale priority of X to 0.[/code]

(Capmikee also has a good point, but the adjective isn't causing this particular problem.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1427&start=0#p8722
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unofficial Inform 7 documentation index
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-09-20 22:50:36

I'm sure it can be overcome fairly easily, but the biggest problem I think is that any links to the documentation will be broken with the next release.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1427&start=0#p8723
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unofficial Inform 7 documentation index
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-20 23:22:18

The *biggest* problem? Nah. That's a minor problem. :)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1427&start=0#p8724
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unofficial Inform 7 documentation index
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-09-21 00:37:32

The biggest problem in the admittedly small domain of the documentation file naming scheme [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1429&start=0#p8725
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conditional locale descs with multiple player characters
User: Rhian / DateTime: 2010-09-21 08:01:58

Thanks guys, this is really helpful. Juhana's code sorted it for me, and I see where I was going wrong. Much obliged!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1296&start=10#p8726
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you do when you have more ideas than time?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2010-09-21 10:32:14

[quote="matt w"]Right, but every idea you have would get worked out at some time or other --[/quote]
Only if you do them in the order you think them up, though. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1430&start=0#p8727
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Bug with unhandled items?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-21 11:40:25

If this is a bug, it's minor, but it's still bugging me:

[code]The Study is a room.

The Desk is a supporter in the Study. The description is "A solid desk."

a piece of paper is in the study. "A blank piece of paper is lying on the floor.".

Instead of examining a supporter:
	say "[description of the noun]";
	try searching the noun;
	if the noun supports a not handled thing:
		say "[initial appearance of a random not handled thing on the noun]";

Every turn:
	say "[The paper] is [if paper is not handled]not [end if]handled.";
		
test me with "look / put paper on desk / x desk / take paper / look".[/code]
[quote]>[1] look
Study
A blank piece of paper is lying on the floor.

You can also see a Desk here.

The piece of paper is not handled.

>[2] put paper on desk
(first taking the piece of paper)

You put the piece of paper on the Desk.

The piece of paper is not handled.

>[3] x desk
A solid desk.
On the Desk is a piece of paper.

A blank piece of paper is lying on the floor.
The piece of paper is not handled.

>[4] get paper
Taken.

The piece of paper is not handled.

>[5] look
Study
You can see a Desk here.

The piece of paper is handled.

>[/quote]
This turned up because I was reading the "handled" property when listing the contents of supporters. If you implicitly take an unhandled item and put it on a supporter (or in a container) elsewhere all in the same turn, it never gets marked as handled. This can look very weird, as you see here.

I'm guessing from this that "handled" actually means "was in the player's inventory at the end of a turn," which isn't exactly what you'd expect it to mean. Is this worth reporting or should I just work around it somehow?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1412&start=0#p8728
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Listing Initial Appearances Inline
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-21 12:06:59

Of course it turned out the the capitalization problem had a very simple solution, thanks to indexed text! I wrote all the initial appearances with the first letter in lowercase, and then capitalized the first letter of the list text before tacking the introductory phrase onto the beginning. Since I'm not writing about bell hooks, that's all I had to do...

The elaborated style didn't quite work as I expected, though - it never got to the "Finally, you see..." line. I fixed it this way:

[code]Table of List Style Assignments (continued)
list style	first delimiter	second delimiter	alternate second delimiter	indefinite name phrase	definite name phrase
elaborated	". "	". "	". "	"[current enumeration out of current listing total in counting terms][trimmed appearance of current listed object]"	"[current enumeration out of current listing total in counting terms][trimmed appearance of the current listed object]. "

To say (N - a number) out of (M - a number) in counting terms:
	if N is M and M > 2:
		say "Finally, you see ";
	otherwise:
		if N is:
			-- 1: say "One thing you see is ";
			-- 2: say "The second is ";
			-- 3: say "Third, there's ";
		[add more here until your patience runs out][/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1296&start=10#p8729
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you do when you have more ideas than time?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-21 12:09:46

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="matt w"]Right, but every idea you have would get worked out at some time or other --[/quote]
Only if you do them in the order you think them up, though. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
Not necessarily. You need to have a one-to-one mapping between the integers and your ideas, but it doesn't have to be that particular mapping.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1430&start=0#p8730
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Bug with unhandled items?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-21 12:43:14

Yep -- the "note object acquisitions rule" late in the Turn Sequence rulebook is responsible for setting "handled".  

You may wish to try a proper past-tense inquiry for your if-statements:  if we have taken the X...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1429&start=0#p8731
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conditional locale descs with multiple player characters
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-21 12:46:24

[quote="capmikee"]
[code]
Definition: a thing is hidden:
    if it is incorporeal and the player is corporeal, yes;
    no.
Definition: a thing is revealed if it is not hidden.
[/code][/quote]

Chopping that down further yields[code]Definition: a thing is hidden rather than revealed if it is incorporeal and the player is corporeal.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1427&start=10#p8732
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unofficial Inform 7 documentation index
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-21 13:46:57

Okay, more serious note: Is it worth having index entries that refer to the recipe book? What about to specific examples in manual pages (as opposed to just linking to the page)? Obviously it would be nice to have these capabilities, but I'm asking whether they'd really be used -- is there an index topic for which the *best* answer is to the recipe book.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1296&start=20#p8733
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you do when you have more ideas than time?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2010-09-21 14:23:27

That's certainly true; you should read the particularly obvious mapping I chose as a [i]pars pro toto[/i]. [emote];)[/emote] (And in fact, not all the one-to-one mappings of N to N will do, since if the ratio of thinking up new ideas to executing them is X, the mappings have the additional limitation that F(n) =< Xn.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1427&start=10#p8734
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unofficial Inform 7 documentation index
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-09-21 14:38:57

I would vote yes, at least for some cases. My impression is that a lot of newbie questions are based around trying to create certain kinds of common things (cars, cell phones, elevators, etc) which there are all Recipe Book examples for. I certainly don't think *every* example needs to be indexed this way, and of course someone would have to hand-curate the most useful ones. But time constraints aside it seems worthwhile.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1429&start=0#p8735
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conditional locale descs with multiple player characters
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-09-21 14:53:56

I feel like the OP ought to be able to do a lot of what was wanted with a statement like this:

[code]After deciding the scope of the player when the player is corporeal:
      repeat with item running through all incorporeal things enclosed by the location:
              remove item from scope.[/code]

I've wanted to do something like this myself on occasion, but it isn't possible—objects can only be [b]added[/b] to scope in this way, not removed. Does anyone who's familiar with the internals know whether this is a fundamental limitation of the library, or just a design oversight?

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1430&start=0#p8736
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Bug with unhandled items?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-21 15:01:25

That would work. I decided to go with an "after taking something not handled" rule, but maybe this would be better:

Definition: a thing is moved if it is handled or we have taken it.

It makes me wonder, though: Is there a concept of "the original state" of a thing? How does restarting the game work? Is it something really low-level like saving the initial z-machine state, or does it happen by rerunning all the code that's not stuck in other rules? The game I'm working on has a "checkpoint" system where we often reset everything to a particular state, but continue the current scene instead of starting at the "when play begins." I've had to duplicate the initial state of every object in a reset phrase because I'm assuming I can't access the state that's described in the source. I'm also consciously avoiding anything like "[one of]fee[or]fi[or]fo[or]fum[stopping]" or "blank out the whole row" because as far as I know, there's no way at all to reset that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1430&start=0#p8737
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Bug with unhandled items?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-21 15:51:29

Yeah, the interpreter saves the startup state as a snapshot of all of memory. The same is true of save files and undo snapshots. They're not accessible by the game.

There's currently no better way to checkpoint a state than the way you're doing it. You might be able to write code to copy out a lot of low-level memory state -- all the state representing an object's properties, for example. But I7 stores state in a lot of little arrays here and there. Locating it all would be tedious.

 (I had to do something similar, in Inform 6, for _Spider and Web_. But I6 is simpler. I was able to ensure that *all* important game state was in object properties and attributes.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1430&start=0#p8738
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Bug with unhandled items?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-21 15:56:51

The concept of game-controlled checkpointing comes up fairly often. Maybe it's worth adding to the Glulx spec? A repository of undo snapshots that are not in the regular user-controlled chain, but can only be reached by game request? 

The problem is, this is a total solution. Any information that you *didn't* want restored would have to be written into a protected array. I think the more likely request is "I want to checkpoint these objects and tables and string-things, but those over there should be left alone." That's a much harder problem for I7 as it stands.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1431&start=0#p8739
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Why can't rulebooks be more dynamic, again?
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-09-21 17:51:21

I've a feeling this is mentioned somewhere already, but: is there a reason why rules can't be changed, reordered, removed from rulebooks and so on with "now"? 

This would allow for all sorts of intriguing possibilities about changing the makeup of in-game systems due to player action, such as the command >OVERTURN PROP 8 triggering the phrase "now the can't marry people of your own gender rule is not listed in the check marrying rulebook."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1429&start=0#p8740
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conditional locale descs with multiple player characters
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-21 17:56:37

It's fundamental to the way scope is handled. (Going back to I6.) "deciding the scope" iterates through all objects in scope. The "add X to scope" line actually iterates through X as well, before the activity completes. The earlier objects have already been touched.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1430&start=0#p8741
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Bug with unhandled items?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-21 18:25:07

Doesn't Jesse's extension Hypothetical Questions walk this ground?  With some tweaks, all the game leading from the last checkpoint could be done 'hypothetically', until the next checkpoint where you can reify it.  

Theoretically speaking.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1427&start=10#p8742
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unofficial Inform 7 documentation index
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-21 18:33:35

There does seem to be a few examples that keep being mentioned in forums on a fairly regular basis. The one with noses and the possessive case is one.  The one with rooms-inside-rooms was another.  Maybe about 3 or 4 others.  I'm blanking.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1431&start=0#p8743
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why can't rulebooks be more dynamic, again?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-21 18:43:42

Congratulations!  You've just described procedural rules with a nicer syntax!  Due to speed issues with Parchment et al, your feature will [i]come on down[/i].    ::plays The Price Is Right theme::


I once tried designing some gameplay about the passing & repealing of laws in that way, but found it can be done sufficiently well in much plainer ways.  The concept of "programming rule = society rule" worked better in theory than in practice. 

Take a look at the board game Puerto Rico, and imagine how you'd code it in Inform.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1427&start=10#p8744
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unofficial Inform 7 documentation index
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-09-21 19:09:57

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]There does seem to be a few examples that keep being mentioned in forums on a fairly regular basis. The one with noses and the possessive case is one.  The one with rooms-inside-rooms was another.  Maybe about 3 or 4 others.  I'm blanking.[/quote]

Wait, is there a recipe book example for the noses thing?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1430&start=0#p8745
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Bug with unhandled items?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-21 21:57:43

You can go that way, but only at the cost of preventing "undo" for the player. (Because you're using the undo stack for your own purposes.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1431&start=0#p8746
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why can't rulebooks be more dynamic, again?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-21 22:10:44

This question has shallow and deep answers.

The shallow answer is, the rulebook mechanism is designed to let you manipulate a rulebook, run it, and then reset it. That's a procedural rule. Allowing a permanent change (in addition to procedural rules) would be more complicated. Possible, certainly, but extra work.

The deeper answer is, this sucks because this mechanism is slow. (Making it more complicated would make it lower.) This is why procedural rules are now deprecated. So take a step back.

Any "now"-style change can be recast as a rule replacement with a condition. E.g.:

[code]
  When the foo scene begins:
    now the bar rule is not listed in the baz rulebook.
[/code]

[code]
  The bar-prime rule is listed instead of the bar rule in the baz rulebook.
  This is the bar-prime rule:
    if the foo scene has not begun:
      follow the bar rule.
[/code]

It's more verbose, but it's closer to the I7 principle of having conditional declarations where possible. (See also, "why can't I write 'now understand "x" as Y'?" "because a conditional understand is better.")

It's also much easier to compile into efficient code.

The drawback is that if you want your rule changes to achieve combinatorial explosion, you need to do much more work. (You have to write out all the combinations.) But as Ron said, rulebooks aren't the only way to do that, and probably not the best way either.

As you've probably seen, I proposed a cleaner syntax for this on the uservoice forum. For this example, it would be:

[code]
  The bar rule doesn't apply when the foo scene has begun.
[/code]

Still a conditional declaration, with the same meaning, but it avoids having to declare the extra rule.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1431&start=0#p8747
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why can't rulebooks be more dynamic, again?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-09-21 23:20:20

The current rulebook implementation is undeniably powerful, but it's also inefficient, painfully so in Javascript interpreters. Luckily most things that it was designed to do could be done without procedural rules, and should still work if rulebooks were compiled to single functions.

I think the best approach is to optimise for the majority use case and for performance. Luckily they both point in the same direction this time! If the rulebook implementation was rewritten and then genuine use cases were found that just couldn't be solved with it, then we'd start to look at more options. It's much better when complexity is only driven by actual needs.

Changing the implementation to compile rulebooks to single functions should also free up a little bit of memory, which would be a plus for the Z-Machine authors out there.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1431&start=0#p8748
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why can't rulebooks be more dynamic, again?
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-09-22 00:42:18

I understand that there are simpler ways to do this for [i]specific[/i] cases (which perhaps my original example implied). But yeah, as Zarf points, out, this is most interesting when there are an exponentially large number of possible outcomes. I'm imagining a game where a player can arbitrarily change rules in many combinations, not just the particular ones I as an author thought of and wrote specific exceptions for.

(I suppose you could hack up some sort of code generation algorithm that would create a huge number of rules for you for all of the individual combinations. But this obviously would not scale very well.)

Also, I understand why procedural rules are slow: they have to be run every time anything happens anywhere to check if this is the sort of situation where this rule applies. But wouldn't simply removing a rule from a rulebook with a "now" statement (assuming this worked) not cause this problem, since the change would be permanent, not constantly needing to be re-checked?

I mean, I imagine that the rules in a particular rulebook must be stored somewhere in memory ("Consult rule 1, then rule 2, then rule 3") and that a procedural rule with an "ignore" phrase is overriding this in a temporary fashion ("Consult rule 1, then rule 3"). Why can't this temporary override be permanent? Is it just something inherent to the z-machine's memory structure?

Anyway, I've found an okay solution that uses a combination of tables, custom values, and objects to achieve a similar effect, but it feels very un-Inform 7.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1431&start=0#p8749
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why can't rulebooks be more dynamic, again?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-22 08:07:13

[quote="aaronius"]I understand that there are simpler ways to do this for [i]specific[/i] cases (which perhaps my original example implied). But yeah, as Zarf points, out, this is most interesting when there are an exponentially large number of possible outcomes. I'm imagining a game where a player can arbitrarily change rules in many combinations, not just the particular ones I as an author thought of and wrote specific exceptions for.[/quote]
Does this syntax work? It would get you partway to Zarf's syntax:

[code]To decide whether a rule applies: yes.[/code]

You'd still have to add "when the foo rule applies" to the condition of every rule. Kind of a drag, but maybe it would be usable.

If you're manipulating a lot of different rules using an in-game mechanism, perhaps a property would be better:

[code]A rule can be disabled.[/code]

Can rules have properties? If not, you'd have to create a variable or an object for every rule you want to change...

[code]A rule-switch is a kind of device. A rule-switch is usually switched on.

The foo-switch is a rule-switch.

This is the foo rule:
    When the foo-switch is switched on...[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1432&start=0#p8750
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: z8 limits on Simple Chat chat nodes?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-22 08:54:30

I feel like I've heard about a problem like this, but I can't remember the details. I recently added a large number of chat nodes to the game I'm working on, and suddenly it started behaving weirdly.

There was a rule in this format:

[code]Instead of doing anything other than examining with the donkey, say "Leave the donkey alone."[/code]

After I added the chat nodes, the game opening looked like this:

[quote][introductory text]

Leave the donkey alone.

[banner text][/quote]

For debugging, I added this:

[code]
The current attempt is a number that varies.

Before doing anything:
    say "[the current attempt]: Trying [the current action].";
    increment the current attempt;
[/code]

Now after the introductory text, I see:
[quote]
1: Trying preparing chatnode1
2: Trying preparing chatnode2
...
87. Trying preparing chatnode87

Leave the donkey alone.

88. trying preparing chatnode 88
...
[/quote]
I can rearrange the chat nodes, but the message always appears after the 87th "Preparing" message.

I tried adding a "try looking" command after the introductory text, and the message appeared after the 88th "trying" report, suggesting that it's really the 87th Preparing attempt, not the 87th action.

Switching to glulx makes the message go away, but it seems like a silly reason to switch to glulx. The z8 file is currently 501670 bytes, if that explains anything.

Is there something about Simple Chat that might cause this kind of limit? I noticed that chat node is a kind of value - is there some kind of limit on the number of values that a kind of value can take?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1432&start=0#p8751
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: z8 limits on Simple Chat chat nodes?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-22 10:31:05

Yes, you're probably hitting some kind of limit, but it's difficult to tell what it is.

The Z-machine limit on the number of values of a kind-of-value is 32767. You probably don't have that many nodes. But there are lots and lots of other things (arrays, calculated values) that could be overflowing.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1431&start=0#p8752
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why can't rulebooks be more dynamic, again?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-09-22 10:48:37

Aaron, am I right in thinking that even in such an emergent system you would only be doing such things to a subset of the rules? Would it work to remove those rulebooks from the turn sequence rulebook tree (ie, that rulebook and any it calls) and then manually use follow the X rules depending on what the player has done?

The current rulebook implementation should be essential only if you want to randomly choose a rulebook and disable it, but that can't possibly be a wise move.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1431&start=0#p8753
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why can't rulebooks be more dynamic, again?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-22 10:50:45

[quote]But wouldn't simply removing a rule from a rulebook with a "now" statement (assuming this worked) not cause this problem, since the change would be permanent, not constantly needing to be re-checked?[/quote]

It still implies that you have a rulebook engine which maintains a list in memory somewhere. And it has to be a dynamic list, which implies bounds-checking. It might look (in I6) something like:

[code]
for (ix=0 : ix < rbooklen : ix++) {
  rbook-->ix();
}
[/code]

The goal, however, is to not *have* a rulebook engine for most cases. No array, no loop, no function calls. The compiler could generate a flat function with all the appropriate code pasted together. (You don't need a separate function for each rule, unless that rule is explicitly invoked in some other way, and most aren't.) This is a small improvement over the above -- array offsets aren't expensive -- but it's a small improvement many times over. And it opens up the possibility of the "*everything* is a rulebook, even individual library messages" model. That would be, IMHO, much more I7-y. 

(Although I admit it won't happen for a long time, maybe not in I7 at all.)

In the meantime, for your case, I think it's reasonable to rig up a rulebook-like replacement structure out of other I7 constructs (tables or lists).

[quote]Does this syntax work? It would get you partway to Zarf's syntax.[/quote]

My syntax proposal is good for removing and adding rules. It doesn't help with rearranging them, and I'm not sure if that's needed for Aaron's game plan.

But you're right, you can rig up the same thing now by adding conditions to the rules when you define them. (Could be a "to decide" phrase, could be an activity, could be a lot of things.) The point of my proposal is to make it easy to do that to *already existing* rules, ie., those in the Standard Rules. Currently you can only do that with a wholesale replacement, which is tedious. If you're writing the rules yourself, that problem doesn't exist.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1429&start=0#p8754
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conditional locale descs with multiple player characters
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-09-22 11:20:56

Thanks. Too bad.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1415&start=0#p8755
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Zoom / CocoaGlk crash
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-09-22 13:29:52

[quote="mwigdahl"][quote="DavidK"]I believe Zoom lets you switch between using Glulxe and Git as the Glulx interpreter: try switching to Glulxe to see if the crash goes away. If your game uses indexed text, the most likely cause is a bug fixed fairly recently in Git, see [url]http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=257[/url][/quote]

I do use indexed text, so that's definitely something to check.  I just got ahold of a friend's Mac, so I will test Zoom/Glulxe to see if it works better there.  I do know the original tester that reported the issue was able to successfully get past that point in Spatterlight, so there's another datapoint.

Thanks for your help![/quote]

Update -- it definitely looks like the Git indexed text bug.  Now to fix my code so it doesn't sling so much indexed text around...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1431&start=0#p8756
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why can't rulebooks be more dynamic, again?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-22 13:45:24

[quote="aaronius"]I understand that there are simpler ways to do this for [i]specific[/i] cases (which perhaps my original example implied). But yeah, as Zarf points, out, this is most interesting when there are an exponentially large number of possible outcomes. I'm imagining a game where a player can arbitrarily change rules in many combinations, not just the particular ones I as an author thought of and wrote specific exceptions for.[/quote]
The logical extreme end of this is building a mini-compiler within your game that the player unwittingly programs. 

[quote]Also, I understand why procedural rules are slow: they have to be run every time anything happens anywhere to check if this is the sort of situation where this rule applies. But wouldn't simply removing a rule from a rulebook with a "now" statement (assuming this worked) not cause this problem, since the change would be permanent, not constantly needing to be re-checked?[/quote] Yes, but if said feature existed and worked that way, they would *be* the procedural rules. I don't know why the PR were coded to work the way they were. When I wrote Repeat Through A Rulebook I was surprised to find that rulebooks were implemented as an array, not linked list, and procedural modifications were NOT done by modifying the array either.  (Such as by temporarily swapping an element value with the Little-Used Do Nothing Rule, for ignore.)  I see that array implementations take less memory than linked-lists, especially since there isn't any linked list code in a Z-machine game at all (unless you specifically use { lists } in which case the corresponding .i6t file is brought in).  OTOH, the check-the-stack-of-changes-upon-each-rule-invocation doesn't seem any more elegant. 

...

Ya know, I might be able to re-code procedural rules with the temporary-swap method.  There's an feature in I6 inclusions using {-allocate:foobar} that gives a bit of memory just large enough to point to a rule.  So if I implement the Ignore phrase to swap to it, and Reinstate to swap back... and a "repeat through ignored rules" phrase to reinstate all ignored rules upon the beginning of a new turn...  Hm.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1431&start=0#p8757
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why can't rulebooks be more dynamic, again?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-22 14:18:15

It seems like this will be easy:


[code]
"test" by Ron Newcomb

Right Here is a room.

Include (- Global RuleIterator; Global RBinquestion; -) after "Definitions.i6t". 

To ignore (R - a rule) from (RB - rulebook): (-
	{-allocate-storage:IgnoredRules}
	RBinquestion = rulebooks_array-->{RB};
	for(RuleIterator = 0 : (RBinquestion)-->(RuleIterator) ~= NULL : RuleIterator++)
	{
		if ((RBinquestion)-->(RuleIterator) == {R}) {
			I7_ST_IgnoredRules-->({-advance-counter:IgnoredRules}) = {R};
			(RBinquestion)-->(RuleIterator) = LITTLE_USED_DO_NOTHING_R;
			break;
		}
	}
-).


To repeat through (RB - a rulebook): (-
	RBinquestion = rulebooks_array-->{RB};
	for(RuleIterator = 0 : (RBinquestion)-->(RuleIterator) ~= NULL : RuleIterator++)
		print (RulePrintingRule) (RBinquestion)-->(RuleIterator), "^";
-).

When play begins:
	say "The Carry out looking rulebook now contains:[line break]";
	repeat through the carry out looking rules;
	ignore the room description heading rule from the carry out looking rulebook;
	say "[line break]The Carry out looking rulebook now contains:[line break]";
	repeat through the carry out looking rules.

[/code]
[quote="Transcript"]



The Carry out looking rulebook now contains:
room description heading rule
room description body text rule
room description paragraphs about objects rule
check new arrival rule

The Carry out looking rulebook now contains:
little-used do nothing rule
room description body text rule
room description paragraphs about objects rule
check new arrival rule

test
An Interactive Fiction by Ron Newcomb
Release 1 / Serial number 100922 / Inform 7 build 6E72 (I6/v6.31 lib 6/12N) SD

>z
Time passes.

>rules
Rules tracing now switched on. Type "rules off" to switch it off again, or "rules all" to include even rules which do not apply.

>look
[Rule "determine visibility ceiling rule" applies.]
[Rule "room description body text rule" applies.]
[Rule "room description paragraphs about objects rule" applies.]
[Rule "don't mention player's supporter in room descriptions rule" applies.]
[Rule "don't mention scenery in room descriptions rule" applies.]
[Rule "don't mention undescribed items in room descriptions rule" applies.]
[Rule "set pronouns from items in room descriptions rule" applies.]
[Rule "offer items to writing a paragraph about rule" applies.]
[Rule "use initial appearance in room descriptions rule" applies.]
[Rule "describe what's on scenery supporters in room descriptions rule" applies.]
[Rule "check new arrival rule" applies.]
[Rule "other people looking rule" applies.]
>[/quote]

Hm, if I ignore more than one rule from a rulebook, I won't know which blank spot is for which, so I won't know in what order to reinstate...

Thoughts?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1433&start=0#p8758
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Creating a lit object with a limited lifetime
User: bgood / DateTime: 2010-09-22 14:18:29

I'm really new to Inform7, I just started yesterday in fact.  I've read through a lot of the documentation, but I can't seem to figure out how to make an object (for example a candle) with a limited lifetime.  I want the counter to only tick down when the object is lit/burning.  I've found plenty of documentation for candles and lit objects in general, but I can't figure out how to give it a limited lifetime.  If anyone could help or point me in the right direction as far as documentation goes, I'd be incredibly grateful.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1433&start=0#p8759
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating a lit object with a limited lifetime
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-22 14:20:48

I'm guessing a rule like[code]Every turn when the white candle is lit, decrease the lifetime of the white candle by one.[/code]I'm guessing you know how to give a numeric property to the candle?
(I typed that from memory, so if I typoed the code let me know.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1434&start=0#p8760
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Rule collision? Simple Chat vs Final Question hacking
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-22 15:39:27

I have a problem now that seems to involve a conflict between my rules for Simple Chat and my rules for restarting the game. I suspect it's another problem with turn order - perhaps "resume the story" doesn't take effect until the end of the turn.

The code is a bit long...
[spoiler][code]Include Simple Chat by Mark Tilford. Use default forbid exiting conversations.

[We want to start the game off in conversation]

When play begins: Try talking to Ray.

[We're going to be restarting the game, and we want to be in conversation when that happens too]

This is the reset the loop rule:
	resume the story;
	Try talking to Ray.

[create a "talk to" verb so we can get back into the conversation if we're dumped out]

talking to is an action applying to one thing. Understand "talk to [someone]" as talking to.

Carry out talking to: run a conversation from chat1;
	
[this next rule is used elsewhere in the game - normally the turn would not be considered to be over until the conversation ended, so "end the story" would have no immediate effect. This Instead rule makes sure that the conversation ends right away so that the game can end.]

Instead of finding responses to when the story has ended (this is the exit conversation when the story is over rule): do nothing;
	
The exit conversation when the story is over rule is listed first in the instead rulebook.

[Here's Zarf's hack for allowing the player to have a "REPLAY" option that resumes the game in a particular non-initial state]

This is the zarf's ask the final question rule: ask the final question replayably.

To ask the final question replayably: (-
   print "^";
   while (true) {
      CarryOutActivity(DEALING_WITH_FINAL_QUESTION_ACT);
      DivideParagraphPoint();
      if (resurrect_please) {
         RulebookSucceeds();
         rtrue;
      }
   }
-).

Zarf's ask the final question rule is listed instead of the ask the final question rule in the shutdown rulebook.

Table of Final Question Options (continued) 
final question wording   	only if victorious   	topic   	final response rule   	final response activity
"REPLAY"	false	"replay"	reset the loop rule	--

[and now the mundane things]

Infinite Loop is a room.

Ray is a man in Infinite Loop.

chat1 is a chat node.

Instead of giving text for chat1, say "We should do this again sometime.";

Instead of finding responses to chat1, link to chat2;

chat2 is a chat node.

Instead of giving link to chat2, say "Yes, let's do it again.";

Instead of giving text for chat2:
	say "Okay, we'll do it again.";
	end the story;

[test me doesn't work from within a conversation, so you'll have to enter these commands yourself]
	
test me with "1/replay/talk to ray/1"
[/code][/spoiler]
[quote]



We should do this again sometime.

1) Yes, let's do it again.

>> 1
Okay, we'll do it again.



    *** The End ***


In that game you scored 0 out of a possible 0, in 1 turn.


Would you like to RESTART, RESTORE a saved game, QUIT, UNDO the last command or REPLAY?
> replay
We should do this again sometime.

>talk to ray
We should do this again sometime.

1) Yes, let's do it again.

>> 1
Okay, we'll do it again.



    *** The End ***


In that game you scored 0 out of a possible 0, in 1 turn.


Would you like to RESTART, RESTORE a saved game, QUIT, UNDO the last command or REPLAY?
> [/quote]
What happens is that the conversation ends the game, but when you REPLAY, the responses for the current chat node disappear, and you get dumped out of conversation. Then I enter "talk to ray" to show that the conversation is working again as expected. So it appears that the "exit conversation when the story is over" rule still applies, even after "resume the story" has been called earlier in the turn. How can I prevent that rule from running after a REPLAY?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1433&start=0#p8761
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating a lit object with a limited lifetime
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-09-22 19:21:25

[url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rex94.html#e94]Example 406 of the Inform documentation[/url], "The Cow, Exonerated," has a lot of stuff about matches burning down -- you probably don't need most of it for your purposes, but you can probably winkle out some of the stuff you need from it. (I don't think it includes a provision for snuffing something and relighting it, but that shouldn't be too hard to code.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1431&start=10#p8762
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why can't rulebooks be more dynamic, again?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-22 20:37:08

Submitted extension "Ignored Rules" to inform7.com.   I only implement ignore & reinstate, as they're the most useful.  They work a little differently from the standard versions.  One, ignore is permanent until reinstate -- they don't "reset" at the beginning of the next turn like the standard versions do.  Two, we must give ignore & restate what rulebook is being affected.  This was because, while possible to iterate through all 1,000 or so rules in Inform looking for one, the player would likely notice the slowness.  So now the author must specify so the runtime only has a few places to look.  Three, the phrases can be used anywhere, not just from the procedural rulebook, and take effect immediately.  

Note: it'll usually remain quiet if you, say, reinstate a rule already reinstated, or ignore a rule that doesn't appear in the provided rulebook. It [i]will[/i] toss a runtime error if you try to reinstate a rule into the wrong rulebook. 

When the I7 dev team takes away the procedural rules, I don't know if this extension will remain working or not.  Specifically, if the dev team takes Danii's suggestion to turn a run of rules into a single monolithic I6 function, the extension will break.  However, if the dev team merely converts the FollowRulebook() functions to basically nothingness, it'll still work.   In the former case, if I7 creates some sort of property of rulebooks, not unlike the "default outcome" from 18.10, "Success and failure," the author could specify select rulebooks to remain mutable at runtime.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1433&start=0#p8763
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating a lit object with a limited lifetime
User: bgood / DateTime: 2010-09-22 20:59:06

Thanks all.  The Cow, Exonerated has exactly the sort of code I was looking for.  It should be very easy to modify to fit my needs.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1415&start=0#p8764
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Zoom / CocoaGlk crash
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-09-22 23:51:02

[quote="mwigdahl"]Update -- it definitely looks like the Git indexed text bug.  Now to fix my code so it doesn't sling so much indexed text around...[/quote]No, hassle Andrew Hunter to update Zoom! There shouldn't be any need to work around already-fixed bugs in Git [emote]:-([/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1435&start=0#p8765
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Table in a not for release section causes obscure error
User: ChristianB / DateTime: 2010-09-23 04:11:28

Hi everybody,

the following section

[code]Section - Table of verb forms to be ignored by Libcheck - Not for release

[To be continued by the author ...]

Table of blessed verb forms
Verb
""[/code]

evokes this error message, only when releasing the game (in Debug-Mode the error doesn't show up):

[quote]Problem. In the sentence '"undo"'  , I was expecting to read something unrecognised, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'Table of blessed verb forms'.
[/quote]

The message links to a line in Section SR3/3 - Final question options (note: the suggested location might vary depending on the source text): 

[code]"UNDO the last command"	false				"undo"		immediately undo rule	--[/code]

We don't know how to reproduce the error. Deleting "Not for release" from the section heading solves the problem, though. Maybe someone knows what causes this behaviour?

Regards,
Christian

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1415&start=0#p8766
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Zoom / CocoaGlk crash
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-09-23 08:54:25

[quote="DavidK"][quote="mwigdahl"]Update -- it definitely looks like the Git indexed text bug.  Now to fix my code so it doesn't sling so much indexed text around...[/quote]No, hassle Andrew Hunter to update Zoom! There shouldn't be any need to work around already-fixed bugs in Git [emote]:-([/emote][/quote]

I'll do that too, but with 7 days left before the Comp I don't think I'm going to be able to manage to get the maintainers to update all the Git 1.2.4-based terps (including Gargoyle, etc.) in time.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1435&start=0#p8767
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table in a not for release section causes obscure error
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2010-09-23 08:54:40

I cannot reproduce this error with this code: it works fine for me, even when releasing. (For both Z-code and Glulx.)

Now, the logic of the situation suggests to me that the inclusion of this Table is necessary for something else in your code. After all, labelling the section "not for release" and then releasing is the only situation in which the table is [i]not[/i] included. Is it possible that you refer to the Table of Blessed Verb Forms somewhere in your code?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1435&start=0#p8768
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table in a not for release section causes obscure error
User: ChristianB / DateTime: 2010-09-23 09:24:27

Thanks. I can' spot incorrect code that is likely to cause that error, either. Even without referring to the Table of blessed verb forms at any time. Strangely enough, the error message implies that there is something wrong in the Standard Rules (Section SR3/3 - Final question options), which is in no way related to the table.

With a larger game source text we produced an error message suggesting that the error ocurred in a "after reading the command" rule. But I guess the problem must lie elsewhere and the error message might be arbitrary due to obscure circumstances.

We haven't been able to reproduce the error in a clean evironment, either. It must be something in our source. But what can cause confusion like that?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1435&start=0#p8769
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table in a not for release section causes obscure error
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-09-23 09:58:23

[quote="ChristianB"]Strangely enough, the error message implies that there is something wrong in the Standard Rules (Section SR3/3 - Final question options), which is in no way related to the table.... It must be something in our source. But what can cause confusion like that?[/quote]

If you've done something that causes a conflict with the Standard Rules, the compiler can give you an error that points to the Standard Rules. For instance, this simple code:

[code]Lab is a room. Only if victorious entry is in Lab.[/code]

gives a compiler error (in 5Z71, at least) that has to do with the Final Question options, because the code I wrote interprets "Only if victorious entry" as a thing (as it should), and then when it comes to a table with a column entitled "only if victorious entry" it gets confused. 

So it's possible that there's something somewhere in your code that creates a namespace clash, so that when it comes time for the compiler to interpret the standard rules it doesn't understand them anymore. I don't know what it might be, though -- just talking about one way you could get a compiler error in the standard rules.

That error was discussed more [url=http://groups.google.es/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/65485b6cc204d434]here[/url], though I don't know what the OP's error actually was. (I also don't know why I can only find the .es version of that thread.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1415&start=0#p8770
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Zoom / CocoaGlk crash
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-09-23 10:21:06

[quote="mwigdahl"]I'll do that too, but with 7 days left before the Comp I don't think I'm going to be able to manage to get the maintainers to update all the Git 1.2.4-based terps (including Gargoyle, etc.) in time.[/quote]

Ack, I've been asleep at the switch. For some reason, I thought the Comp didn't start until late October.  [emote]:oops:[/emote] 

I will get some release candidate builds up in the next few days. Barring any showstopper bugs, they can go final by Oct 1st.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1415&start=10#p8771
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Zoom / CocoaGlk crash
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-09-23 11:02:16

[quote="bcressey"][quote="mwigdahl"]I'll do that too, but with 7 days left before the Comp I don't think I'm going to be able to manage to get the maintainers to update all the Git 1.2.4-based terps (including Gargoyle, etc.) in time.[/quote]

Ack, I've been asleep at the switch. For some reason, I thought the Comp didn't start until late October.  [emote]:oops:[/emote] 

I will get some release candidate builds up in the next few days. Barring any showstopper bugs, they can go final by Oct 1st.[/quote]

Great news -- Gargoyle is my interpreter of choice; the typography is just excellent!  Thanks, Ben!

I've also contacted Andrew Hunter to ask whether he has a timetable for a new release of Zoom; we'll see if there's anything in the works.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1435&start=0#p8772
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table in a not for release section causes obscure error
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2010-09-23 15:37:45

It can take some time, but the best way to find the bug is to comment out all your code and then slowly comment in more and more of it until it stops compiling.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1436&start=0#p8773
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Get Lamp: An Interactive Review
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-09-23 16:50:24

[url=http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://www.robohara.com/temp/Get_Lamp.z5]Get Lamp: An Interactive Review[/url]

I'm sure most/all of you have seen (or at least heard about) Jason Scott's documentary "Get Lamp". The link above is to my interactive review of the documentary. I wrote the review in Inform 6.

I am new to the Interactive Fiction Community Forum so I am not sure if people would like a walk-thru or not, but if you would one I posted a link to a full walk-thru [url=http://www.robohara.com/?p=2427]on my blog[/url]. Also, if you would like to directly download the .z5 file, you can get it [url=http://www.robohara.com/temp/Get_Lamp.z5]here[/url].

As far as games go, it isn't much of one -- there's not a whole lot to "do", other than ask questions about the movie. It's geared toward absolute beginners, and gives many hints to guide first-time players toward the correct commands.

This is only my second attempt to write anything using Inform 6. My first attempt, more of a exercise in learning than anything else, was a small game called [url=http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://www.robohara.com/temp/Chance.z5]A Game of Chance[/url]. It's not very good.

I have begun work on a larger, more serious IF project over the past month or so. I'm still learning the ins-and-outs of Inform, so I was very excited to find and register for this forum. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1435&start=0#p8774
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table in a not for release section causes obscure error
User: ChristianB / DateTime: 2010-09-23 17:03:39

Thank you, that helped! I stripped it down to a working version, and the mistake was, of course, a rather silly but hard to find one. 

The Table of blessed verb forms is defined in a Section marked "Not for release". Somewhere else, in an I6 inclusion the table is referred to as
[code]tab = (+ Table of blessed verb forms +);[/code]
The hole I6-Routine was excluded for release by #ifdef DEBUG; [...] #endif; -- But: The I7 section the code was in was not marked "Not for release". So when releasing a game NI obviously wasn't able to replace the expression (+ Table of blessed verb forms +). Anyway, the error message was quite misleading, wasn't it?

Thank you both, Victor and Matt!

Regards,
Christian

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1436&start=0#p8775
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Get Lamp: An Interactive Review
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-23 17:20:18

I saw this review last week. It is indeed very nifty.

Good luck with the Informing. :)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1435&start=0#p8776
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table in a not for release section causes obscure error
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-23 17:29:19

It's worth reporting that as an error-reporting bug.

You can cut it down to:

[code]
"Test Case" by Andrew Plotkin

The Kitchen is a room.

Include (-
[ Foobar; return (+ totalnonsense +); ];
-).
[/code]

You get the same error message about "undo" in the Standard Rules, rather than "totalnonsense" in your code.

In general I6 inclusions are "at your own risk" -- if they break, it's your fault. But in this case it's the I7 compiler that's wrong, not the generated I6 file.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1435&start=0#p8777
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table in a not for release section causes obscure error
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-23 17:33:49

[quote="zarf"]It's worth reporting that as an error-reporting bug.[/quote]
Already had, actually: <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=183">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=183</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1437&start=0#p8778
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Make an IF, sell 1 copy by the end of October
User: George / DateTime: 2010-09-23 22:37:51

An interesting post at Ludum Dare:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2010/09/22/povs-challenge-make-a-game-sell-1-copy/">http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2010/09/ ... ll-1-copy/</a>

[quote]I’m in a weird mood today, so I decided to put forth a challenge to members of our #ludumdare IRC channel. Feel free to join us. The challenge is simple:

Make a game — take it to market — sell 1 copy (or license it, or earn $1 in ad rev)

Many of you have done the first part, but let’s go all the way this time. The simplest definition of a professional game developer is someone that has made money selling games. So lets create-us some new “professionals” and get some games out!

Think of this as a race (or a Nanowrimo for games+business). Have something new for sale and in a store by the end of October. And if you can sell a copy (or sign a licensing deal, or earn $1 an ad revenue), you win.
[/quote]

I think it'd be interesting to see some IF authors participate. Not to make a comment on the commercial viability of the IF genre or anything. But perhaps 'commercial' IF (after all, it's just one copy sold we're talking about) isn't as daunting/mysterious/outlandish as it sometimes seems to be made out to be.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1438&start=0#p8779
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: NPC Actions
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-09-24 08:07:33

I'm having some difficulty with the programming of actions that both the player and the NPCs will take.

The game is a survival-horror, like a Friday the 13th style game, where you and 3 NPCs try to survive against the zombie monster killer. 

There are various attacks the killer (or anyone) could use, such as hitting with a weapon, biting, kicking, grabbing, etc. 

I want to write the code so that the check/carry out is irrelevant to the actor- so any actor can bite any other character.

This is the code I've tried:

[code]
Every Turn:
   if the player can see Josh and the hostility of josh > 70:
      try josh punching the player.
[/code]

I've verified that the hostility is > 70 and I can certainly see Josh, but josh does not seem to be attacking me. I've also verified my own status (with SHOWME) to verify that I haven't been taking wounds or anything, and it seems like he's just sitting there. What could the issue be?

Also- is there a way to allow you to take something from another NPC (so it does't say THAT SEEMS TO BELONG TO JOSH), in certain circumstances (such as if the NPC is unconscious or dead?). You can knock people out or kill them, and when the killer is knocked out, it would be nice if you could steal his axe...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1073&start=0#p8780
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Multimedia TADS for Linux and Mac
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-09-24 09:29:03

The bug has been fixed (along with a few others) and new builds have been uploaded at the usual location.

You'll find that there's a Windows version too now; for better of worse [emote]:P[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1438&start=0#p8781
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: NPC Actions
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-09-24 09:43:43

Hard to tell exactly what's wrong without seeing the punching code, but it seems like it must be one of the following:

1. the trigger doesn't really work
2. the action isn't really generalized for NPCs
3. the NPC is trying the action but failing to complete it

To test these:

1. You could test the trigger by adding a say phrase ("say "JOSH SHOULD HIT YOU NOW";"). Does the text line show up when you expect Josh to punch you? If so, your trigger is good. 

2. is a little harder to test for directly, so I'd try

3. Type ACTIONS and then wait a turn or two. This will print debugging information about all the actions attempted by any character, and if the action is silently failing for an NPC, it may list the reason why. (If for instance you've written a check rule that prevents him from acting but prints nothing, that should be visible.)

If the action isn't firing at all, then I'd go back and look at the code you've written for characters to punch with. Do the rules start with things like "Check an actor punching: ..." and "Carry out an actor punching: ...", or are they just "Carry out punching...:"? If the latter, they're written for the player only.

If none of that helps, perhaps post the code you're using for the action.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1438&start=0#p8782
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: NPC Actions
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-09-24 09:49:15

Missed this bit:

[quote="tggdan3"]Also- is there a way to allow you to take something from another NPC (so it does't say THAT SEEMS TO BELONG TO JOSH), in certain circumstances (such as if the NPC is unconscious or dead?). You can knock people out or kill them, and when the killer is knocked out, it would be nice if you could steal his axe...[/quote]

There are several ways you could approach this:

-- replace the check taking rule that prevents taking something from an NPC, and provide a new check rule that doesn't fire if the NPC is disabled
-- when an NPC is killed or knocked out, replace the person with a dummy object ("Josh's corpse") that is not of the person kind, and move all Josh's possessions to this object. This has the additional advantage that the corpse won't answer questions or do another things that you might have coded for the live person. Disadvantage: you'll probably want a bit of custom code so that if Josh's body is internally, say, a supporter, Inform nonetheless reports their possessions in a way that sounds plausible and not like the ax is just sitting on a table.
-- have the NPC drop all their possessions into the location when they die or are knocked out. This has the advantage that those objects will more obviously appear in a room description, which may be relevant if you want players to go around scouting for weapons et al.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1438&start=0#p8783
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: NPC Actions
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-09-24 10:42:54

Yeah, I was using carry out punching rather than carry out an actor punching. 

The problem with the dummy object (which I think might be what i have to do) is that characters get over being knocked out, but don't get over being dead. While knocked out or dead, you can take their held objects, when alive you can't. 

I'm also kind of worried that a dummy object would react as an object in ways you don't want to (such as my check rules regarding grappling or biting an object rather than a person), though this might be an easy walkaround. If the killer is knocked out, I would like the PC to be able to take his axe and then kill him with it if they desire. 

Each person has a state (which will be either awake, unconscious, or dead) and any coded NPC actions are intended to work only when the NPC is awake. 

In any case, the actor punching is certainly the issue, thanks! I will have to get that corrected.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1436&start=0#p8784
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Get Lamp: An Interactive Review
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-09-24 12:45:59

Wow, thanks Zarf!

I decided to go with Inform primarily because of Parchment. I have seen some neat games done with both Tads and Hugo, but the ability to write a game and stick it out on the web for anyone with a browser to play caught my attention. I do like some of the multimedia features that particularly Hugo offers, but I just hate to limit my players to any specific platform.

I'm more of an old-school adventurer, cutting my adventuring teeth on TRS-80s, Apple IIs and Commodore 64s, so I'm still trying to get up to speed with the advances IF has made over the past, oh, 20 or so years. I tried my hand at writing several text adventures back in the days of 8-bit computing, but got hung up more on the programming aspects than the actual story ideas. That's what really excites me about Inform; the language is there, and now it's just a matter of figuring out how to tell my stories with it ...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1439&start=0#p8785
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Looking for CYOA testers
User: adventurechris / DateTime: 2010-09-24 17:33:41

Hi all,

I'm looking for just a few testers for a CYOA-style work. FYI: This is aimed at a very casual audience.

PM me or post a reply if you're interested! [emote]:P[/emote] 

-C

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1440&start=0#p8786
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Gargoyle 2010.1 release candidate
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-09-24 17:44:34

Updated builds of the forthcoming Gargoyle release are available here:
[url]http://code.google.com/p/garglk/downloads/list[/url]

[b]Note:[/b]
Because of significant changes to the default configuration, please replace any existing copies of garglk.ini with the distributed one before applying your customizations.

[u]Library changes[/u]
[list]
[*] Runs on Mac[/*:m]
[*] Graphical launcher on Linux[/*:m]
[*] Loads fonts from underlying OS[/*:m]
[*] Faster image loading and text rendering[/*:m]
[*] Dynamic, expanding scroll buffer[/*:m]
[*] Mouse and trackpad scroll support[/*:m]
[*] Assorted bug fixes[/*:m][/list:u]

[u]Interpreter changes[/u]
[list]
[*] Frotz now supports Unicode, Z-Machine Standard 1.1[/*:m]
[*] Updated Agility, Git, Glulxe, and JACL to latest version[/*:m]
[*] Various 64-bit fixes[/*:m][/list:u]

Most of these changes have already appeared in unofficial, preview builds distributed upon request to testers, so I feel pretty good about the overall build quality. Still, please don't hesitate to test the release candidate and drag it through its paces. I'd like to get the final files out by October 1st, and I'm especially interested in bug reports from Comp authors.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1440&start=0#p8787
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gargoyle 2010.1 release candidate
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-09-24 18:08:39

Thanks for putting these up! Not knowing how to build from source, I've been watching your updates to the bugtracking page forlornly for a while now.

I've only just started to play around, but the Mac version is sweet. It's much faster at text-printing than the last build you released, and the scrolling seems to work nicely. I'll try to spend some time with it this weekend and report back.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1440&start=0#p8788
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gargoyle 2010.1 release candidate
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-09-24 19:18:38

The new build is awesome as far as I'm concerned!  I love the fact that it comes with Linux Libertine set up by default -- that font looks great and has good Unicode support, which my game needs.

Performance was great before; it's even better now.  I was able to fly through my WIP, which is pretty darn big.  I had taken out all the indexed text that was causing the lockups before, and unfortunately I don't have the old code that triggered the problem, so I'm not able to test that.  But my WIP does a reasonable amount of low-level Glk calls, opens a secondary window, etc. and it all worked flawlessly.

No bugs as far as I could see in a full run through my walkthrough, plus some save/restore testing that tripped me up in previous builds.

Congratulations on further improving a great interpreter!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1440&start=0#p8789
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gargoyle 2010.1 release candidate
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-09-24 20:00:24

Excellent, thanks!

Is anyone going to be maintaining Linux builds? (Maybe only when the release goes final, to save effort?) I don't mind compiling Gargoyle myself, but it's easier to just install a .deb file. I know Gargoyle is available in the Ubuntu repositories now, but it's not a full version of Gargoyle; it's missing a couple of interpreters that aren't free-software licensed.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1441&start=0#p8790
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Slow programming tasks
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-09-24 20:05:45

I'm interesting in collecting a bunch of different programming tasks which currently take a long time to complete, for an experiment. (Actually a performance test suite.) So if you have any examples, please share them!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1441&start=0#p8791
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Slow programming tasks
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-25 00:17:19

I assume you mean "a long time for the program to run", not "a long time to write the code". :)

My usual of-thumb test is starting up _Reliques of Tolti-Aph_, and then taking the first move ("east") in that game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1440&start=0#p8792
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gargoyle 2010.1 release candidate
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-09-25 00:18:34

[quote="ektemple"]I've only just started to play around, but the Mac version is sweet. It's much faster at text-printing than the last build you released, and the scrolling seems to work nicely. I'll try to spend some time with it this weekend and report back.[/quote]

Not sure why it would be faster now than in the last build you saw, but I'm happy to hear it.  [emote]:D[/emote]

The lower-right corner resize widget has been the bane of my existence for these last few months. I've spent hours trying to coax it back from its hiding place. Alas, no luck yet.

[quote="mwigdahl"]Performance was great before; it's even better now. I was able to fly through my WIP, which is pretty darn big. I had taken out all the indexed text that was causing the lockups before, and unfortunately I don't have the old code that triggered the problem, so I'm not able to test that. But my WIP does a reasonable amount of low-level Glk calls, opens a secondary window, etc. and it all worked flawlessly.[/quote]

All of the Git improvements are thanks to David Kinder's work, and I'm certainly in his debt for those.

On the Glk side, the Mac port turned out to be a big win for performance, since it let me use Shark with its awesome profiling abilities. The performance boost does mean a larger memory footprint, though this should be acceptable on modern systems.

[quote="Emerald"]Is anyone going to be maintaining Linux builds? (Maybe only when the release goes final, to save effort?) I don't mind compiling Gargoyle myself, but it's easier to just install a .deb file. I know Gargoyle is available in the Ubuntu repositories now, but it's not a full version of Gargoyle; it's missing a couple of interpreters that aren't free-software licensed.[/quote]

I believe Eric Forgeot will provide a .deb again on the project site, and I expect a GPL version will find its way into Debian quickly. I need to reach out to the Alan and Hugo folks to see if they're willing to approve a compatible license. Neither was allergic to the idea last time; they just wanted some time to consider. I am not a license zealot but I would really like to see this happen, if only so there's more consistency between the various Gargoyle packages.

For that matter, I have some hope that the Linux enhancements, notably the GUI launcher, will lead to a package that offers the same convenience features that the Windows and Mac builds enjoy: a menu icon and the ability to launch game files by double-clicking them. That would bring all three platforms to feature parity, which was my major goal for this release.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1441&start=0#p8793
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Slow programming tasks
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-09-25 00:23:09

Along those lines, loading up [i]King of Shreds and Patches[/i], starting the game, and pressing "i" to take inventory.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1442&start=0#p8794
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: [SPAG] Request for Content for Issue #59
User: JimmyMaher / DateTime: 2010-09-25 04:28:35

Hi, folks...

Astute SPAG followers will have noticed that there should have been an issue around, oh, last month sometime, but it never appeared. My apologies for that. We're going to try to get things back in track with a big Competition feature issue for mid-November.

I say "we" because there are some changes afoot in SPAG's worldwide headquarters. I'm going to be stepping down as editor following this issue, passing the torch that was passed to me five years ago to one of my best and most thoughtful regular contributors: David Monath. You may not know David as well as you do me, but that will change soon enough. I'm sure he's going to do a great job, and look forward to seeing how SPAG evolves under his guidance. David and I will be working on this next issue together as we make the transition.

With that said, we need content!

We'd like to assemble a team of reviewers again this year to tackle the upcoming Competition entries. If you can help David and me out, please email me at <a href="mailto:maher@filfre.net">maher@filfre.net</a> and/or David at <a href="mailto:davidm.spag@gmail.com">davidm.spag@gmail.com</a>, and tell us how many games you might be able to handle.

There are also some other, already extant games that need reviews. To wit:

Hoist Sail for the Heliopause and Home
EGC Paper Chase
The Art of Fugue
'Mid the Sagebrush and the Cactus
Digital: A Love Story
Choice of... games (any, some, or all)

And of course article and interview ideas and submissions, as well as reviews of older games and games I've overlooked here, are welcome and encouraged. If you have the time, please think about helping to make my last issue and David's first a special one!

Best,
Jimmy

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1443&start=0#p8795
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Git 1.2.8 released
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-09-25 06:01:33

There's a new version of Git out, just in time for the IFComp:
[url]http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/programming/glulx/interpreters/git/git-128.zip[/url]

This only fixes two bugs:
[list]
[*]Fixed a problem with 'undo' when compiled as 64 bit, thanks to Ben Cressey.[/*:m]
[*]Fixed a sign problem for the @fceil opcode, following a similar fix in Glulxe.[/*:m][/list:u]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1339&start=0#p8796
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Glulxe and Windows Git updated
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-09-25 06:03:57

Another new release of the Windows Glulxe and Windows Git interpreters, available from here
[url]http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXprogrammingXglulxXinterpretersXglulxe.html[/url]
[url]http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXprogrammingXglulxXinterpretersXgit.html[/url]
[url]http://www.davidkinder.co.uk/glulxe.html[/url]

This is just a bug fix release:[list]
[*]Corrected problems with formatting and line input when margin images are present. Thanks to Paolo Lucchesi for reporting this and helping with testing.[/*:m]
[*]Corrected a stupid mistake in the handling of alpha-blended images. Thanks to Erik Temple for pointing this problem out.[/*:m][/list:u]

There's also a new release of the underlying Glk library, Windows Glk, which is here:
[url]http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXprogrammingXglkXimplementations.html[/url]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=130#p8797
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-09-25 08:18:44

Hello! 

My name is Rob O'Hara, but most of my online friends know me as Flack (short for [url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087065/]Jack Flack[/url]). I live in Oklahoma and I'm in my late 30s. Married, two kids, and I work for the man doing domain administration, network management, and computer security.

Our first computer was a TRS-80 Model III, which we got back in 1980. I cut my adventuring teeth on that machine playing the old Scott Adams adventures. A couple of years later my dad sold the TRS-80 and got an Apple II. A few years after that, my dad went the PC route while I got a Commodore 64. I spent the majority of my youth behind the keyboard of a 64. In the mid 80s my parents opened a small local computer software store, where I spent my time after school hanging out and playing games "demonstrating them" for customers.

So, anyway, here we are today. I dabble in a ton of different hobbies. I've written and self-published a couple of books: [url=http://www.robohara.com/Commodork]Commodork: Sordid Tales from a BBS Junkie[/url] and [url=http://www.robohara.com/InvadingSpaces]Invading Spaces: A Beginner's Guide to Collecting Arcade Games[/url]. I collect full size [url=http://robohara.com/arcade_collection]arcade games[/url] (I have about 30 or so at the moment). I record a semi-regular podcast called [url=http://podcast.robohara.com/]You Don't Know Flack[/url], which focuses on some geeky aspect of my life. I used to collect video game consoles and games for them as well as old, retro computers, but I'm kind of at the point where I own most of what I set out to buy and I'm out of room to display anything else! In the middle of all of this, I update [url=http://www.robohara.com]robohara.com[/url] on a regular basis. Whew.

To be honest, up until six months ago I hadn't thought about text adventures since the early 80s. I've been following the development of Get Lamp, which got me re-interested in the topic. Back in the day I tried to write a few of my own text adventures, although I didn't have the skills to write the game engine back then. After talking with Robb Sherwin on multiple occasions, he pointed me toward Inform. I've written a couple of very small adventures in Inform over the past few months, mostly just to learn the language. I'm not a programmer by trade, but I've written several VB apps and know enough scripting to let me be lazy at work, so I'm familiar with the concepts. 

I'm kind of excited about all of this right now because, as both a writer and a "computer guy", this seems like something I should be doing. I'm still learning the ins and outs (read: the basics) of Inform, but I'm really looking forward to putting together some neat stuff with it in the very near future!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=130#p8798
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-25 08:43:38

Welcome Rob, and a belated welcome to Silas!

I saw your "interactive review" of Get Lamp, Rob. I thought that was a great idea for getting familiar with the language, and it was enjoyable to "read."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=130#p8799
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: TheTraveler / DateTime: 2010-09-25 09:20:19

Greetings to the community!

I thought I'd introduce myself and represent the moniker "Jeff" (as there seems to be a bit of a lack of them here in the forum).  [emote];)[/emote] 

I'm 53, a retired IT professional who now drives an over the road semi for a living (less stressful than IT ever was!). My interests lie in developing my faith, being with my lovely wife of 23 years and sailing small boats. I'm also a guitarist of 35 years experience with a love for playing the blues. I read voraciously and the Barnes & Noble salespeople just smile and nod their heads knowingly when I enter the local B&N store. (Now I have a Nook with 3G and download content while I'm on the road).

I first started playing computer games in 1975, a text only version (printed out of course) of Star Trek on a PDP 11 at the University of Missouri in St. Louis. Not that I was attending there at the time (I was enlisted in the Navy) but a friend of mine had access to it and we were allowed to mess around when others weren't using it. 

I bought my first personal computer a few years later, a Timex Sinclair 1000. Playing games like "Hunt the Wumpus" triggered something in my gray matter and I was hooked! Later, on the Commodore 64, text based games like the Zork series, the Hitchhikers Guide, Gateway II and others, lead me down paths of imagination that still draw me in to this day.

I've been messing about with different IF authoring systems, and I must say I like Inform the best. TADS is very capable as well, but after writing programming code for a lot of years, TADS code is just a bit too much like what I used to write for a living! Inform's syntax reminds me more of the "predicate calculus", a formal logic system used in things like computer linguistics, an area that I've had a consistent interest in for many years. I hope eventually to write an extension, if possible, to give Inform users a chance to write code that allows the system to respond in a more "intelligent" conversational manner. We'll see how that progresses.

I also see a new IF market emerging in tablet computers, such as the Ipad, the Archos 5, the HP Slate and others. Perhaps we'll see an IF Renaissance in the coming years! [emote]:)[/emote]

Well, a bit longer than I intended, but if you got this far, thanks for reading! I see a number of familiar names here from the int-fiction newsgroup and I'm looking forward to being part of this wonderful community!

Cheers!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1442&start=0#p8800
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: [SPAG] Request for Content for Issue #59
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-09-25 09:36:07

Wow, it's been five years already? Thanks for what you've done, and good luck to David picking up the torch!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=130#p8801
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-25 10:54:07

That's quite a journey, Jeff! I envy you for getting out of the computer business.

I have similar feelings about Inform. I've grown to like Python quite a lot, but sometimes I just want something different. In fact, I've been working on an extremely complicated text parsing routine in Python, and I keep thinking "I should really rewrite this as a rules-based behavior, so I can easily access some kind of "why the rule failed" message...."

I look forward to seeing what you produce with I7.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=130#p8802
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: TheTraveler / DateTime: 2010-09-25 12:34:48

Hi capmikee ... Yep, it was fun while it lasted! 

Now I find myself with time to devote to other pursuits. I drive week on, week off for my current employer so I have time to mess around with other stuff. I think I spent most of my IT life 24/7/365 keeping systems up ... "Home? You mean I live somewhere besides HERE?"   [emote]:shock:[/emote] 

Good luck with your parser. I've always thought Python was a very cool scripting language and used it myself quite a bit over the years. Between Python and the Bash shell, I think they covered 98% of my maintenance and automation tasks. 

However, Inform's rule-based system is very intriguing. It also looks quite flexible though I'm really only starting to study it in depth. I still need to understand how the rules are parsed and "fired" but that will come along. I used to mess around with an expert system called CLIPS: <a class="postlink" href="http://clipsrules.sourceforge.net/">http://clipsrules.sourceforge.net/</a> when I was working on an intelligent weblog processor. Cool stuff, and I'd like to see if I can implement something similar, but simpler, in Inform7. If it works out, I think folks may find it interesting...

Cheers!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1431&start=10#p8803
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why can't rulebooks be more dynamic, again?
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-09-25 13:18:31

Thanks, everyone, for the discussion (and to Ron for the awesome extension). This has led me through an interesting journey, [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_Obstructions]Five Obstructions[/url] style, through a number of different techniques for producing similar effects. It's interesting how many different ways there are to do something in I7...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1431&start=10#p8804
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why can't rulebooks be more dynamic, again?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-25 14:43:51

A bactrian language, like I said. :)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1444&start=0#p8805
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Transcript recording of output to bannerwindows?
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-09-25 18:55:54

I'm working on a game where approximately half of the interesting content occurs in a bannerwindow, and have discovered that the script command only records content from the main window. I've spent a few hours digging through the adv3 code and can't figure out what I need to hack to change this.

It looks like I could keep a separate file to record the contents of the bannerwindow, and could probably then write the main window contents there as well, but I was kind of hoping to hook into the existing mechanisms.

Anyone have advice?

-Chris

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1427&start=10#p8806
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unofficial Inform 7 documentation index
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-25 21:41:21

Permanent location: <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/i7index/">http://eblong.com/zarf/i7index/</a>

I'm still updating the index file. I'll finish doing that -- it may be another week or two -- and link to all the source code and index data that I'm using.

After that, of course, I'll go on to something else and forget about it. Somebody remind me in April, or whenever the next I7 release is. :)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1431&start=10#p8807
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why can't rulebooks be more dynamic, again?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-25 21:55:57

Why not dromedary?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1441&start=0#p8808
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Slow programming tasks
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-09-25 22:58:57

Excellent, keep them coming. Another is the Smarter Parser with it's many regexs.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=130#p8809
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2010-09-26 02:29:35

[quote="TheTraveler"]I'm 53, a retired IT professional who now drives an over the road semi for a living (less stressful than IT ever was!).[/quote]
Welcome to the forums!

Getting out of IT was the best decision I ever made - nowadays I'm on the road, too, driving a bus in local traffic. Very much less stressful than IT - in IT, I kept taking my work with me whenever I went home (I was in software engineering), getting stressed out and finally into the point where I couldn't sleep for more than 2-3 hours a night, and even that in parts, and couldn't look at a computer without feeling sick in my stomach. And that was while I still was [i]studying[/i] IT and working in it on the side! (And it's one of the reasons my previous marriage broke up...)

So in the end, I decided to quit IT and do something else - ended up driving a bus, which I've now been doing on average 37.5 hours a week for the last two years, and find I again enjoy living, find I again enjoy computers... and my new wife and the kids we have (one a step-daughter, 3 1/2, while our son is a little over 2 months... and by force, i'm about 6000 miles apart from my family, but we're working on getting that taken care of).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1427&start=10#p8810
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unofficial Inform 7 documentation index
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-09-26 05:21:42

[quote="matt w"][quote="Ron Newcomb"]There does seem to be a few examples that keep being mentioned in forums on a fairly regular basis. The one with noses and the possessive case is one.  The one with rooms-inside-rooms was another.  Maybe about 3 or 4 others.  I'm blanking.[/quote]

Wait, is there a recipe book example for the noses thing?[/quote]

There are actually two things this could be referring to, I guess -- one is the Walls and Noses example in the recipe book, about how to refine the wording of a parser question, and the other is the example in Punctuation Removal that shows how to parse things like "Joe's tie" on the basis of the fact that it's a tie Joe happens at the moment to be wearing. Examples in the built-in extensions aren't really visible unless the user already knows to go look at that extension.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1444&start=0#p8811
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Transcript recording of output to bannerwindows?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-09-26 06:04:10

Banners use the BannerOutputStream class for output. Its writeFromStream() method is responsible for showing text on screen. All you have to do is override that method and do a call to logConsoleSay():

[code]modify BannerOutputStream {
    // We override this in order to write output from banners to the main
    // window's log file.
    writeFromStream(txt)
    {
        // Allow the overridden method to perform whatever it does.
        inherited(txt);

        // Log all output to the main window's log file.
        logConsoleSay(MainWindowLogHandle, txt);
    }
}[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1444&start=0#p8812
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Transcript recording of output to bannerwindows?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-09-26 06:58:04

It just occurred to me that the above will log all banners, including the status line, which is definitely not what you want.

One way to have only specific banners have their output written to the main log file is to subclass BannerOutputStream instead of modifying it, and also subclass BannerWindow. First, we create a BannerOutputStreamMainLog subclass of BannerOutputStream:

[code]class BannerOutputStreamMainLog: BannerOutputStream {
    writeFromStream(txt)
    {
        inherited(txt);
        logConsoleSay(MainWindowLogHandle, txt);
    }
}[/code]

Now we need a subclass of BannerWindow that uses BannerOutputStreamMainLog. BannerWindow uses createOutputStream() to create its BannerOutputStream, so we override that in our subclass to use a BannerOutputStreamMainLog instead. We will use the default implementation with the only change being the creation of a BannerOutputStreamMainLog instance instead of a BannerOutputStream one:

[code]class BannerWindowMainLog: BannerWindow {
	createOutputStream()
	{
		// Create a banner output stream.
		outputStream_ = new transient BannerOutputStreamMainLog(handle_);

		// Set up the default filters.
		outputStream_.addOutputFilter(typographicalOutputFilter);
		outputStream_.addOutputFilter(new transient ParagraphManager());
		outputStream_.addOutputFilter(styleTagFilter);
		outputStream_.addOutputFilter(langMessageBuilder);
	}
}[/code]

Now whenever you need banners that write to the main log file, make them of class BannerWindowMainLog instead of BannerWindow.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1444&start=0#p8813
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Transcript recording of output to bannerwindows?
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-09-26 07:59:07

Thanks Nikos, I've tested this and it solves the problem nicely. I had actually looked at logConsoleSay(), but thought I was on the wrong track because the only place that is used in adv3 is in the LogConsole class (in output.t) which isn't referred to anywhere else. 

I really appreciate the help... I was expecting a pointer maybe, not a complete implementation. [emote]:-)[/emote]

-Chris

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1427&start=10#p8814
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unofficial Inform 7 documentation index
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-09-26 08:25:26

[quote="emshort"][quote="matt w"][quote="Ron Newcomb"]There does seem to be a few examples that keep being mentioned in forums on a fairly regular basis. The one with noses and the possessive case is one.  The one with rooms-inside-rooms was another.  Maybe about 3 or 4 others.  I'm blanking.[/quote]

Wait, is there a recipe book example for the noses thing?[/quote]

There are actually two things this could be referring to, I guess -- one is the Walls and Noses example in the recipe book, about how to refine the wording of a parser question, and the other is the example in Punctuation Removal that shows how to parse things like "Joe's tie" on the basis of the fact that it's a tie Joe happens at the moment to be wearing. Examples in the built-in extensions aren't really visible unless the user already knows to go look at that extension.[/quote]

Ah, the Punctuation Removal one is the one that I've unknowingly posted in about five threads (after Jesse showed it to me) -- except using an "After reading the command" to turn apostrophe-s into space-s instead of using Punctuation Removal. Good to know.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=130#p8815
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: TheTraveler / DateTime: 2010-09-26 09:18:03

Thanks for the welcome rioshin! I'm happy to hear that you've also found "happiness after IT" as well. It's a funny thing, we're both doing jobs that are considered "low tech" compared to what we used to do, yet, there's satisfaction to be had ... [emote]:)[/emote]

During the years I did IT, I also owned and operated a small local Internet provider company, which I built from the ground up. It took a lot of time and dedication, lot's of burning the midnight oil, traveling withing a 6 state area, etc. Fortunately, my second (current and last!) wife was very understanding. There were a lot of nights I "brought work home" and brooded over things and she was there for me. 

So, if you're willing to say, how is it that you're separated from your family? 6000 miles is a long, long way.  [emote]:([/emote] 

Cheers.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=130#p8816
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2010-09-26 09:30:50

[quote="TheTraveler"]So, if you're willing to say, how is it that you're separated from your family? 6000 miles is a long, long way.  [emote]:([/emote] [/quote]
Yeah, I'm willing to talk about it. [emote]:)[/emote]

After my divorce, when I felt ready to start looking at maybe entering a relationship again, I happened to stumble upon a Filipina. Well, we started talking, we fell in love... and I visited her in the Philippines last November. We ended up together, she ended up pregnant - and this summer I was there again, this time ready to say the "I do"'s in front of the judge and to be there for the birth of our son (who looks very much like me!). We're currently in the process of handling the requisite paperwork in getting them over here - her, my step-daughter and my son, but it's slow - seeing they live in a third-world country, it's natural that I must support them, which means I can't afford to pay for all the paperwork as quickly as I could otherwise, and still manage to save money for their tickets here. A hard situation, being 6000 miles apart, but we're managing it - in the year and a half that I've known her, we've managed 10 weeks together. And now it's looking like it'll take at least a year until I get to see her and the kids again, other than online. Rough on the emotions, but if I were given the option to do it all again, knowing what I now do, I wouldn't even hesitate. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=140#p8817
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: TheTraveler / DateTime: 2010-09-26 10:09:17

Well, my friend, that's and interesting story! I spent some time in the Philippines in the '70s, the islands are beautiful and the people very pleasant. I hope you'll see your family soon and I applaud your dedication and perseverance! I know how tough it can be to be separated from loved ones myself. Hang in there and before you know it, it'll all be said and done!  [emote];)[/emote] 

Cheers!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1439&start=0#p8818
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Looking for CYOA testers
User: Silas Greenback / DateTime: 2010-09-26 10:30:11

I'd go for something like that, though I can't say how involved I'm able to be since the competition is coming up.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1445&start=0#p8819
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: MOD tracker formats in Glulx
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-26 18:19:05

A recent suggestion on the uservoice forums was (paraphrased) "support more modern MOD formats". Fair enough. If you go looking for what audio formats Glulx supports, you get referred to the Glk spec, which refers to the Blorb spec, which I wrote in 1998. The MOD section says:

"For generality, MOD files in Blorb are limited to the ProTracker 2.0 format: 31 note samples, up to 128 note patterns. The magic number at byte 1080 should be 'M.K.' or 'M!K!'."

...which was conservative in 1998. It's a little more than conservative now.

David Kinder pointed out that the Windows interpreters use libModPlug, which is open-source (public domain, more or less) and supports this list of formats (as of libmodplug-0.8.8.1):

"MOD, S3M, XM, IT, 669, AMF (both of them), AMS, DBM, DMF, DSM, FAR, MDL, MED, MTM, OKT, PTM, STM, ULT, UMX, MT2, PSM"

I have no idea what that means. But it seems reasonable to change the spec and suggest that interpreters use libModPlug, so that game authors can rely on whatever it supports. David, Ben Cressey, and Andrew Hunter are on board with this (for WinGlulxe, Gargoyle, and Zoom).

This does add some of uncertainty for authors, because I'm not going to mandate a particular *version* of the library. So if you come back in a year and try to use a format that was added in libmodplug-0.9 (or whatever), you may find that not all interpreters support it. But hopefully this will give us a good base of reliable formats, and it'll certainly be better than what's documented now.

Further problems: David says the stock libModPlug is buggy. He has a patched version in WinGlulxe. We recommend that everybody use that, which is no problem on Mac/Windows interpreters. However, it might be a hassle for Linux packagers. Ben is looking at how it will work.

Overall, I'd like to do this. Does anyone else have any comments? Other interpreter (and Glk library) supporters?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1445&start=0#p8820
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: MOD tracker formats in Glulx
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-09-26 19:02:59

The only formats that matter today are IT and MO3. And maybe XM. The rest are historical remains from the Commodore Amiga days [emote]:P[/emote]

There's also libmikmod. It's LGPL.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1445&start=0#p8821
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: MOD tracker formats in Glulx
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-09-26 22:10:56

[quote="RealNC"]The only formats that matter today are IT and MO3. And maybe XM. The rest are historical remains from the Commodore Amiga days[/quote]

Well, if there are freely available MODs in the older format, it makes sense to support them if we can; authors might find a song from 25 years ago that fits their story perfectly.

[quote="RealNC"]There's also libmikmod. It's LGPL.[/quote]

libmikmod can only play one file at once and must load that file from disk. It's unmaintained and hasn't been updated in over six years. It's non-reentrant and crashes if you invoke it more than once, or if you link to more than one library that links to and initializes it.

I say bring on libmodplug.  [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote="zarf"]Further problems: David says the stock libModPlug is buggy. He has a patched version in WinGlulxe. We recommend that everybody use that, which is no problem on Mac/Windows interpreters. However, it might be a hassle for Linux packagers. Ben is looking at how it will work.[/quote]

The stock libmodplug seems to work OK on Mac. It looks like several of the fixes that have come in over the last few years pertain to 64 bit or endian issues, which aren't a factor on Windows but would be needed for Linux / Snow Leopard x64 and PPC Macs. These would take some effort to analyze and backport, assuming they aren't simply the result of poor coding in the post-fork patches.

I haven't yet tried building garglk with libmodplug support under OS X 10.4, then running that binary on 10.6. libmikmod fails spectacularly under those conditions, and I am optimistic that libmodplug will manage it better.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1446&start=0#p8822
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Supplying a missing noun when the second noun is provided.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-26 22:30:10

I thought maybe the "supplying a missing noun activity" would help me in this situation, but it doesn't seem to be doing anything.

I need a verb that is identical in syntax to "answering it that" - in this example, I've called it "forgiving it for". So I copied the code for "answering it that", which conveniently picks a missing noun if none is provided. But for some reason, my new action doesn't do that, even when I add an extra "supplying a missing noun" rule. (there is no such rule for "answering it that", but it works anyway).

[code]The Hallway is a room. 

Bob is a man in the hallway.

forgiving it for is an action applying to one thing and one topic.

Understand "forgive [text] by [someone]" as forgiving it for (with nouns reversed)

Carry out forgiving it for:
	say "'I forgive you for the transgression of [the topic understood],' you say to [the noun]."
	
Rule for supplying a missing noun while forgiving:
	now the noun is Bob.
	
test me with "say hello to bob/say hello/forgive nose-picking by bob/forgive nose-picking"[/code]
[quote]>[1] say hello to bob
There is no reply.

>[2] say hello
(to Bob)
There is no reply.

>[3] forgive nose-picking by bob
"I forgive you for the transgression of nose-picking," you say to Bob.

>[4] forgive nose-picking
I didn't understand that sentence.

>[/quote]
Note that the parser says (to Bob) when I "say hello", but not when I "forgive nose-picking".

What do I have to do to make this work?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1446&start=0#p8823
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Supplying a missing noun when the second noun is provide
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2010-09-27 06:15:16

This is slightly tricky for a couple of reasons that unfortunately I don't have time to get into real deeply at the moment. The clue to your problem is in this output:[quote]>forgive nose-picking by
(Bob)
"I forgive you for the transgression of nose-picking," you say to Bob.
[/quote]Note that adding "by" makes it work correctly. The reason why your supplying a missing noun rule isn't working is that you haven't created a grammar line that recognizes the command without a noun. See this from 17.30. Supplying a missing noun/second noun. (I added the italicized part.)[quote]Understand "unlock [something]" as unlocking it with. [i]<-- this is required to make the following work[/i]

Rule for supplying a missing second noun while unlocking:
	if the skeleton key is carried, now the second noun is the skeleton key;
	otherwise say "You will have to specify what to unlock [the noun] with."

Note that, in order for our activity to succeed, we do need to supply a grammar line allowing the player to try "unlocking it with" using only one noun. Otherwise, the command "unlock something" will still produce the question "What do you want to unlock the door with?"[/quote]Now the tricky part is that because you've made the thing the first noun and the topic the second noun, it becomes impossible to create the required grammar line. This is the part that would take some time to explain, so just trust me for now. [emote]:)[/emote] Switch the order of the tokens (making the topic the noun and the thing the second noun) and add the grammar for a missing person token and it will work. Remember to change all references to "the noun" to "the second noun."[code]The Hallway is a room. 

Bob is a man in the hallway.

forgiving it for is an action applying to one topic and one thing.

Understand "forgive [text] by [someone]" as forgiving it for. 

Understand "forgive [text]" as forgiving it for.

Carry out forgiving it for:
   say "'I forgive you for the transgression of [the topic understood],' you say to [the second noun]."
   
Rule for supplying a missing second noun while forgiving:
   now the second noun is Bob.
   
test me with "say hello to bob/say hello/forgive nose-picking by bob/forgive nose-picking / forgive nose-picking by".[/code]HTH

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1447&start=0#p8824
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Can a number be converted into text in I7?
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-09-27 07:59:39

Hey all.

Finally getting back into IF after a [i]long[/i] hiatus. I've been going through some feedback on a class regarding "Trinity Reimagined" and I've come across an interesting thing. We're using the same "paced time" concept that [i]Trinity[/i] used, where you get four turns per minute. I've noticed that the common solution just about everyone tries is this:

[code]
To say paced-time:
  let current-time be the minutes part of the time of day;
  if seconds > 9, let current-time be "[current-time]:[seconds]".
[/code]

The problem there, of course, is that current-time is said to be a number but it's now being asked to hold text.

Again, the above is the solution that most people seem to come to, even the non-programmers in my group. The programmers in the crowd want to know if there is explicit conversion possible (essentially, casting) in these cases.

I know Eric Eve's extension "Variable Time Control" uses indexed text for this purpose. Is that the best way to go about this? Or is there a way to say that current-time (a number) can have a string representation? I'm not shying away from indexed text necessarily; I'm just looking for the simplest conceptual thing that will work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1446&start=0#p8825
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Supplying a missing noun when the second noun is provide
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-27 08:44:27

That all makes sense, and switching the order of tokens is a good idea for solving the problem, but why does "answering it that" still work? There's no grammar line that matches, and yet it still picks "Bob" as a noun even when all you say is "say foo".

I actually wrote a little hack that takes advantage of the flexibility of "answering it that". Something along the lines of...

[code]Understand "forgive [text] by [someone]" as answering it that.

Instead of answering someone that something:
    try forgiving the noun for the topic understood.[/code]

... and that worked too!

The fact is, I don't really want to write a complete rule for supplying a missing noun - a custom message for when the player is alone would be enough. The built-in disambiguation of "answer it that" seems to work fine already, so I wanted to know how to hook into it with other verbs. Duplicating the work of identifying the one person in the room other than the player turned out to be non-trivial, and who wants to duplicate work anyway?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1447&start=0#p8826
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can a number be converted into text in I7?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-09-27 11:59:21

No, that's not possible; a number is a number. I think that the easiest way to do what you want to do is to change the output for time of day. For brevity, this example just uses a "00" in place of the seconds, but you can replace this with your own code as needed:

[code]Test is a room.

To say time of day:
	say "[if hours part of the time of day is greater than 12][hours part of the time of day - 12][otherwise][hours part of the time of day][end if]:[if minutes part of the time of day < 10]0[end if][minutes part of the time of day]:00 [if hours part of the time of day is greater than 11]PM[otherwise]AM[end if]"
	
When play begins:
	change right hand status line to "[time of day]"[/code]

Basically, the code redefines the meaning of time of day for "to say" phrases, forcing a third printed parameter. If you only want seconds displayed in certain cases, you could add a condition to the end of the "to say" preamble, or call it "to say time of day plus seconds" and call that as needed.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1447&start=0#p8827
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can a number be converted into text in I7?
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-09-27 12:32:10

Thanks for the response, Erik.

I did originally have an example that did sort of what you did with say phrases but then I started people down a path that would eventually let them see how "Variable Time Control" was created. This counter-example is actually good, in a way, because I'm going to use this as an example of how you can't do certain things. Along with the example I posted, others tried stuff like this:

[code]
The current-time is text that varies.

To say paced-time:
    let current-time be the minutes part of the time of day;
[/code]

That, of course, doesn't work for the exact same reason as the first example, this time because minutes are being used with something that was originally established as text. I find that taking people through these "mis-steps" is really helpful to learning Inform. This will also let me get the indexed text into my tutorials a little earlier than I would have.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1447&start=0#p8828
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can a number be converted into text in I7?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-27 13:13:54

Hey! Welcome back Jeff!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1447&start=0#p8829
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can a number be converted into text in I7?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-09-27 13:16:12

[quote="ektemple"][code]Test is a room.

To say time of day:
	say "[if hours part of the time of day is greater than 12][hours part of the time of day - 12][otherwise][hours part of the time of day][end if]:[if minutes part of the time of day < 10]0[end if][minutes part of the time of day]:00 [if hours part of the time of day is greater than 11]PM[otherwise]AM[end if]"
	
When play begins:
	change right hand status line to "[time of day]"[/code][/quote]

To catch all the cases, I think you need to add "[if hours part of the time of day is less than 1][hours part of the time of day + 12]", or 12:30 AM will display as 0:30 AM. Suddenly the 24-hour clock is very appealing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1446&start=0#p8830
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Supplying a missing noun when the second noun is provide
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-27 13:18:53

[quote="capmikee"]That all makes sense, but why does "answering it that" still work?[/quote]
I believe it is coded as an exception deep within the parser itself.  In other words, Answering doesn't play fair, and to replicate the behavior you'd need to dig around in the I6 templates, parser.i6t, and modify that.  Look for ##Answer for likely suspects.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1446&start=0#p8831
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Supplying a missing noun when the second noun is provide
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-27 13:59:30

I'm beginning to discover how much of I6 is still left in I7. When I first learned about it, I assumed that the Standard Library was entirely reimplemented in in I7. Actually, a lot of it is just hooks into the I6 code, yes?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1445&start=0#p8832
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: MOD tracker formats in Glulx
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-09-27 16:44:36

To specify a library like this is probably a good idea if you want to support those formats. That way the end result can be expected to sound the same in different interpreters. Playback of these formats is inconsistent and varies between implementations. 

(My experience with tracker formats comes from maintaining an engine for graphical adventure games, and using first IT then MO3 in games of mine. I replaced most music with Ogg Vorbis in the latest version of my latest game, though. Partly to avoid some technical issues, but mostly to get better sound quality.)

However with the possible exception of MO3 (which unsurprisingly isn't on the list - I think only the BASS library supports that format), for most things not retro rendering the music to Ogg Vorbis will actually make a smaller file size. So maybe you're mostly adding bloat? But since MOD already is specified as supported, why not. Any terp already has to have tracker playback.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1445&start=0#p8833
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: MOD tracker formats in Glulx
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-27 16:53:31

Thanks for the experiential comments.

The original querent said that Ogg files would be larger (for the music he wanted to write). I haven't measured, but I'm sure there's a tradeoff for length -- Ogg size is roughly proportional to length, where MOD size is proportional to the number of different instruments you use. Allowing very long pieces without bloat seems good.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1446&start=0#p8834
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Supplying a missing noun when the second noun is provide
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-27 16:56:42

"A lot" is a subjective measure. :)

Most of the complex low-level features of I7 (table handling, list handling, rulebook handling, the parser itself) are I6 code. On the other hand, most of the model world code (standard actions) is I7 at this point.

Which you consider "a lot" depends on how deep you've hacked into the Inform cliff-face.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1445&start=0#p8835
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: MOD tracker formats in Glulx
User: djfletch / DateTime: 2010-09-27 17:18:45

I'm still developing QGlk, but slowly, and sound is a long way down the list of things to do.

However, modplug looks OK to me. I'd like something that works on MinGW, which it looks like it does. (And Windows Gargoyle is MinGW anyway, isn't it?)

[quote="bcressey"]
Well, if there are freely available MODs in the older format, it makes sense to support them if we can; authors might find a song from 25 years ago that fits their story perfectly.
[/quote]
I'd say it's desirable for authors to convert the songs to newer formats, if possible. I don't know a lot about trackers but I think you would usually be able to do that.

But you can leave it up to the authors to decide - if they use obscure formats they have less chance of their games working in the year 2050.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1445&start=0#p8836
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: MOD tracker formats in Glulx
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-09-27 19:09:35

FastTracker 2 XM all the way!

Before there was popular pattern-based music software like Fruity Loops Studio and professional soft-/hardware like Native Instruments Maschine I usually composed all my electronic music with FastTracker 2 in the XM (Extended Module) format, as an alternative to MIDI format. I have over 1000 XM songs in my personal archive which I composed between 1992 and 2002. And hundreds of thousands of modules made by other people. I still use MOD trackers on occasion nowadays. Just like the Interactive Fiction community there exists an entire MOD tracker community on the net, the so-called tracker scene, which exists even to this day. The advantage of tracker formats over MIDI is that all music data is exported and stored in one file, not only notes and patterns, but also the entire instrument and WAV sample bank used by a song. Therefore some tracker files can be huge in size, e.g. 5-10 megabytes.

The most popular MOD tracker formats in the scene, sorted by ranking:

1. ImpulseTracker (*.IT)
2. FastTracker 2 (*.XM)
3. ScreamTracker (*.S3M)
4. Standard Module (*.MOD)

Other tracker formats are usually rare.

P.S. Also keep in mind that classic first-person shooters like good old [b]Unreal[/b], [b]Unreal Tournament '99[/b] and [b]Deus Ex[/b] all used music composed in one or all of those four tracker formats listed above, thanks to the Unreal Engine. They were usually stored in Unreal's own music container format (*.UMX). Using MOD tracker formats is very retro and old-fashioned, but it's still cool.  [emote]8-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1445&start=0#p8837
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: MOD tracker formats in Glulx
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-09-27 20:19:39

For playback of modules I strongly recommend ModPlug Player (MPP), as an alternative to WinAmp. It can play most tracker formats in high quality and even save/export them as WAV, so you can convert it to MP3 later on.

A screenshot from my desktop showing MPP in action, playing DOOM music converted from MIDI to XM by me:

[img]http://i56.tinypic.com/2e34snp.jpg[/img]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1448&start=0#p8838
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Alternate Table Of Contents page for Inform 7 available
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-27 20:21:54

One of the suggestions on the uservoice forum is having the table of contents (of Writing With Inform) fully expanded. ([url=http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/783273-ide-make-whole-table-of-contents-visible-at-once]See here.[/url])  A user named Apollia has created said t.o.c. as an HTML file that you can drag-drop into your Inform application folder to put this into effect. 

Here's a pic of the result:
Closed:
[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/97498833@N00/5031275475/][img]http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4148/5031275475_efc00cff9c.jpg[/img][/url]

Open:
[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/97498833@N00/5031306729/][img]http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4088/5031306729_85948145a1.jpg[/img][/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1448&start=0#p8839
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Alternate Table Of Contents page for Inform 7 available
User: TheTraveler / DateTime: 2010-09-27 20:58:59

Thanks for the find Ron! It works pretty slick on my WinXP system.

I had to do a global search and replace:

Search for: <a class="postlink" href="http://astroblahhh.com/temporary__files/inform7-toc/">http://astroblahhh.com/temporary__files/inform7-toc/</a>

Replace with "" 

to get all the references to astroblahhh.com out of the file before it would work though. No biggie.

Cheers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1445&start=0#p8840
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: MOD tracker formats in Glulx
User: weiju / DateTime: 2010-09-27 21:01:40

Hi, since most Glulx/Glk interpreter combinations are written in C, this won't matter to most people - and probably only to ZMPP (Zag/Zing ?), which is simply using MuXM through JavaSound to playback MOD files. It seems that MuXM supports ProTracker (standard MOD), FastTracker and ScreamTracker.

I still own a couple of working Amigas (and would unlikely ever part with them), but I never got into SoundTracker (I always used TFMX on the Miggy) to know much about the format.

Wei-ju

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1449&start=0#p8841
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Quick question about command streams in Glulx Inform
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-09-27 21:16:59

The Glulx Inform library defines two streams:

Constant GG_COMMANDWSTR_ROCK	303; 
Constant GG_COMMANDRSTR_ROCK	304;

These seem to me to be for reading in commands from an alternate source; that is, other than the player's typing. Is this how I7's TEST and Replay commands communicate with the game, or does that happen from without?

Thanks,
Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1445&start=0#p8842
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: MOD tracker formats in Glulx
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-09-27 23:16:50

[quote="djfletch"]However, modplug looks OK to me. I'd like something that works on MinGW, which it looks like it does. (And Windows Gargoyle is MinGW anyway, isn't it?)[/quote]

Gargoyle uses MinGW, yes. I had a fair bit of trouble with the stock libmodplug code today, though. There are some unofficial patches floating around to "unbreak" mingw support, but that doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

I plan to try David Kinder's fork from the [url=http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/programming/glk/implementations/WindowsGlkSrc-140.zip]Windows Glk source[/url] tomorrow, and I'll report back on how that goes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1441&start=0#p8843
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Slow programming tasks
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-09-28 00:18:10

Just to check, are you both considering only the time taken to process those commands, or also the time required by those games when they start up?

My plan for the benchmark script is to have a number of tasks which are run as many times as possible in the test's time limit, which I'll probably make quite large, maybe even a couple of minutes per task. It won't be comprehensive, but I would like to try to collect as many real world examples of slow code as I can. Eventually maybe we can add some Glk stuff too.

The aim will be to know what to improve so we can make both interpreters smarter and code more efficient. Expect more function acceleration in the future [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1451&start=0#p8845
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: QTads 2 has been released (Linux/Mac/Unix Multimedia TADS)
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-09-28 02:28:16

(Neatly copy and pasted from my R*IF announcement)

QTads is a cross-platform, multimedia interpreter for TADS games.  It runs in Linux, Mac OS X (10.5+), MS Windows (with a few problems) and Haiku (though binaries are not yet provided for Haiku).  It probably runs on many more, as long as the Qt and SDL libraries are available.

QTads version 2, the first to include Multimedia TADS support, was in development for seven months (though with big pauses in-between), and is now finally out.  You can find binaries as well as the source code at:

  <a class="postlink" href="http://qtads.sourceforge.net/downloads.shtml">http://qtads.sourceforge.net/downloads.shtml</a>

Some stuff had to go during the rewrite of major parts of the code.  This was necessary in order to decrease the initial porting effort and to release something that works within a reasonable time frame.  I'm hoping to bring everything back bit by bit as development progresses.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1445&start=10#p8846
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: MOD tracker formats in Glulx
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-09-28 04:11:16

Are you planning for any kind of capability testing other than just trying to play the file in glk_schannel_play() and having it fail? It would probably be nice to be able to play a regular MOD if some funky format is unsupported.

And don't write off Javascript... with the new audio data APIs someone will probably write a tracker implementation soon enough.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1451&start=0#p8848
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: QTads 2 has been released (Linux/Mac/Unix Multimedia TAD
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-09-28 10:00:51

Thanks for all your work on this! And thanks as well for working under a free / open source license. 

Gargoyle had some similar sound issues under Windows with SDL_Mixer. I ended up using SDL_Sound to decode compressed music in chunks. I will look into submitting a patch once my own pre-release madness dies down.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1452&start=0#p8849
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Betatesting - Gris et Jaune
User: sgaal / DateTime: 2010-09-28 10:09:02

Hey guys, 

I know we're cutting it close, but if any of you can help me out with a quick run through of my IFComp game, it'd be greatly appreciated.

Please email me at stevevngl AT gmail DOT com.

Thanks in advance!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1452&start=0#p8850
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Betatesting - Gris et Jaune
User: sgaal / DateTime: 2010-09-28 10:10:05

Sorry. It's I6 Glulx. Adaptive hints and walkthru included.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1441&start=0#p8851
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Slow programming tasks
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2010-09-28 10:14:49

I ran into seconds-long pauses in Parchment due to my inventory code in Fragile Shells. Originally I was building the list using definitions and phrases like "[a list of inventoried not-suit-clipped large things carried by the player]", but switched to building the lists via looping over all inventory items and hand-sorting them. The code in question is in Volume 2 Chapter 4 of <a class="postlink" href="http://ifarchive.heanet.ie/if-archive/games/source/inform/FragileShells.txt">http://ifarchive.heanet.ie/if-archive/g ... Shells.txt</a>. Uncomment the auto-list-building code, purloin several of the items (the nozzle, the stick pad, the crowbar, and the chain should do nicely), and take inventory.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1453&start=0#p8852
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Programming Style question: making decisions with rulebooks
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-28 10:26:39

I just read Ron Newcomb's "Inform 7 for Programmers." What a great resource - thanks Ron!

The section on "paradigm leaning" gave me a lot to think about regarding rulebooks and rule-based vs. function-based code. But I'm not quite sure how to use rulebooks to make a decision:

For purposes of this example, let's assume that "say [text]" doesn't have the disambiguating power that it does, and we must choose an interlocutor to say the text to. How does this solution look to you?

[code]The alley is a room. The street is north of the alley.  Bob is a man in the street. Carol is a woman in the street. The Bank is north of the street. The manager is a woman in the bank. The teller is a man in the bank. The Office is north of the Bank. The insurance salesman is a man in the office.

The current interlocutor is a person that varies.

choosing an interlocutor rules is a rulebook.

Definition: a person is other if it is not the player.

A choosing an interlocutor rule:
	If there is exactly one other person in the location:
		now the current interlocutor is a random other person in the location;
		rule succeeds;	
	If there is no other person in the location, say "There's no one to talk to.";
	If the number of other people in the location is greater than one, say "Please be more specific about who to say that to.";
	rule fails;

Rule for choosing an interlocutor when the player is in the bank:
    now the current interlocutor is the teller;
    rule succeeds;

Understand the command "say" as something new.

Generally talking is an action applying to one topic. Understand "say [text]" as generally talking.

Check generally talking:
    Consider the choosing an interlocutor rules;
    If the rule failed, stop the action.

Carry out generally talking:
    try answering the current interlocutor that the topic understood.

Instead of answering:
	say "'[the topic understood],' you say to [the noun]."

test me with "say hello/n/say hello/n/say hello/n/say hello"
[/code]

My questions are these:

Do I have to use a global variable to get my rules to return a usable value? Is it the best way or is there a more I7-like way?

Is it appropriate to use "If the rule failed, stop the action" or is there a more elegant way to do that?

Should I used "abide" instead of "consider?" If I do, then "rule succeeds" is the wrong outcome, and we're back to the old problem that you can't skip the remaining rules in a rulebook without aborting the current action.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1453&start=0#p8853
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Programming Style question: making decisions with rulebo
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-28 11:55:30

I'm glad you found it useful.  It doesn't quite cover all of Inform, and since it's a few builds out of date, some of the syntax it uses is dated.  I will of course update it again after leapfrogging a build or three.

To have a rulebook return a value sans global, read "18.12. Rulebooks producing values" in the official manual. This part was significantly changed with the release of the 6E builds.  

For your "A choosing an interlocutor rule", you may wish to declare it to be "last".  (See 18.6 "The Preamble of a rule".) Since it is sort of the default, it would likely wish to hang back unless no other rule steps in. 

Since this particular rulebook is designed to basically run only one rule (like the Instead rules do), rather than all applicable rules (like the Every Turn rules do), you can specify the default outcome with "The choosing an interlocutor rules have default success."  (Or failure, or no outcome.)  It tacks on a "rule succeeds" (or rule fails, or make no decision) onto the end of each rule in its rulebook. See "18.10 Success and Failure" about halfway down the page -- the cosmic analysis example. This might be a moot point of course if your rulebook produces a value. 

[quote]Is it appropriate to use "If the rule failed, stop the action" (after a consider) or is there a more elegant way to do that?[/quote]
Generally, that's what "abide by" is for.  It "considers", then issues the same rule fails/succeeds/no-decision as what was considered did.  (Related is "anonymously abide by", which won't change the value of the variable "reason the action failed", allowing your rule to play silent middle-man.)  But if you want the action to continue, then the Choosing rulebook would need to produce a value at the same time as make no decision, which it cannot do per 18.12.  So the solution you have is the only one -- unless you want to write a "make no decision with result..."  [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1445&start=10#p8854
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: MOD tracker formats in Glulx
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-28 12:27:52

I am not currently thinking of changing any APIs. Having the play command fail seems good enough.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1451&start=0#p8855
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: QTads 2 has been released (Linux/Mac/Unix Multimedia TAD
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-09-28 13:50:16

The sound implementation is currently somewhat half-assed anyway. It decodes the whole file into memory prior to playback (which is the right thing to do for effects and other short samples, but not for background music.) This seems to be very fast on every system, except for Windows (I suspect due to Windows missing mmap()). Also, SMPEG seems to sometimes play 22kHz MP3s at double speed.

Best thing I should probably do is write a real sound playing routine with mixing (perhaps using libsamplerate), and use libmad for the decoding (the only reason I went with SMPEG is that MAD is totally undocumented.)

Anyway, if anyone is writing a TADS game that has audio, it's highly recommended to choose the Ogg Vorbis format instead of MP3; you get *much* higher quality (indistinguishable from CD quality) at a *much* smaller file size. And there's no confusion with people playing the game about the need of any installed codecs and such, since Vorbis support is built-in into all multimedia interpreters. There is no reason at all to use MP3.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1445&start=10#p8856
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: MOD tracker formats in Glulx
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-28 14:36:09

An ancilliary problem that I should have mentioned: chunks in Blorb files have no filenames. Can libModPlug work out the right thing to do with its data when there's no filename suffix attached?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1445&start=10#p8857
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: MOD tracker formats in Glulx
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-09-28 15:25:35

While I have not used libModPlug, I can't imagine that would be a problem. (It's not a problem for any of the libraries I have used: FMOD, BASS and DUMB.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1441&start=0#p8858
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Slow programming tasks
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-09-28 20:06:24

Thank you. Inventory slowness seems quite common, and probably the same thing happens with King of Shreds and Patches. You've provided source code though [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1286&start=0#p8859
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Half-Finished Game: Need Programmer
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2010-09-28 23:03:59

I'm afraid I only started reading this forum recently, so this advice is not very timely, but...

Just giving the name of your game is probably not going to interest someone enough to work with you.  What is your game about?  What is the mood like?  What makes it special and worthwhile?  Providing at least a two or three sentence summary may bring in someone who will share your passion and excitement.  With only a name, you're not likely to intrigue people enough to volunteer to spend (hours, days, weeks, maybe months) on your game.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1398&start=0#p8860
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Theory book?
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2010-09-28 23:22:34

There's an [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/09/28/if-theory-book-update/]IF Theory Book update[/url] on Emily Short's blog. The editor is now Kevin Jackson-Mead.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1441&start=0#p8861
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Slow programming tasks
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-09-29 00:23:51

Pathfinding over large maps gets rather slow, although this is probably to be expected. Blue Lacuna has a map area of about 90 rooms which was unacceptably slow for pathfinding over: I eventually created a [url=http://lacunastory.com/source/source_273.html]static lookup table[/url] to hard-code pathfinding between the relevant rooms (possible due to the fact that the NPC in question was moving over a limited sub-set of them). It's probably a lot more trouble than you're looking for, but if you recompiled Blue Lacuna with the "if there is a dest of destination in Table of PPF" block commented out, you'd be back to significant pathfinding delays whenever Progue is moving.

Probably better suited for your purposes would be to procedurally generate a map of a few hundred rooms with random interconnections and have NPCs randomly pathfind over it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1445&start=10#p8862
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: MOD tracker formats in Glulx
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-09-29 02:04:13

[quote="zarf"]An ancilliary problem that I should have mentioned: chunks in Blorb files have no filenames. Can libModPlug work out the right thing to do with its data when there's no filename suffix attached?[/quote]It doesn't even have an interface to look at the filename: all the interface takes is a buffer to the input data, from which it figures out the format. The Windows Glk implementation of sound doesn't ever write out the sound data to a temporary file.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1454&start=0#p8863
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Question about Glulx search opcodes and I7 tables
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-29 02:17:26

When I repeat through a table in Inform 7 in order to search the table for a particular row, does the code eventually compile to the relatively speedy Glulx search opcodes?  I have a slow table, and am trying to give it a shot in the arm. 

Would there be any benefit to me using the opcodes directly in an I6 inclusion specifically for this one table? I'm reading this of course: <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/glulx-spec_2.html#s.16">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/glulx-spec_2.html#s.16</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1286&start=0#p8864
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Half-Finished Game: Need Programmer
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-09-29 02:45:18

The OP did post details on a previous thread.

At any rate, to save further confusion - the OP *has* gotten help, she must have forgotten to post about it. [emote]:)[/emote] The project is, in fact, pretty complete, AFAIK.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1398&start=0#p8865
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Theory book?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-09-29 09:26:16

That's correct. I was going to post here about this, then figured I'd leave it up to Kevin. However, he's already moving forward on this; if you are a past contributor to the theory book and have not heard from him already, please do let him know your new email address so he can get in touch with you.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=30#p8866
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: TheTraveler / DateTime: 2010-09-29 10:59:09

Hmm, I've got to go the other way on this. I've used syntax highlighters in other programs, mostly text editors of course and some programming IDEs and the highlighter just seems to slow down the application. The larger the document, the longer the parsing time if highlighter updates in real time. 

I also feel the Inform IDE does a splendid job of displaying necessary information as is. Adding highlighting I think would just "jumble up" the interface more.

Cheers.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1398&start=0#p8867
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Theory book?
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2010-09-29 11:04:02

Yes, sorry for not posting here sooner. It's been a little busy.

-Kevin

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1453&start=0#p8868
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Programming Style question: making decisions with rulebo
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-29 11:15:28

Thanks. I ended up splitting my one big default rule into several more fine-grained rules (with the "if" statements moved into the rule's conditions) - this was satisfying and I felt like it was doing things the I7 way, but I discovered how tricky it is to get rules to fire in the correct order. Rules for special cases such as the bank teller had to be explicitly placed before other rules that looked more general to me. I guess Inform did not agree.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=30#p8869
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-29 11:42:55

I have to say that as the project I'm working on gets larger, the existing text formatting has gotten unbearably slow. Every time I type an open bracket or a quotation mark, I have to wait several seconds for the IDE to start accepting input again!

Whatever formatting or highlighting is done, it should be done at a very low priority so it doesn't get in the way of editing. Perhaps highlighting could even be suspended whenever there are unbalanced quotes or brackets (or even indentation).

The Supercollider IDE takes a different approach. Source files are saved as RTF by default, and you can format them however you like. But if you hit cmd-' or choose menu item Format -> Syntax Colorize, it will apply its own formatting.

I suspect, however, that the problem has more to do with display than with formatting codes. That's probably why syntax highlighting is ignorably fast in MacVim/GVim - everything is fixed-width text in the same size and font. Is there some way we could speed up rendering of just what's being edited currently, or does that go too deep into HTML display libraries?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1286&start=0#p8870
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Half-Finished Game: Need Programmer
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-29 11:45:47

Yes indeed! IFComp 2010, here we come!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1455&start=0#p8871
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Understanding pronouns
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-29 12:04:29

Here's a question along the lines of newbie-friendliness:

Are there any extensions that improve the parser's handling of pronouns? My current project makes use of Plurality to make something "ambiguously plural." Unfortunately, much later in the game, if someone tries to do something with "them," meaning all objects referred to in the previous command, it interprets the noun as the long-gone ambiguously plural thing.

I'm experimenting with some of the newbie-friendly extensions such as "Extended Grammar" and now "Smarter Parser," but I didn't see anything listed in the extensions that appears to help with pronouns.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1454&start=0#p8872
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Glulx search opcodes and I7 tables
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-29 12:18:58

A quick test indicates that no, the I7 compiler is not generating those opcodes for table searches.

It looks like the table structure is too complicated to use them in the general case. My test was an example from the manual:

[code]
	choose row with a name of "Victoria" in the Table of Recent Monarchs;
[/code]

The I6 routine in question is TableRowCorr(), and it has a couple of variant code paths to handle the case where you're searching for a blank entry, and the case where you're searching a column of block-allocated (as opposed to scalar) values. That's too fancy to do with @linearsearch. 

If the I7 compiler were willing to split this up into several routines, and call the appropriate one based on call-specific knowledge, it could implement some of them using @linearsearch. (But then, splitting them up like that would produce faster code even *without* @linearsearch. There would be fewer "if" tests per interation. The tradeoff is more ROM usage, which could be bad for Z-code games.)

For your specific case, it may well be worth doing this, *if* the column you're searching on is a scalar (i.e., not indexed text or a list or some other fancy new type). If you can ensure that the column is sorted, then you can use @binarysearch which will be slightly better.

But this is only relevant if you really are spending a lot of time searching the table. How many rows, and how many times per turn do you hit it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1445&start=10#p8873
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: MOD tracker formats in Glulx
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-29 12:22:54

Okay, that's good.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1449&start=0#p8874
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Quick question about command streams in Glulx Inform
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-09-29 14:38:35

OK, the answer appears to be that the skein uses a different mechanism for inserting commands--at least pulling out the code in blue (see spoilered code) has no effect. So, does this stuff have any use at all in I7? Is it present for the use of I6 debugging tools? 

Thanks,
Erik

[spoiler][ VM_ReadKeyboard  a_buffer a_table done ix;
    [color=#0000FF]if (gg_commandstr ~= 0 && gg_command_reading ~= false) {
        done = glk_get_line_stream(gg_commandstr, a_buffer+WORDSIZE,
            (INPUT_BUFFER_LEN-WORDSIZE)-1);
        if (done == 0) {
            glk_stream_close(gg_commandstr, 0);
            gg_commandstr = 0;
            gg_command_reading = false;
            ! L__M(##CommandsRead, 5); would come after prompt
            ! fall through to normal user input.
        }
        else {
            ! Trim the trailing newline
            if ((a_buffer+WORDSIZE)->(done-1) == 10) done = done-1;
            a_buffer-->0 = done;
            VM_Style(INPUT_VMSTY);
            glk_put_buffer(a_buffer+WORDSIZE, done);
            VM_Style(NORMAL_VMSTY);
            print "^";
            jump KPContinue;
        }
    }[/color]
    done = false;
    glk_request_line_event(gg_mainwin, a_buffer+WORDSIZE, INPUT_BUFFER_LEN-WORDSIZE, 0);
    while (~~done) {
        glk_select(gg_event);
        switch (gg_event-->0) {
          5: ! evtype_Arrange
            DrawStatusLine();
          3: ! evtype_LineInput
            if (gg_event-->1 == gg_mainwin) {
                a_buffer-->0 = gg_event-->2;
                done = true;
            }
        }
        ix = HandleGlkEvent(gg_event, 0, a_buffer);
        if (ix == 2) done = true;
        else if (ix == -1) done = false;
    }
    [color=#0000FF]if (gg_commandstr ~= 0 && gg_command_reading == false) {
        glk_put_buffer_stream(gg_commandstr, a_buffer+WORDSIZE, a_buffer-->0);
        glk_put_char_stream(gg_commandstr, 10); ! newline
    }[/color]
  .KPContinue;
    VM_Tokenise(a_buffer,a_table);
    ! It's time to close any quote window we've got going.
    if (gg_quotewin) {
        glk_window_close(gg_quotewin, 0);
        gg_quotewin = 0;
    }
    #ifdef ECHO_COMMANDS;
    print "** ";
    for (ix=WORDSIZE: ix<(a_buffer-->0)+WORDSIZE: ix++) print (char) a_buffer->ix;
    print "^";
    #endif; ! ECHO_COMMANDS
];[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1456&start=0#p8875
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: "MAP" command to bring up an image?
User: lglasser / DateTime: 2010-09-29 15:44:24

Okay, after looking for two hours through documentation and the forums, I have determined that my search-fu is just very weak.

I have a game that I've written in Inform 7 for Glulx, and I've made a .png map for the game and stuck that in the materials folder.  I would like for the command "Map" to display an image of this static map, that's it, nothing fancy.  (I am not worried about the map being progressive, since it's familiar surroundings to the player.)  

(I am not sure if it would just display a map in the parser with a > below, waiting for the next command or prompt for a Q /escape., but whichever is easiest.  Just "map" shows you the map.)  Thanks in advance!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1456&start=0#p8876
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: "MAP" command to bring up an image?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-09-29 15:52:27

If you don't want to install extensions or write I6 code, the easiest way to do this is:

[code]Displaying the map is an action out of world applying to nothing. Understand "map" as displaying the map.

Carry out displaying the map:
       display Figure of Map.[/code]

This is the standard library behavior as described in the chapter on images: the map will appear in the main text window, followed immediately by a command prompt. 

If you want to put the map in a separate window, try the Simple Graphical Window extension. (I don't believe that extension lets you close the window, so you couldn't open and close the map window at will--the Glulx Status Window control will allow you to close the Simple Graphical Window window.)

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1455&start=0#p8877
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Understanding pronouns
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-29 16:11:32

Well, there's "Pronouns" by Ron Newcomb (me), which allows you to set specific pronouns to specific objects. 

I forget the section it's in, so just pull up "all extension by author".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1454&start=0#p8878
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Glulx search opcodes and I7 tables
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-29 16:39:32

Ah, perfect.  I'm working with something like command history a la TADS, so the table length is "infinite".  But it starts out blank, and fills up in row order so it'd never come across a blank entry, so there's promise of faster ways of doing search.  I long ago replaced its stored action column with 4 separate object (& action name) columns for performance reasons.  A couple of other columns are bitfields: known-by, for example.  

It's chronologically sorted of course, but since turn count = row#, @binarysearch isn't useful to me.  Alas. Searches on the table range from 0 to 3+ per turn.

Thanks zarf, I'll work on this.  Now I just gotta figure out some specifics.  I don't know any column would be particularly well-suited to being the first to search on.  Maybe the noun's column?  Maybe use a new column for a hash of some sort?  Some of the rows will have wildcards for entries -- such as my someone-word object -- which should match anyone.  Hrm.  

(I think the only possible thing more useful to me was a @linersearch that, instead of taking one key value and testing for equality, it would take two values for ANDing:  a care/don't-care bitmask, and a must-be-1 bitmask, which test each entry with "if ((entry & care-dont-care) == must-be-1), decide on matches."   (With that, I'd create a hash column that has some bits from column 1, some bits from column 2, etc.)) 

Anyway, even plain ol' @linearsearch should be noticeably faster than even the tightest I6 loop.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1449&start=0#p8879
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Quick question about command streams in Glulx Inform
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-29 16:56:45

They appear to be vestigial. But if you added the appropriate debugging verbs back in (they were called "commands on", "commands off", "replay" in I6) then they would work.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1455&start=0#p8880
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Understanding pronouns
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-09-29 17:55:40

[quote="capmikee"]Unfortunately, much later in the game, if someone tries to do something with "them," meaning all objects referred to in the previous command, it interprets the noun as the long-gone ambiguously plural thing.[/quote]

If I'm understanding you right, you want "them" at some points in the game to refer to individual objects with plural names (like "the flowers" or "the gloves"), but at other points to refer to a whole list of objects. This is not something that Inform's pronoun handling is set up to deal with -- ALL copes with multiple objects, but pronouns are always assumed to refer to at most one world-model object.

There are probably ways to hack around this, but they wouldn't be entirely trivial. One way that occurs to me is to keep a list of objects that varies, updated from turn to turn every time some list is reported to the player, and then use an entry point where we're printing a parser error ("You can't see them ('the shoes') any more...") to instead queue up a series of action attempts on the items in that list.

When you bring it up, this feels like a big oversight in the parser, yet it's not something I think I've ever heard anyone mention as an issue before. (Perhaps experienced IF players don't use pronouns that much, or have carefully trained ideas about what they ought to be able to do? Not sure.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1455&start=0#p8881
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Understanding pronouns
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-29 18:51:52

I think pronouns is another IF newbie issue - I avoid them as a player because I'm never sure what the parser will do with them. Although it would be nice to have the parser remember the last grouping of items in a player's command, simply replacing the "not here any more" message with something like "I couldn't figure out what you meant by 'them'."

As they say, it's better to be silent and thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1449&start=0#p8882
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Quick question about command streams in Glulx Inform
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-09-29 19:37:27

Great, thank you for the context! I'm working on an extension for creating more flexible input loops and wanted to know if it was safe to just ditch all that stuff so that the loop can be more easily rewritten in I7 code.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1457&start=0#p8883
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: State of the art in ending a turn "immediately"
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-09-29 20:43:03

I don't have a particular problem in mind, but I'm wondering what methods folks have used to finish a turn early, bypassing the rulebooks that would normally increment turn count, run every turn rules, etc. I'm working on an extension where it may be useful to have some kind of facility for doing this, and I'm wondering what you recommend.

Thanks,

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1286&start=0#p8884
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Half-Finished Game: Need Programmer
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2010-09-29 21:11:41

Hooray!  I'm glad to hear it!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1458&start=0#p8885
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Secret feature in Basic Screen Effects
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-29 22:50:20

Dear Emily Short, please document this great feature I discovered by reading the source of Basic Screen Effects:

[code]
To decide what number is the chosen letter:
	(- GetKey() -)
[/code]

(I was trying to implement a splash screen menu like the one in The Act of Misdirection. This not only waits for a key, but remembers which one was pressed. It's returned as a number, but that's no problem for anyone with access to an ASCII table, or a willingness to experiment minimally...)

How many other goodies are hiding in there?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1455&start=0#p8886
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Understanding pronouns
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-09-29 23:10:58

I'm not familiar with Inform (I'm more of a TADS person) but if I understand correctly this is the kind of behavior you are looking for:
[code]
Start Room

This is the starting room. 

You see a red box, a blue box, some flowers, and a green ball here. 

>take them
The word “them” doesn’t refer to anything right now. 

>x boxes

blue box: This box is blue. 
red box: This box is red. 

>take them

blue box: Taken. 
red box: Taken. 

>drop them

blue box: Dropped. 
red box: Dropped. 

>x flowers
A bunch of flowers. 

>take them
Taken. 

>i
You are carrying some flowers. 

>drop them
Dropped. 

>x ball
This ball is green. 

>take them
Taken. 

>i
You are carrying some flowers. 

>drop flowers
Dropped. 

>x boxes, ball, and flowers

blue box: This box is blue. 
red box: This box is red. 
green ball: This ball is green. 
flowers: A bunch of flowers. 

>take them

blue box: Taken. 
red box: Taken. 
green ball: Taken. 
flowers: Taken. 

>[/code]

If so, someone who knows both the TADS parser and the Inform parser should take a look at how TADS does it and see if Inform could do it the same way.

And no, this isn't a TADS-is-better post... I'm just trying to point out a possible resource if someone was going to tackle this in Inform. [emote]:-)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1455&start=0#p8887
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Understanding pronouns
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-29 23:13:56

[quote="scratchm"]And no, this isn't a TADS-is-better post... I'm just trying to point out a possible resource if someone was going to tackle this in Inform. [emote]:-)[/emote][/quote]
A little friendly competition couldn't hurt anyone...  [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1455&start=0#p8888
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Understanding pronouns
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-09-29 23:17:58

[quote="capmikee"]A little friendly competition couldn't hurt anyone...  [emote]:D[/emote][/quote]

Ah, but another TADS vs Inform flame war could. I mean didn't we all get enough of that when discussing tie/attach and treacle sharks over on r.a.i-f? [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1454&start=0#p8889
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Glulx search opcodes and I7 tables
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-29 23:49:46

w00t! Not even my old Mac bats an eye at searching down 70 rows across 5 columns, three times over in a single turn.  You'd think I had the collated answer hard-coded to an Instead rule.  [emote]:D[/emote]   Here's the relevant magic bit:
[code]
Include (-
Global quickloopSearchFor; 
Global quickloopStartAddress;
Global quickloopRowsLeft;
Global quickloopReturnValue;
-) after "Definitions.i6t".


To repeat through (tab - table name) until ([the next blank] row - number) with (tc - a word value of kind K valued table column) as (val - K) begin -- end: 
(-	{-require-ctvs} 
	ct_0 = {tab};
	ct_1 = -1;
	quickloopSearchFor = {val}; 
	quickloopStartAddress = ({tab})-->(TableFindCol({tab}, {tc}, true)) + (COL_HSIZE * WORDSIZE); 
	quickloopRowsLeft = {row};
	quickloopReturnValue = -1;
	while (1) {
		@linearsearch quickloopSearchFor WORDSIZE quickloopStartAddress WORDSIZE quickloopRowsLeft 0 4 quickloopReturnValue;
		quickloopReturnValue++;
		if (quickloopReturnValue == 0) break;
		ct_1 = ct_1 + quickloopReturnValue;     ! set the chosen row for I7
		quickloopStartAddress = quickloopStartAddress + (WORDSIZE * quickloopReturnValue);  ! set start point for next iteration
		quickloopRowsLeft = quickloopRowsLeft - quickloopReturnValue;  ! decrease #/rows left to check
!-).    [ ...and comment out the auto-generated opening brace ]

[/code]


Thanks for the pointers, zarf.  Took me an hour before I remembered that tables are stored in column-major order rather than row-major, but after watching my WIP zip through a green Skein, the hours I toiled were totally worth it.  The code even ends in a winky-smiley, complete with beauty mark. 

Thanks again.

EDIT: added the "of kind K" restrictions on the parameters, added comment in the parameter to clarify the expected row#, and removed the unneeded {-zero..} macro command.  The loop assumes all filled rows are consecutive.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1455&start=0#p8892
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Understanding pronouns
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-30 08:34:16

I certainly wouldn't want a flame war. I'm hopeful that having separate fora for TADS and Inform here will encourage more positive interactions.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1459&start=0#p8893
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Online documentation for built-in extensions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-30 10:46:04

I am away from my Mac for the moment and I wanted to look up some documentation online. So I went to inform7.com and looked in Write -> Extensions. But there are no documentation/source links for the built-in extensions. So I went to Manuals. But there are no documentation links for any extensions there! Is information about the built-in extensions even available on the site?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1460&start=0#p8894
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Weird skein behavior on Mac OS 10.5
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-09-30 12:34:59

I've been having some problems with the skein in Mac OS 10.5. I wonder if it's because I'm using the Frankenstein IDE where the old app is working with the new libraries.

I saw a problem before with test commands where some individual commands were being skipped. I thought it might have something to do with the fact that I'm using Basic Screen Effects to pause the game and wait for a key at certain points. So I tried to duplicate the problem with a small script and found something even worse!

I typed the source into my usual "tmp.inform" project, ran it a couple times, then looked at the skein. What I saw had nothing to do with what I was playing! I had to trim the skein down before it started accepting new paths again.

After that, I couldn't quite duplicate the problem -- whether or not a command was generated by "test me", the output would sometimes show up as different after the pause, but then it would look okay on the next turn. I never got to the problem where any commands were actually lost.

I also had difficulties with the skein, test commands, and Simple Chat - because Simple Chat only accepts single digit option numbers as input, I assume.

Has anyone else been able to track down any weird skein/transcript behavior, or does anyone have a suggestion for other tests I could run on it? And where is the documentation for the IDE? I swear I saw it when I first looked at I7, but I can't find it now. All I have to go on is Aaron Reed's quick demo video.

Okay, here's something. I tried changing the commands within "test me" and the skein is now refusing to update again. It took 3 or 4 tries before the change registered. But sorry, I'm not sure what I did differently, switching back and forth between two different strands didn't seem to do anything, recompiling didn't do anything.. maybe it was switching to Firefox and back that finally did it?

Hmm... I bet it was because the game window was waiting for me to press SPACE.

Anyway, either I need to find some documentation on using the skein and transcript, or there are some bugs to fix... any help at all would be appreciated, because right now I feel like I'm unable to properly test my projects.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1454&start=0#p8895
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Glulx search opcodes and I7 tables
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-09-30 13:02:03

[quote="zarf"]
The I6 routine in question is TableRowCorr(), and it has a couple of variant code paths to handle the case where you're searching for a blank entry, and the case where you're searching a column of block-allocated (as opposed to scalar) values. That's too fancy to do with @linearsearch. 

If the I7 compiler were willing to split this up into several routines, and call the appropriate one based on call-specific knowledge, it could implement some of them using @linearsearch. (But then, splitting them up like that would produce faster code even *without* @linearsearch. There would be fewer "if" tests per iteration. The tradeoff is more ROM usage, which could be bad for Z-code games.)[/quote]

It would be worth it for most Glulx games, which aren't shy about using big tables.  But it basically begs for having a Tables.i6t specifically for Glulx, with slightly different to-phrases in the Standard Rules exposing them.  Since the 6E builds of Inform allow type specifications like "word value valued table column" and the like, just as my above loop does, to-phrases could differentiate between the scalar and block types invisibly.  

Blank entries aren't actually a problem.  All blank entries use a particular unlikely value for their value -- on Glulx that value is the memorable 0xDEADCE11 -- so you can safely use @linearsearch to zip right past it, as the chances of your real data just happening to have that same value are close to nil.  (And even then, a do..until loop wrapped around the opcode to ensure non-blankness solves that edge case neatly.)  

Only real snafu I see for speed is how tables are arranged in Inform.  The opcodes are created with row-major arrays in mind. Inform uses column-major ordering though, because Inform is typesafe and a single column is all of one type.  But if Tables.i6t were rewritten for Glulx speed, and put into row-major ordering, then yet more speed could be gained because -- correct me if I'm wrong -- the key ("searched for") value used in @linearsearch and such can check more than one scalar at a time. Meaning, it could check more than one column at a time.  

Has anyone tried writing such a thing?  I think Jesse or some other RAIF denizen mentioned wanting such a thing, but surely those of you more familiar with Glulx opcodes and I6 coding would've tackled this before an I7-head like me even knew such opcodes existed.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1454&start=0#p8896
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Glulx search opcodes and I7 tables
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-30 13:55:28

Searching for a blank entry is a special case in the code. If you think it can be deleted, go tell Graham :)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1461&start=0#p8897
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Gargoyle 2010.1 released
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-09-30 16:33:39

The new version of Gargoyle is out. Features include a new Mac port, new default fonts, and a new graphical launcher for Linux, plus the usual assortment of bug fixes. This release also includes the latest versions of Git and Glulxe, with support for the floating point opcodes.

A complete list of changes is available here:
<a class="postlink" href="http://code.google.com/p/garglk/wiki/Changes">http://code.google.com/p/garglk/wiki/Changes</a>

Thanks again to everyone who has submitted bug reports, sent me patches, or contributed to the discussions on the project mailing list. I've tried to include you all on the following credits page; please let me know right away if I've missed your name:
<a class="postlink" href="http://code.google.com/p/garglk/wiki/Credits">http://code.google.com/p/garglk/wiki/Credits</a>

Binaries for Windows and Mac, as well as the cross-platform source code, are now available on the project download page, located here:
<a class="postlink" href="http://code.google.com/p/garglk/downloads/list">http://code.google.com/p/garglk/downloads/list</a>

Regards,
Ben

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1445&start=10#p8898
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: MOD tracker formats in Glulx
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-09-30 23:32:41

Here's what I've written:

----------
MOD is an Amiga-originated format for music synthesized from note samples. Over the years, other formats of this type -- generally called "tracker" or "module music" formats -- have arisen. Blorb supports four: original ".MOD" files, ImpulseTracker (".IT"), FastTracker 2 Extended (".XM"), and ScreamTracker 3 (".S3M").

Because tracker-playing libraries typically handle many formats, it is most practical for Blorb to lump them all together. *Regardless of which tracker format is used,* the chunk type will be 'MOD '.

The formats are described here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/formats/fdd/fdd000126.shtml">http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/form ... 0126.shtml</a>

This spec does not attempt to distinguish variations within the four supported formats. (".MOD" is particularly ill-defined, although I have saved comments on the original MOD format at <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/blorb/mod-spec.txt">http://eblong.com/zarf/blorb/mod-spec.txt</a>.) Instead, we recommend that C implementations embed libmodplug, a public-domain tracker-playing library. Its home page is:

<a class="postlink" href="http://modplug-xmms.sourceforge.net/">http://modplug-xmms.sourceforge.net/</a>

However, some bug fixes are included in the version packaged with Windows Glk.

(Note that it may be safer to compile libmodplug with the MODPLUG_BASIC_SUPPORT option, which eliminates many obscure tracker formats that Blorb does not support.)

Where libmodplug is not practical, implementations should use whatever tracker-playing library claims to support the four formats in question. We trust, perhaps beyond reason, that implementation differences will not lead game creators to their doom.
----------

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1463&start=0#p8901
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: When a puzzle is "cheating"
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-10-01 10:01:20

The glass maze puzzle in Sorcerer has 2 solutions- either figuring your way back out, or carful use of the resurrection spell. Some have called the 2nd use "cheating", though it seems like a valid solution. 

I was considering a puzzle somewhat similar to this. Like in Zork I, when you die, you could become a ghost and have to go around to get your body back. A vault door would be closed, with the combination inside the vault. To see it you would have to die (and thus become a spirit), go in and read the combination, and then go get your body back.

Would this be considered "cheating", or does it seem like a valid solution to a puzzle (if properly clued).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1463&start=0#p8902
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When a puzzle is "cheating"
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-10-01 10:11:25

If you can get your body back in a well-clued way within the game, it's probably fine. If you have to UNDO or RESTORE to an earlier game file, I suspect many people will feel that's cheating, because it requires you to go outside the fictional world for a solution. It's no longer tellable as a story that makes sense: "I died, then my ghost found out the combination, and then... I... uh... well the world sort of started over...".

There are a few games that break even that rule: Shrapnel and Slouching Towards Bedlam both do interesting things with making the out-of-game actions a part of the conceptual universe of the game. But you have to be willing to make your backstory pretty odd in order to support that, and it feels gimmicky unless done carefully.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1463&start=0#p8903
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When a puzzle is "cheating"
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-10-01 10:40:46

If I were writing that puzzle, I would probably randomly generate the combination [i]after[/i] the player was in the vault, to prevent a pre-bodily-death saved game from even being useful once you've gotten the combination.  But then again, if I were writing that puzzle, it'd probably be in a game that was short and Zarfian-forgiving enough that you wouldn't have a whole lot of other reasons to be doing much saved game engineering, so it might not be a good move for your particular game.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1309&start=10#p8904
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Author's Forum for 2010 IFComp
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-10-01 10:51:03

Heh. Rioshin, you forgot to exclude the author's board from the RSS feed. Hopefully little to no damage has been done by the couple of posts included in the feeds, but I've made the change to prevent it going forward. Sorry all!!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1463&start=0#p8906
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When a puzzle is "cheating"
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-10-01 11:08:01

The real question is: how do you make it clear to the player that they should put off their clear and urgent goal - getting their body back - to go walking through closed and locked doors?  As long as you do [i]that[/i], then I don't think it would be a "cheating" puzzle.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1463&start=0#p8907
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When a puzzle is "cheating"
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-01 11:14:47

I have a habit of restoring the game any time the PC dies, even if there is some implementation of an afterlife. I'm always afraid it will detract from my chances of getting a perfect score, or even worse, put the game in a more difficult or unwinnable state.

I guess I'm old school, but what I'm saying is - always make it clear that when something 'bad' happens, it's supposed to happen.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1463&start=0#p8908
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When a puzzle is "cheating"
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-10-01 11:17:54

One other consideration is that you have to ensure that the player character dies at some point. I mean, most players will try pretty hard to avoid character death most of the time, so they might not even discover the incorporeal side of the game unless you force the issue somehow.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1463&start=0#p8909
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When a puzzle is "cheating"
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-10-01 11:56:16

[i]Planescape: Torment[/i] handled player deaths fairly well in the few spots they were mandatory for game progression, like the Nameless One's Tomb. The usual penalties for death - resurrection outside the area, inventory items dropped near corpse - were set aside to cue the player that this death was different and that restores were unnecessary and counterproductive.

Also, [i]World of Warcraft[/i] had a quest in one of the dungeons that you could only obtain as a ghost. If you died in the dungeon, you were resurrected at a graveyard nearby. When you ran back for your corpse, you would pass the quest giver along the way. Completing the quest gave you the key necessary to unlock the next stage of the dungeon.

I thought it was a nifty idea in its day, but it didn't scale well with MMO inflation. More powerful characters running the dungeon would never die, so the only way to get the key was to know it was there and take a deliberate lava bath, something that goes against the grain of normal gameplay.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1309&start=10#p8910
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Author's Forum for 2010 IFComp
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-10-01 12:56:53

[quote="Merk"]Heh. Rioshin, you forgot to exclude the author's board from the RSS feed. Hopefully little to no damage has been done by the couple of posts included in the feeds, but I've made the change to prevent it going forward. Sorry all!![/quote]

That's odd; I'm definitely in the Comp but can't see any of the posts at present.  I don't see the authors' forum, just the main Comp discussion forum, and there appear to be no posts in it.

Stephen, or whomever is adding folks, could you add me too?

Matt

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1463&start=0#p8911
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When a puzzle is "cheating"
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-10-01 13:15:59

Many games of different genres have taken that concept and implemented it in various ways. For instance, in 3DR's innovative shooter [i]Prey[/i] your PC could do the so-called "Spirit Walk" after he was dead. He could also do the spirit walk during lifetime to enter a ghost-like state where he could pass impassable obstacles, such as closed doors, walls, etc. It wasn't considered cheating but a serious gameplay element.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRVsu36zybU">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRVsu36zybU</a>

In this video spirit walk in Prey is briefly demonstrated when the PC leaves his body to pass some laser tripwires in a corridor to reach a console on the other end and deactivate them. (Skip to 1:16)

Such a feature could also be implemented in an interactive fiction adventure. Why not. I think it's a good idea.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1309&start=10#p8912
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Author's Forum for 2010 IFComp
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2010-10-01 14:53:38

Heh. So far, it's just me and one other person saying "hey, everybody, I've entered a game". I doubt that can be interpreted as "talking about the games illegally" [emote];)[/emote] So no harm done, I'd say.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1463&start=0#p8913
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When a puzzle is "cheating"
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-10-01 15:01:13

Why would the combination be inside the vault?  Isn't that terribly counterproductive?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1463&start=0#p8914
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When a puzzle is "cheating"
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-10-01 18:10:27

[quote="gravel"]Why would the combination be inside the vault?  Isn't that terribly counterproductive?[/quote]

Maybe it's a failsafe in case someone gets locked in?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1309&start=10#p8916
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Author's Forum for 2010 IFComp
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2010-10-01 21:37:52

Matt: done!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1464&start=0#p8917
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: The 2010 IF Competition has begun!
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2010-10-01 21:39:17

The annual Interactive Fiction Competition has begun. We've got 25 games for you to try.

Run, do not walk, to <a class="postlink" href="http://ifcomp.org/">http://ifcomp.org/</a> to grab the games and get voting!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1463&start=10#p8918
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When a puzzle is "cheating"
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-01 22:21:40

There's a chapter on safecracking in "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman." The details are hazy to me now, but I seem to remember that he was able to figure out at least one number of the combination by looking at the lock when the door was open. Certainly being able to look inside the [i]lock[/i] would help you if you knew what to look for.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1464&start=0#p8919
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The 2010 IF Competition has begun!
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-10-01 22:36:33

Yey! [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

And thanks for working on the IFComp year after year!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1309&start=10#p8921
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Author's Forum for 2010 IFComp
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-10-01 23:31:44

Much obliged; thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1464&start=0#p8922
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The 2010 IF Competition has begun!
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-10-01 23:46:46

See, I'll be on an 8-hour bus ride on Wednesday (and Megabus has power outlets), so if I can strengthen my resolve to leave the entries alone until then...

Nah, who am I kidding?  I'll have my hands all over them by tomorrow.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1464&start=0#p8923
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The 2010 IF Competition has begun!
User: George / DateTime: 2010-10-02 00:02:07

Awesome! Many thanks Sargent [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1465&start=0#p8924
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Funny responses from this year's games
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-10-02 01:10:41

I ran into a response that had me rolling on the floor laughing, probably because I'm just in a perverse mood... but thought I would start this thread for people to share the clever or (in this case) unintentionally funny responses they discover. Please remember appropriate spoiler warnings and tags.

So, this is from the second room of Divis Mortis:
[spoiler]> x my head
Pieces of skull that have been scattered across the floor of the Radiation Controls room.[/spoiler]

Must just be weird default handling (or lack of handling) of pronouns in Inform... I ran into the same thing (albeit with less humorous results) while beta testing Gris et Jaune.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1465&start=0#p8925
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Funny responses from this year's games
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2010-10-02 03:12:16

~~I have temporarily removed this post until I get clarification from an ifcomp admin on rules~~

Will put it back soon hopefully if it does not break any rules... (sorry!)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1464&start=0#p8928
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The 2010 IF Competition has begun!
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2010-10-02 08:32:21

And thanks to Dan Shiovitz and Mark Musante, whose work on the competition website made this year's task even easier for me.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1463&start=10#p8935
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When a puzzle is "cheating"
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-10-02 11:21:53

Or someone had the combination written down, entered the vault, and was somehow struck down and locked in? Or just dropped it inside.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1468&start=0#p8937
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Wondering: what commands you always try?
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2010-10-02 12:25:06

Do you have a set of commands you always try, regardless of the story, just to see if the writer thought of that? What are they? What memorable responses did you get from those?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1470&start=0#p8946
Forum: Feedback / Subject: "View new posts" issue
User: TheTraveler / DateTime: 2010-10-02 14:55:21

Hmm, just recently, today as a matter of fact, I find that clicking "View new posts" link simply generates a page that tells me there are no new posts. Viewing the main forum page shows the appropriate "new post" icons next to there respective sections in which there are indeed, new posts.

Something broken? Anyone else experiencing this?

Cheers.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1470&start=0#p8947
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "View new posts" issue
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2010-10-02 14:59:48

I've just found your post via the "new posts" page, so everything is fine at this side.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1470&start=0#p8948
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "View new posts" issue
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-10-02 15:00:17

"View unread posts" will show you the ones marked as not read yet. "New posts" I think applies some time criterion instead. (I don't find that as useful, so I rarely use it myself.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1470&start=0#p8950
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "View new posts" issue
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2010-10-02 15:17:32

I think "New Posts" applies to the ones published since the last time you've logged in. If you logon and login quickly, you'll notice the folder becoming empty. It never seemed to me that it has any sort of timer, based on the two or three pages of new posts I get everytime I go offline for a week or two.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1471&start=0#p8953
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Anyone Need a Writer?
User: cunctator / DateTime: 2010-10-02 16:09:39

Hi, 

As some of you have seen, I have spent the last four months or so searching for a programmer. I did so, successfully, and was able to finish a game in time for IFComp.  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote] 

I loved the experience, and I'd totally want to do it again for next year. Also, everyone here just seems to be so nice and welcoming.

So, if anyone has an idea that needs fleshing out, or someone to write out all the text, I'm ready. I'm open to any genre, and any difficulty level. I don't have much experience in complicated puzzles, but I can learn. 

Thank you.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1470&start=0#p8954
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "View new posts" issue
User: TheTraveler / DateTime: 2010-10-02 16:27:03

Thanks ... well, gee, this is strange. Er, ummm, now it's working for me again... <sigh> 

Ah, I remember doing a disk clean up right before coming back to these forums. Probably another "lost my cookies incident" ....

Cheers.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1468&start=0#p8955
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Wondering: what commands you always try?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-10-02 16:28:16

Curious question, actually. I often start the game with "look" (just to see if the main description changes - to see if there was anything that was to be shown only the first time), "x me", and "i". Before that, I often try about, help, info, hint, instructions. Follow-ups might be scream, shout, jump. I sometimes try swearing just to see what the game says.

Unless the game has me really hooked from the word go. In which case I do none of the above, unless probably "x me" and "i", because I'm so interested in exploring. I think I recall Anchorhead, Babel, Beyond and Photopia - among others, of course - striking me that way. Games which start with the PC just standing there, with nothing to go on (which usually precludes a scavenger hunt, or puzzlefest, though of course no always), are begging for me to type whatever pops into my head, just to see how it reacts.

Needless to say, if "x me" comes back with "As good-looking as ever", that might tell me more than I wanted to know about the game I've just started playing.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1473&start=0#p8962
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: [SOLVED] Can't get Leadlight to work
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2010-10-02 20:22:07

I'm on a Windows Vista computer. I first tried running the ActiveGS standalone application. It seemed to work fine until it got time for me to actually enter my first command. I could type whatever I wanted, but hitting the enter key does nothing, so the game wouldn't progress. So I tried following the instructions for playing online found on the website for the game, installing the ActiveGS plugin for Firefox. And I get exactly the same behavior. It's as if every key is understood except the enter key.

Has anyone else seen this issue? And has anyone actually been able to play it? I'm also going to contact the author and see what he says.

-Kevin

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1473&start=0#p8963
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Can't get Leadlight to work
User: George / DateTime: 2010-10-02 20:46:26

The desktop version works perfectly for me on XP. Is there a way to run the .exe on Vista with compatibility enabled perhaps?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1473&start=0#p8964
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Can't get Leadlight to work
User: Michael Martin / DateTime: 2010-10-02 20:56:42

This ran for me on Win7, but I had to copy it from where the Installer put it to my Desktop, because Program Files (x86) was "write-protected" from the point of view of the emulator.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1473&start=0#p8965
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Can't get Leadlight to work
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2010-10-02 22:28:45

Tried running it in compatibility mode for XP, and still got the same behavior. Same for all the other compatibility modes.

Also tried running it from the Desktop instead of the Program Files directory where it was installed. Still the same behavior.

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1473&start=0#p8966
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Can't get Leadlight to work
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2010-10-02 22:32:45

Also tried running as administrator, on the desktop, in compatibility mode. Still nothing. The program appears to recognize every key except the enter key.

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1465&start=0#p8967
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Funny responses from this year's games
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-10-02 23:31:44

From the studio in The 12:54 to Asgard:
[spoiler]> x leak
The roof’s been leaking every rainstorm since some numbnuts had the bright idea of having a 
party on the studio roof. You told them not to do it, and they did it anyway. You told them to 
have the roof fixed, and they didn’t. Now it’s your ass, because the roof is leaking so bad 
tonight that it’s blowing out the lighting. 

> take leak
You took a leak before you left the house tonight.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1473&start=0#p8971
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Can't get Leadlight to work
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2010-10-03 01:19:57

Curious...

Have you tried [Shift]+Enter  or [Ctrl]+Enter instead to see if this works?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1473&start=0#p8985
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Can't get Leadlight to work
User: msww / DateTime: 2010-10-03 07:04:43

Does your keyboard have multiple enter keys? I find (using a Windows 7 laptop) that the key at the right of the main keyboard, but to the left of the keypad, behaves as I would expect, while the key on the keypad behaves as you have described.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1473&start=0#p8987
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Can't get Leadlight to work
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2010-10-03 07:26:44

I had tried the various modifier keys plus enter, and no go. And I was using the normal enter key, but pressing either that or the keypad enter key produces the same results.

I heard back from the author, and he suggested that I use the older Apple IIe emulator, AppleWin. The directions are here: <a class="postlink" href="http://leadlightgame.com/faq/faq.html#OLDPC">http://leadlightgame.com/faq/faq.html#OLDPC</a>. It involves downloading the AppleWin emulator and then also the 2-disk version of the game. And now the enter key works for me, so I can play the game.

Thanks for the suggestions, all.

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1483&start=0#p8994
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: R (Pron: Arrr...) is not just for Windows :)
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2010-10-03 11:23:23

Hi judges et al,  [emote]:D[/emote] 

Just a quick heads up for those who have not found out already as I am getting one or two emails through.

The game R (Pron: Arrr...) is not just for Windows as labelled but can be played on lots of operatings systems and gadgets with a "Scott Adams Grand Adventure" (SAGA) interpreter.

Free SAGA intepreters are available from the net ... here is a good starting place ...

[url]http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXscott-adamsXinterpretersXscottfree.html[/url]

All you need to do if Windows is not your cup of tea is to feed the interpreter of your choice the R.DAT file in the IF2010 package.

Cheers

Steve

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=140#p8995
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2010-10-03 13:36:42

Hi,

My name is Steve, aka therealeasterbunny

Brought up from a kid on a diet of Teletype ASR-33, Commodore PET, VIC 20 and Scott Adams adventures.

Now 40, I have moved on to a diet of, well, Teletype ASR-33, Commodore PET, VIC 20 and Scott Adams Adventures.

Favourite game of all time is "Nightmare Park", closely followed by simple two word parser text adventures [emote]:)[/emote]

Currently dodging university by putting the finishing touches to an Adventure Game Creator which makes games in the old classic Scott Adams adventure format. (Published to my website shortly - free to use).

I like the brevity this format offers for excellent gameplay. 

Kindalike speed-adventuring these days I suppose [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1465&start=0#p8996
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Funny responses from this year's games
User: Silas Greenback / DateTime: 2010-10-03 13:37:55

[quote="bcressey"]From the studio in The 12:54 to Asgard:
[spoiler]> x leak
The roof’s been leaking every rainstorm since some numbnuts had the bright idea of having a 
party on the studio roof. You told them not to do it, and they did it anyway. You told them to 
have the roof fixed, and they didn’t. Now it’s your ass, because the roof is leaking so bad 
tonight that it’s blowing out the lighting. 

> take leak
You took a leak before you left the house tonight.[/spoiler][/quote]

Looks like you beat me to it. That was a good one.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1484&start=0#p8999
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Parchment usage graph
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-10-03 19:14:21

[attachment=0]proxy-comp-usage.png[/attachment]

This is the effect of the comp on Parchment's proxy! We're currently at 2.5 requests a minute. But we can handle 5 times as much, so keep inviting everyone to play the comp online!

(I'm not sure why the last part is darker... I think the further you go back in time the less detailed the stats are. They must smooth it out more.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1486&start=0#p9002
Forum: Competitions / Subject: The Game The Sons of the Cherry Was Left Out of IFComp
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2010-10-03 20:43:14

I left the web-based game The Sons of the Cherry out of the original competition list. Please be sure to play it and rate it. It can be played at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.choiceofgames.com/user-contributed/sons-of-the-cherry/">http://www.choiceofgames.com/user-contr ... he-cherry/</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1468&start=0#p9003
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Wondering: what commands you always try?
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-10-04 00:23:32

I don't [i]always[/i] think of it, but most of the time I try a few commands that are inside jokes in the IF community... xyzzy, plugh, and if I find anything that resembles a large pile of objects, I try counting to see if there are 69,105 of them.

Like Peter, I always try 'x me' and 'i' as two of the first commands each game.

When bored or while trying to think of the solution to a puzzle, my fingers sometimes randomly type sing, jump, or various swear words.

Edit: I forgot to mention the meta-commands I always try: credits, about, info, menu, help, hint, intro[duction]... I feel like there are one or two others, but I don't remember them right now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1463&start=10#p9021
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When a puzzle is "cheating"
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-10-04 10:02:32

The idea was that you would have a spirit body and could fix your regular body, rather than using a save/restore trick, which I agree would be cheating in that case.

As far as being inside the vault, the owner of the vault would have had the conversation memorized and not need the written down combination, but all his paperwork and notes would be inside the vault, amongst which would be the invoice for the vault itself, which included the combination scribbled on it. 

The puzzle of course, as people mentioned, is that people don't want to die. In Zork you can become a ghost, but it's useless to you and the puzzle is getting back your body. In this, the counter-intuitive puzzle is that have to die. Though it would be clued in game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1410&start=0#p9029
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: [Boston] People's Republic of IF Meetup, Monday, Septemb
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-04 12:21:23

This stuff is really interesting — I watched part of the stream of the playing of Zork at your first meeting. It makes me wish I lived in Boston, or that there were a similar group here in Toronto.

What we do have in Toronto is the Hand Eye Society bringing together indie game devs of all kinds, and I have found it a really exciting scene. Retro graphics are pretty much the de facto rule, and the thought keeps running through my mind, 'If these people get so excited about blocky graphics with great gameplay, how much of a leap would it be to make a subniche for IF in this society?'

Of course, the society's founder, Jim Munroe, is no stranger to IF. So if he hasn't found a way, I also wonder if there just isn't a good way to make IF social. (Or maybe there aren't yet enough devs of this type in Toronto?) Anyway, I keep trying to think of ways to give an IF session a social element that will suck spectators more deeply into the game. Reading is a personal experience, I know, but performing isn't, and perhaps having an announcer or something would work, but I'm still mulling this over. Maybe there are other creative approaches that haven't occurred to me.

There's just got to be a way to parlay all of this retro gaming social excitement in Toronto into getting more people investigating IF.

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1486&start=0#p9031
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Game The Sons of the Cherry Was Left Out of IFComp
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-10-04 12:56:13

This link is working for me, but the one from the IF Comp page isn't.  I'm not sure why (public computer, slow - could be any number of reasons).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1490&start=0#p9032
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Quixe and IFComp games
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-04 14:10:35

I've gotten a couple of questions about games not running in Quixe. I just ran through all of the Glulx games -- just a couple moves in each -- to test them.

Results: All work except The Blind House (goes into a spin-loop after the first conversation menu) and Following A Star (exits immediately with an error).

I haven't tried to analyze either game. But I also tried all the games in Glulxe with GlkTerm. This is a terminal-window display library which, like Quixe, has no graphics capability. I got the same results -- all the games worked except those two, which had the same errors.

This leads me to believe that both games are failing to allow for the possibility of graphic windows not being available. That is, these are either game bugs or extension bugs, not interpreter bugs. (Blind House uses Flexible Windows 9; Star is an I6 game and I don't know what the code is like.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1483&start=0#p9033
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: R (Pron: Arrr...) is not just for Windows :)
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-04 15:18:28

I didn't notice any OS X binaries in that list - the only one that seems to be for Mac is 68k, not Intel.

I might be accused of laziness for not compiling one of the other ones, but I'm not sure everyone judging the games could say the same. Anyway, I [i]am[/i] lazy (thankfully, I'm not judging).

This link claims to have a solution, though not a simple one. Unfortunately, it's not loading for me right now:

<a class="postlink" href="http://archive.macfixitforums.com/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/201191/site_id/1#import">http://archive.macfixitforums.com/ubbth ... d/1#import</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1410&start=0#p9037
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: [Boston] People's Republic of IF Meetup, Monday, Septemb
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2010-10-04 17:27:09

Well, Jim has a lot of things going on that aren't IF, so just because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it can't.

Here's how we ran our 2nd playing group, where we played Lost Pig:
- Have a room with a projector and a (black|white)board.
- Have a signup sheet for readers and interactors.
- Get a volunteer to map.
- Have one person interact while the whole group makes suggestions for what to do.
- Have the reader read everything that happens.
- Occasionally switch to a new reader and a new interactor.

It worked pretty well for us. It also helped that we had a decent crowd, maybe around 2 dozen. It was a pretty social and fun time. I would think you could do something similar. Either start with something old-school like we did with Zork, or go ahead and start with something new. I'll bet having Everybody Dies there would get some local interest, and once people know what's going on, you could solicit suggestions for other things to play.

Feel free to join the PR-IF mailing list (<a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/boston-if">http://groups.google.com/group/boston-if</a>) and ask for other suggestions for trying to get stuff going.

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1483&start=0#p9038
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: R (Pron: Arrr...) is not just for Windows :)
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-04 18:30:26

It's not loading for me, either.

I have been waiting for a SAGA interpreter for OS X quite a while now, myself.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1410&start=0#p9041
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: [Boston] People's Republic of IF Meetup, Monday, Septemb
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-04 18:49:44

Thanks for the rundown, Kevin!

I'm also wondering if some kind of meta-game can help keep the crowd a bit stoked through the inevitable repetitive descriptions. Sort of drinking-game like, so that if you get the same description twice, you have to give up your seat at the keyboard or something -- maybe the reader changes as well, so that you don't hear the same thing again read by the same voice.

The goal of avoiding repetitious description to keep your seat at the keyboard (which I guess makes you arbiter of all the shouted suggestions) seems to me to run parallel to the successful solving of pretty much every game I can think of. Repetitious messages = failure, in every case I can think of, or at least enough cases. And it creates an environment where chair-swapping increases as success in the game decreases; this physical activity might fight the tendency for spectators to grow into lumps when an impasse is reached, and then eventually keel over. 8)

Anyway just a crazy idea that I thought of right this second. I'm likely to have more of them. Maybe I should test this stuff out with a personal group of friends, first.

That's, if I had any personal Toronto friends still into IF. I used to, but the last holdouts besides myself finally lost interest in the last decade. Actually, maybe if I can think of an 'IF party' that can attract *them* back into playing, I'll be onto something.

Paul.

Edited to add: Perhaps a three-strikes-and-you're-out approach would work even better for repetitious responses.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1483&start=0#p9042
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: R (Pron: Arrr...) is not just for Windows :)
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-10-04 19:05:31

[quote="Laroquod"]I have been waiting for a SAGA interpreter for OS X quite a while now, myself.[/quote]

It looks like it should be straightforward to port ScottFree to Glk, and from there it's a short step to Gargoyle.

No promises that I will get to this during the competition, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1410&start=0#p9045
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: [Boston] People's Republic of IF Meetup, Monday, Septemb
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-04 20:27:52

Our readers quickly (and informally) settled on the notion of simply skipping repetitive responses. They're an inevitable part of attacking puzzles, but the audience doesn't mind skimming over them if an approach didn't work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1410&start=0#p9046
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: [Boston] People's Republic of IF Meetup, Monday, Septemb
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-04 20:33:00

Or that. 8)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1490&start=0#p9047
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Quixe and IFComp games
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-10-04 20:50:01

Both games are trying to open a graphics window at the crash points you mention, so that's the issue. Both of them should probably be taken off the play-online list—the performance might affect voting.

Blind House is screwy in Gargoyle (newest version) on the Mac--nothing prints at the beginning of the game (after the intro screen), but you can eventually get to the point where you can enter line input, after which text prints normally. I wonder if output is going into an alternate stream or something?

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1483&start=0#p9048
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: R (Pron: Arrr...) is not just for Windows :)
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-04 21:22:34

[quote="bcressey"][quote="Laroquod"]I have been waiting for a SAGA interpreter for OS X quite a while now, myself.[/quote]

It looks like it should be straightforward to port ScottFree to Glk, and from there it's a short step to Gargoyle.

No promises that I will get to this during the competition, though.[/quote]

To have somebody decide to apply themselves to this problem is an amazing enough reply to that remark that I'd be a fool to question the timetable. 8)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1490&start=0#p9050
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Quixe and IFComp games
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-10-04 23:22:22

Played around a bit more and found that you can get the opening text to appear in Blind House by changing the window size. Zoom sends an arrange event independent of the player (WinGlulxe/WinGit may do the same, it's been a few months since I was looking at this stuff) when the first input loop runs in a given window configuration. Gargoyle does not. So it's probably the case that the initial text and status line text in Blind House require an arrange event to print. I'm not sure why, perhaps something to do with the char input loops that start the game. In any case, this is what I'm guessing is behind the need to send an arrange event in Gargoyle (i.e., resize the window) before the text becomes visible.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1483&start=0#p9058
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: R (Pron: Arrr...) is not just for Windows :)
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-05 09:10:26

Very well said.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1483&start=0#p9059
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: R (Pron: Arrr...) is not just for Windows :)
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-10-05 09:14:58

[quote="therealeasterbunny"]All you need to do if Windows is not your cup of tea is to feed the interpreter of your choice the R.DAT file in the IF2010 package.[/quote]

You know, I'm glad you entered a Windows game in the competition. Since I wasn't contributing any Windows games of mine this year I started to wonder if anyone else would do it. I was not disappointed. So thanks for your contribution and keeping Windows games alive!

If you like I can write a review for your game...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1483&start=0#p9076
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: R (Pron: Arrr...) is not just for Windows :)
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-10-05 12:33:34

[quote="Retro"]If you like I can write a review for your game...[/quote]

Actually I wanted to say that I do [i]NOT[/i] review any IFComp games but fill in [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/0c66b07e07ba227e#]Conrad's IFComp surveys[/url] instead. Call it lazy. We call it a new style of feedback. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1490&start=0#p9081
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Quixe and IFComp games
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-05 13:23:41

The initial text in Blind House *did* appear, on both interpreters I tested. The problem happened after the first dialogue interaction.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1490&start=0#p9082
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Quixe and IFComp games
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-10-05 13:35:32

The crash with Quixe is due to the game opening a graphics window immediately after the first dialogue response. The other issue, which really doesn't belong in this thread (but hey), is that on Gargoyle (most recent Mac version), you have to resize the window to get text to appear; I suspect that this is due to odd logic involving arrange events, but may be due to something else. Zoom and some other interpreters send bogus arrange events, which might explain why the text displays on those interpreters and not on Gargoyle. Or it might not...

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1490&start=0#p9089
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Quixe and IFComp games
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-05 15:26:27

Right, sorry, I see what you're saying.

It must be more complicated than that, though. I can get as far as the dialogue menu in CheapGlk, which never sends arrange events at all.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1490&start=0#p9090
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Quixe and IFComp games
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-10-05 15:41:48

Yes, if CheapGlk doesn't send arrange events then the problem must lie elsewhere... Ben, have you tried this game in Gargoyle?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1490&start=0#p9091
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Quixe and IFComp games
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2010-10-05 15:52:10

I've now removed the "Play online" links from those two games. I've also re-jiggered it so the web games now have online play links.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1464&start=0#p9094
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The 2010 IF Competition has begun!
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-10-05 16:38:07

I have been reading the game reviews of this year's competition entries linked to from the Planet Interactive blog, and it has inspired me to write a few reviews of my own. My question is, is it cool to post those reviews here? I don't see anyone else doing that so I'm thinking it might not be kosher, even though based on the sub-forum's description, it seems like it would be.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1483&start=0#p9098
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: R (Pron: Arrr...) is not just for Windows :)
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2010-10-05 17:34:51

[quote="Retro"]So thanks for your contribution and keeping Windows games alive![/quote]
This is hilarious.  [emote]:geek:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1464&start=0#p9099
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The 2010 IF Competition has begun!
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2010-10-05 17:36:05

Yes, that has happened before -- feel free to make a topic here with your reviews. The best thing is probably to put them all in one topic, use a new message for each game, and put your entrie reviews between spoiler tags.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1464&start=0#p9100
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The 2010 IF Competition has begun!
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-10-05 17:50:42

Victor - Thanks for the format suggestion; I was about to start writing up some reviews myself and wasn't quite sure how best to post them. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1483&start=0#p9101
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: R (Pron: Arrr...) is not just for Windows :)
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-10-05 18:43:38

I can't tell if he's just joking or not [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1483&start=10#p9102
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: R (Pron: Arrr...) is not just for Windows :)
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-10-05 19:19:20

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="Retro"]So thanks for your contribution and keeping Windows games alive![/quote]
This is hilarious.  [emote]:geek:[/emote][/quote]

No, it's actually sad. Very very sad.

I mean it's not like I'd have any doubts about Windows games rocking the industry for the next 10 years. Everyone who knows me, knows that I don't really give a [enter swear word here] about Mac stuff. A billion Windows users don't care either. Microsoft kicks penguin ass anytime! But after those two years when I look at the IFComp from a non-involved perspective, so to speak, I begin to wonder if this is no more than a Mac games exhibition or something. A big foul apple (no pun intended). Interactive Fiction games running in Windows are definately under-represented in the comp! And that's no joke. But yeh yeh, keep the penguins calling us hilarious. You don't care about our shit. We don't care about yours. Personally I refuse to play or review any interactive fiction game which has not "Windows" written on it.

And if you start to cry like a baby now and think I'm beyond the line here then go and read this:
[url=http://gamesjournal.wordpress.com/2010/10/03/if-comp-10-r-non-review/]Two IFComp haters making lame fun of Windows games[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1483&start=10#p9103
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: R (Pron: Arrr...) is not just for Windows :)
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-10-05 19:21:43

[quote="RealNC"]I can't tell if he's just joking or not [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote][/quote]

That is what makes me so interesting, doesn't it. You never know if I make fun of the penguins and nerds like you.  [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1490&start=0#p9104
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Quixe and IFComp games
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-10-05 19:28:21

[quote="ektemple"]Yes, if CheapGlk doesn't send arrange events then the problem must lie elsewhere... Ben, have you tried this game in Gargoyle?[/quote]

Only as far as replicating your experience.

If you open the Help menu before starting the game, then everything seems to work perfectly. In fact if you press any key other than space at the first menu, to trigger a second iteration of the loop, then everything is fine.

I don't know what to make of that. I will look into it more this evening.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1483&start=10#p9106
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: R (Pron: Arrr...) is not just for Windows :)
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-10-05 19:29:46

I don't get your point though. There's one Windows game, [i]and no Mac or Linux games at all[/i].

Unless you mean that you prefer games that require Windows and should not run on other platforms. If that's the case, then I have trouble understanding the reason why this would be a good thing.


PS:
Windows is superior to everything else, but this doesn't have anything to do with being able to play the games on other platforms too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1483&start=10#p9107
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: R (Pron: Arrr...) is not just for Windows :)
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-10-05 19:40:47

[quote="RealNC"]Unless you mean that you prefer games that require Windows and should not run on other platforms. If that's the case, then I have trouble understanding the reason why this would be a good thing.[/quote]

Games running on multiple platforms are not a bad thing. I agree. But bashing a game and not reviewing it, just because it is designed for Windows only, is what I have trouble understanding.

[quote]Windows is superior to everything else, but this doesn't have anything to do with being able to play the games on other platforms too.[/quote]

Windows is cool, but it's certainly not superior. Every Windows user, not just me, will tell you that. The good news is though: Windows gets better. After XP came Vista which wasn't that bad. After Vista came Windows 7 which is a lot better. But still Windows is WIP and it needs more improvement.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1483&start=10#p9108
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: R (Pron: Arrr...) is not just for Windows :)
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-10-05 20:05:46

I won't/can't get drawn into the Windows vs. Macs vs. Linux debate -- been down that road too many times over the past umpteen years -- BUT ...

... it seems to me (what little I've poked around) that the IF community is already small enough without drawing additional lines in the sand regarding operating systems. The main reason I began playing with Inform is because Z-Code runs in a browser via Parchment, which seems to be essentially platform independent. Getting people to play IF is already a big enough hurdle in and of itself. Why make it even more difficult by having players have to install one (or more) applications to play your game?

Personally, I like the idea of coding a game on my PC and then trying it out later on my iPad. I think by lowering the "cost of admission" to a simple web link, you are greatly expanding your potential audience.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1483&start=10#p9109
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: R (Pron: Arrr...) is not just for Windows :)
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-10-05 20:12:58

(deleted by author)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1503&start=0#p9111
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Leadlight - a tech note for Vista/Win7 users
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2010-10-05 21:13:46

Hey, this is the author of Leadlight with a technical note which may be relevant for Vista/Win7 users.

I heard that one person on a Vista/Win7 computer, using the standalone offline version of the game, experienced a crash when they first tried to save the game.

Apparently the Vista/Win7 installer had put the game's disk image in a place where they did not have administrative access to it (which is necessary for the file to be allowed to edit itself - IE to save the game)

Another gentleman said the solution was simply to 'copy the directory with the emulator and the disk image over to your desktop or you'll never be able to save.'

If you are using Win7 or Vista, just type AUTO at the very first 'WHAT NOW?' prompt in the game to see if you are affected by this issue. If the command works and autosaves the game, you're fine. If it crashes instead, try the above mentioned fix.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1464&start=0#p9116
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The 2010 IF Competition has begun!
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-10-05 21:39:02

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Yes, that has happened before -- feel free to make a topic here with your reviews. The best thing is probably to put them all in one topic, use a new message for each game, and put your entrie reviews between spoiler tags.[/quote]

Thanks for the suggestion -- I will do just that!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1504&start=0#p9119
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Flack's IFComp 2010 Game Reviews
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-10-05 21:53:23

A bit of context:

I am new to the world of (modern) Interactive Fiction, not having dabbled in the genre since parsers were limited to two word commands and capitalization was optional. I am a nobody in the realm of IF and my opinion shouldn't be given much/any weight. Unfortunately, historically speaking, being both unqualified and ignorant rarely prevents me from throwing my two cents worth in on a particular topic -- this one included.

My goal over the next few weeks is to play as many of the 2010 IFComp entries as possible, commenting on each one in this thread as I play them. Those of you looking to avoid game spoilers (or poor writing in general) should probably steer clear. The Planet Interactive Fiction blog/RSS feed is rife with game reviews from experts in the field; in my reviews, I hope to capture the thoughts, feelings and perceptions from a relatively new (again) IF gamer.

And with that ... on with the reviews!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1490&start=0#p9122
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Quixe and IFComp games
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-10-05 22:17:08

It appears that after the menu is printed, glk_set_window is called with a null parameter. This sets the current output stream to null, and causes all further glk_put_char calls to silently do nothing until the next glk_set_window call.

Doesn't really seem like a library issue, I guess.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1504&start=0#p9125
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Flack's IFComp 2010 Game Reviews
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-10-05 22:45:41

Review: The Sons of the Cherry

Right up front I should admit that I chose to play this game first because it is a ChoiceScript ("Choose Your Own Adventure") game, which I thought would be a good way to wade into this year's games. 

[spoiler]Sons of the Cherry (SotC) begins with four seemingly random questions. Not having played a ChoiceScript game before, I suspect these are used to randomly generate player stats or something. Depending on the color of shirt you are wearing, how you might react to an angry hornet, and how honestly you answer questions such as these, your gaming experience may be affected.

I should also note that the second word in this game is "loamy", which I had to look up. (I live in Oklahoma; we don't have a lot of loamy landscapes apparently.) I also encountered the words "ichorous" and "eldritch". These are not words that come up frequently in the world of computer networking, which is mostly what I read about.

In SotC you play a magician (mystical, not stage) framed for the abduction of a creepy shrieking girl with no pupils. Despite your best intentions you are arrested, only to be sprung shortly afterwards by a mysterious masked visitor (FRIEND OR FOE?). Throughout the game's roughly 15-20 minute run time you'll perform some magic(k), rescue a fellow cult member enslaved by Ben Franklin, and try to assassinate George Washington. Why this hasn't already been turned into a made-for-television docudrama, I'll never know. 

Throughout the game players are presented with two opposing choices, one of which is adventurous while the other is typically safe. On my first romp through the game I largely went with the adventurous choices (which seemed more in tune with the spirit of the game). 

The game ends rather abruptly. Seemingly just minutes after we are introduced to this alternate (OR IS IT) version of history with both good and evil practitioners of magick frolicking around the War of Independence, the game ends after your assassination attempt on George Washington fails. And I realize this is fiction and all, but seriously, who misses shooting another person [i]in a tent[/i]? My family and I went camping last summer in a tent and we all instantly knew the moment someone else farted, snored, or simply rolled over. If I had fired a gun in that tent, regardless of the direction, I would have wounded at least three people, myself included. Maybe old pistols were really, really inaccurate, or maybe George Washington hung out in a circus tent, but, wow -- take a deep breath and squeeeeeeeeeze the trigger ...

The most disappointing part of the game was, after playing it a second time, I realized that very few of my choices affected the outcome. For example when presented with the choice to fight or run away, after choosing fight, my NPC companion told me, "Nah let's just run," (I'm paraphrasing here) and so we ran anyway. Other than being able to cut out the middle third of the game and end up with a less-magical-yet-more-depressing ending, the game by and large plays the same no matter what you choose. I even lied and told it I was wearing a green shirt instead of a white one!

The feeling that I was playing a "Have an Adventure Chosen For You" culminated in a spooky scene in which I was supposed to conduct a magick ritual. When I chose not to, the game looped and informed me, "Maybe you should." When I chose not to again, the game informed me "maybe you should." I hit chose not to 10 times and finally accepted my fate and chose yes. This is like when a waiter offers you a choice between the veal and the chicken and then telling you they're all out of veal after you choose it. If my choices don't matter, why make it interactive at all?

After completing the game a second time I didn't feel like SotC was very interactive. I did enjoy the writing style and I liked the weaving of magic into historical events, but there just wasn't enough here to make me feel like I chose anything, or made a difference, or really had any fun. I would like to see a longer piece of work from this author, one in which I could learn more about these secret organizations and their motivation and have fun doing it.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1490&start=10#p9126
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Quixe and IFComp games
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-05 22:48:39

Hard to say at this point. Hopefully post-Comp we can work with the author and see what the code is doing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1483&start=10#p9128
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: R (Pron: Arrr...) is not just for Windows :)
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-10-05 22:52:06

By the way, I didn't meant to imply that I was above discussing the differences between operating systems, only that, after having had the same argument for going on two decades now (not here, of course), I've said all I can say on the topic. In my house I have XP and Windows 7 clients talking to Windows 2003 and Linux servers, syncing with and delivering content to a smattering of iPods, iPhones, and at least one iPad. 

I think some of the features that TADS and Hugo can provide are awesome ... I just wish they translated more easily into Java/Flash/HTML5(?).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=0#p9130
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: IFComp reviews by scratchm
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-10-05 23:07:25

Heh, I can't let Flack be the only one doing this. [emote]:)[/emote] 

I first played Adventure on a line printer terminal over a 300 baud modem, and hunt the wumpus on a microcomputer with a seven-segment, 10-character scrolling display, loaded from audio tape.

But aside from Zork 1, I missed most of the infocom era. Many of the classics are still on my to-play list.

Then I got back into interactive fiction around 1995 or so, and have played an average of 5-10 games a year since then. So not the most dedicated player, but fairly well versed in modern IF.  Every year I spend at least some time programming IF, but have never completed or published a story. Now I find myself out of work, disabled, with a lot of free time on my hands. So I'm playing a lot more IF and may actually make progress towards completing a game of my own this year. 

Anyway, on to the reviews. Each in a separate post, nicely wrapped in spoiler tags. I'm posting them in the same order I'm playing them:
[list]
[*]Divis Mortis[/*:m]
[*]A Quiet Evening at Home[/*:m]
[*]Gigantomania[/*:m]
[*]Mite[/*:m]
[*]Flight of the Hummingbird[/*:m]
[*]Sons of the Cherry[/*:m]
[*]The Chronicler[/*:m]
[*]Oxygen[/*:m]
[*]Heated[/*:m]
[*]The Bible Retold: The Lost Sheep[/*:m]
[*]The 12:54 to Asgard[/*:m]
[*]Death Off the Cuff[/*:m]
[*]Gris et Jaune[/*:m]
[*]Rogue of the Multiverse[/*:m]
[*]East Grove Hills[/*:m]
[*]The People's Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure Game[/*:m]
[*]The Warbler's Nest[/*:m]
[*]Leadlight[/*:m]
[*]One Eye Open[/*:m]
[*]Aotearoa[/*:m]
[*]Ninja's Fate[/*:m]
[*]The Blind House[/*:m]
[*]The Bible Retold: Following a Star[/*:m]
[*]R[/*:m]
[*]Pen and Paint[/*:m]
[*]Under, in Erebus[/*:m]
[*][b]Bonus:[/b] The Unicorn Pool (disqualified from the comp)[/*:m][/list:u]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1506&start=0#p9131
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: IFComp 2010 surveys
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-10-05 23:14:04

Conrad has surveys running for this year's ifcomp games:

<a class="postlink" href="http://onewetsneaker.wordpress.com/ifcomp10-surveys/">http://onewetsneaker.wordpress.com/ifcomp10-surveys/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1464&start=0#p9132
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The 2010 IF Competition has begun!
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-05 23:41:13

I'm new to this forum and to competitions. Why not make a thread for each game and let everyone post their reviews there?

If there's a standard for doing these things, I don't want to mess with it, I'm just curious.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1504&start=0#p9134
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Flack's IFComp 2010 Game Reviews
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-10-06 00:25:42

Review: A Quiet Evening at Home

[spoiler]This game turned me off almost immediately due to the ridiculousness of the opening "puzzle". As the game opens, you find yourself standing outside your home with a strong urge to pee. If you don't make it to your bathroom within x amount of turns, you'll pee your pants and the game ends. So before I talk about any other aspect of this game, I'm going to talk about, in depth, how dumb this is.

The first problem I have with this puzzle is, why do I not know how to get into my own house? In the real world, I enter my house the same way every single day. The game gives no explanation as to why, on this particular day, I don't know where I keep my key. Give me a lump on the head, temporary amnesia, a freaky brain injury ... SOME reason as to why I do not know where the key to my house is!

And actually, a head injury might explain the next section of the game, in which you run from room to room in search of your bathroom. I want you to imagine this in real life. You just got home from work (or school, or whatever), you need to whiz ... and so you go wandering around your kitchen in search of the toilet. It's stupid. Why do I not know where the toilet is IN MY OWN HOME. Some of the rooms in this game list possible exits, but few tell you what lies in each direction. Shouldn't I KNOW that my bedroom is to the north, or that my kitchen is to the east? It's a terrible setup. 

I'm thirty-seven years old, and let me tell you this -- I will piss off my balcony, in my driveway, into a potted plant or the kitchen sink before I pee in my own pants. Of course the game doesn't let you do any of these things, and instead you'll spend multiple turns in search of your own bathroom in your own house. I wet my pants (in the game, not real life) and had to restart three times before I found the bathroom in time. Not only do I have amnesia; I also have the world's only master bedroom without a bathroom in it. Damn my luck.

Without any real direction, it becomes apparent as you begin to find things throughout the house that you are supposed to (A) fix yourself dinner and (B) take out the garbage. I don't even know how to describe this part of the game, other than to say that fixing a bowl of soup in the game is approximately (using Calculus) 8,302,305,590 times harder in the game than in real life. My eight-year-old son can microwave his own dinner but I'll be damned if I could fix a bowl of soup for myself in this game. The final piece of the puzzle I was missing -- the can opener -- can only be discovered if you (A) solve a puzzle involving your pet hamster and (B) wait for him to randomly wander into a room, at which point the can opener appears. The equivalent of this in real life is getting dressed for work in the morning and not being able to find your shoes until you take a piece of pizza and place it in your bathroom.

Before resorting to the walk-thru, I found myself spinning my wheels on what turned out to be red herrings. For example, I wasn't supposed to eat, search, or play with the garbage -- I was supposed to take it out. In the beginning of the game you find a Netflix movie and in my living room I find a television (and later a laptop), but there never seems to put the two together and watch the movie. And before you say "watching a movie in a text adventure doesn't sound like very much fun," I just spent 500 turns to make a bowl of soup and take out the garbage ...

I could go into the lack of capital letters and some missing punctuation but those problems seem secondary in retrospect.

A Quiet Evening at Home reminded me of this old fishing game I used to have for my PC, which was 10x more complicated than real fishing and nowhere near as fun. Perhaps it reflects my overall experience with IF, but I found myself continually frustrated while playing this game, and continually disappointed in myself that I kept playing it. At no point during the game did I ever think "this is fun" or "I should recommend this to a friend". Sorry, anonymous.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=0#p9135
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Divis Mortis
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-10-06 01:04:05

[b]Divis Mortis[/b] [i]by Lynnea Dally[/i]

Spoiler-tastic review below.

[spoiler]Ok, so my first game of the comp is a zombie game, cool! I groan at the amnesia angle, but it's not as severe as it usually is so I decide to forgive it. Then I notice how hungry I am... and the headache, and how I'm covered from head to toe and can't remove my rubber gloves, white boots, or lab coat. Hmm... I wonder if I'm being set up for a "Surprise! You are a zombie!" ending. That would be slightly disappointing. 

First puzzle? Push a button. Ok then, pushed. Moving on.

[code]What you did not expect is to see are two dead bodies.[/code]

Yup, the game is starting to lose points for bad editing already. Not a great sign. But the descriptions in this room are nicely gruesome, so again I forgive.

I arm myself with the handgun and spend eight turns trying to figure out if I have any ammunition or not (the description said the chamber was empty, but it didn't say anything about the magazine). Finally I just try to shoot it and discover that it is, indeed, empty. Puzzle number two: Find ammo. Cool.

I look around again and the room description starts with
[code]You are in a computer control system.[/code]
Really? I'm really in a computer control system? I want to like this game, but it keeps making it difficult.

The periodic messages about being hungry and having a headache make me wonder again if I'm a zombie, or on my way to being a zombie. I figure my head is the only part of my body that isn't described as being covered, so I try to examine it:
[code]>x my head
Pieces of skull that have been scattered across the floor of the Radiation Controls room.
[/code]
No points lost for that one because I suspect it's an inform limitation dealing with pronouns.

Puzzle three: Swipe the badge across the badge reader. Done.

I wander out to the cafeteria, pick up a bottle of water, and get attacked by a zombie. Grabbing the closest blunt object, I smash her skull in. Neat!

[code]The now broken skillet clatters to the ground.[/code]
Well and good, except that later I notice it's still in my inventory. Grrr.

More pronoun trouble in the kitchen:
[code]>take chickpeas
Taken.

>eat them
(first taking the cabinets)
[/code]
This was salvaged by the funny response to trying to take the cabinets, which I would not have otherwise seen.

Puzzle four: Sanitize a can of chickpeas. Done.

Another hint that I might be a zombie. Ugh.

Find the staircase... Puzzle five: Get upstairs. Puzzle six: Get downstairs.

Upstairs first, that's probably where the ammo is for my gun. I need something to stand on, eh? Garbage bin: Nope. Recycle bin: Nope. Microwave: Nope. Let's check out the entry hall. Looks like this bench can be moved, but then again I'm getting a message that it can't be pushed from place to place. Then I get blindsided by a clue-stick telling me to put it in front of the sliding glass door, so I do it. Takes a couple of tries to get the syntax right though. 

The pharmacy seems to exist solely to resolve the headache, so I do that and move along to the gift shop, where I get attacked by another zombie. Cool! But the only weapon I've got is the apparently ruined skillet. Might as well give it a try, so I attack the zombie with the skillet...
[code]>attack zombie with broken skillet
You can't see any such thing.

>attack man with skillet
You can't see any such thing.
[/code]
Yep... the zombie disappeared into thin air. One moment it was there, the next... not there. Oh well.

There's an odd description bug the second time I look at the gift shop, but I ignore it and pick up a flashlight, discovering Puzzle Seven: Get the plastic crap off the flashlight. LOL! That's an excellent idea for a puzzle.

Taking inventory, I decide to lighten my load.
[code]>x skillet
A skillet torn asunder; there is blood - both clotted and dried covering the metal part.  It is rendered quite useless.

>drop it
You drop broken skillet. You hope you remember where you put it.

>get it
That's hardly portable.

>get skillet
That's hardly portable.

>l
Gift Shop
An assortment of gifts and necessities, designed to milk more money out of patients and their visiting families. The place is quiet and poorly lit, lending to a dystopian atmosphere. There are rows and rows of low shelves containing gift cards, knick-knacks, flowers and balloons.  The section containing flashlights, lamps and batteries.

You can go south to the the Entry Hall.

[/code]
The skillet must have followed the zombie, I think. Weird.

After observing the entirely awesome response to 'take balloons', I depart to check out the physical therapy room. Aha! Stepping blocks. Cool. Puzzle five: Done. Puzzle two: Done. 

The mirrors in the bathroom are completely destroyed. More evidence that I'm a zombie, I fear. I don't [i]feel[/i] like a zombie. I seem to have too much control over myself, I don't seem to shamble, there is evidence that I can think just fine. Whatever.

The medical records room provides a fair bit of backstory, and it is presented pretty nicely.

Puzzle seven: Done. I should be able to get downstairs now, I think.

Oh look, what's this?
[code]>x telephone
A plastic set, with the handset attached to the base with a long, loopy cord.  This model is slightly old.

>call 911 on phone
I only understood you as far as wanting to call.

>call phone
I only understood you as far as wanting to call.

>call
The emergency call box isn't open.
[/code]
Hmmm... where would I find an emergency call box? Off to the elevators it is, then. This bit seems like it was written in a hurry, but lays out my objectives pretty clearly. Down we go now.

While trying to figure out how to get downstairs, I drop the flashlight. When I 'look' to find it (worrying that it disappeared like the skillet) what do I find? THE SKILLET! Now that's a pretty weird bug.

I have to use a hint at this point, which reminds me that there were also lamps available in the gift shop. So I get one. The same verbs that gave me completely discouraging default responses with the flashlight work with the lamp. Could certainly have been hinted better. Puzzle six: Done.

A little poking around in the basement and a bit of conversation reveals my next several steps. Including another clue-by-four to the head regarding the gas solution. I'm a little miffed about this, because the entire justification for going down to the basement in the first place was to team up with other survivors, not to kill them with poison gas. But whatever.

Now I have to go outside, and I get stuck trying to figure out how to deal with the zombies outside the lobby (shooting them does nothing) at about the same time as my two hours are up (Yes, I play slowly). I decide to stop playing and wait for a post-comp bugfix release.[/spoiler]

Summary: I had a lot of fun, despite the bugs and other errors. I was surprised to learn that this was Lynnea's first real programming effort; it certainly needs more testing and some bug fixes, but doesn't strike me as a first attempt. I expect a fixed version to appear before long and eagerly look forward to seeing what she does for next year's competition.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=0#p9136
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: A Quiet Evening at Home
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-10-06 01:47:55

[b]A Quiet Evening at Home[/b] [i]by Anonymous[/i]

Very short spoilers.
[spoiler][list]
[*]Unlock the front door.[/*:m]
[*]Locate the bathroom.[/*:m]
[*]Explore the house.[/*:m]
[*]Exercise the hamster.[/*:m]
[*]Make a can of soup.[/*:m]
[*]Quit from boredom.[/*:m][/list:u][/spoiler]

Almost everyone who has written any IF has, at one point or another, implemented the place they live in. Once in a great while, someone is dumb enough to publish such a work. I suppose it was inevitable that one day someone would enter a "game" like that in the comp. This is that sad, sad day.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=0#p9138
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Gigantomania
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-10-06 03:57:00

[b]Gigantomania[/b] [i]by Michelle Tirto[/i]

[spoiler]I had to type 'harvest potatoes' more than a dozen times.

The writing was very good. The story had a great (if dreary) atmosphere that was well communicated. The conversations were not great, but conversations are difficult and my understanding is that this was a first effort, so that's to be expected.
 
I didn't feel as if my choices mattered much at all. But maybe that was part of the point. The story certainly had a clear creative vision, and for the most part it seems that vision was accomplished. Whether one likes the result is somewhat personal.

I couldn't finish the game. I have depression to begin with, and it was just too much of a downer. While I can't really say I [i]enjoyed[/i] it, I don't think that means the story was a bad one.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1464&start=10#p9152
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The 2010 IF Competition has begun!
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-06 10:17:13

[quote="capmikee"]I'm new to this forum and to competitions. Why not make a thread for each game and let everyone post their reviews there?[/quote]

I'm not sure why (new here, too), but there may not be enough review traffic to justify creating so many threads in anticipation of it. On the other hand, it would make the avoiding of spoilers for any particular game much more straightforward.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1504&start=0#p9153
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Flack's IFComp 2010 Game Reviews
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-06 10:20:15

[quote="Flack"]I am a nobody in the realm of IF.[/quote]

In my personal opinion there is no such thing as a "nobody" in the realm of IF. 8)

Paul, in the realm of IF.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1510&start=0#p9154
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: The Lost Sheep (fairly inconsequential bug, never mind)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-10-06 10:46:33

Playing The Lost Sheep in Parchment, I tried the following command and got the following response (extremely mild spoiler):

[spoiler]>tie daisies to stick
I only understood you as far as wanting to tie  always gives short descriptions of locations (even if you haven't been there before). fields.[/spoiler]

Does anyone know if this also happens in other interpreters, or is it a potential bug in Parchment? Not that I want to slander Parchment, but it reminds me a little of the now-fixed illegal object error.

For what it's worth, I only seem to get this response when I'm 

[spoiler]up the gnarly tree.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1483&start=10#p9155
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: R (Pron: Arrr...) is not just for Windows :)
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-10-06 10:57:52

Another hilarious Microsoft/Apple-related videos:

[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHO8l-Bd1O4]Gates vs. Jobs: SuperNews![/url]
[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJAZ0PCS8AY]Gates vs. Jobs II: SuperNews![/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1512&start=0#p9158
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 parser errors: what parts *did* the parser understand?
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2010-10-06 11:22:15

I'm hoping someone with more knowledge of Inform 7's I6 underbelly can help me out.

In the event of a parser error, is there any way to grab and refer to the parts of a player's input that the parser *did* manage to understand before it gave up? I would like to try writing parser errors that specifically refer to parts of the player's input. I'm imagining something like:

[quote][b]Bedroom[/b]
This is an ordinary bedroom. There is a bed here, clearly.

>GET UNDER THE BED
Sorry, I'm a bit confused. I understood the first part of your sentence as "get", as if you wanted to take something. But then it seems like you wanted to take something called "under the bed". You can't see anything called "under the bed" here.

>GET UP TO NO GOOD
Sorry, I'm confused. I understood the first part of your sentence as "get up", as if you wanted to exit something. But then the rest of your sentence, "to no good", doesn't make sense to me. Can you try to reword it?
[/quote]

The wording might need a bit of finesse, but hopefully you get the idea: instead of simply saying "You can't see any such thing," or "I only understood you as far as wanting to get up," the parser error message would explicitly break down the player's input into the parts that it did and didn't understand, and explain why.

But first I need to know where these "parts" get stored and how to refer to them. Any suggestions?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1510&start=0#p9160
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Lost Sheep: game or parchment bug?
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2010-10-06 11:41:37

It also happens within Gargoyle, so I'm guessing a forgotten "" thing.

[spoiler](tie daisies to stick? I would never thought of that, although I did try to give the daisies to the sheep.)[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1510&start=0#p9161
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Lost Sheep: game or parchment bug?
User: Peter / DateTime: 2010-10-06 11:52:17

I tried it in Flaxo too (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.flaxo.org/IFComp2010/LostSheep.html">http://www.flaxo.org/IFComp2010/LostSheep.html</a>) and got the same response. As lribeiro says, it's probably a forgotten "".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1512&start=0#p9162
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 parser errors: what parts *did* the parser understand
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-06 11:52:55

You might be able to grab some of it with a "rule for supplying a missing noun" (or second noun).

But I'm hoping someone here will have a better answer...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1512&start=0#p9166
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 parser errors: what parts *did* the parser understand
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-06 13:05:39

I've been wanting this change myself, but I haven't sat down to munge through the parser internals and make it happen. I'm sure it's possible.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1504&start=0#p9167
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Flack's IFComp 2010 Game Reviews
User: KateSherrod / DateTime: 2010-10-06 13:45:36

[quote="Laroquod"][quote="Flack"]I am a nobody in the realm of IF.[/quote]

In my personal opinion there is no such thing as a "nobody" in the realm of IF. 8)

Paul, in the realm of IF.[/quote]

Now now, perhaps he meant "Nobody" in the sense of the splendiferously badass Indian character played by Gary Farmer in a certain Jim Jarmusch film?

Come on, Stupid White Man...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=0#p9169
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Mite
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-10-06 13:46:58

[b]Mite[/b] [i]by Sara Dee[/i]

I had the great pleasure of playing this game with my father, sister, and ex-wife in the car on a road-trip. I read it out loud and everyone suggested commands to type. I love group IF excursions. This may have caused me to rate the game a bit higher than I otherwise would have, I'm not sure.

[spoiler]This game had me hooked from the beginning. A mysterious thief running through the fields, in a dusky hood and with an impish smile. A curious bulge.
[code]Something about it just wasn't right. And that's partly why you did what you did.[/code]What did I do? What did I do? I pause before pressing the space bar, trying to guess. Then I find out. [code]A millisecond before the caped sprinter was upon you, you stuck out your small green foot.[/code]
Well, this tells me a lot about my character. I'm fast. I'm brave. I'm small, and green. Such economy of words. I press the space bar again, eager to learn more. Then the thief swears -- in Trollish. Along with my small green foot, this is already giving me an idea of my milieu. I'm loving this game, and I haven't even seen a command prompt yet.

Soon enough I do, and a few quick commands tell me that I'm a pixie named Mite, that I have only a jewel in a sling, and that the grass here is as tall as I am. I'm not 100% sure if that means it's really tall grass or if I'm really short, but I suspect the latter. I try out some magic words, which are implemented, and not knowing if pixies traditionally have wings or not, I try to fly.[code]What do you want to fly to?[/code]Ooh, awesome! I type 'north'.[code]You are unable to.[/code]Oh. Interesting, maybe I can fly if I drop the jewel? Nope, I can't drop the jewel. Maybe I'll gain flying abilities later.

Not being able to see anything in either direction, we set off to the north. Hespa the nymph is missing her pet bug. We shall try to help. The spider doesn't like it when I attack, especially the second time. Undo. Hmm... I'll probably need a weapon. I spend several turns trying to sling the jewel at the spider, before concluding that it isn't that sort of sling. Back to the rose bush for a thorn. Neat! This time I am victorious, and I quickly cut the pet bug out of the web. Hespa is grateful and gives me a small pouch. Odd, but no doubt it will come in handy.

Back to the fork in the road, and head east. One of the tulips is unique. We try to climb it, fly to it, talk to the butterfly, shake the tulip, all to no avail. Moving on.

Ah, a dandelion this time, with all those little white seeds. This one looks splendidly shake-able, but alas that does nothing. We spend a few turns trying to navigate the marsh to the east, but it is impassible. The dandelion has leaves on the stem that look promising, but they are not takeable. We conclude that these flowers are just pretty scenery and continue on our way.

We then meet the second NPC on the shore of the pond, a snail named Snoll. He's obviously just there to tell us how to cross the pond. Hespa wasn't a very deep character either. I would have liked to see more interesting characters in this game.

We don't find the clues about how to cross the bridge (we never typed 'x bridge'), but we do independently come up with the idea of putting dirt on it. While trying various commands to carry out this plan, we see[code]>x dirt
A patch of dirt hovering over the water is the only evidence that the bridge exists.[/code]We decide that this is a bug, a scenery object that is present too early, and take it as confirmation that dirt is the key. So we spent entirely too long trying to find portable dirt. Finally, we take a look at the hints, and retrieve the pollen from the unique tulip. Discovering, along the way, the utility (or lack thereof) of the fly verb.

On the other side of the pond, we had a little difficulty with the garden gnome problem. The pushable nature of the smaller mushroom could have been clued better, especially in response to 'take'. The Alice in Wonderland references were appreciated, however.

The chipmunk guard was colorful like the other NPCs, but lacked depth, like the other NPCs.

Then we win, and the best part is that it is possibly set up for a sequel. Yay!

It was a little too short. There were a couple of minor typos in the text, and it could have used deeper interaction with at least one of the NPCs, and one of the puzzles (or puzzle chain, if you will) could have used a different or additional clue. But it was a fantastic game with great atmosphere and we all really enjoyed it. The implementation was nearly perfect as well. I haven't played enough of the games to chose a winner yet, but Mite is definitely one of the contenders.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1465&start=0#p9171
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Funny responses from this year's games
User: KateSherrod / DateTime: 2010-10-06 13:49:09

[quote="bcressey"]From the studio in The 12:54 to Asgard:
[spoiler]> x leak
The roof’s been leaking every rainstorm since some numbnuts had the bright idea of having a 
party on the studio roof. You told them not to do it, and they did it anyway. You told them to 
have the roof fixed, and they didn’t. Now it’s your ass, because the roof is leaking so bad 
tonight that it’s blowing out the lighting. 

> take leak
You took a leak before you left the house tonight.[/spoiler][/quote]

This made me laugh pretty hard as well. I guess at heart we are all twelve, which I had long expected anyway for other reasons 8)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1504&start=0#p9172
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Flack's IFComp 2010 Game Reviews
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-06 13:52:25

I have no idea to what you're referring but I'm sure it's very interesting. 8)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1504&start=0#p9175
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Flack's IFComp 2010 Game Reviews
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-06 14:06:24

[quote="Flack"]Review: A Quiet Evening at Home

[spoiler]This game turned me off almost immediately due to the ridiculousness of the opening "puzzle". As the game opens, you find yourself standing outside your home with a strong urge to pee. If you don't make it to your bathroom within x amount of turns, you'll pee your pants and the game ends. So before I talk about any other aspect of this game, I'm going to talk about, in depth, how dumb this is.

The first problem I have with this puzzle is, why do I not know how to get into my own house? In the real world, I enter my house the same way every single day. The game gives no explanation as to why, on this particular day, I don't know where I keep my key. Give me a lump on the head, temporary amnesia, a freaky brain injury ... SOME reason as to why I do not know where the key to my house is!

And actually, a head injury might explain the next section of the game, in which you run from room to room in search of your bathroom. I want you to imagine this in real life. You just got home from work (or school, or whatever), you need to whiz ... and so you go wandering around your kitchen in search of the toilet. It's stupid. Why do I not know where the toilet is IN MY OWN HOME. Some of the rooms in this game list possible exits, but few tell you what lies in each direction. Shouldn't I KNOW that my bedroom is to the north, or that my kitchen is to the east? It's a terrible setup. 

I'm thirty-seven years old, and let me tell you this -- I will piss off my balcony, in my driveway, into a potted plant or the kitchen sink before I pee in my own pants. Of course the game doesn't let you do any of these things, and instead you'll spend multiple turns in search of your own bathroom in your own house. I wet my pants (in the game, not real life) and had to restart three times before I found the bathroom in time. Not only do I have amnesia; I also have the world's only master bedroom without a bathroom in it. Damn my luck.

Without any real direction, it becomes apparent as you begin to find things throughout the house that you are supposed to (A) fix yourself dinner and (B) take out the garbage. I don't even know how to describe this part of the game, other than to say that fixing a bowl of soup in the game is approximately (using Calculus) 8,302,305,590 times harder in the game than in real life. My eight-year-old son can microwave his own dinner but I'll be damned if I could fix a bowl of soup for myself in this game. The final piece of the puzzle I was missing -- the can opener -- can only be discovered if you (A) solve a puzzle involving your pet hamster and (B) wait for him to randomly wander into a room, at which point the can opener appears. The equivalent of this in real life is getting dressed for work in the morning and not being able to find your shoes until you take a piece of pizza and place it in your bathroom.

Before resorting to the walk-thru, I found myself spinning my wheels on what turned out to be red herrings. For example, I wasn't supposed to eat, search, or play with the garbage -- I was supposed to take it out. In the beginning of the game you find a Netflix movie and in my living room I find a television (and later a laptop), but there never seems to put the two together and watch the movie. And before you say "watching a movie in a text adventure doesn't sound like very much fun," I just spent 500 turns to make a bowl of soup and take out the garbage ...

I could go into the lack of capital letters and some missing punctuation but those problems seem secondary in retrospect.

A Quiet Evening at Home reminded me of this old fishing game I used to have for my PC, which was 10x more complicated than real fishing and nowhere near as fun. Perhaps it reflects my overall experience with IF, but I found myself continually frustrated while playing this game, and continually disappointed in myself that I kept playing it. At no point during the game did I ever think "this is fun" or "I should recommend this to a friend". Sorry, anonymous.[/spoiler][/quote]

Heh heh. Wow, man, that review may well contain more text than the game itself. I agree with you on the incongruity of the game's opening puzzle. For some reason I did not have as many problems with the puzzles as you did. Perhaps because, once I realised that after the very first puzzle there was essentially no direction to the game, I just went about my life in the house like it was mine. Thus, I solved certain things before the game even prompted me to. For example...

[spoiler]First thing I did (after unsuccessfully trying to piss in the sink and then finding the bathroom -- P.S. game designers if peeing is a puzzle then peeing should be a recognised verb, that is all) is find the trash and  take it out. (I had already been in the backyard.) But I didn't complete the final step of taking it to the curb. This threw me for a loop later when the game said I should take out the trash and I was like, 'I did! Stop nagging me.' *bad childhood flashback*

As for the soup, I don't get what was so hard about it, besides opening the can. I resented the fact that it wouldn't let me actually intentionally search the place where the opener ended up being. I could only find it 'by accident'. I don't mind being prevented from doing things by my character's mood, but my character's mood at that point should have been, find that can opener at all costs, not, don't bother searching through stuff. It made no emotional sense, I'd be turning the house upside down. But I didn't spend too much time sweating that, and once it turned up by accident, the only other hitch was figuring out how to 'get' the water from the tap into the bowl. That was a pretty awkward description BTW. '(taking the water first)' -- one of those cases where the standard responses should not be relied upon.[/spoiler]

One thing I will give the game -- it makes no bones about what it is trying to achieve. Just read the title. 87 I was wiling to get into that headspace and just 'live it', and If it had been a bit more elegantly programmed, I might have enjoyed it for what 'just living it' is worth.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=0#p9178
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Quiet Evening at Home
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-06 15:16:07

[quote="scratchm"]Almost everyone who has written any IF has, at one point or another, implemented the place they live in. Once in a great while, someone is dumb enough to publish such a work. I suppose it was inevitable that one day someone would enter a "game" like that in the comp. This is that sad, sad day.[/quote]

Yeah... tho the hamster puzzle was pretty cute. I chuckled, briefly. In fact it sort of felt to me that the whole game might have been an excuse for that hamster.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1512&start=0#p9179
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 parser errors: what parts *did* the parser understand
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-06 15:23:39

It occurs to me that Smarter Parser takes a sort of iterative approach to parsing. If nothing matches the first time around, it rearranges things and puts the command through again. I wonder if there would be any benefit in having that be built into the parser?

Some reasons:

If the parser failed, it might still have matched an Understand line (or set of lines?), but some tokens would remain as unparsed snippets. Then some Smarter Parser-like rules could have a chance at fixing them before the next iteration.

I recently implemented a verb that had optional noun and topic. If one or the other was missing, it would be supplied by the game in a context-dependent way. Because some of this work had to be done by a "rule for supplying a missing noun," I had to implement some of the action separately for independent forms of the verb, because a Check rule redirecting one form to another wouldn't run until parsing was finished.

It might give the game designer better control over disambiguation. I don't really understand how disambiguation works now, though, so maybe I'm wrong.

Of course it could just end up a big hairy mess.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=0#p9180
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp reviews by scratchm
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-10-06 15:40:42

I agree, the hamster was the best part of the game. Not that it compensated for the rest of it, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1512&start=0#p9181
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 parser errors: what parts *did* the parser understand
User: ChristianB / DateTime: 2010-10-06 16:02:05

Maybe you'd like to take a look at an experimental extension "Explicit Error Messages" we've been playing around with. It seems to do something similar to what you want to achieve, I think. The responses are still limited to one word of the original input, though.

The extension requires Default Messages by Ron Newcomb. The Option "Use explicit error messages." must be activated for the extension to show effect. Please look for max_wn and ExplicitError() in the parser substitutions. There's no documentation, just a tiny example.

<a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2691966/Explicit%20Error%20Messages.i7x">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2691966/Explici ... ssages.i7x</a>

Regards,
Christian

Edit: Sorry, the changes to "Refers" in "Parser.i6t" were not included, that was why unknown verbs didn't evoke an explicit error message. I've re-uploaded the file.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1510&start=0#p9185
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Lost Sheep (fairly inconsequential bug, never mind)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-10-06 19:49:16

Thanks! Wondering how that happens.

As for what I was trying,

[spoiler]I figured that I had been prompted that sheep like daisies, and that maybe I could lure it out by sort of fishing for it with daisies attached to a stick. It didn't work, but I finished the game short a point, so perhaps the missing point has something to do with the daisies.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=0#p9186
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp reviews by scratchm
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-10-06 20:22:06

I saw the hamster, then the microwave, then immediately had a Maniac Mansion flashback ... (wait, that was a gerbil I think).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1504&start=0#p9187
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Flack's IFComp 2010 Game Reviews
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-10-06 20:32:39

In regards to "puzzle number two", I figured out what I was supposed to be doing by the items I kept finding. If I had found a carburetor, some headers, a handful of spark plugs and a bucket of bolts, eventually it would have dawned on me that I was supposed to assemble an engine too.

There was one other moment that, in retrospect, didn't make sense either:

[spoiler]How does a flashlight pop out of a futon? I own two futons and they are either L shaped couches, or flat beds. I can't imagine a flashlight popping out of either configuration ...[/spoiler]

That's nitpicking though, and I do want to say that despite the game's shortcomings, the anonymous author [i]was[/i] able to piece together a working house. I think a couple of beta testing transcripts would have brought a few of the puzzles' issues immediately to the author's attention. All of the basics of a game were there and in place, and I hope the author doesn't get discouraged by my gentle ribbing and has another go at it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1309&start=10#p9188
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Author's Forum for 2010 IFComp
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2010-10-06 22:23:46

[quote="Merk"]Heh. Rioshin, you forgot to exclude the author's board from the RSS feed. Hopefully little to no damage has been done by the couple of posts included in the feeds, but I've made the change to prevent it going forward. Sorry all!![/quote]
Oops... I completely forgot we're on RSS now... [emote]:oops:[/emote] 

I'll have to take a serious look-see to check how to do that myself someday soon...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=0#p9189
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp reviews by scratchm
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-10-06 22:57:20

My brother discovered that while it won't let you put the hamster in the microwave, it WILL let you put the hamster in the bowl, and then the bowl in the microwave. The hamster doesn't seem to mind.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1504&start=0#p9190
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Flack's IFComp 2010 Game Reviews
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-06 23:01:07

[quote="Flack"][spoiler]How does a flashlight pop out of a futon? I own two futons and they are either L shaped couches, or flat beds. I can't imagine a flashlight popping out of either configuration ...[/spoiler][/quote]

[spoiler]There are several different types of futons that fold different ways the L-shaped ones are only one way. There are some that fold into an S-shape (In fact, I'm sitting on one like that right now), and others apparently that just roll up, though I didn't really know about those roll-up ones myself until earlier today. Point is, you can lose objects inside those other types and I assume the author had one of those in mind.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=0#p9191
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp reviews by scratchm
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-06 23:04:10

LOL!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1504&start=0#p9192
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Flack's IFComp 2010 Game Reviews
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-10-06 23:44:35

Review: Heated

[spoiler]Within the first few seconds of playing Heated I found something I liked, and something I didn't. I liked the fact that the game presented my goals to me right up front ("You need to show up early, look sharp and be ready to get your report in before the end of the day.") What I didn't like was, the first sentence of the game was actually a run-on sentence, telling me that (in what seems to be a theme so far) this game wasn't very thoroughly proofread. Normally I wouldn't be so picky, but these are [i]text[/i] adventures, and this is a competition. On with the game.

The goal of Heated is to get to work (a) on time and (b) not completely pissed off. Your anger (er, "heat") is tracked throughout the game. In two of the three games I've played so far this year, I have found myself wandering around my own home. This must be a common theme for new IF authors; if I program and submit a game next year, I will definitely make sure it takes place in my house. Unlike in "A Quiet Evening at Home", your house in Heated is logically laid out and easy to navigate, although there were at least three areas of the backyard with no items and nothing to do. 

Although the writing was decent and some of the object descriptions were entertaining, I got distracted counting "its vs. it's" and "your vs. you're" errors. And then, half a dozen moves into the game, I got this response while examining my closet:

[i]Your closet is a finely aged nook in the wall.  It has two magnificent balsa-wood sliding doors  Though you're sure there was an iron in here too, at one point anyway.that are mercifully closed.[/i]

Yikes.

The best advice the game offers you up front is "Save often!", and it's not kidding; waste too much time wandering around your house, chew the gum you found at the wrong time (I incorrectly tried to freshen my breath with it since I don't seem to own a toothbrush or any toothpaste ...) or get too "heated" and it's game over. The good news is, after three or four attempts and without looking at the built-in hints I was able to win the game. Once you figure out the proper order in which to do things before you leave your house, you can run through the entire entry in less than two minutes.

Heated contains quite a bit of "oddness", and I continually received frustrating responses from the game -- like not being close enough to my alarm clock to smash it while lying in bed. ("You cannot reach it from here.") Here are a few other "odd" responses I got:

>x room
Without having visited that yet you can't really piece together a solid description.

your bathroom
It isn't in the best shape, but it isn't condemned either (mostly because as far as the city is concerned, this room doesn't even exist).   It has the normal bathroom fixtures; a shower, a counter with a sink and mirror, and toilet.  To the east is your bedroom.
>take off clothes
That's supposed to be done in the comfort of your own home.

>use bathroom
Which do you mean, the bathroom counter, the bathroom sink, the bathroom mirror, or your bathroom?
>use sink
[The word "USE" is too vague ...]
>use bathroom sink
[The word "USE" is too vague ...]
>wash hands
That isn't here.
>use shower
[The word "USE" is too vague ...]
>turn on shower
That's not something you can switch.

front lawn
An unmanicured and patchy lawn leads up to the front of your house.  Your driveway sits just to the east.
>examine house
There is more than one room that fits that description.

The author notes in the game's documentation that this is his first attempt at programming an IF game, and it shows. I think more experienced authors have more, well, [i]experience[/i] in predicting what a player might attempt and how they might attempt it. Once I got on the same wave-length as the author I was able to beat this game fairly quickly. Heated is a small game and a short competition entry, but I didn't experience any crashes or major bugs while playing. Like I said, the author included some entertaining descriptions within the game, but it definitely could have used a proofreader. "Your alarm, in an apparent attempt on your life, is driving you to suicide." (If it's an attempt on my life, that's murder ...)

Despite some miscommunication between the game and I, what I liked about this game were some of the object descriptions and the clarity of my overall goals. Next year I would like to see a larger and more-polished game from this author.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1504&start=10#p9193
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Flack's IFComp 2010 Game Reviews
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-10-06 23:47:41

[quote="Laroquod"]There are different types of futons ...[/quote]

Good point, and a good reminder of just how difficult it can be to convey something as simple as the description of a single object in IF.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=10#p9194
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp reviews by scratchm
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-10-06 23:50:25

[quote="Flack"]I saw the hamster, then the microwave, then immediately had a Maniac Mansion flashback ... (wait, that was a gerbil I think).[/quote]
I was right the first time; it was a hamster.

[img]http://sydlexia.com/imagesandstuff/10_things_i_didnt_need_on_nes/maniac_mansion_hamster_microwave2.png[/img]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1504&start=10#p9196
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Flack's IFComp 2010 Game Reviews
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-10-07 00:30:35

I think all my awesome reviews broke Parchment. :/

EDIT: It's back!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=10#p9197
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2010-10-07 01:29:56

I'm just getting started on my first IF game, a cold war murder mystery. I've written about 15 pages of background on the game, characters, historical background, storyline, clues, alibis and a rough map.  I'm just starting to code the prologue while reading Aaron Reed's Inform7 book.  Not sure if this is the right approach, but I figured it would be good to have the concepts fairly solid before I started coding.  

Although I don't have any insights to offer at this stage, I find it very encouraging to read some of the posts here and articles on design, using inform7 etc.  

--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1398&start=0#p9198
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Theory book?
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2010-10-07 01:33:12

Great to see this project move forward once again.  I have read a few of the IF Theory articles I could find and I am sure this will be a great book.   One suggestion: I hope the book will be about theory *and* practice.  For a newcomer like me, I really appreciate getting some of the "best practices" about writing, design, characters, puzzles etc.  I think one of the reasons Aaron Reed's book is doing quite well is that he also includes very practical information 
--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1484&start=0#p9199
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Parchment usage graph
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-10-07 01:49:16

And this is what happens when Jay is Games writes about the comp!

[attachment=1]chart2.png[/attachment]

And the next graph shows the quota denials... sorry everyone who was affected. I've enabled paid billing for the proxy, hopefully we won't have any more problems again!

[attachment=0]denials.png[/attachment]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1515&start=0#p9200
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Web-based CYOA games
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-10-07 07:09:12

Hi,

I have recently found an interesting thread at rec.arts.int-fiction which has caught my serious attention lately.

[quote]On 10/6/2010 4:43 AM, Conrad wrote:

> FYI:  Other CYOA solutions include: 

> <a class="postlink" href="http://chooseyourstory.com/">http://chooseyourstory.com/</a> 
> <a class="postlink" href="http://www.choiceofgames.com/">http://www.choiceofgames.com/</a> 
> <a class="postlink" href="http://www.renpy.org/">http://www.renpy.org/</a> 

Also Undum (<a class="postlink" href="http://undum.com/">http://undum.com/</a>). I took a quick look at it, and it seems 
quite slick, if CYOA is your cuppa.[/quote]

Source: <a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/8748759de729f8d5#">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts ... de729f8d5#</a>

It's good to see that more people in the community start to design CYOA games and present them in various new forms. Everything happens as I have forseen in 2007 in terms of CYOA being re-invented and presented in new ways. Web-based CYOA is definately one way to do so.

--Retro

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1516&start=0#p9203
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: The Z-machine's @set_font ... who gets it right?
User: cas / DateTime: 2010-10-07 09:27:32

First, a simple program:
[code]
[Main i j k l;
  @set_font 4 -> i;
  @set_font 1 -> j;
  @set_font 0 -> k;
  @set_font 1 -> l;
  print i, " ", j, " ", k, " ", l, "^";
];
[/code]
I tried this in 10 interpreters (including my own WIP) and I got literally 10 different results.

Of course, part of that difference is that interpreters might not support font 4.  That leaves six that return 1 for the first call and still disagree on the rest.  I think it's obvious that, if the first call succeeded, the second should return 4.  So, in an interpreter that supports fixed fonts, i should be 1 and j should be 4.

The real issue is @set_font 0.  The standard (8.1.2) says that “font ID 0 means ‘the previous font’.”  However, some interpreters treat @set_font 0 as a no-op and just return the current font.  While useful, in that you can find out what the current font is, I can't see how this is standard behavior.  I would expect @set_font 0 to switch back to fixed, which was the previous font, and return 1.  A number of interpreters return 0, indicating that font 0 is unavailable, but I suspect this can't be right either, because they apparently had no problem setting font 4 (or 1, for that matter, which must be available).

Finally, the last call I would expect to return 4, since I expect @set_font 0 to have switched to font 4.  At any rate I would not expect 0 to be returned, because font 1 must be available, and a couple of interpreters return 0 (probably because the 0 from @set_font was stored on the previous call).

The real burning question: should multiple calls to @set_font 0 alternate between the previous and current fonts, or should it simply return the current font over and over?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1516&start=0#p9207
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-machine's @set_font ... who gets it right?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-10-07 10:50:52

So another way of framing the question: is the "previous font" the font in effect before the call to @set_font, or the font in effect before the immediately preceding call to @set_font?

In the first case, I would expect @set_font 0 to make no change to the active font. In the second case, I would expect it to alternate between the active font and the preceding font.

Furthermore, is the "previous font" returned by the call to @set_font the font in effect before the call to @set_font, the font in effect before the immediately preceding call to @set_font, or the most recent font bar one after @set_font does its work?

In the first case, I would expect @set_font 0 to store the value of the active font. In the second case, I would expect it to store the value of the preceding font after switching to the preceding font. In the third case, I would expect it to store the value of the formerly active font after switching to the preceding font.

Here's what I implemented in [url=http://code.google.com/p/garglk/source/browse/trunk/terps/frotz/glkscreen.c#679]glkscreen.c[/url].

For the example program, I believe it would print:

1 4 4 4

In other words, for the questions above I decided that "previous font" meant the font in effect before the immediately preceding call to @set_font, in both cases - setting the font and storing a value.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1484&start=0#p9208
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Parchment usage graph
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-07 10:53:59

[quote="Dannii"]And this is what happens when Jay is Games writes about the comp!

[attachment=1]chart2.png[/attachment][/quote]

That upward slope that comes before all the zig-zags — does it represent a slower sampling rate or does it represent actual less variability in the data compared to what comes afterward? If it's the latter, I wonder why.

[quote]And the next graph shows the quota denials... sorry everyone who was affected. I've enabled paid billing for the proxy, hopefully we won't have any more problems again![/quote]

BTW thanks so much for doing that, I hope it's not too expensive!

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1515&start=0#p9210
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Web-based CYOA games
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-07 10:57:13

Haven't really explored this stuff. Does anyone know, are the web-based CYOAs being done nowadays more sophisticated than the book-based ones (meaning, algorithmically so — not just more locations/numbered sections)? Or are they basically the same thing as a CYOA book only transposed to easy clickable form, at this point?

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1484&start=0#p9212
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Parchment usage graph
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-10-07 11:00:31

I think for the past day they sample it at 5 minutes but then drop it to an hour for anything older than a day. "Past day" meaning billing days, which had only been 13 hours at the time of this graph. The slope represents Jay is Games' readers slowly finding out about the comp.

Well so far I think it's cost me 1 cent, so yeah, not actually a problem so far.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1518&start=0#p9214
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Passing variables from Parchment/i7 to JavaScript and back
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-07 12:11:49

I have very little familiarity with Parchment or Inform 7, but I have coded in Inform 6 extensively (I wrote a DM's assistant in it for roleplaying back in the day, along with some unfinished IF projects).

I'm trying to figure out whether the final stage of a mixed media project I've been developing can be ported to Parchment/Inform 7. (Currently, the IF portion of the project has been roughed out in LambdaMOO, and I'm willing to finish it and release it in that form, if need be, but for reasons of scalability, it would be nice to have it in Inform as an option.)

The trouble is, in order for it to work as planned, there needs to be extensive crosstalk between the text adventure environment and the JavaScript on the surrounding page. I need to pass all sorts of variables (even very long strings) from inside the game, constructed out of the state of the game, from Parchment to my own website's source code, and back. (Well, I could possibly make it work without passing any variables back into the game, but getting as much data as possible out of the game into the surrounding website in which it's embedded, is essential to the concept and can't be avoided.)

My questions:

(1) Are there any standard functions in either i7 or in Parchment to export the states of variables or objects out into the surrounding codebase?

(1a) If there are, are there strict limits to the size and types of variables that can be exported? Can I export a string of any size?

(1b) If there aren't standard functions that allow this, is it possible to dig into the Parchment source code to create one and how difficult do you think this would be? The z-machine is a black box to me.

(2) If Parchment isn't the way, is there another web-playable z-machine interpreter that will give me access to the internal state of the game in mid-play?

and

(3) Can any of this be done with Inform 6 instead of Inform 7? I'm willing to give i7 a chance and do plan to learn it, but as an old codemonkey my brain is quite used to formulas and braces and I'm more comfortable with that syntax than a more natural language approach. AppleScript, for example, drives me a bit nuts with its ambiguities. Also, I have custom libraries for Inform 6 that I'd rather not have to rewrite.

Thanks much for any insight you could provide, however small.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1518&start=0#p9218
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Passing variables from Parchment/i7 to JavaScript and ba
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-07 12:44:43

I have plans for this kind of thing for Glulx/Quixe. No code yet, however.

Hacking Parchment (or Quixe) to do it wouldn't be very difficult, but you'd have to spend some time learning how the interpreter works.

If you did it, it would be an I6-level hack. (Basically you'd add a new custom opcode.) Making it available in I7 would be a little extra work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1518&start=0#p9219
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Passing variables from Parchment/i7 to JavaScript and ba
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-10-07 12:53:06

This thread:

<a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/parchment/browse_thread/thread/f19890f997702dd/">http://groups.google.com/group/parchmen ... f997702dd/</a>

includes a kind of stop-gap measure (i.e., in lieu of an opcode or other vm-level solution). The code provided is javascript (Parchment side) and I7, but you could probably adapt the idea to I6--basically, it involves including tagged instructions in the strings printed by your game file. The javascript preparses all output and, when it finds the special instructions, strips them from the output and acts upon them to display images, etc.

I'm not sure if either the javascript or the I7 still work, as both Parchment and I7 have seen some revisions since then, but it's probably at least worth a look.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=10#p9223
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Flight of the Hummingbird
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-10-07 14:13:59

[b]Flight of the Hummingbird[/b] [i]by Michael Martin[/i]

[spoiler]So it starts out just fine. I do all my usual beginning of game commands, look around, check out the rooms nearby. A couple rooms to the south I find the wreckage of a shack.[code]>x wreckage
It's a pile of metal beams, once an innocent building.[/code]Obviously unimportant; more words are spent describing the sand, and it's clear that I'll need to fly over the water (by flapping my arms) which would be impossible while carrying metal beams. Off I go then.

I die once, splashing down into the ocean. Restart.

I manage to reach the island. Man, this flying mechanic is annoying.

The first conversation of the game has two options, and one of them ends the game. What was the point of that? I suppose to work in the 'without bloodshed' line, but that could have been done without giving me a meaningless choice.

I quickly find the fuel truck and put 'find key' on my to-do list. Then I locate the front door.[code]>s
(first opening the massive door)
The door is too heavy to open by main strength.

>drink energy drink
(first taking the energy drink)
You take another sip of your energy drink and are fully recharged. You flap your arms with all your power and again defy gravity.

>open door
You can't really do that while flapping your arms.

>land
You settle back to earth, your energy exhausted.

>open door
The door is too heavy to open by main strength.[/code]This teaches me an important lesson: [b]I cannot do anything other than fly when energized.[/b] I will remember this.

I fly up to the roof and struggle with the access hatch for a while. I search the island for anything to use for leverage.  I finally give up and use a hint.[code]6/9: Have you seen a nice supply of metal bars anywhere?[/code]Gah. No, in fact I have not seen a nice supply of metal bars. What I saw was a "pile of metal beams".[quote="Oxford American Dictionary"]a long, sturdy piece of squared timber or metal spanning an opening or part of a building, usually to support the roof or floor above.[/quote]A [i]beam[/i] is of no use as a crowbar. But whatever, now I have to do that annoying flying thing all the way back to the mainland. And then again back to the island.

So now I'm in the hangar, and I see what the fuel truck is for. It's also clear I need to open the roof up. And the front door to get the fuel truck in. Down and south to the staging area, a room with absolutely nothing of interest in it. Then to the minions' chambers, again nothing of interest. To the office, open the desk drawer, fall into the pit. Take the key, spend another few turns trying to figure out what this crate could be for and how I might be able to get it upstairs. Give up.

Go back up, take the key from the drawer, enter the command center. Figure out the command terminal puzzle.

Get the truck. Refuel the rocket. Open the roof. This is all very easy but slightly tedious. At some point I move the fuel truck away from the launch area just in case. Launch into space.

The docking puzzle was kind of interesting. I didn't fully understand it; I think the directions could have been described better, but it was easy enough to manipulate the numbers to achieve the desired result.

So then I reach the vestibule. Earlier in the game, I had run across a bunch of things that I would expect to be described, but that were not. For example:[code]Pit Trap
This pit trap is almost two hundred feet deep, and surrounded by smooth walls on all sides. Nevertheless, the bottom seems mostly clean. Perhaps he has some means of flushing it out - or maybe it's just never been used to dispose of anyone.

>x floor
You can't see any such thing.

>x ground
You can't see any such thing.

>x walls
You can't see any such thing.[/code]So here in the vestibule, when I start running into descriptions like this:[code]>x portholes
You can't see any such thing.

>x porthole
Which do you mean, the spinward, the antispinward, or the outside?

>spinward
You see nothing unexpected in that direction.[/code]I'm not really surprised, but it does take me longer than it should have to figure out there was a passageway behind the drapery because I stop looking at everything so closely.

I enjoyed the process of digging through the countermeasures crate, even though I usually detest repetitive commands.

I understand that there are multiple solutions to weakening the guards; I chose to put the potassium bromide in the coffee. My first attempt at this was 'pour vial into coffee pot' but pour wasn't implemented. 'put vial in pot' worked just fine, but it just wasn't the sentence I would have used to describe the action.

So after they drink the spiked coffee, I find I need to do something else to give myself a further advantage. The solution turns out to be drinking the energy drink. But I'm kind of annoyed at this, as the game taught me pretty clearly early on that I can't do anything but fly while energized. If it allows this exception, why not allow me to attempt other feats of strength while energized? Meh.

So then we have the final conversation, which at a minimum can be said to be better than the first. And game over. I got 50/51 points, but there's no way I'm going back to find the last point.

All things considered, it was a good game. I gave it a high score. But it could have used any kind of in-depth characterization of the PC or an NPC, and some more work on some of the descriptions is needed.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1519&start=0#p9225
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Question from a frobtads newbie
User: Morana / DateTime: 2010-10-07 15:23:11

Though I'm not new to TADS 3, I am new to trying to compile it using frobtads (on Ubuntu). So far I can't compile anything, even though the files worked just fine under Windows. Here is the command I've been using:

[code]t3make -I /usr/local/share/frobtads/tads3/lib/adv3/en_us -I /usr/local/share/frobtads/tads3/lib/adv3 -I /usr/local/share/frobtads/tads3/lib second_project.t[/code]

This is the result:

[code]compile /usr/local/share/frobtads/tads3/lib/_main.t -> _main.t3o
/usr/local/share/frobtads/tads3/lib/_main.t(115): error 11032: undefined symbol "main"
[/code]

Any thoughts on what might be going on here?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1465&start=0#p9227
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Funny responses from this year's games
User: Silas Greenback / DateTime: 2010-10-07 16:22:21

From Divis Mortis:

[spoiler]In the janitor's closet "get mop" yields: "This isn't a Space Quest and you aren't a janitor.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1519&start=0#p9228
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Question from a frobtads newbie
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-10-07 16:44:17

What if you leave out the include parameters altogether and just try this?

[code]t3make -f second_project[/code]

Assuming you have a second_project.t3m file in the same directory. Also if object files are going to an obj/ subdirectory, that may have to be created beforehand.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1519&start=0#p9229
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Question from a frobtads newbie
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-10-07 16:46:58

t3make uses your makefile. You do not need to supply any "-I" arguments. Either name your makefile "Makefile.t3m", in which case you only need to call just:

[code]t3make[/code]

and it will find it automatically, or use the "-f" argument to point it to your makefile:

[code]t3make -f MyMakefile.t3m[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1519&start=0#p9230
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Question from a frobtads newbie
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-10-07 16:53:35

You are setting the include paths with the -I options, but you need to specifically include the system and adv3 libraries using -lib options as well. It's easiest to put all your command line options into a .t3m file and specify it on the command line with -f. So here's a complete example that works on my system...

hello.t:
[code]
#charset "us-ascii"
#include <adv3.h>
#include <en_us.h>
versionInfo: GameID
    name = 't3make test'
;
gameMain: GameMainDef
    initialPlayerChar = me
;
startRoom: Room 'Start Room' "This is the starting room. "
;
+ me: Actor
;
[/code]

hello.t3m:
[code]
-D LANGUAGE=en_us
-D MESSAGESTYLE=neu
-Fy obj
-Fo obj
-v

##sources
-lib system
-lib adv3/adv3
-source hello
[/code]

Command line:
[code]$ mkdir obj
$ t3make -f hello.t3m[/code]

Note I don't have -I lines at all; you might or might not need them depending on where it's looking for the libraries on your system.

Hope that helps.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1519&start=0#p9231
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Question from a frobtads newbie
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-10-07 16:56:14

Haha, looks like we got answer overload on this. Too bad I was the slow one. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1465&start=0#p9232
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Funny responses from this year's games
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-10-07 17:08:20

From Flight of the Hummingbird:

[spoiler]> take hose
The hose is part of the fuel truck; you’ll need to get the truck to the same place as whatever it 
is you want to refuel.

> drink from hose
It’s got a perfectly good pump. Siphoning rocket fuel by mouth is just going to end in tears.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1518&start=0#p9233
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Passing variables from Parchment/i7 to JavaScript and ba
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-10-07 17:27:10

The way I did this for Guncho (when it was running on the Z-machine) was to repurpose the extended @save/@restore opcodes. The game read and wrote sections of RAM to specially named fake files, and the interpreter would use those requests to provide things like the system time.

Pro: didn't need to extend the instruction set, didn't need to modify the core of the interpreter (only the I/O section, which is a separate module in the terp I used), easily adapted to large data blocks like strings.

Con: the I6 code to make it work was somewhat baroque.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1465&start=0#p9235
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Funny responses from this year's games
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-10-07 17:55:25

From the gift shop in Divis Mortis:
[spoiler]>take balloons
You seriously doubt that you will ever have need for balloons with get-well inscriptions. Perhaps you can give it to the next zombie you see, and it will be touched at your heart-felt intentions enough not to eat you alive.  Nevertheless, taken.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1515&start=0#p9236
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Web-based CYOA games
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-10-07 18:35:59

[quote="Laroquod"]Haven't really explored this stuff. Does anyone know, are the web-based CYOAs being done nowadays more sophisticated than the book-based ones (meaning, algorithmically so — not just more locations/numbered sections)? Or are they basically the same thing as a CYOA book only transposed to easy clickable form, at this point?

Paul.[/quote]

Choice of Games and Choose Your Story definitely both retain information from state to state. In ChoiceScript, you can use the save information to determine text substitutions, or to determine whether a certain option will be available, as well as to determine where you go if you choose an option.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1518&start=0#p9238
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Passing variables from Parchment/i7 to JavaScript and ba
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-10-07 19:46:18

While I have plans for this, I haven't written the code yet.

As Erik was saying the easiest way is to simply print the data you want and then to catch it before it and strip it out before printing it. If you're using a customised version of Parchment it's easy. The formal extension I'm planning will be a bit trickier as you'll need to check for version 1.2 and then use @gestalt etc.

The time to strip out the special instructions is in onPrint() in zui.js. I suggest choosing some rare characters as delimiters, perhaps <# #> for example. Then you just use a regex to extra the data and cut it out.

Passing it back in is trickier. I guess you could do the same thing and put stuff in the input buffer, which you'd then have to cut out very early in the inform parser.

And yes you'll need to use I6 for this. Even if you were using I7 you'd need to embed some I6.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1239&start=20#p9239
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Transcripts collection proposal
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-10-07 20:01:03

I'm just thinking, while it is certainly simple to print out the tags, might it be cleaner to print to a buffer array and pass the address instead? What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of each method?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=10#p9240
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Sons of the Cherry
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-10-07 20:07:48

[b]Sons of the Cherry[/b] [i]by Alex Livingston[/i]

[spoiler]I don't normally enjoy CYOA as much as parser-based IF, but for CYOA this was fairly fun.

It was too short, and for the most part the decisions one makes don't matter or make any difference. As one other reviewer noted, it was full of historical inaccuracies (I didn't care about that at all, because I viewed it as a fictional story with a few warped historical characters, not historical fiction per se). 

On the other hand, it was well written, and just an entertaining story. I certainly enjoyed it more than A Quiet Evening at Home.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=10#p9244
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Sons of the Cherry
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-10-07 22:05:07

[quote="scratchm"][b]Sons of the Cherry[/b] [i]by Alex Livingston[/i][/quote]

[spoiler]I rated it rather low, but after the last two games I played I think I will bump up my rating a number or two.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1504&start=10#p9250
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Flack's IFComp 2010 Game Reviews
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-10-07 23:48:49

Review: Under, in Erebus

[spoiler]After spending the last two nights playing games in which I wandered around the most familiar of domains (my own home), tonight I had quite the opposite experience in Under, in Erebus (UiE).

As the game begins you find yourself being shoved by a mob onto a mysterious train. Moments later the train takes off for parts unknown, racing deep into the depths of the Earth and ultimately stopping in (I assume) Erebus.

Erebus is dark and mysterious and the writing within the game reflects this. The writing, in fact, is superb -- the best I've encountered so far this year. The descriptions are limited but vivid. I got a real sense of the things I could (and couldn't) see, and the feeling of being somewhat disoriented comes though in the writing.

I'll cut to the chase here; at the heart of UiE lies a puzzle that I wouldn't figure out in two hours, possibly two weeks, and maybe even if given two years. Maybe it's because I just spent the past two nights playing games where the major objectives were to fix myself some soup and find my bathroom before I peed in my pants, but in UiE you've got magic glyphs carved into rocks, size-altering peas a'la Alice in Wonderland, a guy who lives on an island who wants me to fix him a drink, and a bunch of magic booths. I wandered around for about an hour before resorting to hints, and I spent a while looking at hints before I resorted to the walk through, and I'm not even sure I completely understood everything at [b]that[/b] point. I think during my trip to Erebus I must've bumped my head pretty hard.

UiE features great writing and a well laid out world, but after a while I began wondering what on Earth (or under it, I suppose) I was supposed to be doing. I do finally get how the main puzzle works, but I would be [i]super[/i] surprised (and/or impressed) to hear about someone beating this game without hints. I feel like I just spent two hours staring at a piece of modern art, and finally had to walk away because I'm too stupid to understand whatever it was the artist was trying to express.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go fix myself some more soup ...[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1518&start=0#p9252
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Passing variables from Parchment/i7 to JavaScript and ba
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-10-08 02:25:21

A while back I modified Parchment to evaluate JavaScript that's embedded in the game's text. It's a very quick hack with some drawbacks: Parchment wraps every word inside a span tag to preserve whitespace, so I had to remove those to get the JavaScript evaluated correctly, but that means you lose extra spaces if there are more than one in a row, which might break something in games that rely on spaces for formatting. Another drawback is that you can't use the same story file for offline play as it would show the embedded scripts in a non-modified interpreter.

If you think this would be useful to you, I could send you the modifications I made (although it's an out of date version of Parchment with possibly some bugs that have been later fixed.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1515&start=0#p9258
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Web-based CYOA games
User: joningold / DateTime: 2010-10-08 02:50:22

I've played around with Undum and really enjoyed it: actually writing JS is a bit of a pain, but the API produces very nice results and the system has a few interesting twists to it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1512&start=0#p9259
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 parser errors: what parts *did* the parser understand
User: joningold / DateTime: 2010-10-08 03:08:27

I've spent longer than is healthy rooting around in the parser while writing Disambiguation Control, and although I don't have an answer to hand on this, it's definitely doable.

The place where "nouns" get analysed is the NounDomain function; the inputted text itself is stored in the buffer array, but nowhere else really - if the player types in words the parser doesn't know, they don't get converted out of the buffer and into the word-array.

The problem I can see is for dealing with things like

>PUT BLAH ON TABLE

and getting output of the form "I didn't understand "blah" as a thing." rather than "I didn't understand "blah on table" as a thing.", as the parser doesn't "look ahead".

(Actually, that's not quite true -- in the case of "put" the parser *does* look ahead and sort out the second noun first. But this is confusing, and it doesn't do it generically for 2-noun verbs.)

With all of this - disambiguation and parser errors - we really could use a rewrite of the parser to a less opaque, more systematic framework better designed for giving errors and making choices.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1518&start=0#p9260
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Passing variables from Parchment/i7 to JavaScript and ba
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-08 03:54:45

(Looks like 'zhengwei' is a spam account.)

So, thanks so much, guys/gals, this is way more and greater variety of solutions than I anticipated. I'll try to address them all in one post.

[quote="zarf"]Hacking Parchment (or Quixe) to do it wouldn't be very difficult, but you'd have to spend some time learning how the interpreter works.

If you did it, it would be an I6-level hack. (Basically you'd add a new custom opcode.) Making it available in I7 would be a little extra work.[/quote]
Thanks for the tip! I think it'd be a lot easier to transcode from LambdaMOO to i6. But I'm thinking of writing an automatic transcoder to move code repeatedly between MOO & Inform -- it can't be perfect but it can save me grunt work. Just a little worried that targeting i6 might be targeting the past and maybe I'd feel forced to write a whole new i7 transcoder, later, to access modern features.

[quote="vaporware"]The way I did this for Guncho (when it was running on the Z-machine) was to repurpose the extended @save/@restore opcodes. The game read and wrote sections of RAM to specially named fake files, and the interpreter would use those requests to provide things like the system time.[/quote]
I get that. All I'd have to is learn to parse the contents of RAM as represented in a save file. It sounds though like I might end up having to repeatedly move more data than I actually need; And I'd be worried about performance of the save process, as compared to printing. Thanks, vape -- I'll keep it in reserve; great to know there are multiple possible solutions, it makes Inform that much more attractive for this purpose.

[quote="Juhana"]A while back I modified Parchment to evaluate JavaScript that's embedded in the game's text. It's a very quick hack with some drawbacks: Parchment wraps every word inside a span tag to preserve whitespace, so I had to remove those to get the JavaScript evaluated correctly, but that means you lose extra spaces if there are more than one in a row, which might break something in games that rely on spaces for formatting. Another drawback is that you can't use the same story file for offline play as it would show the embedded scripts in a non-modified interpreter.

If you think this would be useful to you, I could send you the modifications I made (although it's an out of date version of Parchment with possibly some bugs that have been later fixed.)[/quote]
Thank you: it sounds interesting, but possibly a roundabout way to achieve what I want, which is not to enhance the display of Parchment in any way (I like that the way it is), but rather to change the contents of surrounding DIV tags. I bet your solution would work for that purpose but it doesn't seem to me like the shortest route, considering I don't need to change the appearance or click behaviour of anything within the actual text window.

[quote="ektemple"]http://groups.google.com/group/parchment/browse_thread/thread/f19890f997702dd/

includes a kind of stop-gap measure (i.e., in lieu of an opcode or other vm-level solution). The code provided is javascript (Parchment side) and I7, but you could probably adapt the idea to I6--basically, it involves including tagged instructions in the strings printed by your game file. The javascript preparses all output and, when it finds the special instructions, strips them from the output and acts upon them to display images, etc.[/quote][quote="Dannii"]As Erik was saying the easiest way is to simply print the data you want and then to catch it before it and strip it out before printing it. If you're using a customised version of Parchment it's easy. The formal extension I'm planning will be a bit trickier as you'll need to check for version 1.2 and then use @gestalt etc.

The time to strip out the special instructions is in onPrint() in zui.js. I suggest choosing some rare characters as delimiters, perhaps <# #> for example. Then you just use a regex to extra the data and cut it out.[/quote]
Dannii's and Erik's suggestion and accompanying link sound optimal to me, especially once I realised that I can still have it affect any part of the web page rather then remaining inline. Thanks dudes, this idea looks like a go! Though I'm still not entirely sure whether I need to learn i7, first. But maybe I have time to learn it, anyway; as there is still lots of graphics work to be done, so I can postpone the conversion. Then I can make a more informed (NPI) decision, regarding i6/i7.

[quote="Dannii"]And yes you'll need to use I6 for this. Even if you were using I7 you'd need to embed some I6.[/quote]
Did not even know that was possible — interesting. 8)

Thanks again everyone, this was an amazing set of responses that orients me pretty well for my purpose.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1515&start=0#p9262
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Web-based CYOA games
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-08 04:21:22

[quote="matt w"]Choice of Games and Choose Your Story definitely both retain information from state to state. In ChoiceScript, you can use the save information to determine text substitutions, or to determine whether a certain option will be available, as well as to determine where you go if you choose an option.[/quote]
Thanks Matt. That sounds like something approaching a rudimentary programming language. I'd like to see way more development along this road, I'll try those out and see what's what.

Paul.

P.S. Will also look up 'Undum'.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1521&start=0#p9263
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Get naked automatically for the shower?
User: lglasser / DateTime: 2010-10-08 09:32:42

So I want to automate stripping garments, dropping inventory, before showering (and not automate getting dressed again), but I can't quite get how to get the parser to do this.  So far I've got:

[code]Before bathing:
	if garments are worn by the player:
		try removing the noun from the player.[/code]

Where garment is the catch-all for all kinds of clothing.  The obvious problem is that I refer to a general kind of object first and then ask to try removing a specific object instead, but "try removing all garments worn by the player" is too general.  How can I remove all garments?  Should I make a table from that and then remove the table objects?

Thanks in advance!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1521&start=0#p9264
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Get naked automatically for the shower?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-10-08 10:07:24

You need to loop through every garment worn by the player and remove them individually (manual chapter 11.11):

[code]Before bathing:
   if garments are worn by the player:
      repeat with cloth running through garments worn by the player:
         try taking off the cloth.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1516&start=0#p9265
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-machine's @set_font ... who gets it right?
User: cas / DateTime: 2010-10-08 10:34:30

Well, with so many possibilities it's no wonder interpreters disagree!

In my collection of Infocom games, there's exactly one place where @set_font is called with a variable, not a constant: in Journey the following happens:
[code]
4df1:  JZ              Gb9 [TRUE] 4df9
4df4:  SET_FONT        #04 -> L02
4df9:  LOADB           #00,#26 -> G89
4dfd:  LOADB           #00,#27 -> G92
4e01:  JZ              Gb9 [TRUE] 4e09
4e04:  SET_FONT        L02 -> -(SP)
4e09:  LOADW           #00,#11 -> -(SP)
[/code]
Assume Gb9 is not zero (it gets set to one or zero based on the interpreter number).

By one interpretation, these @set_font calls appear to do nothing: if @set_font returns the current font (at the time of the @set_font call), this will switch to 4, store current in L02, load a couple of header values into globals, then switch back to L02: whatever was current at the time of the first call.  As far as I can tell, the value pushed onto the stack by the second call is never used.

The first @set_font call here is also the first @set_font call in the entire program.  So if the previous font is not the current font (i.e. the previous font [i]after[/i] the call), what would it mean?  There could have been no previous font to the initial font.

OK, I'm confused now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1512&start=0#p9266
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 parser errors: what parts *did* the parser understand
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-08 10:57:30

I like this discussion better than other ones I've seen that focus on making the parser more newbie-friendly in vague sweeping ways. Seems like we have some reasonable, practical ideas that, while not earth-shaking, might really help authors and players fine tune their experience.

So to Jon, Christian, Zarf, and Michael: Thanks, and keep up the good work!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1516&start=0#p9271
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-machine's @set_font ... who gets it right?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-08 11:45:18

In the computer world, "set and return the previous value (before this call)" is a common pattern. (The POSIX umask() function works this way, for example.) It makes it easy to change a value and then restore it.

"Set and return the previous value (before the previous call)" is weird and, as far as I can tell, useless. I can't believe that it's what Infocom intended.

The Journey code you quote makes sense if the intent is to measure the font metrics. Header bytes $26 and $27 are "font width/height". Obviously that's measuring *the current font*. So this is

[code]
if (interpreter_supports_font_change)
    set font 4;
global_font_width = current_font_width;
global_font_height = current_font_height;
if (interpreter_supports_font_change)
    restore font to previous value;
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=10#p9272
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp reviews by scratchm
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-10-08 12:10:47

Haha, yeah there are some pretty bad ones this year. Speaking of which... see my next post.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1516&start=0#p9273
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-machine's @set_font ... who gets it right?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-10-08 12:19:32

[quote="zarf"]In the computer world, "set and return the previous value (before this call)" is a common pattern. (The POSIX umask() function works this way, for example.) It makes it easy to change a value and then restore it.

"Set and return the previous value (before the previous call)" is weird and, as far as I can tell, useless. I can't believe that it's what Infocom intended.[/quote]

I feel like I've either misunderstood you or vice versa.

In the "set and return the previous value (before this call)" case, the previous font would be the one in effect before the @set_font call under consideration, in other words the font that would be used if this @set_font call was omitted altogether and never took place. If font 1 is on before, then font 1 is on after. If 4, then 4. The call is only useful if you want to know what font is being used, because it stores that as its return value.

By "set and return the previous value (before the previous call)" I meant something along the lines of what I think [url=http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/umask.html]umask[/url] means by "leave the state... the same as its state before the first call."

This would allow you to toggle back and forth between states. Yet it's also the interpretation that you call weird and useless?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1522&start=0#p9274
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6 and OKBScrpt.h
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-10-08 12:29:37

In the game I'm working on I've implemented OKBScrpt.h for branching conversations. (Technically it's a conversation with a voice-activated GPS, but whatever.)

Is anyone familiar with this I6 add-on, and if so, is there anyway to include (or exclude) specific lines of dialog based on variables? For example, I don't want the GPS to list "Go Home" as a choice when you're already sitting in your own driveway ...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=10#p9275
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: The Chronicler
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-10-08 12:42:13

[b]The Chronicler[/b] [i]by John Evans[/i]

I can't think of a better context to post this in, so...
[rant=Rant: Unfinished Games]So far I've played eight competition games this year (if you include the one I beta tested). I only consider three of them to be both reasonably complete and adequately tested, and one of those was the CYOA game. Four of the games I've played (including the one I beta tested) seemed to have been finished, if you can call it that, just barely before the competition deadline and received less testing than they should have.

Is it unreasonable of me to expect that games be completed and well-tested prior to being entered in the competition? Are game authors so eager to be embarrassed and mocked that they simply [u]can't[/u] withdraw their entry if it's not done in time? One game I played had the potential to be a 10/10 if only it didn't have game-ruining bugs and unfinished puzzles. Sure, you can fix those problems and do a post-comp release, but why you would enter a clearly unfinished work in the comp is a mystery to me.[/rant]

[spoiler]This was the most un-finished game I've seen (and I pray, will see) in the comp. No story to speak of. Most objects are not implemented at all (I saw "You can't see any such thing." more than all other text combined). A potentially fun time travel mechanic ruined by bugs and bad design decisions. When I finally resorted to reading the help file, I find[quote="chronicler_help0.txt"]Unfortunately, due to poor scheduling on my part it's only half finished, or perhaps three-quarters.[/quote]More like one-quarter, John, or perhaps one fifth.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1516&start=0#p9276
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-machine's @set_font ... who gets it right?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-10-08 12:53:26

[quote="cas"]The first @set_font call here is also the first @set_font call in the entire program.  So if the previous font is not the current font (i.e. the previous font [i]after[/i] the call), what would it mean?  There could have been no previous font to the initial font.[/quote]

I assume it's normal all the way down. In other words, if you don't have state information to the contrary, then treat it as though the normal font were active. I suppose you could also store 0 to say that it wasn't available, but that creates issues across a restore / restart boundary. (Maybe those issues are there in any case - ugh.)

The drawback of storing the value of the previous font after the call does its work is that the game can't tell which font is now in use. @set_font 0 as no-op and @set_font 0 as toggle that returns the toggled value both provide this data. @set_font 1 and @set_font 4 do not, but in those cases you know which font is in use because you passed it as a parameter.

I dunno. I admit I'm not persuaded by my own logic but that's because the spec is not framing the behavior in a clear and logical way, leaving us to guess at the author's intent.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=10#p9277
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp reviews by scratchm
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-08 13:04:28

The 'revolution' one seems quite finished — polished, even. And it's funny as heck. Try that!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1516&start=0#p9278
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-machine's @set_font ... who gets it right?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-08 13:13:19

[quote="bcressey"]This would allow you to toggle back and forth between states. Yet it's also the interpretation that you call weird and useless?[/quote]
I wouldn't call it 'useless' but FWIW, I too found your interpretation of 'the previous font' reference unusual, since I would tend to assume it meant 'previous to the function call currently under consideration'. I wouldn't think it meant 'previous to the previous function call' unless it specifically spelled that out. Just another POV.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1521&start=0#p9279
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Get naked automatically for the shower?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-10-08 13:21:44

I'd modify this a little further:

[quote="Juhana"]You need to loop through every garment worn by the player and remove them individually (manual chapter 11.11):

[code]Before bathing:
  repeat with cloth running through garments worn by the player:
     try taking off the cloth;
     if the cloth is worn by the player:
       stop the action.
[/code][/quote]

This way if there is any piece of clothing that won't come off (the player has superglued his shirt onto his body, say), we will stop the attempt to undress after that clothing removal fails. Otherwise, the game will try to take everything off, but allow the bathing to go forward even if the player is wearing something.

Also, bonus fact: in cases where you're not worried that the removal action will fail (or you want the clothes to come off even if the player normally can't remove them), you could do a rule in a single sentence of the form:

[code]Before bathing:
  now every garment worn by the player is in the location.[/code]

The original suggestion is probably better for this particular case, because there's no reason that bathing should give the player super-human clothing-removal abilities, but it's useful syntax to know about.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=10#p9280
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp reviews by scratchm
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-10-08 13:42:15

Thanks for the suggestion.  [emote]:D[/emote]  I'm going to play them all before the comp is over; right now I have seven others on my list before The People's Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure Game. Next up: Oxygen.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=10#p9281
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Chronicler
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-10-08 13:43:42

[quote="scratchm"] 
[rant=Rant: Unfinished Games]So far I've played eight competition games this year (if you include the one I beta tested). I only consider three of them to be both reasonably complete and adequately tested, and one of those was the CYOA game. Four of the games I've played (including the one I beta tested) seemed to have been finished, if you can call it that, just barely before the competition deadline and received less testing than they should have.

Is it unreasonable of me to expect that games be completed and well-tested prior to being entered in the competition? Are game authors so eager to be embarrassed and mocked that they simply [u]can't[/u] withdraw their entry if it's not done in time? One game I played had the potential to be a 10/10 if only it didn't have game-ruining bugs and unfinished puzzles. Sure, you can fix those problems and do a post-comp release, but why you would enter a clearly unfinished work in the comp is a mystery to me.[/rant][/quote]

[spoiler]I'm afraid this particular author has a long history of submitting to the comp unfinished games with cool central ideas that could have been awesome. And every time, people say, 'hey, this could have been awesome if only it had been finished enough to be playable. Next time give yourself more time and finish the thing.' The advice hasn't sunk in yet, and this makes me think either he doesn't read the reviews at all or annoying comp judges has developed into some kind of bizarre performance art for him. Dunno.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=10#p9282
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Chronicler
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-10-08 13:54:22

[quote="emshort"][spoiler]or annoying comp judges has developed into some kind of bizarre performance art for him. Dunno.[/spoiler][/quote][spoiler]Actually, I rather suspected that was what was going on with A Quiet Evening at Home... some kind of joke.  [emote]:?[/emote][/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1522&start=0#p9283
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6 and OKBScrpt.h
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-10-08 13:57:34

I actually figured out a way around this. I can make the GPS test to see if you are already at that location and, if so, call you stupid. The problem is, if you are NOT in the current location, I want to move you there but Inform is telling me that "Move X to Y" isn't acceptable.

[code]after	[;
		if (location == driveway) {
		print_ret "~You're already there.";
		} else {
		Move ElCamino to Driveway;
		};
		];[/code]

"Error: Expected assignment or statement but found Move."

Incidently, PlayerTo (Driveway) works just fine there ... but I need to move the car there, too (since you are in it).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=20#p9284
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Chronicler
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-10-08 14:01:44

[quote="emshort"][spoiler]I'm afraid this particular author has a long history of submitting to the comp unfinished games with cool central ideas that could have been awesome. And every time, people say, 'hey, this could have been awesome if only it had been finished enough to be playable. Next time give yourself more time and finish the thing.' The advice hasn't sunk in yet, and this makes me think either he doesn't read the reviews at all or annoying comp judges has developed into some kind of bizarre performance art for him. Dunno.[/spoiler][/quote]

I didn't know that. That's a shame, because I thought the cool central idea was indeed awesome, and intended to say something like, "Hey, take this stuff and implement some objects and give it an actual plot and it will be cool."

[spoiler]For a crap game without any implemented objects -- that's basically a description of its genre -- I did find this engaging. I played it almost all the way to an ending; if the text hadn't described it as unfinished I might have thought a bit harder about how to get to the ending, which is in fact gettable. Two of 'em, in fact. Though the endings definitely fit into the CGWAIO template; they're one step up from "A Winner Is You."[/spoiler]

Anyway, this didn't annoy me that much, because I adjusted my expectations pretty quickly. If no other game in the comp annoyed me more, it would be a pretty great comp experience, at least from a me-not-getting-annoyed perspective.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1522&start=0#p9285
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6 and OKBScrpt.h
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-08 14:30:04

I think "move" has to be lower-case.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1516&start=0#p9286
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-machine's @set_font ... who gets it right?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-08 14:39:12

Let me rephrase:

I think @set_font should be implemented as if it were this pseudo-code:

[code]
Global current_font;
opcode set_font(newval) {
  temp = current_font;
  current_font = newval;
  return temp;
}
[/code]

You can then change and restore the font by doing:

  @setfont 4 val;
  @setfont val dummy;

...which is exactly what the sample code does. That's why I think I'm right.

To toggle between two values, you could do @setfont val val, I guess.

But I'm talking about the case where the argument is not zero! Which is what the Journey code is doing, right?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1516&start=0#p9287
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-machine's @set_font ... who gets it right?
User: cas / DateTime: 2010-10-08 14:49:31

[quote="zarf"]In the computer world, "set and return the previous value (before this call)" is a common pattern. (The POSIX umask() function works this way, for example.) It makes it easy to change a value and then restore it.

"Set and return the previous value (before the previous call)" is weird and, as far as I can tell, useless. I can't believe that it's what Infocom intended.

The Journey code you quote makes sense if the intent is to measure the font metrics. Header bytes $26 and $27 are "font width/height". Obviously that's measuring *the current font*. So this is

[code]
if (interpreter_supports_font_change)
    set font 4;
global_font_width = current_font_width;
global_font_height = current_font_height;
if (interpreter_supports_font_change)
    restore font to previous value;
[/code][/quote]
OK, this makes perfect sense.  Being that I always just set $26 and $27 to 1, I missed the following in §8.1.1: “[T]he height and width of the current font … should be written to bytes $27 and $26 of the header, respectively.”

I can't see how zarf's take is not correct.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1522&start=0#p9288
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6 and OKBScrpt.h
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-10-08 14:49:44

Wow -- newbie error 101. It's working great now. Thank you sir!

[code]NLine ->->-> GPS1 "Location: HOME"
has edible,
with description "~Home,~ you say to the GPS.",
after	[;
		if (location == driveway) {
		print_ret "~You're already there, homie,~ replies Sir Guide-A-Lot 350.";
		} else {
		print "The Sir Guide-A-Lot 350 maps out the quickest route to your home. You follow it, and arrive safely.";
		move ElCamino to Driveway;
		move Player to ElCamino;
		}
		];[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1516&start=0#p9289
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-machine's @set_font ... who gets it right?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-08 14:51:20

...if the argument *is* zero, then we don't have any sample code at all. (By what cas posted.) Do we have any Infocom code where they used @set_font 0?

I think I got off on the wrong foot by talking about the use of "previous font" in the set_font paragraph in section 15, whereas the original question was about 8.1.2. The least confusing interpretation is that they have the same meaning. I.e. I should rewrite my pseudocode to say:

[code]
Global current_font;
opcode set_font(newval) {
  if (newval == 0) { newval = current_font; }
  temp = current_font;
  current_font = newval;
  return temp;
}
[/code]

But I don't know that that's *right*; it's just how I read the spec. The spec is either confusing or wrong in 8.1.2, but I have no way to tell which off-hand.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1518&start=0#p9291
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Passing variables from Parchment/i7 to JavaScript and ba
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-10-08 15:11:22

[quote="Laroquod"][quote="vaporware"]The way I did this for Guncho (when it was running on the Z-machine) was to repurpose the extended @save/@restore opcodes. The game read and wrote sections of RAM to specially named fake files, and the interpreter would use those requests to provide things like the system time.[/quote]
I get that. All I'd have to is learn to parse the contents of RAM as represented in a save file. It sounds though like I might end up having to repeatedly move more data than I actually need; And I'd be worried about performance of the save process, as compared to printing.[/quote]
Not quite - the extended save/restore opcodes save arbitrary blocks of memory with no processing. You specify the starting address and number of bytes you want to save, and the data is just copied instead of going through the whole differencing/compression process.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1516&start=10#p9292
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-machine's @set_font ... who gets it right?
User: cas / DateTime: 2010-10-08 15:12:19

[quote="zarf"]But I'm talking about the case where the argument is not zero! Which is what the Journey code is doing, right?[/quote]
Yes, that's right. The only way it could ever call @set_font with 0 is if @set_font 4 were to return 0.  Under the current standard I think it could do this if an interpreter does not (or claims to not) support fixed fonts.  Journey does not use the fixed-font header bit to determine whether a fixed font is available (it checks the flag, but does not use its result in this code from what I can see); rather, it “knows” which interpreters support fixed font and only calls @set_font 4 on those that do.  So I suspect Journey was not equipped to handle @set_font 0.

I haven't found any instances of @set_font 0 in my Infocom stories.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1516&start=10#p9294
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-machine's @set_font ... who gets it right?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-10-08 15:36:48

[quote="Laroquod"]I wouldn't call it 'useless' but FWIW, I too found your interpretation of 'the previous font' reference unusual, since I would tend to assume it meant 'previous to the function call currently under consideration'. I wouldn't think it meant 'previous to the previous function call' unless it specifically spelled that out. Just another POV.[/quote]

If we go by the definition in 8.1.2, font ID 0 means "the previous font." If this in fact means "the font in place prior to the function call currently under consideration", it would be considerably less opaque to term it "the current font." Current is not ambiguous; it means the font that would be used if the game were to print text on the screen at this moment.

By using the term "the previous font", ambiguities arise because we must answer the question, previous to what? To the call we are making now or to the last most recent call we made? If the first answer is intended, 8.1.2 should state that font ID 0 means "the current font" and remove the ambiguity. If the second, it is worded appropriately but there are further ambiguities surrounding the return value.

Again, I don't know the right answer. I like zarf's pseudocode better than my actual code, though.  [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1518&start=0#p9295
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Passing variables from Parchment/i7 to JavaScript and ba
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-10-08 17:41:50

I'd forgotten about that functionality.

I wonder why I7 doesn't use it to support file writing/reading in zcode.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1518&start=0#p9296
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Passing variables from Parchment/i7 to JavaScript and ba
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-10-08 17:51:03

[quote="Dannii"]I'd forgotten about that functionality.

I wonder why I7 doesn't use it to support file writing/reading in zcode.[/quote]
You have to read and write the entire file at once -- there's no seek or append -- so you're limited to amounts of data that can fit into a single array in RAM. It could be used for some sort of file access functionality, but not the same functionality that's supported on Glulx.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=20#p9298
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Chronicler
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-10-08 18:19:42

[quote="scratchm"][quote="emshort"][spoiler]or annoying comp judges has developed into some kind of bizarre performance art for him. Dunno.[/spoiler][/quote][spoiler]Actually, I rather suspected that was what was going on with A Quiet Evening at Home... some kind of joke.  [emote]:?[/emote][/spoiler][/quote]

[spoiler]There certainly have been some joke games in the past. Sometimes they have a specific joke agenda in mind (see Sisyphus), which is still mildly annoying but at least you can see what they were getting at. The joke of submitting something that is not only bad but bad in a boring way, however... I dunno. I've heard that punchline too many times already, I guess.

I skipped both Chronicler and Quiet Evening because they weren't listing any testers, and because of the confession in Chronicler that it wasn't finished.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1519&start=0#p9300
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Question from a frobtads newbie
User: Morana / DateTime: 2010-10-08 21:09:07

Thank you for the abundance of replies, everyone. I've successfully compiled two of my sample projects. Now on to making more substantial games!  [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1518&start=10#p9301
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Passing variables from Parchment/i7 to JavaScript and ba
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-08 21:28:34

[quote="vaporware"]Not quite - the extended save/restore opcodes save arbitrary blocks of memory with no processing. You specify the starting address and number of bytes you want to save, and the data is just copied instead of going through the whole differencing/compression process.[/quote]
Perhaps your solution is faster and leaner than I thought. Seems like it might work pretty well. Right now the way it's set up is that I can pass all the game state information I need in a single long string, which gets maintained by the game and then unpacked in JavaScript, so that is actually pretty well suited to just being plucked out of RAM.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1518&start=10#p9302
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Passing variables from Parchment/i7 to JavaScript and ba
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-10-08 21:36:17

I really doubt that it would be easier for sending data out of zcode, to use the print method it would literally just take [code]print "<#", state, "#>";[/code] and then a fairly simple regex to extract it.

Using @restore might however be simpler for returning data back to zcode...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1521&start=0#p9304
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Get naked automatically for the shower?
User: lglasser / DateTime: 2010-10-08 23:29:10

Thanks for the help providing the codes and the documentation (my search-fu is weak, even with google).  I used a combination of both methods to drop my inventory and remove my clothes.  The assistance creating a faster in-game nude-state is always appreciated.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1518&start=10#p9306
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Passing variables from Parchment/i7 to JavaScript and ba
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-09 01:51:13

I'll consider both methods, I'm thinking after I have learned i7 and familiarised myself with the Parchment source. Having too many good solutions is not a problem I mind having! 8) Also, I just recalled: I definitely do need to feed data back into the game, because I need to load the 'game state essentials' of chapter 1, as represented in my packed long string, into chapter 2 of the story, when the next web page is loaded and a different blorb file is run in the next Parchment window. As you say, I might end up using both methods. Or one side might end up dictating the other. The most important thing for now is that I now know it's doable, so I know what to put my time into learning, and it won't be a dead-end tangent.

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1445&start=10#p9316
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: MOD tracker formats in Glulx
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-09 10:28:29

Everyone seems to be happy with that, so I've posted it to <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/blorb/">http://eblong.com/zarf/blorb/</a> .

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1473&start=0#p9320
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Can't get Leadlight to work
User: Silas Greenback / DateTime: 2010-10-09 19:01:39

[quote="jacksonmead"]
I heard back from the author, and he suggested that I use the older Apple IIe emulator, AppleWin. The directions are here: <a class="postlink" href="http://leadlightgame.com/faq/faq.html#OLDPC">http://leadlightgame.com/faq/faq.html#OLDPC</a>. It involves downloading the AppleWin emulator and then also the 2-disk version of the game.
-Kevin[/quote]

Kevin,

Thanks for posting that link. I was hoping to run the game on AppleWin, which I already have, rather than the supplied ActiveGS emulator. I wasn't having problems with ActiveGS, it was more a matter of interface preference. The fact that ActiveGS installed a folder in My Documents without permission was another strike against it. 

Now I can get on to playing what looks to be a promising game.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1524&start=0#p9322
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: QTads 2.0.1 released (Linux/Mac/Unix Multimedia TADS 'terp)
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-10-09 21:48:21

I've just released QTads 2.0.1; mainly a bug-fix release.  Thanks to everyone for reporting them!  Downloads for Linux, Mac, Windows, as well as the full source code can be found at:

  <a class="postlink" href="http://qtads.sourceforge.net/downloads.shtml">http://qtads.sourceforge.net/downloads.shtml</a>

The main reason a Windows version is offered is so that authors can test their works with it if they wish.  If something seems to work differently compared to HTML TADS, consider it a bug; and if possible, please send me a bug report about it.

Changes since 2.0.0:

[list][*]A new "Restart Current Game" menu option has been added.[/*:m]
[*]Digital sound fade-in, fade-out and cross-fades are now fully supported on all operating systems.  I think...[/*:m]
[*]MP3 and WAV sounds that use "odd" sampling rates should now play correctly.  Previously, they sometimes were playing at double speed.[/*:m]
[*]Input of non-ASCII characters for languages that use compose keys ("dead keys") should now work correctly for TADS 3.[/*:m]
[*]A memory leak during unloading of MP3 and WAV sounds has been fixed.[/*:m]
[*]Decoding of long MP3s on Windows should not take several millenia anymore.[/*:m]
[*]A new configuration option was introduced that allows for selecting the character set encoding to be used when playing TADS 2 games. Previously, the interpreter was treating TADS 2 games the same as TADS 3 ones, which wouldn't work correctly with games that use characters outside the ASCII range.[/*:m]
[*]When built on Linux with Qt 4.6 or newer, appropriate icons from the desktop environment's current theme will be used for the various menu items.[/*:m]
[*]A sane set of default fonts and sizes is now used on Mac and Windows.[/*:m]
[*]Sometimes the interpreter would not scroll down to the bottom when opening TADS 2 games.  This should no longer be occuring.[/*:m][/list:u]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1525&start=0#p9327
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Galatea's endings (abounding in spoilers)
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-10-10 07:52:37

In case the subject wasn't clear enough: there will be spoilers in this thread. Probably a lot of spoilers, and possibly not hidden by spoiler tags. Read at your own risk.

---

According to an IFwiki user, [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=urxrv27t7qtu52lb]Galatea[/url] has [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/User:Cassandra_Palop/Galatea]70 endings[/url], and I expect most people who've played Galatea have replayed to see some of the different stories available. Of the endings you've seen there are probably some you liked and some you didn't, and maybe you have a favourite or favourites.

But I was wondering about a more specific question. Is there a particular ending (or endings) that you think of as [i]the[/i] ending? If so, why? Because it was the first ending you came to? Because it seems to fit the work as a whole so well? If not, are there any endings that you think of as more important/canonical/true to the story than others?

I've always thought of the [url=http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/reflect.htm]Reflections[/url] ending as the major ending. In case you don't know which I mean, it's this one:
[spoiler]>A GALATEA
"What are you really?" you demand, troubled by the memory of the shifting of her shape, the qualities of stone that come and go at her will.

"I'm not dangerous to you."  She gives you a look that seems almost pitying.  "Except perhaps to your sanity.  But you seem hardy enough."

"But that doesn't explain anything," you complain.  She is silent, apparently reluctant.

"Are you made of some kind of new material?" you demand, casting about.  "Somehow become self-aware?  A shape-shifter?"

Her silence persists.

"A daemon?"

She laughs.  "That's a closer explanation than any other that you are likely to come up with," she says.  "And if you're willing to entertain the notion--"

You aren't, of course, not really, but it's too late to tell her that now, too late to cram reality back into its box.  With a laugh like that of a child being let outside, she turns -- to wood, the color and style of a product of Old Kingdom Egypt.  To glass, faceted, her hair scattering the downshot light to a thousand tiny points.  To a sculpture of sand, to a pillar of salt, to flowing water, to flame.

And finally her substance has fled entirely, and she is only a shadow, passing around you in a cool whisper.

"I am what you think I am; I am what your treatment makes of me."


    *** The End ***[/spoiler]
I'll be the first to admit it's not the most satisfying ending, and it's certainly not my favourite. The reason I think of it as the main ending is [spoiler]partly mundane: I always seemed to get that ending. I'd talk to Galatea for ages about all sorts of things, and when I ran out of ideas, I'd ask her about herself again. But also, in a way that ending sums up my experience of Galatea. I want to know who and what she is, but the game never gives me a definite answer. Maybe she's really a statue come to life, but maybe she isn't. Whatever she is, it's partly a result of the choices I make as I play.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1526&start=0#p9328
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Linux Format (Tux Radar) and Inform...
User: Sslaxx / DateTime: 2010-10-10 08:36:18

[url=http://www.tuxradar.com/content/podcast-season-2-episode-18]It seems the Tux Radar guys have been experimenting with Inform 7.[/url]

Not much comment about it in the comments section, but those comments I have seen indicate that people think the documentation is pretty poor, and that the example stories are too complicated to be of use. Hmmmm.

I have had issues with the documentation being less than useful, but on the whole I've got by fairly well, and the examples seem to be OK to me.

Thoughts?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1287&start=0#p9329
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Hint Request -- The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy
User: Sslaxx / DateTime: 2010-10-10 08:44:17

[quote="Peter Pears"]Your reply makes me think you aren't aware of the following. In which case, you'll probably be very interested.

<a class="postlink" href="http://waxy.org/2008/04/milliways_infocoms_unreleased_sequel_to_hitchhikers_guide_to_the_galax/index.shtml">http://waxy.org/2008/04/milliways_infoc ... ndex.shtml</a>[/quote]
Doing some thread necromancy here, apologies, but I just noticed the link to one of the Milliways prototypes has the extension z[i]6[/i] - was this planned to be a graphical adventure ala Shogun?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1287&start=0#p9331
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Hint Request -- The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-10-10 11:11:36

I don't suppose we'll ever know. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1473&start=0#p9332
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: [SOLVED] Can't get Leadlight to work
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-10-10 11:12:06

Same here.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1525&start=0#p9333
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Galatea's endings (abounding in spoilers)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-10-10 11:15:17

The ending I get most often after wandering around through the conversation is [url=http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/portents.htm]Portents and Omens[/url]. (I always feel kind of dirty typing in commands from a walkthrough in this game.) 

I don't think of any of the endings as canonical, just because of the way that the underlying reality can change from play to play -- something that was driven home by the ending where 

[spoiler]Emily Short herself emerges from behind the curtain. At least that's who I think it is.[/spoiler]

In a way I think the game is meant to reward the player for not trying to break through the facade of [i]Galatea[/i]'s programming, by making Galatea more natural the more naturally you interact with her. Such as, if you exhaust one of her topics early on, the PC thinks something supercilious about how she'll never convince anyone with such a limited database, which always makes me feel like a heel. (Paradoxically: In the story Galatea is a person that the PC is treating like a program, whereas in reality Galatea is a program that I'm treating like a person.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1525&start=0#p9334
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Galatea's endings (abounding in spoilers)
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-10-10 11:29:41

I generally prefer the endings where the PC has accepted that she's not some sort of robot, since that seems somewhat in accordance with the whole aspect of the game that's thematically about interactive characters in games (see Matt's pithy last sentence above).  And more specifically, I'd probably go for one of the ones where they form some sort of friendship, or Galatea is convinced to stop sulking and enjoy the world around her, since that seems like a resolution to her own story, and also appeals to the part of me that's a sentimental sucker.

I'm also fond of the ending where, in order to demonstrate her free will, she angrily snaps the player character's neck.  I don't think I'd want that to be [i]the[/i] ending, but it demonstrates why this is one of my favourite games.  I mean, given the behaviour of most gamers, you'd think that interactive characters would stand up for themselves more often, and what I love about Galatea is that when the player pushes her, she pushes [i]back[/i].

[quote="matt w"]In a way I think the game is meant to reward the player for not trying to break through the facade of [i]Galatea[/i]'s programming[/quote]Exactly.  I think pursuing any specific ending, let alone a canonical one, is against the spirit of the game (as appealing as it may be to the player - and yes, I have done this myself).  This is supposed to be a conversation, and although you may have goals going into a conversation in real life, because of the nature of the world, and of other people, things pretty much never work out as we expect.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1525&start=0#p9335
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Galatea's endings (abounding in spoilers)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-10-10 11:56:26

[quote="Pacian"]I generally prefer the endings where the PC has accepted that she's not some sort of robot, since that seems somewhat in accordance with the whole aspect of the game that's thematically about interactive characters in games....  And more specifically, I'd probably go for one of the ones where they form some sort of friendship, or Galatea is convinced to stop sulking and enjoy the world around her, since that seems like a resolution to her own story, and also appeals to the part of me that's a sentimental sucker.[/quote]

Well, those would be my favorite endings to get (though "sulking" seems pretty harsh -- she's not unjustified). It's not even so sentimental because, you know, [i]you[/i] helped her do this. 

Though there's a sense in which some of those aren't my favorite endings. In particular, I didn't find the ending where you become friends quite so satisfying -- partly because

[spoiler]I wasn't expecting that talking about myself would be the way to make friends with her; though it makes sense, because she might be sick of being poked and prodded, and eager to learn more about people;[/spoiler]

but also because the conversation stops being interactive just when it gets to the good part. And how can it not? It's a lot harder to program a free-form ordinary conversation with friends than the kind of conversation you usually get; at the very least it would require developing the PC's backstory as much as Galatea's. 

So anyway, the ending that had the biggest emotional impact when I got it the first time was the one where

[spoiler]you prod her too much about love and she kills herself -- just turns herself back into a statue.[/spoiler]

Partly because I got it myself, unlike most of the ones where she cheers up (many of which involve commands beyond "a something," I think). But also -- well, it seems like the kind of thing that might happen, if you weren't careful. Of course I try to avoid it now.

[quote]I'm also fond of the ending where, in order to demonstrate her free will, she angrily snaps the player character's neck.  I don't think I'd want that to be [i]the[/i] ending, but it demonstrates why this is one of my favourite games.  I mean, given the behaviour of most gamers, you'd think that interactive characters would stand up for themselves more often, and what I love about Galatea is that when the player pushes her, she pushes [i]back[/i].[/quote]

It may not even be a successful use of her free will;

[spoiler]Have you tried "Eudoxia"? (I just now discovered that, after trying [url=http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/brute.htm]this one[/url].)[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1525&start=0#p9337
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Galatea's endings (abounding in spoilers)
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-10 13:17:42

Wow, 70 endings? I had no idea. I only investigated a handful. FWIW the one Emerald quoted is the one that felt most conclusive of those I witnessed, and after I experienced it I had a general (though still uncertain) feeling that I had 'seen' the story.

Paul.

EDIT TO ADD:

[quote="matt w"](Paradoxically: In the story Galatea is a person that the PC is treating like a program, whereas in reality Galatea is a program that I'm treating like a person.)[/quote]
Wow, a very cool observation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1525&start=0#p9338
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Galatea's endings (abounding in spoilers)
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-10-10 14:08:03

[quote="matt w"][quote="Pacian"]I'd probably go for one of the ones where they form some sort of friendship, or Galatea is convinced to stop sulking and enjoy the world around her, since that seems like a resolution to her own story, and also appeals to the part of me that's a sentimental sucker.[/quote]Well, those would be my favorite endings to get (though "sulking" seems pretty harsh -- she's not unjustified). It's not even so sentimental because, you know, [i]you[/i] helped her do this.[/quote]
To be perfectly clear: "sulk" is me being facetious, and "sentimental" was entirely referring to myself and not the game.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1527&start=0#p9340
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Defining Variables and Lists
User: Theotherguy / DateTime: 2010-10-10 19:24:44

Hello, I'm new to programming in Inform 7. I am a veteran programmer, and I know many languages. Somebody showed me the source code to an Inform 7 program, and I thought it was so ridiculously verbose and obtuse that I had to give it a try.

Right now, I am completely stuck when it comes to creating variables, lists and tables.

The documentation seems to suggest that the following should be valid:

[code]
let Messages be a list of text;

add "...." to Messages;

add "..." to Messages;

add "..." to Messages;
[/code]

However, the compiler complains about not understanding "let". This is the case if I use "let" for anything.

For instance this is illegal as well, apparently:

[code]
let X be 5;
[/code]

If I try this instead:

[code]
Messages is a list of text;
[/code]

The compiler complains that "list of text" is a type, and so can't be used in an assignment.

How is this done?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1527&start=0#p9341
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Defining Variables and Lists
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-10-10 19:56:12

The problem isn't your syntax, but (I'm guessing) that you're using these phrases in a context where Inform expects an assertion or a rule header. (If you are unfamiliar with the idea of assertions and rules, see sections 2.1 and 2.2 in the documentation.) Basically, you're writing procedural code without any wrapper to tell Inform what function it should belong to.

If you want to do something as part of a rule, you can use that "let..." syntax. If you are trying to create a global list variable, then you need an assertion, and the form needs to be "a list of text that varies". 

The following code demonstrates:

[code]Foo is a room.

[Here's a rule:]
Every turn:
	let Messages be a list of text;
	add "...." to Messages;
	add "..." to Messages;
	add "..." to Messages;
	say "Messages are: [Messages][line break]";
	say "Other Messages are: [Other Messages][line break]";
	
[Here's an assertion:]
Other Messages is a list of text that varies. Other Messages is { "bar", "baz" }

Test me with "z". [/code]

That said: Inform is a domain-specific language; if you're trying to do something in it that is deeply contrary to its purpose, then it's unlikely to show its strengths.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1458&start=0#p9342
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Secret feature in Basic Screen Effects
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-10-10 20:08:06

Er, well:

Next time you have a specific request about an extension of mine, please email -- it's easy for me to miss forum posts when I'm busy.

Now, to the point: I don't feel this is polished enough to be advertised in its current form. To be considered a feature rather than an internal method, it really ought to be returning text that the user can easily test against. I'm not going to document something that comes with a caveat that you need a ZSCII table in order to use it. (It's somewhat munged ASCII it's returning.)

If someone wants to write up some code that will do a better job of this feature, I'm happy to have a look; otherwise I can work on it When I Get Around To It, but my to-do list is pretty long right now.

FWIW, more for future users than for you: there is a splash screen extension on the extension site, by Jon Ingold, which does a lot of this nifty stuff automatically.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1459&start=0#p9343
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Online documentation for built-in extensions
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-10-10 20:10:25

[quote="capmikee"]I am away from my Mac for the moment and I wanted to look up some documentation online. So I went to inform7.com and looked in Write -> Extensions. But there are no documentation/source links for the built-in extensions. So I went to Manuals. But there are no documentation links for any extensions there! Is information about the built-in extensions even available on the site?[/quote]

No. I suggest adding a comment/suggestion on the UserVoice forum if you'd like to see this done, as the extension volunteers are currently going over the system.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1527&start=0#p9344
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Defining Variables and Lists
User: Theotherguy / DateTime: 2010-10-10 20:16:15

Ah, okay, so the declaration of local and global variables differ! It would have been very helpful if the parser gave a more useful error here [emote]:([/emote]

I am not trying to do something outside of I7's domain. I am making a text adventure game. Specifically here, I am trying to make a phone have a list of messages that gets decremented every time the player answers it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1239&start=30#p9345
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Transcripts collection proposal
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-10-10 20:41:25

Another new idea, what about using one of the unicode control characters as delimiters? The Inform 7 docs say they don't support characters less than 32, but I'm sure we can work around that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1527&start=0#p9346
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Defining Variables and Lists
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-10-10 21:43:14

You may find the programmer's guide to Inform 7 a bit more direct in its explanations. (see my sig)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1504&start=10#p9347
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Flack's IFComp 2010 Game Reviews
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-10-10 22:59:10

Review: Ninja's Fate

Oh boy.

[spoiler]Imagine, if you will, a film that paid tribute to a bad director -- Ed Wood, perhaps. The film would make references to many different awful scenes from Ed Wood's awful movies and tie them together as loosely as possible. This odd idea for an homage only works if (A) the viewer is familiar with the source material (in this example, Ed Wood's films) and (B), it's done with a nod and a wink to the audience. Simply referencing random bits from old, awful movies doesn't necessarily make for enthralling entertainment. 

And, I should add, that no one unfamiliar with the source material has any business reviewing the final work. Anyone unfamiliar with Wood's films is most definitely not the intended audience.

Ahem.

Ninja's Fate is the text version of the above scenario. It's an (intentionally, I hope) bad game based on the (unintentionally, I presume) bad games of Paul Panks. Who is Paul Panks? I had no idea before trying this game, and only know now after reading other people's review of this game. Paul Panks, by many accounts, appears to have been the Ed Wood of Interactive Fiction. His words were the "pie plates on a string" of UFO attacks; his characters, the Glen or Glenda of transgender drama. 

I can't tell you what the real point of this homage was and I can't tell you what the hell was going on half the time -- what I can tell you is, I am not the intended audience for this game. Not being in on that who is (or was) Paul Panks, any references to the guy's former games were lost on me. 

A few years ago, I rented a film called The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra. It was released in 2004, but shot to look like it was filmed in the 50s. It had all the earmarks of being a lost B-film from that era -- it has a cave, and some aliens, and a talking skeleton. For some reason, I never could get into that movie. While I love old bad B movies, there was something about making one intentionally bad that just didn't have the same feel to me. Ninja's Fate felt that way, too. I get the whole "make a bad game and include bits from other bad games to make a tribute to a bad game author with a new bad game", but ultimately I felt like the joke was between the two authors, and that we (as players) weren't fully in on it.

Anyway, like I said, as someone unfamiliar with Panks' other games, I don't feel like there's much more I can say about this one.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1525&start=0#p9348
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Galatea's endings (abounding in spoilers)
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-10-10 23:49:07

[quote="matt w"]In a way I think the game is meant to reward the player for not trying to break through the facade of [i]Galatea[/i]'s programming, by making Galatea more natural the more naturally you interact with her. Such as, if you exhaust one of her topics early on, the PC thinks something supercilious about how she'll never convince anyone with such a limited database, which always makes me feel like a heel. (Paradoxically: In the story Galatea is a person that the PC is treating like a program, whereas in reality Galatea is a program that I'm treating like a person.)[/quote]
Another paradox, though: the more you understand Galatea's programming, the easier it is to stick to actions that will seem natural. Taking your example, if you know how much Galatea has to say about a particular topic, you know not to her about it once she's said all she has to say and can avoid the "pathetic database" comment. Or, as you mention in a later post, knowing that Galatea will kill herself when pressed too hard about a particular subject allows you to avoid that ending. In other words, the better you understand Galatea as a machine, the easier it is to make her seem human.

[quote="Pacian"]I generally prefer the endings where the PC has accepted that she's not some sort of robot, since that seems somewhat in accordance with the whole aspect of the game that's thematically about interactive characters in games (see Matt's pithy last sentence above).[/quote]
Likewise.

[quote="Pacian"]I'm also fond of the ending where, in order to demonstrate her free will, she angrily snaps the player character's neck.  I don't think I'd want that to be the ending, but it demonstrates why this is one of my favourite games.  I mean, given the behaviour of most gamers, you'd think that interactive characters would stand up for themselves more often, and what I love about Galatea is that when the player pushes her, she pushes back.[/quote]
There's an ending I discovered the other day which I love for that very reason. The critic attempts to convince Galatea that she is an animate, but she turns his argument right back on him:
[spoiler]> GALATEA, KILL ME
“You don’t believe me when I tell you you’re a machine, but here, I’ll prove it to you,” you 
say reasonably.  “You have certain constraints that you can’t go against.  You can’t harm a 
living person, for instance.”

“What are you telling me to do?”

“Just try and hurt me.”

She turns to face you, in a rustle of resettling skirts.    “You’re awfully confident.”

You stand there smiling at her, and she sighs.  “You’re right, I can’t do it.  From where I 
stand it feels as though I simply have an objection to violence.  Is that what it feels like, 
being a machine?  Is your code disguised, from your point of view, as moral scruple?”

“How would I know?” you retort.

She tilts her head in acknowledgement.  “My point exactly.  Maybe we’re both machines; 
maybe neither of us is; maybe this whole thing is itself a simulation inside a box 
somewhere.”

“An unanswerable bit of Sophistry,” you reply.  “You win.  For now.”  You execute a little 
bow, and she laughs as you go out.


    *** The End ***[/spoiler]
It's not a big happy ending; it's not particularly dramatic. But the critic and Galatea find a connection, the critic learns something, and there's a bit of meta-commentary. I like that.

[quote="Laroquod"]Wow, 70 endings? I had no idea.[/quote]
To be fair, many of them are variations on a theme. For instance, there's a bunch of endings where the critic just leaves abruptly, which differ depending on how much time he spent with Galatea and how their relationship developed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1528&start=0#p9349
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: About?
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-10-11 01:11:42

Based on a few of the IF2010 reviews I've read, I gather it is considered polite for an IF game to respond to "About". Is there any agreement or standard as to what should be provided in an about statement, and if so, how long it should be?

(The commonality of the word "about" is making it fairly difficult to search for an answer ...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1528&start=0#p9351
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: About?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-10-11 08:04:38

The "about" command is one of the first things players try because they expect it to give them information about any quirks, special features or non-standard behavior of the game.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1528&start=0#p9352
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: About?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-10-11 08:36:07

Some players, like Emily Short, also expect it to have the author's details and a list of testers. Presumably if a game is released anonymously for a comp then the author details can wait until a post-comp update [emote];)[/emote]

Some stories, in addition to noting unusual things, also contain a general guide to IF. I'm not sure if it's the best place to put such a guide but it probably can't hurt.

And if you make about and help/hint synonyms then it's also a place to get in-game hints.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1528&start=0#p9354
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: About?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-10-11 09:23:12

The things I expect to find when I type ABOUT:

[list]
[*]credits[/*:m]
[*]a way to contact the author in case of bugs etc.[/*:m]
[*]info on any unusual aspects of the game that I might need to know about, e.g. non-standard verbs[/*:m]
[*]info on the help available to me, e.g. how to get hints or a walkthrough[/*:m]
[*]the game's cruelty level, especially if it falls on the crueller end of the spectrum[/*:m][/list:u]

Obviously, if you put all that information in a single block of text it might be a bit much. You can use a menu to break it up, or just tell me where else to find the info, e.g. "Type CREDITS to find out who brought you this fine piece of IF." (And of course, not all of those items will be relevant to every game.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1458&start=0#p9355
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Secret feature in Basic Screen Effects
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-11 09:26:43

Noted.

Thanks for the tip about Jon Ingold's extension!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1459&start=0#p9356
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Online documentation for built-in extensions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-11 09:35:08

Okay, here it is!

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/1126939-make-built-in-extensions-available-online-just-lik">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... e-just-lik</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1529&start=0#p9357
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Fiction about Interactive Fiction
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-11 11:30:42

This webcomic page could be really thought-provoking for fans of IF. In fact, Juan Santapau's stuff in general is littered with amazing crossover stuff like this. Highly recommended! Probably my favourite webcomic.

[url=http://www.thesecretknots.com/2010/09/17/walkthrough/]The Secret Knots: Walkthrough[/url]

Wouldn't mind it at all, either, if I came back here and discovered that a few more links to fiction about interactive fiction (playing off/investigating the particular ways game narratives work, etc.), were posted in this thread... 87

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1530&start=0#p9359
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Need some WordPress help
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-10-11 12:21:43

For the second time in a row, the entirety of my IFcomp review is listed in full all over Planet IF.  WordPress has a box for blurbs or whatever, which I used on the first review, but it didn't stop the review with a READ MORE link or whatever despite the WordPress documentation promising this.  So Ben C told me to use a  tag, so I did this time, and it gives the READ MORE on our site, but still, the whole thing is all over Planet IF. 

Anyone know how to get WordPress to stop doing that???  This seems broken.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1530&start=0#p9360
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Need some WordPress help
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-10-11 12:33:45

At least for me you have to use the both the excerpt field and the  tag. The excerpt field is shown in RSS feeds, search results and some other places and  defines where the front page summary is cut.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1529&start=0#p9362
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Fiction about Interactive Fiction
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-10-11 13:27:07

That is unbelievably awesome.

Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A...  Where's the B, A?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=10#p9363
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2010-10-11 13:40:23

Well, I'm new to Inform 7 writing, but I've done some stuff I was pleased with.

I created a room with 3 dice you could flip over, roll, etc.

Of course, once I implemented rolling, I realized I allowed for the possibility of counterclockwise dice becoming clockwise, and vice versa. Oops.

So much of what I've done, though, is due to the examples I've read and tweaking them. But I created my first two puzzles. They involve some NPC action, too, but I think I can do even more. I still want to understand rules better and I know my code isn't optimal.

Oh, I figured how my first "real" game will end, too, while on the bus yesterday.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=140#p9364
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2010-10-11 13:55:22

My name is Andrew. When very young I was enthralled by a new type of book called Choose Your Own Adventure. Eventually the randomness annoyed me, but by then I'd discovered the wide world of Text Adventures. I even annoyed my parents into buying some Apple program that created them for you, with dice rolls in some areas.

I grew up trying to create text adventures on my family's Apple IIe. I loved the Infocom games but was horrible at them. I remember arguing with my older sister after I revealed all the InvisiClues in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

My games as a kid were derivative but impressive to everyone else. I remember having a different "INPUT A$" for each room, then the glorious day one line took care of all moves. I remember gleefully building up pointless porches and giving points for obvious commands. I also remember being crushed when an AppleSoft adventure got big enough and ran out of memory. Perhaps the greatest blow to my programming self was when I wrote a game collection for a school project. I watched people thoroughly enjoy a game where you were a dot, dodging other dots moving randomly. But my text adventures! My simple text RPG with hit points and spell points! They took days and this game--2 hours. (People also loved my driving game where a <-> had to stay on the road. It took 2 hours, too.)

Then I discovered RPGs, and only the occasional item on clearance in the shrinking Apple section of Babbage's--or Egghead--brought me back to text adventures. But then there was Tetris, and getting a lousy grade in Advanced Placement Computer Science seemed to confirm I was not a programmer. (Of course, I probably just played BlockOut too much. I was the class champ!)

I gave up completely once our Apple II died, Infocom moved to spreadsheets, and graphic games took over. I'm glad others carried the torch--to the point of creating intuitive programming languages. I found some old Infocom games online. I finally figured the box puzzle in Zork 3. I also found a walkthrough for Pyramid of Doom--and felt dumb what I missed.

But I was too lazy and IF programming wasn't intuitive enough yet. Until Inform 7.

My young days were a lot of fun, but I expect better of myself now. Especially with I7 doing the dirty work. I've got the ideas and want to execute them. I've already written two unreleasable, simple games and enjoyed doing so immensely. I'm looking forward to trading ideas, beta-testing, encouragement, etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1529&start=0#p9365
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Fiction about Interactive Fiction
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-10-11 14:42:56

[url=http://mspaintadventures.com/]MS Paint Adventures.[/url] These are webcomics in the form of adventure games/RPGs indescribably weird whatevers rather than IF applied to life, but still. (And the commands used to be supplied by readers, making it more like straight-up IF but the author eventually went away from that as it became unmanageable. He still draws on reader theories and ideas.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1530&start=0#p9366
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Need some WordPress help
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-10-11 15:17:14

Sorry Ron - it looks like Juhana is right and the excerpt field is also needed.

It used to be the case that Wordpress truncated RSS entries based on the more tag, but apparently they "fixed" this a while back.  [emote]:oops:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1527&start=0#p9367
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Defining Variables and Lists
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-11 16:13:26

[quote="Theotherguy"]Ah, okay, so the declaration of local and global variables differ! It would have been very helpful if the parser gave a more useful error here [emote]:([/emote]

I am not trying to do something outside of I7's domain. I am making a text adventure game. Specifically here, I am trying to make a phone have a list of messages that gets decremented every time the player answers it.[/quote]
I find that Tables are a much more reasonable way of managing that sort of thing in Inform.

In fact, I hardly ever need to use local variables at all. A lot of things can be done with properties (i.e. object member variables) and adjectives (a bit like functions that return a value for a particular object, or when used in the context of descriptions, functions that return a list of objects having the same value). Of course I use global variables sparingly, but they can definitely be useful for keeping track of the overall game state, and in my experience it's not at all unreasonable for them to look very different from temporary variables in rules.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1531&start=0#p9368
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: The Warbler's Nest
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-10-11 17:06:32

Granted I'm a sucker for all things horror in IF but even so, [i]Warbler's Nest[/i] is one of the standouts of this competition. It's also pretty heart-wrenching, but that could just the perspective of a parent who's expecting a new baby any day now.

Discussion of the game's ending follows. Do not read until you've played it through to the end.

[spoiler]So I thought it was pretty clear, on the basis of the textual evidence and also certain meta-game elements, that the baby was not in fact a changeling. You have the obvious fact that the ending where you accept the baby as Anda triggers the AMUSING text, and on this basis can be treated as the winning ending. (AMUSING is something of a wild misnomer here, given that this may be the first ending a player sees and that the website actively encourages players to explore the baby-killing ending before reading the commentary.)

Most of the evidence for the Anda hypothesis comes from the standing stones behind the cottage.

[quote]
Two standing stones mark the earth here, along the rear wall of the cottage. One, waist-high, stands larger than the other.

You can see a rock here.

>x stones
One of these stones stands as tall as your waist. And then a small one, only ankle-high, but still conspicuous.

>take stones
You would never disturb where these stones rest.

>look at small stone
A smaller, thin, black stone, with the sign of the Eye chalked upon it.

>look at large stone
A large, heavy stone, roughly but recognizably marked with the sign of the Eye.

The ghost of an ache passes through your shoulders, remembering that stone's weight. It wasn't so long ago.
[/quote]

Along with the player's thoughts when picking up the baby:
[quote]
>cut knots
The cold iron of the shears bites into the blanket.

It was a hard birth. Not like the last one, but hard. Still, it ended with you holding the babe in your arms.
[/quote]

Taken together, this paints a fairly clear picture. The first baby was either stillborn or died shortly after birth; the second baby lived but your wife did not.

I'm satisfied enough with this line of reasoning that I'm almost afraid to ask: did anyone find the third ending?

Also, I really liked that you could unlock more recollections by doing things in a slightly different order, e.g.

[quote]
>x mushrooms
A circle of bulbous, sickly-white mushrooms, growing around one end of the ancient log. They look like malformed little people, their bodies twisted into stooped shapes underneath the large, fleshy caps they wear. Twisted maybe from pain, maybe from laughter.

The little forest animal lies within, noisily cleaning out an eggshell.

When did this ring appear? Has it really been so long since 

[i]the dead thing falling out, wet, the earth swallowing it[/i]

you were last here?
[/quote]

Which you only get if you empty the cracked eggshell before going to the backyard. It makes one of the more disturbing passages even more upsetting by analogy. I thought at first it was an inconsistency in the text, since you had talked about the fairy ring with the tailor in the recent past, but those mushrooms were in the garden out front and not in the backyard.[/spoiler]

Kudos to Jason for such a fine, subtle work of IF.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1528&start=0#p9369
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: About?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-10-11 18:12:24

[quote="Dannii"]Some players, like Emily Short, also expect it to have the author's details and a list of testers. Presumably if a game is released anonymously for a comp then the author details can wait until a post-comp update [emote];)[/emote]

Some stories, in addition to noting unusual things, also contain a general guide to IF. I'm not sure if it's the best place to put such a guide but it probably can't hurt.

And if you make about and help/hint synonyms then it's also a place to get in-game hints.[/quote]

To clarify here: my good-faith effort to find out about testers includes trying a whole bunch of commands -- ABOUT, HELP, HINT, MENU, CREDITS, INFO. If none of those turn up anything, I start getting suspicious.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1530&start=0#p9370
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Need some WordPress help
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-10-11 18:15:28

OK, thanks guys.  I considered that this might be the case, but I thought it better to ask rather than testing theories on a whole series of comp games.   

My sincere apologies to those two authors, and any players caught unaware.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1531&start=0#p9371
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Warbler's Nest
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-10-11 18:49:12

[spoiler][quote]the second baby lived but your wife did not[/quote]

Aren't you the mother? I thought a "shift" (from x me) was a woman's garment. Anyway, I didn't pick up on these; kudos for the observation.

The third ending, I think, is where you just walk out into the forest (which is actually worse for the baby). I didn't want to play to the river ending. (I got the forest ending when I couldn't find the shears; the only criticism I have is that I was sometimes confused by being unable to find important objects in unexamined supporters. And that may be more a criticism of me.) 

It also seems to me, from the afterword, that the game may respond to how you refer to the baby; a nice touch.[/spoiler]

Definitely one of the best games I've played so far (mostly the z-code entries).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1531&start=0#p9372
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Warbler's Nest
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-10-11 19:01:11

[quote="matt w"]
[spoiler]Aren't you the mother? I thought a "shift" (from x me) was a woman's garment.[/spoiler]
[/quote]

[spoiler]Wow, I completely missed that. Guess I should pay more attention instead of imposing my patriocentric ideology on the game.

A related discovery: the game responds to "nurse baby" which is pretty cool.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1531&start=0#p9373
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Warbler's Nest
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-10-11 19:06:35

[spoiler][quote="bcressey"][quote="matt w"]
Aren't you the mother? I thought a "shift" (from x me) was a woman's garment.
[/quote]

Wow, I completely missed that. Guess I should pay more attention instead of imposing my patriocentric ideology on the game.

A related discovery: the game responds to "nurse baby" which is pretty cool.[/quote]

Yeah -- I just played through the game again and was about to say that you can end the game by "feed anda," which removes any doubt. Also, I think in this setting, if the mother had died the baby would need a wet nurse.  

Another correction is that the forest ending is more inconclusive than I remembered -- you go to look for more eggshells, and maybe you won't come back. 

Last, one criticism I didn't have before: There are a few too many default messages left in, as for "think" and (unfortunately) "touch baby."[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1528&start=0#p9374
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: About?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-11 22:10:11

[ Late-night drunk-typing deleted. It was nothing terrible, or anything — just an off-topic ramble about not much, really. 87 ]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=20#p9377
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Oxygen
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-10-12 00:30:07

[b]Oxygen[/b] [i]by ShadowK[/i]

A short review for a short game...
[spoiler]On the one hand, I enjoyed this enough to play it through four times (and got four different endings). On the other hand, doing so took me less than an hour. I have a hard time giving the same weight to a small, one-room, one-puzzle game like this as I do to longer works.

The tiny nature of the game was pretty much my only complaint, however. It was well written and interesting; the puzzle was challenging but not impossible (although it would take a good deal of luck to get the best ending on your first attempt).[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1527&start=0#p9391
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Defining Variables and Lists
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-10-12 03:17:32

[quote="Theotherguy"]I am not trying to do something outside of I7's domain. I am making a text adventure game. Specifically here, I am trying to make a phone have a list of messages that gets decremented every time the player answers it.[/quote]

Cool. Sorry if I sounded unhelpful -- the opening of your post just made me think you were setting out to break the system to prove a point, and, well, that's easily done and not very rewarding. [emote]:)[/emote] 

Game writing questions are always welcome.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1530&start=0#p9395
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Need some WordPress help
User: Rhian / DateTime: 2010-10-12 06:54:56

I had this problem too. [url=http://planetozh.com/blog/my-projects/wordpress-plugin-better-feed-rss/]This plugin[/url] adds the functionality you're looking for, and automatically truncates feeds when you've used the "read more" tag, adding a link to the rest of the post just like on your index page. You don't have to bother with excerpts. It allows you to add other things to your feed, too, but I don't use that part.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=10#p9397
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Genstein / DateTime: 2010-10-12 07:13:07

Apologies for the lack of contact. I've been wrestling with a day job whose definition of "day" is closer to the 24 hour than 8 hour variety...

A couple of people have reported the 100% CPU time issue; I've tracked this down and added a fix. Trizbort tries quite enthusiastically to update its menu and toolbars to make sure everything is checked or greyed out as appropriate, and it was getting a little over zealous to say the least. v1.0.1 rains on its parade in this regard.

As it happens I'd been toying with a teensy new feature so I left that in as well. It's now possible to use the numeric keypad to navigate around the map like a compass rose; select a room, then use keypad keys to move between connected rooms. Hold Ctrl as well to create new rooms in the relevant direction if they don't already exist. Trizbort will do its best to find and place rooms sensibly, but may get things wrong.

The latest version is available from <a class="postlink" href="http://trizbort.genstein.net">http://trizbort.genstein.net</a>

All the best
    -eg.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=10#p9405
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-12 11:04:11

Thanks for bringing this thread back, Zack! And congratulations - it sounds like you're well on your way.

I'm happy to say I have something to brag about now - I did the programming for a complete game AND it was submitted to the IFComp!

So I guess in a sense that's my "first game" down, though I didn't do any of the design or writing. I learned a LOT about I7 while I was working on it.

Over the summer I started something of my own that I think I can actually bring to a point where I'd be proud enough to share it. I originally planned to do a little work on it every day, but that was during a slow time at work...

I was slacking off, but posting this has encouraged me to do another 10 minutes of work on it!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1504&start=10#p9406
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Flack's IFComp 2010 Game Reviews
User: Silas Greenback / DateTime: 2010-10-12 11:23:29

[quote="Flack"]Review: Ninja's Fate

Oh boy.

[spoiler]And, I should add, that no one unfamiliar with the source material has any business reviewing the final work. Anyone unfamiliar with Wood's films is most definitely not the intended audience.

...

I get the whole "make a bad game and include bits from other bad games to make a tribute to a bad game author with a new bad game", but ultimately I felt like the joke was between the two authors, and that we (as players) weren't fully in on it.

Anyway, like I said, as someone unfamiliar with Panks' other games, I don't feel like there's much more I can say about this one.[/spoiler][/quote]

I may or may have not played one of Pank's games before. If the style of Ninja's Fate is anything to go by, the tributee's games would be the kind I would play for a few turns and move on to something else. There are quite a few out there like that. Few of them are memorable.

I originally scored Ninja's Fate a 3. All things considered, particularly the obvious mentions of Pank's past low IF Comp rankings, I suspect the author may be happiest with a 1, so a 1 it is.

That makes 2 games ranking a 1 so far. Ninja's Fate ranks a one with a gold star sticker and a handwritten "Nice Job!" beside it while The Chronicler sits beside itself with a dunce cap in the corner.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1534&start=0#p9407
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Kickstarter Campaign to Complete Cross-Mobile IF Platform
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-10-12 11:44:25

Textfyre, currently self/un-funded, is looking for help in completing the ports of the FyreVM engine to various platforms, including the Kindle, Android Phone and Tablet, iPad, iPhone, and Mac Desktop. We may look at Blackberry and Palm Pre later.

If you're inclined and haven't already seen the notice, please visit:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/textfyre/mobile-interactive-stories/">http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tex ... e-stories/</a>

and pledge.

The proceeds will be used to incenticize current and new developers to complete the work as soon as possible. There are cool prizes too.

Thanks,

David Cornelson, President
Textfyre

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1527&start=0#p9408
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Defining Variables and Lists
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-12 11:50:13

Coming at I7 as a progammer - especially if you take a procedural point of view such as a c programmer might - can often cause you to devise solutions for game problems that don't work very well for I7. I've found it more productive to let I7 expand my view of progamming languages than to fit it into my existing view of what a programming language is. Don't let the "natural language" veneer fool you- underneath the English-like syntax is an amazing new thing that's not like "natural" language or "computer" language as one might have conceived it. Although the minimal punctuation does make it more friendly with text-to-speech readers.

It took me a long time to get the hang of object-oriented programming, and I'm still getting the hang of the kind of asynchronous things you have to do in GUI code... it took me a long time to get the hang of the predicate style of SQL... and now I'm trying to get the hang of I7's rulebook structure, which is very powerful, and unlike anything I've ever used before. By the way, descriptions in I7 are a lot like "where" clauses in SQL.

So, as a programmer, I encourage you to seek out I7's strengths, and not see its differences from other languages as weaknesses. Ron Newcomb's book is immensely valuable for that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=10#p9409
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-10-12 12:11:30

After programming one basic game (basically a "exercise in learning Inform") and one "interactive review" (my Get Lamp review), I have started work on my first "real" text adventure. I say text adventure instead of Interactive Fiction because it has more in common with the classic text adventures than it does with some of the more modern games I've tried. 

One of the things I'm having trouble with is programming a vehicle (in this case, an old El Camino) to transport the character between a few locations. I have the story logistics nailed down to where it makes sense, but the actual programming of the thing has turned out to be harder than I had anticipated. Right now the car is an enterable object, and when the player chooses a location on his GPS, the car takes them there. It sounds good in theory but there are so many little parts that aren't working yet -- for example, in some locations (like a fast food drive-thru) I don't want the player to be able to exit the car, but in other locations (work), I do. So far, the game has been an exercise in coming up with ideas, trying to program those ideas, changing my ideas to fit with what I can figure out how to program, and settling for something less. I'll get there eventually.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1535&start=0#p9410
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Thinking about punctuation
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-12 12:15:32

One of the unique advantages of Inform 7 over other programming languages is that you can often read it out loud. It's nice to have a language with less punctuation, even if it is more verbose sometimes.

Thinking about this made me realize what a problem the IDE's handling of tabs is - it goes against the read-out-loud-ability of Inform in a very frustrating way. Of course tables are the worst problem, but then they're a fundamentally not-out-loud-readable sort of thing. But conditional code can be written in English, sometimes in a not-ambiguous way. It would be an interesting challenge, possibly for I7 or possibly for another language, to come up with a syntax for if-then-else (and maybe even looping) that did not require punctuation or whitespace at all (although as a visual aid, automatic indentation would be nice, and possible if there were no ambiguitites).

So Inform has a more English-like "otherwise" rather than "else." But that's mostly cosmetic. What we would really need is a way to distinguish:

[code]if A:
    if B:
        do C:
    else:
        do D:[/code]

from:

[code]if A:
    if B:
        do C:
else:
    do D:[/code]

I guess behind the scenes we have "begin" and "end if," but they seem so un-Inform like that I've never wanted to use them. Other languages have "then," which seems much more English-like than "begin" but I guess it doesn't work for loops.

Then again, there's no reason not to have a different word to use with loops than with conditions - in fact that might make the language even more "natural."

Just brainstorming here...

[code]if the parlor is open:
    check if the liquor cabinet is locked:
        If so, unlock the liquor cabinet.
        If not, get a drink.
otherwise:
    open the parlor.[/code]

[code]if Superman is flying:
    check if Superman carries Lois (this is the Lois-is-flying condition):
         if so, check if Lois is frightened:
            if so, Lois screams.
    if the Lois-is-flying condition is not so:
        Superman calls Lois.[/code]

A "named condition" could be like an embedded "To decide" phrase, usable in more places... or its result could simply be stored as a named temporary variable as opposed to the anonymous temporary variables referred to by "if so" and "if not"

Another sort of named condition, although more subtly so...
[code]if Superman is flying:
    check first if Superman carries Lois:
        if the first is so, check second if Lois is frightened:
            if the second is so, Lois screams.
    if the first is not so:
        Superman calls Lois.
[/code]

Some alternate phrasings for "end if"...
[code]if Superman is flying:
    check if Superman carries Lois:
         if so, check if Lois is frightened:
            if so, Lois screams.
         done checking;
    if not:
        Superman calls Lois.
No more conditions.[/code]

"check that" could be used when there will be no "else":
[code]if Superman is flying:
    check if Superman carries Lois:
        check that Lois is frightened:
            if confirmed, Lois screams.
    if not:
        Superman calls Lois.
[/code]
Perhaps confusing when read aloud, but at least not ambiguous. And the auto-indent could sort it out if you can look at it.

Another wording for a "no-else" condition, though this might be confused with an every turn rule:
[code]As long as Lois is frightened:
    Lois screams.[/code]

Here's another "end if," used to demonstrate the termination of multiple statements...
[code]
            if so, Lois screams.
            if not:
                Lois sings.
                Superman flies higher.
                Do no more.
[/code]

Or statements could always be single by default, with a keyword to indicate continuation...
[code]
            if so, Lois screams.
            if not:
                Lois sings.
                Also, Superman flies higher.
[/code]

Never mind that "check" is already a keyword, I'm just brainstorming. Any ideas?

I'm on a roll! Let's try...

[code]Repeat with the garment running through every wearable thing:
    Now the garment is worn.
    Increment the warmth of the player.
    Do the next garment. [or just "next", a perfectly good word from Perl][/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=10#p9411
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Silas Greenback / DateTime: 2010-10-12 12:36:57

[quote="Genstein"]
A couple of people have reported the 100% CPU time issue; I've tracked this down and added a fix. 

As it happens I'd been toying with a teensy new feature so I left that in as well. It's now possible to use the numeric keypad to navigate around the map like a compass rose; select a room, then use keypad keys to move between connected rooms. Hold Ctrl as well to create new rooms in the relevant direction if they don't already exist. Trizbort will do its best to find and place rooms sensibly, but may get things wrong.

    -eg.[/quote]

Thanks for the fix! Like the others who posted, Trizbort was using 100% of resources on my PC. I was excited to evaluate Trizbort and now I finally can. (Who would've thought a simple and eye-pleasing mapper could be so thrilling?)

The numeric navigation similar to GueMapper is also a big plus. Frankly, switching from mouse to keyboard constantly hampers the fun of IF sometimes.

Best of luck on development.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=10#p9412
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-12 13:24:21

[quote="Flack"]one "interactive review" (my Get Lamp review)[/quote]
Have you posted your interactive Get Lamp review somewhere, online? I am interested in this sort of thing — using IF tools for documentary purposes rather than fiction. (Seeing as this is exactly how IF got started, in an attempt to convey Crowther's personal take on something real, it seems an oddly underexplored avenue.) So, I'm curious as to how you decided to set it up for the purpose of review, and whether you were basing it on or borrowing from anything.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1525&start=0#p9413
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Galatea's endings (abounding in spoilers)
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-12 13:24:52

I had no idea there was so much of Galatea that I hadn't explored. I can't say that I terribly regret reading all the spoilers, though, because I didn't have that much patience for replaying.

Conversation + multiple endings tends to wear me out. I only got to a couple of endings in Alabaster for the same reason. I've never been much of a re-reader or a re-player. For one thing, even if replaying doesn't expose the inner workings of the game, it exposes the fact that the game IS a machine. Sometimes it would be preferable to expose the workings - in every conversation-heavy game that I've played, branches seem to hinge on completely arbitrary things like when you bring a subject up, or what words you use to say the same thing. I get to a certain replaying where I say "I wonder what would have happened if I'd said THAT"... but I can't figure out how to get to that choice because there's no apparent reason for it.

Maybe real-life conversations are like that, but how could you tell? You never get the chance to start them over in exactly the same state. Call me simplistic, but I like to believe that the outcome of a conversation doesn't usually depend on the small choices - when you mention a particular thing, or what specific words you use. It's the big choices, like what you're talking about overall, what you choose to hide or reveal, or how you treat the other person emotionally. I've read lots of Emily's articles on tracking context and modeling emotional state, but a game has never made me feel like I had any more idea of the emotional path that a conversation takes than I did using a simple context-free ask/tell system.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=10#p9414
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-10-12 13:52:08

[quote="Laroquod"][quote="Flack"]one "interactive review" (my Get Lamp review)[/quote]
Have you posted your interactive Get Lamp review somewhere, online? I am interested in this sort of thing — using IF tools for documentary purposes rather than fiction. (Seeing as this is exactly how IF got started, in an attempt to convey Crowther's personal take on something real, it seems an oddly underexplored avenue.) So, I'm curious as to how you decided to set it up for the purpose of review, and whether you were basing it on or borrowing from anything.

Paul.[/quote]

A link to the review, a bit of back story, and a walk-thru are all located here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.robohara.com/?p=2427">http://www.robohara.com/?p=2427</a>

The second ending (not listed in the walk-thru) involves climbing the bookshelves.

The work wasn't based on anything and I didn't borrow from anyone. The review and (poor) coding are my own.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1534&start=0#p9415
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Kickstarter Campaign to Complete Cross-Mobile IF Platfor
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-10-12 14:21:21

Good luck with this. I've kicked in a few dollars.

I hope it comes together by Friday. Please post a follow-up later in the week if it still needs help getting over the finish line.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1530&start=0#p9416
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Need some WordPress help
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-10-12 14:28:00

Thanks for the tip. I've installed the plugin, so it should work now with just the  tag, and no need for a manual excerpt. Third time's the charm, right?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1534&start=0#p9417
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Kickstarter Campaign to Complete Cross-Mobile IF Platfor
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-10-12 14:39:49

Also, if the idea is to draw funding from outside the established community, you might ask Jason Scott if he'd consider posting a link to your campaign on his Get Lamp blog. Seems like he'd be sympathetic to both the venue and the cause.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1524&start=0#p9418
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: QTads 2.0.1 released (Linux/Mac/Unix Multimedia TADS 'te
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-10-12 14:40:31

Thanks for your work on this!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1526&start=0#p9419
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Linux Format (Tux Radar) and Inform...
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-12 14:59:10

I could not have learned Inform 7 from the included documentation alone. jim Aikin's Handbook, Ron Newcomb's I7 For Programmers, and countless answers to my questions on this forum have provided the bulk of my knowledge about I7.

I know the developers are busy, and I know they have plans to update the documentation when the spec for I7 is firmer, but in my opinion this model of creating documentation is not working. There are volunteers out there who would be willing to work on the documentation in parallel, and I think that's a more effective model of development. Even if it amounts to more work, it means a more usable application at every stage of maturity, instead of some speculated perfect product that will be ready at an unspecified time.

But then, I think that's part of I7 not being open source. I wouldn't argue that it should be, but maybe they do need a slightly larger team working on it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1526&start=0#p9420
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Linux Format (Tux Radar) and Inform...
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-12 15:13:20

When you say "this isn't working", do you mean that Jim's book and Ron's book are not sufficient, or that the users who need them aren't finding them?

Also, I've been working on I7 documentation (the index page) "in parallel". Is this the sort of thing you want to see? Is it a part-resolution to your request?

(Feel free to push the index page on any forum where people are complaining about the I7 manual. It's not quite finished, but I only have another couple of chapters left to work through, and they're not core features.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=10#p9421
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-10-12 15:23:35

Well done! Those were probably the two most outstanding things-to-fix/add. I'm taking a break from IF right now, and my first choice on ZMachine and TADS games is always IFMapper because of the automapping, but when I get back to it I'll start using Trizbort for everything else and see what happens.

The only thing I'd really wish for right now would be a faster way to do Up-Down and suchlike without having to edit the already-drawn line - again, like GUEMapper does. Apart from that, it seems ready for general use.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=10#p9422
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-12 15:45:09

I meant more 'borrowed' in the sense of 'inspired by' than in any negative sense, since if there were something, I'd want to see that, too. Thanks for the link, Rob, I will check it out! 8)

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=10#p9423
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Silas Greenback / DateTime: 2010-10-12 15:56:44

[quote="Peter Pears"]

The only thing I'd really wish for right now would be a faster way to do Up-Down and suchlike without having to edit the already-drawn line - again, like GUEMapper does. Apart from that, it seems ready for general use.[/quote]

That would be a great too.

One other thing, and this is sort of nit-pickish, would be to add a new document template in the right click context menu. This saves me quite a bit of time with GUEMapper. 

For now, having it pinned to my start menu is working out fine.

Edit: Being able to select multiple rooms or all rooms to drag is an absolute must. It would be important to somehow work in this feature, as dragging rooms individually to improve a map's layout is tedious.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1526&start=0#p9425
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Linux Format (Tux Radar) and Inform...
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-10-12 16:06:36

[quote="capmikee"]I know the developers are busy, and I know they have plans to update the documentation when the spec for I7 is firmer, but in my opinion this model of creating documentation is not working. There are volunteers out there who would be willing to work on the documentation in parallel[/quote]

The thing about this is that there is (as I said elsewhere) no model we can think of that would accommodate gradual work on this. Volunteers could help with the creation of indexing and reference materials, or by providing wholesale alternatives to the core documentation -- and many have done so, for which we're grateful. 

But it's less clear how they could take up any significant amount of revising the core documentation, other than by offering usability suggestions. Anything that goes into Writing with Inform needs to be either written by Graham or heavily vetted by him for style, technical accuracy, and presentation; any structural changes that happen there will also have ripple effects to the structure of material in the examples and Recipe Book. This would pretty much lock down both his available Inform time and mine; for any serious overhaul, that would be an expenditure of months.

If what you are saying is "I would like to write some alternate documentation", please, please feel free.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=140#p9426
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: mri / DateTime: 2010-10-12 16:31:57

Hi all. I ended up with "Mri" as my name in this forum, due to some account creation trouble that didn't allow me to use my R.A.I.F. name Kathrel. Same person, different nicks.

Basically I want to give a nod and a wave to the community and say I'm here (too). Very quick about myself; I was born in -67 in Norway where I still live and work. I'm a woman, trying to juggle work, family and my computer related hobby without breaking anything in the process. Been successful so far, but only because I put the hobby part on the backburner from time to time. I came to IF through MUDS, I'm an amateur writer in a language that isn't native to me, and an amateur coder. I can get very passionate about writing stories, and I really want to explore this genre to see what I can make of it  [emote]:)[/emote] 

Using TADS3 so far, no finished production to show for myself yet, and probably not for a year or more either. But eventually... 

"Eventually" happens to function as a personal motto and helps me keep my goals in sight, so; Eventually, there will be IF games/stories by me and I owe the IF community a lot already for its patience with my questions. Hopefully, EVENTUALLY, I can repay the generosity too [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1535&start=0#p9427
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Thinking about punctuation
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-10-12 17:08:33

Your loop already is re-writable.[code]
    Now every wearable thing is worn;
    Increment the warmth of the player by the number of worn things;
[/code]
But I'd like to use "each" to implicitly imply a loop. [code]
   now every worn thing is tattered;
   now the #/rips in each worn thing is a random number from 1 to 3;
   try patching up each worn thing;
[/code]
...which would compile as ...[code]
repeat with X running through every worn thing:
   now X is tattered;
   now the #/rips in X is a random number from 1 to 3;
   try patching up X;
[/code]
As-is, Inform would make three separate loops, one for each line, rather than combining them into a single loop with a three-line body.  

I dunno. This kind of stuff is an old problem.  For complicated, nested if-statements, I think natural language would prefer an approach of asserting rules, rather than the imperative outline we usually program with. For example, to take your modified example[code]
if Superman is flying:
    animate cape whipping in wind;
    check if Superman carries Lois:
        check that Lois is frightened:
            if confirmed, Lois screams.    
    if not:
        Superman calls Lois.
[/code]
It might be written as[code]
Lois screams when Lois is frightened and Superman carries her while flying.
Superman calls Lois when he is not flying and not carrying her.
[/code]
..although the if-statements can still carry extra information, in that no matter how the conditions go, the ordering of the results are the same.  With the assertive approach, a line to assert which effect happens first would be needed.[code]
Animate cape whipping in wind when Superman is flying, but before doing anything with Lois.[/code]

Brainstorming is fun and easy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=20#p9429
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Neurosion / DateTime: 2010-10-12 18:06:41

[quote="aaronius"]
>fuck you
I'm sorry if you're feeling frustrated. If you like, you can type SAVE to store your progress to a file (in most interpreters), then RESTORE to come back to it later. In the meantime, you might try searching the web to see if there are hints available.[/quote]
Of course, every time IF Parser opens a door, It closes a window:

[quote="Sand-Dancer"]
The floor has half-collapsed near one corner, revealing a hole criss-crossed with cobwebs.
>blow cobwebs
I'm sorry if you're feeling frustrated. If you like, you can type SAVE to store your progress to a file (in most interpreters), then RESTORE to come back to it later. In the meantime, you might try [b][color=#800080]searching the web[/color][/b] to see if there are hints available.[/quote]
If I hadn't just read this thread, this might have been confusing.  As it is, I still felt compelled to...

[quote]
>search the web
[/quote]
...you know, just in case.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1526&start=0#p9436
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Linux Format (Tux Radar) and Inform...
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-12 22:42:22

[quote="zarf"]When you say "this isn't working", do you mean that Jim's book and Ron's book are not sufficient, or that the users who need them aren't finding them?[/quote]
More of the latter. But it occurred to me that right now, this forum is an excellent place to find answers to questions in the short term. Maybe that's perfect for now. I don't expect this forum to be the place for fast answers forever, but maybe by the time it's not, the collected wisdom of the users here will have worked its way into the manual.

[quote="zarf"]Also, I've been working on I7 documentation (the index page) "in parallel". Is this the sort of thing you want to see? Is it a part-resolution to your request?[/quote]
Yes!! My main objection is again that it's harder to find supplementary documentation than it is to find the documentation that comes with Inform. There's good stuff out there, but I'm pretty bad at finding stuff.

I've never quite understood why information about IF is not more centralized. IFDB has changed a lot of that, but finding IF websites and resources still seems to take much more time and effort than I would have expected for such a small community. Seeing this forum mentioned on raif was a big leap for me - it probably got me more involved again after a few years of only marginally paying attention.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1526&start=0#p9437
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Linux Format (Tux Radar) and Inform...
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-12 23:04:41

[quote="emshort"]The thing about this is that there is (as I said elsewhere) no model we can think of that would accommodate gradual work on this. Volunteers could help with the creation of indexing and reference materials, or by providing wholesale alternatives to the core documentation -- and many have done so, for which we're grateful.[/quote]
Me too! I've been working my way through the alternatives, but sometimes documentation is a situation where less is more. Reading three or four manuals to find one piece of information doesn't seem like the best solution. Then again, as I mentioned in my previous post, at the moment we have something even better than a clear, concise, easily searchable manual: we have a cloud of experienced developers who are happy to answer specific questions about how to solve particular programming problems.

I mentioned earlier that the Recipe Book might turn out to be a useful reference. I'm sorry to say that I haven't been able to grasp the organization of the Recipe Book any better than I have the manual, or in fact, the categorization of extensions on the website. 

My next big hope is the Phrasebook. I didn't know what it was until I came across a mention of it in something - probably Writing with Inform. I didn't realize that it was a guide to Inform source syntax - I thought it was a catalog of phrases understood by the game parser. Sounds like a handy reference.

[quote="emshort"]But it's less clear how they could take up any significant amount of revising the core documentation, other than by offering usability suggestions. Anything that goes into Writing with Inform needs to be either written by Graham or heavily vetted by him for style, technical accuracy, and presentation; [/quote]
It's a cathedral! (As opposed to a bazaar). It's a beautiful one to be sure, but you're right: as long as Graham has to be a gatekeeper for the documentation, its progress will depend on his availability. I don't know Graham at all, but given the prodigiousness of his contribution to the IF world, he must be a serious workaholic. For us it's a blessing, but maybe also a curse.

[quote]If what you are saying is "I would like to write some alternate documentation", please, please feel free.[/quote]
Thanks for the invitation, but at this point I'm not sure an additional alternate would have a positive effect on the signal-to-noise ratio.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=140#p9438
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-12 23:11:46

I know very little about Scandinavia, except that there are some Norwegians, Finns, and Swedes on just about every web forum I visit, on subjects from obscure 80s techno bands to Paleo low-carb diets. Since there doesn't seem to be much else in common with those things, I'm guessing it's a very technologically advanced place...?!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1535&start=0#p9439
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Thinking about punctuation
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-12 23:27:11

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Your loop already is re-writable.[code]
    Now every wearable thing is worn;
    Increment the warmth of the player by the number of worn things;
[/code][/quote]
Maybe it was a bad example?

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]But I'd like to use "each" to implicitly imply a loop. [code]
   now every worn thing is tattered;
   now the #/rips in each worn thing is a random number from 1 to 3;
   try patching up each worn thing;
[/code][/quote]
Another case where I would want a named condition or remembered condition (or description):
[code]With every worn thing:
    now each one is tattered.
    now the #/rips in each one is a random number from 1 to 3.
    try patching up each one.[/code]

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]I dunno. This kind of stuff is an old problem.  For complicated, nested if-statements, I think natural language would prefer an approach of asserting rules, rather than the imperative outline we usually program with.[/quote]
I agree - if it can be done with a rule, it makes sense to do it that way in I7. Although this does require some mental back-tracking for those of us who are used to procedural programming.

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]
..although the if-statements can still carry extra information, in that no matter how the conditions go, the ordering of the results are the same.[ With the assertive approach, a line to assert which effect happens first would be needed.[code]
Animate cape whipping in wind when Superman is flying, but before doing anything with Lois.[/code][/quote]
I agree with this too- in order to do more with rules in Inform, I want a LOT more control over rule ordering. Is there a tab in the IDE that will tell you the order of rules, either in the Standard Library, extensions, or your own source?

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Brainstorming is fun and easy.[/quote]
I keep hearing, from multiple sources, about how it's impossible (or at least counter-productive) to think creatively and critically at the same time. So I've been having a lot of fun switching off my critical thinking, which has always been weaker than my creative thinking anyway...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1534&start=0#p9441
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Kickstarter Campaign to Complete Cross-Mobile IF Platfor
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-10-12 23:34:45

Digg it here: <a class="postlink" href="http://digg.com/news/gaming/kickstarter_mobile_interactive_adventures_by_david_cornelson">http://digg.com/news/gaming/kickstarter ... _cornelson</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1526&start=0#p9446
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Linux Format (Tux Radar) and Inform...
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-10-13 02:26:24

[quote="capmikee"] 
Me too! I've been working my way through the alternatives, but sometimes documentation is a situation where less is more. Reading three or four manuals to find one piece of information doesn't seem like the best solution.[/quote]

Ideally, there would be just one good *reference*, but that's not the only kind of manual worth having. I do think the existing different manuals serve different (and valid) purposes, as they're trying to teach different audiences, and different people have reported finding different ones accessible.

[quote="capmikee"]I mentioned earlier that the Recipe Book might turn out to be a useful reference. I'm sorry to say that I haven't been able to grasp the organization of the Recipe Book any better than I have the manual, or in fact, the categorization of extensions on the website.[/quote]

Well, the extensions are (mostly) organized like the Recipe Book, so the two do go together, yeah. The idea behind the main manual is to teach someone starting from scratch the structures of Inform as a language; the idea behind the RB is to answer the question "how do I implement a ________?" where what goes in the blank is a command or a world model feature (as opposed to a relation or a list or a string of indexed text). 

The Phrasebook is indeed meant as a syntax reference, systematic and self-updating based on your code. The down side of that is that it's not necessarily much help to someone who hasn't at least skimmed enough of WI to know about rules and rulebooks, phrases and assertions, activities, lists and tables, say phrases, and so on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=20#p9449
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Heated
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-10-13 03:17:05

[b]Heated[/b] [i]by Timothy Peers[/i]

[spoiler]One step up from the implement-your-house game (see [u]A Quiet Evening at Home[/u]) is the go-to-work game. This was a fine example of the type: get dressed, shower, etc. Boring subject matter, but I guess people have to start somewhere.

The keys-in-the-toilet problem had me hoping for a hitchhiker's guide bablefish style puzzle, when I closed the toilet lid and they still managed to get in there. But several frustrating minutes later I hadn't found any way to place a heavy object on the toilet lid, so I gave up on that.

The death-by-electrocution bit had a nice easter egg.

The game was artificially sparse; although it tried to explain that away. The objects that [i]did[/i] exist, however, were all implemented and I didn't notice any outright bugs, just a couple of grammatical errors. I congratulate the author on getting so much right on his first outing.

The central "Heat Meter" mechanic was interesting, sort of, but didn't do much to enhance the game for me. Maybe in a longer game with more opportunities to lower the heat level it would have been worth while. But a longer game would need a more interesting subject matter. I reached the end of the game, getting to work on time with personal hygiene in order, but my heat meter was too high so I didn't get the promotion. I could have re-started at that point and tried to play a perfect game, but who wants to go to work twice in one day?[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=20#p9457
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-13 04:20:47

I think a page can be taken from the primers of modern graphical games, which, I have noticed, often have controls so sophisticated and convoluted that they are barely more discoverable to newbies than the standard IF commands. But a convention has arisen in which, in the early stages of the game, hints pop up onscreen training you what buttons to press in combination with which thumbstick moves, on an [b]as-needed basis[/b]. This proceeds until every move necessary to solve the game has been hinted at least once. At that point, by convention the player will assume that there are no more moves to be learned, and will generally stop trying to discover new control paths. In this way, pointless efforts on the part of the player are completely avoided.

I see no reason why this system of ad-hoc teaching (which is, after all, the best way to learn, since one is only truly motivated to learn to do what one is presently aware needs to be done) is specific to either graphical or gamepad-based games, and I think it would work wonderfully for IF if it has not been used already.

Of course, given the brevity of the experience in most modern IF, authors would need to adopt an ethic of design such that every verb form required to finish the game gets used in the first, say, third of play-time — no surprise late-stage command innovation unless you want to tutor the player through the entire game. One could argue that this is just good design though in any case. Act I - use every verb the game will expect of you: with training wheels. Acts II and III - training wheels come off and the player is expected to think creatively by making new combinations out of only the received grammatical building blocks, and no more.

So, these graphical game designers have worked out pretty thoroughly how to solve a very similar problem. Furthermore, today's players are rather used to this solution and will recognise it and the attendant conventions the moment they get their first 'typing tip'. i.e. They will tend to naturally assume that the typing tips will describe the complete set of necessary commands, and that they will go away as soon as that's done. I suppose it's somewhat similar to the 'WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO?' prompt (ugh) that would sometimes be asked in the early stages of some of the games of the late '70s/'80s, but very much refined to a specific suggestion for what to type at any time. Essentially, one would be walked through the first chapter of the game.

If you're thinking about refining your error messages instead, I think the battle is already lost. No matter how sophisticated an error message, it counts on the player doing things wrong. Failure is built into that process, so that's suboptimal from the start, so it's kind of irrelevant how smart are the error messages. Even if you could hire a human to stand beside your players correcting their errors with perfect intelligence, this would still be a frustrating, belittling process for the player. If you want someone to learn something just tell them how to do it the moment they realise they need to know: not before, and [i]definitely[/i] not afterward — not if you want them to perservere. IF should work the same way. Error messages are a good backup system to have: but they should never be relied upon to teach the rules of a game, IMO.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=20#p9461
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: The Bible Retold: The Lost Sheep
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-10-13 05:24:42

[b]The Bible Retold: The Lost Sheep[/b] [i]by Ben Pennington[/i]

[spoiler]Almost as bad as [u]A Quiet Evening at Home[/u]. The game goes like this:
Follow sheep. Search bush. Follow sheep. Search bush. Search bush. Search bush. Try all sorts of things that don't work. Read hint. Create completely implausible fire. Torch bush. Follow sheep. Ride buffalo. Follow sheep. Follow sheep. Follow sheep. Follow sheep. Follow sheep. You Win!

It has no story to speak of, just an arbitrary goal. It has two puzzles... the first one completely unreasonable and stupid (at least for anyone who has practice making fire) and the second... well, I don't know if I would have solved it on my own, because when reading the hint for the first puzzle it spontaneously gave me the solution to the second puzzle as well.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1465&start=0#p9462
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Funny responses from this year's games
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-10-13 06:13:26

From [u]The Bible Retold: The Lost Sheep[/u]:
[spoiler]>xyzzy
Magic won't get you very far in this game.

>rub stick with crook
(the gnarly stick with the crook)
You strike the gnarly stick on your crook and - [b]as if by magic[/b] - you create fire! Fabulous![/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=20#p9469
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: The 12:54 to Asgard
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-10-13 09:35:06

[b]The 12:54 to Asgard[/b] [i]by J. Robinson Wheeler[/i]

[spoiler]This game started out well. It progressed from good, to great, proceeded towards astounding, then suddenly crashed into mediocrity and failure. Yet again I find myself praying to pagan goddesses for a fixed-up post-comp release.

The introduction was flavorful. Walking around the studio picking things up had a nice old-school feel to it. Lots of good descriptions. Although it certainly didn't seem to be required, I enjoyed cleaning up the maintenance closet and putting everything in the proper places. The tag on the suitcase hinted at things to come. So did "an open suitcase (which is open)", but I didn't realize it at the time.

Up on the catwalk, I spent far too much time trying to make the tree house safer by attempting to clean it with the mop and the sponge. Repairing the snake was more fruitful (although seemingly pointless in the scheme of things). My thought that I would need the tar paper, the rubber sheet, [b]and[/b] the tile to repair the leak was quickly dispelled, and I proceeded to nail the tile on. 

I knew what the game was setting me up for, but was determined to avoid my fate. First I tried to manufacture a safety harness from the feather boa. Then I tried for many minutes to use the drill and screws rather than the hammer and nails; that should at least have been implemented better but at the time I was still to enamored of the game to care.

Finally, I turned around and took that fateful swing with the hammer. Still trying to save myself, I grabbed at the snake, but it didn't hold.

Ok, so I'm dead. I knew all along this was coming, but was still surprised at how well it was done. I take stock of myself and my surroundings. The units of currency are obviously a reference to something, but I don't get the joke. Oh well. At this point I'm regretting my grab for the snake, so a stack of UNDOs later I've grabbed the suitcase instead. I'm a little worried that I should have stocked it better with some of the things I left in the maintenance closet, but trust that the game would have let me know if I were in an unwinnable state.

Across the water, I have a hard time figuring out that up is the correct direction to go in. No worries, I got it after a few tries. Then I meet Polly, and things take a turn for the worse.

[code]
>talk to polly

Polly doesn't even seem to hear your question, which is probably her way of politely refusing to talk about anything she's not interested in. 

>ask polly about herself

Polly doesn't even seem to hear your question, which is probably her way of politely refusing to talk about anything she's not interested in. 

>ask polly about me
You ask Polly about yourself.

Polly doesn't even seem to hear your question, which is probably her way of politely refusing to talk about anything she's not interested in. 

>ask polly about death

Polly doesn't even seem to hear your question, which is probably her way of politely refusing to talk about anything she's not interested in. 

>ask polly about turnstiles
(the turnstiles)
You ask Polly about the turnstiles.

Polly doesn't even seem to hear your question, which is probably her way of politely refusing to talk about anything she's not interested in. 

>ask polly about boat

Polly doesn't even seem to hear your question, which is probably her way of politely refusing to talk about anything she's not interested in. 

[/code]
Ugh.

So I take a look at the turnstiles. Clued by Polly, I try turning each of them. One glides, one grinds, one stops and one goes backwards. Being a contrary type of person, I select the quartz turnstile which goes backwards... back to the studio!

So... there is no body in evidence, and all the flavortext seems to be the same as the first time around. Object status and location have NOT reset, but I find the suitcase with most of my belongings in the lost and found area. Notably missing are the hammer and nails, which seem to have disappeared at the time of my unfortunate accident.

I wander around the studio for quite a while. There is nothing left to do. I can't leave. I can't even re-create my accident and die again because I don't have the hammer and nails. I have a save point before giving the coins to death, but I'm low on time (yes, I play slowly) and this situation has taken away my will to continue playing.

Maybe there is a way to continue from this point... I'm kind of bad at puzzles a lot of the time. But if there is a way to continue, it's not covered by the walkthrough. So I quit.

Up until the point where it started sucking, this game rocked.[/spoiler]

I am thinking of a new scoring policy. If a game seems to have been completed and tested before the competition deadline, I will give it a 10. Otherwise, I will give it a 1. That way if an unfinished or untested game wins the competition, at least I will not be to blame. Does anyone have thoughts on this?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=140#p9471
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: mri / DateTime: 2010-10-13 09:50:55

That is probably correct [emote]:)[/emote] According to The World Factbook Norwegian telecommunication is "modern in all respects; one of the most advanced telecommunications networks in Europe. " Maybe due to our rugged country? If it's not going uphill, it's going downhill, at least most of the places, and long cold winters gives indoor living and long distance connection from heated indoor spaces a certain appeal [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1526&start=0#p9473
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Linux Format (Tux Radar) and Inform...
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-13 10:00:36

[quote]I've never quite understood why information about IF is not more centralized.[/quote]

It's a bazaar, as opposed to a cathedral. :)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=20#p9474
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-13 10:07:18

[quote] But a convention has arisen in which, in the early stages of the game, hints pop up onscreen training you what buttons to press in combination with which thumbstick moves, on an as-needed basis.[/quote]

This was my specific inspiration for the tutorial model in _The Dreamhold_. The training doesn't go through every possible move needed to play the game -- but it goes as far as moving, examining, finding a key, and unlocking and opening a door. I figure by the time the player has gotten that far, she can at least *find* the rest of the game.

As far as I know, this approach works. _Dreamhold_ hasn't turned IF into a mass-popular craze again, but I think that's a failure to get it in front of people, not a failure of design.

(I recently had a friend watch Get Lamp, pick up one of my IF-cheat-sheet cards, go to Dreamhold (via Parchment), and play through it in a couple of days. Cold start, she'd never played IF before. I call that a win.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1538&start=0#p9478
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Time to tighten account security?
User: TheTraveler / DateTime: 2010-10-13 10:56:38

Looks like spammers and link farmers have found the forums...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1526&start=0#p9479
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Linux Format (Tux Radar) and Inform...
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-10-13 11:00:28

[quote="emshort"]The Phrasebook is indeed meant as a syntax reference, systematic and self-updating based on your code. The down side of that is that it's not necessarily much help to someone who hasn't at least skimmed enough of WI to know about rules and rulebooks, phrases and assertions, activities, lists and tables, say phrases, and so on.[/quote]

I still haven't downloaded the new version, but it seems like a problem with this might be that the Phrasebook (and the rest of the Index) aren't available until you've successfully compiled your code -- meaning that it won't reach the people who need it most.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=20#p9480
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-13 11:35:50

[quote="zarf"][quote] But a convention has arisen in which, in the early stages of the game, hints pop up onscreen training you what buttons to press in combination with which thumbstick moves, on an as-needed basis.[/quote][/quote]
Love it when someone quotes just the essence of what you said, showing how wordy you needn't have been. 87

[quote="zarf"]This was my specific inspiration for the tutorial model in _The Dreamhold_. The training doesn't go through every possible move needed to play the game -- but it goes as far as moving, examining, finding a key, and unlocking and opening a door. I figure by the time the player has gotten that far, she can at least *find* the rest of the game.[/quote]
I missed that game; thanks for the reference! I will try it. I kept up pretty well until about 2000, then I got sucked much deeper into filmmaking and my text-based IF projects went fallow for about ten years. But no longer. Anyway I very much appreciate being updated on post-2000 innovations as I have catching up to do.

I don't know how you worked it, yet, but I was thinking I would put the typing tips on by default, with an option to turn it off for players who don't appreciate the guide rail. I figure I would either use square brackets/box it off somehow, or have some sidekick actually 'whisper in your ear'. I've seen it done both ways, graphically.

[quote="zarf"]As far as I know, this approach works. _Dreamhold_ hasn't turned IF into a mass-popular craze again, but I think that's a failure to get it in front of people, not a failure of design.

(I recently had a friend watch Get Lamp, pick up one of my IF-cheat-sheet cards, go to Dreamhold (via Parchment), and play through it in a couple of days. Cold start, she'd never played IF before. I call that a win.)[/quote]
Yeah, I retweeted that cheat-sheet card on Twitter: it's very good. Once again, kudos!

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=140#p9481
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-13 11:50:08

Good consumer-protection laws might also have something to do with it. Around 1998 Canada was close to tops, worldwide, in connectivity. Now we trail most of the first world because our government (at least in Ontario) has let what is essentially a communications duopoly have their way with things. Download speeds have been pretty much frozen for most of a decade. Seems all our innovation now is inventing new ways of hiding/hiking fees, or new B.S. arguments justifying lower and lower bandwidth caps.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1535&start=0#p9483
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Thinking about punctuation
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-10-13 12:33:15

[quote="capmikee"]Maybe it was a bad example?[/quote]
It isn't an efficient way to program such a paragraph, as each line is its own loop. 

[quote]Another case where I would want a named condition or remembered condition (or description):
[code]With every worn thing:
    now each one is tattered.
    now the #/rips in each one is a random number from 1 to 3.
    try patching up each one.[/code]
[/quote]
See, that's just "repeat with  each one  running through every worn thing" by another name (albeit briefer).  I was aiming for not having to explicitly saying "I'm going to do a loop now!  I'm going to use 'each one' as a variable now!"  The idea is that the first Now statement uses the full description-of-objects, and each subsequently line just uses, as you say, an automatically-remembered whatchamacallit.  Inform can tell where the loop ends by where the last place 'each one' appears.  (I had used 'each' rather than 'each one' in my earlier example.)

[quote]I agree - if it can be done with a rule, it makes sense to do it that way in I7. Although this does require some mental back-tracking for those of us who are used to procedural programming.  [...]in order to do more with rules in Inform, I want a LOT more control over rule ordering.[/quote]Yeah.  It's called declarative programming, and the Superman examples I gave were basically Prolog with nicer ([i]readable[/i]) syntax.

[quote]Is there a tab in the IDE that will tell you the order of rules, either in the Standard Library, extensions, or your own source?[/quote]Er, the tab in the Index marked "rules"?  Also, "actions" for rules that have actions in their name.  Everything's sorted into the order in which they'll run.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1526&start=0#p9487
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Linux Format (Tux Radar) and Inform...
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-10-13 14:08:32

[quote="matt w"] I still haven't downloaded the new version, but it seems like a problem with this might be that the Phrasebook (and the rest of the Index) aren't available until you've successfully compiled your code -- meaning that it won't reach the people who need it most.[/quote]

This is supposed to be fixed in the latest build: the index from the last successful build should be retained for viewing.

That still leaves you at absolute startup, but I think there's enough guidance in the docs to lead people to build at least a "Foo is a room." game and see the results. If you haven't read enough to know even that, you probably also don't know what the Phrasebook is.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1531&start=0#p9490
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Warbler's Nest
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-10-13 14:42:31

[spoiler][quote="matt w"][quote]the second baby lived but your wife did not[/quote]

Aren't you the mother? I thought a "shift" (from x me) was a woman's garment. [/quote]

That, and: [quote][i]Before he left, you did the thing you did on his visits, at least since you’d been alone. Together, out in the reeds, away from the noise.[/i]

Payment[i], a bitter part of you thinks. But, no. It wasn’t like that. It was nice.[/i][/quote]

And various other little details.  But possibly what made me so certain of the PC's gender (aside from just a general habit of casting my own female self into characters unless otherwise stated -- I had a bit of a jarring moment in a different Comp game when it turned out the PC was male) was that the changeling myth seems so very female, composed of things like midwife lore, postpartum depression, and village gossip.  I may also have been subconsciously influenced by the recent [url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0824747/]Angelina Jolie movie[/url], too.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=140#p9492
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Neurosion / DateTime: 2010-10-13 15:32:32

Hi there,

My name's Russ.  I used to spend lots (and lots) of time on rec.*.int-fiction circa 1996, for which I can find myself credited precisely once on the ifwiki.  I took a brief hiatus, attempted a return to form shortly before my country went insane, but managed to ruin one of the best games in the genre for N > 2 people (where N included the author of said game) within three days of my triumphant return.  I've been living in relative seclusion since then, getting by on whatever scraps of enjoyment I could distill from the creatively bankrupt world of computerized entertainment (including a particularly geeked-out forum version of Werewolf and a beautiful little game called 'Braid').  Somewhere along the way I managed to pick up a family.  Too much sharing?

I have yet to publish a game and am desperately trying to lay the analysis paralysis aside and just start writing something in Inform 7 (although I do C++ professionally and therefore really really think I should be leaning towards TADS but that whole natural language thing is just so [i]cool[/i] and...).  It'll be a miracle if I finish anything.

Glad to see the hobby is alive and well.  I hope I manage to contribute something positive this time around.

-- Russ

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1531&start=0#p9493
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Warbler's Nest
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-10-13 15:52:08

[quote="tove"][spoiler][quote][i]Before he left, you did the thing you did on his visits, at least since you’d been alone. Together, out in the reeds, away from the noise.[/i]

Payment[i], a bitter part of you thinks. But, no. It wasn’t like that. It was nice.[/i][/quote][/spoiler][/quote]

What triggers that exchange? I missed it both times through.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1526&start=10#p9494
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Linux Format (Tux Radar) and Inform...
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-13 19:13:26

The error message if you *don't* create a room is good about that. The last time I demoed I7, we got oohs and ahhs when we fired it up, hit "go", and were immediately pointed at the next step.

Tangent, I know, but I wanted to laud that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1531&start=0#p9496
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Warbler's Nest
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-10-13 20:13:58

[quote="bcressey"]
What triggers that exchange? I missed it both times through.[/quote]

Examining the shears.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=20#p9497
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Death Off the Cuff
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-10-13 20:20:17

[b]Death Off the Cuff[/b] [i]by Simon Christiansen[/i]

[spoiler]There is a very simple algorithm for solving this game; examine everything, examine the parts of everything, talk about everything you have seen, repeat. There is little else to do but follow this pattern. So while I do consider this a work of interactive fiction, it's less interactive than many of the other comp entries.

That's fine with me. CYOA games are also interactive fiction, but less interactive than normal. I considered [u]Whom the Telling Changed[/u] to be less interactive than most games too.

The story, and more importantly the structure of the story and how it was told, was very entertaining. There was, however, one fatal flaw.

In order to limit the scope of what you could talk about, the game restricts you to talking only about things you can see. It then changes the set of things you can see, over time, to allow the story to progress.

This causes pain at many points during the game when something that was invisible becomes visible, but is mentioned only as part of another object's description. The game feels stuck until you re-examine every object, eventually finding the new clue in the form of a previously undescribed body part or item of clothing or whatever.

This pattern culminates in the ridiculous conclusion of the game, where the final confrontation is triggered by talking about Detective Goodfellow's suddenly-visible uniform. What, as if he was naked before?

I think this pattern of unintuitive obscurity is firmly rooted in the design decision to allow talking only about things that can be seen. I think the problem could have been eliminated, and a much more enjoyable game written, if abstract topics were allowed. I don't know if Inform makes this difficult, or if the author didn't know it was possible, or if it was a conscious design decision.

Despite that one problem, this was a solid story that I had a lot of fun playing.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=140#p9499
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-13 21:00:50

[quote="Laroquod"]Around 1998 Canada was close to tops, worldwide, in connectivity. Now we trail most of the first world because our government (at least in Ontario) has let what is essentially a communications duopoly have their way with things.[/quote]
That may be so, but there are some Torontonians on just about every forum I visit too. And they're all goths.  [emote]8-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=140#p9500
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-13 21:09:13

[quote="Neurosion"]I have yet to publish a game and am desperately trying to lay the analysis paralysis aside and just start writing something in Inform 7[/quote]
I think Jim Aikin was the first to bring it up, but I've been hearing this everywhere and I think it's great to know: You can't think creatively and critically at the same time. Just write down a bunch of ideas, no matter how stupid they seem... I'm doing great with it so far. (okay, I guess that depends on who you ask, since I'm not being critical...)

[quote](although I do C++ professionally and therefore really really think I should be leaning towards TADS but that whole natural language thing is just so [i]cool[/i] and...).[/quote]
Go for what's fun! Learning new languages, and new [i]styles[/i] of languages is good for you! TADS looks too much like what I do at work all day. Like I said in another thread, don't be fooled by the "natural language" thing - I7 is a real programming language, and it's got some very cool things about it from a programmer's perspective. Ron Newcomb's "Inform 7 For Programmers" goes into that a little bit...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=150#p9501
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-13 21:21:34

[quote="capmikee"][quote="Laroquod"]Around 1998 Canada was close to tops, worldwide, in connectivity. Now we trail most of the first world because our government (at least in Ontario) has let what is essentially a communications duopoly have their way with things.[/quote]
That may be so, but there are some Torontonians on just about every forum I visit too. And they're all goths.  [emote]8-)[/emote][/quote]
Heh heh, we are still pretty numerous I admit. But when I hear about the connection speeds vs. prices they have in Northern Europe, it's enough to make me weep.

P.S. Hi, Russ!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=20#p9502
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The 12:54 to Asgard
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-13 21:29:08

[quote="scratchm"][b]The 12:54 to Asgard[/b] [i]by J. Robinson Wheeler[/i]

[spoiler]So I take a look at the turnstiles. Clued by Polly, I try turning each of them. One glides, one grinds, one stops and one goes backwards. Being a contrary type of person, I select the quartz turnstile which goes backwards... back to the studio!

So... there is no body in evidence, and all the flavortext seems to be the same as the first time around. Object status and location have NOT reset, but I find the suitcase with most of my belongings in the lost and found area. Notably missing are the hammer and nails, which seem to have disappeared at the time of my unfortunate accident.

I wander around the studio for quite a while. There is nothing left to do. I can't leave. I can't even re-create my accident and die again because I don't have the hammer and nails. I have a save point before giving the coins to death, but I'm low on time (yes, I play slowly) and this situation has taken away my will to continue playing.

Maybe there is a way to continue from this point... I'm kind of bad at puzzles a lot of the time. But if there is a way to continue, it's not covered by the walkthrough. So I quit.

Up until the point where it started sucking, this game rocked.[/spoiler][/quote]
[spoiler]I did exactly the same thing. I thought at first "Oh, here's a chance to go pick up the suitcase and all the stuff I forgot" but then I had the same problem as you - no way back to the afterlife. I ended up starting over with the walkthrough. It's hard to tell how good the puzzles are when you have a walkthrough sometimes, but they seemed like they might be maddeningly arbitrary. I think I agree that the opening of the game was awesome, and the rest was a big letdown.

The intro gave me an impression of a really engaging PC, but unfortunately, as soon as he gets to the afterlife, he loses all his personality. And yes, the implementation gets progressively more sloppy as the game goes on.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=20#p9503
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Death Off the Cuff
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-13 21:35:04

[quote="scratchm"][b]Death Off the Cuff[/b] [i]by Simon Christiansen[/i]

[spoiler]In order to limit the scope of what you could talk about, the game restricts you to talking only about things you can see. It then changes the set of things you can see, over time, to allow the story to progress.

This causes pain at many points during the game when something that was invisible becomes visible, but is mentioned only as part of another object's description. The game feels stuck until you re-examine every object, eventually finding the new clue in the form of a previously undescribed body part or item of clothing or whatever.

This pattern culminates in the ridiculous conclusion of the game, where the final confrontation is triggered by talking about Detective Goodfellow's suddenly-visible uniform. What, as if he was naked before?[/spoiler][/quote]
Everything you said about this game is exactly right, but somehow it doesn't capture how much fun I had with it. I was very liberal with getting hints, though, so I didn't spend much time being stuck. I just loved the premise of it - the famous detective who actually doesn't have a clue what's going on and has to bluff his way through. It's a perfect send-up of detective stories, and the characters were all very entertaining.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1531&start=0#p9504
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Warbler's Nest
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-13 21:35:55

[quote="bcressey"][quote="matt w"]
[spoiler]Aren't you the mother? I thought a "shift" (from x me) was a woman's garment.[/spoiler]
[/quote]

[spoiler]Wow, I completely missed that. Guess I should pay more attention instead of imposing my patriocentric ideology on the game.

A related discovery: the game responds to "nurse baby" which is pretty cool.[/spoiler][/quote]
Regarding gender...
[spoiler]The person I played with thought there was a specific "peasant woman" reference early on, and based on that I played as female. But playing through again I could not find that peasant woman reference anywhere, though I guess the 'shift' is pretty conclusive. Perhaps that was what she had picked up on.[/spoiler]

Regarding atmosphere...
[spoiler]I felt it was an excellent choice for a short IF subject and found the alternative endings very well chosen and effective. The game definitely had a wonderful sense of atmosphere.[/spoiler]

Regarding narrative voice...
[spoiler]The 2nd person perspective just doesn't work very well for me for psychological suspense, mostly because the best way to do that kind of suspense is to withhold information that a first/second person perspective should really have. The author made a good compromise since achieving suspense is definitely more important than maintaining a consistent first/second person perspective, [i]if[/i] those are your choices. However, they [i]aren't[/i] the only choices. I am always surprised as to why people who do this kind of genre in IF consider third person as an option so rarely. I know the arguments about immersion, etc., but whenever I weigh the benefits of that on one end of the scale, and all the obvious benefits of psychological 'cloaking' to a suspense tale on the other end, and realise that the two techniques do not really hybridise very sensibly, I personally find the balance of narrative benefits should tip far in favour of third person, and I would have preferred this story told in that mode. YMMV of course, but IMO this story was not very successful in terms of narrative voice — we're just so used to overlooking that since 2nd-person is the default mode of IF, that it's relatively easy for a veteran to look beyond it. But I'm hyperaware of it because I'm somewhat of a third person partisan in IF, plus I was playing with a relative IF newbie, who was very much aware of the incongruity of the withheld information as well.[/spoiler]

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1538&start=0#p9506
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Time to tighten account security?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-13 21:51:48

I noticed that too. How much can actually be done about that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1538&start=0#p9507
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Time to tighten account security?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-10-13 21:58:15

Probably the best approach would be to install something like [url=http://code.google.com/apis/recaptcha/docs/phpbb.html]reCAPTCHA[/url], if we're not already using it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=20#p9508
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp reviews by scratchm
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-10-13 22:08:06

[quote="capmikee"]Everything you said about this game is exactly right, but somehow it doesn't capture how much fun I had with it.[/quote]

I had a lot of fun with it too, it was just frustrating because I thought it could have been [i]even better[/i][b][size=50](TM)[/size][/b].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=30#p9509
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Gris et Jaune
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-10-13 22:33:48

[b]Gris et Jaune[/b] [i]by Steve van Gaal[/i]

Full disclosure: I was a beta tester on this game, and thus will not be voting on it. But I will comment on it anyway, using it as an excuse to talk about other games some more as well.

[spoiler]I thought this game had an excellent premise and was executed well... at first. Unfortunately, it falls into the same boat as several of the other games this year... it wasn't quite finished in time for the comp. Here I'm talking about my personal definition of finished, which may be different from Steve's (or may not be).

I'm not sure if there is any fix for this apparently common problem. Hypothetically you could move back the competition deadlines, but I suspect that authors would just keep on working on the games the same way and be just as unfinished when the extended deadline arrived. The problem, I think, has to do with switching over from primary development mode, to finishing mode.

In primary development mode, you add to the map, implement objects, design puzzles, and so on. In finishing mode, you double-check your room descriptions, re-test your object interactions, make sure puzzles are clued correctly, etc. The basic difference is that when you are in finishing mode, you stop adding things and just refine the things you already have.

I'm not entirely sure when the right time is to switch from primary development to finishing mode. But I know that the wrong time is two weeks before the competition deadline, or halfway through beta testing, or whenever it is that most of these games tried to make that switch. Most of my complaints with most of the games this season could have been solved by letting the games be just a little bit smaller and spending more time on finishing.

In a bizarre twist, I realize that [u]The Bible Retold: The Lost Sheep[/u] is an example of a game that spent too much time on finishing and not enough on primary development. So it's possible to make this mistake both ways.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1538&start=0#p9510
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Time to tighten account security?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-10-13 23:40:09

[quote="bcressey"]Probably the best approach would be to install something like [url=http://code.google.com/apis/recaptcha/docs/phpbb.html]reCAPTCHA[/url], if we're not already using it.[/quote]

If this means having to CAPTCHA for every post, then A. Skywalker speaks for me:

[rant][img]http://www.dynamicdiscord.com/BrianStuff/Episode_3/episode-iii-backstroke-of-west_files/swb251lt.jpg[/img][/rant]

If it's just for registration, no worries.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=150#p9511
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: mri / DateTime: 2010-10-13 23:47:18

I guess Canada got enough uphills, downhills and long cold winters on its own, to falsify my theory [emote]:D[/emote] 

So hi, to all of you programmers! I admire your proficience in both your spoken and coded langue(s), inside and outside of Tads, and I am sure it's just a matter of patience. If the motivation is there it will give results. Eventually!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1538&start=0#p9512
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Time to tighten account security?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-10-13 23:55:59

I lot of forums have a CAPTCHA just for members with less than 10 posts for example. It's a little bit of pain for new users, but they'll get past it soon enough. We'd all be fine if it was set up that way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1538&start=0#p9514
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Time to tighten account security?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-14 01:15:35

May I suggest then that it be very clearly stated each time the captcha is presented that you will only have to deal with it for your first ten posts? If I were presented with a captcha on each post upon making my first few posts to some forum/message board, and it weren't crystal clear to me that this annoyance is temporary, I would very likely not return.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1538&start=0#p9515
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Time to tighten account security?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-10-14 01:57:56

The phpBB mod I linked to only applies to new user registration and to guest posts. Guest posts are disabled here and I don't think it's unreasonable to ask new users to complete a captcha when they sign up. I believe there's one already, but obviously it could stand to be better. reCAPTCHA could be the low-hanging fruit that lets that happen with no impact on real people and with the very minor social benefit of helping to digitize old books.

It takes less than two minutes of my time in the morning to update the banlist and purge the spam posts, even if it's been an especially active night. (Thanks to everyone who flags the spam; that makes the job much easier!) A per-post captcha would require vastly more of everyone's time than that. It would be a hassle and it would be lame.

Despite the green text on my username, I don't do anything besides clean up the graffiti. I certainly don't make administrative decisions, so please don't read too much into my suggestions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1538&start=0#p9517
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Time to tighten account security?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-10-14 03:31:02

CAPTCHA for guests wouldn't be too bad.

As for registering, I recall the forums at AGS. You had to fill in a questionaire before the process was complete. The questionaire also served, in its case, as a way to make sure people knew where to go, and didn't post completed games in the Critics' Lounge, or talked about game design in the Technical Forum.

And of course, it stopped bots from registering. They were multiple choice questions, as I recall.

Just a though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1538&start=0#p9521
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Time to tighten account security?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-14 08:36:41

My experience with web forums is that a catpcha on registering a new account will help, but won't eliminate spam entirely. 

I agree that a captcha on posts (even the first ten posts) is too arduous.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1538&start=0#p9522
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Time to tighten account security?
User: TheTraveler / DateTime: 2010-10-14 09:34:01

I agree with Ben. In most the forums I frequent, using CAPTCHA for doing the initial account registration is usually sufficient. If forum users would also co-operate in flagging any spam that does get through, clean up would take a minimal amount of time.

The cool side effect of answering a CAPTCHA correctly is that Carnegie-Mellon is using the input to help digitize books: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.google.com/recaptcha/learnmore">http://www.google.com/recaptcha/learnmore</a>

Cheers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1538&start=10#p9523
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Time to tighten account security?
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2010-10-14 10:01:48

[quote="TheTraveler"]The cool side effect of answering a CAPTCHA correctly is that Carnegie-Mellon is using the input to help digitize books: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.google.com/recaptcha/learnmore">http://www.google.com/recaptcha/learnmore</a>[/quote]
I didn't know unpaid slave labour for the profit of a multi billion dollar corporation is now considered "cool". Profit acquired by copyright infringement to make matters even better. I've still got a lot to learn.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1538&start=10#p9524
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Time to tighten account security?
User: TheTraveler / DateTime: 2010-10-14 10:10:57

[quote="Hannes"][quote="TheTraveler"]The cool side effect of answering a CAPTCHA correctly is that Carnegie-Mellon is using the input to help digitize books: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.google.com/recaptcha/learnmore">http://www.google.com/recaptcha/learnmore</a>[/quote]
I didn't know unpaid slave labour for the profit of a multi billion dollar corporation is now considered "cool". I've still got a lot to learn.[/quote]
The books they're digitizing are in the public domain and made available "free of charge" for downloading or browsing online... Many are vintage editions and aren't generally found in your local public library (at least not in mine). 

So yeah, it's pretty cool ...

Cheers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1538&start=10#p9525
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Time to tighten account security?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-10-14 10:15:50

[quote="Hannes"]
I didn't know unpaid slave labour for the profit of a multi billion dollar corporation is now considered "cool". I've still got a lot to learn.[/quote]

I suppose it's easy to be snarky but I am not sure why anyone would prefer a useless captcha to one that accomplished a small amount of useful work. Every click on a Google search result helps their bottom line far more than helping to digitize old court documents ever will.

The real genius of the idea is that barring some weakness in the implementation, when spammers defeat reCAPTCHA they will do so by advancing the state of the art in OCR. That prospect is very cool.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1538&start=10#p9526
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Time to tighten account security?
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2010-10-14 10:22:24

[quote]The books they're digitizing are in the public domain and made available "free of charge" for downloading or browsing online... [/quote]
Untrue. See the numerous court cases surrounding their book scanning project.

[quote]I am not sure why anyone would prefer a useless captcha to one that accomplished a small amount of useful work.[/quote]
For example because it won't invade anyone's privacy. I think that's a pretty good reason.

[quote]Every click on a Google search result helps their bottom line far more than helping to digitize old court documents ever will.[/quote]
Which is why I'm not using Google search. Again, I value my privacy too much to become too clear a number in Google's endless database.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1539&start=0#p9527
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7 won't run code on my system
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-14 10:23:07

I'm on a Mac mini 1.66 GHz with 2 gigs of RAM and OS X 10.5.8.

I tried compiling examples from the Writing With Inform manual, but they wouldn't run. They [i]seemed[/i] to compile successfully, but the 'game' pane wouldn't activate and that pane actually completely refuses to activate no matter when or how many times I click. Basically, my 'game' pane is dead and I don't know why.

So I tried just compiling a little 'Hello World'...
[quote]"Hello World" by Me

Hello World is a room.[/quote]
But even that wouldn't run in the game pane. I can't even get the 'game' tab to highlight.

Here's the compiler progress I get out of it...
[quote]Launching: ni "-rules" "/Applications/Inform.app/Contents/Resources/Inform7/Extensions" "-package" "/Users/laroquod/Desktop/Writing With Inform/Scratch2.inform" "-extension=z8"
Inform 7 build 6E72 has started.
I've now read your source text, which is 9 words long.
++ 0% (Lexical analysis)
++ 5% (Semantic analysis)
I've also read Standard Rules by Graham Nelson, which is 39419 words long.
++ 15% (Drawing inferences)
++ 20% (Binding rulebooks)
++ 23% (Binding rulebooks)
++ 26% (Binding rulebooks)
++ 29% (Binding rulebooks)
++ 32% (Binding rulebooks)
++ 35% (Binding rulebooks)
++ 38% (Binding rulebooks)
++ 41% (Generating code)
++ 44% (Generating code)
++ 47% (Generating code)
++ 50% (Generating code)
++ 53% (Generating code)
++ 56% (Generating code)
++ 59% (Generating code)
++ 62% (Generating code)
++ 65% (Generating code)
++ 68% (Generating code)
++ 71% (Generating code)
++ 74% (Generating code)
++ 77% (Generating code)
++ 80% (Generating code)
++ 83% (Generating code)
++ 86% (Generating code)
++ 89% (Generating code)
++ 92% (Generating code)
++ 95% (Generating code)
++ 98% (Generating code)

  The 9-word source text has successfully been translated into an intermediate
    description which can be run through Inform 6 to complete compilation.
    There were 1 room and 1 thing.
Inform 7 has finished.
/Applications/Inform.app/Contents/Resources/Compilers/inform-6.31-biplatform \
	-kE2SDwv8 +include_path=/Applications/Inform.app/Contents/Resources/Library/Natural,.,../Source /Users/laroquod/Desktop/Writing With Inform/Scratch2.inform/Build/auto.inf /Users/laroquod/Desktop/Writing With Inform/Scratch2.inform/Build/output.z8 
Launching: inform-6.31-biplatform "-kE2SDwv8" "+include_path=/Applications/Inform.app/Contents/Resources/Library/Natural,.,../Source" "/Users/laroquod/Desktop/Writing With Inform/Scratch2.inform/Build/auto.inf" "/Users/laroquod/Desktop/Writing With Inform/Scratch2.inform/Build/output.z8"
Inform 6.31N for Mac OS X (22nd April 2010)
Compiled with 1399 suppressed warnings

Compiler finished with code 0[/quote]
I don't really know how that's supposed to look but I don't see anything in it that looks to me like a fatal error. Anyone had any experience with this issue?

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1539&start=0#p9528
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 won't run code on my system
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-14 10:38:30

More info: I am running Inform build (1.2 6.31/6E72) which I just downloaded off the official site, this morning.

I tried restarting my Mac fresh and running nothing else but Inform: same problem.

Instead of using the 'game' pane, since the compiler reported success, I tried proceeding directly to the Release stage, so I clicked 'Release'. It told me...

[quote]All went well. I've put the released material into the 'Release' subfolder of the Materials folder for the project: you can take a look with the menu option Release > Open Materials Folder or by clicking the blue folders above.[/quote]
I looked in the appropriate folder and there was no .blorb file created. So if Inform isn't creating the files it says it is creating, then it makes sense that the 'game' pane doesn't work. So I opened my Inform project package to inspect the contents, and checked in the 'Build' folder, and sure enough — no actual build was created although it reported that it did.

Basically my copy of Inform can compile but it can't create finished build files in which to store the compiled results — although, it had no trouble creating the package files and folders meant to contain those build files, so I doubt it's a permissions issue...

EDIT: I just tried removing the spaces from the 'Writing With Inform' folder I was using to create the project, so that there would be no spaces in the file path. Still no love...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1538&start=10#p9529
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Time to tighten account security?
User: TheTraveler / DateTime: 2010-10-14 10:39:31

[quote]Untrue. See the numerous court cases surrounding their book scanning project.[/quote]
Oh bosh. The major settlement was almost two years ago. And, if you want to analyze it further, it was really a "win for everyone" as the settlement created an environment that allowed much wider general access to books than had been previously considered.

There are still minor skirmishes here and there but the settlement: <a class="postlink" href="http://books.google.com/booksrightsholders/agreement-contents.html">http://books.google.com/booksrightshold ... tents.html</a> really set the groundwork for resolution.

So, if you wish to "throw the baby out with the bathwater" then it's your prerogative. For myself, I see the benefits far, far outweighing the drawbacks.

[quote]For example because it won't invade anyone's privacy. I think that's a pretty good reason.[/quote]

How does a CAPTCHA invade one's privacy? The data doesn't contain any personal information that I'm aware of ... The account information is held on whatever server the forum, or other service, is run from. 

[quote]Which is why I'm not using Google search. Again, I value my privacy too much to become too clear a number in Google's endless database.[/quote]

If you really feel that way, then you probably don't want to know about "cookies" ...

Cheers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1539&start=0#p9530
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 won't run code on my system
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-10-14 10:59:02

Almost certainly this bug:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=153">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=153</a>

There are suggested fixes there for the time being; a new bug-fixing release of Inform is probably not too far off.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=10#p9531
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-10-14 11:01:08

I think this qualifies as a bummer.

I've spent a few weeks working on my first "real" IF game, only to find that I have been writing one big cliche. Many of the settings I've included (including my house, and the concept of "getting to work") I now see have been implemented many times before me. 

I think the writing on my game so fas is pretty good, but I can see the reviews now ("It was a well written game that covered no new ground ...").

With weeks worth of work invested, I now need to decide whether or not I should go ahead and finish this adventure, or scrap it and begin on something a bit more original.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1539&start=0#p9532
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 won't run code on my system
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-14 11:03:26

Thanks, Emily!

BTW I just downgraded from July's release of Inform 7 to the June release (1.2 6.31/6E59). My game pane is now working and all appears to be well.

I'm in Leopard; the bug report you posted is in Tiger. Since this build has been out since July and the IFcomp has happened since then, I'm guessing that the newest build works more reliably in Snow Leopard.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=10#p9533
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-14 11:11:26

Finish it anyway! Finish. It. Anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1538&start=10#p9534
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Time to tighten account security?
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2010-10-14 11:26:55

[quote="TheTraveler"][quote]Untrue. See the numerous court cases surrounding their book scanning project.[/quote]
Oh bosh. The major settlement was almost two years ago. And, if you want to analyze it further, it was really a "win for everyone" as the settlement created an environment that allowed much wider general access to books than had been previously considered.

There are still minor skirmishes here and there but the settlement: <a class="postlink" href="http://books.google.com/booksrightsholders/agreement-contents.html">http://books.google.com/booksrightshold ... tents.html</a> really set the groundwork for resolution.[/quote]
Newsflash: The USA isn't the whole world. Oh, wait, that's all just 'minor skirmishes', of course, because it's not taking place in front of [i]your[/i] doorstep. By the way, isn't it funny how you only came up with this [i]after[/i] being told your initial smoke screen attempt was bullshit?

[quote][quote]For example because it won't invade anyone's privacy. I think that's a pretty good reason.[/quote]

How does a CAPTCHA invade one's privacy? The data doesn't contain any personal information that I'm aware of ... The account information is held on whatever server the forum, or other service, is run from. [/quote]
IP addresses combined with a forced cookie valid until 2038 are quite enough to identify you. Combine that with the information which person is using what on the Internet is data which many companies are willing to buy.

[quote][quote]Which is why I'm not using Google search. Again, I value my privacy too much to become too clear a number in Google's endless database.[/quote]

If you really feel that way, then you probably don't want to know about "cookies" ...[/quote]
Information security is my profession, but thanks for the pointless sarcasm.

I'm not out to 'convert' anyone. Do with [i]your[/i] private data whatever you like. I'm telling you that this is a bad idea, because you'll lose potential visitors. I've given you reasons for this. Whether you agree with the validity of those reasons or not is insubstantial. You only have to believe that in the subjective view of some people, these reasons exist.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=10#p9535
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-14 11:29:23

Absolutely. You'll be glad you did, no matter what you decide to do with it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1538&start=10#p9536
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Time to tighten account security?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-14 11:33:47

Is the question of whether to use reCAPTCHA vs. ordinary captcha really worth arguing about? Doesn't seem like it to me.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=20#p9538
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-10-14 11:41:17

Agreed: finish it anyway, if nothing else to gain valuable bug-squashing experience points.  Just get an outside opinion before entering it into any Comps.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=20#p9539
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2010-10-14 11:49:50

Oh, man. I got ninja'd while writing this.

It's worth finishing if only as an exercise. Maybe someone else has an idea about how to move beyond a cliche. The way I look at things is that I will use something cliched as an example of how to learn about a part of the language. For instance, I created one room labeled room 1...100 as you go north, which would be awful in a game but useful to learn dynamic room names and directions. Another project was using Michael Callaghan's questions extension to have a player guess a number between 1 and 1000. I've found that doing stuff I can't quite do--but that fits into a game--helps me think bigger (ouch! a cliche!) because I'm not restricted by what I'm not sure Inform can do.

I think there might be possibilities for beginning writers who know their works aren't super-profound to trade ideas/unpublished games/source code. I'd assume other people would give "here's what I'd do" style pointers, too. Also, just putting time and effort into stuff can help you overcome a cliche or at least throw in a detail. It's disheartening to realize you've been writing a cliche but you don't want that to stop you from looking for better. Continuing the game is the best way to do it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1538&start=10#p9541
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Time to tighten account security?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-10-14 12:50:34

[quote="Hannes"]IP addresses combined with a forced cookie valid until 2038 are quite enough to identify you.[/quote]

The reCAPTCHA library does not store a cookie on the client system, as far as I can tell. You can check the [url=http://code.google.com/p/recaptcha/downloads/list?q=PB2-Latest]source code[/url] to see for yourself. As a security professional, I would hope you are willing to examine less than 300 lines of well-commented code to substantiate your conclusions.

The client IP address is submitted to api.recaptcha.net, but if that is a serious privacy concern then you are already behind an anonymous proxy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1538&start=10#p9542
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Time to tighten account security?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-10-14 12:57:30

Real people create the spammer accounts, not bots. There is already a security question on sign-up, that's intended to make sure a human is actually responsible. Log out, then go to the Sign Up link and you'll see it. If it seems bots are somehow parsing it, I can always change the question and answer to something else. I'm open to suggestions. But I don't like graphical CAPTCHA because those have been cracked by bots already (and because the more unbreakable you make it, the harder it is for even a human to read -- I've had trouble just signing up some places because the CAPTCHA characters were just too vague even for me to make out).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=20#p9543
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-10-14 13:07:20

[quote="Flack"]With weeks worth of work invested, I now need to decide whether or not I should go ahead and finish this adventure, or scrap it and begin on something a bit more original.[/quote]

Scrap it and move on. Your heart won't be in it now. Authoring IF is enough of a grind that without passion on your side, there isn't much point.

The fact that you have enough self-awareness to recognize when you have produced something bland tells me that you have the ability to create something that isn't. It would be a shame to squander that on a project that no longer inspires you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=20#p9544
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-14 13:09:32

[quote="aschultz"] I've found that doing stuff I can't quite do--but that fits into a game--helps me think bigger (ouch! a cliche!) [/quote]
I've said it before and I'll say it again: You can't think creatively and critically at the same time. If you're watching out for cliches, you're not getting down your brilliant ideas either. Just let it all spew out and promise yourself you'll clean it up later.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1539&start=0#p9545
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 won't run code on my system
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-14 13:11:56

[quote="emshort"]a new bug-fixing release of Inform is probably not too far off.[/quote]
Wahoo! Looking forward to it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=20#p9546
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-14 13:22:52

[quote="bcressey"][quote="Flack"]With weeks worth of work invested, I now need to decide whether or not I should go ahead and finish this adventure, or scrap it and begin on something a bit more original.[/quote]

Scrap it and move on. Your heart won't be in it now. Authoring IF is enough of a grind that without passion on your side, there isn't much point.

The fact that you have enough self-awareness to recognize when you have produced something bland tells me that you have the ability to create something that isn't. It would be a shame to squander that on a project that no longer inspires you.[/quote]
A different viewpoint, with a lot of pull to it, I know. But where I'm coming from is, perfectionism is the enemy. I thought more the way you do ten years ago when I first tackled Inform and guess what — when I eventually got involved in other media after about a year of on-and-off IF work, I still had produced nothing releasable, because I had rebooted the process too many times. I have always regretted that. Now, people just have to take my word that I worked on stuff back then, and that sucks.

It's discouraging to not feel as excited by the perfectness of your project anymore, to be sure, but in my experience it's even more discouraging to contemplate, in retrospect, weeks or months of work with *nothing* to show for it. You don't have to finish it to perfection — maybe just slap together the final stages and call it a 'college try' — but having finished something at least gives you something to reflect on and play/analyse as you contemplate your next step, as well as a psychological sense of forward motion that can't be overestimated, IMO.

By being too willing to restart due to flagging passion, particularly after you've put in [i]weeks[/i], one runs the real risk of going through this same loop again and again and [i]never[/i] having anything to show for it. Iteration is the key to success and the key to iteration is to finish every cycle.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1538&start=10#p9547
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Time to tighten account security?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-10-14 13:24:37

[quote="Hannes"]IP addresses combined with a forced cookie valid until 2038 are quite enough to identify you. Combine that with the information which person is using what on the Internet is data which many companies are willing to buy.[/quote]
Not to add to the derail, but while Google's data retention policies are absolutely something to worry about, the 2038 cookie was replaced (in July 2007) with one set to expire 2 years after you last used Google.

[quote="Merk"]Real people create the spammer accounts, not bots.[/quote]
Couldn't they add a little relevance to their posts beyond copying and pasting one of the previous posts in a four-message thread?  Is there some test to filter for [i]creative[/i] spammers?  (Or are the sign-ups human performed and the posting automated?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1538&start=20#p9548
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Time to tighten account security?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-10-14 13:39:56

Oh, it's probably bots that post. I just don't think it's bots that create the accounts. As I've heard it, you have these super low-paid people who do nothing but sign up for web forums, add the username and password to a master list, and then the spam software uses them to post. But that's nothing new.

It's also possible that my security question either made it into the spammer's master list of possible questions (real people can maintain those lists as well), or was simple enough that it was parsed by a bot. It's possible, I suppose.

I've added a bunch more questions for it to randomly choose between. The trick is putting in about a dozen or so "answers" to cover all the likely phrasings or variations to the answer, and asking questions that encourage simple responses to begin with. Here's the current set of security questions I have in there now, for signing up. I think I've covered all of the likely correct answers and variations on the answer for each. None of them are trying to be clever or tricky -- the point is just to ask something that a bot wouldn't have any idea what's supposed to go in the answer blank.

[spoiler]What is 10 minus 2 plus 14?
Which of these is the Earth? A moon, a star, an asteroid, a planet, a comet, a black hole, or a rabbit?
You start with twenty apples and give five away. How many do you have left? (Hint: Not a trick question)
Regarding the IF Community, what does "IF" stand for?
Robins, doves, pigeons, falcons, and owls are all what basic type of animal?
Traditionally, what would you have seen a cowboy riding in the old west?
What four letters does the word Dusty start with (Hint: one word, four letters).
All of these are vowels: i a u e o. Is that true, or is it false?
What general color falls somewhere in the middle of black and white, being a mix of both?
In the color designation RGB, what does the G stand for?
In terms of music and data media, what does "CD" stand for?
When is it more likely to see a bunch of stars in the sky? During the day, or at night?
Is 11:30 AM before noon, or after?
Is 3:45 PM before noon, or after?
Spell the word "food" backwards. (Hint: Not a trick question.)
Spell the word "paper" backwards. (Hint: Not a trick question.)
How many letters are there in the english alphabet, not counting Y and Z?
What grade comes after 4th grade?
What studio/person is famous for creating Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy?[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1538&start=20#p9549
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Time to tighten account security?
User: TheTraveler / DateTime: 2010-10-14 14:10:04

@Hannes:

[quote]Newsflash: The USA isn't the whole world. Oh, wait, that's all just 'minor skirmishes', of course, because it's not taking place in front of your doorstep. [/quote]That's quite true. I don't usually concern myself unnecessarily with legal issues outside of the US. All of the litigation that I'm familiar concerning Google with is based in, and on, US law.   

[quote]By the way, isn't it funny how you only came up with this after being told your initial smoke screen attempt was bullshit?[/quote]I congratulate you on your cleverness, if not for your civility.

Cheers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=20#p9550
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-10-14 14:32:15

[quote="Laroquod"]By being too willing to restart due to flagging passion, particularly after you've put in [i]weeks[/i], one runs the real risk of going through this same loop again and again and [i]never[/i] having anything to show for it. Iteration is the key to success and the key to iteration is to finish every cycle.[/quote]

I don't disagree with your larger point, but I would say that weeks are peanuts in the grand scheme of things. As an artist it's not about the work you put in, it's about the quality of the output and the scope of your ambition.

I went to a small art show a while back offering discounts on student paintings. There were a lot of extremely common subjects: bowls of fruit, ships on storm-tossed seas, that sort of thing. I assume the artists created them as an exercise for class. Even knowing it was an assignment, I liked one of the dozens of ship paintings enough to buy it. It's a running joke in my house now; practically every movie we see that has any kind of home office or library has "our" painting on the wall.

There's nothing really wrong with ships or fruit baskets or games set in your apartment. But some artists will master the basics and start to paint or design subjects that explore less comfortable territory. From my point of view, the most important lesson to be learned is not to underestimate the audience or waste their time. As a member of that audience, the artist owes himself no less. If a house game is the best you can do, make it a damn good game and don't apologize for it. Otherwise, move on and don't look back.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1531&start=0#p9551
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Warbler's Nest
User: KateSherrod / DateTime: 2010-10-14 14:58:40

Regarding gender: yes, a shift is very much a feminine garment and also recall the task for which the PC is accustomed to venture forth for the cabin: gathering reeds. This is generally women's work in this kind of milieu, the peasant-and-fairy-tale world.

BUT -- the fact that many of my forum-mates here seem to have read the PC gender as male and the game still made sense to them is, I find, a point in its favour in terms of immersion and playability. It makes me like the game more.

I do agree with Paul on the narrative voice (I'm the relative IF newbie with whom he played). 

[spoiler]What jarred me in particular was a point where, when I was trying to decide what it was I was supposed to do with the water once I was awkwardly carrying it in an eggshell, I tried just pouring it out. I got a lecture from the game along the lines of "what you're supposed to do with the water has been made very clear" (I'm paraphrasing, here, because I don't remember the exact wording). This took me right out of the game and annoyed me because it bloody well had NOT been made clear, had not been mentioned at all, and I, the player, was not privy to this information in the slightest. Were the game written in third person the knowledge gap between me and the PC would have made a great deal more sense and I would probably have just said "huh" and gone about carrying my water in my eggshell until something gave me a clue what to do with it. But maybe that's just me.[/spoiler]

On the whole this has been one of the more enjoyable games so far, along with the People's Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure Games. I even wrote a sonnet about it over at my blog 8)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=20#p9552
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2010-10-14 15:01:27

[quote="capmikee"][quote="aschultz"] I've found that doing stuff I can't quite do--but that fits into a game--helps me think bigger (ouch! a cliche!) [/quote]
I've said it before and I'll say it again: You can't think creatively and critically at the same time. If you're watching out for cliches, you're not getting down your brilliant ideas either. Just let it all spew out and promise yourself you'll clean it up later.[/quote]

To clarify--I didn't mean at once. Generally I alternate between learning something technical/new and writing down ideas for puzzles/plot etc. It's more that if I let the technical side bug me too much, I forget innovation, and vice versa. But learning technical stuff is like cleaning my place up for me in that I'm not bugged by small stuff later.

When I'm inspired, or I feel like I'm inspired because ideas are flowing, I put off worrying about cliche til later. Agreed.

Also "doing stuff I can't quite do" -> "couldn't quite do before" ...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1538&start=20#p9553
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Time to tighten account security?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-10-14 15:03:45

[spoiler]What is 10 minus 2 plus 14?[/spoiler]

Heh. Careful with this one, you're as likely to get 22 as -6. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=30#p9554
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Rogue of the Multiverse
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-10-14 15:09:02

Halfway there... just 13 games to go. 

[b]Rogue of the Multiverse[/b] [i]by C.E.J. Pacian[/i]

Non-spoiler review: Very good game. Well worth the tiny amount of time it will take you to download and install the TADS interpreter if you need to.

[spoiler]Wow. I am super impressed by this game. I'm assuming you have played it already (hence the spoiler tags) but if you haven't, please stop reading and go play it.

[rant=Last chance to avoid spoiling yourself]Where to begin? I guess with the parts I didn't like. The scenery was a little sparse, especially on the various planets that you visit. But if they had been fully fleshed-out locations, the game would have gone way over two hours. It would be a Spring Thing game, not an IFComp game. So I guess that doesn't count.

There was one point in the epilogue where I wanted to "sit on chair" and had to type "sit on chairs" instead.

I wished that the NPCs (Sliss and Sola) had more conversation topics. In fact I didn't find an opportunity to have an ask/tell conversation with Sliss at all, which was disappointing (ASK SLISS ABOUT BANANA... giggle).

I discovered from the walkthrough after I finished the game that you can apparently only carry two of the items Sola needs at a time... in play I didn't attempt to carry all three at once so I don't know if that's one of those annoying arbitrary limitations or if he makes a good joke out of it.

That's it, that's all the bad stuff. Now on to the good bits.

The interview at the beginning. Play through twice and experience all the answers. Great stuff.

The navigation within the complex was perfect; I loved how the game tracked what direction you were facing and adjusted things accordingly. It really made me feel like I was there. Not appropriate for all games, maybe, but this technique could be used to good effect more often.

The automatic picking-up and putting-down of your equipment when you enter the antechamber.

The amusing things you encounter while hunting for "salvage". My favorite was the angry farmer.

The escape on the jet bike.

Sliss and all her banana comments. In fact, just about everything she says.

The way the normal text adventuring, the salvage hunting, and the jet bike racing all exist in one game -- and how seamlessly they fit together.

Everything was implemented and had at least a basic description. I didn't notice any spelling or grammar errors. I encountered no bugs, and just one vocabulary oversight. This was a quality game, it was a fun game, and it was unique in several ways.[/rant]
I haven't done a proper search just yet, but it bothers me that I don't recall seeing many other reviews of this game. Are people avoiding it because it can't be played in a browser? That would be... unfortunate.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=20#p9555
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-10-14 15:15:28

You should finish it. And release it. The only thing I would discourage is entering it in IFComp, if you feel it isn't up to snuff. [emote]:)[/emote] 

There is absolutely no shame in implementing your house or making a go-to-work game. Who knows, maybe yours will be the best go-to-work game ever! And regardless, there are skills that you only learn by FINISHING a game; even if what you really want to do now is move on to a different project you will get valuable experience by polishing up this one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1538&start=20#p9556
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Time to tighten account security?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-10-14 15:46:08

Maybe if you had only (easy) IF-related questions like the "Regarding the IF Community, what does "IF" stand for" it would be easier for the spammers to just move on to the next forum than to start researching for the answer?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1538&start=20#p9557
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Time to tighten account security?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-14 16:30:32

Too arduous. We *do* get genuine newcomers around here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1538&start=20#p9558
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Time to tighten account security?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-10-14 16:57:37

[quote]Heh. Careful with this one, you're as likely to get 22 as -6.[/quote]
-6 is one of the accepted answers. And "minus six", "negative six" and others. [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote]Maybe if you had only (easy) IF-related questions like the "Regarding the IF Community, what does "IF" stand for" it would be easier for the spammers to just move on to the next forum than to start researching for the answer?[/quote]
I was hesitant to even include that one, and may end up removing it (although it [i]can[/i] be answered by looking at the forum title). I could see somebody wanting to ask questions about what they consider to be "adventure games" after coming upon the site doing a Google search. I definitely wouldn't want to focus even more on IF-specific knowledge. The idea isn't supposed to filter out humans with basic comprehension skills -- just bots. [emote]:)[/emote] If I'm right and the sign-ups are actually being done by people, my opinion is that we'll just have to keep dealing with them case by case. I'd rather allow human spammer sign-ups than accidentally prevent legitimate visitors.

Some of them may still be too hard to assume everybody would know. The G in RGB, for instance, or what CD stands for. The list will probably evolve as needed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1465&start=0#p9559
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Funny responses from this year's games
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-10-14 17:40:06

From Divis Mortis:

[spoiler]> put can in recycling
(empty can in the plastic blue recycling bin)
You put empty can in the recycle bin.  Very responsible of you.[/spoiler]

Lots of cool responses so far for random actions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=20#p9560
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-14 20:22:06

[quote="bcressey"]There's nothing really wrong with ships or fruit baskets or games set in your apartment. But some artists will master the basics and start to paint or design subjects that explore less comfortable territory. From my point of view, the most important lesson to be learned is not to underestimate the audience or waste their time. As a member of that audience, the artist owes himself no less. If a house game is the best you can do, make it a damn good game and don't apologize for it. Otherwise, move on and don't look back.[/quote]
Seems to me that you are coming from the perspective of what sort of release is good for the audience whereas I am coming from the perspective of what sort of process is good for the artist. I would add the one point though that what's good for the artist is good for the audience, because somebody who gets in the habit of giving up mediocre ideas A and B may well never make it to the stage of producing amazing idea C (i.e. ambition needs to develop on fertile ground not spring full-formed out of first-game territory — and how long can you toil in darkness really without feedback? An artist needs to get their mistakes out there so they can hear the criticsms that they [i]didn't[/i] see coming.). And if amazing idea C is never produced because the artist didn't want to go through the developmental stage of painting sailboats, then that's bad for the audience in the end. Anyhoo, I think the positions have been staked out pretty clearly. Nobody's wrong, really, in any absolute sense — there are valid points visible from both perspectives, I admit.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1531&start=0#p9561
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Warbler's Nest
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-14 20:38:28

Yeah, to a certain extent Kate and I may just be critiquing the general IF form here rather than the specific game. I don't want to be unfair to Warbler's Nest and tar it with a problem that is actually pretty widespread in IF. After the first third of the game I made a conscious effort to look past my issue with the story's perspective and meet the game on its own terms. It's really quite well done and a fascinating subject, well-evoked — it made my skin crawl at times, and it will likely be one of my favourites of the comp when all is played and done. 8)

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1540&start=0#p9563
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: After rules and text order
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-10-14 23:05:14

So say your code is something like this:

[code]The generic room is a room.

A box is in the generic room.  It is a closed, openable container.

A cat is in the box.

After opening the box:
	say "The cat jumps out at you!";
	continue the action.[/code]

The result is:

[quote]The cat jumps out at you!

You open the box, revealing a cat.[/quote]

How do you get the text accompanying the "after" action to display after the normal text, assuming you want both to display?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=30#p9564
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Rogue of the Multiverse
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2010-10-14 23:21:48

[quote="scratchm"][b]Rogue of the Multiverse[/b] [i]by C.E.J. Pacian[/i]
[spoiler]I haven't done a proper search just yet, but it bothers me that I don't recall seeing many other reviews of this game. Are people avoiding it because it can't be played in a browser? That would be... unfortunate.[/spoiler][/quote]
[spoiler]There are at least nine other reviews already (which is actually more than for some Inform games!): see <a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Rogue_of_the_Multiverse#Reviews">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Rogue_o ... se#Reviews</a>[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1540&start=0#p9565
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: After rules and text order
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-14 23:22:58

[quote="katz"]How do you get the text accompanying the "after" action to display after the normal text, assuming you want both to display?[/quote]
I've often wondered that myself. Most of the examples I've seen involve faking it:
[code]After opening the box:
   say "You open the box, revealing a cat.[paragraph break]The cat jumps out at you!";[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1540&start=0#p9566
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: After rules and text order
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-10-14 23:54:20

All After rules are always before Report rules, so make your rule a Last Report

   Last report opening the box:  say "The cat jumps out at you!" instead.

IIRC the standard Report rule doesn't have the 'instead' so it will fall through to your final report rule.  (But if not, then yes, you'll need to fake it.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1534&start=0#p9567
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Kickstarter Campaign to Complete Cross-Mobile IF Platfor
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2010-10-15 00:03:48

There's not that much time until this campaign runs out Saturday and it's only halfway funded so far.  

For any IF author or player lurking here wondering how we could expand the audience for IF, I encourage you to sponsor this project.  For the price of a movie for 2, let alone dinner or parking, you could help get more folks using IF on Kindle, Android, Palm and other platforms.  Please join me and others in helping this project reach its fruition. 

--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1540&start=0#p9568
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: After rules and text order
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-10-15 00:28:14

So if there's more to the After rule than just the reporting, you must need to break it into two rules?

For instance, if the code is:

[code]After opening the box:
now the cat is in the generic room;
say "The cat jumps out at you!"[/code]

You instead have to say:

[code]After opening the box:
now the cat is in the generic room.

Last report opening the box:
say "The cat jumps out at you!"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=30#p9569
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Rogue of the Multiverse
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-10-15 01:12:07

[quote="Eriorg"][spoiler]There are at least nine other reviews already (which is actually more than for some Inform games!): see <a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Rogue_of_the_Multiverse#Reviews">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Rogue_o ... se#Reviews</a>[/spoiler][/quote]
[spoiler]Oh thanks! I hardly ever remember that the wiki exists. Should visit it more often. [emote]:)[/emote][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=30#p9572
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp reviews by scratchm
User: SOdhner / DateTime: 2010-10-15 01:26:21

[quote="scratchm"]My brother discovered that while it won't let you put the hamster in the microwave, it WILL let you put the hamster in the bowl, and then the bowl in the microwave. The hamster doesn't seem to mind.[/quote]

It's true.  Sadly, the hamster not only survived getting cooked but also survived when the soup was eaten.  I did crash the game a few times while messing with it, though, and I ended the game with the hamster in the garbage.  So that's something.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1534&start=0#p9573
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Kickstarter Campaign to Complete Cross-Mobile IF Platfor
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-10-15 01:32:11

This is an honest question because I don't understand TextFyre's business strategy; I don't mean it as a snark.

What, if anything, would this project do that would make it easier to publish [b]free[/b] games to these platforms? I ask because it's my understanding that this is a special platform for selling commercial IF and I personally am only interested in consuming/distributing free IF.

I hope I'm misunderstanding; I hope that this is a general purpose z-code and/or glulx and/or t3 interpreter that could play the available pool of free IF at no cost to the end user. That would be cool, and I would pledge money.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1540&start=0#p9574
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: After rules and text order
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-10-15 01:50:55

You needn't do so.  I don't think there's any harm in sticking both effects into the same Last Report rule.  

(Theoretically, it's cleaner to separate narration from simulation, but go with what works for you.  Besides, if you stick the cat-moving phrase in a separate rule than the say phrase, then how's the say phrase's rule going to know to say itself?  The cat will have been moved out of the bag already by the time it gets considered.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1303&start=20#p9577
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Colored Text, distracting or helpful?
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-10-15 02:05:25

I find color distracting.  I think that good IF writing should be compelling enough that people want to read everything and concise enough that people can read everything.  If you're trying to point out what's changed in a scene, you should have the description be shorter the second time so the player can immediately see the new parts.

Besides, IIRC, you only get the basic 8 colors anyway, so there's going to be absolutely no subtlety and little aesthetic value.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1534&start=0#p9578
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Kickstarter Campaign to Complete Cross-Mobile IF Platfor
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-10-15 02:20:26

TextFyre is now committed to releasing its software under FOSS licences. So on the open platforms you could use it easily (however games would need to be recompiled for FyreVM. I personally think it would be better to keep with Glk, or to at least include a Glk compatibility layer, but I hope Dave's decisions work out for the best here.) But on other more closed platforms it's a lot harder to release new software. I think the Kindle is particularly hard to get approval for. So for those platforms you might choose to use TextFyre as your publisher as they already are approved to release software.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1281&start=10#p9579
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Room short names
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-10-15 02:34:35

I think the best format also depends on the type and mood of the game.  "In the Magnificent Gem-Filled Cavern" gives a nice opulent feel to a fantasy game, but my game is set on a spaceship, and "In the Cramped and Antiseptic Crew Quarters" doesn't quite work.  The setting is businesslike, so the descriptions should be too.  (Also, some of the doors are labeled; the room names should match the labels and of course the labels are the most concise form of the name.)

More subtly, it should also depend on the narrator.  A no-nonsense businessman will pay less attention to his surroundings than a mooning poet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=30#p9580
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-10-15 03:46:13

My husband does lots of gaming but acts like a total newbie when doing IF.

One of the most marked things I've noticed is the tendency to try to "talk" by just entering text.  For instance, when my husband was at a part where the player in surrounded by flames that can burn you, he would type "ouch."  This puzzles me because, even if the parser understood it, I'm not sure what it would accomplish.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=30#p9581
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-15 04:32:11

[quote="katz"]For instance, when my husband was at a part where the player in surrounded by flames that can burn you, he would type "ouch."  This puzzles me because, even if the parser understood it, I'm not sure what it would accomplish.[/quote] I do things like this even as a veteran. It's a performance — it doesn't really matter whether the game can play along. It's a consequence, I believe, of being put in the second-person mindset. You are being placed in a role. There is a temptation (at least on my part) to think of the things I am typing as part of the story rather than as purely utilitarian. But the commands don't really scan at all as part of the story in a second-person IF, nor even as part of some extratextual meta-story, because you are aiming imperative sentences at no one in particular. If you are 'you' then who would you be commanding to 'say ouch' or to 'yell'? It just doesn't make sense to me; never has. Thus, my overwhelming compulsion to change my grammar whenever I am tempted to roleplay. The standard IF grammar and the standard IF perspective are very much at odds with each other. I feel like typing things like 'ouch' or 'fuck' or 'whatever',  whenever I feel like roleplaying the actual character who I have been accused (by the game) of being, and I know the conventions so I [i]know[/i] it never works, but I do it sometimes anyway just to air out that impulse to play 'my' role.

Paul.

EDIT: And... I'm going to try to cut down on the harping against 2nd person perspective in this forum. It's come up for me in a couple of different threads now, and this is only like my 40th post, and it will likely continue to be in the forefront of my mind — but I didn't come here to try to hijack every thread in favour of agitating against the conventions of the form. I came here because I just love IF, despite my objections to the narrative conventions that have developed around it, so it'd be best not to thrust those objections front and centre. Anyway the better argument is to produce more games that don't follow those conventions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=30#p9584
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: East Grove Hills
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-10-15 07:49:41

[b]East Grove Hills[/b] [i]by XYZ[/i]

[spoiler]All I can say for this one was that the story was ok. Not good, maybe, but at least ok.

It would have been better if written in a completely non-interactive format; I can't imagine why someone would bother using interactive fiction to tell a non-interactive story rather than just writing the story out on a web page or something, but that's exactly what has been done here. It wasn't just that you were on rails, you were on rails with blinders on.

I thought the writing style was irritating. It had many short sentences. Like this. Most of them were complete thoughts. But some.

The characters were flat. The setting was flat. The plot twist was terrible (more on that next) and the ending was somewhat arbitrary and not connected to the rest of the story.

[quote]and I tried to make an interactive fiction game. Inform 7 was harder to work with than I thought. Still, I managed to get a basic framework done. [u]Despite being failtasticly bad, it was barely playable[/u], and had a semblance of a plot which had nothing to do with the book. I never did finish it in time for the presentation. After what happened, I turned back to my failure of a game. Jenny and Yue were going to be in it. I was going to be in it, too. [u]It's the game you're playing now.[/u]
[/quote](Emphasis added for my own amusement)

So let me get this right... the reason the game sucks is because it was written by a character in the game, who sucks at writing games? Ok yeah, I can get my head around that but I think it's the worst excuse for a bad game I have ever seen. Ever.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1534&start=0#p9585
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Kickstarter Campaign to Complete Cross-Mobile IF Platfor
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-10-15 11:29:01

[quote="scratchm"]What, if anything, would this project do that would make it easier to publish [b]free[/b] games to these platforms?[/quote]

FyreVM is open source at sourceforge.net/projects/fyrevm. All of the current and future code will reside there or if moved, to a similar open source venue.

As a self-publisher, you would still need to register with the various mobile marketplaces on your own. If you weren't able to register or gain access to one or more of the platforms, you could work with Textfyre on publishing your games.

It's looking like the Kickstarter campaign will fall well short of our intended goal. We will still continue to work on the platform, but it's all volunteer work at the moment and some of the platforms are missing volunteers. The Mac/iPad/iPhone code is close to completion, but is sitting idle. We need help completing the engine (including testing) and then getting sample user interfaces developed for each apple platform. We're building a Java FyreVM, but we could certainly use help on the Android UI side.

In lieu of cash, more volunteers would suffice.

FyreVM is meant for this kind of work. It separates the game from the user interface code which allows each platform to have a custom user interface that leverages its strengths (ipad = touch gestures, kindle = 5-way button).

Authors can still envision multiple window user interfaces, but the implementation would be outside of the game code.

There's still a chance....Pledge at: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/textfyre/mobile-interactive-stories/">http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tex ... e-stories/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=30#p9586
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-10-15 11:33:01

You know I do the same thing sometimes, typing expressions as if in character.  It just seems natural.  I only do it if I'm really into the role, though, so it's not often.

This does make a difference if you're a beta-tester, because the author will be reading your transcript very carefully, and it's always nice to entertain him/her while pointing out the rough spots in their work. 

BTW I do appreciate your comments re: second person. I hadn't thought of some of those things that way.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1530&start=0#p9587
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Need some WordPress help
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-10-15 11:50:47

Hey it works. The More tag by itself is now all that's needed. Thanks Ben, Rhian, everyone!   I'm now allowed to review comp games again.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1540&start=0#p9588
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: After rules and text order
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-15 12:00:40

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]IIRC the standard Report rule doesn't have the 'instead' so it will fall through to your final report rule.  (But if not, then yes, you'll need to fake it.)[/quote]
That's what I thought, but when I tried making a "last report" rule, it never fired.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=30#p9589
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp reviews by scratchm
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-10-15 13:40:24

[quote="scratchm"][spoiler]So let me get this right... the reason the game sucks is because it was written by a character in the game, who sucks at writing games? Ok yeah, I can get my head around that but I think it's the worst excuse for a bad game I have ever seen. Ever.[/spoiler][/quote]

[spoiler]Nobody seems to have much good to say about this game but I really liked it, and that line in particular. It served to explain and excuse the game's obvious flaws in a way that stayed true to the narrative.

The author explores the psyche of a school shooting survivor from the perspective of that survivor, who stands in as the author and creator.

The writing quality is OK but not great; it would not be unfair to call it sophomoric which strikes me as the point. It is very much within the grasp of a talented but ordinary high school student. Likewise the execution of the game is competent without displaying any real degree of craft, which again is in keeping with the player character's background and stated experience.

I found this all persuasive enough that I actually did a Google search on East Grove to see if there had in fact been a school shooting in the news. Of course that turned up nothing but that act alone speaks volumes to the verisimilitude of the construct. 

If this story was written by someone in high school, I am impressed. Otherwise I am very nearly in awe. It's not a good game, it's not a good story, yet it may be good literature. Consider this. What if the author produced exactly what he set out to achieve? It may not be [i]The Sound and the Fury[/i] but I have rarely seen its equal as a slice of life.

I understand how someone who approaches it with the idea that the author is unknown and likely unskilled might come away thinking the game a failure. But suppose you knew the author had a formidable grasp of Inform and strong writing abilities. If you accept that the game is the way it is as a result of deliberate creative choice rather than a lack of talent, doesn't that make it much more compelling?[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=20#p9590
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-10-15 15:52:14

Thanks for the feedback and encouragement, all. Even if it's not the most original game ever written, I agree that it's both good practice to finish the game and a good exercise in getting things to work.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1542&start=0#p9591
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: Object / Noun Question?
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-10-15 15:59:38

Slowly but surely, I'm making progress!

Where I'm currently hung up is, I'm trying to allow the player to write a note. In my code I have created a notepad and a pen. I also have a note (has concealed) that I will move to the player's inventory once it has been written.

Here's where I get lost. The way I read the documentation, when looking for nouns I am looking for the object's name. If I write [b]if noun == "note"[/b], nothing triggers. And I can't write [b]if noun == note[/b] because the player doesn't have the note yet. I can get around this by adding 'note' as a name to the pad of paper, but I don't think that's right because the player can now type [b]WRITE PAPER[/b] and it will write the note for them (which I really don't want).

I hope I have given enough information for this to make sense.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1542&start=0#p9592
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Object / Noun Question?
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-10-15 16:04:54

Pertinent code:
[code]
Verb 'write' 'create'
      *          	-> Write
	  * noun		-> Write
      * 'on' noun	-> Write;

-----

[ WriteSub;
      if (noun == nothing) "You don't feel all that inspired.";
	  if (noun == couch) "Don't write on the couch, please.";
	  ];

-----

Object -> -> Notepad "notepad"
with
name 'pad' 'notepad' 'paper',
description "It's a small notepad, with about half the pages left. You used to write your grocery lists down on the pad back when you had money for groceries. You know, maybe with a little mustard ... nah.",
Before	[;
Write:		if (pen in player && notepad in player) {
					print_ret "Using the pen and pad of paper, you scribble out a coupon.";
						} else {
					print_ret "You're going to need both something to write with, and on.";
				}
		],
;

-----

Object note "note" 
with 
name 'note',
description "This will be the note.",
;[/code]

... something like that, anyway.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=30#p9593
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: East Grove Hills
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-10-15 17:00:12

Regarding East Grove Hills:
[quote="bcressey"][spoiler]But suppose you knew the author had a formidable grasp of Inform and strong writing abilities. If you accept that the game is the way it is as a result of deliberate creative choice rather than a lack of talent, doesn't that make it much more compelling?[/spoiler][/quote]

[spoiler]It isn't a game, it's just a story. It doesn't work well as IF. If the author had a formidable grasp of Inform and strong writing abilities, they would have chosen to tell this story as plain text rather than interactive fiction. That's my opinion, anyway.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1542&start=0#p9594
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Object / Noun Question?
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-10-15 18:04:48

I figured it out -- or, rather, I figured out a way around it.

I changed the pad of paper to a single piece of paper (a napkin, actually). That fixed the part about trying to replace one object (the pad of paper) with another (a coupon). Once I made that change, I simple used the [b]object.description = "..."[/b] to update the description and reflect the modified piece of paper. Baby steps ...

---

[i]Dining Room
The word "room" is a bit of a misnomer; it's more of a nook really, and a sparse one at that. In the middle of the room sits a table and two chairs (wishful thinking on your part). Your kitchen is to the south, and the living room is to the west.

You can see a table (on which are a napkin and a pen) here.

>examine napkin
It's just an unused Taco Flaco napkin.

>get napkin
Taken.

>get pen
Taken.

>write coupon
Using the pen, you write "COUPON" across the top of the napkin in bold letters. Below that in smaller letters, you write "10 TACOS FOR A DOLLAR".

[Your score has just gone up by one point.]

>examine napkin
It used to be a Taco Flaco napkin; now, it's a coupon. The craftsmanship is so shoddy it wouldn't fool most illiterate children ... and yet, Taco Flaco continues to accept them for some reason. Perhaps, because of your penmanship, they think you're mentally handicapped.

>[/i]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=30#p9595
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp reviews by scratchm
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-10-15 18:32:57

[quote="scratchm"][spoiler]It isn't a game, it's just a story. It doesn't work well as IF. If the author had a formidable grasp of Inform and strong writing abilities, they would have chosen to tell this story as plain text rather than interactive fiction. That's my opinion, anyway.[/spoiler][/quote]

[spoiler]The scene that made it work for me was the one where you have the option to hide or confront the shooters. You are powerless to effect a real change to the plot, but even so the story reads very differently depending on whether you cower behind the counter or charge out to disarm one of the killers.

It is a choice that defines the character you are playing. Either he is almost a coward or almost a hero, and either way he has to live with the consequences of his shortcomings. It's the most significant event in his life, which is after all what the most compelling stories are about.

It's also the most interactive part by a mile. You can't save your sister's life and you can't put a sentence together, but you get to make the hardest decision you will ever face.

I agree that it isn't much of a game or much of a story. But at its heart it has this one beautiful moment of interactivity, which all the rest of the experience works to support. I can forgive a lot for that; I'm just not sure there's anything to forgive.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1542&start=0#p9596
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Object / Noun Question?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-15 19:11:47

I want to play this game!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=30#p9597
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp reviews by scratchm
User: SOdhner / DateTime: 2010-10-15 20:23:25

East Grove Hills:

[quote="bcressey"][spoiler]If you accept that the game is the way it is as a result of deliberate creative choice rather than a lack of talent, doesn't that make it much more compelling?[/spoiler][/quote]

[spoiler]Slightly more compelling just as a curiosity, but not [b]better[/b].  The fact remains that as a game this was a failure, and as literature it was... not great.  I didn't like Gigantomania, but I can appreciate the art.  I didn't like Sons of the Cherry, but the format was appropriate.  This is something that had the flaws of both and more, but without the redeeming qualities.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=150#p9598
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-10-15 22:09:06

[quote="Neurosion"]Glad to see the hobby is alive and well.  I hope I manage to contribute something positive this time around.[/quote]

I think I know the feeling.  I'd like to contribute something positive to the community, but I've done far less than I feel like I should have been able to.  Same goes for other internet communities I've been a part of, such as the MUD I used to play, where I think I did more harm than good.  But I think the fact that you and I want to make a good difference means that we aren't really ones who cause problems in the community. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=30#p9599
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-10-15 22:47:23

This is a great thread; I'm glad I took the time to read it!  An open, non-judgmental discussion like this is just the thing to motivate hopeful authors.  Because I am a procrastinator and become discouraged easily, and because I'm very detail-oriented, I always fail to complete the projects that I start.

I believe that if you have a sincere idea, it's best to stick with it, no matter that you second-guess its value or feel that it is too cliche.  I think if you really had artistic inspiration, you have something worthwhile to express, because no one else has ever had [i]exactly[/i] the same inspiration as you.

The problem:  When you try to take the practical steps to implement your grand idea, there's always going to be some point that you just don't know what to do next.  The trick is not to let the uncertainty stop you from working on the parts the parts that you [i]do[/i] know.  The real difficult is when your vision begins to change, because you have new ideas to fill in the gaps in your original plan that conflict with what you've already worked out.  When I try to change what I've already implemented, I find that I simply can't break the cycle of indecision, and I never see my WIP take shape.  I'm trying to stick to a policy in which I refrain from changing anything until I have a rough piece of IF that's fairly complete in and of itself, even it may be incoherent.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1540&start=0#p9601
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: After rules and text order
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-10-16 01:54:43

"Last report" isn't working for me.  I'm using Inform 7, and the cat-box example with Last Report yields "You open the box, revealing a cat."

Is it an extension or something?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1540&start=0#p9602
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: After rules and text order
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-10-16 04:47:01

The last report opening rule doesn't work because the standard library stops the action when it reports about the cat inside:

[code]Report an actor opening (this is the reveal any newly visible interior rule):
    if the actor is the player and
        the noun is an opaque container and
        the first thing held by the noun is not nothing and
        the noun does not enclose the actor,
        stop the action with library message opening action number 4 for the noun.[/code]
(It stops the action so that any other library messages won't be displayed.) Possibly the easiest way to go around this is to write an after rule that includes the library message and everything else you want it to do:

[code]After opening the box when the cat is in the box:
	issue actor-based library message opening action number 4 for the box;
	say "[line break]The cat jumps out at you!";
	now the cat is in the location.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1417&start=0#p9604
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The IF Dwarf Planet
User: Mr. Patient / DateTime: 2010-10-16 07:39:24

Just found the Dwarf Planet.  I'm finding it more useful than Planet IF; more of what I want, less of what I don't.  Thanks for doing this.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1543&start=0#p9606
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Can't Run Zork Zero in Zoom on OSX
User: Joey848 / DateTime: 2010-10-16 09:22:43

Can't seem to find out how to do this anywhere.
Have the latest build of Zoom.
I've tried changing the extension to z3, z5, z6, etc.
Downloaded the .blb file and placed it in the same folder.
Always get the error message "The document Zork Zero could not be opened"
I have the same problem with Infocom's other z6 games like Arthur and Journey.
Has anyone gotten these to work?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1540&start=0#p9607
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: After rules and text order
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-10-16 14:09:24

That...is very obscure.  How on Earth would I generalize that to other situations?

And why would the last report rule even exist if it's never actually reported?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1544&start=0#p9610
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Overriding "south" or "se" commands.
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2010-10-16 14:39:03

Hi,

i'd like to override commands such as "e" or "up". I want to avoid to write new instead rules, and use new "Understand..." statements instead. I already tried:

  [i]Understand "[direction]" as walking when the player is in a transition room.[/i]

with no success.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1540&start=0#p9611
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: After rules and text order
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-10-16 14:49:20

[quote="katz"]That...is very obscure.  How on Earth would I generalize that to other situations?[/quote]
This is a kind of special case because 1) you want to preserve the original library message and 2) the action is stopped in the report rules. In practice case 1 is rare because in similar cases you usually replace the library message completely ("You open the box and a cat jumps at you!"), although this depends on the author's style, and case 2 applies only to some standard actions. For example if the action would have been the switching on action the last report rule method would've worked.

[quote]And why would the last report rule even exist if it's never actually reported?[/quote]
Do you mean the concept of "last report rule" in general? It doesn't work in this particular case because the action is stopped before it has a chance to run. It's just a method of defining the order in which rules apply. For example:

[code]Foobaring is an action applying to nothing. Understand "foo" as foobaring.

Report foobaring:
    say "This message is shown first because it's listed first in the source code."

Last report foobaring:
    say "This message is shown last because of the 'last' keyword."

Report foobaring:
    say "This message is not shown last because the 'last report' rule goes after it."[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1543&start=0#p9613
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Can't Run Zork Zero in Zoom on OSX
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-16 15:01:42

It works for me. I am using Zoom 1.1.4.1 on an Intel Mac mini with OS X Leopard 10.5.8. I have a file called 'Zork Zero.z6' in the same folder as a file called 'Zork Zero.blb'. I seem to recall having to run some utility to extract the .z6 data file from the original game file that I received in my Lost Treasures of Infocom package (i.e., if you are starting with the 'Zork Zero' application as it was originally released for the Mac by Infocom, just changing the extension to .z6 is not enough: there is a conversion step). But it's been so long since I did this that I no longer recall which utility I used, and of course I haven't needed to recall it since I already extracted all the original games.

I would recommend googling the extraction of Infocom data files on the Mac. Or if this isn't your issue then I'm not sure what the problem is.

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=40#p9614
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp reviews by scratchm
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-16 15:18:34

For extended discussions, I'd like to request that if you put everything behind spoiler tags, at least put the name of the game you are discussing outside of those tags, or add it to the subject header. Otherwise, how will I figure out which game review you are replying to and whether I am ready to read it or not?

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1544&start=0#p9615
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding "south" or "se" commands.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-10-16 15:55:12

Can you post a larger bit of code? That might make it easier to understand whether the problem is with your "when" clause or something else. (One thing I'd try, looking just at what you've posted, is changing "when the player is in" to "if the location is.")

Also, you probably want to intercept things like "go east" as well.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=40#p9616
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp reviews by scratchm
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-10-16 15:55:25

[quote="Laroquod"]For extended discussions, I'd like to request that if you put everything behind spoiler tags, at least put the name of the game you are discussing outside of those tags, or add it to the subject header. Otherwise, how will I figure out which game review you are replying to and whether I am ready to read it or not?

Paul.[/quote]

Paul, very sorry about that I hadn't noticed that the subject line was generic. The discussion on the bottom half of page 4 of this thread is all about East Grove Hills. I'll go back and edit my posts appropriately.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=30#p9617
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2010-10-16 16:14:26

And even though there are many cliche's in IF (as in any medium) you can always bring an interesting angle to it.   Many genres of fiction are loaded with common themes, settings, happenings, but there's still room for a great murder mystery, romance, or whatever...

--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">http://www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1505&start=40#p9619
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp reviews by scratchm
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-16 18:11:09

No worries, scratch, I'm just eager to read what people are saying about stuff I've already played… especially curious about the ones I already decided to give up on, just to see if I missed anything good. 8)

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1529&start=0#p9620
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Fiction about Interactive Fiction
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-16 18:16:52

MS Paint Adventures is cool — and there are other comics where the readers participate by contributing phrases or suggestions, they seem to be cropping up everywhere lately. [url=http://amultiverse.com/]Scenes from a Multiverse[/url] is a fave. Every week he has readers vote on which scene from which universe will be revisited next week, so it's a choose-our-own of sorts, though Scenes isn't really [i]about[/i] interactive fiction so much as a very loose example of it.

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1545&start=0#p9621
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Calendar Extension
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-10-16 18:24:00

There doesn't seem to be an extension for a calendar that keeps track of days (months, years) as well as minutes.  Am I really the first person who has ever wanted to keep track of more than 24 hours of time?

Anyhow, if there isn't one, I'll have to code one myself.  It seems simple enough to start with this:

[code]The day is a number that varies.
At 12:00 AM:
    now the day is the day + 1.[/code]

But there's a major problem: If you ever skip time with "increase the time of day..." or similar, you may skip 12:00 AM and the day won't increment.  How can I check whether 12 AM has passed, regardless of whether or not it has actually been 12 AM?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1544&start=0#p9622
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding "south" or "se" commands.
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2010-10-16 18:36:06

[code]Walking is an action applying to one visible thing.
[Understand the command "walk" as something new.] [commented out because i need that the command"walk" is understood as "go" when the player is in a "normal room" which is implemented by default. See the going action]
Understand "walk" as walking when the player is in a transition room.

Carry out walking:
	[it is assumed that we are in a transition room][Indeed the walking action is called by the command "walk/walk [direction]" which is understood as the command "go" when the player is in a normal room]
	unless the noun is the nowhere direction:
		change the current direction of the player to the noun;
		change the speed of the player to 1.2 m/s;
	else:
		say "Où veux tu aller ?";

[STOPPING (walking)]

Stopping is an action applying to nothing.
Understand "stop" as stopping;
Carry out stopping when the player is in a transition room:
	change the speed of the player to 0 m/s;
	[TODO enregistrer un ae qui si le jouer s'est arrêté plus de 3 minutes, le force à préciser la direction lorsqu'il va vouloir bouger]

[GOING]
Understand "go" as walking when the player is in a transition room.
Understand "go [direction]" as walking when the player is in a transition room.
Understand "[direction]" as walking when the player is in a transition room. [doesn't work][/code]

There is also a rulebook listed in the Glulx Timed Activity Rulebook that
a) updates the position of the player (a length) in the location when the location is a transition room.
b) tries the going action when the player reaches the limits of the transition room.

Thus if I want b to work i should not write a rule like
Instead of going when the actor is in a transition room
otherwise i wouldn't be able to reproduce the behavior of the going action when the actor is in a transition room.

P.S.: this is all about real time
this is just a draft

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1545&start=0#p9623
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Calendar Extension
User: Brian Rapp / DateTime: 2010-10-16 19:45:15

[quote="katz"]If you ever skip time with "increase the time of day..." or similar, you may skip 12:00 AM and the day won't increment.  How can I check whether 12 AM has passed, regardless of whether or not it has actually been 12 AM?[/quote]

Replace your "increase the time of day" lines with a procedure that checks for the passage of midnight?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1546&start=0#p9625
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Possible Bug?
User: jpb6891 / DateTime: 2010-10-16 23:48:54

In the sushi story where you have to feed the fish in the inform 7 example, you should be able to give the can to the fish and he should complain about you giving him the can. This does not happen though. It ends the game saying you fed him.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1546&start=0#p9628
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Possible Bug?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-10-17 00:06:58

Fair point -- this is clearly an inconsistency in the implementation. I've fixed the example for the next build.

In the future, bugs in examples (as well as in the main Inform) can be submitted at

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view_all_bug_page.php">http://inform7.com/mantis/view_all_bug_page.php</a>

-- this is much easier for us to track, and I do not always follow the forums closely enough to notice everything that is mentioned here.

Thanks!

-- Emily

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1540&start=10#p9630
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: After rules and text order
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-10-17 00:53:48

What should I do if I want a message to display last and I can't fake it (or it would be very unwieldy to fake it)?  For instance, I have conversations that take place when you enter a room with two NPCs; they should take place after you enter the room, but I can't just tack them onto the room description because it could be any room.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1540&start=10#p9631
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: After rules and text order
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-17 01:14:00

An "every turn" rule will work. 

The general case is "every turn when in the Salon: say 'The NPCs babble...'" That comes out in the right place in the turn sequence. Then you customize it to happen only once, under whatever circumstances.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1544&start=0#p9639
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding "south" or "se" commands.
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2010-10-17 08:58:39

I've just tried to add
Understand the command "[direction]" as something new
to my code and it has no effect.

There is no lines matching
Understand the command "[direction]"...
or
Understand "[direction]"...
in the standard rules
so my guess is that's it's parsed unconventionally, at the parser level or something. I haven't been able to locate it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1544&start=0#p9640
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding "south" or "se" commands.
User: Felse / DateTime: 2010-10-17 10:28:56

It seems that the only thing walking does is changing the speed of the player: it's still a matter of going from one room to another in the specified direction, only the player is faster in a transition room.

One way to achieve that result [i]might[/i] be by adding check and carry out rules to the existing going action, something along these lines:

[code]Check an actor going (this is the walk faster in transition rooms rule):
	if the room gone from is a transition room:
		now the speed of the player is 1.2 m/s.

Carry out going (this is the slowing down after transition rule):
	if the room gone to is not a transition room:
		now the speed of the player is 0.6 m/s.[/code]

'Room gone from' and 'room gone to' are variables declared for the going action by the Standard Rules.

I haven't actually tested any of this, so I won't vouch for its feasibility; but, if it works, it might save you from having to override one of the more complicated actions defined in the Standard Rules (an attempt of course not unlikely to give rise to loads of bugs).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1544&start=0#p9641
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding "south" or "se" commands.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-10-17 10:49:56

[quote="Phonatacid"]I've just tried to add
Understand the command "[direction]" as something new
to my code and it has no effect.

There is no lines matching
Understand the command "[direction]"...
or
Understand "[direction]"...
in the standard rules
so my guess is that's it's parsed unconventionally, at the parser level or something. I haven't been able to locate it.[/quote]

That's how it looks to me, too -- I'm pretty far out of my depth here, anyway. 

I changed your code a little so I could get it to compile to z-code on my Inform, and I noticed that "walk north" didn't seem to be responding properly either. It should set you walking north, it seems, but for me it got "Où veux tu aller ?" I changed the relevant paragraph to this:

[code]Carry out walking a direction (called the destination):
    [it is assumed that we are in a transition room][Indeed the walking action is called by the command "walk/walk [direction]" which is understood as the command "go" when the player is in a normal room]
    if the destination is a direction:
        change the current direction of the player to the noun;
        change the speed of the player to 1;
        say "Going [current direction of the player] at [the speed of the player] m/s.";
    else:
        say "Où veux tu aller ?";[/code]

and it worked, though it never falls through to "Où veux tu aller ?"; it looks like that can be fixed with this, though:

[code]Rule for supplying a missing noun when walking:
    say "Où veux tu aller ?".
[/code]

Anyway, this is all very much trial-and-error hackery on my part.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1427&start=10#p9643
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unofficial Inform 7 documentation index
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-17 11:54:44

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/i7index/">http://eblong.com/zarf/i7index/</a> is now up to date. I've added a link to the data and scripts that I used to generate it.

It doesn't have any Recipe Book entries, however. I've just covered Writing With Inform, as best I can. Feel free to use this thread to shower me with suggestions for additions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1544&start=0#p9644
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding "south" or "se" commands.
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2010-10-17 12:14:43

Felse, in my current design your solution wouldn't work as each decisecond the Real Time Engine (huh huh *curls mustache*) updates then checks the position of the player within the transition room. If it ever happens that the player is out of the transition room's bounds, then it "try going (current direction of the player)". Consequently, as the player is still in a transition room it would call "Carry out going when the player is in a transition room rule" (or rather the instead of going... rule) whereas we to go through the standard going action.

Now that i'm re-reading your post it seems you haven't understood what i'm trying to achieve. I'd like to make a real time IF. I decided that the simpler way to achieve this is to create unidimensional rooms the player would use to go from crossroads to crossroads. Thus when you're in a transition room, the going action, that immediately moves the actor from a room to another should not be accessible to the player. It is instead replaced by the walking action, that will lead the player to one of the rooms end. The engine takes care of making the actor go from one room to another.


Also matt, the piece of code i shared wasn't functional. I do have a  "Rule for supplying a missing noun when walking", but i pruned it off my source code after copy/pasting it here so as keep things simple.
And yes, my system requires Glulx (gluxl?) to work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1544&start=0#p9645
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding "south" or "se" commands.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-10-17 12:18:19

[quote="Phonatacid"]Also matt, the piece of code i shared wasn't functional. I do have a  "Rule for supplying a missing noun when walking", but i pruned it off my source code after copy/pasting it here so as keep things simple.
And yes, my system requires Glulx (gluxl?) to work.[/quote]

Cool about the "rule for supplying a missing noun" -- I realized it wasn't functional and figured you needed glulx for the real-time stuff as well as the pace. I just added a room or two to test it, and noticed that "walk north" and "go north" weren't working as intended. They're working for you? (It may be that I'm using an old version of Inform.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1547&start=0#p9646
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: A quick question about I7 Understanding statements
User: Morley / DateTime: 2010-10-17 12:22:37

Hi everyone,

Just a (hopefully) simple question for someone with more experience than me:

In an "understand" statement in Inform 7 (like [i]understand "the portly gentleman" as Cecil[/i]), is there a way to read a term to be understood from a variable or (better still) table? Like, for example, [i]understand X as Cecil[/i]?

I tinkered around a bit and couldn't come up with anything. I'm using cloned objects in the project I'm currently working on (using the Dynamic Objects extension), and I'd like to be able to pull a cloned object's information, including the name(s) the player can refer to the object as, from a table. You know, if that's possible. 

Is it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1544&start=0#p9647
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding "south" or "se" commands.
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-10-17 12:23:23

This is probably an inane reply, but if I understand you correctly, you might try something like I did for abolishing compass directions (even though I know that the way I did it is messy and probably in a to-be-avoided list).

[code]After reading a command (this is the no compass rule):
	if the player's command matches "s/south/n/north/east/e/w/west/nw/northwest/ne/northeast/sw/southwest/se/southeast", say "You have no use for compasses." instead;
	if the player's command matches "go s/south/n/north/east/e/w/west/nw/northwest/ne/northeast/sw/southwest/se/southeast", say "You have no use for compasses." instead;
	if the player's command matches "go to s/south/n/north/east/e/w/west/nw/northwest/ne/northeast/sw/southwest/se/southeast", say "You have no use for compasses." instead;
	if the player's command matches "go to the s/south/n/north/east/e/w/west/nw/northwest/ne/northeast/sw/southwest/se/southeast", say "You have no use for compasses." instead;
	if the player's command matches "north east/west/-east/-west", say "You have no use for compasses." instead;
	if the player's command matches "south east/west/-east/-west", say "You have no use for compasses." instead.
[/code]

With these, I have abolished the player's ability to use compass directions, but internally I can still use them - they just need different trigger-words, which worked a beaut with Aaron Reed's keyword extension. It's as good a starting point as any.

To be honest, I got lost very quickly in this thread, but I think I adressed (or tried to) the issue in the first post... if not, apologies.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1547&start=0#p9648
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A quick question about I7 Understanding statements
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-10-17 13:12:24

This doesn't involve table lookup, but you can use one of the object's properties to refer to it; see 16.15. Understanding things by their properties and in particular the Peers example ( <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/learn/man/ex283.html#e283">http://inform7.com/learn/man/ex283.html#e283</a> ) for one way to do this.

The example Fido ( <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rex140.html#e140">http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rex140.html#e140</a> ) lets you let the player name his dog, but that may be overkill for what you want.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1544&start=0#p9649
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding "south" or "se" commands.
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2010-10-17 13:23:08

Thanks peter i've been able to build something that fixes my problem

[code]
After reading a command when the player is in a transition room:
	if the player's command matches "[direction]":
		change the text of the player's command to "walk [player's command]";
[/code]

you can actually use [direction] instead of "s/south/n/north...".


I'm still wondering how the direction commands are implemented in the Standard Rules...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1544&start=10#p9650
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding "south" or "se" commands.
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-10-17 13:42:37

Ah, I see. In my particular case I couldn't use [direction], I think - I believe it was because I was using stuff like <Understand "shore" as west when the location is At Sea>, in which case the [direction] keyword was too efficient for my purposes. Still, that's certainly a great deal more elegant than what i came up with, and I'll keep it in mind for future reference, so thanks. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1544&start=10#p9652
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding "south" or "se" commands.
User: ChristianB / DateTime: 2010-10-17 16:50:25

[quote="Phonatacid"]I'm still wondering how the direction commands are implemented in the Standard Rules...[/quote]
The direction commands are parsed directly (at I6 level) in the paragraph "Parser Letter B" in "Parser.i6t". If the first word is not a verb, the parser takes it for a direction (before checking whether some is being addressed). The current action and all the related variables are set to the action ##Go which is the counterpart of the going action.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1545&start=0#p9653
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Calendar Extension
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-17 22:52:59

If I remember correctly, that's not the only problem. A rule that fires "at 12AM" will only fire the first time it's 12AM, not on subsequent days.

Maybe you can use a new kind of value for date-times, and replace the advance time rule and the "time of day" variable to make use of it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1545&start=0#p9654
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Calendar Extension
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-18 05:46:53

Interesting. I did not know that about every time trigger only firing once per game. There must be a way to reset that during the game, I would hope.

Anyway, to roll the day counter over every day at midnight, I tested and confirmed this works:

[code]"A Clock Strikes Midnight"

Use no scoring.

Clockless is a room. "Despite there being no clocks immediately visible, somehow, you can sense the precise time. Freaky." The time of day is 11:45 PM. The previous time is a time that varies. The previous time is 11:44 PM. The day is a number that varies. The day is one.

When play begins:
	now the right hand status line is "Day [day], [time of day]".

Every turn:
	let the previous day be the day;
	if the previous time is before 12:00 AM:
		if the time of day is after 11:59 PM:
			increase the day by 1;
		if the time of day is before the previous time:
			increase the day by 1;
	otherwise if the time of day is before the previous time:
		if the time of day is after 11:59 PM:
			increase the day by 1;
	if the day is not the previous day:
		say "You sense that somewhere, a clock has since struck midnight.";
	now the previous time is the time of day.

After waiting for the seventh time: say "Time passes.[paragraph break]You're feeling a little brrzap-y."

Before waiting more than 20 times: instead try brrzapping.

Brrzapping is an action applying to nothing. Understand "brrzap" as brrzapping.

Carry out brrzapping for the first time: now the time of day is 3:17 AM.
Carry out brrzapping for the second time: now the time of day is 2:33 AM.
Carry out brrzapping for the third time: now the time of day is 11:05 AM.
Carry out brrzapping for the fourth time: now the time of day is 7:51 AM.
Carry out brrzapping for the fifth time: now the time of day is 5:14 PM.
Carry out brrzapping for the sixth time: now the time of day is 1:30 AM.
Carry out brrzapping for the seventh time: now the time of day is 11:44 PM.

Report brrzapping: say "BRRZAP!"

Carry out brrzapping for the eight time:
	say "BRRRRRZZAP!!";
	now the left hand status line is "";
	now the right hand status line is "Timeless";
	end the story saying "You have brrzapped right out of existence."[/code]
The solution was made a fair bit more complex by Inform's odd choice of considering times between 12:00 AM and 3:59 AM to be 'after' all the other times, rather than before them. But this seems to work correctly even when the time is shifted by large increments (by typing 'BRRZAP').

Caveats: This solution assumes: that any time jumps are of less than 24 hours (in the case of jumping more than 24 hours, you'd have to add more to the day counter manually); and that all time jumps go forwards only (in the case of the player travelling backwards in time, you'd have to manually subtract a number of days from the jump-forward day, rather than from the current day).

There may well be a more elegant solution, but I'm new to i7 and this was the best I could do with present knowledge.

Paul.

P.S. Due to the 'every turn' routine running before the game time advances rather than afterward, my clock striking can appear to the player to happen a minute late, at 12:01. It wasn't immediately obvious to me how to finetune that. Also, I wonder if there is a way in i7 to test if a time is 'on or before' / 'on or after' another time…

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1548&start=0#p9655
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: bedtime Story available
User: Tale / DateTime: 2010-10-18 07:36:38

Hello!

I just wanted to point out that the final beta of Bedtime Story is available from IFDB. It contains some bugs, but I think it's on the level of a semi-polished comp entry. Just don't drop anything...
Link below:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ydcgk75cqx86opwt">http://www.ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ydcgk75cqx86opwt</a>

Thank you. Now get back to playing comp games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1544&start=10#p9656
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding "south" or "se" commands.
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2010-10-18 07:46:31

ah thanks that explains everything then.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1545&start=0#p9657
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Calendar Extension
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2010-10-18 07:52:32

I made my own extension for handling real time events.

Here is the part that concerns new time values, maybe you can get some inspiration from it (and this is still just a draft):

[code]
Book 1 - Dates, short times, concise times and concise dates

Part  1 - New kinds of value

Chapter A - Dates

Section 1 - What a date is

A date is a kind of value.
2012/12/31 specifies a date with parts years, months and days.
12/31 specifies a date with parts months and days.	

Section 2 - Printing a date

Section 3 - Deciding what date is the date of day

To decide what date is the/-- date of day:
	decide on the date with years part (years of day) months part (months of day) days part (days of day);




Chapter B - Short times

Section 1 - What a short time is

A short time is a kind of value.
59'9 specifies a short time with parts seconds and deciseconds.

Section 2 - Printing a short time

To say (target - a short time):
	say "[if seconds part of target < 10]0[end if]", seconds part of target, "[unicode 8242]", deciseconds part of target;

Section 3 - Deciding what short time is the short time of day
	



Chapter C - Concise times

Section 1 - What a concise time is

A concise time is a kind of value.
23:59:59'9 specifies a concise time with parts hours, minutes, seconds and deciseconds.

To decide what time is the/-- time part of (target - a concise time):
	decide on (minutes part of target) minutes after (hours part of target) hours.
To decide what short time is the/-- short time part of (target - a concise time):
	decide on the short time with seconds part (seconds part of target) deciseconds part (deciseconds part of target).

Section 2 - Printing a concise time

To say (CT - concise time):
	say "[time part of CT]:[short time part of CT]".

Section 3 - Deciding what concise time is the concise time of day

To decide what concise time is the/-- concise time of day:
	decide on the concise time with hours part (hours part of the time of day) minutes part (minutes part of the time of day) seconds part (seconds part of the short time of day) deciseconds part (deciseconds part of the short time of day);

[°°°° value too big
Chapter D - Concise dates

Section 1 - What a concise date is

A concise date is a kind of value.
2012/12/31 23:59:59'9 specifies a concise date with parts years, months, days, hours, minutes, seconds and deciseconds.
2012/12/31 23:59:59 specifies a concise date with parts years, months, days, hours, minutes and seconds.
2012/12/31 23:59 specifies a concise date with parts years, months, days, hours and minutes.
2012/12/31 23 specifies a concise date with parts years, months, days and hours.

To decide what time is the/-- time part of (target - a concise date):
	decide on (minutes part of target) minutes after (hours part of target) hours.
To decide what date is the/-- date part of (target - a concise date):
	decide on the date with years part (years part of target) months part (months part of target) days part (days part of target).
To decide what short time is the/-- short time part of (target - a concise date):
	decide on the short time with seconds part (seconds part of target) deciseconds part (deciseconds part of target).
To decide what concise time is the/-- concise time part of (target - a concise date):
	decide on the concise time with hours part (hours part of target) minutes part (minutes part of target) seconds part (seconds part of target) deciseconds part (deciseconds part of target).

Section 2 - Printing a concise date

Section 3 - Deciding what concise date is the concisme date of day

To decide what concise date is the/-- concise date of day:
	[decide on the concise date with years part (the years of day) months part (the months of day) days part (the days of day) hours part (hours part of the time of day) minutes part (minutes part of the time of day) seconds part (seconds part of the short time of day) deciseconds part (deciseconds part of the short time of day).]
	decide on 2010/04/01 15:54:0'0;
]



Part 2 - Comparing

Chapter A - Before

Section 1 - Short times vs short times

To decide whether (st - a short time) is before (st2 - a short time):
	if st is less than st2:
		decide yes;
	else:
		decide no;
To decide whether (st - a short time) is after (st2 - a short time):
	if st less than st2:
		decide no;
	else:
		decide yes;

Section 2 - Short times vs times

[
To decide whether (st - a short time) is before (t - a time):
		decide .[        here !]
To decide whether (st - a short time) is after (t - a time):
	if st is before t:
		decide no.
To decide whether (t - a time) is before (st - a short time):
	if st is before t:
		decide no.
To decide whether (t - a time) is after (st - a short time):
	if st is before t:
		decide yes;
]

Section 3 - Short times vs concise times

To decide whether (st - a short time) is before (ct - a concise time):
	if st is less than the short time part of ct:
		decide yes;
	else:
		decide no;
To decide whether (st - a short time) is after (ct - a concise time):
	if st is before ct:
		decide no;
	else:
		decide yes;
To decide whether (ct - a concise time) is before (st - a short time):
	if st is before ct:
		decide no;
	else:
		decide yes;
To decide whether (ct - a concise time) is after (st - a short time):
	if st is before ct:
		decide yes;
	else:
		decide no;

Section 4 - Concise times vs times

To decide whether (ct - a concise time) is before (t - a time):
	if the time part of ct is before t:
		decide yes;
	else:
		decide no;
To decide whether (ct - a concise time) is after (t - a time):
	if ct is before t:
		decide no;
	else:
		decide yes;
To decide whether (t - a time) is before (ct - a concise time):
	if ct is before t:
		decide no;
	else:
		decide yes;
To decide whether (t - a time) is after (ct - a concise time):
	if ct is before t:
		decide yes;
	else:
		decide no;

Section 5 - Concise times vs concise times

To decide whether (ct - a concise time) is before (ct2 - a concise time):
	if the time part of ct is before the time part of ct2:
		decide yes;
	else if the time part of ct is the time part of ct2:
		if the short time part of ct is less than the short time part of ct2:
			decide yes;
	else:
		decide no.
To decide whether (ct - a concise time) is after (ct2 - a concise time):
	if ct is before ct2:
		decide no;
	else:
		decide yes;




Part 3 - Before and after TODO

To decide what concise time is (ct - concise time) after (delta - concise time):
	decide on ct plus delta;


Part 4 - At (TODO)

To At (ct - a concise time) sharp:
	say "TODO";


Part 5 - Hacking the time printing routine

Include(-
	! This is the Original PrintTimeOfDay routine.
	#ifndef TWENTYFOUR_HOUR_TIME;
	[ PrintTimeOfDay t h aop;
		if (t<0) { print "<no time>"; return; }
		if (t >= TWELVE_HOURS) { aop = "pm"; t = t - TWELVE_HOURS; } else aop = "am";
		h = t/ONE_HOUR; if (h==0) h=12;
		print h, ":";
		if (t%ONE_HOUR < 10) print "0"; print t%ONE_HOUR, " ", (string) aop;
	];
	#ifnot;
	[ PrintTimeOfDay t h aop;
		if (t<0) { print "<no time>"; return; }
		if (t >= TWENTY_FOUR_HOURS) {  t=t-TWENTY_FOUR_HOURS; }
		h = t/ONE_HOUR;
		print h, ":";
		if (t% ONE_HOUR <10) print "0"; print t% ONE_HOUR;
	];
	#endif;
-) instead of "Digital Printing" in "Time.i6t".

[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1545&start=0#p9658
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Calendar Extension
User: Neurosion / DateTime: 2010-10-18 08:47:36

[quote="Laroquod"]The solution was made a fair bit more complex by Inform's odd choice of considering times between 12:00 AM and 3:59 AM to be 'after' all the other times, rather than before them. But this seems to work correctly even when the time is shifted by large increments (by typing 'BRRZAP').[/quote]
It's not that unusual.  It means that Inform either a) is or b) is not time zone aware, depending on the underlying implementation.  I'd be willing to bet that three weeks from now you'll find the same behavior applying between 12:00 AM and 4:59 AM.  I suspect you could test it by temporarily changing your computer's active time zone.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1549&start=0#p9659
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Individual "Every"
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-10-18 08:48:28

I have a college campus. A dorm-room is a kind of room.

A dresser is a kind of container. A desk is a kind of supporter.

Every dorm-room contains a dresser.
Every dorm-room contains a desk.

Now if I want an object to be inside the desk in Chrissy's Dorm Room, how do i specify that desk? Is it "desk in Chrissy's dorm room" or "a random desk which is in chrissy's dorm room" or "Chrissy's Dorm Room's Desk"?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1549&start=0#p9660
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Individual "Every"
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-18 09:27:28

I believe the possessive only works for [i]parts[/i] of things that are generated by "every," not contents. So you need to use "a random."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1549&start=0#p9661
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Individual "Every"
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-10-18 09:31:47

If you want to use the anonymous instance of a desk you have to move the object in it when the game is already running:

[code]A pencil is a thing.

When play begins:
    now the pencil is in a random desk in Chrissy's dorm room.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1545&start=0#p9662
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Calendar Extension
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-18 09:48:12

[quote="Neurosion"][quote="Laroquod"]The solution was made a fair bit more complex by Inform's odd choice of considering times between 12:00 AM and 3:59 AM to be 'after' all the other times, rather than before them. But this seems to work correctly even when the time is shifted by large increments (by typing 'BRRZAP').[/quote]
It's not that unusual.  It means that Inform either a) is or b) is not time zone aware, depending on the underlying implementation.  I'd be willing to bet that three weeks from now you'll find the same behavior applying between 12:00 AM and 4:59 AM.  I suspect you could test it by temporarily changing your computer's active time zone.[/quote]
4:00 am is specifically mentioned in the Inform 7 manual as a turnover time that was chosen to conform to people's expectations of what is meant by an early time or a late time. Inform just considers 4am as the division point between days rather than midnight. What I meant by odd is that I think it's odd to expect all good IF characters to go to bed by 4am. It doesn't actually simplify anything -- it just moves it -- and it obfuscates something that was formerly generally understood, as this thread demonstrates. But hey, I can live with it. 8)

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1545&start=0#p9663
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Calendar Extension
User: Neurosion / DateTime: 2010-10-18 09:58:50

[quote="Laroquod"][quote="Neurosion"][quote="Laroquod"]The solution was made a fair bit more complex by Inform's odd choice of considering times between 12:00 AM and 3:59 AM to be 'after' all the other times, rather than before them. But this seems to work correctly even when the time is shifted by large increments (by typing 'BRRZAP').[/quote]
It's not that unusual.  It means that Inform either a) is or b) is not time zone aware, depending on the underlying implementation.  I'd be willing to bet that three weeks from now you'll find the same behavior applying between 12:00 AM and 4:59 AM.  I suspect you could test it by temporarily changing your computer's active time zone.[/quote]
4:00 am is specifically mentioned in the Inform 7 manual as a turnover time that was chosen to conform to people's expectations of what is meant by an early time or a late time. Inform just considers 4am as the division point between days rather than midnight. What I meant by odd is that I think it's odd to expect all good IF characters to go to bed by 4am. It doesn't actually simplify anything -- it just moves it -- and it complicates something that was formerly simple, as this thread demonstrates. But hey, I can live with it. 8)[/quote]
Wow.  I even went to the trouble of looking up Toronto's time zone just to make sure I wasn't making things up.

Take that, Occam's Razor!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1545&start=0#p9664
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Calendar Extension
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-18 10:00:45

Heh heh — I just recently read through the manual for the first time, so it's fresh in my mind, particularly the oddities. 87

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1549&start=0#p9665
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Individual "Every"
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-10-18 12:40:32

Awesome, thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1550&start=0#p9666
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Determining the value of something.
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-10-18 12:45:59

[code]
The flow is a number that varies.
[/code]

I would like to determine the value of the flow of water in the tub by what's going on in the game.

Such that:

Flow = 2*(number of water knobs turned on) /2 if the shower knob is turned on.
Such that you can turn on the hot and cold water for a flow of 4, or only 2 if the shower knob is turned on.

We then compare the flow to the drain (which is the amount of water that leaves via the drain).

The drain is easy, because the tub drain is either clogged or not clogged. If clogged, the drain is 0, if not clogged, the drain is 3. 

The purpose is to create a scenario where you can fill up the tub, without fear of over-filling, and leave the tub unattended. (So you have to clog the drain). The "red herring" is trying to fill the tub with all the water on, but when it overflows the neighbors are alerted who turn it off, or if you turn off the tub it will drain again. 

Anyway, my question is, how do i determine the flow of the water in game?

Can I say something like "To decide the flow:"
or do i need "after switching on the hot water knob" and "after switching off the hot water knob"?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1550&start=0#p9667
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Determining the value of something.
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-10-18 13:02:23

For values that are always determined by a formula it's best to use to decide and definition phrases: "To decide which number is flow: decide on ..." (Note that you shouldn't define the number as a variable if you use a to decide phrase.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1552&start=0#p9670
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Cloak of Darkness
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2010-10-18 17:03:01

Cloak of Darkness ([url]http://www.firthworks.com/roger/cloak/[/url]) is a very interesting site, and one of the few that I'm aware of that directly compares the different IF systems available to any great depth.

However, I find the sample game rather odd, focusing on a few, quite specific, objectives and a very small fraction of what can be done with these languages.

Would anyone be interested in having a larger sample used to compare the various systems, perhaps one that would explore more features of each system and allow users to make a more informed (no pun intended) decision?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1553&start=0#p9671
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: A brand new system - Quest 5.0
User: Alex / DateTime: 2010-10-18 17:44:47

Hi all,

It was over 12 years ago that during a bored summer holiday, I started work on my own little text adventure game system, which I called Quest. It had a rather strange user interface, a very limited idea of the kinds of things people might want to do in a game, no editor at all, and not much documentation to speak of. Also, I was trying to get people to pay for it, when there were vastly more capable systems available for free.

Since then Quest has come a long way, and it's now at version 4.1.2. It has a much nicer interface, a lot more power, and a visual editor that makes creating a game reasonably intuitive - though you'd be well advised to read the included tutorial. I'm still trying to get people to pay for it, and every month a handful of people do, for which I am very grateful.

But there are still many ways in which it falls short of the other systems that are available. It has many quirks, the standard game functionality is rather under-powered, and it costs money.

So, [b]I'm starting again[/b]. I am working on a completely new system, created entirely from scratch. The only thing that remains is the name - this brand new system is called Quest 5.0.

Quest 5.0 addresses pretty much everything that wasn't quite right with Quest 4.x and earlier:

- A core library, written in Quest 5.0's ASLX language, handles the standard game logic - even fundamental things like determining what objects are visible, and parsing commands.
- Many concepts which were separate in Quest 4.x are unified - rooms, objects and the player themselves are all objects.
- By writing the core library in ASLX, this means the language has become much more powerful and flexible. Expressions are now fundamental to the way ASLX works, for example, so no more weird inlining of functions and variables, and you can create "if" expressions as complex as you like.  There is also built-in support for handling lists.
- No more hard-coded strings - create games in other languages by translating the English.aslx file.
- Object properties are fundamental, so no more weirdness with properties overriding tags. Properties support different data types: string, double, int, boolean, script, list, object. No more separate concept of global variables - just properties of the "game" or "player" objects.
- Support for "undo", when playing games and in the editor.
- HTML interface means you can format text however you like, even embed YouTube videos in games.

And even more importantly: [b]Quest 5.0 is now free and open source[/b].

Currently you can load, play and save games. The bare bones of the core library are in place, though it needs a lot of fleshing out. I have started work on the editor, which is shaping up nicely - it will be driven by the core library, so as features are added to the library it will be straightforward to wire up the editor to support them.

If you'd like to contribute, please join the project on CodePlex! We need C# and VB.NET programmers, and also people to flesh out the Core library and help with translations.

Here are some links:

Source code and issue tracker on CodePlex: <a class="postlink" href="http://quest.codeplex.com">http://quest.codeplex.com</a>
Documentation is on the wiki: <a class="postlink" href="http://quest5.net">http://quest5.net</a>
Various blog posts talking about how the system works and why it's now open source: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.axeuk.com/blog/">http://www.axeuk.com/blog/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1554&start=0#p9672
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Trouble getting *every turn* to work in I7
User: wfryers / DateTime: 2010-10-18 17:49:31

I have tried to create an *every turn* using block structure.  I got a bunch of error messages.  I went back through the block. It looks just like the Ogg example used in the I7 documentation.  It didn't work.

I copied the Ogg example directly into a room.  I got the same errors I was getting on my code.   

So, if the Ogg example is wrong, where can I find a valid working example?

Thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1554&start=0#p9673
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble getting *every turn* to work in I7
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-18 18:18:29

Coincidentally I posted a complete example game in another thread this morning, focused on using an 'every turn' routine to count the passage of days. It compiles and runs for me -- does this one work for you?

Here's the link to the post...

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=9654#p9654">viewtopic.php?p=9654#p9654</a>

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=10#p9674
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Genstein / DateTime: 2010-10-18 18:27:42

Multi room select/drag is definitely on my list.

As for a quick means of making up/down (and presumably in/out) connections, how would people like it to work? I've not used mappers such as GUEMap, and I'm not sure what's preferred. I can imagine a key to cycle between up/down, in/out and unlabelled; I'm also wondering whether there should be a quick way of changing a connection's (line's) direction.

Thanks,
    -eg.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=30#p9675
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-10-18 19:26:29

Well since last time I posted a "bummer", this time I will post a "brag".

Slowly but surely (I use that phrase a lot when it comes to coding IF), my first real game is coming along. It seems like every day I solve one problem and discover another one. Today I finished up an "After" action that does four compares and based on the player's inventory, performs one of four actions. (Depends on whether the player has two items, the first of two items, the second of two items, or neither of the two items.) I messed around with a case statement and a big long if/else chain before just breaking it down into four individual clauses. It may not be the most elegant solution, but it got me past that hurdle and on to the next one.

I also implemented a help/hint system in my game that gives you specific hints based on what room you are in. I may end up breaking them up into two levels, like "hint" and "solution" or something like that. I also added "about", and a player.description. Things are coming along!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1552&start=0#p9676
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Cloak of Darkness
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-10-18 20:29:37

If you were to post a specification for what the game should do, I would be happy to write a T3 version. Then I'm sure a few of the T3 veterans would be happy to rip my example apart and point out all the ways I could have done it better. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1554&start=0#p9677
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble getting *every turn* to work in I7
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-10-18 20:58:27

[quote="wfryers"]I have tried to create an *every turn* using block structure.  I got a bunch of error messages.  I went back through the block. It looks just like the Ogg example used in the I7 documentation.  It didn't work.

I copied the Ogg example directly into a room.  I got the same errors I was getting on my code.   

So, if the Ogg example is wrong, where can I find a valid working example?

Thanks[/quote]

Are you sure that you've converted all the spaces to tabs where they need to be converted? When you say you copied the Ogg example directly in, that sounds like copy-paste, which will probably convert the tabs into spaces -- but I7 needs tabs to understand the indentation blocks.

Sorry if that's not what's happening, but it's something that happens to me all the time when I'm copying example code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1553&start=0#p9678
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: A brand new system - Quest 5.0
User: George / DateTime: 2010-10-18 21:10:20

Thanks for posting here, I had heard about this on a couple of other forums but hadn't followed up yet. A couple of questions -- I'm guessing this is only for Windows and maybe Linux with Mono? Also, how easy is it to customize the UI of the player? Are there any plans for a web-hosted or browser-playable interpreter?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1554&start=0#p9679
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble getting *every turn* to work in I7
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-10-18 21:28:39

[quote="matt w"] When you say you copied the Ogg example directly in, that sounds like copy-paste, which will probably convert the tabs into spaces -- but I7 needs tabs to understand the indentation blocks.[/quote]

Yes, that's what it sounds like to me too. The Inform documentation and this forum are displayed in HTML, which doesn't use tabs for display. The little icon next to code examples in the I7 docs are there to autocopy--with tabs--the example text to your story file.

The uservoice forum has a request for features to make this easier. Vote or comment here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/pages/57320-general/suggestions/854615-ide-facility-for-converting-spaces-to-tabs/comments">http://inform7.uservoice.com/pages/5732 ... s/comments</a>

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=30#p9680
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-10-18 21:33:44

Brag:
I just got back from assisting my housemate, who was conducting an Inform workshop for about thirty middle-school girls.  Despite the rapid-fire pace of the workshop (1.5 hours total from "do you guys like playing games?  We are going to talk about a kind of game without graphics" to "hopefully you guys have some sort of working thing...") and the fairly casual setting, it seemed like most of the kids were actively engaged and about half seemed to be Truly Getting It.

Bummer:
I'm a bit worried that Zarf's recent teaser post implies that his work in progress is quite similar in genre to my own (er rather, my most progressed work in progress) -- no better way to make a game feel inferior than to compare it against a Zarf work.   [emote];)[/emote]  This is arguably less of a true bummer and more of a good excuse to step up my productivity.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1553&start=0#p9684
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: A brand new system - Quest 5.0
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-10-18 22:24:18

This sounds interesting.  I probably won't be able to resist taking a look at it when it's released. [emote];)[/emote]

When I previewed the demo of Quest 4, the most interesting feature to me was the QuestNet server, the multiplayer functionality.  It sounded as if one could make a MUD with it.  Is this going to be part of Quest 5 as well?  If so, the new open-source status might make it appealing to the MUD community as well as to the IF community, which would be really cool.

Thanks, and good work. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1554&start=0#p9685
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble getting *every turn* to work in I7
User: wfryers / DateTime: 2010-10-18 22:31:54

Thanks for the tips.

I went back and selected the Ogg example the way you suggested.  It worked.

I couldn't find anything wrong with the way I had entered my own story.  So I typed it in again.  It worked.  

At least this little piece is working.


Thanks for the help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1556&start=0#p9686
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Installing Inform7 on Ubuntu 9
User: the0ther / DateTime: 2010-10-19 01:14:49

It would be AWESOME if anybody could help me out with installing Inform 7 on a previous version of Ubuntu. I tried out the CLI version and I'm not sure that i can really deal with that interface.

It looks like the Ubuntu package offered targets the very latest version of Gnome/Ubuntu and I did take a peek at Inform version 6 but it looked a bit crude compared to 7.

Any tips?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1556&start=0#p9687
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Installing Inform7 on Ubuntu 9
User: the0ther / DateTime: 2010-10-19 01:26:36

I just found the 5Z71 version from about a year back, I'll give this a try.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1552&start=0#p9689
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Cloak of Darkness
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2010-10-19 03:18:34

Lol, probably best if I didn't specify it as you might think I was being biased.  But something that covers a large section of commonly used functionality would be a good thing I think.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1553&start=0#p9692
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: A brand new system - Quest 5.0
User: Alex / DateTime: 2010-10-19 03:41:59

[quote]
Thanks for posting here, I had heard about this on a couple of other forums but hadn't followed up yet. A couple of questions -- I'm guessing this is only for Windows and maybe Linux with Mono? Also, how easy is it to customize the UI of the player? Are there any plans for a web-hosted or browser-playable interpreter?
[/quote]

It is built in .NET so at the moment this is Windows only, but I hope it will eventually work on Linux and Mac using Mono.

There will be a browser version, just as there is a "play online" feature for Quest 4.x games. I'm even designing the editor so that the GUI is as abstracted as possible, with the aim that it will be possible to create a web version of the editor too.

The player UI is very customisable as you can specify your own HTML page to use. Javascript in the page can trigger ASLX functions and vice-versa, so there is a two-way link between the game and the HTML which will make it possible to implement whatever UI you want.

[quote]
When I previewed the demo of Quest 4, the most interesting feature to me was the QuestNet server, the multiplayer functionality. It sounded as if one could make a MUD with it. Is this going to be part of Quest 5 as well? If so, the new open-source status might make it appealing to the MUD community as well as to the IF community, which would be really cool.
[/quote]

QuestNet Server never really took off, so it was withdrawn as of Quest 4.1. But multiplayer support is a possibility for Quest 5.0, and now that the player is a proper object, it should be relatively straightforward to adapt the WorldModel and core library to handle multiple players.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=10#p9693
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-10-19 03:45:04

A key to cycle between options should be allright - GUEMapper does it somewhat differently, but it's overall doing something different behind the scenes anyway, so there's only so much inspiration to get *there*. Regarding "quick" ways of doing anything... a keyboard shortcut is usually regarded as quick enough. [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1553&start=0#p9694
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: A brand new system - Quest 5.0
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2010-10-19 04:29:36

Sigh, perhaps you and I should have teamed up at the start and made Querift/Adrest 5.0?   [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1552&start=0#p9695
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Cloak of Darkness
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-10-19 05:15:56

Cloak of Darkness did always seem a bit odd to me.  Lit/unlit rooms are rarely used much these days, and the "puzzle" is utterly arbitrary and can be made unsolvable without warning.  But other parts, such as preventing a broad spectrum of actions are useful things to see in any language.  

Although I think the main purpose of the example is to provide a [i]small[/i] demonstration to let players get a feel of the languages, for which I think it serves its purpose well, regardless of whether you'd actually want to make a game using those kinds of actions. 

Still, in a more comprehensive example, I'd suggest some things that should be covered would be:

[b]Simple:[/b]
Change player description.
Add some "about" text.
Add a character with one abstract ask/tell topic and one about an object in the game world that the player may or may not have encountered.
Add a verb with a default response for all objects, for a class of objects and for a specific object.
Add a new direction.
Teleport the player to a different location.
For systems that force manual door-opening, manually picking up items before you can put/give them, or any other old-school busywork, show how to turn this off.

[b]More Complex:[/b]
Write the game in first person past tense.
Switch between two player characters.

At least, these are the kinds of things I'm interested in.  [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1553&start=0#p9696
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: A brand new system - Quest 5.0
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-10-19 05:17:10

Congratulations, and well done for going freeware and making it so easy to translate games into different languages.

Little question, though - are you going to create a new website and games page for Quest 5, or just merge it with the existing ones?

I would suggest creating new ones, because, to be perfectly honest, for some reason, the users that have been using Quest 4 have turned out very, very sub-par games. This is in no way related to the abilities of the system, though it might be related to the fact that it was shareware, and thus available only to those who'd pay for it; and those who'd pay for it are usually people looking for easy ways to make adventure games, and usually novices. Novices feeding on novices and giving feedback for novices. Whereas people with more experience would decide it wasn't worth paying for Quest when they could Inform or TADS.

The result has been a very big number of small quality games. I hope - I fervently do - that Quest 5 will change that. [emote]:)[/emote] I believe it will. But maybe it would be best to separate Quest 4 pages and communities for this reason, yes? After all, no Quest 4 game is to be an example of the capabilities of Quest 5. And the current users would, quite frankly, not be a good example of Quest's potential. If they wanted to migrate to an hypothetical new site that would be, of course, completely up to them, but using the Quest 4 site and games page and forum, where they've made their mark... to be honest, it would scare me off, as a user. Heck, it did.

Now, I said some unpleasant things, I know, but I needed to say them. And I have to restate that I find none of it to be the fault of Quest's author; a set of circumstances have created a certain user-database, and that is all. I hope - I expect! - that the new Quest will draw in new authors, more experienced - or at least authors who have a grasp of IF conventions, something severely lacking in the current cummunity - who will come up with games worthy of the engine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1557&start=0#p9699
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Trophies/ Achievements
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-10-19 09:46:41

So I have a game I'm working on that will be fairly short, but with many multiple endings.

I'd like to have a "trophies" section that saves to a file or something each time you get a specific ending, perhaps with a new game + option after all endings are acheived. 

So how do I do this? I could do it with tables, but then every time the game is restarted, the trophies would be erased. I assume it's writing to a file, but I'm not quire keen on how to do this. I feel like this was covered in some other topic, but I've been unable to search for it. Any suggestions?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1557&start=0#p9700
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trophies/ Achievements
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-19 10:12:41

Look at manual chapter 22.10, "Files", and the following chapters.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1553&start=0#p9701
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: A brand new system - Quest 5.0
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-19 10:24:38

This sounds like a great project. Good luck.

Peter wrote:

[quote]But maybe it would be best to separate Quest 4 pages and communities for this reason, yes?[/quote]

No, you never *ever* treat your fans as a liability. If the new system is better, it will allow them to make better games. Showcase that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=30#p9702
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-19 10:29:31

I'm curious what genre my teaser post implies. :)

(Of course I will be revealing more soon, but for right now...?)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1557&start=0#p9703
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trophies/ Achievements
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-10-19 10:36:38

Emily Short has an extension for this. I believe it's called Recorded Endings.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=30#p9704
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-10-19 10:43:43

[quote="zarf"]I'm curious what genre my teaser post implies. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Creation myth/elemental powers. But of course, I could be reading that into it because that's what I've been thinking about.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1557&start=0#p9706
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trophies/ Achievements
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-10-19 10:53:41

That recorded endings looks perfect, exactly what I was thinking of!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1552&start=0#p9708
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Cloak of Darkness
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-10-19 12:43:13

[quote="Campbell"]Lol, probably best if I didn't specify it as you might think I was being biased.[/quote]
Well maybe I don't know you very well, but [i]I[/i] wouldn't think you were being biased. Or at least I would assume any bias was unintentional.
[quote="Campbell"]But something that covers a large section of commonly used functionality would be a good thing I think.[/quote]
Agreed. I think it's a great idea for a fun project.

[quote="Pacian"]Add a verb with a default response for all objects, for a class of objects and for a specific object.[/quote]
For verbs, maybe best to provide examples of each kind... no objects, one direct object, or a direct and indirect object.
[quote="Pacian"]
[b]More Complex:[/b]
Write the game in first person past tense.
Switch between two player characters.
[/quote]
Come on, Pacian. "More Complex"?! You know as well as anyone how trivial both of these are to do in T3. Or are they complex in other languages? [emote]:P[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=30#p9709
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: scratchm / DateTime: 2010-10-19 12:47:22

[quote="zarf"]I'm curious what genre my teaser post implies. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

For me it implies the aftermath of destruction from meteorite impacts. Maybe I'm being too literal. Shrug.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1553&start=0#p9712
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: A brand new system - Quest 5.0
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-10-19 13:10:48

[quote="zarf"]No, you never *ever* treat your fans as a liability.[/quote]

Yes, I see that... it's just that all available Quest games are pretty crappy, from what I've seen, and I think that good games won't be long in popping up. And I don't want to have to sift through a lot of crap to get to the good stuff, not when so much of the crap can easily be identified as "released before Quest 5".

I know how this sounds, BTW. I know you HAVE to soft through crap to get to good stuff. I know that being released before Quest 5 doesn't mean it is automatically crap, and being released afterwards doesn't mean it's automatically great. It's just how I feel. And this is coming from the guy who decided to download every single IF game he could get his hands on... and tried a lot of Quest games and decided to just forget about Quest games.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=30#p9714
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-19 13:37:25

Alien pure-light entities discover the benefits of sexual reproduction?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1553&start=0#p9715
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: A brand new system - Quest 5.0
User: Alex / DateTime: 2010-10-19 13:37:57

I'll probably update the category system on <a class="postlink" href="http://www.textadventures.co.uk">http://www.textadventures.co.uk</a> so that games have tags, and then there will be a tag for the Quest version. So when the time comes you'll be able to easily find the v5 games.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=30#p9716
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-19 13:40:54

[quote="Flack"]Well since last time I posted a "bummer", this time I will post a "brag".

Slowly but surely (I use that phrase a lot when it comes to coding IF), my first real game is coming along. It seems like every day I solve one problem and discover another one. Today I finished up an "After" action that does four compares and based on the player's inventory, performs one of four actions. (Depends on whether the player has two items, the first of two items, the second of two items, or neither of the two items.) I messed around with a case statement and a big long if/else chain before just breaking it down into four individual clauses. It may not be the most elegant solution, but it got me past that hurdle and on to the next one.

I also implemented a help/hint system in my game that gives you specific hints based on what room you are in. I may end up breaking them up into two levels, like "hint" and "solution" or something like that. I also added "about", and a player.description. Things are coming along![/quote]
Awesome — congrats and keep it up! 8)

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1529&start=0#p9717
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Fiction about Interactive Fiction
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-10-19 15:52:12

[quote="matt w"][url=http://mspaintadventures.com/]MS Paint Adventures.[/url] These are webcomics in the form of adventure games/RPGs[/quote]

"MS Paint Adventures" looks like a Visual Novel to me, except that it's not presented in anime/manga-style art but in "normal" comic-style art. And it's web-based. I like any type of Visual Novel, because it is a more modern form of CYOA.  [emote]8-)[/emote]

[quote]A visual novel, also known as sound novel, is an interactive fiction game featuring mostly static graphics, usually with anime-style art.
...
Visual novels are distinguished from other game types by their extremely minimal gameplay. Typically the majority of player interaction is limited to clicking to keep the text, graphics and sound moving (most recent games offer 'play' or 'fast-forward' toggles that make even this unnecessary).

Most visual novels have multiple storylines and many endings; the gameplay mechanic in these cases typically consists of intermittent multiple-choice decision points, where the player selects a direction in which to take the game. This style of gameplay has been compared to the Choose Your Own Adventure books.[/quote]

Source: [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_novel]Definition of Visual Novel at wikipedia[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=30#p9718
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-10-19 16:08:01

To balance that out, I'll post what is a very definite bummer on my part: I seem unable to create a simple test game. 

The problem isn't the coding. Rather, what's frustrating is trying to visualize the game itself. Every time I try to create a quick and rough approximation or model of what I want to see, I end up either bored or go "hey, you know what would be cool? [i]Destructible environment.[/i]" That, or something equally inane.

*sigh* This is seriously blocking my creative flow.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1545&start=0#p9719
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Calendar Extension
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-10-19 16:50:06

What I came up with was very much like what Laroquod has; the main difference is that instead of comparing times, I just compared hours.  The plus is that it gets around the 4:00 problem.  

The minus is that, if you increase the time of day past midnight (but not if you set it to a specific time), it will register as an hour past 24 for that turn (although the time of day displays correctly).  The next turn it will correct itself and increment the day.  Any ideas why it would do this?

I called the date "current day, current month, current year" rather than "day, month, year" to allow for the inclusion of other dates (say, a character's birthday).

[code]Month is a kind of value.
The months are January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, and December.
A month can be short, leap, medium, or long.  A month is usually long.
February is short.
April, June, September, and November are medium.
The current day is a number that varies.
The current month is a month that varies.
The current year is a number that varies.

The current day is 31.
The current month is August.
The current year is 2010.
The time of day is 8:00 PM.

The current hour is a number that varies.
The last hour is a number that varies.
The current hour is 20.
The last hour is 20.

Every turn (this is the time increment rule):
    now the last hour is the current hour;
    now the current hour is the hours part of the time of day;
    if the current hour < the last hour:
        increment the current day;
    if the current month is short:
        Let X be the current day - 28;
        if X > 0:
            increment the current month;
            now the current day is X;
    if the current month is medium:
        Let X be the current day - 30;
        if X > 0:
            increment the current month;
            now the current day is X;
    if the current month is long:
        Let X be the current day - 31;
        if X > 0:
            if the current month is December:
                now the current month is January;
                increment the current year;
            otherwise:
                increment the current month;
            now the current day is X.
    
The Bedroom is a room.  "The perpetual mess serves as a deterrent to adults."

The clock is in the bedroom.  "A clock hangs on the wall.  Each tick brings with it a foreboding sense of doom."

Instead of examining the clock:
    say "The current hour is [current hour].";
    say "It's [the time of day]."

The calendar is in the bedroom.  "There's also a calendar, as if you needed to be reminded."

Instead of examining the calendar:
    say "It's [the current month] [the current day], [the current year].";
    if the current month is September:
        if the current day is 1:
            if the current hour > 8:
                say "[first time]Oh no!  You've missed the first day of school![only]"

Instead of waiting:
    say "You procrastinate.";
    let X be a random number between 30 and 120;
    increase the time of day by X minutes.

Instead of sleeping:
    say "You go back to sleep.";
    now the time of day is a random time.
    
Test calendar with "examine clock / examine calendar / sleep / examine clock / examine calendar / wait / examine clock / examine calendar / sleep / sleep / examine calendar".[/code]

I was trying to get a properly formatted date to work, but I couldn't figure out how to make the numerical month and the named month be recognized as the same thing.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1515&start=0#p9720
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Web-based CYOA games
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-10-19 16:56:30

[quote="joningold"]JS is a bit of a pain[/quote]

Well, I would urge every IF author/programmer to learn HTML and Javascript ASAP. Because web-based adventure games and browser-based interpreters are going to dominate the IF community in the near future. Writing platform-dependent IF games in Windows, Linux or MacOSX is out. Everyone is going WWW right now. Even I have recognized the signs of time and transforming my entire Node-X project into the web-based area, as I already should have done in 2008. I am not interested in coding text adventure games in C++ or Freepascal/Delphi for Windows, Linux and whatever system anymore. The modern IF community has changed their focus to web-based gaming. And so have I as a programmer.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1515&start=0#p9721
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Web-based CYOA games
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-19 17:04:42

[quote="Retro"][quote="joningold"]JS is a bit of a pain[/quote]

Well, I would urge every IF author/programmer to learn HTML and Javascript ASAP. Because web-based adventure games and browser-based interpreters are going to dominate the IF community in the near future. Writing platform-dependent IF games in Windows, Linux or MacOSX is out. Everyone is going WWW right now. Even I have recognized the signs of time and transforming my entire Node-X project into the web-based area, as I already should have done in 2008. I am not interested in coding text adventure games in C++ or Freepascal/Delphi for Windows, Linux and whatever system anymore. The modern IF community has changed their focus to web-based gaming. And so have I as a programmer.[/quote]
You may be overstating it but I think you're onto something. It doubt it will play out so oppositionally, though. The whole point of the web is that it doesn't replace things so much as glue them together. I see no reason why the current suite of standalone IF languages won't become embeddable webtech and a natural part of the design milieu. It's already started with JS Parchment and others (and of course Java applet-based IF goes [i]way[/i] back), and I'm sure there are much more and smoother/more interoperable solutions to come.

When I need a hammer, I want to use a hammer. I don't want to try to bash the nail with the entire toolbox. Although I don't mind at all placing that hammer in a beautiful modern kit beside the electric drill and the digital level where all this stuff is easier for people to pull out and use. 8)

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1515&start=0#p9722
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Web-based CYOA games
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-10-19 18:03:25

While I fully recognize that my opinion doesn't mean squat, I specifically chose to learn Inform [i]because of Parchment[/i]. It's hard enough to get people to play Interactive Fiction these days, let alone install half a dozen interpreters to play a variety of games in multiple formats. Especially from a multimedia perspective, I think a lot of the other languages (TADS, Hugo, etc) can do a lot more than Inform, but at the end of the day, I want to be able to post the URL to my new game and not have to worry about what kind of computer my potential audience owns.

I would love a system similar to Inform that allows you to encode HTML in regards to displaying pictures and formatting text. Even something with a simple frame that allowed me to display HTML text in one frame and pictures in the other, that would be awesome.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1515&start=0#p9723
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Web-based CYOA games
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-10-19 20:11:10

Quixe will eventually support that. I'm not sure how it comes in Zarf's list of priorities though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1515&start=0#p9724
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Web-based CYOA games
User: George / DateTime: 2010-10-19 20:30:14

I was looking at CoffeeScript recently and thought it'd make a great base for an IF system. In addition to what we have now with the established systems and their transition to browser-based play, it would be cool to see a good 'native' JS IF system. There are a few now but nothing I'd call ready to rumble.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1553&start=0#p9725
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: A brand new system - Quest 5.0
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-10-20 05:48:10

That would be very nice. [emote]:)[/emote] Sorry for any unpleasantness on my part.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1515&start=10#p9726
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Web-based CYOA games
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-10-20 09:03:02

[quote="Flack"]While I fully recognize that my opinion doesn't mean squat, I specifically chose to learn Inform [i]because of Parchment[/i]. It's hard enough to get people to play Interactive Fiction these days, let alone install half a dozen interpreters to play a variety of games in multiple formats. Especially from a multimedia perspective, I think a lot of the other languages (TADS, Hugo, etc) can do a lot more than Inform, but at the end of the day, I want to be able to post the URL to my new game and not have to worry about what kind of computer my potential audience owns.[/quote]

Absolutely right. That's the entire point behind web-based gaming (or online-gaming, whatever you want to call it) and why I say that it's going to dominate the IF community. It may sound like an overstatement, but I've just came to this conclusion through mere observation of current events. [i]Parchment[/i] is a very good example. One just needs to take a look at IFComp 2010. Most entries, whether they were written in TADS, Z-Code, Glulx, Javascript or in other language, can be played online! No need to install any standalone interpreters. No need to be forced to use Windows, Linux, Mac OSX or another operation system, emulator, whatsoever. All which the audience needs, is an internet browser in the particular system they tend to use. They can also play the IFComp entries on their iPhones and iPads, providing that devices have a working internet connection. So in conclusion, one could say that web-based gaming has already dominated the IF community, [i]because of Parchment[/i], simply because of that reason, as you mentioned. It's more a fact than an overstatement.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1559&start=0#p9727
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Check/Carry Out/Report Before/Instead/After Best Way To Code
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-10-20 09:10:33

So when I'm creating a new action, which is the best way to implement the action.

Check Burning when the noun is the prom dress:
or
Instead of burning the prom dress:
or 
Carry out burning the prom dress:

etc.

I have a couple of actions which could apply to people or to objects, such as cutting.

So should I have
Carry Out Cutting:
if the noun is bob...
if the noun is the prom dress...
if the noun is the curtain...

or
Carry out cutting the curtain...
or
Instead of cutting the curtain...

Which makes for smaller space, quicker Parchment/Quixe decsion time, etc?

Also, is it better to have multiple "insteads" or one in-depth "instead"
EX:
Instead of burning the prom dress:
   if the prom dress is wet [a condition for when it has been soaked in alcohol]...
   otherwise...

or 

Instead of burning the prom dress when the prom dress is wet...
Instead of burning the prom dress when the prom dress is not wet...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1545&start=10#p9728
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Calendar Extension
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-10-20 09:33:05

Ish McGravin's "Weather" extension has calendar capabilities.  It's worked well for me, although IIRC, I did need to make a bug-fix in the year-turn over so it happened on January 1st and not February 1st.  (It's been awhile, so it might have been an introduced bug via some special conditions - still worth double-checking that area.)

It has extra stuff (notably the titular weather), but it would be trivial to strip that out. 

What it doesn't have is the ability to easily tell how much time has passed since a certain time.  It's on my list of things to-do, but surprisingly complicated, given that the extension has separate tracking for months, days, and years.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1559&start=0#p9729
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Check/Carry Out/Report Before/Instead/After Best Way To 
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-20 09:56:04

There's no significant difference between one long "instead" rule and several case-specific "instead" rules. Same goes for any other rulebook ("carry out", "every turn", whatever). Use whichever style you're comfortable with maintaining.

The question of whether to set up a particular action in "check", "instead", or "carry out" is more complicated. The manual has a chapter on that. It's not a question of speed -- "instead" used to have a speed penalty but it's been optimized -- but of what rules override what. "Instead" conditions can bypass "check" rules, so one rule of thumb is: "check" rules are for changing default behavior, and "instead" rules are for specific situations.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1515&start=10#p9730
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Web-based CYOA games
User: Sig / DateTime: 2010-10-20 13:05:30

Web-accessibility is lovely and all, but speaking as someone who has occasionally found themselves without intarweb access for extended periods of time, the ability to download and run a program locally will always be a key consideration for me as a player.

In an ideal world, IF could be written in a way such that it is accessible by a variety of means, able to take advantage of the richer media (e.g. local thick client, HTML) while degrading gracefully for the more "bare bones" interfaces.

As a non-IF example, I am semi-active on a [url=http://www.citadel.org]Citadel[/url] forum system.  To call it a forum is a little limiting, since it also functions as a mail server, instant messaging system, RSS aggregator, chat system, and calendar/planner.  The same database is accessible via IMAP (e.g. Outlook or other thick e-mail client), a web client, or even via telnet or SSH.  You're obviously not going to see embedded graphics over the command line interface, but you are able to read and respond to the same messages.  Users interact with the system in the manner that best serves their needs.   I like the text client because I'd rather type than click/type/click/type.

Web-accessibility is important and may even become the most common method, but I don't think it is necessarily the sole medium of the future.  I like to interact with my computer (and certainly my entertainment) outside of the browser; I suspect I'm not the only one.

Sig

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1553&start=10#p9731
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: A brand new system - Quest 5.0
User: Terry / DateTime: 2010-10-20 13:28:00

[quote="Campbell"]Sigh, perhaps you and I should have teamed up at the start and made Querift/Adrest 5.0?   [emote]:lol:[/emote][/quote]

How about [b]Inform-Adrift-Quest 1.0[/b] (a collaboration of the IF system programmers from good old Blighty!)  [emote]:D[/emote] 

I wish the clever programmers could get together and come up with an intuitive 'natural language' IF creation system that's as easy as simply writing a story, like I7 without the quirky bits. I often think there are those that can program and those that can write, the ones that can write but not program are put off writing IF games before they start or give up soon after.. me, I'm still persevering.

I'm making progress with I7, I have Quest 4, looking at Quest 5.0 and Adrift 5.0, somehow even with I7 it's still programming a game rather than simply writing a game using a true 'natural language' syntax, one day maybe, for now I'll just have to wait and hope.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1515&start=10#p9732
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Web-based CYOA games
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-10-20 15:11:23

[quote]Web-accessibility is important and may even become the most common method, but I don't think it is necessarily the sole medium of the future.  I like to interact with my computer (and certainly my entertainment) outside of the browser; I suspect I'm not the only one.[/quote]

Outside of the browser? Did I miss something or are you talking about a completely different issue than the others and I do? Just for clarification on my part: I am talking about HTML/JS native games written in HTML/Javascript format only. You can't display a HTML/Javascript page outside the browser. That makes no sense anyway, because the web browser already IS the interpreter or system, so to speak, which runs and displays HTML pages, whether this is online or offline. So why would you need an additional program to run and display HTML/Javascript pages when the web browser already does the job for you? I really don't understand your point. I can only assume that you meant something different than what I talked about in this topic...  [emote]:?:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1515&start=10#p9733
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Web-based CYOA games
User: Sig / DateTime: 2010-10-20 15:31:57

[quote]That's the entire point behind web-based gaming (or online-gaming, whatever you want to call it) and why I say that it's going to dominate the IF community.[/quote]
This was specifically the remark that I was addressing.  Web-based IF may become the most common method, but I don't think it will (or even should) completely displace other methods of delivery.    24-hour everywhere online access is becoming more common, but it's not (yet?) the norm.
[quote]That's the plan. All the external file formats (e.g. Z-code, Glulx) are now being centralized in a single online interface. Standalone interpreters for a particular file format have become obsolete. Gamers don't need to install Inform, Z-Machine or whatever standalone interpreter anymore to play the competition games. Parchment has done well so far to accomplish this.[/quote]
My point (perhaps poorly expressed) is that some people may [i]prefer[/i] the experience in an interpreter or find it impractical to play in a web browser.  I can't be the only one.

Sig

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1560&start=0#p9734
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: i7-Examining a vehicle while inside it with no other objects
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-20 18:01:41

Had some randomly appearing spare time today so I screwed around with Inform 7 a little, and stumbled into a problem with this code:
[code]Freeway is a room. A car is a vehicle in the freeway. The player is in the car.[/code]
It produces this transcript:
[code]Freeway (in the car)

>x car
In the car .

>[/code]
That weird space before the period makes me think that message isn't supposed to be there. Giving the car a description of "It's an ordinary car." made the problem a little clearer.
[code]Freeway (in the car)

>x car
It's an ordinary car.

In the car .

>[/code]
Is it me or is Inform mishandling an empty object list inside the car, when the player is inside? Whether it's a bug or not, how do I suppress this 'In the car .' message? I'd also like to know how to suppress this message for a rideable vehicle, if the solution is any different. Appreciate any help!

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1515&start=10#p9735
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Web-based CYOA games
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-10-20 18:05:05

[quote="Sig"]My point (perhaps poorly expressed) is that some people may [i]prefer[/i] the experience in an interpreter or find it impractical to play in a web browser.  I can't be the only one.[/quote]

You certainly aren't.

Incidently, besides Parchment on the web, there's also ZaxMidlet, ZeeME and Z2ME for playing ZMachine games on mobile devices. Maybe because it's the most lightweight format, it's the one with more portability. This is an interesting discussion, I just don't want anyone to overlook the "portable IF" point in favour of the "internet, one-size-fits-all IF".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1560&start=0#p9736
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: i7-Examining a vehicle while inside it with no other obj
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-10-20 18:29:15

Looks like this bug: <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=38">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=38</a> . 

The bug is closed, which means that if you're using the latest version of Inform, that shouldn't be happening and it needs to be reported. 

If you *aren't* using the latest version, then, well, that's why. You can remove the bug without upgrading the compiler if you unlist the "examine supporters" and "examine containers" rules from the carry out examining rulebook; you can then choose whether to replace those with rules that do provide a more limited list of what's in/on the enterable thing with you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1561&start=0#p9737
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Reciprocal Relationships
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-10-20 20:00:45

So the rules specifically state that a completely reciprocal relationship must be between two of the same kind of thing (marriage relates one person to another) and never between two things of different kinds (marriage relates one man to one woman).  But...why?  Or rather, what do I do if I need a proper reciprocal relationship between two things?

My situation is some containers with displays that control them, and I have various functions that need to be performed, such as:

[code]Instead of consulting a display about "[open pod]":
try opening the pod controlled by the noun.

Instead of examining a display:
if the pod controlled by the noun is open:
say "POD OPEN";
otherwise if the pod is occupied:
say "POD OCCUPIED".

Instead of examining a pod:
say "Beside the pod is a [color of the controller of the noun] display."[/code]

And so on.  But I'm constantly tripped up by Inform not knowing which pod I'm referring to, despite the fact that there can only ever be one.  How can I make this work?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1560&start=0#p9738
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: i7-Examining a vehicle while inside it with no other obj
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-20 20:06:17

Yeah, I am one version behind, since the latest version won't successfully compile code on my system due to that other bug you identified for me. It's a bit of a complicated solution (and I've made note of it just in case), and thank you once again for the help. Maybe if I just put it off a little while and investigate other stuff first, there will be a new version out soon enough that solves both bugs for me.

Besides, it looks like I have me some work to do to get the Rideable Vehicles extension to cooperate with the Custom Library Messages (third person) extension. Next random spare time I get, I'll work on that, instead. 8)

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1553&start=10#p9739
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: A brand new system - Quest 5.0
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-10-20 20:11:29

Have you listed some of those quirky bits on the suggestion site so that the developers can consider making them more intuitive?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1561&start=0#p9740
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reciprocal Relationships
User: George / DateTime: 2010-10-20 20:52:22

Is this in the newer build? Because for example this works, 

[code]

Contacting relates various men to various women. 

The verb to contact (it contacts, they contact, it contacted, it is contacting) implies the contacting relation. 
[/code]

I'm probably not understanding the problem.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1515&start=10#p9741
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Web-based CYOA games
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-10-20 21:12:31

I guess what I'm imagining is a perfect world where these games could be played either online or off. Perhaps once a standard is developed, separate online and offline 'terps could then be coded, or maybe the online interpreter could be downloaded and then run locally on your machine. I'm not anti-offline gaming (although with WiFi being added to planes and trains it's getting harder to imagine a scenario where I absolutely couldn't get online), I just want users both online and off to be able to have the same gaming experience. If I'm forced to choose between writing a game that's playable online to anyone with an internet connection and writing a game that's limited to a specific platform, I'm going with the former.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1515&start=10#p9742
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Web-based CYOA games
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-10-20 21:29:19

[quote="Sig"]Web-based IF may become the most common method, but I don't think it will (or even should) completely displace other methods of delivery.[/quote]

Well, from an author's perspective web-based IF is a method to reach a larger audience. This isn't only my conviction. Many people view it the same way. Especially for unknown authors or non-established game developers it is a good method to present their work to a bigger cloud of people. Other methods of delivery (as you call it) may exist to accomplish the same goal. But I can't think of any.

[quote]24-hour everywhere online access is becoming more common, but it's not (yet?) the norm.[/quote]

I could imagine that with the release of internet-enabled portable devices, such as iPhone and iPad, there are people in this world who have permanent 24-hour online access, for business, job-related or other reasons. But I agree, it hasn't become the norm yet.

[quote]My point (perhaps poorly expressed) is that some people may [i]prefer[/i] the experience in an interpreter or find it impractical to play in a web browser.  I can't be the only one.[/quote]

It's a legitimate point of yours. But I think you should also point out why some people find it impractical to play in a web browser. What are the barriers for those people?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1515&start=10#p9743
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Web-based CYOA games
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-10-20 21:51:23

[quote="Flack"]I just want users both online and off to be able to have the same gaming experience. If I'm forced to choose between writing a game that's playable online to anyone with an internet connection and writing a game that's limited to a specific platform, I'm going with the former.[/quote]

I fully agree.

As I have already mentioned in my previous post above, it's all about reaching a larger audience. A game that's playable online produces a higher hitrate. It's like a viral video on Youtube. You can upload a cool video to Youtube or post it on your website for download. If you upload it to Youtube your changes that people gonna watch it will increase.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1515&start=10#p9744
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Web-based CYOA games
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-20 22:07:19

If they're comfortably playable on a smartphone/netbook or above and don't overdo it with the bandwidth or CPU load, it's hard to see web point-n-click adventures at much of a disadvantage. While they are burdened a bit in efficiency compared to text adventures, they are still better on that score, than pretty much all other forms of web gaming. Right now I don't have a lot of spare headspace for checking stuff out, and the IF comp games are getting most of it, but what I'm working on is something of a hybrid, and as I get closer to the finished episode I'm going to want to take a break to hoover up as big a sample of what other people are doing web-adventure-wise as I can. 8)

Paul.

[edited to add]
But they need a full-screen mode!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1561&start=0#p9745
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reciprocal Relationships
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-10-20 22:13:26

I need to connect exactly one pod to exactly one display.  Otherwise when I say "if the pod is open..." etc, Inform won't be able to parse it because it won't know which pod.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1515&start=10#p9746
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Web-based CYOA games
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-10-20 22:19:03

[quote="Flack"]I guess what I'm imagining is a perfect world where these games could be played either online or off. Perhaps once a standard is developed, separate online and offline 'terps could then be coded, or maybe the online interpreter could be downloaded and then run locally on your machine. I'm not anti-offline gaming (although with WiFi being added to planes and trains it's getting harder to imagine a scenario where I absolutely couldn't get online), I just want users both online and off to be able to have the same gaming experience. If I'm forced to choose between writing a game that's playable online to anyone with an internet connection and writing a game that's limited to a specific platform, I'm going with the former.[/quote]
Well browsers have support for offline applications now. We just need to add support to Parchment etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1562&start=0#p9747
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 - I thought I should use "try" - guess not
User: wfryers / DateTime: 2010-10-20 22:54:46

It looks like I am back begging for help.

Here is the story

	A Used_Meal Pack is a thing.
		The description is "The crumpled remains of a meal pack."

	A  Meal Pack is a device.
	
		[The  meal pack is switched on.]
	
		The description is "[if switched on]Steam rises from the open pack.  It smells good enough to eat.[else] You see a hot meal pack labeled - Test one." [end if];
		
		A Meal Pack can be edible.
		
		Understand  "heat [something]" as switching on.
		
		Instead of switching on the meal pack when the meal pack is switched on,
				say "Its already heated."		
		Instead of eating the meal pack when the meal pack is switched on:
				say "The meal fills you with a warm glow.";
				remove meal pack from play;
				move the Used_Meal Pack to the location of the player. 
				
		Instead of switching on the Meal Pack when the meal pack is switched off:
				try switching on the Meal Pack;
				say "You can feel the heat radiating from the pack.  Its ready to eat."		
		Instead of eating the meal pack when the meal is switched off, 
				say "You might want to heat that up first."
				
The lab is a room.  "A well equipped labratory."

The meal pack is in the lab.	

When I “go” it translates correctly.  When I run I get a run time error -

lab
A well equipped labratory.

You can see a Meal Pack here.

>examine 
(the Meal Pack)
 You see a hot meal pack labeled - Test one.

The Meal Pack is currently switched off.

>eat
(the Meal Pack)
(first taking the Meal Pack)
You might want to heat that up first.

>heat
(the Meal Pack)

*** Run-time problem P7: Too many rulebooks in simultaneous use.

You can feel the heat radiating from the pack.  Its ready to eat.

You can feel the heat radiating from the pack.  Its ready to eat.

You can feel the heat radiating from the pack.  Its ready to eat.

You can feel the heat radiating from the pack.  Its ready to eat.

You can feel the heat radiating from the pack.  Its ready to eat.

You can feel the heat radiating from the pack.  Its ready to eat.

You can feel the heat radiating from the pack.  Its ready to eat.

You can feel the heat radiating from the pack.  Its ready to eat.

You can feel the heat radiating from the pack.  Its ready to eat.

You can feel the heat radiating from the pack.  Its ready to eat.

You can feel the heat radiating from the pack.  Its ready to eat.

You can feel the heat radiating from the pack.  Its ready to eat.

You can feel the heat radiating from the pack.  Its ready to eat.

You can feel the heat radiating from the pack.  Its ready to eat.

You can feel the heat radiating from the pack.  Its ready to eat.

You can feel the heat radiating from the pack.  Its ready to eat.

You can feel the heat radiating from the pack.  Its ready to eat.

You can feel the heat radiating from the pack.  Its ready to eat.

>

Apparently 'try' is not the right choice.  So what is?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1529&start=0#p9748
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Fiction about Interactive Fiction
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-20 23:00:32

Interesting. 'Visual novels' is not a way I'd heard it put before. At least, not enough times to remember it.

BTW, some art can be interactive without any actual choices (or at least, it can exist at some weird, relatively sparsely populated midpoint between being interactive fiction and being about it). For example check out the diagram in one of the final panels of this page of [url=http://comics.600poundgorilla.com/?p=1075]Metaphysical Neuroma[/url]: he explores different possible pathways through the room. There is no inherent sequence to it — you have to create a sequence in how you imagine the hero to have experienced the different pathways represented in the diagram.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1561&start=0#p9749
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reciprocal Relationships
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-10-20 23:06:16

Can you try "a random pod controlled by the noun," etc.? If there's always one and only one, that will get you the one and only one. You'll have to make sure that there is always one and only one by hand, though. (In your example it seems like you might not need to change the controller in the course of play, so that wouldn't be such a problem.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=40#p9750
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-20 23:10:03

[quote="Eleas"]Every time I try to create a quick and rough approximation or model of what I want to see, I end up either bored or go "hey, you know what would be cool? [i]Destructible environment.[/i]" That, or something equally inane.

*sigh* This is seriously blocking my creative flow.[/quote]
See earlier discussions in this thread about creativity.

If you have too many ideas, maybe it would help to write them all down and then later sort them for inclusion into different games at a later date.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1562&start=0#p9751
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - I thought I should use "try" - guess not
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-20 23:19:13

Yeah, you've got some infinite recursion going on there. Without testing it, I would guess that what you want is this:

[code]After switching on the Meal Pack:
say "You can feel the heat radiating from the pack. Its ready to eat." [/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1516&start=10#p9752
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-machine's @set_font ... who gets it right?
User: rioshin / DateTime: 2010-10-20 23:49:34

[quote="zarf"]...if the argument *is* zero, then we don't have any sample code at all. (By what cas posted.) Do we have any Infocom code where they used @set_font 0?

I think I got off on the wrong foot by talking about the use of "previous font" in the set_font paragraph in section 15, whereas the original question was about 8.1.2. The least confusing interpretation is that they have the same meaning. I.e. I should rewrite my pseudocode to say:

[code]
Global current_font;
opcode set_font(newval) {
  if (newval == 0) { newval = current_font; }
  temp = current_font;
  current_font = newval;
  return temp;
}
[/code]

But I don't know that that's *right*; it's just how I read the spec. The spec is either confusing or wrong in 8.1.2, but I have no way to tell which off-hand.[/quote]
I would have thought the pseudocode would look like

[code]
Global current_font;
Global previous_font;

opcode set_font(newval) {
   if (newval == 0) { newval = previous_font; }

   previous_font = current_font;
   current_font = newval;
   return previous_font;
}
[/code]

which would allow set_font 0 to switch to the font that was in use before the current font, while returning the font that just was changed out...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1516&start=10#p9753
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-machine's @set_font ... who gets it right?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-21 00:40:04

Well, you could do it that way. But it's making the interpreter more complicated to support a feature that the game can perfectly well handle on its own. The history of the font register (as opposed to its current value) doesn't seem like the sort of thing that the original implementors *or* the spec authors would bother with. Nothing else in the system retains a history like that, and the only reason it seems to have come up in this case is the wording of the spec -- nothing architectural.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1553&start=10#p9754
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: A brand new system - Quest 5.0
User: Terry / DateTime: 2010-10-21 04:55:36

I guess the quirky bits would exist no matter what, it's the quirkiness of languages that have to be accepted, 'natural language' IF creation systems included! Jim Aiken posting on his [url=http://midiguru.wordpress.com/2010/08/23/getting-back-to-basics/]blog[/url] seems to make the point, I'm the same, looking for a system that is 'nice to use'.. old-school programming or state-of-the-art natural language.. or something else?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=40#p9755
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: mri / DateTime: 2010-10-21 05:53:44

This is sort of a bummer, I suppose. I’ve recently started to feel that T3s library is getting in the way of what I want to accomplish in my WIP (it’s not a puzzle game). T3 is awesome for the purpose of world simulation. However, I only need a small portion of that simulation power for my WIP. I also discovered that the effects of T3s extensive simulation power conflicts with my goals, which are much more focused on narration than simulation. The result is a lot of extra coding and deep diving into the lib in order to circumvent built-in features that is at cross-purpose with what I want.

This is a little discouraging, and I have started to wonder if T3 really is the best language for my project. This far into the process of learning TADS3 I don’t think I want to start learning yet another new language, but I’ll probably give serious thought to T2 or Inform6 for my next. Anybody else have similar experiences, and/or related ideas or suggestions?

Mri

World simulation power? No, I want narrative power.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=40#p9760
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-10-21 07:13:42

[quote="capmikee"][quote="Eleas"]Every time I try to create a quick and rough approximation or model of what I want to see, I end up either bored or go "hey, you know what would be cool? [i]Destructible environment.[/i]" That, or something equally inane.

*sigh* This is seriously blocking my creative flow.[/quote]
See earlier discussions in this thread about creativity.

If you have too many ideas, maybe it would help to write them all down and then later sort them for inclusion into different games at a later date.[/quote]

I don't know what everybody else uses to code, but I have been using Notepad++, which supports multiple tabs. In one tab I have my actual game code, and in another I have a pile of scrap notes. For me the coding process takes a lot longer than the writing and/or the brainstorming, so sometimes I'll be coding a long section and have a great idea pop into my head, like "Oh, you could use THIS to do THAT over THERE!". I then jot that down over in the note file, so I don't lose that thought. Being slightly ADD, I tend to jump back and forth between different aspects of a project (even technical and non-technical) more than a lot of people, but when I do sometimes I forget what I was working on. A little file full of notes doesn't hurt.

Even when I am working on a traditional novel, I do the same thing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1562&start=0#p9761
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - I thought I should use "try" - guess not
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-10-21 08:00:40

You basically have

1 Say "text"
2 goto 1

You are saying "Instead of turning on the meal pack, try turning on the meal pack."
Take out the try line and it should work, or change to "instead of EATING the meal pack when switched off"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1529&start=0#p9762
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Fiction about Interactive Fiction
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-10-21 08:22:42

The interactivity isn't much like that of a visual novel at all, though, at least none that I've seen (admittedly not many). There are no choices or branching, and except for some flash-game parodies, interaction with the published comic is generally limited to "click the next link to continue"; just as for any other webcomic, or like turning pages in a book. [url=http://www.mspaintadventures.com/index.php?s=6&p=002779]This entirely comprehensible out-of-context page[/url] does have a click-to-keep-the-animation-going interface that's sort of like a visual novel's, but even then it's a parody of more interactive games; you have a full navigation menu, but only one option at a time is active. 

What makes MSPA especially distinctive is that it's an [url=http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InteractiveComic]Interactive Comic[/url], or started out as one; Andrew Hussie no longer takes direct suggestions for commands, but he still relies a lot on fan theories and ideas posted in the forums. And the reason I posted it here is that it specifically pretends to the log of a graphical adventure game (with lots of RPG and Sim elements), with a lot more freeform IF-like interaction than any graphical game (or IF) can manage. That's a lot easier to see if you start with Problem Sleuth.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1563&start=0#p9763
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Designing Kitchens and Bathrooms
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-10-21 09:03:27

Part of the game I'm currently working on takes place in the player's house. Logic dictates that a house should have a bathroom. Nothing important in my game takes place in the bathroom, and I'm wondering just how much detail I should put into a room that doesn't add anything to the plot?

The average bathroom has a mirror, a sink, a toilet, a towel, and a bathtub and/or a shower. Does everybody program all those objects into every bathroom in every game?

I've come up with two other solutions. The first would be to make the bathroom inaccessible, but that doesn't seem very realistic (how many of you at home right now have non-functioning restrooms?). The other solution I came up with would be to simply return a blurb ("You do your business.") and then move the player back out. Does that seem reasonable, or cheap?

The same question applies for kitchens. Do I really need to create a stove, an oven, a fridge, a microwave, cupboards, a sink, cabinets, etc. for a room where no real action takes place?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1563&start=0#p9764
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Designing Kitchens and Bathrooms
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-10-21 10:13:21

You could just make the restroom inaccessible with the message "You don't need to go to the bathroom" or something like that. For the rest, my advice would be don't don't don't clutter up the game with complex implementations of a lot of stuff that isn't actually needed. If you have twenty-seven openable drawers full of cutlery, a lot of players will open all twenty-seven drawers, under the assumption that there must be something plot-important in them. When it turns out that there isn't, they'll be very annoyed.

This makes sense from a writing standpoint too. In read-only fiction, if I read "Chris walked into the kitchen. It had a stove, a refrigerator, twelve drawers, and four cabinets," I'd assume there's something special about them. No different in IF. If the room description reads "The kitchen is done up in gleaming white. There is a knife on the counter," that's a perfectly natural description. -- You might want to include scenery objects for all the features, so that when the player types "open refrigerator" you give a response like "Of course there's a refrigerator in the kitchen, but you don't need to do anything with it"; and you could implement descriptions for these things, for extra atmosphere. But implementing tons of stuff will just draw the player's attention to that stuff, and if no real action takes place there then that'll be distracting. (In fact, if the kitchen is just there because houses have kitchens, that's distracting in and of itself; I tend to assume every implemented room has some kind of purpose. Compare read-only fiction again; if no action takes place in the kitchen, the kitchen will be left implicit.) 

To see an example of the problems overimplementation can cause, try "The Blueprint" from the JayIsGames interactive fiction competition. It implements your clothing down to your socks and underwear, which just confused the heck out of me at the beginning of the game; I had no idea what I was supposed to do with the clothing. It turns out, nothing (of course it didn't help that it started with a light puzzle with a non-obvious verb solution, so I was trying to work out how to combine my inventory to get light). Just because a game doesn't implement the PC's clothing doesn't mean that the PC is naked.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1563&start=0#p9765
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Designing Kitchens and Bathrooms
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2010-10-21 10:24:15

If they're useless and boring, I think you just shouldn't implement the bathrooms/kitchens/whatever -- and not mention them in any room descriptions, either, so that the players won't want to go there.

I wouldn't find it unrealistic or illogical: in IF, you should only implement what's useful for the story or for the puzzles, or interesting, or funny, but it would be [i]totally[/i] impossible to implement every object of every room which should logically exist. Imagine if your game is set in a big city: you can't create every object of every room of every house of the whole city! And even if you could, you should logically be able to leave the city in any direction, which means that you should implement the whole world in great detail, too, and even the universe. And anyway... why waste an awful lot of time on things which will be boring for the player?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1563&start=0#p9766
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Designing Kitchens and Bathrooms
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-10-21 10:53:32

[quote="matt w"]You might want to include scenery objects for all the features, so that when the player types "open refrigerator" you give a response like "Of course there's a refrigerator in the kitchen, but you don't need to do anything with it"; and you could implement descriptions for these things, for extra atmosphere. [/quote]

Or you could just implement a single scenery object and redirect all kitchen object words there, e.g.:

[code]The kitchen-furnishings is scenery in the kitchen. It is privately-named. Understand "cabinet/cabinets/refrigerator/drawer/drawers/oven" as the kitchen-furnishings.

Instead of doing something with the kitchen furnishings:
     say "The kitchen is beautiful, but you don't need to cook anything right now."

[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1516&start=10#p9767
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-machine's @set_font ... who gets it right?
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-10-21 10:53:57

FWIW, here's the wording from [url=http://www.xlisper.com/zip.pdf]Infocom's own spec[/url], which seems no less ambiguous:

[quote]FONT font:int, window >VAL (EXT:260)

This selects a particular font for the specified window, and returns the number of the previously selected font. If the new font cannot be selected for some reason, this returns 0. The font is used for all new text in that window until it is explicitly changed. Font 1 is the "normal" font for the machine in question, and it is selected initially for all screen windows. The interpreter is responsible for updating the FWRD parameter word whenever the font changes.

Known fonts include:

0 previous font
1 normal font
2 picture font -- obsolete?
3 VT100 character graphics font
4 monospace font

FONT prints and empties the output buffer.

Note that unlike the monospace highlighting mode, FONT 4 may be combined with various highlighting modes to produce (for example) bold monospace output.

It should be possible to change fonts many times, even during a line or word of output.[/quote]

Has anyone checked the behavior of Infocom's interpreters?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1515&start=20#p9768
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Web-based CYOA games
User: Sig / DateTime: 2010-10-21 11:00:51

[quote="Retro"]It's a legitimate point of yours. But I think you should also point out why some people find it impractical to play in a web browser. What are the barriers for those people?[/quote]
Setting aside the connectivity issue (which is an occasional but serious one if you find yourself in Afghanistan from time to time, but I recognize I am part of a niche market), the browser itself is a general tool being bent toward a specific purpose, imperfectly.

The biggest issue that causes me to shy away is that I will occasionally do something to lose focus on the text, hit backspace, and watch horror as my browser goes "back," flushing game progress.  I know there are workarounds, but the player shouldn't need to change default behavior to play; that itself can be a barrier if we are talking about new user accessibility.

I like being able to quickly change font sizes, colors, etc for better readability.  These controls are rarely implemented in an easy-to-find manner in a browser; would they even affect the game?

I use Google Docs when I need to edit something away from my desk, but when I have access to a thick client, I prefer it.  It's more responsive, more fully-featured, and loads just as fast on no internet connection as it does with a good LAN (or a high-latency, low bandwidth link from a remote land).

Again, web access is great for outreach and occasional use, but if web-based interpreters were the only way to play, I probably would not have played long.

[Sorry for typos or lack of clarity; typing with week old baby in my lap.]

Sig

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1563&start=0#p9769
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Designing Kitchens and Bathrooms
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-10-21 12:11:23

[quote="matt w"]... don't don't don't clutter up the game with complex implementations of a lot of stuff that isn't actually needed. If you have twenty-seven openable drawers full of cutlery, a lot of players will open all twenty-seven drawers, under the assumption that there must be something plot-important in them. When it turns out that there isn't, they'll be very annoyed.[/quote]
That was exactly my thinking -- I just wanted to make sure that type of solution wouldn't annoy players. I can't imagine it being more annoying than (like you said) having 27 searchable-but-irrelevant objects.

[code]e_to "You enter the bathroom and, like Elvis, take care of business. When finished you flush, wash and dry your hands (even though nobody was looking -- good job!) and re-enter your bedroom.",[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1563&start=0#p9773
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Designing Kitchens and Bathrooms
User: Morana / DateTime: 2010-10-21 14:36:18

[quote="Flack"]The other solution I came up with would be to simply return a blurb ("You do your business.") and then move the player back out. Does that seem reasonable, or cheap?[/quote]

This is more or less the solution Eric Eve used in [i]The Elysium Enigma[/i], the main difference being that instead of telling you what you did there the blurb told you that the bathroom had all the expected fixtures and explained that there was nothing of importance that would be accomplished there. I rather like this solution.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=40#p9774
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-21 14:39:13

Notepad++ rocks! It's my editor of choice for Windows, but mostly I use MacVim or Gvim. For Inform I use the IDE, but I often slip up and start typing vi commands, filling the source window up with 'jjkkjkkk' or similar garbage.

In Inform, I write myself a lot of notes in comments. A good deal of coding consists of cutting and pasting things from those comments.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1563&start=0#p9775
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Designing Kitchens and Bathrooms
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-21 15:12:53

When I'm playing a game that has a kitchen and bathroom, there's just one important thing I expect to find there: water.

If you can think of a potential solution to any problem in your game that would involve water, I recommend being very careful to satisfy the player in one way or another that the bathroom either is or is not an acceptable means of solving the problem. A possible method would probably be to have no portable watertight containers, preventing the transport of water away from the faucet.

If that would be too complicated, the best thing is probably just to avoid mentioning the bathroom. Unless something else about the game reminds the player that there should be one, I would not expect most players to complain about its absence. Static fiction is full of situations where various characters probably need to go to the bathroom, and people rarely object when that detail is left out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=40#p9776
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-21 15:17:31

I've been a BBEdit/TextWrangler user on the Mac for a very, very long time (I do everything textual with that software - program, wordpro -- even type emails with it sometimes). I'm not entirely sure I'm comfortable with Inform 7's managed IDE yet. At a point when I become more fluent with the language, I could easily see myself returning to TextWrangler and cutting/pasting into the IDE. In fact, I'd love it if I could just point Inform 7 at a text file to compile (which I am not entirely sure yet that I can or cannot do because I haven't tried -- I still need the training wheels).

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1563&start=0#p9778
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Designing Kitchens and Bathrooms
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-10-21 17:49:50

I agree with the recommendation to skip these if you can. 

When I do have stuff I want the player to encounter in a kitchen/bathroom (say there's an important object on the kitchen counter) but I don't want to spend a lot of time hand-rolling a new set of furnishings, I rely on some template code that provides fairly bland default responses in order to turn the player's attention back to what I want him to notice. My Modern Conveniences extension shows one way to do this. [/self-plug]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1562&start=0#p9779
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - I thought I should use "try" - guess not
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-10-21 17:53:05

I would have done something like - 

Instead of switching on the Meal Pack when the meal pack is switched off:
now the Meal pack is switched on;
say "(whatever)"

It's important that you understand what you wrote, however, because it's not obvious when you start making these mistakes - you look at what you wrote and it seems to be allright. But you in fact told Inform to do this:

Instead of switching on the Meal Pack when the meal pack is switched off:
-try switching the Meal Pack on
<and Inform obediently tries to switch it on. And lo and behold, when it does, it encounters this instruction:>
Instead of switching on the Meal Pack when the meal pack is switched off:
-try switching the Meal Pack on
<which it follows, and when it follows it, it encounters the following instruction for when switching on the Meal Pack:>
Instead of switching on the Meal Pack when the meal pack is switched off:
-try switching the Meal Pack on

...and so on and so forth. Does that help you understand what happened? The first time I made a similar mistake, it took me a good three minutes staring at the code, trying to figure out what had happened.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1563&start=0#p9781
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Designing Kitchens and Bathrooms
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-10-21 18:20:25

[quote="Flack"][code]e_to "You enter the bathroom and, like Elvis, take care of business. When finished you flush, wash and dry your hands (even though nobody was looking -- good job!) and re-enter your bedroom.",[/code][/quote]

Man, I would hope that you'd have the player take care of business like Bachmann-Turner Overdrive rather than [url=http://www.poopreport.com/Intellectual/Content/Elvis/elvis.html]Elvis[/url]. That would be the meanest deathtrap ever. 

...seriously, it probably depends on the tone you're trying to achieve whether you should have the player auto-poop or just prohibit them from entering the bathroom with a message about how you don't need to go. I wouldn't look askance at the latter. (Did I just use the words "seriously" and "auto-poop" in the same sentence?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1563&start=0#p9782
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Designing Kitchens and Bathrooms
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-10-21 18:35:44

The main caution I'd give about auto-pooping is that this kind of narration can be pretty jarring if the game is otherwise heavily simulated: say in one puzzle you've got the player meticulously measuring out quantities of different liquids and heating them in a cauldron with the correct type of silver utensil to produce the anti-werewolf potion; he's then going to expect that the bathroom be simulated with the same degree of attention to liquids and containment. In that case, it's better to leave the bathroom out entirely (in terms of managing player expectations) than to provide one that's simulated at a much higher level than the rest of the game world.

(This was something that totally bugged me in a certain mystery-horror game from a few years back: there were some areas where it was important to search meticulously every item of furniture in case there was something important in a drawer or under a bed, but then there were also whole rooms that the game auto-narrated me out of investigating. This was frustrating and made me wonder whether I was doing something wrong that meant I couldn't access those rooms, or what.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1562&start=0#p9784
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - I thought I should use "try" - guess not
User: wfryers / DateTime: 2010-10-21 21:26:55

It sounds like I am still missing the point on a lot of the commands.  

I wanted to create a device that has a specific behavior.  Before the meal is switched on it is just a foil pouch.  Like any foil pouch it is inedible and not too interesting.  Once it is switched on it becomes edible and is much more interesting.  After you eat it, it turns into inedible waste.

There are also some situations that need to be handled.  For example, turning it on when it is on, turning it off when it is off, eating it before it is on and so on.   

Originally I just had the “say” clause.  It works fine just as you say it will.  There is a small problem.  The device is still switched off.  Since the idea is to turn it on. That's kind of a problem.

Yes, I can switch it on with the simple declarative – The meal pack is switched on.  Everything works fine.  

The player can switch it on.  Problem is that allows the player to switch it on several times.  Each time I get the “Say” about being ready to eat.  That is something I only want the first time it is switched on. Subsequent attempts should result in no action and feedback to the player.  


I guess I am still missing the point.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1562&start=0#p9785
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - I thought I should use "try" - guess not
User: wfryers / DateTime: 2010-10-21 21:32:35

Wow!  I never thought of it as:

1 say “text”
2 go to 1.


The piece of code is like this:

Instead of switching on the Meal Pack when the meal pack is switched off:
try switching on the Meal Pack;
say "You can feel the heat radiating from the pack. Its ready to eat." 

 I had been thinking that I should understand the code something like this: 

If the meal pack is in the state “Switched Off”
	Ignore  the player input - “Switch on”
		Substitute the machine input “try”
		Show the player a feedback text string.
	End
End

Some other I7 commands

Reading it like above means I only check the switched state at the beginning of the if.  Any statements within the block are then executed.  Execution then continues with the next I7 command.  It does not jump back to the if to check the switched state while it is executing statements in the block.


Clearly it doesn't work that way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1562&start=0#p9786
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - I thought I should use "try" - guess not
User: wfryers / DateTime: 2010-10-21 22:15:36

[quote="Peter Pears"]I would have done something like - 

Instead of switching on the Meal Pack when the meal pack is switched off:
now the Meal pack is switched on;
say "(whatever)"

It's important that you understand what you wrote, however, because it's not obvious when you start making these mistakes - you look at what you wrote and it seems to be allright. But you in fact told Inform to do this:

Instead of switching on the Meal Pack when the meal pack is switched off:
-try switching the Meal Pack on
<and Inform obediently tries to switch it on. And lo and behold, when it does, it encounters this instruction:>
Instead of switching on the Meal Pack when the meal pack is switched off:
-try switching the Meal Pack on
<which it follows, and when it follows it, it encounters the following instruction for when switching on the Meal Pack:>
Instead of switching on the Meal Pack when the meal pack is switched off:
-try switching the Meal Pack on

...and so on and so forth. Does that help you understand what happened? The first time I made a similar mistake, it took me a good three minutes staring at the code, trying to figure out what had happened.[/quote]


Thanks for suggesting a different way to approach the problem.  I tried it and it worked!

To be honest I am completely confused by the "try".  To me even if it recursively invoking the same instruction (why that is happening completely escapes me)  the state of the meal pack changes to switched on which means the when clause is not met.  That should end the recursion, but it doesn't.  

While I appreciate your attempt to explain how this is happening, I just don't get it.

Thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1562&start=0#p9787
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - I thought I should use "try" - guess not
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-10-21 22:29:49

That's what "try" does, it invokes a new instruction, in your case the same one. The when clause is never met because nothing actually changes the state of the pack. Peter suggested using a "now" phrase, which will change the state.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1562&start=0#p9788
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - I thought I should use "try" - guess not
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-21 22:52:09

[quote="wfryers"]To be honest I am completely confused by the "try".  To me even if it recursively invoking the same instruction (why that is happening completely escapes me)  the state of the meal pack changes to switched on which means the when clause is not met.  That should end the recursion, but it doesn't.[/quote]
It's all about rule order. Rule order is one of the trickiest points in I7, but it's really, really important.

Every time the player tries an action (or the action is triggered by a "try" command in the source), all of the applicable rules are followed, in this order:

Before rules
Instead rules
Check rules
Carry out rules
After rules
Report rules

Now, the standard library rules for devices will handle switching on and off for you, and give reasonable default messages for actions like switching on a device twice ("That's already on.") The checking happens in the check rules, and the actual state-changing happens in the carry out rules. The trouble is that your instead rule is running before carry out rules, meaning that its condition is re-checked before the meal has a chance to be switched on.

"Try" can be a little hard to understand at first, but there are a few things that are useful to know about it:

Actions are processed in more or less [i]exactly the same way[/i] whether they were triggered by a player command or a "try" statement. So when you write "try," you are essentially putting words in the player's mouth. It's useful if you'd like to funnel a variety of commands into one particular action, or you'd like to make things more convenient, like automatically unlocking a door before opening it.

Because of this, a single turn can actually contain [i]any number of actions[/i]. In your case, an infinite number.

I suggested using "After" in this case, because After rules run after the carry out phase, ensuring that the action succeeded and was processed normally by other rules, but giving you a chance to write your own message about what happened. To me that sounds like what you're trying to do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=40#p9789
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-22 09:32:17

[quote="Laroquod"]At a point when I become more fluent with the language, I could easily see myself returning to TextWrangler and cutting/pasting into the IDE.[/quote]
At a point when handling of indentation becomes a little more robust in the IDE, I can see myself doing something similar.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1564&start=0#p9790
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Another transcripts proposal
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-22 10:06:07

This is orthogonal to Dannii's transcript-collection proposal, and much simpler: 

I think that a modern interpreter should save a transcript for every game session. No player interface at all. Just automatically create a file "Game Name 1.txt" when the game is loaded, then "Game Name 2.txt" next time, etc. All in an interpreter-owned directory. Disks are big, and every play session at our Boston events has been introduced by forgetting to type "transcript on". There's no reason not to keep this stuff.

They shouldn't be kept forever, and cleanup should be invisible too. I suggest keeping the most recent week's worth, or the most recent three transcripts, whichever is greater. Naturally, if the player moves a transcript out of the folder, it won't be wiped.

Then the interpreter can have an "open transcripts folder" menu option, and also "wipe transcripts folder" for the cases when the player wants to clear the cache.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1565&start=0#p9793
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Concealing items hidden in the bed
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-10-22 10:42:04

The bed contains a hairclip that should be hidden until the player searches the bed. Unfortunately, this happens:

>x bed
A soft goose-down bed fit for a queen.

In the bed is a hair clip.

>SEARCH THE BED
A puff of goose-down escapes as you search the bed. You found a hair clip!

Obviously that doesn't quite work. I tried to implement a rule:

[code]The bed contains a hair clip. Rule for deciding the concealed possessions of the hair clip: if the hair clip is carried, no; otherwise yes. [/code]

but the rule does absolutely nothing. 

Any advice?

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1565&start=0#p9794
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Concealing items hidden in the bed
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-10-22 10:47:31

Probably the best solution is to not actually have the hairclip there before the player searches the bed. This helps with any other possible unwanted effects as well.

[code]Instead of searching the bed for the first time:
    say "A puff of goose-down escapes as you search the bed. You found a hair clip!";
    now the hairclip is on the bed.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1564&start=0#p9795
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Another transcripts proposal
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-10-22 10:58:43

I like it. Personally I don't think there's even a need for an autodelete of the transcripts cache--just keep it all. At least by default--as you said, these files are small. Interpreters could offer a simple interface in the preferences dialog: A checkbox, which when active would enable the user to provide a number: delete transcripts after X days/weeks/whatever, alongside a "delete cache now" button.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1564&start=0#p9796
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Another transcripts proposal
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2010-10-22 11:03:06

[quote="zarf"]I think that a modern interpreter should save a transcript for every game session. No player interface at all.[/quote]

I basically agree with this. Textfyre does something similar although all transcripts are tied to a saved game and we're going to limit that to 10 saves. We also save the game and transcript of the "current session" so when the player reloads the application, the app automagically loads the current state (game and transcript).

This should be seemless and invisible to the user.

They should be able to load one of their saved games and the state of the entire application, including fonts, colors, transcript, and game state...all of this should be restored.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=40#p9797
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-10-22 11:07:46

[quote="capmikee"][quote="Laroquod"]At a point when I become more fluent with the language, I could easily see myself returning to TextWrangler and cutting/pasting into the IDE.[/quote]
At a point when handling of indentation becomes a little more robust in the IDE, I can see myself doing something similar.[/quote]

I don't understand this comment. If you use tabs in TextWrangler, they will transparently paste into the IDE. I use an external editor all the time to do regex replacements and other things that the IDE isn't good at.

Or are you saying you'd like to use spaces in TextWrangler, then paste into the IDE to see them automatically converted into tabs?

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1565&start=0#p9798
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Concealing items hidden in the bed
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-10-22 11:13:26

That did the trick. Thank you so much!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=40#p9800
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-22 11:41:32

[quote="ektemple"][quote="capmikee"]At a point when handling of indentation becomes a little more robust in the IDE, I can see myself doing something similar.[/quote]

I don't understand this comment. If you use tabs in TextWrangler, they will transparently paste into the IDE. I use an external editor all the time to do regex replacements and other things that the IDE isn't good at.

Or are you saying you'd like to use spaces in TextWrangler, then paste into the IDE to see them automatically converted into tabs?
[/quote]
I'm saying I don't want to have to worry about where the text came from. (And by "similar," I meant "with vi." I used to love BBEdit, but I can't justify paying for TextWrangler when MacVim is awesome and free.)

I have vi set up to replace all tabs with spaces. It works best with Python that way, and it's good in general because there's no guessing how many spaces are in a tab stop. If I copy from the IDE and then paste into an editor, and back again, maybe it will work. But what if I forget that the text came from an email or a web page? If I have to think about it, I'm more likely to just stay in the IDE.

Actually, I really like the IDE with the index and the skein. I've had some weird behavior with the skein, but I'm determined to use it more because I like testing.

Probably  my least favorite aspect of the IDE is how slow it is when you have unbalanced brackets. If you open a comment, it formats the entire rest of the document as a comment, which can completely freeze up the interface for long enough to type 2 or 3 sentences. Maybe pasting would be faster than typing, but it's another thing I haven't felt like messing with. I do occasionally open up extensions in vi, though, because it's sometimes easier to read them that way.

By the way, does anyone have an I6/I7 module for vi? It would be nice to have some syntax coloring.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=40#p9801
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-22 12:03:10

[quote]I can't justify paying for TextWrangler when MacVim is awesome and free[/quote]

TextWrangler is free.

(I jump back and forth somewhat arbitrarily between TextWrangler and Emacs. But in I7, I've only used the IDE.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=40#p9802
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-10-22 12:04:37

[quote="capmikee"]I'm saying I don't want to have to worry about where the text came from. (And by "similar," I meant "with vi." I used to love BBEdit, but I can't justify paying for TextWrangler when MacVim is awesome and free.)[/quote]

I see. TextWrangler is free, actually.

[quote="capmikee"]Probably  my least favorite aspect of the IDE is how slow it is when you have unbalanced brackets. If you open a comment, it formats the entire rest of the document as a comment, which can completely freeze up the interface for long enough to type 2 or 3 sentences.[/quote]
Yes, the Mac IDE definitely needs improvement there (not sure how the others fare). I use TextExpander to auto-close quotation marks and brackets to avoid this problem. If the IDE's rendering speed can't be improved, autoclosed quotations/brackets would be the next best thing.

[quote="capmikee"]By the way, does anyone have an I6/I7 module for vi? It would be nice to have some syntax coloring.[/quote]
I made an I7 syntax-coloring module for TextMate. I'm not sure it's absolutely complete, but it uses TextMate's Inform bundle to color I6 inclusions as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1564&start=0#p9803
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Another transcripts proposal
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-10-22 12:06:33

Yes, this.   

The Delete functionality isn't needed. Text files are small, and many players simply don't play I-F often enough for storage to become a concern.  And of those who do play so often that the space for storing some text files becomes significant, I imagine they are computer-savvy enough to know how to delete files using the OS's ability.  

I'd rather it not be so darn easy to destroy things, especially if it's a toll on terp authors' time while the OS has a perfectly cromulent solution already.

Now, if you wanted a built-in transcript [i]browser[/i], then delete would be something to have.  But that's orthogonal to a terp.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=50#p9804
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-22 12:14:14

[quote="capmikee"]Probably  my least favorite aspect of the IDE is how slow it is when you have unbalanced brackets. If you open a comment, it formats the entire rest of the document as a comment, which can completely freeze up the interface for long enough to type 2 or 3 sentences.[/quote]
That is annoying, I agree. The way I've dealt with it so far is to type the close comment bracket, first, arrow back one, then type the rest.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=50#p9806
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-10-22 13:15:26

[quote="capmikee"]By the way, does anyone have an I6/I7 module for vi? It would be nice to have some syntax coloring.[/quote]
Vim comes with I6 syntax highlighting out of the box: <a class="postlink" href="http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/syntax.html#inform.vim">http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/s ... inform.vim</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1566&start=0#p9807
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Do not understand "hair" for hair clip.
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-10-22 13:33:44

Sorry for troubling everyone and so soon, but I can't seem to get Inform to [b]not[/b] understand certain words as other words. 

I fixed the hair clip on by spelling "hair clip" as "hairclip", which I should have done in any case, but the same issue popped up again elsewhere.  

In the wardrobe, the player has her clothes for the day (a shirt and a pair of pants), which are wearable, and her other clothes (called some other clothes), which are not wearable and not portable. When you open the wardrobe, this happens:

>open wardrobe
You open the wardrobe, revealing a shirt, pants and some other clothes. 

Which is exactly what I want, but as a result, if the player enters "x clothes", the game will say "Your clothes for another day". 

It's not a big problem, but it does seem silly since the shirt and pants are obviously still clothes, just not some other clothes.

Is there a way for I7 to not understand certain variations as the word in question? 

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1562&start=0#p9808
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - I thought I should use "try" - guess not
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-10-22 13:41:02

[code]Instead of switching on the Meal Pack when the meal pack is switched off:
now the Meal pack is switched on;
say "(whatever)"[/code]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you shouldn't need to say "now the Meal Pack is switched on" at all, since you're using the "switch on" action already.  So the even more concise way to say it would be:

[code]After switching on the Meal Pack when the meal pack:
say "(whatever)"[/code]

You don't even need to specify "when the meal pack is switched off," because there's already an "instead" rule for when it's not switched off.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1566&start=0#p9809
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Do not understand "hair" for hair clip.
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-10-22 13:50:07

You can use the privately-named property (manual ch. 16.17), although in this case I would advice against it; you'll end up with something like this:

[quote]>open wardrobe
You open the wardrobe, revealing a shirt, pants and some other clothes.

>x clothes
You can't see any such thing.[/quote]
I would rather add clothes as a synonym to the shirt and pants as well, so you'll get a much more sensible answer:

[quote]>open wardrobe
You open the wardrobe, revealing a shirt, pants and some other clothes.

>x clothes
Which do you mean, the shirt, the pants or the other clothes?[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1566&start=0#p9810
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Do not understand "hair" for hair clip.
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-22 14:03:09

[quote="Juhana"]I would rather add clothes as a synonym to the shirt and pants as well, so you'll get a much more sensible answer:[/quote]
I was going to suggest that, but then I tested it. It solves the problem but creates another. Inform 7 seems to recognise 'other' as some sort of keyword, and refuses to interpret either 'other' or 'other clothes' as referring to the other clothes if there are any other objects around with the synonym 'clothes'. It picks the shirt, instead (probably because it's the first one). So I don't really know how to solve it while still allowing you to refer to 'other clothes', besides just changing the word 'other' to something Inform doesn't trip over, like 'more'.

I don't know why Inform 7 handles 'other' as a special keyword -- I can't recall any commands that suggest the use of 'other' as part of their grammar. Besides, other than what? How would the game figure that out, if there is any automatic processing going on with that word?

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1566&start=0#p9811
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Do not understand "hair" for hair clip.
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-10-22 14:22:03

Thank you Paul.

I had clothes as a synonym for all clothes before and ran into that exact problem, which is why I asked here. 

I changed "some other clothes" to "clothes for another day", and it works perfectly now. 

Thanks Juhana for the advice as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1566&start=0#p9812
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Do not understand "hair" for hair clip.
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-22 14:31:01

[quote]I don't know why Inform 7 handles 'other' as a special keyword[/quote]

It looks like Inform used to use "other"/"another" to disambiguate commands like "put green plate on another plate". However, that functionality is now commented out. Now it's just parsed as a general article like "a"/"an". Possibly that too should be removed, but I can't say offhand whether it would be an improvement or not.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1562&start=10#p9813
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - I thought I should use "try" - guess not
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-10-22 14:43:40

[quote="katz"][code]Instead of switching on the Meal Pack when the meal pack is switched off:
now the Meal pack is switched on;
say "(whatever)"[/code]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you shouldn't need to say "now the Meal Pack is switched on" at all, since you're using the "switch on" action already.  So the even more concise way to say it would be:[/quote]

No, that's not correct: "Instead" cancels the action, so you don't get to the carry out rules that set the switched on property.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1566&start=0#p9814
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Do not understand "hair" for hair clip.
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-22 14:51:54

I can see the uses of not throwing up an error if the player just decides spontaneously to add 'other' before a word, but is there a way to override its status as an article in a particular case, without necessarily removing that flexibility from the Inform library, so that authors can name things 'other this' or 'other that' if they wish?

P.S. Also, if it's just an article, than why don't the ambiguity rules kick in? Why pick the shirt? Weird.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1567&start=0#p9815
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Omitting something from list of contents of a container
User: payo / DateTime: 2010-10-22 14:58:38

Hey, I'm having a little trouble with one or two things.

edit: using Inform 7

Specifically I don't want the contents of a wheelbarrow to be listed after examining the wheelbarrow. How do I accomplish that? edit: Actually I just want to change the text of the listing of the contents.

edit: I tried "Rule for deciding concealed possessions of the wheelbarrow: yes." and "Before listing contents of the wheelbarrow: now the rocks are not marked for listing." No dice. I want it to say "The wheelbarrow is piled high full of rocks." Not "In the wheelbarrow are some rocks" that's lame.

edit: The wheelbarrow has parts, including a wheel and some nuts and bolts securing the wheel, which I want to be examinable.

edit: the chopping problem and turning off problem is solved now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1566&start=0#p9816
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Do not understand "hair" for hair clip.
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-22 15:08:38

Well, it's an *indefinite* article, which signals the parser to pick one rather than asking for disambiguation. I.e.:

[code]
>get the apple
Which do you mean, the red apple or the green apple?

>get an apple
(the red apple)
Taken.
[/code]

This makes sense for "another". I'm not convinced it makes sense for "other" -- making those synonymous made sense for the commented-out functionality, but not for what's there now.

(In case you're curious, "get the other apple" winds up the same as "get an apple".)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1566&start=0#p9817
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Do not understand "hair" for hair clip.
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-10-22 15:09:49

[quote="Laroquod"]I can see the uses of not throwing up an error if the player just decides spontaneously to add 'other' before a word, but is there a way to override its status as an article in a particular case, without necessarily removing that flexibility from the Inform library, so that authors can name things 'other this' or 'other that' if they wish?[/quote]
For a single object you could do something like:

[code]Understand "other-clothes" as the other clothes.

After reading a command:
	if the player's command includes "other" and the player can see the clothes:
		replace the matched text with "other-clothes".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1561&start=0#p9818
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reciprocal Relationships
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-10-22 15:39:36

Actually I'm encountering a rather more fundamental problem than that:

[code]Status is a kind of value.  The statuses are normal, abnormal, and failed.

A pod is a kind of container.  A pod is usually enterable, openable, fixed in place, and closed.  A pod is either active or inactive.  A pod is either occupied or unoccupied."Opposite the door is a cryo pod.  Beside it is a [if the status of the controller of the noun is normal]green[otherwise if the status of the controller of the noun is abnormal]yellow[otherwise]red[end if] display."

A display is a kind of thing.  A display is always fixed in place.  A display has a status.  The description is usually "BEGIN CRYO[line break]OPEN POD[paragraph break]"

Controlling relates one display (called the controller) to one pod. The verb to control (he controls, they control, he controlled) implies the controlling relation.
The verb to be controlled by implies the reversed controlling relation.

The cryo room is a room.

In the cryo room is Pod 1.  Pod 1 is a pod.  Display 1 is part of Pod 1.  Display 1 is a display.  Display 1 controls Pod 1.  The status of Display 1 is normal.[/code]

This gives the run-time error "Attempt to use a property of the 'nothing' non-object."  Why is it having trouble with the status if-statement?  (It works if I change "the status of the controller of the noun" to "the status of Display 1.")

(Before anyone suggests it, I have eight pods, so I'd rather not brute force it by coding each one individually.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1561&start=0#p9819
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reciprocal Relationships
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-10-22 15:52:19

The error is displayed because you're using the word "noun", but the text is displayed in response to the looking action which has no noun (the noun is nothing). If you use "item described" instead it should work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1562&start=10#p9820
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - I thought I should use "try" - guess not
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-10-22 16:28:24

Which is why I then suggested using "After", not "Instead."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1568&start=0#p9821
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: What is the verb for Put? Is there list of verbs?
User: payo / DateTime: 2010-10-22 16:41:35

What is the verb Inform uses for "put [something] in [something]?"

I tried "Instead of putting the fistful of leaves in the fire, say bla bla"

I also tried "putting into."

But the compiler does not recognize "putting" as an action.

Is there a list of verbs somewhere as Inform uses them?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1567&start=0#p9822
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Omitting something from list of contents of a container
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-22 16:44:41

This is a very common situation. It's common enough that it seems possible it will one day be addressed in the Standard Library or at least in an extension.

You could write an Instead rule for examining the wheelbarrow, or if you want to generalize the way containers are described, you can rewrite the examine containers rule.

This thread has some discussion of how to do that, using Emily Short's Complex Listing extension:

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1412">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1412</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1568&start=0#p9823
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What is the verb for Put? Is there list of verbs?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-22 16:46:02

The action you're looking for is "inserting it into."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1568&start=0#p9824
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What is the verb for Put? Is there list of verbs?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-10-22 16:52:16

[quote="payo"]Is there a list of verbs somewhere as Inform uses them?[/quote]
Yes, in the actions tab of the Index page in the IDE. Here's an article I wrote a while back on this issue: <a class="postlink" href="http://nitku.net/blog/2009/12/an-action-by-any-other-name/">http://nitku.net/blog/2009/12/an-action ... ther-name/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=0#p9825
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: wfryers / DateTime: 2010-10-22 16:59:07

Here is the story:

The Fruzzle is an animal.

The description of the Fruzzle is "An animal about the size of a big cat.  It is covered in soft lavender fur.  It has a long pointed muzzle.  The dark band of fur across it's eyes makes it look like it is wearing a mask.  It's long furry  tail  is covered in pumpkin colored splotches. "

The Fruzzle has a number called fear. 
	The fear of the Fruzzle is 0.	

The large nut is a thing.  "A heavy brown nut about the size of a couple of golf balls"


The forest is a room.
	
	The Fruzzle is in the Forest.
	
	Every Turn when the player is in the Forest:
		say "fear is [the fear of the Fruzzle]."; 
		Increment fear of the Fruzzle.


This story works just like you would expect it to.  The fear is displayed and then incremented each turn.  


Let's build on this working example.  Now we are going to add some behavior changes for the Fruzzle. We let it show it's agitation when it's fear is equal to three.

The forest is a room.

	The Fruzzle is in the Forest.
	
	Every Turn when the player is in the Forest:
		say "fear is [the fear of the Fruzzle]."; 
		If the fear of the Fruzzle > 3,
			Say "The Fruzzle begins to sway from side to side.  It makes a funny noise that sounds like a warning.";
		Increment fear of the Fruzzle.


Success!  This story works just like you would expect.  The fear is displayed and incremented each turn.  Once fear passes 3 we get the new “say”.


So now we would like to let the Fruzzle escalate it's response as it's fear rises even higher.  So when it's fear passes 5 it will give us a new more aggressive response.

The forest is a room.
	
	The Fruzzle is in the Forest.
	
	Every Turn when the player is in the Forest:
		say "fear is [the fear of the Fruzzle]."; 
		If the fear of the Fruzzle > 5,
			Say "The Fruzzle has become quite agitated.  It stands on it's back legs, with it's fur on end. It is now hissing and showing it's formidable fangs.";
		else If the fear of the Fruzzle > 3,
			Say "The Fruzzle begins to sway from side to side.  It makes a funny noise that sounds like a warning.";
		Increment fear of the Fruzzle.

But wait a minute, we now find that there is a translation error:

This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6E72) on its most recent run through: 

Problem. You wrote 'else If the fear of the Fruzzle > 3, Say "The Fruzzle begins to sway from si [...] noise that sounds like a warning."'  : but structural phrases like 'if', 'repeat', 'while' or 'otherwise' can't be used as part of the abbreviated form of other structural phrases, so for instance 'if in darkness, repeat with X running through rooms' is not allowed because the 'repeat' is too important a phrase to be put at the end of a simple 'if' like this. Instead, the 'if' must be written out in full, so for instance 'if in darkness begin; repeat ... begin; ...; end repeat; end if;' would be fine.
 See the manual: 11.8 > Otherwise

This rule tells us we have pull if out on it's own.  By the way, 11.8 makes no mention of this rule. The rule also says that repeat is too important to be put in a simple if. 

Small rant follows:
In other languages, I believe  the if structure allows us to write anything in a block that can go in a block.  
If (condition)
 “true” block
else 
“false” block.

We can say things like this (I don't know why anyone would want to) 
read record 
If  (condition)
begin
	repeat while not end of file
	begin 
		if record-key is odd
			begin
				If first time
				begin
					open discard file
				end
				Write record to discard file
			end 
		read record 
	end
	
end
else
begin
		…....
end
 
So much for the rant.  To get back on track, I pulled the If out of the “Every turn” and gave it its own full block structure.  Revised code now reads:

The forest is a room.
	
	The Fruzzle is in the Forest.
	
	Every Turn when the player is in the Forest:
		say "fear is [the fear of the Fruzzle]."; 
		Increment fear of the Fruzzle.
	
	If the fear of the Fruzzle >5 begin;
		Say "The Fruzzle has become quite agitated.  It stands on it's back legs, with it's fur on end. It is now hissing and showing it's formidable fangs.";
	end if,
	else
		Say "The Fruzzle begins to sway from side to side.  It makes a funny noise that sounds like a warning."
	
Yup now I have a new set of translation errors:

This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6E72) on its most recent run through: 

Problem. You wrote 'If the fear of the Fruzzle >5 begin'  : but I can't find a verb that I know how to deal with. This looks like an 'if' phrase which has slipped its moorings, so I am ignoring it. ('If' phrases, like all other such instructions, belong inside definitions of rules or phrases - not as sentences which have no context. Maybe a full stop was accidentally used instead of semicolon, so that you inadvertently ended the last rule early?)
 See the manual: 11.6 > If

Problem. You wrote 'Say "The Fruzzle has become quite agita [...] and showing it's formidable fangs."'  : but I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with, so I am ignoring this sentence altogether.
 See the manual: 2.17 > Review of Chapter 2: The Source Text

Problem. You wrote 'end if, else Say "The Fruzzle begins to sway from si [...] noise that sounds like a warning."'  : but I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with, so I am ignoring this sentence altogether. (I notice there's a comma here, which is sometimes used to abbreviate rules which would normally be written with a colon - for instance, 'Before taking: say "You draw breath."' can be abbreviated to 'Before taking, say...' - but that's only allowed for Before, Instead and After rules. I mention all this in case you meant this sentence as a rule in some rulebook, but used a comma where there should have been a colon ':'?

And what do you think the first error is ? An if can't exist unless it is inside another structure.  So you go to the page 11.6 to find out what to do.  It is entirely silent on the point.  In fact all of the examples are shown inside of no context.  

It looks like I have two rules: one that says I have to put “if” inside of another structure; one that says not to. I am hoping there is some way to evaluate a condition which allows nesting of tests.  Anybody know what it is?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=0#p9826
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-10-22 17:05:38

Follow up your "if" statements with colons instead of commas.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=0#p9827
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: wfryers / DateTime: 2010-10-22 17:26:49

Thanks for the suggested answer.  

Here is the revision

The forest is a room.
	
	The Fruzzle is in the Forest.
	
	Every Turn when the player is in the Forest:
		say "fear is [the fear of the Fruzzle]."; 
		Increment fear of the Fruzzle.
	
	If the fear of the Fruzzle >5:
	 begin;
		Say "The Fruzzle has become quite agitated.  It stands on it's back legs, with it's fur on end. It is now hissing and showing it's formidable fangs.";
	end if,
	else
		Say "The Fruzzle begins to sway from side to side.  It makes a funny noise that sounds like a warning."


Unfortunately, more translation errors.

This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6E72) on its most recent run through:  

Problem. You wrote 'If the fear of the Fruzzle >5'  : but the punctuation here ':' makes me think this should be a definition of a phrase and it doesn't begin as it should, with either 'To' (e.g. 'To flood the riverplain:'), 'Definition:', a name for a rule (e.g. 'This is the devilishly cunning rule:'), 'At' plus a time (e.g. 'At 11:12 PM:' or 'At the time when the clock chimes') or the name of a rulebook, possibly followed by some description of the action or value to apply to (e.g. 'Instead of taking something:' or 'Every turn:').

 See the manual: 18.3 > New rules

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=0#p9828
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-10-22 17:38:48

You need the "if" bits to be in a block of code that gets triggered at some point; they don't make any sense to the compiler by themselves.  So, since you have your "every turn when the player is the Forest," you can put it in there.  Just don't end that block after incrementing -- use a semicolon instead of a period.

[code]
Every Turn when the player is in the Forest:
[tab]say "fear is [the fear of the Fruzzle].";
[tab]Increment fear of the Fruzzle;
[tab]If the fear of the Fruzzle >5:
[tab][tab]Say "The Fruzzle has become quite agitated. It stands on it's back legs, with it's fur on end. It is now hissing and showing it's formidable fangs.";
[tab]else:
[tab][tab]Say "The Fruzzle begins to sway from side to side. It makes a funny noise that sounds like a warning."
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=0#p9829
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: wfryers / DateTime: 2010-10-22 17:58:54

Thank you for the suggested solution.  Unfortunately, I got more translation errors.


The forest is a room.
	
	The Fruzzle is in the Forest.
	
Every Turn when the player is in the Forest:
	say "fear is [the fear of the Fruzzle].";
	Increment fear of the Fruzzle;
	If the fear of the Fruzzle >5:
		Say "The Fruzzle has become quite agitated.  It stands on it's back legs, with it's fur on end. It is now hissing and showing it's formidable fangs.";
	else:
		Say "The Fruzzle begins to sway from side to side.  It makes a funny noise that sounds like a warning."		
		
This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6E72) on its most recent run through:  

Problem. In the sentence 'If the fear of the Fruzzle >5 begin'  , I was expecting to read a condition, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'fear of the Fruzzle >5'.
I was trying to match this phrase:
if (fear of the fruzzle >5 - a condition): 
This was what I found out:
fear of the Fruzzle >5 = something unrecognised

Problem. You wrote 'else'  : but this is an 'else' or 'otherwise' with no matching 'if' (or 'unless'), which must be wrong.
 See the manual: 11.8 > Otherwise

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=0#p9830
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-10-22 18:10:48

You need a space between > and 5. (I'm not sure if this is a bug or a feature, but written together Inform seems to consider them as one word which it doesn't understand.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=0#p9831
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: wfryers / DateTime: 2010-10-22 18:24:04

Thank you.  That fixed the problem.  

I am just not sure I am ever going to get the hang of this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=0#p9832
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-22 18:38:04

I had a lot of trouble at first, too. But I learned to change my learning style. You can't learn this the way you learn procedural or purely object-oriented languages. In those cases, I've often been able to pick up a new language in just a day or two by reading as narrow a spec as I can, skip the examples, and just remember the ways in which the same concepts and constructs I have already experienced translate to an alternate, fairly narrow syntax rule set. This approach didn't work for me with Inform 7, because (1) it's hard to find a narrow, simple language specification, and (2) it has an upside-down approach from most modern languages.

Typically a programming language tries to represent as powerful a range of abilities with the fewest number of syntax rules possible. This allows you to learn the syntax and then use logic + lego-like creativity to get at what the language can do. But this results in a very deep set of dependencies. Often you end up with functions calling functions calling functions calling functions. But they are all functions, so the syntax is still simple. It's just reading the code that's complex.

Inform 7 is upside down: it has a very wide vocabulary and syntax set that allows you (it seems -- I am still learning) to accomplish things without piling logic on top of logic quite so much. But that means you are much more frequently dependent on some sort of dictionary, at first. You can't just read the spec --  you have to habitualise yourself to the code, more like a real language. So, to that end, I've been reading every single example of code that crosses my path, and I try not to move on until I understand what that specific piece of code is doing. And I try not worry about the completeness of my knowledge the way I would learning an OO language where I can sprint for the finish line: I just trust that I will get there.

Like picking up a human language, this learning method requires a lot of trial and error. Actually it also reminds me of learning how to code for the web, with its interlocking languages (HTML, JS, CSS) with different browsers behaviours. I never read the spec for those either: there didn't seem to be any point. Pretty soon I just realised that Google was my spec and I was never going to know everything about programming for the web. Inform 7 is not quite that bad in that it is still a self-contained system running on one (or two) virtual machines, so I think that eventually if I keep it up I will know everything.

Anyway, that's just my perspective on it, and how I changed it so that I wouldn't end up attempting to choke my monitor or something just because I wasn't learning it the way I usually learn a programming language. YMMV. 8)

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1570&start=0#p9833
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: How to replace 'cutting' with 'cutting with something'
User: payo / DateTime: 2010-10-22 19:00:24

Is there a way to replace the actions of cutting and attacking with a new action "chopping it with?"

[quote]A thing can be either a cutter or noncutter. A thing is usually a noncutter.

Chopping it with is an action applying to two things. Understand "chop [something] with [something]" and "ax [something] with [something]" and "cut [something] with [something]" and "attack [something] with [something]" as chopping it with.

ERROR CODE: Instead of cutting something, try chopping it with a cutter.[/quote]

The above code doesn't work...

The reason I want to do this is because the game usually returns "Cutting that up would achieve little" or "Violence isn't the answer to this one..."

I could just use a lot of instead rules, but they have to be specific so I would have to write

[quote]Instead of cutting the white door, try chopping the white door with the axe.[/quote]

But that is too specific, as the player may also be carrying a sword or only a sword and not the axe...

I doubt there is really a solution.

edit: It would be best if the game asked the player, would you like to use the axe or the sword? Or something similar.

edit: I've found one solution, which kind of sucks but...

[quote]Instead of cutting something, say "Try CUT [bracket]SOMETHING[close bracket] WITH [bracket]SOMETHING[close bracket], as in CUT TREE WITH AXE."

Instead of attacking something, say "Try CUT [bracket]SOMETHING[close bracket] WITH [bracket]SOMETHING[close bracket], as in CUT TREE WITH AXE."[/quote]

That's my provisional solution, but it seems jarring for the player.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1566&start=0#p9834
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Do not understand "hair" for hair clip.
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-22 19:02:41

[quote="zarf"](In case you're curious, "get the other apple" winds up the same as "get an apple".)[/quote]
Always curious. Thanks man, your explanation and view of the whole situation make sense to me.

[quote="Juhana"]For a single object you could do something like:

[code]Understand "other-clothes" as the other clothes.

After reading a command:
	if the player's command includes "other" and the player can see the clothes:
		replace the matched text with "other-clothes".[/code][/quote]
That is a great hack Juhana -- I can see that sort of clause coming in handy in all sorts of last-resort situations. Squirrelled away! 8)

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1564&start=0#p9836
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Another transcripts proposal
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-10-22 19:17:37

This would be great. I'm always forgetting to start a transcript, and it's a nuisance.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1568&start=0#p9837
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What is the verb for Put? Is there list of verbs?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-22 19:19:33

I love that comment from zarf on that blog post admitting that he just uses the source code for the Standard Rules as his dictionary. Downloading it now.... XD

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1570&start=0#p9840
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to replace 'cutting' with 'cutting with something'
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-10-22 20:07:17

I think I solved this by just using "attacking it with" -- it doesn't matter what we call the action behind the scenes -- and un-hooked the commands from cutting and then hitched them to attacking like so: 
[code]
Understand the commands "slice", "prune", "cut" and "chop" as something new.
Understand the commands "slice", "prune", "cut" and "chop" as "attack".
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1561&start=0#p9841
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reciprocal Relationships
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-10-22 20:16:10

[quote]So the rules specifically state that a completely reciprocal relationship must be between two of the same kind of thing (marriage relates one person to another) and never between two things of different kinds (marriage relates one man to one woman). But...why?[/quote] That's a very good question, Katz.  Ask it on the suggestions forum, perhaps? <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1570&start=0#p9842
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to replace 'cutting' with 'cutting with something'
User: payo / DateTime: 2010-10-22 20:39:35

Cool problem solved. I think I will try this with "get all" as it's causing me problems.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1575&start=0#p9845
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Am I ripping off Zork too much?
User: payo / DateTime: 2010-10-22 21:28:14

I'm making a game with a house and mailbox in a forest, and a trap door in the house (or maybe somewhere else) leading to a series of caverns...

Do you think I'm ripping off Zork too much? Aside from the house, mailbox and the fact that there is a dungeon nothing else is the same. Except maybe a glowing sword, but that was also in Lord of the Rings.

I already got really far and the game is cool, so I am loathe to change the beginning. Already several puzzles depend on the house in the forest, and the mailbox even.

So what do you think?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1576&start=0#p9846
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: What is wrong with this code?
User: payo / DateTime: 2010-10-22 21:36:57

[code]GTH is a an action applying to nothing. Understand "go to house" as GTH.[/code]

For some reason Inform says that

[code]The sentence 'GTH is a an action applying to nothing'   appears to say two things are the same - I am reading 'GTH' and 'an action applying to nothing' as two different things, and therefore it makes no sense to say that one is the other: it would be like saying that 'Adam is Eve'.[/code]

Whyyyyyyyyy?!

I also tried 

[code]GTH is an action. Understand "go to house" as GTH.[/code]

Same error message. I don't want "go to [any room]" for this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1561&start=0#p9847
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reciprocal Relationships
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-10-22 21:48:35

As I understand it, this would violate the type assumptions that Inform relies on. Currently, if you say something like "The bone is in the box", the containment relationship gives Inform enough information to know that the box must be a container, and the bone can be any kind of thing.

If you have a reciprocal relationship that can relate two different kinds of things, Inform doesn't know on the basis of relationship statements what kinds to assign to the participants, and it can't use that information to check the validity of syntax. In your example, "Pat is married to Chris" is fine as long as Inform can assign both Pat and Chris the kind of "person"; as soon as it has to make one male and one female, it runs into trouble.

(I think I'm philosophically untroubled by this, myself: there's an argument to be made that a relationship cannot be meaningfully reciprocal unless the participants are fundamentally viewed as the same kind of thing.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1576&start=0#p9848
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What is wrong with this code?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-10-22 21:51:51

Your problem is the spare "a" in 

"GTH is a an action applying to nothing" 

-- Inform ignores the first article, but on encountering the second, it thinks the "an" must be part of the name of something, not part of an action definition. So it's now looking to understand "a an action applying to nothing"  as "a (an action applying to nothing)" where everything in the parens there must be some kind. But of course it doesn't know of any such kind, so it's at a loss.

Take out the first "a" and it compiles fine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1576&start=0#p9849
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What is wrong with this code?
User: payo / DateTime: 2010-10-22 21:56:00

Ohhhhh. I missed that 'a'

Oops. Brain fart.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1570&start=0#p9850
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to replace 'cutting' with 'cutting with something'
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-10-22 22:26:10

[quote="payo"]Cool problem solved. I think I will try this with "get all" as it's causing me problems.[/quote]

There's an activity or something called "Deciding whether all includes" for toying with "take all".  Check the Activities chapter in the manual.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1577&start=0#p9851
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Updating someone's Example sourcecode for Inform 7 revisions
User: Satori / DateTime: 2010-10-22 22:37:08

I recently got an idea I wanted to implement using Inform.  I realized that some of what I wanted to do had already been implemented by an IF author, and I wanted to learn from his implementation, to start from there.  I contacted the author, who as it turns out had already released the source to that portion of his game [url=http://eblong.com/zarf/if7/HandyKit/index.html][b]here[/b][/url].

I found that the .zblorb file could run quite well, allowing for a playthrough of his example.

When I went to load the source code into Inform 7 to see how he'd done it, and to try various approaches with it, Inform 7 threw me no shortage of errors.  It turns out that his example had been written in 2006, for version [b]3P53[/b] of Inform 7.  Since then, various practices have been revised, updated, deprecated, and discarded.  His code is now defunct, and his example of implementation not particularly helpful under current practices.

I checked online for Inform 7 version 3P53, in case I could tinker with outmoded code on an outmoded compiler.  No dice, not that this would have done much for a modern implementation anyway.  I then pored through the changelog, and while I was able to find a few of the changes in coding practices, I couldn't locate many of them.

I'm a rank novice with Inform.  What is standard practice here?  I could respond to the award-winning, legendary author and say, "Thank you so much for sharing your code with me.  Now I'd like you to revisit this code you wrote four years ago and redo it in today's version of Inform 7 for my benefit", but that seems rather inappropriate.  I'm not technically proficient enough to revise the code myself.  And I remain stumped in how to go about implementing my own project now, for lack of relevant examples.

Community, what would you advise here?  Could there be some option that doesn't strain courtesy or exceed my own proficiency?  Perhaps an application that automatically revises old code according to Inform 7's revision changes, or some option I've never heard of yet?


Be well,

- Satori

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1577&start=0#p9852
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Updating someone's Example sourcecode for Inform 7 revis
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-10-22 23:01:01

Now it compiles. Satori, wanna test it?  We'll make fixing it a community effort. 

Mild spoilers for, what is this, Spider and Web?  The one with the toolkit. 


[code]
"A Handy Kit" by Andrew Plotkin.

The story headline is "An Inform 7 worked example".
The release number is 2.
The story description is "A reimplementation of the toolcase from Spider and Web. Contains some spoilers for the early parts of that game."

Release along with the source text and a "Standard Helvetica" website.

Chapter 1 - Setting up

Use full-length room descriptions.

When play begins:
	Say "A relaxing day at home, with nothing to do but play with your toys."

The player carries the toolcase. The player carries a boring pebble.
[An object-fiddling example should always have a neutral object to compare effects to.]

[Changing the standard inventory listing.]
This is the print wide inventory rule:
	say "You are carrying ";
	list the contents of the player, as a sentence, giving inventory information, tersely, including contents;
	say "."

[Sure wish there was a way to do this without a procedural rule. Feature request filed.]
Procedural rule:
	substitute the print wide inventory rule for the print standard inventory rule.

[In a few (rare) cases, I want to handle "read" differently from "examining".]
Reading is an action applying to one visible thing, requiring light.
Understand the command "read" as something new. Understand "read [something]" as reading.
Carry out reading something: try examining the noun.

[I need to break up the standard "set [x] to [topic]" grammar into "set [x]" and "set [x] to [number]". Both of these need to be new actions.]
Setting vaguely is an action applying to one thing.
Dialing it to is an action applying to one thing and one number.
Understand the command "set" as something new. Understand "set [something]" as setting vaguely. Understand "set [something] to [number]" as dialing it to.
Understand the command "adjust" as something new. Understand "adjust [something]" as setting vaguely. Understand "adjust [something] to [number]" as dialing it to.
Understand "turn [something] to [number]" as dialing it to.
Understand "rotate [something] to [number]" as dialing it to.
Check setting vaguely: instead say "You can't set that."
Check dialing it to: instead say "You can't set that."

[For fun, I decided to come up with a "one shot" facility -- a way to easily display a message the first time you come across something (but never again). This could be extended to handle "fire on Nth try", etc.]
A oneshot is a kind of thing. A oneshot can be fired.
To decide whether first trying (item - oneshot):
	if item is fired, decide no;
	now item is fired;
	decide yes.

Chapter 2 - The Environs

[This unimportant stuff declaration is my favorite part of the whole program.]
Unimportant stuff is a kind of thing. Unimportant stuff is scenery. 
Instead of examining unimportant stuff, say "Nice, don't you think?"
Instead of doing something other than examining or smelling unimportant stuff, say "For the sake of argument, let's say you'd rather play with your toolcase."

[The smell system is straight from the "Art of Noise" example. But we add in perfume as a special case, because lots of things get perfumized at once. Having a perfumey object present summons the perfume cloud.]
Understand the command "inhale" as "smell".
A thing has some text called scent. The scent of a thing is usually "nothing".
A thing can be perfumey. A thing can be perfumizable. Things are usually perfumizable. Unimportant stuff is never perfumizable. Scenery is never perfumizable.
Definition: a thing is scented if its scent is not "nothing". [but not if it's perfumey.]

Instead of smelling a room (called locale): 
	If a scented thing is in locale, say "You breathe in [the list of scented things in locale].";
	otherwise say "The air is dead.".

Rule for printing the name of something while smelling a room: 
	say "[scent]"

Instead of smelling something which is scented:
	say "You smell the [scent]."
	
Instead of smelling something which is perfumey:
	say "It reeks of cheap perfume."
	
Instead of smelling the toolcase when the toolcase is open and the toolcase encloses something perfumey:
	say "It reeks of cheap perfume."
	
Instead of smelling the player when the player is perfumey:
	say "You've got cheap perfume all over you."
	
[A cloud of perfume that hangs around after the stink bomb goes off. I can't make this a backdrop because I7 doesn't support condition-defined backdrops. Feature request filed.]
The perfume cloud is scenery. Understand "nasty" or "reek" or "cheap" or "wave" as the perfume cloud.
The scent of the perfume cloud is "lingering reek of perfume".
Instead of examining the perfume cloud: try smelling the perfume cloud.
The cloud-oneshot is a oneshot.
Instead of doing something other than examining or smelling the perfume cloud, say "The reek is intangible[if first trying the cloud-oneshot]. (Never mind the distinct feeling that it is clawing at your soft palate.)[otherwise].[end if]".
Every turn (this is the perfume backdrop rule):
	if a perfumey thing is touchable, move the perfume cloud to the location of the player;
	otherwise remove the perfume cloud from play.

[The listening system is simpler, because only one thing in the game can make noise. Okay, except for the palms. Sorry.]
Before listening to a room (called locale):
	if locale encloses the active relaxer,
		instead say "Gentle frog sounds fill the room."

[And now, actual rooms.]

The Arboretum is a room. "A nice place, if you do say so yourself who designed it. The scents of toxic Korean orchids blend with the rattling of the force-grown palms. An ivied arch to the north leads to your control center."

The toxic Korean orchids are unimportant stuff in the Arboretum. Understand "orchid" or "flower" or "flowers" or "scent" as the orchids. The scent of the orchids is "thick, livid sweetness of orchids".
The palm trees are unimportant stuff in the Arboretum. Understand "palms" or "tree" or "rattling" or "force-grown" as the palm trees.
The ivied arch is scenery in the Arboretum. Understand "archway" as the ivied arch. Instead of entering the ivied arch, try going north.

The Control Room is a room. It is north of the Arboretum. "The air is chill and dim beneath the high metal dome. Control panels stand here and there. To the south is an archway."
The control panels are unimportant stuff in the Control Room. Understand "controls" as the control panels.
The archway is scenery in the Control Room. Understand "arch" as the archway. Instead of entering the archway, try going south.

Chapter 3 - Your Kit

A tool is a kind of thing.

The toolcase is an openable container. Understand "grey" or "gray" or "toolkit" or "case" or "tool case" as the toolcase.
Understand "closed" as the toolcase when the toolcase is closed.
Understand "open" as the toolcase when the toolcase is open.

The description of the toolcase is "Your toolcase is a flat grey plastic form[if closed], which is closed.[otherwise], lined with shaped sponge foam. [contents of the toolcase]."

[A phrase which shows what's in the case. Note that it does not end with a period/paragraph break. I wanted this to be usable as a string substitution inside a sentence.]
To say contents of the toolcase:
	If the toolcase is closed begin;
		say "The toolcase is closed";
		stop;
	end if;
	If the toolcase does not contain something, say "The toolcase is empty";
	otherwise say "In the toolcase [is-are list of things in the toolcase]"

[Same as above, but shorter, for use in an inventory listing]
To say brief contents of the toolcase:
	If the toolcase is closed begin;
		say "a closed toolcase";
		stop;
	end if;
	If the toolcase does not contain something, say "an empty toolcase";
	otherwise say "a toolcase (in which [is-are list of things in the toolcase])"

Instead of searching the toolcase, say "[contents of the toolcase]."

Rule for printing the name of the toolcase when taking inventory: say "[brief contents of the toolcase]".

Instead of opening the toolcase when the toolcase is open:
	Say "The toolcase is already open."
Report opening the toolcase when the toolcase does not contain something:
	Instead say "You open the toolcase, and find it empty."
Report opening the toolcase:
	say "You open the toolcase. Inside [is-are list of things in the toolcase].";
	if the toolcase encloses something perfumey begin;
		say "[conditional paragraph break]";
		[This has to be broken up into two say phrases, due to a quirk of the paragraph machinery.]
		say "A wave of nasty perfume drifts out of the case.";
	end if;
	stop the action.

A check inserting it into rule:
	If the second noun is the toolcase and the noun is not a tool,
		instead say "[The noun] won't fit in the case.";
[I originally wrote the above this way:
	Instead of inserting something into the toolcase when the toolcase is open and the noun is not a tool:
		say "[The noun] won't fit in the case.";
It's a toss-up which is nicer. The check rule doesn't have to have the "toolcase is open" exception, because the compiler inserts it after the "can't insert into closed containers" rule. On the other hand, you have to mess with "second noun".]

[We have some foam padding, which is purely decorative.]
The foam padding is part of the toolcase. Understand "shaped" or "sponge" as the foam padding. The description is "The toolcase is lined with foam padding, neatly shaped into hollows for the various tools that the case holds." 
Instead of taking the foam padding, say "The foam padding is part of the case."
Instead of searching the foam padding, say "[contents of the toolcase]."
Instead of inserting something into the foam padding, try inserting the noun into the toolcase.

Rule for deciding the concealed possessions of the toolcase: if the toolcase is open then no; otherwise yes. 
[This conceals the foam padding when the case is closed. The tools aren't affected, because they wouldn't be visible anyway.]

Chapter 4 - Rules for Connectable Stuff

Color is a kind of value. The colors are black, red, purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, brown, and mauve.

A module is a kind of tool. Understand "link" or "minus" as a module.
A module has a color. Modules are usually mauve. Understand the color property as describing modules.

A trigger is a kind of tool. Understand "link" or "plus" as a trigger.
A trigger has a color. Triggers are usually black. Understand the color property as describing triggers.

A remote is a kind of tool.
A remote has a color. Remotes are usually black. Understand the color property as describing remotes.

A thing can be connectable. A tool is usually connectable.

[The connection between a trigger and a module is a reciprocal relation. This is slightly too broad, since this definition of the relation will permit connectivity between two triggers or two modules. We'll just have to be careful not to do that.]
Connectivity relates one tool to another (called the partner). The verb to interface (it interfaces, they interface, he interfaced, it is interfaced, it is interfacing) implies the connectivity relation.

Definition: a tool is connected if it interfaces something.

[For the connection between a remote and a trigger, I decided to make two one-way relations, one defined in terms of the other. I had no particular reason for this.]
Transmission relates one remote to one trigger. The verb to notify (it notifies, they notify) implies the transmission relation.
Reception relates a trigger (called Y) to a remote (called X) when X notifies Y. The verb to attend (it attends, they attend) implies the reception relation.

Contacting it with is an action applying to two things. 
Understand "touch [something] to [something]" as contacting it with.
Understand "touch [something] on [something]" as contacting it with.
Understand "touch [something] with [something]" as contacting it with (with nouns reversed).
Understand "connect [something] to/on/onto/with/into [something]" as contacting it with.
Understand the commands "link", "plug", "join", and "affix" as "connect".
Understand the command "attach" as something new. Understand "attach [something] to/on/onto [something]" as contacting it with.
Understand "tie [something] onto [something]" as tying it to.
Instead of tying something (called X) to something (called Y), try contacting X with Y.

Instead of putting a tool (called X) on a tool (called Y), try contacting X with Y.

Detaching is an action applying to one thing.
Understand "detach [something]" as detaching.
Understand the commands "unlink", "unplug", "disconnect", and "free" as "detach".
Detaching it from is an action applying to two things.
Understand "detach [something] from [something]" as detaching it from.

[Handy trick here. We want to modify the object's name in inventory listings and room descriptions (including sublists inside containers), but not during action commands. Solution: "while listing contents". Note that "...of something" is not sufficient, because rooms are not "things"!]
After printing the name of a module (called mod) while listing contents:
	If mod interfaces something (called trig),
		say " (connected to [a trig])"

Check contacting it with:
	If the second noun is connectable and the noun is not connectable,
		instead try contacting the second noun with the noun;
	if the noun is connectable,
		instead try connecting the noun with the second noun.
		
Report contacting it with:
	instead say "Nothing happens."

Report contacting it with when the noun is the second noun:
	instead say "You can't touch something to itself."

This is the can't disconnect what isn't connected rule:
	if the noun is not connected, 
		instead say "[The noun] isn't connected to anything."

This is the can't disconnect what's connected elsewhere rule:
	if the noun is not the partner of the second noun, 
		instead say "[The noun] is connected to [the partner of the noun], not to [the second noun]."

[I really like expressing the conditions here with rules, like I've done. Sure, it's analogous to using subroutines in I6. But it's tidy.]
Check detaching when the noun is a module:
	abide by the can't disconnect what isn't connected rule;
	instead try disconnecting the noun from the partner of the noun.

Check detaching when the noun is a trigger:
	abide by the can't disconnect what isn't connected rule;
	instead try disconnecting the partner of the noun from the noun.

Check detaching it from when the noun is a module:
	abide by the can't disconnect what isn't connected rule;
	abide by the can't disconnect what's connected elsewhere rule;
	instead try disconnecting the noun from the partner of the noun.
	
Check detaching it from when the noun is a trigger:
	abide by the can't disconnect what isn't connected rule;
	abide by the can't disconnect what's connected elsewhere rule;
	instead try disconnecting the partner of the noun from the noun.


Report detaching:
	instead say "There's no clear way to do that."
Report detaching it from:
	instead say "There's no clear way to do that."

[Connecting is a "fake action", in I6 terms; it isn't triggered by any player commands. It occurs only via a "try connecting..." phrase. I would have used an activity, except that an activity can apply to at most one thing.]
Connecting it with is an action applying to two things.

[I'm making this a general rule (no "when" clause) so that it sorts last in the rulebook of "check connecting it with". This may be a barbarism -- maybe I should name it and then say things like "the lockpick can't connect with itself rule is listed before the stuff can't connect with itself rule." For now, I won't bother.]
Check connecting it with (this is the stuff can't self-connect rule):
	If the noun is the second noun,
		instead say "You can't connect something to itself."
		
Report connecting it with:
	Say "Those don't connect."

Check connecting it with when the noun is a trigger (this is the trigger connection check rule):
	If the noun is connected,
		instead say "[The noun] is already connected to [the partner].";
	if the second noun is a trigger,
		instead say "You can't connect two positive links together.";
	if the second noun is a remote,
		instead carry out the complaining about no link on activity with the second noun;
	if the second noun is a connected module,
		instead say "[The second noun] is already connected to [the partner of the second noun]."
		
Check connecting it with when the noun is a module (this is the module connection check rule):
	If the noun is connected,
		instead say "[The noun] is already connected to [the partner].";
	if the second noun is a module,
		instead say "You can't connect two negative links together.";
	if the second noun is a remote,
		instead carry out the complaining about no link on activity with the second noun;
	if the second noun is a connected trigger,
		instead say "[The second noun] is already connected to [the partner of the second noun].";
	if the second noun is a trigger,
		instead try connecting the second noun with the noun.
	
Check connecting it with when the noun is a remote (this is the remote connection check rule):
	instead carry out the complaining about no link on activity with the noun.

[This shouldn't have to be a procedural rule, but I couldn't get the "Rule X is listed after rule Y" declaration to work. Bug filed.]
Procedural rule:
	Move the trigger connection check rule to after the stuff can't self-connect rule;
	move the module connection check rule to after the stuff can't self-connect rule;
	move the remote connection check rule to after the stuff can't self-connect rule.

Carry out connecting when the noun is a trigger and the second noun is a module:
	Now the noun interfaces the second noun;
	relocate the second noun based on the noun;
	now the noun is part of the second noun;
	change the color of the noun to the color of the second noun;
	if something (called trans) notifies the noun,
		change the color of trans to the color of the second noun.
			
Report connecting when the noun is a trigger and the second noun is a module:
	say "You connect [the noun] to [the second noun]. [The noun] turns [color of noun] to confirm the match";
	if the noun attends something (called trans) begin;
		if the trans is visible,
			say ", and [the trans] turns [color of trans] as well";
	end if;
	say ".[conditional paragraph break]";
	if the noun is currently active begin;
		change the visible effect to zero;
		activate the second noun;
	end if;
	rule succeeds.
	
[Another "fake action", parallel to connecting.]
Disconnecting it from is an action applying to two things.

Check disconnecting it from (this is the disconnection assertions rule):
	If the noun is not a module,
		instead say "(BUG) [The noun] is not a module!";
	if the second noun is not a trigger,
		instead say "(BUG) [The second noun] is not a trigger!";
	if the noun is not the partner of the second noun,
		instead say "(BUG) [The noun] and [the second noun] are not connected properly!";
	if the second noun is not the partner of the noun,
		instead say "(BUG) [The second noun] and [the noun] are not connected properly!"
		
Carry out disconnecting it from:
	now the noun is not interfaced by the second noun;
	now the player carries the second noun.
	
Report disconnecting it from:
	Say "You disconnect [the noun], and take [the second noun] as it turns black again";
	if the second noun attends something (called trans) begin;
		if trans is visible, say ". [The trans] turns black as well";
	end if;
	say ".[conditional paragraph break]";
	if the second noun is currently active begin;
		change the visible effect to zero;
		deactivate the noun;
	end if;
	rule succeeds.
		
Instead of taking a trigger when the noun is connected:
	try taking the partner of the noun.
	
Instead of dropping a trigger when the noun is connected:
	try dropping the partner of the noun.

Report taking a module when the noun is connected:
	instead say "You take [the noun] (and [the partner of the noun] connected to it)."

Report dropping a module when the noun is connected:
	instead say "You drop [the noun] (and [the partner of the noun] connected to it)."

[I suffered some angst when trying to figure out how to implement this. Should it be an activity, a rule, a rulebook, or a phrase? I decided that I couldn't use a rule or rulebook, because I needed to pass in an argument. (You can't "follow" a rule/rulebook and provide an object for the rule to work on.) A phrase is suboptimal because the calling rule has to specify "rule fails". (Or am I wrong? I thought I tried it.) An activity seems to work, although I don't know why it's different from a phrase. I think an action would have worked too.]	
Complaining about no link on something is an activity.
Rule for complaining about no link on something (called item):
	[The only way I could get a binding on the item's transmitter was this "if" statement.]
	if the item notifies something (called trig),
		say "[The item] doesn't have a link; it works through [the trig].";
	otherwise
		say "[The item] doesn't have a link."
	
To say tool status (item - tool):
	if the item is connected,
		say ", which is connected to [the partner]"

To relocate (item - tool) based on (other item - tool):
	if the player carries the item or the player carries the other item begin;
		now the player carries the item;
		stop;
	end if;
	if the player encloses the other item begin;
		move item to the holder of the other item;
		stop;
	end if;
	if the player encloses the item begin;
		stop;
	end if;
	move item to the holder of the other item.

Commanding on is an action applying to nothing. Understand "zap" as commanding on.
Commanding off is an action applying to nothing. Understand "pow" as commanding off.
Carry out commanding on: say "You say the keyword."
Carry out commanding off: say "You say the keyword."

[Activities used by the timer and voice triggers. (The other triggers are simple enough not to need it.) I originally used a fake action here, but that comes with baggage about reachability which I don't need. I just want some rules.]
Engaging something is an activity.
Disengaging something is an activity.

[This is a half-clever trick. I need to keep track of whether remote activation produces any kind of visible effect. To do this, I sprinkle say "[effective]" substitutions into the various result messages. This substitution doesn't actually print anything; it just changes the visible effect variable.]
The visible effect is a number that varies.
To say effective:
	change visible effect to one.

[Phrases which will define all module activity. The default values should not appear in final gameplay; they are placeholders for activity that I haven't written yet.]
[Unfortunately, phrase precedence doesn't work right! (Bug filed.) I am working around this by having the activate/deactivate phrases trigger activities called activate-tmp/deactivate-tmp. The boolean argument "momentarily" will be shoved into a global variable. (An integer variable, since there are no boolean global variables.) I am not proud of this, but activity precedence works, so that's what I'm using.]
To activate (item - module), momentarily:
	if momentarily, change momentarily-tmp-var to one;
	otherwise change momentarily-tmp-var to zero;
	carry out the activating-tmp activity with item.

To deactivate (item - module):
	carry out the deactivating-tmp activity with item.

Momentarily-tmp-var is a number that varies.
To decide whether momentarily-tmp:
	If momentarily-tmp-var is zero, decide no;
	otherwise decide yes.
To decide whether not momentarily-tmp:
	If momentarily-tmp-var is zero, decide yes;
	otherwise decide no.
Activating-tmp something is an activity.
Deactivating-tmp something is an activity.

Rule for activating-tmp something (called item):
	if momentarily-tmp, say "[effective](BUG) [The item] activates momentarily.";
	otherwise say "[effective](BUG) [The item] activates."
	
Rule for deactivating-tmp something (called item):
	say "[effective](BUG) [The item] deactivates."

[Again, phrase precedence doesn't seem to be good enough to let me put rules on each item. So I'm doing this with a simple agglutinated "if" list.]
To decide whether (item - thing) is currently active:
	if the item is the toggle switch and the toggle switch is on, decide yes;
	if the item is the voice module and the voice transmitter is on, decide yes;
	if the item is the timer and the timer is on, decide yes;
	decide no.

Chapter 5 - Actual Tools

[All of these tools say "...in the toolcase." I wanted to cut that out and use something less repetitive. I tried moving everything into the toolcase, with a "Repeat with item running through tools..." phrase at the beginning of play. That stuffed them in reverse order, though, and writing a "reverse order in container" routine would be ostentatious. So I went back to the way it is now.]

Section - The Lockpick

[The lockpick. Its functionality is not implemented in this sample.]
The lockpick is a tool in the toolcase. Understand "pick" or "silver" or "rod" or "status" or "dot" as the lockpick. The description is "The pick is a silver rod the size of your ring finger -- not true silver, of course, nothing so easily scanned. It's splayed at one end into a flat disc of conductor-web matrix. The status dot is blue."
Instead of touching or rubbing the lockpick, say "The rod is smooth and light, quick to pick up the heat of your fingers."

The matrix disc is part of the lockpick. Understand "web" or "conductor" or "flat" or "disk" or "disc" or "lockpick matrix" or "lockpick disc" as the matrix disc. The description is "The lockpick widens at the top, ending in a coin-sized disc with the woven gleam of conductor-web matrix."
Instead of touching or rubbing the matrix disc, say "The familiar weave slides across your thumb."
The matrix disc is not perfumizable.

The lockpick and the matrix disc are connectable. 

[I tried writing this as "Check connecting the lockpick with something: ..." but I can't seem to make that work.]
Check connecting it with when the noun is the lockpick:
	if the second noun is the lockpick or the second noun is the matrix disc,
		instead say "The rod isn't flexible, you understand.";
		
Report connecting it with when the noun is the lockpick:
	instead say "The pick does not react to [the second noun]."

[Connection attempts with the matrix disc should be handled by the lockpick instead.]
Check connecting it with when the noun is the matrix disc:
	instead try connecting the lockpick with the second noun.

Section - Connectable Modules

The bang tab is a purple module in the toolcase. Understand "small" or "cube" as the tab. The description is "It's a small [color] cube, which contains enough stabilized gel to make a satisfactory BANG noise. There's a minus link on one edge[tool status bang tab]."

Rule for activating-tmp the bang tab:
	if the bang tab is visible begin;
		say "[effective][The bang tab] explodes with a satisfactory BANG[if the toolcase contains the bang tab], rattling the toolcase[end if]";
	otherwise;
		if the toolcase contains the bang tab and the toolcase is closed and the toolcase is visible,
			say "[effective]BANG! [The toolcase] flies open as the tab explodes";
		otherwise
			say "[effective]You hear a loud bang nearby";
	end if;
	if the player encloses the bang tab, say ". You rub your numbed fingers";
	say ".";
	if the toolcase contains the bang tab, now the toolcase is open;
	remove the bang tab from play	

The stink pack is a brown module in the toolcase. Understand "small" or "cone" as the stink pack. The description is "It's a small brown cone, covered with tiny pores. It [if stink pack is not expended]contains[otherwise]previously contained[end if] a pressurized capsule of nasty perfume. There's a minus link on one edge[tool status stink pack]." 
The stink pack can be expended. The stink pack is not expended.

Rule for activating-tmp the stink pack:
	if the stink pack is expended, stop;
	now the stink pack is expended;
	if the stink pack is visible begin;
		say "[effective][The stink pack] hisses loudly, spraying perfume[if the toolcase contains the stink pack] out of the toolcase[otherwise] everywhere[end if].";
	otherwise;
		if the toolcase contains the stink pack and the toolcase is closed and the toolcase is visible,
			say "[effective]You hear a loud hiss from inside [the toolcase].";
	end if;
	[We want to perfumize everything in scope to the stink pack. The "can touch" relation handles this nicely, except that if the item is in the closed toolcase, it doesn't work right. (I think this is because the scope rules fail to understand the idea of being in a container -- they're written to deal with the scope of *people*, and people enter vehicles, not containers.) So we special-case the toolcase (har har), but otherwise use the natural I7 idiom.]
	if the toolcase contains the stink pack and the toolcase is closed begin;
		[I first wrote this as:
		repeat with item running through things enclosed by the toolcase begin;
			if the item is perfumizable, now the item is perfumey;
		end repeat;
		...but that was making extra work for myself, wasn't it?]
		now each perfumizable thing which is enclosed by the toolcase is perfumey;
	otherwise;
		now each perfumizable thing which can be touched by the stink pack is perfumey;
	end if.

Rule for deactivating-tmp the stink pack:
	stop.

The minilamp is a yellow module in the toolcase. Understand "small" or "mini" or "lamp" or "torch" or "light" or "tube" or "lens" as the minilamp. The description is "It's a small yellow tube with a lens at one end[if minilamp is lit]; a beam of light shines out[end if]. There's a minus link on one edge of the tube[tool status minilamp]."
[Handy trick here. We want to modify the object's name in inventory listings and room descriptions (including sublists inside containers), but not during action commands. Solution: "while listing contents". Note that "...of something" is not sufficient, because rooms are not "things"!]
Before printing the name of the minilamp while listing contents:
	if the minilamp is lit, say "lit ".

Rule for activating-tmp the minilamp:
	if not momentarily-tmp, now the minilamp is lit;
	if the minilamp is not visible, stop;
	if momentarily-tmp, say "[effective][The minilamp] glows for a moment, then goes out.";
	otherwise say "[effective][The minilamp] begins glowing."
Rule for deactivating-tmp the minilamp:
	now the minilamp is unlit;
	if the minilamp is not visible, stop;
	say "[effective][The minilamp] goes dark."

The sonic relaxer is an orange module in the toolcase. Understand "small" or "pyramid" as the relaxer. The description is "It's a small orange pyramid, traced with conductor matrix. [if relaxer is inactive]It is silent at the moment[otherwise]It is emitting relaxing frog-sounds[end if]. There's a minus link on one edge[tool status relaxer]."
The relaxer can be either inactive or active. The relaxer is inactive.

Instead of listening to the relaxer when the relaxer is active:
	say "Frog noises are coming from [the relaxer]."

Instead of listening to the toolcase when the relaxer is active and the toolcase contains the relaxer:
	say "Frog noises are coming from [the toolcase]."

Rule for activating-tmp the relaxer:
	if not momentarily-tmp, now the relaxer is active;
	let the producer be the relaxer;
	if the relaxer is in the toolcase and the toolcase is closed and the toolcase is visible,
		let the producer be the toolcase;
	if the producer is not visible, stop;
	if momentarily-tmp, say "[effective][The producer] emits a single croak.";
	otherwise say "[effective][The producer] begins playing a series of gentle frog croaks."
Rule for deactivating-tmp the relaxer:
	now the relaxer is inactive;
	if the location of the player encloses the relaxer,
		say "[effective]The chorus of frog-noises ceases."

After looking when the location of the player encloses the active relaxer:
	say "Gentle frog sounds fill the room."

Section - Connectable Triggers

The pushbutton is a trigger in the toolcase. Understand "push" or "button" or "box" as the pushbutton. The description is "It's a small [color] box with a button on one side and a plus link on the other[tool status pushbutton]."

Instead of pushing or switching on the pushbutton:
	if the pushbutton is not connected, instead say "The link dot flashes green in confirmation, but as [the pushbutton] isn't linked to anything, that's all.";
	change the visible effect to zero;
	activate the partner of the pushbutton, momentarily;
	if the visible effect is zero,
		instead say "You press the button, but nothing happens."
Instead of switching off the pushbutton, say "That's not something you can switch off."

The toggle switch is a trigger in the toolcase. Understand "toggleswitch" or "toggle-switch" or "box" as the toggle. The description is "It's a small [color] box with a two-way toggle switch on one side, and a plus link on the other[tool status toggle]. The switch is [if toggle is off]off[otherwise]on[end if]."
The toggle can be either off or on. The toggle is off.
Instead of pushing or turning the toggle:
	if the toggle is on, try switching off the toggle;
	otherwise try switching on the toggle.
Instead of switching on the toggle:
	if the toggle is on, instead say "The switch is already on.";
	change the toggle to on;
	say "You flip the [color] switch on. ";
	if the toggle is not connected, instead say "The link dot flashes green in confirmation, but as [the toggle] isn't linked to anything, that's all.";
	change the visible effect to zero;
	activate the partner of the toggle;
	if the visible effect is zero,
		instead say "There is no apparent effect."
Instead of switching off the toggle:
	if the toggle is off, instead say "The switch is already off.";
	change the toggle to off;
	say "You flip the [color] switch off. ";
	if the toggle is not connected, instead say "The link dot flashes blue in confirmation, but as [the toggle] isn't linked to anything, that's all.";
	change the visible effect to zero;
	deactivate the partner of the toggle;
	if the visible effect is zero,
		instead say "There is no apparent effect."

The timer is a trigger in the toolcase. Understand "dials" or "indicator" or "box" as the timer. The description is "It's a small [color] box with with two dials on one side, and a plus link on the other[tool status timer]. The status dot is [if on]green[otherwise]blue[end if]. [timer status]".
Instead of reading the timer: say "[timer status]".
Check turning when the noun is the timer: instead say "You can set the timer's green dial or its blue dial."
Check setting vaguely when the noun is the timer: instead say "You can set the timer's green dial or its blue dial."
Check dialing it to when the noun is the timer: instead say "You can set the timer's green dial or its blue dial."

[The rule here: you can twiddle dials as you like; you don't get a countdown until you press the dial. If one dial is running, it's in the opposite state, and goes to the dial's state when the dial runs out. If you press the running dial, it stops (and the indicator vanishes.) If you press the non-running dial, it goes on, and you then get alternation. Press the non-running dial again, it shorts to that state of the alternation.]

The timer can be either off or on. The timer is off.
The timer can be neutral, switching, or alternating. The timer is neutral.
The timer has a number called the setting. The setting of the timer is zero.
The timer can be skipping this turn. The timer is not skipping this turn.
To say timer status:
	if the on-dial is the same setting as the off-dial,
		say "Both the green and blue dials are set to [setting of on-dial]; ";
	otherwise
		say "The green dial is set to [setting of on-dial] and the blue dial to [setting of off-dial]; ";
	if the timer is switching,
		say "the [if on]blue[otherwise]green[end if] dial is lit. The";
	if the timer is alternating,
		say "both dials are lit. The";
	if the timer is neutral,
		say "the";
	say " timer's indicator [if setting of timer is zero]is blank[otherwise]reads [setting of timer][end if]."
	
Rule for engaging the timer:
	now the timer is on;
	change the visible effect to zero;
	if the timer is not connected and the timer is visible, instead say "The link dot goes green, but as [the timer] isn't linked to anything, that's all.";
	if the timer is connected,
		activate the partner of the timer;
	if the visible effect is zero and the timer is visible,
		instead say "The status dot goes green."
Rule for disengaging the timer:
	now the timer is off;
	change the visible effect to zero;
	if the timer is not connected and the timer is visible, instead say "The link dot goes blue, but as [the timer] isn't linked to anything, that's all.";
	if the timer is connected,
		deactivate the partner of the timer;
	if the visible effect is zero and the timer is visible,
		instead say "The status dot goes blue."


A dial-instance is a kind of thing. Understand "dial" as a dial-instances. Understand the color property as describing dial-instances.
[I had some trouble here until I figured out the trick of using hyphenated terms for source-code names (which the player is unlikely to type), and then "understand" statements to parse player input. I did not, for example, want "dials" to be a valid descriptor of each dial -- the timer handles that.]
Rule for printing the name of a dial-instance: say "[color] dial".
A dial-instance is always not perfumizable.
The on-dial and the off-dial are dial-instances which are part of the timer.
A dial-instance has a number called the setting. The setting of a dial-instance is usually 1.
A dial-instance has a color. The color of the on-dial is green. The color of the off-dial is blue.
The description of a dial-instance is "[The item described] is set to [setting]."

To decide which dial-instance is the current dial:
	if the timer is on, decide on the on-dial;
	otherwise decide on the off-dial.

The timer-oneshot is a oneshot. [A one-time flag for explaining how the dials work.]

Before setting vaguely or turning a dial-instance: instead say "The dial can be set from 1 to 20."
Check dialing it to when the noun is a dial-instance:
	if the number understood is less than 1 or the number understood is greater than 20,
		instead try setting vaguely the noun;
	change the setting of the noun to the number understood;
	say "You set [the noun] to [the setting of the noun]";
	if first trying the timer-oneshot, say ". (Press the dials to activate them.)";
	otherwise say ".";
	stop.

Instead of pushing a dial-instance (called this-dial) when timer is neutral:
	now the timer is switching;
	now the timer is skipping this turn;
	change the setting of the timer to the setting of this-dial;
	now the timer-oneshot is fired;
	say "[The this-dial] lights as you press it. The timer's indicator flashes to [setting of this-dial].[conditional paragraph break]";
	if this-dial is the current dial begin;
		if this-dial is the on-dial begin;
			carry out the disengaging activity with the timer;
		otherwise;
			carry out the engaging activity with the timer;
		end if;
	end if.
	
Instead of pushing a dial-instance (called this-dial) when timer is switching:
	if this-dial is the current dial begin;
		now the timer is alternating;
		say "[The this-dial] is now lit as well.";
	otherwise;
		now the timer is neutral;
		change the setting of the timer to zero;
		say "[The this-dial] goes out, and the timer's indicator goes blank.";
	end if.

Instead of pushing a dial-instance (called this-dial) when timer is alternating:
	now the timer is neutral;
	change the setting of the timer to zero;
	say "Both dials go out, and the timer's indicator goes blank."

[And the "daemon" procedure:]
Every turn when the timer is not neutral:
	if the timer is skipping this turn begin;
		now the timer is not skipping this turn;
		stop;
	end if;
	decrease the setting of the timer by 1;
	if the setting of the timer is greater than zero begin;
		if the timer is visible, say "The timer changes to [setting of the timer].";
		stop;
	end if;
	let this-dial be the current dial;
	if the timer is alternating begin;
		if the timer is visible, say "The timer's [this-dial] flashes once, and the indicator blinks to [setting of this-dial]. ";
		change the setting of the timer to the setting of this-dial;
	otherwise;
		now the timer is neutral;
		change the setting of the timer to zero;
		if the timer is visible, say "The timer reaches zero. ";
	end if;
	if the timer is on,
		carry out the disengaging activity with the timer;
	otherwise
		carry out the engaging activity with the timer;

The radio module is a trigger in the toolcase. Understand "short" or "antenna" or "box" as the radio module. The description is "It's a small [color] box with a short antenna on one side and a plus link on the other[tool status radio module]."

The voice module is a trigger in the toolcase. Understand "short" or "antenna" or "box" as the voice module. The description is "It's a small [color] box with a short antenna on one side and a plus link on the other[tool status voice module]."

Section - Remotes for Triggers

The key transmitter is a remote in the toolcase. Understand "trans" or "antenna" or "disk" or "disc" as the key transmitter. The description is "It's a small [color] disc with a key to press on one side, and a short antenna on the other."
The key transmitter notifies the radio module.
Instead of pushing or switching on the key transmitter:
	change the visible effect to zero;
	if the radio module is not connected and the radio module is visible, instead say "You press the transmitter key. [The radio module][apostrophe]s link dot flashes green in confirmation, but as it isn't linked to anything, that's all.";
	if the radio module is connected,
		activate the partner of the radio module, momentarily;
	if the visible effect is zero,
		instead say "You press the key, and the status dot flashes green, but you perceive no other effect."
Instead of switching off the key transmitter, say "That's not something you can switch off."

The voice transmitter is a remote in the toolcase. Understand "trans" or "antenna" or "audio" or "pickup" or "square" as the voice transmitter. The description is "It's a small [color] square with an audio pickup on one side, and a short antenna on the other. The status dot is [if on]green[otherwise]blue[end if]. The audio keywords are printed along one edge."
The voice transmitter notifies the voice module.
The voice transmitter can be either off or on. The voice transmitter is off.

[These rules make the transmitter sensitive to bare "zap"/"pow" commands. I use "location encloses" test because no containers in this game are soundproof.]
Instead of commanding on when the location encloses the voice transmitter:
	carry out the engaging activity with the voice transmitter.
Instead of commanding off when the location encloses the voice transmitter:
	carry out the disengaging activity with the voice transmitter.

Instead of asking the voice transmitter to try commanding on:
	carry out the engaging activity with the voice transmitter.
Instead of asking the voice transmitter to try commanding off:
	carry out the disengaging activity with the voice transmitter.

Before answering the player that:
	if the topic understood includes "zap", instead try commanding on;
	if the topic understood includes "pow", instead try commanding off.

[There is no way in the current I7 system to make a non-person respond to commands: "voice transmitter, zap". Well, actually there is, but you have to declare the object to be an Inform library animate object -- not very obvious. So I'm leaving this out for now. Feature request filed.]

Rule for engaging the voice transmitter when the voice transmitter is on:
	say "You say the keyword";
	if the voice transmitter is visible, say ", but [the voice transmitter] is already on";
	say "."
Rule for disengaging the voice transmitter when the voice transmitter is off:
	say "You say the keyword";
	if the voice transmitter is visible, say ", but [the voice transmitter] is already off";
	say "."
Rule for engaging the voice transmitter:
	change the voice transmitter to on;
	change the visible effect to zero;
	if the voice module is not connected and the voice module is visible, instead say "You say the keyword. [The voice module][apostrophe]s link dot flashes green in confirmation, but as it isn't linked to anything, that's all.";
	if the voice module is connected,
		activate the partner of the voice module;
	if the visible effect is zero,
		instead say "You say the keyword, and the status dot flashes green, but you perceive no other effect."
Rule for disengaging the voice transmitter:
	change the voice transmitter to off;
	change the visible effect to zero;
	if the voice module is not connected and the voice module is visible, instead say "You say the keyword. [The voice module][apostrophe]s link dot flashes blue in confirmation, but as it isn't linked to anything, that's all.";
	if the voice module is connected,
		deactivate the partner of the voice module;
	if the visible effect is zero,
		instead say "You say the keyword, and the status dot flashes blue, but you perceive no other effect."
	
The voice keywords are part of the voice transmitter. Understand "audio" or "keyword" or "word" or "words" as the keywords. The description is "The keywords for the voice transmitter are 'zap' to switch on, and 'pow' to switch off."
The voice keywords is not perfumizable. ["are not" fails to compile here; bug filed.]
Instead of doing something other than reading or examining the keywords, say "The keywords are only there as a reminder."

[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=0#p9853
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-10-22 23:05:09

I think you summed it up pretty well, Paul.  Some, "regular" languages I learn by reading examples, intuit the very few rules of syntax/grammar/whatchamacallits, and then use a reference book from there.  Others, notably Perl, I have to read the manual.  I had to read Inform's manual, and nearly three years later there's still many corners I'm new to.

In Inform's defense, it's easier to use now than it used to be.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1561&start=0#p9854
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reciprocal Relationships
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-22 23:12:17

I agree with Emily; it's to make all the sentence verbs unambiguous. You can define a verb for the relation and another verb for the reversed relation, which you've done, and that allows you to do what you want. I'm pretty sure.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1577&start=0#p9855
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Updating someone's Example sourcecode for Inform 7 revis
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-22 23:18:48

I apologize for not keeping this up to date. But thank you, Ron, for working it over!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1561&start=0#p9856
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reciprocal Relationships
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-10-23 00:59:12

It's not a matter of reciprocity so much as exclusivity.  The relationship doesn't have to be the same in each direction; it just has to be between precisely two objects.  I'm turning out some astoundingly ugly code to compensate for the fact that when I say "the pod controlled by Display 1", the game doesn't know which pod I'm talking about.

(Although, philosophically, I can think of plenty of things that seem to have an identical relationship but could be classed as different types--matched shoes, for instance.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1561&start=10#p9857
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reciprocal Relationships
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-10-23 01:28:55

[quote="katz"]It's not a matter of reciprocity so much as exclusivity.  The relationship doesn't have to be the same in each direction; it just has to be between precisely two objects.  I'm turning out some astoundingly ugly code to compensate for the fact that when I say "the pod controlled by Display 1", the game doesn't know which pod I'm talking about.[/quote]

Just "a random pod controlled by Display 1" should work. (Does when I test the sample code.) "A random" tells Inform to pick any it has available; you as the author know there can only be one.

There's a suggestion on the books that we allow just "the pod controlled..." in this kind of situation (<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/751522-programming-get-rid-of-a-random-when-it-s-obvi?ref=title">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... ?ref=title</a>), but this hasn't been implemented yet and is not completely trivial.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1577&start=0#p9858
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Updating someone's Example sourcecode for Inform 7 revis
User: Satori / DateTime: 2010-10-23 01:29:20

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Now it compiles. Satori, wanna test it?  We'll make fixing it a community effort.[/quote]

Joy!  It does seem to work just fine.  Thanky so much Ron.  Was it really that easy for you?

[quote]Mild spoilers for, what is this, Spider and Web?  The one with the toolkit.[/quote]

That's the one!  Such a fave, I've wanted to add onto his components system since I first encountered it. 

[quote="zarf"]I apologize for not keeping this up to date. But thank you, Ron, for working it over![/quote]

My goodness.  You're just everywhere, aren't you?  <gryn>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1575&start=0#p9859
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Am I ripping off Zork too much?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-23 03:55:05

What I think is that I don't care what you are ripping off as long as it is good. I don't really believe much in originality, anyway; the more you think about where originality comes from the more it starts to fall apart. Everything came from somewhere; it's just combined with something. So what are you combining that stuff with, and does the combination work? It's all about the execution, for me. It could be great or it could be boring; I have seen games where there was nothing I recognised but it was so poorly executed that I was crying for something like a mailbox and a house and a trap door, so that stuff is not enough for me to tell, either way.

BTW the white house stuff in Zork was not original, either; it was basically a reimplementation of the opening of Adventure (Colossal Cave). In fact not much in Zork was original at all if you just list the elements like that. It was the execution that killed.

I will say that the old Zork-style [i]puzzles[/i] are not quite as interesting to me anymore, but they are still better than most attempts I see to involve the player. There is something to be said for the item-collecting quest narrative: it never leaves you wondering WTF the author is up to and why does he/she even need my input. But I tend to like games a little thicker with story, nowadays, and in which the puzzles don't all line up neatly in the same direction (like pointed at a trophy case, etc).

Puzzleless games can be good too, as long as what I am typing into the game matters in some way, and it feels like it matters as I am typing it (not just after the fact). But that's tough to achieve; so classic-style puzzles are still OK by me if I am enjoying the actual story.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=0#p9860
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-23 04:32:54

Writing a game purely for the purpose of learning helps, which is not something I usually do either, but It's less frustrating getting bogged down correcting your syntax and untangling your wrong assumptions about the way phrases & rules work, when you know that the only reason you are writing this code is so that you can run into these problems: the more the better.

So, I do have a labour of love which I was thinking of porting to Inform 7, but I'm writing a small game first in my spare time: it's less stressful. 8)

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1578&start=0#p9862
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Looking for Testers for new game- working title: Suicide
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-10-23 08:36:35

Suicide is a one room game in which you play Diana, a seventeen year old girl who decided that she is ready to commit suicide. It's a dark humor game, with multiple endings (various ways to kill yourself) as well as plenty of ways to unsuccessfully kill yourself (***YOU HAVE SURVIVED***). There are also some ways to fight the urge and decide you want to live. 

It's not a deep, brooding game either, and hopefully it can show the effects of suicide attempts, both in the long term effects of failed attempts (such as disability) or the effects on success (such as the effect on your parents). 

The game is bare-bones ready, and it seems to work, but I want to flesh it out more and would like any help people can provide. It's written in inform and playable on the Z-machine. It has the ingame hint menu used. 

If there is any interest, please email me at <a href="mailto:dan.doyleiii@gmail.com">dan.doyleiii@gmail.com</a> and I can get you the latest copy. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1567&start=0#p9863
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Omitting something from list of contents of a container
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-10-23 08:41:15

[code]
Instead of examining the wheelbarrow:
   if the number of things in the wheelbarrow is 0, say "You see an empty wheelbarrow.";
   otherwise, say "The wheelbarrow is piled full of rocks.".

[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1562&start=10#p9865
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - I thought I should use "try" - guess not
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-10-23 09:46:13

[quote="katz"]Which is why I then suggested using "After", not "Instead."[/quote]

Oops, clearly my skim module was malfunctioning. I took you to be saying more or less the opposite of what you actually said. Sorry about that.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1561&start=10#p9866
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reciprocal Relationships
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-23 10:22:21

You can also phrase it as:

  if a pod (called P) is controlled by Display 1: [do something with P]

Again, you as the author know that there *is* such a pod, so the test is logically irrelevant. It just reassures the compiler.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1561&start=10#p9867
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reciprocal Relationships
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-23 10:37:16

...however, I can see why this is confusing. A one-to-one relation isn't completely symmetrical, and I don't see why it couldn't be. For example you can say

  Foo relates one person (called owner) to one vehicle.

But not

  Foo relates one person (called owner) to one vehicle (called ride).

It should be equally sensible to talk about "the car's owner" as "Steve's ride". 

There's also an efficiency difference, under the covers. "if somebody foos the car" compiles to a direct lookup test, but "if somebody reverse-foos Steve" compiles to a loop over all people. This gives the correct result, but it trades off speed for property storage, and that's likely to be a bad choice (especially on Glulx).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1579&start=0#p9871
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Windows Frotz, Glk, Inform 7 on GitHub
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-10-23 11:41:45

I've switched to using Git for source control for the various interactive fiction projects I'm involved in: Windows Frotz, Windows Glk, the Git, Level9 and Magnetic interpreters, and the Windows Inform 7 front-end. The latest bleeding edge source for these will now be available from GitHub: <a class="postlink" href="http://github.com/DavidKinder">http://github.com/DavidKinder</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1575&start=0#p9872
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Am I ripping off Zork too much?
User: payo / DateTime: 2010-10-23 13:38:02

Actually I started some writing on a game that rips off the X-Files, just changing the name of the protagonists. But that is too hard for me.

The puzzles will be just physical item interaction like in Zork. I want to make sure they are always fair, because some of the Infocom games have unfair puzzles without enough clues.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1547&start=0#p9873
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A quick question about I7 Understanding statements
User: Morley / DateTime: 2010-10-23 14:07:21

Thank you -- working with that idea, I was able to define properties with a table and then refer to objects by their properties (I was forgetting about Inform's  "understand property as referring to" options, which is extremely handy).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1580&start=0#p9874
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Changing tenses of builtin messages during a game.
User: kcsaff / DateTime: 2010-10-23 14:16:41

Hi,
I'm new to Inform7 so I apologize in advance if this is a dumb question.  In the game I am writing, I would like the first section to be in the past tense, and then change to the present tense after a certain point.  This would require changing many default library messages (or overriding them?) since they are written in the present tense; and then changing the messages again when we move to the present.  I saw Ron Newcomb's extension to override the library messages, but is it possible to change them based on what scene or room we are in?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1580&start=0#p9875
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing tenses of builtin messages during a game.
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-10-23 14:32:05

One way would be to create say-phrases that tacks on a suffix or prints the appropriate pronoun, like so:[code]
To say e-s:  
     if the flashback scene is happening, say "ed";
     otherwise say "e".

To say You:
    if the flashback scene is happening, say "I";
    otherwise say "You".

To say you:
    if the flashback scene is happening, say "I";
    otherwise say "you".
[/code] So it could be used like,  [code]    "[You] wav[e-s] the torch in a wide arc."  [/code]

David Fisher's Custom Library Messages can do this stuff out-of-the-box, though it'll eat Z-machine memory if you're aiming at that.  I have plans to re-create CLM in a lightweight way, but I have a lot of other things on my plate right now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1577&start=0#p9876
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Updating someone's Example sourcecode for Inform 7 revis
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-10-23 14:33:34

No problem guys.  Best three and a half minutes I ever spent.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1580&start=0#p9877
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing tenses of builtin messages during a game.
User: kcsaff / DateTime: 2010-10-23 14:39:06

Thanks Ron, I didn't expect such a quick response!

I haven't written them out yet, but I expect most of the messages to be too different between the scenes for simple [e-s] substitution to cover it.  I'll take a look at CLM: it's not a big deal to me right now whether the game will fit in zcode.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1237&start=10#p9878
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: TAG Engine v0.1pa Released
User: ultimatebuster / DateTime: 2010-10-23 16:44:52

Just a quick update, we have now released 0.12pa

Also the GUI XML maker is here, although not completely stable. (Separate project from the TAG Engine)
<a class="postlink" href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/taggen/">https://sourceforge.net/projects/taggen/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1171&start=0#p9879
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF URLs
User: George / DateTime: 2010-10-23 17:13:52

Just a small update that I've added a calendar, starting off with events in Seattle and Boston next week. I'm hoping to expand this to a general community calendar, mirroring the events list on IFwiki and other announcements in a more accessible format, and at some point make it community editable. For now Google Calendar seems like it will work well enough. Any other suggestions on this subject are welcome. 

Regular coverage also has branched out to the main forum sites for the Russian, Spanish, French, Italian, and German IF communities, and I try to pull in links that'll be of general interest to an international readership.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1575&start=0#p9880
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Am I ripping off Zork too much?
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-10-23 17:57:11

As with any creative influence/inspiration, whether or not it "works" is entirely dependent on what you do with it.  The results of a quick search of the IFDB for "zork-like" include at least one good straight-up Zorkian game ("Enlightenment" by Taro Ogawa) and one good joke Zorkian game ("Zork: A Troll's-Eye View" by Dylan O'Donnell); several of the other ones sounded pretty fun, too.  "Shrapnel," by Adam Cadre, is downright brilliant.  

That said, it would probably be good to avoid and learn from the various mistakes made by "zork: buried chaos" from last years Comp.  Notably: if you make it so that comparisons between your game and Zork are inevitable -- like, by naming your game anything with "Zork" in the title, or by starting the game in an open field west of a white house -- then you need to make sure your game comes out favorably in the comparison.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1581&start=0#p9881
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Printing the names of groups of things
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-10-23 18:12:28

I noticed that this:

[code]An animal can be identified or unidentified.  An animal is usually unidentified.
Rule for printing the name of an animal when the animal is unidentified:
say "animal".

A dog is a kind of animal.
A cat is a kind of animal.

The yard is a room.  In the yard are 2 cats and 1 dog.[/code]

Yields this:

[quote]You can see two cats and an animal here.[/quote]

How do you make naming rules apply to groups of things?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1581&start=0#p9882
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Printing the names of groups of things
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-10-23 18:23:06

I don't know which one is closer to what you want, but you might find either 17.11 "Printing the plural name of something" or 17.14 "Grouping together something" helpful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1582&start=0#p9884
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Question on Capitalization of compass directions
User: payo / DateTime: 2010-10-23 21:10:00

I can't remember how the compass directions are capitalized in American English. It's probably the same in the UK. Does anyone know when to capitalize compass directions and when not to, as in a room description?

Examples:

A silver sword is mounted on the South wall.

In the western wall is the back door of the house.

You hear a faint sound to the West.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1582&start=0#p9885
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Question on Capitalization of compass directions
User: George / DateTime: 2010-10-23 21:58:48

Not sure about UK conventions, but none of those examples require capitalization. The general rule follows, 

'Go west, young man.'

'The young man is in the West.'

In other words, capitalize directions-as-names, but that's it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1582&start=0#p9886
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Question on Capitalization of compass directions
User: payo / DateTime: 2010-10-23 23:56:44

Ahh, OK.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1171&start=0#p9887
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF URLs
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-10-23 23:59:39

Wow, great coverage as usual. Despite reading most of the forums, I almost always find something new in your weekly updates.

Do you know anything more about [url=http://ging3r.org/learn/onward-ficticious.pdf]Fictitious[/url] from this week's links? Google's not much help but the paper makes it sound as if an actual game might be in the works. I like the focus on eInk devices and I'm also intrigued by the absence of a parser in any of the screenshots.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1375&start=0#p9888
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: my first game experience
User: payo / DateTime: 2010-10-24 00:19:26

You should play Infocom games too...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1575&start=0#p9889
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Am I ripping off Zork too much?
User: payo / DateTime: 2010-10-24 00:20:36

Wow I just played Zork. I remember it as being super awesome but now it seems really bland and mechanical. But it's still pretty cool...

I feel better about my game now...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1583&start=0#p9890
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Brent Spiner from Star Trek is funny
User: payo / DateTime: 2010-10-24 00:24:06

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UpUUXUqCN4">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UpUUXUqCN4</a>

lol

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1584&start=0#p9891
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Asking for game recommendations
User: payo / DateTime: 2010-10-24 00:25:42

Do you know any IF games that are like the classic Infocom games? Esp. Lurking Horror, Spellbreaker and Planetfall. I haven't played many IF other than Infocom but I liked Anchorhead. I want a long game with challenging puzzles that seems classic like. I've downloaded loads of games but, there's too many of them to just go through them one by one looking for a specific kind of game.

Also has anyone played Dark Side of the Moon? It's a graphical adventure but it seems really cool. I can't play it because I don't have Windows 98.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1582&start=0#p9892
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Question on Capitalization of compass directions
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-24 00:53:36

This may clear it up further:

"The sun sets in the west."

"Industrialisation is rampant in the West."

Those are both correct. The difference is that the first is relative to your current position, whereas the second is a proper name designating a specific geographical region on the globe. No matter where you are on Earth, the West is always in the same place, but where the west is changes. 8)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1584&start=0#p9894
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Asking for game recommendations
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-24 01:07:34

Judging from your tastes I think you would really enjoy Curses and Jigsaw. They are quite challenging, particularly in the later stages, and extremely well implemented (well they should be, since the author designed Inform!)

And there are so many more, but they are great places to start. Two others I'd call out for being great puzzle games couched in very interesting atmosphere/environment: 'Edifice', and 'Spider and Web'.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1515&start=20#p9896
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Web-based CYOA games
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-10-24 03:33:51

[quote="Dannii"]Well browsers have support for offline applications now. We just need to add support to Parchment etc.[/quote]

That sounds interesting. I will keep watching the progress of Parchment in the future......

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1515&start=20#p9897
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Web-based CYOA games
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-10-24 06:02:14

[quote="Sig"]Again, web access is great for outreach and occasional use, but if web-based interpreters were the only way to play, I probably would not have played long.[/quote]

General rule: You can't please everyone and you shouldn't. For whatever platform someone designs a game, there are always those who will love it and those who will hate it. In other words, any type of game has its fans and its haters. So even if there are gamers out there who don't like to play in a browser on the one hand, there are enough gamers who enjoy web-based games on the other hand. The key is to gain more fans than haters. I call it the [i]Youtube principle[/i]. [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1584&start=0#p9898
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Asking for game recommendations
User: Neurosion / DateTime: 2010-10-24 07:42:59

Christminster and Lost New York are two that I remember fondly but haven't seen mentioned in a while.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1171&start=0#p9899
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF URLs
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2010-10-24 07:48:03

Great work, George! [emote]:D[/emote] I had somehow missed this thread, or, more probably, looked at it much too quickly and then forgotten about it.

I've added a link to your IF URLs in [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Current_events#News_and_Reviews]the News section from the IFWiki[/url]. (As I wrote on [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Talk:Current_events#Any_volunteers_for_the_News_section.3F]the Talk page[/url] there, I can't seriously take care of that section myself, so it's extremely incomplete, unfortunately. But you're doing much better work!)

[b]EDIT:[/b] I think your "Quote of the Week" section is a good idea; unfortunately, however, some of them could be considered as spoilers for IF Comp judges who don't want to be influenced by other people's opinions about comp games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1524&start=0#p9900
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: QTads 2.0.1 released (Linux/Mac/Unix Multimedia TADS 'te
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-10-24 08:03:05

Idea: it'd be nice if, when the game has finished or quit, the status line noted that, like HTML TADS for Windows does. I used to think it was unnecessary, but today I was playing a game on QTADS that quit unexpectedly, and it took me ages to work out what had happened. (Unexpectedly for me as the player, I mean. There was no *** The End *** or anything. But it was supposed to quit at that point; it wasn't a crash.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1417&start=0#p9901
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The IF Dwarf Planet
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-10-24 08:48:54

I've added the wordpress.com feed for all posts tagged as interactive fiction, no matter what blog they're from. I don't know if this is a good idea. If you think it brings it too much non-IF stuff let me know and I'll remove it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1583&start=0#p9902
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Brent Spiner from Star Trek is funny
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-10-24 08:49:13

[img]http://roflrazzi.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/celebrity-pictures-spiner-burton-adventure-reading.jpg[/img]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1524&start=0#p9903
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: QTads 2.0.1 released (Linux/Mac/Unix Multimedia TADS 'te
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-10-24 09:49:41

You're right. The current behavior is to reset the window's title when a game ends, but that's a bit too subtle to notice. A status message makes it more apparent that the game has ended.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1171&start=0#p9904
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF URLs
User: George / DateTime: 2010-10-24 11:09:38

@Ben, I emailed the developer of Ficticious just yesterday, I'll let you know if I hear anything. He hasn't checked in any code on Ginger (the language driving the IF project, which looks really cool too -- a Python-ish Scheme) in 6 months so I'm not sure where it stands. 

@Eriorg, good point about the spoilers  [emote]:oops:[/emote] . I admit I didn't think of it at all before, thanks for mentioning that [emote]:)[/emote].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1580&start=0#p9905
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing tenses of builtin messages during a game.
User: kcsaff / DateTime: 2010-10-24 11:26:30

OK, I think I found a hack of Ron's library that will let me do want I want with the least amount of pain.  The basic idea is instead of using a constant table for our lookups, we make the library use a variable table.  So after the definition of the table of custom library messages [b]in Ron's extension file[/b] we add this line:
[code]
The current table of custom library messages is a table name that varies.  The current table of custom library messages is the table of custom library messages.
[/code]
And then in the three interventions below we change [code]table of custom library messages[/code] to [code]current table of custom library messages[/code]. Now if you want to change the custom library message table due to some major event, you first define the new table:
[code]
Table of flashback library messages
library-action	library-message-id	library-message-text
action-name	number	text
waiting action	1	"You waited for such a long time..."
[/code]
And then at the point you want to make the change, write
[code]
Now the current table of custom library messages is the table of flashback library messages.
[/code]
And of course you can keep changing the table as much as you wish.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1515&start=20#p9906
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Web-based CYOA games
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-24 11:38:03

[quote="Sig"][Sorry for typos or lack of clarity; typing with week old baby in my lap.]

Sig[/quote]
Yours? Congrats! 8)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1583&start=0#p9907
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Brent Spiner from Star Trek is funny
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-24 11:40:41

Heh heh, IFtrek...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1580&start=0#p9908
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing tenses of builtin messages during a game.
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-24 11:44:12

I'm working with CLM in my stuff too, and I'm going to pocket this trick as it seems like it could come in handy — thanks!

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1417&start=0#p9909
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The IF Dwarf Planet
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-10-24 11:55:05

I don't know exactly what's doing it, but you're getting some alladdictinggames links that you don't want. (For my $0.02, though, I'd rather have them if that's the price of keeping the "interactive fiction" tag.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1583&start=0#p9910
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Brent Spiner from Star Trek is funny
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-10-24 12:08:56

<a class="postlink" href="http://i53.tinypic.com/2it4klj.gif">http://i53.tinypic.com/2it4klj.gif</a>

 [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1417&start=0#p9911
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The IF Dwarf Planet
User: George / DateTime: 2010-10-24 12:32:13

I think it would be safe to just filter out that site after you run the IF tag filter.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=10#p9912
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-24 15:03:18

I've found asking questions on this forum to be a great way of learning Inform.

Ron Newcomb's "Inform 7 for Programmers" was a big help too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1584&start=0#p9913
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Asking for game recommendations
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-10-24 15:18:37

You may also be interested in this IFDB poll:

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/poll?id=c3dx7edfwbqct31s">http://ifdb.tads.org/poll?id=c3dx7edfwbqct31s</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1584&start=0#p9914
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Asking for game recommendations
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-24 15:36:03

I recommend Lydia's Heart. It's got about the same balance of puzzles and spookiness as Lurking Horror, and it has about the same size and difficulty as Anchorhead.

I've written a review of it on the IFDB page:
<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=7t22wbllftv7nuiw">http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=7t22wbllftv7nuiw</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1575&start=0#p9915
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Am I ripping off Zork too much?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-24 16:04:49

One thing that always cheers me up and helps me get work done is to tell myself I will create another game (or story, or performance, or whatever) after this one. It gives me the freedom to come up with ideas that might not fit in my current WIP, or to finish something that might not be the best thing I ever did. It also gives me a chance to review what worked and what didn't, and to learn from the criticism of others. That's stuff you just can't get before you finish at least one project of your own, and it's super valuable.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1515&start=20#p9916
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Web-based CYOA games
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-24 16:08:22

Yes, congrats! You've got 2 or 3 months to get a whole lot of stuff done. Then the baby will start rolling over and you'll be stealing seconds to work on anything of your own for at least 2 years.

Not that that's a bad thing.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=10#p9917
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: wfryers / DateTime: 2010-10-24 17:29:10

I really appreciate the thought that has gone into this discussion.  It has helped me a great deal.  I would like to make a point that perhaps only someone who is new can legitimately make.

I7 is an artificial language.  It apparently exists to allow a story teller a way to create IF.  Somewhere along the way those two points have been lost.  What we have now is something, which constrains the player to simple commands - go north, touch the stone, and so on.  Meanwhile, the author is confronted with an opaque language protected by byzantine rules.

I agree with you wholeheartedly, languages that have to invoke something that invokes something and so on, are a giant pain. We used to have extremely rich computer programming languages.  ALGOL is perhaps the best example.  Aside from its left-handed recursion problems, there were any number of ways to express a particular construct.  It was a nightmare to learn and debug.  Consequently, simpler and more powerful languages took its place.

Over the last 45 years we have seen agreement on three points in computer programming languages.  First, any algorithm can be expressed using a very small set of instructions.  A thanks goes to Edsger Dijkstra for the birth of Structured Programming. Second, strongly typed languages can implement any algorithm. A thanks given to Wirth and the development of Pascal. Third, procedure and data are interchangeable. A thanks given to Ted Codd for Codd's Theorem and Jackson for data driven programming. As data structure grew even more complex they evolved into objects.  If you had to work through LISP, SIMULA and SmallTalk you have met objects.  

Which brings me to the heart of the story teller's craft.  We have character.  We have action.  We have location.  We have conflict and thereby plot.  Our stories are abstractions.  There is just enough reality in our stories to make them believable.  Even when they take place in times and locations which are fanciful.  

I believe that means artificial languages, like I7, exist to serve these basic constructs of story telling.  At the mechanical level IF is computer programming. We know that small, compact, easily understood artificial languages have won.  Perhaps it is time the author should have a small, well defined and straight forward way to create IF.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=10#p9918
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-10-24 18:52:05

I think I7 is primarily about writing well structured and logical ways for a player to interact with a world model. It isn't about constructing narratives. Nick Montfort's Curveship might be more of what you're after.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1417&start=0#p9919
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The IF Dwarf Planet
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-10-24 19:26:12

alladdictinggames is blocked now! [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1585&start=0#p9920
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Printed name mysteriously empty, only in room description
User: infryq / DateTime: 2010-10-24 19:35:05

I'm attempting to model objects that can be set on fire.  I want the game to tell the player what sort of char state the object is in whenever it's mentioned, so I added a rule for printing flammable objects that includes the appropriate state along with the name.  This works for examine, manipulation verbs (like burn), and in showme, but in room descriptions the flammable object is elided entirely! I started messing with the rule for printing room description details, and found that when printing the room description, it thinks that the flammable object is nothing, has no (or an empty) printed name, and has an invalid char state.  What gives? 

[code]
A thing can be flammable.
A thing can be firestarting.
char-ness is a kind of value. The char-nesses are unburned, flaming, and burnt.  Everything has a char-ness.  The char-ness of a thing is usually unburned.

Instead of burning a flammable thing:
	if a firestarting thing is visible:
		say "You set [the noun] on fire using [the random visible firestarting thing].";
		now the char-ness of the noun is flaming;
	otherwise:
		say "There is nothing here to set [the noun] on fire with.";

Rule for printing the name of a flammable thing:
	let N be the printed name of the noun;
	if the char-ness of the noun is:
		-- flaming: say "[N] (currently on fire)";
		-- burnt: say "charred [N]";
		-- otherwise: say "[N]";
Rule for printing room description details of a flammable thing:
	say "[noun] / [printed name of noun] / [char-ness of noun]"
	

The Lab is a room. There is a match in the lab. There is a paper in the lab. 
The match is firestarting.  The paper is flammable.
[/code]

[quote]>l
Lab
You can see a match and a nothing / / <illegal char-ness> here.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1585&start=0#p9921
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Printed name mysteriously empty, only in room descriptio
User: infryq / DateTime: 2010-10-24 19:41:45

Fixed it myself:

[code]
Rule for printing room description details of a flammable thing (called flamor):
	say "[the printed name of flamor]"
[/code]

It turns out that [noun] in printing room description details is the nothing object.  Win!

Oddly though, [flamor] doesn't work, above.  Dunno why.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1585&start=0#p9922
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Printed name mysteriously empty, only in room descriptio
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-10-24 19:45:45

Was just going to suggest that. What happens when you pick up a flaming paper and take inventory?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1583&start=0#p9923
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Brent Spiner from Star Trek is funny
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-24 20:34:07

[quote="RealNC"]http://www.gifbin.com/bin/3g601665550.gif

 [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote][/quote]
"This image or video has been moved or deleted."
 
[emote]:([/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=30#p9924
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-10-24 21:02:40

About the Keyword Interface extension:

While I recognize the utility of this with beginners, it seems like there's a possible problem with things that aren't listed normally in the room description (mainly scenery and parts of things).  If a new player gets used to paying attention to blue things, s/he might not think to look at things in the background, and generally might adhere to a graphics-adventure mentality of having a discrete set of usable objects rather than a text-adventure mentality of thinking outside the box about what you can interact with.  What have your experiences been with new users and this extension?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1586&start=0#p9925
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Parsing coordinates
User: Neurosion / DateTime: 2010-10-24 21:09:09

[code]A coordinate location is a kind of value.  9 9 9 specifies a coordinate location.  9/9/9 specifies a coordinate location.

Walking to is an action applying to one coordinate location.  Understand "walk to [coordinate location]" as walking to.[/code]
Walking to isn't the actual verb, but will serve as a simplification.  My problem is that I want to permit the player to walk to a location with one or more negative coordinates.  The code as written doesn't make such things understood.  I had noticed that Inform translates the numbers I specify as maximum values (that is, using 5 5 5 makes the digits 6-9 invalid), so I tried creating alternative specifications using negative values.  Unfortunately, adding a negative sign to the second or third number results in an error complaining that a negative sign can not be entered in the middle of a constant.

Does anyone have an example, insight or an idea on how I can make this work?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1515&start=20#p9926
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Web-based CYOA games
User: Sig / DateTime: 2010-10-24 21:25:58

Thanks!  This one is #2, so my primary job lately is keeping #1 entertained/busy so Mommy and #2 can get some sleep, occasionally.

No one has yet addressed the playing-IF-while-toddler-tries-to-help-type accessibility issue, but my workaround for now is to play after bedtime.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=10#p9927
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-24 21:28:10

[quote="wfryers"]I believe that means artificial languages, like I7, exist to serve these basic constructs of story telling.  At the mechanical level IF is computer programming. We know that small, compact, easily understood artificial languages have won.  Perhaps it is time the author should have a small, well defined and straight forward way to create IF.[/quote]
I'm not sure if we need to declare winners and losers here. You're welcome to create your narrative in TADS if that works better for you.

Personally, I've been enjoying I7. Just as with Perl (you probably hate Perl, right?), there are inconsistencies and idiosyncracies, but there's also a very interesting paradigm in the use of rules and rulebooks. Maybe it will turn out to be an inefficient way of creating text adventures, but I'm enjoying it. I've also found much more time for writing and designing than I did when I was trying to create something in I6.

If you're interested in helping to create a more consistent language with simple primitives, you might want to help Zarf out with his idea for a 100% rule-based language.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1465&start=10#p9928
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Funny responses from this year's games
User: SOdhner / DateTime: 2010-10-24 21:33:30

One Eye Open

[spoiler]If you are reading this without having played the game, understand that you are in a Silent-Hill-esque hospital with lots of corpses and horrible monster stuff going on.

>x fridge
(the massive refrigerator)

The tall refrigerator has just one door - there's no freezer compartment.

On the massive refrigerator are a handful of colorful magnets and a fridge warning note.

[b]>take magnets
For a crazed moment, you picture yourself taking the refrigerator magnets and running through the hell-hospital sticking cheerful messages to everything.  On second thought, you decide to leave the magnets alone for now.[/b][/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1586&start=0#p9929
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parsing coordinates
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-10-24 21:38:48

It's not possible to implement negative coordinates using a kind of value. The easiest way to implement coordinates is to use a list of numbers:

[code]A thing has a list of numbers called the coordinate location. The coordinate location of the player is {9, 9, 9}.[/code]

You'd need to write a special reg-ex based method of parsing the player's command to use lists in game input, though, as Inform can't parse lists in the straightforward way that it can kinds of value. This could be entered in any way you like, e.g. 

>WALK TO 9, 9, -9
>WALK TO 9/9/-9
>WALK TO 9 9 -9
>WALK TO (9, 9, -9)

You'd just have to grab the numerical values as indexed text, convert them to numbers, and slot them into your list for processing.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1563&start=10#p9930
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Designing Kitchens and Bathrooms
User: payo / DateTime: 2010-10-25 00:46:12

Minimalism. The shorter and simpler the more interesting.

You can create really great situations with a very small amount of text. The more you write, the more bored your audience will be, unless you're Shakespeare (actually maybe not even then). Also the player should have a clear idea what to do, and don't overload the player with details in the beginning, keep it simple, and keep the map simple too.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1587&start=0#p9931
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Actions for things that aren't present
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-10-25 05:00:07

Is there a way to make an action apply to something that isn't present?

(I want a "switch" rule for changing characters, but it would be nice if you didn't have to hunt down the other character first.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1563&start=10#p9932
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Designing Kitchens and Bathrooms
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2010-10-25 05:08:51

Everything depends on the game, of course, but I'm a big fan of what ektemple mentioned above, the "single scenery object" that sucks all relevant nouns into a singularity of polite refusal and back-to-business.

That's for starters. I think it's critical, though, to have picky testers who slam against boundaries and to pay attention to what they attempt in these rooms. Depending on the game, there may be very reasonable attempts (or solutions) that involve basic fixtures, surfaces, or even just the presumption that you can store something in a fridge or cupboard. If the game justifies deeper responses to such things, be sure to include them.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1587&start=0#p9933
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Actions for things that aren't present
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-10-25 06:11:29

Yes, for example:

[code]Switching to is an action applying to one visible thing.  [the word "visible" is essential even though it looks like it's the opposite of what it's supposed to do]
Understand "switch to [any person]" as switching to.[/code]
(see also manual ch. 16.7.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=10#p9934
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: wfryers / DateTime: 2010-10-25 09:02:38

Sorry to disappoint.  I don't hate Perl.  To me Perl is basically Javascript on steroids for the UNIX shell programmer.  Since I have spent some time developing on a LAMP stack, I have a passing understanding of PHP and Perl.  Remember, PHP started life as a set of Perl scripts.  Also the “P” in LAMP is now also understood to be PHP/Perl/Python.

Larry Wall, Perl's creator, has two slogans which I really like.  TMTOWTDI – There's more than one way to do it.  The second is – easy things should be easy and hard things should be possible. If you know C, C++ or C sharp, then you have the basic feel for Perl.  It is a procedural language.  It uses brace delimited blocks.  It has control structures.  It uses subroutines (CPAN is awesome).

It is true that the language supports procedural, object-oriented, and functional styles.  Perl doesn't care which you use or that you jumble them up. This must make implementing Perl a real hair-pulling event. I think somewhere in the Camel Book it says approximately – Perl is a language for getting things done.  That is why writing Perl programs is not a hair-pulling event. The language neither forces you into any one style nor does it does it force you to mix styles.  

I remember reading some interview with Larry Wall.  He made the point that in today's world the programmer is the most expensive part of software development.  So the idea is to make it fast simple and easy for the programmer to get the job done.  

That brings me back to a point I made earlier.  The story teller should be the focus.  I don't care that I7 supports several different paradigms.  My complaint is it forces the story teller to mix paradigms.  My recent questions about conditionals (If statements) really points that out.  Nesting requires indentation by tabs.  It uses a kind-of-block structure that doesn't have matching begin and end symbols.  I7 does not require these structures in other if-statements. In fact it has hidden in one its error messages the statement that I7 regards if as less important than repeat. In procedural languages they are usually on an equal footing.  Perhaps, this unusual view deserves more than passing mention in an obscure error message.

Like you I find the rule book structure to be intriguing.  Personally, I would like to be able to create “objects” which are completely defined by their innate characteristics and behaviors. As a story teller I would then have the characters, locations and scenery I need. Hopefully, I will learn how to do that along the way. 

It is the diversity of the community which keeps a language alive and developing.  I hope you see my comments as constructive. I certainly intend them that way.  I would like easy things to be easy.  The point of I7 should be to get stories told.  There is no doubt I just called your baby ugly.  You resisted the all to natural desire to order me out of your house.  Thank you.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=10#p9935
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-10-25 09:21:44

Have you tried any other authoring systems? There are many and they all take more or less different approaches. I don't think anyone has claimed that Inform would be the best fit for everyone.

[quote="wfryers"]Nesting requires indentation by tabs.[/quote]
That is not true - in fact, at compile time Inform converts tab-indented statements internally into begin..end blocks. If I remember correctly the conditional thread ended with someone suggesting to use the more readable (YMMV) tab-indented form, but that doesn't mean you couldn't use begin..end blocks just as well.

[quote]In fact it has hidden in one its error messages the statement that I7 regards if as less important than repeat.[/quote]
This is news to me. Which error message is that?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=10#p9936
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: wfryers / DateTime: 2010-10-25 11:11:06

As for where the error message is about ifs, please look at my first post in this thread.

I think a little bit later you will see other posts about forcing indentation.

Hope this helps.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=10#p9937
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-10-25 12:09:51

Ok, if you're talking about "the 'repeat' is too important a phrase to be put at the end of a simple 'if' like this", you're reading too much into it. It's not saying that repeat phrases are more important than conditional phrases in general. It's saying that [i]in this particular example[/i] the repeat phrase is too complex for the conditional phrase which is used in its simplified form (with a comma.) The reverse is also true: you can't use full conditional phrases at the end of a simple repeat phrase.

As for the forced indentation, I'm not seeing it; people are suggesting using the tab-indented form, but no-one is saying that you can't do it with begin..end blocks (and even if I missed the part where they said that, they were mistaken). The orignal example works fine using begin..end blocks:

[code]Every Turn when the player is in the Forest:
say "fear is [the fear of the Fruzzle].";
If the fear of the Fruzzle > 5 begin;
Say "The Fruzzle has become quite agitated. It stands on it's back legs, with it's fur on end. It is now hissing and showing it's formidable fangs.";
else if the fear of the Fruzzle > 3;
Say "The Fruzzle begins to sway from side to side. It makes a funny noise that sounds like a warning.";
Increment fear of the Fruzzle;
end if.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=10#p9938
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-10-25 12:25:05

[quote]I7 is an artificial language. It apparently exists to allow a story teller a way to create IF. Somewhere along the way those two points have been lost. What we have now is something, which constrains the player to simple commands - go north, touch the stone, and so on.[/quote]

Well, as dannii said, it's about letting the player interact with a world model, and there's necessarily a certain tradeoff here. The amount of work you have to do is going to be something like the complexity of your world times the freedom the player has to interact with it. One limiting case is books (aka static fiction, read-only fiction, etc.); the author can make the world as complex as she likes, because the reader can only read what's on the page. Henry James could write about all sorts of psychological and social complexities (in part) because he didn't have to make up a lot of stuff about what would have happened if his reader had decided to have Isabel Archer marry [fine, no spoilers] instead. On the other hand, take something like Nethack; you can wander around freely and do all sorts of things, and the world isn't that much more complex than hitting a bunch of things with weapons or spells or wands or whathaveyou. 

In IF, if you're going to have freeform input, you're going to need some constraint on the things people can do. Hence things like "go north" or "touch the stone"; you can allow different kinds of commands, but there's going to have to be some constraint (and some way of letting the player know that you can do that), and you're going to have to deal with a fairly constrained world model. The challenge is partly in making stories that can be told in this kind of world model, through relatively constrained input from the player. On the other hand, Choose Your Own Adventures (or choice-based narratives or whatever) let you write all kinds of worlds and allow all kinds of actions, because you're sharply restraining which actions the player can actually take. You can allow "Marry Madame Merle" as a choice at a particular juncture without having to allow the player to try to marry Madame Merle at any other time, or to implement a sequence of actions that lead up to marrying her, etc. There are some IF innovations that allow for more narrativy kinds of interactions without going all the way to CYOA; keyword interfaces, various conversation structures (multiple-choice like Best of Three, keyword-based like the conversations in Blue Lacuna and Walker and Silhouette, deeply implemented topics like Galatea). Though you'll probably want to look into extensions if you're interested in those. 

I'm not a programmer and don't really understand a lot of the things you're saying about algorithms etc., but it seems to me important to understand that I7 is particularly designed for allowing turn-based text input interaction with certain kinds of world models. Given that there's a lot of structure that you want in there, or available as a default (I think it should be easier to change than it sometimes is, but that's another story). Expressing any algorithm with a small set of instructions is secondary to that. The, as I understand it, generally sad history of games written in homebrew systems bears this out.

All this said, from what I've heard it sounds like TADS3 might be more your cup of tea; it's more object-oriented and I think more programmery in many ways. [url=http://www.brasslantern.org/writers/iftheory/tads3andi7.html]This comparison of TADS3 to Inform[/url] is a good overview, as I understand it. (TADS3 isn't very Mac-friendly, though, so I've never tried it out.)

(The first part of my post was ninja'd by Juhana, but here it goes anyway):

[quote]I7 does not require these structures in other if-statements. In fact it has hidden in one its error messages the statement that I7 regards if as less important than repeat.[/quote]

I think the message you got:

[quote]but structural phrases like 'if', 'repeat', 'while' or 'otherwise' can't be used as part of the abbreviated form of other structural phrases, so for instance 'if in darkness, repeat with X running through rooms' is not allowed because the 'repeat' is too important a phrase to be put at the end of a simple 'if' like this. Instead, the 'if' must be written out in full, so for instance 'if in darkness begin; repeat ... begin; ...; end repeat; end if;' would be fine.[/quote]

doesn't mean that "repeat" is more important than "if"; it's just saying that, if you're going to have nested conditions or loops you need to explicitly delimit them (with begin/end or tabs or something). Note that 'if' is on a par with "repeat" as one of the structural phrases that is not allowed within the abbreviated form of other structural phrases.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=10#p9939
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-25 12:48:29

[quote="wfryers"]It is true that the language supports procedural, object-oriented, and functional styles.  Perl doesn't care which you use or that you jumble them up. This must make implementing Perl a real hair-pulling event. I think somewhere in the Camel Book it says approximately – Perl is a language for getting things done.  That is why writing Perl programs is not a hair-pulling event. The language neither forces you into any one style nor does it does it force you to mix styles.[/quote]
Although it doesn't prevent editing [i]someone else's[/i] Perl program from being hair-pulling...  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

[quote]My complaint is it forces the story teller to mix paradigms.  My recent questions about conditionals (If statements) really points that out.  Nesting requires indentation by tabs.  It uses a kind-of-block structure that doesn't have matching begin and end symbols.  I7 does not require these structures in other if-statements.[/quote]

Okay, I get why TMTOWTDI works for you in Perl while I7 is giving you a headache. But as others have pointed out the nesting alternatives in I7, it looks like the real problem is with I7's documentation - there seems to be a general agreement that it's wretched, and it's well illustrated by the frequency of this "well, actually, Inform [i]does[/i] do that" sort of comment. Where would Perl be without "Learning Perl" and "Programming Perl"? As a matter of fact, I didn't get comfortable with Perl until I'd read a third book - Joseph Hall's "Effective Perl Programming."

If you consider the compiler's messages to be part of the documentation, I think it begins to look even more like the language is fine, but the docs need an overhaul.

I've been thinking about the indentation issue lately too, and wondering about alternatives. I'd be interested to hear if you had anything to add to this thread:

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1535">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1535</a>

[quote="wfryers"]I hope you see my comments as constructive. I certainly intend them that way.  I would like easy things to be easy.  The point of I7 should be to get stories told.  There is no doubt I just called your baby ugly.  You resisted the all to natural desire to order me out of your house.  Thank you.[/quote]
I certainly appreciate the desire to improve I7 - it's got a ways to go before it lives up to its promise. But what is it about TADS that makes you think I7 will ever work out better for you?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=30#p9940
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-10-25 12:56:01

I'd be curious to hear what other authors who've tried to use a system like this feel, but my general impression is that as long as you mention to players early on that they keywords are not the [i]only[/i] words they can type, they will merrily keep trying to interact with unimplemented scenery until the cows come home.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1583&start=0#p9941
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Brent Spiner from Star Trek is funny
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-10-25 14:12:24

Fixed URL  [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=30#p9942
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-10-25 14:18:07

[quote="katz"]While I recognize the utility of this with beginners, it seems like there's a possible problem with things that aren't listed normally in the room description (mainly scenery and parts of things).  If a new player gets used to paying attention to blue things, s/he might not think to look at things in the background,[/quote]
There's nothing to stop you highlighting second-order nouns in the descriptions of objects:
[quote]Also here is a pile of [b][color=#0000FF]junk[/color][/b].

>JUNK
A rusting [b][color=#0000FF]pram[/color][/b] protrudes from a haphazard pile of filthy detritus and soggy [b][color=#0000FF]newspapers[/color][/b].[/quote]
[quote="katz"]and generally might adhere to a graphics-adventure mentality of having a discrete set of usable objects rather than a text-adventure mentality of thinking outside the box about what you can interact with.[/quote]
But the range of gameplay styles in IF games is extremely diverse.  For some games, either of these mindsets might be appropriate (or even some other style of playing).  I can certainly think that highlighted keywords might be a bad or misleading choice for many games (not even necessarily hardcore adventures, but also more naturalistic story games like Galatea), but it can also be a great fit for a lot of others.

[quote="aaronius"]I'd be curious to hear what other authors who've tried to use a system like this feel, but my general impression is that as long as you mention to players early on that they keywords are not the [i]only[/i] words they can type, they will merrily keep trying to interact with unimplemented scenery until the cows come home.[/quote]
Similarly, if you tell them that they [i]only[/i] need to worry about the keywords (and it's true), experienced adventurers will still poke at the scenery, while newbies and casual players will feel a weight lifted off their shoulders.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1575&start=0#p9943
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Am I ripping off Zork too much?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-10-25 14:21:14

For me?  Yeah, that sounds too derivative, unless you're doing something with it.

If you've got a straight forward physical interaction exploration game, what does it add to have a mailbox?  It sounds like you've got a few too many elements for it just to be a reference (the way many authors implement xyzzy, for example.)  If you're using those elements to bring out a story or build expectation or something, that's one thing, but I didn't hear that in your initial post.  Having things that are emblematic of someone else's work without a good reason seems like an invitation to disaster on a number of fronts.

Clearly, some players don't care, but I'd react pretty negatively to something like that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1584&start=0#p9944
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Asking for game recommendations
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-10-25 14:22:04

Anchorhead?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=30#p9945
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-25 15:40:25

I have a much bigger problem with the combinatory explosion of having to examine and search and in some games do some third command to everything, than I do with figuring out what the keywords are in the description, which is not as hard and definitely not as boring. Examine should be it — you examine something, it's examined. If there is something more, reveal to me a different noun (or a different time, after some event has changed the noun) to focus on, so I don't feel like I have to double- or triple-verb [i]every noun in the game[/i] to experience it well.

Maybe I am getting a bit off-topic here or maybe not, but 'examine' and 'search' should be synonyms, IMO, and there should be no other generalised 'look at it even deeper' verbs, because I only have enough patience for one automatically-try-it-on-most-things verb. Add another and I get bored, add yet another and I get frustrated, as the game doubles or triples in length without getting any more interesting. This is when you begin to yearn for keywords, and so I see it as a solution to an overly broad puzzle space, often caused by too many general-purpose verbs rather than by too many concrete nouns.

It would be like defining double-clicking something in a graphic adventure to mean looking at it even deeper than just clicking it. Having to click each object, and then double-click it, would be a pretty silly way to extra-double-dog-disguise a graphic adventure's clues. And then if the designer decided to put an 'importance aura' around certain graphic objects to cut down on all the resulting tedious triple-clicking of unimportant things, it'd all seem comically overdesigned. That's how I feel about keywords, basically: I suspect them of being a solution to a problem that shouldn't be.

Unfortunately the problem does exist. I've played at least 3 examples of it in this year's IFcomp alone. In one of them I felt obligated to examine, search, AND 'concentrate on' every object in the game. (It was otherwise pretty interesting, but [i]man[/i].) I suppose some highlighting could have helped manage that workload, but I'd prefer it if they just subtracted most of the tedium altogether by ditching the redundant verbs.

So I feel these things are both signs of bad design, and I tend to expect double-dog-clue-burying when I see highlights. I'm sure there could be exceptions and not everybody would use highlighting to compensate for multiple layers of examination, and I realise there are different valid styles and expectations of play other than my own.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1547&start=0#p9946
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A quick question about I7 Understanding statements
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2010-10-25 15:57:35

I'd also like to say thanks. I was making a practice-game about visiting all 48 mainland states without hitting one twice and couldn't figure out how to match up a state with its abbreviation property. It works now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1588&start=0#p9947
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Tiny examples
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-10-25 16:15:13

I've been wondering about the state of the I7 manual. I don't find it terrible (apparently, some do); I find it quite useful for reference. I've noticed, however, that out of all Inform-related posts, the ones I love the most are posts that demonstrate simple techniques with a broad range of application. The specific examples demonstrated in the manual are in no way bad, but its perspective is aimless to my mind. Quite often when I read them, I find myself distracted by the presence of an unrelated (and unfamiliar) use of rules or phrase structure that I didn't know could be done. 

But I digress. One of the things I like, as I said, are the small techniques. I'd love it if we could have a thread or two in which we simply posted all those small tricks that we keep going back to. It's daunting, though, because half of the members seem to be inordinately skilled at I7, making me fear accidentally revealing my own ineptitude. But since I proposed it, I'll start.

This is a simple way to convert the names of things into proper title case (applied in this case to rooms). In other words, you can declare 

[code]The dark side of the Force is a room.[/code]

and (assuming it compiles and you've given it a definite article), it should display as "The Dark Side of the Force" in-game.

[code]To say (term - indexed text) title-capitalized:
	Let Line be indexed text;
	Let Line be "[term in title case]";
	Let Prepositions be a list of indexed text;
	Let Prepositions be { "the", "of", "in", "and", "or", "for", "at", "by" };
	Repeat with exp running through Prepositions:
		replace the text "[exp in title case]" in Line with "[exp]";
	Let First-word be word number one in Line;
	Replace word number one in Line with "[First-word in title case]";
	Say "[line]".

Rule for printing the name of a room (called the place):
	say "[printed name of the place title-capitalized]" instead.[/code]

Anyone else have some nifty shortcuts they might want to share?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1588&start=0#p9948
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tiny examples
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-10-25 17:50:01

Great thread. 

I always capitalise & write the room names in the code exactly as they'd appear in prose, for the purposes of listing exits as prose which I like to do rather than the unhelpful "You can't go that way."

Oh, and I use this a lot:[code]To decide which number is the chosen row: (- ct_1 -).[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=30#p9949
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-10-25 18:00:50

[quote="Laroquod"]Maybe I am getting a bit off-topic here or maybe not, but 'examine' and 'search' should be synonyms, IMO, and there should be no other generalised 'look at it even deeper' verbs, because I only have enough patience for one automatically-try-it-on-most-things verb. Add another and I get bored, add yet another and I get frustrated, as the game doubles or triples in length without getting any more interesting. This is when you begin to yearn for keywords, and so I see it as a solution to an overly broad puzzle space, often caused by too many general-purpose verbs rather than by too many concrete nouns.

Unfortunately the problem does exist. I've played at least 3 examples of it in this year's IFcomp alone. In one of them I felt obligated to examine, search, AND 'concentrate on' every object in the game. (It was otherwise pretty interesting, but [i]man[/i].) I suppose some highlighting could have helped manage that workload, but I'd prefer it if they just subtracted most of the tedium altogether by ditching the redundant verbs.[/quote]

We talked about this very thing at Seattle IF yesterday, with the same conclusions.  We added the observation that good writing would mix physical description with the PC's thoughts & feelings & POV, so having different buckets for EXAMINE and THINK ABOUT seemed to encourage bad writing, as well as suspect game design as you say.

My favorite good example was the dirigible that descended upon the zombie/pirate parade in [i]Violet[/i]. Upon examining it, she only replies, "That can't be legal."

This seems to indicate that, unless the author specifically separates them, Examine, Think About, and Search should be synonymous for the same action: comment further.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=30#p9950
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-10-25 18:06:03

I think this is pretty much the trend in most modern IF anyway: most recent games don't require any use of SEARCH or LOOK UNDER without some kind of hint in that direction, unless the game is explicitly a game about meticulous investigation (such as a forensically-focused detective game -- Make It Good does some of this, but is I think fair in that regard). 

THINK ABOUT I have sometimes used as a mechanism for asking for a hint. I like it better than HINT ABOUT (puzzle object) because it feels less meta-gamey, but it shifts part of the task of enacting the protagonist's role from player to game. "Here, I know there's *something* interesting about this locket, but I don't quite get it, game. What might my protagonist think of, left to her own devices, that I the player am not coming up with right away?"

But my EXAMINE descriptions do typically include a fair amount of viewpoint character thought and interpretation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=20#p9951
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: wfryers / DateTime: 2010-10-25 18:06:45

Oh, wow! I have had so many wonderful answers.  It is really nice to be on a forum where NuBees don't get flamed for asking their brain-dead questions.  The responses are all well considered.  I am sure I can't get everything into a single reply. I am just going to pick something to get started.  In no particular order, here we go.

I believe you are taking your life into your own hands when you try to work in another person's Perl code.  [emote]:shock:[/emote] This problem is generally addressed by programming style. Even though the language imposes no limits, programmers will.  That fits neatly into the easy things should be easy idea. If you write code for a living, you can count on some unknown programmer in the unspecified future making modifications to your work.  Since there are big bucks on the line, the simpler and more straight forward your code the better.

Perl is as much a creature of its era as it is a powerful tool. I think the first pieces were done around about 85 or so. At the time we were still looking for the single language that could do everything. What we seemed to have settled on is task-specific languages. Like any craftsman, our tool box contains more than a single tool.  It has several hammers for things that respond well to whacking.  Several cutting implements that let us shear or shave. The same is true for the programmer.  If we need to define persistent data stores, we use a data definition language (DDL) that is specific to the capabilities of the store. We pick other languages for other problems.  I love spreadsheets, but they have a specific niche.

At its fundamental level a program transforms an input string (which may be persistent) into an output string (which may be persistent). The set of input and output strings needs to be closed.  The program defines a closed and hopefully small set of transformations.  In effect every program is an artificial grammar. I guess that's why provability versus testability is a hot topic

I am sorry. I can't find the constructs of story telling in traditional programming languages.  I did take a look at TADS.  What I saw was programming structures getting in the way of story telling structures.  When I looked at I7 I didn't see that problem.   

The link to the comparison between the two languages was perfect for me.  I don't know either language well enough to make the points the author did.  I came away with my basic reaction intact.  I learned a bunch besides.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1589&start=0#p9952
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 6F95
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-10-25 18:52:40

Inform 6F95 is now available for the Mac, with other builds to follow, here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/download/">http://inform7.com/download/</a>

To quote the beginning of the change log:

[quote]This maintenance release fixes every core Inform issue logged on the Inform
bug tracker up to today, which means that it resolves around 180 issues;
this change log lists most of them, but omits a few which were simple
corrections of typos, and of course doesn't list the small number of issues
closed as being misunderstandings. Though there are no significant new
features, two additional resources have been added to the core Inform
distribution: Andrew Plotkin's Quixe interpreter, allowing Glulx story files
to be released as playable websites (something up to now allowed only for
Z-machine story files); and Eric Eve's extension "Epistemology", which
joins the built-in set for the first time.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=20#p9953
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: wfryers / DateTime: 2010-10-25 19:03:47

I took quick look at the if thread.  Its going to take me a while to catch up to where you are.  So let me address the responses in this thread before I get started on the other one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=30#p9954
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-10-25 19:15:04

[quote="emshort"]I think this is pretty much the trend in most modern IF anyway: most recent games don't require any use of SEARCH or LOOK UNDER without some kind of hint in that direction, unless the game is explicitly a game about meticulous investigation (such as a forensically-focused detective game -- Make It Good does some of this, but is I think fair in that regard).[/quote]

Hrm. I'm not so sure of this. Off the top of my head, I think Snowquest, Dual Transform, A Flustered Duck, and Raising the Flag on Mount Yo Momma required "search" or "look under/behind" at some point, which seems like a pretty wide spectrum of well-received recent games. In two of those cases that sent me to the hints, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they weren't well-clued in the game; I often miss clues. 

Anyway, I pretty much agree with Paul's original sentiment; the combinatory explosion can be a big drag for the player, and adding "search" to it makes it worse.  

[Sorry if that's spoily; didn't know how to make the comment without slight spoilers, and spoilering out the games wouldn't help.]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=20#p9955
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-10-25 19:28:10

Hmm, okay. When you said

[quote]Personally, I would like to be able to create “objects” which are completely defined by their innate characteristics and behaviors. As a story teller I would then have the characters, locations and scenery I need. Hopefully, I will learn how to do that along the way.[/quote]

...and tied that in with syntax-level comments about Inform, I think many of us (myself included) understood that as a preference for an OO language, of which there are already several.

But now it seems like you're asking for something else entirely. So I'm curious: in your ideal language, what would you primarily spend your time defining, and how would you express it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=20#p9956
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-25 21:30:30

[quote="wfryers"]I believe you are taking your life into your own hands when you try to work in another person's Perl code.  [emote]:shock:[/emote] [/quote]
Good one!  [emote]:lol:[/emote] It brings up an important point about I7 though: One of my very first reactions upon seeing some I7 code was that it was [i]really easily readable[/i]. Deceptively so, in fact, because it's not obvious in many cases that a particular phrasing will work when a similar-looking one will not. But after you get it right, those that come after can tell what you're trying to do much more quickly than they would in most other languages.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1589&start=0#p9957
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6F95
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-25 22:12:25

Woot! And also for Quixe.

In case anybody is curious, the manual's chapter structure has not been rearranged in this list, so my index page doesn't need to be updated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1589&start=0#p9958
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6F95
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-25 22:15:18

Awesome! Thank you! No more hacking needed to make Inform work on my Mac.

I did, however, have to make some changes to my source. Apparently it's not kosher to give doors multiple connections anymore (e.g. The Front Door is south from the lobby and outside from the lobby) - I had to review the documentation on how to make alternate directions ("instead of going [fake direction] from [origin]" doesn't work, you must use "instead of going [fake direction] [i]in[/i] [origin]") I also had to fix an issue where I referred to an object by its irregular plural form, and Inform didn't recognize that anymore.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=40#p9959
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-25 22:19:06

[quote]It would be like defining double-clicking something in a graphic adventure to mean looking at it even deeper than just clicking it. Having to click each object, and then double-click it, would be a pretty silly way to extra-double-dog-disguise a graphic adventure's clues.[/quote]

You speak irony, but I've played games that worked that way. It was one evolutionary path of the third-person graphical adventure UI (which started with verb menus but quickly collapsed down to two-or-three generic options.)

_The Black Mirror_ was a particularly terrible example... terrible enough that it's all I remember about the game. Left-click was "examine"; right-click was *sometimes* "look under" or "look inside". (More often, right-click did nothing.)

I can defend "look under" in a text game, under some circumstances. (Thinking to look under an object is at least a mimetic experience.) The left-click/right-click thing has no excuse.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=20#p9960
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: wfryers / DateTime: 2010-10-25 22:53:58

It has taken me a while to put together the examples that show why there are problems with the If.  I going to spread them accross several posts.

Here goes the first example.  This is a working nested if.  It uses colons and no tabs to manage the nesting.  It translates correctly and executes correctly.  Just like you said it would.


The Fruzzle is an animal.

The description of the Fruzzle is "An animal about the size of a big cat.  It is covered in soft lavender fur.  It has a long pointed muzzle.  The dark band of fur across it's eyes makes it look like it is wearing a mask.  It's long furry  tail  is covered in pumpkin colored splotches. "

The Fruzzle has  a number called fear. 
	The fear of the Fruzzle is 0.	
The large nut is a thing.  "A heavy brown nut about the size of a couple of golf balls"


The forest is a room.
	
	The Fruzzle is in the Forest.
	
Every Turn when the player is in the Forest:
	say "fear is [the fear of the Fruzzle].";
	Increment fear of the Fruzzle;
	If the  fear of the Fruzzle  >  6:
		Say "The Fruzzle shreiks at you as it throws a large nut at you.  It has remarkably good aim.  The bruise should fade in a few days.";
		Now the large nut is in the forest;
	else If the fear of the Fruzzle  >  5:
		Say "The Fruzzle has become quite agitated.  It stands on it's back legs, with it's fur on end. It is now hissing and showing it's formidable fangs.";
	else If the fear of the Fruzzle  >  3:
		Say "The Fruzzle begins to sway from side to side.  It makes a funny noise that sounds like a warning.";
	else:
		Say "The Fruzzle sits quietly.  It seems to be curious about you.";
		Say "Somehow you find that vaguely uncomfortable."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=20#p9961
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: wfryers / DateTime: 2010-10-25 22:55:41

Here goes the second example.  I took the working nested if and replaced the colons with commas.  This made it syntactically incorrect.  I got error messages.  The second error message states that I can use the colon  but I must use tab indentation.  

So the reason I believe you have to have tabs with colons is the error message says so.



The Fruzzle is an animal.

The description of the Fruzzle is "An animal about the size of a big cat.  It is covered in soft lavender fur.  It has a long pointed muzzle.  The dark band of fur across it's eyes makes it look like it is wearing a mask.  It's long furry  tail  is covered in pumpkin colored splotches. "

The Fruzzle has  a number called fear. 
	The fear of the Fruzzle is 0.	
The large nut is a thing.  "A heavy brown nut about the size of a couple of golf balls"


The forest is a room.
	
	The Fruzzle is in the Forest.
	
Every Turn when the player is in the Forest:
	say "fear is [the fear of the Fruzzle].";
	Increment fear of the Fruzzle;
	If the  fear of the Fruzzle  >  6,
		Say "The Fruzzle shreiks at you as it throws a large nut at you.  It has remarkably good aim.  The bruise should fade in a few days.";
		Now the large nut is in the forest;
	else If the fear of the Fruzzle  >  5,
		Say "The Fruzzle has become quite agitated.  It stands on it's back legs, with it's fur on end. It is now hissing and showing it's formidable fangs.";
	else If the fear of the Fruzzle  >  3,
		Say "The Fruzzle begins to sway from side to side.  It makes a funny noise that sounds like a warning.";
	else:
		Say "The Fruzzle sits quietly.  It seems to be curious about you.";
		Say "Somehow you find that vaguely uncomfortable."
		
Translating the Source

This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6E72) on its most recent run through: 
Problem. The rule or phrase definition 'Every Turn when the player is in the Forest'   seems to use both ways of grouping phrases together into 'if', 'repeat' and 'while' blocks at once. Inform allows two alternative forms, but they cannot be mixed in the same definition. 
 One way is to end the 'if', 'repeat' or 'while' phrases with a 'begin', and then to match that with an 'end if' or similar. ('Otherwise' or 'otherwise if' clauses are phrases like any other, and end with semicolons in this case.) You use this begin/end form here, for instance - 'else If the fear of the Fruzzle > 5, Say "The Fruzzle has become quite agita [...] and showing it's formidable fangs."'  . 
The other way is to end with a colon ':' and then indent the subsequent phrases underneath, using tabs. (Note that any 'otherwise' or 'otherwise if' clauses also have to end with colons in this case.) You use this indented form here - 'else'  .

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=20#p9962
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: wfryers / DateTime: 2010-10-25 22:56:45

Here is the third example.  In this example I delimited blocks using colon.  For if's that are usually understood as not having a block, I used a comma.  What I get is an error message about mixing begin and colon notation.  I am not too sure that is error message is particularly helpful.


The Fruzzle is an animal.

The description of the Fruzzle is "An animal about the size of a big cat.  It is covered in soft lavender fur.  It has a long pointed muzzle.  The dark band of fur across it's eyes makes it look like it is wearing a mask.  It's long furry  tail  is covered in pumpkin colored splotches. "

The Fruzzle has  a number called fear. 
	The fear of the Fruzzle is 0.	
The large nut is a thing.  "A heavy brown nut about the size of a couple of golf balls"


The forest is a room.
	
	The Fruzzle is in the Forest.
	
Every Turn when the player is in the Forest:
	say "fear is [the fear of the Fruzzle].";
	Increment fear of the Fruzzle;
	If the  fear of the Fruzzle  >  6:
		Say "The Fruzzle shreiks at you as it throws a large nut at you.  It has remarkably good aim.  The bruise should fade in a few days.";
		Now the large nut is in the forest;
	else If the fear of the Fruzzle  >  5,
		Say "The Fruzzle has become quite agitated.  It stands on it's back legs, with it's fur on end. It is now hissing and showing it's formidable fangs.";
	else If the fear of the Fruzzle  >  3,
		Say "The Fruzzle begins to sway from side to side.  It makes a funny noise that sounds like a warning.";
	else:
		Say "The Fruzzle sits quietly.  It seems to be curious about you.";
		Say "Somehow you find that vaguely uncomfortable."
		
	Translating the Source

This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6E72) on its most recent run through: 
Problem. The rule or phrase definition 'Every Turn when the player is in the Forest'   seems to use both ways of grouping phrases together into 'if', 'repeat' and 'while' blocks at once. Inform allows two alternative forms, but they cannot be mixed in the same definition. 
 One way is to end the 'if', 'repeat' or 'while' phrases with a 'begin', and then to match that with an 'end if' or similar. ('Otherwise' or 'otherwise if' clauses are phrases like any other, and end with semicolons in this case.) You use this begin/end form here, for instance - 'else If the fear of the Fruzzle > 5, Say "The Fruzzle has become quite agita [...] and showing it's formidable fangs."'  . 
 The other way is to end with a colon ':' and then indent the subsequent phrases underneath, using tabs. (Note that any 'otherwise' or 'otherwise if' clauses also have to end with colons in this case.) You use this indented form here - 'If the fear of the Fruzzle > 6'  .

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=20#p9963
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: wfryers / DateTime: 2010-10-25 22:57:34

Here is the fourth example.  In this one I use begin notation for the blocks.   I still use commas for ifs that are normally not understood as having blocks.  This time the error messages are consistent.  They now let us know that if you use block notion anywhere in an if structure you must use it everywhere.  I think this is the first time the rule is ever spelled out.

The Fruzzle is an animal.

The description of the Fruzzle is "An animal about the size of a big cat.  It is covered in soft lavender fur.  It has a long pointed muzzle.  The dark band of fur across it's eyes makes it look like it is wearing a mask.  It's long furry  tail  is covered in pumpkin colored splotches. "

The Fruzzle has  a number called fear. 
	The fear of the Fruzzle is 0.	
The large nut is a thing.  "A heavy brown nut about the size of a couple of golf balls"


The forest is a room.
	
	The Fruzzle is in the Forest.
	
Every Turn when the player is in the Forest:
	say "fear is [the fear of the Fruzzle].";
	Increment fear of the Fruzzle;
	If the  fear of the Fruzzle  >  6 begin;
		Say "The Fruzzle shreiks at you as it throws a large nut at you.  It has remarkably good aim.  The bruise should fade in a few days.";
		Now the large nut is in the forest;
	else If the fear of the Fruzzle  >  5,
		Say "The Fruzzle has become quite agitated.  It stands on it's back legs, with it's fur on end. It is now hissing and showing it's formidable fangs.";
	else If the fear of the Fruzzle  >  3,
		Say "The Fruzzle begins to sway from side to side.  It makes a funny noise that sounds like a warning.";
	else begin;
		Say "The Fruzzle sits quietly.  It seems to be curious about you.";
		Say "Somehow you find that vaguely uncomfortable."
		
	

Translating the Source
This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6E72) on its most recent run through: 
Problem. You wrote 'else If the fear of the Fruzzle > 5, Say "The Fruzzle has become quite agita [...] and showing it's formidable fangs."'  : but an 'otherwise if' (or 'else if') which uses a comma to give a single consequence can only be used immediately following an equally simple 'if', and can't be used in the middle of a begin ... end if block. 
 To provide alternatives within such a block, use 'otherwise if ... condition...;' (in the same way that one would use 'otherwise;' without a condition).
 See the manual: 11.8 > Otherwise
Problem. You wrote 'else If the fear of the Fruzzle > 3, Say "The Fruzzle begins to sway from si [...] noise that sounds like a warning."'  : again, an 'otherwise if' (or 'else if') which uses a comma to give a single consequence can only be used immediately following an equally simple 'if'.
Problem. You wrote 'else begin'  : but inside an 'if ... begin'/'end if' an 'otherwise' (or 'else') must be a single word phrase, so it appears that the two ways to use 'otherwise' have been mixed up. It can either be used as 'if ... begin; ...; otherwise; ...; end if', or as 'if ..., ...; otherwise ...;'.
Problem. You wrote 'If the fear of the Fruzzle > 6 begin'  : but the definition of the phrase ended with no matching 'end' for this 'begin', bearing in mind that every begin must have a matching end, and that the one most recently begun must be the one first to end. For instance, 'if ... begin' must have a matching 'end if'.
 See the manual: 11.7 > Begin and end

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=20#p9964
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: wfryers / DateTime: 2010-10-25 23:00:03

Here is the last example.   I replace all of the colons with begin; I would expect that I should get a clean translation and execution like I did with colon notation.  I don't.  Now I get errors telling me that begin; is inappropriate.

To me this says that a legitimate block structure suddenly become inappropriate simply by changing the symbol used as a block delimiter.  That just doesn't make any sense to me.  Trying to sort out this syntax error  from the error messages, just stumps me. 


The Fruzzle is an animal.

The description of the Fruzzle is "An animal about the size of a big cat.  It is covered in soft lavender fur.  It has a long pointed muzzle.  The dark band of fur across it's eyes makes it look like it is wearing a mask.  It's long furry  tail  is covered in pumpkin colored splotches. "

The Fruzzle has  a number called fear. 
	The fear of the Fruzzle is 0.	
The large nut is a thing.  "A heavy brown nut about the size of a couple of golf balls"


The forest is a room.
	
	The Fruzzle is in the Forest.
	
Every Turn when the player is in the Forest:
	say "fear is [the fear of the Fruzzle].";
	Increment fear of the Fruzzle;
	If the  fear of the Fruzzle  >  6 begin;
		Say "The Fruzzle shreiks at you as it throws a large nut at you.  It has remarkably good aim.  The bruise should fade in a few days.";
		Now the large nut is in the forest;
	else If the fear of the Fruzzle  >  5 begin;
		Say "The Fruzzle has become quite agitated.  It stands on it's back legs, with it's fur on end. It is now hissing and showing it's formidable fangs.";
	else If the fear of the Fruzzle  >  3 begin;
		Say "The Fruzzle begins to sway from side to side.  It makes a funny noise that sounds like a warning.";
	else begin;
		Say "The Fruzzle sits quietly.  It seems to be curious about you.";
		Say "Somehow you find that vaguely uncomfortable."

Translating the Source
This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6E72) on its most recent run through: 
Problem. You wrote 'else If the fear of the Fruzzle > 5 begin'  : but an 'otherwise if' (or 'else if') should not take a 'begin', but acts as a divider within a begin/end block all by itself.
 See the manual: 11.8 > Otherwise
Problem. You wrote 'else If the fear of the Fruzzle > 3 begin'  : again, an 'otherwise if' (or 'else if') should not take a 'begin'.
Problem. You wrote 'else begin'  : but inside an 'if ... begin'/'end if' an 'otherwise' (or 'else') must be a single word phrase, so it appears that the two ways to use 'otherwise' have been mixed up. It can either be used as 'if ... begin; ...; otherwise; ...; end if', or as 'if ..., ...; otherwise ...;'.
Problem. You wrote 'If the fear of the Fruzzle > 6 begin'  : but the definition of the phrase ended with no matching 'end' for this 'begin', bearing in mind that every begin must have a matching end, and that the one most recently begun must be the one first to end. For instance, 'if ... begin' must have a matching 'end if'.
 See the manual: 11.7 > Begin and end

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=40#p9965
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-10-26 01:10:53

[quote]Maybe I am getting a bit off-topic here or maybe not, but 'examine' and 'search' should be synonyms[/quote]

...Now that I think about it, you're totally right.  I can think of situations where "examine" makes sense but "search" doesn't (EXAMINE COIN), but I can't think of any situations where "search" makes sense but "examine" doesn't; SEARCH PILE OF JUNK is perfectly logical, but there's no reason that EXAMINE PILE OF JUNK shouldn't yield the same results.

Now I'll go change all the searches in my game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=40#p9966
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-10-26 05:10:32

[quote="katz"]SEARCH PILE OF JUNK is perfectly logical, but there's no reason that EXAMINE PILE OF JUNK shouldn't yield the same results.[/quote]
I'd say it depends on what the action triggers. I've always thought of EXAMINE as looking at the object and describing how it looks like (a synonym of LOOK AT, actually). I would feel cheated if I'd EXAMINE PILE OF JUNK and the game would describe how I go through the pile, cut myself on a rusty blade and die from tetanus, when all I wanted was a description of the pile.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=40#p9967
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-10-26 07:35:16

[quote="Juhana"][quote="katz"]SEARCH PILE OF JUNK is perfectly logical, but there's no reason that EXAMINE PILE OF JUNK shouldn't yield the same results.[/quote]
I'd say it depends on what the action triggers. I've always thought of EXAMINE as looking at the object and describing how it looks like (a synonym of LOOK AT, actually). I would feel cheated if I'd EXAMINE PILE OF JUNK and the game would describe how I go through the pile, cut myself on a rusty blade and die from tetanus, when all I wanted was a description of the pile.[/quote]

I'd feel cheated if that happened with SEARCH. But that japery aside, though there's a call for a distinction between LOOK AT and LOOK IN/UNDER/THROUGH (in the sense of looking through a pile rather than looking through junk), I don't think EXAMINE really corresponds to LOOK AT very well in English. In "[url=http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Adventure_of_the_Blue_Carbuncle]The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle[/url]" Sherlock Holmes is examining the hat, but what he sees sure won't show up on "x hat." --But I think that "x" for "look at" is entrenched enough that it might not be impossible to displace it.

OTOH, I do see what Paul is saying about the burdens of having to do two verbs of everything. To descend to the personal, I thought this was done well once in Raising the Flag and poorly once:

[spoiler]Looking behind the jukebox for the volume control was well clued, or at least I figured out to do it (and routing "look behind," "look under," and "search" to the same thing was a very good idea). But looking under every old thing for the contact lens, though it was well clued that you had to do that, was a drag, and in fact one of the two or three things that sent me to the source code when I missed the one object it was hidden under. This isn't quite what Paul is talking about, but it does have the "two verbs for everything" issue.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=40#p9969
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Neurosion / DateTime: 2010-10-26 09:20:51

[quote="matt w"]OTOH, I do see what Paul is saying about the burdens of having to do two verbs of everything. To descend to the personal, I thought this was done well once in Raising the Flag and poorly once:

[spoiler]Looking behind the jukebox for the volume control was well clued, or at least I figured out to do it (and routing "look behind," "look under," and "search" to the same thing was a very good idea). But looking under every old thing for the contact lens, though it was well clued that you had to do that, was a drag, and in fact one of the two or three things that sent me to the source code when I missed the one object it was hidden under. This isn't quite what Paul is talking about, but it does have the "two verbs for everything" issue.[/spoiler][/quote]
[spoiler]Just last night I was at a meeting where we wanted to turn up the volume for a video but had some trouble finding the control.  Someone had looked above, below, and behind the TV, to no avail.  Only when someone took the time to actually search the side of the TV did the volume control reveal itself.[/spoiler]
I don't really agree that "examine" and "search" should map to the same action.  As long as "search" is mapped to all of its poking-around brethren (and vice versa), I'm content.  It seems natural to me that any given object in the game could have three levels of observation: the peripheral ("There is a blanket here"), the observed ("It's a baby blanket with a little rabbit head sewed into its center.  How cute."), and the thorough ("Concealed beneath the blanket are your car keys, a veritable smörgåsbord of choking hazards.  Excellent parenting there, bub.").

I guess it has never been my assumption that examining an unheld item implies interacting with it in any way, and I would be surprised if such interaction was assumed.  Once I've picked up the item, however, I suppose all bets are off.

EDIT: Actually, would you be particularly surprised if "examine" gave a different response depending on whether an item was held or unheld?  It makes sense to me up here [taps head] but that doesn't necessarily mean it would make sense to the average IF hobbyist.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=20#p9970
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2010-10-26 10:37:12

I love i7. I think there are still a few stuffs to straighten but it's a good metalanguage.
IMO the i6 level is what is wrong with I7, because of the structural limitation (no floating numbers, ridiculously awkward arrays, etc...).
For example, i developed an extension that is able to construct and initialize objects from indexed texts (a kind of small syntactic parser, build with a metalanguage, I7,  manipulating a language that is interpreted/compiled for a virtual machine; I6. yep). It takes me around 1 sec to build one of those objects (because of the 7 or so regular expressions it uses). I also tried to implement an ascii animation reader. I cadenced it at 10 fps, but unfortunately it takes glux more than one second to read a 100*100 characters long frame. Meanwhile in the same time i can generate a 5000 pages long pdf with java.

So why not adapt i7 for java ? Why stick to a to a technology that date from the 70s ? I read somewhere the reason was that it "theoretically" enables zmachine games to be played on old nokia phones or something. But what kind of people use these devices ? Everyone has a smartphone nowadays !
Seriously, replace i6 with java. I tend to think that i6 now limits i7. Interactive fictions haven't really change since the first ones were created. But what if someone wants to implement a semantic engine or a syntactic parser based on generative grammar ? You'll probably need an efficient I/O system as well as various and robust memory structures. How are you supposed to do that when the functions you write must handle the way information is stored in memory ?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=30#p9971
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-10-26 10:53:29

I am not sure if I am derailing or re-railing this thread by posting this, but here goes.

In response to: "Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7"

No. I don't get it, either. While I would never call myself a programmer, I do a lot of scripting at work and have written several small-to-medium sized VB apps. I am familiar with code, and I am familiar with content, and the way I feel right now at the moment is, the two should remain separate. I'll admit that the majority of what I've seen of I7 code has come from this forum, but ... and this is kind of hard to explain, but it makes more sense to me to write "if x = y then score = score + 1" than to write it out in natural English. I'd be curious to know if any other people with programming experience feel the same way. Or perhaps it's just me. Or perhaps I haven't given I7 a fair shake yet.

It seems to me that troubleshooting something in I7 would be much more difficult than I6.

I'll give you an example. I'm the type of guy who prefers <b> over <strong>. I know what <b> will do every time, whereas <strong> may/could do different things in different browsers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=40#p9972
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Felse / DateTime: 2010-10-26 11:34:52

The Standard Rules of Inform 7 already in effect makes searching a special case of examining: you can only search containers and supporters, but doing that yields the same result as examining them.

It's probably, in most cases, wise to leave it that way.

Actually, even confining EXAMINE to ocular examination can be needlessly frustrating. A player might often reasonably (I think) expect to have relevant sound, smells, tastes and tactile sensations reported back upon examining something.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=40#p9973
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Neurosion / DateTime: 2010-10-26 11:43:42

[quote="Felse"]Actually, even confining EXAMINE to ocular examination can be needlessly frustrating. A player might often reasonably (I think) expect to have relevant sound, smells, tastes and tactile sensations reported back upon examining something.[/quote]
I agree with you for the purpose of passive senses.  Sound and smell and tactile sensations (assuming the object is held) are all sensible.  I can't say I agree that "examine dog" should ever translate to licking it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=30#p9974
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-26 11:47:06

Re the fourth Fruzzle example:

Your code can be made to compile (correctly) by removing three "begin"s, and adding an "end if".

[code]
Every Turn when the player is in the Forest:
say "fear is [the fear of the Fruzzle].";
Increment fear of the Fruzzle;
If the fear of the Fruzzle > 6 begin;
Say "The Fruzzle shreiks at you as it throws a large nut at you. It has remarkably good aim. The bruise should fade in a few days.";
Now the large nut is in the forest;
else If the fear of the Fruzzle > 5;
Say "The Fruzzle has become quite agitated. It stands on it's back legs, with it's fur on end. It is now hissing and showing it's formidable fangs.";
else If the fear of the Fruzzle > 3;
Say "The Fruzzle begins to sway from side to side. It makes a funny noise that sounds like a warning.";
else;
Say "The Fruzzle sits quietly. It seems to be curious about you.";
Say "Somehow you find that vaguely uncomfortable.";
end if;
[/code]

I more or less followed the error messages here. The first two say "this thing does not take a 'begin'", so I removed "begin" and that was the correct action. The third is more obscure, but removing "begin" was still the right thing to do. The fourth error message says there's no "end" for the "if...begin".

I don't know if that's the code you want to write, but it's the translation of your example into begin/end syntax.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=30#p9975
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-10-26 12:08:03

[quote="Flack"]I am familiar with code, and I am familiar with content, and the way I feel right now at the moment is, the two should remain separate. [...] I'd be curious to know if any other people with programming experience feel the same way.[/quote]

I feel the same way. I've dabbled in Inform 7 over the last couple years and never gotten very far with it. Perhaps it's necessary to overcome the mental bias toward regarding it as natural language, instead of an extremely verbose programming language. I found Ron's document useful in that regard, as it spelled out equivalences between more traditional syntax structures.

But I'm not that interested in what's left over once the natural language veil is lifted. Debugging seems to become exponentially harder past a certain amount of source text, owing to a variety of factors - lack of encapsulation, preponderance of global variables, one file limitation. The available extensions are nice but official support has been erratic in the past.

TADS is cool. It has its faults but I find I prefer them to Inform's. Its infrastructure is lacking - no web interpreters, no cross-platform IDE - but that situation won't ever change if people stop making TADS games. Right now I am happy writing out the content in transcript form and doing the implementation in a more familiar way. Mixing the two has a certain novelty value but the fun factor is lost on me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=30#p9976
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-10-26 12:32:19

I don't know that I "get" I7, but you get accustomed to it, sort of like living with a cat.  You may never fully understand why the cat feels the need to run growling through the apartment, hair on end, claws out, just at the moment there's a jump scare on Amnesia, but after awhile, you sort of get accustomed to its moods and you both can coexist in mutual respect.  

But not everyone is a cat person, so it's worth shopping around.  (I looked at TADS 3, and edged slowly away.  It's not the syntax or rules so much as the Cliffs-of-Despair-like learning curve.  I just don't want to spend that kind of time up front.  I tend to work in manic bursts, and that kind of programming is hard to do that with unless I have pretty solid knowledge of the language involved - otherwise, I spend most of my energy playing catch-up.  Still, if I get to a point in my life where I have a stable creative drive, I might give it another go.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=30#p9978
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: Celestianpower2 / DateTime: 2010-10-26 12:55:04

[quote="gravel"]I don't know that I "get" I7, but you get accustomed to it, sort of like living with a cat.  You may never fully understand why the cat feels the need to run growling through the apartment, hair on end, claws out, just at the moment there's a jump scare on Amnesia, but after awhile, you sort of get accustomed to its moods and you both can coexist in mutual respect.  

But not everyone is a cat person, so it's worth shopping around.  (I looked at TADS 3, and edged slowly away.  It's not the syntax or rules so much as the Cliffs-of-Despair-like learning curve.  I just don't want to spend that kind of time up front.  I tend to work in manic bursts, and that kind of programming is hard to do that with unless I have pretty solid knowledge of the language involved - otherwise, I spend most of my energy playing catch-up.  Still, if I get to a point in my life where I have a stable creative drive, I might give it another go.)[/quote]

That's quite possibly one of the best analogies I've ever heard in my life!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1588&start=0#p9980
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tiny examples
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2010-10-26 13:39:19

[quote]
[b]To decide what K is (O - value of kind K) with/and (V - L) as (P - value of kind L valued property):
	change the P property of O to V;
	decide on O;[/b]

To change the (P - word value of kind K valued property) property of (O - object) to (V - K):
	(- WriteGProperty(OBJECT_TY, {O}, {P}, {V}); -).

To change the (P - pointer value of kind K valued property) property of (O - object) to (V - K):
	(- BlkValueCopy(GProperty(OBJECT_TY, {O}, {P}), {V}); -).

To change (P - indexed text valued property) property of (O - object) to (V - text):
	(- BlkValueCast(GProperty(OBJECT_TY, {O}, {P}), INDEXED_TEXT_TY, TEXT_TY, {V}); -).
[/quote]

Example
[code]
let M a new object cloned from the man prototype with "Rocco" as first name and 24cm as size.
[/code]


And if I remember well
[code]
To decide what K is (V - arithmetic value) as (name of kind of arithmetic value K):
(- {V} -).
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1588&start=0#p9981
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tiny examples
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-10-26 14:07:27

Damn. *low whistle* Phonatacid, after reading it through a while I can see how useful that code is (and Ron's too, but his was short enough for my reptilian brain to grasp in one go). Neophyte as I am, however, I still don't quite see what's meant by the "decide on" statement.  [emote]:oops:[/emote]

The last one, predictably, stumps me entirely.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=40#p9982
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-10-26 14:10:59

[quote="Neurosion"][quote="matt w"]OTOH, I do see what Paul is saying about the burdens of having to do two verbs of everything. To descend to the personal, I thought this was done well once in Raising the Flag and poorly once:

[spoiler]Looking behind the jukebox for the volume control was well clued, or at least I figured out to do it (and routing "look behind," "look under," and "search" to the same thing was a very good idea). But looking under every old thing for the contact lens, though it was well clued that you had to do that, was a drag, and in fact one of the two or three things that sent me to the source code when I missed the one object it was hidden under. This isn't quite what Paul is talking about, but it does have the "two verbs for everything" issue.[/spoiler][/quote]
[spoiler]Just last night I was at a meeting where we wanted to turn up the volume for a video but had some trouble finding the control.  Someone had looked above, below, and behind the TV, to no avail.  Only when someone took the time to actually search the side of the TV did the volume control reveal itself.[/spoiler][/quote]

Well (to keep it spoiler-free) I wouldn't argue that the use of "search" I described is mimetically inaccurate. The other, less successful one is definitely mimetically accurate; if you were in that situation in real life, that's what you'd have to do. It's just a drag to do (both in real life and in the game).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1591&start=0#p9983
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I'm updating the I7 Programmer's Manual. Any requests?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-10-26 14:14:48

I'm going to update the I7 Programmer's Manual for the new build, 6F92.   Anyone have any comments, suggestions, requests, clarifications, or other input for what they'd like to see in the next edition?  Or not see?  Obviously the new type system's gymnastics will be added.

Semi-relatedly, I'm going to take another crack at the scene-based tutorial, and have a request.  Who's using the recent build's ability to create relations to text?  What's it being used for?  I ask, because I scribbled this last night: [quote]
"Quip System"

Spot is room.  A name is a kind.

Naming relates one name to one text. 
The verb to name (he names, they name, he named, it is named, he is naming) implies the naming relation. 
The verb to be called implies the reversed naming relation.

Choice relates one text to one name. 
The verb to be able to follow (it is possibly followed) implies the choice relation. 

Quip 1 names "Bob says, 'How are you, Charlie?'" 

"Charles replies, 'Fine, just fine.  You?'" is called Quip 2.

"'Quite good.'" can follow it.
"'I heard about Donna.'" can follow it.
[/quote]

Seems like it might be relevant or useful or something.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=30#p9984
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-10-26 14:17:54

A popular quote, not sure by whom, goes like:

When someone says "I want a programming language in which I need only say what I wish done," give him a lollipop.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=40#p9985
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-10-26 14:41:54

(NB: what follows is opinionated. If it seems too ranty, mentally glue in as many "I think" and "IMO" bits as you like.)

The problem is not that SEARCH and EXAMINE should always have the same output. The problem is that too many games assume as a matter of course that the player will use certain verbs on every noun; this is not fun, especially if the nouns are numerous or more verbs than EXAMINE are required.

The solution has to do with communicating the affordances of the system more clearly. 

Keywords do a good job of drawing player attention to necessary nouns; if a keyword-highlighting system is used, it should draw player attention to every object that is necessary to interact with to win/understand the game, and avoid drawing player attention to many cluttery items that might be there for scenery reasons.

Verbs are trickier. Text descriptions and hinting sometimes do a decent job of drawing player attention to necessary verbs, and I have played some games where it was not even necessary to go around EXAMINING everything, because the author provided so much direction (usually narratively) that it was always clear whenever I even needed to look. This is the rare case, of course, but it makes for much faster-paced, more storylike play. (People interested in this issue should definitely try some of O/yvind Thorsby's games, which omit EXAMINE entirely.) Those same games tend to be the ones where you don't have to pick up every thing not nailed down, just the interesting ones. (To ease this process, I like having a FIND action that lets the player automatically go back to and collect an item he saw in the past but now can't recall the location of.)

So, ideally, the author always gives the player sufficient guidance that there are some obvious points of interest where the player can start looking/working in order to make progress, and the player never needs to apply a mechanical approach to interaction (I will methodically EXAMINE, then SEARCH, each item here! Then I will pick up every portable thing!). 

UIwise, we can back this up by doing a better job of indicating to players systematically which verbs are especially useful for a given noun.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1583&start=0#p9986
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Brent Spiner from Star Trek is funny
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-10-26 14:44:40

[quote="Laroquod"]"This image or video has been moved or deleted."
 
[emote]:([/emote][/quote]

Here's a better version with sound on youtube, and it works on Windows 7.  [emote]:ugeek:[/emote]  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]  [emote]:P[/emote] 

Commander Data vs. Microsoft Windows
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urcO5OzKwPo">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urcO5OzKwPo</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1583&start=0#p9987
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Brent Spiner from Star Trek is funny
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-10-26 15:34:33

[quote="RealNC"]Fixed URL  [emote]:P[/emote][/quote]

He uses old-fashioned 256-color animated GIFs for video output. [emote]:shock:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=40#p9988
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-10-26 15:40:26

[quote="matt w"]
Well (to keep it spoiler-free) I wouldn't argue that the use of "search" I described is mimetically inaccurate. The other, less successful one is definitely mimetically accurate; if you were in that situation in real life, that's what you'd have to do. It's just a drag to do (both in real life and in the game).[/quote]

I'd disagree on the mimesis note. I've occasionally thought the world I lived in made little sense, but I've never felt the need to question whether, say, God had properly implemented the couch, and that (or something similar) is what I'd do if I had to manually search everything. Also, the real-life interface of sensory immersion (being there) is, I'd argue, far quicker and less capricious than what we have in IF. I think it would be like having to search for said remote while suffering a severe visual and/or bodily handicap.

I dunno; I'm sure a lot of people can make it work in their games. Speaking solely for myself, I don't see any mimesis in having to probe objects repeatedly, because the monotonous repetition of a few specific commands - with many other ideas the player might try failing to yield any result - would IMHO serve to break immersion, not foster it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1592&start=0#p9989
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Connecting autogenerated rooms
User: Kiyi / DateTime: 2010-10-26 16:04:55

I'm working on a game where the player can fly, so I want a sky above every room.
So:

Sky is a kind of room.
A grounded room is a kind of room.
A sky is up from every grounded room.

Great! But the sky is totally disconnected; right now the player is like a helicopter that can only go up and down.
So:

Directions can be horizontal. Directions are usually not horizontal. North, south, east, west, northeast, northwest, southeast, and southwest are horizontal.
Instead of going horizontal direction (called dir) when the location is sky:
	move the player to the room up from the room dir from the room down from the location.

Okay. But not every room connection on the ground, like diagonally through corners and such, is implemented. Is there any way for Inform to, say, use a coordinate system for room traversal?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1588&start=0#p9990
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tiny examples
User: Graham Nelson / DateTime: 2010-10-26 16:28:13

Eleas's example can be made tinier by omitting the line "let Prepositions be a list of indexed text"; it's fine for this to be a list of ordinary text.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1593&start=0#p9991
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: AGS being made open source.
User: Sslaxx / DateTime: 2010-10-26 16:54:55

So far, just the editor, but there's the possibility of the compiler and runtime also being opened up later on. Artistic License 2.0, so GPL-compatible.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.bigbluecup.com/yabb/index.php?topic=42063.0">http://www.bigbluecup.com/yabb/index.php?topic=42063.0</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1592&start=0#p9992
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Connecting autogenerated rooms
User: Janka / DateTime: 2010-10-26 17:53:43

Does the sky have to be a room? If you just want to get different results to actions whether the player is flying or not, adding a "flying" property to the player is much much simpler. You could then add rules like
[code]
Instead of doing something other than looking or landing when the player is flying:
  say "You are riveted by the odd sensation of flying." instead.
[/code]
(untested, though)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1589&start=0#p9993
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6F95
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-26 18:18:26

Sweet! Will report back on if all my issues were fixed.

Paul.

EDIT: Yep! Both the main issues I had are now solved. There is one thing outstanding but it might be specific to my editing routine. Every time I reopen my project, all my tab stops have disappeared (i.e. all the lines are flush with the left margin). It's easy enough to get around. I just select all, cut it, and then paste it back in, and voila, the tab formatting is all restored. It may have something to do with my frequent habit of copying everything into TextWrangler and back? Not sure.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1583&start=0#p9994
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Brent Spiner from Star Trek is funny
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-26 18:22:38

I prefer the GIF — it's lightweight and broadly useful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1592&start=0#p9995
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Connecting autogenerated rooms
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-10-26 18:50:13

I agree with Janka.  Then you just throw that flag into the room description as well:

[code]The description of the open field is "[if the player is flying]You are approximately 30 ft above a[else]A[end if]n open field."[/code]

(also untested)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1592&start=0#p9996
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Connecting autogenerated rooms
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-10-26 18:56:53

Oh, I see, but you also want crow-flies directions.  Well, you could do something like this (still untested, but very similar to something I did in a certain past work):

[code]Ground-accessibility relates rooms to each other.  The verb to be ground-accessible from implies the ground-accessibility relation.
Room A is north of Room B.  Room C is east of Room B. 
Room C is ground-accessible from Room B.
Definition: a room is off-limits if it is not ground-accessible from the location.
Before going to a room that is off-limits:
[tab]if the player is not flying:
[tab][tab]say "You ran into a plotwall!";
[tab][tab]stop the action.[/code]

So in other words, you link up [i]all[/i] of the sky "rooms", but then you only selectively link the ground rooms.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=50#p9997
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-26 19:13:48

Wow, my comments sparked a lot more discussion than what I had expected, all of it very thoughtful. I'll try to keep from 'searching' every single post in addition to examining them, as that would be tedious. 87

I probably don't need to write an essay about the mimesis counterargument which was very well laid out by Neurosion, since it's easy to guess where I'd stand on it. My main problem with mimesis as a principle (besides that in most linear media it's been considered quaint for more than a century — apologies to Aristotle) is, where does it end? And I know I'm not the first to point this out. Sure, EXAMINE and SEARCH [i]can[/i] logically mean something different, in reality. What's important to me personally is, how often is it ever effective, dramatically, for them to mean something different? When characters miss clues in dramatic stories, it's almost always because they overlooked something altogether, not because they did a 50% job of checking out the thing. That would make them seem incompetent and it seems like splitting a mimetic hair for its own sake. Imagine this for example...
[quote][b]Defence attorney[/b]: Did you examine the body on which the murder weapon was eventually found?
[b]Cop on the witness stand[/b]: Well, yes, but... nobody tasked me with SEARCHING the body. Aren't they two different things?[/quote]
Most other viewpoints seem to be a form of agreement with qualification: i.e. a desire to reserve some special case. I can sympathise with a lot of these, so I'll just say, y'all are basically right that if it's handled well and the player is well-clued, and not led to try the extra verbs on [i]everything[/i] (though it's very tempting so I think I need to be specifically clued NOT to), deeper examinations or 'looking under' or 'looking behind', etc., can work and make sense dramatically. It really does seem to me though that doing it without negative effects on playability is one of the tougher things to pull off in IF, style-wise. Not that it's impossible, by any means — and I'm in the presence here of some who have done it.

[quote="emshort"]But my EXAMINE descriptions do typically include a fair amount of viewpoint character thought and interpretation.[/quote]
It's what I appreciate most about them.

[quote="zarf"][quote]It would be like defining double-clicking something in a graphic adventure to mean looking at it even deeper than just clicking it. Having to click each object, and then double-click it, would be a pretty silly way to extra-double-dog-disguise a graphic adventure's clues.[/quote]
You speak irony, but I've played games that worked that way. It was one evolutionary path of the third-person graphical adventure UI (which started with verb menus but quickly collapsed down to two-or-three generic options.)

_The Black Mirror_ was a particularly terrible example... terrible enough that it's all I remember about the game. Left-click was "examine"; right-click was *sometimes* "look under" or "look inside". (More often, right-click did nothing.)[/quote]
Ha! I had a feeling  someone  was going to come back at me  with an example of a game  that did just that. Interesting, thanks, and I'm really glad that technique didn't  take, generally.

[quote="Juhana"]I would feel cheated if I'd EXAMINE PILE OF JUNK and the game would describe how I go through the pile, cut myself on a rusty blade and die from tetanus, when all I wanted was a description of the pile.[/quote]
This would suck — I agree.

[quote="emshort"]The problem is not that SEARCH and EXAMINE should always have the same output. The problem is that too many games assume as a matter of course that the player will use certain verbs on every noun; this is not fun, especially if the nouns are numerous or more verbs than EXAMINE are required.

The solution has to do with communicating the affordances of the system more clearly.[/quote]
An excellent point. If I had a higher level of trust that any IF game I picked up wouldn't "do me like that" in hiding a crucial clue behind a search of some random object, I would probably not have as much of an issue with this. Really, great design can overcome much: I was more talking about the average case which is unfortunately (I've been finding, at least) still pretty common.

[quote](People interested in this issue should definitely try some of O/yvind Thorsby's games, which omit EXAMINE entirely.)[/quote]
Oh sweet, I did not know (or remember) that and that sounds very interesting to me as an experiment, although I don't have any issue with EXAMINE all by itself.

Thanks folks! This forum rules.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1583&start=0#p9998
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Brent Spiner from Star Trek is funny
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-10-26 19:29:49

[quote="Laroquod"]I prefer the GIF — it's lightweight and broadly useful.[/quote]

GIF is a palette-based image format with a maximum number of 256 colors.
Sure it's useful, especially for website design and forum purposes, such as 
animated smilies, ad banners, icons, avatar pics, transparent images, etc.
It sucks for advanced purposes, however, such as video sequences in high
resolutions. That's because animated GIF is not a video codec and it shouldn't
be treated as one. The reasons are a) low framerate on higher resolutions,
b) big filesize due to non-sophisticated image compression algorithm and
c) pixelated/noisy image output in video due to 256-color limit.

But back to the threadstarter's topic...

Brent Spiner is certainly funny, as both an actor and a person in real life.
In most of his movies and TV shows he played some funny guy anyway.
BUT Spiner has proven that he can also play serious roles. I'm a fan of
Brent.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1592&start=0#p9999
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Connecting autogenerated rooms
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-26 19:58:39

I guess the way I would think of doing this is to make a lot fewer sky rooms than ground rooms, and associate each sky room with a Region of ground rooms. When you go down from a sky room, I'd try to get Inform to just pick a random ground room in the region associated with that sky room, for you to land in. Looking down (or just looking) from any sky room could get you the names of the ground rooms below. Probably 3 or 4 ground rooms per 'sky region' would be enough to achieve a sense of realism. And then I would just give the sky rooms all their own compass interconnections with each other rather than trying to calculate their connections from the ground.

Quick 'n' dirty, I guess, and probably not the best solution if it's very important to give the flyer the ability to land anywhere with perfect precision.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1591&start=0#p10000
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I'm updating the I7 Programmer's Manual. Any requests?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-10-26 20:14:19

If it's somehow feasible to use the floating point arithmetic that might be good to add!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1592&start=0#p10001
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Connecting autogenerated rooms
User: Kiyi / DateTime: 2010-10-26 20:45:22

tove: That works great, thanks!

Just one more thing: the game has different costumes that grant different abilities. In some cases, it's important to have a costume that's comprised of multiple parts. For example:

"Witchy is a kind of thing.
The broomstick, robe, and hat are witchy.

[I don't want the player to have to specify each thing individually]
Wearing the witch costume is an action applying to nothing.
Understand "wear witch" or "put on witch" as wearing the witch costume.

Carry out wearing the witch costume:
repeat with cloth running through things worn by the player:
silently try taking off cloth;
repeat with cloth running through witchy:
silently try wearing cloth."

But using this method, I have to code that for every sensible verb, for every multi-part costume. Is there any way to just say something like this?:

"Carry out doing something (called verbing) with the witch costume:
repeat with cloth running through witchy:
silently try verbing cloth."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1591&start=0#p10002
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I'm updating the I7 Programmer's Manual. Any requests?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-26 21:14:19

The floating-point stuff has no support in this I7 release. I know Graham is interested in adding it, but this was a "no new language features" release, obviously.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=50#p10003
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-10-26 21:21:12

[quote]The Standard Rules of Inform 7 already in effect makes searching a special case of examining: you can only search containers and supporters, but doing that yields the same result as examining them.[/quote]

And they don't make an exception for the venerable pile of junk?  A pile of stuff is the first thing I'd instinctively try to search; unless a container or supporter is described as being messy or full, I'd assume that everything on/in it is already visible.

(Actually I realized that my game contains a search that specifically requires the "search" command--because the word "search" is part of the puzzle.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=30#p10004
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: wfryers / DateTime: 2010-10-26 22:23:36

The cat anaolgy is priceless [emote]:lol:[/emote] .  Somebody has to make sure that gets into the documentation.

Fabulously funny!!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=30#p10005
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: wfryers / DateTime: 2010-10-26 22:32:32

I was afraid that using “object” could cause some confusion.  I am glad you brought it up.  In later posts I tried to use the word “construct” instead.  

As I have been saying from the beginning, I am just getting started with I7.  So some of the things I want may already be provided by I7.  I have not yet learned them.  In one of the earlier posts the point was made that perhaps the problem lay in the documentation and error messages rather than the language.  I think that is a good point. While it is fair to ask me what I think the perfect language is, it is none-the-less a daunting task.  So I am going to try to back into it.  I am sure it won't be pretty.

For most of us, the basic interaction between us and computers is turn based.  This is true in IF.  The person does something like entering a command.  The computer attempts to follow the command and posts a reply.  It is equally valid to see the computer as entering commands which the person obeys and then posts a reply.  These two views could be combined into one.  We see this as two worlds with a common message port.  There is an agreement by which the worlds politely wait their turn to post something onto the message port. 

It works out that people try to organize their understanding of the computer side of the interaction.  This understanding goes beyond simply memorizing commands.  They create a mental model (sometimes called a metaphor)  which becomes predictive or proscriptive.  This lets the person effectively guess what they should do in a novel situation.  Also, it is a handy way for the person to organize what they know.  Consequently, it lets the person effectively anticipate the computer's behavior.  

Let me give you an example.  In the early days of word processing the product developers were looking to make it easy for people to switch from typewriters.  They went to clerk typists and asked them how they wanted things to work.  Not surprisingly, they wanted the computer to mimic a typewriter. Thus was born Word Perfect.    As more of us began to use word processing, it became clear we all had  flunked Typing I.  This created an opening in the market.  Now developers asked the rest of us how word processing should work.  They got an entirely different mental model or metaphor.  This gave rise to Microsoft Word.  Eventually, the typewriter dummies like me carried the day.

So part of the answer to what is a perfect IF language lies in understanding which mental models or metaphors to use.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=30#p10006
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: wfryers / DateTime: 2010-10-26 23:04:57

My perfect language part 2

It appears to me that IF stories follow some common approaches.  They might be called genera.  The first is the puzzle genera.  In these stories the person must solve all of the puzzles to “win”.  The second is the discovery genera.  In these stories the person must visit every place in the world to “win”.  The third is the DND genera.  In these stories the person is represented by an avatar.  The avatar, like all characters in the story, has innate properties.  These include things like strength, knowledge, speed, and so on.  In these stories the person must put the avatar through various trials to increase properties like strength or knowledge.  As the avatar becomes “stronger” the game becomes richer by introducing ever more challenging implements, characters and locations.  The player “wins” by growing the avatar to its maximum capacity, thereby revealing all of the world and its challenges.  

When I look at all of these genera I see a commonality.  To me, they are essentially board games, with the computer becoming the other players, game board, score keeper, arbiter and dice.  Thus my mental model or metaphor is the board game. 

Broadly speaking I can create two families of board games.  First are games in which the player functions like the shoe in a Monopoly game.  It is simply a token representing the player's position in the world.  The player's capabilities are reflected only in the person's knowledge of the game.  The second are games in which the player functions as an avatar.  The player's position and capabilities are reflected in the game world through the avatar.  The person's knowledge is moderated by the avatar's capabilities. 

In my imagination creating players works something like this.  There is an individual known as the player character (PC).  He is built on the basic construct called Player. Player is built directly on a construct called Token. Token deals with very simple things like keeping track of the current location.  This lets me create a PC who functions like the shoe in Monopoly.  

I could also create an avatar based PC. He is built on the basic construct Player.  Player is now built on the construct Avatar, which in turn is built on Token.  Avatar deals with things like strength, wisdom and health. This lets me create a PC who functions through the capabilities of his avatar.

I imagine that a Non-player character (NPC) is built similarly.  NPC is built on Player.  Some NPC's need to grow and change, so they would be built on Avatar, which is built on Token.  Some NPC's  don't need to grow, so they are built on Player, which is built on Token.  

NPC,s need to add another construct that corresponds to capabilities the person brings to the game.  I think of this construct as Personality.  (I understand I7 to have some of these capabilities now.  For example generating NPC responses based on who is in the room.)  Personality is built on the construct AI.  AI should be understood broadly as artificial intelligence. For example, this gives an NPC the ability to engage in goal seeking behavior.   

The final piece of the NPC is Individual.  It is built on Player.  It lets us build two dwarfs with different names, physical descriptions, and personalities.  Yet they both act like dwarfs are supposed to.

I realize the language I have chosen sounds like objects and inheritance.  I am not suggesting any particular kind of implementation.  What I am suggesting is a mental model and a conceptual way to understand its workings.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1594&start=0#p10007
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Comments in Extension Examples
User: Roger / DateTime: 2010-10-26 23:07:55

I've produced an extension (yay) but with the examples, comments don't appear in either the Documentation or after it's been pasted over.

Is it just me, or can anyone reproduce this?  Should I report it as a bug?


Cheers,
Roger

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=30#p10008
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-10-26 23:29:13

wfryers: In what way do you visualize the author telling the computer about the differences between this particular game's [PC/NPC/environment] and the default options?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1593&start=0#p10010
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: AGS being made open source.
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-10-27 02:40:50

Wow. This is... quite a change in the AGS world. I suppose it had to happen - CJ couldn't keep doing it all himself, it was either that or assemble a crew like the Inform crew.

I hope it doesn't spiral out of control, the way he was always afraid it would.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1518&start=10#p10011
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Passing variables from Parchment/i7 to JavaScript and ba
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-10-27 02:48:48

In case any of the lovely people working on solutions to this have made progress, please keep us posted. I'm in the midst of a project that could benefit from this functionality, too, but I haven't had much luck poking at the Parchment source myself. (Tustin's solution on raif looked promising, but I couldn't figure out where to put it.) Really any of these proposed solutions would be lovely if they would let me hand off a string from Parchment to Javascript. Would anyone with some working code mind posting it or sending it to me?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1518&start=10#p10012
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Passing variables from Parchment/i7 to JavaScript and ba
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-27 06:33:43

For  my part, I'll certainly post my hack, Aaron, when it's in front of me, but as I mentioned I was more surveying the suitability of the territory for my project before stepping a toe back into Inform (which I've since done, with both feet) and likely won't be tackling Parchment for some months yet. I have a lot of stuff to port from LambdaMOO before I can effectively test an Inform-based expression of my particular idea (which is pretty idiosyncratic) of how a text adventure could interoperate with a surrounding web page.

It would be cool to be able to help you out — I'm just not there, yet.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1518&start=10#p10013
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Passing variables from Parchment/i7 to JavaScript and ba
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-10-27 08:21:01

[quote="aaronius"]In case any of the lovely people working on solutions to this have made progress, please keep us posted. I'm in the midst of a project that could benefit from this functionality, too, but I haven't had much luck poking at the Parchment source myself. (Tustin's solution on raif looked promising, but I couldn't figure out where to put it.) Really any of these proposed solutions would be lovely if they would let me hand off a string from Parchment to Javascript. Would anyone with some working code mind posting it or sending it to me?[/quote]

Can you wait till next week? My thesis is due on Friday but after that I should be able to put aside some time on this. I'm assuming you're happy to do it with I6 assembly? Do you want to be able to send data in the reverse as well? It also wouldn't take much to add it to Quixe if you want to use Glulx instead.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1596&start=0#p10014
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Better understand
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-10-27 08:53:38

[code]
Smashing is an action applying to one thing. Understand "smash [something]" and "smash [something] with hammer" and "break [something" and "break [something] with hammer"...

[/code]

Is there an easier way to understand different verbs?

Perhaps some version of:
[code]
Understand "smash/break/slam/thrash [something]" and as breaking.
[/code]

Also, what if the term "with hammer" is optional? Is there an easier way of saying "smash [something] (with or without the term 'with hammer')" or something?

As it is I need to say:
Understand
"break [something]"
"break [something] with hammer"
"smash [something]"
"smash [soemthing] with hammer"

and so forth for every different word one might use instead of break
(smash/hit/break/destroy/kill/wreck) etc.

Is there a simpler way?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1596&start=0#p10015
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Better understand
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-10-27 09:36:33

You can attach synonyms to verbs with

[code]Understand the command "break" as "attack".[/code]
So you only need to define one verb and assign synonyms to it.

[code]Understand "smash [something]" as smashing.
Understand "smash [something] with [something]" as smashing it with.
Understand the command "slam" and "trash" and "break" as "smash".[/code]

(as an aside, I strongly suggest not to hard-code objects into verb grammar - for example, SMASH DOOR WITH THE HAMMER or SMASH DOOR WITH LOG would give very unhelpful errors.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1360&start=0#p10016
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Beyond Zork, Tandy, and colors
User: cas / DateTime: 2010-10-27 10:19:04

I'm sure this riveting topic has been burning in everybody's minds, so you should be glad to learn that (I think) I've come up with an answer.

Beyond Zork happily accepts any interpreter number you throw at it: it will believe you when you tell it that you're interpreter number 100, for example.  This is an issue in the “color” routine because the game indexes an array (of pointers to color palette tables) with the interpreter number.  According to Wikipedia, BZ was never released for the Tandy, so presumably it assumed the Tandy interpreter number would never be set; since the Tandy number is the highest, there was no need to add an entry for it at the end of the array meaning “no colors available on this platform” like it has for some others.  Instead, there is junk (well, data for something else) at the “Tandy location” that happens to point to an area that says there are 518 color palettes available.

So don't set your interpreters to Tandy when running Beyond Zork; the wrong color data will be accessed.  Crisis averted.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1597&start=0#p10017
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Rewriting the can't take people's possessions rule
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-27 10:57:41

[rant]First, I'd like to revive the discussion of how to bypass standard libary check rules without using procedural rules, mentioning my earlier suggestion that there be a "replace rule" button that pastes the original source text of the rule into your source so you can edit it.

Even better than a "replace rule" might be a new mechanism for exiting rulebooks. Instead of "rule fails" or "rule succeeds" or "stop the action" or "continue the action," there could be some kind of "stop processing the check [action] rulebook" or "allow the action" statement that causes control to skip directly to the carry out rulebook. Possibly even more simply, have "rule succeeds" do the same thing - exit the current rulebook but not stop processing of other rulebooks.[/rant]

Here I replaced the rule manually after looking it up in the Standard Rules. But this one looks a bit complicated and I'm not sure what all of it is supposed to do:

[code]Check an actor taking (this is the can't take people's possessions rule):
	let the local ceiling be the common ancestor of the actor with the noun;
	let H be the not-counting-parts holder of the noun;
	while H is not nothing and H is not the local ceiling:
		if H is a person, stop the action with library message taking action
			number 6 for H;
		let H be the not-counting-parts holder of H;[/code]

First of all, what does the "not-counting-parts holder" mean? Does that mean if the holder is a part then we walk up the tree to the owner of the part?

Second, what the heck does the last line of this rule do? The library message has already been printed and H is about to go out of scope. (right?) So I would predict that it would have no effect at all. What's it there for?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1589&start=0#p10018
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6F95
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-10-27 11:08:55

The Windows build is now up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1583&start=10#p10019
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Brent Spiner from Star Trek is funny
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-10-27 12:07:43

Stop destroying whole threads  [emote]:evil:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=50#p10020
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-27 12:11:36

A new brag: Following my discussion with Ron Newcomb about avoiding nested "if" statements, I created my first rulebook! Instead of a big complicated tree of "ifs", I created a few definitions and used them in conditions for a number of rules.

[code]There is an alert animal called an old yellow dog. "A wretched old yellow dog is [state of the dog]." 

Behavior of the dog is a rulebook. The behavior of the dog has default success.

To say state of the dog:
	say "[run paragraph on]";
	follow behavior of the dog;
[/code]

There were some tricky spots. I wanted to call it "What the dog is doing," but the compiler didn't like having a rulebook with "is" in the title and tried to interpret it as a definition of something called "what the dog". I tried "the dog's behavior", but calling a rule "the dog's behavior when..." produced another error because a rule can't be introduced with "the".

I continue to be mystified by line break inconsistencies. When to use "run paragraph on", etc. Some of my rules seem to need it, others don't. Trial and error is the only reliable solution.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1518&start=10#p10021
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Passing variables from Parchment/i7 to JavaScript and ba
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-10-27 12:16:40

In order of priority, the things I would personally like to see finished are:

[list]Dannii's thesis (and mine for that matter... wow, is it already almost [i]November[/i]?!?)[/list:u]
[list]Data from Parchment to Javascript. (For ideal laziness, preferably in form of code I can copy and paste into my I7 project file and code I can copy and paste into one of the parchment js files.)[/list:u]
[list]Glulx support for the above (current project will probably fit in the z-machine)[/list:u]
[list]Data from JavaScript to Parchment/Quixe (current project doesn't need this, but quite probably the next one will)[/list:u]
[list]The glorious return of the text adventure to the critical and commercial spotlight. Zarf is on the cover of Newsweek, Emily wins a Nobel Peace Prize, and vaporware gets a Porsche.[/list:u]

On the I6 assembly front, I'm fine with writing my own I7 wrappers and integrating them into my project and all that-- it's just the writing the I6 assembly part myself I'd like to avoid.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1589&start=0#p10022
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6F95
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-27 12:28:11

Laroquod: You might be running into problem with the IDE handling line breaks (Unix vs DOS style). I had that trouble when pasting back and forth, a couple of years ago. I thought it had been fixed, but I haven't investigated it recently.

Try looking at the story.ni file in TextWrangler (or some other editor) and deleting any spare ctrl-Ms that might have worked in.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1597&start=0#p10023
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rewriting the can't take people's possessions rule
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-27 12:36:30

[quote]First of all, what does the "not-counting-parts holder" mean? Does that mean if the holder is a part then we walk up the tree to the owner of the part?[/quote]

Basically right. 

Looking at the code, I see it's a little more complicated. It does a part-walk on the object, finds the parent, and then does a part-walk on *that*. So if you have a drawer which is part of a desk, and inside the drawer is a pencil, and an eraser is part of the pencil... then the desk is the not-counting-parts holder of the eraser.

The last line is meaningful because it's inside a while loop. That loop walks up the tree *using the not-counting-parts operator* until it reaches a person (or the room). It exits when it finds a person, but if not, it jumps another level outward and tries again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=40#p10024
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: wfryers / DateTime: 2010-10-27 13:16:04

Part 3 – the vagaries of story space.

It works out that our notions of space and how to navigate it are heavily biased by our culture.  I live in the States.  Within cities, we tend to name and number streets as we do blocks and buildings. So locations are usually given as 123 Sesame Street. While this rule is not universal, it is nearly so.  

By way of contrast, it is my understanding that in Japan streets are not named nor numbered.  It is blocks which are identified.  The number a building has on the block depends on the order it was built. That makes number 1 on the block the first building built.  Number 5 is the fifth.  So number 1 on a block can have number 15 on one side and number 3 on the other. All the while,  number 2 hides on the opposite side of the block. 

The problem gets more interesting when we start talking about how people remember real space.  Very few people know the map of an entire city by heart.  Most of us only know those parts we routinely travel.  Few of us know what lies even two blocks from our routine route to and from work.  

Likewise, we tend to ignore street names and numbers.  Rather we use landmarks.  We tell our friends the location of a new restaurant not by its street address but by being in a particular shopping plaza.  Unless you live in the country, you also tend to ignore compass direction. Like the song says … New York, New York what a wonderful town the east side's up and the battery's down ….

On the other hand, the starting point for story space is the mental model of a board game.  So story space corresponds to the game board.  The game board is divided into a bunch of places we usually call squares.  It is handy that the squares cover all of the game space and don't over lap.  (You're right, they don't have to be squares.  Any regular tessellation will do.  Oh heck, any irregular tessellation will work too.)  

We don't have to stay in two dimensions, we could jump to three or more.  Now we expect the  “square” packs without leaving gaps or over lapping.  Not to go completely crazy, we tend to stick to squares and cubes.  They are simple and obey our needs.  

Game squares carry the idea of adjacency.  A square touches (is touched by) other squares which are thought of as adjacent to the first square.  Here story space takes its first step away from real space.  If we wanted to map real space, we would overlay a grid of squares.  We would then fill in the details for each square.  Eventually each square in the grid will be described.  In story space we only create accessible squares. These are the ones needed to tell the story.  There are no unmapped squares.  

Thus story space can represent the set of all possible routes or all possible places.  For example, the story space for a cave ignores the parts of the underground rock in which there are no passages.   Thereby it represents routes or paths.  By contrast a large open field might be represented through a three by three grid.  Here there is no constraint on path, but there is a constraint on possible place.   

Story space takes a further departure from real space because it is rubbery.  One might think that story space should map to a fixed amount of real space.  Thus all squares are the same size.  We know that is not true.  We can have a location – the open sea.  It can be represented by a single square.  We can have a location – the garden.  It can be represented by three squares.   

To a story teller the notion of rubbery space is perfectly natural.  If we need the open sea as part of the story, we include it.  If nothing important to the plot occurs on the open sea, it is given passing mention.  On the other hand the story may call for three scenes in different places within the garden.  Here we need three squares to tell the story.  Thus story space is driven by plot and not geometry.

I am sitting in a room writing my reply.  I can look through an arch into the next room.  I can see some of the next room and its contents. I can also see through a doorway in the other room to the room beyond it.  I am next to a window which lets me see onto a stone patio and beyond to the garden.  Right now, story space only lets me see what it is in the square I occupy.  

We have learned to overcome the visibility limitations of story space by following some conventions.  For example a room description might read – You are standing in a neatly manicured lawn ringed by tidy flower beds. You are bathed in the lazy drone of bees tending to their work. The garden path pushes to the east through a pergola drowning in scarlet clematis.  The path beckons from the garden beyond.  

The point is story space doesn't behave much like real space at all.  I don't have any serious problems with I7 rooms and associated things like scenery.  The room metaphor has been with IF since the beginning.  I think it faces challenges as story tellers move to using plot to drive things. 

To me the game board metaphor is in taters.  The room metaphor may not be much better off. It feels like things have been added piecemeal to address weaknesses in the room metaphor.  Perhaps it is time to pull all of the story space ideas together to develop a coherent mental model.  Whichever story space metaphor you embrace, it is like one of those baseball batting records with an asterisk after it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1597&start=0#p10025
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rewriting the can't take people's possessions rule
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-10-27 13:22:54

[quote="capmikee"]Second, what the heck does the last line of this rule do? The library message has already been printed and H is about to go out of scope. (right?)[/quote]

I don't think so; it's not under the scope of "if H is a person," only under the "while" loop. "If H is a person" the action stops, which I think means the whole rule stops -- if you hit "stop the action" in a check rule it stops running the check rule. (I only say that because I know the loop should terminate there.) So the last line triggers when H is not a person, and resets H to whatever the not-counting-parts holder of the old H is; then, since you've hit the end of the "while" block, it starts over again, with the new H. So the last line is the mechanism for jumping you out another level, as zarf put it.

(Is that right?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1597&start=0#p10026
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rewriting the can't take people's possessions rule
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-27 13:29:35

Yet again, I was missing the obvious. Now back to the rant...

This looks like a situation where it would be nice to have some sort of callback mechanism - we want to keep this rule, but just modify the second-to-last line. We might change it to "Follow the possessiveness rules for H", or something like that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1596&start=0#p10027
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Better understand
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-10-27 13:39:00

Understand your note about "with [something]" as opposed to "with [hammer]" bad example perhaps. 

A better example would be "light/set [something] on fire" and "burn [something]" and "set fire to [something]" with the possible "with lighter" preposition, perhaps. 
(The game is one-room, so only has one possible thing to burn something with. A longer game might warrant a seperate "burning with" action just for multiple sources of fire.)

[quote]
>BURN ROPE WITH LIGHTER
I only understood you as far as wanting to burn the rope.

>SET FIRE TO ROPE
You burn the rope away.

>SET FIRE TO DIARY WITH LIGHTER
I only understood you as far as wanting to set fire to the diary.
[/quote]


Anyway, I tried "Understand the command 'burn' as burning" but I got an error on complile. I'm not in front of my inform right now, but it was something along the lines of understand not being able to be used in this fasion. 

It let me put
UNDERSTAND THE COMMAND "hit" as something new.
but not
UNDERSTAND THE COMMAND "hit" as smashing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1596&start=0#p10028
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Better understand
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-10-27 13:48:14

What about a command such as 

[code]
Smashing is an action applying to one thing.
Understand "Smash [something] [text]" as smashing
[/code]


This would allow for:
[quote]
>Smash mirror
>Smash mirror with hammer
>Smash mirror with fist
>Smash ball against wall
[/quote]

or similarly with burn
[quote]
>light diary
>light diary on fire
>light diary on fire with lighter
>light diary with lighter
>light diary with Bic
>light diary aflame with lighter
[/quote]

Is there a downside to coding this way? It seems like otherwise we have to make a ridiculous amount of possible inputs for the same action, and possibly seperate actions (burning, burning it with) all with seperate synonyms for something that only MIGHT come up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1596&start=0#p10029
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Better understand
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-10-27 13:49:15

That's because you're not using quite the right grammar. 

Understand the command "break" as "attack".

says that the *word* "break" is being assigned to have the same meanings as the *word* "attack". This is how we establish synonyms, and it will mean that "break" and "attack" are interchangeable to Inform. If you have ten different actions that all start with "attack" -- say "attack man with gun" is shooting, "attack man with axe" is hacking, "attack man with sword" is slashing, and so on -- then for every one of those cases, "break" would be usable in the same place. So you'd immediately get "break man with axe" also to mean hacking, "break man with sword" also to mean slashing, and "break man with gun" also to mean shooting. (Never mind that that is not something that would occur to most English speakers to type; the example is valid from a code perspective.)

This thing of setting up synonyms is a different operation from

Understand "break [something]" as attacking.

...which is instead setting up an action. (Notice "Understand" for actions vs "Understand the command" for synonyms.) 

If you set up the action, then "break man" means attacking him, but "break man with gun" will be unrecognized even though "attack man with gun" is still understood.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1596&start=0#p10030
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Better understand
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-10-27 13:50:31

Ah, thank you! I see what I was doing wrong now! This could spare many lines of code! Thank you again! [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=40#p10031
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-27 13:54:30

[quote="wfryers"]To me the game board metaphor is in taters.  The room metaphor may not be much better off. It feels like things have been added piecemeal to address weaknesses in the room metaphor.  Perhaps it is time to pull all of the story space ideas together to develop a coherent mental model.  Whichever story space metaphor you embrace, it is like one of those baseball batting records with an asterisk after it.[/quote]
It would be very interesting to see what kind alternatives you come up with.

For now, it seems like most games separate spaces by the limits of perception, not necessarily of movement. Good games seem to avoid situations where that would be awkward - a choice of design rather than a feature of coding. For cases where there are dramatic differences between the two (or between the limits of different senses), I think I7 has some extensions and TADS has some built-in capability.

It's easy enough to write a far-off view into a room description. I've come to notice how such a simple trick can do wonders for the illusion of space in a game. The extended capability is only needed when the player has to make out changing details in the distance. And that capability has been around for a long time. Deadline, Infocom's first non-Zork game, had it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1584&start=0#p10032
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Asking for game recommendations
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-10-27 14:00:01

I know some games were styled to be like classic infocom games.

Games with the Zork Style of Writing Include: (or specific zork parodies)
Janitor
Enlightenment
Zork, a troll's-eye view

Puzzle Games similar to old Infocom (maybe in mechanics if not in style) include:
The Tiny House - includes a similar spellcasting system to enchanter and the walk around and use items to solve puzzles approach
So Far - has it's own writing style, but includes the wander around and gather items to use
Bronze - Beauty and the Beast, with puzzle solving and exploation mechanics.
Forbidden Castle- an older game ('84 I think), with some puzzles and NPC interaction that at least reminds ME of infocom games.
Zero Sum Game/(Janitor again) - similarly themed games involving basically playing an adventure game backwards

Of course Adventure is similar (though it predates infocom). 

Just to name a few.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1596&start=0#p10033
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Better understand
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-10-27 14:01:49

[quote="tggdan3"]Is there a downside to coding this way? It seems like otherwise we have to make a ridiculous amount of possible inputs for the same action, and possibly seperate actions (burning, burning it with) all with seperate synonyms for something that only MIGHT come up.[/quote]

Yes: the parser will give less accurate feedback to the player about what it's looking for as a correct command, and the player will get nonsensical responses to input like SMASH BOX ON LISA'S HEAD, in which poor Lisa will be reported as completely unphased by the experience.

As a rule, it's considered a bad idea to have the parser pretend to understand things it doesn't, because it muddies the water for the player about what is possible to communicate to this game and what isn't.

There's a fairly extensive discussion of the design of commands -- in particular, ones that might take multiple inputs or might handle them in different ways -- in the Recipe Book here: <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rdoc29.html">http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rdoc29.html</a> and the following page. 

If you do want to be able to accept a wide variety of nonsense add-ons to sentences, have a look at Smarter Parser by Aaron Reed. It's designed to notice when the player's typed something that is too much information, *tell the player* what it's discarding from the command, then retry the command in this revised form. Makes a huge difference to helping the player understand what he's doing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1597&start=0#p10034
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rewriting the can't take people's possessions rule
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-27 14:08:05

True, a customization hook there would be nice. However, the model for setting it would take some work, Maybe you set up a global variable somewhere, or make it a property of the rule in some sense. (Or you have a full "every line of code is a rulebook" model, but we're not there yet...)

On the third hand, it's only a half-dozen lines of code to replace.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1596&start=0#p10035
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Better understand
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-10-27 14:35:52

[quote]Understand "Smash [something] [text]" as smashing[/quote]

This is definitely a trap, particularly if the player uses "with"--in your burning example, it would allow BURN DIARY WITH LIGHTER, but it would consider BURN DIARY WITH WATERMELON to be equally valid.

As I recall, there's a way to omit the second noun of a two-noun phrase and allow the parser to assume what it is--particularly useful when there's only one possible second noun--so that the default could be

[code]Understand "Burn [something] with [something] as burning"[/code]

But it would also accept

[code]"Burn [something]"[/code]

With the second noun assumed to be the lighter.  I don't remember the syntax of how to do this, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1597&start=0#p10036
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rewriting the can't take people's possessions rule
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-10-27 14:50:16

[quote="capmikee"]This looks like a situation where it would be nice to have some sort of callback mechanism - we want to keep this rule, but just modify the second-to-last line. We might change it to "Follow the possessiveness rules for H", or something like that.[/quote]

I haven't thought about this particular example enough to offer a thought as to whether passing H to a parametrized rulebook is enough, or if Zarf is right that you'd also need a global variable, but I did want to comment more generally that this falls within the realm of things you can do now. I actually mean that in two senses:

One: You can replace the can't take people's possessions rule in your story file without doing any direct hacking of the library.

Two: Since the rules can so easily be replaced (and phrases even more easily), there's no *real* need for this enhancement (or other instances you've mentioned) to be incorporated into the standard library. How about compiling an extension that acts as a grab-bag of such tweaks, providing appropriate default behavior, etc., and share it with the community? There's no reason why'd you have to write such an extension strictly by yourself. You could put it up on google code and invite collaborators. (Or are there wiki code-sharing sites? That might be even more congenial, since it would lower the barrier to entry for collaborators.) 

Changes to the Standard Rules on this scale are more likely to happen if they are well tested, and if the alternative implementation gained enough support among users, it would probably have a very good chance of being incorporated into the main library. (Like a fork merging with the main branch in an open source project, I suppose.)

Just some thoughts, since you seem to feel fairly strongly about making areas of the library more accessible to author intervention. 

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1596&start=0#p10037
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Better understand
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-10-27 14:57:50

[quote="katz"][quote]Understand "Smash [something] [text]" as smashing[/quote]

This is definitely a trap, particularly if the player uses "with"--in your burning example, it would allow BURN DIARY WITH LIGHTER, but it would consider BURN DIARY WITH WATERMELON to be equally valid.[/quote]

And BURN DIARY WITH FELONIOUS WATERMELON AND WANTON ABANDON NOT THINKING OF THE CONSEQUENCES AND LOVING EVERY MINUTE OF IT would also be accepted. But while it's a trap, it's a potentially very useful one, when used properly. [Moving off topic:]That's because you can recursively continue to parse the text part of the token, meaning that, with a little work, you can get around Inform's limitations on how many nouns (two) and values (just one) can be included in a given line of input. I believe there are some discussions on here and maybe on rec.arts.int-fiction that touch on this little technique if anyone's interested.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1596&start=0#p10038
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Better understand
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-10-27 14:58:32

[quote="ektemple"][quote="katz"][quote]Understand "Smash [something] [text]" as smashing[/quote]

This is definitely a trap, particularly if the player uses "with"--in your burning example, it would allow BURN DIARY WITH LIGHTER, but it would consider BURN DIARY WITH WATERMELON to be equally valid.[/quote]

And BURN DIARY WITH FELONIOUS WATERMELON AND WANTON ABANDON NOT THINKING OF THE CONSEQUENCES AND LOVING EVERY MINUTE OF IT would also be accepted. But while it's a trap, it's a potentially very useful one, when used properly. [Moving off topic:]That's because you can recursively continue to parse the text part of the token, meaning that, with a little work, you can get around Inform's limitations on how many nouns (two) and values (just one) can be included in a given line of input. I believe there are some discussions on here and maybe on rec.arts.int-fiction that touch on this little technique if anyone's interested.

--Erik[/quote]

Yeah, but that's pretty explicitly not what the original poster wants to do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1596&start=10#p10039
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Better understand
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-10-27 14:59:36

[quote="emshort"]Yeah, but that's pretty explicitly not what the original poster wants to do.[/quote]

Yeah, that's why I wrote "moving off topic" before describing it...  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1596&start=10#p10040
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Better understand
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-10-27 15:44:23

I definately see the issues with including "[text]" as part of the parser (such as lighting the diary with the watermelon). 

I guess, where's the limit? Certainly the player can't expect the parser to behave like a person, so what's MORE bothersome: having the parser not understand a simple command (Set diary on fire with lighter), or having it simplify a complicated command (set diary on fire with lighter so bobby can see how cool I am, but not so Timmy can see if I can avoid it).

[quote]
>BURN DIARY WITH WATERMELON
You set fire to the diary with the lighter, and watch it burn away.
[/quote]

While this is confusing, I suppose it's better than

[quote]
>SET DIARY ON FIRE WITH THE LIGHTER
That's not a verb I recognise. 
[/quote]

Or maybe it isn't- that's up to debate I suppose.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=50#p10041
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-10-27 15:52:36

The problem is that it's a *sometimes* thing.

Sometimes you want them to be seperate. Sometimes you want them to be the same.
Just like READ and EXAMINE.

[quote]
>EXAMINE SIGN
It's a golden plaque.

>READ SIGN
"WARNING: BEARS"
[/quote]

Surely these can be combined. However, in some games the description of a particular type of book may be as relevant as the information on the pages, or more so.

Likewise with search and examine.

[quote]
>EXAMINE GNOME
The sleeping gnome blocks the closed guard rail.

>SEARCH GNOME
Sifting thruogh his pockets you find the zorkmid you just gave him and pocket it.
[/quote]

Here there's a reason for seperate commands. 

When it comes down to sometimes, it seems like it's up to the programmer to decide what's important and implement it that way.

[quote]
>EXAMINE BOX
It's an intricate puzzle box with some writing on it. The puzzle appears to have already been solved, as you can open it.

>READ BOX
"Thy will surely meet a quick demise, if thou are the kind that pries."

>SEARCH BOX
You open the box and find that the warning on it holds true: Hope itself escapes the box and flutters off into the sky, lost for all mankind. 

***You Blew It***
Would you like to UNDO, RESTART, or RESTORE?
[/quote]

In some cases, it's better to keep them seperate.

Perhaps a solution would be:

[code]
Investigating is an action applying to one thing. 

Carry out investigating:
   try examing the noun;
   try searching the noun;
   try looking under the noun;
   try looking behind the noun;
   try touching the noun;
   try rubbing the noun;
[/code]

and so forth for thorough investigations.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1597&start=0#p10042
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rewriting the can't take people's possessions rule
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-27 15:55:11

I'm flattered by the suggestion!

I'll consider it, but so far I think my thoughts are only organized far enough to propose a bunch of random ideas on this forum. As Andrew said, this particular case is probably best handled by replacing the existing six lines.

I've imagined that most authors will end up developing bits of generalized code when they create a new game, and the more organized ones (like perhaps Emily Short and Aaron Reed) will factor those out into extensions for everyone to share. Right now all this stuff is jumbled up in the rest of my WIP and I don't know yet how applicable most of it will be, or how it compares to other extensions that do similar things.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=50#p10043
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-10-27 15:57:49

BTW- If you think search is awkward, you should have played Forbidden Castle

You had to EXAMINE RING
and EXAMINE RING CAREFULLY.

Without the CAREFULLY when you examined objects, you would miss the magic word inscribed on them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1596&start=10#p10044
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Better understand
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-10-27 16:06:50

I think the latter is better because it is far less likely to result in you accidentally doing something you didn't want to do.  For example, if you said BURN TIMMY WITH WITTY RETORT, you wouldn't want the parser to actually light him on fire.  (Or perhaps LIGHT DRAPES UP WITH FLASHLIGHT might be a better example--you're trying to illuminate them, not burn them.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1596&start=10#p10045
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Better understand
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-10-27 16:18:48

Good point.

I suppose it's all context-sensitive. A world with no NPCs and no need for light vs darkness may have less of an issue with this than a large world with those things.

Likewise "TELL FRANK I HATE HIM" and "TELL FRANK I DON'T HATE HIM" can cause problems for the text searching parser.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1596&start=10#p10046
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Better understand
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-10-27 16:30:02

[quote="tggdan3"]
[quote]
>BURN DIARY WITH WATERMELON
You set fire to the diary with the lighter, and watch it burn away.
[/quote]

While this is confusing, I suppose it's better than

[quote]
>SET DIARY ON FIRE WITH THE LIGHTER
That's not a verb I recognise. 
[/quote]

Or maybe it isn't- that's up to debate I suppose.[/quote]

Other folks have already answered why leapfrogging the parser is a bad idea in general, and why this in particular is a bad way to do it.   

It's also important to note that the two examples you've opposed don't accurately depict the tradeoff. Inform can already understand both "set dairy on fire with lighter" and "set dairy on fire" (supplying a second noun) perfectly well, without "that's not a verb I recognize" errors or parser hacks. Here's example code:


[code]
The Kitchen is a room.

The match is a lit thing in the Kitchen. The bundle is in the Kitchen.

Flaming it with is an action applying to two things. Understand "set [something] on fire with [something preferably held]" or "set [something] on fire" as flaming it with.

Rule for supplying a missing second noun while flaming:
	if the player can see a lit thing:
		now the second noun is a random lit thing that can be seen by the player;
	otherwise if the player is carrying something:
		now the second noun is a random thing carried by the player;
	otherwise if the player can see something:
		now the second noun is a random thing that can be seen by the player;
	say "(with [the second noun])".

Check flaming something with:
	if the second noun is not lit:
		say "[The second noun] can't be used to set anything on fire.";
		rule fails;
	if the noun is the second noun:
		say "You can't set something on fire with itself!";
		rule fails.
		
Carry out flaming something with:
	say "[The noun] goes up in flames and is soon consumed.";
	remove the noun from play.[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1589&start=0#p10047
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6F95
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-27 16:31:56

Thanks, I just checked that out, but my story.ni files all still have proper UNIX line breaks, which is what the IDE uses when I create a new project. While testing what the IDE actually does use I also noticed that a brand new project still loses all its tab stops when reopened even when the source has been untouched by TextWrangler — I guess that was a red herring, sorry. So I experimented with reverting my changed tab preferences in the IDE, instead.

What I discovered is that the 'indent wrapped lines' preference (which I prefer to keep off) seems also to govern whether or not tab stops are respected (wrapped or not) when re-opening a project. Turn this off and even your manual tab stops will seem to disappear on relaunch. I say 'seem' because the tabs are all still in there (they're in that story.ni file — I checked), so it makes sense that 'cutting all' and then 'pasting all' reasserts them.

Anyway, it's no biggie. But this behaviour's been around at least two builds back. Not sure before that.

Paul.

EDIT: In case it ends up making a difference to anyone interested in replicating the bug, I had also shortened my standard tab distance to maybe half of what it was by default.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1597&start=0#p10048
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rewriting the can't take people's possessions rule
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-10-27 16:34:40

If I may offer a more modest suggestion, then:

Create an extension called "My Reusable Code" and drop your replaced 6 lines into it. The next time you do something that you think you might want to use again, do the same. Before too long, you may have a starting place for something more formal!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1597&start=0#p10049
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rewriting the can't take people's possessions rule
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-27 16:59:32

Speaking of which, I hacked up a list of replacement rules for the Rideable Vehicles extension to get it to cooperate with the Custom Library Messages extension. As suggested above I was thinking of offering my adjustments up to the community, but decided to wait since not having experimented yet beyond a single compile with any past tense or pluralised PCs, I can't be positive it will work in all cases. (I tried to preserve all the flexibility of CLM, but not sure I fully understand that flexibility — it's a complicated extension. I've only [i]really[/i] tested rideable vehicles in the third person singular present tense.)

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1596&start=10#p10051
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Better understand
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-10-27 18:35:12

Why can I never make that syntax work?
For instance, it won't accept either of the latter:

[code]Understand "look up [text]" as consulting about.

Understand "exercise" as using the exercise machine.[/code]

The latter I could get around with "understand 'exercise' as using," but that's a recipe for really odd results.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1594&start=0#p10054
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Comments in Extension Examples
User: eu / DateTime: 2010-10-27 19:04:40

WI 25.10 says:

Note that text in square brackets should be avoided in the documentation, because that's taken as being comment matter on the extension, and omitted.

You could suggest a different behavior at uservoice though.

[i]Edit: removed stray space[/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1589&start=0#p10055
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6F95
User: eu / DateTime: 2010-10-27 19:09:16

That bug is now in Mantis: <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=361">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=361</a>.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1599&start=0#p10056
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Names of things that use 'and'
User: bovorasr / DateTime: 2010-10-27 19:15:30

Hi! I've tried just searching for the answer to this, but searching has been difficult because my query either involves the word "and" or is too generic to get any good results...

My question: How can I name a thing that has the word 'and' and the name? Inform seems to get confused, thinking I'm speaking in both the singular and plural at the same time.

For example, I want to make a bookshelf called the 'math and science bookshelf.'

If I say:

"
The math and science bookshelf is a thing.

The math and science bookshelf is in the living room. The description of the math and science bookshelf is "xyz."
"

I get:

[code]
This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6E72) on its most recent run through: 

In Chapter - A, Section - Bookshelves: 

Problem. You wrote 'The description of the math and science bookshelf is "xyz."'  : but this seems to say that a thing is a value, like saying 'the chair is 10'. 
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1599&start=0#p10057
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Names of things that use 'and'
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-10-27 19:29:59

Use "printed name", like so:

[code]The first bookshelf is a thing.  The first bookshelf has the printed name "math and science bookshelf."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1599&start=0#p10058
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Names of things that use 'and'
User: bovorasr / DateTime: 2010-10-27 19:57:57

Thanks much. 

You'd be surprised at how hard that is to find if you aren't that familiar with the language, i.e., if you don't know what to search for (again, because of the 'and').

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1518&start=10#p10059
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Passing variables from Parchment/i7 to JavaScript and ba
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-10-27 20:20:01

What kind of data? Would it work if the zcode just sent a string of code to execute directly?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1596&start=10#p10060
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Better understand
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-10-27 20:22:47

[quote="katz"][code]Understand "look up [text]" as consulting about.

Understand "exercise" as using the exercise machine.[/code]

I think the first just needs the "it":  consulting it about. 

The second is a suggestion at the suggestions forum, but you can make a quickie version using[code]
To say try (act - an action): (- {act}; -).

Understand "exercise" as a mistake ("[run paragraph on][try using the exercise machine][run paragraph on]").
[/code]

You might also do the first in a likewise matter as the second if that isn't working for you. 

Also, I saw a question of yours katz on the RSS feed but can't find the post to answer:  the shipped-with extension Plurality does the pronoun thing you asked about.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1596&start=10#p10061
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Better understand
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-10-27 21:00:48

[quote="Ron Newcomb"][quote="katz"][code]Understand "look up [text]" as consulting about.

Understand "exercise" as using the exercise machine.[/code]

I think the first just needs the "it":  consulting it about.[/quote][/quote]

Unfortunately, this seems to be a bug (or at least a design oversight). It ought to work, obviously, but Inform doesn't seem to consider that the noun might be supplied separately; instead it throws the message:

[quote]The grammar you give in 'Understand "look up [text]" as consulting it about'   is not compatible with the Consulting it about action (defined as 'applying to one thing and one topic') - the thing you suggest this action should act on is not an object at all.[/quote]

I suspect that the order of declaration in the original grammar line is significant somehow. The hack that Ron mentioned is probably the best way to do this.

Katz's second failed example would make a nice shortcut for this (as does Ron's hackier example), but the canonical way to do it is with a "rule for supplying a missing noun while using", as in the example I posted:

[code]Understand "exercise" as using [or whatever the full name of the action is].

Rule for supplying a missing noun while using:
      if the player can see the exercise machine:
             now the noun is the exercise machine;
             say "(using the exercise machine)";[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1594&start=0#p10062
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Comments in Extension Examples
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-10-27 21:02:30

There's a related request at uservoice already:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/849631-extensions-revise-extension-example-presentation">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... esentation</a>

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1596&start=10#p10063
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Better understand
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-10-27 21:42:48

[quote]Rule for supplying a missing noun while using:
      if the player can see the exercise machine:
             now the noun is the exercise machine;
             say "(using the exercise machine)";[/quote]

There are two main problems with this.

First, if there is anything else usable in the room with the exercise machine, that's a problem.

Second, whenever the exercise machine isn't present, it will respond to "exercise" by trying to use something else and either deliver an odd response or actually use the wrong object (presumably that won't be the only clarification I want to write for the "use" verb).

Of course I can use "Understand 'exercise' as a mistake", but one tries not to do that when the player's meaning is perfectly clear.

So is there a way around the "consult" problem?  This is actually a serious problem, because of all the ways I would try to look something up in a book, "consult X about Y" (or any syntax that actually involves the name of the book) would be very far down indeed.

Ron:  Figured that out myself about 1.5 seconds after posting that, hence why I deleted it.  Curse RSS feeds!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1594&start=0#p10064
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Comments in Extension Examples
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-10-27 21:47:02

Yeah, this bugged me too when I wrote a couple of extensions. It seems quite arbitrary for them to have done it this way, as well as a bit annoying for extension authors.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1596&start=10#p10065
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Better understand
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-10-27 22:03:57

[quote="katz"][quote]Rule for supplying a missing noun while using:
      if the player can see the exercise machine:
             now the noun is the exercise machine;
             say "(using the exercise machine)";[/quote]

There are two main problems with this.

First, if there is anything else usable in the room with the exercise machine, that's a problem.

Second, whenever the exercise machine isn't present, it will respond to "exercise" by trying to use something else and either deliver an odd response or actually use the wrong object (presumably that won't be the only clarification I want to write for the "use" verb).[/quote]

I was really just showing you how to use the syntax, since I assumed that was why you replied to my post. I wasn't trying to demonstrate the optimal implementation of exercise as a special case of a use action  [emote]:)[/emote] . The effect you're looking for is best handled by a second "exercise" command that maps to using the exercise machine when the player is near it, and prints a default message when the player isn't. (You could also do that with two "understand as a mistake" lines, or one that contains a conditional.)

[quote="katz"]So is there a way around the "consult" problem?  This is actually a serious problem, because of all the ways I would try to look something up in a book, "consult X about Y" (or any syntax that actually involves the name of the book) would be very far down indeed.[/quote]
Ron and I both mentioned that the "understand as a mistake" hack would work. A second action that remaps to consulting would also work.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1599&start=0#p10066
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Names of things that use 'and'
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-10-27 22:04:18

No.  No, I would not be surprised.  Half my posts here are looking for things like that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1596&start=20#p10067
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Better understand
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-27 22:30:00

[quote="ektemple"][quote]The grammar you give in 'Understand "look up [text]" as consulting it about'   is not compatible with the Consulting it about action (defined as 'applying to one thing and one topic') - the thing you suggest this action should act on is not an object at all.[/quote]

I suspect that the order of declaration in the original grammar line is significant somehow. The hack that Ron mentioned is probably the best way to do this.[/quote]
I've had exactly this problem before. It's something to do with a verb that takes a topic as the second noun - reversing the nouns doesn't work so well, especially if the first noun isn't given. Whoever I was talking to about it told me that it was quite complicated to explain, so I don't know the details, but I can imagine.

I ended up creating several different verbs, including one that takes a topic as a single object, then guesses what the other noun should be and redirects the action using a "try" in a check or carry out rule. It was a big pain.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1591&start=0#p10068
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I'm updating the I7 Programmer's Manual. Any requests?
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2010-10-27 22:46:01

i think the part about Kind Variables (21.7) is not clear enough. I think it should explicitly state that 
"* of kind K" symbolizes the parameter on which other parameters depend (eg, list of Ks).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1589&start=0#p10069
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6F95
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-27 22:56:11

Sounds like they [i]could[/i] be related… thanks for adding my note under it. Looks possible to put my own bug reports in, and it's been tempting, but I'm still noob enough at the IDE that I'd want to check my bug suspicions in here, first, anyway, to avoid generating spurious reports.

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1588&start=0#p10070
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tiny examples
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2010-10-27 23:32:34

[quote="Eleas"]Damn. *low whistle* Phonatacid, after reading it through a while I can see how useful that code is (and Ron's too, but his was short enough for my reptilian brain to grasp in one go). Neophyte as I am, however, I still don't quite see what's meant by the "decide on" statement.  [emote]:oops:[/emote]

The last one, predictably, stumps me entirely.[/quote]

The purpose of the last "decide on" statement is to return the object passed as argument. If it weren't here, either the compiler would trigger an error  ("it seems this phrase should return a value, but I can't find the appropriate decide on statement") or would return 0;
But this kind of phrase:

[quote]
To test (O - object):
_______change the weight of 0 to 1kg;
[/quote]

is possible because object are passed as references. In other words the object that is treated by a routine is the same as the object treated by a subroutine of this routine.
It's not the same with block values (lists and indexed texts mainly) : those are copied before being passed to a routine/phrase. Thus

[quote]
To test (T - indexed text):
_______change T to "test";

When play begins:
_______let T be "abc";
_______test T;
_______say T;
[/quote]

wouldn't work : it'd produce "abc", not "test".




As for the second trick, it's just a way to cast an arithmetic value to another arithmetic value. I think i'm only using it for casting number values (lengths, times, etc...) to numbers. But it can be dangerous ; Let's consider you have a short time value specified by "1'0" ([second]'[decisecond]):
[quote]let x be 60'0 as a time[/quote]
wouldn't produce 00:01 as one would expect it. Actually 60'0 translates into I6 as a number -600- and 00:01 translates as 1. Consequently your 60 seconds (=600 deciseconds) would turn into 600 minutes. It's really a low-level phrase, and i'm not really sure why i'm using it.

But i have quite a few other useful phrases that i wrote thinking "wth man ? why is this not in the standard rules ?". They are dispersed throughout my I7 extension files, i might gather them one day, probably when I'm making the jump to 6F95 (i'm still waiting that jesse updates his Dynamic * extensions).

That dynamic property changing phrases should definitively be in the standard rules though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1529&start=0#p10071
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Fiction about Interactive Fiction
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-27 23:53:05

Funny thing about MS Paint Adventures. I've seen it before, since Ryan North talks about it a lot on his [url=http://twitter.com/ryanqnorth]hilarious Twitter[/url]. But though the elements involved just sound so perfectly suited to my tastes, it's kind of embarrassing that I keep having a tough time getting into it. I'm going to give it another chance. I think it might just be that I'm never sure how long the read is going to last (no progress bar or anything, and the scroll bar is not useful for that in MSPA), and I always checked it while I was trawling through tons of other webcomics. I followed hundreds of them at one point, and had to be pretty ruthless about open-ended reading commitments. I've got the list trimmed down pretty far, now, so I don't think I'll feel as constrained for time.

BTW I do a comic — it's not much of a webcomic, because I don't promise weekly or even monthly updates, but it's a free online photocomic and working on issue #2 is one of the things I've been doing. IF plays a role, along with a lot of other classic games, but IF specifically, plays a unique role in it that'll be expanded in issue 3 — thus my intensified interest lately in examples of Fic on IntFic. This is the [url=http://laroquodexperiment.com/hypo/00.3/#p24]spread (pages 24-25) where the main IF reference occurs[/url]. It's pretty spoiler-y about the first issue's storyline though, so if you're interested in avoiding that, start at [url=http://laroquodexperiment.com/hypo/00.1/]page one, here[/url].

Paul.

P.S. Thanks for the link. I suppose my trope falls into the 'incredibly easy to pull off' category mentioned therein, although I'm just using it for its own sake — my comic is not interactive nor even faux-interactive. But there are multiple ways to read it. 8)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1586&start=0#p10072
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parsing coordinates
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2010-10-28 00:01:41

here's a way i developped in order to parse numbers:
it works well, but as it strongly relies on regular expression, it shouldn't work well with large numbers.

[code]
When play begins:
	say "go";
	let X be "999999999" parsed as a number;
	increment X;
	showme X;

Part - Matchers

A matcher is a kind of thing.
It has some indexed text called the regex.
It has some indexed text called the original string.
It has some indexed text called the current string.
It has some indexed text called the current match.

The matcher prototype  is a matcher.
[After cloning a new object from a matcher:
	fix the cloned regex property;
	fix the cloned original string property;
	fix the cloned current string property;
	fix the cloned current match property;]

To feed (S - indexed text) to (M - matcher):
	change the original string of M to S;
	reset M;

To reset (M - matcher):
	change the current string of M to the original string of M;

To decide what indexed text is the next match/bite of/in/from (M - matcher):
	let window be some indexed text;
	[R = rigth cursor ; L = left cursor]
	repeat with R running from 1 to the number of characters in the original string of M:
		[say the character number R in the current string of M, "[line break]";]
		add the character number R in the current string of M to window;
		if window matches the regular expression (regex of M):
			while not (window exactly matches the regular expression (regex of M)):
				delete the first character of window;
			change the current match of M to window;
			delete the R first characters in the current string of M;
			break;
	decide on the current match of M;

To decide whether (M - matcher) matches:
	if the current string of M matches the regular expression (regex of M):
		decide yes;
	else:
		decide no;

Section - Parsing Numbers

The number parsing matcher is a matcher.
The regex of the number parsing matcher is "\d";

To decide what number is (T - indexed text) parsed as a/-- number:
	if T exactly matches the regular expression "(<-+>?)(\d+)":
		let S be the text matching subexpression 1;
		if S is "" or S is "+":
			let SC be 1;[Sign Coefficient]
		else if S is "-":
			let SC be -1;
		else:
			say "THERE IS SOME KIND OF PROBLEM IN SECTION - PARSING NUMBER OF ADVANCED TEXT MANIPULATION FOR 6E72";
		let RV be 0;
		let M be the number parsing matcher;
		feed the text matching subexpression 2 to M;
		while M matches:
			change RV to RV multiplied by 10;
			let N be the next match of M;
			let X be the digit corresponding to a textual digit of N in the Table of Parsed Digits;
			change RV to RV plus X;
		let RV be RV * SC;
		decide on RV;
	else:
		deliver parse error with T;

Table of Parsed Digits
textual digit (indexed text)	digit
"0"	0
"1"	1
"2"	2
"3"	3
"4"	4
"5"	5
"6"	6
"7"	7
"8"	8
"9"	9



To deliver parse error with (T - indexed text):
	say "[paragraph break][bold type]";
	say "ERROR: Parsing[line break][fixed letter spacing][T][bold type] does not seem to represent a number.";
	say "[roman type][paragraph break]";


Part - Deleting text from indexed texts TODO

Chapter - At the beginning

Section - Characters

To delete/remove/suppress the (N - number) first characters in/from/of (T - indexed text):
	(- {-allocate-storage:iterator}if( {N} > IT_BlobAccess({-pointer-to:T}, CHR_BLOB)) {-open-brace} print "error when deleting characters"; {-close-brace} else {-open-brace} for ((I7_ST_iterator-->{-counter:iterator})=1 : (I7_ST_iterator-->{-counter:iterator})<={N} : (I7_ST_iterator-->{-counter:iterator})++) {-open-brace:} IT_ReplaceBlob(CHR_BLOB, {-pointer-to:T}, 1, ""); {-close-brace} {-close-brace} -).

To delete/suppress/remove the first character in/from/of (T - indexed text):
	(- IT_ReplaceBlob(CHR_BLOB, {-pointer-to:T}, 1, ""); -).
	

Chapter - Adding indexed text to indexed text

Section - Default - appending after

To append/add (T - indexed text) after/to (target - indexed text):	
	(- BlkValueCast({-pointer-to:target}, INDEXED_TEXT_TY, TEXT_TY, ((+ concatenation +)-->1)({target}, {T}));  -).




Concatenation_A is some indexed text that varies.
Concatenation_B is some indexed text that varies.
To decide what text is the concatenation of (A - indexed text) and/with (B - indexed text) (this is concatenation):
	change concatenation_a to A;
	change concatenation_b to B;
	decide on "[concatenation_a][concatenation_b]";

[/code]

Also, if you add one more "9" to the indexed text i'm parsing in my When play begins phrase, it just goes banana and print some bizarre word without displaying any error.
And the matcher object is just an half-assed matcher in the style java. I created it because i wasn't able to see a way to match an unknown number of groups with inform's regex (but maybe, as i'm java-minded, i was just unable to see the obvious).



Another way for parsing numbers: use if/else statements for each digit.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1529&start=0#p10073
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Fiction about Interactive Fiction
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-10-28 01:27:22

[quote="Laroquod"]BTW I do a comic[/quote]

Nice! Reminds me of Argon Zark.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1586&start=0#p10074
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parsing coordinates
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-10-28 01:42:36

There's a considerably simpler number parsing routine in Vaporware's Guncho Mocup extension:

[code]To decide which number is numeric value of (T - indexed text):
	let S be 1;
	let L be the number of characters in T;
	if L is 0, decide on 0;
	let negated be false;
	if character number 1 in T is "-" begin;
		let negated be true;
		let S be 2;
	end if;
	let result be 0;
	repeat with N running from S to L begin;
		let C be character number N in T;
		let D be 0;
		if C is "1" begin; let D be 1; otherwise if C is "2"; let D be 2;
		otherwise if C is "3"; let D be 3; otherwise if C is "4"; let D be 4;
		otherwise if C is "5"; let D be 5; otherwise if C is "6"; let D be 6;
		otherwise if C is "7"; let D be 7; otherwise if C is "8"; let D be 8;
		otherwise if C is "9"; let D be 9; otherwise if C is "0"; let D be 0;
		otherwise; decide on 0; end if;
		let result be (result * 10) + D;
	end repeat;
	if negated is true, let result be 0 - result;
	decide on result.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1600&start=0#p10075
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Game Speed
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-10-28 01:46:05

It concerns me to use "every turn" and similar constructions because I worry about game speed.  Is lagging a significant problem with Inform games, and when does it tend to be a problem?  Does it matter what VM you are using?  (Mine is on Glulx right now.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1529&start=0#p10077
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Fiction about Interactive Fiction
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-10-28 07:32:49

[quote="Laroquod"]Funny thing about MS Paint Adventures. I've seen it before, since Ryan North talks about it a lot on his [url=http://twitter.com/ryanqnorth]hilarious Twitter[/url]. But though the elements involved just sound so perfectly suited to my tastes, it's kind of embarrassing that I keep having a tough time getting into it. I'm going to give it another chance. I think it might just be that I'm never sure how long the read is going to last (no progress bar or anything, and the scroll bar is not useful for that in MSPA), and I always checked it while I was trawling through tons of other webcomics. I followed hundreds of them at one point, and had to be pretty ruthless about open-ended reading commitments. I've got the list trimmed down pretty far, now, so I don't think I'll feel as constrained for time.[/quote]

Yeah, it's a pretty enormous time suck if you're just now getting into the archive. The first time I encountered it, which was during Problem Sleuth, I was like "doop de do, starts off kind of slow, hey this is pretty funny, ahahaha, wait why is it two in the morning?" And I wasn't close to caught up. But it actually doesn't take all that much time if you do a bit each day -- most of the individual updates don't take that long, and in theory you can stop whenever you want. "Open-ended reading commitment" is exactly the right description, though. Also, both the successful adventures (Jailbreak and Bard Quest are missable) do start off slow, though I find Homestuck's slow start a lot more amusing than Problem Sleuth's. 

Your comic looks cool -- it's open in a tab for when I have time to read it, which may not actually be when I get to work today. (People expect you to have something to say in lecture even when you've just graded a bunch of exams, it's totally not fair.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1591&start=0#p10081
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I'm updating the I7 Programmer's Manual. Any requests?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-10-28 08:51:53

Questions of this sort

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1600">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1600</a>

are asked so often, it would be nice if at least one of the manuals covered them. The Programmer's Manual seems like a natural fit.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1600&start=0#p10082
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Game Speed
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2010-10-28 09:00:50

I'm maybe not the best person to answer such a question as i've been developping since april/may, but I can share a few problems I encountered.
The game i'm making is based on real time. So basically, i haven't written anything concrete that would get displayed in the game but i've started adapting/extending the standard rules for handling a real time environement. I'm developping on Gluxl as well.


-My time engine is lagging after an half an hour. I don't really know why it is happening, i just decided to sort this out later, when i am able to play my game for more than half hour.
-Regular expressions: i've implemented a simple syntax so as to create and test what i call moods (list of numerical parameters) blablabla. It takes me around one second or two to create one of those objects (yep my syntax relies on regular expression. Neat heh ?). [emote]:([/emote]. The only workaround i found is to launch the game so that it builds them, then save the game. This way I can restore the game (and the dynamically created objects) when I begin a new game.
-Dynamic object creation (needs dynamic objects by jesse mcgrew).

[code]A zboub is a kind of thing.
The zbouba is a zboub.

When play begins:
	say "GO";
	repeat with N running from 1 to 5000:
		let A be a new object cloned from the zbouba;
	say "[line break]DONE";[/code]

compared to (java):

[code]import java.util.Calendar;

public class testJavaInform {

	public static void main (String [] args){
		System.out.println("GO !");
		
		Calendar now = Calendar.getInstance();
		Object[] container = new Object[5000];
		long before = now.getTimeInMillis();
		for (int i=0 ; i<5000 ; i++) {
			container[i] = new Object();
		}
		long after = now.getTimeInMillis();
		System.out.println("time to complete task = "+(after-before)+" ms");
		System.out.println("DONE !");
	}

}[/code]

I've launched the I7 code prior to writing the java version. It's still lagging (i'm even wondering if the game is frozen). Meanwhile, this is what the java code prints in the terminal:

[quote]
GO !
time to complete task = 0 ms
DONE !
[/quote]

and i7 doesn't seem to totally freeze, but seems to get slower and slower. Not to mention that my computer's fans are going bananas.
edit : i7 seems to have frozen on the 987th object (I think it might just be a matter of max_memory variable or something like this, but i'm wondering why i'm not getting any error message like an OutOfMemoryError).

-Input/output : I tried to make an extension for handling ascii animations. My goal was to create one big file containing all the frames instead of hardcoding them into the source code. It displayed around 1 frame per sec (less than 100*100 characters). And I tried different algorithms, all ended with this result. Maybe because my movie file was too long (a few KOs). 


But I can still get pretty good results (so far) : my system executes quite a lot of code every decisecond, and it still works fine. Of course I disconnected the turn system from the advance time rule (if I remember well) : A turn happens only when the player type something.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1592&start=0#p10083
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Connecting autogenerated rooms
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-28 09:50:48

[quote="Kiyi"]But using this method, I have to code that for every sensible verb, for every multi-part costume. Is there any way to just say something like this?:

"Carry out doing something (called verbing) with the witch costume:
repeat with cloth running through witchy:
silently try verbing cloth."[/quote]
Sounds like a job for AARP-Gnosis:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/learn/man/ex121.html#e121">http://inform7.com/learn/man/ex121.html#e121</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1600&start=0#p10084
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Game Speed
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-10-28 09:54:10

[quote="Phonatacid"]My time engine is lagging after an half an hour. I don't really know why it is happening, i just decided to sort this out later, when i am able to play my game for more than half hour.[/quote]

Glulx wasn't designed to keep perfect time, especially over long periods (see the spec). That said, it's possible this could be an interpreter issue. Zoom (Mac) and Gargoyle (cross-platform) have the highest resolution timers.


[quote="Phonatacid"]
[code]A zboub is a kind of thing.
The zbouba is a zboub.

When play begins:
	say "GO";
	repeat with N running from 1 to 5000:
		let A be a new object cloned from the zbouba;
	say "[line break]DONE";[/code]
[/quote]

I'm confused as to why you would do this with dynamic objects. If you know you need 5000 zboubs, just declare 5000 zboubs as standard objects. It really only makes sense to use Dynamic Objects (which don't have native support in I6/I7) when you *need* to create them on the fly.

[quote="Phonatacid"]I tried to make an extension for handling ascii animations. My goal was to create one big file containing all the frames instead of hardcoding them into the source code. It displayed around 1 frame per sec (less than 100*100 characters). And I tried different algorithms, all ended with this result. Maybe because my movie file was too long (a few KOs).[/quote]

That sounds slower than it really ought to be. The Glimmr Automap extension renders scaled png graphics from fairly large arrays (2000-3000 entries) much faster than that, converting from character codes along the way. Are you using indexed text? If so, you might want to consider using character codes instead, with a custom say statement, e.g.:

To say char-code (N - a number):
	(- print (char) {N}; -)

Another potential cause is that your interpreter doesn't print text very quickly. I'm not familiar with the kinds of speed that are attainable with text-grid windows, in case you're displaying the animation in a grid window. Finally, 10,000 "pixels" (100 x 100) is quite a lot, you might consider reducing the animation size.

More generally: Be sure to test all of these effects outside of the IDE. The IDE interpreters run quite a bit slower than their standalone counterparts.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1599&start=0#p10085
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Names of things that use 'and'
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-28 10:41:40

I have a question about the printed name of something. Is there a quick and easy way to make the printed name of something be Understood just as if you'd made it the real name?

For example:

[code]The little blue man is a man.[/code]
[code]little-blue-man is a man. He is privately-named. The printed name of little-blue-man is "little blue man".[/code]

In the second case, neither "little" nor "blue" nor even "man" works to refer to the man. ("Him" works, though.) Wouldn't it be nice to say something like "Understand the printed name of a thing as the public name of it"?

Short of that, is there documentation somewhere of exactly how a name is Understood, so one could duplicate it manually?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1588&start=0#p10086
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tiny examples
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-10-28 11:07:04

[quote="Eleas"]This is a simple way to convert the names of things into proper title case (applied in this case to rooms).[/quote]
This is a general comment, not specifically related to your example ... your example is just a handy hook to hang it on.

It strikes me that a lot of the things people are trying to do with I7 are in the nature of programming tricks. They have little or nothing to do with storytelling. With your example, if you want a room called "The Dark Side of the Force", why not just call it that and then move on?

The original conception or primary attraction of I7, it seems to me, was/is that it allows people who are not conversant with programming and don't [i]want [/i]to become conversant with programming to write interactive fiction. This is a laudable goal, and I7 accomplishes it in a fairly tidy way.

If you want to do tricks like putting ASCII animations on the screen in real time, creating huge collections of objects dynamically, performing floating-point calculations, or whatever -- why are you using Inform 7? Why not use a more suitable language?

This is more or less a real question. I'm not asking it rhetorically. Why are people jumping up and down on I7's pointed little head trying to make it do things other than provide a framework for telling stories?

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1594&start=0#p10087
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Comments in Extension Examples
User: Roger / DateTime: 2010-10-28 11:18:27

Thanks everyone -- I'll throw my vote in at uservoice and hope for the best.


Cheers,
Roger

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1601&start=0#p10088
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: arrow keys to select, as seen in Menus extension?
User: Morley / DateTime: 2010-10-28 11:30:20

I'd like to use a menu effect in the glulx/inform 7 project I'm working on, similar to the Menus extension.

I'm not looking for something that does everything menus does, though. I don't want to change the status line or nest menus as in a help/hints system, and I'm comfortable enough rolling my own  logic for what options appear and what they trigger.

I'm just looking for the arrow-keys-to-select-menu-item effect. I assume it's just a matter of drawing the menu with one thing highlighted and then redrawing with the next thing highlighted if someone hits the down key, but I can't quite figure out how that's done, even looking at the code for menus. 

I'd be grateful if anyone can point me in the right direction.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1592&start=0#p10089
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Connecting autogenerated rooms
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-10-28 11:56:10

[quote="Kiyi"]But using this method, I have to code that for every sensible verb, for every multi-part costume. Is there any way to just say something like this?:

"Carry out doing something (called verbing) with the witch costume:
repeat with cloth running through witchy:
silently try verbing cloth."[/quote]

The extension Editable Stored Actions is sometimes useful here, as is the built-in "the current action".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1599&start=0#p10090
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Names of things that use 'and'
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-10-28 11:57:37

Just [code]
Understand "little" or "blue" or "man" as the little-blue-man.[/code]

[quote]Wouldn't it be nice to say something like "Understand the printed name of a thing as the public name of it"?[/quote]

Well, yeah.  Inform works that way by default.   Don't use "privately-named".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1588&start=0#p10091
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tiny examples
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-10-28 12:13:54

[quote="Phonatacid"]As for the second trick, it's just a way to cast an arithmetic value to another arithmetic value.[/quote]
I think I've always just divided by 1 unit to turn a Unit into a number.  Although, knowing Inform, I wouldn't trust it to optimize-away the div-by-1 in the assembly.  Hrm.

On a related note, you can break things faster with this typecast:[code]
To decide which K is the (mystery - a value) as a (name of kind of value K): (- {mystery} -).
[/code]

Which'll change anything into anything else.  Granted, that might be going a bit overboard.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1591&start=0#p10092
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I'm updating the I7 Programmer's Manual. Any requests?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-10-28 12:20:53

[quote="Phonatacid"]i think the part about Kind Variables (21.7) is not clear enough. I think it should explicitly state that 
"* of kind K" symbolizes the parameter on which other parameters depend (eg, list of Ks).[/quote]

ah, as a matter of fact I think that is already done.  Here's a pre-release of the new section. 

[quote]
Types of Types

We know defining a class that implements a list of numbers is tedious, but not as tedious as doing it again for strings, objects, and any other type the language supports.  Most languages nowadays provide for this problem, such as the templates of C++.  Inform too offers generic types. "Arithmetic value" allows numbers and units.  "Pointer value" includes indexed text, stored actions, and other dynamically-allocated, variable-sized chunks of memory. "Word value" covers all non-pointer values. "Sayable value" is any type allowed in a print statement, which is almost anything. "Enumerated value" is enums, which includes scenes.  And finally, "value" is all of them: just about anything that can be passed as a parameter.  The Kinds Index in the IDE shows what types belong under which umbrellas.  We can use them to define a phrase like this.
[code]
	To place angle brackets around (foobar - a sayable value): say "<<[foobar]>>".

	To print the elements of (stuff - a list of sayable values): say "The list contains [stuff]."
[/code]
Kind variables tie two or more parameters to the same type. This is particularly useful when one parameter is an aggregate type, and the other is the type being put into, brought out of, or compared to an element of, that aggregate.  Kind variables are always a single capitalized letter, and traditionally use K and L.
[code]
	To decide which K is the initial contents of (stuff - a list of arithmetic values of kind K): ...

	To we will ask if (col - a K valued table column) is (data - a word value of kind K): .... 
[/code]
The words "... value of kind ..." must precede exactly one of the Ks.  That parameter will be the one that declares what K holds, so the other parameter's input will be expected to match. For example, the following line means the second parameter decides what K is, so the compiler will search for a table column of that type:
[code]
	To we will ask if (col - a K valued table column) is (data - value of kind K): .... 
[/code]
While this means the first parameter's type sets K, and the second will be interpreted as the type in question:
[code]
	To we will ask if (col - a value of kind K valued table column) is (data - K): .... 
[/code]
It makes a difference. A very few types are implicitly casted between each other, such as text and indexed text, and whether K is text or indexed text will likely matter in the body of the function.  Other times, the compiler may have a choice of constructs with the same name but different types.  Or, the same words of source text may have radically different interpretations depending on what type the compiler expects it to yield.  And one final note: the return value cannot set the kind variable. It may use one, as the above example with initial contents, but cannot declare it.

The parameter "name of kind of value" is an interesting case because, rather than accepting a particular instantiation of a restricting type, it asks for the source code's name of a type, such as "object" or "room" or "tattoo".  K is set to the type, and then K is used in the body of the function in the same places and same ways as the word itself would have appeared.  The feature is also very useful in typecasting, via Inform 6.
[code]
	To rattle off all the (name of kind of value K):
		repeat with x running through K:
			say "[x], "

	To decide which K is the (mystery - a value) as a (name of kind of value K):
		(- {mystery} -).
[/code]
We can then write:
[code]
	rattle off all the scenes;
	rattle off all the tattoos;
	rattle off all the rooms;
	let whatsit be foobar as a tattoo;
	let whosit be foobar as a person;
	let howsit  be foobar as a rule;
	let whensit be foobar as a scene;
[/code]
And so on.  Most OO languages tend to treat everything as an Object -- even simple functions.  In Inform, many constructs are not Objects, but the type system allows us to use the same functions on everything, just the same.

Note that parameter types "condition" and "action" are still a special case. They can only be used in a phrase when the body is written in Inform 6, because they expand to the condition of an if-statement, or a particular invocation of TryAction(), respectively. The pragma {-backspace} can be used to delete, character by character, their I6 forms. 
[code]
	To decide if maybe (cond - a condition): (- ({cond} && StatCheck()) -). 
	
	To (P - person) should try (act - an action): (-  Could{act}{-backspace}{-backspace}, {P}); -).
[/code]
To-phrases and relations can be passed as parameters, but still strongly-typed.  Examples of the type of a phrase would be:
[code]
	a phrase (length, length) -> nothing
	a phrase nothing -> number
	a phrase (number, number) -> number
[/code]
And for relations:
[code]
	a one-to-various relation of people to cars
	a symmetric one-to-one relation of people ["to people" is assumed]
	an equivalence relation of people
[/code]
One thing Inform cannot do is an indefinite number of parameters, such as the argc/argv combination in the C programming language.  And because Inform is strongly typed, there must be a slew of phrases that apply a passed-in phrase to 1, 2, or 3 inputs, and returning a value or not. For phrases that return a value, use one of "(phrase) applied", "(phrase) applied to (value)", "(phrase) applied to (value1) and (value2)", up to three parameters, just like rules.  For phrases that do not return a value, "apply (phrase)", "apply (phrase) to (value1)", and so on.

In lieu of indefinite parameter counts, Inform can pass around lists of whatever, and has the higher-order phrases map (called "(phrase) applied to (list)"), filter ("filter to (description) of (list)"), and reduce ("(phrase) reduction of (list)"), which apply a passed-in phrase to a list of values and return the new list.  However, this only emulates the syntax of functional programming.  Without lazy evaluation or anonymous functions, this style of programming is inefficient in runtime and in writing, and cannot at all deal with lists of infinite size in the common generator-consumer pattern. 
[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1599&start=0#p10093
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Names of things that use 'and'
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-28 12:41:57

No, I see the point. Sometimes -- in fact, often -- I want to have a source-code name for an object which is unique. But then I set the printed and understood name to something else, for human consumption.

[code]
The little-blue-man is a man. 
The printed name of the little-blue-man is "little blue man".
Understand "little", "blue", "man" as the little-blue-man.
[/code]

I agree there's no reason to use "privately-named" here, but that doesn't help me avoid the mild redundancy.

It would be nice to have a shortcut for this case. But I can't think of one offhand which isn't confusing. Besides, what my code *actually* winds up looking like is

[code]
The little-blue-man is a man. 
The printed name of the little-blue-man is "little blue man".
Understand "little", "small", "short", "blue", "blue-skinned", "skinned", "man", "person", "figure" as the little-blue-man.
[/code]

So the effort of having to re-specify the three "original" words is lost in the shuffle, really.

[quote]Is there documentation somewhere of exactly how a name is Understood?[/quote]

Exactly like that, by default. Each word in the object's name is understood as the object. The parser handles articles and determiners ("a", "the", "all") but that's all.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1599&start=0#p10094
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Names of things that use 'and'
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-10-28 13:05:29

Well, there are special cases:

[code]The printed name of the ever-changing-man is "[size of the ever-changing-man] [color of the ever-changing-man] man".
The printed name of the ever-changing-man is "[if the ever-changing-man is holding the magic wand]big[otherwise]little[end if] blue man".
The printed name of the ever-changing-man is "[one of]little[or]big[or]medium-sized[at random] blue man".
[and so on][/code]
The first two can be handled easily by understanding properties (Understand the size property as describing the ever-changing-man) and conditional understanding (Understand "big" as the ever-changing-man when the ever-changing man is holding the magic wand). The last one is too random to restrict the grammar to what was printed last (although in that case it might be best to understand all possibilities at all times anyhow).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1588&start=0#p10095
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tiny examples
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-10-28 13:19:58

[quote="Ron Newcomb (snipped)"]you can break things faster with this typecast:[code]
To decide which K is the (mystery - a value) as a (name of kind of value K): (- {mystery} -).
[/code]

Which'll change anything into anything else.[/quote]

That's sweet--thanks! I've got to spend more time with the functional programming stuff...

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1591&start=0#p10096
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I'm updating the I7 Programmer's Manual. Any requests?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-10-28 14:13:55

[quote="ektemple"]Questions of this sort

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1600">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1600</a>

are asked so often, it would be nice if at least one of the manuals covered them. The Programmer's Manual seems like a natural fit.[/quote]
Yeah, performance.  I agree it's a good fit, but it's such a slippery topic.  Partly because it's running on a VM, and even opcodes using bad algorithms like @linearsearch will beat the pants off the best binary search coded in I7/I6.  Loops can hide easily, and I've more than once made a recursive Definition: that never ended.  

Plus, I'm leery of using objects too much (as in, nodes for tree structures and the like).  They don't seem to scale well, whereas a table implementation seems much more robust.  Granted, I know objects are more heavy-weight than a row, and used a linked-list rather than array arrangement in memory, but sometimes the parser iterates over them when it shouldn't.  (By way of [any..] tokens??)  That's more a feeling than something I've nailed down, though. 

Then I got burned when I suggested how slow Instead rules were.  Well, seems that was taken care of a few builds ago. I didn't bother to check it again.  That's twice that Instead rules have been sped up.  And when procedural rules bite the dust, that's gonna change things too. 

So with performance, I'm not sure what's going to hold true long enough to be worth putting into print. 

(I will say that if you're trying to write Photoshop in Inform 7, well, I throw up my hands.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1591&start=0#p10097
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I'm updating the I7 Programmer's Manual. Any requests?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-10-28 14:21:44

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]
Yeah, performance.  I agree it's a good fit, but it's such a slippery topic....

Then I got burned when I suggested how slow Instead rules were.  Well, seems that was taken care of a few builds ago. I didn't bother to check it again.  That's twice that Instead rules have been sped up.  And when procedural rules bite the dust, that's gonna change things too. 

So with performance, I'm not sure what's going to hold true long enough to be worth putting into print.[/quote]

Maybe this should be a community effort, then, when the system is stabilized. (Ideally, at that stage, Writing with Inform would itself offer some pointers.)

[quote="Ron Newcomb"](I will say that if you're trying to write Photoshop in Inform 7, well, I throw up my hands.)[/quote]

Actually, I've released a pretty zippy (at least on the graphically fast interpreters) graphics editor for I7.* Ironically, the things that really impair performance are text-related (indexed text, etc.)

* It's not Photoshop, more like Illustrator, but hey.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1593&start=0#p10098
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: AGS being made open source.
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2010-10-28 14:36:33

Interesting, what with Quest doing the same.  Half considered it myself a while back when contemplating how much work was still left to do.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1591&start=0#p10099
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I'm updating the I7 Programmer's Manual. Any requests?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-10-28 14:40:22

It might be better to rather teach people how to find the bottlenecks after they've noticed their game is starting to slow down. My philosophy follows the old programmer wisdom, "premature optimization is the root of all evil": you shouldn't optimize before you actually need to. Most often trying to avoid bottlenecks beforehand leads to much more work than solving them when and if they manifest. For example if a manual says that instead rules can potentially slow your game down, some people will start avoiding them at all costs. It leads to bad design and hours of wasted work trying to optimize where there is no need to do so. (This is a real life example.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1599&start=0#p10100
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Names of things that use 'and'
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-28 14:47:10

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Just [code]
Understand "little" or "blue" or "man" as the little-blue-man.[/code]

[quote]Wouldn't it be nice to say something like "Understand the printed name of a thing as the public name of it"?[/quote]

Well, yeah.  Inform works that way by default.   Don't use "privately-named".[/quote]
I tried my example without "privately-named" too. But even the complete phrase "little blue man" doesn't match.

I didn't realize you could use a plain comma instead of "and" to join understanding tokens, though. That makes a difference. It was having '"little" and "blue" and "man" and...' that was really bugging me. Way too verbose.

Regarding your example, though - What's the difference between "and," "or," slash, and comma? I thought "or" and slash (within quotes) only allowed one of the tokens listed to match. That does not seem to be the case here, so I'm confused.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1599&start=0#p10101
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Names of things that use 'and'
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-10-28 14:55:30

[quote="capmikee"]I tried my example without "privately-named" too. But even the complete phrase "little blue man" doesn't match.[/quote]
Maybe a stupid question, but did you name the object little-blue-man or little blue man? If the former, it will match only "little-blue-man" because that's what it's called.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1599&start=10#p10102
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Names of things that use 'and'
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-28 15:04:15

[quote]What's the difference between "and," "or," slash, and comma?[/quote]

[code]
Understand "little" or "blue" or "man" as the little-blue-man.
Understand "little" and "blue" and "man" as the little-blue-man.
Understand "little", "blue", "man" as the little-blue-man.
[/code]

These all do exactly the same thing.

[code]
Understand "little/blue/man" as the little-blue-man.
[/code]

This only accepts *one* of the words. You could type "x little" or "x blue" or "x man", but not "x little blue man".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1593&start=0#p10103
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: AGS being made open source.
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-10-28 15:11:12

[quote="Campbell"]Interesting, what with Quest doing the same.  Half considered it myself a while back when contemplating how much work was still left to do.[/quote]

If you do, please allow Adrift to compile to a .i7x Inform extension.  Textfyre could really use that for its writers.  As-is, a programmer must take the writer's word processing document and spend a lot of time fidgeting with it.  That isn't a good use of a programmer's time -- programmers aren't typists -- and it isn't really a good use of the game designer's time, though mundane stuff like that frequently falls within their purview.  It'd be better for a writer's GUI tool to generate ready-to-go code-prose which the programmer could easily include... or not include, if he's caught in an edit-compile-test-edit loop trying to nail a bug; not compiling the prose into the game really speeds that up.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1599&start=10#p10104
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Names of things that use 'and'
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-28 15:11:36

I think I misunderstood Ron - I thought he was saying that the default was to understand the printed name of something as the thing.

Yes, I used little-blue-man. I didn't expect "little blue man" to work, but I had to check.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1599&start=10#p10105
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Names of things that use 'and'
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-10-28 15:15:06

[quote="zarf"][code]
Understand "little/blue/man" as the little-blue-man.
[/code]

This only accepts *one* of the words. You could type "x little" or "x blue" or "x man", but not "x little blue man".[/quote]
That used to be the case, but in the latest build the slash is an inclusive or: [url]http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=280[/url]. And if you ask me they've fixed something that wasn't broken.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1599&start=10#p10106
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Names of things that use 'and'
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-28 15:19:08

[quote="zarf"][code]
Understand "little" or "blue" or "man" as the little-blue-man.
Understand "little" and "blue" and "man" as the little-blue-man.
Understand "little", "blue", "man" as the little-blue-man.
[/code]

These all do exactly the same thing.

[code]
Understand "little/blue/man" as the little-blue-man.
[/code]

This only accepts *one* of the words. You could type "x little" or "x blue" or "x man", but not "x little blue man".[/quote]
That's what I thought, but this works:
[code]The Moon is a room.

The little-blue-man is a man in the moon. The printed name of the little-blue-man is "little blue man".

Understand "little/blue/man" as the little-blue-man.

test me with "x little blue man"[/code]

It's also contradicted by this page:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc271.html">http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc271.html</a>
[quote]In general, any number of alternative forms can be given which are to be understood as the same thing (in this case the colour red). When the alternatives are in any way complicated, "or" should always be used, but a shorthand form is allowed for simple cases where it is only a matter of a single word having several possibilities:

    Understand "reach underneath/under/beneath [something]" as looking under. 

This is shorthand for:

    Understand "reach underneath [something]" or "reach under [something]" or "reach beneath [something]" as looking under. 
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1591&start=0#p10107
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I'm updating the I7 Programmer's Manual. Any requests?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-10-28 15:30:43

[quote="ektemple"]Actually, I've released a pretty zippy (at least on the graphically fast interpreters) graphics editor for I7.* Ironically, the things that really impair performance are text-related (indexed text, etc.)[/quote]
I know all about Glimmr; I'm poking fun.  And at [i]Alabaster[/i] too.  I don't suppose you've noticed the Programmer Manual makes no mention of graphics, sound, external files?  I still have no real desire to explain that, partly cause I've never, ever touched it. At all. 

I'm seriously considering adding a section on I6 hacking.  And what section headings are good for.  Since there's less of a need for I6 hacking, it's now a small enough task to be manageable.  I'll still point to the DM4 though.

Seems like there was one other area that I'm forgetting.

Juhana: agreed, but how?  I don't think we have a profiler, and I've always just taken educated guesses where the hit lies.  Well, RULES ALL can allow one to arrange things so so many rules don't appear, but that's still thinking forward through stuff, rather than having a tool point out things we couldn't have known about.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1591&start=10#p10109
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I'm updating the I7 Programmer's Manual. Any requests?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-10-28 15:48:17

[quote="Ron Newcomb"][quote="ektemple"]Actually, I've released a pretty zippy (at least on the graphically fast interpreters) graphics editor for I7.* Ironically, the things that really impair performance are text-related (indexed text, etc.)[/quote]
I know all about Glimmr; I'm poking fun.[/quote]

I figured! ...but I still think it's interesting (though probably not surprising) that text operations can be slower than graphics. A lot of the disparity has to do with interpreters and the optimizations they can make, particularly when they can fairly transparently take advantage of existing graphics libraries. Gargoyle actually writes "text" drawn to a graphics window pixel for pixel nearly as quickly as it writes text to the screen in a buffer. (And that's in spite my code, which in addition to likely being amateurish, is optimized for user-friendliness rather than speed.)

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]I'm seriously considering adding a section on I6 hacking.  And what section headings are good for.  Since there's less of a need for I6 hacking, it's now a small enough task to be manageable.  I'll still point to the DM4 though.[/quote]

This is a good idea. The manual (in the extensions chapter) actually does a pretty good job of covering the ways that you can write I6 inclusions into your code. Things that it would be nice to see better coverage of: what can be done with I7 code inclusions [i]within I6 code blocks[/i], some basic discussion of how most structures (rules, directions, etc.) map to the I6 level. The latter seems like it's especially appropriate to the Programmer's Manual.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1599&start=10#p10113
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Names of things that use 'and'
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-10-28 18:30:40

[quote="capmikee"][spoiler][quote="zarf"][code]
Understand "little" or "blue" or "man" as the little-blue-man.
Understand "little" and "blue" and "man" as the little-blue-man.
Understand "little", "blue", "man" as the little-blue-man.
[/code]

These all do exactly the same thing.

[code]
Understand "little/blue/man" as the little-blue-man.
[/code]

This only accepts *one* of the words. You could type "x little" or "x blue" or "x man", but not "x little blue man".[/quote]
That's what I thought, but this works:
[code]The Moon is a room.

The little-blue-man is a man in the moon. The printed name of the little-blue-man is "little blue man".

Understand "little/blue/man" as the little-blue-man.

test me with "x little blue man"[/code]

It's also contradicted by this page:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc271.html">http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc271.html</a>
[quote]In general, any number of alternative forms can be given which are to be understood as the same thing (in this case the colour red). When the alternatives are in any way complicated, "or" should always be used, but a shorthand form is allowed for simple cases where it is only a matter of a single word having several possibilities:

    Understand "reach underneath/under/beneath [something]" as looking under. 

This is shorthand for:

    Understand "reach underneath [something]" or "reach under [something]" or "reach beneath [something]" as looking under. 
[/quote][/spoiler][/quote]

(spoilered for reasons of space)

Was this perhaps changed in the new build, in response to [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=162]these[/url] [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=280]bugs[/url]? In the discussion for the second, there's some back-and-forthing about whether the slash is supposed to be an exclusive or, and it seems to me from Graham's last comment that he decided to make it inclusive as part of the bugfix.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1599&start=10#p10114
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Names of things that use 'and'
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-28 18:46:33

Sorry about that. I hadn't downloaded the new build when I posted my previous response, so I gave wrong information.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1602&start=0#p10115
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: How to come up with puzzles?
User: payo / DateTime: 2010-10-28 20:27:51

I've come up with 4 puzzles in my game so far just by creating a world with random objects and details and figuring out ways to use those objects in puzzles. But I'm kind of stuck now. I can come up with rooms, but I have no idea how to come up with puzzles. It's easy to come up with rooms.

So what process do you use in your head to create puzzles? What do you come up with first? How do you suddenly find that you have a puzzle idea?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1600&start=0#p10116
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Game Speed
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-10-28 21:27:23

So...should I not be worried about "every turn" events?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=30#p10117
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: eu / DateTime: 2010-10-28 21:45:28

The text formatting has become much faster in the latest release of the OS X IDE---Andrew must have changed something.  I used to have a good few seconds pause every time I opened a comment without M-/; now I hardly notice anything.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=0#p10118
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear map".
User: Tigger31337 / DateTime: 2010-10-28 21:49:40

Easy question for the Inform [b]pros[/b] out there.
Hopefully, there is an equally easy answer.  [emote]:-)[/emote]

I am trying to create an IF that is ludicrously simple in terms of its game "world". I want each room to be logically connected to the next in a [u]linear fashion[/u]. By that, I mean the player follows a straight path from one room to the next. I won't need N/E/S/W directional markers. And users can't skip rooms along the path.

The reason behind such an (odd?) request is that I'm developing a sort of children's riddle game. [u]The primary objective is to solve one puzzle before you can proceed to the next room[/u]. Typically, the puzzles will have one-word answers. If, and only if, the player provides the correct answer to the current room's puzzle, he may proceed to the next room.


If all of this is unclear, let me give an example:

[b]Room 1:[/b]
[color=#0000BF]"You are sitting in a room. You see nothing but the door and it's locked. Keeping the door locked, is an electronic keypad which you have access to. The keypad display reads "2+2=". What number do you punch on the keypad in order to unlock the door?"[/color]
(If, and only if, the player types "4" and presses Enter, he proceeds to Room 2)
(If the player enters anything but "4", then some text may appear offering a hint, etc.)

[b]Room 2:[/b]
[color=#0000BF]<another puzzle. completely unrelated to the one that came before it. when correctly solved, player then moves to...>[/color]

[b]Room 3:[/b]
[color=#0000BF]<another puzzle. completely unrelated to the one that came before it....>
You get the idea.[/color]

Any ideas on how I would get started?

I admit that I am new to Inform, but I have read the documentation and most of that is geared towards creating rooms with objects, and the interactions between objects. Indeed, I was able to create a simple adventure game just fine using some template examples.

I'm a little stuck on my "riddle" game, though. So any help would be GREATLY appreciated!

Thanks in advance,


- Anthony

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=40#p10119
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: wfryers / DateTime: 2010-10-28 22:17:10

Part 4 – Choose Your Own Adventure

To take the next step, I would like to circle back to the notion of IF genera.  The examples I gave earlier fit into a metaphor I called boardgames.  I believe there is another metaphor in use.  It is the Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) story.  

In CYOA the reader reads a section of story and then is given a choice – ride the horse, hide in the thicket.  Depending on the choice, the reader will be told to turn to a particular page where the story line picks up again.  Eventually, the reader reaches the end of the story thread and stops.  Each book contains lots of story threads.  This lets the reader reread the book exploring alternative outcomes. 

CYOA uses the basic building blocks of story telling – character, conflict, dialogue and action to tell the story.  Like most stories CYOA uses the scene as its basic unit of story.  It takes advantage of the elements of a scene to link different story threads together.

To be effective, every scene in traditional story telling must accomplish five things:
[list]It must convey something important to the reader
The two main forces in the plot line must meet and clash
The encounter between the main forces must do one of two things:
[list]Attempt to give or seek information
Overcome the other by using things like logic, argument, guile or brute force
Somebody must win, lose or quit [/list:u]
The state of mind of the character or the state of affairs in the story lead to the next scene or resolve the plot line.
[/list:u]

CYOA are usually written in the first person (I, We).  Thus the reader is the protagonist or antagonist of the story.  There are a few written in the second person (You, You).  Here the reader is a secondary character who helps the protagonist or antagonist.  This imposes two constraints.  First, the only action that can be revealed is action witnessed by the reader.  Second, the reader can only be in one place at any given moment.  Since time cannot run backwards, the reader cannot backtrack in a plot line. 

Let's take a look at the differences in the genera's approach to the same situation.  Some place romantic and daring is always a good setting.  Like titans Hercule Poirot and James Bond before us, we are riding in a sleeper car on the Orient Express. We are in pursuit of the antagonist.  We are carrying an item in our luggage which will help us defeat the antagonist.  The car's conductor has been waylaid.  The antagonist's henchman has taken his place.  His goal is to stop you.

In the puzzle genera we have to include some kind of puzzle. You have to successfully solve this puzzle  to move to the next location.  Some potential puzzles come to mind.  First, you have to determine that the conductor is the henchman before he is able to kill you and take the luggage. Second, you have to determine that the item has been removed from your luggage, discover its hiding place and retrieve it.  Third, you have to discover the bomb the conductor has placed in your compartment and disarm it.  Solving the puzzle in the time allotted (the length of the train trip) lets you on to the next location. 

In the discovery genera we have to explore the train.  You have to successfully visit every place you can.  Some potential places come to mind.  First, you have to “open” everything you can in your compartment. Second, there are two other compartments in this car.  One is occupied the other is not.  You have to evade the conductor and the other occupants to enter the other compartments and “open” everything you can. Third, you have to enter the passageways between cars and“open” everything you can.  You engage in this behavior; because, a mysterious card with a single large black dot falls from the book you are reading.  If you find the bottle of poison, forged documents, and map of the conductor's escape route, you are on to the next location.

In the DND genera we aim to increase the “strength” of the avatar.  You have to choose trials to increase the avatar's strength.  Some potential trials come to mind.  First, the player rests, which increases his health.  Unfortunately, the henchman successfully steals the item from the luggage while you are sleeping. You get off at your stop, but you no longer have the item.  Second, you make friends with the person in the next compartment.  By this interaction you increase your intelligence.  Once your avatar reaches a predetermined level of intelligence, it is able to recognize that someone has tampered with your luggage.  The henchman has hidden the item.  You must find it before you reach your destination.  Third, you discover the conductor in your compartment. There is a fight.  If you win, you win combat points and keep the item otherwise you lose the item.  The conductor may be injured or killed.  He may escape.  You may be injured or killed.  Even if you get off at your stop, your avatar may not be able to continue.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=0#p10120
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: George / DateTime: 2010-10-28 22:36:04

Maybe this can get you started:

[code]
The Manipularium is down from the Pullarium. The Pullarium is down from the Contactorium. 

Instead of going, say "There are no directions but up."

Instead of going up:
	if the riddle-solved of the location is true:
		say "Good luck up there...";
		move the player to a random room above the location;
	otherwise:
		say "You can only go up when you 'say' the answer to the riddle.".

Instead of going up when in the Contactorium, say "You've solved all the riddles!"

a room has a truth state called riddle-solved. 
riddle-solved usually is false. 

The block answering rule is not listed in the report answering it that rulebook.

Instead of answering yourself that it when in The Manipularium:
	if the topic understood matches "manipulate":
		say "Correct!";
		now riddle-solved of the location is true;
	otherwise:
		say "Gesundheit!"

Instead of answering yourself that it when in The Pullarium:
	if the topic understood matches "pull":
		say "Correct!";
		now riddle-solved of the location is true;
	otherwise:
		say "Gesundheit!"

test me with "n / e / s / u / say xyzzy / say Manipulate / u / say pull / u / u"
[/code]

The basic idea is to unlock the next room when you say the magic word. It doesn't have to be a say -- you could make a custom action, or match to the text exactly too. The awkward 'answering yourself that it' is due to the name of the answering action (whose rule gets triggered by the say command).

Other oddities (explained as best I can, I'm no Inform pro [emote]:)[/emote] ):

* 'to a random room' is what you need to code when you're thinking 'to the room' due to Inform syntax.
* truth states are specialized properties which only can be true or false.
* the 'topic understood' will match the text you enter, in this case the text entered for the answering it that action.
* don't forget to unlist the block answering rule if you use the answering it that action (i.e., the 'say' command).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1602&start=0#p10121
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How to come up with puzzles?
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-10-28 22:50:57

Well, if we just posted puzzles, they wouldn't be very puzzling, now would they?   [emote]:D[/emote] 

Now the best puzzles are part of the plot--think about what the goal is, and then think of what impediments might logically and naturally arise.

However, a few standard puzzle types are not amiss in a game, so here are two lists: 

[url]http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StockPuzzle[/url]

[url]http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StockVideoGamePuzzle[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1602&start=0#p10123
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How to come up with puzzles?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-10-28 23:00:24

The current version of The Inform 7 Handbook (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm">http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm</a>) has a whole chapter on types of puzzles. You might find that helpful.

To me, a good puzzle is one that requires some lateral thinking on the part of the player. For example, in "Lydia's Heart" you need to enter a dark room, but your flashlight batteries are dead, and there are no fresh batteries anywhere in the game.

[spoiler]However, there's a laptop computer nearby. When you switch it on, its screen will glow: It's an effective portable light source.[/spoiler]
There are many other ways to construct puzzles. That's just one example. What I feel is not so good is to create a puzzle by describing an object badly. If the description was well written, the use of the object would be obvious, so the author tries to force the player to figure it out by forcing you to try to figure out what is being described. This is a legitimate technique if the object is one that the player character would not instantly recognize, but if you're tempted to describe a screwdriver badly ... just don't, that's all.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=0#p10124
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-10-28 23:11:28

Sounds like you're making a choose-your-own-adventure.  I believe there's an extension or two on the Inform site that makes that easy.  Er, it has Adventure Book or something in the title...?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1602&start=0#p10125
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How to come up with puzzles?
User: payo / DateTime: 2010-10-28 23:12:30

OK. Thanks for the advice.

I think I will create goals and then come up with obstacles.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=30#p10126
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-10-28 23:14:51

[quote="EmacsUser"]The text formatting has become much faster in the latest release of the OS X IDE---Andrew must have changed something.  I used to have a good few seconds pause every time I opened a comment without M-/; now I hardly notice anything.[/quote]
It doesn't much feel like it.  Granted, the reformatting runs at a lower priority so I can.. kinda.. sorta... move... the cursor while it's reformatting, but I think the same amount of work is going on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1600&start=0#p10127
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Game Speed
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-10-28 23:18:04

[quote="katz"]So...should I not be worried about "every turn" events?[/quote]
Correct, don't worry about it. Usually it's not a problem.  

Assuming you don't have 1) hundreds of Every Turn rules, or 2) an Every Turn rule that's, say, calculating pi to a gazillion digits.  Might want to tuck that last one elsewhere.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=0#p10128
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: Tigger31337 / DateTime: 2010-10-28 23:21:56

[quote="George"]Maybe this can get you started:

[code]
--(cut)--
[/code]

The basic idea is to unlock the next room when you say the magic word. It doesn't have to be a say -- you could make a custom action, or match to the text exactly too. The awkward 'answering yourself that it' is due to the name of the answering action (whose rule gets triggered by the say command).

[/quote]


Thanks George... 

The logic here seems like it should work for my application. I suspect there is a more elegant way of doing it, but I'll certainly use this as a starting point and streamline it as I go along.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=0#p10129
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: Tigger31337 / DateTime: 2010-10-28 23:27:49

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Sounds like you're making a choose-your-own-adventure.  I believe there's an extension or two on the Inform site that makes that easy.  Er, it has Adventure Book or something in the title...?[/quote]



Not quite. Remember that my story path is completely linear. There will be no forking or choosing of paths. 

You appear in "Room 1". The only way to get to "Room 2" is to solve Room 1's riddle. For argument's sake, let's say there are 10 rooms until you end. To "win" the game, each and every room must be completed [u][b]in order[/b][/u].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=0#p10130
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: George / DateTime: 2010-10-29 00:04:40

One refinement might be to take the topic matching code and abstract it, so from this:

[code]
Instead of answering yourself that it when in The Manipularium:
   if the topic understood matches "manipulate":
      say "Correct!";
      now riddle-solved of the location is true;
   otherwise:
      say "Gesundheit!"
[/code]

to something like this (not tested):

[code]
Instead of answering yourself that it:
    if the topic understood matches the magic word of the location:
        say the correct answer of the location;
        now riddle-solved of the location is true;
    otherwise:
        say the wrong answer of the location.
[/code]

And you would then define the appropriate properties on the rooms. Might be easier to manage once you had a bunch of rooms.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=0#p10131
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-10-29 00:08:12

[quote="Tigger31337"]Not quite. Remember that my story path is completely linear. There will be no forking or choosing of paths.[/quote]
Eh? One path goes forward, the other loops back with a hint...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1591&start=10#p10132
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I'm updating the I7 Programmer's Manual. Any requests?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-10-29 00:58:48

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]agreed, but how?  I don't think we have a profiler, and I've always just taken educated guesses where the hit lies.  Well, RULES ALL can allow one to arrange things so so many rules don't appear, but that's still thinking forward through stuff, rather than having a tool point out things we couldn't have known about.[/quote]
I don't have an answer to that - my preferred method is commenting stuff out until it works, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend that to everybody.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=0#p10133
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-29 01:14:37

[quote="Tigger31337"]Easy question for the Inform [b]pros[/b] out there.
Hopefully, there is an equally easy answer.  [emote]:-)[/emote]

I am trying to create an IF that is ludicrously simple in terms of its game "world". I want each room to be logically connected to the next in a [u]linear fashion[/u]. By that, I mean the player follows a straight path from one room to the next. I won't need N/E/S/W directional markers. And users can't skip rooms along the path.

The reason behind such an (odd?) request is that I'm developing a sort of children's riddle game. [u]The primary objective is to solve one puzzle before you can proceed to the next room[/u]. Typically, the puzzles will have one-word answers. If, and only if, the player provides the correct answer to the current room's puzzle, he may proceed to the next room.


If all of this is unclear, let me give an example:

[b]Room 1:[/b]
[color=#0000BF]"You are sitting in a room. You see nothing but the door and it's locked. Keeping the door locked, is an electronic keypad which you have access to. The keypad display reads "2+2=". What number do you punch on the keypad in order to unlock the door?"[/color]
(If, and only if, the player types "4" and presses Enter, he proceeds to Room 2)
(If the player enters anything but "4", then some text may appear offering a hint, etc.)

[b]Room 2:[/b]
[color=#0000BF]<another puzzle. completely unrelated to the one that came before it. when correctly solved, player then moves to...>[/color]

[b]Room 3:[/b]
[color=#0000BF]<another puzzle. completely unrelated to the one that came before it....>
You get the idea.[/color]

Any ideas on how I would get started?

I admit that I am new to Inform, but I have read the documentation and most of that is geared towards creating rooms with objects, and the interactions between objects. Indeed, I was able to create a simple adventure game just fine using some template examples.

I'm a little stuck on my "riddle" game, though. So any help would be GREATLY appreciated!

Thanks in advance,


- Anthony[/quote]

I'd probably approach this by finding the part in the manual that identifies how to define a new cardinal direction (I remember seeing it somewhere, probably next to the part where they explained how to cancel the old cardinal directions). Then you can name new exits anything you wish. You can name 13 new exits and definre each of those for each room as leading to the next in the sequence. In other words, one exit per room, named after the answer to its riddle. So for example if the answer to room 1's riddle is 'yes' then you can use 'Room 2 is yes of Room 1' instead of, say, west of Room 1. But you would have to define yes as a new direction, first, which unfortunately I can't give you code for off the top of my head, but I remember it seemed pretty simple. I still kinda think in MUD-brain, where defining any text you wish as an exit verb is a trivial operation; it's more unusual in Inform but I think it'd work fine for a standalone quiz game unless you had hundreds of rooms or something.

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=0#p10134
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-10-29 01:42:31

It also seems like an IF language might not be the best choice of tool for this kind of game, unless you have some other reasons to use one. You could make a trivia game like that with a few lines of HTML and JavaScript.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=0#p10135
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-10-29 02:47:44

Juhana is probably right--this is not a game that plays to Inform's strengths.

However, I think the absolute simplest way to do it would just be to make every room have no exits and then change them to have appropriate exits:

[code]Completing question 1 is an action applying to nothing.
Carry out completing question 1:
Change north exit of room 1 to room 2.
Report completing question 1:
Say "A doorway opens to the north!"[/code]

This is automatically a one-way connection (you can't return to room 1), which is probably what you want.

As for interface, I'd put a person in the room who asks you the riddle and to whom you reply the answer:

[code]The Sphinx is a person in room 1.  "An impassive stone statue gazes at you with stern, intelligent eyes."

Instead of asking the Sphinx about:
say "'What goes by four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening?'"

Instead of answering the Sphinx about:
say "'Incorrect,' says the Sphinx, glowering at you with such ferocity that you almost fear to try again."

Instead of answering the Sphinx about "[man]":
say "'Correct!'";
try completing question 1.

Understand "man" or "men" or "person" or "people" or "human" or "humans" as "[man]".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1600&start=0#p10136
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Game Speed
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-10-29 02:48:09

[quote="ektemple"][quote="Phonatacid"]My time engine is lagging after an half an hour. I don't really know why it is happening, i just decided to sort this out later, when i am able to play my game for more than half hour.[/quote]Glulx wasn't designed to keep perfect time, especially over long periods (see the spec).[/quote]Absolutely. When you're trying to keep track of relatively long stretches of time (such as half an hour) it's important to not rely on (say) having a timer tick every second, and then summing all the seconds. If you do this, and the timer isn't exactly accurate, you'll drift: if the ticks come at an average of 1.01 seconds, rather than the expected 1 second, that would still push you off by about 20 seconds over 30 minutes. In general the best way round this is to have a long-running timer to keep you in sync.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1604&start=0#p10138
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Visible vs touchable for existing actions
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-10-29 04:17:35

So apparently asking and telling require a touchable noun.  Is there a way to change them so that they only require a visible noun?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1591&start=10#p10139
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I'm updating the I7 Programmer's Manual. Any requests?
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-10-29 04:26:27

If game speed is subjective enough that there aren't any generally-established things that should be avoided, then you could just add a note saying so.  I just don't want to fall into any obvious pitfalls.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=10#p10140
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: Tigger31337 / DateTime: 2010-10-29 09:09:15

[quote="George"]One refinement might be to take the topic matching code and abstract it, so from this:

[code]
...[/code]

to something like this (not tested):

[code]...[/code]

And you would then define the appropriate properties on the rooms. Might be easier to manage once you had a bunch of rooms.[/quote]


Thanks again, George. And that was exactly the path (pardon the pun) I was already going down. I've got the core of the logic working just fine now, however I feel it's a bit clunky. I will continue refining it and then post here for all to use.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=10#p10142
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: Tigger31337 / DateTime: 2010-10-29 09:21:16

[quote="Ron Newcomb"][quote="Tigger31337"]Not quite. Remember that my story path is completely linear. There will be no forking or choosing of paths.[/quote]
Eh? One path goes forward, the other loops back with a hint...[/quote]


Hehe. Nice try, but no.
That's not what most people refer to when they say "CYOA".
My "plot-line" (if you can call it that) cannot get any more linear. I am not looking to choose-your-own-anything. In case my first post wasn't clear, the player is to flow from one room to the next. The outcome of the game is fixed.

Displaying a 1-line hint (which is not a requirement, by the way) while within a room does not count as "looping back". Looping back implies that you have already left the room.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1561&start=10#p10144
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reciprocal Relationships
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-29 09:38:14

I was thinking about this problem this morning. It's not overly complicated to implement such a relationship using plain old properties:

[code]The Control Room is a room.

A pod is a kind of thing.
A display is a kind of thing.

A pod has a display called the controller.
To decide which pod is the pod controlled by (D - a display):
	Repeat with P running through pods:
		if D is the controller of P, decide on P;

The green display is a display in the control room.
The blue display is a display in the control room.

The green pod is a pod in the control room. The controller of it is the green display.
The blue pod is a pod in the control room. The controller of it is the blue display.

Instead of examining a display:
	say "The [noun] controls [the pod controlled by the noun].";
	
Instead of examining a pod:
	say "The [noun] is controlled by [the controller of the noun].";[/code]
If you wanted to boost efficiency, you could do some caching:
[code]A display has a pod called the target.

When play begins:
	Repeat with P running through pods:
		Now the target of the controller of P is P.[/code]
If you ever wanted to change the "relation," you'd have to update the cached value, of course.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=10#p10145
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: Tigger31337 / DateTime: 2010-10-29 09:41:50

[quote="Laroquod"]
I'd probably approach this by finding the part in the manual that identifies how to define a new cardinal direction (I remember seeing it somewhere, probably next to the part where they explained how to cancel the old cardinal directions). Then you can name new exits anything you wish. You can name 13 new exits and definre each of those for each room as leading to the next in the sequence. In other words, one exit per room, named after the answer to its riddle. So for example if the answer to room 1's riddle is 'yes' then you can use 'Room 2 is yes of Room 1' instead of, say, west of Room 1. But you would have to define yes as a new direction, first, which unfortunately I can't give you code for off the top of my head, but I remember it seemed pretty simple. I still kinda think in MUD-brain, where defining any text you wish as an exit verb is a trivial operation; it's more unusual in Inform but I think it'd work fine for a standalone quiz game unless you had hundreds of rooms or something.

P.[/quote]

I started off doing the exact same thing (which is why I included the reference to N/E/S/W in my original post). But, I found it awkward to code because it wasn't intuitive for me to think about "solutions" as "cardinal directions". (There will be approx. 40 rooms in total, so you can see this getting convoluted pretty fast. For example, a player might re-use a previous answer (direction) incorrectly, but still be able to exit the room because it matches the cardinal direction that the current room expects.) Overall, having the interpreter parse a correct answer as a spatial direction just doesn't smell right to me. [emote]:)[/emote]  However, it's still a valid idea and worth revisiting if nothing else proves more elegant.

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1561&start=10#p10146
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reciprocal Relationships
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-29 09:47:35

[code]To decide which pod is the pod controlled by (D - a display):
	Repeat with P running through pods:
		if D is the controller of P, decide on P;[/code]

While I was writing this, I wondered: Is there a way to write this loop as a description? Something like:

[code]a random pod which has a controller of D[/code]

That doesn't work, and replacing "of" with "equal to" didn't work either - is there a verb that implies the property "relation"?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1370&start=40#p10148
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Semantic Highlighting in Inform 7
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-29 10:00:44

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]
It doesn't much feel like it.  Granted, the reformatting runs at a lower priority so I can.. kinda.. sorta... move... the cursor while it's reformatting, but I think the same amount of work is going on.[/quote]
That sounds like an improvement, at least.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1604&start=0#p10149
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Visible vs touchable for existing actions
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-29 10:19:43

No. You'd have to define a new action ("new-asking") and then redefine all the "ask" and "tell" grammar to apply to it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1561&start=10#p10150
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reciprocal Relationships
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-29 10:22:47

A relationship *is* cached properties, under the hood. We've always been able to code that way. But the point of relations is to do the same job more succinctly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=10#p10151
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: Tigger31337 / DateTime: 2010-10-29 10:24:25

[quote="Juhana"]It also seems like an IF language might not be the best choice of tool for this kind of game, unless you have some other reasons to use one. You could make a trivia game like that with a few lines of HTML and JavaScript.[/quote]


I wanted to retain the rich and lavish features of the IF experience, that only Inform can provide [emote]:)[/emote]  (shameless plug).

You're right - it can be done, simply, with HTML and JavaScript (hell.. with DOS batch files!)... but "simple" is not the final look of the game that I'm after. I would still like to code objects, people, and interactions in the game - just at a simpler level. Because the plot is weak (non-existent, actually) then I am relying heavily on scenery descriptions, dialogue, characters, etc... things that Inform does well. All the same, each room (it might be better to call it a "scene", perhaps) will be self-contained and you can only progress from one to the next by suppling a short (sometimes 1-word, sometimes not) answer to the room's riddle.

Seems to me that a decent IF compiler is still "the right man for the job".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1561&start=10#p10152
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reciprocal Relationships
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-29 10:34:01

[quote]is there a verb that implies the property "relation"?[/quote]

No, but you can invent one by means of a conditional relation.

[code]
Contact relates a pod (called P) to a display (called D) when the controller of P is D. The verb to be joined to implies the contact relation.
[/code]

Then "a random pod joined to the ..." will work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=10#p10153
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: Tigger31337 / DateTime: 2010-10-29 10:35:41

[quote="katz"]... I think the absolute simplest way to do it would just be to make every room have no exits and then change them to have appropriate exits:

...
[/quote]

I like that a lot, actually. It seems the code would give me tighter control over the flow from one room to the next, yet easily modifiable.

[quote="katz"]
This is automatically a one-way connection (you can't return to room 1), which is probably what you want.
[/quote]

Correct. Except, in your code, the movement from one scene to the next is still an active task (the player has to move himself through the door, for example).  I'd prefer it if, once the riddle was solved, you are automatically ushered into the next scene. It seems like a simple enough programming task, so I'll just look that one up myself.

[quote="katz"]
As for interface, I'd put a person in the room who asks you the riddle and to whom you reply the answer:
[/quote]

Staying true to my favourite text-adventure game's style (HHGTTG), I will be narrating this entirely in the 3rd person.

Thanks, Katz, for the inspiration!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=40#p10154
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: wfryers / DateTime: 2010-10-29 10:40:43

Part 5 – CYOA Part Deux

In CYOA we aim to provide multiply connected story threads that engage and entertain the reader. Since the smallest unit of story telling is the scene, a story thread must contain one or more scenes.  Each scene is a tiny little story.  A scene has a beginning, middle and end.  The purpose of the scene is resolved in a little climax in which someone wins, loses or quits.  It is followed by the aftermath.  The aftermath is either the set-up for the next scene or the falling action at the end of the story

A story form or plot combines scenes together to tell a story.  The most commonly used story form is one that has a beginning, middle and end.  It is the three act play.  In Act I we meet the characters.  At the end we learn the protagonist's visible goal, which has a definite endpoint.  In Act II the protagonist confronts a series of obstacles which become increasingly difficult to surmount. These obstacles advance the outer arc, the visible part of the story.  They also serve to push the protagonist further out of his comfort zone. This advances the inner arc, the psychological part of the story.  The last obstacle in Act II makes it seem to the reader that all is lost.  The only way for the protagonist to succeed is to make one last do-or-die effort.  Act III contains the climax where the visible goal we learned about in Act I is resolved.  This resolves the outer arc.  The protagonist must face the climax alone.  This resolves the inner arc.  Then there is falling action and the house lights come up.

CYOA follows this structure.  The story teller lays out a story that looks like a traditional story.  All of the scenes are identified along with their resolutions.  This creates the main-line story.  Once this is done additional story arcs can be created.  The connection between scenes lies in the aftermath of the preceding scene.  The aftermath is a direct result of the resolution at the climax of a scene.  To create an alternate story line, we change the climax, which gives us a different aftermath. Remember the encounter between the main forces must do one of two things:
Attempt to give or seek information
Overcome the other by using things like logic, argument, guile or brute force.

In CYOA the reader selects the alternative resolution and then turns to the corresponding page.  The reader then reads the corresponding aftermath and begins the new scene.  

Its time to hop the Orient Express to see how the CYOA genera deals with the situation.  We know the set-up.  The henchman is there to stop the protagonist. So this is a scene where the antagonist (through his henchman) tries to overcome the protagonist. We have to decide how. In celebration of the current era, we will use a bomb.  Now we have to decide who wins.  I'd like a little twist here so the henchman wins.  I don't want to end the story, so the protagonist is forward in the dining car when the bomb goes off.  He is safe. The item is destroyed. The henchman wins.  In the aftermath of the explosion, we learn that the bomb was in the protagonist's compartment. The protagonist is suspected of being a terrorist.  This sets up the next scene. .

Now we look at alternative resolutions.  First, the bomb doesn't explode.  You return to your compartment.  You discover and deactivate the bomb.  The construction of the bomb will provide you will all sorts of clues to the antagonist. This could launch a thread in which the henchman attempts to kill you, take the item and use the bomb to cover his tracks.  Second, you set out for the dining car with the passenger in the next compartment.  In the dining car you realize you have forgotten something in your compartment.  You excuse yourself.  You see the henchman entering your compartment.  You catch him planting the bomb.  There is fight. This could launch a thread in which you have to conceal the dead henchman.  You get the idea.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=40#p10155
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: wfryers / DateTime: 2010-10-29 10:49:50

Part 6 – So how am I going to do that

As a story teller I use the elements of conflict, character, action, and dialog to tell the story.The story teller has created the conflict and put it in a location.  

It looks like we need several locations to tell the main-line story:
[list]Three sleeper compartments.  
The sleeper car's corridor.  
The dining car.  
Two passageways between cars. [/list:u]

Character, action, and dialog are provided by N/PC's:
[list]Protagonist – PC
Henchman – NPC
The other passenger – NPC
Waiter – NPC.[/list:u]

We will need a few things:
[list]The item
Bomb
Luggage
Escape map
Bottle of poison
Forged documents.[/list:u]

Further, we have constructed the story thread so that it is one way.  The train will not go backwards.  It is also time bound.  The train ride will come to and end.

This is where the mental model I suggested for N/PC's comes into play.  The protagonist is a PC.  He is based on Player. We need to track inner arc changes, so Player is based on Avatar, which is based on Token.  The henchman is an NPC which needs to change or adapt. He is an Individual. He has a Personality which is based on AI.  He is also a Player, based on Avatar which is base on Token.  The remaining two NPC's don't need to change or adapt during this scene.  They are built like the henchman, but the Avatar is left out.

Conceptually, each NPC has some behaviors that go with their role.  They also may have some behavior that are goal seeking. In this example they also can talk.  Part of what they say or do may advance the plot.  

For example, the henchman character's dialog and action can be stated as:
[list]He behaves like a conductor
[list]Checks tickets
Moves in the corridor[/list:u]
He behaves like a henchman
[list]He must plant the bomb before your last stop
He must not be blown up by the bomb
He must not be seen carrying the bomb
Nobody can be in the compartment when he plants the bomb
He must not be seen leaving the compartment when he plants the bomb.[/list:u]
He talks about conductor things 
[list]Asks for your ticket
Announces your stop
Tells you how long to your destination
Knows where the dining car is[/list:u]
He makes small talk
[list]Talks about the weather
Inquires about your comfort[/list:u][/list:u]

To make this work, all of the characters are placed in the location and the scene is started.  You go to your compartment.  You store your luggage.  You sit down. The train starts moving.  The conductor asks for your ticket.  The rest is now up to the PC. He has much more latitude than the CYOA reader.  For example he can stay in his compartment throughout the trip. He can spend his entire time in the dining car.  He can snoop around.  

By specifying the henchman's goal seeking behavior, the story teller can adapt his strategy in response to the PC.  If the story teller wants to make sure the item is taken by the end of the scene, then the henchman's behavior ensures that.  On the other hand, it may be that the story teller doesn't care.  So the henchman's behavior allows for failure.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1606&start=0#p10157
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Issue with Quixe/Inform build 6F95
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-10-29 11:04:17

When I compile a game file with Quixe through the new build of Inform (6F95), secondary text windows don't work properly. The example linked below provides a spurious More prompt, while never actually printing any content to the window. I imagine that this is probably an issue with the new "viewport" code. Is anyone else experiencing this?

Here is the same gamefile, compiled using:

[url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/InputExperiment1/Release/play.html]6E72, with Quixe downloaded from eblong.com and manually installed (works correctly)[/url]
[url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/InputExperiment1/6F95/play.html]6F95, using the built-in template (problematic)[/url]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=40#p10158
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-29 11:15:07

Have you read "So, Do We Need This Parser Thing Anyway?" on Emily Short's blog?

<a class="postlink" href="http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/06/07/so-do-we-need-this-parser-thing-anyway/">http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/06/07 ... ng-anyway/</a>

She tries a similar overview of IF to what you're doing here, including a discussion of CYOA.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1518&start=10#p10159
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Passing variables from Parchment/i7 to JavaScript and ba
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-10-29 11:52:49

Yeah, that'd work just fine... then if I'm remembering my Javascript correctly you could just go like

[code]
function getTheThingieFromParchmentAndProcess() {
   var codeFromParchment = '';   
   // magic
   exec(codeFromParchment);
}
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1607&start=0#p10160
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Referring to an object when defining its property
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-29 12:15:46

Is there a variable that refers to an object at the time that you create a property for it?

For example:
[code]The initial appearance of a person is usually "[The person understood] is here, smiling at you warmly"[/code]

"The person understood" doesn't work, and neither does "The initial appearance of a person (called P)". Is there a way?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=10#p10161
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-10-29 12:39:44

[quote="Tigger31337"][quote="Ron Newcomb"]
Eh? One path goes forward, the other loops back with a hint...[/quote]
Hehe. Nice try, but no.
That's not what most people refer to when they say "CYOA".[/quote]

I don't think he's "trying" anything.  Your objective may not be exactly what most people mean when they say CYOA (no spaceships or pirates), but it has more in common structurally with CYOA than it does with world-modeled IF.  In any given room -- which cannot be re-visited after exiting, even -- there is a "choice": the correct answer, or any of the wrong ones.  This is true even if you haven't listed the answers out ("1. Banana 2. Apple 3. Orangutan").  The correct answer takes you forward, and the wrong answer keeps you in place (or "loops back" to... exactly where you are).  Without that loop, you'd have a game that allows the player to progress regardless of what answer they give, and that doesn't sound like what you're thinking of.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=10#p10162
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-10-29 12:44:32

[quote="Tigger31337"]
Staying true to my favourite text-adventure game's style (HHGTTG), I will be narrating this entirely in the 3rd person.[/quote]

What?  Not to nitpick, but:
[quote="HHGTTG"]You wake up. The room is spinning very gently round your head. Or at least it would be if you could see it which you can’t.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1608&start=0#p10163
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Checking if a text ends in a period
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-29 12:55:44

Is it possible to check if a text ends in a period without using indexed text?

Maybe it's silly, but I'm aiming for a no-indexed-text game.

I'd like to do something like this:

[code]Rule for writing a paragraph about a person (called P):
    Say "[initial appearance of P]";
    if the initial appearance of P ends in a period:
        Say " [He's-She's-It's for P] ";
    otherwise:
        Say " is ";
    Follow the behavior of P;[/code]
(where behavior is a person-based rulebook that says what P is doing right now)

It's not really necessary, but I didn't like the way the initial appearance of every person looked when it ended in "is" or "He's".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1607&start=0#p10164
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Referring to an object when defining its property
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-10-29 12:59:08

[code]The Lounge is a room.

Bob is a man in the Lounge. Wanda is a woman in the lounge.

The initial appearance of a person  is usually "[The printed name] is here, smiling at you warmly."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1609&start=0#p10165
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Interactive Fiction on the iPad w/iDOS
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-10-29 13:05:27

Earlier today I published a blog entry about running the DOS version of Hugo on the iPad using iDOS.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.robohara.com/?p=2628">http://www.robohara.com/?p=2628</a>

Spoiler: it works.

[img]http://www.robohara.com/pix/junk/hugo.jpg[/img]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1608&start=0#p10166
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Checking if a text ends in a period
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-29 13:38:01

I can't argue with the no-indexed-text game -- I've done my last few that way.

However, the only other way to determine what's in a string is to write some I6 print it to an array. That's easy, but it's essentially recreating some of the indexed-text mechanism for a specific task.

Since you're trading off game speed for programming effort anyway, you might as well define a separate property:

[code]
  A person can be initial-appearance-periodic.
[/code]

Then apply this property to any person whose initial appearance ends with a period. You'll have to keep that in sync by hand, of course.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1606&start=0#p10167
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Issue with Quixe/Inform build 6F95
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-29 13:43:47

I'll have to look at this tonight. It could be a change in the template code or extension code, not the viewport thing. (As far as the viewport is concerned, three Glk windows aren't any harder than two. On the other hand, it does look like a CSS problem, not a Glk code problem.)

You should try these the other way around. Drop each game file (the gblorb.js file) into the other one's interpreter directory. That will help pin down where problem is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1607&start=0#p10168
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Referring to an object when defining its property
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-29 13:47:47

[code]
The initial appearance of a person is usually "[The item described] is here, smiling at you warmly".
[/code]

"The item described" (not person, or any other term, but item) is the equivalent of the I6 variable "self". As far as I understand, when you're evaluating a text property of an item, that variable will be set to the item in question.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1583&start=10#p10169
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Brent Spiner from Star Trek is funny
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-10-29 13:49:31

[quote="payo"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UpUUXUqCN4

lol[/quote]

In addition, a couple of more funny interviews with the man Brent Spiner:

[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_ZEmfg_11w]Brent Spiner Interview 1996 on David Letterman[/url]

[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9mVy49Dp34&feature=fvsr]Interview with Brent Spiner at Grand Slam Con, April 12th 2008[/url]

 [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=10#p10170
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-10-29 13:53:23

[quote="tove"][quote="Tigger31337"][quote="Ron Newcomb"]
Eh? One path goes forward, the other loops back with a hint...[/quote]
Hehe. Nice try, but no.
That's not what most people refer to when they say "CYOA".[/quote]

I don't think he's "trying" anything.  Your objective may not be exactly what most people mean when they say CYOA (no spaceships or pirates), but it has more in common structurally with CYOA than it does with world-modeled IF.  In any given room -- which cannot be re-visited after exiting, even -- there is a "choice": the correct answer, or any of the wrong ones.  This is true even if you haven't listed the answers out ("1. Banana 2. Apple 3. Orangutan").  The correct answer takes you forward, and the wrong answer keeps you in place (or "loops back" to... exactly where you are).  Without that loop, you'd have a game that allows the player to progress regardless of what answer they give, and that doesn't sound like what you're thinking of.[/quote]

I respectfully disagree on the CYOA question. When I think CYOA I think multiple [i]explicitly given[/i] choices with some branching (even if most of the branches terminate quickly); definitely not of things that loop you back till you get the right answer. The game Tigger is describing seems most like "The Grand Quest" or "Gleaming the Verb" from the 2009 comp, both of which had strictly linear progression through a series of puzzles; in The Grand Quest you were gated through a series of rooms, in Gleaming the Verb as soon as you answered a puzzle you got the next clue. But they wouldn't have worked as CYOAs, because the puzzle was to guess the answer, as a riddle; if the choices had been given explicitly the answer probably wouldn't have been obvious.

Anyway, to the original question, why not just automatically move the player from one room to the next, if that's what you want to do? If you want them to automatically move from one room to the next you don't actually need to implement a connection. I think something like "Now the player is in (whatever the next room is)" will work, with appropriate conditions and text about the player going in the next room. (Don't have time to check the exact syntax.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=10#p10172
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: Tigger31337 / DateTime: 2010-10-29 14:05:21

[quote="tove"]
What?  Not to nitpick, but:
[quote="HHGTTG"]You wake up. The room is spinning very gently round your head. Or at least it would be if you could see it which you can’t.[/quote][/quote]


Oops. Brain-fart. I meant to say 2nd-person, not 3rd-person.
If you read the description of "Room1" (in my original post) you'll see the narrative is in 2nd-person, just like HHGTTG.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1606&start=0#p10173
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Issue with Quixe/Inform build 6F95
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-10-29 14:10:36

Switching the gblorb.js files results in the same behavior, so compilation doesn't seem to be the issue. My money is on a CSS problem, but possibly a culprit was introduced in GlkOte or Quixe...

Thanks,
Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=10#p10174
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: Tigger31337 / DateTime: 2010-10-29 14:16:03

[quote="tove"][quote="Tigger31337"][quote="Ron Newcomb"]
Eh? One path goes forward, the other loops back with a hint...[/quote]
Hehe. Nice try, but no.
That's not what most people refer to when they say "CYOA".[/quote]

I don't think he's "trying" anything.  [/quote]

He's trying to insist that my game style is that of a CYOA. However, he is mistaken.

[quote="tove"]
Your objective may not be exactly what most people mean when they say CYOA (no spaceships or pirates), but it has more in common structurally with CYOA than it does with world-modeled IF.  In any given room -- which cannot be re-visited after exiting, even -- there is a "choice": the correct answer, or any of the wrong ones.  This is true even if you haven't listed the answers out ("1. Banana 2. Apple 3. Orangutan").  The correct answer takes you forward, and the wrong answer keeps you in place (or "loops back" to... exactly where you are).  Without that loop, you'd have a game that allows the player to progress regardless of what answer they give, and that doesn't sound like what you're thinking of.[/quote]


It seems that you, too, have misunderstood the objective of my game.
In no way, whatever, is it accurate to describe it as a CYOA, nor is it appropriate to use a CYOA-style of logic when coding this particular game.

There are no "choices" to be made, here. The player examines a richly-detailed room (possibly containing objects, characters, dialogue, etc.) but the player has exactly ONE move to make: answer the riddle. You either pass, or fail. If fail, stay where you are. If pass, move on to the next room/scene/riddle. The entire plot (if you want to call it that) is PRE-DETERMINED. Indeed, my work is the [i][b]exact opposite[/b][/i] of CYOA.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1610&start=0#p10175
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: The Big Bang Theory - Season 4 Episode 6 - IF included !
User: mulehollandaise / DateTime: 2010-10-29 14:30:14

Hi all,

I don't know if it has been noticed here yet, but the latest episode of the show The Big Bang Theory (4x06) features Sheldon playing IF!

More precisely, at the beginning of the episode (5th minute) Sheldon is featured playing an interactive fiction ("You are in a forest. There is quicksand to the west, a path leads to the east." -- rings any bell?  [emote];)[/emote] ), and Leonard comes in; Sheldon says he found an emulator for 80s text-based games, and borrows the tagline of one Infocom ad ("it runs on the most powerful graphics chip: the imagination"). Sheldon then encounters a troll and franctically types ("hit troll with axe"), etc.

The scene is quite short, but noteworthy, still! Is it IF's big break into the mainstream? (11 million viewers on average for the show!)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1608&start=0#p10176
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Checking if a text ends in a period
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-29 14:33:28

Sounds like the easiest thing is to put the appropriate verb at the end of every initial appearance. Or at the beginning of every behavior rule.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=20#p10177
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: Tigger31337 / DateTime: 2010-10-29 14:33:36

[quote="matt w"]I respectfully disagree on the CYOA question. When I think CYOA I think multiple [i]explicitly given[/i] choices with some branching (even if most of the branches terminate quickly); definitely not of things that loop you back till you get the right answer. The game Tigger is describing seems most like "The Grand Quest" or "Gleaming the Verb" from the 2009 comp, both of which had strictly linear progression through a series of puzzles; in The Grand Quest you were gated through a series of rooms, in Gleaming the Verb as soon as you answered a puzzle you got the next clue. But they wouldn't have worked as CYOAs, because the puzzle was to guess the answer, as a riddle; if the choices had been given explicitly the answer probably wouldn't have been obvious.
[/quote]

Thank you. Not only do I agree, but you've given me two great leads. I will investigate "The Grand Quest" and "Gleaming the Verb" immediately.



[quote="matt w"]
Anyway, to the original question, why not just automatically move the player from one room to the next, if that's what you want to do? If you want them to automatically move from one room to the next you don't actually need to implement a connection. I think something like "Now the player is in (whatever the next room is)" will work, with appropriate conditions and text about the player going in the next room. (Don't have time to check the exact syntax.)[/quote]

Yes, that's what I would like to do. I still believe Inform can help me here, but I've yet to see any game (or code) that's remotely similar (of course, I haven't looked into your two previous references... yet). I'm looking for precicsely what you term "appropriate conditions" and "the exact syntax"! Those are not mere details... they are the core of what I'm after!  [emote]:)[/emote]

I can't just have people automatically transporting from room to room. It has to be conditional:

[color=#0000BF]- Room1. there's a bunch of crap in it (objects, scenery, a dude who talks, etc.). describe it all to the player (including the riddle that needs to be solved). ask the player: who stole the dude's cheese?  

- await user input

- if correct (and i know Inform is pretty flexible with user-input, as i can code synonyms for the correct answer) then move user to Room2
- else, do nothing (user stays where he is. frustrated.)

- repeat until bored[/color]

I know Inform wasn't [i]designed [/i]to handle this, but there's nothing (so far) which tells me it [i]can't [/i]handle it. To me, it seems simple... but I'm no Inform pro, that's why I posted it here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1610&start=0#p10178
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The Big Bang Theory - Season 4 Episode 6 - IF included !
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2010-10-29 14:44:58

Of course, the show isn't big on internal consistency. This recent episode had Sheldon 'just' discover he can play games from the 80s in an emulator. In the second season, however, episode 20 had the guys planning to play Zork ("The buggy beta version") on vintage gaming night.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1609&start=0#p10179
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction on the iPad w/iDOS
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-10-29 14:50:05

Heh, DOSBox for iPad. Nice.

Have you already tried to run old standalone DOS games on it? Such as Prince of Persia, Monkey Island 1-2, Ultima Underworld, Escape From Delirium or even classic FPS like Wolf3D, DOOM, Blood, Duke3D or Quake?

I wonder if Node-X interpreter would run on that DOSpad...

E.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1608&start=0#p10180
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Checking if a text ends in a period
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-29 14:54:35

That will work too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1611&start=0#p10181
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Gender bug?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-10-29 15:05:33

[code]The Zoo is a room.

The tortoise is a neuter animal in the Zoo.

Instead of examining the tortoise:
	If the noun is male, say "He ";
	If the noun is female, say "She ";
	if the noun is neuter, say "It ";
	say "is a wonderful shade of green."
	
test me with "x tortoise"[/code]
[quote]>[1] x tortoise
He It is a wonderful shade of green.
[/quote]

It appears that an animal that is declared neuter is both male [i]and[/i] neuter. Is this a bug?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1612&start=0#p10183
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Running games with sound in Zoom / Spatterlight
User: telmah / DateTime: 2010-10-29 16:04:27

I'm trying to get The Lurking Horror working on my Mac, and I'd like to make sure that the sounds will work. We'd like to be able to save the transcript of the game, so playing it in DOSBox is not an option. Do Zoom / Spatterlight play sound? If so, do I have to set it up in any special ways?

Thanks!

BTW I'm preparing this for a playing group event this Sunday. You'll be able to watch it online 2-5 pm EST [url]http://www.ustream.tv/channel/people-s-republic-of-interactive-fiction-zork[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1611&start=0#p10184
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Gender bug?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-29 16:13:40

It's a straightforward consequence of the Standard Rules:

[code]
A person can be female or male. A person is usually male.
A person can be neuter. A person is usually not neuter.

An animal is a kind of person.
[/code]

The same thing happens if you declare a "male person", but not with a "man" (which is a subkind declared to be non-neuter.)

Whether it's a bug is Graham's decision. The library is set up so that neuter overrides the other two declarations -- your tortoise can only be referred to using the "it" pronoun, not "he". With the rules the way they are, you must do the same:

[code]
if the noun is neuter: 
  say "It ";
else:
  if the noun is male, say "He ";
  If the noun is female, say "She ";
[/code]

Maybe that's an unreasonable requirement, but redesigning this bit would mean switching from two binary properties to one three-value property. That might have nasty consequences for existing code; I haven't worked it through.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=20#p10185
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: Felse / DateTime: 2010-10-29 17:28:20

This, I think, will compile, and may be starting point for what you want to do.
(I’m sure the code is much less elegant than it could be …)

[code]Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short.

A room has a list of indexed text called facit.

The successor is a direction. 
The predecessor is a direction. 
The successor has opposite predecessor.

#1 is a room. "Fatumeh has just eaten her fill of kiwifruits. However, she still has 15 fruits left and wants to divide them equally among her 3 brothers (Tom, Dick, and Harry). How many kiwifruits will Harry get from her?" The facit of #1 is {"5"}.

#2 is a room. #2 is successor of #1. "Lincoln's Gettysburg Address begins:[line break][bold type]'Four ___ and seven years ago'[roman type].[paragraph break][italic type](Please type the missing word at the prompt below.)[roman type]". The facit of #2 is {"score"}.

#3 is a room. #3 is successor of #2. "How many kiwifruits will Tom have?" The facit of #3 is {"5"}.

Last after reading a command:
	let L be a list of indexed text;
	add the player's command in lower case to L;
	if L is the facit of the location:
		reinforce;
	otherwise:
		extinguish;
	stop the action.
	
To reinforce:
	say "[one of]Correct.[or]Quite right.[or]Good.[or]Exactly.[or]That's right.[in random order]";
	try going successor.
	
To extinguish:
	say "The correct answer is:[line break][facit][paragraph break][italic type](Press any key to continue)[roman type][paragraph break]";
	wait for any key;
	try going successor.
	
To say facit:
	say the facit of location.

Instead of going nowhere from a room:
		say "[paragraph break]We're finished.";
		stop game abruptly.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=20#p10186
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-10-29 17:45:47

This might not be the most original idea, but in Room #1 I would put a door that gets unlocked when the player's score => 1. Set the door in Room 2 to unlock when score >= 2, and so on. Then, give the player a point for solving each room's puzzle. When they solve a puzzle the door will open, and they can always move backwards.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1602&start=0#p10187
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How to come up with puzzles?
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-10-29 17:53:22

What kind of game are you writing? If we knew the general plot, maybe we could suggest some puzzles?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1588&start=0#p10188
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tiny examples
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2010-10-29 19:48:13

[quote="Jim Aikin"]
It strikes me that a lot of the things people are trying to do with I7 are in the nature of programming tricks. They have little or nothing to do with storytelling.
[/quote]

Just like i7 and the standard rules. They are just a programming language and a world model. There are very few things that directly deal with story-telling : description/printed name could be considered as defining a linguistic item. There is nothing in I7 that implements concepts from theories of narrativity, enonciation or interaction.

[quote="Jim Aikin"]
If you want to do tricks like putting ASCII animations on the screen in real time, creating huge collections of objects dynamically, performing floating-point calculations, or whatever
[/quote]

Actually, natural language processing is quite a high end technology. Stanford's parser source code is more than 170,000 lines long. And it relies on statistical algorithms. Thus, it needs floating-point numbers and dynamic objects (probably huge collections). And ASCII animations are just so cool.

[quote="Jim Aikin"]
The original conception or primary attraction of I7, it seems to me, was/is that it allows people who are not conversant with programming and don't [i]want [/i]to become conversant with programming to write interactive fiction.
[/quote]

The problem of i7 is that it is a programming language and framework that allows you to write interactive fictions in the style of [i]interactive fictions[/i]. It's actually quite difficult to diverge from the idea of what IFs should look like according to i7 because of several limitations :
-lack of standard low-level phrases.
-lack of memory structures at the i6 level.
-glux is not powerful enough.

[quote="Jim Aikin"]
This is more or less a real question. I'm not asking it rhetorically. Why are people jumping up and down on I7's pointed little head trying to make it do things other than provide a framework for telling stories?
 -- why are you using Inform 7? Why not use a more suitable language?

--JA[/quote]

As I said, i7's framework is limited to a certain idea of what IFs are and is absolutely not prepared to handle complex algorithms that would implement [i]natural language[/i] parsing or complex conversational systems (like Façade).
I chose to develop with i7 because literate programming looked like it was more convenient (and it is). And i didn't want to write my own IF system because of my lack of experience but also because i wanted to be part of a community : maybe i'll never finish my project, but at least people'd be able to enjoy the few extensions I wrote.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1611&start=0#p10190
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Gender bug?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-10-29 20:32:20

[quote="zarf"]
Whether it's a bug is Graham's decision. The library is set up so that neuter overrides the other two declarations.[/quote]
Maybe I'm being unusually dense today, but it looks to me as if capmikee's example code contradicts you. The library seems to be set up so that neuterness does [i]not [/i]override maleness. If neuter overrode male, an object declared as neuter would not continue to be male.

Whether it's a bug depends on whether we assume that Inform is attempting to model the real world, or is off in some little universe of its own. If Inform is attempting to model the real world, then I would have to conclude that it's a bug. In the real world, a being cannot be both male and neuter. If Inform is off in a little world of its own, then why are male and female mutually exclusive? Why can't we have an object that's both male and female, eh?

In some other language than English, I suppose the word we would translate into English as "eunuch" might be a male noun. In that case, a neuter object could be referred to using a male pronoun. Other than that, I can't see any justification for this choice of library design. The question of whether fixing it would break existing code ... my impression is that new releases of Inform tend to break existing [i]game [/i]code on a fairly regular basis. If you're referring to existing [i]library [/i]code, then, well, yeah, fixing the bug could be a big job. And quite likely not a high priority. But saying, "It's not a high priority," is a little different than saying, "It's not a bug unless Graham says it's a bug."

Them's mah 2 cents, anyhow.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1611&start=0#p10191
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Gender bug?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-29 20:41:25

[quote]Maybe I'm being unusually dense today, but it looks to me as if capmikee's example code contradicts you[/quote]

You're not being unusually dense. 

What I meant was: the library is set up with the presumption that if the "neuter" flag is set, the object should be treated as neuter, and the "male/female" flag should be ignored.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1611&start=0#p10192
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Gender bug?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-10-29 20:43:56

[quote="Jim Aikin"]In the real world, a being cannot be both male and neuter.[/quote]
Physically, no. Linguistically, yes. And IF deals with the linguistic properties of things, not the physical properties. A turtle is a perfect example here. If you don't know or care whether the turtle is male or female, you'd probably use the neuter pronoun. But if you know it's male, you might use the male pronoun instead. A work of IF should therefore be able to accept either pronoun in cases like these.

That said, zarf is right. You can make the turtle both male and neuter, but you can still only use one of the pronouns ("it") to refer to it. I don't understand why I7 has implemented it this way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1611&start=0#p10193
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Gender bug?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-10-29 21:22:48

[quote="zarf"]You're not being unusually dense.[/quote]
...and there's a reassurance that has a less complimentary secondary meaning.

Thanks, I think.

I think I get it now, though. Maybe what you're saying is that the library itself will never refer to a male object as male, if the object is also neuter. However, the author's code can still discover (and either make use of or trip over, as here) the fact that a neuter object is also male.

If that's the case, then I would have to agree that the question of whether or not this is a bug is a bit of a gray area.

Ahh. I'm feeling less dense already!

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1611&start=0#p10194
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Gender bug?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-10-29 21:28:30

[quote="Emerald"][quote="Jim Aikin"]In the real world, a being cannot be both male and neuter.[/quote]
Physically, no. Linguistically, yes. And IF deals with the linguistic properties of things, not the physical properties.[/quote]
This week I was reading a novel in which one of the characters was a college professor of post-modern literary criticism. Something about semiotics, a word I would have to look up If I were planning to use it in a sentence. Your statement reminds me a little of that approach to discourse -- the idea that things have no inherent properties, that they exist only as objects of discourse.

Was it Samuel Johnson who kicked a rock and said, "I refute it thus!"?

At the risk of starting a philosophical food fight, I would suggest that, on the contrary, IF very often deals with the physical properties of things. Their visibility, for instance. Their location vis-a-vis other things. Stuff like that.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=20#p10195
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-10-29 22:11:21

This is the sort of thing I was thinking of. I've taken George's code and changed it so that when you give the correct answer it automatically moves you to the next room:

[code]The Manipularium is a room. "Here you manipulate. There is a locked door to the north." The Pullarium is a room. "Here you pull. There is a locked door to the north." The Contactorium is a room. "Here you contact. There is a locked door to the north."

Instead of going, say "The only exit is the locked door to the north, which is locked."


The block answering rule is not listed in the report answering it that rulebook.

Instead of answering yourself that it when in The Manipularium:
    if the topic understood matches "manipulate":
        say "Correct!";
        say "The door to north unlocks, and you go through it. As you do it vanishes behind you.";
        move the player to the Pullarium;
    otherwise:
        say "Gesundheit!"

Instead of answering yourself that it when in The Pullarium:
    if the topic understood matches "pull":
        say "Correct!";
        say "The door to north unlocks, and you go through it. As you do it vanishes behind you.";
        move the player to the Contactorium;
    otherwise:
        say "Gesundheit!"

Instead of answering yourself that it when in The Contactorium:
    if the topic understood matches "contact":
        say "Correct!";
        say "The door to north unlocks, and you go through it. Outside is sweet freedom!";
        end the game in victory;
    otherwise:
        say "Gesundheit!"

test me with "n / e / s / u / say xyzzy / say Manipulate / u / say pull / u / u / say contact"[/code]

Now there are several awful things about this, most prominently that the door is mentioned in the description but you can't do anything with it. If you're going to use this sort of thing you need to implement a door-object that the player can interact with, even if they can't open it and use it to go north. Maybe it'd work best to implement it as a locked (and impossible to unlock) door; but anyway, if you want to automatically move the player to a room, "Move the player to the Pullarium" works. 

You probably also want some different ways of parsing the answer; I have no particular ideas here.

Also, there's no reason to be snippy with the people who are talking about CYOAs. They were being perfectly polite and trying to help; which I suppose is "trying something," but it's not like anyone was trying to put one over on you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1611&start=0#p10196
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Gender bug?
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-10-29 22:15:48

There might be situations where you wanted to know the gender (say, if you were modeling the population of a turtle colony) but you still wanted to use "it" in the dialogue.  Anyway, you can just say:

[code]Instead of examining the tortoise:
   say "[if neuter]It[otherwise if male]He[otherwise if female]She[end if] is a wonderful shade of green."[/code]

That way it says "it" by default.  If you want to say "he/she" by default, you can move the "it" to the end.

Or you could use the Plurality extension.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=20#p10202
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-10-30 00:53:51

Is there a reason why just using "now the player is in Room 2" wouldn't be optimal?

I also still think that having the player tell the answer to someone is the easiest and most intuitive interface.  I mean, it's 3 (edit: I can count) lines:

[code]After telling the Sphinx about "[man]":
say "Correct!";
now the player is in Room 2.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1602&start=0#p10203
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How to come up with puzzles?
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2010-10-30 01:09:13

I'm new to writing IF, and the style of mystery game I am writing is not really puzzle intensive, it's more about logic and detection.  That said, I did think of an interesting small obstacle for the prologue.  I set a clear but simple goal for the player during the intro scene and then introduced a character that would basically get in the way of that goal; and there are several different solutions to get through this gateway to the next scene.  

The puzzle really came from thinking about the characters. What would the player detective character encounter?  What is the NPC character like?  What would the NPC want from the detective character?  I set the kind of small logical obstacle that would get in the way of the detective protagonist  that would fit in a traditional narrative, like a short story.  

Maybe this will spark some additional ideas for others.  (And I will need to come up with more such ideas later on as I get to later scenes.)

I also find that sometimes coding in Inform7 is its own puzzle!  [emote];-)[/emote] 

--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1518&start=10#p10204
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Passing variables from Parchment/i7 to JavaScript and ba
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-10-30 01:15:04

eval() rather than exec(), but yeah that's what I'm planning to do!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1606&start=0#p10205
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Issue with Quixe/Inform build 6F95
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-10-30 01:21:01

The right panel is supposed to have a list of commands? Both work then (they look different though) in Firefox 3.6.

6F95 however has two #gameport's. This is probably bad. Actually it looks as if the whole (manifest).txt is out of date.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=20#p10206
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-10-30 01:26:32

[quote="Tigger31337"]
There are no "choices" to be made, here. The player examines a richly-detailed room (possibly containing objects, characters, dialogue, etc.) but the player has exactly ONE move to make: answer the riddle. You either pass, or fail. If fail, stay where you are. If pass, move on to the next room/scene/riddle. The entire plot (if you want to call it that) is PRE-DETERMINED. Indeed, my work is the [i][b]exact opposite[/b][/i] of CYOA.[/quote]
Yes, I understand that the plot is PREDETERMINED.  The exact playthrough, however, is not (which is what distinguishes any interactive work from a non-interactive one!), and "you either pass, or fail" is a branch in the gameplay tree, even if it is not a particularly divergent one, plotwise.

Perhaps the word "choice" is the problem here, since it implies moral agency or something.  It does sound a bit silly to say "The student [i]chose[/i] to answer that 2+2=4," but we get that in the phrase "multiple choice exam" as well.

[quote="Tigger31337"]The player examines a richly-detailed room (possibly containing objects, characters, dialogue, etc.) but the player has exactly ONE move to make: answer the riddle.[/quote]

Ah, well, that does sound a bit different than what you were talking about before.  But I'm confused: does the examining of the room happen over several moves, or is it all in a static printed paragraph?  I can definitely understand why you want a more robust world model if the former, but your description earlier (and "ONE move to make") sound more like the latter.

I want to clarify, by the way, that my intent is not to malign your project, either in general or by comparing it to CYOA (which you may have heard negative rhetoric about around here).  I just thought that it sounds structurally similar to CYOA, and therefore that extensions like Adventure Book would be a good jumping-off point for your code.

[quote="mattw"]In The Grand Quest you were gated through a series of rooms, in Gleaming the Verb as soon as you answered a puzzle you got the next clue.[/quote]

Well, in [i]The Grand Quest[/i], they were (mostly) object-manipulation puzzles (requiring a model world), not puzzles where you proceed by saying the right phrase.  From the example that Tigger31337 gave in hir first post ("The keypad display reads "2+2=". What number do you punch on the keypad in order to unlock the door?"), this game would be a lot more call-and-response.

And I think it's interesting that you list [i]Gleaming the Verb[/i], since one could argue (and several did, in their Comp reviews) that it [i]wasn't[/i] "really IF."  [spoiler]Sure, the magic words that you said to proceed looked like IF commands, in that they took the form of the verb and an object, but there was no indication that you were "actually" performing that action on the object -- in fact, one of the verbs was not even one that could sensibly have applied to the object.[/spoiler]
I quite agree that [i]Gleaming the Cube[/i] would be a good precedent for Tigger31337 to take a look at, at any rate.

So it sounds like you (mattw) are categorizing CYOA based on whether the paths are explicitly demarcated, and I am categorizing CYOA based on whether or not the world is modeled beyond having a look-up for what the current right answer is.  Arguably, of course, my definition has a fuzzy boundary (imagine a puzzle-room in which you simply have to push a rock away from the door to proceed.  Is it IF because you are affecting the model world by model-pushing a model rock away from a model door, or can we treat it as CYOA and just check to see if the player typed the magic phrase "push rock"?), but I think we've already seen that boundary poked at from both sides in CYOA-with-a-lot-of-flags and IF-with-menu-based-conversation.  Anyway, it's always interesting to see what different people think of as the one true defining characteristic of any given category (especially when that category does have multiple common characteristics, as this one clearly does).  On that note, I'd be curious as to what you think the [i][b]exact opposite[/b][/i] of CYOA is. I say "a televised production of a Jacobean tragedy." [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1602&start=0#p10207
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How to come up with puzzles?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-10-30 02:06:30

I especially like puzzles that are designed around a unifying core interaction concept: Enchanter's magic spells, say, or the word puzzles in Ad Verbum, or the gadget-oriented puzzles in Spider & Web. Instead of having disparate puzzles that might not be related at all, you can teach the player to approach problems in your game in a specific way, and ramp up the difficulty gradually as you go -- making the player feel that he's mastering the system and giving him the satisfaction of feeling competent. 

Having a core concept to your puzzles also makes invention easier, because you can brainstorm around the specific type of thing that you're focusing on for your game, rather than starting from a wide open field. 

If you're interested, I talk about this idea a lot longer here:  <a class="postlink" href="http://emshort.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/current-playing-infidel/">http://emshort.wordpress.com/2009/08/13 ... g-infidel/</a>

Some other resources that might be useful:
 
...ifwiki collection of craft articles: <a class="postlink" href="http://ifwiki.org/index.php/Craft#Puzzles">http://ifwiki.org/index.php/Craft#Puzzles</a>
...index of discussions from the past: <a class="postlink" href="http://ifwiki.org/index.php/Past_raif_topics:_Game_Mechanics:_part_1#Puzzles">http://ifwiki.org/index.php/Past_raif_t ... _1#Puzzles</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1613&start=0#p10209
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Custom Library Messages, version 0.
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-10-30 04:14:59

I think this all-new replacement for David Fisher's venerable one is about ready for prime-time, but could I have a few people poke and prod it to see if the tires fall off?  [url=http://www.plover.net/~pscion/Custom%20Library%20Messages.i7x]Pre-release version is here.[/url]  It would make me happy if I could get some help going over the thing.  I think it works perfect now... but I've said that before.   Right now it's tied to the 6E builds and later because, at the least, the activity is an activity "on numbers".  It compiles with or without the current version of Plurality (version 9).

Anyway!  It offers an Activity so you can write Before/After rules for library messages, and uses a table-that-varies rather than being hard-coded to the Table of Custom Library Messages for easy switcheroo.  It supports more tenses than David's, and can be a part of a prose-generation system if you're inclined in that direction.  Some of David's say-phrases I kept as-is to ease porting an existing work, but I did ditch most of the $ % !@#@$!@ stuff.   

And, the documentation is short.  Most needn't read past the first section, which shows:[quote]The story viewpoint is third person feminine.
The story tense is past tense.

When a flashback scene ends: now the story tense is present tense.[/quote] and the second section is how to use the same table as Default Messages.

Let me know what typos the thing produces.  I think I ironed them all out, but one never knows.

[i]EDIT: fixed sample code per below suggestions[/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=20#p10210
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-10-30 04:34:04

[quote="tove"]And I think it's interesting that you list [i]Gleaming the Verb[/i], since one could argue (and several did, in their Comp reviews) that it [i]wasn't[/i] "really IF."  [spoiler]Sure, the magic words that you said to proceed looked like IF commands, in that they took the form of the verb and an object, but there was no indication that you were "actually" performing that action on the object -- in fact, one of the verbs was not even one that could sensibly have applied to the object.[/spoiler][/quote]

True -- and that was something I kind of had in mind -- but I don't think anyone argued that it was CYOA. People tended to say things more like "It's a series of word puzzles."

[quote]So it sounds like you (mattw) are categorizing CYOA based on whether the paths are explicitly demarcated, and I am categorizing CYOA based on whether or not the world is modeled beyond having a look-up for what the current right answer is.  Arguably, of course, my definition has a fuzzy boundary (imagine a puzzle-room in which you simply have to push a rock away from the door to proceed.  Is it IF because you are affecting the model world by model-pushing a model rock away from a model door, or can we treat it as CYOA and just check to see if the player typed the magic phrase "push rock"?), but I think we've already seen that boundary poked at from both sides in CYOA-with-a-lot-of-flags and IF-with-menu-based-conversation.  Anyway, it's always interesting to see what different people think of as the one true defining characteristic of any given category (especially when that category does have multiple common characteristics, as this one clearly does).[/quote]

Yeah, I definitely think of explicitly demarcated multiple choices as defining the CYOA. I don't suppose I have any argument for that, just a sense that that's what people usually mean. And I'd think of keyword-based IF as another raid on the boundary; there are a finite number of keywords you can type, but there may be a lot of them, and they map to interactions with the model world in some way. (Though all, and I think I mean both, of the keyword-based IFs I've played allow you to go outside the keyword anyway.) 

I wonder if it makes a difference to our sense of what CYOA is that I grew up with the Edward Packard books. (And the R.A. Montgomery ones, but Packard's were just better.) Did you read the books at all?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1613&start=0#p10211
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Custom Library Messages, version 0.
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-10-30 05:35:49

Perfect timing, Ron.

I'm just writing up my "Trinity Reimagined" document based on a past class and one of the primary things we wanted to do was change tense and person and all that. We originally did use the Custom Library Messages extension. However, for the updating documentation I'll include your attempt, which will give me a good opportunity to test it out.

Thanks for making this available and for working on it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1588&start=10#p10212
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tiny examples
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-10-30 05:37:54

[quote="Jim Aikin"][quote="Eleas"]This is a simple way to convert the names of things into proper title case (applied in this case to rooms).[/quote]
This is a general comment, not specifically related to your example ... your example is just a handy hook to hang it on.

It strikes me that a lot of the things people are trying to do with I7 are in the nature of programming tricks. They have little or nothing to do with storytelling. With your example, if you want a room called "The Dark Side of the Force", why not just call it that and then move on?[/quote]
Even though this is a general comment, I can only answer for my specific choice. In this particular case, I wasn't going for programmatic trickery. Ever since reading an article by someone or other (can't remember who), I kept wanting to write the room names without capitalization in my code (i.e. "The dank hovel is a room.") and still get the proper casing effect in-game. IMO, other than being more particular, it's not much different from the "say [text] in title case" phrase.

My idea in starting this thread was to promote sharing simple/basic ideas and functionality. This is why I split it up into two blocks: one generic text operation, and one rule for applying it where needed. 


[quote]The original conception or primary attraction of I7, it seems to me, was/is that it allows people who are not conversant with programming and don't [i]want [/i]to become conversant with programming to write interactive fiction. This is a laudable goal, and I7 accomplishes it in a fairly tidy way.

If you want to do tricks like putting ASCII animations on the screen in real time, creating huge collections of objects dynamically, performing floating-point calculations, or whatever -- why are you using Inform 7? Why not use a more suitable language?[/quote]
I see what you're saying, but I wouldn't couch the dilemma in those terms. True, no tool is perfect, and some effects could be considered garish and perhaps unnecessary. But to me, there's no one way to present a story. If a system provides you with many options, is this such a bad thing? 

Also, not all stories are equal. For one trivial example, I recall Robert Heinlein spending several weeks on a passage from one of his stories. I don't remember the exact circumstances, the protagonists were travelling in a spaceship, and Heinlein wanted to get the numbers just right so as to improve realism. This would not be easily accomplished using integers. 

(Floating point conversion in particular is useful in many different ways, and while I'm not looking to use them right now, I feel much happier knowing I have the option.)


[quote]This is more or less a real question. I'm not asking it rhetorically. Why are people jumping up and down on I7's pointed little head trying to make it do things other than provide a framework for telling stories?[/quote]
Two reasons, I think. One, they already use I7 and want to see its limits. Two, they feel they actually need those effects in order to deliver their story more effectively.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1588&start=10#p10213
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tiny examples
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-10-30 06:10:36

[quote="Phonatacid"]
But i have quite a few other useful phrases that i wrote thinking "wth man ? why is this not in the standard rules ?". They are dispersed throughout my I7 extension files, i might gather them one day, probably when I'm making the jump to 6F95 (i'm still waiting that jesse updates his Dynamic * extensions).[/quote]

This. I greatly enjoy I7, both for its unique perspective and its ease of use. This feeling of having somehow missed a vital clue on how to do things has frustrated me on many an occasion, however. I can't make an honest attempt at a game without being able to trust the system to have my back, and that trust falters every time I have to jump through hoops to manage something seemingly trivial.

Then again, I don't think poor documentation is necessarily the culprit (matter of fact, I'm not sure the manual is all that bad). Maybe it's just that I7, in departing from a few regular coding conventions, attracts a much broader user base. If that's the case, it would make sense that they have different ways of looking at Inform, and different needs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1606&start=0#p10214
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Issue with Quixe/Inform build 6F95 (Solved)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-10-30 07:12:32

Are you on Windows or Linux? On a Mac, I see absolutely nothing (aside from a More prompt) in the right window, whether in Firefox 3.6 or in a WebKit browser...

Anyway, I think I've found where this is coming from. I still had my old installation of Quixe in my Templates folder (so that I can continue to compile with 6E72 when needed). It seems that 6F95 is using files from both the old template installation and from the bundled installation, because when I remove the old template files, everything works as it ought to.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1600&start=0#p10215
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Game Speed
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2010-10-30 07:28:28

[quote="ektemple"]
I'm confused as to why you would do this with dynamic objects. If you know you need 5000 zboubs, just declare 5000 zboubs as standard objects. It really only makes sense to use Dynamic Objects (which don't have native support in I6/I7) when you *need* to create them on the fly.
[quote]

It was just a test phrase. I don't think i'd ever need to create 5000 dynamic objects, but I may need to create one hundred persons and 20 cars. I developed an extension that allows you to dump objects you don't use anymore : consequently you don't need to create them : you can just resuscitate them. i've already posted this extension in this forum, but I think I should publish it on inform's website : are beta versions allowed ?

[quote="ektemple"]
That sounds slower than it really ought to be. The Glimmr Automap extension renders scaled png graphics from fairly large arrays (2000-3000 entries) much faster than that, converting from character codes along the way. Are you using indexed text? If so, you might want to consider using character codes instead, with a custom say statement, e.g.:

To say char-code (N - a number):
	(- print (char) {N}; -)

Another potential cause is that your interpreter doesn't print text very quickly. I'm not familiar with the kinds of speed that are attainable with text-grid windows, in case you're displaying the animation in a grid window. Finally, 10,000 "pixels" (100 x 100) is quite a lot, you might consider reducing the animation size.

More generally: Be sure to test all of these effects outside of the IDE. The IDE interpreters run quite a bit slower than their standalone counterparts.

--Erik[/quote][/quote][/quote]

I think i was already using the "print (char) {N}" statement, but thanks anyway, i'll try to investigate this later.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1600&start=0#p10216
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Game Speed
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2010-10-30 07:32:36

[quote="DavidK"][quote="ektemple"][quote="Phonatacid"]My time engine is lagging after an half an hour. I don't really know why it is happening, i just decided to sort this out later, when i am able to play my game for more than half hour.[/quote]Glulx wasn't designed to keep perfect time, especially over long periods (see the spec).[/quote]Absolutely. When you're trying to keep track of relatively long stretches of time (such as half an hour) it's important to not rely on (say) having a timer tick every second, and then summing all the seconds. If you do this, and the timer isn't exactly accurate, you'll drift: if the ticks come at an average of 1.01 seconds, rather than the expected 1 second, that would still push you off by about 20 seconds over 30 minutes. In general the best way round this is to have a long-running timer to keep you in sync.[/quote]

What do you mean ? Having both a fast and slow timer ? Or just replacing my current timer with a lo,g-running one ?
Also, i could use an external program in order to time my game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1606&start=0#p10217
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Issue with Quixe/Inform build 6F95 (Solved)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-10-30 07:37:59

[quote="ektemple"]I still had my old installation of Quixe in my Templates folder (so that I can continue to compile with 6E72 when needed). It seems that 6F95 is using files from both the old template installation and from the bundled installation, because when I remove the old template files, everything works as it ought to.
[/quote]

It looks like the compilation process may somehow be different between the two: if you try to use the new template files with 6E72, the compilation goes fine, but Quixe crashes with a message to the effect that there is no gameport on the page. (Or maybe this is a consequence of the website template being older? If it wasn't obvious already, I haven't looked into how it's all put together...) 

Anyway, anyone who wants to be able to continue compiling to Quixe from 6E72 without screwing up their 6F95 compilation can put the old installation (still available at <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/</a>, I believe) into the application's (rather than the user's) Templates folder. For Mac users, this would be app-bundle/Resources/Inform 7/Extensions/Reserved/Templates (you may need to create this folder).

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1583&start=10#p10218
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Brent Spiner from Star Trek is funny
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-10-30 08:41:01

[quote="RealNC"]Stop destroying whole threads  [emote]:evil:[/emote][/quote]

Are you talking to yourself?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1583&start=10#p10219
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Brent Spiner from Star Trek is funny
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-10-30 09:23:18

[quote="Retro"]You don't provoke us Windows users anyway. But if you don't leave us alone, we will take countermeasures. That's a promise you can bet your little ass on, you moron.[/quote]

Reported. Retro, this would be ridiculously abusive behavior even if the cause weren't so trivial. People make jokes about operating systems, and there's no reason to take it personally when someone posts a joke about f-ing windows. For heaven's sake, you seem to have taken it personally that someone posted a file in a format you don't like. Please try to behave more maturely.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1583&start=10#p10220
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Brent Spiner from Star Trek is funny
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-10-30 09:39:06

[quote="matt w"][quote="Retro"]You don't provoke us Windows users anyway. But if you don't leave us alone, we will take countermeasures. That's a promise you can bet your little ass on, you moron.[/quote]

Reported. Retro, this would be ridiculously abusive behavior even if the cause weren't so trivial. People make jokes about operating systems, and there's no reason to take it personally when someone posts a joke about f-ing windows. For heaven's sake, you seem to have taken it personally that someone posted a file in a format you don't like.[/quote]

Reported what? That quote is fake anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1600&start=0#p10222
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Game Speed
User: George / DateTime: 2010-10-30 11:43:42

In a real-time game loop I think you want your timer to keep track of the delta-t since the last tick. Then you can adjust the next tick accordingly to keep the loop in sync, by not ticking the timer until the fractional difference is made up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=40#p10223
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: wfryers / DateTime: 2010-10-30 12:37:04

capmikee: I had not seen the article. Thanks for pointing it out.  I found it very helpful.  It makes a lot of points along the lines I am thinking.  To me the article deals with a lot of implementation issues.  I am at a stage prior to it.  To me the root cause of the parser issues lies in the mental model.  The reason people struggle, particularly in the beginning is there is no clear mental model.  Their actions do not generate feedback which helps them create one.  

To go back to the word processing example, everyone starts with something that looks like a blank piece of paper.  When you got the product you new it would let you type letters.  That's a whole lot of mental model to work with.  I am not so sure you get anywhere near that much when you open a work of Interactive Fiction.

To me the “>” prompt is equivalent to the computer saying “huh?”.  In the olden days this kind of command line prompt usually honored “?” as a request for some assistance.  I don't think it works that way in I7.  

Right after that we are confronted by some serious differences in natural languages.  The structure of English is not universal to all languages.  If you think so, just ask someone who lives in India or China, where two thirds of the world's population resides.

At the implementation level we might take a leaf from the structural linguist's book.  We can see English as made up of a few word patterns which create clauses.  

For transitive verbs the patterns are:
[list]
Noun-Verb – I run
Noun-Verb-Noun – I kicked the ball
Noun -Verb-Noun-Noun – I gave Marry flowers. [/list:u]   

For intransitive verbs the patterns are:
[list]Noun-LinkingVerb – I am.
Noun-LinkingVerb-Noun – I am Susan
Noun-LinkingVerb-Modifier – I am well.[/list:u]

Syntactically we use these clause patterns to create three sentence structures:
[list]Simple sentence
[list]Made from a single clause
I run[/list:u]
Compound sentence
[list]Made from two clauses
Joined by a comma and a coordinate conjunction
I run, and I jump[/list:u]
The complex sentence
[list]Made from two clauses
Joined by a semicolon,subordinate conjunction and comma
I run; because, I jump.[/list:u][/list:u]

In this view Noun is not understood as a single word.  Rather it is a phrase which functions like a noun.    Likewise, Verb is a phrase functioning as a verb.  

On top of that most of us use colloquial and idiomatic speech.  The one example I believe used in I7 is “feed the dog”.  We are asked – feed the dog to what?  In my part of the world we have an idiom – to feed someone or something.  When I feed the dog, I am providing the dog something to eat.  Likewise I understand to feed the five thousand as a miraculous feast not a grotesque act of human sacrifice.

The first teacher to introduce me to idioms remarked that idioms mean what they say but don't say what they mean.  When I am unpersuaded by a weak argument, occasionally I am provoked to remark – that dog don't hunt. I know it draws sideways glances.  I imagine it would stop almost any parser in its tracks.  

Just like the article I believe both the author and the player need to have a simplified language to work in.  It needs to be backed up by a clear mental model/metaphor.

Oh and for those who claim the I7 development language is natural English, please tell me who speaks like this:


"AARP-Gnosis" 
Fitting relates various things to one thing (called the home). The verb to fit (it fits, they fit, it is fitted) implies the fitting relation. Definition: a thing is missing if it is not part of the home of it. 
A collective is a kind of thing. 
Before doing something to something which is part of a collective: 
    let space be the holder of the home of the noun; 
    move the noun to the space. 
Instead of examining a collective: 
    say "[The noun] consists of [the list of things which are part of the noun]."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1518&start=20#p10224
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Passing variables from Parchment/i7 to JavaScript and ba
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-10-30 14:07:07

Any sentence that begins with me saying "if I'm remembering my programming terms correctly" is in for a rough ride.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=40#p10225
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-10-30 14:32:36

I don't think anyone has ever claimed Inform 7 [i]is[/i] natural English.

Speaking only for myself, I'm a writer who has always had a hard time thinking in traditional programming constructs. Inform 7 has always felt very natural and organic to me. I love that I can write lines of code like: 

[code]The player carries a wallet. The wallet is closed and openable. In the wallet is a driver's license and a receipt from Big Jimmy's. The receipt suggests your shit job.[/code]

To me, that feels more like writing than any other programming language I've ever encountered.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1615&start=0#p10226
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Help me with my movement algorithms
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-10-30 16:18:42

My NPC movement algorithms have been producing runtime errors and anyway are rather clumsy.  Could I get some help, please?  Each character may have several possible locations and the path cannot go through certain doors.  (The action delay is just a number that increments each turn.)  For instance:

[code]Every turn:
	if the player is not Gail:
		if Gail is not in a pod:
			if the action delay of Gail > 4:
				if the location of Jake is not the location of Gail:
					let the current direction be the best route from the location of Gail to the location of Jake, using doors;
					if the door the current direction from the location of Gail is forbidden:
						stop the action;
					otherwise:
						try Gail going the current direction;
						if the location of Gail is the computer room:
							now the action delay of Gail is 0.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=20#p10227
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: Tigger31337 / DateTime: 2010-10-30 16:31:03

First of all, there's lots of good stuff coming in, so thanks for that.

I still see a persistence to categorize my work as (or compare it to) CYOA. Rest assured, you are doing CYOA an injustice if my simple little linear plot is lumped into that category. When (most) people use "CYOA" they are doing so in a context that does not (normally) include my work - on any level of description.

That being said (and I hope we can put this CYOA thread behind us now) I'm making great progress with the code. I'm working off George's original post (with mods by others, notably matt w.). I've removed the door and all references to it. For now, the user is simply transported from room to room. Since the game has no plot and disjointed scenery from one room to the next (on purpose), I didn't want the player physicaly moving through space (i.e. walking) to get from one level to the next. I thought it ruined the surrealism.

Everything works, and the player movement happens automatically upon producing the correct answer. The only thing I'm now stuck on, is this:

[b]I find Inform to be a little [u]TOO[/u] lenient with what it considers a correct response.[/b]

Example:
In one room, the player hears a piece of classical music. I've coded appropriate responses to be "Vivaldi", "Antonio Vivaldi", and "Antonio Lucio Vivaldi". Inform is great for ignoring case (so things like "vivaldi" or "antonio vivaldi" are also accepted) but I also find things like "Vivaldiii" or "Vivaldinorium" or "Vivaldiopolous" getting through.

Now, I'm all for 16th century Greek composers, but "Vivaldiopolous" wasn't one of 'em. And he certainly isn't the correct answer to pass my level. Yet the player does. I thought this wouldn't be a serious problem (hell, if you know the answer to be "Vivaldi", and you type "Vivaldikicksass"... fine, I'll give it to you!) but the problem is unacceptable when it comes to some of my "cypher" rooms. Occasionally, I've got a room with a block of cyphertext that needs to be decrypted. Here, if the correct answer is "31337" and you type "31337241" then I do NOT want you to pass. (Yet the player does).

The mechanism I'm using to parse the correct answer is via the [b][color=#0000FF]if the topic understood matches "xxx"[/color][/b]. I've read that I can use "is identical to" or "is identical with", instead of "matches", but that still doesn't work.

Any tips on how to make Inform match *exactly* a string of text from the user? Perhaps using the "topic understood" mechanism isn't the most flexible, here.

Thanks, again, in advance.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=20#p10228
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-10-30 16:44:34

[quote="Tigger31337"]
Any tips on how to make Inform match *exactly* a string of text from the user? Perhaps using the "topic understood" mechanism isn't the most flexible, here.[/quote]

Have you tried "exactly matches"?  Assuming you're using indexed text (the distinctions between indexed text and "topics" are not exactly clear to me, other than the fact that apparently "topics" can only be checked against player inputs), Chapter 19.5, "Matching and Exactly Matching" may be what you're looking for.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1616&start=0#p10229
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: SF Bay IF Meetup in Berkeley Nov 6
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-10-30 16:50:37

(crossposting from RAIF cause I didn't see it here)
	
Dan Fabulich  	writes:


When: Saturday, November 6, 2010 1:00 PM 
Where: Au Coquelet, 
2000 University Ave 
Berkeley, CA 94701 
510 845-0433 

Open session! We've had several ideas posted to our Ideas section: IF 
development systems; writer's workshop; this year's IFComp entrants. 
We'll decide what to talk about on the spot. 

Unfortunately, it's possible that I'll miss this month's meeting, 
because we're expecting a baby to arrive any day now! I will reserve a 
table for the group at Au Coquelet regardless. 

This meetup is open to everyone; please RSVP on meetup.com, below. 
See you there! 

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.meetup.com/sf-bay-area-interactive-fiction/calendar/14815102/">http://www.meetup.com/sf-bay-area-inter ... /14815102/</a> 
This Meetup repeats on the 1st Saturday of every month.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1518&start=20#p10230
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Passing variables from Parchment/i7 to JavaScript and ba
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-30 16:50:42

In my usual state of "I have plans for doing this in Glulx, but no immediate deadline." Sigh.

(Things will improve in a couple of months. Details soon.)

I definitely want to add a Glk API for exchanging information with the Javascript framework (for Javascript terps), and also with included HTML "images" (that feature will go along with this one.) I grok that it has to be a two-way exchange.

It won't be using magic characters in the output, though. Probably you'll have to fill out a string buffer and then call a Glk function to send data, and then wait for a Javascript event to receive.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1606&start=0#p10231
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Issue with Quixe/Inform build 6F95
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-30 16:54:41

The gameport error occurs if you use the new Quixe template with the old Standard template. or maybe that's vice versa. We changed which file had the <div id="gameport"> line in it.

You'll note that I have not yet looked at the problem, as I got sidetracked with a different interpreter error... Sorry. "This weekend for sure."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=20#p10232
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-10-30 17:24:13

[quote="matt w"]I wonder if it makes a difference to our sense of what CYOA is that I grew up with the Edward Packard books. (And the R.A. Montgomery ones, but Packard's were just better.) Did you read the books at all?[/quote]

Probably not.  I think I read a few CYOA-type books growing up, but they were pretty unmemorable.

An interesting thing about that edge case of keyword-based IF is that in many such games, you [i]can[/i] take actions that are not keyword-based, but they're not necessary to win.  A totally parser-free keyword-based game, however, [i]could[/i] have the same basic code structure as a work of CYOA -- if the only verb is "use" (which is sort of a loose translation of "click"), the options for any given scene narrow rapidly.

Anyway, I'll certainly cede the point that my internal taxonomy is or could be inconsistent with the rest of the community's.  The original point I was trying to make in this thread was that I was surprised by Tigger31337's assertion that hir game [i]had no branching[/i], which seemed like an absurd stance to take: linear plot is not the same thing as linear interaction/code.  And that Ron Newcomb's comment was really not that much of a stretch.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1606&start=0#p10233
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Issue with Quixe/Inform build 6F95
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-10-30 17:25:30

Zarf, I'm not sure whether you need to spend any more time with this or not--the solution for the author is just to make sure that you're using *only* the website and Quixe templates that ship with 6F95. Your Quixe page maybe could use a compatibility note (in the template download section), but otherwise the problem is really one of communication of the fact that the new Quixe template is not compatible with the old Standard Template...

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1171&start=0#p10234
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF URLs
User: George / DateTime: 2010-10-30 18:08:56

I've started to fill out the community calendar with events (meetups, compo deadlines, and so on -- here's a direct link, <a class="postlink" href="http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=ifurls%40gmail.com&ctz=America/Los_Angeles">http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?sr ... os_Angeles</a>), and if anyone would like access to add and edit event details (I think you need a Google account ) let me know. 

I'm also open to using a non-Google calendar, if it's easy to embed and share; any suggestions on that are welcome.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=30#p10235
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-30 20:28:57

[quote="Tigger31337"]I started off doing the exact same thing (which is why I included the reference to N/E/S/W in my original post). But, I found it awkward to code because it wasn't intuitive for me to think about "solutions" as "cardinal directions". (There will be approx. 40 rooms in total, so you can see this getting convoluted pretty fast. For example, a player might re-use a previous answer (direction) incorrectly, but still be able to exit the room because it matches the cardinal direction that the current room expects.) Overall, having the interpreter parse a correct answer as a spatial direction just doesn't smell right to me. [emote]:)[/emote]  However, it's still a valid idea and worth revisiting if nothing else proves more elegant.

Thanks.[/quote]
No probs. BTW it doesn't smell right because it's not very Inform-y I guess. In the MUDs I have coded in (like LambdaMOO) the game has no concept of north, south or other cardinal directions. Any exit is just a set of things you can type that take you from one room to another, the names of which are defined as you add them from room to room. Which describes your problem exactly; so that's why my brain went there. I don't think there needs to be any conflict between the answers for different rooms, because the directions would only be in effect where you specifically defined them room by room. But I can see why you'd want to try another way. For one thing you'd probably have to change the standard 'You can't go that way.' responses and there might be some other quirky-sounding comebacks.

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1583&start=10#p10237
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Brent Spiner from Star Trek is funny
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-30 20:48:01

Stick around, RealNC — you did nothing wrong.

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1529&start=10#p10238
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Fiction about Interactive Fiction
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-30 20:49:29

Thank you both, and thanks matt for identifying the worthwhile MSPA storylines for me. 8)

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1613&start=0#p10239
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Custom Library Messages, version 0.
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-30 21:04:35

Cool, I will check it out and see if it works with my Rideable Vehicles hack or if I need to redo that hack. Thanks, Ron!

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1588&start=10#p10240
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tiny examples
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-30 21:13:44

I felt the official manual was an entertaining read. The main two problems I had with it are (1) there is not enough advantage to reading it sequentially (too many references to functions and syntax that have not yet been specified), and (2) too much reliance on the accompanying examples to do the heavy lifting on teaching core techniques. Especially since in the text file version, the examples are not printed with the chapters they are meant to illustrate; they all seem to be printed together instead. This makes searching for key concepts in the consolidated text file more annoying than it needs to be.

One text file, with new vocabulary as sequentially introduced as possible, so that almost no syntax is put into use (even in examples) unless it's been defined earlier in that text file: that's the setup that would work best with my usual assumptions about how to search a giant text file about a programming language.

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=40#p10241
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-30 21:28:27

That's a great point. Whatever else its flaws, Inform 7 actually feels like writing. The effect of that on your creative state of mind while doing it is pretty powerful and a little bit exciting, I have found.

And here I was all ready to hate i7 thinking it was like AppleScript. But AppleScript doesn't feel like writing at all; probably because AS code doesn't structure any differently than an object-oriented language — it's the same thing as C++ just way more verbose and sometimes maddeningly difficult to read. Having investigated i7 I now think that AppleScript missed most of the point of a natural language approach, which isn't just to replace every plus or equals sign or other operator with a corresponding English word.

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=40#p10242
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: wfryers / DateTime: 2010-10-30 21:50:23

I have the same feeling.  When I am dealing in simple assertions, I don't have to deal  “computer stuff”.    Unfortunately,  if you stray too far from simple assertions I feel it rapidly becomes very opaque language.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1606&start=0#p10243
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Issue with Quixe/Inform build 6F95
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-30 23:21:36

Oh! I missed a post in the shuffle.

Yes, as long as it's correct within 6F95, that's fine.

However, I should post a separate 6E72 template, in case anybody wants to use Quixe with it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1606&start=0#p10244
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Issue with Quixe/Inform build 6F95
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-10-30 23:42:05

Older downloads are available from: <a class="postlink" href="http://github.com/erkyrath/quixe/downloads">http://github.com/erkyrath/quixe/downloads</a>

Though I don't know if they'll work for a particular I7 release etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1606&start=10#p10245
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Issue with Quixe/Inform build 6F95
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-30 23:51:41

That directory doesn't have the I7-ready template package. I'll have to recreate that for the older release.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1588&start=10#p10246
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tiny examples
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-10-31 00:04:38

[quote="Phonatacid"]
-glux is not powerful enough.[/quote]

Please do elaborate so that we can fix this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1588&start=10#p10247
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tiny examples
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-10-31 00:44:15

To Jim:  I'm sure there's plenty of people trying to write works in Inform while avoiding all programming education possible.  [emote]:)[/emote]  Still, when such an author finds themself off in the weeds, it's nice to have just-for-the-sake-of-it people who can give direction.  "Hey, I wove this cool basket out of those weeds, see?  Oh, and you want to go that-a-way and turn left at the bonsai."

Pulling this thread back on topic of cool things, how about an action applying to a stored action? [quote]Suggesting is an action applying to one stored action. 
To decide which stored action is the stored action understood: (- noun -).

Instead of jumping, try suggesting the action of examining yourself.
Instead of waiting, try suggesting the action of taking inventory. 
Instead of an actor suggesting the action of examining yourself, say "I cannot condone [the stored action understood]."
Report an actor suggesting: say "[The actor] suggested [the stored action understood]."[/quote] That code actually works.  

I love build 6F95.   [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1613&start=0#p10248
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Custom Library Messages, version 0.
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-10-31 00:55:09

Thanks in advance, guys. 

Also!  I forgot to mention that the big table in the extension, the one will all 361 messages properly(?) text-substituted out the wazoo, I have put into the same order that David's extension lists them.  I've woven his code's section headers as comments in-between the table rows, so if you're trying to figure out which how my extensions represent his LibMsg <can't turn self inside-out>-style messages, looking at the two extensions side-by-side will help you find the relevant message(s) pretty quick.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1600&start=0#p10250
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Game Speed
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-10-31 08:27:43

[quote="Phonatacid"]What do you mean? Having both a fast and slow timer? Or just replacing my current timer with a long-running one? Also, i could use an external program in order to time my game.[/quote]Well, it depends on how you're implementing it. The way I'd think of doing it would be to have one timer that triggers once a minute, and one that triggers once a second, and use the two together to work out the time elapsed since the start of the game. Since errors on timers are going to be an approximate constant (that is, if a one second timer's accuracy turns out to be +/- 10ms, the one minute timer will most likely also be +/ 10ms) the minute timer will be much less prone to drift.

This would also be an argument for a Glulx opcode that allowed access to the system clock.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1600&start=10#p10252
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Game Speed
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-10-31 08:47:01

[quote]The way I'd think of doing it would be to have one timer that triggers once a minute, and one that triggers once a second, and use the two together to work out the time elapsed since the start of the game.[/quote]

Glulx only allows one timer to be active at a time, so this plan is moot.

[quote]This would also be an argument for a Glulx opcode that allowed access to the system clock.[/quote]

Yes. That is definitely the way to go.

(Glk call, I figure, since this is more like I/O than computation. And more likely to be platform-dependent.)

As I was just saying in the Javascript thread: more details on my schedule tonight.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1583&start=10#p10253
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Brent Spiner from Star Trek is funny
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-10-31 08:54:13

[quote="Laroquod"]Stick around, RealNC — you did nothing wrong.

P.[/quote]

Ah, yes. I forgot that this community consists of die-hard Linux and Mac users you can't argue with. [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1583&start=10#p10254
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Brent Spiner from Star Trek is funny
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-10-31 09:16:52

[quote="Retro"]And I'm the bad guy, because I'm a Windows user and Brent Spiner fan. Fine, I can live with that.[/quote]

That is not why you're the bad guy. There are plenty of people who are both Windows users and Brent Spiner fans -- I bet some are posting in this very thread -- who don't throw tantrums when someone posts a .gif animation of Data and the Blue Screen of Death. It's the tantrum that's the problem.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1618&start=0#p10255
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Concealed items and canned responses
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-10-31 09:26:21

So I have a letter with "writing" as a part of that letter. The letter is in the player’s locker, so logically the player wouldn't be able to read it as long as it's in the locker. I make the writing part concealed, which works fine, but when I try to have Inform say "You can't quite make out the writing at this distance" when the writing is concealed, it doesn't recognize it. Instead it say "You can't see any such thing." Even stranger, if you read the letter (really "read-lettering" the letter since read triggers examine which triggers the description) works even though "read-lettering" redirects to examining the writing. Also, if you examine the letter again even if you examined the writing indirectly by "read-lettering", Inform will not say "A letter left by Timmy."

[code]The description of the letter is "[if we have not examined the writing]A letter probably left by Timmy or a brain-dead chicken, judging by the handwriting[otherwise]A letter left by Timmy[end if]."

Understand "scrawl" and "scribbles" and “handwriting” as the writing.

The writing is a part of the letter. Rule for deciding the concealed possessions of the letter:
	if the letter is carried, no; 
	otherwise yes. 

Instead of examining the writing:
	if the writing is concealed,
		say "You can't quite make out the writing at this distance.";
	otherwise
		say "Urgent. Deliver this to Susan."

Read-lettering is an action applying to one thing. Understand "read [letter]" as read-lettering.
		
Instead of read-lettering: try examining the writing.
[/code]

>x locker
A locker that stores your prized possession, your lunch, on most days. Today, however you see a letter instead.

>x letter 
A letter probably left by Timmy or a brain-dead chicken, judging by the handwriting.

>read letter
You can't quite make out the writing at this distance.

>x writing
You can't see any such thing.

>read writing
You can't see any such thing.

>take letter
Taken.

>read letter
Urgent. Deliver this to Susan.

>read writing 
Urgent. Deliver this to Susan.

>x writing 
Urgent. Deliver this to Susan.

>x letter
A letter probably left by Timmy or a brain-dead chicken, judging by the handwriting.

I'm not so sure where I went wrong. The read-lettering simply redirects to examine which apparently doesn't work...and even when it finally works when the letter is in the player's possession the description of the letter doesn't change. 

Also is there another way to separate read and examine since read-lettering is fairly ridiculous?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1618&start=0#p10256
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Concealed items and canned responses
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-10-31 09:32:56

"Concealed possessions" isn't really meant for that kind of thing. It'd be easier to separate the examining and reading actions (see example 281 in manual chapter 16.3.) and then restrict reading the letter whenever you need to:

[code]Instead of reading the letter when the player is not carrying the letter:
    say "You can't quite make out the writing at this distance."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1618&start=0#p10257
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Concealed items and canned responses
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-10-31 10:01:16

Thank you so much. I can't believe I didn't see that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=50#p10258
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-10-31 10:25:46

[quote="wfryers"]I have the same feeling.  When I am dealing in simple assertions, I don't have to deal  “computer stuff”.    Unfortunately,  if you stray too far from simple assertions I feel it rapidly becomes very opaque language.[/quote]

I feel that's the point where I start rummaging around for very general, far-reaching statements of code. To me, it doesn't become nearly as opaque if I can tuck in all the overarching behaviour code into its own area and give it the proper English-sounding phrase. That lets me mentally compartmentalize the game similarly to what you'd do in OOP.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1583&start=10#p10259
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Brent Spiner from Star Trek is funny
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-10-31 11:05:53

[quote="matt w"]That is not why you're the bad guy. There are plenty of people who are both Windows users and Brent Spiner fans -- I bet some are posting in this very thread -- who don't throw tantrums when someone posts a .gif animation of Data and the Blue Screen of Death. It's the tantrum that's the problem.[/quote]

So show me where I got mad and throwed a tantrum, because I can't see where it exactly happened. Is it a tantrum when giving someone advice to not post video as animated .GIF? Is it a tantrum when stating your opinion on someone's jokes? I think you are overestimating the situation here. You should learn to relax a little more. I'm just saying.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1583&start=10#p10260
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Brent Spiner from Star Trek is funny
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-10-31 11:25:03

The problem is the insult-comic techier-than-thou routine. Notice how it's not going over very well? Maybe try a different tack...?

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1583&start=20#p10261
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Brent Spiner from Star Trek is funny
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-10-31 12:44:27

[quote="Laroquod"]The problem is the insult-comic techier-than-thou routine. Notice how it's not going over very well? Maybe try a different tack...?[/quote]

Maybe not...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1619&start=0#p10263
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Tales of Tale: Reviews of the 2010 IFComp
User: Tale / DateTime: 2010-10-31 15:27:59

Hi,

I'm trying to play as  comp games as possible. Four games will be left out, as I'm reviewing them for SPAG. These reviews will usually be written shortly after playing the game, so they might be a bit hot-headed at times. Still, I think this provided valuable input for the authors. I'm too lazy to come back and revise them, too.

I hope you find them helpful. Thanks to everyone who wrote or tested a game this comp.

-Best,

Marius

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1619&start=0#p10264
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Tales of Tale: Reviews of the 2010 IFComp
User: Tale / DateTime: 2010-10-31 15:36:47

The Blind House
by Maude Overton
[spoiler]A mixed bag. The writing and implementation are solid, and good. It is a bit flowery, as this sort of IF seems prone to be, but it wasn't head-achingly so. The game labels itself as more of a story than a game. Nevertheless, within a few turns I find myself looking for keys and typing UNLOCK EAST DOOR and searching bookshelves for passwords.
Which I usually don't mind, I was just put in a different mindset by the blurb, which in itself is dangerous for a game that depends so much on mood as this one. The overall atmosphere  was good - quite creepy, and the mental state of the protagonist was superbly blended into room descriptions. However, if you are an unstable woman carrying an undroppable kitchen knife, with no memories of the prior evening, the kind of ending this game has is hardly suprising.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1619&start=0#p10265
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Tales of Tale: Reviews of the 2010 IFComp
User: Tale / DateTime: 2010-10-31 15:37:49

R
(Pron: Arrr)
By therealeasterbunny

This appears for completeness' sake. I will not waste my and your time by reiterating what countless other reviewers will say.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1619&start=0#p10266
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Tales of Tale: Reviews of the 2010 IFComp
User: Tale / DateTime: 2010-10-31 16:17:55

Mite
By Sara Dee
[spoiler][i]I had a problem with the ending of this game. I tried it on two interpreters - Gargoyle and Floyd (on IFMud) but I couldn'tz get the winning command to work. Must be something in the sequence of commands. Thanks to Jonathan Blask for providing the winning text.[/i]

This game is cute, in a good way. You're playing a pixie in a some sort of Children's Book magic garden, with nymphs and talking snails and magic bridges. In fact, it shares many aspects of old children's books: There is a suprising element of violence, it doesn't have much of a background world (and doesn't need it), and there is even the hint of development in the main character, who starts out as a bookworm (we are told), but ends up having gotten a taste for adventure.
The length of the game gives it the feel of an intro. We have a seperate comp for that! But I'm just griping because I liked the game and want to see more.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1583&start=20#p10268
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Brent Spiner from Star Trek is funny
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-10-31 19:03:10

Why on earth someone can get insulted over a piece of software is beyond me. Especially since the post in question is just a piece of geek humor, not "Windows bashing". It had Brent Spiner in it, it was funny, so I posted it.

If you want to turn this into a Windows vs Mac/Linux thing, well, here you go:

<a class="postlink" href="http://xkcd.com/619/">http://xkcd.com/619/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1620&start=0#p10269
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Zarf unveils mad plan to do IF full-time
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-01 00:10:14

If you've been wondering what I've been hinting at for the past couple of weeks, the bag is off the cat:

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/kick">http://eblong.com/kick</a>

In one sentence: Andrew Plotkin sets up Kickstarter project for new, original iPhone text adventure. Yes, for money. If funded, I will quit my day job and go to town on this thing. That includes an iPhone Glulx interpreter (which will be open-source, obviously). *Plus* I'll have time to do all the Glulx update work that I keep promising.

As for the game itself, I have a short intro teaser up: <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/zweb/hadean-teaser/">http://eblong.com/zarf/zweb/hadean-teaser/</a>

If you don't have an iPhone (iPad, iPod Touch) then you can pre-order the Special Limited Edition of my planned game. Which means I'll send you the Glulx file on a CD -- play it on whatever you want. *This release is only available through Kickstarter.* When the game actually ships, it'll be iOS-only.

The Kickstarter page is open through November (plus the first week of December, to leave room for the US Thanksgiving holiday). If all goes well, I'll be out of my day job by Christmas, and IF work will begin New Year's Day.

Whew. We're off.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1518&start=20#p10270
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Passing variables from Parchment/i7 to JavaScript and ba
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-01 00:46:31

Okay, here's my implementation for a very basic JS evaluator. Firstly the spec: <a class="postlink" href="http://curiousdannii.github.com/if/op-parchment.html">http://curiousdannii.github.com/if/op-parchment.html</a>
which says it works on Z-Machine and Glulx. If you want Quixe support it won't be hard to add.

Source code showing how to use it: <a class="postlink" href="http://github.com/curiousdannii/if/blob/gh-pages/tests/op-parchment.inf">http://github.com/curiousdannii/if/blob ... chment.inf</a>
You can use as many different print statements as you want, so there's no problems with having dynamically generated code too.

You'll also need the latest Gnusto: <a class="postlink" href="http://github.com/curiousdannii/gnusto">http://github.com/curiousdannii/gnusto</a>
And you need to set PARCHMENT_SECURITY_OVERRIDE=1; in your copy of Parchment.

This particular @parchment function will probably never work on the official Parchment website. If I figure out a way to deal with the security issues then I might add another function.

Getting data back is a bit harder, but not too hard. Let me know if you need it and I'll figure something out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1621&start=0#p10271
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Printing room description details
User: Dododrone / DateTime: 2010-11-01 01:20:05

I can't seem to get the compiler to stop listing every "thing" in the room. I.E. doors, supports, windows, containers and whats in them. everything in the room and containers shows up in the Printing room description details.

 I know I must be missing something here as I've already run through the entire manual and followed the instructions to a T. Three days later and I'm still trying. Any suggestions on how to hide objects (things) from the room description?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1583&start=20#p10272
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Brent Spiner from Star Trek is funny
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-01 03:12:35

[quote="Retro"][quote="Laroquod"]The problem is the insult-comic techier-than-thou routine. Notice how it's not going over very well? Maybe try a different tack...?[/quote]Oh, I see. So you think this is some tactic of mine... [etc.][/quote]
No a tack is just a sailing metaphor. You know... regarding how to get along with other people? And how to sail against the wind? Oh, never mind.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1621&start=0#p10274
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Printing room description details
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-01 03:28:01

Defining some objects as 'is scenery' will keep them from being listed. Also make sure you know the difference between this:

[code]The sofa is a supporter in the living room. "It's an ordinary sofa."[/code]
And this:
[code]The sofa is a supporter in the living room. The description of the sofa is "It's an ordinary sofa."[/code]

Unless you specify 'The description of' Inform will take any text you add in quotation marks after you define an object as that object's *initial* description, which means it will be printed when you look at the room the object starts in. If you want to hide text until the player types 'examine sofa', it's the second form you need.

Hope that helps, somewhat.

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1620&start=0#p10275
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Zarf unveils mad plan to do IF full-time
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-01 04:21:56

This is great. Good luck man, I hope you meet the target!

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1529&start=10#p10276
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Fiction about Interactive Fiction
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-01 06:07:45

<a class="postlink" href="http://lonelydino.com/?id=297">http://lonelydino.com/?id=297</a>

Or the original the mashup was made from: <a class="postlink" href="http://codu.org/imgs/dinosaurComic.php?comics=52&same">http://codu.org/imgs/dinosaurComic.php?comics=52&same</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1622&start=0#p10277
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: The Player's Obituary
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-11-01 07:53:52

[code]
After printing the player's obituary, say "Hello!".
[/code]

Will this print every time the story ends, or only when the story does not end FINALLY?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=50#p10278
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: wfryers / DateTime: 2010-11-01 09:16:04

To me, you give voice to one of the feelings that drives me to a comprehensive mental model.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1583&start=20#p10279
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Brent Spiner from Star Trek is funny
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-11-01 10:19:29

[quote="RealNC"]Why on earth someone can get insulted over a piece of software is beyond me. Especially since the post in question is just a piece of geek humor, not "Windows bashing". It had Brent Spiner in it, it was funny, so I posted it.[/quote]

Well, whoever you address with "someone" here, as far as I'm concerned, I didn't get insulted at all. On the contrary, I liked the Data's Windows Bluescreen joke. If I didn't like it then I wouldn't have posted it here as a YouTube video link (see page 1), would I ?

You see, as I insinuated in my previous post, you still haven't got the point. This is not about me being pissed that you don't like Windows or that you makes jokes about it. No, this is about Windows users owning you Linux/Mac users.

So, I owned ya!  [emote]:P[/emote] And nobody, neither you nor your fans here, can deny it. You, matt, Laroquod and whoever agrees with you on Linux/Mac don't need to talk this through here anyway. Nobody cares. The more you talk, the more you show that you are lame. I have won this battle anyway. And here is why:

1. Data's Bluescreen Video --> The one I linked to has sound and good image quality. The one you linked to has not. Conclusion: Youtube has won. Animated GIF has lost. Period.
2. RealNC posted a broken image link in his original attempt. I never post broken image links, because my links always work. Conclusion: I am reliable. RealNC is not.
3. RealNC and his fans thought they made me mad again, so that they could later pick on it. But THEY got mad instead. Conclusion: I won. You lost.

End of discussion.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1583&start=20#p10281
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Brent Spiner from Star Trek is funny
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-01 10:53:00

[quote="Retro"]The more you talk, the more you show that you are lame.[/quote]

[quote="Retro"]You know, the most sophisticated trick one can pull on people he/she dislikes and who dislike him/her, is such to make his/her opponents believe that they do the trick on him/her where in fact it is him/her who does the trick on them without them knowing it.[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1583&start=20#p10285
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Brent Spiner from Star Trek is funny
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-11-01 12:43:55

This is the weirdest thread I have ever read. Anywhere.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=50#p10286
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-11-01 12:47:07

[quote="wfryers"]To me, you give voice to one of the feelings that drives me to a comprehensive mental model.[/quote]

...does that mean that I'm making some kind of sense, or that the kind of weird non-English I slipped into is part of what you can't stand about I7? [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=30#p10287
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: Tigger31337 / DateTime: 2010-11-01 12:49:04

[quote="tove"]
Have you tried "exactly matches"?  Assuming you're using indexed text (the distinctions between indexed text and "topics" are not exactly clear to me, other than the fact that apparently "topics" can only be checked against player inputs), Chapter 19.5, "Matching and Exactly Matching" may be what you're looking for.[/quote]

Almost. In the end, the syntax that worked for me was:

[code]if the topic understood exactly matches the text "Einstein":[/code]

...which is odd, since I didn't have to include "the text" for my previous attempt of:

[code]if the topic understood matches "Einstein":[/code]

Both commands work. But if you want to get around Inform's default "lenient matching" scheme, then "exactly matches the text" will do the trick.

I hope that helps others.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1615&start=0#p10288
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help me with my movement algorithms
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2010-11-01 12:52:44

I haven't actually messed with stuff like this before, so this is probably a dumb suggestion, but maybe look at what exactly the "stop the action" command is doing. Is it possibly stopping the entire "every turn" rulebook, in which case some necessary things that need to get done every turn aren't getting done?

-Kevin

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=30#p10289
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: Tigger31337 / DateTime: 2010-11-01 13:24:31

[quote="tove"]
The original point I was trying to make in this thread was that I was surprised by Tigger31337's assertion that hir game [i]had no branching[/i], which seemed like an absurd stance to take: .[/quote]

It's hardly surprising for an author to claim that his work is [b]not[/b] a CYOA... especially when it [b]isn't[/b]. If you had read my original Post #1 (and, it seems like you haven't... I encourage you to do so, carefully) then you will see that under no description is mine a work of CYOA. To repeat, if you believe that this type of a riddle-game is a CYOA, then you are most certainly operating with a different definition of CYOA than the rest of the community. I appreciate your persistence to continue to categorize my work as such, but you are still mistaken.


[quote="tove"]linear plot is not the same thing as linear interaction/code.  .[/quote]
I see what you're doing here. You have made the subtle move of shifting the label of CYOA from my [i]game[/i] to the actual [i]code[/i] itself. That is a totally arbitrary move which does not help your original argument one iota. Ron's original label of CYOA was applied to my GAME, not the code. While it's true that my (and almost every other) game uses if/then conditionals, that does not make it a CYOA adventure game. By your definition, Microsoft Word would be a CYOA because I get to "choose" whether or not I save the document.

I have stated earlier that my game cannot be any further from the CYOA genre. I'm sorry if I've disappointed you in some way... perhaps you can use your obvious passion for CYOA to try and convince the [i]next[/i] fellow that his game is most certainly a CYOA. Know that your efforts to do so on me are wasted, because I know perfectly well that you are mistaken.


[quote="tove"]And that Ron Newcomb's comment was really not that much of a stretch.[/quote]

Actually, Ron's comments [i]were[/i] a stretch and (not to speak for Ron) but I think he's actually understood, agreed, and moved on (since he has stopped trying to apply the "CYOA" label to my work).

I'm embarrassed to have to provide this, but:

- CYOA names a very particular style of literature/game/IF/etc.  The defining factor is that the player gets to alter the plot/outcome in a way that no two readings (or playings, etc.) are necessarily alike. For example, I can play a game once and have the protaganist killed before saving the queen. I can play the SAME game again, but this time make different CHOICES, and have the protaganist ride off into the sunset with the queen. I play it a third time, and I magically turn into a heap of dingo's kidneys.

- Contrast that with my game: You're in a room. You are presented a static description (the damn room is the same EVERY TIME YOU PLAY IT!)  You have exactly ONE move to make: solve the riddle. If you do, you proceed to the next room (to face another unique but static room). If you fail, you STAY EXACTLY WHERE YOU ARE.

The whole notion of "branching" was [u][b]not[/b][/u] one that I introduced to this thread. My game (at the level of the GAME) has [u][b]nothing whatever to do with CYOA nor branching![/b][/u] That was my original (and only) point of debate. For anyone to think otherwise shows how little they know of the CYOA genre. Now, somewhere along the way, the argument has shifted such that my [i]code[/i] would be considered CYOA. I still think that's a terrible description, but I do not argue that if/then statements perform a [i]sort[/i] of branching. But then again, so does every other computational algorithm. Describing a piece of software as CYOA because it "internally performs choice-making" is a weak argument and adds NOTHING to the higher-level description of the software.

Please, can we stop throwing around the term CYOA now? Give it to those who actually deserve it... not to my humble little riddle-solving quiz game.

- Tigger31337

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1615&start=0#p10290
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help me with my movement algorithms
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-11-01 13:56:45

I might look at the assumption that there is a door the forbidden direction from Gail.  Mightn't it just be a connection - ie a room?  If you strip out each line individually, which one is giving you the crash problem?
I dunno.  I guess it's not entirely clear what you want to do.  Move Gail towards Jake?  
What's the action delay?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1620&start=0#p10291
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Zarf unveils mad plan to do IF full-time
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-11-01 14:09:52

Awesome!  I burned through my discretionary income early this year, but looking at the total now, I think you're going to make it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1518&start=20#p10292
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Passing variables from Parchment/i7 to JavaScript and ba
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-11-01 14:25:34

This looks like an awesome start. Thank you! I will dig into this soon (thesis proposal due tonight) and start playing around. Yay!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1622&start=0#p10293
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The Player's Obituary
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-01 14:39:41

Every time.

For a question like this, by the way, it's easier to try it yourself than to post on a forum.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1620&start=0#p10294
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Zarf unveils mad plan to do IF full-time
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-01 14:43:51

And, indeed, I already have. Fantastic!

Thanks to all of you who have helped.

Note that, even though I've passed my target, the "pre-order a CD containing the Glulx game file" reward option is still open. That will *only* be available through Kickstarter preorders, so hopefully the total will continue to rise.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1620&start=0#p10295
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Zarf unveils mad plan to do IF full-time
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-01 15:13:57

Now, I just have to write up a plan for a business database product...

(Zarf is then buried under a wave of screaming gamers wielding halberds and sharpened spatulas.)

...blame Gunther for that one.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1619&start=0#p10296
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Tales of Tale: Reviews of the 2010 IFComp
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2010-11-01 16:25:01

[quote="Taleslinger"]Mite
By Sara Dee

Spoilers left out
[/quote]

I had trouble too.

[spoiler]I didn't realize you had to X ME to allow the game ending action.[/spoiler]

Hope to see more reviews. I considered making an alternate topic, just to get talk, the right sort, going.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1621&start=0#p10297
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Printing room description details
User: Dododrone / DateTime: 2010-11-01 18:13:04

Gave it a shot and it worked. Thank you for the help. I would have been smacking my head against a wall for a long time with that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1620&start=0#p10298
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Zarf unveils mad plan to do IF full-time
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-11-01 18:15:44

I pledged purely for the More Cowbell option. I have been waiting for More Cowbell support in Glulx for years!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1623&start=0#p10299
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: @parchment experimental extensions
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-01 18:47:36

Hi all, I've begun working on a new experimental opcode for the Z-Machine and Glulx. Support currently exists for Gnusto (get the latest copy from [url=http://github.com/curiousdannii/gnusto]Github[/url]), but not Quixe, yet. It shouldn't be hard to add support when there's demand for it. (Now whether Zarf would be interested in including it in the default Quixe I don't know.) All you need to do is drop it in and replace it (compress it if you want too.)

@parchment allows you to execute functions which might do any number of things. There is one currently: to switch on a raw eval() mode. In this mode anything you print will be buffered and then when you switch the mode off again it will be run through Javascript's eval(), allowing you to execute arbitrary JS code. Because you can literally execute anything you must add PARCHMENT_SECURITY_OVERRIDE=1; to your copy of parchment.html so that only those interpreters which specifically allow you to execute any code will do so. It won't work on the official Parchment for example.

The spec is at [url=http://curiousdannii.github.com/if/op-parchment.html]my IF site[/url], and the best way to see how to do it is through the [url=http://github.com/curiousdannii/if/blob/gh-pages/tests/op-parchment.inf]test .inf[/url].

Enjoy!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1518&start=20#p10301
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Passing variables from Parchment/i7 to JavaScript and ba
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-01 18:50:28

Hope your thesis proposal goes well! I just submitted my thesis last friday, and am quite relieved!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1624&start=0#p10302
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Automatypewriter
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-01 19:02:07

If you haven't seen this, you should!

<a class="postlink" href="http://upnotnorth.net/2010/10/29/a-new-way-to-interact-with-fiction/">http://upnotnorth.net/2010/10/29/a-new- ... h-fiction/</a>
Playing a game: <a class="postlink" href="http://vimeo.com/16311288">http://vimeo.com/16311288</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=30#p10303
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-Machine Standard 1.2 (draft)
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-01 19:19:19

Does anyone else have any comments? Is it time to publish this properly?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1061&start=10#p10304
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: works based on short stories or old video games
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2010-11-01 19:54:23

So what, then, is fair usage of a concept/quote? Obviously a tribute game (yes, I have one planned. It's for something rather obscure, actually) would need to include intellectual property, and some "classic" quotes in one such book would seem perfect for a puzzle. Are these to be totally avoided?

E.g. if someone wanted to write about Tintin, it would be hard not to have Castafiore singing Faust's Jewel Song--or references to it--or Captain Haddock saying "Blistering Barnacles" or "Thundering Typhoons." But lifting the plot is more than I'm willing to do.

My impression is that common sense should rule, but I don't know enough about IP to know what is common sense.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1620&start=0#p10307
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Zarf unveils mad plan to do IF full-time
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-01 20:37:36

This is really, really great. Congratulations!

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=30#p10308
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-01 22:39:34

Okay dude — it's not a CYOA. I can see both sides of the argument, but it doesn't seem worth going to the wall over. If you don't want to call it that then I see no reason why you need to be forced to call it that.

Good luck with your plan. 8)

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=30#p10309
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: Tigger31337 / DateTime: 2010-11-01 22:49:55

[quote="Laroquod"]If you don't want to call it that then I see no reason why you need to be forced to call it that.
Paul.[/quote]


Well, would [b][i]you[/i][/b] call it that?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1623&start=0#p10310
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: @parchment experimental extensions
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-01 22:51:54

I've made note of this URL and this is amazing that you did that, Dannii, thank you so much!

Now I'm trying to come up with smaller ways to use my idea so I can test this for my purpose sooner rather than later...

I would only use it coupled with my own website anyway so it doesn't seem like a big deal that it doesn't run on official Parchment.

Thanks again! 8)

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=30#p10312
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-01 23:09:04

Chill out, dude. This discussion isn't a contest and nobody is trying to beat you. tove is working with a different definition of CYOA than you, and than me, but there's no reason to jump down anyone's throat about it, and the definition of CYOA is more fluid than you think. For instance....

[quote="Tigger31337"]- CYOA names a very particular style of literature/game/IF/etc.  The defining factor is that the player gets to alter the plot/outcome in a way that no two readings (or playings, etc.) are necessarily alike. For example, I can play a game once and have the protaganist killed before saving the queen. I can play the SAME game again, but this time make different CHOICES, and have the protaganist ride off into the sunset with the queen. I play it a third time, and I magically turn into a heap of dingo's kidneys.[/quote]

Actually, if you'll look at the one game that's generally described as a CYOA in this year's IFcomp, you'll notice that 

[spoiler]the player has almost no power to alter the plot at all, or even the events that occur and the order they occur in.[/spoiler]

My definition of CYOA is that it has multiple-choice gameplay (which is why your game doesn't sound like CYOA to me). tove's definition, if I've got it right, is that it doesn't have a parser or underlying world model (which doesn't look like it's true for your game, anyway, since it sounds like you can examine objects in the rules). Yours is that the player can affect the plot/outcome. I'm not sure which of these definitions would get the most agreement if we took a poll, but the very fact that there are different definitions means that none of us should be too dogmatic that we have the One True Meaning of CYOA.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=30#p10313
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-01 23:16:40

[quote="Tigger31337"][quote="Laroquod"]If you don't want to call it that then I see no reason why you need to be forced to call it that.
Paul.[/quote]


Well, would [b][i]you[/i][/b] call it that?[/quote]
I have always thought that the dividing lines between media are not as sharp as is generally perceived, so I don't really feel the need to label one interpretation as correct and the other as incorrect in order to be comfortable with the situation. Binary narrative choices in which one fork is quickly a dead end or a loop are still technically choices, but on the other hand they are a type of choice that doesn't create an alternate branch of any significance to the reader. On an implementation level that doesn't sound like it should make much difference, but on the level of reader expectation CYOA seems off the mark, so I can see why you'd want to avoid the term. How do I choose which set of factors to consider supreme in classification, implementation or reader expectation? Especially when I'd rather not ignore half the data just for the sake of coming to a conclusion?

In other words, I don't actually need to know. 87

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=30#p10314
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-Machine Standard 1.2 (draft)
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-11-01 23:36:30

[quote="Dannii"]Does anyone else have any comments? Is it time to publish this properly?[/quote]

Can we add a clarification about [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1516]@set_font 0[/url]?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=30#p10315
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: Tigger31337 / DateTime: 2010-11-01 23:47:27

[quote="matt w"]Chill out, dude. This discussion isn't a contest and nobody is trying to beat you. [/quote]

I'm chilled. I know this isn't a contest, and nobody's trying to beat me. All I did was correct someone when he misused a term.

Now, he got very defensive, and insisted that *he* was right, and *I* was wrong. I merely corrected him again (and those who agreed with him). You may interpret my postings as you wish, but the fact stands that CYOA in an agreed-upon term and you simply can't reshape definitions in cases where [b]you[/b] see fit.

[quote="matt w"]
tove is working with a different definition of CYOA than you, and than me, but there's no reason to jump down anyone's throat about it, 
[/quote]

Well I'm glad you agree to at least that. In which case, why am I the only one correcting tove and Ron if you (apparently) agree that their definition differs from the community?

[quote="matt w"]
Actually, if you'll look at the one game that's generally described as a CYOA in this year's IFcomp, you'll notice that ...
[/quote]

You're missing the point. If we dig deep, we may find the oddball case here and there of something labelled (mis-labelled, I would argue) a CYOA. But my point is that MY game is [b]not[/b] a CYOA. If you think otherwise, then I challenge you to publicly declare that, "yes, on the description Tigger gave in his Post #1, I would have to say he [b]is[/b] building a CYOA game".


[quote="matt w"]My definition of CYOA is that it has multiple-choice gameplay (which is why your game doesn't sound like CYOA to me). 
[/quote]

If it doesn't sound like CYOA to you, then why the hell are you giving me such a hard time when I am *agreeing with you*?!  I have been saying the same thing all along: my game is NOT a CYOA! It's really not that hard an argument to follow.


[quote="matt w"]tove's definition, if I've got it right, is that it doesn't have a parser or underlying world model (which doesn't look like it's true for your game, anyway, since it sounds like you can examine objects in the rules). 
[/quote]

I'm truly at a loss, here.

[quote="matt w"]
Yours is that the player can affect the plot/outcome. 
[/quote]

*sigh*
No, in my game you can [b]NOT[/b] affect the plot/outcome.
Maybe it's me. I thought I was explaining such a simple game in simple terms, giving PLENTY of examples along the way. All I can say here is "re-read my posts".

If it helps, think of my rooms as "read-only". Yes, some rooms have objects, characters, and even a bit of dialogue. But there is not one random element in the game. Nor can you get anything to interact with each other (though, even if you did, that wouldn't make it a CYOA). I would argue there is no plot, but if you say there is, I think we would both agree that it's a fixed, determined, and unwavering plot. Please, for the love of all things sacred, tell me how THAT description I just gave is anything remotely similar to a CYOA. There is no "Choose" and there is no "Adventure". All you've got is a "Your Own".  [emote]:?[/emote] 

[quote="matt w"]
I'm not sure which of these definitions would get the most agreement if we took a poll, but the very fact that there are different definitions means that none of us should be too dogmatic that we have the One True Meaning of CYOA.[/quote]

I completely disagree. I think, deep down, we all know what a CYOA is, even if we can't come up with a discreet set of rules which define CYOA. CYOA is a category and, like all categories, there are [b]some[/b] items which might not fit neatly into said category. But also keep in mind that [b]some[/b] items are EASILY placed into or [i]outside[/i] the category. If you (or anyone) still think my game fits in the category of a CYOA, well then not only are you mistaken (sorry if that offends, but I just don't know a nicer way of saying it) but also I am VERY curious to hear your definition of a game that would NOT be considered a CYOA.

I think the best thing we can all do here is stop pretending that we are "defending" some mistaken definition of CYOA. There's CYOA, and then on the other end of the spectrum is my game. I can't, for the life of me, understand why ANYONE would persist in this silly endeavor of lumping my game in with the CYOA label.

Good luck, is all I can say to those who try.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1061&start=10#p10316
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: works based on short stories or old video games
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-11-01 23:57:57

[quote="aschultz"]So what, then, is fair usage of a concept/quote? Obviously a tribute game (yes, I have one planned. It's for something rather obscure, actually) would need to include intellectual property, and some "classic" quotes in one such book would seem perfect for a puzzle. Are these to be totally avoided?[/quote]

Parody is protected. It's the safest way to go if your tribute qualifies. Short quotes are usually fine, though it depends on the length of the quote relative to the amount of original content. Pictures and music are dicey; characters are generally off-limits.

Stealing the plot outright is fine as long as you change the characters and the setting to something of your own devising.

Fair use is a quagmire that comes down to two things: how likely the IP owner is to sue, and whether you are prepared to outspend him on legal fees. I would recommend Googling for something like [url=http://www.google.com/search?&q=tintin+lawsuit]tintin lawsuit[/url] and checking the results before you undertake a project like this. You can also contact the creator and ask for permission.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=30#p10317
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: Tigger31337 / DateTime: 2010-11-02 00:04:43

[quote="Tigger31337"]Well, would [b][i]you[/i][/b] call it that?[/quote]

[quote="Laroquod"]
I have always thought that the dividing lines between media are not as sharp as is generally perceived, so I don't really feel the need to label one interpretation as correct and the other as incorrect in order to be comfortable with the situation. 
[/quote]

Wow. Way to show your knowledge of the subject matter by confidently answering a simple question. (Don't worry, you'll get another chance to answer when I ask you further down in this post).

[quote="Laroquod"]
Binary narrative choices in which one fork is quickly a dead end or a loop are still technically choices, 
[/quote]

No. They most certainly are not. You are performing the exact same error I outlined earlier. You are confusing the description of my GAME(PLAY) with the description of the CODE. No one here (not even me) would argue that source code can not contain if/then conditionals, but the crap you just spewed about "binary narrative choices" is laughable. Nowhere in my game do I have "binary narrative choices" because nowhere in my game do I give the player choices.

[quote="Laroquod"]
but on the other hand they are a type of choice that doesn't create an alternate branch of any significance to the reader. On an implementation level that doesn't sound like it should make much difference, but on the level of reader expectation CYOA seems off the mark, so I can see why you'd want to avoid the term. How do I choose which set of factors to consider supreme in classification, implementation or reader expectation? Especially when I'd rather not ignore half the data just for the sake of coming to a conclusion?
[/quote]

Right. That's very nice, but I asked you a question, point-blank, and you didn't answer it.

For all the hype and hoopla, would you, Paul, categorize my game (based soley on it's description, and/or on it's gameplay (I'm sure you can imagine playing it)) as a CYOA? It really is a yes/no question, and not a hard one at that.

I suspect a lot of folks like to argue for the sake of arguing. Meanwhile, you know perfectly well that my game has nothing to do whatever with a CYOA. You just don't like that I was blunt enough to correct those who thought otherwise.

Fine. 

0/10 for etiquette, on my part.
But 10/10 for actually being correct. 

And it'd be one thing to critique my etiquette, but the sad part is watching folks critique the brute facts of the game and the definition of CYOA! I can't believe there are still those who wish to persuade me that, on SOME level of description, my game is a CYOA!

Uhmm, close but still no.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=30#p10318
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-02 00:25:16

I did answer your question with exactly my opinion on the issue, and I wasn't talking about if/then statements. I was talking about the implementation of player choices. Your implementation of player choices resembles the implementation of player choices in CYOA more than it does IF. In CYOA the player is given simple choice points, in which they know that one of two things will happen, or one of three things will happen, like that. In IF the player is given a sandbox to play in, where the number of possible narrative choices is disguised: it isn't immediately apparent. Achieving these two different effects for the player is a lot of the difference between a CYOA design system and an IF design system. Your idea is closer to CYOA on that level. However, on the level of 'what do people expect to happen when they play a CYOA (extensive branching) it obviously is not a CYOA. I know you don't want to accept that as an answer, but it's reality as I see it. I believe some things genuinely don't fit squarely into the appointed categories -- these categories are man-made, I know you realise that: but do you believe they're perfect? No overlap whatsoever? It isn't a yes/no question. And your idea, in my opinion, is one of those things that can't be squarely put in either camp. So what am I supposed to do, invent another opinion other than what I believe? You'll have to accept it or not accept it as you see fit but that's my answer.

BTW I was trying to help you.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=40#p10319
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: Tigger31337 / DateTime: 2010-11-02 00:42:51

[quote="Laroquod"]In CYOA the player is given simple choice points, in which they know that one of two things will happen, or one of three things will happen, like that. 
[/quote]

Not quite, but I get what you're driving at. I agree with the former part of your definition (players gets to choose "simple choice points") but not the latter ("in which they know that xxx will happen"). It does not follow that, simply because a player makes a choice, he knows the next plot twist. Indeed, the best crafted CYOA avoid just that. In any case, none of this applies to my game, because with my game you get exactly ZERO choice points. And choosing from ZERO options, is hardly a choice at all, now is it? No choosing, hence, not a CYOA.

[quote="Laroquod"]
In IF the player is given a sandbox to play in, where the number of possible narrative choices is disguised: it isn't immediately apparent. 
[/quote]

Also agreed.

[quote="Laroquod"]
Achieving these two different effects for the player is a lot of the difference between a CYOA design system and an IF design system. Your idea is closer to CYOA on that level.
[/quote]

False dichotomy. There are plenty of other game genres besides "CYOA" and "IF". Take, oh I dunno, a simple riddle-solving game, for example.

[quote="Laroquod"]
BTW I was trying to help you.

Paul.[/quote]

I'll offer a "thanks" for the effort.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=40#p10320
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-02 01:18:43

To me, zero options means literally zero options. If there are types of media that offer even fewer options than a riddle-game (and there are: like books, movies, etc), then it's hard for me to see a riddle-game as zero options, because zero is the lowest whole number. How can you have fewer options than zero? You can't, so there must be options in a riddle game, but they are just the simplest options possible -- so simple that they bear the closest possible resemblance to being zero options without actually being zero options. That's what makes it a borderline case.

Regarding the false dichotomy comment -- yes I agree; logic shouldn't force you to choose one category or another when they are not mutually exclusive. Depending on your viewpoint you can belong to both, one, or neither. This is my whole point.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=40#p10326
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-02 08:41:36

[quote="Tigger31337"]If it doesn't sound like CYOA to you, then why the hell are you giving me such a hard time when I am *agreeing with you*?!  I have been saying the same thing all along: my game is NOT a CYOA! It's really not that hard an argument to follow.[/quote]

Because I think you're being rude to people who are trying to be helpful to you and who haven't done anything to deserve your rudeness. 

[quote][quote="matt w"]
Yours is that the player can affect the plot/outcome. 
[/quote]

*sigh*
No, in my game you can [b]NOT[/b] affect the plot/outcome.[/quote]

*facepalm* I was saying, quite clearly, that your [i]definition of CYOA[/i] is that a CYOA is a game in which the player can affect the plot/outcome. Your game is not a CYOA because it doesn't fit your definition of a CYOA. 

Look, it's your privilege to react the way you want to when people offer a definition of CYOA that's different than yours, but if you're going to get hyper-argumentative about it you may find people less willing to engage with you. Which also means that they'll be less willing to help you with your code. 

Of course I do not always engage in the most constructive internet interaction strategies myself, and I'm no I7 pro, so there's no reason for me to get up on a high horse. Best to live and let live, I suppose.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=30#p10328
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-Machine Standard 1.2 (draft)
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-02 08:43:07

Hmm. I'd rather not really. If it's not something that requires the version to be set to 1.2 it shouldn't be there.

There is probably a need for a document listing futher classifications than what 1.1 provided. Perhaps a page on the IF wiki?

We could also have a selector to explain what an interpreter would do for @set_font 0, but I doubt that'd really be very useful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=30#p10329
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-Machine Standard 1.2 (draft)
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-11-02 09:02:22

[quote="Dannii"]There is probably a need for a document listing futher classifications than what 1.1 provided. Perhaps a page on the IF wiki?[/quote]Having the whole specification in a Wiki would be a step forward: that might allow more effective updating. Note that I'm not volunteeing to do this, though...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1610&start=0#p10332
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The Big Bang Theory - Season 4 Episode 6 - IF included !
User: Jota / DateTime: 2010-11-02 09:17:27

There's no reason to assume that it was an Infocom game. It could have been an emulator for any old computer system that happened to have text adventure games written for it (ones which excited Sheldon because, unlike Zork, he'd never played them before).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1626&start=0#p10335
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: BRIEF or VERBOSE
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-11-02 10:46:21

Obviously the player can control whether the rooms are in Brief or Verbose.

I noticed the new inform 7 build defaults to verbose, where the old defaulted to brief.

What's the consensus here? Which is better in general?

Personally, I prefer verbose- but I'm not a big fan of the room description automatically re-printing when I get off a chair or out of a bath tub. What do other people think? Which is a better default position for a game?

What about having the room description print in a seperate window, as in Beyond Zork?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1627&start=0#p10336
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Better Undo
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-11-02 10:48:35

Is there a way to alter the UNDO command?

For example, if you've eaten a poison that takes 5 turns to kill you, is there a way to set up UNDO so that it takes you back to before you've eaten the poison, so that undo isn't worthless? (Or so you don't need to type undo 5 times?).

Maybe some way involving scenes?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1611&start=0#p10337
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Gender bug?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-02 11:14:25

Maybe it's for purposes of understanding?

[quote]>x tortoise
He It is a wonderful shade of green.

>touch it
The tortoise feels smooth.

>take him
I'm not sure what "him" refers to.
[/quote]
Oh well, it was a nice idea.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1627&start=0#p10338
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Better Undo
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-11-02 11:54:54

Jesse's extension "Hypothetical Questions" has some code you could adapt to the purpose. It would be quite a job to do, I think.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1626&start=0#p10339
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: BRIEF or VERBOSE
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-11-02 12:29:47

If you're looking for anecdata, I'll say that I always switch on verbose as soon as it becomes apparent that a game is in a different mode, and it is only very rarely that I switch to a non-verbose mode later.  For that reason, I've used the verbose-on option in all of the Inform 6/7 code that I've written, and it seems natural to me that it is now the default.  However, I'm always playing on a full laptop screen, and not using a screenreader -- I could certainly see wanting to use a more brief mode if that were not the case.

Room description in a separate window sounds good to me (assuming screenreader integration and such), since it minimizes scrolling back to check out the description or wasting turns by looking again.  Maybe it could be just another mode? (Superbrief, Brief, Verbose, Split-Pane?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1610&start=0#p10340
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The Big Bang Theory - Season 4 Episode 6 - IF included !
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-02 13:20:48

[quote="Hannes"]Of course, the show isn't big on internal consistency. This recent episode had Sheldon 'just' discover he can play games from the 80s in an emulator. In the second season, however, episode 20 had the guys planning to play Zork ("The buggy beta version") on vintage gaming night.[/quote]
Maybe in episode 20 they played Zork natively without a third-party emulator, like in DOS mode? I'm waving my hands as hard as I can, here. 87

But Sheldon as a character not being previously aware of classic game emulators is a pretty blaring consistency error in and of itself even without episode 20...

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1611&start=0#p10341
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Gender bug?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-02 13:32:40

[quote="Jim Aikin"]At the risk of starting a philosophical food fight, I would suggest that, on the contrary, IF very often deals with the physical properties of things. Their visibility, for instance. Their location vis-a-vis other things. Stuff like that.[/quote]
But only insofar as those things need to be described. If they don't need to be described, IF is completely unconcerned with the physical properties of things, but it is always concerned with the linguistic properties regardless of other factors. So while I see your point, that physical properties are definitely involved, I would agree with the view that they are only there because IF is so concerned with describing stuff fluently and takes only what it needs to meet that goal.

But then, I was pretty deep into semiotics in school so this kind of thinking comes natural-like. 8)

I notice that things like lighting placement and object locations are not implemented in any way resembling reality, for instance. They are regularised to the point of unrecognisability, data-structure-wise -- but the regularised structure happens to be what language requires to economically (with few words) evoke a setting in the human mind, and ventures no further than that.

So... man is the measure of all things? Yeah, this is getting  philosophical.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=50#p10342
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: wfryers / DateTime: 2010-11-02 13:39:50

You make sense to me.  [emote]8-)[/emote]  I suspect people's passing exposure to computer programming is part of the difficulty here [emote]:shock:[/emote] 

When someone is designing a new computer language, fundamental choices have to be made.  One of the choices is about programming paradigm.  A paradigm is a mental model that structures the way problems are specified and resolved.  

If you learned a language like BASIC, FORTRAN or C, you learned one kind of imperative programming – procedural programming.  You learned that a program expresses an algorithm.  An algorithm can be thought of as a step-by-step recipe for completing a task. You learned about control of flow through things like if and while.  You learned about assertion though things like assignment and compare.  Because it is procedural, you learned how to create and invoke procedures.

When you entered your second programming class, you thought you knew programming.  But the instructor told you that procedural programming has some definite limitations.  Specifically, it could not handle events. The window-based programs on your Mac or PC used an entirely different approach. They used objects and something called Model-View-Controller (MVC) to get the job done. 

Now you learned that an object has a name, data that it alone knows and something called methods (procedures).  To use an object you had to instantiate it to create an instance of the object.  The instances of objects interact through something a lot like a conversation – here is the mysterious event.   There is a conversational rule called MVC which made window-based programming possible.  

Being a thoroughly modern person, you wanted to learn how to do web page design. Your next instructor talked about something called Web 2.0. You are told you will learn AJAX.  Now you know about Hypertext Markup Language, HTML; Cascading Style Sheets, CSS; Document Object Model, DOM; Java Script and a framework like JScript. You might have run through a course on Relational Databases.  There you would have learned Data Definition Language, DDL and Structured Query Language, SQL.  

Your instructor for the web and database classes most likely left something out.  He or she forgot to mention that  SQL, DDL, HTML, CSS and so on are computer programming languages. They are not procedural nor object oriented.  Rather these languages use the declarative paradigm.  

The declarative paradigm specifies the logic of computation (the what) and does not specify flow of control (the how and when). In other words there are no algorithms.  Suddenly, you realize that the course on spreadsheets was your introduction to declarative programming.  You specified what each cell was to do, but you didn't have any control over the flow of execution.  In SQL you specified what to join and what you wanted back, but you said nothing about how it was to be accomplished.  

After you completed your formal education, you may have learned other languages like PHP, Python, or Perl.  You found out these languages support multiple paradigms.  Now you were free to choose the paradigm.  

I suspect that unless you are forced into an event driven world, most people select the procedural paradigm.  It seems to match our intuition about how the world works.  In procedure land farmers bring cows to the milking barn, where the cows are milked.  There is a bunch of procedures or processes that must be followed to complete this compound task.

In object land the milking barn is a container which holds cows.  The farmer asks the barn to provide milk.  The barn in turn asks the cows to milk themselves.  The cows create new instances of a container called milk can which are kept in a heap.  When all the cattle are done milking themselves they notify the milking barn.  The milking barn tells the farmer where the heap of milk cans can be found.  

In declarative programing the farmer specifies there is a container called milk can which holds the cows' milk.  

If you are like me, you want to concentrate on the story.  I don't want to spend my time thinking about procedural ideas like before or after.  I don't find objects to be a particularly natural way to think about anything.  Also once I get past a couple of dozen objects, I seem to spend a disproportionate amount of time trying to keep track of them.  

I find the declarative paradigm lets me concentrate on the story.  It lets me deal with ideas of location separate from ideas of character.  It lets me deal with scenes and thus story. It ought to let me make statements like this:
[list]Asriel is an Elf who lives in the Eastern Enchanted Forest.  
Ethyl Red is a Human. He is the King of a Clan called the Plinth who live in the Fen.
The Eastern Enchanted Forest is a region comprised of:
[list]Room One
Room Two.[/list:u]
An Elf is an Individual.
[list]Knowledge ranges from 5 to 9
Magic ranges from 7 to 10.[/list:u]
[/list:u]
Consequently, I can organize the elements of my story neatly.  I can put all of the elves of the same clan together.  I can implement the back story directly in the character. Locations can form a map. And best of all I don't have to worry about any “computer stuff”.  [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1628&start=0#p10343
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Inform Website
User: gtravis / DateTime: 2010-11-02 14:10:32

It appears that:
A Focused Tutorial -- Descriptions and Locales by Jeff Nyman 
is a dead link or I am confused as to how to use that site.
 [emote]:?:[/emote] 
Thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1626&start=0#p10344
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: BRIEF or VERBOSE
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-11-02 14:22:13

Verbose.  Absolutely.  And I still end up typing "look" a lot.

I tried the description-in-a-box thing for my latest work, and was unimpressed.  It kept dragging my attention away from the main window; I felt like I lost the thread of what was going on.  I much prefer stuff that I'll be reading to be in a single main window, possibly with a few references in the status bar.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1627&start=0#p10345
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Better Undo
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2010-11-02 14:29:10

If you're allowing multiple undos, I don't think it's so onerous to require the player to type undo 5 times in that specific case. Of course, you could also give a bigger clue once the apple is bitten, or just make death instantaneous rather than letting the inevitable play out for 5 turns

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=50#p10346
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-11-02 15:03:24

You're going to have to deal with "computer stuff" at some point if you want to make a story that runs on a computer. The question is which paradigm you're most comfortable approaching that stuff with. And I really don't see much difference between the paradigm you're proposing and what Inform 7 already allows, except that you're not defining some terms that a computer will need to make sense of your proposal. What does it mean to be a king in your story world? What does it mean to "live" somewhere? Is that the same as physically being present, or does it imply other things relevant to your story?

Answering some of those questions arbitrarily, I'd render your plan in I7 like this:
[code]
The Eastern Enchanted Forest is a region. Room One and Room Two are in it.

Every region has a clan called the territorial owner. The Fen is a region. The territorial owner of the Fen is the Plinth.

An elf is a kind of person. Asriel is an elf in Room One. [if we want to define "lives in" more specifically, we'd need rules to support this: can people move outside of the area they live in? Do they behave differently if foreigners enter their region? These would be authorial decisions based on what is necessary to tell your story. Most simply, we can just start our character within a room in the region he lives in.]

A human is a kind of person. Ethyl Red is a human.

A clan is a kind of value. The Plinth is a clan. Every person has a clan. 

["Ruling" by itself doesn't mean anything to the system. But we can define it.]

Ruling relates one person (called the king) to various clans. The verb to rule (he rules) implies the ruling relation. 

Ethyl Red rules the Plinth.

Every person has a number called knowledge. Every person has a number called magic. The knowledge of a human is usually 5. The knowledge of an elf is usually 7. The knowledge of Ethyl Red is 8.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1061&start=10#p10347
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: works based on short stories or old video games
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2010-11-02 15:21:49

[quote="bcressey"][quote="aschultz"]So what, then, is fair usage of a concept/quote? Obviously a tribute game (yes, I have one planned. It's for something rather obscure, actually) would need to include intellectual property, and some "classic" quotes in one such book would seem perfect for a puzzle. Are these to be totally avoided?[/quote]

Parody is protected. It's the safest way to go if your tribute qualifies. Short quotes are usually fine, though it depends on the length of the quote relative to the amount of original content. Pictures and music are dicey; characters are generally off-limits.

Stealing the plot outright is fine as long as you change the characters and the setting to something of your own devising.

Fair use is a quagmire that comes down to two things: how likely the IP owner is to sue, and whether you are prepared to outspend him on legal fees. I would recommend Googling for something like [url=http://www.google.com/search?&q=tintin+lawsuit]tintin lawsuit[/url] and checking the results before you undertake a project like this. You can also contact the creator and ask for permission.[/quote]

Thanks for the help--it's good to have starting points for what to look at and also some assurances that parody etc. and including "money quotes" are ok. Though in this case, I'm writing a tribute work for something which is already a bit of a parody, but it's from 50+ years ago, so I think there's enough latitude for technological advances while hopefully keeping the story's heart.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1627&start=0#p10348
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Better Undo
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-02 15:46:39

You could hack the library to *not save undo states* on turns after the game has become unwinnable. (It would require some low-level surgery.)

It would be hard to communicate the situation to the player clearly, though. You'd want to say something like "[undoing five turns, to before you drank the poison]".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1629&start=0#p10349
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Twisty Passages
User: gevrik / DateTime: 2010-11-02 15:49:58

Hi all! First of all, please excuse me if my platform does not fit into what you expect from interactive fiction. Moderators, please feel free to hide/delete if you think that this topic should not be here. [emote]:)[/emote]

I am the creator of a website called Twisty Passages ( <a class="postlink" href="http://www.tmo-team.org/identity">www.tmo-team.org/identity</a> ) - it is a non-commercial, no-profit website and platform for what most people know as "choose your own adventure" books. But on Twisty Passages you can also create your own adventures for other readers by filling out simple forms and linking "chapters" to each other depending on up to 7 different choices. Adventure status is persistent (saved in a database) and there are simple mechanics to offer "skill" checks on certain actions, with two different outcomes (chapters) possible - this should help make the adventures less linear and static.

The platform is in very early development, but creators can already craft adventures and readers can "play" them. I started making an adventure myself, but I realise that I do not have enough time to both develop the platform and create adventures for it, so I would like to invite some creators onto the site. I would greatly appreciate feedback and suggestions on what could make the site better.

Again, I am doing this for a hobby, not to make money out of it. I have also recently bought a Kindle and have to say that this would work perfectly in its internet browser. I have also started work on an Android client for this platform, so that people on their Android smartphones and future tablets could be another source of readership.

Thanks for reading!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=40#p10350
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-11-02 16:49:24

[quote="Laroquod"]I did answer your question with exactly my opinion on the issue, and I wasn't talking about if/then statements. I was talking about the implementation of player choices. Your implementation of player choices resembles the implementation of player choices in CYOA more than it does IF. In CYOA the player is given simple choice points, in which they know that one of two things will happen, or one of three things will happen, like that. In IF the player is given a sandbox to play in, where the number of possible narrative choices is disguised: it isn't immediately apparent. Achieving these two different effects for the player is a lot of the difference between a CYOA design system and an IF design system. Your idea is closer to CYOA on that level. However, on the level of 'what do people expect to happen when they play a CYOA (extensive branching) it obviously is not a CYOA. I know you don't want to accept that as an answer, but it's reality as I see it. I believe some things genuinely don't fit squarely into the appointed categories -- these categories are man-made, I know you realise that: but do you believe they're perfect? No overlap whatsoever? It isn't a yes/no question. And your idea, in my opinion, is one of those things that can't be squarely put in either camp. So what am I supposed to do, invent another opinion other than what I believe? You'll have to accept it or not accept it as you see fit but that's my answer.

BTW I was trying to help you.

Paul.[/quote]

Well said.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=30#p10351
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-Machine Standard 1.2 (draft)
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-11-02 17:25:31

[quote="Dannii"]Hmm. I'd rather not really. If it's not something that requires the version to be set to 1.2 it shouldn't be there.

There is probably a need for a document listing futher classifications than what 1.1 provided. Perhaps a page on the IF wiki?

We could also have a selector to explain what an interpreter would do for @set_font 0, but I doubt that'd really be very useful.[/quote]
It should be in [i]some[/i] version of the specification. If we're not going to change the old versions retroactively, then it should be in the new version.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=30#p10352
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-Machine Standard 1.2 (draft)
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-02 17:53:48

Has consensus even been reached on @set_font?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1627&start=0#p10353
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Better Undo
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-02 20:30:21

[quote="jacksonmead"]If you're allowing multiple undos, I don't think it's so onerous to require the player to type undo 5 times in that specific case. Of course, you could also give a bigger clue once the apple is bitten, or just make death instantaneous rather than letting the inevitable play out for 5 turns

-Kevin[/quote]

Well, not all that many terps allow that many layers of undo -- specifically I'm pretty sure Parchment doesn't. [UPDATE: Never mind, it does now -- see Dannii's post below.] (This caught out one of the authors in the JayIsGames comp.) Anyway, it'd be pretty annoying to have to type undo five times.

Speaking of the JayIsGames comp, there was one game, "I Expect You To Die," which starts with this text:
[quote]
In the course of this game you may die often.  The game will by default automatically revive you when you die, instead of the usual death screen.  To toggle it to the default behavior or back, type "revive". 
Note: Auto-undo may go back in time a few more steps than one to make puzzles possible without restarting.[/quote]

Which looks intriguing -- but the game was not unbuggy, so I doubt that it did anything too complicated. I suspect that what was going on was that the game was pretty much a series of gated puzzles, so it was possible to just reset you to the beginning of the puzzle on which you died. "Earl Grey" did something similar, I think, and "Everybody Dies" at one point automatically takes you back to the beginning of a scene if you die. But it looks like you want something more flexible.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1626&start=0#p10354
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: BRIEF or VERBOSE
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-02 20:32:59

Another vote for "verbose," and I type "look" a lot too. Even though I can usually scroll back for the room description. In related news, I suck at timed puzzles.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1627&start=0#p10355
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Better Undo
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-11-02 20:44:54

The issue is not the game being unwinnable as much, moreso that you make choices that have consequences beyond 1 turn, and you might want to go back and take a different branch. More like CYOA I guess.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1627&start=0#p10358
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Better Undo
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-02 21:19:14

[quote="matt w"]Well, not all that many terps allow that many layers of undo -- specifically I'm pretty sure Parchment doesn't. (This caught out one of the authors in the JayIsGames comp.) Anyway, it'd be pretty annoying to have to type undo five times.
[/quote]
Parchment now supports an unlimited number of undos. I can't remember when we added that, but it was probably after the JIG comp.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1630&start=0#p10359
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Trouble with NPC-initiated Conversation Nodes
User: chipotle / DateTime: 2010-11-02 21:36:13

Hi there. I've been puttering around with conversation in I7 using Eric Eve's Conversation Package, and I've run into a dilemma of sorts. I've solved it, maybe, but I'm not sure I solved it well. [emote]:)[/emote]

The scenario is this: the player rings a doorbell, and a turn later an NPC answers it and says, "May I help you?" The player has something in mind to discuss already, so this action should start in a conversation node, with suggested topics.

The code I had was something like this:

[code]Ringing is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "ring [something]" as ringing. The doorbell can be rung. The doorbell is not rung.

Instead of ringing the doorbell:
    say "Ding![line break]";
    now the doorbell is rung;
    Anna opens the door in one turn from now.

At the time when Anna opens the door:
    say "The doorknob turns and the door opens. Anna steps out.";
    move Anna to Porch;
    initiate conversation with Anna at intro-node;
    continue the action.

intro-node is a closed convnode.
The tell-suggestions are { envelope }.
The other-suggestions are { yes-no-suggestion }.

node-introduction for intro-node:
    say "May I help you?".
[/code]
All well and good. The problem is that the conversation is initiated with Anna the turn [i]after[/i] the door opens:

[code]>ring bell
Ding!

>z
Time passes.

The doorknob turns and the door opens. Anna steps out.

>z
"May I help you?"

(You could say yes or no; or tell her about the incriminating envelope.)
[/code]
Whereas what I [i]want[/i] is for the node-introduction message and the topic list to happen in the turn Anna steps out.

To add to my confusion, even though the node-introduction hasn't printed, the conversation has actually already started:

[code]>z
Time passes.

The doorknob turns and the door opens. Anna steps out.

>hello, Anna
You are already talking to Anna.

"May I help you?"

(You could say yes or no; or tell her about the incriminating envelope.)
[/code]
This was quite frustrating for a while -- the example game in Conversation Nodes' documentation shows a character immediately launching into conversation when the player enters, but apparently this doesn't work when it's the NPC doing the entering.

My solution so far has been to add a new variation of "initiate conversation" that doesn't schedule the change for the end of the turn:

[code]To plunge into a/-- conversation with (new-speaker - a person) at/in/using/with (new-node - a convnode):
    now the current interlocutor is new-speaker;
    now the node of the current interlocutor is the new-node;
    now the node-timer is the node-time of the current node;
    follow the node-introduction rules for the current node.
[/code]
And then we "plunge into conversation with Anna at intro-node".

The question is: is there a better way to do this? Is there something that was already in Conversation Node that I'm missing? (More than likely.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1631&start=0#p10360
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: debugging/toggling truth states and numbers
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2010-11-02 22:04:56

In a game I'm writing there are currently 3 critical flags that change the story line. I'd like to be able to unit-test them without actually going through the game, to give a semblance of focus.

Here is my code right now. I know there are debug modules for objects, but I'm worried I've missed one that allows the player to actually tinker with numerical values/truth states. I also suspect that my code below is awkward because I am missing something fundamental--among other things. (Yes, arrays would work better for the flags, but I'll tackle that on my own.)

I know Inform 6 has #ifdef DEBUG/#endif, but that doesn't work in I7, and obviously it'd be easy to forget to reset the debug-flag when I release things.

What modules/definitions/ideas am I missing that I should be using? Thanks for any help that can be given, specific or general, and hope the code chunk isn't too long...I only included 2 flags to show the pattern.

[quote]debug-flag is a truth state that varies. debug-flag is usually true. [set to false when I release]

toggling is an action applying to a number. understand the command "toggle [number]" as something new. understand "toggle [number]" as toggling.

temp is a number variable. temp is usually 0.

carry out toggling a number (called flag-num):
	decrease the time of day by 1 minute;
	if debug-flag is false, reject the player's command;
	now temp is flag-num;
	now task-1-done is whether or not temp is odd;
	now temp is temp divided by 2;
	now task-2-done is whether or not temp is odd;
	now temp is temp divided by 2;
	say "Debug flags are now set.";

test endings with "toggle 0/test waiting/restart/y/toggle 1/test waiting/restart/y/toggle 2/test waiting/restart/y/toggle 3/test waiting";[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1627&start=0#p10361
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Better Undo
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-02 22:06:56

[quote="tggdan3"]Is there a way to alter the UNDO command?

For example, if you've eaten a poison that takes 5 turns to kill you, is there a way to set up UNDO so that it takes you back to before you've eaten the poison, so that undo isn't worthless? (Or so you don't need to type undo 5 times?).[/quote]

This was a natural fit for my Undo Output Control extension, so I went ahead and added the capability to stop saving the undo state (Zarf's suggestion, basically). You can download a test version of the extension here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Undo%20Output%20Control.i7x">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Undo%20O ... ontrol.i7x</a>

The second code example (also copied below) replicates the OP's poison-drinking scenario.

Please play around with this and let me know how it goes. If it looks good, I'll submit the extension.

--Erik

[code]Include Undo Output Control by Erik Temple.

Suicide Room is a room. There is a bottle of poison in Suicide.

Instead of drinking the bottle of poison:
	now the printed name of the bottle is "empty bottle";
	say "You drink down the poison in a single draught! That probably wasn't very smart.";
	disable saving of undo state.
	
Every turn when the printed name of the bottle is "empty bottle":
	say "[one of]Your cheeks burn[or]Your teeth hurt[or]Your belly twists[or]Your vision fades[the end][stopping]."
	
To say the end:
	end the game in death.
	
Before undoing an action when save undo state is false:
	say "[bracket]Attempting to undo to the moment just before you drank the poison.[close bracket][paragraph break]";
	rule succeeds.
	
Report undoing an action:
	say "[bold type]";
	say "[Location]" in upper case;
	say "[roman type]";
	say "[line break]";
	say "[bracket]Undone.[close bracket][line break]";
	rule succeeds.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1632&start=0#p10362
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: [Glk] System clock
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-02 22:26:14

I'd find a system clock function useful, so was thinking we could start listing some use cases so Zarf can decide on the spec change more easily.

Firstly it would be good to have a ms timer. This could fit into a signed 32 int fine... we wouldn't need to care about bigger time intervals.

A second function should provide the full time. This won't fit into a single int so we can't use unix time, so it would probably be better to return each part of time as a separate number. UTC time should be returned. Parts to include: Year, Month, Day, Day Of Year (1-365), Day of Week (0-6), Hour (0-23), Minute, Second, ms, time zone delta (in seconds?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=40#p10363
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-11-02 23:27:02

[quote="Tigger31337"]You have made the subtle move of shifting the label of CYOA from my game to the actual code itself. That is a totally arbitrary move which does not help your original argument one iota.[/quote]
This is clearly where we're talking past each other -- I thought we were talking about writing code the whole time:  
[quote="Tigger31337"]Any ideas on how I would get started?[/quote]
[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Sounds like you're making a choose-your-own-adventure. I believe there's an extension or two on the Inform site that makes that easy.[/quote]
[quote="tove"]it has more in common [b]structurally[/b] with CYOA than it does with world-modeled IF.[/quote]
Your initial post was asking for code advice, Ron's post was a suggestion for extension you could use to write code, and I agreed that the extension in question might be more useful to you, in writing code, than you might have thought. Sometimes it helps to reframe a problem in terms of a known solution (for example, using a conversational system as an attack system, even though conversation and attacking are two different things, because structurally they may show similarities in the context of IF).

Anyway, of course I don't care what you call your work.  When you get right down to it, I don't care how you program your work either, any more than any of the other helpful people on this thread who've given more concrete answers than I have.

[quote="Tigger31337"]Now, he got very defensive, and insisted that *he* was right, and *I* was wrong.[/quote]
Assuming you're talking about me and not some dude, well, if my words really came across as that insistent or insulting (my "I just thought that it sounds structurally similar" vs your "It seems that you, too, have misunderstood the objective of my game. In no way, whatever, is it accurate[...]does not help your original argument one iota[...]I know perfectly well that you are mistaken."), then I apologize.  I have no interest in making you sad or angry -- I'm sure there would be easier ways to troll this group if I wanted to do so.  We'll clearly have to agree to disagree on the question of what constitutes branching or narrative choices, but that's fine by me, and shouldn't affect the happiness of either of us.

[quote="mattw"]tove's definition, if I've got it right, is that it doesn't have a parser or underlying world model (which doesn't look like it's true for your game, anyway, since it sounds like you can examine objects in the rules).[/quote]
Yep, you've got it right, though the more I look into it, the more the explicit choice listing is clearly part of most people's expectations as well -- consider my opinion updated.  Since I'm being a horrible meanie that is trying to force poor unsuspecting games into labels they don't feel comfortable with, though, I'll point out that the initial spec, along with all this [i][b]one move to make[/i][/b] business does not make it sound like the game supports examining objects, but instead gives the pertinent information all in one dump. But the spec is inconsistent through the thread, so what do I know? 

[quote="Laroquod"]BTW I was trying to help you.[/quote]
I know, right?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1631&start=0#p10364
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: debugging/toggling truth states and numbers
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-11-02 23:35:52

Anything you put in a section titled "Not For Release" will, well, not be released (so it will exist in the version you play in the IDE, but not in anything you export to send to testers/players).  See section 2.9, "Material not for release," in the documentation for an example.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=40#p10365
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: Tigger31337 / DateTime: 2010-11-03 00:12:29

Sure, I'm all for flogging a dead horse:



From Tigger's First Post:

[quote="Tigger"]I want each room to be logically connected to the next in a linear fashion. By that, I mean the player follows a straight path from one room to the next.

I'm developing a sort of children's riddle game.

The primary objective is to solve one puzzle before you can proceed to the next room.

Users can't skip rooms along the path.

If, and only if, the player provides the correct answer to the current room's puzzle, he may proceed to the next room.[/quote]


(...and so on)


Ron Newcomb's first reply:

[quote="Ron"]Sounds like you're making a choose-your-own-adventure.[/quote]



Tigger's FIRST reply back to Ron (verbatim):

[quote="Tigger"]Not quite. Remember that my story path is completely linear. There will be no forking or choosing of paths. 

You appear in "Room 1". The only way to get to "Room 2" is to solve Room 1's riddle. For argument's sake, let's say there are 10 rooms until you end. To "win" the game, each and every room must be completed in order.[/quote]


Ron's reply (he still thinks, for some reason, that Tigger is making a CYOA):

[quote="Ron"]Eh? One path goes forward, the other loops back with a hint...[/quote]



Tigger's 2nd attempt (3rd overall) to explain his game concept. Directed at Ron:

[quote="Tigger"]Hehe. Nice try, but no.
That's not what most people refer to when they say "CYOA".
My "plot-line" (if you can call it that) cannot get any more linear. I am not looking to choose-your-own-anything. In case my first post wasn't clear, the player is to flow from one room to the next. The outcome of the game is fixed.

Displaying a 1-line hint (which is not a requirement, by the way) while within a room does not count as "looping back". Looping back implies that you have already left the room.[/quote]



Sensing that Ron needs help with his failed CYOA argument, tove steps in and thinks he can lend a helping hand:


[quote="tove"]Your objective may not be exactly what most people mean when they say CYOA (no spaceships or pirates), but it has more in common structurally with CYOA than it does with world-modeled IF. In any given room -- which cannot be re-visited after exiting, even -- there is a "choice": the correct answer, or any of the wrong ones. This is true even if you haven't listed the answers out ("1. Banana 2. Apple 3. Orangutan"). The correct answer takes you forward, and the wrong answer keeps you in place (or "loops back" to... exactly where you are). Without that loop, you'd have a game that allows the player to progress regardless of what answer they give, and that doesn't sound like what you're thinking of.[/quote]


Notice the number of mistakes tove makes here. #1. Since "CYOA" doesn't apply to my GAME (and he knows it) he is going to try to start up another argument (for reasons known only to him) by saying that my CODE has similarities to CYOA. Unfortunately, for reasons I've already outlined, describing CODE as CYOA is not very helpful, nor is it descriptive. CYOA describes gameplay, not source code. #2. He actually believes (or wants you to believe) that since my code is not similar to IF, then it must be similar to CYOA. False dichotomy. #3. (This is my favourite). tove thinks that "guessing the correct answer to a riddle" counts as Choosing Your Own Adventure because "there is a choice: the correct answer, or any of the wrong ones". Not only is tove's definition of CYOA mistaken, but clearly his definition of "choice" is out of whack, too. Recall my example from my FIRST POST: if I ask you "what does 2+2 equal?" you do NOT have a [i]choice[/i] of answers. Good try, though. #4. He believes that staying still is the same as looping back. I'm not really sure what the hell he's driving at here, but it's obviously false. I was crystal clear in my descriptions: you REMAIN in the room until you answer the riddle. There is no looping back, because you've never left your starting point. You really put on your thinking cap for that one. Bravo.


I won't quote the rest of the posts, since they're all pretty much the same - weak arguments that are actually trying to defend (but fail at) describing my game as a CYOA.


Seriously folks, thanks for the laugh. I needed that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=30#p10366
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-Machine Standard 1.2 (draft)
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-11-03 00:22:09

[quote="Dannii"]Has consensus even been reached on @set_font?[/quote]

Nope.  [emote]:D[/emote]

vaporware's Infocom documentation explains where the "previous font" wording came from, and zarf's proposed behavior makes the most logical sense.

If I were updating Glk Frotz today, I would change @set_font 0 to do nothing and return the current font. Fortunately I have the luxury of time and can wait to see what ends up in the spec.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1061&start=10#p10367
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: works based on short stories or old video games
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-11-03 00:32:19

Works published after 1923 and before 1964 may potentially be in the public domain as well, if the copyright was not renewed during the 28th year after the original publication. See the Wikipedia entry on [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_copyright_law#Duration_of_copyright]US copyright law[/url] for details.

This is more likely in the case of short stories in old pulp magazines, some of which have appeared as Project Gutenberg texts.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1600&start=10#p10368
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Game Speed
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-11-03 00:39:36

[quote="zarf"]Glulx only allows one timer to be active at a time, so this plan is moot.[/quote]Gah, I forgot that. D'oh. In that case access to thr system time seems definitely the way to go.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=50#p10370
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: snarke / DateTime: 2010-11-03 01:32:39

[quote="tggdan3"]

Sometimes you want them to be seperate. Sometimes you want them to be the same.
Just like READ and EXAMINE.

[quote]
>EXAMINE SIGN
It's a golden plaque.

>READ SIGN
"WARNING: BEARS"
[/quote]
[/quote]

Argh. The first example, to me, is a narrative failure. 

>EXAMINE SIGN
It's a golden plaque which says "Warning: Bears"

I think this custom of using "examine" is really unfortunate. I almost [i]never[/i] "examine" things around me. I look at them, or check them out, or inspect them, or fiddle with them. 

I think 'look at' is much clearer, really. If I 'look at' a book, I would hope that the parser/engine/script will give me credit for a modicum of intelligence, and assume I will keep looking at the book until I believe I've seen everything there is to see. "The words 'Moby Dick, by China Meiville' are stamped on the dark blue leather binding in gold letters. There's a blood red silk ribbon marking a place in the book, and the cover and pages look a bit scuffed and worn, as if it's been read many times."

"Examine" is ambiguous. I would generally use that word to mean "I picked it up and manipulated the object, continuing to do so until I was satisfied that I'd learned everything I could about it." My Merriam-Webster's 11th Collegiate dictionary says "Examine" means "to inspect closely," and "inspect" is "to view closely in critical appraisal," so if "examining" something doesn't tell me absolutely [i]everything[/i] I could or should know about the object inspected, then 'examine' was not an appropriate verb. 

So, if I'm not accustomed to the special meaning traditionally assigned to some verbs by text adventures, it's not surprising that I would get annoyed and frustrated if I type "examine book" and get anything [i]less[/i] than "The words 'Moby Dick, by China Meiville' are stamped on the dark blue leather binding in gold letters. There's a blood red silk ribbon marking a place in the book, and the cover and pages look a bit scuffed and worn, as if it's been read many times. The ribbon is tucked between pages 146 and 147. You can read the pages if you like. On the other hand, you might first want to read the note you found tucked into the book near the end. "

So, "examine book" = "look at book; get book; open book; search book; get note;" and I'm now fairly sure that "read pages" and "read note" will both accomplish something.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1563&start=10#p10371
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Designing Kitchens and Bathrooms
User: snarke / DateTime: 2010-11-03 01:41:40

I think not allowing somebody to enter the bathroom is jarring and rather bizarre. However, it really isn't hard to 'include' the bathroom in a way that makes it clear it's not important to the story. 

>enter bathroom
It's a pretty typical bathroom decorated in inoffensive shades of blue. Do you need to use the bathroom?

>use bathroom
After you're done taking care of things, and have finished washing your hands, you leave the bathroom.

HALLWAY

or something like that. The bathroom is [i]there[/i], and it [i]works,[/i] but clearly there's nothing important in it. Nevertheless, exploring the bathroom doesn't break the mood of the story.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1626&start=0#p10372
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: BRIEF or VERBOSE
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-11-03 03:02:07

The decision to switch Inform's default to VERBOSE was based on a lot of player/author response that suggested that was the widespread preference. (I myself have been setting my games to default to verbose for a long time.)

Besides the obvious points about form -- BRIEF mode comes from a time when output was expensive and might even be happening on printer paper -- there's also been a lot of shift in the craft of description. It's now much more common to have room descriptions that change over the course of the game, in subtle or dramatic ways, and you want the player to be able to see and notice those changes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1619&start=0#p10373
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Tales of Tale: Reviews of the 2010 IFComp
User: Tale / DateTime: 2010-11-03 06:10:46

The Bible Retold: The Lost Sheep
By Ben Pennington

[spoiler]Now, games about missing livestock have big shoes to fill... Honestly, though, the comparison to Lost Pig only came to me after finishing the game. "Lost Sheep" stands allright on its own, a short, funny inoffensive game. It seems to me, trying the AMUSING or red herring stuff here is actually more of the point here than actually solving the puzzles.  (Which is done quickly.) There is really not much else to say - It accomplishes what it wants to be, a fun little romp.[/spoiler]


ASchultz, thanks for the heads-up. Curious bug, that one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1603&start=40#p10374
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating a *very specific* riddle game with a "linear ma
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-03 06:37:39

[quote="tove"][quote="Laroquod"]BTW I was trying to help you.[/quote]
I know, right?[/quote]
Yes it was clearly a mistake and I won't make it again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=50#p10375
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-11-03 06:41:16

I don't understand why the standard IF command for looking at something is X THING, really. Why not L THING, short for LOOK AT THING? It's closer to standard English, and also has the advantage of reusing an existing abbreviation - one less thing for new players to remember. Unfortunately, it seems that none of the major IF systems allow players to L THING by default, although you can L AT THING.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=50#p10376
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-03 06:52:43

[quote="Emerald"]I don't understand why the standard IF command for looking at something is X THING, really. Why not L THING, short for LOOK AT THING? It's closer to standard English, and also has the advantage of reusing an existing abbreviation - one less thing for new players to remember. Unfortunately, it seems that none of the major IF systems allow players to L THING by default, although you can L AT THING.[/quote]
You know, you're right. My guess is that in the desire to get away from calling to mind older two-word parsers generally perceived as crappy (in which the convention was almost always 'LOOK THING'), Infocom chose 'examine' to set themselves apart, and then it just stuck over time, ingrained by the weight of convention and the logic of it rarely being revisited.

Of course, today we have no more need to differentiate ourselves from lousy two-word parser games, because those games are not recent in anyone's memory, so the whole reason for being for 'examine' over 'look' may now be moot. If you suggested that people type 'L THING' to represent 'LOOK AT' I'm sure no one would think, 'Oh, look thiing? Cheesy two-word parser, I don't wanna play this, you're the weakest link, goodbye.' 87

But the conventions now have a lot of weight to them, so maybe accepting 'X', 'L', 'L AT' and 'LOOK AT' (*cough* and SEARCH, lol) as all synonyms for 'examine' would be the way to go, today?

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=50#p10377
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-11-03 06:53:36

[quote="Emerald"]Unfortunately, it seems that none of the major IF systems allow players to L THING by default, although you can L AT THING.[/quote]
I7 allows this since the release in June along with LOOK <something> as a synonym to EXAMINE.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1626&start=0#p10378
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: BRIEF or VERBOSE
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-03 07:04:24

Yeah good point. And to match what's been added to IF stylistically in favour of 'verbose', something has been removed that argued for 'brief'. There is a lot less traipsing around these days back and forth through extensive mazes or expansive geography just to move a couple of keys 20-30 rooms away to their locked doors. Puzzles tend to be more contained and room layouts more economically fit to the story, so the design style in which verbose descriptions were the most annoying seems pretty much dead. I vote 'verbose' as well.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1563&start=10#p10379
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Designing Kitchens and Bathrooms
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-03 07:47:52

[quote="snarke"]I think not allowing somebody to enter the bathroom is jarring and rather bizarre. However, it really isn't hard to 'include' the bathroom in a way that makes it clear it's not important to the story. 

>enter bathroom
It's a pretty typical bathroom decorated in inoffensive shades of blue. Do you need to use the bathroom?

>use bathroom
After you're done taking care of things, and have finished washing your hands, you leave the bathroom.

HALLWAY

or something like that. The bathroom is [i]there[/i], and it [i]works,[/i] but clearly there's nothing important in it. Nevertheless, exploring the bathroom doesn't break the mood of the story.[/quote]

I don't know, if I saw that my reaction would be "Why is the bathroom implemented? There must be something useful I can do in there." Perhaps along the lines of (mild spoiler for Raising the Flag on Mount Yo Momma)

[spoiler]the plant in Raising the Flag on Mount Yo Momma, which is there so you can dispose of drinks that you don't want.[/spoiler]

Though perhaps the lack of objects in the description would get me to not do anything. But that leads to another problem -- this solution basically requires a bland description of the bathroom, and that can be jarring if the description of the rest of the house is detailed and vivid. 

I don't know, the more I think about it the more I think that maybe the solution is not to include the bathroom at all. In read-only fiction, you don't hear so much about the bathroom, because going to the bathroom is mundane and unremarkable for the most part, and it doesn't break our suspension of disbelief if a character never goes all day -- that's the sort of thing that would have to be brought to our attention. Ditto for IF; if I have things to do in the house, I'm not going to stop and say, "Hey! There's no bathroom!" 

Or maybe you get to the bathroom by xyzzy. That's how mine works.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1627&start=0#p10380
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Better Undo
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-11-03 08:01:47

I guess I'll have to give away some spoilers or something- but basically i have a one room game with about 30 different endings.

Some endings involve being drunk or on drugs when you do certain actions.
Others involve you being tied up.
others involve you destroying the room.

I was hoping people could undo to certain key actions, so they could explore a different ending. (Okay, I drowned myself on drugs, now what if i drown myself without drugs?)

I guess that's what SAVE/RESTORE is for.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1627&start=0#p10381
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Better Undo
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-03 08:39:38

Did you see that I posted an extension and an example that do exactly what your original post asked for? As long as the scenarios you're describing don't need internal undo states (that is, when the player types UNDO, we jump back to before the drinking/drugs/poison/whatever), you should be able to use the solution I posted for any/all of them. Or at least, you should be able to test that solution--I certainly haven't hammered at it exhaustively.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1504&start=10#p10382
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Flack's IFComp 2010 Game Reviews
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-11-03 10:15:32

Review: Aotearoa

[spoiler]Every program needs a name (I learned that from Tron). Occasionally I write programs at work, but before ever writing a single line of code, I'll spend a day or two brainstorming on a good program name. The right name can inspire me to write a great program. I don't know what it is, but it seems that by choosing a great name, sometimes the code will just fall into place behind it.

I hope to play my way through all ~30 games in this year's competition, but to be perfectly honest I started with the ones that sounded interesting. Aotearoa, to me, did not sound interesting. (I'm talking about the name here, not the game's premise.) As a dumb hick from Oklahoma, I thought an aotearoa was the dark part around a nipple. If there's been any pattern to this year's games so far, it's been the ones that sounded great haven't been, and the ones that sound strange, foreign or bizarre have turned out to be the most interesting.

Aotearoa, it turns out, is not the name of the nearest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way, but rather the native Maui name for New Zealand. (Who knew? Not me.) Aotearoa (the game) throws about a dozen native words at you right up front, so between trying to remember foreign names and replacing north/south/east/west with fore/aft/starboard/port while travelling on a boat ("I'm on a boat!"), I thought for sure there were rough waters ahead.

But while riding on a boat on the way to Aotearoa island, something happened -- I got caught up in the story. More so than any other game I've played so far this year, I was not just interested in the game, but in the plot. The more I played this game, the more interested and involved I became. I don't think there's a twelve-year-old alive who hasn't dreamed of visiting an island filled with real life dinosaurs.

This -- THIS! -- is the type of game I thought I would be playing all along. I didn't realize it before, but compared to Aotearoa, many of the other games just felt like "objects in rooms" instead of the interactive world presented here. It is evident that the author of this game spent a lot of time tweaking, smoothing, and perfecting this game. I didn't see any typos, or bugs, or obvious logic errors. 

As a newcomers to the scene, I've been using the terms "text adventure" and "interactive fiction" interchangably. After playing Aotearoa, it has suddenly become clear to me. THIS is Interactive Fiction. And don't get me wrong -- I think there's room in the world for both types of games (the game I'm currently working on would be classified as a text adventure), but Aotearoa is a wonderful example of Interactive Fiction.

While I can't definitely say this is the best game in the competition (I haven't played them all), I can say it's bay far the best one I've played. This game is well written and well construction. Kudos to the author.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1626&start=0#p10383
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: BRIEF or VERBOSE
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-11-03 10:41:47

[quote="Laroquod"] There is a lot less traipsing around these days back and forth through extensive mazes or expansive geography just to move a couple of keys 20-30 rooms away to their locked doors. Puzzles tend to be more contained and room layouts more economically fit to the story, so the design style in which verbose descriptions were the most annoying seems pretty much dead.[/quote]

Interesting, because that was the reason I always preferred verbose in the first place- because I was wandering around a bunch of rooms and I might get West of Chasm confused with South of Chasm, etc.

I suppose I prefer verbose too, I'm just not a fan of the auto-printing room description while exiting a container in the room. 

As far as the split pane, it was useful in beyond zork, when your actions would change the room descriptions. It was nice because it would become an inventory and status window for you as well. (And there was a nice on-screen map which made the room descripions easier). I like that one also.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1633&start=0#p10384
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: General Game Polishing
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-11-03 10:45:40

People seem to hate stock responses. (This dangerous act would achieve little), and also seem to love implementing things that are irrelevant. (SMELL KNIFE). 

What are some commands that SHOULD have a response for each object (or just commands that should have a response). What are some times when stock responses are fine?

Example: I had a beta tester suggest that "fart" be implemented, and have varying levels of description based on whether they were in a full bath tub or not, and likewise ask that a bathroom have implemented toilet paper, towels, soap, and shampoo (though none are relevant to puzzles or plot). I created a stock response (while [noun] is here, it isn't important), and he didn't like that. 

My worry is that too much detail would imply that these things are more important than they are, and lead to many red herrings. 

Anyway, what I'm looking for here is a list of commands that SHOULD have specific details (touching, rubbing, smelling, tasting for each object), should every piece of scenery have a specific detail on attempts to push, pull, pick it up, look under it, etc? What are people's thoughts on this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1627&start=10#p10385
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Better Undo
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-11-03 10:47:22

The problem is that there isn't necessarily 1 thing you want to undo to the expense of others. 

You may want to undo the pills, but you may just want to undo the last turn.
You may want to undo the drinking, which happened before the pills.

Etc.

Seems like you'd have to have multiple undo states, which, upon reflection, is more the venue of save/restore.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1632&start=0#p10386
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: [Glk] System clock
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-03 11:06:10

(Keeping in mind that I won't be able to jump into these question for real for two months...)

When you say an "ms timer", do you mean finer granularity for timed events? I hadn't thought of that, but it makes sense. It's easy to add to old interpreters, even if you don't want to take effort -- just drop resolution.

For providing the clock time, I *do* want to offer the Unix time. It's the easiest way to compute "how long have you been playing" type questions. 32 bits is shy, but if we return an *unsigned* integer, it'll be okay until 2106? We'll have to warn people to use unsigned comparison, of course, which is a nuisance.

I definitely want to offer a time-tuple API as well. I think you've named the standard C structure, which is what we should use.

Does the API need to offer common operations on these values? To-string, from-string, deltas on tuples? These *could* be done in game code, but they're traditionally a nuisance and offered by the OS/library.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1633&start=0#p10387
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: General Game Polishing
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-11-03 11:32:29

There's two things here: the stock responses, and general responsiveness.

Stock responses are designed to be generic, and often don't fit in well with the rest of the writing in a game.  If your main character is a noir dectective with an eye for the ladies, there's no way that "That dangerous act would achieve little" is an appropriate response.  (There's a secondary factor in that players don't often try things that they think will accomplish little, so in that respect I think the default is a little misleading.)  Sarah Morayati's also made some good points on default messages and how weirdly they conflate character and player ([url]http://www.sarahmorayati.com/2010/06/default-parser-messages-do-they-need-an-overhaul/[/url]).

Well-crafted parser defaults will save you a load of work, because they won't throw players out of the story nearly as much as the standards. 

Let's assume then, that you've got well-written, in-character parser messages implemented.
The degree to which I expect implementation of specific messages for objects depends on:
1) how important the item is
2) how likely an action is to occur to a player, and how much it would make sense in that world
3) how much sense the default response makes to a certain action

So if you've got a torch that you can carry around, and a dark room, and I try to light the torch, I am going to be very, very unhappy to see "This dangerous act . . ." because dammit, a lit torch *would* achieve something - something I'm trying to achieve!  This kind of response is the most crucial, because the default responses here makes it feel like the author didn't consider other solutions to puzzles than the correct one, and it doesn't feel like fair play.  

Whereas if you've got a room with a window, and when you look out the window, you see the sky over the forest, I don't expect any unique response to >TAKE SKY.  

I do expect to be able to EXAMINE anything mentioned by the game.  The description might be a conglomeration: if you're in a forest, the description of trees in one location and another could be identical, but I generally feel like "You see nothing special about the trees." is a let down.  Because, really?  There's nothing significant you can tell me that would shed light on my character, my emotional state, the situation at hand, the other dangers of the forest, whether it's the kind of forest Bambi lives in or the kind around Baba Yaga's hut, whether it's midwinter or August - nothing relevant?  

Verbs/actions that are suggested by the game should be implemented, so if your game has a lot of fart jokes, it's good polish to add it as a verb.  Generally, touch/smell/taste are suggested either by the text or by the object itself.  Food, drink, and icy telephone poles should respond to taste; fluffy animals should respond to pet; garbage heaps and truffle fries should response to smell.  Otherwise, your finely written defaults should be more than adequate.

I am tickled when I try an action that falls outside of "fair play" and it works.  Lateral thinking, puns, idioms, emoting verbs - all these make me very happy as a player.  For example, let's say you're writing a story about slavery, and the character is a slave who's just escaped.  I don't *expect* a response to >TASTE FREEDOM, but I'll squeal happily if one shows up.  But that's icing, and there's no way you're going to catch everything, so I wouldn't worry too much about this category of embellishment.  

In a normal game, I would never type >FART unless strongly hinted to by the game.  I think your response to towels/shampoo/etc. is just right, assuming those things wouldn't be useful in the situation you've written.  I'm not a big fan of the phrase "not important", because those things may be, to the character.  I never think "That fluffy towel I use to dry myself every morning is unimportant!"  However, a firm redirect is entirely appropriate.  The redirect could even be the same for all the bathroom clutter.  Most IF isn't a simulation; just because you *can* implement a top and bottom sheet with various blankets for your entirely unimportant bed doesn't mean you *should*. 

Something that may help for more important objects - Juhana has an extension that let's you "analyze" an object - it'll run through the list of commands, and show you the responses in one block.  You can add your own commands to the list, too.  That makes it easy to read through pretty much all the text produced for an item at once, and catch any horrendous errors.  

That's pretty general, but it varies depending on the game.  I generally cut a little more slack for larger games, or those that are clearly trying for an old-school, minimal aesthetic.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1631&start=0#p10388
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: debugging/toggling truth states and numbers
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-11-03 11:52:11

Which means you can do[code]

Section 1 - normal 

debug-flag is a truth state that varies.  debug-flag is usually false. [release]

Section 2 - not for release

debug-flag is true. 

Section 3 - foo
[/code]
The "is usually" sets up a default, while the sometimes-included "is true" overrides.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1632&start=0#p10389
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: [Glk] System clock
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-11-03 11:55:57

[quote="zarf"]For providing the clock time, I *do* want to offer the Unix time.[/quote]

Unix time starts on like January 1st, 1979 or so, right?  We could just pick a more recent date.  We'd be able to not require unsigned, the spec would be good longer, and the conversion is just a subtraction or addition with a constant number, which the spec would say.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1626&start=0#p10390
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: BRIEF or VERBOSE
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-11-03 12:03:20

This is something I wanted to do with my game from the beginning, but didn't know what the general consensus was. Cool. I'm making the change right now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=50#p10391
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-11-03 12:05:26

For a while now, I've thought that it should be "DESCRIBE THING", since that's usually what we're asking the game to do.  

Describe also has the bonus property of being applicable to conversation topics and other things that you can't literally look at or examine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1627&start=10#p10392
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Better Undo
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-11-03 12:23:18

Let's see: if the game is essentially a set of toggles, and inventory and such is unimportant, I think it would be theoretically possible to create a crude internal save state and regress the character that way.  

Something like this, perhaps?

[code]Regretting is an action applying to nothing.  Understand "regret" as regretting.

An occurence is a kind of value.  The occurences are done and undone.

To decide what occurence is the reverse of (reality - an occurence):
	if reality is undone:
		decide on done;
	otherwise:
		decide on undone;

Marijuana is an occurence that varies.  Marijuana is done.

Carry out regretting:
	say "Do you regret [if marijuana is done]taking drugs[otherwise]not trying marijuana[end if]?";
	if player consents:
		now marijuana is the reverse of marijuana;
		if marijuana is undone:
			say "You close your eyes, and it's like it never happened.";
		otherwise:
			say "You close your eyes, and you know you *did* experiment, back in the day.";
	otherwise:
		say "Yes, it's probably best not to regret the past."

The Hall of Memories is a room.  

The description of the player is "[if marijuana is done]You smoked in your youth[otherwise]You remember envying your comrades for their freedom, but you never did anything illegal[end if]."[/code]

You'd have to figure out a bunch of fiddly bits, and you'd need to make sure that the chain of requirements never broke - if you had to have done drugs to drown, you'd need to make sure regretting drugs undid the drowning.  

And I don't think this would work with anything bigger than what you're describing - just a bunch of different states.  But it might be worth playing with.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1631&start=0#p10393
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: debugging/toggling truth states and numbers
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2010-11-03 12:40:24

Thanks very much, Ron. I have to admit that after my first couple of days with Inform 7, I don't know if I looked at chapter 2 of the docs ever again. I sort of dismissed it as introductory fluff.

I think I'll go back and reread it now, as I probably missed some other big-picture stuff that might be more useful with experience, stuff programming intuition says should be in a robust programming language but I can't find off the bat.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1634&start=0#p10394
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Modeling Memory
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-03 13:01:55

As I embark on a conversation system for my WIP, I've been browsing the extensions, including Epistemology and Aaron Reed's "Remembering." I'm not sure either one does exactly what I want, but since many other extensions use Epistemology, I want to make sure my own code plays nice with it. More importantly, I want to formulate a general philosophy of how memory works in the game world.

Here's the situation:

My project has some flashbacks which are filled with objects and people that will never be accessible in the "current" timeline of the game. So instead of using Epistemology to begin with, I created a container called "your memory" which is part of the player. Perhaps this is dangerous, but so far I haven't come up with any problems. Even "examine memory" produces a not totally unreasonable response.

The important thing about the memory is the rule for refusing to do anything with it:

[code]Before doing something when the noun is enclosed by your memory, say "There's no [noun] here right now." instead.

Before doing something when the second noun is enclosed by your memory, say "There's no [second noun] here right now." instead.[/code]

This seems to me to be a good way to cover a wide range of actions since things in memory are always in scope. Much wider than "Remembering," which only handles examining, taking, and dropping. But is it overkill? Since there will be people in memory, it seems like give/show and verbs like that would also apply, but I'm not comfortable guessing what they all would be - especially when extensions like Conversation Framework create new verbs that would be relevant.

The next question is, if I do use an extension that requires Epistemology, what's the best way to work the memory into it? Can I use "known but not visible" instead of "enclosed by your memory," or add known objects to scope manually? Should I manually mark things as familiar when putting them in memory? Should I redefine "known" to include "enclosed by your memory?" And if I do tamper with the workings of Epistemology, what's the best way to do that? Is it safe to simply redefine "known" and "unknown" after including it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1635&start=0#p10395
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Looking for writers
User: imipak / DateTime: 2010-11-03 13:02:23

I have plotted out a number of Interactive Fiction games, where some of the early work was done using the adventure-writing toolkit from Micro User (a BBC computer magazine). In other words, games I've been working on for a while. A loooong while. All the work in the past decade or so has been entirely on paper. At present, I simply don't have the experience to re-implement the games using the current generation of authoring systems, though with practice that will obviously change. In the meantime, I'd love it if people could help me with getting one of the games implemented (doesn't matter which one) to help me get a better feel for what can (and cannot) be done.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1602&start=0#p10396
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How to come up with puzzles?
User: imipak / DateTime: 2010-11-03 13:34:43

There are all kinds of ways to come up with puzzles. The simplest puzzle is to require a logical action by the user. In "Philosopher's Quest", to solve non-existence you think. In Colossal Cave, to solve the lamp problem you buy new batteries. To pass demons in Zork, you'd use the bell, book and candle.

The next-simplest of the puzzles games is the logical maze. Level 9 games often used things like resistor colour codes to identify locations. This would be a tough one to do in the authoring systems I've seen, as I don't know of any support for the virtual room concept. However, the notion of a maze that isn't based on physical barriers but logical barriers is perfectly doable even on a classic system. An example of a logical maze might be a chessboard with passages linking rooms in the manner of a chessboard knight, where you may not revisit a room you have already been in and must do something in each room.

A good place to get ideas would be anything on the Internet about "lateral thinking" - a great source for inspiration. Mythology is also a good source - there's often plenty of riddles, descriptions of challenges/tasks, etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1635&start=0#p10398
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for writers
User: imipak / DateTime: 2010-11-03 13:51:09

I'd better clarify. There are three games I'm working on - a spy-fi, a sci-fi and a fantasy game.

The sci-fi is aimed at problems and solutions geared towards the hard sciences. For example, to create a specific colour of light, you burn the metal that generates that colour. You can't connect a device to earth/ground unless the wire can take the load and said wire is actually connected to ground. And so on.

The spy-fi is loosely themed around the types of story found in the 60s TV series The Avengers, without being too much of a blatant rip-off. In other words, no fancy gadgets, no backup and very time-sensitive clues. (A bit like Infocom's Deadline.)

The fantasy game borrows bits and pieces from mythology (mostly Celtic and Norse) and fantasy novels based on such mythology (such as Alan Garner's books), again without trying to be too much of a blatant rip-off of anything. Complex challenges in the form of traditional riddles identifying what the actual puzzle is can be fun.

The problem I'm having is that the authoring kit for the BBC micro was nice and easy for a lot of things (it was GUI-based, you set flags, you test flags and that's about it), but this was also a major limitation. It's very hard to write complex games that way. On the other hand, systems like Gluxle and Inform 7 are not turning out to be that intuitive to me, the standards expected in IF have gone up heavily since the late 80s and early 90s, and I simply don't have the skills yet to bring what I'm imagining to life the way I'd like on modern engines.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=50#p10399
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-11-03 14:19:01

As a programmer, having one action apply to many things is better.

[quote]
>EXAMINE BOOK
It's a leatherbound copy of your spell book. The years have not been kind to the spell book, and the pages are aged and yellows, though the printing itself is still sharp and legible. It smells a bit musty, having been stored in the trunk so long, and the pages are so frail you fear you might accidentially damage the book. 
It contains the following spells:
Spell1
Spell2
Spell3

>TOUCH BOOK
You feel nothing unexpected.

>SMELL BOOK
You smell nothing unexpected.
[/quote]

To have to program a special response for every item in the game, in case they decide to SMELL, TOUCH, LISTEN TO, TASTE, LOOK UNDER, LOOK BEHIND, etc is a huge pain. Though is makes, sense, the book shouldn't give "you smell nothing unexpected" when the examine description involves smell. As a programmer, I'd prefer it all be one noun.

If I have a story that involves careful examination (like the mystery genre), I would create those actions independently. 

Perhaps we need a "minimal object use" extension (which would be very simple, I admit).
With something along the following lines:

[code]
Before smelling something: 
   say"(examining [the noun]);
   try examining the noun instead.
Before tasting something, try examining the noun instead.
[/code]
And so forth for all senses, and just trust that the author has developed a proper description for all the objects in game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1636&start=0#p10401
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Obscure Interactive Fiction - Gone but not Forgotten
User: imipak / DateTime: 2010-11-03 14:39:58

There were plenty of games in the Olde Days that were brilliant but are largely forgotten because they weren't "big name" titles. I was worried that Level 9's games were amongst them until I saw the Interactive Fiction archive, because they so rarely get mentioned and most times I've mentioned them to people I get this blank stare.

I'd love to discuss games that simply don't fit into the usual mould. Hey Ley Games was a tiny (one-man) company that wrote games for the BBC and Archimedes for a few years, but even Google can't find any reference to them. Another game that is "rare" is "The Pen and The Dark", although a (very few) places document it. By Keith Devlin (author of C&VG's adventure column at the time), it is a nice piece of deductive interactive fiction.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1471&start=0#p10402
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Anyone Need a Writer?
User: imipak / DateTime: 2010-11-03 14:45:56

If you're still interested in doing some writing, I've some ideas for which I can do the code (I've got an engine that I can actually use for this) but the writing side is defeating me entirely. The setting is spy-fi and loosely themed around the Kim Possible series. Unlike the stories I've already designed on older systems, here I know how to get the puzzles coded in the system I want to use but the prose itself is proving damn-near impossible.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1636&start=0#p10403
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Obscure Interactive Fiction - Gone but not Forgotten
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2010-11-03 15:47:41

For any classic IF without backing of some huge company/author, I wholeheartedly [url=http://solutionarchive.com]CASA[/url]. It has got info on [url=http://solutionarchive.com/game/id,394/]The Pen and the Dark[/url] as well as listings of the [url=http://solutionarchive.com/list/company,451/]Heyley Games[/url]. Since some of the latter don't have solutions listed yet, I'm sure if you're up for it, all you'll have to do is ask in their forums and you'll find some other people to play these games 'with' you. It's quite common there to start such 'play-alongs'.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1632&start=0#p10404
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: [Glk] System clock
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-11-03 16:06:37

[quote="Ron Newcomb"][quote="zarf"]Unix time starts on like January 1st, 1979 or so, right?[/quote][/quote]January 1st, 1970: by 1979 Unix was already everywhere. [emote]:-)[/emote] But yes, a more recent offset would seem sensible.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1627&start=10#p10405
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Better Undo
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-11-03 16:45:37

I see what you're doing there. That could work. 

[quote]
**YOU HAVE DIED***
>REGRET

Do you regret drowning?
>Y
Do you regret drinking vodka 10 times?
>Y
Do you regret eating that strange pill?
>N

(Taking the player back to after he ate the pill)

[/quote]

Perhaps a way where the game can undo, check to see if the given state is still true, and if so, undo again for you?

To regret pills:
  try undoing the action;
  if the pill is eaten, regret pills.

To regret drinking:
  try undoing the action;
  if the player is drunk, regret drinking.

And so forth?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1632&start=0#p10406
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: [Glk] System clock
User: djfletch / DateTime: 2010-11-03 17:26:43

[quote="zarf"]For providing the clock time, I *do* want to offer the Unix time. It's the easiest way to compute "how long have you been playing" type questions. 32 bits is shy, but if we return an *unsigned* integer, it'll be okay until 2106? We'll have to warn people to use unsigned comparison, of course, which is a nuisance.[/quote]
[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Unix time starts on like January 1st, 1979 or so, right?  We could just pick a more recent date.  We'd be able to not require unsigned, the spec would be good longer, and the conversion is just a subtraction or addition with a constant number, which the spec would say.[/quote]
Combining these two ideas: if we were going to move the epoch anyway, we could put zero in the future, then we could use signed values but still use all 32 bits. Too tricksy?

[quote="zarf"]Does the API need to offer common operations on these values? To-string, from-string, deltas on tuples? These *could* be done in game code, but they're traditionally a nuisance and offered by the OS/library.[/quote]
I think to-string and from-string get complicated. It won't be common to print an ISO-whatever-it-is date in a game, except maybe to a data file. So to be useful you really need a format string. If you go that far, you might as well just add printf instead (or a cut-down version of it). Plus if you print day and month names you have to decide what language they are in.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1632&start=0#p10407
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: [Glk] System clock
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-11-03 17:41:11

[quote="zarf"]Does the API need to offer common operations on these values? To-string, from-string, deltas on tuples? These *could* be done in game code, but they're traditionally a nuisance and offered by the OS/library.[/quote]

If they could be done in game code, they could be done in a game extension.  Not all games will make heavy use of that API's whiz-bang features, so I see no real need to lay yet another requirement on the 'terp authors et al about it.

[quote="djfletch"]if we were going to move the epoch anyway, we could put zero in the future, then we could use signed values but still use all 32 bits. Too tricksy?[/quote]

Clever.  I might ask that the new epoch still be on the first of January, that way in case there's confusion and a UNIX function is called on value by accident, the wrong answers will still have the month & day right.  It's easier to intuit what's going on if only the year is too far forward than if the whole date is completely different.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1626&start=0#p10408
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: BRIEF or VERBOSE
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-11-03 18:01:13

I'm also in agreement with most everyone else here, including not liking the auto-look after exiting a container.  (Not really sure why, other than "it's jarring".  Er, no pun intended.)   

But I'm not real fond of status bars, extra windows, and other such gadgets that compete with the prose for my attention.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=60#p10409
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-11-03 18:08:02

[quote="Pacian"]For a while now, I've thought that it should be "DESCRIBE THING", since that's usually what we're asking the game to do.  Describe also has the bonus property of being applicable to conversation topics and other things that you can't literally look at or examine.[/quote]

Clever, though it seems to draw attention to Mr. Parser Voice:  EXAMINE is what I do; DESCRIBE is what someone else does for me. 

And my two cents: as a player I rarely use examine, smell, listen, etc. unless cued to, or I'm stuck.  It seems like the commercial companies of old instilled that reflex into I-Fers, cause I still don't seem to be developing it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=60#p10410
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-11-03 18:21:16

[quote="Juhana"][quote="Emerald"]Unfortunately, it seems that none of the major IF systems allow players to L THING by default, although you can L AT THING.[/quote]
I7 allows this since the release in June along with LOOK <something> as a synonym to EXAMINE.[/quote]
Ah, okay. I didn't have Inform available to test with, so I just looked up a fairly recent game file - but not recent enough. Next step: getting TADS 3 to follow suit.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1634&start=0#p10411
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Modeling Memory
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-11-03 18:21:24

Well, the doc for the extension states: [quote]all game objects are either seen or unseen, either familiar or unfamiliar, and either known or unknown. By default, all objects start unseen and unfamiliar, and hence unknown (although we can of course change this for indivdual objects, groups of objects or kinds). The seen/unseen and familiar/unfamiliar pairs can be tested or set as requires. The known/unknown status may be tested but not directly changed in code, since it derives from the other two: a thing is considered to be known if it is either seen or familiar; otherwise it is unknown. 
[/quote]

I think of 3 different ways to handle this.

Since the extension is simple enough, copy-paste the [i]Definition:[/i] of [i]known [/i]into your work, and then re-create the seen/unseen and familiar/unfamiliar as a [i]Definition:[/i] as well -- that new definition would be referencing your memory container somehow.  Any extensions that use Epistemology to check seen/familiar/known would work seamlessly.  

But if they SET the property that you now say is a Definition, well, include Epistemology but re-define Known to be seen and/or familiar and/or in-memory-container.   

Or, include Epistemology, but anything that is familiar per Epistemology should definitely be in your memory container. 

Part of the problem I see is that, just by having a Known property, all objects are sort of in the same bin anyway, rendering an explicit Container object moot. 

But I can't see the fine details of your code, so I can't be a good judge.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1632&start=0#p10412
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: [Glk] System clock
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-11-03 19:06:33

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Unix time starts on like January 1st, 1979 or so, right?  We could just pick a more recent date. We'd be able to not require unsigned, the spec would be good longer, and the conversion is just a subtraction or addition with a constant number, which the spec would say.[/quote]

If any given signed 32-bit epoch is good for +68 years, then starting the counter in 2010 would only take us to 2078, which is well short of 2106.

Personally I'm not that excited about even the 2106 date, unless we think the IF of the 22nd century will have forced a move to 64-bit VMs. It just seems like a misstep to build in an expiration date, such that games relying on modern Glk functionality could behave erratically a century from now. That's not so much time if you consider that the history of IF already spans 34 years.

What about a scheme where the library could return both seconds since the epoch, and the [url=http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/mjd.html]modified Julian day[/url] on which that epoch commenced? Then the library could select an epoch such that elapsed values would stay within a 32 bit range, and the game could correctly identify the real calendar dates if desired.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1632&start=0#p10413
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: [Glk] System clock
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-03 19:53:44

Okay, I agree that to-string and from-string are too much work.

I'm not a fan of shifting the base date either.

[quote]What about a scheme where the library could return both seconds since the epoch, and the modified Julian day on which that epoch commenced?[/quote]

Variable epoch? Oy. Plus, converting Unix to MJD looks like a hassle.

How about this: Unix epoch, but *scale* the base date. You call get_current_time(x), and this returns the Unix time divided by x (truncated to 32 bits). (Signed division, so we can represent old years.) If x is 1, it's just truncation. If x is 60, you get *minutes* since the epoch. Since the most common use case is "how long have I been playing?", this provides an easy way to get that answer in minutes, and it won't break until the year 6000. If you really need a 64-bit Unix time, you can get it in two calls with a little math.

We'd also need calls to convert this scaled form to a tuple, and vice versa.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1632&start=0#p10414
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: [Glk] System clock
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-03 19:55:27

[quote="zarf"](Keeping in mind that I won't be able to jump into these question for real for two months...)[/quote]Well I'm hoping we can reach consensus earlier than then. These should be easier to specify than to implement.

[quote]When you say an "ms timer", do you mean finer granularity for timed events? I hadn't thought of that, but it makes sense. It's easy to add to old interpreters, even if you don't want to take effort -- just drop resolution.[/quote]Yeah I want them for some performance tests. I had originally been thinking to use timers, but if we can get sub-second data that would be even better.

[quote]For providing the clock time, I *do* want to offer the Unix time. It's the easiest way to compute "how long have you been playing" type questions. 32 bits is shy, but if we return an *unsigned* integer, it'll be okay until 2106? We'll have to warn people to use unsigned comparison, of course, which is a nuisance.[/quote]Another option would be to offer 64 bit unix time in two words. Library code could handle comparisons.

[quote]I definitely want to offer a time-tuple API as well. I think you've named the standard C structure, which is what we should use.

Does the API need to offer common operations on these values? To-string, from-string, deltas on tuples? These *could* be done in game code, but they're traditionally a nuisance and offered by the OS/library.[/quote]I think the library could do to/from-string for tuples, as well as deltas, but turning a tuple into unix time might be useful. As would turning an arbitrary unix time into a tuple too. If you had those functions then maybe don't provide tuple time in the api, just convert it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1627&start=10#p10415
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Better Undo
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-03 20:49:05

[quote="tggdan3"]Perhaps a way where the game can undo, check to see if the given state is still true, and if so, undo again for you?[/quote]

That could possibly work, but it would probably be a bit dangerous/fragile.

Back to the more traditional save/restore approach to this—could you prompt the player to save when she does something dumb?

[quote]>DRINK POISON
That sounds dangerous. Would you like to save your game first? y[/quote]

(It might also be good to allow a third option in that situation--so the player could choose between saving, not saving, or canceling the action.)

There have also been discussions either here or at rec.arts.int-fiction about having defined save points, I think.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1627&start=10#p10417
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Better Undo
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-11-03 21:31:54

[quote="tggdan3"]I see what you're doing there. That could work. 

[quote]
**YOU HAVE DIED***
>REGRET

Do you regret drowning?
>Y
Do you regret drinking vodka 10 times?
>Y
Do you regret eating that strange pill?
>N

(Taking the player back to after he ate the pill)

[/quote]

Perhaps a way where the game can undo, check to see if the given state is still true, and if so, undo again for you?

To regret pills:
  try undoing the action;
  if the pill is eaten, regret pills.

To regret drinking:
  try undoing the action;
  if the player is drunk, regret drinking.

And so forth?[/quote]

Precisely, although the beauty of this is that you might never need to actually utilize undo - if you're only dealing with the internal toggles, it doesn't matter to the player whether things are "really" undone or just virtually undone.  The advantage would be that undo remains as-is, for one-turn errors.  It also would have the advantage that undo wouldn't anticipate the player too much.

I'm picturing the regret function repeating through a table in order of latest state-change.  This would be more challenging as the game gets more linear, but I don't see why a counter couldn't be implemented.  

I think this could be cataclysmically buggy to set up, but the advantage would be the ease with which you could add new states to existing tables, making expansion 
semi-trivial.  

The nice thing about this, opposed to save-restore, is that the player wouldn't have to do the routing himself.  If there's ten branches the first play-through, that's ten saves, each of which have to be clearly marked.  That's a player's nightmare.  If the game's short enough, I'd restart instead.  If it's long, I think this feature might well make the difference between one-two plays and many more.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1626&start=0#p10418
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: BRIEF or VERBOSE
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-03 21:56:51

[quote="tggdan3"][quote="Laroquod"] There is a lot less traipsing around these days back and forth through extensive mazes or expansive geography just to move a couple of keys 20-30 rooms away to their locked doors. Puzzles tend to be more contained and room layouts more economically fit to the story, so the design style in which verbose descriptions were the most annoying seems pretty much dead.[/quote]

Interesting, because that was the reason I always preferred verbose in the first place- because I was wandering around a bunch of rooms and I might get West of Chasm confused with South of Chasm, etc.[/quote]
That makes sense; I can see how that would come in handy in that circumstance. I was talking about the situation where well after you know the geography fairly well, puzzles are still sending you from one end to the other of large geographic spaces or labyrinths. So in that case the room descriptions aren't of interest to me -- I just want to travel as efficiently as possible. But that hardly ever happens anymore.

BTW I'll also log a vote against split panes. I do like the room title in the status bar. But I dislike double-width status bars and prefer the text window clean and uncompromised. What happens outside the text window, however, is another matter. 87

Kind of the same way that I don't like network bugs and news crawls crowding in the picture on my TV, but I'm perfectly willing to thumb through a magazine while I watch...

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=60#p10419
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-11-04 04:06:26

[quote="Ron Newcomb"][quote="Pacian"]For a while now, I've thought that it should be "DESCRIBE THING", since that's usually what we're asking the game to do.  Describe also has the bonus property of being applicable to conversation topics and other things that you can't literally look at or examine.[/quote]Clever, though it seems to draw attention to Mr. Parser Voice:  EXAMINE is what I do; DESCRIBE is what someone else does for me.[/quote]
Funnily enough, the WIPs where I've done this have all been in the first person.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1613&start=0#p10420
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Custom Library Messages, version 0.
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-04 06:44:41

Sorry for lack of feedback. I'm hoping to delve into this more today. One thing I did notice right off the bat, compiling the example "exhaustive test" from the documentation gives an error on Inform 6F95:

[quote]"In the line 'say "[re nothing][Aux][we] [aux]carr[ie [...] asked by 64 is 64]?[else].[end if]"'  , I was expecting that 're nothing' would be something to 'say', but it didn't look like any form of 'say' that I know. So I tried to read 're nothing' as a value of some kind (because it's legal to say values), but couldn't make sense of it that way either."[/quote]

The other thing I notice is that it uses phrases that are not necessarily very user friendly, at least from a "thinking like a writer" standpoint. To wit, the extension uses:

[code]The library declension is third person feminine.
The library conjugation is past tense.[/code]

From a writer standpoint, the usual preference is for things like this:

[code]The story viewpoint is first person.
The story tense is past tense.[/code]

I know this is a change that could be easily made and a wrapper can be made to provide that phrasing. I just bring it up because a lot of the writers I've been working with feel that a major problem with Inform is that while it gives an "on the surface" look of having a "writer mental model" in mind, Inform most definitely is not a tool that helps you "think like a writer." To that end, any phrasings that help with that are always welcome.

Tense and viewpoint is probably one of the biggest things that writers are hoping will be easy with Inform. That being said, just about every writer I work with wants to utilize first person, past tense since they feel that's probably one of the best story modes for textual IF. (I tend to agree, but then I've long railed against second person as an effective storytelling mode, while recognizing it as a possibly effective game mode.)

The first class session with the extension won't be until this upcoming weekend. So I hope to have more substantive feedback following that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1613&start=0#p10421
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Custom Library Messages, version 0.
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-04 07:38:43

I'm noticing a problem with a basic test. Here's a test using the original Custom Library Messages:

[code]
Include Custom Library Messages by David Fisher.

When play begins:
	change the library message tense to past tense;
	change the library message person to first person.

Palace Gate is a room.
[/code]

Typing "inventory" gives you "I [b]was[/b] carrying nothing."

Here's my code with the new extension.

[code]
Include Custom Library Messages by Ron Newcomb.

The library declension is first person.
The library conjugation is past tense.

Palace Gate is a room.
[/code]

Typing "inventory" gives you "I [b]is[/b] carrying nothing."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1637&start=0#p10422
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Suicide on IFDB
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-11-04 08:56:44

Suicide available for download off IFDB. 

You play a teen girl who is convinced she needs to end her own life. You get to either help her succeed (or fail) at this, or perhaps find some kind of alternative to suicide. 29 different endings depending on your actions. One-room.

Any feedback is definately welcome, I only want to get better.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1289&start=0#p10423
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Quick Actions and Slow Actions
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-11-04 10:24:23

So here's what I'm trying to do:

You're a thief breaking into a building with a patrolling guard.

It takes 5 turns for you to pick the lock on the door.

If the guard can see you during his patrol during those 5 turns, that triggers one event.
However, if you successfully pick the lock and get in, you avoid that event.

If the guard doesn't come, I'd like the game to just advance the time by the 5 turns, and play continues normally.

But if the guard comes at turn 1,2,3, or 4, that should trigger an event. (Spotted!)

Basically I need a way to tell my "every turn" rules that X turns is about to happen with no player input. 

[quote]
> PICK LOCK
You start picking the lock.

[turn 1, no guard, turn 2, no guard, turn 3: guard]

However, a guard comes around the corner and interrupts you. He draws his gun and says "Freeze!"

>
[/quote]

I want to make sure that when the guard spots you on turn 3, the game doesn't assume you spend 2 more turns trying to pick the lock (or waiting).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1631&start=0#p10424
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: debugging/toggling truth states and numbers
User: Roger / DateTime: 2010-11-04 10:31:00

If you're interested in doing unit-testing, may I humbly suggest that you try out my Automated Testing extension, available from:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/Roger%20Carbol/Automated%20Testing/index.html">http://inform7.com/extensions/Roger%20C ... index.html</a>


Note that this extension (ironically) hasn't received a lot of user-testing out in the real world, so I do have a bit of an ulterior motive here.  I'd very much appreciate any feedback that you (or anyone else) might have on it.



Cheers,
Roger

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1289&start=0#p10425
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Quick Actions and Slow Actions
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-11-04 10:45:07

I don't think you actually need to increment the turn count in order to do that. You can write your 'pick lock' code in such a way as to calculate (or randomize) the arrival of the guard. It can all happen in a single turn.

If your guard is a patroller (moving one room per turn) then all you need to do is check what room the guard is now in, as part of the 'pick lock' code, and you'll know whether or not he will arrive while the lock is being picked.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1289&start=0#p10426
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Quick Actions and Slow Actions
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-04 11:08:33

[quote="tggdan3"]So here's what I'm trying to do:

You're a thief breaking into a building with a patrolling guard.

It takes 5 turns for you to pick the lock on the door.

If the guard can see you during his patrol during those 5 turns, that triggers one event.
However, if you successfully pick the lock and get in, you avoid that event.

If the guard doesn't come, I'd like the game to just advance the time by the 5 turns, and play continues normally.

But if the guard comes at turn 1,2,3, or 4, that should trigger an event. (Spotted!)

Basically I need a way to tell my "every turn" rules that X turns is about to happen with no player input. 
[/quote]

What you are describing is very similar to the way that WAIT 4 TURNS or WAIT UNTIL NOON commands that some of the Infocom games had. The game would automatically wait for you each turn, but stop waiting if something interesting happened. A couple of extensions implemented something like this for I6, I believe; you could check <a class="postlink" href="http://www.inform-fiction.org/extensions/time.html">http://www.inform-fiction.org/extensions/time.html</a> to see if there are any lessons to be learned there. Probably, though, there are enough differences in handling between I6's daemons and I7's every turn rules that the I6 extensions aren't likely to be useful.

Anyway, moving on to I7: If your every turn rules are structured such that they will make no decision unless the guard finds you, you could do it like this:

[code]
At the Warehouse Door is a room.

Lockpicking is an action applying to nothing. Understand "pick lock" as lockpicking.

Instead of lockpicking:
	let pick-turns be 5;
	while pick-turns > 0:
		abide by the every turn rules;
		increment the turn count;
		decrement pick-turns;
	say "You succeed in picking the lock!"
	

An every turn rule (this is the guard searching rule):
	if a random chance of 1 in 10 succeeds:
		say "The guard caught you!";
		rule succeeds.[/code]

You could also do this without "abide" by checking the particular result of the every turn rules.

If this is glulx game, you might want to consider using the timer to make the fact that there is a delay clear to the player. The Real-Time Delays extension could be helpful with that: you could print some new text at the end of each turn on a given interval, for example.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1504&start=10#p10427
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Flack's IFComp 2010 Game Reviews
User: huftis / DateTime: 2010-11-04 11:21:34

[quote="Flack"]Review: Aotearoa
[spoiler]While I can't definitely say this is the best game in the competition (I haven't played them all) […][/spoiler][/quote]
Spoiler for [b]all[/b] the games in this year’s IFComp:
[spoiler]I have. And it is. [emote]:D[/emote][/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1626&start=10#p10428
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: BRIEF or VERBOSE
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-04 11:29:43

The subject of split panes came up in Emily's blog recently, as someone noted that they're rough on screen readers.

I'm now thinking that any game that puts important information outside the main story window should (if possible) offer an "accessible" mode, which goes single-window.

That leads back to the question of whether there's too much repeated text in the story window. When I play, I'm always in "verbose"; I'll happily skip long room descriptions by eye. But a screen reader has to chew through it all. I'm way out of my depth at judging how much is too much, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1631&start=0#p10429
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: debugging/toggling truth states and numbers
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2010-11-04 11:56:22

Wow! That looks really powerful and simple, just tinkering for an hour. Being able to test with regular expressions is really handy. I was thinking of just creating a transcript and weeding out key words in the right place, but this is easier.

It's also really cool that I can put variables in a command, or in expected text.

My immediate impression of stuff to add--whether in the docs or in the program--would be a way to weed out certain responses. For instance, I have a debug command that goes to a specific location, then tries each possible basic direction, then returns to that location. Its purpose is to make sure there are no generic "You can't go that way." messages.

One way to do this would be a test with

Table of steps for verify no generic directions
order command response
1 "everydir" ".*You can't go that way.*"

With the stipulation that you don't WANT a test to pass. But this gets into thinking yes means no and no means yes and eventually fooling myself.

Is there any way to add some variable--flags, text, etc. in a fourth column of the table? It might be useful to have grep-style flags like -i (case insensitive,) -v (don't search for something) or such--those are the two big ones I use.

Or am I missing something relatively big-picture with regular expressions and/or your extension that could do this? That might be something to put as an advanced example. Obviously you don't want to reinvent the wheel in that case, since there are plenty of RegEx tutorials out there. But knowing/seeing what to do could help people get their feet wet. The examples you already have certainly worked for me.

I also have some (even more) fiddly questions better dealt with outside of the forum. But in the big picture, I'm definitely very interested, very quickly, and this has immediate applications.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1613&start=0#p10430
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Custom Library Messages, version 0.
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-11-04 12:14:01

Thanks Jeff.  Tonight I'll change the variable names and fix the inventory bug.  I imagine there will be a few typos and such like inventory's sprinkled throughout.  361 messages across 8 tenses across 8 viewpoints is a lot to check.  The [re nothing] phrase needs be changed to [=> nothing].  That was a last minute change I made so it coincided with David's, and I didn't go over the example.  (Indeed, I hope to write real examples before release, perhaps stealing the one from Default Messages or from David's CLM.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=60#p10431
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-11-04 12:19:04

Oh, well, yeah, that does work better outside of second person.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1613&start=0#p10432
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Custom Library Messages, version 0.
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-04 12:34:31

Sounds good.

The [=> nothing] worked just fine. One other problem in the example that I've found is that the parts that have [ies] have to be [-ies]. Once I took care of that, the example compiled and ran.

I'll keep playing around.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1631&start=0#p10433
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: debugging/toggling truth states and numbers
User: Roger / DateTime: 2010-11-04 13:18:25

Thanks for your comments -- I'm glad you're finding it useful.

[quote="aschultz"]My immediate impression of stuff to add--whether in the docs or in the program--would be a way to weed out certain responses.[/quote]
Hmmmm.  I can think of a couple of different ways to do that, but also some reasons not to.  I appreciate the suggestion, in any case, even if I don't implement it.

[quote="aschultz"]Is there any way to add some variable--flags, text, etc. in a fourth column of the table? It might be useful to have grep-style flags like -i (case insensitive,) -v (don't search for something) or such--those are the two big ones I use.[/quote]
I [i]think[/i] what I might do is make it clearer in the documentation where to find the section on regular expressions in the Writing with Inform manual.  If I start providing examples of, for example, setting case insensitivity, pretty soon I'll have that whole chapter replicated.

[quote="aschultz"]I also have some (even more) fiddly questions better dealt with outside of the forum. But in the big picture, I'm definitely very interested, very quickly, and this has immediate applications.[/quote]
I'll start another thread here for chatter about this extension, as it's valuable stuff that I don't want to lose.


Cheers,
Roger

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1638&start=0#p10434
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [Extension] Automated Testing
User: Roger / DateTime: 2010-11-04 13:20:50

This is the thread for talking about Automated Testing, an Inform 7 extension.

It can be downloaded from:  

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/Roger%20Carbol/Automated%20Testing/index.html">http://inform7.com/extensions/Roger%20C ... index.html</a>



Cheers,
Roger

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1631&start=0#p10436
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: debugging/toggling truth states and numbers
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2010-11-04 15:15:35

Good idea with the new thread. I'll go there now, since this one's probably served its purpose from my original question and well beyond.

But this is as good a place as any to mention I have learned something unexpected from a lot of other question-threads on this sub-board, even if I don't post much. Hooray for people helping people, and stuff!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1638&start=0#p10437
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Extension] Automated Testing
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2010-11-04 15:21:57

Excellent...a whole new thread.

First thing I noticed is that the module requires Text Capture by Eric Eve, but this is not mentioned [b]ETA: in <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/all-extensions-by-title/">http://inform7.com/extensions/all-extensions-by-title/</a>[/b]. So I got an error on first build--a small inconvenience, but as a user I've copped out for equally silly reasons.

Second thing I noticed is that Automated Testing kills transcription, at least while debugging Inform 7. My build is 6E72. This is down to Text Capture. Only building with that module ruins transcription. I don't know if there is any way around this but quick control-Fs didn't reveal anything in the documentation of AT or TC stating that transcription is zapped, or how to get around that.

Now Text Capture works OK in release mode on Windows Glulxe. So I'm not sure if this is a known problem or limitation in Text Capture, or a regression. But it's a potential problem for testers, at whom this script is directed. Building for release is a workaround, but it's slow. I should probably ask Eric Eve about this.

Third, if there is a quasi-transcript file where all the text gets dumped, could this be clarified? It would at any rate be useful to have a file stating "[bad output chunk] failed the Regex expression [response]" -- or at least an option to print more verbose information on the screen.

Thanks again--these points have in no way stopped me writing or thinking up test cases.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1637&start=0#p10439
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Suicide on IFDB
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-11-04 15:35:39

To save other people the search: [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=kmoymj14weszx5a1]Link[/url]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1637&start=0#p10440
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Suicide on IFDB
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-11-04 19:30:38

[quote="tggdan3"]Suicide available for download off IFDB. 

You play a teen girl who is convinced she needs to end her own life. You get to either help her succeed (or fail) at this, or perhaps find some kind of alternative to suicide. 29 different endings depending on your actions. One-room.

Any feedback is definately welcome, I only want to get better.[/quote]

[spoiler]I thought the diary was quite well done. It's an interesting solution to the problem of passing information between the player character and the player. It wasn't really a puzzle in the traditional sense, but it rewarded players for acting in character with some choice nuggets of exposition.

On the one hand, I found it entertaining enough that I played through a good number of the endings. On the other hand, the sheer range of permissible actions served to undercut the sense of dogged determination in the protagonist. I was able to flush virtually all of the suicide implements down the toilet, without any resistance or objection. I would have liked to see some response to player actions that were clearly at cross purposes to her own, either in the form of refusal or grudging acceptance that the suicide was a poor idea.

Really it felt too much like a game in that way, and although it works as a game, it becomes more of a puppet show than a character study. I liked it, but I thought you could have handled your main character with more respect.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1504&start=10#p10441
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Flack's IFComp 2010 Game Reviews
User: Silas Greenback / DateTime: 2010-11-04 19:41:52

[quote="Flack"]

[spoiler]This -- THIS! -- is the type of game I thought I would be playing all along. I didn't realize it before, but compared to Aotearoa, many of the other games just felt like "objects in rooms" instead of the interactive world presented here. It is evident that the author of this game spent a lot of time tweaking, smoothing, and perfecting this game. I didn't see any typos, or bugs, or obvious logic errors.[/spoiler][/quote]

With this year's comp, I played the entries alphabetically. With Aotearoa being only the second game I played, it set the bar very high. 

I've chosen Aotearoa and another game as tied for first and will decide by the deadline. The other game, Leadlight, wasn't well received by most reviewers, though for whatever reason, I liked it very much. (Even the combat system didn't turn me off.)

Just by going on the flawless execution and the use of a standard interpreter rather than making the player use something other than provided for the best gameplay, Aotearoa gets first ranking without any further thought.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1613&start=0#p10443
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Custom Library Messages, version 0.
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-11-04 23:14:17

[url=http://www.plover.net/~pscion/Custom%20Library%20Messages.i7x]Updated version uploaded.[/url]   Adapted and added the [i]Poster Shopping[/i] example from DM, fixed the existing "example", and changed the variable names to mesh with "story headline" and "story creation year" as you suggested.  Sure enough, the [is-are] text substitution was ignoring past tense. That bug would've cropped up in a lot of places. Fixed.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1639&start=0#p10444
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Profiling Sand dancer
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-04 23:25:32

I've profiled a complete play through of Sand dancer now. Here are the top functions (many are broken in to several parts). I was surprised at some of them. It looks like probably 20% of the overall processing time is being spent checking if properties exist. And a third is being spent calling and returning from I6 functions.

So function acceleration would certainly help. Would it be feasible to try to detect them through pattern matching? Edit: I think it will be, but it will also be easier to specifically ask for acceleration... that would require less changes to Gnusto.

[code]Profile (685222.798ms, 91122603 calls)

Function                                Calls   Percent	Own Time		Time			Avg		Min		Max			File
ge_func_return                          9514438 20.8%	142522.124ms	143149.129ms	0.015ms	0.003ms	745.02ms	gnusto-engine.js (line 3251)
ge_gosub                                9514452 12.31%	84355.079ms		84355.079ms		0.009ms	0.002ms	12.708ms	gnusto-engine.js (line 2880)
ge_run                                  7948    10.63%	72846.097ms		724062.401ms	91.1ms	0.006ms	2736.508ms	gnusto-engine.js (line 1787)
ge_property_search                      3248091 7.54%	51643.258ms		55530.739ms		0.017ms	0.003ms	514.547ms	gnusto-engine.js (line 3449)
JIT_2eab9_191161_ScanPropertyMetadata   1381635 1.86%	12748.754ms		17093.933ms		0.012ms	0.007ms	476.069ms	348 (line 2)
JIT_2ea42_191042_WhetherProvides        531525  1.79%	12278.206ms		18155.361ms		0.034ms	0.01ms	505.812ms 	347 (line 2)
JIT_10389_66441_OC__Cl                  875307  1.55%	10589.55ms		11953.571ms		0.014ms	0.004ms	3.193ms		119 (line 2)
JIT_2ea57_191063_WhetherProvides        528471  1.35%	9227.427ms		14317.473ms		0.027ms	0.007ms	498.516ms	390 (line 2)
JIT_45686_284294_Z__Region              556301  1.3%	8882.198ms		20800.328ms		0.037ms	0.007ms	514.732ms	339 (line 2)
JIT_45061_282721_OP__Pr                 730439  1.17%	8012.402ms		8012.402ms		0.011ms	0.005ms	2.4ms		102 (line 2)
JIT_2ea5e_191070_WhetherProvides        528471  1.14%	7833.934ms		26457.771ms		0.05ms	0.023ms	514.662ms	391 (line 2)
JIT_2ea68_191080_WhetherProvides        325655  1.11%	7609.177ms		10996.092ms		0.034ms	0.004ms	504.904ms	546 (line 2)
JIT_44fcf_282575_RA__Pr                 1092577 1.01%	6954.031ms		9757.686ms		0.009ms	0.001ms	452.069ms	117 (line 2)
JIT_45095_282773_OP__Pr                 730355  0.91%	6238.814ms		21669.073ms		0.03ms	0.004ms	505.48ms	103 (line 2)
JIT_2eabc_191164_ScanPropertyMetadata   998821  0.88%	6017.092ms		6153.162ms		0.006ms	0.004ms	2.054ms		388 (line 2)
ge_getUnsignedWord                      4943974 0.87%	5948.677ms		5948.677ms		0.001ms	0ms		2.853ms		gnusto-engine.js (line 2398)
JIT_103a9_66473_OC__Cl                  450228  0.86%	5869.736ms		15405.177ms		0.034ms	0.001ms	498.284ms	121 (line 2)
JIT_10411_66577_Unsigned__Compare       589025  0.82%	5600.99ms		5677.403ms		0.01ms	0.004ms	1.846ms		337 (line 2)
ge_setWord                              6152397 0.74%	5093.516ms		5093.516ms		0.001ms	0ms		2.38ms		gnusto-engine.js (line 2412)
JIT_45671_284273_Z__Region              556633  0.68%	4628.968ms		8106.663ms		0.015ms	0.008ms	408.568ms	336 (line 2)
JIT_16643_91715_DoScopeActionAndRecurse 137354  0.65%	4468.166ms		6188.66ms		0.045ms	0.01ms	511.071ms	266 (line 2)
JIT_2eaee_191214_GetEitherOrProperty    487087  0.58%	3985.274ms		14973.903ms		0.031ms	0.012ms	507.407ms	393 (line 2)
JIT_103cc_66508_OC__Cl                  410637  0.55%	3742.557ms		5594.066ms		0.014ms	0.007ms	4.134ms		122 (line 2)
JIT_456ce_284366_Meta__class            536615  0.54%	3673.674ms		6696.634ms		0.012ms	0.009ms	1.464ms		342 (line 2)
JIT_3c36b_246635_BlkSize                506846  0.53%	3631.159ms		3631.159ms		0.007ms	0.006ms	2.322ms		55 (line 2)
JIT_2ea13_190995_WhetherProvides        531525  0.51%	3471.883ms		3471.883ms		0.007ms	0ms		4.437ms		345 (line 2)
JIT_2eae4_191204_GetEitherOrProperty    487087  0.49%	3331.671ms		8126.895ms		0.017ms	0.01ms	483.144ms	385 (line 2)
JIT_2eebf_192191_ProcessRulebook        223030  0.47%	3224.614ms		3403ms			0.015ms	0.01ms	2.35ms		10 (line 2)
JIT_1664e_91726_DoScopeActionAndRecurse 137354  0.46%	3177.071ms		4434.655ms		0.032ms	0.001ms	500.553ms	267 (line 2)
JIT_44fe5_282597_RA__Pr                 1092577 0.46%	3122.859ms		3122.859ms		0.003ms	0.002ms	4.326ms		116 (line 2)
JIT_2ea07_190983_WhetherProvides        531525  0.45%	3081.479ms		3081.479ms		0.006ms	0.004ms	1.974ms		344 (line 2)
ge_get_prop                             1653649 0.44%	3011.21ms		34992.497ms		0.021ms	0.004ms	514.564ms	gnusto-engine.js (line 3382)
JIT_2fd44_195908_TableRowIsBlank        134220  0.44%	2981.526ms		4351.928ms		0.032ms	0.006ms	763.238ms	617 (line 2)
JIT_16681_91777_DoScopeActionAndRecurse 143135  0.42%	2898.631ms		4274.398ms		0.03ms	0.007ms	502.956ms	287 (line 2)
JIT_2ead9_191193_GetEitherOrProperty    487087  0.41%	2822.173ms		2822.173ms		0.006ms	0.004ms	1.42ms		384 (line 2)
JIT_456b9_284345_Meta__class            539728  0.39%	2666.193ms		5174.765ms		0.01ms	0.006ms	506.608ms	335 (line 2)
JIT_2ea34_191028_WhetherProvides        530190  0.39%	2639.113ms		2639.113ms		0.005ms	0.004ms	1.556ms		387 (line 2)
JIT_44fc8_282568_RA__Pr                 291008  0.37%	2514.855ms		8805.131ms		0.03ms	0.013ms	498.946ms	115 (line 2)
JIT_16636_91702_DoScopeActionAndRecurse 143135  0.35%	2417.408ms		4187.194ms		0.029ms	0.001ms	495.494ms	265 (line 2)
JIT_44ec9_282313_RA__Pr                 338258  0.34%	2307.015ms		3375.013ms		0.01ms	0.004ms	3.159ms		105 (line 2)
JIT_2ea01_190977_WhetherProvides        531525  0.34%	2298.548ms		4444.168ms		0.008ms	0.005ms	392.782ms	334 (line 2)
ge_get_family                           1602902 0.33%	2249.01ms		4410.341ms		0.003ms	0ms		2.857ms		gnusto-engine.js (line 3609)
ge_get_prop_addr                        1579488 0.31%	2142.021ms		25045.233ms		0.016ms	0.004ms	505.398ms	gnusto-engine.js (line 3304)
JIT_2ef81_192385_ProcessRulebook        54845   0.29%	2020.97ms		3180.072ms		0.058ms	0.014ms	509.347ms	17 (line 2)
ge_test_attr                            1562640 0.29%	1988.179ms		1988.179ms		0.001ms	0ms	1.525ms			gnusto-engine.js (line 3523)
JIT_30653_198227_IndirectlyContains     28401   0.28%	1913.405ms		2232.976ms		0.079ms	0.007ms	487.338ms	707 (line 2)
JIT_456bf_284351_Meta__class            539728  0.27%	1827.403ms		2342.559ms		0.004ms	0.003ms	1.231ms		340 (line 2)
JIT_44bdd_281565_RV__Pr                 149191  0.27%	1816.415ms		3244.949ms		0.022ms	0.008ms	491.008ms	126 (line 2)
JIT_2edaa_191914_ProcessRulebook        223030  0.25%	1711.804ms		1858.408ms		0.008ms	0.004ms	3.147ms		5 (line 2)[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1483&start=10#p10446
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: R (Pron: Arrr...) is not just for Windows :)
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2010-11-05 00:15:47

On IF archive I see someone compiled what appears to be ScottFree for Mac OS X last month:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXscott-adamsXinterpretersXscottfree.html">http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-arc ... tfree.html</a>

However, after downloading it I don't know what to do with it. It doesn't unzip as an app. If you manually add the .app suffix, it claims to be a Mac Classic Environment file. Is it an executable or something else? Does anyone happen to know how to get it working?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1640&start=0#p10449
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I7] asking someone about "[player"]
User: farvardin / DateTime: 2010-11-05 03:00:24

I'd like to ask a NPC about myself. I thought this would make sense, but it's not accepted by Inform 7:

[code]Instead of asking Snow-white about "[player]", say "blabla".[/code]

[quote] I was unable to understand what you meant by the grammar token 'player' in the sentence 'Instead of asking Snow-white about "[player]"'   
[/quote]


It would work if I change the player to be someone else, for example:

[code]Bob is a man. Bob is in Kitchen. 
Living-room is north from Kitchen.
Snow-White is a woman in living-room.

When play begins:
	now the player is bob.


Instead of asking Snow-white about "[bob]", say "blabla.".[/code]

Why is [player] not allowed in the first example? Maybe there is another noun for the player, but I couldn't find it in the manuel. It least, even if there is one, it would be logical to use the name "player" in this case.

The second example could be used, but the problem is it's putting a "former self" in the room. And I don't know either how to remove it. (I can't say "move the former self to another-room").

EDIT: I've just found the solution: I also tried with "self", but without luck, we must use "yourself" to manipulate the player this way.
Maybe it would make sense to create a bug report for this, because it's quite confusing?

It's possible to say "move yourself to living-room" or "move the player to living-room", but not to use [player] in a rule.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1642&start=0#p10451
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Every third turn?
User: frogulis / DateTime: 2010-11-05 03:17:08

I'm writing a short work of interactive fiction, and all is well so far, except that I need the message "Your shoulder hurts." to come up every three turns. Every turn is easy, but I can't seem to find a way to get every third turn to work.
Any help would be much appreciated [emote]:)[/emote] 
p.s. I'm using Inform 7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1642&start=0#p10452
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Every third turn?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-11-05 04:01:32

Try this:

[code]Every turn when the remainder after dividing the turn count by 3 is 0:
    say "Your shoulder hurts."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1643&start=0#p10453
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Supporter strangeness
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-11-05 08:00:02

Inspired by [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_frm/thread/a46a28afc0833b3c#]this thread[/url] on raif, I thought I'd have a go at it. I mean, it's a trivial challenge, right?

Then something odd happened.

[code]The stork is an animal. The aviary is a room. The perch is a supporter in the aviary. The stork is on the perch.

Rule for printing room description details of the perch:
	say " (occupied by a ruddy bird)";
	omit contents in listing.[/code]

This is all fine and dandy. However, if we make one tiny change:


[code]The stork is an animal. The aviary is a room. The perch is a supporter in the aviary. The stork is on the perch.

Rule for printing room description details of the perch:
	say " (occupied by a ruddy bird)" instead;
	omit contents in listing.[/code]


The output I get from the second example then becomes: "You can see a perch (inhabited by a ruddy bird) (on which is a stork) here."

What am I missing? I've looked through the Standard Rules, but am no wiser. Is this normal behaviour, or could I have made some error when upgrading to 6F95?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1637&start=0#p10454
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Suicide on IFDB
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-11-05 08:05:15

Thanks for the feedback.

Ah the differing opinions. The first version was more like you suggest, and the beta testers pushed heavily for extra actions to be added that were "irrelevant". 

It's a little tough as the writer on making that balance between replay and just crazyness.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1643&start=0#p10455
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Supporter strangeness
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-05 08:10:57

Using "instead" in that way is the same as saying "end this rule here" (at the I6 level, it reads as "return true"). So you're stopping the rule before you get to the "omit contents in listing". 

Basically, never use "say ... instead" unless your rule is a one-liner.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1643&start=0#p10456
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Supporter strangeness
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-11-05 08:21:57

[quote="ektemple"]Using "instead" in that way is the same as saying "end this rule here" (at the I6 level, it reads as "return true"). So you're stopping the rule before you get to the "omit contents in listing". 

Basically, never use "say ... instead" unless your rule is a one-liner.[/quote]

Right, that does make sense. I'm a bit puzzled at the need to omit contents in listing, though. From looking at the examples, I got the sense that this rule would supersede the regular listing of contents. In a conceptual sense I don't want to omit the list of contents, after all, but merely alter its wording. Is there a preferred way to do that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1644&start=0#p10457
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: an IF-playing typewriter
User: inurashii / DateTime: 2010-11-05 09:28:24

Forgive me if you guys have seen this already, but I didn't see a topic for it:

[url]http://upnotnorth.net/2010/10/29/a-new-way-to-interact-with-fiction/[/url]

I know, it's not exactly a technological marvel, but something about the tactile fascination of watching a typewriter WRITE the IF game you're playing is just about cool enough to justify the phenomenal waste of paper this device would generate.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1643&start=0#p10459
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Supporter strangeness
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-05 09:35:50

Well, the way you're using it, "omit contents" does make sense, at least to me--you're saying: I've already listed the contents, please don't do so automatically.

In any case, that is intended more for changing the way the contents of a supporter are listed. For changing the name of something when it is printed in a content listing, use the "printing the name of" activity:

[code]Rule for printing the name of the stork while listing contents of the perch:
	say "ruddy bird".[/code]

...Now, that code ought to work, but it doesn't do anything (a bug?). So you'll have to do something like this instead:

[code]Rule for printing the name of the stork while listing contents:
	if the holder of the stork is the perch:
		say "ruddy bird".[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1643&start=0#p10461
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Supporter strangeness
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-05 10:03:32

Oops, I forgot that you were also changing the way that the perch's contents are described, in addition to changing the description of the stork. The former is properly changed using the room description details, and here is a more robust way to do exactly what you were doing:

[code]Rule for printing room description details of the perch:
	if the perch supports something, say " (occupied by [list of things which are supported by the perch])";
	omit contents in listing.

Rule for printing the name of the stork while listing contents:
	if the holder of the stork is the perch:
		say "ruddy bird".[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1583&start=20#p10462
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Brent Spiner from Star Trek is funny
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-11-05 10:38:21

Retro, I primarily use Windows, and have never felt even an inkling of being "bashed" here because of it (except maybe way [i]way[/i] back when it was more about home-brewing games that couldn't be played on a larger number of systems). Even though your words say otherwise, I get the impression that you're always in defensive mode. Rather than productively growing your own niche while not shunning the rest of the posters, you seem hell bent on convincing yourself that you're a victim, that people hate the things you like, and that that conflicting opinions are meant as personal insults against you.

My advice is to just stop. Step back, realize that not everybody is going to get along (good advice for us all, I think), and at least make an effort to be less abrasive. Everybody has been doing a good job of letting your rants and wild tangents slide, but good grief. I don't think many people would disagree that you've had plenty of time and opportunity to adapt. Or at least pretend to have adapted.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1610&start=0#p10463
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The Big Bang Theory - Season 4 Episode 6 - IF included !
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-11-05 10:51:55

I should re-watch the first few episodes of the first season. I'm almost positive Sheldon didn't start out as quite so neurotic and socially clueless, and Penny was a lot nicer in general (almost to the point of not realizing these guys were geeks). I could be remembering wrong, but it seems like the characters didn't just evolve -- they abruptly changed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1646&start=0#p10464
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Blue Lacuna mentioned in G4 iPhone news app
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-11-05 10:55:12

I didn't see this previously mentioned, but as I was browsing video game news the other day (G4 iPhone app), there was an article about an independent games con (IndieCade? I forget). Anyway, the author of the article mentioned spending a lot of time playing Blue Lacuna (with a link to Aaron's website), which he enjoyed and wouldn't have ever been exposed to otherwise. I thought that was a cool mainstream mention.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1637&start=0#p10465
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Suicide on IFDB
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-11-05 11:52:13

Well, it admittedly works as a simulator where you murder a teenage girl, or manipulate her into quasi-comic failed attempts. In that it's not dissimilar to the low-budget, slasher horror movies of the 80s, which were both highly sexist and immensely popular for a time.

The fast pace of the game and the high replay value contributed to this effect. I only felt in character the first few times, after which it was very much a game about killing someone else and getting points for accuracy, humor, or novelty. This runs counter to what I perceived as your intent in the ABOUT text, where you relate various suicide statistics and share a hotline number.

I assume you sincerely believe that teen suicide is a serious issue and the numerous failed endings that I encountered first did evoke a sense of tragedy and hopelessness. It's not a game I wanted to win but I didn't want to lose the way I did. You definitely hit the mark there. Yet it felt like you shied away from offering more satisfying ways to negate the character's goal and end on a hopeful note. It could have been about helping her find some small reason to go on, and in fact one of the endings did offer a plausible and personal solution. (The one with the object I liked so well.) But that has a fair chance of getting lost in the shuffle.

I would contrast it with a work like [i]Galatea[/i] where the endings are more or less satisfying based on whether the player accepts her as a woman rather than an object. Emily has said that she specifically did not allow for outcomes where the player regards her as a woman but treats her as an object, for example by attempting sexual violence. That strikes me as the more humane and artistic choice.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1610&start=0#p10466
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The Big Bang Theory - Season 4 Episode 6 - IF included !
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-11-05 12:28:00

[quote="Merk"]I should re-watch the first few episodes of the first season. I'm almost positive Sheldon didn't start out as quite so neurotic and socially clueless, and Penny was a lot nicer in general (almost to the point of not realizing these guys were geeks). I could be remembering wrong, but it seems like the characters didn't just evolve -- they abruptly changed.[/quote]
[url]http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Flanderization[/url]

Funnily enough, the Big Bang Theory is mentioned for the very reasons you state...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1646&start=0#p10467
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Blue Lacuna mentioned in G4 iPhone news app
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-11-05 12:37:53

Blue Lacuna was a finalist at IndieCade alongside games like [i]Every Day the Same Dream[/i], [i]Fatale[/i] and [i]VVVVVV[/i], which is pretty "mainstream indie" in my books.  

What's really cool is that possibly half of the mentions it's getting [i]don't[/i] begin with something to the tune of "remember Zork?/thought text adventures were dead?/etc."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1647&start=0#p10468
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Having some trouble with regions
User: Zipp / DateTime: 2010-11-05 13:26:22

I'm trying to get regions to show up in my index-world map, but they never do.  I'm using OSX (10.6.4) on a MacBook Pro with the latest version of Inform 7.

I've written a short test to illustrate my problem.  The code is:

There is a room called The Bathroom.  East of The Bathroom is a room called The Hallway.

The Fourth Floor is a region.  The Bathroom, The Hallway are in The Fourth Floor.

The image this creates is:
[img]http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/hs465.ash2/73887_10150093355314993_667564992_7004571_67383_n.jpg[/img]

Notice how no regions are showing up.  Any help with this?  And no, adding in multiple regions doesn't help, nor does putting rooms in no regions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1647&start=0#p10469
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Having some trouble with regions
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-11-05 13:32:58

It's a known bug:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=371&nbn=1#bugnotes">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=3 ... 1#bugnotes</a>

I expect it to be fixed in the next release.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1647&start=0#p10470
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Having some trouble with regions
User: Zipp / DateTime: 2010-11-05 13:36:28

Ah, okay.  Thanks for the link to that, I'm new to the community and wasn't sure where to find the bug report.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1648&start=0#p10471
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Interview with Aaron Reed of Blue Lacuna
User: Zipp / DateTime: 2010-11-05 13:41:44

Hello, all!  I'm new to the IF community, though I hope to be around for a long time.

Had a great interview with Aaron Reed last week.  Convinced me to start getting into Interactive Fiction on a daily basis.  If you're interested in checking it out, go here.  Any hits to it are great because it helps show the site that people are interested in Interactive Fiction and may land more interviews in the future or convince more sites to start featuring IF material and updates.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.gameroni.com/posts/331.html">http://www.gameroni.com/posts/331.html</a>

But only click if you really are interested in the subject!  I'm not trying to garner popularity, or anything.

I'm working on my own IF game now, with the help of Aaron Reed's book.  While probably most of the people here are beyond that point, if any newcomers happen along this thread, I highly recommend it!  It's a great way to introduce anyone to all the features that Inform 7 has to offer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=50#p10472
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: wfryers / DateTime: 2010-11-05 14:26:32

Part 7 – Where did I wind up

I think I can now answer the original questions – what is my perfect IF language.

The first part of the answer deals with the mental model or metaphor underlying the language.  I believe the underlying mental model should be the story telling model.  I believe I showed that puzzle based, exploration based, DND and COYA based stories can all be accounted for within the story telling model. Further the story telling model allows us to create richer IF than the other basic models.

Story telling uses character, action, dialog, and conflict to create stories.  The model must explicitly support them.  I showed that character, action, and dialog can be accounted for by an N/PC.  I identified the specific conceptual structure of an N/PC.  Further, a PC which includes Avatar allows the story teller to represent both the outer story arc and the inner story arc.  The fundamental conflict is created by the story teller when the basic goal for the protagonist is set.  The antagonist opposes the protagonist throughout the story.  Specific conflicts arise as the PC makes choices.

The scene is the fundamental unit of story telling.  I laid out how scenes are linked together and can support both outward and inward branching.  This allows the story teller to use story structures or plots.   Scenes take place at a specific time and location.  In IF time can only run one way.  Thus we cannot directly support multiple parallel plot lines.  The PC can play any character.  The most likely choices are protagonist or antagonist.  Thus a single story can be enjoyed from multiple perspectives.  Something that traditional fiction cannot do.  

I looked at physical location and found that Room, a traditional element in IF, is a strong start for the location needed to expand the capabilities of IF.

The second part of the answer deals with the programming paradigm.  I identified four major paradigms in use today - Procedural, Object Oriented, Functional and multiple paradigm. In my opinion, the functional paradigm meets the needs of the story teller better than the other three.   Functional programming deals with what the computer does and not how or when the computer does it.

There is no doubt in my mind that I7 is a domain specific language.  Further, specifying location does not have to use the same language as specifying character or dialog.  This another reason why the functional paradigm makes more sense to me.  Anyone who has used a spreadsheet or HTML has firsthand knowledge of the functional paradigm.  It is not some weird computer-geek thing.  

I also point out that I believe in TMTOWTDI.  Thus, I have no objections to the language developers supporting multiple paradigms.  The only thing I ask is that they don't force the author to mix programing paradigms.  

The third part of the answer deals with the PC.  While I speak English most of the world doesn't.  English word order is not universal.  To me this means that the language developers have to separate the User Interface structure from the story telling structure. Carnegie Mellon's Software Engineering Institute has done extensive work in Software Product Lines.  They give real life examples of how to do this.  

The fourth part of the answer deals with the language developers.  Developing any language is far from a trivial task.  Since I believe I7 is clearly a domain specific language, I7 is not a self-extensible language.  In other word you can't implement I7 using the I7 language. I think a small base language with a framework/module library makes a lot of sense.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1637&start=0#p10473
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Suicide on IFDB
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-11-05 16:05:28

My only question is ... after I drink all the vodka, where does the bottle go?

Perhaps I have a darker sense of humor than most, but I have a hard time taking a game about suicide too seriously when I can bash myself in the head repeatedly with a hammer. 

I also thought the following would work:

[spoiler]I tried filling the tub, getting in, and slitting my wrists. assuming I would slide under the water. Guess not.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=50#p10474
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-05 16:17:57

I like this approach. I want to say that, and I also want to head off the "But you can do all that in I7!" replies (which are somewhat inevitable in this sort of discussion).

I think, however, that you're attacking both "world model" (or "story model") and programming language in your analysis, and they can be kept more separate.

As a tangent: you left out "declarative" in your list of language paradigms, and I point it out because (a) HTML (your example) is declarative, not functional (to the extent that HTML is a programming language at all); and (b) I see I7 as being more declarative than most other programming languages. (Whereas I7 is much *less* of a *functional* language than nearly any other high-level language I know.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1637&start=0#p10475
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Suicide on IFDB
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-11-05 16:38:09

Good notes.

Definately the evolution of the game threw me off as I was writing. As stated in the ABOUT, it was going to start as kind of a joke game, with the losing ending saying "***YOU HAVE SURVIVED***", and there was going to be only 1 way to die.

Then I decided that the "real" ending was the one you mentioned, with a few special "wins" [spoiler]concerning the ecstasy, or some of the other stress relievers[/spoiler]

I tried to make the deaths (and survivals) appear painful and crippling, and some of the deaths are intended to show the parents' emotions afterwards to make suicide seem like a non-viable option in reality.

Of course, the primary goal is to die, assuming that you as the PC don't try to override that, and I feel like I'd be remiss if I didn't put those options in there also. 

A tight line to walk- that's for sure.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1640&start=0#p10476
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] asking someone about "[player"]
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-11-05 16:39:47

The Player and Yourself are two quite different entities to Inform. "Yourself" is the name of a person created by the Standard Rules. "Player" is the name of a variable that keeps track of which person in the game is the current player character. By default the variable Player is set to the person Yourself. But, as you know, that default can be easily overridden.

This means that the following source text
[code]The Kitchen is a room.
Bob is a man. Bob is in Kitchen. 

When play begins:
   now the player is bob.
[/code]
actually creates two persons in the Kitchen. 

The Standard Rules create a person called "yourself" and places him in the room where the game begins (i.e. the Kitchen), and your source text creates another person called "Bob" and explicitly places him, too, in the Kitchen. 
The Yourself person by default begins existence as the player character, i.e. as the value of the variable Player. But then your source text tells Inform to reset the Player to Bob when play begins; so when play begins Inform changes the Player (i.e. the player character) to Bob, leaving Yourself a non-player character (who, of course, remains in the Kitchen). 

So you end up with a Ktichen with two persons: Yourself and Bob. Only it's Bob who is the Player; Yourself is now just anotther NPC in the game.    

However, it would be confusing if Inform kept calling an NPC "yourself". Therefore, when the person Yourself acts as an NPC, Inform refers to him in output as ”your former self”; and that's why you're told you can see your former self in the Kitchen.

If you don't want the person Yourself in the Kitchen at all, simply write: 
[code]The Kitchen is a room.
The player is a man called Bob. Bob is in the Kitchen. 
[/code]
and leave out the when play begins rule.

The Standard Rules will still create a person called "yourself", but he will be placed off-stage, not in any room, since the default value of Player is now overridden even before play begins (as it were).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=50#p10477
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: wfryers / DateTime: 2010-11-05 17:28:03

Zarf: Thank you for the kind words.  It is my hope to contribute to the development of the language and IF.  

I think you are right.  I got a little sloppy with functional.  I believe declarative is generally considered the umbrella term.  It certainly includes functional and domain specific.  I appreciate you catching my mistake.  I am sure both of us would rather not get pulled off topic by it.   [emote]:oops:[/emote] 

Also, I believe CMI calls Software Product Lines a development paradigm.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1649&start=0#p10478
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: What ever happened to Threaded Conversation by Emily Short
User: ChristianB / DateTime: 2010-11-05 17:30:07

In "Creative Writing With Inform 7", Aaron Reed covers the Threaded Conversation extension by Emily Short (pp. 284-288). Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but there seems to be no place to download it. Does anybody know where (or how) to get hold of it?

Thanks,

Christian

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1649&start=0#p10479
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What ever happened to Threaded Conversation by Emily Sho
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-11-05 17:47:15

He does also say somewhere (I think?) that as of the book's writing, it's not public. It's still being worked on, but existed in enough of a draft form for me to be able to share with him the draft version.

There's a (now getting outdated but still right in essentials) discussion here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/01/25/status-of-projects/">http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/01/25 ... -projects/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1649&start=0#p10480
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What ever happened to Threaded Conversation by Emily Sho
User: ChristianB / DateTime: 2010-11-05 18:06:37

[quote="emshort"]He does also say somewhere (I think?) that as of the book's writing, it's not public.[/quote]

He does indeed, right in the first paragraph. So much for the "Read Better, Read Faster" course I took years ago.

Thanks, Emily!

Christian

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1648&start=0#p10481
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview with Aaron Reed of Blue Lacuna
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-05 18:28:28

Thanks for posting the interview! Very cool.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1648&start=0#p10482
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview with Aaron Reed of Blue Lacuna
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-11-05 18:33:36

Ditto -- I especially enjoyed the background about Progue's character creation, which I don't think I'd seen or heard Aaron talk about before.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1643&start=0#p10484
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Supporter strangeness
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-05 21:14:19

[quote="ektemple"]For changing the name of something when it is printed in a content listing, use the "printing the name of" activity:

[code]Rule for printing the name of the stork while listing contents of the perch:
	say "ruddy bird".[/code]

...Now, that code ought to work, but it doesn't do anything (a bug?).[/quote]

Not a bug, it turns out, but the intended behavior. It seems that when the contents of a supporter or container are listed in a room description, the activity is acting on the *room*; otherwise, it will usually be acting on the box. So, if you use this code:

[code]Rule for printing the name of the stork while listing contents of the perch:
	say "ruddy bird".[/code]

...the player will only see "ruddy bird" after typing X BOX. Whereas, if you use this code:

[code]Rule for printing the name of the stork while listing contents of the Aviary:
	say "ruddy bird".[/code]

...the player will only see "ruddy bird" in the room description. To control all of the context in which listing occurs, you need to use:

[code]Rule for printing the name of the stork while listing contents:
         if the holder of the stork is the perch:
               say "ruddy bird".[/code]

I've put in a [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=388]request on Mantis[/url] for the documentation to tackle this explicitly, as it's pretty counterintuitive.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1483&start=10#p10485
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: R (Pron: Arrr...) is not just for Windows :)
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2010-11-05 21:18:40

OK, that Mac OS X version of Scott Free seems to be a dead end. So here's how I played R on Mac OS X.

I already had the Amiga emulator UAE, so I downloaded the Amiga version of Scott Free. Unfortunately it requires certain library files to function which only come on a full installation of Amiga Workbench. So I got the Workbench disks, configured a virtual shared Amiga/Mac hard drive in UAE, installed Workbench, copied the Scott Free files and R.dat onto the drive and finally was able to run Scott Free and play R on an Amiga on a Mac.

This took hours to work out and configure (and to find the necessary Amiga images etc.), but of course I got the perverse satisfaction that comes from completing such tasks, and from running something like an emulator within an emulator. And I got to enjoy R!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1483&start=20#p10486
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: R (Pron: Arrr...) is not just for Windows :)
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-05 22:16:34

[quote="severedhand"]OK, that Mac OS X version of Scott Free seems to be a dead end. So here's how I played R on Mac OS X.

I already had the Amiga emulator UAE, so I downloaded the Amiga version of Scott Free. Unfortunately it requires certain library files to function which only come on a full installation of Amiga Workbench. So I got the Workbench disks, configured a virtual shared Amiga/Mac hard drive in UAE, installed Workbench, copied the Scott Free files and R.dat onto the drive and finally was able to run Scott Free and play R on an Amiga on a Mac.

This took hours to work out and configure (and to find the necessary Amiga images etc.), but of course I got the perverse satisfaction that comes from completing such tasks, and from running something like an emulator within an emulator. And I got to enjoy R![/quote]
Wow. That's dedication!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1648&start=0#p10487
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview with Aaron Reed of Blue Lacuna
User: Zipp / DateTime: 2010-11-05 22:31:25

Thanks for the thanks!  Aaron Reed was a great person to talk to.  I did my homework and read his other interviews and then tried to pick questions that hadn't been covered before.  He took it the extra mile, giving really in depth answers.  Honestly, I could've talked to him for another hour.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1649&start=0#p10488
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What ever happened to Threaded Conversation by Emily Sho
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-11-05 22:39:46

Apologies to Emily for putting her in the somewhat awkward position of having the book come out before the extension!

If it's any consolation to those waiting, it's going to be awesome when it's released.

(And I expect, from Emily's perspective, it's going to be released when it's awesome.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1642&start=0#p10489
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Every third turn?
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-11-05 22:46:12

Another way:
[code]
At the time when shoulder hurts:
	say "Your shoulder hurts.";
	shoulder hurts in two turns from now.
[/code]

Then repeat the last line within a rule or phrase to get the message to start appearing.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1643&start=0#p10490
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Supporter strangeness
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-11-06 06:49:18

Neat! That explains things for me, and (when the documentation change is done) will probably do the same for others. Thanks for making the time and effort to track down the issue.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1648&start=0#p10491
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview with Aaron Reed of Blue Lacuna
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2010-11-06 08:03:15

Those were truly intelligent questions, and, mainly, the whole of the interview "sounded" like a conversation, which is difficult stuff to achieve - and rare.

And I'm with Emily: reading about Rogue was very interesting. There's always something thrilling in knowing about someone's creative process.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1650&start=0#p10492
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: A Cover Art Comp?
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2010-11-06 08:29:01

[i]Possible main rules:

1 - It would have to be the official cover art of the story, as decided by the author, regardless of the cover artist.
2 - The story would have to be released as finished, either to a competition or just a solitary release. This would mean no works in progress, no "trailers", etc.

... - And then other rules like minimum/maximum size, date, creative commons stuff, etc.[/i]

So what do you think? Is it doable/interesting/relevant? I thought of that while browsing Xyzzy awards. There is no "Best Cover Art" award, of course, but being a very graphical person, I thought it would be an interesting idea. I love a good movie poster, a good CD/vinyl cover, a good book cover - [i]and a good IF cover[/i]. Unfortunately, although there are some very good IF covers, I think the bulk is on the low side of aesthetics quality, and such a competition could bump the quality up a bit.

Or maybe not and I'm just wasting internet space.
[i]
Note: I've searched for past/present Cover Art Competitions and found [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2008/02/25/cover-art-drive/]Emily Short's Cover Art Drive (2008)[/url], which at least shows that good cover art is a concern in the community.[/i]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1639&start=0#p10493
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Profiling Sand dancer
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-06 11:23:27

What this chart says to me is that I7 should be relying more on compile-time checking of whether properties exist, rather than run-time.

At this point the language should be type-safe enough to allow that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1650&start=0#p10494
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A Cover Art Comp?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-11-06 11:33:17

This is a fantastic idea and if you were to organize it, I am sure a lot of authors would be very happy.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1650&start=0#p10495
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A Cover Art Comp?
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2010-11-06 12:16:40

I'll give it a try, then. I'll start by proposing a few rules and post them here as soon as I can.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1650&start=0#p10496
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A Cover Art Comp?
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-11-06 12:35:53

I can't be the only one who wishes there were an XYZZY for "Best Feelie."  Though, arguably, Blue Lacuna probably didn't [i]need[/i] to win another XYZZY. [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1591&start=10#p10497
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I'm updating the I7 Programmer's Manual. Any requests?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-11-06 18:03:51

[quote="ektemple"][quote="Ron Newcomb"]I'm seriously considering adding a section on I6 hacking.  And what section headings are good for.  Since there's less of a need for I6 hacking, it's now a small enough task to be manageable.  I'll still point to the DM4 though.[/quote]
This is a good idea. The manual (in the extensions chapter) actually does a pretty good job of covering the ways that you can write I6 inclusions into your code. Things that it would be nice to see better coverage of: what can be done with I7 code inclusions [i]within I6 code blocks[/i], some basic discussion of how most structures (rules, directions, etc.) map to the I6 level. The latter seems like it's especially appropriate to the Programmer's Manual.[/quote]

Minor update: still haven't touched performance -- I'll hit it last -- but the first paragraph in the new section on I6 gives a brief overview of how constructs map down.  One of the examples is an Understand token, which WI only mentions in passing. [quote]
All of an Inform 7 project compiles to Inform 6 source code before compiling again to assembly.  This means all of Inform 7's constructs are implemented in Inform 6 somehow.  For example, a rule is a boolean function that takes no passed-in parameters -- action variables like "the noun" and "the second noun" are global, while local variables are on the stack -- so a rulebook is an array of function pointers.  Larger structures such as actions and activities are composed of several rulebooks. Object instantiations are connected together by linked-list pointers, so a set-description may loop through them.  Each set- description compiles to a unique function containing a loop header, and like generator functions in functional programming, they return the first applicable value that passes muster.  (The calling code, which has the loop body, is responsible for informing the set-description where it left off so it can find the next applicable value.)  Meanwhile, scenes, which can have properties just like objects, are implemented as several different arrays, one per property.  So a scene name is just a named value, an index into those arrays.  And because a single table column's entries all have the same type, a table column is an array plus a few header bytes, while a table is an array pointing to those columns.  And so on and so forth.  
[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=0#p10498
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creator
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2010-11-06 18:19:57

[url]http://therealeasterbunny.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/visionary.htm[/url]

Hi All, 

The above is what I used to create R (Pron: Arrr...). It only runs on MS Windows so apologies to all LINUX etc users. Coded in VB6. Source code also included if you wish to have a rummage. - Should open in Notepad  if you dont have VB6.

Free to use if you also wish to create old school two word parser adventures with relative ease [emote]:)[/emote]

Its v0.00 alpha at the moment and is pretty stable apart from introducing a LOOK / EXAMINE / X bug for my IFCOMP entry which has now been fixed. 

Enjoy.

therealeasterbunny

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1648&start=0#p10499
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview with Aaron Reed of Blue Lacuna
User: Zipp / DateTime: 2010-11-06 19:00:57

If you guys really liked the interview, may I suggest linking to it on your blogs?  I think it's important for the IF community to promote itself in whatever way it can!  It leads to awesome things happening like what's going on with Andrew Plotkin right now (in case you don't know, you can read about it below).

Of course, my intention isn't to ask for promotion for myself. If you don't feel like promoting the interview will do anything except increase the hit count for me, then please don't post it!  I certainly don't want to misrepresent myself as a shameless marketer.  I do think I'm in a unique position to start promoting IF news and information, though, so if ever you hear anything that you think is newsworthy, let me know and I'll write up an article for the community!

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.gameroni.com/posts/347.html">http://www.gameroni.com/posts/347.html</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1512&start=0#p10500
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 parser errors: what parts *did* the parser understand
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-06 21:13:35

I have now munged through it.

This works as far as I can tell. Test with "jump asdf" or "pick me up asdf ghjk".

[code]
Rule for printing a parser error when the latest parser error is the only understood as far as error:
	follow the alternate only-understood error rule.

The alternate only-understood error rule translates into I6 as "Alt_Only_Understood_Rule".

Include (-
[ Alt_Only_Understood_Rule  m ix addr len;
	print "I understood the command ~";
	
	for (ix=1: ix < wn-1; ix++) {
		if (ix ~= 1) print " ";
		addr = WordAddress(ix);
		len = WordLength(ix);
		while (len) {
			print (char) addr->0;
			addr++; len--;
		}
	}
	print "~ (that is, ";

	for (m=0 : m<32 : m++) pattern-->m = pattern2-->m;
	pcount = pcount2;
	PrintCommand(0);
	
	print "); but not the word";
	if (wn-1 ~= num_words) print "s";
	print " ~";
	
	for (ix=wn-1 : ix <= num_words; ix++) {
		if (ix ~= wn-1) print " ";
		addr = WordAddress(ix);
		len = WordLength(ix);
		while (len) {
			print (char) addr->0;
			addr++; len--;
		}
	}
	print "~ at the end.^";
];
-).

[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1650&start=0#p10501
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A Cover Art Comp?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-06 22:44:08

I think a comp for best related materials, including covers, feelies, physical stuff etc, would be good. Limiting it to cover art wouldn't be that exciting.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1644&start=0#p10502
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: an IF-playing typewriter
User: Zipp / DateTime: 2010-11-07 01:22:21

I hadn't seen this. Thanks for sharing!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1648&start=0#p10503
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview with Aaron Reed of Blue Lacuna
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-07 01:54:05

Jonathan Stark, I presume?

Good interview. I linked it on Twitter a couple days back.

Maybe put some links in your profile on here, as well? I went there to check out more stuff from you and found no further guide to what you've been posting. Obviously on the Gameroni blog, yes, but hey the profiles are here on this site why not use them to point to your stuff as well?

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1640&start=0#p10504
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] asking someone about "[player"]
User: farvardin / DateTime: 2010-11-07 03:14:37

thank you for the precision.

But it doesn't explain why it's not possible to use: asking someone about "[player"]
So is it a bug or not? In this case it would be easier to remember "player" than "yourself". (and the Inform guide is definitely missing an index, I searched in the guide for this "yourself" name, until I found the solution by using the "actions" command).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1640&start=0#p10505
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] asking someone about "[player"]
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-07 07:03:33

In the absence of an official index, [url=http://eblong.com/zarf/i7index/#_letter_Y]zarf's unofficial index[/url] can be nice... though I'm not entirely sure that the documentation for "yourself" would've answered your questions. And of course, if you didn't know that "yourself" was what you were looking for, that wouldn't have helped at all.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1652&start=0#p10506
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Click click typewritter sound and other things for Windows
User: Wolk / DateTime: 2010-11-07 08:03:34

Last night I have finished the first IF in my life - it was "The Journey of the King" with great Lord Dunsany story (although with disappointing ending - in original story, not in the game)*. So now I would like to try other IF's and with this aim I am preparing my software. I would like to recommend two additional programs for Windows besides Gargoyle:

- Home Typist (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.colorpilot.com/home-typist.html">http://www.colorpilot.com/home-typist.html</a>), which will add an old typerwitter sound to keyboard keys. You can manually replace those sounds with some better, like those from WriteMonkey or Q10 editors. There is also more simple ClicKey (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.grc.com/freeware/clickey.htm">http://www.grc.com/freeware/clickey.htm</a>) software, but in comparison with Home Typist it has one sound for all keys, when HT can have different sounds eg. for letters, for space, enter, etc.

- Glass2k (<a class="postlink" href="http://chime.tv/products/glass2k.shtml">http://chime.tv/products/glass2k.shtml</a>), which will add a transparency to the Gargoyle window, so you can have a nice effect seeing the background wallpaper.

One more thing that I do is to hide the "start" and the desktop icons. So for example here is the screenshot of my desktop prepared for Anchorhead:

[img]http://i55.tinypic.com/30a6hpw.jpg[/img]

Do you have any other software way for helping increasing immersion?

(* My first IF was Hobbit on C64, never ended it. We have written in those times some pseudo-IF's in basic, and it was much fun. So the other way of immersion that works on me is playing the IF's in C64 emulator. I recommend the VICE emulator. Back to the Peter Nepstad game of Lord Dunsany story - I cannot recommend it enough, and I hope that the rest of Napstad games will be equally good)

(** Excuse the broken english)

--------

One more thing - I would love a full-screen mode in Gargoyle and an option to add a background picture to the window!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1652&start=0#p10508
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Click click typewritter sound and other things for Windo
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2010-11-07 09:00:29

I actually read almost all stories in my tiny smally netbook thingy, with it's 11" screen. Almost a book, I tell you.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1650&start=0#p10510
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A Cover Art Comp?
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2010-11-07 09:19:20

[quote]I think a comp for best related materials[/quote]

Yes, something in the line of Xyzzy awards, but for stuff other than the story itself. The box, so to speak. How about:

[b]IF Box Awards[/b]
[i]Because the cover matters.[/i]

Possible categories:

[b]Best Original Cover Art[/b]
I wrote "original" because the pictures used to make the cover should be created for that cover or heavily manipulated. In practical terms: you could use the Mona Lisa as raw material for something, but you can't limit the cover to the plain Mona Lisa.

[b]Best Digital Extra[/b]
PDF, video, pictures, etc.

[b]Best Physical Extra[/b]
Something holdable that the author releases with the story, like a set of prints, or some object.

[b]Best Tagline[/b]
The [i]"In space no one can hear you scream"[/i] sort of stuff.

[b]Best Webpresence[/b]
Website, Facebook, whatever.

[b]Best Box[/b]
For the best overall presentation of the story. It may not win any of the above, of course, the same way the best game might not have the best NPC, the best setting, etc.

What could be added/subtracted/changed?

I think this is getting interesting and we could go for a "2010 Box Awards". I can put myself up to organize it, but I'll need some help.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1640&start=0#p10511
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] asking someone about "[player"]
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-07 09:26:02

I can add to the index if you point at appropriate chapters.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1650&start=0#p10512
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A Cover Art Comp?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-07 09:48:02

Nice. Emily's effort was already a sort of "cover-art competition", in that people were creating cover art specificically for the event. It makes sense for this to be a "best of year".

(Of course, I released four cover images this year, so I would say that...)

I think you don't need to specify "Original" for the cover art category (or any other). The cover art is what it is, and I can judge it either way. If someone enters the Mona Lisa with a game title splashed on it, I'd give it a lowish score for "nice-looking, but too familiar, and it doesn't indicate much effort." But maybe there's a game for which the Mona Lisa is a *perfect* cover image. In which case, it *should* score high. (Books use Renaissance paintings for cover art all the time.)

Next question, and I might as well be the one to bring it up: do teasers for unreleased games count? (It isn't just me; Blue Lacuna had Blueish, although the game is out now. And Emily posted a teaser image a few months ago.)

What about IF-related work? Get Lamp has lots of art, digital, and physical extras.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1650&start=0#p10514
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A Cover Art Comp?
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2010-11-07 10:46:05

[quote]Books use Renaissance paintings for cover art all the time.[/quote]

I'll have to admit one of my favorite book covers is a detail of a Bosh painting, so I'll have to agree with you, although it is still a context chosen detail of the painting, not the whole rectangle, and the titling is elegantly glued to the angels and demons.

Anyway, I think you're right and the cover should be judged in context.

[quote]do teasers for unreleased games count?[/quote]

I like the idea. These "objects" are different from the extras that come with the released game. We could go for a Best Propaganda award, pointed at anything that advertizes the story pre or post release, like a video trailer, a game-trailer, one picture, one set of pictures, etc. And I just love the word "propaganda"  [emote]8-)[/emote]

[quote]What about IF-related work? Get Lamp has lots of art, digital, and physical extras.[/quote]

Well, I have my doubts about this one, for two reasons: 1st, the most obvious, it is not a work of IF, so I don't know how "fair" it would get; 2nd, it is likely that this isn't going to be a very common scenario (to have IF themed movies and such, I mean), so I don't know if we should even bother to foresee it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1654&start=0#p10515
Forum: Feedback / Subject: www.intfiction.org main page
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2010-11-07 10:51:25

If we type the address "www.intfiction.org" (without "/forum"), we get a small page with "An Interactive Fiction Website... eventually. For now, you can Visit the Forum".

I know there used to be (years ago) a project to make a complete site with that address, not just a forum, but it really looks like it was abandoned, wasn't it? So, now, I guess a redirect to the forum would be clearer. What do you think?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=60#p10516
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-11-07 11:03:16

[quote]Argh. The first example, to me, is a narrative failure.

>EXAMINE SIGN
It's a golden plaque which says "Warning: Bears"[/quote]

I agree.  The vast majority of the time, you don't care at all what the sign looks like, so I virtually always just print what it says.  Yes, there are occasional times when the appearance is important (or just potentially interesting):

>EXAMINE NOTE
"Captured by pirates!  Send help!"
It's in your brother's handwriting.

But that's rare enough that one's execution of the EXAMINE command shouldn't be built around it.  What's more, unless your game contains an Exploding Runes analogue, then once you find out that the note is in your brother's handwriting, you're always immediately going to want to read it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1271&start=0#p10517
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: New German IF Magazine
User: ifwizz / DateTime: 2010-11-07 11:14:03

The November issue of our German IF journal The Parser has been released.

[img]http://ifwizz.de/pub/inhalt/35/the-parser-no-2.png[/img]

Topics:

* Cover story about the IF Comp
* Jason Scott's GET LAMP
* Aaron Reed's Creating Interactive Fiction with I7
* Reviews and Interview

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifwizz.de/2">http://ifwizz.de/2</a>

Have a nice time!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1643&start=0#p10518
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Supporter strangeness
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-11-07 11:19:36

[quote]Rule for printing room description details of the perch:
   if the perch supports something, say " (occupied by [list of things which are supported by the perch])";
   omit contents in listing.[/quote]

...

Did I miss something, or does this code replace the listing rules with the exact same listing rules?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1640&start=0#p10519
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] asking someone about "[player"]
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-07 11:31:49

Oh, I can't think of any offhand -- I just meant that AFAICT (and I could be wrong) there isn't that much about the "yourself" object in the documentation itself.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1640&start=0#p10520
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] asking someone about "[player"]
User: farvardin / DateTime: 2010-11-07 11:35:08

this chapter, into which I read about changing the player's perspective, should definitely talk about the "yourself" thing: <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc130.html">http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc130.html</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1643&start=0#p10521
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Supporter strangeness
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-07 11:40:16

[quote="katz"][quote]Rule for printing room description details of the perch:
   if the perch supports something, say " (occupied by [list of things which are supported by the perch])";
   omit contents in listing.[/quote]

...

Did I miss something, or does this code replace the listing rules with the exact same listing rules?[/quote]

You're missing that the wording has been changed from the default to "occupied by..."

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1652&start=0#p10522
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Click click typewritter sound and other things for Windo
User: Wolk / DateTime: 2010-11-07 11:45:16

Well, to make an offtop of this topic - after all those preparations for Anchorchead, my contact with it was a fail.

[spoiler]Ok, so I've started as a woman looking for the key for new house. The building in which the key should be was closed, the rain was falling, so naturally I went to seek my husband to tell him that I cannot get the key.

But no. As I have consulted the tutorial, this woman, with an umbrella in her hand, should move some filthy trash can, climb on it, open the window to the closed building, break in going through the window, and search through the rooms in quest for the key... It's the first day in this this town and she should break in into someone's house, only because the host in not there now... It's really stupid, so it's the end with anchorhead for me.[/spoiler]

Maybe The King of Shreds and Patches will be better. Or maybe its better to try some infocom games.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1640&start=0#p10523
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] asking someone about "[player"]
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-07 11:56:37

[quote="farvardin"]
But it doesn't explain why it's not possible to use: asking someone about "[player"]
So is it a bug or not? In this case it would be easier to remember "player" than "yourself". (and the Inform guide is definitely missing an index, I searched in the guide for this "yourself" name, until I found the solution by using the "actions" command).[/quote]

The reason that Inform won't accept "[player]" is that it is a global variable, and Inform won't accept global variables on the left side of Understand declarations.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1643&start=0#p10524
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Supporter strangeness
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-07 12:04:27

Just to get myself clearer on how this works:

There are two separate activities involved in printing the name and contents of the supporter/container, right? The first one is "printing room description details of" (or "printing the name of"). If the object is a container or supporter, then by default we carry out the activity "listing contents of" -- even if the activity "printing room description details of" has been stopped. But if the rule for "printing room description details of" invokes "omit contents in listing," then the "listing contents of" activity isn't carried out.

...I don't think that's right, though. So my question is, what activity is stopped by "omit contents in listing"? Does it have a name? If I want to change its behavior, is the best way always to do whatever I want to do in the rules for printing room description details/printing the name and then to omit contents in listing?

Thanks,

Matt

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1648&start=0#p10527
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview with Aaron Reed of Blue Lacuna
User: Zipp / DateTime: 2010-11-07 12:39:15

I didn't want to come off like I was just joining here to advertise my work.  As I've said here, I'm really interested in becoming a part of the community and then promoting it through my various channels.

Thinking about it, I guess there's no harm in putting stuff in my profile.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1652&start=0#p10528
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Click click typewritter sound and other things for Windo
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-07 14:59:09

Spoiler warning on above post, for Anchorhead.

P.S. Regarding immersion software, I have never gone looking specifically with that purpose in mine, but I like to fullscreen Zoom with music playing the background. Unless I'm IMing while playing, as I often am. I actually find that more fun -- it turns out socialising around an interactive work is often more fun than immersing yourself in it. It adds discipline to your playing and it gives you valuable insights into the roads not taken. Especially if you coordinate it such that you take different paths or work on different puzzles.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1652&start=0#p10529
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Click click typewritter sound and other things for Windo
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-11-07 15:04:00

It is curious that that should have been your experience with Anchorhead, and in fact, if you really think that is outrageous, you might be limited to a small amount of IF. In the context, all those actions also make sense - and they open the way to the rest of the game, one of the best IF games ever. A claim I don't make idly, you see. I have yet to find someone who has nothing but high praise for the game, even if - as in my case - there are a couple of sticking points. Character development, plot, writing, programming, pacing, they're all excellent. 

Seriously, my advice to you is not to be so... well, judgemental. There's plenty of IF puzzles which are even more ridiculous. Whole games, like Hollywood Hijinx and Not Just an Ordinary Ballerina, would by your definition be "stupid".

[spoiler]Think of it like this (a mindset which, in IF, will often serve you well): There's an immediate problem here, how do I solve it? You thought about going to see Mike, which is indeed a good idea (I never tried that, actually. Maybe he does have some helpful information?). But if it doesn't work, you should start thinking about follow-ups - it's imperative that you get the key, and the key is in that office, and it's pouring, and at this time of night... and you don't even know where Mike is... under the circumstances, it doesn't seem too odd to do something rather extreme, does it?[/spoiler]

Anyway, these are just my 2 cents.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1643&start=10#p10530
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Supporter strangeness
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-07 15:38:29

[quote="matt w"]There are two separate activities involved in printing the name and contents of the supporter/container, right? The first one is "printing room description details of" (or "printing the name of"). If the object is a container or supporter, then by default we carry out the activity "listing contents of" -- even if the activity "printing room description details of" has been stopped. But if the rule for "printing room description details of" invokes "omit contents in listing," then the "listing contents of" activity isn't carried out.[/quote]

Not quite, and this is what I meant when I said in an earlier post that the way these activities work is counterintuitive. If you EXAMINE the supporter/container, then the "listing the contents" activity controls the listing of contents of the examined object. In the room description, though, it's the "printing room description details" that controls listing of the supporter's content (the listing the contents activity is going on at the same time and is the "parent" of the printing room description details activity, but it is running on the [i]room[/i], not on the supporter).

There is actually a good reason for this: if the library called the listing the contents activity for each supporter/container in a room description, you could exceed the number of allowed rulebooks pretty quickly in a situation where you have nested containers, e.g. an open folder in an inbox in a desk in a room. Each of those would need to run an instance of the listing the contents activity [i]within its parent's instance[/i] of the listing the contents of activity. You can see the potential for problems with this kind of nesting...

(The same is true when you examine a supporter/container--it's only the object examined for which the listing the contents of activity is run. The listing of the contents of any objects in/on the object examined are controlled by the room description details activity.)

[quote="matt w"]So my question is, what activity is stopped by "omit contents in listing"? Does it have a name? If I want to change its behavior, is the best way always to do whatever I want to do in the rules for printing room description details/printing the name and then to omit contents in listing?[/quote]

It's not actually an activity that's stopped by "omit contents in listing." It's what we might call the I6 list-writer, which doesn't have an I7 equivalent. Basically, I believe that all "omit contents in listing" does is, effectively, change the internal list style to "none" for the next item to be called upon in the list-writer; as long as you place "omit..." in the right activity, it should suppress the list-writer's output for the intended item. To give a bit of a sense of how not I7-ey the list-writer is, here's the Standard Rules definition of the "omit" phrase:

[code]To omit contents in listing (documented at ph_omit):
	(- c_style = c_style &~ (RECURSE_BIT+FULLINV_BIT+PARTINV_BIT); -).[/code]

You can look at the DM4 to see some of the details of how c_style and the list-writer's bitwise operations work. I didn't have the patience to study it  myself [emote];)[/emote]

Anyway, yes, the way to intervene in library listing behavior is usually to do what you want in the appropriate activity, and use "omit contents in listing" to cancel the list-writer's work for the object.

More generally, here's a way to explore these questions to find out which activity is responsible for changing what you want to change. This example illustrates all of the points I made above about which activity is responsible for which listings: 

[code]The Aviary is a room. The perch is a supporter in the Aviary. The stork is an animal on the perch.

A box is an open container on the perch. In the box is a baby.

Before listing contents of an object (called X):
	say "-->[italic type](listing contents of [_name_ X])[roman type] ";
	continue the activity.

After listing contents of an object:
	say "<--";
	continue the activity. 
	
Before printing room description details of an object (called X):
	say "->[italic type](details of [_name_ X])[roman type] ";
	continue the activity.
	
After printing room description details of an object:
	say "<-";
	continue the activity.
	
Before printing the name of an object (called X):
	say ">[italic type](name of [_name_ X])[roman type] ";
	continue the activity.
	
After printing the name of an object:
	say "<";
	continue the activity.
	
To say _name_ (O - an object): [prints the name of the object w/o using the printing the name of activity, which would create an infinite recursion]
	(- print (string) {O}.short_name; -)[/code]

The output is an eyeful, and you can make it a little easier to read by getting rid of the two paragraphs dealing with the printing the name of activity. Note that we need to use "an object" in all of these so that we embrace both rooms and things.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1652&start=0#p10532
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Click click typewritter sound and other things for Windo
User: Wolk / DateTime: 2010-11-07 16:45:50

[spoiler][quote="Peter Pears"]Think of it like this (a mindset which, in IF, will often serve you well): There's an immediate problem here, how do I solve it? You thought about going to see Mike, which is indeed a good idea (I never tried that, actually. Maybe he does have some helpful information?). But if it doesn't work, you should start thinking about follow-ups - it's imperative that you get the key, and the key is in that office, and it's pouring, and at this time of night... and you don't even know where Mike is... under the circumstances, it doesn't seem too odd to do something rather extreme, does it?
[/quote]
You know where the Mike is at the start of the game, he said that he will go to the university and then go back to you. If only the "brilliant" break-in was his idea, when you go to him and tell him about the key. But no - he is not interested, he just asks "do you have the key?" and goes back to reading... It looks like he can sleep on the library floor... Or if only it was a desperate situation of a long struggle...  The situation with moving the filthy trash can, climbing small window to break in and rummage in some stranger papers and desks is ridiculous, it's the last thing that I would think as a woman with umbrella in hand on the first day in a foreign city. There is no cthulhu on her back, nobody threatens her, no danger that she is aware of, the closed building host didn't kill her pet to justify such a move. It's just plain stupid, some tomb-raider or poor, forced adventure situation. Maybe it's the only such moment in this game, I hope so, maybe I should close my eyes and continue?

I suppose you are right that my choice of IF may be very limited.[/spoiler]

[quote]P.S. Regarding immersion software, I have never gone looking specifically with that purpose in mine, but I like to fullscreen Zoom with music playing the background.[/quote]
I've searched for the "Zoom" interested by fullscreen option, but unfortunately its for Mac [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1643&start=10#p10533
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Supporter strangeness
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-07 18:42:37

Wow, thanks for that very detailed response. The list-writer thing does seem to me like an instance of something people have said occasionally -- that the real quirks of I7 are in the things that go on in I6 and that you can't change without some deep code munging. (I mean, if you're not going to mess with c_style I don't think I will be anytime soon.) But in this case it seems not too hard to work around by doing what you want with the contents and then omitting contents in listing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1652&start=0#p10536
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Click click typewritter sound and other things for Windo
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-07 21:11:18

[quote="Wolk"]I've searched for the "Zoom" interested by fullscreen option, but unfortunately its for Mac [emote]:([/emote][/quote]
There's gotta be one that can do that for Windows. I suppose you could always go fullscreen in a DOS window, and play with a DOS interpreter... kind of a roundabout way to get there but a lot of emulators go fullscreen, so if you can emulate a text-only environment, and then find an interpreter for it, it might work.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1643&start=10#p10537
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Supporter strangeness
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-11-07 21:11:43

This is a very useful thread -- thanks, everybody!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1652&start=0#p10538
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Click click typewritter sound and other things for Windo
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-07 21:33:20

[spoiler][quote="Wolk"]You know where the Mike is at the start of the game, he said that he will go to the university and then go back to you. If only the "brilliant" break-in was his idea, when you go to him and tell him about the key. But no - he is not interested, he just asks "do you have the key?" and goes back to reading... It looks like he can sleep on the library floor...  [snip] It's just plain stupid, some tomb-raider or poor, forced adventure situation. Maybe it's the only such moment in this game, I hope so, maybe I should close my eyes and continue?[/quote]

Definitely do continue. Michael's lack of interest actually has an explanation within the story, it's not merely a tactic to force the player to break into the office (though it's that too, of course).

Her breaking into the office is also a bit of characterization--she's going to have to do a lot of other stuff that "women with umbrellas" aren't known for tackling before the nightmare is over, and the office break-in is a kind of setup for that. The author could have had you just run to your husband for help, but that is definitely not how the rest of the story is contoured.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1654&start=0#p10539
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: www.intfiction.org main page
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-11-08 01:21:18

Yeah, I had wanted to create a kind of community portal with news, rumors, links, reviews, etc. After the forum was started, I even had working scripts to use the forum database as the news feed and user base for the main page. I wouldn't say the idea is dead, but it's probably unnecessary.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1530&start=0#p10540
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Need some WordPress help
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2010-11-08 05:03:54

This is going to be great once I leave the dreadfull Weebly service [emote]:|[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1656&start=0#p10545
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Write your own CYOA competition (ended December 15!)
User: adventurechris / DateTime: 2010-11-08 10:25:31

Hey everybody!

I'm starting a write-your-own choose-your-own adventure competition to coincide with the test opening of my site, Adventure Cow. [emote]:D[/emote]


(1) Timing
The competition runs from next Monday (November 15, 2010) to a month from then (December 15, 2010).

(2) How it works
There are two options - you can enter in the Adventure League and write 150 pages, or the Fun League and write 50 pages (if you're strapped for time). More details [url=http://adventurecow.com/init/default/adventure_bowl]online[/url].


If you have any questions, I'll be on this thread, you can shoot me an email at <a href="mailto:chris@adventurecow.com">chris@adventurecow.com</a>.

SIGN UP:
Full details here: [url]http://adventurecow.com/init/default/adventure_bowl[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1656&start=0#p10546
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Write your own CYOA competition (starts next week)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-08 10:48:51

[quote="adventurechris"](1) Timing
The competition runs from next Monday (October 15, 2010) to a month from then (November 15, 2010).[/quote]

You mean November/December, right? Anyway, good to see this comp. These CYOAs are ones that don't save statistics or other state information, right? All the information is in the page numbers, like the old Edward Packard/R.A. Montgomery books.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1656&start=0#p10547
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Write your own CYOA competition (starts next week)
User: adventurechris / DateTime: 2010-11-08 11:03:24

Oh man, you're right. Thanks Matt, fixed.

Yeah. I enjoy the Lone Wolf and other number based games, but today we're going for classic all plot, no calculator stuff.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=50#p10549
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: wfryers / DateTime: 2010-11-08 12:38:53

Aaronius: I am glad you don't see much difference between what I am proposing and what I7 does now.      The point is to improve I7 not replace it.

First off my example was not intended to be a full implementation.  Rather it was to illustrate the general way I suppose a declarative implementation should look.

I find your proposed implementation interesting on a couple of points.  Since I take your implementation at face value, I am not suggesting there is an alternate way to implement in I7. Let's look at the implementation of clan:

[list]A human is a kind of person. Ethyl Red is a human.
A clan is a kind of value. The Plinth is a clan. Every person has a clan. [/list:u]

To me the author is attempting to define an ontology.  (I think Wikipedia's article on Ontology (Information Science) covers the topic well.)  That means there is a formal representation of concepts (knowledge) within a domain and the relationships among them.  An ontology is handy because it lets us reason about the domain and describe it.  

To me Kind is a class or set.  So we know that Person is a class and human is a subclass (subset) of that class.  We also know that there are instances of classes.  In this case Ethyl Red is an instance of the human subclass.  Since human is a subclass of Person we know that Ethyl Red is also a Person.  Ethyl Red is a value of name,which is an attribute of Person.  To me this works well.  The game-world model matches my real-world model.  

Clan is defined as a subclass of Value.  Plinth is defined as an instance of clan, thus it is a value.  This one does not match up very well with my real-world model.  

I think of a clan as a set of people, thus it is a class. Membership in a clan is a relationship between instances of the class - human and the class - clan. There is a restriction on clan membership – a human can only be a member through familial relationships (marriage, adoption or birth). Plinth is a value of name, which is an attribute of Clan.  So far we have not said anything about the class Clan.

The ontology lets me make my first point.  The I7 implementation of clan is inconsistent with similar implementations – human. It works against the author's mental model of the language.  Likewise, it works against the player's real-world mental model.  Clans are groups of humans. 

Let me move on to my second point. An Ontology is written in a formal language designed to make it easy to create and reason about an ontology.  Usually, they are declarative languages.  I am inclined to a language, like I7, that makes English-like statements.  The problem is English is a living natural language.  What that leads to is the use of something called a controlled natural language.  

In this case it looks like English.  It is a restricted subset of the language, which can be mapped to a formal language. This means automated tools can be written that validate the language and let us make inferences from it. Attempto Controlled English (ACE) is an example of such a language.

Before someone jumps me about ACE, I am not extolling its virtues.  I am just pointing to an existing example of a controlled natural language.  ACE does have tools to support ontology.  For example, ACE View lets us create OWL ontologies.  Web Ontology Language (OWL) is a family of knowledge representation languages for authoring ontologies. OWL is endorsed by W3C.  

This lets me make my second point.  I7 is a significant departure from I6. It is growing into a controlled natural language that lets us express a game-world model (ontology). Rather than reinventing the wheel, I would like to encourage the adoption of approaches already in use.  I am clearly in the camp,which wants to grow I7 into a declarative language so that authors can concentrate on the “what” of IF and not the “how and when” of computers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1656&start=0#p10550
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Write your own CYOA competition (starts next week)
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-08 12:40:32

'Number based' and 'calculator stuff' don't seem to me to quite cover the potential plot advantages of being able to save at least some historical info. Classic style is definitely cool though and has its own charm. Good to see comps like this happening.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1656&start=0#p10551
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Write your own CYOA competition (starts next week)
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-11-08 12:42:09

Could you post more details on what the system is without requiring a sign-up?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1656&start=0#p10552
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Write your own CYOA competition (starts next week)
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-11-08 12:49:01

While it's good to be inspired by NaNoWriMo, it's going to be tough to do during the same month (working on both a novel and a CYOA game). Hopefully I'll have time to crank something out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1642&start=0#p10553
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Every third turn?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-08 13:07:11

[quote="aaronius"][code]
At the time when shoulder hurts:
	say "Your shoulder hurts.";
	shoulder hurts in two turns from now.
[/code][/quote]
I've used this method, but there's something unsatisfying about it for me. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think you can add additional conditions to "at the time when...", so instead of saying:

[code]Every third turn when the shoulder is injured:[/code]

You have to say:

[code]At the time when the shoulder hurts:
    if the shoulder is injured:[/code]
...which offends my sensibilities by adding too much nesting. Maybe referring to the turn count would be a way around that, but referring to the turn count also offends my sensibilities by using a global variable, and by being wordy. I've often considered using this instead, even though it doesn't do the same thing:

[code]Every turn when the shoulder is injured and a random chance of 1 in 3 succeeds:[/code]
Does that compile? Is it OK to use "random" in a rule condition?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1636&start=0#p10554
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Obscure Interactive Fiction - Gone but not Forgotten
User: imipak / DateTime: 2010-11-08 13:27:00

[quote="Hannes"]For any classic IF without backing of some huge company/author, I wholeheartedly [url=http://solutionarchive.com]CASA[/url]. It has got info on [url=http://solutionarchive.com/game/id,394/]The Pen and the Dark[/url] as well as listings of the [url=http://solutionarchive.com/list/company,451/]Heyley Games[/url]. Since some of the latter don't have solutions listed yet, I'm sure if you're up for it, all you'll have to do is ask in their forums and you'll find some other people to play these games 'with' you. It's quite common there to start such 'play-alongs'.[/quote]

Thanks! I really appreciate the help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1652&start=0#p10555
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Click click typewritter sound and other things for Windo
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-11-08 13:36:09

[quote="Laroquod"]There's gotta be one that can do that for Windows. I suppose you could always go fullscreen in a DOS window, and play with a DOS interpreter... kind of a roundabout way to get there but a lot of emulators go fullscreen, so if you can emulate a text-only environment, and then find an interpreter for it, it might work.[/quote]

Windows Git / Windows Glulxe have a fullscreen mode, if you press Alt-Enter.

I may add this to Gargoyle at some point, though it requires a nontrivial effort on the Mac side. Adding support for a background image will probably never happen, sorry.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=50#p10556
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-11-08 13:40:45

[quote="wfryers"]I think of a clan as a set of people, thus it is a class. Membership in a clan is a relationship between instances of the class - human and the class - clan. There is a restriction on clan membership – a human can only be a member through familial relationships (marriage, adoption or birth). Plinth is a value of name, which is an attribute of Clan.  So far we have not said anything about the class Clan.

The ontology lets me make my first point.  The I7 implementation of clan is inconsistent with similar implementations – human. It works against the author's mental model of the language.  Likewise, it works against the player's real-world mental model.  Clans are groups of humans.[/quote]

OK-- Inform 7 can set things up this way too, if you like. See the section on "Relations in groups" in the docs. You could then create a series of rules to restrict when clan relations change.

If you can propose actual pseudocode that would be a) theoretically compileable, and b) clearly more straightforward than an implementation in Inform 7, I'd start to get interested.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1642&start=0#p10557
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Every third turn?
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-11-08 13:49:16

Randomness issues aside, that should work-- although IMHO, trying to avoid using global variables in Inform 7 is like trying to write a novel in English without using the letter "e." Possible, but masochistic.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1642&start=0#p10558
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Every third turn?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-08 14:18:50

[quote="aaronius"]Randomness issues aside, that should work-- although IMHO, trying to avoid using global variables in Inform 7 is like trying to write a novel in English without using the letter "e." Possible, but masochistic.[/quote]
I'm not against it all the way. I think global variables are good for representing game state - a little more fine-grained than scenes but a little broader than properties of the PC. I accept things like "the noun" as useful for parsing - after all, pretty much every scope you encounter can need access to the player's command. I'm a little uncomfortable with a few other globals (like the current row), but I can accept their use.

After getting more comfortable with OO, I don't really think of any variables as global. Some "global" variables have a scope of the whole story, some have a scope of the current turn, the current rulebook, the player's command, or the current action. Generally there's no danger of scope conflicts in those cases.

But the case of the turn count seems unnecessary somehow. Maybe what bugs me is that it has a scope that goes beyond the story - it's "out of world." It's not a story variable, it's a game variable.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1642&start=0#p10559
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Every third turn?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-08 14:28:14

I don't see the point of avoiding global variables in I7 when nearly *everything* has global scope. Objects, classes, rules, rulebooks, relations, and so on are all global. 

I typically have a "cycler" kind lying around, so that I can say

[code]
The arm-hurt-cycler is a cycler. The period is 3.

Every turn when current arm-hurt-cycler is 1:
    ...
[/code]

You can define the "cycler" kind and the "current (C - cycler)" phrase in a few lines -- it's not even worth posting them. (The phrase just returns 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3,... as it's called. Very simple.) 

I've just taken a global-variable example and replaced it with a global object (that carries a numeric property). It's not really any prettier from a code-management standpoint. The sole difference is that it's easy to read in use, and that's all I care about.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1657&start=0#p10560
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Possible Bad Link
User: Terry / DateTime: 2010-11-08 14:41:34

I'm suspicious that the page link on the thread below in Other Development Systems is bad.

Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creator

My security software has flagged it up as a no go web site.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1535&start=0#p10561
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Thinking about punctuation
User: wfryers / DateTime: 2010-11-08 15:10:17

Capmikee: I finally am able to get to this thread.  It is an interesting set of problems.  

I guess I am going to come at this from a strict procedural syntax angle.  I am going to use EBNF to write the examples.  I feel most language developers are pretty well versed in it.  Unfortunately for the rest of the world, they are lost.  

First off it looks to me like I7 starts with a pretty common understanding of if.

<if statement> ::= If <expression> <statement-1> | 
If <expression> <statement-1> else <statement-2>

Expression has to resolve to a Boolean (true or false) so that the if will work. Many languages will use the reserved word then. It is helpful for all sorts of reasons.

This syntax permits an ambiguity:

 If <expression-1> if <expression-2> <statement-1> else <statement-2>

The ambiguity can be resolved:

If <expression-1> begin if <expression-2> <statement-1> else <statement-2> end

We can make this statement because the language includes other productions such as:

<statement>::= <simple statement> | <structured statement>
<simple statement> ::= <assignment statement> | <empty statement>

<structured statement>::= <conditional statement> | <compound statement>

<conditional statement> ::= <if statement>

<compound statement> ::= begin <statement> {;<statement>} end

The production <statement>::= <simple statement> | <structured statement> allows me to rewrite a <statement> as a  <structured statement> anywhere I see it. This production <structured statement>::= <conditional statement> | <compound statement> lets me rewrite a <structured statement> as a <compound statement>. The production <compound statement> ::= begin <statement {;<statement>} end lets me rewrite <compound statement> as what we commonly call a block.

So the following is syntactically correct::
[list]
begin 
[list]statement-1;
statement-2;
begin [list]
	statement-3;
	statement-4;
	statement-5;[/list:u]
end
statement-6;
statement-7[/list:u]
end [/list:u]

I could take all of the spaces and indentation out:

beginstatement-1;statement-2;beginstatement-3;statement-4;statement-5;endstatement-6;statement-7end

The parser understands both ways.  It does not need spaces or indentation to understand what is going on.  It uses the language tokens, syntax rules and semantic rules to make sense of the input stream. The fancy formatting is there only to help the person read and understand code.  

What the reserved words begin and end represent is the block initiation token and the block termination token.  Languages like C use { and } to be the block delimiters.

It works out that this particular set of productions has the form of an LL(1) grammar.  It is my understanding that this is the predominate grammar used in programming languages. There is a  technical reason we like the reserved word then to appear in conditionals and a block terminator token in compound statements.  There has to be a closure set which is determinate.  Otherwise the parser gets lost deciphering the production.

I will admit that my understanding of I7 syntax is a bit shaky.  But in my other post I give examples where I7 is inconsistent in the way it handles nested if.  I show that it has the rule that if there is a block anywhere in the if blocks must be used everywhere in the if.  This flies in the face of what I would consider the ordinary understanding of nesting ifs and the usage of blocks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1652&start=0#p10562
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Click click typewritter sound and other things for Windo
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-08 15:18:03

[quote="bcressey"]Windows Git / Windows Glulxe have a fullscreen mode, if you press Alt-Enter.

I may add this to Gargoyle at some point, though it requires a nontrivial effort on the Mac side.[/quote]
Indeed, I have found fullscreen modes to be more common on the Windows side in general, so this situation seemed like a weird reversal to me. 87

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=0#p10563
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-11-08 15:28:18

I'd like to check it out, but Google Chrome is reporting that the page contains Malware.

Sometimes this is as innocent as linking to executables instead of zip files in your code.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=0#p10564
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-11-08 16:09:37

Your site contains malware in the embedded ads on the coffee table page. One of them appears to deploy a Java exploit.

I have edited your original post to remove the hyperlink.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=0#p10565
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2010-11-08 16:15:40

Javacsript Malware removed from Coffee Table page. Thank you for the heads up warning.

This is a screenshot of Visionary with R (Pron: Arrr...) loaded.

[img]http://www.therealeasterbunny.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/visionary.gif[/img]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1563&start=10#p10566
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Designing Kitchens and Bathrooms
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-11-08 16:27:46

[quote]Ditto for IF; if I have things to do in the house, I'm not going to stop and say, "Hey! There's no bathroom!" [/quote]

Ever since I was a kid, that has bothered me about the game Clue.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=0#p10567
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2010-11-08 16:31:32

[quote="bcressey"]Your site contains malware in the embedded ads on the coffee table page. One of them appears to deploy a Java exploit.

I have edited your original post to remove the hyperlink.[/quote]

Apologies to all. Now rectified.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1656&start=0#p10568
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Write your own CYOA competition (starts next week)
User: adventurechris / DateTime: 2010-11-08 16:36:17

[quote="Laroquod"]'Number based' and 'calculator stuff' don't seem to me to quite cover the potential plot advantages of being able to save at least some historical info. Classic style is definitely cool though and has its own charm. Good to see comps like this happening.

Paul.[/quote]

Yeah, I think I'll be adding some basic state eventually, but I want to keep it accessible to more people for now.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1656&start=0#p10569
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Write your own CYOA competition (starts next week)
User: adventurechris / DateTime: 2010-11-08 16:37:40

[quote="gravel"]Could you post more details on what the system is without requiring a sign-up?[/quote]

You can actually use the "Try it Out" button from [url=http://adventurecow.com/init/default/writers_corner]Writer's Corner[/url] to use the editor without signing up. I apologize that that's unclear, will fix now.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1535&start=0#p10570
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Thinking about punctuation
User: wfryers / DateTime: 2010-11-08 16:51:39

Just to muddy the waters further.  [emote];)[/emote]  The following if statements are used to express some specific relationships.  

First example: a transitive relationship.
If a Bank is part of a Channel and a Channel is part of a River, then a Bank is part of a River.

Second Example:a symmetric relationship.
If a Floodplain is adjacent to a River, then the River is adjacent to the Floodplain.

Third Example:an antisymmetric relationship.
If one River flows into another River, then the second River cannot flow into the first.

Fourth Example:an Inverse relationship. 
If Water is contained in a river, then the River contains Water.

While they are all superficially the same if-then structure, semantically they have widely varying meanings. 

One might say - while a condition is met such and so happens.  While the house is on fire the fireman spray water.  Syntactically it is not - If the house is on fire, then the fireman spray water.  Also, the if may not require the fireman to spray the entire time.  They could pull up to the fire, spray a gallon of water and then go home. I am inclined to think the if version was met, but certainly not they while version.  

Why stop there? The fireman spray water on the house; because, the house is on fire.  That seems to be closer to the notion than if-then.  We can even invert the clause order.  Because, the house is on fire; the fireman spray water on the house.    

As has been suggested, we may have more “natural” ways to express causal relationships than if-then.  In any case, I suggest that we are nibbling at the edges of a domain specific controlled English.  I am inclined to the view that an organized model (ontology) of IF constructs expressed in that language will create a more powerful, easier to learn and use I7.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=0#p10571
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-11-08 16:58:34

I've had to edit your second post where you embedded an image from your site, to stop Google from saying intfiction.org was hosting malware.

You may have to set up Google Webmaster Tools on your site and submit it for a new crawl, so Google knows the infected files are gone.

Once you do, you can resubmit your original links, but please don't link to or embed content from your site until [url=http://safebrowsing.clients.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=http://therealeasterbunny.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/]it shows up clean[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1638&start=0#p10573
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Extension] Automated Testing
User: Roger / DateTime: 2010-11-08 17:58:52

I'm looking into the transcription issue.  Thanks for the heads-up.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1638&start=0#p10575
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Extension] Automated Testing
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2010-11-08 18:18:52

I feel kind of dumb about asking this--I didn't realize transcript didn't work, period, on even a blank file. So never mind this. I don't know what I was thinking, or how I figured out what I did.

Transcripts fail in Inform 7 testing in any case. Even with a blank file. I imagine that is by design. I had assumed they worked. Sorry for wasting your time with this & thanks again--I've been using this module, but I neglected to update this topic.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1630&start=0#p10576
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with NPC-initiated Conversation Nodes
User: chipotle / DateTime: 2010-11-08 18:35:45

Hmm. Too long a question for a first post? [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=60#p10577
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-08 18:38:23

[quote]Clan is defined as a subclass of Value. Plinth is defined as an instance of clan, thus it is a value. This one does not match up very well with my real-world model. [/quote]
I don't get your problem. In I7 everything is either a subclass of Thing or Value. It doesn't meant anything. You know a person is a subclass of Thing right? Why isn't that a problem?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1642&start=0#p10578
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Every third turn?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-11-08 18:44:33

I would use Juhana's solution. [code]Every turn when the shoulder is injured and the remainder after dividing the turn count by three is zero, say "Your shoulder hurts."[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1638&start=0#p10580
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Extension] Automated Testing
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-08 19:30:51

Can you be more specific about what's happening with transcripts? I'm not aware of any issues using transcripts in the Windows I7 IDE (it works fine for me on the Mac), but maybe if you can say just what's going wrong, someone will be able to help you. 

To eliminate the obvious: Are you sure you're invoking the transcript function correctly? Viz., TRANSCRIPT or SCRIPT ON from the command line while the game is playing, or "try switching the story transcript on" from source code:

[code]When play begins:
      try switching the story transcript on.[/code]

This probably isn't the problem, but I thought I'd ask, just in case...!

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1630&start=0#p10582
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with NPC-initiated Conversation Nodes
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-08 21:55:34

I don't know why you aren't getting an answer. Perhaps there aren't a lot of people using the Conversation package?

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1658&start=0#p10583
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Sand-dancer failing to compile with 6F95
User: Neurosion / DateTime: 2010-11-08 22:07:45

Several errors like this one:
[quote]Problem. In the sentence 'Check trading when trader needs more memories'  , I was expecting to read sand-dancer, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'trader'.

I was trying to match one of these phrases:

1. (trader - sand-dancer) needs more memories 

2. (trader - person) needs more memories 

This was what I found out:

trader = something unrecognised
[/quote]
Most of the errors are related to this text:

[code]Check trading when trader needs more memories: move the noun to the trader; instead say "[The trader] touches your fingertips and pulls [the noun] through your nerve endings. 'Good,' he says, 'I'll take that, although it's not enough to complete the trade.'[paragraph break]Somewhere inside you, things are shifting, moving, growing.""

To decide whether (trader - a person) needs more memories:
	let the projected total be the number of memories held by trader + 1;
	if the projected total is less than the price of trader, decide yes;
	decide no.[/code]
The phrase (trader - sand-dancer) only appears at the bottom of the source file.

Any ideas?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=0#p10585
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2010-11-09 01:10:53

OK, thank you.

If its safer for the site, you can remove this topic if you wish and I will republish once Google is happy.

Cheers.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1630&start=0#p10586
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with NPC-initiated Conversation Nodes
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-11-09 02:06:47

[quote="Laroquod"]I don't know why you aren't getting an answer. Perhaps there aren't a lot of people using the Conversation package?[/quote]

That, and the fact that the package (while undeniably impressive) may also be one of the most complex, interdependency-wise. Also, given the impending release of Alabaster's conversation system, it could be that some authors who might otherwise pick Conversation Package are keeping their options open for the moment.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1659&start=0#p10587
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Which remaining comp games shouldn't I miss?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-09 02:33:00

In your opinions, of course. I've played a fair number, and I suppose I would have to put the People's Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure tops so far. The puzzles are classic style, but there is some ingenuity there, and while I have seen it described at as not as funny as it thinks, I think it's exactly as funny as it thinks... I think.

Anyway, I found it amusing. I felt at first like I was going to be exposed to a political screed in lampooning caricature form, but I found it didn't really take itself seriously enough to engage that with any bitterness, and of course in the endgame...

The People's Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure[spoiler]...the caricatures are shifted to the other side of the political spectrum.[/spoiler]

So I felt it it was a rather consummate execution of the type of adventure and humour that it was setting out to be, which is not a bad type at all. I had fun. It worked on both levels for me of interactive engagement and artifice. I have seen others say that it didn't work for them on either level, but go figure.

The other main contender was Aotearoa, which I really enjoyed once I finally managed to get off that boat. A friend and I both got hung up on something that I think wasn't really intended to be a puzzle, but rather...

Aotearoa[spoiler]...a requirement that you read all the introductory information in your inventory in order to trigger the storyline to actually begin. It fazed him a bit more than it did me, and I sort of saw it as a bug or possibly unintentionally stumping. We both enjoyed the first half of the game thereafter, but in the second half it really turned in a certain direction to generate narrative excitement, it seems, but it narrowed the interest of the puzzles for me. And I also prefer the workings of the Graham Nelson's Rideable Animal extension to the somewhat unwieldy dino-riding verbs that dominated the second half of the game.[/spoiler]
But I did love the command line innovations, like just typing dialogue topics to talk to people (at least once conversation is initiated). I so rarely find dialogue systems a comfortable fit but this was a pretty good exception. And just typing the names of things to examine them and leaving out the verb altogether, that was cool too. Where else was that used -- was it Blue Lacuna?

So those are probably the top two so far in my books, with honourable mention to The Warbler's Nest.

Ones I have enjoyed in some ways but haven't finished enough to really judge yet:
Blindhouse
One Eye Open
Pen and Paint
The 12:54 to Asgard

Ones I have yet to try:
Heated
The Bible Retold: Lost Sheep
Divis Mortis
Following a Star
Gigantomania
Gris et Jaune
Oxygen
Under, In Erebus
The Rogue of the Multiverse
Leadlight

Which of that last group should I definitely check out before the deadline?

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1658&start=0#p10589
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Sand-dancer failing to compile with 6F95
User: Sophronisba / DateTime: 2010-11-09 05:05:07

I had the same problem. I changed all of the trader-checking "check when" code to this:

[code]Check trading:
	if the trader is not a spirit animal: 
		instead say "There's no one here to trade with.";
	if the noun is not a memory: 
		instead say "'I'm only interested in trading memories,' [the trader] says.";
	if the second noun is not a talent: 
		instead say "'I only have talents to offer you,' says [the trader], '[list of visible not held talents].'";
	if the second noun is held: 
		instead say "You've already got the talent of [second noun].";
	if the noun is not in emotional baggage: 
		instead say "You've already traded away that memory.";
	if trader needs more memories: 
		move the noun to the trader; 
		instead say "[The trader] touches your fingertips and pulls [the noun] through your nerve endings. 'Good,' he says, 'I'll take that, although it's not enough to complete the trade.'[paragraph break]Somewhere inside you, things are shifting, moving, growing."[/code]

That compiles fine and seems to work (I've only played through Rabbit's Offer). I did get this run-time error, which seems unrelated: "Since the desert hare is not allowed the property "price", it is against the rules to try to use it." I haven't figured out what is causing that, since it looks like the code isn't doing much of anything with the desert hare.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1658&start=0#p10590
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Sand-dancer failing to compile with 6F95
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-11-09 06:07:12

[quote="Sophronisba"]I did get this run-time error, which seems unrelated: "Since the desert hare is not allowed the property "price", it is against the rules to try to use it." I haven't figured out what is causing that, since it looks like the code isn't doing much of anything with the desert hare.[/quote]

That bug surely stems from the following piece of code (I haven't checked the source text on the website - only that in the book). It should be in Part - Mechanics, Chapter - Memories.

[code]To decide whether insufficient memories found:
if Pursuit is happening and the number of memories in emotional baggage is less than the price of Hare, decide yes;[/code]
etc...

where "Hare" should definitely be "Rabbit".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1658&start=0#p10591
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Sand-dancer failing to compile with 6F95
User: Sophronisba / DateTime: 2010-11-09 06:21:54

Yep, that was it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1659&start=0#p10592
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Which remaining comp games shouldn't I miss?
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2010-11-09 07:08:28

I've only made it through a little more than half myself, but of the ones you list that I've played, I have a few recommendations.

Play Gris et Jaune, but only until you've made it out of the house. Seriously, just consider that the end of the game, and you'll be happier for it, and you'll have played a really awesome short game.

And I seem to be in the minority on this, but I really liked Leadlight. Yes, it's got the Apple II thing going on, but I thought it was a solid game. I recommend reading the manual (it's short) because you'll pick up a few things that will make the game easier to play, like learning that you can hit enter to repeat a command, which comes in handy for the battles. It will very likely take you all the way to the 2 hours to finish, though.

I also thought Rogue of the Multiverse was fun. It's fairly linear, but it was a nice quick story with good funny writing.

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1659&start=0#p10593
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Which remaining comp games shouldn't I miss?
User: JohnW / DateTime: 2010-11-09 07:48:00

[quote="Laroquod"]
Heated
The Bible Retold: Lost Sheep
Divis Mortis
Following a Star
Gigantomania
Gris et Jaune
Oxygen
Under, In Erebus
The Rogue of the Multiverse
Leadlight
[/quote]

In my humble opinion [emote]:)[/emote] :-
Heated - I really liked this though a lot of reviews seem less keen. I realised straight away it just wanted to screw with me so took it in that spirit and its a short, fun game.

Lost Sheep - short, not so fun game that wasn't really funny, though not too bad. Time can be better spent elsewhere as you are running short.

Divis Mortis - I liked this one, well written and well made, needed the walkthrough a bit for the end. The end twist was fairly obvious all the way through but definitely worth a go.

Following a Star - I gave up with this after half an hour, it just didn't grab me one bit. I suspect its better than I think it is.

Gigantomania - I really liked the writing style and the individual scenes are good, but as a game its linear, simplistic and not really any gameplay. Its more something to experience than to play. The last scene has caused confusion to many, FYI its not lots of errors, it is chess moves, if you get that far...

Gris et Jaune - I loved this, easily the best of show. Until I got out of the house and then it just all went to hell. As stated above, escape the house and leave it there, don't spoil the great experience up to that point. If there is a future update to this that cleans up the 2nd half, I'll be first in line for it.

Oxygen - well made, well written, really good. But... the damn puzzle annoyed me so much, but I actually scored very well on it due entirely to luck and random meddling. Maybe I was too tired that day for that one [emote]:-)[/emote] Definitely worth a try though.

Under, in Erebus - After reading a few reviews of this, and the first 5 minutes wandering around in confusion, game over. Not my kind of thing at all.

Rogue of the Multiverse - Quite short and fairly simple, very funny, different and well made. Genuinely good puns and gags here and there, and an IF high speed chase on a rocket bike. What more do you want?

Leadlight - haven't played this one.

Hope this helps a bit [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1642&start=0#p10594
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Every third turn?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-09 08:42:06

Yeah, I guess that's the best, unless you have a particular turn on which you want the messages to start. I might make it briefer by adding this [not tested because my Mac is in the shop]:

[code]To decide whether the turn is a multiple of (N - a number):
    Decide on whether or not the remainder after dividing the turn count by N is zero[/code]

I'm afraid that what is obvious to Zarf is not obvious to everyone. I'm not 100% sure how the cycler kind would work, but it sounds like a useful idea.

It would be nice if there were a "turns since X" phrase, similar to "has been X for N turns". Or maybe "has been X for a multiple of N turns" instead of "has been X for exactly N turns". Is there anything like that?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1535&start=0#p10595
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Thinking about punctuation
User: wfryers / DateTime: 2010-11-09 09:54:44

You are having way too much fun to keep this thread to yourselves.  [emote]:P[/emote] 

I would like to introduce a distinction between loop and iteration.  

Loop is a flow of control construct.  It lets the programmer write a set of instructions called the body of the loop once.  The instructions in the body will be executed, in order, zero or more times.  There are several commonly used ways to control the number of times the loop body is executed.  

Infinite loop:

[list]do 
	[list]loop body[/list:u]
end[/list:u]

A known number of times:

[list]for LoopCounter equals 1 to 10 increment by 1 do
	[list]loop body[/list:u]
end [/list:u]

conditional:

[list]Test before loop body

[list]While a condition is met do
	[list]loop body[/list:u]
end[/list:u]

Test after the loop body

[list]repeat
	[list]loop body[/list:u]
until a condition is met[/list:u]
[/list:u]

Exhaustive:

[list]foreach element in A do
	[list]loop body[/list:u]
end[/list:u]

On the other hand iteration is a construct that allows the programmer to traverse and access all elements in a container.  By container I mean an abstract data type.  It can be realized as any number of real data types, for example arrays, lists, or trees.  An iterator can do something called traverse or visit the individual instances or elements of the data type.  It can also provide access to the element which is the result of a traversal.  

For most programmers the two concepts, loop and iteration, go hand-in-hand. We learned to use loops to traverse all the elements in an array and to access each element in turn.  For example we can list each element in an array: 

[list]UpperBound:= NumberOfElements(SomeArray)-1;
for I:=0, UpperBound do
	[list]show SomeArray[I][/list:u]
end;[/list:u]

Languages can have other constructs which allow us to express the concept of iteration.  Here is one that moves towards a declarative paradigm:

[list]show foreach(SomeArray);[/list:u]

After what must seem like splitting a hair to most people we get to the punch line.  We need to agree on the data types which the language recognizes.  Once we agree on that, we have to decide on an appropriate iterator for each.  Then we have to implement it in the syntax of the language. Languages do not have to be limited to the loop flow of control construct to express iteration. 

So my question for the brainstorming part is this – what data types do we need?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1659&start=0#p10597
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Which remaining comp games shouldn't I miss?
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-11-09 10:15:43

Agreed with the advice regarding [i]Gris et Jaune[/i], and a very hearty recommendation for [i]Rogue of the Multiverse[/i] as well.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1659&start=0#p10598
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Which remaining comp games shouldn't I miss?
User: Celestianpower2 / DateTime: 2010-11-09 11:01:12

<Deleted - I thought this was in the Authors' Forum. Sorry.>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=0#p10600
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-11-09 11:50:40

Looks like your site checks out clean now, so you can feel free to edit back in your links.  [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=60#p10601
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: wfryers / DateTime: 2010-11-09 11:50:55

Dannii: I believe I said that I was going to accept the implementation of the snippet as written.  So I did not take exception to the derivation of either kind.  I pointed out that I didn't think that clan derived from value fit in with my real-world notion of a clan.

If a kind were only a mechanical framework on which we hang things, I suppose I would agree with you.  Apparently, we would only need a single kind. I believe a kind carries with it the notion of a domain over which it exercises some control.  When a kind is created the domain and control are chosen so that they “make sense”.  Taking the cube root of a value is something that can make sense.  Taking the cube root of my mother is another thing entirely. 

Further, I believe kind exhibits a behavior called inheritance. When we have a specific kind, say dog, it has its own domain.  However, I know that dog is a subtype of mammal.  This relieves me of having to state that dogs are warm blooded.  Since mammals are animals, I do not have to explicitly state that dogs can move.

In so far as the choice of kinds is concerned, I believe it is an arbitrary choice.  But it is one guided by an overarching sense of purpose. Many of us are aware of this incompletely stated but purposeful hierarchy:

[list]Kind: Nihil 
[list]	Kind: Light(day) methods to collect light into the sun, moon and stars
	Kind: Darkness(night)
	Kind: Firmament(skies above) (methods to mark the passage of days, seasons, and years)
	[list]	Kind: Birds(method to be fruitful and multiply) [/list:u]
	Kind: Waters below
	[list]		Kind: Seas
			[list]	Kind: Living creatures (method to be fruitful and multiply) [/list:u]
			Kind:Dry Land 
			[list]	Kind: Plants
				[list]	Kind: Grass
					Kind: Fruit Bearing Trees [/list:u]
				Kind: Living creatures
				[list]	Kind: Wild beasts
					Kind: Reptiles
					Kind: Livestock
					Kind: Man(methods to be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, subdue the earth)
[/list:u]
[/list:u]
[/list:u]
[/list:u]
[/list:u]

Since we are creating a game-world, in our own way I feel we need to be as purposeful.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1630&start=0#p10602
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with NPC-initiated Conversation Nodes
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-11-09 11:51:32

First, I'm not 100 % sure about this. But I'll venture a guess.

The Conversation Nodes documentation says:
[quote]  After going to the Lounge for the first time:
     initiate a conversation with Sarah at sarah-jealous-node;
     continue the action.

This sets Sarah as the current interlocutor and schedules sarah-jealous-node as the node to be switched to at the end of this turn. This means that we can use "continue the action" here to have the going to action proceed to print out a room description, and then have Sarah's question (presumably provided by a node-introduction rule) displayed after the room description.[/quote]

Here, Eric Eve uses an after rule to initiate the conversation with Sarah. 

”Continue the action" means that after this After Going Rule has run, Inform will continue through the rulebooks for the going action. The rulebooks are processed in the order: before rules; instead rules; check rules; carry out rules; after rules; report rules. 

So, when the player goes into the Lounge, the check going rules are run, the carry out going rules are run, the above after rule is run (which prepares to switch the node at the end of the turn), the report going rule is run (which prints the room description), and then at the end of the turn the node is switched and the node-introduction rule runs.

However, you initiate the conversation with Anna inside an "At the time when"-phrase.
I'm not sure, but it may be that these, like every turn rules, are themselves processed at the very end of the turn. So that what your code does is setting the event Anna opens the door to occur at the end of the next turn. The player then performs an action and all the rulebooks for it are run; and after that the event takes place – Inform says ”The doorknob turns” etc., moves Anna to the porch and switches the node, and – finds that the turn is already ended. "Continue the action" here does no work, since there is no action to continue. The node-introduction can't run at the end of the rule since the turn is already ended.

As I said I'm not sure if this is the correct explanation, but if I'm wrong perhaps the post can provoke someone to sort things out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1642&start=0#p10604
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Every third turn?
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2010-11-09 12:16:39

The idea, as I understand it, is that you have an object that has a number associated with it. Every time you look to see what that number is, it automatically increases by one, until it loops back around again. Following zarf's terminology, here's one implementation of a cycler object.

[code]A cycler is a kind. A cycler has a number called period. A cycler has a number called current-cycle. The period of a cycler is usually 2. The current-cycle of a cycler is usually 0.

To decide what number is current (C - cycler):
	increment the current-cycle of C;
	if the current-cycle of C is greater than the period of C, now the current-cycle of C is 1;
	decide on the current-cycle of C.[/code]

You can then use zarf's code to have the message appear every third turn.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1661&start=0#p10605
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Pausing the game when the player is writing
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2010-11-09 12:23:19

I'd like to pause the game when the player is writing (ie, when there are characters after the prompt).
How can i access to the buffer that contains the player's command [i]before[/i] he types a new line character ?
I'm using glulx

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1662&start=0#p10606
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Trouble with redirects
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-11-09 12:29:42

I've got a problem with situations where it may not be clear which object (or part of the object) the player should use:

[code]The dial is part of the radio.

Instead of using the radio, say "You listen to some music."

Instead of using the dial, say "You switch to a different station."[/code]

It's reasonable, on the part of the player, to try to "tune" the radio.  If he tries "tune the dial," I can just say "Understand 'tune [the dial]' as using", but the player should be able to get the same result by saying "tune the radio," and I'm not sure how.

"Understand 'tune [the radio] as using the dial," which is what I want to do, doesn't work.

In some situations I could redirect using the radio to using the dial, but not here, because using the radio has its own function.

I could add an entirely new tuning function, but that seems clumsy.

Ideas?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1642&start=10#p10607
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Every third turn?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-09 12:30:54

Sarge is ahead of me, I see. Yes, that's what I use, probably word-for-word. Thanks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=60#p10608
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-09 12:34:12

[quote="wfryers"]Since we are creating a game-world, in our own way I feel we need to be as purposeful.[/quote]
Are you familiar with the WordNet database? I've had idle thoughts about using it to implement some kind of AI model of the universe.

<a class="postlink" href="http://wordnet.princeton.edu/">http://wordnet.princeton.edu/</a>

The danger, however, is that when you make the world model too open-ended, you lose the chance to tell your own story. The storytelling gets left up to the player, and what you are providing ends up being more of a simulation. I love the opportunity that I7 provides to simplify the PC's view of the world to the barest minimum. If that means a complex social grouping is defined as a "kind of value," that's fine with me.

One of the first things I ever learned about storytelling was that choosing what to leave out is at least as important as what to include.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1661&start=0#p10609
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pausing the game when the player is writing
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-09 12:37:01

I assume you have some kind of real-time activity, using the Glulx timer events.

You can cancel line input, look at the input line, and restart line input. However, with the current spec, that will display extra copies of the input line.

I plan to change that (or rather, make the extra printing optional). However, even then, it will probably be a rocky user experience. You'd probably cause the user's cursor to jump to the end, or just blink in an uncomfortable way.

On the whole, I think this is a bad approach. And speaking as a player, I would very quickly train myself to enter command with "enter-space" to pause every input immediately.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1662&start=0#p10610
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with redirects
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-11-09 12:42:00

Do you want them to be able to tune the radio to a specific station?  If so, what I would probably do is have the radio and the dial be the same thing, and support "tune/turn/set [the radio] to [a number]" as actions on it (and have a response to non-specific tuning as well).  Yes, that means that "turn radio" will work, but it seems pretty unlikely that the player will type either that or "listen to dial."  Alternatively, you could do something where any actions (other than listen/examine or whatever specific radio-related actions you have in mind) on the radio trigger a "To set the radio to a different station, try turning the dial."

Out of curiosity, are you implementing a "use" command across the entire game?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1662&start=0#p10611
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with redirects
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-09 12:42:30

I generally argue against *ever* having object-specific grammar. That is, if you want the game to handle "tune radio", you should understand "tune [something]" and generate a sensible error for tuning most things.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1630&start=0#p10612
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with NPC-initiated Conversation Nodes
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-09 12:43:31

That sounds plausible. I've frequently run into problems with the order of events between Every Turn, At the Time When, When a scene begins or ends, when play begins, and when the story ends.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1642&start=10#p10613
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Every third turn?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-09 12:46:19

Oh, okay. I was expecting some cryptic I6 wizardry or something I guess.

That gives me an idea, though... you could have a table-based cycler, wouldn't that be fun...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1642&start=10#p10614
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Every third turn?
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-11-09 12:52:15

[code]
The player has a number called shoulder-pain. The shoulder-pain of the player is 0.

Every turn while the shoulder is injured:
   increase the shoulder-pain of the player by 1;
   if the shoulder-pain of the player is greater than 2:
     say "Your shoulder hurts.";
     now the shoulder-pain of the player is 0.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=0#p10615
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2010-11-09 12:55:43

Thank you. Yes, I can also confirm Google giving it a clean bill of health. Links and posts updated.

On a side issue, I am studying Java at the Open University at the moment and along side this (and to help with Java hands-on study) am looking into developing both a new adventure creator (which will be an extension of the current SACA format) (but will still only be a two word parser) and text adventures for the Kindle (probably freeware games [emote];)[/emote] ). 

I believe there is a market (a free one albeit) out there for text adventures for mobile devices (which is why I made AdvPDA). 

My reasoning behind this is Interactive fiction with full sentences is good for desktops or laptops (full size keyboards) but would anyone play Interactive fiction that uses full sentences on tiny mobile keyboards? ... but this is my reasoning behind two word parser 'text adventures' coming back - simple quick play but with better descriptions of rooms and items instead of "LOOK BED" - "OK".  [emote]:o[/emote] 
 
Cheers

Steve.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=60#p10617
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-11-09 13:45:13

Let's face it - simulation is limited in its worldview, too.  Especially game sims, where elements are chosen and tweaked and smoothed over and simplified and sacrificed for gameplay, but even "real" simulations are going to be doing something similar.  You're always going to have to choose a frame of reference.  

I think there's something to be said for having a language that feels intuitive to the user, and I wonder if that's what we're discussing - do the ways that the language operates, and the words it uses, feel natural and make programming flow?  I actually think I7 is pretty good at that - it's not perfect, but there's only a few things I haven't been able to get used to.  (I *still* have to go back and change lots of things to "enclosed by" rather than "in".  I have a sticky on my monitor, and it's still not good enough.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1662&start=0#p10619
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with redirects
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-11-09 14:50:36

tove: Yes, which is why I'm loath to add too many situation-specific new actions.

zarf: So you think I should make a tuning action?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1662&start=0#p10620
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with redirects
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-09 15:55:29

[quote="katz"]zarf: So you think I should make a tuning action?[/quote]

I'm not sure what zarf would say, but I think you're likely to get better output if you create a separate action for a verb like "tune," then remap "use (my object)" to that specific action, rather than the other way around.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1662&start=0#p10621
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with redirects
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-09 16:27:03

I think you should have an action, and use instead (or check) rules on the action to discriminate. Rather than trying to do it in grammar.

Whether the action is tuning or using is a separate question. I favor tuning, because that way you can provide a reasonable error for "tune hair gel" as distinct from "use hair gel".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1661&start=0#p10622
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pausing the game when the player is writing
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-09 16:33:04

I'm not sure what you're trying to do, but if your intent is simply to allow the player to continue with input that was interrupted by a real-time event, this capability is built into glk. This thread from a few weeks ago should be of some help:

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1340&hilit=buffer&start=20">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1340&hilit=buffer&start=20</a>

On the other hand, if what you really want is character-by-character control over line input, you can in fact get that by recreating the line interface using character input, and it wouldn't be all that hard to do--but it's not to be recommended either. You won't have a cursor, for one thing (though you can imitate one, I suppose), and your players will lose the ability to paste input to the command line.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1642&start=10#p10623
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Every third turn?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-11-09 16:44:47

Or, or, we could use scenes!

[code]A person is either injured or uninjured.  

Agony is a recurring scene.  Agony begins when the player is injured.  Agony ends when the time since Agony began is 3 minutes.

When Agony begins:
    say "Your shoulder hurts."
[/code]

(Okay, I actually use something more like tggdan's solution.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1659&start=0#p10624
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Which remaining comp games shouldn't I miss?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-09 17:47:38

Hmm thanks for the tips, peeps.

I'm thinking [i]Gris et Jaune[/i] sounds like it'll get a try first. And thanks for the other recs too, it's been helpful!

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1642&start=10#p10625
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Every third turn?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-09 17:54:51

That's definitely my favorite one so far.

Can you use "the time since [a scene] began" anywhere?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1642&start=10#p10626
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Every third turn?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-09 17:59:09

[quote="gravel"]Or, or, we could use scenes!

[code]A person is either injured or uninjured.  

Agony is a recurring scene.  Agony begins when the player is injured.  Agony ends when the time since Agony began is 3 minutes.

When Agony begins:
    say "Your shoulder hurts."
[/code]

(Okay, I actually use something more like tggdan's solution.)[/quote]
I am probably misunderstanding something, because my read on this is that it results in the 'shoulder hurts' message only being printed once per injury. How is the loop engaged? What am I missing?

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1642&start=10#p10627
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Every third turn?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-09 18:33:49

It works because the scene's start-condition, "the player is injured", remains true.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=0#p10628
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-09 20:39:23

Lots of people are already working on stuff for mobiles. Rather than invent a new system which, realistically, no one will use, why not help with twisty <a class="postlink" href="http://code.google.com/p/twisty/">http://code.google.com/p/twisty/</a> for example.

As to having to type too much, the solution isn't to make the parsers bad, but to have other tools, like tapping to copy a word, hyperlinks, or keyword extensions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=60#p10629
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: George / DateTime: 2010-11-09 20:49:25

I feel like there are a few issues getting mixed up here and it isn't helping. I think it's been mentioned before that I7 is more of a set of domain languages than a single language, like C for example. In I7 the syntax for defining a room and exits is quite a different matter than the syntax for lists and tables, and for a good reason. Second, if you always map the game objects to the code objects, like the person in the game is one instance of a person object in the program, I think you limit your games and programming to an unnecessary degree (though I'll grant this may make the programming simpler). 

Finally, IMO the player couldn't care less about what programming paradigm you write the game in, and this is crucial -- because as the author, you [i]are[/i] a player, the first player, and to get too deep into the programming structure will skew your perspective in that regard.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=60#p10630
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: TheTraveler / DateTime: 2010-11-09 21:29:07

[quote]Finally, IMO the player could care less about what programming paradigm you write the game, and this is crucial -- because as the author, you are a player, the first player, and to get too deep into the programming structure will skew your perspective in that regard.[/quote]
Well put. If I had to approach Inform7 as say, C/C++, Ada or any of the other programming languages with which I'm familiar, my writing would take on the aspect of function, not gestalt. I would tend to think more about forming proper procedures and less about the "fuzzier" end result. Programming in I7 has a wonderful sense of being "relaxed" ... and it's just plain fun IMO.

Cheers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1642&start=10#p10631
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Every third turn?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-09 21:33:57

It took me a while to get my head around it too. A recurring scene will start again immediately after it ends if its start condition is still true.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1662&start=0#p10632
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with redirects
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-09 21:42:57

If you really wanted to implement a "use" verb, here's one way you could do the redirecting:

[code]The Living room is a room.

There is a radio in the living room.
A knob is a part of the radio.

Using is an action applying to one thing. Understand "use [something]" as using.

Check using:
	say "I don't know what using that would mean." instead.
	
Instead of doing anything with the knob:
	Now the noun is the radio;
	Try the current action;
	
Instead of listening to the radio:
	say "You listen to some music."
	
Instead of turning the knob:
	say "You switch to a different station."
	
Instead of using the knob:
	try turning the knob;
	
Instead of using the radio:
	try listening to the radio;[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1612&start=0#p10634
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Running games with sound in Zoom / Spatterlight
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2010-11-09 22:48:46

I recently played Lurking Horror myself, and googled extensively for purposes of trying to make the sound work in game on the Mac. Zoom doesn't support sound and I don't think it can be done in Spatterlight. The best I could do was merely listen to the sound files on their own to see what I was missing. Even that turned out not to be super easy to do until I game them the right names.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1663&start=0#p10635
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Naming rulebooks/Deciding the scope
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-09 22:50:46

The section of the manual for naming rulebooks seems to say that if the rulebook is based on something other than actions, its name must end with "for". Is this true? Earlier I wanted to call a person-based rulebook "behavior of", but I had to call it "behavior for". How does that work with activities?

I was just reading the section on the "Deciding the Scope of something" activity (tried several chapters before I finally remembered that it was an activity, so maybe it's in the activities chapter), and I have a number of questions:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc308.html">http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc308.html</a>

[quote]2. The default behaviour. Is complicated: see the Inform Designer's Manual, 4th edition, page 227. Briefly, the scope for someone consists of everything in the same place as them, unless it is dark.[/quote]
I gather from this and the example that "Deciding the scope of" is a person-based activity (it's a little ambiguous - the section is called "deciding the scope of some[i]thing[/i]). But aside from the example, there's no real information on how to use it, in terms of when to use someone besides the player, whether to replace the "rule for deciding the scope of" or to do anything "before deciding the scope of" someone. Is that somewhere else in the manual?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1642&start=10#p10636
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Every third turn?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-11-09 23:34:20

[quote="capmikee"]That's definitely my favorite one so far.

Can you use "the time since [a scene] began" anywhere?[/quote]

Yeeeesss, although I haven't tested recurring scenes much beyond this, so I'm not sure what happens if you've got, say, something that fires 20 turns after Agony starts - in this instance, would it fire every three turns starting 20 turns from the injury, or just 20 turns after the end of the latest scene?  

Actually, I should go test that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=10#p10637
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2010-11-09 23:38:53

[quote]Lots of people are already working on stuff for mobiles. Rather than invent a new system which, realistically, no one will use, why not help with twisty <a class="postlink" href="http://code.google.com/p/twisty/">http://code.google.com/p/twisty/</a> for example.

As to having to type too much, the solution isn't to make the parsers bad, but to have other tools, like tapping to copy a word, hyperlinks, or keyword extensions.
[/quote]

Thanks for the link, I will take a look.
 
I implemented hyperlinks on AdvPDA a few years ago which worked well for picking up and dropping items and also for moving in directions as well as a few commonly used buttons for Windows mobiles allowing for quick gameplay with a stylus. 

Predictive typing mechs may also work if implemented properly I guess but if not implemented properly could be a barrier to switch people off.

I disagree with your comment about people realistically not using new systems. Perhaps with a two word parser arguably, some may agree, but if someone invents a radical new system which is easy to develop for and great to interface with from a hci point of view, then why not? 

"If you build it, they will come". Or not, as the case may be [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1650&start=0#p10638
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A Cover Art Comp?
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2010-11-10 00:44:46

I would be totally up for this kind of a comp.  To me what always distinguished the Infocom games was the quality of the game packaging -- box cover art, feelies etc.

As a newbie author though I hope you will allow authors to submit something less than a 100% finished game.  I am still learning Inform7 programming best practices (or maybe, not-quite-awful practices) and while I am confident I can get the opening scene prologue completed and polished (including testing, hints, help etc) in a reasonable amount of time, I am not so sure how long it will take to finish the rest the game.  (So I guess it depends on when the comp is held.)  

That said, I have already created the cover art and some related materials.  (For me that's actually easier than coding.)  Also, I am unclear on whether participation in one competition would preclude being part of others.

--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1628&start=0#p10639
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Inform Website
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2010-11-10 01:00:39

I have run across many dead or obscure links for Inform articles.  I tracked Jeff's tutorials down previously and have posted a link here in case its helpful to anyone.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com/2010/11/jeff-nyman-tutorials.html">http://www.z-machine-matter.com/2010/11 ... rials.html</a>

--Zack

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=60#p10640
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2010-11-10 01:27:34

As a somewhat reformed procedural / object-oriented programmer with some event-driven programming for GUIs, I think Inform7 has a lot of good things going for it in the declarative style, tools, extensions etc.  

But the hard part for me is learning to *think* in a manner that fits with the declarative / rule based style.  I suspect that some of the code I'm writing is just not the best way to do it in Inform.  Sort of like how a C programmer might program in Lisp or vice verse.  

Aaron's book is excellent, but it would be great if there were more comprehensive reference materials.  Still, I am writing my first game, albeit slowly.  But I have no doubt at some point I'll look back at this code and laugh.  

--Zack

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1661&start=0#p10641
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pausing the game when the player is writing
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2010-11-10 06:52:05

I see what you did Erik. I had the same problem at some point. You can avoid it by just adding

When play begins: change the command prompt to "".

Which is not that bad. Actually i prefer to play without a prompt, but i'd like to be able to customize the way it is printed : for instance printing it in red, so as to emphasize it. Is that possible ?

So i'm developing a real time game, and i've wondered how I should deal with time. Should the time of the game by synced to the real time (like in animal crossing) or should I allow it to be different ? (like in GTA where 1 min = 1 s).
So far I haven't really chosen, but I think a pausing-when-the-player-is-writing functionality is something my extension should include. For example:

[code]The Real Time rules is a rulebook.

A glulx timed activity rule
(this is the real time stage rule):
___________unless the player is typing:
______________________follow the Real Time rulebook;

To decide whether the player is writing:
___________if the input buffer length is 0, decide no;
___________decide yes;

To decide what number is the input buffer length:
___________(- SOME_I6_VARIABLE -).[/code]

my I6 variable being updated within the function that converts keystrokes to ASCII :
if the key typed is the delete key, decrement the I6-Variable,
else if the key typed is the newline key, I6-Variable = 0,
else increment the i6 variable.

I though this function was the VM_KeyChar function, but it doesn't seem to be called by the system...

Also I'm not sure to understand what gg_mainwin and gg_event are in
glk_cancel_line_event(gg_mainwin, gg_event); stored_buffer-->0 = gg_event-->2;

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1569&start=60#p10642
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I really the only person who doesn't get I7
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-10 06:58:36

[quote="ZUrlocker"]I am writing my first game, albeit slowly.  But I have no doubt at some point I'll look back at this code and laugh.  

--Zack[/quote]
This has always been the case for me, in any language. Even in LambaMOO (which is pretty much a classical single-inheritance OO language), I now have probably a dozen stylistically distinct historical layers of code of things I have built over the last 7-9 years for different purposes, and they all interlock so I am always facing (and laughing at) several different 'eras' of development of my own MOO coding technique in any extensive building or debugging session. I can't believe I was writing loops that way 4 years ago, and 6 years ago I was apparently afraid of trapping errors and preferred to carefully pre-check the validity of all variables instead. 2 years ago I had no idea how much of a CPU hit some of my simplest code was imposing on me, and etc. etc. I love it when these self-observations happen; it's how I know I've learned stuff.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1664&start=0#p10644
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Lost Items
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-10 10:04:05

I'm thinking about writing an extension.

It will be similar to Aaron Reed's "Remembering," and hopefully compatible with it.

Here's the basic idea:

Sometimes things in the game might disappear. In the case of my WIP, this will happen during flashbacks. They could also happen when the player changes to a different person, or an unusual effect causes an item to be lost (perhaps a pickpocket will take something from your inventory). We want the game to respond with something more helpful than "You can't see any such thing."

Remembering might work for this, but it only works for taking, dropping, and examining. "Buy the hen with the gold coin" won't work if the coin's been stolen from your person, and "ask Harold about Maude" won't work if Harold just jumped off the cliff. I want something that will work for ANY verb.

I am considering two approaches:

1. Add all lost items to the scope of the player, but fight like hell to keep them out of disambiguation.

2. Follow a Smarter Parser-like approach, and don't even include them in scope until we're about to print a parser error.

I think I can get a start on #1, but I've had so much trouble with disambiguation that I want to address that issue first. I can never seem to get "Does the player mean" or even Disambiguation Control to really do what I want. Even if I make "doing something with the bread" very likely and "doing something with the bread knife" very unlikely (not a real example), it seems like I still get a disambiguation question. So I'm nervous about adding all the lost things to scope for every command. In fact, just as there is an option in Remembering to NEVER disambiguate, I want to never offer a lost item as a disambiguation choice.

#2 is looking attractive, but Smarter Parser uses indexed text, which I'm still trying to avoid. Plus, my game so far has no need for glulx and it would be nice if it were mobile-friendly.

Any advice on which path to follow, or tips on how to implement either one?

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1661&start=0#p10645
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pausing the game when the player is writing
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-10 10:26:35

gg_mainwin is the story window; you are cancelling line input in this window.

gg_event is an array of four values. It gets filled in with information about the line of input that you're cancelling.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1663&start=0#p10646
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Naming rulebooks/Deciding the scope
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2010-11-10 10:45:15

Scope is one of those very fiddly bits of Inform, and the manual's description of it leaves swaths of it unexplained. Scope's tied to what the player or NPC can interact with, so any rules that you write will have to do with scope for the player or for a live person who's interacting with the simulated world.

The only scope rules I've ever had to do are "after deciding the scope of..." to add extra things in scope or pull some things out of scope. Unless you want to completely hand-roll your own scoping method, I would stick with after rules to make minor adjustments to the list of things in scope.

Have you looked through the five examples that are part of that manual page? They may help you get a better handle on adjusting scope.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1663&start=0#p10647
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Naming rulebooks/Deciding the scope
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-11-10 10:49:17

Er, the middle rulebook of an activity begins with the word for, but other than that, there's no restrictions.  For and of are both optional prepositions after a rulebook name (either in an activity or out of one).  For example (ha), these all compile and work fine[code]
Behavior is a person based rulebook.

Behavior for yourself: say "hi".
Behavior yourself: say "hi".
Behavior of yourself: say "hi".

Contemplating something is an activity on numbers.

For contemplating 5: say "yes".
For contemplating for 5: say "yes".
For contemplating of 5: say "yes".
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1663&start=0#p10648
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Naming rulebooks/Deciding the scope
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-10 11:02:56

Thanks, Ron! I thought I'd tried that, but I guess I never did.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1661&start=0#p10649
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pausing the game when the player is writing
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-10 11:48:11

[quote="Phonatacid"]I see what you did Erik. I had the same problem at some point. You can avoid it by just adding

When play begins: change the command prompt to "".

Which is not that bad. Actually i prefer to play without a prompt, but i'd like to be able to customize the way it is printed : for instance printing it in red, so as to emphasize it. Is that possible ?[/quote]

Well, the command prompt really isn't why I linked to that thread. zarf mentioned that one way to do what you want (only really practical in the future, once the line-break-on-line-input-cancel behavior is under author control) is to cancel and restart line input (using a timer to decide when to cancel). The code I linked includes the phrases you would need to do that--there's some relatively obscure I6 that needs to be done to retain the state of the buffer when the line event is canceled, and to repopulate the buffer when a new line input is requested (thanks again to zarf for his help figuring  it out!).

[quote="Phonatacid"] I think a pausing-when-the-player-is-writing functionality is something my extension should include.


For example:

[code]The Real Time rules is a rulebook.

A glulx timed activity rule
(this is the real time stage rule):
___________unless the player is typing:
______________________follow the Real Time rulebook;

To decide whether the player is writing:
___________if the input buffer length is 0, decide no;
___________decide yes;

To decide what number is the input buffer length:
___________(- SOME_I6_VARIABLE -).[/code]

my I6 variable being updated within the function that converts keystrokes to ASCII :
if the key typed is the delete key, decrement the I6-Variable,
else if the key typed is the newline key, I6-Variable = 0,
else increment the i6 variable.

I though this function was the VM_KeyChar function, but it doesn't seem to be called by the system...[/quote]

Line input and character input are two mutually exclusive modes in Glulx. The conversion of keystrokes in line input is performed by the interpreter, and can't be affected by the author--nothing is put into the line input buffer until the player presses return, or line input is canceled. 

VM_KeyChar, on the other hand, handles character input (char input). With char input, the library reads in a single keypress and returns the character code. (This is usually used for "Press any key to continue" input.) If you're really attached to the idea of pausing the timer while the player is typing, you could do it, as I mentioned above, by recreating the library's line input functionality using char input. This has definite downsides.

You could also do it more hackily by accepting the first character of any input as char input, pausing your timer, inserting the character entered into the line input buffer, and then requesting line input.

But, to be honest, I don't understand the reasoning behind wanting to pause the timer while the player is typing. Why pause it for typing but not for reading? The player will always be able to cheat your timer and, by typing a character immediately when the command prompt appears, fool the game into not advancing the clock at all.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1665&start=0#p10650
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Editing Extensions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-10 11:49:47

How do you recompile a story after you've edited an extension? Do you have to make a change to the story file to force it to be re-read?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1665&start=0#p10651
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Editing Extensions
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-10 11:55:11

Yep. I usually jump quickly over to the source pane, type a space randomly, undo it, and then press Go. I believe there's a request on uservoice for Inform to autodetect changes to dependencies as well as the story text.

When I'm writing an extension, I try to do 90% of the development in the main story window. When I have things nearly complete, I move the code into an extension.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1634&start=0#p10652
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Modeling Memory
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-10 12:17:26

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]
But if they SET the property that you now say is a Definition, well, include Epistemology but re-define Known to be seen and/or familiar and/or in-memory-container.[/quote]
How do you re-define an adjective from an extension? I tried doing it in my own extension and it didn't work:

[spoiler][code]Lost Items by Mike Ciul begins here.

Include Epistemology by Eric Eve.

Book 1 - Lost

Chapter 1 - Definition of lost

A thing can be lost.

Chapter 2 - Losing things

To lose (the item - a thing):
	Remove the item from play;
	Now the item is lost;

To abduct (the item - a thing) to (the prison - an object):
	Now the prison holds the item;
	Now the item is lost;

Chapter 3 - Finding things

To return (the item - a thing) to (the haven - an object):
	Now the haven holds the item;
	Now the item is not lost;

To put (the item - a thing) back on (the wearer - a person):
	Now the wearer wears the item;
	Now the item is not lost;
		
Book 2 - Basic Familiarity

[ replaces the definition of known/unknown in Epistemology ]

Definition: A thing is known if it is familiar or it is seen or it is lost.

Book 3 - Remembering lost things

After deciding the scope of the player:
	Repeat with item running through lost things:
		Place item in scope.

Instead of doing anything with a lost thing:
	say "That's odd. The [noun] doesn't seem to be here anymore."

Lost Items ends here.
[/code][/spoiler]

If I do an "epistat" on a thing that is unseen and unfamiliar, but lost, it comes up as "unknown".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1666&start=0#p10654
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Zork: Activision gives it some love in an unusual way!
User: Sslaxx / DateTime: 2010-11-10 12:49:18

[url]http://www.destructoid.com/zork-also-hidden-in-call-of-duty-black-ops-186858.phtml[/url] - via Call of Duty.

How bizarre.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1666&start=0#p10655
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Zork: Activision gives it some love in an unusual way!
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-11-10 13:00:58

I heard this on an IGN podcast and was going to post about it. Interesting.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1666&start=0#p10656
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Zork: Activision gives it some love in an unusual way!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-10 13:21:23

This is (an example of) why I think it's a little shortsighted when people complain that every article about IF starts by talking about "You are likely to be eaten by a grue." It's a cultural touchstone of sorts, and people think it's kind of cool. Isn't that the sort of thing writers should be mentioning, before (hopefully) going on to say how things have changed since then?

Perhaps the question is whether it's more like mentioning [i]Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead[/i] when you're talking about Tom Stoppard or mentioning "Valley Girl" when you're talking about Frank Zappa.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1666&start=0#p10657
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Zork: Activision gives it some love in an unusual way!
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-10 14:32:06

People who want to see the form as more literary probably feel the grue stuff gives the wrong impression? Personally, I feel that it's a sign of a mature art form to be comfortable with all forms of expression under its tent, rather than riven with subgroups who wish the others would disappear. Probably wise not to look too far down one's nose at the historically biggest crowdpleasers, either, since they pleased crowds for reasons that it's important not to forget. Plus, the field of artists is not exactly busting out at the seams so that oddballs or die-hard classicists can be casually discarded. Look at Japanese manga — they'll do recipe books in that art form, even. It's a sign of the amazing robustness of that movement — nobody takes it as a reflection on the form.

So, more people doing or mentioning more things in IF or portraying their vision of IF in a way that I may not be personally interested in or think is the best possible vision of IF? That isn't a problem I need to be too concerned about having.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1634&start=0#p10658
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Modeling Memory
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-11-10 14:37:06

Maybe I'm confused:

Why don't you change the verb to include [any thing] instead of [one thing]
and if the thing isn't visible, prevent people from doing something to it?

Seems simpler than making an indepth container for items which may show up again later.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1634&start=0#p10659
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Modeling Memory
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-10 15:10:15

[quote="tggdan3"]Maybe I'm confused:

Why don't you change the verb to include [any thing] instead of [one thing]
and if the thing isn't visible, prevent people from doing something to it?

Seems simpler than making an indepth container for items which may show up again later.[/quote]
Which verb? I'd have to change them all.

I'm thinking of doing this a different way - if you look at the extension code you'll see that it has a "lost" property instead of using a special container. But the real issue is having the correct response with every possible action.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1666&start=0#p10660
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Zork: Activision gives it some love in an unusual way!
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-10 15:20:24

[quote]This is (an example of) why I think it's a little shortsighted when people complain that every article about IF starts by talking about "You are likely to be eaten by a grue."[/quote]

I haven't seen that complaint, actually. 

I grouse a little when an article about IF starts with "It's been dead for twenty years -- but guess what!"  But you'll note I kind of did that myself, when I started doing publicity this month.

I do not hesitate to mention the grues (and the twisty little passages), because people *do* remember them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1666&start=0#p10661
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Zork: Activision gives it some love in an unusual way!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-10 16:58:53

Sarah Morayati says pretty much that [url=http://www.sarahmorayati.com/2010/06/things-i-never-want-to-see-again-in-if-coverage/]here[/url] (I think I agree with everything else in her post). That's just something I've read recently and can find, though; I think I've seen the same complaint elsewhere, though I could be misremembering. 

"It's been dead for twenty years!" does seem pretty annoying, though when I found out about the modern IF scene my reaction was approximately "Whoa! They're still doing those? I haven't thought about them for fifteen years!"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1667&start=0#p10663
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: New actions applying to things with no other req.s
User: UnclGhost / DateTime: 2010-11-10 17:43:16

I'm trying to make actions that apply to things that may or may not be present. For example, "remember x" along the lines of [i]The Aisle[/i], where the game says something about a thing that might not be nearby. Since the default setting is to apply new actions only to nearby objects, and "applying to a non-visible object" doesn't seem to work, I can't think of any way to do this. Is it even possible to have actions apply to objects not in the same room? Thanks for your help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1666&start=0#p10664
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Zork: Activision gives it some love in an unusual way!
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-11-10 17:57:41

I said it [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1646]a few threads down[/url].

It's like if every mention of a cool new movie began, "Remember [i]Casablanca[/i]?  Here's looking at you kid!" even if the movie wasn't a romance.  People who like films, but [i]not[/i] romance films, would get sick of it pretty quick.  Surely even fans of Casablanca would get bored with it eventually?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1666&start=0#p10665
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Zork: Activision gives it some love in an unusual way!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-10 18:46:34

It might make sense, if [i]Casablanca[/i] was the only movie any of the readers had ever heard of.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1667&start=0#p10666
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New actions applying to things with no other req.s
User: eu / DateTime: 2010-11-10 19:02:00

This topic is covered in the Recipe Book under the category ``commands;'' see RB 6.2.  It will also point you to Writing with Inform; see WI 16.7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1664&start=0#p10667
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lost Items
User: Janka / DateTime: 2010-11-10 19:30:45

I'd say #2 is the way to go, especially if you want small memory footprint. #1 adds a lot of complicated code, which uses up a lot of memory, too. #2 in only adds another string->object number mapping table and only a small code piece which does the mapping. I don't think there would be ever a game which has more than some dozen of objects which may become "unavailable", so a plain table should be fast enough.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1667&start=0#p10668
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New actions applying to things with no other req.s
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-10 19:56:42

[quote="UnclGhost"]I'm trying to make actions that apply to things that may or may not be present. For example, "remember x" along the lines of [i]The Aisle[/i], where the game says something about a thing that might not be nearby. Since the default setting is to apply new actions only to nearby objects, and "applying to a non-visible object" doesn't seem to work, I can't think of any way to do this. Is it even possible to have actions apply to objects not in the same room? Thanks for your help.[/quote]

You do this by 1) declaring your action as acting on a [b]visible[/b] object and 2) declaring your grammar using "any" tokens:

[code]Thinking about is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "think about [any thing]" as thinking about.[/code]

Why does Inform call this a "visible" thing when it really means that the thing can be either visible or not visible? It's a strange terminological choice that will hopefully be changed at some point--you're definitely not the first to have been confused about it--but if you think of visible in this case as simply the more expansive selector when opposed to "touchable," that might help it make more sense.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1626&start=10#p10672
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: BRIEF or VERBOSE
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-10 21:04:54

I'm also happy with the new default verbose, and also not a fan of printing room descriptions when exiting containers.

I've seen some other situations in I7 where I wished I could turn off the automatic look. Moving the player was one of them (is there an option to do this silently that I'm forgetting?), and changing the player to another person is another. Both of these can be frustrating because they don't do the same thing 100% of the time - they depend on the previous location of the player. At least that's how I remember it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1626&start=10#p10673
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: BRIEF or VERBOSE
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-10 21:11:07

[quote="capmikee"]I've seen some other situations in I7 where I wished I could turn off the automatic look. Moving the player was one of them (is there an option to do this silently that I'm forgetting?)[/quote]

"move the player to the Antechamber, without printing a room description"?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1633&start=0#p10674
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: General Game Polishing
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2010-11-10 22:59:23

[quote="tggdan3"]People seem to hate stock responses.[/quote]

To answer your question first, I think it's one of the (many) cases where the only correct answer is "it depends."

To respond to the sentence quoted above: personally, I only hate stock responses when they overstep their bounds of presumption (for example, the default Inform 7 response to throwing anything at a living thing is wince-inducing, especially for certain characters, and especially for harmless actions like THROW FRISBEE AT DOG).

I'm partial to stock responses which don't characterize the protagonist in any way. Frankly, I'd prefer a flat-out refusal ("Nah.") to a response that presumes something about the protagonist's personality, unless it's been written specifically to characterize by the game's author.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1626&start=10#p10675
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: BRIEF or VERBOSE
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-10 23:10:26

More generally, replace the standard getting off rule with one that does that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1666&start=0#p10676
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Zork: Activision gives it some love in an unusual way!
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-11 03:22:49

Casablanca is better than about 99.99% of movies released today, so mentioning it way more often than people already do would not be a bad thing. Anyway, I can see the point — repetitious things get boring. I agree. This isn't a matter of childish fixation on a random detail though. These particular parts of gaming history do deserve attention. Just because some may have given them all the lifetime attention they think they deserve, doesn't mean everyone has. Some people are still burning through them. Some never got what was so great about them and probably need to learn. Some may see depths in the classics that many others have never seen, and thus simply aren't done with them, yet. Art is personal. Kind of odd to declare that 'Everyone should be personally over and past these particular works of art.'

As an example, it can be annoying being a veteran on some technical web forum but that doesn't mean newbies aren't necessary, and newbies always come in with a distorted view of things fed by the simplifications of popular culture. It's annoying -- it's also life. So that's all I think it is. Most everybody has to go through the 'omg they aren't dead' stage and 'remember Zork' stage on the way into this medium. Best not to yank the red carpet out from under them, and I think that's exactly what it's like for people indulging in nostalgia, etc., when somebody implies to them that they shouldn't be interested in this medium for that particular reason; it's like the geeklove train has been cancelled after everybody but you is already at the destination. Most of us rode the nostalgia train to get in here, at some point in our pasts. And now nobody's supposed to ride it anymore?

I say let them come. I say send out [i]more[/i] nostalgia trains. Ever hear of 'bait n switch'? 8)

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1664&start=0#p10677
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lost Items
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2010-11-11 04:00:04

Well, I ran into something similar a while ago. In a nutshell: the player has, at the beginning, four ropes that he can loose. I wanted the game to respond to a lost rope with something other than "You can't see...", so I ended up creating the "ghost thing".

In general terms, it was something like this (outta memory):

[code]A thing can be real or ghost. A thing is usually real.
[edited to "real"... I wrote "ghost" by mistake.]

A ghost thing is usually undescribed.

Instead of doing something to a ghost thing:
	say "That was a nice [noun], but it's gone now."

Does the player mean doing something to a real thing: it is very likely.
[this takes care of the disambiguation problems]

[Example game]
Gallery is a room.

The red stone is a real thing in the gallery.

The green stone is a ghost thing in the gallery.

Test stone with "x stone/x green/x red"[/code]

You can then make things be real or ghost on demand, and you can make a whole bunch of rules for ghost things (not showing up in descriptions, inventory, etc.)

I don't know Inform well enough to tell you how will this behave regarding memory, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1626&start=10#p10679
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: BRIEF or VERBOSE
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-11 08:18:37

[quote="matt w"]"move the player to the Antechamber, without printing a room description"?[/quote]
Yeah, that's it.

For some reason I thought "move the player" was deprecated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1666&start=0#p10682
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Zork: Activision gives it some love in an unusual way!
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-11-11 10:32:22

[quote="Laroquod"]Most everybody has to go through the 'omg they aren't dead' stage and 'remember Zork' stage on the way into this medium. [...] Most of us rode the nostalgia train to get in here, at some point in our pasts. And now nobody's supposed to ride it anymore?[/quote]
It's just that some of us[i] can't[/i] ride it, because we're too young.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1664&start=0#p10683
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lost Items
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-11 10:44:57

[quote="Janka"]I'd say #2 is the way to go, especially if you want small memory footprint. #1 adds a lot of complicated code, which uses up a lot of memory, too. #2 in only adds another string->object number mapping table and only a small code piece which does the mapping. I don't think there would be ever a game which has more than some dozen of objects which may become "unavailable", so a plain table should be fast enough.[/quote]
Is there some way to invoke the name-parsing power of Inform there? I'm going to have at least a dozen objects, and I don't want to duplicate the parsing of their names for both cases when they're present and when they're absent.

I tried #1 briefly, but unfortunately it only works for verbs that take a visible noun. The touchable requirement seems to produce a stock error before my Instead rule ever gets a chance (printing "That isn't available.")

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1659&start=0#p10684
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Which remaining comp games shouldn't I miss?
User: Silas Greenback / DateTime: 2010-11-11 10:45:16

[quote="jacksonmead"]

And I seem to be in the minority on this, but I really liked Leadlight. Yes, it's got the Apple II thing going on, but I thought it was a solid game. I recommend reading the manual (it's short) because you'll pick up a few things that will make the game easier to play, like learning that you can hit enter to repeat a command, which comes in handy for the battles. It will very likely take you all the way to the 2 hours to finish, though.

[/quote]

I'm with Kevin on thinking Leadlight is a great game. I'd highly recommend playing it with the AppleWin emulator. Without AppleWin, I wouldn't have bothered. Setting it for monochrome green like in my elementary school days was a plus, too. 

Out of the others in your to-do list, Divis Mortis and Gris et Jaune are the best in my opinion.

(At some point, there's no shame in relying on the walkthrough for Gris et Jaune. Like a reviewer who's name escapes me said, it has a lot of promise in a later and more polished release.)

Edit: The Rogue of the Multiverse was one I also liked, but the deviation from standard compass navigation nearly ruined it for me. Other than that annoying aspect, it's a well written game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1669&start=0#p10685
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Parchment/Quixie question: Is modding them allowed?
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-11-11 11:09:59

I'm working on a project that would benefit a lot from having keypress detection. (It's sort of like a roguelike... ;o ) I'll be using Quixie (or maybe Parchment, depending on how big it ends up being - but probably Quixie) for releasing it for a few reasons, one of which is so that I can mod in keypress detection. But, is this okay with the authors of those systems?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1664&start=0#p10686
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lost Items
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-11-11 11:13:09

How about something like this (an imperfect solution):

[code]Rule for printing a parser error when the latest parser error is the can't see any such thing error and the player's command includes "[any ghost thing]":
	say "That was a nice [matched text], but it's gone now."[/code]
(This assumes that the ghost thing is not in scope anymore.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1669&start=0#p10687
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment/Quixie question: Is modding them allowed?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-11 11:14:48

Before you jump into hacking these interpreters, can I ask: why do you need to hack Quixe to provide keypress input? Wouldn't it make more sense to use the keypress input that's built into Inform/Glulx?

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1669&start=0#p10688
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment/Quixie question: Is modding them allowed?
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-11-11 11:19:01

Woah, guess I'm behind times. I totally didn't realize such a thing existed.

/looks for documentation for that

EDIT:

> Facepalm epically.
You facepalm rather epically when you realize that the documentation was RIGHT THERE.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1669&start=0#p10689
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment/Quixie question: Is modding them allowed?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-11 11:23:15

It's built into the I6/Glulx Inform library, but not implemented at the I7 level. You can get basic functionality with the Basic Screen Effects extension, but you'll probably need to program in Glulx to get what you want.

I put up a Nethack-inspired example a little while back:

[url]http://glimmr.wordpress.com/2010/10/29/an-experiment-with-keystroke-input-in-if/[/url]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1669&start=0#p10690
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment/Quixie question: Is modding them allowed?
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-11-11 11:29:19

So would it be possible to be like, "Okay, he pressed s, so make him go south"? (Without waiting for enter to be pressed.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1669&start=0#p10691
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment/Quixie question: Is modding them allowed?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-11 11:31:17

Yes, you'll see that if you follow the link I posted to play the example.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1669&start=0#p10692
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment/Quixie question: Is modding them allowed?
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-11-11 11:38:27

I looked at it, but not very closely. It [i]seemed[/i] like it [i]might[/i] only have been able to manipulate the input string.

Which actually makes no sense but w/e.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1669&start=0#p10693
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment/Quixie question: Is modding them allowed?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-11 11:50:05

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying, and that's probably why you said it made no sense  [emote]:)[/emote] 

You can do anything you want with a keypress. That example takes a keypress, converts into a command or partial command, and then parses it using Inform's parser (as if the player had actually typed it as line input). 

But you could also cut out Inform's parser entirely and parse the commands yourself, e.g. through a table that keys keypresses to stored actions. That becomes more difficult, though, if you want to parse anything other than a single-word command.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1669&start=0#p10694
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment/Quixie question: Is modding them allowed?
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-11-11 11:56:58

Actually, after a bit of thinking, I thought of a better way to do what I'm aiming for.

Is it possible (without hacking the interpreter) to have links on your page that are equivalent to typing something? (eg. a button that has the same effect as typing "s" and pressing enter) And, can you output HTML?

Let me explain what I'm trying to do: There are battles in this game which are fought out on a "battle grid". I'm thinking of outputting the grid as HTML: img tags for the individual tiles, a tags (a = anchor = what's commonly called a "link", if you don't know - I don't know you at all so idk ;P ) around the grid tiles that you can move to that move you to that tile when clicked, and other links/text on the sides/bottom for stats and actions and stuff. I'll also use JavaScript to display extra information about stuff you mouse over.

tl;dr without modding the interpreter, can you output HTML, and can you make links that give commands to the interpreter as if the player had typed them?

EDIT: And I'm sorry if it was rude to assume that you didn't know HTML. I was just tryin' to avoid confusion.

EDIT2: al2o sorry for being a complete and utter noob. >.>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1666&start=10#p10695
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Zork: Activision gives it some love in an unusual way!
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-11 12:05:52

[quote="Pacian"][quote="Laroquod"]Most everybody has to go through the 'omg they aren't dead' stage and 'remember Zork' stage on the way into this medium. [...] Most of us rode the nostalgia train to get in here, at some point in our pasts. And now nobody's supposed to ride it anymore?[/quote]
It's just that some of us[i] can't[/i] ride it, because we're too young.[/quote]
Good point. Most of the younger people I've introduced to IF, first heard me talking about it in let's face it a nostalgic way, and then got curious.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1670&start=0#p10696
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Setting the Clock to a Specific Time
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-11-11 12:19:40

I have several clocks in-game that are set at the right time. One puzzle has the player resetting the clocks to 2:30. After that the player can reset the clock back to the real time. I want to prevent the player from setting the clock to any other time other than 2:30, but I'm not so sure how would I do that without the message sounding ridiculous. Right now attempting to set the time to anything other than 2:30 results in "No, you can't set that to anything." 

[code]Setting is an action applying to one visible thing.  Understand "set [something] to half past two" and "set [something] to2:30" and "set [something]" as setting.


Resetting is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "reset [something]" as resetting.

Carry out resetting:
	now the noun is not set;
	say "Now the clock is set to [the time of day in words]."
	
Check resetting:
	if the noun is not a clock,
		say "You can't reset that!" instead;
	if the clock is not set,
		say "The clock is already set at the right time." instead.

Check setting:
	if the noun is not a clock,
		say "Why would you set that?" instead.

Carry out setting:
	now the noun is set;
	say "Now the clock is set to half past two."[/code]

Also is there anyway to allow the player to type
       
           > set clock to 2:30

without having an error popping up?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1669&start=0#p10697
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment/Quixie question: Is modding them allowed?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-11 13:25:04

Allowing the online interpreters to receive instructions directly from the game is planned for both Quixe and Parchment. I believe that there is a prerelease version of Parchment that incorporates the capability, whereas Quixe support is still a few months away, I would guess.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1669&start=10#p10699
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment/Quixie question: Is modding them allowed?
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-11-11 14:05:43

I can't wait a few months... I'll code it myself, then!

;D

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1670&start=0#p10701
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting the Clock to a Specific Time
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-11 14:46:33

You can actually understand the time set, which will allow your grammar to understand any time, and your check rules to reject unwanted cases:

[code]Setting is an action applying to one visible thing and one time.  Understand "set [something] to [time]" as setting.

Check setting:
	if the time understood is not 2:30 pm:
		say "No, you can't set the clock to anything but 2:30 PM." instead.

Carry out setting:
	now the noun is set;
	say "Now the clock is set to half past two in the afternoon."[/code]

You'd probably want to provide some alternate grammar to catch incorrectly typed times and instruct the player how to correctly type a time.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1670&start=0#p10702
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting the Clock to a Specific Time
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-11-11 14:52:46

I didn't know that. Thank you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1670&start=0#p10703
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting the Clock to a Specific Time
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-11-11 15:13:27

Actually I just tried that and it produces a really odd reaction. 

[code]A clock is a kind of thing. Clocks can be set or not set. A clock is usually not set. Clocks are rarely portable.

A hall-grandfather is a clock. A hall-grandfather is in the uhall. The description of the hall-grandfather is "Your standard grandfather clock, all cherry wood and polished brass. [if not set]The hands rest on [the time of day in words].[otherwise]The hands rest frozen on half past two." The printed name of the hall-grandfather is "grandfather clock". Understand "grandfather clock" or "clock" or "grandfather" as hall-grandfather. 

Setting is an action applying to one visible thing and one time.  Understand "set [something] to [time]" as setting.

Resetting is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "reset [something]" as resetting.

Carry out resetting:
	now the noun is not set;
	say "Now the clock is set to [the time of day in words]."
	
Check resetting:
	if the noun is not a clock,
		say "You can't reset that!" instead;
	if the clock is not set,
		say "The clock is already set at the right time." instead.
		
Check setting:
	if the time understood is not 2:30 pm:
		say "No, you can't set the clock to anything but 2:30 PM." instead;
	if the noun is not a clock,
		say "Why would you set that?" instead.

Carry out setting:
   now the noun is set;
   say "Now the clock is set to half past two in the afternoon."[/code]

It works perfectly until you try to reset the clock. Technically it shouldn't do anything but revert the description back to telling the right time, but instead you get this.

>x clock
Your standard grandfather clock, all cherry wood and polished brass. The hands rest on twenty-two minutes past eight.

>set clock to 2:30 PM
Now the clock is set to half past two in the afternoon.

>x clock
Your standard grandfather clock, all cherry wood and polished brass. The hands rest frozen on half past two.

>reset clock
The clock is already set at the right time.

It's technically true since the change is just superficial, but I'm not sure why the clock doesn't go back to being not set.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1670&start=0#p10704
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting the Clock to a Specific Time
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-11 15:29:43

[quote="Bistre"]Actually I just tried that and it produces a really odd reaction. 

[code]A clock is a kind of thing. Clocks can be set or not set. A clock is usually not set. Clocks are rarely portable.[/code]

>reset clock
The clock is already set at the right time.

It's technically true since the change is just superficial, but I'm not sure why the clock doesn't go back to being not set.[/quote]

Your problem is the line "Clocks can be set or not set" -- Inform is getting confused about what "not set" means. If you just do this:

[code]A clock is a kind of thing. Clocks can be set. Clocks are rarely portable.[/code]

...it should work. (Inform generates its own "not set" when you declare that clocks can be "set".)

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1670&start=0#p10707
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting the Clock to a Specific Time
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-11-11 17:03:40

It still doesn't work...unless I'm missing your point?

[code]A clock is a kind of thing. Clocks can be set. Clocks are rarely portable.

A hall-grandfather is a clock. A hall-grandfather is in the uhall. The description of the hall-grandfather is "Your standard grandfather clock, all cherry wood and polished brass. [if set]The hands rest frozen on half past two.[otherwise]The hands rest on [the time of day in words]." 

Setting is an action applying to one visible thing and one time.  Understand "set [something] to [time]" as setting.

Resetting is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "reset [something]" as resetting.

Carry out resetting:
	say "Now the clock is set to [the time of day in words].";
	now the noun is not set.
	
Check resetting:
	if the noun is not a clock,
		say "You can't reset that!" instead;
	if the clock is not set,
		say "The clock is already set at the right time." instead.
		
Check setting:
	if the time understood is not 2:30 pm:
		say "You move the hands to [time understood in words] but hastily move them back again. You wouldn't want to accidentally confuse someone." instead; 
	if the noun is not a clock,
		say "Why would you set that?" instead.

Carry out setting:
   now the noun is set;
   say "Now the clock is set to half past two."
   
[/code]

Reset doesn't change the clock's status back to "not set" for some reason.

Also, is there a way to turn off the pm/am distinction? I mean it is a 12-hour grandfather clock.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1664&start=0#p10708
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lost Items
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2010-11-11 18:11:16

You could use the ghost approach and move the object to the player's possessions as it becomes ghost. Then it's just a case of changing inventory listing so that ghosts don't show. That way the object is yours, anywhere, anytime - darn, this sounded so much like a radio commercial.

The plus side of this approach is you don't have to mind scope, tables or indexed text and the ghost object ends up answering to any command, just as a normal object would. The minus side is you have a problem with ghost NPCs, but you can work around that by switching from a John [i]person[/i] to a John [i]thing[/i] and move it to the player.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1669&start=10#p10709
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment/Quixie question: Is modding them allowed?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-11 18:22:51

See <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1623">viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1623</a>

With that you can output any Javascript code you want with Parchment. You can't currently return data to the Z-Machine however.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1670&start=0#p10710
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting the Clock to a Specific Time
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-11-11 18:28:00

Actually thinking about it I think I know what's wrong.

[code]Carry out resetting:
	now the noun is not set; 
	say "Now the clock is set to [the time of day in words].";

	
Check resetting:
	if the noun is not a clock,
		say "You can't reset that!" instead;
	if the noun not set,
		say "The clock is already set at the right time." instead.[/code]

Inform resets the clock to "not set" then checks it apparently, leading to "The clock is already set at the right time". 

I fiddled around with the order and came up with this:

[code]Carry out resetting:
	now the noun is not set;
	say "Now the clock is set to [the time of day in words].";
	stop the action.
	
Check resetting:
	if the noun is not a clock,
		say "You can't reset that!" instead;
	if the noun is not set,
		say "The clock is already set at the right time." instead.[/code]

I have no idea why that works but it does. Thank you for all your help Erik.

Now if only I can figure out how to make the game accept 2:30 and not 2:30 pm exclusively.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1657&start=0#p10712
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Possible Bad Link
User: Merk / DateTime: 2010-11-11 18:54:57

Looks like it has already been resolved.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1671&start=0#p10713
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Good idea or bad: rename "contents" source tab to "outline"
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-11-11 19:42:33

There's two tabs in the IDE that say "contents".  One's in the index, containing variables, object instantiations (again??), table sizes, and the library card.  The other "contents" is above the source text:  it shows the source text as outline.

Are the identical names intentional?  When I write "try clicking the contents tab in the IDE" I feel I have to qualify which tab I'm talking about each time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1664&start=0#p10714
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lost Items
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-11 21:34:27

[quote="Juhana"]How about something like this (an imperfect solution):

[code]Rule for printing a parser error when the latest parser error is the can't see any such thing error and the player's command includes "[any ghost thing]":
	say "That was a nice [matched text], but it's gone now."[/code]
(This assumes that the ghost thing is not in scope anymore.)[/quote]
What's imperfect about about that? That looks like exactly what I need.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1664&start=0#p10715
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lost Items
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-11 21:37:53

[quote="lribeiro"]You could use the ghost approach and move the object to the player's possessions as it becomes ghost. Then it's just a case of changing inventory listing so that ghosts don't show. That way the object is yours, anywhere, anytime - darn, this sounded so much like a radio commercial.

The plus side of this approach is you don't have to mind scope, tables or indexed text and the ghost object ends up answering to any command, just as a normal object would. The minus side is you have a problem with ghost NPCs, but you can work around that by switching from a John [i]person[/i] to a John [i]thing[/i] and move it to the player.[/quote]
That's like what I was doing before. I had a container called "your memory" which was part of the player. It might also work as a backdrop. When doing it that way, you don't even have to hide anything. It even worked for NPCs. But it does have the potential for weird interactions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1670&start=0#p10716
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting the Clock to a Specific Time
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-11 21:47:56

[quote="Bistre"][code]Carry out resetting:
	now the noun is not set; 
	say "Now the clock is set to [the time of day in words].";[/code][/quote]

That may work, but it bothers me. Shouldn't it be:

[code]Carry out resetting:
    now the noun is not set;

Report resetting:
    say "Now [the noun] is set to [the time of day in words].";[/code]

[quote][code]
Check resetting:
	if the noun is not a clock,
		say "You can't reset that!" instead;
	if the noun is not set,
		say "The clock is already set at the right time." instead.[/code]

I have no idea why that works but it does. Thank you for all your help Erik.[/quote]
Your earlier posts said "if the [b]clock[/b] is not set," not "if the [b]noun[/b] is not set" - maybe that was the real problem?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1672&start=0#p10717
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: inform Attack by Victor Gijsbers
User: Dododrone / DateTime: 2010-11-11 22:21:48

ok, I downloaded and installed the extension: "Inform-Attack" by Victor Gijsbers. A excellent  extension for me as it gives detailed control over many different combat aspects.

 I wrote a small combat test game to try out code without having to compile my larger main project over and over.

I'm having a problem with coding the reloading of a weapon. The 77 pg help text doesn't seem to suggest how to code what types/calibur of ammunition fit into what calibur weapon. Or how to prevent a player from reloading a weapon when the player is not carrying extra ammunition. Obviously I wouldn't want to allow a player to put shotgun shells into a .22 pistol or want them to pull ammunition out of the air to load into the weapon.

any suggestions on how to write this? Even locations of any examples online would help. 

Here is what I have so far for the test room code:

[spoiler]"Combat Test room" by Dodo

Include the Plurality by Emily Short

Include Inform Attack by Victor Gijsbers.

The Square room is a room.

The description of the Square room is
"A bland square room. The walls, floor, and ceiling are made of concrete. There is a single light screwed in a socket which dangles from the ceiling. There is a table against one wall"

The player has a number called permanent health. The player has a number called current health. The player has a number called defense.

The permanent health of the player is 100.
The melee of the player is 5.
The defense of the player is 2.

A table is in the square room. The table is a supporter. The table is scenery.

A box is on the table. The box is a container. The box is scenery. The box is opaque. The box is closed and openable.

The description of the box is
"A Highly poilshed, black box made of wood."
 
The description of the table is
"A sturdy looking oak table. The varnish has been stripped away leaving bare wood. On the table is a box.".

A Firearm is a kind of Weapon.

A Pistol is a kind of Firearm.
	
A Colt M1911A1 is a pistol.
	Maximum shots of the Colt M1911A1 is 8. 
	Current shots of the Colt M1911A1 is 0. 
	Damage die of the Colt M1911A1 is 8.
	Dodgability of the Colt M1911A1 is 2.
	Active parry max of the Colt M1911A1 is 0.
	Passive parry max of the Colt M1911A1 is 0.
	Weapon attack bonus of the Colt M1911A1 is 2.
	Maximum load time of the Colt M1911A1 is 1.
	Current load time of the Colt M1911A1 is 0.

A Colt M1911A1 is in the box.

The description of the Colt M1911A1 is
"A handgun similar to the ones carried by soldiers in WWII. It can hold 8 rounds of .45 calibur ACP."

South of the Square room is the Oval room.

A person has a number called permanent health. A person has a number called current health. A person has a number called defense.

Jack is a person.
The permanent health of Jack is 20.
The melee of Jack is 2.
The defense of Jack is 1.
Jack is hostile.

Jack is in the Oval room.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1670&start=0#p10718
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting the Clock to a Specific Time
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-11-11 22:28:52

Oh...that was rather stupid of me, especially since I was agonizing over that for like 3 hours. 

Thanks capmikee! At least I don't have to wonder anymore. Also I'm really sorry for wasting every one's time over a typo.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1628&start=0#p10719
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Inform Website
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-11-12 03:02:47

Oh, thanks Zack.

And thank you Jeff Nyman.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1664&start=0#p10720
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lost Items
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-11-12 03:05:37

[quote="capmikee"]What's imperfect about about that? That looks like exactly what I need.[/quote]
I thought it needed a disclaimer because you need to tweak it to prevent, for example, the following more or less fringe cases:

[quote]>X ROCK
That was a nice ROCK, but it's gone now.

>take the rock
That was a nice the rock, but it's gone now.

>take big [assuming "big" is an adjective of one of the things]
That was a nice big, but it's gone now.

>get rock [when there's an object with a "get" in its name, like "a Get Lamp DVD"]
That was a nice get, but it's gone now.
[/quote]
In fact I'm usually extremely cautious about using user input as such in the output. It'd be better to loop through every ghost thing and check if it's mentioned in the player's input, but frankly I don't know how to implement that (you can't use variables as grammar tokens).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1664&start=0#p10721
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lost Items
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-11-12 03:39:37

Actually it would be awesome if someone would make an extension that could do something like this:

[code]if the parser would understand the command "foo bar": ...
if the parser error for the command "foo bar" would be the can't see any such thing error: ...
Parse the command "foo bar".
if the verb "foo" is in the dictionary: ...
if the noun "foo" is in the dictionary: ...
[/code]
And I would [i]kill[/i] for:

[code]repeat with X running through things in the location:
    if "foo" is understood as the name of X: 
        say "[X] is what you're looking for."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1670&start=0#p10722
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting the Clock to a Specific Time
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-11-12 06:11:38

Actually, I couldn't reproduce the problem with the not set clock at all. 

Perhaps you were typing commands right into your work in progress rather than into a tiny "game" with just the fragment of source text presented in this thread? As, in your WIP you have several clocks, Inform may perhaps have interpreted "the clock" as some other clock than the one you were resetting. (Changing "clock" to "noun" shouldn't make any difference to the code presented in the posts, I think, since there is only one clock in it.)

Two more things by the bye, both rather general and both such that you may be well aware of the already. In that case, please, have forbearance with my meddling.

1) You made a reasonable guess as to the problem:
[quote]Carry out resetting:
   now the noun is not set; 
   say "Now the clock is set to [the time of day in words].";

   
Check resetting:
   if the noun is not a clock,
      say "You can't reset that!" instead;
   if the noun not set,
      say "The clock is already set at the right time." instead.


Inform resets the clock to "not set" then checks it apparently, leading to "The clock is already set at the right time".[/quote]
But that couldn't be the answer, for a reason that is well worth to know. Check rules for an action are always run before the carry out rules for that action. It doesn't matter if you put the check or the carry out rules first in your source text. (The rulebooks for an action are run in this order: before, instead, check, carry out, after, report.)

2) In your source you define setting and resetting as applying to "one visible thing". That will make it possible to set and reset clocks that the player can see but can't touch. Obviously, I know nothing of your game, so that may well be exactly what you want. But if you want to keep the player from setting and resetting clocks that he/she can't touch, make the actions simply apply to "one thing" (which Inform will interpret as "one visible and touchable thing").

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1664&start=10#p10723
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lost Items
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-11-12 06:34:33

[quote="Juhana"]
And I would [i]kill[/i] for:

[code]repeat with X running through things in the location:
    if "foo" is understood as the name of X: 
        say "[X] is what you're looking for."[/code][/quote]

This is a brute-force approach that I haven't tried, but would it be possible to do something along these lines? You create a "tag [any thing in location]" action that actually only sets a global truth state (true if the thing understood is found, false otherwise). The action is out-of-world. Then, you pipe that through "the player's command" and "try" it in sequence.

I have no idea how fast it would be, or even if it's deeply stupid. The thought of trying it frightens me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1674&start=0#p10725
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Possible Dialog Extension
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2010-11-12 06:44:21

Before starting to write my first conversation, I needed to decide one thing: how am I going to code it? I wanted something [i]a bit[/i] like Blue Lacuna, which works by topics. I browsed BL's code, but I found it very tied up with the rest of the game's structure. So I started reading the main dialog extensions in Inform page, but none gave me what I wanted out of the box, so I edited them to fit my needs. At the end I realized it hardly resembled the source material at all, so I thought I could share the code. I'm thinking if it's worth to make an extension out of it. I'll need help testing it and polishing it, of course. Short's extension will be coming any time soon, but from what I saw while playing Alabaster, it is a completely different beast. This one is a simple chat-by-topic mechanism with memory and topic suggestions.

The source material I used was:
- Conversation Framework and Conversation Suggestions by Eric Eve.
- Conversation Framework for Sand-Dancer by Aaron Reed.

It needs, at the moment, the following extensions:
- Epistemology by Eric Eve.
- Complex Listing by Emily Short.

(Kudos to all of those above!)

So, what does it do?

[b]Dialog Scene and the Chat-pall[/b]
Conversations have to be started by greeting an NPC, implicity or explicitly. Everytime a conversation starts, a dialog scene begins. You can create any rule you want during that scene, so that you can forbid some actions during a conversation. It also selects one NPC as the chat-pall. You can change the chat-pall at any time during a dialog scene.

[b]Chatting by Topic[/b]
Talking is done by typing topics. Ask/tell are dropped completely.

[b]Memory[/b]
It remembers all topics discussed, as well as the last discussed topic with each chat-pall. It is arranged so that it distinguishes a successefull discussion from an unsuccessfull one, so that if you have a customed response for an NPC refusing to adress a given topic, such topic won't be taken as a discussed thing.

It also remembers if you ever started a conversation with a given NPC.

[b]NPC control[/b]
It allows for mute NPCs, the ones you can't talk to, and it monitors silent and talking NPCs.

[b]Debugging mode[/b]
When it is on and a dialog is happening, it prints useful info, like the current chat-pall, the last discussed topic and the list of discussed topics with that chat-pall.

[b]Topic suggestions[/b]
It prints a line with suggested topics. You can add and remove suggestions with text subs. It removes discussed things from topic suggestions automaticaly, like the Sand-Dancer extension.

[b]Different prompt[/b]
It changes the prompt while a dialog is happening to anything. Defaults to "Talking with [the chat-pall]>"

[b]Text Substitutions[/b]
Everything was done with text substitutions, and then a chapter with the "defaults" was added. This allows for easy override of the default answers (greeting, saying goodbye, reacting to unknown subjects, etc) to all NPCs, as well as the "choice of words" to stuff like the topic suggestions, the look of the prompt, etc.


I've created an example game, so you can see it working. You can switch debug mode in this version, although this won't show in a final release.

Online play [url=http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http%3A//42hooks.weebly.com/uploads/4/8/1/1/4811704/chattopic.z8]here[/url] (Edited. It had a bug and Weebly wasn't updating the file...)
Source code [url=http://42hooks.weebly.com/uploads/4/8/1/1/4811704/source.txt]here[/url].

So now I would like to know two things: [b]1)[/b] if it is worthwhile to make an extension out of this, which involves documentation, etc; [b]2)[/b] if any of you would like to help me test it and polish it.

Hugs and kisses, 
Leandro

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1629&start=0#p10726
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Twisty Passages
User: rootshell / DateTime: 2010-11-12 07:35:32

No matter how many times I REGISTER I NEVER can login... Please, check your code

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1675&start=0#p10727
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Revert to Past Game State
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-12 09:57:14

I didn't quite know how to word the subject of this post. What I'm wondering is whether it's possible in Inform 7 to do something equivalent to what AutoSave does in TADS 3. The description of that extension is that is "allows the player to restore the game to an earlier state determined by the game itself, like 'undo', except that the story is brought back to a specific point rather than one turn backwards."

That's going to be a key element of the work I'm doing. Essentially I need for the player to be able to turn on a certain device in the game. The player can then perform a series of actions, just as they normally would. If the player so chooses, they can "revert" all the actions by turning off the device. It's almost as if the player went back in time and prevented themselves from taking the actions, leaving the world in the state it was at that point in time.

The key thing, of course, is that the game state would have to be brought back to the state it was in prior to the device being turned on. There can be a varying number of moves taken between when the player turns the device on and off. Also note that the player can leave the device on, which means the "reversion of history" never happens and thus the actions are committed to the game world for good.

I'm just on the start of investigating this but I figured I'd post the question while I do my investigations in case anyone has already trod this particular path. I suppose one thing I could do is hook into Save and Restore but, of course, I wouldn't want the output to be the same as if the player was doing Save and Restore.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1664&start=10#p10728
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lost Items
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-12 10:09:08

Thank you Eleas and Juhana! You have helped me frame the problem and I have solved it:

[code]The item sought is a thing that varies.
Definition: A thing is sought if it is the item sought.

Rule for printing a parser error when the latest parser error is the can't see any such thing error and the player's command includes "[any lost thing]":
	Repeat with the missing item running through lost things:
		Now the item sought is the missing item;
		if the player's command includes "[any sought thing]":
			abide by the notice absence rules for the missing item;
	make no decision;[/code]

I leave it as an exercise to the reader to apply the "sought item" trick to a more generic understanding rulebook.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1664&start=10#p10729
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lost Items
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-12 10:15:33

Curious, though - now I'm getting "that noun did not make sense in this context" when I should be getting "you can't see any such thing." Why would that be?

[quote]>rules all
Rules tracing now switched to "all". Type "rules off" to switch it off again.

>x foo
[Rule "Rule for printing a parser error when the latest parser error is the can't see any such thing error and the player's command includes "[any lost thing]"" does not apply.]
[Rule "Rule for printing a parser error when the latest parser error is the can't see any such thing error and the player's command includes "[any lost thing]"" does not apply.]
That noun did not make sense in this context.
[/quote]

Commenting out the rule for printing a parser error restores the proper message, even though according to this, the rule never applied. Twice.

I've tried figuring out how to hack this to print the appropriate library message. I could cheat and just say "You can't see any such thing," but I want to be compatible with Custom Library Messages. But I can't figure out how to issue a library message that isn't associated with an action. There seems to be some I6 voodoo going on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1675&start=0#p10731
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Revert to Past Game State
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-12 10:38:25

You're the second person to ask about this here in the last week or so, believe it or not!

You can do indeed do this by hooking into save/restore, but there's a catch: The technique is to stop saving the undo game state immediately after the turn you want to return to, meaning that the player will not be able to UNDO [i]within[/i] the sequence of actions that postdate the last saved state; any UNDO will take the player back to your saved state. If that's compatible with your desired player experience, then you might be interested in the new (still unreleased, any comments or bug reports welcome) version of the Undo Output Control extension, which provides the capability to change the game state, as well as to change the output selectively as needed:

[url]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Undo%20Output%20Control.i7x[/url]

The third example in the extension shows how to do suspend the saving of undo states.

If you want your variation of UNDO to have its own command, e.g. REVERT, there is another difficulty. Undo/Restore is actually handled before the command is parsed (all we know at this early stage of parsing is how many words the command contains), so  you can't productively refer to the "player's command" in I7 at this point. To make it work, you'd need to do two things: change one of the undo word constants (UNDO1__WD, UNDO2__WD, or UNDO3__WD) to "revert", and check to see whether that word was typed before allowing UNDO in your special situation. I think this would let you distinguish REVERT from UNDO:

[code]To decide whether the player typed REVERT:
    (- table-->1 == UNDO3_WD -)[/code]

We're only checking the first word of the command, so "REVERT", "REVERT THE GAME" and "REVERT TO MADNESS" would all work. Anyway, the idea is that you would use this test in a before undoing an action rule (as provided by Undo Output Control) to control whether reversion to the last saved state should occur or not.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1664&start=10#p10733
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lost Items
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-12 10:51:01

It looks like you're instructing your parser error rule to make a decision based on what the absence rules decide ("abide by"), but aren't actually deciding anything there. Add something like this to your absence rules definition and the problem will go away:

[code]The notice absence rules have outcomes end (success - the default) and continue (no outcome).[/code]

Alternatively, end each of your notice absence rules with "rule succeeds" or "rule fails".

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1629&start=0#p10735
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Twisty Passages
User: gevrik / DateTime: 2010-11-12 10:58:34

Hi Rootshell,

I'm currently facing some issues with the way the site handles cookies. If you use <a class="postlink" href="http://www.tmo-team.org/identity">http://www.tmo-team.org/identity</a> to log in and read everything should work fine.

Cheers,
Gevrik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1675&start=0#p10736
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Revert to Past Game State
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-12 11:00:31

[quote="ektemple"]We're only checking the first word of the command, so "REVERT", "REVERT THE GAME" and "REVERT TO MADNESS" would all work.[/quote]

Oops, I was wrong about this. Undo only functions if you type a single word, so unless you hack the single-word requirement out of the library (a simple one-line change), your command will also need to be just a single word.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1664&start=10#p10737
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lost Items
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-12 11:05:11

I've written an ugly hack for getting around the "you can't see any such thing" message problem. Here is the full text of my extension. I'd love to hear your comments:

[spoiler][code]Lost Items by Mike Ciul begins here.

Include Epistemology by Eric Eve.

Book 1 - Lost

Chapter 1 - Definition of lost

A thing can be lost.

Chapter 2 - Losing things

To lose (the item - a thing):
	Remove the item from play;
	Now the item is lost;

To abduct (the item - a thing) to (the prison - an object):
	Now the prison holds the item;
	Now the item is lost;

Chapter 3 - Finding things

To return (the item - a thing) to (the haven - an object):
	Now the haven holds the item;
	Now the item is not lost;

To put (the item - a thing) back on (the wearer - a person):
	Now the wearer wears the item;
	Now the item is not lost;
		
Book 2 - Familiarity

Chapter 1 - Basic Familiarity (in place of Chapter 1 - Basic Familiarity in Epistemology by Eric Eve)

A thing can be familiar or unfamiliar. A thing is usually unfamiliar.

Carry out examining something visible (this is the mark items as seen on examining rule):
 now the noun is familiar;
 now the noun is seen.

Definition: a thing is known if it is familiar or it is seen or it is lost.

Definition: a thing is unknown if it is not known.

Book 3 - Remembering lost things

Chapter 1 - The Notice Absence rulebook

Notice absence is an object-based rulebook with default failure.

Notice absence of something (called the missing item) (this is the default notice absence rule):
	say "That's odd. [The missing item] doesn't seem to be here anymore."

Chapter 2 - When to notice absence

The item sought is a thing that varies.
Definition: A thing is sought if it is the item sought.

Rule for printing a parser error when the latest parser error is the can't see any such thing error:
	Repeat with the missing item running through lost things:
		Now the item sought is the missing item;
		if the player's command includes "[any sought thing]":
			abide by the notice absence rules for the missing item;
	say "[you can't see any such thing]";

Chapter 3 - Dirty hack for You can't see any such thing message

Section 1 - Simple Hack (for use without Custom Library Messages by David Fisher)

To say you can't see any such thing:
	say "You can't see any such thing."

Section 2 - Library Messages Table Hack (for use with Custom Library Messages by David Fisher)

To say you can't see any such thing:
	display LibMsg <unknown object>

Lost Items ends here.[/code][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1675&start=0#p10738
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Revert to Past Game State
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-12 11:06:23

I'm interested in thinking out an extension to Glulx's undo mechanism that would allow the game to offer this sort of thing more flexibly. Maybe a game should be able to tag undo snapshots, and roll back to a specific one instead of just to the previous one?

I see two counterarguments: 

- The game can't control when snapshots are thrown away, so in low-memory conditions, you could lose a critical game feature. (Sure, you could put in the spec that tagged snapshots aren't discarded automatically. Result: in low-memory situations, the interpreter crashes. That's not an improvement.)

- If the game wants to do this, it should just save to a named file. That's no problem in Glulx. Arguably this is the best solution.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1675&start=0#p10739
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Revert to Past Game State
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-12 11:14:57

Writing to an external file makes sense to me. I suspect that the most common use for this feature will be to allow for specific save points, and in that situation authors might very well want to have a number of them. (An autosave before every combat in an RPG-type game, for example).

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1677&start=0#p10741
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Background color
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-11-12 12:00:24

So I don't see a way to change the background color in Inform 7.  Is there one?  And is there a way to change color/formatting of all the text after a certain point?  I want the game to switch between being white on a black background to black on a white background partway through.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1675&start=0#p10743
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Revert to Past Game State
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2010-11-12 12:40:08

If we take the external file approach, then how do you handle this in Quixe? I'd hate to have a feature like this that cannot be used in browser-based terps.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1678&start=0#p10744
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: moving inside the room and distance to walls
User: merkator / DateTime: 2010-11-12 12:45:32

Hello
I have been struggling with trying to set up a room which can have dimensions (length and width) and internal coordinates, so that each step the player takes in a specified direction inside the room moves the player closer to (or further away from) one of the four walls of the room and the objects which appear on the walls. 
The distance and exact position of the player in relation to a specified wall should trigger certain things appear or disappear on the wall. However, I don't need to have a map printed (so Room & Dimension by Sebastian Rahn doesn't really work). 
I would be very grateful for any help!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1677&start=0#p10745
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Background color
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-12 12:46:11

You'll need the Glulx Text Effects extension to change text colors, and Flexible Windows to change the background color. However, in Glulx, once a window has been opened, any changes to its style hints will only take effect after the window has been closed and reopened (in other words, stylehints are applied when the window is opened). The main window, which I presume is the window you want to change, is difficult to close and reopen it during play. But you could potentially use Text Window Input-Output Control to use a window other than gg_mainwin as your game's "main window".

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1675&start=0#p10746
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Revert to Past Game State
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-12 15:32:16

Quixe uses localStorage for "external" files.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1658&start=0#p10747
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Sand-dancer failing to compile with 6F95
User: Neurosion / DateTime: 2010-11-12 15:39:00

[quote="Sophronisba"][code]Check trading:
	if the trader is not a spirit animal: 
		instead say "There's no one here to trade with.";
	if the noun is not a memory: 
		instead say "'I'm only interested in trading memories,' [the trader] says.";
	if the second noun is not a talent: 
		instead say "'I only have talents to offer you,' says [the trader], '[list of visible not held talents].'";
	if the second noun is held: 
		instead say "You've already got the talent of [second noun].";
	if the noun is not in emotional baggage: 
		instead say "You've already traded away that memory.";
	if trader needs more memories: 
		move the noun to the trader; 
		instead say "[The trader] touches your fingertips and pulls [the noun] through your nerve endings. 'Good,' he says, 'I'll take that, although it's not enough to complete the trade.'[paragraph break]Somewhere inside you, things are shifting, moving, growing."[/code]

That compiles fine and seems to work (I've only played through Rabbit's Offer).[/quote]
So this is all well and good, but the conscientious developer in me feels compelled to discover if this was actually a bug in the source text or if this was a bug in the 6F95 release.  I couldn't find a smoking gun in the release notes, and the "fix" just looks like an attempt to rephrase something that should work into something else that does work.  Could someone with more experience than I figure that out?  I was hoping that someone could point to some phrase in the source code and announce, "Ah, there's your bug!"

Anyone?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1674&start=0#p10748
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Possible Dialog Extension
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-12 15:43:28

It definitely sounds useful, although to share it with others it might be worthwhile to make it into something that can be added onto Conversation Framework rather than replacing it.

I recently discovered the value of declaring extension sections "(in place of Section X in Extension Y by Z)". You can use that method to pick and choose what aspects of other extensions you want to replace.

One comment about variable names, though, and I hope this is not rude: If you're going to share your code with other English speakers, I recommend using the term "chat-pal," as "pall" would more likely refer to a pallor, e.g. a pale color. Or you could stick with Eric Eve's "current interlocutor" variable, which would help with compatibility.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1679&start=0#p10749
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Scope and library actions
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-12 15:58:01

Over in the "Lost Items" thread, capmikee has been struggling (and seems to have succeeded) to get around a thorny issue with Inform's implementation of scope. Basically, the problem is that when Inform calculates the scope of the player, anything not scoped is actually [i]unmentionable[/i]. This means that an author has to do a good bit of work to identify whether the player has referred to something that can't be seen, or whether she's simply referred to nothing at all. Solutions are generally hacky and requiring text-matching (though I'm not sure whether they require including the indexed text template).

My question is, what would be the objection(s) to recasting the library actions so that all of them can process any (publically-mentioned) object in the game? For example:

[code]Examining is an action applying to one visible thing and requiring light. Understand "think about [any thing]" as examining.

Check examining something:
	if the player cannot see the noun:
		issue library message number 30.[/code]

I guess the first objection would be that this involves repeating very similar code for each action. That's valid, but are there other reasons not to do this? Do the benefits outweigh the negatives?

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1613&start=0#p10750
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Custom Library Messages, version 0.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-12 16:06:17

Hi Ron,

I'm excited about your extension, and I'm trying it out to see how it interacts with an extension I'm creating.

It appears to default to first person singular, past tense. Is that the intention?

It seems that Custom Library Messages does not influence room descriptions:

[quote]Living room
You can see a seat here.

> x television
I couldn't see any such thing.[/quote]

Is that by design? Is it necessary to use a separate extension to put room description paragraphs in the proper person and verb tense?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1679&start=0#p10751
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Scope and library actions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-12 16:18:30

My impression is that the reason for the current situation is that I6 handles a lot of early stages of parsing. If we were to change every verb grammar to accept any visible thing, we'd end up doing away with a lot of the I6 infrastructure. Maybe that's not a bad thing, but it's a big decision, and I can imagine that it would make games run a lot slower.

Personally I'm in favor of lightening the parser's load and putting more of the burden on I7-style rulebooks, but I'm not sure I totally understand the situation.

To implement what you're talking about in a general way, I can imagine that actions would be given properties to define the requirements for the noun and second noun, and a some rulebook other than a check rulebook would check the command against the properties of the action understood. Currently that stuff happens before the Before rules, and I'm speculating that we would want them to happen after the Instead rules, or at least after the Before rules. But I'm not certain of the implications.

Or perhaps certain check rules would be generated automatically when the requirements for an action were declared.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1664&start=10#p10752
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lost Items
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-12 16:21:56

I have a better fix now. I think the problem is when you put an "[any X]" token in a match against the player's command, the value of the latest parser error gets changed as a side effect. So I just reset the value before exiting the rule:

[code]Rule for printing a parser error when the latest parser error is the can't see any such thing error:
	Repeat with the missing item running through lost things:
		Now the item sought is the missing item;
		if the player's command includes "[any sought thing]":
			abide by the notice absence rules for the missing item;
	now the latest parser error is the can't see any such thing error;
	make no decision;
[/code]

A clear case against global variables, I think.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1670&start=10#p10753
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting the Clock to a Specific Time
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-11-12 16:52:11

That's might be because you used the "defective" code I posted at 10:47 pm. It wasn't really defective though. Both codes in that post work, mainly because by then I had changed clock to noun in one of my many attempts to fix the clock mechanism. Looking back, I actually have no idea that "defective" code is since I clearly didn't run it through Inform.  

I do know the order (I vaguely remember reading it), but I couldn't think of other any reason why it worked while absolutely nothing I had tried so far hadn’t. After all, I hadn't notice the typo until capmikee pointed it out for me. *shrug* Live and learn, I guess. 

Thanks for that tip. I wasn't sure if making an action touchable would require the player to carry the item (in this case the ridiculously heavy and part of the scenery grandfather clock). Since there are no grandfather clocks that can be seen but not touched in the game, I decided to just go with visible . 

As you probably guessed, I am ridiculously new to Inform, and so any advice is absolute music to my ears. Thank you Felix.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1667&start=0#p10754
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New actions applying to things with no other req.s
User: UnclGhost / DateTime: 2010-11-12 17:03:03

Got it, thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1677&start=0#p10755
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Background color
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-12 20:20:44

[quote="ektemple"]You'll need the Glulx Text Effects extension to change text colors[/quote]
I'm pretty sure there was a way to change at least just the text colours before Glulx came along -- wasn't there? Specifically I recall a zcode version of Photopia that had coloured text...?

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1613&start=10#p10756
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Custom Library Messages, version 0.
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-12 20:28:27

[quote="capmikee"]Hi Ron,

I'm excited about your extension, and I'm trying it out to see how it interacts with an extension I'm creating.

It appears to default to first person singular, past tense. Is that the intention?

It seems that Custom Library Messages does not influence room descriptions:

[quote]Living room
You can see a seat here.

> x television
I couldn't see any such thing.[/quote]

Is that by design? Is it necessary to use a separate extension to put room description paragraphs in the proper person and verb tense?[/quote]
Presumably, since the room descriptions are all specific to any particular game, you are expected to simply write them in the person and tense that the actual game requires.

I haven't found the time to try Ron's version yet, but the previous version of Custom Library Messages provided forms like [you] that you can use in text strings for substitution (i.e. "[You] can see a seat here." should work). So I suppose you would just place those in your room descriptions to trigger the substitution in the case that your person and tense were planned to change mid-game.

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1677&start=0#p10757
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Background color
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-12 20:51:53

Was the OP asking about z-code? I no longer assume that people are asking about z-code if they don't specify. In my mind at least, we've turned the glulx corner...

Basic Screen Effects lets you change both text color and background color, for z-code only. Z-code is more flexible than glulx in terms of changing colors, but has a *very* limited palette (good enough for the OP's purposes, it sounds like).

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1677&start=0#p10758
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Background color
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-12 21:12:33

While I7's default is for Z-code we should probably assume that's what people are using.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1677&start=0#p10759
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Background color
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-12 21:31:22

The number of glulx questions posted here and the ever-increasing difficulty of fitting an I7 game into z-code suggest otherwise to me (there's a thread current on raif likening writing a z5 game in I7 to "constrained design"), but I'll try to remember that there are indeed people out there writing I7 games for z-code   [emote];)[/emote] 

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1680&start=0#p10760
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Gradual Slowdown/Script Errors in Quixe?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-12 21:32:40

I'm playing Under, In Erebus in Quixe (with exit listings on) and it seems to be gradually slowing down on me -- the first few turns went quickly, but 80-100 turns in I'm getting slow response times, temporary browser freezes, and unresponsive script errors. (Sometimes it takes around five unresponsive script errors for one command to be processed.) Does anyone else have similar problems? 

At first this was happening in Firefox 10.6.12 on OS X 10.5.8, then I switched to Safari 5.0.2 (running nothing but the game) and got the same slowdown. My computer is a bit old and tetchy so that might be it. Saving, quitting, and restoring seems to help for a few turns but not for long.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1613&start=10#p10761
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Custom Library Messages, version 0.
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-11-12 21:41:09

Hi Mikee,
[quote="capmikee"]I'm excited about your extension, and I'm trying it out to see how it interacts with an extension I'm creating.[/quote]   [emote]:)[/emote]   [quote]It appears to default to first person singular, past tense. Is that the intention?[/quote]Mostly yes.  I did some tricksy things roughly translated as "bitfields = row numbers" in order to tamp down the complexity and memory requirements, and that default just fell out as a result. I'm happy with it though, and have no intention to change it, partly because it allows the author to assert tense & viewpoint at compile-time.

[quote]Living room
You can see a seat here.

> x television
I couldn't see any such thing.[/quote]

Urg.  Browsing the Standard Rules, it seems the aptly-named you-can-also-see rule hard-codes "you" in there rather than using the [i]library message number[/i] phrases it should.  I'll update the extension to replace that rule, but any other games or extensions which fiddle with that rule will need to check up on their changes.  Thank you for the catch.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1613&start=10#p10762
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Custom Library Messages, version 0.
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-11-12 21:48:31

[quote="Laroquod"]the previous version of Custom Library Messages provided forms like [you] that you can use in text strings for substitution[/quote]

Ah-ha, it seems David's CLM had to replace the offending rule wholesale as well.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1680&start=0#p10764
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gradual Slowdown/Script Errors in Quixe?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-12 22:07:30

Do you meaning Firefox 3.6 rather than 10.6? [emote]:P[/emote]

If you go (in FF) to Tools->Error console, does anything interesting come up? Clear it before you load Quixe as there'll be lots of errors from other web pages.

Is your memory usage increasing the more you play?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1613&start=10#p10765
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Custom Library Messages, version 0.
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-12 22:13:26

[quote="Ron Newcomb"][quote="Laroquod"]the previous version of Custom Library Messages provided forms like [you] that you can use in text strings for substitution[/quote]

Ah-ha, it seems David's CLM had to replace the offending rule wholesale as well.[/quote]
Yeah I think I misunderstood the original question. I was thinking 'You can see a seat here.' was the actual typed room description rather than an autogenerated contents message in a room with a blank description. Duh! Well looks like the problem will be solved anyway. 8)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1677&start=0#p10766
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Background color
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-11-12 22:31:39

I am on Glulx; I have pictures as well.

But it sounds like these changes are more trouble than they're worth.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1680&start=0#p10767
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gradual Slowdown/Script Errors in Quixe?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-12 22:31:42

Well, I got five of these:

github.com : server does not support RFC 5746, see CVE-2009-3555

but those seemed to happen before I restored my save, and so before I got the beachball. (In FF, I start, type restore, and those go fine, and then I look and it beachballs for about ten seconds.) 

I also get "declaration dropped" for "margin" but I vaguely recall those aren't a big deal. 

I'm not actually sure how to check my memory usage.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1680&start=0#p10768
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gradual Slowdown/Script Errors in Quixe?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-12 22:32:38

It sounds like some part of the code is leaking memory. (In which case there won't be any error messages.)

That shouldn't be happening. (Nothing in the code should be allocating forever without limit.) But, well, apparently it is.

The other possibility is that the amount of code is too large for your computer's memory. Quixe compiles each chunk of code the first time it's executed. Maybe there are just too many chunks. The pattern you saw seems to suggest this: when you start from the beginning of the game only a small amount of the game code gets used, but when you restore to the middle, many more objects are in play.

When you say you tried "saving, quitting, and restoring" did you quit Firefox entirely?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1677&start=0#p10769
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Background color
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-12 22:35:17

I have no clue which VM people expect by default. I was just curious how much of this stuff (text colour, bg colour, etc.) is possible in zcode. As I am aiming for browser-based play with one of my projects I've been thinking it might be best for me to avoid using Glulx-level resources on that one at least, for performance reasons.

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1680&start=0#p10770
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gradual Slowdown/Script Errors in Quixe?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-12 22:39:59

[quote="zarf"]When you say you tried "saving, quitting, and restoring" did you quit Firefox entirely?[/quote]

I meant saving the game, closing the window, reopening it, and restoring the game. I think I did quit Firefox once in there too, though (though I had it reopen the immense number of tabs I was using). Going to try quitting Safari and restarting it...

...nope, quitting Safari, reopening it, going back to the page, restoring my save file (242 turns in), and typing "look" and another command, I got two unresponsive script errors. It might just be that Quixe is breaking my computer here. Oh well.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1680&start=0#p10771
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gradual Slowdown/Script Errors in Quixe?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-12 22:55:40

Do you have similar problems with Parchment?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1613&start=10#p10772
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Custom Library Messages, version 0.
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-11-12 23:32:14

Would one of you be so kind as to add this to Mantis as a bug, if you haven't already? That would be awesome, and might help prevent this kind of issue in future. (Sorry, can't do it myself right now.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1681&start=0#p10773
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Epistemology and Visibility
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-12 23:44:02

I've been looking through Eric Eve's Epistemology extension for hints about how to implement the "lost" property/adjective for use in my Lost Items extension.

I've pretty much settled on the following:

[code]A thing can be losable.

Definition: A thing is lost if it is known and it is losable and it is not visible[/code]

...but I'm not totally sure what visible really means.

So my question regards this section of Epistemology:
[code]Carry out looking (this is the mark items as seen when looking rule): 
  unless in darkness begin;    
  repeat with item running through things that are enclosed by the location begin;   
       if the item is not enclosed by an opaque closed container, now the item is seen;  
  end repeat;
 end unless.[/code]

Why is "visible" not used here? In addition to being a good deal of duplicated effort, it appears as though items in the room would be falsely marked visible if the player were inside a closed opaque container with a light source. Am I wrong? One could also argue that items in the player's inventory are seen even in the dark.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1613&start=10#p10774
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Custom Library Messages, version 0.
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-11-12 23:46:04

I'm on it.  There's another bug in both the standard and CLM rule anyway. 

As far as ensuring standard library text is replaceable, it [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=203]may not qualify as a bug.[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1613&start=10#p10775
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Custom Library Messages, version 0.
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-11-13 00:10:17

[url=http://www.plover.net/~pscion/Custom%20Library%20Messages.i7x]New version available.[/url]   I put the version# on this as 1/101112 since this is the third iteration, and some may forget which one they have.  (Sadly, Inform doesn't allow me to call it version 0.  Alas.)

Do please thump the new I-could-also-see rule pretty good, as I did some rewriting.

[i]EDIT to add:[/i] New bug reported as [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=409]#409.[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1679&start=0#p10776
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Scope and library actions
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-11-13 01:16:29

It's possible to set the I6 variable wn to point to the first unknown word of the player's command, then call NextWord() to see if it returns zero (word not in dictionary) or non-zero (word in dictionary.... somewhere.)

That may not be specific enough for the Lost Items problem, because it doesn't distinguish between objects, topics, pronouns, etc.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1583&start=20#p10777
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Brent Spiner from Star Trek is funny
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-11-13 02:50:05

[quote="Merk"]My advice is to just stop. Step back, realize that not everybody is going to get along (good advice for us all, I think), and at least make an effort to be less abrasive. Everybody has been doing a good job of letting your rants and wild tangents slide, but good grief. I don't think many people would disagree that you've had plenty of time and opportunity to adapt. Or at least pretend to have adapted.[/quote]

Since you are the admin of this board I will reply to your post...

Actually I don't see a problem with my current behaviour. I think I have adapted very well to this community. Ranting about systems and software, making wild arguments with nay-sayers and the like. You know, the Paul Panks stuff. This community would be boring without people like us. [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote] 

However, after observing this community for two years it turns out some users have a different problem with people like me. My bet is fear. They are frightened of new guys and inventors who could dominate this community. The constant bashing and downgrading of CYOA systems and games by most reviewers in this community underlines my assumption.

--Retro

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1658&start=0#p10778
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Sand-dancer failing to compile with 6F95
User: veryalien / DateTime: 2010-11-13 03:51:40

To add to the research into the problem I've got a much simpler one-line change to make the original sand-dancer code compile with 6F95:

Change the first check trading needs more memories to explicitly check that the trader is not sand-dancer:

[code]Check trading when trader needs more memories and the trader is not sand-dancer:[/code]

The run-time error with Hare still happens in 6F95, so change it to Rabbit as described in this thead.

I could be going in the wrong direction here, but as I've had a number of other minor issues with various extensions giving run-time errors under 6F95 it looks like it's got something to do with type checking. 6F95 is checking the type of objects all the time. The Hare/Rabbit issue seems to be that problem and maybe the trader vs. sand-dancer check is the same type of problem? Inform doesn't seem to be able to see the difference between any trader (a person) or sand-dancer (a specific trader person) without the additional code above.

EDIT:

I guess inform cannot decide which 'to decide' code to use? Or am I completely wrong?

[code]To decide whether (trader - a person) needs more memories: ...

To decide whether (trader - Sand-dancer) needs more memories: ...
[/code]

 
Although the type-checking will make inform code better and cleaner, it means authors will have to do more run-time testing to make sure everything is always of the correct type, otherwise at least a run-time error will happen under certain conditions.

Can anyone else add any comments to the real cause of the errors?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1674&start=0#p10782
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Possible Dialog Extension
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2010-11-13 06:03:04

[quote="capmikee"]I recently discovered the value of declaring extension sections "(in place of Section X in Extension Y by Z)". You can use that method to pick and choose what aspects of other extensions you want to replace.[/quote]

This does sound useful. Thanks.

[quote="capmikee"]One comment about variable names, though, and I hope this is not rude: If you're going to share your code with other English speakers, I recommend using the term "chat-pal," as "pall" would more likely refer to a pallor, e.g. a pale color. Or you could stick with Eric Eve's "current interlocutor" variable, which would help with compatibility.[/quote]

Not rude, just embarrassing. For me, not for you, of course :)

It just points out the gazillion english I still have left to learn.

I chose "chat-pal" because I don't like big names in variables, but I'll have to keep "current interlocutor" if this is going to be compatible with Eric's extensions. Speaking of which...

[quote="capmikee"]It definitely sounds useful, although to share it with others it might be worthwhile to make it into something that can be added onto Conversation Framework rather than replacing it.[/quote]

There are portions that could be made as stand-alone, like the debug and the memory, and Conversation Framework+Conversation Suggestions compatible.

On the other hand, it doesn't seem likely that someone will be using both kinds of dialog in one game. A lot of the code in Eric Eve's extensions surrounds Ask/Tell stuff (ask suggestions, tell suggestions, etc), and this one overrides all of it with an exclusive topic based approach, so it doesn't seem having both extensions in the same story, one of which almost completely overriding the other, is resourceful wise.

I think I'll browse all of it again to see what could be used in both frameworks. Suggestions are welcome :)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1681&start=0#p10783
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Epistemology and Visibility
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2010-11-13 06:11:06

I think "visible" means [i]anything that is visible in the story world[/i]. So, if a coin is on a table inside a hidden room, it is a visible object to I7, even if the PC never went to such room.

So pointing the code to a visible thing would make every object out in the open seen.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1680&start=0#p10786
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gradual Slowdown/Script Errors in Quixe?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-13 06:29:54

Nope -- made it 310 moves into Annoyotron in Firefox without any slowdown. (Paradoxically, chosen as the least annoying game to do hundreds of turns in for testing purposes alone.) 

I do have a weird thing in Firefox at the moment where my input is typed below the command prompt, which is a sign that Firefox is grumpy right now -- before, when I've quit Firefox and restarted it, that's gone away. But no performance issues. (That isn't happening in Safari -- I didn't try hundreds of turns there.)

Of course Annoyotron is a tiny game (assuming that Ben Parrish didn't actually implement the corridor as a hundred separate rooms). Don't know if that makes a difference.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1680&start=0#p10787
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gradual Slowdown/Script Errors in Quixe?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-13 06:41:49

You can check your memory usage with "Activity Monitor". As most of the code is run at the beginning we would expect memory from JIT code to increase roughly logarithmically. So if the memory usage increases linearly that would indicate some other kind of memory leak.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1583&start=20#p10791
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Brent Spiner from Star Trek is funny
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-13 07:39:20

So you're very open-minded about other people being evil. You'll raise the possibility of anti-Windowsism, anti-CYOAism, anti-Germanism (rly?), or just plain racism — anything at all, as long as you don't have to consider the possibility that you personally just acted poorly in this situation and thus failed to navigate it successfully. That's your fear talking not your courage.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1675&start=0#p10794
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Revert to Past Game State
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-13 10:30:46

Thanks, Erik. I'm trying out the Undo Output Control as we speak. I played with the third example you mentioned and that certainly seems to do the basics of what I'm trying to achieve. I haven't tried changing any of those UNDO constants to use a REVERT command. Maybe you answered this in your reply, but rather than changing what seems to be part of Inform, couldn't I just make an action that behind the scenes tries an UNDO command?

In my case, the player can't have multiple states they can revert to. Basically they'll be utilizing a science-fiction like mechanism that allows them to experience one possible future. The "revert" ("undo") will then take them back to the present -- but with the understanding of what that future would have entailed, given certain actions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1680&start=0#p10795
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gradual Slowdown/Script Errors in Quixe?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-13 10:32:34

[quote]As most of the code is run at the beginning we would expect memory from JIT code to increase roughly logarithmically.[/quote]

That's what I was saying, though. I'd expect memory to increase logarithmically *if* you begin your session by restoring to the middle of the game. (That is, memory use will spike up at the start of the session, but then mostly flatten out towards horizontal.)

If you start from the beginning of the *game*, memory use should spike up but then settle to an upward curve proportional to your progress through the game. (Which is a handwavy measure, because every game brings code into play at a different rate, but I believe it describes what you're experiencing.)

[quote]I do have a weird thing in Firefox at the moment where my input is typed below the command prompt[/quote]

When I see this it means that I'm using an older CSS stylesheet for the game page. But that isn't a sporadic problem, obviously, so I'm not sure what you're seeing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1683&start=0#p10796
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: "How to play IF" translations
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-13 10:36:50

The "How to play IF" card designed by Lea Albaugh and me has now been translated into French, Russian, Spanish, and German. Links on the PR-IF page:

<a class="postlink" href="http://pr-if.org/doc/play-if-card/">http://pr-if.org/doc/play-if-card/</a>

Thanks to the people who did this work. (Including Eriorg, Benjamin Roux, Eric Forgeot, Depresiv, and I'm not actually sure who else.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1681&start=0#p10797
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Epistemology and Visibility
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-13 10:45:58

[quote]I think "visible" means anything that is visible in the story world.[/quote]

No, "X is visible" means that the player can see X. (Via the visibility relation.) This is exactly the parser's notion of scope -- the code compiles to a scope test.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1680&start=0#p10798
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gradual Slowdown/Script Errors in Quixe?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-13 11:00:37

Blah, now the game isn't loading at all on either browser. This is probably just some flaky thing that is happening with my computer. If I can get it to run later I'll check back on the Activity Monitor readings.

EDIT: OK, it's baaaack. So: Opening Safari on apple.com/startpage: Real memory usage of about 50 MB.
After game loads in Quixe: ~97.5 MB.
...oh hey,
[spoiler]You can die on the second turn.[/spoiler]
Restarting and going ten turns in: 151.25 MB.
Twenty turns in: 166.26 MB. I think the usage has been creeping up every turn; as I enter the command it burps up and drops back down.
...ok, doing a couple things in that room didn't increase the resting memory usage. Going to a new room seemed to increase it by about .05. Handling a new object seemed to increase it to 170.63.
Twenty-nine turns in: 175.49 MB. Doing something with a new object appears to increase it a couple megs. No performance problems yet. 
Restoring my save file: It goes to 198.88 MB. No performance problems (as before).
Looking: No problems; stays at 198 MB (peaking at 210 or so).
Taking an object: The usage [i]drops[/i] into the 180s and I get an unresponsive script error. After this resolves it's at 192.93 MB.
A couple turns later (turn 244 of the restored game, FWIW): Three unresponsive script errors for one command, usage hovering around 195 MB throughout. 

Hope that's somehow helpful. Memory usage seems to climb as I play during the early part of the game, but doesn't seem to be spiking when I'm getting the errors. Is it possible that the memory settings on the browser are causing the problem? Did that question even make any sense?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1471&start=0#p10801
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Anyone Need a Writer?
User: cunctator / DateTime: 2010-11-13 12:11:02

Hi everyone,

Just to update this post: I'm already starting a new project, so for the moment I'm unavailable.

Thank you!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1680&start=10#p10802
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gradual Slowdown/Script Errors in Quixe?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-13 14:39:57

It's helpful, but I don't know what it means yet.

 I don't know much about Firefox's memory settings. They're probably not the specific problem, however, since Safari is just as bad for you.

When the memory usage dropped (on an interpreter freeze), that's probably a garbage-collection event in the Javascript interpreter. There may be places where I can re-use Javascript objects instead of discarding them and creating new ones. But I'll have to dig around with a debugger to see what's really going on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1677&start=0#p10803
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Background color
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-13 14:41:11

Paul: yeah, sorry about that. I was trying to glance playfully at my own glulx solipsism (if you look at my listing in the extensions library, there are something like 20 extensions there, and maybe one of them works with z-code!) It didn't come off that way, though...

You're right about Photopia and colors in the z-machine. And actually, the glulx trick I mentioned (closing windows and reopening them with new stylehints) is how Adam Cadre ported Photopia to Glulx later. So that one game serves as an example for both platforms, in fact.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1658&start=0#p10804
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Sand-dancer failing to compile with 6F95
User: eu / DateTime: 2010-11-13 14:46:34

It's a bug in 6F95; I've reported it at <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=410">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=410</a>.

[i]Edit:[/i] Also, Neurosion, if you have an account on Mantis, let me know, so I can change the reporter to you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1684&start=0#p10806
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Replacing a rule for performing an activity
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-13 15:19:00

I feel like I'm having a mental block or something. Aaron Reed's "Remembering" extension has this:

[code][ Since we've used an "any" grammar token, we'll get the "That noun did not make sense in that context." message for any unrecognized word or not visible noun. Restore this to the normal behavior. Note: if your game features other uses of "any" tokens, you'll need to replace this rule. ]

Rule for printing a parser error when the latest parser error is the noun did not make sense in that context error (this is the replace did not make sense in that context rule):
	say "You can't see any such thing."[/code]

I was thinking about how to replace this rule for use with Custom Library Messages by Ron Newcomb, but this doesn't work:

[code]	Rule for printing a parser error when the latest parser error is the noun did not make sense in that context error (this is the custom replace did not make sense in that context rule):
		say "[We] [can't] see any such thing."

	The custom replace did not make sense in that context rule is listed instead of the replace did not make sense in that context rule in the printing a parser error rulebook.
[/code]

What is the name of the rulebook for an activity? Does it even have one?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1681&start=0#p10807
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Epistemology and Visibility
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-13 15:20:48

Is Eric here? I'd like to talk to him about why he didn't use it in that case.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1681&start=0#p10808
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Epistemology and Visibility
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-13 15:29:16

Possibly for efficiency reasons. Iterating through all objects and performing a scope test on each one is a nasty, nasty slow operation. (Even if you phrase it with an I7 description, i.e. "now all visible things are seen." 

It should be possible to optimize this to a single scope iteration, but that would take some I6-level hacking.

(Arguably that the I7 compiler should optimize that automatically, but it looks like that's difficult -- scope iterations aren't a language-level construct.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1675&start=0#p10809
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Revert to Past Game State
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-13 15:31:29

Jeff, that question brings me a little out of my depth, so maybe someone else can provide a more definitive answer. But I'll give it a shot first: I do think that you could implement your own undo action, but it might get a bit complex. Currently, undo is not an action--it is handled before the player's command is parsed, and detected by comparing an array of the words the player typed directly to the word "undo" (UNDO1_WD etc). I suspect--but am not certain--that it was handled this way because performing an undo and saving the undo state are intertwined. Basically, the flow of events in the library goes like this:

[list=1][*] Print the command prompt and get player input.[/*:m]
[*] Check to see if the player typed UNDO. If so, restore the game state.[/*:m]
[*] Save the UNDO state. If the VM was just restored (i.e. by UNDO), return a special value.[/*:m]
[*] If the special value was returned, we need to print text to indicate that the game has been restored: print the appropriate output for restoring the game and restart the input loop (back to step 1). We will now be awaiting the player's input with the game state restored to the last saved point.[/*:m]
[*] Otherwise, continue on, parsing the player's command and resolving it to an action.[/*:m][/list:o]

The difficulty (again, as I see it--I could be wrong) is in separating these two. Because you need to call VM_SaveUndo to see whether the last VM_RestoreUndo succeeded, it is difficult to split the two routines up by placing one in an action and the other at the beginning of the turn. It could probably be done, but I think if I were doing it (I have no programming background), it would probably involve a lot of trial and error coding...

Back to the topic of the undo word constants (i.e., UNDO1_WD, UNDO2_WD, and UNDO3_WD): These are actually intended to be changed, though there still isn't any way to do so at the Inform 7 level. Out of the box, all three of these constants are assigned to "undo", with the idea that authors can replace one or two of the redundant constants as desired.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1681&start=0#p10810
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Epistemology and Visibility
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-11-13 15:33:31

The comment right before that code might have something to do with it:

[quote][ It might seem more straightforward simply to write "Now everything visible in the location is seen." but
  this turns out to be unacceptably slow in practice. The following code does approximately the same thing
  but much faster.][/quote]
His e-mail address is at the bottom right corner of his home page at [url]http://www.ecse.ukf.net/[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1684&start=0#p10811
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Replacing a rule for performing an activity
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-11-13 15:43:27

In this case you can just remove the original rule since you've already placed the new rule in the right place (replacing the old rule again would make the new rule listed twice in the rulebook).

[code]The replace did not make sense in that context rule is not listed in any rulebook.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1681&start=0#p10812
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Epistemology and Visibility
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-13 16:43:26

I swear, about 10 years ago, a chunk of my brain just burned right out. I never used to need spellcheck, and I would have caught something like that. My apologies for the multitude of times I've missed glaring things like that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1675&start=0#p10813
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Revert to Past Game State
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-13 17:23:27

Okay, I tried the "REVERT" thing. In case anyone follows along with this approach, I found the area you were talking about in terms of UNDO3__x. So I added this:

[code]
Include (-
  Constant UNDO3__WD = 'REVERT';
-) instead of "Vocabulary" in "Language.i6t".
[/code]

That got me a slew of errors and a "Translating the Source Failed" message. The errors started like this:

auto.inf(5072): Error:  No such constant as "THEN1__WD"
auto.inf(5252): Error:  No such constant as "OOPS1__WD"
auto.inf(5252): Error:  No such constant as "OOPS2__WD"
auto.inf(5252): Error:  No such constant as "OOPS3__WD"
...

I thought I might know the answer to this but I was hoping it wasn't the case. You have to include every constant in your own include code block. If you do that, it all works. (It's terribly ugly from a design pattern approach but at least it works.)

Thanks again for the extension because I'd be lost without it at this point.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1675&start=10#p10814
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Revert to Past Game State
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-13 18:04:10

[quote="Jeff Nyman"]Okay, I tried the "REVERT" thing. In case anyone follows along with this approach, I found the area you were talking about in terms of UNDO3__x. So I added this:

[code]
Include (-
  Constant UNDO3__WD = 'REVERT';
-) instead of "Vocabulary" in "Language.i6t".
[/code]

That got me a slew of errors and a "Translating the Source Failed" message. The errors started like this:

auto.inf(5072): Error:  No such constant as "THEN1__WD"
auto.inf(5252): Error:  No such constant as "OOPS1__WD"
auto.inf(5252): Error:  No such constant as "OOPS2__WD"
auto.inf(5252): Error:  No such constant as "OOPS3__WD"
...

I thought I might know the answer to this but I was hoping it wasn't the case. You have to include every constant in your own include code block. If you do that, it all works. (It's terribly ugly from a design pattern approach but at least it works.)[/quote]

Actually, from a design standpoint that makes perfect sense and works just as it ought to: You're replacing a named section of source code, so it stands to reason that you need to replace the whole section. You wouldn't want the compiler (in any language) to [i]guess[/i] what you're after when you say "replace this entire section of source code with this code snippet". How would it know that you meant "replace just this one constant but keep everything else" vs. "replace this section entirely with this new code I included"?

What is bad from a design standpoint is that there is no way to reassign these constants at the I7 level. (If there is no way to replace a single constant at the I6 level either, that is also a bad thing--but I'm not sure whether that's the case or not.) In fact, I7 doesn't have constants at all, so it probably makes the most sense to simply replace these with variables (though that's a bit of extra memory usage for the z-machine). I could do that for the UNDO and OOPS constants in Undo Output Control; maybe I'll give that some thought.

[quote="Jeff Nyman"]Thanks again for the extension because I'd be lost without it at this point.[/quote]

You bet!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1685&start=0#p10815
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Another Parchment question
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-11-13 18:15:01

I'd like to be able to save files containing specific information about the state of the game world to the server holding my Parchment game, and then loading those same files in a different game entirely. It's for a hybrid webcomic/text adventure, where a short IF game is released each time I update which continues the story. I'd like to be able to carry over the player's inventory and the states of certain things between games (so we don't have items randomly moving around and the inventory getting changed each time, etc).

Suggestions?

(I do have FTP access to the server and know PHP quite well.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1680&start=10#p10816
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gradual Slowdown/Script Errors in Quixe?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-13 18:17:00

Sorry, that [i]was[/i] in Safari. I have enough other stuff open in Firefox (and my memory usage in Firefox is ridiculously awful enough) that data from it won't be too useful right now.

It also may well be something weird in my computer, which occasionally does weird things. Since no one else seems to have reported it, I wouldn't worry about this [i]too[/i] much. 

Thanks for all your work on this, anyway.

Matt

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1675&start=10#p10817
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Revert to Past Game State
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-13 18:53:02

[quote="ektemple"]Actually, from a design standpoint that makes perfect sense and works just as it ought to: You're replacing a named section of source code, so it stands to reason that you need to replace the whole section. You wouldn't want the compiler (in any language) to [i]guess[/i] what you're after when you say "replace this entire section of source code with this code snippet". How would it know that you meant "replace just this one constant but keep everything else" vs. "replace this section entirely with this new code I included"?[/quote]

Well, in TADS 3 I'm used to the distinction between 'modify' and 'replace' which lets me be a little more selective in some cases. I'm also used to being a Ruby coder, where you have "open classes" that you can selectively modify on demand, either by replacing or modifying only one element -- say a given method -- without having to type everything else again.

It's been awhile since I've worked with Inform 7 and I just finished a slew of classes with TADS 3 so I'm having to reorient myself again to Inform 7's approach. One of the things I did with the TADS 3 class was show how various design patterns common in languages like Java, Python, Ruby, and C# can be applied to TADS code. I'm finding that's not always the case with Inform. That being said, what is interesting in Inform is trying to show design pattern concepts for a rules-based language.

Even this example of hooking into the undo/save/restore stuff in Inform 7 is very different from the "autosave" approach in TADS 3. It's a really good comparison in terms of different approaches based on language implementations.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=0#p10818
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-13 19:00:27

For those of you who have done any screenwriting or fiction writing, you probably know about the moral premise and it's importance. The game industry is likewise turning to these concepts, particularly with a lot of the current focus on what's called "fiction-reinforcing game mechanics." In terms of the moral premise, some may be interested in this (admittedly older) blog post:

<a class="postlink" href="http://blog.rbkdesign.com/2009/07/infusing-games-with-a-moral-premise/">http://blog.rbkdesign.com/2009/07/infus ... l-premise/</a>

I pick that one simply because I think it provides a good introductory style analysis although there is much more recent work on this subject.

In a recent class, we talked about applying the moral premise to a specific game from the Infocom days, "Trinity." It was quite interesting to see what people came up with. It's an instructive design approach for textual IF, as well, particularly given the emphasis on the player/reader becoming the protagonist and thus having to participate in the moral premise more actively than is the case in either book, film or stage play.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1675&start=10#p10819
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Revert to Past Game State
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-13 19:11:10

Yeah, what you trying to do with that library replacement was really the equivalent of this (fake I6 code inclusion):

(- Replace Constant UNDO3__WD = "REVERT"; -)

That doesn't work, but you [i]can[/i] replace functions using this syntax. (There may well be an alternate means of replacing a constant, but I'm not familiar enough with I6 to say.)

I agree, the difference between Inform and TADS handling of game state is interesting. Inform's implementation of UNDO/game states is very likely influenced by the fact that, given the Z-machine's limited memory, you could only have one saved game state in memory at a time. TADS 3, of course, never faced those restrictions and winds up with a more robust implementation.

--Erik

EDIT: Now that I think about it, it may be only stubs that can be replaced using the I6 "Replace" directive; again, I've never actually programmed anything in I6, so I don't know the language well enough to say!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1685&start=0#p10820
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Another Parchment question
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-13 20:09:58

Not yet possible. Maybe in a couple of weeks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1675&start=10#p10821
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Revert to Past Game State
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-13 20:22:51

Jeff, you might want to download the extension again (same URL): I've added an easier way of changing the word constants. It's a bit awkward--there is no direct I7 equivalent type for the "character" type (single-quoted string) in I6--but it's less annoying than replacing that whole section of Language.i6t. Here's how it's done:

[code]Include Undo Output Control by Erik Temple.

To decide which value is undo word #3:
	(- 'revert' -)[/code]
	
You're overloading a phrase that's already defined in the extension, so your custom phrase definition must come [i]after[/i] the line that includes the extension.

Also note that these tokens cannot be printed--really, they can't be used for anything at all--at the I7 level.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1687&start=0#p10822
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7 Programmer's Manual updated -- get the PDF now
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-11-13 23:13:17

Currently it's only available as a PDF [url=http://www.plover.net/~pscion/Inform%207%20for%20Programmers.pdf]here,[/url] as I wanted feedback on it before going through the trouble of creating the other formats.  I did some significant rewriting on it.  Here's what changed.

The introductory In A Nutshell chapter has actual paragraphs now, instead of naked bullet lists. And it breaks down a rule at the end for flavor.

The second chapter is brand new.  Titled The Firehose, it's a broad overview of the whole language. "Subclass like this, enums like this," that sort of thing.  I still spend quite a few pixels explaining the grammar of rules in it, since that's likely to be new to just about any programmer.

The new chapter Types of Types was added. 

The activities chapter is now actually useful, and includes a callgraph/outline/diagram of the five activities used in LOOK.

New chapters on headings, and on Inform 6, were added. 

The chapter "Times, Turns, and Tenses" received an extensive rewrite.  More information, less theory. 

A few chapters were folded into others:  Indistinguishable Instances --> Class & Prejudice;  No Lights --> Events are Actions; Grammar Gotchas had its size reduced by the new builds so that its remaining parts were distributed piecemeal elsewhere. 

Equations were added to the Units chapter.

Many if not most examples of syntax now make use of bold and italic.  Bold is used to show the parts of a phrase that aren't its parameters.  Within the flow of narration, code samples are in italics, for the same reason that an oddball French word in an English article would be italicized.  

I started favoring the Python syntax because it's less wordy. 

The chapters on relations and rulebooks both received a healthy dose of rewrite, due all the new features of recent builds.  Though I don't think a single chapter escaped unscathed. 

I still don't cover multimedia. 

Comments, bug reports, etc. etc., all welcome.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=0#p10823
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-11-14 00:05:31

I like the idea of introducing more complex morality into games, but to a certain extent this works at cross purposes to the goal of player agency. Most protagonists of sufficient age and maturity will possess a moral code that effectively dictates the choices they make when confronted with a decision. "Do I harvest this child's soul for power or do I save her life?" is not a choice at all for any sane adult. By presenting it as one, the designer is making a game out of morality, not adding morality to the game.

(I should add that the critical analysis of [i]Bioshock[/i] in the linked article may be the least cogent one imaginable; the narrative is properly an exploration of the morality and consequences of Andrew Ryan's choices, and the player's actions are at best a footnote to this.)

Emily Short's treatment of morality in [i]Floatpoint[/i] is perhaps the high water mark in IF. It allows the player to make a moral choice while requiring him to pass judgment on the appropriateness of that choice. But there the player character is somewhat sparsely characterized, which is all but necessary to keep the choice open-ended. Otherwise the endings would vary from good to bad based on the character's moral code, rather than the player's comfort with the decision he made.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1675&start=10#p10824
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Revert to Past Game State
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-14 02:33:18

Just tried the updated extension and it looks to work just fine. Much thanks for the work on this. This extension is absolutely just what I needed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=0#p10825
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-14 02:52:28

[quote="bcressey"]I like the idea of introducing more complex morality into games, but to a certain extent this works at cross purposes to the goal of player agency.[/quote]

As we found, therein lies the challenge for an author.

[quote]Most protagonists of sufficient age and maturity will possess a moral code that effectively dictates the choices they make when confronted with a decision.[/quote]

People who go to movies and read books also have certain moral codes. There, of course, people still participate in the decisions made by the protagonist(s) and in the end an audience (viewer, reader, whatever) has to decide for themselves whether they ultimately agree with the way the story was presented. They don't even have to agree that [i]they[/i] would have done the same thing; they just have to agree with the actions taken by the protagonist given the [i]character[/i] that was presented and the [i]situation[/i] that the character was in. (So notice how conflating the protagonist/player character and the player in textual IF would be much more at cross-purposes in this kind of concept. This is something I used to talk about on RAIF a lot.)

The moral premise in film or book isn't about forcing an audience to make moral decisions; it's about understanding a world view or concept that has moral implications and exploring that as part of a story. Textual IF can be just the same but, as you note, the added level of agency allows for the audience to participate much more fully in the implications. What doesn't change is the fact that you are telling a story. The fact that it's part of a game, rather than on a movie screen, in printed pages, or up on a stage, is largely irrelevant when you focus on effective storytelling.

The moral premise is very much an author implanted concept, not one supplied by the audience. In fact, to the extent that the moral premise becomes "visble" then it becomes a "message" and too preachy. Which you generally don't want in textual IF any more than you do in film or book. I recommend the book [i]The Moral Premise[/i] by Stan Williams, which explains a lot of these concepts very well. The reason I think this can be effective in textual IF is because it allows a greater degree of "conversation" between author and reader/player and allows for a much more nuanced form of storytelling.

The challenge, of course, is also making sure you have an entertaining game around that -- which is the challenge many game makers are wrestling with. (The latest studies, for example, show that the more interaction possibilities, the less engagement people feel. This has been used to indicate why the [i]Modern Warfare[/i] series (part of [i]Call of Duty[/i]) is so highly praised for its story elements since the games themselves are basically linear shooters. The same arguments are used for the engagement people have with games like [i]Half Life 2[/i] which, again, is very linear in approach. The same study applies to the relatively recent game [i]Alpha Protocol[/i] which had interesting reviews regarding gameplay vs. story or [i]Fallout 3[/i] and the newly released [i]Fallout: Las Vegas[/i].

There has even been some discussions about how "old-style" graphical adventures like [i]King's Quest[/i] or, more noticeably, [i]Police Quest[/i] tried to impart some elements of story but no longer work for audiences. These studies found that the stacatto nature of the interaction model was often what doomed them with modern audiences, whereas the continuous interaction level of modern games is what made for more story possibilities. (This goes in with the whole "non-delayed choice points" that some game makers are using these days.) The point here being that if people found the "stacatto-like" nature of even graphical IF was not as palatable to audiences, how much moreso might that be for textual IF, with it's turn-based prompt?

It's been an interesting time to be back in the game industry, whether as tester, designer or developer. I'm definitely happy to see that there has been a much greater emphasis on storytelling aspects, so much so that screenwriting and fiction writing concepts are now not only more widely recognized but also seen as integral to providing an experience.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1688&start=0#p10826
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Compiler fails with 6F95 - where to start looking?
User: i-k / DateTime: 2010-11-14 04:56:36

So, I returned to my WIP with the new I7 build for the first time, and the compiler failed (code 11).

I have no idea what part of the source is the problem. Any suggestions where to look first? This happen to anyone else?

Wild guesses and shooting in the dark are welcomed with open arms! Otherwise I just have to start copy-pasting the entire source line by line to a new project, and it's not a tiny bit of code, that...

Thanks!

i-k

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1687&start=0#p10827
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Programmer's Manual updated -- get the PDF now
User: grbaptist / DateTime: 2010-11-14 07:15:13

Hi Ron,

Just downloaded your PDF and had a quick scan through it. Very useful. Thanks for taking the time to produce it. 

I'll report any specific feedback as I work through it.

Thanks,

Gary

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1681&start=0#p10828
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Epistemology and Visibility
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-14 07:20:43

[quote="zarf"]It should be possible to optimize this to a single scope iteration, but that would take some I6-level hacking.[/quote]
Do you think this could be done with an extension? I'm trying to guess what would be a good compromise between what could be done and what would work in many situations:

Of course if this could be done, it would be ideal:

[code]Include Quickly Visible by Inform Six Wizard.

Every turn when at least one nonplayer thing is visible:
    Repeat with item running through quickly-visible things:[/code]

But this would probably be acceptable, and it might even make things faster if you had to do something more complex without changing the current scope:

[code]Include Scope Caching by Inform Six Wizard.

Every turn when at least one nonplayer thing is visible:
    Mark visibility;
    Repeat with item running through marked-visible things:
        do some stuff.
    Repeat with NPC running through marked-visible nonplayer people:
        do some other stuff.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1687&start=0#p10829
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Programmer's Manual updated -- get the PDF now
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-14 07:29:43

I'll try to give this a look next week. Feel free to bug me if I don't!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1613&start=10#p10831
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Custom Library Messages, version 0.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-14 07:49:33

I can't claim any major thumping, but it seems to be working nicely with my Lost Items example.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=0#p10832
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: mri / DateTime: 2010-11-14 08:11:49

I'm going to pick up "The Moral Premise" on this recommendation. The notion seems to capture what I am trying to do with my own IF WIP [emote]:)[/emote] I can also recommend Miguel Sicarts "Ethics in Computer Games." It provides both a theoretical framework for analysis of successful implementation of ethical design in computer games, and contains interesting analyses of modern games, "Bioshock" among them.

Thanks for the thread/thoughts.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1687&start=0#p10834
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Programmer's Manual updated -- get the PDF now
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-14 08:21:53

Thanks for this, Ron. I'm not at all the intended audience for this, but I did find the first edition useful, and I hope to look at this one soon enough to provide you with some feedback.

For now, I do have a comment about the formatting: It's kind of a wall of words, with small type, tight leading (space between lines), and a high per-line character count. I have perfect vision, but my eyes huff and puff just contemplating all that left-to-right scanning. Would you consider narrowing the text columns for the final version? (FYI, depending on the leading, type designers generally recommend 60-70 characters per line as optimal. It might also be helpful to use a smaller page size, e.g. 7x10 or 6x9.)

(I spent a number of years in the publishing industry. Please accept that as my excuse for being finicky!)

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1681&start=0#p10839
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Epistemology and Visibility
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-14 10:52:35

I've only barely tested this:

[code]
To iterate scope with (func - phrase thing -> nothing): (- LoopOverScope({func}-->1); -).

To iterate scope for (actor - thing) with (func - phrase thing -> nothing): (- LoopOverScope({func}-->1, {actor}); -).

To mungle (xx - thing) (this is mungling):
	say "Scope contains [xx]."
Instead of jumping:
	iterate scope with mungling.
	iterate scope for Floyd with mungling.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1688&start=0#p10840
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compiler fails with 6F95 - where to start looking?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-14 10:54:11

Can you compile a new (one-line) project with 6F95?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=0#p10841
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-11-14 11:10:33

I'm not at all sure that the staccato-effect will be at all as pronounced in textual IF. In the graphical adventure game you choose something for the protagonist to do, watched him walk over the screen and perform some action on something and you felt that was when things happened in the game. Then you had to sit watching the protagonist/yourself scratching his head or tapping his foot or seeming generally bored, till you came up with something else for him to do. And those times you felt (you actually saw) the game coming to a halt.

That contrast, I think, must have contributed to the staccato-effect.

Playing/reading IF is quite another experience to me. The necessity of more slowly building your own mental model of the game world (rather than having it instantly presented to you visually) do make the turn-based approach different from modern graphical games – but sufficiently different to forestall judging IF game flow by first person shooter criteria. 

In IF game actions are certainly quite discrete, but that usually does not give you (or at least not me) the feeling of broken flow in the game (unless at times when I'm stuck).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1688&start=0#p10842
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compiler fails with 6F95 - where to start looking?
User: i-k / DateTime: 2010-11-14 11:15:31

Yep, that I can. Also tested with a few of my old misc projects, they too compile beautifully.

So, as Inform kindly informs me, "that probably indicates that the compiler failed to manage its data structures properly. Perhaps you created a complicated situation on which it has not been fully tested."

Gee, creating complicated situations, me?

i-k

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1666&start=10#p10843
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Zork: Activision gives it some love in an unusual way!
User: Nathan / DateTime: 2010-11-14 11:59:39

Has anyone here tried this yet? I'd love to know what happens if you crash Zork, such as by typing EAT BOAT when you're in the boat.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1458&start=0#p10844
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Secret feature in Basic Screen Effects
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-14 12:06:34

Here is the code I use to convert a keypress to an indexed text (the only appropriate I7 type, unfortunately) under Glulx:

[code]To decide which indexed text is (N - a number) resolved to an/-- indexed text:
	if (N > 31 and N < 127) or (N > 160 and N < 384):[i.e., we have received printable input]
		decide on "[char-code (N)]";
	otherwise:
		decide on "".
		
To say char-code (N - a number):
	(- print (char) {N}; -)[/code]

The decide phrase takes a number (presumably a character code returned by VM_KeyChar) and returns that code as an indexed text if it's found in the ASCII or Latin Extended A character sets. If the player has entered something else, whether an exotic character or a control key (e.g. return or arrow key), it returns an empty string. The same code works under z-code, though maybe there are interpreters that won't allow character codes from the higher range (161 - 383)?

Anyway, you could build on Basic Screen Effects's undocumented capabilities by adding something like this:

[code]Keychar is a number variable.
Keypress is an indexed text variable.

To get char input:
	now keychar is the chosen letter;
	now keypress is keychar resolved to an indexed text.[/code]

This gives the author access to the input in two forms. If we are interested in control key input (e.g., arrow keys), we can use the keychar variable to check against those codes, e.g.:

[code]To decide whether (keychar - a number) is an arrow key:
	if keychar > -6 and keychar < -1, decide yes;
	decide no.[/code]

For printable input, we can just compare textually:

[code]When play begins:
	while keypress is "":
		say "Press any key and I'll tell you what you pressed.";
		get char input;
		say "You typed: [keypress] (character code [keychar]).";
		if keypress is "": 
			say "You pressed a control key. That's cheating. Try again![paragraph break]";
		if keypress is "a" or keypress is "A":
			say "Good work, 'a' is the first letter of the alphabet!"[/code]

So, the basics of an author-friendly approach to char input are pretty simple. A full solution would probably have a number of decision phrases for different types of key, as well as a table of nonprintable input so that the author wouldn't have to refer directly to character code numbers.

Anybody feel like carrying it the rest of the way?

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=0#p10845
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-14 12:09:26

[quote="Felix"]I'm not at all sure that the staccato-effect will be at all as pronounced in textual IF.[/quote]

It seems to depend on whether you are participating in textual IF as a game versus as a story. In other words, audience data seems to suggest that the level of (perceived) storytelling mattered. So if a work of textual IF is trying to tell a very engaging story and trying to get the player/reader to identify with the protagonist, then the turn prompt often worked counter to that. You bring up a good point in relation to this:

[quote]In the graphical adventure game you choose something for the protagonist to do, watched him walk over the screen and perform some action on something and you felt that was when things happened in the game.[/quote]

The difference is that it was [i]continuous, visible[/i] motion/action on your part. You could click and have the protagonist walk over but you could also immediately click and have them walk elsewhere. (Games that "stopped" all further processing until the protagonist got to the screen location were found to be even worse for the stacatto-like effect, in terms of audience perception. In a sort of crossover approach, consider how [i]King's Quest[/i] would let you type but the character would keep moving as you typed.)

[quote]Then you had to sit watching the protagonist/yourself scratching his head or tapping his foot or seeming generally bored, till you came up with something else for him to do. And those times you felt (you actually saw) the game coming to a halt.[/quote]

Not necessarily. In some games, there was background sound or background animation. That's part of the full experience from a game player's perspective. Those elements give audiences perception that the world is continuing -- just as the real world does -- and thus, again, a continuous experience. That's often brought to focus in more modern games like the aforementioned [i]Modern Warfare[/i] or [i]Half Life 2[/i]. Even though you are basically bolted to a linear railway as a protagonist, enough is going on around you that the experience is continuous and thus engaging, which is partly why both of those series often get high marks from players regarding their stories even though you could argue that their stories are a bit thin on the ground in some cases. [i]Grand Theft Auto[/i] is a perfect example of this type of immersion in an active, continuous world -- even if you are standing still and doing nothing. Yet to a certain extent players do want a bit of railroading and that's been found to be effective for storytelling. Witness the recent study done on the [i]Wing Commander[/i] series -- and only partially (and confusingly) reported on in the latest issue of PC Gamer. There players responded to the story being more effective in the games where player action was continuous -- but more constrained, as opposed to later games in the series which broadened out the possibilities for interaction, thus (perhaps counter-intuitively?) making the action less continuous, and thus reducing the impact of the story. (A good example of a game that's widely considered to have "failed" in this category was the first [i]Kane and Lynch[/i] by way of counter-example to some of the other shooters I've mentioned, even though many people felt that the initial setup and the characters were fascinating.)

Even better examples are the audience reaction to games like [i]The Force Unleashed[/i] -- both the original and the recently released second in the series. Granted, these games are marred by bugs and various porting problems. But when you get beyond those, notice what people are saying about the engaging story but then notice how that's often said to be marred by the game mechanism. Contrast that with the level of storytelling (and gameplay mechanisms) present in the games [i]Dragon Age[/i] or [i]Mass Effect[/i].

[quote]The necessity of more slowly building your own mental model of the game world (rather than having it instantly presented to you visually) do make the turn-based approach different from modern graphical games – but sufficiently different to forestall judging IF game flow by first person shooter criteria.[/quote]

Certainly I would agree with this. But no one is judging game flow here; at least not on its own. What's also being "judged" is the ability to have a story be told and have the audience engage in that story and identify with a protagonist in a game setting -- whether graphical IF, textual IF, or first-person shooter. In this case, it's not just having a story being told but having one that readers/players/viewers emotionally respond to similar to how they would be emotionally engaged by a film or a book.

[quote]In IF game actions are certainly quite discrete, but that usually does not give you (or at least not me) the feeling of broken flow in the game (unless at times when I'm stuck).[/quote]

Agreed -- not broken game flow necessarily. But story flow can be a different thing entirely. Mind, this isn't a problem solely in the realm of textual IF; graphical IF or any other medium can have the same issue. That was actually more my point in that I think textual IF could benefit from authors looking into how these issues are handled in other game formats, in written fiction, and in film. The moral premise is, so far, one of the most approachable techniques I've found to getting a grip on this.

Incidentally of the games I've mentioned above, the moral premise concept (in various forms) has been specifically utilized in [i]Mass Effect[/i] (both the first and second), [i]Dragon Age[/i], and [i]Modern Warfare[/i]. As it turns out, some of the best sellers and most hightly regarded by many game players. This matches films that tend to make a great deal of money based on their use of the moral premise. Some of the those whose directors were advocates of the moral premise were [i]The Incredibles[/i], [i]The Dark Knight[/i] and [i]Inception[/i]. Again, very high-grossing films that people often tout as "great stories." My only point there being that, for me at least, the evidence is there -- across various entertainment media -- that effective storytelling approaches can make a huge difference. What then matters are the implementation details, which is where the "stacatto-like" effect became interesting as one side area of study.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1681&start=0#p10846
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Epistemology and Visibility
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-14 12:36:45

[quote="zarf"]I've only barely tested this:

[code]
To iterate scope with (func - phrase thing -> nothing): (- LoopOverScope({func}-->1); -).

To iterate scope for (actor - thing) with (func - phrase thing -> nothing): (- LoopOverScope({func}-->1, {actor}); -).

To mungle (xx - thing) (this is mungling):
	say "Scope contains [xx]."
Instead of jumping:
	iterate scope with mungling.
	iterate scope for Floyd with mungling.
[/code][/quote]

Thanks - I'll try it out.

I didn't know you could take a phrase as an argument and then execute it - that's pretty cool. Is that an I6-only trick?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1681&start=10#p10847
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Epistemology and Visibility
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-14 13:42:35

No, it came in with the new type system. You can say "apply PHRASE to VALUE" in I7, or a few other variants -- see 21.3. 

I'm using I6 here because LoopOverScope() is an I6 function.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1687&start=0#p10848
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Programmer's Manual updated -- get the PDF now
User: vivdunstan / DateTime: 2010-11-14 13:58:19

[quote="ektemple"]For now, I do have a comment about the formatting: It's kind of a wall of words, with small type, tight leading (space between lines), and a high per-line character count. I have perfect vision, but my eyes huff and puff just contemplating all that left-to-right scanning. Would you consider narrowing the text columns for the final version? (FYI, depending on the leading, type designers generally recommend 60-70 characters per line as optimal. It might also be helpful to use a smaller page size, e.g. 7x10 or 6x9.)[/quote]

I'd second this. It is quite a mass of text. Though for now I have a happy workaround for me, having converted it to my Kindle where I can read it much more comfortably.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1666&start=10#p10849
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Zork: Activision gives it some love in an unusual way!
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-14 14:50:30

[quote="Nathan"]Has anyone here tried this yet? I'd love to know what happens if you crash Zork, such as by typing EAT BOAT when you're in the boat.[/quote]
Awesome. Somebody's gotta try this.

The first Zork I ever played had a bug where if you tried to open the front door of the white house from inside after the trap door in the same room had already been discovered, there would be an unrecoverable error. But I believe that was just in an earlier mainframe version (I was playing by modem on a PDP) as I have never been able to reproduce that error in any other version I have seen in the days since.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1666&start=10#p10850
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Zork: Activision gives it some love in an unusual way!
User: ManolisG13 / DateTime: 2010-11-14 15:08:54

Ehm.. Why do some ppl want so badly to reduce everything oldschool related to text adventures? 

I mean, I found it really cool .. And instead ppl are bitching about it .. Ehm.. Okay.. Maybe including one of the comp games, half of which are half finished would be better eh?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1659&start=0#p10851
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Which remaining comp games shouldn't I miss?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-14 17:22:02

I tried Divis Mortis and it was pretty damn good. I think I would actually rate it about equal with the People's Glorious Text Adventure, if not higher.

Gris et Jaune I've had more trouble with. I also got through Oxygen and Rogue of the Multiverse is planned for my final play session of the comp, tomorrow night.

This thread has really helped me mop up in an efficient manner, thanks folks. 8)

Paul.

P.S. I'm hoping Leadlight will also get a try. Cool that it's written in the Eamon adventure set — I remember tooling around with that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=0#p10854
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-11-14 19:30:25

What do you even mean by broken story flow?  Of course you don't find out what happens next until you type the next command, just as you don't find out what happens next in a story until you read the next page.

(Of course we are digressing from the moral premise.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=0#p10855
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-14 20:16:33

[quote="Jeff Nyman"](The latest studies, for example, show that the more interaction possibilities, the less engagement people feel. This has been used to indicate why the [i]Modern Warfare[/i] series (part of [i]Call of Duty[/i]) is so highly praised for its story elements since the games themselves are basically linear shooters....)[/quote]

This seems sort of distressing; I'm interested in IF and storytelling in games mostly because of the promise that player can affect the narrative. Otherwise I'd just concentrate on read-only fiction (you know, what usually you find in books and stuff).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1690&start=0#p10857
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Stuck implementing a table with consult about
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2010-11-14 21:46:20

I've been coding away on my first piece of IF using Inform7 slowly wading through syntax errors etc, but now I am really stuck.  I'm trying to implement a detective's notebook (similar to what is found in Chris Huang's "An Act of Murder") that automatically records relevant evidence or clues for the player along with the current time and can be read or consulted later on.  

The usage I intended is as follows:
[code]
[Items are added to the notebook in the game via code such as:
          Note "Matchbook" with "Has Tony's phone number CH 2481.";

 The player can use the commands:
          > examine notebook
          > consult notebook about Matchbook
          > read about Matchbook in notebook
          > look up Matchbook in notebook
] 
[/code]
I got the basics working with the ability to add items to the notebook during the game and the ability to read the notebook as follows:
[code]
Table of Notes
timestamp	item	detail
a time	some text	some text
with 50 blank rows

[ Items in the notebook will be stored by unique item and only recorded once.
  This makes it easier to have multiple sources giving the same clue.   
  First time, alert the reader that player he has found a clue. ]
To note (t - some text) with (d - some text):
	if the number of blank rows in the Table of Notes is 0:
		say ">>Warning: the notebook is now full.  (Please file a bug report.)";
		rule succeeds;
	[ Note: Check to see if the clue is already in the notebook, if so, disregard. ]   
	if there is an item of t in the Table of Notes:
		rule succeeds; 
	else:
		if the number of filled rows in the Table of Notes is 0:
			say "You decide to take a note of this in your notebook.";
		increase score by 1; 
		choose a blank row in the Table of Notes;
		change timestamp entry to the time of day;
		change item entry to t;
		change detail entry to d.

[ Examine or Read notebook willl display a list of times, items, but omits detail  ]
Instead of examining notebook:
	if the number of filled rows in the Table of Notes is 0:
		say "Alas your notebook is empty.  You still need to find some clues.";
	else:
		say "The notebook contains [the number of filled rows in the Table of Notes] entries:[line break]";
		repeat through the Table of Notes:
			say "  [timestamp entry] - [detail entry][line break]".
[/code]
So far this all works fine. But when I try to implement a mechanism for the player to type something like 
> Consult notebook about matchbook

I tried writing the code below which doesn't compile because of the use of something in the second and third lines. (It does work properly if I substitute a literal value such as "Matchbook". 
[code]
Instead of consulting notebook about something:
	if there is a detail corresponding to an item of something in the Table of Notes:
		choose row with a item of something in the Table of Notes; 
		say "[item entry] - [Detail entry][line break]";
	else: 
		[ enable user to look up by time, just in case ]
		if there is a timestamp of something in the Table of Notes:
			choose row with a timestamp of something in the Table of Notes;
			say "[timestamp entry] - [item entry] - [Detail entry][line break]";
		else:
		[ This never matches! ]
			say "There's nothing that matches that item exactly."
[/code]
I'm really stumped.  I have read the built-in docs, the programmer's guide to Inform7, Jim Aikin's Guide and Aaron Reed's book.  I have tried half a dozen ways over several hours and I either have compiler errors on the syntax or runtime errors.  In Jim Aikin's book there's an example of an Encyclopedia that uses Topic as the type in the table.  I tried that but then I couldn't figure out how add new items to the table without getting a runtime error on a statement like:
[code]
    Note "Matchbook" with "Has Tony's phone number CH 2481.";
[/code]
If anyone can provide some tips here (or ideally working code!) that is much appreciated.

thanks in advance
--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">http://www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1690&start=0#p10858
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stuck implementing a table with consult about
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-14 23:09:03

[quote="ZUrlocker"]:
Instead of consulting notebook about something:
	if there is a detail corresponding to an item of something in the Table of Notes:
		choose row with a item of something in the Table of Notes; 
		say "[item entry] - [Detail entry][line break]";
[/code][/quote]

This doesn't look right. I don't think you can use "something" as a variable. You probably want "the topic understood," but you may need an intermediate step to strip the topic down to the keyword.

Have a look at the section of Writing with Inform about Topic Columns.
<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc253.html">http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc253.html</a>

I'm not sure if this has changed, or it's just listed somewhere else but there's also an example somewhere about looping over all rows of a table to see if each item matches the topic understood. Using tokens in a topic column is probably what you want, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1690&start=0#p10859
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stuck implementing a table with consult about
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2010-11-14 23:36:49

Thanks.  Yes, I know the code is not right.  I have tried declaring the item column as a topic column as shown in the docs you mentioned and also in Jim Aiken's Handbook.  e.g.
[code]
Table of Notes
timestamp	topic	detail
a time	some topic	some text
with 50 blank rows
[/code]
and then changing all the references to item to be topic.  But then when I try to put something into the notebook as follows:
[code]  Note "Matchbook" with "Brass lantern...";  
[/code]
I get a runtime error because "Matchbook" is text, not a topic.

So yes, I understand the problem, I just don't know an alternative way to implement this using a topic column.  That's why I posted my question.
--Zack

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1688&start=0#p10860
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compiler fails with 6F95 - where to start looking?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-11-14 23:45:24

Data structures ... hmm. I have no clue about what "code 11" means, but rather than start at the top and copy your code to a new project one block at a time, you might try going the other direction and comment out things like tables. If you get rid of anything that's sort of complicated and not vanilla I7, then recompile, you may be able to narrow it down.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1688&start=0#p10861
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compiler fails with 6F95 - where to start looking?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-15 00:45:23

I'm afraid there's no alternative to progressive pasting (or commenting).

You're *probably* mistreating some piece of syntax in a way that nobody's managed to do before. This isn't a failure on your part; you've just happened to do something that trips a compiler crashy bug. Unfortunately the compiler can't report what's causing it to crash.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1688&start=0#p10862
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compiler fails with 6F95 - where to start looking?
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-11-15 01:50:14

Code 11 indicates an internal compiler failure, which should never happen. In addition to narrowing down with what is causing it, it would be helpful to create a bug report in Mantis and attach the offending source code to it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=0#p10863
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-15 04:51:41

[quote="katz"]What do you even mean by broken story flow?  Of course you don't find out what happens next until you type the next command, just as you don't find out what happens next in a story until you read the next page.[/quote]

A good example in film is if the pacing is way off from the nature of the events being shown. A good example in written novels is the same thing except this is usually due to things like overlong chapters, ineffective use of scene weaves, meandering dialogue, etc. In games this is where the thrust of the story -- the events that keep propelling the player (and the protagonist) -- gets lost in the mechanics of the game.

[i]Half Life 2[/i] and [i]Modern Warfare[/i] get high marks for story and often this seems to be because the player is forced along a linear path. You must experience the story and largely at the pace the authors (game makers) intended. At localized points, you can affect bits of the narrative -- but not the most important bits. [i]Fallout 3[/i] was said to suffer a bit in comparison for this on the marks of story, if not on gameplay. It was very expansive but players reported that sometimes it felt as if the quests didn't really matter or weren't acting towards the main story line at all, even though the game was apparently fun to many.

The point here being that the game flow complements the story flow. A particular story is being told. You, as player, are being allowed to participate. However, if you, as the player, are allowed to do anything, then obviously the story (as the author wants to tell it) could be circumscribed. It would even be circumvented if too much freedom is allowed. Then you don't really have the story at all because effective stories operate with a theme (which is one part of a moral premise) and they do so with a physical "spine." The extent to which the flow of a story can be modified and altered but still tell the story you want to tell is a major challenge for authors who want to tell a story in the context of a game.

[quote](Of course we are digressing from the moral premise.)[/quote]

Not necessarily; at least not in the sense that the moral premise complements the physical premise (or "physical spine") of the story. That means the flow of that part of the story matters very much in terms of whether the moral premise can be part of it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1688&start=0#p10864
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compiler fails with 6F95 - where to start looking?
User: i-k / DateTime: 2010-11-15 05:07:10

Found it. Linking scenes fails in certain conditions. See bug report [url]http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=415[/url] to find out the details.

Hopefully this gets fixed (not just the problem message), or else I have to, yet again, resort to dubious truth-states-and-what-not -tactics, and it seems that every other word in my source is already 'truth state'.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=0#p10865
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-15 05:10:56

[quote="matt w"][quote="Jeff Nyman"](The latest studies, for example, show that the more interaction possibilities, the less engagement people feel. This has been used to indicate why the [i]Modern Warfare[/i] series (part of [i]Call of Duty[/i]) is so highly praised for its story elements since the games themselves are basically linear shooters....)[/quote]

This seems sort of distressing; I'm interested in IF and storytelling in games mostly because of the promise that player can affect the narrative. Otherwise I'd just concentrate on read-only fiction (you know, what usually you find in books and stuff).[/quote]

Being able to affect the narrative and being able to change the story being told are different things. Imagine if you have the game [i]The Godfather[/i]. Let's say you, as the player, want to make it so that Michael Corleone never goes into the mafia. Never takes over the family business. Never kills anyone and, in fact, turns in members of his family. That's definitely affecting the narrative -- because you've undermined the entire story. That's not the story that Mario Puzo was trying to tell. Michael's morals modified severely as he realized he placed family far and above his other duties.

Or consider Anakin Skywalker on his path to becoming Darth Vader. Let's say you decide, as a player of some putative game, that Anakin just isn't going to do that whole "Dark Side thing." He turns in Palpatine/Sidious. He gives up his marriage to Padme Amidala. He becomes a good Jedi Knight, following their tenets to the letter and becoming the most powerful Jedi ever. So here the story is in some ways the same outcome: Anakin as the most powerful Jedi to ever live -- but the narrative path, and thus the story, is far different. You have Anakin's moral premise moving from a desire for control (and thus power to get that control) to a desire to let go of attachments. Two hugely different stories. Both viable from an authoring perspective. But to pull off an emotional engagement with both [i]in the same story/game[/i] is difficult.

Michael Corleone couldn't be both a criminal and a law-abiding citizen. The moral premise he was operating under forced him to choose a path. Anakin couldn't be both a Sith and a Jedi. Likewise, his moral premise forced him to choose a path. In both cases here we have a tragedy of sorts. You could make a game where both possibilities are available -- but those games historically tend to have very little engagement from a story perspective.

The trick is ... how can game makers incorporate those elements into a game? How can it be made to matter what you actually do? How can it be made so that audiences will emotionally engage with a protagonist, experience the story as the author wished to tell it, but still have some freedom on how the ultimate outcome is met? A good example from the past is the game [i]Blade Runner[/i] which does allow you to make various moral decisions, although I would argue not enough impact was paid to them. The first [i]Deus Ex[/i] tried to do this with its various routes to "success" depending upon what state you wanted the planet to be in at the end.

With all this said, some game companies are realizing that it may be possible to tell two very different stories in one game -- thus allowing the player to choose -- but then even more emphasis must be put on the storytelling and effective writing. Going back to "Star Wars" games, in most of the released games, choosing between the Dark Side or the Light Side is really not all that major of a thing. If you do certain actions, you go one way or the other. But none of it really [i]matters[/i] from a story perspective. Further, there's often no real character arc to speak of. Even further, players really aren't asked to identify with the protagonist in terms of the consequences of actions taken (or not taken). As an example, let's say Anakin wants to join the Sith, but you (as player) can't bring yourself to kill the kids in the Jedi Temple. So you have to hide the consequences of that non-action from Sidious. BUT -- if the story narrative requires that Anakin start becoming more and more of a monster, how do you tell that story in a game and still allow the player to not do certain actions that would carry him further towards his monstrous behaviors?

It's a huge challenge. On the one hand you could argue, don't do all that. Just go read a book where that story can be told. Let me have my freedom in a game. However, game makers are responding to the fact that games with highly effective stories tend to sell much better than those that do not. This is obviously not an across-the-board sort of thing. But they go on aggregate sales and look for what seems to work and what doesn't. As just one timely example, that's why [i]Call of Duty: Black Ops[/i] (the most recent game in the series) decided to go with the storytelling approach (including flashback sequences) that were so popular in the [i]Modern Warfare[/i] branch of that series. Yet, in those games, you can affect bits of the narrative -- but the overall story is still very much told as the authors/game makers wanted it to be told. [i]Grand Theft Auto[/i] is a prime example of this as well, where players are now more often complaining if the main storyline is bad rather than whether there are not enough side challenges. Rockstar, in fact, is doing [i]L.A. Noire[/i], which is based on a lot of what they claim they've learned about storytelling in a fictional game world.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=10#p10866
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-15 07:22:38

More to say later when I have time, but I feel like we're discussing "moral premise" without having defined it (been grading philosophy papers so I'm particularly sensitive to undefined terms), and the original linked post is tl;dr, so here's an excerpt from it which I think defines the issue:

[quote]Before we can begin creating moral premises for games, we need to look at its structure. The moral premise has four parts to it.

   1. Virtue
   2. Success
   3. Vice
   4. Failure

The designer or writer chooses a virtue that they personally believe in and includes its opposite, the vice. Then, using the two, virtue and vice, they construct a statement that they believe to be true. Or coming up with the statement first and then figuring out which values are involved can form the Moral Premise.

For example, say I want to make a game about the virtue trust and therefore I include its opposite, the vice suspicion. Next I formulate a statement that I think is true about trust and suspicion that I wish to use during my dialog with the player through gameplay and narrative.

[i][quote]“Trusting others leads to cooperation and success,
but misplaced suspicion of others leads to mutiny and failure.”[/quote][/i]

Notice there are two parts to this statement. Part one says, “Trusting others leads to cooperation and success.” Part two says, “Misplaced suspicion of others leads to mutiny and failure.” The game mechanics must be constructed in such a way that through play, the player experiences the truth of either side. Think of it as two sides of a coin, they are inseparable, but a player might only [bear] witness to one side throughout their play, depending on their choices.[/quote]

This does suggest that the moral premise involves multiple play paths; but it seems to lead naturally to the morality slider/karma meter approach which many people seem to find unsatisfying.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1691&start=0#p10867
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Player Experience Report (Theme: Protagonist Mental Model)
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-15 07:51:10

I thought some of you may be interested in some of the game design discussions that stemmed from some of my classes that worked on the "Trinity Reimagined" concept. (For those who don't know, the idea was to take Infocom's [i]Trinity[/i] and rework it with a more defined protagonist and putting some of the more fantastical elements of the game into a better story framework that was backed up by moral premise.)

In short, there was a dual focus in this class on crafting the game with a storytelling focus (i.e., using effective storytelling techniques) and playing the game as a story. It's the latter that I'm reporting on here. (These observations are not just confined to [i]Trinity[/i] as other works of textual IF were played to gather opinions and to make speculative forays into the player experience.) This was interesting because, of course, it shows what people not used to some of the conventions of textual IF from the past will expect or at least attempt. This is probably going to be a long post.


[size=150][b]LOCATIONS / MOVING AROUND[/b][/size]

People always, always, always expected to be able (and wanted) to do things like this:

[list]
[*]Go to the {room}.[/*:m]
[*]Find the {room}.[/*:m]
[*]Get to the {room}.[/*:m]
[*]Go to where the barrow wight {is|was}.[/*:m][/list:u]

That's not too hard to understand. A lot of related elements came out of this, however.

People, for the most part, did not like location descriptions that mentioned a slew of exits. They would rather have a list available that just showed the exits, but where the list was situationally updated. Here's how that broke down:

[list]
[*]If you (as player [i]and[/i] protagonist) didn't know where an exit went, the list would just show "EAST".[/*:m]
[*]If you (as player [i]and[/i] protagonist) did know -- having been there before -- then have it say "EAST - TO PALACE GATE".[/*:m]
[*]If you (as player; from past play) knew but you (as protagonist) did not know, the list would just show "EAST".[/*:m]
[*]If you (as player) did not know but you (as protagonist) did know, have it say "EAST - TO PALACE GATE".[/*:m][/list:u]

This was not something people wanted in game text, such as in the room description. Rather this information was displayed in a separate window or on the status line. That being said, people weren't often thrilled with the "status line" -- which they felt didn't really offer "status" of any sort. (Yes, score and turns could be considered status but most people felt that reflecting the turns was hardly something that mattered -- I agree -- and that scoring didn't make a lot of sense, in that scoring detracted from the story.)

What people indicated they really liked was what we initially ended up calling a "situational location/compass window." (This name got shorter and combined with descriptions; more on that later.) This window would show your current location name. It would show exits from that location with the above mentioned context based on player or protagonist knowledge.

People did like the idea of relative directions ("to the right", "to the left") but more so in terms of descriptions. They liked the ability to "turn around" and "look to the right" or "look up". They didn't mind typing "go to the right" or "go straight" or "go back" but they also preferred to just type "go to the {room}" when the room name was known or something like "go to the left exit" if the room name wasn't known.

I found this interesting simply because "go east" or "go west" seemed much easier. When I brought that up, people agreed it was easier but then said, in that case, they found it easier to just say "go left" or "go right" assuming it was clear where exits were. Then once the connecting room name was known, they would use that room name ("go to {room}") from that point forward, not having to rely on "right", "left", "east", "west", whatever. (They also felt this helped keep stories paced a bit better because someone could traverse lots of geography relatively quickly.)

"But," I said, "I thought we didn't want exits listed in descriptions? So how would you know whether to go right or left?"

The response (boiled down and paraphrased):

[list]
[*]If the protagonist or player does not know where connections go to, it's fine to have this: 'To the left and right are doorways leading out of the room.'[/*:m]
[*]If the protagonist or player knows where connections go to: 'To the left is the entryway to the living room; to the right is the hall leading to the bathroom.'[/*:m][/list:u]

However, people really only wanted to see that once. Once the information was known, it was felt it should go in the situational/compass window and not have to be displayed in the room description again.

So what I did is go with the idea that you as player (acting as protagonist) would make a mental model of the room and then store that in your mind, not having to have it "described" each time. You would simply "know" it as you went into the room. The situational/compass window would represent sort of "your protagonist's mind" or "your contextual knowledge."

Keep this in mind because this "mental model of the protagonist" comes up a lot.


[b][size=150]EXAMINE vs. LOOK AT[/size][/b]

"Examine" is very, very rarely used. In fact, it was never used unless someone already knew that convention or had read instructions saying to use "examine" as a verb. "Look at" was always attempted first.


[b][size=150]LOOK AT / EXAMINE vs. READ[/size][/b]

When "look at" was used for paper, sign, or anything with writing, the expectation was always that an "automatic read" would take place. As people (rightly) pointed out, it's hard to look at writing without reading it. It's sort of built-in to our brain. Again, the mental model of the protagonist: once you've seen it, you've read it. Even seeing it again means you would naturally and inevitably read it again.


[b][size=150]WHO IS / WHAT IS[/size][/b]

Commands like these were tried very often:

[list]
[*]Who is {character}?[/*:m]
[*]What is {object}?[/*:m][/list:u]

The responses to these, it was felt, should always be part of the narrative, and not the "game talking at you." So the protagonist might say, "Oh, that's Jones. He was my best friend. Well, sort of." If the protagonist didn't know someone or something that should be indicated, even if it's just a simple "I had no idea what that was."

What people also expected were commands like these to work:

[list]
[*]Who have I met?[/*:m]
[*]What have I seen?[/*:m]
[*]Where have I been?[/*:m][/list:u]

Having a separate window that could show the "who have I met" was found to be something people liked, since it sort of kept a list of characters (from a game perspective) but also matched a person's mental model (such as when you are introduced to people at a new job or a party or whatever and you try to keep straight who's who). Players didn't like the information overload of the other two elements being shown in a separate window, however, but they did like if the above commands would then produce a list. (Some suggested that "Where have I been" could bring up a graphical map.)

Here's another one people expected to work, based on the number of times I saw it (or something like it) tried:

[list]
[*]What has {character} {talked about|mentioned}?[/*:m][/list:u]

This obviously only mattered in games where the conversation actually mattered. Players responded well to in-context clues about whether a subject was worth exploring. Something like the protagonist (via game) responding with:

"I've talked to the butler about the murder weapon that was found, the messed up room, and the rudeness of the police. I got the impression that there was nothing more to ask about the weapon or the room. He did seem to want to talk more about the police, though. I also might want to ask about when the police were called."

Notice I'm doing the first person thing there? This will come up more in a bit. But as I've long argued, textual IF seems well-suited to being a conversation between the player and the protagonist, such that the player is almost acting as the subconscious of the protagonist. (More shades of the mental map.) Writers that I've worked with are particularly intrigued with that aspect and readers/players -- while not indicating this was desired in those exact words -- seemed to prefer levels of description and narrative that suggested it nonetheless.


[b][size=150]COMMAND PROMPT[/size][/b]

People [i]hated[/i] that it was called a "command prompt." I ended up using "interaction point" and that at least seemed to work better. (Earlier I mentioned people didn't like "status line" either. Textual IF, I believe, really needs to rethink some of its conventions if it wants to be relevant to new and different audiences. That being said, I still think "interaction point" might be too much of a mouthful.)

Beyond nomenclature difficulties, more variation in the command prompt/interaction point was preferred. People responded well when the interaction point was contextual to some extent about what interaction is occurring. So if you're in a conversation with an NPC, for example, have that reflected in the interaction point ("[TALKING TO NED] >"). A prompt/point that always was the same thing was found to be annoying and quite off-putting for most audiences.

Some even liked the idea of having the prompt/point reflect a goal if that was what the player was doing. That proved to be really tricky, though, in that if the player started doing other things, they might be going off on a different goal -- without even realizing it. In [i]Trinity[/i] this was easy in some locations (i.e., "[ESCAPE SPACE STATION] >") but not in others, such as when you were exploring the land of the toadstools. The player could be doing numerous goals of their own that don't quite match to the game goals. Some players felt this was a way, however, to direct the player. So in areas where it was more "free play" until a goal was found, have the prompt/point be just nothing or something simple like "[EXPLORING] >". Others felt that perhaps "story rail lines" could be established as part of the game that would recognize when a player seemed to be trying to achieve a given goal. This would serve as a clue to players that they were on one track versus another and may serve as a form of constant "hint." We'll be exploring this in the next class. Oh, and people did agree that the prompt/point should be allowed to be "simple" or "contextual" based on a setting. That way you could just have the simple ">" if you wanted it.


[b][size=150]VIEWPOINT and TENSE[/size][/b]

Everyone -- literally everyone in these classes and studies -- felt that the game itself (by which they meant the parser) should be in second person: "You can't refer to that." and so on. People were fine with being addressed as "you" in that context and didn't feel it detracted from the story; on the contrary, it kept them focused. However -- the narrative itself was overwhelmingly found to be disengaging when in second person -- except for those who already had familiarity with the convention. Having "you" be both "you the player" and "you the protagonist" was found to be a way to quickly get people disengaged in the game except as a brief diversion, almost no different than doing a crossword puzzle.

First person, past tense was the overwhelming preference by just about everyone. First person, present tense was the second runner up. Third person, past tense was the third runner up.


[b][size=150]IMAGES / SOUNDS[/size][/b]

Images/pictures were found to be annoying -- unless the images were very well done and conveyed the location accurately. When images that did this were provided, too much text describing the location was found to be annoying. What was preferred in these cases was more atmospheric text that couldn't be conveyed by the picture. But what about the locale information? (I.e., the "You can also see...") People much preferred that to be off in a separate window, except to the extent that people had good description skills and were able to weave what was in a room with effective text describing the other elements (like atmosphere and so on).

Sounds and music were pretty much universally disliked and found to be unnecessary.

That point about weaving locale elements in with the description led to something I was curious about and experimented a lot with and that's the next point.


[b][size=150]CHANGING DESCRIPTIONS[/size][/b]

People didn't mind if the descriptions had to change and thus they had to read them again to find what may have changed. However, this was only the case if the descriptions were well-written and served to bring the player into the "mood" and "atmosphere" of the location. People liked the following idea that we tried with "Trinity Reimagined":

Upon first visit to a location, have the full mood/atmosphere description, along with any relevant locale information interspersed within that text. (This builds the mental map/model of that location.) Then have that information populate a "locale window." The locale window would, of course, change for each location. This then led back to the situational/compass window I talked about earlier. Was the "locale window" and the "situational/compass window" the same?

Yes, people ultimately felt that it was. So the goal was to have the window present something like this:

[list]NAME OF ROOM
[list]  exit list [in the contextual way mentioned earlier]
  locale items
[/list:u][/list:u]

The main window could still display the atmosphere and mood text. People liked this because they quickly trained themselves to read the main text to ground themselves in the geography as they played (and to keep themselves in the story), but to glance at the "Locale Window" to remind themselves of game specific stuff. People felt this didn't take them out of the story at all -- rather, it allowed them to focus on story where necessary but also actually play the game. The idea of the window being the "mental model" of the protagonist seemed to serve this well.


[b][size=150]SUMMARY[/size][/b]

I have no summary of all this really. This was more just to present it for what little it might be worth. There's obviously a lot more detail but I was worried this post was getting too long as it was. This should, at the very least, give the flavor of what people seemed to respond well to, what their expectations were, and a general idea that was settled upon as a metaphor for a textual IF experience.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1672&start=0#p10868
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform Attack by Victor Gijsbers
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-11-15 08:03:05

Create a relation between firearms and their respective ammunition.
Then create a reloading action, applying to two carried items (the gun and the related bullets).

Then upon running out of bullets, if you like, you can have the player automatically try to reload.

For simplicity, you might have a number tied to the ammo and assume the player reloads appropriately like many video games do, and when bullets are gone they're gone.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1691&start=0#p10869
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Player Experience Report (Theme: Protagonist Mental Mode
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-15 08:03:39

Very cool, thanks!

Do you think "input point" might work and save a couple syllables? I'm a little intrigued that they had such strong opinions; I don't think I ever thought about what that thingy where you typed your stuff was called until I started looking at the I7 documentation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=10#p10870
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-15 08:24:31

[quote="matt w"]This does suggest that the moral premise involves multiple play paths; but it seems to lead naturally to the morality slider/karma meter approach which many people seem to find unsatisfying.[/quote]
Yes, there has to be a subtlety to it. Maybe IF just has to pass through a crucible of moral obviousness to figure out what tools it needs to break through to the level of multivariate long-lived moral complexity, but I prefer to think not. Unfortunately new starkly-obvious-single-moral-choice game experiments keep popping up despite my preferences, but I don't begrudge them for existing — maybe in the final analysis they will need to have existed. Literature certainly didn't escape that stage, although it would be nice if we could take some early cross-media lessons and find some ways to do a little leapfrogging.

BTW this has been a fascinating discussion in this thread.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=10#p10871
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-15 08:34:58

The idea is that effective stories demonstrate a moral premise. More specifically, they demonstrate a particular statement that encodes the moral premise. So your post is basically showing that. Here's the formal structure of the moral premise in two formats:

[color=#400000][b][Vice][/b] leads to [b][defeat][/b], but
[b][Virtue][/b] leads to [b][success][/b].
[/color]

[color=#400000][b][Vice][/b] leads to [b][undesirable consequences][/b]; but
[b][Virtue][/b] leads to [b][desirable consequences][/b].[/color]

It might help to think of the "defeat / undesirable consequences" and "success / desirable consequences" parts as the physical goals of the protagonist. That would mean the "vice" and "virtue" parts are the psychological goals of the protagonist. The reason I bring that up is because there's usually a "physical" arc of the story. That's usually the outward journey of the protagonist, That physical story arc is paralleled by (or, some would say, is a metaphor for) the psychological story arc. That's the inner journey, which gets into things like motivations.

Lately many have taken to reformulating the moral premise statement like this:

[color=#400000][b][Psychological vice][/b] leads to [b][physical detriment][/b]; but
[b][Psychological virtue][/b] leads to [b][physical betterment][/b].[/color]

So here are two examples of a moral premise statement:

[color=#400000][b]Selfishness[/b] leads to [b]isolation[/b]; but
[b]Selflessness[/b] leads to [b]community[/b].[/color]

[color=#400000][b]Unbridled passion[/b] leads to [b]risk[/b]; but
[b]Reasoned discernment[/b] leads to [b]safety[/b].[/color]

The two phrases here should be understood to be almost exact opposites. In some way, these phrases need to describe the decisions and actions of both the protagonist(s) and antagonist(s). Why? Because the idea is to allow the theme of the story to be contrasted. (The theme being one half of a moral premise.) A moral premise is fundamentally focused upon a dichotomy of right and wrong, which is why the statement embodies a vice and a virtue.

I've found the most resistance to the idea of "right and wrong" from people who haven't experienced this stuff before because the issue comes up: right or wrong [i]for whom[/i]? Suggesting what is right and wrong (or what is a vice and what is a virtue) is what humans do in their search for truth and meaning. That's a fact. People often turn to fictional stories for meaning and structure. That's another fact. Those same people tend to enjoy those fictional stories that "explain the world" emotionally rather than analytically. Part of connecting with someone emotionally means there is a shared value system of sorts, making moral identification possible. (This does [i]not[/i] mean people the same value system in all particulars or share the exact same set of morals. It simply means that there is a way for people -- author and reader, in this case -- to map between their two systems to find out what is and is not shared.) As a writer, you need to allow your audience to achieve moral identification with the characters of your story. This is a structural aspect of storytelling.

It's important to know that the "moral stance" of the author does not necessarily have to be that of the protagonist. Further, it's up for debate (at least to me) to what extent the notions of "vice" and "virtue" for the author and for the audience have to coincide. Certainly they have to do so for the context of the given story, so that the reader can support the protagonist (or to know when they are going down the "wrong" path). Yet with this notice how people could -- with my previous examples -- more root for Michael Corleone than Anakin Sykwalker because Michael was, at least, attempting to preserve his family and, in many ways, his actions (though illegal) did do so. Anakin thought he was protecting his family but his actions (though reprehensible) did NOT do so. Yet there was also sympathy for Anakin because he was fundamentally doing the wrong things (morally) for what he thought were the right reasons. Michael Corleone was doing the wrong things (legally) but the right things ("morally") for his premise that family comes before everything. Both Anakin and Michael put their immediate families above all else; above all other codes of behavior.

In both cases, the protagonist's inner journey is shown to us in the protagonist's outer journey. Anakin destroys himself (the moral person he was) just as he destroyed his family. Michael destroys himself (the moral person we was) as he preserves the family. (Or does he? Think about what happens in [i]The Godfather[/i]. Michael is actually a lot like Anakin in many ways. That's because while the thematic elements are different, there is similar moral premise lurking.)

So:

[quote]This does suggest that the moral premise involves multiple play paths.[/quote]

Only if each path is written as if it was a story told for just that purpose (meaning, that it encapsulates the moral premise). That's why I stuck with Michael Corleone and Anakin Skywalker for this post as well, because what I was trying to show is that if you had "multiple play paths" with them, and if those paths were fundamentally different in terms of the ultimate moral premise, then you have a different story altogether. Anakin [i]not[/i] becoming Darth Vader is fundamentally different than the story where he does. Can you tell both stories in one game? Maybe. But then both stories had better be equally as well told, with the moral premise front and center because, otherwise, you end up with decisions that simply don't matter.

Consider a more recent film, like [i]Avatar[/i]. To me one possible moral premise of that film is:

[color=#400000][b]Embracing new viewpoints[/b] leads to [b]salvation[/b]; but
[b]Stagnating in old viewpoints[/b] leads to [b]destruction[/b].[/color]

The humans needed to see the viewpoint of the Na'vi (with their planet) and not just as an exploitable resource. On the other hand, the Na'vi needed the infusion of humans (Jake and Grace) in order to give their own culture a boost to deal with threats and to look beyond themselves. (Incidentally, it's not coincidental that Grace's name is ... Grace. As in "seeking grace." Another film that did this was Jim Carey's [i]Bruce Almighty[/i], where his girlfriend was named Grace.) So could you make a player embrace new viewpoints in the context of a game? Take actions not just because they have to in order to win but because they feel they need to in order to at least explore the story to its logical conclusions (even if they don't agree)? The trick is providing an experience, just as all good fiction does. The other trick is looking at how to graft a more interactive element to that experience onto the story.

So how does all that apply to textual IF? Well, that's part of what I'm investigating. Textual IF that is focused on a story will have a protagonist. There will be an antagonist (or multiple such). Right there you have the primary ingredients for every other type of fiction: a protagonist motivated to reach a certain goal, usually including overcoming the antagonist. That's your physical element: the path through the game. What's often not modeled well in textual IF (in my opinion, at least) is the psychological element, which is where a lot of consideration has to be made regarding how the protagonist and the player are meant to "interact", as it were.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1691&start=0#p10872
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Player Experience Report (Theme: Protagonist Mental Mode
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-11-15 08:44:18

That's awesome - both the class concept and the report.  I'd definitely like to hear more as the class continues.

The mental model is very interesting.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1691&start=0#p10873
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Player Experience Report (Theme: Protagonist Mental Mode
User: Harry Giles / DateTime: 2010-11-15 09:51:51

Thanks for this; it's fascinating.

I have a question that might be worth exploring or revisiting: 

I'm glad that the students felt confused by the dissonance of referring to both the player and the protagonist as you, because this is one of my biggest IF pet peeves. However, I also like the interesting immersion/identification effects that second person narration can have, if used well, so I'm currently working on a solution that, rather than narrating in a different person, alters all error and out of game messages to a non-person-specific response. In the IF I'm currently writing, all out-of-game messages are written in the perfect tense, exclusing the person, italicised and in square brackets. So instead of "You can't go that way", we get "[i][It is not possible to go in that direction.][/i]" or somesuch. ( I seem to remember [i]Blue Lacuna[/i] doing something similar.) This has the additional advantage of removing the need to come up with context-appropriate custom library messages that also fit the game's tone.

So the question is: How would your students respond to this alternative solution?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=10#p10874
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-15 10:13:59

To be clear, I was saying that Kimball's argument about the moral premise (in the [url=http://blog.rbkdesign.com/2009/07/infusing-games-with-a-moral-premise/]originally linked post[/url]) suggests multiple play paths; he explicitly says "The use of a Moral Premise naturally leads to games that allow multiple play paths."

Sorry for the terseness of my responses here; I'm trying to process it (also still grading those papers).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1613&start=10#p10875
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Custom Library Messages, version 0.
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-11-15 10:25:40

Your second example isn't compiling for me on 6E72.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1678&start=0#p10876
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: moving inside the room and distance to walls
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-11-15 10:27:20

I suppose that the simplest way is to make the room a region full of smaller rooms, arranged in a grid fashion.

[code]
Middle of the Room is a room.
West wall is a room.
(and so forth)
[/code]

You could rewrite the "going" rules so that it modifies the internal coordinates, but you may be doing a lot of programming here. 

Considering that some in-room movement is assumed in certain actions (examining sometimes assumes that you can touch an object, or entering a bath tub moves you over to and into the tub), you'll have to be extra aware of that. How far away can you push the button from, etc. Rooms are usually used without such coordinates on purpose for simplicities sake.

Likewise when turning on a water faucet we don't usually require the player to specificy to what degree (out of 360) he is turning the faucet and thus determine the relative flow of water. 

The only reason I bring this up is that the position in the room should be required for the puzzle (to a greater extent than "stand on rug"), and the player should be aware that he can do this in advance (since it's unusual for the genre).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1691&start=0#p10877
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Player Experience Report (Theme: Protagonist Mental Mode
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-15 10:28:15

I'll throw a few responses in one here.

[quote="matt w"]Do you think "input point" might work and save a couple syllables? I'm a little intrigued that they had such strong opinions; I don't think I ever thought about what that thingy where you typed your stuff was called until I started looking at the I7 documentation.[/quote]

Input point could work. The writers in my class were trying to grasp for something that would be less mechanistic in some sense. Along with "interaction point," some shortened it to "action point." As far as why they had such strong opinions, I think it's just that when they heard "command prompt" it meant nothing to them in terms of writer interacting with reader, even though they realized a "command" could be what the author was waiting for from the reader.


[quote="Harry Giles"]In the IF I'm currently writing, all out-of-game messages are written in the perfect tense, exclusing the person, italicised and in square brackets. So instead of "You can't go that way", we get "[i][It is not possible to go in that direction.][/i]" or somesuch.

So the question is: How would your students respond to this alternative solution?[/quote]

Good question and interesting approach. I can certainly bring it up. I can tell you that with the example you gave -- about going a direction that can't be traversed -- people seem to want this to be contextual rather than the game telling you about it. So in the case of your example, what seems to be the preference is something like this:

[color=#004000][list]"It wasn't possible for me to go wherever that led; the door was locked."[/list:u][/color]

That's for an exit that it might seem like you could go in but could not. For en exit that was "soft" -- in the sense that it was just a world boundary -- this kind of thing was preferred:

[color=#004000][list]"There was no reason for me to leave the estate."[/list:u][/color]

My class felt that the context and description should make it clear to the player where they can and can't go, whether to due to "soft" or "hard" boundary. When the player tried to go that way anyway, the protagonist should respond. For example, let's say the player keeps trying to have the protagonist leave the estate grounds. Then perhaps a response comes up like this:

[color=#004000][list]"Why did I keep wanting to leave the estate? I knew I had to figure out what Edward was hiding. The fact that I continued to try to leave told me how scared I truly was of him."[/list:u][/color]

So you disallow the action, but you have the protagonist at least respond to it. Further, you characterize the protagonist a bit. Then the player has to start working to solve the game in the context of that characterization. You (as player) have now learned something important about the person you are "inhabiting." They have limits, at least for now, given the situation. (Maybe later those limits will change as the protagonist grows along their character arc.)

In my own case, I used the example of "You can't refer to that" as something that people felt was "okay" for the parser/game to respond in second person for. While this was true, there was some debate about this. My class felt that the more you had to use the game/parser to indicate something, the more you weren't crafting the story world. So for anything that was mentioned but wasn't useful to the player/protagonist, you could again do situational responses:

[color=#004000][list]"A butcher knife? Was I seriously going to take a knife? Yes, I suppose I was. I was that scared of Edward."[/list:u][/color]

Now here's another place for characterization. Maybe you let the protagonist take the knife or you don't. You could argue: But won't the player get ticked if I disallow things they want to do? Not necessarily. As long as the protagonist can give story-contextual reasons for why they are doing what they are doing. Consider that kind of response vs. this:

[color=#004000][list]"You would never want to use a knife against someone -- even Edward."[/list:u][/color]

To any writer or reader I worked with, the latter was basically just the game showing through even though it was worded as applying to the protagonist.

The only time game mechanics were felt to be "allowable" was to indicate incorrect commands, such as:

[color=#004000][list]"Having the actor take that action is not allowed in this story."[/list:u][/color]

Along with this, however, it was felt that it was necessary to guide the player in terms of what the actual problem was. We found this a bit easier in TADS 3 than in Inform 7, but the idea was something like this. Let's say the protagonist is in some room other than the Library and types: > FIND THE LIBRARY. The game could say:

[color=#004000][list]"You tried to 'find the Library.' Presumably you meant to 'go to the library.'"[/list:u][/color]

However, if the player was [i]in the Library[/i] and performed that command, then the message would be different:

[color=#004000][list]"You tried to 'find the Library.' Since you are already in the Library, did you mean that you want to 'search the library'?"[/list:u][/color]

My writers argued that the extent to which the game could help the player along, based on context, was a good use for parser/game messages. However, they also argued that things like the above should be handled by the author rather than relying on informing the player of an issue. So, for example, if "FIND {ROOM}" was a common alternative for "GO TO {ROOM}" then the game should just accept that.

In fact, some of what you are seeing here were the test heuristics we used for beta testing. Analysis was done of playthroughs and design decisions where made as to what to allow and disallow. The focus of the testing was always to make sure that the protagonist (story) voice was heard as much as possible except in those cases where that would have been more confusing than having the parser (game) voice heard. Even then, the testing then focused on how to incorporate the game (voice) situation into the parser (story) voice or how to provide clues to what [i]specifically[/i] the game got confused on and then offer a possible hint.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=60#p10878
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-11-15 10:36:41

We seem to have gotten off the original topic a bit- teaching IF to new players.

There's an IF card that seems to be pretty good out there, which describes basic actions. 

I think what might help is an extension. 

The extension could be included in basic rules or added as needed by authors, but it should include all the basic information we take for granted, such as using compass directions to move, taking inventory, examining things, etc.

Recently watching some newbies play, they never thought to take inventory, figuring that carried items were not relevant. Another was writing overly complex sentences. Having an "About" file that made all of these things apparant would be nice. 

Granted, some people use their own about files for hints and such.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1583&start=20#p10879
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Brent Spiner from Star Trek is funny
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-11-15 11:02:39

[quote="Laroquod"]So you're very open-minded about other people being evil. You'll raise the possibility of anti-Windowsism, anti-CYOAism, anti-Germanism (rly?), or just plain racism — anything at all, as long as you don't have to consider the possibility that you personally just acted poorly in this situation and thus failed to navigate it successfully.[/quote]

So you claim that I acted poorly in a certain situation. And what situation are you talking about?

If you're talking about my Node-X interpreter then you're wrong. I didn't act poorly. My act as a programmer was exceptional, you see. Node-X is a sophisticated engine/system to build and run CYOA/Multiple-Choice adventures in Windows/DOS. A few reviewers even hinted to that. And those many reviewers who failed to acknowledge that in IFComps 2008 and 2009 obviously seemed to have a jealousy problem with it. [emote]:roll:[/emote]

[quote]That's your fear talking not your courage.[/quote]

Wrong. It's rather my self-esteem than my fear talking here. You can't distinguish them in this case ofcourse, because you have a false estimation of me. You base your conclusions on either prejudice or generalisation. You think: "Oh, I know they all act poorly, think bad of themselves and are afraid. So he has to be like that aswell." But the reality is: "He is not like them. He differs from them a lot, is the complete opposite of them, has a very high opinion of himself and thus cannot accept that he is being put in a shelf where he knows that he doesn't belong at all." In short, I am not what you think I am or what you want me to be.

And btw. I see that you, Laroquod, joined this forum and community on Oct 04, 2010, two years before I did. Do you even know what the whole Node-X/CYOA/Windows rant is all about? Have you followed it from the start? If not, then please don't interfere in issues, rants or cyberwars which you were not originally part of.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1688&start=0#p10880
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compiler fails with 6F95 - where to start looking?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-15 11:09:02

I'm sure it will be fixed (compiler crashing bugs are high priority) but it might be several months before the fix is out. You may be stuck applying flags for the moment.

Thanks for tracking it down, in any case.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1692&start=0#p10881
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7 - same grammar but a phrase is rejected?
User: moose / DateTime: 2010-11-15 11:43:02

Hi,

I've been playing around with Inform 7 a lot recently, as it's an intriguing language to me.  I've even found that it can be better at expressing database concepts than some actual database software (has it ever been considered to make an Inform 7 to SQL compiler? [emote]:)[/emote] )

You can see below one of my attempts at writing up a database structure using Inform 7.  It's based on the modular programme rules of my University.

[code]
"InformTest" by Moose

A student is a kind of person.
A student has some text called the name.
A student is either undergraduate or postgraduate.

A module is a kind of thing.
A module has some text called the name.
A module is either basic, advanced, or honours.
A module is either undergraduate or postgraduate.

A field is a kind of thing.
A field has some text called the name.

Enrolment relates various students to various fields.
Studying relates various students to various modules.
Acceptability relates various modules to various fields.
Compulsoriness relates various modules to various fields.
Prerequisition relates various modules to various modules.

The verb to study (he studies, they study, he studied, it is studied, he is studying) implies the studying relation.
The verb to take (he takes, they take, he took, it is taken, he is taking) implies the studying relation.
The verb to be acceptable on implies the acceptability relation.
The verb to be compulsory on implies the compulsoriness relation.
The verb to be a prerequisite of implies the prerequisition relation.
The verb to be enrolled on implies the enrolment relation.

To check (target field - a field) for hidden compulsories:
	repeat with compulsory running through modules that are compulsory on target field:
		repeat with prerequisite module running through modules that are a prerequisite of compulsory:
			if prerequisite module is not compulsory on target field, say "[prerequisite module] is a hidden compulsory on [target field] via [compulsory].  "

To check if (target student - a student) has a complete programme:
	if the number of basic modules studied by target student is less than 8:
		say "Too few basic modules.";
		stop;
	if the number of modules studied by target student is less than 24:
		say "Too few modules.";
		stop;
	repeat with target field running through fields target student is enrolled on:
		say "Test".
[/code]

My problem is that Inform barfs on the phrase "target field running through fields target student is enrolled on", saying that it doesn't understand it but not giving any idea why not.  The earlier "check for hidden compulsories" process compiles fine even though it seems to use the same grammar so I'm not sure what the problem could be.  I've tried rewording it in various ways ("target field running through fields on which target student is enrolled", and even "target field running through fields related to target student by enrolment") but every time I get the same completely opaque error.  What am I doing wrong?  Is there a way to get Inform to show me the part of the parse tree it's having a problem with?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1688&start=0#p10882
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compiler fails with 6F95 - where to start looking?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-11-15 11:47:13

Speaking of truth state variables, have you looking into using the tensed versions of actions and relations?  As in, [i]if we have taken the log[/i] and [i]if Arthur has carried the blood-stained coat[/i]?  Phrasings like that and [i]if Scene1 has ended[/i] are intended to cut down on the number of explicit truth state variables in a work, though they're such a minor feature their existence is easy to overlook.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1613&start=10#p10883
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Custom Library Messages, version 0.
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-11-15 11:48:59

[quote="gravel"]Your second example isn't compiling for me on 6E72.[/quote]
I haven't tested on earlier builds at all, but I'll certainly look into it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1691&start=0#p10884
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Player Experience Report (Theme: Protagonist Mental Mode
User: Harry Giles / DateTime: 2010-11-15 12:18:20

Thanks for that; that helps me think through what I'm trying to do.

The tricky part, programming- and writing-wise, is working out when it's best to try and give a contextual response, and when it's best to give an error-message type response -- and then to successfully program that contextuality!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1691&start=0#p10885
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Player Experience Report (Theme: Protagonist Mental Mode
User: Harry Giles / DateTime: 2010-11-15 12:23:11

Actually, thinking about it more, given your response, I think the reason with my qualms for the solution your class preferred is that it acknowledges the existence of the player within the narrative voice of the story. Now, unless you're doing something very clever with the player-protagonist relationship (cf. Violet), I find that that itself tends to disrupt the immersion and narrative flow of the story -- it breaks the fourth wall, or screen, maybe. That's why I prefer a solution where through typography, person and tense we're indicating that these messages are taking place outside of the story.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1691&start=0#p10886
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Player Experience Report (Theme: Protagonist Mental Mode
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-15 13:03:01

[quote="Harry Giles"]Actually, thinking about it more, given your response, I think the reason with my qualms for the solution your class preferred is that it acknowledges the existence of the player within the narrative voice of the story.[/quote]

The key difference perhaps being that it's not the narrative voice of the story insofar as how the story is being told. It's a game mechanic. And readers are clever enough to forgive certain mechanics if those mechanics only intrude very rarely and are consistent in terms of how and when they appear. In that case, mechanics can guide the experience so that the story stands out even more.

Maybe a good example is why people are willing to accept that in first-person shooters you can take massive trauma and still survive. Clearly this is fairly ridiculous and yet people forgive it -- but it is an intrusion of recognition that there is a player who will get ticked off if they die too easily. Even games that try to be a little more realistic in terms of the damage you take, like the [i]Hitman[/i] series, have to make concessions on the part of the player. One such concession, in those games, is that players will often get shown a little "picture in picture" window of a target leaving a location, when in reality the protagonist is in no position to "actually" see this happening.

[quote]Now, unless you're doing something very clever with the player-protagonist relationship (cf. Violet), ...[/quote]

I can't say we're doing anything clever, per se, except trying things out. What we are doing is conflating the protagonist and the player to an extent. That extent being that the player is acting like some aspect of the mind of the protagonist; the protagonist is "talking to himself" in terms of describing what's going on and what's happening. (We're not conflating the protagonist with the player in terms of actually [i]being[/i] the protagonist in some categorical sense; this is what allows the protagonist to have a certain value base, moral stance, or personality that may differ from the player.)

But, again, we're not doing that so much to remove all aspects of game mechanics. People do realize that they are, in fact, playing a game. The very act of turning pages doesn't necessarily take someone out of a book, for example, or the fact that there are page numbers and chapter headings to structure the story even though those serve no purpose in the narrative itself. So people are willing to deal with certain mechanics if the story experience is worth it and if those mechanics help structure the story and streamline the experience.

[quote]That's why I prefer a solution where through typography, person and tense we're indicating that these messages are taking place outside of the story.[/quote]

Agreed on this. Certainly my class felt that when these messages that are outside the story had to be conveyed, one way of making sure they were so conveyed was through tense. In this case, it was the only reason that my class thought second person had any use at all. The story itself was told in first person in most cases. People did also like the idea of either bracketing the text or italicizing it, such as you had mentioned, just to set it off as being "out of story" game elements.

The goal was looking for when certain messages could be used effectively as part of the narrative. If they couldn't -- or if it would have been too contrived -- then out of world messages were used in second person. A partial measure of success to was determined by groups in my class by the [i]lack[/i] of out of world messages that were necessary. But the goal wasn't to eradicate them entirely.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1691&start=0#p10887
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Player Experience Report (Theme: Protagonist Mental Mode
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-11-15 13:06:29

Fascinating as always, Jeff.  

Regarding the command prompt: call it the "story prompt" perhaps?   Setting the prompt to the currently-running (major) Scene seems workable.

For that matter, they're fine with the "parser error" nomenclature?

Regarding FIND THE and GO TO THE, the extension Permission To Visit does these.  Moreover, FIND will prefer a prop while GO TO prefers a room.  VISIT prefers a person.  But other than preferences they work identically. 

I'm hoping then that my Custom Library Messages did its job well?  Any snafus or requests?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1687&start=0#p10888
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Programmer's Manual updated -- get the PDF now
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-11-15 13:14:30

Thanks everyone. 

Erik:  I know nothing of that stuff.  I had used 10.5 font with some slightly relaxed margins to cram a lot onto a page cause, I dunno, it makes things easier to find when you're flipping through looking for something.  I was using Inform's Appendix A & B as a reference for font selection and such, but I only eyeballed it.  Since it's a PDF, most every PDF reader I know allows zooming in/out on the text, so the font can be as big as you'd like.  Hence I was fine with a smaller font -- I'd just zoom in until the line fills the screen, and arrow down to read. 

But since you bring it up, I suppose at first blush it is a thick wodge, especially those early pages.  Granted, once you start getting into the nitty-gritty, the examples break up the paragraphs...

I'm open to suggestions here.  I'll have another look at the Appendices.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1691&start=0#p10889
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Player Experience Report (Theme: Protagonist Mental Mode
User: mri / DateTime: 2010-11-15 13:40:19

This is great information to have. Thanks for sharing. It will be a challenge for the non-programmers among us to handle the suggested mechanics code-wise, perhaps somebody  tech savvy would consider creating suitable extensions...? 

Here's to hoping that I can spend more time on design and writing, than on coding [emote]:)[/emote] (Yeah. Fat chance...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1687&start=0#p10890
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Programmer's Manual updated -- get the PDF now
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2010-11-15 13:51:21

I'm enjoying this so far. I agree it's a bit wall-of-text, but I also don't think it's worth worrying about aesthetics on the first pass through.

It also seems like it might have been intimidating for me a month or so ago when I was starting, but now I enjoy the in-depth examples. I've seen a few things already that I can incorporate that I didn't know about before. I think it covers ground that other sources don't, or at least prioritizes what to learn differently.

The only definite thing to fix I've seen is "It is easier to show all parts of a full rule preamble then explain..." then->than.

I'm generally pretty good at finding typos/grammar stuff and in fact it gives me confidence and makes me feel smart when I'm reading something challenging, but I don't know if it's better to dump things in this topic, or how interested you are in stylistic stuff--which can be extremely objective. Obviously, I'll lump things together a bit better when I can sit down and look at this more. But so far, lots of good stuff.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1687&start=0#p10891
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Programmer's Manual updated -- get the PDF now
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-15 14:10:51

Just to clarify, I don't see the small type as an issue per se--it's the wide lines that result from using small type on large paper that make a text difficult to read. Here's a quote from a type manual, for no good reason really except that I have it on hand:

[quote]Anything from 45 to 75 characters is widely regarded as a satisfactory length of line for a single-column page set in a serifed text face in a text size. The 66-character line (counting both letters and spaces) is widely regarded as ideal. For multiple column work, a better average is 40 to 50 characters.[/quote]

Anyway, you said you're planning to offer this in multiple formats, so if someone doesn't like the PDF formatting, they can use say HTML instead.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1692&start=0#p10892
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 - same grammar but a phrase is rejected?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-11-15 14:19:22

Does this addition/replacement do what you want?  It seems to, but I'm not sure how much was snipped from your example code.

[code]The verb to enroll (he enrolls, they enroll, he enrolled, it is enrolled, he is enrolling) implies the reversed enrolment relation.

To check if (target student - a student) has a complete programme:
	if the number of basic modules studied by target student is less than 8:
		say "Too few basic modules.";
	stop;
	if the number of modules studied by target student is less than 24:
		say "Too few modules.";
	stop;
	repeat with target field running through the fields enrolling the target student:
		say "Test".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1672&start=0#p10893
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform Attack by Victor Gijsbers
User: Dododrone / DateTime: 2010-11-15 14:56:13

I'll give it a shot. Might take a while to get back to it because of work, but thank you for the tip ^_^

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1692&start=0#p10894
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 - same grammar but a phrase is rejected?
User: moose / DateTime: 2010-11-15 15:55:27

Thanks - this did work, but being a codey type I'm bothered that I don't understand why...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1692&start=0#p10895
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 - same grammar but a phrase is rejected?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-11-15 16:04:26

Your problem is this bit:

"fields target student is enrolled on"

-- and the trouble is the reversed grammar you're using here. Inform can understand syntax of the form X {relation} Y, whether that's "students {who are studying} maths" or "subjects {which are studied by} Josephine". It does not handle syntax of the form X Y {relation}, as you have here. (It would also not understand "chairs the dog is on", "boxes a coin is in", etc.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1687&start=0#p10896
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Programmer's Manual updated -- get the PDF now
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-11-15 16:51:56

[quote="aschultz"]It also seems like it might have been intimidating for me a month or so ago when I was starting, but now I enjoy the in-depth examples. I've seen a few things already that I can incorporate that I didn't know about before. I think it covers ground that other sources don't, or at least prioritizes what to learn differently.[/quote]Thank you.  That was pretty much my intent.  (Well, not to intimidate.)  I try to prioritize what translates from other languages pretty directly and get the potential coder doing hands-on stuff with what compiles.  Of course, I can't get around rules for very long at all, and that takes some 'splainin. 

Then/than noted.  Thx.

[quote]I'm generally pretty good at finding typos/grammar stuff and in fact it gives me confidence and makes me feel smart when I'm reading something challenging, but I don't know if it's better to dump things in this topic, or how interested you are in stylistic stuff--which can be extremely objective. Obviously, I'll lump things together a bit better when I can sit down and look at this more. But so far, lots of good stuff.[/quote]
I'm very interested in stylistic stuff.  I hope to write my own i-f one of these days, and some skills transfer between technical writing & creative writing.  So yeah, ramble on if you wouldn't mind, I'd be grateful.  

Erik: some from RAIF have or will print it, like, on real live dead trees, so I shall take your advice.  I just think it makes the examples ugly to have them wrap around.  (I really, really like one-liner examples when I can get away with it, as you can probably tell.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1692&start=0#p10897
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 - same grammar but a phrase is rejected?
User: moose / DateTime: 2010-11-15 18:22:13

That makes sense, but is there any syntax to loop through the range of a relation implied by a predicate without specifying an verb for the reverse?  Or even using a non-verb syntax ("fields related to target student by enrolment" was also rejected?) It seems really contradictory if you can only loop through the domain of a relation..

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1694&start=0#p10899
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Possible Glitch?
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-11-15 20:06:26

[code]
Instead of showing the wooden sword to Donald:
	say "'Such a weapon would do no good. [run paragraph on][if the metal sword is broken] Actually, it's the only weapon you have left![run paragraph on][end if]' says Donald.";
	say "";
	now the wooden sword is shown.[/code]

The reason I put [run paragraph on] is that the system will automatically line break otherwise. And for the say "" line, if I don't put that it will not skip the line before the next input.

Interestingly, this only seems to happen when showing something to someone. If I just have it as part of a normal say, as if "when play begins, say", it doesn't auto-line break.

Is it supposed to be like this? Is this a bug of some kind?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1694&start=0#p10900
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Possible Glitch?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-15 20:27:49

I'd call it a bug. The line spacing differs depending on whether the say phrase compiles to a string literal or to a function (text with substitutions compiles as a function). That shouldn't be the case. I'd also call the line break that occurs at the exclamation point in mid-text a bug. Inform should know not to apply line-ending punctuation rules in mid-sentence.

[rant]By the way, you only need one of those "run paragraph on"s, the second one:

[code]say "'Such a weapon would do no good. [if the metal sword is broken] Actually, it's the only weapon you have left![run paragraph on][end if]' says Donald."[/code][/rant]

--Erik

EDIT: Oops, the ranted text is incorrect. The OP's posted text had an undesirable space before the first "run paragraph on"; remove that space, and that run paragraph on is indeed necessary (though it shouldn't be--again, it doesn't make sense that Inform breaks lines automatically in this way).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1687&start=0#p10905
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Programmer's Manual updated -- get the PDF now
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-15 20:44:09

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]I'm very interested in stylistic stuff.  I hope to write my own i-f one of these days, and some skills transfer between technical writing & creative writing.[/quote]

Have you ever read "The Sparrow" by Mary Doria Russell? An amazing first novel by a technical writer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1687&start=10#p10909
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Programmer's Manual updated -- get the PDF now
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-15 21:47:48

I don't remember if you discussed "what makes Inform cool" in the first few pages of the previous version, but I thought the discussion was effective, particularly the unpacking of a short bit of Inform source code into a long list of assertions and inferences. (Reminded a little of William Gass's essay on Gertrude Stein's use of "and"--he shows how she uses "and" with something like 30 different meanings in one of those chapter-length sentences of hers.)

A minor correction on page 6:

[quote]And now some examples of supplying initial values. [i]Usually[/i] is just ignored in this context, but when we come to creating new properties, [i]usually[/i] defines a default value for all instantiations which can be overridden at design-time.[/quote]

I think this used to be true, but [i]usually[/i] now works in the same way for globals as for properties, e.g. this is perfectly valid:

[code]X is a number variable. X is usually 2.
X is 3.[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1691&start=10#p10911
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Player Experience Report (Theme: Protagonist Mental Mode
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-11-16 00:09:03

I'll throw another "thanks" on the pile, and just add a brief comment: "prompt" sounds almost completely non-technical to me, perhaps because I am used to thinking of prompts in the context of a "writing prompt" or the thing you give at the beginning of an improv acting exercise.  It's almost like I imagine the interpreter pausing, blushing, and mumbling, "...line?"

"Point" sounds much more jargony to my ear.  I could sort of see something like "turning point" capturing the feeling (though perhaps it implies too sharp a branching); "crux"?  "Minicrux"?  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1688&start=0#p10912
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compiler fails with 6F95 - where to start looking?
User: i-k / DateTime: 2010-11-16 02:13:16

Thanks, everyone, for the help!


I already use past tense (and present) for managing scenes -- the trouble is: more complexity needed to keep track of the plot! And when Inform won't allow but a single begin/end trigger for a given scene outside the scene machinery, yees, that's where one has to pull out those bloody truth states once again -- to gather different conditions and actions and all that nonsense in one variable.


i-k

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=10#p10915
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2010-11-16 06:18:50

[quote="Dannii"]Lots of people are already working on stuff for mobiles. Rather than invent a new system which, realistically, no one will use, why not help with twisty <a class="postlink" href="http://code.google.com/p/twisty/">http://code.google.com/p/twisty/</a> for example.[/quote]

I don't think this is a realistic assumption. When you go to mobiles, you're almost reinventing what can be done and what people will accept. They don't have all these preconceptions.

[quote]As to having to type too much, the solution isn't to make the parsers bad, but to have other tools, like tapping to copy a word, hyperlinks, or keyword extensions.[/quote]

If the parser is suitable for the game content, it's a good parser. If you're looking at Scott Adams style adventures , which is what is being discussed here, a two word parser is probably good, and an inform parser could be overkill, and therefore bad. The idea of a parser which is inherently 'good' isn't really relevant. There's as much controversy about the wisdom of lit up keywords as there may be about two-word parsers. The parser is merely a tool to enable interaction with the game system, and it is the game system for each game which will determine what is good or bad.

The point here seems to be that a classic adventure game delivery platform (and creative tools for it) are being delivered for a new and accessible platform, which is all good news to me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1691&start=10#p10916
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Player Experience Report (Theme: Protagonist Mental Mode
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-11-16 06:35:24

Very interesting.

For what they’re worth, here are some  thoughts on the finds.

The very first pieces of If were modeled on D&D and suchlike role playing games, with the parser acting the part of Dungeon Master. In that context second person present tense is of course perfectly natural. The player actually pretends to be the protagonist. 

But it's also true that  Adventure and Zork does not sport much of a story (except in a trivial sense). It's all exploration – and in particular the protagonist is deliberately un-characterized.

In real life D&D players are of course free to characterize their PC:s as they see fit, but in IF the characterization is almost completely left to the author.

Characterization of the protagonist may not be an actual prerequisite for telling a story, but at least it contributes greatly to the efficient telling of good stories. And with a heavily characterized protagonist, the difference between player and protagonist becomes so much more marked – especially when the characterization is not up to the player himself/herself.

The preference for presenting the protagonist as an "I" distinct from the player (adressed at times by the parser (or the protagonist even – depending on the kind of game)) as "you" can perhaps be given some such explanation from the nature of games/stories. (There is a prediction here that players will feel more at home with second person present tense in games like Adventure.)

The mental model window was in a sense, I think,  a stock feature of early IF – only it wasn't realized digitally in-game but by hand using paper and pencil. It seems to be a request for automatized basic mapping and note-making.  That certainly has some nice advantages – like (if properly debugged) it won't miss to take important notes, and it can even be used to give the player hints. (There is a possibility, too, that such a feature won't be acutely felt lacking in smaller, puzzleless games.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1691&start=10#p10917
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Player Experience Report (Theme: Protagonist Mental Mode
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-16 06:56:54

[quote="tove"]"prompt" sounds almost completely non-technical to me, perhaps because I am used to thinking of prompts in the context of a "writing prompt" or the thing you give at the beginning of an improv acting exercise.[/quote]

Yeah, in acting or film you'll have a cue, and so -- close to Ron's idea of "story prompt" -- I did originally recommend "story cue." That's more used in a theater setting, going back to the idea of "autocue" or "cue acting", but it's also very much used in screenplay concepts as well not to mention on the set, in terms of "cueing {some action}."

You are correct in that "turning point" was sort of what people were thinking about in terms of "interaction point." The reason I was shying away from that is because turning points are very specific moments in film or book and are most certainly not present 'all the time,' as it were.

It's looking like "story cue" or "story prompt" will probably win the day. (Not that it will matter in some wider sense, of course, since all of this will only really be regularly used by people in my classes.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1691&start=10#p10918
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Player Experience Report (Theme: Protagonist Mental Mode
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-16 07:04:34

[quote="Felix"]The mental model window was in a sense, I think,  a stock feature of early IF – only it wasn't realized digitally in-game but by hand using paper and pencil. It seems to be a request for automatized basic mapping and note-making.[/quote]

Essentially, I would agree. The idea is that the "mental model window" is meant to suggest what you, as a person, would logically immediately notice upon entering a room, particularly if you had been there before. As people, we categorize and sort information in our brains based on what we deem relevant and not relevant. But our subconscious does keep track of many more details than we consciously recognize at any given time.

So the idea here is really bringing in a game mechanic and allowing it to interfere as little as possible with the narrative being told. Allow the player a common place to look for the "mental model" information if and when needed, but otherwise all focus can be on the narrative elements. Another idea of the "mental model" that we want to explore in the next class sessions is storing "relationships" that the protagonist observes and makes note of.

For example: "Chrissy (seems to) dislike Jack." and "Marcus disapproved of Danni's actions."

These would just be like the "thoughts" of the protagonist that are made available to the player, allowing the player to explore those areas further. So the "mental model window" is really that: a window into the thoughts of the protagonist. Note, of course, that part of the fun in telling these stories is when those relationships would have to change based on new information. So just as the protagonist learns more, so does the player. This also allows for intriguing narrative possibilities, such as the so-called unreliable narrator (in this case, the protagonist) as well as  where the player ends up being able to make connections that the protagonist has not yet. This introduces a conflict not just in the game, but between player and protagonist. Likewise, you can have situations where the protagonist is clearly making connections that the player is not and so the player now has to figure out why the protagonist thinks certain things and then decide how to act based on that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=0#p10919
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2010-11-16 07:08:31

The 16th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition has ended. Congratulations to Matt Wigdahl, whose "Aotearoa" took first place. The top three games were:

Aotearoa, by Matt Wigdahl
Rogue of the Multiverse, by C.E.J. Pacian
One Eye Open, by Colin Sandel and Carolyn VanEseltine(tie) 

The winners of the Miss Congeniality contest were:

Aotearoa, by Matt Wigdahl and Death Off the Cuff, by Simon Christiansen (tie for first)
The Blind House, by Amanda Allen (writing as Maude Overton) and One Eye Open, by Colin Sandel and Carolyn VanEseltine (tie for third)

Congratulations! And thanks to all authors who entered!

Stephen

Full results list:

1. Aotearoa, by Matt Wigdahl
2. Rogue of the Multiverse, by C.E.J. Pacian
3. One Eye Open, by Colin Sandel and Carolyn VanEseltine
4. The Blind House, by Amanda Allen (writing as Maude Overton)
5. Death Off the Cuff, by Simon Christiansen
6. Mite, by Sara Dee
7. The People's Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure Game, by Taylor
Vaughan
8. Flight of the Hummingbird, by Michael Martin
9. Gris et Jaune, by Jason Devlin (writing as Steve van Gaal)
(tie) The Warbler's Nest, by Jason McIntosh
11. Divis Mortis, by Lynnea Dally
12. Oxygen, by ShadowK
13. The Bible Retold: Following a Star, by Justin Morgan
14. Leadlight, by Wade Clarke
15. Gigantomania, by Michelle Tirto
16. Under, In Erebus, by Brian Rapp
17. Pen and Paint, by Owen Parish
(tie) The 12:54 to Asgard, by J. Robinson Wheeler
19. The Bible Retold: The Lost Sheep, by Ben Pennington
20. Heated, by Timothy Peers
21. Ninja's Fate, by Hannes Schueller
22. Sons of the Cherry, by Alex Livingston
23. East Grove Hills, by XYZ
24. R, by therealeasterbunny
25. A quiet evening at home, by Ruth Alfasso (writing as anonymous)
26. The Chronicler, by John Evans

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=0#p10920
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-16 07:15:19

Congratulations to everyone who entered! I didn't get the chance to play a lot of the games yet, but it looks like there was something worthwhile in all the games. I enjoyed The Chronicler a fair amount, actually (eventually I may get around to posting my such-as-they-are reviews). 

It looks like the all-important Golden Banana of Discord went to Leadlight and it wasn't even close.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1691&start=10#p10922
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Player Experience Report (Theme: Protagonist Mental Mode
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-16 07:23:18

[quote="Jeff Nyman"]What people indicated they really liked was what we initially ended up calling a "situational location/compass window." (This name got shorter and combined with descriptions; more on that later.) This window would show your current location name. It would show exits from that location with the above mentioned context based on player or protagonist knowledge.[/quote]

Do you mean specifically displayed on a compass, as in (e.g) A New Life? (Though that didn't list the locations you could go to, and in fact sometimes has another status effect.) A couple caveats about that:

1) A compass rose might have trouble with up/down/in/out. 
2) It seems like something that would make screenreaders barf. 

I think the ideal would probably be that the player could adjust the manner of exit listing to whatever they preferred -- compass rose, list in the extra window, list in the main text, off. Of course that's the maximum amount of work and programming overhead.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1691&start=10#p10924
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Player Experience Report (Theme: Protagonist Mental Mode
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-16 07:55:27

[quote="matt w"]Do you mean specifically displayed on a compass, as in (e.g) A New Life? (Though that didn't list the locations you could go to, and in fact sometimes has another status effect.)[/quote]

Definitely not a compass rose image. Or, at least, no one really wanted that. We had looked at games that did that, like the old [i]Spellcasting[/i] series, but those were found to be a little intrusive. Plus the compass image couldn't list things like "EAST - TO THE KITCHEN", at least without being distracting, and what people really wanted is where the exit led, not just its cardinal direction. So the goal was always a list, similar to how information is categorized in our heads.

There was a brief debate about how positional information is stored in the mind and, in fact, that was what led more people to prefer relative directional information being provided in many cases. However, while some argued that a "compass rose" type concept might seem like what we normally do in terms of conceptualizing directions, people don't do that. Cognitive theory shows us that at base level we tend to associate "ways to move" relative to specific landmarks in a given location, relative to ourselves. Taking that strictly, that would mean things like "go right" and "go left." My class realized that could get tricky because then you have to account for the direction someone is facing as they move between locations.

That's ultimately why the "go to {location}" was preferred, with the mental model window just showing a list of locations.

Some even argued that having "EAST - TO THE KITCHEN" was going too much into the cardinal direction mode again. But others argued that without that, locations would be in danger of seeming disconnected from any spatial relationship. In some stories that may be fine. But in others, the geography may be somewhat crucial. What was really preferred was if the games could present effective maps that would more closely match the visual images we make of our surroundings. Not so much as a series of connected lines, but rather like a blueprint. (Think back to the house maps provided with Infocom's [i]Deadline[/i], for example.)

We actually used many notes from Stephen King on this (he wasn't in these classes, I hasten to add!) regarding how he liked to establish geography for his stories, such as the Chester Mills setting in his recent [i]Under the Dome[/i]. Writers tend to have a lot of ideas on how to model geography particularly because the level of detail required in various stories can differ, even within a specific context. (Such as one part of the area having to be meticulously defined while whole other swathes are left somewhat nebulous.) Writers are often of the opinion that "Setting" is one of the characters in the story. This was a particularly interesting challenge in [i]Trinity[/i] because some areas could be relatively constrained in terms of geography whereas others -- like Kensington Gardens and the Toadstool Realm -- needed to be more expansive.

Also, it was recognized these maps would have to gracefully move down to pure text representations on devices like screenreaders. Since based on a few experiments at the time no one had any real faith in any current textual IF system generating effective, dynamic maps, the goal was to focus on text-based maps.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1691&start=10#p10926
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Player Experience Report (Theme: Protagonist Mental Mode
User: Harry Giles / DateTime: 2010-11-16 08:00:16

Infocom's [i]Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur[/i] is worth looking at for innovations like this: It had a wide top bar which could be changed qith the function keys, displaying at your choice a location image, a clickable map, an inventory (divided into carrying and wearing), or a room description. You could also revert to text-only with a standard location and date/time status bar. The location image added very little, of course, but the other options were a great innovation, for the reasons given here.

I think all that isn't a substitue for well-clued writing, however: it should be an additional aid -- for the sake of voth screenreaders and personal taste.

However, all this depends on the type of game being written. Games with any focus on exploration or puzzles would, I think, almost universally benefit from such systems, but they would also detract from games with a focus on narrative, especially fast-moving narrative. They make it more of a game and less of a story, basically.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=0#p10927
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2010-11-16 08:02:54

I would've posted earlier, but I only just got back from a cross-continent video-conference with the creator of Leadlight and all his other beta-testing minions. There was much sinister whispering and loud overbearing laughter and petting of ill-tempered cats. One participant was cut off for suggesting the evil plan had come to fruition.

Err, anyway. I'd like to echo the congratulations. I also found something in every game and was particularly interested and impressed by reviewers who managed to get through all the games. Every one who did had a lot of interesting things to say.

I vaguely wanted to try that, but I got distracted writing my own game, and I can see how tough it is to make even a few simple things go the way you want.

As much as "there are no losers" is a cliche, I think that's really true. While I'd guess there were no shockers for anyone in terms of what placed where, it's neat to see what the exact places are and also the distributions. I liked being able to hover over the graphics on the ifcomp page, too.

I'd also be very interested in what the authors have to say about their games or others'.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1690&start=0#p10931
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stuck implementing a table with consult about
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-16 09:11:20

Well, I'm stumped. I don't know why it's allowed to write "if [snippet] includes [text]", even though it appears that it's impossible for those two things to ever match. For reference, here's a compilable example that I was trying:

[spoiler][code]Study is a room. The player carries a notebook.

Table of Notes
timestamp	item	detail
a time	some text	some text
with 50 blank rows

[ Items in the notebook will be stored by unique item and only recorded once.
  This makes it easier to have multiple sources giving the same clue.   
  First time, alert the reader that player he has found a clue. ]
To note (t - some text) with (d - some text):
	if the number of blank rows in the Table of Notes is 0:
		say ">>Warning: the notebook is now full.  (Please file a bug report.)";
		rule succeeds;
	[ Note: Check to see if the clue is already in the notebook, if so, disregard. ]
	if there is an item of t in the Table of Notes:
		rule succeeds;
	else:
		if the number of filled rows in the Table of Notes is 0:
			say "You decide to take a note of this in your notebook.";
			increase score by 1;
	choose a blank row in the Table of Notes;
	change timestamp entry to the time of day;
	change item entry to t;
	change detail entry to d.

[ Examine or Read notebook willl display a list of times, items, but omits detail  ]
Instead of examining notebook:
	if the number of filled rows in the Table of Notes is 0:
		say "Alas your notebook is empty.  You still need to find some clues.";
	else:
		say "The notebook contains [the number of filled rows in the Table of Notes] entries:[line break]";
		repeat through the Table of Notes:
			say "  [timestamp entry] - [item entry] - [detail entry][line break]".

Instead of consulting notebook about something:
	Repeat through Table of Notes:
		if the topic understood includes item entry:
			say "[item entry] - [Detail entry][line break]" instead;
		[
		[ enable user to look up by time, just in case ]
		[ Every wording I can think of for this produces an error: ]
		if the player's command includes timestamp entry:
			say "[timestamp entry] - [item entry] - [Detail entry][line break]" instead;
		]
	[ This never matches! ]
	say "There's nothing that matches that item exactly."

When play begins:
	Note "matchbook" with "Has Tony's phone number CH 2481.";

test me with "look up matchbook in notebook"[/code][/spoiler]

And here's the relevant lines, unspoilered:
[code]Instead of consulting notebook about something:
	Repeat through Table of Notes:
		if the topic understood includes item entry:
			say "[item entry] - [Detail entry][line break]" instead;
[/code]

I would love it if someone could explain why this doesn't work, or how to make it work, or how to write a "topic literal" in order to add it to a table.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1690&start=0#p10932
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stuck implementing a table with consult about
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-16 09:16:58

In the meantime, I thought of a couple alternatives.

Here's the first. Instead of trying to use texts or topics, create a kind of thing called a subject. That's how Epistemology does it, and Conversation Framework uses that to create new "quizzing it about" and "informing it about" actions to replace the topic-based ask/tell actions. I used the same approach here to replace consulting it about, but I've also created a special verb for looking up times.

[spoiler][code]Study is a room. The player carries a notebook.

a subject is a kind of thing. [borrowed from Epistemology]

matchbook is a subject. [if there were an actual matchbook in the game, you wouldn't need this line]

looking it up in is an action applying to one visible thing and one thing.
Understand "look up [any thing] in [something]" as looking it up in.
Understand "consult [something] on/about [any thing]" as looking it up in (with nouns reversed).
Understand "read about [any thing] in [something]" as looking it up in.
Understand "read [any thing] in [something]" as looking it up in.

check looking something up in when the second noun is not the notebook:
	say "You can only look things up in your notebook." instead
	
check looking something up in the notebook:
	unless there is an item of the noun in table of notes:
		say "There is nothing that matches that item exactly." instead

carry out looking something up in:
	choose row with an item of the noun in table of notes;
	say "[item entry] - [Detail entry][line break]";
	
chronologically-seeking it in is an action applying to one time and one thing.
Understand "look up [time] in [something]" as chronologically-seeking it in.
Understand "consult [something] on/about [time]" as chronologically-seeking it in (with nouns reversed).
Understand "read about [time] in [something]" as chronologically-seeking it in.
Understand "read [time] in [something]" as chronologically-seeking it in.

check chronologically-seeking when the second noun is not the notebook:
	say "You can only look notes up in the notebook." instead
	
check chronologically-seeking when the second noun is the notebook:
	unless there is a timestamp of the time understood in the table of notes:
		say "There is no note for that time." instead

check consulting the notebook about something:
	say "There is nothing that matches that subject exactly." instead

carry out chronologically-seeking:
	choose row with a timestamp of the time understood in table of notes;
	say "[timestamp entry] - [item entry] - [Detail entry][line break]";

Table of Notes
timestamp	item	detail
a time	a thing	some text
with 50 blank rows

[ Items in the notebook will be stored by unique item and only recorded once.
  This makes it easier to have multiple sources giving the same clue.   
  First time, alert the reader that player he has found a clue. ]
To note (d - some text) about (t - a thing):
	if the number of blank rows in the Table of Notes is 0:
		say ">>Warning: the notebook is now full.  (Please file a bug report.)";
		rule succeeds;
	[ Note: Check to see if the clue is already in the notebook, if so, disregard. ]
	if there is an item of t in the Table of Notes:
		rule succeeds;
	else:
		if the number of filled rows in the Table of Notes is 0:
			say "You decide to take a note of this in your notebook.";
			increase score by 1;
	choose a blank row in the Table of Notes;
	change timestamp entry to the time of day;
	change item entry to t;
	change detail entry to d.

[ Examine or Read notebook willl display a list of times, items, but omits detail  ]
Instead of examining notebook:
	if the number of filled rows in the Table of Notes is 0:
		say "Alas your notebook is empty.  You still need to find some clues.";
	else:
		say "The notebook contains [the number of filled rows in the Table of Notes] entries:[line break]";
		repeat through the Table of Notes:
			say "  [timestamp entry] - [item entry] - [detail entry][line break]".

When play begins:
	Note "Has Tony's phone number CH 2481." about matchbook;

test me with "read notebook/look up matchbook in notebook/look up 9:00 in notebook"[/code][/spoiler]

Another alternative would be to use a topic-based table, but instead of adding rows as you need them, create a "recorded" or "known" column in the table that hides entries when they're not yet known. You might even be able to get away with using the timestamp column - set all timestamps blank, and then set them to the time of discovery when they're activated.

A similar approach would be to have two tables, one complete and one empty, and you would copy entries from the complete table when they're added to the notebook.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1691&start=10#p10934
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Player Experience Report (Theme: Protagonist Mental Mode
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-11-16 09:37:06

The mental window seems to be a really good thing. 

Mapping and taking notes DOES break story flow (even if it doesn't necessarily break game flow - it can be too much a part of the way the game is played to do that);the mental window presumably won't. 

Come to think  of it, there is one possibly important difference between notes taken by the player and the information in the mental window. My personal notes will be taken from  my (the player's) perspective; the mental window is (as you said) a window into the protagonist's fictional mind. That, too, promises to help the player immerse himself/herself in the story.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1692&start=0#p10935
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 - same grammar but a phrase is rejected?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-16 09:38:46

Why not specify a verb for the reverse? I don't remember the syntax, but something like "the verb to be studied by implies the reversed enrolment relation" seems like it would be very handy. Except that I forgot you already used the "study" verb.

I think you can also say "fields related to target student by reverse enrolment."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1694&start=0#p10936
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Possible Glitch?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-16 09:46:10

Line breaks in Inform never happen where I expect them to. I've done a lot of work to break things up into rulebooks, and rulebooks seem to have particularly unpredictable handling of line breaks. I think there was a case where I moved some rules into their own section of the source, and the line break behavior changed. (that was before I got 6F95 - I haven't tested it since then)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=959&start=0#p10940
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment!
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-16 10:15:41

It's time to revive this thread!

If you want, head over to the [url=http://code.google.com/p/parchment/issues/list]issues list[/url] and vote (ie, star) any issues you think should be worked on ASAP.

OR, comment here! Tell me what improvements you'd love to see in Parchment!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1694&start=0#p10943
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Possible Glitch?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-11-16 10:46:32

[quote="capmikee"]Line breaks in Inform never happen where I expect them to.[/quote]
Historically, this has always been a problem with Inform. If you go back about ten years, you'll find many I6 games with extra and missing line breaks. Those were easier for the author to fix, however, because I6 was a much simpler language. The number of constructions the author can devise in I7 is exponentially larger, so the library is called on to handle more odd cases.

The fact that text with substitutions compiles as a function ... I didn't know that, but it's obvious now that you mention it. In I6 there was no such thing as a text substitution. You had to do it by hand. So I guess it's not surprising that the added power of I7 produces some "edge cases" that still need tidying up.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=0#p10944
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-11-16 10:51:21

[quote="aschultz"]
I'd also be very interested in what the authors have to say about their games or others'.[/quote]

I have a postmortem going on my blog: [url]http://www.wigdahl.net/quern[/url].  The first part was in the pipe and ready to go, and I'll be writing a couple more installments over the next weeks.

Several of the authors (including me) got through all the Comp games and put reviews up on the authors' forums.  I'll try to extract mine and clean them up for posting as well.  There are some good perspectives from the various authors -- we don't all like the same things, and that leads to some good discussion and analysis.

I thought this was a really strong year; I thoroughly enjoyed the vast majority of games and thought the overall quality was very high.  When great games like [i]The Warbler's Nest[/i], [i]The Bible Retold: Following a Star[/i], and [i]Gigantomania[/i] are somehow placing in the middle of the pack, you know the competition was stiff.

Whew!  It's strange to be able to post publicly again!   [emote]:shock:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1688&start=10#p10948
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compiler fails with 6F95 - where to start looking?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-16 11:29:04

I'm not sure just what you're doing, but it may be easier to use a boolean test rather than a boolean variable to gather complex conditions;

[code]
To decide whether scene-1-starts:
  if ..., decide yes;
  if ... and ..., decide no;
  if ... or ..., decide yes;
  decide no.

Scene 1 begins when scene-1-starts.
[/code]

I find this easier than setting variables, because there's no chance that the variables can wind up set inconsistently. Also, I didn't have to use the words "truth state". :)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1688&start=10#p10951
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compiler fails with 6F95 - where to start looking?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-16 12:47:18

[quote="zarf"]Also, I didn't have to use the words "truth state". [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
Gold.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=0#p10952
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: huftis / DateTime: 2010-11-16 12:48:28

[quote="aschultz"]While I'd guess there were no shockers for anyone in terms of what placed where, it's neat to see what the exact places are and also the distributions.[/quote]
Yeah, I like that too. I was happy to see that Aotearoa had the lowest standard deviation in [b]addition[/b] to having the highest average score; that is, it got consistently high scores. In fact, it got [b]no[/b] 1s, 2s, 3s, or 4s, and only two 5s (out of a 100 votes). It truly is an excellent game!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=10#p10958
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2010-11-16 14:25:20

[quote="severedhand"]The point here seems to be that a classic adventure game delivery platform (and creative tools for it) are being delivered for a new and accessible platform, which is all good news to me.[/quote]

Spot on severedhand. Thank you. This has spurred me on. 

I indeed think there is a need/space for old-school two-word parsers on mobile platforms with subtle enhancements here and there from the old days such as catering for more descriptive content of rooms and items but yes, two word parsers to allow interactivity with the game to progress through the old school type text Adventures. 

I think modern day Interactive Fiction has gone too far down the road of modernisation, catering for full sentences which in my opinion has made it prohibitive in mobile device gameplay and furthermore removes some of the 'romance' and 'speed Adventuring' of the good old days.

Mobile devices small chicklet keyboards / stylus etc (and the Kindle) are crying out for two word parsers in my opinion (but with more descriptive text for rooms and objects if authors wish).

Also the complexity of the modern day Adventure game generators such as Inform may put off would be authors from making games whereas two word parser games are, as you may see with Visionary, relatively easy to contruct.

Don't get me wrong. Modern day authoring tools like Inform are excellent and a lot of hard work has been put into their being, but in doing so, has removed the position further away from old school text Adventures and conditioned players into their expectations of how to play modern IF.

A few of the responses to my entry ("R") into the IFCOMP 2010 have made me realise the vast expectations (conditioning) of players nowadays playing 'Interactive Fiction' vs the 'text adventure' era. 

I guess there is a clear divide between old school text Adventures and modern day Interactive Fiction. The two are most definately different beasts.

My entry into IFCOMP bore this out.

People seem to have been 'conditioned' into certain ways of playing IF such as being surprised that my game did not have the option of "X" (object) but instead you had to type EXAMine (object) or LOOK (object) to learn something and also why you had to type 'GO CAVE' instead of just "West". Also the ability to 'ASK Bob ABOUT Fred' and other such options, although good in modern day progression again removes romance and speed adventuring, conditioning again into new Adventuring.

The results for the IFCOMP are now out and 24th out of 26th place isn't that bad   [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote] - I'm quite happy really - I put it down to:

- a bug about examining objects in the game
- the expectations of conditioned players to modern day IF
- the lack of descriptive text for locations and objects
- "FEED SHARks" [emote]:)[/emote]
- Screen size by AdvPDA when playing on the PC.
- My theory of my "Text Adventure" not being modern "Interactive Fiction"

There may be other stuff why people didn't like it but I also got some nice comments to suggest two word parser text Adventures are not stone cold dead although they do need a defibrillator.

Two word parsers with better descriptions designed for browsers for mobile play may be the electrical charge for old school text Adventure rebirth.

I am just rambling at this point. I'll sum up...

I have stuff floating around in my head which will be realised eventually for the rebirth of old school text Adventures using two word parsers (yay!) and the games would be playable from the net or on a Kindle or downloadable to mobiles devices (and desktops for that matter!). 

I am currently studying at uni as well as having a full time job, wife and kids and cat to juggle but I'll get there. [emote]:)[/emote]

It may be 'another engine to make adventures' but I believe it will fill a market where I believe there is a hole at the moment both in gameplay type (two word parsers for mobile play) and ease of use to create new old school text Adventure games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=10#p10961
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-16 14:54:30

[quote]I think modern day Interactive Fiction has gone too far down the road of modernisation, catering for full sentences which in my opinion has made it prohibitive in mobile device gameplay[/quote]

I disagree, as you can probably guess from my current business plan. :)

"Catering for full sentences" does not require increased typing overall. It is still the case in modern IF that 80% of commands are single words (if not single letters), and 80% of the rest are two-word command phrases. The added expressivity of a modern parser is there when the player wants to use it, for additional disambiguation or multi-object manipulations. Extra typing isn't a UI drag if the user actually wants to type the extra words.

(After all, the Scott Adams solution to multi-object commands was ">PUT ROCK" "Where?" ">IN BOX" -- and that doesn't actually save the user any typing.)

It will be important to support shortcuts, and I certainly expect to do a lot of work making the mobile interface as smooth as possible.

As for romance, the players will have to judge.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=10#p10962
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2010-11-16 15:22:32

Your reply is appreciated zarf, thank you.

[quote="zarf"]It is still the case in modern IF that 80% of commands are single words (if not single letters), and 80% of the rest are two-word command phrases.[/quote]

Is there a further breakdown of these stats I can find somewhere such as %moves, %get/drop, vs %3_word_or_more_sentences? I guess it all depends on different games for these but if there is a place where a good chunk of games stats are analysed and output as results I would love to see them to get a better feel.

[quote="zarf"]As for romance, the players will have to judge.[/quote]

Yes indeed.  [emote]:)[/emote]  

 I have an uberlove of all things retro [emote]:)[/emote]

Cheers.

---------------------------
Update:

I have just seen your page [url]http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zarf/hadean-lands-interactive-fiction-for-the-iphone[/url] and wish you the sincerest of best wishes in this new (ad)venture [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=10#p10963
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-11-16 16:03:55

[quote="matt w"]To be clear, I was saying that Kimball's argument about the moral premise (in the [url=http://blog.rbkdesign.com/2009/07/infusing-games-with-a-moral-premise/]originally linked post[/url]) suggests multiple play paths; he explicitly says "The use of a Moral Premise naturally leads to games that allow multiple play paths."[/quote]

Kimball later goes on to add: "A solution and one that applies to all games that use the Moral Premise on purpose is to allow multiple narrative paths that match the multiple gameplay paths." This is wrongheaded and naive.

Naive because even AAA titles don't have the budget to support four distinct paths through a story, with all the additional voice-acting and cinematic work that would entail.

Wrongheaded because it completely misses the point: to provide a single lens through which players can contemplate the actions and motivations of the characters they play. [i]Bioshock[/i] would not be a better game if it accommodated four premises instead of one. It would be the same muddled mess that most shooters are, where morality is supplied by the player and largely inconsequential to the experience.

Bioshock's theme is "A man chooses, a slave obeys." In moral premise form: choice builds identity, but submission destroys identity.

Moral premise and theme can be useful tools in defining what sort of experience the player ought to have. It's not about imparting a message; it's about making sure the story withstands some degree of scrutiny, and thereby encouraging the audience not to dismiss it as shallow, obscure, or meaningless.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1692&start=0#p10965
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 - same grammar but a phrase is rejected?
User: moose / DateTime: 2010-11-16 16:21:03

Well, that puts the finger on what's bothering me.

It seems that although I've said, "Enrolment relates various students to various fields", in fact, I can't - using that relation - calculate which fields a student is taking.  That would require the forbidden syntax "the fields John is enrolled on".  What I can do is to calculate, given a field, which students are taking it - so "students enrolled on Computer Games".  

In other words, the enrolment relation created by "Enrolment relates various students to various fields" actually relates fields to students, not students to fields.  

Having to use the "reversed enrolment relation" to access the mapping from students to fields, when that is actually what I asked for the enrolment relation to be in the first place, just makes it more confusing [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=10#p10967
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-11-16 17:12:33

[quote="therealeasterbunny"]catering for full sentences which in my opinion [...] removes some of the 'romance'[/quote]

I find that lack of communication is antithetical to romance.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1583&start=30#p10968
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Brent Spiner from Star Trek is funny
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-16 17:38:15

[quote="Retro"]don't interfere in issues, rants or cyberwars which you were not originally part of. This is a private war between me, Sarah Morayati, Jeremy Freese and some IFComp reviewers who I have an axe to grind with.[/quote]
This thread was called 'Brent Spiner from Star Trek is funny'.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1692&start=0#p10969
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 - same grammar but a phrase is rejected?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-11-16 17:46:19

Maybe it will be helpful to think of it this way:

Inform doesn't have an implicit way of distinguishing nouns.  It doesn't know that there isn't a noun called fields students, or fields students enrolled, or whatever.  Verbs are amongst the tools necessary to indicate where the breaks are, so it's not looking to repeat through the imaginary value fields students are enrolled in but the fields (which enroll) (some student X).

Given the vagaries of English, it's probably safer all around this way.  BTW, I've always heard "enrolled in", as in "John is enrolled in Computer Science."  Can I ask what part of the world you're from?  Just curious.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=0#p10970
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-16 17:47:35

Congrats to Matt and the other winners...! 8)

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=10#p10971
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-16 18:47:52

I don't know where zarf gets his stats, but if you look at a bunch of walkthroughs you can see the commands stories need these days. I would have guessed it would've been closer to 50% 1 word 50% multi word.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=10#p10972
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-16 19:05:29

[quote="bcressey"]Naive because even AAA titles don't have the budget to support four distinct paths through a story, with all the additional voice-acting and cinematic work that would entail.[/quote]

Sounds like it's "especially" AAA titles, not "even." Another thing that interests me about IF is that it might be easier to explore multiple paths when that doesn't mean shelling out four times as much for voice acting and cinematics. 

I can't speak about how wrongheaded it might be right now, because the Kimball post is the only definition I've been given of the moral premise, so if he gets it wrong I'm in the dark.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=10#p10973
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-16 19:11:35

[quote="Dannii"]I don't know where zarf gets his stats, but if you look at a bunch of walkthroughs you can see the commands stories need these days. I would have guessed it would've been closer to 50% 1 word 50% multi word.[/quote]

That's a good idea, but there might be a bit of bias in the method; walkthroughs probably skip a fair number of l's and i's, as well as possibly some directional commands due to not realizing which location you need to be in.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1583&start=30#p10974
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Brent Spiner from Star Trek is funny
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-16 19:22:27

Retro has a point. You really can't understand where he's coming from if you haven't read [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=847&p=4537#p4537]this post[/url]. In discussing why few people voted on his IFComp game, he claims that the community's hostility to CYOA is a more important reason than the fact that the English version of the game was mostly in German.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1690&start=0#p10976
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stuck implementing a table with consult about
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2010-11-17 00:43:50

Thanks again for looking into this with me.  I decided to try to code the Table of Notes as a static table with a topic column, as you suggested.  It is pre-filled with all of the relevant topics and clues and I set the timestamp with a default value of 1:00 pm to indicate a clue is not yet discovered.  Then as the user uncovers clues, I call a subroutine called Note passing the topic & text. If it's found in the table, I set the time to the actual time, which will be much later, to make the clue visible in the notebook.

Unfortunately, I have run into equally vexing problems with this approach.  
1. I can't find the clues in the table to make them visible
2. I can't print the topics in the table 

I think the error is related to the fact that I'm trying to pass a string argument into a Note subroutine and look it up as a topic.  But after 5+ hours and many code variations,  I can't for the life of me figure out the right way to do this.  But it's clear that the string is not being passed properly; "topic understood" is not valid in the Note subroutine.  Here's the code in a shortened form:
[code]
[ I'm stuffing one clue in the table to be visible during testing ]
number of found clues is a number that varies.
When play begins: now number of found clues is 1. 

[ Static table with 1 found clue to start; unfound clues have timestamp 1:00 pm]
Table of Notes
timestamp	topic	detail
1:00 pm	"Matches/Matchbook"	"From the Brass Lantern Tony -- CH 2481."
1:00 pm	"Alan Hugo's Motive"	"Financial problems...?"
1:00 pm	"News report"	"Klaus Fuchs worked at Los Alamos Laboratory..."
1:00 pm	"news/newspaper"	"Alan Hugo also worked at Los Alamos."
9:30 pm	"fish"	"This is a red herring."

[ This gets called later with a topic and string, e.g.
      Note "Matches" with "From the Brass Lantern Tony -- CH 2481.";
  How do you pass a string in to a subroutine to treat it like a topic? 
]
To note (topic - some topic) with (dd - some text):
	[ Topic understood appears to be nil -- runtime P39 if I try to print it ]
	[ say ">>Topic understood is: [topic understood] [line break]"; ]
	[ This next condition never matches --  ]
 	if the topic understood is a topic listed in the Table of Notes:	
		if the number of found clues is 0:
			say "You decide to take a note of this in your notebook.";  
		increase score by 1; 
		increase number of found clues by 1;   
		change timestamp entry to the time of day;
	else:
		say ">>Warning: Clue not found: [dd][line break]". 
                [ How do I print the topic to help with debugging?]

[ Examine or Read notebook willl display a list of times, topics  ]
Instead of examining notebook:
	if the number of found clues is 0:
		say "Alas your notebook is empty.  You still need to find some clues.";
	else:
		say "Notebook has [the number of found clues] entries:[line break]";
		repeat through the Table of Notes:
			if timestamp entry is not 1:00 pm:
				say "  [timestamp entry] - [detail entry][line break]".  
				[How do you print the topic entry which is what I want? ]

[ From Jim Aiken's Handbook using Topic tables  ]
Instead of consulting the notebook about something:
	if the topic understood is a topic listed in the Table of Notes:
		if timestamp entry is not 1:00 pm:
			say "You read the entry on [the topic understood]:[line break]";
			say "[detail entry][line break]";
		else:
			say "Nothing visible in the notebook on [the topic understood].";
			[ This is just for debugging purposes.  ]
	else:
		say "There's nothing in the notebook on [the topic understood]."
[/code]

I can print the notebook and consult the notebook on topics, but when I try to make a clue visible, it does not seem to be able to find the entry in the table; it always tells me the clue was not found.  
[code]
   [ This always results in "Warning>> Clue not found: " ]
   note "Matchbook" with "From the Brass Lantern Tony -- CH 2481.";

[/code]
If anyone can help me figure out a solution here, I would be tremendously grateful.  I'm about ready to tear my hair out on this one.   

Inform7 seems like a great language, but I am frustrated beyond belief that something so simple should take so many hours of trial and error.  Nor can I find any documentation that says how to do something fairly basic like print a topic or do some kind of typecast operation to convert a topic to text or vice verse.  

--Zack

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=10#p10977
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2010-11-17 00:46:56

[quote="tove"]I find that lack of communication is antithetical to romance.  [emote];)[/emote][/quote]

Oh I don't know... "I LOVE YOU" surely is the most romantic of short phrases to use...

Damn! Thats three words! Bang goes the two word parser theory  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote] 

btw I Googled antithetical  [emote]:oops:[/emote]  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=10#p10979
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2010-11-17 01:48:36

[quote="matt w"][quote="Dannii"]I don't know where zarf gets his stats, but if you look at a bunch of walkthroughs you can see the commands stories need these days. I would have guessed it would've been closer to 50% 1 word 50% multi word.[/quote]

That's a good idea, but there might be a bit of bias in the method; walkthroughs probably skip a fair number of l's and i's, as well as possibly some directional commands due to not realizing which location you need to be in.[/quote]

Maybe the Parchment developers have put something in their code to track number of words per lines input in all the online games it caters for and saves it back end somewhere for stats purposes. It would be an interesting set of stats to analyze. Not that I'm a stats fanatic or anything, but just to guage the scene at the moment when planning new projects. I guess Andrew has done this already in some respects if targetting new mobile platforms such as the iphone as part of his business plan.

I did see at one point - not sure where it was - it was a couple of years ago when I was researching the SACA format - that someone developed a voice recognition system for the Scott Adams format.

It may have been this ... [url]http://www.mperfect.net/speechTextAdv/[/url]

This audio clip is also linked on the page but highlighted here because I think its cool [url]http://www.mperfect.net/speechTextAdv/speechTextAdv_sample.mp3[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=0#p10980
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: Neo / DateTime: 2010-11-17 02:18:35

Indeed! Congrats, Matt! Well done.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=20#p10981
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: Neo / DateTime: 2010-11-17 02:41:35

From my experience, speed doesn't come from the number of words required to create a command, but instead from knowing what to type (correct syntax) or what needs to be done next in terms of plot or puzzle progression (well-implemented design and player familiarity with interactive fiction).

In terms of a mobile device as a format, a large percentage of my IF playing is done on my iPhone (using iFrotz). The few times that I actually find using the keyboard annoying are: when I'm required to enter numbers and letters (I have to keep alternating virtual keyboard layouts); or when the author has used a long or unusual name for an NPC I need to engage with. Both are easily rectified by the author.

For the rest of what's been said, Zarf and Dannii have this in the bag.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=959&start=0#p10983
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment!
User: Neo / DateTime: 2010-11-17 03:11:09

Hey Dannii,

You asked recently about the accessibility of Parchment... 

Short answer: it's not very good. Part of the problem is the way it works within the browser, but an equally large degree of it has to do with how the game has been written.

If you want to test it out for yourself, go here (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.nvda-project.org/">http://www.nvda-project.org/</a>) and grab the NVDA screen reader (it's free). Then visit Parchment and attempt to play one of the games. I tried Lost Pig and it was pretty disastrous.

I'll be posting soon about the topic of accessibility, but not directly addressing Parchment. The information should, though, give you some insight about the authoring side of things. I'm still working through feedback on the draft but I'm working towards getting it posted before the end of the week.

Hope that helps.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1688&start=10#p10984
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compiler fails with 6F95 - where to start looking?
User: i-k / DateTime: 2010-11-17 03:47:35

[quote="zarf"]Also, I didn't have to use the words "truth state". [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
Ah, you have broken free from the claws of that vicious beast that walks among us rattling his chains and stating the truth! I bow to you, good sir, and shall drink from this cup of wisdom to further examine the strange lands the path of decisions may lead...

Undecidedly Yours,
i-k

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=10#p10985
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: Harry Giles / DateTime: 2010-11-17 03:57:58

[quote="matt w"]I can't speak about how wrongheaded it might be right now, because the Kimball post is the only definition I've been given of the moral premise, so if he gets it wrong I'm in the dark.  [emote];)[/emote][/quote]

I think he gets it pretty right.

--

Very briefly, I'm going to come at this from the other side. I agree that games in general could would benefit narratively from more consideration of the moral premise: it would vastly widen the palate of possible stories from the current hegemony of hero-defeats-evil-and-gets-girl ("fun games") and rape-revenge-fantasy ("dark games"). However, for me, structuring around the moral premise - around, effectively, prescriptive ethical dichotomies - is still a horrendously simplified approach to storytelling. It's noticeable how many of the games, films and books mentioned have been blockbustered: that's because this is the kind of thing which is taught to writers to ensure commercial success, to ensure a smoothly-running story that doesn't confuse anyone too much but that has enough bite not to be boring. Bioshock, for example, as someone has already mentioned, is ethically utterly facile: while the story outstrips the majority of other blockbuster games (and the story[i]telling[/i] is some of the best we've ever seen anywhere), the moral exploration is pretty dull and simple.

So while we can learn from moral premise work, I think it's limited how far it will take us. It doesn't take us into the realm of real ambiguity, uncertainty and questioning which is at the heart of the best of our stories. I don't want to come out of a story with a barely-nuanced argument for the author's moral fetish; I want to come out of a story having experienced the world anew, with far more ideas about how to live in it, each more uncertain and speculative than the last.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1583&start=30#p10986
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Brent Spiner from Star Trek is funny
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-11-17 04:59:55

You know what, guys. I was wrong. There is no cyberwar between other users and me. There was just an old rant in 2009 which was settled a long time ago.

Forget it.

Let's go back to Brent Spiner... =)

--Retro

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1699&start=0#p10987
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: quixe not working with internet explorer?
User: kakarot / DateTime: 2010-11-17 05:07:55

hi,

are there any known problems with quixe on internet explorer? according to the quixe homepage it has been tested with IE7 & 8.. i'm here on 7.0.5730.11 and am finding the following problems:

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/i7-release/play.html">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/i7-release/play.html</a>
launches ok.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.red-bean.com/sussman/if/rover/play.html">http://www.red-bean.com/sussman/if/rover/play.html</a>
"A script on this page is causing Internet Explorer to run slwly. IF it continues to run, your computer may become unresponsive. Stop running the script?"

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quixe/play-remote.html?story=stories/Advent.ulx.js">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quix ... ent.ulx.js</a>
"Loading..." and spinning compass forever.

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quixe/play-remote.html?story=stories/Reliques.gblorb.js">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quix ... .gblorb.js</a>
"A script on this page is causing Internet Explorer to run slwly. IF it continues to run, your computer may become unresponsive. Stop running the script?"

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quixe/play.html">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quixe/play.html</a>
launches ok

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quixe/play-remote.html?story=stories/windowtest.ulx.js">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quix ... est.ulx.js</a>
launches ok

and all of the ifcomp.org glulx "play online" links:
nothing at all. not even a spinning compass. the z-code parchment ones are fine though.

i dont get these problems when using google chrome through, so it seems to be browser-specific. has anybody got quixe working with internet explorer? thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=10#p10988
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-17 06:48:01

[quote="Harry Giles"]So while we can learn from moral premise work, I think it's limited how far it will take us. It doesn't take us into the realm of real ambiguity, uncertainty and questioning which is at the heart of the best of our stories.[/quote]

Agreed; but that's not what the moral premise is meant to do. It's a guiding element for those other things you mention. What takes you into the realm of ambiguity, uncertainty and all that is the level of writing that's woven around a thematic concept that's manifested by character, dialogue, setting, and so forth.

In a fictional story, the idea is that the protagonist has a choice: embrace the truth of the moral premise or reject it. From an authoring perspective, this gives you a certain technique in the form of an approach:

[list]
• If the protagonist embraces the truth, it means they understand the truth (to some degree) and they try to apply it to their situation.
[list]o If their application is successful, they understand the truth even better and they achieve their goal.
o If they embrace it but do not understand it, and thus don’t apply it correctly, perhaps they don’t achieve their goal. (But then do they still gain the better understanding? They might. Even in failure – sometimes [i]especially[/i] in failure – we can learn.)[/list:u]
[/list:u]
[list] • If the protagonist rejects the truth, they obviously don’t try to apply it and, presumably, they don’t get to their goal and, worse, they may never understand why.[/list:u]

The "identification" aspect is important because when the audience sees a given protagonist struggling with the difficulty of making some tough decision, that audience will start to identify with that character and in some sense try to make the choice for them. (In other words, the audience engages with the character and thus the story.) In textual IF, you, as player, [i]literally[/i] get to make the choice for them.

These choices that the protagonist wrestles with are ultimately difficult because they often deal with dilemmas involving unclear moral rights and wrongs. This is essentially the nature of complications in a story. The protagonist will go through a series of actions and decisions that will, often in equal measure, challenge and even compromise the journey. So the protagonist has something at stake; and if the audience identifies with the need -- with what's at stake -- then they'll root for the protagonist to make the right decision. (Or, at least, the decision they believe is right.)

In textual IF, the audience (the players) gets to make the "right" decision -- the one they believe is right. If they go down the "virtue" side, they will agree with the author and experience the positive side of the moral premise. If they go down the "vice" side, they will disagree with the author and experience the negative side of the moral premise. The key is that the author has to have done a good job in presenting both arguments, as it were.

So if the author has put all this in front the audience effectively, then that audience has a window to the protagonist's mind. That means the audience's involvement in the story turns on the protagonist's ability to make the right moral decision that moves the plot and story into a direction they'd like to see. In film or book, you as reader just have to go along for the ride. The same applies in textual IF, except that you do have a little more control over the ride. But that puts much more onus on the author to provide an experience.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1700&start=0#p10989
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Moral Premise: Trinity Reimagined
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-17 06:59:30

Rather than throw this in the [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=10]Moral Premise and Gaming[/url] thread, I figured I would put up this one just to give one example of how we tried thinking about and applying the moral premise. I mentioned that one of the classes was focused on "Trinity Reimagined." So here I'll cover a very small snapshot of how we looked at this. Even thought it's a small snapshot, I fear this still may be a long post.

[b][color=#FF0000]Warning:[/color][/b] There is a significant spoiler here regarding the original game [i]Trinity[/i]. I do discuss how the original game ended because I sort of have to. If you haven't played the game and still want to, this would be a good time to stop reading.


[size=150][b]THE ORIGINAL TRINITY[/b][/size]

If we were going to "reimagine" something, we had to know what that something was originally. Here's a basic summary of [i]Trinity[/i]:

The game focused on a nameless protagonist who ends up escaping a nuclear war. You had an American who was visiting London when the war breaks out. A particular nuclear weapon happens to detonate right over Kensington Gardens, which is where the player happens to be. Being vaporized in the blast is what the player has to escape.

This escape involves traveling into what appears to a fantastical other dimension that does, in some ways, have elements that match our own dimension or reality. Through a series of adventures in various time periods -- all of which involved some aspect of atomic or nuclear weapon development -- the protagonist collects a series of items that eventually allow him to re-enter our dimension at the "Trinity" test site in Alamagordo, New Mexico. It's here that the protagonist is given a chance to alter the course of history by preventing the first test from ever working, thus presumably avoiding the future nuclear war.


[size=150][b]THINKING ABOUT TRINITY[/b][/size]

After some review and some play-through of the original game, it was immediately clear to anyone with some writing skill that the entire basis of [i]Trinity[/i] was flawed. The overriding concept was that just because one atomic test was thwarted, all of the subsequent atomic and nuclear development would have somehow changed enough that a nuclear war would never happen. Clearly that chain of logic is lacking a whole lot of logic. From a design perspective, I wanted my class to recognize that and think about what that might mean for the story.

Another thing that my class noticed is that the fantasy elements in the game didn't sit very well with the "real world" elements. Essentially the main part of the game -- where the brunt of the action takes place -- is in the fantastical realm. However, that realm leads to various points of time in the "real" world. The intrusion of the fantasy into that world wasn't really handled all that well, at least from a storytelling perspective. (After all, at one point you have to interact with a dolphin to get yourself a coconut.) The game itself seemed to just mix these elements freely which, it could be argued, diminished the story a bit.

Finally, there were many, many places in [i]Trinity[/i] where it was simply possible to get yourself in a no-win situation. Failing to grab certain items at the right time could lead to problems later on where you were no longer able to complete the game. There was no way to go back and get those items. From a design perspective, this was found to compromise the ability to tell the story effectively.

I think it says a lot about the paucity of effective stories in textual IF from the Infocom days that [i]Trinity[/i] was so well-regarded at the time as it was. Looked at honestly, it was essentially [i]Zork[/i] with a slight veneer of sophistication. Mind, I say this in full light of the fact that I was one of those who greatly enjoyed Trinity at the time. It was probably my favorite Infocom game, even given the annoying fact that you could routinely get yourself into spots where you could no longer win them game. That being said, there [i]was[/i] an attempt to tell a particular story.


[size=150][b]DESIGNING TRINITY[/b][/size]

With the above already-existing design in mind, I then asked the class to largely clear it from their minds while, at the same time, keeping it very much in their mind. Sounds strange, I realize, but what I wanted the class to do was consider a redesign based on the original but almost as if they were coming up with it for the first time. So what I asked the class to do was to consider what was known about the basic elements of the game as a treatment, similar to what you would see when somebody pitches a synopsis for a screenplay or novel. Then we'd use that to "design (a new) Trinity." To break it down, here's the simple treatment:

[quote]A guy narrowly escapes a nuclear explosion by entering another dimension. This other dimension has time portals that can be used to go back into his own dimension, at various points along the timeline. The portals all seem to connect to significant events in the history of atomic and nuclear development. One such portal leads back to the very first atomic explosion test and it's here that the guy is given a chance to alter history by aborting the test before it can ever take place.[/quote]

As far as a treatment goes, that's just fine. But it also leaves a lot out: particularly in terms of why a reader would care. Who is this guy? Where is he located? How does he escape? Why does he escape? Did anyone else escape? Why do the portals all connect to past nuclear-related events? Why can the guy just change history at that one point -- the "Trinity" test -- as opposed to all the points he can visit? Why does the guy try to alter history? Does he even realize that this is what he's doing? Does he consider any other ramifications of this, such as wiping out his own potential existence? Speaking to that, does the notion of time paradox have anything to do with this? Is this more a story about time travel? About nuclear war? And so on and so forth.

Let's consider the first two questions there: “Who is this guy? Where is he located?"

Yes, you obviously needed a setting. That's obviously important. No matter what characters you end up building, they need to populate some location. But, as I talked about with my class, the nature of the location may depend on the character, in terms of having the setting be a counterpoint to that character.


[size=150][b]MEET HARRY SMOLIN[/b][/size]

In contrast to Trinity's nameless protagonist, our protagonist was going to be Harry Smolin. This was an American guy who was on vacation (in the United Kingdom) but not really enjoying it. [u]This was a guy who lacked a bit of imagination regarding the world around him[/u]. The story picks up as Harry is visiting Kensington Gardens, after already having visited various other popular tourist attractions in and around London. Harry's [u]hates the idea of crowds and people all around him[/u]. In fact, Harry would [u]rather be alone[/u]. If that's the case, why then is Harry taking a vacation in a heavily touristed spot? Mainly because he feels that's simply what people do. Harry's a little lost in life, sort of going through the motions. Harry is also on vacation with his estranged wife and their child. But even though he's supposed to be trying to use the vacation time to get back in touch with his family, here he is wandering around alone and, ultimately, this is because Harry fears he may not care all that much about his family. He doesn't wish them harm; he just values being alone.

Harry often takes the easy road; the past of least resistance; the path that would allow him to largely just go through the motions of life without having to necessarily feel intensely about anything or anyone.

So, in talking with my class, we reiterated the obvious: characters that will be at odds with each other at some stage in the story provide a basis for conflict. However, in this case, what I really need is for a setting to be at odds with Harry. Harry's imagination -- or lack thereof -- has to be challenged. Harry's desire for being alone has to be challenged. As such, Harry is going to witness the destruction of civilization. Harry is going to be thrust into another land that not only gives him his "desire" (being very alone) but that also challenges his imagination because this land is very much not like our own. And even the events that have led Harry here -- some odd things happen in Kensington Gardens -- will have challenged his imagination already.

For a guy that liked to operate on the fringe of noticeability, with the minimum of effort, and taking the fewest risks, Harry was about to find that the future of history was in his hands.


[size=150][b]MORAL PREMISE[/b][/size]

So here's a possible moral premise:

[list][color=#400000][b]Selfishness and self-preservation[/b] lead to [b]defeat and death[/b]; but
[b]Selflessness and sacrifice[/b] lead to [b]victory and peace[/b].[/color][/list:u]

Each statement by itself is a theme; together, they're a moral premise. Each statement acts as an argument and a conclusion. The story's job is to prove it. From a textual IF authoring perspective, the challenge is to prove it will still allowing the player to interact.


[size=150][b]BUT ... TRINITY UNDERMINES ITSELF[/b][/size]

As my class played through [i]Trinity[/i] I was happy that they realized the fundamentally obvious problem in the story as a whole. The problem is that the closed causal loop ending of the original game  undermines any sort of premise except one that focuses on inevitability. In the original the nameless protagonist (i.e., you) manages to subvert the original Trinity test. Then "something" tells you that such a thing can't be allowed ultimately because of paradox and thus you end up right back at the beginning ("all prams lead to Kensington Gardens").

That's kind of silly for various reasons. At the very least, it doesn't take much to realize that the pram was only one element of the game and it didn't "lead you" to Kensington at all. You used it at Kensington Gardens. You didn't use it at the Trinity test site. So it wasn't a "loop object" in the sense that good time travel stories use them. The umbrella had much more claim to this in a lot of ways.

Further, you had succeeded in changing history -- and yet the game just introduces a deus ex machina that says, effectively, "No, you really didn't." A closed causal loop is one the effect from a cause can reach back in time and cause the cause. You have what amounts to a self-caused event (or self-consistent global causality violation if you want to get technical about it).

Further, you were saving a tangible that was an abstract: civilization (i.e., life as we know it). Noble goal but in order for character engagement, it can help to parallel that story in a more localized way.

All of this threw a big spanner in the works in terms of design ideas.


[size=150][b]REDESIGN IDEAS[/b][/size]

Regarding the whole civilization saving thing, we realized that you can have Harry really trying to save his wife and child who were also in London at the time. The act of trying to save them is mirrored in the actions to save civilization.

There are a couple of ways to do this. Harry's actions in the game could truly prevent a global nuclear exchange thus saving himself and his family. Another is that there wasn't really a global war, but rather some accident wherein only London was destroyed. During Harry's visits to various time periods, he will have to meet selfish people interested only in self-preservation but his actions will, to an extent, change them. That very changing is what in fact makes it so that .... what? A general nuclear war does not take place? Enough people survive past encounters with an atomic and/or nuclear bomb and they all have influence later? Or does Harry in fact end up in a causal loop wherein the war always happens?

It depends on whether player ends up having Harry pursue the vice (selfishness and self-preservation) or the virtue (selflessness and sacrifice). Both paths through the game will prove the premise. (In a more complex game, multiple paths could exist for the vice and the virtue but it's questionable how well such a game will be written.)

You could still have a closed causal loop and that could, in a way, be a form of "death" in that you constantly relive the same situation over and over. (If Harry gets stuck in that, he wasn't redeemed and thus we have a tragedy.)

The elements of the story will have to work towards this premise:

[list]
[*]The "bird lady" Harry meets in Kensington should be made to seem selfish or putting self-preservation first. (She seems to sacrifice and be selfless for "her" birds. But that should only be on the surface. After all, why doesn't she just feed the birds herself rather than relying on people to give her money to feed the birds?)[/*:m]
[*]The disfigured Japanese woman should be selfish or show only self-preservation. (This woman is critical in terms of providing the equivalent of the conch shell in Lord of the Flies; in this case, it's the umbrella. It's a totem that should have been sued more than it was. The self-preservation here would be showing how she's not risky enough to get the umbrella -- even though it means a whole lot to her.)[/*:m]
[*]The barrow wight should be selfish or desiring self-preservation. (This would actually require a lot of changes in terms of hwo the barrow wight was used in the game.)[/*:m]
[*]Some character would need to be at the Trinity site that could personify those events in the game. There has to be someone trying to actively stop the protagonist from completing his "mission." (This, again, would require changes to the structure of that part of the game.)[/*:m][/list:u]

This, as you may noticed, forced us to consider some redesign ideas. Did it have to be a nuclear war?

We wanted an event that could destroy civilization (or at least some portion of it).
Just as the family is being destroyed (literally and figuratively).

Possible endings:

[list]
[*]Harry can be in a time loop and everyone dies. <- vice (selfish)[/*:m]
[*]Harry can be in a time loop but everyone lives. <- virtue (sacrifice; selflessness)[/*:m]
[*]Harry can be in a time loop but his family lives. (No; Harry and his family can't live exlusively.)[/*:m]
[*]Harry can die and everyone lives. (Possible.) <- virtue (sacrifice)[/*:m]
[*]Harry can die as everyone else dies. (Possible) <- vice (self-preservation)[/*:m]
[*]Harry can die as his family lives. (Possible) <- virtue (sacrifice)[/*:m]
[*]Harry can live and everyone lives. (Possible) <- virtue (selflessness)[/*:m]
[*]Harry can live and his family lives. (No; Harry and his family can't live exlusively.)[/*:m][/list:u]

So I can see that the Harry's family has a fate that is tied with everyone. If everyone dies, the family dies. If the family dies, everyone dies. Likewise, if the family lives, so does everyone else and vice versa.

At this point, we began implementation around a series of ideas in Kensington Gardens ....


[size=150][b]WAS THERE A POINT?[/b][/size]

What I hope you all get out of this is that [color=#000080]by considering a specific character (Harry Smolin) with specific traits (lack of imagination, desire for aloneness) and a specific setting (Toadstool Realm) that served as a crucible and as a counterpoint to Harry's own traits, we ended up coming up with a moral premise we wanted to explore. That in turn allowed us to focus our design very specifically.[/color]

I'll just give a very brief synopsis of some of those design discussions here.

[list][*]We decided we didn't want some elements of Kensington Gardens to be as "magical" as they appeared. We didn't want, for example, the grass that tangles up the player's feet and drags them back to Lancaster Walk. The roadrunner, as it was used, was probably going to have to go.[/*:m][/list:u]

[list][*]We decided that many of the past points in history that Harry would develop would not be as "odd" as those in the game. Each historical point would have someone in it who Harry could choose to act selfishly with or selflessly with. Those choices would determine whether Harry (the player) was following the vice or the virtue.[/*:m][/list:u]

[list][*]We weren't sure if a nuclear war was necessarily going to be the focus. Rather, the "toadstool realm" may have simply connected up with disasters of various sorts, whether chemical spills, oil rig explosions, whatever. So maybe the "toadstool realm" linked up periods of focused human suffering. Or maybe, similar to the film [i]Groundhog Day[/i], Harry was himself being tested by "something" and breaking the loop was one part of that. Or maybe it wouldn't really be explained at all.[/*:m][/list:u]

[list][*]We did like the idea of a loop in time, but more in the sense that this was only one possible end for Harry. If the loop was used, it truly had to be self-caused all along the path. Going with the moral premise (the "...leads to death" part), the act of getting caught up in the loop would be a form of death.[/*:m][/list:u]

[list][*]We did like the idea of "something" guiding Harry along a path. The deus ex machina in the original game could, perhaps, be put to better use; not as something to be explained, but rather as a constant element that is driving Harry.[/*:m][/list:u]

[list][*]There is some possibility to having all of the events be something Harry "experiences" without necessarily being real. (If you read the original novelization or screenplay for [i]12 Monkeys[/i], you'll see that was the intent of that story, which didn't transfer quite as well to the film version.)[/*:m][/list:u]


[size=150][b]FINALLY (AND THEN I SHUT UP)[/b][/size]

My class was interested in a few other games of the Infocom area in terms of trying to reimagine them with a moral premise idea. Those games were [i]Bureaucracy[/i], [i]Planetfall[/i], [i]Plundered Hearts[/i], and [i]Starcross[/i]. There was some talk about [i]A Mind Forever Voyaging[/i] as well since there was a lot of story possibility regarding a different set of values (for a computer; i.e. PRISM) being applied to a human world.

Why not just have people write their own games and stories rather than look at those from the past? That's the ultimate goal; but there's huge benefit in learning to think about textual IF in the context of a pre-existing work. In fact, my own attempt to "reimagine" [i]Starcross[/i] led to a unique story and game idea that I'm still hoping to implement one of those days.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=10#p10990
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: Harry Giles / DateTime: 2010-11-17 07:04:22

[quote="Jeff Nyman"][quote="Harry Giles"]So while we can learn from moral premise work, I think it's limited how far it will take us. It doesn't take us into the realm of real ambiguity, uncertainty and questioning which is at the heart of the best of our stories.[/quote]

Agreed; but that's not what the moral premise is meant to do. It's a guiding element for those other things you mention. What takes you into the realm of ambiguity, uncertainty and all that is the level of writing that's woven around a thematic concept that's manifested by character, dialogue, setting, and so forth.[/quote]

I think you're partly right, and your expansion of your thinking in the last post is useful; however, I do think that working from moral premise structures, because they are dichotomous, tends to make writers work with moral binaries rather than introducing moral subtleties.

So if the basic equation is:

[Vice] leads to [undesirable consequences]; but
[Virtue] leads to [desirable consequences].

We're likely to leave out the possibilities, which exist in the real world, that:

[Vice] leads to [desirable consequences];
[Virtue] leads to [undesirable consequences]; or
[Somewhere between Vice and Virtue] leads to [a mix of desirable and undesirable consequences];

or, indeed that possibility that:

Faced with a difficult choice between vice and virtue, the protagonist suffers moral paralysis, leading to either disaster or enlightenment through non-action;
The protagonist does what they think is virtuous and then realises they're actually acting viciously (actually, this is quite common in blockbusters, though its inverse is rarer: it's just that it's usually introduced as a childish "plot twist" rather than a moral conundrum);
The world is too complex that making moral choices seems impossible;
The world is too complex, but the protagonist tries to make moral choices, leading to any of desirable consequences, undesirable consequences, personal fulfilment, personal anxiety, utopia or a totalitarian state;

&c.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=10#p10991
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: Harry Giles / DateTime: 2010-11-17 07:05:25

Incidentally, is there a term for the syndrome in which the author distracts themselves from writing by contributing posts of IF theory?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1700&start=0#p10992
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise: Trinity Reimagined
User: Harry Giles / DateTime: 2010-11-17 07:28:43

Again, really valuable, especially because it gives us something concrete to consider in our other conversation.

I'll try to provide a fuller critique later (or maybe I'll write my game instead), but for now I'm going to focus on this, as it's the problem I have in microcosm:

[quote]Regarding the whole civilization saving thing, we realized that you can have Harry really trying to save his wife and child who were also in London at the time. The act of trying to save them is mirrored in the actions to save civilization.[/quote]

This, for me, is a prime example of how working with moral premise structures tends us towards tired narrative devices (not [i]necessarily[/i], but in practise). The save-the-wife-and-child plot is a plot essentially halfway between the two great stories of kill-dragon-win-princess and rape-revenge-fantasy. Leaving aside the narrative laziness and dubious gender politics (harsh language used because of lack of time and eagerness to put thoughts down, not to imply your work isn't in depth and useful) of creating two characters defined solely by their relation to the (presumably, by name) white male protagonist, this is also the kind of ethical simplification which simply does not exist in the real world, and which I think it's artistically irresponsible to keep telling people does exist.

Even though this is also a tired and lazy narrative option, wouldn't it be infinitely more interesting if, in some way, through either disaster or time paradox, saving civilisation would involve Harry sacrificing his wife and child? That's, tellingly, one of the few options you don't ennumerate. That way we really get to see selflessness: a much bigger sacrifice than the whole Bruce Willis-in-[i]Armageddon[/i] thing because the sacrificer has to live with their loss. And although the layer of moral complexity there is no more than in some facile philosophical moral dilemma, at least there's a layer there, however thin.

More subtly, what if interfering at all these time points has a confusing and complex mix of positive and negative effects? What if this involves ruining a scientist's career, or killing someone's unborn child to prevent them inventing the bomb? What if we explore the frustration you hint at in which the protagnoist realises it's not actually possible to prevent the bomb forevermore? What an interesting hero we have if the dragon keeps inevitably coming back to life, and the hero is totally unable to find personal fulfilment (or save his village) by killing the dragon, and so has to do something else instead.

This is one of the very few things I really liked about the storytelling in [i]Indigo Prophecy[/i] (aka [i]Farenheit[/i]). While there was considerable kill-dragon-win-princess plotting, the epilogue for each possible ending was narratively complex: "winning" the final sequence didn't lead to total happiness for anyone, and "losing" the final sequence didn't immediately lead to dsiaster for everyone. Saving the world turned out to be a lot more complex than the game first thought.

Finally, it's worth pointing out that kill-dragon-win-princess is an extremely culturally specific dominant narrative, though it's increasingly hegemonic in this era of homogenising globalisation. What if we were to write stories that are more like Zen [i]koan[/i], Melanesian tragicomic hero quests, or American First Nations Trickster stories? Wouldn't that massively widen and deepen our storytelling ability?

(This rant, unstructured, questioning and incomplete as it is, has been heavily influenced by the fact that I recently read Scarlett Thomas's [i]Our Tragic Universe[/i], a tasty little novel which explores all of these questions in depth, with wit, moral complexity, and emotional depth. How we tell stories really matters to how people figure out how to live their lives.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=20#p10993
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-17 07:38:55

[quote="Harry Giles"]I think you're partly right, and your expansion of your thinking in the last post is useful; however, I do think that working from moral premise structures, because they are dichotomous, tends to make writers work with moral binaries rather than introducing moral subtleties.[/quote]

True. But as an author you are not writing about moral subtleties usually. You are approaching the story with a moral stance or viewpoint. You have a certain view that this is how the world works (or, at least, may work) and so you are setting out to prove that assertion. You may have antagonists or co-protaognists represent the subtleties, but ultimately you (and your protagonist) are taking some sort of stance.

An important point is that the plot is said to be an effect (a consequence of) the moral thoughts and values of the protagonist, who takes action based on those thoughts and values. It's those moral thoughts, decisions, and actions that create in the audience an emotional feeling about the virtues and vices with which the protagonist struggles. It's up to the audience to decide how they feel about the virtues and the vices -- or even if they consider them as such -- but it's up to the author to make sure that the audience understands what the protagonist considers to be a virtue and a vice.

If there is too much subtlety, then there is a defocusing aspect to the story. Audiences tend to disengage from that because, after all, not getting meaning and structure is something they can get outside of fictional experiences. Fictional experiences are where they can go to get at least one possible meaning.

[quote]We're likely to leave out the possibilities, which exist in the real world, that:

[Vice] leads to [desirable consequences];
[Virtue] leads to [undesirable consequences]; or
[Somewhere between Vice and Virtue] leads to [a mix of desirable and undesirable consequences];
[/quote]

True enough. But fiction is generally a focusing element for a given viewpoint. It's not meant to present all sides necessarily, but rather to make a compelling argument. (Bear with me here because I'm not saying it [i]has[/i] to be or that textual IF [i]must[/i] follow that. I'm playing the Devil's Advocate to your points.)

So let's say we have a set of values. That set of values give us the motivation to take action. But what happens when those values are in conflict? This is when people must make a value-oriented decision under more extreme situations. But which value wins out? [i]That[/i] is the dilemma and thus the drama. It's dramatic conflict, more specifically, and the job of the author is to motivate the characters in a story into and out of such conflicts.

So my argument is that the focus needs to be conflict that is rooted in values structured around a moral premise. It needs to be clear that when a premise is moral in nature, that premise will make judgments of what is right or what is wrong. So the author is essentially coming down on one side or other of the "versus" dichotomy.

So going with what you say here:

[quote]Faced with a difficult choice between vice and virtue, the protagonist suffers moral paralysis, leading to either disaster or enlightenment through non-action;
The protagonist does what they think is virtuous and then realises they're actually acting viciously (actually, this is quite common in blockbusters, though its inverse is rarer: it's just that it's usually introduced as a childish "plot twist" rather than a moral conundrum);
The world is too complex that making moral choices seems impossible;
The world is too complex, but the protagonist tries to make moral choices, leading to any of desirable consequences, undesirable consequences, personal fulfilment, personal anxiety, utopia or a totalitarian state;[/quote]

Good examples. In your second example, what you have is the protagonist following the vice rather than the virtue. In the first case, "moral paralysis" may then be the vice side of your premise. ("Failure to take action and make decisions leads to disaster.") In the third case, that's a valid viewpoint but how do you characterize it? Believing that the world is too complex and that moral choice is impossible could be a vice that you explore thematically via a character. Recognizing that moral choice is possible even in the face of complexity could be a virtue.

So what your statements above are showing is that you have different stories you might want to tell. Now what's a character that can be used to showcase those ideas? You may have people out there who do believe that the complexity of the world does mean no moral decisions are possible. Do you agree? If so, make that your moral premise and then prove it via a dramatic series of events. Do you disagree? If so, tell that story instead. That's what I mean about the premise focusing you on the story you want to tell.

Going back to an earlier example, Mario Puzo wanted to tell the story of a guy who decided that immediate family was more important than anything, even the law or even a morality based on the idea that murder is wrong. Michael Corleone's wife represented some moral subtlety as did other situational elements of the film (such as getting revenge for a killed brother). But Puzo had a specific story he wanted to tell and a premise he wanted to prove via Michael. Having Michael be vague and ambivalent towards whether to be a criminal overlord or a law-abiding citizen would only work up to a point. Michael had to start approaching one or the other.

Likewise, having Anakin constantly waffle between being a Jedi or a Sith would not have worked for too long. Yet notice there were moral subtleties played with. After all, the Jedi did often act like closed-minded jerks. They were using Anakin for a specific purpose without letting him in all details. Palpatine did, at the very least, have some good points about what the "quest for power" means and how it can take different forms and how "good and evil are points of view."

In fact, what you're describing is really how you apply inciting incidents, turning points, and an eventual moment of grace into a story, where the conflicting viewpoints and the subtleties ebb and flow until either the vice or the virtue dominates. Getting the moment of grace into textual IF is actually a lot bigger of a challenge than getting the moral premise in.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1692&start=0#p10994
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 - same grammar but a phrase is rejected?
User: moose / DateTime: 2010-11-17 08:13:41

[quote="gravel"]Inform doesn't have an implicit way of distinguishing nouns.  It doesn't know that there isn't a noun called fields students, or fields students enrolled, or whatever.  Verbs are amongst the tools necessary to indicate where the breaks are, so it's not looking to repeat through the imaginary value fields students are enrolled in but the fields (which enroll) (some student X).[/quote]

That isn't the issue - it's that when I want to add that verb "which enrolls", I have to add it corresponding to the [i]reversed[/i] enrolment relation.  But I want that verb to relate students to fields which is what I originally specified that enrolment should do in the forward direction.

[quote]Given the vagaries of English, it's probably safer all around this way.  BTW, I've always heard "enrolled in", as in "John is enrolled in Computer Science."  Can I ask what part of the world you're from?  Just curious.[/quote]

The UK.  I think "enrolled on" is fairly standard here.  Interesting! [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1700&start=0#p10995
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise: Trinity Reimagined
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-17 08:20:04

[quote="Harry Giles"]Even though this is also a tired and lazy narrative option, wouldn't it be infinitely more interesting if, in some way, through either disaster or time paradox, saving civilisation would involve Harry sacrificing his wife and child?[/quote]

Perhaps so. Thematically you could have a story about how Harry, in saving two lives, realized he could save many others or, alternatively, how Harry could sacrifice two lives to save many others. The real thematic area we were going for, however, is that Harry's desire for alone-ness wasn't just from his family but a disconnection from the world around him. You certainly could argue that Harry could sacrifice his family for the good of civilization. But then you need a premise to support that. (After all, if Harry's family doesn't get a choice in whether or not to be sacrificed for the good of civilization, you could have another area of self-preservation or selfishness taking place. Remember: Harry is disconnected from his family; them dying in some purported attempt to save the world may not be all that hard for him to conceive of.)

[quote]That way we really get to see selflessness: a much bigger sacrifice than the whole Bruce Willis-in-[i]Armageddon[/i] thing because the sacrificer has to live with their loss.[/quote]

Perhaps; if you can convince the audience that all the sudden Harry sees the value in saving civilization by letting just two people die. But how realistic is that? What would save the world from a nuclear war just because [i]his[/i] family dies? You'd have to build up a narrative where somehow his family became the linchpin of a civilization destroying event.

You bring up Bruce Willis and [i]Armageddon[/i] and that's interesting because there's another movie of his, [i]Die Hard[/i], that explores ideas very similar to our revamped ideas of [i]Trinity[/i].

On the physical level [i]Die Hard[/i] is pretty simple, right? You've got a cop who battles an office tower full of terrorists (who are basically just thieves). They are people who, obviously, act very selfishly. But on the moral premise side, the movie is really about the depth of John McClaine's selfless love for his wife, Holly. The motivation of every character in [i]Die Hard[/i] centers on the conflict and arc between selfishness and selflessness. John, in particular, begins the movie pretty selfish. He ends it largely selfless (or at least a heckuva lot more selfless than before). With that, we have a possible moral premise statement:

[list][color=#400000][b]Selflessness leads[/b] to [b]happiness[/b]; but
[b]Selfishness[/b] leads to [b]unhappiness[/b].[/color][/list:u]

There's another way to look at this as well, which is that part of the formula requires that the protagonist have some aspect of that which he is going to fight against in his own nature (internal) as well as in the outside world (external). With this logic applied to the film, McClane is selfish (internal) and fighting selfish (external). Harry, in our case, was a guy who lacked imagination and yet was confronted with a situation that required tons of imagination. Harry was a guy who wanted to be alone and then get more of being alone than he could stand (since the "Toadstool Realm" is largely unpopulated).

Okay, so sticking with a storytelling mantra for a second: the idea is that the author does the presenting of the evidence via scenes. When advice like "keep each scene focused on the premise" is given, what this means is that each scene should provide evidence in support of the moral position that you, the author, are taking. And it's not even just this. It's also that each scene must reinforce the "formula" of the premise, which is another way of saying the moral premise statement. So even if we go with the idea in "Trinity Reimagined" that to be selfless means to sacrifice others for some greater good, you have to explore that theme at all points.

So going with the [i]Die Hard[/i] example, we've said that part of the moral premise (the conclusion we're trying to prove) is "selfishness leads to unhappiness." So in this film you've got a character who's a chain-smoker, drinks a lot, puts more effort into his job than his family, and disregards authority (selfishness). This puts a huge strain on his marriage (leads to) and causes estrangement from his wife and children (unhappiness). So each and every scene must reinforce some aspect of this three-part conclusion. (Tangent: you'll notice that "each and every scene" reinforcing this in the context of textual IF is a trickier proposition when you have a lot of geography to explore that breaks up the scenes.)

The audience's involvement in the story turns on the John's ability to make the "right" moral decision that moves the plot and story into a direction they'd like to see. But who is the "they" here? Well, that's the rub, isn't it? The story has to resonate with enough people, based on some of the commonalities that make up human nature, such that what each individual would like to see is largely the same across a wide swath of people. With [i]Die Hard[/i], it's doubtful too many people in the audience were rooting for the terrorists to kill everyone and get away clean. That means they were rooting for John to go after them and killing them (they shouldn't get away with their crime, after all) and also rooting for John and his wife, Holly, to get back together (since, in doing all this, he is proving his love for her and his willingness to risk everything for her).

[Tangent: Would the film work if John decided to sacrifice his wife for the "greater good"?]

Okay, so another metra: in adhering to a moral premise, the protagonist's inner journey is shown to us in the protagonist's outer journey. An example of this in [i]Die Hard[/i] is in that the idea that John's attempts to defeat the terrorists are a metaphor for his attempts to win back the love of Holly. The two concepts intertwine because in order for John to keep on loving Holly he has to save her (and others) from the terrorists. John has to battle with terrorists that have a total disregard for life (including that of Holly). The problem is that John, up to this point, has been someone who has shown a similar aspect of disregard (especially of his own wife, Holly). Just as Holly has rejected John, so do the terrorists. Just as John has to fight the nature of the terrorists, he has to fight the similar nature in himself. So as John works to defeat the physical threat, he starts to deal with the psychological threat as well. What's also interesting is that the audience identifies with John and this isn't because most of us identify with fighting loads of terrorists in a skyscraper but rather because we identify with the notion of "going through hell" to win back a love. The "spine" of the story is given as "John's battle with the terrorists to [u][i]save his marriage[/i][/u]."

[Tangent: Notice how some people may just say the "point" of the movie was to save people from terrorists. That's true at a physical level. Saving his wife was one part of that. But, really, it was saving his marriage. It was saving the relationship and going back to what he was when he and Holly got married.]

Part of this is making the audience want to identify with the characters. We identify with John's desire to destroy the terrorists (because he hates bad guys so much, which is why he was so work-driven in his police job). But he also has a compelling need to do this because his wife is directly endangered by those terrorists. It's his love for his wife that drives all of his actions. The title even makes sense in all of this: the villains "die hard;" the villains find that McClane "dies hard;" McClane's love for his wife "dies hard." There is, at the heart of all these things, a moral struggle.

In order to create moral or psychological identification, the moral struggle must resonate with the audience as being true and, along with this, the moral premise must be consistently portrayed throughout the story. What's really happening is that the audience (often unconsciously) is agreeing with the moral and psychological story. At an even higher level, the story connects with the audience's values and gives their own life, complete with its own trials and conflicts, meaning. To consider how this can go wrong if a story is told badly, let's invert [i]Die Hard[/i]. Let's say that John spends most of the time in film looking for a way out of the tower at all costs. Let's say he refused to sacrifice his well-being for his wife. When John was forced to confront the bad guys, let's say he was shown to have shown ambivalence toward what the terrorists were doing. (In other words, he only fought them because he couldn't get past them otherwise; it wasn't for any higher moral outrage at their actions.) So let's say that [i]Die Hard[/i] had been constructed with John as an anti-hero, doing nothing more than protecting his own life and even showing him willing to sacrifice Holly to protect himself.

Then we get a different moral premise. In that case, would have been something like this:

[list][color=#400000][b]Covetous hatred[/b] leads to [b]life and celebration[/b]; but
[b]Sacrificial love[/b] leads to [b]self-denial and certain death[/b].[/color][/list:u]

That's a valid moral premise upon which an author could spin his tale. That being said, it's unlikely too many audiences would have agreed with that moral premise. The psychological spine developed in those scenarios would not have been something that most audiences reacted positively to (even if they could intellectually understand why John didn't want to risk his life).

I think the film [i]Lethal Weapon[/i] could come into play here along with [i]Die Hard[/i] in that you have people reinforcing the value of the traditional family since you have characters either trying to put their family back together or to save it from destruction.

Incidentally, those moral premises I just mention above come from Stan Williams. I disagree with some of his viewpoints on [i]Die Hard[/i] but, by and large, I think he provides a good analysis. Also note from this that the reason "Trinity Reimagined" goes a different direction even though the premises are similar, is because John's battle is ultimately to save his wife (which requires saving himself). In Harry's case, his battle is ultimately with himself (which requires saving others).

Incidentally, if I haven't bored you to death yet, for a counterexample that many people have reacted very negatively to, consider the movie version of the [i]The Mist[/i] and how it ended.

[spoiler]In the end, the hero, David Drayton, ends up shooting his own son (and some others) to spare them living in a world of horrors. There's no more bullets left for him to kill himself. Just after he does this, the military comes through, saving everyone. His son died for nothing. Even though David was a good man through the film and did the "right" things by people, the ending is widely recognized as undermining the premise.[/spoiler]

The problem wasn't so much that particular ending. It was that the ending undermined the premise that had, up to that point, been established and acted upon by all characters. The film ending was jarring and I will admit it was an emotional ending, but it was also one where audiences had said it "cheated."

So in terms of whether Harry could or should sacrifice his family, it's a valid way to tell a story. It's not one we settled on in particular. The story was really about Harry and about how he disengaged himself, not just from the world (civilization) but from his family. The death of civilization was simply personified in two people but both elements were really a metaphor for the "death" of Harry that had been taking place for a long time. That's why the family's death was linked the civilization's death: it's because one wasn't necessarily more important than the other since those weren't the focus. The focus was on Harry having to become a very different person and realize some things about himself.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1700&start=0#p10996
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise: Trinity Reimagined
User: Harry Giles / DateTime: 2010-11-17 08:34:34

I really appreciate the time you've put into this, and I think this analysis should prove useful to many authors: it's not boring at all. I'm gonna be really quick, because there's a quick point I can make, and because I'm procrastinating, but I hope I'll find the time this conversation deserves later:

[quote="Jeff Nyman"]The problem wasn't so much that particular ending. It was that the ending undermined the premise that had, up to that point, been established and acted upon by all characters. The film ending was jarring and I will admit it was an emotional ending, but it was also one where audiences had said it "cheated."[/quote]

Now, I don't know this film, but that's the kind of ending I absolutely love. A story which undermines itself is much more valuable to me than a story which doesn't, because it gives me more to think about. It's complex and surprising without depending on [i]just[/i] a "plot twist". It presents an argument and then the negation of that argument. Sure, an audience will feel "cheated", but that's just because so many audiences have been dulled into only wanting or expecting small variations on the same stories and narrative structures.

[i]Night of the Living Dead[/i], which does something similar, has my favourite ending in all of popular cinema, apart from possibly Todd Solondz's [i]Happiness[/i]. And isn't it so much more interesting than [i]The Walking Dead[/i], with its tired safe-wife-and-family and rape-revenge-fantasy plots? (I wrote [url=https://harrygiles.wordpress.com/2010/10/08/save-our-zombies-and-why-its-important/]a blog post[/url] a while ago about the political distinction between the two, which you might like.

Finally, I think this bit is probably more important than anything else I wrote:

[quote]it's worth pointing out that kill-dragon-win-princess is an extremely culturally specific dominant narrative, though it's increasingly hegemonic in this era of homogenising globalisation. What if we were to write stories that are more like Zen koan, Melanesian tragicomic hero quests, or American First Nations Trickster stories? Wouldn't that massively widen and deepen our storytelling ability?[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1692&start=0#p10997
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 - same grammar but a phrase is rejected?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-11-17 08:51:25

Ah, missed the problem originally.  Sorry.

The verb you want is relating students to fields, but only in the sense that all the relations are going to assign students to fields.  

Consider :

[quote]John is enrolled in the computer science program.
Computer science enrolls six students, including John and Mary.

Mary studies music and math.
History is studied by Linda.[/quote]

In the first instance, the subject is the student, the primary "target" of your relation.  [color=#0040BF]Various students[/color] relate to [color=#008000]various subjects[/color].  So your verb without reversals, "to be enrolled on" is useful for that straightforward declatory sentence.  Whatever verb you'd use to complete the sentence "[color=#0040BF]John [/color]___________ [color=#008000]computer science[/color]" is the enrollment relation verb without reversal; any verb you'd use to complete the sentence "[color=#008000]Computer science[/color] _______ [color=#0040BF]John[/color]" is the reversed.

But you're not writing a straightforward declarative statement, so it seems backwards; your goal is to look at a particular student's fields (John to his fields).  This makes total sense,  but the actual sentence you have to construct is actually in the frame of fields to a particular student ([color=#008000]fields [/color]_______ [color=#0040BF]John[/color]), so you need the reversed verb.  The sentence form dictates the verb form.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1690&start=0#p10998
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stuck implementing a table with consult about
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-11-17 08:56:24

As usual I'm not positive about this. But I think the basic problem with the last attempt is that the relation of being listed in a table only matches a so called snippet with a topic (the topic understood actually stores a snippet). Neither snippets nor topics are text. So what you want is a note-phrase that passes text to a subroutine that should treat it as a snippet. I'm not sure if that is possible.
Apparently snippets are meant to point to one or more words in the player's commands.
If you defined a noting action (rather than a note-phrase) applying to one topic, the topic understood would store a snippet that could be tested for being listed in the Table of Notes.
However, it also works if the source text rather than the player calls the action in question.

How well the following suits your needs I can't tell, of course; but it seems to do more or less what you want:
[code]
"More clues" by Zack

The Venue  is a room.
The player carries a notebook.
A newspaper is a thing in the Venue.

[ I'm stuffing one clue in the table to be visible during testing ]
number of found clues is a number that varies.
When play begins: now number of found clues is 1. 

[ Static table with 1 found clue to start; unfound clues have timestamp 1:00 pm]
Table of Notes
timestamp	topic	detail
1:00 pm	"Matches/Matchbook"	"From the Brass Lantern Tony -- CH 2481."
1:00 pm	"Alan Hugo's Motive"	"Financial problems...?"
1:00 pm	"News report"	"Klaus Fuchs worked at Los Alamos Laboratory..."
1:00 pm	"news/newspaper"	"Alan Hugo also worked at Los Alamos."
9:30 pm	"fish"	"This is a red herring."

Instead of reading the newspaper:
	try noting "newspaper".

[ This gets called later with a topic and string, e.g.
      Note "Matches" with "From the Brass Lantern Tony -- CH 2481.";
  How do you pass a string in to a subroutine to treat it like a topic? 
]
Noting is an action applying to one topic.
Understand "note [text]" as noting.

Carry out noting:
   [ Topic understood appears to be nil -- runtime P39 if I try to print it ]
   [ say ">>Topic understood is: [topic understood] [line break]"; ]
   [ This next condition never matches --  ]
	if the topic understood is a topic listed in the Table of Notes:
		if the number of found clues is 0:
			say "You decide to take a note of this in your notebook.";  
		increase score by 1; 
		increase number of found clues by 1;   
		change timestamp entry to the time of day;
		rule succeeds;
	else:
		say ">>Warning: Clue not found about [topic understood][line break]".                [ How do I print the topic to help with debugging?]

[ Examine or Read notebook willl display a list of times, topics  ]
Instead of examining notebook:
	if the number of found clues is 0:
		say "Alas your notebook is empty.  You still need to find some clues.";
	else:
		say "Notebook has [the number of found clues] entries:[line break]";
		repeat through the Table of Notes:
			if timestamp entry is not 1:00 pm:
  				say "  [timestamp entry] - [detail entry][line break]".  
            [How do you print the topic entry which is what I want? ]

[ From Jim Aiken's Handbook using Topic tables  ]
Instead of consulting the notebook about something:
	if the topic understood is a topic listed in the Table of Notes:
		if timestamp entry is not 1:00 pm:
			say "You read the entry on [the topic understood]:[line break]";
			say "[detail entry][line break]";
		else:
			say "Nothing visible in the notebook on [the topic understood].";
         [ This is just for debugging purposes.  ]
	else:
		say "There's nothing in the notebook on [the topic understood]."
[/code]

Some aspects of Inform are very hard to find out about in the documentation – great as it is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1700&start=0#p10999
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise: Trinity Reimagined
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-17 09:00:24

[quote="Harry Giles"]Now, I don't know this film, but that's the kind of ending I absolutely love. A story which undermines itself is much more valuable to me than a story which doesn't, because it gives me more to think about. It's complex and surprising without depending on [i]just[/i] a "plot twist".[/quote]

Completely agreed. I was fuming at the end of that movie; I was so [i]pissed off[/i]. And then I had to step back and realize: wow, that movie really hit me emotionally in that one moment. I also agree, however, that it did "cheat" -- but not because of the ending. It was because the premise wasn't followed. There are many other movies that had similar bleak endings that audiences raved over. And if you analyze those, it tends to have to do with how the "bleak ending" was, in fact, consistent with the premise.

[quote][i]Night of the Living Dead[/i], which does something similar, has my favourite ending in all of popular cinema, ...[/quote]

Agreed. And that was an example where the premise was adhered to because it was clear that "doing the right thing" (made concrete in [i]The Mist[/i]) was more diffuse in that context. Holing up in a house, for example, was probably not the smartest move. Well played in the scene where Ben doesn't want to go in the cellar, locking himself in -- even though he ends up doing just that with the house as a whole. A great play on the idea of the antiquated space and showing how the rules had changed. Normally barricading yourself in against threats was safe; in this case, given the nature of the enemy, it was not.

In fact, [i]The Mist[/i] and [i]Night of the Living Dead[/i] are very similar thematically: an antiquated space (store, house) is used; there is good inside and outside. Both focus on the distrust of official explanations or even any explanations at all. Both also focus on the inability to work together for a common purpose, except in limited situations. But eventually groups and cliques form. The internal threat ends up becoming even greater than the external threat.

[quote]it's worth pointing out that kill-dragon-win-princess is an extremely culturally specific dominant narrative, though it's increasingly hegemonic in this era of homogenising globalisation. What if we were to write stories that are more like Zen koan, Melanesian tragicomic hero quests, or American First Nations Trickster stories? Wouldn't that massively widen and deepen our storytelling ability?[/quote]

Regarding your last question, I think (for me) that storytelling ability would depend on what audiences can (and want) to relate to. My ability to connect with audiences may be compromised were I to go certain routes. In which case my ability to "tell a story" doesn't necessarily translate into effective storytelling. That being said, storytelling evolves. The nature of what people do and don't like change. Many of our most effective stories are heavily imbued with a sense of myth. In fact, I'll give you what may seems a really strange data point here (You're going to think I've lost my mind here.)

A perhaps surprising example of the mythic (and it's sometimes subconscious appeal) can even be seen in the horror film [i]Friday the 13th, Part 4: The Final Chapter[/i].

There's a key pivotal moment in that film and -- believe it or not -- it's rooted in mythology! The screenplay was by Barney Cohen but it was based on the story done by Bruce Sakow, who believed that good writers incorporated mythological motifs -- even if very subtle -- in their films or novels. So Part 4 was done with a moral premise in mind. And, interestingly enough, [i]The Final Chapter[/i] is the film that most fans of the series routinely say is the absolute best. They don't always articulate why necessarily; but, again, it's another example I've seen of where emotional impact matters when it's crafted via a specific technique. And, as we know, it wasn't quite the "final chapter." There were six more films in the series; nine more if you count the 2009 remake and the 2003 [i]Freddy vs. Jason[/i]. My point there being: fans had a lot of other movies to choose as their favorites, including the prior three in the series. It's interesting that the one they picked was the one that had a writer who believed in, and utilized the moral premise.

For those curious:

[spoiler]At one point Jason is confronted by Tommy Jarvis, who shaves off his hair and makes himself look like Jason did when he was a young boy. Jason, in seeing Tommy, sees himself as it were. This is rooted in the mythological idea that if you have a monster -- and Jason was a monster -- one way (sometimes the only way) to destroy it was to get it to look at itself; to truly see itself. If you could do that, it was vulnerable. And in that vulnerability was your one shot to destroy it.[/spoiler]

That being said, my point point is that there is a lot of room to explore ideas, even in a venue like [i]Friday the 13th[/i]. Because of that, I think stories based on tragicomic hero quests and various other concepts are worthwhile pursuits. The trick is making them relevant to an audience. Audiences will decide what they respond to. This doesn't mean a writer has to write for an audience, necessarily. But if part of "improving our storytelling ability" is predicated upon the important ability to connect with and emotionally engage audiences, then stories like you describe can certainly take a stab at that.

In general, one truism that seems to exist is that successful fictional communication has three components. It must not just be a story; it must be an entertaining story. That's the first component. (What does and does not entertain will differ by culture, both spatially and temporally.) For fiction to be entertaining, it seems that it must be morally "true" (at a psychological or spiritual level) or, at least, morally consistent. That's the second component. Finally, for fiction to entertain, it must emotionally engage, meaning it must be be a reasonable simulation of life in terms of being physically understandable. "Reasonable" and "understandable" here just means that people can related to it in some way, even if it's fantastical. People have no trouble enjoying films like [i]The Matrix[/i] or [i]Inception[/i] but that's largely because the physical was relatable and the arcs of the characters (played out in the moral realm) were also relatable. The same could be said of a film like [i]Identity[/i], which has a "twist" ending that was rooted in the physicality of the scenes (keeping people focused) but with a clever play on what that physicality represented later in the film.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1700&start=0#p11000
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise: Trinity Reimagined
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-11-17 10:19:22

I am not a big fan of The Mist, although I liked the ending.  

[spoiler]I'm not very familiar with stating moral premises, but it seems like the ending fits with something like "Acting on things you cannot be certain of leads to pain and death; acting on the understanding that you have only limited knowledge leads to hope and opportunity."  This would fit in with the origin of the creatures, which were strongly hinted to be lab-made (at least in the original text), and also with the various ends of people who were sure they knew nothing was out there, and the dangers of people who were certain the enemy was other people.[/spoiler]

I think myths have a lot to offer, too, but I like stories that at least hint that It's More Complicated Than That.  It's never as simple as "kill the terrorists, save the wife, save the marriage".  You can't go back again to the person you were twenty years ago.  Often the other survivors are more of a threat than the zombies.  Sometimes the princess is happy where she is.  

I think one of the reasons The Witcher filled me with unholy glee was that it played with those tropes.  (The game, at least; the stories, at translated, are kind of full of gender fail, which tends to detract from any cultural undermining.)  Both choices were legitimate paths with significant downsides; there was no clear and obvious right choice, but you still had to choose.  That's the sort of premise I miss in games.  Sand Dancer did something similar, pretty explicitly, with a path to responsibility and a path to freedom.  I appreciated that the path to responsibility felt like the "right" choice morally, but the path to freedom felt like the "right" choice from a character perspective.  (Perhaps this was unintentional, and a reflection on me.)  It made the whole thing very bittersweet, whichever way you went.

I do wonder about the unfortunate side implications of some of these things.  For example, if you've got a certain number of people that you can interact selfishly or selflessly with, how many selfless actions are required to save the world?  Is last-minute redemption of a selfish actor ever a possibility?  Is it clear that selflessness will help you down the line (in which case, how selfless is it really)?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1700&start=0#p11001
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise: Trinity Reimagined
User: Harry Giles / DateTime: 2010-11-17 10:37:55

[quote="gravel"]I think myths have a lot to offer, too, but I like stories that at least hint that It's More Complicated Than That.  It's never as simple as "kill the terrorists, save the wife, save the marriage".  You can't go back again to the person you were twenty years ago.  Often the other survivors are more of a threat than the zombies.  Sometimes the princess is happy where she is.[/quote]

It's worth saying that most myths, even Western myths, are much more complicated than contemporary Western narrative conventions. Take Theseus and the Minotaur, for example: in most tellings, after defeating the monster and getting the girl, Theseus abandons Ariadne, who does love him, on Naxos! -- sometimes for no particular reason, and sometimes because Dionysus tells him she's already spoken for. And then in some versions of the myth Theseus either forgets, or is cursed by Ariadne to forget, to change the symbolic colour of his sails, so that, on Thesus's return home, his father Aegus thinks that Thesus is dead and throws himself off a cliff into the sea! (hence Aegean) The thing about Greek myths is, they rarely have neat endings -- they keep being extended and retold, because they're owned by everyone.

This is putting it a little crudely, but our current narrative conventions are a product of the growth of the moralistic novel in the 18th century (though even then Samuel Richardson can be dialectically opposed to Lawrence Sterne), and, later, of the growth of mass entertainment. I might take the crude genealogy further, and claim that our current narrative conventions have memetically evolved in the fitness-ensuring struggle of commercial mass entertainment, because they work so well at producing simple and satisfying stories. But not so well, I've been arguing, at producing morally complex stories which, after all, make much less money.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1692&start=10#p11002
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 - same grammar but a phrase is rejected?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-17 10:42:23

I eventually hit on the same solution as gravel for this, but I wonder if either of these would make things easier in this kind of situation:

(Probably pretty ambitious): Treat "that" as a delimiter which allows the construction that moose originally wanted ("repeat with target field running through fields target student is enrolled on"). As gravel said, the Inform compiler doesn't know that "fields" and "target student" are two nouns; it could be "fields target" and "student," or "fields target student" as one noun. But if you allowed "that" as a delimiter in this kind of declaration, could you have "repeat with target field running through fields that target student is enrolled on"? The "that" would provide an unambiguous break between nouns. I guess what I'm thinking of is something like "X that Y Z" translates into "X bearing the reversed Z relation to Y" whenever X and Y are nouns and Z is a verb.

(Maybe less ambitous? Probably more helpful in general): One of the issue here is that the compiler error message isn't that helpful: "I was expecting to read a description, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'fields target student is enrolled in'." The thing is, we don't know why the compiler couldn't understand the text. So would it be possible to have the message explain how the compiler is trying to break down the text -- "I tried to understand 'fields target student' as a noun and 'is enrolled in' as a verb, but that didn't work"? Something like that.

Actually, now that I think of it, the latter suggestion may be absurdly ambitious. So I won't put these in the suggestion forum yet. But any thoughts?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1699&start=0#p11003
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: quixe not working with internet explorer?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-17 10:50:19

That's an odd mix of results. 

All the play-remote links work the same way. They should either all work or all not work. 

Reliques happens to be a very slow game, particularly at the beginning -- it takes most of a minute to start running on my (old) G4 Mac. That may be the only problem there.

Rover isn't nearly as slow, but conceivably has the same problem.

Advent (your third link) *isn't* slow, and I don't know why it would fail.

The ifcomp links (but none of the others) are going through a web server proxy ( <a class="postlink" href="http://zcode.appspot.com/proxy/">http://zcode.appspot.com/proxy/</a> ) which does some necessary base64 encoding. That's clearly not working for you, but I'm not sure why. (The Z-code games use the same proxy.)

Can you look at your browser's error console?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1687&start=10#p11004
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Programmer's Manual updated -- get the PDF now
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-11-17 11:23:39

OH, so that was finally supported.  Very nice.  Thanks Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1690&start=0#p11005
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stuck implementing a table with consult about
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2010-11-17 11:47:02

Felix,
thank you this is very helpful.  There's only one issue that puzzles me is how to print the topic when examining the notebook.  Right now I can print the [detail entry] ok, but what I really want is the [topic entry] or [topic understood].  I sort of understand why Inform doesn't want to print it, since a topic is more complex than a string.  
[code]Instead of examining notebook:
	if the number of found clues is 0:
		say "Alas your notebook is empty.  You still need to find some clues.";
	else:
		sort the Table of Notes in timestamp order;
		say "The notebook has [the number of found clues] entries:[line break]";
		repeat through the Table of Notes:
			if timestamp entry is not 1:00 pm:
			[ topic understood is nil - causes runtime error p39]
				say "  [timestamp entry] - [topic understood][line break]".  
				[How do you print the topic entry? ]
[/code]
So in order to just get on with the rest of my coding, I've added an extra column called key which is plain text equivalent to the topic.  No doubt there's a better way to do this, but for now I guess it is not the worst thing in the world.

Thanks everyone for your help.  Much appreciated. 
The world somehow seems sunnier today. [emote];-)[/emote]
--Zack

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1700&start=0#p11006
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise: Trinity Reimagined
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-17 11:49:47

There has always been an alternative underground current to the popular entertainment running through literature, which, if not formally, is typically at least morally more complex. I wouldn't go too far though in aligning interactivity with the less pop-culture-ready aspects of literature, because to some extent this might be an accidental artifact of recent computer history. There is another level on which interactivity could be argued to be more pop-culture-ready than all of literature, so to the extent that this other level is attainable and its benefits could come to be perceived in the way they are in say modern 3D video games as compared to movies (since in the visual space the interactive industries have long outstripped the size of the TV/Movie industries despite the lopsided relative storytelling challenges), that could change the whole equation.

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=20#p11007
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-11-17 12:16:11

[quote="Jeff Nyman"]The "identification" aspect is important because when the audience sees a given protagonist struggling with the difficulty of making some tough decision, that audience will start to identify with that character and in some sense try to make the choice for them. So the protagonist has something at stake; and if the audience identifies with the need -- with what's at stake -- then they'll root for the protagonist to make the right decision. [/quote]

But it's also common knowledge that you can't sympathize with yourself.  So conflation of PC & player destroys this rooting-for aspect.

[quote]In textual IF, the audience (the players) gets to make the "right" decision -- the one they believe is right.[/quote]

Doesn't this rob the story of a lot of its tension, when the will-he-or-wont-he decision points are made by the reader?  The reader will never worry about the protag cause they control the protag.

I wonder that, rather than un-conflating PC & player, which can be difficult to do regardless the pronouns you use while the prompt drives the character, it would be more fruitful to divide viewpoint character from protagonist, letting the reader drive the VC and only influence the protag.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1690&start=0#p11008
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stuck implementing a table with consult about
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-17 12:32:46

There's some other old posts that might be helpful here. (I don't have any firsthand experience with any of this, but I remembered some of the posts and looked them up).

[url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1279&p=7583&hilit=topic+table#p7583]This topic[/url] discusses why you can't just print the topic -- it's a function, which I think means it could potentially include things like "paper/newspaper," and you can't print that. It sounds like the preferred solution is what you're going to do -- include an extra text column that repeats the topic.

[url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1279&p=7583&hilit=topic+table#p7583]Here's[/url] a cool kludge for turning text into a snippet, if you want to do that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=20#p11009
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-11-17 12:54:44

[quote="Jeff Nyman"]In textual IF, the audience (the players) gets to make the "right" decision -- the one they believe is right. If they go down the "virtue" side, they will agree with the author and experience the positive side of the moral premise. If they go down the "vice" side, they will disagree with the author and experience the negative side of the moral premise. The key is that the author has to have done a good job in presenting both arguments, as it were.[/quote]

Well, I agree that the author has to present both arguments, but I disagree that the game has to accommodate both sides in the form of divergent interactive choices to do so successfully. An approach like that taken in [i]The Primrose Path[/i], where the protagonist will refuse certain actions for reasons grounded in character, is one way of handling this. Acknowledge the interaction but nullify the choice.

For that matter, [i]Lost Pig[/i] offers an interesting perspective on the morality of conventional IF behavior. Grunk is permitted to ignore that morality, but the player is not permitted to justify his immoral behavior within the parameters of the game world and scoring system. You can either shrug off the consequences of your actions and accept a lower score, or you can make amends. This is successful but arguably a big part of why it works is that Grunk is not a character who can assert his own moral code.

The alternative is to accept a wide swath of behavior as acceptable and implicitly moral. Leaving the "right" decision up to the player rather than the character is effectively the same as making no decision at all. It doesn't sharpen the sense of moral dilemma; rather, it undermines the foundation of morality by weakening the character's identity.

Good fiction leaves the reader with a sense of inevitability. Static fiction has an edge because it is fixed in form, but interactive fiction should be no less inevitable for its interactivity.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=20#p11010
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-17 12:57:08

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]But it's also common knowledge that you can't sympathize with yourself.  So conflation of PC & player destroys this rooting-for aspect.[/quote]

Agreed. But there are degrees of conflation; it's not an either-or.


[quote]Doesn't this rob the story of a lot of its tension, when the will-he-or-wont-he decision points are made by the reader?  The reader will never worry about the protag cause they control the protag.[/quote]

It's questionable to what extent people truly "worry" about a character they read about or see on film. What they are often doing is anticipating actions based upon what they think they understand about that protagonist (given what the author has presented up to this point) and what they themselves might do in a similar situation. A lot of this happens at a very low level, however. In fact, the extent to which you are thinking those things consciously while reading a book or viewing a film is a measure of how much you are being taken out of the immediacy of the experience. So the "worry" is often a measure of expectations being established and then seeing if those are met or not.

Readers will have certain expectations that they come in with (such as if they reading or playing in a certain genre). But some of those expectations will be built up as they interact with [i]your[/i] particular instance of the genre. Given both of those operative concepts, readers will have their expectations and from those will establish a set of hopes regarding how the story can possibly turn out.

That being said, you could argue the tension is even more in place when the onus is on the player to participate at a greater level than just reading. However, this does also depend on the level of writing. I think if the writing is lackluster or doesn't use established techniques for engaging someone who is taking part in a fictional experience, then the tension will not be there either way.

[quote]I wonder that, rather than un-conflating PC & player, which can be difficult to do regardless the pronouns you use while the prompt drives the character, it would be more fruitful to divide viewpoint character from protagonist, letting the reader drive the VC and only influence the protag.[/quote]

The premise that it's difficult to unconflate the protagonist character (PC) and the player is one that I haven't seen borne out much so I'm at a disadvantage on that side of things. (Read that as: I may have blinders that I'm not sure how to remove in this case.) Personally, I've seen the opposite, when the writing is effective and when the protagonist is clearly defined as a character that the reader has to understand rather than "agree with" or "accept as themself."

The issue I have with the viewpoint character is that the protagonist is going to be the person the story is about. They are the person that you, as author, have chosen as being the most interesting person to follow given the set of events that is going to transpire. A reader will logically ask why they would be playing another character if the protagonist is the more interesting one. And if the viewpoint character [i]is[/i] the more interesting one, then why aren't they the protagonist? How do you establish a engaging character arc when you follow what amounts to a co-protagonist rather than the protagonist?

But, again, this seems to be predicated upon the idea that it might be difficult to separate the protagonist and the player (in the eyes of the player) and I've not found that to be the case. That's not the same as saying that I can't see narrative possibilities where you have a protagonist who does manipulate other characters in the game into taking actions (or not taking actions). Maybe textual IF does offer some possibility for controlling the character who the story is [i]not[/i] fundamentally about.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=20#p11011
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-11-17 13:02:27

[quote="Jeff Nyman"]Maybe textual IF does offer some possibility for controlling the character who the story is [i]not[/i] fundamentally about.[/quote]

[i]Lock & Key[/i] is one example of this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1699&start=0#p11012
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: quixe not working with internet explorer?
User: kakarot / DateTime: 2010-11-17 13:02:56

ok i'm trying now on a different, more powerful PC running IE  8.0.7600.16385. results are much better, but still issues with the ifcomp.org links:

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/i7-release/play.html">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/i7-release/play.html</a>
launches ok.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.red-bean.com/sussman/if/rover/play.html">http://www.red-bean.com/sussman/if/rover/play.html</a>
launches ok

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quixe/play-remote.html?story=stories/Advent.ulx.js">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quix ... ent.ulx.js</a>
launches ok

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quixe/play-remote.html?story=stories/Reliques.gblorb.js">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quix ... .gblorb.js</a>
"A script on this page is causing Internet Explorer to run slowly. IF it continues to run, your computer may become unresponsive. Stop running the script?". (if i stop running script, get spinning compass rose forever. if i reply "No" 13 times in sequence, it does eventually launch ok!) 

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quixe/play.html">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quixe/play.html</a>
launches ok

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quixe/play-remote.html?story=stories/windowtest.ulx.js">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quix ... est.ulx.js</a>
launches ok

any ifcomp page "play online" link eg <a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifcomp.org/comp10/play.php?id=146">http://www.ifcomp.org/comp10/play.php?id=146</a>
"A script on this page is causing Internet Explorer to run slwly. IF it continues to run, your computer may become unresponsive. Stop running the script?" (if i stop running script, spinning compass rose forever, partially obscured at top of screen. if i continue running script, no response, nothing. with no error output to speak of.) 

no such problems with the z-code games eg
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifcomp.org/comp10/play.php?id=138">http://www.ifcomp.org/comp10/play.php?id=138</a>
launches ok

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=20#p11013
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-17 13:04:40

[quote="bcressey"]Well, I agree that the author has to present both arguments, but I disagree that the game has to accommodate both sides in the form of divergent interactive choices to do so successfully.[/quote]

Agreed. I don't think the game does. I think I confused how I was trying to accomodate the viewpoint of how the vice and the virtue [i]could[/i] be enacted in the same game, but I didn't make it clear that I don't think that's the best approach from an authoring perspective.

[quote]The alternative is to accept a wide swath of behavior as acceptable and implicitly moral. Leaving the "right" decision up to the player rather than the character is effectively the same as making no decision at all. It doesn't sharpen the sense of moral dilemma; rather, it undermines the foundation of morality by weakening the character's identity.[/quote]

Could not have said it better myself.

[quote]Good fiction leaves the reader with a sense of inevitability. Static fiction has an edge because it is fixed in form, but interactive fiction should be no less inevitable for its interactivity.[/quote]

Agreed. What textual IF -- and thus the interactivity -- allow is perhaps more thorough explorations of the nuances or the consequences of a set of actions as they lead towards inevitable conclusions (i.e., proving the premise). This meshes with the reports of players who, in aggregate, respond more positively to games wherein the interaction is constrained along certain axes rather than being a wide open experience. It's a matter of the depth of the experience (engaging with a story and its ramifications) rather than the breadth (i.e., how many multiple paths can I find in this game?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1692&start=10#p11014
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 - same grammar but a phrase is rejected?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-11-17 13:30:25

The "noun that noun verb" construction was actually my first try, and I half-expected it to work, so I think it's at least worth a suggestion.

Edit: Also, "which" or "[preposition] which", as in "fields in which the target is enrolled."  (That one's tricky because it would require moving the preposition from the verb form to before the which, so maybe it should be left out?  Or I could live with "field in which the target is enrolled in" despite the grammatical tangle.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=0#p11015
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-11-17 13:38:01

[quote="huftis"]Yeah, I like that too. I was happy to see that Aotearoa had the lowest standard deviation in [b]addition[/b] to having the highest average score; that is, it got consistently high scores. In fact, it got [b]no[/b] 1s, 2s, 3s, or 4s, and only two 5s (out of a 100 votes). It truly is an excellent game![/quote]

Another interesting result is that [i]Rogue of the Multiverse[/i] garnered as many votes as the more accessible, web-based Inform games. Glad to see TADS is alive and kicking.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1701&start=0#p11016
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Post-comp thoughts about Ninja's Fate
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2010-11-17 14:03:10

Now that the competition is over, I've put up a [url=http://www.yllr.net/if/ninja/]website[/url] for the game which contains some explanations about some of the design decisions - just in case anyone has been wondering what-the-hell-this-guy-was-thinking.

What I can say in addition is that I'm quite satisfied with the way it placed in the competition. My initial call for testers included the magic sentence "It won't do very well in the competition". All the games which ended up in front of mine were very respectable entries which I enjoyed personally. So there is no shame in ending up behind them.

Generally, I was also happy with the reviews the game received. You can never please everybody, of course, so the range of ratings went from 10 to 1 - with the reviews citing ratings from 9 to 1. To be honest, I wouldn't know how to rate it myself. I think there are good reasons for each of these ratings which I can follow.

What I found unfortunate was a few reviews of people who didn't seem to 'get it' at all and then concluded the game was crap because of that. There's always two sides to a player not comprehending a game. One reviewer even concluded that because the game I entered last year was buggy, this one must be, too. Some reviewers might want to consider the responsibilities [i]they[/i] have when they publish some unresearched and unfair bashing of a game (other authors were hit much worse than me this year, of course): Your reviews end up in the permanent record of the game [i]and[/i] the author. Thankfully, this was a small minority. 

A general remark for reviewers: Almost none of you provides contact information on your websites. Please consider that this might be regarded as quite unfair as you're not giving the authors a chance to react.

Since [url=http://islemaster.wordpress.com/2010/11/16/ifcomp-postmortem/]one of my beta testers[/url] brought up his fear of this game's 'bad' placement reflecting badly on him, let me say that he (and the other testers as well) has been extremely helpful. Not only did the game turn out to be virtually bugless and thoroughly implemented thanks to them (not to mention all the help I received regarding the English language which obviously I'm not native in), but they challenged many of my design decisions as good testers should. This gave me the opportunity to reflect on these decisions, changing some, but retaining most. So these decisions were entirely my own. What's even better, all my testers also had the great ability to critique a game based on the assumptions of the author. In the second round, that is. 

I didn't give them much information initially (not even the dedication text was in that version, then), just let them have a go. I was glad to see they all understood what I was going for. After their reports started coming in, I started explaining my motives. They all did a great job of helping me realise and implement my own vision of the game - which is what the perfect beta tester should. Thanks again to all of you!

If anyone still has feedback or just a transcript, I'd be glad to hear or see it! Thanks to everyone who played the game! Thanks to the other authors for the interesting discussions on the authors forum. Thanks to Stephen for once again running the comp. And, finally, thanks to Eriorg for his tireless work of linking to all those reviews in the IF Wiki - I think I'm speaking for most authors when I say that this has made the last six weeks a lot more bearable for us [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1702&start=0#p11017
Forum: Competitions / Subject: IF Comp games' websites & rule 5
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2010-11-17 14:18:38

Now that the IF Comp is over, I'd like to ask a general question - didn't want to risk it before, because it might have looked as bad sportsmanship while the competition was running.

I noticed that this year, more than one game had an official website by its author. How far does is this allowed to go with regards to rule five? How much information may be on it? Especially considering that unlike in-game explanatory texts, such a website is under the full control of the author herself, meaning she could theoretically change it anytime (again, this is an abstract question - I'm not insinuating anyone did that).

On a sidenote, rule five actually only states authors are not allowed to discuss their game publicly [i]during the voting period[/i]. Is it actually the intention of the rule that it's alright to discuss the game [i]before[/i]?

Another sidenote: There is no explicit rule forbidding an author to publish an updated/fixed version during the voting period, but there still seems to be a consensus not to do so (which I believe it the right thing to do). How is this ensured with web-based games? Like their websites, these are under the full technical control of the respective authors.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=0#p11018
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: huftis / DateTime: 2010-11-17 14:22:06

[quote="bcressey"]Another interesting result is that [i]Rogue of the Multiverse[/i] garnered as many votes as the more accessible, web-based Inform games. Glad to see TADS is alive and kicking.[/quote]
Well, ‘alive and kicking’ may be a bit of an exaggeration. [emote]:)[/emote] There was [b]one[/b] TADS game this year. And there [b]have[/b] been years with about as many TADS games as Z-code games. 

It’s somewhat sad to see the decreased use of TADS. I used to prefer TADS games over Z-code games. I’m not sure why, though. Perhaps it was just the nicer interpreter I could use to play them? With the Gargoyle interpreter, all IF games look alike (they do look [b]great[/b] though – much better than with earlier interpreters). Or was the parser really better than the Inform parser?

I doubt anybody misses the ADRIFT and ALAN games, BTW. But what happened to Hugo? I have only played a couple of Hugo games, but I remember them as being excellent.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=20#p11019
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-11-17 14:29:32

[quote]However, for me, structuring around the moral premise - around, effectively, prescriptive ethical dichotomies - is still a horrendously simplified approach to storytelling.[/quote]

I agree: A print-fiction story with the theme "[Vice] leads to [undesirable consequences]; but [Virtue] leads to [desirable consequences]" would seem (to me) horrendously banal, suitable only for children.

After all, regardless of what you put in the brackets, the statement will never be true: the world is too complex for any action to have an absolutely guaranteed result.  For instance, is it true that:

[Good job-hunting skills] lead to [a job]; but
[Poor job-hunting skills] lead to [unemployment]?

Of course not.  Sometimes they do, but it may be overreaching to even say that they usually do.

Literature has always recognized this.  Tragic figures, some of the most interesting characters and stories in literature, are often people who did everything right and somehow still failed.  Oedipus; "star-crossed lovers": It doesn't matter what you do; fate has spoken.  (It needn't be a fate thing, either; sometimes it's the opposite: random, unpredictable butterfly effect derailed your plans.)

[quote]True. But as an author you are not writing about moral subtleties usually. You are approaching the story with a moral stance or viewpoint.[/quote]

Good print authors are virtually always talking about moral subtleties.  Not that they are themselves cool and disinterested third parties, but stories where right and wrong are clearly and unambiguously defined are usually considered thematically week.  Besides, who wants to read a tract proselytizing the author's views?

[quote]I do think that working from moral premise structures, because they are dichotomous, tends to make writers work with moral binaries rather than introducing moral subtleties.[/quote]

This is the problem with moral choice games; as [url=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation]Zero Punctuation[/url] once pointed out, the choices are always "save the orphans from the burning building" or "kill all the orphans"--they're not very interesting because they're never the sort of thing that would actually be a difficult decision in real life.  For instance, in the Neverwinter Nights games, my characters always end up jammed against the good end of the spectrum because you have to do really horrendous stuff to ever get evil points.  Neutral alignment might as well not exist.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1701&start=0#p11020
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Post-comp thoughts about Ninja's Fate
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2010-11-17 14:41:28

Thanks for this explanation! I should have figured relevance/wikipedia. I'm very interested in trying to disrespect the bust and so forth. But I have to admit, given the style of IF games I wrote as a kid (I probably made bigger mistakes than Paul but with less ambitious plots) I was able to laugh at my own games, hopefully not snidely, and I may've underrated that when giving a rating.

I have to say that since I googled Paul Panks, I was able to figure what was going on. It's so hard to hit things exactly right with this sort of game, because a straightforwardly good game could be a whitewash and not a tribute.

I would love to see more authors write out a topic like this. With all the reviews floating around and the wiki keeping the review links up to date, it's been interesting to see what people think about which games, or which sort of games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=60#p11021
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-11-17 14:43:50

Emily Short's Tutorial Mode is supposed to do that, but I've had difficulty with it.  It always seems to gravitate to unimportant stuff (like prompting the player to "examine door") and has more than once trapped me in situations where it won't accept the command it prompts you to type.

Of course my game relies heavily on custom "use" functions and has custom compass directions, so I'll be stuck creating my own help resources in any event.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=20#p11022
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-17 15:00:55

[quote="katz"]I agree: A print-fiction story with the theme "[Vice] leads to [undesirable consequences]; but [Virtue] leads to [desirable consequences]" would seem (to me) horrendously banal, suitable only for children.[/quote]

The only problem is that many, many of the most successful screenwriters do use a moral premise and those films routinely those that do very well with audiences. (Not all the time, of course. I don't mean to imply that just having a moral premise means you have a hit.) Christopher Nolan, for example, wrote an article on the screenplay he utilized for [i]The Dark Knight[/i] and how the moral premise was utilized. That film was far from being suitable "only for children." Pixar Films utilize a moral premise in all of their films and those films [i]are[/i] suitable for children, but very suitable for adults as well. Many of the most popular printed authors out there utilize a moral premise concept. And here by popular I don't just mean by sales.

[quote]After all, regardless of what you put in the brackets, the statement will never be true: the world is too complex for any action to have an absolutely guaranteed result.[/quote]

Fiction isn't about the "real" world and thus the fact that world is more complex doesn't have to factor in to that extent. Fictional people use focused dialogue that people in real life don't use. Geography shrinks or expands based on need. Fiction deals with a facsimilie of the world in order to focus on more specific aspects. No one expects fiction to mirror the real world. That's, in fact, one reason why people enjoy fiction: because it isn't as complex as the real world in all cases.

[quote]Good print authors are virtually always talking about moral subtleties.  Not that they are themselves cool and disinterested third parties, but stories where right and wrong are clearly and unambiguously defined are usually considered thematically week.[/quote]

I would disagree with this, unless you have examples of stories that utilized a moral premise and were widely considered to be "thematically weak." Certainly authors may explore moral subtleties. But the "good print authors" do tend to come down on a particular side of a particular fence because that's what the protagonist ultimately does, regardless of whether they end up winning or losing. Even Kurt Vonnegut, who had the listless anit-hero down to an art form, and did explore moral ambiguity and subtlety, did have a very focused moral premise operative in his works.

[quote]Besides, who wants to read a tract proselytizing the author's views?[/quote]

That's a mischaracterization of the moral premise and I hope it's not one I have promoted. The problem is that the moral premise is a large concept, utilizing in a variety of ways in both stage, film, and novel. I have no doubt I haven't necessarily done it justice. But, like it or not, when you watch a film or read a book, you [i]are[/i] getting the author's views. Those authors who do become preachy or proselytize do tend to do poorly with audiences. But equating that with authors that utilize a moral premise would be inaccurate.

That being said, please don't think I'm dismissing your views here. I do take them seriously; it's simply that I've worked with writers who have often been very dismissive of the moral premise, regardless of how much they have studied its application in film and book, and then eventually come around to see the power it has as part of the storytelling toolbox. Again, though, I don't mean to suggest that just having a moral premise is enough.

Writing fiction is about giving your reader a powerful emotional experience. To do this, you need to master several main aspects of fiction, including creating an immersive story world, constructing believable characters, building a well-structured plot, and overlaying it all with a theme. These are your core skills. The character change (or arc) is a central element of the effective story. The story is exploring a theme with that character. So that means most scenes, characters, dialogue, and images should ideally be a reflection of that theme. The story thus becomes a tool to create circumstances that will showcase the theme. Theme is one half of moral premise.

Some writers, in fact, turn the theme into a question, not a premise. As an example, rather than state the premise for [i]Romeo and Juliet[/i] as something like "Great love defies even death," you could ask, "What does great love defy?" or, more likely, "Can love survive even death?" Then let the story reach a natural conclusion. (Not the only conclusion; not the "right" conclusion for everyone. Just a conclusion that is consistent with the story you want to tell.) Ask a question, and let your story provide readers with an answer by experiencing it emotionally.

Another way authors utilize a moral premise is by asking this: What's the major emotional decision the protagonist must make in order to resolve the story problem? That's where you'll find your theme, at the very least. A good example is the film [i]Groundhog Day[/i]. The film is about a self-absorbed, arrogant, cynical guy who for some reason is being forced to relive the same day over and over again. He suffers throughout, but then gains courage to transform into an authentic, self-actualized human being. In telling the story, the movie hits on the essential truth that when we go beyond resentment over the conditions of life and death and accept our situation, we can become authentic and compassionate. This message is kept in the background of the film by focusing on the protagonist's growth, as he goes through bewilderment and despair to generosity and, eventually, deep compassion for life. That film utilized a moral premise very effectively and, again, I don't think anyone could say it was "suitable only for children."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1694&start=0#p11023
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Possible Glitch?
User: eu / DateTime: 2010-11-17 15:16:12

The problem here is that you used "[run paragraph on]" where what you meant is "[no line break]".  WI 5.8 explains the difference: regarding "[run paragraph on]" it says, ``it prevents a paragraph break occurring after the present text is printed,'' where in this case the present text includes everything up to and including ``says Donald.''

The interaction between rules and line breaks is also explained in that same section.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=20#p11024
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-11-17 15:19:58

Hmm.  So I'm not even sure I fully understand "moral premise" now.  Could you give some examples of stories without moral premises?  I've been thinking every story has one, with more or less strong adherence to its letter.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=0#p11025
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-11-17 15:46:07

Well, while I'm in this thread, let me just thank everyone who tested, played, rated and/or reviewed my game, whatever you thought of it.   [emote]:D[/emote] 

[quote="huftis"]I doubt anybody misses the ADRIFT and ALAN games[/quote]
ADRIFT is still around, largely through the efforts of a loyal community.  I think the main reason there were no ADRIFT games this year was just because they're all focused on the new version of the system that's in the works.

And I think there's an ALAN author floating around somewhere as well (outside the comp).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=20#p11026
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-17 15:55:09

[quote="gravel"]Hmm.  So I'm not even sure I fully understand "moral premise" now.  Could you give some examples of stories without moral premises?  I've been thinking every story has one, with more or less strong adherence to its letter.[/quote]

Here's one interesting link on a film that (according to some) didn't have an effective moral premise:

<a class="postlink" href="http://moralpremise.blogspot.com/2010/08/all-star-cast-false-moral-premise-sink.html">http://moralpremise.blogspot.com/2010/0 ... -sink.html</a>

The key phrase there, and the reason I link to that article, is the notion of a "false" moral premise. It's often not the case that there's no "message" behind the story, but rather that it's a "false" message. Personally I prefer to think of that as an ineffective moral premise or one that isn't consistently applied. (That was the problem many people had with the film [i]The Mist[/i], for example.)

The idea really focuses more on consistency of purpose rather than a binary statement of presence or absence. If your story hsa characters doing things that cannot be explained logically as coming from a value, you may have problems. (The idea there being that every character action must be logically connected to the character’s value motivation.) Proponents of the moral premise will say that all action is preceded by a decision that finds its motivation in a psychological value (virtue or vice).

The protagonist must have a physical, tangible goal. The audience must care about that goal. It doesn't matter if the goal is a "good" thing (the audience really hopes the protagonist makes it) or if the goal is a bad thing (the audience hopes the protagonist doesn't get it). What matters is that it is tangible. However, the protagonist's goal can't be reached until they first overcome their vice, the inner obstacle to their journey. They embrace what the author feels is a virtue to get to the goal.

Mind, this leaves totally open the interpretation between "virtue" and "vice." That's a key point: it's what the protagonist considers to be the "good side" and the "bad side" -- not the audience. The audience will have it's own viewpoint but they can also embrace the vice. (People did root for Michael Corleone in the [i]The Godfather[/i], after all.)

I didn't answer your question here but I was trying to answer the larger question of how it's possible to look for a certain consistency of purpose in terms of how characters act and how much depth those characters are given such that believable actions stem from logical motivations. (Mind, "logical" doesn't have to mean strict logic; it's logical to [i]that[/i] protagonist. And that logic may lead to reprehensible -- but believable -- actions.) When aggregated over a variety of axes, books and films that tend to show that consistency of purpose and an engaging motivational arc, tend to be much better regarded by audiences.

In film, a good example of an effective moral premise was [i]Titanic[/i]. Another film was structurally very similar to it but had a (widely recognized) inconsistent moral premise was [i]Pearl Harbor[/i]. Notice the difference in box office results, audience reaction, and critic reaction to both films. (Granted, [i]Pearl Harbor[/i] still took in a huge amount of money relatively speaking. But not as much as expected or hoped for and certainly did not get the critical success that [i]Titanic[/i] did.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=959&start=0#p11027
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment!
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-17 17:05:59

Thanks for those comments! Using a screen reader that supports ARIA live regions should provide a much better experience, but I don't think that NVDA does from the website's description of it. I would like to try to increase accessibility further, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to spend time doing it for screen readers which don't support the official web accessibility standards.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=959&start=0#p11028
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment!
User: Neo / DateTime: 2010-11-17 17:53:51

Fair call.

I've dropped an email to Austin Seraphin (featured in Get Lamp) alerting him to this thread and asking for his assistance. He's been helping me out with some of my own queries. His expertise on this (and his broader and more practical use of screen readers) far surpasses my limited knowledge.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=30#p11029
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-17 18:27:59

[quote="Jeff Nyman"][quote="gravel"]Hmm.  So I'm not even sure I fully understand "moral premise" now.  Could you give some examples of stories without moral premises?  I've been thinking every story has one, with more or less strong adherence to its letter.[/quote]

Here's one interesting link on a film that (according to some) didn't have an effective moral premise:

<a class="postlink" href="http://moralpremise.blogspot.com/2010/08/all-star-cast-false-moral-premise-sink.html">http://moralpremise.blogspot.com/2010/0 ... -sink.html</a>[/quote]

I don't find this helpful at all, because Williams is pointing out a bunch of flaws in the film and saying that it has a false moral premise, but he doesn't say why the moral premise is false, or what the flaws have to do with the false moral premise. For that matter, he doesn't say why the vice should be "Keeping your word to find justice leads to drunken insanity" instead of "Fanaticism in the pursuit of justice leads to unscrupulous behavior and remorse" or something like that, which sounds like the moral premise I would draw from the story of a cop using a little girl as bait for a killer. (Haven't seen the movie, though.)

[quote]In film, a good example of an effective moral premise was Titanic. Another film was structurally very similar to it but had a (widely recognized) inconsistent moral premise was Pearl Harbor.[/quote]

Can you please spell the moral premises out?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1692&start=10#p11030
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 - same grammar but a phrase is rejected?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-17 19:17:32

[quote="gravel"]Edit: Also, "which" or "[preposition] which", as in "fields in which the target is enrolled."  (That one's tricky because it would require moving the preposition from the verb form to before the which, so maybe it should be left out?  Or I could live with "field in which the target is enrolled in" despite the grammatical tangle.)[/quote]

I think I'll just suggest "that" and "which." [preposition] "which" seems like it'd probably be a compiler's nightmare; the compiler would have to know where the preposition went, and for that matter it'd have to know that it was a preposition. At least I take it that when we define a verb "to be enrolled in" "in" doesn't have any special status -- it could just as well be "to be enrolled frooble." Also I like to stand up for the preposition at the end of the sentence. Or the preposition at the end of the sentence is something I like to stand up for.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=30#p11031
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-17 19:26:28

[quote="matt w"]I don't find this helpful at all, because Williams is pointing out a bunch of flaws in the film and saying that it has a false moral premise, but he doesn't say why the moral premise is false, or what the flaws have to do with the false moral premise.[/quote]

He does in that he says: "The virtues and vices are not parallel, and neither is the consequence."

That's part of what makes a moral premise work. Granted, he doesn't spell that out but I probably should have mentioned that Stan is writing his blog for people who probably have some familiarity with the moral premise.

[quote]For that matter, he doesn't say why the vice should be "Keeping your word to find justice leads to drunken insanity" instead of "Fanaticism in the pursuit of justice leads to unscrupulous behavior and remorse" or something like that, ...[/quote]

Yeah, he doesn't, I agree. That said, he did say: "Here's a good take what the film's really about at the psychological level." That implies other interpretations are possible. However, in seeing the film, it's hard to find other interpretations that are consistent given how the characters act and the motivations established for the characters.

The idea is that a moral premise is a structural element that is acted out in the scenes, dialogue, and so on as mentioned before. Protagonists will act out the virtue side, antagonists will act out the vice side. Although in effective stories, the protagonist is effectively practicing the vice initially. At least up until the end of the first act. The premise isn't accepted until the moment of grace in the film. And this can happen quite late in a film or book. (Consider Luke Skywalker's moment of grace in [i]A New Hope[/i]. It comes very, very late in the film.) Essentially the high-level structural element of effective stories that use the moral premise is this for the protagonist arc:

[list][*]Discovers Opportunity (inciting incident)[/*:m]
[*]Rejects Opportunity[/*:m]
[*]Accepts Opportunity[/*:m]
[*]Rejects Premise (practices vice)[/*:m]
[*]Accepts Premise (recognizes vice is an issue | moment of grace)[/*:m]
[*]Tries Premise (practices virtue)[/*:m]
[*]Commits to Premise (recognizes virtue is the way to go)[/*:m][/list:u]

The film [i]The Pledge[/i] does not follow any sort of structure even remotely like that. Thus the premise itself is only one of interpretation because the motivations are not consistent and certainly not believable.

A good example is the older film [i]An Officer and a Gentleman[/i]. Here's one way to word the film’s moral premise:

[color=#400000][list][b]Arrogance and dishonesty with others[/b] leads to [b]despair and a life not worth living[/b]; but
[b]Giving ourselves honestly to others[/b] leads to [b]hope and a better life[/b].[/list:u][/color]

That can be shortened a bit:

[color=#400000][list][b]Deceiving ourselves and others[/b] leads to [b]despair and death[/b]; but
[b]Truthfulness to ourselves and others[/b] leads to [b]hope and life[/b].[/list:u][/color]

Yet another way to word that is this:

[color=#400000][list][b]Honest friendships and counselors[/b] lead to [b]hope and life[/b]; but
[b]Dishonest friendships and counselors[/b] lead to [b]despair and death[/b].[/list:u][/color]

Here what you see is a tightening of the concept of the moral premise. But if you watch the film, you'll see that all the scenes play out this premise in all of the characters.

Another example is [i]Braveheart[/i]. (And, yeah, I know: [i]everyone[/i] picks that one.) Here's one example of the film’s moral premise:

[color=#400000][list][b]The willingness of leaders to compromise liberty[/b] leads to [b]tyranny[/b]; but
[b]The willingness of leaders to die for liberty[/b] leads to [b]freedom[/b].[/list:u][/color]

If you contract that a bit, you get:

[color=#400000][list][b]Compromise of liberty[/b] leads to [b]tyranny[/b]; but
[b]Dying for liberty[/b] leads to [b]freedom[/b].[/list:u][/color]

Here you see how you can simply contract the guiding concept of the moral premise.

Another example is from [i]Bruce Almighty[/i]. Here’s a possible moral premise from the film:

[color=#400000][list][b]Expecting miracles, or others to labor with their gifts on our behalf[/b] leads to [b]frustration, anger, and chaos[/b]; but
[b]Laboring to be the miracle for others using our gifts for their behalf[/b] leads to [b]contentment, happiness, and peace[/b].[/list:u][/color]

That's a mouthful. A short form would be this:

[color=#400000][list][b]Expecting a miracle[/b] leads to [b]frustration[/b]; but
[b]Being a miracle[/b] leads to [b]peace[/b].[/list:u][/color]

This is contracting not just the guiding concept, but also contracting the end result of the application of the concept.

Another example is the film [i]In the Bedroom[/i] which in many ways does match [i]The Pledge[/i] in a lot of particulars. Here is one possible premise:

[color=#400000][list][b]Ignoring moral instruction[/b] leads to [b]death and bitterness[/b]; but
[b]Flaunting moral instruction[/b] leads to [b]killing and dread[/b].[/list:u][/color]

Another version is this one:

[color=#400000][list][b]Watching over a child's well-being[/b] leads to [b]health and life[/b]; but
[b]Undermining a child's well-being[/b] leads to [b]sickness and death[/b].[/list:u][/color]

Again, notice how you can be very specific (and in context) with the second case, which is a more specific interpretation of the abstract with the first case. Unlike [i]The Pledge[/i], this film routinely proves out each end of the premise through its various characters. It does consistently.

What you can see with these examples is that you can abstract the premise but also put it into a specific context of a story. For example, in [i]Braveheart[/i] the concept went from the somewhat specific "the willingness of leaders to compromise..." to the somewhat general "compromise." In [i]Bruce Almighty[/i], it was possible to go from the more specific "frustration, anger, and chaos" to the more general "frustration." You can certainly see that with [i]An Officer and a Gentleman[/i], where you start with "arrogance and dishonesty with others," go to "deceiving ourselves and others" to, finally, "honest friendships."

The reason I'm showing all this is to show that the reason it's possible to apply these and have others empirically share the observations is that the scenes and the character arcs all play out these premises. It's not to say that other premises are not possible for any one of these films; but for it to be a moral premise, the situational elements would have to accurately reflect those statements at each point.

[quote]Can you please spell the moral premises out?[/quote]

These might actually be good exercises for anyone/everyone to try. [i]Titanic[/i] in particular is interesting in that it focuses on class differences and social constraints. These are mirrored in the constraints of the ship and the options available to those fleeing it; thus you also have a focus between the difference with man and machine. (The machine will equalize all class and social elements.) It's also interesting in that film is really a story within a story. There's also the notion of duty and sacrifice inherent in much of the film. It's a thematically rich film. Taking all those elements, contrast that film with [i]Pearl Harbor[/i]. Certainly you have notions there of honor and duty. Are those played out in all the characters, however? What corresponding vice acted as a counterpoint? War is a thematic element (of course) but what's the focal element for war as played out in the main characters?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=20#p11032
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-11-17 19:31:25

[quote="therealeasterbunny"]The results for the IFCOMP are now out and 24th out of 26th place isn't that bad   [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote] - I'm quite happy really[/quote]

How disappointing. It sounds like you didn't care about a good rating in the first place.

Seems I have correctly assessed your entry.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1690&start=0#p11033
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stuck implementing a table with consult about
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-11-17 20:10:31

I'm probably not going to be a bit of help here. I've never mastered the use of tables in I7. Tables strike me as one of the most awkward implementations I've ever seen. I sincerely hope that Graham Nelson reads this entire thread and takes it under consultation.

That said, you may be on the right track in making the entries in the notebook subjects rather than raw text. A subject is just an object (and there's a sentence that would make a grammarian shudder). The subject will have a name (which you can print), vocabulary (so the player can use the write about and look up actions flexibly), and a text (the text of the noted clue). You might not need multiple columns in a table, just one column that either does or doesn't have a subject entry in it.

Come to that, I'm not sure you need a table at all. Just give each subject a number (the notebook-order number) and set it to -1 as a default. When a subject is entered in the notebook, change its notebook-order number. When the player tries to look up something or write something in the notebook, all you have to do is check whether the notebook-order of the subject is -1. Each time a new subject is entered in the notebook, give it a notebook-order value that is one higher than the previous one (which you would have to check on the fly).

That would be how I would try designing it, anyhow. If I have time tonight, I'll try roughing it out.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=30#p11034
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-11-17 20:14:36

[quote]Fiction isn't about the "real" world and thus the fact that world is more complex doesn't have to factor in to that extent. Fictional people use focused dialogue that people in real life don't use. Geography shrinks or expands based on need. Fiction deals with a facsimilie of the world in order to focus on more specific aspects. No one expects fiction to mirror the real world. That's, in fact, one reason why people enjoy fiction: because it isn't as complex as the real world in all cases.[/quote]

Escape fiction is used as, obviously, an escape from the complexities of real life, but serious fiction emulates the complexity.  That's one reason why the French Romantics were so good.  Stories that distill life too much end up feeling artificial (for instance, if the main character's friends all seem to only be friends with the main character and to not have their own independent lives).  Simplification of moral issues is particularly questionable, since glossing over real complexities can result in conclusions that have have no application to the real world.

For instance, there's the common question of whether it's acceptable to lie to save someone's life or prevent some other bad result.  Someone who holds the "no" view might write a story where, whenever someone tells the truth, the situation ends up working itself out.  Conversely, writers often try to shoehorn their characters into tragic moral choice situations when, in real life, there might be dozens of other available options.

Certainly, I would consider the two examples you gave to be major flaws, particularly the latter.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=30#p11035
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-11-17 20:33:25

I still think that a story that can actually be encapsulated in such an equation is inferior to one that acknowledges the limitations of the equation.

Compare [i]V For Vendetta[/i] the movie with [i]V For Vendetta[/i] the graphic novel.

In the movie, we have a clear theme of:
[b]Too much government leads to horrible tyranny.
Resisting tyranny leads to freedom.[/b]

And that's why, despite being compelling, aesthetically beautiful, and making thousands of women fall in love with Hugo Weaving (it helps when you can't see his face), it was thematically trite.

In the comic, the formula is different:
[b]Too much government leads to horrible tyranny.
Too little government leads to horrible anarchy.[/b]

So the story is the same, but the ending is drastically different and better, because it acknowledges that there isn't one correct principle you can cling to that will inevitably lead to a positive result.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1703&start=0#p11036
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Average IF command lengths
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-17 20:49:20

In another thread I said: "80% of commands are single words (if not single letters), and 80% of the rest are two-word command phrases."

Those number were, how shall we say, colonically extrofitted. therealeasterbunny called me on it, so I've done some counting.

All of these numbers are from my beta-testing transcripts.

The first entry for each game ("with one or two letters") is a subset of the "one word" entry.

Note that Heliopause and Dual Transform have very different proportions from Dreamhold and Wallpaper. Heliopause and Dual Transform are both one-room(-ish) games. They each have a notion of locale, but navigation is by two-word commands in each case, with no one-or-two-letter abbreviations.

Conclusion: my original numbers were too high, but not *very* high (for games with traditional map navigation). Between 50% and 70% of commands are one word. About 75% of the rest are two words.

[code]
* Delightful Wallpaper
3005 input lines
with one or two letters: 66.1 percent
with 1 words: 69.5 percent
with 2 words: 20.8 percent
with 3 words: 0.6 percent
with 4 words: 7.2 percent

* The Dreamhold:
10444 input lines
with one or two letters: 43.2 percent
with 1 words: 53.0 percent
with 2 words: 31.1 percent
with 3 words: 6.0 percent
with 4 words: 4.8 percent

* Heliopause:
1107 input lines
with one or two letters: 19.1 percent
with 1 words: 36.6 percent
with 2 words: 49.2 percent
with 3 words: 6.1 percent
with 4 words: 3.0 percent

* Dual Transform:
2687 input lines
with one or two letters: 14.4 percent
with 1 words: 20.3 percent
with 2 words: 71.5 percent
with 3 words: 2.1 percent
with 4 words: 4.2 percent
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=959&start=10#p11037
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment!
User: omeron / DateTime: 2010-11-17 20:52:09

Hello, Austin here. Parchment does something very weird with VoiceOver and Safari on a Mac. By the way, VoiceOver does have ARIA support, and it comes free with every Mac! Just hit command-f5 and enjoy. When the game opens, I see an edit box containing the whole text, and an edit box within that edit box at the bottom where I type text. This makes sense. Strangely, when I try to review the main edit box containing the game, I get it a word at a time. This makes it impossible to use, you can't read a game a word at a time. Normally, VoiceOver will read a whole page element, such as a paragraph or link. By the way, Firefox with Orca on Linux doesn't work well, I just get the intro text and status line. At least Safari got the game! It hung it up when I went back there though, I almost lost this message. I'd better not tempt fate. These sorts of client side programs can often have problems with screen readers, so don't feel bad. I hope you can get this working, lots of blind people need an accessible way to play these games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1690&start=10#p11038
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stuck implementing a table with consult about
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-17 21:11:40

[quote="Jim Aikin"]I'm probably not going to be a bit of help here. I've never mastered the use of tables in I7. Tables strike me as one of the most awkward implementations I've ever seen. I sincerely hope that Graham Nelson reads this entire thread and takes it under consultation.[/quote]

I don't think the problem is with tables per se--to my mind, they're pretty darn straightforward, as evidenced by how easily newcomers learn to use (and probably overuse) them. I'm guessing that the difficulty you're referring to comes with matching the melange of different types that all look like text (topic, snippet, text, indexed text, etc.) This often happens in tables because the manual suggests topic columns as a good way to organize data. And they would be, except for all the contortions an author can be forced into in using them (as illustrated by the progression of this thread). 

The profusion of "textual" types is what really could use an overhaul, in my opinion. Unfortunately, there's a sense in which that overhaul would mean redesigning much of the system...

Given which, maybe the most practical solution is better documentation that gives users better insight into exactly what the data structures are, why they're incompatible, and how to effectively typecast between them.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=959&start=10#p11039
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-17 21:27:05

[quote="omeron"]By the way, VoiceOver does have ARIA support, and it comes free with every Mac! Just hit command-f5 and enjoy.[/quote]

My cat discovered this feature the other day. It freaked me the fuck out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1704&start=0#p11040
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Gris et Jaune - Post Comp
User: sgaal / DateTime: 2010-11-17 21:30:13

Hey guys, hope you enjoyed the comp'!

I think I've found most of the reviews to be found, and they're all very consistent with regards to the problems in Gris et Jaune. I'd like to do a post-comp version to address them, and I need your help!

If any of you are in the habit of saving transcripts of the games you played, I'd really love if you could send them on over to me. Commented or not, it's usually pretty easy to tell when the player starts to get frustrated or bogged down. Any additional comments (either privately or here) would also be greatly appreciated.

The problems with the game structure after leaving the house definitely means that the revision will have to be more than bug and typo fixes, but I have a fairly good idea of how I want to change things. 

If you have anything that could help me, please send it to <a href="mailto:stevevngl@gmail.com">stevevngl@gmail.com</a> or <a href="mailto:jdevlin1984@hotmail.com">jdevlin1984@hotmail.com</a>

Thanks,

Jason

(Mike, I'm not sure if this should be here or in the Betatesting forum)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1702&start=0#p11041
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IF Comp games' websites & rule 5
User: George / DateTime: 2010-11-17 21:30:23

Considering that discussion of the games is allowed by everyone who isn't an author, and so it would be trivial for an author to violate the spirit of the competition if they chose to do so, I feel like the simple answer to these questions is we trust the authors to keep to the spirit of the Comp. I don't really see the need for piling on more rules and errata about how authors should conduct themselves during the Comp. 

I am interested in your question about pre-Comp conduct, as this would seem to cover devlogs and whether they're allowed. I feel like devlogs are valuable contributions to the community at large, and while I've seen a couple for Comp games (though not really trumpeted as such), Comp authors seem to shie away from doing it; that also might be related to the process of writing IF in general. Perhaps post-mortems are a happy compromise.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=30#p11042
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-17 21:37:35

I agree with katz — in fact I think James Joyce (and his contemporaries) pretty conclusively killed the moral premise as a respectable form of storytelling, and it's never been the same since.

To a certain extent, too much formulising over the story's message will lead IF down a very well-travelled and now-deprecated 'O. Henry' type road (O. Henry's moral premises are almost perfectly constructed little turns that would suit IF perfectly and which are now almost universally considered to be trite and/or facile).

But as I pointed out earlier, it's possible that this will turn out to be a [i]necessary phase[/i] for IF. After all you can't figure out how to step light until you've already learned all the ways you can step too heavy — by stepping too heavy. It wouldn't be terrible if this were the case, but it wouldn't be ideal either, and personally I prefer a simple quest narrative, if the alternative is an O. Henry-style moral twist, because that isn't interesting or even respectible in literary circles in this day and age. And if you're not going for the [i]real[/i] gold (true [b]moral intrigue[/b] — not a one-linerable premise — of the complexity expected by the modern sophisticated reader) then why even bother leaving the land of the thinly disguised quest?

Quest narratives work and they're proven. The simple moral premise is deprecated in literature. It would be a shame to trade the former for the latter — what I wish for IF is to leapfrog the middle part, the part that is no longer really popular nor interesting.

Pass directly through modernism and go to postmodernism — do not collect $200 in exchange for breaking your character's principles. 8)

Paul.

P.S. Write something with all the moral complexity and indeterminacy of any single story in James Joyce's Dubliners; this is what it'd take, at minimum, to truly impress a modern literary type, I believe. I don't think we're going to get there by hyperfocusing on moral premise. James Joyce's work is a progressive rejection (to the eventual point of absurdity) of that exact trend in literature and to a large extent the entire literary world has followed him into that territory and left the moral premise behind as a measuring stick for anything, quite a long time ago. Why should IF be pounding on that old, decrepit door? Except if it is a necessary inescapable evil; that's the only reason I can see to go there: to run our seedy little experiments and abscond with the data into more interesting realms. I definitely do not see achieving a working moral premise as a worthy goal; quite the opposite. It's more like a training environment for how to achieve moral [i]intrigue[/i]; how to involve and provoke the reader's moral senses without provoking them to clamp down into certainty or conclusiveness.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=30#p11043
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-17 21:47:45

Another question: What might the moral premise of the Cherry Orchard be? Is there anyway to fit it into a moral premise analysis such that Semyonov-Pishchik's plot makes sense? 
[spoiler]If I were to give it the moral premise analysis, it'd be something like: Denying reality leads to a rude awakening; crushing people's dreams alienates you from society. But Semyonov-Pishchik is even deeper into denial than the Ranevskayas, and he's saved by a last-minute miracle. However we analyze it, the whole point of Semyonov-Pishchik's plot seems to be that he epitomizes the main characters' vices even more than the main characters do, yet he escapes the consequences.[/spoiler]

The whole idea of the moral premise analysis of literature seems to be that characters control their fates through their actions (otherwise you wouldn't have the virtue -> reward; vice -> punishment equation), but that seems simplistic. 

[Reading Laroquod on Joyce: Well, Joyce was influenced by Chekhov, I think? I wouldn't say the modernists killed off the moral premise, but maybe they opened up an alternative. If I wanted to be really obnoxious I'd ask what the moral premise of Waiting for Godot was.]

OTOH, it does seem like a useful paradigm for IF, because in IF we want the player's actions to have consequences. It's generally unsatisfying otherwise. I still have to respond some to the IF-related ideas that we've been discussing. Short preview: When we talk about The Godfather, giving Michael the chance to go straight would've undermined the story Puzo/Coppola wanted to tell -- but maybe that's why it's a novel/movie rather than a game. (And the games make you into a supporting character, or so says Wikipedia.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1702&start=0#p11044
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IF Comp games' websites & rule 5
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-17 22:07:25

The only reason for rule 5 that I can see is the small size of the community. It's actually difficult to wander around critiquing games in IF without stumbling into their author. This creates a danger of a self-reinforcing echo-chamber effect that is probably most distortive during a competition. So I would use that as a guide to the spirit of the rule. If you are finding ways of injecting yourself into conversations that you probably shouldn't be a part of, you're probably violating the spirit of the rule.

So, if you don't say anything during the comp but everybody already knows all of your hopes and dreams and aspirations for your game and what you're trying to say with it because you talked it up so much before the comp, I'd say you probably violated the spirit of the rule.

Whereas an author just maintaining his own website does not seem to violate anything since nobody will likely visit that website unless they are specifically seeking out that author's voice. Personally I don't see a problem with that; the point isn't that there is information but rather whether that info impinges on the fairly small and thus easily influenced pools of fan discussion, and author websites seem more like faraway freestanding bastions than a direct injection of an author's self-analysis into 'the process'.

Just IMO of course but I think you want there to be fans and players who have no clue what the designer says about his own game: they just play it. Those 'context-free' players need to exist, so I think rule 5 is just meant to help ensure they exist for comp games as much as possible. If the community were a little bit larger it wouldn't be necessary to have any rule of silence at all because we'd be guaranteed a majority of context-free players in any case.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=60#p11045
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Neo / DateTime: 2010-11-17 22:11:11

To be honest, the more I come to understand interactive fiction the less convinced I am that there is a universal solution to teaching new players how to play.

For me, the problem comes down to disparate implementation.

As you've discussed, the command "X (object)" might mean something different to two different authors. Or, fifty different authors. Or, it might be implemented differently by the same author in two different games. Or, more confusing still, implemented differently by the same author in two different places within the same game. How do you communicate that to a new player? How do you make a general rule to cover that? Isn't that the power of authoring languages, such as Inform 7? To be able to assign any meaning the author wants on any given command or action, and create new ones?

Of course, even if we were all to suddenly agree on the differences between "EXAMINE", "SEARCH" and "LOOK AT (object)", there's still thirty years of IF games that don't work along those lines. And then there are all the "experimental" and "innovative" works.

Further complications come in the complexities of regional, social and cultural expression. Language is fluid. Yes, we can use a tutorial to set up more rigid connections between commands and their meanings, but then you run into problems of instruction versus experimentation.

To that end, the inclusion of new commands is a difficult concept for new players and for authors.

How does a new player know that this particular game contains the command "URINATE", necessary for a toilet-stop puzzle mid-game, if the game doesn't implicitly tell them? The author, of course, hopes that the narrative will convey that it's the right course of action, but there's no guarantee the player will understand or use the right command. (They might type "TAKE A SLASH"). Worse still, this might be the only IF game ever written to include that command, leaving the new player wondering why they can't type the same thing in another game.

Where is the line between madatory tutorial and experimental surprise? You could say that any command that's required to "win" a game should be part of a tutorial. But something like the example above might be ruined by such exposition.

It's interesting to see video games struggle with this same issue when they stray into the use of text input and narrative. Super Scribblenauts is a great example here. When playing the game, I wrote "LONG POLE" hoping to give it to Maxwell so he could knock a Starite out of a tree, but when it materialised, the game deemed that Maxwell could not hold the pole. I don't know about Maxwell, but I've held many long poles. Why couldn't he? After all, he can hold a "POOL CUE", "LONG STICK", and even a "POLE VAULT". It's also interesting to note that the game (by necessity) has its own system of disambiguation.

Presently, I wonder if it's not the players we need to be teaching, but the authors. While it is extremely improbable that the larger IF community might come to a universal agreement on a style guide or a "standard", a quorum of talented authors implementing IF in the same way would be able to provide a fantastic and consistent body of work to introduce new players to.

Perhaps, then, (accepting that we can't change the past) we could really start to talk about what certain commands mean, and how new players are able to use them.

It's just a thought...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1690&start=10#p11046
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stuck implementing a table with consult about
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-11-17 22:20:37

[quote="ektemple"]I don't think the problem is with tables per se--to my mind, they're pretty darn straightforward, as evidenced by how easily newcomers learn to use (and probably overuse) them. I'm guessing that the difficulty you're referring to comes with matching the melange of different types that all look like text (topic, snippet, text, indexed text, etc.)[/quote]
Well, yeah, that too. But I tend to fumble around with tables, because I've never properly grasped the syntax with which one would look up an item in a table and then use it.

Here's another way of creating a notebook that can record the detective's clues. I avoided using tables. This may or may not meet the design criteria. Also, it relies on the author to make sure that every suspicious item has a clue as part of it.

You have to be in the presence of an in-game object to jot down the clue. This may be limiting.

This doesn't give the player the option of jotting down their own clue information. If you want to do that, you could try adapting my Notepad extension.

[code]The Kitchen is a room. "If nothing else, the food in this kitchen is a crime."

A table is in the Kitchen.

Section - Items

A clue is a kind of thing. A clue is always privately-named. A clue has a number called the note-number. The note-number of a clue is usually -1.

A suspicious item is a kind of thing.

On the table are a carving knife, a mackerel, and a lemon merengue pie. The pie is edible. The knife is a suspicious item. The mackerel is a suspicious item. The pie is a suspicious item. Understand "fish" as the mackerel. The description of the knife is "It looks quite sharp." The description of the mackerel is "Quite dead, and not holy at all." The description of the pie is "Clearly toxic."

The player carries a notebook. Understand "clues" and "notes" as the notebook.

The knife-clue is a clue. The knife-clue is part of the carving knife. The description is "carving knife: Could have been used to stab Professor Plum".

The fish-clue is a clue. The fish-clue is part of the mackerel. The description is "mackerel: Could have been used to bludgeon Miss Scarlet".

The pie-clue is a clue. The pie-clue is part of the lemon merengue pie. The description is "lemon merengue pie: Could have been used to poison Colonel Mustard".

Section - Actions

Note-taking is an action applying to one visible thing and one thing. Understand "write about [any thing] in [something]" as note-taking.

Check note-taking:
	if the second noun is not the notebook:
		say "You can't write in [the second noun]." instead;
	otherwise if the noun is not a suspicious item:
		say "You can't write that up in the notebook." instead;
	otherwise:
		let C be an object;
		repeat with found-it running through clues:
			if found-it is part of the noun:
				now C is found-it;
		if the note-number of C is not -1:
			say "You've already written your notes about [the noun] in the notebook." instead.

Carry out note-taking:
	let N be a number;
	let N be 1;
	let S be an object;
	repeat with recorded running through clues:
		if the note-number of recorded is not -1:
			increase N by 1;
		if recorded is part of the noun:
			let S be recorded;
	now the note-number of S is N;
	say "You write: '[description of S]' in your trusty notebook."

Understand the command "read" as something new.

Clue-consulting is an action applying to one thing and one visible thing. Understand "consult [something] about [something]" as clue-consulting. Understand "look up [any thing] in [something]" as clue-consulting (with nouns reversed). Understand "read about [any thing] in [something]" as clue-consulting (with nouns reversed).

Check clue-consulting:
	if the noun is not the notebook:
		say "You can't look up anything in [the noun]." instead;
	otherwise if the second noun is not a suspicious item:
		say "You haven't written anything about [the second noun] in your notebook." instead;
	otherwise:
		let found-it be a truth state;
		let found-it be false;
		repeat with recorded running through clues:
			if recorded is part of the second noun and the note-number of recorded is not -1:
				now found-it is true;
		if found-it is false:
			say "You haven't written anything about [the second noun] in your notebook." instead.
			
Carry out clue-consulting:
	say "Consulting your notebook, you find the following entry for [the second noun]: [run paragraph on]";
	let C be an object;
	repeat with recorded running through clues:
		if recorded is part of the second noun:
			now C is recorded;
	say "'[description of C].'"

Reading is an action applying to one thing and requiring light. Understand "read [something]" and "consult [something]" as reading.

Instead of reading something:
	say "Nothing is written on [the noun]."
	
Instead of reading the notebook:
	let N be a number;
	let N be 0;
	repeat with recorded running through clues:
		if the note-number of recorded is not -1:
			increase N by 1;
	if N is 0:
		say "Nothing has yet been recorded in the notebook.";
	otherwise:
		say "In the notebook you find the following entries: [line break]";
		repeat with recorded running through clues:
			if the note-number of recorded is not -1:
				say "[description of recorded].[line break]".[/code]
				
Hope that helps!

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1690&start=10#p11047
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stuck implementing a table with consult about
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-11-17 22:30:39

On further investigation, that code didn't work as desired, because I forgot a couple of "[any thing]" specifications. It should be all better now.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1705&start=0#p11048
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Leadlight updated to version 1.1, plus comp thanks
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2010-11-18 00:03:52

With the competition over, I have just today updated Leadlight to version 1.1.

This version removes the handful of bugs found since the competition began, but its real purpose is to add extra look-at descriptions to things in the game.

I left a number of objects which could have had descriptions with "You see nothing special"s in the original release, because my guess had been that to draw attention to particular objects in the trickily small implementation space could add red herrings to the game. (I.e. I thought players might waste time fiddling with interesting looking objects which couldn't be fiddled with).

What I learned from feedback was that everyone wanted fewer "You see nothing special"s!

So I've done what I can, and this new version should slightly enrich the experience of anyone who plays the game in future. Here are the changes:

    * Added descriptions to 16 objects
    * Updated or improved descriptions for 4 objects and 1 enemy
    * Added 4 object synonyms
    * Fixed a bug where certain control characters could cause crashing at the prompt
    * Fixed a bug which could cause a memory leak and a weird crash
    * Fixed a bug where one monster wasn't removed from the game properly after its death
    * Fixed apple description bug
    * Mystery Girl article fixed
    * Missing Sheryl description restored
    * After first round of combat the player is reminded 'RETURN' repeats last command

Please note that for anyone who played online with the plugin, your old save games are not compatible with the new version of the game, and so will have disappeared.

If any kind IF database management folk would like any help from me in determining what files may need to be updated in collections etc, just send me a private message.

---

My thanks to the many people who really dug this game and let me know it. I also found that getting to hang in the cool kids clubhouse (IE author forum) was great recompense for having tape over my mouth for six weeks. I am super pleased to have made 14th place with a game which had to run in 35kb of RAM. Obviously there are a lot of players who are prepared to engage with what is placed in front of them, even with an unfamiliar steering wheel and some notes telling them how to use it. (But not THAT unfamiliar… don't get me started on some of those blog reviews.)

And like Hannes said, to the people who organised this competition and did things like create webpages for our games, it's hugely appreciated.

- Wade

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1706&start=0#p11049
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: making a key pad
User: drumn4life0789 / DateTime: 2010-11-18 00:15:01

Hi,  I am very new to IF and IF programming.  And by very new I mean I played my first IF game last week which was ZORK and that was only because it is playable in the new Call of Duty video game.   Well I became very interested and have played some simple games and now have decided that I want to start writing IF.  I have decided to write a small game to get my self acclimated with the Inform programming language.  

My game is based around my house and the player has to escape the house.  I figured this was an easy way to help me create rooms and things that are in those rooms because I could base it all off of my house.  Well there are obviously some things that I have made different but that's not really why I am here.  

I am trying to make a keypad that opens a door.  I would like the player to say something like examine keypad.  This will tell them how to enter the code.   Then they will enter a code and if its the right code then the door becomes unlocked.   Here is what I have done so far.

[code]understand "enter code [something]" as entering code.

check entering code:
	if the noun is the key pad:
		say "You should now type in the code to unlock the garage door";
	otherwise:
		say "There is nothing here to enter a code on."


the key pad is a thing in the laundry room. it is fixed in place. key pad has a number called keycode. the keycode of the key pad is 1234.

understand "keypad" as key pad.

the garagedoor is a door. it is locked.

understand "garage door" as garagedoor.

the garagedoor is north of the laundry room and south of the garage.[/code]

so what i would like is somehow after telling the person to enter a code that the next thing entered would be compared to the number keycode and if it is correct then the door unlocks.  

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1705&start=0#p11050
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Leadlight updated to version 1.1, plus comp thanks
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-11-18 00:58:55

Just wanted to say that this ended up being one of my favorite experiences in this year's comp. Aside from the technical proficiency that the game represents, the packaging was some of the best I've ever seen. The user's guide was great, the installation instructions were clear and thorough, and the website design was excellent.

You had a very specific experience in mind and you really delivered. Great work!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1705&start=0#p11051
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Leadlight updated to version 1.1, plus comp thanks
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2010-11-18 01:06:17

Thanks a lot bcressey!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=30#p11052
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-11-18 01:28:08

[quote]OTOH, it does seem like a useful paradigm for IF, because in IF we want the player's actions to have consequences. It's generally unsatisfying otherwise.[/quote]

Of course, but not with simplistic good action=good result algorithms.  It's much more interesting to have the results cascade in unpredictable ways:  Good actions with bad results, bad actions with good results, actions that don't influence anything, events not caused by the player that cause results for the player, and so on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=20#p11053
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2010-11-18 02:01:26

[quote="Retro"][quote="therealeasterbunny"]The results for the IFCOMP are now out and 24th out of 26th place isn't that bad   [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote] - I'm quite happy really[/quote]

How disappointing. It sounds like you didn't care about a good rating in the first place.

Seems I have correctly assessed your entry.[/quote]

No, you misunderstand me. Of course it would have been nicer to get a ranking up the ladder and yes, you normally enter a competition to win, but one of the reasons I entered was to see how the reaction was to the old school two word parsers and how the ground lied in placing vs modern IF. And also to give pleasure of old school surprise.

As I have mentioned I thinnk there are at least two different types of beasts now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=959&start=10#p11054
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment!
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-18 03:07:33

Hi omeron, thanks for your comments! Based on [url=http://codetalks.org/wiki/index.php/Set_of_ARIA_Test_Cases#Live_Regions]this page of tests[/url] it doesn't appear that VoiceOver has support for ARIA Live Regions, and as such is still one of those screen readers that I'm not going to work hard to fix.

But I'll see if I can try it on a mac at uni one day.



Does anyone have any non-accessibility related ideas?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1705&start=0#p11055
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Leadlight updated to version 1.1, plus comp thanks
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-11-18 03:29:51

A link would be appreciated - for the new version with your emulator AND for the .dsk version to play with AppleWin. [emote];)[/emote]

When you update the IFDB page, I'd also like to draw your attention to the "Add a news item" feature, which I'm trying hard to ensure everyone uses. If you do, then the version change will appear on the first page, and everyone will know it's out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=30#p11056
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: Harry Giles / DateTime: 2010-11-18 03:40:53

[quote="matt w"]Another question: What might the moral premise of the Cherry Orchard be? Is there anyway to fit it into a moral premise analysis such that Semyonov-Pishchik's plot makes sense?[/quote]

I reckon you'll be onto a loser if you try and fit Chekhov into the structures of the moral premise. Chekhov was in a constant struggle to do in his plays what he did much more successfully in his stories: to remove the constraining artificiality of plot and narrative structures, and instead to show life as it is, in its complexity. He belongs somewhere in a whole tradition of realist theatre and literature that did so -- which was, yes, an influence on Joyce. Realism itself grew in part out of a naturalist tradition in theatre and literature, which, relevantly to your points, was explicitly inspired by deterministic philosophy and the idea that characters had no real agency.

That said . . . 

[quote]Pass directly through modernism and go to postmodernism — do not collect $200 in exchange for breaking your character's principles. 8)[/quote]

OK, this is nicely put, and I'm glad others are wading in eloquently on the points I was trying to make, but I'm going to wave something from the sidelines: there's a risk here of getting all liberal-deterministic and society-and-art-are-a-march-of-progress about all this. I don't really see the development of art as in any sense a natural progress from one state to another more sophisticated or complex state. Art evolves, but evolution is not linear progress.

I'm in danger of derailing the conversation entirely, but what the hell, let's give it a shot: As I wrote in the other thread, mythology and storytelling in the period before the 18th century novel were far more morally ambiguous and complex than they are throughout mass enterainment of the last couple of centuries. If I were going out on a limb, I'd argue that simplistic moral narratives evolved through the demands of mass entertainment, and also through the concentration of the means of artistic production in the hands of a few. What I'm saying is: folk art is often more complex and interesting than state-sponsored or commercial art. Which is relevant to IF, of course, which, while wildly and deliciously various in its forms and aims, is often a form of internet folk art.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1707&start=0#p11057
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: R (Pron: Arrr...) Post competition thank you
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2010-11-18 04:29:28

Hello,

Just a quick note to say thank you to all judges in the IF 2010 competition who took time out to judge the games and also thank you for the comments received by way of both reviews and emails for my entry.

I will address the bug introduced for 'examine' for those objects which had descriptions and will  then put out v1.1 to the IFDB as an update as I like to clear up issues with any of my projects.

From what I have learned, there will be more descriptive information in my next game. Whether it be a two parser or otherwise. 

In the mean time, happy Adventuring!

Steve.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=30#p11058
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-18 04:37:19

[quote="Laroquod"]Write something with all the moral complexity and indeterminacy of any single story in James Joyce's Dubliners; this is what it'd take, at minimum, to truly impress a modern literary type, I believe.[/quote]

Possibly. But for myself I'm not trying to impress a literary type necessarily. I'm trying to work with a modern audience that is more likely to actually play and engage in textual IF. I'm not saying this for commercial purposes. I'm simply saying that I'm going where the audience is. Textual IF, while it's made lots of technical strides and has brought in newcomers, has actually done nothing to really appeal to a wider audience, despite a long amount of time in which to do so.

I think modern books and the film industry have proven that you can tell very effective stories that do appeal to a wide audience. The game industry has shown the same thing. My hope is that textual IF may at least try to learn from some of those successes. (And where they didn't succeed, why not.) I do think that if textual IF tries to stay within the realm that would appeal to the "literary type", it will stay in the same relatively lackluster place it has been for many years. That may be okay. For myself, I'd really like to broaden the audience.


[quote]Why should IF be pounding on that old, decrepit door? Except if it is a necessary inescapable evil; that's the only reason I can see to go there: to run our seedy little experiments and abscond with the data into more interesting realms. I definitely do not see achieving a working moral premise as a worthy goal; quite the opposite.[/quote]

It's certainly a valid viewpoint. Obviously it's one with which I would disagree, but I certainly recognize its validity. My goal here was more to present a technique --- the moral premise. Like all techniques, it can be ineffective in some cases simply because of the realm in which it's being imposed. In other cases, it can be misapplied. But it is a valid technique and it is one that works for three industries that textual IF has at least some structural and mechanistic similiarites to. As such dismissing it was not something I was prepared to do without actual experimentation, both in terms of myself applying it and then seeing some effects on various audiences.

That being said, the goal of this thread was to encourage discussion about the idea, regardless of whether people liked it or disliked it. If nothing else, people coming down on one side or the other is expected and I've learned a lot by reading contrary responses, for which I'm appreciative.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1690&start=10#p11059
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stuck implementing a table with consult about
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-11-18 04:52:14

[quote="ektemple"]I'm guessing that the difficulty you're referring to comes with matching the melange of different types that all look like text (topic, snippet, text, indexed text, etc.) This often happens in tables because the manual suggests topic columns as a good way to organize data. And they would be, except for all the contortions an author can be forced into in using them (as illustrated by the progression of this thread).[/quote]
I, for one, certainly find it quite confusing.

[quote="ektemple"]maybe the most practical solution is better documentation that gives users better insight into exactly what the data structures are, why they're incompatible, and how to effectively typecast between them.[/quote]
And I'd love that.

I found a discussion of some of it in [i]Inform 7 for Programmers[/i], which did explain things. But I would very much like to see such things explained in the official documentation, too. After all Ron's tutorial is explicitly aimed at people with programming experience whereas Inform 7 strives to be accessible also to people with none.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=30#p11060
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: Harry Giles / DateTime: 2010-11-18 04:55:25

[quote]Good fiction leaves the reader with a sense of inevitability.[/quote]

This was said a page or so ago, but I wanted to highlight it because it encapsulates so well what some of us are railing against. That sense of inevitability is exactly what some of us find simplified or trite about basing stories on narrative structures like the moral premise! I absolutely agree that doing so leads to well-constructed, compelling and rhetorically effective stories. But whether or not they're "good" depends, crucially, on what you want the story to achieve. How "good" art is could be said to be determined by how effectively it achieves its goals, although many of us on different sides on this thread have made arguments for goodness based on what we think those goals ought to be.

(Etymological sidebar: I really like the word "crucial": its literally etymological meaning is "as of a cross" (cf. "crucific"), but it came to mean "critical" more recently in reference, it seems, to a logical term referring to making a decision at a crossroads. So something is crucial when a decision about it determines in which direction we go.)

[quote]It's certainly a valid viewpoint. Obviously it's one with which I would disagree, but I certainly recognize its validity. My goal here was more to present a technique --- the moral premise. Like all techniques, it can be ineffective in some cases simply because of the realm in which it's being imposed. In other cases, it can be misapplied. But it is a valid technique and it is one that works for three industries that textual IF has at least some structural and mechanistic similiarites to. As such dismissing it was not something I was prepared to do without actual experimentation, both in terms of myself applying it and then seeing some effects on various audiences.

That being said, the goal of this thread was to encourage discussion about the idea, regardless of whether people liked it or disliked it. If nothing else, people coming down on one side or the other is expected and I've learned a lot by reading contrary responses, for which I'm appreciative.[/quote]

I think this is well put. (By the way, you're bloody good at the whole "well I recognise the validity of your viewpoint but here's what I think" argumentative respect and politeness thing, for which thanks; I tend to get carried away by rhetorical flourishes, for which apologies.) I think part of the problem for some of us comes when narrative structures like the moral premise are prescribed as a cure-all for weak stories, when in fact what they do is help us to create particular kinds of stories for particular audiences. I hope you won't mind if I quote you putting this well in the other Moral Premise thread:

[quote]I think (for me) that storytelling ability would depend on what audiences can (and want) to relate to. My ability to connect with audiences may be compromised were I to go certain routes. In which case my ability to "tell a story" doesn't necessarily translate into effective storytelling. That being said, storytelling evolves. The nature of what people do and don't like change.[/quote]

What we want our art to do, and what methods we use to achieve those goals, should depend very much on what audiences we want for our art, how we understand those audiences, and what effect we want to have on them. I've maybe come down a little hard on Hollywood-style well-structured narratives (in theatre we have the technical term "well-made play", which describes much the same kind of thing, and the development and theory of which contributed extensively to the development of the Hollywood narrative); I'm actually not as snobbish as all that, and think there is an important role for such storytelling. But I also think there's a vital role, which IF can also play, for art which, through its formal structures and through its content, productively disrupts, disturbs, upsets and confuses.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1708&start=0#p11061
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Interactive fiction and VI accessibility
User: Neo / DateTime: 2010-11-18 05:36:18

A number of weeks ago I began asking some questions about the accessibility of interactive fiction for blind and visually impaired players (often called "audio gamers"). It was requested by a few members of the IF community that I share any information that came out of those discussions. I promised I would.

Here, then, is the link to my blog post on the topic: [url]http://www.inthecompanyofgrues.com/?p=220[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=20#p11062
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-18 06:57:55

I just don't get why a two word parser would be in any way desirable when there are so many multi-word parsers already available today (ie, not just Inform!) The only reason to have one is if it's impossible to have a better parser.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1708&start=0#p11063
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Interactive fiction and VI accessibility
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-18 07:03:01

Thanks for this. It's very informative.

Interestingly enough, in some classes I've been working on there was a similar desire to remove the status line entirely. These were all sighted authors, so it wasn't for reasons of accessibility so much as it was for the perceived "intrusiveness" of the status line itself. Likewise, menus were pretty much thoroughly disliked among my classes (both the writers and the players).

Beyond that, one of the major things we did consider was an altering of the interface to represent a sort of mental map of the protagonist. (This was done, in fact, to partially alleviate the need for the "extensive note taking and mapping" that's mentioned in the blog post.) It sounds like current interpreters and screen readers will not respond too well to this modified user interface, however. This would not be a graphical element but rather a set of text that mentions the name of the location, the vialble exits from it, plus other information that may be relevant. For example, inventory might be there or contextual information (such as relationships the protagonist has observed).

I'm wondering if it makes sense for us to focus on some sort of progressive enhancement approach. Meaning, if an interpreter is set to be playing in "accessible" mode, that interface simply wouldn't appear. Then relevant commands could be used to bring up the same information that would have been in the window. I don't know if this is possible somehow with checking what's available on the interpreter and tailoring the experience accordingly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=20#p11064
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2010-11-18 07:31:12

[quote="Dannii"]I just don't get why a two word parser would be in any way desirable when there are so many multi-word parsers already available today (ie, not just Inform!) The only reason to have one is if it's impossible to have a better parser.[/quote]

Retro gaming desire perhaps?

How about:

"I just don't get why Pacman, Space Invaders or Q-Bert would be in any way desirable to play when there are so many 3D games available today (ie, not just Call of Duty!) The only reason to play one is if it's impossible to play a better game."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=20#p11065
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-18 07:36:05

Okay, but then why would the parser of all things provoke feelings of nostalgia? Having retro IF with terse descriptions, mazes, instant death etc is all great, but why have a crappy parser too? Does it really make it fun?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1708&start=0#p11066
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Interactive fiction and VI accessibility
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-18 07:39:13

Neo, thanks for doing this! I've commented on your blog, and will leave that discussion there.

Jeff, why did everyone so dislike the status bar so much? I can guess that in some works it might suck, but the thing in itself has so much potential I can't see why it's reviled. Many books have chapter titles in their headers after all! That's actually what I'd consider the best use of the status bar, something akin to a chapter title. In Violet it's the current problem to solve. Does that really break immersion?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=20#p11067
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2010-11-18 07:40:54

[quote="Dannii"]Okay, but then why would the parser of all things provoke feelings of nostalgia? Having retro IF with terse descriptions, mazes, instant death etc is all great, but why have a crappy parser too? Does it really make it fun?[/quote]

I think its the two word parser which makes it retro, and therefore makes it fun.

Maybe its just me. I have been known to get joy out of things other people can't figure and they look at me in a strange way. I am the same with old cars that way. People say why run an old car with its problems when you can get a newer one?

(BTW my old car runs fine.... )

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1708&start=0#p11068
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Interactive fiction and VI accessibility
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-18 07:59:29

[quote="Dannii"]Jeff, why did everyone so dislike the status bar so much? I can guess that in some works it might suck, but the thing in itself has so much potential I can't see why it's reviled.[/quote]

In most cases everyone felt that it was redundant in that if it mentioned the location name, this was already known by the player. No one ever felt they were in a location doing something for so long that they simply forgot where they were. The other side of it was that most games my classes had looked at had the status line presenting score and turns, both of which were felt to be unnecessary. (Writers tend to want to get rid of the presentation of score and turns pretty quickly I've found.)

I think part of it was the name as well. "Status" of what? Where I'm located is not usually considered "status" and so I think people had cognitive friction. Score and turn did match "status" (as in my "status" in the game -- which would really be better thought of as a "Progress Bar" than a "Status Bar") but, again, writers aren't took keen on those concepts, which have nothing to do with story.


[quote]Many books have chapter titles in their headers after all![/quote]

Agreed and people did respond somewhat positively if the status line was used to indicate "story location" (i.e,. Book 1: The Progression -- Chapter 2) as opposed to geographical location or other information.

There was some talk of using the "mental model window" (mentioned in another thread) as part of the status line but that quickly proved to be way too cumbersome. Given the discussion about accessibility that the referenced blog has pointed out, I'm actually curious as to how to implement this now.

From an accessibility perspective, if the screen readers read all text that has changed, the mental model window wouldn't change at all unless the player learned something in that room, and it was added to the "mental" inventory, as it were. However, screen readers would read all the text again in the window and not just the part that changed. (Visually my writers wanted to have it so that new additions to the mental map were initially bolded to indicate a change. The bolding would alert the reader that something changed and would stay until the next turn was achieved, at which point the mental model window showed all text in normal type again.)

Based on this, I'm making it a point in the next class to bring up a focus on accessibility concerns and how the solution needs to be oriented to the specifics of mechanics for various types of interpreters.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1703&start=0#p11069
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Average IF command lengths
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-18 08:20:14

I wonder how much this is affected by your particular style, and in particular whether any of your games required any commands of more than two words. 

 It'd be interesting to see what the results were for, say, <i>Hoosegow</i>; in its walkthrough, 36 out of 105 commands have more than two words. Several of those commands involve two-word nouns that can probably be cut down for lazy typists ("x right" rather than "x right whatever"), but some can't. In particular, dealing with NPCs seems to involve a lot of four-word commands; "ask X about Y," "show X to Y." There are also a fair number of actions involving two things (like "Throw x at y," though that in fact isn't one of them). And in the latter category I did wind up retrying a lot of those actions, so my proportion of multi-word commands may have been inflated.

Of course Hoosegow was another mostly one-room game, so you don't get the navigational commands.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1708&start=0#p11070
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Interactive fiction and VI accessibility
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-18 08:24:32

There's a lot more that interpreters could do for accessibility, but I wonder if it would be good for authors to also be able to control more. Maybe Glk could have something akin to ARIA's aria-live property, so that authors could specify that some elements are not to be spoken, while others should take precedence. Glk also needs a way to specify alternative content (for images, perhaps for ascii art too.)

I think that status bars can be sensibly announced via screen readers. I'd be interested to see how this mental model side window would work, but it would probably need more Glk options, otherwise stuff would be read out twice (once when it was bolded and once when it went back to regular.)

Also, the people you talk to seem to have a lot of problems with terminology! Status lines, command prompts etc... are you feeding them these names? Unless you're an author you probably wouldn't have ever heard of the names for these things. If you are an author... well I feel like saying "get over it!" as all programming has weird terms that don't make complete sense.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1708&start=0#p11071
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Interactive fiction and VI accessibility
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-18 08:37:41

[quote="Dannii"]Also, the people you talk to seem to have a lot of problems with terminology! Status lines, command prompts etc... are you feeding them these names?[/quote]

Well, they also read the manuals to the systems (like Inform and TADS) and those terms come up so it's pretty hard not to get exposed to them. Even if they don't see the term, people logically ask "What's that thing up at the top?" or "Does the greater than sign ever become less than or something else?" It's not that they have problems with terminology in all cases, but rather terminology that doesn't match what it says (i.e., "status bar" is really "progress bar" from one logical point of view). That being said, writers tend to question everything, including why something is one way rather than another. I treat it as an eye for detail and making the fewest possible assumptions -- but I try not to let it become too much of a focal point of classes.


[quote]...well I feel like saying "get over it!" as all programming has weird terms that don't make complete sense.[/quote]

Right, but the status line and command prompt are exposed to users, not just authors. Any time you expose the implementation model you have to consider how various audiences may reflect upon it, even if, in the end, you basically do tell them to "just accept it."


As far as status bars being sensibly read by screen readers, I am curious about that. If a status bar just presented the "Book 1 - Chapter 1" thing, that should not change much (certainly not as much as the location indicator), which hopefully means that screen readers won't read that every single turn. I was actually thinking along the same lines as you with the ARIA kind of thing, not only in terms of what does and does not get spoken but also where there's a sort of progressive enchancement of technique presented.

It sounds like I have some experimenting to do. I'd like to try to play some actual textual IF works through screen reader software.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1708&start=0#p11072
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Interactive fiction and VI accessibility
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-18 08:44:40

It's made more complicated by the fact that Inform naturally prints the status bar last. But by setting the status bar to aria-live="assertive" and the main window to aria-live="polite" then in turns when the status bar changes it will be read before the new text that was added to the main window, even though it was printed last. ([url=http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/aria-practices/#liveprops]Read more about ARIA live regions[/url].)

This would actually be easy to implement in Parchment, but I want to do it properly and make the turns and score never be read out. I have an idea of detecting common status bar templates and altering them so that they're no longer in a fixed width character window, but instead separate blocks of text which can be positioned with CSS and will display in nice proportional fonts.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1708&start=0#p11073
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Interactive fiction and VI accessibility
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-18 09:07:00

[quote="Dannii"]This would actually be easy to implement in Parchment, but I want to do it properly and make the turns and score never be read out. I have an idea of detecting common status bar templates and altering them so that they're no longer in a fixed width character window, but instead separate blocks of text which can be positioned with CSS and will display in nice proportional fonts.[/quote]

Interesting stuff here. Beyond the important accessibility implications, it's sounding like I need to get more familiar with Parchment and use that in the classes. (I was aware of it, but I simply didn't give it the attention I should have.) In my class many people did ask if web pages or web applications would be a little more flexible than the interpreters, particularly since how some concerns that were coming up were already challenges being faced when providing web-based experiences.

I also know a focus on accessibility and audio users will be very welcome to writers simply because of the popularity of audio books.

So my thanks to both Neo and yourself! You have both given me an interesting direction to go in here since the next classes are focusing much more on design and implementation concerns.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1708&start=0#p11074
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Interactive fiction and VI accessibility
User: George / DateTime: 2010-11-18 10:04:26

[quote="Jeff Nyman"]
I'm wondering if it makes sense for us to focus on some sort of progressive enhancement approach. Meaning, if an interpreter is set to be playing in "accessible" mode, that interface simply wouldn't appear. Then relevant commands could be used to bring up the same information that would have been in the window. I don't know if this is possible somehow with checking what's available on the interpreter and tailoring the experience accordingly.[/quote]

I play muds a fair amount, and this usually is the approach they use. God Wars 2 does a particularly good job of making its interface (which can have many graphical elements) accessible in an all text format. I think a third or so of its players are blind.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1703&start=0#p11075
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Average IF command lengths
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-18 10:07:08

As noted elsewhere, looking at a walkthrough is fairly useless, because nobody plays that way. (Except the game author, constructing a walkthrough.) You have to look at actual play transcripts.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1703&start=0#p11076
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Average IF command lengths
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-18 10:24:06

Oh, I didn't mean to suggest that we could conclude that one-third of the commands entered in Hoosegow would have more than two words. Just using the walkthrough to note that you did need to use a lot of multi-word commands to finish. (Well, it doesn't prove that, but my recollection is that a lot of the commands had to be multi-word.) Just wondering how different kinds of game would affect the count. For instance, I don't think the three of those games I've played (Dreamhold, Hoist, Dual) had NPCs, or maybe didn't have traditional NPCs, so I wasn't SHOWing anything TO anyone. My idea was just that it'd be interesting to look at stats from other types of games to see what they looked like.

Anyway, I'm trying to get hold of a Hoosegow transcript; if I do I'll come up with some real stats. (If anyone has a transcript and wants to do the count themselves, that would be particularly awesome.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1708&start=0#p11077
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Interactive fiction and VI accessibility
User: Harry Giles / DateTime: 2010-11-18 10:37:03

I wrote this as a comment on the blog, but thought it might be useful to post it here anyway:

Thanks for this: it's thorough, precise, well-argued and just really useful. I'm going to try and take your advice on board for the game I'm currently working on, and try and integrate accessibility.

I could do this by myself, going on your advice and the resources you've linked to. However, I enjoy collaborative work, and I think the process would benefit from have a sort of "accessibility advisor" on board, especially if they had programming abilities to help implement some of the suggestions. I understand that may not be possible, but do you think there might be people who are interested?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1708&start=10#p11078
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Interactive fiction and VI accessibility
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-18 10:52:37

[quote="George"][quote="Jeff Nyman"]
I'm wondering if it makes sense for us to focus on some sort of progressive enhancement approach. Meaning, if an interpreter is set to be playing in "accessible" mode, that interface simply wouldn't appear. Then relevant commands could be used to bring up the same information that would have been in the window. I don't know if this is possible somehow with checking what's available on the interpreter and tailoring the experience accordingly.[/quote]

I play muds a fair amount, and this usually is the approach they use. God Wars 2 does a particularly good job of making its interface (which can have many graphical elements) accessible in an all text format. I think a third or so of its players are blind.[/quote]

Interactive fiction authors need to do most of this themselves, rather than having an interpreter-level solution, I think. It's pretty hard to predict what, exactly, should be done to make a given game more accessible. Obviously, though, our ability to do some things depends on multiple game (sub)windows working well with the screenreader, which Neo's document suggests isn't the state of things right now.

Once that technical issue is resolved, we need to grease the wheels to make creating maximally accessible games easy for authors. A while back, I proposed an extension that would, when the player specified that she was using a screenreader, open graphics windows as text windows instead, displaying alternate text content (provided by the author, of course); something similar could be done with pictures displayed in text windows (displaying text instead). I never did create the extension; there was pretty much zero interest expressed. But it would be simple enough for anyone with some familiarity with Flexible Windows to do something similar.

It would also be easy to create an extension that could handle Jeff's suggestion, i.e., providing an accessible mode with alternate commands which users could get status updates rather than opening secondary windows. This, of course, would be useful (and usable) right now. (Though a blind user did tell me that opening alternate text windows for graphic content would work nicely under Zoom + VoiceOver, so possibly that combination already provides good results.)

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=60#p11079
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-11-18 11:51:42

Neo, do you feel that there's no standard set of commands that are used in a fairly standard way across most (90%+) of IF?  I'd argue pretty strongly that there is, although there's fuzzy areas, like conversation.  A lot of this is indoctrinating new players to conventions of the genre and command phrasing.  Sure, on occasion there's new verbs, and we should make it clear that different games deviate slightly, but they're deviating from a loose standard.  

New commands are usually the exception, not the rule, and uncued new commands are generally looked upon unfavorably.  (That is, urination is not something I'd ever try unless the situation seemed to demand it, whereas examination is something I do as a way of getting information about the world.)  Standard commands may function slightly differently - I think/hope SEARCH is getting deprecated these days - and I think it's fair for authors to hint or explicitly say what choices they've made in these gray areas are.

SEARCH is never going to be a surprise choice the way URINATE might be; it's pretty clearly in a gray zone where implementation is a little unusual in a game.  The same with TALK TO vs. ASK/TELL/SHOW - the author needs to direct players on gray systems.  

I can well imagine a tutorial object that encourages the player to come up with verbs on their own, and provide feedback, letting the player "pass" after two or three iterations.  That is, it would be an over-implemented object, and would respond to a huge variety of commands, providing juicy affirmation for players who tried their own commands.  

But honestly, I can only remember one or two AHA! moments with new commands - it's one of those things that's awesome when it happens, but happens very rarely in the games I've played.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=959&start=10#p11080
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment!
User: omeron / DateTime: 2010-11-18 12:12:40

Matt W: Hilarious! My cat has almost activated things on my iPad too! Hopefully you figured out command-f5 toggles VoiceOver, but now you know.

Dannii: Those tests happened with VoiceOver under Leopard, and with Safari 4. Macs now use Snow Leopard, with Safari 5. I have 5.0.2. I went to that page you referenced and I can assure you the ARIA dialogues work, at least the few I tested. Screen readers change constantly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1706&start=0#p11081
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: making a key pad
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-11-18 12:23:53

I'm not entirely sure what you're asking (do you just want, basically, a functioning keypad?  Or does it have to be the case that the player has to type the code right after reading the sign?) but here's the [slightly simplified/sanitized to avoid [i]Byzantine Perspective[/i] spoilers] code of a keypad I made.  It may not be the right way to do it, but it was sufficient for my purposes.

[code]
The button panel is [whatever you want it to be; you have "a fixed in place thing in the laundry room"].  "There are square buttons for the digits 0-9 , plus an asterisk and an octothorpe." Understand "panel/buttons/keypad" or "the panel/buttons/keypad" or "button panel" or "the button panel" or "grid" or "the grid" or "the button grid" or "button grid" or "octothorpe" or "asterisk" as the button panel.

Keycode is a number that varies.

Determinately keying in is an action applying to one number and one thing.  

Understand "enter [a number]" or "key in [a number]" or "key [a number] in" or "push [a number]" or "punch in [a number]" as determinately keying in. Understand "enter [a number] into [something]" or "punch in [a number] into [something]" or "key in [a number] into [something]" or "push [a number]" or "push [a number] on [something]" as determinately keying in.  

Rule for supplying a missing second noun while determinately keying in: change the second noun to the button panel.

Check determinately keying in (this is the determinate check rule): 
	if the location does not enclose the button panel:
		say "You can't see anything to enter a number into." instead;
		stop the action;

Instead of determinately keying in keycode:
		[whatever you want to happen; probably "now the garagedoor is unlocked"].

Report determinately keying in: say "You hear the sort of beep that implies that the code you entered has been rejected."
[That is what happens when the player keys in anything that isn't keycode.]


Indeterminately keying in is an action applying to one thing.

Understand "a random number" or "a number" as "[an indeterminate value]".  Understand "key in [an indeterminate value]" or "punch in [an indeterminate value]" or "push [an indeterminate value]" or "enter [an indeterminate value]" as indeterminately keying in.  Understand "enter [an indeterminate value] into [something]" or "punch in [an indeterminate value] into [something]" or "push [an indeterminate value] into/on [something]" as indeterminately keying in.

Instead of pushing the button panel, try indeterminately keying in the button panel.  Instead of attacking the button panel, try indeterminately keying in the button panel.

Rule for supplying a missing noun when indeterminately keying in: change the noun to the button panel.
Does the player mean indeterminately keying in the button panel: it is likely.

Check indeterminately keying in (this is the indeterminate check rule): 
	if the location does not enclose the button panel:
		say "You can't see anything to enter a number into." instead;
		stop the action.

Carry out indeterminately keying in:
	if a random number from 1000 to 9999 is keycode:
		[whatever you want to happen; probably "now the garagedoor is unlocked"];
		stop the action;
	else:
		continue the action.
[Of course, it's not necessary to support the player getting a random chance of entering the right combination, but I did implement it, so here it is.]

Report indeterminately keying in: say "You push a couple of buttons randomly. [/p] (To enter a particular number into the button panel, try [quotation mark]enter <the number>[quotation mark].)"
[/code]

I hope that helps (or that somebody else posts something closer to what you want).

By the way, if you have any further Inform questions, you should post them to the "Inform 6 and 7 Development" subforum.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1703&start=0#p11082
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Average IF command lengths
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-11-18 12:33:10

I have linked the online version of [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=1iqmpkn009h9gbug]Raising the Flag on Mount Yo Momma[/url] to a [url=http://nitku.net/blog/2010/06/collecting-real-life-gameplay-data-with-parchment/]modified Parchment[/url] that saves the transcripts as people play. The sample size means that nothing of this is in any way statistically significant -- these are based on 416 commands over 16 played games (on average 26 turns/game), none to completion. 

[list]
[*] with one or two letters: 24.0 percent[/*:m]
[*] with 1 words: 40.9 percent[/*:m]
[*] with 2 words: 42.8 percent[/*:m]
[*] with 3 words: 12.0 percent[/*:m]
[*] with 4 words: 3.1 percent[/*:m]
[*] more than 4 words: 1.2 percent[/*:m][/list:u]

The Parchment data collecting demo has slightly more data, 681 commands over 23 played games. Roughly one third is from a single playing of [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=pxs5jlc2cjxhnrd7]Escapade![/url] to completion, 261 turns. The rest are from playing Yo Momma, most of them presumably just trying out the system, but the numbers are still quite close to the other data set. (Note that Escapade! is a one-room game so there are much fewer one-character compass directions in this set.)

[list]
[*] with one or two letters: 11.6 percent[/*:m]
[*] with 1 words: 39.9 percent[/*:m]
[*] with 2 words: 43.2 percent[/*:m]
[*] with 3 words: 9.0 percent[/*:m]
[*] with 4 words: 7.0 percent[/*:m]
[*] more than 4 words: 0.9 percent[/*:m][/list:u]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=20#p11083
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-11-18 12:58:25

[quote="Dannii"]Okay, but then why would the parser of all things provoke feelings of nostalgia? Having retro IF with terse descriptions, mazes, instant death etc is all great, but why have a crappy parser too? Does it really make it fun?[/quote]

Constraining input to a maximum of two words can help tighten up the open-ended nature of the command prompt. The player knows that all solutions can be expressed in commands of a certain length, and any potential solution that exceeds that length must be pared down or discarded.

I thought it worked surprisingly well in [i]Leadlight[/i]. The only parser-related complaint I had with it was the lack of "x" as a synonym for "examine" - forgivable, but only just. Arguably the game experience would have been worse with a better parser, because the slow screen refreshes and the bland default responses tended to punish unrecognized or unimplemented input.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=20#p11084
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2010-11-18 13:22:25

[quote="bcressey"]Constraining input to a maximum of two words can help tighten up the open-ended nature of the command prompt. The player knows that all solutions can be expressed in commands of a certain length, and any potential solution that exceeds that length must be pared down or discarded.[/quote]
^^^ wot he said!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   [emote]:D[/emote]

[quote="bcressey"]The only parser-related complaint I had with it was the lack of "x" as a synonym for "examine" [/quote]

... this was the case also in my adventure ... but 'X' will be in my future Adventures because I guess it would relieve the stress of modern day IF players 'going retro' from normally playing games which support X (I guess as well a I, N, S, E, W, U, D, L etc).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=20#p11085
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2010-11-18 13:41:24

[quote="bcressey"][quote="Dannii"]Okay, but then why would the parser of all things provoke feelings of nostalgia? Having retro IF with terse descriptions, mazes, instant death etc is all great, but why have a crappy parser too? Does it really make it fun?[/quote]

Constraining input to a maximum of two words can help tighten up the open-ended nature of the command prompt. The player knows that all solutions can be expressed in commands of a certain length, and any potential solution that exceeds that length must be pared down or discarded.

I thought it worked surprisingly well in [i]Leadlight[/i]. The only parser-related complaint I had with it was the lack of "x" as a synonym for "examine" - forgivable, but only just. Arguably the game experience would have been worse with a better parser, because the slow screen refreshes and the bland default responses tended to punish unrecognized or unimplemented input.[/quote]

I think a crappy parser is one that is internally inconsistent. If a parser is limited, well, that can be a help sometimes, as long as it is defined what the limits are to avoid guess-the-verb. And if you want to play a very long game, a limited parser will probably be lousy because verbs and puzzles and commands will probably get recycled, and people will groan "I'm not typing that again." For competition style entries...not so much.

Re: guess the verb, I think Leadlight eliminates guess-the-verb well. It helped me in my testing to have a list of verbs printed out and to check them off when trying specific actions. There are some deathtraps which use questionable English by necessity, though, so people playing to find them may have to use process of elimination. Memory constraints, etc.

I found "EX APPLE" but I started using it early in testing and probably eventually took it for granted that other people would find it too. "They're more experienced playing these things...I'm sure they'll figure at least as quickly." Ouch.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=959&start=10#p11086
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-18 14:02:11

[quote="omeron"]Matt W: Hilarious! My cat has almost activated things on my iPad too! Hopefully you figured out command-f5 toggles VoiceOver, but now you know..[/quote]

Yeah, Apple wisely included a help topic titled (approx.) "Why is my computer talking to me?"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=40#p11087
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-11-18 14:07:20

[quote="Harry Giles"]This was said a page or so ago, but I wanted to highlight it because it encapsulates so well what some of us are railing against. That sense of inevitability is exactly what some of us find simplified or trite about basing stories on narrative structures like the moral premise! I absolutely agree that doing so leads to well-constructed, compelling and rhetorically effective stories. But whether or not they're "good" depends, crucially, on what you want the story to achieve. How "good" art is could be said to be determined by how effectively it achieves its goals, although many of us on different sides on this thread have made arguments for goodness based on what we think those goals ought to be.[/quote]

Inevitable does not imply obvious, simple, or trite. I simply meant that well-plotted stories have a sense of internal order and consistency. They are in a word dramatic. The alternative seems to be stories that rely on coincidence and deus ex machina on the one hand, and stories in which nothing happens on the other. I will not insist that such stories are necessarily bad; they can be quite good. But lack of dramatic virtue does not imply other virtues, any more than its presence implies the absence of flaws.

Perhaps I should state that good dramatic fiction is inevitable, and good literary fiction is real. One type of story embraces the artifice of the construct and the other transcends it. Both seek to share a truth: the one in a form that shapes the plot; the other in the shadow cast by events over our thoughts. I do not think that a story can be good unless it has at least that much purpose behind it. Moral premise is one refinement of that notional purpose, and in any refinement some trace elements are discarded. If those traces are essential to your goals, then moral premise is the wrong tool.


[quote]What we want our art to do, and what methods we use to achieve those goals, should depend very much on what audiences we want for our art, how we understand those audiences, and what effect we want to have on them. I've maybe come down a little hard on Hollywood-style well-structured narratives (in theatre we have the technical term "well-made play", which describes much the same kind of thing, and the development and theory of which contributed extensively to the development of the Hollywood narrative); I'm actually not as snobbish as all that, and think there is an important role for such storytelling. But I also think there's a vital role, which IF can also play, for art which, through its formal structures and through its content, productively disrupts, disturbs, upsets and confuses.[/quote]

Absolutely. Works like [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=9wozfe2gm3oui7hq]Deadline Enchanter[/url] fall into this realm and IF is richer as a result.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=959&start=10#p11088
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment!
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-11-18 14:10:24

I love Parchment.

It would be cool if I could extricate a saved game to save to a flash drive to take home and finish on another computer, or send to an author.  (Honestly, I'm not sure I'd use it that much, but there were a couple times recently when it would have come in handy.)

I had some trouble with transcripts, too, but I'm not sure if that was Parchment per se or just the computer I was using, which hates all things downloaded from the internet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=50#p11090
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2010-11-18 14:18:50

I still haven't made a rulebook, but I want to look into it. It helps to have these real-world examples, no matter how simple they are. Actually, simpler is better. Often they make me say "Geez, that's what they meant."

In my game I managed to eliminate "You can't go that way" messages. Using regions and regions within regions helped a lot. I also managed to create a test that checks for all exits.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1703&start=0#p11091
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Average IF command lengths
User: Roger / DateTime: 2010-11-18 15:41:52

I'm not sure how hard this would be to automate, but I'd be interested to see what percentage of commands were navigational -- the compass directions and in/out, primarily.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1708&start=10#p11092
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Interactive fiction and VI accessibility
User: Neo / DateTime: 2010-11-18 16:11:38

Thanks.

The gamers that I talked to were a very smart bunch. Many of them are programmers (creating amateur and commercial audio games) or writers, so partnering with them on accessibility projects would be both highly recommended and extremely beneficial.

In fact, just this morning I received a message from audio gamer Jacob Kruger highlighting a clever and creative way that "sound" can be added to a game. There's the risk of overdoing it, but as a nice touch it's a great idea. Here's what he said:

[quote]One thing I will mention, which relates to general synthesizer pronunciation, but which will also differ from synth to synth, is that making use of initial caps does help sometimes. While the following string wouldn't sound too good: "Iwouldliketohearthispronouncedabitbetter", the following version sounds fine: "IWouldLikeToHearThisPronouncedAbitBetter".
Some things just come out sounding quite funny/interesting:
"hahahahahahahahahaha"
"vrhrhrhrhrhrhrhrhrhrhrhrhrhrhrhrhrhrhroomvrhrhrhrhrhrhrhrhrhrhroom"
"step on a rattle stststststststststststststststststststsnake" [/quote]

As for interpreter-based solutions, I'm not a programmer (not even close!), but from what's been said it sounds like a few small changes have the potential to make an enormous difference.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1700&start=0#p11093
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise: Trinity Reimagined
User: Roger / DateTime: 2010-11-18 16:15:31

Did you and/or your class spend any time trying to identify the premise of the original Trinity?  What did you come up with?



Cheers,
Roger

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1690&start=10#p11094
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stuck implementing a table with consult about
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2010-11-18 17:24:13

Jim, Felix, ektemple et al,
thanks everyone for your additional suggestions, code samples etc.  As the newbie who kicked off this thread, I greatly appreciate everyone's willingness to help out.  I have gone with an implementation based on Felix's suggested code (which is nicely succinct) and a second largely redundant text column for printing purposes.  This is probably much less elegant than other solutions, but it works, fits my design needs and I understand it.

While I'm a newcomer to Inform, I have done other programming projects over the years and at one time was a good (but not great) programmer in C, Pascal, etc for Windows GUI applications. I also taught object-oriented and event-driven programming, wrote articles for programming magazines  and helped create Delphi in a prior life at Borland.  And still, I was stumped by all of this. (Or maybe that's why I was stumped.)

There are great examples in the Inform7 docs and the third party books are excellent.  But as a traditionally schooled programmer, it feels to me that Inform7 is a bit of a black box in some areas performing all kinds of crazy magic behind the scenes that often you don't have to worry about, except when something doesn't work as you expect.  It's impressive and cool but it is not at all clear to me that the rules and patterns that define good Inform7 programming best practices have been documented beyond a large (possibly infinite) number of code samples.   To me that makes the learning curve much tougher than it should be.

If there was a more definitive *reference* manual that covered language grammar and code libraries and explained what was going on more authoritatively that would be very helpful to those who have some programming experience or whose skills have gone beyond the basics.  And I would gladly buy such a book or donate $$$ to it on Kickstarter. 

Maybe it's impossible for a system as rich and broad as Inform7 to have a definitive reference manual as understandable as a classic book like "The C Programming Language" (Kernighan & Ritchie on C) but I don't know how you ever get beyond anecdotal trial & error learning without it. 

And I still have the question: How do you convert between Text and Topic types?  How do you convert between types in general?  

Note that I am not trying to be critical of Inform7.  It's a fantastic tool and I hope I am able to continue with this project without running into too many roadblocks.  Better documentation and a more systematic treatment of some topics could go a long way towards making it even more accessible. 

--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">http://www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1708&start=10#p11095
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Interactive fiction and VI accessibility
User: Harry Giles / DateTime: 2010-11-18 18:28:19

[quote="Neo"]
The gamers that I talked to were a very smart bunch. Many of them are programmers (creating amateur and commercial audio games) or writers, so partnering with them on accessibility projects would be both highly recommended and extremely beneficial.[/quote]

Good to hear. What's the best way to get in touch with possible collaborators?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1708&start=10#p11096
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Interactive fiction and VI accessibility
User: Neo / DateTime: 2010-11-18 18:43:04

In the links section, there's a bunch of sites listed. Joining Audyssey and posting there would be a good start.

It really depends on the scope of what you're thinking and whether you want testing or programming. What platform you're developing for is a big decider, too, as some of them are more proficient at coding for certain operating systems than others.

If you're interested in a particular individual, let me know. I have some direct email addresses.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1706&start=0#p11097
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: making a key pad
User: drumn4life0789 / DateTime: 2010-11-18 18:55:21

Yea i noticed that thread right after I posted the thread. maybe someone can move it.

That idea seems a little to complex.  Here is what I would like happen.  

[code]
understand "enter code [something]" as entering code.

check entering code:
   if in the laundry room:
         say "you walk up to the keypad and start to enter the code.";   
         [right here I need something that waits to see what the player types in  I just dont know how to do that.]
         if what the player typed equals the keycode of the keypad:
             say "the door opens";
         otherwise:
             say "you here a beeping sound signaling the incorrect code has been entered";
    otherwise:
    say "There is nothing here to enter a code on."


the key pad is a thing in the laundry room. it is fixed in place. key pad has a number called keycode. the keycode of the key pad is 1234.

understand "keypad" as key pad.

the garagedoor is a door. it is locked.

understand "garage door" as garagedoor.

the garagedoor is north of the laundry room and south of the garage.
[/code]

just need to know how to wait on a specific thing to come in from the keyboard.  the player needs to enter 1234 after it says you walk up to the key pad and begin entering the code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=60#p11098
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Neo / DateTime: 2010-11-18 19:47:07

Definitely. Indeed, I'm not saying that there isn't something of a standard already. But in interactive fiction, context and nuance can make or break a new player's experience. In many cases, it only takes a single misunderstanding to bring a game to a halt.

Using my own experiences from the last 12 months as the example...

There are a number of commands that have never stumped me since I (re)discovered interactive fiction. A few examples would be "INVENTORY", "SAVE", "LOOK". These commands have worked exactly the same way in pretty much all of the games I've played.

Then there are those commands which are undeniably linked to an action but, due to the context, I've been stumped in using them. Surprisingly, they include compass directions. Yes, I know that the abbreviation "NE" is north-east, and that the command syntax never changes, but I remember one section of The Dreamhold where I spent an hour lost and wandering around because I misunderstood the description of a curved passageway. It said something like: "The exits are east and west from the passage, which curves round and ends to the northeast." I kept going east and west, but didn't understand northeast was also an exit. In this case it was the application of context, not the command itself. So, while I can be taught that "NE" is northeast, I also needed to understand how Zarf uses narrative.

This thread mentions some other perfect examples. "EXAMINE" where "READ" or "SEARCH" or "FEEL" is intended. Getting on or in things, or trying to make things work with each other, continues on occasion to perplex me. In the IFCOMP 2010 game Ninja's Fate I temporarily struggled to find the right syntax to attach the rope to the grappling hook, the grappling hook to the open trapdoor and climb down the rope inside the museum. It's a simple action, which I can describe many ways in plain English, but the correct implementation of commands seemed to elude me.

And you're right: conversation is the real killer. I think I have yet to have a complete conversation with an NPC that worked exactly as I intended. And given how many games are now striving to have a populated game world in order to create further immersion, that means a certain level of frustration is becoming increasingly inevitable (at least, for new players).

On the topic of deviation, I have to disagree. I think that while many games use a similar set of commands for most of their actions, almost every game these days includes something new. Maybe not an action to go to the toilet, but something. A new twist to doing things, a new way to reference something, a new type of object or puzzle that works a little bit differently, a new exception to the rulebook. Otherwise, we'd all just be using the commands examine, get, drop and attack, etc.

(Speaking of which... "ATTACK" is another good example. I'm holding a light-saber, but when I type "ATTACK STORMTROOPER" do I really mean that I want to rush at them with my bare fists? I can't remember which game it was, but I recently died from doing a similar thing.) 

Perhaps you are right. Perhaps it is all a matter of indoctrination. But I still can't help but wish there were a range of games--even just a series--that played the same way. A series where, once you knew how the first one worked, you didn't need to learn new commands or actions or realign to a new author's intentions to play the rest.

Then again, maybe that's just me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1708&start=10#p11099
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Interactive fiction and VI accessibility
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-18 20:23:38

[quote]Interactive fiction authors need to do most of this themselves, rather than having an interpreter-level solution, I think.[/quote]

There are elements which are better on one side and elements which are better on the other.

Definitely, an I7 extension (and equivalent for other systems) which adds an "accessible" command. Neo's blog post mentions changing the command prompt (">" to "Command?" maybe); beyond that, the author needs to be involved. The obvious *design* approach, I guess, is to print out status-line information before the prompt *if* it has change and is important enough to notice. Otherwise, have a "statusline" command which prints just the information that would normally be in the status line. Some of this can be handled semi-automatically, if the author is using the left-hand and right-hand variables for status line display. But it will still require some adjustment. (There's no point in quoting the turn count every turn. Probably not score either, since there's a standard "notify" command.)

For Alabaster, in further example, this pre-prompt information would include some text description of the changing illustration.

What an interpreter *can* do is handle scrollback better (in buffer windows). Again, I only know what I read in the blog post, but it seems that we need to be able to scroll forwards and backwards *a turn at a time* in a way that the screen reader can cope with. (Maybe adding "one turn ago", "two turns ago", etc before each chunk of text is read.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1708&start=10#p11100
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Interactive fiction and VI accessibility
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-11-18 20:42:47

Some game-playing environments, such as the collaborative ClubFloyd, cannot show status bars or other windows.  I would think a standard command to call up its contents would be ideal, possibly with a preamble prepended to the command prompt if something changed, cuing the player that entering the command would be worth it.  

As for turn count, I can't say I've ever used it as a player.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1705&start=0#p11101
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Leadlight updated to version 1.1, plus comp thanks
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2010-11-18 20:49:10

Thanks for the news item tip Peter, I'll check it out real soon.

Something I've realised is, the game 'read me' on ifdb only makes sense for the distribution of the game held at ifarchive, as it was written for the competition package.

EDIT: Oh wait I get it, I can provide  my own links at IFDB and I can upload stuff to IFarchive myself. This will make everything easier.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1703&start=0#p11102
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Average IF command lengths
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-18 21:22:44

Thanks, Juhana -- Raising the Flag was a game I was interested in, because it's got a lot of NPCs but also a fair amount of movement. 

Do you think the three-word commands were mostly "TALK TO NPC" or "LOOK UNDER/BEHIND THING"? Or something else?

BTW, I don't doubt zarf's general point that most commands are two words or less, unless you're playing [url=http://web.archive.org/web/20020619094002/http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/extra.txt]BOWL DROP TOY SLEEP PLAY[/url] or something. (And even then we have the caveat that you can't use a walkthrough for these statistics.) I'm just curious.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1690&start=10#p11103
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stuck implementing a table with consult about
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-18 21:26:25

You have a very good point, Jim. There's no need for this stuff to be in a table at all except for the matter of ordering. Everything about a note could be added as a property of the subject. Even if you did have a table, it could be a single-column table that just lists the order in which subjects were discovered.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1690&start=10#p11104
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stuck implementing a table with consult about
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-18 21:35:54

[quote="ZUrlocker"]If there was a more definitive *reference* manual that covered language grammar and code libraries and explained what was going on more authoritatively that would be very helpful to those who have some programming experience or whose skills have gone beyond the basics.  And I would gladly buy such a book or donate $$$ to it on Kickstarter. 

Maybe it's impossible for a system as rich and broad as Inform7 to have a definitive reference manual as understandable as a classic book like "The C Programming Language" (Kernighan & Ritchie on C) but I don't know how you ever get beyond anecdotal trial & error learning without it.[/quote]
I said the exact same thing, including a comparison of current I7 documentation with K&R, about two months ago. If only identifying the need were enough to make such a thing happen! Thankfully, since then I've been the beneficiary of a large volume of arcane knowlege shared by people on this forum, and Inform is starting to feel a little less like a black box. Hopefully the same thing will happen to you as you receive suggestions for problems such as this. And eventually I think it may be possible that such a document will come into being when the structure of I7 settles down.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1690&start=10#p11105
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stuck implementing a table with consult about
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-18 21:46:35

[quote="capmikee"]You have a very good point, Jim. There's no need for this stuff to be in a table at all except for the matter of ordering. Everything about a note could be added as a property of the subject. Even if you did have a table, it could be a single-column table that just lists the order in which subjects were discovered.[/quote]
But let's keep the table-effacement rolling: why use a table for a single column of data? A list is more natural if you only need one dimension. You can even format lists with internal carriage returns and spacing, if you want one item per line as in a table:

[code]{ "Hunger",
  "Thirst",
  "Blindness" }[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1690&start=10#p11106
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stuck implementing a table with consult about
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-11-18 22:40:35

[quote="ZUrlocker"]There are great examples in the Inform7 docs and the third party books are excellent.  But as a traditionally schooled programmer, it feels to me that Inform7 is a bit of a black box in some areas performing all kinds of crazy magic behind the scenes that often you don't have to worry about, except when something doesn't work as you expect.  It's impressive and cool but it is not at all clear to me that the rules and patterns that define good Inform7 programming best practices have been documented beyond a large (possibly infinite) number of code samples.   To me that makes the learning curve much tougher than it should be.

If there was a more definitive *reference* manual that covered language grammar and code libraries and explained what was going on more authoritatively that would be very helpful to those who have some programming experience or whose skills have gone beyond the basics.  And I would gladly buy such a book or donate $$$ to it on Kickstarter. 

Maybe it's impossible for a system as rich and broad as Inform7 to have a definitive reference manual as understandable as a classic book like "The C Programming Language" (Kernighan & Ritchie on C) but I don't know how you ever get beyond anecdotal trial & error learning without it.[/quote]
I'm strictly a hobbyist programmer, but from what little I recall of C, it seems to me Inform is quite a bit more complex than C. Less complex than writing an app in C that includes the full range of OS function calls ... somewhere in the gray area between the two.

After skimming Ron's guide for programmers and leafing through various chapters in Aaron's book, it seems to me that what's needed is for someone to chop up those two texts, my own modest Handbook, and the built-in documentation and use the raw material to carefully construct a single coherent manual. If I can say this without disrespecting any of said authors (Ron, Aaron, Graham, Emily, and myself), it strikes me that what we have here is a case of the blind men and the elephant. If you go through [i]all [/i]of these documents and then spend a few months coding by trial and error and posting messages on the newsgroup or this forum, you'll find that you're developing a comprehensive mental model of the beast, based on several fragmentary views.

A single comprehensive manual on I7 would, I'd guess, be more than a thousand pages long -- and who would have the patience to read it? Maybe in the real world, what we have isn't too bad.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1709&start=0#p11107
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: creating first game going to need some help.
User: drumn4life0789 / DateTime: 2010-11-18 22:46:16

Hi, I am very new to IF and IF programming. And by very new I mean I played my first IF game last week which was ZORK and that was only because it is playable in the new Call of Duty video game. Well I became very interested and have played some simple games and now have decided that I want to start writing IF. I have decided to write a small game to get my self acclimated with the Inform programming language.

My game is based around my house and the player has to escape the house. I figured this was an easy way to help me create rooms and things that are in those rooms because I could base it all off of my house. Well there are obviously some things that I have made different but that's not really why I am here. 

I am going to put my questions here and maybe this will help me learn a lot about inform 7.

The first part is copied from a thread i put in the wrong section before but it really longs here.

Here i am trying to make a code unlock a door.  I have a keypad next to the door and i would like the player to type enter code.  then i would like for them to right in the code on the next line.  But i am stuck here and dont know what to do.
[code]
entering code is an action applying to one visible thing.

understand "enter code" as entering code.

check entering code:
	if in the laundry room:
		say " you walk up to the keypad and start to enter the code.";
	otherwise:
		say "There is nothing here to enter a code on."

the key pad is a thing in the laundry room. it is fixed in place. key pad has a number called keycode. the keycode of the key pad is 1234.

understand "keypad" as key pad.

[/code]

another question I have involves breaking a bench with a hammer.  this is what I have so far.

It all works find and dandy except for one thing.  if someone just says break bench i want I7 to ask what do you want to break the bench with and then the player can just type hammer.  but as of now if they say break bench I7 just gives out the normal  "violence is not the answer" response.   

[code]
a bench is a thing in the breakfast nook. "A bench is oddly positioned in the center of the room with nothing else around it.".  The description of a bench is "A place to sit.".

understand the commands "break" and "destroy" and "hit" and "smash" as something new.

attacking it with is an action applying to one visible thing and one carried thing.

understand "attack [something] with [something preferably held]" as attacking it with.

understand the commands "break" and "destroy" and "hit" and "smash" as "attack".

check attacking something with something:
	if the noun is not the bench:
		say "that is not something worth breaking.";
		stop the action;
	otherwise:
		if the second noun is not a metal hammer:
			say "You cannout break the bench with that.";
			stop the action.

			
carry out attacking something with something:
	say "The bench breaks apart into tiny pieces, there might be one piece left salvagable.";
	remove the bench from play;
	now the piece of bench is in the location.

piece of bench is a thing. "the only piece of bench left after you smashed it."  The description of the piece of bench is "Well it was a bench now it is just a random piece of wood.";
[/code]


Thanks to anyone who helps and comeback for more im sure i will run into some problems.  And once this is done I would like to have a few IF veterans to try this little game out to give me some feedback on what things I have missed and what things need to be done better in my future projects.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1709&start=0#p11108
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: creating first game going to need some help.
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-11-18 23:26:29

You're almost there.

[code]Understand the commands "break" and "destroy" and "hit" and "smash" and "attack" as something new.[/code]

Because you didn't define "attack" as a new command, when you reassigned the verbs to attack, they went right back to the original attacking verb.  (Disclaimer: not rigorously tested.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1701&start=0#p11109
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Post-comp thoughts about Ninja's Fate
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2010-11-18 23:54:11

[quote="Hannes"]And, finally, thanks to Eriorg for his tireless work of linking to all those reviews in the IF Wiki - I think I'm speaking for most authors when I say that this has made the last six weeks a lot more bearable for us [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
You're welcome! [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=70#p11110
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-11-19 00:03:40

Yeah, that's fair enough.  I still think that the vast bulk of commands - directions, examination, taking/dropping - are predictable from game to game, except in clearly experimental works.  

I think a lot of what you're describing is what I'd categorize at author error - if not a bug, then definitely a deficiency in implementation or design.  I think if players know the genre expectations, then they're better prepared to deal with these; their frustration should be with the game, not themselves.  That is, it's not your fault that "attack stormtroopers" produced an unsatisfactory result; that's a design issue, and should be reported.  On the other hand, expecting players to examine objects is not a design flaw, at least in genre terms - it's totally fair play.  

Similar for the new commands - I see a lot of new verbs added because they're appropriate natural language, but few where the effect would be ruined if they were included in a list of game verbs.  Most of the turn comes from applying the verb with an unusual object, or in a lateral thinking kind of way. 

I don't think a tutorial has to promise the player will now have no problems at all interacting with IF - pretty much everyone does at some point, due to a variety of factors.  But I do think we can give new players a base line to start from.  Zarf's intro to IF card is the vast majority of gameplay in the vast majority of games, and there should be a way to convey that, while also indicating areas where the player will need to experiment a bit (and where the authors need to be extra-diligent).

I think those baselines make it easier to handle learning a new author's style, because you have some idea of the general possibilities.  When I read an IF game, I actually type a fair number of experimental commands, but there's a few areas where I'm confident there will be clues - about movement, object importance, goals, etc.  

I have no illusions that tutorial are a universal solution, but they can help, and they can help train players as to what it's reasonable to expect.  Ideally, of course, each author crafts their own tutorial geared to their own game, which trains players both in IF conventions and in authorial choice.  It would be well-written, smoothly integrated, and flexible to suit various levels of gameplay.  (In other news: I want a pony.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1658&start=0#p11111
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Sand-dancer failing to compile with 6F95
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-11-19 00:11:32

Hey all-- first of all, it's a gift to log onto a forum and discover that people have not only found your bugs, but diagnosed them and fixed them as well. You are all amazing.

I'm updating Sand-dancer and book text for 6F95 (just a few changes here and there). The "hare/rabbit" confusion is fixed-- oops, embarrassing. It's nice to see the bug report also. In general, this style of syntax should work, though, right?
[code]To decide whether (trader - a person) needs more memories: ...

To decide whether (trader - Sand-dancer) needs more memories: ...[/code]
I swear there's an example very similar to this somewhere in the official docs, but now I can't find it. It seems an elegant way to write more specific rules. Is the consensus that this no longer works because of 6F95's more stringent type-checking, or is it just temporarily stymied because of the bug?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1710&start=0#p11112
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: What Is a Construction?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-11-19 00:56:54

Tonight I happened to glance at page 21.1 of "Writing with Inform." I found it utterly baffling. The very first sentence stopped me cold: "Most, if not quite all, Inform constructions are values - sometimes openly so, sometimes not."

I found myself wondering, what does the word "construction" mean in that sentence? Is the description property of a room, for instance, a construction? I have no idea.

So I searched for the word "construction" in "Writing with Inform" using the search field. I was unable to find a definition of the term. It's used a few times. Page 8.16, for instance, refers to "the 'number of ...' construction." But a scattered example or two hardly qualifies as an effective definition of something that is apparently a universal aspect of the language.

Page 21.1 asserts that constructions "are ways to make new kinds from existing ones." This would probably be more informative if we knew what a construction [i]is[/i]. We're given a list of nine distinct constructions, but with no examples of any of the nine types, and no explanation of how any of them might be used.

Given that assertion, in what sense is the phrase "the number of edible things carried" (to quote 8.16) making a new kind from an existing one? How does a "K based rule producing L" make a new kind from an existing kind? And in what sense is a "K based rule producing L" a value, for Pete's sake?

A little further down page 21.1, I stumbled onto this: "Nothing will make that a simple idea, but it's unambiguous and can be puzzled out with practice." Oh-kay. It's not a simple idea. You'll get no argument from me on that point. But am I out of line in thinking that the manual ought to sit down and patiently explain this non-simple idea to us, rather than just tossing us into the big tank with the piranha?

Every few months I start thinking, "I'd like to really master Inform 7. I know it's sophisticated. I'd like to understand every detail of how it works." And then I run into something like this, and I change my mind. I start thinking maybe I'll play the piano instead.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1711&start=0#p11113
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Aurora
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-11-19 00:59:50

My sci-fi game Aurora is ready for beta-testing.  I've combed it pretty thoroughly for bugs, so just enjoy (and give me copious feedback, since it's my first game).  It's Glulx.

You can email me, but I'll be gone this week for Thanksgiving.  The latest version should be up on IFDB now or soon, though.

My main testing questions are below.
[spoiler]Dr Liang doesn't contribute much to the plot.  Should I take her out?
The Tell function is used far less than the Ask function; a character may respond to 30 Ask topics but only 3 Tell topics.  Should I take it out?
How is the artwork?  Should there be more/less/different/none of it?
Since I'm mainly a traditional-fiction author, I could use help with my IF writing style.
Better title ideas are also gratefully accepted.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1710&start=0#p11114
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What Is a Construction?
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-11-19 01:27:02

[quote="Jim Aikin"]I start thinking maybe I'll play the piano instead.[/quote]

I like to play musical instruments when I get frustrated. I've been on the guitar lately since I don't live in a place with a piano, but I miss it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1710&start=0#p11115
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What Is a Construction?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-19 01:48:18

It's easy for me to understand how this happened, because the vocabulary and grammar of Inform 7 are like a many-headed hydra. I think what happened to you is essentially a form of vocab panic with which I'm well familiar now as an i7 learner. You were so used to stumbling across undefined terms in the manual that you began to lose the ability to differentiate between special programming terms and ordinary English terms used ordinarily. I constantly have this problem with the Inform manual, even though I'm pretty familiar with what is typically a programming concept and what is not, from prior knowledge.

A "construction" as used in the Inform manual is no different from in ordinary English. There is no special programming definition of "construction" nor as far as I can tell is there any Inform-specific usage for this term. When they say, 'Here are nine constructions,' what they mean is, 'Here are nine examples of ways to phrase things.' When your grammar teacher talks about constructions he or she just means any form of sentence construction, there is no special form that makes it a 'construction'; that word covers everything. Unless I am also confused (which is possible) it seems to me that the term is used just as generally in the Inform manual as it is everywhere else. So, a 'Rule' is a construction. A 'Phrase' is a construction. Everything you type into Inform is a construction.

You can definitely be forgiven for thinking that they were introducing another technical term to the reader before defining it: because they do that a lot in the manual, and most of Inform's technical terms resemble ordinary English terms, so that breeds its own class of confusion; namely, 'Do you mean in the ordinary English sense or is this yet another voodoo sense for an ordinary word of which I am not yet aware? And if even you, the Inform manual writer, cannot put yourself in the mindset of very explicitly noting the differences, how do you expect me to?'

Basically, if you don't already have a good sense of what is a programming concept and what is just a verbal concept, the manual isn't really going to be too careful to differentiate them for you. Because that would read too much like a programming manual, always setting off terms as separate, and as having their own meaning independently of the English language? Did natural language evangelism get in the way of simply writing a clear spec?  Or was there some other notion at work? I dunno the reasons, that's just me speculating, but for whatever reason, the approach to the i7 manual is extremely different than in the manual for i6, which was very rigorous about defining its terms and wouldn't think of portraying anything as deducible from English, because i6 is obviously not. Perhaps less obviously, Inform 7 isn't deducible at all from English either, so I don't know why the same exact rigour wasn't adopted about not making extensive use of terms before they have been properly defined.

What a manual needs is to completely abandon the idea that Inform is anything like English and to just pretend it isn't at all. IMO! (I'm sure I'm not the first to point this out. And I know others have even written their own manuals.) Just define every term [i]upon arrival[/i], with extreme prejudice — exactly as if these deceptively English-[i]sounding[/i] terms have been handed down to us from Martians obsessed with human cable shows, but if we were to use them the way an English speaker would rather than the way a Martian does, we'd be risking an alien invasion — the distinctions between English and Inform need to be taken that seriously, by the writer of any manual, because that's how seriously they need to be taken by the writer of an actual game. 87

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1709&start=0#p11116
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: creating first game going to need some help.
User: drumn4life0789 / DateTime: 2010-11-19 02:05:34

thanks for the help. That is all I had to do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=70#p11117
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Neo / DateTime: 2010-11-19 02:25:25

I totally agree to all of that.

News flash: I want a pony, too. One that rides the same as a lot of other poinies. With ribbons.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1710&start=0#p11118
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What Is a Construction?
User: Harry Giles / DateTime: 2010-11-19 03:12:09

[quote="Laroquod"]
What a manual needs is to completely abandon the idea that Inform is anything like English and to just pretend it isn't at all. IMO! (I'm sure I'm not the first to point this out. And I know others have even written their own manuals.) Just define every term [i]upon arrival[/i], with extreme prejudice — exactly as if these deceptively English-[i]sounding[/i] terms have been handed down to us from Martians obsessed with human cable shows, but if we were to use them the way an English speaker would rather than the way a Martian does, we'd be risking an alien invasion — the distinctions between English and Inform need to be taken that seriously, by the writer of any manual, because that's how seriously they need to be taken by the writer of an actual game.[/quote]

Two cents: I'd probably never have thought I could give IF writing a shot if the manual weren't written the way it's written. I'm not a programmer, and while I've a decently logical brain programming languages and programming manuals do tend to make me go wibble. Some people learn well when everything is laid out simply and clearly with definitions and short, sort paragraphs; some people, like me, learn well when things are written more naturalistically and are understood more gradually. So I think it's great that people are writing manuals in other styles, but I'm glad we have the style we already do.

That said, I'm aware that this enables me not to write code, but to write sloppy code. My in-depth understanding of Inform is not great, so my code is not elegant. The accessibility of the manual has allowed me to start writing and is allowing me to get better through writing, rather than through just reading. It's possible I'll never quite reach the level of skill of someone who can pick up a more standard and clearer programming manual. But I don't mind.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=40#p11119
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-19 03:52:06

[quote="Jeff Nyman"][quote="Laroquod"]Write something with all the moral complexity and indeterminacy of any single story in James Joyce's Dubliners; this is what it'd take, at minimum, to truly impress a modern literary type, I believe.[/quote]

Possibly. But for myself I'm not trying to impress a literary type necessarily. I'm trying to work with a modern audience that is more likely to actually play and engage in textual IF. I'm not saying this for commercial purposes. I'm simply saying that I'm going where the audience is. Textual IF, while it's made lots of technical strides and has brought in newcomers, has actually done nothing to really appeal to a wider audience, despite a long amount of time in which to do so.

I think modern books and the film industry have proven that you can tell very effective stories that do appeal to a wide audience. The game industry has shown the same thing. My hope is that textual IF may at least try to learn from some of those successes. (And where they didn't succeed, why not.) I do think that if textual IF tries to stay within the realm that would appeal to the "literary type", it will stay in the same relatively lackluster place it has been for many years. That may be okay. For myself, I'd really like to broaden the audience.[/quote]
You're conflating two things here, though, that I don't think are necessarily connected — a perspective I also tried to add to your other Moral Premise thread. The lack of popular success in textual IF has very little to do with the lack of popular success of what is typically thought of as a 'literary' novel. They are on the losing ends of two trends and for very different reasons. In particular with IF, the form hasn't been taken seriously [i]enough[/i] as a form of storyteling in the same way that all gaming isn't yet taken seriously enough as a form of storytelling. (just ask Roger Ebert.) So you're taking two cultures that have often been diametrically opposed, and lumping them together and saying that by getting away from what 'literary types' would be impressed with, you would solve the other side as well? But text adventures have never been primarily aimed at 'literary types', so much as Just plain readers: who are also the sort of people who are quite used to the moral complexities of the modern novel. This is why I think that the people you would wish to dismiss as 'literary' are actually the whole potential audience for any IF that reaches beyond the children's tale level. (For a children's tale, the moral premise is the perfect pitch.)

There is a famous saying about never going broke by underestimating your audience, I realise, but you've implied as I read it that text adventures have heretofore been too literary to be popular, and that's not the way I experienced the history. After a certain transition point where they and their trappings became popularly perceived as technologically obsolescent, text adventures have been unpopular regardless of how literary they were or weren't and there have been plenty of attempts at going the genre-based or crowdpleasing routes.

[quote][quote]Why should IF be pounding on that old, decrepit door? Except if it is a necessary inescapable evil; that's the only reason I can see to go there: to run our seedy little experiments and abscond with the data into more interesting realms. I definitely do not see achieving a working moral premise as a worthy goal; quite the opposite.[/quote]
It's certainly a valid viewpoint. Obviously it's one with which I would disagree, but I certainly recognize its validity. My goal here was more to present a technique --- the moral premise. Like all techniques, it can be ineffective in some cases simply because of the realm in which it's being imposed. In other cases, it can be misapplied. But it is a valid technique and it is one that works for three industries that textual IF has at least some structural and mechanistic similiarites to. As such dismissing it was not something I was prepared to do without actual experimentation, both in terms of myself applying it and then seeing some effects on various audiences.[/quote]
Well as I say, it may be a necessary step on the way to something, the way it was in literature (BTW I am including popular literature which is a bit more morally sophisticated than it may seem from reducing everything to one line). and In the case that this is so, I'll be glad that somebody was already thinking about it and processing it, so thanks for starting this discussion.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1710&start=0#p11120
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What Is a Construction?
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-19 04:10:22

Jim: My classes all have the same problems with the manual you do. It's why I had to write the "Well-Versed Informer" stuff so that I could start getting out the idea of "thinking in Inform." (From a programmer perspective, this means design patterns. From a non-programmer perspective, this means heuristics and idioms of use.) In fact, when I tried to get Inform introduced into some curricula -- a process I mentioned way back on RAIF -- one of the first things I was always told was "The manual is going to have to be rewritten."

Interestingly, unless I miss my mark, you have a writer mentality. (You did publish a book or two awhile back, yes?) As such, I notice that my class of writers often have the same cognitive friction that you do. And I, likewise, share that same set of issues. I mentioned in another post (in the game design area) that writers have an attention to detail and a mindset of making the fewest possible assumptions. I think that's why some of us approaching Inform have some issues with how it's presented. (One of my favorites is in 18.1, "On Rules", which says: "We seldom need to know how this machinery [rules and rulebooks] works..."   [i]Really??![/i])

I could be way off here but I just find it interesting that your sentiments -- and even the examples you often point out -- are [i]exactly[/i] the same ones that get pointed out in my classes. All that being said, having had to write the "Well-Versed" stuff did give me a feeling for how complex it can be to write a manual for Inform. However, it isn't that hard if you keep forward references to a minimum and utilize a design structure for presentation, such as progressive disclosure, consistent use of nomenclature, limited and focused examples (rather than examples have "too much going on"), the use of exercises to encourage people to think about (and apply) what they just read, and so on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=40#p11121
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-19 04:22:09

[quote="bcressey"][quote="Harry Giles"]This was said a page or so ago, but I wanted to highlight it because it encapsulates so well what some of us are railing against. That sense of inevitability is exactly what some of us find simplified or trite about basing stories on narrative structures like the moral premise! I absolutely agree that doing so leads to well-constructed, compelling and rhetorically effective stories. But whether or not they're "good" depends, crucially, on what you want the story to achieve. How "good" art is could be said to be determined by how effectively it achieves its goals, although many of us on different sides on this thread have made arguments for goodness based on what we think those goals ought to be.[/quote]

Inevitable does not imply obvious, simple, or trite. I simply meant that well-plotted stories have a sense of internal order and consistency. They are in a word dramatic. The alternative seems to be stories that rely on coincidence and deus ex machina on the one hand, and stories in which nothing happens on the other. I will not insist that such stories are necessarily bad; they can be quite good. But lack of dramatic virtue does not imply other virtues, any more than its presence implies the absence of flaws.

Perhaps I should state that good dramatic fiction is inevitable, and good literary fiction is real. One type of story embraces the artifice of the construct and the other transcends it. Both seek to share a truth: the one in a form that shapes the plot; the other in the shadow cast by events over our thoughts. I do not think that a story can be good unless it has at least that much purpose behind it. Moral premise is one refinement of that notional purpose, and in any refinement some trace elements are discarded. If those traces are essential to your goals, then moral premise is the wrong tool.[/quote]
I don't think the best literary fiction really denies that it still operates just as much as an artifice or a construct as any 'dramatic' fiction, so I wouldn't run too far with that distinction. They are all constructs, they are just constructed for different effects and to achieve different sorts of communication. Even if a novel is literary, if care isn't taken to manage my expectations and keep track of what I am supposed to be wondering about, I quickly lose interest in that author just as I would in a sci-fi action author who couldn't maintain a self-consistent plot. They are both constructs; they can both be well or poorly constructed, and a sense of inevitability can be achieved or rejected by the author according to taste, independently of whether there is any moral premise.

The key is that the 'literary types' as we're calling them are using, let's face it, more sophisticated constructs. If IF is not capable of that level of sophistication then frankly I'm a lot less interested in it as a form — particularly in writing it. Why choose an instrument with so many fewer notes? But I don't believe that's the case; however it may be a while before such theories as 'moral premise will rule' or my own 'IF can and should leapfrog modernism' are truly tested.

[quote="matt w"][Reading Laroquod on Joyce: Well, Joyce was influenced by Chekhov, I think? I wouldn't say the modernists killed off the moral premise, but maybe they opened up an alternative. If I wanted to be really obnoxious I'd ask what the moral premise of Waiting for Godot was.][/quote]
Ha ha, not going there. But I meant more that the postmodernists killed off the moral premise, not the modernists. I see Joyce as a progenitor of postmodernism; I probably should have made that clear since often he is lumped in with the modernists — but how could a modernist end up writing the last chapters of Ulysses, or basically all of Finnegan's Wake? He's one of the pioneers who corrupted the whole idea of storyteling being based on a moral premise. And I don't think of that kind of corrptuion as modernist, no.

[quote="Harry Giles"]I'm in danger of derailing the conversation entirely, but what the hell, let's give it a shot: As I wrote in the other thread, mythology and storytelling in the period before the 18th century novel were far more morally ambiguous and complex than they are throughout mass enterainment of the last couple of centuries. If I were going out on a limb, I'd argue that simplistic moral narratives evolved through the demands of mass entertainment, and also through the concentration of the means of artistic production in the hands of a few. What I'm saying is: folk art is often more complex and interesting than state-sponsored or commercial art. Which is relevant to IF, of course, which, while wildly and deliciously various in its forms and aims, is often a form of internet folk art.[/quote]
Very interesting observation there.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=30#p11122
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2010-11-19 04:43:53

For anyone who was wondering -- there is no RAM left in Leadlight to implement one extra verb or verb synonym. I would never implement an abbreviation over a real English word, so it's Examine, or just EX, since Leadlight's parser actually allows you to type very few letters to recognise the vast majority of its content. However, a lot of people missed that fact while they were screaming about the truly horrific imposition on their lives of having to type EX instead of X [emote];)[/emote]

If I had a free verb slot, I'd have happily added 'X' to v 1.1, but I do not. I just say that here as I want people to know the reason I didn't add it wasn't out of bloody-minded glee.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=40#p11123
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-19 04:58:24

[quote="Laroquod"]In particular with IF, the form hasn't been taken seriously [i]enough[/i] as a form of storyteling in the same way that all gaming isn't yet taken seriously enough as a form of storytelling. (just ask Roger Ebert.)[/quote]

That's rapidly changing in the game industry and has been for years. Working in it, usually as quality assurance, I can tell you that storyboarding, character arcs, placement of inciting incidents, and so on, is a major area of focus for some game companies. Certainly not across the board, of course. But there is a major shift in the ability to tell effective stories. A lot of the game examples I provided -- whether in graphical adventure or first-person shooter format -- was an attempt to indicate at least some of this trend. Whether it's taken "seriously enough" as a form of storytelling, that's hard to say. I'm less concerned about the critics (like Ebert) and more concerned with what audiences respond to. That will be the barometer of what of storytelling is effective in a game format. We're starting to see that more and more with people's buying decisions.


[quote]But text adventures have never been primarily aimed at 'literary types', so much as Just plain readers:[/quote]
[quote]but you've implied as I read it that text adventures have heretofore been too literary to be popular[/quote]

On the first point, I think textual IF has been aimed at just plain game players. The "readers" part has been incidental, at best.

On the first and second points, I've been conducting classes on textual IF since 2005 and I can say that the one thing people have never said is that any textual IF is too literary. So if I gave that impression of my thoughts, I was incorrect in doing so.

The problem has been that textual IF is too much game and, to many people, barely even that. (Appealing to avid game players with textual IF is certainly possible, but it's also just one part of a potentially vast audience.)

When I have presented textual IF -- and I've done it with works from the Infocom days, from the resurgence period of Legend Entertainment, and then from a wide swath of the textual IF community (including various IF Comp games) -- the issue has largely been that the stories are not engaging enough. People have reported that the characters are barely existent as far as they're concerned. The plots are often not all that interesting. The dialogue (when there is any) is borderline at best. Here I'm reporting on the feedback I've been given, as opposed to just presenting my own conclusions. (I do realize that this is anecdotal to everyone reading this, however.) The point is that the reaction I've gotten is that people just don't care about what they just played/read. It was a little bit of a diversion, but not much beyond that. I've had people tell me it was basically just like playing a more elaborate form of crossword puzzle: slotting words and phrases in the right place to "win."

What people responded to initially was "a book I can play." They liked the idea of taking something they already enjoy -- reading good stories -- and having some ability to interact with the story. Authors, in turn, were intrigued by the possibilities of making an already established audience less passive, in that they now had direct agency within the story. (I even had screenwriters who were interested in the idea of textual IF systems becoming some sort of "living storyboard"; a quasi prototype, if you will, for how a series of scenes can play out.)

My contention has long been that textual IF was [i]not[/i] primarily aimed at readers insofar as it did not encourage readers to engage with textual IF as they do with their novels or even with their film experiences. This is largely because writing techniques were not utilized by the vast majority of people creating textual IF. Why is that? Because the people authoring textual IF were (often) not writers. They may have been people who wanted to tell a story, but the focus was more on creating a fun game than a fun game [i]and[/i] an emotional experience.

Having audiences search through IFDB, for example, is a very enlightening experience for those who want to see how people approach textual IF, what catches their eye, what they tend to be intrigued with, etc. Then you have to do follow-up: after they try it, what was their experience like? Did they feel let-down? Did they feel surprised at how good it was? And so on.

With all this rambling of mine aside, I will say that I am aware that I've often approached textual IF in a counter-current fashion. As such I realize that a certain extent, there is an inherent selection effect in how I've presented classes and how I've engaged outside audiences (adults and children; teachers and students; authors and screenwriters; readers and players) with textual IF. I've tried to guard against that when possible but it's often not -- hence me presenting ideas like this here for consideration. So much thanks for your responses. You (and others here) have given me some really good things to think about and take into consideration when presenting textual IF to audiences.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1703&start=0#p11124
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Average IF command lengths
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-11-19 05:58:36

[quote="matt w"]Do you think the three-word commands were mostly "TALK TO NPC" or "LOOK UNDER/BEHIND THING"? Or something else?[/quote]
That's right, about 75% of all three-word commands were TALK TO [someone]. (Suprisingly no LOOK UNDER/BEHIND - apparently these players used SEARCH instead.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1701&start=0#p11125
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Post-comp thoughts about Ninja's Fate
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2010-11-19 06:43:33

Well, I'm the one who gave you a 10. For the reasons I did so, here's the [url=http://42hooks.weebly.com/1/post/2010/10/if-comp-ninjas-fate.html]rambling[/url].

For the record, your entry was one of those few my thought wagon kept taking me to after reading.

And for another page of the same record, a discussion is going on upstairs, in the "Moral Premise" thread, that, I think, adresses some of the questions [i]Ninja's Fate[/i] puts on the IF world. I tend to take IF more as a literary medium on steroids, and less as a platform for entertaining games. In such way, I value when an author takes chances writing his stories, when (s)he goes for weird interactions or settings or moods, I value creative prose over creative puzzles, a sentence that kicks my guts in over a well written one, I vibrate with unsettling imagery over polished gaming experience; so what recently brought me to IF was the idea of putting it beside Beckett and Kubrick, not beside Blizzard Entertainment. Ninja's Fate takes chances, it risks alot, it unsettled me many times - like a good work of a creative something should. But because of that it will naturally fail within the ones who take IF more as a gaming platform.

And now I think I'll have to go and add this up to the review. Darn...

[edited in]Ps.: I've been to your website and I must admit my admiration for Ninja's Fate is still increasing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1710&start=0#p11126
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What Is a Construction?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-19 07:45:48

[quote="Jim Aikin"]A little further down page 21.1, I stumbled onto this: "Nothing will make that a simple idea, but it's unambiguous and can be puzzled out with practice."[/quote]

I think this is referring to the previous example of a construction:

[quote]    phrase (phrase number -> (phrase number -> number)) -> nothing [/quote]

which is quite convoluted; not to any of the concepts that are being introduced in this section. I agree that it'd be nice to break down exactly what it means anyway (I don't think those -> things were in the old version, and zarf's site is timing out for me so I can't look them up in his index), but it's not deliberately taunting the reader in the way that it seems at first, I don't think. 

I'm reminded the old joke about the math prof who says that some fact is obvious. A student raises his hand and says, "Professor, I don't see why this is true." The professor stares at the board for fifteen minutes, says, "No, it is obvious," and keeps lecturing. -- Anyway, I'm saying that it isn't quite like that, since the thing that needs to be puzzled out is not the main idea of the page but a particularly convoluted example. 

Also, this page seems to be new in this version of the manual, so it probably could stand to have some kinks hammered out. 

BTW, count me with Harry as someone who finds this style of documentation an easier way of getting into the language than a more programmery style -- I would never have been able to start with something like Ron's programming guide. (I actually started by looking at an early draft of Jim's guide, but switched to the documentation pretty quickly -- partly because the draft I had was very early and I think didn't even have some parts filled in yet.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1658&start=0#p11127
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Sand-dancer failing to compile with 6F95
User: eu / DateTime: 2010-11-19 08:43:38

Just stymied.  And you're right that it is in the docs---see WI 11.3's shivering example.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1710&start=0#p11128
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What Is a Construction?
User: eu / DateTime: 2010-11-19 09:10:00

I can see the opening sentence of WI 21.1 being confusing in that it doesn't seem to mean construction in the technical sense, so I've opened a bug on that: <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=423">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=423</a> (let me know if you want to go on file as the reporter).  But otherwise, ``construction'' can be read as ``parameterized type.''

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=10#p11129
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-11-19 09:28:38

[quote="bcressey"]Another interesting result is that [i]Rogue of the Multiverse[/i] garnered as many votes as the more accessible, web-based Inform games.[/quote]
Running an interpreter isn't more difficult than running a web browser (or a media player, or ...) So I think the reason there are few TADS games compared to Z/Glulx is author choice, not player choice. And I guess the Comp results prove that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1712&start=0#p11130
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Distance
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-11-19 09:36:40

I'm considering the amount of time it takes to go from one location to another in-game.  One of the mechanics I'm considering is distance.  I'm not sure about implementation, though.  I can't quite wrap my head around how it would work.  Is this even a plausible thing to implement in I7?  It seems like a three-part relation - Room A is related via Number B to Room C.  

I think I should be able to handle it similarly to how directions work:

The West End is west of the East Bay.  The West End is 2 miles from the East Bay.

But looking through the standard rules, I cannot for the life of me figure out how this was done.  Is it all in I6?  Hard-coded?  I'm not entirely sure I even want to implement this, given the potential issues that could arise.  I could make all rooms equidistant, or fake it with regions or something, but before I look at workarounds, I'd be interested to know what the deal is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1713&start=0#p11131
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Hyperlinks to Websites w/ Inform 7?
User: richardnixon / DateTime: 2010-11-19 09:39:42

Hi,

First time poster here. Is there a way you can put in a hyperlink that goes to an external website with Inform 7 and Quixe? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1710&start=0#p11132
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What Is a Construction?
User: dfan / DateTime: 2010-11-19 10:14:13

[quote="Laroquod"]I dunno the reasons, that's just me speculating, but for whatever reason, the approach to the i7 manual is extremely different than in the manual for i6, which was very rigorous about defining its terms and wouldn't think of portraying anything as deducible from English, because i6 is obviously not.[/quote]
Interesting; I was unhappy with some parts of the Inform 6 Manual precisely because I thought it was not that rigorous, particularly in distinguishing what parts of "Inform 6" were properties of the language itself and what parts were properties of the standard library. (I remember in particular having a hell of a time determining where the implicit switch statement fell - I think it ended up being half and half.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=10#p11133
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2010-11-19 10:14:38

[quote="RealNC"][quote="bcressey"]Another interesting result is that [i]Rogue of the Multiverse[/i] garnered as many votes as the more accessible, web-based Inform games.[/quote]
Running an interpreter isn't more difficult than running a web browser (or a media player, or ...) So I think the reason there are few TADS games compared to Z/Glulx is author choice, not player choice. And I guess the Comp results prove that.[/quote]

Given that the lone TADS entry was a well-known author who has made some great games, I don't think the Comp results alone prove anything.

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1713&start=0#p11134
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hyperlinks to Websites w/ Inform 7?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-19 10:40:33

We were discussing that in another thread. At the moment, there is no way to do it. 

It would make sense for an interpreter to recognize URLs in the output text and allow them to be launched. Many interpreters already do this, either directly or by virtue of using an OS text widget. (Try right-clicking or ctrl-clicking on a URL in Zoom, for example.) 

Whether it works in Quixe depends on your browser, but neither WebKit nor Firefox appears interested in recognizing URLs like that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1712&start=0#p11135
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Distance
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-19 10:45:31

There might be a way to piggyback on the existing adjacency relation somehow, though it wouldn't be straightforward (relations can't take properties).

On the other hand, it seems to me that when it actually comes time to fill in this information for all of your locations, you won't want to have to type a sentence-length declaration for each distance. A table would be more succinct, and combined with a phrase, you could use it to find the distance whenever you needed it (whether that's to set the travel time during the going action, or to describe the distance when an NPC is giving directions).

Of course, creating such a table and keeping it up to date is a nuisance. Here is a way to autogenerate the table with a default value for distance. The table is output to a separate file so that it can use tabs appropriately. You would then cut and paste the table into your story file and customize it with values that differ from the default.

[code]Owl Hill is a room. The Gully is east of Owl Hill. The Town is south of the Gully. The Foothills are west of Owl Hill. The Cliff is west of the Foothills.

Section - Distance Table (not for release)
The file of Distance Table is called "DistTable".

To say tab:
	(- glk_put_char_uni(9); -)

When play begins:
	write "Table of Distances[line break]a-terminus[tab]b-terminus[tab]distance[line break]" to the file of distance table;
	repeat with a-terminus running through rooms:
		repeat with b-terminus running through rooms:
			if a-terminus is adjacent to b-terminus:
				append "[a-terminus][tab][b-terminus][tab]1[line break]" to the file of distance table.[/code]

In the generated table there are two entries for each map connection, one entry for each direction. With a little more work, you could make the table more compact (one entry per connection), which would be a better choice as long as you don't need the distances between rooms to be nonreciprocal. This is the resulting table, copied direct from the file:

[code]Table of Distances
a-terminus	b-terminus	distance
Owl Hill	Gully	1
Owl Hill	Foothills	1
Gully	Owl Hill	1
Gully	Town	1
Town	Gully	1
Foothills	Owl Hill	1
Foothills	Cliff	1
Cliff	Foothills	1[/code]

(Note that you could also have the game build the table in the same way, supplying your exceptions through a custom phrase, but that would take up valuable start-up time.)

Anyway, even if you don't use a table to solve this problem, hopefully you'll find the autogenerate-code-to-a-file technique useful...

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1712&start=0#p11136
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Distance
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-19 10:48:55

Inform doesn't support three-way relations.

Map connections aren't defined as a relation. Yeah, they're all defined in I6. (Adjacency is a relation, but it's two-way -- it ignores direction.)

Erik posted everything else I was going to say. :)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1710&start=0#p11137
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What Is a Construction?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-11-19 10:57:00

@Jeff: Thanks for the confirmation. Yes, I'm a writer -- both a tech writer and a writer of fiction. But it does strike me that your description, "writers have an attention to detail and a mindset of making the fewest possible assumptions," would (or should) apply equally well to programmers. In any event, if the documentation for Inform is being written by someone who is not a writer and/or doesn't think like a writer, isn't that a problem in itself?

I did like the Inform 6 Designer's Manual a great deal, and still do ... though on reacquainting myself with it recently I've noticed that here and there it suffers from the same tendency to blithely skip over details that really ought to be nailed down.

One response in this thread suggests that "construction" is not meant to be a technical term, while another response says that it's a synonym for "parameterized type," which is surely a technical term. Page 21.1 tells us that there are only nine constructions, which are then listed, so I would tend to lean toward the idea that the word is being used here as a technical term (without being defined). Yet it's possible that the usage on page 8.16 is general, not technical, and thus misleading to anyone who is trying to puzzle out what's going on.

@Matt: I agree that the style or tone used in "Writing with Inform" is more readily approachable, especially for novices, than the approach Ron uses. Ron's guide, while extremely useful, seems to require both a prior knowledge of conventional programming (which is what he intended) and a prior knowledge of Inform 7 (which he may not have intended).

That said, I'm pretty sure "Writing with Inform" could be written in a much more thorough and rigorous manner without sacrificing the style and tone! That's the challenge in technical writing -- to make it complete and informative while also keeping it readable and clear.

After starting this thread last night, I started thinking I should try Zarf's business model. I should offer to write The Ultimate Inform 7 Guide as soon as I have $10,000 in pledges. The resulting document would, of course, be free for users. If I can say this without sounding egotistical, I probably have as good qualifications as anyone to undertake such a project, including 30 years of varied experience as a tech writer explaining technical subjects (mostly music technology) to non-technically-minded readers.

Does anyone else think this would be a good idea? Or am I just swinging from a lamp post at 3 A.M., singing Irish ballads?

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=70#p11138
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-19 11:02:53

For what it's worth, the play-IF card tries to convey that experimentation is necessary. It says it explicitly, but also implies it by having a bunch of verbs that *are* a little unusual. I didn't want to limit it to a bare-minimum subset -- that would have been misleading.

Also, while I agree that a truly surprising verb is rare in typical IF play, the process of learning the *distinctive* verbs of a game is a mainstay of IF experience. I think it's an important part of the game experience, even when the game is explicit about prompting you.

I went in one direction with this in Heliopause, which supports lots of unusual verbs, and another in the Hadean demo, which has just two.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1712&start=0#p11139
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Distance
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-11-19 11:03:11

[quote]
Anyway, even if you don't use a table to solve this problem, hopefully you'll find the autogenerate-code-to-a-file technique useful...[/quote]

No doubt.  There's some excellent potential there on all kinds of fronts.  It's totally going into my scrapbook of useful code.  

Thanks for the clarification on directions.  I keep thinking there's things I don't need to know, and then situations come up and it's really helpful to know them.  Some kind of important life lesson in there, no doubt.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1701&start=0#p11140
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Post-comp thoughts about Ninja's Fate
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2010-11-19 11:04:14

Oh, wow, thanks for that! I'm especially happy that someone without any background on Paul and 'classic IF' enjoyed the game so much. For the record, I don't consider myself a good author when it comes to writing style. It is quite ironic that this year, the people who liked my game predominantly came from the 'literary' crowd. I consider myself to be part of the 'gaming' side of the spectrum. As I said, though, I can perfectly understand the difficulty you expressed with respect to giving the game a rating. I'm sorry for producing a deadlock in your mind [emote];)[/emote]

You bring up some interesting points in your review. Your definition of a tribute, especially, is quite clever. According to that definition, I'd say [url=https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/The_Call_of_Cthulhu_(film)]Call of Cthulu[/url] is definitely a tribute movie. Ed Wood isn't, yes, but it still could have been [i]in spite of[/i] being [i]about[/i] the real Ed Wood. In my opinion, the two categories aren't completely distinct. Ed Wood, the movie, could have used stylistic devices found in Ed Wood movies to tell a story about Ed Wood (still following?). This wouldn't necessarily mean it [i]has[/i] to be a 'bad movie' - there could be [i]some[/i] stylistic allusions without making [i]the whole thing[/i] bad. That would still make it a tribute in my book.

Basically, this is what I was going for. Implement the game well (i.e. show basic technical craftsmanship), but use the technical implementation as a basis to show some not-so-great things. Those things toned down to a bearable level, though. So what you can see in Ninja's Fate is actually still quite far from what Paul usually delivered in his games, many of which [i]were[/i] virtually unplayable.

I like the expression[quote]that feverish belief in something, in spite of everyone against it[/quote]This sums up so many things... [emote]:)[/emote]

P.S. What's with the wandering apostrophe?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1690&start=10#p11141
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stuck implementing a table with consult about
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-19 11:07:13

[quote="Jim Aikin"]A single comprehensive manual on I7 would, I'd guess, be more than a thousand pages long -- and who would have the patience to read it?[/quote]
That's why an excellent reference book is needed. A linear manual should give just enough information so that people will know where to look in the reference.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=70#p11142
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-19 11:17:06

Veering a little bit off topic, does anyone think it would be a good idea for the I7-generated Quixe and Parchment pages to include Crazy Uncle Zarf's IF card, whether as a link to a PDF, a jquery-style pop-up, or in some other way?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1701&start=0#p11143
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Post-comp thoughts about N'injas Fate
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2010-11-19 11:37:51

[quote]This wouldn't necessarily mean it has to be a 'bad movie' - there could be some stylistic allusions without making the whole thing bad. That would still make it a tribute in my book.
[/quote]

Well, I agree. Keep in mind that the presented "tribute definition" was an ad hoc one, created just to get my point across. I also think that what you've done with Ninj'as Fate gets out as a crafted work, in which there is no doubt whether the [i]unclimbable climbable tree[/i] is a feature or a bug. Those things present themselves solidly as features, so we're left with the question why - hence, [i]a good thing[/i].

[quote]P.S. What's with the wandering apostrophe?[/quote]

What wandering apostrophe? [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=10#p11144
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-11-19 12:27:56

[quote="jacksonmead"]Running an interpreter isn't more difficult than running a web browser (or a media player, or ...)[/quote]
It's not more difficult to [i]the comp judges[/i] who already have the interpreters installed and know how to use them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1710&start=0#p11145
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What Is a Construction?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-11-19 12:59:56

[quote="Jim Aikin"]After starting this thread last night, I started thinking I should try Zarf's business model. I should offer to write The Ultimate Inform 7 Guide as soon as I have $10,000 in pledges. The resulting document would, of course, be free for users. If I can say this without sounding egotistical, I probably have as good qualifications as anyone to undertake such a project, including 30 years of varied experience as a tech writer explaining technical subjects (mostly music technology) to non-technically-minded readers.[/quote]

Sounds good to me. I'm of the mindset that if folks want to make money working in IF, they should ask for money straight out, especially if the goal is to enrich the community in some way. Kickstarter seems ideal for this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=10#p11146
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-11-19 14:44:22

[quote="Juhana"][quote="jacksonmead"]Running an interpreter isn't more difficult than running a web browser (or a media player, or ...)[/quote]
It's not more difficult to [i]the comp judges[/i] who already have the interpreters installed and know how to use them.[/quote]
I don't see any difficulty in installing software. If someone has a computer, he can double click an icon and install something.

It's a total no-brainer. And why exclude the comp judges? They're people too [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=10#p11147
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-11-19 15:10:12

[quote="jacksonmead"]Given that the lone TADS entry was a well-known author who has made some great games, I don't think the Comp results alone prove anything.[/quote]

I am not trying to prove anything. I just thought it was interesting. All else being equal, every game should receive the same number of votes, and the share of votes garnered by zcode or TADS games should depend on the number of those games entered in the competition. Plainly this is not the case.

I went back and compiled the results for the last four years, subtracting each game's pro rata share of votes from the percentage of votes it actually received. The result is a crude measure of voter preference: a positive number means voters allocated more votes to that game than it should have received, and a negative number means the opposite. The greater the magnitude, the more pronounced that preference.

Here are the results by format.

[img]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2759298/IFCompVoteStats.PNG[/img]

(The preference index is not meaningful outside its competition year, and the totals are supposed to be zero.)

I would characterize this as demonstrating a clear and consistent preference for zcode games, a relative acceptance of TADS and Glulx formats, and a clear aversion to everything else. Whether or not those assertions would survive robust statistical analysis, I can't say, but the preference for zcode games is hard to ignore. This year's comp is also remarkable in that voters tended to avoid the Glulx games for the first time.

Here's the [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2759298/IFCompVoteStats.xlsx]Excel spreadsheet[/url] if anyone is interested.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=10#p11148
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-11-19 15:20:27

[quote]I don't see any difficulty in installing software. If someone has a computer, he can double click an icon and install something.[/quote]
It might not be [i]difficult[/i], but the thing is that not everyone who has a computer knows how to do it, or is willing to do it, or is allowed to do it. Installing software fails the Mom Test (for example my mom would not know how to install anything on her computer, but she can use a web browser). A casual gamer is unlikely to install something just to try out a game they don't know anything about. Some companies don't let you install anything on their computers so if you want to play on your lunch hour you're pretty much restricted to web games.

It can be disputed whether online interpreters are bringing in more people to IF, but you can't say that there's a zero difference in effort between clicking a link to play online and installing and using offline interpreters.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=10#p11149
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2010-11-19 15:20:40

[quote="bcressey"][quote="jacksonmead"]Given that the lone TADS entry was a well-known author who has made some great games, I don't think the Comp results alone prove anything.[/quote]

I am not trying to prove anything.[/quote]

Just for the record, I was addressing RealNC, who did say that something was proven, not you.

Thanks for those stats, which are indeed interesting. I can personally say that, for this year's comp, almost half of the Glulx games were ones that I started playing, didn't care for enough to spend more time on, and then didn't vote on because I didn't feel that I had played it enough to fairly evaluate. I wonder if the same might be true for others.

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=10#p11150
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-19 15:26:56

[quote="bcressey"]I would characterize this as demonstrating a clear and consistent preference for zcode games, a relative acceptance of TADS and Glulx formats, and a clear aversion to everything else. Whether or not those assertions would survive robust statistical analysis, I can't say, but the preference for zcode games is hard to ignore. This year's comp is also remarkable in that voters tended to avoid the Glulx games for the first time.[/quote]

I strongly suspect that the apparent drop in preference score for Glulx games coincides with the fact that many peoples' habits are shifting toward playing on mobile devices (smartphones and tablets). That was certainly true in my own case--I've still played only one of the Glulx games*, because I now much prefer to recline on the couch or in bed to play (or play on the go). Right now, the only VM that fits the bill is z-code.

* Blind House, which I enjoyed but hope to see an authorial postmortem about.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1701&start=0#p11151
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Post-comp thoughts about Ninja's Fate
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-11-19 15:43:32

This game certainly created conflicting feelings for me.  However, I deeply respect the sentiment.  To honor Mr. Panks and his under-appreciated works is noble.  I encountered Panks's games on the IF Comp, and downloaded some of his other games as well.  I won at least two of his games, and I'm sure that I enjoyed and appreciated them more than most.

It was good of you to risk your own standing in the IF community to honor one who was such an outsider, Hannes.  That Panks was not reconciled to the hostile community before his death is an unfortunate wound that can never heal.  [i]Ninja's Fate[/i] can teach us all a lesson on treating one another with human dignity.  I also respect the fact that you didn't glorify Panks or praise his stubbornness.  [i]Ninja's Fate[/i] simply presents his work as something special in its own right.  I think we have an obligation to treat the sincere effort of every contributor in the IF community as special and honorable, even if we dislike the work itself or disagree with what it stands for.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1584&start=0#p11152
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Asking for game recommendations
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-11-19 16:17:35

I recommend [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=zflseqfngmbhwhny][i]Wearing the Claw[/i][/url] by Paul O'Brian.  It's traditional, linear, and has good story.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1704&start=0#p11153
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Gris et Jaune - Post Comp
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-19 16:27:06

I haven't played the comp version yet, but I've gotten over my annoyance and would be happy to betatest the post-comp version when you're ready.

My annoyance, you ask? Well, when I read that Gris et Jaune was about [i]zombis[/i] (as opposed to zombies), I had to kick myself for not having started working on one of the game ideas I'd been kicking around, to be set in Haiti and starring a [i]zombi[/i] PC. Now I'll have to wait 10 years for the idea to seem fresh again...!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1710&start=10#p11154
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What Is a Construction?
User: drumn4life0789 / DateTime: 2010-11-19 17:57:49

I am really knew to inform as well and I find myself reading this [url]http://www.musicwords.net/if/InformHandbook.pdf[/url] more than actually reading the documentation within inform 7.  I am more of the programming type than the writer type and I feel the documentation is not designed to teach this type of person.  Since I7 is based so much on English I think the right way to present it is to pretend the person that is learning is not an English speaking person.  That way the verbage and such does not become to English like.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=10#p11155
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-19 18:27:58

This is maybe idiosyncratic of me as a judging-type person, but I prefer to play games in-browser if I can, especially Comp-type games where I have no idea whether I'll actually like it. There's just something I don't like about having a game sitting on my hard drive if I'm going to play it for ten turns, have it annoy me, and give it up. (Yeah, I know I can delete it; this is partly neurosis, though deleting it also takes effort.) 

This year I didn't vote, so I don't show up in the stats, but I mostly only played z-code games in Parchment. Part of this was an unfortunate experience with Quixe -- I used it to look at the intros of a bunch of games, but of the two I tried to play through the first one crashed (this was at the beginning before it was realized that it was bugged in Quixe) and the second bogged down gradually, which from what I've heard also may not have been Quixe-related. I also played Sons of the Cherry, because it was online, and part of Rogue of the Multiverse, because it was by Pacian (only part because my computer crashed). So I wound up in line with what Ben says, and also Erik.

Another factor is that I expect z-code games to be shorter, so I'm more willing to jump in when I only have a little time or when I'm not sure that the game will be worth the candle.

Last year I had a lot more time and played just about all the z-code and Glulx games, but the Glulx games were the ones I played last, and I believe I played every single z-code game in Parchment. I would've played a couple of the ADRIFT games, but I didn't think I could; Zoom wasn't working with them, and I didn't realize Spatterlight would, partly because I didn't associate SCARE with Spatterlight. Which brings me to...

[quote]Running an interpreter isn't more difficult than running a web browser (or a media player, or ...)[/quote]

I think it actually gets more difficult when you're talking about different authoring systems and file formats. When I was first getting into IF any discussion of z-code versus glulx made my head spin, and I'm still not entirely clear on the concept of the .gblorb; it gets even more complicated when you add in .t2, .t3, and .whatever the ADRIFT extension is, not to mention all the trouble people had playing Robb Sherwin's recent HUGO game. 

In fact the media player isn't such a bad analogy -- your computer probably came with something that plays mp3s, but if you had to juggle a lot of .ogg, .ram, .flac, and .ape files would you navigate your way around all the different downloads you need, or would you give up? (In my case, I downloaded a player for .flacs, it lets me listen to .apes but crashes at the end of each track, and I don't think I can listen to .oggs at all. And I listen to a lot of music on my computer.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1713&start=0#p11156
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hyperlinks to Websites w/ Inform 7?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-19 18:41:15

zarf, well no browser will ever turn plain text into marked up text. But that's a fairly simple addition, I think I'll add it to Parchment too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1713&start=0#p11157
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hyperlinks to Websites w/ Inform 7?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-11-19 18:49:57

[quote="zarf"]Whether it works in Quixe depends on your browser, but neither WebKit nor Firefox appears interested in recognizing URLs like that.[/quote]

Not quite the same thing, but if you right-click a selection of characters beginning with "http://" in Chrome, it gives you the option to go to that URL.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1714&start=0#p11158
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Overriding existing commands vs New action
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-11-19 19:05:47

While I'm okay with an action called "waiting-for-minutes", I'm not sure why this doesn't work.

[code]Understand the command "wait" as something new. Understand "wait for [number] minutes" and "wait for [number] mins" and "wait for "and "wait for [number]" as waiting. 

Waiting is an action applying to one number. 

Carry out waiting:
	increase the time of day by number understood minutes;
	say "[number understood] minute[s] passed uneventfully."[/code]

Inform replies that waiting is "seems to be an action already existing, so it cannot be redefined now", but that's the purpose of overriding a command, isn't it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1714&start=0#p11159
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding existing commands vs New action
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-19 19:39:19

You can think of commands as having two parts. One part is the grammar of the command, which is defined by the "understand" rubric. The other part is the action proper, which in this case is called "waiting". So, when you declare that "wait" should be understood as something new, you are redefining [i]only the grammar[/i], not the waiting action itself.

Now, actions cannot be redefined, so you will need to define your own action. For example:

[code]Understand "wait for [number] minutes" and "wait for [number] mins" and "wait for "and "wait for [number]" as waiting for. 

Waiting for is an action applying to one number. 

Carry out waiting:
	increase the time of day by number understood minutes.

Report waiting for:
	say "[number understood] minute[s] passed uneventfully."

Instead of waiting for 5:
	say "That's the magic number! You are whisked off to fairy land." [/code]

I'd recommend that you not redefine the grammar for "wait" alongside this new action; let it stand as shorthand for "wait 1 minute". (Experienced players are more likely to type "z" anyway, so if you do redefine the "wait" grammar, be sure to redefine "z" in the same way.)

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1714&start=0#p11160
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding existing commands vs New action
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-11-19 19:44:07

That makes sense. Thank you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1710&start=10#p11161
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What Is a Construction?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-19 19:55:29

[quote="drumn4life0789"]I am really knew to inform as well and I find myself reading this [url]http://www.musicwords.net/if/InformHandbook.pdf[/url] more than actually reading the documentation within inform 7.[/quote]
I could not tell from your context whether you are aware that the Inform Handbook was written by the original poster of this thread. But if you're not, it's worth pointing out...  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1690&start=20#p11162
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stuck implementing a table with consult about
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2010-11-19 20:15:55

I think it's likely that there's a good body of knowledge and experience among the experts, but the problem is how do you get that information out of the experts heads and into the hands of newcomers? 

I have read much of Aaron's book, much of the PDF version of the Inform7 book, parts of Jim's book (on an as needed basis) and parts of Ron's document.  As good as these are, none of them are a reference and amalgamating all of these, even with extensive editing, would likely not solve the problem.

Not everyone needs reference materials.  But the issue is that the learning curve for Inform7 is very easy until you try to do something that's not syntactically obvious (or for which there is no explicit example) at which point it appears to have such a steep curve as to be nearly impossible.  (Or at least impossible without getting help on the forums or through much trial and error.)  

Even big projects get done one piece at a time, and I think if it was written as a reference with a discipline and narrow focus, it could be done.  Might require multiple authors who have expertise in different areas.  But don't try to recreate a mega-tutorial + reference + examples that encompasses everything that's already out there. The trick is to make it definitive on some of these inner workings or programmery things so that there's a final word on how stuff really works.  

Inform is a much more sophisticated and broad language than C, but if you keep the focus narrow, it's probably a couple hundred of pages.  Or perhaps a different way to look at it is, if there were a series of articles or chapters that documented one piece at a time, each section would have a lot of value to those who want go beyond the learn by example approach.

Again, this is not a nock on the existing materials, just a suggestion or perhaps an opportunity for someone who wants to write a book or run a kickstarter project.

--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1690&start=20#p11163
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stuck implementing a table with consult about
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-19 20:21:38

[quote="ZUrlocker"]I think it's likely that there's a good body of knowledge and experience among the experts, but the problem is how do you get that information out of the experts heads and into the hands of newcomers? 

Not everyone needs reference materials.  But the issue is that the learning curve for Inform7 is very easy until you try to do something that's not syntactically obvious (or for which there is no explicit example) at which point it appears to have such a steep curve as to be nearly impossible.  (Or at least impossible without getting help on the forums or through much trial and error.)  

Even big projects get done one piece at a time, and I think if it was written as a reference with a discipline and narrow focus, it could be done.  Might require multiple authors who have expertise in different areas.  But don't try to recreate a mega-tutorial + reference + examples that encompasses everything that's already out there. The trick is to make it definitive on some of these inner workings or programmery things so that there's a final word on how stuff really works.  [/quote]
I agree with the gist of this. Maybe what we need (for now, anyway) is an Inform 7 programming wiki.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1710&start=10#p11164
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What Is a Construction?
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2010-11-19 20:51:39

[quote]
After starting this thread last night, I started thinking I should try Zarf's business model. I should offer to write The Ultimate Inform 7 Guide as soon as I have $10,000 in pledges. The resulting document would, of course, be free for users. If I can say this without sounding egotistical, I probably have as good qualifications as anyone to undertake such a project, including 30 years of varied experience as a tech writer explaining technical subjects (mostly music technology) to non-technically-minded readers.
[/quote]
Jim, it's worth a shot.  I have no idea if you can get $10,000 out of such a project, but most technical books with traditional publishers don't get that kind of an advance.  You could always self-publish via Amazon CreateSpace / Kindle and continue to make money without a publisher anyways. (Do publishers even add any value when the distribution is a narrowly targeted audience?  I would doubt it.)  

My guess is a lot of folks would kick in $10 or $20 and some might go higher.  So think carefully about keeping the scope of the project narrow enough to make it worth your time and effort and also so that people don't have to wait too long to see it.   (To me the value declines the longer it takes to get the project completed.   I'd pay more for a 200 page manual sooner than a 400 page manual later.) 

Sunday evening I would have pledged $100 for a ref manual if I thought it would have helped me fix the problem that had me stuck. By Monday evening I would have doubled it.  Heck, if you are willing to do a code review of my game, I may go higher. 

--Zack

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1713&start=0#p11165
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hyperlinks to Websites w/ Inform 7?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-19 23:30:10

That's what I meant, actually. But I tried it in Chrome and it didn't work. Must be either a recent addition to Chrome (I had an old install) or to MacOS (I tried it only on 10.5.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1658&start=0#p11166
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Sand-dancer failing to compile with 6F95
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2010-11-19 23:46:44

Aaron, very cool to update this stuff to the latest.  Much appreciated.   

I have been coding away on my first Inform7 project in 6E72  while reading your book and using the keyword interface.  I tried 6F95 when it first came out as part of a switch to the Mac and got some errors compiling that seemed to be about the keyword stuff.  I had no idea what the messages meant, so I quickly fled back to the safety of 6E72 on Windows.

I'm assuming that's all fixed with the update you did to the extension.  I've also held back adding Extended Grammar, Small Kindness, Smarter Parser, Poor Man's Mistype, Numbered Disambiguation until I got my game to a point where the opening scene is more-or-less complete as a proof of concept for the game.   

Are there any changes needed to my existing code to upgrade the IDE to 6F95?   Anything else I should be worried about?

[b]Update:  The upgrade went fine. Note that Smarter Parser requires Glulx.[/b]

--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">http://www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1690&start=20#p11167
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stuck implementing a table with consult about
User: George / DateTime: 2010-11-19 23:54:15

I'm still kind of confused about what people are looking for. Do they want [url=http://docs.python.org/tutorial/index.html]a tutorial like this?[/url] Or [url=http://docs.python.org/library/index.html]a reference like this?[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1690&start=20#p11168
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stuck implementing a table with consult about
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-19 23:58:33

Both have their place! With Python specifically I never look at those official tutorials, the docs usually have numerous examples. If I did look at something else it would be Dive Into Python.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1690&start=20#p11169
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stuck implementing a table with consult about
User: George / DateTime: 2010-11-20 00:15:09

[url=http://jashkenas.github.com/coffee-script/]Here's another example[/url], maybe easier to compare against.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=10#p11170
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: Neo / DateTime: 2010-11-20 03:54:46

I may be a sampling of one, but...

For the record: I downloaded and installed Gargoyle because of IFComp 2010, and that was so I could play Aotearoa. (It just simply would not work in Parchment.)

Up until that point, I didn't even understand there was a difference between Glulux and z code games, and I didn't know about Gargoyle or multi-format interpreters. I only discovered Gargoyle because Aaron mentions it as his favourite interpreter for Windows in the front of his book. Until five minutes ago (yes, I opened up Gargoyle to check) I didn't know it could also play TADS games.

So, nine months in, and I'm still finding out things most of you (authors) take for granted. Where that leaves a "casual player", I don't know...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=20#p11171
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-11-20 05:40:02

[quote="matt w"]In fact the media player isn't such a bad analogy -- your computer probably came with something that plays mp3s, but if you had to juggle a lot of .ogg, .ram, .flac, and .ape files would you navigate your way around all the different downloads you need, or would you give up? (In my case, I downloaded a player for .flacs, it lets me listen to .apes but crashes at the end of each track, and I don't think I can listen to .oggs at all. And I listen to a lot of music on my computer.)[/quote]
Just download VLC, and you have something that can play practically anything. Or download Gargoyle and you don't have to worry about what a .gblorb is - just play it.

But in order for it to be that simple, people have to both know about and want to use the one-in-all solution. Otherwise people will just say "I clicked on your link, and it didn't work". That's a reply I've received after uploading some music files in m4a format and told my colleagues.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=20#p11172
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: Harry Giles / DateTime: 2010-11-20 05:54:30

[quote="Trumgottist"][quote="matt w"]In fact the media player isn't such a bad analogy -- your computer probably came with something that plays mp3s, but if you had to juggle a lot of .ogg, .ram, .flac, and .ape files would you navigate your way around all the different downloads you need, or would you give up? (In my case, I downloaded a player for .flacs, it lets me listen to .apes but crashes at the end of each track, and I don't think I can listen to .oggs at all. And I listen to a lot of music on my computer.)[/quote]
Just download VLC, and you have something that can play practically anything. Or download Gargoyle and you don't have to worry about what a .gblorb is - just play it.

But in order for it to be that simple, people have to both know about and want to use the one-in-all solution. Otherwise people will just say "I clicked on your link, and it didn't work". That's a reply I've received after uploading some music files in m4a format and told my colleagues.[/quote]

Yes, this analogy is useful. I was going to say the same thing about foobar2000 for Windows users: an elegant, simple, low-weight media player that'll handle just about any file type and has extensive community support. That's our Gargoyle.

I'm a bit worried by this idea that increased use of mobile devices is reducing accessibility to glulx. I love the extra space and functionality that format affords, and it's a shame it's not currently as widely supported. I assume people are working on this? Not that I'm in any position to make criticism. I, like Neo, also want a pony. With ribbons.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=20#p11173
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2010-11-20 06:09:01

I basically use Gargoyle to play everything I can, but I agree that, in the days to come, all the Parchments and Quixes of this world should be the attention receivers. At the moment they lack in very simple things, like the aesthetics and the possibility to save the game. Gargoyle is still a most elegant, beautiful way to play IF. But I believe that will come with time.

On the other hand, one thing I believe will putt off new readers mostly concerns author choices. I was trying to play [i]The Rover's Day Out[/i] using Quixe, and, right after the first lines, the game just sits there, waiting for any key, nothing happening. I pressed one [i](it was the E key, by the way)[/i] because I'm already familiar with the mechanics of IF, but a new player will only see a website with some text, nothing to click on, and not a single instruction.

IF played inside a webpage enhances this "What the hell should I be doing now?" effect, because someone who just fell on that link will not expect that a text-based website will respond to pressing any key.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=20#p11174
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-20 07:00:30

I was thinking that Parchment (and Quixe) should have a notification like "Waiting for a key press" when it's waiting for key input, with the option that it could be dismissed and so it wouldn't be shown again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=20#p11175
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-20 07:15:29

[quote="Trumgottist"]Just download VLC, and you have something that can play practically anything.[/quote]

Hey, that looks cool. Hadn't heard of it before -- and for some reason it never comes up when I do a search on "playing ogg vorbis on OS X" or something like that. 

[quote]Or download Gargoyle and you don't have to worry about what a .gblorb is - just play it.[/quote]

Well, that already works for me with Zoom (and maybe Spatterlight?); which is part of the reason I haven't learned. But Gargoyle does look more flexible than my current interpreters -- I'm using Zoom partly because Emily Short said it was recommended for Alabaster, don't know how Gargoyle performs there. Still, the [url=http://ccxvii.net/gargoyle/]web page[/url] illustrates part of the problem:

[i]There are many interpreters that have been Glk-enabled. All of the following interpreters have been compiled for Gargoyle and are included in the package: Agility, Alan 2 and 3, Frotz (glk port), Glulxe, Hugo, Level 9, Magnetic, Scare, Tads 2 and 3.[/i]

This is not entirely clear to the newbie. I know that Tads, Alan, and Hugo work for games written in their respective languages, and that Glulxe is for glulx files, and presumably Frotz does z-code; and I know (because I found it out when I was looking for something to play ADRIFT games) that Scare plays ADRIFT -- but I basically have no idea what the rest do. And even then, you may have some problems with certain kinds of game in certain interpreters, as with [i]Cryptozookeeper[/i]. (If [url='http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/07/16/introcomp-2010/"]Emily[/url] can't figure out how to get it running, it's not noob-friendly.)

All of which is a long-winded way of agreeing with this:
[quote]
But in order for it to be that simple, people have to both know about and want to use the one-in-all solution.[/quote]

If we're thinking about how to get people to play, messing about with interpreters is less convenient than browser play even for some relatively experienced folks, and definitely for new players.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=20#p11176
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-20 07:18:11

[quote="lribeiro"]...all the Parchments and Quixes of this world should be the attention receivers. At the moment they lack in very simple things, like the aesthetics and the possibility to save the game.[/quote]

Quixe's save possibility is working -- I was able to save and restore my games of Under, in Erebus. And doesn't Parchment allow you to save a game to an URL? This is most convenient if you want to keep one save state going while you're playing, because you can revert just by hitting "refresh"; otherwise I think it recommends bookmarking the URL.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1690&start=20#p11177
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stuck implementing a table with consult about
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-20 07:42:39

Jeff Nyman's [url=http://zurlocker.typepad.com/files/nyman---inform7-locale.pdf]Locale Tutorial[/url] to my mind comes closest to the kind of manual that would really be a boon, both to beginners and adepts. It has perhaps a bit too much of the "tutorial" kind of thing in it ("type this text, press go, you'll see this output"), but it actually tackles the I7 library as a library, explaining the order of execution of rules, exactly what details the library takes into account, and to some degree how to tweak this. A manual that did this for the entire system, and didn't shy away from also talking about the I6 underbelly where appropriate, would be on the right track. It would also be a mammoth undertaking.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1715&start=0#p11178
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: About a Llama Adventure
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2010-11-20 07:59:26

I played [url=http://jayisgames.com/archives/2009/05/llama_adventure.php]Llama Adventure[/url] before I was familiar with IF. I was an ignorant as far as "x something", "l" or "x me" was concerned, so having to type "look around" from time to time never bothered me, and I never tried to "examine me" - it does nothing, by the way. So I truly enjoyed Llama Adventure and it stroke me as an easy piece to interact with. The numbers in Jay is Games also speak for themselves: Number of Plays - 444,259; Add to Faves - 333

So, why is that? I can only speak for myself:

> Visually it is extremely elegant, both in colour scheme, font rendering and background imagery;
> The simple sound bit works great as a guide;
> The commands are simple and well explained, and it counts on the player not knowing what he should be doing;
> It tries to complete your commands, but I didn't find that necessary at the time;
> The text "flows", instead of "being replaced". This replacement is something that I found out to be extremely irritating to newcomers. My wife, for instance, complaints that the effort to know where the new body of text begins is huge;
> It starts off with a simple menu, instead of throwing you a quotation or right into the story itself.

It has some bad things - and you can like the story itself or not, of course - but I only got to be aware of those defects [i]AFTER[/i] I begin messing around with "real" (cof cof) IF:

> Not every object is implemented and many actions are unaccounted for. 

In fact, if you approach it as you would any IF Comp entry, with all it's conventions, you will probably get frustrated. This is something that, I believe, only bothers IF "veterans". People that find the game somewhere and just want to have a great, text-based experience - like me, at the time - won't feel it to be a bad thing; actually, they won't feel it at all. The truth is anyone will play Llama Adventure without any problem and without any additional explanation.

Sometimes a lot of discussion goes around what IF needs to appeal to a wider audience, and every time I think about the issue, Llama Adventure pops to mind. Many recent stories have been doing some of these small things, like starting with a menu (Alabaster is a great example), or easing the interaction with keywords, but generally I think there is a lot to be done, like:

> making the text flow instead of just making it appear on screen;
> clearly distinguish the prompt from the rest of the text;
> being overall pleasant to the eye;
> making the flow of interaction natural.

Some of these things are author dependent, some are interpreter dependent; some are probably easy to deal with, some will probably be hard (like the flow of text thing, I guess); but the question is [i]should it be done?[/i]

I thought of this subject today because of the Quixe discussion in the Competition Results thread. I never saw a Llama Adventure referenced in these forums, and wondered why, so I decided to pull the subject.

And now I've pulled the subject.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=20#p11179
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2010-11-20 08:08:03

[quote]Quixe's save possibility is working -- I was able to save and restore my games of Under, in Erebus. And doesn't Parchment allow you to save a game to an URL?[/quote]

Didn't know that! I mostly use Gargoyle, and I knew Parchment wasn't able to save the progress a while ago. That is great for both terps!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1716&start=0#p11180
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Under, In Erebus: Post-competition release
User: Brian Rapp / DateTime: 2010-11-20 08:38:37

The latest release of "Under, In Erebus" is available at <a class="postlink" href="http://boutell.com/~rapp/erebus.html">http://boutell.com/~rapp/erebus.html</a>

It should make late-game actions much easier, so maybe someone will actually find all 100 points.

Please let me know if you have any questions or comments, using the email address in CREDITS.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1715&start=0#p11181
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: About a Llama Adventure
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-11-20 09:30:07

> making the text flow instead of just making it appear on screen;

Interesting that you should bring it up. I've always hated Glulx's (and Git's) habit of just replacing the text, instead of - as Windows Frotz does - scrolling it up, for the very same reason you describe: it's simply MUCH easier on the eyes.

However, there doesn't seem to be enough interest in the matter one way or another. I pointed it out to Maher when I e-mailed him about Filfre, a long time ago. He replied that due to the way the text was output, there was no easy way to achieve the "flowing" effect... but he didn't seem too bothered about it. And I can understand why - no one else seems to be.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1717&start=0#p11182
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: If then else turns math ack!
User: Bafflebox / DateTime: 2010-11-20 11:20:29

Maybe I'm searching for my answer in the wrong way, but I feel I've looked everywhere and found nothing (so I'm sorry if this is a redundant question(!)), but I hope you'll answer anyway, even if it is~

[code]Every turn:
	If turn count/3 equals one:
		say "You feel hungry".[/code]

Returns:
[quote]This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6F95) on its most recent run through:

[b]Problem.[/b] In the sentence 'Unless turn count/3 equals one begin', I was expecting to read a condition, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'turn count/3 equals one'.

I was trying to match this phrase:

If (turn count/3 equals one - [color=#FF0000][i]a condition[/i][/color]): 

This was what I found out:

        turn count/3 equals one = [i]something unrecognised[/i][/quote]

Please help? :<

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1717&start=0#p11183
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: If then else turns math ack!
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-11-20 11:36:30

Try "every third turn" maybe.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=20#p11184
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-11-20 11:49:21

I run OSX, and I use Spatterlight.  So I also barely notice what format games are in.  The only trouble I've ever had was with [i]Cryptozookeeper[/i] (which was a pity, because the bits I read were awesome, but dark grey text on the same color background is only sustainable so long), and I hadn't even checked its extension before trying to run it.

The first game I played during this year's Comp was [i]Rogue of the Multiverse[/i], and I was not disappointed.  (Thanks, Pacian!  It hit exactly my niche of caring about writing and liking a good comedy but being rubbish at solving puzzles.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=20#p11185
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-11-20 11:55:12

For me, playing the games online feels like I'm only listening to online music without having a local song collection.

I will never get used to playing text adventures online. If I don't have an interpreter, I get the feeling that something vital is missing. I want the games on my hard disk, as well as my save games, to organize everything as I see fit. And I don't want to depend on whether my Internet connection is acting up.

In general I avoid the browser like the plague. I hate browsers. I use email through email clients, never through webmail. I use Usenet through newsreaders, never through web interfaces. I listen to music using my media player, never through stuff like grooveshark. And so on.

The browser is great for demo purposes though. But new players are likely to stick with it without ever experiencing the advantages of interpreters.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1717&start=0#p11186
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: If then else turns math ack!
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-11-20 12:32:31

Turn count divided by 3 will be 1 only when the turn count is exactly 3. You need to use remainder:

[code]Every turn when the remainder after dividing the turn count by 3 is 0: [...][/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1717&start=0#p11187
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: If then else turns math ack!
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-11-20 12:33:48

This is an annoying one.
For some reason you can't use "equals" or "=" when testing numerical conditions in Inform 7. 
Use "is" instead.
Also don't forget the spaces before and after "/".
[code]
Every turn:
	If turn count / 3 is one:
		say "You feel hungry".
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1715&start=0#p11188
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: About a Llama Adventure
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-11-20 12:51:40

When there's a long response from the game or there's a cutscene that's been divided to parts by keypresses I tend to lose the spot where I was reading. What I would really like is to have the terp show the most recent turn in slightly different color than the previous turns so that you could quickly find the place where you were reading, for example have the latest turn in black and previous turns in dark gray.

(It wouldn't be too hard to make Parchment do this, but I haven't gotten around to do it myself yet.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1717&start=0#p11189
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: If then else turns math ack!
User: Bafflebox / DateTime: 2010-11-20 13:01:04

Oh, thank you so much for your quick responses! ^-^

It works, now! [emote]:D[/emote]
[i]*happy girl*[/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1718&start=0#p11190
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: AM/PM and colon troubles
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-11-20 13:05:39

The game's clock is on a standard 12-hour clock. In game, there are grandfather clocks that can be set to basically one specific time, 2:30 PM, but since grandfather clocks are obviously analog clocks, it really doesn't matter whether the player set it to 2:30 AM or 2:30 (which just loops back to 2:30 AM). However the way I have it, the game won't accept 2:30.

I’ve tried understand statements, but I can't use colons in those. 

I’ve tried rewriting my check that prevents other times other than 2:30 PM
[code]Check setting:
	if the time understood is not 2:30 am or the time understood is not 2:30 pm:
		say "You play with the clock a bit before finally moving the hands back to the right time." instead. [/code]

and variations of that, but either it doesn't do anything or Inform error-messages it.

I'm really not sure what I can do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1553&start=10#p11191
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: A brand new system - Quest 5.0
User: Terry / DateTime: 2010-11-20 13:07:33

The recent [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1710]What Is a Construction?[/url] thread in the Inform 6 and 7 Development forum I think makes the point along the lines I am getting at. Anyone developing IF creation systems and writing manuals should take the suggestions and comments on board so beginners can grasp and understand a language, make progress and not simply give up.

If an experienced IF author says the following..

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Every few months I start thinking, "I'd like to really master Inform 7. I know it's sophisticated. I'd like to understand every detail of how it works." And then I run into something like this, and I change my mind. I start thinking maybe I'll play the piano instead.[/quote]

.. then something must not be as easy to understand and comprehend as it could be!

Now where's my good old piano, I think I'll go play it instead.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1718&start=0#p11192
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: AM/PM and colon troubles
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-20 13:57:47

You're on the right track. If the player doesn't specify a time, Inform assumes that the time supplied is AM. So, you need to use "and", not "or" in your check test.

[code]Check setting:
	if the time understood is not 2:30 AM and the time understood is not 2:30 PM:
		say "You play with the clock a bit before finally moving the hands back to the right time." instead.
[/code]

FYI, Inform will also see the commands "set clock to two thirty" and "set clock to half past two" as specifying 2:30 AM, so keep those in mind as you write your code.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1718&start=0#p11193
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: AM/PM and colon troubles
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-11-20 14:08:42

Thank you so much. Just a clarification, what exactly is the difference between "and" and "or" in Inform?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=20#p11194
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-11-20 14:11:26

RealNC: My thoughts *exactly*.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1718&start=0#p11195
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: AM/PM and colon troubles
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-20 14:14:28

When talking about "if" statements and conditions, "and" and "or" behave the way they do in other programming languages.

You wrote "if the time understood is not 2:30 am or the time understood is not 2:30 pm". Break that down logically, and you see that it's always true -- it's always not one *or* not the other (or, more frequently, not both).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1715&start=0#p11196
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: About a Llama Adventure
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-20 14:18:47

I can understand the appeal of smooth scrolling, and there's no reason a Glk library couldn't do it. (Adds note to iPhone design notes.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1718&start=0#p11197
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: AM/PM and colon troubles
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-11-20 14:22:13

Oh wow. My grammar and logic skills must have deteriorated when I wasn’t looking. Thank you for clearing that up for me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1553&start=10#p11198
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: A brand new system - Quest 5.0
User: Alex / DateTime: 2010-11-20 14:31:02

I agree - this is why I think GUI-based editors can be quite a good idea, as all your available capabilities are laid out in front of you - you don't have to remember the correct syntax for creating the various behaviours in your game, and no functionality is hidden.

Of course any design has its compromises, and this approach has traditionally made it difficult to create advanced behaviour in the game, as the GUI can slow you down.

With Quest 5.0 I plan to give the best of both worlds - the Script Editor will default to the point-and-click style of Quest 4, letting you choose commands from various categories and populating their parameters according to prompts, but it will also let you switch to a code view so you can write code by hand as well. Hopefully this will make it appealing to beginners but without slowing down people more comfortable with programming.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1675&start=10#p11199
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Revert to Past Game State
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-20 15:07:15

Jeff, I was preparing the extension for submission to the library when I realized that there is a potential problem with all this. Maybe you've already thought of it, but just in case:

When the game is saved, no undo states will be saved with it. So if the player saves and restores the game while in your possible future, there will be no returning to the present--the REVERT command will only go back as far as the first move after the restore. For that reason, you might want to disable saving while the player is exploring the "future". This is easy to do:

[code]Check saving the game when the player is in a possible future:
	say "You'll need to REVERT to the present before saving the game.";
	rule fails.[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1719&start=0#p11200
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: IF/webcomic hybrid: Essence of Eternity
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-11-20 15:44:25

k so I'm making an interactive fiction/webcomic hybrid. It's called Essence of Eternity and has only started recently (only having one chapter atm, though a second will be up within two days, in theory). It's about a girl named Athena Stonewell, who is forced to defend "Eternity" (an ethereal and really messed up extradimensional city) against the Time Bandit, a rogue dude from Eternity who tries to change the past to damage Eternity. Not that you'd know that yet, because it hasn't been explained yet... w/e

Anyway, if anyone's interested, here's the [url=eoe.thecomicseries.com/]link[/url].

Note that I'm [b][i][u]REALLY[/u][/i][/b] rusty at writing IF, and it definitely shows.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=30#p11201
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-20 15:52:13

Whereas for me, the music I really like, and listen to over and over, is on my computer (or more likely on CD or LP), but stuff I just want to listen to maybe once to see what it sounds like, I'm happy if I can stream it through a browser so it isn't sitting on my hard drive and playlist. It's cool to hear [url=http://www.wired.com/listening_post/2008/04/a-scientific-at/]an operatic soprano yodel-rapping about reading Wittgenstein on the prairie with oom-pah tuba backing[/url], but do I want it around forever?

And there's no IF that I play as often as I listen to the music I like best. So that just makes me want to download it less. (Maybe Galatea, but I've never downloaded that; been playing that on [url=http://nickm.com/if/emshort/galatea.html]ZPlet[/url] basically since the week I rediscovered IF, and if I hadn't been able to play it and a few others online I probably wouldn't be playing IF at all.) 

As I said, this is a matter of idiosyncratic preference, but I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person who plays in-browser where practical.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1675&start=10#p11202
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Revert to Past Game State
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-20 15:55:06

You should probably warn the player about that when you first press the button, too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=30#p11203
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2010-11-20 16:39:16

Version 0.01 alpha is now out. If you have v0.00 alpha, I recommend you get this latest version.

v0.01 alpha - Added ini file parameter for 'WindowMode' at startup.
                - Added ability to load a game data file from command line.
                - Fixed not saving starting location in certain circumstances
                - Added option for Visionary to auto-fill return path for locations input.
                - Fixed issue where it would cause "Array out of bounds" in AdvPDA / AdcPC.
                - Added Open Last File Saved menu option.

[url]http://www.therealeasterbunny.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/visionary.htm[/url]

Thank you to the person who reported / recommended the above.

Cheers

Steve.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1715&start=0#p11204
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: About a Llama Adventure
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2010-11-20 16:40:45

And with color changing, you'd get trained pretty quickly to start reading from the start of the color change, and so people would be less likely to miss those little messages that sometimes come up as you're moving between rooms, which are notoriously easy to miss.

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1719&start=0#p11205
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: IF/webcomic hybrid: Essence of Eternity
User: Harry Giles / DateTime: 2010-11-20 17:00:37

I really like the concept of this project: episodic IF should be fun, and has a lot of promise. I especially like the idea of audience suggestions for future episodes; that could turn out quite interesting.

I've a couple of criticisms which you may or may not find useful; I'd e-mail them, but couldn't find an address. I hope this isn't bad manners; if so, apologies. 
[spoiler]- I almost ragequit when I couldn't find any way of dealing with Fox. You had me playing guess the verb: I kept getting the "Normal conversation options have been disabled" message, which gave me no clue to the command I needed to interact with him. Not fun.
- I don't think you're currently capitalising on the interactivity. I felt very railroaded, especially in conversation (always a risk with menus; I should know, I used them myself), but in general, as well -- no reason to explore, no puzzle to solve, to motivation to act apart from performing the actions I'm obviously clued to do. There has to be a reason for this to be IF rather than a webcomic.
- I'd like more jokes, mainly? The situation has promise and the prose is servicable, but I'd like to have something more to laugh at.[/spoiler]

Good luck!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1719&start=0#p11206
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: IF/webcomic hybrid: Essence of Eternity
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-20 17:16:08

Sounds like a very interesting project similar in some ways to something I'm working on. It looks like a cool adventure too, although I didn't have much time and didn't quite make it to the actual comic book part, or maybe I am missing something. Do I need to turn off my pop-up blocker? Anyway, I will try more, later.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1719&start=0#p11207
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: IF/webcomic hybrid: Essence of Eternity
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-11-20 17:18:18

[quote]- I almost ragequit when I couldn't find any way of dealing with Fox. You had me playing guess the verb: I kept getting the "Normal conversation options have been disabled" message, which gave me no clue to the command I needed to interact with him. Not fun.
- I don't think you're currently capitalising on the interactivity. I felt very railroaded, especially in conversation (always a risk with menus; I should know, I used them myself), but in general, as well -- no reason to explore, no puzzle to solve, to motivation to act apart from performing the actions I'm obviously clued to do. There has to be a reason for this to be IF rather than a webcomic.
- I'd like more jokes, mainly? The situation has promise and the prose is servicable, but I'd like to have something more to laugh at.[/quote]
1) I would have thought "talk to fox" is pretty obvious. Or you could use the hint system... Which I may have forgotten to mention... I'll look into making it more obvious. (Probably add something like "Try 'talk to' instead." to the "Normal conversation options have been disabled" message.)
2) I'm aware of this and intent to improve on this a lot as the comic goes on. These initial chapters are pretty important, though, and I don't want people getting confused. So I railroad. Maybe not the best solution, but I don't see anything better. >.> (Though, in the next chapter, there will be a lot of pointless stuff to do up until the end.)
3) Heh, other people have said they find it hilarious, so I'm confused. Any chance you could post your transcript?

@above: More details, please.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1719&start=0#p11208
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: IF/webcomic hybrid: Essence of Eternity
User: George / DateTime: 2010-11-20 17:54:47

Is this a comic, or episodic IF? I'm confused about where the hybrid part comes in.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1715&start=0#p11209
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: About a Llama Adventure
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2010-11-20 18:37:43

Yeah, I think flowing text is both practically helpful and also attractive to behold. It was also one of the reasons I clocked Leadlight at 8mhz rather than just let the emulators go at unlimited speed - it meant the text still flowed down the screen.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1584&start=0#p11210
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Asking for game recommendations
User: DJHastings / DateTime: 2010-11-20 19:42:41

[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=cpwktis6qwh9ydn8]Augmented Fourth[/url] is a good one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=70#p11211
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-20 22:54:34

I can't think of many situations where it would ever be a [i]bad[/i] idea to display Zarf's IF instruction card. Perhaps if there were some author who feels it's a misleading card to have prefixed to their particular game? Particular if the commands are nonstandard or there is already a built-in tutorial. I suppose that's how adding things at the terp level could be controversial, but I can't see how it could really inconvenience much, since you could easily edit i7's autogenerated page after the fact to suppress the card.

Maybe give it a 'show_IF_card' boolean variable which is easy to flip off early in the page's source, without having to decipher any of the flow of execution... that is, short of a preference checkmark in the IDE itself, which would probably be ideal.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=70#p11212
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-20 23:35:59

Including the card as a publication option would be a good idea, as would having the card and Emily's PDF be included in the side panel of both index.html and play.html.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1719&start=0#p11213
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: IF/webcomic hybrid: Essence of Eternity
User: Harry Giles / DateTime: 2010-11-21 03:13:59

[quote="Biophysicist"]1) I would have thought "talk to fox" is pretty obvious. Or you could use the hint system... Which I may have forgotten to mention... I'll look into making it more obvious. (Probably add something like "Try 'talk to' instead." to the "Normal conversation options have been disabled" message.)[/quote]

Personally, I try to avoid ever assuming a command is obvious. That way lies frustrated players. Bare in mind that I'm someone who [i]used[/i] "talk to" instead of "ask/tell" in my game, and I didn't think to try it. Thinking about it, though, I reckon what happened was that the "Normal conversation options have been disabled" actively discouraged me from trying any other conversation verbs, so I tried attacking, forgiving, even kissing and every other action that's regularly implemented before hitting HINT, which is always unsatisfying. So yeh, I reckon adding more cueing to the error message would be a bonus.

[quote]3) Heh, other people have said they find it hilarious, so I'm confused. Any chance you could post your transcript?[/quote]

I'm afraid I didn't keep a transcript. But no need to be confused: different people have different senses of humour. You've no obligation to amuse everybody, but, depending on what audiences you want to reach, I thought it might be useful to know that tnhe range of appeal might be more limited than it could be. So for what it's worth: I don't tend to laugh at snark, find words like "failtard" tiresome rather than funny, and I found the "massively powerful entity talks in overly casual language!" and "incompetence and non-sequiteur abound in this apparently serious situation!" humour a bit old. Maybe this is why I'm very picky about webcomics.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1715&start=0#p11214
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: About a Llama Adventure
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-11-21 05:24:16

[quote="Peter Pears"]However, there doesn't seem to be enough interest in the matter one way or another. I pointed it out to Maher when I e-mailed him about Filfre, a long time ago. He replied that due to the way the text was output, there was no easy way to achieve the "flowing" effect... but he didn't seem too bothered about it. And I can understand why - no one else seems to be.[/quote]

I take it all back. Apparently, there IS interest in the matter, it just hadn't been brought up yet. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=150#p11215
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Siavash / DateTime: 2010-11-21 05:57:51

Hi, I'm Siavash. I'm Iranian and have lived my whole life in Tehran. During the rise and fall of commercial IF in the 80s I was yet to be reincarnated to my current soul, in other words I'm 20.
I became familiar with interactive fiction just a few weeks ago while reviving some old memories of "The Lone Wolf" books. I became so excited, started learning Inform and I'm already thinking about doing a game. anyway it's nice to meet you all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=70#p11216
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-21 06:39:43

[quote="Laroquod"]Maybe give it a 'show_IF_card' boolean variable which is easy to flip off early in the page's source, without having to decipher any of the flow of execution... that is, short of a preference checkmark in the IDE itself, which would probably be ideal.[/quote]

Yes, I was assuming that it would be listed alongside the many other release options that put links or features on the web page. You can already add a link to the file to website template by just saying "release along with a file called 'IF Card.pdf', but if we think that the card is useful to newbies--and it sounds like it has already shown itself to be--it seems like we ought to consider giving it official status, like the longer PDF intro to IF has. 

I also think it's worth thinking of slicker ways to integrate it than just a link to a PDF. Essentially, it's the equivalent of those concise splash-screen tutorials that so many Flash games use. One idea would be putting it in a [url=http://orangoo.com/labs/GreyBox/]greybox[/url]-style javascript pop-up, so that it can easily be brought up as needed during play, without a download. Something like that would, I think, increase the chances that new players will actually refer to it as they play.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1720&start=0#p11217
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: IF Authors' Group: An idea for developer mutual aid
User: Harry Giles / DateTime: 2010-11-21 08:18:15

[b]The General Idea[/b]

It seems that some people come to IF mainly from a writing background, and some people come to IF mainly from a programming background: both tend to be excited by the combination of writing and gaming, but are generally more proficient in one than the other; those equally proficient seem to be a talented minority.

I've been doing some thinking about how people could share their strengths and support each other's work, so that writers can become better programmers and programmers can become better writers. At the moment, I'm thinking along the lines of creating a space where writers and programmers can meet up to provide constructive criticism and suggestions for each other's writing and programming.

I'm starting this thread to throw the idea out there, see how it's received, and see what will or ideas there might be for taking it forward.

[b]The Personal Background[/b]

I'm returning to authoring IF after a couple of years' absence, though I've been playing all that while. As I slowly get reacquainted with Inform, I'm rediscovering something about myself: I am not a natural programmer. I've got a logical enough mind to write serviceable code: I can make my game do what I want it to most of the time, and after extensive beta-testing it's reasonably (though not completely) bug-free. But I know that the code I write is not good: it's inelegant, generally too complex, doesn't always grasp the way the central concepts work, is filled with ugly workarounds.

I am, however, I think, a pretty decent writer. It's part of what I do as a job (of sorts). Another part of what I do is working as an editor and event organiser, so whatever my own writing abilities, I do have an experience of how writing works and a sensitivity to what good writing should do. I spend a lot of my time reading on and commenting on other people's work, and enjoy that.

I also really believe in collaboration and mutual support. I set very little store by the idea of the heroic lone author, and think that most writers benefit from sharing their work and asking for criticism. One of the lessons of the open source movement seems to be that the same is true of programming. 

So, faced with the problem of my weak programming skills, my natural reaction is to seek support and advice: I'd like to find people willing to look over my code and tell me where I'm going wrong. I'm not talking about debugging it or rewriting it for me, but rather look at it and saying “This bit is too complex: have a look at this bit in this manual which will help you rework it”, or “If you use that rule there it's likely to have impacts later on when you do such-and-such.”, and so on. Not debugging, but helping me improve my [i]style[/i].

But that's quite a lot to ask, so I started thinking about what I could offer in return. And, just as my code is serviceable but not good, I honestly think that the majority of IF is only serviceably written: the prose tends to do the job, but not much more than that. There's less understanding around of what makes good writing, of what makes good prose, than there is of what makes good code. There's a reliance on cliché and stock tropes, there's inelegant story-telling and poor grammar everywhere, and so on. So now I'm thinking: what if I could offer my services as a critical reader in return?

I run more than one writers' group where people get together to discuss their works in progress. So I suppose what I'm proposing is an online IF authors' group where people can share and discuss what they're working on, and seek criticism, support and advice.

[b]How It Might Work[/b]

I can see two main ways of this might work:

There could be a mailing list or forum where people regularly post parts of their game, asking all participants for constructive criticism on the code or the prose. There could be a timetable to this – in one writers' group I run each writer e-mails a poem every Saturday, and everyone responds with their comments, for example – or it could be open or free-flowing.
There could be a sort of matchmaking service, where people post about their IF and what kind of readers they're looking for, and people get paired off with each other on the basis of mutually compatible needs. The pairs would then proceed on whatever schedule best suits them.

There are probably other, better ways this might work. I'd love to hear comments on these thoughts and suggestions, other ideas for how this could work, and suggestions for how the whole idea could be moved forward.

[b]So[/b]

what do you think?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1701&start=0#p11218
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Post-comp thoughts about Ninja's Fate
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2010-11-21 09:49:15

[quote="Bainespal"]It was good of you to risk your own standing in the IF community to honor one who was such an outsider, Hannes.[/quote]
Well, I don't believe I had much of a standing to risk [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=150#p11219
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-21 10:07:10

Welcome to the forum, and good luck with the project.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1720&start=0#p11220
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Authors' Group: An idea for developer mutual aid
User: George / DateTime: 2010-11-21 11:56:52

My first thought is that your programming skills may not be as bad as you think [emote]:)[/emote]. 

That aside, author groups can take so many forms and we even have a few examples in the IF community past and present, from the TADS group that Jim Aikin started to the ongoing workshop the PR-IF runs, as well as one-off events like IF Month. I'm interested in hearing from those guys about what they think is successful and not. 

One challenge that online groups seem to face is keeping motivation up, so I think deliberately addressing that is a good idea -- whether you do this with regularly scheduled real-time chats/Skypes or something else.

I've seen some groups have a formal queue and quotas (so you can't put your work in the queue-to-be-reviewed unless you meet your quota-of-reviewing). That may be a good idea only for larger groups; a simple commitment to review once per week may work just as well for a smaller group as you mentioned.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1283&start=70#p11221
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Teaching IF to new players
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-11-21 12:59:12

That's a fantastic idea, Erik. I've just made a [url=http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/1240511-include-andrew-plotkin-s-if-instruction-card-as-a-]UserVoice suggestion[/url] for this idea.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1701&start=0#p11222
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Post-comp thoughts about Ninja's Fate
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-21 16:54:36

I don't understand this. Why would a playtester be risking any standing by playtesting a game by an unpopular author? Not even in high school did I take social flack by helping out the wrong person with a project. Helping people is good. Judging someone just for helping someone you may not care for is kinda... petty and ridiculous? Yes? Or did I just wake up in a mirror universe? 87

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1701&start=0#p11223
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Post-comp thoughts about Ninja's Fate
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-11-21 17:31:44

Having read through that post, I *think* the beta-tester in question was trying to work out how good a job of beta-testing and game-design-advising he'd done. 

If I'm reading that right, then "the placement of this game reflects on me as a beta-tester" would mean not "the placement of this game makes people in the community think I suck" but "the placement of this game indicates *to me* that my beta-testing instincts aren't yet good enough to tell me how a finished game will be popularly received, and/or that there might have been more I could have done to help it succeed."

I could be wrong, but I think (hope?) that there's no fear people are judging testers personally on those grounds. There are some people whose beta-testing work I know to be excellent, and I'm always encouraged when I see their names in the credits. But it certainly wouldn't diminish my opinion of them to see that they'd tested something that didn't turn out so hot, or wasn't to my taste. Beta-testing is one of the most important forms of public service one can do for the community, and I appreciate the effort these people put in.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1721&start=0#p11224
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Annotated transcripts
User: djfletch / DateTime: 2010-11-21 17:47:48

This year I was experimenting with annotating transcripts instead of writing reviews. They are at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.bubblycloud.com/ifcomp2010/">http://www.bubblycloud.com/ifcomp2010/</a>

David.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1721&start=0#p11225
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Annotated transcripts
User: Brian Rapp / DateTime: 2010-11-21 18:57:32

Thank you for the transcript of "Under, In Erebus", and congratulations.  Not everyone did nearly as well at solving the riddle.

A revised version which makes things progressively easier to manage is available at <a class="postlink" href="http://boutell.com/~rapp/erebus.html">http://boutell.com/~rapp/erebus.html</a>.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=30#p11226
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-21 21:33:29

Any activity that I do regularly enough to justify using a desktop application for, I almost always choose to use the desktop app rather than to do it in a browser. It's just superior. However, I'm damn glad that the web exists anyway. As important as it is to have an open and easily accessible web despite the fact that every computer system has its own applications; that's how important it is to be able to pick up and play IF in a browser despite the fact that every platform has its own interpreter(s), So stuff like Parchment and Quixe will turn out to be exactly as important to disseminating IF as the web is to disseminating tech news, which means it will turn out to be all-important. That still doesn't mean that I'm going to choose to play in a browser if I have other options for experiencing a particular work of art. But I don't see my personal choices as very relevant here.

I also would love to see a lot more experimentation with things the web can do that are a lot more difficult and cumbersome to achiev in a native app — like for example interoperating and exchanging data with other embeddable protocols like Flash, HTML5, and general AJAX programming. The web sports the greatest modular collection of interoperable media technologies the world's ever known. The real sweetness will come the more these technologies are combined and hybridised. Right now IF is still too much like a LEGO brick without very many pips, in that regard. (I'm talking about its place in the interoperable ecosystem here — I am not talking about any internal features or drawbacks of the programming languages involved.)

I want to see stunning things, visions of things I never would have thought of doing with an IF window. It's the web interpreters that will make those things the most possible.

It's weird how I can hate using web apps and love them at the same time like that, but I do — it's complicated. It all has to do with choosing the best tool for the job. What is the job? That depends entirely on the individual author and individual work of art. Playing Zork or Spider and Web in a web browser would drive me a little nuts with all the unnecessary inefficiency of the experience. Playing a different vision of IF in a web browser, on the other hand, a vision that could only be easily achieved in a web browser, because other web technologies are being leveraged — that would make me giddy with excitement to see that crossover potential, fulfilled.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1722&start=0#p11227
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Today's IE7 confusion: Grammar tokens must have the same....
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2010-11-21 22:50:02

Here's the source code that tripped me up today.

---------------

[color=#0000BF]Room 1 is a room.

Color is a kind of value.  The color are red and blue.

A cube is a kind of thing.  A cube has a color.  The color of a cube is usually red.  Understand "[color]" as a cube.  Understand "box" as a cube.[/color]

---------------

This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6F95) on its most recent run through:

Problem. You wrote 'Understand "box" as a cube'  : but grammar tokens must have the same outcome whatever the way they are reached, so writing a line like 'Understand "within" or "next to [something]" as "[my token]" must be wrong: one way it produces a thing, the other way it doesn't.

 See the manual: 16.13 > New tokens

---------------

I found this error message pretty confusing and banged my head on the wall for some time.  If I took out either Understand statement, it compiled just fine, but it kicked me back out if I had both of them.  Eventually, I found my problem:

[color=#0000BF]Understand "[color]" as a cube.[/color]

should have been

[color=#0000BF]Understand the color property as describing a cube.[/color]

My question is: was the error message appropriate to this circumstance?  I'm perfectly happy filing a bug report if this was a bug, but I feel like it might just be my failure to understand the error message, and I wanted to loop through for other people's thoughts before proceeding.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1719&start=0#p11228
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: IF/webcomic hybrid: Essence of Eternity
User: HoraceTorys / DateTime: 2010-11-21 23:12:48

Wouldn't there actually have to be sequential art to call it a webcomic/IF hybrid? Something like <a class="postlink" href="http://www.mspaintadventures.com/">http://www.mspaintadventures.com/</a>?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1721&start=0#p11229
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Annotated transcripts
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2010-11-22 00:15:46

I like this idea a lot. I don't know how you produced it--parsing any line where you commented?--but I think an abbreviated version where we just show the comment before you posted and the one after would be nice. That, or a collapse function. The next/previous links are handy but it would also be cool to see your comments all at once. Maybe you could make an outline at the start? That's a small nuisance, though.

Being able to convert transcripts to HTML might be really useful for beta testing and communication & if you have a perl script for it or something, perhaps other people could add to it and really customize it. The concept seems powerful beyond giving reviews, though it also worked well for that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1720&start=0#p11230
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Authors' Group: An idea for developer mutual aid
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-22 07:08:03

[quote="Harry Giles"]I've been doing some thinking about how people could share their strengths and support each other's work, so that writers can become better programmers and programmers can become better writers.[/quote]

This is interesting and I'll throw a little anecdote out there. I won't do my normal long-winded posting here but I will say that during my classes, writers often seemed to prefer TADS 3 to Inform 7 and the reason for that was because they felt that Inform too much tried to conflate the act of writing with the act of programming. They felt that there was a certain dislocation in terms of how they [i]thought[/i] about their writing tasks as distinct from their programming tasks.

So the idea of separation of concerns -- which is really what my writers were looking for -- is interesting because with the idea you are talking about, the separation would be done by person, rather than by the medium itself. That was something I tried as well. In my earlier classes -- and this goes back a few years -- I did have programmers and writers do "pair writing", as it were. (Sort of like pair programming, but more akin to how you would have a tester and a programmer work together rather than a programmer and a programmer. The reason this is relevant is because in such "pairing" you have programmers focus on the implementation, while testers focus on the intent. There is a corollary there with writers vs. programmers.)

One of the challenges I found in this with Inform 7 in particular was that people (even the programmers) needed better ways to think about how to "think in Inform." In other words, it was felt that certain idioms and even design patterns were lurking in the language but were not expressely called out. To be sure, some of those same charges could be leveled against TADS 3 but since TADS has a more traditional programming structure -- at least on the surface -- this was found to be less of a problem. I only bring that up because it mattered if the workshops were constructed with more than one language in mind.

In terms of how this was all done, in all classes where I had programmers and writers teaming up, I did something equivalent to the notion of a "spec workshop." (In the IT world, this has to do when business users, quality assurance, and developers get together to "spec" out a user story.) The issue here is that "effective programming technique" and "effective writing technique" are different domains and that middle ground ("effective programming supports the effective writing") becomes tricky because the programmers and the writers collaborate at very different levels. It often became very one-sided until I had at least more than one writer/programmer teaming up. But even then there was a tricky aspect because the writers often wanted to write their own story.

So it depends here if your focus is an active learning for each person's specific purpose or collaborative learning. In the latter case, you can almost run these things like writing workshops combined with programming "spikes." (For example, in my classes the goal was always to have a "spike solution" implemented at the end of the class for the given area being tackled.) That spike was then discussed with the class -- both programmers and writers -- so that there was understanding across domains. This way I allowed writers to still work on the story they wanted to work on (active learning) but allowed some discussion of overall technique, design considerations, and implementation (collaborative learning). This allowed more cross-pollination as well between the writers and the programmers (similar to how you would encourage more of that between developers and business users in the software engineering world). This seemed to work to keep motivation alive because there was more interest in what was being done across the board rather than the self-interest of one writer's story or one programmer's game.

Now, your mileage may vary on this next point, but I tended to find that the writers ultimately wanted to be more involved and hands-on -- and, in fact, doing the programming work -- once they were confident they had a good grasp of the techniques they could use to get what they wanted to achieve. A certain "programmer lockout" had to be watched for. I should also note that it did help when the programmers had some background in game design as well, such as story frameworks, movement impetus, architectural pressure, challenge modulation, and so on. That was one way that the "programmer lockout" was avoided because the programmers could clearly keep articulating ways to incorporate game-focused thinking into the more writer-focused aspects of dialogue, exposition, pacing, and so forth.

(Hmm. What was that I said about [i]not[/i] doing a long-winded posting?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1721&start=0#p11231
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Annotated transcripts
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-11-22 07:12:20

Seems like a good opportunity for some self promotion: [url=http://nitku.net/if/beautifier/]IF Transcript Beautifier[/url] does all that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1553&start=10#p11232
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: A brand new system - Quest 5.0
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-11-22 07:24:09

[quote="Alex"]With Quest 5.0 I plan to give the best of both worlds - the Script Editor will default to the point-and-click style of Quest 4, letting you choose commands from various categories and populating their parameters according to prompts, but it will also let you switch to a code view so you can write code by hand as well. Hopefully this will make it appealing to beginners but without slowing down people more comfortable with programming.[/quote]

This is really intriguing to me. I'll be honest here and say I haven't used Quest at all. I did partially introduce some classes on textual IF to the Adrift system and they were quite intrigued. It sounds like Quest may have some similarities in approach which would also be welcome.

I'm almost wondering at this point if I shouldn't try to plan a class with both Adrift and Quest. Prior to this, I've largely focused on Inform and TADS 3. But now you've got me thinking ...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1719&start=0#p11233
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: IF/webcomic hybrid: Essence of Eternity
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-22 07:49:49

It seems like kind of an IF/MS Paint Adventures hybrid to me, with the IF taking the place of the art (instead of looking at a picture you play an IF game), and the real effect on the storyline coming from the suggestion box.

I didn't enjoy the failtard joke much either -- may not be in the target demographic -- but I did like the explanation of why Athena had been chosen. Anyway it's cool to see someone doing something new with the form, and an IF that plays out in lots of good episodes seems like a good idea; more newbie friendly. But I won't have to play through all the episodes every time a new one posts, will I?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1720&start=0#p11234
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Authors' Group: An idea for developer mutual aid
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-11-22 09:06:48

I'd love to be in on something like this.  I'm not really satisfied with where I am on a programming or writing level, though.  I think I'm a pretty decent writer outside of IF, but once it comes down to chopping things into bits, things go wibbly.  

I'd like to see something where regular work of some kind was expected; I tend to go through dry spells, and a little extra encouragement to get something down, even if it's only an object description, would be helpful.  I suspect regular real-time chats will be a real challenge for most people, given the diversity of locations and schedules.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1722&start=0#p11235
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Today's IE7 confusion: Grammar tokens must have the same
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-11-22 09:37:45

I would have read that error message – [quote]but grammar tokens must have the same outcome whatever the way they are reached, so writing a line like 'Understand "within" or "next to [something]" as "[my token]" must be wrong: one way it produces a thing, the other way it doesn't.[/quote] – as saying that Inform can't tell, after reading that line, whether '[my token]' is meant to be a token for a thing (the [something] mentioned) or not. (In which case the reference to the manual should possibly be to section 16.14 > Tokens can produce values rather than to 16.13.)

However, Inform shouldn't have the SAME trouble with your 'cubes' that are explicitly asserted to be things,  should it? 

There seems to be something fishy here, but I'm not sure that it isn't really my understanding of it that's muddy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1722&start=0#p11236
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Today's IE7 confusion: Grammar tokens must have the same
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-22 10:13:53

This looks like a bug. The line

[code]
Understand "[color]" as a cube.
[/code]

...shouldn't define a grammar token at all. A token-defining line would have a bracketed string on the right, e.g.:

[code]
Understand "hue [color]" as "[hue]".
[/code]

The lines

[code]
Understand "box" as a cube. 
Understand the color property as describing a cube.
[/code]

...are *not* defining a new grammar token; they're defining synonyms for a class of object. (That ultimately affects the parsing behavior of the built-in "[something]" token.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=30#p11237
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-22 10:26:25

This is getting back to outreach stuff, rather than the question of why on earth an experienced player like me still plays in browsers, but I was looking back at the JayIsGames threads that really reintroduced me to IF, and I think they're instructive.

First, [url=http://jayisgames.com/archives/2006/01/ifiction_zarf.php]this thread on zarf[/url], where a bunch of games by Emily Short and Adam Cadre and others are mentioned in comments. All zarf's games were playable in Zplet, and there was a link to an online-playable version of Galatea; the links to Adam's and Emily's pages have rotted, but I think there were a bunch of online-playable games there too. (As an aside, Spider and Web wasn't a great choice for my third IF game. This is not a comment on Spider and Web.) 

A few months later you have [url=http://jayisgames.com/archives/2006/11/floatpoint.php]this thread[/url] about Floatpoint. About 90% of the comments are about how to get it to run.

Then in 2008 there's [url=http://jayisgames.com/archives/2008/05/weekend_download_interactive_fiction_edition.php]this download thread[/url] about IF, with Galatea, Delightful Wallpaper, The Elysium Enigma (TADS), and Tales of the Traveling Swordsman (HUGO). Note the commenter who says "I think Galatea is awesome. I've been hoping to try an IF that didn't require a download, and this one really intrigues me. I may have to try downloading some more IF games"; she actually wound up  [url=http://jayisgames.com/archives/2010/10/interactive_fiction_competition.php]reviewing IFComp 2010 on JiG[/url].

This doesn't really prove that online play is super-important and that file formats confuse people, but I'm willing to marshal it in support of my preexisting prejudices.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1720&start=0#p11238
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Authors' Group: An idea for developer mutual aid
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2010-11-22 11:30:54

Count me in, too. I've had a lot of projects that have helped me learn stuff, though there are some areas I keep avoiding out of general fear. Right now there's so much I don't know I can always find something easy, but it won't always be that way.

If I had someone to push me on the stuff that gave me trouble, and if I could do the reverse for them, that'd be a wonderful boost.

With Inform, or really any sort of programming, it's useful to have a bunch of people who may know something you don't and know how to present it well. I mean, there is a lot of good documentation, but it needs to be general to get the point out to as many people as possible. I've found even the Inform 6/7 questions on this message board to be valuable, and if there was a more directed and formal and scheduled way for people of various levels to learn and trade information, I'd be in for that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1723&start=0#p11239
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Interviews with Infocommies
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2010-11-22 12:56:41

I've gathered up a list of links to interviews with many prominent Infocom authors including: Steve Meretsky, Dave Lebling, Marc Blank, Bob Bates and others.   I've also included a few excerpts.
Enjoy!
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com/2010/11/infocommies.html">http://www.z-machine-matter.com/2010/11 ... mmies.html</a>
--Zack

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1722&start=0#p11240
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Today's IE7 confusion: Grammar tokens must have the same
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2010-11-22 13:02:58

Thank you both.  I'll file a bug report.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=30#p11241
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-11-22 13:33:48

Also, when JayIsGames [url=http://jayisgames.com/archives/2009/05/dead_like_ants.php]featured [i]Dead Like Ants[/i][/url], we see the comment:

[quote]I'd love if you guys would host more IF on your online interpreter. I know you have to get permission to do so, but I'd love to see more IF on JIG that doesn't require downloading.[/quote]
I'd give them permission, if their online interpreter could play TADS games.  T_T

I don't think anyone can seriously dispute that clicking a link is simpler than downloading a file, installing an interpreter and running the former with the latter.  At the very least, it's [i]quicker[/i], and I often play IF games online because I just want to sample the opening. On the other hand, there are plenty of people who are happy to download games, or who [i]prefer[/i] to.

(I usually always release a Windows executable version of my games along with the game file, which is one of the many things I did differently for IFComp - I expect IFComp players to either understand about interpreters, or to have found the comp by a link that explains them.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=30#p11242
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-11-22 13:57:42

One of my goals with porting Gargoyle to the Mac was to release a multi-format interpreter that would work on all three platforms, which could be recommended to new players without needing to consider what platform they used.

Speaking as someone who only arrived on the IF scene three years ago, I remember floundering for a while trying to find a program that would play IF. I used ZMPP for quite a while until a thread on raif directed me toward Gargoyle. (Ironically, the poster was lamenting the unmaintained state of the project.)

Despite Gargoyle's popularity it is unusual to find it mentioned by any of the IF authoring projects. I don't believe it appears anywhere on the Inform or TADS sites. I can understand why this might be; Gargoyle's "lowest common denominator" approach means that it rarely shows off the strengths of a given format. Creators are understandably reluctant to promote a sub-optimal experience for their work.

At the same time, there's a network effect for creators as more potential players have Gargoyle installed. Treating every format as a story file to be played gives people confidence that technical barriers will not prevent them from getting the game to start, and makes them more willing to try a game as a consequence. It also promotes a form of IF literacy; most if not all talented IF authors are conversant with games from a broad spectrum of formats, and encouraging the audience to play them can only mean an enriched appreciation of the author's own contributions.

I cannot deny the importance and appeal of web-based IF, but at the moment that progress threatens to reignite the format wars of the last decade, when the most salient characteristic of a game was whether or not it could run in your Z-Machine interpreter. The results of that are still with us today, in the form of voter preferences during IF Comp, and it seems we are destined to indoctrinate a new generation of players along similar lines.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=30#p11243
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-22 14:01:33

[quote="Pacian"]Also, when JayIsGames [url=http://jayisgames.com/archives/2009/05/dead_like_ants.php]featured [i]Dead Like Ants[/i][/url], we see the comment:

[quote]I'd love if you guys would host more IF on your online interpreter. I know you have to get permission to do so, but I'd love to see more IF on JIG that doesn't require downloading.[/quote]
I'd give them permission, if their online interpreter could play TADS games.  T_T[/quote]

Same commenter, it turns out. (The one who wound up reviewing IFComp 2010 for the site.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=30#p11244
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2010-11-22 14:23:32

[quote="Pacian"]I don't think anyone can seriously dispute that clicking a link is simpler than downloading a file, installing an interpreter and running the former with the latter.  At the very least, it's [i]quicker[/i], and I often play IF games online because I just want to sample the opening. On the other hand, there are plenty of people who are happy to download games, or who [i]prefer[/i] to.[/quote]
Yep. I'd need to adjust my browser settings and reconfigure my proxy to "play games online" (which is nonsense anyway, considering a Javascript based interpreter's first step will be to [i]download[/i] the respective game anyway). All that just to get an inferior experience - less stable, not conforming to my favourite colour settings, shaky save function etc. Not to mention the steep technical requirements (Internet connection, a 'graphical' environment,...). Personally, I see zero advantages over saving a story file locally and simply running it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=30#p11245
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-22 14:45:47

[quote]On the other hand, there are plenty of people who are happy to download games, or who prefer to.[/quote]

No, there are a tiny number of people who are happy to download IF games.

This thread is full of people in that tiny minority, but that does not prove me wrong. :)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1721&start=0#p11246
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Annotated transcripts
User: djfletch / DateTime: 2010-11-22 14:47:51

[quote="aschultz"]Being able to convert transcripts to HTML might be really useful for beta testing and communication & if you have a perl script for it or something, perhaps other people could add to it and really customize it.[/quote]
The HTML transcripting is a feature I've been adding to my Glk implementation, QGlk. A stable release with this in will be a while yet, but I keep meaning to put the source code somewhere public, so development versions may be around sooner.

The annotation I don't have proper tools for. When I was playing I typed annotations into the game marked with "aaa", which let me add their markup with a search and replace. Then I had to do a lot of manual repositioning.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=30#p11247
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2010-11-22 15:03:41

[quote="zarf"][quote]On the other hand, there are plenty of people who are happy to download games, or who prefer to.[/quote]

No, there are a tiny number of people who are happy to download IF games.[/quote]
Let me correct that for you:
[quote]No, there are a tiny number of people who are happy to [i]play[/i] IF games.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1724&start=0#p11248
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Following a Star - Post-Comp Release
User: Kivie / DateTime: 2010-11-22 15:36:17

Hello,
I have put together version 2 of The Bible Retold: Following a Star, fixing some bugs and adding minor story enhancements:
IFArchive link: [url]http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/glulx/FollowingAStar.zip[/url]

If any IF repository maintainers are reading this I'd be grateful if you can update links. I've done IFDB and IFWiki.

Thanks everyone,
Justin.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=30#p11249
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-11-22 16:06:23

[quote="zarf"]No, there are a tiny number of people who are happy to download IF games.[/quote]

It seems to me that players who take the step of downloading a story file are more likely to engage with it than players who will only play via a hyperlink. The latter may be more likely to make it to the first prompt, but if they are significantly more likely to abandon it at that point, the gain in raw audience numbers may be blunted by a disproportionate lack of commitment across the set of players.

Proving this contention is going to be difficult until some means of automated transcript submission gets picked up. But if we accept your claim at face value and agree that web-only players are fully as desirable, why are you developing [i]Hadean Lands[/i] as a downloadable application instead of gated but otherwise more broadly accessible web app?

It seems like your reasons for doing so boil down to your ability to offer a higher quality experience than you otherwise could. I agree with the commercial wisdom of this choice. I just don't think that the tiny number of people happy to download IF games [i]at the moment[/i] has any bearing on the willingness of potential players to download (and pay for) IF, or in any way demonstrates the inherent superiority of the web as the medium of presentation. It seems like you would have gone in a different direction if you truly believed that it did.

Also, I take issue with the "tiny" label. Gargoyle's last release had over 12,000 downloads - double counting some folks, to be sure, but also omitting anyone who installed the Debian packages. In the last 45 days, with a single announcement on raif mired in negative feedback, the new release has been downloaded 1800 times.

These are not huge numbers on the scale of global populations, or indeed more than a footnote on Activision's balance sheet, but they also represent only a fraction of the overall market in IF interpreters: the players passionate enough to download a dedicated interpreter and willing to use Gargoyle for this purpose. I doubt this amounts to more than 25% market share, all told, which gives us around 50,000 interested players. This is a couple orders of magnitude above the pessimistic estimates I routinely encounter. (The first approximation of community size I saw was in an article that suggested there were a few dozen authors and a few hundred players in the field.)

I would say "small" instead, and suggest that a small, devoted community can be far more valuable than a large but indifferent one. After all, fewer than 600 such people were enough to put your Kickstarter project well over the top. 50,000 players spending $5 on a game would put that title within striking distance of [i]Braid[/i] in terms of sales figures. At some point it stops making sense to underestimate the value of the players we already have.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1708&start=10#p11250
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Interactive fiction and VI accessibility
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-22 16:46:45

Having new commands is great for new games, but what about old games? How about having an interpreter command like "\status", that would be intercepted before the VM would get a chance at it and show the status in the main window?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=40#p11251
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-22 17:01:09

[quote]Let me correct that for you[/quote]

No, I meant what I said. 

[quote]It seems to me that players who take the step of downloading a story file are more likely to engage with it than players who will only play via a hyperlink.[/quote]

Maybe. But the prior probabilities are so wildly different as to swamp this concern.

(That is, a hundred people downloading my game would be thrilling. But I'd rather have ten thousand people *try* my game, even without having demonstrated that commitment.)

[quote]...why are you developing Hadean Lands as a downloadable application instead of gated but otherwise more broadly accessible web app?[/quote]

Several reasons, which are interconnected, but all stem from the requirement of selling a game. (A paywalled web app has several knocks against it, which I could start listing, but I think it would be a distraction.)

It is true that I'm thinking hard about polish and quality of play experience. But that's tangled up in all of these other decisions. If my commercial scheme were to release a free game with advertising, then I'd be thinking hard about how to polish Quixe and make a really good browser presentation.

Note, too, that you're comparing the idea of a web game to that of a *game app*, not of an interpreter application. If I do branch out to Mac and PC sales, I will still be selling some flavor of packaged downloadable app -- not a ZIP file containing an interpreter and a gblorb.

(Whereas the "special edition" form of HL *will* be a CD containing a game file and some interpreters. Because that makes sense for IF fans, and it's the fans who pre-order. I'll also note that while I uploaded a zblorb of the HL teaser, I forgot to link to it -- and it was two weeks before anybody asked about it.)

I guess we're fundamentally talking about two different target audiences. I am spending all my time and energy worrying about the people for whom IF is one entertainment option in a sea of available Internet monomanias. That means a one-button in-path is more important than *any* other feature -- whether that's the iPhone's "install" button or a hyperlink. The other target audience, the one I am (perhaps) maligning as "tiny", isn't outside my attention -- but I don't have to work to convince them of anything.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=40#p11252
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-22 17:08:19

TADS: I've just started rewriting Gnusto using code that will be much more transferrable. I think it would be feasible to write a new implementation of the T3 VM (remember that currently there is only 1 implementation, all the others are just ports of it!) With Jetty that would mean TADS 2 and 3 games could be played online. I think it would be better to have a team working on this though: if one person wrote the file decoder (which is kind of similar to Blorb or Quetzal), another wrote the objects system and another worked on the JIT the team could get it all finished a lot quicker. If we copied the way Gargoyle connects TADS to Glk that would make the IO work quick too. Ironically that would mean it wouldn't support HTML TADS [emote]:P[/emote]

As to web interpreters, I'd be interested in knowing how well they run in Links. Regardless... anyone who's not running a graphical system should be more than capable of finding and downloading IF terps. Those people are not really in Parchment's target demographic.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=40#p11256
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-11-23 03:37:12

[quote="zarf"][quote="Pacian"]On the other hand, there are plenty of people who are happy to download games, or who [i]prefer [/i]to.[/quote]No, there are a tiny number of people who are happy to download IF games.[/quote]
Not a correction, so much as a footnote.  I said "download games" not "download IF games".  Cave Story, Five Days a Stranger, Soldat and Knytt aren't played in a browser and are more widely known than any IF game.

I guess what I really meant was, "there are plenty of people who are happy to download [i]Windows[/i] games".  Which, again, is why I always include such a version in my releases.  (This isn't to say anything about the desire to download Mac or Linux games, except that I'm ignorant on that subject.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=40#p11257
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-11-23 05:30:32

[quote="bcressey"]Despite Gargoyle's popularity it is unusual to find it mentioned by any of the IF authoring projects. I don't believe it appears anywhere on the Inform or TADS sites. I can understand why this might be; Gargoyle's "lowest common denominator" approach means that it rarely shows off the strengths of a given format. Creators are understandably reluctant to promote a sub-optimal experience for their work.[/quote]
A lot of terps are mentioned in the [url=http://tads.org/tads3.htm]download page[/url], so I guess it's just a matter of writing a short note to MJR about it [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=40#p11258
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-23 07:27:32

[quote="Pacian"]Cave Story, Five Days a Stranger, Soldat and Knytt aren't played in a browser and are more widely known than any IF game.[/quote]
 
Well, than any recent IF game. I reckon Zork is more well known than any of these, even pre-Black Ops. Of course that's not because you can play it in a browser (and maybe it's not as true among younger folk). 

[quote]I guess what I really meant was, "there are plenty of people who are happy to download [i]Windows[/i] games".  Which, again, is why I always include such a version in my releases.  (This isn't to say anything about the desire to download Mac or Linux games, except that I'm ignorant on that subject.)[/quote]

Hard to say about the desire to download Mac games, at least among the indie gaming community, because most of those games seem not to be made for Macs; to the extent to which downloadable indie games often seem not to even specify that they're for Windows, because it's taken for granted. (Which is their prerogative; the extra hassle of porting things to the Mac may not be worth the relatively small increase in user base.) That may have influenced me to be more interested in browser games; dunno. I do play Cave Story, which is the only game of those four that plays on a Mac.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=40#p11259
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-23 10:30:00

[quote="Pacian"]I said "download games" not "download IF games".[/quote]

Ah, I missed that distinction.

[quote="Pacian"] Cave Story, Five Days a Stranger, Soldat and Knytt aren't played in a browser and are more widely known than any IF game.[/quote]

Sure. But then, the aggregate number of room-escape games (snack-sized first-person graphical IF) dwarfs all of those, and those are almost universally Flash applets. (Supported by web ads.)

Then there are the hidden-object games, which are not adventures per se but have close enough mechanics that (at this point) most of them have some Myst-style element to them. Those are almost universally pay-to-download Windows and Mac apps.

So I don't know what that proves, except that if you want to charge money for your web game, you'd better figure out a way to make the core gameplay free. (Either sell ads, sell t-shirts, or charge for add-ons.)

But charging money is not what *most* IF people are concerned with. My own personality flaws aside. :)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=50#p11260
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: Harry Giles / DateTime: 2010-11-23 10:31:45

Bummer:

"I'll just make a simple story," I thought to myself, a few weeks ago. "I'll ease myself back into programming."

Ha! [i]Ha![/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=40#p11261
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-11-23 11:44:29

I have an expectation (right or wrong) that *most* games requiring download are more polished than their web counterparts.  I'm completely happy to randomly try a flash game on Kongregate, but I need some recommendation or hook to download.  The same's true for IF, usually; although I can grab a game from IFDB and open it directly in my interp, if I'm going to save it, I want a more polished experience.  

I'm beginning to download more Windows app. games, but that's largely because I've found a couple reviewers I trust.  

I think web-playable snippets for games that require download are a very, very good idea - the first few turns, or some crucial decision - something that gives players a chance to prove that it's worth their click.  Because there is more setup involved, and especially for new players, there can be a significant number of sorting out to do.  (Ask me how many interps and versions of interps I downloaded the first week I started playing.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=40#p11262
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-23 12:21:11

How many interps and versions of interps did you download the first week you were playing?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1725&start=0#p11263
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Command not understood: a problem with command ambiguity
User: Harry Giles / DateTime: 2010-11-23 12:38:51

I have two understand rules in my game which share a word, and something a bit odd is happening as a result. Here are the relevant bits of code (though why they are what they are is going to be a bit opaque without a lot of context):

[code]Dancingwards is a direction.

Clubbing is a region.

Entranceway is a room in Clubbing. Dancing is a room in Clubbing. at the Bar is a room in Clubbing. at the Seats is a room in Clubbing. Second Hallway is a room.

Dancing is dancingwards of Entranceway. Dancing is dancingwards of at the Bar. Dancing is dancingwards of at the Seats. Dancing is dancingwards of Dancing.

The dance is a backdrop in Entranceway. 

Understand "dance", "dancing", "the dance" and "the dancing" as dancingwards when the player is in Clubbing. 

The boy is a man.

The loners are scenery in at the Seats. After examining the loners for the first time: now the boy is in at the Seats.

Understand "dance with [the boy]" as taking when the boy is in at the Seats.[/code]

When the player types "dance" it ought to make the player go dancingwards to dancing, unless the boy is in at the Seats. But instead we get the "command not understood" error: "I didn't understand that sentence". When the boy is in at the Seats, however, the taking action takes place fine. (I had originally made a new action called "dancing with" with the command "dancing with [something]", but that caused the same problem, so I tried something else: no dice.)

I tried to muddle through this and wondered if, as detailed in Documentation 16.21-22, the 'Understand "dance with [the boy]"' rule was taking precedence over the 'Understand "dance"' rule, so I tried adding

[code]Does the player mean going dancingwards: it is very likely. Does the player mean taking: it is unlikely.[/code]

but that didn't seem to do anything.

I've been at it for a while now, and I'm completely stumped: I'm not sure what's going on (turning on RULES and ACTIONS listing while playing yielded no information), let alone how to fix it. Part of the problem is that I can't work out what rule causes the "command not understood" error to be printed. How does one figure out such things? And does anyone have a solution to this problem? Any help much appreciated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=40#p11264
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-11-23 12:45:05

I'm so glad you asked!  Around 10, including ADRIFT/TADS terps.  And that was mostly because I couldn't quite figure out where I was going wrong.  The community's system of creative naming of file extensions and interps made it difficult to match, and I had real difficulty getting my hands on updated copies of a few interps.  Well, it wasn't difficult per se, but it took time and effort.  Often I'd run into an error, and just go download a new interp rather than trying to figure out what the actual problem was.  I still need to go in and clean out the ones I never use, but that means working out which I do use, and which I might use but just haven't for awhile, and which I might like better if I used them, and that ranks somewhere below defragmenting my hard drive on the list of fun things to do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1725&start=0#p11265
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Command not understood: a problem with command ambiguity
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-23 13:02:56

[quote="Harry Giles"]Understand "dance", "dancing", "the dance" and "the dancing" as dancingwards when the player is in Clubbing.[/quote]

This line doesn't do what you think it's doing. "Dance" and variations are being understood as an object (in this case, a direction), not as an action. In other words, if you type: GO DANCE, then Inform will read this as "GO DANCINGWARDS", but it won't do anything with it at all if there is otherwise no action being triggered. And that's the problem you were running into.

What you really want is:

[quote]Understand "dance", "dancing", "the dance" and "the dancing" as going dancingwards when the player is in Clubbing.[/quote] 

However, Inform can't quite do that, because it doesn't allow for a full stored action (roughly, verb + noun) in that situation, only the bare action name--so, you can only get as far as "going" with this syntax. (Might be worth a suggestion, though, to try to get the functionality expanded to include stored actions.)

Anyway, here's one way to do what you're after:

[code]Understand "dance", "dancing", "the dance" and "the dancing" as going when the player is in Clubbing. 

Rule for supplying a missing noun while going when the player is in Clubbing:
	if the player's command matches the regular expression "danc":
		now the noun is dancingwards.
		
The block vaguely going rule is not listed in the for supplying a missing noun rules.[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&start=40#p11266
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2010 IF Competition
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-11-23 13:19:07

[quote="zarf"][quote="Pacian"]I said "download games" not "download IF games".[/quote]Ah, I missed that distinction.[/quote]
(Probably because I didn't really make it clear, although I was thinking it at the time.)

[quote="zarf"]But then, the aggregate number of room-escape games (snack-sized first-person graphical IF) dwarfs all of those, and those are almost universally Flash applets. (Supported by web ads.)[/quote]
Absolutely.  I think browser games probably eclipse even major commercial releases in terms of how widely they're played (although, without access to the statistics, I'd guess Wii Sports might beat any individual browser game, ditto Tetris).

[quote="zarf"]So I don't know what that proves, except that if you want to charge money for your web game, you'd better figure out a way to make the core gameplay free. (Either sell ads, sell t-shirts, or charge for add-ons.)[/quote]
As part of your research it's at least worth looking into how Terry Cavanagh fared selling his Flash game VVVVVV (if you haven't already).

On the plus side, his demo was extremely widely played, on the negative side many of those players were vocally offended at the idea of having to pay for a Flash game, and then on the even positiver side he made a profit anyway.  (I also suspect that the same kind of new-school/old-school collision that fuelled the popularity of VVVVVV might be something you could tap into.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1725&start=0#p11267
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Command not understood: a problem with command ambiguity
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-23 13:45:23

Actually, I was partly misunderstanding what you were saying, I think. You were trying to simply create "dance" as a synonym for "dancingwards", so that it would be understood by Inform as a command for going of the form "[direction]". And it should indeed work that way, but (as you suggested), your use of "dance with" as a synonym for taking is interfering. Given this, the solution I posted above should be regarded as a workaround, not as the "right" way to do it.

I'm not sure if there's a way to force Inform to get Inform to prefer your synonym-turned-grammar (dance as synonym for dancingwards as short form for going) to your straight-up grammar (dance with as a synonym for taking). Maybe someone else could help with that. (By the way, the TRACE debugging command will show that Inform is only trying to match against the taking special case grammar.)

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1725&start=0#p11268
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Command not understood: a problem with command ambiguity
User: Harry Giles / DateTime: 2010-11-23 18:47:05

[quote="ektemple"]Actually, I was partly misunderstanding what you were saying, I think. You were trying to simply create "dance" as a synonym for "dancingwards", so that it would be understood by Inform as a command for going of the form "[direction]". And it should indeed work that way, but (as you suggested), your use of "dance with" as a synonym for taking is interfering. Given this, the solution I posted above should be regarded as a workaround, not as the "right" way to do it.

I'm not sure if there's a way to force Inform to get Inform to prefer your synonym-turned-grammar (dance as synonym for dancingwards as short form for going) to your straight-up grammar (dance with as a synonym for taking). Maybe someone else could help with that. (By the way, the TRACE debugging command will show that Inform is only trying to match against the taking special case grammar.)[/quote]

I'm glad to know that my analysis of what's causing the problem seems to be correct, and the workaround you provided seems to work. Better still, I seem to understand why the workaround works. So thank you.

Now I just wish I understood why the problem's occurring! An extra datum: with the workaround in place, "dance" still produces "I didn't understand that sentence" when there is no location dancingwards of the current location, with TRACE again showing that in that case Inform is only trying to match against the taking special case grammar.

One thing which might help me understand: can you tell me how to find out what rule causes the "command not understood" error to be printed? I only know that that's the name of the error by searching through David Fisher's Custom Library Messages; I'm sure there must be a better way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1720&start=0#p11269
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Authors' Group: An idea for developer mutual aid
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-11-23 19:49:52

[quote="George"]as well as one-off events like IF Month. I'm interested in hearing from those guys about what they think is successful and not. [/quote]

There's a sense in which IFMonth [i]totally backfired[/i] for me personally: I spent so much of my [already tightly-budgeted because of schoolwork] time designing the site, putting together a mailing list, re-reading the DM4, writing blog posts, and uploading other people's games to actually, you know, write any IF myself.  So, as a tool for actually getting IF writing done, IFMonth was not so great.  However, some things turned out well: I learned some names of members of the community, which I still think of as my IFMonth friends (the first Comp 2009 game I played, other than my own, of course, was by one of them), and I had an excuse to get Goob to talk to some of us about narrative.  Writing the blog posts also encouraged me to get a little more rigorous about the theory side of things, though I like to think I have progressed since then.  And I get to claim to be partially responsible for the formation of PR-IF.  Two of those positives are directly related to the in-person meet-ups.

I'm still a great believer in the "just put together [i]something[/i]" ([url=http://crapart.spacebar.org/]more eloquently explained by an acquaintance here[/url]) school of overcoming the hurdles to [at least one form of] productivity.  I've also done some 24-hour comics, Ludum Dare, and my undergrad gallery show, Instamatique (which could be described as "24 hour dresses day"), and the experiences have been positive for me.  I also love implicit peer pressure as a motivating force for getting things done: if I tell someone (especially someone whose respect I want to keep) that I am going to do something, I am at least twice as likely to actually do it, even if that person doesn't actually care whether or not I do.  So the general structure of IFMonth was something that was influenced by my own productivity strategies.  It's not entirely clear to me whether this structure was optimal for the participants.  It's interesting that the dropoff in submissions was roughly equal among people I know personally and people "from the internet." (Data: 5 of 20 first assignment submissions vs 2 of 6 last assignment submissions from people I know.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1725&start=0#p11270
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Command not understood: a problem with command ambiguity
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-23 21:21:26

That error comes out of the "printing a parser error" activity; it's labelled the "didn't understand error".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1725&start=0#p11271
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Command not understood: a problem with command ambiguity
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-23 21:32:30

The basic problem is that the parser doesn't handle directions consistently with other verbs. Workarounds are all you're going to get, I'm afraid.

I would drop the idea of using "dance" as a direction. Handle "dance/dancing" as an special action (not "going", that's awkward); and then understand "go dance" and "go dancing" as the same action. (The carry-out rules for the action will have to be location-specific, obviously.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1720&start=0#p11272
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Authors' Group: An idea for developer mutual aid
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2010-11-23 23:30:23

Harry,
sounds very intriguing at a high level.  But I don't actually know what would be done here that isn't done already via these forums.  Are you suggesting a different medium for collaboration?  Or just an active way of soliciting collaboration?  

I'm working on my first IF piece (a murder mystery story) and while I find it rewarding, it is sometimes daunting to be programming solo without a solid grounding of how to think in Inform and without knowing all the best practices, design patterns, idioms etc.  (And the more I read on these forums, the more I think very few people have this down cold.)  

I'm happy to share what I uncover along the way with others and would love some convenient mechanism for getting input. (I would love to get someone to look at some of my code and make it more Inform-like in some areas.)   But I'm also not looking to just hand-off my design document and the working prologue and ask someone to finish it. (Maybe if I run out of time, that might happen.)

Perhaps it would be enough to declare December (or perhaps through Feb 1) as a time to encourage folks to start on a new game, and set some milestones, sort of like NaNoWriMo (national novel writing month) or IFmonth.  Could easily make it possible for folks to check-in their progress, share tips, share code excerpts, curse Inform's documentation [emote]:-)[/emote]  and at the end all drink beer, whether real or virtual.  

That said, it might be good to understand what worked or didn't work about IFmonth.

--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1725&start=0#p11274
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Command not understood: a problem with command ambiguity
User: Harry Giles / DateTime: 2010-11-24 03:16:15

[quote="zarf"]The basic problem is that the parser doesn't handle directions consistently with other verbs. Workarounds are all you're going to get, I'm afraid.[/quote]

Thanks for the clarification. Is this the kind of thing I should send in as a bug report, or is this limitation well understood?

[quote]I would drop the idea of using "dance" as a direction. Handle "dance/dancing" as an special action (not "going", that's awkward); and then understand "go dance" and "go dancing" as the same action. (The carry-out rules for the action will have to be location-specific, obviously.)[/quote]

Aye, I think a rewrite of this whole bit is a good idea. Though this is actually part of a clumsy attempt to allow navigation in a particular area by room name. However, I've now rediscovered the "go by name" ideas in 16.7, so I reckon that's the best option.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1725&start=0#p11275
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Command not understood: a problem with command ambiguity
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-11-24 05:37:39

If you specifically want the functionality of the going action, it seems you could redirect a newly defined going dancing action to the action of going dancingwards:

[code]Going dancing is an action applying to nothing.
Understand "dance", "dancing", "the dance", "go dance", "go dancing" and "the dancing" as going dancing. 

Check going dancing when the actor is not in Clubbing: say "There's no dancing going on around here." instead.
Carry out going dancing when the actor is in Clubbing: try going dancingwards instead.
[/code]

Don't know what draw-backs there may be, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1725&start=0#p11276
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Command not understood: a problem with command ambiguity
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-11-24 07:26:27

[code]
Instead of dancing when the player is in clubbing:
   move the character to the dance.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1720&start=0#p11277
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Authors' Group: An idea for developer mutual aid
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2010-11-24 10:24:13

[quote="George"]the ongoing workshop the PR-IF runs, as well as one-off events like IF Month.[/quote]

I've participated in these two, so I can say a little something.

In short, the best thing about both of them was having a deadline and a group of people I had to show something to.

The IF Month was set up as a learning thing, and it was very effective at that for me. I was able to dip my toes into IF programming with some guided help, which really was a great way to do it. Having that blog post to read and also being pointed at other sources to read helped focus things.

Grue Street, the PR-IF semi-regular workshop (we need to have another one soon), works nicely because of the in-person-ness. Everyone is required to bring something, at the very least some small bit of interactivity, and then everyone else gathers around and plays that person's thing, generally with the author keeping quiet. It's not only a good motivator to get at least some work done, but it's great to be able to watch live as people play with your work, and you can pretty quickly see ways in which your implementation could be improved, things that you thought were obvious but that are actually not obvious, etc. I could see this possibly being turned into a live remote thing, where people get on some kind of voice chat thing and play together remotely.

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1726&start=0#p11278
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Recognizing New Kinds
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-11-24 10:53:23

Frankly I have not a single idea as to why this wouldn't work. 

[code]Clothing is a kind of thing. Clothing is usually wearable. 
A dress is clothing. A dress is in the Bedroom. 

Check inserting things into closet:
	if the thing is not clothing:
		say "That really doesn't belong in the closet." instead.[/code]

If I try to put the dress into the closet, it will still say that "That really doesn't belong in the closet" even though I defined it as clothing.

Thank you in advance.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1726&start=0#p11279
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Recognizing New Kinds
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-11-24 11:03:00

The problem is that "the thing" doesn't refer to the thing you're trying to put in the closet. In English the connection is strongly implied so a human reader understands the intended meaning but Inform takes everything literally, in this case it understands that line as "if there is a thing that is not clothing" which is always true. Instead of "thing" you need to use "noun" which refers to the object that's being handled.

[code]Check inserting things into closet:
   if the noun is not clothing:
      say "That really doesn't belong in the closet." instead.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1726&start=0#p11280
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Recognizing New Kinds
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-24 11:48:22

As I understand it, one way to think of this is that I7 almost always treats "the" and "a" interchangeably (I think the main exceptions are in the handling of definite/indefinite articles when saying object names, and in some set phrases like "end the story"). So "If the thing is not clothing" compiles to the same thing as "If a thing is not clothing," which is almost always true.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1726&start=0#p11281
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Recognizing New Kinds
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-11-24 11:57:19

Thank you. It works. I was wondering though; do you mean that Inform believes there is a thing called clothing and only that thing can be put in the closet? Or am I completely misunderstanding you? If it is the former, why? The word clothing is already specified as a kind, so wouldn't Inform understand the line as "if there is a thing that is not a clothing-kind" similar to how it recognizes that certain actions can't apply to inanimate objects? I'm sorry if that's a dumb question.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1726&start=0#p11282
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Recognizing New Kinds
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-11-24 12:07:32

No, it's only the wording of the phrase you used. "Thing" means "any thing at all", but "noun" means "the thing in question".

"if the thing is not clothing" belongs to the same group as the following:

[code]
A wolf is a kind of animal. A wolf can be hungry.
If a wolf is hungry: ... [if any wolf in the game is hungry]

Clothing is a kind of thing.
If clothing is worn by the player: ... [if the player is wearing anything]

If a door is open: ... [if any door is open]

If a person is in a container: ... [if any person is in any container]
[/code]

So following this logic, and remembering that Inform generally does not make a difference between "a" and "the",

[code]
If [the] thing is not clothing: ... [if there is a thing that is not clothing.]
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1720&start=0#p11283
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Authors' Group: An idea for developer mutual aid
User: murphy_slaw / DateTime: 2010-11-24 12:11:39

[quote="George"]ongoing workshop the PR-IF runs[/quote]

Speaking of which, is anyone doing something like this in the San Francisco Bay Area? (I'm aware of the IF Meetup, but it doesn't seem like quite the same thing.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1720&start=0#p11284
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Authors' Group: An idea for developer mutual aid
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2010-11-24 12:52:13

I would think the SF IF meetup could incorporate this type of activity. Pls suggest it to Dan F. Might be good to have a venue where we could project a game and/or code onscreen.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1720&start=10#p11285
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Authors' Group: An idea for developer mutual aid
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2010-11-24 13:19:19

Projecting on a screen would probably work well, but we have always done it with just people gathered around a laptop, and it's worked fine. So, find a place to project if you can, but don't let not being able to easily find such a place stop you from doing it.

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1726&start=0#p11286
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Recognizing New Kinds
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-11-24 13:33:18

Thank you so much for that simple explanation. I think that concept has been tripping me up more than I know.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1727&start=0#p11287
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Dungeon Zork =/= Zork 1+2+3... Zork Complete?
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-11-24 14:51:46

The Original Pre-Split Zork had a few puzzles that didn't make it in to Zork 1-3 (they made it into Sorcerer instead).

Likewise, Zork 1-3 has items that never were in mainframe zork (the baseball puzzle, the wizard with his wand, the demon, the dragon, the dam (not damn) echo room solution, and most of Zork 3).

Items in Zork 2 (and even 3), are reminiscent of the split. For example, the gazebo in zork 2 just contains a load of items that were better placed in the original mainframe (or in zork 1, they just needed to also be here- such as the newspaper, the mat, the teapot). Or there was the teleporting table in Zork 3 that brought you to locations in Zork 1&2 (which always stuck me as odd, as going to zork 2 you find that the carousel room is still spinning).

I would like to see a Zork Complete game: one where you travel through the GUE, dealing simultaneously with the thief and the wizard, perhaps with the trophy case treasure hunt and demon treasure hunt happening simultaneously (or just combined into one larger hunt). For the very bold, perhaps you're even summoned away at one point to fulfil your role in Enchanter...

Such a game would change a lot of the puzzles in the Zork games, perhaps offering alternate solutions (such as using the teleporter table as part of the solution to the drafty room puzzle, or using the wand to fluoresce your way past the grue convention instead of using the grue repellent, or even using the wand to "Fire" that pesky thief, or "filch"ing the royal jewelry away instead of time travelling). 

That being said, surely there's some kind of copyright (copywrite?) issue involved in such an undertaking. How would one get the proper permission? Or is Zork considered public domain at this point? 

Maybe I'm the only one interested in such an undertaking. Does anyone else have any thoughts on this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1727&start=0#p11288
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Dungeon Zork =/= Zork 1+2+3... Zork Complete?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-24 15:23:06

Zork isn't public domain, it's still considered under copyright, and owned by Activision. I think the Zork 1-3 game files were distributed for free once or twice but that's not the same thing as releasing the [i]copyright[/i], which I highly doubt Activision would ever do voluntarily. The dudes who wrote Zork are still alive, and the 75-year countdown doesn't start until the author has passed away, so we've got about a century I'd guess before these works enter the public domain. Preposterous, I know, but there it is.

That said, if someone were to do what you propose and implement a kind of uber-Zork, I'd do my best to get my hands on a copy and try it out. 8)

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1727&start=0#p11289
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Dungeon Zork =/= Zork 1+2+3... Zork Complete?
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-11-24 15:53:31

I knew activision was the last copyright holder (due to Zork: GI), but I've seen it playable online all over the place, as well as in the modern call of duty, as well as having seen ports of Adventure and Dungeon made in I7, so I guess I was *hoping* that Activision just "didn't care" and let something like that slide...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1728&start=0#p11290
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Transcript bug?
User: lglasser / DateTime: 2010-11-24 16:22:42

Not sure where to ask this, but I'm running into something weird.  Sometimes when I use a transcript (using the >SCRIPT command) it doesn't record my input.  As an example:

I would write:

[code]>*Suggestion about this part.
Noted.

>South
Room Two.
You find yourself in room two, which is different from room 1.[/code]

but what shows up in the script is:

[code]>Noted.

>Room Two.  You find yourself in room two, which is different from room 1.[/code]

This happens with some games, not others.  It's happening to me with a .ulx, but also happened to me with Following a Star .blb from the IF comp (made me think they were all bugged).

I have a mac, running Zoom.  Any help would be appreciated!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1685&start=0#p11291
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Another Parchment question
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-11-24 16:58:37

k so another question. I'd like to be able to automatically run a command, as if the player had typed it and pressed enter. This MUST be done through JavaScript, because it involved data external to the game itself (from a PHP script). Anyone know how to do this? I'm not afraid to engage in hackjobbery, but don't really see like how to even go about starting this...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1719&start=0#p11292
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: IF/webcomic hybrid: Essence of Eternity
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2010-11-24 17:01:12

[quote]But I won't have to play through all the episodes every time a new one posts, will I?[/quote]
Of course not. That's why I'm trying to hack together this save/load system.

@failtard: That's actually not for humor. It's because I'm offended easily by swearing and refuse to put any in the comic, so I introduced a (bizarre) euphemism so that I can use that rather than saying stuff like "gosh darn it" or censoring everything.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1727&start=0#p11293
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Dungeon Zork =/= Zork 1+2+3... Zork Complete?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-11-24 17:08:29

[quote="tggdan3"]as well as in the modern call of duty[/quote]
Which, [i]is[/i] an Activision game, to be fair.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1685&start=0#p11294
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Another Parchment question
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-24 17:21:06

You could do that by listening for when the input is focused:

[code]jquery('body').delegate('.LineInput input', 'focus', function() {
   jquery(this).val('COMMAND');
   jquery('.LineInput').submit();
});[/code]

That should work I think.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1729&start=0#p11295
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Two Storey Rooms and Jumping from Windows
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-11-24 17:23:56

So I have a room in which there is a window-door. The window-door leads east, down to the backyard. However there is no direction east-down or at least I don't think there is. In any case the player should logically be able to type e and fall down to the backyard. However, on the first storey the dining room also leads east to the backyard since the dining room is directly below the first room. 

The problem is that a room can't, for all I can tell, be two storeys high. 

I know you can have something like "Instead of the player going west in the dining room: move player to backyard", but it conflicts with Emily Short's fancy status bar compass, since that direction will not be shown. Should I just get rid of the compass, or is there any way do this? 

Sorry for basically spamming this forum with my inevitably silly questions, and thanks for the help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1729&start=0#p11296
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two Storey Rooms and Jumping from Windows
User: eu / DateTime: 2010-11-24 17:35:29

Most IF would map the backyard east of both the upper room and the dining room, but only the lower story west of the backyard.  See Writing with Inform, section 3.3 for how to make that happen.  (There's also a nice bit on windows in section 3.6 of the Recipe Book, which does a more thorough simulation of altitude in Example 181, ``A Haughty Spirit.'')

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=30#p11297
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-Machine Standard 1.2 (draft)
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-24 18:02:13

I've updated the draft with my position on this issue, which is effectively that the 1.2 standard is orthogonal to any clarifications of the 1.0/1.1 specs. It would be wonderful to have them, but I don't think this spec is the appropriate place for them (as they won't depend on @gestalt) and I'm not up to writing those clarifications either.

<a class="postlink" href="http://curiousdannii.github.com/if/zspec12.html">http://curiousdannii.github.com/if/zspec12.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1729&start=0#p11298
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two Storey Rooms and Jumping from Windows
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-11-24 18:25:31

Nevermind. I figured out what I was doing wrong. Thank you for your help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1729&start=0#p11299
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two Storey Rooms and Jumping from Windows
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-24 19:50:02

[quote="Bistre"][code]Sample Room is a room. The window is a door. It is west of Sample Room and east of the Sample Yard.  

The Other Room is below the Sample Room and east of the Sample Yard.
[/code]

That simply leads to the typical "That's a contradiction" error. [/quote]

Hmyeah, if you didn't want to have a door there you could simply define a one-way connection between the Sample Room and the Sample Yard, but I think if you want a door you need to have a room on either side of it. So maybe define a dummy room, and when the player goes through the window automatically move them to the yard? Like so, but I'm not sure if it works:

[code]Sample Room is a room. The window is a door. It is west of Sample Room and north of Void.  

The Other Room is below the Sample Room and east of the Sample Yard.

After going to Void:
	say "You step through the window and fall to the sample yard.";
	move the player to Sample Yard.[/code]

The player should never be able to stay in Void; in a cursory test, going west from Sample Room yields the desired behavior. But I don't know if there are other problems with doing this by an "after" rule (for instance, it might mess with other going rules).

[EDIT: I originally had that as a Carry Out rule, but forgot to test it -- it doesn't work, because the standard "move player and vehicle" rule fires after my "carry out going to void" rule, so you wind up in Void with a quick trip through Sample Yard. Bluh.]

UPDATE: Here's the doorless version, with room descriptions:

[code]Sample Room is a room. "An open window stands to the west. Stairs lead down."
The Other Room is below the Sample Room and east of the Sample Yard. "A doorway leads west and stairs lead up."
Sample Yard is west of Sample Room. "A doorway leads east."
After going west from Sample Room:
	say "You step out the window and fall to the sample yard.";
	continue the action.[/code]

I7 tries to make connections two-way when it can, so the connections from Other Room are two-way, but when it gets to "Sample Yard is west of Sample Room" it's already put Other Room east of Sample Yard, so it just makes a one-way connection.

[And that "After" rule should probably be a report rule? going to stop writing awful code and do the work I need to be doing.]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1728&start=0#p11300
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Transcript bug?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2010-11-24 20:00:39

I think in Zoom, transcripting is automatic?

In one of the menus, choose 'save a transcript', and it will produce a file containing everything that's happened since you started the game. This extends to save games - if you come back on a different day, reload a saved game and then export a transcript, it includes everything that happened from the beginning of the game, not just from the beginning of the saved game file.

That's been my experience recently and I haven't touched any of Zoom's preferences. Also I never used the 'script' command before in my life.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1730&start=0#p11301
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Combining string variables?
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2010-11-24 20:34:43

It's time for me to ask for help.

I can't figure out how to combine string variables in I7.  What I want is to combine two pieces of text together and drop them in a third piece of text.  Some fake example code is below (and that last line most definitely doesn't compile - it's just to show what I'm trying to do).

--------------------

The first sentence is some text that varies.  The first sentence is "To be, or not to be?"
The second sentence is some text that varies.  The second sentence is "That is the question."
The third sentence is some text that varies.

To compose Hamlet's quip:
    now the third sentence is (the first sentence plus "  " plus the second sentence).

--------------------

Let us assume, for the sake of this example, that I am compiling a great number of quips and it is very ineffective to use a different variable for each one (so "now the third sentence is "[the first sentence]  [the second sentence]" would not do, since the meaning will be lost when I change the value in those variables.)

What's the correct way to do this?  Is it even possible?

Carolyn

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1730&start=0#p11302
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Combining string variables?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-24 20:44:02

Indexed text does this. If you have:

The third sentence is some indexed text that varies.
now the third sentence is "[the first sentence] [the second sentence]".

...that will do what you want; an indexed text variable is "rendered" when it's set.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1721&start=0#p11303
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Annotated transcripts
User: Michael Martin / DateTime: 2010-11-24 21:07:55

Nitku wrote a really great online [url=http://nitku.net/if/beautifier/]IF transcript beautifier[/url] which uses the traditional 

> * comment goes here

Syntax for transcript comments, though I believe it's also configurable.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1720&start=10#p11304
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Authors' Group: An idea for developer mutual aid
User: Neo / DateTime: 2010-11-24 21:08:59

Addressing the opening message post again:

I'm all for collaboration. I think it's the way IF will continue to grow and draw new audiences. But do all writers want to be programmers? And can--or should--they be?

As I put together my frist real piece of anything in Inform 7, I'm quickly realising that it's not as friendly as I'd hoped. The myth of it being easy to pick up and use by writers extends only as far as the basics. From my experience, anything else means learning lots of syntax rules, programming quirks and much referencing of the user manual. To be honest, I don't mind too much: I like the sense of satisfaction I get when my code *finally* works the way I want it to. But, I wonder if collaboration could be more about finding ways that people can retain their expertise, without necessarily having to learn someone elses...

I only say this because I read this thread a few days ago, and since then all I can think about is the way that Juhana approached the IF Trainer. Before any code was written at all, he wrote this based on a few ideas we bounced back and forth:

[url]http://www.inthecompanyofgrues.com/iftrainer/index.php?title=Mock_transcript[/url]

Even now, when I read through this I see something that any author could write with almost no knowledge of how to code. All that would be required was a basic knowledge of playing IF.

Yet, if you gave this transcript to someone who's adept at coding, they'd easily be able to create a game from it, and would already have the tone of the piece, numerous descriptions, and even a large chunk of dialgoue. Anything extra that's required of the author could be requested by the programmer once the majority of the game design and coding is done. (eg. Coder: "Hey, writer, could you write up another room that would be a secret place accessed by the player if they use the magic word XYZZY? That'd be awesome. Cheers." etc.) Or, you might have distinct writing/coding phases.

It might not be necessarily "mutual aid" as you propose, but it is mutual development. It also clearly marks the lines between work tasks, and possibly reduces the likelihood of "lockout".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1730&start=0#p11305
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Combining string variables?
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2010-11-24 21:22:29

[quote="zarf"]Indexed text does this. If you have:

The third sentence is some indexed text that varies.
now the third sentence is "[the first sentence] [the second sentence]".

...that will do what you want; an indexed text variable is "rendered" when it's set.[/quote]

Ah-hah!  That is extremely helpful.

Now, suppose (because the first example was fairly terrible in view of my ultimate goal) that I wanted to take the first sentence, combine it with the second sentence, and then apply it to an item description.  I understand that item descriptions are text, not indexed text.  Would something like this be the answer?

----------------

A Hamlet T-shirt is a wearable thing.  A Hamlet T-shirt has some indexed text called the visual.  Instead of examining the Hamlet T-shirt: say the visual of the Hamlet shirt.

The first sentence is some text that varies. The first sentence is "To be, or not to be?"
The second sentence is some text that varies. The second sentence is "That is the question."

To prepare the shirt description:
    now the visual of the Hamlet shirt is "The shirt reads: '[first sentence]  [second sentence]'".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=150#p11306
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Sequitur / DateTime: 2010-11-24 21:23:48

I'm Bruno, and I'm a film student from Brazil. I've been a lurker, player, and very occasional participator in the IF community for a while now, but lately I've decided to get started on an IF writing project, largely due to a confluence of three factors: Towards the end of the year, I'll have time for it; Inform 7 has really matured very nicely and is extremely usable; and I've actually had some experience with writing (I'm an honest to goodness screenwriter now, at least) that makes me more likely to actually get through a project. I have a great deal of ideas lying around and more than one game in some phase of planning or another, but I think I'll do much better with help and by participating in the broader IF community. So, hello everyone.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1730&start=0#p11307
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Combining string variables?
User: Sequitur / DateTime: 2010-11-24 21:36:00

I believe this works. I'm unsure of the performance effects of using a function v. using indexed text, but generally I feel it's 'cleaner' to use substitutions and 'to say' functions in order to build adaptive prose, rather than the lower-level operations involved in indexed text.

[code]
"Some text that varies"

The opening sentence is some text that varies.

The closing sentence is some text that varies.

To say full sentence: say "[opening sentence] [closing sentence]"

The Variant Room is a room. "A placard reads, '[full sentence]'"

When play begins:
	now the opening sentence is "Bob's";
	now the closing sentence is " your uncle!"

Fizbo is an action applying to nothing.
Understand "fizbo" as fizbo.

Carry out fizbo:
	now the opening sentence is "[one of]Robert[or]Jonah[or]Chris[or]Mark[at random]'s";
	now the closing sentence is "your [one of]uncle[or]roommate[or]grief counselor[at random]!"

Report fizbo:
	say "You feel a tingle run up your spine."
	
Test me with "fizbo / look / fizbo / look".
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1727&start=0#p11308
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Dungeon Zork =/= Zork 1+2+3... Zork Complete?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-24 21:37:22

Yeah, the Call of Duty thing is Activision using their own property.

Nitpick on the copyright expiration date: The Infocom works go out of copyright 95 years after publication. (They say "copyright Infocom". The rules are different for works of corporate, as opposed to individual, authorship.)

Activision has traditionally not objected to ports of the MIT version of Dungeon, and they've been good about allowing new games set in the Zork universe. You could try to find Laird Malamed's email address and ask for permission.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=40#p11309
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: Sequitur / DateTime: 2010-11-24 21:46:45

I'm going to humbly suggest to posters upthread that they don't pick up [i]The Moral Premise[/i], or any Hollywood screenwriting manual, without first having a look at the sources they draw upon, in this case Lajos Egri's [i]The Art of Dramatic Writing[/i]. Not to say there's anything bad about Hollywood screenwriting manuals like Syd Fields' and Robert McKee's work, but that they tend to focus too much on formula and too little on the grounding and theory that make the formula work. Hell, if you want to really be informed when you approach Syd Fields, you have to go all the way back to Aristotle.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1730&start=0#p11310
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Combining string variables?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-24 21:47:46

[code]
A Hamlet T-shirt is a wearable thing. A Hamlet T-shirt has some indexed text called the visual. Instead of examining the Hamlet T-shirt: say the visual of the Hamlet shirt.
[/code]

That will work. Or you could set the description of the shirt to "[visual of the shirt]", although that brings up some line-break hassles.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1730&start=0#p11311
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Combining string variables?
User: Sequitur / DateTime: 2010-11-24 21:51:27

Oh, gah, I think I rather misunderstood what the original poster was trying to accomplish. [emote]:oops:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1730&start=0#p11312
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Combining string variables?
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2010-11-24 22:40:10

Thanks for your help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1729&start=0#p11313
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two Storey Rooms and Jumping from Windows
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-11-24 22:41:48

I had dummy rooms at first, but...now I can't remember why, but the effect didn't work out quite as I wanted. I think it was due to the compass thing.  In any case, I ended up with something like this: 

[code]The window is a door. It is west of Sample Room and east of the Sample Yard. The Other Room is below the Sample Room. The Sample Yard is west of the Other Room

Instead of going up [or climbing] in the Sample Yard, say "I don't think so."[/code]

To stop that weird report detour "why are you trying to go east when you are already here" thing, I used a before rule.

[code]Before going east in the Sample Yard:
	move the player to Other Room;
	stop the action.[/code]

[But your "awful code" is much appreciated and not awful at all! Thank you for your help. That is a ton less clunky than mine was.]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1720&start=10#p11314
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Authors' Group: An idea for developer mutual aid
User: George / DateTime: 2010-11-24 22:41:56

Slightly OT, that'd make for an interesting minicomp. People sign up as programmers and/or writers, then the programmers get (randomly?) transcripts to implement.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1729&start=0#p11315
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two Storey Rooms and Jumping from Windows
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-24 22:59:51

Oops, I totally forgot about the compass, which I don't have installed. I think it'd work fine with the no-door version, but as you could tell not with the door version.

Anyway, thanks for the compliment on the code, and definitely don't try to do anything with it without a lot more testing than I've given it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1719&start=0#p11316
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: IF/webcomic hybrid: Essence of Eternity
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-11-24 23:02:23

That's kind of an odd way around it -- I can't be the only one who is more offended by variants of "retarded" as a slur (likewise "gay," of course) than the common fornication and religion-based swears.  If the goal is to minimize offense, perhaps you could take a page from [url=http://io9.com/350163/frak-off-weve-got-the-best-swear-words-from-scifi]science fiction television shows[/url] and make up something more ridiculous?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1720&start=10#p11318
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Authors' Group: An idea for developer mutual aid
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-25 02:23:46

My experience of the writer/programmer dichotomy is that writers often want programmers to collaborate with and often believe in the division of labour, conveniently keeping most of the inspiring stuff to themselves. Whereas programmers want to play both sides because coming up with neat content to implement is where most of the fun is.

Somebody who programs as a hobby, is probably doing it out of [i]creative[/i] excitement to see the finished product. The exciting part is envisioning something [i]and then making what you personally had envisioned real[/i]. That's where the juice is. It's just not as exciting to realise somebody else's vision wholesale. And it's a lot of work w/o pay, so it had better be exciting.

A programmer should be thought of as just another creative mind but with more technical knowledge. Such a person should be probably be approached as a full creative partner rather than as a potential implementor of *your* visions.

It'd be sort of like if a programmer came up to you and said, 'I'll do all the puzzles and the plot and all the mechanics, but you just polish my dialogue and prose.' You might do it out of a desire to help, but you probably wouldn't feel too *excited* about it — your services are merely being rendered on a project that is essentially unconnected to you. Now imagine that same relationship only instead of polishing the prose, you are doing all the actual coding and debugging, and trying to implement puzzles envisioned by someone who doesn't know what's easy to do or what's hard.

To me that sounds like a nightmare project with no upside and a huge downside. YMMV, but in order to win over collaborators you have to understand what they need to be fulfilled. Maybe there are a lot of people who just love programming things dictated by others, for the sake of the act of coding alone (or maybe they are just very altruistic), but I've hardly ever met these people. Nor has any of the coding I've done in my life been motivated in that simplistic way. Without having my own creative vision to implement I never would have coded a single thing (nor indeed would I have bothered to learn how), and since I am no longer employed as a programmer, if I never had any further creative visions, I surely wouldn't bother programming anything ever again. It is a means to an end, and no more.

Paul.

P.S. This is not a knock against the authors' group idea, which sounds cool…

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1728&start=0#p11319
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Transcript bug?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-25 03:01:16

What happens if you use the menus to turn on scripting instead of using the 'script' command?

I've never had a problem with Zoom's transcripting but like severedhand, I never type the actual 'script' command. I just turn it on via the menu system. Don't know why really I have avoided that command -- I have known about it since the start. Probably because I am about to mouse anyway to navigate the resulting file location dialog, so why not just start with the mouse?

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1282&start=0#p11320
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Help finding old IF (or graphic adventure?)
User: fredrik / DateTime: 2010-11-25 03:34:24

Haven't visited the forum in ages, so I didn't see this until now.

This question would have a greater chance of finding an answer over at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.solutionarchive.com">www.solutionarchive.com</a> . You could also try to search for the game in their database.

/Fredrik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1719&start=10#p11321
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: IF/webcomic hybrid: Essence of Eternity
User: Harry Giles / DateTime: 2010-11-25 04:26:28

Yeh, it's worth knowing that in the UK "retard" and its variants are considered really quite offensive; it's a linguistic difference with the US, although I know Americans who also don't like it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1282&start=0#p11322
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Help finding old IF (or graphic adventure?)
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-11-25 08:23:45

[quote="livens"]Hi,

I used to play a game on a Atari 2600. It was text based but did have simple EGA(maybe VGA) graphics. You played an alien on a spaceship. There was a supply room with important objects to get, I do remember 2 or 3 different colored screwdrivers being there. There was a control room with a teleporter you could use to visit different planets, one being a jungle planet. On this planet the goal was seemingly to get lost then eaten by some wild alien monster... or at least thats what always happened to me [emote]:)[/emote] 

That is all I remember. I was 7 or so at the time, so this was in the early eightes. My older brother owned the 2600 and was a member of an Atari club at his high school that had a large library of software and games. We got to copy as many as we wanted [emote]:)[/emote]

Thanks[/quote]

There are a lot of details here that don't add up. The Atari 2600 has a resolution of 192x160, pretty far from VGA (640x480). Also, the Atari 2600 doesn't have a keyboard, so a text-based game would be pretty odd. I just saw your comment about copying games, so you must be talking about an Atari computer, not the 2600 console. I'll do some more digging.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1731&start=0#p11323
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Happy Thanksgiving!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-25 09:13:01

Happy Thanksgiving to all the American intfictioners, and happy Thursday, November 25 to everyone else!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1727&start=0#p11324
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Dungeon Zork =/= Zork 1+2+3... Zork Complete?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-11-25 10:09:34

[quote="zarf"]Nitpick on the copyright expiration date[/quote]
And a nitpick on the nitpick:

That's the US part of the story. In the European Union (the UK may, as usual, be an exception to the European rule) copyright always belongs to individual authors (though the economic rights may not) with a duration (except for audio recordings) of life + 70 years . So even when Zork I becomes public domain in the US in 2075, it will still be copyrighted in EU countries.

This holds for a lot of works presently in the US public domain. E.g. there is a  couple of short stories by SF writer Algis Budrys on Project Gutenberg. It's perfectly legal to base an IF game on one of them, upload it to an American server and donwload it in America. It would actually be illegal to host it on a European mirror site or to download it to your computer inside the EU.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=40#p11325
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-Machine Standard 1.2 (draft)
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-11-25 11:42:12

[quote="Dannii"]I've updated the draft with my position on this issue, which is effectively that the 1.2 standard is orthogonal to any clarifications of the 1.0/1.1 specs. It would be wonderful to have them, but I don't think this spec is the appropriate place for them (as they won't depend on @gestalt) and I'm not up to writing those clarifications either.

<a class="postlink" href="http://curiousdannii.github.com/if/zspec12.html">http://curiousdannii.github.com/if/zspec12.html</a>[/quote]
If the 1.2 spec isn't the appropriate place to revise the 1.1 spec, then what is? It seems quite strange to me to propose that 1.0/1.1 be revised independently of 1.2, and that those revisions be announced through some means other than the version number.

You have a proposal for one new feature here, but labeling that as a new version of the Z-Machine Standard seems premature.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1720&start=10#p11326
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Authors' Group: An idea for developer mutual aid
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2010-11-25 12:10:32

Paul,
Great perspective, and I think it gets to the heart of collaboration. From a historical perspective my understanding is that most of the Infocom games were primarily the work of one person as an 'implementor' covering coding and writing. (The low level compiler and runtime done separately.) Collaboration was more informal in tossing around design ideas, puzzle ideas etc.

The notable exception to this was Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. But even there, Steve Meretsky (mostly programming) ended up writing much of the prose in later stages in the style of Douglas Adams.


It's a small sample size for sure. But worth noting. Here's a link to some interviews with Infocom folks
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com/2010/11/infocommies.html">http://www.z-machine-matter.com/2010/11 ... mmies.html</a>

Zack



Zack

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1719&start=10#p11327
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: IF/webcomic hybrid: Essence of Eternity
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-11-25 12:10:51

Hmmm.

[spoiler]The log-in without any information on the game or inducement to play, plus the requirement of a sign-up, is pretty discouraging.  Is it something required by the site?

The first command encourages the player to type help, which encourages new players to click tutorial, which simultaneously routes them out of Parchment and then requires them to click another link to get instructions.  Since pressing the back button in the browser restarts the game, this is a downside from a number of angles (breaks progress, too many clicks, still no easy way to reference commands).

When the game begins, there's no immediate goal to accomplish.  I feel like I'm finding out things that I need to know to be acting on - when I try to leave the throne room, I'm told that I can't, because Alpha let the Bandit escape, but that's news to me.  My attempt to deal with Alpha (kicking him) results in an utterly unhelpful error message.  My attempt to hit him results in "Sounds violent." which, you know, is kind of the point.  Dare I try "execute"?  

There's no sense of wonder in the thing.  I'd expect Lord Chronos to be blase about foxes and clocks on his throne, but when a 17 year old girl describes a supernatural event with "Suddenly, there's a giant blue vortex in your room. Simultaneous with its appearance, your computer turns off", something is amiss.  If your [i]character [/i]is bored by the appearance of a giant blue vortex, why should [i]I[/i] find it interesting?

The humor/tone . . . yeah.  Not really my thing.  (The response to xyzzy is one instance - references to memes are rarely fun in and of themselves.  In addition, I find failtard immensely Not Okay.).[/spoiler]

Do you have betas?  It feels like some of these things you'll see from transcripts.  There's some incomplete sentences and oddly hyphenated words (pure-gold) that they'll pick up, and they'll give you insight into the kind of commands you need to provide as they try things out.

I find the idea of a webcomic/IF hybrid interesting, but I can't quite envision what you're trying to do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1720&start=10#p11328
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Authors' Group: An idea for developer mutual aid
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-11-25 12:17:15

I agree with Paul.  There's a few writers whose vision I trust solely, and would be okay implementing for them.  But it's about those writers and that vision, not about the love of fiddly programming in particular.  Even when I beta, I think I do a much better job when I feel invested in the process - either I love the work itself, or the writer is implementing/changing things per suggestion, or at least demonstrating that s/he's thinking about it.  And as a result, I am biased for most of the games I beta, because I have to be creatively invested to do a halfway decent job.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1720&start=10#p11330
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Authors' Group: An idea for developer mutual aid
User: Neo / DateTime: 2010-11-25 15:56:00

[quote]Before any code was written at all, he wrote this based on a few ideas we bounced back and forth...[/quote]

Perhaps this line was overlooked. I wasn't suggesting at all that the writer simply plops a finished concept/transcript on the programmer and says, "Code this!" The creative process can still be shared.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=40#p11331
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-Machine Standard 1.2 (draft)
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-25 17:53:40

It's one feature as well as an incrementing of the standard revision header. I honestly don't really care what this spec is called, but having it match the revision header makes the most sense to me. Further clarifications could be made by a 1.1.1 spec, or even a 1.3 spec (whether or not that would entail incrementing the revision header again.)

How strongly do people feel the need for a further set of clarifications? It might be helpful to collect a list of issues, even if there isn't consensus on all of them, I'd even be willing to help with this.

What I don't want is to tie them all to my spec. I'd like to be able to introduce some function acceleration to Parchment in time for the next I7 release and would prefer the spec to be finalised by then.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=40#p11332
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-Machine Standard 1.2 (draft)
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-11-25 18:41:28

[quote="Dannii"]It's one feature as well as an incrementing of the standard revision header. I honestly don't really care what this spec is called, but having it match the revision header makes the most sense to me.[/quote]
Well, that header field is there to indicate which version of the Z-Machine Standard the interpreter implements, so if you increment that number, you're making a new revision of that standard. My objection is not that this proposal is called "The Z-Machine Standard 1.2" -- that's what it should be called -- but that it isn't addressing the things that a standard revision ought to address.

(I'm also not sure what the purpose of selector $01 is, since the standard revision number is already stored in the header, and any game that uses @gestalt will have read it from there.)

[quote]Further clarifications could be made by a 1.1.1 spec, or even a 1.3 spec (whether or not that would entail incrementing the revision header again.)[/quote]
It would have to be 1.3, since the header field only has room to store two parts of the version number.

[quote]How strongly do people feel the need for a further set of clarifications? It might be helpful to collect a list of issues, even if there isn't consensus on all of them. What I don't want is to tie them all to my spec. I'd like to be able to introduce some function acceleration to Parchment in time for the next I7 release and would prefer the spec to be finalised by then.[/quote]
Have you had any luck with pattern matching?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=40#p11333
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-Machine Standard 1.2 (draft)
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-25 20:53:16

I think the revision header is like an API version: it describes what functionality is available. The description of that API can be updated without updating the API itself though. Similarly the 1.0 standard had a few revisions, and the 1.1 standard had clarifications for 1.0 that should be implemented by all 1.0 terps, even if they didn't implement the 1.1 "API". So there's no reason another document couldn't do the same, and if it only had clarifications it wouldn't need to increment the revision header.

Now maybe instead of having multiple documents we should instead work on a new unified 1.0-1.1 standard. This is like the HTML5 standard, which instead of just describing the additions it makes, redescribes the entire language. Perhaps we could do the same. I could edit it if others would help with the technical minutiae.

Both options are possible, and they wouldn't need to stop this 1.2 spec from being finalised either.

As to pattern matching, the Gnusto architecture doesn't lend itself well to that. I've started rewriting Gnusto from scratch so I could add pattern matching later. Having an acceleration opcode though would be possible with the current architecture, and feasible to implement in time for the next I7 release.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=40#p11334
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-Machine Standard 1.2 (draft)
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-11-25 22:03:47

[quote="Dannii"]I think the revision header is like an API version: it describes what functionality is available. The description of that API can be updated without updating the API itself though. Similarly the 1.0 standard had a few revisions, and the 1.1 standard had clarifications for 1.0 that should be implemented by all 1.0 terps, even if they didn't implement the 1.1 "API".[/quote]
I disagree: the standard revision number doesn't only describe the set of opcodes that are available, but also the behavior of those opcodes. The game has to assume that an interpreter claiming to support 1.0 only supports 1.0 as it was first published, because there's no way for it to know whether or not the interpreter incorporates clarifications that weren't published until years after the original 1.0 spec.

[quote]Now maybe instead of having multiple documents we should instead work on a new unified 1.0-1.1 standard. This is like the HTML5 standard, which instead of just describing the additions it makes, redescribes the entire language. Perhaps we could do the same. I could edit it if others would help with the technical minutiae.

Both options are possible, and they wouldn't need to stop this 1.2 spec from being finalised either.[/quote]
Again, I think attempting to change the old specs retroactively is a mistake. Games can't distinguish between "old 1.0" and "new 1.0".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1721&start=0#p11335
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Annotated transcripts
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-25 22:22:45

This is really cool! Thanks for the transcript of Gigantomania - I think it will help a lot with future versions.

I'm impressed by how you breezed through the game. Even the more difficult conversations didn't take that many attempts. Sorry you felt that they were "learn-by-dying lawnmowery," though!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1282&start=0#p11336
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Help finding old IF (or graphic adventure?)
User: Flack / DateTime: 2010-11-25 23:15:16

Wait -- are we talking about Starcross?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1732&start=0#p11337
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Aurora-related questions
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-11-26 02:17:35

So as some of you may have noticed, my beta release of [i]Aurora[/i] was rather rocky.  Still, I feel that there is a decent game in there waiting to be pulled out.  Here are some problems that have arisen that I'm not sure how to solve.

-The beginning is supposed to have a lonely, atmospheric feel, which is why you start in a long, empty hall.  However, everyone seems to get frustrated because you start in a long, empty hall with no items and practically nothing to interact with.  Inherent problem?

-I'm not sure how to judge what's a good difficulty.  I feel like a proper IF should leave you really and completely stuck at some point, but the difficult parts in my game seem to mostly just annoy people, especially at the beginning when you can't talk to other characters for hints.

-How often should one include metagame advice (on what commands to use, etc)?  After you wake up Gail, it tells you how to switch characters, which seems highly necessary to me, but I don't have anything at the beginning advising you to type "about" or "help" (or whatever)--and if you don't, apparently you'll never, ever figure out how to use the displays.  I put work into the opening paragraph and don't want to break the mood with metagame suggestions.  Should I anyway?

-Aaaugh what causes extra line breaks to appear in random places?  Seriously, I have no idea.  I didn't put extra paragraph break tags anywhere; what else could cause that?

P.S.  Don't go download it now if you haven't; I'll make a newer release when I've resolved these questions.  And to the people who downloaded that really buggy first version:  I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it's way better now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1732&start=0#p11338
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Aurora-related questions
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-11-26 03:52:26

[quote="katz"]-The beginning is supposed to have a lonely, atmospheric feel, which is why you start in a long, empty hall.  However, everyone seems to get frustrated because you start in a long, empty hall with no items and practically nothing to interact with.  Inherent problem?[/quote]
I can imagine a long, empty hall being atmospheric in a film with good cinematography.  Maybe in a comic.  But in prose, you need to provide specific details in the text to create the atmosphere.  That doesn't necessarily mean cluttering locations with useless objects - it can be light, shadows, memories.  (Things that might make a spaceship corridor seem atmospheric and lonely to me might be: humming lights, a discarded personal item, something that's broken down and not been fixed...)

Also bear in mind that empty hallways are all too common in IF.  Your audience may already have preconceptions for what this means that are quite different from your own.

[quote="katz"]-I'm not sure how to judge what's a good difficulty.  I feel like a proper IF should leave you really and completely stuck at some point, but the difficult parts in my game seem to mostly just annoy people, especially at the beginning when you can't talk to other characters for hints.[/quote]
There are plenty of people who complain that games are becoming too easy.  Give your game the difficulty you want it to have and stick to your guns.  But bear in mind that there are a larger number of people who just quit when they get stuck, so either provide hints, or be prepared to lose that section of your audience.  (Also, high difficulty isn't the same thing as having no idea what to do to progress, so be careful to make sure which you're dealing with.)

[quote="katz"]-How often should one include metagame advice (on what commands to use, etc)?  After you wake up Gail, it tells you how to switch characters, which seems highly necessary to me, but I don't have anything at the beginning advising you to type "about" or "help" (or whatever)--and if you don't, apparently you'll never, ever figure out how to use the displays.  I put work into the opening paragraph and don't want to break the mood with metagame suggestions.  Should I anyway?[/quote]
Normally I don't worry so much about this, but I wanted my last game to have a clean opening.  What I did was to have two different screens at the start - first the title, then the game, with a single line right at the top telling players to type ABOUT.  In others words, include the meta stuff, but clearly demarcate it from the in-universe text of the game.

That said, working in Inform, don't you have to output that version banner anyway?  That's always an obvious place for authors to put "Please type ABOUT even if you've played IF before."

[quote="katz"]-Aaaugh what causes extra line breaks to appear in random places?  Seriously, I have no idea.  I didn't put extra paragraph break tags anywhere; what else could cause that?[/quote]
If you could start this thread in the Inform 7 forum, I'd be interested in the answer.  I think it revolves around where you have full stops and spaces, but it doesn't seem at all intuitive to me.

[quote="katz"]And to the people who downloaded that really buggy first version:  I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it's way better now.[/quote]
As long as you made it clear this was a beta, your players are probably A) Specifically looking for where they can help you. B) Focusing on letting you know what they didn't like about the game.

There's no need to apologise.  Almost every IF game has flaws in its first beta.  Finding them at this stage is a good thing.   [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1732&start=0#p11339
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Aurora-related questions
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-11-26 04:57:19

Just one thing. I may be wrong, but it seems that you've been uploading beta versions of Aurora directly to the IFArchive, without ever making it known on IFDB that it's not beta anymore. I have downloaded 3 versions of Aurora already, all of them saying "release 1", all of them different sizes (and the latest one being corrupt).

If this is what you're doing, I'd like to ask you to consider rapidshare or megaupload or some other service to share your beta with your testers, and wait until it's ready before you add it to the archive - it gets so confusing. Also, please start incrementing the number of releases - it gets even more confusing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1732&start=0#p11341
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Aurora-related questions
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-26 07:28:13

I just played a few turns (went and searched for it on the IF-archive and plopped it into Quixe before I got to the part of your message where you said not to download it. I fail the [url=http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=24333&start=0]idiot test[/url]), and I agree with pretty much everything Pacian said. Especially this:

[quote]But in prose, you need to provide specific details in the text to create the atmosphere. That doesn't necessarily mean cluttering locations with useless objects - it can be light, shadows, memories. (Things that might make a spaceship corridor seem atmospheric and lonely to me might be: humming lights, a discarded personal item, something that's broken down and not been fixed...)[/quote]

And in your case, I think you have good reason to put atmospheric stuff in the corridor -- as far as I can tell, the original PC isn't supposed to have any trouble remembering the layout of the ship, so you can spice up the corridor descriptions with what's behind all those doors, and hook memories etc. onto that. It doesn't seem like the player should have to walk through every door to see what's behind it. 

[spoiler]In particular, I walked into Cryo 3 and got this message:

[quote]What are you doing?  You know Gail's pod isn't here.  It's in the sickbay.[/quote]

and my thought was "Hey! [i]I[/i] don't know that."[/spoiler]

Also, I think more metagame hints can be a good idea. The response to "west" was good; and the first time the player examines a display you can tell them about "consult display about x." (Redirecting "consult pod about x" to that might be nice too, or did that turn out to be incredibly annoying?) Telling the player about commands when they need them is a good idea, I think.

Oh, and cruelty level might be a good thing to mention in the ABOUT -- can the game be made unwinnable?

I really like the idea of switching among multiple PCs to perform different tasks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=50#p11342
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-11-26 08:13:22

Brags: I get excited about my ideas.
Bummer: I end up making everything WAY over-complicated and then have to make that tough decision: to cut out stuff, or to implement the hell out of everything.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=40#p11343
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-Machine Standard 1.2 (draft)
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-26 08:27:14

What do you suggest I do? Has consensus been reached on some issues which need specifying? Even if there has been no consensus we could still add a selector for each issue to show which reading of the standard a terp has taken, so that at least games could then detect and account for different implementations. That's the approach I'd like to take... so if you can identify which issues need specifying I'll add them in.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1734&start=0#p11344
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 making sitting, standing on, and lying down different
User: jonathan.laver / DateTime: 2010-11-26 12:49:40

Hi,
I'm trying to write some code that will mean that the player will be able to sit on, lie on, or stand on the bed. I would also like the player to start the game on the bed. This is my first Inform game, so I am not very experienced with the coding.

This is my code for the room:

[code]Bedroom is a room. The bedroom is dark.  A bed is here. It is fixed in place. It is a supporter. It is enterable. The light switch is a switched off device in the Bedroom. It is fixed in place. "Light is pouring from a large, old-fashioned lamp beside the bed. As you look around the room, you wonder why you chose it. The room is small, cramped and smells of rotting wood. Unfortunately the rest of the house is like this. Which is probably why you got it so cheap.".
Carry out switching off the light switch: now the Bedroom is dark. 
Carry out switching on the light switch: now the Bedroom is lighted.
Understand "flip [something switched off]" as switching on. Understand "flip [something switched on]" as switching off. Understand "flip [something]" as switching on.
After deciding the scope of the player when the location is the Bedroom: 
    place the light switch in scope.

The solid oak door is south of the landing and north of the bedroom. The solid oak door is a door. The landing is lighted.
Understand the commands "stand" and "sit" and "lie" as something new. 


Understand "sit on [bed]" as sitting on.
Understand "lie on/down [bed]" as lying on. 
Understand "stand on [bed]" as standing on. 

Sitting on is an action applying to one thing. 
Lying on is an action applying to one thing. 
Standing on is an action applying to one thing.
After sitting on bed, say "You are sitting down on the bed. The only problem is that several of the springs have broken, and the few springs that were fine have now also broken thanks to the amount of pressure placed on the (now broken) springs.". now you are on the bed.
 After lying on bed, say "You are now lying down. Although this is very comfortable, you are hardly going to save the world by lying down. You then realise that this, and decide to get out of the bed".
 After standing on bed, say "Your feet go straight through to the floor. There is now a gaping hole in the bed. Not really any use now, is it!". now you are on the bed.
 Instead of opening the door when you are on the bed, say "How am I going to reach the door. Getting up might help.".[/code]
Thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1734&start=0#p11345
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 making sitting, standing on, and lying down different
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-11-26 14:07:13

To have the player start in bed, simply add "The player is on the bed."

The lines
[quote]After standing on bed, say "Your feet go straight through to the floor. There is now a gaping hole in the bed. Not really any use now, is it!". now the player is on the bed.[/quote]
will not move the player to the bed. You need a semicolon instead of a full stop between the different things you want a rule to do.
Write:
[code]After standing on bed:
say "Your feet go straight through to the floor. There is now a gaping hole in the bed. Not really any use now, is it!";
now the player is on the bed.[/code]
Mind the colon and the semicolon!
(The same thing of course goes for the after sitting on rule …)

As it stands the line "now the player is on the bed" is what makes inform print that mysterious comment inside parentheses: "(on the bed is now you)".

I also think you probably shouldn't redefine the command "stand". That's a standard command for getting off beds in IF, and players will try to use it thus. It's better if you understand "stand on" as something new and keep "stand" as it is.

Good luck with your game!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1734&start=0#p11346
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 making sitting, standing on, and lying down different
User: Sequitur / DateTime: 2010-11-26 20:06:22

The neat-freak way to get this done, which Inform 7 makes surprisingly "easy," is to abolish regular I7 supporters entirely (Or use them for one of the relations you want, e.g. standing on) and then add new relations for lying on and sitting on things. I'm not really sure of everything needed to make this work, as that essentially means rebuilding a small chunk of the standard world model.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1732&start=0#p11347
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Aurora-related questions
User: Sequitur / DateTime: 2010-11-26 20:21:23

[quote="katz"]
-The beginning is supposed to have a lonely, atmospheric feel, which is why you start in a long, empty hall.  However, everyone seems to get frustrated because you start in a long, empty hall with no items and practically nothing to interact with.  Inherent problem?
[/quote]
Give the player something to do that evokes the feel you want. Remember, the player's reactions and commands are part of the story - if you just plop him on an empty corridor, the atmosphere will get lost as soon as the player leaves. Loneliness and atmosphere rely on time, and time in IF has to be filled with reading, thinking and interacting. It's part of the nature of IF that it takes only a moment to do anything, but it can take a very long time to react and understand the immediate consequences of an action.

[quote]
-I'm not sure how to judge what's a good difficulty.  I feel like a proper IF should leave you really and completely stuck at some point, but the difficult parts in my game seem to mostly just annoy people, especially at the beginning when you can't talk to other characters for hints.
[/quote]
Difficulty and cruelty basically come down to the public you want to reach; but within a set level of difficulty, there is such a thing as frustrating. Do implement a hint system, or at least a hint [i]file[/i] to give to your testers. Record how often they have to refer to the hints, and more importantly, how they felt about a puzzle once they solved it, with or without hints - if they're as mystified by the solution as they were by the problem, then something is probably amiss. Furthermore, in-game clues can come from everywhere, but it's very easy for them to sometimes get lost in the shuffle of detail in object descriptions, etcetera. A good rule of thumb is that seeing something happening is much more likely to be taken as a clue than seeing something in a description.

[quote]
-How often should one include metagame advice (on what commands to use, etc)?  After you wake up Gail, it tells you how to switch characters, which seems highly necessary to me, but I don't have anything at the beginning advising you to type "about" or "help" (or whatever)--and if you don't, apparently you'll never, ever figure out how to use the displays.  I put work into the opening paragraph and don't want to break the mood with metagame suggestions.  Should I anyway?
[/quote]
Traditionally, the words "New players should type ABOUT" come either just before the first prompt or right after the banner text - that's the part with the title, author's name, serial number and so on. I strongly suggest you don't remove the banner entirely, although delaying or replacing it with an equivalent for stylistic reasons is cool. If the player needs meta-game help to get through a section prior to the title text, then either you give it to them earlier, or delay the moment when it's necessary.

But ultimately: Not knowing how the game's interface works is much more of an immersion-breaker than an unobtrusive message telling them to try >FITZO LAMP.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1735&start=0#p11348
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Books
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-11-26 21:15:28

Since I'm ridiculously bad at figuring out how to create items, I ended up outright stealing Aaron Reed's book mechanism to create a book. I added a few basic functions so that the player can turn back pages and consult the book if need be. The problem comes in where there are two books in the same place.  

A shoddy example:

[code]
"Waiting Room"

Waiting Room is a room. "A waiting room."  

A thing has some text called printing. The printing of a thing is usually "blank". 

Understand the command "read" as something new. Understand "read [something]" as reading. Reading is an action applying to one thing and requiring light. Carry out reading: say "You read: [paragraph break][printing of the noun][line break]". Report reading: do nothing. 

Check reading: 
if the noun is a book, try read-booking the noun instead;
if the printing of the noun is "blank", say "Nothing is written on [the noun]." instead.

A book is a kind of thing. Understand "book" or "books" or "page" or "pages" as a book. A book has a table name called the contents.  
 
Understand the command "read-book" as something new. Read-booking is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "read [something]" as read-booking.  Check read-booking: if noun is not a book, try examining noun instead. 

A book is a kind of thing. Understand "book" or "books" or "page" or "pages" as a book.

A book can be open or closed. A book can be openable. A book is usually closed. A book is always openable. Does the player mean doing something to an open book: it is likely. Check opening a book (called tome): try read-booking tome instead. Check closing a book (called tome): now tome is closed; say "You close [the tome] again." instead. 

A book has a number called current page. The current page of a book is usually 0. To say current page of (tome - a book): let n be the current page of tome; choose row n in the contents of tome; say "[reply entry][paragraph break]".

A book has a table-name called contents. 

Carry out read-booking: 
	repeat with tome running through books enclosed by location:
		now tome is closed;
	now noun is open;
	if current page of noun is 0, now current page of noun is 1; 
	say "[if current page of noun is 1]You open [the noun].[paragraph break][end if][current page of noun][if the current page of noun is at most the number of rows in contents of noun - 1]Turn to the next page? Turn back a page?[otherwise][The noun] is turned to the last page.[end if]". 

Check read-booking:
	if the player is not holding the book:
		say "You can't read anything from this distance." instead.

The contents of a book is usually Table of No Contents. 

Table of No Contents 
topic	reply
"BLAH"	"BLAH"

Forward-turning is an action applying to one thing.
Back-turning is an action applying to one thing.

Check back-turning book (called tome):
	if the book is not open:
		try opening the NOUN instead;
	if the player is not holding the book:
		say "You can't read anything at this distance." instead;
	otherwise:
		decrease the current page of tome by 1;
		if current page of tome is less than the number of rows in contents of tome:
			now the current page of tome is 0;
			say "You close [the tome]." instead;
		otherwise:
			say "You turn back a page."; 
			try read-booking tome instead.

Check forward-turning book (called tome):
	if the book is not open:
		try opening the NOUN instead;
	if the player is not holding the book:
		say "You can't read anything at this distance." instead;
	otherwise:
		increase the current page of tome by 1;
		if current page of tome is greater than the number of rows in contents of tome:
			now the current page of tome is 0;
			say "You close [the tome]." instead;
		otherwise:
			say "You turn to the next page."; 
			try read-booking tome instead.
			
Understand the command "turn" as something new. 

Understand "flip to the next [something]" as forward-turning. Understand "flip to next [something]" as forward-turning. Understand "turn [something]" as forward-turning. Understand "turn the [something]" as forward-turning. Understand "turn [something] forward" as forward-turning. Understand "turn to next [something]" as forward-turning. Understand "turn to the next [something]" as forward-turning. Understand "turn next [something]" as forward-turning. Understand "turn the [something] forward" as forward-turning.

Understand "flip to the previous [something]" as back-turning. Understand "flip to previous [something]" as back-turning. Understand "flip back a [something]" as back-turning. Understand "turn back a [something]" as back-turning. Understand "turn back the [something]" as back-turning. Understand "turn [something] back" as back-turning. Understand "turn [something] back one" as back-turning. Understand "turn to [something] previous page" as back-turning. Understand "turn [something] backwards" as back-turning.

The BAD NEWS WEEKLY is a book. BAD NEWS WEEKLY is in the waiting room. The contents of BAD NEWS WEEKLY is the Table of Bad News.  

Table of BAD NEWS
topic	reply 
"Some random pages"	"Some ads for life insurance and alarm systems"
"Death"	"The headline screams: '10 killed in freak balloon accident. Will your child be next?'"

TABLOID NOW is a book. TABLOID NOW is in the waiting room. The contents of TABLOID NOW is the Table of Junk
 
 Instead of consulting a book about a topic listed in the contents of the noun: 
    say "[reply entry][paragraph break]". 
 
 The current page of TABLOID NOW is 2.

 
Table of Junk 
topic	reply 
"Babies"	"Is that a Baby Bump? YES!"   
"Rehab"	"Is your favorite star is rehab? YES!"
"Yes"	"YES!"[/code]

If you delete one book, the other functions beautifully, but with two, the player can't turn the page. It simply stays on page 1 forever. 

I'm not sure what exactly is causing it, which I suppose is understandable given I didn't write the base code for the books.

Thanks for any help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1735&start=0#p11349
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Books
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-26 22:05:49

In these lines

[code]Check back-turning book (called tome):
	if the book is not open:
		try opening the NOUN instead;
	if the player is not holding the book:
		say "You can't read anything at this distance." instead;
	otherwise:
		decrease the current page of tome by 1;
		if current page of tome is less than the number of rows in contents of tome:
			now the current page of tome is 0;
			say "You close [the tome]." instead;
		otherwise:
			say "You turn back a page."; 
			try read-booking tome instead.

Check forward-turning book (called tome):
	if the book is not open:
		try opening the NOUN instead;
	if the player is not holding the book:
		say "You can't read anything at this distance." instead;
	otherwise:
		increase the current page of tome by 1;
		if current page of tome is greater than the number of rows in contents of tome:
			now the current page of tome is 0;
			say "You close [the tome]." instead;
		otherwise:
			say "You turn to the next page."; 
			try read-booking tome instead.[/code]

I think you want to change "the book" to tome: "If tome is not open," "if player is not holding tome," etc. Remember, Inform parses "the book" the same as "a book," so "if the book is not open" will be true if either book is not open, and so on.

[UPDATE: Also, I don't think you want "if current page of tome is less than the number of rows in contents of tome" in the rule for back-turning, because that'll always be true after you turn back; maybe "less than 1"?]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1735&start=0#p11350
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Books
User: George / DateTime: 2010-11-26 22:21:41

Yeah, the book/tome thing is the bug. Inform 7 doesn't have the greatest debugging tools but one thing you can do is put lines like [i][b]say [/b]"doing this now"[/i] in the code blocks of the actions that you're firing -- you would have seen what was happening in this case by doing something like:

[code]
Check forward-turning book (called tome):
	if the book is not open:
		say "opening";                      [ <---- debugging say here]
		try opening the NOUN instead;
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1735&start=0#p11351
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Books
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-11-26 23:09:09

I think that "the" is actually a blank space and/or "a" thing has tripped me up a million times by now. I'm really thankful to the people here for being so patient and helping me every time I make the exact same mistake. Also thanks for that update. I didn't notice it until you pointed it out, but yes, with what I had, "turning back a page" just closes the book no matter what.

George, I'm afraid all of that is pretty much lost on me. I don't think I could make heads or tails of what was happening even if I saw step by step the process since before now I didn't even know naming the book "tome" made much of a difference...though really I should have realised since "tome" is basically saying "book in question", I think. Thanks for your time and input though, even if it blew past a giant dummy like me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1734&start=0#p11352
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 making sitting, standing on, and lying down different
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-26 23:17:18

You might want to check out Emily Short's "Postures" extension.

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/Emily%20Short/Postures/index.html">http://inform7.com/extensions/Emily%20S ... index.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1734&start=0#p11354
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 making sitting, standing on, and lying down different
User: jonathan.laver / DateTime: 2010-11-27 06:31:48

It worked but now I get the room description repeated which I don't want.

Here is the code:

[code]After sitting on bed:
Now the player is on the bed;
 say "You are sitting down on the bed. The only problem is that several of the springs have broken, and the few springs that were fine have now also broken thanks to the amount of pressure placed on the (now broken) springs.".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1735&start=0#p11355
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Books
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-11-27 08:24:40

The thing is, you can narrow it down to two or three lines of code (whatever's in the if statement), rather than the whole thing.  So if you know this one piece isn't firing the way you expected, you can deal with that.  

I usually start by commenting out bits of extraneous code; where that's not possible, you can try tracing through the expected reaction.  

In a case where the check rule is in question, I might insert a couple debugging say phrases, one right after the check rule starts (to make sure it's firing as expected), and one after each if statement).  That way, you can see that it's starting, but not carrying through as expected.  If it's not firing at all, that's some other issue; if it enters the loop but doesn't perform the way you expect, that's another thing.

It gets easier, though; there's a couple things I do with regularity that I'm much better at catching, and certain error messages will appear with such regularity that they'll cue you to certain mistakes you tend to make.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1735&start=0#p11356
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Books
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-27 08:58:23

[quote="Bistre"]I think that "the" is actually a blank space and/or "a" thing has tripped me up a million times by now. I'm really thankful to the people here for being so patient and helping me every time I make the exact same mistake.[/quote]

Ha, no problem, I do this too. It just occurred to me that maybe a way to keep from doing this is to call your local variable the-book instead of tome, as in "Check forward-turning book (called the-book):", and then you can just say "if the-book is open" etc., which looks like what you want to say. Or maybe that would make it really easy to leave out the hyphen once and completely confuse yourself about where the bug was coming from.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1734&start=0#p11357
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 making sitting, standing on, and lying down different
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-11-27 11:03:56

Use the phrase "move the player to the bed, without printing a room description" instead of "now the player is on the bed":
[code]After sitting on bed:
move the player to the bed, without printing a room description;
say "You are sitting down on the bed. The only problem is that several of the springs have broken, and the few springs that were fine have now also broken thanks to the amount of pressure placed on the (now broken) springs.".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1736&start=0#p11358
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Teleporting command for testing purposes.
User: koopa184 / DateTime: 2010-11-27 12:11:11

Well, I'm pretty new to Inform, and I know some of the basics but I'm still an amateur. I've been attempting to make a teleporting command, but I can't seem to do it. Any help? Here's the source text:

Teleporting is an action applying to one thing.
understand "Teleport to [any room]" as teleporting.
Carry out teleporting: now the player is in [This is where I have a problem with the teleporting text]
Report teleporting: say "You teleport to [the noun]."

Is it possible? Or not?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1736&start=0#p11359
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Teleporting command for testing purposes.
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-11-27 12:17:44

It's pretty easy. Good question, though.

[code]The Lounge is a room. "Ah, the Lounge."

The Crypt is a room. "Ugh, the Crypt."

Teleporting is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "Teleport to [any room]" as teleporting.

Carry out teleporting:
	say "You teleport to [the noun].";
	now the player is in the noun.
	
Test me with "teleport to crypt / teleport to lounge".[/code]

Note that I put the reporting output in the carry out rule. This is so the player will read a report BEFORE the description of the new room is printed. Also note the use of "visible", which is required precisely because the destination is not, in fact, visible. (It's an Inform thing.)

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1736&start=0#p11360
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Teleporting command for testing purposes.
User: fgevaerts / DateTime: 2010-11-27 12:59:25

Are you aware of the "abstract to" built-in testing command in inform7?  In debug builds, you can do things like "abstract me to garden" or "abstract lamp to basement"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1736&start=0#p11361
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Teleporting command for testing purposes.
User: koopa184 / DateTime: 2010-11-27 13:16:45

Aha! Thank you both for your input. [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1720&start=10#p11362
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Authors' Group: An idea for developer mutual aid
User: Harry Giles / DateTime: 2010-11-27 13:38:52

Hey all,

I wanted to let the discussion go round a bit before responding. I'm glad to hear there are several people who think that something like this might be worthwhile. Currently, looking at the projects I've got on, I'm unlikely to be able to set something up until after Christmas. However, if anyone would actively like to help me plan and run such a group, feel free to e-mail me on [i]harry DOT lodestone SPLAT gmail DOT com[/i] and we can chat about it.

The major piece of feedback I'm getting is that something which would give people a regular target or a reason to regularly write would be really beneficial, quite apart from the aspect of critical commentary. So that's something we should definitely incorporate. I'm also getting a sense that a group approach rather than a paired approach might work best: so, for example, the group could be a small mailing list to which everyone sends a section of writing/code each fortnight, on which each member constructively comments. What do people think about that?

To respond to a few points, and some of the discussion of collaboration:

[quote="ZUrlocker"]But I don't actually know what would be done here that isn't done already via these forums. Are you suggesting a different medium for collaboration? Or just an active way of soliciting collaboration?[/quote]

I'm not actually looking for a medium for collaborative authoring: rather, it's about authors getting critical input on authoring. So this isn't about two or more people authoring an IF together, but about people getting commentary and input on their authoring.

Currently, discussion here seems to focus on either debugging or high level theory. What I think isn't already done is discussion of [i]good[/i] programming and [i]good[/i] writing style. People don't post working code or complete passages and ask for comment: they post things that aren't working or that they're having trouble with. So this is about critical feedback to improve our writing and programming. Does that make it clearer?

[quote="Jeff Nyman"]I tended to find that the writers ultimately wanted to be more involved and hands-on -- and, in fact, doing the programming work -- once they were confident they had a good grasp of the techniques they could use to get what they wanted to achieve. A certain "programmer lockout" had to be watched for.[/quote]

[quote="Neo"]But do all writers want to be programmers? And can--or should--they be?[/quote]

[quote="Laroquond"]My experience of the writer/programmer dichotomy is that writers often want programmers to collaborate with and often believe in the division of labour, conveniently keeping most of the inspiring stuff to themselves. Whereas programmers want to play both sides because coming up with neat content to implement is where most of the fun is.[/quote]

So there was this interesting discussion of what makes good collaboration. My own perspective on this is that there are lots of different models of collaboration, none of which can be said to be universally ideal: really, how a collaboration works depends on the collaborators; different sets of collaborators need to work out between them how they're going to work, what the roles are going to be, and so on. My first IF was written collaboratively with one other author, but we made no split of code and text: we just wrote different sections of the game, and then edited each other's sections, so that the result was an emergent voice that was both of us and neither of us at the same time.

That said, I think that having a good understanding of programming makes for better writing, and vice versa, in the context of IF authoring. IF authoring is not simply writing + programming: the two influence each other heavily, and the whole is more than the sum of the parts. How one writes the text depends on game dynamics which depends on the programming, and what one programs depends on the demands of the text. And so on. So I personally counsel against a very firm and clear demarcation of the roles.

But this is all an interesting side discussion, rather than what I think this group would be about, as I hope is now a bit clearer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1738&start=0#p11364
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Initial text after play begins
User: DrWorm / DateTime: 2010-11-27 14:44:57

There's no doubt in my mind that the answer to this question is exceedingly obvious, but I can't find it anywhere in the manual.

I know that you can insert text before gameplay begins by using
[code]When play begins:
       say "Blah blah blah."[/code]

But most IF I've played also has some initial text that appears only once, but [i]after[/i] gameplay begins. So the title and game information is shown, the room is listed, and it says something like
[quote]You've never seen this room before. Three large windows loom above a wall to the north.[/quote]
and if you look around again, it just says
[quote]Three large windows loom above a wall to the north.[/quote]

How do I add the initial text (in this case, "You've never seen this room before.")?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1738&start=0#p11365
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Initial text after play begins
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-11-27 15:05:27

[quote="DrWorm"]There's no doubt in my mind that the answer to this question is exceedingly obvious, but I can't find it anywhere in the manual.

I know that you can insert text before gameplay begins by using
[code]When play begins:
       say "Blah blah blah."[/code]

But most IF I've played also has some initial text that appears only once, but [i]after[/i] gameplay begins. So the title and game information is shown, the room is listed, and it says something like
[quote]You've never seen this room before. Three large windows loom above a wall to the north.[/quote]
and if you look around again, it just says
[quote]Three large windows loom above a wall to the north.[/quote]

How do I add the initial text (in this case, "You've never seen this room before.")?[/quote]

You can do this at different layers of implementation, which is a fancy way of saying that you can do it in the description itself or, for instance, as part of a rule.

The first method is used fairly often.

[code]The description of the Starting-Room is "[if unvisited]You've never seen this room before. [end if]Three large windows loom above a wall to the north."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1734&start=0#p11366
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 making sitting, standing on, and lying down different
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-27 15:25:26

[quote="Felix"]Use the phrase "move the player to the bed, without printing a room description" instead of "now the player is on the bed":[/quote]
I thought 'move' instead of 'now' is deprecated? Was I wrong? I'm wondering if there is a way to achieve this effect without using a deprecated command.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1720&start=10#p11367
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Authors' Group: An idea for developer mutual aid
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-27 15:36:47

Sorry, I did not mean to contribute to thread entropy. Nor to miss the subtleties of Neo's post. But...

[quote="Harry Giles"]IF authoring is not simply writing + programming: the two influence each other heavily, and the whole is more than the sum of the parts.[/quote]This!

As for a 'reason to write', I already do write. There is a mixed media project that involves IF that I work a little bit on every day, and there is a side project I started up specifically for acquainting myself with Inform 7, which I work on a little bit every *other* day. (The days when I don't work in Inform 7 I use that time for a non-IF project instead.) Not sure where I would make room for yet another project.

There are some writers who have trouble getting started and others who have trouble getting finished. I tend to fall into the latter due to intercompetition between various projects I do for myself and others, so yet another project (particularly a regular recurring one) is the last thing I personally need. I don't know where everyone else falls on it — probably it's a great idea for some.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1738&start=0#p11368
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Initial text after play begins
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-27 16:04:47

Or:

[code]
The description of the Starting-Room is "[first time]You've never seen this room before. [only]Three large windows loom above a wall to the north."
[/code]

The difference is that first time/only is a general tool; it works in any string. "Unvisited" is only meaningful in room description strings.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1734&start=0#p11369
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 making sitting, standing on, and lying down different
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-27 16:06:03

You're wrong. :) It's not deprecated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1738&start=0#p11370
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Initial text after play begins
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-11-27 16:59:06

[quote="zarf"]Or:

[code]
The description of the Starting-Room is "[first time]You've never seen this room before. [only]Three large windows loom above a wall to the north."
[/code]

The difference is that first time/only is a general tool; it works in any string. "Unvisited" is only meaningful in room description strings.[/quote]

I never heard of this term. It's awesome. Thank you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1734&start=0#p11371
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 making sitting, standing on, and lying down different
User: George / DateTime: 2010-11-27 17:43:17

Paul, you might have been thinking of one of the 'change' phrases. There were also a couple of move phrases related to rule ordering.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1734&start=0#p11372
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 making sitting, standing on, and lying down different
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-27 18:55:50

[quote="George"]Paul, you might have been thinking of one of the 'change' phrases.[/quote]
Ah that sounds likely. Thanks guys!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1738&start=0#p11373
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Initial text after play begins
User: Sequitur / DateTime: 2010-11-27 20:16:50

[quote="zarf"]Or:

[code]
The description of the Starting-Room is "[first time]You've never seen this room before. [only]Three large windows loom above a wall to the north."
[/code]

The difference is that first time/only is a general tool; it works in any string. "Unvisited" is only meaningful in room description strings.[/quote]

Incidentally: [first time]/[only] really deserves its own documentation page. I read on the 'one-shot text' extension description that it had been implemented as a general feature of Inform; then proceeded to totally miss it at the bottom of the 'text with random variations' page. [emote]:oops:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1739&start=0#p11374
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Help me pick a project
User: Sequitur / DateTime: 2010-11-27 20:25:00

Okay, so now that I anticipate having time to work on a game, and I have three different concepts at different stages in planning/maturation, I wanted to pitch them to some people and gauge reaction before I move on. I just want some feedback on what looks interesting, what looks like it might contain some new ground, what you'd personally most like to play, and what looks more like a "first project" kind of thing. As a note, I'm using Inform 7.

[list]
[*] Unnamed fantasy game: The player character is a journalist in an urban original fantasy setting, investigating a story of government corruption and magical mishandling. It would mostly be a game about asking questions of NPCs, and potentially telling them things; NPCs would have their own agendas, and act on information they're given. There would be a handful of totally self-contained exploration/puzzle sections.[/*:m]
[*] The Party: We open on the player character murdering the host of a dinner party that's soon to begin. Now he must host the party himself, maintain the ruse that the host is merely ill, and keep everyone from going down into the wine cellar and finding the body. This would have multiple endings, and would be scored on the player not only keeping himself from being found out, but also protecting the Terrible Secret that prompted the murder, and making sure everyone has a good time at the party.[/*:m]
[*] The Revolution: The player is a black-market operation in a city-state that has left a war only to enter anarchy. One of the sides in this revolution will win - the goal is to make yourself indispensable when they do. The player would at the same time have great control over the personal story of his character, and very little control over the sweeping events.[/*:m][/list:u]

Any thoughts?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1739&start=0#p11375
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Help me pick a project
User: George / DateTime: 2010-11-27 20:54:41

I think the Party has the best hook, but would also require the best implementation, and that the Revolution is the most likely to get big fast (though you could perhaps make the smallest story of the three ideas from this, by focusing on the personal story of the protagonist above all). Compared to those, the quality of the game made from the first idea would be most influenced by how much work you put into it. 

So for a first game, I'd go with the Party, as IMO it's the clearest concept and would be interesting from the start. 

All of them look worthwhile. Best wishes on the project.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1718&start=0#p11376
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: AM/PM and colon troubles
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-27 21:12:17

I don't remember if I used to be better at this sort of thing, but since I've started using unit tests in Python, I've found myself picking logical operators by trial and error more often than thinking them through properly. At least my unit tests usually tell me if I've done something dumb....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1725&start=0#p11377
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Command not understood: a problem with command ambiguity
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-27 21:24:26

Your original source, for all its flaws, is poetically written. I like your style.

I think Zarf is right, though, that this is the hard way to do things. If it were my game, I'd probably have a place called "dance floor", give it normal compass connections, and then add some sugar so that all of your grammars will be understood in addition to the normal directions. But maybe this isn't the sort of club that has a place referred to as a "dance floor..."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1726&start=0#p11378
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Recognizing New Kinds
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-27 21:29:25

[quote="Bistre"][code]Clothing is a kind of thing. Clothing is usually wearable. 
A dress is clothing. A dress is in the Bedroom. 

Check inserting things into closet:
	if the thing is not clothing:
		say "That really doesn't belong in the closet." instead.[/code]

If I try to put the dress into the closet, it will still say that "That really doesn't belong in the closet" even though I defined it as clothing.[/quote]

I've tried various ways of phrasing things like this in rule conditions, but I've never been able to do it:

[code]Check inserting clothing into closet:[/code]
is valid, but I don't think this is:
[code]Check inserting something not clothing into closet:[/code]

You can always do this:
[code]
Definition: A thing is non-clothing if it is not clothing.

Check inserting non-clothing into closet:[/code]
...but that doesn't always seem to deserve an extra paragraph.

I've probably used this on occasion, but I can't even remember if this works:

[code]Check inserting something into the closet when the noun is not clothing:[/code]
...but even that seems unfairly wordy to me. Is there a syntax to do all-except-one-kind in a single phrase?

Sometimes I think my real problem is with the way the check rulebook works.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1730&start=0#p11379
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Combining string variables?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-27 21:40:45

I've started using rulebooks for complicated text pastiche. You could have a caption rulebook:

(not tested):
[code]Caption is an object-based rulebook.

Caption of the T-shirt (this is the first sentence rule):
    say "To be, or not to be?";

Caption of the T-shirt (this is the second sentence rule):
    say "That is the question.";

Instead of examining the T-shirt:
    follow the caption of the T-shirt.[/code]
There are definite line-break hassles, but I really like the way the source looks once I get it working. And there's no indexed text!

I've also considered doing things like this with activities, but so far that's seemed unnecessarily verbose. I like the way rulebooks can be named to blend in with the code in a "natural language" way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1736&start=0#p11380
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Teleporting command for testing purposes.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-27 21:51:09

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Note that I put the reporting output in the carry out rule. This is so the player will read a report BEFORE the description of the new room is printed. Also note the use of "visible", which is required precisely because the destination is not, in fact, visible. (It's an Inform thing.)[/quote]
Yes, it looks and sounds ridiculous, but I don't know if that's quite fair. The use of "visible" is required because "visible" is not as restrictive as "touchable," which is the default.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1740&start=0#p11381
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Playlists
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-27 22:03:42

It would be great if there were some sort of generic playlist format, such that IFDB could output it as well as Zoom with it's library, so that other interpreters, including Parchment, could then display the list and download the games. Would make it easier to share recommended games or other sorts of lists. (With IFDB every list could generate a corresponding playlist, meaning polls and recommended items could be easily gathered form the site.)

Is there already a playlist format we could use for this? If not, what info should it provide?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1738&start=0#p11382
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Initial text after play begins
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-11-27 22:09:10

Yet another option is:

[code]The description of the Starting-Room is "[one of]You've never seen this room before. [or][stopping]Three large windows loom above a wall to the north."[/code]

True, it's the weakest option in this case, but it's often a good general option because a) you can have a different text display the second time (ie, [one of]You've never seen this room before.[or]You've been in this room before.[stopping]) and b) you could make it display more than two variations (ie, [one of]You've never seen this room before.[or]You've been in this room once before.[or]You've been in this room several times.[stopping]).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1739&start=0#p11383
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Help me pick a project
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-11-27 22:11:03

The first one is the only one that doesn't sound astoundingly complicated, although the second one could be manageable as long as it was broken into relatively self-contained scenes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1739&start=0#p11384
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Help me pick a project
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-11-27 22:38:10

I too like the hook of "The Party", though it sounds like a challenge to pull off unless you break it up into distinct and well-specified threats: here's a scene where the wine-loving guest really wants to go to the basement to check out the vintages down there, here's one where the doctor notices what looks like a blood stain and you have to convince him it's something else... etc. (If you do go that route, I recommend trying out Aaron Reed's game Gourmet from a few years back. The protagonist's motives are a bit purer, but the concept of meeting NPC needs while keeping secrets under wraps is well explored.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1739&start=0#p11385
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Help me pick a project
User: Sequitur / DateTime: 2010-11-27 22:42:34

Setting it up with distinct scenes was pretty much the plan from the start, although I see it as somewhat more organic - the Party would be split into large meta-scenes broadly corresponding to the parts of a dinner party (Introductions, Cocktails, Dinner, Dessert, Brandy and Farewells, for example) and within those meta-scenes, smaller individual scenes would open one at a time although not necessarily in a specific order. Most of the game's puzzles would centre around dealing with social convention, i.e., the player has to extricate himself from conversations, or find excuses to stand up and leave during dinner, in order to put out some fire. There would be a fair bit of leeway in that the game would be winnable without attending to everything, but there would be some extra challenge in trying to make it a successful party in spite of the corpse.

Two features it would need are a system that lets the player type >GOALS in order to view the player character's immediate necessities, and an inner monologue where thoughts that serve as clues-slash-humorous-commentary would pop up at apropos moments.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1741&start=0#p11386
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Things in every room
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-11-27 23:02:18

So for unfathomable reasons I apparently need to implement a floor, ceiling, and walls in every room in my game.  It's simple enough to put a ceiling in every room:

[code]A ceiling is a kind of thing.  It is scenery.  The description is usually "It's the ceiling.  What did you expect?"

A ceiling is in every room.[/code]

But Inform specifically prevents me from changing the description of a particular ceiling; the following gets an error:

[code]The description of the ceiling in the dining room is "A fancy crystal chandelier hangs in the middle of the room."[/code]

Nor can I just put a specifically named ceiling in rooms that need a different description, since then I'd have two ceilings.  Is my only option to actually, as Inform suggests, make one huge text substitution that contains the description of every ceiling in the game?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1739&start=0#p11387
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Help me pick a project
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-11-27 23:29:26

I like the party idea a lot; it seems very fresh, and there's a lot of places it could go.  (One of those places: a IF version of the movie Clue, with the protagonist as Tim Curry.  Now that's a game I would play in a heartbeat.)  On the other hand, it seems extraordinarily ambitious for a first game.  NPCs are challenging to do even in a casual kind of way.  I'd also be concerned about making the boundaries very clear to the player: what is socially acceptable under these circumstances?  I mean, when I need to get away to the kitchen, I just gesture vaguely with my wine glass and wander blithely off, or mumble something about the canapes.  If there are going to be puzzles - worse, timed puzzles - everything needs to be very clear and *tight*, especially with so much revolving around conversation, which is not exactly what IF is known for handling well.  

The urban fantasy one . . . well, honestly, I think the genre's a bit stale right now, and that's going to hurt.  On the other hand, it's not stale in IF - there's fantasy, and even fantasy in cities, but not usually with the sort of trappings UF usually implies to me.  Quite honestly, conversation isn't quite how I expect urban fantasy to go; the genre implies some sort of adventure-having and werewolf-slaying (or saving) somewhere in there, but it could be that my idea of the genre is outdated.

The last idea seems like it could go either way, depending greatly on the story and how well it's conveyed.  One problem I can see is that a smart black market op would be as far away as possible from where the fight is actually going down, so delivering news of what's happening, and making that compelling, could be a challenge.  (Or you could find ways to insert the main character into major events, but unlike the other two scenarios, it doesn't seem like the character actually belongs there.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1742&start=0#p11388
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Intervisibility and Doors
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-11-28 02:49:01

I am trying to make some rooms intervisible and I noticed a large problem with the intervisibility rules in the Rock Garden example: They don't work on doors.

Apparently moving a room into scope doesn't move the doors into scope, even if the rooms on both sides of the door are all connected.  Understandable, but it makes those rules useless if any of the connected rooms have doors in them.

Any way I can modify these rules (or make up new ones) so that the player can look at doors in connected rooms?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1741&start=0#p11389
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Things in every room
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-11-28 03:08:37

Yes, that's the idea of anonymous instances of things -- they're all exact copies of each other. There's a couple of ways to go around this. The simplest is to change the description at runtime:

[code]When play begins:
    now the description of a random ceiling in the dining room is "A fancy crystal chandelier hangs in the middle of the room."[/code]

The other is to put the generic ceilings only in rooms that do not already have ceilings, or alternatively remove the duplicates at runtime. This is the preferred method when some instances are genuinely different or significant.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1726&start=0#p11390
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Recognizing New Kinds
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-11-28 03:14:12

Try "Check inserting something that is not clothing into closet".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1741&start=0#p11391
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Things in every room
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-28 03:15:49

A scenery object is not a way of cloning an object multiple times; rather, it's a way of moving a single object from room to room along with the player, so that it always appears to be there in the designated rooms. Internally, Inform is literally moving around that ceiling scenery object every time the player moves. That's why you can't give a separate description to 'the ceiling in the dining room' -- because there is no separate ceiling in the dining room, nor is there even *a* ceiling in the dining room unless the player is also in the dining room.

Presumably, most of your ceilings will have the same description, with a few exceptions for special rooms. If I am correct in that assumption, then a good solution might be to define the standard ceiling scenery as being in every room in the plain-ceilinged region or every room of a plain-ceilinged kind (which you would define according to your map). Leave all the rooms with special ceilings that require individual descriptions out of the definition of 'plain-ceilinged', so that they won't get the standard ceiling moved to them when the player is there. That way the special rooms won't have two ceilings when you give them a special, separate ceiling scenery object (ceiling2, ceiling3, etc?) of their own.

It's best to think of scenery as a multi-room effect produced by a single object by always magically jumping to where it needs to be, just in time. Smoke & mirrors. 8)

Paul.

EDIT: OR — what Juhana said.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1741&start=0#p11392
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Things in every room
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-11-28 03:24:10

[quote="Laroquod"]A scenery object is not a way of cloning an object multiple times; rather, it's a way of moving a single object from room to room along with the player, so that it always appears to be there in the designated rooms. Internally, Inform is literally moving around that ceiling scenery object every time the player moves.[/quote]
Actually you're thinking of backdrops. Anonymous instances of kinds are separate objects.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1741&start=0#p11393
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Things in every room
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-11-28 03:32:40

[quote="Juhana"][quote="Laroquod"]A scenery object is not a way of cloning an object multiple times; rather, it's a way of moving a single object from room to room along with the player, so that it always appears to be there in the designated rooms. Internally, Inform is literally moving around that ceiling scenery object every time the player moves.[/quote]
Actually you're thinking of backdrops. Anonymous instances of kinds are separate objects.[/quote]
Whups! Thanks for setting me straight. 'Backdrops', forgot that. What did they used to call those in Inform 6? I don't think it was 'backdrops' — it was... some other property. 'Found' or something.

So, all backdrops are scenery but not all scenery is a backdrop? Is that still the case?

P.S. Isn't the above problem a backdrop situation? I'm wondering why bother doing it with multiple instances of a kind.

EDIT: Found_in! 8)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1741&start=0#p11394
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Things in every room
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-11-28 03:58:09

For a ceiling or a sky, I would use a single backdrop object and use some sleight of hand to change how it was described as needed. That assumes the player's not going to be doing anything significant to the ceiling in any one room.

For a floor, though, I'd be more careful, because a floor might reasonably be treated as a supporter, possibly an enterable one. So we have to consider:

- What happens if the player types PUT (SOMETHING) ON FLOOR? If the floor is a backdrop, I could put a knife on the floor in the kitchen, wander into the living room, and find that the knife was on the floor there too.  

- Similarly, what if the player types STAND ON FLOOR as a way to get out of objects? What if NPCs stand on floors? Are enterable objects contained within a floor? Those things will all float magically from room to room too if there's any way for them to get onto the floor supporter.

If we're sure we've covered all our bases about redirecting all actions that might move an object to the floor, we might be able to get away with a floor backdrop, but there are enough complications that it might be more appealing to make one floor object per room.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1740&start=0#p11395
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Playlists
User: djfletch / DateTime: 2010-11-28 05:58:40

This could be some sort of microformat (in the sense of <a class="postlink" href="http://microformats.org/">http://microformats.org/</a>) which would let you refer to a game in HTML and tag it with its IFID in a machine-readable way. Then you could have a web page or feed that could be also be parsed as a playlist.

Although if you rely on the IFID alone, it needs to be in conjunction with a service that lets you get from that to the metadata and the story file URL (as was originally proposed for Babel). If IFDB was involved this service could be an API onto IFDB.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1741&start=0#p11396
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Things in every room
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-28 07:49:02

Could you do this with a say phrase and a table? Something along the lines of:

[code]A ceiling is a kind of thing.  It is scenery.  The description is "[Ceiling-Description]."

A ceiling is in every room.

To say ceiling-description:
    if location is a ceiling-room listed in the Table of Ceiling Descriptions:
       say the ceiling-text corresponding to location in the Table of Ceiling Descriptions:
    otherwise:
        say "Just a plain old ceiling, with some cracks that may or may not have the habit of looking something like a rabbit." 

Table of Ceiling Descriptions
ceiling-room    ceiling-text
Chapel          "The ceiling depicts God creating the universe. You know, that sort of thing."
Police Station  "I was really tempted to put a spoiler for the Third Policeman here, but I can't. Go read the book."
[etc.][/code]

I haven't tested this at all, and I'm not sure if this can get you complex say phrases or even if it works at all, but would it do the sort of thing the original poster wanted? And I suppose it would make more sense for the floor, since you can just use a backdrop for the ceiling.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1465&start=10#p11397
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Funny responses from this year's games
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-11-28 09:50:58

From Divis Mortis:

[spoiler]>eat male [zombie]
I think you've got this zombie thing the wrong way around.[/spoiler]

Sure, it's not *that* funny, but in context, it surprised a chuckle out of me.

[spoiler]>search male
Nothing here but internal organs.

A nice slab of steak sounds perfect right now. 

>x organs
They're usually on the inside.

You can't think about anything but eating at the moment. 

>eat male
I think you've got this zombie thing the wrong way around.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1742&start=0#p11398
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Intervisibility and Doors
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-11-28 11:33:17

I looked at this, and I can't figure it out. It seems to have something to do with how Inform does path-finding.

I created a garden gate between Rock Garden East and Rock Garden West, and got the problem you've described. I then added this code to the rule for reaching inside a room, right after "let way be the best route...":

if the way is a door:
say "Boinnnggg!";

This statement never fires, so way isn't a door ... but it's not a direction either. Turns out it's nothing. If I change that to "if the way is nothing", my say statement fires off.

I suppose this behavior could be modified by writing a test inside of the rule for reaching inside of the room -- a test that would look at whether target and location are joined by a door. You'd have to create a new relation -- call it "door-joining" or something like that. I'll try it later if I have time.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1742&start=0#p11399
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Intervisibility and Doors
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-11-28 11:41:03

You can do it this way -- but my solution is not general, it's specific to the example. I'm not sure how best to generalize it. I've created a general door-joining relation, but my rule has to check the specific locations and supply a direction.
[code]Section 1 - General Rules

Intervisibility relates rooms to each other in groups. The verb to be connected with implies the intervisibility relation.

Definition: a room is inter-visible if it is connected with more than one room.

Door-joining relates rooms to each other in groups. The verb to be door-joined to implies the door-joining relation.

After deciding the scope of the player when the location is an inter-visible room:
	repeat with other place running through rooms which are connected with the location:
		unless the other place is the location, place the other place in scope.

Rule for reaching inside a room (called target) which is connected with the location:
	let way be the best route from the location to the target;
	if the way is nothing:
		if the location is door-joined to the target:
			say "(first heading through the gate)[command clarification break]";
			if the player is in Rock Garden East:
				try going west;
			otherwise:
				try going east;
			if the player is in the target, allow access;
			otherwise deny access;
	if the way is not a direction:
		say "You can't get over to [the target] from here.";
		deny access;
	say "(first heading [way])[command clarification break]";
	try going way;
	if the player is in the target, allow access;
	otherwise deny access.

After looking when the location is an inter-visible room:
	repeat with other place running through rooms which are connected with the location:
		if the other place is not the location, describe locale for other place.

Section 2 - The Scenario

Rock Garden West is a room. Rock Garden East is a room. Rock Garden East contains a rake. Rock Garden West contains a bench and a maple leaf. The bench is an enterable supporter.

The rock garden gate is a door. It is open. It is west of Rock Garden East and east of Rock Garden West.

Rock Garden West is connected with Rock Garden East. Rock Garden West is door-joined to Rock Garden East.

Test me with "get rake / drop rake / sit on bench / get rake".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1742&start=0#p11400
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Intervisibility and Doors
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-11-28 12:47:58

I'm not so much concerned with the rooms connected by doors as I am with the door itself:  It isn't being placed in scope, so you can't examine it or automatically move towards it.  Like so:

[code]Rock Garden West is west of Rock Garden East. Rock Garden East contains a rake. Rock Garden West contains a bench and a maple leaf. The bench is an enterable supporter.

Rock Garden West is connected with Rock Garden East.  The House is connected with Rock Garden East.

The gate is east of Rock Garden East and west of the House.  It is a door.

Test me with "examine gate / open gate".[/code]

Notice that the gate isn't even mentioned when you're in Rock Garden West.  Thus the rules aren't much good, because there is something in Rock Garden East that you can't see or examine.  My instinct is to just manually move the doors in scope:

[code]After deciding the scope of the player when the location is an inter-visible room:
	repeat with other place running through rooms which are connected with the location:
		unless the other place is the location, place the other place in scope;
		repeat with other door running through all doors which are adjacent to the location:
			unless the other place is the location, place the other door in scope.[/code]

But that doesn't work (apparently a door is neither "in" nor "adjacent to" a room it's connected to?).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1738&start=0#p11401
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Initial text after play begins
User: DrWorm / DateTime: 2010-11-28 12:57:32

Thanks so much to all of you for the tips--they all work, and the [first time] term is a godsend for this type of thing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1742&start=0#p11402
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Intervisibility and Doors
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-28 13:02:50

[quote="Jim Aikin"]I looked at this, and I can't figure it out. It seems to have something to do with how Inform does path-finding.

I created a garden gate between Rock Garden East and Rock Garden West, and got the problem you've described. I then added this code to the rule for reaching inside a room, right after "let way be the best route...":

if the way is a door:
say "Boinnnggg!";

This statement never fires, so way isn't a door ... but it's not a direction either. Turns out it's nothing. If I change that to "if the way is nothing", my say statement fires off.

I suppose this behavior could be modified by writing a test inside of the rule for reaching inside of the room -- a test that would look at whether target and location are joined by a door. You'd have to create a new relation -- call it "door-joining" or something like that. I'll try it later if I have time.

--JA[/quote]

Path-finding doesn't use doors as a default; see [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc99.html]Writing with Inform 6.14[/url]:

[quote]Best routes are ordinarily forbidden to go through doors, but if the suffix "using doors" is added as an option then any open or openable and unlocked door may be used on the way; and if "using even locked doors" is given, then any door at all will do.[/quote]

So if I've understood your example correctly, the best route is "nothing" because you can't get here from there without going through a door.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1742&start=0#p11403
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Intervisibility and Doors
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-11-28 14:04:26

[quote="katz"]But that doesn't work (apparently a door is neither "in" nor "adjacent to" a room it's connected to?).[/quote]

That's right. This has nothing to do with pathfinding, which isn't being used to determine scope in the Rock Garden example, and everything to do with the implementation of doors. A door is an object that has to be in two places at once, so it is handled by Inform like a backdrop. When the player moves to a new location, Inform does a bit of housekeeping and moves to that location all the backdrop and door objects that ought to be visible from there; it removes all the ones that should not.

One way around this is to use an implementation of doors that treats each side of a door individually. It is fiddly, but the Deluxe Doors extension does that. 

Another way is manually to revise the placement of door backdrops. Backdrops are normally moved at the start of play and then also during "carry out going...". You'd want to call your rule from the carry out rulebook but make sure it was placed late in the process, like so:

[code]When play begins:
	follow the door updating rule.
	
Last carry out an actor going somewhere:
	follow the door updating rule.

This is the door updating rule:
	repeat with item running through doors:
		unless the item is in the location:
			if the front side of the item is a room which is connected with the location: 
				move item to the front side of the item;
			otherwise if the back side of the item is a room which is connected with the location: 
				move item to the back side of the item.[/code]

This solution is more compact than the two door-halves solution. I've tested it lightly and it seems to work, though it's possible there are complications I haven't thought of.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=50#p11404
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2010-11-28 15:28:40

My game code got too big to compile as Z8/zblorb so I had to go with Glulxe/gblorb. I feel like it's an even more major project, now.

(edited to add word)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1736&start=0#p11405
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Teleporting command for testing purposes.
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2010-11-28 15:38:22

Because it's always good to have more than one way to do things...

GONEAR LOCATION works well.

You can GONEAR an item, too. And you don't need to fill everything in. So "gonear north of the house" could be "gonear north"...

Gonear has the advantage of not using time, too.

Between that, PURLOIN, and SHOWME, I'm able to do a lot of things with the test command that save all kinds of time.

BTW, Jim, it's neat to see how people would make this command from scratch (I didn't know,) but I'm curious why you might favor teleporting over gonear, since I believe I learned about gonear in your Inform Handbook.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=50#p11406
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-11-28 16:06:15

Have spent much of this weekend agonizing over the subdivisions of items. Gets particularly nasty when you come up with plausible-seeming reasons for implementing dozens upon dozens of incorporated items, and iterating across them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1743&start=0#p11407
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Run Paragraph On
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-11-28 16:18:37

Any idea why "run paragraph on" doesn't work with room descriptions?  Like so:

[code]The hamster cage is a room.  "You are in a small glass terrarium.  The floor is strewn with clean pine shavings.  [run paragraph on]"

A water bottle is in the hamster cage.  "A water bottle hangs from one side of the cage.  [run paragraph on]"

A wheel is in the hamster cage.  "There is also a squeaky plastic exercise wheel.  [run paragraph on]"

A tube is in the hamster cage.  "There is a discarded toilet paper tube in one corner."[/code]

Why doesn't this print all four lines as a single paragraph?  Is there a way to make this work?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1686&start=40#p11408
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Moral Premise and Gaming
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-11-28 17:27:18

[quote="Sequitur"]I'm going to humbly suggest to posters upthread that they don't pick up [i]The Moral Premise[/i], or any Hollywood screenwriting manual, without first having a look at the sources they draw upon, in this case Lajos Egri's [i]The Art of Dramatic Writing[/i]. Not to say there's anything bad about Hollywood screenwriting manuals like Syd Fields' and Robert McKee's work, but that they tend to focus too much on formula and too little on the grounding and theory that make the formula work. Hell, if you want to really be informed when you approach Syd Fields, you have to go all the way back to Aristotle.[/quote]
As a general rule, I tend to look first at what how-to books that the current crop of how-to books compare themselves to.  I also find that I get best results as far as creative writing is concerned with books published between 1900 and, oh, 1975 or so.  Time separates the wheat from the chaff. 

Right now I'm a few chapters into Chris Vogler's The Writer's Journey, but since I haven't yet found a copy of The Hero with a THousand Faces, it isn't doing much for me.  

So thanks for the heads-up.  (As for Aristotle, I've read some of it, but he's just too distant from me for me to get much from him.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1739&start=0#p11409
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Help me pick a project
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2010-11-28 18:57:11

The Party also gets my vote.  I'm a big fan of murder mystery IF.  Also, I think you can keep the scope narrow enough to make it manageable as a first game.  I strongly recommend you try out Infocom's The Witness (from 1983) and An Act of Murder by Chris Huang (2007).  There are some conventions in this genre that are worth following (e.g. Ask / Tell, Analyze, Accuse, Arrest...) and as such you can actually get away without too much NPC complexity.  Or at least, that's my hope since I'm also working on my first game, which is a murder mystery set in 1950, southern California.  

Happy to compare notes or share code if you decide to go this route.  
--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1732&start=0#p11410
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Aurora-related questions
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-11-28 21:17:28

I've got a newer version compiled now, by the way.  (And I was forgetting to increment the release numbers.  *facepalm*)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1252&start=10#p11411
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Extra Challenges
User: mulehollandaise / DateTime: 2010-11-28 21:42:29

[quote="gravel"][quote="zarf"]With the advent of web interpreters, it's not implausible to imagine online achievement lists for IF. Or speed-run lists, IF win scores...

Yes, it's cheesy. But we waft around all day wondering how to make IF popular -- look, *I* do -- and these are classic strategies for making games popular.[/quote]

Well, especially since beginners find interaction kind of frustrating - rewarding interaction, even with cheese, could well get people over the hump.  A well-tailored list of accomplishments could also help reveal inside mechanics that the author wants to show off - either by hinting at other courses of action through locked achievement names (ie "Peacenik" for a non-violent playthrough), or by rewarding actions the player might not expect the game to notice ("Procrastinator" for a certain amount of waiting or what not).  

Sort of like the AMUSE lists, but perhaps available up front, or with a little more structure (say, unlock messages).[/quote]

(This thread is a bit old, but I came here to create a thread about achievements and extra challenges, and so here are my two cents.)

I only recently discovered the Xbox Live and its system of achievements, and I must admit that I got hooked in no time. I've always enjoyed doing a maximum of secondary quests while I'm playing a game, for that matter, but the fact that you're awarded points if you do so is fairly gratifying and entices you in playing over and over and discover every single thing in the game.

Moreover, the simple fact that you have a score associated with your achievements (and the fact that it is very present: along with your avatar's name, the only thing you can see is your score) is the bulk of the addiction: you're naturally enticed in making this score grow more and more (and I must admit I don't know why, the brain just seems to react this way!). This is to my mind why the system of achievements is better on Xbox than on Steam (other than the fact that _every_ Xbox game has achievements): you can summarize all your achievements and see them all in a glance. (Steam achievements are just for the sake of it, and you can only see your achievements for a game, not all the achievements you have earned).


Anyway, I think an Xbox Live or Steam-like website would be a great thing for IF to gather and/or attract players. This system works really well for mainstream gaming, because of their addictive nature; why not to try applying it to IF? That would require some adaptations, of course, because IF games are really different from mainstream games (and IF players don't look for the same experience when they're playing an IF). But I can imagine that we could have a website in which a user logs in, and start playing a game in his browser; he can save the game on the server at any moment; there can be a list of "played games", as well as "wish list" and such, as in the IFDB. The players would be enticed to use this website if we give links to play a game on this website rather than on Parchment, for instance; either way the player gets to play a game, and can at the same time see that a million games are waiting for him to join!

And for the achievements, why not simply use the score for a start? For each game, the user can see the score he has, as well as his rank and the max score; so you just sum up your score for every game you played in a "global score" attached to your profile. The thing is, there are quite a number of IFs nowadays that don't have a score (because a score is quite anticlimatic if you want to focus on storytelling); for these games, either you could let it this way (after all not all the games on Steam have achievements), or you could just create an achievement "Game completed", with possibly a good number of points attached to the achievement (this way the player is still enticed in completing the game).
All in all, it shouldn't be very difficult to implement (the interpreter just have to detect commands affecting score and the deadflags), and doesn't require any change in any game! And with such a system, authors may be enticed in creating subplots or easter eggs, as well as individual achievements (for which you don't get any points added to your score for the game, but you get points added to your "overall gaming score").
And you could even add "meta-achievements": when you read 1 millions words, when you played more than 100 games, when you finished every game from an IF-Comp, etc, etc !

Anyway, I definitely think this idea has potential [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1743&start=0#p11412
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Run Paragraph On
User: Sequitur / DateTime: 2010-11-28 23:12:48

There are many ways to get all that in a single paragraph. The most common one, for items such as the water bottle and wheel which (Presumably) are fixed in place, is to define them as scenery instead of things, and incorporate them to the room description:
[code]
Hamster Cage is a room. "You are in a small glass terrarium. The floor is strewn with clean pine shavings. A water bottle and a squeaky hamster wheel hang from one side of the cage; a discarded tube of toilet paper sits in the corner, likely feeling sorry for itself."

The water bottle, the hamster wheel, and the toilet paper tube are scenery in the hamster cage.
[/code]

This produces:
[quote]
Hamster Cage
You are in a small glass terrarium. The floor is strewn with clean pine shavings. A water bottle and a squeaky hamster wheel hang from one side of the cage; a discarded tube of toilet paper sits in the corner, likely feeling sorry for itself.

>
[/quote]

However, this is not a general solution. It won't work for items that the player can take or move around, for example. The best way to implement this as a general feature of the game is to use the Room Description Control extension by Emily Short, which allows you to completely rewrite the Inform room description rules.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1744&start=0#p11413
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Request for comment: Thoughts
User: Sequitur / DateTime: 2010-11-29 00:18:30

So, in preparation for my game project, I just built a little system for feeding information to the player gradually. This system defines a number of thought objects, and a rulebook for thinking a particular thought. It allows for sequences of thoughts to unfold one at a time, and unlike the simpler [first time][only] one-shot text functionality, it allows for completely different events to trigger the same thought. It's fairly simple, but very general-use so I think I'll put it in an extension, which I might release if there's interest. This is the implementation I have:
[code]
"Morbid Thoughts" by Bruno Dias

The thought preformat is some text that varies. The thought preformat is "[italic type]".
The thought postformat is some text that varies. The thought postformat is "[roman type]".

Thought-state is a kind of value. The thought-states are ending, ended, passing, passed, and repeat.

A thought is a kind of thing. A thought has some text called the content. A thought has a thought-state called the state. The state of a thought is usually ending. A thought has a thought called the next thought.

Some thoughts are defined by the Table of Deep Thoughts.

Table of Deep Thoughts
thought			state			content											next thought
garden thought	ending			"I hate the smell of carnations. I really should go in and
								pay my respects, however."						--
death thought 1	passing			"Well this is depressing."							death thought 2	
death thought 2	passing			"Maybe I should try grief counseling instead."		death thought 3
death thought 3	ending			"I need to stop dwelling on those things."			--

The thinking rules are an object based rulebook.

A thinking rule (This is the thought preformat rule):
	say the thought preformat.

The thought preformat rule is listed first in the thinking rules.

A thinking rule for a thought (called the idea):
	if the state of the idea is ending:
		say the content of the idea;
		now the state of the idea is ended;
	if the state of the idea is passed:
		think the next thought of the idea;
	if the state of the idea is passing:
		say the content of the idea;
		now the state of the idea is passed;
	if the state of the idea is repeat:
		say the content of the idea;
		
A thinking rule (This is the thought postformat rule):
	say the thought postformat.
	
The thought postformat rule is listed last in the thinking rules.

To think (idea - a thought):
	follow the thinking rules for the idea.

To say think (idea - a thought):
	think the idea.

The Carnation Garden is a room. "Ahh, the garden just outside the crypt. [think the garden thought]"

Inside from the carnation garden is the Dank Crypt. The description of the crypt is "Ugh, the crypt." In the crypt are a tomb and a memento mori.

The description of the tomb is "Carved out of marble." The description of the memento is "A skull left upon the tomb as a general reminder of mortality."

After examining the tomb:
	think the death thought 1;
	continue the action.
	
After examining the memento mori:
	think the death thought 1;
	continue the action.

After going in the crypt:
	The grim realisation hits in two turns from now;
	continue the action.
	
At the time when the grim realisation hits:
	think the death thought 1.

Test me with "in / x tomb / z / x memento / x tomb"
[/code]

This works. I just want to ask if any cleaner/saner/better way of doing this or all of it jumps at anybody, and if you'd like to have it in extension form. Also: This code is recursive because I, not having been a programmer of any sort for years, can't think of a more elegant way of accomplishing it. It will, however, cause a runtime error if an author using it is careless in defining thoughts. Is there a way to prevent this from happening? [i]Should I try[/i]?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1739&start=0#p11414
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Help me pick a project
User: Sequitur / DateTime: 2010-11-29 00:23:05

Well, the Party game wouldn't be structured as a mystery - After all, you play as the killer! - and would be somewhat similar in tone to the film [i]American Psycho[/i] - maybe I should read the book. Although it would also resemble a [i]Clue[/i]-like farce. The plot, of course, is very similar to Hitchcock's [i]Rope[/i], although I only realised this after I had the idea.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1252&start=10#p11415
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Extra Challenges
User: Harry Giles / DateTime: 2010-11-29 03:57:04

[i]Walker and Silhouette[/i] does this in a pleasant, IF-sensitive way, I think. Gaining achievements even unlocks context! The key, I think, was that the tasks for achievement weren't pointless or grindy -- they were narrative. There were only 3, and it's a short game, so that functions more as a proof of concept, but worth looking at.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1734&start=10#p11416
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 making sitting, standing on, and lying down different
User: jonathan.laver / DateTime: 2010-11-29 07:01:18

Thanks everyone. Now I know what to do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1252&start=10#p11417
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Extra Challenges
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-29 07:03:50

[quote="Harry Giles"][i]Walker and Silhouette[/i] does this in a pleasant, IF-sensitive way, I think. Gaining achievements even unlocks context! The key, I think, was that the tasks for achievement weren't pointless or grindy -- they were narrative. There were only 3, and it's a short game, so that functions more as a proof of concept, but worth looking at.[/quote]

Wait, how do you get to the unlocked context? If I've earned some context I want to see it! (Even if I haven't earned any context, I want to see it, but in this case I have.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1252&start=20#p11418
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Extra Challenges
User: Harry Giles / DateTime: 2010-11-29 07:12:33

[quote="matt w"][quote="Harry Giles"][i]Walker and Silhouette[/i] does this in a pleasant, IF-sensitive way, I think. Gaining achievements even unlocks context! The key, I think, was that the tasks for achievement weren't pointless or grindy -- they were narrative. There were only 3, and it's a short game, so that functions more as a proof of concept, but worth looking at.[/quote]

Wait, how do you get to the unlocked context? If I've earned some context I want to see it! (Even if I haven't earned any context, I want to see it, but in this case I have.)[/quote]

 [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

Should have been "content", as you probably know, though I think the idea of earning context is stunning as a conceptual level.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1745&start=0#p11419
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Muti-System Interpreter
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-11-29 08:01:50

Z-code
Tads
Adrift
Glulx
(and others)

There are so many kinds of games out there. It would be nice if I could find an interpreter that would recognise what kind of game I'm trying to load, then interpret it, regardless of type. 

I know with my wife, who is new to IF, this was a pitfall of getting her into it- each time we downloaded a game off IFDB she was interested in, it needed a new interpreter. We both have games on our "wish list" we can't play without downloading something else...

Is there a multi-system interpreter out there?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1252&start=20#p11420
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Extra Challenges
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-29 08:25:52

[quote="Harry Giles"][quote="matt w"][quote="Harry Giles"][i]Walker and Silhouette[/i] does this in a pleasant, IF-sensitive way, I think. Gaining achievements even unlocks context! The key, I think, was that the tasks for achievement weren't pointless or grindy -- they were narrative. There were only 3, and it's a short game, so that functions more as a proof of concept, but worth looking at.[/quote]

Wait, how do you get to the unlocked context? If I've earned some context I want to see it! (Even if I haven't earned any context, I want to see it, but in this case I have.)[/quote]

 [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

Should have been "content", as you probably know, though I think the idea of earning context is stunning as a conceptual level.[/quote]

Actually, I thought that what you meant was that you could unlock more about the context of the story -- the world-building, the background, maybe Ivy's dossier, like that. Which may even be true. Anyway, if I replay the game, will it be obvious how to get my unlock? Is it possible that I saw it already and have forgotten that I did? Will I actually remember how to unlock the achievements? (Um, you probably can't answer the last two questions.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1252&start=20#p11421
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Extra Challenges
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-29 08:32:51

I think one potential difficulty with the original idea might be getting the games to communicate that you've unlocked the achievements -- that seems like it would involve writing to an external file, which I think can only be done in glulx rather than z-code, and which I think might be an issue with online interpreters anyway. One possibility might be having the games give you passwords for your unlock. Another might be optional unlocking, which I just read about at [url=http://www.wurb.com/stack/archives/1144]baf's blog[/url]; apparently the indie platformer VVVVVV has things that you can unlock by getting achievements, or you can just go to the menu and unlock them from there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1252&start=20#p11422
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Extra Challenges
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-11-29 08:40:58

[quote="matt w"]Actually, I thought that what you meant was that you could unlock more about the context of the story -- the world-building, the background, maybe Ivy's dossier, like that. Which may even be true. Anyway, if I replay the game, will it be obvious how to get my unlock? Is it possible that I saw it already and have forgotten that I did? Will I actually remember how to unlock the achievements? (Um, you probably can't answer the last two questions.)[/quote]
If I remember correctly, the unlockables are additional endgame options - Nate and Ivy's dossiers, and I forget what else. So if you got all the achievements, you've probably seen the unlockable content.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1252&start=20#p11423
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Extra Challenges
User: Harry Giles / DateTime: 2010-11-29 08:49:48

[quote="matt w"]Actually, I thought that what you meant was that you could unlock more about the context of the story -- the world-building, the background, maybe Ivy's dossier, like that. Which may even be true. Anyway, if I replay the game, will it be obvious how to get my unlock? Is it possible that I saw it already and have forgotten that I did? Will I actually remember how to unlock the achievements? (Um, you probably can't answer the last two questions.)[/quote]

Oh I see, I thought you were amusedly pointing out my typo.

As I recall, the things you could unlock

[spoiler]were character biographies one one other extra-content type thing[/spoiler]

and you could unlock them by

[spoiler]performing certain narrative feats during the game, too of which I can remember, and am happy to place behind spoiler tags for you if you want.[/spoiler]

I was told of this when I completed the game, at the point where AMUSING would usually be suggested. And you're told when the game opens that it's possible to unlock achievements. Unfortunately, because I got them all on the first playthrough (they're not hard to get), I don't know what it tells you if you only get some or none of them, so don't know how prompted/clued they are.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1252&start=20#p11424
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Extra Challenges
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-29 09:23:22

Oh now that I think of it I'm pretty sure I have seen those. They do count as unlocked context, I think. (I'm not actually a big gamer -- I keep telling myself that -- so "unlock" and "content" don't always arrange themselves next to each other in my head; I wasn't trying to twit you, I swear.) 

Pacian, have I mentioned that a Walker and Silhouette sequel would be [i]totally boss[/i]?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1746&start=0#p11425
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: The Warbler's Nest (post-comp)
User: jmac / DateTime: 2010-11-29 09:24:08

Howdy y'all,

I have published the post-comp release of [i]The Warbler's Nest[/i]. Lots of bugfixes and stylistic improvements applied since the comp release, and I hope the work is much stronger for it. You can play it online at [url=http://jmac.org/warbler]its homepage[/url], or at [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=he5spzmz6vr4dgej]its IFDB page[/url].

My sincere thanks to everyone who played and judged the comp release, and moreso to all who wrote reviews of the game or sent me direct feedback. Naturally, the door remains open for further critique, and I intend to quietly continue pushing out maintenance releases as necessary, but other than that I consider the work finished. Enjoy!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1745&start=0#p11426
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Muti-System Interpreter
User: George / DateTime: 2010-11-29 09:29:33

[url=http://code.google.com/p/garglk/]Gargoyle[/url]. Btw, combined with the [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/plugins/index]IFDB plugin[/url], this pretty much gives you Steam for IF.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1747&start=0#p11427
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Conversation Rules vs 6F95
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-29 11:16:32

Someone discovered a problem with Conversation Rules by Eric Eve. Here's the thread at raif:

<a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/17b3eee1cc31e40b/bf1112674ee519a8">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts ... 674ee519a8</a>

The example included with Conversation Rules doesn't work any more. Specifically, the subject "Jerusalem" can never be recognized. It seems that only a person can be recognized as a subject. I tried narrowing the problem down and I came up with this:

[code]Mentioning is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "a [any thing]" as mentioning.

[There is a Table of Null Responses in "Conversation Rules" by Eric Eve which also has "yourself" in the subject column. 

The addition of this table, with "yourself" in the subject column, causes Jerusalem (i.e. a thing rather than a person) to "not listed in the Table of Mentionables."

Changing "yourself" in this table to "a person," or changing the column header to something different to the column header in the Table of Mentionables allows Jerusalem to be "listed" again.]

Table of Null Responses
subject
yourself

The Great Hall is a Room. Pontius Pilate is a man in the Great Hall.

Jerusalem is a thing. Caiaphas is a man.

Table of Mentionables
subject
Jerusalem
Caiaphas

Check mentioning something when the noun is not a subject listed in the Table of Mentionables:
	say "Pilate doesn't have anything to say about that." instead;
	
Report mentioning something:
	say "Pilate tells you about [the noun].";
	
Part 3 - Testing

test me with "a caiaphas/a jerusalem" [/code]

Can anyone figure out why this is happening? Should it be reported on Mantis, or is it a desirable feature that merely needs documentation?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1741&start=0#p11428
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Things in every room
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-29 11:28:10

[quote="matt w"]Could you do this with a say phrase and a table? Something along the lines of:

[code]A ceiling is a kind of thing.  It is scenery.  The description is "[Ceiling-Description]."

A ceiling is in every room.

To say ceiling-description:
    if location is a ceiling-room listed in the Table of Ceiling Descriptions:
       say the ceiling-text corresponding to location in the Table of Ceiling Descriptions:
    otherwise:
        say "Just a plain old ceiling, with some cracks that may or may not have the habit of looking something like a rabbit." 

Table of Ceiling Descriptions
ceiling-room    ceiling-text
Chapel          "The ceiling depicts God creating the universe. You know, that sort of thing."
Police Station  "I was really tempted to put a spoiler for the Third Policeman here, but I can't. Go read the book."
[etc.][/code]

I haven't tested this at all, and I'm not sure if this can get you complex say phrases or even if it works at all, but would it do the sort of thing the original poster wanted? And I suppose it would make more sense for the floor, since you can just use a backdrop for the ceiling.[/quote]

If you didn't want the ceiling descriptions all lumped together in one place, you could make a property of rooms called ceiling-description.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1726&start=0#p11429
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Recognizing New Kinds
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-29 11:51:14

[quote="Juhana"]Try "Check inserting something that is not clothing into closet".[/quote]
I could have sworn I tried that. Oh well, it works now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1748&start=0#p11430
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: quick question
User: sqib / DateTime: 2010-11-29 12:12:52

Can someone point me in the proper direction for making this phrase compile:

Instead of putting flashlight into your wallet:
	say "Thats seems like a silly idea, dont you think?"

that produces:

Problem. You wrote 'Instead of putting flashlight into your wallet'  , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is 'putting flashlight into your wallet'. But that did not make sense as a description of an action. I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook.


 What would be the proper wording?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1745&start=0#p11431
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Muti-System Interpreter
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-29 12:24:26

Also Spatterlight, for Mac.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1748&start=0#p11432
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: quick question
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-29 12:26:25

That action is called "inserting _ into _" (or "inserting it into".)

Look at the Actions tab of the Index, or type "actions" in your game for a debugging trace of actions being invoked.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1745&start=0#p11433
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Muti-System Interpreter
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-29 12:54:30

Zoom (for Mac) is another option. It is updated more regularly than Spatterlight, but doesn't yet support sound (an issue in only a tiny fraction of games). It also integrates nicely with IFDB.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1749&start=0#p11434
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Death off the Cuff - Post Competition release
User: SimonChris / DateTime: 2010-11-29 13:03:48

A post competition release of Death Off the Cuff is now available. This contains several new features based on the feedback i have received from the reviewers. Thanks to everyone who took the time to write a review [emote]:)[/emote].

The new features are:
- Abstract topics. Yes, you can now talk about the murder, the victim, the time of death and so on, without being told that it isn't there.
- The player now has to tear off peoples facial hair himself if he thinks it is fake. Careful, though. If you are wrong too many times people might stop taking you seriously.
- Major objects will no longer pop into existence when it is time to examine them. Uniforms, shirts and noses will be present from the start. Some minor details will still appear along the way, but the NPC will always be doing something to reveal them.
- Fixed numerous typos and grammatical errors.
- The player can now choose to give up and leave the hotel by typing a compass direction and answering yes.
- The player can also, more interestingly, "solve" the game by confessing to the murder himself.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1745&start=0#p11435
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Muti-System Interpreter
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-29 13:21:28

[quote="ektemple"]Zoom (for Mac) is another option. It is updated more regularly than Spatterlight, but doesn't yet support sound (an issue in only a tiny fraction of games). It also integrates nicely with IFDB.[/quote]

I've had trouble running ADRIFT games in Zoom (the latest version, according to the "Check Update" feature). Which put me back on the "Which interpreter do I need?" carousel. These games do run on Spatterlight -- there seem to be some ADRIFT games that wind up buggy if you're not using the ADRIFT runner, but there's not much to be done about that from the player's side, I guess.

 (It's also my understanding that a couple of games -- specifically Alabaster and Rover's Day Out -- don't or at one point didn't run well on Spatterlight.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1749&start=0#p11436
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Death off the Cuff - Post Competition release
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-11-29 13:30:18

Excellent!  The lack of the first and third things on that list was more or less my only complaint with the game, which I otherwise really liked.  These improvements sound like they'll put [i]Death Off the Cuff[/i] solidly into "recommend it to my friends" territory for me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1747&start=0#p11437
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Rules vs 6F95
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-11-29 14:01:00

The behaviour (buggy or not) is not  specific to 6F95; at least it's reproducible in 5Z71.

Replacing yourself in the Table of Null Responses with Great Hall triggers the check mentioning rule for both Jerusalem and Caiaphas.

Moving the table of Null Responses to after the Table of Mentionables makes mentioning suceed for both Jerusalem and Caiaphas.

It seems that being explicit about the kind of the entries of the subject column in the first table (calling it "subject (object)" ) fixes things.

Is it really that the first entry in the first table with a column that goes by a certain name determines the kind of entries of any column  with the same name in any subsequent table?

In Writing with Inform section 4.15, we are told that "objects are allowed to have names clashing with other objects, or no name at all, whereas other values have to have names belonging to themselves alone". Which suggests that table columns must be given unique names (a table column is not an object but I guess it's a value).

Section 15.17 does say that "it is a good idea to give the columns very specific names ... rather than vague names which might cause clashes elsewhere". But in context (defining values with tables) that doesn't give the impression of being a perfectly universal rule of syntax.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1518&start=20#p11438
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Passing variables from Parchment/i7 to JavaScript and ba
User: Lucea / DateTime: 2010-11-29 14:15:14

Just got done looking at that Google Groups thread; noticed it was from 2009. I know some of this functionality is in the pipeline via people's projects, but I have this crazy IF idea that I'd have to rush out the door by December 10-ish (don't worry, all this would be on me, not on you). Parchment's undoubtedly been updated since then -- would they still work with the latest version?

Said project is fairly simple -- just has photos and CSS.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1747&start=0#p11439
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Rules vs 6F95
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-29 14:27:17

Thanks for the further clarifications, Felix.

In this case we really do want the columns to have the same names, because Conversation Rules offers a choice of tables for a single purpose. It sounds like the subject(object) clarification should work as a bugfix for Conversation Rules, but I still think this looks like a bug in Inform. If we are really using invalid values in one of these tables, there should be a compile-time error, not an unexpected runtime behavior.

What boggles my mind is that replacing "yourself" with "a person" fixes the problem. If the first table in the source is setting the datatype for that column, then Jerusalem shouldn't be allowed later on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1741&start=0#p11440
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Things in every room
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-11-29 15:03:19

[code]- What happens if the player types PUT (SOMETHING) ON FLOOR? If the floor is a backdrop, I could put a knife on the floor in the kitchen, wander into the living room, and find that the knife was on the floor there too. [/code]

That's easy: Instead of putting something on the floor, move it to the location.  In fact, that totally solves a different problem I was having (moving objects off a supporter without taking them).

For other actions, I should think that a simple response saying that the floor's existence is passive and it doesn't need to be interacted with would be enough.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1741&start=0#p11441
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Things in every room
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-29 15:05:40

[quote]Instead of putting something on the floor, move it to the location.[/quote]

Better: Instead of putting something on the floor, try dropping the noun.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1741&start=10#p11442
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Things in every room
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-11-29 15:08:55

That only works for held items; the problem that would require moving things to the floor is about objects too big to be held.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1739&start=0#p11443
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Help me pick a project
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2010-11-29 15:19:52

Ok, somehow I missed the part that the protagonist kills someone.  Might be tricky to make this into a character that the player relates to.  The reason it works in the film Rope is because the viewer empathizes with the Jimmy Stewart character, who is the protagonist.

Personally, I think it might work better if you put some mystery around who has been killed or who has done the killing and leave it to the player to be more of the good guy trying to figure it out. 
--Zack

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1739&start=0#p11444
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Help me pick a project
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-29 15:30:34

[quote="ZUrlocker"]Ok, somehow I missed the part that the protagonist kills someone.  Might be tricky to make this into a character that the player relates to.  The reason it works in the film Rope is because the viewer empathizes with the Jimmy Stewart character, who is the protagonist.

Personally, I think it might work better if you put some mystery around who has been killed or who has done the killing and leave it to the player to be more of the good guy trying to figure it out. 
--Zack[/quote]

Oh, I don't know; the Tom Ripley novels do a pretty good job of this. I think [i]Ripley Under Ground[/i] even has a sequence that involves the murderer trying to keep a guest out of the wine cellar to avoid discovery. I could be misremembering that detail--it's been a while--but I'd highly recommend having a look at these books (by Patricia Highsmith) if you feel that your amoral/immoral protagonist isn't relatable. There are probably some ideas there for you.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1747&start=0#p11445
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Rules vs 6F95
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-11-29 15:39:47

[quote]What boggles my mind is that replacing "yourself" with "a person" fixes the problem. If the first table in the source is setting the datatype for that column, then Jerusalem shouldn't be allowed later on.[/quote]

(first swearing mildly)
Quite.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1750&start=0#p11446
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Index map colouring by region
User: ChristianB / DateTime: 2010-11-29 15:40:12

In WI, chapter 3.4. Regions and the index map, it is written:
[quote]Rooms are represented by coloured squares, and the colour-coding is done by region.[/quote]
This effect doesn't show up in release 6F95 (at least with Windows and Mac). Before reporting a known or irrelevant issue, I'd like to check: is the documentation outdated or is there probably something wrong with index map creation?

Thanks,
Christian

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1749&start=0#p11447
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Death off the Cuff - Post Competition release
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2010-11-29 16:28:01

I didn't write a review, but just looking at this list of changes, I really want to try the new things in the game, because I just want to see what the characters do.

It's been neat to see writers updating their work so soon after the competition's over, regardless of where they placed. The dedication is impressive. It makes me realize I could have given more feedback. Guess I'll try to start judging earlier next year.

EDITED because "regardless of" was originally an unintended backhand compliment. Ouch.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1745&start=0#p11448
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Muti-System Interpreter
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-11-29 17:17:27

Spatterlight is no longer maintained. IIRC it comes with Glulxe 0.4.3, which is missing some newer features (accelerated opcodes, floating-point math) and some bug fixes. Alabaster benefits from accelerated opcodes, and Rover's Day Out needs the print_to_array(buf) fix.

Many of the other Glk interpreters it bundles are also outdated, with the Alan, Frotz, and TADS code being significantly behind.

I haven't tried it, but I think an enterprising individual could merge in the shared interpreter sources from Gargoyle and build an updated version of Spatterlight without too many headaches. Likely with Tor's blessing; he has supported the ongoing development of Gargoyle.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1739&start=10#p11449
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Help me pick a project
User: Sequitur / DateTime: 2010-11-29 19:57:22

Not to mention, say, [i]Dexter[/i] which is about an actual sociopath. Or about half of all the videogames...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1749&start=0#p11450
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Death off the Cuff - Post Competition release
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-11-29 21:49:21

Sweet! Those all sound like excellent improvements.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1750&start=0#p11451
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Index map colouring by region
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-11-29 21:50:43

There is a known bug in index map creation in 6F95, one result of which is that there is no region coloring. It will go away next time.

(Edited to add: One way to check about known bugs is to go to <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view_all_bug_page.php">http://inform7.com/mantis/view_all_bug_page.php</a> and use the search box there to find what's been reported already.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1747&start=0#p11452
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Rules vs 6F95
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-29 22:14:06

[quote]What boggles my mind is that replacing "yourself" with "a person" fixes the problem. If the first table in the source is setting the datatype for that column, then Jerusalem shouldn't be allowed later on.[/quote]

The kernel of the bug seems to be that when you explicitly define a table-column as a subkind of object, Inform  sets the datatype as simply "object" [i]regardless of what type was specified[/i], whereas when a subkind is inferred, the column is typed as the most restrictive kind (e.g., "person" for yourself). This demonstrates the issue:

[code]Test is a room. There is a pen in Test.

Table of Testing One
subject
a person
--

Table of Testing Two
subject_
yourself
--

When play begins:
	say "Now trying to add the pen to the explicitly typed subject column.";
	choose a blank row in the Table of Testing One;
	now the subject entry is the pen;
	say "   It worked!";
	say "Now trying to add the pen to the implicitly typed subject_ column.";
	choose a blank row in the Table of Testing Two;
	now the subject_ entry is the pen.[/code]

It would be really, really nice if there were a way to see the kinds that Inform has inferred for each table column in the Index, in addition to the table names currently presented. It looks like you could create a showme type command for tables that would do that, and maybe I'll try to figure out exactly how it could be done...

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1747&start=0#p11453
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Rules vs 6F95
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-30 00:24:19

Even better if they could be in the Index.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1728&start=0#p11454
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Transcript bug?
User: lglasser / DateTime: 2010-11-30 03:10:07

Doing that seems to work just fine.  I have no idea why the script command doesn't work.  Whatever, got it worked around now, thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1747&start=0#p11455
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Rules vs 6F95
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-11-30 06:05:40

So the apparent difference in functionality between putting the type of entries in a column in parentheses after the column name (which will give an error message if you try a subkind of objects) and that of putting it on a row below the column title (which gives no error message) is nothing but apparent!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1747&start=0#p11456
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Rules vs 6F95
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-30 08:38:41

[quote="ektemple"]
It would be really, really nice if there were a way to see the kinds that Inform has inferred for each table column in the Index, in addition to the table names currently presented. It looks like you could create a showme type command for tables that would do that, and maybe I'll try to figure out exactly how it could be done...[/quote]

It doesn't look like this is possible after all. I was hoping to be able to use the same mechanism that the P60 run-time error uses to grab the table-column kind; unfortunately, this is set by the I7 compiler and thus isn't available to authors. So, the only solution is for the functionality to be added to the Index, or to a special library debugging command that could be triggered in-game.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1744&start=0#p11457
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Request for comment: Thoughts
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-30 09:50:01

I have several comments, which I will post separately.

Have you seen Aaron Reed's "Experiment 1"?

<a class="postlink" href="http://aaronareed.net/if/ex1/">http://aaronareed.net/if/ex1/</a>

What you are doing is a little bit like the "symbolizing" relation, although your ability to trigger themes is interesting. Your sequence of thoughts is a little different from the way he implemented the "suggesting" relation, but his experiment shows how relations might be used to do something like what you're doing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1744&start=0#p11458
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Request for comment: Thoughts
User: Sequitur / DateTime: 2010-11-30 09:58:46

I thought of using relations, actually, but thought this was simpler to work programatically. The mechanic here isn't so much that thoughts segue into another - although they could, with a few changes to the code I've thought of but haven't implemented. It's rather that 1. Thoughts are usually only triggered once, to avoid the protagonist seeming robotic, and 2. An already-triggered thought can be substituted for another. Although this does give me ideas of how to change a couple of things, and how to make this system a bit more interesting by creating default behaviours for thoughts in relation to objects, and making it so the same thought won't be triggered twice by the same action.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1744&start=0#p11459
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Request for comment: Thoughts
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-30 10:06:58

I think the most useful thing to take from Aaron's experiment is the "theme" object. I think it would be helpful for you to separate themes out from individual thoughts. There are a couple ways you could do this:

[code]Table of Thoughts
theme   state  content
garden  ending  "I hate the smell..."
death    passing  "Well this is depressing"
death    passing  "Maybe I should try..."
death    ending   "I need to stop..."
[/code]

or...

[code]Table of Garden Thoughts
state     content
ending "I hate the smell..."

Table of Death Thoughts
state      content
passing  "Well this is depressing"
passing  "Maybe I should try..."
ending   "I need to stop..."
[/code]

It looks like your thoughts are mostly arranged into linear chains. There's no need to manually implement the links if that's all you're going to have. On the other hand, if you want thoughts to converge in a treelike structure, maybe you do need relations or a "next thought" column. Or maybe a "next theme" column?

Anyway, once you have themes, you can give them some useful properties, such as the thoughts-table used by my second example.

If you have a simple chain of thoughts like your "passing" thoughts, you could blank out each row in turn. But if you want to implement a cycle of "repeating" thoughts, you can't do that. You could, however, give your theme a "current row" or "current thought" property.

In light of this approach, I think you don't need to distinguish between "passing" and "ending". It looks like an ending thought is merely a passing thought that has no next thought. You could use "passing" vs "ending" adjectives if you wanted to refer to them in a rule, but it needn't be explicitly set.

You might consider making the passing/repeating behavior another property of a theme instead of individual thoughts. Then you could use the same random/stopping/etc patterns that say phrases have. And as I hinted before, the "repeating" property could allow you to cycle through a number of thoughts instead of just one.

I love the way you used "some thoughts are defined by the Table of Deep Thoughts." I didn't remember you could do that - very useful!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1744&start=0#p11460
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Request for comment: Thoughts
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-30 10:12:29

Now a somewhat open-ended question:

Should thinking be an activity or a rulebook? I've come across several cases in my own work where I didn't know which one to use. Most of the time I use a rulebook even when an activity makes sense, because defining and invoking rules is a lot less verbose than doing the same for activities. But the "preformat" and "postformat" rules seem a lot like before activity and after activity rules.

I'd be interested in hearing other people's views about when activities should be used, or whether they should be removed from the language completely and replaced with rulebooks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1744&start=0#p11461
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Request for comment: Thoughts
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-30 10:14:22

Finally a small complaint:

Line break behavior seems somewhat inconsistent for the code as it stands:

[quote]>[1] in

Dank Crypt
Ugh, the crypt.

You can see a tomb and a memento mori here.

>[2] x tomb
Carved out of marble.

Well this is depressing.
>[3] z
Time passes.

Maybe I should try grief counseling instead.
>[4] x memento
A skull left upon the tomb as a general reminder of mortality.

I need to stop dwelling on those things.
>[5] x tomb
Carved out of marble.


>[/quote]
Sometimes there is blank line after the last line in the output, sometimes there is not. And when there is no thought at all, it looks like that can cause a double blank line.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1744&start=0#p11462
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Request for comment: Thoughts
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-11-30 10:15:40

I modded "Experiment 1" to produce prosier prose than what he had, and to let your mind drift a little (in Aaron's code I think the theme, the last thing everything reminds you of, remains the same unless you wait; in mine it moves one step by the symbolizing relation every turn). What I wound up with produces something that looks to me like a mildly acceptable stream of consciousness on individual turns, but turn by turn it gets very repetitive. One way of dealing with that might be by a rotating table of quips for each theme; I'm not sure how far that would get you toward something that wasn't obviously generated by procedurally stringing together a bunch of quips. One thing that would definitely help is better writing (though to do that I'd probably have to write my own story). 

Anyway, for the curious, it's below the rant tag. Something like half or maybe more of the code is Aaron's. Comments not beginning "MW:" are his. If you want to paste this into your IDE, hit the "quote" button and copy out the relevant parts; that should preserve the tab stops. (Thanks to whoever came up with that trick!) 

Oh, and I'm still running 5Z; there's a hack in there to work around a bug that apparently has been fixed in later versions.

[rant][code]"Aaron Reed's Experiment 1" by Matt Weiner

Use serial comma.

The story description is "Giving objects in a story world symbolic weight has often been done by hand, but rarely procedurally. Here's one method for doing so.".

When play begins:
	say "Lost in the cold, you can only hope for rescue."

Include Plurality by Emily Short.

The Wilderness is a room. "The sky is full of stars you could never see in the city."

Instead of doing something other than looking, taking inventory, examining, and waiting:
	say "All you can do is look through your belongings and hope for rescue."

Instead of taking the compass:
	say "It's broken. It won't do you any good."

[MW: The next rule is a hack. For some reason -- apparently a 5Z bug -- the previous rule triggered when taking inventory. Fortunately I've stopped you from changing your inventory, so it doesn't much matter now.]

Instead of taking inventory:
	say "You are carrying ";
	list the contents of the player, as a sentence, including contents, giving inventory information;
	say "."
	
[Let's imagine a basic story about a young astronomer alone on a backpacking trip. He's engaged to be married, but is worried about how this will affect his career. He's also starting to worry that he may be lost, and strange hallucinations make him wonder if he is losing his mind. How might we encode these thematic elements into our story?]

A theme is a kind of thing. being lost, the wild, fear, change, cold, astronomy, what's really important, career, marriage, and senility are themes.

[MW: Each theme produces different text, something briefer if it's being used as the transition to another theme, something longer if it's the last thing that gets mentioned.]
A theme has some text called transition. A theme has some text called resolution. 

Being lost has transition "Will you ever get home? ". Being lost has resolution "You wonder whether anyone will ever find you. "

The wild has transition "You're far from civilization. ".
 The wild has resolution "The wilderness is harsh and unforgiving, but you couldn't live without adventure. ".

Fear has transition "You could die out here. ". Fear has resolution "You start to tremble, not from the cold but from sheer terror that soon you may be dead. ".

Change has transition "And your life is changing. ". Change has resolution "Things will be different when you get back. You're not sure how, but they will. ".

Cold has transition "How cold it is! ". Cold has resolution "The wind is cutting through your flimsy jacket. You wonder whether you'll ever be warm again. ".

Astronomy has transition "The stars burn down from the sky, their secrets locked away. ". Astronomy has resolution "You look up at the stars again. Will you ever be able to decipher their secrets? ".

What's really important has transition "Have you been devoting your life to the right things? ". What's really important has resolution "When you're faced with death, you start wonder whether you've really been devoting yourself to what's important. But what exactly is that? ".

Career has transition "You've been spending so much time at the observatory. ". Career has resolution "You'll need to put in some late nights at the observatory when you return -- if you return. Your research is at a critical stage. ".

Marriage has transition "Elizabeth -- will you ever see her again? ". Marriage has resolution "Soon you'll be in a new home, married to Elizabeth, always with her. If you survive. How will she cope if you don't? ".

Senility has transition "You've been seeing some strange things here. ". Senility has resolution "You're not sure whether what you've been seeing is real anymore. Is your brain beginning to shut down? ".

[The various things in our story world should connect to these abstract ideas.]

Symbolizing relates one theme (called the metaphor) to one thing. The verb to symbolize (he symbolizes, they symbolize, he symbolized, it is symbolized, he is symbolizing) implies the reversed symbolizing relation.

The player holds a water bottle. The description of the water bottle is "Precious water, the only thing that can keep you alive in the wilderness." The bottle symbolizes the wild. The player wears a pendant. The description of the pendant is "Elizabeth's picture; you like to think of it lying next to your heart." The pendant symbolizes marriage. The stars are a plural-named backdrop. "The stars here are as rich and full as on the mountain peaks." They are everywhere. They symbolize astronomy. Understand "sky" as the stars. [MW: I typed "x sky" and got "you can't see any such thing" in a game I was programming myself. Sheesh.] The player wears a jacket. The description of the jacket is "A light jacket, too thin." The jacket symbolizes cold. A broken compass is here. The initial appearance is "Your broken compass is here." The description is "Your compass broke and you think you've lost the trail." It symbolizes being lost.

The description of the player is "You're an astronomer, and right now, you're lost, cold and worrying that you might be going crazy."

[What's interesting, though, is how the themes relate to each other.]

Suggesting relates various themes to each other. The verb to suggest (he suggests, they suggest, he suggested, it is suggested, he is suggesting) implies the suggesting relation.

Being lost suggests fear and the wild. The wild suggests what's really important and change. Fear suggests change and senility. Change suggests what's really important and senility. Cold suggests the wild and astronomy. Astronomy suggests career and what's really important. What's really important suggests marriage and change. Senility suggests fear. Marriage suggests change.

[Now, we can trace a path of connection between any object in the game world and any theme. Let's say that, at any point in our story, one theme is dominant.]

The dominant metaphor is a theme that varies.
[Let's find the connection between any object acted upon and the dominant metaphor.]

Instead of examining:
	carry out the finding meaning in activity with the noun.

Finding meaning in something is an activity. 

[MW: I've changed Aaron's loop, because the intermediate steps of the chain are different from the first step. Actually if you're finding meaning in something that symbolized the current theme, it should probably go to its resolution rather than its transition, which is not what happens now.]
For finding meaning in something (called the token):
	say the description of the token;
	say " ";
	let current idea be the metaphor of the token;
	if current idea is not a theme:
		now the current idea is a random theme;
	say the transition of the current idea;
	while current idea is not the dominant metaphor:
		let the next idea be the next step via the suggesting relation from current idea to the dominant metaphor;
		if the next idea is not a theme:
			stop;
		otherwise if the next idea is not the dominant metaphor:
			say the transition of the next idea;
			now current idea is next idea;
		otherwise:
			say the resolution of the next idea;
			now current idea is next idea;
	advance;
	say "[line break]".

[MW: I wanted to have the PC's mind wander from theme to theme as he thought; printing the same resolution every turn would be boring.]

Advancing is an action applying to nothing.
	
To advance:
	let the next metaphor be a random theme suggested by the dominant metaphor;
	if the next metaphor is not nothing:
		now the dominant metaphor is the next metaphor.
	
	
[To test this, let's create a method for setting and revealing the dominant metaphor.]

When play begins: now the left hand status line is "[the dominant metaphor]".

Carry out waiting: now the dominant metaphor is a random theme.

[Now we have a crude but procedural method of tying any object to any theme, which reveals interesting things about the player character in a way that doesn't rely on hand-authored text. For instance, examining the stars when the dominant metaphor is "change" finds a path between through "what's really important," which reveals that both astronomy and change are important to our protagonist. ]
	

Every turn:
	if the turn count is greater than 5:
		say "You hear voices coming from the trail above you, and then you see flashlights and hear someone calling your name. Forgetting everything else, you shout in response, and then your rescuers burst through the underbrush.";
		end the game saying "Saved!".
		
[MW: originally I was totes going to have him freeze to death. Also, as you can probably tell, I know nothing about backpacking.] 


[/code][/rant]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1744&start=0#p11463
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Request for comment: Thoughts
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-30 10:17:28

Something else just occurred to me.

This does look like it might make a good extension, but perhaps it would be good to make it work with Epistemology. In that case you would want to have "subjects" instead of "themes."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1747&start=0#p11464
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Rules vs 6F95
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-30 10:17:46

I've posted two bug reports on Mantis related to this issue:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=444">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=444</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=446">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=446</a>

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1748&start=0#p11465
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: quick question
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-11-30 10:47:37

I've often wondered, but I don't think I've ever asked ... this is such a common syntax error for newcomers to make, why the heck doesn't the compiler just quietly translate "putting ... in ..." and "putting ... into ..." into "inserting ... into ..."? The utility of the synonym seems inarguable.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1744&start=0#p11466
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Request for comment: Thoughts
User: Sequitur / DateTime: 2010-11-30 11:34:23

The problematic line breaks are a bug. They're caused by the pre/postformat rules being invoked even for inactive thoughts, which is something that's easy to stop. Additionally, the reason for making it a rulebook is so that 1. The if/otherwise logic in that rule can be broken down into separate rules, for cleanliness; 2. The thought-printing logic can be separated from the thought-state changing logic; 3. Additional rules can easily be added by users of the extension, so that thoughts can potentially do more than just print text. For example:
[code]
A thought can be sad, happy, fearful or angry. A thought is usually happy.

A thinking rule for a fearful thought (This is the frightening thoughts rule):
	now the player is afraid;
	consider the fright rules.

The frightening thoughts rule is listed before the happy thoughts rule in the thinking rulebook.

(...)
[/code]

And yes, making it work alongside epistemology should be important. I'll post a new version of the code as soon as I'm able. Using activities in lieu of rulebooks is a pretty fine point of distinction, as the two are extremely similar.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1744&start=0#p11467
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Request for comment: Thoughts
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-11-30 11:57:51

[quote="Sequitur"]The problematic line breaks are a bug. They're caused by the pre/postformat rules being invoked even for inactive thoughts, which is something that's easy to stop. Additionally, the reason for making it a rulebook is so that 1. The if/otherwise logic in that rule can be broken down into separate rules, for cleanliness; 2. The thought-printing logic can be separated from the thought-state changing logic; 3. Additional rules can easily be added by users of the extension, so that thoughts can potentially do more than just print text. For example:
[code]
A thought can be sad, happy, fearful or angry. A thought is usually happy.

A thinking rule for a fearful thought (This is the frightening thoughts rule):
	now the player is afraid;
	consider the fright rules.

The frightening thoughts rule is listed before the happy thoughts rule in the thinking rulebook.

(...)
[/code]

And yes, making it work alongside epistemology should be important. I'll post a new version of the code as soon as I'm able. Using activities in lieu of rulebooks is a pretty fine point of distinction, as the two are extremely similar.[/quote]
I would recommend an activity for this for three reasons.  One, if you might [i]consider[/i] other rulebooks from within [i]thinking[/i], it'll allow you to write rules like [i]Fright rule while thinking[/i] and the like.  Two, activities almost never automatically print line breaks, AFAIK, hopefully solving that issue.  And three, if you have pre- and post- rules, then yes, you basically using before/after rules by another name.  

I had a fourth point, but forgot it already.   [emote]:oops:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1748&start=0#p11468
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: quick question
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-11-30 12:01:13

[quote="Jim Aikin"]I've often wondered, but I don't think I've ever asked ... this is such a common syntax error for newcomers to make, why the heck doesn't the compiler just quietly translate "putting ... in ..." and "putting ... into ..." into "inserting ... into ..."? The utility of the synonym seems inarguable.

--JA[/quote]
...or just call it [i]putting into[/i] to begin with. I've made these goofs too, though I did know by then to check the Index in such cases.  Still, the colloquial putting seems more natural.  (Maybe [i]putting[/i] isn't colloquial in the UK?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1748&start=0#p11469
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: quick question
User: jonathan.laver / DateTime: 2010-11-30 12:09:09

Na. It's a mistake thats made in the UK as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1738&start=0#p11470
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Initial text after play begins
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-11-30 12:16:41

This is awesome. Never knew about the [first time].
Does that mean that one can type [second time] [third time] etc?
What format woudl that take?
A: Say "[first time] One [second time] Two [third time] three [only]"  or
B" Say "[first time] One [only][second time] Two [only][third time] three [only]"

?

Man that would save me trouble with "instead of examining... for the second/third/fourth time"

Also, are there variations on [only]?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1738&start=0#p11471
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Initial text after play begins
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-30 12:46:46

To define sequential variations like that, use:

"[one of]First[or]Second[or]Third[stopping]"

You can have as many of those as you want. The "[stopping]" tag means to print the variants in sequence, and then stick with the last one. See manual chapter 5.7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1748&start=0#p11472
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: quick question
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-30 12:49:38

The compiler doesn't do that because the language doesn't know any action names. They're defined in the library.

The library doesn't do that because the language has no facility for defining synonyms for actions. If you think that's worthwhile, suggest it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1741&start=10#p11473
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Things in every room
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-30 12:55:39

You could have an every turn rule, or a turn sequence rule (perhaps listed right after the note object acquisitions rule) that does something like this:

[code]Now everything on the floor in the location is in the location.[/code]

As long as you don't have relevant stuff happening in mid-turn, that should cover every possibility.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1744&start=10#p11474
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Request for comment: Thoughts
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-30 13:21:29

I agree with Sequitur that being forced to put all the heavy lifting into one rule for doing an activity makes it an unattractive choice. Does the "while thinking" clause allow you to tack extra rules on there? Does it defeat the purpose if a rule for doing an activity considers a rulebook, or does that reintroduce the line break problems?

It also occurred to me that there's no problem having both "themes" and "subjects." Epistemology keeps track of all things, so both would be covered. Of course, a theme could be a kind of subject - I don't think it matters much, although that would make it "usually familiar".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1751&start=0#p11475
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Overriding defaults & Story idea
User: jfreehill / DateTime: 2010-11-30 13:26:34

Hey everyone, I'll post my main question(s) first for anyone that doesn't feel like reading the supplemental info below the code.

These are fairly simple things I think, but they are difficult to find in the documentation because I'm not sure what to look for. The first thing I want to do is remove the default operation of telling what's in a room, or its description, especially when it has a certain property (i.e. it is a "mind room" in my case). Second, using the same scenario, how do I make it so an examine action (or any action for that matter) does not automatically target a thing in the room, or at least require a noun? Below is the relevant output. Note: I have touch understood as examine, which produces a weird way of touch requiring a noun, but then examine produces text meant to be incorporated into an "Instead" activity meant for touching, thus giving the funky output below, but that's kind of irrelevant.

[code]
Tester Room
You can see a fluorescent light here.

>x
(the fluorescent light)
the lightly heard electric buzzing grow heavier as I press on it. The plastic cover protecting the light seems to be loose on one edge

>touch light
(the fluorescent light)
"As I touch the fluorescent light, I can feel the lightly heard electric buzzing grow heavier as I press on it. The plastic cover protecting the light seems to be loose on one edge."[/code]
Background: This is my first piece of IF and I'm doing it for a "Writing for Interactive Media" class. The idea for the story is that the player is a therapeutic hypnotist analyzing a blind patient (Basir) who is one of several survivors of a mass kidnapping. Since all the victims were blindfolded, the patient, having enhanced senses due to his blindness, is the only one capable of producing enough sensory detail to help out the investigating party. The IF progresses as a player asks Basir to describe his surroundings using all senses except sight.

[rant]While I enjoy the challenge, having such a plan for the story has turned out to be a fairly difficult to program IF for me, having to basically speed-learn the syntax and such. I have programming experience with languages such as C#, JavaScript, and PHP but it just seems strangely difficult to wrap my head around I7 for some reason. The whole "natural language" thing almost confuses me more than traditional programing. Has anyone else experienced this?

It's just darn difficult to find answers in the documentation when I don't even know what to look for, without looking at many examples and using pieces from those. I've had to implement things like feeling or tasting a room in what I can only guess to be a "hacky" way, but at least they work for now. Maybe I'll post it later on if anyone is willing to give feedback.[/rant]
Thanks for any help, I'd appreciate it.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1751&start=0#p11476
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding defaults & Story idea
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-30 13:36:19

I don't know much about it, but I believe the Room Description Control extension may help you with room descriptions.

I'm not exactly sure if you want "touch" and "examine" to be identical, but if you do, this would work pretty well:

[code]Instead of touching something, try examining the noun.[/code]

You might want to use one of the Custom Library Messages extensions if you're not happy with the use of "see" in library messages. They can also help you put library messages in first person.

I know there are a few blind authors on raif, but I'm not sure if they're all here. Some of them have been known to offer advice on writing blind characters in IF, so you might consider posting your questions there as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1748&start=0#p11477
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: quick question
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-11-30 13:52:50

This has come up before (there's some discussion of it on the suggestions forum and the old January document). 

Brief-mode summary of the answer: it would probably be possible to get around the limitations zarf mentions, but it's less clear that this is a good idea overall. If library-defined actions have predefined synonyms, we use up more and more of the namespace that might be wanted by authors; doing this in one or two places creates an expectation that it will be done in many cases; and we start to see novices asking questions like "how come I can't use 'considering' as my own action? it keeps translating itself to 'thinking'!" (etc.) Or: "I see some source with rules about 'stealing something'. Is that the same thing as the taking action, or not?"

I7 is full of these trade-offs about exactly how robust and accepting it should be of variant input and code styles vs. how syntactically predictable it should be, so I'm not claiming this is a unique case. But in this particular instance, there really only seemed to be a single issue that came up frequently. We concluded that a "putting it in" --> "inserting it into" conversion led in a direction we weren't sure we wanted to take the language and library.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1748&start=0#p11478
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: quick question
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-11-30 14:00:32

Possibly it just needs a more blatant example or call-out in the documentation.  It's definitely a specific problem that continues to crop up -- I myself had to deal with several tables full of pouting middle-schoolers when I tried to explain it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1748&start=0#p11479
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: quick question
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-30 14:02:11

Given that this does come up all the time, maybe it would make sense to tailor an error message to this situation? A very rough stab for illustration's sake:

[quote]You wrote "putting something into" but no "putting it into" action has been defined. It is very possible that you are intending to refer to the "inserting it into" action?[/quote]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1741&start=10#p11480
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Things in every room
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-30 14:26:57

My suggestion was specifically to ensure that customizations of "drop" (such as "report dropping") were included in "put X on floor".

If the situation also includes moving of non-portable objects, then I'd change it to:

Instead of putting a carried thing on the floor, try dropping the noun.

...and then proceed with the customization of moving the giant crate, or whatever it is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1748&start=0#p11481
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: quick question
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-11-30 14:29:11

For what it's worth, the mistake I make all the time is typing "inserting it in" or "putting it onto". (Both are wrong.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1751&start=0#p11482
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding defaults & Story idea
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-11-30 16:13:31

You can prevent Inform from hazarding any guesses as to what the player may want to examine in a mind room by this line:

Does the player mean examining something in a mind room: it is very unlikely.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1752&start=0#p11483
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: UNDERSTAND command
User: lennyzer0 / DateTime: 2010-11-30 16:22:49

Hi

I've just started out with Inform 7 and I can't seem to get the UNDERSTAND command working as I thought it should.

Basically I want the player to be able to flick a switch into the on position as opposed to the built in 'turn switch on'.  I thought this would be as simple as 

[code]Understand "flick [something]" as turning on.[/code]

but apparently not.

Any pointers greatly appreciated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1752&start=0#p11484
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: UNDERSTAND command
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-11-30 16:45:46

The reason your understand phrase doesn't work is that the turning on-action is actually called "switching on".

So [code]Understand "flick [something]" as switching on.[/code] should work.

(Alternatively you could make the words flick and switch interchangeable in player's input thus:[code]Understand the command "flick" as "switch".[/code])

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1744&start=10#p11485
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Request for comment: Thoughts
User: Sequitur / DateTime: 2010-11-30 18:15:44

Actually, I plan on moving over to subjects, mainly for the reason that subjects can (With Eric Eve's conversation framework) be talked about as well. thus allowing for an object that can be both a thought triggered by experiences and a subject in conversation. Also: The erratic spacing was, as I thought, the consequence of the game running the pre- and post-format rules no matter whether a thought was actually being printed. This is fixed by defining 'active' thoughts and ensuring those rules only run for active thoughts; now the spacing isn't ideal (Mostly as a consequence of how the thinking rules can be called from anywhere) but it is consistent.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1518&start=20#p11486
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Passing variables from Parchment/i7 to JavaScript and ba
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-11-30 19:53:05

Does that mean you just want to pass stuff to Javascript, and not get anything in return? If so you can use the updated version of Gnusto I mentioned a couple of posts back.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1753&start=0#p11487
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Compass Woes
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-11-30 20:54:27

So I finally ran out of space with z-code, probably due to how ridiculously chunky my code is. The problem though is that I use a z-code compass (swiped from Emily Short's Bronze). I searched for a way to program the same compass, only in glulx and found this, <a class="postlink" href="http://emshort.wordpress.com/2007/12/17/an-example-with-compasses/">http://emshort.wordpress.com/2007/12/17 ... compasses/</a>. However, she has since taken down the example, redirecting people to something vaguely referred to as "Erik Temple’s graphical extensions". The problem is that one, I have no idea which one she's referring to (though I think it might be Glulx Status Window Control?) and two, if Glulx Status Window Control is what she's referring to, I have no idea how to use it at all or Glulx Text Effects in general. From flailing about randomly, I think I have the compass itself working, but the red for unmarked areas never happens. I'm also pretty sure that half of this code is just ignored by Inform and completely contradictory.

[code]Include Glulx Text Effects by Emily Short.
Include Menus by Emily Short. 
Include Basic Help Menu by Emily Short. 
Include Flexible Windows by Jon Ingold.
Include Glulx Status Window Control by Erik Temple.
Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short. 

When play begins:
     open the status window.

Table of User Styles (continued)
style name	justification	obliquity	indentation	first-line indentation	boldness	fixed width	relative size	glulx color
special-style-2	left-right-justified	italic-obliquity	15	-4	light-weight	proportional-font	0	g-red



The Street is a room. Not The Street is a room. Not The Street is north of The Street.

To turn screen black:
set the text color of the status window to g-white;
set the background color of the status window to g-white;
open status window;
leave space;

To turn screen white:
set the background color of the status window to g-white;
set the text color of the status window to g-black;
open status window;
leave space.

To leave space:
say paragraph break;
say paragraph break;
say paragraph break;
say paragraph break. 

Table of Fancy Status
left	central	right  
" [if in darkness]Darkness[otherwise][location][end if]"	""	"[top rose]"
" [regional area]"	""	"[middle rose]" 
" [turn count]"	""	"[bottom rose]" 

To say regional area:
	if in darkness, rule succeeds;
	if location is in The Not Street, say "Your House";
	if location is in The Street, say "The Street".

When play begins:
     open the status window.

To say red reverse:
say second custom style.

To say black reverse:
set the background color of the status window to g-black.


To say white reverse:
set the background color of the status window to g-white.


Definition: a room is discernible: 
if it is lit, yes;
if in darkness, no;
yes.


To say top rose:
let place be the room up from the location;
if the place is a discernible room, say "[if the place is unvisited][red reverse][end if]U "; otherwise say " "; [2]
let place be the room northwest from the location;
if place is a discernible room, say "[if the place is unvisited][red reverse][end if]NW"; otherwise say " ";
let place be the room north from the location;
if place is a discernible room, say "[if the place is unvisited][red reverse][end if] N "; otherwise say " ";
let place be the room northeast from the location;
if place is a discernible room, say "[if the place is unvisited][red reverse][end if]NE"; otherwise say " ".


To say middle rose:
say " ";
let place be the room west from the location;
if place is a discernible room, say "[if the place is unvisited][red reverse][end if]W "; otherwise say " ";
say " . ";
let place be the room east from the location;
if place is a discernible room, say "[if the place is unvisited][red reverse][end if] E"; otherwise say " ".

To say bottom rose:
let place be the room down from the location;
if the place is a discernible room, say "[if the place is unvisited][red reverse][end if]D "; otherwise say " ";
let place be the room southwest from the location;
if place is a discernible room, say "[if the place is unvisited][red reverse][end if]SW"; otherwise say " ";
let place be the room south from the location;
if place is a discernible room, say "[if the place is unvisited][red reverse][end if] S "; otherwise say " ";
let place be the room southeast from the location;
if place is a discernible room, say "[if the place is unvisited][red reverse][end if]SE"; otherwise say " ".

Rule for constructing the status line:
fill status bar with Table of Fancy Status;
open status window;
rule succeeds.[/code]

I don't even know where to start. Does anyone have any advice or a site I can go to to see how to use color change in glulx or something? I read all the documentation, but I'm still hopelessly lost.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1744&start=10#p11488
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Request for comment: Thoughts
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-11-30 21:47:33

[quote="Sequitur"]Actually, I plan on moving over to subjects, mainly for the reason that subjects can (With Eric Eve's conversation framework) be talked about as well. thus allowing for an object that can be both a thought triggered by experiences and a subject in conversation.[/quote]
That's exactly what I'm talking about. The quizzing and informing actions apply to things - they can be actual concrete things in the game-world, or abstract things like subjects, or new kinds of things that you define yourself, like themes. A subject is a convenient way of creating an abstract known thing, but it's by no means the only way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1744&start=10#p11489
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Request for comment: Thoughts
User: Sequitur / DateTime: 2010-11-30 22:04:10

Ahh, true, I forgot that part. Well then. Still, using a subtype of subjects is probably 'neater,' keeping all our abstract ducks in a row.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1753&start=0#p11490
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compass Woes
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-11-30 22:07:45

Erik Temple here. There are now a lot more extensions under my name than when Emily wrote that comment, so I can see where the confusion comes in... Her example used graphics rather than text, so I believe she was probably referring to Graphical Window Sprites (no longer maintained and not compatible with either 6Exx or 6Fxx), which included a [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Clickable%20Compass.gblorb]graphical compass rose example[/url]. If you want to go the graphics route, you could use the Glimmr extensions (see my signature below) and adapt the logic of the Graphical Window Sprites example.

But you're almost there in using Glulx Status Window Control to help recreate the text status bar, so moving to graphics probably shouldn't be on your radar unless you have other plans for using graphics. The main problem in the code you posted is that you are using a [i]text-grid[/i] window (the status window) for the compass, but the Glulx Text Effects extension only sets [i]text-buffer[/i] window styles. (You have a secondary problem in that you need reset to roman type after setting the red-reverse style for each letter, but that's not a big deal, and the code below fixes it.)

So, the main thing you need to do is make sure that you're setting the text-grid stylehints for the styles you intend to use in text-grid windows. That requires some I6-level hacking, as you can see in the section of the revised code that replaces the Glulx Text Effects I6 routines (compare to the original Glulx Text Effects source code to see what I've done--it's very simple). Note that a number of the stylehints that you were setting in your table of user styles don't really do anything when applied to a text-grid window, so I've taken the liberty of blanking out the ineffectual table entries.

Also note that the status line stylehints need to be set [i]before[/i] the custom stylehints or else you'll get presumably undesired results (viz., a red square around the "red-reversed" text rather than a red letter). Glulx Text Effects sets the custom stylehints at nearly the earliest possible moment, in the "before starting the virtual machine" activity; my revised version of your code below uses a "first before starting the virtual machine" to hook in before this.

Note that this solution doesn't seem to work in Quixe--you get the compass rose, but not the color changes. This may simply mean that you'd need to use custom CSS, but I don't really know.

Some of the code in your example wasn't actually being used (the "turn screen black" and "turn screen white" blocks, for example), but the implication seems to be that you'd like the user to be able to set the look of the status line/compass window. This isn't really very smooth using Glulx Text Effects or my ugly hack of it, but I've illustrated how to get it to work--basically, you have to reset all of the stylehints, then close and reopen the status window. Use JUMP to make the status line white, WAVE to make it black again.

The code follows.

--Erik

[code]Include Glulx Text Effects by Emily Short.
Include Menus by Emily Short. 
Include Basic Help Menu by Emily Short. 
Include Flexible Windows by Jon Ingold.
Include Glulx Status Window Control by Erik Temple.
Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short.

First before starting the virtual machine:
	set the background of the status window to colored;
	set the text color of the status window to g-white;
	set the background color of the status window to g-black.
	
When play begins:
	open the status window.

Table of User Styles (continued)
style name	justification	obliquity	indentation	first-line indentation	boldness	fixed width	relative size	glulx color
special-style-2	--	italic-obliquity	--	--	--	--	--	g-red



The Street is a room. Not The Street is a room. Not The Street is north of The Street.

Instead of jumping:
	turn screen white.
	
Instead of waving hands:
	turn screen black.

To turn screen white:
	set the background of the status window to colored;
	set the text color of the status window to g-black;
	set the background color of the status window to g-white;
	initialize user styles;
	close the status window;
	open status window.

 To turn screen black:
	set the background of the status window to colored;
	set the text color of the status window to g-white;
	set the background color of the status window to g-black;
	initialize user styles;
	close the status window;
	open status window.

Table of Fancy Status
left	central	right  
" [if in darkness]Darkness[otherwise][location][end if]"	""	"[top rose]"
" [regional area]"	""	"[middle rose]" 
" [turn count]"	""	"[bottom rose]" 

To say regional area:
	if in darkness, rule succeeds;
	if location is in The Not Street, say "Your House";
	if location is in The Street, say "The Street".


To say red reverse:
say second custom style.


Definition: a room is discernible: 
if it is lit, yes;
if in darkness, no;
yes.


To say top rose:
let place be the room up from the location;
if the place is a discernible room, say "[if the place is unvisited][red reverse][end if]U [roman type]"; otherwise say " "; [2]
let place be the room northwest from the location;
if place is a discernible room, say "[if the place is unvisited][red reverse][end if]NW[roman type]"; otherwise say " ";
let place be the room north from the location;
if place is a discernible room, say "[if the place is unvisited][red reverse][end if] N [roman type]"; otherwise say " ";
let place be the room northeast from the location;
if place is a discernible room, say "[if the place is unvisited][red reverse][end if]NE[roman type]"; otherwise say " ".


To say middle rose:
say " ";
let place be the room west from the location;
if place is a discernible room, say "[if the place is unvisited][red reverse][end if]W [roman type]"; otherwise say " ";
say " . ";
let place be the room east from the location;
if place is a discernible room, say "[if the place is unvisited][red reverse][end if] E[roman type]"; otherwise say " ".

To say bottom rose:
let place be the room down from the location;
if the place is a discernible room, say "[if the place is unvisited][red reverse][end if]D [roman type]"; otherwise say " ";
let place be the room southwest from the location;
if place is a discernible room, say "[if the place is unvisited][red reverse][end if]SW[roman type]"; otherwise say " ";
let place be the room south from the location;
if place is a discernible room, say "[if the place is unvisited][red reverse][end if] S [roman type]"; otherwise say " ";
let place be the room southeast from the location;
if place is a discernible room, say "[if the place is unvisited][red reverse][end if]SE[roman type]"; otherwise say " ".

Rule for constructing the status line:
	fill status bar with Table of Fancy Status;
	rule succeeds.


Section - Modified I6 inclusions (in place of Section - I6 inclusions in Glulx Text Effects by Emily Short)
	
Include (-

[ SetColor S N;
	glk_stylehint_set(wintype_TextBuffer, S, stylehint_TextColor, N); 
	glk_stylehint_set(wintype_TextGrid, S, stylehint_TextColor, N); 
];

[ FixitySet S N;
	N--;
	glk_stylehint_set(wintype_TextBuffer, S, stylehint_Proportional, N); 
	glk_stylehint_set(wintype_TextGrid, S, stylehint_Proportional, N); 
];

[ SetSize S N;
	glk_stylehint_set(wintype_TextBuffer, S, stylehint_Size, N); 
	glk_stylehint_set(wintype_TextGrid, S, stylehint_Size, N); 
];

[ BoldnessSet S N;
	N = N-2;
	glk_stylehint_set(wintype_TextBuffer, S, stylehint_Weight, N); 
	glk_stylehint_set(wintype_TextGrid, S, stylehint_Weight, N); 
];

[ ParaIndent S N;
	glk_stylehint_set(wintype_TextBuffer, S, stylehint_ParaIndentation, N); 
	glk_stylehint_set(wintype_TextGrid, S, stylehint_ParaIndentation, N); 
];

[ Indent S N;
	glk_stylehint_set(wintype_TextBuffer, S, stylehint_Indentation, N); 
	glk_stylehint_set(wintype_TextGrid, S, stylehint_Indentation, N);
];

[ Justification N S;
	N--;
	glk_stylehint_set(wintype_TextBuffer, S, stylehint_Justification, N); 
	glk_stylehint_set(wintype_TextGrid, S, stylehint_Justification, N); 
];

[ Obliquify S N;
	N--;
	glk_stylehint_set(wintype_TextBuffer, S, stylehint_Oblique, N); 
	glk_stylehint_set(wintype_TextGrid, S, stylehint_Oblique, N); 
];

-)[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1754&start=0#p11491
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Dialog editors
User: George / DateTime: 2010-12-01 01:43:27

I just learned of an interesting dialog editor released this year -- from their promo copy, "Chat Mapper is a new, high quality, easy to use tool for writing and testing nonlinear dialogue, especially for video games.".

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.chat-mapper.com/">http://www.chat-mapper.com/</a>

The more full-featured license isn't free, but it looks like it could be useful. 

Since I haven't heard of many tools like this (there's the old Neverwinter Nights editor, but I'm drawing a blank for others) I'm also curious if anyone knows of dialog editors like this.

[i]eta[/i]: And I randomly found another one: <a class="postlink" href="http://ninjaportal.com/NinjaPortal/UDE.html">http://ninjaportal.com/NinjaPortal/UDE.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1656&start=0#p11492
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Write your own CYOA competition (starts next week)
User: Neo / DateTime: 2010-12-01 03:26:59

How's the competition going so far, Chris?

(I take it you'd be able to know how many are in the process of writing their adventure from the number of saved games that have been generated, or at least an idea from the number of new sign-ups.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1748&start=10#p11493
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: quick question
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-01 10:00:23

[quote="zarf"]For what it's worth, the mistake I make all the time is typing "inserting it in" or "putting it onto". (Both are wrong.)[/quote]
I've got an idea. How about instead of making synonyms, make special compiler errors?

Problem: "putting it in" is not an action defined in the Standard Library. Did you mean "inserting it into?" ... etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1752&start=0#p11494
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: UNDERSTAND command
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-01 10:05:17

Could the compiler be trusted to provide a helpful message in this case?

[quote]Problem: You seem to be referring to an action, but "turning on" has not been defined as an action. Here are some commonly used actions that are sometimes mis-phrased:

inserting it into
putting it on
switching on
....

To see a list of all actions that have been defined, look at the Actions tab in the Index.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1656&start=0#p11495
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Write your own CYOA competition (starts next week)
User: adventurechris / DateTime: 2010-12-01 11:16:53

Hey Neo,

Yeah, I have some very basic stats. A number of people have signed up, but no one is really writing anything approaching full length.

I think that's at least partly because the contest was on short notice (NaNoWriMo, for example, comes the same time every year), but I also see a lot of people try the tools and then leave.

If anyone here has tried the writing tools (or would like to: <a class="postlink" href="http://adventurecow.com/init/story/create_demo">http://adventurecow.com/init/story/create_demo</a>), I'd love to get some feedback. I'm still testing and refining.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=40#p11496
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-Machine Standard 1.2 (draft)
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-12-01 11:18:24

Well, from this thread we have:

[list]
[*]@set_font 0[/*:m]
[*]output streams 3 and 4 available in V3/V4[/*:m]
[*]maximum of 7 routine arguments in V4[/*:m][/list:u]

The first may require some more discussion -- is there consensus on what @set_font 0 should do? -- but the latter two are contradictions in the current specs and just need to be re-specified.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1748&start=10#p11497
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: quick question
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-12-01 11:33:26

[quote="emshort"]Brief-mode summary of the answer: it would probably be possible to get around the limitations zarf mentions, but it's less clear that this is a good idea overall. If library-defined actions have predefined synonyms, we use up more and more of the namespace that might be wanted by authors; doing this in one or two places creates an expectation that it will be done in many cases; and we start to see novices asking questions like "how come I can't use 'considering' as my own action? it keeps translating itself to 'thinking'!" (etc.) Or: "I see some source with rules about 'stealing something'. Is that the same thing as the taking action, or not?"[/quote]
This is certainly a sensible way to look at it. Just as a suggestion, how about a Use Mode option? Something like "use action synonyms" at the head of the source code. But maybe it would be more trouble than it would be worth, since in that case people would (a) not know about it, which would lead to the same problem as at present, or (b) ask for the message to be more customizable, which would be a lot of extra work to no good purpose.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1656&start=10#p11498
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Write your own CYOA competition (starts next week)
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-12-01 13:11:41

I think the big thing for me was that there was no way to store meaningful data between states.  CYOA isn't a format I'm most drawn to in general, but it would have been nice to have some variables (ie hitting the rock wall with your bare hands reduces health).  Also, I would have liked the option to change the navigation tags from page numbers to something else (ie Go to the Library).

Honestly, I'm trying not to start new projects now, but I think other people might appreciate those features.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1753&start=0#p11499
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compass Woes
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-12-01 16:55:28

I'm not so sure what exactly I'm doing wrong, but the code still doesn't change the compass color and displays oddly. When you run the code, the words/letters have a box of black surrounding them, but the bar itself is white. I had to rename the corresponding extention code in Emily Short's Glulx Text Effects as Section - I6 inclusions, though I don't think that plays a role (though it very well might given how little I know about all of this).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1753&start=0#p11500
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compass Woes
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-12-01 19:19:20

Oops, I forgot that I'm using a customized version of Glulx Text Effects that adds a bunch of sections to make things more customizable (the original is just a single text block with no section headers, meaning that you can't replace anything). Here's the version I'm using, if you want to try it with this:

<a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Glulx%20Text%20Effects.i7x">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Glulx%20 ... ffects.i7x</a>

However, I tried putting section headers before and after the replaced section in the 6F95 bundled version, and that also worked fine. It sounds like you also tried that and still had troubles, though. 

Maybe it's an interpreter thing? We might be able to narrow things down if you try my gblorb in your interpreter:

<a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Compass%20Test.gblorb">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Compass%20Test.gblorb</a>

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1755&start=0#p11501
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Text-based Strip Poker
User: Call_Me_Steve / DateTime: 2010-12-01 19:24:02

You read that correctly.  This is my first game since I graduated college. I hope you appreciate my sense of humor... and if you do, please encourage others to download and play it.  Its free and available for Linux and Windows.  Its located at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.stevendetweiler.info">www.stevendetweiler.info</a>.  Comments and feedback are welcome!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1751&start=0#p11502
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding defaults & Story idea
User: eu / DateTime: 2010-12-01 19:25:20

First off, see the specification for the looking action in ``Index''->``Actions''->``Standard actions concerning the actor's vision''->``Looking.''  That will tell you how room descriptions are created, and it should give you an idea on how to suppress them.

As far as not supplying a noun automatically, I'm afraid that

[code]Does the player mean examining something in a mind room: it is very unlikely.[/code]
won't do the trick; Inform will still pick some object, even if it has to go with an unlikely alternative.  Instead, read Writing with Inform, Section 17.30.  I will note that you will need nounless forms of your commands, so if you have

[code]Understand the commands "examine" and "x" as something new.
Understand "examine [something]" and "x [something]" as touching.[/code]
be sure to also have

[code]Understand "touch" and "examine" and "x" as touching.[/code]
so that the parser knows that you're prepared to take responsibility for filling in (or not filling in) a missing noun.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1656&start=10#p11503
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Write your own CYOA competition (starts next week)
User: Neo / DateTime: 2010-12-01 19:48:07

Hey Chris,

I didn't sign up, but I did try the tools out.

Gravel's got a good point. I know a lot of people will want extra functionality, even just the ability to add a single variable stat, but I'm actually more than happy with the straight CYOA format. I also really like the idea of an editor that can help you put a story together.

For me, however, the big obstacles were:

You've developed a proprietary system. From what I can tell, the gamebooks can't be played anywhere else and there's hints that you want to turn it into a business model with paid access. That makes me nervous about what I create with your tool. (I had the same commercial reservations with Choice of Games' ChoiceScript.) It also means that ultimate control over the story (and how long it stays 'live') begins and ends with you, not the author.

The editor is not portable. It's online and as such can experience server and service crashes while you are writing your story. While I was playing around with the demo something went wrong and the page wouldn't reload properly. Also, saved games seem to sit with you. (Again, that makes me nervous.) I think if I was to use the tool, I would probably write my story offline first in a text file, then just copy and paste into your editor.

On the plus side:

The system is very simple to understand. It only takes about 5-10 minutes to become familiar with it.

The collaboration and public story concepts are excellent.

I like the fact that you're also developing it as an educational tool, something that can be used by school-age kids.

Hope that feedback helps.

Cheers,

Neo

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1753&start=0#p11504
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compass Woes
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-12-01 20:29:15

It works with your customizable Glulx Text Effects. I might have placed the headers wrong; I did label them rather haphazardly. The blocky color thing is apparently limited only to Inform 7 itself. If I package the code into a gblorb file, it's absolutely fine. 

Thank you so much for your time. Without your help, I would have never figured out how to get a functional compass.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1753&start=0#p11505
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compass Woes
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-12-01 20:59:11

Glad to hear it's working for you. Are you on Windows? If so, the blocks of color you see may indicate an issue with the interpreter that's bundled with the IDE. The game looks good to me both within the Mac IDE and as a gblorb running in Gargoyle, Zoom, and Spatterlight. (As I mentioned, Quixe ignores all of the stylehints to the status window, but this may be because the author is expected to manage the look of the window using CSS--?).

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1755&start=0#p11506
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Text-based Strip Poker
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-01 21:17:41

Hi, Steve. I don't know if it matters to you since there's no Mac version, but except for the three nav links in the upper left, none of the links on your site actually work for me in Safari. So I couldn't look at or download anything on your site.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1656&start=10#p11507
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Write your own CYOA competition (starts next week)
User: adventurechris / DateTime: 2010-12-02 01:40:57

Hey Neo+Gravel,

Thanks so much for the feedback. Let me explain where I'm headed with this, so you can nudge me in more of the right direction:

[b]Links[/b]: Links are coming, but this will take time - I haven't figured out a friendly syntax. See state.

[b]State[/b]: This is a tough one.

I grew up on a mix of CYOA and computer western RPGs, so my experience with state varies between "none at all" to "far too complicated for a human to keep track of." Ideally the script would be something simple to understand and powerful. Right now I'm leaning towards an in page script, where you could do something like:

[code]
[health=100]
[health -= 5]
[if health < 30]
You should see a doctor!
[else]
You decide to keep moving for now, instead of seeing a doctor.
[endif]
[/code]

I haven't used much of Inform7 or ChoiceScript though, so I don't have firsthand experience with what works and what doesn't. If anyone has suggestions I'd love to hear them.

[b]Proprietary vs. Portable (i.e. Your stories are yours)[/b]:
What I'm hoping to do is give writers a venue to market their own works. This all started when I was watching [i]Get Lamp[/i] and hearing about the days when people could make a living telling an interactive story. It was great to hear about Andrew Plotkin breaking out and doing something on Kickstarter, and I'd like that to happen more. Hopefully, someday, this will be something more than just my own project. 

I want to be open and unproprietary. The stories you write should remain entirely yours, and you should be able to take them wherever and whenever you choose.

Along those lines I'd like to give people access to export their stories in text format. It will happen, but I haven't had time for that yet - unfortunately I can't afford to hire my own Data Liberation Front. :-/ (Import's a little trickier, because there has to be an agreed standard, but I'd like to do that too.)

-----
Thoughts?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1756&start=0#p11508
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Deriving kind from instance of kind
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-12-02 06:25:18

On several occasions I've needed constructs on the form of

[code]To decide whether (X - a thing) is sibling to (Y - a thing):
	if the kind-name of X is the kind-name of Y, decide yes;
	decide no.[/code]

This same basic issue has come up earlier on [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/]raif[/url], and probably elsewhere as well. [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_frm/thread/ff3331e38a2b1c68/a4542ccff8b44dfe?lnk=gst&q=kind+name#a4542ccff8b44dfe]The proposed solution[/url] I found, however, is I6 based and (at least in the Window 7 build of 6F95) seems to kill the compiler.

[code]To say kind name of (x - thing):
	(- print (I7_Kind_Name) {x}.&i7_kind-->0; -).[/code]
The ability to test whether thing A is of a kind with B would be great, but not enough by itself. No, on more than a few occasions I've needed to check whether this thing derives from the kind of another thing, or even whether a particular kind name begins with "pair of...-". The chore removing "[owner]'s" from an incorporated thing is recurring, and I'd love a more elegant way of doing it. 

But it does seem inordinately difficult. Is it still possible to do something like this in recent builds? Or is it (as I'm beginning to suspect) discouraged as a bad or unsafe practice?



[size=85]EDIT: Made some clarifications.[/size]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1751&start=0#p11509
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding defaults & Story idea
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-12-02 07:56:06

Maybe I misunderstood jfreehill's problem. 
But if the problem is that you have a room with only one thing in it and the player types X and you don't want Inform automatically to examine that thing for him, then [code]Does the player mean examining something: it is very unlikely.[/code] will prevent Inform from doing that – or it would as late as build 6E72. (The same goes/went for "it is unlikely", but not for "possible", "likely" or "very likely".) Instead the player is/was asked what he wants to examine.

As for preventing Inform from telling what is in a mind room:
If you want no objects in a room to be described at all –– printing neither "initial appearances" (if they have any) nor the "You can also see"-paragraph nor listing things on supporters in the room --, I suppose you could do it thus:
[code]For printing a locale paragraph about a thing (called the item) in a mind room: now the item is mentioned.[/code]
In effect that tells Inform that it has already mentioned each thing in the mind room and need not bother doing it again.
(There are lots of Inform activities going on when it comes to printing the contents of a room, however, and I certainly won't swear that this simple solution doesn't introduce any bugs anywhere. It might be worth a try, though.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1756&start=0#p11510
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Deriving kind from instance of kind
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-12-02 11:25:03

The 6F95 version of that kind-printing hack:

[code]
To say kind name of (x - thing):
   (- print (I7_Kind_Name) KindHierarchy-->(({x}.KD_Count)*2); -).
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1756&start=0#p11511
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Deriving kind from instance of kind
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-12-02 11:31:54

The sort of kind operators you're talking about can be hacked together, but obviously these internals are still changing with every release. I don't know why they're not built in.

[quote]
The ability to test whether thing A is of a kind with B would be great, but not enough by itself. No, on more than a few occasions I've needed to check whether this thing derives from the kind of another thing
[/quote]

Is there a difference? If Fluffy is an animal, and Steve is a person, then Fluffy derives from Steve's kind. But it is also true that Fluffy and Steve are both people.

If you want to know whether the kind name matches a particular *string*, by far the easiest way would be to declare an either-or property "name-pairy" and have some kinds be usually name-pairy. You don't need to mess around with the kind machinery for that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1656&start=10#p11512
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Write your own CYOA competition (starts next week)
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-12-02 11:50:19

Health was an easy example; I think integers would give people a lot of flexibility in themselves - they can be used as placeholders, truth states, etc.  I think what a lot of CYOA struggles with is that every path probably won't be completely unique; in a work of size, it's helpful to funnel people back to certain nodes.

If you have paths that never recross, you're essentially writing a new storyline every time a choice opens up.
However, if you have too many points of intersection, the choices readers make feel meaningless.

Thus, it's be helpful to be able to distinguish paths people have taken (which might signify things like what they know, or how much health they have, or whether Timmy is angry at Lassie).  Numbers would, I think, be an easy way to implement this, but there's a lot of other options (ie if page 3 has been read, do the following.)  If you allow these states to trigger text substitutions, you can have nodes, but different playthroughs may have slightly different flavors depending on the protagonist's knowledge and perception of events.  (I have no idea if I'm making sense here or not.)

One other thing I was thinking of is that it would be worthwhile to have a couple examples up; I think the starting text you give is not a bad idea, but a few short but compelling stories might serve as a hook, especially to younger authors who perhaps are not as familiar with the traditional format.  Any reading features could be seen there; I'm not sure whether there's a "return to last unexplored option" button, but I know that's how I read CYOA growing up.  (Fingers wedged on decision pages for quick flips back - I was a completionist, even at 7, and made sure the choice tree was completely explored.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1756&start=0#p11513
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Deriving kind from instance of kind
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-12-02 12:06:45

Okay, this is seriously borderline embarassingly hackish, but I have in fact resorted to giving my things some text called kind (kind_name, actually).  Thus, I can test whether the kind of A is the kind of B, and with a little extra work, whether the kind of A is in the same general "family kind" of B.  I think the easiest way to do this with text is lists: is the kind of A and the kind of B are listed in the Person Kind List, then blah blah blah.  This doesn't give derivation, though, since I've never needed it to; I've only needed to know if the two things have been similar enough or different enough.  

I think you could set this up with a table if you needed to, though:

Table of Embarassingly Hackish Kinds
"person"   {"animal", "man", "woman"}

It's work, and you have to be very careful to define everything and make sure you're clear and careful about what you use it for, but it's let me do some things that would be excruciatingly difficult otherwise.  The second option is one I don't use much, but I use the "is the noun the same sort of thing as the stuff in the container?" kind of query all over the place.  I'm glad to know about the I6 option, but will probably keep working with text for awhile, because I fully understand what's happening, and that's more important right now than elegant code.  (Also, you can easily fiddle with the text for output reasons, which is nice.)  I'll make a note to pare it down in the future, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1756&start=0#p11514
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Deriving kind from instance of kind
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-12-02 12:40:06

The I6 option is *not* elegant code. :)

Hm. I wonder if the relative opaqueness of this stuff is because Graham is planning to switch to multiple-inheritance someday. That would mess with the semantics of any kind operators.

(I am only speculating here.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1656&start=10#p11515
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Write your own CYOA competition (starts next week)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-02 13:46:32

Gravel, did you ever get to Ultima? 

Chris, obviously you don't want to just copy ChoiceScript, but it seems like they let you set flags and stats. There's a ChoiceScript game in the [url=http://jayisgames.com/cgdc9/]current JayIsGames comp[/url] (I don't think I can direct-link, but click "Zebulon") that does kind of a nice job of using stats to keep track not just of characters' skills but of their relationships -- it was kind of buggy when I played it, I haven't gone back. But those seem like nice functionalities. (I don't know anything about the inner workings, though.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1656&start=10#p11516
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Write your own CYOA competition (starts next week)
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-12-02 14:01:33

. . . no?  (Oops?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1757&start=0#p11517
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Direction Types
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-12-02 14:10:49

I would like to designate the cardinal directions as "cardinal".
This way when the player tries to move in a cardinal direction I can say something like "You have no compass and can't see the sun. Cardinal directions mean nothing to you right now.".

I can define new directions easy enough (Right, Left, Frontwards, Backwards), but how do I disable moving from the cardinal directions only (I want to continue to use in, out, up, down).

The following does not work:

-Cardinal is a kind of direction. North is cardinal.
-Definition: a direction is cardinal if it is north. Before going: if the direction is cardinal...
(the direcion is cardinal always returns true even if going up,down, right, left).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1757&start=0#p11518
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Direction Types
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-12-02 14:17:30

The latter method works, but you're tripping on the [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1726]thing/noun distinction[/url]. Either

[code]Before going: if the noun is cardinal...[/code]
or

[code]Before going a cardinal direction: ...[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1758&start=0#p11519
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Referring to the object that has a shuffled event list
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-12-02 16:15:43

My class has a shuffled event list.  Instances of this class will use the shuffled event list to spit out atmospheric text in certain circumstances.  It would be nice to attribute this text to the specific instance that is responsible for it.

What I want is something like this:

[code]
class Mime: Person
    CaperList: ShuffledEventList
    {
        [
            '<.p>\^'+theName+' capers in a disconcerting fashion.'
        ]
    }
    afterAction()
    {
        "<<CaperList.doScript()>>"; 
    }
;

someLocation: Room 'A Room'
;

+Mime 'tall mime' 'tall mime'
;[/code]
Which will output:

[quote]>z
The tall mime capers in a disconcerting fashion.[/quote]
But it seems that "theName" in this context refers to the theName of the shuffledEventList, which is nil. What do I need to make this work?

UPDATE:  Okay, Learning TADS 3 suggests "lexicalParent.theName", but this refers to the class itself and not the instance.  As it happens, I did have some vocab set at the class level, but I really want to see "the tall mime" and not "the mime".

UPDATE the 2nd:  So an obvious duct-tape solution is just to store the current object in a global variable at the start of the afterAction, and then refer to that variable in the ShuffledEventList.  This works, but I'd be interested to know what the canonical solution is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1755&start=0#p11520
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Text-based Strip Poker
User: Call_Me_Steve / DateTime: 2010-12-02 16:27:41

I'm sorry.  I don't have a Mac.  I tested my game and my site in Linux and Windows.  

Maybe since the download link is to a php page that then downloads the game, it may not be liked by Safari?  There shouldn't be many more links on the page (the different colors are just there to bring your attention to certain keywords). If you are still having problems, find me on facebook and I'll trying to find another way to get you the file.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1753&start=0#p11521
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compass Woes
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-12-02 16:49:29

Yep, I use Windows, though it is odd. I would think that a lot of people would be complaining if it was a Windows IDE issue (unless you are saying its a problem with just my Inform 7/computer?). It works fine on the interpeters I ran the gborb with, Gargolye and Windows Glulx.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1753&start=0#p11522
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compass Woes
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-12-02 16:57:03

[quote="Bistre"]Yep, I use Windows, though it is odd. I would think that a lot of people would be complaining if it was a Windows IDE issue (unless you are saying its a problem with just my Inform 7/computer?). It works fine on the interpeters I ran the gborb with, Gargolye and Windows Glulx.[/quote]

I doubt there are many people who have changed text colors in Glulx status lines; as far as I know, Glulx Status Window Control is the only way to do it (at least, for people who don't want to directly hack the I6 template layer). So, I don't think it's surprising that this might have gone unreported until now.

I believe that the Windows IDE interpreter is a variant of Windows Glulxe (though I could be wrong), so that's interesting as well.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1753&start=0#p11523
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compass Woes
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-12-02 17:41:30

That really is strange then.

Should it be reported? I mean it really is a trival thing, and I personally don't mind.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1758&start=0#p11524
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Referring to the object that has a shuffled event list
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-12-02 17:56:54

Don't simply use a list in the class, but actually inherit from it. That way, you can refer to the properties/methods of the class directly through 'self'. And that means that when you create objects (=instances) of that class, 'self' refers to the object, not the class.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1656&start=10#p11525
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Write your own CYOA competition (starts next week)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-02 18:36:34

Perhaps I should say, did you ever read [i]Inside UFO 54-40[/i]? 'Cause if not, um, that part of my comment makes no sense and I fail. Spoiler below.

[spoiler]I don't remember all the details, but throughout the book a lot of characters talk about a paradise planet called "Utlima." One thing someone says about it is that you can't reach it by making a choice. And in fact it turns out that there's an ending where you reach Ultima... but there isn't any other page leading to it. You just have to turn directly to the page to get there. So I was thinking, if read these books by lawnmowering the choice tree, you'd never get to Ultima, because it wasn't on the choice tree.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1756&start=0#p11526
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Deriving kind from instance of kind
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-12-02 18:58:34

[quote="zarf"]The sort of kind operators you're talking about can be hacked together, but obviously these internals are still changing with every release. I don't know why they're not built in.[/quote]

Interesting. As an aside, how does one best keep track of the particulars of such changes? Is it necessary to examine the source code, or is everything given in the I7 change log?

[quote][quote]The ability to test whether thing A is of a kind with B would be great, but not enough by itself. No, on more than a few occasions I've needed to check whether this thing derives from the kind of another thing[/quote]

Is there a difference? If Fluffy is an animal, and Steve is a person, then Fluffy derives from Steve's kind. But it is also true that Fluffy and Steve are both people.[/quote]

Crud, I knew I messed up that sentence. It should say, "on more than a few occasions, I've needed to be able to check whether the kind of (A) is itself kind of the kind of (B). That is, to be able to traverse the inheritance tree as needed."

Note that if this were possible, I'd probably use this space to complain about something different. [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote]If you want to know whether the kind name matches a particular *string*, by far the easiest way would be to declare an either-or property "name-pairy" and have some kinds be usually name-pairy. You don't need to mess around with the kind machinery for that.[/quote]

I'm sorry, I don't think I'm following. How would doing so help in this instance?


[quote="zarf"]The I6 option is *not* elegant code. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

I'm largely unfamiliar with I6, so I'd prefer not use it at all. If it allows me to sidestep having to declare a kind's name twice when creating a kind, however (assuming we used [b]gravel[/b]'s method to give the root kind the property [b]kind_name[/b]), I'd be prepared to erect a small temple dedicated to I6 inclusions.

[quote="gravel"]Okay, this is seriously borderline embarassingly hackish, but I have in fact resorted to giving my things some text called kind (kind_name, actually). Thus, I can test whether the kind of A is the kind of B, and with a little extra work, whether the kind of A is in the same general "family kind" of B. I think the easiest way to do this with text is lists: is the kind of A and the kind of B are listed in the Person Kind List, then blah blah blah. This doesn't give derivation, though, since I've never needed it to; I've only needed to know if the two things have been similar enough or different enough.[/quote]

Yeah. It's certainly a workable solution, and it was more or less the solution remaining. Laziness may have played some small part in why I chose not to do it, but mostly, it was for the reason I gave [b]zarf[/b] above: namely that repetition of data is something I need to avoid. My ADHD means keeping track of scattered details is a nontrivial task, so I want to avoid cluttering the code with redundant constructions as much as I can.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1758&start=0#p11527
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Referring to the object that has a shuffled event list
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-12-02 20:38:41

How about this?

[code]
class Mime: Person
    CaperList: ShuffledEventList
    {
        [
            '<.p>\^'+theName+' capers in a disconcerting fashion.'
        ]
        theName = ''
    }
    afterAction()
    {
        "<<CaperList.doScript()>>"; 
    }
    initializeThing()
    {
        inherited;
        CaperList = CaperList.createClone();
        CaperList.theName = theName;
    }
;

+Mime 'tall mime' 'tall mime';
+Mime 'short mime' 'short mime';
+Mime 'fat mime' 'fat mime';
[/code]

EDIT: changed the way that CaperList is initialized.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1656&start=10#p11528
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Write your own CYOA competition (starts next week)
User: Neo / DateTime: 2010-12-03 03:25:17

Hey Chris,

It's hard to comment without a certain amount of bias. I'm currently working on a free plug-and-play format for Inform 7 that will let authors write games that can be dropped into a template that will enable a z-code game (playable on any IF interpreter) to be created. To be honest, mine's a little more about collaboration and blurring the boundaries between IF and CYOA.

I'd love to say what I'm working on is as simple as what you've got going (so kudos to you), but there's a range of trade-offs. I think that's what you'll find as you attempt to add features. The more features you add (such as variables) the more you push what you're doing closer to programming and the harder it becomes for the non-coding writer to produce a work.

I'm not sure if any of that helps, but, at the very least, I hope it works like a signpost for you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1755&start=0#p11529
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Text-based Strip Poker
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2010-12-03 04:33:56

The links work fine over here (on a Mac) but the download bundle contains nothing a Mac can use anyway. There's a windows executable and another for Linux.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1656&start=10#p11530
Forum: Competitions / Subject: In Support of CYOA as a Concept and a Competition
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-03 04:48:50

There is something pure about CYOA that makes it a good proving ground for ideas about interactivity. I have my own CYOA system as well, but it isn't JavaScript it uses server-side scripting (served by LambdaMOO but the MUD/IF-like features of LambdaMOO have nothing to do with it — I just use LambdaMOO as a dynamic webserver replacement for PHP sometimes, my art blog is written in it, etc).

Anyway I've never released anything with this server-side-scripted CYOA system — it was part of an interactive video experiment I tackled in 2003 which failed for related reasons of production timeline and casting (losing actors because it was taking me too long to deal with all the disparate storyline threads: I messed up on the sequencing of when I recruited people in the process and started shooting, and I made technological mistakes as well, which slowed me up at crucial times — now corrected).

So the server-side scripting setup allowed me apply my CYOA tool to any form of media, and I chose video at first, but that's not what I'm doing anymore. After the abject failure of my video project collapsing under its own weight I opted for a more lightweight production environment. Now I'm working on a hybrid of a standard IF-input window and surrounding photography which is more manageable to experiment with as there is much lower time commitment from my photographic models and I am way less likely to have people quit with the various branches of their tale incomplete.

However, the CYOA-like tool I originally wrote for video has come in immensely useful, since the choice encoding I used for it I am now using to communicate player choice info back and forth between the LambdaMOO and JavaScript sides of my hybrid project. It's become a way of encapsulating and communicating the interactive structure among different (what ppl are now calling) "transmedia" modules.

So I think the right kinds of CYOA tools have a big future as a lingua franca of transmitting information about choice, quite independently of the actual interface used in the end to navigate those choices.

I'll stop before I give away too much of the farm here. (These tools will be released freely anyway when I am actually happy with what I'm creating with them, and have written documentation etc.) Point is, CYOA comps are great, multiple systems investigating different approaches is even better because there's all sorts of magic out there in this territory: and I don't think CYOA is a throwback either. It's a purer form. IF itself is more of a hybrid form compared to CYOA. Not that pure == good and hybrid == bad; because hybrid also = sophisticated; but the purer, more focused expressions of a particular art or idea are mathematically and experimentally significant. It's incorrect to consider them rudimentary or primitive or outdated. I think CYOA is to IF somewhat as poetry is to prose. In fact, it's trivially easy (tech-wise) to write an elegant, CYOA poem but the same attempt made with a parser seems over-designed and -interfaced.

To attempt another relation: IF is to the purity of game narrative as CYOA is to the purity of narrative choice. They are both purer expressions of something found all over the world in hybrid forms. This makes them both very valuable for slightly different but parallel reasons.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1656&start=10#p11531
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Write your own CYOA competition (starts next week)
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-12-03 08:38:34

[quote="matt w"]Perhaps I should say, did you ever read [i]Inside UFO 54-40[/i]? 'Cause if not, um, that part of my comment makes no sense and I fail. Spoiler below.
[/quote]

Oh!  No, I don't remember that one.  I don't remember many science fiction CYOA, actually; most of the ones I read were Earth based.  (I *still* can never remember which way to go when an avalanche is coming.  No doubt that will be my downfall.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1756&start=0#p11532
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Deriving kind from instance of kind
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-12-03 08:44:04

Yeah.  I don't have ADHD, and I find this sort of stuff difficult to keep track of, especially when I step away for more than a day.  Remembering to give new kinds appropriate labels upon creation is a huge pain, and I tend to really, really like to make kinds of things.  It would make total sense if this were a feature rolled into Inform - even if most authors don't use it (and I think they might if they could), it would be a godsend to all those marvelous extensions that deal with extra text and grouping and pronouns and whatnot.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1753&start=0#p11533
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compass Woes
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-12-03 09:26:47

I've noticed, but figured as long as it outputs okay, I don't care that much.  But the stuff I'm doing merely makes it look like the status line is split down the middle - black boxes on either side.  Seems to be a result of using Eric Eve's Exits extension.

You get used to it pretty quickly, and I didn't even think about reporting it.  I guess it is technically a bug; if it's easy to fix, I guess it would be nice to have it fixed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1758&start=0#p11534
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Referring to the object that has a shuffled event list
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-12-03 11:51:14

This would also work, and is pretty close to your original solution of using a global. Here we exploit the fact that we change 'theName' on every new object of class Mime, and pass that altered value into the parent's CaperList.

[code]
class Mime: Person
    CaperList: ShuffledEventList
    {
        [
            '<.p>\^'+theName+' capers in a disconcerting fashion.'
        ]
        theName = ''
        doScriptFor(me)
        {
            theName = me;
            doScript();
            theName = '';
        }
    }
    afterAction()
    {
        "<<CaperList.doScriptFor(theName)>>"; 
    }
;

+Mime 'tall mime' 'tall mime';
+Mime 'short mime' 'short mime';
+Mime 'fat mime' 'fat mime';
[/code]

The earlier approach is more suitable when you want objects inheriting from the class to have their own, independent instance of a nested object without having to override that property for every new object.

My understanding is that TADS objects are created as shallow copies of the parent. The only properties stored separately in memory are the ones you override. Unless you intentionally create a new CaperList object for each mime, they will all use the one nested in the parent object. So lexicalParent is of no help because it will always refer to the class object rather than the game object.

This is not necessarily intuitive; I've persisted in thinking of TADS classes as insubstantial archetypes, though the manual takes pains to stress that the only difference between a class and an object is that the former is ignored by the parser.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1756&start=0#p11535
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Deriving kind from instance of kind
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-12-03 12:10:25

Does the following not work? (Untested of course.)
[code]
To decide whether (X - a value) is sibling to (Y - a value): no.
To decide whether (X - a value of kind K) is sibling to (Y - K): yes.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1758&start=0#p11536
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Referring to the object that has a shuffled event list
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-12-03 12:57:59

Thanks for the responses, you two.

[quote="RealNC"]Don't simply use a list in the class, but actually inherit from it. That way, you can refer to the properties/methods of the class directly through 'self'. And that means that when you create objects (=instances) of that class, 'self' refers to the object, not the class.[/quote]
That seems cool (if a little hard to think about in the typical "is a/has a" way), but what if I want each class to have multiple lists of things?  (Could you provide an example?)

[quote="bcressey"]How about this?[/quote]
Neat idea, but the idea of defining all the lists in their constructors seems like it would result in pretty ugly code to me.

[quote="bcressey"]This would also work, and is pretty close to your original solution of using a global. Here we exploit the fact that we change 'theName' on every new object of class Mime, and pass that altered value into the parent's CaperList.[/quote]
I like it.  I might use it if I need to get more parameters to the list.  As it stands, I think I'll stick to the global variable, since I need to keep track of my mimes somewhere anyway.

[quote="bcressey"]My understanding is that TADS objects are created as shallow copies of the parent. The only properties stored separately in memory are the ones you override. Unless you intentionally create a new CaperList object for each mime, they will all use the one nested in the parent object. So lexicalParent is of no help because it will always refer to the class object rather than the game object.[/quote]
I think this is something that has confused me before, so thanks for the explanation.  

Also, I am kind of wanting to have my cake and eat it, since I want the shuffled event list to serve up different responses universally, while referring to specific objects.  So I wouldn't want to see two different mimes caper in the same way one after the other.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1756&start=0#p11537
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Deriving kind from instance of kind
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-12-03 13:11:26

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Does the following not work? (Untested of course.)
[code]
To decide whether (X - a value) is sibling to (Y - a value): no.
To decide whether (X - a value of kind K) is sibling to (Y - K): yes.
[/code][/quote]

Oh, that is [i]elegant.[/i] Thank you. It certainly provides a large part of the needed functionality. Testing the phrase, I find it returns true for any two items that either derive from the exact same kind or when one of them is derived from a subkind of the first. Do you know if there's a way to check if two items are exclusively siblings?


As an aside, I will admit that these [i]value of kind K[/i] phrases are difficult for me to grasp. That recent addition to the manual felt pretty opaque and separate from the manual as a whole; to me, it read more like a brief summary of previously explained concepts.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1759&start=0#p11538
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Asking NPC for something
User: Frumious / DateTime: 2010-12-03 13:21:04

When the player asks a particular NPC something, I want it to say something about the object that has been asked for.

So the code I've got at the moment (that isn't working) is:
[code]Instead of asking John for [anything]:
	say "John gives you [the noun]"[/code]

When the player enters 'Ask John for a hat' it says "You can't see any such thing."
But when the player enters 'Ask John for' it says John gives you John

Does anyone know of a way I can refer to the thing that has just been asked for?

Thanks in advance

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1759&start=0#p11539
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Asking NPC for something
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-12-03 13:57:40

Sounds like the object asked for isn't in scope.  Where is this hat in question?  Is it in the room with you & John?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1759&start=0#p11540
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Asking NPC for something
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-03 14:10:13

Also, don't you want "second noun" there? I think John is the noun and the hat is the second noun.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1760&start=0#p11541
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Comments in Extension Documentation
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-03 14:36:09

I think someone else was complaining about this, but I'm not sure where the thread is.

I'm trying to write documentation for my extension, and I came up with a couple of problems:

1. I couldn't find anything in Writing with Inform about how to make the examples pastable. I had to look in the source of another extension to see that you need to start it with the string "*:". Is that documented somewhere? It really should be.

2. I tried commenting my example by unindenting the comments. That looks right in the documentation window, but it defeats the pasting feature  - when you click the paste button, you only get the text from the start of the example to the first comment. The built-in examples don't have this limitation, do they? I thought when you pasted them, the unindented text turned into bracketed text.

3. Checking how your extension documentation looks (and if your examples run correctly) is even more tedious than forcing it to recompile. In fact, at one point I was so stumped that I quit Inform and restarted it, just to see how the changes to my extension documentation looked. Is there a way to get the documentation to reload? I can't figure it out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1760&start=0#p11542
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Comments in Extension Documentation
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-12-03 21:03:13

[quote="capmikee"]I think someone else was complaining about this, but I'm not sure where the thread is.[/quote]

Maybe you're thinking of [url=http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/849631-extensions-revise-extension-example-presentation]this[/url], from the uservoice site?

[quote="capmikee"]
2. I tried commenting my example by unindenting the comments. That looks right in the documentation window, but it defeats the pasting feature  - when you click the paste button, you only get the text from the start of the example to the first comment. The built-in examples don't have this limitation, do they? I thought when you pasted them, the unindented text turned into bracketed text.[/quote]

You're right: the examples in the manual don't face this limitation. There's another difficulty as well--for some reason, bracketed text in extension documentation is stripped out when the docs are rendered into HTML. So you can't include straightforward pastable comments in your example code either.

In the uservoice thread linked above, Emily explains that there is extra markup in the manual examples that allows for the more sensible treatment of comments in that context. For now, the solution (workaround, really) is to use multiple paste blocks. This is less than ideal, though, because users may not realize that they need to do this (the WI examples having trained them that only one paste operation is needed); it's also annoying to have to click multiple paste buttons, and if you prefer to read the comments in the source window (where tables look better, for example), you're out of luck, because comments can't be pasted.

There are potentially at least two ways to fix this problem:

1) Allow extension authors to use the same markup that is available for the manual examples.
2) Allow text in brackets to appear in the documentation HTML and to be pasted along with the example source.

I'd be happy with either, but I think 1 is a better option from the point of view of predictability--users will have the same experience pasting an example whether it comes from the manual or from an extension.


[quote="capmikee"]
3. Checking how your extension documentation looks (and if your examples run correctly) is even more tedious than forcing it to recompile. In fact, at one point I was so stumped that I quit Inform and restarted it, just to see how the changes to my extension documentation looked. Is there a way to get the documentation to reload? I can't figure it out.[/quote]

I think someone mentioned here recently (or maybe on uservoice) that there is a key combination or something that will do this, at least in the Mac IDE. Maybe it was EmacsUser...?

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1759&start=0#p11543
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Asking NPC for something
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-12-03 21:25:13

Also, that use of the bracketed token [anything] is incorrect. You need to use "anything" (or "something") w/o brackets:

[code]Instead of asking John for something:
   say "John gives you [the second noun]."[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1759&start=0#p11544
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Asking NPC for something
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-12-04 00:58:18

The bracketed [anything] happens to work in that example, because it's a comment and the compiler ignores it!

[code]
Instead of asking John for:
   say "John gives you [the second noun]."
[/code]

Just as "taking" is a valid shorthand for "taking anything", "asking John for" is shorthand for "asking John for anything".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1759&start=0#p11545
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Asking NPC for something
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-12-04 01:26:22

Unless I missed something, the larger problem with this code is that, since it's an Instead rule, John doesn't actually give you the hat--it just says that he does.

If you want the object to actually be given, a Before rule might work better.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1759&start=0#p11546
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Asking NPC for something
User: Frumious / DateTime: 2010-12-04 04:29:28

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Sounds like the object asked for isn't in scope.  Where is this hat in question?  Is it in the room with you & John?[/quote]

Well I was really trying to understand it more generally, so for example if John is a genie, he gives the player whatever is asked for (although the question of what to do if the player wants to do something with it is something else altogether). Another use would be if the player asks for something (for example, a banana) and have the response "John says 'A banana? I don't have one of those, but I can give you one of these...'. But I suppose it's probably a better idea just to get it working in the current context I'm working with for now - which is that John has multiple hats, and will give the player one if they ask for it. I have
[code]John carries 4 hats[/code]
And my code for asking John for anything executes when the player types "Ask John for 4 quarters", but not when typing "Ask John for a quarter" or anything else.

[quote="matt w"]Also, don't you want "second noun" there? I think John is the noun and the hat is the second noun.[/quote]
Ah, makes sense, thanks! Doesn't fix the problem at hand, but I'm sure it will prevent another one.
[quote="ektemple"]Also, that use of the bracketed token [anything] is incorrect. You need to use "anything" (or "something") w/o brackets:
[code]Instead of asking John for something:
   say "John gives you [the second noun]."[/code]
--Erik[/quote][quote="zarf"]The bracketed [anything] happens to work in that example, because it's a comment and the compiler ignores it!

[code]
Instead of asking John for:
   say "John gives you [the second noun]."
[/code]

Just as "taking" is a valid shorthand for "taking anything", "asking John for" is shorthand for "asking John for anything".[/quote]
Ah, good to know!
[quote="katz"]Unless I missed something, the larger problem with this code is that, since it's an Instead rule, John doesn't actually give you the hat--it just says that he does.

If you want the object to actually be given, a Before rule might work better.[/quote]
I was going to try to implement the actual giving after I'd overcome this current issue, but one thing is that when the code is executed (eg if the player asks specifically for something I've said John has) if I put this stuff in a before rule it goes through the rule and still has the stock response ("John has better things to do")


Thanks for all the help, guys.

I think I may be struggling with the idea of plurality - is there an easy way to say that 4 hats exist, John has the 4 hats, and when asked for one he gives it to the player?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1656&start=20#p11547
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Write your own CYOA competition (starts next week)
User: Neo / DateTime: 2010-12-04 04:31:23

Laroquod:

[quote]Now I'm working on a hybrid of a standard IF-input window and surrounding photography which is more manageable to experiment with as there is much lower time commitment from my photographic models and I am way less likely to have people quit with the various branches of their tale incomplete.
[/quote]

This sounds really interesting. I can understand your reasons for dumping the video. I can't imagine the ridiculous amount of video/production you'd need even to tackle a short CYOA style narrative, particularly if you were making something half decent.

That said, I have seen a couple of attempts make it onto the iStore as apps...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1759&start=0#p11548
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Asking NPC for something
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-04 07:03:39

[quote="Frumious"]\But I suppose it's probably a better idea just to get it working in the current context I'm working with for now - which is that John has multiple hats, and will give the player one if they ask for it. I have
[code]John carries 4 hats[/code]
And my code for asking John for anything executes when the player types "Ask John for 4 quarters", but not when typing "Ask John for a quarter" or anything else....

I think I may be struggling with the idea of plurality - is there an easy way to say that 4 hats exist, John has the 4 hats, and when asked for one he gives it to the player?[/quote]

Do you have:

[code]A hat is a kind of thing[/code]

? Because if you just have "John has 4 hats" without declaring a hat as a kind of thing, I7 will create a single object called "4 hats." (For some reason this reminds me of the following video: [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qu9MptWyCB8]"Four candles[/url] by the Two Ronnies.) And then it'll understand "4" and "hats" as referring to that object, but not "hat" -- it doesn't know that "hat" is the singular of "hats."

It sounds like what you want is something like this:

[code]"Four Candles"

Lamp is a room. 
A hat is a kind of thing. John is a man in Lamp. John carries four hats.
Instead of asking John for a hat:
	if John carries a hat:
		move a random hat that is carried by John to the player;
		say "John gives you a hat.";
	otherwise:
		say "John is out of hats."[/code]

The player can't ask John for more than one hat at a time this way -- and you may not want to let em do so. You probably also want to make the hat wearable, and give it a description. Or if you want to be able to ask John for anything he has, you can do this:

[code]Lamp is a room. 
A hat is a kind of thing. John is a man in Lamp. John carries four hats. John carries
Instead of asking John for something:
	if John carries the second noun:
		move the second noun to the player;
		say "John gives you [the second noun].";
	otherwise:
		say "John don't have that."
		
Does the player mean asking John for something that is carried by John:
	it is likely.[/code]

which works in this case, at least, though again it doesn't allow you to ask for multiple hats (the default parser error is at least helpful here). You need that last line so it doesn't think you're asking John for the hat you already have.

You'd also need to accommodate "JOHN, GIVE ME A HAT" and like that, but you probably want to "ASK JOHN FOR A HAT" working first. Also, the people who know more than me (that's everyone else) might point out some other problems that could crop up. 

[EDIT: One issue is, if the thing you ask John for isn't in the room at all, you'll get "You can't see any such thing" instead of  "John don't have that." It might require some mild I6 trickery to get a special rule for asking John for something that isn't in the room -- zarf, I think you showed me how to do that once?]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1759&start=0#p11549
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Asking NPC for something
User: StJohnLimbo / DateTime: 2010-12-04 07:23:08

You don't need to implement the details of the giving action again; you can take advantage of the implementation that's built in.

Looking at the Actions Index, we see that the "asking for" action is treated like the order "NPC, give me X". Normally, the NPCs don't obey the player character's orders, so we have to tell Inform that John can be "persuaded" to give the player what he wants. So one way to do it would be like this:

[code]The Foyer is a room.

John is a man in the Foyer. John carries a hat. John carries a cane.

Persuasion rule for asking John to try doing something:
	Persuasion succeeds.
[/code]	
Unfortunately, this is not quite enough yet. When we ask him for the hat, the game will now say "John is unable to do that" instead of "John has better things to do". To find out why, we enter "actions" while testing the game in the IDE, and ask John for the hat again. The output tells us that the action "failed the block giving rule". So we look again at the Actions Index under "giving it to" and find that this is usually blocked by the Standard Rules. By clicking the button labeled "unlist" next to the "block giving rule", we insert a line into the source code that removes that rule ("The block giving rule is not listed in the check giving it to rulebook."). Now it works.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1656&start=20#p11550
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Write your own CYOA competition (starts next week)
User: adventurechris / DateTime: 2010-12-04 10:09:47

[quote="Neo"]
This sounds really interesting. I can understand your reasons for dumping the video. I can't imagine the ridiculous amount of video/production you'd need even to tackle a short CYOA style narrative, particularly if you were making something half decent.[/quote]

There are these, on Youtube. There's very little branching though, as the majority of the energy goes into the video:

[url]http://www.youtube.com/user/chadmattandrob[/url]

(There's also one featuring zombies somewhere)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1759&start=0#p11551
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Asking NPC for something
User: Frumious / DateTime: 2010-12-04 11:00:04

[quote="matt w"][quote="Frumious"]\But I suppose it's probably a better idea just to get it working in the current context I'm working with for now - which is that John has multiple hats, and will give the player one if they ask for it. I have
[code]John carries 4 hats[/code]
And my code for asking John for anything executes when the player types "Ask John for 4 quarters", but not when typing "Ask John for a quarter" or anything else....

I think I may be struggling with the idea of plurality - is there an easy way to say that 4 hats exist, John has the 4 hats, and when asked for one he gives it to the player?[/quote]

Do you have:

[code]A hat is a kind of thing[/code]
[/quote]
Ah, once I'd abandoned my attempt to do something beyond what I actually need it to do, this was what was holding me back from success! Thanks very much.

I'm very grateful for all the help. This community probably has the highest helpfulness to size ratio I've encountered online. I will attempt to add to this! My biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to your own*



[size=50]*Just to avoid seeming creepy - this is a Star Trek joke[/size]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1753&start=10#p11552
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compass Woes
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-12-04 11:07:09

This is a bug in the Game tab of the Windows front-end: it's ignoring the current style's colours when clearing text grid windows. This will be fixed in the next build.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1758&start=0#p11553
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Referring to the object that has a shuffled event list
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-12-04 12:20:13

[quote="Pacian"]Neat idea, but the idea of defining all the lists in their constructors seems like it would result in pretty ugly code to me.[/quote]

I've edited the original post to reflect a different way of handling it. It reads better and is slightly more efficient, since each mime's CaperList differs from the original only in the 'theName' property.

I agree that having all the mimes caper through the same mechanism (rather than three independent ones) makes it easier to collate responses into more readable prose. So for your purposes the second approach is still superior.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1759&start=10#p11554
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Asking NPC for something
User: Frumious / DateTime: 2010-12-04 15:36:56

[quote="matt w"]
though again it doesn't allow you to ask for multiple hats (the default parser error is at least helpful here).
[/quote]
Hmm, this is causing continuing issues. I'm now trying to show someone the hats - they will only respond in a certain way if the player shows them four or more hats... but "show" won't let the player show multiple items. Is there any way around this without unpicking the 'show' rule entirely? I've tried insteads and befores, neither of which work

EDIT: Something that I doubt will solve my current plight but has come up is the idea of defining a rule as applying to an unspecified number of objects (eg So and so is an action applying to some carried things). Is this possible at all?

And this whole showing thing is getting really annoying. I've been working on it for over an hour! I must be missing something really obvious...

EDIT: After 2 hours (shameful, shameful!) I have made some progress. Through the use of
[code]Understand "show [things] to [someone]" as showing it to.[/code] I can show multiple hats. Still having some issues with the details of what happens next, but I'm sure I can sort them out...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1756&start=0#p11555
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Deriving kind from instance of kind
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-12-04 15:49:08

Never mind, found it. I was just being sloppy.

[code]To decide whether (X - a value) is sibling to (Y - a value): no.
To decide whether (X - a value of kind K) is sibling to (Y - a value of kind M): if K is M, yes; no.[/code]

EDIT again: apparently, this is not a workable solution. It only seems to work up to a point; as long as the items are statically defined it works just fine, but use them as variables and it either returns yes when it shouldn't or, as in the case of this example, crashes at runtime.

[code]To decide whether (X - a value) is sibling to (Y - a value): no.
To decide whether (X - a value of kind K) is sibling to (Y - a value of kind M): if M is K, yes; no.

A garment is a kind of thing. A tunic and some trousers are kinds of garment. The jersey is a tunic. John is wearing the pants and the jersey. 

Instead of jumping: 
	let X be the pants;
	let Y be the jersey;
	if X is sibling to Y, say "Eureka."

The Errea is a room. John is a man in the Errea.

Test me with "jump".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1759&start=10#p11556
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Asking NPC for something
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-12-04 17:03:47

[quote]"show" won't let the player show multiple items. Is there any way around this without unpicking the 'show' rule entirely?[/quote]

You tell Inform that a command takes multiple items like this:
[code]Understand "show [things preferably held] to [someone]" as showing it to.
Understand "show [someone] [things preferably held]" as showing it to (with nouns reversed).[/code]

It's the grammar token "[things]" instead of "[something]" that does that trick. The "[preferably held]" part is so that Inform shall interpret e.g. SHOW ALL TO JOHN as showing John everything you carry rather than everything in the location whether you carry it or not.
(And, obviously, that second line is to make sure Inform understands SHOW JOHN THE HAT AND THE MAT as well as SHOW THE HAT AND THE MAT TO JOHN, even though "JOHN" and "HAT AND MAT" are mentioned in a different order in the different cases.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1759&start=10#p11557
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Asking NPC for something
User: Frumious / DateTime: 2010-12-04 17:05:56

[quote="Felix"][quote]"show" won't let the player show multiple items. Is there any way around this without unpicking the 'show' rule entirely?[/quote]

You tell Inform that a command takes multiple items like this:
[code]Understand "show [things preferably held] to [someone]" as showing it to.
Understand "show [someone] [things preferably held]" as showing it to (with nouns reversed).[/code]

It's the grammar token "[things]" instead of "[something]" that does that trick. The "[preferably held]" part is so that Inform shall interpret e.g. SHOW ALL TO JOHN as showing John everything you carry rather than everything in the location whether you carry it or not.
(And, obviously, that second line is to make sure Inform understands SHOW JOHN THE HAT AND THE MAT as well as SHOW THE HAT AND THE MAT TO JOHN, even though "JOHN" and "HAT AND MAT" are mentioned in a different order in the different cases.)[/quote]
Haha, as you posted this I was editing my post to say that I had done almost this. I had missed out the 'preferably held' though. Thanks!

Slow but steady progress...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1759&start=10#p11558
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Asking NPC for something
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-12-04 17:09:47

Not that slow, I think ...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1756&start=10#p11559
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Deriving kind from instance of kind
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-12-04 20:53:43

That K & M thing should work.  I'm going to report it as a [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=452]bug[/url].  Or even if it's not supposed to work, the runtime error about an inability to repeat through things is off-base.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1761&start=0#p11560
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform grouping things together inconsistently.
User: grbaptist / DateTime: 2010-12-05 04:48:03

Has anyone come across this strange behaviour before? It seems like a bug to me but I won't raise it until I'm sure.
[code]
A monster is a kind of person. 

A skeleton is a kind of monster.
A rat is a kind of monster.
A screamer is a kind of monster.
A worm is a kind of monster.
A troll is a kind of monster.
A ghost is a kind of monster.

The Graveyard is a room. 

The Graveyard is a room. 

Skeleton1 is a skeleton.
Skeleton2 is a skeleton.

In the graveyard is Skeleton1 and Skeleton2.

Rat1 is a rat.
Rat2 is a rat.

In the Graveyard is Rat1 and Rat2.

Screamer1 is a screamer.
Screamer2 is a screamer.

In the Graveyard is Screamer1 and Screamer2.

Worm1 is a worm.
Worm2 is a worm.

In the Graveyard is Worm1 and Worm2.

Troll1 is a troll.
Troll2 is a troll.

In the Graveyard is Troll1 and Troll2.
[/code]
It generates the following output:
[quote]
[b]Graveyard[/b]
You can see two skeletons, Rat1, Rat2, two screamers, Worm1, Worm2, Troll1 and Troll2 here.
[/quote]
Why has Inform decided to group some of the monsters and not the others? 

I'm using version 1.2 6.31/6F95. I've compiled it to all story file formats but get the same behaviour - actually for Glulx I don't get any grouping at all.

I'd appreciate anyone shedding some light on this otherwise I'll raise it as a bug.

Thank you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1761&start=0#p11561
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform grouping things together inconsistently.
User: StJohnLimbo / DateTime: 2010-12-05 07:11:21

I think it has somehow something to do with a limitation of the Z-Machine: as far as I know, only the first nine characters of object names are recognized (i. e., available to distinguish objects). The strange thing is that this limit seems to kick in one letter earlier when the object name ends in a number, like in your examples. For illustration purposes, try adding this to your code:

[code]SkeletonA is a skeleton.
SkeletonB is a skeleton.

In the graveyard is SkeletonA and SkeletonB.

SkeletonXY is a skeleton.
SkeletonXZ is a skeleton.

In the graveyard is SkeletonXY and SkeletonXZ.
[/code]
When you test the game, you will see that Skeletons A and B are not grouped together, while Skeletons XY and XZ are grouped and indistinguishable from one another (try examining SkeletonXZ and you'll get the description for SkeletonXY, just like it is with Skeleton1 and Skeleton2).

So I guess one solution would be to give them shorter names (probably the player is not supposed to see their internal names like "Skeleton1" in the finished game anyway?).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1761&start=0#p11562
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform grouping things together inconsistently.
User: grbaptist / DateTime: 2010-12-05 07:23:56

Hi StJohnLimbo,

You're spot on by the looks of it. Thanks very much for pointing that out to me as I had no idea of such a limitation. I'm new to Inform.

You're also correct on the player not seeing the internal names so your solution will work a treat.

Thanks again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1761&start=0#p11563
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform grouping things together inconsistently.
User: Luci / DateTime: 2010-12-05 09:57:57

This is a miniaturized version of the way I'm handling massive groupings and appearances of monsters in a WIP I'm putting together now. It might not ideally answer the way you want to address things, but if it helps give you any ideas, here it is.

[code]graveyard is a room.

undead is a kind of person.

undead-nature is a kind of value. the undead-natures are skeleton, zombie, wraith, spectre, ghoul and vampire. Every undead has an undead-nature. An undead is usually skeleton.

Understand the undead-nature property as describing an undead.

five zombie undead are in the graveyard. three skeleton undead are in the graveyard. one ghoul undead is in the graveyard. two spectre undead are in the graveyard.

When play begins:
        repeat with x running through every undead:
                now the printed name of x is "[undead-nature]";
                now the printed plural name of x is "[undead-nature]s".
[/code]

Edit: Actually, I had some free time, so I put together something a bit more relevant to your example:

[code]The Graveyard is a room.

A monster is a kind of person.

monster-nature is a kind of value.
The monster-natures are skeleton, rat, screamer, worm, troll, and ghost.
Every monster has a monster-nature.
Understand the monster-nature property as describing a monster.

every monster has a number called monster-number.
the monster-number of a monster is 0.

two skeleton monsters, two rat monsters, two screamer monsters, two
worm monsters, and two troll monsters are in The Graveyard.

When play begins:
        repeat with x running through every monster:
                now the printed name of x is "[monster-nature]";
                now the printed plural name of x is "[monster-nature]s".

When play begins:
        let N be 0;
        repeat with x running through every monster:
                increase N by 1;
                now the monster-number of x is N.[/code]

This way, it will keep track of every monster in the game by a number so you can identify each both in groups and more generally in the game.

[quote]Graveyard
You can see two skeletons, two rats, two screamers, two worms and two trolls here.[/quote]

... and the skeletons will be assigned monster-numbers 1 and 2, the rats will be assigned 3 and 4, and so on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1761&start=0#p11564
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform grouping things together inconsistently.
User: grbaptist / DateTime: 2010-12-05 10:52:59

Hi Luci,

Thanks for that. It never even occurred to me to solve the problem without creating a new kind for each monster. I'm guessing your way will also help reduce memory footprint.

I just want to ask though, do you need to uniquely identify each of the instances within the group. e.g. attacking the second zombie or first skeleton? If so, how are you doing it? This is the ultimate problem I was trying to solve when I hit the above.

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1761&start=0#p11565
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform grouping things together inconsistently.
User: Luci / DateTime: 2010-12-05 11:12:38

Actually, I saw that that was the next logical step here.  [emote]:)[/emote] 

I actually was wondering if you wanted it to display something along these lines, though...

[quote]Graveyard
You can see a skeleton ( 1 ), a skeleton ( 2 ), a skeleton ( 3 ), and a screamer here.[/quote]

... or if you wanted, say, them to not get individualized until they're hit.

such as...

[quote]Graveyard
You can see two skeletons, a lightly wounded skeleton, and a screamer here.[/quote]

I admit I'm kind of assuming a lot here, but the first version is probably the easiest to create until you have a HP/life/health system in place first.

edit: known as the Sword Of Hope method and the Ultima method, respectively  [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1761&start=0#p11566
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform grouping things together inconsistently.
User: grbaptist / DateTime: 2010-12-05 13:44:34

Whilst the first solution is easier to implement, I don't feel it is very elegant for the player; the second is much better. 

The [i]lightly wounded[/i] aspect of the description isn't necessary in the game I'm creating. I'm more than happy with:
[quote]
Graveyard
You see four skeletons, eight screamers and a rat here.
[/quote]
Even after the player has issued attack commands to a monster, I still don't want their health status to be identified. However, if the player repeatedly attacks the first skeleton, for example, they should be guaranteed to be hitting the same one.

Thanks for your help on this by the way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1759&start=10#p11567
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Asking NPC for something
User: Frumious / DateTime: 2010-12-05 14:27:33

I've got it doing what I want it to do... except now, if I show someone 4 hats (for example), it says 'hat:' once for each one

So I have...
[code]Understand "show [things preferably held] to [someone]" as showing it to.
Understand "show [someone] [things preferably held]" as showing it to (with nouns reversed).

Numma is a number that varies.

Every turn:
	If numma is 4:
		let Respondy be "Wow, 4 hats! Woo hoo etc";
	otherwise:
		let Respondy be "I am not impressed.";
	Say Respondy;
	now numma is 0.

Instead of showing a hat to Robert:
	increase numma by 1.	[/code]

So this does a fair job of counting how many hats are shown to Robert, and responding accordingly. However, because it says 'hat' each time, you end up with things like this:

>show Robert hats
hat: hat: hat: hat: Wow, 4 hats! Woo hoo etc

Does anyone know a way around this?


EDIT: it occurs to me that I need to put code in covering turns when he hasn't shown the guy some hats, but that's nothing to worry about

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1759&start=10#p11568
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Asking NPC for something
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-12-05 16:48:04

[quote]>show Robert hats
hat: hat: hat: hat: Wow, 4 hats! Woo hoo etc

Does anyone know a way around this?[/quote]

Those hats are printed by a standard rule called the "announce items from multiple object lists rule", which is listed in a rulebook called the "action-processing rules".
It goes like this:
[code]This is the announce items from multiple object lists rule: if the current item from the multiple object list is not nothing, say "[current item from the multiple object list]: [run paragraph on]". [/code]

You need to tamper with it somehow. The following is a first shot:
[code]
The new announce items from multiple object lists rule is listed instead of the announce items from multiple object lists rule in the action-processing rules.

This is the new announce items from multiple object lists rule:
	if the current item from the multiple object list is a hat:
		say "[run paragraph on]";
	otherwise if the current item from the multiple object list is not nothing :
		say "[current item from the multiple object list]: [run paragraph on]".
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1761&start=0#p11569
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform grouping things together inconsistently.
User: Luci / DateTime: 2010-12-05 17:27:25

Well, the best quick&dirty way to put together a way to continuously target the same enemy would be to add something like ...

[code]A monster can be current-target or potential-target.
A monster is usually potential-target.

After attacking a monster:
        now every current-target monster is potential-target;
        now the noun is current-target.

Understand "current target" as a monster when the item described is current-target.[/code]

... this, though you'll want to make a way to actually let attacking happen. The easiest way to do that ( though you would still have to add some checking, carrying out, and possibly reporting rules for the action, but that can probably wait if you're just testing ) would just be to add the line ...

[code]The block attacking rule is not listed in the check attacking rulebook.[/code]

... into your code somewhere. now you can type 'attack current target' after you've attacked whichever enemy you wanted to hit. You can easily modify the wording if you wanted something more suitable, too.

Also, by default, attacking will target the first listed target of the type you name, you'll have to make it random-by-default manually, if that's how you want it to otherwise behave.

Edit: You'll also want to remove that last bit of code after you have decided on a better way to permit attacking monsters; it's not exactly good form to unlist rules without -really- good reason in a completed work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1760&start=0#p11570
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Comments in Extension Documentation
User: eu / DateTime: 2010-12-05 17:50:30

Yes, that was me.  Right-click and select ``reload'' after recompiling a story that includes the extension.  The relevant UV suggestion is at <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/1238785-ides-refresh-extension-documentation-on-compile">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... on-compile</a>.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1751&start=0#p11571
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding defaults & Story idea
User: eu / DateTime: 2010-12-05 17:53:32

Felix is right about the ``it is very unlikely'' line.  I must have messed up when I tested it.  Sorry.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1748&start=10#p11572
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: quick question
User: sqib / DateTime: 2010-12-05 18:09:13

thank you btw.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1759&start=10#p11573
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Asking NPC for something
User: Frumious / DateTime: 2010-12-06 10:30:20

[quote="Felix"][quote]>show Robert hats
hat: hat: hat: hat: Wow, 4 hats! Woo hoo etc

Does anyone know a way around this?[/quote]

Those hats are printed by a standard rule called the "announce items from multiple object lists rule", which is listed in a rulebook called the "action-processing rules".
It goes like this:
[code]This is the announce items from multiple object lists rule: if the current item from the multiple object list is not nothing, say "[current item from the multiple object list]: [run paragraph on]". [/code]

You need to tamper with it somehow. The following is a first shot:
[code]
The new announce items from multiple object lists rule is listed instead of the announce items from multiple object lists rule in the action-processing rules.

This is the new announce items from multiple object lists rule:
	if the current item from the multiple object list is a hat:
		say "[run paragraph on]";
	otherwise if the current item from the multiple object list is not nothing :
		say "[current item from the multiple object list]: [run paragraph on]".
[/code][/quote]
Felix, it appears that you are my saviour once more. Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1761&start=0#p11574
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform grouping things together inconsistently.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-06 11:32:51

I wonder if it would work to define "first," "second," etc adjectives to describe objects of identical kind.If that capability isn't built-in, it would probably be worth creating an extension to do it. (Is there something like that in Numbered Disambiguation Choices?) The monster-number idea might come in handy, or perhaps there's some way to access the I6 object-number for ordering purposes.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1620&start=0#p11575
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Zarf unveils mad plan to do IF full-time
User: StJohnLimbo / DateTime: 2010-12-06 12:03:26

I guess everyone on this forum has already taken a look at the project, but on the off chance that someone hasn't done so: Today's the last day for contributions, which also means it's the last opportunity to get the game as a platform-independent Glulx file.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1761&start=0#p11576
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform grouping things together inconsistently.
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-12-06 12:35:47

[quote="capmikee"]perhaps there's some way to access the I6 object-number for ordering purposes.[/quote]

I think that the linked object list will generally keep the objects in the same order (creation order, more or less) each time you reference it, so that there might not be much reason for manually ordering. (I could be wrong, though!) In any case, if the I6 object number is needed, it can be got at pretty easily:

[code]To decide what number is the number_ID of (O - an object):
	(- {O} -)[/code]

One way to use this would be to loop through all objects at the beginning of the game, add the ID as a property, and then sort lists based on the ID as needed, e.g.:

[code]When play begins:
	repeat with item running through things:
		now the ID of item is the number_ID of item.
	
[later...]	
	let L be the list of skeletons;
	sort L in ID order;
	say "[L]."[/code]

However, as I said, this is probably superfluous, since there probably will not be a difference in the default ordering of the list of skeletons vs. the number-ID sorted list.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1620&start=0#p11577
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Zarf unveils mad plan to do IF full-time
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-12-06 13:21:04

I hope he makes the glulx available sometime, or at least allows us to pay *for* the game *directly*. Not everyone can pledge a certain amount and, by the time it gets withdrawn, still make sure he won't need that money. I've twice had the opportunity to do it, just for getting the glulx. I've twice had the further opportunity to regret it if I HAD done it.

Just, you know, in case everyone thinks 25 dollars is a trivial amount of money for everyone. It's the impression I get.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1761&start=10#p11578
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform grouping things together inconsistently.
User: grbaptist / DateTime: 2010-12-06 14:28:07

Luci,

With your example source, every monster now has a unique id across all monsters in the game; they are also nicely grouped into monster type. But I really need go one step further because the player isn't going to know that [i]the second zombie has an id of 3[/i]. So, for each group of monsters the id needs to start at 1. From the player's perspective this is what I'm hoping to achieve:
[quote]
Graveyard
You see three skeletons and four zombies.

>attack second zombie (or attack 2.zombie)
>attack third skeleton.
[/quote]
So from this I should be able to map the attack command to the relevant monster in the group.

I don't play MUDs but I think this solution is something similar to what they use.

I have actually got a crude way of doing this, but I was hoping for a neater solution using an equivalence relation. This has stumped me a bit because of my limited knowledge of Inform. I was thinking along these lines:

[code]
Pack relates monsters to each other in groups. The verb to band together with (it bands together with, they band together with, it banded together with, it is banded together with, it is banding together with) implies the pack relation.

Sk1 is a skeleton.
Sk2 is a skeleton.

Sk1 bands together with Sk2.

When play begins:
   [loop through all the groups of the pack relation]
    [loop through all the monsters in the group]
      [generate and allocate identifier]
[/code]
What I don't understand is how I get hold of a list of groups of the pack relation. I know it can be done because the [i]relations[/i] command shows exactly this information.

I know I'm pushing you for more help but I don't suppose you know where I'm going wrong?

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1761&start=10#p11579
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform grouping things together inconsistently.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-06 14:54:48

This is pushing the limits of my knowledge, but I imagine something like this could be the beginning of a solution:

[code]Graveyard is a room.

A monster is a kind of person.

There are three monsters in graveyard.

Ordinal is a kind of value. The ordinals are first, second, third, and fourth.

A thing has an ordinal called order. Understand the order property as referring to a thing.

After reading a command:
	let N be first;
	Repeat with enemy running through monsters in the location:
		Now the order of enemy is N;
		increment N;[/code]
This depends on the player only using "first" etc. with monsters. It would fall apart with sub-kinds. To really do this right, you'd have to hijack the disambiguation process, probably in I6.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1761&start=10#p11580
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform grouping things together inconsistently.
User: Luci / DateTime: 2010-12-06 16:14:19

Sorry to respond so late to some of these...

[quote="grbaptist"]Thanks for that. It never even occurred to me to solve the problem without creating a new kind for each monster. I'm guessing your way will also help reduce memory footprint.[/quote]

Actually, yes. The more subtle reasoning for that is that you can recycle monsters as any type this way. If, say, you have a bunch of dead rats in your monster 'recycle bin' room ( sorta-kinda how I handle it ), you can convert them into skeletons elsewhere when needed, and only use the same 20 to 30 monsters through the whole game ( unless you're getting Bard's-Tale-3-degree ambitious, and want to have groups of 99 monsters or more in a room  [emote]:P[/emote]  ).

[quote="grbaptist"]With your example source, every monster now has a unique id across all monsters in the game; they are also nicely grouped into monster type. But I really need go one step further because the player isn't going to know that the second zombie has an id of 3. So, for each group of monsters the id needs to start at 1.[/quote]

Well, I have to admit the unique ID is for the use of the creator, not really for the player. Basically it's just so you can do 'whatever' with any given monster, usually in the form of keeping tabs on it, bringing it back as something else elsewhere in the game world as needed... there are probably better ways to do this, but I am just used to creating NPCs and creatures in masses or through tables.

The reason I didn't offer a method to order whole groups yet is because I wasn't sure how you were handling monster movement and behaviour. In combat-oriented games, I sometimes have a tendency to let creatures roam totally independently, and then group them at appropriate times. If you generated packs ( as in your one example ) when play begins, it would probably still require on-the-fly grouping afterwards, since packs will change size, and would likely have to be resummoned as alternate monsters, and such. Capmikee's idea for ordinals is a good basis for naming them, though it still needs to be subdivided among the monster types.

Anyway, before I get a bit tl;dr with this, I'll pore through some of my code and see if I can find something relevant. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1620&start=0#p11581
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Zarf unveils mad plan to do IF full-time
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-06 17:29:11

I hope there is a way to get the Glulx outside the Kickstarter, too. Seems a bit unrealistic to expect people not to get their hands on it regardless, so y'know… providing them with a way to do it legally without buying a phone from Apple would probably be wise. (It's my understanding that Zarf hasn't ruled out releasing a desktop version to the general public later on, it's just not part of the initial project.)

BTW 25 dollars is not a trivial amount for me, either — which I why I put it off until this past week.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1761&start=10#p11582
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform grouping things together inconsistently.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-06 18:28:47

[quote="Luci"]Edit: You'll also want to remove that last bit of code after you have decided on a better way to permit attacking monsters; it's not exactly good form to unlist rules without -really- good reason in a completed work.[/quote]

Why not? It seems like I've seen a lot of examples where rules get unlisted -- as a novice I admit it gives me the heebie-jeebies a little, but are there any hidden issues with unlisting rules?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1620&start=10#p11583
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Zarf unveils mad plan to do IF full-time
User: StJohnLimbo / DateTime: 2010-12-06 19:31:08

Oh, I hope I didn't come across as exhorting people to pledge. I was really just posting for the benefit of those who might have missed or forgotten the whole thing.

I totally agree that 25 dollars is not a trivial amount.

[rant]It is actually a bit ironic that people who can afford an iPhone, which almost by definition means they've got more disposable income than the average, are able to get the game for 3 (/5) $. (Of course, iPhone app prices are quite low across the board, as far as I know, so that's part and parcel of that way of publishing.)[/rant]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1656&start=20#p11584
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Write your own CYOA competition (starts next week)
User: Retro / DateTime: 2010-12-07 02:05:47

[quote="gravel"]Health was an easy example; I think integers would give people a lot of flexibility in themselves - they can be used as placeholders, truth states, etc.  I think what a lot of CYOA struggles with is that every path probably won't be completely unique; in a work of size, it's helpful to funnel people back to certain nodes.[/quote]

Congratulations. You have just indirectly and briefly explained the concept behind [b]nodes[/b] in my [b]Node[/b]-X interpreter. And you called them by the right name. In fact, CYOA pages which use integers and other state variables cannot be called "pages" anymore. There are more than a simple page in a CYOA gamebook. So you need a more precise name for them. That's why I called them "nodes" when I started developing Node-X back in 2007. And now you call them the same way as I did and do all the time. It seems my inception (no pun intended with Dicaprio's new movie) has finally worked out. ([i]I guess Cobb would be proud of me.[/i]) [emote]8-)[/emote] 

[quote]If you have paths that never recross, you're essentially writing a new storyline every time a choice opens up.
However, if you have too many points of intersection, the choices readers make feel meaningless.[/quote]

The balance between those two factors is the key. And it was exactly that what I had to struggle with most when I wrote my CYOA game Trap Cave (see IFComp 2009) for my Node-X interpreter. In fact, a good balance between recrossing nodes and one-way nodes is what makes a well-scripted Node-X adventure, in terms of programming. The perfect maze layout. That's my opinion.

[quote]Thus, it's be helpful to be able to distinguish paths people have taken (which might signify things like what they know, or how much health they have, or whether Timmy is angry at Lassie).  Numbers would, I think, be an easy way to implement this, but there's a lot of other options (ie if page 3 has been read, do the following.)  If you allow these states to trigger text substitutions, you can have nodes, but different playthroughs may have slightly different flavors depending on the protagonist's knowledge and perception of events.  (I have no idea if I'm making sense here or not.)[/quote]

Oh, you are making perfect sense here. You talk my language. Congratulations again. Now you have explained well how FlagNodes work in Node-X interpreter, although indirectly again. But let me also say it in my own words... FlagNodes, as well as other types of nodes in Node-X engine, work with states, but they are called "boolean flags" there, hence the name "FlagNode". Their basic function is to check during game whether the player has read a certain page (node) or not, and then depending on that state jump to an alternate destination (node/page), pre-defined by the scripter/author.

This way you can have different playthroughs with different flavors for the protagonist/player, as you have described above. It adds a replayability factor to a CYOA/MC game! And believe it or not, even my two trashy adventures "Project Delta" and "Trap Cave" have a replay factor, thanks to FlagNodes which I implemented in Node-X engine. You can feel the replay factor when you make choices different than you made when you played the game for the first time. The experience slightly changes each time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1761&start=10#p11585
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform grouping things together inconsistently.
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-12-07 04:51:07

[quote="matt w"]Why not? It seems like I've seen a lot of examples where rules get unlisted -- as a novice I admit it gives me the heebie-jeebies a little, but are there any hidden issues with unlisting rules?[/quote]
IMHO when you unlist a rule you should be aware of what it does and how removing it affects gameplay. Block rules should be safe to remove if you have a structure to replace their functionality. For example if you unlist the block attacking rule and handle only the special case of attacking monsters, attacking anything else gives an empty response. 

Real life example: Once I unlisted a rule that I didn't think I'd need. Later I spent hours trying to figure out why the turn counter wasn't advancing. Turns out the rule I unlisted had also incremented the turn counter.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1755&start=0#p11586
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Text-based Strip Poker
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-07 05:31:15

I am not on Facebook. But don't sweat it. I just wanted to give you the courtesy of a heads-up that most of your site's links might have been significantly nonfunctional on a Mac. Sounds though like I misinterpreted what were supposed to be functional links and it is actually working exactly as intended. So, oops, and sorry.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1761&start=10#p11587
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform grouping things together inconsistently.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-07 09:14:21

What I usually do when I need to remove the functionality of a rule is to find its source in the Standard Library and copy it into a new rule.

e.g. this is the original Block Attacking rule:

[code]Check an actor attacking (this is the block attacking rule):
	stop the action with library message attacking action number 1 for the noun.
[/code]

You could change it like this:

[code]Check an actor attacking something that is not a monster (this is the only attack monsters rule):
	stop the action with library message attacking action number 1 for the noun.

The only attack monsters rule is listed instead of the block attacking rule in the check attacking rulebook.
[/code]

Here's a complete example:
[spoiler][code]Graveyard is a room.

A monster is a kind of person.

There are three monsters in graveyard.

Ordinal is a kind of value. The ordinals are first, second, third, and fourth.

A thing has an ordinal called order. Understand the order property as describing a thing.

Before printing the name of a monster, say "[order] "

After reading a command:
	let N be first;
	Repeat with enemy running through monsters in the location:
		Now the order of enemy is N;
		increment N;
		
Check an actor attacking something that is not a monster (this is the only attack monsters rule):
	stop the action with library message attacking action number 1 for the noun.

The only attack monsters rule is listed instead of the block attacking rule in the check attacking rulebook.

Carry out attacking something:
	Say "You hit [the noun] with a mighty blow!"
	
test me with "attack monster/first"[/code][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1761&start=10#p11588
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform grouping things together inconsistently.
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-12-07 09:58:22

[quote="capmikee"]This is pushing the limits of my knowledge, but I imagine something like this could be the beginning of a solution:

[code]After reading a command:
	let N be first;
	Repeat with enemy running through monsters in the location:
		Now the order of enemy is N;
		increment N;[/code]
This depends on the player only using "first" etc. with monsters. It would fall apart with sub-kinds. To really do this right, you'd have to hijack the disambiguation process, probably in I6.[/quote]

As capmikee says, this would be difficult to get right when monsters are divided into subkinds, but it wouldn't be too hard to adapt capmikee's code to work with the "dynamic" monster reassignment that Luci recommends. I don't know if the OP is going that route or not, though.

Here are two ideas which are tangential to what the OP wants to do, but might work for other authors working on similar kinds of game:

1) Allow the author to assign nicknames, e.g.:

[quote][b]Graveyard[/b]
Three skeletons jape menacingly at you.

>attack the skeleton called Boneboy

>look

[b]Graveyard[/b]
A skeleton called Boneboy and two other skeletons jape menacingly at you.[/quote]

2) Have the game assign nicknames automatically when the player does something that causes a differentiation (an attack, most obviously):

[quote][b]Graveyard[/b]
Three skeletons jape menacingly at you.

>attack a skeleton
You bash one of the skeletons soundly!

>look

[b]Graveyard[/b]
A bashed skeleton and two other skeletons jape menacingly at you.

>attack bashed skeleton
The bashed skeleton falls to pieces. Two skeletons advance.[/quote]

Again, these ideas may or may not be useful, but I thought I'd throw them out there.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1761&start=10#p11589
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform grouping things together inconsistently.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-07 10:51:23

Reading through Ron Newcomb's new "Inform for Programmers," I came across this useful type definition:

[quote]The parameter [i]name of kind of value[/i] is an interesting case because, rather than accepting a particular instantiation of a 
restricting type, it asks for the source code's name of a type, such as [i]object[/i] or [i]room[/i] or [i]weather condition[/i].  K is set to the 
type, and then K is used in the body of the function in the same places and same ways as the word itself would have 
appeared.[/quote]

This can be used to write one phrase to order any kind of monster (or in fact any kind of thing):

[code]After reading a command:
	order zombies;
	order skeletons;
	
To order (name of kind of value K):
	let N be first;
	Repeat with enemy running through K in the location:
		Now the order of enemy is N;
		increment N;
[/code]

This modified source:

[spoiler][code]Graveyard is a room.

A monster is a kind of person. Understand "monster" as a monster.

A zombie is a kind of monster.
A skeleton is a kind of monster.

There are three zombies in graveyard.
There are two skeletons in graveyard.

Ordinal is a kind of value. The ordinals are first, second, third, and fourth.

A thing has an ordinal called order. Understand the order property as describing a thing.

Before printing the name of a monster, say "[order] "

After reading a command:
	order zombies;
	order skeletons;
	
To order (name of kind of value K):
	let N be first;
	Repeat with enemy running through K in the location:
		Now the order of enemy is N;
		increment N;
		
Check an actor attacking something that is not a monster (this is the only attack monsters rule):
	stop the action with library message attacking action number 1 for the noun.

The only attack monsters rule is listed instead of the block attacking rule in the check attacking rulebook.

Report attacking something:
	Say "You hit [the noun] with a mighty blow!"
	
test me with "attack monster/first/zombie"[/code][/spoiler]

produces this delightful exchange:
[quote]>[1] attack monster
Who do you mean, the first zombie, the second zombie, the third zombie, the first skeleton or the second skeleton?

>[2] first
Who do you mean, the first zombie or the first skeleton?

>[3] zombie
You hit the first zombie with a mighty blow!

>[/quote]

What I can't figure out is how to phrase the ordering as a loop over kinds of monsters - something like this:

[code]Repeat with K running through names of kinds of monster:
    order K[/code]

That doesn't work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1656&start=20#p11590
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Write your own CYOA competition (starts next week)
User: adventurechris / DateTime: 2010-12-07 11:38:24

I'd like not to reinvent the wheel with making a new CYOA language.

The only question is: "Is there a language that covers making a CYOA in simple enough form that anyone could use it with out it feeling like code?"

Here's the really big list:
[url]http://www.wurb.com/if/devsys[/url]
And here are some more linked from there:
[url]http://gadgetopia.com/post/1940[/url]
More here but my brain will melt trying to read them all:
[url]http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXprogramming.html[/url]

I decided to go through the lists one by one. My only requirements are:
[list]
[*]The site is up[/*:m]
[*]The system was developed at least partially in native english[/*:m]
[*]The language is not set up for much more complicated games[/*:m][/list:u]

Many of them are dead links. So far, the only thing I've found that might remotely be reasonable is QuestML. Most of the others are fully in the IFiction camp. (The Node-X forum is down.)


Since I haven't heard great demand for it (yet), I'm going to be practical and say that I don't want to make Adventure Cow more complicated until more people have written in it and had their say.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1656&start=20#p11591
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Write your own CYOA competition (starts next week)
User: tove / DateTime: 2010-12-07 11:46:25

[quote="adventurechris"]The only question is: "Is there a language that covers making a CYOA in simple enough form that anyone could use it with out it feeling like code?"[/quote]

How about Twine? <a class="postlink" href="http://gimcrackd.com/etc/src/">http://gimcrackd.com/etc/src/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1620&start=10#p11592
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Zarf unveils mad plan to do IF full-time
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-12-07 12:22:23

Hey, that final amount in zarf's kickstarter... that isn't l33t-speak by chance, is it?   [emote]:geek:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1620&start=10#p11593
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Zarf unveils mad plan to do IF full-time
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-12-07 12:33:52

I have not ruled out releasing the game for any platform. It will depend on where the effort of building a saleable release looks worthwhile.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1620&start=10#p11594
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Zarf unveils mad plan to do IF full-time
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-12-07 12:36:24

Since I really enjoyed the first part and as it's always nice to Support the Artist, I'd love to donate. A question, though: I don't use an iPhone, so the postage for the CD could prove steep. Is that a problem?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1620&start=10#p11595
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Zarf unveils mad plan to do IF full-time
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-12-07 12:48:34

[quote="zarf"]I have not ruled out releasing the game for any platform. It will depend on where the effort of building a saleable release looks worthwhile.[/quote]

Wonderful to know. I would surely feel better if I could pay directly, instead of pledging. And I feel even better knowing that my only chance of getting that game on a form I can play isn't gone forever because I didn't pledge.

I mean, I *love* your games. $25 isn't trivial, but the day I can pay them and get the game in Glulx form, I'll feel it'll have been worth it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1620&start=10#p11596
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Zarf unveils mad plan to do IF full-time
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-12-07 12:51:17

The donation period ended last night. We are now into the Zarf Actually Writes the Damn Game period. (Although I won't be quit of my day job until Christmas.)

I do not plan to accept further donations outside of Kickstarter. It would be a distraction and a hassle, and I can hardly say that I'm underfunded at this point.

I'll accept payments when I have a game to sell.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=50#p11597
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2010-12-07 13:17:03

Brag: In my current WIP, I figured out a gorgeous way to implement something in I7.  (Rather than using spaghettified statements to figure out which list I want to look at, I can simply declare a list as a property of a value and then go look up the list automatically.)  Hooray!

Bummer: I figured this out after implementing it the ugly way 5 other places in my code.  Darn it!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1762&start=0#p11598
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: name of value of kind K
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-07 13:19:02

A recent thread has got me thinking it would be nice to have an "enumerating anonymous things" extension. I almost feel like I could write it, but I'm missing a couple pieces.

First, it would be nice to identify what things are anonymous. Is there any built-in way of figuring this out? The Index shows anonymous objects as "nameless," but I can't seem to get at the nameless/anonymous quality within the code.

Maybe it would be better to loop over all objects in scope and check if there are any duplicate names? Then things that weren't truly anonymous but were indistinguishable by name could still be identified.

Second, I think I need to identify the most specific kind of a thing and use it as a variable. I can certainly receive it as a parameter using the (name of value of kind K) construct, but I can't seem to come up with a syntax to indicate "name of value of kind of X".

I think if I had those two pieces, I could write the extension.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1762&start=0#p11599
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: name of value of kind K
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-12-07 13:32:17

No, there's no way (in the compiled game) to distinguish or iterate over anonymous objects. The best you can do is reserve a kind *solely* for anonymous objects, and iterate over that kind.

The way to extract the (most specific) kind of an object, as I noted in another thread, is:

[code] KindHierarchy-->(({x}.KD_Count)*2); [/code]

But this may change in future I7 releases, as it has changed in past ones.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1762&start=0#p11600
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: name of value of kind K
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-12-07 13:51:02

[quote="zarf"]No, there's no way (in the compiled game) to distinguish or iterate over anonymous objects. The best you can do is reserve a kind *solely* for anonymous objects, and iterate over that kind.[/quote]

Or reserve a property, right, which would allow you to keep a hierarchy of kinds...? Or is there an implicit part of the logic required by capmikee's proposed extension that I'm missing?

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1762&start=0#p11601
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: name of value of kind K
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-07 14:09:18

For now I'm going with things that have non-unique names, instead of meddling with kinds. But I've run into another snag:

[spoiler][code]Graveyard is a room.

A monster is a kind of person. Understand "monster" as a monster.

A zombie is a kind of monster.
A skeleton is a kind of monster.

There are four zombies in graveyard.
There are two skeletons in graveyard.

Ordinal is a kind of value. The ordinals are unordered, first, second, third, fourth.
A thing has an ordinal called order. Understand the order property as describing a thing.

Definition: a thing is unique rather than non-specific if it is a last named item listed in Table of Non-Specific Names and the order of it is first.

Before printing the name of a non-specific thing:
	say "[order] "
	
After reading a command:
	repeat through Table of Non-Specific Names:
		say "deleting row [non-specific name entry]/[last named item entry].";
		blank out the whole row;
	repeat with candidate running through things in the location:
		unless we updated a non-specific name row for candidate:
			say "creating row from [printed name of candidate].";
			now the order of candidate is first;
			Choose a blank row in Table of Non-Specific Names;
			now the non-specific name entry is the printed name of candidate;
			now the last named item entry is candidate;
			
To decide whether we updated a non-specific name row for (candidate - an object):
	Repeat through Table of Non-Specific Names:
		say "entry: [non-specific name entry] printed name: [printed name of candidate].";
		if non-specific name entry is the printed name of candidate:
			say "found row matching [printed name of candidate].";
			now the order of candidate is the ordinal after the order of the last named item entry;
			now the last named item entry is candidate;
			decide yes;
	decide no;

Table of Non-Specific Names
non-specific name	last named item
a text	an object
with 20 blank rows
	
Check an actor attacking something that is not a monster (this is the only attack monsters rule):
	stop the action with library message attacking action number 1 for the noun.

The only attack monsters rule is listed instead of the block attacking rule in the check attacking rulebook.

Report attacking something:
	Say "You hit [the noun] with a mighty blow!"
	
test me with "attack monster/first/zombie"
[/code][/spoiler]

Since "listed in" wasn't working, I tried manually looping over the Table of Non-Specific Names. But as the debugging statements show, the printed name never matches the non-specific name entry at all. As far as I can tell, they're both texts, and they're sometimes the same, and yet the code to update the row instead of creating a new one never runs. What am I doing wrong?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1761&start=10#p11602
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform grouping things together inconsistently.
User: grbaptist / DateTime: 2010-12-07 14:36:04

Well I'm overwhelmed by the input from everyone. Thank you to you all.

Firstly,
[quote="Luci"]The more subtle reasoning for that is that you can recycle monsters as any type this way.[/quote]
An absolutely fantastic idea! My game will consist of many monsters that also regenerate, so this is a great technique.

[quote="ektemple"]Allow the author to assign nicknames.[/quote]
This is very interesting and creative I think, and I'm going to explore this for myself. It's a great way to allow the player to organise their combat and personalise enemy identities. I really like this.

With regards to monster movement and behaviour, I intend to allow them to roam freely and then form packs when they meet up - even if they are outside the room of the player. Some monsters will actually be created as packs at the beginning of play, but anything goes after that. I want an involving combat experience and I'm looking to have monsters seek each other out as a backup, form new packs and then hunt the player - not quite ready for that yet though! In summary, this is a dynamic world so my coding needs to be robust enough to cope. 

Simplicity and convenience to the player is also a major requirement.

[quote="capmikee"]Reading through Ron Newcomb's new "Inform for Programmers," I came across this useful type definition:
[quote]
The parameter name of kind of value is an interesting case because, rather than accepting a particular instantiation of a 
restricting type, it asks for the source code's name of a type, such as object or room or weather condition. K is set to the 
type, and then K is used in the body of the function in the same places and same ways as the word itself would have 
appeared.[/quote]
[/quote]
I have developed some code using the equivalence relation (see below) but I think this idea capmikee is a far better avenue to explore. Thanks for that.

I've posted my own code here as a form of contribution as I feel like I'm zapping people's knowledge. I don't claim this to be the best, but it was a start and adds to the Inform learning experience.  It is complicated code I know, but I had to see my idea through to implementation.

Basically, the following code was my way of grouping monsters together. It doesn't actually assign the ids as I think I'm going to abandon the implementation now. Instead, all it does is print out all the monsters grouped together. Originally I thought this would be simple (maybe it is) but this was the only way I could get it to work.

[code]
A monster is a kind of person.

A skeleton is a kind of monster.
A rat is a kind of monster.

Pack relates monsters to each other in groups. The verb to band together with (it bands together with, they band together with, it banded together with, it is banded together with, it is banding together with) implies the pack relation.

Sk1 is a skeleton.
Sk2 is a skeleton.

Sk1 bands together with Sk2.

R1 is a rat.
R2 is a rat.
R3 is a rat.

R1 bands together with R2 and R3.

When play begins:
	allocate identifiers to members of pack relation;

To allocate identifiers to members of (R - an equivalence relation of monsters):
	let the monster list be a list of monsters;
	let the final monster set be a list of a list of monsters;
	repeat with the monster running through the list of monsters that R relates:
		repeat with the group monster running through the list of monsters which relate to the monster by R:
			add the group monster to the monster list;
		add the monster list to the final monster set, if absent;
		truncate the monster list to 0 entries;
	say "[the final monster set][line break]".
[/code]
You end up with this:
[quote]{Sk1, Sk2} and {R1, R2, R3}[/quote]
It is clearly inefficient with large numbers of monsters, particularly running at the start of play. But it still maybe useful at some point. I'll keep it in the code repository just in case.

Thanks everyone.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1761&start=10#p11603
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform grouping things together inconsistently.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-07 14:41:21

I can't say why, but I'm now obsessed with creating an extension for enumerating indistinguishable things. I've started another thread to talk about it in more detail:

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1762">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1762</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1762&start=0#p11604
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: name of value of kind K
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-12-07 16:16:18

It seems you will get a match if you make the non-specific name entry indexed text instead.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1762&start=0#p11605
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: name of value of kind K
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-07 16:19:37

That can't be the only way.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1656&start=20#p11606
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Write your own CYOA competition (ends December 15!)
User: adventurechris / DateTime: 2010-12-07 16:31:20

tove: That looks good. At least I could implement it partially at first and not break people's pure text stories. And it's open source (though I may possibly write an LGPL/Apache version of the interpreter from scratch). Awesome find.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1763&start=0#p11607
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Intercepting "examine" before I7 even cares about the noun
User: Chris. / DateTime: 2010-12-07 21:37:42

I know this is odd, but there's a narrative purpose behind it. So there's my stylistic disclaimer. [emote]:)[/emote]

I've been attempting to render the same response to the examination of anything -- even to the point of overriding the thing-is-not-here error. In other words, I would like one particular, custom response to "examine" to be triggered as soon as I7 sees the word "examine," whether the player specifies something that exists, or something that doesn't.

I can make the response to a [b]legitimate [/b]"examine" universal with no problem, but the noun has to exist for I7 to display that universal response -- if it doesn't, the player gets the usual not-seen-here error. I would even like "examine (typo)" to return the custom examining message.

I've been finding great success with Ron Newcomb's "Default Messages" extension, and it works well for changing any error message that deals with a particular command. The problem with changing the not-seen-here error for "examine" is that there [b]is [/b]no particular bad-noun error message for "examine" -- the same can't-see-that-here message is triggered if the player tries to take a nonexistent object, push it, smell it, etc.

Thanks so much for any help with this!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1656&start=20#p11608
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Write your own CYOA competition (ends December 15!)
User: George / DateTime: 2010-12-07 22:02:20

I feel like the most current and developed CYOA systems are ChoiceScript, Undum, and Twee/Twine. Any others in this class?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1763&start=0#p11609
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Intercepting "examine" before I7 even cares about the no
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-12-07 22:28:10

[code]
No-examining is an action applying to one topic.
Report no-examining:
	say "Forget it."

Understand the command "examine" as something new.
Understand "examine [text]" as no-examining.
[/code]

This just covers the verb "examine". You'd also want to catch all of its synonyms:

[code]
Understand the commands "x", "watch", "describe", "check" as something new.
Understand the commands "x", "watch", "describe", "check" as "examine".
[/code]

Similarly for "read", "look", "look at".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1763&start=0#p11610
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Intercepting "examine" before I7 even cares about the no
User: Chris. / DateTime: 2010-12-08 01:13:33

Wow. That's extremely helpful. Thanks for your time -- I sure appreciate it!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1764&start=0#p11611
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Looking for a game. Can you guys help me?
User: kirilov / DateTime: 2010-12-08 01:29:06

It's funny -- after searching for this game on Baf's, the IFDB, SPAG, and every other IF resource imaginable, I'm beginning to think I might have dreamed the whole damn thing up. In case I didn't, do anyone of you know a game which opens similarly to Baluthar (in a hut of some kind) and features a lamb that follows you around and a cave that is actually the mouth of some enormous monster, which you must pass through to finish the rest of the game? Does this ring any bells or did I make it all up?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1762&start=0#p11612
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: name of value of kind K
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-12-08 04:43:02

The entries will also match if you explicitly give monsters printed names. (I mean like 'The printed name of a zombie is usually "zombie".')

The printed name property is text; but what type is the name one uses when originally defining the object in source text? (I mean like 'zombie' in "A zombie is in the Graveyard.")
Obviously, one can tell Inform to say the printed name of objects one never bothered to actually give an explicit printed name, and it will say the name that the object has in the source text instead. 

[Edit: Erasing patently wrong suggestions.]

And obviously, telling Inform to put the printed name of the monsters in the non-specific names column will put their source text names there for want of an explicitly set printed name. (So I suppose that is text, too.)

But it seems that yet a test whether the source text name in the non-specific name entry is the printed name of a monster fails ...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1764&start=0#p11613
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Looking for a game. Can you guys help me?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-12-08 04:53:44

You want the TADS game Chancellor. Great choice it is, too. You'll be sure to have fun.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1765&start=0#p11614
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Does anyone know anything about Dachshund Software?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-12-08 05:46:51

So, this is extremely off-topic, but it's in an OT board, so that's probably allright. And it's in a forum where lots of computer-savvy people hang out - certainly more savvy than me - so maybe it's not such a bad place to post after all.

Dachshund Software (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.dachshundsoftware.com/index.html">http://www.dachshundsoftware.com/index.html</a>) claims to offer rather amazing utilities. Hare will supposedly speed up your computer up to 300%, AntiCrash will prevent crashes, and Zoom will severely speed up shutdowns and startups.

Yeah, yeah, been there done that, there's tons of "great tools" out there that claim to do lots of stuff. Lots of "accelerating software" that tweak a few setting to make you THINK it's accelerating. Lots of AntiCrash software that fakes or even creates crashes.

Except...

...except that the website and the FAQ look very professional.
...except that I can't find any mention of them being a fraud *anywhere*. No comments anywhere, no one saying a word, no reviews.
...except that as far as I could tell (I've been using Hare and AntiCrash on and off for years, without really knowing if it's doing anything) it rather works, or at least, it doesn't make anything worse.

So maybe it's for real.

Except...

...except the site's out of date for years.
...except that I can't find any mention of them being miracle-workers *anywhere*, and if their programs did what they claimed, surely someone would have been saying stuff like "I tried it and it changed my life", right?
...except some of the utilities, like WinOptimize in Hare and AutoRepair in AntiCrash, look too utopic to be real.

I've been wondering about this for years. Does anyone know anything about this company and/or this software? Is it for real? Partially for real? A total fake? If anyone wants to try it out, I can at least guarantee that it's not spyware, adware or virus. Which is another thing that makes it look half-way real...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1764&start=0#p11615
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Looking for a game. Can you guys help me?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-08 06:57:29

OK, here's something that's been bothering me and this seems like not a bad thread for it.

You know this year's IFcomp game, Pen and Paint? I found the basic environment of that game (a studio containing a magical painting, as an anchor for a supernatural narrative involving your wife) reminded me very much of another game I have at least tried (probably not completed) that begins with those same elements, but I cannot remember what that game was. I just know I have seen that scenario before, that 'you start off thinking about your wife in your house which happens to contain a magically transformative/teleportive painting' scenario (I think the painting was full of leaves in the older game - or at least the leaf was a big motif). And it wasn't that long ago, either. Probably just last year or something. I just have a very poor memory for games which for whatever reason (maybe I got distracted, etc.) I only played briefly.

So, I have been waiting to read someone say on here, 'Pen and Paint is somewhat derivative of X' but it hasn't happened that I have noticed.

What is X?

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1764&start=0#p11616
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Looking for a game. Can you guys help me?
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2010-12-08 07:03:03

Paul, would you perhaps be thinking of Blue Lacuna?

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1765&start=0#p11618
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Does anyone know anything about Dachshund Software?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-08 07:09:18

I've never heard of them. However, I can understand your skepticism — I would automatically disbelieve any company which promised those magical, mostly impossible things. 300%? And it prevents crashes? How? Does it go in like Robin Hood and fix faulty code? How can it do that? How can any program prevent a crash in another program without divining by some ESP what the other program was *supposed* to be doing rather than what it is actually doing?

The info needed to solve most crashes just isn't there in the machine -- it's squirrelled away in some programmer's mind. It's like, fix this sentence: 'John dkdmco fifty times to no avail.' Unless you know what the writer was thinking it's just not a solvable problem; you could put a supercomputer on it and it would be useless. Same thing goes for buggy, crashy code. So unless I am missing a trick, the claims made by Dachshund are just squarely impossible. This so-called 'total crash preventer' is probably just releasing some memory quickly that is usually released by the OS more sluggishly (so about the same effect as quitting your programs and relaunching them from time to time, that's the best I can see it doing and it's a trivial advantage since memory leaks only very rarely bring down operating systems, these days).

The website might be professional, but HTML, like talk, is cheap. The promises are so outlandish sounding that I personally wouldn't give anybody making them the time of day, so I share your 'something's fishy' instinct.

Paul.

P.S. A program that did something truly sophisticated in regards to use of the processor or memory management/crash behaviour, which are kernel-level tasks, would *certainly* not remain compatible across different Windows iterations (XP, Vista, 7) so if this stuff that was designed for XP still installs and runs without complaint in Vista or Win7, that'd be a huge sign that it's not really touching any of the low level code that it claims to be touching. If it still runs on a modern OS I'd guess it's more like a placebo (if not worse).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1762&start=0#p11619
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: name of value of kind K
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-08 09:01:09

[quote="Felix"]The printed name property is text; but what type is the name one uses when  originally defining the object in source text? (I mean like 'zombie' in "A zombie is in the Graveyard.")
Obviously, one can tell Inform to say the printed name of objects one never bothered to actually give an explicit printed name, and it will say the name that the object has in the source text instead.[/quote]
That seems reasonable, but how do you explain this?

[code]         now the non-specific name entry is the printed name of candidate;
[/code]
The assignment gives the non-specific name entry a value of "zombie." Is it unreasonable to expect a comparison to work in a place where an assignment already works?

And if it really truly will not ever work, is there some sneaky way of using that to test if an object is anonymous? Perhaps something like:

[code]Definition: A thing is anonymous if:
    Let T be a text;
    Let T be the printed name of X;
    Decide on whether or not T is not the printed name of X.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1762&start=0#p11620
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: name of value of kind K
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-12-08 09:16:47

[quote="capmikee"]
[code]         now the non-specific name entry is the printed name of candidate;
[/code]
The assignment gives the non-specific name entry a value of "zombie." Is it unreasonable to expect a comparison to work in a place where an assignment already works?
[/quote]

Of course it's a perfectly reasonable expectation! It's a mystery to me why it doesn't work. Perhaps it has something to do with the I6 print routines?

[quote="capmikee"]
And if it really truly will not ever work, is there some sneaky way of using that to test if an object is anonymous? Perhaps something like:

[code]Definition: A thing is anonymous if:
    Let T be a text;
    Let T be the printed name of X;
    Decide on whether or not T is not the printed name of X.[/code]
[/quote]

Apparently it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1762&start=0#p11621
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: name of value of kind K
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-08 09:37:58

Nope, that doesn't work:

[code]Definition: A thing (called candidate) is explicitly named rather than anonymous:
	choose row 1 in Table of Non-Specific Names;
	Now the non-specific name entry is the printed name;
	Now the last named item entry is candidate;
	Decide on whether or not non-specific name entry is the printed name.
	
When play begins:
	Repeat with item running through things:
		say "[The item] is [if item is not anonymous]not [end if]anonymous.";
[/code]

I get this:
[quote]You is not anonymous.
The zombie is not anonymous.
The zombie is not anonymous.
The zombie is not anonymous.
The zombie is not anonymous.
The skeleton is not anonymous.
The skeleton is not anonymous[/quote]

I'm guessing that the printed name of an anonymous thing matches itself as a text, but not the printed name of another anonymous thing. Why would that be?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1763&start=0#p11623
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Intercepting "examine" before I7 even cares about the no
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-08 10:03:30

zarf, I thought of using your trick for figuring out what you're trying to do when you get a parser error, but I can only get it to work when an error is actually happening, so I need another case to intercept examining things that are there:

[code]To decide what action-name is the action-to-be: (- action_to_be -).

Rule for printing a parser error when action-to-be is the examining action: say "Forget it."

Instead of examining: say "Forget it."[/code]

Is there a hook I can hang action-to-be on that'll intercept non-parser-errors as well?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1762&start=10#p11624
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: name of value of kind K
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-08 10:09:50

Okay, let's try another tack. These printed names match:

[code]Quisling1 is a person in graveyard. The printed name of quisling1 is "zombie".
Quisling2 is a person in graveyard. The printed name of quisling2 is "zombie".[/code]

Adding that produces this rather odd output:
[quote]Graveyard
You can see four zombies, two skeletons, zombie and zombie here.[/quote]
Which makes me think that Inform has some potentially useful code for handling items of the same kind. Is it buried deep in I6?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1763&start=0#p11625
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Intercepting "examine" before I7 even cares about the no
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-08 10:18:46

Aaron Reed's "Remembering" extension makes some modifications to the examine command - you might want to look into how he does that. It reminds me I should finish up my Lost Items extension which deals specifically with the "you can't see any such thing" error:

[code]Rule for printing a parser error when the latest parser error is the can't see any such thing error:[/code]
You might also need to catch the "noun did not make sense in that context" error if you have anything more specific than a topic in any of your verb grammars:
[code]Rule for printing a parser error when the latest parser error is the noun did not make sense in that context error (this is the custom replace did not make sense in that context rule):
	now the latest parser error is the can't see any such thing error;
	make no decision;[/code]
(I just remembered why I added this. "Remembering" has the phrase 'you can't see any such thing' hard-coded in a rule, and I had to use this to trigger the correct message from Custom Library Messages if, for example, the person and tense had changed.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1765&start=0#p11626
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Does anyone know anything about Dachshund Software?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-12-08 10:19:37

I could believe that it works, if it simply goes in and disables McAfee / Symantec in the background.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1762&start=10#p11627
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: name of value of kind K
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-12-08 10:58:00

The default printed name thing is definitely a bug. When the printed name of an object is autogenerated (either from its own name, or anonymously from the class name) you get a duplicate I6 string object, which fails matching tests. (I6 strings are not interned; I7 strings usually are, but not in this case.)

I'll file it.

Simple test case:

[code]
The Kitchen is a room.

The rock is a thing in the Kitchen.
The stone is a thing in the Kitchen. The printed name is "stone".

When play begins:
	if the printed name of the rock is "rock":
		say "Rock: match.";
	if the printed name of the stone is "stone":
		say "Stone: match.";
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1764&start=0#p11628
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Looking for a game. Can you guys help me?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-12-08 11:11:42

[url=http://ifwiki.org/index.php/The_Primrose_Path]The Primrose Path[/url] is the other big painting-teleport game that comes to mind.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1762&start=10#p11629
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: name of value of kind K
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-08 11:12:57

Good to know. I would be willing to use indexed text on a temporary basis until this is fixed, but my curiosity has been piqued once again regarding grouping objects of like kind. Do you think it would be possible to use some of that code to generate ordinal identifiers for grouped items?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1765&start=0#p11630
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Does anyone know anything about Dachshund Software?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-12-08 11:16:59

[quote="Peter Pears"]...except that the website and the FAQ look very professional.[/quote]
Maybe for ten years ago...

[quote="Peter Pears"]...except the site's out of date for years.[/quote]
Well yeah.   [emote]:D[/emote] 

There's a similarly old review [url=http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/dachshundsoft/]here[/url].  It has some utterly underwhelming graphs of very slight increases (and decreases!) in performance.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1765&start=0#p11631
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Does anyone know anything about Dachshund Software?
User: George / DateTime: 2010-12-08 11:37:01

[quote="bcressey"]I could believe that it works, if it simply goes in and disables McAfee / Symantec in the background.[/quote]

I'm not ashamed to admit (well, maybe a little) that the first thing I do with Windows is disable all firewalls/anti-virus/Newspeak programs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1766&start=0#p11632
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Parsing ordinals
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-08 13:56:20

I'm wondering if there's a simple trick for getting the parser to understand ordinal numbers. I've been working with this:

[code]Ordinal is a kind of value. Some ordinals are unordered, first, second, third, and fourth.[/code]

But obviously this is a finite sequence. I tried specifying an ordinal as a unit:

[code]Ordinal is a kind of value. 999th specifies an ordinal[/code]

But the compiler said "it looks as if you intend to give a new meaning to expressions like '999th', but this is already something I recognise - specifying a number - so a more distinctive specification must be chosen."

That made me think I could do this:

[code]Counting to is an action applying to one number. Understand "count to [number]" as counting to.

Carry out counting to:
	let i be 1;
	while i < the number understood:
		say "[i], ";
		increment i;
	say "[the number understood].";

Test me with "count to 3rd/count to third"[/code]

But I got "I didn't understand that number."

I'm guessing the compiler's parser can understand ordinals, but the game parser can't. Is that true? Is there a way around the situation?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1766&start=0#p11633
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parsing ordinals
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-12-08 15:07:10

[quote="capmikee"]I'm guessing the compiler's parser can understand ordinals, but the game parser can't. Is that true? Is there a way around the situation?[/quote]
I think that's true. I would've done your [i]Ordinal is a kind of value. Some ordinals are unordered, first, second, third, and fourth[/i] with a [i]After reading a command when the player's command includes "[ordinal]", replace the matched text with the ordinal understood as a number[/i] or similar construction.  I think by typecasting the ordinal to a number with [i]To decide which number is (x - an ordinal) as a number: (- {x} -)[/i] you can get it to work.  Might lose the "unordered" value, though.

EDIT TO ADD: er, the ordinal understood probably isn't set in the ARaC rules, so my solution isn't quite that straightforward, but I think the general idea is sound.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1765&start=0#p11634
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Does anyone know anything about Dachshund Software?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-12-08 15:20:14

First thing I do with most any computer is run the Task Manager / Activity Monitor to see what I can kill.  For example, the Dashboard on Macs, which, if I need a stock ticker or calculator, I'd run an app. Otherwise it just eats memory.  I also disable the root user, ensure the computer doesn't respond to pings unless it actually supports a given TCP port, shutdown all TCP ports except the very few I actually need, disable sharing, hide the wifi network from casual users, supply the Terminal shell with my usual creature comforts, etc.  I have a text file in which I write down all the tweaks I do to my system, so I can re-do them all after a format or some such. 

As for Daschund Software, meh.  I can't imagine much they'd do that you couldn't do yourself with an evening's worth of net research.  Generally, a faster computer has less software, not more.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1766&start=0#p11635
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parsing ordinals
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-08 15:58:49

ARaC rules?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1765&start=0#p11636
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Does anyone know anything about Dachshund Software?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-12-08 16:45:58

[quote="Pacian"]There's a similarly old review [url=http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/dachshundsoft/]here[/url].  It has some utterly underwhelming graphs of very slight increases (and decreases!) in performance.[/quote]

Well, that was very helpfull, and pretty much told me everything I needed to know. [emote]:)[/emote] Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1767&start=0#p11637
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: I can't play my game, PLEASE HELP
User: Iwillremember / DateTime: 2010-12-08 17:15:16

Well, I have my game saved as a zblorb file and a z5 file, but whenever I try to open either of them with frotz, it shows what looks like the command prompt for less than a second and then that disapears.

I am using Inform 7.

Does anyone know what my problem is and how to fix it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1767&start=0#p11638
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: I can't play my game, PLEASE HELP
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-12-08 17:30:53

What platform (Windows, Linux, Mac) are you using, and which incarnation of Frotz?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1766&start=0#p11639
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parsing ordinals
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-12-08 17:48:27

After Reading a Command

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1764&start=0#p11640
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Looking for a game. Can you guys help me?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-08 18:29:16

I don't recall the name 'Primrose Path'. Seeing people talk about it on here I got the feeling that I had tried Blue Lacuna before, so that's probably it, but I guess I must have abandoned it rather quickly. It's one of the first things on my list to try again though, so I'll know if that's it pretty soon…

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1656&start=20#p11641
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Write your own CYOA competition (starts next week)
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-08 18:35:54

[quote="Retro"]FlagNodes, as well as other types of nodes in Node-X engine, work with states, but they are called "boolean flags" there, hence the name "FlagNode". Their basic function is to check during game whether the player has read a certain page (node) or not, and then depending on that state jump to an alternate destination (node/page), pre-defined by the scripter/author.[/quote]
Sounds interesting. And probably more powerful than it seems considering in a CYOA without dice/randomisation any state the story can get itself into should be checkable entirely by matching against whether what you guys are calling 'nodes' (good name) have already been read. I have a very similar functionality in my LambdaMOO-based system, only I don't call it nodes, I use a different terminology, but in it's the same end result: being able to match against the entire history of the choice tree in deciding how to print any particular chunk of text. Thus, you can get deep recursion of the consequences of player choices, much the same way Space Invaders added deep recursion to the effects of player choices on enemy formations and shield coverage. (I get a fair bit more granular than redirecting from page to page, though — I have a syntax for embedding choice-tree-matched conditionals in any text — which, unbeknownst to me turned out to be superficially similar to the Inform 7 syntax for embedding ordinary conditionals in a string literal.)

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1764&start=0#p11642
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Looking for a game. Can you guys help me?
User: kirilov / DateTime: 2010-12-08 18:45:05

[quote="Peter Pears"]You want the TADS game Chancellor. Great choice it is, too. You'll be sure to have fun.[/quote]

Thanks! Yes, that's it. I guess it wasn't showing up on IFDB because the category was Surreal/Fantasy, so a search for either genre alone wouldn't work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1766&start=0#p11643
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parsing ordinals
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-12-08 18:49:24

[quote="Ron Newcomb"][quote="capmikee"]I'm guessing the compiler's parser can understand ordinals, but the game parser can't. Is that true? Is there a way around the situation?[/quote]
I think that's true. I would've done your [i]Ordinal is a kind of value. Some ordinals are unordered, first, second, third, and fourth[/i] with a [i]After reading a command when the player's command includes "[ordinal]", replace the matched text with the ordinal understood as a number[/i] or similar construction.  I think by typecasting the ordinal to a number with [i]To decide which number is (x - an ordinal) as a number: (- {x} -)[/i] you can get it to work.  Might lose the "unordered" value, though.

EDIT TO ADD: er, the ordinal understood probably isn't set in the ARaC rules, so my solution isn't quite that straightforward, but I think the general idea is sound.[/quote]

I did exactly this exploring the same question a couple of days ago, using "the matched text" rather than "ordinal understood" in the ARaC activity, so that will work fine.

Typecast with {x} - 1 to get 0 for unordered, 1 for first, etc.:

[code]To decide which number is (x - an ordinal) as a number: (- {x} - 1 -)[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1768&start=0#p11644
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Workaround for lazy evaluation of I7 text substitutions?
User: rwhe / DateTime: 2010-12-08 20:30:23

I just realized that a number of related problems I've been having stem from Inform's evaluating texts lazily. Room names act strangely when they're reported from another room, and I realized it's because their names, which have text substitutions, are not "sticky", but are re-evaluated from the room you're in. Example:

[code]Report going down when location is a passage:
	now the printed name of the location is "Passage from [the room up from the location] to [the room down from the location]".[/code]

When you go down to this room, the name is reported within it as [b]Passage from Foo1 to Foo2[/b], where [b]Foo1[/b] is the room up from the passage, and [b]Foo2[/b] is the room down from the passage.

When you go down to [b]Foo2[/b], however, the name of the passage is reported there as [b]Passage from Passage from Passage from Passage from Passage from Passage from Passage from Passage from [stack overflow][/b]. This is because "[location]" is suddenly interpreted as [b]Foo2[/b], so "[the room up from the location]" returns the passage itself.

Does anyone have any ideas for working around this lazy evaluation behavior? I've thought of using indexed texts or storing names in tables, but I'm fairly new to Inform 7, and this is the hairiest problem I've faced.

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1768&start=0#p11645
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Workaround for lazy evaluation of I7 text substitutions?
User: rwhe / DateTime: 2010-12-08 21:25:25

Ha! It just came to me.

This fixed my problem:

[code]A passage is a kind of room. 
A passage has an indexed text called the sticky name.

Report going down when location is a passage:
	now the sticky name of the location is "Passage from [the room up from the location] to [the room down from the location]";
	now the printed name of the location is "[the sticky name]".[/code]

Hope this helps someone else!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1768&start=0#p11646
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Workaround for lazy evaluation of I7 text substitutions?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-08 21:49:15

Yeah, sparked by your post I had tried googling a bit for how to force a strict evaluation but came up empty. Looks like you found the way. Thanks I'm certain this will come in handy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1768&start=0#p11647
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Workaround for lazy evaluation of I7 text substitutions?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-12-09 02:20:11

If you want a cleaner solution without extra variables you can just use "Passage from [the room up from the item described] to [the room down from the item described]".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1768&start=0#p11648
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Workaround for lazy evaluation of I7 text substitutions?
User: rwhe / DateTime: 2010-12-09 03:06:05

Thanks very much, Juhana! I may refactor my code later, but it's finally working and right now I want to let it be. However, I will certainly read up on "the item described", which doubtless has a number of uses.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1768&start=0#p11649
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Workaround for lazy evaluation of I7 text substitutions?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-09 11:02:46

It took me a while to figure this out. Eventually I realized that lazy evaluation makes sense, since a "text" is either an immutable string or a procedure that prints immutable strings. The problem comes when printing the name of a room that is not the current location. I guess you already figured it out, but if anyone looks at your code, they may find it as confusing as I did.

I tried a few experiments with this situation and it just made my brain hurt.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1768&start=0#p11650
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Workaround for lazy evaluation of I7 text substitutions?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-12-09 11:58:17

A way to do this without indexed text: rather than trying to change the text property, change properties that it depends on. For example, you could have

A passage has a room called the passage-source. A passage has a room called the passage-dest.
The printed name of a passage is usually "[Passage-source] to [passage-dest]".

Then you could change a given passage's passage-source and passage-dest at any time, and the lazy evaluation would work *for* you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1766&start=0#p11651
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parsing ordinals
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-12-09 12:37:59

Erik, you replaced the matched text with the matched text?  Huh?

Oh, and I would've removed the "unordered" value, or at least move it to the end of the list rather than the beginning, to save a subtraction at run-time.  (Every little bit of optimization helps! [emote]:P[/emote] )

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1768&start=0#p11652
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Workaround for lazy evaluation of I7 text substitutions?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-12-09 12:42:33

Ah, I got your email Ron and will add a note somewhere.  This problem also crops up a lot with table entries in text. 

Is this the same issue as the parameter-passing confusion you'd hit earlier?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1766&start=0#p11653
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parsing ordinals
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-12-09 13:33:12

Ron, I guess I left out the matching part. My main point was that it could be matched as text and cast back to a value. I think in fact that there's only one way to match at this stage, with "if the player's command includes '[ordinal]'". Other phrases might work, but neither "matches the text" nor "matches the regular expression" will work with KOV tokens like "[ordinal]". (And just plain "matches" works, as in "if the player's command matches "[ordinal]", but only if an ordinal is the whole of the command.)

The optimization gained by not subtracting is pretty well meaningless, I think, especially when not doing it either means losing some functionality (no "unordered"), or embracing the illogical (having unordered translate as 11, for example). But to each his own!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1769&start=0#p11654
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Lost Items extension released!
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-09 14:18:57

Here for your use and pleasure is the Lost Items extension, my first extension and my first solo release in Inform 7. I would love to hear comments on the interface, coding and functionality. I hope it is useful to you!

[quote]Prints a special message instead of 'You can't see any such thing' when certain items are out of scope, indicating that they have disappeared unexpectedly. Useful for flashbacks, theft, and NPCs who might sneak away.

Requires Epistemology by Eric Eve.[/quote]

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.eyeballsun.org/i/Lost%20Items.i7x">http://www.eyeballsun.org/i/Lost%20Items.i7x</a>

I'm not clear on what official bodies I should submit this to. Does the IF Archive want extensions? Should I ask for this to become a public extensions?

There's no "Release Extension" option in the IDE, is there? I didn't know if there was an easy way to publish the documentation or nicely-formatted source on my website.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1768&start=0#p11655
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Workaround for lazy evaluation of I7 text substitutions?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-09 14:29:52

[quote="zarf"]A way to do this without indexed text: rather than trying to change the text property, change properties that it depends on. For example, you could have

A passage has a room called the passage-source. A passage has a room called the passage-dest.
The printed name of a passage is usually "[Passage-source] to [passage-dest]".

Then you could change a given passage's passage-source and passage-dest at any time, and the lazy evaluation would work *for* you.[/quote]
After experimenting with something just like this, I realized that having two Passages connected to each other produces an infinite loop much like the one in the original post. (I'm assuming that Foo2 is also a passage, because if it isn't, the original source works perfectly well for me.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1766&start=0#p11656
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parsing ordinals
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-09 14:36:57

[quote="ektemple"]The optimization gained by not subtracting is pretty well meaningless, I think, especially when not doing it either means losing some functionality (no "unordered"), or embracing the illogical (having unordered translate as 11, for example). But to each his own![/quote]
The reason I put "unordered" first, originally, was so that I could add more ordinals to the end if necessary.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1769&start=0#p11657
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lost Items extension released!
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2010-12-09 14:53:42

The Inform 7 website is where I (and I assume most people) go for extensions.

Have you seen this?

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/contribute/extensions/">http://inform7.com/contribute/extensions/</a>

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1766&start=0#p11658
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parsing ordinals
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-12-09 14:54:10

[quote="capmikee"][quote="ektemple"]The optimization gained by not subtracting is pretty well meaningless, I think, especially when not doing it either means losing some functionality (no "unordered"), or embracing the illogical (having unordered translate as 11, for example). But to each his own![/quote]
The reason I put "unordered" first, originally, was so that I could add more ordinals to the end if necessary.[/quote]

Yes, and that makes great sense for an extension, which I believe is what you're planning. If you provide 10 ordinals and make the 11th unordered, thus reserving the typecast number 11 to mean <<null>>, users will have extra hacking to do to actually add "eleventh" to the list. As it is, they need only replace your original list of ordinals with their own to expand the number of word ordinals understood.

A tip along these lines, since this kind of user-friendliness still hasn't really burbled up into standard procedure for extensions: Put your definition of the ordinal KOV in its own section, so that users can easily replace it, e.g.:

[code]Section - Definition of the ordinal KOV

An ordinal is a kind of value. The ordinals are first, second, and third.

Section - <Other stuff here>[/code]


EDITED to add: Actually, it seems that it isn't even necessary to hack an extension to add more values to a KOV. Your users will be able to augment the list simply by typing more of them into their own source code, e.g.:

[code]Include Ordinals by capmikee.

The ordinals are eleventh and twelfth.[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1765&start=0#p11659
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Does anyone know anything about Dachshund Software?
User: Janka / DateTime: 2010-12-09 16:20:16

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]
As for Daschund Software, meh. 
[/quote]
Intentional misspelling? While "Dachshund" is a german dog breed for hunting badgers, "Da Schund" is spoken german for "the rubbish".

Janka

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1769&start=0#p11660
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lost Items extension released!
User: Janka / DateTime: 2010-12-09 17:05:40

That small extension seems highly useful. Still, by reading the source, it seems it doesn't handle containers nor supporters. That would be a nice addition.

Janka

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1768&start=0#p11661
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Workaround for lazy evaluation of I7 text substitutions?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-12-09 17:27:35

True. You could work around that in a few ways. For example, define a "say short printed name" function which defaults to the print name, but just prints "Passage" for a passage.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1768&start=10#p11662
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Workaround for lazy evaluation of I7 text substitutions?
User: rwhe / DateTime: 2010-12-09 18:00:26

Yow! Intfiction.org was supposed to tell me whenever someone replied to my post! It did work the first couple of times...

OK, from the top:

Laroquod, glad I could help somewhat. Hope you're reading all these other clever answers.

zarf, very nice! I'll keep this technique in mind. In this case, it doesn't work so well, because I'm using the Exit Listings extension and I rename the passage as Foo1 when seen from Foo2 and vice versa, so that you see more helpful exit listings like "down to [b]Foo2[/b]" and not "down to [b]Passage from Foo1 to Foo2[/b]".

Ron, thanks. This is not the same as the parameter problem I was experiencing. That involved an intermittent compiler error to the effect that local variables and function parameters are too ephemeral to be used in texts within the function.

capmikee, passages in my game do not connect to passages. They alternate everywhere with "beads", like beads on a necklace's string.

Thanks, all!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1770&start=0#p11663
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Calling for a NPC
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-12-09 18:56:19

I want to try creating a pet of sorts that comes at the player's command and fetches items. I have no idea how to do the latter, so I started working on the former. I came up with a modified form of Van Helsing.

[code]Park is a room.

Playground is a room.

House is a room.

Garden is a room.

Dump is a room. 

The front door is a door. The front door is west of the House and east of the park. 

The playground is north of the park. Dump is west of the playground. Garden is south of the park.

A squeaky toy is in the House.
A bone is in the park.
A magic lamp is in the park.
A swing is in the Playground. The swing is not portable.

A random trash is in the dump.

Fido is a person in the house.

Fido is an action applying to nothing. Understand "call Fido" and "Fido" and "whistle" and "call for Fido" and " whistle for Fido" as Fido.

Carry out Fido:
	if the location of Fido is not the location of the player:
		let the way be the best route from the location of Fido to the location of the player, using doors;
		try Fido going the way;
		say "You call for Fido.";
	otherwise:
		say "'Woof. Woof.' Fido barks."
[/code]

For some reason, just calling "Fido" and waiting won't work (Fido never comes). However, spamming Fido does. Why, and is there any way to just "Fido" once and have Fido arrive? And in a more timely manner if there are more rooms?

Thanks for any help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1770&start=0#p11664
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Calling for a NPC
User: StJohnLimbo / DateTime: 2010-12-09 19:53:58

The Carry out rule is only run on the turn where you actually give the command, not every turn. The path-following in the Van Helsing example takes place in an every-turn rule. One way to do what you want would be like this:

[code]Park is a room.

Playground is a room.

House is a room.

Garden is a room.

Dump is a room. 

The front door is a door. The front door is west of the House and east of the park. 

The playground is north of the park. Dump is west of the playground. Garden is south of the park.

A squeaky toy is in the House.
A bone is in the park.
A magic lamp is in the park.
A swing is in the Playground. The swing is not portable.

A random trash is in the dump. The indefinite article of the trash is "some".

Fido is a person in the house.

Fido can be stationary or called-for. Fido is stationary.

Every turn:
	if Fido is called-for:
		if the location of Fido is not the location of the player:
			let the way be the best route from the location of Fido to the location of the player, using doors;
			try Fido going the way;
			if the location of Fido is the location of the player:
				now Fido is stationary.
				
Fido-calling is an action applying to nothing. Understand "call Fido" and "Fido" and "whistle" and "call for Fido" and " whistle for Fido" as Fido-calling.

Carry out Fido-calling:
	if the location of Fido is not the location of the player:
		say "You call for Fido.";
		now Fido is called-for;
	otherwise:
		say "'Woof. Woof.' Fido barks.".[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1769&start=0#p11665
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lost Items extension released!
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-09 21:26:48

I'm open to ideas. What would you want it to do with containers or supporters?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1771&start=0#p11666
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Is this a known bug?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-09 21:34:23

I have a vague feeling of deja vu about this, but I have no idea if this bug has been observed by anyone before:

[code]Test is a room.

When play begins:
	Remove every wearable thing from play.[/code]
[quote]Problem. An internal error has occurred: tried to find instance inside SP of wrong type. The current sentence is 'Remove every wearable thing from play'[/quote]

The 'wearable' adjective is not necessary to produce the error, but I didn't feel right about doing something that would remove the player from play.

I'm not sure "remove [something] from play" is supposed to take a set-description, but I thought I'd try it out and this is what I got. 'Now every wearable thing is off-stage' works fine, but obviously it would be better to have a Problem message that the former is invalid syntax than to be told that the compiler crashed...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1385&start=50#p11667
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works-in-Progress: Brags and Bummers
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2010-12-09 23:54:11

Brag: I've gotten my first IF game "The Z-Machine Matter" to a working prototype level of the opening scene along with help text, cover art, hints, user manual etc.  That was fun!  

Bummer: But, I've just taken a new job and I'm not sure if I'll have the time to complete this any time soon.  But I have a week off over Christmas, so I'm sure the family won't mind if I sneak off and program for several days. [emote];-)[/emote]

And here's a link to the cover art
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com/2010/12/cover-art.html">http://www.z-machine-matter.com/2010/12/cover-art.html</a>
--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">http://www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1771&start=0#p11668
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is this a known bug?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-12-10 00:38:53

It looks like the same bug as <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=458">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=458</a> , which has been marked as a duplicate of 404, which is marked as fixed in the next release.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1656&start=20#p11669
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Write your own CYOA competition (ends December 15!)
User: Neo / DateTime: 2010-12-10 03:26:35

As mentioned earlier in this thread, I was developing a system... I've now got it to a working state:

The ‘Plug-and-Play Gamebook’ template. (Or, how do you get writers and CYOA players one step closer to interactive fiction?)
[url]http://www.inthecompanyofgrues.com/?p=228[/url]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1720&start=10#p11670
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Authors' Group: An idea for developer mutual aid
User: Neo / DateTime: 2010-12-10 03:29:54

I know my idea for collaboration got knocked down pretty hard earlier in this thread, but this is the project I was working on when I made those comments:

The ‘Plug-and-Play Gamebook’ template. (Or, how do you get writers and CYOA players one step closer to interactive fiction?)
[url]http://www.inthecompanyofgrues.com/?p=228[/url]

Perhaps that goes a little further towards explaining what I was suggesting.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1772&start=0#p11671
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Real time printing
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2010-12-10 05:24:15

I'm trying to build an extension for printing text in real time. Currently my "printer" prints text at a rate of 2000 characters per minute. When it starts printing, it pauses the game (i'm building a real time game), then unpause it when it has finished printing text.
When the system process the "To tell/type (T - sayable value)" phrase, T is registered in a table. Then, every tick, the system prints a few characters of T.
T is registered in my table as a text if it is a text otherwise it is registered as indexed text. This way, i'm able to register phrases in the table (as i7 texts can be i6 routines) : if the "bold", "italic" and "roman" types are defined by a routine rather than by an i6 inclusion, the system is able to reproduce the text's style when typing it.

But I haven't succeeded in reproducing the paragraph control system. I think the main reason is that paragraph controls doesn't entirely rely on routines : i wish "say__p = 1" was wrapped into a routine.

That's why i'm looking for another solution :
-obviously i can't store style informations into indexed texts.
-From Gluxl for Dunces : However, setting text styles in file streams will probably be ignored, although not necessarily. While the setting of text styles in memory streams will always be ignored (see File References below).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1656&start=20#p11672
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Write your own CYOA competition (ends December 15!)
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-10 07:51:45

Looks good, Neo. I'm putting this on my list of things to check out when I am checking things out. 8)

P.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1771&start=0#p11673
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is this a known bug?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-10 08:11:42

Is this the way to do it?

[code]
Repeat with item running through all wearable things: remove item from play.[/code]

Also, if I'm not mistaken, the real problem is that you can't remove more than one thing from play at a time, isn't it? Graham's notes on those bugs seemed to suggest that they should be producing compiler errors, but crashed when doing so.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1771&start=0#p11674
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is this a known bug?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-10 08:49:41

[quote="matt w"]Also, if I'm not mistaken, the real problem is that you can't remove more than one thing from play at a time, isn't it? Graham's notes on those bugs seemed to suggest that they should be producing compiler errors, but crashed when doing so.[/quote]
I think you can, you just can't use the "remove" phrase. "now" works with set-descriptions, so you can also do it this way:
[code]Now every wearable thing is off-stage.[/code]
"off-stage" is a little tricky because I never remember whether it's one word, two words, or hyphenated. What do folks think about asking for synonyms on uservoice?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&start=0#p11675
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Why I hate ASK ABOUT and TALK ABOUT
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-10 08:54:44

Because I dislike envisioning the protagonist of the story as a monosyllabic verbal cripple who can barely get out a coherent thought and can't express anything that can't be encapsulated in one or two words?

Because trying to control a conversation in IF line-by-line is like trying to masturbate wearing boxing gloves.

Because the IF interface manages to avoid modalities in all things except in conversation, where special TALK modes and TOPIC modes abound, modes where I can type the same exact thing as when I am not in that mode, and get entirely different results. This is a sign that the interface simply isn't suited for the goal and has to be cloned-and-grafted to fit unnatural territory. Watching some parser games dissolve into numbered CYOA-style whenever conversation happens is another very strong sign that a bad graft has occurred.

Lastly and most importantly it's because I don't even [i]need[/i] to choose words for the conversation in order to actually have and influence a conversation. I am barely kicking in any words anyway so what's the point? A conversation is just a series of events that happen, nothing more, and there's no reason it [i]has[/i] to be more, so why go there into crap-interface territory? It just isn't necessary. My character can be afraid and angry and curious and I never have to type 'be afraid' or 'get angry' or worse, 'think about curiosity' -- why should conversation be any different? It should just happen.

A verb-object parser is just the wrong tool for this; in fact, since it is fundamentally predicated (NPI) on verb-object, IF in general is simply not well suited for simulating participatory dialogue -- full-stop. This doesn't mean it can't depict conversations and even have their flow affected by the player: one thing has nothing to do with the other. I can't decide which way to point my feet in IF, that would be tedious -- but that doesn't mean I can't affect where I walk. A poor foot-simulator is not necessarily a poor walking-simulator. We just have to get less literal-minded about it to make it [i]graceful[/i].

I have never seen an actual graceful conversation system in IF that I can recall -- I've seen some heroic attempts, but nothing ever nailed it. So I believe that we have to get way less literal-minded about adding interactivity to conversation, before we can get to the point where I don't groan inwardly [i]every single time[/i] a game takes me into conversation mode. It's just a huge black mark on a game for me the moment it asks me to supply actual words into a conversation. I get bored out of my skull every time and I don't mind admitting it -- it's not like I am an action movie guy either or have no patience for slice-of-life type stuff. Quite the opposite, so that's not it, it's just about bad interface. The fun part of being in a conversation is not the choosing of topic headings; the real fun is choosing your attitude and word order, so that isn't captured at all in these systems, it's just removed, leaving conversations a pale shadow of the liveliness they normally entail, and so conversations would be much [i]better[/i] off without these 'tools'. So the prevailing convention for this just doesn't work and no tinkering it will fix it, the whole ASK/TELL ABOUT paradigm needs to be discarded completely, IMO, to be replaced with... nothing! Just a general philosophy that the graceful way to influence conversations in IF, is indirectly, or not at all.

This has been a solution in search of a problem, the entire time.

So, 'Show don't tell', applied as a parser principle, to put it rather reductively. Anyone else feel the same about this? Does anyone else have that feeling of disappointment and trepidation [i]every time[/i] any IF game wants me to tell it what specifically to talk about and what to ask about?

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1774&start=0#p11676
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Setting named properties with "now"
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-10 08:57:09

Is this possible?

[code]Ordinal is a kind of value. The ordinals are unordered, first, second, and third.

A thing has an ordinal called order.

After reading a command:
    Now the order of every thing is unordered.[/code]
I think I've also tried "now every thing is unordered" and "now every thing has order unordered," but those don't work either. Since "now" works for anonymous boolean properties, I always expect it to work for named properties, but as far as I know, it doesn't. Am I wrong?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1775&start=0#p11677
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Overriding adjective definitions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-10 09:24:56

I'd like people to be able to override the definition of an adjective I create in my "Lost Items" extension. Currently it's done in this rather awkward way:

[code]Section 1 - The lost adjective

Definition: A thing is lost:
	follow the determine loss rules for it;
	if rule succeeded, yes;
	no;

Section 2 - The Determine Loss rulebook

Determine loss is an object-based rulebook. The determine loss rules have outcomes no (failure), and yes (success).

Determine loss of a known losable not visible thing:
	rule succeeds;[/code]
Is there a cleaner way to do it? I tried this:
[code]Section 1 - The lost adjective

Definition: A thing is lost:
	decide on whether or not the truth state produced by the determine loss rules for it;

Section 2 - The Determine Loss rulebook

Determine loss is an object-based rulebook producing a truth state.

Determine loss of a known losable not visible thing:
	rule succeeds with result true.

Determine loss:
	rule succeeds with result false.
[/code]
But the compiler told me:
[quote]Problem. The sentence 'Determine loss is an object-based rulebook producing a truth state'   appears to say two things are the same - I am reading 'Determine loss' and 'object-based rulebook producing a truth state' as two different things, and therefore it makes no sense to say that one is the other[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1769&start=0#p11678
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lost Items extension released!
User: Janka / DateTime: 2010-12-10 09:33:28

I'm basically thinking of having some more standard responses.
[code]
Kitchen
You see a cardboard box.
> put ball into cardboard box
...
[some NPC takes the cardboard box later secretly]
...
Outdoors
> throw ball
The last time you saw the ball it was inside the cardboard box.
> open cardboard box
The last time you saw the cardboard box it was in the kitchen.
[/code]
Janka

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&start=0#p11679
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why I hate ASK ABOUT and TALK ABOUT
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2010-12-10 09:35:47

I haven't really felt that way before, but I can certainly see what you're saying.

Can you give a sample transcript of how you envision conversation working? I'm having a hard time seeing an immediately obvious elegant solution.

-Kevin

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&start=0#p11680
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why I hate ASK ABOUT and TALK ABOUT
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-10 09:40:10

Well not really because there are no specific commands I'm thinking of, but here's how it plays out in the one I'm currently writing. You just do things and conversations happen. The player does plenty of things that can spark conversation -- you would just key conversational results off things the player picks up or examines or places the character goes and whether people follow, rather than asking the player to specifically do something conversational. Ever notice how when you are talking to someone your physical actions while talking tend to become topics of conversation? It's pretty simple, it's -- how would you do conversation if there is no conversation system? That to me is still the most elegant system, so that doesn't speak very well for the systems that are out there.

Why don't we need a system for deciding what the player feels or thinks to himself? We don't have one and yet authors have had no trouble at all having the player think or feel things to themselves based on the [i]circumstances[/i] -- I see no reason why conversation is a different scenario. Dialogue is the same essential scenario as an internal monologue; it just has two thinkers/feelers instead of one -- that's the only difference. So, if internal monologue doesn't require a whole special set of commands to be portrayed in IF, then why does everyone think it's so necessary to have special commands for dialogue? To me it's just an accident of text adventure history that dialogues require special commands to navigate whereas internal monologues just happen based on the situation, because I don't see a logical reason for distinguishing them and the results of handling dialogues differently from monologues have been pretty poor.

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1769&start=0#p11681
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lost Items extension released!
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-10 09:40:25

[quote="Janka"]I'm basically thinking of having some more standard responses.
[code]
Kitchen
You see a cardboard box.
> put ball into cardboard box
...
[some NPC takes the cardboard box later secretly]
...
Outdoors
> throw ball
The last time you saw the ball it was inside the cardboard box.
> open cardboard box
The last time you saw the cardboard box it was in the kitchen.
[/code]
Janka[/quote]
Maybe that could be a "use" option - "use default remember holder" vs "use default remember location." What do you think?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1771&start=0#p11682
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is this a known bug?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-10 09:58:10

[quote="capmikee"]"off-stage" is a little tricky because I never remember whether it's one word, two words, or hyphenated. What do folks think about asking for synonyms on uservoice?[/quote]

Yes -- the only issue is that it'd probably break some existing code. (I think Tove said something about having a junk room called "offstage," which only worked because it didn't have the hyphen.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1771&start=0#p11683
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is this a known bug?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-12-10 10:04:23

[quote="capmikee"]What do folks think about asking for synonyms on uservoice?[/quote]
Personally I'm against synonyms in the core language/library (as I've [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1183#p6765]ranted before[/url]) but on the other hand this is exactly what Usevoice is for: you put in a suggestion and people can vote for it if they want to see it happen.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1775&start=0#p11684
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding adjective definitions
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-12-10 10:19:36

I think you can just not do anything and it works because of the ordering of rules based on their specificity. For example:

[code][extension]
Definition: a thing is lost: no.

[story]
Definition: a pig is lost: yes.
[/code]

Also curiously enough it seems like "Definition" phrases override equally specific "To decide" phrases. You could have "To decide whether a thing is lost: no" in the extension so that the author could easily override the general case with a "Definition: a thing is lost if..." phrase.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1775&start=0#p11685
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding adjective definitions
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-12-10 10:29:48

Also, any "to" phrase can overload any other with the same preamble, so if your extension has:

[code]To decide if (item - a thing) is lost:
    decide yes.[/code]

and the author writes:

[code]To decide if (item - a thing) is lost:
     if the player has held the item:
          decide yes.[/code]

..then the latter will be used. (Rather, the latter will be used provided that it appears [i]after[/i] the inclusion of your extension in the source code; in other words, after the initial phrase definition.)

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1771&start=0#p11686
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is this a known bug?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-10 10:52:36

Juhana, I think this is generally a good point:

[quote]It's all nice and handy to be able to guess syntax when you're learning the language or a new library, but in the long run it starts to become a burden because if you read other people's code, you have to learn every available wording to be able to understand the code.[/quote]

but in this particular case, I think it'd be good to allow "offstage" as well as "off-stage"; no one should be confused by that. I'm a little more agnostic about "off stage."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&start=0#p11687
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why I hate ASK ABOUT and TALK ABOUT
User: George / DateTime: 2010-12-10 11:03:55

[quote="Laroquod"]Well not really because there are no specific commands I'm thinking of, but here's how it plays out in the one I'm currently writing. You just do things and conversations happen. The player does plenty of things that can spark conversation -- you would just key conversational results off things the player picks up or examines or places the character goes and whether people follow, rather than asking the player to specifically do something conversational. [/quote]

So if the player wants to know about another character's opinion of [i]x [/i]and [i]x [/i]isn't a physical object, do they 'examine x'?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&start=0#p11688
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why I hate ASK ABOUT and TALK ABOUT
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-12-10 11:12:31

[quote]it's just an accident of text adventure history that dialogues require special commands to navigate whereas internal monologues just happen based on the situation[/quote]
I'm not sure about the historical accuracy but I can well imagine that conversation in IF originated as mainly another kind of puzzle (figuring out what you have to ask that NPC about) – which may (perhaps) explain why some features of conversation in IF gets in the way when it doesn't serve the purpose of a puzzle. 

Would you say conversation is less bothersome when clearly used as a puzzle?

Perhaps a mere TALK TO command that the player can use to set off conversation, would be less troubling? Anyway, that seems to me to be an action of the same order and in the same mode as ordinary commands like LOOK AT or GIVE TO etc.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1775&start=0#p11689
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding adjective definitions
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-12-10 11:22:43

[quote="capmikee"]I'd like people to be able to override the definition of an adjective I create in my "Lost Items" extension. Currently it's done in this rather awkward way:

[snip]

Is there a cleaner way to do it? I tried this:
[code]Section 1 - The lost adjective

Definition: A thing is lost:
	decide on whether or not the truth state produced by the determine loss rules for it;

Section 2 - The Determine Loss rulebook

Determine loss is an object-based rulebook producing a truth state.

Determine loss of a known losable not visible thing:
	rule succeeds with result true.

Determine loss:
	rule succeeds with result false.
[/code]
[/quote]

Personally, I think the first way is fine, and nicer from the point of view of the end user (isn't it simpler for the author to be able to write simply "yes" or "rule succeeds" vs. "rule succeeds with result true"?). But here's how to get the second way working:

[code]Section 1 - The lost adjective

Definition: A thing is lost:
   decide on the truth state produced by the determine loss rules for it.

Section 2 - The Determine Loss rulebook

Determine loss is an object based rulebook producing a truth state.

Determine loss of a known losable not visible thing:
   rule succeeds with result true.

Determine loss:
   rule succeeds with result false.[/code]

The compiler message you got was due to the hyphen in "object-based". I thought the hyphen was still optional, but apparently it now fails, at least in some circumstances. Would be nice if the error message was more helpful, though. (The bigger problem in the original was the syntax of the decide phrase itself.)

--Erik

EDITED to add: I've reported the unhelpful error message as a bug. Probably the solution will be to disallow the hyphenated form (which may have already been slated for the next release; I'm not sure whether these hyphenated forms were officially deprecated or not).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&start=0#p11690
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why I hate ASK ABOUT and TALK ABOUT
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-12-10 11:30:04

Laroquod is right in that IF games could do a whole lot more with the most basic "TALK TO" conversation implementation, based on context and NPC responsiveness to the player's actions.  In some games, this could easily satisfy all the need for NPC-interaction and dialogue.  However, I don't think NPC responsiveness and context-sentive dialogue based on the simple TALK TO command could completely replace ASK/TELL.

The other side of the coin is that the player might feel frustrated when he or she wants to command the PC to interact with an NPC in a specific way, but the NPC doesn't pick up on any of the PC's attempts as conversation topics.  Sometimes, the player may actually [i]want[/i] the PC simply to say a specific and simple question or statement, or to give a one-word answer.  In an IF scenario where an NPC asks the PC to find a key, and the player wants to know more about this key, it would probably be less frustrating to have to type "ASK (NPC) ABOUT KEY" than to try to think of a non-conversation command that might make the NPC talk more about it.

I think that responsive NPCs and perhaps a simple "TALK TO" command that is sensitive to context can fulfill the need for more in-depth dialogue than the parser system can naturally accomodate, but I don't think we'll ever stop needing ASK/TELL, or other sysytems that let the player directly choose conversation topics (such as CYOA conversation trees).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1769&start=0#p11691
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lost Items extension released!
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-10 11:35:32

I've made a couple small changes. The notice absence rulebook has been changed to the noticing absence activity. There is a new "Did we lose" rulebook so you can customize which items are lost.

The new version is in the same place:

<a class="postlink" href="http://eyeballsun.org/i/Lost%20Items.i7x">http://eyeballsun.org/i/Lost%20Items.i7x</a>

The old version is still there, but it's been renamed to "Lost Items-1-101203.i7x".

I think I will submit this now, and consider suggestions such as remembering containers for version 2.

Thanks for the input. Keep it coming!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1771&start=0#p11692
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is this a known bug?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-10 11:57:02

I don't mind strict syntax if there is a helpful compiler error. Being told that there is no object or property called "offstage", but there is a construct called "off-stage" meaning "removed from play" would be perfectly sufficient.

Here's a suggestion:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/1286087-understand-offstage-or-off-stage-">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... off-stage-</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1720&start=20#p11693
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Authors' Group: An idea for developer mutual aid
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-12-10 11:57:22

[quote="Harry Giles"]So there was this interesting discussion of what makes good collaboration. My own perspective on this is that there are lots of different models of collaboration, none of which can be said to be universally ideal[/quote]
I've enjoyed coding extensions on request -- Aaron Reed's Mentioned in Room Description; Michael Bacon's iPoetry; David Fisher's Default Messages & Custom Library Messages.  These are fairly clear-cut and bite-size problems, taking no more than two or three weeks to go from conception to finished product.  But an actual game is a pretty big commitment.  The Inform 7 Suggestions site floats the idea of an extension site that could take requests, reviews, etc. of same.  If that gets off the ground it could be a tool for collaboration.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&start=0#p11694
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why I hate ASK ABOUT and TALK ABOUT
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-12-10 12:04:00

[quote="Laroquod"]Why don't we need a system for deciding what the player feels or thinks to himself?[/quote]

A handful of games do.

[quote="Laroquod"]We don't have one and yet authors have had no trouble at all having the player think or feel things to themselves based on the [i]circumstances[/i] -- I see no reason why conversation is a different scenario. Dialogue is the same essential scenario as an internal monologue; it just has two thinkers/feelers instead of one -- that's the only difference. So, if internal monologue doesn't require a whole special set of commands to be portrayed in IF, then why does everyone think it's so necessary to have special commands for dialogue?[/quote]

Short answer: agency.

Longer answer: things that the protagonist says aloud to another character are more likely to change the state of the world. There are relatively few games where what you are thinking changes what happens in the story. There are a lot of games where you have to convince an NPC of something, or find out something from him, or establish a relationship, or whatever. It's possible to have the game work out for you what you should say at every juncture, but that rules out a lot of kinds of gameplay. And if the player is responsible for directing the conversation, he needs some non-accidental way to steer it.

(Also, I realize that you may have been speaking hyperbolically, and certainly the features you describe occur in most current IF that deals with conversation. There are some exceptions, though, if you're interested and haven't run into them -- [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/how-to-play/writing-if/my-articles/conversation/]this old article[/url] hasn't been updated for years, but it does point to some older examples of various conversation systems; I don't have a list assembled of games where the NPC chats with you in reaction to other behavior, but [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=7yiyxcnrlwejoffd]here[/url] is a brief one of mine.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1775&start=0#p11695
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding adjective definitions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-10 12:13:54

[quote="Juhana"]I think you can just not do anything and it works because of the ordering of rules based on their specificity.[/quote]
That has not been my experience:
[code]Include Epistemology by Eric Eve.

Test is a room.

A thing can be fooish. Foo is a thing. Foo is fooish.

Definition: A thing is known rather than unknown if it is familiar or it is seen or it is fooish.

test me with "epistat foo"[/code]
[quote]>[1] epistat foo
Foo - unseen / unfamiliar / unknown.

>[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1775&start=0#p11696
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding adjective definitions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-10 12:18:30

I wanted to make a rulebook that has "yes" and "no" outcomes that could be dropped into a Definition phrase, but that didn't seem to work - I wonder if "yes" and "no" are some kind of reserved words that can't be used as outcomes in normal rules?

I did something I'm happy with, though. I changed the name of the rulebook to "did we lose" and I gave it outcomes "we did" and "we didn't." The Definition still has to check the outcome, but at least the API looks nice now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1771&start=0#p11697
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is this a known bug?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-12-10 12:19:05

If I were to submit a suggestion, it would be to remove the "remove .. from" phrase from the language.  It is perfectly redundant now, isn't it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1774&start=0#p11698
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting named properties with "now"
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-12-10 12:31:39

I think if you change [i]A thing has an ordinal called order.[/i] to [i]A thing has an ordinal.[/i] then it would work?  Or maybe [i]A thing can be unordered, first, second, or third.[/i]   But I don't think you can do what you were trying.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1772&start=0#p11699
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Real time printing
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-12-10 12:35:56

I'm not real sure, but I think you can override I7's bold/italic/roman to-say phrases with your own that could instead output an illegal or reserved character which will land in the indexed text.  Then your printer can turn the illegal character back into the style.  I think you can also override line break and similar phrases similarly. 

Did that answer your question?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1774&start=0#p11700
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting named properties with "now"
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-12-10 12:37:53

I think you're right.

You can of course make it work for multivalue anonymous properties too. (That is, if you just said "A thing has an ordinal," it would be easy.) But for a named property, I don't see a way to write the condition.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1774&start=0#p11701
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting named properties with "now"
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-10 12:40:15

I thought you couldn't give things an anonymous KOV property, but it looks like you can, as long as you give them the property before you refer to it in the source. Otherwise you get a compiler error. Thanks for the tip, Ron!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1774&start=0#p11702
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting named properties with "now"
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-12-10 12:43:25

This is weirdly related to the "offstage" problem mentioned in another thread. One of my tries was to say:

Definition: a thing is zorkulate if the ordinal of it is unordered.

This makes a *testable* condition (you could say "if every thing is zorkulate") but it's not a settable condition ("now every thing is zorkulate" produces an error). Similarly, it would be nice to be able to say

Definition: a thing is offstage if it is off-stage.

But again, this is not a settable condition. 

Clearly it's a hard problem to sort through such definitions and figure out which ones *could* be settable -- most aren't. But if the compiler were able to figure that out, it would be awfully handy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1774&start=0#p11703
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting named properties with "now"
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-10 12:46:34

[quote="zarf"]I think you're right.

You can of course make it work for multivalue anonymous properties too. (That is, if you just said "A thing has an ordinal," it would be easy.) But for a named property, I don't see a way to write the condition.[/quote]
I'm imagining how it might work if you could, using relations. Something weird like "now every order that relates to a thing by the property relation...." or maybe "now every order property...."

If you use an anonymous property, can you still declare that the property describes or refers to a thing?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&start=0#p11704
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why I hate ASK ABOUT and TALK ABOUT
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-12-10 13:31:56

[quote="Laroquod"]You just do things and conversations happen.[/quote]
As evidence for the prosecution, this is how I handled conversation between the title characters in Walker & Silhouette in most scenes, and a lot of players seemed to think they had a bit of chemistry.

[quote="Laroquod"]So, if internal monologue doesn't require a whole special set of commands to be portrayed in IF, then why does everyone think it's so necessary to have special commands for dialogue?[/quote]
I don't think [i]any[/i] commands are really required in IF.  Often the biggest issue I have while developing a game is handling all the default actions I don't care about.  (I finally actually have a WIP where throwing is something other than a nuisance to be disabled.)

But I think it's important to distinguish between conversation in the sense of two characters talking to one another as flavour, characterisation or divulging essential information, and [i]conversation actions[/i] in the sense of things that the player wants their character to say to another character.  Certainly, I don't think anyone has hit on an entirely satisfying way to do this, but I think it's a healthy impulse in players if you want them to engage with your work as an interactive story.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&start=0#p11705
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why I hate ASK ABOUT and TALK ABOUT
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-12-10 14:40:43

[quote]Because I dislike envisioning the protagonist of the story as a monosyllabic verbal cripple who can barely get out a coherent thought and can't express anything that can't be encapsulated in one or two words?[/quote]

This, at least, is purely a matter of prose.  Yes, if it goes:

[code]>ASK TODD ABOUT POWERS

Todd says, "You know how you only use use ten percent of your brain?  Well, it's because the other 90 percent is filled up with curds and whey!"[/code]

Then you sound like a Neanderthal, which is why it's usually better to do this:

[code]>ASK VEGAN POLICE ABOUT VIOLATION

You say, "What'd I do?  What authority do you represent?  You can't do this!  I didn't do anything!  You can't prove anything!  I'M A ROCK STAR!"

The vegan police say, "We have it on record that at 12:27 this afternoon you did knowingly consume a restricted food item.  Gelato."

>ASK VEGAN POLICE ABOUT GELATO

You say, "Gelato isn't vegan?"

"It's milk and eggs, bitch."[/code]

(Dialogue from Scott Pilgrim book 3, because I'm bad at dialogue.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1774&start=0#p11706
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting named properties with "now"
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-12-10 14:50:26

[quote="zarf"]This is weirdly related to the "offstage" problem mentioned in another thread. One of my tries [...] makes a *testable* condition (you could say "if every thing is zorkulate") but it's not a settable condition ("now every thing is zorkulate" produces an error). [...]But if the compiler were able to figure that out, it would be awfully handy.[/quote]

You can do this by dipping into I6.  See 25.23, "Inform 6 adjectives", in the manual and the "makes it so" syntax. The I6 routine you write would obviously set the location or whatever that off-stage would do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1776&start=0#p11707
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 crashes when quitting
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-10 15:03:54

This seems like a pretty low priority, but I wonder if anyone else experiences it:

About 60% of the time when I quit Inform, it crashes. I'm running 6F95 on Mac OS 10.5.8.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1774&start=0#p11708
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting named properties with "now"
User: Luci / DateTime: 2010-12-10 15:05:20

This works:

[code]ordinal is a kind of value.
the ordinals are unordered, first, second, and third.
a thing has an ordinal called order.

After reading a command:
        repeat with x running through every thing:
                now the order of x is unordered.
[/code]

... though I'm not sure if this is how you want to do that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1774&start=0#p11709
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting named properties with "now"
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-10 15:07:04

That's how I'm doing it now. It's probably no less efficient, but I don't like the way it looks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1776&start=0#p11710
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 crashes when quitting
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-12-10 15:11:06

I used to have this problem, for a long time in fact (I'm also on mac os), and still see it occasionally. I'd suggest grabbing the output from the log and filing it as a bug report on Mantis.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1775&start=0#p11711
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding adjective definitions
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-12-10 15:27:37

[quote="capmikee"][quote="Juhana"]I think you can just not do anything and it works because of the ordering of rules based on their specificity.[/quote]
That has not been my experience:[/quote]
Well not in that case because your rule is not more specific than the one you're trying to override. If you had "Definition: A foo is known rather than unknown if..." it would work. Also, if Epistemology's rule would be a To decide rule your definition rule would override it. I don't know why a later defined equally specific definition doesn't override the previous one and if it's intended behavior.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&start=0#p11712
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why I hate ASK ABOUT and TALK ABOUT
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-10 19:00:35

Some interesting responses. I'll run through them...

[quote="George"]So if the player wants to know about another character's opinion of [i]x [/i]and [i]x [/i]isn't a physical object, do they 'examine x'?[/quote]
Yeah. Although, I'm not structuring my puzzles so that getting people to cognitively sniff objects is a regular task. Having someone around versus not having them around is the major decision that's going to affect the outcome of the game rather than particular things you try to say to them; because if you don't say it they probably will -- which seems to me more like real life. Playing 'pulling teeth' with NPCs is just never a fun thing, in my book. I just want them to offer stuff up while I'm thinking about it, which probably means while I'm manipulating it or otherwise trying commands on some other noun that is not the NPC. Then see the conversation is automatically about something important and not just an opportunity to shove a file folder full of backstory at me, wholesale, and expecting me to just page through it for its own sake, absent a narrative. That's not a fun type of interactivity -- why give me the drudge work? It's not interesting for me to have to control of the order in which I read a glossary -- and that's essentially what the talk model is, treating a person like a dictionary. I mean -- these are really boring conversations if you were to consider them in, say, a filmic or a literary light. They're mostly purely informational though I admit they could be written better by some than by others. But if you want me to read backstory, weave it into the narrative on the way to something else...? Isn't that generally the wiser way for a writer to win the reader's indulgence for reams of worldbuilding?


[quote="Felix"]Would you say conversation is less bothersome when clearly used as a puzzle?

Perhaps a mere TALK TO command that the player can use to set off conversation, would be less troubling? Anyway, that seems to me to be an action of the same order and in the same mode as ordinary commands like LOOK AT or GIVE TO etc.[/quote]
You and Bainespal mentioned TALK TO. I find it marginally better than ask/tell about because it doesn't implicitly or explicitly) put me in a different command mode. But I don't really like to have to tell the game when I should talk to people, either. I'm softer on it though -- I could be convinced. I'd personally prefer to use the word GREET, though. As for when it's used as a puzzle. No, my very least favourite puzzle in the world besides huge identical mazes, is the whole figure-out-what-specific-magic-word-to-mention-to-the-NPC thing. It's like, the NPC is a lock and there is one word that is the key. This has always felt unrealistic and more like a case of my solving a parser than me solving a real life situation.


[quote="emshort"][quote="Laroquod"]Why don't we need a system for deciding what the player feels or thinks to himself?[/quote]
A handful of games do.[/quote]
Yeah, I remembered that afterward. I get an inward double-groan when I see the 'think about' command. Usually though it hasn't been a mandatory part of the puzzle so I've been able to just avoid going there.

[quote="emshort"][quote="Laroquod"]We don't have one and yet authors have had no trouble at all having the player think or feel things to themselves based on the [i]circumstances[/i] -- I see no reason why conversation is a different scenario. Dialogue is the same essential scenario as an internal monologue; it just has two thinkers/feelers instead of one -- that's the only difference. So, if internal monologue doesn't require a whole special set of commands to be portrayed in IF, then why does everyone think it's so necessary to have special commands for dialogue?[/quote]

Short answer: agency.

Longer answer: things that the protagonist says aloud to another character are more likely to change the state of the world. There are relatively few games where what you are thinking changes what happens in the story. There are a lot of games where you have to convince an NPC of something, or find out something from him, or establish a relationship, or whatever. It's possible to have the game work out for you what you should say at every juncture, but that rules out a lot of kinds of gameplay. And if the player is responsible for directing the conversation, he needs some non-accidental way to steer it.[/quote]
Yeah, you're absolutely right about agency, and that's exactly my objection is to the placement of player agency itself, not just to the ask/tell syntax   — I object to the player's agency being extended to cover individual words in a conversation. I realise that it is possible (now, increasingly common) to construct puzzles that *require* extending the player's agency that far — I just don't prefer those kinds of puzzles. It's not interesting to me. I would prefer it if the author rearranged things such that I am in charge of something else other than dialogue and can still affect the outcome. I don't want control of that; for whatever reason, perhaps having to do with my theories as stated above or perhaps some other factor I haven't figured out yet, it's just not interesting to me.

[quote="emshort"](Also, I realize that you may have been speaking hyperbolically, and certainly the features you describe occur in most current IF that deals with conversation. There are some exceptions, though, if you're interested and haven't run into them -- [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/how-to-play/writing-if/my-articles/conversation/]this old article[/url] hasn't been updated for years, but it does point to some older examples of various conversation systems; I don't have a list assembled of games where the NPC chats with you in reaction to other behavior, but [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=7yiyxcnrlwejoffd]here[/url] is a brief one of mine.)[/quote]
I believe I read that article a while back. It's a good article, I like reading people's theories about it because I've always been curious about why it works so poorly for me. It's something I've been thinking about for a long time, in fact, and I'm dismayed getting back into zcode games how popular conversational commands have really become -- they are in so many games, now.


[quote="Pacian"]As evidence for the prosecution, this is how I handled conversation between the title characters in Walker & Silhouette in most scenes, and a lot of players seemed to think they had a bit of chemistry.[/quote]
I have heard lots of good stuff about W&S and it's high on my list to try -- forgive my ignorance of some of the experiments that have already gone on. The best example I could think of for conversation being handled in IF is in Violet, where of course it's all represented as an internal dialogue with an imaginary character -- no particular commands required, it just develops with the story. That felt like a real relationship. Relationships are based on conversation of course, and this elaborate conversational syntax we've developed is like an albatross over every character's neck converting them from a person into a reference manual -- remove it and it feels like sudden, relationship freedom, at least to me.

BTW I've been wanting to congratulate you on Rogue of the Multiverse -- really enjoyed that one! 8)

[quote]But I think it's important to distinguish between conversation in the sense of two characters talking to one another as flavour, characterisation or divulging essential information, and [i]conversation actions[/i] in the sense of things that the player wants their character to say to another character.  Certainly, I don't think anyone has hit on an entirely satisfying way to do this, but I think it's a healthy impulse in players if you want them to engage with your work as an interactive story.[/quote]
This approaches Emily's sense of agency I think. Like not just how to depict a conversation but how to affect its flow. I think of the character as separate -- if I want to change what my character says then my favourite goal is to change the state of the character, to change 'my' attitude or what I'm likely to talk about. Via the things I do.

Thanks again folks, lots of thought-provoking stuff here, I'm glad I blurted out my big secret peeve, lol...

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&start=10#p11713
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why I hate ASK ABOUT and TALK ABOUT
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-10 19:37:00

[quote="katz"][quote]Because I dislike envisioning the protagonist of the story as a monosyllabic verbal cripple who can barely get out a coherent thought and can't express anything that can't be encapsulated in one or two words?[/quote]

This, at least, is purely a matter of prose.  Yes, if it goes:

[code]>ASK TODD ABOUT POWERS

Todd says, "You know how you only use use ten percent of your brain?  Well, it's because the other 90 percent is filled up with curds and whey!"[/code]

Then you sound like a Neanderthal, which is why it's usually better to do this:

[code]>ASK VEGAN POLICE ABOUT VIOLATION

You say, "What'd I do?  What authority do you represent?  You can't do this!  I didn't do anything!  You can't prove anything!  I'M A ROCK STAR!"

The vegan police say, "We have it on record that at 12:27 this afternoon you did knowingly consume a restricted food item.  Gelato."

>ASK VEGAN POLICE ABOUT GELATO

You say, "Gelato isn't vegan?"

"It's milk and eggs, bitch."[/code]

(Dialogue from Scott Pilgrim book 3, because I'm bad at dialogue.)[/quote]
It's a good point that you can dress it up so that it sounds more natural. However, in terms of player agency in conversations, which is a much clearer way to frame my objections I'm discovering, you are still only adding single words into the interactive mix so your steering cannot possibly be intelligent enough to do justice to the sort of control you should have to make a conversation feel both dynamic/real and interactive. So I guess I'm just saying, why is it so important to even achieve this? We can have great dynamic/real conversations -- just because it's an interactive story doesn't mean every aspect needs to be under player control. As the writer you choose what requires player agency by how you design your puzzles, I just don't get what's so great about getting the player's command line all entangled in a sort of word-by-word, dialogue-by-inches. What's the upside for the player? It doesn't actually feel like you are half of an interesting conversation, so that's not a win. What is the win, interactively? I don't see it. I want to give the player things to do that feel real, are fun or otherwise interesting to control, and pay off well. I just don't see how the prevailing talk conventions will help me fulfill those goals.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1610&start=0#p11714
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The Big Bang Theory - Season 4 Episode 6 - IF included !
User: javiside / DateTime: 2010-12-10 21:23:59

Hey guys, which is exactly the name of that game?
Or where can i play it?..(the troll, the axe, etc)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1776&start=0#p11715
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 crashes when quitting
User: eu / DateTime: 2010-12-10 21:34:10

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=118">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=118</a> or something like it perhaps?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1772&start=0#p11716
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Real time printing
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2010-12-10 21:43:17

yes, i think so. I guess there is no way to "truly" store styled text . You can either store style instructions into routines or into special characters. The latter seems to be the best solution. But can I use unicode characters ? And what are  illegal characters ? negative values ?

I think i will try to create a new relation between phrases and indexed texts (P is symbolized by T), and wrap the in-line style instructions into routines. This way, i'll be able to trigger phrases in the middle of indexed texts, which could turn to be useful if one wants to modify the behavior of the printer.
[spoiler][img]http://takeaticket.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83454962b69e2010537190ac2970b-800wi[/img][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1775&start=0#p11717
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding adjective definitions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-10 22:09:18

But what if you want an equally general rule that replaces the old rule?

Also, you can make a more specific definition for "a foo," but you can't make one for "a fooish thing:"

[quote]Problem. You defined an adjective by 'A fooish thing is known rather than unknown if it is familiar or it is seen or it is fooish' intending that it would apply to 'A fooish thing': but this is slippery, because it can change during play. Definitions can only be made in cases where it's clear for any given value or object what definition will apply. For instance, 'Definition: a door is shiny if ...' is fine, but 'Definition: an open door is shiny if ...' is not allowed - Inform wouldn't know whether or not to apply it to the Big Blue Door (say), since it would only apply some of the time.[/quote]

For some reason, this doesn't override the original either:

[code]A thing is known rather than unknown when it is fooish: yes.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1776&start=0#p11718
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 crashes when quitting
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-10 22:17:09

I bet that's it. I've been working on extensions lately...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1777&start=0#p11719
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Characters without bodies?
User: orionsbelt / DateTime: 2010-12-10 23:56:05

Hi everyone, I've just started writing IF and I absolutely love it. However, I've run into a bit of a snag with my first experiment. The story takes place on a space station and there's a friendly AI that fills most, but not all, of the ship. How can I make this work out? Can I make an NPC invisible and capable of moving freely through locked doors? Thanks for your help!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1772&start=0#p11720
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Real time printing
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-12-10 23:57:52

In the extension Output Filtering, I just used curly braces and an angle bracket.  They don't tend to occur in a game's prose. 
[code]
Chapter - I6 helper routines for Output Filtering

To say bold type: (- bold_on(); -).

To say italic type: (- italic_on(); -).

To say roman type: (- roman_on(); -).

To say blank line: say "[bracket]BLANK LINE[close bracket]".

To say the/-- filtered (itext - indexed text): (- SayGameResponse(({itext})); -).

Include (-

[ bold_on;
if (capture_active > 0) print "{";
else style bold;
]; 

[ italic_on;
if (capture_active > 0) print "<";
else style underline;
]; 

[ roman_on;
if (capture_active > 0) print "}";
else style roman;
]; 


[ SayGameResponse indt ch i dsize;
    if ((indt==0) || (BlkType(indt) ~= INDEXED_TEXT_TY)) return;
    dsize = BlkValueExtent(indt);
    for (i=0:i<dsize:i++) {
        ch = BlkValueRead(indt, i);
        switch (ch) 
        {
        0: return;
        255: return;
        '{': style bold; continue;
        '<': style underline; continue;
        '}': style roman; continue;
    #ifdef TARGET_ZCODE;
        10: continue;
    #endif;
        }
        #ifdef DEBUG_OUTPUT_FILTERING;
            switch (ch) { ! then print ZSCII values instead
            32: print " ";
            10: print "^";
            default: print ch, " ";
            }
        #ifnot;
            #ifdef IT_Storage_Glulx_Unicode;
                glk_put_char_uni(ch);
            #ifnot; ! IT_Storage_Glulx_Unicode
                print (char) ch;
            #endif;
        #endif;
    }
];

-).[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&start=10#p11721
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why I hate ASK ABOUT and TALK ABOUT
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-12-11 00:04:27

[quote="Laroquod"]However, in terms of player agency in conversations, which is a much clearer way to frame my objections I'm discovering, you are still only adding single words into the interactive mix so your steering cannot possibly be intelligent enough to do justice to the sort of control you should have to make a conversation feel both dynamic/real and interactive. ...[/quote] 

I'd say "the sort of control you should have" is control that focuses the player on what matters to this game. Nothing in a game is ever interactive in all the ways real life is interactive; by picking the type of interactivity you want to make available, you're establishing something about the kind of story that can happen.

Sometimes you want the player to focus on tone (Varicella, Forever Always); sometimes on getting clues and exploring information (lots of games, but to pick a great one: Make It Good). Sometimes it's about picking from the limited set of things that a well-defined protagonist would do in this situation (Rameses). 

I think the kind of interaction you describe is appropriate only for a subset of the kinds of stories I would like to tell. Specifically: it works for a strongly defined protagonist and strongly defined NPCs, within a small, dense setting where many or most actions will carry some kind of emotional resonance, and where there is a single definite goal that the protagonist is working towards. Great for Violet. Great for other one-room games, or games that are highly railroaded through a linear story and sequence of locations (as much of Pacian's work is).

It's not so great for mysteries. It gets in the way if you want the protagonist to be more freely defined by the player's actions. It's nearly impossible to pull off in a large open world, or in places where you're giving the player major choices about what to accomplish. 

And, I would argue, it rarely works in cases where the protagonist's *main focus and goal* is to do something with or to an NPC. You can have games where the protagonist is doing something else (like, say, trying to finish a paper, or rescue his lover from a hanging) where an NPC is strongly motivated to care about what you're doing or how you're doing it. But if the whole point of the scene, from the protagonist's point of view, is to talk to that NPC? It's going to feel odd, or at least extremely stylized, if you're only allowed to do it indirectly. "You're a politician. Convince this group of rich donors to back you. P.S.: You may only achieve this by physically manipulating the contents of the room." 

It's been done. Textfire Golf is almost that game. But... stylized, like I said. It definitely wouldn't work for everything.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&start=10#p11722
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why I hate ASK ABOUT and TALK ABOUT
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-12-11 02:56:13

I spent ages programming every character in [i]Aurora[/i] to respond when asked about every other character, so I may have a vested interest.  Anyway:

[quote]I get an inward double-groan when I see the 'think about' command. Usually though it hasn't been a mandatory part of the puzzle so I've been able to just avoid going there.[/quote]

What about the 'hint' command?  Any game that isn't utterly self-explanatory needs some way to let the player know what to do next; the trick is making it not break immersion.  So why not ask other people what to do next?  It beats having a metagame hint command, IMO.

[quote]I realise that it is possible (now, increasingly common) to construct puzzles that *require* extending the player's agency that far — I just don't prefer those kinds of puzzles.[/quote]

I can think of situations--not even necessarily puzzles--where you might want to control who you do or don't say something to.  What if the NPCs' motives are unknown and you don't know who to trust?  >TELL IRIS NETWORK ABOUT DOMZ may return a very different result from >TELL ALPHA SECTIONS ABOUT DOMZ.

In that situation, though, you want the third option of actively misleading the people you don't trust.  Has anyone written a game where there's a command for telling the truth and a command for lying?  Because that would be awesome!

[quote]It doesn't actually feel like you are half of an interesting conversation, so that's not a win.[/quote]

It can feel that way if one command triggers a long conversation.

Yes, a single command triggering a long conversation may seem no better than a long conversation triggering automatically, but there's a key difference:  You can choose not to have the conversation.  If you're trying to figure out how to get into the back room of the bar and all the bar patrons keep talking to you, it could get annoying; you could miss important stuff skimming to get back to the puzzle you were working on; it even breaks character, because your character should be focusing on the puzzle too.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&start=10#p11723
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why I hate ASK ABOUT and TALK ABOUT
User: Harry Giles / DateTime: 2010-12-11 03:35:17

I think your points are generally worthwhile, and help me to think about conversation, but I disagree with the point that no game has yet featured believable, non-clunk dialogue with agency. Personally, I find the conversation model used in [i]Galatea[/i] and, later, in [i]Blue Lacuna[/i], entirely satisfying -- in that it at least takes conversation to the same level of control and immersion, despite occasional absurdity, found in all the interactions in IF. Overlaying keywords and topic suggestions on top of ASK/TELL, if the writing is skilful, is a damn good solution, I think.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1777&start=0#p11724
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Characters without bodies?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-12-11 03:37:47

Instead of moving the AI around you could try putting the AI in scope in the locations where you want it to be. Here I've made an adjective that you can set to those rooms where you don't want it.

[code]AI is a person.
A room can be AI-free. A room is usually not AI-free.

After deciding the scope of the player:
	if the location is not AI-free:
		place AI in scope.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1656&start=30#p11725
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Write your own CYOA competition (ends December 15!)
User: Neo / DateTime: 2010-12-11 03:53:20

Thanks, Laroquod.

Any feedback you have would be greatly appreciated. [emote]:)[/emote]

Cheers!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1777&start=0#p11726
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Characters without bodies?
User: Harry Giles / DateTime: 2010-12-11 03:56:02

If I were to make an invisible near-omnipresent NPC, I'd do it in several stages:

First, you probably want to make the relevant person "scenery", so that it does not appear in room descriptions.

Second, you want to write a set of rules defining where the AI is. Does the AI ever need to be anywhere other than where the player is? If not, then you can just move the AI to wherever the player is whenever the player goes somewhere, but block that rule if the player is going into certain rooms (see chapter 8.9 of the documentation on moving the player, and then all of chapter 12 for lots of the details on moving NPCs around). 

Finally, you're going to want to block certain actions to do with seeing and touching the AI. Some of this can be accomplished through the rules for visibility and touchability and so forth (see 6.13 and 12.16-19). However, you're going to need to think through all the different things the player might try to do to the AI once they learn of its existence, work out if they're possible to do to a noncorporeal voice, and then write a bunch of rules to implement them.

Hope this helps.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1777&start=0#p11727
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Characters without bodies?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-12-11 09:40:00

You're really asking for a backdrop that is a person. Though you can't have one thing that is both a backdrop and a person, you can have a backdrop that has a part that is a person and then put that backdrop in a region of your spacestation. Like so:

[code]
The Lab is a room. North of the Lab is the Hallway. North of the Hallway is the Pantry.
The Tattles is a Region. The Lab and the Pantry are in the Tattles.
The AI is an backdrop in the Tattles. A person called HAL is part of the AI.[/code]

Now it's possible to interact with HAL in the Lab and in the Pantry but not in the Hallway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1770&start=0#p11728
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Calling for a NPC
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-12-11 10:14:59

Thank you. That worked perfectly.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&start=10#p11729
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why I hate ASK ABOUT and TALK ABOUT
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-12-11 11:04:08

Forbidden Castle did an okay job with this- for being 1985.

Basically it assumed that any text that wasn't a command was a converastion attempt if NPCs were present. (There were 6 or 7 people to talk to).

This worked well, but it could be a pain when you made a typo. You could specify NPCs with [person], [text]. And it wasn't as good as a real conversation.

[quote]
>MANKIN, WHY IS THE KING SUCH A JERK?
Mankin: The king? He's not quite all there, is he?
>I (the game used INV for inventory, not I)
Mankin: I'd like to help, but you tend to ramble.
>SORRY ABOUT THAT
Mankin: Apology Accepted
>FAERIE, PLEASE HELP ME
Faerie: May you and your kind rot!
>WILL YOU TRADE ME THE VASE FOR THE KEY OH BEAUTIFUL FAERIE
Faerie: Do you want the vase?
>YES
Faerie: Then I'll just keep it!
>FAERIE TRADE ME THE VASE
Faerie: You want the vase?
>NO
Faerie: I know you have the key. That's what I want. Would you part with the key?
>NO
Faerie: Well then I'll take it!
She takes the key from you and pushes the vase into your hands.
Faerie: Begone, maggot brain!
>RAVEN TELL ME ABOUT THE PRINCESS
Raven: I don't want to talk about the princess, ask me about the blue faerie
[/quote]

As a beginner, it helped me avoid the ASK/TELL/SHOW nonsense and made me feel that the game was listening to me. (It also would allow you to examine ANYTHING, and if the object wasn't recognised it would say "A quick look is all you needed" or something to make it seem like objects that weren't implemented were.)

It seems like there may be a case for "If the topic understood includes 'KING' and the topic understood includes 'CASTLE'" modes for conversation, or having the parser assume that non-commands are a case for conversation.

Something along the lines of 
[code]
Instead of [creating a parser error]:
  if a person is visible (called the guy):
    try saying the player's input to the guy;
  otherwise:
    [continue the parser error]
[/code]

Not sure how the coding on that would go.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1610&start=0#p11730
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The Big Bang Theory - Season 4 Episode 6 - IF included !
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-12-11 11:08:05

The game described in the recent episode? It's a portmanteau of several early IF games. 

Zork had a troll with an axe. (You could hit him with the axe if you were lucky enough to disarm him, but most people just whaled away with the sword.) A dragon and collecting mud were puzzles in Scott Adams's Adventureland. And getting lost in the forest was a feature of Zork, Adventureland, *and* Colossal Cave. (Although Adventureland's was one room, so you couldn't *really* get lost.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1778&start=0#p11731
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: There are a lot of people making new languages!
User: adventurechris / DateTime: 2010-12-11 11:13:48

Hi all,

So, I'm testing out a new site I made for people to quickly write and play CYOA-like stories. I posted it a little earlier for comments, and a lot of people were nice enough to offer feedback.

The [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1656&start=20]discussion[/url] got sidetracked to CYOA development languages, and I was fascinated by what happened next. I found a huge [url=http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXprogramming.html]list[/url] of development environments, and on top of that at least three people mentioned that they were working on their own!

I'm not a believer in there being "one right language" for doing interactive stories, whether IF, CYOA, or otherwise, but the sheer multiplicity of them...it makes me wonder if there's a hole that's not filled by anything satisfactory, standardized, and open enough out there.

I'm quite curious about this and would love to hear what you all think.


For those making story languages: Why did you choose to work on a new one? Was it something missing from previous options or did you have other motivations?

For those who currently use them: Do you find that what you use at present works well? What's good/bad in the world of crafting IF/CYOA? Something get under your collar about your favorite language?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1656&start=30#p11732
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Write your own CYOA competition (ends December 15!)
User: adventurechris / DateTime: 2010-12-11 11:14:18

Coolness! (@Neo: I linked to your blog.)

As an aside:
I'm pretty amazed. First Retro has his language, tove mentions Twine, Laroquod has a system, and then Neo has something too! I'm relatively new to serious story-telling languages but it seems like something must be up if we're all creating them! There are plenty of programming languages but I don't hear quite so much about everyone cooking up new ones.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1779&start=0#p11733
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: any way to run two instances of the IDE?
User: George / DateTime: 2010-12-11 11:57:49

I feel like I read about this on raif at one point, but I can't find the thread. Is there a way to run two instances of the IDE, or the IDE and a text editor, so I could have a fullscreen of the source code and then a separate screen with just the index/game/skein and so on? The IDE does weird stuff with save files and can't revert, so it doesn't seem to work like you'd expect.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1777&start=0#p11734
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Characters without bodies?
User: orionsbelt / DateTime: 2010-12-11 17:46:06

Thanks for the help, guys!

Now, I've got the code doing what I want, but I'm running into an error message.

[code]A computer is a kind of thing. A computer is a kind of device. A computer is in every room. A computer is usually switched on.

Definition: a room is habitable if the computer is switched on.
Definition: A room is inhabitable if the computer is switched off.

The network is a backdrop. The network is in all habitable rooms.

A person called Q is part of the network.[/code]

I'm being told that this is no good, because "[habitable room] is now a kind qualified by a property which may come or go during play." But I [i]want[/i] that property to change, because later on, the player is on the run from the AI, and the only way to keep away from him is to turn off the computers. Any way I can get this to work?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&start=10#p11735
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why I hate ASK ABOUT and TALK ABOUT
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-12-11 19:01:13

As regards entering a different way of operating within IF just for the conversations, I once attempted a different way of tackling ASK/TELL - "<NPC>, <KEYWORD>?" and "<NPC>, <KEYWORD>" would ASK about the keyword, and "<NPC>, <KEYWORD>." and "<NPC>, <KEYWORD>!" would TELL about it.

My goal was, of course, to make it feel as though it's part of the same mechanism. You can order people around with this formula, which is in itself a proper and logical extension of your own commands - so why not use it for conversation, as well?

I got it to work very nicely, too. Pity that it made actually ORDERING people around harder to capture, but I wasn't expecting on using THAT feature.

Personally, I don't see anything wrong with ASK/TELL... sure, when misused it can be trying and awful, but when misused, everything is awful. ASK/TELL allows the player to communicate an idea in its simplest form. Which is what the parser in IF does - communicate an idea in its simplest form. Not "read out page number one of the book with the red cover sitting on the table." Just "GET BOOK", "READ IT". Similarly, not "Jane, don't you think Max has been acting strange lately? I'm getting worried about him." Just "ASK/TELL JANE ABOUT MAX". Trying to get fancy with that is akin using adverbs - "GO NORTH SLOWLY". And we all know what a kettle of worms adverbs are, for author AND player.

I'm not saying the system is perfect, I'm just kinda surprised so many people considered it so inadequate. Anchorhead remains to me as an example of how to make ask/tell create serious conversations - I asked about what I wanted, I got told about it, I asked about something else. It was so real!

EDIT - "Kettle of worms"?! Way to mix metaphors. I blame 1am.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&start=10#p11736
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why I hate ASK ABOUT and TALK ABOUT
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2010-12-11 19:27:39

I've been thinking about this stuff lately, because I was thinking about what kind of next game I'd wanna make. I'm aware that I don't like conversation in IF either, because it always feels klunky to me, broadly because I have the same feelings as Larroquod.

I note the usual conversation commands didn't bother me much in old Infocom games, and that's probably because expectation was lower. I didn't expect the NPC to talk about anything but a handful of preprogrammed topics. Today if you take that approach, people would probably yell at you for having robotic NPCs. But to me, they're still kinda robotic, even if they can talk about 20 topics instead of 3.

People are so complicated that if it comes down to the level where I have to specify what to talk about via the parser, I'll always find 200 holes where the NPC spits out a default blocking response, that makes them feel klunky in a way I never mind when I'm dealing with the physical environment - because the trees and doors don't have personality, etc.

Obviously part of this is taste, and also what's best for any particular game's circumstances.

Blue Lacuna, the conversation there was like the nicest CYOA format you could have for conversation in text, but it still felt to me like CYOA based on specific words.

Anyway, my first idea for a new game where I could avoid the usual conversation involved having a mute player!.. probably the flunky to some other character.

Then I had a couple of less extreme ideas. They are far from whole solutions, and Larroquod may still not like 'em as they  use a tree menu, but there's a couple of different approaches. Note they're best suited for characters who are either clear on their goals or sociopathic [emote];)[/emote]

1. When conversation begins, you specify where you want it to head. Whether or not you get the desired outcome, or something like it, or nothing like it, depends on the gamestate, who you've spoken to, what you 're carrying if that's relevant - have you created the circumstances to achieve that outcome with that person? The game checks and then produces the full flow of conversation.

So you only have to do one thing when conversation starts, which is pick a broad direction from a list determined by context, but there are still different conversations possible.

2. My second idea was like CYOA but divorces you from knowing exactly what you will say.

A problem with a lot of CYOA is it's hard to be neutral about player options. Some options stick out like crazy.

"Do you wanna say 'Yes', 'No', or 'Wait, tell me about the prince of Zanzibar!'"

So I though about having a set of broad approaches to conversation, rather than specific content.

An NPC starts talking to you. You could then choose to respond 'Very positively', 'Positively', 'Neutrally', 'Negatively', 'Angrily', 'Flirtily' etc. You pick your approach then conversation takes off by gamestate and circumstance. Any conversation is prefaced by the same 'approaches' menu. What's neat is you don't have to specify any topics. They should come naturally from gamestate. Also you don't know precisely what your character will say before you say it.

This one seems especially good for sociopaths, and I was thinking of making a game where you play a sociopath, but I probably won't.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1777&start=0#p11737
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Characters without bodies?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-11 19:58:48

Does this work?

[code]Every turn: 
     Move the network backdrop to all habitable rooms;
     update backdrop positions.[/code]

[EDIT: First time I left out "backdrop" from "network backdrop" -- that's necessary, see section 8.8 of Writing with Inform.]

Probably pretty inefficient, though; you might want to do it every time a computer switches on or off instead of every turn.

Also, I'll bet that this:

[code]
Definition: a room is habitable if the computer is switched on.
Definition: A room is inhabitable if the computer is switched off.[/code]

defines a room as habitable if [i]any[/i] computer is switched on, and inhabitable if [i]any[/i] computer is switched off. Inform almost always treats "the" the same as "a"; you need some way of telling it that the computer you mean is the computer in that room. 

Another point, which doesn't affect how your code runs but might make it more readable, is that "inhabitable" means the same thing as "habitable," that is "can be inhabited. You might want "inhabitable" and "uninhabitable."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1777&start=0#p11738
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Characters without bodies?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-11 20:24:39

This seemed to work for me:

[code]Definition: a room is habitable if it contains a computer that is switched on.
Definition: A room is inhabitable if every computer in it is switched off.[/code]

By the way, this from your code didn't work for me:

[code]A computer is a kind of thing. A computer is a kind of device. A computer is in every room. A computer is usually switched on.[/code]

For one thing, I7 didn't like that computer was declared as both "kind of thing" and "kind of device." When that was out of the way, "A computer is in every room" didn't actually create a computer in every room -- only in the first room. If I read 4.14 of Writing with Inform correctly, you aren't allowed to use "every room" -- you have to make a special kind of room, thus:

[code]A computing room is a kind of room. A computer is in every computing room.[/code]

And then I think you have to declare by hand that all your rooms are computing rooms, which is annoying. 

I'm using an older build of Inform though, and also am not too experienced, so take this all with a grain of salt which is to say test it yourself.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1777&start=0#p11739
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Characters without bodies?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-12-11 20:34:37

I'm going to suggest that you jettison the backdrop approach and try Juhana's solution. The basic code for what you want to do is quite simple:

[code]The network is a thing.

After deciding the scope of the player when the location is habitable:
      place the network in scope.[/code]

(Folks are often afraid of "messing with scope," but it's really not as complex as the odd terminology suggests. What the code does is not move the network into the room with the player, but simply makes it accessible to the player [i]as if it were there[/i], with some differences. See the manual, chapters 17.27, 12.16, 12.19, 16.7 for most of the details on how this works.)

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1777&start=0#p11740
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Characters without bodies?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-11 20:53:14

[quote="ektemple"]I'm going to suggest that you jettison the backdrop approach and try Juhana's solution. The basic code for what you want to do is quite simple:

[code]The network is a thing.

After deciding the scope of the player when the location is habitable:
      place the network in scope.[/code]

(Folks are often afraid of "messing with scope," but it's really not as complex as the odd terminology suggests. What the code does is not move the network into the room with the player, but simply makes it accessible to the player [i]as if it were there[/i], with some differences. See the manual, chapters 17.27, 12.16, 12.19, 16.7 for most of the details on how this works.)

--Erik[/quote]

This sounds like the best plan to me. When I was testing the backdroppy code I noticed that the error message for talking to Q in an uninhabitable room was super-unhelpful -- the standard "You can't see any such thing." Maybe you can use scope to create a better error message, like this?

[code]After deciding the scope of the player:
      place the network in scope.
Instead of doing anything involving Q when the location is not habitable:
      say "You can only access Q through a switched-on computer."[/code]

How does that seem?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1777&start=0#p11741
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Characters without bodies?
User: orionsbelt / DateTime: 2010-12-11 21:14:50

I've combined the different solutions, but I haven't been able to test it yet.

[code]A computing room is a kind of room. Every computing room contains a computer.
[/code]

contradicts with

[code]The Personal Quarters is a computing room.

The Central Hallway is a computing room.[/code]

because it wants to put the same computer object in each room, rather than creating a different computer for each.

EDIT: Copied 4:14's example word-for-word, I think I've got it working now. Had to say "one computer" instead of "a computer."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1777&start=10#p11742
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Characters without bodies?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-12-11 21:38:28

It works in 6F95. That is, I have this:

[code]
A computer is a kind of thing.

A computing room is a kind of room. Every computing room contains a computer.

The Personal Quarters is a computing room.

The Central Hallway is a computing room.
[/code]

And that produces two anonymous computer objects.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1779&start=0#p11743
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: any way to run two instances of the IDE?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-12-11 21:41:12

It's not currently possible. I posted a feature suggestion for the ability to use an external editor:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/1220683-support-external-editor">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... nal-editor</a>

David said he's implemented it for the Windows IDE code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1777&start=10#p11744
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Characters without bodies?
User: orionsbelt / DateTime: 2010-12-11 22:05:45

So I've gotten the game to recognize Q as a part of the computer...I think. Any time I interact with Q, even in an inhabitable room, I get the message that I can only interact through a switched on computer. I defined most computers as switched on, and I still get this. Worse, I'm told the computer isn't something I can switch.
[code]A computer is a kind of device. One computer is in a computing room. A computer is usually switched on.

The network is a thing. A person called Q is part of the network.

Definition: a room is inhabitable if it contains a computer that is switched on.
Definition: A room is uninhabitable if every computer in it is switched off.

After deciding the scope of the player:
      place the network in scope.
Instead of doing something to Q when the location is uninhabitable, say "You can only access Q through a switched-on computer."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1777&start=10#p11745
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Characters without bodies?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-12-11 23:47:09

Once again, that problem doesn't arise in 6F95. I really think you should update.

(I pasted your code into a new I7 project, but also said "The computing room is a room" to make it compile.)

I run into a different problem, however, which is that most verbs (including tell and ask) give a "He isn't available" error, because Q is untouchable. (Putting something in scope only makes it visible, not touchable.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1777&start=10#p11746
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Characters without bodies?
User: orionsbelt / DateTime: 2010-12-12 00:53:17

Trouble is, I am running 6E95, since that's the version on the main site. I'm presuming I'm not missing out on a patch or something?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1656&start=30#p11747
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Write your own CYOA competition (ends December 15!)
User: Neo / DateTime: 2010-12-12 03:03:52

Thanks, Chris.

I think there are a number of factors that ensure a high level of interest is maintained in CYOA/gamebook style IF. Nostalgia is one. But, more importantly, I think gamebooks are one of the purest forms of interactive fiction, distilled down into action and choice. CYOA is also one of the most accessible forms of IF to he and she Q. Public.

I also think the form has yet to be fully explored. I believe there's a lot of scope for innovation and experimentation, and that excites me. I also believe that the line between gamebook and (Infocom-style) IF can be blurred even more than it has been.

Thanks for the link. I've added you to my own links page. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1778&start=0#p11749
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: There are a lot of people making new languages!
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-12 03:49:43

I chose to make my own CYOA-like choice-tree-matching tool (I hesitate to call it a 'new language', though it could form the core of a language, I just haven't developed a programming environment for it, besides in LambdaMOO where I do pretty much all my skunkworks projects) because I had ideas about how to absorb and feedback player choices that have never been done before, based on theories about interactivity I had never seen expressed before. (What I said about Space Invaders in the other thread is an important clue to how I see interactivity -- I have looked at early arcade history pretty in depth looking for the turn physics engines made that narrative engines never did, and I believe that turn occurred in Space Invaders, and is also strongly in evidence in Pac-Man.) And I still really haven't seen a lot of those ideas expressed. So it was for my own edification, to test out my own ideas and see if they would work. They solved the things I thought they did but they were not the magical solution to explosion of narrative complexity in interactive work that I thought they would be, as I discovered in trying to use my own tools. However, they are still good tools and they've been coming in handy the more I work in IF.

Basically, I had a dream 'vehicle' for interactive video and I built the engine for it — I still don't really have a chassis though: it was to be just interactive video but now it is something much weirder and it may eventually involve using Parchment as just one element of a larger web design. The important thing is, the new hypothesis solves many problems I had with the first hypothesis, and it's interesting to me and is leading me forward artistically. It's one of those 'I have to chase this' things.

I started working on the concepts around 1999/2000. Took a break from employment etc. to build something big in earnest during 2002-2003. Tried my video project in late '03/'04, then that failed and I was rather destitute so the next 3 or 4 years were basically used up trying to get back on my feet and 'make it again in the city'.

Anyway, circumstances have brought me full circle and now I am in building mode again, so now is the time when another *huge* piece is getting added to my code monstrosity.

I wouldn't portray it as 'I am dedicated to designing a general-purpose CYOA scripting language'. More accurate would be 'A targeted CYOA scripting language is one of the tools I've created for my ongoing hobby/passion of coming up with interactive fiction design theories and attempting to implement them.' (Before I discovered Inform I had already written my own parser system and text adventure design language -- you would design it in HyperCard and then it would spit out C++-compilable code — this was in around '95, but it died with HyperCard unfortunately. Besides, Inform quickly won me over from my own system as soon as I read the manual.) There are other tools in the same position: there is a whole web page design/blogging platform system I've built out of LambdaMOO; tools for auto-tracing linear narratives visually based on simple question-answer inputs (see [url=http://extratemporal.blogspot.com/2010/10/shadowy-figure-watches-break-up-club.html]here[/url] and [url=http://extratemporal.blogspot.com/2009/06/battlestar-galactica-miniseries-ntwined.html]here[/url]) and really all sorts of stuff all relating to tracing choice, that piqued my fancy, and that I have plans to release. Some of the tools have been duplicated though by others in the interim, which is also cool because it confirms I'm in touch with the zeitgeist of people who can glimpse all the artistic possibilities that don't quite exist yet in this medium, and thus I am not actually insane and/or driven by imaginary entities. 87

Because thinking about art and interactivity IS what drives almost everything about me -- there is incredible untapped juice there and I am (we are) one of the few people on the planet who really perceive it. That's an extraordinary thing for we few who are moved to systematising by the crossover between stories and games.

In one sense, I am one of these people with a ton of half finished projects. In another sense, few of them are *abandoned* (an important distinction, e.g. Tolkien's process, has anyone read up on it? Fascinating) and some of the projects have been coming together lately into things greater than the sum of the parts. It's an exciting time for me! Actually more than a decade of work is coming into play lately in my art.

I'll find out what the universe has in store for my little collection of polished stones eventually. Good luck with your own codepile. If you are very focused about it you will probably advance it much quicker than I do any individual thing. 8)

There are a lot of different reasons and motivations why someone might want to do this kind of stuff.

Paul.

P.S. Thanks for asking! XD

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&start=10#p11750
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why I hate ASK ABOUT and TALK ABOUT
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-12 05:03:09

[quote="emshort"]I'd say "the sort of control you should have" is control that focuses the player on what matters to this game. Nothing in a game is ever interactive in all the ways real life is interactive; by picking the type of interactivity you want to make available, you're establishing something about the kind of story that can happen.[/quote]
This is an excellent observation that I agree with wholeheartedly. Arguments to the effect of 'But my character should be able to decide that because logicially it should be in his control' are rarely persuasive to me, because I have never seen a game where you can control everything the character 'should' control. The designer of a game chooses to make some subset (and it is *always* a subset) of possible choices available to the player. This decision on the part of a designer is an artistic decision — IMO it is not really susceptible to formal logic of what the player 'should' control. It sounds like we agree on that point but simply disagree on other factors that constrain those decisions on the part of the designer -- like what kind of story you want to tell, which is fair enough as far as it goes. 

[quote="emshort"]Sometimes you want the player to focus on tone (Varicella, Forever Always); sometimes on getting clues and exploring information (lots of games, but to pick a great one: Make It Good). Sometimes it's about picking from the limited set of things that a well-defined protagonist would do in this situation (Rameses). 

I think the kind of interaction you describe is appropriate only for a subset of the kinds of stories I would like to tell. Specifically: it works for a strongly defined protagonist and strongly defined NPCs, within a small, dense setting where many or most actions will carry some kind of emotional resonance, and where there is a single definite goal that the protagonist is working towards. Great for Violet. Great for other one-room games, or games that are highly railroaded through a linear story and sequence of locations (as much of Pacian's work is).

It's not so great for mysteries. It gets in the way if you want the protagonist to be more freely defined by the player's actions. It's nearly impossible to pull off in a large open world, or in places where you're giving the player major choices about what to accomplish. [/quote]
I do think though that you are vastly underestimating, above, what can be achieved storywise without directly suggesting topics of conversation. You are restricting it to very narrow categories but I perceive way more possibilities than that. Possibilities that I can only really 'prove' by demonstrating them, so that's where I'll put my efforts. Mistake I used to make: letting my passion for debating the issues wander into the territory of explaining all my ideas and letting the juice run out of them that way, rather than saving that motivational juice for implementation. So I'm going to try to avoid that this time and leave myself in a state here in this thread of 'not having proved it yet' -- which is a good state to be in, artistically. 8)

[quote="emshort"]And, I would argue, it rarely works in cases where the protagonist's *main focus and goal* is to do something with or to an NPC. You can have games where the protagonist is doing something else (like, say, trying to finish a paper, or rescue his lover from a hanging) where an NPC is strongly motivated to care about what you're doing or how you're doing it. But if the whole point of the scene, from the protagonist's point of view, is to talk to that NPC? It's going to feel odd, or at least extremely stylized, if you're only allowed to do it indirectly. "You're a politician. Convince this group of rich donors to back you. P.S.: You may only achieve this by physically manipulating the contents of the room."[/quote]
That politician game sounds perfectly awful to me, even without the indirect manipulation, lol. BTW portraying what I'm advocating as simply manipulating the contents of the room to achieve character effects, is mostly technically accurate (if you discount timers and daemons, etc.) but quite reductive. To the extent that 'only by physically manipulating the contents' is pejorative, it would have to turn on conflating the abstract with the specific. But the 'object' and the 'room' we're talking about here are just abstract representation of the idea of containment, representations that you can actually use for anything that involves containment, not just literal objects in literal rooms. Which is another avenue I'm exploring in my first (small) game. So, I'm glad you qualified with 'rarely'… because in my conception there is nothing really 'only' about manipulating objects in rooms: that IS the IF language and what I believe is the best scaffold for accessing almost all effects, including most dialogue.

Everything is an abstract representation already, so adding a 'topic' level abstraction is abstracting away from the room abstraction. I would prefer to bend and twist the room abstraction than to go there.

Think about what DW Griffiths achieved by introducing the world to the time-eliding cut (in film). That technique made no sense to many at the time, and an argument could well have been made that cuts are OK for a certain narrow set of action stories, but for elaborate character mysteries, one needs to avoid the cut and let the conversation play out more like a stage play. They perceived back then that a certain tool was REQUIRED for a certain type of narrative job, because it makes a logical sense of its own and seems persuasive, but it turned out that logic wasn't *necessary* at all because it mistook what is the key factor to enjoying and getting story value out of subtle character interaction, and that factor just [i]isn't[/i] the accurate passage of time. What is the [i]enjoyment[/i] factor? That's the only key question, I believe, not what seems formally logical according to the conventions of the medium.

It's not a perfect analogy, to be sure (one can't involve player agency in it for example because there is none in film) but I think the state we are in with IF is still nowhere near what it could be mostly due to leftover assumptions from the birth of the form, and I believe the ask/tell conventions are one of those leftovers. This has all happened before, in film and other media. (Remember how all the early novels were written like discovered diaries? Because the authors were worried that audience needed an explanation for why are they reading this. Nobody worries about that anymore. I can envision a day when nobody will worry anymore about whether they 'should' be able to control individual conversation topics in IF.) So that's just my POV, I'm characterising it how I see it here, I realise that this analogy is flawed and doesn't prove anything and is not really a killer debating point.

But there are always great logical arguments for keeping things that don't really *work*. That's why in all the early movies we are watching people get into cars, drive cars, and then get out of cars -- people thought you couldn't tell a story that involved driving around without showing it. Audiences would get irritable if they weren't shown things that are really, pointless to be seen, anyway. Convention is just that powerful. That's how I feel about making conversation topic choices in a game, these are almost always pointless choices and thus shouldn't be available to me. YMMV as of course it obviously does.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&start=10#p11751
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why I hate ASK ABOUT and TALK ABOUT
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-12 05:53:01

[quote="katz"]I spent ages programming every character in [i]Aurora[/i] to respond when asked about every other character, so I may have a vested interest.  Anyway:[/quote]
I should take this opportunity to note that several people debating this here with me have spent a lot of time doing exactly that sort of thing, and in no way do I intend to denigrate the value and artistry of what they've achieved. For me this is a debate about the future of a certain form of interaction — not a passing of judgement on anyone and everyone who has put time into that form in the past. The flaws I perceive are in the form, and not mostly in the artists. So their efforts are NOT diminished by my view, and of course what they've created will always be an important part of IF history, full-stop.

[quote="katz"][quote]I get an inward double-groan when I see the 'think about' command. Usually though it hasn't been a mandatory part of the puzzle so I've been able to just avoid going there.[/quote]
What about the 'hint' command?  Any game that isn't utterly self-explanatory needs some way to let the player know what to do next; the trick is making it not break immersion.  So why not ask other people what to do next?  It beats having a metagame hint command, IMO.[/quote]
I prefer a help menu, personally. I am not much of a stickler for not breaking immersion. I see the hint menu as of a piece with the window and the scrollbars. Is it breaking immersion for the player to say, maximise the window, mid-game? Should we, therefore, prevent it? There is nothing pure here which is made impure by a hint menu; that level of immersion just doesn't exist to be broken, IMO. But I take your point -- choosing a topic can be a useful in-continuity way to get a hint -- and I agree.

[quote="katz"][quote]I realise that it is possible (now, increasingly common) to construct puzzles that *require* extending the player's agency that far — I just don't prefer those kinds of puzzles.[/quote]

I can think of situations--not even necessarily puzzles--where you might want to control who you do or don't say something to.  What if the NPCs' motives are unknown and you don't know who to trust?  >TELL IRIS NETWORK ABOUT DOMZ may return a very different result from >TELL ALPHA SECTIONS ABOUT DOMZ.

In that situation, though, you want the third option of actively misleading the people you don't trust.  Has anyone written a game where there's a command for telling the truth and a command for lying?  Because that would be awesome![/quote]
Not that I know of. And though this thread will last forever if it becomes 'Lots of people suggest scenarios that require ASK/TELL and then Paul says whether he thinks they really do or not', I'd point out in your scenario that asking people directly about other people is usually the worst way to find out if you can trust them or not. In real life, they tell you whatever you want to hear, and then their actions speak louder than their words. So, if I were to design your situation such that untrustworthiness is revealed through a failed attempt at cooperation with an NPC on an actual physical task, rather than improbably through a clumsy form of interrogation, it would actually be more true to life, wouldn't it? And it would fulfill, 'Show, don't tell.'

But anyway I am not trying to argue that every situation is reducible to action in this way. There are some situations which aren't, I admit this, so I don't really need counterexamples because I know they do exist — I just don't think the above is one of them. And, I would argue, there are a fair bit fewer of them than people tend to assume…

[quote="katz"][quote]It doesn't actually feel like you are half of an interesting conversation, so that's not a win.[/quote]
It can feel that way if one command triggers a long conversation.

Yes, a single command triggering a long conversation may seem no better than a long conversation triggering automatically, but there's a key difference:  You can choose not to have the conversation.  If you're trying to figure out how to get into the back room of the bar and all the bar patrons keep talking to you, it could get annoying; you could miss important stuff skimming to get back to the puzzle you were working on; it even breaks character, because your character should be focusing on the puzzle too.[/quote]
Note that 'triggered automatically' is not the alternative I'm proposing. I'm proposing 'triggered indirectly by relevant player choices which are not suggested topic headings'. Triggering automatically (which I read as 'according to some timer or predetermined schedule') is just one of a myriad of ways of fitting that bill. Not usually the best one, either.

As for choosing not to have the conversation, yeah, you're right about that. That's why I said I am bit 'softer' on things like 'talk TO' or 'greet' — so that it is easier to choose not to have the conversation at all. That I can see a lot of use for. But then again, you could just not examine or pick up the objects that the other character finds interesting, so then he/she wouldn't see you as a kindred spirit or whatever and wouldn't follow you out of the room, and thus you wouldn't be having continued conversations with them — and that for me would work just as well, as one 'shared-object' technique among many.

What I want is to focus the player not on, 'what's the magic password for me to say to this character' and to focus the player more on, 'Who is this person and what do they value in this environment that we share? How can we connect through this environment.' Because in IF the environment IS the story, so mediating everything through that is to me a big strength and not a weakness needing redress through a specific conversational object-bypass system, implementing, essentially, a whole other level of containment (people 'contain' topics the way rooms contains objects), when there is a perfectly good containment system already there if you just ply it liberally enough. But the more you ply it [i]quite[/i] liberally the better it works. I don't want to give examples — I want people to play my examples, say 4-6 months from now and such. The training game I am writing encapsulates a lot of these ideas: I only intended to do it to learn Inform 7 (big task, requires small test game), but my ideas could not be suppressed — they're all popping up in there, one by one. 87

However, the game is not ballooning in size — on that I'm maintaining discipline, so far. There will be four puzzles, two object-based, two more about manipulated what other characters decide. So hopefully there will be a nice range in there. There is no specific genre, it's mostly slice-of-life-with-a-strong-narrative-throughline in the way it feels to play (well, there is a little sci-fi surprise.) Anyway, I can't prove it all in one short game, but I couldn't keep my crazy ideas out of the game, either, and remain motivated — so this is what has me thinking about all this stuff, all over again, of late.

I'm actually glad I haven't really convinced anyone. XD

And, ye gods, I am all typed out. I'll look at the rest of the responses later and try to be more succinct in reply, I promise. 8)

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1767&start=0#p11752
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: I can't play my game, PLEASE HELP
User: Iwillremember / DateTime: 2010-12-12 11:44:04

Sorry, forgot to mention I'm on Windows Vista.

I don't know what frotz I have.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1656&start=30#p11753
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Write your own CYOA competition (ends December 15!)
User: adventurechris / DateTime: 2010-12-12 13:03:38

@Neo: I suspect you're right, we've only seen the start of ways to create interactive stories.

By the way, I started a more focused discussion [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1778&p=11749]here[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1780&start=0#p11754
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Help creating a virtual patient
User: jwaxman / DateTime: 2010-12-12 13:05:58

Hi all:

I'm an eye doc trying to use Inform 7 to create scenarios for docs in training. 
The plan is to create a bunch of patients with acute eye problems.
I have a bit of programming experience but I'm new to interactive fiction (except as a player of Infocom games).

I'd like some advice about how to proceed with a number of things.
I don't generally have a problem with messing around until I find something that works but I'd like to do things the "Inform way" if I can. I really have looked over the documentation. 

More details about the concept.
This will probably be a one room story.
The setting is an exam room in an emergency dept.
There's a patient there.
She's come in because she's lost vision in one of her eyes.
I'd like the player to be able 
- to ask her questions
- then proceed to examine her
- then proceed to order appropriate tests
- then to prescribe treatment

I've got a few things working.
I need help with some others.

Starting with the history, I want the player to be able to ask the patient questions about a number of things.
I understand that I can simply have a bunch of 
[code]Instead of asking Mable Barnett about "weight loss":
  say "Actually my clothes have been a little looser lately."[/code]
kinds of statements.
I could also create a table of topics and replies.
[code]topic	reply	points
"headache"	"'Well, now that you mention it. I have had a headache over the last few weeks."	1
"weight loss"	"'Actually my clothes have been a little looser lately."	1
"her foot"	"I can't see from my right eye. Why in the world are you asking me about my feet?"	0[/code]
That will also give me the ability to give the player points when they ask relevant questions.
When they accumulate enough points I'll let them go on to the exam.

What's the best way to deal with all of the sensible synonyms?
Ask Mable about weight loss? weight? her weight?
Ask Mable about her feet? feet? foot? her right foot?
Is this going to be a matter of an endless number of understand statements?

etc.  

Thanks
Jake

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1767&start=0#p11755
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: I can't play my game, PLEASE HELP
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-12-12 13:27:56

You're not trying to use the "frotz.exe" that's included in the "Interpreters" sub-directory of your Inform 7 install, are you? If so that's not something you can do: that executable is part of Inform 7 and is used by the front-end to run the Game tab: it's not useable on its own.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1781&start=0#p11756
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: More help on the virtual patient
User: jwaxman / DateTime: 2010-12-12 14:52:05

When trying
[code]
 Instead of examining a topic listed in the Table of normal exam findings:
     say "[reply entry][paragraph break]";
  
 Table of normal exam findings
 topic	reply
 "ears" or "hearing"	"Good old wnl"
 "nose"	"Looks like a nose"
 "throat"	"Aaaahhhhhh"
 "stomach" or "abdomen"	"Non tender/non distended."
[/code]
I get the following error
[quote]Problem. You wrote 'Instead of examining a topic listed in the Table of normal exam findings'  , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is 'examining a topic listed in the Table of normal exam findings'. But that did not make sense as a description of an action. I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook.[/quote]
Is examining not allowed with topics in tables?
Is there a way around it?

Thanks
Jake

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&start=10#p11757
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why I hate ASK ABOUT and TALK ABOUT
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-12-12 15:03:56

I would have defined "automatically" as "happening without the player giving a command for it to happen."  If the door closes and locks behind you, that's automatic, no?

(I know I'm sounding rather negative to your concept; there's no reason it couldn't work and experimenting with very conventional parts of the game experience is a good thing, but I really only see this going two ways:  A game where the dialogue is just flavor text of no importance, and a game full of frustration as conversations trigger when you don't want them and refuse to trigger when you do want them.  But yes, go ahead and give us a demo and then we'll see.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1782&start=0#p11758
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Extensions and Unlisting Rules
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-12-12 15:19:00

I'm not very familiar with extension-writing conventions, but it seems to me that unlisting rules should be avoided, because it may cause large, unexpected changes to the parts of the game that the extension doesn't cover.  Is this so?

I'm writing an extension for various animals, and I've run into two situations that seem iffy:

First, you should be able to give toys and treats to your pets, but that would require unlisting the block giving rule.

Second, you should be able to pick up small animals like cats, but that would require unlisting the can't take other people rule.

The latter is simple enough; define certain animals as "small" and say you can only take small animals; this works because the game is unlikely to have already replaced the can't take other people rule with its own variant.  But it's perfectly likely that a game has already replaced the block giving rule with its own algorithm for whether people accept gifts or not and you don't want to wipe that out with your own rule.

How do people typically handle modifying rules in extensions?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1782&start=0#p11759
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Extensions and Unlisting Rules
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-12-12 15:49:50

I think you're definitely right that your extension should include both giving and taking behavior. I would recommend that you replace the [i]block giving[/i] and [i]can't take other people[/i] rules with your own variants that allow interaction with animals, while keeping the old behavior for everything else. Explain in your documentation what your users will need to do to delist your variant. This will be only a very minor annoyance--if that--since authors will be able to use their own logic completely intact, only needing to change the name of the rule they delist to the name of your new rule.

An example:

[code]The block giving to all but animals rule is listed instead of the block giving rule in the check giving it to rulebook.

Check an actor giving something to (this is the block giving to all but animals rule):
	unless the second noun is an animal:
		stop the action with library message giving it to action number 3 for the second noun.[/code]

Incidentally, another solution would be to delist nothing, and to do something like this instead:

[code]Check an actor giving something to an animal:
	ignore the block giving rule. [/code]

This by far the easiest way to do it, but the [i]ignore...rule[/i] phrase is deprecated. (To my mind, this is an unfortunate byproduct of the removal of procedural rules. I don't think that the ignore phrase actually makes use of the procedural rules machinery, but even if it does, Ron Newcomb has shown that it isn't necessary to use anything to do with procedural rules in order to selectively and dynamically delist rules. OK, end of rant.)

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&start=20#p11760
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why I hate ASK ABOUT and TALK ABOUT
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-12-12 16:08:30

For what it's worth, I don't want to focus the player on "'what's the magic password for me to say to this character'" either (though I realize that that is the experience some players have had with my work). 

What I want them to think about is "what in the range of conversation here is important and interesting? what am I interested in digging into more?" This implies a kind of conversational space that isn't purely physical, and invites the player to explore it in a similar way. 

Ideally, actions that will significantly affect the NPC's state are described in a way that clues the player in about that.

[quote="Laroquod"]
[quote="emshort"]It's not so great for mysteries. It gets in the way if you want the protagonist to be more freely defined by the player's actions. It's nearly impossible to pull off in a large open world, or in places where you're giving the player major choices about what to accomplish. [/quote]
I do think though that you are vastly underestimating, above, what can be achieved storywise without directly suggesting topics of conversation. You are restricting it to very narrow categories but I perceive way more possibilities than that.[/quote] 

What I was arguing wasn't "you can't do these things without suggesting specific conversation topics"; what I was arguing was "you can't do these things purely through environmental cluing."  I actually do think there's a lot of interesting stuff one can do by specifying a speech act (INSULT DOUG, BUY A COW, etc.), or by breaking down conversation in some completely other way ([url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/10/08/gdc-marleigh-norton-conversation-interfaces/]choose when to interrupt someone[/url], [url=http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2009/01/column_homer_in_silicon_improv.php]what emotional tone to set[/url], [url=http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2009/09/column_homer_in_silicon_achill.php]which of several debating tactics to use next[/url]).

The reason I think your environmental method is limited is that it represents a second-order kind of agency. It requires the game to draw conclusions about what I mean when I set the teddy bear on fire or rip a photograph in half or lay the polished rock on top of the gravestone... or what I mean by glancing at a poster or reading a book or dropping a box of chocolates. That's doable enough when the story is very well defined. It's a lot harder when the story can branch or the protagonist is making significant choices or is in an unknown knowledge state. (Mysteries are hard exactly because the game is trying to assess what the player knows and give ways to translate that back into in-game actions... without providing overly obvious hints about what to do next. There are games that belong to the literary genre of mystery that don't do this -- Death Off the Cuff is an obvious example -- but that's because the player is not being asked to deduce anything himself.) 

So the more things a protagonist *could* reasonably be doing or thinking in this situation, the more explicit the connection needs to be between the player's action and the protagonist's intent. Otherwise, the player is thrashing around with minimal control.

[b]Edited to add, especially since it drives me nuts when other people say categorically that something is impossible in interactive stories[/b]: when I say "I think you can't do X," I'd be happy to be proven wrong by example. But I mean that I don't see a good way of doing it. If I were confronted with the design challenge of writing a game that was all about communication by environmental interaction, I would constrain it pretty sharply in the ways I described in order to make it work.

[quote="Laroquod"]Possibilities that I can only really 'prove' by demonstrating them, so that's where I'll put my efforts. Mistake I used to make: letting my passion for debating the issues wander into the territory of explaining all my ideas and letting the juice run out of them that way, rather than saving that motivational juice for implementation. So I'm going to try to avoid that this time and leave myself in a state here in this thread of 'not having proved it yet' -- which is a good state to be in, artistically. 8)[/quote]

Yeah, I'm all for that. Good luck!

[quote="Laroquod"]So, I'm glad you qualified with 'rarely'… because in my conception there is nothing really 'only' about manipulating objects in rooms: that IS the IF language and what I believe is the best scaffold for accessing almost all effects, including most dialogue.[/quote]

See, that's the part that I personally would identify as IF's unhelpful holdover from an earlier era: the relentless trivial physicality, the obsession with open and closed boxes, with doors and buttons and lights. We have gradually moved away from some of that, and light source puzzles (for instance) are much less common than they used to be. 

But I do think it would help if our conventions included more allowance for abstract or impressionistic treatments of setting (yes, this room is an office; no, I didn't implement the desk, because it's not at all important and the player's attention is meant to be elsewhere); and more willingness to move the action to a partly-abstracted sphere. The room only gets you so far.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1782&start=0#p11761
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Extensions and Unlisting Rules
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-12-12 17:21:21

[quote]The block giving to all but animals rule is listed instead of the block giving rule in the check giving it to rulebook.[/quote]

Won't this lead to a problem if the game has its own alternate giving rules, also listed in place of the block giving rule?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1782&start=0#p11762
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Extensions and Unlisting Rules
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-12-12 18:12:14

I don't think that's a big deal. If you explain in your documentation what you've done, the author can modify her existing rule as needed to accomodate your logic. Any author that can write her own blocking rule can figure out how to make her code work with yours.

This is really your only avenue, since the library requires that you actively hack it to provide interesting behavior. If you hack the library in one way and an author hacks it in another, those hacks simply have to be reconciled, and that reconciliation is ultimately the author's responsibility. 

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1620&start=10#p11763
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Zarf unveils mad plan to do IF full-time
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-12-12 18:34:42

What fascinates me about this announcement is the possibility of porting the game to the Kindle, mentioned on the Kickstarter page.  If the game can be ported to the Kindle, that will allow people who do not own iPhones to play it on their computers, because Amazon has released free Kindle software for both Windows and Mac that will display Kindle ebooks.  Assuming [i]Hadean Lands[/i] would work as well with the desktop Kindle software as with a hardware Kindle, this seems like a good solution to me.  Also, I'm fascinated with the prospect of IF going mainstream through ebook technologies!  I'd love to be able to by IF by Andrew Plotkin from Amazon.com.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1783&start=0#p11764
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: No images in the Win IDE itself
User: Ghantu / DateTime: 2010-12-12 19:14:48

Hey, I'm having an issue with the Inform 7 IDE itself: it seems images aren't showing up. This is the Windows build, and I'm running Vista 64 and the build is (27th October 2010; 6F95).

I'm guessing it's happening in some way because I didn't install it in the default location: I typically keep my installed programs and games and such on a separate partition from Windows itself, so it's in "D:\Programs\Inform 7" instead of the usual spot. The places where there are images show up as the IE "red X" for a missing file, and when I right-click and get properties on them, it looks like the URL is "inform:/map_icons/ew_spacer.png", for example.

This doesn't seem to be happening with all images: the toolbar images for the go button etc are there, as are the little stars next to the examples in the documentation, but nothing on Errors:Problems page shows up, nor does anything on the Index tab. The Skein seems fine though.

Any idea? Other than reinstalling in the default location...

[size=85][Edit: grammar][/size]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1781&start=0#p11765
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More help on the virtual patient
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-12-12 19:41:53

The built-in examining action is for use with objects, not topics. But this doesn't mean that your players can't use examine; if you designate a new action that works with topics, you'll be good to go:

[code]Exam Room is a room.

Topic-examining is an action applying to one topic. Understand "examine [text]" or "x [text]" as topic-examining.

Instead of topic-examining a topic listed in the Table of normal exam findings:
	say "[reply entry][paragraph break]";

Instead of topic-examining:
	say "I didn't understand what you were trying to examine."
  
 Table of normal exam findings
 topic	reply
 "ears" or "hearing"	"Good old wnl"
 "nose"	"Looks like a nose"
 "throat"	"Aaaahhhhhh"
 "stomach" or "abdomen"	"Non tender/non distended."[/code]

Depending on how fully featured you want your simulation to be, though, you might want to consider implementing the world with objects rather than topics; they are far more flexible.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1780&start=0#p11766
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help creating a virtual patient
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-12-12 19:48:49

[quote="jwaxman"]What's the best way to deal with all of the sensible synonyms?
Ask Mable about weight loss? weight? her weight?
Ask Mable about her feet? feet? foot? her right foot?
Is this going to be a matter of an endless number of understand statements?
[/quote]

You can provide the options uses slashes and/or "or", e.g.:

topic
"weight" or "her weight" or "weight loss" or "her weight loss"
"her feet/foot" or "feet/foot" or "her right foot" or "her left foot"
etc.

You can get more flexible parsing by using objects rather than topics--see Eric Eve's conversation extensions (you probably would need only the most basic configuration).

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1781&start=0#p11767
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More help on the virtual patient
User: jwaxman / DateTime: 2010-12-12 19:52:19

Many thanks.
I was just getting to the point of understanding that topics were not objects.
I'd have never figured out how to get around it.

I see your point about maintaining flexibility by working with objects though.
Is there a way to use tables with objects?
I have a lot of body parts to come up with short descriptions for.
Many of the body parts have reasonable synonyms. (stomach, abdomen for example)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1620&start=10#p11768
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Zarf unveils mad plan to do IF full-time
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-12-12 20:04:17

Ah, no. I'm afraid that you've misinterpreted that. Amazon has released software to read Kindle *e-books* on other platforms. Kindle *applications* are (or will be) a different thing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&start=20#p11769
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why I hate ASK ABOUT and TALK ABOUT
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-12 20:39:24

This is a nice discussion. I'd like to see as many different approaches as possible tried, but in general I like conversational approaches that give me agency -- so long as it's done well, which is of course the trick. I've shared Paul's frustration with "What topic do I need to mention to advance the game state?", but I think my problem there is not with the topic-based conversation system, but with the idea that the purpose of the conversation is to advance the game state. 

That's my experience with a couple of different conversation systems and kinds of game. What felt like a lack of agency wasn't being able to select only from a menu or from the topics that had been introduced, it was when I couldn't use the options to control the PC the way I wanted. And that was heavily correlated with having a particular thing I wanted to do in the conversation, rather than using the conversation to roleplay. 

So In Galatea (topic-based and Best of Three (multiple-choice), I feel like conversation usually flows smoothly (sometimes I dead-end in Galatea, but there's usually a way to restart it). But in Alabaster (multiple-choice) and the comp version of Death off the Cuff (basically topic-based), I felt like I lost control over the PC; sometimes I was being pulled along behind the PC and sometimes I was trying to drag him with me. Which is to say that sometimes the PC would make leaps that I hadn't seen yet, and sometimes I would have figured something out and couldn't figure out how to get the PC onto that topic. And I think that the difference is that the latter two are both mysteries, in their way, where it's natural to try and push the conversation to a particular outcome. You're trying to find out what's going on and master the conversation. 

Whereas in the other two games the interaction with the NPC is the point. It was OK in Best of Three when the conversation menu revealed something I didn't know about the PC, because I didn't feel like those were things I was supposed to figure out or that I'd missed out on something by doing it; and in Galatea I was usually serving as a sounding board for her, so the PC tended not to blurt out something I didn't want. (Well, often he was an ass when I didn't want him to be. But that was part of the point.) In fact the bumpiest experiences I've had with those games have been when I was trying to push them to a particular outcome. 

Now I'd really like to see more done with taking different tones, though that seems like something that wouldn't be easy without a multiple-choice inference. And I really like the idea of choosing an outcome for the conversation, and then having it spool out turn by turn; maybe you could have different choices for tones and strategies within it. Though that could turn into a game of "pick the right choice to bring about your preferred outcome." Having conversation develop from your actions organically and automatically (in katz's sense, where it happens when you do a certain thing) seems like a nice idea, but I don't know if it'd work where NPC interaction is the main point; it seems like it works best where the NPC is commenting on what you're task, as in A Day For Fresh Sushi. It's interesting that Pacian brought up Walker and Silhouette as an example of this, because I would've thought of it as a keyword/topic-driven system; actually it's got all three kinds of conversation. The first scene has keywords (some of which trigger actions and accompanying conversation, some of which are conversation topics), the interrogation lets you pick the tone from a multiple-choice menu, and other scenes, especially the big climax, have conversation triggered by other actions. 

And while I was typing this I started [url=http://www.archimedes.plus.com/shaggydog/flaws.html]Jon Ingold's new multiple-choice story[/url], whose first set of options is "Yes/No/Tell the Truth/Lie."

[quote="emshort"][quote="Laroquod"]So, I'm glad you qualified with 'rarely'… because in my conception there is nothing really 'only' about manipulating objects in rooms: that IS the IF language and what I believe is the best scaffold for accessing almost all effects, including most dialogue.[/quote]

See, that's the part that I personally would identify as IF's unhelpful holdover from an earlier era: the relentless trivial physicality, the obsession with open and closed boxes, with doors and buttons and lights. We have gradually moved away from some of that, and light source puzzles (for instance) are much less common than they used to be. 

But I do think it would help if our conventions included more allowance for abstract or impressionistic treatments of setting (yes, this room is an office; no, I didn't implement the desk, because it's not at all important and the player's attention is meant to be elsewhere); and more willingness to move the action to a partly-abstracted sphere. The room only gets you so far.[/quote]

Yes, yes, yes. Unfortunately a lot of this is pretty thoroughly baked into the world model of I7 at least. One promise of multiple-choice/keyword systems is that they let you do things at a more abstract level, though there are tradeoffs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&start=20#p11770
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why I hate ASK ABOUT and TALK ABOUT
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-12-12 20:41:42

@Paul:  I would say that "in IF the environment is the story," is precisely one of those "leftover assumptions from the birth of the form."  While we may look askance at the CYOA and hypertext communities' lack of mechanical complexity, they look askance at our obsession with setting.  So while I empathize with your "simplify, simplify" impulse, I'm suspect of its direction:  even if your WIP proves its concept swimmingly, it may be regressive, not progressive.

I think about the dialogue-by-inches thing a lot.  (Thanks for the term.)  My WIP has a fancy-pants parser, but still, the player enters input text, not prose.  The command prompt is changed so the whole construction looks exactly like a sentence.  But still, it's not prose.  So I'm concerned about unintended incidental characterization as well as the quality of the whole WIP, being funneled through parser-mouth that way.

(My direct opinion on ASK/TELL:  guess-the-noun is worse than for Examine since there's no room description to mine for possibilities, but, there's nothing wrong with the default ASK/TELL response be a (possibly in-world) TOPICS command.)

[quote](choose when to interrupt someone,[/quote]
(Noticing that link points to i-f rather than I-F, there's this awesome Inform 7 extension called Command Prompt On Cue, and I really must petition Merk for a horn-tooting smiley.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1778&start=0#p11771
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: There are a lot of people making new languages!
User: Neo / DateTime: 2010-12-12 22:37:12

While I completely dig where Laraquod is coming from, especially given my background in design and my own dabbles with ‘art’, the ‘Plug-and-Play Gamebook’ template derived from a much more pragmatic set of events.

When I first (re)discovered interactive fiction almost a year ago, I wanted to jump in and write something with Inform 7. But from everything I’d seen, writing an IF game is a big undertaking. So, instead, I thought I would get used to the language by creating a CYOA-style gamebook using one of the two extensions that appear on the Inform 7 site ([url]http://inform7.com/extensions/adaptive-prose/#Non-standard_User_Interfaces[/url]). I figured if anything was going to be simple for a complete beginner to achieve in Inform 7, then this would be it.

As it turned out, both Mark Tilford’s “Simple CYOA” extension and Edward Griffiths’ “Adventure Book” extension baffled me no end. I eventually cobbled together a working version of Admiral Jota’s Grunk and Cheese, but it didn’t work the way I wanted it to.

For some time I left any notion behind of being able to code using Inform 7, then I picked up Aaron Reed’s book. The book is not designed for beginners (few would make it through chapter four without being moderately confused, and I confess to giving up on the book by the half-way mark), but reading about Tables inspired me to reconsider my gamebook idea.

As a community, we’ve been talking about how we can best teach people to play interactive fiction. We’ve also discussed the idea of being able to entice writers (who aren’t coders) to collaborate and bring their creative skills to the genre.

The gamebook template was an attempt to provide a tool that can do both. (And also my first attempt at writing anything substantial in Inform 7!)

Because the gamebooks use z code, they can be played using IF interpreters. This means they can be played across a huge number of platforms, including the iPhone, desktop, online, etc. And this should get people downloading and experimenting with IF terps some more, becoming familiar with the way they work. To this end, the restore, save and restart commands, and use of the keyboard, all work the same way as standard IF. The game examples I put out with the beta also use a lot of conventional IF commands as the links between pages. Hopefully, quite subliminally, players will get used to command conventions such as “enter barn” or “get wumplet”. The better the link between the IF command and what they’re being used to do in a gamebook, the more the IF convention becomes second nature to the gamebook player.

Then there’s the coding side of things. By providing an option to either collaborate with a coder (and directing said authors towards the intfiction.org site) or, better yet, installing and dabbling with Inform 7 themselves, people who may not have considered writing interactive fiction using authoring software are suddenly familiarizing themselves with the program and some of the features.

Add to all of that what I wrote in my blog post ([url]http://www.inthecompanyofgrues.com/?p=228[/url]) and my belief that the gamebook form still has plenty of untapped potential, and hopefully that answers at least a few of your questions…

[emote]:)[/emote]

Oh, and I totally agree with Paul... I don't think I'd call what I'm doing a "language". Maybe a "system" or a "tool"?

So, Chris... How about you? What was your background/intent? What's your ultimate goal? You mentioned that you're new to the scene...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&start=20#p11772
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why I hate ASK ABOUT and TALK ABOUT
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2010-12-12 23:20:18

While I can't say whether Ask About / Tell About is the best interface, I think it works well in some situations. Notably, I've enjoyed Murder Mystery stories that use this interface; perhaps that's owing to the premise that has the player operating as a detective where there are certain expected lines of questioning.  Infocom's The Witness comes to mind, which was quite limited given the state-of-the-art from 1983.  More recently, Chris Huang's "An Act of Murder" does a good job with this interface.

Not surprisingly, I'm using Ask About / Tell About for my first IF story which is of the same genre.  I'm totally open to suggestions on how to best use this style of dialog to make it work well within the constraints etc.

--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1783&start=0#p11773
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: No images in the Win IDE itself
User: StJohnLimbo / DateTime: 2010-12-13 00:53:49

Hmmm... I didn't install Inform in the default location, either, but all the images show up correctly for me. I'm on Windows XP, 32 bit -- so maybe Vista 64 has something to do with it? My path is E:\IF\Inform\Inform7, and the images are in the Documentation subdirectory.

If nobody else answers here in the course of the day, try contacting David Kinder, the Windows IDE programmer, directly. His email address is listed in the first paragraph of the bug report form "BugReport.txt" in the Inform directory.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1784&start=0#p11774
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Doing something other than asking
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-12-13 02:12:24

So if I try to restrict the list of possible actions, like so:

[code]Instead of doing something other than looking, asking, or telling:
say "That action is not needed."[/code]

Looking works.  Telling someone about works.  But asking doesn't work.  Why does this code block asking, but not telling?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1784&start=0#p11775
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Doing something other than asking
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-12-13 03:24:43

I guess it's because there are two "asking" actions in the Standard Rules (asking it about and asking it for).

Anyway, this seems to work:
[code]Instead of doing something other than looking, asking it about, or telling:
say "That action is not needed."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1774&start=0#p11776
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting named properties with "now"
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-12-13 04:38:38

Here's another way to do it:
[code]A thing has an ordinal called order.
The verb to have order (it has order) implies the order property.

After reading a command:
    now every thing has order unordered.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1779&start=0#p11777
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: any way to run two instances of the IDE?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-12-13 06:44:10

Extensions are opened and edited in a separate window (by the IDE); so pending a proper solution, if one wants separate windows for the source text and the rest of the IDE, I guess it's possible to write a game as though it was an extension and merely use two lines in the source panel of the IDE for a title and an "include".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1785&start=0#p11778
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Ares release 2 - finished
User: Mikawa / DateTime: 2010-12-13 06:45:14

Hi y'all,

I have to announce that "Ares" (german language, winner of Textfire Grand Prix 2010) has been updated to the post-comp-release.
Thanks a bunch to all who helped to improve it!

Any further feedback is welcome. Have fun.

Regards
-- MI

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1774&start=10#p11779
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting named properties with "now"
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-13 10:01:11

[quote="vaporware"]Here's another way to do it:
[code]A thing has an ordinal called order.
The verb to have order (it has order) implies the order property.

After reading a command:
    now every thing has order unordered.[/code][/quote]
That's awesome! Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1777&start=10#p11780
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Characters without bodies?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-13 10:23:25

The latest version, available at <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/download/">http://inform7.com/download/</a>, is 6[b]F[/b]95. The previous version is 6E72. Which one do you have? What platform are you running on?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1781&start=0#p11781
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More help on the virtual patient
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-13 10:32:12

Yes, you can use just about any kind of object in a table column. You can have a "body part" column instead of a "topic" column and list things in that column. You can even create things with a table:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc256.html">http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc256.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1774&start=10#p11782
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting named properties with "now"
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-12-13 11:23:31

Yes, I had missed that declaration too. (Or forgotten it, since I managed to index it, but in a confusing manner. Will improve that.)

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1786&start=0#p11783
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Getting rid of unwanted containment messages
User: koopa184 / DateTime: 2010-12-13 11:40:07

I'm currently creating a small game in which the player is a magician, but I've run into a small problem early into producing it. Here's some of the source text:

[code]The Stage is a room. "The stagelights are bright in your eyes, and you hear your thousands of adoring fans cheering for you, Alfonso the Amazing.".

Your fans are in The Stage. Your fans are scenery. The description of your fans is "Thousands of adoring fans cheer you on to perform your magic act.". Your fans are fixed in place.

The table is in The Stage. The initial appearance of the table is "A table stands in the middle of the stage.". The table is fixed in place. 

A magic hat is on the table. The initial appearance of the hat is "A wide-brimmed, black top hat is on the table.". The hat is fixed in place. The hat is an open not openable container. 

A magic wand is carried by the player. The description is "A slender and sleek black instrument that exemplifies the stereotypical look of a magician's wand".[/code]

This produces: [quote]Stage
The stagelights are bright in your eyes, and you hear your thousands of adoring fans cheering for you, Alfonso the Amazing.

A table stands in the middle of the stage.

On the table is a magic hat (empty).

>[/quote]
I want to get rid of the message with the magic hat being empty, and instead insert my own initial appearance message for it, the one mentioned in the Source text. What can I do?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&start=20#p11784
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why I hate ASK ABOUT and TALK ABOUT
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-12-13 13:38:48

Just to be clear, I don't think an interest in setting is necessarily holding IF back -- I'd like it not to be the only thing we do, but setting is a strength for interactive games of all types, and I think we do well to keep exploring the possibilities there. But I do think it's cramping if we always do setting at the lowest possible level, with interest predominantly in small acts of physical manipulation. 

(Disclaimer: I have a WIP that is very much about setting, but I've tried to focus the interaction on actions that are a little unusual for IF, and streamline the opening doors sorts of activity so that they're as automatic as possible.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1786&start=0#p11785
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting rid of unwanted containment messages
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-12-13 13:55:09

Chapter 17.15 of the documentation should have you covered.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1784&start=0#p11786
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Doing something other than asking
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-12-13 13:56:29

That gives me the same problem.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1784&start=0#p11787
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Doing something other than asking
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-12-13 14:07:21

Actually, I see now that even your original code works fine for me. (I'm on build 5Z71 on this particular computer though.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1787&start=0#p11788
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Must puzzles be at war with stories?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-13 14:28:16

In the [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&p=11784&sid=88d016218d873f403078a738c1dd78cb#p11784]thread about conversations[/url], I said that my favorite conversation systems in games were ones where I wasn't trying to manipulate the NPC in order to change the game state in a certain way, but those in which interaction with the NPC was the whole point of the game. Which is to say, roughly, that I like conversations that aren't puzzles but are in service of a story.

Which made me think -- are there a lot of games that you'd praise for their stories, where it was really important that they have puzzles? Hard puzzles, where the player is likely to spend a lot of time thinking "What do I have to do to get to the next part?" And was the story itself significantly improved by those puzzles, or would the story have been just as strong if the puzzles had been easier? --By the way, I don't mean "story" in a necessarily linear sense; I'd count Galatea as having a good story, though there are many ways it can go. "Narrative element" if you prefer. 

My worry is that puzzles really interfere with the story (my topic title riffs on Graham Nelson's description of IF as "a crossword at war with a narrative"). When I think of the IFs whose stories I've found the most satisfying, they weren't ones where I spent a lot of time figuring out what to do next. Getting stuck on a puzzle can bring the narrative to a halt. And sometimes advancing the story feels like a reward for solving a puzzle, but even if the puzzle arises organically out of the story it doesn't seem as though the story couldn't exist without the puzzle.

But overcoming frustration is a part of playing a game, and it should be possible for IF to harness the frustration of puzzles in the service of narrative. To pick a non-IF example, the punishing platformer [url=http://www.kongregate.com/games/TerryCavanagh/dont-look-back]Don't Look Back[/url] has a lot of narrative power that couldn't be attained if it weren't so hard; the difficulty is part of the story. Whereas a great game like Cave Story is more of the "narrative as a reward for success" mode; it has a good story, but I feel as though the story would be just as good if it were a little easier or a little harder. (And if it were a little easier I might be able to see the end.) 

Maybe one of the ways in which IF can harness this is with the accretive PC, as in Varicella and Broken Legs, where (so I've heard) you learn to be a master manipulator by trying and failing to manipulate the NPCs, until you succeed. The games wouldn't be the same if they handed you the solution, because then [i]you[/i] wouldn't be the master manipulator, the game would be doing it before you.

Any (other) examples of IF that puts puzzles at the service of story?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1786&start=0#p11789
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting rid of unwanted containment messages
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-13 14:35:48

That's part of the solution, but it looks like there's another complication in the fact that the hat is on a supporter. By default, Inform does not print initial appearances of things that are on supporters.

There is a solution for changing the behavior of containers and supporters, but it's wordy, and as far as I know there's no extension that quite does it (although you might look into Room Description Control.)

However, in your case, since the hat is fixed in place, it seems like the simple solution would be this:

[code]The table is in The Stage. "A table stands in the middle of the stage.[paragraph break]A wide-brimmed, black top hat is on the table.". The table is fixed in place.

A magic hat is scenery on the table. The hat is an open not openable container.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1787&start=0#p11790
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Must puzzles be at war with stories?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-12-13 14:41:38

Have you tried Make It Good? It's a little like Varicella and Broken Legs in relying on the accretive PC concept (and also in being insanely hard); the puzzles are essential to the story and carry a lot of emotional weight, and they feel organic. I enjoyed Broken Legs, but some of the puzzles there definitely stood out as Things The Author Designed To Be Puzzles, whereas Make It Good does a better job of presenting a holistic problem situation that you have to find a way to resolve.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1784&start=0#p11791
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Doing something other than asking
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-13 14:44:09

I'm using 6F95. It looks like "asking it about" doesn't work, but "asking something about" does work. I'm a little surprised: I didn't think I'd get away with putting "looking" and "asking something about" in the same rule preamble, since they have different arities. But at least in 6F95, using "other than," that's okay.

[code]Test is a room.
	
Instead of doing something other than looking, asking something about, or telling:
	say "That action is not needed."

test me with "l/ask me for a cookie/ask me about cookies/tell me about cookies/smell"[/code]

Also, it's worth noting that parser errors will fire before the Instead rule fires, so "smell cookies" prompts the response "You can't see any such thing."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&start=20#p11792
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why I hate ASK ABOUT and TALK ABOUT
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-13 14:49:38

[quote="Harry Giles"]I think your points are generally worthwhile, and help me to think about conversation, but I disagree with the point that no game has yet featured believable, non-clunk dialogue with agency. Personally, I find the conversation model used in [i]Galatea[/i] and, later, in [i]Blue Lacuna[/i], entirely satisfying -- in that it at least takes conversation to the same level of control and immersion, despite occasional absurdity, found in all the interactions in IF. Overlaying keywords and topic suggestions on top of ASK/TELL, if the writing is skilful, is a damn good solution, I think.[/quote]
Thanks and I have tried Galatea and enjoyed it but felt it was an exception because the ASK ABOUT is essentialy, in that case, the only interface. In fact I think you could probably recode it such that every single thing typed is interpreted as a conversation topic (no ASK or ABOUT required and no other types of commands understood), and it wouldn't really disturb the functioning of any of the actual pathways through the game. So, in that case, the game still only has one mode, really — in that case what I'd prefer is that the remaining trappings of the verb/object system be entirely discarded, and let the parser just be what it is — a sequence-sensitive keyword search. But in agreement with you, it was satisfying it was one of the most satisfying IF conversations I have seen but not really as satisfying as following a good, intriguing conversation into which I didn't inject any words. There's just something about that word injection and the conceptual and stylistic ranging limitations that puts on one half of the conversation, that diminishes the act of conversation.

For example, how do you represent utterances that are meant to affect the other person but without any grammatical content at all? How can you express sarcasm? How can just say, 'duh'? How is the game ever going to interpret the huge range of conversational effects I really need to hold up my end of an entertaining conversation? Thus, conversation are just better when half the decisions aren't being directly driven by the parser. I *want* an indirect connection because I want to read whole conversations ripped out of the game designer's mind, stylistically intact and with no compromises in dynamism and pace.

Haven't really got into Blue Lacuna yet — I just started playing it again the other day. I'm not sure what you mean by overlaying but I guess I will find out.


[quote="Peter Pears"]As regards entering a different way of operating within IF just for the conversations, I once attempted a different way of tackling ASK/TELL - "<NPC>, <KEYWORD>?" and "<NPC>, <KEYWORD>" would ASK about the keyword, and "<NPC>, <KEYWORD>." and "<NPC>, <KEYWORD>!" would TELL about it.

My goal was, of course, to make it feel as though it's part of the same mechanism. You can order people around with this formula, which is in itself a proper and logical extension of your own commands - so why not use it for conversation, as well?

I got it to work very nicely, too. Pity that it made actually ORDERING people around harder to capture, but I wasn't expecting on using THAT feature.[/quote]
LOL, you and tggdan3 both mentioned solutions that use the name comma phrase thing. Funny because I also dislike that interface as a way of ordering people around -- I prefer the method where you actually assume their POV for the duration, that I first saw in Suspended and Hitchhiker's Guide. (I think they used the comma method to switch POVs but thereafter you could just type as them.)

[quote="Peter Pears"]Personally, I don't see anything wrong with ASK/TELL... sure, when misused it can be trying and awful, but when misused, everything is awful. ASK/TELL allows the player to communicate an idea in its simplest form. Which is what the parser in IF does - communicate an idea in its simplest form. Not "read out page number one of the book with the red cover sitting on the table." Just "GET BOOK", "READ IT". Similarly, not "Jane, don't you think Max has been acting strange lately? I'm getting worried about him." Just "ASK/TELL JANE ABOUT MAX". Trying to get fancy with that is akin using adverbs - "GO NORTH SLOWLY". And we all know what a kettle of worms adverbs are, for author AND player.[/quote]
Yeah I agree with you that we shouldn't get fancy with the ASK/TELL system of course, because I already think the system itself is too fancy. Sure, anything is awful when poorly executed, but my POV is coming out of having experienced all too often an ASK/TELL interface that kind of stank up and slowed to a grind an otherwise fun and well-written game. So, maybe they can be perfectly executed but it seems like it's a lot harder to achieve that, it's like the triple-axle of IF, so it should be a whole lot rarer than what it is, no? At least, I wish it were. And I definitely wish that it weren't this automatic thing that people seem to resort to now to reveal backstory. I'd much rather open a mailbox and read a leaflet than have a pretend conversation that is actually just a bad conversation which happens to also have the property that it reveals backstory.

I guess you could put a different spin on it and take away from discontent like my own, the lesson that maybe ASK/TELL is difficult enough to design well around, that it's not a great stock way of revealing background information and might be better reserved for situation where the outcome of the conversation really matters. If there were just way fewer of these things and they didn't turn out to be inconsequential to the story almost every time, my patience might not have such a short fuse for them.

Here's a thought experiment I like to do sometimes: if I have already solved your game, can I play it through completely from beginning to end without talking to anyone? If I can, then I'm usually not too impressed with the wisdom of implementing all those elaborate conversational interludes, plus it seems my 'agency' wasn't really required. This describes a surprising number of games that use ASK/TELL. (Not all of them though — I think the very first, was it Deadline? Could not be solved this way, which is perhaps telling as to how these commands were originally envisioned to affect outcomes... quite strongly, or else not really be used at all?)

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&start=20#p11793
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why I hate ASK ABOUT and TALK ABOUT
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-13 15:11:12

[quote="severedhand"]Blue Lacuna, the conversation there was like the nicest CYOA format you could have for conversation in text, but it still felt to me like CYOA based on specific words.[/quote]
Are they numbered? I hope they aren't numbered… that bugs me, too. (Man, am I ever picky.)

[quote="severedhand"]Anyway, my first idea for a new game where I could avoid the usual conversation involved having a mute player!.. probably the flunky to some other character.[/quote]
That's a sweet idea. What I'm using to replace the ask/tell default responses at present is just '[So-and-so] can speak for himself.' (This works because my game is in third person instead of second person.) Rather flip, I know. Maybe I should include an anti-tutorial, for veterans. 87

[quote="severedhand"]Then I had a couple of less extreme ideas. They are far from whole solutions, and Larroquod may still not like 'em as they  use a tree menu, but there's a couple of different approaches. Note they're best suited for characters who are either clear on their goals or sociopathic [emote];)[/emote]

1. When conversation begins, you specify where you want it to head. Whether or not you get the desired outcome, or something like it, or nothing like it, depends on the gamestate, who you've spoken to, what you 're carrying if that's relevant - have you created the circumstances to achieve that outcome with that person? The game checks and then produces the full flow of conversation.

So you only have to do one thing when conversation starts, which is pick a broad direction from a list determined by context, but there are still different conversations possible.[/quote]
Not bad, so basically you are restricting to one topic choice per character. This is a nice way I think of restricting the field without necessarily coming off as robotic (which as you pointed out earlier, is usually a lost battle anyway -- it be seem robotic even with 20 topics). I'd still to prefer to avoid even the one topic myself, but I'd love it if more games went your way in #1.

[quote="severedhand"]2. My second idea was like CYOA but divorces you from knowing exactly what you will say.

A problem with a lot of CYOA is it's hard to be neutral about player options. Some options stick out like crazy.

"Do you wanna say 'Yes', 'No', or 'Wait, tell me about the prince of Zanzibar!'"

So I though about having a set of broad approaches to conversation, rather than specific content.

An NPC starts talking to you. You could then choose to respond 'Very positively', 'Positively', 'Neutrally', 'Negatively', 'Angrily', 'Flirtily' etc. You pick your approach then conversation takes off by gamestate and circumstance. Any conversation is prefaced by the same 'approaches' menu. What's neat is you don't have to specify any topics. They should come naturally from gamestate. Also you don't know precisely what your character will say before you say it.

This one seems especially good for sociopaths, and I was thinking of making a game where you play a sociopath, but I probably won't.[/quote]
Or even a sort of thumbs-up/thumbs-down system. Could work. My own interest still lies, primarily, in directing player agency somewhere else entirely and then having those choices bounce back into character, smoke-and-mirrors style. But as you say, it's a matter of taste and that goes for choices of solutions even more so than identifying problems.

P.

P.S. I'll be back later to pick up responding where I left off, but I have read ahead and some great points are being made…

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1784&start=0#p11794
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Doing something other than asking
User: katz / DateTime: 2010-12-13 15:20:57

Awesome, that works.  (I too didn't think it would work because of the arities.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1786&start=0#p11795
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting rid of unwanted containment messages
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-12-13 16:19:10

Inform will not print what is on supporters, if it knows that those things have already been mentioned.

Try this:
[code]The table is in The Stage. The initial appearance of the table is "A table stands in the middle of the stage. A wide-brimmed, black top [hat] is on the table.". The table is fixed in place. 
[/code]

That will print "black top magic hat" rather than just "hat", because "magic hat" is the full name of the hat. You can fix that by renaming the magic hat (calling it "hat" merely) or by giving it the printed name "hat".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1786&start=0#p11796
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting rid of unwanted containment messages
User: koopa184 / DateTime: 2010-12-13 17:01:05

Thank you all for your input! I ended up using Capmikee's method:[quote]Code:
The table is in The Stage. "A table stands in the middle of the stage.[paragraph break]A wide-brimmed, black top hat is on the table.". The table is fixed in place.

A magic hat is scenery on the table. The hat is an open not openable container.
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&start=20#p11797
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why I hate ASK ABOUT and TALK ABOUT
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-12-13 17:50:21

[quote="Laroquod"]I *want* an indirect connection because I want to read whole conversations ripped out of the game designer's mind, stylistically intact and with no compromises in dynamism and pace.[/quote]

It's interesting you put it this way, because I think of it as a pace issue as well -- but *interaction* pace. I don't expect players to want to read more than a paragraph or two of text in response to a single turn, unless something really amazing and drastic has happened (which should be infrequent). If I'm routinely printing more than about a quarter screen of text in response to a move, I'm probably doing something wrong.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1787&start=0#p11798
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Must puzzles be at war with stories?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-13 18:46:27

[quote="emshort"]It's a little like Varicella and Broken Legs in relying on the accretive PC concept (and also in being insanely hard)[/quote]

Well, that's the hitch -- I often kind of suck at puzzles. Which may be part of my feeling that the puzzle is at war with the story, because in many cases the puzzle is keeping me from reading the story, which sometimes means that by the time I reach the end of the story I've forgotten what the beginning is like. I mean, that happened to me with "All Roads" for crying out loud. Which also means that generalizing from my own experience is a bad idea. 

I probably didn't make this clear in my original post, but I haven't got very far into either Varicella or Broken Legs. Part of it is that I'm especially awful at timed and cruel puzzles, and it seems like this sort of approach requires them. If the puzzles require you to keep restarting until you've found an optimized route, then by the last playthrough the PC will be a master manipulator who knows exactly what to do (because you learned it through all your failures). If you have a bunch of untimed puzzles with difficult solutions like, I don't know, A Flustered Duck, then in your playthrough the PC will be a bumbling fool who spends a lot of time wandering in circles and trying to put things on other things and realizing his pig has wandered away because he forgot to tie it up (not to mention reading the hints), which is of course entirely appropriate for the PC of A Flustered Duck but which doesn't make for a super-compelling story; the point is the puzzles. 

Another way to exploit puzzle frustration for story purposes is found in a couple of games from the JayIsGames Escape Comp, [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=d4d28pkufwxfhen]Critical Breach[/url] and [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=akinghyw9jcrg02z]Lurid Dreams[/url]. Both have sequences where there's basically only one thing you can do, and it took me a fair amount of guessing to figure out what that was -- but that was justified, because the PCs there were heavily constrained and were supposed to be frustrated and lashing out at their confinement. I don't know that that would work very well in a much bigger game, though. 

(I especially liked Critical Breach, by the way, and I think it's a shame no one seems to have noticed it much. One thing is that the puzzles in the other scenes of the game are a bit fussy, and you really have to play through both endings to figure out what's going on.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1788&start=0#p11799
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Examining multiple things, forcing run paragraph on.
User: lglasser / DateTime: 2010-12-13 18:47:44

This seems really simple, but I am just pulling my hair out over it.  I want to be able to examine multiple things, and not introduce a paragraph break.  For example:

[code]Instead of examining yourself:
	try examining your body;
	try examining your face.[/code]

This spits out:

[code]>X me

Description of your body.

Description of your face.[/code]


I'd much prefer:
[code]
>X me

Description of your body.  Description of your face.

(or maybe
Description of your body.
Description of your face.)[/code]

Is there any way to prevent that paragraph break from being put in there?  I've tried messing around with "run paragraph on", but it doesn't like that out of text.

P.S.  I would just use

[code]Instead of examining yourself: say "[description of your body] [description of your face]".[/code]

but frequently these things have many states, and I've used this sort of code:

[code]Instead of examining your face:
          if A:
               say "blah";
          if B:
               say "blah [if C]blah[end if] blah[if D] and blah[end if]."[/code]
So technically many of these things do not have descriptions assigned to them.

If there's a way to use [code]say "[description of your body] [description of your face]"[/code], I am not picky and would love that too.

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&start=20#p11800
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why I hate ASK ABOUT and TALK ABOUT
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-13 18:53:58

[quote="Laroquod"]Thanks and I have tried Galatea and enjoyed it but felt it was an exception because the ASK ABOUT is essentialy, in that case, the only interface. In fact I think you could probably recode it such that every single thing typed is interpreted as a conversation topic (no ASK or ABOUT required and no other types of commands understood), and it wouldn't really disturb the functioning of any of the actual pathways through the game.[/quote]

This isn't exactly true -- "x something" is sometimes kind of natural and important, "a something" and "t something" occasionally yield different results, there are some implemented "galatea, do something"s, and a few other actions too. OTOH "a something" is probably a pretty enormous percentage of the commands typed into the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1789&start=0#p11801
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Text Capture & Unicode
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2010-12-13 20:03:44

[code]
Include Text Capture by Eric Eve.

There is a room.


When play begins:
	start capturing text;
	say "[unicode 301]";
	stop capturing text;
	say "[captured text]";
	say "[unicode 301]";
[/code]
[quote]
?ĭ
Welcome
An Interactive Fiction
Release 1 / Serial numbe...
[/quote]

Text Capture (by Eric Eve) doesn't handle unicode, consequently i'm trying to adapt it, but unfortunately, i don't have a clear idea of what I'm doing. I know that I should use glk_stream_open_memory_uni rather than glk_stream_open_memory, but I don't really understand the mystical aspect of some opcodes (@push, @pull, @copy) nor have a good grasp at how arrays (bytes, words, multiplications and additions) work.

So here is a pale attempt (vaguely copied from Casting in IndexedText.i6t.

[code]
Include (-

#ifndef IT_MemoryBufferSize;
Constant IT_MemoryBufferSize = 512;
#endif;

Constant IT_Memory_NoBuffers = 2;

#ifndef IT_Memory_NoBuffers;
Constant IT_Memory_NoBuffers = 1;
#endif;

#ifdef TARGET_ZCODE;
Array IT_MemoryBuffer -> IT_MemoryBufferSize*IT_Memory_NoBuffers; ! Where characters are bytes
#ifnot;
Array IT_MemoryBuffer --> (IT_MemoryBufferSize+2)*IT_Memory_NoBuffers; ! Where characters are words
#endif;

Global RawBufferAddress = IT_MemoryBuffer;
Global RawBufferSize = IT_MemoryBufferSize;

Global old_stream = 0;

[ StartCapture i  buffx buff str;   
	if (capture_active > 0) return;
	old_stream = glk_stream_get_current();
	
	buffx = (IT_MemoryBufferSize + 2)*WORDSIZE;
	buff = RawBufferAddress;
	
	str = glk_stream_open_memory_uni(buff, RawBufferSize, filemode_Write, 0);
	glk_stream_set_current(str);
	
	capture_active = 1;
];

[ EndCapture  results buffx buff;
	buffx = (IT_MemoryBufferSize + 2)*WORDSIZE;
	buff = RawBufferAddress;
	
	if (capture_active == 0) return;
	print (char) 255; !add end of string marker
	results = buff + buffx - 2*WORDSIZE;
	glk_stream_close(glk_stream_get_current(), results);
	set_cur_stream(old_stream);      
	capture_active = 0;
];

-).

Include (-

[ PrintCapture i j ch;
	j = captured_text-->0;
	for (i=WORDSIZE:i<(j+WORDSIZE):i++){
		ch = captured_text->i;
		if(ch== 0 or 255) break;
		else if(ch ~= 10 || i>WORDSIZE) {
			if (unicode_gestalt_ok) glk_put_char_uni(ch);
		}
	}
];

-).
[/code]

I would highly appreciate any sort of help. Thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1788&start=0#p11803
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Examining multiple things, forcing run paragraph on.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-13 20:50:37

I'd love to know this too, but I'd probably do it this way:

[code]The description of yourself is "[face description]. [body description]."

The description of your face is "[face description]."

The description of your body is "[body description]."

To say face description...

To say body description...[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1788&start=0#p11804
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Examining multiple things, forcing run paragraph on.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-13 21:13:46

This works in at least one case, but probably isn't recommendable overall.

[code]A body is a kind of thing. A face is a kind of thing.
A body is a part of every person. A face is a part of every person. 

Me-examining is a truth state that varies. Me-examining is usually false.
Every turn: Now me-examining is false.
The description of your body is "It's a body.[if me-examining is true] [run paragraph on]".
Instead of examining yourself:
	now me-examining is true;
	try examining your body;
	say "[run paragraph on]"; 
	try examining your face;
	now me-examining is false.
	
Carry out examining your body while me-examining is true:
	say "[the description of your body]";
	stop the action.
[/code]

The idea is that you want examining your body to work differently depending on whether you're examining it directly or as part of your body, so you set the me-examining flag to see whether you're examining your body, and that runs the paragraph on in the description. But the standard examining rule, which is a carry out examining rule, automatically prints a line break after the description, so you need to intercept that too with a special rule while me-examining; and you need to stop the action so they don't both trigger. Which could mess up any "after examining" rules you have. If you don't mind having two separate paragraphs with no line break, you could leave this bit out.

Anyway, this requires making sure that your face-description always ends with that conditional [run paragraph on], so another solution might be better. There are probably extensions out there that allow this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1788&start=0#p11805
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Examining multiple things, forcing run paragraph on.
User: lglasser / DateTime: 2010-12-13 21:29:02

Thanks so much, that worked really well!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&start=20#p11806
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why I hate ASK ABOUT and TALK ABOUT
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-14 00:18:35

[quote="katz"]I would have defined "automatically" as "happening without the player giving a command for it to happen."  If the door closes and locks behind you, that's automatic, no?

(I know I'm sounding rather negative to your concept; there's no reason it couldn't work and experimenting with very conventional parts of the game experience is a good thing, but I really only see this going two ways:  A game where the dialogue is just flavor text of no importance, and a game full of frustration as conversations trigger when you don't want them and refuse to trigger when you do want them.  But yes, go ahead and give us a demo and then we'll see.)[/quote]
Well the purpose of my game is not solely to demo this, but this ideas are definitely in there.

I misinterpreted your reference to conversations automatically happening earlier, although the definition you do give I still find doesn't really cover everything. Where does indirectly giving a command that allows it to happen fit in? It doesn't seem to be squarely automatic or non-automatic according to your definition and so that's what concerns me — I don't want people to think that I am advocating even more robotic, clockwork-like diallogue that depends *only* on factors extrinsic to the player's choices (such factors even if randomised usually feel like 'clockwork' to me).

[quote="emshort"]What I was arguing wasn't "you can't do these things without suggesting specific conversation topics"; what I was arguing was "you can't do these things purely through environmental cluing."  I actually do think there's a lot of interesting stuff one can do by specifying a speech act (INSULT DOUG, BUY A COW, etc.), or by breaking down conversation in some completely other way ([url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/10/08/gdc-marleigh-norton-conversation-interfaces/]choose when to interrupt someone[/url], [url=http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2009/01/column_homer_in_silicon_improv.php]what emotional tone to set[/url], [url=http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2009/09/column_homer_in_silicon_achill.php]which of several debating tactics to use next[/url]).[/quote]
Wow, thanks for scaring up those links for me — very interesting, especially that first one. The second one is also of interest. The techniques represented in your third link don't interest me so much — too on the nose, and I guess 'it's just so on-the-nose' is a pretty apt description of what it feels like to me to step through most dialogue trees and to type topics at a character, telling them what to talk about. There is a school of thought apparently that ASK ABOUT etc. are not even direct enough, so we need to specifically feed buzzwords into an NPC's brain sort of 'behind the scenes' of the conversation. This solution feels even worse to me — perhaps the ultimate extension of it would be a command like, '> STORY, BE ABOUT LOVE.' I don't want to decide that, I want to discover it, and that's I guess how I feel about topics and why I don't want responsibility for them.

[quote="emshort"]The reason I think your environmental method is limited is that it represents a second-order kind of agency. It requires the game to draw conclusions about what I mean when I set the teddy bear on fire or rip a photograph in half or lay the polished rock on top of the gravestone... or what I mean by glancing at a poster or reading a book or dropping a box of chocolates. That's doable enough when the story is very well defined. It's a lot harder when the story can branch or the protagonist is making significant choices or is in an unknown knowledge state. (Mysteries are hard exactly because the game is trying to assess what the player knows and give ways to translate that back into in-game actions... without providing overly obvious hints about what to do next. There are games that belong to the literary genre of mystery that don't do this -- Death Off the Cuff is an obvious example -- but that's because the player is not being asked to deduce anything himself.) 

So the more things a protagonist *could* reasonably be doing or thinking in this situation, the more explicit the connection needs to be between the player's action and the protagonist's intent. Otherwise, the player is thrashing around with minimal control.[/quote]
Isn't that just what it's like when you have a puzzle to solve. This second-order agency that you accurately define, and the uncertainty it creates; wouldn't the resolution of this uncertainty be some great subject matter for a puzzle? Why is it any poorer than the uncertainty you get when you don't know (I won't call it a magic word anymore) what to ask about?

And if the environment is well-designed in sympathy with the story's point, figuring out how it can echo into character and what that means, is the whole ball game, IMO. I definitely don't see it as a negative, I see it as good artistic space because the author is defining fresh relationships between objects that you have to explore. Whereas I percieve stocking an ASK ABOUT system as more like filling in a dictionary. (Not that it can't be artistic but you have to fight against something to make it so — as opposed to coming with some schema for what objects mean to characters, which is more like just building a real world.)

[quote="emshort"][b]Edited to add, especially since it drives me nuts when other people say categorically that something is impossible in interactive stories[/b]: when I say "I think you can't do X," I'd be happy to be proven wrong by example. But I mean that I don't see a good way of doing it. If I were confronted with the design challenge of writing a game that was all about communication by environmental interaction, I would constrain it pretty sharply in the ways I described in order to make it work.[/quote]
I'm trying to avoid too many categorical statements myself, but I still don't see all the constraints; I see a fertile green territory there yonder. 8)

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&start=30#p11807
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why I hate ASK ABOUT and TALK ABOUT
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-14 00:59:02

[quote="emshort"][quote="Laroquod"]So, I'm glad you qualified with 'rarely'… because in my conception there is nothing really 'only' about manipulating objects in rooms: that IS the IF language and what I believe is the best scaffold for accessing almost all effects, including most dialogue.[/quote]
See, that's the part that I personally would identify as IF's unhelpful holdover from an earlier era: the relentless trivial physicality, the obsession with open and closed boxes, with doors and buttons and lights. We have gradually moved away from some of that, and light source puzzles (for instance) are much less common than they used to be.[/quote]
I think that you and Ron who have stated/implied that focus on setting is 'regressive' (to use Ron's term) in IF are conflating two things that seem very similar but which actually don't logically need to be conflated: the containment tree, which of course drives all parser-based IF, and the neanderthal puzzle ('How do I bring LIGHT to this place? Grunt.')

I don't know, I suppose I can't really push this point much farther without drawing all my crazy ideas together and showing how they interact. I don't use the containment tree in a standard way — I let emotions bleed into it. I believe it's necessary, because I think the object is to IF as the shot (or the cut, to an editor) is to cinema: it's the fundamental unit of meaning for the form, and to think of it as regressive or old school is I think to throw out the baby with some bathwater there. I understand this opinion because I understand what it's rejecting and I reject that, too. Light puzzles: mostly lame. Inventory management puzzles: mostly lame. There are all these conventions that are now kind of lame, I agree, but the answer isn't trying to supersede the default containment model, just like the answer to the pokey shots of early cinema [i]wasn't[/i] to denigrate and move away from the idea of the basic unit of meaning being 'the shot'. The real fertile territory in cinema was opened up when people came to see the shot in a different way: when people opened up the 'shot space' to encompass far more than it ever had. The same basic unit of meaning: stretched artistically into extreme flexibility; this won out over more stagey concepts of how to evoke emotion, even though as Eisenstein showed us with his montage experiments (he showed the same shot of an old man's face interecut with different things, making it seem like he had different emotions), it's all smoke and mirrors. And yet creating smoke & mirrors from the simplest, most non-emotional seeming toolset, actually ended up to be the most flexible way of creating emotion on screen.

I think the indirect nature of the relationship between the shifting of a camera's POV and the audience's feelings, have a lot to do with that. It allows an artist to construct their own language for what things mean and to communicate those meaning using the simplest language possible: juxtaposition. Applying the same sorts of artistic ideas and principles to IF to me suggests rehabilitating the way we use the object tree: rather than building outside of it.

If you had shown early filmmakers many of today's films with their dream sequences and flash cuts and flashbacks and flashforwards, and POV shots and extreme-close-ups, and animated sequences, and etc. etc., and these are all SHOTS, but they would likely say, 'That's wrong. That's not what a shot is for.' This is what I hear when I read that IF is moving beyond the object tree. There is nothing beyond the object tree: to me exploring what you can express with an object tree is the whole point of the exercise and we do not seem to have come close to plumbing this territory whereas conversational trees seem to me played out. All about perspective I suppose.

[quote="emshort"]But I do think it would help if our conventions included more allowance for abstract or impressionistic treatments of setting (yes, this room is an office; no, I didn't implement the desk, because it's not at all important and the player's attention is meant to be elsewhere); and more willingness to move the action to a partly-abstracted sphere. The room only gets you so far.[/quote]
That's just it: the conventions do allow for this. There is nothing in the Inform (for example) language that *forces* you to make a room an actual physical room, and an object an actual physical object, or to describe them in mundane, unemotional terms. This is a view that we are actually imposing on the object tree with our literallism, and it isn't necessary: you can break this rule as you please. Anyway, once again — this is the sort of thing where probably very few are going to get what I mean without a demonstration — it's in my head, though! And soon it'll be in a game. 8)

[quote="matt w"]This is a nice discussion. I'd like to see as many different approaches as possible tried, but in general I like conversational approaches that give me agency -- so long as it's done well, which is of course the trick. I've shared Paul's frustration with "What topic do I need to mention to advance the game state?", but I think my problem there is not with the topic-based conversation system, but with the idea that the purpose of the conversation is to advance the game state. 

That's my experience with a couple of different conversation systems and kinds of game. What felt like a lack of agency wasn't being able to select only from a menu or from the topics that had been introduced, it was when I couldn't use the options to control the PC the way I wanted. And that was heavily correlated with having a particular thing I wanted to do in the conversation, rather than using the conversation to roleplay.[/quote]
So, conversations are only good when they're irrelevant? Heh heh it sounds absurd but I kind of agree that the attempt to capture player agency for some important goal is part of the frustration factor. (The other part is just wading through wads of mostly irrelevant backstory that's been shoved into a character's mouth with no narrative aplomb, Babylon 5-style -- that's what it is, most IF characters interact with me as if they all live in the overexplanatory, mealy-mouthed world of Babylon 5. 87)

So it's kind of damned if you do and damned if you don't. If it's irrelevant then it's irrelevant. To the extent that it's relevant, it tends to be overwritten to the point that frustration sets in.

My formula for good writing is pretty simple: hook them hard with something intriguing, and then string them along with something fun, and use whatever respite from the winds of impatience you've earned to express some of your philosophy. The ASK/TELL system is very hard to work around that suspense-focused principle. If it opens with a strong hook, then the interface feels like it gets in your way and the stringing along is no longer fun, and my interest in the hook fades. If there is no strong hook, then it's definitely not a wise moment to be sending the player into a complex conversational cul-de-sac, at any rate. (Like even if I were writing a linear story, the moment when my strong hooks are played out is the worst possible moment to launch into a long conversational digression, because there's nothing holding people.)

'Is the conversation fun' would be a huge plus that would mitigate the problem, but it's very hard for an ASK/TELL structured conversation to come out as 'fun', I have found. Which is sad, because conversations are usually the most fun in literature.

[quote="matt w"]Now I'd really like to see more done with taking different tones, though that seems like something that wouldn't be easy without a multiple-choice inference. And I really like the idea of choosing an outcome for the conversation, and then having it spool out turn by turn; maybe you could have different choices for tones and strategies within it. Though that could turn into a game of "pick the right choice to bring about your preferred outcome." Having conversation develop from your actions organically and automatically (in katz's sense, where it happens when you do a certain thing) seems like a nice idea, but I don't know if it'd work where NPC interaction is the main point; it seems like it works best where the NPC is commenting on what you're task, as in A Day For Fresh Sushi. It's interesting that Pacian brought up Walker and Silhouette as an example of this, because I would've thought of it as a keyword/topic-driven system; actually it's got all three kinds of conversation. The first scene has keywords (some of which trigger actions and accompanying conversation, some of which are conversation topics), the interrogation lets you pick the tone from a multiple-choice menu, and other scenes, especially the big climax, have conversation triggered by other actions.[/quote]
Wow, interesting. I wonder what drove the different choices for different situations, I will have to play this game, for sure.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&start=30#p11808
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why I hate ASK ABOUT and TALK ABOUT
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-14 01:21:00

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]@Paul:  I would say that "in IF the environment is the story," is precisely one of those "leftover assumptions from the birth of the form."  While we may look askance at the CYOA and hypertext communities' lack of mechanical complexity, they look askance at our obsession with setting.  So while I empathize with your "simplify, simplify" impulse, I'm suspect of its direction:  even if your WIP proves its concept swimmingly, it may be regressive, not progressive.[/quote]
I disagree with this pretty strongly (and I referenced why above in a reponse to Emily). Anyway, there is a reason I prefer to write IF over CYOA and it's exactly this: the object tree is a strength, not a weakness. Otherwise, aren't we all in the wrong medium, and wouldn't just a very sophisticated CYOA be better? Are all the ASK/TELL afficionadoes eager to upconvert to CYOA but just don't have a sophisticated enough CYOA tool, yet? If the object tree is so regressive, then maybe it [i]should[/i] be abandoned in favour of CYOA, by those who feel that way?

I like CYOA and have experimented with it particularly for projects that weren't susceptible to a parser, but I'm more [i]into[/i] IF precisely because I am inspired by the possibilities of what I can explore through and express with a simulated text object tree. I'm inspired by all the things that don't seem to have been done with it, all the things that could be. Not regressive at all in my book, and I personally feel that's a bit of a misunderstanding of the underpinnings of the form to think so, the way it is when people say that 'comic books are about action because they have pictures'. So maybe pictures are regressive and speech bubbles are the future? If that sounds weird, that's how this sounds to me. It's like tarring the heart of a neutral form with the brush of the way a few practitioners have used it. Most designers have used the object tree in mundane ways thus the object tree is mundane and true human abstraction requires a 'higher' system — I disagree with this. The object tree IS already maximally abstracted. Nobody says a room has to be an actual room — it could be a state of mind. It would be more fun for me to explore weird ways of using the room/object interface than to explore abstraction using a much more unmoored and nebulous topical interface.

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]I think about the dialogue-by-inches thing a lot.  (Thanks for the term.)  My WIP has a fancy-pants parser, but still, the player enters input text, not prose.  The command prompt is changed so the whole construction looks exactly like a sentence.  But still, it's not prose.  So I'm concerned about unintended incidental characterization as well as the quality of the whole WIP, being funneled through parser-mouth that way.[/quote]
This sounds really interesting as an experiment — looking forward to it!

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1790&start=0#p11809
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Glk implementation of TADS banner API
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-12-14 01:24:41

I've updated Gargoyle's Glk/ANSI port of TADS to include support for the banner API.

The banner API is [i]almost[/i] Glk friendly: window splits and space allocation between parent and child windows work in exactly the same way. The catch is that TADS allows subsequently declared banners to usurp space from siblings (by declaring themselves 'first' or 'before') which is a very un-Glk way of doing things.

Unfortunately this means that every time a window is added, we have to close all banners, resize and restyle them, and restore the contents. The good news is that the collective banners rarely represent more than a screenful of text, so the inherent inefficiency isn't as painful as it might otherwise be.

[url=http://code.google.com/p/garglk/source/browse/trunk/tads/osglkban.c]osglkban.c[/url] implements the required window and contents management code. There are a couple tweaks unique to Gargoyle but all core functionality is pure Glk and should work with any other library. Size to contents doesn't work quite right, and besides the basic text styles, only reversed colors and a single custom color are supported. For the most part these are Glk limitations.

Gargoyle's next release will include this feature, which means (among other things) that the TADS exit lister will actually work now. My hope is that this is the first milestone on the road to full HTML TADS support.

[img]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2759298/tads_banners.png[/img]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&start=30#p11810
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why I hate ASK ABOUT and TALK ABOUT
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-14 01:35:34

Alright I've probably mounted the best defence I'm capable of on this, and would probably only write in circles going forward, so I'm going to consider my case rested and will not waste people's time henceforth restating things further at length, but to mop up some neglected replies…

[quote="ZUrlocker"]While I can't say whether Ask About / Tell About is the best interface, I think it works well in some situations. Notably, I've enjoyed Murder Mystery stories that use this interface; perhaps that's owing to the premise that has the player operating as a detective where there are certain expected lines of questioning.  Infocom's The Witness comes to mind, which was quite limited given the state-of-the-art from 1983.  More recently, Chris Huang's "An Act of Murder" does a good job with this interface.

Not surprisingly, I'm using Ask About / Tell About for my first IF story which is of the same genre.  I'm totally open to suggestions on how to best use this style of dialog to make it work well within the constraints etc.[/quote]
Yes, I do agree that in terms of classical IF these are the types of stories where this interface worked best and was even almost fun — when you were playacting as a detective. This interface was added very, very early (Deadline) — so why didn't Infocom then export it to every other game to handle conversations? They kept it very restricted to only the mystery-style games. But that's not really what I see today. Not that Infocom is the be-all and end-all, far from it, but they were pretty smart people, and they must have had a reason for these choices… I feel that they at least in some ways felt the way I do about this interface. It's a necessary evil, perhaps, to be avoided if possible. In a straight-up detective game, where you play the detective, perhaps it is not so possible to avoid — I'm willing to accept this as true as far as it goes.

[quote="emshort"][quote="Laroquod"]I *want* an indirect connection because I want to read whole conversations ripped out of the game designer's mind, stylistically intact and with no compromises in dynamism and pace.[/quote]

It's interesting you put it this way, because I think of it as a pace issue as well -- but *interaction* pace. I don't expect players to want to read more than a paragraph or two of text in response to a single turn, unless something really amazing and drastic has happened (which should be infrequent). If I'm routinely printing more than about a quarter screen of text in response to a move, I'm probably doing something wrong.[/quote]
I agree with this. I don't want to read a whole long dialogue all at once. But there are many ways to break up long texts and some have a bigger impact on 'pace' (which is hard to quantify in IF — how long does it take to think up a topic heading?) than others. Also pace in narrative is completely contingent on your proximity to the most recent strong narrative question: the further away you are from it, the 'longer' every word becomes. This becomes really important in the case of ASK/TELL, where overly deep conversational trees tend to lead you pretty far from the point of it all and tend to return you feeling you have wasted your time and are now in the same position with less interest. Again, as you have argued, with the right technique these concerns can be allayed, but it's pretty difficult.

[quote="matt w"][quote="Laroquod"]Thanks and I have tried Galatea and enjoyed it but felt it was an exception because the ASK ABOUT is essentialy, in that case, the only interface. In fact I think you could probably recode it such that every single thing typed is interpreted as a conversation topic (no ASK or ABOUT required and no other types of commands understood), and it wouldn't really disturb the functioning of any of the actual pathways through the game.[/quote]

This isn't exactly true -- "x something" is sometimes kind of natural and important, "a something" and "t something" occasionally yield different results, there are some implemented "galatea, do something"s, and a few other actions too. OTOH "a something" is probably a pretty enormous percentage of the commands typed into the game.[/quote]
Point taken. I was close, but no cigar. 8)

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1787&start=0#p11811
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Must puzzles be at war with stories?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-14 02:42:24

[quote="matt w"]In the [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&p=11784&sid=e58337483088c76ede1116d56f37ce8d#p11784]thread about conversations[/url], I said that my favorite conversation systems in games were ones where I wasn't trying to manipulate the NPC in order to change the game state in a certain way, but those in which interaction with the NPC was the whole point of the game. Which is to say, roughly, that I like conversations that aren't puzzles but are in service of a story.[/quote]
Reading this, I now think I misunderstood what you said in that other thread: I interpreted you liking conversations better when there is no goal for the player, as referring to both puzzle goals (solve X) and story goals (find out X): but you clearly meant it only in the sense of puzzle goals. Makes more sense to me now.

[quote="matt w"]Which made me think -- are there a lot of games that you'd praise for their stories, where it was really important that they have puzzles? Hard puzzles, where the player is likely to spend a lot of time thinking "What do I have to do to get to the next part?" And was the story itself significantly improved by those puzzles, or would the story have been just as strong if the puzzles had been easier? --By the way, I don't mean "story" in a necessarily linear sense; I'd count Galatea as having a good story, though there are many ways it can go. "Narrative element" if you prefer.[/quote]
I would praise Jigsaw for its story and the puzzles are really integral to it, and they get REALLY hard, like walkthrough hard, for me. I am not very purist these days about not ever getting a hint, although I used to be. I'm not really trying to test my faculties when I approach IF puzzles anymore — I am just trying to have fun, so I will bang my head a certain amount, and then if I resort to hint or walkthrough then it's actually a compliment to the game, because it means the story's hooked me and I [i]need[/i] an answer. Maybe if you took as casual an approach the puzzles wouldn't interfere as much? (Hmm I think I just talked myself into adding a hint system to my game -- I've been debating it.)

[quote="matt w"]My worry is that puzzles really interfere with the story (my topic title riffs on Graham Nelson's description of IF as "a crossword at war with a narrative"). When I think of the IFs whose stories I've found the most satisfying, they weren't ones where I spent a lot of time figuring out what to do next. Getting stuck on a puzzle can bring the narrative to a halt. And sometimes advancing the story feels like a reward for solving a puzzle, but even if the puzzle arises organically out of the story it doesn't seem as though the story couldn't exist without the puzzle.[/quote]
For me the puzzle and the story each exist both for its own sake and to help make the other more interesting. If they are not serving in this regard then I suspect malfunction. Sounds simple and obvious, but it helps me to remember that this is actually four separate things to keep track of and try to bring into alignment with each other: Is the puzzle a fun, solvable puzzle? Does the puzzle matter to and/or help say something about the story? Is the story sequence intriguing? Does the story sequence intensify one's involvement in the puzzles?

When something is working on all those cylinders, I think it's magic. And it's not an easy thing to do and I would only hope to be able to touch this territory that I think some authors have been to. A Mind Forever Voyaging is still one of the greatest examples, I find. A game that is a puzzle without really containing puzzles, and whose puzzle couldn't exist without the story — a puzzle whose reason for being is to investigate the terms of the story. I think Shade went there, too, though I wouldn't class it 'Hard'. Sargent's Fragile Shells goes there, mostly by bringing the mountain to Mohammed — choosing a story and environment in which puzzle solving is key to survival. Within its small pocket of reality, it really works.

But I'm not sure I enitrely buy the widely-sold dichotomy that a game/puzzle is at war with its story, for the reason that a puzzle is a story. They're the same thing. It's like you can convert mass into energy and you can encode almost any story into a puzzle, and vice versa. If they're any good. At least, that's the way I like to think of the world — but hey, I'm a bithead. 87

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1787&start=0#p11812
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Must puzzles be at war with stories?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2010-12-14 07:04:25

Defining 'story' is kind of boring, but the term gets abused a lot, usually when people are bagging something for 'having no story'.

What is a puzzle? To me, a quick definition would be it's where you have to consciously manipulate the game environment in some way to progress the game.

My bias is towards these games being gamey. Puzzles make things gamey and interactive. They don't have to be killer hard, or even conspicuously feel like puzzles, but I like them to be there. By the same token, I have a scale where I consider a game a failure if it has not been completed without any hints by at least one human, who reported that they did so. The thing about that is of course I can't prove it or know it for any games except ones I write myself, or where the author can tell me. But I have my suspicions!

(Some betatest guides say 'give your betatesters hints as needed.' I am opposed to that. I advocate giving no hints and verifying that one of them at least clears the game without hints. If you picked your betatesters well and nobody clears it without a hint, I'd say your game is at fault. I feel like the game is guilty of being uncompleteable without hints until someone verifiably demonstrates otherwise, and that folks should probably get this verification before the game is released.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1787&start=0#p11813
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Must puzzles be at war with stories?
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-12-14 09:05:57

[quote="Laroquod"]A Mind Forever Voyaging is still one of the greatest examples, I find. A game that is a puzzle without really containing puzzles, and whose puzzle couldn't exist without the story — a puzzle whose reason for being is to investigate the terms of the story. I think Shade went there, too, though I wouldn't class it 'Hard'. Sargent's Fragile Shells goes there, mostly by bringing the mountain to Mohammed — choosing a story and environment in which puzzle solving is key to survival. Within its small pocket of reality, it really works.

But I'm not sure I enitrely buy the widely-sold dichotomy that a game/puzzle is at war with its story, for the reason that a puzzle is a story. They're the same thing. It's like you can convert mass into energy and you can encode almost any story into a puzzle, and vice versa. If they're any good. At least, that's the way I like to think of the world — but hey, I'm a bithead. 87

Paul.[/quote]

As you can see from my avatar, I agree on AMFV -- probably my favorite IF of all time...  [emote];)[/emote] 

It's pretty easy to put a story into an IF game.  It's pretty easy to put puzzles in, too.  Where the real war exists is in trying to balance and synthesize an immersive experience out of the combination of the two.  I've played pure-story IF that was good, and had fun with pure-puzzle IF, but to me the best IF combines the two into an experience much greater than the sum of its parts.

For me, reading a story, even one written in second-person with some environmental agency (such as being able to move around at will, examine items at will, etc.), does not give me a strong sense of immersion unless the story is so powerful that it would have grabbed me just as strongly reading it in a book or magazine.  [i]Photopia[/i] qualifies under this rubric, and there have been one or two others, but it's rare.  Although I feel story is essential, the inclusion of challenges or puzzles in a game helps to build that sense of immersion and provide a sense of accomplishment, leading to identification with the PC.  This is something you don't get in a printed story -- it's one of the unique strengths of the gaming paradigm.

[i]Spider and Web[/i] is a great example of this.  To make progress, you have to figure out a lot of fiddly details and unforgiving timings in a nice twist on the accretive PC.  But the game is structured such that you keep getting story details as you progress in small chunks, and you feel a burst of triumph each time you surmount a puzzle.  By the endgame, you've not only mastered the mechanics of your gear and have a pretty good idea what's going on and what you need to do to win, but you're strongly engaged in the plot and identifying with the otherwise-faceless protagonist.

[i]Spider and Web[/i] without the puzzle-solving aspect would be a competently-written story about a futuristic secret agent raiding an enemy base.  Without the story aspect, it would be a tough, generic puzzler with some interesting technological devices and game mechanics.  With both present and integrated, it's one of the best IF experiences available.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&start=30#p11814
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why I hate ASK ABOUT and TALK ABOUT
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-14 09:55:25

[quote="Laroquod"][quote="matt w"]This is a nice discussion. I'd like to see as many different approaches as possible tried, but in general I like conversational approaches that give me agency -- so long as it's done well, which is of course the trick. I've shared Paul's frustration with "What topic do I need to mention to advance the game state?", but I think my problem there is not with the topic-based conversation system, but with the idea that the purpose of the conversation is to advance the game state. 

That's my experience with a couple of different conversation systems and kinds of game. What felt like a lack of agency wasn't being able to select only from a menu or from the topics that had been introduced, it was when I couldn't use the options to control the PC the way I wanted. And that was heavily correlated with having a particular thing I wanted to do in the conversation, rather than using the conversation to roleplay.[/quote]
So, conversations are only good when they're irrelevant? [/quote]

Not irrelevant, but an end in themselves rather than a means to another end. Which solves the pacing problem you mentioned, I think; you're at no remove at all from the narrative question. 

Does that mean the conversation has to be the whole game, as in the two I cited as ones I liked (and, come to think of it, the two I cited as ones I didn't like)? I don't think so -- you could definitely have a game where you explored and talked to people, and you were just talking to them in order to talk rather than to unlock some new part of the game. And you could have a game with puzzles and also with conversations (or other NPC interactions) that didn't serve the puzzles but were interesting in their own right. "She's Got a Thing for Spring" does that, I guess, to the extent of disabling the timer on the puzzles while you're talking to the NPC. (I didn't enjoy the puzzles, though.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1790&start=0#p11815
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk implementation of TADS banner API
User: George / DateTime: 2010-12-14 09:56:38

Awesome Ben!

Interesting coincidence that you posted this, I was browsing IF stuff on github yesterday and found this, <a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/weiju/zmpp2/tree/master/zmpp-tads3">https://github.com/weiju/zmpp2/tree/master/zmpp-tads3</a>. 

2011, the year of TADS 3? [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1790&start=0#p11816
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk implementation of TADS banner API
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-12-14 10:17:12

Cool! A ZMPP implementation of TADS 3 could mean a native Kindle app as well, which is high on next year's Christmas list.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1791&start=0#p11817
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: the object tree and the chunk
User: George / DateTime: 2010-12-14 10:34:55

(forked from this post, <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&start=30#p11807">viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&start=30#p11807</a>)

[quote="Laroquod"]I think the object is to IF as the shot (or the cut, to an editor) is to cinema: it's the fundamental unit of meaning for the form, and to think of it as regressive or old school is I think to throw out the baby with some bathwater there. I understand this opinion because I understand what it's rejecting and I reject that, too. Light puzzles: mostly lame. Inventory management puzzles: mostly lame. There are all these conventions that are now kind of lame, I agree, but the answer isn't trying to supersede the default containment model, just like the answer to the pokey shots of early cinema [i]wasn't[/i] to denigrate and move away from the idea of the basic unit of meaning being 'the shot'. The real fertile territory in cinema was opened up when people came to see the shot in a different way: when people opened up the 'shot space' to encompass far more than it ever had. [/quote]

I thought this was super interesting and I didn't want to derail the other thread too much, so....at first my basic response to this was that the analogy was wrong, that the fundamental unit of IF is not the object but the 'chunk', that unit of text returned to the player after they perform an action (maybe there's a better term?), and as a result the conclusions Paul drew from that analogy were misguided. 

But on second thought I'm wondering if it goes a little deeper than that. You could look at the object tree literally as the objects in the game and how they relate to one another by containment, but is it more fruitful to consider the 'object tree' as another term for the model world? I think that may be a more idiomatic way it's used. And text chunks are the player's perception of the model world, right?

Going back to the analogy with cinema -- in the early days of IF I think its developers (Infocom, etc.) were unapologetic about rejecting normal literary conventions. Contrast this with early cinema which took much of its formal inspiration from theater. If early cinema directors had been like Infocom implementors, they would have taken their inspiration not from theater, but from I don't know what, abstract music maybe. 

Anyway, the point is that with the renewed emphasis on story and narrative in contemporary work, there also seems to be a renewed inheritance of the formal conventions of literary work too. But I feel like this is like one step forward, two steps back. If we continue with the analogy to film (and you could draw this analogy across many other new media), IF will eventually adopt its own typical formal conventions that have less to do with its surface appearance as a literary work. 

In this case, the object tree is at the heart of the matter, and so is the chunk. 

Now what I'm not sure about but I think might be the case is that you could even say that the chunks are not just presentation of the object tree to the player, but [i]are objects themselves[/i]. Think about this in relation to what Nick Montfort is doing with [url=http://curveship.com/]Curveship[/url] for example. 

A next step might not just be to reconsider the object tree with respect to objects, their relations (containment, etc.), but to deal with chunks as objects. What properties do they have and how can you change them to communicate the work to the player?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1791&start=0#p11818
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: the object tree and the chunk
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-12-14 11:02:14

The text chunk (meaning any self-contained descriptive or narrative message) could be the main superclass in a class-based IF system, above even a basic "thing" or "object" class.  So, objects would be a kind of chunk, and so would lines of dialog, timers that print messages at specific times, etc.

Emilian Kowalewski has already used this basic philosophy with his Node-X CYOA system, which I have looked at and experimented with.  I never heard of Curveship before, but it looks intriguing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1788&start=0#p11819
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Examining multiple things, forcing run paragraph on.
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-12-14 11:32:59

[quote="EEAtheist"]Thanks so much, that worked really well![/quote]

Being woozy from sleeping pills, I decided to try doing it with rulebooks, and it sort of snowballed from there. Spoiler-spaced, since it is huge and rather pointless. [emote]:)[/emote]


[spoiler][code]"Ruling Body" by Björn Paulsen

A body part is a kind of thing. A body and a face are kinds of body part.
A body and a face are part of every man.

Appearance is an object-based rulebook.
An appearance rule for a face: say "It's a face.[run paragraph on]".
An appearance rule for a body: say "It's a body.[run paragraph on]".



The Court is a room. "This is the Imperial Court, where petitioners come from distant worlds to beg the favour of their sovereign. The atrium's endless expanse stretches out in every direction, broken only by towering columns, judiciously placed artwork, and equally silent if slightly less ornamental guards."



The throne is a supporter in the Court. Emperor Palpatine is a man on the throne. The description of Palpatine is "Palpatine grins skeletally as he beckons [one of]a[or]another[or]yet another[stopping] petitioner forward."

An appearance rule for Palpatine's face: say "Beneath the hood, the Emperor's face is a withered, half-melted ruin. His yellow eyes glitter in their dark sockets; his grin is terrible to behold.[run paragraph on]" instead.

An appearance rule for Palpatine's body: say "He's swathed in his customary robes[first time] (they appear simple, almost austere, but are probably fabulously expensive)[only], and from what you can tell, he's old and frail.[run paragraph on]" instead.


First carry out examining Palpatine:
	Consider the appearance rules for Palpatine's face;
	say " ";
	Consider the appearance rules for Palpatine's body;
	say "[paragraph break]".

Carry out examining a body part (called flesh):
	Consider the appearance rules for the flesh;
	say "[paragraph break]" instead.

Does the player mean examining the Emperor: it is likely.



For printing a locale paragraph about the throne:
	if the Emperor is on the throne, say "On his throne in the middle of the room sits the wizened Emperor Palpatine.";
	otherwise say "In the room's center is a dais with Emperor Palpatine's throne. For the moment, it is vacant.";
	set the locale priority of the throne to 0;
	continue the activity.

Every turn: Unless the current action is examining something, say "[SomethingSomethingDarkSide]".


To say SomethingSomethingDarkSide:
	if the number of filled rows in the Table of Cackling Villainy is 0:
		say "The Emperor [one of]smirks evilly.[or]cackles quietly to himself.[or]gives a brief snort; has he fallen asleep?[or]sneers.[at random]";
	otherwise:
		choose a random row in the Table of Cackling Villainy;
		say "[taunt entry][line break]";
		blank out the whole row.


Table of Cackling Villainy
Taunt
"'Surrounded by fools,' the Emperor sneers, as if to himself. His adjutant quickly complements him on his perspicacity."
"Palpatine leans forward in his chair, yellow eyes fixing on his adjutant. 'I think the time has come to embrace a more... proactive version of the constitution.'[paragraph break]'Capital idea, sire!'"
"A petitioner approaches, and timidly states his case for the creation of a pan-Imperial holiday. He's barely begun expounding on the significance of reindeer and mulled wine when the Emperor, growing bored, orders him thrown down a reactor shaft. They drag the fool away, his screams cut off by the closing of the double doors."
"A petitioner delivers a list of names protesting recent surveillance laws, which the Emperor politely accepts, promising to look into the matter."
"A prospective petitioner loses his nerve and beats a quiet retreat."[/code][/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1792&start=0#p11820
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Compiler crashes with "Code block underflow."
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-14 12:46:48

[code]Test is a room. 

When play begins:
	If the player is a woman, say "You are a woman.";
	otherwise if the player is a man, say "You are a man."[/code]
[quote]
This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6F95) on its most recent run through:

Problem. An internal error has occurred: code block underflow. The current sentence is 'otherwise if the player is a man, say "You are a man."'  ; the error was detected at line 1035 of "Chapter 22/Stack Frames.w". This should never happen, and I am now halting in abject failure.[/quote]

This seems to be a product of the if/otherwise syntax. Switching to Python syntax makes the error go away. The if-conditions don't seem to be important at all.

Is this a known bug?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1790&start=0#p11821
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk implementation of TADS banner API
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-12-14 12:46:53

[quote="bcressey"]I've updated Gargoyle's Glk/ANSI port of TADS to include support for the banner API.[/quote]
Yay!  Cool.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1790&start=0#p11822
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk implementation of TADS banner API
User: weiju / DateTime: 2010-12-14 12:47:49

Hi,

there I thought no one would notice until I got something showable  [emote];)[/emote] 
But it's looking pretty good, I think that I got a pretty solid grasp of how TADS3 works now, it's just simply the large amount of libraries that need to be implemented in the VM....

Wei-ju

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1791&start=0#p11823
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: the object tree and the chunk
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-12-14 12:50:57

I like these two ways of breaking down IF design. But what's interesting is that, in current systems, the model world and the output chunk aren't particularly connected. 

Chunks can be associated with objects in code (although this is less true in I7 than in I6), but the connection is shallow. To the extent that text chunks become varied and interesting, it's because of ad-hoc logic in the chunks, which can reference any game state. And to the extent that the model world is interesting (customized changes in behavior, new relations between objects), it's not reflected in the output chunks. (An object can have a description property, but *the containment of one object by another* has no description property.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1792&start=0#p11824
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compiler crashes with "Code block underflow."
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-12-14 12:59:32

Yes, it's <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=398">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=398</a> .

The problem that the compiler is trying to report is that you can't use "otherwise if" with the one-liner form of "if". You can use the Python form, or this:

[code]
When play begins:
	If the player is a woman begin;
		say "You are a woman.";
	otherwise if the player is a man;
		say "You are a man.";
	end if.
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1792&start=0#p11825
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compiler crashes with "Code block underflow."
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-14 13:44:52

Good to know.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1791&start=0#p11826
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: the object tree and the chunk
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-14 14:35:53

Thanks for picking up on this line of thought.

I used to consider the basic unit of expression in IF to be the player choice, i.e. everything that happened between one player choice and the next; which maps roughly (much more so than a modelled object, anyway) onto the concept expressed here as a 'chunk'. However, I have changed my mind about this. The span between player choice is a unit but its a hybrid unit. It's not the smallest-editable-but-still-meaningful piece the way a shot is in film, and it also covers too many media the way a shot doesn't in film. It covers even flipping channels on a TV remote, if you think about it (a consequence of relying exclusively on player input as a delimiter of meaning). More importantly it doesn't distinguish at all between CYOA and IF, and that is very counterintuitive to me. They are not like comedy and drama, or like documentary and music videos — all forms of cinema that share the same basic unit of meaning. Those are content distinctions whereas CYOA and IF are different in a much more formal way. I think the difference between those two forms goes very deep, so I do think now that the object tree is a better candidate for there being a basic unit of meaning in parsed IF; it's the only discrete unit of meaning that is exclusive to IF. And it includes the concept of player choice, because without the choice of how to explore the object tree, it's not an object tree -- it's just a sequence of text.

But you could definitely make a strong argument the other way (for 'the chunk') and I can definitely see that point of view. One could even allege that which model the designer feels more affinity can really affect the gameplay. People who think shot sequence is really important play a lot with shot sequence. People who think cinematography is really key to a good film play around a lot with light and colour, etc.

[quote="George"]Now what I'm not sure about but I think might be the case is that you could even say that the chunks are not just presentation of the object tree to the player, but [i]are objects themselves[/i]. Think about this in relation to what Nick Montfort is doing with [url=http://curveship.com/]Curveship[/url] for example. 

A next step might not just be to reconsider the object tree with respect to objects, their relations (containment, etc.), but to deal with chunks as objects. What properties do they have and how can you change them to communicate the work to the player?[/quote]
But I'm not sure I entirely get what you're driving at. Anything could be framed as an object, but usually there is only a point to doing so because it provides hooks for regularised functionality. A string variable is already a chunk with regularised functionality (strings are actually usually represented internally in modern programming languages as objects anyway for exactly that reason). So we already have that, what would further objectifying bits of text get us, outside of the modelled world? I can't think of something but it would be interesting if there were something but I'm not sure what you have in mind.

Paul.

P.S. 'Object tree' = 'model world', absolutely.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1786&start=0#p11827
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting rid of unwanted containment messages
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-14 15:49:41

I'm dealing with a similar situation. I successfully suppressed the "(empty)" message with this statement:

[code]For printing room description details of a foo-container: stop.[/code]

But I can't seem to suppress the "(in which is...)" message when it contains something. Is that a different activity, or is there a high-precedence rule that I'm not catching soon enough?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1793&start=0#p11828
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Compass rose?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-12-14 15:59:24

I'm thinking about doing a new [url=http://glimmr.wordpress.com/]Glimmr[/url] tutorial. There seems to be perennial interest in graphical compass roses, and a compass rose is also nicely self-contained and portable, so it seems like a good focus for a tutorial.

My reason for posting is to sample specific interests: Is there anything you'd like to see in a graphical compass rose that you haven't seen yet? Any particular style that might appeal? Any must-have features? Anything you don't want to see?

Thanks,
Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1786&start=0#p11829
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting rid of unwanted containment messages
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-12-14 16:07:46

[quote="capmikee"]I'm dealing with a similar situation. I successfully suppressed the "(empty)" message with this statement:

[code]For printing room description details of a foo-container: stop.[/code]

But I can't seem to suppress the "(in which is...)" message when it contains something. Is that a different activity, or is there a high-precedence rule that I'm not catching soon enough?[/quote]

This is covered in some detail in this thread:

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1643">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1643</a>

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1786&start=0#p11830
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting rid of unwanted containment messages
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-14 16:14:51

That's super confusing!

I'm going to have to take some time to read this in detail - I haven't been able to come up with a working solution just by skimming that thread.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1786&start=0#p11831
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting rid of unwanted containment messages
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-12-14 16:23:08

[quote="capmikee"]That's super confusing!

I'm going to have to take some time to read this in detail - I haven't been able to come up with a working solution just by skimming that thread.[/quote]

Yes, that's the upshot of the thread--the way contents listing is handled is not really intuitive, and definitely not as simple as it seems at first glance!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&start=30#p11832
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why I hate ASK ABOUT and TALK ABOUT
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-12-14 17:03:26

[quote="Laroquod"]I don't want to read a whole long dialogue all at once. But there are many ways to break up long texts and some have a bigger impact on 'pace' (which is hard to quantify in IF — how long does it take to think up a topic heading?) than others. Also pace in narrative is completely contingent on your proximity to the most recent strong narrative question: the further away you are from it, the 'longer' every word becomes. This becomes really important in the case of ASK/TELL, where overly deep conversational trees tend to lead you pretty far from the point of it all and tend to return you feeling you have wasted your time and are now in the same position with less interest.[/quote]

This I definitely agree with. One of the things I've been working on for a long time is the use of NPC conversation direction to keep the conversation moving forward. So for instance, as an author, I'd define a scene with a list of things the NPC definitely wants to cover. The player would be able to ask questions, but as he reached the end of a productive line of investigation, the NPC would redirect the subject onto the next important element -- so you're constantly moving forward, not just exhausting a static tree. (This is what Alabaster does.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1794&start=0#p11833
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Rogue of the Multiverse - Post-Comp'd
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-12-14 17:10:45

I finally got around to assembling a slightly updated version of Rogue of the Multiverse, everyone's favourite game of penal jet bike dismemberment upgrades [i]in space[/i].  

There's a page for it [url=http://gamesforcrows.blogspot.com/2010/12/rogue-of-multiverse.html]here[/url] and you can download it from an IF Archive mirror at [url=http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/RogueOfTheMultiverse.zip]this link[/url].

This is primarily a bug fix release, resolving numerous issues large and small that I've seen in reviews and transcripts.  I've also taken the opportunity to add something that's been bothering me for a while now: a much better response to FULL SCORE at the end of the game.

Also, someone, somewhere suggested that [spoiler]examining yourself should list any injured body parts[/spoiler] so I added that as well.

And, if you're interested, I posted a post mortem type dealie [url=http://gamesforcrows.blogspot.com/2010/11/rogue-of-multiverse-what-was-i-thinking.html]here[/url] ([color=#FF0000]spoilers[/color]).

That is all.  Please place your leftovers in the receptacle provided and return to your cells.  Anyone found disseminating baseless rumours about the supposed disappearance of non-saurian inmates will be subjected to time in the Hole.

[size=85]UPDATE: IF archive link.[/size]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1793&start=0#p11834
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compass rose?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-12-14 17:18:35

Must-have:  which room(s) leading off in those directions that have/haven't been visited.  

I found that essential when playing Bronze.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1773&start=30#p11835
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why I hate ASK ABOUT and TALK ABOUT
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-14 17:38:59

[quote="matt w"][quote="Laroquod"][quote="matt w"]This is a nice discussion. I'd like to see as many different approaches as possible tried, but in general I like conversational approaches that give me agency -- so long as it's done well, which is of course the trick. I've shared Paul's frustration with "What topic do I need to mention to advance the game state?", but I think my problem there is not with the topic-based conversation system, but with the idea that the purpose of the conversation is to advance the game state. 

That's my experience with a couple of different conversation systems and kinds of game. What felt like a lack of agency wasn't being able to select only from a menu or from the topics that had been introduced, it was when I couldn't use the options to control the PC the way I wanted. And that was heavily correlated with having a particular thing I wanted to do in the conversation, rather than using the conversation to roleplay.[/quote]
So, conversations are only good when they're irrelevant? [/quote]

Not irrelevant, but an end in themselves rather than a means to another end. Which solves the pacing problem you mentioned, I think; you're at no remove at all from the narrative question. 

Does that mean the conversation has to be the whole game, as in the two I cited as ones I liked (and, come to think of it, the two I cited as ones I didn't like)? I don't think so -- you could definitely have a game where you explored and talked to people, and you were just talking to them in order to talk rather than to unlock some new part of the game. And you could have a game with puzzles and also with conversations (or other NPC interactions) that didn't serve the puzzles but were interesting in their own right. "She's Got a Thing for Spring" does that, I guess, to the extent of disabling the timer on the puzzles while you're talking to the NPC. (I didn't enjoy the puzzles, though.)[/quote]
So you would be talking to them just to talk rather than unlock a puzzle, but it'd still be part of some proximate narrative question whose answer I assume would be revealed in the course of the conversation, do I have that right? If so, it sounds like great advice. 8)

[quote="emshort"]One of the things I've been working on for a long time is the use of NPC conversation direction to keep the conversation moving forward. So for instance, as an author, I'd define a scene with a list of things the NPC definitely wants to cover. The player would be able to ask questions, but as he reached the end of a productive line of investigation, the NPC would redirect the subject onto the next important element -- so you're constantly moving forward, not just exhausting a static tree. (This is what Alabaster does.)[/quote]
Sounds like an improvement — with my level of impatience though I'm not sure I would notice the difference on my first encounter with it. I'm rather guilty I'm afraid of cancelling out of anything that even smells like a dialogue tree after trying only one or two topics and only returning to it when I've exhausted other avenues. (At which point, sometimes it can end up impressing me — like talking to Eruera in Aotearoa was not bad, and seemed absolutely necessary, but I still felt he was overtopicked, and yet I felt obliged to plumb everything available in the end, for clues.) Haven't really played Alabaster yet — I definitely will. I keep noticing how many authors' names there are on it and get curious about how that collaboration happened.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1529&start=10#p11836
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Fiction about Interactive Fiction
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-14 18:00:41

So, I was googling for whether the title 'Cave Quest' had ever been used for an adventure game — I know it sounds cheesy: I want it to sound cheesy, for reasons that are not nearly as interesting as what I accidentally found along the way. A theatrical play called [url=http://www.backstage.com/bso/reviews-la-theatre/cave-quest-1004072382.story]Cave Quest[/url]! Seems to qualify as fic about intfic. The blurb is fascinating — I'd have loved to have seen this play!

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1790&start=0#p11837
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk implementation of TADS banner API
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-12-14 18:00:56

Wow, the first independent implementation of the TADS3 VM!

I'd be keen to coordinate a group to write a JS implementation as well. Anyone else interested?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1790&start=0#p11838
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk implementation of TADS banner API
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-12-14 18:11:31

This entire thread is making me very happy. Thanks for your work on this, Ben!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1783&start=0#p11839
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: No images in the Win IDE itself
User: Ghantu / DateTime: 2010-12-14 20:00:25

Thanks for that, StJohn. This turns out to be a problem with IE, not Inform. Details spoilered off if anyone comes across this in the future.

[spoiler]IE7 on Vista has a really weird problem with PNGs. For most people, it shows up after installing QuickTime, apparently. David pointed me to this thread:

<a class="postlink" href="http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1070279">http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jsp ... ID=1070279</a>

And just googling "ie7 png" turns up this thread:

<a class="postlink" href="http://idea15.wordpress.com/2009/06/17/fixing-the-png-bug-in-ie7/">http://idea15.wordpress.com/2009/06/17/ ... ug-in-ie7/</a>

But I don't have QuickTime installed. PNGs were associated with Windows Photo Gallery instead of IE, so I tried the rest of the steps in the post anyway:

[quote]# Right click on a PNG file, Open With –> Choose Default Program –> Internet Explorer.
# Close IE, then load [url=http://www.w3.org/Graphics/PNG/nurbcup2si.png]a PNG from the web[/url] via Internet Explorer.  It’s there?  Good.  Close IE.
# Right click on a PNG file, Open With –> Choose Default Program –> Windows Photo Gallery.[/quote]
PNGs from the web now work fine (I don't actually know whether they were working before), but trying to load a local one pops up the "File Download" dialog. You know, the one with Open, Save or Cancel. If I hit Open, I get... can you guess? That's right, the "File Download" dialog. Ad infinitum. Awesome. And I still have red X's in Inform.

So then I checked out what was posted by commenter "Somebody" in that second thread:

[quote]If the PNGs show when you run the explorer as Administrator; and they dont show for non-Administrator users, the problem is registry. Run regedit as non-Administrator user and browse through the entries under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Mime\Database\Content. All entries under this should be readable by all users. If it shows read permission error while you are browsing these entries (just scroll up and down to check quickly), that is your ticket. You have to fix the entry to make it readable by all users.[/quote]
But I don't have a "Content" directory at that level, just "Content Type", and at any rate everything in it was readable if I opened regedit as a non-Administrator. At that point I gave up and I'm trying to update to IE8 right now. =\ I suppose I should have been on IE8 a long time ago, but I basically never use the gorram thing.

UPDATE: ....and IE8 installation doesn't work.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1791&start=0#p11840
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: the object tree and the chunk
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-12-14 20:15:50

[quote="Laroquod"]I used to consider the basic unit of expression in IF to be the player choice, i.e. everything that happened between one player choice and the next; which maps roughly (much more so than a modelled object, anyway) onto the concept expressed here as a 'chunk'. However, I have changed my mind about this. The span between player choice is a unit but its a hybrid unit. It's not the smallest-editable-but-still-meaningful piece the way a shot is in film, and it also covers too many media the way a shot doesn't in film. It covers even flipping channels on a TV remote, if you think about it (a consequence of relying exclusively on player input as a delimiter of meaning). More importantly it doesn't distinguish at all between CYOA and IF, and that is very counterintuitive to me. They are not like comedy and drama, or like documentary and music videos — all forms of cinema that share the same basic unit of meaning. Those are content distinctions whereas CYOA and IF are different in a much more formal way. I think the difference between those two forms goes very deep, so I do think now that the object tree is a better candidate for there being a basic unit of meaning in parsed IF; it's the only discrete unit of meaning that is exclusive to IF. And it includes the concept of player choice, because without the choice of how to explore the object tree, it's not an object tree -- it's just a sequence of text.[/quote]
I don't think player choice has much to do with the fundamental unit of meaning in IF.  My opinion is that the most basic unit is the text description, because that's what conveys all of the information about both story and puzzles to the player.  Choice, or interactivity, comes into play only to the limited extent that the player can control when, which, how often, and if the units of description are displayed.

I think an object of the model world is composed of its various descriptions.  An extension of the object tree might show the description "chunks" as being "children" contained within the object.  For instance, an object representing a static scenery tree might "contain" two chunks -- the long description displayed when the player examines the object, the short description displayed after the room description (which is a chunk belonging to the room object).  An object that the player can pick up and move, such as our brass lantern, might also have two chunks -- the long description and an inventory listing description.  Maybe a special listing description would be another chunk.  The generic "You can also see x, y, and z here" message is also a chunk, probably belonging to the meta room class.

All narrative messages carrying the story should be considered chunk units, although I'm not certain on their object relationships.  It would probably depend on the circumstances; dialog lines could be "contained" within an NPC object, or a meta-object representing that NPC's dialog.

Finally, although I believe that a unit of text is a more fundamental unit of meaning than the objects themselves, I agree that that the objects of the model world are the basic units of the individual game, as opposed to IF generally.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1796&start=0#p11842
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Monetary system extension
User: koopa184 / DateTime: 2010-12-14 20:41:36

I'm trying to make a simple extension for a monetary system, and I have most of it done. But selling is one thing that I haven't been able to accomplish. I'm in some need of help so that I might be able to finish my extension, even if it's an easily createable one. Here's some of the coding:[code]
Appraisal is a kind of value. 1 gold (plural, in gold) specifies an appraisal.
Every thing has an appraisal.

Player's personal money is an appraisal that varies. Player's personal money is 1 gold.

Selling is an action applying to one thing.
Understand "sell [something]" as selling.
Check selling:
	if the noun is not carried by the player:
		say "You don't have that with you.";
		stop the action.
Carry out selling:
	increase the appraisal of player's personal money by the appraisal of the noun. [This is where I have trouble. It won't recognize the appraisal of the noun.][/code]

    Well, could anybody help me with this? I want to get it to recognize the carry out phrase in the way that I'd like it to, so that when you sell an object, the player's personal money is increased by the value of the object sold.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1797&start=0#p11843
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Removing the status line
User: Neo / DateTime: 2010-12-14 21:03:10

I just came across this line of code in Edward Griffiths' extension 'Adventure Book':

[code]Rule for constructing the status line: do nothing.[/code]

Does this single line of code negate the need for Emily Short's extension 'Removing the status line'?

Looking through Emily's source code, it seems to target very different things. (None of which I really understand. I'm guessing she goes after some kind of draw facilities in Glulx...maybe?)

Is there a substantial difference between them? Or will both work in all major IF terps? Is there a better way?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1797&start=0#p11844
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Removing the status line
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-12-14 21:30:47

The code you quote from Adventure Book doesn't get rid of the status line, it just prevents anything from being printed to it. 

Emily's extension uses two different techniques to kill the status line, one for z-code and one for glulx. If you want the status line gone (not just empty of text), you'll have to use that extension (or one of the others that can also remove it--Flexible Windows or Glulx Status Window Control).

The glulx code in her extension simply returns true when the library calls the InitGlkWindow routine for the status window, essentially telling the library not to create it.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1796&start=0#p11845
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Monetary system extension
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-14 21:34:21

I think you want to replace

[code]increase the appraisal of player's personal money by the appraisal of the noun.[/code]

with

[code]increase the player's personal money by the appraisal of the noun.[/code]

since the player's personal money is an appraisal, it doesn't have one. Doing that makes it work for me (well, I still have whatever I sold in my inventory, but presumably that's taken care of elsewhere in your code).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1796&start=0#p11846
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Monetary system extension
User: koopa184 / DateTime: 2010-12-14 21:36:15

Yes, it will be included elsewhere in my code. Thanks a lot for your help!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1797&start=0#p11847
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Removing the status line
User: Neo / DateTime: 2010-12-14 21:41:54

Thanks for the explanation, Erik.

Cheers!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1790&start=0#p11848
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk implementation of TADS banner API
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-12-14 22:34:49

[quote="Dannii"]Wow, the first independent implementation of the TADS3 VM![/quote]
Gargoyle uses the reference implementation. This is about the T3 banner API being implemented in Glk.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1790&start=0#p11849
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk implementation of TADS banner API
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-12-14 22:36:13

[quote="bcressey"]I've updated Gargoyle's Glk/ANSI port of TADS to include support for the banner API.[/quote]
Don't know about the others, but to me this looks like quite a Christmas gift [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote] Thanks for you hard work on this!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1787&start=0#p11850
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Must puzzles be at war with stories?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-15 11:22:44

I realize that I set up a sort of Catch-22; my original post stipulated that the puzzles had to be hard, and then my response to Emily's suggestion of "Make It Good" was "I haven't played that because it's too hard." Not THAT shaggy! Seriously, I think what I'm looking for can involve something that's puzzly -- you have to stop and think about the puzzles -- without being overwhelming. But I am hoping for something where you might say the story is paramount. Anyway...

[quote="Laroquod"]A Mind Forever Voyaging is still one of the greatest examples, I find. A game that is a puzzle without really containing puzzles, and whose puzzle couldn't exist without the story — a puzzle whose reason for being is to investigate the terms of the story. I think Shade went there, too, though I wouldn't class it 'Hard'. Sargent's Fragile Shells goes there, mostly by bringing the mountain to Mohammed — choosing a story and environment in which puzzle solving is key to survival. Within its small pocket of reality, it really works.[/quote]

See, I'd call Shade a no-puzzle piece -- I did get stuck in it when I examined something out of order, but what would you call a puzzle in it? And Fragile Shells seemed to me like a pretty straight-up puzzle game with a story as decoration -- essential decoration, if that makes sense, in that the game wouldn't have been nearly as worth playing without bits of story, but still the story was in service of the puzzles instead of vice versa. (My [url=http://saucersofmud.wordpress.com/2010/02/23/jayisgames-if-comp-wrapup/]contemporary take[/url] was "a solid puzzler with a story that’s nicely integrated but incidental," and [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/02/07/jig-comp-games/]Emily said "It’s puzzlicious; there’s a story there, but not a [i]lot[/i] of story."[/url]) AMFV I haven't played.  

[quote="mwigdahl"]For me, reading a story, even one written in second-person with some environmental agency (such as being able to move around at will, examine items at will, etc.), does not give me a strong sense of immersion unless the story is so powerful that it would have grabbed me just as strongly reading it in a book or magazine.  [i]Photopia[/i] qualifies under this rubric, and there have been one or two others, but it's rare.[/quote]

I don't agree with this view of Photopia -- see [url=http://www.necessarygames.com/reviews/photopia-game-free-download-independent-glulx-z-machine-interactive-fiction-fictional]this great essay on it[/url]. But this is the question of whether story-driven IF [i]needs[/i] puzzles, and that's another issue, maybe....

[quote][i]Spider and Web[/i] is a great example of this.  To make progress, you have to figure out a lot of fiddly details and unforgiving timings in a nice twist on the accretive PC.  But the game is structured such that you keep getting story details as you progress in small chunks, and you feel a burst of triumph each time you surmount a puzzle.  By the endgame, you've not only mastered the mechanics of your gear and have a pretty good idea what's going on and what you need to do to win, but you're strongly engaged in the plot and identifying with the otherwise-faceless protagonist.

[i]Spider and Web[/i] without the puzzle-solving aspect would be a competently-written story about a futuristic secret agent raiding an enemy base.  Without the story aspect, it would be a tough, generic puzzler with some interesting technological devices and game mechanics.  With both present and integrated, it's one of the best IF experiences available.[/quote]

This is interesting; Spider and Web was one of the games I was thinking about when I wrote my original post. I was originally going to characterize it as puzzle-first, but that's not quite right. The first most striking thing about it is the absolutely amazing framing conceit and its use; the second is the puzzles, especially That One; the plot for me is a distant third. I played it with heavily using a walkthrough,* which may skew my view, but I wanted to succeed in order to succeed in the game, not because I was heavily committed to making a difference. 

But this may not be fair, and this maybe goes back to what Paul said about puzzle being story and vice versa. S&W's framework and its puzzles all fit into a way of telling a story, and the puzzles are certainly essential to that. If the plot per se isn't the most compelling element of the game, often the plot isn't the most compelling element of the story. So maybe this is an example of what I'm talking about.

Another one I was thinking of is Gun Mute. At first I had it pegged as like Fragile Shells, a puzzle game with just enough story, but with the story developed further in a couple of scenes (in which you aren't in danger) -- sort of the Cave Story model of getting more story when you complete some stages (which of course goes way beyond Cave Story). But the more I think about it, the more I think that the puzzles are essential to the story. The story is that you're rescuing your lover, and to do this it's important that you fight through obstacles, and that the obstacles not be trivially solvable. That's the Don't Look Back model, in a way, though I think it's important to the story of Gun Mute that the stories aren't as hard as in Don't Look Back -- Don't Look Back really needs to push you to the edge of ragequitting (or in my cast past that edge, several times), Gun Mute doesn't. Partly because in IF you have to save manually, but also because of the different natures of your quests. So maybe that's an example of a game that puts puzzles in the service of a strong story without getting too hard for me. 

*(Spider and Web was one of the first games I played, and just now I see that the place that sent me to the walkthrough was really my fault; I didn't know that you could type 
[spoiler]jump[/spoiler]
as a command, but it was heavily hinted by the interrogator. Later on I don't think that I realized that if you failed often enough you'd get another hint from the interrogator. I did almost get That Puzzle, except
[spoiler]I flipping forgot which was "waltz" and which was "tango"[/spoiler]
but then I was pretty confused in the endgame. So maybe my view of the plot should be taken with a big grain of salt.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1787&start=0#p11851
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Must puzzles be at war with stories?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-15 11:30:35

[quote="Laroquod"]I am not very purist these days about not ever getting a hint, although I used to be. I'm not really trying to test my faculties when I approach IF puzzles anymore — I am just trying to have fun, so I will bang my head a certain amount, and then if I resort to hint or walkthrough then it's actually a compliment to the game, because it means the story's hooked me and I [i]need[/i] an answer. Maybe if you took as casual an approach the puzzles wouldn't interfere as much? (Hmm I think I just talked myself into adding a hint system to my game -- I've been debating it.)[/quote]

Oh I definitely would. I'm not at all a purist about using the hints either, and it's way more frustrating to hit a walkthrough than a well-designed hint system. In some of these games I've felt like I shouldn't sully them by using the hints, but I probably need to get over that, since the alternative seems to be not playing them. severedhand is probably right that it should be possible to clear the game without hints, but there are people who won't be able to.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1793&start=0#p11852
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compass rose?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-12-15 12:08:54

Thanks, Ron. That was definitely one of the possibilities I was thinking about, since this means that there are three possible states for any compass direction: absent (no exit that way), present/visited, or present/unvisited. I will include this feature.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1793&start=0#p11853
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compass rose?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-12-15 12:47:03

Remember that games can re-wire what directions lead from a room at run-time, so ensure it handles that too.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1798&start=0#p11854
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: ADRIFT website
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2010-12-15 13:16:53

It is currently down because Thus who provide internet connectivity to the datacentre where the site is hosted have a hardware fault.  Hoping that it will be up again soon.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1787&start=0#p11855
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Must puzzles be at war with stories?
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-12-15 13:23:04

[quote="matt w"]
I don't agree with this view of Photopia -- see [url=http://www.necessarygames.com/reviews/photopia-game-free-download-independent-glulx-z-machine-interactive-fiction-fictional]this great essay on it[/url]. But this is the question of whether story-driven IF [i]needs[/i] puzzles, and that's another issue, maybe....
[/quote]

I've read that essay.  I agree, a bit, in that you can exercise some control over pacing and presentation in the IF format that you can't in the short-story format.  That may have heightened the impact of playing [i]Photopia[/i] over reading the hypothetical short-story version.  And certainly puzzles don't necessarily have to be hard to give people a rush when they overcome them.  [i]Photopia[/i] had at least two "puzzles" that delivered direct emotional payoff, outside the greater context of the story.

[quote="matt w"]
This is interesting; Spider and Web was one of the games I was thinking about when I wrote my original post. I was originally going to characterize it as puzzle-first, but that's not quite right. The first most striking thing about it is the absolutely amazing framing conceit and its use; the second is the puzzles, especially That One; the plot for me is a distant third. I played it with heavily using a walkthrough,* which may skew my view, but I wanted to succeed in order to succeed in the game, not because I was heavily committed to making a difference. 

But this may not be fair, and this maybe goes back to what Paul said about puzzle being story and vice versa. S&W's framework and its puzzles all fit into a way of telling a story, and the puzzles are certainly essential to that. If the plot per se isn't the most compelling element of the game, often the plot isn't the most compelling element of the story. So maybe this is an example of what I'm talking about.
[/quote]

I'm probably being too nonspecific when I use the term "plot" -- maybe what I really mean is "storytelling".  I would certainly maintain that the "framing conceit" in [i]Spider and Web[/i] is at least as much associated with the storytelling aspect of the game as with the puzzle mechanics.  You are correct that without considering that conceit, the remaining plot diminishes in significance.

When I played [i]Spider and Web[/i] I wasn't trying to make a difference so much as defeat the interrogator.  I identified with the agent due to the oppressive interrogation and the difficulty of the challenges required to progress, and I took the interrogation personally.  For me, That Puzzle delivered huge emotional payoff.  I consider solving it as where I truly won the game; the rest was trying to figure out how to make the game finally acknowledge that.   [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1793&start=0#p11856
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compass rose?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-12-15 15:47:57

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Remember that games can re-wire what directions lead from a room at run-time, so ensure it handles that too.[/quote]

I guess I'm not sure what you mean. The directions available would be reevaluated every time the compass rose updates, which ought to catch any map connection that was changed at run time. (I'm not sure how else one would code it, to be honest; I mean, I could think of other ways, but they'd represent more work for dubious gain). 

If you mean using something like the Hypothetical Actions extension to check what would actually result if the player goes in each compass direction, e.g. to catch things like this:

Instead of going north from the Confusion Room:
     move the player to the Cold Comfort Room.

...well, I'm not going to do that. (This sort of thing [i]shouldn't [/i]be handled by a compass, I don't think.)

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1791&start=0#p11857
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: the object tree and the chunk
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-12-15 17:06:56

After I posted on this thread last night, I pondered the question of the fundamental unit of meaning in IF some more, and I realized that we have essentially come up with three distinct but not at all mutually-exclusive theories, which I'll call here the Object Theory, the Chunk Theory, and the Description Theory.

According to the Object Theory, an IF game is simulated fictional world built on relationships between components of that world, which may or may not correspond to actual spatial relationships.

According to the Chunk Theory, an IF game is a program that produces specific chunks of text in response to a human user's choices.  These chunks of text describe how the user's choice has or has not affected the state of the program.

According to the Description Theory, an IF game is an organized system of interrelated descriptions.

These different theories have different advantages for discussing different aspects of IF.  For instance, it is true that an object is greater than the sum of its descriptions in the sense of what the game is communicating the player.  That is, the player doesn't think of the object as a few associated pieces of text, but rather imagines a real, physical object in his mind.  Therefore, the Object Theory is definitely the best for discussing IF as an art or literary form.  It is of great use to critics and reviewers, though authors must of course think in terms of the object tree as well.  Also, this is theory that all visual maps that were ever created about any specific IF game is based on.

The Chunk Theory's chief strength is that it actually describes the player's experience as he or she encounters the text of an IF game.  It is the only one of three theories that is directly concerned with interactivity.  More than the other two theories, the Chunk Theory deals with IF as a kind of computer game.  Because an author needs to be aware as much as possible of the "chunks" that the player may encounter, this theory is of great use to authors as well as to beta testers.
 
The Description Theory has similarities to both the Object and Chunk Theories.  Like the Chunk Theory, it is based on units of text rather than on the model world.  However, since units of description form objects (according to this theory), it sort of builds a meta-object tree, with the objects being formed by their descriptions.  Therefore, it is related to the Object Theory.  I think this theory is less useful than the other two in a practical sense.  It is not concerned with the whole value of any component of an IF game, just as strict science is not concerned with the inherent value of a human, but rather describes the human organism in terms of its component parts.  However, I think this theory has great potential for authors of IF languages and development systems to think of ways to organize the author's written text to create a functional IF game.

This stuff belongs in a textbook! [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1791&start=0#p11858
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: the object tree and the chunk
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-12-15 17:19:06

I think you've slipped your definition of "chunk" from "any self-contained descriptive or narrative message" (as you introduced it) to something more like "everything that happened between one player choice and the next" (which Laroquod mentioned). Which?

Also:

[quote]That is, the player doesn't think of the object as a few associated pieces of text, but rather imagines a real, physical object in his mind.[/quote]

Sure...

[quote]Therefore, the Object Theory is definitely the best for discussing IF as an art or literary form.[/quote]

No, that doesn't follow at all. :) An object-level description of a game does a poor job of representing the story as the player sees it. 

When I'm discussing IF as an art form, I talk about game events and what choices the player is thinking about. Those have no direct representation in the program.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1790&start=0#p11859
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk implementation of TADS banner API
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-12-15 17:36:52

[quote="RealNC"][quote="Dannii"]Wow, the first independent implementation of the TADS3 VM![/quote]
Gargoyle uses the reference implementation. This is about the T3 banner API being implemented in Glk.[/quote]
I was referring to ZMPP...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1800&start=0#p11861
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: [SPAG] #59 Now Available
User: RandomExile / DateTime: 2010-12-16 00:54:02

Hi, there!

The latest issue of IF's journal of record, SPAG, is available at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/backissues/spag59.html">http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/backissues/spag59.html</a>. Thanks for bearing with us while we straightened out the transfer of editorial oversight!  Everyone's been extremely kind, and deepest thanks to our reviewers this issue, whose time and thoughtful writing made this possible during an otherwise frenetic last quarter(s).

For those who would like to contribute to the forthcoming SPAG #60, by all means begin drafting your essays, musings,and observations.  I'd love to hear what you're working on, and if you want to be involved but aren't sure how, shoot me an e-mail and we'll find the inspiration!

Cheers,

RE

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1800&start=0#p11872
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: [SPAG] #59 Now Available
User: ManolisG13 / DateTime: 2010-12-16 07:23:28

Thanx for keeping SPAG alive after all these years [emote]:)[/emote] (this goes to all the maintainers right from the start [emote]:)[/emote] )..

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1811&start=0#p11873
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: no color in the Inform IDE map?
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2010-12-16 08:11:43

I realize I'm a little bit late to this party, but I finally got around to compiling my WIP in the latest release of Inform (6F95). And I noticed that all the colors have drained away from the index map.

Has anyone else noticed this? Is it on purpose, or is it a bug?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1811&start=0#p11874
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: no color in the Inform IDE map?
User: eu / DateTime: 2010-12-16 08:31:43

It's a bug, and it's been fixed for the next release: <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=371">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=371</a>.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1800&start=0#p11875
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: [SPAG] #59 Now Available
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2010-12-16 08:35:19

Hi SPAGgers. Thank you for SPAG.

For IFComp authors, this SPAG may largely remind them/us of the aggravations of being in the comp and watching reviews roll in, just because it is again another set of reviews of the comp games.

So here are my capsule reviews of the SPAG reviews. I don't mean to review them just by whether I agree with what they say about any game, but whether I think they're good work for the cause of reviewing, which was the authors' primary gripe about many reviews written in haste in blogs during the comp:

[b]Aot, Chronicler, One Eye Open, Following a Star, Warbler's Nest, Flight of the Hummingbird, Gigantomania, Lost Sheep, Mite, R, 12:54 to Asgard, Under in Erebus, Blind House, A quiet evening at home:[/b] Thumbs up!

[b]Divis Mortis:[/b] Mostly thumbs up, but many complaints about 'lack of originality' grow wearying. I find tropes and originality studies unhelpful, since total originality is so extraordinarily rare. Was this game obviously the author's particular delivery? Yes.

The same trope-watching is going on in the Pen and Paint review.

[b]Oxygen, East Grove Hills:[/b] Sure it's only 1 paragraph long, or in danger of being underdeveloped, respectively, but thumbs up.

[b]Rogue:[/b] Thumbs down! I don't think the opening paragraph about playing some other unnamed TADs game is relevant, or demonstrated to be relevant in hindsight. Re: The complaint about 'there is nowhere near enough prose'... I think the game's consistent style shows it has the amount of prose the author intended. There aren't inherently correct amounts of prose in these games. The more I hang on IFDB, the more I see this kind of criticism, where terse and perfectly arranged prose which also succeeds in paying everything off is unreasonably described as, 'Well, it wasn't awful...' ... A high word count for its own sake is not a good goal. Whatever serves the story best via author intention and logistics will be best.

[b]Heated:[/b] Thumbs down. Opens with a paragraph saying the game is doomed because of the expectations of 'the community'. No thorough description of why the game is actually as terrible as all that follows. There's a valid para about the undernourished heatometer, then one saying 'the tech is solid', then one bug description. Conclusion paragraph: 'Will go down like a lead balloon.' Speculation on author's motives and knowledge, etc., follows.

[b]Leadlight:[/b] My game. I got a lot of reviews I placed on one pile which featured the combo of: 'We're trying to move IF forward these days' (what, was I trying to move it back?) paragraphs of speculation on my motives for various things, and dotted line drawing to separate the lovely modern IF from the horrible old IF.

What I like about Junana's review was that she didn't speculate on my motives or google me. She did evoke the dotted lines and 'moving forward', though... buuut she also admits to not being au fait with horror games, and I think that may be one of the most important things you can say if you go to review a horror game - or more generally, to declare your au faitness with the general attributes of any particular game you're reviewing if it's new turf for you. So thumbs up.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1800&start=0#p11876
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: [SPAG] #59 Now Available
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-16 09:56:16

Isn't Juhana a dude?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1791&start=0#p11877
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: the object tree and the chunk
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-12-16 10:19:39

[quote="zarf"]I think you've slipped your definition of "chunk" from "any self-contained descriptive or narrative message" (as you introduced it) to something more like "everything that happened between one player choice and the next" (which Laroquod mentioned). Which?[/quote]
Yes.  After my initial definition of "chunk", I realized what I was thinking was not quite the same idea as what George introduced the thread with.  As far as I can tell, his definition was more of all the text that is produced by a player's command:
[quote="George"]the fundamental unit of IF is not the object but the 'chunk', that unit of text returned to the player after they perform an action (maybe there's a better term?)[/quote]
Therefore, I figured that my model of discussing IF was different from George's, so I decided to call it the "Description Theory" in my next post.  This "Description Theory" is not based on the "chunk" (as defined by George) at all, but on individual descriptions as the most basic unit of meaning.

[quote="zarf"]
[quote]That is, the player doesn't think of the object as a few associated pieces of text, but rather imagines a real, physical object in his mind.[/quote]

Sure...

[quote]Therefore, the Object Theory is definitely the best for discussing IF as an art or literary form.[/quote]

No, that doesn't follow at all. [emote]:)[/emote] An object-level description of a game does a poor job of representing the story as the player sees it. 

When I'm discussing IF as an art form, I talk about game events and what choices the player is thinking about. Those have no direct representation in the program.[/quote]
Hmmm... The reason I was thinking that the "Object Theory" was the preferable model for discussing IF as an artform was that I thought the object tree is the only concrete way that the author of the IF game can express his artistic meaning.  Basically, I'm agreeing with Laroquod in that the objects, and the relationships between objects, carry all the meaning of both the puzzles and the story.  I agree that "chunks" and descriptions are both smaller units of meaning, but the objects in the model world -- whether or not they are literal or abstract -- are greater than the sum of their descriptions.  The player reads various descriptions to learn about an object, but the human player forms a concrete literary or symbolic picture in his or her mind.  Therefore, I feel that the object contains more symbolic meaning than the sum of all its descriptions.

However, because the player only knows about the objects based on the pieces of text that he or she has read ("descriptions"), I believe that the description is indeed a more fundamental unit of meaning than the object.  (Note that this is presupposing an entirely text-only IF game.  Adding pictures to the theory would complicate matters.)  I was thinking that neither descriptions nor chunks are complete expressions of one unique part of the author's vision, but I may be wrong about that.  Obviously, descriptions and chunks have literary meaning, because they [i]are[/i] prose, after all.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1800&start=0#p11878
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: [SPAG] #59 Now Available
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-12-16 10:54:21

[quote="matt w"]Isn't Juhana a dude?[/quote]
[url=http://www.behindthename.com/name/juhana]Yes he is[/url] :)

I'd also like to clarify that the "moving forward" part referred to technological advancements. It'd be hypocrisy to claim that IF couldn't advance as an art form or as games when using decades old technology, but on the other hand technological advances do open wider possibilities (not necessarily deeper). I can also see why people would think that the game was meant to be a tribute or the old-school look and feel was the main point. I thought that myself, too, but apparently this isn't the case--sorry for jumping into conclusions without better knowledge.

It should also be noted that when people sign up to the SPAG review pool the games are assigned randomly. Sometimes you get a game that you know you're not the best person to review and you have to try not to bash the game when it's obvious that you and the game just aren't meant for each other.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1811&start=0#p11879
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: no color in the Inform IDE map?
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2010-12-16 13:37:24

Ah, I should have looked there first. Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1800&start=0#p11880
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: [SPAG] #59 Now Available
User: Neo / DateTime: 2010-12-16 15:59:18

Hahaha... that's priceless!

Juhana: "Junana" could be your drag name... You know, if you ever went down that path... [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1800&start=0#p11881
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: [SPAG] #59 Now Available
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2010-12-16 19:46:35

[quote="Juhana"][quote="matt w"]Isn't Juhana a dude?[/quote]
[url=http://www.behindthename.com/name/juhana]Yes he is[/url] [emote]:)[/emote]

I'd also like to clarify that the "moving forward" part referred to technological advancements. It'd be hypocrisy to claim that IF couldn't advance as an art form or as games when using decades old technology, but on the other hand technological advances do open wider possibilities (not necessarily deeper). I can also see why people would think that the game was meant to be a tribute or the old-school look and feel was the main point. I thought that myself, too, but apparently this isn't the case--sorry for jumping into conclusions without better knowledge.

It should also be noted that when people sign up to the SPAG review pool the games are assigned randomly. Sometimes you get a game that you know you're not the best person to review and you have to try not to bash the game when it's obvious that you and the game just aren't meant for each other.[/quote]

Haha... I'm sorry Juhana. You may wish to examine SPAG #59, where your name appears as 'Junana' every time. And that's where I got it as I hadn't met you before.

Thanks for your extra clarifications on my own game. I obviously can't expect anyone to know my motives unless I state them (I did on the game website, but clearly many did not read it at the time) but it was the reviews that decided what my motives were for sure, acted confidently in the knowledge - and got it wrong - that really irked me. Yours definitely had no relation to such stuff.

My intent with my SPAG post was to mobilise talk on various reviewing issues. Some things kept coming up over and over again during the review explosion of IFCOMP, but the authors weren't allowed to talk about any of them.

Your comment about the review pool designation of SPAG is relevant to IFCOMP time as well. In IFCOMP, many players are inevitably going to be playing games they normally might not try. But for those who double as commenters on everything in their blog, we saw a lot of hasty work done as they rushed to get through all the games. So instead of considered reviews, you get opinionated first responses, sometimes not with much consideration and often with no fact checking.

Some weren't even reviews... yknow, for my own game, Yoon Ha Lee's entry paraphrases to 'My eyeballs exploded so I couldn't stand to play the game, 5/10'. The review actually stopped where the game started, but only after giving a blow by blow account of all his/her (I'm not gonna make that mistake twice in one topic!) emotional state changes. I dialed up this review on my friend's iphone when we were having some drinks at the Bavarian Bier Cafe and we all rolled around in hysterics.

But this got linked up as a 'review' at ifwiki, etc. As it turns out later, I still liked Yoon Ha Lee's set of comments more than others I received [emote]:)[/emote] My overall point is - IFCOMP certainly exposed the diference between considered reviews and a lot of rush jobs, but the rush jobs nevertheless follow the games around afterwards I think it was Hannes who pointed this out.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1812&start=0#p11882
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Useful Extension Ideas?
User: koopa184 / DateTime: 2010-12-17 19:03:10

Extensions are definitely a huge part of Inform7, as there are a ton of users who use them, especially the useful ones. I'm thinking of trying to make an extension, so any suggestions that wouldn't be mind-blowingly hard but so easy that anyone could make it? I'll try to consider all extension ideas, and I'll mention the person who suggests the extension that I end up choosing in the documentation of said extension.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1813&start=0#p11883
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Help with Tables
User: koopa184 / DateTime: 2010-12-17 20:56:58

Tables are a newer piece of information that I've learned, and I'm still adjusting to using them. In my attempt to make a small test of my table-making skills, I became confused in how to use tables with actions. Here I've tried to make an action to change a TV to a program, and then use a list of programs in a table to check whether the program is viable to change to or not. Here's some of the source code: [code]Changing it to is an action applying to two things.
Understand "Change [television] to [program]" as changing it to.
Check changing it to:
	if the noun is not the television:
		say "That's not the television.";
		stop the action;
	if the program is not listed in the Table of Television Programs:
		say "You flip through the channels, searching for something that appears not to be there";
		stop the action.
Carry out changing it to:
	say "[mindless description entry]"

Table of Television Programs
Program	Mindless description
"Hunting"	"Mindless animals being hunted down by men with rifles appear on the screen"
"Baseball"	"Ah, the iconic battle between the Red Sox and the Yankees. Oh yes, you just 
		remembered that you hate baseball"

[/code]
As I'm still new to this, I was wondering whether my fellow Inform 7 users could help me with this issue.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1813&start=0#p11884
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with Tables
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2010-12-17 21:31:08

you should have used

if the program is not [b]an action listed[/b] in the Table of Television Programs:

To decide whether (a value ) is a (name of a column) listed in (a tablle). Always
You don't have to use this with lists though, as they contain only one kind of... kind

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1813&start=0#p11885
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with Tables
User: koopa184 / DateTime: 2010-12-17 21:36:05

What exactly do you mean? Could you use it in the source text for me?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1813&start=0#p11886
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with Tables
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2010-12-17 21:47:10

[quote]
Changing it to is an action applying to two things.
Understand "Change [television] to [program]" as changing it to.
Check changing it to:
   if the noun is not the television:
      say "That's not the television.";
      stop the action;
  [b] if the program is not a Program listed in the Table of Television Programs:[/b]
      say "You flip through the channels, searching for something that appears not to be there";
      stop the action.
Carry out changing it to:
   say "[mindless description entry]"

Table of Television Programs
Program   Mindless description
"Hunting"   "Mindless animals being hunted down by men with rifles appear on the screen"
"Baseball"   "Ah, the iconic battle between the Red Sox and the Yankees. Oh yes, you just
      remembered that you hate baseball"
[/quote]

I'm not really sure whether "...an action listed..." works (and sorry for the mistake, i'm probzably high). The right syntax is to use the table column (= the name of the column).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1814&start=0#p11887
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Stop displaying room names?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-12-18 04:37:41

So I can see this piece of code in the Thing class:

[code]/* if desired, display the room name */
        if ((verbose & LookRoomName) != 0)
        {
            "<.roomname>";
            lookAroundWithinName(actor, illum);
            "<./roomname>";
        }[/code]
Just what I want.  But how do I express that it [i]isn't[/i] desired?

LookRoomName seems to be a flag in adv3.h:

[code]/* ------------------------------------------------------------------------ */
/*
 *   Flags for LOOK AROUND styles 
 */

/* show the room name as part of the description */
#define LookRoomName       0x0001[/code]
How do I use this flag?  It seems to be implied in comments that I can set gameMain.VerboseMode.isOn to some combination of flags, such as "(LookRoomDesc | LookListSpecials | LookListPortables)", but doing so in the intro doesn't seem to turn off the room names.

Alternatively I can just short circuit lookAroundWithinName to return nothing, but that's overkill.  I don't want to stop rooms having names, I just don't want them printed out as the player moves around or looks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1815&start=0#p11888
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Reciprocal Directions
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-12-18 06:56:33

So for the past year I've been wanting to do something in Inform 7, and I've developed the nasty habit of starting projects in I7, hitting a wall and then switching to TADS.  Right now I'm actually prototyping something in both languages, and since I've hit problems in both, I thought I'd ask about my I7 woes.

First up, reciprocal directions: I don't like them, and I want to turn them off.  I see my project as having a large number of rooms of different kinds.  Movement will typically be one way, so the idea of having to remember to set opposite directions to nowhere seems like a headache.  

Consider the following:

[code]The first room is a room.

The second room is south of the first room.  North of the second room is nowhere.

The third room is east of the second room.  West of the third room is nowhere.

The fourth room is north of the third room.  South of the fourth room is nowhere.[/code]
Now imagine there was branching and multiple ways to reach a room.

Is there a way to tell Inform not to assume that a direction one way must also go the other way?  (I've tried saying "The opposite of south is nothing." which seems to work for newly created directions, but not for existing ones.)

At the same time, any solution shouldn't prevent me from adding a returning connection in the rare instances where I do want them.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1815&start=0#p11889
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reciprocal Directions
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-12-18 09:17:15

I don't think you can turn the feature off completely, but you can go around it by defining the exits at runtime:

[code]The first room is a room. The second room is a room. The third room is a room. The fourth room is a room.

When play begins:
    change the south exit of the first room to the second room;
    change the east exit of the second room to the third room;
    change the north exit of the third room to the fourth room.[/code]

The downside is that you'll lose the world map in the index, but if the layout is too convoluted the map doesn't handle it very graciously anyway.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1813&start=0#p11890
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with Tables
User: koopa184 / DateTime: 2010-12-18 10:15:42

Nope, doesn't appear to work...

Again, can anyone help me? I know that there are plenty of users with a lot of experience using tables, so can you help? I've attempted to revise this a little, though I think I may have just made this worse...:[code]The Living Room is a room. "You lay back on your plush black sofa and watch your favorite television programs." The sofa is in The Living Room. The television is a device in The Living Room. The television is switched on. The player is on the sofa.

Changing it to is an action applying to one thing and one topic.
Understand "Change [television] to [topic]" as changing it to.
Carry out changing it to:
	if the second noun corresponds to a program listed in The Table of Television Programs:
		say "[mindless description entry]";
	otherwise:
		say "You flip through the channels searching for it, but you can't find it";
		stop the action.

Table of Television Programs
Program	Mindless description
"Hunting"	"Mindless animals being hunted down by men with rifles appear on the screen"
"Baseball"	"Ah, the iconic battle between the Red Sox and the Yankees. Oh yes, you just 
		remembered that you hate baseball"[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1813&start=0#p11891
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with Tables
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-12-18 10:26:08

That's almost there, the wording is just a little off. There is no "second noun" in the changing it to action, the second token is a "topic understood". You can also use a special "Topic" header in the table (see manual ch. 15.13.)

[code]
The living room is a room.
The television is in the living room.

Changing it to is an action applying to one thing and one topic.
Understand "change [something] to [text]" as changing it to.

Check changing it to:
	if the noun is not the television:
		say "That's not the television." instead;
	if the topic understood is not a topic listed in the Table of Television Programs:
		say "You flip through the channels searching for it, but you can't find it." instead.

Carry out changing it to:
	if the topic understood is a topic listed in the Table of Television Programs:
		say "[mindless description entry]".
	
Table of Television Programs
Topic	Mindless description
"Hunting"	"Mindless animals being hunted down by men with rifles appear on the screen"
"Baseball"	"Ah, the iconic battle between the Red Sox and the Yankees. Oh yes, you just
  remembered that you hate baseball"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1813&start=0#p11892
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with Tables
User: koopa184 / DateTime: 2010-12-18 10:49:54

Oh!

Thank you for your help!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1816&start=0#p11893
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: ZMPP working for Glulx?
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-12-18 11:33:45

I'm trying to get ZMPP to play Glulx games, but I'm not having any luck. I can open and run .z5 files okay, but when I try to open either a .ulx or a .gblorb, I just get a blank white screen-- no error messages, but no game either.

I've downloaded the zmpp-1.5-preview1-bin.zip file from the Sourceforge page, although I notice there's also a "Glulx Preview" directory that's empty. Is Glulx support still in the works for ZMPP or has it actually been added? (If not, there is no working Java implementation of modern Glulx, correct?)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1620&start=10#p11894
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Zarf unveils mad plan to do IF full-time
User: Siavash / DateTime: 2010-12-18 11:52:48

Hey Zarf, Aside from the game itself, When are you planning to release the iphone interpreter?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1816&start=0#p11895
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ZMPP working for Glulx?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-12-18 12:04:15

You are looking for [url=https://github.com/weiju/zmpp2]ZMPP2[/url], which added Glulx support.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1777&start=10#p11896
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Characters without bodies?
User: orionsbelt / DateTime: 2010-12-18 12:33:43

6F95 on Windows 7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1814&start=0#p11897
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Stop displaying room names?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-12-18 12:47:09

LookRoomName is a bit-flag that is used when calling Actor.lookAround(), Thing.lookAroundPov(), Thing.lookAroundWithin() and maybe others. gameMain.VerboseMode.isOn doesn't work with bit-flags. It can only be either true or nil.

Try overriding (or modifying, if you're not subclassing) Thing.lookAroundWithin(actor, pov, verbose):

[code]lookAroundWithin(actor, pov, verbose)
{
	if (verbose) {
		verbose = (LookRoomDesc | LookListSpecials | LookListPortables);
	} else {
		verbose = (LookListSpecials | LookListPortables); 
	}
	inherited(actor, pov, verbose);
}[/code]

That should work.

For the statusline, you can play around with Thing.statusName(actor). By default, it prints the room name.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1620&start=10#p11898
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Zarf unveils mad plan to do IF full-time
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-12-18 13:21:03

I haven't put any deadlines on my project, because that would be silly.

The iPhone interpreter source code will be an open repository, so you will be able to compile it at any stage of its done-ness. *Probably* it will be usable well before the game is finished. But maybe not polished.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1814&start=0#p11899
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Stop displaying room names?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-12-18 14:14:30

Yay!  Awesome.  Thanks.

I'm not too worried about the status line because I'll be changing that anyway.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1800&start=0#p11900
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: [SPAG] #59 Now Available
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-12-18 16:26:52

From Irfon-Kim Ahmad's "Rogue of the Multiverse" review in SPAG #59:
[quote]I played [Rogue of the Multiverse] in QTads version 2.0.1 on Max OS X. There was one major glitch in the game, which was that at occasional points during one specific region of the game, the display would jump to a random point in the transcript and although the game would still be playing, scrolling down to see the "current" text did not work. Simply saving my game, then re-opening the story file and restoring my saved game did work as a workaround for this issue. I don't know whether the game or QTads or a combination of the two caused the issue, since I've never tried another TADS game on this system, although the fact that it happened in only one region of the game leads me to believe that the game was at least involved.[/quote]
I wish to point out that this bug is entirely my fault; the game has nothing to do with it. I shipped QTads 2.0.1 Mac binaries that were created using a faulty version of one of the base libraries. As a result, the bug described above can occur with all games and not just RotM.

My apologies for this screw-up. I will replace the released 2.0.1 Mac applications (both the Intel as well as the PPC version are affected) with corrected ones as soon as possible. Note that only the Mac versions are affected. The Linux and Windows versions don't have this problem.

Edit:
I've just uploaded the [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=11902#p11902]corrected Mac builds[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1815&start=0#p11901
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reciprocal Directions
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-12-18 17:41:17

I would have expected this to work:

[code]The no-way is a direction.
When play begins:
	repeat with way running through directions:
		now the opposite of the way is no-way.[/code]

But it doesn't. It compiles and as far as I can tell it runs through all twelve directions, but the opposites apparently are not reset.
Can anybody explain why?

I'm [i]sure[/i] there is another way, but as a last resort I guess you could replace Section SR1/4 - Directions in the Standard Rules with something appropriate to your needs.

Would this do? Or will it lead to horrible bugs?

[rant=Non-Reciprocal Directions]Section SR1/4/custom - Non-Reciprocal Directions (in place of Section SR1/4 - Directions in Standard Rules by Graham Nelson)

The specification of direction is "Represents a direction of movement, such
as northeast or down. They always occur in opposite, matched pairs: northeast
and southwest, for instance; down and up."

A direction can be privately-named or publically-named. A direction is usually
publically-named.
A direction can be marked for listing or unmarked for listing. A direction is
usually unmarked for listing.

A direction has a direction called an opposite. [The going action at certain rare occasions uses the opposite of direction, so don't comment it out.]

Include (-
	has scenery, ! class CompassDirection,
-) when defining a direction.

The north is a direction.
The northeast is a direction.
The northwest is a direction.
The south is a direction.
The southeast is a direction.
The southwest is a direction.
The east is a direction.
The west is a direction.
The up is a direction.
The down is a direction.
The inside is a direction.
The outside is a direction.

[Adding the following two lines.]
The no-way is a direction.
The opposite of a direction is usually no-way. [Otherwise the opposite direction will default to north.]


[The north has opposite south.] Understand "n" as north.
[The northeast has opposite southwest.] Understand "ne" as northeast.
[The northwest has opposite southeast.] Understand "nw" as northwest.
[The south has opposite north.] Understand "s" as south.
[The southeast has opposite northwest.] Understand "se" as southeast.
[The southwest has opposite northeast.] Understand "sw" as southwest.
[The east has opposite west.] Understand "e" as east.
[The west has opposite east.] Understand "w" as west.
[Up has opposite down.] Understand "u" as up.
[Down has opposite up.] Understand "d" as down.
[Inside has opposite outside.] Understand "in" as inside.
[Outside has opposite inside.] Understand "out" as outside.

The inside object translates into I6 as "in_obj".
The outside object translates into I6 as "out_obj".

The verb to be above implies the mapping up relation.
The verb to be mapped above implies the mapping up relation.
The verb to be below implies the mapping down relation.
The verb to be mapped below implies the mapping down relation.[/rant]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1524&start=0#p11902
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: QTads 2.0.1 released (Linux/Mac/Unix Multimedia TADS 'te
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2010-12-18 17:50:54

I just re-released the Mac version in order to fix [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=11900#p11900]a nasty scroll history bug[/url]. It's still version 2.0.1 since the bug was in an external library, not in the interpreter itself:

[url=http://sourceforge.net/projects/qtads/files/qtads-2.x/2.0.1/QTads-2.0.1-scrollfix-intel.dmg/download]Updated Intel version[/url]
[url=http://sourceforge.net/projects/qtads/files/qtads-2.x/2.0.1/QTads-2.0.1-scrollfix-ppc.dmg/download]Updated PowerPC version[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1767&start=0#p11903
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: I can't play my game, PLEASE HELP
User: Iwillremember / DateTime: 2010-12-18 23:57:43

Unfortunately, I was trying to use the frotz.exe to run my game.  Thanks, I now realize this was a mistake.

What do I need to do to run my game outside of the Inform 7 editor (once it is a zblorb or z5 file) ?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1767&start=0#p11904
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: I can't play my game, PLEASE HELP
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-12-19 00:56:42

[quote="Iwillremember"]What do I need to do to run my game outside of the Inform 7 editor (once it is a zblorb or z5 file) ?[/quote]You need to download and install an interpreter program for Z-code files, of which there are lots. Two popular ones for Windows:
Windows Frotz [url]http://www.davidkinder.co.uk/frotz.html[/url]
Gargoyle [url]http://code.google.com/p/garglk/[/url]

There is also a web-based interpreter ("Parchment") that is built into the latest versions of Inform 7, see the documentation on "Releasing", particularly the section on web sites.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1815&start=0#p11905
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reciprocal Directions
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-12-19 05:17:45

[quote="Juhana"]I don't think you can turn the feature off completely, but you can go around it by defining the exits at runtime:[/quote]
Neat idea, but I think it solves one fiddly thing by replacing it with another.

[quote="Felix"]Would this do? Or will it lead to horrible bugs?

[rant=Non-Reciprocal Directions]Section SR1/4/custom - Non-Reciprocal Directions (in place of Section SR1/4 - Directions in Standard Rules by Graham Nelson)

The specification of direction is "Represents a direction of movement, such
as northeast or down. They always occur in opposite, matched pairs: northeast
and southwest, for instance; down and up."

A direction can be privately-named or publically-named. A direction is usually
publically-named.
A direction can be marked for listing or unmarked for listing. A direction is
usually unmarked for listing.

A direction has a direction called an opposite. [The going action at certain rare occasions uses the opposite of direction, so don't comment it out.]

Include (-
	has scenery, ! class CompassDirection,
-) when defining a direction.

The north is a direction.
The northeast is a direction.
The northwest is a direction.
The south is a direction.
The southeast is a direction.
The southwest is a direction.
The east is a direction.
The west is a direction.
The up is a direction.
The down is a direction.
The inside is a direction.
The outside is a direction.

[Adding the following two lines.]
The no-way is a direction.
The opposite of a direction is usually no-way. [Otherwise the opposite direction will default to north.]


[The north has opposite south.] Understand "n" as north.
[The northeast has opposite southwest.] Understand "ne" as northeast.
[The northwest has opposite southeast.] Understand "nw" as northwest.
[The south has opposite north.] Understand "s" as south.
[The southeast has opposite northwest.] Understand "se" as southeast.
[The southwest has opposite northeast.] Understand "sw" as southwest.
[The east has opposite west.] Understand "e" as east.
[The west has opposite east.] Understand "w" as west.
[Up has opposite down.] Understand "u" as up.
[Down has opposite up.] Understand "d" as down.
[Inside has opposite outside.] Understand "in" as inside.
[Outside has opposite inside.] Understand "out" as outside.

The inside object translates into I6 as "in_obj".
The outside object translates into I6 as "out_obj".

The verb to be above implies the mapping up relation.
The verb to be mapped above implies the mapping up relation.
The verb to be below implies the mapping down relation.
The verb to be mapped below implies the mapping down relation.[/rant][/quote]
Well, it [i]seems[/i] to work nicely.  (And I was wondering what the syntax was for overriding the default library.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1815&start=0#p11906
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reciprocal Directions
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-19 08:32:07

[quote="Felix"]I would have expected this to work:

[code]First report going a direction (called way):
	say "(coming from the [opposite of way])[command clarification break]".[/code]

But it doesn't. It compiles and as far as I can tell it runs through all twelve directions, but the opposites apparently are not reset.
Can anybody explain why?[/quote]

The opposites do seem to get reset. Try adding this bit to your code:

[quote]First report going a direction (called way):
	let origin be the opposite of way;
	say "(coming from [the origin])[command clarification break]".[/quote]

Whenever you go somewhere, it'll say "(coming from the no-way)". What I think is happening is that the map connections, with their opposites, get defined before play begins. So resetting the opposites after play begins doesn't prevent the original reciprocal map connections from being created. 

BTW it seems that the other place the opposite gets used in the standard rules is in the rules for reporting NPC movements, though the logic there is convoluted enough that I can't tell what's going on and how you'd want to deal with it after resetting the opposites.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1817&start=0#p11907
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Capturing Three Features About Player At Start Of Game?
User: demonboy / DateTime: 2010-12-20 00:10:17

Hi all, newbie here to Inform 7. Love it.

I am using some of the examples and have found 'Identity Theft' and 'Pink or Blue'. The first asks for the player's name and the second asks if they are male or female. I would like to add a third question (what is the name of your boat).

Unfortunately I haven't quite got my head around the correct syntax to get this to run properly. So far I have it asking the player if they are male or female and then their name. This is the wrong way round. I'd like to ask name, boat name and then male or female.

This is what I have pasted from the examples. I know this has something to do with conflicts between 'When play begins' and 'move the player to the location;', but I can't get my head around it.

Any pointers?

[code]
The player's forename is an indexed text that varies. The player's full name is an indexed text that varies.

When play begins:
	now the command prompt is "And what name do you wish to go by? > ".

To decide whether collecting names:
	if the command prompt is "And what name do you wish to go by? > ", yes;
	no.

After reading a command when collecting names:
	if the number of words in the player's command is greater than 5:
		say "[paragraph break]Who are you, a member of the British royal family? No one has that many names. Let's try this again.";
		reject the player's command;
	now the player's full name is the player's command;
	now the player's forename is word number 1 in the player's command;
	now the command prompt is ">";
	say "[paragraph break]";
	move the player to the location; 
	reject the player's command. 


[We also want to postpone the proper beginning of the game until we've gotten the name:]

Instead of looking when collecting names: do nothing.

Rule for printing the banner text when collecting names: do nothing.

Rule for constructing the status line when collecting names: do nothing.



The player's boatname is an indexed text that varies. 

When play begins:
	now the command prompt is "And what is your boat name? > ".

To decide whether collecting boatname:
	if the command prompt is "And what is your boat name? > ", yes;
	no.

After reading a command when collecting boatname:
	if the number of words in the player's command is greater than 5:
		say "[paragraph break]That's a bit convoluted. Imagine repeating that name over the VHF in an emergency. Let's try this again.";
		reject the player's command;
	[now the player's full name is the player's command;]
	now the player's boatname is word number 1 in the player's command;
	now the command prompt is ">";
	say "[paragraph break]";
	move the player to the location; 
	reject the player's command. 


[We also want to postpone the proper beginning of the game until we've gotten the name:]

Instead of looking when collecting boatname: do nothing.

Rule for printing the banner text when collecting boatname: do nothing.

Rule for constructing the status line when collecting boatname: do nothing.



When play begins:
	say "Welcome! Before we begin, a couple of personal questions if I may. [paragraph break]Should your character be male or female? >";
	if men win, now the player is male;
	otherwise now the player is female;
	say line break.

[Now a piece of Inform 6 code handles the unusual input. It's not necessary to understand this to use it, and the code should work for any question you'd like to ask the player. The first three words in quotation marks ('male', 'M', 'man'...) correspond to positive feedback; the later three words correspond to negative feedback. So "to decide whether men win" will be true if the player types one of the first three, and false if he types one of the last three.]

To decide whether men win:
	(- Question('male','M//','man','female','F//','woman') -)

Include (-

[ Question pos1 pos2 pos3 neg1 neg2 neg3 first_word_typed;
	while (true) {
		VM_ReadKeyboard(buffer, parse);
		wn = 1; first_word_typed = NextWordStopped();
		if (first_word_typed == pos1 or pos2 or pos3) rtrue;
		if (first_word_typed == neg1 or neg2 or neg3) rfalse;
		print "Please choose ", (address) pos1, " or ", (address) neg1, ". > ";
	}
];


-)

[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1800&start=0#p11908
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: [SPAG] #59 Now Available
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-20 01:04:21

[quote="Juhana"]It should also be noted that when people sign up to the SPAG review pool the games are assigned randomly. Sometimes you get a game that you know you're not the best person to review and you have to try not to bash the game when it's obvious that you and the game just aren't meant for each other.[/quote]
Seriously? Wow. I don't want to mess with a successfully long-standing tradition or anything, but this sounds to my ears like an awful system.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1791&start=0#p11909
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: the object tree and the chunk
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-20 01:39:23

[quote="Bainespal"]After I posted on this thread last night, I pondered the question of the fundamental unit of meaning in IF some more, and I realized that we have essentially come up with three distinct but not at all mutually-exclusive theories, which I'll call here the Object Theory, the Chunk Theory, and the Description Theory.

According to the Object Theory, an IF game is simulated fictional world built on relationships between components of that world, which may or may not correspond to actual spatial relationships.

According to the Chunk Theory, an IF game is a program that produces specific chunks of text in response to a human user's choices.  These chunks of text describe how the user's choice has or has not affected the state of the program.

According to the Description Theory, an IF game is an organized system of interrelated descriptions.[/quote]
Interrelated how, but through the object tree?

It's hard for me to see your description theory as something very different from the object theory. Granted, you have a different emphasis. (It sounds to me in your later descriptions like you are talking about objects but just elevating the object property to prominence. Which to me, is not much difference. I could even agree with you. For example, here is an object tree...

[code]The Kitchen
 --> a chair
 --> a table
      --> a bowl
      --> a spoon
 --> a cupboard
      --> cereal[/code]

So, I would say these are the units of meaning -- the nodes of this tree and their interrelationships. It sounds like your theory just seeks to extend the specificity to properties of the nodes on this tree, i.e. just extend your view one branch further...

[code]The Kitchen
            - the description of the kitchen
 --> a chair
                - the initial appearance of the chair
                - the description of the chair
 --> a table
                - etc.
      --> a bowl
      --> a spoon
 --> a cupboard
      --> cereal[/code]

I can't say you are wrong, but I can't say it matters that much as to me the key thing is that objects and their interrelations (which are designed by setting properties on those objects) are how meaning is achieved. If the next theorist came to you and said, 'But no, it is not a text property that is the basic unit of meaning -- it is one single sentence in that text property, since sentences can be changed individually.' Would that seem like much of a difference, either? Possibly not. And you could go on splitting hairs unto the word and the letter.

But smallest isn't the only factor here -- for me the main factor is where is the particularly IF-flavoured way to giving some text meaning, where specifically in that structure is this trick achieved? Where does Eisenstein achieve his montage trick? It's in the cut. Sure he could rearrange things within every shot and having moving shots that change their subject and so on, and achieve meaning THAT way, but the question isn't *could* you achieve meaning that way (of course you could), for me the question is, where does an excellent film achieve its meaning -- where is the potency, where is the rich, fertile expressive territory?

In cinema that territory is all in the cut: it provides so many ways of ascibing a meaning to an image, that other methods are dwarfed by the sheer weight of combinative territory provided by a cut.

So the reason I see the object and its relations with other objects (i.e. 'the tree') as the basic unit is that it is THE field where the combinatory explosion of possible meanings happens, so it's the menu from which IF authors choose not just what to mean, but HOW to mean.

If you want to say that the property on an object is the key factor and not the behaviour of the whole object, well I can pretty much agree with that, thinking it's just another way to say essentially the same thing. Objectifying text is the whole ball game, here.

I could write an IF game that has only one property on one object (beyond the standard properties). And it could mean something. But even if it were excellent, it would be so due to intentional self-restriction, the way a film with no cuts in it can be excellent precisely because it sets for itself the challenge of abjuring the basic unit of meaning of the medium.

So I'm going to stick with my object thing but in my view, your theory and my theory are essentially allied against other theories in which the primacy of relations between objects in the modelled world is not considered, and IF is view more as just a way of shuffling and dealing responses to player input, with the responses being like cards that are dealt (more like a subflavour of CYOA). There are people who seem to see it this way, judging by their game design as well as what they say. I don't prefer their visions, but hey I'm glad they're around.

[quote]These different theories have different advantages for discussing different aspects of IF.  For instance, it is true that an object is greater than the sum of its descriptions in the sense of what the game is communicating the player.  That is, the player doesn't think of the object as a few associated pieces of text, but rather imagines a real, physical object in his mind.  Therefore, the Object Theory is definitely the best for discussing IF as an art or literary form.  It is of great use to critics and reviewers, though authors must of course think in terms of the object tree as well.  Also, this is theory that all visual maps that were ever created about any specific IF game is based on.[/quote]
I think this is key. I don't think you can get very far in a typical IF game without internalising the object tree in your own mind. It doesn't seem playable to me without being aware that it is object-oriented and these bits of text are interrelated, *nor should it be*, IMO, but there are those who think the point is just to mimick a piece of fiction, with choices, and the perfect IF would free the player from even thinking about how things are modelled but I don't agree - I think hyperawareness of how things are modelled would be better, done artistically.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1787&start=0#p11910
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Must puzzles be at war with stories?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-20 01:57:32

[quote="mwigdahl"]ut a story into an IF game.  It's pretty easy to put puzzles in, too.  Where the real war exists is in trying to balance and synthesize an immersive experience out of the combination of the two.  I've played pure-story IF that was good, and had fun with pure-puzzle IF, but to me the best IF combines the two into an experience much greater than the sum of its parts.

For me, reading a story, even one written in second-person with some environmental agency (such as being able to move around at will, examine items at will, etc.), does not give me a strong sense of immersion unless the story is so powerful that it would have grabbed me just as strongly reading it in a book or magazine.  [i]Photopia[/i] qualifies under this rubric, and there have been one or two others, but it's rare.  Although I feel story is essential, the inclusion of challenges or puzzles in a game helps to build that sense of immersion and provide a sense of accomplishment, leading to identification with the PC.  This is something you don't get in a printed story -- it's one of the unique strengths of the gaming paradigm.

[i]Spider and Web[/i] is a great example of this.  To make progress, you have to figure out a lot of fiddly details and unforgiving timings in a nice twist on the accretive PC.  But the game is structured such that you keep getting story details as you progress in small chunks, and you feel a burst of triumph each time you surmount a puzzle.  By the endgame, you've not only mastered the mechanics of your gear and have a pretty good idea what's going on and what you need to do to win, but you're strongly engaged in the plot and identifying with the otherwise-faceless protagonist.

[i]Spider and Web[/i] without the puzzle-solving aspect would be a competently-written story about a futuristic secret agent raiding an enemy base.  Without the story aspect, it would be a tough, generic puzzler with some interesting technological devices and game mechanics.  With both present and integrated, it's one of the best IF experiences available.[/quote]
I agree with you about immersion, but I mostly don't put it in those terms. I think about things mostly in terms of narrative questions. They are what lead me forward. I see a TV teaser -- now I want to watch the whole episode. I had no interest in it earlier. I don't even like that series. But after seeing the teaser, suddenly I want to see it. Why? It's not because the people were so good-lookin', it's because of narrative questions.

It may be possible to construct an interesting puzzle with no strong central narrative question, but I've never seen it done -- it would seem tantamount to breaking the laws of physics. Most amateur writers are trying to get their ideas out and are not experiencing things in anything close to the same order their readers do; as a result, they tend to have the most trouble with setting up narrative questions so that they grab us effectively and are properly paid off and the next question (whatever it is be it situational or emotional or psychological, as long as whatever it is, I am meant to wonder about it) is set up,

For that reason, I think it would be perfectly possible to create a highly immersive, puzzle-free game, but it requires a sort of 'high' art and storytelling aplomb that most people don't have -- there are a lot of writers in the world, but few actual great narrators. Adding puzzles sort of forces the game into a mode where one can't escape narrative questions, at least eventually, when the puzzles surface (sometimes I am at something of a loss to understand why the author thinks I should be interested, before then, considering the way a lot of these games start off, essentially in 'waiting for puzzle' mode which is not a great narrative question at all).

So it's not that puzzles are a necessary evil because I think they can be brilliant, but it's not like puzzles are the only way to grip a person's mind and not let go, either. They're just the easiest way, if interactivity is available. 87

Paul.

P.S. Total agree on Spider and Web, in fact the only reason I didn't mention it is that I may have mentioned it too often by now whenever people say, 'What's the best IF'?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1787&start=10#p11911
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Must puzzles be at war with stories?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-20 02:09:04

[quote="matt w"]See, I'd call Shade a no-puzzle piece -- I did get stuck in it when I examined something out of order, but what would you call a puzzle in it? And Fragile Shells seemed to me like a pretty straight-up puzzle game with a story as decoration -- essential decoration, if that makes sense, in that the game wouldn't have been nearly as worth playing without bits of story, but still the story was in service of the puzzles instead of vice versa. (My [url=http://saucersofmud.wordpress.com/2010/02/23/jayisgames-if-comp-wrapup/]contemporary take[/url] was "a solid puzzler with a story that’s nicely integrated but incidental," and [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/02/07/jig-comp-games/]Emily said "It’s puzzlicious; there’s a story there, but not a [i]lot[/i] of story."[/url]) AMFV I haven't played.[/quote]
Interesting that you would say Shade is puzzle-free, since I couldn't figure out how to 'solve' it for a while. I was definitely stuck there for a bit. Some people also say AMFV has no puzzles but I also disagree. Are there things that you have to figure out how to type in order to get an optimal ending? Yes? Then that is a puzzle. Some of what people call no-puzzle games I actually just consider to be games in which the entire game is a single puzzle. That pretty much describes both AMFV and Shade (although there are some things in Shade that I would consider 'sub-puzzles') and the two games could not be more different in size and scope -- which is interesting.

Your take on Fragile Shells is pretty accurate in its details even if I don't agree with the conclusion. It had a strong story -- it's just that the story wasn't separate at all from the puzzles. The puzzles were the story and it was a fine survival story that made complete story sense on its own terms. You have to subtract the puzzles to not see a story there. But you can't subtract the puzzles in Fragile Shells since they are integral to the story being told -- that's why I called it out. And that's what I meant by 'bringing the mountain to Mohammed'. Rather than trying to twist a bunch of puzzles into 'naturally' evoking a story, Sargent instead chose a story that naturally involved puzzles -- and it worked, and I think that method is just as valid a way of bring the two things into harmony. I'm not going to say it was a Harlan Ellison-class story, but everything in it was in complete harmony and there were strong narrative questions from beginning to end. It wasn't a very *psychological* story, but that's a different issue -- perhaps one closer to what you (and perhaps Emily) are driving at.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1777&start=10#p11912
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Characters without bodies?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-12-20 05:32:21

This, I think, is how I would do it.

The only disembodied character in the game is Q, right? And the player will only interact with Q through a computer and by a limited number of commands (ask Q about, tell Q about, perhaps answer Q that, consult Q about, possibly show something to Q), right?

Let's keep Q off stage altogether and talk to him via the computer terminals. That way we need not bother with putting him in scope or making rooms inhabitable.

Begin as before by creating the computer and computing room kinds:
[code]A computer is a kind of device.  A computer is usually switched on.
A computing room is a kind of room. Every computing room contains a computer.[/code]

Then we create Q but place him nowhere, thus leaving him off stage:
[code]There is a person called Q.[/code]

Next we create the  actions we need to interact with Q in a way that lets the player interact with things out of scope:
[code]Q-asking it about is an action applying to one visible thing and one topic.
Q-telling it about is an action applying to one visible thing and one topic.
Q-answering it that is an action applying to one visible thing and one topic.
Q-consulting it about is an action applying to one visible thing and one topic.[/code]
It's the "visible" part that does the trick (Q isn't visible, but some things can be out of scope and still be visible—like elephants at a distance. That, I guess, is the rationale for using that word for actions applying to out of scope things.) Showing it to, by the way, is already defined as applying to one carried thing and one visible thing.

Now we won't let the player address Q directly, but only via a computer terminal:
[code]Understand "Q" as a computer.
Instead of asking a switched on computer about something, try Q-asking Q about the topic understood.
Instead of asking a switched off computer about something, say "You can only access Q through a switched on computer."[/code]
And mutatis mutandis for the other Q-actions.
So when the player asks Q (who is not present) about something, Inform will  interpret that as asking a computer (that is present) about it. But before the computer gets a chance to answer, Inform stops the asking action and replaces it with a Q-asking action addressed to Q instead.

However, Inform 7 won't let you ask the computer any questions, because it's not a person. You get around that problem by including a bit of Inform 6-code.
[code]Include (- has talkable -) when defining a computer.[/code]
Now, we can talk to computers and via them to Q.

This is what it might all look like.
[rant]A computer is a kind of device. 
A computer is usually switched on. 
Include (- has talkable -) when defining a computer.

A computing room is a kind of room.
Every computing room contains a computer.

The Personal Quarters is a computing room.
The Passage is north of Personal Quarters and south of Central Hallway.
The Central Hallway is a computing room.

Major Tom is a person. He is in the Personal Quarters.
An apple is in the Personal Quarters.

There is a person called Q.	
Understand "Q" as a computer.

Q-asking it about is an action applying to one visible thing and one topic.
Carry out Q-asking Q about "secret": say "'I can't tell you that, Dave', Q says softly."

Instead of asking a switched on computer about something, try Q-asking Q about the topic understood.
Instead of asking a switched off computer about something, say "You can only access Q through a switched on computer."


test me with "ask tom about secret/ask apple about secret/ask computer about secret/ask Q about secret/x Q/n/x Q/ask Q about secret/n/x Q/ask Q about secret/switch computer off/x Q/ask Q about secret".[/rant]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1787&start=10#p11913
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Must puzzles be at war with stories?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-20 07:07:36

[quote="Laroquod"]Your take on Fragile Shells is pretty accurate in its details even if I don't agree with the conclusion. It had a strong story -- it's just that the story wasn't separate at all from the puzzles. The puzzles were the story and it was a fine survival story that made complete story sense on its own terms. You have to subtract the puzzles to not see a story there. [/quote]

Hm, this is an interesting take. So the story you have in mind is a story of your character (I've forgotten his name) surviving by doing this and this and this, rather than all the business about the impending war and big Suze and like that? That's a reasonable take, but it reminds me more of the stories I get out of nethack -- like the story of Jane, the pretty but fragile tourist who could only defend herself by flashing her camera at monsters and making them run away, but who gradually learned to take care of herself 

[rant](stumbling through the mines in the dark till she was able to liberate a dwarven short sword), surviving a particularly harrowing encounter with a horde of Mordor orcs with arrows by hiding behind a door until they got in range one by one, until the light came on and she was able to take on the whole Sokoban zoo -- and then standing on Elbereth while her awesome cats Thumpy and Foof fought off a horde of demons (I usually hate standing on Elbereth, but when you get a demon that summons other demons that summon other demons... stupid polymorph traps), mooching around Minetown until as she was just leaving the Lady gifted her with Thor's lightning hammer and she rolled over everything the rest of the way[/rant]

the story as the gameplay, more or less. The thing is that I'm not sure that this plays to IF's strengths anymore. For one thing, I think that here procedural generation really helps, because it lets you face real danger, and for various reasons IF isn't great at procedurally generated gameplay.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1818&start=0#p11914
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Ngram Viewer and IF
User: Terry / DateTime: 2010-12-20 07:28:36

I just heard about the Google Books Ngram Viewer, not had chance to find out what's possible. I tried 'interactive fiction' with British English and also with American English.

Interesting results..

[url=http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=interactive+fiction&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=6&smoothing=3]'interactive fiction' - British English[/url]

[url=http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=interactive+fiction&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=5&smoothing=3]'interactive fiction' - American English[/url]

The question I guess is, what does it mean and can we learn something from these results?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1818&start=0#p11915
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Ngram Viewer and IF
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2010-12-20 08:41:29

Damn it, I missed the surge of 1920!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1818&start=0#p11916
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Ngram Viewer and IF
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-20 08:59:36

Thanks, Terry!

BTW I updated your graphs to end at the year 2010 instead of 2000 (10 years is a long time). The year in the form doesn't read properly afterward, but the data looks correct. The British graph in this case is VERY interesting...

[url=http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=interactive+fiction&year_start=1800&year_end=2010&corpus=6&smoothing=3]British[/url]

[url=http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=interactive+fiction&year_start=1800&year_end=2010&corpus=5&smoothing=3]American[/url]

Also, there is always the country-neutral option...

[url=http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=interactive+fiction&year_start=1800&year_end=2010&corpus=0&smoothing=3]English[/url]

Neat stuff!

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1812&start=0#p11917
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Useful Extension Ideas?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-20 09:42:12

I bet you're surprised by the lack of responses! I was a little bit too. But I think it reflects something that Eric Raymond said about open source projects:

[quote]Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch.[/quote]

In other words, these extensions exist because some author personally wanted to create them, not because they were asked or believed there would be demand for them.

On the other hand, I think this whole forum is a great source for ideas. I was momentarily inspired when someone asked if there was a way of distinguishing anonymous things of the same kind. I thought there would be a straightforward way, and it turned out there wasn't. I made a few steps towards creating the extension, just because it sounded like a fun project, but the number of obstacles to making it work slowed me down. It's definitely doable, but if you want to work on it, you'll probably get there before I do. Most of the details have already been worked out in these threads:

[url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1761]Inform grouping things together inconsistently.[/url]
[url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1766]Parsing Ordinals[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1817&start=0#p11918
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Capturing Three Features About Player At Start Of Game?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-20 09:59:46

I think I see what the problem is. You have three different rules that fire "when play begins." One of them (the gender question) gets player input from I6, so it bypasses the normal command-reading sequence. That's why it goes first. Both of the other rules fire at the same time, so the command prompt is reset twice before the first turn actually begins. The last rule to set the command prompt wins, and the other one is forgotten.

It looks to me like the example you're cribbing from is a bit of a hack, and you've added more hacks to the hack. You might be better off starting fresh, maybe using Michael Callaghan's "Questions" extension:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/Michael%20Callaghan/Questions/index.html">http://inform7.com/extensions/Michael%2 ... index.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1818&start=0#p11919
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Ngram Viewer and IF
User: Terry / DateTime: 2010-12-20 10:30:27

Thanks for that Paul, didn't try up to 2010 I assumed the data only ran up to the year 2000.

So what's the 1920 surge then, interactive fiction in the 1920's ??

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1818&start=0#p11920
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Ngram Viewer and IF
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-20 10:43:05

Tragically, it seems to be a [url=http://books.google.com/books?id=9-E7AAAAIAAJ&q=%22interactive+fiction%22&dq=%22interactive+fiction%22&hl=en&ei=EIcPTa2fPMH38Abqn5WmDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAA]mistake in matching the book with its text[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1819&start=0#p11921
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Integrading skein and test commands
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-20 11:04:38

At this point I feel like I have to decide between using test commands and using the skein - they have some incompatibilities that make working with both very frustrating.

1: "test me" counts as a single command in the skein. If you change the commands in the test, the transcript treats it as different output to the same command.

2: Test commands may not restart the interpreter. So a suite of test commands may not explore branching storylines in a single command.

I understand that these may be fundamental differences: The skein is a product of the IDE, and test commands are built-in to the story file. But if some genius were to overcome these problems, there would be some really big advantages:

1: The skein itself could be represented as text, edited, exported, saved and possibly even pasted into the source.

2: Test commands could be joined with existing playthroughs in the skein, and create meaningful branches in the skein.

A partial solution might be achieved by fixing only problem #1. If that were done, a node of the skein could be pasted into the source, and executing that test command would activate its node in the skein. There might even be a "paste all [labeled] nodes" command in the skein menu to quickly turn a number of playthroughs into a test suite. Or maybe there could be a "play all test commands" command in the skein menu that searches the source for commands to execute and runs each one from a fresh restart.

I'd like to hash this out a little before posting it as a uservoice suggestion. Any thoughts?

Some related suggestions at uservoice:

[url=http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/751324-debugging-exportable-walkthroughs-test-me-script](Debugging) Exportable Walkthroughs/Test Me Scripts[/url]
[url=http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/751318-debugging-ability-to-remove-all-test-commands-wh](Debugging) Ability to remove all test commands while still running within the IDE[/url]
[url=http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/797667-testing-let-undo-work-within-test-me-][testing] Let 'undo' work within 'test me'[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1820&start=0#p11922
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Scenes and Moving NPC
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-12-20 11:11:21

I've been working on this for at least a week, and I'm hopelessly stuck. 

Hodges is a butler, who should come and get you at tea time. You can call him at anytime (which works thanks to StJohnLimbo), and he comes as long as you're dressed. However, when I try to get him to come up to call you for tea time, he always gets stuck in the DHall. He moves to the Back Parlour just fine though, so I have no idea what is going on.

Here is my latest attempt (using a ridiculously clunky merit badge system that features in a puzzle later). I simplified the world model, but as far as I can tell, there's nothing in the actual code that triggers any Hodges actions other than these pieces.

[code]Your Room is a room.  The description is "Your bedroom."

The bedroom-door is a door. The bedroom-door is east of Your Room and west of the UHall.  Understand "bedroom door" and "door" as bedroom-door. The printed name of bedroom-door is "bedroom door".
         
The bedroom window is a door. It is west of Your Room and east of the Gardens.  

A closet is in your room. The closet is a openable closed container. A dress is in the closet. A dress is wearable.

The UHall is a room.  The description is "A hall upstairs."

The DHall is a room.   The description is "A hall downstairs." The DHall is below the UHall.

The Gardens is a room. The description is "Gardens"

The Gardens is west of the Front Parlour.

Kitchens is a south of the DHall. 

Before going east in the Gardens:
	move the player to Front Parlour;
	stop the action.

The Back Parlour is south of the Front Parlour. The Front Parlour is west of dhall. 

Scullery is south of the kitchens.

Hodges is a man in the Scullery.

The time of day is 8:50 AM.

Chapter 0 - Calling

After reading a command:
	if the player's command includes "[calling]":
		if the player's command includes "Hodges":
			continue the action;
		otherwise:
			say "Don't bother. It's Hodges' job to come at your beck and call." instead.
	
Understand "call [someone]" and "ring for [someone]" and "ring [someone]" and "call for [someone]" as "[calling]".


Hodges-calling is an action applying to nothing. Understand "call Hodges" and "Hodges" and "ring" and "call for Hodges" and "ring for Hodges" and "ring up Hodges" and "ring hodges" as hodges-calling.

Hodges can be stationary or called-for. Hodges is stationary.

Carry out Hodges-calling:
	if the location of Hodges is not the location of the player:
		say "You call for Hodges. Knowing him, he'll probably be here in a few moments.";
		now Hodges is called-for;
	otherwise:
		say "'Yes, Miss Sinclair?' Hodges says stiffly."


Every turn:
	if Hodges is called-for:
		if the location of Hodges is not the location of the player:
			let the way be the best route from the location of Hodges to the location of the player, using doors; [*unfortunately this results at times in Hodges jumping out of windows...]
			try Hodges going the way;
	if the location of Hodges is the location of the player:
		now Hodges is stationary.

Check Hodges-calling:
	if the player is not wearing the dress:
		say "You aren't inviting Hodges up here half-dressed!" instead.

Chapter 1 - Merit Badges for Hodges

The merit badge of prelude1 is a thing.
The merit badge of prelude2 is a thing.
The merit badge of prelude2-alt is a thing.
The failure badge of prelude is a thing.
The success badge of prelude is a thing.
The merit badge of tea1 is a thing. 

Chapter 2 - Fake Hodges Actions
		
Prelude to Morning Tea is a scene. Prelude to Morning Tea begins when the time of day is 9:00 AM.

Prelude to Morning Tea ends when the player is in the back parlour or the time of day is 9:20 AM.

Morning Tea is a scene. Morning Tea begins when Prelude to Morning Tea ends.

Morning Tea ends when the time of day is 9:30 AM.

Check opening the door: 
                if the player is not wearing a dress, say "Get dressed first." instead; 


Every turn during prelude to morning tea:
	if Hodges does not carry the merit badge of prelude1:
		let BP-way be the best route from the location of Hodges to the Back Parlour, using doors;
		try Hodges going BP-way;
		now Hodges carries merit badge of prelude1;
	otherwise:
		if the player is wearing the dress:
			if Hodges does not carry the merit badge of prelude2:
				if Hodges carries the merit badge of prelude2-alt:
					stop the action;
				otherwise:
					if the location of Hodges is not the location of the player:
						let the Hodges's first step be the best route from the location of Hodges to the location of the player, using doors;
						try Hodges going the Hodges's first step;
						now Hodges carries the merit badge of prelude2;
					otherwise:
						now Hodges carries the merit badge of prelude2;
			otherwise:
				say "[one of]'Miss Sinclair,' Hodges says 'It's time for morning tea.'[or]Hodges clears his throat, and asks if you are coming to tea.[or]Hodges looks at you rather pointedly. 'Miss Sinclair, you need to come to tea.'[stopping]";
		otherwise:
			if Hodges does not carry the merit badge of prelude2-alt:
				let the Hodges's first trouble be the best route from the location of Hodges to the Uhall, using doors;
				try Hodges going the Hodges's first trouble;
				now Hodges carries the merit badge of prelude2-alt;
			otherwise:
				say "[one of]You can hear a knock at your door and the muffled voice of Hodges calling you. 'Miss Sinclair, it's time for tea.[or]'Please, Miss Sinclair. Get dressed and come out.'[or]'Miss Lisette is waiting for you. Cook's even prepared a surpise.'[or]You can almost hear Hodges waiting for you to come out.[stopping]"

When prelude to morning tea ends:
	remove the merit badge of prelude1 from play;
	remove the merit badge of prelude2 from play;
	remove the merit badge of prelude2-alt from play;
	if Hodges does not carry the failure badge of prelude:
		now Hodges carries the success badge of prelude;
	otherwise:
		continue the action.

[/code]

Thanks for any help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1821&start=0#p11923
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [i7] Weird ALMOST ALL behaviour
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-20 11:16:30

The manual says the ALMOST ALL condition is true if 80% or more of the objects of the kind meet the condition. But I'm finding when you're dealing with only two or three objects, this is far from the case. It is only with higher numbers of objects where the test acts more like an 80% check. Here's some test code which shows the issue (this is not a part of any actual game, I just whipped it up to test this issue)...

[code]The Tool Room is a room.

A switched on device called a blue button is here.

A switched off device called a red button is here.

When play begins:
     if almost all of the devices are switched on, say "Almost all of the devices are switched on."[/code]
This results in the conclusion that almost all of the devices are switched on, even though it's just one out of 2, or 50%. If I put in three devices, and switch two on (one is not enough, apparently), it tells me almost all of them are on, which makes a bit more sense but it's still just 66%, not 80%. With four it triggers at 75%, and that's when it begins to resemble what the manual predicts.

If I change it from devices to people who are male and female, I get the same problem. If I change the condition to 'if almost all of the devices in the tool room are switched on', again -- same problem.

I'm on build 6F95 of the Mac IDE.

Paul.

EDIT: Actually, come to think of it, it looks like it is treating ALMOST ALL as a synonym for ALL BUT ONE, at the lower object counts (but not at the higher)...

EDIT2: Which is odd, because as I've just discovered, ALL BUT doesn't actually work as advertised, either. Supposedly I can form conditions like 'if all but two of the devices are switched on' but I've played with it and played with it and I can't get ALL BUT or ALL EXCEPT to work, ever.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1820&start=0#p11924
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scenes and Moving NPC
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-20 11:24:29

Could you post a test script that duplicates your problem? I tried waiting for 14 turns and I got:

[quote]You can hear a knock at your door and the muffled voice of Hodges calling you. "Miss Sinclair, it's time for tea[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1820&start=0#p11925
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scenes and Moving NPC
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-20 11:34:17

Hmmm. Using "showme" revealed that even though Hodges is talking to the player, he is still in DHall. I think I see why:

[code]		otherwise:
			if Hodges does not carry the merit badge of prelude2-alt:
				let the Hodges's first trouble be the best route from the location of Hodges to the Uhall, using doors;
				try Hodges going the Hodges's first trouble;
				now Hodges carries the merit badge of prelude2-alt;
			otherwise:
				say "[one of]You can hear a knock at your door and the muffled voice of Hodges calling you. 'Miss Sinclair, it's time for tea.[or]'Please, Miss Sinclair. Get dressed and come out.'[or]'Miss Lisette is waiting for you. Cook's even prepared a surpise.'[or]You can almost hear Hodges waiting for you to come out.[stopping]"
[/code]
The line "now Hodges carries the merit badge of prelude2-alt" does not check whether he's arrived at his destination yet. You could do that this way:

[code]		otherwise:
			if Hodges is not in the UHall:
				let the Hodges's first trouble be the best route from the location of Hodges to the Uhall, using doors;
				try Hodges going the Hodges's first trouble;
			otherwise:
				now Hodges carries the merit badge of prelude2-alt;
				say "[one of]You can hear a knock at your door and the muffled voice of Hodges calling you. 'Miss Sinclair, it's time for tea.[or]'Please, Miss Sinclair. Get dressed and come out.'[or]'Miss Lisette is waiting for you. Cook's even prepared a surpise.'[or]You can almost hear Hodges waiting for you to come out.[stopping]"
[/code]

But to save yourself and everyone trying to help you some headaches, I think it would help to refactor this into several specific every turn rules, and clean up the merit badge system.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1820&start=0#p11926
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scenes and Moving NPC
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-12-20 11:47:25

I can't figure out how to break it up though. 

The actions of Hodges should logically go like this:

9:00 AM - Tea Time - Hodges moves to the Back Parlour.
After getting to the Back Parlour - 
     if the player isn't there, Hodges goes to fetch the player.
Hodges climbs up to UHALL. 
     if the player is wearing clothes, Hodges goes in
     otherwise Hodges waits outside in UHALL.
The player goes to Back Parlour at Hodges' prodding.
Tea time.

With the merit badges:
9:00 AM - Tea Time - Hodges moves to the Back Parlour. (Gets prelude1)
After getting to the Back Parlour - 
     if the player isn't there, Hodges goes to fetch the player. 
Hodges climbs up to UHALL (if the player is in the bedroom). 
     if the player is wearing clothes, Hodges goes in. (Gets prelude2)
     otherwise Hodges waits outside in UHALL. (Gets prelude2-alt)
The player goes to Back Parlour at Hodges' prodding. (all merit badges are removed from play except for the failure badge if the player doesn't go to tea; Hodges gets the success badge for later)

I guess my question is how to check if Hodges arrives or not. Also, as far as I can tell Hodges will never get to UHALL for some reason.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1820&start=0#p11927
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scenes and Moving NPC
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-20 12:13:58

I might do it this way - replacing the "stationary"/"called for" property with a "destination" property (if you want Hodges to follow the player if she moves after calling him, you might still need the "called for" property): 

[code]Hodges has a room called destination. The destination of Hodges is Scullery.

Every turn when the location of Hodges is not destination:
	let way be the best route from the location of Hodges to destination, using doors;
	try Hodges going way;

Check Hodges-calling when Hodges is in the location:
	say "'Yes, Miss Sinclair?' Hodges says stiffly." instead;

Carry out Hodges-calling:
	now the destination of Hodges is the location.

Report Hodges-calling:
	say "You call for Hodges. Knowing him, he'll probably be here in a few moments.";[/code]

Then I break up your big complicated Prelude to Morning Tea rule into two groups of rules: First, setting Hodges' destination, and second, what to do when he arrives at his destination.

Full source:
[spoiler][code]Your Room is a room.  The description is "Your bedroom."

The bedroom-door is a door. The bedroom-door is east of Your Room and west of the UHall.  Understand "bedroom door" and "door" as bedroom-door. The printed name of bedroom-door is "bedroom door".
         
The bedroom window is a door. It is west of Your Room and east of the Gardens.  

A closet is in your room. The closet is a openable closed container. A dress is in the closet. A dress is wearable.

The UHall is a room.  The description is "A hall upstairs."

The DHall is a room.   The description is "A hall downstairs." The DHall is below the UHall.

The Gardens is a room. The description is "Gardens"

The Gardens is west of the Front Parlour.

Kitchens is a south of the DHall. 

Before going east in the Gardens:
	move the player to Front Parlour;
	stop the action.

The Back Parlour is south of the Front Parlour. The Front Parlour is west of dhall. 

Scullery is south of the kitchens.

Hodges is a man in the Scullery.

The time of day is 8:50 AM.

Chapter 0 - Calling

After reading a command:
	if the player's command includes "[calling]":
		if the player's command includes "Hodges":
			continue the action;
		otherwise:
			say "Don't bother. It's Hodges' job to come at your beck and call." instead.
	
Understand "call [someone]" and "ring for [someone]" and "ring [someone]" and "call for [someone]" as "[calling]".


Hodges-calling is an action applying to nothing. Understand "call Hodges" and "Hodges" and "ring" and "call for Hodges" and "ring for Hodges" and "ring up Hodges" and "ring hodges" as hodges-calling.

Hodges has a room called destination. The destination of Hodges is Scullery.

Every turn when the location of Hodges is not the destination of Hodges:
		let way be the best route from the location of Hodges to the destination of Hodges, using doors;
		[still need to deal with jumping through windows]
		try Hodges going way;
		
Check Hodges-calling when Hodges is in the location:
	say "'Yes, Miss Sinclair?' Hodges says stiffly." instead;

Carry out Hodges-calling:
	now the destination of Hodges is the location.

Report Hodges-calling:
	say "You call for Hodges. Knowing him, he'll probably be here in a few moments.";

Check Hodges-calling:
	if the player is not wearing the dress:
		say "You aren't inviting Hodges up here half-dressed!" instead.

Chapter 1 - Merit Badges for Hodges

The merit badge of prelude1 is a thing.
The merit badge of prelude2 is a thing.
The merit badge of prelude2-alt is a thing.
The failure badge of prelude is a thing.
The success badge of prelude is a thing.
The merit badge of tea1 is a thing. 

Chapter 2 - Fake Hodges Actions
		
Prelude to Morning Tea is a scene. Prelude to Morning Tea begins when the time of day is 9:00 AM.

Prelude to Morning Tea ends when the player is in the back parlour or the time of day is 9:20 AM.

Morning Tea is a scene. Morning Tea begins when Prelude to Morning Tea ends.

Morning Tea ends when the time of day is 9:30 AM.

Check opening the door: 
                if the player is not wearing a dress, say "Get dressed first." instead; 

Every turn when Hodges does not carry the merit badge of prelude1 during prelude to morning tea:
	Now the destination of Hodges is Back Parlour;
	
Every turn when Hodges carries the merit badge of prelude1 during prelude to morning tea:
	if the player is wearing the dress, now the destination of Hodges is the location;
	otherwise now the destination of Hodges is UHall.

Every turn when Hodges is in the destination of Hodges during prelude to morning tea:	
	if Hodges is in Back Parlour:
		now Hodges carries the merit badge of prelude1;
	otherwise if Hodges is in the location:
		now Hodges carries the merit badge of prelude2;
		say "[one of]'Miss Sinclair,' Hodges says 'It's time for morning tea.'[or]Hodges clears his throat, and asks if you are coming to tea.[or]Hodges looks at you rather pointedly. 'Miss Sinclair, you need to come to tea.'[stopping]";
	otherwise:
		now Hodges carries the merit badge of prelude2-alt;
		say "[one of]You can hear a knock at your door and the muffled voice of Hodges calling you. 'Miss Sinclair, it's time for tea.[or]'Please, Miss Sinclair. Get dressed and come out.'[or]'Miss Lisette is waiting for you. Cook's even prepared a surpise.'[or]You can almost hear Hodges waiting for you to come out.[stopping]"
		
When prelude to morning tea ends:
	remove the merit badge of prelude1 from play;
	remove the merit badge of prelude2 from play;
	remove the merit badge of prelude2-alt from play;
	if Hodges does not carry the failure badge of prelude:
		now Hodges carries the success badge of prelude;
	otherwise:
		continue the action.
[/code][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1821&start=0#p11928
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] Weird ALMOST ALL behaviour
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-12-20 12:15:59

That sounds like it's potentially a bug -- I'd report it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1819&start=0#p11929
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Integrading skein and test commands
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-12-20 12:22:37

[quote]1: "test me" counts as a single command in the skein. If you change the commands in the test, the transcript treats it as different output to the same command.[/quote]That has always bugged me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1820&start=0#p11930
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scenes and Moving NPC
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-12-20 12:31:31

A reason the original source text didn't work was this, I suppose:
[quote]Every turn during prelude to morning tea:
   ...
         if Hodges does not carry the merit badge of prelude2:
            ...
               if the location of Hodges is not the location of the player:
                  let the Hodges's first step be the best route from the location of Hodges to the location of the player, using doors;
                  try Hodges going the Hodges's first step;
                  now Hodges carries the merit badge of prelude2;
               ...
         otherwise:
            say "[one of]'Miss Sinclair,' Hodges says 'It's time for morning tea.'[or]Hodges clears his throat, and asks if you are coming to tea.[or]Hodges looks at you rather pointedly. 'Miss Sinclair, you need to come to tea.'[stopping]";
[/quote]
So, the first turn during the prelude Hodges does not wear the merit badge and therefore moves one room towards the player, whereupon he receives the badge.
The next turn, then, he does carry the merit badge and so starts talking to Miss Sinclair.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1821&start=0#p11931
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] Weird ALMOST ALL behaviour
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-20 12:35:36

I'd guess that means "at least 80% rounded down to the nearest integer," which doesn't seem like a bad meaning for "almost." Maybe only the documentation needs to change?

This test seems to confirm my hypothesis:

[code]The Tool Room is a room.

four open containers are here.
one closed containers are here.

five switched on devices are here.
one switched off devices are here.

To report:
	if almost all of the devices are switched on, say "At least 66.6% of the devices are switched on - [the number of switched on devices] out of [the number of devices].";
	if almost all of the containers are open, say "At least 80% of the containers are open - [the number of open containers] out of [the number of containers].";

When play begins:
	Report.

Every turn when the turn count is 1:
	Now a random open container is closed;
	Now a random switched on device is switched off;
	Report.
	
test me with "z"
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1821&start=0#p11932
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] Weird ALMOST ALL behaviour
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-20 12:51:26

Fascinating test, thanks capmikee. Sounds like you might be right about that but I still find it a little weird to think of 1 out of 2 devices as being 'ALMOST ALL'.

@em
I have submitted both the issues I found as separate bugs — thanks.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1820&start=0#p11933
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scenes and Moving NPC
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-20 12:53:02

You could also award merit badges in an "after Hodges going" (or "last carry out Hodges going") rule. That would prevent the 1-turn delay that happens because the badge-awarding rules seems to fire before the hodges-going rule.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1820&start=0#p11934
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scenes and Moving NPC
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-12-20 12:54:55

Thank you so much. I tried to write a code that broke the process into steps, but it, instead of locking Hodges in the DHall, locked him into the Front Parlour. 

The called-for action needs some revision in any case. Hodges eventually should go back to where he came from if the player leaves.

Thanks again.

Felix, just before capmikee posted his solution, I fixed my original code for that error, and while Hodges no longer "talks" to the player when he isn't there, Hodges still doesn't move upstairs for some reason.

Here is the full adjusted code (that doesn't work) that takes into account that error. Now Hodges never receives the merit badges (other than the first one for moving to the Back Parlour) since the prerequisite for the others is being in the same place as the player, which he for some reason never fulfills. He just stays in the Front Parlour. I'm not sure why this happens though. 

[spoiler][code]Your Room is a room.  The description is "Your bedroom."

The bedroom-door is a door. The bedroom-door is east of Your Room and west of the UHall.  Understand "bedroom door" and "door" as bedroom-door. The printed name of bedroom-door is "bedroom door".
         
The bedroom window is a door. It is west of Your Room and east of the Gardens.  

A closet is in your room. The closet is a openable closed container. A dress is in the closet. A dress is wearable.

The UHall is a room.  The description is "A hall upstairs."

The DHall is a room.   The description is "A hall downstairs." The DHall is below the UHall.

The Gardens is a room. The description is "Gardens"

The Gardens is west of the Front Parlour.

Kitchens is a south of the DHall. 

Before going east in the Gardens:
	move the player to Front Parlour;
	stop the action.

The Back Parlour is south of the Front Parlour. The Front Parlour is west of dhall. 

Scullery is south of the kitchens.

Hodges is a man in the Scullery.

The time of day is 8:50 AM.

Chapter 0 - Calling

After reading a command:
	if the player's command includes "[calling]":
		if the player's command includes "Hodges":
			continue the action;
		otherwise:
			say "Don't bother. It's Hodges' job to come at your beck and call." instead.
	
Understand "call [someone]" and "ring for [someone]" and "ring [someone]" and "call for [someone]" as "[calling]".


Hodges-calling is an action applying to nothing. Understand "call Hodges" and "Hodges" and "ring" and "call for Hodges" and "ring for Hodges" and "ring up Hodges" and "ring hodges" as hodges-calling.

Hodges can be stationary or called-for. Hodges is stationary.

Carry out Hodges-calling:
	if the location of Hodges is not the location of the player:
		say "You call for Hodges. Knowing him, he'll probably be here in a few moments.";
		now Hodges is called-for;
	otherwise:
		say "'Yes, Miss Sinclair?' Hodges says stiffly."


Every turn:
	if Hodges is called-for:
		if the location of Hodges is not the location of the player:
			let the way be the best route from the location of Hodges to the location of the player, using doors; [*unfortunately this results at times in Hodges jumping out of windows...]
			try Hodges going the way;
	if the location of Hodges is the location of the player:
		now Hodges is stationary.

Check Hodges-calling:
	if the player is not wearing the dress:
		say "You aren't inviting Hodges up here half-dressed!" instead.


Chapter 1 - Merit Badges for Hodges

The merit badge of prelude1 is a thing. [aka Hodges goes to the BP sucessfully]
The merit badge of prelude2 is a thing. [aka Hodges goes to where ever the player is successfully]
The merit badge of prelude2-alt is a thing. [aka Hodges goes to Uhall]
The failure badge of prelude is a thing. [aka the player refuses to come to tea]
The success badge of prelude is a thing.
The merit badge of tea1 is a thing. 

Chapter 2 - Fake Hodges Actions
		
Prelude to Morning Tea is a scene. Prelude to Morning Tea begins when the time of day is 9:00 AM.

Prelude to Morning Tea ends when the player is in the back parlour or the time of day is 9:20 AM.

Morning Tea is a scene. Morning Tea begins when Prelude to Morning Tea ends.

Morning Tea ends when the time of day is 9:30 AM.

Every turn during prelude to morning tea: [Hodges going to Back Parlour]
	if Hodges is not in the Back Parlour:
		let BP-way be the best route from the location of Hodges to the Back Parlour, using doors;
		try Hodges going BP-way;
	otherwise:
		now Hodges carries merit badge of prelude1.

Every turn during prelude to morning tea: [Hodges going to the player]
	if Hodges carries the merit badge of prelude1:
		if Hodges does not carry the merit badge of prelude2:
			if the player is wearing the dress:
				let the Hodges's first step be the best route from the location of Hodges to the location of the player, using doors;
				try Hodges going the Hodges's first step;
				if the location of Hodges is the location of the player:
					now Hodges carries the merit badge of prelude2;
			otherwise:
				let the Hodges's first trouble be the best route from the location of Hodges to the Uhall, using doors;
				try Hodges going the Hodges's first trouble;
				if the location of Hodges is Uhall:
					now Hodges carries the merit badge of prelude2-alt.

Every turn during prelude to morning tea: [Hodges calling to the player]
	if Hodges carries the merit badge of prelude2:
		say "[one of]'Miss Sinclair,' Hodges says 'It's time for morning tea.'[or]Hodges clears his throat, and asks if you are coming to tea.[or]Hodges looks at you rather pointedly. 'Miss Sinclair, you need to come to tea.'[stopping]"

Every turn during prelude to morning tea: [Hodges calling to the player when player is undressed]
	if Hodges carries the merit badge of prelude2-alt:
		say "[one of]You can hear a knock at your door and the muffled voice of Hodges calling you. 'Miss Sinclair, it's time for tea.[or]'Please, Miss Sinclair. Get dressed and come out.'[or]'Miss Lisette is waiting for you. Cook's even prepared a surpise.'[or]You can almost hear Hodges waiting for you to come out.[stopping]"

Every turn:
	if the time of day is 9:19 AM:
		if the player is not in the Back Parlour:
			now Hodges carries the failure badge of prelude;
			say "'Fine, Miss Sinclair. If you insist on missing morning tea, then so be it.' Hodges says and walks away.'";
			move Hodges to the back parlour.

When prelude to morning tea ends:
	remove the merit badge of prelude1 from play;
	remove the merit badge of prelude2 from play;
	remove the merit badge of prelude2-alt from play;
	if Hodges does not carry the failure badge of prelude:
		now Hodges carries the success badge of prelude;
	otherwise:
		continue the action.[/code][/spoiler]

Edit: capmikee, do you mean on your code, or on mine?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1821&start=0#p11935
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] Weird ALMOST ALL behaviour
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-20 13:06:22

What would you recommend instead: rounding up, or rounding to the closest integer?

Rounding up:
1-4 objects: all
5-9 objects: all but one
10 objects: all but two
etc...

closest:
2 objects: all = 100%
3 objects: at least 2 = 66.6%
4 objects: at least 3 = 75%
5 objects: at least 3 = 80%
6 objects: at least 5 = 83.3%
7 objects: at least 6 = 85.7%
8 objects: at least 6 = 75%
etc...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1793&start=0#p11936
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compass rose?
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-12-20 13:13:35

I would personally love to see some sort of Compass tutorial, especially after my experience with trying to make one myself. 

I'm not sure what would happen though if there was a room that simply led out to all directions to a random other room. Would that direction be visited, not visited, etc?  On the other hand, I'm not even sure making such a room is possible.

Also, would new directions be supported?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1820&start=0#p11937
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scenes and Moving NPC
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-20 13:20:52

[code]Every turn during prelude to morning tea: [Hodges going to Back Parlour]
	if Hodges is not in the Back Parlour:
		let BP-way be the best route from the location of Hodges to the Back Parlour, using doors;
		try Hodges going BP-way;
	otherwise:
		now Hodges carries merit badge of prelude1.[/code]
Here's the problem: Hodges is going [i]back[/i] to the Back Parlor every turn, even after he has the merit badge and starts moving on. He's hopping back and forth between Back Parlour and Front Parlour.

Change the rule preamble to this:
[code]Every turn when Hodges does not carry the merit badge of Prelude1 during prelude to morning tea: [Hodges going to Back Parlour][/code]

Here's a tip: Use some debugging tools. The comments after your rule preambles would make good rule names. Then you could use the "rules" command to see when they're firing:

[code]Every turn during prelude to morning tea (This is the Hodges going to Back Parlour rule):[/code]

And don't forget the oldest standby of debugging techniques: print statements!

[code]	if Hodges is not in the Back Parlour:
		let BP-way be the best route from the location of Hodges to the Back Parlour, using doors;
		say "Hodges is not in the Back Parlour. Going [BP-way] from [the location of Hodges].";
		try Hodges going BP-way;
[/code]

[quote]Edit: capmikee, do you mean on your code, or on mine?[/quote]
If you're referring to the After going/Last carry out going rule, I meant my code - you don't really need it if everything's lumped into one rule. But anything to separate different activities out into separate rules will help make your code easier to read and debug.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1793&start=0#p11938
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compass rose?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-12-20 14:26:17

[quote="Bistre"]I would personally love to see some sort of Compass tutorial, especially after my experience with trying to make one myself. 

I'm not sure what would happen though if there was a room that simply led out to all directions to a random other room. Would that direction be visited, not visited, etc?  On the other hand, I'm not even sure making such a room is possible.[/quote]

It depends on how you handle that room's exits. If you set the exits to random rooms at the beginning of play, say, or reset them each time the player reenters the room, then the compass would handle it just fine, and the exit lister would indicate a visited or unvisited connection as normal (i.e., depending on whether the player has already visited the destination room). If, on the other hand, you change the map connections after the player has type "go", or if you bypass the connection altogether (e.g. with a "move the player to a random room"), then the compass exit lister will just use the connection that was defined when the player entered the room.

[quote="Bistre"]Also, would new directions be supported?[/quote]
Glimmr could certainly handle (fairly easily, actually) a completely custom compass, even one that changed during play (say from standard compass directions to shipboard directions). However, I see that as terrain for an extension rather than a tutorial, so I think I'll stick to something pretty basic.

Thanks!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1823&start=0#p11941
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Extension Beta-Testers Wanted
User: eu / DateTime: 2010-12-20 17:38:19

I am looking to line up some beta-testers for a set of debugging extensions.  Given my current pace, the plan is to release the files to testers in two batches: one before the new year, and another in mid-January.

The first batch includes framework extensions that make it easier to write debugging tools, as well as two examples of how the framework can be useful.  It would help if testers could:

[list][*]Include the framework in their own stories and check that the stories still behave properly on an in-IDE play-through[/*:m]
[*]Report back on how useful the example tools were in debugging a work-in-progress[/*:m]
[*]Comment on the documentation[/*:m]
[*](for the enthusiastic) Build a debugging tool with the framework, and report back on the experience.[/*:m][/list:u]

The second batch of extensions constitutes a more powerful debugging tool; it would be good if testers could:

[list][*]Again, include the extensions in the own stories and verify the absence of unfortunate side-effects[/*:m]
[*]Use the extensions to hunt down real bugs, and report on the experience[/*:m]
[*]Comment on the documentation.[/*:m][/list:u]

Let me know by private message if you are interested in helping out.  Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1821&start=0#p11942
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] Weird ALMOST ALL behaviour
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-20 18:26:32

I'm not sure about your tables. Taking the percentage and then rounding up to the nearest integer to form the lower bound required, sounds about right, but I would think it would play out this way (I'm using CEIL to mean rounding up, it's what I'm used to)...

1 objects: ceil(1.0*0.8) = 1
2 objects: ceil(2.0*0.8) = 2
3 objects: ceil(3.0*0.8) = 3
4 objects: ceil(4.0*0.8) = 4
5 objects: ceil(5.0*0.8) = 4
etc.

Although I could live with it perhaps even better if it were pegged at 75% instead of 80%. It's not much difference, and it allows 4 objects to make the grade into the realm of the perfectly logical. Three objects would still be a little iffy, but ok. For 2 objects or 1, 100% is the only meaning that makes sense to me. Certainly its better to overestimate 'almost all' into 'all' than to underestimate it into 'half'. At least to me.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1821&start=0#p11944
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] Weird ALMOST ALL behaviour
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-12-20 19:48:53

Thanks for posting this; I hadn't been aware of the "almost all" adjective. Very cool. However, it strikes me that the adjective is mislabeled: "Almost all" means that [i]not quite[/i] everything should be selected, so that if 3/3 or 6/6 things are picked out, then "almost all" should return false. In other words, if absolutely everything matches the given condition, then the condition we have is not "almost all" but "all or almost all". Just plain "almost all" would, as I see it, be more limited, applying as long as a preponderance of items match the condition, but [i]not[/i] if all of them do. So:

80–99.9% of things selected, rounding down: ALMOST ALL
80–100% of things selected, rounding down: ALL OR ALMOST ALL

If ALMOST ALL is going to continue to mean the latter, as it does now, then I think the current formulation (80-100%, rounding down) is the right way to go. It doesn't make sense for "almost all" to be true only when [i]all[/i] items in a set meet the condition; if the term is defined so that only 2/2 or 3/3 qualify as "almost all", then we've just decided to ignore the "almost" entirely in those cases.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1791&start=0#p11945
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: the object tree and the chunk
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2010-12-20 20:44:52

[quote="Laroquod"]Interrelated how, but through the object tree?[/quote]
Through the object tree, yes, but also through the rules that determine which descriptions attatched to which objects are displayed in response to input by the player.  That's where the "chunks" come in.  You make a very good defense of the object tree and of the necessity of acknowledging the relationships between objects in IF, and I've been pretty much convinced.  However, I think it's still useful to think of IF in terms of responses to player choice, as well, even if that most simple definition does not exclude CYOAs.  After all, the way the game reacts to the player's choice to display more prose is both determined by the object tree and is the only way that the player can discover it.  Is it better to talk about IF in terms of its model world or its element of player choice/interactivity?  That's a question of quality that probably can't be answered objectively.

[quote="Laroquod"]If you want to say that the property on an object is the key factor and not the behaviour of the whole object, well I can pretty much agree with that, thinking it's just another way to say essentially the same thing. Objectifying text is the whole ball game, here.[/quote]
My entire premise has been that the only way that the player discovers the behavior of objects in text-based IF is by reading the text description properties that the objects posses during the course of the game.  Therefore, everything that a player can know about the object tree (and arguably about the entire game as a whole) is based on descriptions (or, more technically, individual units of normally descriptive prose, with occasional narrative prose in some units).  If I disagree with you here, it's probably only a matter of emphasis.  You say "objectifying text," but I contend that the whole purpose of IF is to "textify" objects!  Which came first, the chicken or the egg? [emote];-)[/emote]

However, I admit that your last post has convinced me that the object is a better reference as a unique unit of meaning in IF than the description, because units of description are by no means unique to IF.  Let's take the example of a leaf object in a hypothetical IF game.  The long description that a player saw when she examined it might equally be found in a field guidebook for identifying trees.  When the player read it, she imagined a leaf, but that conveyed no story about the leaf to her, nor did it present any problems which the leaf might be an element in solving (puzzles).  However, taken with the initial description of the leaf attached to the branch of the tree in the appropriate room, the short description of the leaf after it fell to the ground, a description of the leaf when the PC carried it and the player took inventory, a description specifying how the leaf rested on a platform, and an alternate long description for when the leaf became damaged, a concrete literary image of a fictional leaf emerges in the context of a story about the leaf or a problem in which the leaf was a component.  The fictional leaf is more "real" than the general leaf in the guidebook, even though they shared one of the same descriptions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1817&start=0#p11946
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Capturing Three Features About Player At Start Of Game?
User: demonboy / DateTime: 2010-12-20 21:44:05

Aha, that looks just the ticket. Thanks for bringing this to my attention, capmikee. Guess I should get more familiar with some of those extensions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1824&start=0#p11947
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Doing something after every turn?
User: abandonwareguru / DateTime: 2010-12-21 01:07:51

I have a theoretical situation that I can't quite get Inform to work with, and the documentation isn't entirely clear on this. Consider the following code:

[code]Every turn while in darkness:
	if a random chance of 1 in 3 succeeds: 
		end the game saying "You have wandered into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue![line break]*** YOU ARE DEAD."[/code]

The code technically works fine, but say I enter darkness, THEN light a lantern. Even if I use that first turn in darkness to light the lantern, that 1 in 3 chance can still succeed. How could I add to that rule to say something like, "Unless the player lights a lantern, if a random chance of 1 in 3 succeeds..." etc.? I don't want the player to light a lantern, then still have the chance of being eaten by the grue on that turn. The idea would be to process that random chance only if the player does not light the lantern.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1824&start=0#p11948
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Doing something after every turn?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-12-21 02:57:12

Every turn rules run after action rules, so you should be able to check if an action has lit a lantern by then.
Like so:
[code]Every turn while in darkness:
	if the lantern is not lit: 
		if a random chance of 1 in 3 succeeds: 
			end the game saying "You have wandered into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue! ***[line break]*** YOU ARE DEAD."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1824&start=0#p11949
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Doing something after every turn?
User: abandonwareguru / DateTime: 2010-12-21 03:04:07

Thanks a ton, that worked perfectly. I could have sworn I tried stacking "if" statements before and got some kind of syntax error, but doing what you said gave me no problems at all. Really appreciate it!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1787&start=10#p11950
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Must puzzles be at war with stories?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-12-21 05:14:33

[quote="Laroquod"]Are there things that you have to figure out how to type in order to get an optimal ending? Yes? Then that is a puzzle.[/quote]

Not really. If that were true, then even a game whose walkthrough consisted of "N. N. N. W. S" would be a puzzle. In the case of AMFV, there does happen to be a puzzle later on, in the third part, but in the first part you're asked to record some experiences. Those experiences are freeley available to you, there are no obstacles. All you do is go there and record them and then get back - and that's not a puzzle. If anything, it's an objective, a "quest". I will agree that "puzzleless games" are one gigantic "quest" (or, in the case of Photopia, several small quests), but not that they're one gigantic puzzle. A puzzle involves an obstacle. You're not describing obstacles when you talk about AMFV, you're describing the flow of the story.

After all, if AMFV isn't puzzleless, what about Photopia? Photopia's maze segment is actually a puzzle, and so is the segment where you meet and help the wolf - but can it really be a puzzle when it's all as obvious as that? The only way for it to be more obvious would be unlocking a door with the key you started off with. Technically it's a puzzle, but if that's the only puzzle of the game, then the game is practically puzzleless.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1821&start=0#p11951
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] Weird ALMOST ALL behaviour
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-21 05:28:10

I know I just said that ALL BUT ONE doesn't work (and I still can't make it work), but it's *supposed* to work, so if we did have ALL BUT ONE, then your interpretation of ALMOST ALL, Erik, would seem to me to be not as useful, perhaps even redundant. There's a certain extent to which these words will probably never be agreed upon and we should probably just pinpoint what we mean with a custom calculation instead of trying to define words that aren't really susceptible to both clear AND naturally useful definitions. But if I had my druthers, I would want to use them in this way:

ALL BUT ONE, ALL BUT TWO, etc -- in the situation you describe, where the important thing to me is that always there be at least a few left out -- if that is the key thing then I'd use want to use these.

ALMOST ALL -- for the situation where it's important, for my text to make sense, that a large majority of the objects qualify, but it's not strictly necessary for every single object to qualify. That strikes me a scenario that can happen often enough that my version of ALMOST ALL could serve it well. I would never think to use the phrase ALMOST ALL to try to signify that it's really important that it isn't actually ALL. I use the phrase in a way to say, 'Well pretty much all, or close enough for jazz, anyway. i.e. let's not split hairs — it's basically all.' That's what I feel that phrase most naturally means, and it seems like a useful meaning, too. So it has to include the ALL scenario for it to have that useful meaning as distinct from ALL BUT ONE. YMMV.

I really don't feel strongly about it. I didn't find these 'bugs' (if it is in fact a bug) because I had come up with important uses for these terms. I found them because I've been writing myself an Inform 7 grammar cheat sheet, and when it came to these terms, like any i7 grammar I found an organisational place on my cheat sheet for them, and then tested them while doing a lot of syntax variation to see how many different variations are allowed (trying ALMOST ALL THE, ALMOST ALL OF THE, etc) so that I could note these things on my 'sheet'. And that's when I discovered that there are problems with these terms.

Honestly I don't know if I would ever actually use either of them. I'd be way more likely to forget they exist, look up the math routines, and do an actual calculation of my own to behave however I specifically wish for that situation. I don't really employ concepts like ALMOST ALL when I am programming - it's been trained out of me.

Paul.

P.S. Other Inform weirdnesses I discovered through this 'making a cheat sheet' process. This...

[code]if the containers in the Kitchen are closed ...[/code]
Does not mean what it appears to mean. (I know, it's because of the strict interchangeability of singulars and plurals -- there are no cases I know of where making something plural can change the meaning of the sentence, to Inform.)

Also, one of these two works and the other doesn't, but as I read it according to the manual, they should both work (only the second one actually does)...

[code]Definition: A room is naked if it contains nothing that is not a person.
Definition: A room is naked if it contains no thing that is not a person.[/code]
Quirks and oddities like these, I've been discovering. The ones that started this thread are just the ones that I perceived as crossing a line into near-total dysfunction.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1787&start=10#p11952
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Must puzzles be at war with stories?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-21 07:17:21

[quote="matt w"]Hm, this is an interesting take. So the story you have in mind is a story of your character (I've forgotten his name) surviving by doing this and this and this, rather than all the business about the impending war and big Suze and like that?[/quote]
Yeah, precisely. It's the perceived dichotomy between puzzle and story (as if they aren't fundamentally the same thing, which they are) that is kind of giving all of these authors the idea that there is a war. There is no war required. There is only a pre-existing notion that they are two separate things. Once that notion is accepted, there cannot help but be a war, but that notion doesn't have to be accepted. Examining ones terms is a great way to avoid going down the same road as everybody else, because you know? Everybody's pretty smart (at least, around here). If the terms in which they see things were amenable to a great, perfect solution, then not only would it have already been found -- it would be popular. To the extent that it is perceived that there is a war (meanng things cannot be reconciled) it means popular perfect solutions have not been found and that means that terms in which the problem is conventionally seen are probably not the best terms to take seriously if you are looking for the solution few have considered. And there are fascinating solutions out there, but to my mind they depend on considering puzzles and stories to be equivalent, just different facets on the same gem and not at war at all.

[quote="matt w"]That's a reasonable take, but it reminds me more of the stories I get out of nethack -- like the story of Jane, the pretty but fragile tourist who could only defend herself by flashing her camera at monsters and making them run away, but who gradually learned to take care of herself

[rant](stumbling through the mines in the dark till she was able to liberate a dwarven short sword), surviving a particularly harrowing encounter with a horde of Mordor orcs with arrows by hiding behind a door until they got in range one by one, until the light came on and she was able to take on the whole Sokoban zoo -- and then standing on Elbereth while her awesome cats Thumpy and Foof fought off a horde of demons (I usually hate standing on Elbereth, but when you get a demon that summons other demons that summon other demons... stupid polymorph traps), mooching around Minetown until as she was just leaving the Lady gifted her with Thor's lightning hammer and she rolled over everything the rest of the way[/rant]

the story as the gameplay, more or less. The thing is that I'm not sure that this plays to IF's strengths anymore. For one thing, I think that here procedural generation really helps, because it lets you face real danger, and for various reasons IF isn't great at procedurally generated gameplay.[/quote]
Heh heh, that was funny. And it makes your point. However, i have no problem with this example: what it demonstrates to me is not that stories based on puzzles are kind of reductive -- what it demonstrates to me is that the puzzles are reductive. Your story needs better puzzles, is my conclusion. I think a lot of people would conclude that your puzzles require a better story, but that's the conventional way of thinking that leads in most cases (Fragile Shells being an exception) to rather unrelated stories just being grafted on a bunch of puzzles, with the two goals served separately: the two things aimed at different sorts of people for different sorts of purposes. That's the situation where there is a war, but it's not a consequence of IF itself, as a medium: it's only a consequence of how some people currently see IF.

[quote="Peter Pears"][quote="Laroquod"]Are there things that you have to figure out how to type in order to get an optimal ending? Yes? Then that is a puzzle.[/quote]

Not really. If that were true, then even a game whose walkthrough consisted of "N. N. N. W. S" would be a puzzle.[/quote]
No, I wouldn't consider that walkthrough to be a puzzle because the direcitonal commands are already a known factor. I'm talking about figuring out an unknown factor.

[quote="Peter Pears"]In the case of AMFV, there does happen to be a puzzle later on, in the third part, but in the first part you're asked to record some experiences. Those experiences are freeley available to you, there are no obstacles. All you do is go there and record them and then get back - and that's not a puzzle. If anything, it's an objective, a "quest".[/quote]
In AMFV the things you record change the information that will be revealed later, so getting enough information to understand the direction of the simulation is a puzzle. What I am talking about is not the same thing as a quest -- it requires interactivity and an obscured path to an optimal solution. As long is the path is obscured, someway, somehow, so that you have to choose to do the right things to get the information or reward you desire, and which are the right things to choose (or to record, in the case of AMFV) are non-obvious and not merely a consequence of the standard IF commands, then it's a puzzle -- how is it not? A puzzle is just something non-obvious you have to figure out in order to get to where a game has managed to get you to want to be. AMFV is great for that -- all of the introductory material about the simulation really raises one's curiosity as to what this simulation is going to prove, and not every playthrough will get you the answers you need: you do have to do the right things and they are not completely obvious.

[quote="Peter Pears"]I will agree that "puzzleless games" are one gigantic "quest" (or, in the case of Photopia, several small quests), but not that they're one gigantic puzzle. A puzzle involves an obstacle. You're not describing obstacles when you talk about AMFV, you're describing the flow of the story.[/quote]
Agree that a puzzle is an obstacle to getting something you want out of the game, though it doesn't necessarily have to prevent you from getting *an* ending. All it has to do to qualify as a puzzle is prevent you from getting the particular ending that you want, the one you have been led to desire by the story. (I hope the reason I see these two things as so undisentanglable is coming clear.) Disagree that I was only talking about the story in AMFV, see above.

[quote="Peter Pears"]After all, if AMFV isn't puzzleless, what about Photopia? Photopia's maze segment is actually a puzzle, and so is the segment where you meet and help the wolf - but can it really be a puzzle when it's all as obvious as that? The only way for it to be more obvious would be unlocking a door with the key you started off with. Technically it's a puzzle, but if that's the only puzzle of the game, then the game is practically puzzleless.[/quote]
A super-obvious puzzle is not really a puzzle even if it resembles the usual standard key-in-lock puzzle. Like say if you find the key and the lock plainly and not hidden in the same room, then that's not a puzzle. I agree. Hide the key and then it's a puzzle.

I can't really comment much on comparing Photopia with AMFV, because it's been way too long since I played Photopia -- like, 90s -- and I don't recall it in the detail that would be required of this sort of conversation. (There is a fairly good chance though that if I re-examined the game, I would find puzzles in it that meet my definition, since I often depart from the conventional view on this point. Truly puzzleless games are really rare I find. Galatea is one, mainly because although there are plenty of obstacles to getting certain information out of Galatea, one is not led to *want* any particular piece of information out of Galatea. One is just led to sort of wonder about what she is, which she never really reveals it seems. If there were an optimal conversation that reveals exactly what she is, then that would be the puzzle. If I were led to want some other piece of information out of her, that is solvable out of her, then it would be a puzzle. But I don't *think* either of those things are true, so the two pieces required for a puzzle -- an obstacle and a goal for the player (not just the character) -- are never there simultaneously so it's a truly puzzle-free game. And it was satisfying on its own terms, once I realised what it was trying achieve and more importantly what it wasnt.)

Here's an interesting question for you though. If hiding a crucial key somewhere in the maze turns a simple key-in-lock into a puzzle, then why doesn't hiding crucial information (that you have to figure out whether it's relevant or not) somewhere in the extensive map of Rockvil, South Dakota (back to AMFV now) constitute a puzzle? Why do buried keys that affect the outcome of the game have puzzle precedence over just buried information that affects (when your character has seen it) the outcome of the game? They shouldn't, IMO. They are both necessary to get what you want out of the game, and they are both things you have to actively dig for, not knowing where you'll find them. In its simplest form it could be just a Where's Waldo puzzle (AMFV is more complex than that because there are various conclusions depending on various events that you think might resemble 'evidence' that you manage to record, and some of those conclusions are more satisfying to the original, stated goal of the PRISM simulation than others), but even the simplest Where's Waldo is still a puzzle — unless Waldo takes up like a quarter of a page. 87

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1821&start=0#p11953
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] Weird ALMOST ALL behaviour
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-12-21 07:21:17

I'd be inclined to use "almost all" for substitution text and device setup the way Eric suggests, ie "[if all the monoliths are inactive]The room is dominated by enormous obsidian pillars.[otherwise if almost all the monoliths are inactive]A few of the obsidian pillars glow with a blue flame.[otherwise if almost all the monoliths are active]Flames lick up the sides of most of the monoliths, but a few stand silent.[otherwise]Blue light throbs from every corner of the room.[end if]"

If almost all means 80%+, then we're in trouble; instead I need to go in and hand-edit in a clumsy and confusing way, especially if I change the number of monoliths to turn on.  

Worse, I think, is that "almost all" in everyday usage pretty clearly means "not all" to me.  When something is almost downloaded, it's still incomplete; when the animals are almost all cats, there's still a dog or two in the mix, etc.  Inform has enough linguistically unintuitive uses of phrases already.

(I think it might be nice to be able to use percents, with more or less, or percent to percent:
If 50 percent or more of the gumballs are eaten:
If 10 percent to 20 percent of the hobgoblins laugh:)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1821&start=0#p11954
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] Weird ALMOST ALL behaviour
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-12-21 08:26:40

I was also going to suggest percentages as an addition to the language. It seems to me that that is really what Paul is looking for: not [i]almost all[/i], but [i]80% or more[/i]:

if 80% or more of the elves are on workmen's compensation
if less than 80% of the elves are on workmen's compensation
if exactly 80% of the elves are on workmen's compensation

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1821&start=10#p11955
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] Weird ALMOST ALL behaviour
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-21 08:36:13

[quote="gravel"]I'd be inclined to use "almost all" for substitution text and device setup the way Eric suggests, ie "[if all the monoliths are inactive]The room is dominated by enormous obsidian pillars.[otherwise if almost all the monoliths are inactive]A few of the obsidian pillars glow with a blue flame.[otherwise if almost all the monoliths are active]Flames lick up the sides of most of the monoliths, but a few stand silent.[otherwise]Blue light throbs from every corner of the room.[end if]"

If almost all means 80%+, then we're in trouble; instead I need to go in and hand-edit in a clumsy and confusing way, especially if I change the number of monoliths to turn on.  [/quote]

Methinks that the last line should be for "if all the monoliths are active" and the "otherwise" should catch the case where about half the monoliths are active -- then it's not true that most are active but most are inactive. This is a fairly pointless comment. --Though if this is something that actually happens in your code, you can make it work by having the "all" clauses fire before the corresponding "almost all" clauses, right? 

[quote]Worse, I think, is that "almost all" in everyday usage pretty clearly means "not all" to me.  When something is almost downloaded, it's still incomplete; when the animals are almost all cats, there's still a dog or two in the mix, etc.  Inform has enough linguistically unintuitive uses of phrases already.[/quote]

This is interesting -- I wonder what the formal semanticists have to say. I was tempted to say that "almost all" merely [url=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/implicature/]implicates[/url] not all, in the same way that "I tried to do it" implicates that you failed, because if you succeeded you'd just say "I did it." But I think it's pretty clear that if you're almost there you're not there. 

(And googling a little, [url=http://ling.uni-konstanz.de/pages/home/penka/Pubs/penka_AC05.pdf]this formal semanticist[/url] says that "almost applied to a proposition p is true iff p itself is false in the actual world  but there is an alternative proposition that is close by to p and true. There is some debate whether the requirement that p be false in the actual world is an entailment or an implicature (as argued for a.o. by Sadock 1981). I do not want to go into this discussion and will simply follow Rapp and von Stechow 1999 in assuming that it is indeed part of the truth conditions." So there you go.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1787&start=10#p11956
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Must puzzles be at war with stories?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-21 08:40:31

[quote="Peter Pears"]The only way for it to be more obvious would be unlocking a door with the key you started off with.[/quote]

Don't underestimate my ability to forget about my starting inventory. In "Eruption" from the 2009 comp

[spoiler]I spent a fair amount of time twiddling around looking for a way to get whatever it was out of the sailcloth before I remembered that I'd started the game with a knife.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1821&start=10#p11957
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] Weird ALMOST ALL behaviour
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-21 08:48:30

[quote="gravel"]I'd be inclined to use "almost all" for substitution text and device setup the way Eric suggests, ie "[if all the monoliths are inactive]The room is dominated by enormous obsidian pillars.[otherwise if almost all the monoliths are inactive]A few of the obsidian pillars glow with a blue flame.[otherwise if almost all the monoliths are active]Flames lick up the sides of most of the monoliths, but a few stand silent.[otherwise]Blue light throbs from every corner of the room.[end if]"[/quote]
Yeah, but -- your code works identically under Erik's interpretation and my interpretation (because following good practice you've sequenced it from the narrowest to the most inclusive case). Plus, my interpretation is rendered more sensical in my alternate context. One meaning that serves both purposes? Anyone? *sigh*

Anyway, good on both of you though for suggesting the i7-style percentage syntax. That would be primo. Seems unusual actually for i7 to predefine a property that depends on a certain number range without also having a predefined way to let you just go ahead and specify the number range. I wasn't sure entirely that there wasn't one already, buried in the docs somewhere.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1820&start=0#p11958
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scenes and Moving NPC
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-12-21 09:05:13

I can't believe I missed that. Thank you for catching it. 

Thanks for the tips, especially the rule one, and all the help. I'm still sort of fiddling with the Hodge actions to see which one makes the most sense, and I can see that coming in handy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1821&start=10#p11959
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] Weird ALMOST ALL behaviour
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-12-21 09:05:54

[quote](And googling a little, this formal semanticist says that "almost applied to a proposition p is true iff p itself is false in the actual world but there is an alternative proposition that is close by to p and true. There is some debate whether the requirement that p be false in the actual world is an entailment or an implicature (as argued for a.o. by Sadock 1981). I do not want to go into this discussion and will simply follow Rapp and von Stechow 1999 in assuming that it is indeed part of the truth conditions." So there you go.)[/quote]

Yes.  Yes, that's very . . . hmmm.  Yes.  It may very well be that almost all is mainly implicature, but it's such a strong use that in natural language, we need to be careful.  Interestingly, I've been chewing over examples, and think the "almost but not all" meaning is [i]least [/i]implied when paired with an if phrase:

[quote]If almost all your socks are dirty, you should do laundry.
Almost all the socks in the laundry were dirty.[/quote]

The first sentence would indicate to me 80%+, the second 80%-99.9%.  Since if phrases are where this is most likely to come up, I'm now confused on which meaning I want.  I do want it to be accurately documented, though.

Matt: good catch on the code.  This is why I shouldn't code without testing things.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1825&start=0#p11960
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: one-line if syntax vs conditions in text substitutions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-21 10:25:09

I just noticed something.

This is legal:

[code]say "[if foo is true]Foo[otherwise if bar is true]Bar[otherwise]Baz[end if]."[/code]

But this is not:

[code]
if foo is true, say "Foo.";
otherwise if bar is true, say "Bar.";
otherwise say "Baz."
[/code]

I had been going on the assumption that one-line if statements followed the same restrictions as conditions in text substitutions, but I guess I was wrong. Why are they different?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1820&start=10#p11961
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scenes and Moving NPC
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-21 10:26:50

[quote="Bistre"]I can't believe I missed that. Thank you for catching it.[/quote]
No problem. It happens to everyone!

[quote]Thanks for the tips, especially the rule one, and all the help. I'm still sort of fiddling with the Hodge actions to see which one makes the most sense, and I can see that coming in handy.[/quote]
Enjoy!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1824&start=0#p11962
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Doing something after every turn?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-21 10:40:28

That's an interesting circumstance. I'm assuming that "darkness" here is interpreted as the darkness room, and not the state of having no light. Is there a phrase that can be used to invoke the checking-for-light routine? 

This seems to work, although I feel like there should be an even simpler phrase:

[code]Every turn when in darkness and no visible thing is lit:[/code]

Actualy, that's not quite right. The "visible" adjective only applies to things that were visible at the start of the turn, i.e. only the players possessions when it's dark. So this code will not prevent grues:

[code]
The Cave is a dark room. "You are in a brightly lit cave." The Plain is west of the Cave. "You are in broad daylight."

The remote control is a device. Understand "light" as the remote control. It is carried by the player.
The fixture is scenery in the Cave.

Carry out switching on the remote control: now the fixture is lit.
Carry out switching off the remote control: now the fixture is dark.

Every turn while in darkness:
	say "You are in darkness."
	
Every turn when in darkness and no visible thing is lit:
	say "There is no light in here."
	
test me with "z/turn light on/z/turn light off/z/turn light on/w"[/code]

While I was checking this out, I noticed that the "printing the announcement of light" activity happens after the every turn rules.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1821&start=10#p11963
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] Weird ALMOST ALL behaviour
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-12-21 10:41:19

[quote="gravel"] Interestingly, I've been chewing over examples, and think the "almost but not all" meaning is [i]least [/i]implied when paired with an if phrase:

[quote]If almost all your socks are dirty, you should do laundry.
Almost all the socks in the laundry were dirty.[/quote]

The first sentence would indicate to me 80%+, the second 80%-99.9%.  Since if phrases are where this is most likely to come up, I'm now confused on which meaning I want.  I do want it to be accurately documented, though.[/quote]

But wait, neither of those are the sort of phrases (or sentences) that can be written in I7.

I'd argue that when you use "almost all" to test the state of a given situation as in Inform, it is fundamentally ambiguous:

[quote]if almost all of the lamps are lit, say "The streets glows, but there are still some pools of shadow."
if almost all of the lamps are lit, say "The street glows brightly."[/quote]

Inform can't distinguish what is implied by "almost all" in these two sentences based on the say phrase as humans can. That, to me, is enough to dispense with the idea that "almost" should be implemented as merely an implicature in Informese (regardless of its status in English). One or both of the distinct meanings should be explicitly called out using slightly more verbose forms like "all or almost all" and/or "almost but not all".

Now, as an author using the current system, I could only safely write the second sentence. To achieve the first effect, I need to write:

[quote]if almost all of the lamps are lit and not all of the lamps are lit, say "The streets glows, but there are still some pools of shadow."[/quote]

That's not nearly as friendly as it ought to be...

Paul, I still can't wrap my head around the definition that you're pushing, i.e. that it makes sense for [i]only[/i] 3/3 or 2/2 to be accepted as matching "almost"--that denies both almost-as-implicature and almost-as-truth-condition. Surely 2/3 is "almost all" in natural language? If there were three eclairs and you complain that I've eaten almost all of them, you can't possibly mean that I ate all three? Again, I think what fits your needs is really a percentage test, e.g. "if at least 80% of the eclairs are consumed", not "almost all". It's probably possible to write your own phrase to do that, but "almost all" does seem to be handled by the I7 compiler, rather than implemented by I7 or I6 template code...

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1787&start=10#p11964
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Must puzzles be at war with stories?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-12-21 10:50:45

[quote]Like say if you find the key and the lock plainly and not hidden in the same room, then that's not a puzzle. I agree.[/quote]

I don't agree. Just as bad art is still art, an easy puzzle is still a puzzle.

Yes, this leads "ad absurdum" towards the position where anything the player has to do counts as a puzzle. But this is a useful position, not a trivial one. We put puzzles (and puzzle-like constructions, if you insist) into games in order to make the player engage with the game world and think about his/her actions. By this view, you can't divide games into "puzzle-y and puzzle-free", but you *can* ask *how* puzzle-y they are. What does the player have to think about? How closely related are those things to the story events? Are they momentary distractions or do they consume the game experience?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1824&start=0#p11965
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Doing something after every turn?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-12-21 11:01:01

Felix's example is almost right. You should check that the lantern is lit *and in the location*. Right now, the lantern will suppress darkness messages even if it's lit somewhere else in the game.

Capmikee's example works too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1825&start=0#p11966
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: one-line if syntax vs conditions in text substitutions
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-12-21 11:07:40

They're different pieces of syntax, defined by different parts of the languaage. Why would you expect them to be the same?

I suspect the answer is that "if" substitutions can't be nested, and that prevents ambiguities about what the "else" matches. You can resolve those ambiguities by using begin/else form, or indentation form, which is why those forms work for nested "if" statements.

I don't prefer this design -- I'd rather "if" be nestable in all forms -- but I think it's how it arose.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1656&start=30#p11967
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Write your own CYOA competition (ended December 15!)
User: adventurechris / DateTime: 2010-12-21 12:32:15

The contest is officially closed, though a number of people have extensions due to various bugs that had to be fixed.

We'll be doing something on longer notice next summer, so if anyone participated and has new suggestions, they're very welcome!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1824&start=0#p11968
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Doing something after every turn?
User: abandonwareguru / DateTime: 2010-12-21 12:58:37

That's a good idea. Since the lantern would have to be on the player or in the room, would there be a phrase to check whether or not an item is at the player's location, regardless of visibility? Alternately, I could rig it so that the lantern becomes unlit if put down, but I'd like to have the player be able to set it down and still light the room.

Or, possibly even better would be to just prohibit the player from dropping the lantern, and instead say that the lantern is too important to leave behind. That way, I could just add a qualifier to check if the player carries the lantern AND if it's lit.

e.g.
[code]
Every turn while in darkness:
	if the player carries the lantern:
		if the lantern is not lit:
			if a random chance of 1 in 3 succeeds: 
				end the game saying "You have wandered into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue![line break]*** YOU ARE DEAD."
				
Instead of dropping the lantern, say "You realize you shouldn't do that, as the lantern is your only source of light. It could be dangerous in here!"
Instead of inserting the lantern into a container, say "You realize you shouldn't do that, as the lantern is your only source of light. It could be dangerous in here!"
[/code]

It would be possible to prohibit the player from lighting the lantern unless he/she picks it up first as well, right?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1826&start=0#p11969
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I think Inform just exploded.
User: abandonwareguru / DateTime: 2010-12-21 13:41:30

Consider this code:

[code]Your Kitchen is south of Your Living Room. "This is your kitchen. While less messy than your living room, it is still disgusting. There are food stains all over the counter, floor, and table. You use one of the drawers in your counter as a junk drawer for lack of a better storage space. You really should clean up this hole sometime, son. In the corner of the room there is a relatively small staircase in an alcove leading down to your basement." The counter is in the kitchen. "Your kitchen counter only seems to have one drawer left. The rest were torn out and either stolen or destroyed as a result of a crazy party you had a while back. Of course, this was before your house wasn't enough of a sty to scare off any potential company."[/code]

Inform produced this error on building:

[code]This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6F95) on its most recent run through:


Problem. You wrote 'The rest were torn out and either stolen or destroyed as a result of a crazy party you had a while back'  : but assertions about the initial state of play must be given in the present tense, so 'The cat is in the basket' is fine but not 'The cat has been in the basket'. Time is presumed to start only when the game begins, so there is no anterior state which we can speak of.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem. You wrote 'Of course, this was before your house wasn't enough of a sty to scare off any potential company'  : again, assertions about the initial state of play must be given in the present tense.
[/code]


If I were to replace the whole text of the kitchen counter with "text." about 50 other things in the source just become broken somehow. It makes no sense at all. Any ideas? Is this some kind of known bug?


Edit: It seems as though Inform is reading descriptions as actual code instead of just text. I've made sure there aren't any mission quotation marks anywhere though, and I can't pinpoint the source of this problem for the life of me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1826&start=0#p11970
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I think Inform just exploded.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-21 13:50:15

Compiles for me (in 5Z71). Are you sure you haven't skipped a quotation mark somewhere in your code? The parts in quotation marks should be showing up in bold, I think. 

Also, in this:

[quote]Of course, this was before your house wasn't enough of a sty to scare off any potential company.[/quote]

I think "before" should be "when" or "back when" -- compare "This was before your house was such a sty it would scare off any potential company."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1826&start=0#p11971
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I think Inform just exploded.
User: abandonwareguru / DateTime: 2010-12-21 13:54:22

Thanks for that, nice catch. But no, it doesn't work at all on my end. Are you using a Mac or Linux version of Inform? I'm running on Windows, and descriptions and the like show up in blue rather than bold. As for my build, I'm running 6F95, I just downloaded it last night for use on my laptop, and grabbed the project file from my desktop. 

I'm absolutely positive I haven't missed any punctuation at all, honestly. I have a feeling this is a bug of some sort. I could post the errors that I get after changing that description, if you'd like.

EDIT: I found the problem. I have a friend collaboratively writing this with me, and I just copy/pasted something that he wrote. I used double quotes instead of single quotes INSIDE the description, so everything looked copacetic, but it threw all the formatting off.

The original code was:
[code]The closet has the description "Your closet door (as well as all the other doors and door frames in the house) is painted a rich blue, in contrast with the radiant orange that adorns your walls. It is scarred with veritable fives of tens of knife holes from when you were doing "target practice" with a steak knife you stole from your mom a couple months ago. The knife is nowhere to be seen."[/code]

I had to change "target practice" to 'target practice'.

Again though, thanks for catching that little grammar mishap.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1826&start=0#p11972
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I think Inform just exploded.
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-12-21 14:00:20

I don't get this error either using the code you posted (6F95, Mac OS).

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1826&start=0#p11973
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I think Inform just exploded.
User: abandonwareguru / DateTime: 2010-12-21 14:30:41

Yeah, it was something in an earlier block of code causing a weird formatting error down the line. It's resolved, not a bug or anything. Just a syntax error that didn't really show up as one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1824&start=0#p11974
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Doing something after every turn?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-12-21 14:58:33

[quote="abandonwareguru"]
It would be possible to prohibit the player from lighting the lantern unless he/she picks it up first as well, right?[/quote]


Sure. Pseudocode-wise (meaning I haven't tested it, but it should look like this):

[code]Check lighting the brass lantern when the lantern is not held by the player (this is the too light not to carry rule): say "You had best carry the lantern before attempting that." instead.[/code]

although in that situation I'd much prefer to have Inform take the lantern before lighting it. As a player, any time I'm being told to perform an essentially mindless task, I feel like I'm jumping through hoops. If the author had the time to snicker at me for not dotting the i:s and crossing the t:s, then the author clearly had the time to automate such pointless makework, but chose not to.



EDIT: Changed around a few phrases.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1824&start=0#p11975
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Doing something after every turn?
User: abandonwareguru / DateTime: 2010-12-21 15:39:11

I did something similar to that actually, using a check statement:

[code]Check switching on the battery powered lantern: If the player does not carry the battery powered lantern, instead say "You must first pick up the lantern."[/code]

This seems to work perfectly, and in conjunction with the code discussed earlier, the whole thing works just as it should. Thanks for the help everyone!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1827&start=0#p11976
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: PLEASE HALP!!!! lol  (random item from inventory!)
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2010-12-21 19:54:43

hi everyone! its great to find a forum of other IF folks!

so check it ert, im writing my first IF and im very excited about it, its grooving pretty nicely but im totally stuck and cant find an answer in the documentation.

im using Inform 7.

so, in my story, i pretty much make fun of the idea of the player thinking he is a warrior, when hes not, so when the player tries to go all Conan, i pretty much make it kinda realistic, humorous, or difficult.

ok, so if u try to "throw knife at guard" (for instance), i have different random things occur instead.  one thing im struggling to figure out is having the player [b]take a random, non-weapon, item from inventory instead[/b] but for the life of me, i cannot figure out the code to make that work!!!

HALP!!!

and please dont make fun of me or anything, im hoping this is a friendly community, im going thru a lot of crap in my life and im really hoping to avoid elitist IF people or whatever, this is my first post, i hope u guys make me feel welcome here.  ok thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1827&start=0#p11977
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: PLEASE HALP!!!! lol  (random item from inventory!)
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-21 22:47:09

It would be helpful if you could post some code to show how far you've gotten with this idea.

I'm guessing you could do something like this (not tested):

[code]
A weapon is a kind of thing. The knife is a weapon.

Before throwing a weapon at something when the player carries something that is not a weapon:
    Now the noun is a random thing carried by the player that is not a weapon;
    Say "Before you realize what you've done, you grab [the noun] instead of your weapon and aim it at [the second noun]."
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1656&start=30#p11978
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Write your own CYOA competition (ended December 15!)
User: Neo / DateTime: 2010-12-22 02:02:45

I hope the competition went well for you.

You're probably already aware of it, but I noticed you've been linked on Demian's Gamebook site.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=150#p11980
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Mark H. / DateTime: 2010-12-22 02:39:17

Greetings Wumpus-Hunters,

My name is Mark and I hail from the US.  I guess a bit of background is in order...

My first computer was a C64, in the early 80's.  I was 15.  I think it cost my parents something like $600.  At the time, 64K surpassed the piddly 48K apple 2's and trash-80s, and positively dwarfed Commodore's own Vic 20.  It came with the tape deck, but not the floppy-drive, which was a few hundred more.

I learned BASIC in a week, and was POKEing and PEEKing game designs shortly thereafter.  My first computer adventure game was Temple of Apshai, by Epyx IIRC.  It was basically a roguelike that came with a physical book (along with the tape-cassette) in which we looked up entries to describe the rooms and creatures we fought.  To say the game was crude would be an understatement.  Think gold-box D&D, but without the great ;) graphics.  But my buddy and I waited a half-hour for that damn cassette to load, and ended up playing most of the night.  That and Jumpman.

So that's some context.  That's about when I discovered Infocom.  Zork 2 was my first text adventure, but I bought and played several later, including Starcross, Deadline, Enchanter, Planetfall, Infidel, Hitchhiker's, and more Zorks, although some of them might of been on later machines (I got an Amiga after the C64 then eventually switched to IBM).

Sometime in the early to mid nineties I read an article in Computer Gaming World (I think it was called) about text adventures and TADS.  A dedicated language just for text adventures?  It was cool enough to set off my nerd-lust - I had to have it!  So I ordered everything I could get from Mike Robert's company (High-Energy?) - TADS 2.2 (with the hot-off-the-presses comb-bound Book of the Parser), Perdition's Flames and Deep Space Drifter with hintbooks and feelies, and of course the TADS manual.  Shortly thereafter I discovered the IF community on the internet, and have been lurking off and on ever since.  

In 2008 I finally finished a game.  It was an old-school puzzle-fest called Berrost's Challenge that finished 10th and "won" the Golden Banana of Dischord award in the 2008 comp, a distinction of which I am proud for no rational reason.

That's my background with IF, and way more than I intended to write, so I'll shut up now and just say see ya round the campus.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1827&start=0#p11981
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: PLEASE HALP!!!! lol  (random item from inventory!)
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-12-22 05:52:18

Interestingly, that rule doesn't actually prevent the player from choosing the knife. 
I'm not sure why, but perhaps Inform interprets the description "a random thing carried by the player that is not a weapon" as "a random thing carried by *a player who is not a weapon*"!

Anyway, "a random thing that is carried that is not a weapon" works.

(Also, if you let your would-be Conan actually throw things, make sure all "throw-aways" are actually dropped and don't remain carried.)

[code]Instead of throwing a weapon at something when the player carries something that is not a weapon:
    let the mishap be a random thing that is carried that is not a weapon;
    say "Before you realize what you've done, you grab [the mishap] instead of your [noun] and hurl it at [the second noun].";
    try silently dropping the mishap.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=150#p11982
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-22 08:57:35

I have fond memories of Jumpman. I remember watching the guy climb the ladder in super-slo-mo as the tape loaded. I keep hearing about remakes, but I can't imagine that any of them could be as good as the original.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1787&start=10#p11983
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Must puzzles be at war with stories?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2010-12-22 09:40:45

[quote="matt w"]Which made me think -- are there a lot of games that you'd praise for their stories, where it was really important that they have puzzles?[/quote]

None in my case. I can think of only one work of IF I'd praise for its "story," and it had no puzzles (or indeed, player agency or interactivity) at all. [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1727&start=0#p11984
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Dungeon Zork =/= Zork 1+2+3... Zork Complete?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2010-12-22 09:47:16

[quote="zarf"]Activision has traditionally not objected to ports of the MIT version of Dungeon, and they've been good about allowing new games set in the Zork universe. You could try to find Laird Malamed's email address and ask for permission.[/quote]

This. Activision has seemed (at times, anyway) very liberal with giving the nod to fan projects.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1824&start=0#p11985
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Doing something after every turn?
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-12-22 10:36:01

I don't know why this wouldn't work. 

[code]
To decide if a player is darkened:
  if he can see a lit thing, decide no;
  if he is not in a dark room, decide no;
  decide yes.

Every turn while the player is darkened:
  if a 1 in 3 chance succeeds:
   say "[grue death]".

[/code]

Of course this doesn't *stop* you from wandering around in the dark through careful use of undo and luck. You might want a turn counter during darkness, or something that prevents you from moving to a non-lit area.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1827&start=0#p11986
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: PLEASE HALP!!!! lol  (random item from inventory!)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-22 10:54:24

[quote="Felix"]Interestingly, that rule doesn't actually prevent the player from choosing the knife. 
I'm not sure why, but perhaps Inform interprets the description "a random thing carried by the player that is not a weapon" as "a random thing carried by *a player who is not a weapon*"![/quote]

Pretty sure that's what happens. This seems to trip people up a lot. 

I suppose you could also do this with a property of things (not tested):

[code]A thing can be weapon or nonweapon. A thing is usually nonweapon.
Before throwing a weapon thing at something:
    if the player carries something that is nonweapon:
       let the mishap be a random nonweapon thing that is carried by the player:
         "Before you realize what you've done, you grab [the mishap] instead of your [noun] and hurl it at [the second noun].";
          move the mishap to the location;
     otherwise:
          say "You somehow manage to throw [the noun] straight up in the air, but manage to dodge out of the way before it hits you in the skull.";
          move the noun to the location;
    stop the action.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1787&start=10#p11987
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Must puzzles be at war with stories?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-22 11:00:27

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="matt w"]Which made me think -- are there a lot of games that you'd praise for their stories, where it was really important that they have puzzles?[/quote]

None in my case. I can think of only one work of IF I'd praise for its "story," and it had no puzzles (or indeed, player agency or interactivity) at all. [emote]:([/emote][/quote]

???

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1827&start=0#p11988
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: PLEASE HALP!!!! lol  (random item from inventory!)
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2010-12-22 12:26:18

hey, thanks everyone!  these are great!  i did figure out a code that works [a random thing carried by the player that is not the noun], and i did specify things are weapons or not-weapons, and this way if they throw something, it just drops it, if they throw something at the guard and its not a weapon, it does the "lack the nerve" comment, and if they try to throw the weapon, then it does the random stuff including the humorous grabbing of something else.

but thanks for the advice, all of it gives me some insight into the coding that im sure i will use elsewhere eventually!  and thanks for being friendly about it!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1787&start=10#p11989
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Must puzzles be at war with stories?
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2010-12-22 12:45:54

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="matt w"]Which made me think -- are there a lot of games that you'd praise for their stories, where it was really important that they have puzzles?[/quote]

None in my case. I can think of only one work of IF I'd praise for its "story," and it had no puzzles (or indeed, player agency or interactivity) at all. [emote]:([/emote][/quote]

[i]Rameses[/i]?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1787&start=10#p11990
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Must puzzles be at war with stories?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2010-12-22 13:01:08

[quote="mwigdahl"][quote="Ghalev"][quote="matt w"]Which made me think -- are there a lot of games that you'd praise for their stories, where it was really important that they have puzzles?[/quote]

None in my case. I can think of only one work of IF I'd praise for its "story," and it had no puzzles (or indeed, player agency or interactivity) at all. [emote]:([/emote][/quote]

[i]Rameses[/i]?[/quote]

That's the one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=150#p11991
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-12-22 13:48:04

[quote="Mark H."]In 2008 I finally finished a game.  It was an old-school puzzle-fest called Berrost's Challenge that finished 10th and "won" the Golden Banana of Dischord award in the 2008 comp, a distinction of which I am proud for no rational reason.[/quote]

[i]Berrost's Challenge[/i] was one of the first IF games I played, and my first time through a puzzle-rich game involving a wizard's apprentice. As a result I have a lot of fond nostalgia for it, despite the fact that it's only been around for two years. I suspect it holds the same place in my heart that [i]Zork[/i] does for others.

Thanks for making it!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1778&start=0#p11992
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: There are a lot of people making new languages!
User: adventurechris / DateTime: 2010-12-22 14:23:24

Well, I'm a novice in this space. I've played maybe one thing by emshort, Lost Pig (which was a great deal of fun), possibly some third thing, and the rest of my experience with interactive fiction has been with computer games, and RPGs in particular. If you're familiar with, say, [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planescape:_Torment]Planescape: Torment[/url] or [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_Ex]Deus Ex[/url] (or heck, even Chrono Trigger somewhat), then you'll recognize my gaming lineage. [emote]:)[/emote]

I [b]did[/b], however, play CYOAs when I was a kid. Fast forward to the present day; I'm in a darkened room in Hotel Pennsylvania, watching an advance screening of [url=http://www.getlamp.com/]GET LAMP[/url]. Prior to this, I:

[list]
[*]Had basically played no interactive fiction (I knew there was a grue out there, but that was it).[/*:m]
[*]Didn't really think about its place in games history, figuring it was replaced by graphic adventures like King's Quest (gasp!)[/*:m][/list:u]

After GET LAMP, I thought about CYOAs and something clicked in my head, and that's where [url=http://adventurecow.com/]Adventure Cow[/url] came from. My goal is not to create a new story language or express some new innovation; I'm just hoping to get more people playing with interactive stories, and more people writing them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1787&start=20#p11993
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Must puzzles be at war with stories?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-22 18:03:01

[quote="zarf"][quote]Like say if you find the key and the lock plainly and not hidden in the same room, then that's not a puzzle. I agree.[/quote]

I don't agree. Just as bad art is still art, an easy puzzle is still a puzzle.

Yes, this leads "ad absurdum" towards the position where anything the player has to do counts as a puzzle. But this is a useful position, not a trivial one. We put puzzles (and puzzle-like constructions, if you insist) into games in order to make the player engage with the game world and think about his/her actions. By this view, you can't divide games into "puzzle-y and puzzle-free", but you *can* ask *how* puzzle-y they are. What does the player have to think about? How closely related are those things to the story events? Are they momentary distractions or do they consume the game experience?[/quote]
We [i]have[/i] been overlooking matters of degree, and I'm glad you pointed that out. Not sure, say, framing GO NORTH as puzzle with 1% difficulty is really necessary to get there — I am content to call a puzzle with 1% difficulty not a puzzle, but it's really semantics because in the large, I do agree about the things you say we should examine.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1787&start=20#p11994
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Must puzzles be at war with stories?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2010-12-22 18:34:54

[quote="zarf"]Just as bad art is still art, an easy puzzle is still a puzzle.[/quote]

Sure. But there are necessary tasks that aren't "easy puzzles" at all ... they're just necessary tasks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1828&start=0#p11995
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Choice of Games Releases Interactive Fiction Apps for Kindle
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2010-12-22 19:11:19

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/32173/Choice_Of_Games_Releases_Interactive_Fiction_Apps_For_Kindle.php">http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/3217 ... Kindle.php</a>

Lovers of interactive fiction, rejoice! Choice of Games, a quirky independent games company, has just released our first two interactive fiction titles for Amazon Kindle. Both games are available now in the Amazon Kindle Store.

In our first game, “Choice of the Dragon,” you play as a dragon who kidnaps princesses and sleeps on gold for fun. You’ll dominate the local kingdom, loot and pillage, and inspire terror in the hearts of your enemies.
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.amazon.com/Choice-of-the-Dragon/dp/B004EUOFGC">http://www.amazon.com/Choice-of-the-Dra ... B004EUOFGC</a>

Our second game, “Choice of Broadsides,” is a swashbuckling naval adventure, in the spirit of C. S. Forester’s Hornblower or Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin books, with a dash of Jane Austen. As a young officer fighting the Napoleonic Wars, you’ll take command of a Royal Navy frigate, earning glory in the name of the Crown.
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.amazon.com/Choice-of-Broadsides/dp/B004FRH3PO">http://www.amazon.com/Choice-of-Broadsi ... B004FRH3PO</a>

Enjoy!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1828&start=0#p11996
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Choice of Games Releases Interactive Fiction Apps for Ki
User: George / DateTime: 2010-12-22 19:26:55

Cool Dan, I'd be interested to hear how this works out for you guys, especially compared to iPhone, once you have some figures to go by.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1610&start=0#p11998
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The Big Bang Theory - Season 4 Episode 6 - IF included !
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-12-22 22:43:54

big break into the mainstream being a short filler scene of a bunch of nerds rediscovering an old text-game? [emote];)[/emote]

yeah, right.  Call me if you pick up someone playing an ifcomp game on iPhone in some soap opera...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1666&start=10#p11999
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Zork: Activision gives it some love in an unusual way!
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-12-22 22:55:04

[quote="ManolisG13"]
I found it really cool .. And instead ppl are bitching about it .. Ehm.. Okay.. Maybe including one of the comp games, half of which are half finished would be better eh?[/quote]

yeah, perhaps a good idea.  It's not like CoD players will unlock and play Zork for more than, what, 2 mins?  I'm also pretty sure they'll try "shoot mailbox" and "shoot door" and quit when it gets them nowhere.  So, a half finished game would get them the same deal.

This is not a bonus for player who don't care, it's really just a lame maneuver to ensure that Zork and other Infocom titles never really get released into the public domain, because it's [i]being used[/i] in a commercial package.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1620&start=20#p12000
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Zarf unveils mad plan to do IF full-time
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-12-22 22:57:00

For those of you counting the days, today was my last day of work at the industry job I've held for the past three years.

(*I* was counting the days, obviously.)

Tomorrow I am a free man, or something.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1620&start=20#p12001
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Zarf unveils mad plan to do IF full-time
User: George / DateTime: 2010-12-22 23:09:14

Grats [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1323&start=0#p12002
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: what tools do you use for mapping interactive fiction ga
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-12-22 23:09:14

my mind

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1666&start=10#p12003
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Zork: Activision gives it some love in an unusual way!
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-12-23 00:01:57

[quote]it's really just a lame maneuver to ensure that Zork and other Infocom titles never really get released into the public domain, because it's being used in a commercial package.[/quote]

No it isn't, because copyright law doesn't work that way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1612&start=0#p12004
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Running games with sound in Zoom / Spatterlight
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-23 00:17:25

If I remember correctly, I jumped through several hoops to get Lurking Horror's sound working on the Mac, but the only interpreter that could handle it crashed whenever I tried to save the game. So I only heard the first few sounds before I got tired of replaying from the beginning.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1829&start=0#p12005
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Inventure 2011
User: olethros / DateTime: 2010-12-23 00:52:47

Inventure 2011 : The 1st interactive fiction mini-competition on inverting / subverting IF puzzles and tropes

Puzzles have always been a staple of interactive fiction. You must
have learned to recognise the standard patterns by now, some of them
reviled (such as find the item in the maze), some of them simply
boring (such as unlock the door with the key), which do crop up in one
form or the other in plenty of cases.

A side-effect of the existence of such patterns is that they guide the
player towards very specific, easily detectable goals, that usually
take the form of some obstacle. What is a closed door, but an
invitation to open it? On the other hand, if the puzzle requires to
_lock_ the door, this may be something that is not immediately
apparent to the player. Does this hold more generally for other item +
action combinations?

Submission guidelines and judging criteria
==========================================

The aim of this mini-comp is to break some new ground in puzzle
construction. This entails subverting or inverting normative
interactive fiction themes as follows:

1. Take a classic puzzle theme.
2. Change it so that the puzzle solution entails performing the
opposite (or just a completely different) action.
3. Make a stand-alone mini-game so that the puzzle makes sense within the
context of the game.

Entries will be judged on three main criteria:

1. How recognisable the original puzzle / trope is.
2. The quality and originality the new variant is.
3. How great the game is as a whole


Essential Information
=====================
- Submission deadline: 21 January 2011
- Submission method: send an email to <a href="mailto:dimitrakakis@fias.uni-frankfurt.de">dimitrakakis@fias.uni-frankfurt.de</a> with the subject  INVENTURE-2011.
- Voting Period: 22 January - 21 February 2011
- Winner Announcement: 28 February 2011.

Christos Dimitrakakis

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1666&start=10#p12006
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Zork: Activision gives it some love in an unusual way!
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-12-23 02:15:51

[quote="namekuseijin"][quote="ManolisG13"]
I found it really cool .. And instead ppl are bitching about it .. Ehm.. Okay.. Maybe including one of the comp games, half of which are half finished would be better eh?[/quote]

yeah, perhaps a good idea.  It's not like CoD players will unlock and play Zork for more than, what, 2 mins?  I'm also pretty sure they'll try "shoot mailbox" and "shoot door" and quit when it gets them nowhere.  So, a half finished game would get them the same deal.[/quote]
I think you're being unnecessarily pessimistic. Sure, most players won't find Zork hidden in their copy of Black Ops, and many of those who do won't be interested. But Black Ops is a huge best-seller, and if it piques the curiosity of even a tiny fraction of CoD players, it'll be good for the community. We've already had one new member join this forum after being introduced to IF through CoD's Zork.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1666&start=10#p12007
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Zork: Activision gives it some love in an unusual way!
User: ManolisG13 / DateTime: 2010-12-23 02:19:39

@ namekuseijin : so "CoD players" according to you are mindless bastards who just shoot things in games.. lol , ok .. [emote]:P[/emote] And I suppose you  ONLY play interactive fiction? Lol, enjoy life mate, gaming is good .. Whatever..

I liked though the "shoot mailbox with shotgun" if I could in that specific version I could add it, would make for a nice inside joke..

Now, seriously, you know what Clint Eastwood said about some holes, so imho the Zork presence even if it's just there will make some ppl hear about TEXT Adventures (as we called them in the good old days) for the first time and it's very good..

For the copyright stuff I don't know at all, I guess Andrew knows better [emote];)[/emote] [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1830&start=0#p12008
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Conversation Defaults Just Prints Blank Prompt
User: demonboy / DateTime: 2010-12-23 03:02:53

After installing Conversational Defaults extension by Eric Eve, asking about things now just prints a blank line. I copied his example verbatim from the documentation and ran his Captain Sisko example in a new room, but when I 'ask sisko about war', it comes back with 

[code]
>ask sisko about war
>
[/code]

There is no 'don't understand' or 'there is no reply', just a blank line. I've even created a completely new game and just pasted the code from [url]http://inform7.com/extensions/Eric%20Eve/Conversational%20Defaults/doc_1.html[/url], and used all the recommended test commands, but I'm still getting a blank line. 

I had to comment out the line 'try saying hello' in Conversational Framework by Eric Eve as Inform kept tripping up on this line every time I tried to compile. I don't know if these are related.

Also:

If I comment out all of these extensions and then just do a normal:

[code]
A framed photo is on the desk. The description is "This ia a picture of the receptionist." 

Understand "photo", "pic", "picture", "image", "framed photo", "framed photograph", "frame", "framed", "snap" as "[framed photo]".


Instead of asking receptionist about "[framed photo]": 
	say "'Why, it's a photo of me', exclaims the receptionist as she flutters her eyelashes. '".
[/code]

It all works fine. So how come I'm getting these blank prompts?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=150#p12009
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Mark H. / DateTime: 2010-12-23 04:04:54

Wow, that is quite a compliment!  I'm really very gratified that someone remembers my game so fondly.  And you are very welcome!

Regarding Jumpman - Google Jumpman Under Construction if you are running windows - it is an extremely faithful windows clone of both Jumpman and Jumpman Junior.  Retro-geeky overload!  I installed it and ran it under windows 7 with no problems (just run as admin) and no need for dosbox or emulators.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1829&start=0#p12010
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Inventure 2011
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-23 08:38:49

Sweet. There are some games that do this already -- Enlightenment is one that springs to mind, and maybe the Tower of Hanoi in the Bryant Collection.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1610&start=0#p12011
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The Big Bang Theory - Season 4 Episode 6 - IF included !
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-23 09:00:18

Not the point, I believe — add up all the 'little breaks' in all the little callback references going on around the world. That's what tips the balance. One thing being mentioned by one popular figure, rarely changes anything, no matter how popular the figure. Not impossible, but it's unlikely -- highly popular figures mention obscure things all the time, and it gives those obscure things a momentary boost and maybe even a crashed server for a day or two, but changes little in the scheme of things.

What effects real change is thousands of little references, pressing on the culture, over time, such that people begin to perceive it as *happening now*. One mention cannot do this -- it takes hundreds and then thousands to approach that tipping point. The good news is that no one mention needs to particularly significant for success to eventually become inevitable, so it's counterproductive to interpret a minor mention as a defeat or as signifying that a topic is minor.

It seems to me that a re-awareness of IF (and, in fact, the roots of gaming in general) is pressing harder on the culture with each passing year, as it becomes clearer and clearer to people that the so-called 'Triple-A' game studios have gone the way of Hollywood and have converted themselves into largely soulless sausage factories.

Paul.

P.S. Indie games 4ever. 8)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1620&start=20#p12012
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Zarf unveils mad plan to do IF full-time
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-23 09:08:30

@zarf: You must feel [i]so[/i] awesome right now. XD

Happy Christmas, if you want one… and the same to all other if.o members and any r.a.i-fers who like to wander by!

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1323&start=0#p12013
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: what tools do you use for mapping interactive fiction ga
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-23 09:16:42

This could be embarrassing, it will be the first time I admitted it, heh. When necessary (though I prefer when it's not), I tend to make IF maps with my handy old text editor, kind of like capmikee's backup plan only it's my only plan, like so...

[code]End of Road
	W	Hill
	E	Inside Building
	N	Forest
	S	Valley

Valley
	S	Slit in Streambead
	N	End of Road

etc.[/code]
Faster than pen and paper, for me anyway, and way easier to adjust for mistakes. (Nothing more annoying than having to wedge in rooms where they don't seem to fit.) There have been times when I loved a game so much, that I took my text 'map' and drew an actual map based on it, afterwards, but that was purely out of youthful fannish exuberance and free time, and I don't do it much anymore.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1612&start=0#p12014
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Running games with sound in Zoom / Spatterlight
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-23 09:20:17

I managed to get sounds working in Sherlock (and I think it was through Zoom) quite a few years ago, but I don't think I have ever heard the Lurking Horror sounds, and I'm *sure* I tried. Never tried sound in Spatterlight though, that wasn't around at the time.

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=160#p12015
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-23 09:23:30

Awesome, Mike! I'm going to try this Berrost's Challenge, I've just put it on my list. 8)

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1778&start=0#p12016
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: There are a lot of people making new languages!
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-23 09:26:00

That is an awesome goal, and I wish you all success with it! I hope I can find time to start participating in some of these contests, soon...

P.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1821&start=10#p12017
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] Weird ALMOST ALL behaviour
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-23 09:35:32

[quote="ektemple"]Paul, I still can't wrap my head around the definition that you're pushing, i.e. that it makes sense for [i]only[/i] 3/3 or 2/2 to be accepted as matching "almost"--that denies both almost-as-implicature and almost-as-truth-condition. Surely 2/3 is "almost all" in natural language? If there were three eclairs and you complain that I've eaten almost all of them, you can't possibly mean that I ate all three? Again, I think what fits your needs is really a percentage test, e.g. "if at least 80% of the eclairs are consumed", not "almost all". It's probably possible to write your own phrase to do that, but "almost all" does seem to be handled by the I7 compiler, rather than implemented by I7 or I6 template code...

--Erik[/quote]
Two-thirds is a modest majority, and isn't really considered to be something you can accurately describe as 'almost all' in my experience. After all, you are leaving a full third on the table! If anyone said to me 'almost all', and I found out later that it was only two-thirds, I would think that they bent the truth pretty far, there, to make their point. And I wouldn't really trust their hyperbolic characterisations of statistics, in the future. Surely I can't be alone in this regard?

But there are cases that don't make sense intuitively here any way you slice it, though, aren't there? I have yet to see an interpretation (including my own) that makes sense in all possible common sense uses of ALMOST ALL; we are just all disagreeing over which part of common sense to hold supreme, which seems to me a bit futile, somewhat like arguing over which flavour of ice cream is 'real ice cream'. Which is why I'd probably go for the actual percentages, etc.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1791&start=10#p12018
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: the object tree and the chunk
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-23 09:58:32

[quote="Bainespal"][quote="Laroquod"]Interrelated how, but through the object tree?[/quote]
Through the object tree, yes, but also through the rules that determine which descriptions attatched to which objects are displayed in response to input by the player.  That's where the "chunks" come in.  You make a very good defense of the object tree and of the necessity of acknowledging the relationships between objects in IF, and I've been pretty much convinced.  However, I think it's still useful to think of IF in terms of responses to player choice, as well, even if that most simple definition does not exclude CYOAs.  After all, the way the game reacts to the player's choice to display more prose is both determined by the object tree and is the only way that the player can discover it.  Is it better to talk about IF in terms of its model world or its element of player choice/interactivity?  That's a question of quality that probably can't be answered objectively.[/quote]
I agree that responses to player choice are important -- we're just having a sort of hair-splitting debate about what's of *prime* importance. 87

I might point out that Inform 7 might be clouding the issue here, somewhat. What i7 calls a RULE is actually just an executable property (i.e. function, routine, method, insert your favourite object-oriented language here), that is attached to… an object! So I just see this stuff as all of a piece. Inform 7 compiles down to i6 syntax, so everything that happens, actions, rules, whatever, is just executing some typically object-oriented code, behind the scenes, in which nothing exists that isn't attached to a particular object, or to a kind (i.e. 'class') of object, which is itself an object.

I don't perceive any significant difference between printing out text properties on objects and running routines attached to objects. The latter is just a more complex case of the former.

So holding ACTIONS to be supreme seems to me to be saying, it's not objects, but it's what objects do. But that is the same difference to me, because I wasn't talking about frozen objects that don't do anything -- I was talking about what they do as well; I was talking about the relations between objects: that includes what they have been instructed to do to other objects.

[quote]My entire premise has been that the only way that the player discovers the behavior of objects in text-based IF is by reading the text description properties that the objects posses during the course of the game.  Therefore, everything that a player can know about the object tree (and arguably about the entire game as a whole) is based on descriptions (or, more technically, individual units of normally descriptive prose, with occasional narrative prose in some units).  If I disagree with you here, it's probably only a matter of emphasis.  You say "objectifying text," but I contend that the whole purpose of IF is to "textify" objects!  Which came first, the chicken or the egg? [emote];-)[/emote][/quote]
Point well taken — you're right, the perspective is reversible. But there is a machine in IF that automatically sequences text. A film or a novel has no automatic machine (though there is a manual production process, all the work is 'pre-rendered' if you will, whereas IF does its text 'rendering' on the fly). So I just feel it's very important to acknowledge this difference. And also not to be afraid of objects as if somehow the art of writing text is above the art of placing objects into useful fictional relationships, since I don't really think it is, personally. I'm not saying that this is what you think; I'm just saying that I reject that view and that feeds into my reasons for defining things the way I do, as well...

[quote]However, I admit that your last post has convinced me that the object is a better reference as a unique unit of meaning in IF than the description, because units of description are by no means unique to IF.  Let's take the example of a leaf object in a hypothetical IF game.  The long description that a player saw when she examined it might equally be found in a field guidebook for identifying trees.  When the player read it, she imagined a leaf, but that conveyed no story about the leaf to her, nor did it present any problems which the leaf might be an element in solving (puzzles).  However, taken with the initial description of the leaf attached to the branch of the tree in the appropriate room, the short description of the leaf after it fell to the ground, a description of the leaf when the PC carried it and the player took inventory, a description specifying how the leaf rested on a platform, and an alternate long description for when the leaf became damaged, a concrete literary image of a fictional leaf emerges in the context of a story about the leaf or a problem in which the leaf was a component.  The fictional leaf is more "real" than the general leaf in the guidebook, even though they shared one of the same descriptions.[/quote]
Yeah I agree with your reasoning here. I just see all those things you describe as properties/functions on, or related to, the leaf object. Without that object these properties and functions would not be attached to anything, indeed there would be no reason for them to exist, so that's why even though I agree with the way you see a lot of this stuff, I still manage to come to a different conclusion.

It's been a great discussion though, hasn't it? Made me reconsider some stuff...

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1778&start=0#p12019
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: There are a lot of people making new languages!
User: adventurechris / DateTime: 2010-12-23 10:02:48

Thanks, Laroquod! Speaking of finding time, do you think the summer is a good time? That's my current plan, which I think works well for schools but probably doesn't have as much of an effect with working people...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1778&start=0#p12020
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: There are a lot of people making new languages!
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-23 10:23:56

[quote="adventurechris"]Thanks, Laroquod! Speaking of finding time, do you think the summer is a good time? That's my current plan, which I think works well for schools but probably doesn't have as much of an effect with working people...[/quote]
Sounds like as good as a time as any. Personally, I am not really seasonal. I just get gluts of projects sometimes. Right now I am in a huge glut and most of my spare time is going into learning Inform 7 on a test adventure (and learning i7 has been *way* more time-intensive than I expected it to be, but I'm finding it worth it and interesting, worth it and intersting enough that it's sucking up larger and larger swaths of my motivation, that's going into understanding it better). Plus, working on my comic book.

So, there is no best time for me -- there are just those times that are freed up by circumstance. Once I feel I 'know' i7 enough to write code basically off the cuff with it, it will be one of those wow-i'm-freer-now times, but not sure how soon that will be...

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1620&start=20#p12021
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Zarf unveils mad plan to do IF full-time
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-12-23 10:37:52

yay!  Looking forward for it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1262&start=0#p12022
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: LIMBO (XBox Live Summer of Arcade)
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-12-23 11:37:15

BTW, is it anything [url=http://www.comagame.net/]Coma[/url]?

I wonder if it's a port...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1323&start=0#p12023
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: what tools do you use for mapping interactive fiction ga
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-12-23 12:00:28

Wow. If it helps you, sure, but... wow. I don't think that method would orient me in the least.

namekuseijin, I once pulled your leg about mapping the old Eamon adventures in you head. I've got a better one for you - Level 9 games, such as Emerald Isle, or their version of Adventure called Colossal Cave, or the Silicon Dreams trilogy. Would you map those in your head?  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1262&start=0#p12024
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: LIMBO (XBox Live Summer of Arcade)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-23 12:15:33

If you liked [i]Coma[/i] you should definitely play [url=http://armorgames.com/play/3391/nevermore-3]Nevermore 3[/url], which I think was probably a big inspiration. (It might even have the same game engine, but I'd have to play through Coma again to see the credits.) Nevermore is charming and lighthearted instead of grimdark, which may or may not be a plus but I think the story works much better, and it has a lot more open exploration IMO (I find Coma pretty linear).

These are both browser games, by the way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1323&start=0#p12025
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: what tools do you use for mapping interactive fiction ga
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-23 18:11:53

I used Laroquod's method for doing [url=http://dhakajack.templaro.com/node/75]SWEDUN[/url] (from the TWIFcomp); otherwise I use my head or game-supplied maps if available (the maps in Byzantine Perspective and Resonance were really helpful), and then I use the walkthrough. I don't like having to take notes.

[ETA: Oh, and I do scroll up to review things sometimes, which is an on-the-cheap version of capmikee's "keep scripting on" approach I guess.]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1831&start=0#p12026
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: ToaSK goes Free!
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2010-12-24 01:40:44

On Christmas Eve, 2007, Cumberland Games released TREASURES OF A SLAVER'S KINGDOM as a commercial title, with a promise that on Christmas Eve, 2010, the game's commercial run would end and the game would go freeware.

I was stoked because at the time we were also going to have the new Hobbit movie today.

I suck less than all the big-business crapola that delayed the @#!^& Hobbit movie. But ToaSK sucks more. A lot more. Time to see for yourself.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/toask.htm">http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/toask.htm</a>

If you enjoyed ToaSK as a supporter, encourage your friends to play! If you found it terrifying, encourage your enemies.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1778&start=0#p12027
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: There are a lot of people making new languages!
User: Neo / DateTime: 2010-12-24 04:10:49

[quote="adventurechris"]Speaking of finding time, do you think the summer is a good time? That's my current plan, which I think works well for schools but probably doesn't have as much of an effect with working people...[/quote]

People will (often) find time if the motivation is right. If you really get into something, you'll start finding that it becomes a priority.

As to how that works with a competition, I think there's a lot of factors that come into play. Motivation comes in all shapes and forms. A good question to ask yourself, though, is this: what would motivate me to use someone else's tool to write a CYOA (particularly with the investment easily being in the tens of hours for something decent)?

All the best! [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=809&start=20#p12028
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: beginner questions/programming
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2010-12-24 05:02:06

Thanks everyone, particlarly Emily for such a detailed explanation.  Much appreciated and sorry it's taken so long for me to get back to you:
1) I began working on the suggestions and lost track of time,
2) It took me a while to locate this thread again

My first project is taking shape, slowly but surely, and as intended I'm learning things along the way.

Still running over some bumps with the syntax and vocabulary however.  I have one particular rule that I need to create, and it has baffled me for months even though it ought to be very simple.  I've put it aside and worked on other things (making considerable progress), then come back to it and tried again, re-visited Inform7's inbuilt documentation, and tried every variation that I can think of.

I know I'm going to feel like an idiot when I see the answer, but how do I achieve this?

I have a fire extinguisher case with a glass front.  Player has to find an object suitable to break or cut the glass case to reach the extinguisher.  Obviously I don't want the player taking anything in or out of the case while the glass is in the way.

[b]The code I've tried[/b]
First part works fine:
[code]Glass is a kind of thing.  Glass can be intact, shattered or cut.

A small metal case is in the Kitchen.  The small metal case is fixed in place.  The case glass is part of the small metal case.  The case glass is glass and intact.

A fire extinguisher is inside the small metal case.[/code]
Below is the code that I've been unable to get to work:
[code]Instead of taking a thing out of the small metal case when the case glass is intact:
	say "The glass front of the case prevents you reaching inside."
Instead of putting a thing inside the small metal case when the case glass is intact:
	say "The glass front of the case prevents you reaching inside."
[/code]

This is the error, every single time:
[color=#BF0000]You wrote 'Instead of taking a thing out of the small metal case when the case glass is intact'  , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is 'taking a thing out of the small metal case when the case glass is intact'. The part after 'when' (or 'while') was fine, but the earlier words did not make sense as a description of an action. I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook.[/color]

In place of "a thing" I've tried "anything", "any object", "(whatever - a thing)" and some others I've forgotten now.

In place of "out of the small metal case" I've tried "from the small metal case" and "from out of the small metal case" and "remove a thing from the small metal case."

I know this is going to turn out to be something embarrasingly simple.  [emote]:roll:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1831&start=0#p12029
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: ToaSK goes Free!
User: ManolisG13 / DateTime: 2010-12-24 05:31:18

Thanx for releasing it for free .. Downloading now and again thanx for your act ..

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1832&start=0#p12030
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Beta tester wanted (needed)
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2010-12-24 08:51:29

Hi, 
I’m close to having finished my entry for the Spring Thing 2011.
I am looking for a brave volunteer who’ll help me test the game.
The game is currently in late Alpha, early Beta state which means that it’s playable but not yet completely finished. (You can finish the game, but I need to add a few more rooms)
I need someone to check for spelling and grammar errors, and also the usual playability.
The game is written in Adrift V.5 (Campbell’s’ latest “invention”)
I have posted at <a class="postlink" href="http://if.game-testing.org">http://if.game-testing.org</a> too, but thought I’d post here too, just in case.
If you’re interested pls. PM me or mail me at: [b]Rosenloev DOT 1 AT Gmail DOT com[/b]
Looking forward to hear from you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=809&start=20#p12031
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: beginner questions/programming
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-24 09:54:13

[quote="thefoxaroo"]Thanks everyone, particlarly Emily for such a detailed explanation.  Much appreciated and sorry it's taken so long for me to get back to you:
1) I began working on the suggestions and lost track of time,
2) It took me a while to locate this thread again

My first project is taking shape, slowly but surely, and as intended I'm learning things along the way.

Still running over some bumps with the syntax and vocabulary however.  I have one particular rule that I need to create, and it has baffled me for months even though it ought to be very simple.  I've put it aside and worked on other things (making considerable progress), then come back to it and tried again, re-visited Inform7's inbuilt documentation, and tried every variation that I can think of.

I know I'm going to feel like an idiot when I see the answer, but how do I achieve this?

I have a fire extinguisher case with a glass front.  Player has to find an object suitable to break or cut the glass case to reach the extinguisher.  Obviously I don't want the player taking anything in or out of the case while the glass is in the way.

[b]The code I've tried[/b]
First part works fine:
[code]Glass is a kind of thing.  Glass can be intact, shattered or cut.

A small metal case is in the Kitchen.  The small metal case is fixed in place.  The case glass is part of the small metal case.  The case glass is glass and intact.

A fire extinguisher is inside the small metal case.[/code]
Below is the code that I've been unable to get to work:
[code]Instead of taking a thing out of the small metal case when the case glass is intact:
	say "The glass front of the case prevents you reaching inside."
Instead of putting a thing inside the small metal case when the case glass is intact:
	say "The glass front of the case prevents you reaching inside."
[/code]

This is the error, every single time:
[color=#BF0000]You wrote 'Instead of taking a thing out of the small metal case when the case glass is intact'  , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is 'taking a thing out of the small metal case when the case glass is intact'. The part after 'when' (or 'while') was fine, but the earlier words did not make sense as a description of an action. I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook.[/color]

In place of "a thing" I've tried "anything", "any object", "(whatever - a thing)" and some others I've forgotten now.

In place of "out of the small metal case" I've tried "from the small metal case" and "from out of the small metal case" and "remove a thing from the small metal case."

I know this is going to turn out to be something embarrasingly simple.  [emote]:roll:[/emote][/quote]

This looks a lot less embarrassingly simple than you think. The action you want for "taking it out of" is "removing it from," I think, but if you look up "removing it from" in the index (under the Actions tab) it warns you not to write rules about it -- you can only remove things from things by TAKING them, and the removing action is used to provide error messages. So for the first rule, what you want I think is something like:

[code]nstead of taking a thing when the small metal case encloses the noun and the case glass is intact:
	say "The glass front of the case prevents you reaching inside."[/code]

(I originally had "when the noun is in the small metal case" but I wanted to catch cases where you had something that was in a container that in turn is in the case, or something like that. Haven't tested those cases.)

For the other rule, the name of that action is "inserting it into" -- this is one that trips me up a lot -- so you can write

[code]Instead of inserting a thing into the small metal case when the case glass is intact:
	say "The glass front of the case prevents you reaching inside."[/code]

Haven't tested these too much but at least they work in the basic cases!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1262&start=0#p12032
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: LIMBO (XBox Live Summer of Arcade)
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-12-24 09:57:11

well, I wouldn't consider a skinny dark figure or bones and skulls everywhere exactly charming, what's wrong with people's aesthetics these days?

I played Coma for a chance, but being a console guy (and an IF type), I find most flash or *social* games depressingly shallow and pointless.  Beautiful perhaps, but far too little.  These 2 in particular remind us of the ancient classics Prince of Persia and Another World, except they share nothing of the ingenious puzzles and challenges...

I think they are a reflection of a much more stupid and shallow society.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1711&start=0#p12033
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Aurora
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2010-12-24 10:20:50

So, what's the status on this? I've got a couple of versions in my hard drive - I'm just waiting for the final version before I start playing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1833&start=0#p12034
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Curses R16 -- mis-assembled property table?
User: DustinC / DateTime: 2010-12-24 10:28:55

While working on my own terp, I noticed an oddity in one of the property tables assembly in Curses.z5 R16. On object 448 ("The Birdcage of the Muses") there are [i]two[/i] properties with the number 11 containing the same value. Has anyone else noticed this? Is it expected or an Inform compiler bug?

Thanks!
Dustin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1262&start=0#p12036
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: LIMBO (XBox Live Summer of Arcade)
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-12-24 11:18:04

There was a brief hub-bub in the wake of Limbo about indie games being content-over-gameplay.  Specifically, they thought Limbo was the next Braid, and had a great fling with it, but the morning after they wake up and think, "Hey, it's just a by-the-numbers puzzler that looks pretty. What gives?" 

While I wouldn't go so far as to blame the decay of society, I do find many indie games being shallow and/or highly derivative of Mario.  

::shrug::   I'm sure Limbo's a fine game, but I don't think it'll be a classic or anything.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1787&start=20#p12037
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Must puzzles be at war with stories?
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-12-24 11:36:19

Puzzles are your only true input to a story, the only way to make you feel like you've had any active role within the game world.

IF is not merely about reading a story:  it's about role-playing and feeling and thinking like the protagonist.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1658&start=10#p12038
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Sand-dancer failing to compile with 6F95
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2010-12-24 11:43:04

Well, I was waiting for the new build to fix the bug before updating, but since it didn't, I've gone ahead and added veryalien's hack into the latest Sand-dancer code and updated the book's errata page accordingly. Sand-dancer's code as it appears on the website should now compile with 6G60.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1787&start=20#p12039
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Must puzzles be at war with stories?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-24 12:22:12

[quote="namekuseijin"]Puzzles are your only true input to a story, the only way to make you feel like you've had any active role within the game world.[/quote]

No. I want to put together a longer post about this later, but no.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1833&start=0#p12040
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Curses R16 -- mis-assembled property table?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-12-24 12:29:36

Sounds like a compiler bug. What's the compiler version listed in the banner?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1262&start=0#p12041
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: LIMBO (XBox Live Summer of Arcade)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-24 12:52:48

Complaining about the lack of challenging gameplay in Nevermore 3 is like complaining about the slipshod characterization in Tetris. It's just not that kind of game. (It also has one skull and crossbones in the initial screen and one toward the very end.) 

For that matter, the lack of challenging gameplay isn't the problem with Coma -- it's that it offers the illusion of exploration while being incredibly linear, and relies on grimdark and obscurantism instead of actually having something to say. I like Nevermore 3 because it lets me explore a world without putting me through a lot of twitch challenges. 

I haven't played Limbo, but from what I've heard it basically has nothing to do with either of these games -- for one thing, in the other games you can't die and if you miss a jump you just have to go through some of the map again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=809&start=20#p12042
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: beginner questions/programming
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2010-12-24 13:10:25

Thank you Matt w, most appreciated and yes you're right; I don't feel foolish at all after seeing that.  I haven't yet encountered the phrase "encloses the noun" in the instructional documentation and I wouldn't have figured that out on my own any time soon.  Cheers! [emote]:)[/emote]

I've tested both the taking and the inserting, and each one works!

Merry Christmass everyone - have you noticed that today, the 25th Dec when Inform7 reports an error it displays a broken christmas decoration?  [emote]:shock:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1833&start=0#p12043
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Curses R16 -- mis-assembled property table?
User: DustinC / DateTime: 2010-12-24 17:18:43

Oh, it's built with quite an old version of the Inform compiler. The last version of this game (that I'm aware of) was released on 24-Oct-1995. The game header indicates that it is "Inform v1600 Library 5/12" -- Perhaps 'v1600' came from the release number?

FWIW, this is more of a curiosity than anything. [emote]:-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=809&start=20#p12044
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: beginner questions/programming
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-24 17:49:22

Well, the "encloses" part isn't really necessary -- you could write "Instead of taking a thing when the noun is in the small metal case and the case glass is intact:" and it would probably work for your case. "Encloses" just takes care of things that are parts of things in the case, or in things that are in turn in the case, if you want to implement them. "Encloses" is discussed in [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc52.html]section 3.25 of the Inform docs[/url]. 

Merry Christmas to you too! It's not December 25th in the States yet, but I'll be sure to give myself a compiler error tomorrow.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1666&start=10#p12045
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Zork: Activision gives it some love in an unusual way!
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-12-24 19:06:39

[quote="ManolisG13"]And I suppose you  ONLY play interactive fiction?[/quote]

Nope, I also play console games such as Zelda, Shadow of Colossus, Prince of Persia, God of War and the likes...

[quote]I liked though the "shoot mailbox with shotgun" if I could in that specific version I could add it, would make for a nice inside joke..[/quote]

indeed it would...

[quote]so imho the Zork presence even if it's just there will make some ppl hear about TEXT Adventures (as we called them in the good old days) for the first time and it's very good..
[/quote]

if you are the one coming from COD, you can see it has not succeeded besides bringing an old fart ("as we called them in the good old days") due to nostalgia.  IF doesn't need more nostalgic farts, it needs new blood.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1630&start=0#p12046
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with NPC-initiated Conversation Nodes
User: chipotle / DateTime: 2010-12-24 19:24:31

...returning very belatedly (Christmas Eve, no less). Well, okay, that clears some things up. I didn't even think about the question of where "At the time when..." was in the event chain compared to "After going to X for the first time..." in the docs.

I think for the time being I'll stick with my (hopefully not too hacky) solution. I'm also one of the ones interested in the Alabaster conversation framework, but I'll have to use what's available.

Thanks for the help!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1787&start=20#p12047
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Must puzzles be at war with stories?
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2010-12-24 23:02:33

[quote][b]amekuseijin wrote[/b]
Puzzles are your only true input to a story, the only way to make you feel like you've had any active role within the game world.[/quote]
I am sure there are games where this is the case.  But there are also games where it's not the case.  In particular, some of the best detective / mystery IF stories (Witness, An Act of Murder) are really not laden with a lot of puzzles.  There are some logical things the player needs to deduce, but most of that is done from interrogation of suspects and some observation or discovery of clues.  There's no real head-scratcher types of puzzles.  But for fans of detective stories, they are very immersive.  Lives hang in the balance, after all.  Depending on how good a job the player does in figuring out the mystery, the criminal may be arrested or locked up, or they may go free.

And that's the style I'm working on in my own game.  I'm writing an awful lot of dialog to enable the player to immerse themselves in the story and uncover the mystery and so I certainly hope it gives the player a feeling of having an active role. 

--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">http://www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1791&start=10#p12048
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: the object tree and the chunk
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-12-25 00:55:27

[quote]What i7 calls a RULE is actually just an executable property (i.e. function, routine, method, insert your favourite object-oriented language here), that is attached to… an object![/quote]

This is not true. An I7 rule compiles to an I6 function, but it is not associated with any particular object. They live in rulebooks, but rulebooks are not I6 objects (nor are they objects in the world-model sense). You're trying to force a structure into I7 that it explicitly doesn't have.

Rules written for *object-based* rulebooks are associated with objects, sure. Rules written for action-based rulebooks are associated with action descriptions. And so on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1666&start=10#p12049
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Zork: Activision gives it some love in an unusual way!
User: ManolisG13 / DateTime: 2010-12-25 04:02:40

I guess Zork in COD might help a little bit more than someone like you who's bitching on an IF forum [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote] ..  And who are you who will decide what IF needs ?  [emote]:lol:[/emote] Funny guy [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1543&start=0#p12051
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Can't Run Zork Zero in Zoom on OSX
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-12-25 04:56:55

The spammers spend more effort every day it seems. Soon they'll almost be worth keeping around!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=809&start=20#p12052
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: beginner questions/programming
User: Neo / DateTime: 2010-12-25 05:01:25

I've been coding tonight (Dec 25th) as well... and Inform 7 rewards you with a giant, shiny red bauble (unbroken) if your code compiles correctly!  [emote]:D[/emote]

Hurrah for the Christmas I7 elves!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1666&start=20#p12053
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Zork: Activision gives it some love in an unusual way!
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-12-25 08:34:41

I'm not deciding anything, it's called common sense:  if the only ones who care about IF are nostalgic old people, IF will die with them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1830&start=0#p12054
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Defaults Just Prints Blank Prompt
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-12-25 10:20:56

I'm not sure about that since the example works fine with me. Maybe you can try reinstalling the extension?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=809&start=20#p12055
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: beginner questions/programming
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-12-25 12:24:09

FWIW the glass case is a textbook example of a situation where you could use the built-in transparent property. If you make the container closed and transparent, the player can automatically see what's inside but can't do anything to them that would require touching them. This has the added bonus of taking care of any other commands you might want to limit (touching, pushing etc). When the glass is broken make the container open and the player can interact with the things inside.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1666&start=20#p12056
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Zork: Activision gives it some love in an unusual way!
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-25 12:39:53

[quote="namekuseijin"]I'm not deciding anything, it's called common sense:  if the only ones who care about IF are nostalgic old people, IF will die with them.[/quote]
Languages and interpreters may come and go, but IF as a concept cannot permanently die. It occupies a sort of concentrated nexus between two disparate disciplines that people will seek to return to again and again, whether they find a community already practising there or not. And if they find (via Google, say) that experiments have been done at this nexus in the past, but sadly abandoned, then they will find it necessary to resurrect them.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1791&start=10#p12057
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: the object tree and the chunk
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-25 12:55:01

[quote="zarf"]This is not true. An I7 rule compiles to an I6 function, but it is not associated with any particular object. They live in rulebooks, but rulebooks are not I6 objects (nor are they objects in the world-model sense). You're trying to force a structure into I7 that it explicitly doesn't have.

Rules written for *object-based* rulebooks are associated with objects, sure. Rules written for action-based rulebooks are associated with action descriptions. And so on.[/quote]
Alright. I admit I sussed out the internals wrong. But… isn't an action just an object by another name? As in, a titled text-related data structure which exists for the purpose of being interconnected with other titled text-related data structures? The separation of text into discrete, interrelated data structures is what I'm trying to get at. I don't know of a better word for that than object-orientation.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1834&start=0#p12058
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Shortcut for 'asking' the only person in the room.
User: jwaxman / DateTime: 2010-12-25 13:18:45

I'm still working on my virtual patient.
I've got my interview questions working except:

It seems it would become tiresome to have the player have to type
"ask patient about TOPIC" over and over again.
It seems silly when the patient is the only other person in the room.

When the player types 
"ask about TOPIC" though Inform responds "You can't see any such thing."
I'm assuming that that's because its expecting a person to be specified.

I looked at trying to clarify with "very likely"
I looked at intercepting commands in the presence of someone.
I tried to overload ask to take a single text as a topic.
I tried various configurations of understand.
I'm not making progress.

I don't want 
"ask patient about TOPIC" to go away I just want "ask about TOPIC" to understand that the only person in the room is implied.

While we're at it. It'd be great if I could have Inform respond sensibly to just plain "ask"
I'd like to respond "Ask patient about what?"

Any help would be appreciated.
Merry Christmas

Jake

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=809&start=20#p12059
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: beginner questions/programming
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-25 13:32:01

[quote="Juhana"]FWIW the glass case is a textbook example of a situation where you could use the built-in transparent property. If you make the container closed and transparent, the player can automatically see what's inside but can't do anything to them that would require touching them. This has the added bonus of taking care of any other commands you might want to limit (touching, pushing etc). When the glass is broken make the container open and the player can interact with the things inside.[/quote]

Ah, I had thought of that but decided it might be duplication of effort, since you probably want to write special rules (or parser error messages?) for reaching inside the case anyway. But preventing pushing and touching is a good idea anyway.

(What I mean is, if I comment out my instead rules and add this code:

[code]The small metal case is transparent and closed.

Instead of attacking the case glass:
	say "Crash!";
	now the case glass is shattered;
	now the small metal case is open.
[/code]

then I get this response:

[quote]>take extinguisher
The small metal case isn't open.

>open case
(the small metal case)
That's not something you can open.

>break glass
Crash!

>take extinguisher
Taken.
[/quote]

where the first two responses are annoying. In fact, even if we add the "Instead" clauses back in we get this, because taking the extinguisher fails the basic accessibility rule before the "Instead" rule fires, so getting a nice message back in this case is going to require something more.

BTW, some unrelated user-friendly things -- it'd probably be a good idea to understand "front" as the case glass and to redirect attacking the small metal case to attacking the case glass. 

[Awesomeness: When testing this I got the following parser error:

[quote]Problem. You wrote 'now the glass is shattered'  : but this is not explicit enough, and should set out definite relationships between specific things [etc.][/quote]

with the special Dec. 25 broken ornament over it! Cool.]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1791&start=10#p12060
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: the object tree and the chunk
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-12-25 14:49:29

The two TADS systems are a better base for your theory re: "everything is an object".  TADS also has a master plan of sorts, that once you intuit it, authoring is much easier.  (It's because TADS was built, but Inform was grown.)

I've found this thread to be horrifying and fascinating in about equal measure.  My WIP makes use of what I guess you guys would call a "because" tree, rather than a containment tree.  I.e., the kind of tree the I7 author hand-codes when using Aaron Reed's extension Intelligent Hinting, the kind of tree that Nate Cull's Planner (a.k.a. Reactive Agent Planner in other authoring tools) builds on each turn an NPC needs figure something out, etc. 

I could go on, boring you for hours.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=809&start=20#p12061
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: beginner questions/programming
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-12-25 15:16:19

[quote="matt w"]Ah, I had thought of that but decided it might be duplication of effort, since you probably want to write special rules (or parser error messages?) for reaching inside the case anyway. [/quote]
[quote]In fact, even if we add the "Instead" clauses back in we get this, because taking the extinguisher fails the basic accessibility rule before the "Instead" rule fires, so getting a nice message back in this case is going to require something more.[/quote]
Fair point. Fortunately "something more" in this case is just using a before rule, which fires before the basic accessibility rule. Or if you want to use accessibility rules (this might actually be the cleanest solution):

[code]A reaching inside rule for the metal case:
	say "The glass front of the case prevents you reaching inside.";
	rule fails.

A reaching inside rule for the metal case when the case glass is shattered:
	rule succeeds.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=809&start=20#p12062
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: beginner questions/programming
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-25 15:50:30

[quote="Juhana"][quote="matt w"]Ah, I had thought of that but decided it might be duplication of effort, since you probably want to write special rules (or parser error messages?) for reaching inside the case anyway. [/quote]
[quote]In fact, even if we add the "Instead" clauses back in we get this, because taking the extinguisher fails the basic accessibility rule before the "Instead" rule fires, so getting a nice message back in this case is going to require something more.[/quote]
Fair point. Fortunately "something more" in this case is just using a before rule, which fires before the basic accessibility rule.[/quote]

Oh, duh, thanks. 

[quote] Or if you want to use accessibility rules (this might actually be the cleanest solution):

[code]A reaching inside rule for the metal case:
	say "The glass front of the case prevents you reaching inside.";
	rule fails.

A reaching inside rule for the metal case when the case glass is shattered:
	rule succeeds.[/code][/quote]

Looks neat -- I'd forgotten about the reaching inside rules. The original author probably wants to code the first rule as "when the case glass is intact" and the second as the general rule, since I suspect you can reach inside the case when the glass is cut. In this case I guess we can write "allow access/deny access" instead of "rule succeeds/rule fails"?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1834&start=0#p12063
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Shortcut for 'asking' the only person in the room.
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-12-25 16:57:55

You want something like this:
[code]Asking about is an action applying to one topic.
Understand "ask about [text]" as asking about.
Carry out asking about in the presence of someone: try asking a random person in the location about the topic understood.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1834&start=0#p12064
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Shortcut for 'asking' the only person in the room.
User: jwaxman / DateTime: 2010-12-25 18:27:05

Thanks. It works of course. It would have never occurred to me to invoke randomness to achieve a certain result.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1834&start=0#p12065
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Shortcut for 'asking' the only person in the room.
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2010-12-25 20:19:44

[code]
Asking about is an action applying to one topic.
Understand "ask about [text]" as asking about.
Carry out asking about in the presence of someone: try asking a random person in the location about the topic understood.
[/code]
I was wondering about this for my game.  The player, who is a detective named Johnny Dollar, uses ASK ABOUT and TELL ABOUT to interrogate suspects or other NPCs.  Often there is only one NPC in the room and it would be nice to automatically ASK that person.  So this looks very helpful.  However I have two things I am wondering about that cause this not to work quite right.

1. I have defined a default case for Instead of asking Johnny Dollar about something...
    As a result, the new code seems to default to asking the player, rather than an NPC.

2. If there is more than one NPC in the room, then it's hard to tell who is responding.
    
If there is more than one NPC in the room, perhaps it would be best to simply reject the command or ask the player to specify who they are asking.  But in the default case of just having one NPC visible in the room, it would be nice to supply an intelligent default.

Any ideas on how to do that?   Any help is appreciated.

--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">http://www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1834&start=0#p12066
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Shortcut for 'asking' the only person in the room.
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-12-26 02:40:34

Try [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Michael%20Martin/Assumed%20Conversers/index.html]Michael Martin's Assumed Conversers extension[/url] which should do all that out of the box.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1835&start=0#p12067
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Can a relation imply or execute an action?
User: Neo / DateTime: 2010-12-26 04:07:56

Is it possible to have a relation that can imply or execute an action, such as:

[code]Thingy adjusts X by Y.[/code] [Where Thingy is a kind of thing, adjusting is the relation, x is a value that varies, 'by' is an addition action defined in the relation, and Y is a number that varies.]

I've looked and hacked code, but can't seem to find a way to do it.

I have, however, been able to come up with a bit of a work-around by changing the relation's name to identify the action I want, and then using code to identify the relation and execute a function. (I should note that I'm breaking up the pieces of code between a source project and an extension so that the source code reads like English, not like code.) As such, my work-around looks like this...

In the source code...

[code]Thingy adds1to X.[/code] [Where Thingy is a kind of thing, X is a kind of Z and adds1to is a relation.]

And then (in my extension)...

[code]Repeat with N running through Zs adds1toed by Thingy:
    adds1function to N;[/code] [Where adds1function is a function that adds 1 to a value contained within Zs, and N is the particular Z being adjusted]

The code works. (Which I'm pretty happy about... Hurrah for the beginner!) But the obvious downside, of course, is that I need to set up a relation for any value I want to alter (ie. adds2to, adds3to, rolls1die6for, etc.) which makes it very clunky coding.

Any suggestions??

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1835&start=0#p12068
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can a relation imply or execute an action?
User: George / DateTime: 2010-12-26 11:19:20

[quote="Neo"]Is it possible to have a relation that can imply or execute an action, such as:

[code]Thingy adjusts X by Y.[/code] [Where Thingy is a kind of thing, adjusting is the relation, x is a value that varies, 'by' is an addition action defined in the relation, and Y is a number that varies.][/quote]


To piggyback on Neo's question, in trying out an answer for this it seems like I7 only passes values into phrases, for example:

[code]
There is a room.

Sliminess is a number variable. 

Dungeon Master is a thing. 

To (Thing - a thing) adjusts (X - number) by (Y - a number):
	say "[Thing] adjusts [X] by [Y].[line break]";	
	increase X by Y.
	
Instead of jumping:
	Dungeon Master adjusts sliminess by 1. 
	
test me with "jump / jump / jump".
[/code]

[quote]
Welcome
An Interactive Fiction
Release 1 / Serial number 101226 / Inform 7 build 6F95 (I6/v6.31 lib 6/12N) SD

room

>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] jump
Dungeon Master adjusts 0 by 1.

>[2] jump
Dungeon Master adjusts 0 by 1.

>[3] jump
Dungeon Master adjusts 0 by 1.

>[/quote]

How would you write that phrase to increase whatever number variable you pass into it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1836&start=0#p12069
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Defining Names
User: Cassandra / DateTime: 2010-12-26 14:47:01

Hi there. I'm writing my first game in Inform 7 on Mac OSX and I am having a lot of trouble trying to figure out how to get around the problem where you need to tell Inform to call or print something in a specific manner.

A few examples:

- I have a room (the closet) with a scenery door (the closet door).

I want the player to be able to x the following objects:
The closet door itself
The closet (but only if the closet door is open).
Otherwise, when the player types "look closet," I want it to say something like "you'll have to open the door first."

- I have a scenery table (the computer desk) which I am going to put a computer on.

I want the player to be able to x the following objects:
The computer table itself
The computer
When the player types "look computer," I want to make Inform figure out that the player is looking at the computer itself, unless they specifically type "computer desk."

Obviously, this is happening because the parser is only picking up the first word, like "closet" or "computer." I figured this was a common problem (I've played a lot of text adventures with closet doors!) so I poked through the documentation for a workaround.

I have tried a bunch of stuff, including "calling" the "closet door" the "closet door." But it's not working, and I know it's because I've messed up the way I'm calling it (looking at it from the complier's point of view, it's obviously going to throw an error).

Here's my current code:

The closet door is a scenery door. The closet door is called the closet door. The closet door is north of Your Bedroom and south of the Closet. It is a closed, openable, not lockable door. The description is "A white door with a black knob."
	
The Closet is a room. "Just a half-empty closet. There are some wrapped boxes on the shelves here." 
The boxes are scenery in the Closet. "Colorfully wrapped gifts." Instead of taking boxes: say "Those aren't for you, and if you opened them you'd just have to rewrap them and put them back anyway." Understand "box" or "boxes" or "wrapped boxes" or "wrapped box" or "package" or "packages" or "wrapped package" or "wrapped packages" or "present" or "presents" or "wrapped present" or "wrapped presents" or "gift" or "gifts" or "wrapped gift" or "wrapped gifts" as boxes. Understand "closet" or "closet interior" or "interior of closet" or "closet inside" or "inside of closet" as Closet.
The shelves are scenery in the Closet. "Slightly dusty shelves." Understand "shelf" or "shelves" as shelves. Instead of taking shelves: say "They're attached to the wall."

If somebody could help me out, that would be great--this problem is driving me crazy! 

I also looked at the Inform Recipe Book example of Desolation Bay, where there is a room (the Cabin) and a door (the cabin door) with the same problem that I am having, but the problem wasn't addressed in the Recipe Book, and in the Inform manual the cigarette case example is really not being helpful, here.

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1835&start=0#p12070
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can a relation imply or execute an action?
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2010-12-26 15:11:26

This question is somewhat ambiguous.

If you're asking how you can use a relation to link objects to actions, that depends on when you want the actions to take place. Do you want to affect every object that's in the relation at the end of each turn (which is easy enough), or do you want to affect an object as soon as it's related with "now" (which is harder)?

Here's an example of linking objects to stored actions which can then be executed by other code:
[code]Home is a room.

Leading-to relates various things to one stored action. The verb to lead to (it leads to, they lead to, it is leading to, it is led to) implies the leading-to relation.

After examining something:
	if the noun relates to a stored action by the leading-to relation:
		let SA be the stored action that the noun relates to by the leading-to relation;
		try SA.

Adjusting it to is an action applying to one thing and one number.

Report adjusting something (called X) to a number (called Y):
	say "You adjust [the X] to [Y]."

A dial is in Home. It is fixed in place.

Thingy is in Home.
Thingy leads to the action of adjusting the dial to 5.

Test me with "x thingy".[/code]

If you're asking how you can relate three things together (Thingy, X, and Y), the easiest way to do that is probably to use a table. The second easiest is to use a relation of relations, so that Thingy is related to a set of relationships between Xs and Ys.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1836&start=0#p12071
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Defining Names
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-12-26 15:12:35

You can set things "privately-named" so that their internal names won't be automatically taken into account when parsing object names. For example to make "computer" match the computer only and not the table:

[code]The computer is on the computer table.
The computer table is privately-named. Understand "computer table" and "table" as the computer table.[/code]
The same thing with the closet door. Another option is to give the object a different internal name and set the printed name explicitly:

[code]The computer-table is a supporter. The printed name of the computer-table is "computer table". 
Understand "computer table" and "table" as the computer-table. [/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1755&start=0#p12072
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Text-based Strip Poker
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-12-26 15:21:15

I agree that the colouring is confusing. It looks like links to me too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1834&start=0#p12073
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Shortcut for 'asking' the only person in the room.
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2010-12-26 16:10:04

Thanks.  That works great for ASK ABOUT topic or TELL ABOUT topic, but it doesn't work well for things that are objects.  Instead, they end up getting a default response indicating that there's no rule implemented.  In otherwords if there's an object called Gun, 
        ASK ABOUT Gun
and
        ASK Duffy ABOUT Gun

do different things when Duffy is the only NPC present.

I've implementing the actions Quizzing it About and Informing it About as defined in Jim Aikin's Inform7 Handbook as well as lots of Instead of Quizzing Duffy about code.  But it appears the Assumed Conversers extension causes a bit of a collision with Jim's code (or at least wasn't designed take it into account.)  

For example, I've used Jim's code to define:
[code]Quizzing it about is an action applying to one thing and one visible thing. Understand "ask [someone] about [any thing]" and "quiz [someone] about [any thing]" as quizzing it about.[/code]
When the player types ASK ABOUT Gun  they get this code below firing:
[code]Instead of asking Sgt Duffy about something, say "[one of]'Dollar, I think we need to question all the suspects about their whereabouts and arrival.'[or]'Never mind that, Dollar, we need to figure out everyone's alibi and possible motive.'[or]'Pardon me?'[or]'What?'[or]'Mr Dollar, really. We've got some business to tend to.'[or]Sgt Duffy ignores you.[stopping]".[/code]
Instead of this code that runs if they type ASK Duffy ABOUT Gun
[code]Instead of quizzing Duffy about gun, say "'Dollar, yes, I have a gun and a shiny badge, too.  If you're a good little insurance investigator, I'll let you look at them later on.'"[/code]

Any ideas?

--Zack

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1837&start=0#p12074
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Underlining in Inform 7
User: josef-k / DateTime: 2010-12-26 18:43:01

Total newcomer here. Is there any way to underline text in Inform? Maybe something akin to the <u> tag in html? I'm not having any luck finding anything on it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1791&start=10#p12075
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: the object tree and the chunk
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-26 18:44:13

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]The two TADS systems are a better base for your theory re: "everything is an object".  TADS also has a master plan of sorts, that once you intuit it, authoring is much easier.  (It's because TADS was built, but Inform was grown.)

I've found this thread to be horrifying and fascinating in about equal measure.  My WIP makes use of what I guess you guys would call a "because" tree, rather than a containment tree.  I.e., the kind of tree the I7 author hand-codes when using Aaron Reed's extension Intelligent Hinting, the kind of tree that Nate Cull's Planner (a.k.a. Reactive Agent Planner in other authoring tools) builds on each turn an NPC needs figure something out, etc. 

I could go on, boring you for hours.[/quote]
Boring? Not in the least.

I wouldn't restrict my own POV to a containment tree alone, though — that would exclude all sorts of stuff even from a classical O-O IF system, and make mine not a very workable theory. Your 'because' tree sounds pretty interesting and I wouldn't want my focus on the objectness of it all to be interpreted as some kind of opposition to a cause-and-effect based system. Personally I just see those as smarter varieties of object, but you could probably look at the whole thing inverted and define an object as a dumber case of the cause-and-effect type of data structure.

BTW what's the relationship between a 'because' tree and a choice tree? They sound similar to me. (A choice tree would somewhat resemble the skein but without any particular focus on typed commands -- instead the discrete different paths that the player can take would be traced out, and actions that could be taken that don't have any significant future effects would be igored.)

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1837&start=0#p12076
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Underlining in Inform 7
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-12-26 20:56:02

Italics is generally to be preferred over underlining. Underlining actually originated/became popular as an alternative to italics as typewritters didn't have the alternative italic letter forms, but could put a line under text.

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rdoc97.html">http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rdoc97.html</a> shows how to format text in I7.

If you produce a playable webpage using Parchment or Quixe you could actually change the text styles to use underlines rather than italics, but that would only work for the webpage, and not if the storyfile was used in a traditional interpreter.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1837&start=0#p12082
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Underlining in Inform 7
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-27 02:43:06

Never liked the omission of underlining, though that original decision to not add it even though underlining became available was probably made by Marc Blank or one of those dudes, and then the original Inform just followed the opcodes, I'd guess. I don't think the omission of underlining from Inform is going to convince anyone about the superiority of Italics. I think it does reflects poorly on the language, since it's a feature provided by every other modern programming language that specialises in text.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1837&start=0#p12088
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Underlining in Inform 7
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-12-27 05:16:57

Another factor worth considering is the tendency to confuse underlined text with hyperlinks.  It's not such a problem for titles etc. but underlined text in the [u]middle of a sentence[/u] always draws clicks when you encounter it on a computer screen (and especially in a browser).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1834&start=0#p12090
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Shortcut for 'asking' the only person in the room.
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-12-27 05:49:13

[quote="ZUrlocker"]
I've used Jim's code to define:
[code]Quizzing it about is an action applying to one thing and one visible thing. Understand "ask [someone] about [any thing]" and "quiz [someone] about [any thing]" as quizzing it about.[/code]
When the player types ASK ABOUT Gun  they get this code below firing:
[code]Instead of asking Sgt Duffy about something, say "[one of]'Dollar, I think we need to question all the suspects about their whereabouts and arrival.'[or]'Never mind that, Dollar, we need to figure out everyone's alibi and possible motive.'[or]'Pardon me?'[or]'What?'[or]'Mr Dollar, really. We've got some business to tend to.'[or]Sgt Duffy ignores you.[stopping]".[/code]
Instead of this code that runs if they type ASK Duffy ABOUT Gun
[code]Instead of quizzing Duffy about gun, say "'Dollar, yes, I have a gun and a shiny badge, too.  If you're a good little insurance investigator, I'll let you look at them later on.'"[/code][/quote]

Michael Martin's extension makes the command "ask about [text]" understood as his asking generically action, which is later converted to the ordinary asking it about action. I guess that's why the 'instead of asking Duffy about something' rule fires.

So, I suppose, you need to do for quizzing what Michael does for asking in his extension: define your own 'quizzing generically' action applying to one visible thing, have "ask about [any thing]" understood as quizzing generically and later convert it to the 'quizzing it about' action.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1833&start=0#p12091
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Curses R16 -- mis-assembled property table?
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2010-12-27 05:49:19

[quote="DustinC"]The game header indicates that it is "Inform v1600 Library 5/12" -- Perhaps 'v1600' came from the release number?[/quote]"v1600" indicates that the file was built with Inform 6.00: v1601 would be Inform 6.01, and so on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1835&start=0#p12092
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can a relation imply or execute an action?
User: Neo / DateTime: 2010-12-27 07:30:17

Hey Vapor,

Thanks! I haven't been able to sit down and try out your suggestion, but your code example looks spot on. I had no idea you could use a stored action or even another relation with relations.

Again, thanks heaps!

Cheers!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1837&start=0#p12093
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Underlining in Inform 7
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-12-27 09:07:07

[quote="Pacian"]Another factor worth considering is the tendency to confuse underlined text with hyperlinks.[/quote]
While I prefer italics to underlining for emphasis, this is actually a reason for the inclusion of underlining – since you can have games with hyperlinks. 

As far as Inform goes, there are extension that lets you put hyperlinks in a Glulx game, but I'm not sure you can define a text style for Glulx games that will underline text (at least underlining is not among the style hints defined by the Glk standard).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1836&start=0#p12094
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Defining Names
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-12-27 11:30:01

The advantage of the first method Juhana mentioned is that it will be easier for you to remember how to refer to the table elsewhere in your code. One of the hidden gotchas in Inform is that if you initially create something called the computer-table and later, because you've forgotten how you formatted the object name, refer to something called the computer table, Inform may -- depending on what exactly you've written -- quietly create a second object (which will quite likely be off-stage).

Briefly:

[code]The office is a room. The computer-table is in the office. Understand "computer table" and "table" as the computer-table. The printed name of the computer-table is "computer table". The pencil sharpener is on the computer table.[/code]
This will compile, but the pencil sharpener will [i]not [/i]be in scope in the office; it will be off-stage, along with the extra object called computer table.

Note, also, that the hyphenated name trick won't work as expected if the first word is 9 or more letters. By default, Inform only looks at the first 9 letters in each word. And a hyphenated word only counts as one word. So if the first word is too long, the player [i]will [/i]be able to use it to refer to the table (unless you also make the table privately-named).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1837&start=0#p12095
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Underlining in Inform 7
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-12-27 11:30:56

The Glk spec says that hyperlinked text should be displayed in a distinctive way, and suggests blue underlined text.

There's no way as a game author to control the appearance of hyperlinks, at least for now. I believe the proposed Glk CSS would allow this, though of course it would be Glulx only at the Inform level.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1836&start=0#p12096
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Defining Names
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-12-27 12:03:54

And also because the parser looks at only the first 7 or 8 letters or so, "computer" will probably match "computer-table" as well anyway. So yeah, the privately-named method is probably the more robust solution.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1791&start=10#p12097
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: the object tree and the chunk
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-12-27 12:28:21

[quote="Laroquod"]I wouldn't restrict my own POV to a containment tree alone, though — that would exclude all sorts of stuff even from a classical O-O IF system, and make mine not a very workable theory. Your 'because' tree sounds pretty interesting and I wouldn't want my focus on the objectness of it all to be interpreted as some kind of opposition to a cause-and-effect based system. Personally I just see those as smarter varieties of object, but you could probably look at the whole thing inverted and define an object as a dumber case of the cause-and-effect type of data structure.[/quote]I can think of software architecture in many more ways than presented in this thread, which is why I'm a bit horrified to see tree-of-objects deified so.  OTOH, you're also talking about the meaning of a work, in which case I'm kinda fascinated seeing a structure from Computer Science play a role in semantics/philosophy/wonderment.  I don't have much to add to the latter -- ask me what a program [i]means[/i] and I'll tell you what it [i]does[/i] -- but I can at least engage when it comes to guessing at what kinds of works will result from particular purposeful architectures.  So...:

[quote="Laroquod"]what's the relationship between a 'because' tree and a choice tree?[/quote]
The latter is an example of the former.  To expound:  a CYOA is a choice tree.  Per zarf and others, the story/plot of parser I-F ultimately boils down to a CYOA as well, the parser just adding some ancillary exploration.  Scene 2b happens [i]because[/i] choice #2 in scene 1 was chosen.   Scene 1 is the root node of the story's whole tree. 

And now to bore you for twenty minutes.

In a RAP/Planner -like AI, you may have a (very small) tree:

GO THROUGH DOOR (which is currently locked)
*  GET KEY
*  UNLOCK DOOR

So ask, "why is the character getting this key?"  Find the GET KEY node and the answer is its parent node: "Because he wants to go through the door."  Ask, "How is he going to go through that locked door?"  Find the GO THRU DOOR node and return all its children nodes: "By getting its key, and then unlocking the door."   So there's a because tree used in an AI. 

Similar for Aaron's Intelligent Hinting extension.  "How is the character going to WIN GAME?"  And so on.  So there's a because tree used in a hinting system.

Right there you've got enough to give your player WHY and HOW commands, and get sensible (if brief) answers back without the content-creation problem of writing lots and lots of prose.  WHY and HOW are directions in a Because tree.

Now take the locked door example and pretend it's a shifty-looking NPC who's trying to do that, rather than our PC.  Asking a second, trustworthy NPC WHY and HOW puts our IF into a very different place than "trivial physicality", to use Em's phrase up-thread.  It's character-to-character dialogue, about the motivations and methodology of a third, not-currently-present character.   That's the stuff fiction is made of.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1839&start=0#p12098
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Help With Conditionals?
User: SilverPhoenix / DateTime: 2010-12-27 13:08:05

Hey guys, I'm fairly new to IF and new to inform (and am generally all around awful with computers). Mostly, I'm a writer who thought it would be fun to translate a story line into IF format. I've got the basics, but one thing is still tripping me up; conditionals.

I understand the whole "instead" conditional. I've got that. But what I don't understand is how to make one action depend on another. For instance, I have the character "Mom" who I have defined as being "a woman in the Kitchen". For the purposes of this game. I want the player to have to talk to "Mom" before leaving through the door. Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to code this properly. If I say "instead of opening the door, say" whatever, then the door will never open. I don't know how to make the opening of the door dependent on whether or not the character has talked to "Mom".

Also I find a similar issue with a vehicle. I want the character NOT to be able to enter or re-enter any other rooms (except a few designated areas, like streets and driveways) once inside the car. But I don't know how to prevent her from entering somewhere based on the fact that she is in the car.

I've combed through the documentation and even an extra manual I found online, and while the extra manual mentions similar issues (such as a guard dog not letting you enter until you complete a certain task; namely, distracting it) they don't actually blatantly tell you how to do it yourself. 

Any help would be appreciated! Also any other tips would be warmly welcomed!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1837&start=0#p12100
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Underlining in Inform 7
User: josef-k / DateTime: 2010-12-27 14:33:43

Thanks for all the info.

I also prefer italics over underlining for emphasis, but I was playing with the idea of using underlining to mark things that can be interacted with. ([url=http://www.lacunastory.com/]Blue Lacuna[/url] did something like this with bold/colored text, which looks goofy in my opinion.)

For example:
[quote]You spot an unkempt [u]wo[/u]man sitting up against the brick wall of an [u]a[/u]ntique store.[/quote]
Sadly, it doesn't sound like this would work in Inform.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1840&start=0#p12101
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Taking things from NPCs
User: Pulchritude / DateTime: 2010-12-27 15:23:35

Greetings all!

I'm a fledgling programmer with a novice question:

When I try to take things from the NPC, I get the message "The NPC won't let you have that."

How do I change this message?  I'd like to at least customize it to say something like: The NPC scowls at you.  "Stop trying to steal my stuff!"

Also, how would one change the code so that things can be freely taken from an NPC (say, if I were a pickpocket).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1839&start=0#p12102
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help With Conditionals?
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-12-27 16:49:58

I'm not sure if this is the most elegant way to accomplish this since I'm just a newbie myself, but you could use "Check".

[code]Talking is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "talk to [someone]" as talking

Instead of talking:
	if the noun is mom:
		say "'Hi mom!' you say.";
		now mom is talked-to

Check opening the door:
	if mom is not-talked-to:
		say "You should really talk to mom first." instead.[/code]

Though that only covers really basic talking. For more complex talking, I suppose you can do something like this:

[code]Mom is a woman. Mom is in your room.

Mom has a number called Talked-to number. The talked-to number of Mom is 0.

After asking Mom about "grilled cheese":
	say "'Oh honey, you know the Martians ate all of that over Christmas. Maybe next time, okay?'";
	increase talked-to number of Mom by 1
	
After asking Mom about "Dad":
	say "'You just missed him, sweetie, but he sends his good luck on your whatitmacally, whatever you do when you aren't at home.'";
	increase talked-to number of Mom by 1
	
After asking Mom about "intergalactic space tennis":
	say "'That's nice, darling.'";
	increase talked-to number of Mom by 1
	

Check opening the door:
	if the talked-to number of mom is less than 3:
		say "You should probably talk to mom some more." instead.[/code]

As for the driving car thing, I'm not sure since I haven't tested it fully, but it should work.

[code]Include Rideable Vehicles by Graham Nelson.

The car is in the Street. The car is a rideable vehicle. The house is south of the street. The highway is west of the street.

The Do-Not-Drive Zone is a region. The house and the garden is in the Do-Not-Drive Zone.

Check going to the Do-Not-Drive Zone:
	if the player is on the car:
		say "You aren't smashing into your house. Get out the car and walk." instead[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1841&start=0#p12103
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Understanding Commas
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2010-12-27 17:33:33

I know that Understand clauses cannot contain commas or periods, but is there a way to override this without an "After reading a player's command: if the player's command contains 'esq', BLAH", if you have something akin to a "portrait of James Thomas, Esq." and you want to anticipate that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1837&start=0#p12104
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Underlining in Inform 7
User: cas / DateTime: 2010-12-27 18:40:13

If you're targeting the Z-machine, there is no actual italic or underline style.  Instead, there is an emphasized style, which can be rendered however the interpreter decides (which might include letting the user decide).  The same interpreter might even render the text in different ways depending on the circumstances--in the non-GLK version of my interpreter, italics are used if the terminal supports it (e.g. rxvt-unicode), underline otherwise (e.g. xterm).

Because the Z-machine was designed to target various platforms, it really couldn't mandate precise text styles.  I'm not sure how Glulx differs, if at all, in this respect.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1840&start=0#p12105
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Taking things from NPCs
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-12-27 19:13:17

Whether or not you can take something from an NPC is controlled by the NPC's "checkTakeFromInventory" method. It behaves pretty much like an ordinary check method. If you want to stop the player from taking something from the NPC, print a failure message and then stop the action with "exit". Otherwise, just ignore the action.

Changing the failure message is simple. Just print your failure message and then use the "exit" command to stop the action, like so:
[code]+ bob: Person
    'Bob'
    'Bob'
    "Bob looks around suspiciously. "
    // etc.

    checkTakeFromInventory (actor, obj)
    {
        "Bob scowls at you. <q>Stop trying to steal my stuff!</q> ";
        exit;
    }
;[/code]

Allowing the player to steal anything from an NPC is also simple. Override "checkTakeFromInventory", but leave it blank, like so:
[code]    checkTakeFromInventory (actor, obj) { }[/code]

If you want to allow some things to be stolen, but not others, just block the ones you don't want stolen. For instance:
[code]    checkTakeFromInventory (actor, obj)
    {
        if (obj == pants)
        {
            "You can hardly steal Bob's pants while he's wearing them. ";
            exit;
        }
        
        if (!actor.canPickPockets) {
            "Bob scowls at you. <q>Stop trying to steal my stuff!</q> ";
            exit;
        }
    }
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1840&start=0#p12115
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Taking things from NPCs
User: Pulchritude / DateTime: 2010-12-27 21:27:48

Thank you so much for such a helpful response!  That was perfect!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1851&start=0#p12116
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Liquids: infinite loop in deciding the scope activity?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-27 22:09:31

Before you try this code, let me warn you that my computer got seriously hung up when I ran it:
[code]A vessel is a kind of container. A vessel can be full or empty.

Water is a thing.

After deciding the scope of the player when the player can see a full vessel:
	place water in scope.
	
Instead of doing anything with water:
	Now the noun is a random full vessel;
	Try the current action.
	
Up the Hill is a room. 

The well is a full vessel in Up the Hill. 

Test me with "s"[/code]

After trying various permutations of this, it seems that the hang happens when going but not when waiting. Maybe waiting doesn't check scope? Usually the action results in a hang, but once I got a runtime error of "too many activities going at once." I'm guessing this is because of the "after deciding the scope of the player..." line.

Since this does seem to play hell with my computer, I thought I should post this before I do any further experiments. Please let me know if you have ideas or suggestions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1839&start=0#p12117
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help With Conditionals?
User: SilverPhoenix / DateTime: 2010-12-27 22:20:49

Thanks for the advice! It's...sort of working? It doesn't seem to understand the condition of being "talked-to" . I'm not sure how to make that a condition that it will understand. It says in the error message that it was expecting a condition but received something unrecognizable (the "talked-to"). Any guesses on how to fix that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1791&start=10#p12118
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: the object tree and the chunk
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2010-12-28 00:46:28

I like the sound of that, Ron! Looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1839&start=0#p12120
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help With Conditionals?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-12-28 06:02:07

The reason you get the error message is that you have to explicitly give Mom the either/or property 'talked-to' (just like you explicitly give her the number 'talked-to number' in Bistre's second example) in order to refer to the property (or the number). 
You do that easily enough:
[code]Mom can be talked-to. Mom is not talked-to. [/code]
(The last phrase is probably not necessary, but it makes sure that Mom is not talked-to by default.)

(If you're not interested in any extended conversation between Mom and the player character, but only wish  him automatically to tell Mom something before he leaves the kitchen, you could do it like this:
[code]Instead of opening the kitchen door when Mom is not talked-to: say "At the door you suddenly hesitate. 'Bye mom!', you say and turn to face her. 'I'll be back a rich and famous man.' Your mother looks at you, tears in her eyes, uttering an ancient Philadelphian blessing: 'Take care, my son.'"; now mom is talked-to.[/code])

Also, you don't actually need to include the Rideable Vehicles extension to use vehicles. That extension is only meant for vehicles you ride ON (like you ride on a horse or a bike). Vehicles you ride IN (as you ride in a car) come built-in. 
(That's because by default vehicles are containers that you go inside  – and things can't be both containers and supporters, so you need the trickery that the extension works to have vehicle-like objects that you go onto.)

An extra tip: there's an action variable for the going action, viz. 'the room gone to', that comes in handy for text substitutions in cases like this:
[code]Check going to the Do-Not-Drive Zone: if the player is in the car, say "No, you mustn't drive your car into [the room gone to]. Mom wouldn't approve. And as Granny would have said: 'If you can't get'em where you put'em, you can't hav'em when you want'em', meaning (you think) she wouldn't have approved either." instead.
[/code]
(Note that the player character is "IN the car", if you're not using the Rideable Vehicles extension.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1787&start=20#p12121
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Must puzzles be at war with stories?
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2010-12-28 06:17:53

[quote="ZUrlocker"][quote][b]amekuseijin wrote[/b]
some of the best detective / mystery IF stories (Witness, An Act of Murder) are really not laden with a lot of puzzles.  There are some logical things the player needs to deduce, but most of that is done from interrogation of suspects and some observation or discovery of clues.  There's no real head-scratcher types of puzzles.[/quote][/quote]

isn't solving a mystery the same as solving a puzzle?  Just that it depends on dialogues rather than [i]keys[/i]...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1851&start=0#p12122
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Liquids: infinite loop in deciding the scope activity?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-12-28 06:47:46

To know whether the player can "see" something the game has to check scope. After it has done that, it runs into the "after deciding the scope of the player" rule and needs to check the scope again, and so on. ("The player can see X" is the same as "X is in scope".)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1787&start=20#p12123
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Must puzzles be at war with stories?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-12-28 07:55:18

What about role-playing and character development?  There's not really much puzzle-y about your choices in The Baron.  There's certainly things you might miss, but the trick isn't to think of something that works to produce an end game.  Menu-based conversation is even more obviously not-a-puzzle, but still produces change.  

What some people seem to be arguing is that story progression is always based on a puzzle, which just isn't true.  Some story progression feels more interactive than others, but I don't think that interactivity relies on puzzles per se, but on feeling like your character has agency.  I've had satisfying experiences with games that are just phenomenally juicy, and games that left it open to me to make up my own progressing story, and games that tried really hard to present open storylines.  Alabaster has some puzzles, but you can play in a near-puzzleless state, following suggested cues, and still feel like you have an impact. 

And what about games like Aisle, where you might never figure out all your options, but figuring out a sizeable number of them is trivial?  The puzzle figuring out endings is entirely external to the story and player, not character dependent.  

In general, I'd say story progression, even if it doesn't depend on a puzzle, increases investment, especially when it appears to react in response to the character.  I don't think it needs to be puzzle-based.  Poorly done, puzzleless story progression can feel like a cut scene or railed - think about games where you need to press "z" seven times in a row to get through dialogue - but that's just a poor design choice.  That same dialogue, with you "participating" can be engaging, even if the result is always the same, even if it's always clear what to type.  

Think about classic western RPG's.  Most of them have conversation options even when there's no choices.  The villain is always going to attack you in the end, but you often have different lines you can deliver.  Often they're variations on the same theme ("die, scum!").  Why do that?  Well, because interaction, even trivial interaction, helps immersion, and well-written choices help role-playing.  You feel like you have an impact in western RPGs because the story progresses in response to your actions, even if those actions are little bulletpoints in a journal.   

As a player, some puzzles make me feel connected with the game/story/character, and some don't.  Being stuck hardly ever feels like an in-character thing - it is actively disengaging for me.  Poorly designed puzzles can require external knowledge.  "Thinking like the protagonist" is often way less helpful than I'd expect, and sometimes a really bad idea.  (I love Lost Pig.  A lot.  But it requires you to be way smarter than Grunk could ever be on his best day.)  

I'd say puzzles are one tool for connecting players with the game, but they're a double-edged sword.  Good writing, juice, story progression, offering clear choice that changes the world - these are other ways of making people feel invested and involved.  

(Sorry if this was disjointed - I'm on some pretty heavy duty meds at the moment, and everything's all foggy and vague.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1787&start=20#p12124
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Must puzzles be at war with stories?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-12-28 13:35:24

[quote="gravel"]What some people seem to be arguing is that story progression is always based on a puzzle, which just isn't true.  Some story progression feels more interactive than others, but I don't think that interactivity relies on puzzles per se, but on feeling like your character has agency.[/quote]
And, conversely, I've played games with lots of puzzles, but where I felt little agency in the story.  Done badly, a puzzle can just feel like a padlock closing off the next scene, or a needless hurdle in the natural progression of a story.  (As a pacing mechanism they're also highly suspect, as different players will solve different puzzles more quickly than  others, and some will go to the hints after the first stumble.)

[quote="gravel"]As a player, some puzzles make me feel connected with the game/story/character, and some don't.  Being stuck hardly ever feels like an in-character thing - it is actively disengaging for me.  [...]  I'd say puzzles are one tool for connecting players with the game, but they're a double-edged sword.  Good writing, juice, story progression, offering clear choice that changes the world - these are other ways of making people feel invested and involved.[/quote]
Very well put.  I think any sentiment of the form "a game must X to Y" (or even just "a game must X") is really just a rephrasing of "I only like games that X" - which is fine, but of no use to authors or players who like, prefer or [i]only like[/i] things other than X.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1839&start=0#p12125
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help With Conditionals?
User: SilverPhoenix / DateTime: 2010-12-28 13:55:24

Thanks for the help! For note, if anyone else is reading this thread trying to figure the same things out, you must put "A person can be talked-to or not-talked-to" . When I put "Mom can be talked-to or not-talked-to" it flipped out and gave me another error message, but it works fine with the former.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1839&start=0#p12126
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help With Conditionals?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-12-28 16:48:11

"Mom can be talked-to or not-talked-to" is legal in general. I mean, if Mom is an object. If it didn't work for you, it must have conflicted with some other code you wrote.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1851&start=0#p12127
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Liquids: infinite loop in deciding the scope activity?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-28 23:55:07

So is there a way to have an object "tag along" to the scope of another object without infinite recursion?

In this case, I'm wondering if something like this would work:

[code]Understand "[water]" as a full vessel[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1851&start=0#p12128
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Liquids: infinite loop in deciding the scope activity?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-12-29 00:41:29

[quote]So is there a way to have an object "tag along" to the scope of another object without infinite recursion?[/quote]

You can use a simpler test than "can see". (Example 351, Ginger Beer, does it with a "...while the small end is carried by the player" test.)

Otherwise, the easiest solution is to not use the scope mechanism directly. Rather, make one object part of (or contained in) another object.

If you need something to be "part of" several objects, you'd have to create a bunch of proxy objects and write "instead of doing whatever to X, do whatever to Y" rules.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1851&start=0#p12129
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Liquids: infinite loop in deciding the scope activity?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-29 01:57:33

Speaking of "part of," I was doing something with a pump that has two ends. I made the ends parts of the pump, but it seems that when one end of the pump goes inside a container, it stops being part of the pump. Are the "contained by" and "part of" relationships mutually exclusive?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1612&start=0#p12130
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Running games with sound in Zoom / Spatterlight
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-12-29 09:22:19

Has anyone tried running Lurking Horror with Gargoyle? It is the only up-to-date interpreter on OSX that supports sound.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1852&start=0#p12131
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: i7 coding help-- open, door!
User: rmacleod / DateTime: 2010-12-29 09:41:42

Hi,

New to board, new to IF, new to I7, new new new...

Writing my first game-- I want the player to not be able to leave the room unless they're carrying a certain book. I locked the door and used the kind of code you'd use for a key, but it's inelegant ('you unlock the door with the book') and for some reason I've done something wrong between my 2am obsession and my morning coffee that made the whole thing collapse. 

Any advice? Also, is there a way to work around the "the door is locked" so it says something like "you shouldn't leave without your book" or something a little less weird? Though I shouldn't be picking at aesthetics until I've mastered practicality, I suppose.

I'm not sure if this is the kind of question that should go here, but any help would be appreciated. 

Thanks in advance,
...riley

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1852&start=0#p12132
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: i7 coding help-- open, door!
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-12-29 10:06:13

It'd be easier if you didn't actually lock the door at all. You can just stop the player from opening it when they don't have the book.

[code]Instead of opening the library door when the player is not carrying the encyclopedia:
	say "You shouldn't leave without your book."[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1852&start=0#p12133
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: i7 coding help-- open, door!
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2010-12-29 10:20:20

[quote="rmacleod"]Hi,

New to board, new to IF, new to I7, new new new...

Writing my first game-- I want the player to not be able to leave the room unless they're carrying a certain book. I locked the door and used the kind of code you'd use for a key, but it's inelegant ('you unlock the door with the book') and for some reason I've done something wrong between my 2am obsession and my morning coffee that made the whole thing collapse. 

Any advice? Also, is there a way to work around the "the door is locked" so it says something like "you shouldn't leave without your book" or something a little less weird? Though I shouldn't be picking at aesthetics until I've mastered practicality, I suppose.

I'm not sure if this is the kind of question that should go here, but any help would be appreciated. 

Thanks in advance,
...riley[/quote]

First of all, welcome! [emote]:)[/emote]

Secondly, as a personal observation, I've found that a fixation on aesthetics often leads me off track, but to not focus on it is borderline impossible. It's just a question of how much effort you're willing to expend and how to keep track of all the consequences.

Thirdly, to your exact question, arguably the simplest way to do so is by way of the "instead of going..." rule.

[code]Instead of going when the player does not have the book:
	say "You shouldn't leave without your book."[/code]

Of course, this message will fire when you try going in any direction, and it's going to happen everywhere. Therefore, on the assumption that the room you want the book to be found in is called "the Library":

[code]Instead of going from the Library when the player does not have the book:
	say "You shouldn't leave without your book".[/code]

There certainly far more elegant ways of doing it (there are reasons for why experienced writers caution against overuse of Instead rules), but this one should do the trick.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1612&start=0#p12134
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Running games with sound in Zoom / Spatterlight
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-12-29 10:34:44

Glancing at the code, it looks as if Gargoyle should handle it provided that the sound files are in the same directory as the Lurking Horror game, with filenames like SND###.

Or also in the hypothetical case that both Lurking Horror and the sounds were in the same blorb file. That would be quite convenient for players but sadly not legal to distribute.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1851&start=0#p12135
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Liquids: infinite loop in deciding the scope activity?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2010-12-29 10:35:32

[quote="capmikee"]In this case, I'm wondering if something like this would work:

[code]Understand "[water]" as a full vessel[/code][/quote]

Just checked - this doesn't work because you can't use adjectives in an Understand phrase that way.

I tried this:

[code]
A vessel is a kind of container. A vessel can be full or empty.

Water is a thing.

Understand "[water]" as a vessel when the item described is full.
	
Up the Hill is a room. 

The well is a full vessel in Up the Hill. 
The bucket is an empty vessel in Up the Hill.

Test me with "get water"[/code]
But that also causes the interpreter to crash. I'm not sure "the item described" refers to the object understood, but it was the only syntax I could come up with that didn't cause a compiler error.

It seems like I can prevent the crash by changing "water" into a token rather than an actual thing, though. Can anyone tell me why?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1851&start=0#p12136
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Liquids: infinite loop in deciding the scope activity?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-12-29 11:19:57

What's causing the interpreter to crash appears to be "[water]". If you remove the brackets, there's no stack overflow. I think you should be able to get a working version going with this change. (At present, 'get water' causes the player to pick up the well, and without the player being alerted to that fact.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1851&start=0#p12137
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Liquids: infinite loop in deciding the scope activity?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-12-29 13:19:36

Yes, "the item described" is the right way to refer to the object being understood. See 16.17 in the manual.

As Jim says, the example works (as far as it goes) when you remove the brackets around "water".

You'll get nicer output if you make the vessel a kind of thing, instead of a kind of container. Right now your "full" vessels are actually containers with no contents, which is why the room description keeps writing "(empty)" after them.

Alternatively, you could keep them as containers, and put water objects in them (as normal contents). 

Either approach will work, but both will take additional fiddling.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1851&start=0#p12138
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Liquids: infinite loop in deciding the scope activity?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-12-29 13:24:00

[quote]Are the "contained by" and "part of" relationships mutually exclusive?[/quote]

Yes. That is, an object can have only one parent in the general sense: it can be contained in something, or part of something, or supported by something, or carried by somebody. But only one of the above. 

(That's why we call it an object *tree*. :)

If you want two objects to be manipulated separately, but still "stuck together" in some sense, you have invented a form of the rope problem.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1780&start=0#p12139
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help creating a virtual patient
User: jwaxman / DateTime: 2010-12-29 14:57:09

Moving right along with this project.
I've continued to wrestle with the objects vs topics question for different entities for the virtual patient.
Answers to history questions seem like natural topics rather than objects.
Body parts to examine seem like they could be objects with descriptions.
Diagnoses and treatments don't seem like a natural for either.

Are there disadvantages to using values for these?
For instance, 
[code]
A treatment is a kind of value.
Prednisone is a treatment.
Bed rest is a treatment.
Observation is treatment.
Meds is a list of treatments that varies.
Prescribing is an action applying to one treatment.
Understand "Prescribe [treatment]" as prescribing.
Carry out prescribing:
  add the treatment to Meds;
  say "You have now prescribed [meds].".
[/code]

This seems like the right approach. Inform barfs on the [b]add the treatment to Meds;[/b]phrase though. What am I missing? How do I get the subject of the prescribing verb into the instructions for carrying out prescribe? 

Thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=0#p12140
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-12-29 15:11:23

For those curious, I had some interesting discussions with many of the participants of my previous and upcoming classes and one of those discussions centered on the following sentiment:

[quote]"It's much more fun to create interactive fiction than it is to play it."[/quote]

I delved into this quite a bit and what I found was that people most definitely were enjoying the challenge of figuring out how to tell a story and make that story have some compelling obstacles (read: "puzzles" in various guises) for the protagonist/player. But they found that when it came to playing interactive fiction, they were more often than not bored with it fairly quickly, although there were certainly exceptions. At a glance -- and I don't know if this is interesting or not -- games that the textual IF community tends to applaud, like [i]Galatea[/i], [i]Spider and Web[/i], and [i]Photopia[/i], tended to do the worst, relatively speaking. Exceptions to this did exist, such as [i]Slouching Towards Bedlam[/i]. Going back to the Infocom era, in most of my classes, [i]Starcross[/i] tends to fare much better than [i]Planetfall[/i], which I think is opposite to the grain of the textual IF community. That being said, [i]Anchorhead[/i] is always preferred over [i]The Lurking Horror[/i]. A game that I often thought would be appealing to people, [i]Plundered Hearts[/i], tends to fare somewhat poorly. I mention all this just to give an idea of what some of the games looked at were.

[b]I'm curious if any authors of textual IF here have felt that same way in terms of writing vs. playing? Is the writing for you more fun than the playing?[/b]

Here was another potentially interesting bit. Dialogue-heavy games or games with heavy NPC interaction were found to fare the worst among my participants, both in the class and in our volunteer player pool.

As many of you know, I have a lot of screenwriters in my classes and they reminded me of a quote by Alfred Hitchcock:

[quote]"In many of the films now being made, there is very little cinema: they are mostly what I call 'photographs of people talking.' When we tell a story in cinema, we should resort to dialog only when it's impossible to do otherwise. I always try to tell a story in the cinematic way, through a succession of shots and bits of film in between."[/quote]

This lead to some interesting discussion where much of my class talked about the "cinematic" appeal they found in interactive fiction. We're actually having a more full discussion of this topic, sometime after the new year, mainly because I need to better understand this focus. I realize we're talking about crafting text as a visual image here, which is what books already do. The cinematic part for my screenwriters relies on the fact that, for them, textual IF is more like a film in that it's "moving along," carrying the protagonist and the "viewer/player" along as well.

The upshot was that games/stories that focused on heavy dialgoue choices or branching strategies based on conversational elements were found to be the most off-putting for my classes. Interested in this finding, I want back to my data from over a year ago where, as one part of a different class, we enlisted the help of volunteers to go through "play sessions" with various works of interactive fiction. And, sure enough, games that had at least more than a passing focus on dialogue or NPC interaction [i]where that interaction focused on dialogue[/i] tended to fare the worst in terms of people's reviews and stated enjoyment levels.

[b]I'm curious if people here have the same reaction? The opposite reaction? A reaction somewhere in the middle based on some other element (such as game play mechanic used)?[/b]

I should note that my class was not responding to real or perceived limitations in what textual IF systems could do in terms of presenting dialogue. Rather, they simply felt that the dialogue more often than not "got in the way."

Like I said, I'm going to be curious to pursue this further with the class. Since I'm doing freelance quality assurance work for the game industry lately, I've also been following up on discussions in the game community regarding fiction-reinforcing game mechanics (mentioned in a previous thread) and my curiousity was piqued when I realized that dialogue mechanics in games is currently undergoing major reconsideration. It seems two of the focal point techniques lately are time-pressured dialogue paths as well as change-motivation dialogue mechanics. I don't know what research others have been doing into dialogue as part of textual IF, but if anyone has any pointers, I'm more than eager to follow up.

Other than that, not much to report. Just dropping by. I hope everyone had a good holiday and is gearing up for some fun new year celebrations!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1780&start=0#p12141
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help creating a virtual patient
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-12-29 15:19:41

The main disadvantage to using values is that the player can only enter one value at a time, whereas she can enter two objects; the same is true of topics. E.g., the command "prescribe prednisone and bed rest" is only possible if you're using objects. Otherwise, with values you can use "understand" statements to expand the vocabulary as with objects (see the bit of code below), and you can more easily manipulate the values than you can topics.

The reason that you couldn't add the treatment to the list of meds is that you need to say "the treatment understood" rather than just "the treatment" so that Inform knows you're referring to the treatment input by the player:

[code]A treatment is a kind of value. The treatments are prednisone, bed rest, and observation.

Understand "sleep" as bed rest.

Meds is a list of treatments that varies.

Prescribing is an action applying to one treatment. Understand "Prescribe [treatment]" as prescribing.

Carry out prescribing:
  add the treatment understood to Meds;
  say "You have now prescribed [meds]."[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1780&start=0#p12142
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help creating a virtual patient
User: jwaxman / DateTime: 2010-12-29 17:33:33

Thanks Erik.
That worked.
Is there a way to understand why understood is needed for values and not objects?
I think I'll stick with values. It seems more natural than having to declare a diagnosis or treatment as present in the room and then having to worry about suppressing the descriptions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1791&start=10#p12143
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: the object tree and the chunk
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-12-29 18:03:48

This is a really interesting thread. I'll give a slightly different take, although I think I agree with Ron's approach. Going with how this stuff is discussed in the wider game community, I can say that it often comes down to this question: [b]How does a player [i]experience[/i] the story/game?[/b]

I personally wouldn't -- and don't -- worry about the implementation model: objects, rules, and so forth. That's a behind the scenes thing that users generally don't -- and shouldn't -- care about. (In the same way that I don't care if Amazon runs on a J2EE-with-Oracle or a .NET-with-SQLServer framework when I'm buying a book.)

Okay: so -- how does a player experience the game?

They experience it via a series of images. In much of the gaming community, the "image" is the basic unit. Yes, for textual IF, these images are textual rather than visual -- but if the writing is good, they build up a visual image. That's what the player is ultimately responding to. The player then -- via the medium -- has to break down that image into its component parts in order to make sense of the experience. They start to look at what's in a given room via a provided description. But whether that's an object or not is hardly something players/readers care about. Yes, they utilize a set of descriptive text to get that information but it's a means to an end. Graphical IF uses a series of static or moving images as well as (sometimes) spoken text to convey that same information. It's the image that both have in common, in terms of what they are trying to provide.

Storytelling is about providing experiences and then allowing someone to make sense of those experiences. That's still true in the arena of stories told within games.

Taking a side road for a second, in the software testing world, a test is anything that leads to a specific observable result that is a consequence of a series of actions. It's the end result combined with the actions that lead to it that ultimately matter. (Because you might different actions that can lead to the same result, or similar actions that lead to a very different result. The "image" as a whole is what matters and what makes each test --- each experience, if you will --- different.) That observable result is the final "image" you get presented with. A tester could break things down to each action (click this button, fill in this field, select this item from the list), but the test as a whole has meaning only in terms of the final observed output: the final image and what it conveys.

Likewise, cinema focuses on the "units" of the shot by not just considering the content, but the way in which the content would be shown. You can vary a shot's perspective, lighting, location, or other qualities to achieve certain effects (i.e., observed outputs). Once you have that image, you can then have the viewer focus on specific elements of it: the actor in the scene, the specifics of the background, the music playing as the scene goes on, etc. But it all ultimately adds up to a series of images.

So what's the "image as unit?" It's the reason for [i]why[/i] the player/reader/viewer is engaging with the story at that moment. It's what they are experiencing at that moment. The storyteller, of course, has to craft the story to provide a possible experience. What this means is that every observed output is a (relatively) clear [i]because[/i] to a (relatively) clear [i]why[/i]. I think this may be somewhat along the lines of what Ron is talking about regarding the notion of a "because tree."

I think when you look at things at that level, from an authoring perspective (which is the intent), you get beyond concerns of object trees or mapping relations (which is the implementation). And your readers/players/viewers care more about the intent than the implementation. Interestingly, for the programmers in the crowd and since a few tool specifics have come up, this is the very same notion that exists behind domain modeling and domain-specific languages in the programming industry as a whole. I say interesting here because Inform 7 clearly tries to be a DSL but, I would argue, without the necessary domain-driven design behind it. I'm hoping eventually it evolves its intent along with its implementation.

I'm greatly simplifying a lot of ideas here but I hope I've at least conveyed the basics of my thinking.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=0#p12144
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2010-12-29 18:52:13

[quote="Jeff Nyman"][b]I'm curious if any authors of textual IF here have felt that same way in terms of writing vs. playing? Is the writing for you more fun than the playing?[/b][/quote]
Yes, but that feeling isn't limited to IF. I used to write poetry, even though I literally never read it (past tense - I do read it sometimes now). I think it might be related to the difficulty of reading a particular kind of text, such as IF or poetry. If the effort required to read a text is nearly as high as the effort of writing your own, the creative satisfaction of writing your own might well be greater than the satisfaction of reading someone else's.

For me, most puzzly IF takes a lot of mental effort to play - more so than programming. With programming, there's a system to the "puzzles", and I know that I can mess with the system until I figure it out some way of doing what I'm trying to do. With most IF puzzles, there's a single solution, and I have no way of knowing whether what makes sense to the author will also make sense to me. So writing my own IF is actually [i]easier[/i] than playing some IF...

[quote="Jeff Nyman"]I should note that my class was not responding to real or perceived limitations in what textual IF systems could do in terms of presenting dialogue. Rather, they simply felt that the dialogue more often than not "got in the way."[/quote]
Got in the way of what? I mean, what did your class feel were better techniques for telling a story in IF form, analogous to cinematic action?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=0#p12145
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-12-29 19:41:00

[quote][quote="Jeff Nyman"]I should note that my class was not responding to real or perceived limitations in what textual IF systems could do in terms of presenting dialogue. Rather, they simply felt that the dialogue more often than not "got in the way."[/quote]
Got in the way of what? I mean, what did your class feel were better techniques for telling a story in IF form, analogous to cinematic action?[/quote]

In terms of "got in the way", they meant got in the way of the story itself. The dialogue often felt like it was tacked on and players had to stumble through ASK ABOUT or TALK ABOUT elements just to hopefully get a little tidbit of information. That tidbit was often provided by NPCs that often had no other purpose or whose only purpose was allegedly to lend atmosphere and/or verisimilitude to the story itself. In other cases, they were simply presented with a clearly mechanical menu of choices that did much to remove any interest in the story since the conversation menus were felt to a destructuring element.

In terms of techniques, I should say that no one was so much contrasting cinematic technique with lack of dialogue except insofar as most cinematic storytelling courses will tell you that if you're focusing on dialogue as a central element, you're probably not focusing on the right thing. As far as some specifics, by way of example, people noted in textual IF that there was rarely incidental dialogue. Locational anchors are another example that are effective in cinema (as well as in novels) to focus dialogue. (These techniques have been used in some popular works of graphical IF and other game genres. See "Dragon Age: Origins" for a particularly relevant example.) Narrative causality is another technique that authors of textual IF have shied away from (either by choice or simply by not doing it). Even techniques that utilize dialogue as character revelation are given somewhat short shrift in textual IF, where it would seem to find a ready home. Dialogue to control pacing and atmosphere, used heavily in cinema and novels, is yet another technique that often seems to be missing.

So what people were responding to was not so much that there was "too much dialogue", per se, but rather too much of one type of dialogue. (There was a thought that dialogue-heavy games just didn't seem to work very well and this had nothing to do with quantity of text, but rather with the pacing of information and the mechanics of getting that information. Games like "The Longest Journey" -- a work of graphical IF -- were used by way of contrast, with how this can effectively be done. A counter-example was the game "Mission Critical" by Legend Entertainment, which is one of the games I often utilize in classes because it leads to a lot of discussion.)

Beyond the presentation of dialogue mechanics, many felt that textual IF could use visuals as a counterpoint to the narrative and thus the dialogue. Obviously they are referring here to static images, which some works of textual IF do utilize. But in most cases the images are just presented as such, without a technique like visual match-cuts used in games (see "Assassin's Creed" or "The Force Unleashed") or in film. In those games, notice how the dialogue elements are paced to occur with narrative points but that also take place very dynamically, with a minimum of stopping the action. This is where the picture works with the narrative, and that can include dialogue. Those images can, of course, use the cinematic techniques of camera position, such as close-ups, over the shoulder shots, high-angle, and so on. In other words, the image can change based upon the context of what's occurring in the story and intercutting could be used to have a montage of images that appear based on dialogue. (This, of course, would mean you need someone who is capable of creating effective images and knowing how and when to utilize those in conjunction with narrative.) These techniques are certainly already being used in many games. A surprisingly good example of this was the game "Kane & Lynch" or, some would argue, "Grim Fandango." Others have argued that "Indigo Prophecy" is a good example of the incorporation of various techniques that utilize dialogue without making the dialogue a mechanic.

All this being said, if people are aware of dialogue-heavy games or games that they feel very effectively utilize dialogue as part of the story, I would be more than happy to have those included in the classes for consideration. Often in these posts, I'm having to refer to graphical IF or various other forms of game, like first-person shooters. It would be good to have a focused set of textual IF where there was a clear attempt by the authors to utilize a certain technique for a certain purpose.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1780&start=0#p12146
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help creating a virtual patient
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-12-29 20:03:13

[quote="jwaxman"]Is there a way to understand why understood is needed for values and not objects?[/quote]
Well, "<value> understood" or "topic understood" is conceptually equivalent to "noun"/"second noun": The principle is the same, it's just that with objects there can be more than one object understood, hence the need to distinguish using noun and second noun. In other words, you can't say "if the object is held by the player" in an action rule and expect Inform to understand it; you need to say "if the noun is held..." (or "if the second noun...").

[quote="jwaxman"]I think I'll stick with values. It seems more natural than having to declare a diagnosis or treatment as present in the room and then having to worry about suppressing the descriptions.[/quote]
Whatever you're comfortable with; aside from the limitation I mentioned and the fact that values may require more "understand" declarations than objects, they will work similarly.

If I were going to use objects, though, the method you describe is definitely not how I would do it. Eric Eve's Conversation Framework extension, which I think I mentioned up-thread, illustrates how to create commands that refer to any object in the game, not just objects that are in the room--that's the method I'd use. 

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=0#p12147
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: George / DateTime: 2010-12-29 22:19:21

[quote]Often in these posts, I'm having to refer to graphical IF or various other forms of game, like first-person shooters. It would be good to have a focused set of textual IF where there was a clear attempt by the authors to utilize a certain technique for a certain purpose.
[/quote]

IF's turn-based convention makes it harder to create such a set (as far as IF utilizing common cinematic or literary techniques). [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=tag:realtime]There is a realtime tag at IFDB[/url] but a lot of those are z-code abuses. You could add [i]Facade[/i] to that list I guess and it might come closest to a useful example for this case. 

I wonder if there've been any games that were turn-based but also had a realtime element?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=0#p12148
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2010-12-29 22:52:24

[quote="Jeff Nyman"][b]I'm curious if people here have the same reaction? The opposite reaction? A reaction somewhere in the middle based on some other element (such as game play mechanic used)?[/b][/quote]

For my own part, IF is too diverse for me to have a general opinion of it as a player. I "love IF" in general but in the details I don't care for most of it, same as with anything ... "I love novels" but in fact I love only a few novels ... "I love listening to music" but I have broad, but still very specific, tastes in music. "I love movies" but the truth is, while I love a couple hundred movies, there are many thousands of movies I have no interest in or consider a waste of celluloid or megabytes. As far as I can see, that whole "90% of everything is crud" axiom just goes to show how kindhearted Sturgeon really was. Near as I can see, 99.99% of everything is crud (but the exceptions make it all worthwhile, and I love those). [emote]:)[/emote]

It sounds like my tastes are similar in some ways to those you're describing for your class, especially when it comes to dialogue emphasis (when a game is dialogue-heavy, I tend to get eyelid-heavy).

On the other hand, I differ from your class in that I'm very fond of Plundered Hearts. I haven't played Starcross yet so I can't yet weigh in on that one [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=0#p12149
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-12-30 01:31:34

[quote="Jeff Nyman"][b]I'm curious if any authors of textual IF here have felt that same way in terms of writing vs. playing? Is the writing for you more fun than the playing?[/b][/quote]
Yes. I enjoy the writing process, and I feel guilty or just plain weird because I don't enjoy playing nearly as much.

This winter I'm putting a lot more time into an entirely different type of hobbyist programming (experimental music with Csound), and the main reason is because it's easy and natural for me to listen to and appreciate music.

Playing IF is easy and natural for the first 15 or 20 minutes after I try a new game. There's an initial phase of fun and discovery ... what kind of world am I in, what sort of problems do I have, what are the things I can try? But before too long the fun almost always gives way to the experience of being stuck, which is not fun at all.

It's like reading a novel where some of the pages are glued together. A novel like that, I'd throw it across the room.

In theory, it may be possible to write a game that quietly notices when the player is stuck and alters the model world so as to make it easier for the player to move forward. Or one can do what Aaron Reed did in Blue Lacuna, and give the player a choice between story mode and puzzle mode.

I would speculate that the player's willingness to bear down and keep trying when stuck may correlate with how fresh, involving, and well written the story is. IF is not unlike conventional fiction in this respect: If I care about what may happen to the protagonist (i.e., "me") I'll stick with it longer. That's one factor -- I'm sure there are others.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1854&start=0#p12150
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Interactive Fiction-speak: A Linguistic Conspiracy! :D
User: adventurechris / DateTime: 2010-12-30 01:35:45

I had a weird thought and was wondering if anyone with experience in Inform7, TADS, or some other programming language could offer their insight:

[color=#0000BF]Inform7 and languages like it rely on a specific syntax to make creating IF easier. That is, you can say something like "The marching band is in the kitchen" and they become something you can interact with, if you're in the kitchen.

There's something in linguistics called the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity]Sapir-Whorf hypothesis[/url], which essentially states that language influences thought; the way we think is, at least in some small way, determined by the words we have. Kind of like how Newspeak worked in 1984.[/color]


--
Question for all:
If you work in an IF language, do you find that it shapes your creations into a specific type of world, maybe with objects that you pick up and carry around, inventory, settings, certain types of dialogue, etc.? Do you notice it?
Apologies if I'm being naive in some way through not having more experience with I7 and other languages.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=0#p12151
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2010-12-30 01:56:53

[quote="Jeff Nyman"]To dialogue, [b]I'm curious if people here have the same reaction? The opposite reaction? A reaction somewhere in the middle based on some other element (such as game play mechanic used)?[/b][/quote]
Opposite.  Dialogue is "louder" in my mind than narrative, and in the book world I don't think I'm alone in that.  I've read in at least one writing book that dialogue counts as action.  Perhaps dialogue is less special in visual mediums like movies & webcomics, where talking head syndrome is more of a worry and the camera should carry some of that meaning, but I prefer games with a heavy story component, and story needs dialogue.  [quote]In terms of "got in the way", they meant got in the way of the story itself. The dialogue often felt like it was tacked on and players had to stumble through ASK ABOUT or TALK ABOUT elements just to hopefully get a little tidbit of information. That tidbit was often provided by NPCs that often had no other purpose or whose only purpose was allegedly to lend atmosphere and/or verisimilitude to the story itself. In other cases, they were simply presented with a clearly mechanical menu of choices that did much to remove any interest in the story since the conversation menus were felt to a destructuring element.[/quote]It makes sense when you put it that way.  I highly recommend [i]Walker & Silhouette[/i] because its pick-a-keyword interface doesn't distinguish between examining, talking about, or manipulating the chosen keyword, so the difference between [i]interface[/i] vis-a-vis dialogue vs. physical action disappears.   [quote]Beyond the presentation of dialogue mechanics, many felt that textual IF could use visuals as a counterpoint to the narrative and thus the dialogue.[/quote]Er, that sounds like they ran out of ideas and are falling back on what they know -- visuals.  Can they pull away from trying to apply cinematography to prose & parser?  The moral premise stuff from scriptwriting was much more interesting.  [quote]I realized that dialogue mechanics in games is currently undergoing major reconsideration. It seems two of the focal point techniques lately are time-pressured dialogue paths as well as change-motivation dialogue mechanics.[/quote]I'm unfamiliar with later videogames -- I can't afford a system.  What's "change-motivation dialogue mechanics"?[quote]Locational anchors are another example that are effective in cinema (as well as in novels) to focus dialogue. (These techniques have been used in some popular works of graphical IF and other game genres. See "Dragon Age: Origins" for a particularly relevant example.)[/quote]or "locational anchors"?
[quote]Narrative causality is another technique that authors of textual IF have shied away from (either by choice or simply by not doing it).[/quote]or "narrative causality"?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1855&start=0#p12152
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Collaborative Interactive Fiction
User: Terry / DateTime: 2010-12-30 05:00:17

I was thinking about collaborative world building and story creation and the possibilities for creating collaborative interactive fiction using Inform 7, is it something that would work?
What I am looking for are any helpful suggestions, maybe anyone know of any on-line collaborative tools that are available or any ideas as to how collaborative IF could develop.
It's been tried before [url=http://barrymars.co.uk/spaceship/index.html]here[/url] I was wondering if there was a way to hide the source code to prevent spoiling things for the players, maybe use something like ROT13?

Anyway, so after a quick search I came up with a couple of interesting websites, collaborative fictional world/story creation is out there.

[url=http://www.libboo.com/exp_soon.php]The Great Libboo Experiment[/url]

[url=http://www.mongoliad.com/]The Mongoliad[/url]

So how can we develop and create collaborative IF, if indeed we want to?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1855&start=0#p12153
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Collaborative Interactive Fiction
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2010-12-30 07:31:53

I guess someone has to mention IF Whispers, although as IFWIKI [url=http://ifwiki.org/index.php/IF_Whispers]puts it[/url]:

[quote]Each participant codes a section of a game in sequence, only seeing the section of code immediately before their own. If managed correctly, this results in a game that is playable, but makes little sense in terms of plot.[/quote]
Obviously, I think something like the Guardian's collab is more desirable for players, if perhaps a little less fun for the authors...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=0#p12154
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-12-30 08:50:35

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Er, that sounds like they ran out of ideas and are falling back on what they know -- visuals.  Can they pull away from trying to apply cinematography to prose & parser?  The moral premise stuff from scriptwriting was much more interesting.[/quote]

Actually, good novelists -- not just filmmakers -- are very well versed in visuals. The trick is not to think in terms of cinematography. That's different than a visual. Cinematography is a way of using visuals, yes. But text is a visual as well. And the image it builds in someone's mind is a visual. Visual is not an either-or concept. I think applying visuals -- or at least the thinking behind them -- to the idea of prose and parser has a lot to say about effective textual IF. In fact, many novelists are often encouraged to think about scenes in their novels as if they had to film them. It's a technique I've used quite a bit and it's a very powerful one. I do think the same could be applied to textual IF.


As far as the terms I mentioned:

[b]Change-motivation[/b] refers to, in part, having dialogue define character. As we all know, characters ideally change through a story. However, to do so, you need believable motivation. One way of indicating the change points, and thus the motivation, is via dialogue. This reveals character. Conversations with characters can reveal the personality of the character as well, by showing how they view the world around them. Conversational modes used by the protagonist -- which may only be controlled by an indication of tone -- can also reveal the protagonist. (This goes back to the whole debate about how conflated the player and the protagonist are in a game.) This is not just used in film, but also by novelists.

Beyond even change-motivation elements, dialgoue can convey individual traits of a character. That may be something like a stutter, an accent, or specific speech patterns that are regularly used by the characters. The way a character speaks can also reveal mood and emotion, which provides more impetus for motivation (why the character acts as they do). Again, this isn't just in film but also in novels. The presentational mechanics, of course, are different but the thinking behind them is largely the same. I most certainly would think authors of textual IF could learn a lot from studying such elements and at least trying such techniques in their stories/games.

[b]Locational anchors[/b] are used in novels, games, and film. They're essentially a form of association. There are also situational anchors, which are a bit of a different thing. The latter case is where you associate an internal response of a character with some triggering event in the plot. That may be external or internal plot point. (In film, they'll often use beats to indicate when a triggering event must occur.) The trick is then showing why this trigger led the character to act in a certain way. Dialogue can be part of the situational aspect since, as you mention, dialogue is a form of action. Locational anchors for their part utilize dialogue wherein you learn who someone is, where they are (relative to the surroundings), what they are doing, where they are going, and why the character is where they are. It may sound simple when put like that, but training yourself to "read" scenes that involve characters (whether in film, book, or game) will often tell you how effectively you feel you "understand" what's going on around you (or, rather, the protagonist). This is even more important in textual IF where you often don't have picture or moving image visuals to guide you. Your visual is often purely the text. (The most common criticism I've heard of characters in textual IF -- and thus of any resulting dialogue -- is that they just seem "put there" in order to be able to ask questions of them to force the story along a little bit.)

[b]Narrative causality[/b] simply refers to how your dialogue conveys "why" and "what next" to the reader/viewer/player. It also leads to plot development because it focuses on consequences of actions taken during the plot that lead the plot to evolve in a certain way rather than another way. This term, incidentally, is often credited to Terry Pratchett but in fact the concept goes back to techniques of narrative coherence. The role of dialogue is not quite as central as many people sometimes assume. It's often revealing for a class to go back to what they thought was a "dialogue-heavy" book or film and realize how much was done without actual dialogue of the extensive sort. Rather, dialogue was a prod and a goad to further action of a non-dialogue sort. That certainly seems to be relevant to textual IF, where there is a balance of different player interactions. (Specifically, for example, how much information a player has to "dig out" or "ferret out" of a NPC via a somewhat clumsy mechanism, versus how much the game interweaves dialogue without the player actually having to do much to make that dialogue take place.)

Just to be clear, I'm not saying that use of these techniques would magically make games or stories "better" in some sense. But I think it's not too inaccurate to say that many of these techniques are not used at all by many textual IF authors. Beyond this community, I've found that people don't respond very well to textual IF except as a novelty or one-off thing they might try for a bit. Retention becomes problematic and the return rate of players/readers is pretty bad. I've also found that when you distill the responses of why people don't become as engaged with textual IF as they do with book, film or graphical IF, the reasons often come down to techniques of storytelling. That's largely why I was curious to what extent people in the community found it more fun to create textual IF (for the thinking challenges, if not the authoring challenges) rather than play/read it.

I think dialogue is a good case in point. It seems that in some cases the thinking may go "I have to include NPCs otherwise my world is going to be pretty boring. But if I have NPCs, I have to have some dialogue. After all, what's the point of having the NPC otherwise? So I guess I'll have to somehow get the player to 'talk' with the NPCs and I guess I'll have to choose between ASK/TELL or maybe a menu or something like that. And maybe to keep the unfruitful path level down, I can have 'you can also ask about' prompts to goad the player to ask about very specific things." I would argue that with this kind of thinking, dialogue easily becomes no more than a mechanical element and, in fact, is not the action that you would find works so well in novel or film. It becomes "one more thing to do" rather than "an element to experience" or an integral part of guiding the story by revealing character intent and motivation and thus engaging the protagonist (and thus hopefully the player) in what's actually going on and why it matters (beyond just "solving the game").

Film, book, and graphical IF tend to provide an experience. I think textual IF can do that and I think has done that in some cases. ([i]Babel[/i] and [i]Slouching Towards Bedlam[/i] are two textual IF games that routinely score very high with outside groups that I work with.) But I think the fact that textual IF has little traction outside of one community is because while it can provide an experience, it often does not. My contention has been -- and admittedly, it's just a hypothesis -- is that textual IF authors seem to be somewhat insulated from the wider world of storytelling techniques (via media like film, novel, and game). I could be very wrong, of course, but I'm judging this based upon the output I see, the responsiveness of people to that output, and the discussion of such techniques in general.

I'm not entirely sure at this point if this lack of cross-association with other techniques is because of one of the following:

[list]
[*]The techniques are simply not known about at all and thus not practiced.[/*:m]
[*]The techniques are known about, have been tried, but not felt to apply to textual IF.[/*:m]
[*]The techniques are known about, have [i]not[/i] been tried, but are [i]assumed[/i] not to apply to textual IF.[/*:m]
[*]The techniques are known about and felt could apply to textual IF, but it's felt textual IF limits the ability to use the techniques.[/*:m][/list:u]

Or perhaps there are other aspects that I'm not considering. As you can probably tell, I have the feeling that there are many who think "textual IF is its own unique thing, and thus other techniques from other media may not apply." I don't think textual IF is all that unique in that sense. I think it provides unique elements, yes. But so does film. So does novel. So does graphical IF. So when you say they "ran out of ideas and are falling back on what they know", that's actually not a bad thing. Falling back on what we know about good storytelling techniques is something I think could potentially benefit authors of textual IF.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1856&start=0#p12155
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Bug with understanding new kinds of value
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-12-30 09:24:55

6F95 (or maybe 6Exx, I'm not sure) apparently introduced a bug with understanding certain author-defined kinds of value in player input. I'll report this on Mantis later in the day, but I'm wondering whether there might be a workaround...?

The main problem arises when one sets up a new type of value, such as the "real number" from Michael Callaghan's Fixed Point Maths extension, and then tries to use a conditional understand statement to parse values of that type in player input. The spoilered code provides a full example:


[spoiler][code]Test is a room.

A real number is a kind of value. -999999.9999 specifies a real number with parts whole and fractional.

The element-selection set is a list of numbers variable. The element-selection set is {1}.

Scaling elements is an action applying to one real number. Understand "scale at [real number]" or  "scale element/elements at [real number]" or "scale to [real number]" or "scale element/elements to [real number]" as scaling elements.

Understand "scale [real number]" as scaling elements when the number of entries of the element-selection set > 0.

Carry out scaling elements:
	say "Scaled to [real number understood]!"

Test me with "scale element at 0.8000 / scale element at 1.2500 / scale 0.8000 / scale 1.2500 / scale -1.0000 / scale -0.9000 / scale 0.9999 / scale 1.0000"[/code][/spoiler]

Basically, under 6G60, parsing of real numbers fails when using the command form defined in the conditional understand line ([color=#80BF00]Understand "scale [real number]" as scaling elements when the number of entries of the element-selection set > 0[/color]), but only when the real number is greater than 0.9999 or negative; otherwise it works fine. Under 5Z71, only negative real numbers failed, all positive real numbers parsed correctly. See spoilered test outputs for each compiler:

[b]6G60[/b]
[spoiler]>[1] scale element at 0.8000
Scaled to 0.8000!

>[2] scale element at 1.2500
Scaled to 1.2500!

>[3] scale 0.8000
Scaled to 0.8000!

>[4] scale 1.2500
I don't think much is to be achieved by that.

That's not a verb I recognise.

>[5] scale -1.0000
You can't see any such thing.

>[6] scale -0.9000
You can't see any such thing.

>[7] scale 0.9999
Scaled to 0.9999!

>[8] scale 1.0000
I don't think much is to be achieved by that.

That's not a verb I recognise.[/spoiler]

[b]5Z71[/b]
[spoiler]>[1] scale element at 0.8000
Scaled to 0.8000!

>[2] scale element at 1.2500
Scaled to 1.2500!

>[3] scale 0.8000
Scaled to 0.8000!

>[4] scale 1.2500
Scaled to 1.2500!

>[5] scale -1.0000
You can't see any such thing.

>[6] scale -0.9000
You can't see any such thing.

>[7] scale 0.9999
Scaled to 0.9999!

>[8] scale 1.0000
Scaled to 1.0000![/spoiler]

[A separate problem: Parsing of "negative" real numbers has never worked in player input, it seems, though the I7 compiler does recognize them properly in source code.]

Does anyone see a workaround other than avoiding conditional understand declarations altogether?

Thanks,
Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=0#p12156
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-12-30 10:00:15

I think there's some sensitivity in the community because people often suggest things to fix IF that seem to run counter to what we love about it.  I get a little anxious when there's talk of removing the parser, even though I'll readily admit there's huge giant issues around it.  (Judging by the fooferall last time the parser came up, I think I am Not Alone.)  CYOA seems to occupy the same niche.  "Visual elements" from an outside group suggests to me illustrations, sort of the first step towards Kings Quest 1-4, with a hybrid parser/graphic/text presentation.  There's a lot of identity in the current format, so vague suggestions are unsettling.  

I, personally, don't know formal elements of video/writing/games, although I do regularly look at other genres and see what I might pull.  More cinematic IF might not be a bad thing, especially with regards to action/character.  Film, books, and plays often have very effective cuts for when the action changes - the setup, the buildup, the change, the climax, the denouement. Sure, in a way it's a formula, but I think it might help with the problem I keep experiencing in IF, where the work just ends and I'm left staring at my screen feeling bitter.  (More rarely, I feel like I've gone through a story, and yet it keeps going.)  I'd welcome discussions that are firmly based in concrete "how might one accomplish this".  The moral premise discussion was fascinating, and although I don't completely agree with everything in there, it was definite food for thought.

As an author, I'm looking for techniques that don't introduce complexity into the writing without giving a *lot* in return.  (I come up with enough ideas for pointless complexity all by myself, thanks.)  I'd love to see more change-motivation, but I'm not quite sure how to work it, and it potentially introduces a huge amount of complexity.  

But then, yeah: I like writing IF (especially the design part) way more than playing it.  Writing IF feels like an exercise in stretching your imagination and creating worlds; playing it often feels like you need to constrain yourself.  The same is true for other games, too, but the constraints are all out on the table.  When I sit down to play IF, I feel like I need to be well-fortified.  Like Jim, getting stuck is near inevitable for me.  But even beyond that, I rarely feel really connected with a story.  That's true for mainstream games, too, but there are backup mechanics.  Bioshock 2 had a lousy "story" and I laughed a lot, but you still got to electrocute things.  IF doesn't have any backup awesome for me - it's the story-world or bust.  (Story, world, characters, etc.)  Actually, that's not quite true.  I'd say Earl Gray had a mechanic I enjoyed despite the story.  

D&D has somewhat of the same issue for me.  I love all the workup, the character and world creation, the fleshing out of back stories, the drawing of maps, the provisioning of the main party.  But when it comes to gameplay, 86 times out of 100, I'd rather be doing more work on the imaginary world/character.  The rules seem constraining; the people are uncooperative; play often ends when everyone gets tired, rather than when the story reaches a natural break.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1855&start=0#p12157
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Collaborative Interactive Fiction
User: gravel / DateTime: 2010-12-30 10:04:38

I think any players who are brave enough to go trawling through the source code for answers deserve their spoilers.  (And rot13 isn't going to stop someone that determined.)  Google has good ways to share ongoing projects, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1855&start=0#p12158
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Collaborative Interactive Fiction
User: George / DateTime: 2010-12-30 10:22:00

Guncho or something like it would be a good way to do it too I think.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=0#p12159
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-12-30 15:41:40

[quote="gravel"]I think there's some sensitivity in the community because people often suggest things to fix IF that seem to run counter to what we love about it.  I get a little anxious when there's talk of removing the parser, even though I'll readily admit there's huge giant issues around it.  (Judging by the fooferall last time the parser came up, I think I am Not Alone.)  CYOA seems to occupy the same niche.  "Visual elements" from an outside group suggests to me illustrations, sort of the first step towards Kings Quest 1-4, with a hybrid parser/graphic/text presentation.  There's a lot of identity in the current format, so vague suggestions are unsettling.[/quote]

Well ... playing Devil's Advocate here, there is be a reason why the vast majority of the gaming community has "moved on" from text-only games. [emote]:)[/emote] While certainly there is a segment of game players that never liked the move to graphics, point-and-click, and so on, there is equal certainty that the vast majority of game players did move to those formats. Graphical IF still is very commercially successful.

That being said, no one in my groups have advocated getting rid of the parser necessarily since a text game without a parser would largely seem to relegate to a menu-based selection of some sort. (My classes have consistently disliked the "choose your own adventure" format in games, even though many of them have fond memories of the book series from their childhood.) But it does bring up a good point: if the parser is considered a limiting element, then when speaking of textual IF, you are essentially left with what is almost a book or short story. My classes feel that this is largely what [i]Photopia[/i], as just one example, is ... nothing more than a short story that is made harder to read because you have to force it along.

[quote]Sure, in a way it's a formula, but I think it might help with the problem I keep experiencing in IF, where the work just ends and I'm left staring at my screen feeling bitter.[/quote]

Yeah, people I work with sort of express this as well. Not so much bitter but rather a sense of not really accomplishing anything but that also largely comes down to the fact that they feel they are writing for a very small audience (meaning, the current audience that actually plays textual IF) and an audience that doesn't seem receptive to broadening the reach of textual IF. In other words and putting it bluntly: they just feel they wasted their time.

[quote]I'd welcome discussions that are firmly based in concrete "how might one accomplish this".  The moral premise discussion was fascinating, and although I don't completely agree with everything in there, it was definite food for thought.[/quote]

That's largely been my goal in the textual IF community -- throwing ideas out there and seeing if they lead to discussions or if they open people's minds to other approaches. Even if people disagree, that's more than fine with me. Disagreeing means people are at least thinking about it and coming to a conclusion based on their own thoughts about how and why textual IF can be effective.

[quote]As an author, I'm looking for techniques that don't introduce complexity into the writing without giving a *lot* in return.  (I come up with enough ideas for pointless complexity all by myself, thanks.)  I'd love to see more change-motivation, but I'm not quite sure how to work it, and it potentially introduces a huge amount of complexity.[/quote]

Very true on all points. That's why my classes largely take the form of "spec workshops." The idea is we take the "specification" for a particular approach, idea, or technique. We then all agree to try out a limited subset of functionality that displays that technique in action. Everyone is free to implement the technique however they see fit and they are free to introduce as much surrounding context as they feel is necessary. These are timeboxed workshops, however. People have a deadline to get something in front of everyone. Then the techniques are displayed for the group and discussion takes place. The source code is provided so that people who want to tweak the technique can do so.

As you can see, the end result is not complete games or stories. The goal here is to focus on specific techniques and how complex it is to put those techniques in place. This way people can get focused experimentation done but without having to worry about producing a full game or story at the end. They then have a more informed opinion about what techniques do and do not seem to work and how complex they actually are to implement. Some things we thought would be "easy" were actually quite hard. And, of course, some things we thought would be incredibly difficult turned out not to be so bad.

[quote]Writing IF feels like an exercise in stretching your imagination and creating worlds; playing it often feels like you need to constrain yourself.[/quote]

Which is interesting because this is a sentiment I've found largely to be only in the textual IF gaming world. Those who create graphical IF or graphical games of other sorts, like shooters, rarely feel this dichotomy between creation and playing. They enjoy doing both equally. (Participants in the various AGS challenges often indicate this as do the many participants in Pyweek.) This mirrors novelists who feel it is equally important (and enjoyable) to read as well as write. This mirrors filmmakers who get as much enjoyment watching films as they do creating them. (This is particularly true with the home-brew or independent filmmakers.) Textual IF is one of the few communities I've found where the level of enjoyment in playing is often nowhere near the same as the level of enjoyment in creating.

[quote]Bioshock 2 had a lousy "story" and I laughed a lot, but you still got to electrocute things.  IF doesn't have any backup awesome for me - it's the story-world or bust.  (Story, world, characters, etc.)[/quote]

Well said and this mirrors general findings with games overall. Even those games that have somewhat lackluster stories, there are good pacing elements that can at least keep the excitement level up and keep you engaged. I had talked about this in a previous thread when mentioning the "constant interaction points" that occur in graphical IF because a constant world presence is shown, which is not the case in textual IF. By way of example, even in static background games, like the old [i]King's Quest[/i] or [i]Monkey Island[/i] games, even just standing around, you would hear sounds or have a constant visual picture image shown to you. That does matter in terms of how persistent people find the play state. The play state is continuous rather than discrete -- even when the player is doing nothing -- and that matters quite a bit.

All of that is a way of introducing another topic that has often come up in my classes and that perhaps you allude to: is the format that textual IF presents simply not workable for audiences. This doesn't mean so much getting rid of the parser. But it does mean perhaps considering the way that a story/game presents itself. One example I had mentioned in a previous thread was the cognitive window, which we did explore via a spec workshop. Other examples had to do with the use of picture images that displayed more of the techniques used in cinema to heighten mood or showcase atmosphere. Yet another had to do with the idea of having any "spoken text" from NPCs literally be that: spoken. In other words, have voice acting in textual IF. Yet others had to do with not having the prompt simply appear as it does "inline with the text", as it were, but via different mechanisms.

Ultimately, though, it is interesting because what you initially brought up was something I noticed as well: the changes that people started to eventually come up with had us going well beyond what traditional textual IF interfaces looked like. In some cases, the changes were enough to almost become something like the [i]King's Quest[/i] or [i]Space Quest[/i] games that had parsers but persistent world images with moving characters. And, again, since the industry as a whole moved to that, it's perhaps not surprising that this is the case.

For myself, it does make me wonder if there is any real future for textual IF beyond a hobbyist focus. I don't mean to imply that would be a bad thing but, again speaking for myself, that would drastically lessen my interest in the genre.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=10#p12160
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2010-12-30 16:03:57

[quote="Jeff Nyman"]All of that is a way of introducing another topic that has often come up in my classes and that perhaps you allude to: is the format that textual IF presents simply not workable for audiences. This doesn't mean so much getting rid of the parser. But it does mean perhaps considering the way that a story/game presents itself. One example I had mentioned in a previous thread was the cognitive window, which we did explore via a spec workshop. Other examples had to do with the use of picture images that displayed more of the techniques used in cinema to heighten mood or showcase atmosphere. Yet another had to do with the idea of having any "spoken text" from NPCs literally be that: spoken.[/quote]
I'd love to be able to include other elements in any games that I write. Unfortunately, I'm not a visual artist. For me, a big attraction of IF as a creative medium is that I can create an entire imaginary world using nothing but text.

If there are any great graphic designers out there who want to collaborate on a game, please -- send me an email!

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=10#p12161
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2010-12-30 16:10:09

[quote="Jeff Nyman"]Graphical IF still is very commercially successful.[/quote]

Again, rather than still. The form was virtually dead for a while there. CRPGs went through something similar, too.

Which is not to suggest that IF is somehow "due" for some kind of cyclical revival; I don't think it works that way. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=10#p12162
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-12-30 16:31:43

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="Jeff Nyman"]Graphical IF still is very commercially successful.[/quote]

Again, rather than still. The form was virtually dead for a while there. CRPGs went through something similar, too.[/quote]

I would argue that graphical IF has always been pretty strong. Even when graphical IF wasn't very visible such as with series like [i]King's Quest[/i], the games were alive and well consistently. As just one example of a list that shows from the mid 80s to roughly now:

<a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_graphic_adventure_games">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gr ... ture_games</a>

There actually wasn't that much of a lull in graphical adventure games when you consider how long it can take to make some of the higher production games. And that list above is by no means comprehensive. Those are just so-called "notable games." There were certainly periods where not as many games came out in a given time period, which could be considered a lull. But even at its worst moments, the lull for graphical adventures is nothing compared to what textual IF has experienced. And those lists don't take into account the fan community output, which was quite large.

Even "traditional" series like [i]Sam & Max[/i], [i]Broken Sword[/i], and [i]Monkey Island[/i] come out with new entries these days that do respectably from a commercial perspective. So it might depend on how you define "dead."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=10#p12163
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2010-12-30 17:33:54

[quote="Jeff Nyman"]So it might depend on how you define "dead."[/quote]

As you wish.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=10#p12164
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2010-12-30 18:09:33

[quote="Jeff Nyman"]Textual IF is one of the few communities I've found where the level of enjoyment in playing is often nowhere near the same as the level of enjoyment in creating.[/quote]

I find this difficult to credit, even taking into account the responses in the thread. There are tens of thousands of active IF players, most of whom will never create a game, or even post on forums like this. By asking the question here or in your classes, you are sampling from a small pool of authors who almost by definition are more likely to privilege the creation process. 

You could also ask the folks who design IF languages if they enjoy that as much as authoring or playing IF. I expect you would discover they enjoy it quite a bit more. But I don't think that would have any bearing on whether IF as it presently exists is enjoyable for large numbers of players.

[quote]Well said and this mirrors general findings with games overall. Even those games that have somewhat lackluster stories, there are good pacing elements that can at least keep the excitement level up and keep you engaged.[/quote]

Dan Brown's success demonstrates the effectiveness of pacing elements alone. [i]Da Vinci Code[/i] is forgettable but it's essentially just one scene multiplied across however many chapters, with minor differences in the twist/hook at the end of each. It works in the sense that the book is virtually impossible to put down, simply because he raises the stakes every time he presents the reader with the logical opportunity to close the book.

I like the way that [i]King of Shreds and Patches[/i] handles pacing with its act break structure. (Likewise [i]Shadow in the Cathedral[/i].) Most IF is so short that breaking it down into chapters or acts would be silly, yet even a two hour game is far longer than any one commercial game level would be. As a player I really appreciate having a visible structure imposed on the game; chapters provide a natural stopping point, and if I resort to hints during a chapter, I only risk spoiling content up to the next milestone. At the other extreme is [i]Curses[/i], which I played for hours and eventually quit with no idea how far along I was, and no intention to ever return. I liked a lot of the puzzles but even the progress felt like floundering.

For your class, I wonder if it's really a question of too much dialogue rather than simply too much of everything with no goal and no end in sight, which is the way a lot of IF feels to me. An NPC with too many topics is basically the same as a room with too many nouns: filled with irrelevant distractions. The latter has fallen out of favor and perhaps the former will in time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=10#p12165
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2010-12-30 18:52:54

Jim, 
Thanks for kicking off this discussion with your findingS. As a first-time IF author it is very helpful. Thank you also for defining the literary / storytelling terms. That said, I am unclear on "Location Anchors". Can you give an example, perhaps from film, that would illustrate this?

My IF story is a murder mystery and while I've written a lot of Ask/Tell dialog with the NPCs, I recognize its hit or miss whether the play goes down those paths. So I am thinking of other mechanisms to move the story along with some timed events. So far, feedback from alpha testers has indicated they like these sort of cut-scenes to move things along. I'm also conscious of having the NPC responses (and their emotions and character traits) be influenced by the clues the player uncovers.
Thanks much
--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">http://www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=10#p12166
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-30 22:32:39

[quote="Jeff Nyman"]the idea of having any "spoken text" from NPCs literally be that: spoken. In other words, have voice acting in textual IF.[/quote]

I don't think I'd enjoy this at all. Even leaving aside the problem that you need to get really good voice actors for this to work, and that'll increase the cost of your game by a factor of infinity, voice acting will just make the game even more static -- because unless you're writing to be heard rather than read (and you'd better be damn good at it), the player will just wind up drumming his/her fingers waiting for the dialogue to finish.

I'm thinking of poor [url=http://www.deirdrakiai.com/my-games/life-flashes-by/][i]Life Flashes By[/i][/url], a game I was eagerly awaiting, a game that I set aside an evening for when I had a lull in the end-of-term madness, and a game that I've currently abandoned less than a third of the way through, which is how far I got in that one evening. I kept wanting a skip button to hammer to get through the dialogue faster. It just seems like it was written to be read, not heard, and I'm not sure you can write dialogue that'll work both ways. (I like [url=http://www.deirdrakiai.com/girl/]this game[/url] because the chunks are much shorter. So is the game -- maybe I just have a short attention span.)

I may be an outlier here; other people seem to love podcasts, and I hate the idea that people expect me to listen to them talk for ten minutes when in two minutes I could read the same thing. But it seems to me that if you're writing IF you're interested in the [i]written[/i] word.

Also, voice-acted dialogue doesn't give you anything to do when you're not getting the voice-acted dialogue, so I don't think it even solves the problem that's presented here. I think a more promising way to give the player something ongoing of interest would be to use some background music, like in Digital: A Love Story (or every non-textual game ever), or some atmospheric non-plot critical visuals; which Alabaster does, but you could have something to watch. Or am I just proposing putting a screensaver behind your IF?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=10#p12167
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2010-12-31 00:50:38

[quote]I find this difficult to credit, even taking into account the responses in the thread.[/quote]

And some of us on the thread don't buy in, either [emote]:)[/emote] As I said above, I love good IF. I play IF daily, almost without exception. I dislike bad IF, and play it as seldom as possible. Most IF happens to be bad; this is neither unusual nor unexpected nor at all limited to IF as compared to other forms. Fortunately, bad IF is usually pretty easy to spot (in the first thousand or two words of play, if not much sooner) and good IF is often very replayable, thus keeping me happily in my IF habit [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote]For your class, I wonder if it's really a question of too much dialogue rather than simply too much of everything with no goal and no end in sight, which is the way a lot of IF feels to me. An NPC with too many topics is basically the same as a room with too many nouns: filled with irrelevant distractions. The latter has fallen out of favor and perhaps the former will in time.[/quote]

A wise notion.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=10#p12168
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2010-12-31 00:56:19

[quote="matt w"]... the player will just wind up drumming his/her fingers waiting for the dialogue to finish.[/quote]

Or clicking past it, if the game permits it.

Right now I've finally gotten around to playing Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. One of the "improvements" over Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind is that all that NPC chatterboxing has voice-acting (and animated heads) where the prior game had only text. This amused me the first three or four conversations, but ever since then I'm just impatiently clicking through it, interrupting the voice acting to get on with it. I read a _heck_ of a lot faster than the speed of speech, and the acting, while competent, simply isn't compelling enough to sit there and listen to every line.

So for my gaming experience, that's a lot of expense and time wasted.

Others' mileage may vary, of course.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1830&start=0#p12169
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Defaults Just Prints Blank Prompt
User: demonboy / DateTime: 2010-12-31 03:54:44

OK, I've worked out half of what the problem is but it's not a solution:

When I first walk into reception and try "ask receptionist about photo" I get the blank prompt.

Instead if I say "hello" first Inform knows I am saying hello to the receptionist and it then allows me to ask the question, and I get the correct response.

Is this normal?
Is a blank command prompt a normal way for an IF game to tell the player to continue with their questioning?

This doesn't seem right.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=10#p12170
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2010-12-31 06:18:27

[quote="bcressey"][quote="Jeff Nyman"]Textual IF is one of the few communities I've found where the level of enjoyment in playing is often nowhere near the same as the level of enjoyment in creating.[/quote]

I find this difficult to credit, even taking into account the responses in the thread. There are tens of thousands of active IF players, most of whom will never create a game, or even post on forums like this. By asking the question here or in your classes, you are sampling from a small pool of authors who almost by definition are more likely to privilege the creation process.[/quote]

Fair enough. But, by definition, you can only ask the people who do the creating. If I don't ask here or in classes where people are doing the creating ... pray tell ... where will I ask? I'm not interested in just the players any more than I would be interested in just readers. There are thousands and thousands of both groups, who will never become game authors or novelists. There's tons of movie-goers who won't become directors. So what? What I need are people who actively try both and come to a conclusion that one is more fun or more enjoyable than the other.

As it is, I have been conducting classes of various sorts, with different types of people, since late 2005. That's given me a lot of data points and it does, in some sense, reflect a different community of people than this one. (It also was a community that didn't come potentially predisposed to answer questions a certain way or to be letting too much of a nostalgia and/or hobbyist factor influence their responses, which I initially wanted to balance as separate variables.)

So, yeah, I realize, some of this is anecdotal. But with textual IF, there's not a whole lot of data points except finding a community of people and asking or getting groups of people together, having them both play and create, and then see what they enjoy more. Then you do some sampling and at least come to provisional conclusions.

What I as more referring to is that you very rarely (if ever) hear even a hint of the same sentiment with game creators in other venues. (I've been working on and off in the game industry since 1989, mostly as quality assurance with a large part of my work being on focus groups on the one hand and testing with developers on the other. So I've had a lot of time to gather opinions, accumulate data and witness trends.) You also don't even get a hint of this dichotomy with writers, who don't hestitate to tell you they enjoy reading as much as writing. And, yes, I'm sure there are exceptions. I'm going for aggregate findings here because, for this high level of comparison, aggegrate is what matters if you are looking at these things beyond a hobbyist venture. Presumably if the community was interested in these data points, there would have been an operationally constructed poll at some point asking these very questions. I couldn't find one so getting anything beyond aggregate information on textual IF is somewhat difficult.

All this being said, I could be totally and completely off-base here. Even if that provisional conclusion was totally wrong, and every data point I have is counter-indicative, it wouldn't change some of the more fundamental issues I deal with in the classes. So this was more of a curiosity than a fundamental point for me. The fact that such a dichotomy was stated [i]at all[/i] was more relevant to me than any actual numbers would have been.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1854&start=0#p12171
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction-speak: A Linguistic Conspiracy! :D
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2010-12-31 07:43:23

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis isn't easy to apply to programming languages. (It's even debatable if it applies to natural languages; personally I don't believe it does or the influence is too small to be of any significance.) It's obvious that what the programming language brings with its standard library will be used in most games and if something can be done in two ways and the other is trivial in the language and the other requires a lot of work and expertise, most authors are likely to take the easy way unless the game absolutely requires something else. For example when you TAKE ALL in an Inform game you always get the same kind of output:
[quote]spoon: Taken.
fork: Taken.
plate: Taken.[/quote]
Changing the format to something else takes a lot of effort so most authors just let it be. Another example is that TADS authors are more likely to use suggested topics for conversation because the standard library supports it directly. Inform authors use more varied techniques because the library doesn't advocate any particular method as strongly.

On the other hand having standard functionality is good so that authors don't have to re-invent the wheel every time, but on the other hand it could be argued that less variety hinders innovation.

The more interesting question and more relevant to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is if the wording the language uses affects the game design. Do games have more indoor locations because most systems call game locations "rooms"? Do Inform games have more male than female animals because the animal kind defaults to male? I don't think so, but who knows if there's some subconscious influence somewhere in there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1830&start=0#p12172
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Defaults Just Prints Blank Prompt
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2010-12-31 08:56:55

Perhaps something in the source text gets in the way of Conversation Frameworks' 'implicit greetings'. What does your rules for 'saying hello' look like?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1856&start=0#p12173
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Bug with understanding new kinds of value
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-12-31 09:06:28

emacsuser points out on the [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=488]Mantis page[/url] that the 6G60 bug is due to interaction with the existing "scales" command (which I didn't know existed--it's a synonym for "climb"). This means that there is an easy workaround:

[code]Understand the command "scales" as something new.[/code]

This fixes my main problem (and also makes me feel a little silly for not trying a different grammar from the start). Thanks, emacs!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=20#p12174
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: George / DateTime: 2010-12-31 09:43:13

[quote="Jeff Nyman"]
What I as more referring to is that you very rarely (if ever) hear even a hint of the same sentiment with game creators in other venues. (I've been working on and off in the game industry since 1989, mostly as quality assurance with a large part of my work being on focus groups on the one hand and testing with developers on the other. So I've had a lot of time to gather opinions, accumulate data and witness trends.) You also don't even get a hint of this dichotomy with writers, who don't hestitate to tell you they enjoy reading as much as writing. And, yes, I'm sure there are exceptions.[/quote]

Just dealing with this as a curiosity -- I don't think this is a fair comparison. IF has been mostly a hobby endeavor for the last 15+ years. You can hardly say the same thing for professional game development and book publishing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=20#p12175
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2010-12-31 10:10:46

[quote="Jeff Nyman"]You also don't even get a hint of this dichotomy with writers, who don't hestitate to tell you they enjoy reading as much as writing.[/quote]
I've read quite a few interviews with successful novelists who indicate that they don't read much fiction, so I think that there is definitely a hint of it in that world. There's also an unquantifiable (though probably not insignificant) bias effect, in that accurate self-reporting is biased toward low-stakes endeavors like IF: the (wo)man of letters, for example, will find it pretty difficult to admit that he or she doesn't read as much as he/she "ought" to. There is just too much pressure to be well read, to know your tools, to keep up with the social milieu. A gauge of this is the fact that discussion of the phenomenon of [i]pretending to have read something[/i] is extremely common in the literary world.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=20#p12176
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-12-31 10:58:44

George and Ghalev both have good points. 

I often like playing IF more than I like writing games for a living. Nothing is as much fun when it's your job.

I rarely like playing IF as much as I like writing IF as a hobby. Lots of IF is not that great, and finding the good stuff takes time.

For me, at least, there's another issue which is more or less orthogonal to fun. I also play IF because the best stuff leaves me with better long-term value than most other forms of entertainment. That is, I still think back frequently to my favorite IF games of the last few years -- especially Make It Good, most of Victor Gijsbers' work, a couple of images in Shadow in the Cathedral, the last couple chapters of Blue Lacuna. They all left me with some striking experience, question, idea, or image that I have thought about over and over since I stopped playing.

That's more than I can say for most of the entertainment I've consumed in that period -- almost any commercial game, most indie games, most of the Hollywood movies and genre books and television shows. There are a few exceptions -- Batman: Arkham Asylum, Tale of Tales' frustrating but memorable non-games, and my favorite episodes of Dr Who all had pieces that I think about frequently after the fact. I'm actually drawing a blank on any movie I've seen in a theater in the last two years that had that effect on me. 

So, yeah. There's a high likelihood, for me, that a given piece of IF will not be fabulous. But once those games are eliminated, there's also a better than average probability that I'll get something of lasting value from playing.

I may be unique in this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=20#p12177
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2010-12-31 11:06:12

[quote="Jeff Nyman"]What I as more referring to is that you very rarely (if ever) hear even a hint of the same sentiment with game creators in other venues.[/quote]

In my own native gaming industry (pen-and-paper RPGs and hobby board/card game publishing) I hear it constantly. It's why, when I did my stint as an editor at Steve Jackson Games, one of the first things I did there was haul Steve and company back to the gaming table at my place  ... approximately 100% of the in-house staff at SJG were, at that point, almost avowed non-gamers, working from memory as it were. And it's not limited to that particular company; editors, writers, designer and line developers from virtually every publisher I've worked with (dozens of them) have expressed the same general sentiment.

In some cases it seems to be a matter of a geeky kind of nitpick syndrome ... they can no longer really enjoy the games of others because they can't turn off the part of their brain that picks it apart in an editorial way, they just sit there criticizing it and bemoaning how much better it could be (I don't have this impulse with game design, but I do with typography, and it's a pain).

In my days as a computer-game journalist (editor at IE/Strategy Plus), I heard it from computer game developers. Outside of gaming, I've also heard it from multiple novelists, a filmmaker I know, and a career musician (who is, to be fair, also a music producer, and I think he suffers from that same can't-stop-picking-it-apart thing).

My experiences in this matter are every bit as anecdotal as yours, but there they are.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=972&start=0#p12178
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Graphical Adventures: SLUDGE
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-12-31 12:11:31

Now SLUDGE 2.0 is released. Both engine and development kit are available for Mac, Windows and Linux.

(And if you want to try a SLUDGE game, I recommend the recently released dialogue-based [url=http://www.deirdrakiai.com/my-games/life-flashes-by/]Life Flashes By[/url] by Deirdra Kiai.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=20#p12179
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2010-12-31 12:41:24

[quote="matt w"]I'm thinking of poor [url=http://www.deirdrakiai.com/my-games/life-flashes-by/][i]Life Flashes By[/i][/url], a game I was eagerly awaiting, a game that I set aside an evening for when I had a lull in the end-of-term madness, and a game that I've currently abandoned less than a third of the way through, which is how far I got in that one evening. I kept wanting a skip button to hammer to get through the dialogue faster.[/quote]

There is a skip button. Right-click. (Or ctrl+click or two-finger-click if you're on a Mac.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=20#p12180
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: emshort / DateTime: 2010-12-31 14:09:36

[quote="Jeff Nyman"]My contention has been -- and admittedly, it's just a hypothesis -- is that textual IF authors seem to be somewhat insulated from the wider world of storytelling techniques (via media like film, novel, and game). I could be very wrong, of course, but I'm judging this based upon the output I see, the responsiveness of people to that output, and the discussion of such techniques in general.

I'm not entirely sure at this point if this lack of cross-association with other techniques is because of one of the following:

[list]
[*]The techniques are simply not known about at all and thus not practiced.[/*:m]
[*]The techniques are known about, have been tried, but not felt to apply to textual IF.[/*:m]
[*]The techniques are known about, have [i]not[/i] been tried, but are [i]assumed[/i] not to apply to textual IF.[/*:m]
[*]The techniques are known about and felt could apply to textual IF, but it's felt textual IF limits the ability to use the techniques.[/*:m][/list:u][/quote]

I've said a lot of this before. So once more, and then I'll let it go:

Lots of IF authors have creative exposure in at least one other medium, and sometimes in several. IF authors include novelists, short story authors, filmmakers, screenwriters, and people who work professionally in one or another part of the game industry. 

There was a certain amount of insulation from other playing and reading communities ten or fifteen years ago, but I'd say that is much less true now, and that that insulation was never exactly because IF authors were unaware of the techniques of other media. When it existed, I think it was more about the fact that hobbyist IF started out as an exercise in nostalgia and only gradually moved away to explore new directions.

When it comes to the specific techniques you mention, a lot of them are known, are used, and indeed in some cases have been discussed as a matter of craft for at least the last fifteen years. 

So, I guess I continue to be interested in your work in theory, but in practice have trouble using it or even responding to it in a way that would feel like I was being receptive. 

Possibly you have great insights into how things could be applied that none of the rest of us have thought of. Maybe you've got a load of intriguing data about what people have responded to.

But you're the only person who has seen any of the raw data, and it's very hard to analyze what it all means without feedback on specific games, without knowing what questions were asked, and so on. As a general rule, I also tend to think it's much more useful to ask playtesters about their experience than it is to ask them to suggest improvements. But either way, whatever you're asking them, we don't have access to the particulars, and it's hard to know what to make of your reports without that information.  

You also do not share examples of your proposed techniques in practice -- even in the form of a small experiment. It doesn't have to be a full game. Even just releasing a sample piece and saying, "this is what we're talking about, so you can see how it differs from execution you've seen so far" would help a lot with identifying what you have in mind. 

When you say things like "explain why the NPC is here" or "use dialogue to characterize the player" or "sketch the player/NPC's motivation" or "provide incidental dialogue" or "describe spaces cinematically", my mind fills with examples of these things already happening in existing IF:

[list][*]the large-scope games in populous landscapes like Make It Good, Blighted Isle, King of Shreds and Patches, etc. that are full of characters with very clear reasons for being where they are; the highly scripted NPCs in games like She's Got a Thing for a Spring, where the NPC has a whole program of activities and plans going on[/*:m]
[*]the unique styles of talking that define characters in Robb Sherwin's and Adam Cadre's work, or in Party Foul, Lost Pig, Violet, Broken Legs, Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom...[/*:m]
[*]the extensive incidental dialogue in Child's Play; the sidekick commentaries provided by characters in the Frenetic Five games, by Aloysius in Fine Tuned, by any number of reactive NPCs[/*:m]
[*]the use of dialogue options (those offered and those rejected) to express character in Rameses; to express motivation in some of Victor Gijsbers' work[/*:m]
[*]the pacing of a number of games where the story keeps rolling forward while the player has a chance to intervene, rather than waiting on player action, and where dialogue and other interaction types -- even taking inventory -- are used to help pace that progress out; J. Robinson Wheeler has done this a lot, especially in Centipede and Being Andrew Plotkin, and written about his techniques for designing this type of scene by writing a transcript first[/*:m]
[*]from the same source, Wheeler's writing on creating a visually-imagined space, not to mention a host of games with strong visual writing. To grab just a handful of strong visual memories from IF games: the auto-apothecary in Shadows in the Cathedral; the fluttering pigeons and shadow in All Roads; the beaches of Worlds Apart; the cold-berries in Dreamhold; the abandoned official buildings in Anchorhead, with nothing visible beyond the pebbled glass in the windows; the windsong tree in Blue Lacuna; pretty much all of the latter half of Shade...[/*:m][/list:u]

These are not only things that have been presented by IF authors but have been discussed by reviewers and players and in many cases brought up repeatedly in craft discussions.

So do these examples not in fact correspond to the techniques you are recommending? If not, why not? Would you implement the same technical concepts differently? Do you actually mean different techniques than I think you mean, and is that the source of miscommunication? Are we talking at cross-purposes because IF has developed a separate set of terminology for these things, which is not the vocabulary you expect from screenwriting conversations? 

Without an example or targeted critique of existing work, it's impossible to tell.

Even more bewildering to me is the claim that IF authors are not trying to create an "experience." Of course we are. In fact, I'm not sure how we could avoid it. Any encounter between player and game is an experience. I have an idea in my head of what I want that experience to be like, which is the core vision behind any project I design. Perhaps you mean that IF authors do not focus on some aspect of the player experience that you think is important? But without more detail, I'm totally at a loss for what to do with that kind of feedback.

The plot treatment for your redesigned Trinity is an exception. I disagreed there about what would be useful to make a good story, but I felt like I did at least understand what you were arguing for, because I had specifics to work with.

===

Re. dialogue design, again, no: it's not the case that these choices are always made by default without any consideration. There are lots of experiments in other design choices than ASK/TELL or menus, and lots of discussion of pros and cons, going back more than a decade. Certain choices have become especially common because they allow rapid-moving scenes (menus) or because they facilitate dialogue tied to exploration (ASK/TELL), but there are other possibilities, and we continue to see new experiments. 'Mid the Sagebrush and the Cactus deals with dialogue as a negotiating counterpoint to violence, for instance. 

I can tell you why I sometimes (but not always) design dialogue to be deeper and less forward-moving than you describe: I am trying to convey interactively the idea of a character with interiority, one who can be significantly affected, pleased or hurt or annoyed, by the player's actions. This is not a challenge that exists particularly in non-interactive art forms, because all the protagonists and antagonists have their being in the same way. You might choose to use a limited first- or third-person viewpoint that only shows one person's inner monologue, but even then, the divide between the people whose thoughts are known and those whose thoughts are unknown is much less severe than the divide in interactive narrative between the characters with player-animated purpose and the characters who only exist as they respond to and support the player's experience. 

So most of my most thickly-implemented characters are designed around this concern, the desire to make them feel responsive and give the sense that there is some person there, a personality that can be interactively tested out. This is a very fragile illusion still; it won't withstand a player who wants to break it. My only hope is to support the player who does want that illusion and is willing to play along. 

That's part of what Galatea was trying for -- not to tell *a* specific story, but to explore the idea that if you treat someone receptively, you will get more from the encounter, and to do so in a way that plays on existing preconceptions about what IF NPCs can do. (Preconceptions that existed in 2000. Galatea polls much worse among the IF community now than it did ten years ago; maybe people have gotten more discriminating, but I suspect part of the reason is that what it does is no longer surprising.)

The interiority focus is not always what I want, of course. So Glass is written around a fast-moving dialogue that the player can at best break the flow of, where conversation is very limited; Floatpoint offers limited conversation where encounters are timed to be only a few turns long and implementing only discussions relevant to what is immediately happening; Mystery House Possessed does some keyword matching in order to allow a looser style of NPC communication because I was going for a much more simulationist feel and wanted to step away from the idea that the world was honed towards a single solution. And that's just a survey of some of my own decisions; I suspect other IF authors could offer a list of their own.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1841&start=0#p12181
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Understanding Commas
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2010-12-31 15:12:52

You can remove all punctuation from the player's command before reading, but then you run into some problems with

>John, go east

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1791&start=10#p12182
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: the object tree and the chunk
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2010-12-31 15:15:58

I get where you're coming from, Jeff, and it's not that I disagree that those things are important. Audiences are often unaware about the cut in filmmaking as I'm sure you know, but it has an effect on them nonetheless and audience unawareness didn't stop critics from labelling the cut as the important unit of meaning. I guess I just what I was musing about as trying to identify what plays that central role whether the audience/reader/player is specifically aware of it or not.

At the same time, the image as unit theory that you put forth is compelling, just as compelling as it is for film, but in what way is it different from film? If what you're saying is that there is no difference in the basic unit of meaning across media, then I can get behind that to a certain extent (there is a narrative thread that runs throughout all things, no doubt about it). But again, I was aiming at something a little more expressive of how a medium constructs meaning from moment to moment, at a more basic level, if that makes any sense.

[quote="Ron Newcomb"][quote="Laroquod"]I wouldn't restrict my own POV to a containment tree alone, though — that would exclude all sorts of stuff even from a classical O-O IF system, and make mine not a very workable theory. Your 'because' tree sounds pretty interesting and I wouldn't want my focus on the objectness of it all to be interpreted as some kind of opposition to a cause-and-effect based system. Personally I just see those as smarter varieties of object, but you could probably look at the whole thing inverted and define an object as a dumber case of the cause-and-effect type of data structure.[/quote]I can think of software architecture in many more ways than presented in this thread, which is why I'm a bit horrified to see tree-of-objects deified so.  OTOH, you're also talking about the meaning of a work, in which case I'm kinda fascinated seeing a structure from Computer Science play a role in semantics/philosophy/wonderment.  I don't have much to add to the latter -- ask me what a program [i]means[/i] and I'll tell you what it [i]does[/i] -- but I can at least engage when it comes to guessing at what kinds of works will result from particular purposeful architectures.[/quote]
I know that you are deep into the mechanics of how programming languages work. I checked out your Inform 7 guide and found it a bit above my head. I've just always used programming languages, for play and then for pay. I didn't take any formal computer science beyond first year university, as I was an Arts major so I guess I do come at things more from that perspective.

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]The latter is an example of the former.  To expound:  a CYOA is a choice tree.  Per zarf and others, the story/plot of parser I-F ultimately boils down to a CYOA as well, the parser just adding some ancillary exploration.  Scene 2b happens [i]because[/i] choice #2 in scene 1 was chosen.   Scene 1 is the root node of the story's whole tree.[/quote]
Yeah that's pretty much what I've been thinking of it as -- there is an interweaving pattern of possible choices; which means, a pattern of consequences; and it's a form of design, because anything that be patterned can be designed. The greater an awareness we have of that pattern, while designing a game, the better. The skein seems a really interesting experiment in that regard but it's still too fine-grained. I'm thinking more, big-picture patterns.

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]And now to bore you for twenty minutes.

In a RAP/Planner -like AI, you may have a (very small) tree:

GO THROUGH DOOR (which is currently locked)
*  GET KEY
*  UNLOCK DOOR

So ask, "why is the character getting this key?"  Find the GET KEY node and the answer is its parent node: "Because he wants to go through the door."  Ask, "How is he going to go through that locked door?"  Find the GO THRU DOOR node and return all its children nodes: "By getting its key, and then unlocking the door."   So there's a because tree used in an AI. 

Similar for Aaron's Intelligent Hinting extension.  "How is the character going to WIN GAME?"  And so on.  So there's a because tree used in a hinting system.

Right there you've got enough to give your player WHY and HOW commands, and get sensible (if brief) answers back without the content-creation problem of writing lots and lots of prose.  WHY and HOW are directions in a Because tree.

Now take the locked door example and pretend it's a shifty-looking NPC who's trying to do that, rather than our PC.  Asking a second, trustworthy NPC WHY and HOW puts our IF into a very different place than "trivial physicality", to use Em's phrase up-thread.  It's character-to-character dialogue, about the motivations and methodology of a third, not-currently-present character.   That's the stuff fiction is made of.[/quote]
Pretty interesting stuff and falls into a pretty strong tradition (if I'm not mistaken) of trying to make the model world more soluble for more intelligent questions about it. It sounds like a cool advance along that path, and I'd love to see what sorts of games it would make easier to code.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1171&start=0#p12183
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF URLs
User: George / DateTime: 2010-12-31 16:21:28

I've posted a "best of 2010 in IF URLs" -- looking back on 2010, it was a pretty awesome year for IF. Happy new year all [emote]:)[/emote]. 

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifurls.tumblr.com">http://ifurls.tumblr.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1791&start=10#p12184
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: the object tree and the chunk
User: zarf / DateTime: 2010-12-31 17:38:30

[quote] Per zarf and others, the story/plot of parser I-F ultimately boils down to a CYOA as well, the parser just adding some ancillary exploration[/quote]

Sorry, I missed this statement earlier.

I don't say this at all. It's *technically* true, in the same sense that a movie ultimately boils down to spots of light and shadow. When you've boiled things down to a choice tree, you've boiled too far.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=20#p12185
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-31 18:09:15

[quote="Trumgottist"][quote="matt w"]I'm thinking of poor [url=http://www.deirdrakiai.com/my-games/life-flashes-by/][i]Life Flashes By[/i][/url], a game I was eagerly awaiting, a game that I set aside an evening for when I had a lull in the end-of-term madness, and a game that I've currently abandoned less than a third of the way through, which is how far I got in that one evening. I kept wanting a skip button to hammer to get through the dialogue faster.[/quote]

There is a skip button. Right-click. (Or ctrl+click or two-finger-click if you're on a Mac.)[/quote]

Ah, thanks very much. I'll turn on the subtitles and give it another try. 

Back on topic, I think it's kind of funny that classes that have a lot of screenwriters in them came up with the idea of reading the dialogue aloud and using visuals.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1857&start=0#p12186
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7: Defined Value vs Printed Value
User: mgsisk / DateTime: 2010-12-31 21:06:25

Let's say a person has a descriptive value called height. A persons height may change during play, but the affect isn't necessarily plot based; one particular event won't change a person from short to tall, but a collection of events might. To that end every person also has a number value called height percentage, ranges of which correspond to height values.
[code]
A person can be gnomish, dwarfish, short, average height, tall, giant, or monumental (this is the height). A person is usually average height.
A person has a number called height percentage. The height percentage of a person is usually 500.

Definition: a person is gnomish if the height percentage of it is less than 1.
Definition: a person is dwarfish if the height percentage of it is less than 201.
Definition: a person is short if the height percentage of it is less than 401.
Definition: a person is average height if the height percentage of it is less than 601.
Definition: a person is tall if the height percentage of it is less than 801.
Definition: a person is giant if the height percentage of it is less than 1001.
Definition: a person is monumental if the height percentage of it is greater than 1000.
[/code]
Inform 1.2 6.31/6G60 seems to understand this perfectly well internally, so I can write things like:
[code]The description of the player is "As good looking as ever.[if short] You wouldn't mind being a little taller though.[else if tall] You wouldn't mind being a little shorter though.[end if]"[/code]
But if I try to say the height value, like:
[code]The description of the player is "You're [height]!"[/code]
it never changes. It seems like Inform is keeping track of two different height values for a person: an inferred value based on the definitions that it seems to use nearly everywhere, and a specified value that it only seems to use when trying to say the height of a person. Is this by design?

The best "fix" I've been able to come up with so far is creating an every turn rule to check the height percentage of a specific person (the player, for example) and forcing the person's height to change using "now...is", but that seems like a rather awful kludge.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1858&start=0#p12187
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: IF Comp 2010 reviews posted by Dark Star
User: DrkStarr / DateTime: 2010-12-31 21:35:06

Well even though the IF Comp ended 45 days ago, I thought that a few people would like to take a look at the reviews I wrote, at least the authors.  I’ve been holding off waiting for SPAG to post, but all of them can now be found here: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.infodarkness.com/if/ifcomp2010.html">http://www.infodarkness.com/if/ifcomp2010.html</a>

To any of the authors, if your game can generate a transcript I probably have it.  If you want to read through it just send me an e-mail.

- D

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1857&start=0#p12188
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: Defined Value vs Printed Value
User: matt w / DateTime: 2010-12-31 23:40:04

Have you tried a to decide phrase? This seems to work for me, though I still haven't updated from 5Z71:

[code]A stature is a kind of value. The statures are short, average, and tall.
A person has a number called height percentage. The height percentage is usually 500.
To decide what stature is the height of (shorty - person):
	if the height percentage of shorty is less than 401:
		decide on short;
	otherwise if the height percentage of shorty is less than 600:
		decide on average;
	otherwise:
		decide on tall.[/code]

From your code it looks to me as though Inform would expect you to set the height explicitly rather than looking at your definition phrases, though I'm not expert in this.

Here's a short sample game with the "to decide" phrase which seems to work as desired (the cakes and pies just give you a way to change your height, their code is awful):

[spoiler][code]Lab is a room. A cake is a kind of thing. A cake is edible. A pie is a kind of thing. A pie is edible. There are ten cakes in lab. There are ten pies in lab.

A stature is a kind of value. The statures are short, average, and tall.
A person has a number called height percentage. The height percentage is usually 500.
To decide what stature is the height of (shorty - person):
	if the height percentage of shorty is less than 401:
		decide on short;
	otherwise if the height percentage of shorty is less than 600:
		decide on average;
	otherwise:
		decide on tall.

The description of the player is "You're [height percentage of player] centimeters tall![if height of player is short] You wouldn't mind being a little taller though.[else if height of player is tall] You wouldn't mind being a little shorter though.[end if]"

After eating a cake:
	increase the height percentage of the player by 50.
After eating a pie:
	decrease the height percentage of the player by 50.
	
[/code][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1857&start=0#p12189
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: Defined Value vs Printed Value
User: mgsisk / DateTime: 2011-01-01 00:02:49

Thanks matt w, that seems to be what I was aiming for.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1857&start=0#p12190
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: Defined Value vs Printed Value
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-01 00:32:19

[quote]It seems like Inform is keeping track of two different height values for a person: an inferred value based on the definitions that it seems to use nearly everywhere, and a specified value that it only seems to use when trying to say the height of a person. Is this by design?[/quote]

You are correct that your (original) example had two different definitions of each adjective (gnomish, dwarfish, etc) -- one derived from a property, one derived from the "Definition" statements. One definition was overriding the other.

I think this is by design, but it's not my favorite design. You can completely override the definition of an adjective, which may be useful for some cases, like adjusting library behavior. But it's a crude sort of override; it's not like adding a rule to a rulebook, where you can adjust the priorities or inspect the rulebook in the index to see what's going on. So it's better to avoid this. Matt's solution is fine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1857&start=0#p12191
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: Defined Value vs Printed Value
User: mgsisk / DateTime: 2011-01-01 00:43:46

Yeah, it's a little odd how it handles things but I finally realized the definitions really don't have any connection to the height value. I've settled on eliminating the height value and just using definition statements to define the height of an actor, then a decide block to set a "height of the actor" text for saying the height.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1047&start=0#p12192
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: where can I get ifarchive.org
User: Bloodsong / DateTime: 2011-01-01 03:23:37

[quote="zarf"]The answer is, roughly, that if you want a one-off copy, you should use a web-downloading tool (like wget) -- just limit the download speed so that you don't block out other users.  And only download the directories you really need. Consider using a mirror near you rather than the main site.[/quote]

Any recommendations as to the prefered download rate to limit it to, and/or wait periods between files for both main site and any mirrors?

Tommie

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1047&start=0#p12193
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: where can I get ifarchive.org
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-01-01 03:33:18

Actually you don't need a web download tool, since many mirrors allow FTP access. That means you can copy the "ifarchive" directory directly (pretty much like a normal directory on your disk.)

I recommend <a class="postlink" href="ftp://ftp.giga.or.at/pub">ftp://ftp.giga.or.at/pub</a> since in Europe bandwidth in not a big concern.

You can use FileZilla if you're on Windows. On Linux and Mac OS X, simply open the above address in your file manager and copy the "ifarchive" directory.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=20#p12194
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-01-01 04:33:45

[quote="emshort"]... but I suspect part of the reason is that what it does is no longer surprising.[/quote]

Just as long as you recognize that as a significant form of success, it's still good news [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1830&start=0#p12195
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Defaults Just Prints Blank Prompt
User: demonboy / DateTime: 2011-01-01 08:28:55

I do not have any rules about saying hello. This shouldn't make a difference, should it? I'm just asking the receptionist about an item so why would she not tell me anything until I say 'hello' to her first? I'm not sure I understand the logic of this, if this is the default of Inform.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1830&start=0#p12196
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Defaults Just Prints Blank Prompt
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-01-01 09:33:10

This is not default to Inform, as Inform itself does not have rules for greeting NPCs, everything is brought in by the extensions.

If you have modified the extensions as you say in the first message there's a high chance that you have removed or altered something in a way that breaks the functionality. The first step would be to re-install the extensions and try again. If it still doesn't work, we need a full text of what you tried; I just tested both Sisko examples in the Conversational Defaults extension and they both work fine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1830&start=0#p12197
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Defaults Just Prints Blank Prompt
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-01 11:59:44

[quote="demonboy"]I do not have any rules about saying hello. This shouldn't make a difference, should it? I'm just asking the receptionist about an item so why would she not tell me anything until I say 'hello' to her first? I'm not sure I understand the logic of this, if this is the default of Inform.[/quote]

The default of Inform is that if you define a new action without telling Inform what to do with the new action, it won't do anything. I think that's what you're seeing here. (This doesn't come up that much as ubiquitously as you might expect, since a lot of the usual sorts of things like picking things up or going from place to place come with rules predefined, and there are parser errors for input that doesn't correspond to any undefined action; I'm thinking of when you specifically define a new action without any rules for saying something when the action is performed.

To see this, open a new project -- don't include any extensions -- and type this:

[code]Lab is a room.
Saying hello is an action applying to nothing.
Understand "hello" as saying hello.[/code]

If you start the game and type "hello," you'll get a blank prompt. That's because the game is performing the action "saying hello," but there aren't any rules telling it what to do or say when it's saying hello, so it doesn't do anything.

Now add this:

[code]Report saying hello: say "Hi!".[/code]

Now when you type hello into the game, you should get "Hi!" before the command prompt. That's because the report rule fires after the game performs the saying hello action, and that's what tells the game to print "Hi!"

So, getting back to your case, the tl;dr: you should figure out (or ask someone) why Conversation Framework isn't compiling, because that's where your problem is. Make sure you have the current version, and that there isn't something in your code that's making it go goofy; if you do, you should probably let Eric Eve know that it's not compiling. 

OK, you said you commented out "try saying hello" in the Conversation Framework extension. I've never used these extensions, but it looks like when your first command in the example is "a sisko" it's supposed to trigger the following rules in Conversation Framework:

[code]Before conversing when the noun is not the current interlocutor (this is the greet a new interlocutor rule):
implicitly greet the noun;
if the noun is not the current interlocutor, stop the action.

[...]
To implicitly greet (character - a thing):
now the greeting type is implicit;
try saying hello to the character.

[...]
Carry out saying hello to a person (this is the note current interlocutor when greeted rule):
now the current interlocutor is the noun.

[and there's this one, which won't fire but is worth noting]
Report saying hello to someone when the greeting type is explicit (this is the default greeting rule):
say "You say hello to [the noun]."
[/code]

Asking Sisko about something counts as conversing (I think), so the first "before" rule tells the game to implicitly greet him before asking him anything. Then the "to implicitly greet" rule sets the greeting type to implicit and tells the game to perform the try saying hello action. Performing the try saying hello action fires the carry out saying hello rule, which sets the current interlocutor to the "noun" (which should be the person we're trying to talk to, Sisko) and then fires the report saying hello rule -- but since we set the greeting type to implicit, this report saying hello rule doesn't actually fire. Now we've finished saying hello, which means we've finished implicitly greeting, so we go back to the first "before conversing" rule, which says to stop the action if the current interlocutor is not the noun.* We [i]have[/i] set the current interloctur to Sisko, so we don't stop the action and we can continue asking him about whatever.

Now look at what happens if we comment out that "try saying hello." We'll get to the "implicitly greet" rule and set the greeting type to implicit. Then we hit the end of that rule (since "try saying hello" is commented out) and go back to the "before conversing" rule. The next thing is "if the noun is not the current interlocutor, stop the action." We never did set the current interlocutor to Sisko (that would've happened in the "carry out saying hello" rule), so we stop the action -- never having told the game to say anything. That's why you get a blank command prompt. 

In your other example, if you say "hello" then I'm pretty sure what happens is that it carries out the "saying hello" action without changing the greeting type from explicit. So the current interlocutor gets reset to the receptionist, the report saying hello rule fires and prints something else, and then when you ask her a question on the next turn you don't have to deal with any of the "before conversing" rules quoted above, since she's already the current interlocutor.

So the "try saying hello" is very important; if you don't have that in there, the only way for the player to change the current interlocutor is to explicitly say hello to them, and until you do that you won't be able to talk to them.

*The "if the noun is not the current interlocutor" clause is meant to catch cases where you tried to talk to something that isn't a person, or where the author has written a rule that blocks that carry out saying hello rule under certain circumstances. So you might write something like 

[code]Instead of saying hello to Sisko, say "Without looking up from his paperwork, Sisko shakes his head impatiently."[/code]

then (I think) when you try saying hello, the game will print that and stop the saying hello action, so the current interlocutor never gets reset and you don't wind up trying to ask him something anyway. It's important to have the "say" phrase as part of this rule, so you don't wind up with a blank command prompt. Similarly the rule that stops you from talking to inanimate objects prints a response before this clause stops the action.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1047&start=0#p12198
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: where can I get ifarchive.org
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-01 12:12:55

I'm going to arbitrarily say that if you are trawling Archive directories and downloading lots of files, limit your transfer speed to 100 kilobytes/sec. Again, that's for a one-time download.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1859&start=0#p12199
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Can new games be entered into IntroComp and IF Comp?
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2011-01-01 14:57:41

I'm a new, first-time IF author and I was wondering about the rules around some of the competitions.  I'm part way through writing my first game and am considering entering it into IntroComp to gauge interest, get feedback and continue down what seems like a long road towards completion.  However, from my quick perusal of the rules around some of the competitions, it seems that entering into IntroComp might preclude a later entry into IF Comp in the fall.  

I realize that these are two different competitions with different purposes and different organizers.   Still, it seems to me that if there's a shared goal to help encourage new authors to create higher quality works, then it should be possible to enter the introductory "work in progress" opening scenes of my game in IntroComp and then, if I'm successful completing the game, enter the finished work into IF Comp.  

Can anyone shed any light on this?  

Thanks in advance
--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=20#p12200
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2011-01-01 15:36:56

[quote="Jeff Nyman"][b]I'm curious if any authors of textual IF here have felt that same way in terms of writing vs. playing? Is the writing for you more fun than the playing?[/b][/quote]

Yes, writing interactive fiction is more fun for me than playing interactive fiction.

However, running a tabletop game is more fun for me than playing in someone else's game, and being in a play is more fun to me than watching someone else be in a play, and singing is more fun for me than going to a concert, and writing poetry is more fun for me than reading someone else's poetry.  That isn't to say that playing tabletop, going to theater, going to concerts, and reading poetry aren't fun - but, with rare exception, I want to be on the creative side instead of the experiential side.  It's just the kind of person I am.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=20#p12201
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-01-01 15:44:42

I thought that was pretty much universal? At least for the performing arts. It certainly is the case for me as a musician.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1859&start=0#p12202
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Can new games be entered into IntroComp and IF Comp?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-01-01 17:12:32

From the [url=http://allthingsjacq.com/introcomp/]IntroComp FAQ[/url]:

[quote]WHEN I FINISH WRITING MY GAME, CAN I SUBMIT IT TO IFCOMP?
No go, my friend. It would run afoul of the spirit of IFComp's "no prior release" rule. You may be allowed to enter it in other minicomps, though - ask your local minicomp dealer. [/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1780&start=0#p12203
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help creating a virtual patient
User: jwaxman / DateTime: 2011-01-01 18:05:16

Thanks again Erik.
I've used Eric Eve's built in Epistemology extension and turned everything: interview questions, exam findings, diagnoses, treatments, etc into subjects. Doing so helped me to clean up my code and make it more consistent from section to section. I didn't see anything in the other EE conversation extensions that I needed (I think).

What did you mean by
[quote]values may require more "understand" declarations than objects[/quote]?

Is there a shortcut for synonyms for objects that doesn't exist for values?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1841&start=0#p12204
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Understanding Commas
User: Bistre / DateTime: 2011-01-01 18:25:12

Well, that does seem to be a bit inconvenient. The players will just have to manage, I suppose. Thank you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1780&start=0#p12205
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help creating a virtual patient
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-01-01 18:32:57

[quote="jwaxman"]What did you mean by
[quote]values may require more "understand" declarations than objects[/quote]?

Is there a shortcut for synonyms for objects that doesn't exist for values?[/quote]

Glad to hear it's going well!

When you declare an object, Inform automatically allows each word in the object to refer to it independently, and also automatically disambiguates for you. So, two objects defined as:

[color=#0000FF]cloudy left eye
clear right eye[/color]

...will automatically produce the following output:

[quote]>examine cloudy eye
It's got a catarct, all right.

>examine cloudy
It's got a cataract, all right.

>examine right eye
It's oddly dilated.

>examine clear eye
It's oddly dilated.

>examine eye
Which eye do you mean, the cloudy eye or the clear eye?[/quote]

To do the same with values, you'd need to use some extra understand statements (e.g., Understand "cloudy" or "cloudy eye" or "right eye" or "right cloudy eye" as the cloudy right eye), and probably a dummy value (for "eye" alone) that would make clear that more specific input is necessary (since Inform won't auto-disambiguate values).

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1860&start=0#p12206
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7: Question about values
User: cbernard / DateTime: 2011-01-01 18:44:36

I'm trying to make an oven with a temperature knob that can be set, but in the check code for turning the dial I get an error message.

Here's the code:
[code]
The oven_dial is part of the oven. Understand "dial" as the oven_dial. The oven_dial has a number called current setting. The current setting of the oven_dial is 100. The oven_dial has a number called min setting. The min setting of the oven_dial is 100. The oven_dial has a number called max setting. The max setting of the oven_dial is 500. The description of the dial is "The oven dial can be set from [min setting of the oven_dial] to [max setting of the oven_dial] degrees Fahrenheit. At the moment it's set to [current setting of the oven_dial]."
Instead of turning the oven_dial:
say "You have to specify a number to turn it to."
Setting the state of it to is an action applying to one thing and one number. Understand "turn [something] to [number]" or "set [something] to [number]" or "adjust [something] to [number]" or "put [something] at [number]" or "heat [something] to [number]" or "crank [something] to [number]" as setting the state of it to.
Check setting the state of it to:
if the noun is not the oven_dial or the noun is not the oven, say "You can't set [the noun] to a number." instead;
if the noun is the oven, now the noun is the oven_dial;
if the noun is the oven_dial:

	if the number understood < min setting of the oven_dial:
	
		instead: say "The lowest setting is [min setting of the oven_dial] degrees.";

	if the number understood > max setting of the oven_dial:
	
		instead: say "Sorry, the dial can only be set from [min setting of the oven_dial] to [max setting of the oven_dial] degrees.".

Carry out setting the state of it to:
now the current setting of the noun is the number understood;
say "You set the oven temperature to [number understood]."
[/code]

The two lines that look like 'if the number understood < min setting of the oven_dial' generate the error message:

You wrote 'if the number understood < min setting of the oven_dial'  : but this is a kind of value which already has a semi-numerical specification, so it can't have an entirely verbal form as well.


How can I fix this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1861&start=0#p12207
Forum: Feedback / Subject: The spoiler tag
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-01 18:59:15

Is it possible to add a preference for the spoiler tag to not hide text? Or, alternatively, adjust the spoiler tag so that it defaults to "not hidden" on a non-javascript browser?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1780&start=0#p12208
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help creating a virtual patient
User: jwaxman / DateTime: 2011-01-01 19:34:53

Interesting.
That presents new problems though.
I guess I didn't realize that the whole "or" and "/" thing isn't supposed to be used for naming objects in table.

[code]Table of Interview Question Definitions
interview question		importance				response
headaches or head pain	important				"Why yes I have been having headaches."
chest pain				unimportant				"No, I haven't had any chest pain."
eye pain					important				"No, my eyes don't hurt at all."[/code]

asking about "pain" leads to [quote]Which do you mean, headaches or head pain, chest pain or eye pain?[/quote]

and asking about "or" ends up referring to headaches.
Is there a way to get synonyms into a table without this complication.

Is there a way to get inform to spit out  [quote]Which do you mean, headaches, chest pain or eye pain?[/quote] when asking about "pain"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1860&start=0#p12209
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: Question about values
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-01-01 21:21:08

Are those blank lines really in your source code? You can't have blank lines in the middle of a rule — it doesn't work. Looks like you've got 4 of them in the middle of your Check rule there. When you skip a line where you shouldn't, I've found that Inform tends to reject the first line following the skipped line, so maybe that is what's happening here.

Paul.

EDIT: P.S. Also, I don't think you can use colons after your 'instead' like that (I mean within your Check rule) -- rather than 'instead: say' I think it should just be 'instead say'...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1861&start=0#p12211
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: The spoiler tag
User: Merk / DateTime: 2011-01-01 21:31:22

Well, the purpose of the spoiler tag was the hide the text inside it, so having it be expanded by default would defeat its purpose. I could add another tag that has the same header but doesn't collapse, if that would help. I gather from the request that there's a reason you're asking, though. Is it causing some issues with non-javascript browsers?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1860&start=0#p12212
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: Question about values
User: cbernard / DateTime: 2011-01-01 23:37:51

Ok. I had it formatted differently at first, but when I got a bunch of error messages I changed the formatting, and since most of the messages disappeared, I thought I had fixed it.  [emote]:oops:[/emote]  When I tried what you said, it worked. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1861&start=0#p12213
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: The spoiler tag
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-02 00:38:27

A block which fails to be hidden defeats the purpose of the spoiler tag, but a block which fails to expand defeats the purpose of the whole post. It's easier for a non-javascript reader to deal with the former, is all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1863&start=0#p12215
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Filght of the Hummingbird post-comp release
User: Michael Martin / DateTime: 2011-01-02 01:10:27

Release 2 of Flight of the Hummingbird is now finished. It is available at the moment at 

<a class="postlink" href="http://hkn.eecs.berkeley.edu/~mcmartin/if/games/Hummingbird/">http://hkn.eecs.berkeley.edu/~mcmartin/ ... mmingbird/</a>

With an additional copy working its way into the Archive.

[list][*]A wide variety of new phrasings and synonyms have been added that should make interaction with some objects simpler. Many thanks to the comp judges who sent me transcripts.[/*:m][*]The Last Lousy Point has been removed; in its place are five Optional Challenges tracked individually and separately from the score.[/*:m][*]It is now possible to beat the game using no takeable objects that you did not start the game with. This is in fact one of the aforementioned optional challenges.[/*:m][*]A few wobbles in the physics model have been improved.[/*:m][*]The source code has been cleaned up for release.[/*:m][*]A handful of additional alternate solutions have been added to many puzzles.[/*:m][*]The hint menus have been improved slightly.[/*:m][*]Plot elements involving your interactions with mission control have been extended and refined.[/*:m][/list:u]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1830&start=0#p12216
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Defaults Just Prints Blank Prompt
User: demonboy / DateTime: 2011-01-02 03:56:29

Thanks for the comprehensive reply, Matt, that's great and it helps me understand a little more. Your explanation appears to make sense under the circumstances but I'm not sure how I get Inform to avoid that empty command prompt. Despite reinstalling the extensions in question and ensuring that the 'try saying hello...' line is not commented out, I am still getting '>' when I type "ask receptionist about photo". What I'd like to happen is for it to come back and say "try saying hello first". Should it do this by default or do I need to set this up?

Alternatively is there a way of getting my receptionist to answer some questions but have default responses to others (taken from a random list) without having to install these extensions and without having to say hello first?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1860&start=0#p12217
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: Question about values
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-01-02 05:12:34

Oh, no worries. That skipped line thing has tripped me up already many times, and every time it's happened, I stared at the error message and at my code for 10 or 15 minutes wondering WTF was Inform talking about — I guess I finally learned! 87

The only other bug that has stumped me as often is this thing where after "Currency is a kind of value. $1.99 specifies a currency with parts dollars and cents. X is a currency variable.' Inform will accept 'X is the currency with dollars part 19 cents part 99.' but it won't accept 'X is a currency with dollars part 19 cents part 99.' — much like with whitespace, Inform doesn't care whether you type 'a' and 'the' [i]except[/i] in a few circumstances, and that gets me, every time, I will tend to just stare and stare at those 'errors' and see nothing wrong.

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1780&start=0#p12218
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help creating a virtual patient
User: jwaxman / DateTime: 2011-01-02 10:01:09

Never mind. Got this one on my own.
I created an extra text property for the printed name and a name printing rule to go with it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1830&start=0#p12219
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Defaults Just Prints Blank Prompt
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-02 10:41:45

[quote="demonboy"]Thanks for the comprehensive reply, Matt, that's great and it helps me understand a little more. Your explanation appears to make sense under the circumstances but I'm not sure how I get Inform to avoid that empty command prompt. Despite reinstalling the extensions in question and ensuring that the 'try saying hello...' line is not commented out, I am still getting '>' when I type "ask receptionist about photo". What I'd like to happen is for it to come back and say "try saying hello first". Should it do this by default or do I need to set this up?

Alternatively is there a way of getting my receptionist to answer some questions but have default responses to others (taken from a random list) without having to install these extensions and without having to say hello first?[/quote]

No problem. As I said, I haven't used these extensions myself -- this was as much a way to work out how it worked for myself as anything else. Which also means that I'm not sure how to do what you say in the first paragraph -- maybe some of the other folk can explain it better.

You can definitely do what you say in the second paragraph, though, especially if you don't want your conversations to be too complicated. Check out [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/ex198.html#e198]this section[/url] of the manual and the examples in it. To do a random list of default answers to the receptionist, I think something like this will work:

[code]Instead of asking the receptionist about something:
	say "[one of]She says, 'Toodle-oo!'[or]She tries to look interested.[or]She says, 'Yes, yes.'[at random]".

Instead of asking receptionist about "[framed photo]":
        say "'Why, it's a photo of me', exclaims the receptionist as she flutters her eyelashes. '".[/code]

The default rule won't interfere with the rule for the photo, because that rule is more specific and gets checked first.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1859&start=0#p12220
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Can new games be entered into IntroComp and IF Comp?
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2011-01-02 12:39:49

Thanks for pointing out the answer from the FAQ. 

 I guess my question is more fundamental: why can't a game entered into IntroComp be later entered into IF Comp?  After all, it's not a complete game at the IntroComp stage anyways.

--Zack

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1859&start=0#p12221
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Can new games be entered into IntroComp and IF Comp?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-01-02 13:15:57

A game entered into IntroComp to "gauge interest" would gain an unfair advantage over games that have their initial release in IFcomp. To counter this you'd then have to allow all other games to release previews as well, which would change the nature of IFcomp and not to a better direction IMHO. You'd also have to change the nicely unambiguous no previous release rule to something that'd be very hard to define without leaving room for interpretation. (How long intros are allowed? 20% of the full game? 50%? How is it measured and by whom? Would re-releases be allowed?)

IntroComp does have the one year completion deadline that comes very close to the IFcomp deadline. I'm not sure what the actual benefit for the author would be other than to be able to win two prizes for the same game, which would probably be perceived as unfair.

(Disclaimer: This is just my personal opinion and I do not represent IFcomp or IntroComp.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1830&start=0#p12223
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Defaults Just Prints Blank Prompt
User: demonboy / DateTime: 2011-01-02 20:49:51

Thanks, Matt. I picked up on your suggestion of certain rules being processed first, I didn't realise Inform did this. This may be the cause of some other issues I have, so thanks again for pointing that out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1864&start=0#p12224
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7 does incorrect math on scaled units
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-01-03 02:28:10

Knocking around the UNITS system trying things, I've found at least two (seemingly, different) problems with Inform's built-in math routines. The answer Inform gives is actually not mathematically correct. These are problems with very common operations like simple multiplication and even addition, so I would be surprised if these are not already known issues, thus I have not reported them yet as bugs and have been thinking about them for about a week wondering if I just miscalculated something, but I don't think so. Math is math...

Both issues are with Inform's system of fractional math. The first occurs when you simply scale a number with a non-base-10 value. For example...

[code]The Kitchen is a room. Filesize is a kind of value. 1KB specifies a filesize. 1MB specifies a filesize scaled up by 1024.

X, Y, and Z are filesizes that vary.

X is 500KB. Y is 700KB.

When play begins:
	showme x;
	showme y;
	now z is x + y;
	showme z;
	now z is z - 700KB;
	showme z.[/code]
The first value returned for Z is off -- it returns 1.1729MB when the answer should be 1.1719MB -- and the error is larger by an order of magnitude than the margin of error you would expect from the scaling (I would expect the 4th decimal place to possibly be wrong or omitted, but not the third, that's too much error). However, it seems the value is being stored correctly, because subtracting 700KB from Z results in the correct value, so the mistake only appears when printing a scale-shifted result (and furthermore only when printing a result scale-shifted via a non-base-10 scale).

The other flaw is much simpler and I'd be surprised if people didn't know about it already. Multiplying and dividing compound units (i.e. '6 foot 2' or '8 lb 5 oz') by each other produces results that are way off, usually by an order of magnitude -- and the whole number, not just one digit. Witness the disastrous results of my attempt to create an (apparently) unitless, single-decimal-place number type...

[code]The Kitchen is a room. A single-decimal-place number is a kind of value.
1.9 specifies a single-decimal-place number with parts integer and decimal.
A single-decimal-place number times a single-decimal-place number specifies a single-decimal-place number.

When play begins:
	let p be 1.9;
	let q be 7.5;
	let r be p * q;
	let s be p / q;
	showme r;
	showme s.[/code]
Multiplication inflates the results when multiplying compound units together, in this case by a factor of 10. Division lowballs the result by a factor of I think either 100 or 1000 in this case; though I don't remember specifically -- you can probably work it out from the 'To decide' routine I ended up with to compensate (see below).

I was finally able to create a somewhat mathematically usable, compound unit, but after correcting for Inform's errors, it isn't exactly pretty. With multiplication it was easy: I just fudged it. With division the necessary precision gets lost, so the only way was to convert the whole thing to integer math and then back again (but something janky seems to be going on there, too, because I had to scale the dividend up by an order of magnitude more than I expected, to get the right answer out even using integer math, or maybe I just miscalculated at first, but anyway by trial & error, I basically just added factors of 10, until I got the right answer).

The below will probably have to be modified to compensate for a different level of error if you use non-base-10 scaling or if want greater than one decimal place of precision, but these additional 'To decide' routines or something like them seems necessary to get accurate co-multiplication or co-division out of a compound (i.e. two part) unit kind: please correct me if I am wrong...

[code]The Kitchen is a room.
	
A single-decimal-place number is a kind of value.
1.9 specifies a single-decimal-place number with parts integer and decimal.
A single-decimal-place number times a single-decimal-place number specifies a single-decimal-place number.
	
	To decide which single-decimal-place number is (x - a single-decimal-place number) multiplied correctly by (y - a single-decimal-place number):
		let z be x * y;
		decide on z / 10.
	
	To decide which single-decimal-place number is (x - a single-decimal-place number) divided correctly by (y - a single-decimal-place number):
		let xk be 10 * the integer part of x;
			now xk is xk + the decimal part of x;
			now xk is xk * 100;
		let yk be 10 * the integer part of y;
			now yk is yk + the decimal part of y;
		let zk be xk / yk;
			now zk is zk / 10;
		let zi be zk / 10;
		let zd be the remainder after dividing zk by 10;
		decide on the single-decimal-place number with integer part zi decimal part zd.
	
	When play begins:
		let p be 1.9;
		let q be 7.5;
		let r be p multiplied correctly by q;
		let s be p divided correctly by q;
		showme r;
		showme s.[/code]
Paul.

EDIT: Damn, I have not tried this in 6G60 yet. I really should have — I will later.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1800&start=0#p12225
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: [SPAG] #59 Now Available
User: Neo / DateTime: 2011-01-03 06:42:26

SPAG #59 as an 'IFmag' (Z-Code)
[url]http://www.inthecompanyofgrues.com/interactivefiction/SPAG%20No.%2059.z8[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1865&start=0#p12226
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Quest 4.1.4 is now freeware
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-01-03 08:42:50

With Quest 5.0 currently under development as free and open-source software, it doesn’t make much sense to continue trying to sell copies of Quest Pro 4.x. So I’m happy to announce that the new release, version 4.1.4 is now available and is completely free.

There is no longer a separate Quest Pro product. Instead, all of the benefits of that edition have been folded into the free version. So, Quest 4.1.4 is now free and includes:

- an unrestricted version of the editor, QDK – you can now make games as big as you like
- the Quest Compiler, which lets you encrypt your ASL file so players can’t edit your game
- the Quest Packager, which lets you turn your game into a stand-alone Setup EXE file for Windows machines

You can download Quest 4.1.4 from <a class="postlink" href="http://www.axeuk.com/quest/">http://www.axeuk.com/quest/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1866&start=0#p12227
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Creating z3 story files.
User: aliennerd / DateTime: 2011-01-03 09:41:26

I've been having a hunt around for some software that will allow me to create and compile a small adventure into a version 3 or z3 story file.  I'm not having much luck, the platform can be Windows 95 up or OSX Tiger up for the development.

I started using Inform but as far as I can tell it currently compiles to z5 and above?

I hope I'm making sense.

Charlie

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1866&start=0#p12228
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating z3 story files.
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-01-03 11:16:51

Well, the [i]very[/i] obvious question here is: why?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1866&start=0#p12229
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating z3 story files.
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-01-03 11:28:25

[quote="aliennerd"]I started using Inform but as far as I can tell it currently compiles to z5 and above?[/quote]You don't say which version of Inform you're using. Inform 7 definitely doesn't support anything before z5. Inform 6 did, at least partially: the latest version of the Inform compiler and library that was useable with z3 was Inform 6.05 and library 6/2, I think. You can get these from the IF-Archive if you really want to, but expect it to be a pretty minimal environment to work in.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1866&start=0#p12230
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating z3 story files.
User: aliennerd / DateTime: 2011-01-03 11:58:26

Thanks chaps for your help.  In answer to the question why?  [emote]:D[/emote] 

I've set myself a challenge for the Retrochallenge Winter Warmup to create a new adventure that I can play on my Epson PX-8 which is a CP/M based machine from the early 80's.

The z-machine interpreter I have for it (Infocom) only supports version 3 story files as far as I can tell.

Charlie

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1791&start=20#p12231
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: the object tree and the chunk
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-03 12:20:37

[quote="zarf"]I don't say this at all.[/quote] I looked for the post of yours that made me believe that, but it seems to have existed only in my imagination.  My apologies, zarf.  (But I coulda [i]swore[/i]...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1866&start=0#p12232
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating z3 story files.
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-01-03 14:49:42

[quote="DavidK"]The latest version of the Inform compiler and library that was useable with z3 was Inform 6.05 and library 6/2, I think.[/quote]Looking into it further, it turns out that Inform 6.15 was what I meant here. Also worth looking at is 
Dave Bernazzani's mInform library, which was written to allow z3 games for old systems:

[url]http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/infocom/compilers/inform6/library/contributions/minform.zip[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1865&start=0#p12233
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Quest 4.1.4 is now freeware
User: ManolisG13 / DateTime: 2011-01-03 14:58:32

Thanx for making it free [emote]:)[/emote]

I'll give it a try sometime soon , though atm I'm mostly ready to bother with Inform 7 as I have Aaron's Reed book sitting in the library for very long..

Thanx again, nice move..

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1864&start=0#p12234
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 does incorrect math on scaled units
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-01-03 16:22:35

If this is a problem in the new build, it sounds like bug report time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1866&start=0#p12235
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating z3 story files.
User: aliennerd / DateTime: 2011-01-03 17:15:33

Thanks David, I might even go for Inform 5.

Charlie

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1864&start=0#p12236
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 does incorrect math on scaled units
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-01-03 17:40:20

For the second bit of code:

[code]When play begins:
	let p be 1.9;
	let q be 7.5;
	let r be p * q;
	let s be p / q;
	showme r;
	showme s.[/code]
You have effectively said

[code]When play begins:
	let p be 19 tenths;
	let q be 75 tenths;
	let r be p * q; [19*75=1425]
	let s be p / q; [19/75=0 (and some change, which is lost in the integer arithmetic)]
	showme r; [1425 is formatted as 142.5]
	showme s. [0 is formatted as 0.0][/code]
so Inform has done everything correctly.  Or, put another way, by writing

[code]A single-decimal-place number times a single-decimal-place number specifies a single-decimal-place number.[/code]
you have claimed that a tenth times a tenth is a tenth.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1865&start=0#p12237
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Quest 4.1.4 is now freeware
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-01-03 17:48:45

Here's hoping we start seeing a large influx of quality quest games, both for quest 4 and for quest 5 when it comes available!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1613&start=20#p12238
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Custom Library Messages, version 0.
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-03 17:58:19

[quote="gravel"]Your second example isn't compiling for me on 6E72.[/quote]

Ah, that's because the paste button doesn't work right for I6 inclusions, turning (- ... -)  into a mess like (--) ... -)  or some such. 

After tweaking the extension a tiny bit more, I've submitted it to the official extensions site.  Thanks to all you early adopters.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1791&start=20#p12239
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: the object tree and the chunk
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-03 18:05:53

Nah, it's okay. What I said was "When I'm discussing IF as an art form, I talk about game events and what choices the player is thinking about." Player choice is a broad topic; CYOA or "choice game" is narrower. But the terminology isn't clear (or clearly agreed on).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1864&start=0#p12240
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 does incorrect math on scaled units
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-01-03 18:17:13

Alright, did I do wrong by setting a kind of number to multiply by itself? That is not what the Writing With Inform manual suggests, I realise, and I had a feeling that might come up. Besides, my example is sort of bending the unit system to a purpose for which it wasn't designed, and that makes it an unintuitive example.

So, let's go by the book, then. As Writing With Inform recommends, let's have a length times a length specify an area. But let's make them compound units, and see if the math comes out with anything resembling common sense reality...

[code]The Kitchen is a room.

Length is a kind of value. 8 foot 11 specifies a length.
An area is a kind of value. 8 foot 11 inches square specifies an area.
A length times a length specifies an area.

X and Y are lengths that vary. Z is an area that varies.

X is 5 foot 4. Y is 4 foot 9.

When play begins:
	now z is x * y;
	showme x;
	showme y;
	showme z;[/code]
So now inform is telling me that when I multiply 5 foot 4 by 4 foot 9, the result is 304 feet 0 inches square. Once again, this is off by an order of magnitude, and seems to run counter to what the manual claims, which is that multiplying length units together is meant to represent an area. In order to achieve that end, Inform should have converted everything to inches, multiplied them together, and then divided everything by 12, and then by 12 again (because the result is squared) -- but it forgot to divide by 12 the second time. Just as it forgot to divide by 10 a second time when we were dealing with a base 10 system instead of the 12 inches in a foot. Seems like a simple slip-up to me. It's hard for me to imagine a situation where the current behaviour would be useful, even if by some odd technicality it proves to be correct. (I don't really understand what you did there either Emacs with the tenth times a tenth being equal to a tenth, but I'd be curious if you think this new example is also working as intended.)

Paul.

EDIT: I just checked in the latest build (6G60) — the behaviour is unchanged. I'll file a bug report using the above example (and probably a separate one, for the first bug regarding filesize calculations), assuming EmacsUser doesn't convince me yet that I've got it all wrong. 8)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1864&start=0#p12241
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 does incorrect math on scaled units
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-01-03 18:38:23

Hmm, I'm going to leave that last response up but I think Emacsuser is right. Because thinking about it my area specification implies that there are 12 square inches in a square foot, which is of course wrong -- there are 144 inches in a square foot. So what happens if I specify that in my area? Suddenly I get the right result (the only thing I changed was the 8 foot 11 to an 8 foot 143)...

[code]The Kitchen is a room.

Length is a kind of value. 8 foot 11 specifies a length.
An area is a kind of value. 8 foot 143 inches square specifies an area.
A length times a length specifies an area.

Z is an area that varies.

X and Y are lengths that vary.

X is 5 foot 4. Y is 4 foot 9.

When play begins:
	now z is x * y;
	showme x;
	showme y;
	showme z;[/code]
I begin to see the light — thanks.

Maybe that first filesize bug is still worth reporting, though...

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1791&start=20#p12242
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: the object tree and the chunk
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-01-03 18:55:54

LOL. People don't even agree on what to call 'Interactive Fiction'. Somebody told me they were getting all into Interactive Fiction and were all excited about it, and then I realised they were talking exclusively about CYOA and were not interested in the least in a parser. I don't have any huge objection to CYOA being considered IF (though by habit that's not the way I normally use the term), but the weird combination of utter interactive text excitement with total parser-block, mystified me.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1791&start=20#p12243
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: the object tree and the chunk
User: George / DateTime: 2011-01-03 19:23:30

I was standing in line at PAX last year and talking to a few younger folks, and when I mentioned interactive fiction they said, "interactive fiction like [i]Heavy Rain[/i] or like [i]Galatea[/i]?"  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1866&start=0#p12244
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating z3 story files.
User: Roody_Yogurt / DateTime: 2011-01-04 00:37:09

You might also want to look at ZIL (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/ZIL">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/ZIL</a>), using the ZILF compiler (<a class="postlink" href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/zilf/">http://sourceforge.net/projects/zilf/</a>). It defaults to z3 story files.

Josh Lawrence made a Cloak of Darkness (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.firthworks.com/roger/cloak/">http://www.firthworks.com/roger/cloak/</a>) ZIL example. You can download it and see if it's something you'd think you'd be able to learn: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.mozomedia.com/IF/zilf_cloak.zip">http://www.mozomedia.com/IF/zilf_cloak.zip</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1866&start=0#p12245
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Creating z3 story files.
User: aliennerd / DateTime: 2011-01-04 06:55:31

Ok, thanks very much I'll take a look at that as well.

Charlie

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1867&start=0#p12246
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Zifmia - Content Filtering
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2011-01-04 13:06:24

So I have a working version of Zifmia (web service based FyreVM engine) accessible via jQuery Ajax. There are still pieces to complete, like logins, user identity, authorization, and managing game sessions, but I'm looking at the UI for the moment.

The content from FyreVM is returned in raw format. Nothing is done to the text of any channel from what the I7 game provides. In previous versions of FyreVM, we had a filtering mechanism that would implement XAML, HTML, or plain text results. I didn't think this belonged in the FyreVM engine, so I removed it.

Now I need to re-implement the content filtering, in the case of Zifmia, for HTML. But where?

My original thoughts were it would just be an add-on library on the backend, but I think an author may want to tweak the filter, so I'm thinking this would be better served on the client side in JavaScript.

So Zifmia.HTMLFilter.js would implement a standard channel filter mechanism. The default filter would simply change newlines to <p> tags. I still need to work through this, but it's not complicated.

If an author were to add their own inline tags, those have to be either filtered or ignored. An example of inline filtering might be the author designating a link with something like:

say "The [kitchen is to the east | go east]";

And the content filter turns that into <p>The <a href="javascript:AutoRespond('go east')>kitchen is to the east</a></p>.

I'm just looking for anyone's thoughts on where the content filtering should happen and any other ideas about implementation.

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1868&start=0#p12247
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: When in the presence of someone...
User: BishyT / DateTime: 2011-01-04 19:44:06

I already know how to do "Instead of (doing something) in the presence of so-and-so", but I seem to be having trouble with checking IF the player is in the presence of someone at a particular time.

For example, I want something to happen every turn, but only if the player is in the presence of someone.

I've tried "Every turn while/when in the presence of Grandpa", as well as separating the presence into it's own if statement ("If in the presence of Grandpa"), but all I keep getting is errors.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1839&start=0#p12248
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help With Conditionals?
User: SilverPhoenix / DateTime: 2011-01-04 20:33:15

Ok, one more question, which is actually a coding question for a friend of mine. She's trying to figure out how to code conditionals with attacking. It's much more complex than mine. I tried to help her out with what I know from here, but it's not working. Let me show you the code:
[code]A person can be attacked or not-attacked.

Understand "kill leader/use saber on leader/throw saber at leader" as "[attack leader]"

Instead of attacking:
    if the noun is Leader
         say "Your blade meets the man's with a ring and a sickening squeal as the iron grinds together. He's huge, nearly a foot taller than    
         you, and after a valiant effort on your part he forces the blade from your grip. It thuds to the ground where he kicks it out of your 
         reach before you can make a grab for it. You always try to tell Bernhard that a dagger was more your style but he never listens.";
    Leader is now attacked

Check attacking Leader:
   If Leader is not-attacked:
         After waiting for the first time:
               say "The man in the black tunic is squaring off with you. It occurs to you that now would be the time to use your saber. After      
               all, the CB didn't ask you to save lives."
         After waiting for the second time:
               say "The man raises his battleaxe and charges you. You notice..."
         After waiting for the third time:
               say "The thieves' leader..."; end the game in death.

    If Leader is attacked:
         After waiting for the first time:
               say "The thieves' leader..."; end the game in death.[/code]

What's tripping inform up (for the moment, anyway) is "If Leader is attacked" and the subsequent colon. I really don't understand why this is, especially when it seems to be fine with "If Leader is not-attacked" unless it's just not currently showing an error message there....

Thoughts?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1854&start=0#p12249
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction-speak: A Linguistic Conspiracy! :D
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-04 22:23:53

I'd say almost certainly yes on both counts - structure and ease of use influences what makes it in, and assumptions for use influence how those things are made, too.  Of course, many of the default states aren't original to the language; Inform gives you a male protagonist by default, but that's not a new assumption in the history of IF, gaming, entertainment, or literature, all of which have influenced designers long before they ever read the first line of documentation.  

I do find that if I write while coding, my sentences tend to be much more declarative - similar in structure to the ones I'm writing in Inform.  I'm not sure how much of that is the language, though, and how much of it is trying to do two things at once.  I don't really think in Inform, though (as is evident by the amount of time I spend rewriting code chunks), so I'm not sure anyone but very very advanced coders might run into the kind of thing Sapir-Whorf refers to.  Inform may be more influenced by the structure of English than games are by being written in Inform.  (What that influence looks like I have no idea, but especially since it's a natural language, I'm sure there's some assumptions that Inform takes on from its mother tongue.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1839&start=0#p12250
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help With Conditionals?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-04 22:58:02

Well, there's a couple issues going on.  The big one is that the sentence before "if leader is attacked" ends with a period, not a semi-colon, which signals to Inform that that code chunk has ended.  Therefore, it doesn't know what to do with the line beginning with "if leader is attacked".

Your friend is also going to run into problems because the instead rule written is going to prevent any of the check/carry out rules for attack from firing.  It also seems to be missing a colon on after "if the noun is leader" and a semi-colon or period after "leader is now attacked".  If fact, there's all kinds of missing punctuation.  Basically, every line end needs either a semi-colon or a period.  The last line in a code block gets a period; the rest should get semi-colons.  

Rules from different rulebooks can't be combined; "After waiting" should not be under "Check attacking", because those things will never happen simultaneously (and Inform doesn't know how to handle it.)

Here's a working example.  I've put all the attack code relevant for the leader in one "instead of attacking the leader" block.  This completely bypasses the rest of the attack rules, so if you decide in the future that the player can't attack unless she's carrying the Vorpel Blade of Gore, you'll have to do some revisions.  

It looked to me like you wanted the death sequence to happen as the player waited, but as noted in the comments, it could just as easily go every turn.  (Right now, the player character can open things, try on tiaras, talk to their friends, etc. without the fight progressing.)

There's some pretty specific grammar for declaring things in Inform; "now leader is attacked" is necessary rather than "the leader is now attacked".

I put in a "encounter count", which is similar to the waiting tag that was being used earlier.  However, that would have fired if the player had waited anywhere any earlier in the game, even if the leader wasn't present.  This is more specific, and resets itself if the player leaves the room and returns.  (I'm pretty sure this should work, but I am using 6E72 rather than the most recent version.)  

Is your friend compiling/testing every line or two?  I still find that massively worthwhile; it seems time consuming, until you have to find the one hidden bug in twenty lines of code, which is much harder than it has any right to be.  

[code]"ATTACK!"

A person can be attacked or not-attacked.

Understand "kill leader/use saber on leader/throw saber at leader" as "[attack leader]"

Instead of attacking the Leader:
	if the Leader is not-attacked:
		if the player is carrying the broadsword:
			say "Your blade meets the man's with a ring and a sickening squeal as the iron grinds together. He's huge, nearly a foot taller than   
         you, and after a valiant effort on your part he forces the blade from your grip. It thuds to the ground where he kicks it out of your
         reach before you can make a grab for it. You always try to tell Bernhard that a dagger was more your style but he never listens.";
			move the broadsword to the location;
		otherwise:
			say "You swing gamely at the man with your fist, and dodge back with a curse as he raises his blade, grinning.";
		now Leader is attacked;
	otherwise:	
		say "This fight is clearly over, and you are not the victor.";

Check waiting:  [This could be replaced by "Every turn" if you like; right now it fires only if the player is actively waiting.]
	if the encounter count is 1:
		say "The man in the black tunic is squaring off with you. It occurs to you that now would be the time to use your saber. After all, the CB didn't ask you to save lives." instead;
	otherwise if the encounter count is 2:
		say "The man raises his battleaxe and charges you. You notice..." instead;	
	otherwise if the encounter count is 3:
		say "The thieves['] leader brings his axe in for a swift blow; you have just enough time to admire his technique before it slices through your chest."; 
		end the game in death;

           
 Every turn:  [Likewise, this could be a "check waiting" or "after waiting" rule - it all depends how you want it]
	if the Leader is in the location:
		increase encounter count by 1;
	otherwise:
		now encounter count is 0; 
		
The Sparring Room is a room.  The player is carrying a broadsword.              
 The leader of the thieves is a man in the Sparring Room.
 
 Encounter count is a number that varies.  Encounter count is 0.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1868&start=0#p12251
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: When in the presence of someone...
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-04 23:09:30

I think this is "...if the player can see Grandpa".

(I'm not sure why action descriptions have a non-generalized way to say it.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1839&start=0#p12252
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help With Conditionals?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-01-05 06:44:44

Some last lousy points.

The line [quote]Understand "kill leader/use saber on leader/throw saber at leader" as "[attack leader]".[/quote] will not work as intended.

For one thing, "the slash indicates a choice between words only, not between entire phrases" (to quote [i]Writing with Inform[/i]). It's only the very words on either side of the slash that are exchangeable. What that means is that the line above makes "[attack leader]" a token for "kill leader saber on leader saber at leader", "kill leader saber on throw saber at leader", "kill use saber on leader saber at leader", and "kill use saber on throw saber at leader" – but NOT for "kill leader", "use saber on leader" or "throw saber at leader".

I suppose a syntactically correct way to do it would be 'Understand "kill leader", "use saber on leader" and "throw saber at leader" as "[attack leader]".'. However, Inform will not understand "[attack leader]" as intended [i]anyway[/i] – i.e as a token for commands triggering the action of attacking the leader.
You define commands for actions a little differently.

It seems that your friend wants "kill", "use saber on" and "throw saber at" as synonyms for "attack", but only when the player attacks the leader. She could do that this way:
[code]Understand "use saber on [leader]" and "throw saber at [leader]" as attacking.[/code]
(Inform already by default understands the command "kill" as "attack", so she need not bother about that.)

Or, if she wants "use saber on" and "throw saber at" as synonyms for "attack" generally, regardless of whom or what is attacked:
[code]Understand "use saber on [something]" and "throw saber at [something]" as attacking.[/code]

(For the sake of clarity:
[quote]It's only the very words on either side of the slash that are exchangeable.[/quote]
... except when you write 'Test me with'-commands. In that particular context you can write things like [code]Test me with "attack leader / kill leader / use saber on leader / throw saber at leader / flee."[/code] and Inform will understand it as intended. But in all other contexts it's only the very words on either side of the slash that are exchangeable.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1868&start=0#p12253
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: When in the presence of someone...
User: BishyT / DateTime: 2011-01-05 09:07:42

Thanks, it seems to work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1839&start=0#p12254
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help With Conditionals?
User: SilverPhoenix / DateTime: 2011-01-05 09:45:50

Wow, thanks so much, guys! We're both really new at this. I'm sure she'll appreciate the help. I think she needs to learn how to do turns and things, which I have no idea how to work and have very little desire to figure out at present.

I don't really get the different punctuation rules (differences between colon and semi-colon, for instance) or the rules for indentation, so it's back to the manual on that for me!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1869&start=0#p12255
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Liquids: Reporting filling
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-05 10:35:08

I'm having a problem understanding how to implement check/carry out/report rules when the circumstances before and after the action change. In this case, I want to say whether liquid flowed from one vessel to another, but I can't be sure of that unless I know the state of the game world before the carry out rules took place. What's the proper Informish way to do that? I thought using "if the noun was full" would be the way, but apparently I can't use "was" with the variable "the noun." This does not compile:

[code]
A vessel is a kind of thing. A vessel can be full or empty.

Pouring it into is an action applying to two things. Understand "pour [something] into [something]" as pouring it into.
	
The kitchen is a room. 

The teacup is a vessel in the kitchen.
The kettle is a full vessel in the kitchen.

Check pouring something that is not a vessel into something:
	say "You can't pour anything from [the noun]." instead.
	
Check pouring something into something that is not a vessel:
	say "You can't pour anything into [the second noun]." instead.
	
Carry out pouring something into something:
	if the noun is full, now the second noun is full;
	now the noun is empty.
	
Report pouring something into something:
	say "You tip [the noun] over [the second noun][if the noun was full], and water pours into it[otherwise], but nothing comes out[end if]."
		
Test me with "pour kettle into teacup"[/code]

So what's the right way?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1869&start=0#p12256
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Liquids: Reporting filling
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-05 10:58:28

I think it sad that variables can't be used with the simple past tense like that.  ::whine::   The next-most-elegant way to handle that would likely just be a truth state variable that's local to the action.  [i]The pouring it into action has a truth state called the former state.[/i] or somesuch.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1868&start=0#p12257
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: When in the presence of someone...
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-05 11:00:18

Wouldn't it be [i]Every turn in the presence of Grandpa...[/i] rather than having the when/while word there?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1870&start=0#p12258
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: New CYA: The Adventures of Phoebe McGee
User: casmith / DateTime: 2011-01-05 12:07:09

Greetings all. 

I just created a choose-your-own adventure type of story at  chooseyourstory.com called "The Adventures of Phoebe McGee." Phoebe is a thirteen-year-old living in Maine in 1937. I also created a website to support the story at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.ksu.edu/wwparent/story/Phoebe/">http://www.ksu.edu/wwparent/story/Phoebe/</a>. 

I created a fairly complex CYA type story after struggling to learn Inform 7. I would focus on that tool extensively for a period, only to be pulled away to time-consuming professional projects. Then I would return to I7 only to have to relearn what I had studied before. I am more of a storyteller than a programmer. Then I found chooseyourstory.com and was impressed with what they provide storytellers. "Phoebe" has about 250 pages, dozens of scripts (some of them fairly complicated) and a large number of variables. 

I am sure that "true" IF types might scoff at their CYA counterparts. I would agree that a CYA format can be like playing Chutes and Ladders. If you want to see a CYA story with roots in IF, I hope you take a look at "The Adventures of Phoebe McGee."

I suggest that you check out the website first. That has quite a bit of information about the story, resources, and three color maps as PDF files. 

If you take a look, I hope you enjoy it. 

Chuck

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1104&start=0#p12259
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: SUDS??
User: casmith / DateTime: 2011-01-05 12:30:58

WOW! This is sure a golden oldie. Andy and I talked frequently about my story "Snow Night" that I wrote with SUDS. The conversational system in SUDS was great. Alas, he was distracted by more important matters and left it behind. This was quite a few years ago, and I lost contact with him. Then I plunged into I7. Did my best to learn it and am amazed at what it can do if you know it. But I had too many distractions that required tedious relearning.

Now I'm working with a CYA format at chooseyourstory.com. Their tools allow for advanced and potentially complicated stories far beyond the old paperback books format.

As an example, you can visit the website for my story "The Adventures of Phoebe McGee" at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.ksu.edu/wwparent/story/Phoebe/">http://www.ksu.edu/wwparent/story/Phoebe/</a> that has a link to the story and includes resources that support it.

Someday, I might go back to the heavy hitter I7. I am more of a storyteller than a programmer. The versatile tools at chooseyourstory.com are all that I need at the moment.

Good luck!

Chuck

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1104&start=0#p12260
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: SUDS??
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-01-05 12:47:27

An authoring system's strong point should not be ease of use for the author. It should be the ability to generate games that people are actually willing to play. I don't think that SUDS does particularly well here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1869&start=0#p12261
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Liquids: Reporting filling
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-05 13:15:15

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]I think it sad that variables can't be used with the simple past tense like that.  ::whine::   The next-most-elegant way to handle that would likely just be a truth state variable that's local to the action.  [i]The pouring it into action has a truth state called the former state.[/i] or somesuch.[/quote]
I can't seem to get that working:

[code]The pouring action has a truth state called the source was filled.[/code]
[code]Report pouring something into something:
	say "You tip [the noun] over [the second noun][if the source was filled is true], and water pours into it[otherwise], but nothing comes out[end if]."[/code]

[spoiler][code]
A vessel is a kind of thing. A vessel can be full or empty.

Pouring it into is an action applying to two things. Understand "pour [something] into [something]" as pouring it into.
	
The pouring action has a truth state called the source was filled.

The kitchen is a room. 

The teacup is a vessel in the kitchen.
The kettle is a full vessel in the kitchen.

Setting action variables for pouring something into something:
	now the source was filled is whether or not the noun is full.
	
Check pouring something that is not a vessel into something:
	say "You can't pour anything from [the noun]." instead.
	
Check pouring something into something that is not a vessel:
	say "You can't pour anything into [the second noun]." instead.
	
Carry out pouring something into something:
	if the noun is full, now the second noun is full;
	now the noun is empty.
	
Report pouring something into something:
	say "You tip [the noun] over [the second noun][if the source was filled is true], and water pours into it[otherwise], but nothing comes out[end if]."
		
Test me with "pour kettle into teacup"[/code][/spoiler]

That gives me this run-time error:
[quote]*** Run-time problem P10: Since the kettle is not allowed the property "source was filled", it is against the rules to try to use it.
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1869&start=0#p12262
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Liquids: Reporting filling
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-01-05 13:36:58

A workaround might be using a three-valued property:
[code]
A vessel is a kind of thing. A vessel can be full, emptied or empty.

...
   
Carry out pouring something into something:
   if the noun is full, now the second noun is full;
   now the noun is emptied.
   
Report pouring something into something:
   say "You tip [the noun] over [the second noun][if the noun is emptied], and water pours into it[otherwise], but nothing comes out[end if]."; now the noun is empty.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1869&start=0#p12263
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Liquids: Reporting filling
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-05 14:03:23

Ugh! If I'm going to put side effects into a report rule, I might as well just print a message during a carry out rule. Or just do everything with an Instead rule.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1865&start=0#p12264
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Quest 4.1.4 is now freeware
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-01-05 15:19:55

Thanks for your generosity! [emote]:)[/emote]

I'm definitely looking forward to trying out version 5, and I may use version 4 for at least a draft of a project that is coming together in my notes.  I've experimented with so many different systems over the several years that I've been involved with IF, changing systems nearly as frequently as projects.  That makes me hesitant to commit to buying a commercial product, since then I would feel obligated to continue using it, so as not to waste my purchase.  Now that Quest 4 is free, I suspect many others like me will be willing to make sincere efforts at IF projects with it.  This is exciting news!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1104&start=0#p12265
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: SUDS??
User: casmith / DateTime: 2011-01-05 15:21:02

Hard to judge ease of use because authors come in all different ages. I agree with your essential point. What matters is the experience of the player. The CYA stories that can be created at chooseyourstory.com can be extremely simple and easy to do. But they can also be quite complicated as well and for some quite immersive. Alternatively, I wouldn't say that a difficult-to-use tool is necessarily going to create a better story. 

The key to your point though is "actually willing to play." Any storyteller, regardless of medium, has to find an audience. But I'm not sure why having ease of use and creating great stories aren't compatible. I7 made a huge leap forward in its ease of use without sacrificing what can be created using it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1870&start=0#p12266
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: New CYA: The Adventures of Phoebe McGee
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-05 15:45:55

Interesting.  [spoiler]I can definitely see the IF roots, and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, although often I just wanted to type "e" rather than click the link!  I'm not sure the story takes advantage of one of the nice things about CYOA, though: the ability to push the story forward.  I explored pretty thoroughly, but about turn 204, ran out of places to go; I think I should have been able to get kerosene for the lamp, but couldn't figure it out.  I went to the clearing to wait, but after twenty turns, nothing had changed much; since it was unclear when I'd be able to see more story, that was the point I quit.  I'm sure I was missing something, but I found exploration more difficult than in typical IF, and revisiting places took quite a bit of time, as each room had to load separately, and there were a fair number of ambiance rooms.  

What I saw of the story seems really interesting, but I wonder if there's a way to tell it that's less about being told (through journals/Maize).  I was much more interested in figuring out what's up with the crows than with Hitler.  I think the bird imagery and escalating weather/intensity was leading up to something, and I wish I'd been able to get at it.  

The text needs a some polishing - there's a lot of missing commas and it's/its errors.  One out and out bug: I was able to tell Maize about the house before having visited it.  I'm also amused that falling out of the tree kills you outright, but falling off a cliff only bruises you.  Ha![/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1870&start=0#p12267
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: New CYA: The Adventures of Phoebe McGee
User: casmith / DateTime: 2011-01-05 16:31:05

Thanks for the comments gravel. Much appreciated. Did you look at the maps available on the website? I really appreciate the time you invested in going through the story.

[spoiler]Trying to set up the right time frame was a challenge. Having darkness fall too soon can be frustrating. But having it take too long is no good as well. You may have missed some events. Did you fully explore the abandoned car? I think I understand what you mean by "pushing the story forward." Reducing the time variable to make night appear more quickly would do that at the cost of cutting out some events (I may go ahead and do that now when I fix the bug you found (with the conversation with Maize). Also, I realize it's conversation heavy. As the first in a projected series of episodes I wanted to give the background foundation. The next time around (if there is one) I will work on revealing things in other ways.[/spoiler]

Chuck

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1870&start=0#p12268
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: New CYA: The Adventures of Phoebe McGee
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-01-05 16:42:22

I checked that website out. It bugged the hell out of me that I couldn't download games, so I forgot all about it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1870&start=0#p12269
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: New CYA: The Adventures of Phoebe McGee
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-05 16:50:59

[spoiler]I exhausted the car early on, and couldn't get in later (after the brake-releasing), although it still appeared in the description, I think.  The only place I don't recall seeing is the cemetery.

I don't think it's necessarily a time issue as a "is there something I'm missing, and if so, what?" issue.  (I'm assuming that something happens when you've triggered all the events; if not, then that's a problem.)  Maybe Maize could suggest avenues of searching; I think this is especially true early on, when Phoebe may have visited the lighthouse and found it empty.  Considering that her grandfather is missing, the lighthouse is dark, and she's getting creeped out, it feels a little incongruous to be playing around with a car to progress the story.  If she advised going back to the ship, say, that would make it easier to swallow the journey back.  Otherwise, it's just like being stuck in IF - you're stuck wandering around hoping you stumble across the missing piece.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1871&start=0#p12270
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: How to "use [blank] on [blank]"
User: CupcakeGoesRawr / DateTime: 2011-01-05 17:06:41

Hi everyone, I'm working through my first game using I7.  Basically just creating a world where I can test the possibilities.  Unfortunately, so far the possibilities are testing me.  [emote]:?[/emote] 

But here's my problem (which occurs in the last section, the rest is background info for the kind soul who attempts to help me):
(Quick side note: I know that I've spelled "dessert" not "desert".  It's eventually going to turn into a poor attempt at humor.)

[code][Player's beginning items and descriptions.]
The carrying capacity of the player is 2.  Yourself is wearing a red silken cape.  Yourself is carrying a walking stick. Description of the walking stick is "A gnarly old stick about four feet long.  You picked it up somewhere before climbing that plateau."  Description of the red silken cape is "This is your adventuring cape.  It seemed appropriate to wear today since you set off into the unknown dessert and all."

Plateau is a room in The Dessert.  The description of Plateau is "[if unvisited]You seem to be standing on a plateau overlooking the dessert.  You remember heading out into the wild looking for adventure.  Hopefully that doesn't end up being a terrible idea.[end if]  The way down is to the North and a dangerous drop surrounds you on all other sides." 

[Bush activity]
In Plateau is a burning bush.  The burning bush is lit.  Description of burning bush is "A small shrubbery sitting at the edge of the plateau is burning with a chipper little flicker.  Nevermind, it's pretty raging, fire-wise.  Fortunately, it doesn't seem to be spreading."  Instead of taking the burning bush, say "That would hurt for a whole host of reasons.  Better just leave it there.".  Instead of attacking the burning bush: say "you swing a well-aimed kick at the bush.  Your animosity towards the bush seems to have gotten the better of you when your shoe catches fire, leading to your silk cape, then hair going up in flame also.  Since you're in the dessert, you're out of luck.  Rest in peace knowing tat this is probably the most creative way to die." ; end the game in death.  Instead of using the walking stick on the burning bush: say "Your walking stick isn't very good for walking now but it certainly gives off a nice glow now." ; now the walking stick is lit.[/code]

All I'm trying to do is essentially turn the trusty walking stick into a torch if the player is creative enough to figure it out.  Clearly inform doesn't recognize "using [something] on [something else]" as an action.  Neither does it recognize "lighting [something] on [something else]"  Is there a command for accomplishing this or will I have to create a new rule?  If so, what's the best way for me to do so in this situation?  I haven't run into creating my own rules yet.

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1871&start=0#p12271
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to "use [blank] on [blank]"
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-05 17:24:34

You might try the inserting it into action.  ("Instead of inserting the walking stick into the burning bush:")
If I recall correctly, you may need to make the burning bush a container for that to work out of the box, although workarounds are possible.

Burning is also an action.  It does nothing by default, but you can change that.  Or, if you want to stick with the two noun thing, you could just remap burn to inserting something into the burning bush.  (ie "Check burning: if the burning bush is in the location, try inserting the noun into the burning bush instead.")  (Untested!)

To be kind to players, you'd want to allow as many synonymous phrases as possible, of course.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1872&start=0#p12272
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Attacking something (Inform 7)
User: ExxtaC / DateTime: 2011-01-05 17:42:34

I am very new with Inform 7 and I am trying to make it so you enter a sort of attack sequence with the animal. So far this is what I have but you always win. Do I need the ATTACK extension?

[code]
In the basement is a zombie. The zombie is an animal. "It is ugly."
Instead of attacking zombie:
	say "You attacked the zombie.....[line break]";
	say "And won!";
move zombie to Graveyard.
[/code]




Help please!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1871&start=0#p12273
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to "use [blank] on [blank]"
User: CupcakeGoesRawr / DateTime: 2011-01-05 17:46:59

Okay so I'm continuing to attempt to solve this problem.  I'm now trying to use the bush as a container that the stick may be inserted into at which time the walking stick will then be lit.

My code reads:
[code]In Plateau is a burning bush.  The burning bush is lit.  The burning bush is an open container.  Description of burning bush is "A small shrubbery sitting at the edge of the plateau is burning with a chipper little flicker.  Nevermind, it's pretty raging, fire-wise.  Thankfully it doesn't seem to be spreading."  Instead of taking the burning bush, say "That would hurt for a whole host of reasons.  Better just leave it there.".  Instead of attacking the burning bush: say "you swing a well-aimed kick at the bush.  Your animosity towards the bush seems to have gotten the better of you when your shoe catches fire, leading to your silk cape, then hair going up in flame also.  Since you're in the dessert, you're out of luck.  Rest in peace knowing tat this is probably the most creative way to die." ; end the game in death.  
	Instead of inserting "[noun]" into the burning bush:
		If the noun is the walking stick, say "Your walking stick isn't very good for walking now but it certainly gives off a nice glow now." ; now the walking stick is lit.[/code]

My error message is:
Problem. You wrote 'Instead of inserting "[noun]" into the burning bush' , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is 'inserting "[noun]" into the burning bush'. But that did not make sense as a description of an action. I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1870&start=0#p12274
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: New CYA: The Adventures of Phoebe McGee
User: casmith / DateTime: 2011-01-05 17:51:00

gravel, I went back and discovered a major error that interfered with progression. I think the mistake actually "broke" the story. That mistake should no longer cause the problem, though I'm going to go back and give it [i]additional[/i] thorough testing. Making any changes right now worries me because I could introduce another error as part of any "fix."

[spoiler]The mistake involved a failure in talking with Maize about the swan pendant dropped in the fight with Bonesnapper. This conversation opens up a pretty dramatic series of events just east of the burned house.[/spoiler]

Peter, sorry the website bugged you. The CYA story of this kind is dependent on <a class="postlink" href="http://chooseyourstory.com">http://chooseyourstory.com</a>. My website can be bypassed by going directly to this primary website. It is an online play only. My website supports the story I created there.

Depending on having to use the website in the development of the story has advantages but can be a huge challenge as well, especially when editing later.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1872&start=0#p12275
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Attacking something (Inform 7)
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-05 17:58:28

What do you want to happen?  Purely random combat is possible - take a look at the "Randomness" section (8.18 in my documentation).  On the other hand, it can be frustrating to the player.  Do you want the zombie to win unless the player has something?  

I think the ATTACK extension is definitely worth looking at if you're writing a combat intensive game and randomness appeals to you, but for most scenarios, it's probably not worth it.  (Also, since you're quite new to Inform, you may want to wrestle one megabeast at a time.  ATTACK is relatively straightforward, but it's not exactly plug and play, especially if the defaults aren't quite your thing.)

Here's a way to introduce a little bit of randomness to the encounter, if that's what you want.

[code]The Basement is a room.  The Graveyard is a room.  

In the basement is a zombie. The zombie is an animal.  The description of the zombie is "It is ugly."

Instead of attacking zombie:
	if a random chance of 1 in 2 succeeds:
		say "You attacked the zombie.....[line break]";
		say "And won!";
		move zombie to Graveyard;
	otherwise:
		say "You attacked the zombie, but lost.";
		move player to Graveyard;[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1870&start=0#p12276
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: New CYA: The Adventures of Phoebe McGee
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-05 18:02:25

Ah, that would do it.  No worries; I am fully familiar with game-breaking bugs.  Usually mine.  Let me know when it's fixed, and I'll try again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1872&start=0#p12277
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Attacking something (Inform 7)
User: ExxtaC / DateTime: 2011-01-05 18:08:11

Thanks for the code but when I paste it I get this:

The phrase or rule definition 'Instead of attacking zombie'   is written using the 'colon and indentation' syntax for its 'if's, 'repeat's and 'while's, where blocks of phrases grouped together are indented one tab step inward from the 'if ...:' or similar phrase to which they belong. But the tabs here seem to be misaligned, and I can't determine the structure. The first phrase going awry in the definition seems to be 'if a random chance of 1 in 2 succeeds'  , in case that helps. 

 This sometimes happens even when the code looks about right, to the eye, if rows of spaces have been used to indent phrases instead of tabs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1871&start=0#p12278
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to "use [blank] on [blank]"
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-05 18:08:55

Unless you're going to print the noun name, you don't need to use the "[noun]" construction; you can always just refer to the noun plain, as in "try dropping the noun" or "now the noun is lit".  

If you're writing rules for an action, you can use "something" as a placeholder.  Due to the rules of what the noun is, you'll always be inserting the noun into the second noun.  "Instead of inserting the noun into the burning bush" compiles, but it's not the way I usually see it done, which makes me a little anxious.  I usually see "instead of inserting something into the burning bush".

Accordingly, this should work.

[code]Instead of inserting something into the burning bush:
	If the noun is the walking stick, say "Your walking stick isn't very good for walking now but it certainly gives off a nice glow now." ; 
	now the walking stick is lit.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1872&start=0#p12279
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Attacking something (Inform 7)
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-05 18:10:07

Yeah, copying and pasting to or from the forum breaks the tabs into spaces.  It still looks right, but you'll need to manually tab it.  (I think it does that for everyone.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1872&start=0#p12280
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Attacking something (Inform 7)
User: ExxtaC / DateTime: 2011-01-05 18:13:44

Oh thank you. Now I am getting this one [emote]:oops:[/emote] Sorry for bothering you.




Problem. You wrote 'otherwise'  : but the punctuation here ':' makes me think this should be a definition of a phrase and it doesn't begin as it should, with either 'To' (e.g. 'To flood the riverplain:'), 'Definition:', a name for a rule (e.g. 'This is the devilishly cunning rule:'), 'At' plus a time (e.g. 'At 11:12 PM:' or 'At the time when the clock chimes') or the name of a rulebook, possibly followed by some description of the action or value to apply to (e.g. 'Instead of taking something:' or 'Every turn:').

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1872&start=0#p12281
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Attacking something (Inform 7)
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-05 18:17:02

Did you insert a line space between "move zombie to Graveyard" and "otherwise:"?
They should be on separate lines, but not with a line between them.

ie. 

Line 1;
Line 2;

not 

Line 1;

Line 2;

In the second case, Inform will not know where the "otherwise:" lines go.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1871&start=0#p12282
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to "use [blank] on [blank]"
User: CupcakeGoesRawr / DateTime: 2011-01-05 18:18:49

Thanks so much for all your help!  It's working so far.  My only last concern is that the end description of the room reads "You can see a burning bush (empty) here.".  Since I'm only specifying that the bush is a container as a nuance of the game, is there any way to get around it saying that the bush is empty?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1872&start=0#p12283
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Attacking something (Inform 7)
User: ExxtaC / DateTime: 2011-01-05 18:21:49

Ohh ok. What code could I use if I wanted to make the player have a higher chance to kill if they had a certain item. "Gun" for instance?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1871&start=0#p12284
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to "use [blank] on [blank]"
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-05 18:24:27

Oh, right.  Sorry!  This is one of those tiny little weird things I have to look up every time:

[code]Rule for printing room description details of the burning bush:
	stop.[/code]

Also!  Don't forget to add something in case the player (inevitably) tries putting other things in the burning bush.  For example:

[code]Instead of inserting something into the burning bush:
	If the noun is the walking stick:
		say "Your walking stick isn't very good for walking now but it certainly gives off a nice glow now." ; 
		now the walking stick is lit;
	otherwise:
		say "You almost thrust [the noun] into the inferno, and then think better of it."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1871&start=0#p12285
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to "use [blank] on [blank]"
User: CupcakeGoesRawr / DateTime: 2011-01-05 18:38:53

Thanks so much for all your help!  I'm struggling a little with the "otherwise" clause but it's a matter of punctuation that I'll probably be able to puzzle through alone.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1869&start=0#p12286
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Liquids: Reporting filling
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-01-05 19:02:00

Yeah, the elegant way is definitely not to have results happen in the report rule.

Using action variables is the "right way" to handle this problem, if there is one; indeed, part of the point of action variables is precisely to store this kind of information for elegant reporting. 

The fact that Inform is even trying to read this as a reference to the kettle's properties is because you've defined "source was filled" as a variable of the "pouring action"; but you need to refer to the "pouring it into action" instead. Without that, it doesn't know of a "source was filled" variable because it's affiliating that variable with a totally different (possibly even nonexistent) action rulebook; so it has no context to understand it within *this* rulebook, and it tries to see if maybe it's a property of the most recent object we were talking about, instead. And when that doesn't work, it throws a runtime error.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1872&start=0#p12287
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Attacking something (Inform 7)
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-05 19:08:36

Well, you're could just recombine elements you've already used before.  

There are a *lot* of different ways to do this.  For example, you could have an automatic win.

[code]Instead of attacking the zombie while the player holds the gun:
	say "BLAM!  The zombie's head disappears in a fine mist of blood.";
        move the zombie to the Graveyard;[/code]

More specific instead rules trump less specific rules, so you could have a yet-more-specific rule if the player is holding the gun and has no ammunition.

This works fine - great, even - for fairly small, isolated scenarios.  But what if you want a flamethrower and a gun and a poker, and the player might be carrying some or all of them at any given time?  Writing out all the permutations gets confusing pretty fast.  So let's introduce a new kind: weapons.  

[code]A weapon is a kind of thing. [/code]

Using a new kind allows us to give weapons overall characteristics.  For example, all weapons are going to be better at killing something than just punching it.  How much more dangerous?  Well, there's a bunch of different ways, again.  I'm going to say, though, that the difference is a number out of 100, with 1 being the least lethal (kills 1% of the time) and 100 being the most lethal (kills 100% of the time).

[code]A weapon has a number called lethality.[/code]

Okay, so clearly I didn't tell Inform all that stuff about percentages; that's for later.  Still, though.  The other thing I'm going to do is give each weapon its own word.  Different weapons attack different ways, and this is a flexible way to personalize messages later on.

[code] A weapon has some text called action_verb.[/code]

Now let's define some weapons.  We could do this in a table - I like tables - but I'll let you do that later if you want.

[code]The fireplace poker is a weapon carried by the player.  The lethality of the poker is usually 10.  The action_verb of the poker is "poke".
The gun is a weapon in the Basement.  The lethality of the gun is usually 50.  The action_verb of the gun is "shoot".
The flamethrower is a weapon in the Basement.  The lethality of the flamethrower is 100.  The action_verb of the flamethrower is "toast".[/code]

You can always add/take out weapons as you want.

Let's decide if the player gets to pick which weapon to kill with.  I'm going to say no, although the scenario is expandable if you want it to be.  The player character will automatically choose the most dangerous thing s/he is carrying or has stashed in a backpack.  How does the game know what that is?

[code]Definition: a weapon is lethal if its lethality is 25 or more.[/code]

Definitions dealing with numbers allow you to use some new words to describe things.  (See 14.7 in my documentation - Making the Verb "to weigh".)  The awesome thing?  Now we can talk about the lethalest weapon.  My inner grammarian is not pleased, but now the game can choose the most dangerous weapon with no problem.  Now we can easily figure out how lethal the player is, based on what's being carried.  But first, one more definition.

[code]Definition: a person is unarmed rather than armed if it does not enclose a weapon.[/code]

This just tidies up the code a bit.

[code]To decide what number is the player lethality:
	if the player is unarmed:
		decide on 1;
	otherwise:
		decide on the lethality of the lethalest weapon enclosed by the player;[/code]

This is basically the player's odds, out of 100, of killing something.  

Now we're going to modify the text I gave you before just a little bit.

[code]Instead of attacking zombie:
	say "You attack the zombie with [if the player is unarmed]your fists[otherwise][the lethalest weapon enclosed by the player][end if].[paragraph break]";
	if a random chance of player lethality in 100 succeeds:
		say "You [if the player is unarmed]punch out[otherwise][action_verb of the lethalest weapon enclosed by the player][end if] the zombie!";
	        move zombie to Graveyard;
	otherwise:
		say "You miss, and the zombie tears out your throat.";
		move player to Graveyard;[/code]

We start by saying what the player attacks with.  (I used this for testing purposes.)  Note the use of the "lethalest weapon enclosed by the player".

Now remember earlier, when we wrote that phrase to figure out how dangerous the player was?  That's what "a random chance of player lethality in 100" is: out of 100, what's the percent odds that the player will kill?  This is just like "a random chance of 1 in 2" except one of the numbers is determined based on the game state.

This is just an initial stab, since I have no idea what you're looking for, but it introduces some chance of success in any scenario, and complete success with a flamethrower.  Just like real life.

This could be way less or way more complicated, depending on what you want done.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1871&start=0#p12288
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to "use [blank] on [blank]"
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-05 19:13:25

No problem!  Good luck.  (Let me know if the grammar issue persists - sometimes it's easier to spot from the outside.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1871&start=0#p12289
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to "use [blank] on [blank]"
User: CupcakeGoesRawr / DateTime: 2011-01-05 19:39:09

Alright, my grammar issues are persisting relentlessly.  I've got it working except for that part about not putting other things into the bush.

 I have:
[code]Instead of inserting something into the burning bush:
	If the noun is the walking stick: 
		say "Your walking stick isn't very good for walking now but it certainly gives off a nice glow." ;
   		now the walking stick is lit.
	Otherwise: 
		say "You decide that putting that into the bush probaby isn't a good idea.".[/code] 
I've checked my indentations and played around with : vs , format but nothing seems to work.

Additionally, I have another problem hinging onto this.  I've set up a cave and intend for the player to have to light the walking stick before entering.  Inform doesn't see an issue with my code but it still lets me enter the second room of the cave without the lit stick.

[code]A Cave is a region in The Dessert.

Cave Entrance is a room in A Cave.  Cave Entrance is west of Oasis.The description of Cave Entrance is "[If unvisited]You expect a break from the dessert heat when you walk into the shade of the cave.  What you didn't expect was the cool draft that comes from somewhere deeper underground.[End if]  You can still faintly see the oasis in the distance to the East.  The cave continues to the West."

Check entering Grand Foyér:
	If the walking stick is not lit:
		Instead of entering Grand Foyér:
			say "It's too dark that way.  Better turn back." ;
			move player to Cave Entrance.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1859&start=0#p12290
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Can new games be entered into IntroComp and IF Comp?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-01-05 19:42:41

[quote="ZUrlocker"]Thanks for pointing out the answer from the FAQ. 

 I guess my question is more fundamental: why can't a game entered into IntroComp be later entered into IF Comp?  After all, it's not a complete game at the IntroComp stage anyways.

--Zack[/quote]

I'm not a comp guy, myself (I don't enter them and don't generally play the games from them until months or years later), but I think mainly the idea is that all the IFComp games are equally 'virgin' in the eyes of the community; they all appear at once without any preconceived notions or existing buzz or affection surrounding them.

(Reading up, Juhana already mentioned this reason among others, but I've already typed the post, so feh) [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1871&start=0#p12291
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to "use [blank] on [blank]"
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-05 19:55:11

Replace the period on the line preceding the otherwise with a semi-colon.

The problem here:
[code]
Check entering Grand Foyér:
   If the walking stick is not lit:
      Instead of entering Grand Foyér:
         say "It's too dark that way.  Better turn back." ;
         move player to Cave Entrance.[/code]

is that you're mixing two rulebooks - check entering and instead of entering.  You can only do one at a time, so Inform is confused.  You're absolutely on the right track, though.

You can put your block either place, but I'd leave in the check rules.  If you want to halt the action, you can always finish the last line with "instead".  And I changed "entering" to "going to".  This is a little confusing, but basically the entering action is for getting onto or into things that aren't rooms.  (From the action description: "Whereas the going action allows people to move from one location to another in the model world, the entering action is for movement inside a location: for instance, climbing into a cage or sitting on a couch.")

[code]Check going to Grand Foyér:
	if the walking stick is not lit:
		say "It's too dark that way.  Better turn back." instead;[/code]

There are internal things in Inform about dark rooms and light and stuff, but I've never worked with them.  (This should work, but if you're doing lots of dark rooms, it might be worthwhile taking a look.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1871&start=10#p12292
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to "use [blank] on [blank]"
User: CupcakeGoesRawr / DateTime: 2011-01-05 20:06:46

Thanks!  It all works perfectly now!  I really appreciate the time you spent helping me figure it all out  [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1870&start=0#p12293
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: New CYA: The Adventures of Phoebe McGee
User: casmith / DateTime: 2011-01-05 20:30:32

I hope I fixed it. But I need to go through it to find the simple punctuation problems you mentioned. Plus I have been unable to repeat the conversation error you described in your spoiler. I have enjoyed creating the story at chooseyourstory.com but going back and fixing typos (and similar kinds of problems) is very time consuming.

Funny how a problem can appear, then be "fixed" then later to find that it has reappeared. Oh well. I appreciate your assistance on this but don't expect you to invest more of your valuable time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1873&start=0#p12294
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: A quick question about describing persons
User: whoiscraig / DateTime: 2011-01-05 20:54:39

Hi, I'm new to Inform7. I have been using it for a total of two days [emote]:D[/emote]

I just have a quick question. I'm sure there is a simple answer, but I can't seem to find it in the manual. I know, when describing a room you can write "[if unvisited]blah blah blah[otherwise] yadda yadda yadda." But what is the equivalent for a person? Basically, I want to describe a person when the player first sees him, but only the once and not ever again.

Thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1870&start=0#p12295
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: New CYA: The Adventures of Phoebe McGee
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-05 21:34:36

I'm having a pretty similar problem to gravel, I think:

[spoiler]It's pretty heavily hinted that I need to find a key in the coffee cup, but I can't find a coffee cup. I have sent the car into the stream and have, I think, done everything there is to do in the cave.[/spoiler]

This system looks intriguing, though. I like the inventory system and the fact that there seem to be timers that can drain and trigger events at any time -- I'm not sure if you can do that in, say, ChoiceScript.

UPDATE: Grumble.

[spoiler]Turned out that night was about to fall, Maize gave me a kerosene can that for some reason she had been unwilling to give up during any of our conversations about how I needed to light the lamp, I found matches in the desk that I may have failed to examine before, and... I got screwed by the time limit. I believe I would have to play through the entire story again to get another chance, and I still don't know how to get the kerosene without pootering around waiting for nightfall.[/spoiler]

I share Gravel's sense that the navigation is particularly cumbersome here, especially when combined with a time limit, since I had to rush up and down looking for unexamined options. I may have messed up, but it seems like a "wait-and-hurry-up" style is enforced. Though you should know that I hate timed puzzles (especially if you can't recover a saved game, which you can't, am I right?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1869&start=0#p12296
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Liquids: Reporting filling
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-05 21:39:53

I see. I always have problems with two-noun actions - when to call it "pouring it into" and when to call it "pouring something into something." I've had the impression in the past that simply "pouring" will match in some circumstances, but maybe I was mistaken.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1872&start=0#p12297
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Attacking something (Inform 7)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-05 21:42:30

[quote="gravel"]Yeah, copying and pasting to or from the forum breaks the tabs into spaces.  It still looks right, but you'll need to manually tab it.  (I think it does that for everyone.)[/quote]

A handy trick someone taught me: if you go to the post with the code you want to use and hit the "quote" button, the code will show up with all the tab stops that were originally typed in. Then you can copy-paste it without having to manually replace the spaces with tabs.

This only works if the original poster pasted it in with tabs -- if the spaces are in the original post it won't work. (Basically, this works for stuff people wrote in I7 and then copy-pasted into the comment box, not for stuff they typed into the comment box.) But it's usually worth trying.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1872&start=0#p12298
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Attacking something (Inform 7)
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-05 21:54:39

[quote="matt w"][quote="gravel"]Yeah, copying and pasting to or from the forum breaks the tabs into spaces.  It still looks right, but you'll need to manually tab it.  (I think it does that for everyone.)[/quote]

A handy trick someone taught me: if you go to the post with the code you want to use and hit the "quote" button, the code will show up with all the tab stops that were originally typed in. Then you can copy-paste it without having to manually replace the spaces with tabs.

This only works if the original poster pasted it in with tabs -- if the spaces are in the original post it won't work. (Basically, this works for stuff people wrote in I7 and then copy-pasted into the comment box, not for stuff they typed into the comment box.) But it's usually worth trying.[/quote]

Awesome.  That should be a sticky somewhere.  (One says, without checking to see if it's already a sticky.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1869&start=0#p12299
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Liquids: Reporting filling
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-01-05 21:55:14

It will match in Instead rules etc., I think, if there's no other competing action name; but for specifying the full action name (as here) you need the "it" and the preposition.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1874&start=0#p12300
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Progress note: Quixe acceleration
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-05 21:57:25

I sat down and implemented the Glulx function-acceleration opcodes in Quixe. Finally.

Turns out they help a lot. Reliques is now running twice as fast, for functions that aren't dominated by Javascript compilation. (I.e., all functions after the first time through.) The game-setup code (which is ponderous) now runs more than three times as fast.

You could argue, of course, that this demonstrates the inefficiency of Quixe's JIT Javascript compilation...

(Tested on Safari on a PPC Mac.)

This code is not yet released, but you can get the source from github if you want.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1873&start=0#p12301
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A quick question about describing persons
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-05 22:00:24

say "[one of]First time description[or]Later time description[stopping]."

This works in any printed message.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1859&start=0#p12302
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Can new games be entered into IntroComp and IF Comp?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-05 22:03:40

I believe Spring Thing is a valid avenue for IntroComp graduates.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1873&start=0#p12303
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A quick question about describing persons
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-05 22:04:53

Typing from memory: [i]The description of Bob is "[one of]Behold Bob.[or]It's Bob again.[stopping]"[/i]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1859&start=0#p12304
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Can new games be entered into IntroComp and IF Comp?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-01-05 22:18:50

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]I believe Spring Thing is a valid avenue for IntroComp graduates.[/quote]
Greg Boettcher [url=https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rec.arts.int-fiction/2iSqbCX9Aww/T4c6YA_ZsI0J]said[/url] he was going to update the rules to allow this, but he [url=http://www.springthing.net/2011/rules.htm]never did[/url]. I expect he would if someone emailed him and reminded him, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1873&start=0#p12305
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A quick question about describing persons
User: whoiscraig / DateTime: 2011-01-05 22:25:26

Ahhh, [one of]. 

Perfect, thanks [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1875&start=0#p12306
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Item limit: Putting an object inside something you carry
User: CupcakeGoesRawr / DateTime: 2011-01-05 22:55:28

I'm sure this is a relatively quick-fix but for the life of me I can't find the solution in any of the guides I use or the documentation.

I've been thwarted by my own item limit!  I've set the limit at 2 for the player (excluding worn items).  At this point in the game the player, in the given situation MUST be carrying both a lit torch (the pesky problem from my last topic) and a bucket.  The bucket was found in a small stream which contains water.  When testing my code with actual gameplay I found that the game will give the player this response:
[color=#0000BF]
In the small stream are water and a bucket.
>take bucket
Taken.
>put water in bucket
(first taking water)
You're carrying too many things already.
>i
You are carrying:
  a bucket
  a red silken cape (being worn)
  a walking stick (providing light)[/color]

The corresponding code is:
[code]Underground Stream is a room in A Cave.  Underground Stream is south of Grand Foyér.  "[if unvisited]You seem to have sumbled upon an underground stream deep in the cave.  Who knew there was going to be so much water in the dessert?[end if]  It's pretty cold down here.  The main cavern is to the North."  There is a small stream in Underground Stream.  The small stream is an open enterable scenery container. There is water in the small stream.  There is a bucket in the small stream.  The bucket is an open container. Description of bucket is "A small tin bucket.  It looks like it might hold about a gallon of water."  Description of the small stream is "The water here looks clear.  If you jumped in it would probably only come up to your ankles."[/code]

I expect there's just a quick rule to solve this so if anyone knows the answer off the top of their head I'd love to hear it.  Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1875&start=0#p12307
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item limit: Putting an object inside something you carry
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-01-05 23:53:37

Inform takes the position that you have to be holding something before you can insert it into something else. That's why your inventory limit is being hit.

One way to deal with this is to create a 'fill' action (I'm assuming there isn't one already) that will move the water directly into the bucket container. Then do something like this:

[code]Before inserting the water into the bucket:
     try filling the bucket instead.[/code]
I'm leaving out a few intermediate steps here, and it's untested. But does that explain the situation?

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1875&start=0#p12308
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item limit: Putting an object inside something you carry
User: CupcakeGoesRawr / DateTime: 2011-01-06 00:32:17

Yeah you've definitely sent me in the right direction.  I have a rule for "filling it with" as follows:

[code]Filling it with is an action applying to two things. Understand "fill [something] with [something]" as filling it with.
Check filling it with: 
	if the noun is not a container:
		say "[The noun] can't hold things, silly."[/code]
Still, I get the feeling that this rule, while Inform has accepted its code as correct, is not operating the way I think it is.  I don't think Inform knows that when I perform the action "fill bucket with water" that the bucket now contains water.

I tried a code like:
[code]The noun now contains "[the second noun]"[/code]

Though that didn't work.

When it's used in conjunction with:
[code]Instead of inserting water into bucket:
	try filling the bucket with instead.[/code]

it turns up this result:

>put water in bucket
You must supply a second noun.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1875&start=0#p12309
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item limit: Putting an object inside something you carry
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-01-06 05:00:27

[quote="CupcakeGoesRawr"]I tried a code like:
[code]The noun now contains "[the second noun]"[/code][/quote]
The syntax is "now the second noun is in the noun". (ch. 8.11. in the manual.)

[quote]When it's used in conjunction with:
[code]Instead of inserting water into bucket:
	try filling the bucket with instead.[/code]
it turns up this result:

>put water in bucket
You must supply a second noun.[/quote]
The parser pretty much says it: you forgot to say what to fill the bucket with. Try:

[code]Instead of inserting water into bucket:
	try filling the bucket with water.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1876&start=0#p12310
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Problem with Conversation Framework by Eric Eve
User: whoiscraig / DateTime: 2011-01-06 06:01:56

So I downloaded all of Eric Eve's conversation extensions, but I find that all of them are based around Conversation Framekwork, and this is giving me an error.

[quote]
In Book 3 - Greeting Protocols, Chapter 2 - Saying Goodbye in the extension Conversation Framework by Eric Eve:

Problem. You wrote 'now the current interlocutor is nothing'  , but although 'current interlocutor is nothing' is a condition which it is legal to test with 'if', 'when', and so forth, it is not something I can arrange to happen on request. Whether it is true or not depends on current circumstances: so to make it true, you will need to adjust those circumstances.

 See the manual: 8.11 > Now...

I was trying to match this phrase:

(current interlocutor - object) is nothing 

This was what I found out:

current interlocutor = a non-temporary variable, holding an object[/quote]

This is before I've even done anything. All I did was include the file.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1877&start=0#p12311
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: For greater speed, values or strings?  (I7)
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2011-01-06 07:28:40

I have a number of variables that could be handled by either new kinds of value or by strings.  Example:

-------------------------
A person has a hair length.
The hair lengths are short, medium-length, and long.
Instead of examining a person: say "[The noun] has [hair length] hair."
-------------------------

Or:

-------------------------
A person has some text called the hair length.
Instead of examining a person: say "[The noun] has [hair length] hair."
-------------------------

Will one of these options run faster in Inform?  (Assume a severe case - say, 20 such variables with 30 options in each.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1875&start=0#p12312
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item limit: Putting an object inside something you carry
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-06 09:07:40

As a general note about "try:" you may be tempted to think of a situation like this as restarting the current action only with a different verb. But that's not how "try" works. "Try" creates a whole new action that runs, potentially simultaneously, with the current one. It's possible to have a very large number of actions going at once if each one tries another action. This happens in the library with situations where automatic actions are performed, such as opening a door before going through it -- or in your case, taking the water before inserting it into a container. That's caused by this rule in the library:

[code]Check an actor inserting something into (this is the can't insert what's not held rule):
	if the actor is carrying the noun, continue the action;
	if the actor is wearing the noun, continue the action;
	issue miscellaneous library message number 26 for the noun;
	silently try the actor taking the noun;
	if the actor is carrying the noun, continue the action;
	stop the action.[/code]

It's possible to modify the "current action" variable and then try it as a new action. There are even cases where it's possible to change action variables in mid-action. But usually that's not what you want to do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1878&start=0#p12313
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: "can't see any such thing" when removing
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-06 10:40:48

I can't figure out why this doesn't work:

[code]A vessel is a kind of thing. A vessel can be full or empty. A vessel can be pumped or unpumped.

Backyard is a room.

The kiddie pool is a full vessel in backyard. The bucket is a vessel in backyard. The water pump is a vessel in backyard.

Instead of inserting the water pump into a vessel:
	say "You insert one end of the pump into [the second noun].";
	Now the second noun is pumped.
	
Instead of removing the water pump from a vessel:
	say "You remove the end of the pump from [the second noun].";
	Now the second noun is unpumped.
	
test me with "rules/put pump in pool/remove pump from pool"[/code]
[quote]
>[2] put pump in pool
[Rule "Instead of inserting the water pump into a vessel" applies.]
You insert one end of the pump into the kiddie pool.

>[3] remove pump from pool
You can't see any such thing.

>[/quote]

Okay, I can guess why it doesn't work, but I can't figure out how to fix it. For some reason, the grammar of "remove" limits the scope to the contents of the second noun. Seems like a bad idea to me, but I know it's an old, complicated, little-used verb that hasn't changed much since I6. Do I have to completely replace the "remove" command to make this do what I want?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1875&start=0#p12314
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item limit: Putting an object inside something you carry
User: CupcakeGoesRawr / DateTime: 2011-01-06 10:53:05

After some fiddling around and checking more syntax problems it works like a charm!  

Thanks guys, I really appreciate all the help!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1878&start=0#p12315
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "can't see any such thing" when removing
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2011-01-06 10:55:23

[quote="capmikee"]
Instead of removing the water pump from a vessel:
	say "You remove the end of the pump from [the second noun].";
	Now the second noun is unpumped.[/quote]

How about:

After taking the water pump when the water pump is in a vessel:
	say "You remove the end of the pump from [the second noun].";
	Now the second noun is unpumped.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1878&start=0#p12316
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "can't see any such thing" when removing
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-01-06 11:12:36

You're using Instead rules, so the main action behaviors never happen. The pump is never actually inserted, so it isn't in the pool. Change your insteads to reports (or some other way of distributing the action rulebooks) and it will work.

...Or rather, it will work if you also define vessels as kinds of containers rather than kinds of things:

[color=#0000FF]A vessel is a kind of container. A vessel can be full or empty. A vessel can be pumped or unpumped. A vessel is transparent.[/color]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1869&start=0#p12317
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Liquids: Reporting filling
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-01-06 11:27:00

[emote]:oops:[/emote] [quote]Report pouring something into something:
   say "You tip [the noun] over [the second noun][if the noun is emptied], and water pours into it[otherwise], but nothing comes out[end if]."; now the noun is empty.[/quote]
[quote]Ugh! If I'm going to put side effects into a report rule, I might as well just print a message during a carry out rule.[/quote] [emote]:oops:[/emote] 

Quite so! I should have made that an "Every turn when a vessel (called the utensil) is emptied: now the utensil is empty." kind of thing.

 [emote]:oops:[/emote] 

Well, happily no work-around needed anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1870&start=0#p12318
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: New CYA: The Adventures of Phoebe McGee
User: casmith / DateTime: 2011-01-06 11:37:23

Greetings all. I really appreciate your trying the game. Here are a few spoilers based on your comments.

Spoiler 1 Jake's key
[spoiler]Caught in the spider web in the cave. Open his lock-box in his lighthouse room. He had put it with his note but then taken by the spiders after he was captured.[/spoiler]

Spoiler 2 Cage key
[spoiler]In the kitchen sink in the burned house. Opens only after visiting the Swan Angel. Used to free the family in the basement of the house. Enter through the back yard.[/spoiler]

Spoiler 3 Rescuing Lilly and her mother
[spoiler]Getting to the basement opens after the Swan Angel. Drop down through hole in hallway. Open cage. Push table to basement window. Off they go. Then go out yourself.[/spoiler]

Spoiler 4 Kerosene can
[spoiler]Getting the can from Maize starts to countdown to the failed ending with the ship crashing on the rocks. Save here. See next spoiler for a more explicit solution if you want.[/spoiler]

Spoiler 5 Getting the lamp lit
[spoiler]There is time to do this (though I might add time if you think it's needed). 
Get can from Maize (starts at the Night cycle)
Fill can behind lighthouse
Jake's room in lighthouse-get matches
Up to service room. Fill tank with kerosene.
Up to lantern room, examine lens, light lens. Out to gallery to take in the sights.[/spoiler]

The process of lighting the lamp is accurate for how lighthouses work in 1937. Of course it's simplified, but the essentials are there. I could add more time to "Night" before the failed ending if you advise. Another example of a timed event during the day: did you bring Maize the injured bird? If you wait too long to do this, the bird dies.

Again, I am so thankful that you are trying it out and reporting problems. VERY helpful. I would be happy to hear of any other problems or suggestions. Oh yea, I found one "it's" that should have been "its". Corrected.  [emote]:roll:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1877&start=0#p12319
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: For greater speed, values or strings?  (I7)
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-06 11:39:11

Texts will be *slightly* faster. But I don't expect the difference to be significant, even at the scale you describe.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1878&start=0#p12320
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "can't see any such thing" when removing
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-06 11:44:45

No, defining the vessel as a container doesn't change anything. And using taking instead of removing doesn't work either, for two reasons:

1. The pump has two ends, each of which can be "in" a vessel so normal containment relations don't apply. That's why I created the "pumped" property - it's essentially a many-to-one containment relation.
2. taking doesn't have a second noun, so we don't know which end of the pump to remove

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1878&start=0#p12321
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "can't see any such thing" when removing
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-06 11:47:45

[quote]Okay, I can guess why it doesn't work, but I can't figure out how to fix it. For some reason, the grammar of "remove" limits the scope to the contents of the second noun. Seems like a bad idea to me, but I know it's an old, complicated, little-used verb that hasn't changed much since I6.[/quote]

None of the standard verb have, really.

The idea is to successfully disambiguate "take rock from table" when there are several rocks scattered around the room. I think the results are inferior to setting up an "it is likely" rule, but this works out of the box. And, as you say, it's old.

[quote]Do I have to completely replace the "remove" command to make this do what I want?[/quote]

Yes. Also the "get" and "take" commands, to handle the "get/from" and "take/from" cases.

This is not my favorite part of I7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1869&start=0#p12322
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Liquids: Reporting filling
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-06 11:54:56

My approach is just to consider the empty case as a failure, and catch it with a check rule. For more complex cases, I tend to wind up with actions invoking other actions.

Maybe that's not sufficiently general -- ie, you might want to store and report the substance being poured. An action-local variable certainly works.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1878&start=0#p12323
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "can't see any such thing" when removing
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-01-06 11:58:56

[quote="capmikee"]No, defining the vessel as a container doesn't change anything. And using taking instead of removing doesn't work either, for two reasons:

1. The pump has two ends, each of which can be "in" a vessel so normal containment relations don't apply. That's why I created the "pumped" property - it's essentially a many-to-one containment relation.
2. taking doesn't have a second noun, so we don't know which end of the pump to remove[/quote]

You seem to be describing your actual source text rather than the excerpt you posted. For that excerpt to work, vessels definitely do need to be containers, otherwise the pump can't be inserted into the pool. (This doesn't help you, I know, but it might help someone else who is browsing this thread and trying to figure out what's going on.) 

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1876&start=0#p12324
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with Conversation Framework by Eric Eve
User: whoiscraig / DateTime: 2011-01-06 13:31:50

Okay, I worked out what the problem was. I was also including Custom Library Messages, but when I included that as well as Conversation Framekwork, it broke the latter.

Without Custom Library Messages, it works fine.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1878&start=0#p12325
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "can't see any such thing" when removing
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-06 13:47:33

[quote="ektemple"]You seem to be describing your actual source text rather than the excerpt you posted. For that excerpt to work, vessels definitely do need to be containers, otherwise the pump can't be inserted into the pool. (This doesn't help you, I know, but it might help someone else who is browsing this thread and trying to figure out what's going on.)[/quote]
Yes, the source includes a pretty much complete implementation of the containment relation for the two ends of the pump, without using any of Inform's built-in containment. I didn't think it was necessary for the example - setting the "pumped" property is the key point.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1878&start=0#p12326
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "can't see any such thing" when removing
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-06 13:48:00

[quote="zarf"][quote]Do I have to completely replace the "remove" command to make this do what I want?[/quote]

Yes. Also the "get" and "take" commands, to handle the "get/from" and "take/from" cases.

This is not my favorite part of I7.[/quote]
No kidding! Argh!

I wish, at least, that there were another library message for this error, such as "You can't see any such thing in [the second noun]." As it is, there's no way to know whether the message refers to the noun or the second noun.

I guess as an alternative, I could intercept the "printing a parser error" activity.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1878&start=0#p12327
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "can't see any such thing" when removing
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-06 13:56:08

Actually, this seems to be a relatively painless fix. I still have to catch all the take synonyms, but it looks like I don't have to reimplement them for the taking action:

[code]A vessel is a kind of container. A vessel can be full or empty. A vessel can be pumped or unpumped.

Backyard is a room.

The kiddie pool is a full vessel in backyard. The bucket is a vessel in backyard. The water pump is a vessel in backyard.

Unpumping it from is an action applying to two things. Understand "remove [something] from [vessel]" as unpumping it from.

Instead of inserting the water pump into a vessel:
	say "You insert one end of the pump into [the second noun].";
	Now the second noun is pumped.
	
Instead of unpumping the water pump from a vessel:
	say "You remove the end of the pump from [the second noun].";
	Now the second noun is unpumped.
	
test me with "rules/put pump in pool/remove pump from pool"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1877&start=0#p12328
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: For greater speed, values or strings?  (I7)
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2011-01-06 14:14:16

Thank you!  I appreciate the info.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1879&start=0#p12329
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Indirect relations on values and temporary names
User: ErWenn / DateTime: 2011-01-06 16:50:26

I've pared the problem down to a simple example:

[code]X-type is a kind of value. The X-types are XA, XB, and XC.

Direct-X-relating relates various X-types to one X-type.

X-relating relates an X-type (called A) to an X-type (called B) when the number of steps via the direct-X-relating relation from A to B is at least 0.[/code]

At compile time, I get an error like this:

[quote]Problem. You wrote 'X-relating relates an X-type (called A) to an X-type (called B) when the number of steps via the direct-X-relating relation from A to B is at least 0'  , but 'A' is a temporary name for an x-type (created by 'let' or 'repeat'), whereas I was expecting to find an object there.

I was trying to match one of these phrases:

1. number of steps via (direct-x-relating relation - relation of values to values) from (a - object) to (b - object) 

2. number of (steps via the direct-x-relating relation from a to b - description of values) 

This was what I found out:

direct-X-relating relation = a relation of x-types to x-types

A = a temporary named value, holding an x-type

B = a temporary named value, holding an x-type

steps via the direct-X-relating relation from A to B = something unrecognised



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem. You wrote 'X-relating relates an X-type (called A) to an X-type (called B) when the number of steps via the direct-X-relating relation from A to B is at least 0'  , but 'A' is a temporary name for an x-type (created by 'let' or 'repeat'), whereas I was expecting to find an object there.

I was trying to match one of these phrases:

1. number of steps via (direct-x-relating relation - relation of values to values) from (a - object) to (b - object) 

2. number of (steps via the direct-x-relating relation from a to b - description of values) 



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem. You wrote 'X-relating relates an X-type (called A) to an X-type (called B) when the number of steps via the direct-X-relating relation from A to B is at least 0'  : but the condition defining this relation makes no sense to me, although the definition was properly formed - it is only the part after 'when' which I can't follow.

 See the manual: 13.12 > Relations which express conditions
[/quote]

On the previous build (SF95), something like this went through without complaint, but it produced an internal error on compiling when I tried to use the new relation. So I updated to the new version (6G60) and now it produces the above error message. I suspect there's a good reason why I can't do what I tried to do, but even after reading the error message, I'm not sure what that reason might be.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1880&start=0#p12330
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Making an NPC (under certain conditions) follow the player
User: CupcakeGoesRawr / DateTime: 2011-01-06 17:18:20

Okay guys, I have another puzzle for you all.  The setup looks something like this:

[code]A ferret is an animal.  The ferret can be hungry, thirsty, or happy.  The ferret is hungry.  [/code]

What I want is the ferret to follow the player when happy.  I figured I could use a simple code like:
[code]
If the ferret is happy:
               The location of the ferret is the location of the player.[/code]
Naturally I found out that Inform doesn't like this command but can't figure out the language that it will accept.  

I've added a part of Emily Short's "Simple Followers" code that reads as follows:

[code]Shadowing relates various people to one person (called the goal). The verb to shadow (he shadows, they shadow, he shadowed, he is shadowed, he is shadowing) implies the shadowing relation. 

Every turn: 
	repeat with pursuer running through people who are shadowing someone:
		let starting-space be the location of the pursuer; 
		let ending-space be the location of the goal of the pursuer; 
		if the starting-space is not the ending-space:
			let next-way be the best route from the starting-space to the ending-space, using doors; 
			if next-way is a direction:
				try the pursuer trying going next-way;
[/code]

When I have that turned on, Inform still won't accept anything similar to:
[code]
If the ferret is happy:
            now the ferret is shadowing the player[/code]

I think the answer is in the code right in front of me but can't pick it out.  Any bright ideas?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1880&start=0#p12331
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making an NPC (under certain conditions) follow the play
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-01-06 17:30:42

You can't write a free-floating if-statement. It has to be executed at some specific point. Try this:

[code]Before jumping:
	now the ferret is happy;
	continue the action.
	
Every turn:
	if the ferret is happy:
		now the ferret is shadowing the player.[/code]
I like to use 'jump' to test changes in object states. With this code, I find that after 'jump', the ferret follows the player.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1880&start=0#p12332
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making an NPC (under certain conditions) follow the play
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-01-06 17:31:49

And of course, I added:

Include Simple Followers by Emily Short.

...to my code. That allows "shadowing" to work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1880&start=0#p12333
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making an NPC (under certain conditions) follow the play
User: CupcakeGoesRawr / DateTime: 2011-01-06 17:48:58

Awesome, thanks!  Works like a charm.  Knew the answer was right in front of me  [emote]:?[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1879&start=0#p12334
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indirect relations on values and temporary names
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-01-06 18:35:40

It looks like a bug, since the compiler is happy to accept the same code when X-type is a kind of object, rather than a kind of value:
[code]X-type is a kind of object.  XA, XB, and XC are X-types.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1881&start=0#p12335
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: A way around one source file limit
User: Birion / DateTime: 2011-01-06 19:06:54

Hello, I've been playing around with the one feature of Inform 7 that makes me see red, the damnable use of a single source file, and eventually I came up with this simple bash script:

<a class="postlink" href="http://pastebin.com/Q9W7zyEX">http://pastebin.com/Q9W7zyEX</a>

It requires two things as it is, but both of them are easily changed in the script:

First, that your projects are saved in the same directory (for me, it's ~/games/inform/) with .inform/ and Materials/ under the project name (e.g. ~/games/inform/My Awesome Game/My Awesome Game.inform/).

Second, that a file called order.txt is in the Source/ directory. The file should have one filename per line, in the exact order in which you want it to appear in story.ni.

As an example, order.txt might look like this:

Introduction.ni
At the Ball.txt
Intermezzo
Aftermath.ni

All of these files need to be in the Source/ directory. As the story.ni file is rewritten every time the script is run, these files have to contain everything, including the "My Awesome Game" by "Secret Nickname" line (which should be the first line in Introduction.ni in this example).

The script requires i7 to be installed in your path.
It can be invoked simply as [i]script[/i], which only compiles the source, or with several optional arguments:

-p runs the compiled file in an interpreter of your choice
-r releases the game
-b blorbs the release (implicit)
-b does NOT blorb the release
-z # switches formats (5, 6, 8, or g)

The main disadvantage of this approach is you can't use the IDE for working, just for checking, as everything new in story.ni will be overwritten by the script, but if you want to use more than one source file, you're probably using a proper text editor for writing anyway.

Otherwise, the script is very dumb, it does minimal checks, it reports virtually nothing, and there's every chance it borks up something important, so read before you use, please.

I hope it will be useful to some people, and I will be glad for any improvements people more skilled than me can make.

EDIT: I have added a way to put Inform headings into the order.txt file. The headings have the form of e.g. [code]+Part 1 - Boring Stuff[/code] with the + sign at the beginning of the line.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1881&start=0#p12336
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A way around one source file limit
User: George / DateTime: 2011-01-06 20:00:48

Cool Birion, this looks very useful. 

Incidentally I think the new Windows release has a new (?) feature that lets you use an external text editor with the IDE (the source pane reverts if the source has been changed by an external program), I wonder if this will get added to Mac/Linux?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1876&start=0#p12337
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with Conversation Framework by Eric Eve
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-06 20:45:19

Which Custom Library Messages?  David's or mine? 

If it's mine I will correct that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1876&start=0#p12338
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with Conversation Framework by Eric Eve
User: whoiscraig / DateTime: 2011-01-06 20:57:46

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Which Custom Library Messages?  David's or mine? 

If it's mine I will correct that.[/quote]

It was David Fisher's. I hadn't tried yours out yet.

I only did his first because it was first alphabetically! Honest!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1876&start=0#p12339
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with Conversation Framework by Eric Eve
User: whoiscraig / DateTime: 2011-01-06 21:14:11

Now that I try it, yours works fine. Thanks [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1870&start=10#p12340
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: New CYA: The Adventures of Phoebe McGee
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-06 22:23:43

Hey, thanks for the response. I think adding more time to light the lamp is a good idea -- I'll tell you what I did in the spoiler, but basically I think it's pretty easy to get snarled up doing things in the wrong order and hit the time limit.

[spoiler]I filled the can, went up and filled the tank, I think investigated everything else upstairs at the time, went down to the kitchen and found the matches, and was on my way back up when the ship hit the reef. So I didn't do things in the maximally efficient order. One issue was that I felt it was necessary to examine everything, because I wasn't sure in what room a new plot trigger would appear -- the matches were new in the kitchen, weren't they? I'd been looking around there for a while before, mostly trying to find the coffee cup.[/spoiler]

I think there's a dramatic issue here:

[spoiler]For a while I'd been looking for a way to get kerosene -- even if it wasn't obvious from the presence of a lighthouse and a kerosene shed, I think both the angel and Maize had told me that I needed to get the lamp lit. In fact, when I released the brake on the car I was hoping it would wind up somewhere where I could use it to get kerosene somehow. But I never got a conversation option to ask Maize for the lamp. This felt like an artificial restriction; I would've liked to get started on the lamp early, and the reason I didn't wasn't necessarily anything to do with my character's motivation, but because it would've deprived the plot of a suspenseful set piece. It was also a little annoying that the matches didn't appear until just before they were needed; as I said, this meant I didn't know where not to look.[/spoiler]

I think there are a couple of ways to solve this:

[spoiler]One: Just have night fall as soon as you get the can from Maize, rather than the other way around. It retains the suspense and doesn't block you off from lighting the lighthouse.
Two: Have Phoebe be forbidden from messing around with fire or flammable things until Maize realizes she has to light the lighthouse. That doesn't seem so unrealistic -- lighting lighthouses seems dangerous, and Maize might hope that Jake would come back and do it himself. (Actually I think this might require more plot surgery than I'm presenting here.) When night is about to fall, Maize realizes that she needs to give Phoebe the can -- it's Phoebe or nothing.[/spoiler]

I didn't mind the injured bird timer at all -- I failed that because I had no idea where Maize was (I thought I could find someone inside the lighthouse), but that seemed completely natural.

Another thing about the website is it takes a lot of clicks to get to the story from the homepage. It looks like some of this is inevitable because of the way it's split between k-state's page and the chooseyourstory page, but it might be nice to have links to the individual episode(s) from the front page of the series. Also, it'd be nice to point out that you can save using that "options" box in the corner; I didn't find it [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1870&start=10#p12341
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: New CYA: The Adventures of Phoebe McGee
User: casmith / DateTime: 2011-01-06 22:58:34

Matt,

Quick response... many good suggestions for me to consider. I will definitely increase the time at night before endgame. The other suggestions have considerable merit. Over the next several days I'll be thinking about implementing them.

I always worry about making any changes. In some cases, there's a lot of tinkering in the code that would be required. I don't want to introduce any new problems. Even so, your ideas can strengthen the story and that's worth the effort. I certainly think I need to help readers a little more.

Thanks.

Chuck

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1870&start=10#p12342
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: New CYA: The Adventures of Phoebe McGee
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-06 23:08:31

Thanks for the response, Chuck! I'm always anxious about saying this sort of thing -- sometimes I feel like I'm saying, "You know what would improve your story? SPACE NINJA KITTENS. Rewrite it to be mostly about that." Which is generally not helpful, even if true.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1882&start=0#p12343
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Checking if NPCs performed an action
User: Birion / DateTime: 2011-01-07 00:27:29

Hi, I'm trying to work out a way to check if some NPC performed an action in a way similar to "if we have...", e.g. this situation:

[code]
the PC, John the Important NPC, and Mary the Annoying NPC

> take pot

Mary stops you.

> John, florb Mary

Mary doesn't let him because you haven't given her the flowers yet.

> give flowers to Mary

> take pot

Mary stops you.

> John, florb Mary

John florbs Mary.

> take pot

Mary is distracted and you take the stone pot.
[/code]

Because "if John has florbbed Mary" or "if John florbbed Mary" just don't work. The same, even, with "if we have asked John to try florbbing Mary" (which, to me, should be successful after the first attempt already, not exactly the thing I have in mind). In fact, they all just end in error reports during compilation.

I know I could add some toggle

[code]
Mary can be florbbed by John. Mary is not florbbed by John.

...
    if Mary is not florbbed by John:
        ...
[/code]

but suppose the player needs to get these two together and has to tell John how to do everything, because John the Eternally Slow is too stupid to do it on his own? Poor Mary will end up with a list of these longer than the list of the king's titles. And so will any character or thing that needs to interact in an important way without the PCs involvement.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1839&start=10#p12344
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help With Conditionals?
User: CupcakeGoesRawr / DateTime: 2011-01-07 00:33:04

Having some conditional issues for some reason.  I've been mired in this particular bit of code for about five hours now.  I've rearranged, rephrased, and done just about everything else but nothing seems to help.  

Inform accepts my code as correct but the problem I'm facing is that it seems to have ignored my "if the ferret is not in the room" rule entirely.

[code]Service Door is a door.  The description of Service Door is "The service door is a reinforced aluminum door.  It looks worn as if its seen a lot of use."  Service door is east of The Shadow of the Plateau and west of Main Bay.  Service Door is scenery.  Service Door is lockable and locked.  Service door is openable.

Instead of opening the Service Door:
	if the Service Door is locked:
		say "You jiggle the handle but you can feel the deadbolt holding it shut.  There isn't even a place for a key on this side." ;
	if the Service Door is unlocked:
		say "You have to put your shoulder into it but the old door opens."
		
Bay Door is a door.  The description of Bay Door is "The bay door is twice your height and about 50 meters wide.  Big enough to fit a tank, or several, perhaps.  It looks automatic."  Bay Door is southeast of The Shadow of the Plateau and southwest of Main Bay.  Bay Door is scenery.  Bay Door is closed and openable.

Instead of opening the Bay Door:		
	if the ferret is in the room:
		if the Bay Door is closed:
			say "The ferret, sensing your struggle, skitters up the wall of the garage and into a fist-sized hole between the bay door and the wall.  A moment later the automatic door shudders and begins to heave open slowly.  You may never know how the ferret figured that out.  He really deserves a name for that stunt." ;
			now the Bay Door is open;
			now the Bay Door is not openable;
	otherwise:
		if the Bay Door is closed:
			say "There doesn't seem to be a way to open it from this side."[/code]


[quote]>look
Shadow of the Plateau
You are standing on the south side of the plateau looking up at the spot where you had been standing before.  Next to you is a half-cylinder military garage that you hadn't noticed from above.  The oasis is to the North.  The service door to the garage is to the East.  The automatic bay door is to the Southeast.

>open bay door
The ferret, sensing your struggle, skitters up the wall of the garage and into a fist-sized hole between the bay door and the wall.  A moment later the automatic door shudders and begins to heave open slowly.  You may never know how the ferret figured that out.  He really deserves a name for that stunt.[/quote]

No ferret in sight and yet he shows up to open the door for me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1839&start=10#p12345
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help With Conditionals?
User: Birion / DateTime: 2011-01-07 00:51:34

It seems like it's checking if the ferret is on-stage, that is in [i]a[/i] room. If you said somewhere in your code that

[code]A ferret is an animal in Very Special Hidden Room.[/code]

then ferret being in a room is true.

Try

[code]if the ferret is in Main Bay[/code]

if you'd like the door to be open only if the ferret is in one specific room (you could even put the ferret in Control Room and he'd jump on the button opening the door for you), or

[code]if the ferret is in the location of the player[/code]

if the ferret is your friend and opens the door only when he's with you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1839&start=10#p12346
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help With Conditionals?
User: CupcakeGoesRawr / DateTime: 2011-01-07 01:04:49

Thank you so much!  The simple change to "main bay" vs "the room" made all the difference!  Of all the things I tried, that never occurred to me.   [emote]:roll:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1882&start=0#p12347
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Checking if NPCs performed an action
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-07 01:19:34

No, there's no built-in facility for this, and for exactly the reason you note: the system would have to store a humungous amount of information.

You can do it, but you have to set up the storage system yourself.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1839&start=10#p12348
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help With Conditionals?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-07 01:21:53

Yeah, this comes up about twice a week. I7 doesn't interpret "the room" or "the person" or etc the way you expect; such references always wind up meaning "a room" or "a person".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1859&start=0#p12349
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Can new games be entered into IntroComp and IF Comp?
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2011-01-07 01:34:14

Thanks everyone for the responses.  I understand the perspective that everything should be fair and that it's certainly much easier to have a simple rule like "no prior release" with as broad a definition as possible.  

[quote]A game entered into IntroComp to "gauge interest" would gain an unfair advantage over games that have their initial release in IFcomp.[/quote]
But that said, I still question the purpose of this "no prior release" rule for IFComp.  And I wonder what actual advantage is there for someone who enters a game into IntroComp and is it really unfair?   

Or perhaps there's another way I can convey my concern.  If there is a goal of the comps to encourage authors to create higher quality games and that getting more testing and more feedback to the developer improves the quality, then the idea of precluding IntroComp games from IF Comp seems to be at cross-purposes.  In my view the IF Comp rules make it *much* harder to get beta testers for games since you have to know everyone personally who does the testing and you can't make it available publicly on the web or get the feedback from a partially released game that might help an author do a much better job.  

Or if you really want to make sure no authors have "unfair advantage" why not restrict the ability to use Inform Extensions?  Obviously that hasn't been done because it would inhibit the quality of the games.  

What I've learned from beta testing software (in general) over the years is that it takes a lot of beta testers before you get meaningful feedback and generally, more testers means better feedback and better quality.  

So if I may be so humble as to ask the Intro Comp and IFComp organizers to consider whether now that we enter into 2011 where IF seems to be taking off with new devices, new funding models like Kickstarter, and potentially more users on iPhones, iPads, Androids, Kindles and the InterWeb should the Comp rules now consider that getting more people to test more stuff and get more feedback might actually be more beneficial?

This next analogy is completely a stretch, but I'm an occasional marathon runner and perhaps other runners will appreciate it.  To me the lack of compatibility between IntroComp and IFcomp is like the Boston Marathon having a rule that says "By the way, to enter into run Boston Marathon you can't run any half marathons or 10k races.  Ever.  Because we want it to be a fair competition to everyone."  

I know a game comp is not a sporting event.  But the parallel here is that very few runners of a marathon could successfully complete such an event without months or even years of serious training. Part of that training is to run miles and part of the training is to actually run races.  And those who undertake more training, and especially races, do actually have an "unfair advantage" in terms of being better prepared physically and emotionally to do their best on race day compared to those who do not. 

Is there a risk that someone who enters into IntroComp or gets more beta testers will somehow have more "PR Buzz" for their game?  Maybe.  But I think games are judged on their merits, not on their PR.  There's probably more buzz around famous IF authors than anything.  And honestly, doesn't the IF community need more PR rather than less?   Consider this irony: IF Comp games can be played on the interweb during the voting period, but they can't be tested that way.  

Again, I mean no disrespect to the organizers of the comp.  Just wondering if folks might re-examine the rules and consider whether they should be updated.  

Does anyone else think it's time to reconsider these rules?  Or am I way off base?

--Zack

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1859&start=0#p12350
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Can new games be entered into IntroComp and IF Comp?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-07 02:19:39

To some extent, my reason for liking the IFComp rules the way they are is that they're *not* the ideal way to release a game. Therefore, there are good reasons to release IF outside the IFComp. I want to maintain that, not reduce it.

If the IFComp became so out-of-touch that nobody wanted to enter it, then I'd reconsider my reasoning. But we're clearly not in that situation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1859&start=0#p12351
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Can new games be entered into IntroComp and IF Comp?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-07 07:25:46

[quote="ZUrlocker"]In my view the IF Comp rules make it *much* harder to get beta testers for games since you have to know everyone personally who does the testing[/quote]

Actually it's OK to make a public announcement that you need testers for a game that you're going to enter into the IFComp. That's how I wound up as a tester for one IFComp game this year, for an author I didn't know. As I understand it, the ban on authors publicly discussing the games applies only [i]during[/i] the competition, not before it, so you can even say some more things about the game if you like; the problem is only with publicly releasing the game. 

All that said I like the JayIsGames model where each game has a comment section and the author can release rolling updates; it seemed as though it helped improve a lot of the games, many of which were by first-timers (and even the winning entry, which wasn't by first-timers, had a bug caught this way). I don't know that I think the IFcomp should work this way, though, and I realize it's kind of tangential to your concern since it requires you to start with a complete game. 

[quote="zarf"]To some extent, my reason for liking the IFComp rules the way they are is that they're *not* the ideal way to release a game. Therefore, there are good reasons to release IF outside the IFComp. I want to maintain that, not reduce it.[/quote]

Well, I don't know if the "no IntroComp entries in IFComp" rule (ruling?) helps much with that -- isn't the number of IntroComp entries that have ever been finished surprisingly small? On the other hand, allowing IntroComp entries in the Spring Thing but not the IFComp seems like a nice medium, since Spring Thing does need the entries, and it makes sense to have part of a big game released in the IntroComp and then the whole shebang in Spring Thing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1859&start=10#p12352
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Can new games be entered into IntroComp and IF Comp?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-01-07 07:40:22

[quote="ZUrlocker"]If there is a goal of the comps to encourage authors to create higher quality games and that getting more testing and more feedback to the developer improves the quality, then the idea of precluding IntroComp games from IF Comp seems to be at cross-purposes.[/quote]
To my understanding this is [i]not[/i] IFcomp's explicit goal. On the other hand Spring Thing has always stated that producing better quality games has been its goal, you might have better luck convincing its organizers (especially if they have already planned on updating the rules).

[quote]Or if you really want to make sure no authors have "unfair advantage" why not restrict the ability to use Inform Extensions?[/quote]
I don't see how this is comparable. Using extensions may or may not be an advantage, but how is it unfair? Anyone can use them if they wish to.

[quote]So if I may be so humble as to ask the Intro Comp and IFComp organizers to consider whether now that we enter into 2011 where IF seems to be taking off with new devices, new funding models like Kickstarter, and potentially more users on iPhones, iPads, Androids, Kindles and the InterWeb should the Comp rules now consider that getting more people to test more stuff and get more feedback might actually be more beneficial?[/quote]
That's what's already happening, but during and after the comp, not before. Authors get a lot of feedback during the competition and many authors release revised versions of their games after the competition.

[quote]This next analogy is completely a stretch, but I'm an occasional marathon runner and perhaps other runners will appreciate it.  To me the lack of compatibility between IntroComp and IFcomp is like the Boston Marathon having a rule that says "By the way, to enter into run Boston Marathon you can't run any half marathons or 10k races.  Ever.  Because we want it to be a fair competition to everyone."  [/quote]
No, that's a very good analogy. You are certainly allowed to run previous maratons and races (write games and practice) to enter. There is no rule saying that you can't enter the competition if you have previous experience or training. You're just not allowed to start 10 km ahead of everyone else because you already ran that distance the previous day.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=520&start=0#p12353
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Merk's Review: Nightfall
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2011-01-07 07:59:26

hey, just got finished on this (at least up to the [i]bad[/i] ending).

I have to say I've got a bad feeling about [spoiler]her right from the first clues, like when you get to the bar and see the crosswords displaying "sheevil and scam"[/spoiler].  After that and as it took long for any contact or [spoiler]any real threat to appear[/spoiler], I begin to feel the PC to be just a delusional paranoid, trembling at everyshadow or noise.

In any case, here's something that bothered me and I don't know whether it's a bug or intentional:  you can't [i]remember My Office[/i].  The PC simply has no memories associated to that place, even though when you get there you do have quite a strong memory of Jeremy recalling something... [spoiler]possibly the PC supressing memories that may taint his love?[/spoiler]

top-notch implementation, puzzling story, great writing and suspense...  [emote]:)[/emote] 

gotta try the [i]good ending[/i] yet...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1839&start=10#p12354
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help With Conditionals?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-07 08:49:37

[quote="zarf"]Yeah, this comes up about twice a week. I7 doesn't interpret "the room" or "the person" or etc the way you expect; such references always wind up meaning "a room" or "a person".[/quote]

Since this issue is so ubiquitous, I've posted a [url=http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/1357393-more-thoroughly-highlight-the-way-inform-understan]uservoice suggestion[/url] that the documentation mention it more often and more prominently.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1882&start=0#p12355
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Checking if NPCs performed an action
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-07 10:45:36

You can do the past tense with a [i]to be florbed by[/i] relation:  [i]if Mary has been florbed by John..[/i].  But if this is just a one-off thing, your can-be line is probably easier.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1870&start=10#p12356
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: New CYA: The Adventures of Phoebe McGee
User: casmith / DateTime: 2011-01-07 10:49:56

Good morning Matt.

Well, I made three important changes based on your insights.

Change 1
Increased the time for night by five turns.

Change 2
Changed the early daytime conversation with Maize to say:
[spoiler]Maize continues, "I'm hoping your grandpa gets back in time to light it. Messing around with flammable materials is not something for the young and inexperienced to do. When nighttime arrives and it's still dark, then come to me and I'll give you some things to do it on your own."

"I can try Maize," Phoebe replies seriously.[/spoiler]

Change 3 A better start at night
[spoiler]When night arrives Maize gives Phoebe the empty oil can and matches. Matches were removed from desk.[/spoiler]

I think this strengthens the story considerably, and I have you to thank for that. I learned a few important things as well.

Chuck

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1878&start=0#p12357
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "can't see any such thing" when removing
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-01-07 10:52:04

As a footnote ... even when the water pump is connected to the kiddie pool, the player will still be able to walk out of the room carrying the water pump (or the bucket, which may be more likely), and the connection between the two objects will remain -- probably not what you want.

What you're doing has more in common with connecting (attaching) than with inserting. You might want to take a look at the examples in Recipe Book 10.6. Neither of them is exactly what you're looking for, but they might suggest something.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1879&start=0#p12358
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indirect relations on values and temporary names
User: ErWenn / DateTime: 2011-01-07 11:19:21

Should I be reporting this, then?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1878&start=10#p12359
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "can't see any such thing" when removing
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-07 11:25:46

[quote="Jim Aikin"]As a footnote ... even when the water pump is connected to the kiddie pool, the player will still be able to walk out of the room carrying the water pump (or the bucket, which may be more likely), and the connection between the two objects will remain -- probably not what you want.

What you're doing has more in common with connecting (attaching) than with inserting. You might want to take a look at the examples in Recipe Book 10.6. Neither of them is exactly what you're looking for, but they might suggest something.[/quote]
Once again, I left out details like that for brevity. Rest assured, my source covers situations like walking around with connected items in obsessive detail. In fact, I'm starting to worry that I'm spending too much time on this and I need to get back to other parts of my WIP.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1878&start=10#p12360
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "can't see any such thing" when removing
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-07 11:35:07

Whoa, are you doing something that effectively involves both liquids and ropes in your WiP? Isn't that like the Snake River Canyon Jump of IF programming?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1870&start=10#p12361
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: New CYA: The Adventures of Phoebe McGee
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-07 11:41:53

Glad I was able to help! I'll PM you with my ideas for how to fit in the space ninja kittens.

(Not really.)

I do have another suggestion, though:

[spoiler]In change 2, it'd definitely good to have Maize point out that you'll need to come back, but I don't think she should say "when" -- I'd say something more like "If he's not back by nightfall, we can light the lamp." This way it does sound like she's saying "You will in fact need to do this, but not yet -- wait till the timer starts counting down."

In fact, what might be [i]even better[/i] is to have her gradually get more and more unsure about Jake coming back over some conversations -- like in the first conversation, you can ask her about the lighthouse and she'll say "don't play with matches and kerosene, Jake will do it," and then you can do it again and she says "I hope he comes back," and in the third she says "come back to me if he's not back by nightfall," and in the fourth she tells you about the space ninja kittens. Sorry, lost control for a moment there. Anyway, you see what I mean, but I think this would be a lot more work -- one thing you'd have to do is make sure that the later conversation options unlock themselves as you get closer to nightfall even if the player hadn't asked about the lighthouse yet, to make sure the player does get the clue about coming back at nightfall.[/spoiler]

Looking forward to more of this!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1878&start=10#p12362
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "can't see any such thing" when removing
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-07 11:55:09

[quote="matt w"]Whoa, are you doing something that effectively involves both liquids and ropes in your WiP? Isn't that like the Snake River Canyon Jump of IF programming?[/quote]
 [emote]:lol:[/emote]  [emote]:lol:[/emote]  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

I never intended to have anything complicated, but then I had an idea for this puzzle...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1023&start=0#p12363
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2010 -- call for participation
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-01-07 12:30:55

Just to put a word out there, I'm also planning on entering Spring Thing 2011. I haven't "officially announced" yet though, because I'm waiting to at least get the story into the beta-testing stage before doing so.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1023&start=0#p12364
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2010 -- call for participation
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-01-07 15:51:06

[quote="Jizaboz"]Just to put a word out there, I'm also planning on entering Spring Thing 2011. I haven't "officially announced" yet though, because I'm waiting to at least get the story into the beta-testing stage before doing so.[/quote]
Great!  I certainly hope your game takes shape smoothly.  Enjoy the process of bringing your ideas to life in your own little world made of text, and if it works out, I'll be happy to play it in the spring!

Since I was so bold to announce that I was going to enter, I'd better face up now.  The game that I was "thinking about" back in April was two abandoned projects ago. [emote]:oops:[/emote]  A new project started taking shape in my notes this holiday season, and I think I have about two-thirds of the design planned.  I've written drafts of all the room descriptions, and I'm still working on puzzles and plot.  Then I have to decide what IF system to use to implement my first beta version.  The only problem is, this game will be short; right now my design has only ten rooms.  I'm not really planning to enter into the Spring Fling.  But maybe if I do get it done in time, I may consider entering.  I'd rather hold it until the October comp, though, or else release it independently.  Of course, that's if I even ever release it at all. [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1870&start=10#p12365
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: New CYA: The Adventures of Phoebe McGee
User: casmith / DateTime: 2011-01-07 15:54:12

Greetings once again. Here's the change I made:

[spoiler].....
Maize continues, "I'm hoping your grandpa gets back in time to light it. Messing around with flammable materials is not something for the young and inexperienced to do. When nighttime arrives and if Jake is still missing, then come to me and I'll give you some items for you to use in the lighthouse on your own. Let's hope it doesn't come to that."[/spoiler]

Your second suggestion would require more tinkering than I want to do at this point. I agree that increasing anxiety about Jake's absence would be good. 

[spoiler]With the exception of the conversational bit that opens up the path to the Swan Angel, a reader could go through most of the story without talking to Maize. A visit to her would then reveal quite a long list of conversational options that could be addressed in any order. That's the kind of design I chose, for good or bad.[/spoiler]

I really wanted to focus on developing a rich conversational system this time around. I think what I have learned from you and from becoming more knowledgeable about the design program will enable me to create a better story the next time. Some of the new goals:

1. Create more efficient links with fewer clicks to get around. I don't dare to go back now and retrofit what I did. Much to dangerous for stability.

2. A shorter story. Statistics at the <a class="postlink" href="http://chooseyourstory.com">http://chooseyourstory.com</a> says that the number of pages in "Phoebe" is at the very high end of all stories there. That will require even more careful planning before starting.

3. A winter setting. The previous story I published used SUDS (see the thread here) called Snow Night.

4. A few more characters that appear in different locations.

I love what the designers did for Inform7. I spent many hours learning (or trying to learn) how to program in I7. I have concluded, though, that the general public doesn't have the patience to struggle with a blinking cursor and the puzzle nature of most formal IF. I am going to look at other options before beginning again. 

For a CYOA type of story, I don't think there is a better system than what <a class="postlink" href="http://chooseyourstory.com">http://chooseyourstory.com</a> provides. I think I demonstrated with "Phoebe" that a CYOA type story can have some fluidity. But I don't like being so dependent on their website. There is no simple way other than cutting and pasting to get a text file of the entire story. I'm doing that now with nearly 250 pages. There's no way to conduct a "search and replace" type editing. So if a writer has confused someone's name somewhere in the story, he or she has to hunt every single page separately to find the error.

Despite these disadvantages, I am amazed at the tool they provide. Take a look at the "Small story" linked from my website. I read it to my 4-year-old granddaughter who made the choices. Since that experience was so successful (months afterward she still talks about Lilly) I may go back to writing at least one more Lilly story for her (let me see, how can I introduce ninja kittens in those stories).

Again, you really helped with your comments. I look forward to our continued conversation.

Chuck
The Adventures of Phoebe McGee
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ksu.edu/wwparent/story/Phoebe/">http://www.ksu.edu/wwparent/story/Phoebe/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=7&start=20#p12366
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: How does ADRIFT's parsing work?
User: casmith / DateTime: 2011-01-07 16:09:54

I sure hope it will run on my Mac.

Chuck

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1883&start=0#p12367
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Non-binary values
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-01-07 17:09:02

Non-binary values pose a problem because Inform won't allow complex If statements.  For instance, you can't say 'If the weather is raining, snowing, or hailing, say "I'm not going outside in that!"'

What's the best way to get around this limitation, assuming that a series of if statements would be too clumsy?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=30#p12368
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-01-07 17:49:03

I was hoping I was the only one who enjoys writing IF but doesn't have much interest in playing it.  (I used to when I was a teenager, but don't much anymore.)  In my experience, there is usually a good ratio of users to makers, or too many users; for instance, at college you could throw a stone and hit half a dozen people who wanted to be in your D&D campaign, but you'd need to be a very good shot to hit even one person who wanted to DM.  Pity that this doesn't seem to be true for IF.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1883&start=0#p12369
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Non-binary values
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-01-07 17:49:59

A decide phrase or a definition, probably:

[code]To decide whether there is precipitation:
    if it is raining, decide yes;
    if it is snowing, decide yes;
    if it is hailing, decide yes;
    decide no.

Carry out speeding:
    if there is precipitation, now the car is wrecked.
[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1884&start=0#p12370
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Keyword based actions
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-01-07 19:13:06

Is there a straightforward way to handle noun-based keyword actions in TADS 3?

Say I want the player to be able to type the name of an object and automatically take that object. I tried something like this:

[code]
DefineTAction(Keyword);
VerbRule(Keyword)
    [badness 1000]
    singleDobj
    : KeywordAction
    verbPhrase = 'keyword/keywording (what)'
;
[/code]

That did what I wanted it to: the dobjFor(Keyword) functions were called, which I could remap to dobjFor(Take). However, this completely lobotomized the disambiguation process. Output was something like this:

[quote]
> take ring
Taken.

> drop ring
Dropped.

> take
What do you want to take?

> all
You can't do that.

> ring
Keyworded.
[/quote]

My current approach involves generating a list of vocab words for all keyword objects in the game, then replacing them with 'keyword <OBJECT>' if they are entered as a single command. I also make a half-hearted effort to prevent disambiguation from blowing up. My concern is that this lacks any finesse whatsoever.

[spoiler][code]
DefineTAction(Keyword);
VerbRule(Keyword)
    'keyword' singleDobj
    : KeywordAction
    verbPhrase = 'keyword/keywording (what)'
;

modify Actor
    ambigAction = nil
;

modify playerMessages
    askMissingObject(actor, action, which)
    {
        inherited(actor, action, which);
        actor.ambigAction = action;
    }
;

StringPreParser
    doParsing(str,which)
    {
        str = str.toLower();

        if (!gActor.ambigAction)
        {
            foreach (local keyword in allKeywords.lst())
            {
                if (rexSearch('^' + keyword + '$', str))
                    str = str.findReplace(keyword, 'keyword ' + keyword, ReplaceOnce);
            }
        }
        gActor.ambigAction = nil;

        return str;
    }
;[/code][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=30#p12371
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-01-07 19:16:27

This has been a fascinating thread. To some extent, though, I think we may be coming down a little hard on ourselves. IF is still a nascent form. When it comes to film, or novels, or comics, there are so many subcultures, that whatever my tastes (and I do have fairly particular tastes), I will find a whole community of people dedicated just to exploring that avenue.

In IF, there are typically only one or two authors exploring any particularly 'style' at one time. So, if I really enjoy a particular type of IF story, no matter what it is, it's not like I'm going to find even five other authors exploring the same type of fiction in IF, with the same sorts of values or priorities or general theory and approach to art. (And I'm saying this having been somewhat clued out of the scene for like a decade and returning to find it advanced but not much changed in this way.)

If is still at the stage where it is mostly interresting (in a blanket fashion, if I had to say) in the sense that it is still a wide open field and many experiments are done, and they are often firsts, or close enough to being firsts that they're still interesting.

It's the flip-side of the coin. Nascent mediums are more exciting perhaps to be explored from the point of view of a potential creators looking for what other groundbreakers are doing.

I think it's a wonderful medium in the sense that everyone practising is conducting some sort of an experiment, and that is something perhaps you can say of the best novelists or filmmakers but it definitely doesn't rule field. In IF, experimentation rules the field. It's like an entire community of experimental short film makers. Ever spend a lot of time watching indie short films? A lot of crap surrounding a scattering of mindblowing gems that really make you reconsider the form.

This is what IF is like everyday -- part of why I love it. And I do enjoy playing -- very much so, and I'm not very picky about puzzle-vs-story or about old forms vs. new. I'm much more excited when something different is being tried. The moment of discovery for me playing is almost as great as if I had thought it up and implemented it myself.

I do admit though that before I had got it back into my head to jump back into an attempt at authoring for the virtual machine, my playing had tailed off quite a bit. It wasn't unheard of that I would play, but I would play only in pairs and we ended up playing a lot for nostalgia, because that tends to happen when you're playing with another near-40-year-old and you're trying to pick a game to play (or play again). My choices were not so much my own then as I have made sure they are, now, so I'm playing more interesting fare now that authorship is in the picture.

That was also the case when I got into filmmaking. I started watching a much better class of film, and it made me a better artist. (Probably even a better person.)

I believe many more of the differences between the way IF and film/etc are experienced are attributable to general consequences of media positioning, age, and maturity of the form, and far fewer of them are attiributable to anything intrinsic about interactivity or the command line, than is generally assumed.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1883&start=0#p12372
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Non-binary values
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-07 19:24:09

[quote="katz"]Non-binary values pose a problem because Inform won't allow complex If statements.  For instance, you can't say 'If the weather is raining, snowing, or hailing, say "I'm not going outside in that!"'

What's the best way to get around this limitation, assuming that a series of if statements would be too clumsy?[/quote]

Doesn't "If the weather is raining or the weather is snowing or the weather is hailing" work? The problem isn't that you can't have more than two or-clauses, it's that you have to write out the subject every time -- you can't use "or" to join the values.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1883&start=0#p12373
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Non-binary values
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-01-07 20:06:03

[quote="matt w"][quote="katz"]Non-binary values pose a problem because Inform won't allow complex If statements.  For instance, you can't say 'If the weather is raining, snowing, or hailing, say "I'm not going outside in that!"'

What's the best way to get around this limitation, assuming that a series of if statements would be too clumsy?[/quote]

Doesn't "If the weather is raining or the weather is snowing or the weather is hailing" work? The problem isn't that you can't have more than two or-clauses, it's that you have to write out the subject every time -- you can't use "or" to join the values.[/quote]
It's not completely unheard of in my experience but it is extremely rare in any programming language to be able to use 'or' in that way. One of the cases I guess where Inform follows suit instead of breaking with tradition.

However, it seems like it [i]should[/i] be uniquely (or at least unusually) possible for Inform to implement this kind of grammar. Most languages have to avoid it, because they can't resolve the ambiguity -- do you mean the 'or value' to add to the list of previous values, or do you mean to test the 'truth state' (i.e. interpret it as a binary value) on its own? The latter provides an incredibly useful loophole to help write simultaneously complex and compact if conditions. Wouldn't want to close that.

But Inform doesn't have this loophole to begin with because you can't test variables as truth states (I don't think). You have to rephrase it as a 'whether or not' to get an actual truth state out of a conditional statement, and I think the same goes for variables. I don't remember i7 ever accepting something like 'if carrying capacity, say "It can hold things."'

So there is no danger of ambiguity and it seems like going for the more fully featured use of 'or' that is unavailable to most languages, would be a win.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1883&start=0#p12374
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Non-binary values
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-07 20:42:25

[quote]It's not completely unheard of in my experience but it is extremely rare in any programming language to be able to use 'or' in that way.[/quote]

Although one of the rare exceptions is Inform 6.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1883&start=0#p12375
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Non-binary values
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-01-07 20:45:22

[quote="matt w"][quote="katz"]What's the best way to get around this limitation, assuming that a series of if statements would be too clumsy?[/quote]

Doesn't "If the weather is raining or the weather is snowing or the weather is hailing" work? The problem isn't that you can't have more than two or-clauses, it's that you have to write out the subject every time -- you can't use "or" to join the values.[/quote]

Yes indeed, that will definitely work. And thanks for mentioning it--I took the OP's statement that "a series of if statements would be too clumsy" to be explicitly rejecting this approach, but I'll bet that in fact it's exactly what he was looking for.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1885&start=0#p12376
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Quixe Save Game Files
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-01-07 21:04:36

Testing the "Release with an interpreter" in the latest version, it seems to work nicely with Glulx games. But I'm puzzled about one thing: When I save a game state, it's accessible the next time I open Safari and launch the game, but I can't find a file with a matching filename anywhere on my hard drive.

Where are the save files being stored, and in what form? Thanks for any insights!

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1883&start=0#p12377
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Non-binary values
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-01-07 21:42:26

[quote="zarf"][quote]It's not completely unheard of in my experience but it is extremely rare in any programming language to be able to use 'or' in that way.[/quote]

Although one of the rare exceptions is Inform 6.[/quote]
That's actually probably the one place that I had seen it that kept me from typing 'yes it's unheard of'. I knew I had seen that somewhere...

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1885&start=0#p12378
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Quixe Save Game Files
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-07 21:55:53

Save games are stored in the HTML5 "local storage" database. You can read about it here: <a class="postlink" href="http://diveintohtml5.org/storage.html">http://diveintohtml5.org/storage.html</a>

From the naive user's point of view, it's a big web cookie.

Getting the thing out (to use in another interpreter) is another question. I can think of ways to do it, but I haven't implemented anything.

(The same problem applies to stored game transcripts, which Quixe also puts in local storage.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1883&start=0#p12379
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Non-binary values
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-07 22:09:46

Eric's extension [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Eric%20Eve/Alternatives/index.html]Alternatives[/url] allows if-statements like that.  To quote:[quote]Allows checking the presence of an object or value in a set of objects or values with new either/or and neither/nor phrases. e.g., 'If the noun is either the carrot or the potato:', or 'Instead of eating something when the noun is neither the cake nor the pudding:'.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1885&start=0#p12380
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Quixe Save Game Files
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-01-07 22:17:56

Thanks. That page provides enough explanation for now. Someday I might have a technical question or two, but not this month.

FWIW, I don't see the transcript storage exporting as a big issue. Transcripts are mainly used by testers, and there's no reason why testers can't run a game in a local terp. Well, at some point I guess you do need people to hunt for Quixe-specific bugs, but those can be captured and sent to the author in other ways.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1859&start=10#p12381
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Can new games be entered into IntroComp and IF Comp?
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2011-01-07 23:13:39

Thanks.  I appreciate the dialogue.  We obviously disagree on some of this, but I'll just ping the organizers directly and see if its something they are open to considering.  

--Zack

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1886&start=0#p12382
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: pushing an item to one room but not another
User: kerkness / DateTime: 2011-01-07 23:44:59

I'm having some trouble figuring out how to let the player push an item only between two rooms but not anywhere else.

This is what I'm working with...
[code]

[The world]
The Garage is a room.

The Garage Door is west of the Driveway and east of the Garage.

The Garage Door is open.

The Side Door is north of the Garage and south of the Yard.

The Side Door is open.

A vehicle called The Mini Van is in the Garage. The mini van is pushable between rooms.

[then things go wrong....]

Instead of pushing van into yard, say "The van won't fit through the side door. The garage door would be a better idea."


[/code]

The goal is to let the player push the van into the drive way but not into the yard. 

I'm new to Inform7 and writing IFs.  Or at least the last time I did was on my c64 with little "goto 10" scripts.   Having a lot of fun with Inform but just getting started on my first story.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1886&start=0#p12383
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: pushing an item to one room but not another
User: kerkness / DateTime: 2011-01-07 23:57:19

Will happily answer my own post...  I found the solution in the documentation. Chapter 7.14. Going by, going through, going with

[code]Instead of going to the yard with the mini van: say "There is no way you're going to push this beast through the side door. If you're not mistaken that's what the garage door is for."[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1885&start=0#p12384
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Quixe Save Game Files
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-01-08 00:44:35

[quote]Getting the thing out (to use in another interpreter) is another question. I can think of ways to do it, but I haven't implemented anything.[/quote]
If anyone else wants to help, the way is of course to use data: links and the .getAsBinary() function on <file> inputs. The tricky part will be getting it work cross browser. It may not be possible for IE.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1870&start=10#p12385
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: New CYA: The Adventures of Phoebe McGee
User: Neo / DateTime: 2011-01-08 03:45:42

Hi Chuck,

I spent a bit of time playing Phoebe the other night. It took me a while to get into the story (the exploration at the very start seemed a bit laboured), but there's some great writing there, and I'm very interested in your motivations and research.

Matt's obviously given you some incredibly good advice, but I would also suggest that you consider dropping a thread in the beta-testing forum on this site and get some systematic testing done. When I played through I noticed a number of errors (what seemed to be a missing choice when fighting bonecrusher; "runaway" (someone who has absconded) instead of "run away" (an action) as one of the choices; a few spelling mistakes... apologies for not writing them down as I was playing).

I'm also intrigued by the level of menace (female jeapourdy scenarios and "horror" settings) within the story, especially given the target age group. What have the responses from children to this story been like? Have you found the length to be prohibitive? Have boys responded well to playing out the character of a young girl? Have readers been able to save the bird at the start?

Well done on what you've written and achieved. You've not only created a great story, but something meaningful.

By the way, should you be interested in CYOA style stories that have substance, I recommend you check out a new Australian series of books called Ranger in Danger (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.rangerindanger.com">http://www.rangerindanger.com</a>). The backstory to how the series came about is inspiring.

All the best!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1887&start=0#p12386
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Gnome-Inform 6G60
User: Birion / DateTime: 2011-01-08 04:26:21

Does anyone know when (approximately) it might be released? Not that I mind waiting, but knowing for how long is always nicer than waiting blind.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1884&start=0#p12387
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Keyword based actions
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-01-08 06:34:07

[quote="bcressey"]Is there a straightforward way to handle noun-based keyword actions in TADS 3?[/quote]
I asked the same question in [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1246]this thread[/url].  Ultimately this, along with the lack of a browser-based interpreter, means I'll be developing the next Walker & Silhouette game in Inform/Quixe.

[quote="bcressey"][code]
DefineTAction(Keyword);
VerbRule(Keyword)
    [badness 1000]
    singleDobj
    : KeywordAction
    verbPhrase = 'keyword/keywording (what)'
;
[/code][/quote]
What's badness?   [emote]:shock:[/emote]   My own implementation was exactly the same as yours except for that line, and it didn't work half as well.  (I mean, if you think disambiguation is broken by [i]your[/i] code - I'd have been happy to have it work so well.)

Wow, and this also fixes an issue I had with commands that consisted of a single punctuation mark (I had to modify TAction as a work-around).

[quote="bcressey"]My current approach involves generating a list of vocab words for all keyword objects in the game, then replacing them with 'keyword <OBJECT>' if they are entered as a single command. I also make a half-hearted effort to prevent disambiguation from blowing up. My concern is that this lacks any finesse whatsoever.

[spoiler][code]
DefineTAction(Keyword);
VerbRule(Keyword)
    'keyword' singleDobj
    : KeywordAction
    verbPhrase = 'keyword/keywording (what)'
;

modify Actor
    ambigAction = nil
;

modify playerMessages
    askMissingObject(actor, action, which)
    {
        inherited(actor, action, which);
        actor.ambigAction = action;
    }
;

StringPreParser
    doParsing(str,which)
    {
        str = str.toLower();

        if (!gActor.ambigAction)
        {
            foreach (local keyword in allKeywords.lst())
            {
                if (rexSearch('^' + keyword + '$', str))
                    str = str.findReplace(keyword, 'keyword ' + keyword, ReplaceOnce);
            }
        }
        gActor.ambigAction = nil;

        return str;
    }
;[/code][/spoiler][/quote]
How are you creating your list of vocab words?  I can't seem to find a good tokenise or split method.  Or are you only allowing one keyword per object?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1884&start=0#p12388
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Keyword based actions
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-08 06:55:45

[quote="Pacian"]I'll be developing the next Walker & Silhouette game[/quote]

Yay!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=30#p12389
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2011-01-08 08:55:06

in true IF spirit, I'll shoot first and read later all the rest of the thread. [emote]:-)[/emote]

Indeed IF seems to grow far more authors than audience.  I do enjoy playing more, but only perhaps because not being a native english speaker I feel my own shortcomings when trying to actually author something up...

OTOH, I can't help but think your study is biased.  As I understand it, you give classes to screenwriters, right?  They approach IF biased on their cinematic taste:  visual/descriptions first, linear progression.  How much better would multibranching/dialogue IF fare with literature majors?  How about your typical gaming crowd?  I'm quite sure more gamey puzzle-heavy IF would find more bearing with them.

In other words:  there's all kinds of audiences for IF and each one like them for different reasons.  Or, more likely, don't like at all...  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1888&start=0#p12390
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Socrates in your pocket
User: Alcibiades / DateTime: 2011-01-08 09:57:02

Six months ago or more, I visited this site with many questions when I first switched from TADS to Inform7.  In short order I was told (if a tad more diplomatically) to go away and study the documentation further.

Duly chastised, I went away and studied the documentation further. My pilot project now stands at 17,000 words, just 60 rooms and 138 things, and all of this compiles without complaint, but I still have many refinements to implement in what amounts to the opening region of a far more ambitious whole.

With your forbearance, I bring some of my enduring problems here, but if there is a more suitable site for raising such “entry level” queries, please tell.

For openers, here are a few niggles I have been unable to solve thus far:

[b]Default content reporting[/b]

I’m using “brief” room description (and undo disabled), but it doesn’t serve the purpose that I7 declares the contents of everything on first sight (including pockets in clothes, and the contents of those pockets, and the contents of those contents). It doesn’t suit the purpose either that I7 tells me a closed door is closed, an empty bottle is empty. How do I disable this “lazy man” option, and have the parser disclose no more than I wish it to disclose?


[b]Micro “regions”[/b]

I’m guessing the situation arises frequently where a significant artefact (say Nelson’s column) should be both enterable from one direction but present and viewable in all adjacent rooms. We want separate reports when the artefact is viewed from different angles, and elements of it to be visible/interacted with from one direction only, but it does seem redundant to declare the “column” as a separate scenery item for each adjacent room. Is there a convenient solution which doesn’t entail incorporating the logic for distant objects?  If I declare (say) “the chippe shoppe” as a micro-region to that purpose, is there an economical way to list all the component rooms of that region without (again) redundantly declaring each separate room as in “region X”?


[b]Search revealed objects[/b]

Some items already appear only once specific scenery elements are examined or searched, by simply moving them into play at that juncture. But in one room I want various fixtures only to be reported once the player looks at (say) the fireplace.  Presumably I cannot declare a thing (and its component parts) as scenery or “fixed in place” and then move it into the room at the appropriate moment, but how otherwise do I forbid it being reported? 


[b]Compound clothing labels[/b]

I need the parser to recognise (for example) “suit of armour” to mean breastplate and helmet and gauntlets when these separate items are all present in a given location, or all worn by the player.  How do I declare “suit of armour” as a compound noun for those specific items, and not simply as a synonym for any one of them?


[b]Magic pocket [/b]

One of the wearable items has a magic pocket. Nothing can be put into that pocket (apart from a hand, obviously) but anything conceivable can be taken out of it – for example a coach and horses, a Viking ship or Socrates. However, while the parser registers the pocket as a container, I’ve been unable to find a syntax to disable the “putting into” action for anything but the wearer’s hand.

To be exact, I’ve tried disabling it with all permutations of the following: ““[Before / Instead of] putting [anything / something / a thing] [in / into] [a / the] majick pocket, say “Xxxxx” – and none of these is recognised as valid. I don’t quite understand why not? If I declare the holding capacity of the pocket to be 0, will the player still be able to put his hand into it?


Trusting you won’t find these queries[i] too[/i] elementary. I thought it easiest to keep them all in a single thread rather than spray them out as individual threads.  Any kindly advice much appreciated.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1888&start=0#p12391
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Socrates in your pocket
User: Birion / DateTime: 2011-01-08 10:08:28

As for the magic pocket, try "inserting it into" instead of putting.

Something like

[code]
Before inserting something into the majick pocket:
    if the noun is not the player's hand:
        say "You can't put it there!";
[/code]

should work for you.

Or you might create a new action (Putting a hand into, perhaps?) that would only work with "put the hand in [majick pocket]" command.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1888&start=0#p12392
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Socrates in your pocket
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-01-08 11:37:05

[quote="Alcibiades"] 

[b]Default content reporting[/b]

I’m using “brief” room description (and undo disabled), but it doesn’t serve the purpose that I7 declares the contents of everything on first sight (including pockets in clothes, and the contents of those pockets, and the contents of those contents). It doesn’t suit the purpose either that I7 tells me a closed door is closed, an empty bottle is empty. How do I disable this “lazy man” option, and have the parser disclose no more than I wish it to disclose?[/quote]

Those pieces of information come from two different places. The "closed" stuff is from the room description details activity; the contents listing can be turned off when you print the name of something. So to get rid of both:

[code]The Testing Lab is a room.

The basket and the bottle are containers in the Testing Lab. The bottle is closed and transparent. It contains a genie. The basket is open. It contains a breadfruit and some Mexican sweet bread.

Rule for printing room description details: stop.

After printing the name of something while looking:
	omit contents in listing.[/code]


[quote="Alcibiades"] [b]Micro “regions”[/b]

I’m guessing the situation arises frequently where a significant artefact (say Nelson’s column) should be both enterable from one direction but present and viewable in all adjacent rooms. We want separate reports when the artefact is viewed from different angles, and elements of it to be visible/interacted with from one direction only, but it does seem redundant to declare the “column” as a separate scenery item for each adjacent room. Is there a convenient solution which doesn’t entail incorporating the logic for distant objects?
[/quote]

I'm not quite sure what you have in mind here when you say "doesn't entail incorporating the logic for distant objects" -- if you want something to be seen but not touched, you'll have to include some kind of code to enforce this. The "Carnivale" example does that by changing the way scope is handled.

If that method isn't what you want, another way handle this is to make one Nelson's column object that is interactable-with and physically present in Center of Trafalgar Square, and then a view of Nelson's column backdrop. I'd then put the backdrop in the mini-region or room list where it's supposed to be visible, and write a rule to make that view object untouchable. 

[quote="Alcibiades"][b]Search revealed objects[/b]

Some items already appear only once specific scenery elements are examined or searched, by simply moving them into play at that juncture. But in one room I want various fixtures only to be reported once the player looks at (say) the fireplace.  Presumably I cannot declare a thing (and its component parts) as scenery or “fixed in place” and then move it into the room at the appropriate moment, but how otherwise do I forbid it being reported? 
[/quote]

You can make something scenery and move it in your code. It's only the player who can't move a scenery thing.

[quote="Alcibiades"][b]Compound clothing labels[/b]

I need the parser to recognise (for example) “suit of armour” to mean breastplate and helmet and gauntlets when these separate items are all present in a given location, or all worn by the player.  How do I declare “suit of armour” as a compound noun for those specific items, and not simply as a synonym for any one of them? [/quote]

That's not at all an elementary question -- it's possible but requires some work. 

Depending on how exactly you want it to function, you might find "Left Hand of Autumn" or "AARP-Gnosis" helpful, though I suspect there may be some additional gotchas about using these techniques on wearable items. I'm afraid I'm not in a position to put together an example case for you right now, but possibly someone else will be able to; or you can experiment and come back if you run into problems.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1870&start=10#p12393
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: New CYA: The Adventures of Phoebe McGee
User: casmith / DateTime: 2011-01-08 12:03:43

Thanks Neo. 

Your comments are valuable and deserve my follow-up. I will correct the errors you mentioned. After I do that, I will start a thread in the beta testing forum.

As far as menace... this concerns me as well. I would suggest that "Phoebe" is suitable only for fifth to sixth graders and older. On my website I advise parents and their children going through it together. Yes, there are some scary images. I have not promoted the site to elementary school teachers or parents, other than creating the website to make the story available.

For an interesting take on these kind of images, see Jane Yolen's book Tough Magic. I think the images are no scarier than in typical fairy tales, though those can be scary for a young child. So the jury is out on the menace level. I think I need to return to my website to make this clear. Phoebe's courage has to occur in the face of significant danger. My choice of a female protagonist was deliberate. Having two grandchildren who are girls may have something to do with that. Both are too young to view the story, though I was impressed with the four year old's response to the "small story" on the website.

Visit my website at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.raisingcourageouskids.com">http://www.raisingcourageouskids.com</a> for commentary about fear, courage, and heroism. 

Your reaction ....

[quote]Well done on what you've written and achieved. You've not only created a great story, but something meaningful.[/quote]

.... really lifted my spirit. Great story... something meaningful... well done. So nice to hear that you thought what I did is worthwhile.

I have written nonfiction books, but "Phoebe" is really my first effort with fiction. Also my first try (other than the short story for very young children) with CYOA. Thanks for the tip on Ranger in Danger. I'll check it out right away.

All the best to you as well. Thanks for taking the time to read the story and post your comments.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1879&start=0#p12394
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indirect relations on values and temporary names
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-01-08 12:37:36

Yes, please.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1884&start=0#p12395
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Keyword based actions
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-01-08 12:45:41

I think badness just tells the parser to match that line last, so other grammar predicates will take precedence. It never quite seems to do what I expect, at least when modifying the built-in predicates, so I may not understand it very well.

Here's how I generate the list of keywords.

[spoiler][code]
/**********************************************************************************************************************
 * maintain lists of significant objects
 *********************************************************************************************************************/

#define MakeClassList(K, N) \
##N : object \
 \
    lst() \
    { \
    if (lst_ == nil) \
        initLst(); \
    return lst_; \
    } \
 \
    initLst() \
    { \
        lst_ = new Vector(50); \
        local obj = firstObj(); \
        while (obj != nil) \
        { \
            if(obj.ofKind(##K)) \
                lst_.append(obj); \
            obj = nextObj(obj); \
        } \
        lst_ = lst_.toList(); \
    } \
 \
    lst_ = nil \

MakeClassList(Room, allRooms);
MakeClassList(Weapon, allWeapons);
MakeClassList(Armor, allArmor);
MakeClassList(Person, allPeople);
MakeClassList(Keyword, allKeywords);

modify allKeywords
    initLst()
    {
        local keyWords = new Vector(200);
        local keyNouns = allRooms.lst() + allWeapons.lst() + allArmor.lst() + allPeople.lst();
        local vocab, toks;

        foreach (local keyNoun in keyNouns)
        {
            if (keyNoun.vocabWords)
            {
                vocab = keyNoun.vocabWords.toLower();
                vocab = vocab.findReplace('/',' ', ReplaceAll);
                vocab = vocab.findReplace('*',' ', ReplaceAll);
                toks = Tokenizer.tokenize(vocab);

                for (local i = 1, local cnt = toks.length() ; i <= cnt ; ++i)
                    keyWords.appendUnique(getTokVal(toks[i]));
            }
        }

        lst_ = keyWords.toList();
    }
;
[/code][/spoiler]

It will match every token in vocabWords for every object of Room, Person, Armor, and Weapon in the game. Keyword is a throwaway class so I could get extra mileage out of the macro.

For room keywords to work correctly, I had to fiddle with scope a bit.

[spoiler][code]
modify KeywordAction
    objInScope(obj) { return true; }
    getScopeList()  { return scope_ + allRooms.lst(); }
;
[/code][/spoiler]

I also undefined the majority of verbs and rolled my own Enter and Exit actions, which could be helpful in avoiding unwanted clashes with other verbs.

This is for a port of the [i]Treasures of an Unspecified Realm or District[/i] code from S. John Ross, so I have a pretty free hand in demolishing the parser's vocabulary. I can post more of it if you're interested, though it likely has a lot of bugs at this stage - I've only been at it for a couple days.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1711&start=0#p12396
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Aurora
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-01-08 14:00:23

Sorry about the initial proliferation of versions; the version on IFDB now (release 4) is the "final" one.  EDIT:  There were a couple of minor but really annoying bugs in that version, so I put up a version 4.1 (which is why there was no download link for the moment; should be up now/soon).

But nobody (except me and my husband) has played through very far; absolutely nobody has gotten through the dream sequence, so there could still be problems after that, which is why it's still beta for now.  I am certainly still soliciting playtesters.

(If anyone has utterly given up on the dream sequence, I can post the solution.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1883&start=0#p12397
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Non-binary values
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-01-08 14:38:57

But it would be nice to also have an adjectival value, like so (except, you know, in a way that actually works):

[code]Weather is a kind of value.
A room has a weather.
A room can be adverse.
A room is adverse if the weather is raining, snowing, or hailing.
Instead of going in an adverse room, say "I'm not going outside in that!"
[/code]

Complicated because it would be better if the "adverse" value itself had three states instead of two (three being the largest set that can be divided up in any way by including or excluding a single element):

[code]A room can be pleasant, neutral, or adverse.
A room is pleasant if the weather is sunny.  A room is adverse if the weather is raining, snowing, or hailing.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1883&start=0#p12398
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Non-binary values
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-08 14:46:48

You can set that up (for a particular case) with a "Definition" adjective.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1859&start=10#p12399
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Can new games be entered into IntroComp and IF Comp?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-08 14:58:39

[quote]You're just not allowed to start 10 km ahead of everyone else because you already ran that distance the previous day.[/quote]

This metaphor has passed its load limit... the point here is that a marathon is a physical trial, but the IFComp is a popularity contest.

[quote]To my understanding this is not IFcomp's explicit goal.[/quote]

(Increasing the quality of games, that is.) Yeah, I agree with this. At least, my view of what the IFComp is *good for* is not making games better, but *measuring* how good games are. Quality is not a measurable value, but we can approximate it by this popularity contest -- if people encounter games fresh, with no preconceived opinions. That's valuable information and I think we would be poorer if it weren't available.

Measuring *community* popularity -- after people have discussed a work, seen how it is refined, and come to whatever level of consensus emerges -- is *also* valuable information. The XYZZY awards are good for that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1888&start=0#p12400
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Socrates in your pocket
User: Alcibiades / DateTime: 2011-01-08 15:01:18

Very grateful to Birion and Emily for replying so promptly and helpfully.

The point of the compound noun glitch is that I want to block the player entering certain locations or utilising certain things if he/she is not wearing (the appropriate costume). Making it a single item (like a tracksuit) would have been the easy answer, but assembling (say the spacesuit) from component elements seems more realistic and intuitive. Surprised this has not arisen before.

Similar niggles - 

[b]Don't sit on the Brazen Bit[/b]

The Brazen Bit can be stood on to feast from the damson tree, but it must also be carted off to feed the troll's baby. By making it an "enterable supporter" it can be stood upon, but the parser gets snooty about a movable enterable supporter. Also, how would I make it possible to stand on supporter X but not sit on it, or sit on supporter Y but not stand on it, if both "sit" and "stand" are translated as "enter"?  (That's probably an easy peasy one, sorry.)

[b]Telescoops and Magnifrying Glasses[/b]

And so is this one, I daresay: The player will want to "look through" such portable items, but on the face of it that action is reserved for such fixed items as windows, which are in fact specialised doors. If I write a special code for handling such items, won't it interfere with the default spec that this is a window-specific activity?

[b]Is it a bird? Is he a plane?[/b]

This one's more pernickety.  Nice word, pernickety.  I have defined a certain animal with the gender appropriate to its name and function, yet the player should be allowed to refer to it as "it". This is not allowed.  If a game were to incorporate an android or replicant, the neuter form should also be interchangeable with the notional gender.  The game may refer to (Skippy) as "him", but the player may still default to "it".  Interestingly, what I found was that the parser ignores "it" as designating (the coelocanth or whatever) and assumes another inanimate object present in the location, even when this has not been examined or interacted with at all. This might surprise the player:   "PICK UP DOG" - "TAKEN" - "WASH IT" - "I SEE NO PURPOSE IN WASHING THE HAND-SPUN SHROUD"

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1884&start=0#p12401
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Keyword based actions
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-01-08 15:12:48

It makes more sense to rewrite failed commands as TAKE + failed_command instead of messing with vocabulary. For example, if you type DOOR, that will fail. When it fails, rewrite the command as TAKE DOOR and try again.

When a command fails, notifyParseFailure(issuingActor, messageProp, args) is called on the actor that would perform the failed action. I assume you only want this for the implicit "me" actor. So when defining your "me" actor, override the default implementation of the above method with something like:

[code]
me: Person
    // ...
    notifyParseFailure(issuingActor, messageProp, args)
    {
        callWithSenseContext(nil, nil, new function()
        {
            if (issuingActor.isPlayerChar()) {
                if (issuingActor != self && !canTalkTo(issuingActor)) {
                    cannotRespondToCommand(issuingActor, messageProp, args);
                } else {
                    // ***** Replace the command here.
                }
            } else {
                issuingActor.notifyIssuerParseFailure(self, messageProp, args);
            }
        });
    }
[/code]

The above is the default implementation except for the line marked with "*****". There, instead of printing an error message, which is what the default does, you can replace the current command with a new one. You do that by throwing a ReplacementCommandStringException exception. For example, if you would like to replace the current command with "TAKE DOOR", you would write:

[code]throw new ReplacementCommandStringException('take door', nil, nil);[/code]

However, I don't know how to get the text the player typed [emote]:-P[/emote] This should be possible and I hope someone knows how. Assuming that a hypothetical function currentText() does that, the above would be:

[code]throw new ReplacementCommandStringException('take ' + currentText(), nil, nil);[/code]

Note that the above only deals with commands that contain an object but no verb. Typing DOOR triggers the above. But typing QWERTY does not. And I assume this is exactly what you want; only try TAKE if the player actually typed a word that the game recognizes.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1888&start=0#p12402
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Socrates in your pocket
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-01-08 15:25:23

[quote="Alcibiades"]The point of the compound noun glitch is that I want to block the player entering certain locations or utilising certain things if he/she is not wearing (the appropriate costume). Making it a single item (like a tracksuit) would have been the easy answer, but assembling (say the spacesuit) from component elements seems more realistic and intuitive. Surprised this has not arisen before.[/quote]
The first post sounded like you wanted the player's command TAKE ARMOUR to equal TAKE BREASTPLATE, HELMET AND GAUNTLETS and so on, but this sounds like you need to handle multiple items as one in the code. The latter case you can solve quite easily, for example:

[code]Definition: A person is armoured if he is wearing the breastplate and he is wearing the helmet and he is wearing the gauntlets.

Instead of taking the sword when the player is not armoured:
    say "The knight's code of honour dictates that a sword cannot be carried unless wearing a proper armour."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1888&start=0#p12403
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Socrates in your pocket
User: Birion / DateTime: 2011-01-08 16:58:48

[quote="Alcibiades"][b]Don't sit on the Brazen Bit[/b]

The Brazen Bit can be stood on to feast from the damson tree, but it must also be carted off to feed the troll's baby. By making it an "enterable supporter" it can be stood upon, but the parser gets snooty about a movable enterable supporter. Also, how would I make it possible to stand on supporter X but not sit on it, or sit on supporter Y but not stand on it, if both "sit" and "stand" are translated as "enter"?  (That's probably an easy peasy one, sorry.)[/quote]

It's a bit late, so I apologise for any mistakes I might make. Take my suggestions with a grain of salt.

(first taking the grain of salt)

If you want supporters that move, maybe you should take a look at the Ridable Vehicles extension. I can't promise it's what you need, but maybe it'll solve all your worries.

As for sitting/standing on something, I would (once again) suggest making new actions (unless they are already defined, you should spend some time looking through the Index, in fact, you should do it regardless, sometimes it seems to me like I learnt more just searching the Index than reading the Documentation):

[code]

Understand the commands "sit on [something]" and "stand on [something]" as something new.
[You want to stop the commands from being part of the entering action.]

Sitting on is an action applying to one thing. Understand "sit on [something]" as sitting on.

Standing on is an action applying to one thing. Understand "stand on [something]" as something new.

Check standing on the Brazen Bit:
    try entering the Brazen Bit instead;

Check sitting on the Brazen Bit:
   say "You can't sit on something so alliterative.";
   rule fails;

[/code]

With luck, this might do the trick.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1884&start=0#p12404
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Keyword based actions
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-01-08 17:04:11

[quote="RealNC"]However, I don't know how to get the text the player typed [emote]:-P[/emote] This should be possible and I hope someone knows how.[/quote]

I assume we could use a StringPreParser for that, right? Give it a sufficiently high runOrder so it runs after all the others.

[code]
modify Actor
    lastCmdText = nil
;

StringPreParser
    doParsing(str,which)
    {
        gActor.lastCmdText = str;
        return str;
    }
    runOrder = 1000
;
[/code]

[code]throw new ReplacementCommandStringException('take ' + self.lastCmdText, nil, nil);[/code]

[quote]Note that the above only deals with commands that contain an object but no verb. Typing DOOR triggers the above. But typing QWERTY does not. And I assume this is exactly what you want; only try TAKE if the player actually typed a word that the game recognizes.[/quote]

This looks perfect, thank you very much!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1888&start=0#p12406
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Socrates in your pocket
User: Alcibiades / DateTime: 2011-01-08 19:05:39

Gosh, you people are a Weritable Results Factory, aren't you.  I shall try adding all these solutions to the code tomorrow.  And thanks again.

By the bye, not having played other people's excursions in Inform7, I have no yardstick to measure how verbose mine is becoming. I had extensive experience of text adventures when they were still known as text adventures, but in the current project I am taking the term "interactive fiction" quite literally. This is a book in playable form, rather than a game or puzzle, and hence a large part of the experience will be the delight and amusement the player gets from experiencing and exploring the created world. It is entirely non-linear, highly descriptive and whimsical, but that implicitly demands a high ratio of essentially redundant text (describing functionless or scenery items, dealing with player inputs in character, and explaining the convoluted logic of his surroundings piecemeal as he goes.

Does Inform7 have an effective ceiling (in Glulx mode) to a portable game size - translatable into a maximum effective word count?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1888&start=0#p12407
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Socrates in your pocket
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2011-01-08 19:24:50

[quote="Alcibiades"]
[b]Telescoops and Magnifrying Glasses[/b]

And so is this one, I daresay: The player will want to "look through" such portable items, but on the face of it that action is reserved for such fixed items as windows, which are in fact specialised doors. If I write a special code for handling such items, won't it interfere with the default spec that this is a window-specific activity?
[/quote]

Inform doesn't come with any default definitions for windows out of the box. (Although perhaps you are using an extension that defines windows?) The command "look through" is actually just a synonym for the "search" action.

If you want "look through" to do something else in the context of things like windows and microscopes, you will need to 1) define a new action, 2) define the specific kinds of things that you want the action to apply to, and 3) define the grammar that calls the new action for the new kinds.

Example code will probably make this clearer:

[code]
A window is a kind of door.
An optical instrument is a kind of thing. A microscope is an optical instrument. A telescope is an optical instrument.

Peering through is an action applying to one thing.

Understand "look through [a window]" as peering through.
Understand "look through [an optical instrument]" as peering through.
[/code]

The two understand lines will be checked before the more general line that understands "look through [something]" as searching, so if the noun is a window or an optical instrument, the peering through action will be called first. Of course you can then write whatever code you like to define the results of peering through something.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1883&start=10#p12408
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Non-binary values
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-08 20:34:26

I'm quite fond of Python's convention for using the "in" operator for iterables in this way, such as:

[code]if weather in (snowing, raining, hailing):[/code]

The "alternatives" extension sounds like it handles things in a similar way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1883&start=10#p12409
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Non-binary values
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-01-08 23:44:20

[quote="capmikee"]I'm quite fond of Python's convention for using the "in" operator for iterables in this way, such as:

[code]if weather in (snowing, raining, hailing):[/code]

The "alternatives" extension sounds like it handles things in a similar way.[/quote]
This construction is extremely useful. I do it all the time in lambdamoo. It's part of the awesome power of lists when they are treated as a central variable type.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1884&start=0#p12410
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Keyword based actions
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-01-08 23:59:57

Here is the full source for the Keyword action.

[code]
modify Actor
    notifyParseFailure(issuingActor, messageProp, args)
    {
        callWithSenseContext(nil, nil, new function()
        {
            if (issuingActor.isPlayerChar())
            {
                if (issuingActor != self && !canTalkTo(issuingActor))
                {
                    cannotRespondToCommand(issuingActor, messageProp, args);
                }
                else
                {
                    local keyword = self.lastCmdText;
                    if (keyword)
                    {
                        self.lastCmdText = nil;
                        throw new ReplacementCommandStringException('keyword ' + keyword, nil, nil);
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        getParserMessageObj().(messageProp)(self, args...);
                    }
                }
            }
            else
            {
                issuingActor.notifyIssuerParseFailure(self, messageProp, args);
            }
        });
    }
    lastCmdText = nil
;

StringPreParser
    doParsing(str,which)
    {
        gActor.lastCmdText = str;
        return str;
    }
    runOrder = 1000
;

DefineTAction(Keyword);
VerbRule(Keyword)
    'keyword' singleDobj
    : KeywordAction
    verbPhrase = 'keyword/keywording (what)'
;
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1859&start=10#p12411
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Can new games be entered into IntroComp and IF Comp?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-01-09 00:02:54

[quote="zarf"][quote]To my understanding this is not IFcomp's explicit goal.[/quote]

(Increasing the quality of games, that is.) Yeah, I agree with this. At least, my view of what the IFComp is *good for* is not making games better, but *measuring* how good games are. Quality is not a measurable value, but we can approximate it by this popularity contest -- if people encounter games fresh, with no preconceived opinions. That's valuable information and I think we would be poorer if it weren't available.

Measuring *community* popularity -- after people have discussed a work, seen how it is refined, and come to whatever level of consensus emerges -- is *also* valuable information. The XYZZY awards are good for that.[/quote]
As every award show has taught us, and I don't think IFcomp is any different, measuring popularity is not actually a very good approximation of measuring quality. I don't agree with the results this year at all -- I mean they were good games, but were they the *best* games? I would pretty much have to take the top 7 or 8 and turn them upside down. This is not to dis the comp -- I wasn't peeved about it -- it's just the way voted awards go.

So, purpose-wise, I'm going to go with neither/nor. The point of a competition like this seems not to directly go for quality (seminars and lessons would be way more effective at that -- a comp is more sink-or-swim) nor to accurately determine the Few the True (and it would be obnoxious for any comp to claim it had) -- but just to promote the form and to get more participation. That describes the sum of it.

So the main function of the comp is simply to promote [i]quantity[/i]. Maybe that sounds crass and so people seek to avoid saying it directly, but it cuts to the point and has the advantage of avoiding questionable conclusions about the value of an open vote in determining artistic merit. It's just about quantity, that's the kind of beast it is. More quality games will hopefully fall out as a side effect. We can't always be sure the best games wouldn't have been released anyway, but we can be pretty sure that there are a few that wouldn't have. Good enough for me!

Besides, it's fun. 8)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1859&start=10#p12412
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Can new games be entered into IntroComp and IF Comp?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-09 01:07:40

[quote]As every award show has taught us, and I don't think IFcomp is any different, measuring popularity is not actually a very good approximation of measuring quality.[/quote]

Maybe I should have said, "quality as typical IF players will judge it." Not as how I, or any other single person, would judge it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1859&start=10#p12413
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Can new games be entered into IntroComp and IF Comp?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-01-09 02:23:41

[quote="zarf"]Maybe I should have said, "quality as typical IF players will judge it." Not as how I, or any other single person, would judge it.[/quote]
Works for me.

Anyway, I have no problem with the restriction against one game being entered in two competitions. Fairness aside, if someone really wants to participate in both contests, there's a simple solution available — write two games. Quantity.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1889&start=0#p12414
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Is the short story the most natural fit for IF?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-01-09 02:42:15

All the comps are doing it. Vast majority of the authors are doing it. Development resources over development time seems to demand it. IF is highly experimental and the more experimental corners of other media also evolved to focus on short forms. And as a player, I tend to approach IF more spontaneously when I have better information about the size of my commitment, as I do when there is a score (I am way pro-scoring for this reason) or when a short game is the expectation.

By adopting the short form, has the IF form found its natural fit? Or is this a phase of some sort? I'm thinking, natural fit.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1889&start=0#p12415
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Is the short story the most natural fit for IF?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-01-09 04:20:13

I don't think it's a natural fit for IF, so much as a natural fit for the kind of people making IF at the moment.  If a commercial company decided to make an IF, I imagine that a relatively small team of writers, working 9-5, would probably find a novel-sized game a better fit.  But with IF currently being made primarily by individuals in their spare time, unpaid, I think a short story is the only thing they can expect to do well, unless they have the stamina to work on a game for years.

That said, I think that authors [i]can[/i] make bigger games if they're prepared to ignore certain received wisdoms and accepted ways of doing things.  Procedural generation and randomisation are ways for small games to offer more content than a single author would normally be able to provide.  Limited command sets and/or restricted implementation are ways to create sprawling stories/worlds while limiting combinatorial explosion.  User participation is another way to extend the life of games dramatically.

Basically, I think short stories are a good fit for modern IF, but if you just peak over the fence at what other amateur game devs are doing, there are a lot of other forms that look like they might fit as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1890&start=0#p12416
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: A small program to list all Check rules in your game.
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-09 04:26:47

Why yes, I [i]did[/i] do nothing this Saturday except putter about. 

[code]"All Check Rules" by Ron Newcomb.

There is room.

When play begins:
	repeat with the Nth rulebook running from 0 to 500:
		let RB be the Nth rulebook as a rulebook;
		if RB is the final rulebook, break;
		;
		let the rulebook's name be indexed text;
		let the rulebook's name be "[RB]";
		unless word number 1 in the rulebook's name is "check", next;
		;
		if rule 1 of RB is the little-used do nothing rule, next;  [ skip empty rulebooks ]
		;
		say "[line break][bold type][RB][roman type]:[line break]";
		repeat with n running from 1 to the number of rules in RB:
			say "[rule n of RB]."

To decide which rulebook is (n - a number) as a rulebook: (- {n} -).
To decide which rule is rule (n - number) of/in/for (ar - a rulebook): (- (NthOfRulebook({n},{ar})) -).
To decide which number is the number of rules in (rb - rulebook): (- NumberOfRulesInRulebook({rb}) -).

Include (-
[ NthOfRulebook n ar;
	if (n < 1) return LITTLE_USED_DO_NOTHING_R;
	if (n > NumberOfRulesInRulebook(ar)) return LITTLE_USED_DO_NOTHING_R;
	return (rulebooks_array-->(ar))-->(n-1); 
];
[ NumberOfRulesInRulebook ar i;
	for (i = 0 : (rulebooks_array-->ar)-->i ~= NULL : i++);
	return i;
];
-).

The final rulebook is a rulebook. 
[/code]
Stick it at the very end of your game's source.  (Without the title or my name, obviously.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1891&start=0#p12417
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: I7 port of Crowther's Colossal Cave looking for testers
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2011-01-09 04:41:19

I last posted about this project in rgif: <a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/60e6306538a57dd9/7e7bdb571238017d?lnk=gst&q=oneconch&pli=1">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... onch&pli=1</a> 

Just a short time and a few Inform versions later (the team did an excellent job on the new mapping function, by the way -- I only needed a couple of tweaks to get a really useful index map), I think I have something complete enough to be worth testing.

My goal was first to reproduce Crowther's original IF world in its entirety, including output text, without removing all the niceties of a modern parser. Ideally, a transcript of valid (and, less importantly, many invalid) commands in the original executable should produce the same output in my version, with possibly a few disambiguation messages in parentheses.

So, I'd like some testers interested in trying to break it. Again, I'm looking for exact reproduction of the behavior of the executable in [url]http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/source/adv_crowther.zip[/url] made available by Dennis Jerz in his article [url=http://digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/001/2/000009/000009.html]Somewhere Nearby is Colossal Cave[/url].

If you're interested, PM me here or contact me at <a class="postlink" href="http://if.game-testing.org/">http://if.game-testing.org/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1891&start=0#p12418
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: I7 port of Crowther's Colossal Cave looking for testers
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-01-09 06:06:41

I don't think I've ever had the chance to do this, so I'll take this chance right away!

The only feature that really reduces my pleasure of that old game nowadays is the light source. Every port of Adventure I've seen maintains the light limit - which of course, is reasonable enough. But I kept hoping for a game that'd either allow us to extend the lamp's life or just remove the limit altogether, as an extra option. There's actually a TADS version (Colossal Cave Revisited) that does just that, at the cost of losing five points and calling it an "easy" game. Thing is, it doesn't say what *else* it changes when it goes into "easy" mode.

Also, if you're using I7... then you have access to something else which would make it easier for modern players to enjoy Adventure. An onscreen, toggleable, automap. The cave is so windy, the gameplay so oldschool, that mapping it out - especially when you get to bedquilt! - just makes it overwhelming for some players.

I understand this is very much a tall order... well, it's just a couple of suggestions, really. [emote]:)[/emote]

Incidently - did you base your code on Aaron Reed's I7 port of Adventure? The one he uses to illustrate his "intelligent hinting" system?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1891&start=0#p12419
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: I7 port of Crowther's Colossal Cave looking for testers
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-01-09 07:34:12

[quote="ChrisC"]Again, I'm looking for exact reproduction of the behavior of the executable in <a class="postlink" href="http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/source/adv350-pdp10.tar.gz">http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/ ... p10.tar.gz</a> made available by Dennis Jerz.[/quote]Did you really mean the adv350-pdp10.tar.gz file? That's the 1977 Crowther and Woods version: the 1975-6 Crowther original is this one
[url]http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/source/adv_crowther.zip[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1892&start=0#p12420
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Simple way to say appropriate rank from Table of Rankings?
User: Birion / DateTime: 2011-01-09 08:23:20

And again I come with another question. I'm trying to replace the default message for requesting the score (because, honestly, "You have scored 7 out of a possible 11" does not a sense make - 7 what? Apples?), but don't know how to find out the appropriate rank from the table of rankings (I can't round the score down to something and then compare it, since the ranks aren't at regular intervals, e.g. 10, 20, 30, but somewhat like 6, 9, 13, 15).

EDIT: Solved it by running through the table.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1889&start=0#p12421
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Is the short story the most natural fit for IF?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-09 09:09:19

My prejudice is for short games, whether or not they're interactive fiction. Actually I think IF might be better suited for longer games than other forms of games, but I'll get to that.

I say it's a prejudice because, never having bought a game between "Yars' Revenge" and the Humble Indie Bundle 2, I've never actually had a chance to play a long game except nethack and maybe Cave Story, and I suspect Cave Story wouldn't count as a long game if I were any good at it. (Oh, and I think Legerdemain probably is long, but I haven't yet made it to the third area.) Absorbing my attention for that whole time while continuously generating new content just seems like an incredibly difficult challenge. And from what I understand of the length of a typical AAA game, they expect me to spend more time on it than I did watching the first season of Heroes. I didn't even want to spend that much time watching the first season of Heroes. Really good TV shows seem to come in under 20 hour-long episodes per season, and they seem like they can deliver more content than a game can.

To elaborate on that last point: A game can communicate something through its procedures in a way TV can't; if only by making you perform the main characters' actions rather than watching them be performed. Can it keep communicating new things through its procedures for twenty hours? I'm skeptical. (Anna Anthropy has a couple of pithy rants against the eighty-hour game [url=http://www.auntiepixelante.com/?p=354]here[/url] and [url=http://www.auntiepixelante.com/?p=541]here[/url].)

So I don't really want any game, or at least any game that falls short of complete brilliance, to try to soak up that much of a time. (And keep in mind that in the time it takes me to play a novel-length game I could probably read several novels; progression through a game is usually going to be slower than progression through a novel.) Procedural generation is one way to keep things interesting for a long time, though I'm not sure IF is very well suited for it. The other thing that might make long-form IF suitable is just that IF is a medium that's really well suited for delivering tons of story, and a long (and good!) story can sustain interest. Even so, I suspect that I'd enjoy an extended IF story more in multiple episodes than I would as a single game. Partly, perhaps, because a single game would probably either have to close off a lot of the content to begin with, effectively gating you through multiple episodes, or present you with an overwhelming amount of stuff at the beginning.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1870&start=10#p12422
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: New CYA: The Adventures of Phoebe McGee
User: casmith / DateTime: 2011-01-09 10:54:47

Neo,

I changed runaway to run away. Misspelling and typos are difficult to track down because I would have to examine each of the more than 250 pages to find them. It would help if you note the page title if you go through the story again. I am now cutting and pasting all the pages into a Word document that will make it easier to find these things.

I could not duplicate the error you found when fighting Bonesnapper. All the links seem to be functioning as planned.

Sadly, the Ranger in Danger books are not available at Amazon. I looked at ordering them on the website, but there was no comment about shipping to US.

Thanks for your comments and suggestions.

Chuck

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1893&start=0#p12423
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: CYOA "The Adventures of Phoebe McGee"
User: casmith / DateTime: 2011-01-09 11:41:41

Greetings all. 

"The Adventures of Phoebe McGee" is ready for beta testing at <a class="postlink" href="http://chooseyourstory.com/story/The_Adventures_of_Phoebe_McGee_0x3a__The_Lighthouse.aspx">http://chooseyourstory.com/story/The_Ad ... house.aspx</a>. It is all online and there is nothing to download. I also created a website to support the story at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.ksu.edu/wwparent/story/Phoebe/">http://www.ksu.edu/wwparent/story/Phoebe/</a>. The support site has quite a bit of information about "Phoebe" including resources and three color maps as PDF files. There is a link to the online story from this support website as well.

There has also been a discussion about the story here at <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1870">viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1870</a>. You might find some of the comments and my responses of interest.

Phoebe is a thirteen-year-old living in Maine in 1937 who is sent to stay with her grandfather on Acadia Island. When she arrives Phoebe discovers that Jake is missing.

I know that many of you are not fond of CYOA type stories for their chutes-and-ladders format. I think "The Adventures of Phoebe McGee" is different with its stable environment for movement. There are many variables and scripts integrated into the story.  If you find mistakes you can report them here (with the page title of the problem) or send your observations directly to me.

Thanks for any assistance you can provide. If you take a look, I hope you enjoy it.

Chuck

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1889&start=0#p12424
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Is the short story the most natural fit for IF?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-09 12:06:51

I like some long games, and some short games, and I think IF is appropriate to *some* of each.

One of the big problems I have with epic-length IF (er, epic for IF - I haven't run across any Moby Dick-sized works) is that it's easy for me to lose my place, especially if I've restarted the game at some point, especially especially if there's no mechanism for reacquiring information.  (There are relatively easy workarounds to this, of course, but most IF don't use them.)  So not only does a long IF work have to continue to draw me back, it has to be so compelling that I want to spend a whole three-day weekend on it, which . . . yeah.  That's gotta be pretty compelling.  I do prefer longer games in general, but it is usually not handled in a way that makes them easy for me to finish.  

Serials might be a better fit - something like the magazine serials novels used to be published in, or comic book serials.  A little story, with a big hook on the end for the next issue, and regularly scheduled releases could be quite compelling, and reuse the same base "engine" each time.  (I happen to hate that mode of delivery, but I think it would be a good choice - the engine could be an extension.)

But part of what's a good fit is what audiences will play and writers will write.  I'm surprised there aren't more gamey-games - I can think of a number of ways that strategy IF could be hugely fun.  So could sim games, or RPG's.  I don't think they're completely natural fits, but part of that is that I'm not convinced I could get many people to play one.  But the idea of plotless IF (or story emergent IF) is still vastly unexplored.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1892&start=0#p12425
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple way to say appropriate rank from Table of Ranking
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-09 12:08:04

Points, I think, is the understood currency of the score system.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1884&start=0#p12426
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Keyword based actions
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-01-09 12:18:07

Small optimization you can do here so that a string copy and local variable creation happen less often:

[code]
                    if (self.lastCmdText)
                    {
                        local keyword = self.lastCmdText;
                        self.lastCmdText = nil;
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1892&start=0#p12427
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple way to say appropriate rank from Table of Ranking
User: Birion / DateTime: 2011-01-09 13:05:11

This isn't about understood or not. "You have scored 7 out of 11" is equivalent to saying "It is 5 old", or "He weighs 23". Sure, the units might sometimes be understood from the context. But they might also result in a loss of millions of dollars when someone understands imperial units while someone else writes metric.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=30#p12428
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-01-09 13:16:04

[quote="Laroquod"]I think it's a wonderful medium in the sense that everyone practising is conducting some sort of an experiment[/quote]

I could wash your mouth out with soap. Assuming you type with your mouth, which would be odd.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1894&start=0#p12429
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: 5 Programming Queries.
User: kazaarh / DateTime: 2011-01-09 14:48:10

I've recently began programming an IF using Inform 7. here are my problems, and I'm unsure how to fix them:

I have an enemy character that needs to be defeated before access to a piece of treasure: how do I program combat?

How do I give that treasure a point value?

How do I fix a container to one place (so It cannot be 'taken')?

How do I make the floor collapse after the treasure is taken and remove access to that area?

How do I let the player repair the floor to grant access again?
The last two are not necessary, but the first 3 are.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1884&start=0#p12430
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Keyword based actions
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-01-09 15:01:00

Thanks for the tip! I also had better luck using executeCommand() instead of throwing an exception; under certain circumstances - when using '<verb> all' or 'again' - the error handling doesn't seem to work the same way, and the ReplacementCommandStringException goes uncaught, leading to a nasty runtime error.

[code]
                    //...
                    if (issuingActor.lastCmdText)
                    {
                        local keyword = issuingActor.lastCmdText;
                        local toks = Tokenizer.tokenize('keyword ' + keyword);
                        issuingActor.lastCmdText = nil;
                        executeCommand(issuingActor, issuingActor, toks, true);
                    }
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1894&start=0#p12431
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 5 Programming Queries.
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-01-09 15:03:05

[quote="kazaarh"]I have an enemy character that needs to be defeated before access to a piece of treasure: how do I program combat?[/quote]
That depends on how complex system you want to build, ranging from a simple ATTACK GUARD to a full-blown combat system. There are a lot of examples in the Recipe Book chapter 7.5. (the link to the Recipe Book is at the bottom of the documentation's index). You might also want to take a look at Victor Gjisbers' [url=http://inform7.com/news/2010/09/28/attack-combat-extension/]ATTACK extension[/url].

[quote]How do I give that treasure a point value?[/quote]
You can find examples in the chapter 11.4. of the Recipe Book.

[quote]How do I fix a container to one place (so It cannot be 'taken')?[/quote]
Give it the property "fixed in place" (manual chapter 3.6.)

[quote]How do I make the floor collapse after the treasure is taken and remove access to that area?
How do I let the player repair the floor to grant access again?[/quote]
These are a bit hard to answer without further details. The general solution would be to give the floor property "intact" or "collapsed", switch the status when the treasure is taken and check the status with an instead rule to prevent access.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1894&start=0#p12432
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 5 Programming Queries.
User: kazaarh / DateTime: 2011-01-09 15:15:30

thanks. the last part, i new would be harder. it would have just been an added thing to make the game interesting. i did not know about the Recipe Book, so thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1892&start=0#p12433
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple way to say appropriate rank from Table of Ranking
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-09 15:55:36

Really?  You hear "The team won 5 to 3" and think "5 to 3 what?"  I mean, if you want to measure success in your game in chocolate-covered espresso beans, that's fine, but I don't think it's something that trips most players up.  Especially since scoring IF is so clearly artificial anyway - it doesn't really matter what the unit is, because it's totally arbitrary.  No one is ever going to *do* anything with their score (except, I suppose, compare it to others).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=30#p12434
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: Jeff Nyman / DateTime: 2011-01-09 16:19:50

I've been a bit busy at work so I apologize that I couldn't reply to everyone who replied to me.

[quote="namekuseijin"]OTOH, I can't help but think your study is biased.  As I understand it, you give classes to screenwriters, right?[/quote]

The last class was. Prior to that two classes were composed almost solely of novelists and a few stage play writers. Prior to that, however, most of my classes were simply filled with people who liked games and who liked to read, but who were not novelists, screenwriters or anything else. Prior to that -- going back to the original classes -- they were composed largely of game programmers or people who wanted to be game programmers.

That being said, none of this is meant to dismiss your observation: bias in study. There is an inherent selection effect that I've worked to overcome in all cases, but that still leaves a lot of room for bias that I have to be mindful of.

[quote]In other words:  there's all kinds of audiences for IF and each one like them for different reasons.[/quote]

Very true. On the other hand, what I've found is that many audiences tend to not respond textual IF and I've always wanted to get more behind why that is. (Even when audiences do respond to textual IF, they rarely "come back for more" as it was. They are often interested enough for a quick diversion but "repeat customers" and value-on-return metrics suggest that textual IF can't sustain an audience that isn't already predisposed to it for various reasons.)

What's been interesting to me is that textual IF focuses on the written word for storytelling and on a game-playing experience. Gamers and readers are two major, huge audiences. Yet the overall audience for texutal IF has been and continues to be small, relative to those two arenas. Writers I've worked with (both established and otherwise) are often intrigued by the potential of textual IF, but are often heavily turned off by the mechanics of how textual IF has to be created as well as the perceived (if not actual) lack of cross-pollination of textual IF writing with different forms of writing, such as for stageplays, screenplays, novels, etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1892&start=0#p12435
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple way to say appropriate rank from Table of Ranking
User: Birion / DateTime: 2011-01-09 16:46:41

Well... yeah. Without further context, the team may have won by scoring five goals. Or maybe they got five points. Or maybe they won five games. Or five holes. And I'm sure there are other ways to measure success in team sports.

But that was never my issue. I never said that looking at the default score message makes me go "Oh, whatever unit is this measure in?" No, I think "Oh, why oh why does this message look so unnatural?" It is a rare moment in which the scientist in me and the language major in me agree on something. It offends my aesthetic appreciation of the language.

And besides, if I had wanted to measure my game in tea cups, I would have had to deal with the exact same issue (and much sooner, too, rather than now when I can realise the need for a loop on my own). My biggest faux pas, it seems, was thinking minute changes instead of replacing the message wholesale (well, technically...).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1891&start=0#p12436
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: I7 port of Crowther's Colossal Cave looking for testers
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2011-01-09 19:33:55

[quote="DavidK"][quote="ChrisC"]Again, I'm looking for exact reproduction of the behavior of the executable in <a class="postlink" href="http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/source/adv350-pdp10.tar.gz">http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/ ... p10.tar.gz</a> made available by Dennis Jerz.[/quote]Did you really mean the adv350-pdp10.tar.gz file? That's the 1977 Crowther and Woods version: the 1975-6 Crowther original is this one
[url]http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/source/adv_crowther.zip[/url][/quote]
Oops! Thank you, David. Yes, I meant to link to Crowther's original version.

Pears: No, I only wanted to reproduce Crowther's version, before Woods' involvement. The lamp's lifespan is infinite in that early version.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1893&start=0#p12437
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: CYOA "The Adventures of Phoebe McGee"
User: Neo / DateTime: 2011-01-09 22:48:28

I'll do a full play-through later this week for you, Chuck, recording my choices and any errors/suggestions.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1870&start=10#p12438
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: New CYA: The Adventures of Phoebe McGee
User: Neo / DateTime: 2011-01-09 23:10:30

Hey Chuck,

Hmmm, it seems the Ranger in Danger books are only available in Australia at this point. Some information about the background is available from their web site, but not much. I'll see what I can do about getting you some more information. I just did a feature on the books for a kids magazine, including some short interviews with the creators.

With regards to Phoebe, as I said before, sorry for not writing down the errors at the time. I wasn't playing with a beta testing hat on, just more out of interest. I'll do something more comprehensive for you later in the week.

Also, if it's really important that your stories are portable, you might consider Inform 7 again, using Ed Griffiths' excellent extension, Adventure Book. Or, if you can wait a week or two, I should have my own extension completed, which builds on the Adventure Book extension and adds a few neat features (including accessibility options for blind/VI readers). If you have Lilly of the Forest available as a text file now, I'd happily convert it for you as an example file so you can see how it might work.

[b]UPDATE:[/b]
Don't worry about the Lilly text file...

I re-created the game myself using what I could copy-and-paste from the web version, making an assumption or two about the variables you'd used to flag certain responses.

Here (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifgamebooks.com/files/">www.ifgamebooks.com/files/</a>) is Lilly of the Forest as a .z8 code IF game (which you can play on pretty much any IF interpreter) and the source code as a .txt file, so you can see how easy it would be to write. (In fact, the whole purpose of the extension is to allow someone who doesn't know Inform 7 to write an IF-driven CYOA/gamebook.)

If you have an iPhone (or similar), I strongly suggest you download the app Frotz, which would then give you a fully mobile version of Lilly of the Forest without the need to access the internet. I should also mention that I've turned on the inventory system so that you can see the Kite appear in there. Simply type INV or I at any time to bring up the inventory.

A story such as Lilly is very basic and would easily be recreated using Ed Griffiths' Adventure Book extension. I've used mine--IF Gamebook--which, when finished, should open up a slew of features, including three parser options, a psychological inventory and more. It should even be able to recreate Phoebe (though the timed sequences might be interesting).

I should mention that I haven't fully tested this version of Lilly of the Forest, just the main flags and paths. It would be a cinch to make changes and updates, though, so if I have made errors or incorrect link assumptions, let me know.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1895&start=0#p12439
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Adventure Book extension won't compile in 6G60
User: Ryusui / DateTime: 2011-01-09 23:56:49

Inform 7 spits up this error:

[quote]This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6G60) on its most recent run through:

In Chapter Two -- How the Parts of an Adventure Book Relate to Each Other in the extension Adventure Book by Edward Griffiths:

Problem. You wrote 'Giving relates various pages to various flags'  , but 'Giving' is not free to be the name of a fresh property: it already has a meaning (as a condition).



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem. You wrote 'Removing relates various pages to various flags'  , but 'Removing' is not free to be the name of a fresh property: it already has a meaning (as a condition).[/quote]

How do I fix this?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=30#p12440
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2011-01-09 23:58:47

[quote="Trumgottist"]I thought that was pretty much universal? At least for the performing arts. It certainly is the case for me as a musician.[/quote]

yep, no doubt music is the most inaccesible of arts, too abstract for most people's tastes without lyrics to give them some meaning.  People like music because it makes them dance, find sex partners, celebrate events, rarely they like music by music itself.  And those who are most likely to like music, the ones in the known of its language, syntax and idioms, musicians, are often more interested in the plain act of playing than in the music itself.  Guess it's up to a few composers and obsessive geek's to truly appreciate enjoy music by music itself...


Regarding the rest of the discussions, all I heard is the same old arguments about the text interface and they always come down to this:  people don't like reading, so you put some images there, some voice-overs and some links to be clicked so we can all go one further step down into Idiocracy, playing fun, shallow, puzzleless linear games with full stereo while inhaling some fun drug...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=30#p12441
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-01-10 00:15:23

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="Laroquod"]I think it's a wonderful medium in the sense that everyone practising is conducting some sort of an experiment[/quote]

I could wash your mouth out with soap. Assuming you type with your mouth, which would be odd.[/quote]
When I say 'experiment', I don't think I mean what you think I mean. For example, the new Battlestar Galactica was an experiment. One which hugely failed in the end and proved itself quite wrong in its own conclusions, but that's besides the point I am trying to make, which is that abstract or plotless stories are not the only experimental forms. Star Wars was a huge experiment.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=30#p12442
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2011-01-10 00:25:41

[quote="Jeff Nyman"]Prior to that two classes were composed almost solely of novelists and a few stage play writers. Prior to that, however, most of my classes were simply filled with people who liked games and who liked to read, but who were not novelists, screenwriters or anything else. Prior to that -- going back to the original classes -- they were composed largely of game programmers or people who wanted to be game programmers.[/quote]

far less bias than what I would have imagined...

However, I don't think game programmers or wannabes would be that enthusiastic about IF.  You talk someone about game programming and you imagine all the excitement of modern day 3D action games -- even cellphones these days are able to bring all that flash!  Tell them instead they should work their way through the old medium the very first mainframe games trailed and it's a severe let down...

Novelists and stage play writers would play elitist about the whole enterprise I would guess, perhaps wrongly.


[quote="Jeff Nyman"]What's been interesting to me is that textual IF focuses on the written word for storytelling and on a game-playing experience. Gamers and readers are two major, huge audiences.[/quote]

It's not enough to be either a gamer or a reader, you've gotta be both.  Unfortunately, I'm afraid most of your typical mainstream gamers are not that much of a reader...

It does not explain all, of course.  I'd love to tell it's just all the juvenile text adventures, too much plain trash, too few serious attempts at true interactive storytelling rather than either too much text and few interactions or short descriptions and much too puzzles.  But in the end, most people just don't come back because their novel or gaming fix are already too crowded with more flashy and hyped stuff for them to bother...

How many people come back to 19th poetry after graduating?  How many people truly enjoy classical music concerts other than for taking a nap or to look bright among their peers?  And those 2 are far more mainstream than IF...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=30#p12443
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2011-01-10 00:34:57

[quote="Laroquod"]For example, the new Battlestar Galactica was an experiment. One which hugely failed in the end and proved itself quite wrong in its own conclusions[/quote]

It was the first most visceral reaction on entertainment TV to the events of 9/11.  First miniseries felt just like a punch in the stomach, camera was just as nervous as in the live streams of the incident.  So, mankind is attacked and almost dizimated by a bunch of soulless robots and find, under the guidance of an initially warmonger Captain, the road to salvation, the Promised Land of the ancestors of Mankind, Earth.  Warring Politics and Religion in one go.

The ending was fitting.  [spoiler]The only way for peace is by learning to coexist in the same world with your enemies, not wiping out one another.[/spoiler]

quite possibly the best remake ever.  Not only for its excellence itself, but also because the original was way too corny...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1889&start=0#p12444
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Is the short story the most natural fit for IF?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-01-10 00:39:59

[quote="Pacian"]I don't think it's a natural fit for IF, so much as a natural fit for the kind of people making IF at the moment.  If a commercial company decided to make an IF, I imagine that a relatively small team of writers, working 9-5, would probably find a novel-sized game a better fit.  But with IF currently being made primarily by individuals in their spare time, unpaid, I think a short story is the only thing they can expect to do well, unless they have the stamina to work on a game for years.

That said, I think that authors [i]can[/i] make bigger games if they're prepared to ignore certain received wisdoms and accepted ways of doing things.  Procedural generation and randomisation are ways for small games to offer more content than a single author would normally be able to provide.  Limited command sets and/or restricted implementation are ways to create sprawling stories/worlds while limiting combinatorial explosion.  User participation is another way to extend the life of games dramatically.

Basically, I think short stories are a good fit for modern IF, but if you just peak over the fence at what other amateur game devs are doing, there are a lot of other forms that look like they might fit as well.[/quote]
Interesting -- like what? Indie games in general are going the same way as IF it has seemed to me. Shorter games, simpler graphics, one idea expressed as well as possible. Mind you with graphics play can be more naturally extended without adding any story; still, they seem much shorter and less ambitiously epic now than they were.

[quote="matt w"]Absorbing my attention for that whole time while continuously generating new content just seems like an incredibly difficult challenge. And from what I understand of the length of a typical AAA game, they expect me to spend more time on it than I did watching the first season of Heroes. I didn't even want to spend that much time watching the first season of Heroes.[/quote]
Man... I hear ya. Know how I keep up on the AAA scene? I go to a hardcore friend's house and just ask him to play and show me game after game. The sad thing about modern mainstream gaming is that despite the 80-hr commitment, once you have watched someone play for a half hour you have seen everything of worth. I can't think of any counterexamples though I haven't tried Heavy Rain yet. (Alan Wake though is the same story -- let's make them do the same damn thing for two weeks, but in a cooler atmosphere.) Red Dead Redemption had a rather interesting ending, narratively speaking: I watched it on YouTube. 87

[quote]To elaborate on that last point: A game can communicate something through its procedures in a way TV can't; if only by making you perform the main characters' actions rather than watching them be performed. Can it keep communicating new things through its procedures for twenty hours? I'm skeptical. (Anna Anthropy has a couple of pithy rants against the eighty-hour game [url=http://www.auntiepixelante.com/?p=354]here[/url] and [url=http://www.auntiepixelante.com/?p=541]here[/url].)[/quote]
Thanks for the cool-looking links. I've been enjoying her Twitter feed. I'm fundamentally uninterested in procedural content generation. What I want is an author to fake me out with smoke and mirrors so that the environment feels somewhat randomised or 'experienced' but without actually being random, because random is boring. A lot of game authors don't realise that they are fundamentally engaged in a deception and that is never going to change no matter how good their worlds get: if they did realise that it is fundamentally a deceptive act, their narratives would get better, because narrative is also fundamentally a deceptive act, and those who get this are those who tend to master it. Maybe they'd be more willing to pull fake-outs and tricks, maybe shake n bake them a little with their other techniques. But no, they seem committed to producing virtual worlds as an end in itself, and they consider a lot of narrative techniques 'cheating', and it's just so dreary to me. Frickin' fool the hell out of me! Fake it! Trick me! Make me think it's all random when it's really all so... not. Anyway, so few seem to get this, that I agree modern studio games are like a wasteland, but it's one I feel obligated to know about because evolution dictates that if you put enough monkeys in a room, one of them is eventually going to type something interesting. XD

I really like your 'multiple episodes' idea. Something I've also been thinking about, but I don't want to announce a first game as 'volume 1' of anything. I've seen too many part ones with no part twos -- it leaves a bad aftertaste of promises unfulfilled. Better to promise nothing but what is already in their hands.

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1889&start=0#p12445
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Is the short story the most natural fit for IF?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-01-10 00:49:26

[quote="gravel"]But part of what's a good fit is what audiences will play and writers will write.  I'm surprised there aren't more gamey-games - I can think of a number of ways that strategy IF could be hugely fun.  So could sim games, or RPG's.  I don't think they're completely natural fits, but part of that is that I'm not convinced I could get many people to play one.  But the idea of plotless IF (or story emergent IF) is still vastly unexplored.[/quote]
I think that's pretty perceptive and to the point on why short forms are ascendant.

I also agree with you about engines, there are too many engines already as it is. Not that someone with an idea for one shouldn't do it, but for the purpose of supporting a serialised story? Just publish the episodes in the accepted engines. Don't use new tools unless you need new tools because they do new things that are integral to what you're trying to achieve. Or just do engines the way graphic designers do -- they are internal. You don't really talk about them much. (They don't even ask people to install them separately, the game is just the game. I can understand why IF splits the streams it makes sense for IF, but really there is too much focus on engines and not enough focus on techniques. I wonder what the response would be like if some well-respected prolific author were to take apprentices?)

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1895&start=0#p12446
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Adventure Book extension won't compile in 6G60
User: Birion / DateTime: 2011-01-10 00:51:15

I went through the .i7x file and replaced "give" with "supply" and "remove" with "delete". Not the most natural choice of words, but it works perfectly. You just have to be careful to replace only where it's appropriate, or it will complain again (and it will look strange - "The old man supplies you a sword" in printed text and such).

EDIT: Oh, yeah, "provide" is the better word I was looking for instead of supply. "It provides Reading Lamp Is On." Much better. You might also try "take away" instead of "remove"/"delete"- But I can't promise it will compile with these choices. It should, though. I think.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1791&start=20#p12447
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: the object tree and the chunk
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-01-10 01:04:06

[quote="George"]I was standing in line at PAX last year and talking to a few younger folks, and when I mentioned interactive fiction they said, "interactive fiction like [i]Heavy Rain[/i] or like [i]Galatea[/i]?"  [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
That is awesome. XD

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1896&start=0#p12448
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Mindwheel Book
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-01-10 01:26:59

Anyone know where to find it?  The link on IFDB is a 403 (at least for me), and the game isn't playable without it.  Yes, I could get the answers from the walkthrough, but I'd rather play it properly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1895&start=0#p12449
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Adventure Book extension won't compile in 6G60
User: Ryusui / DateTime: 2011-01-10 02:16:56

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=30#p12450
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-01-10 02:43:54

[quote="Laroquod"]When I say 'experiment', I don't think I mean what you think I mean. [/quote]

I hope that's true [emote]:)[/emote]

Suffice it to say that, the way _I_ use the word, absolutely nothing I ever do (publicly) with IF will be experimental, and that's a promise [emote]:)[/emote]

I keep those urges to private moments when nobody's looking.

[quote]abstract or plotless stories are not the only experimental forms.[/quote]

Well, duh. I didn't think you meant THAT [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1889&start=0#p12451
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Is the short story the most natural fit for IF?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-01-10 03:22:13

[quote="Laroquod"]Interesting -- like what?[/quote]
Like the ones I said.  [emote]:P[/emote] 

[quote="Laroquod"]Indie games in general are going the same way as IF it has seemed to me. Shorter games, simpler graphics, one idea expressed as well as possible. Mind you with graphics play can be more naturally extended without adding any story; still, they seem much shorter and less ambitiously epic now than they were.[/quote]
I don't see that indie games are "moving in that direction" - if anything there are probably more epic/HD/multiple-idea indie games than there used to be.  But, as with IF, single author games will always be more likely to succeed if they're smaller in scale.

[quote="Laroquod"]What I want is an author to fake me out with smoke and mirrors so that the environment feels somewhat randomised or 'experienced' but without actually being random, because random is boring. [...] Frickin' fool the hell out of me! Fake it! Trick me! Make me think it's all random when it's really all so... not.[/quote]
That seems... backwards to me.  What exactly is appealing about randomness in and of itself that you would want to be tricked into experiencing it?  Surely the trick with randomness/procedural generation is to make it seem like it [i]isn't[/i] random but is actually the result of cause and effect or authorial control (the AI director in Left 4 Dead is one example of an effort to achieve this).

Randomness is a side effect of a particular way of trying to create limitless worlds - but it's an entirely undesirable one.  I'm sure we'd all prefer it if the limitless environment could instead be crafted instantaneously by a master architect.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1889&start=0#p12452
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Is the short story the most natural fit for IF?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-01-10 03:41:11

[quote="Pacian"]That seems... backwards to me.  What exactly is appealing about randomness in and of itself that you would want to be tricked into experiencing it?  Surely the trick with randomness/procedural generation is to make it seem like it [i]isn't[/i] random but is actually the result of cause and effect or authorial control (the AI director in Left 4 Dead is one example of an effort to achieve this).

Randomness is a side effect of a particular way of trying to create limitless worlds - but it's an entirely undesirable one.  I'm sure we'd all prefer it if the limitless environment could instead be crafted instantaneously by a master architect.[/quote]
I wouldn't, because an architect isn't a storyteller. If all I'm getting is a sandbox to wander around in -- well, that will keep me amused for a while, but really I prefer to do that in the real world. To some extent we are talking at cross-purposes. You are talking about what is required to make a good sim (which is why you're talking about faking intentionality on the part of the characters where computers find it difficult to generate) whereas I am talking about what is required to make a good narrative (which is why I'm talking about [i]disguising[/i] intentionality on the part of the [i]author[/i] and making a certain set of pre-designed conclusions seem to have been generated spontaneously from the environment and your choices).

I think of your issue as the classic graphical game designer's issue -- they are all about that -- whereas the issue I thought you meant and that I tend to focus on is largely ignored or given short shrift by graphical game designers. So, very different things, yeah.

Paul.

P.S. 'Like what' I meant which games. Most of the indie stuff I have seen getting buzz lately (Passage, Sleep is Death) are very much aimed at short play sessions. Are you talking about stuff like Minecraft, etc.? i.e. stuff that bears little relation to storytelling? That's what I was wondering.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1891&start=0#p12453
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: I7 port of Crowther's Colossal Cave looking for testers
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-01-10 05:12:34

Oh, the very very first version without all that fantasy? The "cave exploration" simulation? Funny, I don't think I ever played that. Didn't think it existed anymore.

Ok, then. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1896&start=0#p12454
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Mindwheel Book
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-01-10 05:14:30

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.hotud.org/component/content/article/45-interactive-fiction/21192">http://www.hotud.org/component/content/ ... tion/21192</a>

Here you go.

If you want to repay the favour, just keep an eye out for the "Breakers" manual, by the same company. [emote];)[/emote] It's the only one of the four I haven't found.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1891&start=0#p12455
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: I7 port of Crowther's Colossal Cave looking for testers
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-01-10 05:30:48

There was fantasy in Crowther's original. Just not as much of it. But it was definitely a game and not just a sim.

I'm really happy to see this being done. Trying to read Fortran to experience what Crowther did gets kind of old.

One thing that has always bugged me about ports of Adventure is that there is a dead end in the twisty maze that exits in the wrong direction (east instead of west, or west instead of east, one of those), and it exits in the wrong direction in the TADS adaptation as well (and in the Inform adaptation that is based on it), but it exits in the correct direction (i.e. true to Crowther & Woods) in the DOS version (Ekman's?) that the TADS version is supposedly based on.

I can look it up for you if you wish I have it noted down somewhere. Not that a dead end maze direction is a big deal or anything, it's always bugged me nonetheless — that and the parser responses that have been added, particularly error messages, which are often not really in keeping with what I felt was the very bare bones spirit of the original. The textual experience (as opposed to the modelled world experience) has not been ported in as sacrosanct a manner as I would have wished. So I reverted a lot of these additions back to just repetitions of room text that already exists in the original, and I found that it really alters the feel of the game. It reads less like Infocom, in other words, and more like its own kind of experience, which is what it was. (I have a MUD version of Adventure that I've been doing all this in, but it's the Crowther & Woods, not just the Crowther). However, I third-person-ised the whole thing, including the descriptions, so I have made my own transgressions; they're just my own idiosyncratic idea of what's OK to change for MUD version of this and what isn't. 87

I'm sure once I start I'll get quite into it and eat up lots of time -- so I'll try out your game later in the week when I've got it to spare. I'll PM you. 8)

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1889&start=0#p12456
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Is the short story the most natural fit for IF?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-01-10 05:49:47

[quote="Laroquod"](which is why I'm talking about [i]disguising[/i] intentionality on the part of the [i]author[/i] and making a certain set of pre-designed conclusions seem to have been generated spontaneously from the environment and your choices).[/quote]
Okay, I understand your point logically now, but it's not something I remember ever thinking about a story.  "That was really well done - I could believe it was random."  I think people like to see cause and effect in stories - not because it's realistic, but because that's part of the appeal of fiction - a chance to tackle our sense of cause and motive.  In an interactive story, in which you'd expect the player to be supplying the causes, if not the motives as well, that probably goes double.

[quote="Laroquod"]P.S. 'Like what' I meant which games. Most of the indie stuff I have seen getting buzz lately (Passage, Sleep is Death) are very much aimed at short play sessions. Are you talking about stuff like Minecraft, etc.? i.e. stuff that bears little relation to storytelling? That's what I was wondering.[/quote]
Sleep is Death is the kind of thing I meant.  The play sessions may be short, but the act of user participation means that the game as a whole is larger than any short story.  Essentially Sleep is Death is closer to a [i]collection[/i] of short stories.

The Choice of... games also feel larger than most IF games (even though they're a lot quicker to play), which they're able to do by playing at a higher level of interaction (making broad choices rather than interacting with individual objects).  I like the idea of an IF game where you have high-level verbs for significant actions in the place of the usual "take/open/put" form.

And, yeah, Minecraft was another one.  Maybe that kind of thing isn't related to storytelling (although I think the IF equivalent could well be a game that focuses on characters and motives the same way Minecraft focuses on blocks and physics) - but so what?  

When it comes to graphical games, I'm often concerned with the place that storytelling takes, but within the IF community I think it's the gameplay that bothers me more.  Too often it feels like authors come up with an awesome story, but when it comes to what the player actually does in it, they just slap in some puzzles.  An IF game that instead featured something like the malleable world of Minecraft (you have a story-based goal, but how you achieve it in the sandbox is up to you) would be an interesting development - something that could make a small game feel a lot larger.  It might not be the "best fit" but it would at least be "another way".  I suspect that with enough experimentation there could be a lot of "other ways".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1889&start=0#p12457
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Is the short story the most natural fit for IF?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-10 08:15:32

[quote="Pacian"]What exactly is appealing about randomness in and of itself that you would want to be tricked into experiencing it?  Surely the trick with randomness/procedural generation is to make it seem like it [i]isn't[/i] random but is actually the result of cause and effect or authorial control (the AI director in Left 4 Dead is one example of an effort to achieve this).

Randomness is a side effect of a particular way of trying to create limitless worlds - but it's an entirely undesirable one.  I'm sure we'd all prefer it if the limitless environment could instead be crafted instantaneously by a master architect.[/quote]

To sidetrack this for a bit into a discussion of randomness in games, I disagree here. I'm tempted to say, "I just read [url=http://insomnia.ac/reviews/pc/spelunky/page_01.php]Alex Kierkegaard making the same argument[/url], therefore it's wrong." (Warning: link contains homophobia, caps lock, generalized rampant immaturity.) But that would be silly.

Seriously, one appeal of randomized gameplay is unpredictability -- not just that the game will be new for the player each time, but that situations can arise that the designer didn't anticipate, and that allow for kinds of gameplay that weren't anticipated either. There was an interesting post from the designers of Steambirds: Survival [url=http://www.lostgarden.com/2010/12/steambirds-survival-goodbye-handcrafted.html]here[/url] about why they decided to dump preset levels for randomness. The whole thing is worth reading, but here are some bits:

[quote]We were forced [to] experience the gameplay from a variety of perspectives.   When I create static levels, it is  easy to quickly fall into a rut where I start polishing the experience for one or two 'correct' paths.  If a specific scenario is too powerful, I might simply adjust the health of an individual enemy instance so the player has less difficulty. The result is localized polish that translates into shallow gameplay. With random levels, this class of tweaking is impossible....
[list]Instead of creating content that can be enjoyed only a handful of times, we are setting up game modes that can be played a very large number of times. 
How each mode unfolds is primarily determined by game mechanics, not a set of scripted events.  As a result there is a very wide range of possible scenarios, not a single predetermined outcome. 
Modes are modular, robust and loosely coupled so that tweaking critical values is rarely damaging to the mode's fun.  Level design is fragile because you are trying to squeeze fun out of a very narrow playspace.  One tiny mistake and the experience is broken. [/list:u][/quote]

There's also a nice diagram of how randomized design means that the playtesting experiments cover a wider variety of experiences. Incidentally this is not about creating a limitless world; the game always takes place in the same blank expanse of sky (bounded by those rassenfrassen antiaircraft guns). 

I think part of what they're getting at here is the importance of the randomized [i]feel[/i]. In this kind of game you don't necessarily want to feel that the designer is setting up an experience for you -- "Oh hey, I see what that powerup is there!" You want to be able to discover things you can do for yourself without feeling that the designer got there first. It might be possible to create that kind of experience with a large enough set of preset levels, but that might be the sort of thing that Paul was referring to when he was hoping that the author would fake him out with something that feels random even if it isn't. Or it might be the opposite, I'm not sure.  [emote];)[/emote] 

Now, in my previous post I tossed aside the comment that I didn't think IF was necessarily suited for procedural generation. What I meant was this: In graphical media the recombination of a small set of elements can stay interesting. Look at a game like [url=http://www.necessarygames.com/my-games/walk-or-die/flash]Walk or Die[/url] (which even people who are bad at twitch gaming should be able to get pretty far in). There aren't that many different items repeating, but the variety is endless, because having a tree of this height this distance from another tree isn't quite the same as having a tree of that height that distance from another tree. In prose recombining the same number of elements won't stay as interesting, I don't think; [url=http://eblong.com/zarf/zweb/huntdark]Hunter, In Darkness[/url] does an excellent job with its procedurally generated bits, but at some point there isn't that much difference between "Delicate brown crystals grow everywhere" and "delicate dark grey crystals grow everywhere." The random prose can't quite sustain attention on its own, or at least not that much more attention than the same amount of prose presented non-randomly. 

All that said I'd really like to see more different modes of IF play -- more simulation and strategy kinds of game, and I'd love to be proved wrong about procedural generation too. I think I'd love the game with a goal that takes place in a big sandbox that allows you multiple ways through, all the better if I lose sight of the goal.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1870&start=20#p12458
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: New CYA: The Adventures of Phoebe McGee
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-01-10 09:12:02

This thread discusses the (simple) steps needed to get Adventure Book working with the newest version of Inform:

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1895">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1895</a>

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1889&start=10#p12459
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Is the short story the most natural fit for IF?
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2011-01-10 09:51:54

the problem is the dicothomy between the story and the crosswords puzzle, between literature and game.  If the story is good, we want it long.  If puzzles are good, we want more of it.  But long story most times mean more text thrown at you at once while you have no saying in all that is shown and told.  And more game aspect most times mean more rooms to explore and more literal and annoying attention to little irrelevant details, like [i]"take key out of wallet, unlock door with key, open"[/i].  I'm glad some IF automate all that and some games actually have a lot of story interspeced with lots of quality interaction.  But it's quite rare still...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1870&start=20#p12460
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: New CYA: The Adventures of Phoebe McGee
User: casmith / DateTime: 2011-01-10 10:09:48

Good morning all.

Neo, thank for what you have done. I'll get a cuppa here in a moment and take a look. Thanks! I am fond of that simple story because of how my [i]four-year-old[/i] gd Samantha responded. She sailed through it making choices along the way, all involving the more risky options. I need to do another more challenging for her. I think this is how IF starts at an early age. I would certainly encourage her later to create something at chooseyourstory.com and then "graduate" to I7 when she's ready.

Erik, looking forward to trying out  the Adventure Book extension again. I tried using it about six months ago and couldn't get it to work. Time to dust off I7 and try again.

If I decide to go back to I7 I shudder at the thought of trying to port the the current "Adventures of Phoebe McGee." The support at chooseyourstory.com has been excellent, but not having a file of the story has always bugged me. The support I have received here is wonderful since this forum more active.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=40#p12461
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-10 10:21:07

Experimental or not, TOASS has changed the way I want to handle a couple things in the future. 

*ducks*

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1711&start=0#p12462
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Aurora
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-10 10:33:26

That would be [url]http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=7ykzpem8720zd1c3[/url] for the lazy, although I don't see any download for it on the IFDB.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1870&start=20#p12463
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: New CYA: The Adventures of Phoebe McGee
User: casmith / DateTime: 2011-01-10 11:16:26

Greetings all. See my post about [i]Adventure Book[/i] at:

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1895">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1895</a>.

I may have to go to an older version of I7.

I got Zoom to run the Lilly file.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1897&start=0#p12464
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Other people in I7
User: kazaarh / DateTime: 2011-01-10 11:21:36

I'm practicing my code and decided to introduce a prisoner. For extra clarity, here is the scene:

The prison cell is in the bedroom. The cell is enterable, openable, transparent, closed,lockable and locked. The matching key of the prison cell is the Cell Key. "There is a cell near you. Within it is a man named Dave."
Dave is a man in the prison cell. "Dave looks like he's in pain. You should free him."
The Cell Key is on the desk. "The key lies next to the cell." The description is "This could be used to free Dave."

The player is able to unlock and open the cell, but I want Dave to exit the cell when this happens. I also want the player to be able to talk to Dave.

How would I do this?

Also, would it be possible for me to teleport the player after a certain amount of time?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1898&start=0#p12465
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Conversation Package: Prompts for asking about the unknown
User: anttiki / DateTime: 2011-01-10 11:27:36

I'm a newbie in Inform7. I'm using the Conversation Package by Eric Eve. I want to have a default prompt (like say "You are not really familiar with [subject] so you don't know what to ask.") when the player tries to ask anyone about subjects that are unfamiliar / unknown. 

What is the most simple way to do this? I can have a default ask response for a person but that will also be triggered when the player asks some NPC about known stuff that the NPC doesn't have an answer for so I'd like that to be a different answer.

There's probably a very easy way to do this but I'm stuck. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

SOLVED, thanks (see last post).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1895&start=0#p12466
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Adventure Book extension won't compile in 6G60
User: casmith / DateTime: 2011-01-10 12:11:28

I have the same problem with the newest version of I7. 

But I have a problem with the solution.

[quote]I went through the .i7x file and replaced "give" with "supply" and "remove" with "delete". Not the most natural choice of words, but it works perfectly. [/quote]

I am assuming by .i7x file you mean the extension file. Does that also mean making these changes:

give-->supply
gives-->supplies
gave-->supplied

remove-->delete
removes-->deletes
removed-->deleted

There are more variations of the two words than implied in the quote.

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1895&start=0#p12467
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Adventure Book extension won't compile in 6G60
User: Birion / DateTime: 2011-01-10 12:23:11

That's what I meant. Sorry for not making it clear. You have to completely replace the "give" and "remove" grammar with the "supply/provide" and "delete/take away" grammar, so, like you said, 'gives' becomes 'supplies', 'removed' becomes 'deleted' etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=40#p12468
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-10 12:23:40

[quote="Jeff Nyman"]The last class was. Prior to that two classes were composed almost solely of novelists and a few stage play writers.[/quote]I have an itch to go re-read those.  When did the discussions here happen?  My search-fu is weak...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1861&start=0#p12469
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: The spoiler tag
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2011-01-10 12:35:36

The usual way to handle accessibility in such cases is to use the same technology to hide elements which is later used to 'unhide' them again manually. I.e.: If you use Javascript to show these spoiler sections, use a Javascript function (which can be called on page load) to hide them in the first place, too. This way, if a client doesn't handle this kind of code, there will be no problem.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1861&start=0#p12470
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: The spoiler tag
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-01-10 12:39:50

[quote="Merk"]Well, the purpose of the spoiler tag was the hide the text inside it, so having it be expanded by default would defeat its purpose. I could add another tag that has the same header but doesn't collapse, if that would help. I gather from the request that there's a reason you're asking, though. Is it causing some issues with non-javascript browsers?[/quote]
I think what Zarf meant is a user preference that shows spoilers by default. If someone enables that preference in his profile, then that user, and only that user gets to see spoilers.

Showing spoilers for everyone would of course defeat the purpose.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1895&start=0#p12471
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Adventure Book extension won't compile in 6G60
User: casmith / DateTime: 2011-01-10 12:46:51

Birion, thanks for the fast response. I thought this was what you intended but didn't want to edit that file until certain.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1853&start=40#p12472
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Class Findings: Write vs. Play and Too Much Dialogue
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-01-10 13:02:39

[quote="gravel"]Experimental or not, TOASS has changed the way I want to handle a couple things in the future. 

*ducks*[/quote]

Aw, leave poor Ambershards alone; he gets enough guff [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1895&start=0#p12473
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Adventure Book extension won't compile in 6G60
User: casmith / DateTime: 2011-01-10 13:16:05

Made all the changes in the variations of the two words. Then run the story example in the extension. Get this:

[quote]This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6G60) on its most recent run through:

In Chapter Three -- How an Adventure Book Works, Section 6 -- Reading the Book in the extension Adventure Book by Edward Griffiths:

Problem. In the sentence 'if x is an inventory item, delete x from play'  , I was expecting to read a table entry, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'x from play'.
I was trying to match this phrase:

delete (x from play - a table entry) 
This was what I found out:

x from play = something unrecognised[/quote]

The  extension file code that is the source of the error in Section 6 is:

[code]To clear (x - a flag):
	if x is not a magic word:
		now x is off;
		if x is an inventory item, delete x from play;

To run inform code for (x - a page):
	do nothing;[/code]

Not sure how to fix this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1895&start=0#p12474
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Adventure Book extension won't compile in 6G60
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-01-10 13:20:11

"Remove from play" has a fixed meaning in I7, so it's not one of the "remove"s that should be changed. If you change it back to "remove x from play" that part should compile.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1888&start=0#p12475
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Socrates in your pocket
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-01-10 13:33:18

[quote="Alcibiades"]
[b]Is it a bird? Is he a plane?[/b]

This one's more pernickety.  Nice word, pernickety.  I have defined a certain animal with the gender appropriate to its name and function, yet the player should be allowed to refer to it as "it". This is not allowed.  If a game were to incorporate an android or replicant, the neuter form should also be interchangeable with the notional gender.  The game may refer to (Skippy) as "him", but the player may still default to "it".  Interestingly, what I found was that the parser ignores "it" as designating (the coelocanth or whatever) and assumes another inanimate object present in the location, even when this has not been examined or interacted with at all. This might surprise the player:   "PICK UP DOG" - "TAKEN" - "WASH IT" - "I SEE NO PURPOSE IN WASHING THE HAND-SPUN SHROUD"[/quote]

The behaviour of pronouns is very much governed by Inform's representation of grammatical gender which is really an Inform 6 Template thing. So I guess this one is pernicky.

I can only think of two ways to make it" refer to 'hims' and 'hers'.

1) Make all you animals neuter and then add an understand line like "Understand "him" as Fido." to the male ones and mutatis mutandis to the female ones – alternatively add a an "Understand "it" as the droid." to all non-human 'people'. This doesn't make an understood "him", "her" and "it" a pronoun though! The words will behave at once as names, not as pronouns, for Fido and the droid etc. and as pronouns, not as names, for everything else – and the practical implications of that, I can't foresee.

2) You could hack the I6 Template slightly thus:

[code]Include (-
Array LanguagePronouns table

  ! word         possible GNAs                   connected
  !              to follow:                      to:
  !              a     i
  !              s  p  s  p
  !              mfnmfnmfnmfn

    'it'      $$111000111000                NULL
    'him'    $$100000000000                NULL
    'her'    $$010000000000                NULL
    'them'      $$000111000111                NULL;
-) instead of "Pronouns" in "Language.i6t".[/code]

(In Inform 6 the exclamation mark comments out the rest of the line. So you can safely skip all of the lines that begin with an "!" in their entirety.)

"GNA" means 'GenderNumberAnimation', pronouns can refer to things that are animate (a) or inanimate (i); singular (s) or plural (p); male (m), female (f) or neuter (n). A "1" means that the pronoun of the row can refer to the relevant kind of things; a "0" that it can't. So "them" here refers to anything that is plural (place 4-6 and 10-12 in the array);"him" only to something animate, singular and male (place 1); "her" only to something animate, singular and female (place 2); and "it" to anything that is singular (places 1-3 and 7-9). (Thus in the original I6 code the first row reads "    'it'   $$001000001000   NULL".)

This way is robust, but the drawback is that "it" will thereby refer to anything singular, including not only animals but men and women as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1893&start=0#p12476
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: CYOA "The Adventures of Phoebe McGee"
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-01-10 14:25:08

There's a few places where the options are confusing.  For instance, in the clearing, there are two identically-labeled, but distinct, paths leading west.  Also, behind the burned house, it says there's a window with access to the basement, but there's no link.  I was able to make the description of the car appear in the clearing when it wasn't there anymore.  You also sometimes end the links with periods, and sometimes you don't (I think it looks better without them).  I spotted some typos, too, so look carefully for those.

I think you should organize the conversations into trees more.  For instance, you should need to say "I saw a shipwreck" in order to unlock "I saw something in the shipwreck."

Also, maybe I just don't know how, but it would be really nice to have an "undo" button.  I've at least once accidentally hit the wrong link and suffered consequences for it   [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1897&start=0#p12477
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Other people in I7
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-01-10 14:37:35

The built-in ask/tell functions will let you talk to Dave; you just need to add responses (Instead of asking Dave about "cell", say "'I've been in here for ten years!'", etc).  If you want a more general conversation, you might add a "talk to" function.

You can just teleport Dave into the room (After opening the cell: now Dave is in the bedroom), but if you want him to walk around more and seem more natural, use the "best route" functionality (chapter 6.14).

Teleporting the player is as easy as 'At [time]: now the player is in [the destination].'

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1870&start=20#p12478
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: New CYA: The Adventures of Phoebe McGee
User: Neo / DateTime: 2011-01-10 15:41:29

Sorry. My fault. I should have been clearer.

The Adventure Book extension is currently broken. One of the recent updates for Inform 7 added some syntax which the extension uses to define how to turn on and off certain flags. Ed Griffiths (the author of the extension) is aware and in the process of fixing it.

Lilly of the Forest is written using my extension (not yet released). For all purposes it looks like Adventure Book in your example purely because I kept the Adventure Book functionality as part of its feature set. I did, however, mess around with some of the terminology. In my version 'activate' and 'deactivate' are used in the place of 'give' and 'remove', and the inventory now utilises a flag-based set-up rather than IF's usual player inventory. (This allows me to create a second 'psychological' inventory and dictate whether items can have a general use or a specific one).

Where does that currently leave you?

Well, I imagine Ed will probably have the new version of Adventure Book up on the Extension repository soon.

Some time after that mine will be done.

Until then, yes, you can use an older version of Inform 7, but be aware that at some point you will have to rewrite the source code again if you want to use newer versions of Inform 7.

Hope that helps.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1889&start=10#p12479
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Is the short story the most natural fit for IF?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-10 15:55:52

[quote="matt w"]Actually I think IF might be better suited for longer games than other forms of games,[/quote]
I'm inclined to agree.  Gameplay-wise, you can get a lot out of playing the same chapter over & over.  A change in setting and/or antagonists doesn't do as much for gamplay as it does for story progression.  Witness any Street Fighter game.  Gameplay's phenomenal, but the various settings are nothing more than wallpaper.  Narratively, though, an individual fight isn't as interesting as one's overall progression toward the Big Bad. 

But I-F does have that content generation problem, and lack of gameplay problem.  

Interesting thing about randomized text:  the first time you read it, it isn't randomized (even though it is).  You can't tell a difference until you see the same language again with small tweaks in the same context.  I think Emily Short's When In Rome 2 begins with a randomly-created antagonist, but you wouldn't know it at all unless you replayed the game two or three times at least.  

What I think Laroquad is after is how to disguise railroading better.

[quote="matt w"]and a long (and good!) story can sustain interest. [/quote]
So can an interesting set of tools with various ways of accomplishing a goal(s), which is what good videogames do. And Spider & Web.  Once the player understand their tools, they can make and execute plans. And THAT is what mastery of a gameplay feels like. 

[quote="matt w"]Really good TV shows seem to come in under 20 hour-long episodes per season, and they seem like they can deliver more content than a game can.[/quote]
Ico and Shadow of the Colossus were about 10 - 12 hours long each, and I felt both were too short. It may be that up to 20 hours hits some sort of sweet spot.

I don't like "episodes" though.  An episode usually needs to close a narrative arc, and that give me the pre-packaged feeling of TV episodes to me.  I don't mind occasional lulls in activity for contrast, but a lull every hour on the hour (or insert your favorite train schedule of choice) is too artificial, and that seeps into the rest of the work.  Movies, novels, videogames, I-F, and songs are each as long as it needs to be.  Only TV has that hard time limit.  "Episodes" are stupid. (nyaah.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1899&start=0#p12480
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: communicating with npc's in other locations
User: zodraz / DateTime: 2011-01-10 16:48:32

Help!

I am writing a game based on a modern spy novel, there is a good deal of communication by using a telephone and two-way radio.

Anybody any idea how I would code this in TADS 3 so the PC can talk to other NPCs in another room?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1889&start=10#p12481
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Is the short story the most natural fit for IF?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-01-10 17:59:15

[i]"Movies, novels, videogames, I-F, and songs"[/i]

Movies are the only ones where they're designed to be taken in full without a break. If every movie was 3 hours long, bladders and people's senses would rebel, so they sit at around 90 mins to 2 hrs, which seems to be tolerated well by earthlings.

Novels, games, songs, IF, don't have to be taken in one sitting (music concerts excluded) and can be as long or short as the author wants them to be to convey whatever the author wants to convey. I don't think any of these forms have any kind of natural fit. There are trends, and the current IF vogue seems to be for the relatively short. I figure this grows out of the major event in IF culture being IFComp, which mostly mitigates against long games.

I don't even know what long means in IF all the time. In the 80s you could have games sitting around for 18 months+ that you were unable to complete (EG Wizard and the Princess!). The game's unhelpful parser, toughness and the absence of an internet providing you with instant hints and walkthroughs help explain this.

How much content was in that game in real terms versus a new longish (only longish) game like One Eye Closed? Probably less. But a movie that was 78 minutes long in 1960 is 78 minutes long today. Wizard and the Princess's length was a year and a half in 1981 and... how much today? Your actions, patience or lack of it and tolerance or lack of it will change the perception of the length drastically.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1899&start=0#p12482
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: communicating with npc's in other locations
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-01-10 18:43:47

It's not something I've tried before, but the "Remote Sensory Scope" section of the [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/techman/t3scope.htm]Redefining Scope[/url] article may be a useful starting point. It covers the approach Eric Eve used in [i]Elysium Enigma[/i] to achieve a similar effect.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1889&start=10#p12483
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Is the short story the most natural fit for IF?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-10 19:10:47

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]I don't like "episodes" though.  An episode usually needs to close a narrative arc, and that give me the pre-packaged feeling of TV episodes to me.  I don't mind occasional lulls in activity for contrast, but a lull every hour on the hour (or insert your favorite train schedule of choice) is too artificial, and that seeps into the rest of the work.  Movies, novels, videogames, I-F, and songs are each as long as it needs to be.  Only TV has that hard time limit.  "Episodes" are stupid. (nyaah.)[/quote]

Well, I agree that having the episodes be precisely the same length is artificial (and also, in IF, completely impossible), but novels do tend to have chapters, and the chapters are usually roughly the same length. Maybe all I'm looking for is lulls, though, places where you feel like it's OK to save and pick it up another day.

Anyhow I agree with the rest of what you say (except that I haven't played Ico and Shadow of the Colossus), and Wade (severedhand) makes good points too about variability in length. Actually I bet that Ico and Shadow would take me a lot more time to play than they did you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1895&start=0#p12484
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Adventure Book extension won't compile in 6G60
User: casmith / DateTime: 2011-01-10 19:18:52

Gads y'all are impressive. That fixed it. Thanks Juhana. Adventure Book by Edward Griffiths now runs on Inform 7 (1.2 6.31/6G60).

Chuck

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1870&start=20#p12485
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: New CYA: The Adventures of Phoebe McGee
User: casmith / DateTime: 2011-01-10 19:52:57

Greetings all.

I have Adventure Book running properly with the most recent version of I7. I looked over the documentation for the extension once again. I would need to have a much better understanding of I7 to be able to port The Adventures of Phoebe McGee to I7 with Adventure Book. 

This story has quite a few variables and some fairly sophisticated page and link scripts. And there is still much to learn to effectively use the tools at chooseyourstory.com.

No doubt I could use the "Running Inform Code" as part of the Adventure Book to duplicate all of that, but I will not have the patience or frustration tolerance to figure out how to do this. As it currently stands, Adventure Book in I7 does not have the complexity of what is available at chooseyourstory.com.

The problem with using a website to develop the story is facing a horrendous task of editing later. The writer does not create and save a file locally. There is no search and replace. Someone has to be online to read it.

Even with these liabilities, I'm impressed with the CYOA that can be created at chooseyourstory.com. I like using pictures for each page. I'm still trying to figure out scripts but see their potential. The next time (if there is another time) I will need to write everything beforehand and make sure it's ROCK solid before putting it into the website format. And then hope that the early readers don't find mistakes because most are going to be difficult to find unless accompanied by page titles.

So now I'm focusing on finding and correcting the minor mistakes in the current story, listening to comments, and taking time to decide on the next effort. I may focus on writing short stories for 4-8 year olds who have parent help. 

I have learned a lot from those who posted in this thread and appreciate your help. I am looking forward to Neo's extension. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1870&start=20#p12486
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: New CYA: The Adventures of Phoebe McGee
User: Neo / DateTime: 2011-01-10 20:31:07

Hey Chuck,

I'm sure you've looked into this already, but, if you haven't, you might want to check out the terms and conditions of using Choose Your Story. Effectively, they now can do anything they like with Phoebe...

[quote]1. Copyright, Licenses and Idea Submissions. The entire contents of the Web site are copyrighted under the United States copyright laws. HALOGEN STUDIOS is the exclusive owner of the copyright. You may print and download portions of the materials solely for your non-commercial use. Reproduction of any content from ChooseYourStory.com is permitted as long as you obtain express written permission of HALOGEN STUDIOS. Any other copying, redistribution, publication or retransmission of any portion of Web site material, is strictly prohibited without the express written permission of HALOGEN STUDIOS. You agree not to change or delete any proprietary notices from any materials downloaded from the Web site. You further agree to grant to HALOGEN STUDIOS a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, perpetual license, with the right to sublicense, to reproduce, transmit, distribute, create any derivative works of, publicly use or display any materials or other information (including, but not limited to, ideas, concepts or techniques for new or improved services and products) you publish to the Web site by any means or by any media now known or hereafter developed. You further agree that any such communication you make to the Web site (whether information, feedback, data, questions, comments, suggestions or the like) shall be deemed not to be confidential. You further agree and acknowledge that you shall have no recourse against HALOGEN STUDIOS for any alleged or actual infringement or misappropriation of any proprietary right in your publications or communications to us.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1889&start=10#p12487
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Is the short story the most natural fit for IF?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-01-11 01:10:40

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]What I think Laroquad is after is how to disguise railroading better.[/quote]
Not how I would put it, particularly since it is my belief that there is no such thing a non-'railroaded' narrative, so I would not use that word, because it takes what is a universal truth about narrative (that it must be led in a particular direction by a human designer) and makes it sound like a pejorative. But it *can't* be a pejorative, because there aren't any other options.

Your observation of what I am after is essentially correct. But what I think of as a 'railroaded' story is one in which the bloom of choices is too narrow or too poorly disguised. When you get right down to it, though, every story is either a railroad (in your sense, Ron) or not really much of a story at all. I know there are lots who disagree with this, in fact who have pinned entire lines of software development on disagreeing with this, but their disagreements all still seem theoretical, from my POV, pinning hopes on technologies that have never delivered, narratively. Experience with actual games bears this out: Narrative = railroad. They're the same thing. So it's a matter of giving the track enough splits and clothing it in enough 'choice' clothing so that it doesn't feel like what it is. There is no shame in this. It follows the same tradition that gave us 'characters' in the first place. Characters are fake -- they aren't real people; they are marks on the page, a trick of the light -- an intentionality that isn't. We allow ourselves to believe they're real, even though we know they are a trick -- and we respect the author when he or she makes it very easy for us to willingly fool ourselves into believing they're real. We don't dis that author for deceiving us. If an author's characters are obviously fake, we don't criticise that because it's a deception, we criticise it because it's a [i]bad[/i] deception (a very key distinction for IF that tends to get overlooked). This covenant between author and audience was not given to us a priori from the heavens: it developed by convention. (And BTW not everybody agreed at first that these deceptive novels were a good thing.)

So, I see IF as developing a similar covenant: 'I know I can't have true freedom of choice but if you make me believe it anyway, for a while, you're Aces.' Narrative is just the art of tricking people with their consent, and disguising the 'railroad' is no different. We should approach this task with pride and craftsmanship, and not make like it's a terrible compromise, because the alternative storytelling techniques we would have to compare 'railroading' with in order to reach that opinion, don't actually exist anywhere that I have seen. 8)

Sorry for the single-sentence-targeted response, but I'll be back for more later.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1859&start=10#p12488
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Can new games be entered into IntroComp and IF Comp?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-01-11 01:57:48

[quote="Laroquod"][...] if someone really wants to participate in both contests, there's a simple solution available — write two games. Quantity.[/quote]

This has the heady stench of wisdom about it [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1900&start=0#p12489
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Pet Peeve
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-01-11 02:26:50

Extensions will run when downloaded and saved to the folder where Inform is installed.  But if you want to edit an extension, Inform refuses to let you save it anywhere but your "My Documents" folder.

Inform isn't installed there.  My game isn't there.  In fact, I don't store anything in the "My Documents" folder.  Why does Inform force you to put extensions in an extraneous third location?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1895&start=0#p12490
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Adventure Book extension won't compile in 6G60
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-01-11 02:44:27

Actually you have to use "supply" and not "provide;" there is already a "provide" relation in the standard rules, apparently.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1899&start=0#p12491
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: communicating with npc's in other locations
User: zodraz / DateTime: 2011-01-11 02:59:22

I checked the technical manual, your idea looks like should work ok, thank you!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1171&start=0#p12492
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF URLs
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-01-11 03:13:24

Could you please link to your QOTW sources?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1898&start=0#p12493
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Package: Prompts for asking about the unkno
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-01-11 03:48:37

Have you tried something along the lines of "[b]Default ask response for a person when the second noun is an unfamiliar subject: say "You are not really familiar with [second noun], so you don't know what to ask."[/b]"?
(I haven't checked to see if it works, so it's just a suggestion.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=7&start=20#p12494
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: How does ADRIFT's parsing work?
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-01-11 04:52:23

There are rumbles that the .NET Framework may soon run on Macs, in which case ADRIFT 5 will be able to run natively on Macs.  Even if that doesn't come to fruition, I'm hoping I should be able to get Runner working via the Mono project.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1898&start=0#p12495
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Package: Prompts for asking about the unkno
User: anttiki / DateTime: 2011-01-11 06:47:45

[quote="Felix"]Have you tried something along the lines of "[b]Default ask response for a person when the second noun is an unfamiliar subject: say "You are not really familiar with [second noun], so you don't know what to ask."[/b]"?
(I haven't checked to see if it works, so it's just a suggestion.)[/quote]

I've tried something similar ("[b]Default ask response for a person when asked [i]about an unknown subject[/i]: say "You are not really familiar with [second noun], so you don't know what to ask."[/b]"), but unfortunately it didn't work. 

So thanks for the suggestion, I'll try that next.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1900&start=0#p12496
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pet Peeve
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-11 07:14:33

I don't experience this problem - everything goes automatically into Inform/Extensions.  Is this a new feature introduced with a newer release of Inform?  (I use an older one because of extension compatibility.)  Is there an error message when you try to save elsewhere, or what does it look like?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1889&start=10#p12497
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Is the short story the most natural fit for IF?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-11 07:46:30

[quote="Laroquod"] I know there are lots who disagree with this, in fact who have pinned entire lines of software development on disagreeing with this, but their disagreements all still seem theoretical, from my POV, pinning hopes on technologies that have never delivered, narratively. Experience with actual games bears this out: Narrative = railroad. They're the same thing.[/quote]

Hrm. What about [url=http://aliceandkev.wordpress.com/]Alice and Kev[/url]? [url=http://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-Boatmurdered/]Boatmurdered[/url]? I'm not presenting these as gotchas -- I expect you have answers for them -- but I'd like to hear what you have to say about them, to clarify your concepts.

There's also the "narrative in gameplay" aspect, as in the story of Jane the Tourist (from nethack) that I posted a little while back -- Dwarf Fortress is probably intermediate between this and Alice and Kev, because it's partly about struggling to do well in the game, whereas Alice and Kev is about setting up obstacles to create an interesting narrative. (I haven't actually played Dwarf Fortress or the Sims.) That -- a narrative that's also a narrative of the player's struggle -- seems more orthogonal to the kind of narrative we're talking about, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1870&start=20#p12498
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: New CYA: The Adventures of Phoebe McGee
User: casmith / DateTime: 2011-01-11 08:22:40

Thanks Neo.

Of course I'm not fond of this kind of statement buried somewhere on their website.

I can imagine their motivations for doing so are not nefarious but have something to do with making their site available to the general public. I don't think they are looking to harvest stories for their own commercial use.

If the movie "The Adventures of Phibber Maglee" shows up in the theater or the TV feature of the week I'll contact my lawyer. [emote]:shock:[/emote] 

I write and publish for the general public as part of my professional work at the university. Phoebe is actually part of that work. The project is unusual (odd perhaps), but according to U.S. law I don't believe a statement like that allows them to take my work and claim ownership. They own the code used on their website and the "engine" that "drives" the story (that's what "Contents" might mean in the statement). They would be in their rights to simply delete all of Phoebe if they want (that possibility makes me nervous). They should have that kind of control. If I want to take my words and put them into a different format, I could do that. In other words, they do not own [i][b]what[/b][/i] I said but do own the [i][b]way[/b][/i] it's said.

In the past I have had colleagues tell me that I cannot copyright what I write at the university. That is wrong unless it's done as a contractual work for hire (like what's done with many federal publications). But I am obliged to allow the university to have control over distributing or making available what I've written.

Now what does this mean for me right now? First of all, so good to have the statement you sent me. I may start a thread in their forum about it and see what pops up. Second, would I write another story at the website? I don't know. It gives me pause. More important is traction for what I've done. If Phoebe doesn't get it (being read and making a difference) I will not invest the time required to do another. The idea that a CYOA type story could make money makes me chuckle.

Thanks again for taking the time to inform me about this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1870&start=20#p12499
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: New CYA: The Adventures of Phoebe McGee
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-01-11 08:47:28

[quote="casmith"]The idea that a CYOA type story could make money makes me chuckle.[/quote]
It's really not that far-fetched idea: [url=http://www.choiceofgames.com/]Choice of Games[/url] sells their products for smartphones. I don't know what their sales figures are but I do suspect they're significantly more than zero.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1870&start=20#p12500
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: New CYA: The Adventures of Phoebe McGee
User: casmith / DateTime: 2011-01-11 09:03:03

Juhana,

 [emote]:oops:[/emote]  Of course you are right. With all the new opportunities for delivery, why not see writing such fiction as generating income. 

I enjoyed looking at the Choice of Games website. I didn't go deep into any of the stories but the one I looked at seemed to be functional. Never asked to pay. I also liked their simple rationale for the CYOA format.

Another opportunity for writers. I hope their program has some of the sophistication found at chooseyourstory.com. Items and variables used in scripts are very useful. 

Thanks for letting me know.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1889&start=10#p12501
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Is the short story the most natural fit for IF?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-11 09:15:47

If we're defining narrative as a created story, a told story, then I'd say things like Boatmurdered are written by the users, incorporating elements given them, sort of like improv.  And the same is true for Alice and Kev - there's no *actual* story there, except in the telling.  I could take the same video or events in either game and spin a nearly completely different story, at least insofar as character, motivation, theme, etc.  (Would the Great Gatsby still be the Great Gatsby if the events were the same but the characters and dialogue were totally different?)  Sometimes these stories are given specific frameworks by voluntary play mode - like the One Dwarf Challenge, or the [url=http://www.legacychallenge.com/apocalypse.html]Apocalypse Challenge[/url].

But Dwarf Fortress and the Sims can provide inspiration and a rich toolbox, and far more meat for storytelling than, say, Nethack, where the events are far less malleable and open to interpretation.  I mean, you're in a dungeon, going down.  There are stories to be told about that, but the range of events is constricted to a pretty limited set.  Gameplay, graphics, random events, variety, worldbuilding - all these can expand your toolset dramatically.  A smoothly enough written game with a big enough toolset may appear to write its own story, because it's so easy to fill in the gaps, even as it allows for alternate explanations from people who deliberately approach from a different angle.

I actually really *like* this form of gameplay, but it is different than the game designer deciding that he's going to tell the story of the Chosen One who will Save the World. (Although I confess that I enjoy playing those games and watching destruction spread in the "savior"'s wake, and imagining what the people around him/her must be thinking.)  It's more play-assisted narrative, like pirate-themed Legos or Barbies.  There may or may not be an intended framework or simple narrative (Barbie loves Ken and clothes and lives in her dream house), but there's more often a player-chosen narrative (Barbie and Snake-Eyes have an ongoing feud over who will control Candyland, interrupted only by sieges from the Lego pirates).  

There's nothing to be ashamed of in giving people tools for telling stories, and that often overlaps with stories we're telling as authors.  I don't agree that the best stories are necessarily the ones that we are told.  Some of them are the ones we tell ourselves, and some of them are the ones that appear to be told to us (". . . and then the zombie elephants and skeletal carp came FOR REVENGE . . .") even if that story isn't hardcoded or intended or imagined by the player.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1892&start=0#p12502
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple way to say appropriate rank from Table of Ranking
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2011-01-11 09:18:38

Create a new measurement system. Call is Skore or something.

[code]
The player has a number called skore. The skore of the player is 0.

To say Rank:
  say "You have found [skore of the player] apples. There were 120 apples to find.".

[/code]

I'm not sure what the problem is. Perhaps you're better off saying

[code]
Use no scoring.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1900&start=0#p12503
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pet Peeve
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-01-11 09:36:13

[quote="katz"]But if you want to edit an extension, Inform refuses to let you save it anywhere but your "My Documents" folder.[/quote]It will let you save an extension anywhere [b]other[/b] than the I7 installation directory. The installation directory isn't intended as somewhere to dump random extensions or other files.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1891&start=0#p12504
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: I7 port of Crowther's Colossal Cave looking for testers
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2011-01-11 09:40:04

[quote="Laroquod"]There was fantasy in Crowther's original. Just not as much of it. But it was definitely a game and not just a sim.

I'm really happy to see this being done. Trying to read Fortran to experience what Crowther did gets kind of old.[/quote]Heh, that's what I thought at first, too, but it's actually pretty easy to get a basic understanding of Fortran and the code from a bit of poking around and experimenting with the executable.

[quote]One thing that has always bugged me about ports of Adventure is that there is a dead end in the twisty maze that exits in the wrong direction (east instead of west, or west instead of east, one of those), and it exits in the wrong direction in the TADS adaptation as well (and in the Inform adaptation that is based on it), but it exits in the correct direction (i.e. true to Crowther & Woods) in the DOS version (Ekman's?) that the TADS version is supposedly based on.[/quote]I can confirm that there is no such backwards dead end in Crowther's original. I pretty much agree about the original prose.

Thanks for offering, I've sent you a response.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1870&start=20#p12505
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: New CYA: The Adventures of Phoebe McGee
User: casmith / DateTime: 2011-01-11 09:57:15

I looked at the docs for ChoiceScript at Choice of Games. It does appear to have both variables and scripts. So I'm going to dig a little deeper and do some experimenting with it. I'll try porting Lilly first. Nice to see the option.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1171&start=0#p12506
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF URLs
User: George / DateTime: 2011-01-11 09:59:12

I edited the latest, thanks for noting it Dannii.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1889&start=10#p12507
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Is the short story the most natural fit for IF?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-01-11 11:21:56

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]I think Emily Short's When In Rome 2 begins with a randomly-created antagonist, but you wouldn't know it at all unless you replayed the game two or three times at least.[/quote]

It's a randomly *selected* antagonist, out of a fairly small pool; the idea being that each antagonist brings with it certain challenges to diagnose and control, and having them randomized lets the player play several times and experience the evolution from not knowing much about these critters to being quite good with them. I was trying for something with a clear narrative arc but a fair amount of gameplay depth; the critter AI is intended to give the player a slightly different playing challenge every time around, and encourage solutions that aren't specifically things that I came up with myself. (How well this worked, I don't really know -- I've gotten very little feedback on those games and have the impression that they weren't that successful on the whole.)

But I do cautiously agree with the sensation that there is some disappointing gameplay in story-rich games; or, at least, gameplay that doesn't live up to the story. I found "One Eye Open" oddly gripping, but most of the actual challenges were about collecting lots of key objects and diary objects -- an idea old as the hills and sometimes rather repetitive. (There were some exceptions. The laundry machine still makes me go "ew" at random moments.) But quite a few games have puzzles that feel like they arise for purely plot-mechanical reasons: we need to block the player at points X, Y, and Z, and require a visit to P before unlocking Q. And those are good reasons to have puzzles, but not all that's needed to determine what the puzzle should be.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1891&start=0#p12508
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: I7 port of Crowther's Colossal Cave looking for testers
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-01-11 13:24:51

[quote="Laroquod"](I have a MUD version of Adventure that I've been doing all this in, but it's the Crowther & Woods, not just the Crowther). However, I third-person-ised the whole thing, including the descriptions, so I have made my own transgressions; they're just my own idiosyncratic idea of what's OK to change for MUD version of this and what isn't.
[/quote]
Are you ever going to open your MUD version to players?  I think it would be awesome to explore the [i]Adventure[/i] map in an austere, traditional presentation with other players. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1900&start=0#p12509
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pet Peeve
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-01-11 14:18:10

Why not?  The installation folder contains an extensions folder.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1900&start=0#p12510
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pet Peeve
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-01-11 14:23:11

Because the entire installation folder is replaced with each upgrade. The extensions folder inside it contains only the built-in extensions, so that these can be bundled with the latest version of the software.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1892&start=0#p12511
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple way to say appropriate rank from Table of Ranking
User: Birion / DateTime: 2011-01-11 14:34:08

First of all, let me apologise for any insult this post will cause, but sometimes I feel like questioning other people's basic literacy skills. Why would I want to add more cruft to my game in the form of a useless variable? Are you honestly doubting my ability to type "[score] points"? Why would "[skore in words] points" (or apples) be any better? (Not to mention that were I to use such a construction, I would most certainly measure it in points, i.e. [code]Skore is a kind of value.
1 point specifies a skore.
The player has a skore.[/code]
or something to that effect.)

And whatever possessed you to suggest "Use no scoring." as an answer to a question that is tangentially connected to scoring? That hints at a basic inability to comprehend written text. I fear for you, my friend. Life will be very hard for you. We are not at the stage where all our communication can consist of pictograms yet.

But all of it is inconsequential, as I never had any problem with saying "[score]". (I did note that I found the wording with the "points" missing rather unattractive as a way to explain why I even had the problem mentioned in the first post.) My problem (which, incidentally, was resolved even before the first reply, as mentioned in the first post, again) was quite clearly concerned with the Table of Rankings, i.e. a table which is clearly mentioned in the Writing with Inform manual (and, I suspect, on the same page where the "Use no scoring." option is mentioned). But to make myself absolutely clear, I will post the relevant part of the code. And so that there are no more misunderstandings, I was looking for a way to say "[rank]":

[code]
The my scoring rule is listed instead of the print final score rule in for printing the player's obituary.
The my scoring rule is listed instead of the announce the score rule in the carry out requesting the score rulebook.

To say rank:
	repeat through Table of Rankings in reverse order:
		if score is less than score entry:
			next;
		otherwise:
			say rank entry;
			stop;

This is the my scoring rule:
	say "You have scored [bold type][score][roman type] point[s] out of a possible maximum of [bold type][maximum score][roman type], earning you the rank of [italic type][rank][roman type].";
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1901&start=0#p12512
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Identity Confusion with 'which do you mean?' Activity
User: grbaptist / DateTime: 2011-01-11 16:06:08

Hi everyone,

I've come across an interesting problem when trying to identify a specific object out of a list of similar objects. Here is the code:

[code]
A monster is a kind of person. A monster has a number called identifier. Understand the identifier property as referring to a monster.

A skeleton is a kind of monster. 

Rule for printing the name of a skeleton:
	say "[printed name] [identifier]".

Instead of attacking:
	say "You attack the [noun]."

When play begins:
	allocate identifiers to skeletons;
	
To allocate identifiers to (name of kind of value K):
	let current identifier be 1;
	repeat with monster running through K in the location:
		now the identifier of the monster is the current identifier;
		increase current identifier by 1;
		say "[monster][line break]".

The Graveyard is a room. In the Graveyard are 15 skeletons.
[/code]
When I follow through this sequence of commands I am unable to attack the first skeleton. I can attack any of the others, just not the first.

[quote]
>attack skeleton
Who do you mean, the skeleton 14, the skeleton 12, the skeleton 10, the skeleton 8, the skeleton 6, the skeleton 4, the skeleton 2, the skeleton 1, the skeleton 3, the skeleton 5, the skeleton 7, the skeleton 9, the skeleton 11, the skeleton 13 or the skeleton 15?

>attack 1 skeleton
(the skeleton 14)
You attack the skeleton 14.

>attack 2 skeleton
You attack the skeleton 2.

>attack 13 skeleton
You attack the skeleton 13.
[/quote]
What seems to be happening is that skeleton 1 is being matched to the first one appearing in the 'Who do you mean?' list.

Interestingly though if I type the following it works:

[quote]
>attack skeleton 1
You attack the skeleton 1.
[/quote]
Anyone have an idea of the reason behind this?

Thank you.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1870&start=30#p12513
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: New CYA: The Adventures of Phoebe McGee
User: Neo / DateTime: 2011-01-11 16:12:52

[quote="casmith"]The idea that a CYOA type story could make money makes me chuckle.[/quote]

Not to mention U-Ventures, official CYOA, Fighting Fantasy, and an awesome Aussie series Gamebook Adventures... Just to name the commercial ones. All of these are available on the iStore.

In fact, arguably, CYA/gamebooks are more commercially viable right now than full-blown interactive fiction.

I'm guessing Zarf hopes to kick that trend a little in the other direction. [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1901&start=0#p12514
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Identity Confusion with 'which do you mean?' Activity
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-01-11 17:01:57

I suspect that this is a similar bug to this one:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=488">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=488</a>

(see eMacsUser's comments at the bottom.)

I don't know whether this "1" thing is a new feature or if it's an old feature that's behaving badly, but you're probably stuck with the problem until a new build of Inform is released. Or until someone identifies the bug in the template layer and specifies a patch.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1902&start=0#p12515
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Taking when container is closed
User: whoiscraig / DateTime: 2011-01-11 19:39:49

I can't work out why this code won't work.

[code]
The description of dead scientist is "It is not evident how he died, though his lab coat is stained with a lot blood, In his hand is a [bold type]bloody note[roman type]."

Scientist's Hand is a transparent closed openable container. Scientist's Hand is part of Dead Scientist.

Bloody note is a thing in Scientist's Hand. Understand "piece of paper" as bloody note. The description of the bloody note is "A hastily scrawled note has been written on a torn piece of white paper, stained with drops of red blood. You can't read what it says from here."

Instead of taking the bloody note when the scientist's hand is closed, say "I try to take the piece of paper, but his fingers are clasped tightly around it. I find I cannot remove the paper from the dead scientist's hand without tearing it.".[/code]

When I test it:

[code]>examine dead scientist
It is not evident how he died, though his lab coat is stained with a lot blood, In his hand is a bloody note.

>examine bloody note
A hastily scrawled note has been written on a torn piece of white paper, stained with drops of red blood. You can't read what it says from here.

>take bloody note
Scientist's Hand isn't open.

>[/code]

How come my [b]Instead of taking the bloody note when the scientist's hand is closed,[/b] is ignored?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1901&start=0#p12516
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Identity Confusion with 'which do you mean?' Activity
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-11 19:40:36

Maybe because it's parsing as "attack a skeleton", much like "take 1 coin" when there are several indistinguishable coins?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1902&start=0#p12517
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Taking when container is closed
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-11 20:05:29

Taking the note fails the "basic accessibility" rule, which runs before any Instead rules you might have going on. You can see this by turning on "rules" and "actions" listing; you will get this output:

[quote]>take note
[taking Bloody note]
Scientist's Hand isn't open.
[taking Bloody note - failed the basic accessibility rule]
[/quote]

which as you can see doesn't cite [i]any[/i] check rules or anything like that. In order to let you interact with something that's inside a closed container, you need rules for reaching inside the container, as discussed [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/ex430.html]here[/url].

I think a rule that will work in your case is:

[code]A rule for reaching inside the scientist's hand:
	if scientist's hand is closed:
		say "I try to take the piece of paper, but his fingers are clasped tightly around it. I find I cannot remove the paper from the dead scientist's hand without tearing it.";
		deny access;
	otherwise:
		allow access.[/code]

In fact I don't think you need the "otherwise," since open containers are accessible by default. 

(Further testing reveals that if you want to have the scientist's hand open when you give him pie, you will have to write some special code somewhere. Presumably you have a different solution in mind. In my defense, I already had pie lying around in the code I was testing this in.)

Also, you have "a lot blood" where you want "a lot of blood," and your narration seems to switch from second to first person -- is that intentional?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1171&start=0#p12518
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF URLs
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-01-11 20:29:36

Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1901&start=0#p12519
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Identity Confusion with 'which do you mean?' Activity
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-01-11 20:53:29

Yes, I think that's it. In the bug I linked to, the "1" is parsed in that sense when it ought not to be. Here, it should be parsed that way, I guess (though it's not a feature I've ever used in any game), but it seems to me that the author should also be able to disable that reading of "1".

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1903&start=0#p12520
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Problems automatically generating exits
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-01-11 20:55:06

I'm working on a map that automatically generates room connections based on 3D coordinates assigned to each room (you're allowed to travel to any adjacent room at the same level), and I've run into a couple of puzzling problems with this statement:

[code]When play begins:
	repeat with current room running through rooms:
		let x be the latitude of the current room;
		let y be the longitude of the current room;
		let z be the level of the current room;
		if y > 1:
			let n be y - 1;
			let the north room be a random room with longitude n and latitude x;
			if the level of the north room is z:
				now the north room is mapped north of the current room.[/code]

The main error I'm getting is that I can't, apparently, refer to "a random room with longitude n."  Why not?  Is my phrasing just wrong, or can I not randomly select a thing by its values?

I'm also getting this error, and I have no idea why:

[quote]You wrote 'end if' , but the end I was expecting next was 'end repeat', finishing the block you began with 'repeat with current room running through rooms begin'[/quote]

Help?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1903&start=0#p12521
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problems automatically generating exits
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-11 22:42:10

This may be tricky.

You can select a thing by a property, but you have to define a sentence verb for it. An unlovely example:

[code]
The verb to longit (it longits, they longit, it is longiting) implies the longitude property.
[/code]

You can then say "a random room that longits N".

(The verb can be more than one word; I just tried a simple form to test it.)

However, I don't think you can apply *two* restrictive clauses in the same description. The only way I see to do it is to fall back to global variables. Set global-n and global-x, and then have

[code]
Definition: a room is n-x-correct if the longitude of it is global-n and the latitude of it is global-x.
[/code]

You can then talk about "a random n-x-correct room".

The "end if" problem should go away if you indent properly. You code compiled when I fixed the randomizer line.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1902&start=0#p12522
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Taking when container is closed
User: whoiscraig / DateTime: 2011-01-11 23:47:51

In fact I don't think you need the "otherwise," since open containers are accessible by default. 

(Further testing reveals that if you want to have the scientist's hand open when you give him pie, you will have to write some special code somewhere. Presumably you have a different solution in mind. In my defense, I already had pie lying around in the code I was testing this in.)

Also, you have "a lot blood" where you want "a lot of blood," and your narration seems to switch from second to first person -- is that intentional?[/quote]

Ah thanks, that worked perfectly. It wasn't my intention to switch perspectives, thanks for pointing it out.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1891&start=0#p12523
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: I7 port of Crowther's Colossal Cave looking for testers
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-01-12 00:06:16

I doubt it would take much to port this to Guncho now!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1898&start=0#p12524
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Package: Prompts for asking about the unkno
User: anttiki / DateTime: 2011-01-12 00:45:31

[quote="Felix"]Have you tried something along the lines of "[b]Default ask response for a person when the second noun is an unfamiliar subject: say "You are not really familiar with [second noun], so you don't know what to ask."[/b]"?
(I haven't checked to see if it works, so it's just a suggestion.)[/quote]

Nope, did not work. I've turned on all the rules and it seems that the rule that is chosen is the (default) block asking rule which says the basic response [b]There is no reply[/b]. What baffles me is that Eric Eve's conversation framework has a separate rule for when someone is asked about something unknown:
[code]Check quizzing someone about something unknown (this is the block asking about something unknown rule):
  abide by the block asking rule.[/code]

This doesn't seem to get triggered. Any thoughts?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1901&start=0#p12525
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Identity Confusion with 'which do you mean?' Activity
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-01-12 02:30:24

I tried the same thing in 5Z71 and got this:
[quote]
>attack skeleton
Which do you mean, the skeleton 14, the skeleton 12, the skeleton 10, the skeleton 8, the skeleton 6, the skeleton 4, the skeleton 2, the skeleton 1, the skeleton 3, the skeleton 5, the skeleton 7, the skeleton 9, the skeleton 11, the skeleton 13 or the skeleton 15?

>attack 1 skeleton
You attack the skeleton 1.

>attack a skeleton
(the skeleton 14)
You attack the skeleton 14.

>attack one skeleton
(the skeleton 14)
You attack the skeleton 14.
[/quote]
So maybe the new behaviour qualifies as a bug after all.

Note:[rant]I had to modify the source text to make it compile on the earlier build, but I don't think that should make the difference:
[code]
To allocate identifiers to skeletons:
	let current identifier be 1;
	repeat with horror running through skeletons:
		now the identifier of horror is the current identifier;
		increase current identifier by 1;
		say "[horror][line break]".
[/code][/rant]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1902&start=0#p12526
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Taking when container is closed
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-01-12 03:00:08

In a case like this, where you can see something inside a container but can't reach it, you could alternatively use a before rule.
Before rules run before the basic accessibility rule, so this will also do the trick: [code]Before taking the bloody note when the scientist's hand is closed, instead say "I try to take the piece of paper, but his fingers are clasped tightly around it. I find I cannot remove the paper from the dead scientist's hand without tearing it."[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1898&start=0#p12527
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Package: Prompts for asking about the unkno
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-01-12 05:13:22

It looks like the Conversation Framework defines the grammar line for quizzing it about action as "ask [someone] about [any known thing]". Unknown things fall outside the definition so ASK X ABOUT Y is understood as asking X about a topic "Y" when object Y is unknown.

If you add the line
[code]Understand "ask [someone] about [any thing]" as quizzing it about.[/code]
to your code you should be able to catch all topics. You might need some additional tweaks to prevent giving accidental information in disambiguation prompts (ASK GUARD ABOUT KEY -> "Which key do you mean, the treasury key or the super secret twist ending key?")

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1898&start=0#p12528
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Package: Prompts for asking about the unkno
User: anttiki / DateTime: 2011-01-12 06:36:17

[quote="Juhana"]It looks like the Conversation Framework defines the grammar line for quizzing it about action as "ask [someone] about [any known thing]". Unknown things fall outside the definition so ASK X ABOUT Y is understood as asking X about a topic "Y" when object Y is unknown.

If you add the line
[code]Understand "ask [someone] about [any thing]" as quizzing it about.[/code]
to your code you should be able to catch all topics. [/quote]

Thanks, that did the trick. 

In addition to what you advised I unlisted the block asking about something unknown rule in the extension and replaced it with my own:
[code]The block asking about something unknown rule is not listed in the check quizzing it about rulebook.

Check quizzing someone about something unknown (this is the block asking about something unknown mark 2 rule):
  say "You are not really familiar with that, so you don't know what to ask.";
  stop the action.[/code]

And now it works (or at least seems to work  [emote];)[/emote]  ) as I intended. So, yes, thanks again, I was driving myself mad when I couldn't figure out why the rule I mentioned wouldn't even get triggered and replacing it did nothing.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1904&start=0#p12529
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Actions applying to rooms?
User: Bafflebox / DateTime: 2011-01-12 08:06:17

Could someone help me out, please? I've been puzzling for hours now;
I'm trying to create a command that changes the description of -anything-. NPCs, things and rooms, even the sky.
For now, let's assume the player is a god-like figure, and he or she may change something with a command I'll call 'zap'. How do I write this? I know how to make an action apply to a thing and even change it's description, but that's not enough for what I need [emote]:)[/emote]

I hope someone can figure this one out~
[color=#FF40BF]Your help is greatly appreciated ^-^[/color]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1905&start=0#p12530
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Remotely view object location Inform 6
User: aliennerd / DateTime: 2011-01-12 08:35:24

I've been trying to resolve this for a couple of days and can't seem to get it to work.

In a room I have a series of monitors which are intended to monitor the location of certain objects within the game. When the player examines those monitors I want the description to say something like:-

Object A is currently in the (location), object b is in the (location) etc... But I can't seem to get it to work, I've tried the following:-

Nearby monitors "monitors"
	with name "monitors" "monitor" "screens" "displays",
	description
	[; if (monitors has controlled)
		Print "The monitors are showing video feeds from the freighter's maintenance drones, Drone 1 is currently in ",(location.drone1), " Drone 2 is in ",(location.drone2), " and Drone 3 is in " ,(location.drone3),".";
		
],
	has static controlled;



When I play this it returns numbers in the description rather than the location names, am I anywhere near getting this right?

Charlie

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1904&start=0#p12531
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Actions applying to rooms?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-12 09:05:57

[code]Base is a room.  Bob is a man in Base.  The ball is in Base.

Zapping is an action applying to one visible thing.  Understand "zap [any thing]" as zapping.  Understand "zap [any room]" as zapping.

Carry out zapping:
	now the description of the noun is "Zapped by you!"

test me with "zap base / zap bob / zap ball / l / x bob / x ball".[/code]

You may want to modify what you can zap, of course - make sure the room's been visited, or is visible, or something.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1904&start=0#p12532
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Actions applying to rooms?
User: Bafflebox / DateTime: 2011-01-12 09:59:17

Alrighty, thanks so much! Now, I figured it'd make sense for the zap command to be able to toggle!
[code]Every thing has some text called zapdesc. The zapdesc of something is usually "unzappable".
Every thing has some text called regdesc. The regdesc of something is usually "There is nothing special about this.".
Every room has some text called zapdesc. The zapdesc of a room is usually "unzappable".
Every room has some text called regdesc. The regdesc of a room is usually "There is nothing special about this room.".

Understand "zap [any thing]" as zapping.
Zapping is an action applying to one thing.
Check zapping:
	If the zapdesc of the noun is "unzappable":
		say "That is unzappable.";
Carry out zapping:
	If the description of the noun is the regdesc of the noun:
		now the description of the noun is the zapdesc of the noun;
	else:
		now the description of the noun is the regdesc of the noun;
Report zapping:
	say "Your hands glow with an intense light when your power touch touches [noun].".
	
Testroom is a room. "This is the testroom." The zapdesc of the room is "This is a lovely testroom.".

The ball is in testroom. The description is "This is a ball.". The regdesc of ball is "This is a ball.". The zapdesc of ball is "This is a bucket! (but it is a ball)".[/code]

However, when playing, it returns "That noun did not make sense in this context." when I try to zap here, room or testroom.
What am I overlooking? o.o;

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1904&start=0#p12533
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Actions applying to rooms?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-01-12 10:08:25

You forgot the "Understand "zap [any room]" as zapping." line.

Also, rooms aren't called "room" or the current room "here" by default, you have to add the understand lines for them as well:

[code]Understand "room" as a room.
Understand "here" as a room when the location is the item described.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1905&start=0#p12534
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Remotely view object location Inform 6
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-12 10:44:47

To print an object reference in I6 you have to use one of the forms:

print (object) location.drone2;
print (the) location.drone2;
print (The) location.drone2;
print (a) location.drone2;

The (object) form leaves off the article; the others add "the", "The", or "a/an".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1906&start=0#p12535
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Looking for beta-testers for Berrost's Challenge v2
User: Mark H. / DateTime: 2011-01-12 10:58:21

I've been working on v2 of my 2008 comp game 'Berrost's Challenge'.

Cleaned up spelling and grammar, fixed several bugs, removed unwinnable states, added an automap feature, added an achievement system, rebalanced scoring, removed penalties for casting spells, etc etc.  I tried to take the comments of the post-comp reviewers into account to make a better play experience.

Please PM me if you are interested in helping me polish the new version before release.

Thanks,

Mark Hatfield

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1903&start=0#p12536
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problems automatically generating exits
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-01-12 11:27:27

[code]Definition: a room is n-x-correct if the longitude of it is global-n and the latitude of it is global-x.[/code]

Does this work for you?  It won't compile for me if I put a variable in the definition instead of a constant.

(It occurs to me that the less elegant, but eminently more practical, way to do this is to just nest another repeat running through and then use if statements to check each coordinate.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1901&start=0#p12537
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Identity Confusion with 'which do you mean?' Activity
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-12 12:15:32

I'm less inclined to believe it a bug than the problem is being tackled in an unusual way.  How about just:

[code]A skeleton is a kind of animal.  There are 15 skeletons.[/code]

And then defined various properties on skeletons such as "damaged", "dinged", "broken", and "most recently attacked" on them, and expose those adjectives to the player.  It would solve the repetitive narrator issue the original sample has. 

Mind, I haven't looked at the problem in any depth.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1901&start=0#p12538
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Identity Confusion with 'which do you mean?' Activity
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-01-12 12:30:47

I do think that this is a bug. Inform should be prioritizing its parsing decisions so that, when the grammar allows for a command that has a user-defined "1" vs. a command that automatically understood "1" to mean a quantifier (as in "Take 1 goblet"), the former is always chosen. In both the bug report I linked to and the test Felix posted (thanks, Felix!), 5Z71 did prioritize things that way, and the situation was handled gracefully. In contrast, when 6G60 gives priority (unintentionally, I'm sure) to the "1" as a quantifier, there is no way for the author to override that behavior, at least without digging deep in the internals of the parser.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1905&start=0#p12539
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Remotely view object location Inform 6
User: aliennerd / DateTime: 2011-01-12 12:58:29

Hi Zarf,

Thanks for your reply, I still can't work out how to implement this into my existing code, what exactly do I need to change in the above example for the text returned to player to advise which location each drone is in and to update accordingly should the drones move and the monitor be examined again?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Charlie

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1903&start=0#p12540
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problems automatically generating exits
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-12 13:05:18

Yeah, I compiled this last night to test.

[code]
A room has a number called the latitude.
A room has a number called the longitude.
A room has a number called the level.

When play begins:
	now global-n is 5;
	now global-x is 6;
	let the north room be a random n-x-correct room.

Global-n is a number that varies.
Global-x is a number that varies.

Definition: a room is n-x-correct if the longitude of it is global-n and the latitude of it is global-x.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1907&start=0#p12541
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: problems with mail delivery in IF
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-01-12 13:26:25

Hi! I'm writing my first IF game using Inform7, I'm trying to write a scene where when you visit a room and pick up a certain item, then the mailman arrives and delivers a letter (which takes place in another room).

If you open the mailbox before the mailman arrives it's empty. After, there's a letter inside for you.

Can anyone suggest a simple way to make a letter appear inside a mailbox after the mail is delivered?

Thanks for any help...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1907&start=0#p12542
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: problems with mail delivery in IF
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-01-12 13:33:26

You just move the letter to the box, like so:

[code]The Front Drive is a room.

The dog bone and the mailbox are in Front Drive. The mailbox is a closed openable container. It is fixed in place.

The letter is a thing.

After taking the dog bone for the first time:
	say "Just as you pick up the bone, a mailman walks up to your mailbox. He puts a letter inside and leaves.";
	move the letter to the mailbox.
	
Test me with "z / open mailbox / look in mailbox / close mailbox / get bone / x mailbox / open mailbox / get letter".[/code]

(I put the mailbox in the same room with you in order to make it easier to see what's going on.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1907&start=0#p12543
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: problems with mail delivery in IF
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-01-12 13:40:39

[quote="emshort"]You just move the letter to the box, like so:

[code]The Front Drive is a room.

The dog bone and the mailbox are in Front Drive. The mailbox is a closed openable container. It is fixed in place.

The letter is a thing.

After taking the dog bone for the first time:
	say "Just as you pick up the bone, a mailman walks up to your mailbox. He puts a letter inside and leaves.";
	move the letter to the mailbox.
	
Test me with "z / open mailbox / look in mailbox / close mailbox / get bone / x mailbox / open mailbox / get letter".[/code]

(I put the mailbox in the same room with you in order to make it easier to see what's going on.)[/quote]

Hey thanks so much, works!!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1262&start=0#p12544
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: LIMBO (XBox Live Summer of Arcade)
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2011-01-12 15:13:43

I would describe Limbo's gameplay as "trial and death" (as opposed to trial and error) - you die constantly and often unfairly, but it restarts you no more than 5 seconds back from wherever you were, so you lose no time at all.  It's a fascinating game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1904&start=0#p12545
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Actions applying to rooms?
User: Bafflebox / DateTime: 2011-01-12 15:43:57

Awesomecakes!
Thanks a bunch, now it works! [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1908&start=0#p12546
Forum: Competitions / Subject: 2010 XYZZY Awards now open
User: inky / DateTime: 2011-01-12 22:21:17

It's that time of year again, only earlier! First-round voting for the best IF games of 2010 is now open at <a class="postlink" href="http://xyzzyawards.org/">http://xyzzyawards.org/</a> with a couple new awards and all sorts of good stuff.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1793&start=0#p12547
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compass rose?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-01-12 22:55:29

I've finally posted this tutorial:

<a class="postlink" href="http://glimmr.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/compass-roseexit-lister-tutorial/">http://glimmr.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/ ... -tutorial/</a>

Thanks for the thoughts and encouragement!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1908&start=0#p12548
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: 2010 XYZZY Awards now open
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-01-13 00:39:12

Cool! Thanks for organising the awards again this year!

By the way, the page listing all the [url=http://xyzzyawards.org/games.php]awards and games[/url] for this year still includes Best Use of Medium as well as Best Implementation and Best Use of Innovation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1909&start=0#p12549
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Appearing and disappearing doors!
User: Bafflebox / DateTime: 2011-01-13 02:25:03

Alright, so in my previous topic I needed a way to change the descriptions of -everything-. That worked (with the help of you guys! [color=#FF40BF]<3[/color])

Now, I've stumbled into a situation where one of the rooms ends up having an extra exit after the description changes - however, it's important that the player doesn't get a clue of the passage. For instance, when I say:
[code]The fdoor is a locked, openable door, north of the Chamber.
The Foyer is north of the fdoor.[/code]

and I want to go north, it says:
[code](first opening fdoor)
That's not something you can open.[/code]

Yikes, dead giveaway! That should be "You can't go that way." or whatever the default message is.
Any thoughts on how to solve this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1889&start=10#p12550
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Is the short story the most natural fit for IF?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-01-13 02:29:40

Sorry for the delay — things got a little hairy there and my sleep schedule is now all messed up.

[quote="Pacian"]I think people like to see cause and effect in stories - not because it's realistic, but because that's part of the appeal of fiction - a chance to tackle our sense of cause and motive.  In an interactive story, in which you'd expect the player to be supplying the causes, if not the motives as well, that probably goes double.[/quote]
I agree with this, but I think you're talking about hindsight, which is different, IMO (and can be specifically written to be different) from the way the events are experienced as you are experiencing them. I'd prefer the player to feel as if they had discovered something that didn't necessarily have to be discovered, and then in hindsight, to feel that the cause-and-effect of it all made sense in retrospect and is satisfying (but not that it is inevitably programmed to happen to every player of the game).

[quote="Pacian"]When it comes to graphical games, I'm often concerned with the place that storytelling takes, but within the IF community I think it's the gameplay that bothers me more.  Too often it feels like authors come up with an awesome story, but when it comes to what the player actually does in it, they just slap in some puzzles.  An IF game that instead featured something like the malleable world of Minecraft (you have a story-based goal, but how you achieve it in the sandbox is up to you) would be an interesting development - something that could make a small game feel a lot larger.  It might not be the "best fit" but it would at least be "another way".  I suspect that with enough experimentation there could be a lot of "other ways".[/quote]
I agree with you on the first point -- gameplay is now often given short shift -- but disagree with your conclusion (to suggest a swing toward IF gameplay in a Minecraft-inspired vein). Probably because I don't see the slippage away from gameplay in the same context. I see it as failure to remain seated on the head of the pin. 87

I've said it before, but I don't really beleve in the dichotomy of 'puzzle vs. story', and I'm certainly never going to come down on one side or another. What we have here, IMO, is a Third Thing. A thing which we can currently most conveniently understand by referencing the subsystems within it that we recognise, historically (which we typically called 'puzzle' and 'story'). But neither puzzles nor stories are unitary things, either. Each is made up in turn of several subsystems (for puzzles: interface elements, data objects, if/thens; for stories: pretend people, perched-on-the-shoulder invisible narrators, interior monologues, elisions of time, etc). If we didn't previously have a concept of a 'story', we might be able to have an argument about whether these newfangled novelists should focus on writing great pretend people, or on making interesting juxtapositions of time -- but this is a false dichotomy, because there is no reason you can't do both; it's all part of writing a story. Our concept of 'story' just happens to include both those techniques, by convention alone. We don't think of them as polar opposites even though elided time can interfere a great deal with establishing a contininuity of character, [i]if you don't do it carefully and thus fall off the head of that pin[/i]. The same goes for IF -- the only reason we divide it up in terms of 'puzzle' and 'story' is these are the pre-existing forms that we can identify within IF as subsystems, and because the combination of skills involved is not common in our specialised, stratified society, and so writers tend to come up short on one side or the other. But it didn't have to be this way. It's an accident of history. There is nothing intrinsically unified about 'puzzleness' or about 'storytelling' that should give [i]these[/i] forms a valid claim to being irreducible pieces, whereas [i]IF[/i] somehow is reducible to into its component parts, so that we can have debates about which part to weigh more heavily, which is the 'important' one.

There is no important one. IF itself is an irreducible form, because the elements it combines create a Third Thing not present in any of its subsystems, and that's why as a medium, it just refuses to stay down and die. If interactive fiction were really just all about story, then it wouldn't really be necessary, because we have that pretty much covered. To the extent that IF is going to continue to be exciting as a medium, we have to steadfastly refuse to pick a winner between puzzle and story, as I see it. Even better if we simply stop looking at it in those terms, because it might be blinding us to precisely the territory that is exclusive to IF: all the magic that can happen in the middle. So, I'm for the Third Thing. That we don't even have the perfect words for it yet is incredibly exciting, because it's just that new. New and irreducible things are not that common in history — particularly in the history of art.

So I'd have to disagree that taking cues from Minecraft is the answer, although I am in no way opposed to experiments in that vein. I would just perceive them as attempts to learn about one aspect of IF by focusing on it, kind of like when you write a film that all takes place in one room; and that's a good thing for a particular work of art. But the medium itself is located in whatever it is that you get when you combine the various subelements of what we think of as puzzle and story, but which is impossible to describe by reference exclusively to either. And that puts Minecraft-like building block games off on the margin of the spectrum of the most fertile IF fields to explore, IMO. The magic is in the middle -- that's where all the brand-new-to-the-world crossover effects will be found.

[quote="Pacian"]Sleep is Death is the kind of thing I meant.  The play sessions may be short, but the act of user participation means that the game as a whole is larger than any short story.  Essentially Sleep is Death is closer to a [i]collection[/i] of short stories.[/quote]
Yeah, Sleep is Death is an interesting example in this context, and it's not alone it seems, so I'll skip over to something Matt mentioned.

[quote="matt w"]Hrm. What about [url=http://aliceandkev.wordpress.com/]Alice and Kev[/url]? [url=http://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-Boatmurdered/]Boatmurdered[/url]? I'm not presenting these as gotchas -- I expect you have answers for them -- but I'd like to hear what you have to say about them, to clarify your concepts.[/quote]
I don't have answers for them, actually, because I haven't played them. I take it that Boatmurdered is some sort of an add-on for Dwarf Fortress, which is a game I read about briefly but didn't try. Anyway, thanks for the links!

Reading responses to you, it sounds like there are a lot of parallels between the sorts of games you're talking about and Sleep is Death, which is another where the players create the story using the game as just a set of building blocks, and I do see this as a different kind of thing. Not that it's not IF, but it's more like.... the difference between Pong and Breakout. Pong was fun because they recruited a human to be your opponent for you, making the sorts of decisions that the computer was finally able to make in Breakout, but 6 or 7 years before affordable computer components were able to make them. So the reason games like Sleep is Death work so well is that, like Pong, they sidestep the entire issue and go for a different sort of experience. But that's not same as solving the issue, and my main interest is still in solving the issue, and in the work of those who are attempting to do so. I have nothing against collaborative storyteling games though, and they are like IF in the same way that Pong is like Breakout -- which is pretty damn close but the difference is actually pretty crucial to the game designer and the engine. You have to actually change what you are trying to achieve to go from writing Breakout to writing Pong, instead. I hope this makes sense, I feel like this paragraph has now vanished into a rabbit hole in the early '70s. XD

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Interesting thing about randomized text:  the first time you read it, it isn't randomized (even though it is).  You can't tell a difference until you see the same language again with small tweaks in the same context.  I think Emily Short's When In Rome 2 begins with a randomly-created antagonist, but you wouldn't know it at all unless you replayed the game two or three times at least.[/quote]
A great point that overlooked in my first read. Randomised text requires replay to detect as randomised -- so, it also requires replay to have any effect at all different from non-randomised text. Both the postivie and negative effects of randomised text require replay to detect (though, not necessarily to function). This is interesting I think in the context of the discussion that followed about the length of a work.

[quote="severedhand"]I don't even know what long means in IF all the time. In the 80s you could have games sitting around for 18 months+ that you were unable to complete (EG Wizard and the Princess!). The game's unhelpful parser, toughness and the absence of an internet providing you with instant hints and walkthroughs help explain this.[/quote]
Thanks for mentioning Wiz & the Princess. I remember it fondly, although it may have had the suckiest ending, ever. XD But we're talking about completion-of-puzzles time, here, obviously, which is so hard to quantify. Maybe that's why shorter for IF, works better now. It means there's time to spare -- that's kind of important, in light of the ability of puzzles to expand.

Anyway, that wasn't the quote I had in mind related to replays, and now I can't find it -- but someone upthread included replays in the estimation of the 'length of an IF work' and I wanted to disagree with that somewhat. It really depends on how the replays are meant to be played. It takes a very special game to get me to replay -- I am not a big replayer. Once I get what is clearly meant to be 'a non-failed conclusion', I will generally judge the game on that ending. I won't replay it in case there might be a more satisfying ending. I won't replay it to find out what character X might say about character Z if I talk to them, this time, before I meet character Y. I would only do that if the author of the game specifically seeded me with that desire with some parting clue, which is a legitimate technique that I wouldn't mind seeing used more often. (Yeah, sorry peeps -- you don't get replays for free, you have to actually work narratively toward them just like any other paragraph, or I'll take the first opportunity to 'close the book'.) If those techniques are used, then I could agree with counting replays as part of the length, but if they are not specifically narratively seeded, then no, replaying most IFs I have seen is the same really as rereading a novel -- you see different things in it the second time, but it's basically the same thing so most of the narrative tension has run out of it, and it's just less interesting to me, unless I've become such an uberfan of that author that I feel like pouring over every word, which doesn't happen much even in the elder arts.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1909&start=0#p12551
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Appearing and disappearing doors!
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-01-13 02:44:20

You could just write an "instead of going north in the chamber..." statement, but you probably want a more general solution.

You're getting two messages, so you need two solutions.

For the "that's not something you can open" error, a simple "before" statement replacing that error message with the default one will do the trick:

[code]Before opening the fdoor:
	say "You can't go that way." instead.[/code]

The (first opening...) message is the result of the rule that tries opening a door before going through it.  You need to unlist the rule and, perhaps, replace it with a "try silently" rule that will do the same thing but won't give you the message.  I can't find the rule in question at the moment, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1793&start=0#p12552
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compass rose?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-01-13 03:33:34

Very nice, Erik. I have to say, though I haven't had enough time to actually use GLIMMR for the project I have in mind, I've been really impressed by the thoroughness of your materials and tutorials. I enjoy just reading through the how-to stuff. Thanks for doing this!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1891&start=0#p12553
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: I7 port of Crowther's Colossal Cave looking for testers
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-01-13 04:01:58

[quote="Bainespal"][quote="Laroquod"](I have a MUD version of Adventure that I've been doing all this in, but it's the Crowther & Woods, not just the Crowther). However, I third-person-ised the whole thing, including the descriptions, so I have made my own transgressions; they're just my own idiosyncratic idea of what's OK to change for MUD version of this and what isn't.
[/quote]
Are you ever going to open your MUD version to players?  I think it would be awesome to explore the [i]Adventure[/i] map in an austere, traditional presentation with other players. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
Heh heh. It must seem singularly useless to read about somebody constructing a multiplayer version of Adventure in a MUD and not ever talk about releasing it or inviting people in. But it's just an accident of how this thing was built.

I'll try to make this rundown quick as possible, but it is a long story. Originally, I chose LambdaMOO as a place to conduct some personal IF experiments because it seemed like there was nothing it couldn't do, from IF to actual dynamic-served web pages. My experiments were structural -- I was thinking about interactive video and toying with ideas for tools for tracking interactive narrative. and I needed a sandbox testing environment, and I didn't want to get bogged down in creative decisions, so I basically ripped off all the rooms and text of the original Adventure, knowing that it was in the public domain by default (though not formally I don't think).

Anyway, I love that game, and as I experimented with some tools I'd often test them by mangling some Adventure puzzle with them, so I'd have to code that puzzle. After my experiments were done, I'd return the puzzle to its 'original' state. In this way I eventually coded most of the game. This past summer I realised that I was so close to having a complete version, that I went ahead and spent time specifically on that goal, polishing text, checking historical sources, etc.

But most of the work on this thing was a side effect of me doing stuff purely for my own edification and as a place for me to hang out in and feel creative in, and experiment. I've let in friends now and then, but since the environment wasn't specifically designed to entertain [i]them[/i] — it didn't. So I became a little wary about visitors. That being said, I do think about opening the doors, as it were. But there are some things I have to work out first. Should I make changes to give multiple players more things to do? (There is still only one light source, for example. Think about that. Is it a good thing or a bad thing?)

So the answer is, I don't really know what's wise to do, here. I'm afraid that it's actually less entertaining for multiple people to play, and, conversely, that making it more entertaining in that way will destroy the historical value of it. And I don't have any good answer for the criticism, 'You know what? There is no actual good reason to make this particular game multiplayer.' There probably isn't. It just makes the place feel even more real to me. I've come to love it and depend on it, and think of it as my own little museum of a thing I care about, which I have guests in from time to time. They're polite but few of them appreciate it as much as I do, and isn't that always the way? 87

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1909&start=0#p12554
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Appearing and disappearing doors!
User: Bafflebox / DateTime: 2011-01-13 04:45:33

Thanks, but it's not working too fantastically :<

So, I've been thinking about it myself, too~ [emote]:)[/emote]
[code]An exit is a kind of door.
An exit can be apparent or concealed.
[/code]

How about something like this? I don't understand writing rules very well yet though, so if anyone could assist me with this, that'd be absolutely lovely ^_^

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1909&start=0#p12555
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Appearing and disappearing doors!
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-01-13 05:14:16

You might consider not having the door there at all in the first place and bring it to play only when it actually should appear. The [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Krister%20Fundin/Hidden%20Items/index.html]Hidden Items extension[/url] might be of help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1893&start=0#p12556
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: CYOA "The Adventures of Phoebe McGee"
User: casmith / DateTime: 2011-01-13 07:51:08

Thanks Katz. Fixed the double going west in the clearing. If you don't save the bear, that west will take the reader to a rather sad location of the bear dead in the trap.

Access to the basement depends on having done something in the basement. I think I could have made that clearer.

That car issue needs to be dealt with. I thought I fixed that. Will look into that again.

Typos are hard to find in that format. I'm going back and copying and pasting everything in the story to find them. The format does not provide a single file of everything, one of the great drawbacks of using chooseyourstory.com.

I think the conversation trees is the best way to do it. Too difficult to revise now, but in the future certainly.

"Undo button"? You can hit your backspace key to go back and there is a "back" option in the top right menu.

Thanks so much for looking and posting your thoughts here. Very appreciated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1893&start=0#p12557
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: CYOA "The Adventures of Phoebe McGee"
User: casmith / DateTime: 2011-01-13 08:04:50

Katz,

I cannot duplicate the car description problem. Once the reader goes on the ride and then returns later the car is gone. I'll keep checking.

As far as links with periods... that was my way of visually recognizing what the links do. I could have added more info in a parens but I thought the periods would be less obtrusive. Having many different outcomes to the same link depending on variable states can be confusing for me as the writer. I will think about other ways of doing this without making it look like a mistake. At this point, I think I'll let them be.

Thanks again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1889&start=10#p12558
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Is the short story the most natural fit for IF?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-13 08:29:22

[quote="Laroquod"][quote="matt w"]Hrm. What about [url=http://aliceandkev.wordpress.com/]Alice and Kev[/url]? [url=http://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-Boatmurdered/]Boatmurdered[/url]? I'm not presenting these as gotchas -- I expect you have answers for them -- but I'd like to hear what you have to say about them, to clarify your concepts.[/quote]
I don't have answers for them, actually, because I haven't played them. I take it that Boatmurdered is some sort of an add-on for Dwarf Fortress, which is a game I read about briefly but didn't try. Anyway, thanks for the links![/quote]

Sorry, I didn't make myself clear. These are both recountings of specific stories that take place within sandboxy games -- Alice and Kev in The Sims, Boatmurdered in Dwarf Fortress. So they're not things you play, they're things you read about other folks playing. I haven't played either of the games myself either, let alone participating in those particular sessions; the links just let you read about what happened. (Did the story happen in the sessions themselves or was it created in the editing and presentation on those websites? I suspect the former, but I don't know.)

So I'd say you're right that the player is creating the story, but it's more that the single player is creating the story with the aid of the Sims/Dwarf Fortress, and the story develops in ways they don't necessarily expect, rather than that another player is GMing the story as I think happens in Sleep Is Death. The player of Alice and Kev was specifically trying something unusual in order to create a story; I don't think that was true to the same extent with the players of Boatmurdered.

[edited a couple times]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1909&start=0#p12559
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Appearing and disappearing doors!
User: Bafflebox / DateTime: 2011-01-13 09:17:47

Fantastic, thanks a bunch! [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1793&start=0#p12560
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compass rose?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-01-13 09:23:36

Thanks, Emily! That's nice feedback to hear!

On another note, I've updated the tutorial to mention that the image and design files for the tutorial are in the public domain--anyone is free to use and alter them in any game (incl. commercial), with or without attribution.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1908&start=0#p12561
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: 2010 XYZZY Awards now open
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-13 11:58:17

We have lists of nominees for the game categories, but not for "Supplemental Materials" or "Technological Development". I think it's worth posting links to works that are eligible for those categories. (To repeat the FAQ: supplemental materials released in 2010, not materials for games released in 2010.)

I will start by *declining* the nomination (or pre-declining, I guess, since this is the nomination phase) of all the promotional material I put together for Hadean Lands. (That includes the cover art, the kickstarter page, the teaser game, and the video). It was high-profile, everybody saw it, and I think it was one of the motivators for this award category in the first place. So I'm not comfortable having it in competition.

If you like my art, note that in 2010 I created cover art for Dual Transform, Heliopause, and The Dreamhold (all visible on my web site). I should also point out that Jason McIntosh, whose work on the HL video I am peremptorily withdrawing -- sorry Jmac -- created cover art for The Warbler's Nest.

So we have many eligible cover illustrations. What else? There was this image, whose status is unresolved as far as I know, but it should count: <a class="postlink" href="http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/09/18/a-public-service-announcement/">http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/09/18 ... ouncement/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1909&start=0#p12562
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Appearing and disappearing doors!
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-01-13 12:34:42

Have you looked at the extension Secret Doors by Andrew Owen?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1908&start=0#p12563
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: 2010 XYZZY Awards now open
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-01-13 13:14:39

For "Supplemental Materials," do they have to be for a specific game?  Arguably, the entirety of the IF Hospitality Suite and [i]Get Lamp[/i] were pretty big in the realm of supplemental materials for IF this year.

Also, by my reading of the FAQ, the supplemental materials ought to be for a game that was released in or before 2010 ("regardless of whether the game it is a supplement for was released then or earlier","(for a game released in the past year, or earlier)"), by which rules Em Short's truly excellent [i]chatons[/i] poster is disqualified.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1901&start=0#p12564
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Identity Confusion with 'which do you mean?' Activity
User: grbaptist / DateTime: 2011-01-13 14:51:40

Thanks everyone.

Ron,

I do agree that the repetition of this narrative is poor but I can assure you this isn't my final product. The code was just helping to clarify my problem.

Thanks again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1908&start=0#p12565
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: 2010 XYZZY Awards now open
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-13 15:05:43

[quote]the supplemental materials ought to be for a game that was released in or before 2010[/quote]

Good point; inky should clarify whether he meant that that way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1905&start=0#p12566
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Remotely view object location Inform 6
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-01-13 15:18:31

Untested ... and be warned, my I6 is quite rusty. First of all, though it makes me very nervous to suggest that Zarf might have given a wrong example, shouldn't it be drone2.location, not location.drone2? The room class doesn't have a property drone1 or drone2 that can be accessed in this way. I can't find anything in the DM4 that uses either syntax, and I'm pretty sure drone2.location is TADS syntax, not Inform.

What I'm fairly sure would be reliable would be something like this:

[code]local rm;
print "The monitors are showing video feeds from the freighter's maintenance drones. Drone 1 is currently in ";
rm = parent(drone1);
print (object) rm;
print ", Drone 2 is in ";
rm = parent (drone2);
print (object) rm;
print ", and Drone 3 is in ";
rm = parent(drone3);
print (object) rm;
".";[/code]
...except that I think "local" is TADS syntax too. You need to define the variable rm at the top of the code block:
[code]description [rm;[/code]
You'll note that I've tidied up your commas, so that they'll print, and that the code block ends with an implicit print_ret.

At any rate, maybe that code, even if it's faulty, will help you get moving in the right direction.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1891&start=10#p12567
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: I7 port of Crowther's Colossal Cave looking for testers
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2011-01-13 15:25:43

[quote="Laroquod"]
So the answer is, I don't really know what's wise to do, here. I'm afraid that it's actually less entertaining for multiple people to play, and, conversely, that making it more entertaining in that way will destroy the historical value of it. And I don't have any good answer for the criticism, 'You know what? There is no actual good reason to make this particular game multiplayer.' There probably isn't. It just makes the place feel even more real to me. I've come to love it and depend on it, and think of it as my own little museum of a thing I care about, which I have guests in from time to time. They're polite but few of them appreciate it as much as I do, and isn't that always the way? 87

Paul.[/quote]
Maybe one solution could be to allow people to generate their own instances of it using alternate rule sets, like in an FPS running different maps, or an MMO dungeon. So they could choose to make the required tools like the lamp gettable once each per person, and have the puzzles collected in a scavenger fashion, whoever gets the most points wins; another option to randomize the locations of treasures and tools or players; another to randomize maze layouts and even connections between regions; and so on. Some different settings to provide a competitive or cooperative framework, without really breaking the entire game physics/logic of the world as a whole.

If one group really wanted to run classic Adventure, they could, while another could start everyone off with a full set of tools and one treasure each.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1893&start=0#p12568
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: CYOA "The Adventures of Phoebe McGee"
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-01-13 15:54:03

Oh, you can just use the back button?  Heh.  I didn't even try because I assumed it would bork the game.

It was fun, btw; I played through a couple times to get different results and I would probably play the rest of the games in the series.

(How do you plan to keep track of game status between games?  For instance, whether or not Phoebe gets the swan ring in the first game should influence the second game, no?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1870&start=30#p12569
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: New CYA: The Adventures of Phoebe McGee
User: casmith / DateTime: 2011-01-13 16:09:09

Greetings all.

I have now examined the 261 pages and the 494 links in the story and hopefully corrected all the spelling and grammar errors. It also has 58 variables and 71 scripts. Whew!

I have enjoyed all the comments in this thread. Thanks for caring.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1893&start=0#p12570
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: CYOA "The Adventures of Phoebe McGee"
User: casmith / DateTime: 2011-01-13 16:27:45

katz, glad you enjoyed it.  [emote]:D[/emote] 

I have now examined the 261 pages and the 494 links in the story and hopefully corrected all the spelling and grammar errors. It also has 58 variables and 71 scripts. Whew! [emote]:roll:[/emote] 

[quote]How do you plan to keep track of game status between games? For instance, whether or not Phoebe gets the swan ring in the first game should influence the second game, no?)[/quote]

I will begin the second game assuming an optimal result with the first and will note that in the introduction. I will strongly advise readers to do them in order. The swan ring will have a significant role in the second game. What do you think of managing it that way?

Also, I have been looking closely at [i]choicescript[/i] as an alternative to what I used for Phoebe. There is no way to even come close to using [i]choicescript[/i] to duplicate what I did at [i]chooseyourstory.com[/i] (at least without being some programming god in the [i]choicescript[/i] language). Chooseyourstory has some significant disadvantages, but its advantages for any kind of sophisticated CYOA are impressive.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1893&start=0#p12571
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: CYOA "The Adventures of Phoebe McGee"
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-13 18:13:57

[quote="casmith"]Also, I have been looking closely at [i]choicescript[/i] as an alternative to what I used for Phoebe. There is no way to even come close to using [i]choicescript[/i] to duplicate what I did at [i]chooseyourstory.com[/i] (at least without being some programming god in the [i]choicescript[/i] language). Chooseyourstory has some significant disadvantages, but its advantages for any kind of sophisticated CYOA are impressive.[/quote]

Aside from the graphics, what are the things that you wouldn't have been able to do in choicescript? It seemed to me that choicescript would have trouble with inventories and timed countdowns (especially ones like for the

[spoiler]wounded bird[/spoiler] 

that could expire on any page, and would send you back to that page). But I [i]haven't[/i] looked closely at choicescript.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1893&start=0#p12572
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: CYOA "The Adventures of Phoebe McGee"
User: casmith / DateTime: 2011-01-13 19:22:19

In Phoebe there are both page scripts (a script that runs automatically with every page) and link scripts that run every time a link is clicked. Inventory is important and every item can be used as flags for initiating or not initiating a new page. I set it up so that nearly every page has a random 1D20 that will then trigger some random event at that page.

I am not an expert in [i]choicescript[/i]. I am going to continue looking at it. But the documentation is in my opinion fairly poor and incomplete (I think it's capable of doing more than what is in the two documents. For example, the forum presents code for doing something that cannot be found in the docs. Plus, I'm not a big fan of clicking a button and then clicking "Next" to move the story along. I think this can be changed too though. I really dislike not having an inventory and having to use variables in referring to inventory. Finally, the stories I have looked at seem "shallow" with minimal text.

My style for writing CYOA seems to approach what I did in I7: move around on a fairly stable stage (a set of "rooms" in nsew relationship and then events unfold in those rooms). So I always have a map in mind (and then as a PDF). This seems quite different from traditional CYOA that is paper based. [i]Chooseyourstory[/i] seems to fit my approach. For me, their conceptual framework is approachable. I would consider myself having only moderate expertise in using their tools. There's a lot more to experiment and use. I find that attractive. 

But the disadvantages of being based only at their website are significant. It's very difficult to see what someone else has done. So it's not transparent at all, though there is excellent help at their forum.

I am going to start a thread discussing the pros and cons of all the development tools for CYOA. I am enjoying our discussion.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1908&start=0#p12573
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: 2010 XYZZY Awards now open
User: inky / DateTime: 2011-01-13 20:27:08

[quote="tove"]For "Supplemental Materials," do they have to be for a specific game?  Arguably, the entirety of the IF Hospitality Suite and [i]Get Lamp[/i] were pretty big in the realm of supplemental materials for IF this year.

Also, by my reading of the FAQ, the supplemental materials ought to be for a game that was released in or before 2010 ("regardless of whether the game it is a supplement for was released then or earlier","(for a game released in the past year, or earlier)"), by which rules Em Short's truly excellent [i]chatons[/i] poster is disqualified.[/quote]

Both good questions! I've updated the FAQ to reflect the Clarified Official Position: the release year of the game doesn't matter, just the release year of the supplemental materials (so supplemental materials for even games that haven't been released yet are ok); however, the supplemental materials do have to be for a specific game, so the Hospitality Suite and Get Lamp are both ineligible*. 

*That said, there's probably room for a Best IF Scene Thing award in some future XYZZYs, but it'd be separate.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1910&start=0#p12574
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: More Glk progress
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-13 22:38:24

I've written out the spec changes for the Glk 0.7.1 update, which will cover simple stuff:

* glk.h header should use 32-bit typedefs for glui32 and glsi32. (Include stdint.h.)
* A way to set line-input terminator keys (so the game can react to function keys, etc, during line input) (this function is based on vaporware's proposal from last year)
* A way to set whether line input is automatically echoed to the window, when input is completed or cancelled. (Currently it always is, but in certain cases you want to suppress that.)
* The always-popular "draw a border between these windows" flag.
* Calls to decompose and renormalize a bufferful of Unicode text.

The Glk-Spec document is in my github repository, but you can see the changed sections on this page:

<a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/erkyrath/glk-dev/wiki/Glk-071-draft-spec-changes">https://github.com/erkyrath/glk-dev/wik ... ec-changes</a>

I've implemented the Unicode decompose/normalize feature, and the 32-bit change for the header. Everything else is just spec so far. Next week I'll start implementing them in GlkTerm and Quixe, and also writing the ever-popular unit tests. Once all that's done, I'll declare 0.7.1 final, and start thinking about the next round of changes.

Feel free to comment. However, I'm going to be wrapped up in the MIT Mystery Hunt through this weekend. I'll be online, but I will only respond briefly if at all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1908&start=0#p12575
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: 2010 XYZZY Awards now open
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-01-13 22:45:36

[quote="zarf"]We have lists of nominees for the game categories, but not for "Supplemental Materials" or "Technological Development". I think it's worth posting links to works that are eligible for those categories. (To repeat the FAQ: supplemental materials released in 2010, not materials for games released in 2010.)[/quote]
I saw that GLIMMR was nominated for the Technological Development category, while I nominated Inform 7's "Release with an interpreter." option. I'm not sure about the ethics of these things which had so many people involved... I'll certainly abstain from voting for that release option in the final vote.

[quote]however, the supplemental materials do have to be for a specific game, so the Hospitality Suite and Get Lamp are both ineligible*. [/quote]Could Get Lamp be considered a supplementary video prequel to the Get Lamp Review? [emote]:P[/emote]

This comp has a sad side effect of making me feel ashamed of how few new works I played last year.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1910&start=0#p12576
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: More Glk progress
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-01-13 22:48:47

Some simple but important and good changes.

Looking forward to the profiling/timer APIs [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1910&start=0#p12577
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: More Glk progress
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-14 00:00:21

Profiling isn't an API, it's an interpreter feature. I've already checked in those changes.

Time API -- as in, "what is the current date and time" -- will probably be next after this stuff. (Because it's easy.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1911&start=0#p12578
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Routes through the map
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-01-14 00:54:10

So in the map with the automatically-generated exits, it turned out most convenient to map all adjacent rooms as adjacent (in acknowledgment of the fact that they are next to each other, whether you can get there or not) and then use a reciprocal relation to define which rooms are inaccessible from each other and block any attempts to go to a room inaccessible from the current location.

The problem is that there's an NPC who needs to find his way through the map.  The "best route" syntax can't be made to work with the relation (as far as I know) because that would only work with the square where the NPC starts: I can't make the algorithm re-evaluate which squares are now accessible at every step.  (I can just have him pick a different direction if the one the algorithm chooses is inaccessible, but then he'll get stuck in a corner.)

Any way to make the NPC run the map intelligently?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1910&start=0#p12579
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: More Glk progress
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-01-14 02:28:40

Sorry, by profiling I meant a high-resolution CPU timer API, so that we can create programs to profile the terps. Creating terps that can profile works is only one part of the story.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1912&start=0#p12580
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: I Am Too Sexy For This Forum
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-01-14 02:58:20

But I will give it a try nonetheless.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1905&start=0#p12581
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Remotely view object location Inform 6
User: aliennerd / DateTime: 2011-01-14 03:35:09

Much appreciated Jim, I'll give this a go today, thanks for your help.

Charlie

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1883&start=10#p12582
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Non-binary values
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-01-14 04:08:09

[quote="capmikee"]I'm quite fond of Python's convention for using the "in" operator for iterables in this way, such as:

[code]if weather in (snowing, raining, hailing):[/code]

The "alternatives" extension sounds like it handles things in a similar way.[/quote]

Most of the time Python = [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1883&start=10#p12583
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Non-binary values
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-01-14 04:26:37

[quote="capmikee"]I'm quite fond of Python's convention for using the "in" operator for iterables in this way, such as:

[code]if weather in (snowing, raining, hailing):[/code][/quote]
TADS 3 can do the same thing, slightly more verbosely:
[code]if weather is in (snowing, raining, hailing)[/code]
Unlike Python, though, it's a special case syntax - you can't say "if weather is in precipitationList", for instance. (For that, you'd have to call one of precipitationList's methods.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1909&start=0#p12584
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Appearing and disappearing doors!
User: Bafflebox / DateTime: 2011-01-14 06:00:14

Not yet! But although this method works just fine, I'll have a look.
Maybe it's even more efficient ^-^

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1913&start=0#p12585
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: After three turns, but only once?
User: Bafflebox / DateTime: 2011-01-14 06:02:18

In the introductory part of this IF I'm working on, there's something that needs to be mentioned only after being in a room for three turns; but only once. After three turns doesn't seem to work, at all, so I'm wondering what I should do!
I've tried properly looking for answers, but I can't find anything ^^;

I hope you know of a solution~!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1913&start=0#p12586
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: After three turns, but only once?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-01-14 06:19:29

If you want it mentioned every time it's been present for exactly three turns (but not on the fourth, fifth, sixth, etc. turns):

[code]The Front Drive is a room.

The dog bone is carried by the player.

Every turn when the dog bone has been in Front Drive for exactly three turns:
	say "That bone has been here for three turns."
	
Test me with "z / z / z / z / drop bone / z / z / z / z / get bone / z / z / z / drop bone / z / z / z /z".[/code]

If you want it mentioned only once ever, after being present three turns:

[code]The Front Drive is a room.

The dog bone is carried by the player. The dog bone can be advertised or unadvertised.

Every turn when the dog bone has been in Front Drive for exactly three turns:
	if the bone is unadvertised:
		say "That bone has been here for three turns.";
		now the bone is advertised.
	
Test me with "z / z / z / z / drop bone / z / z / z / z / get bone / z / z / z / drop bone / z / z / z /z".
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1887&start=0#p12587
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Gnome-Inform 6G60
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-01-14 08:35:51

I'm thinking at this point that there won't be one. I think it's noted it's recommended to just use Gnome Inform 6F95 unless you really have some reason to use the command-line version. 

Maybe us Gnome users will get a new version if a lot of stuff is changed or fixed in the next release.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1913&start=0#p12588
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: After three turns, but only once?
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2011-01-14 10:12:09

[quote]
Finding Bones is a scene. Finding bone begins when player enters the boneyard.
Finding bones ends when the time since finding bones beings >= 3 minutes.

When finding bones ends:
    now the bone is in the boneyard;
    say "You found the bone!"




[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1908&start=0#p12589
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: 2010 XYZZY Awards now open
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-01-14 10:13:27

Inky:  Sounds good, thanks.  Those [i]were[/i] the answers I was expecting, but I just wanted to be sure.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1912&start=0#p12590
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I Am Too Sexy For This Forum
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-01-14 11:38:25

Welcome!

(I'm surprised you didn't pick an avatar of Caesar, though.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1887&start=0#p12591
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Gnome-Inform 6G60
User: Birion / DateTime: 2011-01-14 12:00:14

I use the command line i7 regardless, but I thought it'd be nice to have the latest IDE as well, since the only reason I even use it is the index (because say whatever you want, the index just isn't usable through an ordinary browser - no inform: scheme, no tabs to switch between), and better index is the main reason for 6G60. But still, would have been nice to have some kind of notification on the download page.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1883&start=10#p12592
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Non-binary values
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-14 12:30:42

[quote="Emerald"][quote="capmikee"]I'm quite fond of Python's convention for using the "in" operator for iterables in this way, such as:

[code]if weather in (snowing, raining, hailing):[/code][/quote]
TADS 3 can do the same thing, slightly more verbosely:
[code]if weather is in (snowing, raining, hailing)[/code]
Unlike Python, though, it's a special case syntax - you can't say "if weather is in precipitationList", for instance. (For that, you'd have to call one of precipitationList's methods.)[/quote]
For that matter, I think Inform can do that, slightly more verbosely.[code]if the weather is listed in { snowing, raining, hailing }[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1913&start=0#p12593
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: After three turns, but only once?
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2011-01-14 12:51:40

[quote="tggdan3"][quote]
Finding Bones is a scene. Finding bone begins when player enters the boneyard.
Finding bones ends when the time since finding bones beings >= 3 minutes.

When finding bones ends:
    now the bone is in the boneyard;
    say "You found the bone!"




[/quote][/quote]

Won't this trigger if a player enters and boneyard and then leaves it right away, giving the player a message when they're off in another room?

-Kevin

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1914&start=0#p12594
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Forums for Applied Design
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-14 13:19:23

Anyone hang out on forums or boards or whatnot where there are regular conversations about specific design discussions?  I'd like to bounce specific ideas off people and see what the holes are.  They're mostly world-building, but there's also some gameplay pro-cons.  Doesn't necessarily have to be game-targeted - I imagine an active group of fiction readers could be helpful.  I just want to go somewhere where I can recruit a little help parsing out design choices.  (Is there such a thing as a design beta?)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1912&start=0#p12595
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I Am Too Sexy For This Forum
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-01-14 14:23:18

Jacek is my avatar. I *am* Akhenaten. I know it's confusing, but it's all explained in my WIP.

By the way, do you know if this forum is being archived? If so, how does one access the archive? I'm asking on behalf of my future biographers.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1515&start=20#p12596
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Web-based CYOA games
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2011-01-14 14:27:24

[quote="Retro"][quote="joningold"]JS is a bit of a pain[/quote]

Well, I would urge every IF author/programmer to learn HTML and Javascript ASAP. Because web-based adventure games and browser-based interpreters are going to dominate the IF community in the near future. Writing platform-dependent IF games in Windows, Linux or MacOSX is out. Everyone is going WWW right now. Even I have recognized the signs of time and transforming my entire Node-X project into the web-based area, as I already should have done in 2008. I am not interested in coding text adventure games in C++ or Freepascal/Delphi for Windows, Linux and whatever system anymore. The modern IF community has changed their focus to web-based gaming. And so have I as a programmer.[/quote]

do you realize that:
1. platform-independent IF has been around since the very first days of the format?  what do you think the z-machine is?
2. most games playable through parchment were created in platform-independent Inform language without authors ever knowing they should have learned html + javascript to make that possible?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1915&start=0#p12597
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: When can you check for activities?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-14 15:55:39

Some things in my WIP have thoughts about them that can either occur within the player's head or be spoken out loud. Usually they are the same in both cases, but sometimes they are different. I thought I could use activities to distinguish each case, but I can't seem to make it work.

[code]A thing has a text called the thought.

Last report examining a thing:
	Carry out the thinking privately activity with the noun.

Thinking privately of something is an activity on objects.
	
For thinking privately of something (called the token):
	say "[the thought of the token].";
	
Discussing is an action applying to one thing. Understand "discuss [something]" as discussing.

Report discussing:
	carry out the speaking out loud activity with the noun.

Speaking out loud of something is an activity on objects.

For speaking out loud of something (called the token):
	say "'[the thought of the token],' you say."
	
To decide whether aloud while speaking out loud: yes.
To decide whether aloud: no.

The classroom is a room.

The globe is a thing in the classroom. The thought of the globe is "It's a small world after all[if aloud], Bub[end if]"

test me with "x globe/discuss globe"[/code]

This code never prints out "Bub." I've tried a few different phrasings, but nothing seems to detect whether the speaking out loud (or thinking privately) activity is happening.

I'm not married to the idea of using activities to solve this problem, but I would like to be able to put conditionals within the thought-text somehow. Any suggestions?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1915&start=0#p12598
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: When can you check for activities?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-01-14 17:18:25

The problem is with the to decide -phrases: you can't use when/while conditions like you would in other rules. Here you are creating a to decide phrase called literally "aloud while speaking out loud". You need to put the check inside a single phrase. 

[code]To decide whether aloud:
	if the speaking out loud activity is going on, yes; 
	no.
[/code]
Or you can just use the "if the speaking out loud activity is going on" directly where you need it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1914&start=0#p12599
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Forums for Applied Design
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-14 18:13:33

I think you're in such a forum.  Maybe it's a bit anaemic, but hey, you're in a perfect position to change that.  [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1914&start=0#p12600
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Forums for Applied Design
User: George / DateTime: 2011-01-14 20:01:19

A while back the 'Getting Started' and 'Design' sub-forums here were consolidated or reformed or something, but maybe it's time to split the two topics?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1891&start=10#p12601
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: I7 port of Crowther's Colossal Cave looking for testers
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-01-14 20:02:14

[quote="ChrisC"][quote="Laroquod"]
So the answer is, I don't really know what's wise to do, here. I'm afraid that it's actually less entertaining for multiple people to play, and, conversely, that making it more entertaining in that way will destroy the historical value of it. And I don't have any good answer for the criticism, 'You know what? There is no actual good reason to make this particular game multiplayer.' There probably isn't. It just makes the place feel even more real to me. I've come to love it and depend on it, and think of it as my own little museum of a thing I care about, which I have guests in from time to time. They're polite but few of them appreciate it as much as I do, and isn't that always the way? 87

Paul.[/quote]
Maybe one solution could be to allow people to generate their own instances of it using alternate rule sets, like in an FPS running different maps, or an MMO dungeon. So they could choose to make the required tools like the lamp gettable once each per person, and have the puzzles collected in a scavenger fashion, whoever gets the most points wins; another option to randomize the locations of treasures and tools or players; another to randomize maze layouts and even connections between regions; and so on. Some different settings to provide a competitive or cooperative framework, without really breaking the entire game physics/logic of the world as a whole.

If one group really wanted to run classic Adventure, they could, while another could start everyone off with a full set of tools and one treasure each.[/quote]
Huh. Another thing I implemented in LambdaMOO last summer for an entirely different purpose is multiple universes, which could come in handy for your 'instances' suggestion. (i.e. In my MUD you can have a hundred or more people in the same room without ever seeing each other or witnessing each other's activities. Every object/character gets a verse ID and even if it's in the same room, no object will see a message generated by another object with a different verse ID. Rooms don't have verse IDs -- they're one of the agnostic types of objects that exist across universes. Also, you can give any object an ID of zero and it will exist in all universes. This applies to the effects of light sources too, light doesn't cross universes unless you want it to.)

So I could pretty easily have ten different Adventure games with different Adventure rules happening in the same maze. But I wouldn't really want to spend the time writing all those different rulesets and inventing all that brand new gameplay unless I knew there would be interest. Since last summer I have taken the temperature of the community better and I don't think there is that much desire for more versions of the 350-point Colossal Cave. Crowther's original though is a whole different matter -- I think your project was a lot shrewder a tackle than mine. Good thing mine was just a side effect of my main pursuits or I might have been put off the entire field. 8)

What I've sort of always figured I would do with it is work parts of it into my other storylines in some way. And if a way to add some multiplayer goodness very much in keeping with the original game occurred to me, then I'd probably do that.because that's the way my tastes run.

For an example of the type of solution I enjoy, turn-based stuff is an issue because MUDs aren't turn-based they happen in real-time. So I really couldn't directly replicate the wandering monster algorithms, or the lamp running out. I had to approximate them in minutes and seconds. But with darkness and pits something really interesting happened. A natural solution presented itself that I feel really dovetails well with the original environment. Instead of having two turns moved in the dark result in death by falling in a pit, I just have an algorithm look for an [i]actual pit[/i] (there are plenty of them). So you can stumble around in the dark all you want as long as you don't step into a room with an actual pit (or other steep fall) in it. Finding my solution to a conversion problem by extrapolating the logic of the actual original scenery was really satisfying to me — especially since in many cases the behaviour is indistinguishable from the original, and where it is distinguishable, it's more logical. I'm interested in more solutions like that, if they occur to me. Maybe there is something similar that I can find, something already inherited from the original, which has secret multiplaying properties that were never tapped. (A second player can survive the maze without the lamp in my version but they have to be dead expert with the directions and know where every single pit is. I'm going to want something that can come into play from the start whenever there are two or more players. But I don't want to invent it out of whole cloth; I want to extrapolate it.)

I'll wait for an idea like that to come along before I really take seriously the goal of making my so-far nominally multiplayer Adventure public. I'm a patient dude and I am in no hurry. 8)

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1889&start=20#p12602
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Is the short story the most natural fit for IF?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-01-14 21:13:52

[quote="matt w"]Sorry, I didn't make myself clear.[/quote]
Yeah, I should have clicked both links, too, sorry. I saved both URLs, but only loaded the second one, assumed from misinterpreting it that they were both expansion sets or DLC. So the first is kind of like using The Sims like a pen, yeah. I pretty much agree with gravel's take on it — the control arrow in most technology can be reversed, so any open enough world can be used to create art, which is very cool and I'm glad that perspective was added here. I do prefer myself to work from the perspective of writing rather rather than simulating, though I'm quite willing to steal my favourite stuff from the other side, if I can figure a way to let it happen but also run some sort of parallel subversion to the narrative. 87

I love the idea of stuff like machinima too, but in that case, I'd also figure short is a more natural fit. After all, there's a lot of it!

[quote]The player of Alice and Kev was specifically trying something unusual in order to create a story;[/quote]
I also see that as pen-like, and of a piece with machinima (though not exactly Sleep is Death, you're right). A lot of the best art has been made by trying unusual things with standard tools and bending them to purposes for which they weren't directly designed. It looks a whole lot different than intentionally stressed and overexposed film, but I think the same basic turn is happening, there.

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1889&start=20#p12603
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Is the short story the most natural fit for IF?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-14 21:32:36

[quote]I love the idea of stuff like machinima too[/quote]

Wow, and earlier in this thread I was hoping that somehow I would get an excuse to link [url=http://vimeo.com/9197535]this[/url]. Well, OK, it's a pretty flimsy excuse. (For those who don't like clicking blind links, it's atmospheric abstractly narrative Tomb Raider machnima from 2001, with narration from texts by Fernando Pessoa, Joanna Russ, and Sun Ra.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1891&start=10#p12604
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: I7 port of Crowther's Colossal Cave looking for testers
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-01-14 23:13:49

[quote="Laroquod"]I'll wait for an idea like that to come along before I really take seriously the goal of making my so-far nominally multiplayer Adventure public. I'm a patient dude and I am in no hurry. 8)[/quote]
You're probably right that there's probably not much popular interest in [i]Adventure[/i] right now, and the IF and MUD communities seem to have far less to do with each other than I might wish.  Even so, your project is a worthy one, especially by honoring the spirit of the original game.  I wish you well in it.

That goes for the I7 port of Crowther's original, too.   [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1887&start=0#p12605
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Gnome-Inform 6G60
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-01-15 00:31:17

The recent activity on its [url=http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnome-inform7/]project page[/url] suggests that a 6G60 build may not be too far off.

As a bonus the new integrated interpreter seems to be coming together. I think you have a lot to look forward to.   [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1910&start=0#p12606
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: More Glk progress
User: djfletch / DateTime: 2011-01-15 05:00:51

[quote="zarf"]
* The always-popular "draw a border between these windows" flag.
[/quote]
Just to make sure I understand how this works - the winmethod_Border/NoBorder flag would be a property of the split, that is, of the pair window, in the same way as the other winmethod flags, right?

So for example, if a window's sibling is deleted, and therefore its original parent pair window goes away, then whether it gets a border with its new sibling depends on what its new parent pair window says.

And, I suppose, the game can turn a border on and off using glk_window_set_arrangement on a pair window?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1913&start=0#p12607
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: After three turns, but only once?
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2011-01-15 07:42:12

[code]

When finding bones ends:
now the bone is in the boneyard;
if the player is in the boneyad, say "You found the bone!"

[/code]

or

[code]
finding bones ends when the player has been in the boneyard for 3 minutes. 

[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1916&start=0#p12608
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Glulx Inform: Autosaves
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-01-15 11:22:12

Hi all,

This is both a design question and a lazyweb question...

I am in the very earliest stages of design for a game, and I am considering how to incorporate meaningful danger. Basically, I want to be able to kill the player, and in ways that immediate undo won't fix--I want the story to be able to spin out around the player's death, in a kind of unhappy denemount. At the same time, I don't want to frustrate the player too much, or require her to navigate the file system to save and restore (a tiresome task).

So, I'm considering a system whereby the game would autosave at key points, writing the file to the player's hard drive silently (w/o prompting). In the event of player death, there would be an option to restore to the last checkpoint, alongside the normal restore option. There would also be an in-game command that would show all autosaved checkpoints and allow the player to restore to any of them.

My questions are:

1) Design: How does this sound? Am I missing anything that I should be thinking of?
2) Lazyweb: Is this (saving w/o a prompt) something that can be done in Glulx Inform? I believe it is, since other external files can be written that way, but am not positive. 
3) Lazyweb: Assuming it works in Glulx Inform, would it work seamlessly with Quixe's local storage file management? (Again, I assume that Quixe would work just fine, but I'm not sure.)

Thanks for any insights!

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1917&start=0#p12609
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: a problem with extensions.
User: Balthier1 / DateTime: 2011-01-15 12:57:49

well, i am a begginer in IF and i am still learning the inform 7 language. however, yesterday when i tried to include the "mood variations" extension by emily short, the program reported a series of errors, all of them related with the source code [b]of the extension[/b]. are you guys experiencing same problems? it have anything to do with the last updates?

[quote]Get lamp.
ok.[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1916&start=0#p12610
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx Inform: Autosaves
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-01-15 17:29:40

OK, I had more time than I thought I would for IF today, and I've answered Question 2 to my own satisfaction by referring to the template code and Doe's infglk summary--it's definitely doable. I think the answer to Question 3 should also be yes. I'm still open to comments on Question 1.

Thanks!

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1916&start=0#p12611
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx Inform: Autosaves
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-15 19:40:47

I like this idea -- part of the reason zarfian-cruel games bother me is that I'm too lazy to mess around with saves (also, kind of frustrating to discover that I saved just [i]after[/i] the game became unwinnable), so it'd be nice to have the game do it for me. 

I would suggest that maybe the game should say "(autosaving)", which spares the player worrying about whether they need to save or whether they've just passed a checkpoint. Also it lets you know that you've just made some progress. Also I suppose some folks might want control over where the files get written, though I don't know how plausible that is.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1912&start=0#p12612
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I Am Too Sexy For This Forum
User: Merk / DateTime: 2011-01-15 20:04:20

Right now, it all goes back to the beginning. It does need a monthly text dump to the IF Archive. Future historians can probably find it there.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1916&start=0#p12613
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx Inform: Autosaves
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-15 20:22:23

Sounds great.  The only thing I'd request is that you make it clear where the files are being written, and/or allow the possibility of wiping them at the end of the game.  I play a fair amount on public computers, and it's polite to keep those uncluttered.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1914&start=0#p12614
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Forums for Applied Design
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-15 20:23:55

Fair enough.  I just figured there might be other such forums floating around (and sometimes it's nice to get hold on non-IFers).  I'll try to keep the number of topics under control.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1914&start=0#p12615
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Forums for Applied Design
User: George / DateTime: 2011-01-15 21:05:24

If you've never checked out TIGSource, it's worth a look.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1908&start=0#p12616
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: 2010 XYZZY Awards now open
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-01-16 02:59:59

I was freaked when I first picked 'Rogue... Multiverse' for best NPCs and saw Dr Sliss pop up when I started typing. I thought 'OMG someone has created a drop menu of every NPC!'... then my freakedness abated when I realised (I think!) that I was seeing what someone else had previously voted for.

Along these lines, I put the cursor in Supplemental Materials and saw five options, two of them being Aaron Read's book. I created Leadlight and I was pleased to see my game there, because I have a manual, website, coded hints and handdrawn ink pics, sketches and a painting. But I thought 'if Read's book is eligible, the book is the winner.' I have the book beside my laptop now and it's killer, but should it be in this category? As a whole tutorial on programming Inform, I don't see it inspiring feelies or cover art or artistic materials, etc., which is the stated goal of the award on the front of the xyzzy page. I feel like it's an apples and oranges comparison to the specific extra materials attached to my game or anyone else's.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1893&start=0#p12617
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: CYOA "The Adventures of Phoebe McGee"
User: Neo / DateTime: 2011-01-16 03:52:15

Seems like you've got this covered now.

All the very best with the game, and the series.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1918&start=0#p12618
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: *** Run-time problem P55 [SOLVED]
User: gadevoi / DateTime: 2011-01-16 03:57:04

Hello,
I've been writing a small if with Inform 7, and the message [quote]*** Run-time problem P55: The scene Space hasn't started, so you can't ask when it did.[/quote] appears every turn before Space begins. I think the problem comes from this part of the code:
[code]Strange castle is a scene. Strange castle begins when the time since Space began is 3 minutes. Strange castle ends when the player is in the planet and the player has a sword.[/code]
Space is another Scene:
[code]Space is a scene. Space begins when Beginning ends.[/code]
And Beginning is another Scene:
[code]Beginning is a scene. Beginning begins when play begins. Beginning ends when Noriko is awake.[/code]

The run-time errors are slowing considerably the game and I don't see how I could avoid them. Does somebody else get this kind of problems?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1918&start=0#p12619
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: *** Run-time problem P55
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-01-16 06:04:32

This is one of Inform's quirks: as the error message says, you can't check for "time since X began" if the scene hasn't started yet. It should work if you change the line to: 

[code]Strange castle begins when Space is happening and time since Space began is 3 minutes.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1916&start=0#p12620
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx Inform: Autosaves
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-01-16 07:45:50

Thanks for the responses; these are all good suggestions.

It isn't possible to specify a save location for files that are saved w/o a file dialog; Glk doesn't provide authors a way to access the player's file system directly, which is probably the way it should be. Most interpreters thus choose to save the game file to the same directory that the game file is in--that seems sensible. Zoom saves to the user's home folder in at least some situations (I haven't bothered to work out the wherefore of it), and that makes considerably less sense to me.

I could offer a batch delete command (Glk does allow deletion of files it has an internal reference for)--it shouldn't be very difficult, and it might be a nice thing for users on private as well a public machines, in fact.

OK, the main thing I'm concerned about now are the UI issues--how to reveal this capability to the player, how the player should interact with it, etc. Matt, your idea about making it obvious that an autosave has just occurred is excellent. I was originally thinking that the autosave feature would live alongside the library's standard SAVE/RESTORE commands--which allow the player to choose the save location--but I think now that the best thing might just be to track all saved games in the way I'm tracking autosaves. 

To get concrete: Typing SAVE or RESTORE would bring up a list of previously saved file names, not an OS file dialog. Both autosaved and manually saved games would appear in the list (possibly under different headings). When the player types RESTORE, the list is hyperlinked, and clicking on a file name restores the game. Typing SAVE, on the other hand, presents the list of previous saves and prompts the player to type the filename for the new saved game. (It might be better to use descriptions rather than filenames; that is, the filenames would be opaque to the player, and the descriptions would give some sense of where in the game the SAVE was made.) 

Or maybe I could collapse SAVE/RESTORE into a single SAVED GAMES command: The player can click on a file name to restore, or type a new name to save...

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1887&start=0#p12621
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Gnome-Inform 6G60
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-01-16 10:11:02

Heh, yup. Spoke too soon. The Gnome version of 6G60 is in the downloads section of the Inform7 site as of now.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1908&start=0#p12622
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: 2010 XYZZY Awards now open
User: George / DateTime: 2011-01-16 11:33:49

I agree, if anything it seems like a manual should go in tech improvement or something like that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1908&start=10#p12623
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: 2010 XYZZY Awards now open
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-16 12:16:04

[quote="George"]I agree, if anything it seems like a manual should go in tech improvement or something like that.[/quote]

That sounds right to me, but it's also attached to the game [i]Sand Dancer[/i] -- does that make a difference?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1908&start=10#p12624
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: 2010 XYZZY Awards now open
User: George / DateTime: 2011-01-16 12:32:40

I don't think so, a manual plus tutorial game feels like a different thing than a game plus feelies and cover art.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1855&start=0#p12625
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Collaborative Interactive Fiction
User: Balthier1 / DateTime: 2011-01-16 16:38:44

i wanted to have the proper skills to do so.

not... yet.

[quote]get lamp.
ok.[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1906&start=0#p12626
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Looking for beta-testers for Berrost's Challenge v2
User: Balthier1 / DateTime: 2011-01-16 16:43:27

i'm interested.

i can help you more with gameplay problems and ideas rather than with the bugs and source code. but still, i'm at orders.

[quote]Get lamp. 
Ok.[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1906&start=0#p12627
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Looking for beta-testers for Berrost's Challenge v2
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-01-16 17:49:40

[quote="Balthier1"]i'm interested.

i can help you more with gameplay problems and ideas rather than with the bugs and source code. but still, i'm at orders.

[quote]Get lamp. 
Ok.[/quote][/quote]
If you want a signature, please do it in your User Control Panel: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/ucp.php?i=profile&mode=signature">ucp.php?i=profile&mode=signature</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1914&start=0#p12628
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Forums for Applied Design
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-01-16 18:37:32

[quote="George"]A while back the 'Getting Started' and 'Design' sub-forums here were consolidated or reformed or something, but maybe it's time to split the two topics?[/quote]

God yes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1915&start=0#p12629
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: When can you check for activities?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-16 21:23:49

Thanks! I didn't expect activities to be phrased differently from actions in that context.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1919&start=0#p12630
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Brainstorm: Survival Stuff
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-16 21:48:45

Background: I'm writing a survival/farming sim, and want to make sure I have as many bases covered as possible.  The PC gets to choose equipment before setting off, and I'm sure I'm missing some things, both items and general strategies.

If you were going to be stranded for a long period of time on an island (or an abandoned planet, or whatever your preferred setting is), what would you want to take with you?  In one scenario, you can only have what you can personally carry.  In another, you've got whatever you want, within a reasonable budget (ie no helicoptors). 

What general strategies might you base your equipment choices around?  

Things you know about your environment ahead of time: it's temperate, with plenty of trees; it gets cold in the winter and hot in the summer, and it's currently early to mid spring.  

Many thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1919&start=0#p12631
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Brainstorm: Survival Stuff
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2011-01-16 22:45:24

My answers are directly inspired by too much Dwarf Fortress.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1910&start=0#p12632
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: More Glk progress
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-16 22:58:59

[quote]by profiling I meant a high-resolution CPU timer API, so that we can create programs to profile the terps.[/quote]

I had not planned to have a *high-resolution* timer, nor one tied to the CPU (only to the general time-of-day-and-date facility). I am not opposed to this, but I'm not sure why you'd want to profile an interpreter *from game code*. Surely that's upside down. The game would be looking at the CPU through so many layers of code that the values would be more cruft than result. If you need to profile an interpreter, you'll be better off using the platform (or language) native profiling tools.

[quote]the winmethod_Border/NoBorder flag would be a property of the split, that is, of the pair window, in the same way as the other winmethod flags, right?[/quote]

Right.

[quote]And, I suppose, the game can turn a border on and off using glk_window_set_arrangement on a pair window?[/quote]

I went back and forth on this, but yes, I think that's supported. The implementation work that it requires is already required by any opening or rearranging of new windows.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1910&start=0#p12633
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: More Glk progress
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-01-17 00:02:32

[quote]I had not planned to have a *high-resolution* timer, nor one tied to the CPU (only to the general time-of-day-and-date facility). I am not opposed to this, but I'm not sure why you'd want to profile an interpreter *from game code*. Surely that's upside down. The game would be looking at the CPU through so many layers of code that the values would be more cruft than result. If you need to profile an interpreter, you'll be better off using the platform (or language) native profiling tools.[/quote]We had discussed having at least a millisecond timer before, and you weren't opposed to the idea...

Of course I wouldn't be trying to profile the CPU or anything at that level, just the interpreter. Having two levels of profiling is actually quite common. Javascript frameworks like to compete against each other, and this could be compared to profiling different versions of I7, or indeed comparing I7 to I6 and ZIL. But there are also profiling suites which are used to compare interpreters, which would be like comparing different versions of a terp, or several terps. The advantage of doing so from game code is that it's much simpler - any compliant interpreter could be tested (and adding timers is a lot easier than adding profiling code!) - while the results will also be easy to compare, instead of having to figure out how each platform and language can be profiled, if they even can be. Lastly, generally language-level profiling systems disrupt the running of programs so that their results are not the same as if the profiling wasn't happening. By profiling from bytecode the terps will run as they always do.

Obviously some things wouldn't be very sensible to profile - I'm not going to want to know how long it takes to make 5 writes to the memory. I was thinking bigger things like pathfinding, setting up large data structures and then using them (probably conversation ones) and other long algorithms. From such tests we could for example test whether storing multiple sets of the memory such that all 32 bit values take the same time to read but require 4 writes will actually end up better off or not. Sure you could write some custom code to test it, but I'd prefer a profiling game. Fill it with natural real world examples that touch on all areas of the VM and it will be useful for testing any potential optimisation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1917&start=0#p12634
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: a problem with extensions.
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-01-17 06:25:31

The extension expects you to set certain values in your source text.
The extension documentation says:
[quote]It makes certain assumptions -- namely, that there is some character known as "current interlocutor" (defined as in "current interlocutor is an object that varies"). The current interlocutor might sometimes be nothing. Some of Eric Eve's conversation extensions use this convention, for example.

We must also define our own spectrum of moods appropriate to the game we're currently writing.[/quote]
What this means is that you need some lines like this in your source text:
[code]The current interlocutor is an object that varies.
The moods are friendly, neutral, and hostile.[/code]
The first line creates the variable 'current interlocutor' that the extension needs.
The second one creates the moods you want to have in your games (replace "friendly, neutral and hostile" with the moods you need for your game: "nice and mean" or "grumpy, happy, sleepy, bashful, and sneezy" or whatever).

You also should add two more lines to set the initial and default values:
[code]The current interlocutor is an object that varies. The current interlocutor is usually nothing.
The moods are friendly, neutral, and hostile. The current mood of a person is usually neutral.[/code]
Again, instead of setting the initial value to nothing, you could set it to "the player" or to some other person in the game. And the default value for a persons mood should of course be the mood most people in the game will normally be.
(If you don't explicitly specify a default value yourself, Inform will automatically choose a default mood: the first value mention after "The moods are", if there are three or more moods mentioned; the last one mentioned, if there are only two of them.)

(And by the way – this thread really belongs rather to the "Inform 6 & 7 Development" category.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1912&start=0#p12635
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I Am Too Sexy For This Forum
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2011-01-17 09:21:12

hmm, somehow I thought you were just a newsgroups troll.  On the web though you sound like a pre-teen... explains a lot.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=10#p12636
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2011-01-17 09:41:52

I'm now a happy cell phone IF player too.  Specially delightful on the bus...  [emote]:)[/emote] 

For now, just using Zippy for Motorola Milestone 2 Android.  Although it comes with a sliding tiny physical keyboard, I'm now very fond of the Swype touchscreen text input method.  amazing!

Parchment works too, but CSS for mobile should be fixed a bit -- perhaps slightly larger spacing in the borders...

Hope Tads and Glulx follow along.  I wonder about Inform 7 too:  it seems most people like it more to write than to play IF!  Writing IF on the go, can you imagine it?

Really, a little time with current generation mobile hardware is enough to convince anyone that desktops will be pretty much dead among the general, mostly consuming populace in the very near future.  Only software developers and hard typing jobs will actually require desktop workstations.  and die-hard PC gamers who don't like fixed-hardware consoles.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1912&start=0#p12637
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I Am Too Sexy For This Forum
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-01-17 10:43:22

Well I thought it was funny. 8)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1893&start=10#p12638
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: CYOA "The Adventures of Phoebe McGee"
User: HoraceTorys / DateTime: 2011-01-17 11:07:19

I think you've got something nifty going here, and deeper than most of the stories on chooseyourstory.com. I definitely like being able to freely explore the island, it did have an IF feel in that sense.

I would actually say it relied too much on IF. With the descriptive choice links, there's no reason to load the text or choices with compass directions. Also, you can safely get rid of the choices in the text, since they are repeated clearly enough in the links themselves -- things like:
[quote]She could go back to the dock or continue east along the shore.
    * Continue east along shore
    * Back to dock[/quote]

IF also tends to describe things in a detached, passive voice, as in "There is a key here." This is unnecessary and detrimental in CYOA format. For example:
[quote]The wheel room is higher than the deck. The front once had a large window overlooking the water. Jagged pieces of glass, razor sharp and dangerous, are all that is left. The jagged glass on the window frame points to the center of the window as though in testimony to the power of force that punched through it. All the pieces look much too dangerous to touch, much less remove.

The windows surrounding the wheel room to the front and sides once provided a clear view of the surrounding sea. The glass is gone now, missing entirely or leaving behind only a broken testimony to the forces that ruined the boat. Just below the broken front window is the helm, a large wheel with spokes used to steer the ship and a panel of instruments.

Phoebe can examine the helm or the panel. Or she can go back down to the deck.

    * Examine the helm
    * Examine the panel
    * Down to deck[/quote]

Could be written much more vividly and succinctly, and centered around Phoebe's point of view and experience (even though written in third person):
[quote]Phoebe stands in the wheel room, broken glass crunching beneath her feet on the tilted floor. Chill wind from the ocean whistles through the jagged fragments clinging to the empty window frames that enclose the cabin. Beneath the shattered front window is a panel of levers and gauges, and the ship's steering wheel. [i]The helm,[/i] Phoebe corrected herself. [i]Grandpa Jake said it's called 'the helm.'[/i]

    * Examine the helm
    * Examine the panel
    * Return to the ship's deck[/quote]

Many of your descriptions of locations and objects are similarly redundant or overdescribed, and uncharacteristic of the main character's observations. The car, in particular.

Your story is written in limited third person, closely identified with Phoebe, and yet the voice is all over the place, with things a 13-year-old wouldn't know, wouldn't feel, and certainly wouldn't say:

[spoiler]"If you keep doing that I won't be able to see through my own tears" is funny writing, but no one actually thinks like that in an actual situation. It's too self-aware.

Conversely, no 13-year-old is this dumb:
Phoebe thinks grimly, "I wonder what time to play means?" she asks herself. Phoebe shudders at the thought. Then she finds out.

Most of her exclamations to herself seemed completely out of place, even for 1937. Also, when talking to the angel in the glade, she develops some out-of-character snideness and attitude.[/spoiler]

You are missing commas on almost every page, as in:
"You know the way miss," needs to be, "You know the way, Miss."

Likewise, a number of sentences have words missing, like "She can get down the deck from here..."

As Katz mentioned, the description of the car is still there (though the choice disappears). Likewise, in the cave, something sparkles back in the web, despite having removed the key.

Also, in the opening poem, "Our champions are the 32." Shouldn't that be "36"? BTW, in poems and in speech, (usually) it should be spelled out, "thirty-six," or "The Thirty-Six."

All in all, I think you're doing something cool, and don't mean to discourage. The story held my interest and wanted to finish it. I think in the future, more people will be reading works that have some of the strengths of IF combined with the simplicity of CYOA. However, my strongest impression from [i]Phoebe McGee[/i] was that of poor writing craft.

P.S. Check out Twine at <a class="postlink" href="http://gimcrackd.com/etc/src/">http://gimcrackd.com/etc/src/</a> It is superb, simple, has a nice GUI, and does everything you did in [i]Phoebe McGee[/i] (I think). It would also let you do the choice links in your description text, if so desired, instead of a list at the bottom. Watch the videos at the bottom of the page to see for yourself, then read the documentation. You would have to host the end result on your own webpage somehow (it compiles into a single HTML doc, with linked pictures), but as you mentioned, chooseyourstory.com has its own problems.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1919&start=0#p12639
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Brainstorm: Survival Stuff
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-01-17 12:08:10

Am I aiming to return to civilization any time soon?  (Is there civilization to return to?)  As in, should I be concerned with things like radios or flares or other means of getting people's attention?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1919&start=0#p12640
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Brainstorm: Survival Stuff
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-17 14:27:12

I'm assuming that we're talking about some competent person instead of actual me. Actual me needs good stuff to read while he starves to death, and a Sub-Etha Sens-o-matic Electronic Thumb just on the offchance. 

Early spring in that kind of climate seems like it means I could still freeze to death at night, so warm clothes and a sleeping bag. Am I confident that early on I'll be able to find enough fruit to keep me going? Probably not, so some freeze-driedish rations. Firestarting stuff, flint and steel and like that (not sure how much I can count on gathering, though I'm assuming tinder is OK). An axe and/or saw. If potability of water seems like a problem a, well, pot. Something to help me carry things -- a frame backpack with a belt (which also helps me get more stuff if I've only got what I can carry) and some kind of wagon or cart. If it's only what I can carry, I think I still want a collapsible barrow, like an umbrella stroller but with bigger wheels; it folds into easily portable size, but actual umbrella strollers are impossible to maneuver over uneven terrain. Bungee cords. If I can take more than what I carry, I guess some kind of pedicab for fast movement/heavy hauling. And since I'll probably need to do some hunting at first, definitely a sling, which is the only thing I can think of that won't run into ammo problems real fast. I'll still probably starve.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1918&start=0#p12641
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: *** Run-time problem P55
User: gadevoi / DateTime: 2011-01-17 14:50:05

That worked just fine. Thank you!  [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1919&start=0#p12642
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Brainstorm: Survival Stuff
User: George / DateTime: 2011-01-17 15:05:08

There are a few great books for this kind of stuff; one is [url=http://www.amazon.com/Driftwood-Valley-Naturalist-Wilderness-Northwest/dp/0870715240]Driftwood Valley[/url], which would be for your take-as-much-as-you can scenario. 

If you had to travel light, I would still take a rifle; plus sleeping bag, oilcloth/tarp, knife, axe, canteen, pot, rope, and a sewing needle/awl.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1920&start=0#p12643
Forum: Competitions / Subject: TIGSource Versus compo
User: George / DateTime: 2011-01-17 15:17:54

TIGSource's latest compo sounds rather interesting:

<a class="postlink" href="http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=17083.0">http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=17083.0</a>

[quote]
For the TIGSource Versus Compo, the rules are simple: make a game that is about one human player versus at least one other human player. The rest (genre, online/offline, etc.) is up to you.
[/quote]

You don't normally hear about PvP IF, but I think there are a lot of possibilities; from a simple puzzle achievement ladder to something like the old head to head paper gamebooks.

An easy way to do the networking would be to use [url=http://www.guncho.com/]Guncho[/url], but there are a lot of other options as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1919&start=0#p12644
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Brainstorm: Survival Stuff
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-17 15:55:12

[quote]Am I aiming to return to civilization any time soon?[/quote]

You're essentially SOL, but what can be done in that regard has already been done (ie your ship has sent up a distress beacon, etc.)  

I'm hoping that eventually civilization will come to you, but considering I'm still trying to figure out the complexities of fire, I don't think you should hold your breath.

[quote]I'm assuming that we're talking about some competent person instead of actual me.[/quote]

Heh.  Well, not necessarily.  You can, if you like, choose a more skilled character, and easy mode gives you some basic skills.  There's some stuff to be worked out there, so that's all I feel comfortable saying at this point, since the skill breakdowns and their effects are kind of murky, and I'm not sure how much customization will be possible ahead of time. 

[quote="George"]There are a few great books for this kind of stuff; one is Driftwood Valley, which would be for your take-as-much-as-you can scenario. [/quote]  

Thanks; I'll check that one out.  

How much would people appreciate a prepacked survival kit for a game like this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1919&start=0#p12645
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Brainstorm: Survival Stuff
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-01-17 17:18:51

[quote="gravel"]
I'm hoping that eventually civilization will come to you, but considering I'm still trying to figure out the complexities of fire, I don't think you should hold your breath.[/quote]

Ha, well, I've been pretty impressed with what I've seen of your process so far.

Anyway, that pretty much renders moot my first thoughts, which were more or less along the lines of "how do I get out of here?!"

[quote]How much would people appreciate a prepacked survival kit for a game like this?[/quote]

Hm, that would be one way to play, but I bet that just being put in a setting where you get to wander around and collect which supplies you think you'll want (a general store of some kind, perhaps) would be enough to jog people's thoughts in the right direction.  It's a bit harder to pull ideas out of thin air ("I can bring whatever I want? Out of anything in the universe?") than to choose from a concrete list ("Rope! Oh yes, that'll be good. Eh, don't know if I'll need a 5-pound bag of thyme...").

I think the first thing I'd want would be some means of collecting/purifying water.  Even a bucket, cup, and saran wrap might be better than nothing.  Of course, the usual knives and needle/thread would be there, too (but I carry those in real life, so I barely even thought about needing to acquire them in-game).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1855&start=0#p12646
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Collaborative Interactive Fiction
User: Terry / DateTime: 2011-01-17 18:14:15

Just as Slartibartfast enjoys creating coastlines (see below for those without 'humourous sci-fi' knowledge) some people might (and most likely do) enjoy creating locations for games, collaborative IF would give such persons an outlet for their talents.

I'm no expert at writing games, far from it, but I think I would enjoy adding small parts to a larger whole to help create something I could end up exploring and enjoy without 'knowing' everything about the game due to the fact I had created it all.

Nothing too ambitious, only a desire to see collaborative text adventures be given a chance in some way to develop. Just imagine Colossal Cave with new unexplored caves, now that [i]really[/i] would be fun!

Quote from Wikipedia entry on [b][i]Slartibartfast[/i][/b]
[i]Slartibartfast is a Magrathean, and a designer of planets. His favourite part of the job is creating coastlines, the most notable of which are the fjords found on the coast of Norway on planet Earth.[/i]

No Wikipedia entry for Collaborative Interactive Fiction, guess it just doesn't really 'officially' exist yet, apart from
Multi-User Dungeon (MUD), which may be considered as a kind of multiplayer or collaborative interactive fiction

.. kind of, but not the [u]real[/u] McCoy!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1919&start=0#p12647
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Brainstorm: Survival Stuff
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-17 18:16:20

[quote="gravel"]How much would people appreciate a prepacked survival kit for a game like this?[/quote]

A bunch. One of the things I almost listed was "A nice stack of printed-out FAQs on wilderness survival." Also, the player doesn't know exactly what you've implemented, so it's harder to tell what to take -- does not taking the pot mean -2 to your cooking skill or "You have died of dysentery"?

[UPDATE: I see that my thoughts are almost the exact opposites of tove's. But I've been impressed by what I've seen of your process, too. Like, your blog makes me think that this is going to be the awesomest thing ever.]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1529&start=10#p12648
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Fiction about Interactive Fiction
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-01-17 18:32:28

Ha ha, no way I could NOT link to this int fiction reference in [url=http://gunshowcomic.com/372]Gun Show[/url]! XD

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1855&start=0#p12649
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Collaborative Interactive Fiction
User: George / DateTime: 2011-01-17 19:06:58

There are different kinds of muds though -- it's common to think of them all has hack and slash goal oriented games but there is more variety than that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1911&start=0#p12650
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Routes through the map
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-01-17 19:24:28

Alas.

My other option is to only use the actual compass directions for actual exits, and then define my own system of coordinates ("northish," "southish," or what have you) for rooms that are adjacent but inaccessible.

One problem being that you can't define reciprocal relations between different things (see?  Terribly useful function).

The more frustrating problem being that any input would be given in the form of regular directions, and I'd continually have to manually convert them to the custom directions (if the second noun is north: let the target room be the room northish of the location).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1891&start=10#p12651
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: I7 port of Crowther's Colossal Cave looking for testers
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2011-01-17 19:36:43

[quote="Laroquod"][quote="ChrisC"][quote="Laroquod"]I'll wait for an idea like that to come along before I really take seriously the goal of making my so-far nominally multiplayer Adventure public. I'm a patient dude and I am in no hurry. 8)

Paul.[/quote][/quote][/quote]
Sure, that's understandable. It would take a lot of careful design and experimentation to develop a multiplayer system that works coherently and well.

By the way, did you get a chance to try out my port?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1919&start=0#p12652
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Brainstorm: Survival Stuff
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-17 20:23:02

[quote="tove"]Ha, well, I've been pretty impressed with what I've seen of your process so far.[/quote]

Thanks!  (I edit out a lot of the embarrassing stuff, like "Day 435: Worked on implementing sleep.  Basic functionality still escapes me.  Left out a semi-colon at the end of a line four times today."

[quote="tove"]It's a bit harder to pull ideas out of thin air ("I can bring whatever I want? Out of anything in the universe?") than to choose from a concrete list ("Rope! Oh yes, that'll be good. Eh, don't know if I'll need a 5-pound bag of thyme...").[/quote]

Oh, there will be lists.  Yes, indeed.  But what I want to avoid is the player going "But I want to try hunting!" and, despite this being a totally reasonable strategy, have no implementation or explanation for its absence.  And speaking of that, look into my eyes.  You don't want a rope . . . you don't need a rope . . . there is no reason for a rope . . . 

[quote="matt w"]UPDATE: I see that my thoughts are almost the exact opposites of tove's.[/quote]

Well, as long as it's helpful for someone.  I'll add it to the list.  And thanks for the kind words. 

Oh, and water in general is not a concern for the player.  Horrendously inaccurate, of course, but it didn't seem fun.  

Man, I've got to find a way to communicate all this to the player at the very beginning of the game without an infodump, don't I? 

Okay, what if I appended the help output if the player looks at something during this time?  Theoretically, this would be the text that comes up if you type "help on [something]":

[quote]>x pot
The pot is made of cast iron.
[i]
Pots and pans let you make a wider variety of foods.  In a pinch, pots can also be used to carry liquids or small items that you couldn't hold comfortably in your hands.  Many food staples, including grains and beans, can only be properly cooked in a pot or pan.  

You will only need to refer directly to a pot or pan to perform the usual tasks, TAKE POT.  Cooking uses pots and pans automatically if they're needed.  After eating, you may wish to WASH POT specifically.  You can also WASH DISHES, which includes pots, pans, plates, silverware, and other dirty dishes.   

Related verbs: cook, wash.  Related topics: food, utensils, meals, kitchen.[/i]
[/quote]

It's a lot of text; on the other hand, I'm a little hesitant to write two competing in-game reference guides.  I could probably manage a list of categories that the player should try to cover, ie:

[quote]Cooking: Useful.  A pot or pan will let you cook a wider variety of food, and you can cook more at once, saving you time.
Fire: A necessity.  Be sure to bring flint, matches, or another way to start a fire.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1910&start=0#p12653
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: More Glk progress
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-17 21:08:06

[quote]We had discussed having at least a millisecond timer before, and you weren't opposed to the idea...[/quote]

I'm not opposed to it. As long as you're not expecting nanoseconds.

[quote]Lastly, generally language-level profiling systems disrupt the running of programs so that their results are not the same as if the profiling wasn't happening. By profiling from bytecode the terps will run as they always do.[/quote]

This is generally held to be an *advantage* of language-level profiling, in that it tells you *what* is taking time in the system. As opposed to merely how much clock time is passing -- which can involve all sort of unrelated stuff that you can't distinguish. Clock time can be measured using outside tools, anyway. ("time" on Unix, etc. Or a stopwatch.)

None of this is an argument against having a sub-second gettimeofday-like API. I'm just not convinced it's a useful approach.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1910&start=0#p12654
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: More Glk progress
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-01-17 21:30:34

[quote]I'm not opposed to it. As long as you're not expecting nanoseconds.[/quote]No, really just milliseconds. That should be achievable in most languages.

[quote]This is generally held to be an *advantage* of language-level profiling, in that it tells you *what* is taking time in the system. As opposed to merely how much clock time is passing -- which can involve all sort of unrelated stuff that you can't distinguish. Clock time can be measured using outside tools, anyway. ("time" on Unix, etc. Or a stopwatch.)[/quote]I guess profiling isn't the best word for what I'm planning - more interpreter performance testing, of the holistic sort. With the aim to encourage a bit of friendly competition among terp writers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1919&start=0#p12655
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Brainstorm: Survival Stuff
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-17 22:18:35

[quote]>enter store
The smiling saleswoman hands you a brochure, then quickly moves on to the next customer.

>x brochure
A brightly colored brochure, with "So you've decided to survive the coming apocalypse!" written on the cover.

>read brochure
"Barter Town Mart is eager to meet all your apocalypse needs! Just check out the CONTENTS of this brochure to see what we can help you about, and CONSULT BROCHURE ABOUT a topic to see how we can help you about it! 

>contents
The topics in the brochure are fire, hunting, cooking, building, water, transportation, and prices. Rope is not a topic in the brochure.

>consult brochure about water
"No one can survive without water, but in the apocalypse there will be water, water everywhere, and lots of drops to drink! No need to worry about potability either -- you won't die of dysentery on this trail! Even if you decide to go somewhere, which might not be the best idea."

>consult brochure about prices
"Perhaps the apocalypse's best feature is that you don't have to worry about prices at all! Just grab what you need and run. It's not like fifteen minutes from now the currency will be good for anything more than fishing sinkers anyway. Oh, fishing should probably be a topic too."[/quote]

I am actually a huge fraud -- I've neither played Oregon Trail nor seen Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. 

Anyway, if I don't need ropes I guess I don't need bungee cords either. Snif.

[EDITED to use the serial mother-f'ing comma.]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1891&start=10#p12656
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: I7 port of Crowther's Colossal Cave looking for testers
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-01-18 04:14:35

[quote="ChrisC"]By the way, did you get a chance to try out my port?[/quote]
My weekend got booked up and I didn't get a chance, but I should be able to get at it this week, probably tomorrow night. 8)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1919&start=10#p12657
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Brainstorm: Survival Stuff
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-01-18 04:25:04

[quote="matt w"][UPDATE: I see that my thoughts are almost the exact opposites of tove's. But I've been impressed by what I've seen of your process, too. Like, your blog makes me think that this is going to be the awesomest thing ever.][/quote]
Link?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1919&start=10#p12658
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Brainstorm: Survival Stuff
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-18 06:44:39

[quote="Laroquod"][quote="matt w"][UPDATE: I see that my thoughts are almost the exact opposites of tove's. But I've been impressed by what I've seen of your process, too. Like, your blog makes me think that this is going to be the awesomest thing ever.][/quote]
Link?[/quote]

[url=http://gravelgamedesign.blogspot.com/]http://gravelgamedesign.blogspot.com[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1921&start=0#p12659
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Complex currency system
User: Birion / DateTime: 2011-01-18 06:52:01

Hi, I'm working on a fantasy-themed game and I thought I'd put in a bit more complex currency system, with several different values (e.g. gold, silver, and copper pieces) and I'd like it to be reported a bit sensibly. Right now, I have

[code]A currency is a kind of value.
1 okram specifies a currency.
1 ura specifies a currency scaled down by 12.
1 lesut specifies a currency scaled down by 120.
1 okram 11 ura 9 lesut specifies a currency with parts okram, ura, and lesut.

A thing has a currency called price.

The verb to cost (it costs, they cost, it cost, it is costing, it has cost) implies the price property.[/code]

But if I say:

[code]A knife costs 13 ura.[/code]

it reports the knife as costing 1.088 okram, instead of 1 okram 1 ura (ideally, but I'd be happy with even 1 okram 1 ura 0 lesut).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1919&start=10#p12660
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Brainstorm: Survival Stuff
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2011-01-18 07:54:17

Most important tools would be a knife, axe, and lighter.

An axe(hatchet) can cut down wood for the fire (which I'd only personally be able to start with a lighter). The knife can carve wood into spears (for fishing or hunting) or cut open tough food (like cocunuts, pineapple). A knife could also cut fabric to help make a tent or shelter (if fabric is available). A knife can also help prepare fish or meat caught. 

Sunscreen wouldn't be bad either- or soap!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1922&start=0#p12661
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Mini-Review of the "Zork Anthology" at Good Old Games
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-01-18 08:38:12

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/the_zork_anthology">http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/the_zork_anthology</a>

Okay, so I couldn't resist the opportunity to pay for Zork again. At $6 for six games, GOG certainly aren't gouging on the price, and I wanted this version mainly to toss into the vast and yawning pit of my Infocom archives.

The games install with DOSBox rather than running on a modern interpreter, so, for better or worse (I found it charming), the customer gets to play the games pretty much exactly as they once were. They installed cleanly and play nicely on my rig (Win7, 64bit) but that's because DOSBox is groovy and I already knew that.

My only real complaint is with the doc files provided (and not provided). Complete manuals are included for only two of the games, which I find baffling ... and the "maps" package mixes feelie-type maps and cheaty-spoily-type maps with little distinction offered. And despite providing the cheaty-spoily maps and labeling them "invisiclues" maps (complete with the invisiclues booklet covers included in the PDF), the actual invisiclues are nowhere to be found (and the term never explained), so no hints at all except where (in Zork Zero) the game itself includes them.

And the installed shortcut for Zork Zero calls it Zero Zork, which is harmless but made me grin.

Anyway, the point is I was offered an opportunity to pay for Zork again and I took it. If I were a modern gamer curious about Ye Olden Dayes, though, the spotty documentation might be an issue ... so, shame on Activision for not assembling a better pack of docs, and shame on GOG for either not noticing or not caring.

But woo, Zork on sale and stuff.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1893&start=10#p12662
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: CYOA "The Adventures of Phoebe McGee"
User: casmith / DateTime: 2011-01-18 08:49:00

Horace,

I don't find anything in your post discouraging. Quite the opposite. Taking time to go through what I created and then posting suggestions is a gift that contributes to my learning. So I need to take a close look at your comments.

Grammar is always a problem. We tend to think of grammar as having a rigid set of rules. The problem is inconsistency. I will certainly take another look at my use of commas. The example of the mistake you mentioned certainly needs to be corrected. Every page though? Or should that be every page, though?

I take back my first sentence in this post. I must admit to feeling a little discouraged by

[quote]"...my strongest impression from Phoebe McGee was that of poor writing craft."[/quote]
[sigh] Golly, that was harsh. [emote]:oops:[/emote]  But I'll take that as a challenge to improve.

Thanks for the tip about Twine. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1921&start=0#p12663
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Complex currency system
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-18 08:49:31

I don't believe there's an automatic way to handle this.  However, you can fix this with "to say" phrase.

You can take advantage of the fact that Inform divides and ignores remainders, so 

(your price) / (1 okram) = # okrams in your price

The number of ura in your price is price, minus the number of okrams, divided by a ura.  The number of lesut is your price minus the okrams and ura, divided by a lesut.  (I didn't write out the lesut in the example below, but that's the right equation.)  

It's easy enough to get the game to say "[number of okrams] okram [number of ura] ura [number of lesut] lesut" from this.  It's a little more difficult getting the proper spacing and stuff if you don't want the zeros reported, but it can be done, if you're willing to test a load of values.

The example below works properly for okram and ura, but doesn't incorporate the additional complication of lesut.  

[code]To say (target - a currency):
	let O be (target divided by 1 okram);
	let U be (target minus (O multiplied by 1 okram)) divided by 1 ura;
	say "[if O is less than 1][otherwise][O] okram[end if][if U is less than 1][otherwise] [no line break]"; [you'd need an additional test for lesut here to properly space]
	say "[if U is less than 1][otherwise][U] ura[end if]"; [and another test here][/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1919&start=10#p12664
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Brainstorm: Survival Stuff
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-18 08:53:36

tggdan - excellent point.  The knife is so important that the player is not allowed to leave without it.  I'd overlooked spears, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1919&start=10#p12665
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Brainstorm: Survival Stuff
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-01-18 08:57:06

I also enjoy reading your blog posts--it's gratifying to watch you progressing on such an ambitious project!

While I realize that there is probably a school/genre/slice of games for which this is normal and expected, I'd probably be put off by a game that forced me to make a bunch of decisions before I even started playing. Might it be easier to rope in players by minimizing the number of decisions that need to be made at the outset, while at the same time allowing those decisions to be meaningful and informed? I'm thinking, for example, of offering a single base package of items that all explorers would take with them, and then allowing players to choose from pre-made packages intended for certain gameplay approaches, e.g., "Hunter's Toolkit", "Horticulturalist's Toolkit", "Stoneworker's Toolkit," etc.

This would mean that the player has a single choice to make, and as long as the toolkit labels are descriptive enough, gives her a good sense of how that choice will affect gameplay (Ah, I'm going to be a hunter!). The existence of these different kits might also give you more purchase in creating balanced gameplay, since you could have basic expectations as an author about different approaches to the sim.

You could also offered an advanced mode alongside this, of course, where the player is allowed to directly pick all the starting items from a list.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1921&start=0#p12666
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Complex currency system
User: Birion / DateTime: 2011-01-18 09:19:56

Ah, thanks. I was kind of hoping for some easy way, but figured it would end up something like this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1911&start=0#p12667
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Routes through the map
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-01-18 09:25:47

I'm not sure exactly what your end result is--do you need an alternate scheme of connections for NPCs, reflecting the fact that NPCs can walk through walls or dig tunnels or something like that? Maybe there might be an alternate approach to the problem that we could help brainstorm?

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1921&start=0#p12668
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Complex currency system
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-01-18 09:31:27

Perhaps you want something like this:
[code]A currency is a kind of value.
1 okram specifies a currency.
1 ura specifies a currency scaled down by 12.
1 lesut specifies a currency scaled down by 120.
1 okram 11 ura 9 lesut (in full) specifies a currency with parts okram, ura, and lesut (optional).

A thing has a currency called price.

The verb to cost (he costs, they cost, he costed, it is costed, it is costing) implies the price property.

The knife costs 13 ura.

Instead of examining the knife: say "This knife costs [price of the knife in full]."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1893&start=10#p12669
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: CYOA "The Adventures of Phoebe McGee"
User: HoraceTorys / DateTime: 2011-01-18 09:33:15

I took a creative fiction class in college and published a few shorts on paying online markets, so, actually, I know just enough to be dangerous. However, you might check out a book or two from the library on writing mechanics. Strunk & White's [i]The Elements of Style[/i] is very readable. Two books I can recommend for the craft of fiction: [i]Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft[/i], by Janet Burroway, Elizabeth Stuckey-French, and Ned Stuckey-French, and [i]Writing Fiction: The Practical Guide from New York's Acclaimed Creative Writing School[/i] by Gotham Writers' Workshop. Check their sections on Point of View, Dialogue, etc. 

And, really, you've done the hard part, which is get the thing written. It's just a matter of editing and revising, now.

Twine might be the answer to the problems of hosting [i]Phoebe McGee[/i] on chooseyourstory.com (and trying to correct it now!). I notice your site is "Made with a Mac," so you'll need the latest version of OS X (10.6) to run Twine. I don't have that, so I run Twine on the Windows partition of my MacBook Pro.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1893&start=10#p12670
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: CYOA "The Adventures of Phoebe McGee"
User: casmith / DateTime: 2011-01-18 09:51:32

Thanks Horace.

I have written five nonfiction books, the last one on the origins of courage in children. I value the importance of stories and have conducted storytelling concerts across the states. But.... [i]writing[/i] fiction is completely new to me. Putting it on the web is a form of publishing, so I understand the merits of criticism. I have to decide how much immersion in the craft of writing nonfiction I want to make to improve beyond what I can do now.

This is a very important question for me both professionally and personally. Because there is no sense in continuing to write Interactive [i]Fiction[/i] unless I'm willing to focus on the craft. There is another challenge too, and that's the "interactive" part: learning the tools to bring the story to life. Also, how much work do I want to do to "fix" what I have done as opposed to working on a new story? 

I have a text copy of the 260 pages in the current story. I will go through those looking for grammar errors. I will look again at Phoebe's commentary to see if that needs to be improved. But major surgery is not likely (the risks of "breaking" the story are too great). 

Thanks for responding again and your suggestions. 

Curious. Why not use the Mac version of Twine? I hope Twine has scripts. I'll take a close look later this morning.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1855&start=0#p12671
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Collaborative Interactive Fiction
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-01-18 10:02:01

[quote="Terry"]Just as Slartibartfast enjoys creating coastlines (see below for those without 'humourous sci-fi' knowledge) some people might (and most likely do) enjoy creating locations for games, collaborative IF would give such persons an outlet for their talents.

I'm no expert at writing games, far from it, but I think I would enjoy adding small parts to a larger whole to help create something I could end up exploring and enjoy without 'knowing' everything about the game due to the fact I had created it all.[/quote]
I like implementing rooms and objects, and although writing the descriptions is hard, I do enjoy the challenge at trying my hand at literary prose.  I've never finished a whole game since my buggy, incohesive Comp entry of 2005, because I'm not good at coming up with a design plan and sticking to it.  I think I would enjoy participating in a loose collaboration like this.

I also think it would a lot of fun to be a builder for a MUD or a MUSH, especially a moderately roleplay-oriented one where the rooms need to convey atmosphere and background to provide a setting for the players to act in-character.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1923&start=0#p12672
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Storybook
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-01-18 10:28:56

A while ago, someone on the other forum that I frequent -- a Christian speculative fiction forum that is mostly geared toward novelists/short story writers of that set of genres -- started a topic about an open-source novelists' tool called Storybook.

Storybook is a basically a GUI database application that lets writers organize information about locations, characters, and scenes in their novel-in-progress, allowing scenes to be grouped into chapters and broader "parts".  The application to IF struck me immediately.  I think it's almost as useful a tool for an IF author as it is for a novelist, perhaps even more in some ways.  The only real drawback to using Storybook for IF is that it assumes a linear plot, although it allows for divergent plot strands (something I haven't experimented with much).

I used Storybook to draft all my room descriptions for a game idea that came to me just after Thanksgiving.  Then I added added descriptions and notes for all the NPCs.  I created scenes to represent puzzles and important interactions.  I divided the project into three parts -- Prologue, Midgame, and Endgame.  This really helped immensely in developing my design.  Just today, an idea for a way to introduce the endgame came into my head.  I added notes in Storybook, and for the first time, I have a fairly comprehensive plan of what to implement for a potential IF game!  The experience of using Storybook was not all that different from designing a game with ADRIFT or Quest, both of which I've used in the past, if only for experimentation.

Storybook is available for both Linux and Windows.  Here's its website: <a class="postlink" href="http://storybook.intertec.ch/joomla/">http://storybook.intertec.ch/joomla/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1921&start=0#p12673
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Complex currency system
User: Birion / DateTime: 2011-01-18 11:00:21

That, for some reason, gives 0.088 okram 0 ura 1 lesut. I'm thinking I might have a wrong scaling somewhere, but maths and me aren't really good friends.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1924&start=0#p12674
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Is there a way to display an external website?
User: wpobsessed / DateTime: 2011-01-18 11:06:50

In Inform 7, is there a way to have a hyperlink in the game and have a website open up either in game or out?

I apologize if this is documented somewhere and I just missed it.

Thanks in advance for the help!

wpobsessed

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1924&start=0#p12675
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is there a way to display an external website?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-18 11:20:23

Ron Hale-Evans brought this up at Seattle I-F a couple months ago.  I think the answer was, no.  You can display the http: address or whatever on-screen, and some interpreters will automatically treat it as a clickable link, but it depends on the interpreter, not the game. 

Reasons cited for that behavior were security-related, IIRC.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1924&start=0#p12676
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is there a way to display an external website?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-18 11:38:20

Interpreters will typically not treat it as a *clickable* link, but many will recognize it as a URL and offer an "open" option in a context-menu / right-click / ctrl-click menu.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1905&start=0#p12677
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Remotely view object location Inform 6
User: aliennerd / DateTime: 2011-01-18 11:39:16

Still no luck getting this working I'm afraid.

Is anyone able to advise if there is a simple way to print the location of an object in the game.  If I could get that syntax correct I'm sure I could work out the rest.

Charlie

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1905&start=0#p12678
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Remotely view object location Inform 6
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-18 11:45:18

Sorry -- I was assuming you had a "location" object with properties that you had set up for the three drones.

[code]

Print "The monitors are showing video feeds from the freighter's maintenance drones, Drone 1 is currently in ", (object) parent(drone1), " Drone 2 is in ", (object) parent(drone2), " and Drone 3 is in " , (object) parent(drone3),".";

[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1911&start=0#p12679
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Routes through the map
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-18 11:53:50

I'm still fuzzy on what the problem actually is.  Why did you change the definition of adjacent again?  If it breaks pathfinding, I'd fix the adjective first and foremost.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1921&start=0#p12680
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Complex currency system
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-01-18 12:27:36

Weird!
Anyway, I get
[quote]>x knife
This knife costs 1 okram 1 ura .
[/quote]
The space before the full stop is ugly, but deleting the "(optional)" thing it comes out "1 okram 1 ura 0 lesut.".


EDIT -- The above holds for 5Z71. I haven't actually tested it on later builds.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1924&start=0#p12682
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is there a way to display an external website?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-01-18 13:27:56

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Reasons cited for that behavior were security-related, IIRC.[/quote]
I don't get it. Who are we protecting, and from what?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1906&start=0#p12683
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Looking for beta-testers for Berrost's Challenge v2
User: Mark H. / DateTime: 2011-01-18 13:32:32

Hi Balthier,

I sent you a PM.

Could still use more testers, if anyone else is interested.  

Mark

[quote="Balthier1"]i'm interested.

i can help you more with gameplay problems and ideas rather than with the bugs and source code. but still, i'm at orders.

[quote]Get lamp. 
Ok.[/quote][/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1919&start=10#p12684
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Brainstorm: Survival Stuff
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-01-18 14:19:07

[quote="gravel"]tggdan - excellent point.  The knife is so important that the player is not allowed to leave without it.  I'd overlooked spears, though.[/quote]
What about the ability to craft a simple flatbow with the knife, from a stout hardwood branch, assuming something can be found for a bowstring?  I've made two such bows (in real life), and I've shot plain natural sticks from them.  Of course, I could never have hit anything that way if I'd tried, but it was fun.  Such a bow is weak, inaccurate, and cracks easily, but for the sake of a game it might work.

By the way, I just glanced at your blog for the first time, and I have to say, this is one of the coolest IF projects I've heard about in a while.  The closest thing I've ever played would be a roleplay-intensive MUD, which has very detailed simulation and never reveals the numbers behind the skills and stats, etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1889&start=20#p12685
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Is the short story the most natural fit for IF?
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2011-01-18 14:49:49

A [url=http://midiguru.wordpress.com/2011/01/08/gameboy-idle-thoughts/]post in Jim Aikin's blog[/url] made me think.

I have a vague feeling that for the twitter/cell phone generation the best bet would be short episodic IF. IF in small, diary doses for monosyllabic obsessive twitters — some story, 2 or 3 enticing puzzles and a staytuned ending.

This can be a reality with front-page links to parchment playable games. Also be sure to include next to the link some of those “Tweet/Mail these to your friends, Digg it up” links, etc

just wonder how one could handle game state between episodes, though… the straightforward way, I guess, would be to compile different episodes of the same game with some variables manually set — there would not really be any user-related variable, like essential possetions beyond usage for any single episode.

what do you guys think?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1911&start=0#p12686
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Routes through the map
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-01-18 15:27:03

So I have a grid map where the positions of rooms are defined by 3D coordinates (longitude, latitude, and level).  Rooms with neighboring coordinates are adjacent (1,1 would be next to 1,2, for instance).  If adjacent rooms are on the same level (or if there's a ramp or similar), you can move between them.  If they aren't, you can't, but there still needs to be a way to tell that they're adjacent so that you can have actions like THROW GRAPPLING HOOK NORTH, which would make the room to the north accessible.

So the options are:
a) Map all neighboring rooms as adjacent, and then put in an Instead (or Check) statement blocking you from moving to inaccessible rooms (which is what I did, but there's the NPC problem), or
b) Map only accessible rooms as adjacent, and then come up with an alternate system for mapping inaccessible neighboring rooms.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1893&start=10#p12687
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: CYOA "The Adventures of Phoebe McGee"
User: casmith / DateTime: 2011-01-18 15:39:18

Horace,

From what I can see (and after reading their forum) Twine is broken on the Mac and may not be currently supported on any system at this point. Even if it worked properly, I would have to use Twee and its command-line interface. Sadly, I don't see it as a viable system worth learning at this point. The documentation is very poor. 

I'd love to see an alternative to chooseyourstory.com (CYS), believe me. But everything I have seen does not provide the sophistication of what is at that site. CYS has significant limitations, but at this point its strengths make up for them (mostly anyway).

Chuck

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1893&start=10#p12688
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: CYOA "The Adventures of Phoebe McGee"
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-01-18 15:44:24

You should get someone else to proofread your manuscript if you can; it can be very hard to catch your own errors.  I always have my husband read through my stuff.

I mentioned earlier about continuity between games.  If you just have each game assume the optimal result from the previous game, there will be two problems:
1.  It'll be confusing.  If you play through without getting to [spoiler]the angel and the swan ring[/spoiler], that's going to be a major continuity gap with the second game.
2.  There's a sense of impotence.  It doesn't matter what you do in the first game, because the second game will be the same.  I feel this somewhat with your story already:  Assuming you don't do something stupid, [spoiler]the Shadowman fight[/spoiler] always turns out more or less the same, especially since your health can get restored right back to full.  Also, a lot of plot objects [spoiler]the bird, the rosary[/spoiler] seem to disappear into Maize with no real result.

Ideally, I should think, the first game would end by giving you a save state that could be loaded into the second game.  But that would be just about impossible with any game engine.  However, it might be possible to have the first game provide you with a link or URL to the second game, but only if you complete it sufficiently well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1919&start=10#p12689
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Brainstorm: Survival Stuff
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-18 15:46:24

[quote="Bainespal"]By the way, I just glanced at your blog for the first time, and I have to say, this is one of the coolest IF projects I've heard about in a while. The closest thing I've ever played would be a roleplay-intensive MUD, which has very detailed simulation and never reveals the numbers behind the skills and stats, etc[/quote]

Aw, thank you.  That's such a gratifying thing to hear; it can be hard to know if the game that sounds awesome in your head also sounds interesting to anyone else.  

[quote="Bainespal"]Such a bow is weak, inaccurate, and cracks easily, but for the sake of a game it might work.[/quote]

Such a thing makes things [b]even better[/b] for a game like this.  

I have bows in my "implement eventually" column because I haven't done the research on them that I would need to regarding accuracy, damage, and manufacture, and because I can imagine them getting kind of fiddly, because they have lots of bits - arrows, quivers, bow body, bow string, targets for practice, feathers for fletching, arrowheads for arrows, the potential for broken parts, etc.  Not that all those necessarily would be included, but there's a lot of judgment calls in there, and a lot of potentially fiddly knowledge to acquire or make up.  

[quote="ektemple"]You could also offered an advanced mode alongside this, of course, where the player is allowed to directly pick all the starting items from a list.[/quote]

And, it sounds like, a quick start option for those who want to jump straight in, in addition to those who want to make one general choice or micromanage.  Hmm.  I'll play with that a bit.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1911&start=0#p12690
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Routes through the map
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-01-18 15:54:26

Thank you for the clarification. With this option:

[quote="katz"]Map all neighboring rooms as adjacent, and then put in an Instead (or Check) statement blocking you from moving to inaccessible rooms (which is what I did, but there's the NPC problem)[/quote]

...couldn't you block NPC travel as well as player travel by using "Check [b]an actor[/b] going" (instead of just "Check going"? If you want to give NPCs the ability to attempt to reach adjacent rooms using nonstandard means (grappling hooks, e.g.), you could use a check/instead rule of this sort to redirect to an "AI" routine to let the NPC check its options. Something like this pseudo-code:

[code]Definition: A person is an NPC if the person is not the player.

Instead of an NPC going:
    [check accessibility]
    if the destination is inaccessible:
         try the actor grappling to the destination.[/code]

Does that make sense, or have I missed something?

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1889&start=20#p12691
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Is the short story the most natural fit for IF?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-01-18 15:54:35

[quote="namekuseijin"]I have a vague feeling that for the twitter/cell phone generation the best bet would be short episodic IF. IF in small, diary doses for monosyllabic obsessive twitters — some story, 2 or 3 enticing puzzles and a staytuned ending.[/quote]

That seems like an awfully cynical way of putting it.  I don't know if I'm exactly in the generation you're talking about, but I am probably one of the younger people here and do [url=http://instamatique.com/lea/Ditter.html]technically have a twitter account[/url], but since I've actually been working on some such micro-IF projects (not exactly episodic, but certainly brief), I'd like to claim that the [very] short form appeals to me not because of a Mountain Dew-saturated lifestyle, but because I'm interested in experimenting, and prototyping rapidly.  It's a lot easier to get feedback on something if your audience doesn't have to set aside a week to play your work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1893&start=10#p12692
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: CYOA "The Adventures of Phoebe McGee"
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-01-18 16:04:13

[quote="casmith"]From what I can see (and after reading their forum) Twine is broken on the Mac and may not be currently supported on any system at this point. Even if it worked properly, I would have to use Twee and its command-line interface. Sadly, I don't see it as a viable system worth learning at this point. The documentation is very poor. [/quote]

I am running OSX 10.5.7, and have a download of Twine 1.3 from October 2009 that seems to work fine and reasonably intuitively.  Admittedly, I haven't really done more than fifteen minutes of poking around at it, so it could certainly be buggy or a pain to work with for an actual project, but I did manage to arrange a simple story and output it at the time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1919&start=10#p12693
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Brainstorm: Survival Stuff
User: zahariel / DateTime: 2011-01-18 16:15:15

As far as communicating this information to a player, I would say that examining stuff while in the store also prints the "help on" text is probably a good way to do it. After all, while you're in the store you've got all the random documentation and handbooks and stuff that everyone always throws away when they open the box.

I would also want to start with a prepacked survival kit, which is the absolute minimum necessary stuff needed to get through the game (but not necessarily with the best ending, maybe?), and then the opportunity to buy extra stuff that "might come in handy". Choosing certain things to add to your survival kit will make some puzzles/challenges easier, or allow access to better results/endings.

This sounds like an awesome project, though, wherever you go with it!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1911&start=0#p12694
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Routes through the map
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-01-18 16:20:07

[quote]...couldn't you block NPC travel as well as player travel by using "Check an actor going" (instead of just "Check going"?[/quote]

Yes, but the problem is that I need to find the best route through the map.  The "best route" algorithm, of course, ignores my user-defined accessibility rules (I can't just say "using only accessible rooms" because accessibility is defined relative to a given room, rather than in absolute terms).  So the algorithm will just run him into a corner and get stuck.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1855&start=0#p12695
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Collaborative Interactive Fiction
User: Balthier1 / DateTime: 2011-01-18 16:39:04

if the idea goes ahead, i could help (and i like to) writing room descriptions or maybe we should do a sketch first, about what the game would be, how we should  approach to the player, if the game is a "nonsense-yet-lovely-get-the-key-or-solve-the-puzzle-game." And if we can (efficiently) add dialogues often to the story and the game.

And, personally, i think the idea is wonderful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1911&start=0#p12696
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Routes through the map
User: zahariel / DateTime: 2011-01-18 17:15:24

I would go with option (b), since you don't want to be reimplementing pathfinding. Finding adjacent rooms should be quite straightforward, yes? For cases like THROW GRAPPLING HOOK NORTH, you can change the map during runtime, I should think, which would automatically allow the NPC to chase you along the grappling hook. See Reliques for an example of runtime mapping, but basically:

[code]
To decide which room is adjacent to (R - a room) in direction (dir - a direction):
    [lots of math-based code using coordinates]

To throw the grappling hook (dir - a direction):
    let R be the room adjacent to the location in direction dir;
    now the room dir from the location is R.
[/code]

Something like that ought to work?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1855&start=0#p12697
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Collaborative Interactive Fiction
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-01-18 20:00:21

I just had an idea.

The collaborators could form two groups, those interested in implementing the map/model world, and those interested in creating the story, puzzles, and NPCs.  This would probably work best if the implementation went forward in two stages.  First the map team would get together and decide on a setting, whether it be a cavern system, a modern city block, a two-story house, an office building, an alien planet, or a medieval castle.  Then the map team gets busy building the rooms and scenery objects, along with some non-scenery objects that would logically be present from the setting (perhaps including basic NPCs, such as wandering villagers or random office personnel).  Then the story team would decide on a story that fits the setting and would implement all the objects and NPCs necessary to present the story, conflict, and interaction.  They will have to decide whether or not to have difficult puzzles.  The story team will probably also add narration to be triggered under different circumstances.

Or, maybe the two phases are undesirable, and everyone could work at once.  I don't know.  There could also be a third team of programmers who will help both the map team and the story team with any advanced coding that needs to be done.  I don't think there should be a separate team of writers -- the map and story people will take care of all the text.

Maybe the the programming team could be more general then that.  They work on any technical or meta details as well as code.  This might include multimedia in the game itself, or at least the cover art and bibliographic information, as well as a hint system, or even all menus in general.

Well, that's just some brainstorming.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1924&start=0#p12698
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is there a way to display an external website?
User: wpobsessed / DateTime: 2011-01-18 20:13:26

Thanks for the responses! I appreciate it.

I am going to give it a try and see if I can't get some reasonable solution for this.

Any idea on how to present it in Inform? A Say command perhaps?

I would appreciate any insights.

wpobsessed

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1889&start=20#p12699
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Is the short story the most natural fit for IF?
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2011-01-18 21:31:30

[quote]
That seems like an awfully cynical way of putting it.
[/quote]

I like to call it a realistic way of putting it.

[quote] since I've actually been working on some such micro-IF projects (not exactly episodic, but certainly brief), I'd like to claim that the [very] short form appeals to me not because of a Mountain Dew-saturated lifestyle, but because I'm interested in experimenting, and prototyping rapidly.  It's a lot easier to get feedback on something if your audience doesn't have to set aside a week to play your work.[/quote]

Fair enough.  That's your take as an author.  My take was that of the (short-attention-span) audience.  I truly believe it's a worthwhile experiment, that of short episodic IF with links to share the experience with friends...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1919&start=10#p12700
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Brainstorm: Survival Stuff
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2011-01-19 08:13:18

Though it's rediculous to expect to bring with you, an alembic (or some other way to distil water) would be helpful for changing that salt water into fresh water, or for purifying water. Can be a life saver. 

Of course, a PDA or book full of important medical advances (how to make penicillin from mold, or how to disinfect a wound - whiskey perhaps) could be useful as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1919&start=10#p12701
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Brainstorm: Survival Stuff
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-19 08:19:09

You could have [url=http://www.topatoco.com/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=TO&Product_Code=QW-CHEATSHEET&Category_Code=QW#pic]this shirt[/url], or something similar (since I'm guessing you won't be able to build that airplane no matter how much know-how you have).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1919&start=20#p12702
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Brainstorm: Survival Stuff
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2011-01-19 12:34:14

A Boy Scout manual or similar instruction book can be very useful in these situations. If you had something like that in the game, you could use it to clue players in to possible actions they should take and that are supported by the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1919&start=20#p12703
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Brainstorm: Survival Stuff
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-19 13:23:06

Yeah, there's not intended to be much in the way of secret actions.  A basic scouting type guide is a good idea, although I'm hoping I can talk people into signing up for the tutorial as the main introductory portal.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1925&start=0#p12704
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: wordplay puzzles
User: rmacleod / DateTime: 2011-01-19 14:00:22

Hello, me again. Thanks for your quick and excellent responses to my earlier question about opening the door-- it's really exciting for me, as a lonely freelance writer, to suddenly be working on a project that comes with a knowledgeable and helpful community, as opposed to wandering around my room screaming "Why?! WHY?!!" to the unhelpful walls.

I've been reading this great book about game design (Jesse Schell's "The Art of Game Design," which I thought wouldn't live up to its Amazon.com reviews, but has, and more-- check it out!) and it's given me a lot to think about for making my IF more of a game, which of course means puzzles! As a relatively new IF player, I kind of hate puzzles, because I don't understand how they work. But I playtested some parts of my game at a party and was surprised to find that a lot of players (almost all of whom had never played IF before) were most excited to write funny verbs into the prompt in order to see what happens. I decided that the prompt could really be the "toy" my IF is based around, and this works well thematically because one of the main characters of the story itself has the ability to change the world around him by talking in a particular way. 

So the question: I can read all I want about theory, but as super-new coder to Inform7, I don't know how you actually MAKE wordplay puzzles. There are some games that involve them that I've fiddled with, but I was wondering if anyone had any advice on how such puzzles are made-- where saying certain words or things in a certain order makes things happen, or that sort of thing. OR if anyone knows where I can find some Inform7 source code for wordplay puzzles, since I learn pretty well by seeing how others do it.

Maybe this is better for the Inform7 board, but I'm such a noob, and they all seem so experienced over there...

Thanks,
...riley

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1926&start=0#p12705
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: A kind "has a number" causes problems
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2011-01-19 14:57:50

The following source code will cause problems in the latest release of Inform:
[code]"Reduced testcase"

A foo is a kind of thing.  A foo has a number.
The Bar is a room.[/code]
Specifically, this causes problem messages about the Standard Rules; even more specifically, any time the standard rules use the construction "number of things" (as in "'if the number of things in H is [...]" which is an actual quote from the standard rules).
This behavior was also present in the October release of Inform (not a regression).
I wasn't sure if this counts as a bug, since you can just do this:
[code]A foo has a number called its baz.[/code]
And then it will work.  (Looks like a workaround to me, but I'm not very experienced with Inform...)

It seems like a bug since it is inconsistent with 
[code]A foo has a text.[/code]
Which works just fine (but is a different kind of value).

It also seems to me that the standard rules shouldn't break that easily.

I did search for this, but the search function doesn't like the words "kind" and "number", so it was kind of difficult; if this has been discussed before I'm sorry. [emote]:oops:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1927&start=0#p12706
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: To Decide - Kinds of Action - Description of Objects
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-19 15:06:16

I'm trying to create a To Decide Whether phrase that takes an object or kind of object as an argument and tells me whether or not it is involved in one of several kinds of action. The original context involves Conversation Responses, but this is an extension-free example of the problem:

[code]Lab is a room.

A toy is a kind of thing.
There is a toy called a baseball bat in Lab.
There is a toy called a cricket bat in Lab.
There is a fruit bat in Lab.

There is a padlock in Lab.

The item of interest is a thing that varies. The item of interest is the baseball bat.

Does the player mean doing something when utilizing a toy:
	It is unlikely.
	
Does the player mean doing something when utilizing the item of interest:
	It is very likely.

Listening to something is working seriously.
Examining something is working seriously.
Unlocking something with something is binary working seriously.
	
To decide whether utilizing (item - an object):
	If working seriously and item is the noun, yes;
	If binary working seriously and the item is the second noun, yes;
	no.
	
Test me with "listen to bat/swing bat/unlock padlock with bat"
	[/code]

My goal here is for "swing bat" to avoid listing the cricket bat in the disambiguation choices. Unfortunately the "utilizing a toy" rule  produces a compiler error:
[quote]Problem. You wrote 'Does the player mean doing something when utilizing a toy'  , but 'toy' seems to be a toy, whereas I was expecting to find an object there.
I was trying to match this phrase:

utilizing (toy - object) 
This was what I found out:

toy = a description of toys[/quote]
How can I make this work? Can you use a description of objects as an argument for a To Decide phrase? I couldn't come up with a working syntax for that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1928&start=0#p12707
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Color of the status bar
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-01-19 15:30:20

So.  ZCode games have a status bar with the colors inverted.  I want to put a minimap in the status bar, in the style of the Automap extension, except custom (truly, this minigame continually strives to make Inform do things it shouldn't!).  I have the map all drawn up the way I want it.

Trouble is that the characters look funny with the colors inverted.  For instance, I'd much rather the player's location be a green dot on a white background than a white dot on a green background (the complexity of the information on my map requires colors).  Is there a way to keep the status bar from inverting the color?  If not, is there another way to "dock" the map at the top, since redrawing it every turn (or whenever something happens) is ungainly?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1927&start=0#p12708
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: To Decide - Kinds of Action - Description of Objects
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-19 15:38:37

I don't know that you can use kinds in that way, because the "to decide" function asks for an object, and Inform doesn't know how to treat a generic kind as an object.  You can create a backup clause, "to decide whether utilizing a toy", and then the text compiles.  You could change the function to decide on a utilized object, and then see if the utilized object is a toy or not, but I can't tell if that would work in this circumstance or not.  (Honestly, I couldn't quite follow the various strands of code.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1927&start=0#p12709
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: To Decide - Kinds of Action - Description of Objects
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-01-19 16:01:24

I think it should be possible to do that kind of thing as of the last few builds of Inform.
Would this work?
[code]To decide whether utilizing (name of kind of value K):[/code]
(Perhaps you've already tried that ...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1927&start=0#p12710
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: To Decide - Kinds of Action - Description of Objects
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-19 16:14:58

It's just frustrating, because kinds of action can't be aggregated, and if I remember correctly, can't take variable arguments - while at the same time To Decide phrases can't take the range of descriptions that action descriptions can.

But those both look like good workable ideas.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1928&start=0#p12711
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Color of the status bar
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-01-19 16:37:49

It's just a convention that the status bar is inverted. You can actually change the background colour to anything you like, just as you would for the main menu.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1927&start=0#p12712
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: To Decide - Kinds of Action - Description of Objects
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-19 16:43:18

Er, don't you mean...[code]Does the player mean doing something with a toy when utilizing the noun:[/code]..and..[code]To decide whether utilizing (item - a toy):[/code] but to do it right isn't as elegant as you had it.

EDIT: pardon, you don't want the 2nd line.  I just noticed the variable you're passing to it.  

Where's my caffeine?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1927&start=0#p12713
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: To Decide - Kinds of Action - Description of Objects
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-19 17:13:27

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Er, don't you mean...[code]Does the player mean doing something with a toy when utilizing the noun:[/code]
[/quote]
No, because sometimes it's the second noun.

However, I realized that an adjective definition will take me a lot farther toward my goal than a To Decide phrase here:

[code]Definition: an object (called item) is utilized:
	If working seriously and item is the noun, yes;
	If binary working seriously and the item is the second noun, yes;
	no.
[/code]

Then I can say "a toy is utilized".

I realized, unfortunately, that the conditions here are seriously messed up. I'm operating on a sleep deficit...

One more question: once upon a time, I thought there was a phrase that would let you check if something was used in an action, either as the noun or as the second noun. I can't seem to find it. Would you have to define it yourself, or is this redundant?

[code]Definition: An object is involved if it is the noun or it is the second noun[/code]

EDIT: ARGH! I hate "Does the player mean"! I have the correct rule in my WIP now, I can see that it is firing, and yet it is still failing to remove the unwanted item from disambiguation. I think it would take me a few more hours to come up with a brief example, but if anyone is willing to help, I will do it...

EDIT 2: I decided to remove the offending items from scope completely. It wasn't that hard, since the verb syntax used "any known thing." What I'm calling a "toy" here was actually a "question" - a sub-kind of "subject." I just defined a question as unknown unless it's the item of interest.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1927&start=0#p12714
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: To Decide - Kinds of Action - Description of Objects
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-19 20:55:20

Chapter 12.20. "Stored actions" has [i]if (stored action) involves (object):[/i], but your adjective def is likely more elegant. 

You might want to read the documentation for Jon INgold's Disambiguation Control extension, just to see what problems it was designed to cure.  I think yours might be one of them.  Like, I think if two items come up equally likely, Inform prints them *all*, not just the top two. 

But if you found a solution, go with it.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1911&start=0#p12715
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Routes through the map
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-01-19 21:20:23

[quote="katz"][quote]...couldn't you block NPC travel as well as player travel by using "Check an actor going" (instead of just "Check going"?[/quote]

Yes, but the problem is that I need to find the best route through the map.  The "best route" algorithm, of course, ignores my user-defined accessibility rules (I can't just say "using only accessible rooms" because accessibility is defined relative to a given room, rather than in absolute terms).  So the algorithm will just run him into a corner and get stuck.[/quote]

Ah, sorry about that--you'd think I could have taken the time to scroll up and reread your original question. Sheesh.

Here's another idea: You could potentially use standard map connections between accessible rooms (rooms on the same level), but place invisible doors between inaccessible neighboring rooms. That way, standard pathfinding gets your NPC to any accessible room, while "using doors" gets you to the inaccessible rooms as well. You could also have locked invisible doors if you needed a second state (testable "using even locked doors"); NPCs trying to reach inaccessible rooms could "unlock" locked doors, for example. 

A when play begins rule could probably set all this up dynamically for you based on the coordinates, so that you don't have to set up all the connections manually.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1927&start=0#p12716
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: To Decide - Kinds of Action - Description of Objects
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-19 21:37:12

My recollection of Disambiguation Control is that its behavior differs from the default mainly when no noun is supplied at all. Although it provides a "never" result, I wasn't able to get it working as I expected when I tried it. I think maybe I just need to get my head around disambiguation situations a little better.

It certainly seems like once disambiguation is initiated, all possible candidates are offered, not just the likely ones, and the only way to completely eliminate something from the list is to remove it from scope. Am I wrong?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1891&start=10#p12717
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: I7 port of Crowther's Colossal Cave looking for testers
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2011-01-19 21:49:55

Thanks, I'm interested in hearing your thoughts.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1919&start=20#p12728
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Brainstorm: Survival Stuff
User: araneldon / DateTime: 2011-01-20 03:15:37

This project looks interesting. Here's something that came to mind when I read the comment about pots and doing dishes.

Scenario (this is roughly what the game tells you):
"You're carrying a pot and some raw food items."
The player cooks the food using the pot, and eats the food.
Some time later the game ends: "You die of food poisoning. Should have washed that pot, eh?"

Alternate scenario:
"You're carrying a pot (with some moldy gunk on it) and some raw food items."
The player tries to cook using the pot: "You notice the pot is dirty and decide not to risk it."

In other words, please don't make it too easy for the player to overlook that which in the real world would be obvious. If the pot is dirty, 1) make sure this is communicated clearly, and 2) possibly even prevent any obviously dangerous action (at least the first attempt).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1905&start=0#p12729
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Remotely view object location Inform 6
User: aliennerd / DateTime: 2011-01-20 03:25:31

Thanks Zarf, I still can't seem to get this to work, but I'm sure that's my fault.

Charlie

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1929&start=0#p12730
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: A Beta Tester for a role playing game called Necron's Keep!
User: danwelch / DateTime: 2011-01-20 03:37:57

Please choose the nightly builds link. A help menu is provided along with my e-mail contact information. 

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=w8c5ngckvclnjum1">http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=w8c5ngckvclnjum1</a>

Bluex the divine king of Surya has decreed for you to locate the Arch Mage Wizard Necron. Necron built an enchanted castle deep within an ancient forest to protect himself and his people. Esentially, you are being sent to investigate since no communication with the outside has occured for over twently years. Your master gave you a dragon skin tome from his own private library, and a magic bag of holding. The magic bag allows you to place an unlimited amount of things into it. As a magic user your primary ability is to cast spells. By collecting experience points, you may progress upwards in "level". Your odyssey pits you against the supernatural forces that oppose your efforts to reach deep within Necron's Keep. Read on, adventurer. Your quest awaits!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1930&start=0#p12731
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Wearing things in layers (new to I7)
User: araneldon / DateTime: 2011-01-20 05:12:27

Hello, newbie here [emote]:)[/emote]

As a first exercise I decided to try and "fix" the layered clothing model presented in "What Not To Wear" ([url]http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rex426.html#e426[/url]).

The issues I want to fix:
1) It only works on the player (should be easy to fix, not my focus at the moment)

2) It relates every piece of clothing in existence, which seems wasteful. My idea here is to create a set of garment archetypes and establish relations between those. Then each real garment holds a reference to the appropriate archetype.

A garment-element is a kind of thing. It has a garment-element called archetype.
The hat-archetype is a garment-element.
A hat is a kind of garment-element. The archetype of a hat is usually the hat-archetype.
The beanie, the fedora and the baseball cap are hats.

And so forth. It's a bit of a mess; I'm having trouble working with object models in Inform. My current implementation (see below) appears to work, but it's slow. The original code also feels more sluggish that I'd expected, but mine is even worse.

I'd appreciate any suggestions for improvements [emote]:)[/emote]

[spoiler][code]
"Test" by blah 

[Original "What Not To Wear"]

[Include Plurality by Emily Short.]

[ Not used yet, maybe useful at some point:
To decide whether (X - a value) is sibling to (Y - a value): no.
To decide whether (X - a value of kind K) is sibling to (Y - a value of kind M): if K is M, yes; no.
]

Section 1 - Overlying and Underlying

[We start by borrowing some of the same ideas from the Bogart example, but we're also going to make a kind called "garment-element". This kind will include both garments (objects of clothing) and body parts (things that can be covered by clothing); using it allows us to restrict the way our underlying and overlying relations apply, which will make them a bit faster at run-time.]

A garment-element is a kind of thing. A garment-element has a garment-element called archetype.

Underlying relates various garment-elements to various garment-elements with fast route-finding.
The verb to underlie (it underlies, they underlie, it is underlying, it is underlaid) implies the underlying relation.
The verb to be under implies the underlying relation.

Overlying relates various garment-elements to various garment-elements.
The verb to overlie (it overlies, they overlie, it is overlying) implies the overlying relation.

Covering relates a garment-element (called A) to a garment-element (called B) when the number of steps via the overlying relation from A to B is greater than 0.
The verb to cover (it covers, they cover, it is covering, it is covered) implies the covering relation.

Definition: a garment-element is uppermost if it is not under something opaque.


Check taking off:
	if the noun underlies something (called the impediment) which is worn by the actor, say "[The impediment] is in the way." instead.

Carry out taking off:
	now the noun is not underlaid by anything.

Report taking off something:
	say "You are now wearing [a list of garments worn by the player]." instead. [uppermost removed]

Before taking off something which underlies something which is worn by the player:
	while the noun underlies something (called the impediment) which is worn by the player:
		say "(first removing [the impediment])[command clarification break]";
		silently try taking off the impediment;
		if the noun underlies the impediment, stop the action.

[ ORIGINAL:
Before wearing something when a garment which covers the noun is worn by the player:
	while the player wears a garment (called the impediment) which covers the noun:
		say "(first removing [the impediment])[command clarification break]";
		silently try taking off the impediment;
		if the player is wearing the impediment, stop the action.

Before wearing something:
	let N be the layering depth of the noun;
	repeat with item running through things worn by the player:
		if the layering depth of the item is N and the item covers a garment-region which is covered by the noun:
			say "(first taking off [the item])[command clarification break]";
			silently try taking off the item;
			if the player wears the item, stop the action.
]

Before wearing something:
	repeat with worn-garment running through garments worn by the actor:
		if the archetype of the worn-garment covers the archetype of the noun:
			say "(first removing [the worn-garment])[command clarification break]";
			silently try taking off the worn-garment;
			if the actor is wearing the worn-garment, stop the action;
	let regions-covered-by-noun be the list of garment-regions covered by the archetype of the noun;
	say "regions-covered-by-noun = [regions-covered-by-noun].";
	repeat with worn-garment running through garments worn by the actor:
		let I be regions-covered-by-noun;
		repeat with region-covered-by-worn-garment running through garment-regions covered by the archetype of the worn-garment:
			if region-covered-by-worn-garment is not listed in regions-covered-by-noun, remove region-covered-by-worn-garment from I, if present;
		repeat with shared-region running through I:
			let A be the layering depth of the worn-garment for shared-region;
			let B be the layering depth of the noun for shared-region;
			if A is B:
				say "shared-region = [shared-region], depth of worn-garment = [A], depth of the noun = [B]";
				say "(first taking off [the worn-garment])[command clarification break]";
				silently try taking off the worn-garment;
				if the actor is wearing the worn-garment, stop the action;
				break.

Carry out wearing:
	repeat with worn-garment running through things worn by the actor:
		if the archetype of the noun covers the archetype of the worn-garment, now the worn-garment underlies the noun.

[This may seem like overkill, but it allows us to create garments that cover different subsets of the body -- pants and shirt vs. a dress, for instance.]

To decide what number is the layering depth of (chosen garment - a garment) for (target-region - garment-region):
	let N be 0;
	if the archetype of the chosen garment covers the archetype of the target-region:
		let N be the number of steps via the overlying relation from the archetype of the chosen garment to the archetype of the target-region;
	decide on N.

[
To decide what number is the layering depth of (chosen garment - a thing):
	let N be 0;
	if the chosen garment covers a garment-region (called base):
		let N be the number of steps via the overlying relation from the chosen garment to the base;
	decide on N.
]

[To help with modeling, we'll give everyone body parts (garment regions), broken down according to their relevance to clothing:]

A garment-region is a kind of garment-element.
A torso, a hip, a head, a pair of legs, and a pair of feet are kinds of garment-region.

One head, one torso, one pair of legs, one pair of feet and one hip are part of every person. [One pair of legs is part of every person. ...]

The torso-archetype is a torso.
The hip-archetype is a hip.
The head-archetype is a head.
The legs-archetype is a pair of legs.
The feet-archetype is a pair of feet.

The archetype of a torso is usually torso-archetype.
The archetype of a hip is usually hip-archetype.
The archetype of a head is usually head-archetype.
The archetype of a pair of legs is usually legs-archetype.
The archetype of a pair of feet is usually feet-archetype.

[And now we make some categories of clothing:]

A garment is a kind of garment-element. A garment can be transparent. A garment is usually wearable. [A garment has a garment called archetype.]
A pair of pants, a pair of underpants, a foundation garment, a pair of socks, a pair of shoes, a jacket, a hat, a dress, and a shirt are kinds of garment.

The plural of pair of pants is pairs of pants. The plural of pair of underpants is pairs of underpants. The plural of pair of socks is pairs of socks. The plural of pair of shoes is pairs of shoes.

The pants-archetype is a pair of pants.
The underpants-archetype is a pair of underpants.
The foundation-archetype is a foundation garment.
The socks-archetype is a pair of socks.
The shoes-archetype is a pair of shoes.
The jacket-archetype is a jacket.
The hat-archetype is a hat.
The dress-archetype is a dress.
The shirt-archetype is a shirt.

The archetype of a pair of pants is usually pants-archetype.
The archetype of a pair of underpants is usually underpants-archetype.
The archetype of a foundation garment is usually foundation-archetype.
The archetype of a pair of socks is usually socks-archetype.
The archetype of a pair of shoes is usually shoes-archetype.
The archetype of a jacket is usually jacket-archetype.
The archetype of a hat is usually hat-archetype.
The archetype of a dress is usually dress-archetype.
The archetype of a shirt is usually shirt-archetype.

Instead of taking inventory: [uppermost removed]
	say "You're carrying [a list of things carried by the player][if the player wears something]. You are wearing [a list of garments worn by the player][end if]." 

When play begins:
	now socks-archetype overlies feet-archetype;
	now shoes-archetype overlies socks-archetype;
	now underpants-archetype overlies hip-archetype;
	now pants-archetype overlies legs-archetype;
	now pants-archetype overlies underpants-archetype;
	now foundation-archetype overlies torso-archetype;
	now jacket-archetype overlies shirt-archetype;
	now jacket-archetype overlies dress-archetype;
	now hat-archetype overlies head-archetype;
	now dress-archetype overlies underpants-archetype;
	now dress-archetype overlies foundation-archetype.

Section 2 - The Scenario

The Dressing Room is a room.

The player carries some capris, some jeans, a corset, a plunge bra, a thong, boy-shorts, black satin D'Orsay pumps, brown leather boots, a camisole, a cocktail dress, a bolero, a cashmere shrug, a sheer wrap, woolly socks, and a linen tunic.

The thong has the description "a red barely-there crime against good taste".

The woolly socks are a pair of socks.
The D'Orsay pumps and the brown leather boots are pairs of shoes.
The thong and the boy-shorts are pairs of underpants.
The capris and the jeans are pairs of pants.
The tunic is a shirt.
The camisole, the corset, and the plunge bra are foundation garments.
The cocktail dress is a dress.
The bolero, the cashmere shrug, and the sheer wrap are jackets. The shrug and the wrap are transparent.

[Aaron, Ben, Carl, David, Earl, Fargo, Gabriel, Harry, Ian, Jack, Kyle, Larry, Michael, Nate, Ozzy and Patrick are men in the Dressing Room.]

[The player is wearing the thong and the jeans.]

Test legs with "wear thong / wear jeans".
Test me with "wear capris / wear jeans / i / wear thong / i / wear dress / wear corset / wear dress / i / wear wrap / i / wear boots / wear pumps / i".

[/code][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1930&start=0#p12732
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Wearing things in layers (new to I7)
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-20 07:17:28

How does this compare to a "update the layers of worn clothing" during the carry out wearing rules?  Such a function would just relate the items the player is wearing (ie "now the noun overlies every shirt worn by the actor" (not tested)).  The advantage with the initial code is that there's only the initial setup, which is a little boggy in IDE but more or less unnnoticeable on most machines I've tried, which simplifies code.  How is the speed when you actually compile your WIP?

I've had fairly good success with the "when play begins" method combined with updates as clothing status changes, but if you come up with something faster, please let me know, since I'm using similar gutted code for my WIP.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1930&start=0#p12733
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Wearing things in layers (new to I7)
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-01-20 07:21:17

Nice. A while ago I managed to do largely what you refer to using a combination of values, kinds, 'to decide'-phrases, and custom relations. The project unfortunately foundered; the more appropriate the autogenerated prose became, the less I wanted it to be as generic as it had to be. I still have a lot to learn in terms of making prose flow smoothly.

Anyway, the end benefit of doing it that way is a great deal of flexibility and an impressive speed boost (or at least, the speed in the I7 environment was (very) noticeably improved compared to [i]What Not To Wear[/i], despite my test using far more body parts and possible areas and overall greater complexity). The drawbacks are the aforementioned complexity; it simply requires more moving parts, and the [i]conceptual[/i] complexity is increased by a large factor.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1930&start=0#p12734
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Wearing things in layers (new to I7)
User: araneldon / DateTime: 2011-01-20 07:47:46

[quote="gravel"]How does this compare to a "update the layers of worn clothing" during the carry out wearing rules?  Such a function would just relate the items the player is wearing (ie "now the noun overlies every shirt worn by the actor" (not tested)).  The advantage with the initial code is that there's only the initial setup, which is a little boggy in IDE but more or less unnnoticeable on most machines I've tried, which simplifies code.  How is the speed when you actually compile your WIP?[/quote]
This is actually what's happening now -- or is supposed to happen at any rate. Permanent relations are only established for the archetypes, and during play the worn items are related as appropriate.

The current "when play begins" bit is misleading; that stuff should happen before play begins, replaced with code that establishes relations for garments worn by the player and NPCs when play begins.

[quote="gravel"]I've had fairly good success with the "when play begins" method combined with updates as clothing status changes, but if you come up with something faster, please let me know, since I'm using similar gutted code for my WIP.[/quote]
If I can't get this working with acceptable performance, might as well give up on enforcing the layering and let the player wear whatever s/he pleases. Then again, this system would be good for deciding what NPCs wear.

Maybe. I don't know. I'm really no good at math or algorithms [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1919&start=20#p12735
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Brainstorm: Survival Stuff
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-20 07:48:49

Araneldon: good points.  I think this comes back to communicating expectations to the player so he can make good choices.  I'm not sure how death will be handled, but it definitely seems like that needs the most clear explanations and warnings.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1930&start=0#p12736
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Wearing things in layers (new to I7)
User: araneldon / DateTime: 2011-01-20 08:37:06

[quote="Eleas"]Nice. A while ago I managed to do largely what you refer to using a combination of values, kinds, 'to decide'-phrases, and custom relations. The project unfortunately foundered; the more appropriate the autogenerated prose became, the less I wanted it to be as generic as it had to be. I still have a lot to learn in terms of making prose flow smoothly.

Anyway, the end benefit of doing it that way is a great deal of flexibility and an impressive speed boost (or at least, the speed in the I7 environment was (very) noticeably improved compared to [i]What Not To Wear[/i], despite my test using far more body parts and possible areas and overall greater complexity). The drawbacks are the aforementioned complexity; it simply requires more moving parts, and the [i]conceptual[/i] complexity is increased by a large factor.[/quote]
Are you willing to share your code? I don't plan to use this in any finished work, it's just something to play with while learning Inform. If something usable were to come out of it, I could make it available as an extension if there's any interest.

I should probably fix the code in the first post somehow, it's very difficult to read without tabs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1930&start=0#p12737
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Wearing things in layers (new to I7)
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-01-20 08:44:39

[quote="araneldon"]Edit: apparently the tabs get destroyed, should I convert them to spaces for posting?[/quote]
If you use the code tag to wrap your source, it'll preserve the tabs. (The web browser will then convert them to spaces anyway, because all browser designers hate programming languages with significant whitespace, but if you quote the post you'll see the tabs are still tabs behind the scenes!)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1930&start=0#p12738
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Wearing things in layers (new to I7)
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-01-20 09:04:05

[quote="araneldon"]Are you willing to share your code? I don't plan to use this in any finished work, it's just something to play with while learning Inform. If something usable were to come out of it, I could make it available as an extension if there's any interest.

I should probably fix the code in the first post somehow, it's very difficult to read without tabs.[/quote]

Gladly. It's a WIP anyway, and it wasn't going anywhere. Bit big for the forum though, and it's probably inelegant, so in order to spare the eyes of purists and aesthetes alike, I'll spoilerize it.

[spoiler][code]"Lightweight" by Björn Paulsen

Include Epistemology by Eric Eve.



Part 1 - Garments and Body-parts
Chapter 1 - Kinds
Section 1 - Garment-element

A garment-element is a kind of thing.



Section 2 - Garment

A garment is a kind of garment-element. A garment can be worn. A garment can be transparent. A garment can be underwear. A garment can be openable. A garment can be open or closed. 


Section 3 - Body-part

A body-part is a kind of garment-element. A body-part can be unexpected. [This allows for tattoos as well as more bizarre occurences that you wouldn't expect until you see it... horns, maybe?]



Section 4 - Wrapping it up

Every garment-element has a number called level. The level of a garment is usually 2. The level of a body-part is usually 0.

A body-area is a kind of value.




Chapter 2 - Coverage and visibility

Section 1 - Relating body-areas to things on the body


Placement relates various garment-elements to various body-areas.
The verb to occupy (he occupies, they occupied, it is occupying) implies the placement relation.

To decide whether (x - a garment-element) covers (y - a body-area):
	if x is transparent, no;
	if x occupies y, yes;
	no.

	


Section 2 - Rules for checking visibility

Definition: a thing is being worn if someone is wearing it.


The warderobe rules are an object based rulebook.

A warderobe rule for a garment (called cloth) (this is the don't hide what's not worn rule):
	if the cloth is not being worn, rule succeeds;
	make no decision.

A warderobe rule for a body-part (called flesh) (this is the don't hide naked bodies rule):
	if the holder of the flesh does not wear an opaque garment, rule succeeds;
	make no decision.
	
A warderobe rule for a garment-element (called element) (this is the don't hide outermost attire rule):
	let subject be holder of the element;
	repeat with item running through opaque garments worn by subject:
		if the level of the item is greater than the level of the element, make no decision;
	rule succeeds.

A warderobe rule for a garment-element (called element) (this is the standard hidden attire rule):
	let subject be holder of the element;
	let overlying garment-cover be a list of body-areas;
	repeat with item running through opaque garments worn by subject:
		if the level of the item is greater than the level of the element:
			repeat with gar running through body-areas:
				if the item covers gar, add gar to overlying garment-cover, if absent;
	repeat with area running through body-areas:
		if the element occupies the area and the area is not listed in overlying garment-cover, rule succeeds;
	rule fails.

To decide whether (element - a garment-element) is in sight:
	consider the warderobe rules for the element;
	if rule succeeded, yes;
	no.


	
Section 3 - Finding the clothes that cover
	
To decide which list of garments is garments hiding (area in question - a body-area) on (subject - a person):
	let clothesline be a list of garments;
	repeat with cloth running through opaque garments worn by subject:
		if the cloth covers the area in question, add the cloth to the clothesline;
	sort the clothesline in level order;
	decide on the clothesline.
	
To decide which list of garments is visible garments hiding (area in question - a body-area) on (subject - a person):
	let clothesline be garments hiding area in question on subject;
	if the number of entries in clothesline is at least 2:
		let extra clothesline be a list of garments;
		repeat with cloth running through clothesline:
			consider the warderobe rules for the cloth;
			if rule succeeded, add the cloth to extra clothesline;
		decide on extra clothesline;
	decide on clothesline.
	



Chapter 3 - Accessibility

Section 1 - Relations

General access-permission relates various garments to various body-areas. 

The verb to generally permit access to (he generally permits access to, they generally permit access to, it is generally permitting access to) implies the general access-permission relation.


To decide whether (x - a garment-element) makes (y - a body-area) inaccessible:
	if x generally permits access to y, no;
	if x covers y, yes;
	no.	



Section 2 - Access permission

The access permission rules are an object based rulebook. 

An access permission rule for a garment (called cloth) (this is the don't anchor what's not worn rule): 
	if the cloth is not being worn, rule fails;
	make no decision.

An access permission rule for a garment-element (called element) (this is the don't anchor topmost element rule):
	let subject be the holder of the element;
	repeat with item running through garments worn by subject:
		if the level of the item is greater than the level of the element:
			make no decision;
	rule fails.

An access permission rule for a garment-element (called element) (this is the standard access permission for elements rule):
	let subject be the holder of the element;
	repeat with item running through garments worn by subject:
		if the level of the item is greater than the level of the element:
			repeat with bar running through body-areas:
				if the element occupies the bar: 
					if the item makes the bar inaccessible:
						rule succeeds;
	rule fails.


To decide whether (element - a garment-element) can be affected:
	consider the access permission rules for the element;
	if rule succeeded, decide no;
	yes.



	
Section 2 - Locking down

To decide whether (upper - a garment) locks down (lower - a garment-element):
	repeat with bar running through body-areas:
		if upper makes the bar inaccessible and lower occupies the bar, yes;
	no.

To decide which list of garments is clothes that lock (specific element - garment-element):
	let locklist be a list of garments;
	consider the access permission rules for the specific element;
	if rule succeeded:
		let the subject be the holder of the specific element;
		repeat with item running through garments worn by the subject:
			if the item is not the specific element:
				if the item locks down the specific element, add the item to locklist;
	decide on locklist.

To decide which list of garments is nearest clothes that lock (specific element - garment-element):
	let locklist be a list of garments;
	let locklist be clothes that lock the specific element;
	if the number of entries in the locklist is at least 2:
		let result be a list of garments;
		sort the locklist in level order;
		let desired level be the level of entry 1 of locklist;
		repeat with item running through locklist:
			if the level of the item is the desired level, add item to result;
		decide on result;
	decide on locklist.





	
Chapter 4 - Knowledge (For use with Epistemology by Eric Eve)

A body-part is usually familiar. An unexpected body-part is usually unfamiliar.

The mark items as seen when looking rule is not listed in any rulebook.

Carry out looking (this is the fancy mark items as seen when looking rule): 
	unless in darkness:
		repeat with item running through things that are enclosed by the location:
			if the item is a garment-element:
				consider the warderobe rules for the item;
				if rule succeeded:
					now the item is familiar;
					now the item is seen;
			otherwise:
				if the item is not enclosed by an opaque closed container, now the item is seen.

After actor taking off garment:
	repeat with item running through things that are enclosed by actor:
		if the item is a garment-element:
			consider the warderobe rules for the item;
			if rule succeeded:
				now the item is familiar;
				now the item is seen;
	continue the action.

After disrobing garment (this is the fancy mark items as seen when removing rule):
	unless in darkness:
		repeat with item running through things that are enclosed by the holder of the noun:
			if the item is a garment-element:
				consider the warderobe rules for the item;
				if rule succeeded:
					now the item is familiar;
					now the item is seen;
	continue the action.


Carry out examining visible garment (this is the fancy mark items as seen on examining rule):
	consider the warderobe rules for the noun;
	if rule succeeded:
		now the noun is familiar;
		now the noun is seen;
	otherwise:
		stop the action.



Part 2 - Default action behaviour

Chapter 1 - Concealed

Rule for deciding the concealed possessions of a person:
	if the particular possession is unknown, yes;
	otherwise no.



Chapter 2 - Removing clothes

Section 1 - Disrobing and permissions

Disrobing is an action applying to one touchable thing.


The disrobing permission rules are an object based rulebook.
A disrobing permission rule: rule succeeds.


Rule for implicitly taking something (called cloth) when the cloth is not worn by the person asked and the cloth is worn by a person and the current action is taking off the cloth:
	try disrobing the cloth. 

Check disrobing: 
	let subject be holder of the noun;
	consider the disrobing permission rules for the noun;
	if rule failed, say "[The subject] doesn't concur." instead.

Carry out disrobing: now the noun is in the location of the noun.
Report disrobing: say "You take off [the noun]."












Part 3 - Defining the particulars

Chapter 1 - Body-areas

Head-area, chest-area, belly-area, back-area, arm-area, hand-area, pelvis-area, thigh-area, ankle-area, and foot-area are body-areas.



Chapter 2 - Body-parts

A chest, arms, legs, a butt, and a head are kinds of body-part.
Arms, legs, a butt, a chest, and a head are parts of every person.

Arms and legs are usually plural-named.

Every chest occupies chest-area.
Every breasts occupies chest-area.
Every arms occupies arm-area.
Every legs occupies thigh-area, ankle-area, and foot-area.
Every butt occupies pelvis-area.
Every head occupies head-area.


Chapter 3 - Clothing

A kilt is a kind of garment. Every kilt occupies the pelvis-area and the thighs-area. The level of a kilt is 2.
A bra is a kind of garment. Every bra occupies chest-area. The level of a bra is 1. A bra is underwear.
A pair of panties is a kind of garment. Every pair of panties occupies the pelvis-area. The level of a pair of panties is 1. A pair of panties is underwear.
A suit is a kind of garment. Every suit occupies the pelvis-area, the thighs-area, the chest-area, the arm-area, and the ankle-area. The level of a suit is 3.


Part 3 - Showtime

A persuasion rule for asking someone to try doing something: persuasion succeeds.


Chapter 1 - Room

The Arena is a room. 


Chapter 2 - Player

The chainmail bikini is a pair of panties. The chainmail bra is a bra. The leather armor is a suit.

Sonja is a woman in the Arena. Sonja is wearing the leather armor, the chainmail panties and the chainmail bra. The player is Sonja.


Chapter 3 - NPC

The scale armor is a suit. The loincloth is a kilt.

Conan is a man in the Arena.  Conan is wearing the loincloth and the scale armor.[/code][/spoiler]

Before posting I had to perform some surgery to excise the things that weren't germane to the example. Other things I had no time to get into - for instance, there's no [i]report examining known garment[/i] rule, but it should be trivial to add.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1930&start=0#p12739
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Wearing things in layers (new to I7)
User: araneldon / DateTime: 2011-01-20 09:17:25

Thanks Emerald, fixed the code in the first post.

[quote="Eleas"][quote="araneldon"]Are you willing to share your code? I don't plan to use this in any finished work, it's just something to play with while learning Inform. If something usable were to come out of it, I could make it available as an extension if there's any interest.

I should probably fix the code in the first post somehow, it's very difficult to read without tabs.[/quote]
Gladly. It's a WIP anyway, and it wasn't going anywhere. Bit big for the forum though, and it's probably inelegant, so in order to spare the eyes of purists and aesthetes alike, I'll spoilerize it.[/quote]
Thanks a lot, I'll take a look at it soon.

A moment ago I tried adding a bunch of people to my test scenario and it slowed down even more, which is interesting because they aren't wearing anything. Something is definitely not right with it, I'll have to check how the original WNTW behaves.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1925&start=0#p12740
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: wordplay puzzles
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2011-01-20 09:57:14

Look up [i]Ad Verbum[/i], by Nick Montfort.

BTW, I'm not particularly fond of wordplay [i]puzzles[/i] in IF.  But I'm all for puzzles.  IF without puzzles is simply like a novel where you switch pages by typing "go north" or other silly and useless nonsense.


that said, most n00bs try out different and silly things at the prompt simply either because they 1) are not aware of IF parser's limitations; 2) are facing a particularly evil puzzle; or 3) are plain stupid.  Most puzzles should be self-evident in the context of the story and settings, at least for the best IF out there.  Players should play like an actor:  put themselves in the character shoes.  It's not reasonable to make a priest PC "shoot the merchant" simply because there's a shotgun and merchant nearby or because the player has sadistic tendencies.  Unless of course it's in the context of the story...

Solving good, well-crafted puzzles well integrated in the context of the story are an immensely rewarding experience and makes up for much more immersion of the player in it, he feels like he had some positive influence in its outcome and is not a mere reader of sometimes verbose events...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1891&start=10#p12741
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: I7 port of Crowther's Colossal Cave looking for testers
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2011-01-20 10:20:06

[quote="ChrisC"]
My goal was first to reproduce Crowther's original IF world in its entirety, including output text, without removing all the niceties of a modern parser.[/quote]

cool, a subtle hinting system and auto-mapping feature would be highly regarded for an ancient relic such as this.

now, regarding OUTPUT TEXT, I wish things like that could be taken care by the interpreter.  Gargoyle comes with wonderful text output, but it could have options for ANCIENT ALLCAPS, [i]Fine Blasé[/i] and other styles... kinda like CSS for IF...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1930&start=0#p12742
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Wearing things in layers (new to I7)
User: araneldon / DateTime: 2011-01-20 10:24:17

Apparently a lot of time is spent executing this in "Before wearing something":

let regions-covered-by-noun be the list of garment-regions covered by the archetype of the noun;
[the variable's name is a bit misleading]

I can't see why. Any ideas?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1926&start=0#p12743
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A kind "has a number" causes problems
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-01-20 10:57:54

Technically, I guess this may be a bug in the compiler, but your test code would not lead to a useful game, because you have no way of referring to the number of the foo. If you replace your second sentence with:

A foo has a number called zap.

...the game compiles, and you can refer to the zap of a foo in your code.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1926&start=0#p12744
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A kind "has a number" causes problems
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-20 11:14:53

No, that's a bug, if for no other reason than misleading problem messages.  Interesting that "number" causes a slew of errors, "text" none, and "device" a single irrelevant problem. 

Can you report this at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.inform7.com/bugs/">www.inform7.com/bugs/</a>  please?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1912&start=0#p12745
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I Am Too Sexy For This Forum
User: Merk / DateTime: 2011-01-20 11:21:21

namekuseijin, that's really not called for.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1912&start=0#p12746
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I Am Too Sexy For This Forum
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2011-01-20 11:48:26

ah, moderated and touchy web... even with trolls like Jaceck (or indeed myself), free-speech newsgroups is still best...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1930&start=0#p12747
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Wearing things in layers (new to I7)
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-20 11:48:37

I haven't done any profiling to verify where the slowness is. But eyeballing the code, I see that the covering relation requires doing a graph search through the overlying relation, which is many-to-many. You're calling that a lot. 

I suspect (again, haven't verified) that that list-making command iterates through every garment-region in the game, and does a "covers" test on it. That would probably be slow.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1930&start=10#p12748
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Wearing things in layers (new to I7)
User: araneldon / DateTime: 2011-01-20 12:01:05

Yeah, I figured it out earlier: every person in the game has multiple garment-regions (head, torso, etc), and the code goes through all of them and the clothes, even though it's only necessary to check the "archetypes".

I changed it now and it's much faster, though I'm not sure whether it actually works. I'll update the first post as soon as I have tested it further.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1925&start=0#p12749
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: wordplay puzzles
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-20 12:24:51

I don't know if the source code for [i]Ad Verbum[/i] is available, and anyway it's almost certainly written in Inform 6 (since it came out in 2000 and Inform 7 wasn't publicly available until 2006). Another recent game based on wordplay is [i]Earl Grey[/i], but that also seems to have been written in Inform 6. [i]Under, in Erebus[/i] from this year's comp was a wordplay-based game that was written in Inform 7, and though I don't think the source code is available online you could always politely ask the [url=http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeykiv3/index.html]author[/url] for it. Oh, and Andrew Plotkin's "Escape" is a very short wordplay-based game that's mostly in Inform 7, with publicly available source code [url=http://dhakajack.templaro.com/node/48]here[/url]; but the code is a bit harder to read than usual because it had to fit within a 140-character limit for the purposes of a contest. 

So that's not much help for you. One thing about it is that these games have very different sorts of wordplay-based puzzles, and how their implement probably differs accordingly. [i]Escape[/i] uses a standard Inform action and implements a couple of synonyms for it (not the one I tried, boo hoo, but it's impressive that he got any synonyms implemented in a twitter-length IF). [i]Under, in Erebus[/i] implements its wordplay through standard actions:

[spoiler]you have to get objects that sound like letters, put them in a row of booths, and push a button, and you'll get the word they spell out; a bewildering number of words are implemented.[/spoiler]

My guess is that somewhere in the source code there's an enormous table listing all the possible outcomes.

[i]Earl Grey[/i] relies mostly on a couple of custom verbs that seem like they must have been really hard to implement. And [i]Ad Verbum[/i] has a crazy amount of custom verbs, and some other stuff that I don't remember too well.

So it really depends on what kind of puzzle you want. Now, if all you want to do is "If the player types in this word, something happens," that might not be too hard to implement, like this:

[spoiler][code]"A lad in a cave" by Matt Weiner

The Cave is a room. "A bare cave with a door to the north." Paradise is a room. The magical door is a door. The magical door is scenery. [This means that "You can see a magical door here" won't show up.] The description of the magical door is "The door has no handles, hinges, or any apparent way of opening it. On it is written: 'There is a seed that if said will open me.'" The magical door is north of The Cave and south of Paradise. The magical door is closed.

Sesameing is an action applying to nothing. Understand "sesame" as sesameing. [This is the action that will take place when the player types "sesame."]
Instead of sesameing:
	say "With a puff of smoke the door swings open!";
	now the magical door is open. 
	
Instead of opening the magical door:
	say "There isn't any obvious way to open the door." [We don't want it to be openable by normal means, but I don't want to lock it and have the default "It appears to be locked" message appear, so this should work, I hope.]
	
After going through the magical door:
	end the story finally saying "You have won". [An "instead" rule won't work here, because that'll fire before we check to see if you can actually go through the door.]

[The most fiddly bit may be getting the game to understand "say sesame" as well as "sesame."]
Understand the command "say" as something new. [This is necessary because "say" defaults to the built-in action "answering it that," I think, and we have to remove that understanding in order to get "say" to do what we want.]
Speaking is an action applying to one topic. [A topic is a piece of text from the command that needn't be an object that's present.]  Understand "Say [text]" as speaking. 
Instead of speaking "sesame": try sesameing. [This means that "say sesame" does what "sesame" would do.]
[But we need something to happen when the player types "say cheese."]
Instead of speaking: say "Nothing seems to happen." [This rule won't interfere with the previous one because the previous one is more specific.]

[And if the player just says "poppyseed" they'll get "That's not a verb I recognise." That's bad,  so we can include a catchall command to trap any unrecognized command and treat it as a wrong answer to the riddle.]

Wrong-answering is an action applying to one topic. Understand "[text]" as wrong-answering. [In theory this understands any input as wrong-answering, but since the other rules for understanding text are more specific they'll fire first. That means that, if the command can be understood as anything other than wrong-answering, it will.]
Instead of wrong-answering: say "No, that's not it."

[Or, and this probably would've been better, I could've defined one action to cover both the right answer and the wrong answer.][/code][/spoiler]

It's more of a riddle than a wordplay, but it's maybe the same principle.

BTW, I wouldn't be shy about posting to the I7 forum. I may talk like I know what I'm doing, but I'm basically a noob too. Also, I just look at the unread posts, so I usually don't even notice which board something is posted in.  [emote];)[/emote]

[UPDATE: I just walked my wife through the game -- she doesn't play IF, but she did get the puzzle -- and her reaction was "you scored 0 out of a possible 0?" So the moral is, turn off scoring if you don't use it.]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1893&start=10#p12750
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: CYOA "The Adventures of Phoebe McGee"
User: casmith / DateTime: 2011-01-20 14:04:45

Thanks Tove and Katz for your comments.

Katz, you are right about getting someone else to proofread. One of the great liabilities of creating at chooseyourstory.com is in the editing after creating. If I wrote the entire story and determined its links before working on the website, the proofing would be fairly simple. Unfortunately, my Muse has other ideas as I work. It is very easy to create links and content from within the site. The next time I create a story at CYS, I will be more careful to copy and paste into a "master" text file because there is no single file to examine from the website.

The continuity between games can be problematic as you point out. I do not think there is any way to prevent that feeling of what you refer to as "impotence." All I can tell readers is to play out the first story before continuing to the next. Then I'll have a preface to the second that summarizes what Phoebe did in the first (to achieve success). Some books in a series will do this. So I think a person could actually sidestep the first and go to the second (just like reading the second book in a series). I would advise against this but have no control over that choice.

Some of the plot items (like the dead bird) are dropped or most often given to another character. So they disappear from the inventory when this is done. Perhaps I did not make this clear on those pages.
[quote]Ideally, I should think, the first game would end by giving you a save state that could be loaded into the second game. But that would be just about impossible with any game engine. However, it might be possible to have the first game provide you with a link or URL to the second game, but only if you complete it sufficiently well.[/quote]
Interesting option, Katz. I need to think about how to do this in CYS. Of course, the investment of time to create the first story of about 250 pages might be difficult to repeat. But I have some knowledge of CYS now and Maize and Phoebe are clamoring for continuation. And poor Jake is waiting.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1893&start=10#p12751
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: CYOA "The Adventures of Phoebe McGee"
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-01-20 14:34:00

I understand that the bird etc get given to Maize; the problem, as I see it, is that the items don't seem to do anything important.  You don't get a bird sidekick or a rosary that protects you from evil.  So it doesn't seem to matter to the plot if you pick them up or not.[spoiler]You [i]can[/i] get a bear helper, but it doesn't seem to be that much help.  With and without the bear cub, I ended the Shadowman fight with similar health.[/spoiler]

But regardless you should definitely finish the series.   [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1925&start=0#p12752
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: wordplay puzzles
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-01-20 14:59:31

name, don't talk about noobs.  Everyone has the right to play IF however and at whatever skill level they wish.

That said, however you implement a word puzzle, don't make it a guess-the-verb.  While I would have tremendous respect for anyone who implemented DEFENESTRATE as a synonym for THROW OUT WINDOW, I would hate anyone who actually made you use that particular command instead of a perfectly reasonable synonym.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1931&start=0#p12753
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Real-time input
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-01-20 18:02:42

I know this is a long shot, but: Is there any way to interact with the command being entered while it is being entered?  That is, for the story to respond before the player hits enter?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1926&start=0#p12754
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A kind "has a number" causes problems
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2011-01-20 19:19:56

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]No, that's a bug, if for no other reason than misleading problem messages.  Interesting that "number" causes a slew of errors, "text" none, and "device" a single irrelevant problem. 

Can you report this at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.inform7.com/bugs/">http://www.inform7.com/bugs/</a>  please?[/quote]

[url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=517]Reported[/url], thanks for the assessment.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1931&start=0#p12755
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Real-time input
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-01-20 20:51:37

The answer is no, at least if what you want is to check the content of the command itself before enter is pressed. ...However, it would be possible to fake it. Rather than use the basic "line input", you could revamp Inform's default input routines to use keystroke input instead. Keystroke input is the type of input used to handle "press any key to continue", but instead of "continuing" when a key is pressed, you'd add it to the player's command, print it to the command line, and then restart the input loop. When the player pressed return/enter, you'd stop the loop and tell Inform to process the command as normal. You could then do anything else you wanted to during each loop, such as check for a real-time event, match the developing command to a regular expression, etc. You could even disallow the letter "e", for example, if you wanted the player to have to play like an Oulipian.

My Glulx Input Loops extension would make this process pretty easy--at least if you're using Glulx. If you're targeting z-code, though, you'd have to hack the I6 input loops yourself. There are other significant drawbacks:

1) The player won't be able to paste to the command line.
2) You will need to program arrow key behavior yourself. This isn't hard--I did it for the [url=http://glimmr.wordpress.com/2010/12/12/new-releases-glimmr-form-fields-and-glulx-input-loops/]Glimmr Form Fields[/url] extension--but it would need to be done.
3) Unless you use a grid window, the player won't be able to delete previously typed characters (and again, you'll need to create this functionality yourself).
4) On a slow interpreter or slow device, the player may be able to type faster than the game can handle.

Chances are, you won't think that the functionality you're after is worth the compromises and implementation time. And you're probably right!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1931&start=0#p12756
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Real-time input
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-20 20:59:01

I did something similar in the extension Command Prompt On Cue, which waits for the player to press space to continue reading, or if they start to type something it'll display the command and accept the rest of the input normally. Even on my 1Ghz desktop, I'd lose the 2nd letter to typing speed more often than not.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1931&start=0#p12757
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Real-time input
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-01-20 22:10:42

[quote]The answer is no, at least if what you want is to check the content of the command itself before enter is pressed.[/quote]

With a lot of Glk work you should be able to do this. You can start a timer and when it goes off then call glk_cancel_line_event(). After that the buffer will be filled in with the partially complete command. After doing whatever you like, you could then call glk_request_line_event() specifying that you want to resume input using that same buffer. And you can reset the timer again if you want to keep checking what the player is typing.

This may however result in several partially completed input lines?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1931&start=0#p12758
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Real-time input
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-01-20 23:04:23

Yes, canceling a line event will insert a carriage return--probably very confusing for the player. If you used a grid window for input, you could probably get around the line break (by resetting the cursor), but the timer would probably not be a foolproof solution in any case. 

On the other hand, maybe a timer is what the OP is looking for: I took "real-time" to mean that the input could be checked keystroke by keystroke. (I suppose that it's also possible that the OP is just wondering whether a command can be interrupted by a real-time event. That is definitely possible with Glulx--there's a thread from a few months ago that shows how to do this.)

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1931&start=0#p12759
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Real-time input
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-21 00:17:33

[quote]Yes, canceling a line event will insert a carriage return--probably very confusing for the player.[/quote]

I've designed an Glk update which will allow the game to suppress the carriage return (in buffer windows). I should have it posted this weekend, so that the Mac and Windows interpreters can implement it. (Already implemented in my Quixe sandbox.)

It still won't be completely invisible to the player, though. He might see a hitch in the UI's typing response, and it would probably reset the cursor position.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1932&start=0#p12760
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: PAX East 2011 posts
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-21 00:18:46

Just links:

<a class="postlink" href="http://gameshelf.jmac.org/2011/01/pax-east-2011.html">http://gameshelf.jmac.org/2011/01/pax-east-2011.html</a>

<a class="postlink" href="http://emshort.wordpress.com/2011/01/20/pax-east-2011/">http://emshort.wordpress.com/2011/01/20/pax-east-2011/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1891&start=10#p12761
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: I7 port of Crowther's Colossal Cave looking for testers
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2011-01-21 00:42:33

[quote="namekuseijin"][quote="ChrisC"]
My goal was first to reproduce Crowther's original IF world in its entirety, including output text, without removing all the niceties of a modern parser.[/quote]

cool, a subtle hinting system and auto-mapping feature would be highly regarded for an ancient relic such as this.

now, regarding OUTPUT TEXT, I wish things like that could be taken care by the interpreter.  Gargoyle comes with wonderful text output, but it could have options for ANCIENT ALLCAPS, [i]Fine Blasé[/i] and other styles... kinda like CSS for IF...[/quote]
Actually, the original had a decent hinting system, considering the fairly simple puzzles implemented at the time.

An automapping function has been mentioned before -- what exactly are people looking for from such a thing? Something like Bronze, or just a simple list of exits on the command line?

As for the output text, I agree. I wasn't referring to the formatting so much as getting the phrasing exact to the original. From the start, I took the liberty of converting all the output text to sentence case for my own sanity's sake.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1931&start=0#p12762
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Real-time input
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-01-21 02:10:20

I did mean checking the input character-by-character, and no, that doesn't sound worth it.  Especially since I was looking for a particular command (rather than using it in a particular situation), so I'd have to implement it for the entire game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1891&start=10#p12763
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: I7 port of Crowther's Colossal Cave looking for testers
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-01-21 03:42:56

[quote="ChrisC"]Thanks, I'm interested in hearing your thoughts.[/quote]
So I finally got a chance to get into it. I have PMed you a link to the transcript of my play session. There are some fairly serious problems with basic puzzles like the grate and the dwarves. It's going to be difficult to play through much further until the dwarf situation is fixed, because they just come on like gangbusters. The game just becomes a constant exercise in dwarf management. Also, they come in multiples and that doesn't seem right, although I'm not entirely sure what Crowther did, but these dwarves are far more aggressive and numerous than in Crowther & Woods, and they don't kill right, either. (See my transcript for details.)

Anyway it's fixable and I think you've done a fine job so far and I especially like how you implemented the location-based movement words like BUILDING, GRATE, etc.

Two more general tips I would give is that you need to avoid some negative consequences of grafting the Inform-style parser onto this. In two ways: suppress some standard Inform messages that don't make logical sense in the Adventure environment (again, details in the transcript). Also, no matter how complex the parser gets, IMO, the same old two word commands from the original game should work. I should be able to just type THROW AXE as Colossal Cavers typically do. It took a while to figure out which kill command would work -- they should all work, *especially* the one that originally worked. The same goes for any other puzzle, I'd say. More complex parser is cool but not when it renders the original commands inoperable; then it's just getting in the way of the original experience.

Anyway, these are not judgements, just suggestions -- this is a playtest. Thanks for doing this, and I think if you keep refining it this could be a very valuable thing to have. I for one really enjoyed stumbling around and taking note of what things were not implemented yet by Crowther and which were -- way more fun than picking through the FORTRAN: kudos.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1891&start=10#p12764
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: I7 port of Crowther's Colossal Cave looking for testers
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-01-21 04:17:24

[quote="ChrisC"]An automapping function has been mentioned before -- what exactly are people looking for from such a thing? Something like Bronze, or just a simple list of exits on the command line?[/quote]

If you do end up implementing it - though I agree it's not top priority, or even top-level priority - I'm talking more about a map that completes itself as you play, like in Beyond Zork or Zork Zero. You have an automap extension by Mark Tilford which should make it relatively painless.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1931&start=0#p12765
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Real-time input
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-21 07:11:03

I don't know if this would suit your purposes at all, but some z-code games sometimes force you to input something -- at a certain stage no matter what you type, it turns into the letters of the input the game wants. Probably the quickest way to see this in action is to go to [url=http://www.spatch.net/games/play.cgi?game=ddyte]Pick Up the Phone Booth and Aisle[/url]

[spoiler]and enter "undo" as your first command.[/spoiler]

Obviously this isn't exactly what you're looking for, but would you be able to work it so it accepts the specific command normally, and then the next turn forces your input in this way? It seems like a similar sort of thing that's actually been implemented.

I don't actually know how to code this, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1931&start=0#p12766
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Real-time input
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-01-21 08:57:24

[quote="zarf"]I've designed an Glk update which will allow the game to suppress the carriage return (in buffer windows). I should have it posted this weekend, so that the Mac and Windows interpreters can implement it. (Already implemented in my Quixe sandbox.)[/quote]

Great news--thanks for the new (and ongoing) Glk stuff!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1931&start=0#p12767
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Real-time input
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-01-21 10:55:06

[quote="matt w"]I don't know if this would suit your purposes at all, but some z-code games sometimes force you to input something -- at a certain stage no matter what you type, it turns into the letters of the input the game wants....

I don't actually know how to code this, though.[/quote]

I swear I've seen the code for this somewhere--was it covered in the DM4? Anyway, it's possible that this technique might lead to a z-code solution to katz's question: If you can intervene character-by-character in z-code input to change what's written to the input buffer, it's quite possible that you could also check the buffer character-by-character as she wants to do...

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1893&start=10#p12768
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: CYOA "The Adventures of Phoebe McGee"
User: casmith / DateTime: 2011-01-21 10:58:50

[quote]So it doesn't seem to matter to the plot if you pick them up or not.[/quote]That's a good point Katz. I need to keep this in mind the next time around.

I think all items in a story should have some relevance to how the story unfolds. Every part in the story should be there because it's important. In "Phoebe" some items move a conversation along. Some experiences give courage and/or kindness. (But I think I should make this more clear to the reader.)

My design decision was to make it very difficult for Phoebe to die. I don't want the reader to have to restart or restore because of some bad random die roll. In the next story, I will push that envelop more, create more risk and danger for her and her friends. And if a choice results in death, the result should be poignant.
[spoiler]For an example of me trying to do this, have Phoebe jump out of the tree house.[/spoiler]
I find this process of creating CYOA a lot of fun, especially reading and learning from your comments and those of others. Gads, to do CYOA well someone has to know how to write fiction in small segments that can then be arranged and modified by variables and scripts to become a satisfying outcome. That's a tall order, to do the writing and the programming, like a lineman in football who can do ballet. Hard to be good at both. 
[quote]But regardless you should definitely finish the series. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
Thanks! That's the encouragement I need. And the best of good fortune to you.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1931&start=10#p12769
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Real-time input
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-01-21 11:33:20

The fake-forced-entry trick is a lot easier than what the OP is asking for. "Basic Screen Effects" has an example, "The High Note." It's totally cheating: it prints a prompt character, but it hasn't actually generated a true prompt. Then it waits for keypresses to advance printing the forced command to screen. IIRC, the way to do this in I6 is rather similar.

I don't see a way around it for the purposes of the whole game without some pretty heavy-duty work, as Erik said.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1931&start=10#p12770
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Real-time input
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-01-21 11:47:11

Thanks, Emily--I was hoping this might be one of those rare situations where the z-machine was more flexible than glulx, but no dice!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1931&start=10#p12771
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Real-time input
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-21 12:40:51

[quote="emshort"]The fake-forced-entry trick is a lot easier than what the OP is asking for. "Basic Screen Effects" has an example, "The High Note." It's totally cheating: it prints a prompt character, but it hasn't actually generated a true prompt. Then it waits for keypresses to advance printing the forced command to screen. IIRC, the way to do this in I6 is rather similar.

I don't see a way around it for the purposes of the whole game without some pretty heavy-duty work, as Erik said.[/quote]yin

Yeah. To be clear, I was trying to suggest the fake-forced-entry as a related trick that would require some redesign, but that was actually doable. So if Katz's idea is that the command "feed cat alfalfa" gets replaced with "feed cat cheezburger" as you type, maybe you can't do that, but you can do this:

[quote]>FEED CAT ALFALFA
The cat disdains your pathetic offering.

[Fake forced entry]>FEED CAT CHEEZBURGER
The cat gladly wolfs down the cheezburger that you have so kindly offered.[/quote]

O'course I don't know if what she has in mind is at all conducive to this kind of solution.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1925&start=0#p12772
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: wordplay puzzles
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-21 12:49:39

[quote="katz"]That said, however you implement a word puzzle, don't make it a guess-the-verb.  While I would have tremendous respect for anyone who implemented DEFENESTRATE as a synonym for THROW OUT WINDOW, I would hate anyone who actually made you use that particular command instead of a perfectly reasonable synonym.[/quote]

This is a good point. I think sometimes it might be OK to make people type in the exact word, if there's enough cluing that that word is needed and why other synonyms won't work. Ad Verbum has some puzzles like this. But you'd have to be pretty careful about it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1931&start=10#p12773
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Real-time input
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-01-21 15:01:01

Yeah, I've seen the fake-forced-entry trick (it was used in Blue Chairs, no?), but of course that's something that you use on a specific turn, not through the whole game.

Second best option:  After the command is entered, can I edit the input buffer so that what gets parsed and printed is what I want, as if that was what the player had entered?

IE:  Player enters FEED CAT ALFALFA

Input buffer changes FEED CAT ALFALFA to FEED CAT CHEEZBURGER

Inform prints and parses FEED CAT CHEEZBURGER

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1931&start=10#p12774
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Real-time input
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-01-21 15:14:49

That, at least, is both doable and easy:

[code]After reading a command when the player's command matches "give cat alfalfa":
	change the text of the player's command to "give cat cheezburger";
	say "I think you mean: GIVE CAT CHEEZBURGER. Yeah, let's go with that...";[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1925&start=0#p12775
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: wordplay puzzles
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-01-21 15:45:37

Roughly speaking, I think you should be able to enter anything that accurately represents what you're referring to.  So, if the game environment is the real world, TAKE, GET, PICK UP, etc, all represent the same action and should all work accordingly.  Same with objects: if there's a drinking glass, I should think DRINKING GLASS, GLASS, CUP, etc should all work; since TAKE GLASS and GET CUP clearly are trying to do the same thing, they should both work, even if there's a very clever reason why TAKE GLASS makes much more sense in-game.

But I think it's another thing altogether if you're in some kind of nonstandard environment: a dream, a meta-computer, a surrealist game, or just an abstraction.  In those cases, there might be no other words that represent what you're referring to: the only way to ZERF THE QUIGDERB is to ZERF THE QUIGDERB.

(On the other hand, you can always have a word puzzle that indicates that taking the glass is what you're supposed to do, but then allow you to take the glass using any wording you like.  Telltale's new Back to the Future game, which was great, had a puzzle like this:  There's a character having an argument in another room, and he slips in words hinting at what you're supposed to do next.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1925&start=0#p12776
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: wordplay puzzles
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-01-21 16:19:12

[quote="katz"]In those cases, there might be no other words that represent what you're referring to: the only way to ZERF THE QUIGDERB is to ZERF THE QUIGDERB.[/quote]

See: [i][url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=w5s3sv43s3p98v45]The Gostak[/url][/i].  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1893&start=20#p12777
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: CYOA "The Adventures of Phoebe McGee"
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-01-21 16:39:41

Handling items in a satisfying way is difficult.  In adventure games, though, there's an expectation that all items do something important.  Many adventure games start you with no items and end you with no items, while in between requiring you to pick up every item and then use it somewhere else.  Not that it's the only way to plot a game by any stretch, but it can feel like a letdown if all that happens is "Maize tells you something."

There's an additional problem with having items trigger Maize's conversation cues:  It can make her seem like she's withholding information.  This is a common problem in fiction, I find, especially fantasy:  Good writing should spread out the exposition, but if one character knows so much important stuff, why doesn't she just say so?

[quote]Gads, to do CYOA well someone has to know how to write fiction in small segments that can then be arranged and modified by variables and scripts to become a satisfying outcome. That's a tall order, to do the writing and the programming, like a lineman in football who can do ballet. Hard to be good at both.[/quote]

I know!  I actually was introduced to Inform (which is why I'm here) out of a TVTropes conversation about [i]whether it was possible[/i] to write really good interactive fiction, or whether the varied and conflicting requirements mean that every story will be a compromise.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=429&start=0#p12778
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Vegitarian
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2011-01-21 17:03:23

Another herbivore reporting in here.

I'm almost vegan, and probably would be if I knew how to maintain my body's protein & calcium levels without cheese.

Been a vege all my 41 years, and I've encountered an extraordinary fact: being a vegetarian draws more criticism than being God fearing. 9_9

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=429&start=0#p12779
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Vegitarian
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-01-21 17:36:42

I love meat, eggs, cheese, milk and all the rest.

I don't love our society's unsustainable dependence on high volumes of said products.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=429&start=0#p12780
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Vegitarian
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-01-21 17:52:14

I'm a carnivore. Take away my barbecue and I'll shoot you [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1711&start=0#p12781
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Aurora
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-01-21 17:52:46

If the 4.1 version is the one that just went up on the archive, it seems to have gotten corrupted during upload - I get the following error:

---------------------------
Git Fatal Error
---------------------------
Can't read the Blorb file because it seems to be corrupted.
---------------------------
OK   
---------------------------

I downloaded the file again to make sure it wasn't a problem with my download. Same error.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1925&start=0#p12782
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: wordplay puzzles
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-21 18:35:36

[quote="katz"]Roughly speaking, I think you should be able to enter anything that accurately represents what you're referring to.  So, if the game environment is the real world, TAKE, GET, PICK UP, etc, all represent the same action and should all work accordingly.  Same with objects: if there's a drinking glass, I should think DRINKING GLASS, GLASS, CUP, etc should all work; since TAKE GLASS and GET CUP clearly are trying to do the same thing, they should both work, even if there's a very clever reason why TAKE GLASS makes much more sense in-game.

But I think it's another thing altogether if you're in some kind of nonstandard environment: a dream, a meta-computer, a surrealist game, or just an abstraction.  In those cases, there might be no other words that represent what you're referring to: the only way to ZERF THE QUIGDERB is to ZERF THE QUIGDERB.[/quote]

Well, in Ad Verbum you have a nonstandard environment. In particular -- this isn't very spoilery, and in fact I think is a pretty well-known fact about the game, but under the tag it goes in case you don't want advance notice of the puzzles

[spoiler]there are some rooms where you can only use words starting with a certain letter. And you have to figure out how to pick up an object and leave the room while only using words that start with that letter. So in the S room you can't just type "get spatula [or whatever it is]" even though that's what you want to do. But this is pretty well clued -- every word that the game prints while you're in that room starts with S, so it's easy to see what's going on. And the whole fun of it is seeing how you can do what you want only using S words.[/spoiler]

This probably counts as a non-standard environment, even though what you're trying to do is standard.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1893&start=20#p12783
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: CYOA "The Adventures of Phoebe McGee"
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-21 18:38:55

[quote="katz"]I know!  I actually was introduced to Inform (which is why I'm here) out of a TVTropes conversation about [i]whether it was possible[/i] to write really good interactive fiction, or whether the varied and conflicting requirements mean that every story will be a compromise.[/quote]

Sounds interesting -- do you have a link to the conversation?

casmith, if it's any consolation, I think some linemen do study ballet -- helps with the footwork.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1933&start=0#p12784
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Intelligent Machines in Interactive Fiction
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-01-21 18:48:09

Last year I did honours in English as part of my Bachelor of Arts, and I wrote my dissertation on interactive fiction – specifically, Galatea and A Mind Forever Voyaging. The dissertation discusses the representation of intelligent machines in interactive fiction (surprise surprise), mainly with regards to the characters of Galatea and PRISM/Perry Simm. I looked at issues like choice and free will, true intelligence as opposed to the illusion of intelligence, and – I forget what, it’s been a whole [i]three months[/i] since I handed this thing in. I hoped to use these themes as a means of discussing the peculiarities of IF as a medium; I don’t know how successful I was, but I’d like to think it at least raises some interesting talking points.

I posted a PDF of the dissertation on my blog yesterday, and I can see from the site stats that a few people have already discovered it there. But in case anyone else is interested, I thought I'd post it here as well. So: [url=http://almsbasket.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/dissertation1.pdf]Intelligent Machines in Interactive Fiction[/url]. (I know, it’s not going to win any awards for creative titling.) I suggest you skip the first chapter. It’s only a conventional what’s-this-IF-stuff-anyway-and-where-did-it-come-from summary, and you’ll already know pretty much everything it has to say. The meaty part of the dissertation is in the second and third chapters. If you’re really keen on reading the whole thing, though, at least the first chapter is short.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1711&start=0#p12785
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Aurora
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-01-21 19:33:27

...Huh.  It downloads and fine for me.  This is the second time someone's reported a version of this game being corrupted, but I've never been able to replicate the problem.  Anyone know why this is happening?

(I'm using Windows Glulxe 0.4.6, if that's any help, but I imagine everyone is.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1893&start=20#p12786
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: CYOA "The Adventures of Phoebe McGee"
User: casmith / DateTime: 2011-01-21 19:44:14

Matt,

[quote]I think some linemen do study ballet -- helps with the footwork.[/quote]
How about the reverse? Could learning to be lineman help a ballet dancer? That would make an interesting movie.

Well, maybe not a lineman. More likely a nimble safety.

Katz

[quote]Good writing should spread out the exposition, but if one character knows so much important stuff, why doesn't she just say so?[/quote]
So true. One way to solve this problem is for the primary character to introduce new information in the conversation. Now that I feel more comfortable with what CYS can do for a conversation, I think I can make them more realistic. I also need to move secondary characters around more. Looking forward to trying.

Emily Short has some interesting insights in some of her articles about conversation at <a class="postlink" href="http://emshort.wordpress.com/how-to-play/writing-if/my-articles/conversation/">http://emshort.wordpress.com/how-to-pla ... versation/</a>. I am going to search for more of her work on this issue.

Chuck

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=50#p12787
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-01-22 00:37:46

[quote="Pacian"][quote="emshort"]I've talked to many, MANY people in the last couple years who said some variation of "I love the idea of interactive fiction, but I can't stand the parser."[/quote]
I discussed Walker & Silhouette with some indie game devs while I was working on it, and this was what pretty much each of them said - some of them also referred to having tried to write IF but getting bogged down handling actions they didn't care about.[/quote]
I only recently (well, today actually) played "Ecdysis", a 2007 game by Peter Nepstad:

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=aqtol7ejlzadgnsz">http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=aqtol7ejlzadgnsz</a>

I wasn't aware of the way it presents itself. It's almost identical to Walker & Silhouette, but you don't click on keywords like in W&L, but on words [i]and[/i] sentences. Clicking them executes actual meaningful commands. For example:

"Your side of the bed is [color=#0000FF]soaked with sweat[/color]."

Clicking on "soaked with sweat" results in an automatic FEEL THE BED. I like this approach. It takes absolutely nothing away from traditional IF. Yet new players don't even have to understand the parser but can still experience it and, most importantly perhaps, learn about it. If they see the kind of commands generated by simple clicking, they soon figure out how to step in themselves from time to time if they feel like it.

In my opinion, it's a very smart way to offer a full-blown parser yet unobtrusive ease of use at the same time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1891&start=20#p12788
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: I7 port of Crowther's Colossal Cave looking for testers
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2011-01-22 01:56:25

[quote="Peter Pears"]If you do end up implementing it - though I agree it's not top priority, or even top-level priority - I'm talking more about a map that completes itself as you play, like in Beyond Zork or Zork Zero. You have an automap extension by Mark Tilford which should make it relatively painless.[/quote]

Oh, glulx. Heh, I've never done anything with glulx, and right now it's nice that Adventure can fit into a .z8 file. I'll look into what it would take to add that extension for an alterate glulx release.

[quote="Laroquod"][quote="ChrisC"]Thanks, I'm interested in hearing your thoughts.[/quote]
So I finally got a chance to get into it. I have PMed you a link to the transcript of my play session. There are some fairly serious problems with basic puzzles like the grate and the dwarves. It's going to be difficult to play through much further until the dwarf situation is fixed, because they just come on like gangbusters. The game just becomes a constant exercise in dwarf management. Also, they come in multiples and that doesn't seem right, although I'm not entirely sure what Crowther did, but these dwarves are far more aggressive and numerous than in Crowther & Woods, and they don't kill right, either. (See my transcript for details.)

Anyway it's fixable and I think you've done a fine job so far and I especially like how you implemented the location-based movement words like BUILDING, GRATE, etc.

Two more general tips I would give is that you need to avoid some negative consequences of grafting the Inform-style parser onto this. In two ways: suppress some standard Inform messages that don't make logical sense in the Adventure environment (again, details in the transcript). Also, no matter how complex the parser gets, IMO, the same old two word commands from the original game should work. I should be able to just type THROW AXE as Colossal Cavers typically do. It took a while to figure out which kill command would work -- they should all work, *especially* the one that originally worked. The same goes for any other puzzle, I'd say. More complex parser is cool but not when it renders the original commands inoperable; then it's just getting in the way of the original experience.

Anyway, these are not judgements, just suggestions -- this is a playtest. Thanks for doing this, and I think if you keep refining it this could be a very valuable thing to have. I for one really enjoyed stumbling around and taking note of what things were not implemented yet by Crowther and which were -- way more fun than picking through the FORTRAN: kudos.

Paul.[/quote]Awesome, thanks! Your analysis was exactly what I was looking for. You found a lot of bugs and implementation oversight. I've PMed responses to your comments in the transcript, plus the corrected .z8 file.

The axe originally did nothing in Crowther's version, and trying to throw anything only displayed an error message asking the player to use "drop" or "attack" instead. I've corrected this in the latest version.

I'm divided on how exactly to handle the dwarves, as I mentioned. In Crowther, after the Hall of Mists is reached, the dwarves make a single patrol of main rooms in the cave, following something of a figure-eight path. After that, they get removed from play, at least as far as I understand array out of bounds handling in FORTRAN, and as far as I can tell from the behavior of the dwarves in the compiled executable -- after a given one of them completes his first circuit or is killed, he never seems to appear again.

Wandering around the cave without sign of any adversary at all, it starts to feel very empty, so my choice was to make them loop indefinitely. As you noticed, they can be intense, but that's all true to Crowther's original functionality. To reduce this annoyance factor somewhat, I've chosen in the latest version to add a longer pause at the end and to space them somewhat further apart.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1932&start=0#p12789
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: PAX East 2011 posts
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-01-22 02:53:24

One proposal is for a live collaborative play-through... could that be used for a story's premiere?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1934&start=0#p12790
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Player takes off blindfold, objects in room become visible
User: essell / DateTime: 2011-01-22 04:07:07

Hi peeps, I'm pretty new to Inform 7 - started trying to into it a few days ago. 

I have the player sitting in a room with a blindfold on. There are objects in the room but I don't want to mention them to the player until they take the blindfold off. Can anyone suggest how to stop Inform from automatically describing the objects in the room, when the player is wearing the blindfold?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1934&start=0#p12791
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Player takes off blindfold, objects in room become visib
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-01-22 04:34:55

You could start by making the room dark when the player is wearing the blindfold (see ch. 3.15. in the manual). The player can't see the room description or interact with the objects while the room is dark.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1711&start=0#p12792
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Aurora
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-01-22 05:35:29

What with Git, Gargoyle, Quixe and Filfre, I wouldn't make that assumption automatically.

Incidently, I re-downloaded, just to make sure. Same error. I'm downloading from the feed of the archive. The file is 2.17Mbs. I also tried it with Windows Glulxe, and same error:

---------------------------
Glulxe
---------------------------
This Blorb file seems to be invalid.
---------------------------
OK   
---------------------------

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1711&start=0#p12793
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Aurora
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-01-22 05:50:45

It works just fine for me. (It's a 2.2 MB file, by the way, slightly larger than your corrupted copy.) Have you tried downloading it from a different mirror of the IF Archive? How about clearing your web browser's cache, or using a different browser to download it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1711&start=0#p12794
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Aurora
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-01-22 05:54:12

Works fine here (Gargoyle/Linux).

MD5 of the file is: 0ea8ce47e6dfc836cbb204f8efef318a
2.281.852 bytes.

If you get the same MD5 with your downloaded file, then the download is OK and something else is going on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1711&start=0#p12795
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Aurora
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-01-22 05:58:03

Strange. I re-downloaded from the IFDB link, which links to the archive. Again, a corrupted copy.

But then I downloaded through a mirror (jmac.org), and NOW it works.

Just so it's all clear and sorted out, where have you guys been downloading from? The main archive or a mirror?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1711&start=10#p12796
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Aurora
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-01-22 06:05:15

[quote="Peter Pears"]Strange. I re-downloaded from the IFDB link, which links to the archive. Again, a corrupted copy.

But then I downloaded through a mirror (jmac.org), and NOW it works.

Just so it's all clear and sorted out, where have you guys been downloading from? The main archive or a mirror?[/quote]
<a class="postlink" href="http://ifarchive.heanet.ie/if-archive/games/glulx/Aurora.gblorb">http://ifarchive.heanet.ie/if-archive/g ... ora.gblorb</a>

I guess it might be a good idea to inform whoever runs the mirror you downloaded from that he has corrupt files.

Edit: Oops, you said you downloaded directly from the archive. I just tried to test that right now (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/glulx/Aurora.gblorb">http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/gam ... ora.gblorb</a>) and the file is fine from there too.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1711&start=10#p12797
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Aurora
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-01-22 06:17:34

Then the only theory I have is that, for some reason, downloading different files all named "aurora.gblorb" from the feed of the main archive as they became available (and renaming them as I downloaded them to aurora_.gblorb, aurora__.gblorb and stuff) got my browser screwy.

Nevertheless, I now have the current version. And if it can be considered out of beta for the moment, then I'm *finally* going to play it. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1891&start=20#p12798
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: I7 port of Crowther's Colossal Cave looking for testers
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-01-22 07:16:46

[quote]Oh, glulx. Heh, I've never done anything with glulx, and right now it's nice that Adventure can fit into a .z8 file. I'll look into what it would take to add that extension for an alterate glulx release.[/quote]

I'm not sure what you mean. If you use GLimmr, yes, it's Glulx only. But Tilford's extension works just as well in ZCode, as he proves in "Goldilocks is a FOX!".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1891&start=20#p12799
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: I7 port of Crowther's Colossal Cave looking for testers
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-01-22 07:36:55

[quote="ChrisC"]I'm divided on how exactly to handle the dwarves, as I mentioned. In Crowther, after the Hall of Mists is reached, the dwarves make a single patrol of main rooms in the cave, following something of a figure-eight path. After that, they get removed from play, at least as far as I understand array out of bounds handling in FORTRAN, and as far as I can tell from the behavior of the dwarves in the compiled executable -- after a given one of them completes his first circuit or is killed, he never seems to appear again.

Wandering around the cave without sign of any adversary at all, it starts to feel very empty, so my choice was to make them loop indefinitely. As you noticed, they can be intense, but that's all true to Crowther's original functionality. To reduce this annoyance factor somewhat, I've chosen in the latest version to add a longer pause at the end and to space them somewhat further apart.[/quote]

Wow, that's such a different behaviour than any version of Adventure that I've played! All Woods' doing I guess.

Could you have two modes, a Faithful mode and a Player's mode (pick your own names) which would allow you to choose whether you want the port to remain as faithful as possible to Crowther's original, or one with a few slight changes which make it nicer in general (such as changing the dwarf rate.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1935&start=0#p12800
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Question about relations
User: Birion / DateTime: 2011-01-22 10:51:08

Hi, I'm stuck again.

I've been trying to make a simple market setup, but the following code keeps bugging on me. [emote]:([/emote]

[code]

A shop owner is a kind of person.
The printed name of a shop owner is "[merchandise sold by the shop owner] shop owner".

A merchandise is a kind of thing.

Selling relates a shop owner to a merchandise.

The verb to sell (he sells, they sell, he sold, he is selling, he has sold) implies the selling relation.

The verb to be sold by implies the reversed selling relation.

A fruit is a kind of merchandise.

Marek is a shop owner in Market.
Marek sells fruit.
[/code]

Apparently, [merchandise sold by the shop owner] is a description of merchandises (whatever that actually means) and it describes items too vaguely and therefore cannot be said.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1935&start=0#p12802
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about relations
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-01-22 12:46:55

Not bad. Your code was essentially correct. The basic problem is pretty common, and stems from the fact that Inform 7  (at least at the moment of writing) fails to infer that the possible merchandises sold by a shop are one and only one at any given time.

Therefore, we add "a random" before "merchandise." It looks sort of silly, but that's how it works. I suspect the reason is that in your code I7 tries to look for [i]a thing named[/i] "a merchandise," rather than [i]a thing of the merchandise kind[/i].

[code]A shop owner is a kind of person.
The printed name of a shop owner is "[a random merchandise sold by the shop owner] shop owner".

A merchandise is a kind of thing.

Selling relates a shop owner to a merchandise.

The verb to sell (he sells, they sell, he sold, he is selling, he has sold) implies the selling relation.

The verb to be sold by implies the reversed selling relation.

A fruit is a kind of merchandise.

The Market is a room.
Marek is a shop owner in Market.
Marek sells fruit.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1935&start=0#p12803
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about relations
User: Birion / DateTime: 2011-01-22 13:24:22

Great, thanks, that works. Unfortunately, it leads to another problem, since now I can't refer to the fruit shop owner as the fruit shop owner, since it doesn't recognise "fruit", and [merchandise sold by the shop owner] (with or without random) doesn't seem to be a valid token for Understanding.

...

Er, no, actually, it doesn't work. It only works correctly with one shop owner and one merchandise, but with more of either, it goes haywire. I just checked and poor Marek with his apples and bananas is called a weaponry shop owner while Saheem, who sells swords and maces, is a fruit shop owner. I'm thinking it needs some kind of When play begins loop?

Something like

[code]
When play begins:
	repeat with X running through shop owners:
		now the printed name of X is "a [merchandise sold by X] shop owner";
[/code]

except the [merchandise sold by X] seems to be problematic again.

EDIT: And just to be clear, I wasn't being sarcastic. I truly thought it was working (it just incidentally named the owners correctly, and since I couldn't examine them to see what they were selling, it looked all right), but then I thought to showme one of them on the next compile and found out about the problem. So, to Eleas: I was really grateful for your quick response.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1935&start=0#p12804
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about relations
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-01-22 13:58:59

It's doable. Well, I'm a bit woozy from meds so it may be I'm not at my best right now. The following code should do the trick, but if you do decide to use it, don't take my drugged-up word for it as being gospel. [emote]:)[/emote]

One thing to remember is that just as you won't be able to refer to "thing" (as in 'x thing') to match every thing in scope, so will the shop owner kind not automatically refer to a shop owner. We need to add that, and then just do a relation-based understand statement.

[code]
A shop owner is a kind of person. Understand "shop owner" or "seller" or "merchant" as a shop owner.

After printing the name of a shop owner (called subject): say " ([the random merchandise sold by subject] shop owner)".

A merchandise is a kind of thing.

Selling relates a shop owner to a merchandise.
The verb to sell (he sells, they sell, he sold, he is selling, he has sold) implies the selling relation.

The verb to be sold by implies the reversed selling relation.

Understand "[something related by selling]" as person. 

A fruit is a kind of merchandise.
A tool is a kind of merchandise.

The Market is a room.
Marek is a shop owner in the Market.
John is a shop owner in the Market.
Marek sells fruit.
John sells tools.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1935&start=0#p12805
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about relations
User: Birion / DateTime: 2011-01-22 14:50:31

Now it works perfectly. Thanks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1935&start=0#p12806
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about relations
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-22 17:24:12

[code]
The printed name of a shop owner is "[a random merchandise sold by the shop owner] shop owner".
[/code]

The right way to do the above:


[code]
The printed name of a shop owner is "[a random merchandise sold by the item described] shop owner".
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1932&start=0#p12807
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: PAX East 2011 posts
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-22 17:30:41

I think not for a *brand-new* game. We'd want to have played it already, to be sure the game will work well in that setup. It could be the first *public* release of a game, though.

We haven't discussed the game choice at all, yet.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1911&start=0#p12808
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Routes through the map
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-01-22 19:49:25

I'm working on Zahariel's solution; the code is as simple as this:

[code]To decide which room is near (R - a gorge room) to the (D - a direction):
	let x be the latitude of R;
	let y be the longitude of R;
	if D is north:
		now global-x is x;
		now global-y is y - 1;
		if global-y > 0:
			decide on a random x-y-correct room;
	otherwise if D is south:
		now global-x is x;
		now global-y is y + 1;
		if global-y < 11:
			decide on a random x-y-correct room;
	otherwise if D is east:
		now global-x is x + 1;
		now global-y is y;
		if global-x < 9:
			decide on a random x-y-correct room;
	otherwise if D is west:
		now global-x is x - 1;
		now global-y is y;
		if global-x > 0:
			decide on a random x-y-correct room.[/code]

But there's a big problem.  If the room is on the edge of the map, there's nothing in one direction.  But I can't make inform decide on nothing.  Suggestions?

And why are there such limitations to when and where the "nothing" object can be used?  I've found several situations where I wanted to use it but couldn't.

P.S. for Erik:  A good idea, except that the connections are generated automatically, and automatically placing doors would be very tricky indeed!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1911&start=10#p12809
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Routes through the map
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-01-22 20:11:02

Try "To decide which [b]object[/b] is near (R - a gorge room) to the (D - a direction)"--the nothing object is not a room, which I think is what triggers the run-time error.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1891&start=20#p12810
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: I7 port of Crowther's Colossal Cave looking for testers
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2011-01-22 20:34:16

For those interested, the original dwarf patrol route is Dirty Passage, Low N/S Passage, Hall of Mountain King, West Side Chamber, Crossover, East End of Long Hall, West End of Mists, West of Fissure, East of Fissure, Hall of Mists, Hall of Mountain King, Low N/S Passage, Dirty Passage, nowhere, nowhere, nowhere.

I could go with a more accurate/more playable split chosen at the beginning of the game, say, but that would make my job a lot more difficult. I've basically had to decide whether to keep the implementation minimal or allow the more powerful Inform library to smooth out the rough edges with every single thing, room, action, and block of logic. Generally, the physical world model -- especially room connections, except when they crashed the game -- is as close to the original as possible, while more abstract concerns like gameplay and the flexibility offered by the more powerful parser has in some cases led me to compromise the faithfulness of the port. Especially when Crowther didn't implement any error message that explains how a thing should be accomplished, I've generally leaned towards the side of greater permissiveness, hopefully to be more in line with what a modern IF player has come to expect. 

Splitting like you propose would almost require me to duplicate the entire game, to determine exactly which side of the line I've implemented already in every single block of code, and then to add the other one. I'm not sure if that would be worthwhile.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1936&start=0#p12811
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Glk spec 0.7.1 (and cheapglk, glkterm, glkote, quixe)
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-22 21:31:51

The new Glk spec is posted: <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glk/">http://eblong.com/zarf/glk/</a>

The changes are all described at <a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/erkyrath/glk-dev/wiki/Glk-071-draft-spec-changes">https://github.com/erkyrath/glk-dev/wik ... ec-changes</a> . They're minor features, but it's good to have them all in place.

I have also updated the glkterm and cheapglk libraries (now version 1.0, after only twelve years?)

And also the glkote library and the quixe interpreter: <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/</a>

You can test these new features by looking at the unit tests listed on the Glulx page. In particular, you can test window borders by going to 

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quixe/play-remote.html?story=stories/windowtest.ulx.js">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quix ... est.ulx.js</a>

...and typing "open" (to see a default status line), then "close", then "open noborder".

To test the input echoing and line terminator features, go to

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quixe/play-remote.html?story=stories/inputfeaturetest.ulx.js">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quix ... est.ulx.js</a>

...and try the commands therein. In particular, see the difference in the "timer" command between "echo" and "noecho" mode. Then type "terminate", and hit some function keys, again in "echo" and "noecho" mode.

When new interpreters come out, you can test them with the same unit tests to verify they have the same behavior.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1936&start=0#p12812
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk spec 0.7.1 (and cheapglk, glkterm, glkote, quixe)
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-01-22 22:04:14

Very nice!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1937&start=0#p12813
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Consulting it about with a table
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2011-01-22 23:41:28

This code won't compile:
[code]"Encyclopedia"

The computer room is a room.  "There are many computer terminals here."
The terminals are scenery in the computer room.
Instead of examining the terminals, say "You were never very good with these things, but one of them has a web browser open to Wikipedia."
Understand "wikipedia" or "wiki" or "terminal" as the terminals.

Table 2 - Table of Wikipedia
topic						Content
"twitter"					"You read a lengthy article about Twitter."
"facebook"					"You read an article about Facebook.  Important game-finishing info would go here."

Instead of consulting the terminals about a topic listed in the Table of Wikipedia (this is the wikipedia rule):
	Say "[content entry][paragraph break]".
Report consulting the terminals about:
		Say "You find nothing of interest."[/code]

It's complaining that "consulting the terminals about a topic listed in the Table of Wikipedia" "doesn't make sense as an action."  Why not?

(NB: this is table 2 since in the actual work there already is a table 1.  And yes I have tried compiling [i]exactly[/i] the code shown above.)

Almost exactly the same type of instead rule is used in Example 94 in the documentation ("Costa Rican Ornithology").  What mistake have I made?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1911&start=10#p12814
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Routes through the map
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2011-01-22 23:51:29

Is it possible to "decide on nowhere"?  I think it might be, but the Index doesn't seem to support my theory.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=50#p12815
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-01-23 03:43:17

Ecdysis was a big influence on me, but the issue I found with this style of game is that there seems to be a limited interest in supporting hyperlinks in interpreters (your QTADS is one of the exceptions).  When I see a review of Ecdysis, I know it will fall into one of two camps: those who played it with hyperlinks and found it to be a smooth ride - and those who played it without hyperlinks and can't understand why people are enjoying such a sparsely implemented, poorly clued game.

Assuming that you can jump that hurdle (e.g. by releasing the game through Quixe), I think you're absolutely right.  This is a great way to teach newbies how to form IF commands, while allowing them to progress through a game while they do so.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1937&start=0#p12816
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Consulting it about with a table
User: StJohnLimbo / DateTime: 2011-01-23 03:54:47

This works:
[code]Instead of consulting the terminals about a topic listed in Table 2 (this is the wikipedia rule):
	Say "[content entry][paragraph break]".[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1937&start=0#p12817
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Consulting it about with a table
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-01-23 04:36:01

The "table of" part in the table definition is superfluous, so if you name it "Table 2 - Wikipedia" you can refer to it as "table of Wikipedia". Now it works if you refer to it as "table of table of Wikipedia" which would be kind of silly.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=50#p12818
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-01-23 06:45:21

Pretty much all of the glulx interpreters support hyperlinks (aside from those designed for terminals). For typed keywords on any system, though, you could use the same interface used for supplying a inferred noun to show the player the whole command:

[quote][b]Kitchen[/b]
There is a [color=#0000FF]plate[/color] of kung pao chicken here.

>plate
(TAKE PLATE)
You swipe the steaming plate of kung pao chicken.[/quote]

The new [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1936]glulx feature[/url] that allows you to replace the text on the command line would be another option; perhaps something similar is also possible in TADS?

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=50#p12819
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-01-23 06:53:49

I prefer how Ecdysis does this:

[quote][b]Kitchen[/b]
There is a [color=#0000FF]plate[/color] of kung pao chicken here.

>Take plate.
You swipe the steaming plate of kung pao chicken.[/quote]

"Take plate" will appear on the statusline when the mouse is hovered over "plate", so you don't have to click first to know the command that will be generated.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=50#p12820
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-01-23 07:01:45

It would be kind of cool if this happened as a tooltip in browser-based terps. I don't know how hard that would be to generate, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=50#p12821
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-01-23 07:06:59

Unfortunately, the hovering effect you describe is next to impossible with Glulx games: Hover behavior is not a feature of the VM, and even if your interpreter/Glk library shows a tooltip over the link on hover (as Zoom/CocoaGlk does), Glk represents the link as a number--and that number, which is pretty much useless to the player in nearly every situation, is what appears in the tooltip. It's possible that with Quixe you could do better by using javascript to tack a title attribute on the <a> elements as they are displayed, but I'm not familiar enough with Quixe's internals (or the prospective javascript-game interface) to know how feasible this would be for the average game author at present.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1911&start=10#p12822
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Routes through the map
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-01-23 07:12:27

[quote="NYKevin"]Is it possible to "decide on nowhere"?  I think it might be, but the Index doesn't seem to support my theory.[/quote]

No, because "nowhere" is not itself a room--it's a description of a room. "Nothing," on the other hand, [i]is[/i] an object, and can be decided upon safely as long as the decision's outcome is specified as an object.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=50#p12823
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-01-23 07:22:44

This is actually not a feature of the TADS VM. It's during output that the text gets parsed. For example, the above is achieved by the game by printing this:

[code]<a href="Take the plate">plate</a>[/code]

The HTML Parser (and not the VM) will then print "plate" in the game window, make that word clickable, and generate a "Take the plate" command when the player clicks it and also show it in the statusline when the mouse is hovered over "plate."

I suppose that to duplicate this with Inform, it would need to go into Glk (output layer), not Glulx (VM).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=50#p12824
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-01-23 07:57:04

Well, the hyperlink system's usability would be narrowed if the Glk layer [b]insisted[/b] on treating links as texts to be entered on the command line. Currently, hyperlinks can represent anything that the author wants them to: the game just needs to convert the number returned into the appropriate value and do something with it. Most often authors do want a link to insert a given piece of text at the command line followed by a terminator--but certainly not always.

If hyperlink tooltips were added to Glk, one way it could be done is with an optional argument to glk_set_hyperlink that would display the tooltip on hover, while the absence of the argument would suppress the tooltip.

[code]glk_set_hyperlink(12, "TAKE KUNG PAO CHICKEN");
glk_set_hyperlink(12, HyperlinkTip(12) );
[/code]

This would have a minimal impact on the current functionality.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1912&start=0#p12825
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I Am Too Sexy For This Forum
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-01-23 08:22:35

"IF without puzzles is simply like a novel where you switch pages by typing "go north" or other silly and useless nonsense."

This is no doubt a very profound sentiment you're sharing with us, kiddo. Of course, pages are not "switched." They are turned. You'd have known that, had you ever read a book.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1912&start=0#p12826
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I Am Too Sexy For This Forum
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-01-23 08:50:30

You can't type "go north" in a novel either, so I guess page switching doesn't refer to the novel itself, but to puzzleless, novel-like, page-switching IF.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1937&start=0#p12827
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Consulting it about with a table
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2011-01-23 09:08:59

[quote="Juhana"]The "table of" part in the table definition is superfluous, so if you name it "Table 2 - Wikipedia" you can refer to it as "table of Wikipedia". Now it works if you refer to it as "table of table of Wikipedia" which would be kind of silly.[/quote]

Thanks, that fixed it.  I don't know why I added the "table of" stuff, I didn't in the other table.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1911&start=10#p12828
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Routes through the map
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-01-23 11:01:20

[quote="ektemple"][quote="NYKevin"]"Nothing," on the other hand, [i]is[/i] an object, and can be decided upon safely as long as the decision's outcome is specified as an object.[/quote][/quote]
I don't think this is true. In Inform 6, the DM4 is quite specific in saying, "Nothing is not an object." When I compile a test I7 game and look in the index, there is no object called "nothing," and 'showme nothing' does not respond by displaying the properties of a nothing object.

Also, the line, "Understand "zilch" as nothing" won't compile. If nothing were an object, I would expect it to compile normally.

--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1911&start=10#p12829
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Routes through the map
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-01-23 11:14:17

[quote="Jim Aikin"][quote="ektemple"][quote="NYKevin"]"Nothing," on the other hand, [i]is[/i] an object, and can be decided upon safely as long as the decision's outcome is specified as an object.[/quote][/quote]
I don't think this is true. In Inform 6, the DM4 is quite specific in saying, "Nothing is not an object." When I compile a test I7 game and look in the index, there is no object called "nothing," and 'showme nothing' does not respond by displaying the properties of a nothing object.

Also, the line, "Understand "zilch" as nothing" won't compile. If nothing were an object, I would expect it to compile normally.

--JA[/quote]

Let's amend what I said to "[i]for these purposes[/i], 'nothing' is of the [i]object kind[/i]". 'Nowhere' is just a description, so you can't "decide on nowhere" any more than you can "decide on visited rooms". Nothing, on the other hand, is a special-case value (object number 0) which Inform 7 treats as a valid object reference in certain circumstances, though it can't be assigned properties or do many of the other things that standard objects can do; again, it is valid to "decide on nothing" if the outcome of your phrase is of the kind object. Here are some perfectly valid phrases that treat "nothing" as an object:

[code]To decide which number is the ID of (O - an object):
	(- {O} -)
	
To decide which object is the Almighty:
	decide on nothing.
	
When play begins:
	say "The Almighty is [the Almighty]: [ID of nothing]."[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=50#p12830
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-23 12:31:55

Thanks for pointing out this aspect of the hyperlink model. I hadn't thought about tooltips / visible targets.

Getting strings out through the API is a nuisance, but it's clearly useful in more than one situation (arbitrary style names, for example). I will think more about this.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=60#p12831
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-01-23 15:11:13

Does that mean your HTML extensions are also like to have number rather than string IDs?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1938&start=0#p12832
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Creating a network of verbs
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2011-01-23 15:21:30

Say I want to make an AI system in which Alice sees Bob take action C, and performs action D in response. Yes, I can write a single "after Bob C-ing in the presence of Alice: add the action of Alice D-ing to the action queue of Alice" or similar, but that's not ideal. I want the same action to have different responses in different conditions. Any ad-hoc system like that will quickly become impossible to maintain as the number of verbs and actors handled increases. 

My question really is, how can I make a modular, easily extensible verb-response system? I'd like to have some simple ways to define connections between verbs, and conditions on actions, so that the system can be extended indefinitely. Most responses will require the reactor to be in the same location as the actor, for instance, but not all; and some would not be caused by any preceding verb, but rather by some other condition.

I get the feeling that I want to make a rulebook, or several rulebooks -- one for linking one verb to its responses in all the different conditions, another for deciding how to populate that response with its noun, second noun, third noun, etc. as necessary. I've never made my own rulebook yet; am I on the right track?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1919&start=20#p12833
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Brainstorm: Survival Stuff
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-01-23 16:30:04

I was skimming and may have missed it ... but I didn't see any mention of the danger of wild animals. A rifle and spear were mentioned, but of course there are other dangers, such as poisonous insects, that are not so easy to shoot. Nor will a rifle do you much good if you're being trampled to death by a herd of large herbivores.

Also, has anybody mentioned stout hiking boots and a couple of extra pairs of socks? Much more important than soap, IMO.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1938&start=0#p12834
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating a network of verbs
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-23 16:38:35

Sounds like you want something like[code]Every turn, consider the when reacting to rules. 
The when reacting to rules are a rulebook. 
[/code]And then write whatever.[code]When reacting to someone examining the vase when in the presence of Xia, say "'Nice, isn't it?  Very old, too.'"
[/code] And so on. 

If the reaction is to change at runtime and you don't or can't code the conditions beforehand in a rule, well, a table with a text column might be a partial answer.  But you can't construct action descriptions like [i]someone that is angry with the actor[/i] during play.  And you can't stick a condition directly into a table column anyway, so in some senses you must hard code some things.   Hence, back to the plain-jane rulebook.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=60#p12835
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-23 18:11:00

That was the original plan from a year ago. (Although that assumed some language support so that the I7 end user wouldn't be writing code with numbers.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1936&start=0#p12836
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk spec 0.7.1 (and cheapglk, glkterm, glkote, quixe)
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-23 23:56:43

Turns out there was a bug in my glk_buffer_canon_normalize_uni() algorithm. *And* in the unit test (I misunderstood the Unicode spec, and then wrote the C code, the Javascript code, and the unit test all wrong in the same way).

I've uploaded a new, corrected unicasetest, but the interpreters are still buggy. So if you run the new test with my interpreters, you'll see errors now.

I have a fix for Quixe, but it's only on github right now. I'll fix cheapglk and glkterm tomorrow. I won't release updated interpreters right away, since I was planning to get the next small API bump out in the next few week. In the meantime, don't copy my stupid mistakes. :)

Thanks to David Fletcher for catching this.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1939&start=0#p12837
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: 2 characters play through 2 games in one environment
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-01-24 02:10:55

Hi. I'm a short time reader, first time seeker of wisdom.

I'm learning Inform and trying to work out broadly what would be the best approach to deliver a game idea I have. I don't know all the mechanisms there are (far from it) so you might come up with a whole one I don't even know of yet.

In the game, you start as character A and play through the game in a particular environment. If you get through that, I want to give you the opportunity to go back and play character B in the same situation, and thus which in story terms occurs over the same period of time as character A's adventures.

I understand I can handle the character switch with the viewpoint character mechanism and a bunch of alternatives in programming where necessary. It also looked to me that the main way you would handle the resetting of the props on the playfield (which will be slightly different for character B) would be via the scene mechanism. So each character's game would be a scene, with everything and everyone moved into place when the scene begins.

What I can't work out is - how do I 'flush' the game's memory when you switch from character A to B or vice versa? For instance, won't things like handled flags persist from scene to scene? I can get my head around manually resetting stuff I programmed myself at scene change, but things like 'handled' are built into Inform.

Just on the 'handled' topic, does inform keep track of this flag separately for different persons?

So I'm looking for the equivalent of a game baseline initialisation routine for both characters, followed by the execution of the specific playfield setup for either character, A or B, every time you start a game with a new character. Thanks for any help.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1911&start=10#p12838
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Routes through the map
User: zahariel / DateTime: 2011-01-24 03:36:43

The problem with "decide on nothing" in these situations is that it's translated into I6 in exactly the same way as "make no decision." Which is silly, but there you go. Presumably it's something to do with how this works in I6, which I'm not familiar with.

Take a look at how Reliques does the labyrinth. As you discovered, you can't decide on nothing when trying to figure out what room is north of here, so instead make a special non-room (I think the Solid Rock room was used for this purpose in Reliques) and decide on that. Then you can check for it later (If the room near the location to the north is Solid Rock, say "There ain't nothing that way, just rock!" instead.)

To a programmer (like me) this is called the "null object pattern"; it's especially useful when you're doing some kind of inheritance-based data structure (like say a binary-or-ternary tree, I don't know why you'd need such a thing but you can do it if you want). You make the Empty object that replaces null at the bottom of your structure, which behaves more or less like null but understands all the behaviors you want your tree to support. That way you can get rid of a lot of null-detection code in the behaviors of the actual objects. In this case you make the Solid Rock room, which shows up whenever you ask for a room that doesn't exist. It's a real room for language and engine purposes, but at the game logic level it's a fake object you can easily detect.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1912&start=10#p12839
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I Am Too Sexy For This Forum
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-01-24 04:26:32

"Switch" implies a binary-type situation, like switching seats or husbands switching wives or switching the lights on and off. It doesn't adequately describe turning pages, nor is it an adequate description of text scrolling on a computer screen. No matter how you look at it,"switching pages" is very awkward, unidiomatic English. Unidiomatic diction is the most common weakness one finds in the prose of untalented writers. Which is what makes this thing so ironic. Here's a guy preaching to IF writers how to write good IF and he delivers his sermon in Neanderthal English.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1912&start=10#p12840
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I Am Too Sexy For This Forum
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-01-24 04:43:48

Excuse me for butting in like this, but wouldn't it be better to address the sentiment he exposes in his signature, rather than be overly picky about the way he stated it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1911&start=10#p12841
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Routes through the map
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-01-24 09:54:11

[quote="zahariel"]The problem with "decide on nothing" in these situations is that it's translated into I6 in exactly the same way as "make no decision." Which is silly, but there you go. Presumably it's something to do with how this works in I6, which I'm not familiar with.[/quote]

Well, not exactly. "Decide on nothing" yields [i]return nothing[/i] (the nothing object) in I6, whereas "make no decision" yields [i]return false[/i]. I guess both of those evaluate to "return 0" at some level, but not really in a way that's meaningful to I7. "Decide on nothing" returns the nothing pseudo-object in I7, while "make no decision" is just illegal in phrases that return a value. The only real issue with returning "nothing" from a phrase to decide a value is that it needs to be of the kind "object", so nothing will throw a run-time error when the outcome of your phrase is more specific than object. Luckily, it's not often that the result really [i]needs[/i] to be more specific, so widening the scope of what can be returned can be a good way to make use of the null object.

[quote="zahariel"]Take a look at how Reliques does the labyrinth. As you discovered, you can't decide on nothing when trying to figure out what room is north of here, so instead make a special non-room (I think the Solid Rock room was used for this purpose in Reliques) and decide on that. Then you can check for it later (If the room near the location to the north is Solid Rock, say "There ain't nothing that way, just rock!" instead.)[/quote]

You can do this, of course, but it isn't really necessary in the situation that the OP shared with us. If you have a decide phrase that returns a value, such as the one we've been talking about, which begins like this:

[code]To decide which object is near (R - a gorge room) to the (D - a direction):[/code]

...then the result returned will either be a room (see the code as katz posted it), or the nothing pseudo-object. You can then test which was returned using either "if X is nothing" or "if X is a room"--and thus there's no need for you to create your own null object. Now, there are situations where you might need your own null room (you want your null to have properties, or you need to return a strict room value from your phrase, for example), but on the basis of what we've seen so far, that isn't necessary here.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1940&start=0#p12842
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: More hassles with "does the player mean"
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-24 10:12:29

I'm still trying. I really want this to work. But I still can't get "does the player mean" to do what I want. Here's a bizarre situation:

[code]Kitchen is a room.

Freezer is a room.

The steel door is a door. It is lockable. It is west of the Kitchen and east of the Freezer.

A steel key is in Kitchen. The steel key unlocks the steel door.

The player carries a chef's knife and a beef tenderloin.

The carrying capacity of yourself is 2.

Does the player mean locking or unlocking the steel door with the steel key: it is very likely.

test me with "lock door/drop knife/lock door"[/code]
[quote]>[1] lock door
(with the steel key)
(first taking the steel key)
You're carrying too many things already.

>[2] drop knife
Dropped.

>[3] lock door
(with the beef tenderloin)
That doesn't seem to fit the lock.

>[/quote]
I've tried adding other "does the player mean" rules, and I've tried using a couple rules from Disambiguation Control, but nothing seems to make a difference. How can I get the game to ALWAYS choose the steel key?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1940&start=0#p12843
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More hassles with "does the player mean"
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-01-24 10:20:46

The grammar for the locking action specifies that it applies to a [i]carried thing[/i], and it seems that Inform thus looks only at the player's inventory for potential disambiguation matches. One solution would be to hack the grammar for the command so that it could apply equally to carried or visible things.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1939&start=0#p12844
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 characters play through 2 games in one environment
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-24 10:21:34

I had a similar situation in a project I worked on, and the way I dealt with it was to avoid initializing things with declarative phrases.

e.g. instead of saying "The croquet ball is in the Game Room," I'd say:

[code]
A scene can be episodic. Playing As A is an episodic scene. Playing As A begins when play begins. Playing As B is an episodic scene. Playing As B begins when Playing As A ends.

When an episodic scene begins:
    Now the croquet ball is in the Game Room.
[/code]

That will take care of most circumstances. You may also have to add a few lines like "now everything is not handled," but don't feel intimidated - you can always fix problems like that one at a time.

You may have to avoid tricks like blanking out table rows or saying "[one of]....[stopping]," since those can't be reset.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1940&start=0#p12845
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More hassles with "does the player mean"
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-01-24 10:25:33

In this instance, add the following two lines:

[code]Understand "lock [something] with [steel key]" as locking it with.
Understand "unlock [something] with [steel key]" as unlocking it with.[/code]

In the general case, where you have a lot of keys: make a "key" kind, and use

[code]Understand "lock [something] with [a key]" as locking it with.
Understand "unlock [something] with [a key]" as unlocking it with.[/code]

What's happening in your situation is that some of Inform's internal disambiguation rules are firing in an order that overcomes your own disambiguation rules. It's trying to match against a carried object in the player's hand, and when there's only one of those, it doesn't check does the player mean to further grade carried objects vs uncarried objects; it just chooses the tenderloin.

A way to get around this is to make a more specific grammar line. Because "a key" or "the steel key" is more specific than "a preferably held thing", Inform will try to match the grammar lines to do with keys first. Only when those failed would it go to trying out the tenderloin. So the player can still type UNLOCK DOOR WITH BEEF if he's sufficiently hard-headed, but Inform won't assume that any more.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1940&start=0#p12846
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More hassles with "does the player mean"
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-24 10:30:44

[quote="emshort"]In this instance, add the following two lines:

[code]Understand "lock [something] with [steel key]" as locking it with.
Understand "unlock [something] with [steel key]" as unlocking it with.[/code]
[/quote]
That looks like it will do fine. Thanks!

So the first command worked because once disambiguation was triggered, the [carried] token wasn't considered any more?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1939&start=0#p12847
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 characters play through 2 games in one environment
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-01-24 11:29:11

[quote="capmikee"]instead of saying "The croquet ball is in the Game Room," I'd say:

[code]
A scene can be episodic. Playing As A is an episodic scene. Playing As A begins when play begins. Playing As B is an episodic scene. Playing As B begins when Playing As A ends.

When an episodic scene begins:
    Now the croquet ball is in the Game Room.
[/code][/quote]

This technique can be partially automated by giving each of your items an initial location property and then repeating through all of them to set/reset the initial state:

[code]A thing has an object [or a room] called the starting location.

When an episodic scene begins:
    Repeat with item running through things:
         now the item is in the starting location of the item.[/code]

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1936&start=0#p12848
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk spec 0.7.1 (and cheapglk, glkterm, glkote, quixe)
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-01-24 12:49:54

Re: line terminators.

What is the recommended way to deal with special keys that are not reserved by the OS, but which the library uses to provide certain functionality?

E.g. the left, right, up, down, home, end, delete are used for line editing; page up and page down are used for viewing the scrollback buffer; tab is used for changing between Glk windows awaiting input.

A conservative approach would disallow any of these as terminators, which leaves only the function keys and escape as acceptable values. I don't know enough about the intended purpose of this feature to know if that is too narrow-minded to be of practical use for authors.

Is keycode_Unknown an acceptable terminator?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1936&start=0#p12849
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk spec 0.7.1 (and cheapglk, glkterm, glkote, quixe)
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-24 13:33:41

I've checked in fixes to the C and Javascript implementation of glk_buffer_canon_normalize_uni(). If you want to copy my implementation, please do it from the github source tree, not the released 1.0.0 libraries. This will be fixed in the releases cheapglk/glkterm 1.0.1 and Quixe 1.1.1

If you use a native OS implementation of Unicode normalization, the unicasetest test should still pass.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1936&start=0#p12850
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk spec 0.7.1 (and cheapglk, glkterm, glkote, quixe)
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-24 13:39:58

[quote]What is the recommended way to deal with special keys that are not reserved by the OS, but which the library uses to provide certain functionality?[/quote]

Good question. People should feel free to chime in on this. This feature exists basically to imitate Beyond Zork, which only used the function keys.

My choice (for my libraries and Quixe) was your conservative one: only allow Escape and the function keys (F1 to F12) as terminators. 

Authors will have to describe what they want, if they want more than this. The only example I can think of is pre-empting arrow-up and arrow-down, to provide a different command alternative feature from the interpreter's default command history. Speaking as a player, I'm not terribly fond of that sort of thing.

[quote]Is keycode_Unknown an acceptable terminator?[/quote]

No.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1940&start=0#p12851
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More hassles with "does the player mean"
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-24 13:43:34

[quote]A way to get around this is to make a more specific grammar line.[/quote]

Or make the library's grammar line more general, which is what ektemple suggested.

My experience is that trying to force disambiguation at the grammar level (rather than the "does the player mean" level) always causes more problems than it solves.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1936&start=0#p12852
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk spec 0.7.1 (and cheapglk, glkterm, glkote, quixe)
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-01-24 15:38:36

Are key combinations, such as Alt+a detectable?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1936&start=0#p12853
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk spec 0.7.1 (and cheapglk, glkterm, glkote, quixe)
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-24 17:54:25

[quote="zarf"]To test the input echoing and line terminator features, go to

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quixe/play-remote.html?story=stories/inputfeaturetest.ulx.js">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quix ... est.ulx.js</a>

...and try the commands therein. In particular, see the difference in the "timer" command between "echo" and "noecho" mode. Then type "terminate", and hit some function keys, again in "echo" and "noecho" mode.[/quote]

I'd once asked for 'terps to not echo the carriage return & line feed that occurs when the user hits the ENTER key.  This is the feature that allows that? If so, do you have the game source for the echo/noecho test so I can toy with it real quick?  

Or am I off in the weeds?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1936&start=0#p12854
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk spec 0.7.1 (and cheapglk, glkterm, glkote, quixe)
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-01-24 18:40:49

Re: borders

I kind of wish there were three border constants: DefaultBorder, NoBorder, Border. DefaultBorder would yield the old 0.7.0 behavior, NoBorder would work as in 0.7.1, and a non-zero Border flag would give the author a way to say, "I'd really like a border even though most libraries have shipped with them turned off for the last five years."

I've got the code working but if I adjust the config defaults to enable borders, then every existing game will have borders between all its windows. If I leave it disabled in the config, 90% of players will never know the library supports the feature.

I would like the outcome to be that only new games that are aware of NoBorder and deliberately request a border will draw borders. I don't see a way to accomplish that with only two constants and borders always on by default.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1936&start=0#p12855
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk spec 0.7.1 (and cheapglk, glkterm, glkote, quixe)
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-24 18:42:37

[quote]I'd once asked for 'terps to not echo the carriage return & line feed that occurs when the user hits the ENTER key. This is the feature that allows that?[/quote]

Yes. All of the unit test source code is linked on the Glulx web page. Or you can read the spec.

[quote]Are key combinations, such as Alt+a detectable?[/quote]

Not currently. (And it's a complicated subject, since, for example, Alt-a is "å" on the Mac.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1939&start=0#p12856
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 characters play through 2 games in one environment
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-01-24 18:45:41

Thanks a lot Erik. That's good stuff to get me thinking.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1936&start=10#p12857
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk spec 0.7.1 (and cheapglk, glkterm, glkote, quixe)
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-24 18:47:30

[quote]I kind of wish there were three border constants: DefaultBorder, NoBorder, Border. DefaultBorder would yield the old 0.7.0 behavior, NoBorder would work as in 0.7.1, and a non-zero Border flag would give the author a way to say, "I'd really like a border even though most libraries have shipped with them turned off for the last five years."[/quote]

Have they? I thought most libraries have shipped with them turned *on*, since always.

The default should be what we're doing now.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1940&start=0#p12858
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More hassles with "does the player mean"
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-01-24 19:06:03

[quote="zarf"][quote]A way to get around this is to make a more specific grammar line.[/quote]

Or make the library's grammar line more general, which is what ektemple suggested.

My experience is that trying to force disambiguation at the grammar level (rather than the "does the player mean" level) always causes more problems than it solves.[/quote]

How so, in this case?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1936&start=10#p12859
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk spec 0.7.1 (and cheapglk, glkterm, glkote, quixe)
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-01-24 19:12:39

There was one short-lived Gargoyle release that had borders enabled by default, and I changed it after people complained.

David Kinder turned off the default borders in WinGlk a while ago. Not sure what the other libraries do.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1936&start=10#p12860
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk spec 0.7.1 (and cheapglk, glkterm, glkote, quixe)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-01-24 19:26:46

Zoom turns borders on by default, or did when I started using it 6 or 7 years ago. I thought it was a terribly ugly interpreter at first, because it threw these ugly borders all over my City of Secrets. It took me way too long to discover that the borders were a "feature" that I could turn off.

So, please don't turn borders on by default in older games--a number of games use multiple windows to draw a single image, or use windows as UI subdivisions (e.g., <a class="postlink" href="http://gwindows.trenchcoatsoft.com/gwin3.htm">http://gwindows.trenchcoatsoft.com/gwin3.htm</a>). These games would look terrible with borders on, and the issue with players not knowing about the config is worse in this case, because players may assume that the game is *supposed* to look that way.

I wouldn't worry that players are unaware of the borders feature, Ben--borders just don't add anything at all to most games, and they can actively detract from most others. Authors have always had the option of making their own using narrow (1-3 px) graphics windows--this functionality is built into Flexible Windows, FYI--so there is good reason to believe that authors who didn't actively include them didn't think they really were needed.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1936&start=10#p12861
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk spec 0.7.1 (and cheapglk, glkterm, glkote, quixe)
User: nitfol / DateTime: 2011-01-24 19:49:18

[quote="zarf"]This feature exists basically to imitate Beyond Zork, which only used the function keys.[/quote]
It also used the up and down arrows to scroll the upper window and the number pad as direction short-cuts.  I think some interpreters use page up / page  down to emulate the up and down arrows, but that's problematic if you support scroll-back. Currently, Nitfol requires the user to tab over to the upper window to enter the terminating characters to scroll the upper window.  With the new API calls, I'll probably additionally allow control-up and control-down to simulate up/down terminating characters.

[quote="zarf"]Have they? I thought most libraries have shipped with them turned *on*, since always[/quote]
Nitfol uses a crazy policy of displaying borders for proportional-split windows and none for fixed-split windows, with the border being an adjustable pane so the user can mess with the split percentage.  This is on the theory that a game will be prepared to draw resized graphics on proportional splits but not fixed splits.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1941&start=0#p12862
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Dream Sequence
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-01-24 20:14:19

Hi, Everyone!

I'm trying to figure out some way to implement a dream sequence with Inform7, and some of the related examples I've seen in the Recipe Book and elsewhere seem overly complicated and hard to interpret and pick apart to modify for what I want to do. 

I would like to simply let the player choose to go to sleep, and if they're in the bedroom, they fall asleep on the bed and then they enter a dream sequence.

While asleep, the game moves them to another series of rooms (a dream world) disconnected from the main game. And you can explore the area, take things, do everything else, ect., but then when they pick up a certain object, it wakes them up, and they find themselves back in their bedroom. And then they have the object they picked up in their dream in their inventory.

If somebody knows a simple, easy way to implement this and would be willing to share it or point me in the right direction it would be much appreciated!

Thanks,
Dustin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1940&start=0#p12863
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More hassles with "does the player mean"
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-24 21:44:11

Well, the library grammar in this case has caused this thread with its further workarounds.

If you mean "this case" as in your solution, I don't know of anything that will go wrong with it. But it seems like the more you pre-empt library disambiguation with grammar, the more you have to keep doing it. I think it also leads new authors to create "newverb [myobject]" grammar which is *not* backstopped by a general "newverb [something]" verb, which is definitely bad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1939&start=0#p12864
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 characters play through 2 games in one environment
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-24 22:37:06

I wonder if it's possible to do an *actual restart* and use a different character?  You might be able to place a flag in a file on the player's computer reflecting whether the game's been finished or not; if so, allow the player to choose which character to use.  That way, if the player wanted to take a break, he could always come back and still have access to the feature without doing another playthrough.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1941&start=0#p12865
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dream Sequence
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-24 23:20:06

Example 158 "Space Patrol - Stranded on Jupiter!" illustrates one way to handle it.

Another way would be to switch the player to a different character, one who is already set up in the dream world:

(not tested):
[code]Dream Sequence is a scene. Dream sequence begins when sleeping in the bedroom.

When dream sequence begins:
    Now the player is dream-walker.

Dream-World is a room. Dream-walker is a man in Dream-World.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1939&start=0#p12866
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 characters play through 2 games in one environment
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-01-24 23:46:51

Heh, Gravel, I was just now drawing up a flowchart along those lines.

I think with a few Rules etc. that set things up for one character or the other initially, this might be the easiest way to go.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1941&start=0#p12867
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dream Sequence
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-01-25 01:17:23

Switching to a different character is definitely the way to go, IMO.  Otherwise you have the hassle of all the stuff the player is carrying (unless you want the player to have all his/her items in the dream).

You can end the scene with "Dream sequence ends when the player has [the item]."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1936&start=10#p12868
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk spec 0.7.1 (and cheapglk, glkterm, glkote, quixe)
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-01-25 02:20:46

[quote="zarf"][quote]Have they? I thought most libraries have shipped with them turned *on*, since always.[/quote][/quote]As Ben notes, some years ago I changed Windows Glk to default to "no borders", and no-one complained. Gargoyle is no borders by default, and most of the OSX Inform 7 screenshots I've seen look like the interpreters is showing no borders.

I think I agree with Ben that I don't like the fact that with Glk 0.71 the default is that all windows get borders. It would be better if the extra "borders" hints only indicate to the Glk library that the game has a specific desire for borders or for no borders, and the default is to let the library (and therefore the user choose.) Having all existing games suddenly have borders on will not look that attractive on Windows Glk, at least.

(If I'd read your spec changes more thoroughly earlier, I'd've noticed this sooner. D'oh...)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=462&start=10#p12870
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Project Delta: Trojan?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-01-25 03:12:29

Whenever your anti-virus finds something, it is a good idea to use this online service:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.virustotal.com">http://www.virustotal.com</a>

It will check the file you submit using over 20 different programs.

Edit:
Btw, Merk, I think that context-sensitive bot is back  [emote]:P[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1942&start=0#p12871
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Examples of IF that challenge expectations of the medium?
User: reduxd / DateTime: 2011-01-25 04:34:03

Hi,

I'm doing some research into IF for a digital narrative project at my company. I've played quite a few examples over the years (most of the Infocom releases, plus more notable community works like Galatea and A Change in the Weather). I'm trying to research whether there are examples of IF that break its usual conventions; not necessarily just more literary works, but things like:

- IF done well in third person, past tense
- IF in which the player is not the protagonist
- IF in which the player acts as multiple characters
- IF which unfolds through something other than spatial exploration (this might be a tough one)
- IF as a non-solitary (perhaps multiplayer?) experience
- IF that uses something other than the traditional challenge-response mechanic
- puzzleless IF done well, where player motivation to explore the story is strong

Anyone care to make some suggestions?
Cheers,
Mike

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1936&start=10#p12872
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk spec 0.7.1 (and cheapglk, glkterm, glkote, quixe)
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-01-25 07:06:23

I'd read the spec and understood the change but hadn't played enough Glk window using games to notice the discrepancy...  [emote]:?[/emote] 
I agree the spec should be changed to either specify that if no hint is used it should be borderless, or to say that no hint = unspecified behaviour.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1942&start=0#p12873
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Examples of IF that challenge expectations of the medium
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-01-25 07:09:45

[quote="reduxd"]
- IF done well in third person, past tense
[/quote]
At least for that one I can help out. Eric Eve's "Shelter from the Storm" offers any combination of first, second and third person with past and present tense. The player chooses a combination at the start of the game, but can change that preference later in the game:

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=t6lk8c2wktxjnod6">http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=t6lk8c2wktxjnod6</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1942&start=0#p12874
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Examples of IF that challenge expectations of the medium
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-01-25 07:25:50

Jon Ingold's [i]My Angel[/i] is notable for providing an optional presentation in novel form, divorcing input from game output.


Edit: Initially spelt his first name as "John." *sigh*

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1942&start=0#p12875
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Examples of IF that challenge expectations of the medium
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-01-25 07:35:14

IFDB advanced searches, lists, and polls can help you out with a lot of these:

[quote="reduxd"]
- IF done well in third person, past tense[/quote]

[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchbar=tag%3A+third+person+tag%3Apast+rating%3A3-&searchGo.x=0&searchGo.y=0]Third person, past tense games with at least a three-star rating.[/url]

[quote]- IF in which the player is not the protagonist[/quote]

[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/poll?id=o5jhbd6i9tw8jt]Games with complex player/protagonist relationships.[/url]
[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/poll?id=d1tjirpj9k2imcp6]Games with the PC as antihero or villain.[/url]

[quote]- IF in which the player acts as multiple characters[/quote]

[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=tag%3A+multiple+protagonists&searchgo=Search+Games]Multiple protagonists.[/url]

[quote]- IF which unfolds through something other than spatial exploration (this might be a tough one)[/quote]

[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchbar=tag%3A+conversation&searchGo.x=0&searchGo.y=0]Conversation games[/url] may qualify. [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=egtt6j8vif0plzrc]The Space Under the Window[/url] might as well.

[quote]- IF as a non-solitary (perhaps multiplayer?) experience[/quote]

Traditional muds arose with something like this intention. You might also be interested in [url=http://ifwiki.org/index.php/Guncho]Guncho[/url].

[quote]- IF that uses something other than the traditional challenge-response mechanic[/quote]

[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=tag%3A+hypertext&searchgo=Search+Games]Hypertext[/url], [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=tag%3A+cyoa&searchgo=Search+Games]CYOA[/url], and [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=tag%3A+keyword&searchgo=Search+Games]keyword[/url] games kind of sort of work here. The Space Under the Window is an especially good example, though for exactly that reason some people would probably class it as "not really IF."

[quote]- puzzleless IF done well, where player motivation to explore the story is strong[/quote]

[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/poll?id=djfvinp62g488f0]"Artistic IF" poll.[/url]
[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=tag%3Apuzzleless+rating%3A3-&searchgo=Search+Games]Puzzleless games with at least three stars.[/url]

You may also be interested in [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/how-to-play/reading-if/]my "Reading IF" page[/url], which lists some unusual formal experiments.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1940&start=0#p12876
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More hassles with "does the player mean"
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-01-25 07:41:06

[quote="zarf"]Well, the library grammar in this case has caused this thread with its further workarounds.

If you mean "this case" as in your solution, I don't know of anything that will go wrong with it. But it seems like the more you pre-empt library disambiguation with grammar, the more you have to keep doing it.[/quote] 

My experience is just the opposite -- that the method I suggested reliably gets me what I want to have happen when I know exactly what kind of object I want plugged into the player's command; there's enough potential overlap between the effects of "does the player mean..." rules that I prefer to use that only for fuzzier cases, or where I'm establishing a preference to work across multiple verbs.

[quote]I think it also leads new authors to create "newverb [myobject]" grammar which is *not* backstopped by a general "newverb [something]" verb, which is definitely bad.[/quote]

Well, no, that is indeed bad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1942&start=0#p12877
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Examples of IF that challenge expectations of the medium
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-25 08:14:33

[quote]- IF which unfolds through something other than spatial exploration (this might be a tough one)[/quote]

For this you might also want to check out [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=tag%3Asingle+room+rating%3A3-&searchgo=Search+Games]single-room games[/url], though not all of these might fit your criterion; in some of them you're definitely exploring the single room, and sometimes getting up and down on things is important. (The third hit on that search is Aisle, which you definitely want to play.) 

The split-up functionality poll doesn't have Lea Albaugh's IntroComp entry [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=m92r7ml5ozfix62&review=11319]Memento Moratori[/url], which isn't a finished game but which you probably want to see.

I assume you've played Photopia? It meets at least two of your criteria (multiple viewpoint characters, puzzleless).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1939&start=0#p12878
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 characters play through 2 games in one environment
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-25 08:28:05

[quote="gravel"]I wonder if it's possible to do an *actual restart* and use a different character?  You might be able to place a flag in a file on the player's computer reflecting whether the game's been finished or not; if so, allow the player to choose which character to use.  That way, if the player wanted to take a break, he could always come back and still have access to the feature without doing another playthrough.[/quote]

[url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1254&start=0]This discussion[/url] might be helpful. I think you could add an option to the Table of Final Player Options that allowed you to restart as the new character -- "Would you like to UNDO, RESTART, RESTORE a saved game, QUIT, try some AMUSING things, or play again as EDWARD?" -- presumably if the player chooses EDWARD then you have to have a whole routine that resets the game, sets a "playing-as-Edward" flag, does whatever else you need, and then you use "resume the story." I haven't tried "resume the story" yet so I'm not sure if this would work.

To let the player play as Edward when the game starts up, I think I would probably just use a password.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1905&start=0#p12879
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Remotely view object location Inform 6
User: aliennerd / DateTime: 2011-01-25 08:40:48

The final code I came up with was:-

[quote]Object monitors "bank of monitors"
	with name "monitors" "monitor",
	description "There are three monitors, each one showing a live feed from the freighter's maintenance drones.",
	found_in droneroom crewsmess,
	after
	[;examine:Print "^Huey is in:-  ";Print (name)parent(drone1);Print "^Dewey is in:-  ";Print (name)parent(drone2);Print "^Louie is in:-  ";Print (name)parent(drone3);
],
has static controlled;[/quote]

So thanks for all your help, got there in the end.

Charlie

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1940&start=0#p12880
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More hassles with "does the player mean"
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-25 09:05:03

I think you're both right. Every verb should have a fallback grammar so you see "you can't frob a grubnitz" instead of "that noun did not make sense in this context," or a ridiculous disambiguation situation. But once a fallback grammar is in place, a more specific grammar can only help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1939&start=0#p12881
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 characters play through 2 games in one environment
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-25 09:11:35

From experience, I can tell you that "resume the story" is marred with a couple of complications.

For one thing, there's a timing situation. I don't remember the details, but it has to do with turn sequence - I don't think "resume the story" starts a new turn in the way you would always desire.

For another thing, it does not reset the game world in any way, so it has no advantage over a normal scene change.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1891&start=20#p12882
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: I7 port of Crowther's Colossal Cave looking for testers
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-01-25 09:52:13

I'd say go with the faithful mode. When I made my suggestions, I was not aware that the dwarves had behaved so differently in Crowther's original. I thought that you had made an implementation mistake. The behaviour was so different that I had a hard time believing it was faithful. If it is in fact faithful then this is extremely interesting, possibly what will become the most interesting new perspective brought to the community by your game, so I vote for faithful implementation despite that I found playing it more annoying.

And the other differences you point out about the use of the axe, etc. are also interesting. It's a tougher question about whether to implement Woods's parser improvements, but I would say since you are already implementing Inform's parser improvements in general, to leave out Woods's parser improvements seems pointless since the parser isn't faithful, anyway. It seems like you are going for a non-faithful parser grafted onto a faithful game, and in that case, I would say we should have the benefit of Woods's wisdom in there too, but only as applied to the parser commands which are already not going to be faithful, anyway.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1912&start=10#p12883
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I Am Too Sexy For This Forum
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-01-25 10:02:31

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]"Switch" implies a binary-type situation, like switching seats or husbands switching wives or switching the lights on and off. It doesn't adequately describe turning pages, nor is it an adequate description of text scrolling on a computer screen. No matter how you look at it,"switching pages" is very awkward, unidiomatic English. Unidiomatic diction is the most common weakness one finds in the prose of untalented writers. Which is what makes this thing so ironic. Here's a guy preaching to IF writers how to write good IF and he delivers his sermon in Neanderthal English.[/quote]
Sounds like you are saying that in order to be a good writer, you need to avoid forming new phrases and stick with clichéd phrases that we have already heard before, thus... 'idiomatic'. The idiom is not what defines the correct way to write. The idiiom is what defines the way people ordinarily speak. Sticking to idiom is what you do when you are trying to write believable dialogue. It's not what you do when you are trying to write great prose — then you should seek to stray from idiom and come up with some fresh phrases that will make people think on things in a new light. So your attempt to invent an insult here to apply to somebody else, didn't really pan out. 8)

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1939&start=0#p12884
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 characters play through 2 games in one environment
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2011-01-25 10:18:17

Depending on how you plan on running the quest, there need not be a "reset".

For example, if the game is small enough, you can have two rooms (Desert1 and Desert2) which are identically named to the player and having the second player in the second, non-connected game world "faking it".

If you need it to be reset, then don't put starting locations for any object or npc which can be moved. Then just have a "when play begins" which describes where all the objects are using a subroutine.

[code]
To re-place:
  now the sword is in the living room;
  now the lantern is in the living room;
  now the nasty-knife is in the attic;
etc.

When play begins:
  re-place.

Player2 is a scene. Player2 begins when Player1 ends. When player2 begins: replace.
[/code]

Of course, every object could have a room called starting-location. During re-place now every thing is in its starting location.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1943&start=0#p12885
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Starborn: play statistics
User: ManolisG13 / DateTime: 2011-01-25 10:53:14

[i]I searched if there is already a discussion here but nothing found, sorry if there is, merge the topic plz mods/admins [emote]:)[/emote][/i]

Since I guess most ppl here check every day Planet IF, this shouldn't be news to anyone.. But just in case :

<a class="postlink" href="http://nitku.net/blog/2011/01/starborn-play-statistics/">http://nitku.net/blog/2011/01/starborn-play-statistics/</a>

[quote]Starborn: play statistics
Posted on January 24, 2011, 13:18, by Juhana.

Starborn is a short interactive sci-fi story that uses a simple keyword interface instead of a standard IF parser. It was made as a speed-if for this year’s New Year’s Speed-if event on ifMUD. It was released to the public about a week ago and at first gained the usual amount of interest: the logs show 7 online plays on the release day and less on the next two days.

Last Wednesday however C.E.J. Pacian wrote a blog post about it which was picked up by the IndieGames.com blog. From there a couple of people tweeted about it and suddenly the play count jumped to about 600 plays per day. The main Parchment site reported similar amounts of traffic.

I’m running the online version of the story on a modified version of Parchment that saves the transcripts to the server. I now have 1557 transcripts consisting of 23 896 turns (and counting, but the traffic is slowing down considerably). To my knowledge this is more play data collected than for any other single IF game so far.

So here’s a random bunch of analysis from those transcripts. There are no spoilers other than keywords used throughout the game, but if you haven’t played yet the data would probably make more sense if you at least checked out a couple of turns just to see what the parser looks like. Online version and downloads are available.
[/quote]

Now, this is very interesting, go and read all the stats at the above page, it really is a nice read..

The problem is, ehm.... You know ppl, it's just a tiny thing, trivial I guess but, shouldn't players be ADVISED beforehand that the transcripts are saved ??  [emote]:?[/emote]  And by this i mean no disrespect to the author who had an awesome idea, but I'm thinking about the future and the what if scenarios abusement of the above will bring.. And trust to online IF to players too.. I for one dont feel AT ALL comfortable knowing my transcript could be saved without me even knowing it, so I guess playing browser based IF will be even more far away for me from now on..

Thanx for your time ..

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1943&start=0#p12886
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Starborn: play statistics
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-01-25 11:59:23

(It's the author here.)

[quote="ManolisG13"]The problem is, ehm.... You know ppl, it's just a tiny thing, trivial I guess but, shouldn't players be ADVISED beforehand that the transcripts are saved ??[/quote]
I'm sorry if you feel misinformed. I did think about this, but came to the conclusion that because saving anonymous statistical information is standard in both online games and the world wide web itself, there's no need to draw attention to the fact. Every time you visit a web site the server saves information about the visit, including your IP address and browser information. If there are ads on the web page, it's almost certain that they are tailored to you based on tracking data from visits to other sites, or at least the page tries to do that unless the visitor has some countermeasures in place. Most likely almost every (commercial) online game saves every move you make while playing the game.

What my setup does is much more anonymous than the above examples since there is no way to trace the transcripts back to the player. The transcripts won't contain names, e-mail addresses, credit card numbers or even IP addresses. Also the saved transcripts are not on public display. You could play the game using the "official" Parchment installation, but even that has a standard Google tracker to collect page load statistics.

I am open to discussion, of course, but I do believe the data collected is far below the standard level of online data collection and because it's untraceable to the player it's genuinely anonymous.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1912&start=10#p12887
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I Am Too Sexy For This Forum
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-01-25 12:48:37

I totally dig what you're saying, Smokin' Croc Dude. (Your avatar *is* a crocodile, right? It's not an elk?) I only have one tiny caveat. Before you rebel against the idiom, you need to learn the idiom you're rebelling against. When a person describes reading a book as "switching pages," I get the feeling that person doesn't have a firm grasp of the extant idiom, so inventing a radically new idiom isn't really an option for them. 

As to Peter Pears's question, is puzzleless IF "silly and useless nonsense"? Do you feel that _Photopia_ and _Rameses_ are silly and useless? Assuming that you do, do you feel that _Zork_ is less silly and more useful? Personally, I prefer both _Photopia_ and _Rameses_ to _Zork_, but I also prefer _Savoir-Faire_ to both of them. So perhaps this whole puzzleless/puzzleheavy dichotomy isn't really as aesthetically relevant as many people seem to think it is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1943&start=0#p12888
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Starborn: play statistics
User: ManolisG13 / DateTime: 2011-01-25 13:14:11

Thanx for replying [emote]:)[/emote]

I agree that in this case it's acceptable even if personally i would prefer to know it anyway.. What is worrying, I think , is this I wrote :

[quote]but I'm thinking about the future and the what if scenarios abusement of the above will bring..[/quote]

We have a parser here, and , I'm not trying to sound paranoid, but what if someone made an online text adventure and could hide and collect much more personal data or even harvest clues to break into e-mails by secret questions etc..

I know I sound paranoid, I again say mate that I agree on your points I'm just worried of a possible abuse of this..  [emote]:geek:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1936&start=10#p12889
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk spec 0.7.1 (and cheapglk, glkterm, glkote, quixe)
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-25 13:22:26

This feature was intended as a way for games to *suppress* window borders, because that's what people have always requested.

I will make it clearer that this is a hint, and that the default ("Borders") state is what libraries have always done. (I already say "This is a hint to the library".) 

My test case was GlkTerm, which has always had a "use borders / no borders" user-level preference, defaulting to borders-yes. For this release I upgraded that preference to "always / never / follow game hint", defaulting to "follow game hints". So there is no visible change to games under GlkTerm, unless either the user or the game does something non-default. That's how I figured most libraries would go. (Obviously Zoom is the one I use most often.)

For libraries that have moved to a no-borders default already, I guess this feature is going to wind up being a no-op.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1936&start=10#p12890
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk spec 0.7.1 (and cheapglk, glkterm, glkote, quixe)
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-25 13:27:15

I should describe Quixe too... I ship Quixe with an HTML layout that includes window borders, but that's really to demonstrate the layout structure rather than because it looks good. (My infamous brown borders and orange status line. Yeah, not my best web design ever.) In this setup, the NoBorders flag suppresses interwindow borders, as you'd expect.

The Quixe template that ships with I7 imitates the Parchment template, and *doesn't* use any borders. In this setup, the NoBorders flag has no effect.

In the future I think better control over window layout via CSS will make this whole question moot.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1939&start=0#p12891
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 characters play through 2 games in one environment
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-25 13:35:07

[quote="capmikee"]From experience, I can tell you that "resume the story" is marred with a couple of complications....

For another thing, it does not reset the game world in any way, so it has no advantage over a normal scene change.[/quote]

Well, the advantage I was thinking of is that you can do it after the player finishes the game/story. But you could also accomplish that by faking the ending, I suppose. (That is, instead of ending the story finally, go to a scene during which the player is asked to Restart, Restore, play as Edward, etc.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1910&start=0#p12892
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: More Glk progress
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-25 13:52:12

Okay, I've posted a draft of the clock API:

<a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/erkyrath/glk-dev/wiki/Glk-072-draft-spec-changes">https://github.com/erkyrath/glk-dev/wik ... ec-changes</a>

This should be easy to implement on top of the C and Javascript standard date facilities. My only "crazy uncle zarf" touch this time are the simple_time functions, which let you get a Unix time divided by any factor (to work around the 2038ocalypse). I think these will be easier to work with for certain cases. ("How long has the user been playing this game, in minutes, and please don't make me do 64-bit subtraction?") If you want the full time_t resolution, it's available too.

I left out date parsing and formatting, more or less for the same reasons that I left float parsing and formatting out of the Glulx spec. Too ugly to wire in at this level. Let game/extension code handle it.

As before, I am posting this in advance of releasing the spec or code, so feel free to comment...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1944&start=0#p12893
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Jay is Games Looking for Votes for Best Browser IF in 2010
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2011-01-25 14:12:20

Jay is Games is [url=http://jayisgames.com/best-of/2010/interactive-fiction/]taking votes on the best browser IF in 2010[/url]. You choose from their pre-selected list of games:

[list]Blue Lacuna
Dead Frontier: Outbreak 2
Dual Transform
Fragile Shells
Hoosegow
Ka
Monday, 16:30
Party Foul
Roofed
Thousand Dollar Soul
You Find Yourself in a Room[/list:u]

As you might expect, most of them are from their all-IF Casual Game Design Competition 7.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1936&start=10#p12894
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk spec 0.7.1 (and cheapglk, glkterm, glkote, quixe)
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-01-25 14:17:06

OK, fair enough. I've added the new API features to Gargoyle. Thank you for doing the heavy lifting on the Unicode decomposition / normalization front - that saved me a considerable pile of work trying to figure out how to do it on all three platforms.

(Also thanks to vaporware, whose private API implementation of line terminators made it trivial to support the official version.)

I will hold off on a new release until 0.7.2, since that seems to be just around the corner.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1912&start=10#p12895
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I Am Too Sexy For This Forum
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-01-25 14:17:19

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]I totally dig what you're saying, Smokin' Croc Dude. (Your avatar *is* a crocodile, right? It's not an elk?) I only have one tiny caveat. Before you rebel against the idiom, you need to learn the idiom you're rebelling against. When a person describes reading a book as "switching pages," I get the feeling that person doesn't have a firm grasp of the extant idiom, so inventing a radically new idiom isn't really an option for them.[/quote]
It's 'Wormy' and it's a dragon drawn by David Trampier in the 1980s in the pages of Dragon magazine, if anyone cares. Come to think of it, it does look rather like a crocodile.

Anyway I don't agree with your 'Rules of Idiom'. Nothing wrong with 'switching pages' -- it's both grammatical and describes what it is describing accurately. Those are the only requirements.

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1912&start=10#p12896
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I Am Too Sexy For This Forum
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-01-25 14:29:07

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]As to Peter Pears's question, is puzzleless IF "silly and useless nonsense"? Do you feel that _Photopia_ and _Rameses_ are silly and useless? Assuming that you do, do you feel that _Zork_ is less silly and more useful? Personally, I prefer both _Photopia_ and _Rameses_ to _Zork_, but I also prefer _Savoir-Faire_ to both of them. So perhaps this whole puzzleless/puzzleheavy dichotomy isn't really as aesthetically relevant as many people seem to think it is.[/quote]

I don't think puzzleless IF is silly and useless, but that's quite beside the point. His signature reflects discontentment with a growing trend of "puzzlelessness" (heck of a word). He might miss the mental exercise, or the feeling that he's actually accomplishing something instead of being railroaded. He might feel things are becoming "artsy-fartsy" and moving away from what made IF great in the first place.

I don't know whether he does feel all these things, but they're possible issues that his signature raises. Faced with a signature like that, we can either ignore it and address his sentiments if and when he would decide to express them, leading to a hopefully useful overview of past and present IF and the way it's changing, or we can pick up on it and start discussing it whether he starts the conversation or not.

Instead, you've picked up on his signature and started discussing his use of the language. This in a community where not everyone is from an English-speaking country (although I'll agree most are).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1944&start=0#p12897
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Jay is Games Looking for Votes for Best Browser IF in 20
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2011-01-25 14:36:56

[quote="Sargent"]Jay is Games is [url=http://jayisgames.com/best-of/2010/interactive-fiction/]taking votes on the best browser IF in 2010[/url]. You choose from their pre-selected list of games:

[list]Blue Lacuna
[/list:u]
[/quote]

Isn't Blue Lacuna neither a browser game nor a 2010 game? Am I missing something?

-Kevin

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1944&start=0#p12898
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Jay is Games Looking for Votes for Best Browser IF in 20
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2011-01-25 14:40:04

[quote="jacksonmead"][quote="Sargent"]Jay is Games is [url=http://jayisgames.com/best-of/2010/interactive-fiction/]taking votes on the best browser IF in 2010[/url]. You choose from their pre-selected list of games:

[list]Blue Lacuna
[/list:u]
[/quote]

Isn't Blue Lacuna neither a browser game nor a 2010 game? Am I missing something?
[/quote]

OK, I actually read their announcement and answered my own question:

[quote]Thus, you might find a game categorized somewhere in a place you don't feel is its 100% best fit. . . . Best of 2010 also features games we've only covered in the last year, not only the games that were released then.[/quote]

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1912&start=10#p12899
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I Am Too Sexy For This Forum
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2011-01-25 14:45:23

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]As to Peter Pears's question, is puzzleless IF "silly and useless nonsense"? Do you feel that _Photopia_ and _Rameses_ are silly and useless? Assuming that you do, do you feel that _Zork_ is less silly and more useful? Personally, I prefer both _Photopia_ and _Rameses_ to _Zork_, but I also prefer _Savoir-Faire_ to both of them. So perhaps this whole puzzleless/puzzleheavy dichotomy isn't really as aesthetically relevant as many people seem to think it is.[/quote]

I wouldn't put it in better words myself.  Still, puzzleless IF feels to me pretty pointless.  Sure, good, puzzling plots interwined with some interaction go a long way providing the immersion and feeling of immersion and satisfaction puzzles provide.  But just handling objects, examining things, exploring places and choosing options can't make up for that lack of completion only puzzles provide:  that sentiment of "my action was detrimental into making things happen in the plot."  Choosing a path from numerous is not as exciting as finding one.

I've also corrected the sig.  I'm not a native english speaker and the right word failed my grasp at the moment...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1945&start=0#p12900
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Understand "[someone], [something]" as informing it about?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-25 14:48:25

I'm sure this has been covered before, but I haven't found it after a quick search.

Commas in player commands are treated at a low level by Inform, aren't they? And they either parse as "orders" or as "answering it that." I'm using Eric Eve's Conversation Framework and I'd like, ideally, to parse ALL attempts at conversation as quizzing or informing. But I can't figure out how to do this one.

I suppose I could use indexed text to rewrite the command, but I'd like to avoid indexed text if possible.

I thought I might be able to redirect the "answering it that" action just as it is done for "saying yes," etc. Unfortunately, by the time I did that, it would be too late for disambiguation, which I'd still like to have.

I'm open to suggestions as to how to solve the problem before me, and I'm willing to accept "tell the player to rephrase their command" as advice if that's the most reasonable solution. But I'd also like to hear about the current thinking on the parser, whether something like this could be implemented in an extension (or has already been), or whether it might be considered as a change to future versions of Inform.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1912&start=10#p12901
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I Am Too Sexy For This Forum
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2011-01-25 14:51:27

[quote="Peter Pears"]I don't think puzzleless IF is silly and useless, but that's quite beside the point. His signature reflects discontentment with a growing trend of "puzzlelessness" (heck of a word). He might miss the mental exercise, or the feeling that he's actually accomplishing something instead of being railroaded. He might feel things are becoming "artsy-fartsy" and moving away from what made IF great in the first place.

I don't know whether he does feel all these things, but they're possible issues that his signature raises. Faced with a signature like that, we can either ignore it and address his sentiments if and when he would decide to express them, leading to a hopefully useful overview of past and present IF and the way it's changing, or we can pick up on it and start discussing it whether he starts the conversation or not.[/quote]

I feel you would be the right woman for me were you to be a woman.  No woman has ever looked upon my soul and distilled my feelings with such depth and accuracy.

I'm not kidding.  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

seems like the sig has been very effective.  I'm glad for having come up with it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1936&start=10#p12902
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk spec 0.7.1 (and cheapglk, glkterm, glkote, quixe)
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-25 14:53:17

[quote="zarf"]Yes. All of the unit test source code is linked on the Glulx web page.[/quote]
Thank you zarf!  I got it going in Inform 7.  Transcript and quickie source follow.  Note that the transcript is misleading (on purpose).  I used the X and L abbreviations for EXAMINE and LOOK when I type them as a player, but they are expanded to their full names in the transcript.  

[quote="Transcript"]
input line test
An Interactive Fiction by Ron Newcomb
Release 1 / Serial number 110125 / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N) SD
 
room
Welcome to the echo chamber. Type "echo false" to hand input echoing over to the game, "echo true" to restore it back to the default library.  Currently the command line is echoed by the story.
 
"Examine me," I said, thinking As good-looking as ever.
 
"foo," I said, thinking I didn't understand that sentence.
 
"echoed by the library," I said, thinking Currently the command line is echoed by the library.
 
"foo
I didn't understand that sentence.
 
"x me
As good-looking as ever.
 
"echoed by the story
Currently the command line is echoed by the story.
 
"foo," I said, thinking I didn't understand that sentence.
 
"always echoed per the interpreter," I said, thinking Currently the command line is echoed by the library.
 
"x me
As good-looking as ever.

"echoed by the story
Currently the command line is echoed by the story.
 
"Look," I said, thinking room
Welcome to the echo chamber. Type "echo false" to hand input echoing over to the game, "echo true" to restore it back to the default library.  Currently the command line is echoed by the story.
 
" 
[/quote]

The code's a little longer, but not by much:
[spoiler][code]"input line test" by Ron Newcomb

Release along with the "Quixe" interpreter. [ After downloading and installing the latest version from http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/Quixe-110.zip of course.]

There is a room. "Welcome to the echo chamber. Type 'echoed by the story' to hand input echoing over to the game, or 'echoed by the library' to restore it to normal.  Currently the command line is [the command line echo mode]."

Section - extension

A Glulx command line echo mode is a kind of value. The Glulx command line echo modes are echoed by the story, echoed by the library, and always echoed per the interpreter.

To decide which Glulx command line echo mode is the command line echo mode: (- echo_mode -).
To change the/-- command line echo mode to (tr - a Glulx command line echo mode): (- set_line_echo({tr}); -).

Include (- Global echo_mode = (+ echoed by the library +); -) after "Definitions.i6t".
Include (-
[ set_line_echo val;
	if (~~(glk($0004, 17, 0)))  {     ! gestalt(gestalt_LineInputEcho)
		echo_mode = (+ always echoed per the interpreter +); 
		return echo_mode;            ! interpreter needs Glk version 0.7.1 or later
	}
	if (val == (+ always echoed per the interpreter +)) 
		val = (+ echoed by the library +);
	echo_mode = val;
	glk($0150, gg_mainwin, echo_mode - 1); ! glk_set_echo_line_event
	return echo_mode;
];
-).

First when play begins (this is the initialize command line echo mode rule): change the command line echo mode to echoed by the story.

Section - not for release

To say change --/the command line echo mode to (tr - a Glulx command line echo mode): change the command line echo mode to tr.

Understand "[Glulx command line echo mode]" as a mistake ("[change the command line echo mode to the Glulx command line echo mode understood]Currently the command line is [the command line echo mode].").

Test me with "don't use the TEST command / x me / foo / echoed by the library / x me / foo".

Section - using it

when play begins, now the command prompt is "[bold type]'[roman type]".

After reading a command when the player's command includes "x", replace the matched text with "Examine".
After reading a command when the player's command includes "l", replace the matched text with "Look".

After reading a command when the command line echo mode is echoed by the story, say "[bold type][the player's command],' I said, thinking[roman type][run paragraph on] ".
[First before printing a parser error when the command line echo mode is echoed by the story: say line break.]
[/code][/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1912&start=10#p12903
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I Am Too Sexy For This Forum
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-01-25 15:15:57

[quote="Peter Pears"]Instead, you've picked up on his signature and started discussing his use of the language. This in a community where not everyone is from an English-speaking country (although I'll agree most are).[/quote]

To be fair, as an ambassador from ancient Egypt, Jacek is not a native English speaker either, though he has had longer to master its intricacies than most.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1936&start=20#p12904
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk spec 0.7.1 (and cheapglk, glkterm, glkote, quixe)
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-01-25 15:55:17

[quote="zarf"](And it's a complicated subject, since, for example, Alt-a is "å" on the Mac.)[/quote]
(On your Mac. On mine, it's an apple. On my Swedish keyboard, "å" has its own key.) Unless the game requires special characters to be typed, that's not really a problem, is it? Or is my understanding that this is a game-specific thing wrong?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1944&start=0#p12905
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Jay is Games Looking for Votes for Best Browser IF in 20
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-25 16:25:06

The categories as a whole are divided into "browser," "casual download," "indie [download, I assume]," and "mobile." So it's that IF as a whole is filed under "browser," not that there's a special category for "browser IF." Most of the categories are labeled browser.

That wasn't very clear, was it? It's clearer if you [url=http://jayisgames.com/best-of/2010/]look at the category page[/url].

Presumably you can play Blue Lacuna in your browser using Quixe, though I don't think I'd try it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1946&start=0#p12906
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Beta testers wanted for "Bonehead"
User: Mr. Patient / DateTime: 2011-01-25 16:35:40

I'm looking for volunteers to beta-test my game, Bonehead.  It's a comp-length Glulx game with light puzzles.  The subject is baseball history, and a lot of the action takes place on a baseball diamond.  My goal is that people who know nothing about the sport will still find it interesting and accessible.

If you can help, please email me at mister_patient at yahoo dot com.  Depending on how testing goes, I would like to enter it as part of Spring Thing 2011.  Thanks very much.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1910&start=10#p12907
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: More Glk progress
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-01-25 17:40:04

Excellent. To use those structs we make word-arrays of the right length and pass the address? Easy!

One thing that might be useful would be day-of-year in the date tuple.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1912&start=10#p12908
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I Am Too Sexy For This Forum
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-01-25 18:37:35

[quote="Laroquod"][quote="Jacek Pudlo"]I totally dig what you're saying, Smokin' Croc Dude. (Your avatar *is* a crocodile, right? It's not an elk?) I only have one tiny caveat. Before you rebel against the idiom, you need to learn the idiom you're rebelling against. When a person describes reading a book as "switching pages," I get the feeling that person doesn't have a firm grasp of the extant idiom, so inventing a radically new idiom isn't really an option for them.[/quote]
It's 'Wormy' and it's a dragon drawn by David Trampier in the 1980s in the pages of Dragon magazine, if anyone cares. Come to think of it, it does look rather like a crocodile.

Anyway I don't agree with your 'Rules of Idiom'. [/quote]

You're going about this the wrong way. You're eating blueberries, flour and sugar and hoping to crap blueberry pie. You can only stray from the idiom if you know the rules you're supposed to stray from [i]beforehand[/i].


[quote]Nothing wrong with 'switching pages' -- it's both grammatical and describes what it is describing accurately. Those are the only requirements.[/quote]

It describes exchanging two [i]loose[/i] pages. It doesn't describe turning pages in a book.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1912&start=20#p12909
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I Am Too Sexy For This Forum
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-01-25 19:50:05

Somehow you're doing better in the newsgroups. I'm falling asleep reading this thread. [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1947&start=0#p12910
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Disambiguation on Demand
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-25 20:01:44

This is a proposal for an extension. I was thinking this work was beyond by abilities, but I realized how many bits of it I can steal from other places.

Aaron Reed's "Remembering" has a technique for switching off disambiguation completely.

Example 356: "Walls and Noses" shows how to access the list of disambiguation choices.

The main thing that is missing is a way to trigger a disambiguation event. I'm hoping this is possible with access to I6 - if anyone has any tips, I'd like to hear about them.

So, this is what I think the extension should do:

Provide a hook for translating a snippet into an object, performing disambiguation if necessary. Something like this:

[code]Keywording is an action applying to one visible thing.

After reading a command when the player's command matches "[any known thing]":
    let item be the matched text, as an object;
    try keywording item.[/code]

Provide a means for disabling disambiguation:

[code]Refusal to disambiguate when remembering:
    say "You don't know anything about that."[/code]

Possibly add some conveniences for use with the "asking which do you mean" activity such as the "to decide whether N fits the parse list" function in "Walls and Noses."

What do you think? Is it possible? Is it worthwhile? Would you use it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1852&start=0#p12911
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: i7 coding help-- open, door!
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-25 21:49:09

[quote="Eleas"][code]Instead of going from the Library when the player does not have the book:
	say "You shouldn't leave without your book".[/code]

There certainly far more elegant ways of doing it (there are reasons for why experienced writers caution against overuse of Instead rules), but this one should do the trick.[/quote]
If you ask me, that's about as elegant as it gets. Instead rules are made for special cases, and this looks like a special case to me. Plus, it's brief and perfectly readable.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1910&start=10#p12912
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: More Glk progress
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-25 22:06:12

Day-of-year is in the C struct tm, but I don't see how to get it in Javascript. (I guess I could do the leap-year computation... or not.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1910&start=10#p12913
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: More Glk progress
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-01-25 23:04:01

If we think such a thing is likely to be useful (and I think it might be) then I think it would be better to do the leap year calculations behind the scenes than make people do it in their own code. Especially if the calculations wouldn't be needed for every platform.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1943&start=0#p12914
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Starborn: play statistics
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-01-25 23:06:33

If it's a regular type of IF then they couldn't do that, they have no direct access to JS or anything. If they used a custom interpreter where they did have direct access then they'd still not be able to do anything more than any other website. If you use a modern browser and aren't stupid enough to give out your credit card details etc. to anyone who asks then there's no risk.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1910&start=10#p12915
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: More Glk progress
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-25 23:30:12

What is it useful for?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1910&start=10#p12916
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: More Glk progress
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-01-25 23:42:47

Any situation in which dates could be compared. But then... it might be easier and simpler to just work with day-scaled timestamps. Never mind that then.

There are no conversions between time and simpletime... is it worth having distinct functions, or should people just go via dates?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1947&start=0#p12917
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation on Demand
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-25 23:50:17

[size=200]Yes.[/size]

If the prose asks the player a question, it'd be nice to be able to piggyback on the disambig code to understand an answer.  I.e., use some code that can understand a given property as referring to a thing, like "A thing can be relevant. Understand the relevant property as referring to a thing."  (Typing from memory.)  The author can set relevant/irrelevant on any objects in the game he likes, then prime parser with "<VERB> RELEVANT", like "Rule for reading a command when the primed command is not empty: change the text of the player's command to the primed command; now the primed command is empty."  The WDYM question appears on its own, ready to prefer any Relevant object, but barring that, will still understand all other commands if they're typed in. 

Still, you're looking to dig into the I6 template code.  You know where the Appendix A and Appendix B are on the Inform site?  The latter especially will give you a guided tour of the parser code. Well, to a point. The DM4 will do the rest.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1912&start=20#p12918
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I Am Too Sexy For This Forum
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-01-26 00:44:19

[quote="RealNC"]Somehow you're doing better in the newsgroups.[/quote]
I dunno, he still makes outrageous claims obviously crafted just to annoy people and still manages to evoke a response. That's a textbook example of succesful trolling.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1912&start=20#p12919
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I Am Too Sexy For This Forum
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-01-26 00:50:14

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"][quote="Laroquod"]Anyway I don't agree with your 'Rules of Idiom'. [/quote]

You're going about this the wrong way. You're eating blueberries, flour and sugar and hoping to crap blueberry pie. You can only stray from the idiom if you know the rules you're supposed to stray from [i]beforehand[/i].[/quote]
Possibly you are confusing the use of idiom, which is entirely optional, with the use of literary or filmic conventions, which is a situation where I do agree it is better (but not mandatory) to know which rule you are breaking.

[quote][quote]Nothing wrong with 'switching pages' -- it's both grammatical and describes what it is describing accurately. Those are the only requirements.[/quote]

It describes exchanging two [i]loose[/i] pages. It doesn't describe turning pages in a book.[/quote]
Heh, you seem to enjoy inventing rules about language. It describes both. There is nothing about 'switching' that requires they be 'loose'. You can switch tracks, switch rooms, switch seats, switch sidewalks, etc. You can switch whatever you like including pages.

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1912&start=20#p12920
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I Am Too Sexy For This Forum
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-01-26 00:51:25

[quote="Juhana"]I dunno, he still makes outrageous claims obviously crafted just to annoy people and still manages to evoke a response. That's a textbook example of succesful trolling.[/quote]
True. Usually it is better when it's funny, though, which this thread hasn't been for a while now, so I give it like a 5/10 for trolling.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1859&start=10#p12921
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Can new games be entered into IntroComp and IF Comp?
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-01-26 03:07:39

It seems to me that the convenient thing about IFComp is that entries are due at the end of September, giving you a reasonable three months to finish your game, whereas you'd have to wait most of a year to enter it in Spring Thing, by which time your intro would have to be very memorable indeed to still be in people's minds.

(Not criticizing the decision not to allow entries to both; the reasoning is sound; I'm just saying.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1912&start=20#p12922
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I Am Too Sexy For This Forum
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-01-26 05:49:33

[quote="Laroquod"][quote="Juhana"]I dunno, he still makes outrageous claims obviously crafted just to annoy people and still manages to evoke a response. That's a textbook example of succesful trolling.[/quote]
True. Usually it is better when it's funny, though, which this thread hasn't been for a while now, so I give it like a 5/10 for trolling.[/quote]

Oh, I wasn't infotaining you effectively enough, was I? How old are you? Twelve? Do you yourself a favour and look up the transitive verb "switch" in a dictionary. Read the entry [i]carefully[/i] and maybe you'll understand why "switching pages" isn't synonymous with "turning pages."

I am habitually urbane but liable to sudden spleen when confronted with crass stupidity.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1912&start=20#p12923
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I Am Too Sexy For This Forum
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-26 06:29:16

[quote="Laroquod"][quote="Juhana"]I dunno, he still makes outrageous claims obviously crafted just to annoy people and still manages to evoke a response. That's a textbook example of succesful trolling.[/quote]
True. Usually it is better when it's funny, though, which this thread hasn't been for a while now, so I give it like a 5/10 for trolling.[/quote]

Eh, I don't even think Jacek's really trolling on this thread -- to take things well below the twelve-year-old level, namekuseijin started it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1947&start=0#p12924
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation on Demand
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-26 06:45:35

I would also be interested in this. (I have a vague project in mind which involves basically turning everything into a keyword, which it seems like this might be helpful for.)

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Still, you're looking to dig into the I6 template code.  You know where the Appendix A and Appendix B are on the Inform site?[/quote]

If you don't, they're [url=http://inform7.com/sources/webs/]here[/url]; Appendix A is "The standard rules web extract" and Appendix B is "the I6T web extract." 

(This is a mild peeve I have about the I7 website, that these things are impossible to find without a walkthrough, and even then the name that appears in the room description isn't the one you're looking for. Apparently "web extract" doesn't mean "extract we put on the web" but has something to with a "web" as a "literate program," explained [url=http://inform7.com/sources/inweb/]here[/url]; but is putting this stuff under a "Webs" tab on the I7 website really the best way to help people find it? It seems like one of those things, like where the mess hall is or what a Code Red means, that you pick up from other folks.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1912&start=20#p12925
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I Am Too Sexy For This Forum
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-01-26 07:08:22

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]Oh, I wasn't infotaining you effectively enough, was I? How old are you? Twelve? Do you yourself a favour and look up the transitive verb "switch" in a dictionary. Read the entry [i]carefully[/i] and maybe you'll understand why "switching pages" isn't synonymous with "turning pages."

I am habitually urbane but liable to sudden spleen when confronted with crass stupidity.[/quote]
So the one thing I've said that irritated you enough to start insulting me as well, was that I rated you low on [i]trolling[/i]? You must take a lot of pride in it — seems like namekuseijin had you pegged.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1912&start=20#p12926
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I Am Too Sexy For This Forum
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-01-26 07:15:22

Now would be a good time for this topic to be locked/deleted.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1912&start=20#p12927
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I Am Too Sexy For This Forum
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-01-26 09:18:15

Smokin' Croc Dude, you remind me of Sobek, the Crocodile God whose temples I razed with the ground and whose priests I scattered to the winds when I abolished polytheism and made myself the only God. He too had surprisingly thin skin for a reptile.

So far I have spoken to y'all as your equal. Now I will speak to you as your Pharaoh.

Hearken to My words, mortals, for it is I -- Akhenaten Son of Aten, He Whose faeces is chocolate fudge to mortal men, He Whose urine is finest wine to His subjects, He Whose semen is lotion for His concubines' faces -- Who speak unto you. I hereby order the moderators to lock and preserve this topic so that it may edify posterity and enlighten future generations of Pudlologists.

Thus have I spoken and thus shall it be written.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1947&start=0#p12928
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation on Demand
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-26 09:27:35

Wow, I see more support than I expected, but also more challenges! I will have a look into this and see if it is something I think I can achieve.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1912&start=20#p12929
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I Am Too Sexy For This Forum
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2011-01-26 10:25:35

too late for locking, I guess.  It'd make the trolling teen pharaoh angry.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1912&start=30#p12930
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I Am Too Sexy For This Forum
User: George / DateTime: 2011-01-26 10:25:50

[quote="Dannii"]Now would be a good time for this topic to be locked/deleted.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=429&start=0#p12931
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Vegitarian
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2011-01-26 10:34:50

On a scale from green to red, I'd be more on the green side.  I don't care that much for beef and a plain meat and bread diet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1943&start=0#p12932
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Starborn: play statistics
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-26 11:01:59

I think it starts getting ethically gray if someone wrote something that's less clearly a game - say, a more serious version of ELIZA.  A fake psychotherapy session should stay optionally private, just as a real one should, even if it's anonymous.  (Unless there's a compelling interest in releasing it, of course.)  I remember entering real info into Bureaucracy when I first played it; I don't think I'd put something like that up without a heads up to the player.

I'd say releasing individual transcripts of regular IF at this point is almost harmless, and statistical analyses are so far removed that there's really nothing to worry about.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1943&start=0#p12933
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Starborn: play statistics
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-01-26 11:13:58

I agree that the privacy issues here are slim to none. I do think it would be nice if there were a way to offer something back to player, though--how about asking whether the player wants to view/download the transcript after play completes? (e.g., when the player typed QUIT, or when he has reached an ending.)

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=60#p12934
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2011-01-26 11:37:42

cool.  Both this discussion and the linked ones, many good points from both parser advocates, parser detractors and trolls.

sounded like "Super Smash IF Authors Mellee"  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

I have a smartphone now.  Although zippy is an interpreter for zcode by Google itself for Android, it sadly does not support the swype virtual keyboard input method.  Swype is nothing short of amazing and I can quickly write with it lots of text here and in other forums with ease by [i]swyping[/i] over letters to form words rather than type them.  So, as far as zippy is concerned, it's not quite as joyful to play IF on mobile as it is to click on choices given by CYAO works.  Parchments works fine with swype though, it's just lacking some screen adjustment:  you often have to scroll new text down yourself and even scroll right.

I like the parser and I like command lines.  What I don't quite like is the limited common set of verbs every IF has.   Not only are they limited and limit gameplay to essentially collect and unlock things and explore around in cardinal directions but also further, those verbs really don't handle natural language:  how many times have you seen things like "take the bus", "get out", "take shower"  lamely failing for the parser inability to handle NL ambiguities and the author not programming replies to such sensible actions?  I know you can create new verbs in Inform 7, but making them handle ambiguities of NL is still a pain.

Sometimes when I'm sketching some IF idea, I do something like:
> quiet|calm down|tranquilize dude|fellow|guy
You try your best at shredding his fears.

I think a parser programmable via regular expressions would be great at handling complex human actions rather than strict one-shot verbs building and aliasing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1943&start=0#p12935
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Starborn: play statistics
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-01-26 12:21:34

I'm not too excited about the silent transcript capture. I use my real name when prompted in games like [i]Bolivia by Night[/i], and I often perform actions that I don't identify with and wouldn't care to have aggregated and analyzed by a third party. (A certain scene in [i]Vespers[/i] comes to mind.) This behavior signals my willingness to invest time and energy in the work, to participate in an experience crafted by someone else.

Players and authors both benefit from that sort of engagement. Capturing data - even anonymous data - without warning or consent undermines the implicit trust that makes it possible. Even Microsoft asks permission before opting users into automatic error reports via [url=http://www.microsoft.com/products/ceip/EN-US/default.mspx]CEIP[/url]. I don't see how what you're doing is so different as to merit a free pass.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1910&start=10#p12936
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: More Glk progress
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-26 13:28:57

If you are comparing dates, you're probably comparing (year, month, day) in the date structure. Having a day-of-year field only simplifies that slightly. (Julian dates are better all around for that, and that's not exactly the same as simpletime with a 86400 factor. But it doesn't seem worth adding Julian dates just for that.)

I can't see a project using both time and simpletime. Maybe it would happen with different extensions?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1947&start=0#p12937
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation on Demand
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-26 14:30:26

I'm just browsing through Disambiguation Control. It looks like Jon Ingold completely reimplemented the NounDomain function. Is he available for comment?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1947&start=0#p12938
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation on Demand
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-26 15:04:25

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]The author can set relevant/irrelevant on any objects in the game he likes, then prime parser with "<VERB> RELEVANT", like "Rule for reading a command when the primed command is not empty: change the text of the player's command to the primed command; now the primed command is empty." [/quote]
Tell me more about priming the parser. Can it be done without indexed text?

I've been looking at the I6 parser code and it looks like there are three buffers, where buffer and buffer2 are used during disambiguation and buffer3 is used during "oops" and "again." Would it be possible to write I7 hooks for manipulating them? Do they behave like indexed text? Can a text be written to a buffer, or does it need to be converted to indexed text first?

Perhaps I'm being obsessive about avoiding indexed text, but I like to keep static memory static.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=160#p12939
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Mr. Patient / DateTime: 2011-01-26 15:13:27

Hi, I'm Sean, a UNIX admin in the Twin Cities.  I've been playing IF off and on for almost 30 years, but didn't even know this community existed until last fall.  Since then, I've been doing my best to catch up for all the lost time, but I still have a long list of must-play games ahead of me.

I've written a few reviews at IFDB, but mostly I just lurk.  I bought Aaron Reed's book a couple of months ago, and was inspired to try my hand at writing my own game, and it's now in a testable state.  If anyone is willing to test it, please drop me a line.  (<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1946">viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1946</a> -- apologies for the plug).

Thanks, and nice to meet all of you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1947&start=0#p12940
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation on Demand
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-26 15:36:16

I don't know.  I don't think I7 has a counterpart to the plain I6 array, esp. the byte array.  You could look at Appendix A for the phrase "To change the text of the player's command to" and see what it does, as it converts the indexed text to the input buffer. 

Mmm.. good luck. I think you're in for a world of hurt with that parser.  I feel it should be rewritten in I7 just for transparency and adding hooks, but it obviously would be a much bigger piece of code as a result.  (My argument isn't with its architecture so much as a few of the additions bolted on.  It being GPR based is actually pretty slick.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1947&start=0#p12941
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation on Demand
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-26 15:37:34

And I though Aaron Reed had done something with disambig mode, like fix a bug or something in it which involved replacing a big swathe of template code... but I can't remember.  Maybe it's in one of his extensions?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1947&start=0#p12942
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation on Demand
User: joningold / DateTime: 2011-01-26 17:44:31

[quote="capmikee"]I'm just browsing through Disambiguation Control. It looks like Jon Ingold completely reimplemented the NounDomain function. Is he available for comment?[/quote]

Hey there -

It's been a while since I wrote DC so I'm not entirely sure I remember how it works, which isn't a great starting point. It's also - as far as I can see - pretty underused, so it may well be buggy. But looking through, I think I reimplemented NounDomain for a few reasons:

 - to spot and flag when the parser was guessing nouns without any typed information, to prevent disambiguation rules from getting too excited

 - to check the word *after* a noun matches the right preposition token (to avoid the parser passing a line when it's about to fail; this is really a bug in the core Inform parser as it leads to "You can't see anything such thing here." errors for input like PUT BOTTLE AWAY).

 - to allow the game to say "You can't use multiple items here, which one do you mean exactly?", and receive disambiguation input, and use it

Anyway, none of that should be too important for what you want. At the top of either version of NounDomain, there's a call to the function SearchScope, and I think that's what actually does the parsing and fills up the match_list array with possible objects. The number_matched variable is set to how many matches get made. If this is 0, the token failed. If 1, the token was unique. Anything higher, and the game asks to disambiguate, which is done by horrible hacky code in NounDomain that prints a question, reads in text, and then copies it into the buffer before calling a reparse.

I think you want to take the pieces of NounDomain you need and write a short version of that routine that hooks in. You'll probably need to use the buffer for the input text, and then do the library parse thing, that writes out the parse table. You'll need to set wn to where you want SearchScope to start working.

But it should be possible!

cheers
jon

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1947&start=0#p12943
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation on Demand
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-26 21:00:54

Thanks, Jon, that's really helpful!

As for rewriting the parser, I agree with you, Ron! After studying how commas are handled, it does seem horribly over-complicated. Creating an "orders" equivalent in I7 would be complicated, but it seems like it could be done a lot better than it is now. And the ability to have commas in I7 grammar lines seems worthwhile.

What's GPR?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1947&start=10#p12944
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation on Demand
User: George / DateTime: 2011-01-26 22:42:44

[quote="capmikee"]
What's GPR?[/quote]

[quote] in the I6 design, any object can provide its own GPR [general parsing routine], in the form of a parse_name
property. GPRs are in eﬀect parser plug-ins, and I7 makes extensive use of them[/quote]

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7Downloads/Documents/Appendix-B.pdf">http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7Downloa ... ndix-B.pdf</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1947&start=10#p12946
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation on Demand
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-27 15:44:16

[quote="capmikee"]What's GPR?[/quote]
General Parsing Routine.  Inform 7 knows them as Understand tokens.   Inform 6 can stick functions into variables and properties, pass them to other functions, etc., and the parser makes good use of that.  So it isn't just the case that the parser is this bit of code sitting in a library, built to serve the author's code above it; the parser is also a framework which treats bits of the author's code as the parser's own little library.  Whenever we write Understand "foobar [something preferably held]", there's a 'preferably held' function/rule/to-phrase/whatchamacallit that the parser calls to ask, "do you recognize this stuff starting at word number X?"   The function returns the Object that matches the words if there is one, or, sets its corresponding global variable to the number or value if it recognizes one, or, returns a KOV like GPR_PREPOSITION or GPR_FAIL or whatever if it doesn't recognize the words.    Such a function can be written by the I7 author -- see 25.22 "Inform 6 Understand tokens" in WwI.  

I don't think the I7 manual tells us about wn -- the "word number" variable so important to GPRs -- or about the KOVs, or all that other stuff.  But it's possible to use that with I6-I7 glue code to get the parser to do all sorts of interesting things.  

In that respect, the parser is quite extensible.  Just make new tokens, each of which is an arbitrary function. 

Granted, I don't think any of this helps you with the special disambig-retry loop buried in the parser.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1936&start=20#p12947
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk spec 0.7.1 (and cheapglk, glkterm, glkote, quixe)
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-27 19:34:44

[quote="zarf"]To test the input echoing and line terminator features, go to

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quixe/play-remote.html?story=stories/inputfeaturetest.ulx.js">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quix ... est.ulx.js</a>

...and try the commands therein. In particular, see the difference in the "timer" command between "echo" and "noecho" mode. Then type "terminate", and hit some function keys, again in "echo" and "noecho" mode.

When new interpreters come out, you can test them with the same unit tests to verify they have the same behavior.[/quote]

[url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Ron%20Newcomb/Rewrite%20the%20Command%20Line/index.html]I've posted an Inform 7 extension to expose the echo/noecho functionality.[/url] The included example expands common abbreviations like X into the full word.  The example also will say if the interpreter running it doesn't support the functionality, which you'll see if you run it in the IDE.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1325&start=0#p12948
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: New hugo site
User: Roody_Yogurt / DateTime: 2011-01-27 19:45:51

Just bumping this thread to point out the progress we've been making on Hugo By Example. We've got a ways to go yet, but we've covered a couple things that the average Hugo user might be unclear on and it's shaping up to be a nice site. Feel free to check it out, Hugo users and the Hugo-curious!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1936&start=20#p12949
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk spec 0.7.1 (and cheapglk, glkterm, glkote, quixe)
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-27 19:48:11

Thanks, Ron.

One request: it would be better if the command were echoed in the Input style, rather than [bold type]. That way it will match the style that was used during editing, and the style used in other games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1936&start=20#p12950
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk spec 0.7.1 (and cheapglk, glkterm, glkote, quixe)
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-27 19:49:30

I've added this comment to the spec re window borders:

[i]The Border/NoBorder was introduced in Glk 0.7.1. Prior to that, all games used the Border hint, and this remains the default. However, as noted, not all implementations display window borders. Therefore, for existing implementations, "Border" may be understood as "your normal style of window display"; "NoBorder" may be understood as "suppress any interwindow borders you may have".[/i]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1919&start=20#p12951
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Brainstorm: Survival Stuff
User: Sig / DateTime: 2011-01-27 22:56:05

This whole thread makes me want to re-read Heinlein's [i]Tunnel in the Sky[/i], which I probably haven't read since elementary school.  The premise is that a high school (Of The FUTURE!) class in survival, as a final exam, gets teleported individually to an unknown (but hospitable) planet to survive on their own for a short time--a few days or a week, perhaps; I forget.  When the return portal is not forthcoming, the survivors have to band together and figure out how to do it for real, indefinitely.  It's probably juvenile fiction, but I loved it when I was a kid.

One thing I remember distinctly is that the main character is advised by a relative not to bring a gun (as so many of his classmates did).  The argument was that a man unarmed (or lightly armed--with a knife, perhaps) in the wild will be cautious and careful, whereas a man with a gun will tend to be confident and careless.

A few other thoughts...
-I haven't yet seen the gun that can kill malaria.

-Even without plentiful water, you can only get [i]so[/i] dirty.  Without modern soaps, you can only get [i]so[/i] clean.  You get used to it.  Soap wouldn't be high on my list.

-Knives/axes/machetes and the like are most useful when you have some ability to sharpen them again.  A good-sized sharpening stone would probably work for all of these adequately, if not perfectly.

-If you're traveling light, it makes more sense to bring warm layers you can move around in than to bring a sleeping bag you will only use at night.  Modern U. S. Army sleeping bags come in several layers, with a waterproof and wind-resistant Goretex shell on the outside.  If the climate is temperate and I'm on foot, I wouldn't even bring the sleeping bags, but use a poncho liner (a kind of multipurpose blanket) inside that shell (which is light and packs down small), plus layers of clothing that I am carrying anyway.  Every ounce counts.

-I've not spent any time there, but I've seen survivalist forums floating around where people discuss such things to death.  Might be a good place to troll for advice (both good and bad).

-Instructables.com has an outdoors sub-section devoted to [url=http://www.instructables.com/tag/type-id/category-outside/channel-survival/]survival[/url] topics.  Instructions for simple things that can be constructed from everyday components might give you a few ideas.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1908&start=10#p12952
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: 2010 XYZZY Awards now open
User: inky / DateTime: 2011-01-28 01:09:48

Just a reminder that there's still a few more days left to vote in the first round! Finalists will be put up sometime Feb 1st.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1945&start=0#p12953
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Understand "[someone], [something]" as informing it abou
User: ChristianB / DateTime: 2011-01-28 04:46:10

A bare command (a command in which nobody is explicitly addressed) is understood by Inform as an order to the player. Therefore, >GO NORTH does the same as >YOURSELF, GO NORTH. So you don't have do define commands with an [actor], [something] pattern.

Maybe the following example does what you have in mind:

[code]
The Kitchen is a room.

Bob is a man in the Kitchen.

The apple is an edible thing in the Kitchen.

Vaguely being informed about is an action applying to one thing.
	
Understand "[something]" as vaguely being informed about.

Check an actor vaguely being informed about: 
	if the actor is the player, say "You reassure yourself: yes, this is [a noun].";
	otherwise try telling the actor about.
	
Test me with "apple / bob, apple".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1945&start=0#p12954
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Understand "[someone], [something]" as informing it abou
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-28 10:46:26

That seems like a good idea, but it's not working for me.

If you do "actions" before you run your example, you'll see that the action is still "answering Bob that 'apple'."

The problem is that the comma is handled at a very low level in I6. I'm not sure how I7 handles grammar lines that don't start with a command verb, but it seems that whatever mechanism is used for that doesn't get to run before the line is parsed as ##Answer.

I'm thinking of writing an extension for "disambiguation on demand" so that the topic understood from the "Answering it that" action can be reparsed as an object and then used in the informing it about action. But it's a lot of work to solve one specific problem. At this point I'm considering writing an extension to replace this I6 hack with a routine that can handle commas in a more general way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1945&start=0#p12955
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Understand "[someone], [something]" as informing it abou
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-28 11:33:20

If you're re-defining the "person, stuff" syntax completely, then wouldn't a Persuasion rule that tries the informing it about action work?  

As for topics to objects, if the parser doesn't understand the latter part of "person, stuff" then it won't understand "stuff" by itself either. The answering it that action is just a parser error by another name.

I guess I'm confused about what you're aiming at.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1936&start=20#p12956
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk spec 0.7.1 (and cheapglk, glkterm, glkote, quixe)
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-28 11:41:37

[quote="zarf"]One request: it would be better if the command were echoed in the Input style, rather than [bold type]. That way it will match the style that was used during editing, and the style used in other games.[/quote]
Is that available in vanilla Inform?  I can't find that even in Glulx Text Effects extension....
I'll poke around for it.  (EDIT: Found it.  I'll see what i can do with it.)

And thank you for the feature in the first place!   [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1945&start=0#p12957
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Understand "[someone], [something]" as informing it abou
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-28 11:52:05

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]If you're re-defining the "person, stuff" syntax completely, then wouldn't a Persuasion rule that tries the informing it about action work? [/quote]
I'm not sure if you're talking about rewriting Parser Letter H, or just modifying the example here, but I tried the latter. Adding a persuasion rule doesn't seem to make any difference:

[spoiler][code]The Kitchen is a room.

Bob is a man in the Kitchen.

The apple is an edible thing in the Kitchen.

Vaguely being informed about is an action applying to one thing.
   
Understand "[something]" as vaguely being informed about.
   
Persuasion rule for asking someone to try vaguely being informed about something:
	Persuasion succeeds.
	
Check an actor vaguely being informed about something:
	say "'That's nice.'"
	
Instead of Bob trying vaguely being informed about the apple:
	say "'That's a delicious-looking apple,' says Bob."
	
Test me with "bob, apple".[/code][/spoiler]

[quote]As for topics to objects, if the parser doesn't understand the latter part of "person, stuff" then it won't understand "stuff" by itself either. The answering it that action is just a parser error by another name.

I guess I'm confused about what you're aiming at.[/quote]
And parser errors are what the "disambiguation on demand" extension is all about - part of my idea for iterative parsing. This is what I'd like to have happen here:

[code]Instead of answering someone that something when the topic understood matches "[any known thing]":
    Let the item understood be the topic understood as an object;
    if the item understood is not nothing, try informing the noun about the item understood.
[/code]

The extension would define a "to decide which object is (topic - a snippet) as an object" phrase which performs disambiguation if necessary.

I'm a little fuzzy on what would happen if the player entered a new command instead of answering the "which do you mean" question - I'm imagining that the turn sequence would abort and start over again at the beginning, but that might be dangerous. I haven't yet reviewed the behavior of similar question-and-answer interactions such as "if the player consents" and the various question-handling extensions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1936&start=20#p12958
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk spec 0.7.1 (and cheapglk, glkterm, glkote, quixe)
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-28 15:26:56

I now have the [input type] say-phrase working. It was easy, after the necessary research:[code]To say input type:  (- glk_set_style(style_Input); -).

when play begins, say "> [input type]start game[roman type]"[/code]But now I have a question.  I'd like to give the author a phrase informing him if the input and output types are identical or not.  So I used this:[code]To decide if input type differs from roman type: 
(- (glk_style_distinguish(gg_mainwin, style_Input, style_Normal)) -).[/code]But it doesn't seem to work, as least on Quixe.  Does Quixe not implement this?  I notice when calling [i]glk_style_measure[/i] it returns false on Quixe, but true on Git & Glulxe, and it seems the former function would be composed of the latter.  And yet, calling [i]retvalcompare = glk_style_measure(gg_mainwin, style_Preformatted, stylehint_Proportional, compareout);[/i] puts a zero in the output variable when it shouldn't. Matter of fact, I *always* get a zero in the output variable regardless the interpreter, leading me to believe that I'm doing something very wrong, or a lot of this stuff doesn't work, either way.  

Help?

EDIT : nevermind, reading Quixe source tells me it does not. As for the rest of it, I shan't care.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1945&start=0#p12959
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Understand "[someone], [something]" as informing it abou
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-28 15:35:55

Ah, I misunderstood. Well then I would've suggested what ChristianB already did, but why that doesn't work, I don't know. 

It's clunky, but in Answering It That, you can use regexes on the player's command to remove the person being addressed, stow the actor variable in a informed-actor variable, finish the action, skip parsing the 2nd time with [i]Rule for reading a command when the command to re-try is not empty: change the text of the player's command to the command to re-try; now the command to re-try is "".[/i], then use a Before on the Informed-actor being something to try your new action.

You might want to file a bug on Christian's example.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1945&start=0#p12960
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Understand "[someone], [something]" as informing it abou
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-28 15:39:22

Like this, assuming you have a [i]current interlocutor[/i] variable.
[code]The command to re-try is indexed text that varies. The command to re-try is usually "".

Rule for reading a command when the command to re-try is not "": 
	change the text of the player's command to the command to re-try;
	now the command to re-try is "".

Check answering when the player's command matches the text "," :
	now the current interlocutor is the noun;
	now the command to re-try is the player's command;
	replace the regular expression "^<^,>+, *" in the command to re-try with "";
	rule succeeds.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1945&start=0#p12961
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Understand "[someone], [something]" as informing it abou
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-28 15:49:48

That seems to work, Ron - thanks!

I was starting to get the impression from compiler errors that you couldn't match a comma anywhere, but that one is okay.

Still, I'm going to work on doing it without indexed text. Maybe I can come up with a safe I6 routine for modifying the buffer? buffer2's not used after disambiguation is done, is it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1945&start=0#p12962
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Understand "[someone], [something]" as informing it abou
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-28 17:19:40

I honestly do not know.  Jon & Aaron have tinkered with the parser more than I.  I just know how to get I7 to use what's already there, and I obviously don't care enough to optimize away indexed text.  Long live Glulx, and all that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1936&start=20#p12963
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk spec 0.7.1 (and cheapglk, glkterm, glkote, quixe)
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-28 19:51:29

[quote]I'd like to give the author a phrase informing him if the input and output types are identical or not.[/quote]

I see I keep reading these questions late. As you note, it's just not practical to do this, and it will get less practical in the future (when we move to CSS). Leave the formatting decisions separate from the code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1936&start=20#p12964
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk spec 0.7.1 (and cheapglk, glkterm, glkote, quixe)
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-01-29 02:35:13

Implementing style_distinguish could be done in GlkOte... just depends on how much effort is spent on it. Few people seem to want it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=809&start=30#p12965
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: beginner questions/programming
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2011-01-29 04:59:08

Thanks Guys and Gals.

Is there a way to substitute "break" / "breaking" instead of "attack" / "attacking" the case glass?

It would be the more obvious verb for the player to figure out, but it seems that breaking is a word already in Inform7's vocabulary, and it seems reluctant to alow a rule to override it.  "Attacking" works just fine, but "breaking" produces the error:
[code]You wrote 'Instead of breaking the case glass'  , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is 'breaking the case glass'. But that did not make sense as a description of an action. I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook.[/code]

BTW I'll be travelling from the 8th Feb to the 16th March and probably out of touch during that time.  When I return I'll commence a thread specifically for the project that I've been working on all this time - it's taking me too long to suss out Inform7's little quirks on my own.  I've appreciated the friendly and generous assitance you people have given me, and hopefully it will be fun to involve you in the project more directly.  (Albeit with the consequence of the end result not being the surprise that I'd planned, but what the hey. [emote]:)[/emote] )

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1945&start=0#p12966
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Understand "[someone], [something]" as informing it abou
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-01-29 04:59:09

The parser converts "Bob, apple" and the like to the answering it that action at Parser Letter H in the Parser Template.

Shouldn't it be possible to tell Inform that 
[code]The informing it about action translates into I6 as "Inform".[/code]
and then replace the line 
parser_results-->ACTION_PRES = ##Answer 
in Parser Letter H with
[code]parser_results-->ACTION_PRES = ##Inform[/code]
?

(Haven't tried it out, though ...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=40#p12967
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-Machine Standard 1.2 (draft)
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-01-29 05:31:08

I've updated the spec again. I've added selectors which allow for those issues to be identified, but which don't dictate which is the correct interpretation. Comments?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=809&start=30#p12968
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: beginner questions/programming
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-01-29 06:54:03

[quote]It would be the more obvious verb for the player to figure out, but it seems that breaking is a word already in Inform7's vocabulary, and it seems reluctant to alow a rule to override it.[/quote]
Actually it's the opposite: breaking is a word that Inform [i]doesn't[/i] know and therefore doesn't know what to do with it.

If you want only the command BREAK GLASS to work you have to make your own breaking action, but I wouldn't do that: the attacking action already includes BREAK as a synonym, along with many others, so the BREAK GLASS command already works. If you make a new breaking action and the player types HIT GLASS or SMASH GLASS or something else they get the rather misleading "Violence is not the answer" response.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1949&start=0#p12969
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [Newbie] A door with a different name for each side
User: Kroc / DateTime: 2011-01-29 08:20:21

Hello all. Long story short, I bought my friend the GET LAMP documentary on DVD, and he pointed me to Inform, which I have been most impressed with. I never knew a tool of this quality existed.

I have a superb idea for a prototype collection of rooms I can use to teach me the system and explore many basic principles of the engine.

My problem is this: I am not able to clearly ascertain from the documentation I have understood thus far how to create a door that has a different name (not description) on either side.

Let us say there is a sitting room and a bedroom connected. When in the sitting room, I want the door to be called "The door to the bedroom", but when you are in the bedroom I want it to be called "The door to the sitting room".

Could I ask favour of your greater knowledge in this matter?

---

Also, but not as important, any general advice you could give on the following would be a bonus. Realistically, people do not talk about entering and leaving rooms in terms of cardinal positions. I do not explain to somebody in my house that they must go west to go into the living room. I would like my game to eschew the use of cardinal movement and instead let the play move from one room to the next through obvious, named entrances such as doors, paths, rooms, ladders and so forth.

I assume that this is both possible and relatively easy in Inform to do, and having your help solve the first problem, I'm sure the answer is not far off but any heads-up you can give on facilitating actions like "go through door", "enter door" &c. would be a great help.

Kind regards,
Kroc Camen.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=809&start=30#p12970
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: beginner questions/programming
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-29 08:24:00

To elaborate a little, and hopefully accurately, there are two kinds of vocabulary here: The words that show up in your source code and the words that the player types. (The TL;DR is that "break glass" should work already; let us know if it doesn't.)

In the source code, you have (for instance) names of actions, like "attacking." If you wanted to use "breaking" in the source code you'd have to define a new action by saying something like "Breaking is an action applying to one thing" and then defining rules for it. But you don't need to, because....

It doesn't matter to the player whether your source code calls the action "attacking" or "breaking." The player never has to directly deal with the words that appear in your source code, or the names of your actions. The words that the player types get translated into actions by the parser. Understand statements tell the parser how to do this translation. That's why you often see code like this:

[code]Twirling is an action applying to one thing. Understand "twirl [something]" as twirling.[/code]

If not for the "understand" statement, the parser wouldn't know that the command "TWIRL MUSTACHE" was meant to be translated into the action of twirling the mustache, and twirling would never happen. 

In this case, as Juhana points out, "BREAK [something]" is already built in as a synonym for "ATTACK [something]." So your game will automatically understand "BREAK GLASS" as attacking the glass, unless you tell it not to. So you're set.

(Specifically, this is the relevant part of the standard rules:

[code]Understand "attack [something]" as attacking.
Understand the commands "break", "smash", "hit", "fight", "torture", "wreck", "crack", "destroy",
	"murder", "kill", "punch" and "thump" as "attack".[/code]

The "Understand the commands..." part means that those words get mapped onto "attack" with all the attendant syntax. I suppose Graham could've put in 
[code]Understand "break [something] as attacking. Understand "smash [something] as attacking. [etc.][/code]

but it would obviously have been more tedious, and maybe there's a difference I'm not picking up.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=809&start=30#p12971
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: beginner questions/programming
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-01-29 08:40:31

Well said!

[quote="matt w"]The "Understand the commands..." part means that those words get mapped onto "attack" with all the attendant syntax. I suppose Graham could've put in 
[code]Understand "break [something] as attacking. Understand "smash [something] as attacking. [etc.][/code]
but it would obviously have been more tedious, and maybe there's a difference I'm not picking up.)[/quote]
The difference is that "Understand the command..." makes the words themselves synonymous, regardless of the action. So if you created your own "attacking it with" action you could just define one grammar line, "Understand "attack [something] with [something]" as attacking it with", and all the other verbs would automatically work with this new action as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1949&start=0#p12972
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Newbie] A door with a different name for each side
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-01-29 09:08:23

There are several examples that deal with variations of the renamed door, in the Inform Recipe Book, under Place / 3.5 Doors, Staircases, and Bridges. (If you can't find the Recipe Book, scroll to the bottom of the table of contents for the main manual -- there's a link there.)

GO THROUGH DOOR and ENTER DOOR should work already, out of the box.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1210&start=0#p12973
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: [Hugo] New syntax highlighter for ConTEXT editor
User: Roody_Yogurt / DateTime: 2011-01-29 10:19:59

I have also thrown together  ("thrown together" refers to the quality of my work, not the time it took to do it) syntax files for Crimson Editor and Notepad++. For now, you can find them here: [url]http://hugo.gerynarsabode.org./index.php?title=Windows_Apps[/url]

Eventually, I will upload them to the IF Archive.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1949&start=0#p12974
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Newbie] A door with a different name for each side
User: Kroc / DateTime: 2011-01-29 11:50:28

I had looked at those examples, but they just conditionally change the description of the room or the door, not the *name* of the door as it appears in the item list that proceeds the room description. Any further suggestions?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1936&start=20#p12975
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk spec 0.7.1 (and cheapglk, glkterm, glkote, quixe)
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-29 11:52:30

It could be done, but I think it was a design error to begin with, and I'd rather not encouraging people to start relying on it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1949&start=0#p12976
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Newbie] A door with a different name for each side
User: Kroc / DateTime: 2011-01-29 12:18:40

Correction: on further inspection, it appears that changing the description of the door, allows appending the description to the end of the room description, and as such one could wrangle some way of including the description of the door into the room. The only problem here is that if I want make mention of the door in the regular room description (say in the middle of the text), I then don't want a description on the door, but if I add empty string "" to the end of the door, Inform still lists the door in the room using it's canonical name, not the name I want. "You can also see a Bedroom Door here."

Inform has an idea what I'm referring to when I use the other description--e.g. "Close the door to the bedroom" gives "I understand you as far as wanting to close the Bedroom Door". I'm sure I can get Inform to pair together the two names. If anybody has a more elegant solution I would much like to know it [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1949&start=0#p12977
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Newbie] A door with a different name for each side
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-29 12:35:33

Are you looking for something like this, using the printed name property?

[code]The Bathroom is a room. "A bathroom." The Kitchen is a room. "A kitchen." The white door is a door. The white door is north of the bathroom and south of the kitchen. The printed name of the white door is "[If the location is the bathroom]white door to the kitchen on the north wall[otherwise]white door to the bathroom on the south wall". 

Understand "kitchen" as the white door when the location is the bathroom. Understand "bathroom" as the white door when the location is the kitchen.[/code]

However, the output there is kind of fugly; you probably don't want to say "You can see the white door to the kitchen on the north wall here." For instance, you'll notice that I had to include the direction in the name of the wall, or people wouldn't know where to go. So it might be better to just include the description of the door in the room and suppress in the item list by declaring it as scenery, thus:

[code]The Bathroom is a room. "A bathroom. The white door on the north wall leads to the kitchen." The Kitchen is a room. "A kitchen. The white door on the south wall leads to the bathroom." The white door is a door. The white door is scenery. The white door is north of the bathroom and south of the kitchen. 

Understand "kitchen" as the white door when the location is the bathroom. Understand "bathroom" as the white door when the location is the kitchen.[/code]

The "understand" stuff is still useful because it means "enter kitchen" or "open kitchen door" will work in the bathroom. 

So there you mostly don't have to worry about the printed name of the door, since it doesn't even appear in the room description -- but it does appear when you implicitly open it, or something like that. Paste in my last bit of code and try "go north"; it'll say "(first opening the white door)". If you'd like it to say "(first opening the kitchen door)" you can do that with a varying printed name, thus:

[code]The Bathroom is a room. "A bathroom. The white door on the north wall leads to the kitchen." The Kitchen is a room. "A kitchen. The white door on the south wall leads to the bathroom." The white door is a door. The white door is scenery. The white door is north of the bathroom and south of the kitchen. The printed name of the white door is "[If the location is the bathroom]kitchen door[otherwise]bathroom door". 

Understand "kitchen" as the white door when the location is the bathroom. Understand "bathroom" as the white door when the location is the kitchen.[/code]

Which as you can see basically combines the last two approaches.

I'm not a real experienced I7 coder, so there may be wrinkles (or big ol' important things) I'm missing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1949&start=0#p12978
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Newbie] A door with a different name for each side
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-29 12:43:51

Hrm, somehow I missed your second post before I wrote mine, but to suppress "You see a Bedroom Door here" you can say "The Bedroom Door [or whatever you're calling it in your code] is scenery." Scenery won't be listed after the room description. (That was in my previous post too, but maybe pretty well hidden.) 

As for this:

[quote]Inform has an idea what I'm referring to when I use the other description--e.g. "Close the door to the bedroom" gives "I understand you as far as wanting to close the Bedroom Door".[/quote]

I'm afraid it's not quite as good as you hope -- it's understanding "door" but it might not be understanding "bedroom." In the second and third example I posted, "close bathroom door" works but I don't think "close the door to the bathroom" does. I'm not quite sure how to get that to work, other than maybe by brute-forcing it:

[code]Understand "door to the bathroom" as the white door when the location is the kitchen. Understand "door to bathroom" as the white door when the location is the kitchen. Understand "door to the kitchen" as the white door when the location is the bathroom. Understand "door to kitchen" as the white door when the location is the bathroom.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1949&start=0#p12979
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Newbie] A door with a different name for each side
User: Kroc / DateTime: 2011-01-29 13:11:25

Extremely informative, thank you!

I shall begin dissecting this info and get back to you if I run into problems.

Thank you for efforts!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1529&start=10#p12980
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Fiction about Interactive Fiction
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-01-29 13:39:57

[quote][b]Jones[/b]

Reports of a slow-moving little man with a very large head and glazed over eyes came from Kingston, New York in the 1890’s. At first, he was thought to be part of the undead wandering around with a slow moan. He actually was a man who the locals called Jones. He was a constant sleepwalker. He once sleep walked for almost 27 years,  only “dosing “ into consciousness to avoid obstacles in his path. He once woke up in 1896 on Warren Street and uttered the word “[b]Plugh[/b]”, looked around, and then fell back into his sleepwalking march, which took him from route downtown Kingston all the way to the Rondout and back again.[/quote]

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.travislouie.com/">http://www.travislouie.com/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1936&start=20#p12981
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk spec 0.7.1 (and cheapglk, glkterm, glkote, quixe)
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-29 14:10:54

I've submitted version 2 to the extensions site, with the [input type] style that works just like [bold type] and [italic type]: turn it off with [roman type].

Although I did go ahead and toss in [i]style_distinguish[/i], I put it at the end of the documentation with caveats that not all interpreters support it, and it will tend to return a value saying the styles are the same when it doesn't know.  At worst, the author would be changing the input style when he doesn't need to, which, without [i]style_distinguish[/i], he would have needed to do anyway:  when rewriting the command line so it blends in with other prose, the styling is important so the player knows where to begin reading again after pressing Enter.

If it becomes an issue in the future, we could always go back and implement [i]style_distinguish[/i], but if it doesn't, so much the better.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1950&start=0#p12982
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Changing descriptions
User: tomcamfield / DateTime: 2011-01-29 15:52:15

I'm having problems setting up the second room in my first game, any help would be appreciated:

I have a key in a wall, and I want the wall description to change as you examine the wall further.
However, I also want the wall description to reset when you remove the key from it.
It's this second bit I can't get to work, whatever I try, it keeps telling me that there might be a key in the wall.

An example of a failed attempt:

The walls are here.
The walls are scenery.
The walls contain a key.
The description is "The walls are ... blah blah blah"

If we have not taken the key, instead of examining the walls for the second time, say "Is there something in the wall?"
If we have not taken the key, instead of examining the walls at least twice, say "Is that a key in the wall?"
If we have taken the key, instead of examining the walls, say "The walls are ... blah blah blah"

Can anyone help? Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1949&start=0#p12983
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Newbie] A door with a different name for each side
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-01-29 16:17:18

Doors have a special "property" called "the other side" (viz. the room at the other side of the door). You can use it to name doors by default after the room they lead to.

[code]The bathroom is a room. "A bathroom. The white door on the north wall leads to the kitchen." 

The kitchen is a room. "A kitchen. The white door on the south wall leads to the bathroom." 

The white door is a door. The white door is scenery. The white door is north of the bathroom and south of the kitchen. 

A door is usually scenery.
The printed name of a door is usually "[other side] door".
[/code]
(or, if you prefer, »The printed name of a door is usually "door to the [other side]".»

(I would also have expected 
»Understand the other side property as referring to a door.»
to let you use "kitchen door" and "bathroom door" to refer to the same door from different sides, but it won't compile on my old build of Inform. It may possibly work on the current build however.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1950&start=0#p12984
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing descriptions
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-01-29 16:57:59

You can't start a rule with an if-clause; you've got to do it the other way around and first tell Inform what kind of rule you're writing (an instead rule or an after rule or …?), then you put any conditionals [b]inside [/b]the rule. Like this:

[code]The walls are here.
The walls are scenery.
The walls contain a key.
The description is "The walls are ... blah blah blah."

Instead of examining the walls: if we have examined the walls and we have not taken the key, say "Is there something in the wall?"; otherwise continue the action.
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1950&start=0#p12985
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing descriptions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-29 18:46:43

Please, please don't make players examine something twice to find the hidden object!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1325&start=0#p12986
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: New hugo site
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-01-29 19:31:48

It looks very good and already has some practical self-help material that I'll likely incorporate into my current Hugo experiment (which I hope will be more than an experiment).  Thank you.

If I think of anything that I can contribute, I will do so.  Do you think a class definition, along with several property definitions, that provide a way to include what I call "travel messages" into room objects is worthwhile as a Hugo tip for the wiki?  "Travel messages" are text blocks printed after the player leaves in a certain direction and before the next room description is printed, intended to describe the PC's journey from one location to the next.  My code works for me, but it's never been betatested or debugged.  It's also rather inelegant; I think I should have used a "switch" statement instead of a bunch of "if" conditions.  If you're interested, I'll see if I can clean it up a little bit.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1950&start=0#p12987
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing descriptions
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-01-29 21:04:40

[quote="capmikee"]Please, please don't make players examine something twice to find the hidden object![/quote]
I agree. This kind of puzzle, in which there's no initial nudge that would lead the player to undertake further examination, is almost guaranteed to annoy your players.

On top of which, in most IF the walls are not important. Even if you mention the walls in the room description (something like "The walls are panelled in dark oak"), it won't occur to many players that the walls should be examined even once.

Also ... I hate to ask, but what is a key doing sticking out of the middle of a wall? I find that more than a bit odd. A key tucked into the dirt in a potted plant or hidden under a rug makes some kind of sense.

If the walls are brick, and if your room description, after mentioning the brick walls, says something like, "The grout holding the bricks in place is chipped and cracked," the puzzle becomes much more reasonable, first because you've called the player's attention to the grout and second because a little cranny where some grout has fallen out would be a natural hiding place for a key.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1325&start=0#p12988
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: New hugo site
User: Roody_Yogurt / DateTime: 2011-01-29 22:07:45

I remember this from joltcountry. I wasn't entirely clear on why travel messages would be specific to direction and am curious to see exactly how your experiment is modeled. If you think your code suitably fits a topic someone would want to look up, feel free to add entries to Hugo By Example. For code that I haven't yet decided what topic I'm going to file it under, I have just been adding it to my thread on joltcountry which I have linked to from the Hugo Tips page. You could do the same.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1945&start=10#p12989
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Understand "[someone], [something]" as informing it abou
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-29 22:39:35

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]You might want to file a bug on Christian's example.[/quote]
I filed it:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=526">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=526</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1951&start=0#p12990
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform book (and howdy!)
User: theraje / DateTime: 2011-01-30 03:57:14

Hey there! I'm a new user of Inform 7, and a friend of mine pointed me to these forums. I just signed up, and this is my initial post. Hope you are all well today! [emote]:D[/emote]

I'm planning on getting a copy of Aaron Reed's book, "Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7," and I am interested in the opinions of those who have read it. I am having a little trouble with the documentation included with Inform 7 (mainly when it comes to finding something specific I want to do), and am hoping the book has a structure that is more appropriate for my way of handling things. If anyone can comment a little on how the book is organized and so on, that would be really helpful. [emote]:)[/emote]

I also write graphical games, and am experienced with a few programming languages (C, C++, C#, Java, and JavaScript mostly). I'd like to know of any recommendations to help me transition from writing in plus signs and curly braces to Plain English. [emote];)[/emote] I know, I know, but once you get into the mindset of a programmer, unlearning (or at least managing) those habits is tough!

Looking forward to getting to know you, and sharing information and stories with the community here. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1950&start=0#p12991
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing descriptions
User: tomcamfield / DateTime: 2011-01-30 04:45:49

Thank you for all the help.

I agree, I hate examining things twice too, so I changed it so that the first examination hints at something, the second tells you what is there. Here is my successful, but incredibly long, solution:

[quote]The wall is here.
The wall is scenery.
The wall contains a slimy key and ooze.
Instead of examining the wall:
	If the key is in the wall, say "The wall is disgusting, the green ooze looks like its moving, reaching out to touch you. There is something in the ooze.";
	If the key is not in the wall, say "The wall is disgusting, the green ooze looks like its moving, reaching out to touch you.".
Instead of examining the wall more than once:
	If the key is in the wall, say "The wall is disgusting, the green ooze looks like its moving, reaching out to touch you. There is something in the ooze, it looks like a key.";
	If the key is not in the wall, say "The wall is disgusting, the green ooze looks like its moving, reaching out to touch you.".[/quote]

Context: a tiny snail has been made sick by swallowing a key, and has left it behind in it's now freakishly large slime trail. The snail tells you he feels sick which was supposed to make people look at the trail, but now I think they might try to break open the snail. This is okay, as killing the snail is punished by a negative score, and the player doesn't need the key (they can break a window to get into the locked shed instead).

I guess, however, that if people don't normally examine the walls, I should put the key in the ooze instead...

Thanks again

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1951&start=0#p12992
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform book (and howdy
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-01-30 05:40:16

[quote="theraje"]

I also write graphical games, and am experienced with a few programming languages (C, C++, C#, Java, and JavaScript mostly). I'd like to know of any recommendations to help me transition from writing in plus signs and curly braces to Plain English. I know, I know, but once you get into the mindset of a programmer, unlearning (or at least managing) those habits is tough!

[/quote]


I7 isn't plain English. It just pretends to be. Pretence is an important part of the I7 project.

With your C++ background, I'd suggest you stick to the curly braces and learn I6 instead.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1952&start=0#p12993
Forum: Competitions / Subject: IF Demo Fair proposal
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-01-30 06:02:25

I've mentioned this on my blog, but in case people here have more thoughts:

One suggestion that we’ve been kicking around on the mud for PAX East is a sort of fair, as follows:

Authors have the opportunity to work on tech demonstrations during February, focusing on one of several themes. These would not have to be full games — a single scene or mockup would suffice, as long as it gets the idea across. The point is to share interesting new concepts, not to produce finished products.

During PAX, these will be on show on laptops so that people would have a chance to experience them individually.

On Saturday afternoon when we have the big room available, there will be a dedicated Demo Fair time when we get together and play through the demos on a projector, and discuss.

Authors will be invited to talk about why they did what they did, if they’re present. It’s still permitted to submit a demonstration if you’re not going to be there, and you’re welcome to accompany your demo with some authorial notes to be shared with everyone.

This is not a competition, in that there will be no official prizes, judges, or winners, and anyone is free both to enter and to offer feedback on other entries.

The currently proposed themes are:

* New styles of NPC interaction
* UI concepts

It sounds like this is of interest to enough people that we’re probably going to do something like it. 

Before we do an official public announcement, though — are there other themes we should include? Concerns or suggestions?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1951&start=0#p12994
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform book (and howdy
User: ManolisG13 / DateTime: 2011-01-30 06:03:04

+1 to the above mate.. Since you have a programming background, besides curiosity and the novelty of I7, you'd better try Inform 6 or TADS.. [emote];)[/emote]

EDIT: And I too have Aaron's book but not time to put on I7 yet.. But if you want to take a look on I7 I think it's worth it, but it doesn't have the structure you ask, the "how to do this" kind... Besides Inform's 7 original manual other ppl here have made their owns, take a look around or google to find some more links mate, cheers [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1951&start=0#p12995
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform book (and howdy
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-01-30 06:14:32

To put it in another way, programming in I7 is still programming, even though the syntax differs from other languages. Programming background does help and there's no need to unlearn it. What requires more of a mindset change is that I7 is a rule-based language instead of declarative or object-oriented.

It's often said that programmers should stay away from I7, but I haven't found a real correlation between previous programming experience and ability to grasp I7. It'd be crazy to claim that pre-existing programming knowledge somehow prevents learning other paradigms. Some programmers use and like I7, some are more comfortable with a more traditional language; the same is equally true for people with no previous programming experience.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1950&start=0#p12996
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing descriptions
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-01-30 06:32:45

[quote]if people don't normally examine the walls, I should put the key in the ooze instead...[/quote]
I figure that's a wise choice.

Also, you actually don't need those instead rules at all. Put it all inside the description of the ooze/trail instead:
[code]The description of the ooze is: ”The wall is disgusting, the green ooze looks like its moving, reaching out to touch you.[if the key is in the ooze and we have not examined the key] There is some kind of thingy in the ooze.[if the key is in the ooze and we have examined the key] There is something in the ooze, it looks like a key.”
[/code]

And players will appreciate it, if you put in a couple of synonyms for the ooze and for the key in the ooze (so they can type X TRAIL and X THINGY). (I'm pretty sure players will try to examine the something in the ooze rather than reexamine the ooze, after you tell them there's something in it.)

[code]Understand "trail" as the ooze.

The description of the key is: "[if the key is in the ooze]There is something in the ooze, it looks like a key.[otherwise]Gee! This is the key to everlasting fortune!!!”
Understand "thingy" as the key when the key is in the ooze.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1951&start=0#p12997
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform book (and howdy
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-01-30 06:51:20

[quote="theraje"]I'm planning on getting a copy of Aaron Reed's book, "Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7," and I am interested in the opinions of those who have read it. I am having a little trouble with the documentation included with Inform 7 (mainly when it comes to finding something specific I want to do), and am hoping the book has a structure that is more appropriate for my way of handling things. If anyone can comment a little on how the book is organized and so on, that would be really helpful.[/quote]
[url=http://www.amazon.com/Creating-Interactive-Fiction-Inform-7/dp/1435455061/]Amazon's page for the book[/url] has the index and large chunks of content on display (click on the cover picture). From that you can probably get a good picture of how the book is organized.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1951&start=0#p12998
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform book (and howdy
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-01-30 07:01:01

[quote="theraje"]I am having a little trouble with the documentation included with Inform 7 (mainly when it comes to finding something specific I want to do)[/quote]

This may or may not help, but it's worth pointing out that the Recipe Book part of the documentation is the part that's organized around accomplishing specific tasks you might want to do in a game. If you haven't seen it, scroll to the bottom of the table of contents for the main docs, and click Inform Recipe Book.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1951&start=0#p12999
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform book (and howdy
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2011-01-30 09:23:59

plese notice Jacek is our resident troll and almost always is full of BS.  I'm a programmer too but I found i7 a refreshing new approach to IF authoring.  Next step in the evolution of the genre only if we get a smarter parser and better event narrator.

So, besides the Recipe Book Emily suggested, you could also take a look at Jim Aikin's excellent Inform 7 Handbook:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm">http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1953&start=0#p13000
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Fixed Point Maths does not work (Inform 7)
User: T. R. Zazzara / DateTime: 2011-01-30 09:40:34

Hello there!

The Fixed Point Maths extension seems not to work anymore, at least not for me. Is it because of the new Inform 7 version? (I used Inform 7 v. 6G60 and Fixed Points Math v. 4)

Look for yourself: 
[code]
Include Fixed Point Maths by Michael Callaghan.
Hello is a room.
[/code]

Output:
[code]This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6G60) on its most recent run through:

In Chapter 9 - Some mathematical functions, Section 6 - Sines in the extension Fixed Point Maths by Michael Callaghan:

Problem. In 'let X be X plus 1'  , it looks as if you want to use 'let' to change the value of the temporary variable 'X'. Ordinarily that would be fine, but it's not allowed when the variable is used as the counter in a 'repeat' loop, or has some other do-not-disturb purpose - this could cause chaotic effects. The rule is: you can only change an existing value with 'let' if it was created by 'let' in the first place.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In Section 8 - Tangents in the extension Fixed Point Maths by Michael Callaghan:

Problem. In the sentence 'decide on result in degrees'  , I was expecting to read a real number, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'result'.

I was trying to match one of these phrases:

1. (result - real number) in degrees 

2. (result - number) in degrees 

This was what I found out:

result = something unrecognised

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In Section 9 - Natural logarithms in the extension Fixed Point Maths by Michael Callaghan:

Problem. In 'let X be X plus 1'  , it looks as if you want to use 'let' to change the value of the temporary variable 'X'. Ordinarily that would be fine, but it's not allowed when the variable is used as the counter in a 'repeat' loop, or has some other do-not-disturb purpose - this could cause chaotic effects. The rule is: you can only change an existing value with 'let' if it was created by 'let' in the first place.
[/code]

Pretty annoying, because without the extension you can't use the Glimmr extensions either.
Any way to fix this? (I'm still hoping that it's just a matter of changing a couple of lines.)

Thanks,
T. R. Z.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1951&start=0#p13001
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform book (and howdy
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-30 09:41:50

[quote="namekuseijin"]plese notice Jacek is our resident troll and almost always is full of BS.[/quote]

Actually, his comment that I7 only pretends to be English is straightforwardly true. I don't know whether that means that C programmers should go for I6 instead.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1942&start=0#p13002
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Examples of IF that challenge expectations of the medium
User: reduxd / DateTime: 2011-01-30 09:45:29

Thank you all - fantastic responses there. I'll go and immerse myself some more [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1953&start=0#p13003
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Fixed Point Maths does not work (Inform 7)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-01-30 10:03:32

Huh! Thanks for pointing this out... I've had no trouble building Glimmr projects, and neither have a couple of other folks I've corresponded with, but it seems that there's a simple reason for that--I'm using a version of Fixed Point Maths that differs from the one on the website. Whether I hacked it myself and forgot about it (very likely) or whether there is some other reason for the discrepancy, I'm not sure...

You might want to let the folks that run the extensions library at inform7.com know that version 4 isn't compatible with 6G60.

Anyway, I've attached the repaired version of Fixed Point Maths that I'm using. If you want to see the very minor differences between the two versions, you can compare them using [url=http://diffchecker.com]diffchecker.com[/url].

Just FYI: Once there is wide support for the new native Glulx floating point features, I am planning to transition Glimmr to use those features rather than FPM.

--Erik

UPDATE: I've emailed Michael Callaghan to let him know about the incompatibility, and also incorporated the modified version of FPM into [url=http://code.google.com/p/glimmr-i7x/downloads/detail?name=Glimmr%20Full%20Release%20r.3.2.zip]release 3.2 of the complete Glimmr package[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1951&start=0#p13004
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform book (and howdy
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-01-30 10:07:53

I'm not a programmer myself, but the notion that programmers don't like Inform 7 is clearly belied by the facts--there are plenty of programmers who are using and enjoying I7. There's even a separate manual intended to help introduce programmers to the language:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.plover.net/~pscion/Inform%207%20for%20Programmers.pdf">http://www.plover.net/~pscion/Inform%20 ... ammers.pdf</a>

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1951&start=0#p13005
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform book (and howdy
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-30 11:10:43

I have a very basic programming background in C++ and VB, and I enjoy I7 very much.  It's got some . . . well, quirks, and I've found it takes time to figure out where those are likely to pop up.  I think what coding background I had was helpful in that I had some expectation for how if statements and such were used, and a grasp of where infinite loops might pop up and other common problems.  In other words - the programmer mindset will serve you well, because you can focus your energy on the actual language.  

Creating Interactive Fiction didn't really help me with the technical aspects of Inform, but I found it helpful seeing how someone else put together their story, and then playing the game and seeing how those came together.  For more technical assistance, I found Jim Aikin's book invaluable when I was starting out.  I treat Creating Interactive Fiction as less a reference/learning manual than a travel journal - something to read for inspiration or insight, but not so much for programming directions.  But then, I came to the book after having done a fair amount of I7.  There's certainly plenty of explicit I7 code in there, and I think following along would give you a good grasp of the basics.

The other thing I've found helpful, once you've read parts of your chosen manuals, is reading source code.  Even stuff from older versions of Inform.  Even stuff by novices.  Even stuff that's not perfectly written.  Even stuff that's above your current ability level.  (It's been so helpful that as far as I'm concerned, it should be standard practice.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1951&start=10#p13006
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform book (and howdy
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-01-30 11:13:45

I'm surprised no-one's mentioned Ron's guide yet.

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifwiki.org/index.php/Inform_7_for_Programmers">http://ifwiki.org/index.php/Inform_7_for_Programmers</a>

Also there's Jim Aikin's great handbook, but in this case, "I7 for Programmers" seems more relevant.

And since Pudlo's brought it up, you should be aware that there's nothing you can do in I7 that you can't do in I6, so you can use I6 if you like... but I7's great innovations make trivial the implementation of things that have always been notoriously horrible to implement in I6. Just so you know.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1919&start=20#p13007
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Brainstorm: Survival Stuff
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-01-30 11:26:11

[quote="Sig"]This whole thread makes me want to re-read Heinlein's [i]Tunnel in the Sky[/i], which I probably haven't read since elementary school.  The premise is that a high school (Of The FUTURE!) class in survival, as a final exam, gets teleported individually to an unknown (but hospitable) planet to survive on their own for a short time--a few days or a week, perhaps; I forget.  When the return portal is not forthcoming, the survivors have to band together and figure out how to do it for real, indefinitely.  It's probably juvenile fiction, but I loved it when I was a kid.

One thing I remember distinctly is that the main character is advised by a relative not to bring a gun (as so many of his classmates did).  The argument was that a man unarmed (or lightly armed--with a knife, perhaps) in the wild will be cautious and careful, whereas a man with a gun will tend to be confident and careless.

A few other thoughts...
-I haven't yet seen the gun that can kill malaria.

-Even without plentiful water, you can only get [i]so[/i] dirty.  Without modern soaps, you can only get [i]so[/i] clean.  You get used to it.  Soap wouldn't be high on my list.

-Knives/axes/machetes and the like are most useful when you have some ability to sharpen them again.  A good-sized sharpening stone would probably work for all of these adequately, if not perfectly.

-If you're traveling light, it makes more sense to bring warm layers you can move around in than to bring a sleeping bag you will only use at night.  Modern U. S. Army sleeping bags come in several layers, with a waterproof and wind-resistant Goretex shell on the outside.  If the climate is temperate and I'm on foot, I wouldn't even bring the sleeping bags, but use a poncho liner (a kind of multipurpose blanket) inside that shell (which is light and packs down small), plus layers of clothing that I am carrying anyway.  Every ounce counts.

-I've not spent any time there, but I've seen survivalist forums floating around where people discuss such things to death.  Might be a good place to troll for advice (both good and bad).

-Instructables.com has an outdoors sub-section devoted to [url=http://www.instructables.com/tag/type-id/category-outside/channel-survival/]survival[/url] topics.  Instructions for simple things that can be constructed from everyday components might give you a few ideas.[/quote]

Instructables is awesome, although I'm a little wary of letting players think they can deconstruct things quite that vigorously.  

The survival forums (and their more terrifying cousins, the hardcore fundamentalist rapture forums) are an interesting read.  

The poncho liner is a good idea; stuffable with various on hand materials (I would think leaves, even if there's no clothes.  Hmm.  

The malaria and poisonous insects . . . well, I'm working on that issue.  I may make it another topic, so as not to sidetrack too much.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1953&start=0#p13008
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Fixed Point Maths does not work (Inform 7)
User: T. R. Zazzara / DateTime: 2011-01-30 12:10:24

Thanks a lot!

I checked the difference. It was minimal indeed, but I would'nt have managed to fix it myself, as I'm really new to Inform 7 (my third day).

It's great to see that there are so many IF-enthusiasts around these days!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1953&start=0#p13009
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Fixed Point Maths does not work (Inform 7)
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-01-30 12:24:49

[quote="T. R. Zazzara"]Thanks a lot!

I checked the difference. It was minimal indeed, but I would'nt have managed to fix it myself, as I'm really new to Inform 7 (my third day).

It's great to see that there are so many IF-enthusiasts around these days![/quote]

Huh. Welcome to the community, and good work. Three days in, and already you've made your mark. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1951&start=10#p13010
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform book (and howdy
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-01-30 12:37:50

[quote="Peter Pears"]And since Pudlo's brought it up, you should be aware that there's nothing you can do in I7 that you can't do in I6[/quote]

Oh, so the "(-"/"-)" notation is just for pure nostalgia? But never mind. A more interesting question is which language is better at enforcing coding discipline. This is likely to be of some importance to someone whose expectations are based on C++. There are a number of reasons why I7 absolutely sucks at coding discipline, and I was kinda hoping you I7 guys and gals would be honest enough to educate the OP on at least some of them...


[quote]so you can use I6 if you like... but I7's great innovations make trivial the implementation of things that have always been notoriously horrible to implement in I6. Just so you know.[/quote]

It's true that things that were already trivial in I6 have been made even more trivial in I7. I'm not sure how that is a "great innovation" though. There are also some serious drawbacks. One of them is that I7 is so incredibly bloated, even a medium-sized game will not fit in the z-format. This means that by choosing to write your game in I7 you are condemning your opus to Glulx, an ugly and clunky VM that lacks support for most handheld devices, thereby cutting your audience in half.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1951&start=10#p13011
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform book (and howdy
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-01-30 12:46:59

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"][quote="Peter Pears"]And since Pudlo's brought it up, you should be aware that there's nothing you can do in I7 that you can't do in I6[/quote]

Oh, so the "(-"/"-)" notation is just for pure nostalgia? [/quote]

Er, no, that notation is for when, for some reason, it's necessary to delve into I6, which has absolutely no bearing on my original statement - that there is nothing withing Inform 7 that you couldn't already do in Inform 6.

[quote][quote]so you can use I6 if you like... but I7's great innovations make trivial the implementation of things that have always been notoriously horrible to implement in I6. Just so you know.[/quote]

It's true that things that were already trivial in I6 have been made even more trivial in I7. I'm not sure how that is a "great innovation" though.[/quote]

I admit, having never programmed in I6, that this is mostly hearsay. I often hear that things like spreading fire and smoke, and ropes, were nightmarish to implement in I6 (except, of course, for you, as you demonstrate in all your games involving buildings on fire and such). I also often hear that I7's ability to create relations is one of its biggest advantages over I6.

[quote]There are also some serious drawbacks. One of them is that I7 is so incredibly bloated, even a medium-sized game will not fit in the z-format. [/quote]

I actually agree on this one, and have often wondered whether it might not be worth having a more condensed version of the standard rules, or some such - some way to elliminate overhead on games in which it's simply unnecessary. Especially now that I've discovered the joys of mobile-phone IF.

But we should keep any of that to another thread, methinks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1951&start=10#p13012
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform book (and howdy
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-30 14:07:23

The Programmer's Guide for Inform 7 might be more up your alley.  PDF link in my sig.

If you find it useful or confusing let me know. I'm working on polishing up this version still.

EDIT: oh, thanks Peter.
EDIT2: and Erik.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1951&start=10#p13013
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform book (and howdy
User: theraje / DateTime: 2011-01-30 17:11:40

Hey everybody, thanks for all the tips -- I didn't think I'd end up starting a debate though. I guess I should know better by now, being a seasoned Web-forum user. [emote]:P[/emote]

I plan to stick with Inform 7. I know the syntax isn't really "Plain English" per se, but is meant to sort of mimic it. It's just learning the semantics and the "grammar" it uses seems a little weird in places. I'm thinking I can learn it, it's just going to be like learning a traditional programming language again.

Thanks again, guys -- I'm going to start checking out the resources you've posted. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1910&start=10#p13014
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: More Glk progress
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-01-30 17:37:22

[code]typedef struct glkdate_struct {
    glsi32 year;     /* full (four-digit) year */
    glsi32 month;    /* 0-11, 0 is January */
    glsi32 day;      /* 1-31 */
    glsi32 weekday;  /* 0-6, 0 is Sunday */
    glsi32 hour;     /* 0-23 */
    glsi32 minute;   /* 0-59 */
    glsi32 second;   /* 0-60 */
    glsi32 microsec; /* 0-999999 */
} glkdate_t;[/code]
Could you add the comment [i]The seconds value may be 60 because of a leap second.[/i] as an actual code comment in there?  I double-taked.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1951&start=10#p13015
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform book (and howdy
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-01-30 20:17:02

[quote="Peter Pears"][quote="Jacek Pudlo"][quote="Peter Pears"]And since Pudlo's brought it up, you should be aware that there's nothing you can do in I7 that you can't do in I6[/quote]

Oh, so the "(-"/"-)" notation is just for pure nostalgia? [/quote]

Er, no, that notation is for when, for some reason, it's necessary to delve into I6, which has absolutely no bearing on my original statement - that there is nothing withing Inform 7 that you couldn't already do in Inform 6.[/quote]

Well, my bad. The point is that this notation exists because there are things you can do in I6 which you can't do in I7.

[quote][quote]so you can use I6 if you like... but I7's great innovations make trivial the implementation of things that have always been notoriously horrible to implement in I6. Just so you know.[/quote]

It's true that things that were already trivial in I6 have been made even more trivial in I7. I'm not sure how that is a "great innovation" though.[/quote]

[quote]I admit, having never programmed in I6, that this is mostly hearsay. I often hear that things like spreading fire and smoke, and ropes, were nightmarish to implement in I6 (except, of course, for you, as you demonstrate in all your games involving buildings on fire and such). I also often hear that I7's ability to create relations is one of its biggest advantages over I6.[/quote]

This is the combinatorial complexity argument, according to which I7 is vastly superior to I6 in regard to complex relations. The magic word here is "relations," the absence of which supposedly cripples I6. Yet both _Varicella_ and _Savoir-Faire_ were written in I6, and both games are combinatorially complex in ways that no I7 game I know of has been able to emulate.


[quote]There are also some serious drawbacks. One of them is that I7 is so incredibly bloated, even a medium-sized game will not fit in the z-format. [/quote]

[quote]I actually agree on this one, and have often wondered whether it might not be worth having a more condensed version of the standard rules, or some such - some way to elliminate overhead on games in which it's simply unnecessary. Especially now that I've discovered the joys of mobile-phone IF.[/quote]

Oh, and one other tiny thing: I7 is under constant and rather leisurely development, meaning it won't stabilise for at least a couple of years, meaning its very syntax is in a state of constant flux. Yeah, that's right ---> With Every New Build You Must Rewrite Your Entire Source Code. None of which you mentioned to the OP. Did it just slip your mind?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1951&start=10#p13016
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform book (and howdy
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-01-30 20:30:48

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"] With Every New Build You Must Rewrite Your Entire Source Code.[/quote]

Or You Can Just Keep A Copy Of The Old Build On Your Hard Drive Until You're Done With That Project.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1954&start=0#p13017
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: TADS 3 newbie question
User: Arag-e / DateTime: 2011-01-30 21:27:37

Greetings, I’m completely new to writing in TADS 3 and mostly programming in general. I’ve (very slowly) been making my way through Eric Eve’s Learning T3 tutorial and trying things along the way and I hit a snag at getting a simple method to work

The first example of method in the tutorial deals with how to create a method to change the name propriety of an item. I tried to do it with the ‘desc’ propriety instead, as follows:

[code]Mike: Person 'man/guy/mike'  'Mike' @SecondRoom
    "A man”
;
+tattoo: Component 'mike\'s tattoo' 'tattoo'
    desc = "A tattoo"
    changeDesc(newDesc)
    {
        desc = newDesc;
    }
;[/code]

This ‘tattoo’ being a component of the NPC Mike. The tutorial goes on to explain how to make a hidden item (a ring in this case) appear by looking for it, so I decided to hijack the setting of the ‘discovered’ propriety of the ring to also serve as the call for changing the description of the tattoo, like this:
[code]
+ ring: Hidden, Wearable 'ring' 'gold ring'
    "A golden ring"
;
+ rock: Immovable 'grey rock' 'rock'
    "A big grey rock"
    dobjFor(LookUnder)
    {
        action()
        {
            tattoo.changeDesc('A dragon tattoo');                    
            {
                if(ring.discovered)
                    "There is nothing else.";
                else
                {
                    ring.discover();
                    "You find a ring";
                }
            }
        }
    }
;[/code]

All the code here deals with making the ring show up if I look under the rock, which works perfectly, except for the line that I added “tattoo.changeDesc('A dragon tattoo');” that is also supposed to change the ‘desc’ propriety of the tattoo.

Now, something works here, just not all of it. When I run the game, I can examine the tattoo and get the first description (“A tattoo”) just fine, but once I find the ring, examining the tattoo makes the game return the default “Nothing obvious happens” response, meaning that SOMETHING happened to the ‘desc’ propriety, but it was not correctly replaced by ‘A dragon tattoo’ like I wanted.

I’ve been scratching my head for a good while and I can’t figure out what’s wrong, and I really don’t want to keep reading until I can sort out something as basic as this. Any help would be really appreciated.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1954&start=0#p13018
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 newbie question
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-01-30 22:22:52

You are running into the distinction between single-quoted and double-quoted (aka self-printing) strings.

The initial desc string is double-quoted, so when the examine action invokes that property, it immediately displays "A tattoo" in the output.

When you replace its value with a single-quoted string, you store the text in the property, but you aren't introducing a mechanism to display it on the screen.

The simplest fix is to change desc to a function that displays another property, then update that property in your changeDesc method.

[code]
Mike: Person 'man/guy/mike'  'Mike' @SecondRoom
    "A man”
;
+tattoo: Component 'mike\'s tattoo' 'tattoo'
    desc
    {
        "<<myDesc>>";
    }
    changeDesc(newDesc)
    {
        myDesc = newDesc;
    }
    myDesc = 'A tattoo'
;
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1954&start=0#p13019
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 newbie question
User: Arag-e / DateTime: 2011-01-30 22:42:50

I see. I had a feeling that it had to be the double quotes since it was the only difference with other proprieties I tested. I just tried it and it worked as expected.

Thank you very much.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1955&start=0#p13020
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Reading input from a file
User: whoiscraig / DateTime: 2011-01-31 02:56:44

Just a random thought, lets say I want to divide a long story up into episodes, can I have one episode write some values to a file, then the next episode read those values, so as to have the player's choices remain consistant between episodes?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1955&start=0#p13021
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reading input from a file
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-01-31 04:12:35

Yes you can, see chapter 22, section 10 and following.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1951&start=10#p13022
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform book (and howdy
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-01-31 04:55:16

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"][quote="Peter Pears"]Er, no, that notation is for when, for some reason, it's necessary to delve into I6, which has absolutely no bearing on my original statement - that there is nothing withing Inform 7 that you couldn't already do in Inform 6.[/quote]

Well, my bad. The point is that this notation exists because there are things you can do in I6 which you can't do in I7.[/quote]

If you want to say that, then say it without hijacking my own phrases. You made a big deal of English language on another thread - be consistent.

[quote][quote]I admit, having never programmed in I6, that this is mostly hearsay. I often hear that things like spreading fire and smoke, and ropes, were nightmarish to implement in I6 (except, of course, for you, as you demonstrate in all your games involving buildings on fire and such). I also often hear that I7's ability to create relations is one of its biggest advantages over I6.[/quote]

This is the combinatorial complexity argument, according to which I7 is vastly superior to I6 in regard to complex relations. The magic word here is "relations," the absence of which supposedly cripples I6. Yet both _Varicella_ and _Savoir-Faire_ were written in I6, and both games are combinatorially complex in ways that no I7 game I know of has been able to emulate.[/quote]

Which is, of course, another point entirely, relating only to authors, not to their tools. It also relates to a tendency for smaller games. I mean, why use matches when flint and metal did such a great job?

(note - I'm not implying that I6 is as unsophisticated as flint and metal. I'm implying that I7 is matches, in a matchbook, easy to carry, and you can light it easily)

EDIT - Also, I have not yet played Savoir-Faire and I don't really like Varicella, but if you want complexity, you have Child's Play, Blue Lacuna (and spare us your hatemongering, we already know you loathe Blue Lacuna). I have not played Damnatio Memoriae, but the reviews lead me to believe it shares the complexity, if not the length, of Savoir-Faire. Alabaster is certainly worthy of mention. Not to mention that trying to emulate Varicella is like trying to write an Invention. Bach already perfected them - what else can you add? Or like trying to write another Peleàs et Melisande. It's just not possible, it's the pinnacle of that particular current. 

I would also venture to add that, if another Varicella were to come along, it might have a much more limited audience nowadays.

But then again, maybe Make it Good was that other Varicella, and it certainly had a broad audience.

But I digress horribly.

[quote]Oh, and one other tiny thing: I7 is under constant and rather leisurely development, meaning it won't stabilise for at least a couple of years, meaning its very syntax is in a state of constant flux. Yeah, that's right ---> With Every New Build You Must Rewrite Your Entire Source Code. None of which you mentioned to the OP. Did it just slip your mind?[/quote]

Curious that you shouldn't mention the one point in which I agreed with you... at any rate, what you're describing is the natural process of a lot of software. There was a concept, it was fleshed out, it got working, it was released to a certain public in order to gain feedback and improve it. Inform itself always went through many iterations. And I'm not sure it was ever necessary to Rewrite Your Entire Source Code With Every New Build - again, if you want to waste our time on the meaning of the word "switch", you have to be precise. If it was, then it was only at the beginning, when the syntax was radically changing, but I would venture to say that you'd only have to seriously rewrite your entire code if you were using, say, v1.4 and suddenly started using v3.8. Mostly, there's only little changes. Which is perfectly normal, as the syntax is being bettered as it's being used, so as to better mirror what is required of it.

I tire of this, now. Pudlo, it's quite all right not to like I7. It's perfectly ok to point out, in a convenient discussion, its shortcomings. Being aggressively militant about it, in content and tone, is quite another thing.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1956&start=0#p13023
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Looking in a specific direction
User: Rayven / DateTime: 2011-01-31 06:37:23

Okay, I'm the first to admit that my IF is a little rusty, I haven't tried to code anything in about 5 years, and the manual has a habit of putting me to sleep if i read it for too long.

However, I digress.

What I need to do in one location is allow the player to "look up".  This will trigger an event and cause an object to appear that is vital to them continuing.  The even, the object, etc., are all coded.  But for the life of me I can't figure out how to intercept the command "look up" in the location.

Can someone point me in the right direction.  I know this is going to be something obvious, so I have started kicking myself from here to eternity already in anticipation.  [emote]:D[/emote] 

Thanks in advance.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1956&start=0#p13024
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Looking in a specific direction
User: ChristianB / DateTime: 2011-01-31 06:54:25

"look [something]" triggers the examining action. Thus ...

[code]Instead of examining the up, say "Up, up, and away.".[/code]
... will result in:

[quote]>look up
Up, up, and away.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1711&start=10#p13025
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Aurora
User: Mr. Patient / DateTime: 2011-01-31 09:22:48

Version 401 seems to be pretty much broken, when compared to Version 4.  The MD5 matches what RealNC posted above, so I assume this is a noncorrupted file.

The normal look-upon-entering-a-new-room is disabled; all you get is a > prompt.  I didn't even know I had left the first room.  Most of the standard feedback messages are gone, too ("Taken", "Opened", etc.).  "Check time" doesn't function at all.  The alarm coming from Aleksey's cryo chamber doesn't exist.  Is anyone else seeing this?

I've downloaded multiple copies of 401 from the main archive and the mirrors, and played on both Mac and Windows, using both Git and Glulxe (included with Gargoyle), and I get this behavior every time.

Also -- if the dream sequence is the bit with the Mist, yes, a solution would be very helpful.  I made it as far as Fire, but have no idea what to do now.

Thanks very much.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1956&start=0#p13026
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Looking in a specific direction
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-31 10:56:18

I hope this puzzle is heavily hinted, and the "up" direction has many synonyms (e.g.  "upwards/ceiling/lights/sky/sun/clouds/spider/cobweb/fly/bird/etc").

One way to hint this puzzle would be to encourage players to look up at other places and times. You can do that in two ways: one, by indicating that looking up might do something interesting in other text, and two, by saying something interesting any time a player looks up.

[code]A room has a text called the overhead-description. A room can be indoors or outdoors.
The overhead-description of an indoors room is usually "[one of]A spider crawls across the ceiling[or]You see a cobweb in the corner[or]A fly is buzzing around the ceiling[or]The lights flicker slightly[at random]."
The overhead-description of an outdoors room is usually "[one of]The sky is bright and clear, with hardly a cloud in sight[or]One cloud looks a little like a rabbit[or]A bird soars high overhead[at random]."

Instead of examining the up, say "[overhead-description of the location][paragraph break]".

The overhead-description of the Sistine Chapel is "With the touch of a finger, God gives life to Adam."[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1952&start=0#p13027
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IF Demo Fair proposal
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-01-31 12:12:10

Do you have a vision of the (or a) future of interactive fiction that you would like to share with interested players, authors, implementers and theorists?

The IF Demo Fair will be running during PAX East (March 11-13), showcasing new and interesting demonstrations in the IF world. These don’t need to be polished, complete games, just pieces that show off your concept. We’re particularly interested in demonstrations that explore one of our themes:

novel ways to interact with in-game characters
innovative user interfaces for text/story-based games
But if you have a great idea that doesn’t match either of these themes, send it anyway! We welcome any demonstration that can reasonably be construed as relating to interactive fiction and storytelling: traditional parser-based IF, works with multimedia and graphical components, choose-your-own-adventure, or interactive poetry.

Entries in the Fair will be set up on laptops in the IF suite for players to explore. Saturday afternoon, there will also be an official playthrough in the Alcott Conference Room at the Westin, where we will go through all the entries on a projector screen (exact time TBA).

Authors who are there with their submissions are welcome (indeed, encouraged) to talk briefly about their design concepts.

Note that this is not an official PAX event. No badges are required to attend or participate.

Entry restrictions. This is not a competition, and there are no judges or prizes. Authors who have submitted content are welcome to comment on each others’ work. The only restriction is that you must be willing to have your work showcased in a public forum, and presented or linked from a website afterward.

Intent to enter: Friday, February 18. Email me (<a href="mailto:emshort@mindspring.com">emshort@mindspring.com</a>) with your intent to enter and include your technical requirements, answering these questions:

does your project need software to run other than a standard IF interpreter?
is it restricted to one OS?
will your project need internet access to run?
are you going to be present in person to install your project and/or present it on your own device?
I reserve the right to refuse an entry that is technically infeasible for us to present, but will do my best to accommodate reasonable requests.

Submission: Sunday, March 6. Email me (<a href="mailto:emshort@mindspring.com">emshort@mindspring.com</a>) your project or a link to where it lives on the web, and installation instructions.

Optionally, you may also submit an author’s note (no more than about 500 words, please) explaining the background of your project, anything you want players to know about it, and your hopes/expectations for the project.

Feedback for authors. Forms for anonymous feedback will be available both in the IF Suite and during the live presentation. Players and audience members who would like to share their thoughts without attribution can do so via these forms.

After the event, we’ll provide website coverage for the submissions, with links to author projects.


(<a class="postlink" href="http://emshort.wordpress.com/2011/01/31/announce-if-demo-fair/">http://emshort.wordpress.com/2011/01/31 ... demo-fair/</a>)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1956&start=0#p13028
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Looking in a specific direction
User: Rayven / DateTime: 2011-01-31 12:41:42

(* slaps face with palm *) [emote]:oops:[/emote] 
I knew it was something obvious.

That did the trick.

Thanks for the extra pointers about using hints, in this case the player's attention is drawn to the fact that there is a sound from somewhere above them, and any attempts to go up fail.  But i'd not thought about the additional things like ceilings, etc., and i'm sure to use this again another time.

Thanks for the help.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1950&start=0#p13029
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing descriptions
User: tomcamfield / DateTime: 2011-01-31 13:10:46

Thanks a lot! It looks like I have a lot to learn about the programming language (-:

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1954&start=0#p13030
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 newbie question
User: Arag-e / DateTime: 2011-01-31 13:34:35

Another basic one. Trying to understand how to set and check for variables, I created the following object:

[code]moon: Distant 'moon' 'moon' @ForestStart
    "You see the new moon shining overhead"
    tooDistantMsg = 'The moon is way too far away to do that'
    changeTooDistantMsg(newTooDistantMsg)
    {
        tooDistantMsg = newTooDistantMsg;
    }
    dobjFor(Take)
    {
        action()
        {
            if(moon.triedToTake == true)
                moon.changeTooDistantMsg('Yeah, you just keep trying that');
            else
                moon.triedToTake = true;
        }
    }
    triedToTake = nil
;[/code]

The idea is that trying to 'take' the moon once will display the regular tooDistantMsg I set, but trying to do so again will call the changeTooDistantMsg method, but trying to take the moon repeatedly just returns the first tooDistantMsg. I'm guessing whatever it is that I'm screwing up has to do with my poor understanding of how to set and check for variables. I tried to make the call check for a "triedToTake" boolean variable I made up.
 
Additionally, two semi-related questions:
1) Seeing as all this code happens within the same object, how would I signal the triedToTake variable as local to this object only?
2) Can I set an object's location to more than one room? The moon here is set to @ForestStart, for instance, but could I make it so that THIS moon should be visible in multiple locations, or do I need to create copies for each individual room?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1954&start=0#p13031
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 newbie question
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-01-31 14:03:41

I had to look up the source code to the [url=http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/libref/source/objects.t.html#2240]Distant[/url] object to figure this out. Because the action gets ruled out in the verify() stage, it never made it to your action() routine and therefore your message update never fired.

This will do what you want. Basically we just replace the default dobj / iobj verify routines with a modified version that updates the triedToTake property.

Another catch is that the verify() routine runs multiple times before it actually displays the message. This happens because you could have multiple "moon" objects in scope, only one of which would be logical to take. The parser runs through each of the objects with a vocabulary match before deciding on the most likely match. In my testing, verification happened three times, so I set an appropriate condition in the moonVerify() routine to switch the message after three passes. 

[code]
moon: Distant 'moon' 'the moon' @kitchen
    "You see the new moon shining overhead"
    tooDistantMsg = 'The moon is way too far away to do that'

    changeTooDistantMsg(newTooDistantMsg)
    {
        tooDistantMsg = newTooDistantMsg;
    }

    dobjFor(Default)
    {
        verify()
        {
            moonVerify();
            illogical(&tooDistantMsg, self);
        }
    }

    iobjFor(Default)
    {
        verify()
        {
            moonVerify();
            illogical(&tooDistantMsg, self);
        }
    }

    moonVerify()
    {
        if (triedToTake > 3)
            changeTooDistantMsg('Yeah, you just keep trying that');
        else
            triedToTake ++;
    }

    triedToTake = 0
;
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1954&start=0#p13032
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 newbie question
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-01-31 14:17:05

[quote="Arag-e"]
1) Seeing as all this code happens within the same object, how would I signal the triedToTake variable as local to this object only?
2) Can I set an object's location to more than one room? The moon here is set to @ForestStart, for instance, but could I make it so that THIS moon should be visible in multiple locations, or do I need to create copies for each individual room?[/quote]

1) The triedToTake property is automatically a local property. Other objects can only access it via moon.triedToTake, or through a macro that expands to the same. Macro expansion is the way that the libGlobal pseudo-globals work; for instance, gDobj is really libGlobal.curAction.getDobj().

2) If you define the moon with MultiLoc, Distant in its class list, you can add locations to its locationList property.

[code]
moon: MultiLoc, Distant 'moon' 'the moon'
    "You see the new moon shining overhead"
    locationList = [kitchen, patio, forest]
;
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1956&start=0#p13033
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Looking in a specific direction
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-01-31 14:34:33

[quote="Rayven"]Thanks for the extra pointers about using hints, in this case the player's attention is drawn to the fact that there is a sound from somewhere above them, and any attempts to go up fail.  But i'd not thought about the additional things like ceilings, etc., and i'm sure to use this again another time.[/quote]
So you might want to catch commands like "examine sound", "find/follow/locate sound", "look towards sound"...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1952&start=0#p13034
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IF Demo Fair proposal
User: George / DateTime: 2011-01-31 15:00:12

Nice! I took the liberty of linking to it [url=http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=17548.msg502283#msg502283]at TIGSource[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1952&start=0#p13035
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IF Demo Fair proposal
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-01-31 15:04:47

Sounds really interesting. Wish I could be there. I'm sure it would be an amazing event — reading about what was happening at PAX last year in regards to IF made me [i]really[/i] wish I were there.

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1276&start=0#p13036
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Trouble viewing forum pages, "General Error"
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-01-31 15:59:07

I've been seeing the "General Error" a lot more lately. It's to the point where the forums are down more often than not when I attempt to read them.

Is there anything we can do to help you provide a more stable hosting environment? I wouldn't mind donating to the cause.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1954&start=0#p13037
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 newbie question
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-01-31 16:32:14

[quote="Arag-e"]The idea is that trying to 'take' the moon once will display the regular tooDistantMsg I set, but trying to do so again will call the changeTooDistantMsg method, but trying to take the moon repeatedly just returns the first tooDistantMsg. I'm guessing whatever it is that I'm screwing up has to do with my poor understanding of how to set and check for variables. I tried to make the call check for a "triedToTake" boolean variable I made up.[/quote]
Always keep in mind that properties can also be defined as methods. There are some exceptions, but mostly you can. So all you need to do is:

[code]moon: Distant 'moon' 'moon' @ForestStart
		"You see the new moon shining overhead. "
		triedToTake = nil
		tooDistantMsg()
		{
				if (self.triedToTake) {
						return 'Yeah, you just keep trying that. ';
				}
				self.triedToTake = true;
				return 'It\'s far away. ';
		}
;[/code]

On an unrelated matter, you should include a space at the end of strings that are to be printed, unless you have a reason not to. This avoids sentences running together with no space between them. This happens when TADS automatically appends something (like "It's closed.") Imagine for example: "It's a drawer.It's closed." Obviously, you don't want that. Also note that the extra space at the end has no ill effect, since TADS will always join multiple spaces into one, so you don't have to fear that you end up with sentences separated by too much spaces.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1954&start=0#p13038
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 newbie question
User: Arag-e / DateTime: 2011-01-31 16:48:19

Let me see if I got this right: Since the Distant property inherently rules out actions like "Take" as illogical to begin with, any code depending on executing said action was ignored until said inherent behavior was overriden?

Anyhow, that did the trick, although I had to replace the (Default) in "iobjFor/dobjFor(Default)" for (Take), else the game reacted to ANY action as if I had just tried to use Take.

Thank you very much.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1954&start=0#p13039
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 newbie question
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-01-31 16:51:43

Oops, I didn't notice that you want the modified reply only for the Take action. In which case you can either follow bcressey's advice of defining a verify() routine, or check whether the current action is "Take" in tooDistantMsg():

[code]moon: Distant 'moon' 'moon' @ForestStart
	"You see the new moon shining overhead. "
	triedToTake = nil
	tooDistantMsg()
	{
		if (gActionIs(Take)) {
			if (self.triedToTake) {
				return 'Yeah, you just keep trying that. ';
			}
			self.triedToTake = true;
		}
		return 'It\'s far away. ';
	}
;[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1954&start=0#p13040
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 newbie question
User: Arag-e / DateTime: 2011-01-31 16:55:01

[quote="RealNC"]
[code]moon: Distant 'moon' 'moon' @ForestStart
		"You see the new moon shining overhead. "
		triedToTake = nil
		tooDistantMsg()
		{
				if (self.triedToTake) {
						return 'Yeah, you just keep trying that. ';
				}
				self.triedToTake = true;
				return 'It\'s far away. ';
		}
;[/code]
[/quote]

This does work, but it results in the same behavior as leaving (Default) in the other method: The game reacts to any action in the same way, so for instance, using Examine results in the same response as trying to use Take.

EDIT: Okay, nevermind.

Ah, and thanks for the heads up on leaving the space. I was wondering why the tutorial samples were all written like that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1276&start=0#p13041
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Trouble viewing forum pages, "General Error"
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-01-31 17:37:33

[quote="bcressey"]Is there anything we can do to help you provide a more stable hosting environment? I wouldn't mind donating to the cause.[/quote]
I've had the same thought. While I'm not prepared to make a substantial donation, there's probably enough people that would be prepared to give [i]something[/i] to make a difference, if that'd help.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1711&start=10#p13042
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Aurora
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-01-31 18:17:06

Sigh...no idea how that happened; I've uploaded a new copy (4.2) to IFDB, so it should be up in a few days.  Thanks for your patience.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1276&start=10#p13043
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Trouble viewing forum pages, "General Error"
User: George / DateTime: 2011-01-31 20:10:09

I had the same thought as bcressey yesterday when I was seeing the same error. 

Merk, another option for the spam might be to filter addresses through a gmail account -- <a class="postlink" href="http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=21288">http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answ ... swer=21288</a>. I think you can forward up to 5 addresses that way, maybe that could work?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1951&start=10#p13044
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform book (and howdy
User: theraje / DateTime: 2011-01-31 20:13:35

[quote="Peter Pears"][quote]Oh, and one other tiny thing: I7 is under constant and rather leisurely development, meaning it won't stabilise for at least a couple of years, meaning its very syntax is in a state of constant flux. Yeah, that's right ---> With Every New Build You Must Rewrite Your Entire Source Code. None of which you mentioned to the OP. Did it just slip your mind?[/quote]

Curious that you shouldn't mention the one point in which I agreed with you... at any rate, what you're describing is the natural process of a lot of software. There was a concept, it was fleshed out, it got working, it was released to a certain public in order to gain feedback and improve it. Inform itself always went through many iterations. And I'm not sure it was ever necessary to Rewrite Your Entire Source Code With Every New Build - again, if you want to waste our time on the meaning of the word "switch", you have to be precise. If it was, then it was only at the beginning, when the syntax was radically changing, but I would venture to say that you'd only have to seriously rewrite your entire code if you were using, say, v1.4 and suddenly started using v3.8. Mostly, there's only little changes. Which is perfectly normal, as the syntax is being bettered as it's being used, so as to better mirror what is required of it.[/quote]
Well, I'm used to having to adapt to change. When you're programming in C++ (or even C#) and one of the libraries you use (for writing games, of course [emote];)[/emote] ) gets an update, it's going to result in something getting rewritten about 90% of the time. For example, the fixed-function pipeline routines I used with OpenGL back in the day -- they have been completely deprecated in more recent OpenGL specifications. So, that forced me to learn about the programmable pipeline, shader programs, and so on -- which, now, I have come to appreciate.

Of course, I don't think it will be anything quite as radical here with Inform. OpenGL and the like are industry standards -- the world of forced upgrades. It seems as though people are happily using older builds of the Inform app, and their story files still work fine. So I suppose as far as backward-compatibility, things could be worse. [emote]:)[/emote]

I'm just going to relax and have fun. It's not like I have anything substantial to complain about if a new Inform version breaks my code, since I can just grin and bear the code tweaks, or just continue to use the build I had already been using. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1957&start=0#p13045
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Git and Tabulation / Unicode
User: T. R. Zazzara / DateTime: 2011-01-31 21:15:57

(One more round of annoying people with questions.  [emote]:D[/emote] )

When I code something like this:

[code]say "x[unicode 9]x[unicode 9]o";[/code]

it works fine for the build-in Inform 7 Interpreter (Windows) (i.e. tabs are inserted). However it does NOT work for Windows Git 1.2.8, which prints this instead: [0x09]

So is this a bug in Git or am I just using the wrong way of implementing tabs?

Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1957&start=0#p13046
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Git and Tabulation / Unicode
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-01-31 21:39:41

Tabs are unsupported in Glulx output. You shouldn't rely on interpreters doing anything consistent with them.

(This is true whether you use the [unicode] substitution or some other character-printing routine.)

I assume you're trying to display a table? You'll have to use [fixed letter spacing] and then count spaces to line up the columns manually.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1957&start=0#p13047
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Git and Tabulation / Unicode
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-01-31 21:47:35

Depending on what effect you're after, you could also try making Glk style hints, but I have no idea how successful you'll be with that.

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glk/glk-spec-071_5.html#s.5.1">http://eblong.com/zarf/glk/glk-spec-071_5.html#s.5.1</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1951&start=10#p13048
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform book (and howdy
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-02-01 00:33:52

[quote="theraje"]I'm just going to relax and have fun. It's not like I have anything substantial to complain about if a new Inform version breaks my code, since I can just grin and bear the code tweaks, or just continue to use the build I had already been using. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
Great attitude. FWIW, I have a very similar programming background to what you do (except I never learned C# and have spent a whole lot of time coding in LambdaMOO which is like a weakly-typed fusion of C++ and BASIC). I knew how to code in i6 fairly well, and have just recently got into i7. I share your problems with the official manual (and the recipe book doesn't really fit my mental model, either, which is more abstract, I am more of a 'give me the bare bones spec and skip the examples' man), but I've found stretching myself into new conceptual programming territory enormously stimulating in a way that programming in i6 never was. Programming in i6 is like learning a specialised subset of C++. It isn't going to be a serious challenge to anyone who knows OO, but you won't learn anything new about programming. It's [i]much[/i] easier in i6 to get to the point where you feel you've got every aspect of the language nailed down. But worthwhile things are often harder than sticking to the status quo, and I'm finding i7 gives me a level of expressivity in my code that I never actually imagined could exist. [i]Creative[/i] expressivity, I'm not just talking about what can be achieved, I'm talking about how it is achieved. What's the value of fluidity? That's a new perspective that I now have that I wouldn't give up for mere convenience or the comfort of familiarity.

I've even found myself wondering lately what it would be like to program non-IF in the style of i7. Now that I have the sorts of structures i7 uses in my brain, I don't think it would be that hard to adapt, much the way that once your brain has been object-oriented, you're at least 50% of the way toward learning most OO language. I suppose what differentiates an old school programmer who will like i7 from one who will hate it, is whether you can take a step back from ALL the things you've learned about programming, and see that the same recurring structures that make it easy to pick up a new garden variety OO language are also locking you into a way of solving problems that is sometimes quite circuitous, and that compared to the way that you could just describe what should happen in pseudo-English, filtering all of your ideas through the standard circuitous hoops does tend to have a negative impact on creativity. This is something I might never have realised had I not given i7 a real chance.

Anyway, i7 compilers have gone through a couple of revisions since I started learning and nothing that I have coded has stopped working, so to some extent the naysayers may be more nursing old wounds at this point (and there is a dude who has dedicated his entire blog to naysaying i7, in a kind of amusingly cranky way — well, I find it amusing, anyway, only he's dead serious).

Good luck and don't forget to use this forum; it's an amazing resource. Better than Google. 8)

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1951&start=20#p13049
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform book (and howdy
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-02-01 01:40:51

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]f you find it useful or confusing let me know. I'm working on polishing up this version still.[/quote]
Oh cool, if you're looking for perspectives on it, I gave your guide a second look and I think I bounced out of it too quickly the last time. I should have stuck through. The problem for me is that the version I read opened by using a lot of computer science terms to situate i7 within the larger family of programming languages, and it didn't feel like what I wanted. What I needed at the time was as bare bones a spec as possible, I wanted an arrow into the heart of the language. Whereas your guide felt to me at the time like it just exchanged the official manual's excess literary verbiage for a bunch of excess computer science philosophy verbiage. It seemed like it was going to be a different but not a faster way in.

I've taken another look since then, and it does get leaner later. It was just the way it opened up that scared me off because I felt like the goal of it was not directly to solve the official manual's sometimes-maddening lack of to-the-pointness, but rather to communicate to people who are formally schooled in computer science, which I am not. I don't know if that accurately describes what you were after, but taking that impression from the initial chapters is what put me off using it.

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1276&start=10#p13050
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Trouble viewing forum pages, "General Error"
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-02-01 01:58:22

When I ran a mail server it caused me no end of trouble, and was easily responsible for 80% of my server maintenance. Since I switched my mail domains over to gmail using Google For Your Domain, I barely ever have to wrestle with my server anymore. (Ugh I sound like a shill don't I. But it's true.)

The problem I had was not volume of incoming spam though but just navigating the ever-increasing barriers to remote SMTP authentication and keeping my IP block out of the highly questionably administered Spam filter blacklists used by [i]other[/i] people so that my mail would be guaranteed delivery. I never did solve the latter problem. I gave up and went with Google, whose mail server IPs have enough weight behind them to not remain on any blacklists for long even if they do get accidentally blacklisted (and they have been, because as I say, spam blacklists are not responsibly administered and there is no care taken to avoid misclassifying some small fry server -- once you're on a list you just ain't coming off, typically, unless you're Google etc).

I don't know if this is relevant to the problems Merk is having but I just found that in this day and age, administering your own mail server is kind of a mug's game. Or just outside my available troubleshooting patience, if you prefer.

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1958&start=0#p13051
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Towards an i7 spec?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-02-01 02:44:32

Something that I have felt is lacking in the world of manuals for i7 is a very bare bones, 'just the specification and nothing but the specification' approach. It's not that there can be no examples, but I prefer them to be kept to a bare minimum and to use my own imagination to fill in the gaps. My ideal i7 manual would explain every grammar structure in only one place, but in the [i]right[/i] place, and in as abstract a form as possible. I guess the perfect manual to me is Kernighan and Ritchie's classic C book. I doubt i7 could be described in as parsimonious a manner, but I think there would be enormous value in the attempt.

Is there already something like this out there, or was it decided by the community early on that such an approach would not be useful for i7?. Ron Newcomb's guide comes the closest, in the things I've skimmed (I have not yet read it thoroughly), but what I am looking for doesn't really seem to exist. In its absence, I have gone through the official manual several times trying to get at the basic skeleton of the allowed grammars, and I think I've made some headway, although it's nowhere near complete and probably inaccurate in places. But below is a snippet of the sorts of notes that I've been making over time, that should give you an idea of the sort of thing I was looking for and didn't find.

[code]==== AN INCOMPLETE GRAMMAR OF I7 ====

UPPER CASE COMPONENT NAMES are to be substituted with the specification of those components, whereas lowercase letters are to be typed literally, except the indefiniate articles 'a' or 'an', which are always optional. Other optional components are specified by [square] brackets. Slashes separate phrases that are interchangeable / alternatives / otherwise synonyms.

 -- basic building blocks --

	OBJECT
		Kitchen / the rusty knife / a container / Susan / etc.

	ADJECTIVE
		closed / not openable / edible / male / dark / etc.

	ADJECTIVES
		ADJECTIVE [ADJECTIVE] [ADJECTIVE] [...]

	QUALIFIED-NOUN
		[ADJECTIVES] OBJECT [[that is/which is/who is] ADJECTIVES]

 -- is here --

SUBJECT-LIST is here.
Here is a SUBJECT-LIST.

	SUBJECT-LIST
		SUBJECT [, SUBJECT] [[,] and SUBJECT] [...]

	SUBJECT
		[QUALIFIED-NOUN called] OBJECT
	
 -- contains, supports, carries, wears --

SUBJECT PREDICATES a QUALIFIED-NOUN-LIST.

	PREDICATES
		contains / supports / carries / wears

	QUALIFIED-NOUN-LIST
		QUALIFIED-NOUN [, QUALIFIED-NOUN] [[,] and QUALIFIED-NOUN] [...]

 -- containing, supporting, carrying, wearing --

SUBJECT is PREDICATING a QUALIFIED-NOUN-LIST.
PREDICATING a QUALIFIED-NOUN-LIST is a SUBJECT.

	PREDICATING
		containing / supporting / carrying / wearing

 -- in, contained in/by, on, supported on/by, carried by, worn by --

SUBJECT-LIST is PREDICATED-BY a QUALIFIED-NOUN.
PREDICATED-BY a QUALIFIED-NOUN is a SUBJECT-LIST.

	PREDICATED-BY
		in / contained in / contained by /
		on / supported in / supported by /
		carried [by] /
		worn [by] /
		part of

 -- is a kind of --

SUBJECT-LIST is a kind of OBJECT.

 -- is a --

SUBJECT-LIST is a FULLY-QUALIFIED-ADJECTIVE.
SUBJECT-LIST is a FULLY-QUALIFIED-NOUN.

	FULLY-QUALIFIED-ADJECTIVE
		[ADJECTIVE-LIST] [VERB-PHRASE / PARTICIPLE-PHRASE-LIST]

	FULLY-QUALIFIED-NOUN
		[ADJECTIVE-LIST] OBJECT [[that is/which is/who is] ADJECTIVE-LIST] [VERB-PHRASE / PARTICIPLE-PHRASE-LIST]

	ADJECTIVE-LIST
		ADJECTIVE [[,/, and/and/that is/which is/who is] ADJECTIVE] [[,/, and/and/that is/which is/who is] ADJECTIVE] [...]
		
	VERB-PHRASE
		that/which/who PREDICATES a QUALIFIED-NOUN

	PARTICIPLE-PHRASE-LIST
		[,/, and/and/that is/which is/who is] PARTICIPLE-PHRASE [, PARTICIPLE-PHRASE] [[,] and PARTICIPLE-PHRASE] [...]

	PARTICIPLE-PHRASE
		PREDICATED-BY/PREDICATING a QUALIFIED-NOUN

 -- has --

SUBJECT-LIST has the PROPERTY VALUE.
PROPERTY-LIST is a VALUE.

	PROPERTY-LIST
		PROPERTY [, PROPERTY] [[,] and PROPERTY] [...]

	PROPERTY
		VARIABLE
		VARIABLE of OBJECT
	
	VARIABLE
		decription / location / player / etc.
	
	VALUE
		"It looks ordinary." / 10 / 334 / lamp / sword / etc.
[/code]

And I've been building on it as I go. Currently there a lot of things I've learned about the grammar that I have not yet folded into this skunkworks 'spec'. But is this all duplicative work, anyway? I have just been doing it because it suits my brain.

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=40#p13052
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-Machine Standard 1.2 (draft)
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-02-01 03:44:22

Any comments? I'd appreciate if someone would check I understood the spec conflict issues.

If not I'd like to finalise this now. I'll keep updating the list of selectors as needed, so if further spec conflicts were identified it will be easy to add them in. Note that those selectors are all core selectors, so compliant implementations must support all of them. Which reminds me, I should include them in praxix...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=40#p13053
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-Machine Standard 1.2 (draft)
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-02-01 03:50:47

[quote="Dannii"]Any comments? I'd appreciate if someone would check I understood the spec conflict issues[/quote]Sorry, but I really dislike the idea of the specification just listing selectors for the outstanding issues. This is just pushing work onto game authors: you've got to check for all these possible cases, and do something sensible in each case. The 1.2 spec should simply state definitively what a compliant interpreter should do in each case.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1959&start=0#p13054
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Size limit of Z8 created with Inform7
User: ontheair / DateTime: 2011-02-01 04:19:43

Hello,

I just started programming an adventure in Inform7. I created a world consisting of some rooms, objects and puzzles. But the game is far from beeing completed.

I released the game for testing to a Z8-file. It is around 250 kB. I have heard that the maximum file size is 512 kB. Now I am worried, if I will reach this limit because I want to put there some more rooms, objects and puzzles.
If my game will be too big... What can I do?

Thank you for your help!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1958&start=0#p13055
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Towards an i7 spec?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-02-01 04:23:23

Have you seen the syntax document ([url]http://inform7.com/learn/documents/I7_syntax.txt[/url])? I think it's slightly out of date (says it's updated for 5Z71) but it looks a bit like your example.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1960&start=0#p13056
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Release Z8-game with integrated interpreter
User: ontheair / DateTime: 2011-02-01 04:23:44

Hello,

when I am finishing my adventure I will export it as a Z8-file. Then I can publish this file, of course, and everybody is able to play it with an interpreter.

I would like to know, if it is possible to release the game with an integrated interpreter. Because a lot of people do not know how to handle a Z8-file, they dont know that they will need an interpreter to play the game.

Is it possible to integrate the Z8-file together with an interpreter into a single exe-file (for Windows user)? This would be perfect because I want to bring the game to some people never played text adventures before and they dont know about the interpreters.

Thank you very much for your help!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1959&start=0#p13057
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Size limit of Z8 created with Inform7
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-02-01 04:35:09

You're not going to go over the limit any time soon. I have two projects that are just at the 512 kb limit and they have, including extensions, about 50,000 words each. The 250 kb you have now includes a lot of overhead from the standard rules.

Even if you do hit the limit you just have to switch to Glulx which has practically no upper file size limit. It might require minor changes to the code but shouldn't be a problem.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1960&start=0#p13058
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Release Z8-game with integrated interpreter
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-02-01 04:46:06

If you have your own website or other place where you can set up web pages, you can release the game along with a web interpreter (see ch. 23.11. in the manual). You could also upload the .z8 somewhere and point Parchment at it ([url]http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/zcode.html[/url]).

If you want to give the file for offline play, I guess it's just a matter of giving the interpreter and instructions along with the story file (most interpreters are stand-alone .exe:s so it's just a matter of opening the interpreter and choosing the story file). I don't know of any tool that could bundle the story file and an offline interpreter together.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1959&start=0#p13059
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Size limit of Z8 created with Inform7
User: ontheair / DateTime: 2011-02-01 04:47:18

Thank you for this explanation! So I hope not to exceed the limit [emote];-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1960&start=0#p13060
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Release Z8-game with integrated interpreter
User: ontheair / DateTime: 2011-02-01 04:53:00

I see. It was also my idea to publish a package consisting of an free interpreter and the game file (maybe with a batch-file to start the interpreter along with the game file by one click). I just thought there might another possibility.
The online game with parchment is also a good idea!

Thank you for helping a newbe! [emote];-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1960&start=0#p13061
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Release Z8-game with integrated interpreter
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-02-01 05:05:25

The package/batch might be your best bet. On the subject, if you were using Glulx instead of the ZMachine, it might interest you to know that if you rename "Glulxe.exe" to the name of your game, i.e. "My game.exe", it will automatically open any story file with that name in the current directory (be it "My game.ulx", ".gblorb", or whatnot).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1960&start=0#p13062
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Release Z8-game with integrated interpreter
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-02-01 07:29:43

[quote]If you have your own website or other place where you can set up web pages, you can release the game along with a web interpreter[/quote]

And, I suppose, the web-page you get by adding "Release along with an interpreter" to the source text should be equally playable off-line in any reasonably modern browser.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1960&start=0#p13063
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Release Z8-game with integrated interpreter
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-02-01 07:33:55

That's right, it will be.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1960&start=0#p13064
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Release Z8-game with integrated interpreter
User: ontheair / DateTime: 2011-02-01 07:59:49

Yes, good ideas! Thank you!

I have downloaded Glulxe and it seems to be perfect for releasing a "out-of-the-box-playable" game for windows. Renaming the exe to the same name es the game file also works perfect. Great idea, thanks!
And I also created a cfg file with some settings (removing the title bar from Glulxe) so nobody is bothered by settings, options, etc.

But I still have two questions about Glulxe:

1) How to load a previously saved game state file?
2) Is it possible to rename the word "Glulxe" that appears in the Windows task bar? Because: If people double-click on AdventureGame.exe, for example, nobody will understand why this window is identified als "Glulxe" in the task bar.

You see, I would like to make game play as easy as possible for people who never played interactive fiction before.

Thank you for your help!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1960&start=0#p13065
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Release Z8-game with integrated interpreter
User: ontheair / DateTime: 2011-02-01 08:47:25

I found the answer for my first reply It's RESTORE, not LOAD [emote];-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1960&start=0#p13066
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Release Z8-game with integrated interpreter
User: George / DateTime: 2011-02-01 09:48:45

[quote="ontheair"]
2) Is it possible to rename the word "Glulxe" that appears in the Windows task bar? Because: If people double-click on AdventureGame.exe, for example, nobody will understand why this window is identified als "Glulxe" in the task bar.[/quote]

You'd probably have to recompile the interpreter after changing the value of the window title in the source. I wonder if this could be a cfg setting though, that'd be nice.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1960&start=0#p13067
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Release Z8-game with integrated interpreter
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-01 10:16:23

[quote="ontheair"]I found the answer for my first reply It's RESTORE, not LOAD [emote];-)[/emote][/quote]

You can add this line to your game:

[code]Understand "load" as restoring the game.[/code]

and then LOAD will work too. (I think.) And similarly for defining other synonyms for restoring the game, and for anything else you want to do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1958&start=0#p13068
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Towards an i7 spec?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-02-01 10:21:33

[quote="Juhana"]Have you seen the syntax document ([url]http://inform7.com/learn/documents/I7_syntax.txt[/url])? I think it's slightly out of date (says it's updated for 5Z71) but it looks a bit like your example.[/quote]
Thanks, Juhana, that could come in handy, and no I hadn't seen it before, but it's not really the same thing as a spec — more like a pile of categorised examples. Still, it's a more concentrated rundown than any other I've seen.

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1958&start=0#p13069
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Towards an i7 spec?
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-02-01 11:59:29

I also tend to think this way and would prefer a manual with that structure.

Do make sure that everything you list comes with an explanation of what it is and how to use it, though, lest it just become another guessing game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1961&start=0#p13070
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [help] Time of day and day/night cycling
User: PhilGerb93 / DateTime: 2011-02-01 12:23:34

Hi, I want to create an ''open world'' kind of game with cities. So I want to make a day night cycle, so that's what I'm using.

[b]This one is to increase the time advancement:[/b]

        The fast time rule is listed instead of the advance time rule in the turn sequence rules. 

    This is the fast time rule:
        increment the turn count;
        increase the time of day by 5 minutes. 

[b]And this one is to set the day/night cycle:[/b]

The sun is a backdrop. It is everywhere. The description is "Currently out of sight." 
Night is a recurring scene. Night begins when play begins. Night begins when Dusk ends. Night ends at 6:00 AM.

When Night begins: 
    say "The sun falls below the horizon and the temperature drops abruptly to well below zero."; 
    now the description of the sun is "Currently out of sight." 

Dawn is a recurring scene. Dawn begins when Night ends. Dawn ends at 10:00 AM. 

When Dawn begins: 
    say "The sun appears on the horizon."; 
    now the description of the sun is "It is tiny and weak.". 

Day is a recurring scene. Day begins when Dawn ends. Day ends at 6:00 PM.

When Day begins: 
    say "The sun is now properly up." 

Dusk is a recurring scene. Dusk begins when Day ends. Dusk ends at 10:00 PM.
When Dusk begins: 
    say "The sun has passed across the sky and is on the verge of setting." 

Cratered Landscape is a room. "The ground here is [if Night is happening]dim silver, with the craters visible as darker splotches[otherwise]the color of dried blood; here and there it is also rippled by impact craters[end if]. The horizon curves visibly." 

[b]Problem:[/b]

Well first of all the "X ends at Y code don't work for me. I know I must be doing something wrong and I need your help for that. But that is not the main problem.

The main problem is that my time of day is broken. After 11 AM is says 12 PM (this is okay), but after 11 pm it stays at 12 pm and then continue at 13,14,15,16 PM... It don't know why it's doing that. I tryed reinstalling Inform 7 but it's still broken. Maybe I could use a code to fix it?

Thanks for your help [emote]:)[/emote].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1956&start=0#p13071
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Looking in a specific direction
User: Rayven / DateTime: 2011-02-01 13:50:52

Okay, I'm being blonde again.

I take it the code given as an example is for Inform 7.  I only found out about Inform 7 over the weekend (I have been away for a while) but am still trying to understand the language, so I am coding in version 6 at the moment.

I don't suppose someone would be kind enough to post a code snippet compatible with version 6.

From what I can figure, code like this should work

Object room "The Room"
with description "You stand in a room",
  compasslook
  [ obj;
          if (obj == u_obj) "You look up";  
  ],
w_to AnotherRoom,
has light
;

The English.h and grammar.h have apparently been updated to handle looking in directions from version 6.11, but it just ignores me

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1958&start=0#p13072
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Towards an i7 spec?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-02-01 13:51:11

[quote="katz"]I also tend to think this way and would prefer a manual with that structure.

Do make sure that everything you list comes with an explanation of what it is and how to use it, though, lest it just become another guessing game.[/quote]
Good suggestion. I have written some explanations but not enough yet because I'm not sure that my categories and terms won't change in light of later chapters. I'm still really sketchy on the later chapters of the official manual, and I have the feeling that once I really nail down the common grammatical elements among them, they might end up actually forming the core of the spec causing me to rethink how I've categorised things already, so I've got a long way to go.

Also, it's just something I do when I feel the need to shift from 'try programming more stuff' to 'learn a bunch more because I'm not good enough yet to code the things I want'. Adding to this document is basically how I'm learning i7. This would probably be much better if it were done by an expert I suppose but what I would like it to shape up into is the most complete, self-sufficient description of the language possible in the fewest number of words.

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1951&start=20#p13073
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform book (and howdy
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-01 13:52:27

[quote="Laroquod"]Oh cool, if you're looking for perspectives on it,[/quote]Always.[quote]The problem for me is that the version I read opened by using a lot of computer science terms to situate i7 within the larger family of programming languages, and it didn't feel like what I wanted. What I needed at the time was as bare bones a spec as possible, I wanted an arrow into the heart of the language. Whereas your guide felt to me at the time like it just exchanged the official manual's excess literary verbiage for a bunch of excess computer science philosophy verbiage. It seemed like it was going to be a different but not a faster way in.[/quote]
Yes, it is specifically aimed at those with a Comp Sci background, and not necessarily with an I-F background.   I do assume they've at least played one I-F and so know the shape of the thing.  So yes, the introductory nutshell chapter situates it just as you say.  Despite all its terminology it's probably the vaguest of the chapters.  Take the term Object-Oriented, for example.  While even many of the dabbler-programmers here know what that basically means, if you look at several OO languages, each's notion of exactly what an object is and can do never matches up perfectly.  Still, when a language is described as OO, it still says [i]something[/i] useful.  The other terms are similarly vague-but-not-meaningless.  

I had other responses like yours:  say it fast and straight.  So in this current revision I added an extra chapter, the Firehose, which takes a whirlwind tour of the language before each of the following chapters digs into details.  I've also had good feedback about taking a long example of a rule (esp. its preamble) and breaking it down word-by-word.  I imagine because that's one of the most unique parts of Inform, and a rule can read so well the programmer-ly mind doesn't have anything to latch onto. 

I'll add a disclaimer in the opening of chapter 1 to the effect of, "you can skip this part."  I imagine that'll save time for much of the audience.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1958&start=0#p13074
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Towards an i7 spec?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-01 14:10:22

Example #383 in the official manual, titled "Backus-Naur form for rules", states:
[quote]Backus-Naur form, or BNF, is a standard notation used by computer scientists to specify more or less precisely what the valid programs are for a given programming language. It tends to provide a good description for a language such as C or Pascal, where contextual rules are limited, but the authors of Inform are doubtful that it is such a good tool for a natural-language system. For those who are interested, though, the following gives a formal specification for Inform's rules. [/quote] Sample BNF follows.  That's probably what you're looking for, and why Inform doesn't provide it. The Programmer's Guide touches upon which part of English grammar certain constructs should be named: i.e., rulebooks should be named after a subordinating conjunction (before, instead), an imperative verb (check, report), or any larger fragment that accepts a participial phrase after it (Every turn, Should the game disambiguate).  Beyond that, the grammar is mainly the simple subset of English's, but of course general To-phrases define a one-off idiom rather than a category of grammar, so can break or reinforce just about anything.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1960&start=10#p13075
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Release Z8-game with integrated interpreter
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-02-01 17:40:39

[quote]so nobody is bothered by settings, options, etc.[/quote]

Bear in mind that you do this at your own peril. Even people who have no idea what they're playing can want to change settings - even if it's just the fonts. I certainly don't use the default font, for instance. "Baskerville Old Face" is easier on my eyes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1962&start=0#p13076
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: QTads 2.1 has been released
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-02-01 17:44:53

I've just released version 2.1 of QTads, a Multimedia/HTML TADS interpreter for Linux, Mac, Windows and other platforms. There were quite a few enhancements and important fixes to warrant a minor version bump.

You can grab it from:

<a class="postlink" href="http://qtads.sourceforge.net">http://qtads.sourceforge.net</a>

Note to Ubuntu 10.10 users: You will need to install the "libqt4-network" package in addition to the usual dependencies ("libqt4-gui", "libsdl-mixer1.2" and "libsdl-sound1.2".)

Kubuntu comes with "libqt4-network" already installed by default. 

Changes since 2.0.2:

[list][*]Page-pauses (aka "MORE" prompts) are now occurring when the game displays more content that will fit in the window.[/*:m]
[*]Banners can now have borders. Note that borders are controlled by the game; it's not a feature that can be switched on or off by the player.[/*:m]
[*]Banners now correctly take margins into account when calculating sizes. This fixes the banner at the bottom in "Walker & Silhouette" for example.[/*:m]
[*]The interpreter will no longer allow scrolling in banners unless the game allows it.[/*:m]
[*]Text rendering is now faster and performs less drawing operations.[/*:m]
[*]The interpreter is now able to perform on online check for new versions through the "Help->Check for Updates" menu item.[/*:m]
[*]Some GUI elements were changed to better comply with various "Human Interface Guidelines" on several platforms. This includes changes in the menus as well as using sheets for some dialogs on Mac OS X.[/*:m]
[*]On the Mac, running a game by dropping its file on the QTads icon is now supported.[/*:m]
[*]When the VM requests input from the player, the maximum allowed length of input is now taken into account. Previously, the interpreter would allow input to be much longer than what the VM accepts and the extra characters were simply truncated.[/*:m]
[*]The last entered directory for the "Open New Game" dialog is now remembered between sessions.[/*:m]
[*]Various minor bugfixes and enhancements not worth mentioning here.[/*:m][/list:u]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1963&start=0#p13077
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Number of Entries in a Column
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-02-01 18:14:31

I know this shouldn't be difficult, but it's eluding me.  I'm working on a scoring system that awards prizes, a la 15.12, and I want to display how many prizes have been collected out of the total number.  But I can't figure out how to count the number of filled entries in one column.  Is there a way to do this short of using a repeat statement to count them?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1963&start=0#p13078
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Number of Entries in a Column
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-01 18:22:14

"THe number of filled rows.." should do the trick, unless you have rows filled in but that particular column blank.  Otherwise, you can always make a repeat loop through the table with "if there is a X entry, increase num by one."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1964&start=0#p13079
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [help] Time and Day/Night cycling
User: PhilGerb93 / DateTime: 2011-02-01 18:32:45

Hi, I want to create an ''open world'' kind of game with cities. So I want to make a day night cycle, so that's what I'm using.

This one is to increase the time advancement:

The fast time rule is listed instead of the advance time rule in the turn sequence rules. 

This is the fast time rule:
increment the turn count;
increase the time of day by 5 minutes. 

And this one is to set the day/night cycle:

The sun is a backdrop. It is everywhere. The description is "Currently out of sight." 
Night is a recurring scene. Night begins when play begins. Night begins when Dusk ends. Night ends at 6:00 AM.

When Night begins: 
say "The sun falls below the horizon and the temperature drops abruptly to well below zero."; 
now the description of the sun is "Currently out of sight." 

Dawn is a recurring scene. Dawn begins when Night ends. Dawn ends at 10:00 AM. 

When Dawn begins: 
say "The sun appears on the horizon."; 
now the description of the sun is "It is tiny and weak.". 

Day is a recurring scene. Day begins when Dawn ends. Day ends at 6:00 PM.

When Day begins: 
say "The sun is now properly up." 

Dusk is a recurring scene. Dusk begins when Day ends. Dusk ends at 10:00 PM.
When Dusk begins: 
say "The sun has passed across the sky and is on the verge of setting." 

Cratered Landscape is a room. "The ground here is [if Night is happening]dim silver, with the craters visible as darker splotches[otherwise]the color of dried blood; here and there it is also rippled by impact craters[end if]. The horizon curves visibly." 

Problem:

Well first of all the "X ends at Y code don't work for me. I know I must be doing something wrong and I need your help for that. But that is not the main problem.

The main problem is that my time of day is broken. After 11 AM is says 12 PM (this is okay), but after 11 pm it stays at 12 pm and then continue at 13,14,15,16 PM... It don't know why it's doing that. I tryed reinstalling Inform 7 but it's still broken. Maybe I could use a code to fix it?

Thanks for your help .

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1958&start=0#p13080
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Towards an i7 spec?
User: George / DateTime: 2011-02-01 18:56:08

I would definitely appreciate a simple, clear tutorial that looked something like this, 

<a class="postlink" href="http://docs.python.org/tutorial/introduction.html">http://docs.python.org/tutorial/introduction.html</a>

And a reference manual that looked like this, 

<a class="postlink" href="http://docs.python.org/library/index.html">http://docs.python.org/library/index.html</a>

Though that's easier for me to say rather than do ;D. 

I wonder if part of the problem is that I7 is both a library and a language, and that learning both at the same time could be confusing?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1958&start=0#p13081
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Towards an i7 spec?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-02-01 21:31:16

I think one issue is that most "library" type things in I7 have their own syntax. It would be hard to separate the language from the library in I7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1908&start=10#p13082
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: 2010 XYZZY Awards now open
User: inky / DateTime: 2011-02-01 23:49:46

The finalists are up and the second round of voting is open! See the list of finalists at <a class="postlink" href="http://xyzzyawards.org/finalists.php">http://xyzzyawards.org/finalists.php</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1965&start=0#p13083
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Curveship released
User: nickm / DateTime: 2011-02-02 02:15:51

Curveship, my interactive fiction system that also supports interactive narrating, is now available in a development version (0.5). Curveship is a Python framework.

Here's the announcement I posed on my blog: [url]http://nickm.com/post/2011/02/curveship_released/[/url]

And the site for the system, including description, documentation, and download links: [url]http://curveship.com[/url]

 -Nick

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1277&start=50#p13084
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: The Z-Machine Standard 1.2 (draft)
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-02-02 02:22:44

If authors were having problems, if these issues needed to be definitively sort out, then they would have been by now. It's been years. I doubt there'll ever be problems caused by issues. Now at least those possibly existent authors could check for these problems and deal with them accordingly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1961&start=0#p13085
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [help] Time of day and day/night cycling
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-02-02 03:35:49

[quote="PhilGerb93"]
The main problem is that my time of day is broken. After 11 AM is says 12 PM (this is okay), but after 11 pm it stays at 12 pm and then continue at 13,14,15,16 PM... It don't know why it's doing that. I tryed reinstalling Inform 7 but it's still broken. Maybe I could use a code to fix it?[/quote]

Yes, it seems the Uptempo example in the Recipe Book misses to make the necessary adjustments to the hours part of time of day when it reaches 13. Your fast time rule should look something like this:
[code]
This is the fast time rule:
	increment the turn count;
	increase the time of day by 5 minutes;
	if the hours part of time of day >= 13:
		decrease the time of day by 12 hours;
		increase the time of day by 12 hours.
[/code]

Normally those adjustments are made by the Advance Time Rule, but of course the whole point of the fast time rule is to replace the Advance Time Rule, so we need to make the adjustments ourselves.

Alternatively, you could skip the fast time rule and set the number of minutes per turn thus:
[code]The time rate is a number that varies. The time rate variable translates into I6 as "time_rate". When play begins: now the time rate is 5.[/code]
The time_rate is the I6 global variable that determines how many minutes a turn takes. It is used by the Advance Time Rule as such, so in this case we can rely as normal on the standard Advance Time Rule to fix the passage from 12:59pm to 1:00pm.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1958&start=0#p13086
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Towards an i7 spec?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-02-02 03:41:02

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Example #383 in the official manual, titled "Backus-Naur form for rules", states:
[quote]Backus-Naur form, or BNF, is a standard notation used by computer scientists to specify more or less precisely what the valid programs are for a given programming language. It tends to provide a good description for a language such as C or Pascal, where contextual rules are limited, but the authors of Inform are doubtful that it is such a good tool for a natural-language system. For those who are interested, though, the following gives a formal specification for Inform's rules. [/quote] Sample BNF follows.  That's probably what you're looking for, and why Inform doesn't provide it. The Programmer's Guide touches upon which part of English grammar certain constructs should be named: i.e., rulebooks should be named after a subordinating conjunction (before, instead), an imperative verb (check, report), or any larger fragment that accepts a participial phrase after it (Every turn, Should the game disambiguate).  Beyond that, the grammar is mainly the simple subset of English's, but of course general To-phrases define a one-off idiom rather than a category of grammar, so can break or reinforce just about anything.[/quote]
Interesting, thanks Ron. So it seems there was a decision early on that this sort of notation isn't useful for Inform (BTW I am sure I am wildly deviating from the BNF standard, in fact I never thought of it as a standard although I've seen plenty of them). But I can't say I agree and the key is in the last thing you say, about the grammar being 'mainly the simple subset of English'. That makes something sound simple which is actually quite complex — in order to understand the subset, currently, you have try to use English and then to learn each case individually where you are using 'too much English' and not adhering to the subset. That's a lot of cases and a lot of trial & error. I prefer to start from the position that it is not English, it is merely a collection of grammars that superficially resemble English, and then to learn those grammars from the ground up. 'Subset of English' makes it sound easier, but to me it's actually harder because there is way too much irrelevant English bouncing around in my head getting in my way of seeing what are the [i]relevant[/i] base structures. For example, it took me way too long to understand the difference between what I call the 'FULLY-QUALIFIED-NOUN' structure, above, and the 'QUALIFIED-NOUN' structure, and the contexts in which they are used. It's a categorical distinction that is fundamental to Inform and should be one of the first things learned, as this distinction is what renders most of the grammatical restrictions you will run into at first intelligible. It's not hard to remember it once you know where it is, but it is impossible to divine from any knowledge of the English language. And it's a distinction I found much obscured (unnecessarily, IMO) by the offiicial manual's attachment to the idea that it is describing a form of English, i.e. a subset. Which subset? There are a near-infinite number of possible subsets. Knowing that it's a subset of English doesn't give me any grammatical knowledge I can put into practise. What it tells me is, 'The tree you want is somewhere in the forest.'

Anyway I'm just explaining why I find what you quoted a little bit baffling, but definitely thanks for bringing it to my attention and for explaining the Backus-Naur term.

[quote="George"]I wonder if part of the problem is that I7 is both a library and a language, and that learning both at the same time could be confusing?[/quote]
[quote="Dannii"]I think one issue is that most "library" type things in I7 have their own syntax. It would be hard to separate the language from the library in I7.[/quote]
Distinguishing between what's a 'built-in' and what's in the library is one of those things that I don't feel qualified to do yet without a fuller undestanding of the later chapters, but I agree that it too is an important, if mostly theoretical, distinction. I suspect that in the end, it will be almost all library. I am a believer in the idea that the section headings should be the literal keywords that you need to use and not categorical desciptions. (i.e. as much as is possible, I want to look through a list of literal library functions like '1.1: Carries / Carrying / Carried by; 1.2: Contains / Containing / Contained by; 1.3: Supports / Supporting / Supported by' rather than '1.1 Possessions; 1.2 Contents; 1.3: etc.'). Particularly in the case of Inform, where it is hard to distinguish the required tokens from the words used to explain those tokens, there should be one convention in any manual as to how to designate a token, and it should be adhered to pretty rigidly, IMO. An undifferentiated mix of tokens and non-tokens in chapter and section headings is just the worst possible state of confusion for the uninitiated, but that's the system adopted by the official manual. So I interpret that as the main point of George wanting the Python-like manual organisation: it is very clear on what's a token and it is designed to be able to scanned for tokens. (I suppose I'm using 'token' rather loosely here to include built-in keywords and library functions.) That's of huge importance to me as well.

Thanks for your thoughts, guys, it's been helpful. I'm glad that I haven't just missed something and that at least some others feel the same need.


Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1961&start=0#p13087
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [help] Time of day and day/night cycling
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-02-02 03:57:21

[quote="PhilGerb93"]the "X ends at Y code don't work for me.[/quote]

From the source text you've posted it would seem that the problem is this.
Night begins when play begins. But by default play begins at 9:00 am. So the first night of your game begins at 9:00am. Then Night doesn't end till 6:00am, which won't occur till early next morning. So the first night of your game will last for 21 hours.

If you want your game to start in the middle of the night, you need an assertion to that effect in the source text:
[code]The time of day is 12:00 AM.[/code]
or
[code]When play begins: now the time of day is 12:00 AM.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1966&start=0#p13088
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Many many rooms....
User: austriangilbert / DateTime: 2011-02-02 04:15:27

Hello everyone, especially avid i7 users.

I want to simulate 4 streets with 9 blocks (think tic-tac-toe). Each block has various adresses on each street (4 sides), and each number has a few stories. So this comes to about 75 apartments in first story only (or basement for european users). And as there are more stories and each apartment has a few to many rooms, ...

[b]Can i7 handle this?[/b] I need this variety for the world I want to simulate and have tested many things. I know about other engines, and would use them if necessary, the game is not intended for public release so far. Currently eg. a street is called Humble Avenue, the adress is 24 the apartment is in 2nd floor and has number 11. I'd call the rooms HA2411 bathroom HA2411 kitchen etc., the corridor would be HA242. I have done the streets, blocks, stories, corridors and the inner courtyards so far, and a few test apartments.

Only thing so far coming to my mind as to limit the number of rooms is to have rooms be [b]enterable containers[/b] in one single "apartment room". But then how can I hinder seeing outside a container, i.e. seeing the bathroom from "inside" the kitchen? It's funny how things can only be set "in scope", but not "out of scope".

On a side note, how can I part the [b]adjective and the noun of the name of a room[/b], so the printed name would automatically be ONLY the noun? Can this be done?
[b]EDIT:[/b] I know about "understand this as that", but don't want to do this for each single room, so I am looking for a general, concise and someway automatic way!

I admit english is not my mothers tongue, so there could subtleties in the documentation and examples I don't catch. Thank you for any pointers!!!!!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1951&start=20#p13089
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform book (and howdy
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-02-02 04:25:06

Those sound like good revisions, especially the 'Firehose' thing. Yeah you can count me in with the 'fast & straight' crowd. I appreciate that there are some who will find the more deliberated, theoretical approach most useful because it fits their mental models, but self-taught programmers, if they're anything like me, don't really maintain more than a rough, rule-of-thumb mental model of language/compiler philosophies even when we are more than dabblers. We're more about the shortest possible path to the code. There are a lot of parallels to music here, I keep thinking. Some don't know chord theory but read sheet music; some don't even read sheet music; all are musicians. 8)

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1964&start=0#p13090
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [help] Time and Day/Night cycling
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-02-02 04:26:34

Sorry, I just answered your question (as best I could) at the ”Getting Started Playing” forum before I saw this post. You're quite right that the question (and the answers) should rather go here. Or perhaps even more appropriately at the "Inform 6 and 7" forum below. 
Good luck with the game!

EDIT:
I should of course repost the replies. Here they are:

[quote="PhilGerb93"]The main problem is that my time of day is broken. After 11 AM is says 12 PM (this is okay), but after 11 pm it stays at 12 pm and then continue at 13,14,15,16 PM... It don't know why it's doing that. I tryed reinstalling Inform 7 but it's still broken. Maybe I could use a code to fix it?[/quote]


Yes, it seems the Uptempo example in the Recipe Book misses to make the necessary adjustments to the hours part of time of day when it reaches 13. Your fast time rule should look something like this:
[code]This is the fast time rule:
   increment the turn count;
   increase the time of day by 5 minutes;
   if the hours part of time of day >= 13:
      decrease the time of day by 12 hours;
      increase the time of day by 12 hours.
[/code]
Normally those adjustments are made by the Advance Time Rule, but of course the whole point of the fast time rule is to replace the Advance Time Rule, so we need to make the adjustments ourselves.

Alternatively, you could skip the fast time rule and set the number of minutes per turn thus:
[code]The time rate is a number that varies. The time rate variable translates into I6 as "time_rate". When play begins: now the time rate is 5.
[/code]
The time_rate is the I6 global variable that determines how many minutes a turn takes. It is used by the Advance Time Rule as such, so in this case we can rely as normal on the standard Advance Time Rule to fix the passage from 12:59pm to 1:00pm.

[quote="PhilGerb93"]
the "X ends at Y code don't work for me.
[/quote]

From the source text you've posted it would seem that the problem is this.
Night begins when play begins. But by default play begins at 9:00 am. So the first night of your game begins at 9:00am. Then Night doesn't end till 6:00am, which won't occur till early next morning. So the first night of your game will last for 21 hours.

If you want your game to start in the middle of the night, you need an assertion to that effect in the source text:
[code]The time of day is 12:00 AM.[/code]
or
[code]When play begins: now the time of day is 12:00 AM.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1966&start=0#p13091
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Many many rooms....
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-02-02 05:25:45

[quote="austriangilbert"]Hello everyone, especially avid i7 users.

I want to simulate 4 streets with 9 blocks (think tic-tac-toe). Each block has various adresses on each street (4 sides), and each number has a few stories. So this comes to about 75 apartments in first story only (or basement for european users). And as there are more stories and each apartment has a few to many rooms, ...[/quote]

This is already a massive undertaking. I suspect it would be untenable to do it by hand. If you do need it and decide on using procedural creation, then the process isn't difficult: you simply create the illusion of said grid of rooms.

Just bear in mind that you'll need to put a lot of effort into the appearance of variety. You'll have an awful lot of similar objects no matter how you slice it, so you'll almost have to go with this approach if you're using I7.

[quote="austriangilbert"][b]Can i7 handle this?[/b] I need this variety for the world I want to simulate and have tested many things. I know about other engines, and would use them if necessary, the game is not intended for public release so far. Currently eg. a street is called Humble Avenue, the adress is 24 the apartment is in 2nd floor and has number 11. I'd call the rooms HA2411 bathroom HA2411 kitchen etc., the corridor would be HA242. I have done the streets, blocks, stories, corridors and the inner courtyards so far, and a few test apartments.[/quote]

That depends on how you decide to implement it. You could (if you wanted) hand-create the entire environment, although I suspect having all the rooms etc in play at the same time will break even Glulx and create horrific slowdown for very little gain. You could use sleight-of-hand to basically create a single floor or section of floor and then iterate it intelligently, moving all portable objects as appropriate. You can use algorithms, tables, or lists to define whatever you want. There are even extensions that allow for the dynamic creation of rooms at run-time.

What I'm saying is that there are several methods. You may need to figure out what's actually necessary to your story.

[quote="austriangilbert"]
On a side note, how can I part the [b]adjective and the noun of the name of a room[/b], so the printed name would automatically be ONLY the noun? Can this be done?
[b]EDIT:[/b] I know about "understand this as that", but don't want to do this for each single room, so I am looking for a general, concise and someway automatic way![/quote]

Well, assuming I'm understanding you correctly, you're considering using containers to simulate rooms. That can be a difficult thing to do. In this instance, scope, visibility and reach depend on such things as transparency and open/closed state of the (enterable) container. Conceivably, you could simulate a kitchen as a closed opaque enterable container; then, whenever you open the kitchen-container (by opening the door), the area enclosing the kitchen will pop into scope.

However, I think it'd really be much more straightforward to use the [b]room[/b] object(s) to simulate the function of a room. Doesn't have to be a single room object either, as [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rex325.html]this section about continuous spaces demonstrates[/url].


Edit: Oh, and welcome! [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1966&start=0#p13092
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Many many rooms....
User: austriangilbert / DateTime: 2011-02-02 05:37:46

Some points are that NPCs will be home or not and in this or that room (but not conversationable since the main character is planned to be a ghost, luckily...), pedestrians should walk around scripted, objects can be learned to be interacted with, etc. Yep, this is massive, but I want a long term project and am ready to handcraft.

The point is that the main character has to find out who he is, which persons belong to him and so on.

I am currently concentrating on the center block and see what space will be left, technically and creatively. Would you have a suggestion wether a map can be build by [b]means of a table[/b] and assigning some kind of [b]apartment templates[/b]?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1965&start=0#p13093
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Curveship released
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-02-02 06:15:10

HOORAY!

I look eagerly forward to all the splendid games and stories that will be created with Curveship.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1951&start=20#p13094
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform book (and howdy
User: theraje / DateTime: 2011-02-02 06:24:27

[quote="Laroquod"]... self-taught programmers, if they're anything like me, don't really maintain more than a rough, rule-of-thumb mental model of language/compiler philosophies even when we are more than dabblers. We're more about the shortest possible path to the code.[/quote]
Truly. [emote]:)[/emote] I guess once you get the general theory of programming under your belt, you don't want your hand held too much. I'm much more apt to learn from a plain-old reference sheet than a "guide" that teaches concepts with which you are familiar.

Ron, I've downloaded your eBook, and have gone through it a bit, but I haven't had much time to really sink my teeth into it. I will keep in mind to give you any feedback if and when I come up with anything. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1965&start=0#p13095
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Curveship released
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-02-02 06:37:35

If that was sarcasm, it somewhat missed the point. Being a Python framework means it can be integrated into other software without you even noticing it. Something that the other IF systems do not provide, nor attempt to.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1965&start=0#p13096
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Curveship released
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-02-02 06:47:41

Was it sarcastic? I was wondering, too.

Integration (which is awesome) aside, I'm just interested, in a pure interactive theory sense, in how much can be made of the road this tool is going down. I can't say that I'm convinced that it's the right road but I'm sure glad there is somebody on it. It doesn't make sense to me not to want to see pathways that I am not personally following (I favour the 'smoke & mirrors' approach to narrative, myself) explored. I am just not that sure of myself that I can dismiss alternate data sets, [i]a priori[/i].

So much on my plate, but I'm just going to have to look into this at some point, as I take interactive theory fairly seriously and I think I need to see if this tool has the ability to challenge my ideas about it.

In any case, congratulations on the release, Nick!

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1965&start=0#p13097
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Curveship released
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-02 06:55:44

What do I have to do to run one of the example stories on a Mac?

As this question probably reveals, I don't know anything about Python, so I won't be able to do anything with this anytime soon, but I look forward to seeing what others do/have done with it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1965&start=0#p13098
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Curveship released
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-02-02 06:59:29

Mac OS X comes with Python pre-installed by default. What I don't know is whether Curveship can run with the version shipped by Apple and requires a more recent one.

Edit:
If you're really interested in this, see <a class="postlink" href="http://www.python.org/download/mac">http://www.python.org/download/mac</a> to get a general idea.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1965&start=0#p13099
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Curveship released
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-02-02 07:55:38

My sincere regrets if my previous post looked sarcastic. It wasn't my intention in the least.

I've read a lot about what Nick has been revealing about Curveship the past two years or so and have been really excited about the new ideas it implements and the possibilities it promises. I've simply been waiting for this, that's all.

So, my hooray was nothing but an expression of enthusiasm (though a much too naive expression, I now realize) and a perfectly well-meant wish for the success of Curveship. I really do look forward to the kind of IF that may be done with this tool, and I hate to think that anyone may have been discouraged or offended by that post.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1967&start=0#p13100
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: UML, the Unified Process, and OO programming with Inform 7
User: Andrew Owen / DateTime: 2011-02-02 09:07:48

Greetings,

For my first post since I switched over from Usenet, I'd like to ask the people who are developers for a living about applying the object oriented development model and associated processes to development in Inform 7. I'm asking because I'm keen to write something in Inform 7 to fulfil the requirements of a masters degree in computer science, but I feel the pressure to demonstrate that I've understood what they've been teaching me about systems analysis and design. Any advice, warnings of pitfalls, examples of the use of UML in Inform 7 projects, would be very much appreciated.

Regards

-Andrew

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1965&start=0#p13101
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Curveship released
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-02-02 09:24:26

I am also non-sarcastically excited about this!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1229&start=0#p13102
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Bug in Secret Doors, not sure who to contact
User: Andrew Owen / DateTime: 2011-02-02 09:26:28

[quote="Ragzouken"]The extension "Secret Doors" by Andrew Owen has a small problem because a few places in the source have "when when" instead of "when". The site says extension bugs should to be reported to the maintainer but there in no email address given for Andrew Owen so I am posting it here.

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/Andrew%20Owen/Secret%20Doors/source.html">http://inform7.com/extensions/Andrew%20 ... ource.html</a>[/quote]

I'm almost sure those weren't in my original version. I'll see what I can do to get this fixed. Sorry it's taken a while to discover this post.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1965&start=0#p13103
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Curveship released
User: nickm / DateTime: 2011-02-02 09:31:52

The README file explains everything you need to do to run Curveship on Mac, Linux, or Windows. From the github page for the system, you can view the README before you download Curveship:

<a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/nickmontfort/curveship">https://github.com/nickmontfort/curveship</a>

On Mac and Linux, it's all fairly easy because Python is pre-installed. Any recent 2.X version of Python will work.

Windows is more difficult; you'll need to install Python, either set your path up or provide the full pathname for "python", and use a "\" where you use a "/" on Mac and Linux. I and others have gotten it working on systems from Windows XP to Windows 7, however.

In all cases, you'll need to use the Terminal/Command Prompt. The full instructions for all three platforms, including all of this, are in the README.

 -Nick

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1967&start=0#p13104
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: UML, the Unified Process, and OO programming with Inform
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-02-02 09:33:29

I'd try a general purpore language, like Java or Object Pascal. Both easy to pick up. Inform 7 is rule based, not object oriented.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1965&start=0#p13105
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Curveship released
User: George / DateTime: 2011-02-02 10:03:20

I'm curious if there's an editor highlighting file of any kind available for the strings-with-slots syntax?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1967&start=0#p13106
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: UML, the Unified Process, and OO programming with Inform
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-02 11:59:22

Yeah, I7 sounds like a bad choice for your project. It's a very domain-specific language.

Especially since I think the greatest value of OO programming is in GUI development...!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1965&start=10#p13107
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Curveship released
User: nickm / DateTime: 2011-02-02 12:04:26

George, I don't have anything to do syntax highlighting, but that's a good idea.

You can diagnose many problems with a Curveship fiction file using static checking tools such as pylint or by simply running the fiction file to see if it successfully sets up the world or if it crashes. But there is nothing right now that checks the syntax of templates. A validator as well as and syntax coloring would be nice to add as development continues.

 -Nick

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1958&start=0#p13108
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Towards an i7 spec?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-02 12:17:28

[quote]So I interpret that as the main point of George wanting the Python-like manual organisation: it is very clear on what's a token and it is designed to be able to scanned for tokens. (I suppose I'm using 'token' rather loosely here to include built-in keywords and library functions.)[/quote]
That whole One Magic Token thing is what bugs me about programming languages.  Heaven forbid we use words, with spaces between them even.  Comp Sci really needs to give the mathematicians back their syntax. 

Also, I forgot to mention to you the Index, especially the Phrases tab.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1967&start=0#p13109
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: UML, the Unified Process, and OO programming with Inform
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-02 12:21:34

Ditto.  It's object-based not OO, like Visual Basic 5, but probably not what you're looking for.  You can kinda compare rules to multimethods, but it's a stretch.

I do support your intent of using I7 for your Master's, but I don't know enough about it to shoehorn in some good news.
[quote]what they've been teaching me about systems analysis and design[/quote]
Maybe find an example where UML falls apart and rules is the way to go?  Paradigms like aspect-oriented programming or mixins were all created to finesse certain OO problems, and Inform too was made to be rule-based to circumvent certain problems.

Note that Inform's rules aren't like the production rules of Prolog, they're just named similarly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1956&start=0#p13110
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Looking in a specific direction
User: Rayven / DateTime: 2011-02-02 12:25:22

GOT IT!

The command was compass_look not compasslook, i found it tucked away in the release notes.  The online documentation was wrong [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1966&start=0#p13111
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Many many rooms....
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-02 12:38:12

You might take a look at the extension Dynamic Rooms by Aaron Reed.  I used it when I was experimenting with automatic room layouts and mapping. 

There's theoretically no limit to rooms and such, but you'd need to do some testing to see how it performs.  I think it might be okay.  The nice thing about Dynamic Rooms is that it would be easy to load the approximate number of rooms in and see if it's possible in a bare bones form.

What's the advantage to doing all of this, versus just the important places, or the important places plus a little padding to make the world complete?  Are all the areas/apartments going to be plot-related, and/or have something interesting for the player?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1957&start=0#p13112
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Git and Tabulation / Unicode
User: T. R. Zazzara / DateTime: 2011-02-02 12:42:19

Thanks! I'll try the [fixed letter spacing].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1966&start=0#p13113
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Many many rooms....
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-02 13:04:12

*By default*, Inform is good about scaling to larger games as long as you don't cram everything into a few rooms. That is, adding more rooms (with normal numbers of objects in them) doesn't slow the gameplay down.

However, it's easy to write rules that *do* start causing scaling problems. If you have lots of NPCs moving around through the game, their "every turn" rules are obviously going to cost you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1958&start=10#p13114
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Towards an i7 spec?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-02 13:41:06

[quote]So it seems there was a decision early on that this sort of notation isn't useful for Inform[/quote]

Here's my take: Python, as an example, has an *extremely simple* syntax. (That was a design goal, of course.) The Python library reference is wonderfully detailed, but it isn't about *syntax* at all -- it assumes that you already know how to do "X.Y" and "X.Y(Z)", and those are 95% of what you do with Python libraries.

I7 doesn't break down that way. You say:

[quote]as much as is possible, I want to look through a list of literal library functions like '1.1: Carries / Carrying / Carried by; 1.2: Contains / Containing / Contained by; 1.3: Supports / Supporting / Supported by...[/quote]

But in fact those aren't functions, and the words in them aren't tokens. "Carried" could refer to a relation (the carrying relation); an adjective ("a thing is carried if the player is carrying it"); or one of the special requirements of an action ("Wearing is an action applying to one carried thing."). Or it could be part of a longer name (there's a rule called "the can't put onto something being carried rule"; there's a condition "whether the action requires a carried noun").

In Python, a token "carried" would have exactly one definition in any context. In I7, the compiler looks through all of these possibilities. It distinguishes them based on context, which includes the presence of the longer name, but also on -- well, English-like connectives and rules. "If X is carried: ..."  is different from "now the player carries X".

(You get a peek into this parsing process when you make a mistake, and the I7 error message lists all the various ways the compiler failed to parse your code.)

So in a traditional language, it makes sense to organize the manual by token, because there's a strong aesthetic of "one token <=> one feature". (More so in Python than in Perl, of course. :) But in I7, there's this messy many-many relation between code words and concepts. You really do have to know that the carrying relation is a core concept, which feeds into many syntaxes ("now the player carries X", "if the player carries X", "all swords carried by the player", ...) but is distinct from concepts like action requirements. If you lead with the words you have a horrible disorganized mess.

But then you *also* want a reference organized by code word. I tried to do this with my I7 index page: <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/i7index/">http://eblong.com/zarf/i7index/</a> The point there is to be an index, rather than a manual -- entries just refer to manual chapters. It may be useful, but on the other hand, it's very hard to do well. (The entries on "carrying", "carried", etc are rather sparse. I don't know if they cover everything you want to know.)

And that leads back to the original question, which is *syntax*. I7 has a high-level syntax, which I think the manual fails to convey very well. (Thus the very frequent question whose answer is "you have to put your 'if' statement inside some rule".) I think Ron's manual goes in that direction. But it's more important to have the high-level stuff -- the layout of rules and top-level declarations. If you try to notate the syntax of everything down to individual values and variable names, you're going to drown in the swamp of phrase and adjective names (which, as I showed above, can be very flexible and include other "reserved" words).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1966&start=0#p13115
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Many many rooms....
User: austriangilbert / DateTime: 2011-02-02 13:49:13

[i]gravel[/i], Dynamic rooms looks GOOD, I will try that out very soon. Thank you for telling me what I oversaw [emote];)[/emote]
I want distraction from the main theme, and with my knowledge growing I want to have more freedom and possibilities within the game world. And then, maybe I can use the streets and apartments for other projects, like alien uncovering missions etc.

[i]zarf[/i], with the work so far done I already had a memory warning and compiling wouldn't commence. Only rooms (and even just one block first story), one door and the player-object, and a few rules. I added the "[b]memory economy[/b]" line and that solves it for now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1966&start=0#p13116
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Many many rooms....
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-02 14:39:00

I was talking about speed, not memory use. Sorry. Completely distinct problems.

If you have many complex objects, or many tables or relations of objects, you will quickly be pushed into Glulx.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1968&start=0#p13117
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Combine reports extension
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-02-02 14:45:06

Eric Eve's "Combine Reports" extension works very nicely for summarizing similar reports, but it doesn't provide an equally nice summary for a single instance of a MultipleObjectAnnouncement.

The resulting transcript looks something like this:

[code]
> take all
You take the note, the bowling ball, and the knife.

> drop knife
Dropped.

> take all
knife: Taken.
[/code]

The last line would ideally be "You take the knife."

I can get that behavior by modifying the afterActionMain routine in the extension's actionReportManager and changing it to work on lists of at least one object, instead of two or more. I'm just wondering if there's a reason it doesn't do that by default - perhaps the capability is provided by some core library functionality that I'm not aware of?

Any thoughts?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1958&start=10#p13118
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Towards an i7 spec?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-02-02 15:16:02

[quote="Ron Newcomb"][quote]So I interpret that as the main point of George wanting the Python-like manual organisation: it is very clear on what's a token and it is designed to be able to scanned for tokens. (I suppose I'm using 'token' rather loosely here to include built-in keywords and library functions.)[/quote]
That whole One Magic Token thing is what bugs me about programming languages.  Heaven forbid we use words, with spaces between them even.  Comp Sci really needs to give the mathematicians back their syntax. 

Also, I forgot to mention to you the Index, especially the Phrases tab.[/quote]
I didn't mean single words with no spaces in them. Let's just say I used the wrong word with 'token'. I meant to differentiate between actual words you are supposed to type when programming, and words that are merely in the manual to help explain those keywords. The distinction between those two things gets pretty muddy at times in the official manual, particularly in the section headings which I don't find useful at all in that manual — I'm just saying they should be clearly distinct, even moreso with i7 than other languages, because without some non-alphabetic or contextual cue, it is impossible to distinguish the pseudo-English from the English meant to explain the pseudo-English. The simplest cue I can think of is to reserve section headings for actual syntax words only. Also, aren't i7 keywords self-describing? They make better section headings than any other language's keywords. Forgive me if I'm just not getting it, but this seems like a no-brainer.

[quote="zarf"]Here's my take: Python, as an example, has an *extremely simple* syntax. (That was a design goal, of course.) The Python library reference is wonderfully detailed, but it isn't about *syntax* at all -- it assumes that you already know how to do "X.Y" and "X.Y(Z)", and those are 95% of what you do with Python libraries.

I7 doesn't break down that way.[/quote]
I realise this stuff. To me it doesn't obviate the need. English is way more complex than Inform, and I have seen plenty of grammar specifications for English that attempt to conceptually name and mark out the relations of parts of speech, rather than going with examples alone.

[quote="zarf"]You say:

[quote]as much as is possible, I want to look through a list of literal library functions like '1.1: Carries / Carrying / Carried by; 1.2: Contains / Containing / Contained by; 1.3: Supports / Supporting / Supported by...[/quote]

But in fact those aren't functions, and the words in them aren't tokens. "Carried" could refer to a relation (the carrying relation); an adjective ("a thing is carried if the player is carrying it"); or one of the special requirements of an action ("Wearing is an action applying to one carried thing."). Or it could be part of a longer name (there's a rule called "the can't put onto something being carried rule"; there's a condition "whether the action requires a carried noun").[/quote]
OK let's just say I screwed up all the terminology. I don't care if they are functions or tokens or something else. They are words I need to know to write the code, that can be substituted into sentences with certain effects -- almost all of them (like the relations, say) belong to a particular category the members of which behave in a similar way. That's good enough for me. I didn't think any of my reasoning was really contingent on the semantics of whether they are functions or tokens or whatnot.

[quote="zarf"]In Python, a token "carried" would have exactly one definition in any context. In I7, the compiler looks through all of these possibilities. It distinguishes them based on context, which includes the presence of the longer name, but also on -- well, English-like connectives and rules. "If X is carried: ..."  is different from "now the player carries X".

(You get a peek into this parsing process when you make a mistake, and the I7 error message lists all the various ways the compiler failed to parse your code.)

So in a traditional language, it makes sense to organize the manual by token, because there's a strong aesthetic of "one token <=> one feature". (More so in Python than in Perl, of course. [emote]:)[/emote] But in I7, there's this messy many-many relation between code words and concepts. You really do have to know that the carrying relation is a core concept, which feeds into many syntaxes ("now the player carries X", "if the player carries X", "all swords carried by the player", ...) but is distinct from concepts like action requirements. If you lead with the words you have a horrible disorganized mess.[/quote]
You make excellent points here but I still don't think it obviates the need for a spec. It just makes it more difficult. Where there are many-to-many relationships, I guess I would just approach that by making it as clear as possible which parallel structures each type of relationship has as its siblings (not in the OO sense of 'sibling'). As I say above, there are grammarians who have written what are basically specs for the English language itself. So although I'm sure you are right about all of these specifics and I was wrong, it's still hard for me to see how your points speak directly to the need (or lack of need) for a specification.

[quote="zarf"]But then you *also* want a reference organized by code word. I tried to do this with my I7 index page: <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/i7index/">http://eblong.com/zarf/i7index/</a> The point there is to be an index, rather than a manual -- entries just refer to manual chapters. It may be useful, but on the other hand, it's very hard to do well. (The entries on "carrying", "carried", etc are rather sparse. I don't know if they cover everything you want to know.)[/quote]
I have seen this document. It's a very worthwhile goal, it's just too bad that it references the official manual, which I find very frustratingly unclear in parts. Very often when I read a section of the manual, I have to do a bunch of trial & error to actually nail down the behaviour. I save everything I've learned in a document, some of which is in the format I used above. (The rest is just me rewriting sections of the manual in my own words to be more specific about the resulting behaviour. I've already completely rewritten in my own words everything up to chapter 13 in the official manual, though the spec section is lagging behind as it requires more analysis -- I've been attempting to build the formal grammar on top of my rewritten chapters.) So that's the main reason I didn't perceive your index as a solution to my problems.

[quote="zarf"]And that leads back to the original question, which is *syntax*. I7 has a high-level syntax, which I think the manual fails to convey very well. (Thus the very frequent question whose answer is "you have to put your 'if' statement inside some rule".) I think Ron's manual goes in that direction. But it's more important to have the high-level stuff -- the layout of rules and top-level declarations. If you try to notate the syntax of everything down to individual values and variable names, you're going to drown in the swamp of phrase and adjective names (which, as I showed above, can be very flexible and include other "reserved" words).[/quote]
Well you have the experience to know better here and it seems what you are saying is that I am undertaking a Quixotic quest. I'm not going to argue that. If that is the case, I'll be easily dissuaded when that realisation dawns; it just hasn't yet and I've made a lot more headway than what I've posted above. Thanks for the warning, I know you are just trying to save me work. But if I don't try and fail to write an accurate spec while I have the desire, I figure I'll be sitting around years from now still wishing, 'Gee I wish I had a spec' and wondering if maybe I shouldn't have been so easily dissuaded. 8) Some mistakes we just have to make for ourselves. I'll be happy to admit you were right all along, when the time comes, because it'll mean I can drop this obsession with a spec.

Thanks guys I hope my stubbornness isn't too annoying. I'm just not convinced that a spec isn't doable or useful. I was desperate for one coming in, and being more than halfway in now, I can see all the little places where it would have saved me tons of time. Even half a specification would be better than the status quo, IMO.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1966&start=0#p13119
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Many many rooms....
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-02 15:52:19

[quote="austriangilbert"][i]zarf[/i], with the work so far done I already had a memory warning and compiling wouldn't commence. Only rooms (and even just one block first story), one door and the player-object, and a few rules. I added the "[b]memory economy[/b]" line and that solves it for now.[/quote]

Are you compiling to glulx? You can compile I7 projects into two formats (roughly), z-code and glulx; glulx has a [b]lot[/b] more memory and has other features as well (I think Dynamic Rooms only works with glulx) [EDIT: wrong, I was thinking of Jesse McGrew's dynamic objects, though if you want to put things in your dynamic rooms you might need that as well]. If you haven't done so already, you should click on the "settings" tab and change the story file format to Glulx. That should save you from out of memory errors for a bit.

If you're already up against the glulx memory limits, well, dang.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1969&start=0#p13120
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Preventing duplicate messages
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-02 15:54:52

I have a message that needs to be printed about an object every time that same information is not given elsewhere. I can't seem to figure out the cleanest way to do that:

[code]The Kitchen is a room. The Dining Room is west of the Kitchen.

There is a pie in the kitchen. "A heady aroma of baked apples wafts from a pie on the counter."

Every turn when not smelling or looking and the pie is visible:
	say "The aroma of baked apples tickles your nose."
	
Instead of smelling the pie:
	say "It smells like baked apples.";
	
test me with "z/l/smell pie/z/w/e"[/code]
This prevents the every turn rule from running when the aroma is given by smelling or explicitly looking. But when an automatic look is generated by going, it fails to suppress the every turn rule. Aside from smelling, the only thing I need to worry about is when the pie is mentioned in the locale, but I can't seem to come up with a way to test that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1958&start=10#p13121
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Towards an i7 spec?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-02-02 16:08:11

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Also, I forgot to mention to you the Index, especially the Phrases tab.[/quote]
I forgot to address this. I've tried to use the Index and the Phrases tab, I've been all over that stuff, and I just can't use that stuff. I want my info in a text file -- I'm strictly a text file man. And it isn't a spec but you're right it does come close in some ways. Can I get that stuff in a text file? Or is that basically considered to be equivalent to the syntax document Juhana pointed me to?

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1969&start=0#p13122
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Preventing duplicate messages
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-02 16:09:06

Will it work if you add "going" to the list of suppressed actions?

Also, there is the [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Ron%20Newcomb/Mentioned%20In%20Room%20Description/index.html]Mentioned in Room Descriptions[/url] extension.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1969&start=0#p13123
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Preventing duplicate messages
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-02-02 16:13:03

Try this. It seems to work for me. It may need further fine-tuning.

[code]The Kitchen is a room. The Dining Room is west of the Kitchen.

There is a pie in the kitchen. "[Aroma-mention]A heady aroma of baked apples wafts from a pie on the counter."

After reading a command:
	now aroma-mentioned is false.

Every turn when not smelling or looking:
	if the pie is visible and aroma-mentioned is false:
		say "The aroma of baked apples tickles your nose."

Instead of smelling the kitchen:
	if the pie is enclosed by the kitchen:
		say "A pie, sez I....";
	otherwise:
		continue the action.

Instead of smelling the pie:
	say "It smells like baked apples."
	
To say aroma-mention:
	now aroma-mentioned is true.
	
Aroma-mentioned is a truth state that varies. Aroma-mentioned is false.
   
test me with "z/l/smell pie/z/w/e"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1969&start=0#p13124
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Preventing duplicate messages
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-02 16:16:45

I thought I might have to resort to that, but adding a global variable and an ARaC rule seemed kludgy. Is it really the best way?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1958&start=10#p13125
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Towards an i7 spec?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-02 16:22:48

[quote="Laroquod"][quote="Ron Newcomb"]Also, I forgot to mention to you the Index, especially the Phrases tab.[/quote]
I forgot to address this. I've tried to use the Index and the Phrases tab, I've been all over that stuff, and I just can't use that stuff. I want my info in a text file -- I'm strictly a text file man. And it isn't a spec but you're right it does come close in some ways. Can I get that stuff in a text file? Or is that basically considered to be equivalent to the syntax document Juhana pointed me to?

Paul.[/quote]
The other day I tried to use the "find" feature to locate some rules in the Actions tab of the Index. No matter what I tried, I couldn't get it to work without guessing what the action was and clicking on it. I'm not sure if this means the Actions tab is split up into multiple pages, or if the find feature is flawed, but I've had plenty of problems with both.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1958&start=10#p13127
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Towards an i7 spec?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-02-02 16:57:25

[quote="capmikee"]The other day I tried to use the "find" feature to locate some rules in the Actions tab of the Index. No matter what I tried, I couldn't get it to work without guessing what the action was and clicking on it. I'm not sure if this means the Actions tab is split up into multiple pages, or if the find feature is flawed, but I've had plenty of problems with both.[/quote]
Yeah, I don't so much reread text files, I search them. Search after search after search. Grep is indispensible. Go full screen -- paging around as rapidly as possible to cross-reference different sections. In TextWrangler I can even look at two widely separated sections of the same document simultaneously. Also, I like to add my own notes. I feel crippled inside the IDE, reference-wise. The index is pretty useful though once you get stuff built. And the skein is cool, there are lots of neat things about the IDE but I think it's the wrong place for reference material [ EDITED TO QUALIFY: For someone with my text file habits. ]

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1964&start=0#p13128
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [help] Time and Day/Night cycling
User: PhilGerb93 / DateTime: 2011-02-02 17:54:08

Thanks for answering, all is fine now [emote]:)[/emote]. 

But if you have the time, could you answer another question please?

Let's say I want to make a city. In an area, I want to be able to enter in several houses. But when you only type "enter", it says something like that: What location do you want to get in? (Could be better [emote]:P[/emote]).

I already tryed to do:

Exemple:

Room1 is a room.

Room2 is a room. Room2 is inside from room1.

Room3 is a room. Room3 is inside from room2.


But it don't work. Do you have any tips? [emote]:D[/emote]

Edit: Sorry, I made a mistake:


Exemple:

Room1 is a room.

Room2 is a room. Room2 is inside from room1.

Room3 is a room. Room3 is inside from room[b]1[/b].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1958&start=10#p13129
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Towards an i7 spec?
User: StJohnLimbo / DateTime: 2011-02-02 18:18:24

[quote="Laroquod"][quote="Ron Newcomb"]Also, I forgot to mention to you the Index, especially the Phrases tab.[/quote]
I forgot to address this. I've tried to use the Index and the Phrases tab, I've been all over that stuff, and I just can't use that stuff. I want my info in a text file -- I'm strictly a text file man. And it isn't a spec but you're right it does come close in some ways. Can I get that stuff in a text file? Or is that basically considered to be equivalent to the syntax document Juhana pointed me to?

Paul.[/quote]
AFAIK, it's not available in an up-to-date text file; here's a pertinent explanatory post: <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/news/2010/06/20/6e59-phrasebook-index/">http://inform7.com/news/2010/06/20/6e59 ... ook-index/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1958&start=10#p13130
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Towards an i7 spec?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-02 20:47:56

[quote]As I say above, there are grammarians who have written what are basically specs for the English language itself.[/quote]

Yeah, but nobody tries to *learn* from them. :)

I don't think the desire for a spec is quixotic or impossible. I just think most of the value is in the first 20% of the work -- which is an argument *for* doing that much, of course. Also: that value is in supplementing the manual with a clear understanding of how the core I7 concepts are fit into English. It won't be great for looking up how to do specific things.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1969&start=0#p13131
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Preventing duplicate messages
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-02-02 21:09:34

[quote="capmikee"]I thought I might have to resort to that, but adding a global variable and an ARaC rule seemed kludgy. Is it really the best way?[/quote]
I think you can pretty much trust that I [i]don't [/i]know the optimum way to do stuff. OTOH, the typical IF game puts no strain whatever on a computer's resources. I'm sure you could write a hundred after reading a command rules without seeing a perceptible slowdown in performance.

The main issue, as far as I can see, is keeping your code organized so that you don't start to see unexpected interactions among closely related rules. For instance, I would tend to put all of my after reading a command rules into one block, so that they would run in my own preferred order, not in whatever order the compiler happened to improvise. But again, I'm not an expert. I just do it that way because it's easier for me to understand what's going on.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1967&start=0#p13132
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: UML, the Unified Process, and OO programming with Inform
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-02-02 21:16:25

Since nobody else has mentioned it ... TADS 3 is entirely object-oriented. It's easily as powerful as Inform 7 with respect to the creation of model worlds and text games, and it's also somewhat more stable. I know not a solitary thing about UML, but if you're looking to apply a UML paradigm (???) to IF development systems and authorship, TADS might be the way to go.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1229&start=0#p13133
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Bug in Secret Doors, not sure who to contact
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-02-02 21:17:50

Yeah, I recall running into that bug too. I just edited the extension to remove the extra words.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1969&start=0#p13134
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Preventing duplicate messages
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-02 22:25:49

[quote="Jim Aikin"]The main issue, as far as I can see, is keeping your code organized so that you don't start to see unexpected interactions among closely related rules.[/quote]
Exactly. I'm not concerned about performance, but readability and maintainability.

I ended up doing it the other way around. Something like this:

[code]Every turn when the player can see the hot pie:
    say "The aroma of baked apples rises from the hot pie on the counter."

After choosing notable locale objects when the pie is hot:
    set the locale priority of the pie to 0.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1951&start=20#p13135
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform book (and howdy
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2011-02-02 22:56:38

theraje, 
good luck with the project.  I'm using Inform7 for a first IF project and given my slightly out of date programming skills (Delphi, C++, etc) I think Inform7 is great, but it is not perfect.  In particular, the lack of a good reference manual makes some things difficult to learn.  But despite that, it has a lot of built-in functionality that is pretty amazing.  I have not had to make any code changes as I7 has been updated, though I did have to get updates to some extensions (e.g. libraries.)

I have found Aaron Reed's book to be a great resource and highly recommend it.

--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1959&start=0#p13136
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Size limit of Z8 created with Inform7
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-02-03 02:30:08

[quote="Juhana"]The 250 kb you have now includes a lot of overhead from the standard rules.[/quote]

Just so. And for bonus perspective, the very very very leanest I7 program (something like "X is room" being the whole of the code) will compile to around 153 kilobytes with a recent version of I7 ... which in turn means that 250kb is, in practical terms, only 27% of the way to filling up the z8 jug.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1970&start=0#p13137
Forum: Competitions / Subject: "Golden Hamster 2010" — Russian IF awards
User: yandexx / DateTime: 2011-02-03 03:02:34

Hello intfiction.org :)

Wanted to share the word about the ongoing voting in the second tier of the Russian Interactive Fiction awards called Золотой Хомяк 2010 ("Golden Hamster 2010" — hamster is a mascot of the good old first Russian IF games).

Here's the official web-site: <a class="postlink" href="http://ynd.stormway.ru/zh2010/">http://ynd.stormway.ru/zh2010/</a>

This year we had at least 100 games, and while in the English-speaking community Inform is definitely leading as a platform, we in Russian-speaking community have a diversity of platforms, and most of them are menu-based (not to be confused with CYAO).

Here's some stats — the number of works — grouped by platform:
QSP – 43, URQ - 31, INSTEAD - 14, RInform  - 3, Милена – 3, Tweebox - 2, RTADS - 1, TGE - 1, custom engine - 2.

You can also check out the last year's awards where it debuted: <a class="postlink" href="http://ynd.stormway.ru/zh2009/">http://ynd.stormway.ru/zh2009/</a>
Last year we had a scheme similar to XYZZY awards, but since there was a lot of "fan" votes where people would vote for a single game and only that game, because it was made in their community, we have devised the scheme for this year. This time we have a jury of 6 people, well-known in the communities and who play most of the games released. And we have a "Public choice" award for the best game as voted by the public.

"Public choice" is now decided, and the 2nd tier is happening right now.

And I hope you get the reference in the hamster pic on this year's awards page :)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1958&start=10#p13138
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Towards an i7 spec?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-02-03 04:32:41

[quote="zarf"][quote]As I say above, there are grammarians who have written what are basically specs for the English language itself.[/quote]

Yeah, but nobody tries to *learn* from them. [emote]:)[/emote]

I don't think the desire for a spec is quixotic or impossible. I just think most of the value is in the first 20% of the work -- which is an argument *for* doing that much, of course. Also: that value is in supplementing the manual with a clear understanding of how the core I7 concepts are fit into English. It won't be great for looking up how to do specific things.[/quote]
I agree with that last bit. The waters got muddied a bit by the introduction of the strategy of a keyword-organised reference from those Python docs. The purpose of a spec and the purpose of organising a manual around keyword headings are separate purposes — but they're principles that do cross over in that grammatical terminology used in the spec can be used to help categorise a keyword-based reference (where one looks up specific things) and make it more structurally intelligible. And of course, the keyword reference describes the range of vocabulary available for parts of the spec, hopefully completing it.

I wouldn't be [i]as[/i] interested in having a complete spec if it didn't have an adjoining, compatibly-categorised keyword reference. It would be less useful, as you say.

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1970&start=0#p13139
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: "Golden Hamster 2010" — Russian IF awards
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-02-03 07:11:46

Thanks for the announcement here. It's interesting to hear, even though I don't understand any Russian. I can't even decode the cyrillic alphabet!

100 games sound like a lot. Does this make Russian the second largest language for IF? (Or is the production even larger than the English?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1970&start=0#p13140
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: "Golden Hamster 2010" — Russian IF awards
User: yandexx / DateTime: 2011-02-03 08:13:59

Well, in 2009 we had 50 games at most. This year has seen the new "SpeedIF" (titled "Вжж!", which can be translated as "Fwoosh!") competition, that happened twice (3rd time was just recently, in 2011) — people had to write a game with a given set of topics in roughly 24 hours. This has amounted to about 15 games.

Then there was a fan-fiction "festival" with the message posted on a huge number of forums and different communities. This resulted in about 10 more games and new authors.

I don't know about other languages, but from the list of games in the [url=http://xyzzyawards.org/games.php]XYZZY list[/url] there were about 300 games in 2010, and the list includes games in different languages, but most are in English.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1970&start=0#p13141
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: "Golden Hamster 2010" — Russian IF awards
User: riktik / DateTime: 2011-02-03 08:16:08

it seems so... 
and what's that QSP system? it seems really popular...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1970&start=0#p13142
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: "Golden Hamster 2010" — Russian IF awards
User: yandexx / DateTime: 2011-02-03 08:51:17

QSP is a "menu-based" system with a simple language and is simple for beginners, maybe that's why it is most popular.
If you're on Windows, you can try <a class="postlink" href="http://qsp.su/attachments/players_pack_2010_06_17.exe">http://qsp.su/attachments/players_pack_2010_06_17.exe</a> to see some sample games in action.
More cross-platform binaries here: <a class="postlink" href="http://qsp.su/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=64">http://qsp.su/index.php?option=com_cont ... icle&id=64</a>
There's a way to publish a QSP game in Flash so it can run in modern browsers.

Personally, I'd rather recommend INSTEAD: <a class="postlink" href="http://instead.syscall.ru/">http://instead.syscall.ru/</a>
It has intuitive language akin to Inform 6 (actually Lua is used), it has English documentation and good media capabilities (cross-platfrom too).
Some screenshots: <a class="postlink" href="http://instead.syscall.ru/screenshots/">http://instead.syscall.ru/screenshots/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1964&start=0#p13143
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [help] Time and Day/Night cycling
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-03 09:33:18

The main issue is that "enter" means "enter container"; Inform recognizes "in" as synonymous for going inside, and enter as going inside a container - a booth, or a large box.  

This is a bit more complicated than it appears, as you need to know what you want the player experience to look like, and you need to know something about how you're going to use enterable containers.  (For example, if you're never going to use them at all, you might just replace the command entirely.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1968&start=0#p13144
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Combine reports extension
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-02-03 10:08:15

This looks more like a oversight by Eric rather than a design decision. Maybe it's a good idea to report that directly to him or open an issue about it on <a class="postlink" href="http://bugdb.tads.org">http://bugdb.tads.org</a>.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1967&start=0#p13145
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: UML, the Unified Process, and OO programming with Inform
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-03 10:45:17

Good point.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1971&start=0#p13146
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Adjective bug?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-03 10:48:18

I've come across a curious circumstance that looks like a bug. This does not compile:

[code]
Test is a room.

A vessel is a kind of thing. A vessel can be full or empty.

The shot glass is a full vessel in Test.

The tiny handbag is a container with carrying capacity 1. It is carried by the player.

Definition: The handbag is full rather than empty if it contains something.
[/code]

This produces the following problem message:

[quote]Problem. You defined an adjective by 'The handbag is full rather than empty if it contains something' intending that it would apply to 'The handbag': but this isn't a thing, a kind of thing or a kind of value, and indeed doesn't have any meaning I can make sense of.
 See the manual: 6.4 > Defining new adjectives[/quote]

Obviously, the handbag is a thing, and that's not the problem here. After a good deal of poking around, I discovered that the error disappears if I change the line about the shot glass to this:

[code]The shot glass is a vessel in Test. It is full.[/code]

What's happening here? Should there actually be a compiler error? And if so, shouldn't it say something more helpful?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1964&start=0#p13147
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [help] Time and Day/Night cycling
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-02-03 10:52:59

You could change the noun to "inside" when none has been given and then change the action to the going action. Try this:

[code]Rule for supplying a missing noun while entering and the room inside from the location is a room:
	change the noun to inside.
	
Before entering inside:
	try going inside instead.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1970&start=0#p13148
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: "Golden Hamster 2010" — Russian IF awards
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-02-03 10:55:18

I never knew there was so much Russian interactive fiction!
Unfortunately it's all lost on me: "Ya lyublyu tebya" and "Do svedanya" pretty much exhausts my knowledge of Russian.

Still, I find it very refreshing to be reminded that the world (and even the Internet) actually is bigger than the one I'm usually aware of.

(I wonder what other non-English and non-Western European interactive fiction communities may be thriving out there – Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Turkish  …?)

I also had no idea there were so many tools for writing IF in use that I never heard of. 

I'd love to hear more from Russia. For, instance are there any noteworthy differences in what kinds of games are preferred or produced or especially appreciated etc. in the Russian IF community as compared to the English speaking one?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1964&start=0#p13149
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [help] Time and Day/Night cycling
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-02-03 11:21:23

[quote="PhilGerb93"]Let's say I want to make a city. In an area, I want to be able to enter in several houses.[/quote]
If I understand you right, you want to be able to type ENTER to enter any room. And you tried to achieve that by relating them by the inside direction, which didn't work.

The rules for the entering action assumes that only containers, supporters, doors and directions should be entered. And we cant add any rules for entering rooms, because the entering action is not defined as applying to things anywhere else than the current location. And another room is by definition somewhere else (even if it happens to be inside from the room where you are).

The rules for the going action doesn't let you specify a room to go to either (on ly a direction to go in or a door to go through). But in this case we can add rules to make it possible, since the going action is defined as applying to things anywhere in the game world.

After that we can redirect the command ENTER to mean going rather than entering.

We can let the player specify a room to go to by changing one of the check going rules in the Standard rules:
[code]
Check an actor going (this is the new determine map connection rule):
	repeat with portal running through visible doors:
		if the noun is the other side of the portal, try going the portal instead;
	let the target be nothing;
	if the noun is an adjacent room:
		now the target is the noun;
	if the noun is a direction:
		let direction D be the noun;
		let the target be the room-or-door direction D from the room gone from;
	otherwise:
		if the noun is a door, let the target be the noun;
	if the target is a door:
		now the target is the other side of the target from the room gone from;
	now the room gone to is the target.

The new determine map connection rule is listed instead of the determine map connection rule in the check going rules.
[/code]
This will replace one of the standard rules with a new one, in which we have added a few lines (lines #2, 3, 5 and 6) to let the player go to the specified room if it is adjacent or there is a visible door that leads to it.

Now we could add merely »Understand "enter [any room]" as going.» and the game would understand commands such as ENTER LIBRARY as going to the library. However, it would still understand simply ENTER as entering a container or a supporter or a door, which means that if you type ENTER in a room where there is only one of these the player will enter that thing without asking any questions. 

A solution that preserves most of the default behaviour, is to create a new action that can serve as a middle hand and redirect ENTER commands to the entering or the going action as appropriate:
[code]
Intruding is an action applying to one visible thing.
Check intruding:
	if the noun is a room, try going the noun;
	otherwise try entering the noun;
	stop the action.

Understand the command "enter" as something new.
Understand "enter" as intruding.
Understand "enter [something]" as intruding.
Understand "enter [any room]" as intruding.
[/code]
And while were at it, we can define a couple more relevant commands:
[code]
Understand "go to [any room]" as going.
Understand "go [any room]" as going.
[/code]

This seems to work reasonably well. But it isn't thoroughly tested, so may or may lead to bugs and may or may not clash with any Inform extensions you choose to include.

EDIT:
Since this is a non-standard use of the command ENTER many players will not think of using it; therefore you should somehow hint that it's possible to ENTER A ROOM in your game.
On the other hand, it's a command that new players, who are not already conditioned to the conventions of IF (or at least to the conventions of Inform – and of TADS, I guess (I really don't know what games I've played were written in TADS and what in Inform)), may very reasonably try.
So, I suppose, it may be worth the while to provide such an ENTER ROOM command.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1967&start=0#p13150
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: UML, the Unified Process, and OO programming with Inform
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-02-03 11:33:56

If keeping this to IF is a requirement, then indeed T3 would be the most natural choice; the object oriented development model fits like a glove since T3 [i]is[/i] an object oriented language.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1967&start=0#p13151
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: UML, the Unified Process, and OO programming with Inform
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-03 12:56:28

I should add:  Graham Nelson, creator of Inform 7, created a white paper regarding Inform's creation, including reasons for rules over objects. <a class="postlink" href="http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7Downloads/Documents/WhitePaper.pdf">http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7Downloa ... ePaper.pdf</a>    Dr. Nelson is also an academic so you could cite that paper in your dissertation or whatever it's called. 

Otherwise, yes, TADS3 is fully OO.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1970&start=0#p13152
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: "Golden Hamster 2010" — Russian IF awards
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-03 13:06:29

SPAG really needs an international correspondent with a regular column.  I really enjoyed Conrad Cook's blog entry, "watching them watch us."

On one of the Seattle IF group's get-togethers, we surfed around on the Russian sites.  Wei-ju (sp?) could read a smidge of Russian.  That was interesting.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1971&start=0#p13153
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Adjective bug?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-03 13:13:03

I don't think Inform allows declaring the kind of something along with adjectives.  For example, I do this a lot:[code]Bob is a man, here.[/code] which means [code]Bob is a man. Bob is here.[/code]The comma is necessary, and I can't write it as [i]Bob is a man here.[/i] So I'm inclined to call it a limitation or feature suggestion than a bug. 

But go ahead & report it at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.inform7.com/bugs/">www.inform7.com/bugs/</a> if you've the time because who knows, maybe they'll amend matters.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1951&start=20#p13154
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform book (and howdy
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-03 13:18:12

[quote="theraje"]Ron, I've downloaded your eBook, and have gone through it a bit, but I haven't had much time to really sink my teeth into it. I will keep in mind to give you any feedback if and when I come up with anything. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]Thank you!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1958&start=10#p13155
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Towards an i7 spec?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-03 13:29:08

Generally, I think just understanding type gets you a long way.  Granted, type like [i]description of people[/i] would need to be explained in detail, as that's a whole mess of adjectives, relations, a kind, "called" local variables, and the like, on top of the sometimes restricted ways of how a relation fits in (i.e., sometimes a "reversed" relation is necessary) and especially when chaining relations together.  

OK, to-phrases can take a description or instance for the "type" of each parameter, an oft-overlooked fact. When we say [i]To foo (x - a person)[/i] the "person" bit is a description of people, not just a kind like more restrictive languages. 

But other than that, the to-phrases, decide-phrases, and assertions all are each like an idiom.  There's not real grammar there, just a fill-in-the-blank ad-lib.  Descriptions are the only part with a real grammar. 

Well, maybe rule preambles as well.   

I keep undermining my own point, don't I?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1972&start=0#p13156
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Can a check rule "try anonymously?"
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-03 14:02:31

Consider this scenario:

[code]
Test is a room.

A person has an object called the instrument played.

Bob is a man in Test.

Persuasion rule for asking bob to try doing something: Persuasion succeeds.

Playing is an action applying to one thing. Understand "play [something]" as playing.

The drum set is a thing in Test. Understand "drums" as the drum set. The snare drum is a part of the drum set. The kick drum is a part of the drum set.

Check an actor playing the instrument played of the person asked (This is the can't play what's being played rule):
	if the person asked is the player, say "You're already playing that.";
	stop the action.
	
Check an actor playing the drum set (This is the play the kick drum by default rule):
	Try the actor playing the kick drum instead.
	
Carry out an actor playing something:
	Now the instrument played of the person asked is the noun.
	
Report an actor playing something:
	say "[The person asked] [if the person asked is yourself]are[otherwise]is[end if] now playing [the noun]."
	
Unsuccessful attempt by Bob playing something:
	if the reason the action failed is the can't play what's being played rule:
		say "Bob is already playing that.";
	otherwise:
		say "Bob isn't sure why he can't do that."
	
test me with "play snare/g/bob, play snare/bob,play drums/bob, play kick/bob,play drums"[/code]

In most cases, Bob's success or failure will be reported correctly. But when the "play the kick drum by default rule" triggers a failed action, the reason the action failed is not the rule that stopped the action, but the rule that triggered the failed action. What I want instead is something like "anonymously abide by the check rules" that attempts the entire action - Before rules, Instead rules, etc. - so we actually know the real reason why the action failed. Is there a way to do that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1971&start=0#p13157
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Adjective bug?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-03 14:08:17

I don't think that's true. If I take out the container, I get this:

[code]Test is a room.

A vessel is a kind of thing. A vessel can be full or empty.

The shot glass is a full vessel in Test.

Test me with "showme glass"[/code]
[quote]>[1] showme glass
shot glass - vessel
location: in Test
singular-named, improper-named; unlit, inedible, portable; full
printed name: "shot glass"
printed plural name: "vessels"
indefinite article: none
description: none
initial appearance: none
[/quote]

As you can see, declaring the shot glass as a "full vessel" successfully sets the kind to vessel and the full/empty property to full.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1971&start=0#p13158
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Adjective bug?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-03 14:26:58

Reported here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=533">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=533</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1971&start=0#p13159
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Adjective bug?
User: George / DateTime: 2011-02-03 14:33:34

I think the problem is the order of declarations here, as this compiles. 

[code]
Test is a room.

A vessel is a kind of thing. A vessel can be full or empty.

The tiny handbag is a container with carrying capacity 1. It is carried by the player.

The shot glass is a full vessel in Test.


Definition: The handbag is full rather than empty if it contains something.
[/code]

In the OP I'm guessing the shot glass references the definition, which references the handbag that hasn't been declared yet -- I've heard there are some corner cases where order of declaration is important in I7, so maybe this is one of them. In any case, it doesn't seem like the expected behavior.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1970&start=0#p13160
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: "Golden Hamster 2010" — Russian IF awards
User: George / DateTime: 2011-02-03 14:44:25

I regularly check the Russian sites with Google translate (using Chrome is not too clunky) for IF URLs. I haven't found other communities besides the Spanish, German, Italian, and French (I do look though!), though there has been some work done in other languages, I wouldn't say there are communities per se. I have a feeling that the further afield from the English-centric IF world you go, the more you find IF as visual novels and graphical games, though I'm not sure why that is really.

@Felix, this SPAG might interest you: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/backissues/spag48.html">http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/backissues/spag48.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1972&start=0#p13161
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can a check rule "try anonymously?"
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-03 15:02:18

Eh, you'd have to unstick the action-processing rules to shoehorn it into there, for just that one little case, so it isn't worth it.  Better might be to break out your problem rule:[code]
Check an actor playing the drum set (This is the play the kick drum by default rule):
   Try the actor playing the kick drum;
   rule succeeds.
[/code]
And maybe also specifically set the reason the action failed to whatever if the "rule succeeds" doesn't clear it up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1972&start=0#p13162
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can a check rule "try anonymously?"
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-03 15:12:41

[quote="Ron Newcomb"][code]
Check an actor playing the drum set (This is the play the kick drum by default rule):
   Try the actor playing the kick drum;
   rule succeeds.
[/code]
And maybe also specifically set the reason the action failed to whatever if the "rule succeeds" doesn't clear it up.[/quote]
But how do I know what to set the reason the action failed to? And won't it get reset as soon as the check rule exits?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1972&start=0#p13163
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can a check rule "try anonymously?"
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-03 17:59:10

Oh I see, you're needing the variable after all of that is complete.  I should read closely. 

With your particular example, you're not changing the action so[code]
Check an actor playing the drum set (This is the play the kick drum by default rule):
	change the noun to the kick drum.
[/code] works fine.  Otherwise, make a new variable to save away the reason the action failed right after the Try statement, then use a [i]First Unsuccessful attempt by when that variable isn't the little-used do nothing rule: now the reason the action failed is that variable.[/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1891&start=20#p13164
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: I7 port of Crowther's Colossal Cave looking for testers
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2011-02-03 21:38:14

[quote="Peter Pears"][quote]Oh, glulx. Heh, I've never done anything with glulx, and right now it's nice that Adventure can fit into a .z8 file. I'll look into what it would take to add that extension for an alterate glulx release.[/quote]

I'm not sure what you mean. If you use GLimmr, yes, it's Glulx only. But Tilford's extension works just as well in ZCode, as he proves in "Goldilocks is a FOX!".[/quote]
Ah, sorry. I just played around with it now; it's not going to work, at least in its current version, because it doesn't support custom directions, which my code makes extensive use of to handle Crowther's many long-distance travel verbs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1973&start=0#p13165
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: IF and the Mac App Store
User: jmac / DateTime: 2011-02-03 23:49:02

Howdy y'all,

In light of [url=http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zarf/hadean-lands-interactive-fiction-for-the-iphone]certain parties' efforts[/url] to develop and eventually sell IF games as stand-alone iOS apps, I would like to wonder out loud if there'd be value in experimenting with a similar approach using the Mac OS App Store. 

Background: the most recent version of Mac OS includes a shiny button on the desktop that summons the Mac App Store, a new thing the mold of the one that the iPhone made famous. It provides a fall-down easy way for users to browse, purchase, and update "apps", which seems to generally mean stand-alone applications of a modest-or-smaller size. It also lends an interesting and potentially highly visible new channel for developers to distribute their software to Mac users (so long as they can navigate through the limbo of Apple's also-famous approval process, but let's call that a separate topic for now).

I've been buying games from it -- cool little indie titles, for the most part. Inevitably, I started to think about the fact that, gee, y'know, [url=http://jmac.org/warbler]I've written a game that runs on Macs[/url], too, sort of...

What would an App Store-friendly IF game look like? Aiming modestly, I figure the bare minimum would include resources like [url=http://pr-if.org/doc/play-if-card/]the PR-IF postcard[/url] or the Inform first-time-player's guide under the native Help menu, and the first time it's launched it could make their presence extra-obvious (or permanently dismissible). But otherwise, the meat of the app would be, not to put too fine a point on it, Zoom. (Or a fork of it, anyway, permanently grafted to a single story file.) No [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/06/07/so-do-we-need-this-parser-thing-anyway/]reaching for any ingenious new UX idioms[/url], at least not in the first rev.

Ideally, this app-wrapper would be reusable by other authors, and applicable to any game that Zoom is capable of running. So, it'd end up as something like the iOS framework that Zarf is building, but for Mac OS and -- in my current imagining -- not nearly as ambitious in introducing any new platform-specific IF play idioms. And, at least in my case, I don't see myself aiming to make a living off of this! It just strikes me as an unexplored channel for distributing IF to a new audience, and one worth discussion.

Again, I'm just thinking out loud for now, and I'd love to hear others' thoughts.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1970&start=0#p13166
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: "Golden Hamster 2010" — Russian IF awards
User: riktik / DateTime: 2011-02-04 03:09:56

[quote="yandexx"]Personally, I'd rather recommend INSTEAD: <a class="postlink" href="http://instead.syscall.ru/">http://instead.syscall.ru/</a>
It has intuitive language akin to Inform 6 (actually Lua is used), it has English documentation and good media capabilities (cross-platfrom too).
Some screenshots: <a class="postlink" href="http://instead.syscall.ru/screenshots/">http://instead.syscall.ru/screenshots/</a>[/quote]

I looked at INSTEAD and it seems intresting. I think I'll give it a try to test the features and the limits...

thank you

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1973&start=0#p13167
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF and the Mac App Store
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-02-04 06:20:16

I've been a Mac user since 1990, Apple user since 1980. In fact I evangelised the platform until 2007 when all of this controlled App Store nonsense started, because I could see the day coming when it would be pushed to the Mac as well, but nobody believed me back then that Apple would try to force the App Store onto the desktop. And yet here we are. They aren't all the way there yet (you can still install apps outside the App Store, but the user attention climate is going to become very poor for it until there is almost nobody left doing it -- that's when I believe Apple will finally close that escape route for any little-fry developer, i.e. if you are not Adobe -- clearly they do not value computing freedom at all and have no moral compunctions about doing so). So I have lost all my respect for Apple as a company and I am fundamentally uninterested in the Mac App Store and regard it as the harbinger of the death of freedom in computing and I will not support it with a single purchase or even a single free download. In fact I am abandoning the Mac as a platform. I never believed I would ever make this decision but here I am having switched to Ubuntu on my laptop and looking for alternatives for things like iTunes and Final Cut Pro and Comic Life for my desktop. So… wait. I guess that that renders my own opinion irrelevant to this thread. But I just had to say it. I already know you don't agree (from Twitter). I'll shut up now.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1973&start=0#p13168
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF and the Mac App Store
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-04 06:25:24

[quote="jmac"]Zoom. (Or a fork of it, anyway, permanently grafted to a single story file.)[/quote]

Speaking from total ignorance, definitely a fork. It seems to me that "open this and then run this in it" would be a lot more off-putting than plain old "open this."

And if you're going to sell a bundled version of Zoom, I presume you need to conform to the GNU GPL; don't know what that would entail or how much it allows for commercial use. 

Does the app store allow you to make your app free?

(I also have some sympathy with Paul, although it may be an "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" situation. Does seem like Apple would be hard pressed to cut off access to applications outside the App store, so I'm not too worried that this would suck the air out of the if-archive or similar things.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1958&start=10#p13169
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Towards an i7 spec?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-02-04 06:59:38

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Generally, I think just understanding type gets you a long way.  Granted, type like [i]description of people[/i] would need to be explained in detail, as that's a whole mess of adjectives, relations, a kind, "called" local variables, and the like, on top of the sometimes restricted ways of how a relation fits in (i.e., sometimes a "reversed" relation is necessary) and especially when chaining relations together.[/quote]
Yeah, truly, and you know what I don't think I fully  understand type yet in all its myriad detail. I'm sure I will though by the end of this effort, however it turns out. 8)

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]OK, to-phrases can take a description or instance for the "type" of each parameter, an oft-overlooked fact. When we say [i]To foo (x - a person)[/i] the "person" bit is a description of people, not just a kind like more restrictive languages. 

But other than that, the to-phrases, decide-phrases, and assertions all are each like an idiom.  There's not real grammar there, just a fill-in-the-blank ad-lib.  Descriptions are the only part with a real grammar. 

Well, maybe rule preambles as well.   

I keep undermining my own point, don't I?[/quote]
Heh. I take your point though — there are some very freeform constructions that are sort of like grammatical black boxes. Not everything is going to be well illuminated by this process — I see that now.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1973&start=0#p13170
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF and the Mac App Store
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-02-04 07:07:07

[quote="matt w"]Does seem like Apple would be hard pressed to cut off access to applications outside the App store, so I'm not too worried that this would suck the air out of the if-archive or similar things.[/quote]
This is a good point that Jmac has also made on his Twitter feed. My reaction to it is twofold (1) It is hard to put anything past Apple these days with the distinct tone-deafness to issues of freedom they display. Censoring, censoring, censoring, even in cultural matters that are classically considering off-limits in a civil society. I simply don't trust them anymore. They have a serious ongoing PR problem entirely of their own making. (2) Even if they don't cut off outside access to the marketplace, they can make things very untenable for small developers who can't or don't want to distribute via their official channel.

OK I'll shut up [i]now[/i]. XD

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1973&start=0#p13171
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF and the Mac App Store
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-04 07:30:44

[quote="Laroquod"][quote="matt w"]Does seem like Apple would be hard pressed to cut off access to applications outside the App store, so I'm not too worried that this would suck the air out of the if-archive or similar things.[/quote]
This is a good point that Jmac has also made on his Twitter feed. My reaction to it is twofold (1) It is hard to put anything past Apple these days with the distinct tone-deafness to issues of freedom they display. Censoring, censoring, censoring, even in cultural matters that are classically considering off-limits in a civil society. I simply don't trust them anymore. They have a serious ongoing PR problem entirely of their own making. (2) Even if they don't cut off outside access to the marketplace, they can make things very untenable for small developers who can't or don't want to distribute via their official channel.

OK I'll shut up [i]now[/i]. XD

P.[/quote]

Well, what I meant about point (2) was basically that whatever Apple does to make things untenable for small devs doing distribution probably won't put them in any worse a state than an IF programmer who's relying on the IF archive or IFDB or whatever. IF players are well used to jumping through hoops to get their fix.  [emote];)[/emote]  (Of course what I do is usually to get the z-code URL from IFDB and drop it into Parchment, which is probably even more convoluted than usual.)

For the first, I suppose nothing should surprise me, but would they really stop you from downloading some application from the internet and then opening it? Well, I guess nothing should surprise me. I could definitely see them dropping in a series of more and more intrusive pop-up warnings when you do. ("Zoom is an application downloaded from the internet. Are you sure you want to open it?" [OK] "But it's filthy dirty and unclean! Wouldn't you like to visit the App store?")

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1966&start=0#p13172
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Many many rooms....
User: austriangilbert / DateTime: 2011-02-04 07:49:04

I didn't have the time yet to try Dynamic Doors yet.

But I want to *bump* a question from one of my previous posts: Can I somehow [b]seperate the adjective and the noun of a name of an object[/b]? For example I would like a printed name of a Green Grass to be "Grass". I would be using the adjective of a room as its "backstage" identifier (like "flat134 Livingroom"), and am looking for a way for the printed name to be automatically "Livingroom" with a rule (for printing names of rooms?) or instead. Solving this could very well make me understand inform7 a bit more.

Additionally, could I take a identifier/adjective eg. from a table, and let an object be in the [adjective] Livingroom?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1973&start=0#p13173
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF and the Mac App Store
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-02-04 07:55:32

Windows has way more users anyway (last time I looked it was like 80% Windows vs 10% Mac), so if anyone wants to sell his game, the most lucrative option is to make sure to release for Windows. Given that Apple has a tiny market share compared to MS, I wonder why they decided to charge money for the service in the first place. Maybe in a hope to keep application quality high. But it sure isn't working; take a look at the "most popular" or "top selling" apps on the Apple Store. Don't know about you, but I had a good laugh (someone sells a 1080p video of a fireplace that you play at full screen so your Mac looks like an actual fireplace?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1973&start=0#p13174
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF and the Mac App Store
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-02-04 08:06:01

[quote="RealNC"]Given that Apple has a tiny market share compared to MS[/quote]
The market share is small in comparison, but on the other hand the market itself is [i]huge[/i]. There are about 1 billion personal computers in the world, so the app store reaches somewhere around 100 million potential customers. I think that's quite enough people to make a good business.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1966&start=0#p13175
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Many many rooms....
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-04 08:11:35

It may be easiest to do this by kind:

[code]A living room is a kind of room.

ABCD is a living room.  Understand "living room" as a living room.

The printed name of a living room is usually "Living Room".[/code]

This would allow you to do lots of other things to general living rooms, test if the player is in a living room, place a couch in every living room, etc.  I'm sure there is a way with indexed text to suss out and say the second word of the name of a room, but since you're probably going to be using kinds of rooms anyway . . . 

Also noteworthy would be this variation on the above:

[code]
A living room has some text called descriptor.  The descriptor of a living room is usually "Enormous".
The printed name of a living room is usually "[descriptor of the item described] Living Room".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1966&start=10#p13176
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Many many rooms....
User: austriangilbert / DateTime: 2011-02-04 08:27:30

Hmm, I've tried kind of room already but the result wasn't as hoped for, and can't remember what exactly the error was right now. I will give it another go over the weekend, thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1974&start=0#p13177
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Find in I7 IDE
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-04 09:44:37

Another gripe about the Find dialog in the I7 IDE:

I've already mentioned the problems with focus and the target pane for the Mac IDE's "Find" feature. But I just noticed a couple new problems.

First, I got into a situation where it seemed clear that the source pane was focused, and the text I was searching for was right in front of me, but "Find again" did not find it. I wish I knew how to duplicate that, but it's happening over and over again. Something I'm doing, maybe cmd-F to do a fresh find, resets it and then it works again, but I'm not sure exactly how.

Second, if you're done finding, even if you found nothing (e.g. you just finished a cycle of search & replace), focus remains on the source pane, not on the Find window. Even pressing cmd-~ repeatedly will not ever focus the find window - it just cycles between other windows. Several times I have finished a search & replace and then hit cmd-W to close the Find window... which actually closes the project instead!

edit - I've figured out how it DOES work - cmd-F focuses the find window. The find window really behaves like a separate pane, but it floats over the text of the other panes instead of having its own space. I think this is my main problem - it can't decide whether it's a pane or an independent window.

Does anyone else experience these problems, and do you have suggestions we could vote up or propose on uservoice?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1975&start=0#p13178
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Mac I7 IDE: Skein, Transcript, and Replay bugs
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-04 09:52:44

I'm continuing to experience problems with the skein, transcript, and replay features.

Sometimes when I edit the source and hit cmd-R or "play to here" in a transcript, the game chokes and stops at the first turn. This is often accompanied by the disappearance of the current skein branch, and occasionally a few of the commands from near the bottom of the branch will be executed, but at the beginning of the game instead of where they're supposed to happen.

I can't figure out how to duplicate the problem. Has anyone else noticed this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1973&start=0#p13179
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF and the Mac App Store
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-04 09:59:45

jmac, you might want to consider retitling this post "Debating the Mac App Store" and repost your actual question in another thread...

Anyway, I'm just posting to say that Zoom is only one of your options. Gargoyle is a very nice alternative. More to the point, I know that Ben Cressey has at least had tentative plans in the past to create a packager that would allow you to bundle a game with the interpreter to create executables for both Mac and Windows. I believe that Ben's current Gargoyle development energies are going toward providing full multimedia support for TADS 3, and I don't know what he's thinking about the packager thing right now (sorry if I'm misrepresenting your efforts and plans, Ben!), but it might be more productive to consider building your app-wrapper on Gargoyle. The prospect of full T3 support--in addition to Glulx, Z, and other formats already available through Gargoyle--would be a real plus.

Zoom is, of course, a nice interpreter as well, and uses native OSX technologies, so that's not a bad idea either, but I wanted to emphasize that it isn't the only option.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1973&start=0#p13180
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF and the Mac App Store
User: jmac / DateTime: 2011-02-04 10:02:55

[quote="matt w"]
Speaking from total ignorance, definitely a fork. It seems to me that "open this and then run this in it" would be a lot more off-putting than plain old "open this."
[/quote]

Yup. As far as the user's concerned, they wouldn't be running Zoom-which-is-running-CoolGame; they'd be running CoolGame (for Mac). And this would take the appropriate amount on surgery on the Zoom codebase, transforming it from an application into a wrapper that story files slot into in order to become a new application.

[quote]
And if you're going to sell a bundled version of Zoom, I presume you need to conform to the GNU GPL; don't know what that would entail or how much it allows for commercial use. 

Does the app store allow you to make your app free?
[/quote]

Yes, you can make it free.

The GPL doesn't disallow commercial use. I don't think that, used this way, the GPL would "infect" the story files the wrapper interacts with. The wrapper itself, the Zoom-fork, would have to remain under the GPL, and I would be fine with that.

[quote](I also have some sympathy with Paul, although it may be an "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" situation. Does seem like Apple would be hard pressed to cut off access to applications outside the App store, so I'm not too worried that this would suck the air out of the if-archive or similar things.)[/quote]

I have no way to respond to this line or argument without the risk of this thread red-shifting the hell away into a meow meow computer fight, so instead I will say: I am fine assuming that none of this is a concern. Now let's talk about doing awesome stuff!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1975&start=0#p13181
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Mac I7 IDE: Skein, Transcript, and Replay bugs
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-02-04 10:21:43

That used to happen back in 5Z71. Replay just didn't work right on the Mac -- intermittently, exactly as you described. There was some discussion at the time, but I don't remember if anybody ever reached any conclusions about what was going on.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1973&start=0#p13182
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF and the Mac App Store
User: jmac / DateTime: 2011-02-04 10:26:57

[quote="ektemple"]Anyway, I'm just posting to say that Zoom is only one of your options. Gargoyle is a very nice alternative. More to the point, I know that Ben Cressey has at least had tentative plans in the past to create a packager that would allow you to bundle a game with the interpreter to create executables for both Mac and Windows.[/quote]
Ah, see, [i]this[/i] is why I wanted to wonder about this in public. I didn't know this about Gargoyle. (Or future-Gargoyle, anyway.)

[quote]
Zoom is, of course, a nice interpreter as well, and uses native OSX technologies, so that's not a bad idea either, but I wanted to emphasize that it isn't the only option.
[/quote]
Yeah, the native Macness does make Zoom attractive for this project.

This would require some custom code work in either case. From the user's perspective, downloading an App Store app results in a single, executable icon getting squirted onto their dock; there's no room to ZIP it together with free-floating PDFs or what have you. So, help documents and other feelies would exist as bundled resources, and the app would need to know about these and provide ways to summon them (either on player request or under certain conditions, e.g. the app being run for the first time).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1973&start=10#p13183
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF and the Mac App Store
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-04 10:49:04

[quote="jmac"]
[quote]
Zoom is, of course, a nice interpreter as well, and uses native OSX technologies, so that's not a bad idea either, but I wanted to emphasize that it isn't the only option.
[/quote]
Yeah, the native Macness does make Zoom attractive for this project.
[/quote]

Just to clarify: Gargoyle uses cross-platform libraries, but it is a native app; it's not running in X11 or anything.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1973&start=10#p13184
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF and the Mac App Store
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2011-02-04 10:51:01

[quote="Laroquod"]I've been a Mac user since 1990, Apple user since 1980. In fact I evangelised the platform until 2007 when all of this controlled App Store nonsense started, because I could see the day coming when it would be pushed to the Mac as well, but nobody believed me back then that Apple would try to force the App Store onto the desktop. And yet here we are. They aren't all the way there yet (you can still install apps outside the App Store, but the user attention climate is going to become very poor for it until there is almost nobody left doing it -- that's when I believe Apple will finally close that escape route for any little-fry developer, i.e. if you are not Adobe -- clearly they do not value computing freedom at all and have no moral compunctions about doing so). So I have lost all my respect for Apple as a company and I am fundamentally uninterested in the Mac App Store and regard it as the harbinger of the death of freedom in computing and I will not support it with a single purchase or even a single free download. In fact I am abandoning the Mac as a platform. I never believed I would ever make this decision but here I am having switched to Ubuntu on my laptop[/quote]

a valid anecdote.  Bad timing for Ubuntu and even other well-known Linux distros, as they too are coming up with an App Store of sorts.  Though actually just your usual Linux software repository on steroids and certainly not something closed as in Apple land.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1973&start=10#p13185
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF and the Mac App Store
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2011-02-04 11:05:21

BTW, as a recent convert to mobile computing in the form of a Motorola Droid 2, I'm lusting for some kind of portal into IF realm.

Android comes with Google's own Zippy interpreter for z-code and parchment works fine too, but I'm not really talking about interpreters, but of ease of browsing an IF catalogue akin to the many portals into ebooks.  You don't even need a particular app for that:  you go at something like Project Gutemberg and it's got a [url=http://m.gutenberg.org/]nifty page specifically for mobile[/url], leading you directly to a few links listing most populars, authors, subjects and categories.  IF truly is in need for something like that.  You can browse the web from smartphones, but zooming in is an annoyance if all you want is browse for titles, reviews etc.

IFDB could use something similar.  Good time too for another CSS contest for ifarchive I guess.

Plus, some app doing exactly that and specifically showing up in an App Store may go a long way towards publicizing IF.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1973&start=10#p13186
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF and the Mac App Store
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-02-04 11:19:26

[quote="jmac"]I have no way to respond to this line or argument without the risk of this thread red-shifting the hell away into a meow meow computer fight, so instead I will say: I am fine assuming that none of this is a concern. Now let's talk about doing awesome stuff![/quote]
I certainly haven't said anything catty — just expressed my opinion. Sorry for the derail and you have no obligation to answer me, but I think your fears are unwarranted. There has been no evidence here of any impending flame war.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1973&start=10#p13187
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF and the Mac App Store
User: jmac / DateTime: 2011-02-04 11:25:13

[quote="Laroquod"][quote="jmac"]I have no way to respond to this line or argument without the risk of this thread red-shifting the hell away into a meow meow computer fight, so instead I will say: I am fine assuming that none of this is a concern. Now let's talk about doing awesome stuff![/quote]
I certainly haven't said anything catty — just expressed my opinion. Sorry for the derail and you have no obligation to answer me, but I think your fears are unwarranted. There has been no evidence here of any impending flame war.

Paul.[/quote]
I apologize for being jumpy. Let us all embrace our beautiful machines and agree that they are the best machines, and return to talking about cool stuff. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1973&start=10#p13188
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF and the Mac App Store
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-02-04 11:26:35

[quote="jmac"]I apologize for being jumpy. Let us all embrace our beautiful machines and agree that they are the best machines, and return to talking about cool stuff. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
Yeah I didn't mean to hijack either, I do feel sorry about that. Thanks and good luck with your plan.

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1972&start=0#p13189
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can a check rule "try anonymously?"
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-04 11:28:02

Now why didn't I think of that? Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1975&start=0#p13190
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Mac I7 IDE: Skein, Transcript, and Replay bugs
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-02-04 11:32:36

Yes, it's annoying - the replay function hasn't worked for me the past several releases except on very rare occasions. I haven't figured out if there's any pattern, it seems completely random.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1973&start=10#p13191
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF and the Mac App Store
User: jmac / DateTime: 2011-02-04 11:40:37

[quote="namekuseijin"]IFDB could use something similar.  Good time too for another CSS contest for ifarchive I guess.[/quote]

Zoom kinda-sorta gives you that right now, letting you browse IFDB and download games from it from within the app. 

But it sounds like what you're talking about is an IFDB API? Which is actually an intriguing topic, and one worth forking off into its own thread.

The question I'm interested in exploring here is whether the App Store (and similar services on other platforms, sure) gives us enough reason to make a push for releasing IF games as stand-alone "Here is a game! Download and play it!" applications. 

It could be that the answer is "No, I looked at the calendar and it still isn't 1995 any more," in which case OK let's just keep focusing on making browser-playable IF awesome.

It could also be that the answer is "Only if you're willing to make the resulting stand-alone applications incredibly polished and beautiful and tuned to the platforms they respectively run on, c.f. Hadean Lands," in which case OK, too rich for my blood.

All I know is that "Here is a bunch of games you can play, but you'll need to download this other thing first, or maybe this thing instead, and maybe go over here and read these things to figure out how to play them" is not an awesome model, and I'm interested in exploring ways to improve on it by way of emerging technologies and services.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1975&start=0#p13192
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Mac I7 IDE: Skein, Transcript, and Replay bugs
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-04 11:48:30

Is it worth reporting anyway? I notice this possibly related bug is also not easy to reproduce:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=201">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=201</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1976&start=0#p13193
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Action - Hunting
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-04 12:16:29

I've been working on the specs for hunting for my WIP, and I'd like some feedback.  Full simulation is not really a possibility, but that still leaves a lot of options.  Hunting is an optional part of the game, and one that I don't intend to be a main focus of the gameplay - that is, most PCs will hunt occasionally, but it'll be a relatively small amount.  

The front running option A is a menu-driven system - sort of like a CYOA mini-game, where the player is given a couple choices, followed by outcomes and a couple choices.  (The major downside is that I have no idea where to even begin programming such a thing, but I'm sure there's some appropriate extension thing I can muddle in.  If anyone knows of one, please give it a shout out.)

Option B would give an update for each segment of time - that is, what does the PC accomplish in an hour? - with an option to continue or quit.  

Option C would just spit out a report, ending the expedition after success or a certain period of time has passed.  

I have no idea whether people would find combat at the end entertaining or just sort of irritating.  I'm not sure that a full-on ATTACK type implementation is worth it, although I'm not adverse to including one.  (There could be other uses for such a system.)  Another option to spice up the report-based options would be to include some random events - maybe about 20% of the time, the PC encounters some special thing of interest that dumps them out of the cut scene.

I know things can sound boring and be fun and vice versa, but if you were playing an IF with a mini-game of hunting, how would you want it to go?  

(If you like things to consider: What options would you be looking for?  What bits of awesome would make your day and/or spoil it completely?  Is it adequate to auto-select the best weapon you're carrying, or do you want to be able to HUNT WITH [specific weapon]?  HUNT [specific animal]?  HUNT [for specific purpose], ie HUNT FOR FOOD/FUR/PREDATORS?  HUNT FOR [specific amount of time]?  How many turns would you want an action to run?  Are there ways to increase interactivity for players that want that while keeping things simple for players that really just want to catch a rabbit for dinner?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1973&start=10#p13194
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF and the Mac App Store
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-04 12:21:55

[quote="jmac"]The question I'm interested in exploring here is whether the App Store (and similar services on other platforms, sure) gives us enough reason to make a push for releasing IF games as stand-alone "Here is a game! Download and play it!" applications. 

It could be that the answer is "No, I looked at the calendar and it still isn't 1995 any more," in which case OK let's just keep focusing on making browser-playable IF awesome.

It could also be that the answer is "Only if you're willing to make the resulting stand-alone applications incredibly polished and beautiful and tuned to the platforms they respectively run on, c.f. Hadean Lands," in which case OK, too rich for my blood.[/quote]

I'd say go for it. The download-and-play stuff from the Humble Indie Bundles seems to be successful, and not all of it is super tuned to its platform. Samorost 2 (admittedly a throw-in to the first one) just opens itself up in a web browser. Of course its content is beautiful and polished, but that's what we ought to be accomplishing with our prose.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1973&start=10#p13195
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF and the Mac App Store
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2011-02-04 12:30:09

[quote="ektemple"][quote="jmac"]
[quote]
Zoom is, of course, a nice interpreter as well, and uses native OSX technologies, so that's not a bad idea either, but I wanted to emphasize that it isn't the only option.
[/quote]
Yeah, the native Macness does make Zoom attractive for this project.
[/quote]

Just to clarify: Gargoyle uses cross-platform libraries, but it is a native app; it's not running in X11 or anything.

--Erik[/quote]

it amazes me that Mac users can be touchy to the issue of non native window widgets even to essentially play text adventures with a command prompt... sick.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1973&start=10#p13196
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF and the Mac App Store
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2011-02-04 12:43:14

[quote="RealNC"]Windows has way more users anyway (last time I looked it was like 80% Windows vs 10% Mac), so if anyone wants to sell his game, the most lucrative option is to make sure to release for Windows.[/quote]

BTW, I have a feeling the most common computing device in the near future will be mobile devices.  Your 80% Windows desktops are fading into irrelevancy as app stores for iPhone/Android/etc get loaded and much many millions more are able to get at very low pricepoints...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1973&start=20#p13197
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF and the Mac App Store
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2011-02-04 13:01:19

[quote="jmac"]It could also be that the answer is "Only if you're willing to make the resulting stand-alone applications incredibly polished and beautiful and tuned to the platforms they respectively run on, c.f. Hadean Lands," in which case OK, too rich for my blood.[/quote]

I don't understand how much polish people do expect from a "text description/user input" loop.  I'm much too glad already current interpreters use polished antialiased fonts and look like an actual book instead of some retro phosphor-on-black .  Aside from true AI helping better parser and event narration, I don't think it can get much better an interface in this medium, unless you want to dumb it down going the CYOA or point'n'click interface.

[quote]All I know is that "Here is a bunch of games you can play, but you'll need to download this other thing first, or maybe this thing instead, and maybe go over here and read these things to figure out how to play them" is not an awesome model, and I'm interested in exploring ways to improve on it by way of emerging technologies and services.[/quote]

Certainly.  I'm actually thinking of the ebooks model aforementioned:  a clean interface listing categories for browsing content and after that they're in your bookshelf.  You then just choose one, click and read.  Or, in the case of simply browsing a web page formatted for mobile, having the interpreter automatically register and handle downloads of the given file type.

Seriously, IF is severely misrepresented in the mobile world.  You search for IF in the app store and is submitted to lots of lame CYOA...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1976&start=0#p13198
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Action - Hunting
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-04 13:17:15

I think I might like something like "Hunter, In Darkness" -- ah, I guess I should spoiler-tag this, though I'm not even sure my memories of the game are accurate:

[spoiler]A procedurally generated description of the forest (assuming it's a forest) with some clues tossed in, at least some of the time, as to which direction to go to catch the prey. The better you follow the clues, the better the outcome is -- the quicker you catch it or something. Maybe you could have different appropriate reactions for different kinds of prey; there are some were when you get close you have to hide behind something that's mentioned in the description, or something.[/spoiler]

I suspect that this is more or less exactly what you said wasn't an option. Otherwise, I guess A? Definitely prefer B to C; the interactivity would be important.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1975&start=0#p13199
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Mac I7 IDE: Skein, Transcript, and Replay bugs
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-04 13:35:54

It might be related to that last bug, but my guess is no. (I don't have a useful guess for what the problem *is*, of course.)

I had the same skein and replay problems way back (a couple of years ago), and the result is that I stopped using them, so I can't tell you if they've gotten better. I suspect the problem has been lurking all this time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1954&start=10#p13200
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 newbie question
User: Arag-e / DateTime: 2011-02-04 13:38:01

Hi again. Did some good progress in understanding what the whole deal with the verify routine was all about. Not too sure on the whole “runs multiple times” thing yet but I guess I’ll work that out eventually.

Now I’m trying to monkey around with Switch Statements. I previously took the Moon object up there and started adding other If checks and responses. It worked just fine, but now I’m trying to convert all that into a switch statement as seen below.

[code]   moonVerify()
    {
        switch(triedToTake)
        {
        case 3: 
            {
            changeTooDistantMsg('Yeah, you just keep trying that ');
                triedToTake ++;
            }
            break;
        case 6:
            {
            changeTooDistantMsg('Still at it? ');
                triedToTake ++;
            }
            break;
        case 9:
            {
            fakeMoon.moveInto(me);
            changeTooDistantMsg('You see a small round object appear out of nowhere ');
               triedToTake ++; 
            }
            break;
        case 12:
            changeTooDistantMsg('ENOUGH! ');
            break;
        default:
            triedToTake ++;
            break;
        }
    }
    triedToTake = 0[/code]


Now, this works, but there’s something I can’t work out:

This one should be kind of basic syntax. If I’m getting this right, I made it so that if triedToTake is 3, the first response will trigger. If it’s 6, the second will, and so on until triedToTake is 12 and the last case is triggered any subsequent time. The first time the Take action is attempted, the ‘default’ case will trigger since triedToTake will be 0. I get it up to here. Don’t pay attention to what happens in 9, I made that one do some other stuff just to see if I could.

However, I’d like the variables to be checked as ‘larger than x/lower than y’, not ‘exactly x’. For instance, I’d like to have the first case trigger if triedToTake is larger or equal to 3 but smaller than 6. That’s not important in THIS item, but I can see myself needing to make checks work that way later on. I know how to make that happen in regular If checks, but I can’t seem to work out how to embed that into the switch statement.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1976&start=0#p13201
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Action - Hunting
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-04 13:51:15

I was just reading about the original Oregon Trail and its hunting minigame--at that stage, the game was text-only and you played on a teletype. To shoot an animal, you typed BANG--the speed and accuracy of your typing determined your success... 

Anyway, I like Matt's idea. Of course, it does sound like a lot more work than any of the originally mentioned options! Also, there are multiple types of hunting: do you set up a blind and wait, lay out traps and bait them, range over the landscape looking for herds, band together with others and drive animals into a net or over a cliff...? The chase scenario described by Matt really covers only one of these options. That may be OK, since it's also probably the most fun option. But a CYOA might let players try more styles of hunting with less work on your part, and could also be tactical or strategic--e.g., different choices are better at different times of day or in different habitats.

As for option A: How about combining it with Option B, and offering the CYOA alongside the standard command set, rather than in place of it. E.g., when you enter hunting mode, you could open a subsidiary text window with hyperlinked hunting options. If the player clicks on one of these, he goes hunting (for an hour, or whatever), and gets a report--maybe you even give a couple of different randomized reports, separated by keypresses, before ending the segment. But if the player decides to type a standard command at the keyboard, he can do anything else that he wants. (There are any number of possible UIs, of course, you don't need hyperlinked options or a separate window. The main thing is that the hunting is clearly differentiated from other activity, yet doesn't pull the player too far away from the standard command line interface.)

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1977&start=0#p13202
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: SF Bay IF Meetup Tomorrow at 1PM
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-02-04 15:07:31

When: Saturday, February 5, 2011 1:00 PM
Where: Stanley Hall Room 421 at UC Berkeley
Gayley Rd and University Dr
Berkeley, CA 94701
Call Dan if you get lost: 510-290-6099

Tomorrow, the San Francisco Bay Area Interactive Fiction Meetup will be at Stanley Hall Room 421 on the UC Berkeley campus. It sounds like at least three of us have projects to demo, and I'll bring a copy of Get Lamp, the text adventure documentary. I'll also bring pizza, because I eat food and I'm sure you do, too.  Demos are more fun with more people, so please RSVP and bring friends!

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.meetup.com/sf-bay-area-interactive-fiction/events/16144777/">http://www.meetup.com/sf-bay-area-inter ... /16144777/</a>

Be advised: there's a basketball game tomorrow at 5pm, so parking might be tricky. If you contact me in advance at dan at fabulich.com, I can try to give people a ride from BART.

This Meetup repeats on the 1st Saturday of every month.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1973&start=20#p13203
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF and the Mac App Store
User: George / DateTime: 2011-02-04 15:16:28

[quote]Certainly. I'm actually thinking of the ebooks model aforementioned: a clean interface listing categories for browsing content and after that they're in your bookshelf. You then just choose one, click and read.[/quote]

Zoom already browses the IFDB though (from what I hear -- I don't use Zoom [emote];)[/emote] ). An ifdb/mobile is a good idea, you could split that off into its own thread. 

However to contribute my own OTness to this, the IFDB is already an excellent IF portal on the desktop, as its plugins allow you to play games with one click. I think you could write a similar plugin for the mobile browser you use depending on the browser. This also seems like a separate issue from selling games in an App store though. 

I wouldn't worry about App stores pushing out small developers, in fact it seems like it has quite the opposite effect. Marketing for those small developers is a whole other story though. There was a very interesting post on this subject here, <a class="postlink" href="http://tinmangames.com.au/?p=1149">http://tinmangames.com.au/?p=1149</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1973&start=20#p13204
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF and the Mac App Store
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-02-04 15:17:14

Gargoyle seems like a reasonable choice to me for this purpose (but then, it would.) As Eric says, it's a native OS X app. It doesn't fully conform to the Human Interface Guidelines but it does implement enough of the common menu items to not look like a clumsy port at first glance.

The most awkward thing about it is the bifurcated nature of the application. One process handles UI events and screen updates, and a separate process (one per game) executes the interpreter and consumes the application-directed events. This results in a lot of IPC chatter and some embarrassing inefficiencies. All screen updates, however small, result in sending a full bitmap over Distributed Objects to the launcher process, which duly renders it in an OpenGL view. 

But that awkwardness is a result of needing to support multiple simultaneous game sessions across a lot of standalone interpreters. With a modest effort, you could par down the Glk library to be linked with only a single interpreter, have it automatically launch a designated story, and simply ignore any pesky Apple Events wanting you to launch a second instance. I know this is possible because for a long time this is all the functionality I had.  [emote]:)[/emote]

It does need some UI improvements - an actual help file rather than a stub menu item; a native preferences dialog; save and restore commands - but these are easier to build in the case of a standalone game.

I don't own an iPhone or an iPad but I've thought about porting a more minimal, single-game version of Gargoyle's Glk implementation to iOS. zarf's effort is likely to make that unnecessary, which makes a standalone desktop version even more of a niche product. I haven't pursued it because there doesn't seem to be much enthusiasm for desktop IF among active authors, and it doesn't scratch any particular itch for me at the moment.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1954&start=10#p13205
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 newbie question
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-02-04 16:23:38

Switch statements require the case to test a discrete value, not a range, but cases that do not lead to a break will fall through, so you can pile up conditions and handle them as a group.

[spoiler][code]
    moonVerify()
    {        
        switch(triedToTake)
        {                
            case 3:
            case 4:
            case 5:
            {
                changeTooDistantMsg('Yeah, you just keep trying that ');
                break;
            }
    
            case 6:
            case 7:
            case 8:
            {
                changeTooDistantMsg('Still at it? ');
                break;
            }
            
            case 9:
            {
                fakeMoon.moveInto(gPlayerChar.getOutermostRoom());
                changeTooDistantMsg('You see a small round object appear out of nowhere ');
                break;
            }
            
            case 12:
            {
                changeTooDistantMsg('ENOUGH! ');
                break;
            }            
            
            case  1:
            case  2:            
            case 10:
            case 11:
            default:
            {
                break;
            }
        }
        
        triedToTake ++;        
    }
    
    triedToTake = 0
[/code][/spoiler]

However, in this particular instance you are much better off adapting Nikos' suggestion and example code. This avoids having to account for the fact that verification routines are called multiple times (to decide on logic, scope, accessibility, etc), and it's far more readable as a result.

[code]
moon: Distant 'moon' 'moon' @ForestStart
    "You see the new moon shining overhead. "
    tooDistantMsg()
    {
        if (gActionIs(Take))
        {
            triedToTake ++;
            
            switch (triedToTake)
            {
                case 1:
                    return 'The moon is way too far away to do that ';
                
                case 2:
                    return 'Yeah, you just keep trying that ';
                    
                case 3:
                    return 'Still at it? ';
                    
                case 4:
                    fakeMoon.moveInto(gPlayerChar.getOutermostRoom());
                    return 'You see a small round object appear out of nowhere ';
                    
                case 5:
                default:
                    return 'ENOUGH ';             
            }
        }
        else
        {
            return 'The moon is way too far away to do that ';
        }
    }
    triedToTake = 0
;

fakeMoon: Thing 'fakemoon' 'FAKEMOON';
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1711&start=10#p13206
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Aurora
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-02-04 17:18:46

I finally gave this one a go. I have very strong feelings about it, the sort I would usually express in a review - but I ended up playing very little of it, so a review would be very much out of place. However, since this thread's been around, I might as well express my feelings here.

BTW, first things first, I did find a typo, or something. There's something which I assume is the player's wedding band in the jewelry box... which is only described as "your". Always just as "your".

I'll hide my impressions with a "rant" tag, because although this isn't 100% private, it's not exactly meant for the general public either.

[rant]I really wanted to like this game, and for a while, I did. I liked it when I saw how things were developing - the slow build-up to an unknown situtation, the alarm ringing off and finding a dead crewmember, the relief of finding Gail safe - and knowing that it'd be 8 hours before she thawed. I also liked it when I saw that there was some care for details, especially on those displays next to the pods. I liked the room descriptions, sparse as they were. The writing, especially on the introduction, seemed a bit forced sometimes, but that might have been just me.

But mapping an environment which the game is the first to acknowledge as "big" in regular grid paper (using Trizbort, actually) and always having to remind myself which is fore and which is aft, which is port and which is starboard... I mean, I made a game effort, but eventually I just couldn't stand it anymore. Please consider allowing NSEW movement.

Then I got to the crew quarters. Suddenly I was flooded with lots of information about the other crew members, when the only ones I knew so far were me, Gail and Aleksey. Which was not so bad... if, when I opened the wardrobe and the jewelry box, I wasn't confronted with "X's things, Y's things, XY's things, XYZ's things, Z's things and ZY's things". I'm afraid it's often underestimated how overwhelming this sort of thing is for a player. Especially one who's already having to constantly sort out directions.

Then I went into the computer room. After trying to "wear goggles", I remembered the "about" text talking about "use". I sighed inwardly, because I'm not too fond of that sort of thing, and proceeded to "use" the computer. Which has a cumbersome and confusing interface, to be blunt. It was the final turn-off.

This is my opinion, and you can take it for what it's worth - namely, not much. But it was my experience with Aurora, and I thought you might be interested.[/rant]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1975&start=0#p13207
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Mac I7 IDE: Skein, Transcript, and Replay bugs
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-04 17:41:30

I've noticed that replay works much more consistently if you start playing using a "play to here" button in the transcript. If you don't, it pretty much never works.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1954&start=10#p13208
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 newbie question
User: Arag-e / DateTime: 2011-02-04 18:08:33

I get it, so you can't use ranges with switch statements. Thank you very much.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1973&start=20#p13209
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF and the Mac App Store
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-04 18:57:27

I managed to miss this whole thread today, although I talked with Jmac a little bit about the subject last night.

My take on the App Store is that it doesn't change things for IF on the Mac, very much, by itself. If I wanted to offer a particular IF game for Mac users to play (and of course I may want to do that very thing within the next year) then I would absolutely make a stand-alone Mac app. The App Store is a question of distribution, not design. (I'd be comparing that with Steam, really.)

UI polish for a desktop IF game is mostly a matter of making sure there's a clean set of menu options, and good access to help documents. Maybe integrated note-taking, although that's even less critical on desktop machines than it is on modern mobile OSes.

Creating a good IFDB browser and game-playing tool is a *completely different* problem. Absolutely don't try to tie them together in player's minds.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1711&start=10#p13210
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Aurora
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-02-04 19:52:45

Thanks, this is good feedback.  I've fixed the "your" error and made "wear goggles" work.

Do you think that the cast is simply too large, or is there just too much information in the crew quarters?  Dr. Liang is pretty much on the cutting room floor already; there are other possible reductions, but the other characters all have important or important-ish roles in the gameplay.

The idea with the jewelry box is that I'm playing with indirect characterization:  How can we find out what these people are like when they're all asleep?  We get some dry statistics from the cryo displays, but you find out more about them from things like what files they have on the computer or what their avatar looks like.  Anyway, that's the intent; whether it works or not is up to the player.

What I can definitely do is to rename the jewelry so it doesn't say whose it is (unless it's yours); that way you can still get the explanation if you examine it, but won't get immediately hit with all those names.  Or I could just remove it entirely if it's just not working.

Another way to reduce the amount of information in the crew quarters would be to have different characters give different descriptions of the stuff there; so maybe all Jake will say about the game board is that he doesn't know how to play.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1978&start=0#p13211
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Not-matching an indexed text
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-02-04 20:58:54

I started writing a post, then solved my problem, but still have a question.  So, here's what I was originally going to ask you all:

[quote]I think I'm confused about varieties of text in Inform again.  I'm trying to use indexed text matching, as in chapter 19.6.  The example is [quote]if "taramasalata" matches the regular expression "a.*l", ...[/quote] and [a simplified version of] my code looks like 
[code]	let N be a random number between 1 and the number of words in the game's response;
	let W be word number N in the game's response;
	let Y be a random number between two and the number of characters in W minus one;
	let B be an indexed text;
	let B be character number Y in W;
	if B does not match the regular expression "\s":
		say "[B] is not a space."[/code]
(where "the game's response" is a chunk of text I'm getting from Ron Newcomb's "Output Filtering" extension -- thanks, Ron!)

Inform responds thusly:[quote]You wrote 'if B does not match the regular expression "\s" begin'  , but 'B' is a temporary name for an indexed text (created by 'let' or 'repeat'), whereas I was expecting to find a snippet there.
I was trying to match this phrase:

(b - snippet) does not match (regular expression "\s" - topic) 
This was what I found out:

B = a temporary named value, holding an indexed text
regular expression "\s" = something unrecognised[/quote]

I think I can get around its objections to "a temporary named value" by referring to [code]if "[B]" does not match the regular expression "\s":[/code] but it still complains about "regular expression "\s"," since it seems convinced I'm trying to do the snippet-to-topic matching from Chapter 17.31.  What am I doing wrong?[/quote]

The solution, it turns out, is that I can't ask if something "does not match" for regular expressions.  Instead, I have to say [code]if B matches the regular expression "\s":
	do nothing;
else:
	say "[B] is not a space."[/code]
So my question is: is this intentional?  I can kind of see "yes," since the goal with regex matching is usually to go on to replace/manipulate the thing that [i]did[/i] match.  It was definitely confusing to me, though, since I'm used to thinking of "doesn't" as, you know, just the opposite truth state from "does."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1978&start=0#p13212
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Not-matching an indexed text
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-04 21:10:30

The "if (snippet) matches (topic)" phrase has an inverse "if (snippet) does not match (a topic)". (You can't use "doesn't" there, however.) So it's reasonable to ask if regexp matching should follow the same pattern.

Most, but not all, conditional phrases are defined with "not" inverses like this. It has to be done case-by-case in the Standard Rules; the compiler doesn't have a general understanding of negated verbs. In this case, I think it make sense to have them.

EDIT-ADD: I forgot to mention "unless". You can say "unless (condition): ..." , which is just like an "if" phrase but inverted. That works anywhere a phrase-level "if" does.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1976&start=0#p13213
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Action - Hunting
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-04 21:20:33

I'm not opposed to Matt's suggestion per se.  I'm a little concerned about providing adequate content, though.  Do you think it would remain fun after the player had learned the basic clue and play types?  I found the appeal of Hunter to lie in figuring out rather than performing the mechanism.  (Not that there's anything particularly exciting about choosing an action from a menu.)  I'm sure there's ways to keep things fresh, but it's not immediately obvious what those would be.  For full implementation, I was thinking more along the lines of constantly tracking herds and groups and things, and placing markers in the normal game world, to be followed up.  So, say the game's resident rabbits visited the pond in the morning; the game would add rabbit tracks that the PC could spot later that day, which might allow the PC to find the rabbits if she followed them, etc.  There were going to be dens and territory and all kinds of stuff.  Then I started looking at the insane quantities of implementation for what was ultimately a pretty minor feature, had myself a stiff drink, and decided it just wasn't currently possible with my skill set, and I didn't want it so badly that I wanted to figure it out.  (Worse, the pseudo-prototype was boring.)  Some of that could be possible procedurally generated; having it come on player demand means a lot of things can be fudged.

Erik, I like the idea of some sort of differentiation of hunting vs. regular play, and a window would be a neat way of doing that.  Out of curiosity, do you know if there's a way of doing that that makes it appropriate for people who are just using keyboards, such as using tab to switch focal windows?  

It's a good point about types of hunting, and one I haven't fully figured out yet.  Trapping was on my list, but only in a "figure this out!" kind of way.  

Ah, Oregon Trail.  "Grandma has been bitten by a rattlesnake."  Good times.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1976&start=0#p13214
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Action - Hunting
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-04 21:48:00

One thing you could do is implement it for the first few times, and then after the player had developed sufficient skill -- unlocked some sort of achievement -- give them the option to automate it. So you could just type "Hunt for x" and it'd give you a report "You hunted for this long and this happened."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1976&start=0#p13215
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Action - Hunting
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-04 22:08:35

[quote="gravel"]Do you know if there's a way of doing that that makes it appropriate for people who are just using keyboards, such as using tab to switch focal windows?[/quote]

I think most if not all interpreters use tab to move focus between windows. I'm not sure whether any interpreters let you move between hyperlinks within a window using the keyboard. Of course, you could use keypress input in the subsidiary window for CYOA menu items instead of/in addition to hyperlinks.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1978&start=0#p13216
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Not-matching an indexed text
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-04 23:23:43

I'd go for unless in this case. I've always liked unless, ever since I first saw it in Perl.

On a related note, is there a cleaner way to say this?

[code]To decide whether foo: yes
To decide whether bar: decide on whether or not not foo[/code]

(where bar is the negation of foo.) Adjective phrases have a nice way of defining either/or values - do "to decide whether" phrases have an equivalent?

And, if you'll pardon the rant, why aren't truth states interchangeable with the return value of a boolean expression? If I call a truth state "the foo has arrived," why do I have to check "when the foo has arrived is true" rather than simply "when the foo has arrived?" If you really want to get fancy, why not allow a declaration like this?

[code]The foo has arrived is a truth state with opposite the foo has not arrived.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1978&start=0#p13217
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Not-matching an indexed text
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-04 23:45:39

[quote]Adjective phrases have a nice way of defining either/or values - do "to decide whether" phrases have an equivalent?[/quote]

You mean the "... rather than ..." syntax for adjectives? No, I don't know of anything.

You could define a general condition negator -- not tested, but probably

[code]
To decide whether opposite (C - condition):
	(- (~~({C})) -).
[/code]

I'm pretty sure the only reason that's not in the standard library is that there's no nice English way to name it. "Opposite" is awkward, "not" is awkward in most cases, "not the case that" is too long, ... etc.

[quote]And, if you'll pardon the rant, why aren't truth states interchangeable with the return value of a boolean expression?[/quote]

I don't know. Maybe it would interfere with parsing other things. Maybe it's just an over-harsh rejection of the anything-is-interchangeable-with-boolean model that other programming languages use.

[code]
The foo has arrived is a truth state with opposite the foo has not arrived.
[/code]

To be honest, that's kind of horrible to anybody except a logician.

I could unpick all the syntactic ideas that that example implies, but I suspect that's not what you're looking for.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1978&start=0#p13218
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Not-matching an indexed text
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-05 00:14:29

[quote="zarf"][code]
The foo has arrived is a truth state with opposite the foo has not arrived.
[/code]

To be honest, that's kind of horrible to anybody except a logician.

I could unpick all the syntactic ideas that that example implies, but I suspect that's not what you're looking for.[/quote]
You're right - I'm looking for better suggestions.  [emote];)[/emote] 

Let's try:

Whether or not the foo has arrived varies.

Not so nice either. Any ideas?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1979&start=0#p13219
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Kayleth — now in English and Russian!
User: yandexx / DateTime: 2011-02-05 04:44:34

I wanted to re-post [url=http://instead.syscall.ru/2011/02/kayleth-0-4-in-english-and-russian/]this[/url] here via Peter Kosykh:
[quote]
Ladies and gentlemen! We are glad to introduce first INSTEAD game both in English and Russian! Here it is: Kayleth 0.4!

To play the game you need to:

1. Download INSTEAD for your﻿ platform from [url=http://code.google.com/p/instead/downloads/list]here[/url].

2. Download Kayleth game in zip format from [url=http://code.google.com/p/instead-games/downloads/list]here[/url].

3. Press F4 key in INSTEAD or ‘Select Game’ menu, then ‘…’ button  and choose the zip file with the game to install.

4. Enjoy! Please, write any feedback in our English forum [url=http://instead.syscall.ru/forum]here[/url].[/quote]
And of course you could just leave your comments here :)
From the Russian IF community with love! :)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1970&start=0#p13220
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: "Golden Hamster 2010" — Russian IF awards
User: yandexx / DateTime: 2011-02-05 04:56:11

[quote="Felix"]I'd love to hear more from Russia. For, instance are there any noteworthy differences in what kinds of games are preferred or produced or especially appreciated etc. in the Russian IF community as compared to the English speaking one?[/quote]Yes indeed, see <a class="postlink" href="http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/backissues/spag48.html">http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/backissues/spag48.html</a> -- it's 3 years old now, but an interesting read.

[quote="George"]I have a feeling that the further afield from the English-centric IF world you go, the more you find IF as visual novels and graphical games, though I'm not sure why that is really.[/quote]Because of the complexity of Russian language (take 6 cases for nouns and adjectives for example) there was no good parser early, and this probably led to the popularity of menu/CYAO-style IF here. I wonder if it's the same in the other countries, like Japan for example?

[quote="riktik"]I looked at INSTEAD and it seems intresting. I think I'll give it a try to test the features and the limits...[/quote]You might also want to check out this newly released game here: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1979">viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1979</a> :)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1711&start=10#p13221
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Aurora
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-02-05 05:02:00

I think I gave you the impression that I think there's too much stuff in the game. That wasn't my intention. Let me try again: I feel that I was overwhelmed by the following, happening all at once:

1 - No compass movement on a large environment (this was the biggest "offender")
2 - Suddenly finding myself on a location (Crew Quarters) where I found mention of a lot of people, and their little characteristics that make them human. Understand that there were a lot of things to be examined in that room and that I didn't examine them because I didn't want to be bombarded with the little characteristics of people I had no idea existed yet. 
3 - In a room, finding a description with lots of objects, and then a white line, and then "You can see a wardrobe" (surely you can find some better formatting). Then opening the wardrobe and seeing a box. Then opening a box and being bombarded with all those names, diferentiating small things in the box. Then, whenever I "look"ed, I would see "You can see a wardrobe (in which is a jewelry box (in which is X's things, Y's things, XY's things, etc))" in the description.
4 - Having to navigate an unwieldy computer interface in the IF prompt.

Of these:

1 - I think you should really consider allowing NSEW movement. Maybe make it toggleable. Maybe optional. Maybe integrate it somewhere, I don't know. But it's a huge drain on my mind, when I'd rather be focusing on the game, story and characters.

2 - You don't have to change this, of course. It's the crew's quarters - it's the best place to do exactly that. Maybe if I'd gone south instead of north when I started the game, I'd have seen the other cryo pods, and checked them out, and got little background information. In fact, if it weren't for the non-compass movement, I'm sure I would have explored a bit more.

3 - Formatting needs a bit more work. As it is, the wardrobe stands out in such a way that it feels like it's the only object you implemented. Considering it's competing with a lot of scenery you can interact with (even if it is just examining), that's unfortunate. And getting all those jewelry descriptions on the "look" description is also overwhelming. This is all just formatting. Maybe if these little things were taken care of, I wouldn't mind all that jewelry so much, although my reaction might have remained the same: "Oh damn. Now I have to examine all of these." I would suggest spreading them out a bit more, not having all that in a single location... but that's only my suggestion, and of all of the suggestions I'm giving it's the least important.

4 - It's sometimes unclear how to use computers. For instance, it was a while before I realised that I could interact with the displays next to the cryo pods, looking up information in them. And it was still a while after THAT that I realised I could initiate procedures. Now, after all that, I'm already a bit thrown and not as receptive as I was when I first started the game. Then you throw at me a computer in which you bunch together lots of files, in a way that makes them as confusing as the jewelry box, and I don't even know whether I should "click" the files' name, "touch" them... "reading" the unlocked file in the computer gave me the same response as "examining" it, which was, in fact, the last straw before I stopped playing. I also think I had some difficulty accessing the "Shared" folder, but maybe that was just because I didn't know the verb. There are many ways to walk around this problem, and I would suggest two - but there are more, naturally. 

a) Seriously consider using menus for the computer interface.

b) If you want to make a VR environment, consider making it more VR. If you want the player to use the IF prompt and this feel as though he's in an alternate reality, then have him walk around. One room for documents, for instance, another room for whatever.

The thing is, at the moment you have a strange mixture of "VR" and "desktop". It doesn't really work.

Other than that, you can go wild, if you like, with, say, graphical representations and use of mouse... Glulx certainly allows that. There are many ways around this one.

To wrap it up, I don't think there's too much stuff in the game, and I'm not sure I'd like you to remove details and characterization. I just suggest you rethink some things, especially the formatting. I wasn't overwhelmed by the quantity of information, I was overwhelmed by it coming at me all at once. Formatting is an unsung hero.

EDIT - I had a thought, which you may or may not agree with, but here goes - if you want to encourage a playing stile where "use" is more important than the other verbs, why not consider adding a keyword system? Doesn't have to be entirely keyword-based, but if you want to empashize that objects can be "examined" or "used" and little else, a keyword system is your friend. For starters, it clearly guides the player towards the right frame of mind. Otherwise - trust me on this - most IF players will start "wearing" the goggles you meant for them to "use", for instance.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1979&start=0#p13222
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Kayleth — now in English and Russian!
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-02-05 06:30:20

Done!

(It may take a couple of days till I actually get around playing it though.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1980&start=0#p13223
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Multitudes
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-05 10:03:36

I'm considering another extension idea, for representing multiple objects with backdrops:

[code]"Multitudes"

Section - Multitudes

A multitude is a kind of backdrop.

Section - The Littering Relation

Vague quantity is a kind of value. The vague quantities are none, single, a couple, a few, and a great many.

Littering relates one multitude to various rooms. The verb to litter (he litters, they litter, he littered, it is littered, he is littering) implies the littering relation.

The littering relation has a vague quantity called the amount.

Section - Updating Multitudes

The current mess is a multitude that varies.
Definition: A room is messy if it is littered by the current mess.

To update multitudes:
	Repeat with the mess running through multitudes:
		Now the current mess is the mess;
		Move the mess backdrop to all messy rooms;
	update backdrop positions.

When play begins:
	update multitudes.

Section - Invocations

Gravel is a multitude.

The quarry is a room. The quarry is littered by gravel.

The road is west of the quarry.[/code]

This code compiles as long as I leave out the line "the littering relation has a vague quantity called the amount." I was afraid that wouldn't work, but I don't want to give up on it if the only problem is that I'm using the wrong syntax.

What I want is basically a table listing the amount of each multitude in each room. So if I were to implement it as a table, it would have to have (number of rooms * number of multitudes) rows. That sounded like a relation to me, except that it needs a third column for the amount. So - can it be done with a relation? Or, is it possible to create a table with a calculated number of rows? Or should I just have a fixed number of rows and try to figure out how to fail gracefully if it overflows?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1978&start=0#p13224
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Not-matching an indexed text
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-05 10:42:06

How about this?

It can be true that the foo has arrived or that the foo has not arrived.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1981&start=0#p13225
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Parchment and "Output Filtering"
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-02-05 10:58:02

I made a brief game using Ron Newcomb's "Output Filtering" extension (which allows one to directly manipulate the game's output before it gets printed to the screen, and does a bit of its own grammar/linespacing-tidying).  It works fine in Zoom and Spatterlight, but when I tried playing it via Parchment, all the line breaks show up as asterisks, like so:
[quote]Sidewalk*You're just rising out of a particularly productive streak at work, but now you have a problem: you seem to have forgotten to eat lunch.  Or breakfast.  Or dinner yesterday.  In fact, you're so hungry that you can feel yourself ceasing to make any sense.**You're (conveniently) on a sidewalk in front of a convenience store.**[/quote]
(That's <a class="postlink" href="http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http%3A//www.instamatique.com/games/sugar/Sugar.z8#">http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/tru ... /Sugar.z8#</a> in case you're curious.)
Compiling to glulx and playing it with Quixe works fine as well.  ( <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quixe/play-remote.html?story=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.instamatique.com%2Fgames%2Fsugar%2FSugar.ulx&enter=Play+it">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quix ... er=Play+it</a>! )

So it seems that the problem is somewhere in the interaction between the output filtering and Parchment -- possibly the extension is replacing line breaks with a different character that Parchment doesn't recognize?  Is there anything I can do about it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1978&start=0#p13226
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Not-matching an indexed text
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-02-05 11:00:57

[quote="zarf"]It has to be done case-by-case in the Standard Rules; the compiler doesn't have a general understanding of negated verbs.[/quote]

Ah, I see.

[quote="zarf"]EDIT-ADD: I forgot to mention "unless". You can say "unless (condition): ..." , which is just like an "if" phrase but inverted. That works anywhere a phrase-level "if" does.[/quote]

Yes, that sounds like what I'd like to use.  Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1981&start=0#p13227
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment and "Output Filtering"
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-05 13:00:22

This is an old Parchment bug, having to do with writing newlines to a memory stream. It's fixed in the Parchment source repository. 

I'm not sure what the easiest way is to get it into your web site, though. (My Parchment web sites aren't generated directly from I7; I hacked them together long ago and update them irregularly.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1978&start=0#p13228
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Not-matching an indexed text
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-05 13:18:52

[code]
Whether or not the foo has arrived varies.
    [or]
It can be true that the foo has arrived or that the foo has not arrived.
[/code]

Okay, I didn't grasp earlier what you were trying to do. Hm. I'm still not sure. Your suggestions aren't actually suggesting to me what you want them to do, which is a black mark, I'm afraid.

Are you trying to define a global variable -- that is, a settable truth state -- but have it usable as a condition, rather than a truth state value? Or are you trying to define a "to decide whether" condition (not directly settable) that has a natural inverse phrasing?

For the former, I think that allowing the compiler to use truth state values and conditions interchangeably is a better solution than any new syntax.

For the latter, I wouldn't mind being able to say:

[code]
To decide whether foo has arrived (rather than foo has not arrived): ...
[/code]

It's hard to shorten that, however. That is, I don't expect the compiler to be able to parse "To decide whether foo has arrived (rather than not arrived)" because a phrase doesn't necessarily have an "is" verb, nor a clear subject either.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1954&start=10#p13229
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 newbie question
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-02-05 14:30:30

[quote="Arag-e"]Hi again. Did some good progress in understanding what the whole deal with the verify routine was all about. Not too sure on the whole “runs multiple times” thing yet but I guess I’ll work that out eventually.[/quote]
While attempting to work out what object the player was most likely referring to in a command, the parser may call a verify() routine several times. This is because the parser wants to see which object is the most logical in cases of ambiguity.

While doing this, the parser is suppressing the text output from macros such as illogical, so you don't [i]see [/i]it running multiple times. But that's why it's vital not to make any changes in the game state in a verify() routine.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1171&start=10#p13230
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF URLs
User: George / DateTime: 2011-02-05 15:19:22

I'm looking for some help finding sites to add to an index for a custom IF search. If you have some favorite IF sites or a personal site that covers IF I'd appreciate it if you searched the following list, and if the URL isn't there, let me know. 

You can see the search in action in the new header at <a class="postlink" href="http://ifurls.tumblr.com">http://ifurls.tumblr.com</a> -- thanks for any help. 

[code]
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction
http://code.google.com/p/zvm/
http://code.google.com/p/garglk/
http://community.livejournal.com/tads3/
http://meetup.com/sf-bay-area-interactive-fiction/
http://home.fuse.net/wolfonenet/PAWS.htm
http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~obrian/IF.htm
http://tale-of-tales.com/DramaPrincess/index.html
http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/commpars.htm
http://www.adventuregamers.com/index.php
http://nickm.com/post/
http://www.ifcomp.org/
http://www.ifwiki.org/
http://www.gamebooks.org/
http://www.xyzzynews.com/
http://wurb.com/if/index
http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/
http://www.tads.org/
http://ifdb.tads.org/
http://www.ifiction.org/
http://emshort.wordpress.com/
http://plover.net/~textfire/beta.html
http://www.theinspiracy.com/inspirac.htm
http://www.brasslantern.org/
http://www.firthworks.com/roger/parsifal
http://www.choiceofgames.com/blog/
http://www.adventuredevelopers.com/index.php
http://www.ministryofpeace.com/if-review/
http://www.caad.es/
http://gimcrackd.com/etc/src/
http://justadventure.com/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=IF
http://www.springthing.net/
http://inventory.getlamp.com/
http://parchment.toolness.com/
http://www.carouselchain.com/if/
http://www.ifreviews.org/
http://pr-if.org/
http://coolnamehere.com/geekery/python/ifiction/index.html
http://ifiction.free.fr/
http://www.cityofif.com/
http://www.intfiction.org/forum/
http://blog.failbettergames.com/
http://www.terradif.net/mc/en/index.html
http://lacunagame.blogspot.com/
http://curveship.com/
http://pissylittlesausages.wordpress.com/
http://www.guncho.com/
http://if.game-testing.org/
http://www.gimcrackd.com/dross/
http://horacetorys.weebly.com/
http://nitku.net/
http://nitku.net/if/namegenerator
http://forum.ifzentrale.de/
http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/zcode.html
http://ifarchive.plover.net/if-archive
http://dwwp.decontextualize.com/
http://onewetsneaker.wordpress.com/
http://ifurls.tumblr.com/
http://if.seattle.wa.us/
http://ifwizz.de/
http://ifiction.ru/
http://ifdialogue.wordpress.com/
http://kwi.homepage.dk/t3/exercises.htm
http://blorple.sourceforge.net/
http://chicago-if.org/
http://tinmangames.com.au/blog/
http://glimmr.wordpress.com/
http://www.logossrl.com/gargoyle-mod/gargoyle_mod_it.html
http://msk.users.sonic.net/jiffeegames.com/
http://www.sarahmorayati.com/interactive-fiction/
http://ifiction.lysseus.com/ifdownloads.htm
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1982&start=0#p13231
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7 Extensions as Zip
User: Banbury / DateTime: 2011-02-05 16:56:24

Hi,
since the suggestion to offer all I7 extensions as a single download hasn't been accepted, I decided to help myself. I wrote a little script, that downloads all extensions.
I also mirrored them on my homepage (<a class="postlink" href="http://banbury.110mb.com/files/i7extensions%5B1%5D.zip">http://banbury.110mb.com/files/i7extensions%5B1%5D.zip</a>).

Maybe someone else has an interest in this.

Greetings

Banbury

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1975&start=0#p13232
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Mac I7 IDE: Skein, Transcript, and Replay bugs
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-02-05 19:21:33

[quote]Is it worth reporting anyway?[/quote]
Yes, please file a report, so it doesn't slip under the radar.  If you have any other observations like

[quote]I've noticed that replay works much more consistently if you start playing using a "play to here" button in the transcript. If you don't, it pretty much never works.[/quote]
include them too; I'll see what I can do to help make it consistently reproducible.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1981&start=0#p13233
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment and "Output Filtering"
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-02-05 19:47:27

Oops, I didn't know it wasn't up to date! I've just updated it now.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1983&start=0#p13234
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: How to get item from NPC when ask about topic?
User: daniellepriser / DateTime: 2011-02-05 20:24:17

HELP!
I've been working on this for over a week!!!!

I have an NPC- say "Bob" and I need him to give the player an object, say "Apple" when the player asks him about a topic, say, "Eve" but I can't seem to code it correctly.
I've tried everything I can possibly find in the IF handbook, Jim Aiken's handbook, recipe book, extensions... *screams*

Basically what I want to happen is,
If the player asks Bob about Eve, bob says (whatever) and moves apple to player (or gives to player, etc, so long as player then has object.)
I would also like to do something like, if the player asks bob about doughnut, the player dies blah blah blah. 

Any suggestions would be immensely helpful. Thanks :*

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1171&start=10#p13235
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF URLs
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-02-05 20:25:47

Here are some from the IF Dwarf Planet:

[code]
http://gamingphilosopher.blogspot.com/
http://lacunagame.blogspot.com/
http://jncullinan.wordpress.com/
http://jncullinan.wordpress.com/
http://amethystgames.wordpress.com/
http://community.livejournal.com/gnusto/
http://mikecantelon.com/
http://adrift5.blogspot.com/
http://chicagodave.wordpress.com/
http://ifiction.wordpress.com/
http://orangeriverstudio.com/
http://stupidparsertricks.blogspot.com/
http://logicalshift.co.uk/
http://interactive-friction.blogspot.com/
http://inform7.com/
http://www.inthecompanyofgrues.com/
http://www.illuminatedlantern.com/
http://www.z-machine-matter.com/
http://gravelgamedesign.blogspot.com
http://gruelove.wordpress.com/
http://eatlamp.wordpress.com/
http://www.robohara.com/
http://vaporwareif.blogspot.com/
http://fcd3.blogspot.com/
http://www.allthingsjacq.com
http://radix.twistedmatrix.com/search/label/interactive-fiction
http://www.toolness.com/wp/?cat=9
http://www.getmewriting.com/category/interactive-fiction/
http://www.adrift.org.uk
http://inky.org
http://www.wigdahl.net/quern/
http://gameshelf.jmac.org/
http://mcmartin.livejournal.com/tag/interactive%20fiction
http://madarchitect.blogspot.com/search/label/interactive%20fiction
http://www.joltcountry.com/index.php/features/category/interactive-fiction
http://midiguru.wordpress.com/
http://fouldeformity.blogspot.com/
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/author/RonNewcomb/293/
http://en.wordpress.com/tag/interactive-fiction/
http://en.wordpress.com/tag/InteractiveFiction/

and lastly..
http://curiousdannii.github.com/if/
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1171&start=10#p13236
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF URLs
User: George / DateTime: 2011-02-05 21:07:52

That's great Dannii, indexing 110 sites now. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1983&start=0#p13237
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to get item from NPC when ask about topic?
User: George / DateTime: 2011-02-05 21:39:05

Here's a simple way to do it:

[code]
Paradise is a room. 

Bob is a person in Paradise. Bob carries an apple. 

Table of Bob's Replies
Topic	Replies
"eve"		"[apple]"

To say apple:
	if Bob carries an apple:
		say "Bob says, 'here you go.' ";
		try Bob giving an apple to the player;
	else:
		say "Bob says, 'sorry, I gave my apple to Eve.' ".

This is the custom block giving rule: 
	if the actor is Bob:
		say "[bold type](here is our custom rule when Bob gives)[roman type]";
	else:
		say "[bold type](here is our custom rule for anyone else giving)[roman type]".
	
	
The custom block giving rule is listed instead of the block giving rule in the check giving it to rulebook.
	
After asking Bob about a topic listed in the Table of Bob's replies, say replies entry. 

test me with "ask bob about eve / g / give apple to bob"
[/code]


[quote]
Welcome
An Interactive Fiction
Release 1 / Serial number 110204 / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N) SD

Paradise
You can see Bob here.

>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] ask bob about eve
Bob says, "here you go." 
(here is our custom rule when Bob gives)
Bob gives the apple to you.

>[2] g
Bob says, "sorry, I gave my apple to Eve." 
>[3] give apple to bob
(here is our custom rule for anyone else giving)
You give the apple to Bob.

>
[/quote]

In the custom rule you'll want to add whatever specific behaviour is necessary to check giving, as you may not always want the player giving whatever to whomever (as I understand it).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1980&start=0#p13238
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Multitudes
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-05 22:04:43

Dynamic Tables can do that for you.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1979&start=0#p13239
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Kayleth — now in English and Russian!
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-05 22:12:42

I'm a little confused, and not sure if I've hit a bug or just a unique design choice.

[spoiler]The first puzzle times out almost immediately, telling me that I've been transported out of the galaxy, but with no option to restart.  There's ellipses at the top, but I can't get them to trigger.  I can't tell if I'm dead, or there's something I need to do.  I haven't tried all the combinations yet, but I'm a confused as to what's happening, so I thought I better check in.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1979&start=0#p13240
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Kayleth — now in English and Russian!
User: gl00my / DateTime: 2011-02-06 00:29:51

[quote="gravel"]I haven't tried all the combinations yet, but I'm a confused as to what's happening, so I thought I better check in.[/quote]

It's ok. [emote]:)[/emote] It is not a bug. You just lost. You can use save at beginning of scene.
 
b.t.w. some keys:
f8/f9 - quickload/quicksave
f2 - save
f3 - load
esc/f1 - menu

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1001&start=0#p13241
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: INSTEAD
User: gl00my / DateTime: 2011-02-06 01:24:55

Hello from Russia! [emote]:)[/emote]

Here is curent links for project:

<a class="postlink" href="http://instead.syscall.ru">http://instead.syscall.ru</a> -- in Russian only
<a class="postlink" href="http://instead.syscall.ru/wiki/en/start">http://instead.syscall.ru/wiki/en/start</a> -- English wiki
<a class="postlink" href="http://instead.syscall.ru/forum">http://instead.syscall.ru/forum</a> -- forum with English part
<a class="postlink" href="http://instead.googlecode.com">http://instead.googlecode.com</a> -- engine itself (for Linux, Windows, MacOS X (x86), Windows Mobile, Android, S60 3rd and 5th, Haiku and Maemo)
<a class="postlink" href="http://instead-games.googlecode.com">http://instead-games.googlecode.com</a> -- games.

Currently there are three games in Englsh:
- english tutorial (packed with engine) [emote];)[/emote]
- Return Of The Quantum Cat (only first part currently)
- Kayleth (oldschool quest from ZX80 both in Russian and English) 

Screenshots:
<a class="postlink" href="http://instead.syscall.ru/screenshots">http://instead.syscall.ru/screenshots</a>

And it is not CYA engine, it is adventure engine. You may play english or spainish tutorial to see what type of games it was made for.

---

We are always glad to help with code and docs. Here, or in our forum, or in jabber conference: <a href="mailto:instead@conference.jabber.ru">instead@conference.jabber.ru</a>.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1984&start=0#p13242
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Compass and nautical directions
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-02-06 02:45:45

I can't replicate the system for switching between compass and nautical directions from 3.26.  The syntax given for mapping the one onto the other is:

[code]Index map with fore mapped as north. Index map with aft mapped as south. Index map with port mapped as west. Index map with starboard mapped as east.[/code]

But that doesn't work for me.  At least, it doesn't work if you try to map the compass directions onto the nautical directions, which are the ones my game is written in.  (It compiles, but the compass directions always result in going nowhere.)  I don't suppose there's a way to make this work, short of rewriting my game in compass directions?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1984&start=0#p13243
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compass and nautical directions
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-02-06 06:01:28

The bit of code you quote is a hint for the index maker: it tells Inform to map those nautical directions as though they were NSEW directions it already knows about. It doesn't do anything about making nautical directions and compass directions identical for the player.

There would be a couple of ways to make compass directions match up with the nautical directions, but the one that's probably easiest to fit to an existing game written with nautical directions would be just to redirect the compass commands into nautical ones.

Instead rules would probably work for this, but I myself would write

[code]Setting action variables for an actor going north:
	change the noun to fore.
Setting action variables for an actor going south:
	change the noun to aft.
Setting action variables for an actor going west:
	change the noun to port.
Setting action variables for an actor going east:
	change the noun to starboard.[/code]

...because this is general enough to work even when other characters than the player are moving around, and it's unlikely to conflict with any instead rules you have already going in the game.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=0#p13244
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Infocom (of course)
User: Aintelligence / DateTime: 2011-02-06 06:47:53

I was wondering where the best place is to buy/get info com games.  Any help? It's frustrating. [emote]:x[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1979&start=0#p13245
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Kayleth — now in English and Russian!
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-06 07:31:01

Good!  (I guess.)  In that case, I can express a desire for some more enthusiastic hinting and/or 

[spoiler]a non-timed puzzle on the start of the game.  Some of us are *remarkably* sucky puzzle solvers, and *mumble* number of deaths is pretty discouraging.

Well, really, a general desire for non-timed puzzles in general, but especially when I don't know what the game norms are, haven't ever succeeded anywhere else, and don't have much motivation to keep going.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1979&start=0#p13246
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Kayleth — now in English and Russian!
User: yandexx / DateTime: 2011-02-06 07:40:39

I wanted to note here that this is [b]not a typical Russian IF[/b] :) But it is a good demo of what INSTEAD is capable of.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=0#p13247
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2011-02-06 08:39:41

Not where, when.  1984 is a good bet.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=0#p13248
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-02-06 09:46:20

[quote="Aintelligence"]I was wondering where the best place is to buy/get info com games.  Any help? It's frustrating. [emote]:x[/emote][/quote]There are usually plenty for sale on eBay.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=0#p13249
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-02-06 10:31:10

If you know your way around abandonware rings, you can also find a fair share. You can also find, say, Apple II versions, or Spectrum versions, or Commodore or Amiga or whatever, and use tools to extract the .dat file from those games so you can play them on your interpreter of choice.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=0#p13250
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-02-06 11:06:25

Simple, actually. The Pirate Bay. No documentation though; you need to track that down separately, which is also pretty simple, just search out every game title individually as you play it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=0#p13251
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-02-06 11:09:22

Not sure you can actually name names, though. Even though we're all cool, abandonware is still legally tricky business...

EDIT - And regarding documentation, be sure to check out <a class="postlink" href="http://infocom.elsewhere.org/gallery/">http://infocom.elsewhere.org/gallery/</a>. I actually downloaded and printed all the images and docs. Doesn't replace the real thing, but it sure feels nice to own. [emote]:)[/emote] Heh, I even printed the Trinity sundial onto harder paper and glued it up.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=0#p13252
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-02-06 11:10:16

Call it an act of civil disobedience. There is no case I'm aware of where the application of copyright laws is a more braindead, pointless exercise.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=0#p13253
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-02-06 11:12:48

In that case, go right ahead. [emote]:)[/emote] Though I'd usually prefer Home of the Underdogs.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=0#p13254
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-02-06 11:31:36

Yeah I don't know if this is in contravention of the board rules or whatever. I figure as long as nobody actually links to anything there is no possibility of any legal problems (and even if they do it's vanishingly unlikely). This is one of those cases where copyright really does the opposite of what it's supposed to. Anyway if these posts need to be redacted or something it so be it but it's really just a sad situation for the community's sense of history, IMO.

P.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1981&start=0#p13255
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment and "Output Filtering"
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-02-06 12:07:46

Excellent, thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=0#p13256
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: Aintelligence / DateTime: 2011-02-06 12:27:44

[quote="Laroquod"]Simple, actually. The Pirate Bay. No documentation though; you need to track that down separately, which is also pretty simple, just search out every game title individually as you play it.[/quote]
What do you mean by documentation exactly?
BTW thank you guys for this

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=10#p13257
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-02-06 12:30:34

You can buy the Zork games and Planetfall from GOG: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/the_zork_anthology">http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/the_zork_anthology</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=10#p13258
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-02-06 12:32:44

We mean the manuals, and... all the feelies and all the extra information. You see, Infocom - starting right up with Deadline - packaged their games with all sort of documentation. Not just the game manual - Infidel, for instance, came with a "Tales of Adventure" magazine. Hollywood Hijinx, among other things, came with an autographed photo of your uncle Bud.

Most importantly, in cases like Moonmist, sometimes they used the documentation to spare some size in the actual game so they could fit other things (in Moonmist, room descriptions are practically all in the brochure you get with the game). And most importantly of all, there's always information (except, possibly, on Zork I, II and III) critical for your gameplay. Maybe it's a code, like in A Mind Forever Voyaging; a set of coordinates in Infidel; just instructions for play, for Suspended and A Mind Forever Voyaging; all sorts of things. 

Bottom line, if you play Infocom without ALL the documentation, you'll miss out of most of the experience... and not only that, you simply won't get far at all.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=10#p13259
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: Aintelligence / DateTime: 2011-02-06 12:36:16

[quote="Peter Pears"]

Bottom line, if you play Infocom without ALL the documentation, you'll miss out of most of the experience... and not only that, you simply won't get far at all.[/quote]

Thanks, that explains why I some of the games I did have "didn't work"

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1978&start=0#p13260
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Not-matching an indexed text
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-06 13:05:04

I meant the former, except that I think truth states should also have definable inverse phrasings. A "to decide whether" phrase wouldn't really be enough for that, because you couldn't then declare "now the foo has not arrived." But I like both your suggestions.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=10#p13261
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2011-02-06 13:57:53

[quote="Laroquod"]Call it an act of civil disobedience. There is no case I'm aware of where the application of copyright laws is a more braindead, pointless exercise.[/quote]

People do what they do, but the IF community has a good relationship with Activision and Infocom materials. I think we should shy away from advocating piracy.

David C.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1978&start=0#p13262
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Not-matching an indexed text
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-06 14:05:44

I'm not discounting the idea of *getting* the compiler to recognize linking verbs. I don't know how difficult it is, but it would be a clear win.

That is: if you define "to decide whether zig is zog", the compiler would pick out the "is" and defined "whether zig is not zog" and "zig isn't zog". Ditto for "are" and (stretching a point) "has".

Applying the same logic to any truth state containing "is" requires a little extra infrastructure.

There is potential for confusion here. Users would have to understand that defining "whether zig is zog" implies an inverse, but "whether zig matches zog" (the original question here) does not. 

Similarly, for truth states, defining "The roast is done is a truth state that varies" would be somewhat different from "Doneness is a truth state that varies". (And different again from "Definition: the roast is done if ...", not to mention "the roast can be done".) Arguably this swamp doesn't need any extra logs thrown into it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=10#p13263
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-06 14:08:18

The manuals are also available (with permission from Activision) at <a class="postlink" href="http://infodoc.plover.net/">http://infodoc.plover.net/</a> .

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=10#p13264
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-02-06 14:16:45

Yeah, that's a good place too. Pity that so many of them are in black and white.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=10#p13265
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-06 15:29:11

[quote="DavidC"]People do what they do, but the IF community has a good relationship with Activision and Infocom materials.[/quote]

What do you mean exactly? Mostly I'm not sure what the word "materials" is doing, but also, what does the "good relationship" consist in?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1954&start=10#p13266
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 newbie question
User: Arag-e / DateTime: 2011-02-06 15:53:24

Yet again. Now I'm messing with Daemons. I made this:

[spoiler][code]me: Actor 
    location = StartRoom
;

+MyHP: Component 'my hp/health/life/point*points'
    desc = "Current Health: <<CurrentHP>>/<<MaxHP>>"
    MaxHP = 10
    CurrentHP = 1
    RegenAmount = 1
    regenerateHP()
    {
        if (CurrentHP < MaxHP)
        {
            CurrentHP += RegenAmount;
            "You feel a little better. ";
        }
            {
                if (CurrentHP > MaxHP)
                    CurrentHP = MaxHP;
            }
        else
            "You are already fully healed. ";
    }
;

DefineIAction(Regenerate)
    execAction() 
    {
            MyHP.regenerateHP();
    }
;

VerbRule(Regenerate)
    'Regenerate' | 'heal'
    : RegenerateAction
;

StartRoom = Room 'Start Room'
;[/code][/spoiler]

This was my attempt to screw around with defining actions, and I got a bit carried away while testing checking conditions. Simply put, the character has a certain amount of HP, starting at 1 and going up to 10, and whenever he uses the command 'regenerate' or 'heal', he gains one extra point up to a maximum of 10. I can tweak the Current, Maximum and Regenerate amounts from outside quite easily if I wanted to without anything going tits up as well, and I added a check to make sure CurrentHP never exceeds MaxHP in the case I ever increase RegenAmount... though I'd probably have to add that check to any other external modifications I do to CurrentHP unless there's a tidier way to do it. Well, I'll figure that out later, I’m rather inordinately proud of having gotten this running at all.

However, now I want to see if I can have a daemon running perpetually in the background that will execute MyHP.regenerateHP() once per turn.
[code]regenDaemon = new Daemon (MyHP, &regenerateHP, 1); [/code]
The thing is, I can't figure out how to have this fire on its own. I tried including it as part of the MyHP object like so
[spoiler][code]   +MyHP: Component 'my hp/health/life/point*points'
    desc = "Current Health: <<CurrentHP>>/<<MaxHP>>"
    MaxHP = 10
    CurrentHP = 1
    RegenAmount = 1
    regenerateHP()
    {
        if (CurrentHP < MaxHP)
        {
            CurrentHP += RegenAmount;
            "You feel a little better. ";
        }
        else
            "You are already fully healed. ";
    } 
    autoRegenHP()
    {
        regenDaemon = new Daemon(self, &regenerateHP, 1); 
    }
    regenDaemon = true
[/code][/spoiler]

...but that doesn't work either.

[quote="Jim Aikin"]While attempting to work out what object the player was most likely referring to in a command, the parser may call a verify() routine several times. This is because the parser wants to see which object is the most logical in cases of ambiguity.[/quote]

I see. So is there a way to quickly get how many times the verify routine runs in an action, or is it necessary to do something like having your action increment a variable and then guessing by how much the variable was increased?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1986&start=0#p13267
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Updated the Programmer's Guide to Inform 7
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-06 16:18:19

Larger font, margins are better for a 3-ring binder, and various typos & snafus fixed.  Not much else to report, really.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.plover.net/~pscion/Inform%207%20for%20Programmers.pdf">http://www.plover.net/~pscion/Inform%20 ... ammers.pdf</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=10#p13268
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-02-06 16:18:29

[quote="DavidC"]People do what they do, but the IF community has a good relationship with Activision and Infocom materials. I think we should shy away from advocating piracy.[/quote]
It's a pragmatic argument you are making (i.e. do what it takes to preserve the relationship), but in the case of pragmatism, one has to weigh what is gained with what is lost. So, maintaining Activision's benign neglect vs. pointing interested people toward the actual games…

P.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=10#p13269
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-06 16:24:15

Oh, and for the original poster, you can play a version of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy [url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/game.shtml]on the BBC's site[/url] which I believe is a port of the Infocom game, with illustrations. Don't know how they did the port.

(I also thought of one conceivable answer to my previous question, which is that I suppose it might be possible for Activision to make themselves obnoxious about use of the Z-machine, and they haven't.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1954&start=10#p13270
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 newbie question
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-02-06 16:53:31

Since Component inherits from Thing, it has an initializeThing() method that runs during pre-init (after compile, but before the game is launched.) You can override that method to add any startup code your object needs.

I also adjusted your regenerateHP() routine to cap the value of CurrentHP at MaxHP, regardless of the value of RegenAmount.

[code]
+MyHP: Component 'my hp/health/life/point*points'
    desc = "Current Health: <<CurrentHP>>/<<MaxHP>>"
    MaxHP = 10
    CurrentHP = 1
    RegenAmount = 1
    regenerateHP()
    {
        if (CurrentHP < MaxHP)
        {
            CurrentHP += RegenAmount;
            CurrentHP = min(CurrentHP, MaxHP);
            "You feel a little better. ";
        }
        else
            "You are already fully healed. ";
    } 
    autoRegenHP()
    {
        regenDaemon = new Daemon(self, &regenerateHP, 1); 
    }
    initializeThing()
    {
        inherited();
        autoRegenHP();
    }
    regenDaemon = nil
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1954&start=10#p13271
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 newbie question
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-02-06 17:22:18

Since there are countless ways to build a mousetrap, here's my take on this [emote]:D[/emote]

HP is just an abstract numerical value. It's not a game object, so there's no reason for you to make an actual object that derives from the Thing class out of it. Unless of course you want things like PICK UP HP, PUT HP IN THE BOX, etc, to work. With HP, what I would expect from such a game is to show it in a banner and perhaps as a response to X ME or STATS, but not X HP. So you only need to have a few variables in the "me" object. Like:

[code]
me: Actor
    maxHP = 10
    currentHP = 1
    regenAmount = 1
    regenerateHP()
    {
        if (currentHP < maxHP) {
            currentHP += regenAmount;
            if (currentHP > maxHP) {
                currentHP = maxHP;
            }
            "You feel a little better. ";
        } else {
            "You are already fully healed. ";
        }
    }
;
[/code]

As for the Daemon not working, you need to execute the code that creates the Daemon somewhere. I suppose what you want is an additional method that lowers HP. You call that when the PC loses health. In that method, you check whether a Daemon already exists. If not, you create one. In regenerateHP you then check whether you reached max HP. If yes, you delete the Daemon. So the complete code would look like this:

[spoiler][code]+ me: Actor
	maxHP = 10
	currentHP = 1
	regenAmount = 1
	regenDaemon = nil

	regenerateHP()
	{
		if (currentHP < maxHP) {
			currentHP += regenAmount;
			if (currentHP >= maxHP) {
				currentHP = maxHP;
				// We reached full health. Delete the daemon.
				regenDaemon.removeEvent();
			}
			"You feel a little better. ";
		} else {
			"You are already fully healed. ";
		}
	}

	loseHP(amount)
	{
		currentHP -= amount;
		if (currentHP < 1) {
			// Kill the player, end the game, whatever.
			// ...
			return;
		}
		if (regenDaemon == nil) {
			// We lost health and there's no regen daemon. Create one.
			regenDaemon = new Daemon(self, &regenerateHP, 1);
		}
	}
;[/code][/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=10#p13272
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-06 17:33:48

[quote]what does the "good relationship" consist in?[/quote]

For example, when someone in the IF community asked "Can we scan all your manuals and put them on a web site for historical interest?", someone at Activision said "yes". Similarly, several people have gotten permission to release free IF games set in the Zork world. Stuff like that.

I don't want to overstate it. That's a good relationship with some people *at* Activision. A company doesn't have relationships except for legal and contractual ones, and Activision has as many lawyers as any big company. The lawyers have never come down on us, and we -- as a community -- have avoided doing things that might provoke them. (E.g., we haven't posted the Infocom game files on the Archive.) You can call that a good relationship, benign neglect, or just lack of communication. I don't want to change it, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=20#p13273
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-06 17:44:45

[quote="zarf"][quote]what does the "good relationship" consist in?[/quote]

For example, when someone in the IF community asked "Can we scan all your manuals and put them on a web site for historical interest?", someone at Activision said "yes". Similarly, several people have gotten permission to release free IF games set in the Zork world. Stuff like that.

I don't want to overstate it. That's a good relationship with some people *at* Activision. A company doesn't have relationships except for legal and contractual ones, and Activision has as many lawyers as any big company. The lawyers have never come down on us, and we -- as a community -- have avoided doing things that might provoke them. (E.g., we haven't posted the Infocom game files on the Archive.) You can call that a good relationship, benign neglect, or just lack of communication. I don't want to change it, though.[/quote]

Fair enough; I'd pick "benign neglect," but that's probably something to preserve.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1954&start=10#p13274
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 newbie question
User: Arag-e / DateTime: 2011-02-06 17:51:50

Thanks for the min(CurrentHP, MaxHP) check. I see how that works now. Actually, I took it off from the regenerateHP() method and made it into a new PromptDaemon:

[code]    capMaxHP()
    {
        CurrentHP = min(CurrentHP, MaxHP);
    }
    capHP
    {
        HPCapDaemon = new PromptDaemon(MyHP, &capMaxHP);
    }
    HPCapDaemon = nil[/code]

And had initializeThing() trigger this one too. This way, no matter how I mess around with CurrentHP from the outside, I can be certain that it will never exceed MaxHP.

One question though, why set the Daemons to 'nil' before the start? There doesn't seem to be any difference if I have the game start with them as 'true'.

Actually, I had made it a Component simply so I could put all the relevant code inside that object and not clutter the Me character’s code. I hadn't thought about a proper display method yet.

Looking at the two methods, I think hijacking the Component’s initializeThing() serves my idea a bit better. The point was for the regeneration to always be active at all times, and while the loseHP() method looks like it’d serve most possible scenarios, having it running permanently gives me a bit more leeway with how I mess around with the values, else I’d have to remember to reroute everything through loseHP(). For example, if I ever increase MaxHP for any reason, CurrentHP would be less than MaxHP without having called the loseHP() method.

That said, thanks for the loseHP() method, that’s the next thing I was going to get into. Conveniently, I’m a few pages away from learning how to actually end a game, so that’ll come in handy real soon.

I should mention, these are just random theoretical “I wonder how I would do that” ideas I get while trying to get the hang of programming. These are just proof of concept, I’m not making a game just yet.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1954&start=10#p13275
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 newbie question
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-02-06 18:02:12

[quote="Arag-e"]One question though, why set the Daemons to 'nil' before the start? There doesn't seem to be any difference if I have the game start with them as 'true'.[/quote]
It can be anything you like. But nil is used just to make it clear that it's initially just an empty property. That is, make it clear to you, not the compiler.

I also found a bug in my code above. After deleting the daemon, this is needed:

regenDaemon = nil;

To make the property nil again. Otherwise, the check for nil will fail later.

[quote]Looking at the two methods, I think hijacking the Component’s initializeThing() serves my idea a bit better. The point was for the regeneration to always be active at all times[/quote]
This means you will have code that is executed at all times, even when not needed. This is something that should be avoided since it slows down the game. This one check of course won't slow it down, but when things like this add up it can have an effect. The rule of thumb is to have code execute only when needed.

[quote]and while the loseHP() method looks like it’d serve most possible scenarios, having it running permanently gives me a bit more leeway with how I mess around with the values, else I’d have to remember to reroute everything through loseHP(). For example, if I ever increase MaxHP for any reason, CurrentHP would be less than MaxHP without having called the loseHP() method.[/quote]
The correct way to do this in an object oriented language is to never touch those properties directly. Only the object or class that defines them should do that. You always define methods to manipulate them, and those methods then can make sure that things stay consistent. To increase HP for example, an increaseHP() method should be used.

Since TADS doesn't offer a way to protect properties from outside access, the norm is to append an underscore to properties and methods that are not intended to be used directly from the outside.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=20#p13276
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-02-06 18:41:15

[quote="zarf"][quote]what does the "good relationship" consist in?[/quote]

For example, when someone in the IF community asked "Can we scan all your manuals and put them on a web site for historical interest?", someone at Activision said "yes". Similarly, several people have gotten permission to release free IF games set in the Zork world. Stuff like that.

I don't want to overstate it. That's a good relationship with some people *at* Activision. A company doesn't have relationships except for legal and contractual ones, and Activision has as many lawyers as any big company. The lawyers have never come down on us, and we -- as a community -- have avoided doing things that might provoke them. (E.g., we haven't posted the Infocom game files on the Archive.) You can call that a good relationship, benign neglect, or just lack of communication. I don't want to change it, though.[/quote]
Fair enough so is the verdict that we shouldn't point people toward the games even in the vaguest terms? (Basically saying 'They are out there but you are on your own.'?) Or that we can name but not link? Is saying 'abandonware' giving them a search term just as likely to be considered a poke at the relationship as naming an actual site?

I'm seeing a lot of just shirking the issue but no practically useful opinions. Not that I blame anyone, really, as feeling too legally shackled to use your words is part of the whole problem here. (And it's a real freedom of speech issue, IMO, but let's put the politics aside for now.) Personally I don't believe in shirking the issue and I'd like to take a stand and just name a site if it's acceptable. If it's not, I'd like a guideline as to how far I should go.

P.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1986&start=0#p13277
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Updated the Programmer's Guide to Inform 7
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-02-06 20:32:15

Thanks for your consistently excellent contributions to the community, Ron.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1954&start=10#p13278
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 newbie question
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-02-06 23:45:28

With multiple PromptDaemons, I would recommend setting the eventOrder property on at least one, so that they execute in a controlled order.

The default eventOrder is 100, so setting HPCapDaemon to 200 will make it run after the regen daemon. This avoids the situation where the health is capped first and then the regen amount is added later.

[quote]One question though, why set the Daemons to 'nil' before the start? There doesn't seem to be any difference if I have the game start with them as 'true'.[/quote]

I do it to facilitate a sanity check on whether the daemon has already been initialized. If implementing capHP in an actual game, I would write:

[code]
    capHP
    {
        if (HPCapDaemon != nil)
        {
            HPCapDaemon.removeEvent();
            HPCapDaemon = nil;
        }
        HPCapDaemon = new PromptDaemon(MyHP, &capMaxHP);
        HPCapDaemon.eventOrder = 200
    }
    HPCapDaemon = nil
[/code]

That way, if you ever call capHP() a second time, you will not end up with a second daemon. It wouldn't matter for that one, but for the regen daemon it could lead to a bug where health was regenerated at double the correct rate.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1987&start=0#p13279
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: hopeless
User: kuniqs / DateTime: 2011-02-07 01:38:43

So, I have this following piece of code:

[code]

"argh"

include the inform ATTACK by Victor Gijsbers.



a body part is a kind of thing.
a body part can be intact or severed.
a body part is usually intact.
[a body part is usually singular-named and proper-named.]
a body part has a number called resilience.
resilience of a body part is usually 1.

left arm is a kind of body part.

a humanoid is a kind of person.
a body part (called left arm) are part of every humanoid.
a body part (called right arm) are part of every humanoid.
a body part (called left leg) are part of every humanoid.
a body part (called right leg) are part of every humanoid.
a body part (called torso) are part of every humanoid.
a body part (called groin) are part of every humanoid.
a body part (called head) are part of every humanoid.


understand "aim [who] at [what]" as aiming.
aiming is an action applying to two things.
the aiming action has an body part called what (matched as "at").


check aiming:
	take no time.
	if the noun is not a humanoid:
		say "You can aim only opponents" instead.
[	if the second noun is not a body part,
		say "[noun] has no [second noun]" instead.
]		


Carry out aiming with second noun as a body part:
	take no time.
	now what is severed.
	now what is in the cave.
	
		
report aiming:
	say "You sever it!".
		
		

The goblin is a humanoid.

the cave is a room. The player is in the cave.
The health of the player is 20.
The player carries a sword.

The goblin is in the cave.  The goblin carries a mace.The melee of the goblin is -1. The goblin is hostile.
[/code]

compiler says:

[code]
This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6G60) on its most recent run through:


Problem. You wrote 'the aiming action has an body part called what (matched as "at")'  , but 'what' already has a meaning, which this would clash with.
 
[/code]

Am I missing something, since as I see 'what' is not defined anywhere else.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=20#p13280
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: Aintelligence / DateTime: 2011-02-07 06:04:52

[quote="Laroquod"]
I'm seeing a lot of just shirking the issue but no practically useful opinions. Not that I blame anyone, really, as feeling too legally shackled to use your words is part of the whole problem here. (And it's a real freedom of speech issue, IMO, but let's put the politics aside for now.) Personally I don't believe in shirking the issue and I'd like to take a stand and just name a site if it's acceptable. If it's not, I'd like a guideline as to how far I should go.

[/quote]

I take it activision took over copyright.  Darn, I was hoping copyright would be expired, but personally I don't think there's much wrong with using the sites.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1987&start=0#p13281
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: hopeless
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-02-07 08:18:01

The word "what" is used (interchangeably with "which") to define new 'phrases to decide' (as in section 11.17 in the Documentation, which illustrates this use with "To decide what number is the target score: ..."). That's probably why it can't also be used as a variable.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1987&start=0#p13282
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: hopeless
User: kuniqs / DateTime: 2011-02-07 08:31:59

Nope. Exchange 'what' with any other word and you'll get the same.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1987&start=0#p13283
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: hopeless
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-02-07 09:09:03

You have several other issues with the code that somehow lead to the compiler complaining about that line, which itself should be ok. First, you should change the aiming action's grammar to

[code]Understand "aim [something] at [something]" as aiming.[/code]
("who" and "what" aren't allowed grammar tokens.)

Secondly, you are terminating sentences with a full stop inside a rule. Only the last sentence of a rule should end in a full stop, all others should end in a semicolon.

[code]Check aiming:
	take no time;
	if the noun is not a humanoid:
		say "You can aim only opponents" instead.

Carry out aiming at a body part:
	take no time;
	now what is severed;
	now what is in the cave.[/code]
With these changes the code should compile, but there are still problems with it so that it probably won't function as you inted it to; for example, the body part is never assigned in the aiming action. You could drop the action variable completely, name the action "aiming it at" and check if the second noun is a body part (just like you do when you check if the noun is a humanoid).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1980&start=0#p13284
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Multitudes
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-07 12:34:04

Thank you, gravel, for replying about gravel!

I would like to avoid using dynamic memory if possible. I noticed in the Standard Library there is a table defined with a special syntax "with blank rows for each thing." I was wondering if there was some way to take advantage of that syntax or the code for allocating relation memory, in order to allocate what I need.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1980&start=0#p13285
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Multitudes
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-07 12:44:17

If you can define the number of rooms and the number of multitudes when you build the game, you can make a table with the appropriate number of rows (N*M). Or you could make N tables with M rows each, and (for example) have a table name property on each multitude. There are a few ways you can do it. I think they all involve some cutting and pasting of repetitive declarations.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1988&start=0#p13286
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Problem with The other four senses (listen in a room)
User: Rayven / DateTime: 2011-02-07 12:47:57

I have been trying to get one of the snippets of code in the manual to work.

In 7.7 The other four sense, it has the line
Instead of listening in the Seashore, say "The song of gulls." 

However when I try this, i get an error message saying

This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6G60) on its most recent run through:


Problem. You wrote 'Instead of listening in the Seashore'  , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is 'listening in the Seashore'. But that did not make sense as a description of an action. I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook.

Am I missing something?

I can get
Instead of listening:
    if the player is in the Seashore, say "The song of gulls."

but I prefer the first approach if I can get it to work.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1980&start=0#p13287
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Multitudes
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-07 12:49:10

I just noticed another potential problem with tables. Is it impossible to use a "multiple key" to reference a table row?

e.g.:
[code]Table of Littering
Substance	Field 	Quantity
a multitude	a room	a vague quantity
with enough blank rows

To decide whether (site - a room) is littered by (mess - a multitude):
    Unless there is a substance of mess and a field of site in Table of Littering, no[/code]
That will not compile. Is there a syntax that will, or do I have to repeat through every row?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1988&start=0#p13288
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with The other four senses (listen in a room)
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-07 12:57:57

That must be an untested bit of code (or perhaps it used to work, but it doesn't any more.) You can fix it like this:

Instead of listening [b]when[/b] in the Seashore, say "The song of gulls."

You definitely don't want to use the second method, because you'll end up with this:

[quote]
Seashore

> listen
The song of gulls.

> w

Cliffs

> listen
>
[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1975&start=0#p13289
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Mac I7 IDE: Skein, Transcript, and Replay bugs
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-07 13:02:28

Reported here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=538">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=538</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1988&start=0#p13290
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with The other four senses (listen in a room)
User: Rayven / DateTime: 2011-02-07 13:55:23

Worked like a charm, thanks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1980&start=0#p13291
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Multitudes
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-07 14:50:40

[quote="zarf"]If you can define the number of rooms and the number of multitudes when you build the game, you can make a table with the appropriate number of rows (N*M). Or you could make N tables with M rows each, and (for example) have a table name property on each multitude. There are a few ways you can do it. I think they all involve some cutting and pasting of repetitive declarations.[/quote]
Are you saying that if I wrote the extension for others to use then I would have to tell authors to manually create their own tables? Or is there some sort of macro feature of I7 that could be used for code generation?

You can't actually have a numeric expression in the line "with X blank rows," can you?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1980&start=0#p13292
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Multitudes
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-07 15:15:04

[quote="capmikee"][quote="zarf"]If you can define the number of rooms and the number of multitudes when you build the game, you can make a table with the appropriate number of rows (N*M). Or you could make N tables with M rows each, and (for example) have a table name property on each multitude. There are a few ways you can do it. I think they all involve some cutting and pasting of repetitive declarations.[/quote]
Are you saying that if I wrote the extension for others to use then I would have to tell authors to manually create their own tables? Or is there some sort of macro feature of I7 that could be used for code generation?

You can't actually have a numeric expression in the line "with X blank rows," can you?[/quote]

No, there's no compile-time macro language. I've run into a number of situations where one would be useful, though (I think there's a request on uservoice, maybe buried within another request...?).

For an extension, I'd just use one table and give it a fairly high number of blank rows. Warn your users that they may need to extend the table with more rows and clearly explain how to do it. That's how most existing extensions that are based around tables work.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1989&start=0#p13293
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: A command to return the player to the previous room?
User: adoblivione / DateTime: 2011-02-07 16:32:03

Hi, folks!  I tried searching for an answer to this question here and in the documentation, but couldn't find anything specifically referring to this sort of situation.  I really hope I'm not asking something that's been covered many times before.

Is there a way to implement a command (for example, "back") that would return the player to the room they were previously in?  For example, if the player goes northeast and then wants to go back, rather than making them go southwest, they could just type "back" and the game would interpret it as the player going southwest?

Thanks in advance! [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1980&start=0#p13294
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Multitudes
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-07 16:56:27

[quote="capmikee"]Thank you, gravel, for replying about gravel!

I would like to avoid using dynamic memory if possible. I noticed in the Standard Library there is a table defined with a special syntax "with blank rows for each thing." I was wondering if there was some way to take advantage of that syntax or the code for allocating relation memory, in order to allocate what I need.[/quote]

Ah.  Yeah, then I'd do what Erik suggested.  It's no biggie, as long as the extension writer gives people a heads up.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1989&start=0#p13295
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A command to return the player to the previous room?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-02-07 17:14:43

Hm, off the top of my head, I'd probably have a "last room visited" variable, which I'd change every time the player leaves a room.

Oh, and in double-checking my example code, I found that example #102, "Polarity" seems to do what you're looking for.

I do wish more games supported this command!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1989&start=0#p13296
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A command to return the player to the previous room?
User: adoblivione / DateTime: 2011-02-07 17:36:49

Ah, thanks so much!  I must have been looking for the wrong thing in the documentation.

This is definitely a feature that should be implemented in more games.  The one I'm working on has a centralized hub with several rooms leading off of it, so this will save the player quite a bit of trouble.   [emote]:lol:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1984&start=0#p13297
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compass and nautical directions
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-02-07 18:02:12

The major problem there is that it apparently executes before "before" and "instead" rules, preventing me from ever writing compass-specific or nautical-specific rules.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1984&start=0#p13298
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compass and nautical directions
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-07 18:06:19

You can apply conditions to the setting action variables rules as well, e.g.:

[code]Setting action variables for an actor going north when the player is in the ship:
   change the noun to fore.[/code]

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1980&start=0#p13299
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Multitudes
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-07 18:16:14

All right then, I think I'm ready to go ahead with this. But before I get too crazy with it, let me ask:

Do you think there is a need for this? Does something like this exist already?

Here's the specifics of what I intend to do:

Each multitude will have an associated thing, a "specimen." There will be exactly one specimen in the game world. When the player does not carry the specimen, it will be part of the backdrop. The specimen can be taken, interacted with, whatever, but the player will be prevented from having more than one. I think this works well for the use I have in mind, but I want to know if it's general enough.

My rationale is that if you really want multiple objects, there's probably less overhead in making your multitude a kind and creating a bunch of clones. But do other people really want something like this?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1984&start=0#p13300
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compass and nautical directions
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-02-07 18:19:17

Yes, I've got that, but that's insufficient because it still treats "fore" and "north" as functionally identical within the context.  That is, I don't think there's any way to write a rule that applies if you go fore on the ship, but not if you go north (or vice versa).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1988&start=0#p13301
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with The other four senses (listen in a room)
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-02-07 18:28:36

This should be reported on the bug tracker as a mistake in the manual.

--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1990&start=0#p13302
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Retrospective: Galatea (2000)
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-02-07 20:00:31

No critic has ever admitted that Galatea is the primary problem, and [i]Galatea[/i] only secondary. [i]Galatea[/i] the game is a wonderfully complex cuckoo clock whose cuckoo never comes out at the right moment. Galatea the character is a stolid, humourless woman whose conversation gives new meaning to the phrase "stone brain." The reason why critics have overlooked the character and focused on the game is partly because decision trees are much easier to discuss and analyze than literary dialogue and partly because Galatea is such a bland and harmless creature she will never rise to the level of insulting your aesthetic sensibility. She may -- if you make the mistake of taking her seriously -- insult your intelligence, but then people are by now pretty much used to having their intelligence insulted by IF.

[i]Galatea[/i] is based on the Pygmalion myth. Pygmalion was a sculptor of such brilliance, one of his sculptures literally came to life. To base a work of IF on this particular concept is an ambitious endeavor, to say the least. Some might call it presumptuous. The woman who calls herself "Emily Short" is emulating an artist capable of infusing dead matter with life, hoping to achieve with decision tree and dialogue what he accomplished with chisel and mallet. Now, those of you who know me, know that I rarely make fun of people's names. Since "Emily" has in the past made fun of my ethnic and religious background (I'm a Jew) as well as speculated on my sexual mores, I feel entitled to a pun. Short falls short of her ambition. She falls short because the woman who gave us the following exchange

ASK GALATEA ABOUT GREECE
"Buy a map."

has no dramatic sense whatsoever. [i]Galatea[/i] fails not because its decision tree is flawed or because its algorithms are broken, but because Galatea has nothing worthwhile to say. She is bland, evasive and brusque, and the sentiments that issue from her mouth are full of platitudes puffed up with stilted diction to appear universal and profound. Short's Galatea is to the mind what silicon is to a bimbo. Your head will feel positively inflated with grandiloquent banalities.

We are the cognitive ceilings of our creations. We can never create a character more intelligent, or more witty, or more eloquent than ourselves. This trivial fact has never been more sadly exemplified than by the infamous "food ending" of _Galatea_. If you ask her about food in the [i]exact[/i] right sequence, she will step down from her pedestal (presumably giving up her immortality) and start munching at the buffe. Here we can see the reason for [i]Galatea[/i]'s aesthetic failure as well as the source of Galatea's pig-like intelligence: the limits of a character's cognizance will always reflect the limits of its creator's imagination.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1984&start=0#p13303
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compass and nautical directions
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-02-07 20:06:13

Okay, I think I misunderstood what you wanted. What's the intended behavior?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1990&start=0#p13304
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Retrospective: Galatea (2000)
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-02-07 20:47:56

Galatea is not intended as a monolithic character. Rather she is a mirror whose reflected image is distorted by the player's interactions and expectations. That flippant response to the player's request for information about Greece may not be the soul of drama, yet it does serve notice that he is doing something wrong.

Even if Galatea is at times bland, evasive and brusque, you must admit that those are traits that ordinary people display. She is in that respect more human than the typical IF character before or since.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1932&start=0#p13305
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: PAX East 2011 posts
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-07 21:23:12

Current planning page:

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifwiki.org/index.php/PAX_East_2011">http://ifwiki.org/index.php/PAX_East_2011</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=20#p13306
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-07 23:07:21

[quote]'m seeing a lot of just shirking the issue but no practically useful opinions.[/quote]

Fair enough.

I have no problem telling people "if you search for Infocom games online, you will find them." (Because that's, you know, a true statement.) I don't tell people they *should* do this, and I don't tell them they shouldn't.

(It's not necessary to include the term "abandonware" in the search.)

[quote]I take it activision took over copyright.[/quote]

Yes, when Activision bought Infocom they bought all the rights. (But the copyrights wouldn't have expired, anyhow. That won't happen for a long time, under US law.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1988&start=0#p13307
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with The other four senses (listen in a room)
User: ChristianB / DateTime: 2011-02-08 03:26:02

There seems to be another problem besides documentation:

[code]Instead of smelling in the seashore, say "The smell of gulls."[/code]
compiles and runs, whereas the syntactically identical example from WI 7.7.

[code]Instead of listening in the Seashore, say "The song of gulls."[/code]
doesn't.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1988&start=0#p13308
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with The other four senses (listen in a room)
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-02-08 04:03:42

The full name of the listening action is "listening to".

[code]Instead of listening to in the Seashore, say "The song of gulls."[/code]
compiles and works as intended. So there's a misprint (a missing "to") in the manual.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=20#p13309
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-02-08 04:15:35

[quote="zarf"]I have no problem telling people "if you search for Infocom games online, you will find them." (Because that's, you know, a true statement.) I don't tell people they *should* do this, and I don't tell them they shouldn't.

(It's not necessary to include the term "abandonware" in the search.)[/quote]
Thanks for your perspective on it.

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=20#p13310
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-02-08 04:52:26

[quote="Aintelligence"]I take it activision took over copyright.  Darn, I was hoping copyright would be expired, but personally I don't think there's much wrong with using the sites.[/quote]
Yeah. And my concern is that the vagueness of the 'deniably clean hands' approach is too easily interpreted as unfriendliness to new players. It bears an uncomfortably close resemblance for me to that old school hackerish 'if you can't figure it out for yourself you don't deserve it' mentality that I recall. But newbies are rare and valuable now, whereas most of the old games aren't commercially valued enough by Activision even to be distributed, so the situation has been stood on its head and maybe the old responses aren't the wisest, anymore.

If nobody had named a site or even said 'abandonware' in here and instead we had simply said 'They are searchable. Figure out how if you want them.', do you think you'd have persisted through our not-very-helpful attitude, and through multiple search pages, until you found them? Or were you prepared to give these games up for dead fairly easily?

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1988&start=0#p13311
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with The other four senses (listen in a room)
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-02-08 06:07:17

[quote="ChristianB"]There seems to be another problem besides documentation:[/quote]
I agree that there's more to it.
The Standard Rules sometimes use "listening to" sometimes just "listening". I can't remember reading any explanation as to when prepositions at the end of the name of an action can be omitted and when they can't.
Besides, if you try defining a new action -- say, bouncing on something --, in as close analogy to the action of listening to as possible, I don't think Inform will let you omit the "on" in “bouncing on“ [b]even[/b] where the "to" in "listening to" [b]is[/b] omitted in the Standard Rules.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1990&start=0#p13312
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Retrospective: Galatea (2000)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-02-08 06:12:32

Erm... I'm sorry for butting in, I didn't really mean to reply to this, and it'll be a bit off-topic, but...

[quote]This is the only Internet forum I allow my wife and daughters to visit. Please show consideration for my family and keep the discussion on a civil level.[/quote]

...are you serious? You control the net activities of your family - your [b]wife[/b]? (a daughter I could understand). Am I the only person to whom that feels just plain [b]wrong[/b]?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1990&start=0#p13313
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Retrospective: Galatea (2000)
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-02-08 07:03:30

[quote="Peter Pears"]Am I the only person to whom that feels just plain [b]wrong[/b]?[/quote]

You are not. The phrase "This is the only Internet forum I allow my wife  ..." is an alarming and nauseating one, even from Pudlo.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1990&start=0#p13314
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Retrospective: Galatea (2000)
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-02-08 07:03:40

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]No critic has ever admitted that Galatea is the primary problem, and [i]Galatea[/i] only secondary. [i]Galatea[/i] the game is a wonderfully complex cuckoo clock whose cuckoo never comes out at the right moment. Galatea the character is a stolid, humourless woman whose conversation gives new meaning to the phrase "stone brain."[/quote]

Maybe your observation is valid, Jacek, but you're not offering anything that can really be addressed in a meaningful sense. I would note your pointlessly inflammatory tone and insolent flourishes, but they're incidental. The main problem is this: you neither define a problem nor offer a useful alternative.


[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]The reason why critics have overlooked the character and focused on the game is partly because decision trees are much easier to discuss and analyze than literary dialogue and partly because Galatea is such a bland and harmless creature she will never rise to the level of insulting your aesthetic sensibility. She may -- if you make the mistake of taking her seriously -- insult your intelligence, but then people are by now pretty much used to having their intelligence insulted by IF.[/quote]

For instance, had this paragraph been cut in its entirety, your post would have been the stronger for it. True, you make authoritative statements, but for them to be more than random noise you need to support them. Yet you provide no analysis, no mechanisms, no conclusions, and certainly no insight as far as IF goes.


[quote="Jacek Pudlo"][i]Galatea[/i] is based on the Pygmalion myth. Pygmalion was a sculptor of such brilliance, one of his sculptures literally came to life. To base a work of IF on this particular concept is an ambitious endeavor, to say the least. Some might call it presumptuous.[/quote]

Yet others might not. This is a strikingly banal attempt at covering up an insult, and it fails due to the inadequate nature of its camouflage. It tries to look as if it wants to say something beyond "Emily Short thinks she's hot shit and I think her work is boring," but that is really the thrust of the argument, such as it is.


[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]
The woman who calls herself "Emily Short" is emulating an artist capable of infusing dead matter with life, hoping to achieve with decision tree and dialogue what he accomplished with chisel and mallet. Now, those of you who know me, know that I rarely make fun of people's names. Since "Emily" has in the past made fun of my ethnic and religious background (I'm a Jew) as well as speculated on my sexual mores, I feel entitled to a pun. Short falls short of her ambition. She falls short because the woman who gave us the following exchange

ASK GALATEA ABOUT GREECE
"Buy a map."

has no dramatic sense whatsoever.[/quote]

That's quite the bold statement. On the face of it, I can't see its validity. While any game should be able to rest on its own merits, I fail to see why that quote could not constitute an artistic choice or a calculated effect. According to you, that one sentence establishes not that the work is flawed... but that its [i]author[/i] is, and irrevocably so. Coupled with your frank admission of pursuing a vendetta (which should not interest anyone on this forum, but is nonetheless illuminating), your purpose here is pretty damn obvious.


The rest of your post is odd. Jacek -- and I'm being perfectly honest here -- why do you insist on attacking qualities in others that are far more pronounced in yourself?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1990&start=0#p13315
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Retrospective: Galatea (2000)
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-02-08 07:15:51

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]We are the cognitive ceilings of our creations. We can never create a character more intelligent, or more witty, or more eloquent than ourselves.[/quote]

Nonsense. Fictional characters can easily be more intelligent, witty, and eloquent than the author. For starters, the author can take full advantage of luxuries such as extended consideration, deliberate research, and refinement of the copy to achieve dialogue and decision-making that the author could never achieve (or at least, could never achieve with the speed, grace, or facility granted the fictional character).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1990&start=0#p13316
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Retrospective: Galatea (2000)
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-08 07:38:26

[quote="Ghalev"]
Nonsense. Fictional characters can easily be more intelligent, witty, and eloquent than the author. For starters, the author can take full advantage of luxuries such as extended consideration, deliberate research, and refinement of the copy to achieve dialogue and decision-making that the author could never achieve (or at least, could never achieve with the speed, grace, or facility granted the fictional character).[/quote]

Are you sure?  Because I'm pretty sure Conan Doyle *could* have have chosen to solve murders and thefts, but being sort of sociopathic, neglected those fine mental talents to merely write about someone super intelligent.  Jerk.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1990&start=0#p13317
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Retrospective: Galatea (2000)
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-02-08 07:51:42

[quote]Because I'm pretty sure Conan Doyle *could* have have chosen to solve murders and thefts,[/quote]

Probably so. The decision to make a character more or less capable than one's self remains a choice, even for sociopaths [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1990&start=0#p13318
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Retrospective: Galatea (2000)
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-02-08 07:52:38

[quote="gravel"]Are you sure?  Because I'm pretty sure Conan Doyle *could* have have chosen to solve murders and thefts, but being sort of sociopathic, neglected those fine mental talents to merely write about someone super intelligent.  Jerk.[/quote]

That's over and done with. What we [i]really[/i] should fear is people like [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iain_Banks]Iain M. Banks[/url], who in his novels depicts (convincingly) sentient AIs with supernormal IQ and planet-cracking weaponry.

Banks is a Scotsman. We must assume he's already armed, possibly with nuclear weapons.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1978&start=10#p13319
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Not-matching an indexed text
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-08 10:15:24

[quote="zarf"]For the latter, I wouldn't mind being able to say:

[code]
To decide whether foo has arrived (rather than foo has not arrived): ...
[/code][/quote]
Getting back to this. Without the help of that very appealing feature, what's the cleanest way to create a pair of "To decide whether" phrases? I'm getting really tired of this almost comically ridiculous formulation:

[code]To decide whether foo has not arrived: Decide on whether or not not foo has arrived.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1978&start=10#p13320
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Not-matching an indexed text
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-08 10:27:55

Sometimes I try to manipulate the phrases into place, ie:

[code]
To decide what truth state is the arrival of foo: 
If the arrival of foo is true:[/code]

But that gets tiresome and awkward, too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1991&start=0#p13321
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Setting up complicated interrelated randomish texts
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-08 11:08:50

So I've got a bit in-game that generates a paragraph or two of randomized text.  I'd like high variation and also correlation between early and later bits.  For example, if the first sentence is "You spot an apple on the shelf." the second sentence is related to the apple, and makes sense in context.

I've got a handle on picking subjects and verbs, but it's a little complicated routing through the action.  Before I do much coding, I wanted to double check that this seems reasonable (code not compileable - only for example purposes):

[code]To say a random paragraph of text:
say "[initial]".

To say initial:
  if a random chance succeeds:
     say "Blah!  [secondary A]";
  otherwise if a random chance succeeds:
    say "Blah.  [secondary B]";
  otherwise:
    say "Blah? [one of][secondary A][or][secondary B][or][secondary C][at random]".

etc.[/code]

Is that the best way to do it?  I can sorta imagine something with tables, but I don't know if it would actually be any easier/cleaner/more flexible, and having a dozen tables for random text gen feels sort of extravagant.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1990&start=0#p13322
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Retrospective: Galatea (2000)
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-02-08 12:25:33

[quote="Eleas"][quote="Jacek Pudlo"]No critic has ever admitted that Galatea is the primary problem, and [i]Galatea[/i] only secondary. [i]Galatea[/i] the game is a wonderfully complex cuckoo clock whose cuckoo never comes out at the right moment. Galatea the character is a stolid, humourless woman whose conversation gives new meaning to the phrase "stone brain."[/quote]

[quote]Maybe your observation is valid, Jacek, but you're not offering anything that can really be addressed in a meaningful sense. I would note your pointlessly inflammatory tone and insolent flourishes, but they're incidental. The main problem is this: you neither define a problem nor offer a useful alternative. [/quote][/quote]

A useful alternative being what exactly? Asking "Emily" for the source code and rewriting the entire game? My point is that [i]Galatea[/i] deserves to be approached as a literary work for the simple reason that it has literary ambition. And when approached in this way, the game exhibits modest literary merit, to put it mildly. 



[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]The reason why critics have overlooked the character and focused on the game is partly because decision trees are much easier to discuss and analyze than literary dialogue and partly because Galatea is such a bland and harmless creature she will never rise to the level of insulting your aesthetic sensibility. She may -- if you make the mistake of taking her seriously -- insult your intelligence, but then people are by now pretty much used to having their intelligence insulted by IF.[/quote]

[quote="Eleas"]For instance, had this paragraph been cut in its entirety, your post would have been the stronger for it. True, you make authoritative statements, but for them to be more than random noise you need to support them. Yet you provide no analysis, no mechanisms, no conclusions, and certainly no insight as far as IF goes.[/quote]

I suppose I could present the jury with exhibit A followed by exhibit B and C, only this could easily get tiresome. What I'm going to do instead is offer you a set of keywords you can feed Galatea yourself. Art. Love. Life. Death. Sex. Do any of Galatea's responses strike you as interesting? Did you enjoy the prose? The jerky, stilted diction? The absolute humourlessness?

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"][i]Galatea[/i] is based on the Pygmalion myth. Pygmalion was a sculptor of such brilliance, one of his sculptures literally came to life. To base a work of IF on this particular concept is an ambitious endeavor, to say the least. Some might call it presumptuous.[/quote]

[quote="Eleas"]Yet others might not. This is a strikingly banal attempt at covering up an insult, and it fails due to the inadequate nature of its camouflage. It tries to look as if it wants to say something beyond "Emily Short thinks she's hot shit and I think her work is boring," but that is really the thrust of the argument, such as it is.[/quote]

Do you ever read literary magazines? Dale Peck, Norman Mailer, Ezra Pound, David Foster Wallace. Do these names mean anything to you? I'm beginning to suspect that this is not so much a case of oversensitivity, but rather cultural escapism. And by that I don't mean escapism from the brutal centres of literary power, but more like escapism from reality. Just to give you a taste of what literary criticism normally looks like in the real world, here's Laura Miller's review of Chuck Palahniuk's novel [i]Diary[/i].

[url]http://www.salon.com/books/review/2003/08/20/palahniuk/index.html[/url]

Also, check out what David Foster Wallace wrote about John Updike's [i]The End of Time[/i] and Dale Peck's review of Rick Moody's [i]The Black Veil[/i].

[url]http://www.badgerinternet.com/~bobkat/observer1.html[/url]

[url]http://www.powells.com/review/2002_07_04.html[/url]

Oh, and I strongly advise you against reading any review or essay by Norman Mailer or Ezra Pound. If you think I'm insulting, these guys will blow your fuse.

[quote="Eleas"]That's quite the bold statement. On the face of it, I can't see its validity. While any game should be able to rest on its own merits, I fail to see why that quote could not constitute an artistic choice or a calculated effect. According to you, that one sentence establishes not that the work is flawed... but that its [i]author[/i] is, and irrevocably so.[/quote]

The quality of your work reflects on you as an author, just as the quality of your behaviour reflects on you as a human being. 

[quote="bcressey"]Galatea is not intended as a monolithic character. Rather she is a mirror whose reflected image is distorted by the player's interactions and expectations. That flippant response to the player's request for information about Greece may not be the soul of drama, yet it does serve notice that he is doing something wrong.[/quote]

I suppose I should have elaborated more on that example. The problem with this particular response is that it occurs [i]invariably[/i] whenever the game recognises a geographical reference. As you have pointed out, Galatea adapts to the PC's behaviour changing her mood as the conversation progresses. But no matter how chummy you get with her, she'll always give you that flippant response to any geographical query. This is just one of many inelastic aspects of her malleability, which is why the mimesis wears thin from the very beginning and you begin to treat her more like a scriptoid than a character.

[quote="bcressey"]Even if Galatea is at times bland, evasive and brusque, you must admit that those are traits that ordinary people display. She is in that respect more human than the typical IF character before or since.[/quote]

It's true that fiction often concerns itself with bland and boring people, but the [i]artistic rendition[/i] of these people is never supposed to be bland and boring. A good writer is supposed to be able to write interestingly about uninteresting people.

[quote="Peter Pears"]...are you serious? You control the net activities of your family - your wife? (a daughter I could understand). Am I the only person to whom that feels just plain wrong?[/quote]

What's so strange about wanting to protect the people you love from the excess and vulgarity of modern mass culture?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1990&start=10#p13323
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Retrospective: Galatea (2000)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-02-08 12:44:48

[quote]What's so strange about wanting to protect the people you love from the excess and vulgarity of modern mass culture?[/quote]

If you're daughter's young enough, then yeah, I understand wanting to protect her from some things. But an adult? Doesn't she have a mind of her own? Can't she see for herself what's excess and vulgarity? Isn't she intelligent or emotionally stable enough to take a look at, say, Madoxx's blogs about suicide and realize at once it's not actually a plea to actually commit it?

But the thing that bugs me most about it is that you're controlling, filtering, what she sees. She's another human being. She has the power of choice. Unless she chooses to, in which case I respectfully withdraw from this conversation and keep my opinions to myself, she is not subordinate to your own choices, your own views of what's "excess" and "vulgarity" and even "mass culture". It scares me that in this day and age anyone could even think of doing that.

[quote]What I'm going to do instead is offer you a set of keywords you can feed Galatea yourself. Art. Love. Life. Death. Sex. Do any of Galatea's responses strike you as interesting? Did you enjoy the prose? The jerky, stilted diction? The absolute humourlessness?[/quote]

Actually, I just tried them on, and I thank you for it. It made me really interested in the game. I had only briefly toyed with it, but those responses fleshed out the character in such a way that I'm now compelled to see more. Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean it's crap, you know. Maybe choosing what your family gets to watch and experience makes you believe you're the purveyor of all knowledge, and what you like is law. Well, tough luck. I loved Galatea's responses to those keywords. And since you like dropping names, and since I just know that you're going to start talking about my lack of culture, here's a couple of books I've recently read and loved and cherish: Moby Dick, Jane Eyre, Dicken's The Christmas Books, The Pickwick Papers, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Turn of the Screw, a Sherlock Holmes complete collection and the entire works of Samuel Beckett and Edgar Allan Poe.

I swear, name-dropping like this makes me sick. Makes me feel I'm descending to your level. But I'll be damned if I'll let you insult the intelligence and sensibilities of everyone who doesn't agree with you on the basis of a pretence of a higher cultural ground.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1990&start=10#p13324
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Retrospective: Galatea (2000)
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-02-08 13:40:28

[quote="Peter Pears"]You control the net activities of your family - your [b]wife[/b]? (a daughter I could understand). Am I the only person to whom that feels just plain [b]wrong[/b]?[/quote]

Nope.  I'd be even more put off if it weren't obvious from the entire post that "Jacek" is just trying to jump belatedly onto last week's internet misogyny bandwagon, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1990&start=10#p13325
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Retrospective: Galatea (2000)
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-02-08 13:43:57

People, please. This is Pudlo. Making up provocative stuff and watching the flames grow is his shtick. There's nothing to be won with arguments because these are not his actual opinions. They are carefully crafted just to provoke a response.

The more you respond, the more he keeps playing the game. If you ignore him, he goes away. We had such a nice forum here, please don't turn it into a copy of R*IF by letting the trolls win.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1990&start=10#p13326
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Retrospective: Galatea (2000)
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2011-02-08 13:55:15

what a lamer...

we also know you don't have a wife, Mr. Pharaoh...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1978&start=10#p13327
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Not-matching an indexed text
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-08 13:57:41

It is the nature of I7 that setting up clean and compact phrases to use in your code is not, itself, a clean and compact process.

You could just define "whether foo has not arrived" using the same logic as "whether foo has arrived", if it's short.

You could say

[code]
To decide whether foo has not arrived: unless foo has arrived, decide yes.
[/code]

You could give up on the "has" verb, and say "is present / is not present" instead. (Create a "foo" object, and say "foo can be present".)

You could give up on the "has not arrived" form, and use "unless" everywhere.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1992&start=0#p13328
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Setting variables in "to say" phrases?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-08 14:04:33

It's possible, I think, to use say phrases to do things besides printing text, like this:

[code]Lab is a room. The thingy is a thing in Lab. The button is a thing in Lab. A thing can be activated or inactivated. A thing is usually inactivated.
Instead of pushing the button, say "You push the button. [activate thingy][line break]".
To say activate thingy: Now the thingy is activated.[/code]

Is it possible to pass a variable into this kind of say-phrase? Something like, 

[code]Instead of pushing something, say "You push [the noun]. [activate [noun]][line break].[/code]

I don't think that'll work, but is there any way to do something like it?

This is certainly bad code -- I'm just trying to see how much can be done with say-phrases, because I'm working on something that will proceed almost entirely by reading quips from tables.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1991&start=0#p13329
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting up complicated interrelated randomish texts
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-08 14:05:00

I don't know about the *best* way. It's a perfectly reasonable way to do it. Say phrases invoking more say phrases, with that kind of random selection, covers a great deal of territory.

For the correlation, don't forget that a say phrase can change game state too. So you might do

[code]

To say choose prop:
    now the global-prop is a random prop;
    say "[The global-prop]"

To say chosen prop:
    say "[the global-prop]"

To say initial-sentence:
    say "[choose prop] [one of]falls off a shelf[or]rolls under a table[at random]. You ignore [chosen prop]."

[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1992&start=0#p13330
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting variables in "to say" phrases?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-08 14:10:08

Sure it's possible. When you do

[code]
    say "[The noun]...";
[/code]

...that *is* a say phrase with a variable.

In your case:

[code]
To say activate (T - thing): 
    now T is lit.
	
Instead of pushing:
    say "[activate noun]You whack [the noun]."
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1992&start=0#p13331
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting variables in "to say" phrases?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-08 14:13:57

[smacks forehead]

That seems like something I should've known. Thank you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1991&start=0#p13332
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting up complicated interrelated randomish texts
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-08 14:18:40

Yeah, there are a lot of moving parts in there beyond the output, which is part of what makes it messy.

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=20#p13333
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-08 14:20:24

Multiple search pages? If I type "infocom games" into Google, three of the top ten hits are titled "Play Infocom games online" or a variant thereof. A fourth is "Play Infocom games cheap", a fifth is "Where to buy Infocom games", and a sixth points to a playable HHGG at douglasadams.com.

With due respect to the original poster, I really think that most IF newcomers will find the games long before they find this web forum to ask the question.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1990&start=10#p13334
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Retrospective: Galatea (2000)
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-02-08 15:47:18

[quote="tove"]Nope.  I'd be even more put off if it weren't obvious from the entire post that "Jacek" is just trying to jump belatedly onto last week's internet misogyny bandwagon, though.[/quote]

Ah, thanks for pointing it out. It [i]did[/i] seem forced, now that you mention it.


[quote="Peter Pears"]I swear, name-dropping like this makes me sick. Makes me feel I'm descending to your level. But I'll be damned if I'll let you insult the intelligence and sensibilities of everyone who doesn't agree with you on the basis of a pretence of a higher cultural ground.[/quote]

I'm grateful for the sentiment, but it's not necessary. I guess, given the awkwardness of it all, I can't see a way to take real offence. Still, Juhana rightly points out the principle of Don't Feed the Troll. I see no point in acknowledging Pudlo's existence, which is why I'm simply going to forget him.



Ah well. Time for a sandwich, methinks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1990&start=10#p13335
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Retrospective: Galatea (2000)
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-02-08 17:33:31

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]I suppose I could present the jury with exhibit A followed by exhibit B and C, only this could easily get tiresome. What I'm going to do instead is offer you a set of keywords you can feed Galatea yourself. Art. Love. Life. Death. Sex. Do any of Galatea's responses strike you as interesting? Did you enjoy the prose? The jerky, stilted diction? The absolute humourlessness?[/quote]

[quote]
> tell galatea about sex
Oh, really.  There are some things that fall outside your job description.
[/quote]

That was worth a chuckle, at least. And asking her about love twice yields a comment about her "pathetic database" which I think is fair to interpret as an authorial intrusion. In the narrator's voice it is a cynical remark; from Short herself it might be construed as a wistful apology. I find that contrast interesting.

It suggests that she is all too aware of the problems you have highlighted, especially in light of a title that cannot fail to suggest hubris to an educated reader. It invites the player to consider whether this constrained and clumsy character might yet deserve to be taken seriously, within the work and in the larger community. Should Galatea the character be condemned because she fails to rise to the ideal of the Pygmalion myth, or can some measure of merit be found amid her flaws?

The story as a whole felt deeply conflicted to me. What artist hasn't felt the desire to create something beautiful, known the despair of falling short? There are no easy solutions or platitudes buried within the work. It offers a space for a like-minded player to interact with the joy and grief of the creative process. That may be all, but it is no mean feat.

I do have to hand it to you, though. Finding fault with a writer and criticizing her story about an art critic who criticizes a sculpture and finds fault with her creator could easily descend into recursive irony, and yet your arguments have been sharp and straightforward. But in this case I think Emily has beaten you to it. If anything you are giving her more credit than she appears to claim.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1990&start=10#p13336
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Retrospective: Galatea (2000)
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-02-08 18:20:20

[quote="bcressey"]... But in this case I think Emily has beaten you to it. If anything you are giving her more credit than she appears to claim.[/quote]

Spot on [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=20#p13337
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-02-08 18:43:28

[quote="Laroquod"]... most of the old games aren't commercially valued enough by Activision even to be distributed ...[/quote]

I think that's a little unfair given that the new re-releases of the games started just weeks ago. Activision has recently made some of the titles available commercially again (via an agreement with GOG) and the implication I got from their adcopy was that more titles would be forthcoming via that channel. There's no reason (at least not yet) to assume that GOG won't at some point have (nearly) the entire library available for sale again.

Furthermore, Activision has made the library available in multiple forms over the years (themed collections in the nineties, then a CD library at the turn of the century). Not too long ago, they also licensed the Zork trademarks and such to a company doing an all-new Zork online game (not to my taste, but there it was). There are two legally-troublesome titles that stay out of Activision's releases for legal reasons (Shogun and Hitchhiker's), but Hitchhiker's has been made free online in various forms (including in legally-provided browser versions playable right now).

To be clear, I [i]love [/i]the work abandonware sites do at preserving games that would otherwise be lost, and I think it's good and moral to [i]kick copyright laws in the face[/i] when a game (or any other work) is genuinely [i]abandoned [/i] ... but Activision have, demonstrably, not abandoned these games. Maybe they're not hawking them the way the community would like, or promoting them the way we think they deserve to be promoted (and having purchased the recent GOG package, I certainly think someone's disinterested cousin did a lazy job putting it together), but they have, repeatedly, taken at least minimal necessary steps to keep the majority of the library available for large chunks of time well past their financial viability.

I think only Shogun, out of all the Infocom library, would really qualify as abandonware at this point. But that's IMO and all that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=20#p13338
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-08 19:00:14

[quote="Ghalev"]Furthermore, Activision has made the library available in multiple forms over the years (themed collections in the nineties, then a CD library at the turn of the century).[/quote]

Which CD library is this? I've heard of the "Classic Text Adventure Masterpieces" CD, but that was from 1996, I think.

[quote]Maybe they're not hawking them the way the community would like, or promoting them the way we think they deserve to be promoted (and having purchased the recent GOG package, I certainly think someone's disinterested cousin did a lazy job putting it together), but they have, repeatedly, taken at least minimal necessary steps to keep the majority of the library available for large chunks of time well past their financial viability.[/quote]

I guess I'm not seeing "repeatedly," or that the "large chunks of time" include anything recent before the GOG release. I mean, even if the CD library was at the turn of century that means that the games haven't been obtainable (except on eBay) for the past ten years, doesn't it? That goes beyond not hawking or promoting them, and I don't see how it counts as taking minimal necessary steps. 

(Of course, I could be wrong about this; I only started paying attention recently, so I'm looking this up now. As far as I can tell, Activision published the Classic Text Adventure Masterpieces in 1996, made some noises about republishing everything in 2005 that came to naught, made Zork I-III freely available for a while; what am I missing?)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1993&start=0#p13339
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Errors compiling "Bronze"
User: ChrisNf / DateTime: 2011-02-08 19:26:54

Hello,

I am trying to compile Emily Short's Bronze from the source she has posted online.  However, I am receiving many errors related to Section 5 of the source.  

I am using Inform 7 6G60 on Windows  7.  I don't think the source is the problem since obviously many other people have managed to compile it.  But, I can't find any solution. 

The source is directly from: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7Downloads/Examples/bronze/source.txt">http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7Downloa ... source.txt</a>

The errors which are reported are below.

Thanks for any advice on getting this to compile.

Christopher 



This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6G60) on its most recent run through:

In Section 5 - Go To (any room):

Problem. In the sentence 'if heading is not a direction begin'  , I was expecting to read a condition, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'heading is not a direction'.

I was trying to match this phrase:

if (heading is not a direction - a condition): 

This was what I found out:

heading is not a direction = something unrecognised



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem. In the sentence 'let destination be the room heading from the location'  , I was expecting to read a description of directions, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'heading'.

I was trying to match this phrase:

room (heading - direction) from/of (location - room) 

This was what I found out:

heading = something unrecognised

location = a non-temporary variable, holding an object



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem. You wrote 'silently try going heading'  , but 'going heading' is not an action I can try. This looks as if it might be because it contains something of the wrong kind. My best try involved seeing if 'heading' could be an object, which might have made sense, but it turned out to be something unrecognised.

 See the manual: 7.4 > Try and try silently

I was trying to match one of these phrases:

1. silently try (going heading - an action) 

2. silently try (going heading - stored action) 

This was what I found out:

going heading = something unrecognised



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem. The 'else' or 'otherwise' here did not make sense inside a 'while' structure: it's provided for 'if' (or 'unless').

 See the manual: 11.8 > Otherwise



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem. You wrote 'try going heading'  , but 'going heading' is not an action I can try. This looks as if it might be because it contains something of the wrong kind. My best try involved seeing if 'heading' could be an object, which might have made sense, but it turned out to be something unrecognised.

I was trying to match one of these phrases:

1. try (going heading - an action) 

2. try (going heading - stored action) 

This was what I found out:

going heading = something unrecognised



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem. The 'else' or 'otherwise' here did not make sense inside a 'while' structure: it's provided for 'if' (or 'unless').



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem. In the sentence 'while the map region of the location is not the noun and the player is not in the goal begin'  , I was expecting that 'map region of the location is not the noun and the player is not in the goal' would be a condition. It didn't make sense as one long phrase, but because it was divided up by 'and'/'or', I tried breaking it down into smaller conditions, but that didn't work either. 'map region of the location is not the noun' was okay; 'the player is not in the goal' did not make sense; so I ran out of ideas.

I was trying to match this phrase:

while (map region of the location is not the noun and the player is not in the goal - a condition): 

This was what I found out:

map region of the location is not the noun and the player is not in the goal = something unrecognised

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=20#p13340
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-02-08 21:19:00

[quote="matt w"]Which CD library is this? I've heard of the "Classic Text Adventure Masterpieces" CD, but that was from 1996, I think.[/quote]

It was available from Activision directly for a couple of years into the new millennium, and it was continually available through retail outlets (normal ones, I don't mean auction sites) through approximately 2005. I got a couple myself (new, from a regular retailer) near the end of that time-frame (Christmas, 2004), and sold one on eBay in (IIRC) spring of 2007, by which time it had faded into "auction-sites-only."

[quote]I guess I'm not seeing "repeatedly," or that the "large chunks of time" include anything recent before the GOG release.[/quote]

The theme sets Activision made available in the early 90s were available for years, and when those stocks sold out they did the CD library which was available for even more years. Prior to that, it wasn't Activision's deal anyway and many of the old Infocom boxes were still easy to find on the back shelves at retailers (I know; I used to stare at them and wish I owned a computer). Now that we're in the age when things like GOG and Steam are making it easier to distribute niche/classic games without mucking around with warehousing and shipping, they're doing download releases which will (I think we have every reason to assume) be even easier to keep available for the long term.

Depending on which title we're talking about, I count maybe 6-8 years total, out of the last 20 years, that any given Infocom game (excluding Shogun) hasn't been available to the public. Some games (the Zorks, Hitchhiker's Guide) have been available in times when others haven't, but on average it looks like Activision has kept the games available (either for free or for sale) for well over half the time they've been shepherding them in their decidedly post-commercial phase.

That's repeatedly. And those are large chunks of time (at least, relative to the span we're talking about). That's my opinion and it doesn't need to be yours, but it's not baseless.

This doesn't mean you have to agree with me that they've done the minimal steps necessary (the concept of "abandonware," while laudable IMO, has no legal grounding or definition to work with), but I think it's unfair to ignore (for example) the CD library's long window of retail availability and point only to its release date.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=30#p13341
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-08 21:34:13

Fair enough. As I said, I started paying attention after the time period, so I didn't know how long the CD-ROMs were available. 

[quote]This doesn't mean you have to agree with me that they've done the minimal steps necessary (the concept of "abandonware," while laudable IMO, has no legal grounding or definition to work with)[/quote]

Oh, I didn't mean to be setting up some kind of standard for necessity -- I was just talking about the steps that were necessary to make the games available. Which, since the games haven't been available for the last five years, they haven't been taking by definition. I suppose that, in a way, recently taking the necessary steps just means not cracking down on the abandonware sites after the abortive Ken Love thing in 2005 (anyone know anything more about that?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=30#p13342
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-02-08 21:57:28

[quote="matt w"]Oh, I didn't mean to be setting up some kind of standard for necessity -- [/quote]

That bit was a response to when you said "I don't see how it counts as taking minimal necessary steps." I didn't mean to put words in your mouth/keyboard/etc; just responding.

"Abandonware" is a very slippery term, and some people use it for (IMO) a noble idea of preserving games that would otherwise be forgotten ... and some people just use it to prop up their sense of entitlement to any game that doesn't require the latest graphics cards. There's a big spectrum there, every shade is represented.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1993&start=0#p13343
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Errors compiling "Bronze"
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-08 22:31:40

You're looking at the older Inform web site. If you get the source from the current site, <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/learn/eg/bronze/source.html">http://inform7.com/learn/eg/bronze/source.html</a> , it will work.

(Be sure you choose "Z-code version 8" in the setting pane.)

(I don't know why the working version is labelled "release number 12" when the older version is "release number 13".)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=30#p13344
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-02-08 22:31:41

[quote="zarf"]Multiple search pages? If I type "infocom games" into Google, three of the top ten hits are titled "Play Infocom games online" or a variant thereof. A fourth is "Play Infocom games cheap", a fifth is "Where to buy Infocom games", and a sixth points to a playable HHGG at douglasadams.com.

With due respect to the original poster, I really think that most IF newcomers will find the games long before they find this web forum to ask the question.[/quote]
When I tried I just typed 'infocom' which doesn't produce anything playable for three pages (and then only a single result, in Zplet form). It was less-than-immediately-obvious to me to add 'games'; in fact it didn't even occur to me (I did try adding 'torrents' though). I went with the minimalist search most likely to be typed. By narrowing the search you kind of weakened your counterpoint.

And which location they find first depends entirely on their way in. If they start off already knowing about Infocom then they likely don't need advice as much. If they start off interested in interactive fiction as a concept, and hear the word Infocom bandied about hereabouts and become curious about the history, the discovery path is very different and they are quite likely to ask here. Furthermore, that seems the more likely route nowadays, since where else are people going to get unsolicited mentions of Infocom?

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=30#p13345
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-02-08 22:48:11

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="Laroquod"]... most of the old games aren't commercially valued enough by Activision even to be distributed ...[/quote]

I think that's a little unfair given that the new re-releases of the games started just weeks ago. Activision has recently made some of the titles available commercially again (via an agreement with GOG) and the implication I got from their adcopy was that more titles would be forthcoming via that channel. There's no reason (at least not yet) to assume that GOG won't at some point have (nearly) the entire library available for sale again.[/quote]
No reason to assume they will, either. So far they have only released the few they usually rerelease, when the idea crosses their radar again. Zork I -2 - 3. Planetfall. Hitchhiker's. Yup. The usuals. Those games have been released in the past without signalling any intent to release the whole oeuvre. So I don't expect much more this time, either, and I'll believe it when I see it. I'd be glad to be proven wrong.

[quote="Ghalev"]Furthermore, Activision has made the library available in multiple forms over the years (themed collections in the nineties, then a CD library at the turn of the century).[/quote]
I was aware of that. I purchased the Lost Treasures editions, myself. The nineties are long gone, though. If that's what I'm supposed to give them credit for, it's slim pickings, indeed. The other trademark stuff you mention just doesn't make any difference to me. Trademarks aren't games. *shrug* But I get what you're saying, they haven't been evil or anything. Fair enough. As I say — benign neglect. But it is neglect. The literary culture would [i]never[/i] stand for the legal unavailability of their classic, canonical works. They would do something about it, legally or no. For the most part, they wouldn't think, [i]Oh better not to upset the corporation lest they take away what little we have[/i]. They'd consider another principle to be higher. They would spread the word and make discovery as easy as humanly possible regardless of the legal niceties. Because the culture trumps the legal niceties for them, as I believe it should for us (and you seem to believe it should for some but not us). See Fahrenheit 451 for more. 8)

[quote="Ghalev"]To be clear, I [i]love [/i]the work abandonware sites do at preserving games that would otherwise be lost, and I think it's good and moral to [i]kick copyright laws in the face[/i] when a game (or any other work) is genuinely [i]abandoned [/i] ... but Activision have, demonstrably, not abandoned these games.[/quote]
I can't say I agree. When all the classics are on sale, we can talk. Until then you may trust them but I don't. The great majority of these works (all but the most popular handful) have been off the market for a decade. That speaks volumes compared to your evidence, which consists of… extrapolation? Some vague promises in some ad copy? The promise of what might happen is great but credit should only be accrued by the deed itself. BTW rampant, unabashed, and conspicuously public piracy of the 'lesser' Infocom works would be the best possible way to force the issue, IMO.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1970&start=10#p13346
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: "Golden Hamster 2010" — Russian IF awards
User: yandexx / DateTime: 2011-02-09 02:46:54

And the winner is... [b]Интерстейт [/b]("Interstate") by Cheshire (aka Vyacheslav Dobranov)! (<a class="postlink" href="http://ifwiki.ru/%D0%98%D0%BD%D1%82%D0%B5%D1%80%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%B9%D1%82">http://ifwiki.ru/%D0%98%D0%BD%D1%82%D0% ... 0%B9%D1%82</a>)
The game also got "Best Story" and "Best Setting".

Who knows, maybe an English translation of this excellent game will see the light of day some time in the future.

<a class="postlink" href="http://ynd.stormway.ru/zh2010/">http://ynd.stormway.ru/zh2010/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=30#p13347
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-02-09 04:32:35

[quote]The great majority of these works (all but the most popular handful) have been off the market for a decade.[/quote]

Well, it's true that six years rounds to one decade if we ... round it to the nearest decade. I guess that's something [emote]:)[/emote]

My earlier post already addresses all of your points. Refer to it, or don't, as you like. I also believe you've already made your stance clear, and I have no argument with it so there's no point at all in simply re-stating it. Your opinion is yours to have.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=30#p13348
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-02-09 07:32:51

[quote="Ghalev"][quote]The great majority of these works (all but the most popular handful) have been off the market for a decade.[/quote]

Well, it's true that six years rounds to one decade if we ... round it to the nearest decade. I guess that's something [emote]:)[/emote]

My earlier post already addresses all of your points. Refer to it, or don't, as you like. I also believe you've already made your stance clear, and I have no argument with it so there's no point at all in simply re-stating it. Your opinion is yours to have.[/quote]
If you don't want to discuss it further that's fine. However my points were not reiterations — they were specific responses to your multiple points. You left them unaddressed because you think say you already addressed them, but from where I'm standing, you didn't. Activision's beneficence just has not been nearly as much in evidence as you seem to suggest, and I explained specifically why I think so.

And yes, it has been a full decade since the vast majority of these works were commercially available. Three or four have been rereleased in the interim (as I acknowledged) but they are always the same three or four. There are more than [i]thirty[/i] titles that have been unavailable commercially for actually more than ten years — if you have knowledge to the contrary, you haven't said so. So… that's a fairly serious situation. Nothing you have said has given me any real reason to believe it's going to change. [i]Thirty games.[/i]

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=30#p13349
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-02-09 07:41:04

[quote]If you don't want to discuss it further that's fine.[/quote]

I'm here to discuss it. You're welcome to watch. As I said, I have no argument with your opinion (or anyone's).

[quote]There are more than [i]thirty[/i] titles that have been unavailable legally for ten full years[/quote]

Incorrect. See prior posts.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=30#p13350
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-02-09 07:44:48

[quote="Ghalev"]Incorrect. See prior posts.[/quote]
Can you  quote this prior post to which you refer? Here is [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infocom]the full list of Infocom titles[/url]. There are way more than just the Zorks and Planetfall and Hitchhiker's — those you mentioned are a drop in the bucket.

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=30#p13351
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-02-09 07:46:30

[quote="Laroquod"][quote="Ghalev"]Incorrect. See prior posts.[/quote]
Can you  quote this prior post to which you refer? [/quote]

Yes, and so can you, if you'd bothered to read the thread.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=30#p13352
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-02-09 07:53:18

[quote="Ghalev"]Yes, and so can you, if you'd bothered to read the thread.[/quote]
*sigh* Why must these discussions always acquire a hostility to them? I'm not [i]trying[/i] to get up your nose, dude.

I looked over your discussion with Matt and it seems that you think that as long as something can qualify as having been on some shelf somewhere (like there is some remaindered stock in some back shelf somewhere), it counts as being generally commercially available. I'm just going to have to disagree. I haven't seen a commercial release for ten years. Let's really close this exchange now because it's obvious I am pissing you off and that's not my intention.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=40#p13353
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-02-09 08:01:27

[quote="Laroquod"]*sigh* Why must these discussions always acquire a hostility to them? [/quote]

They needn't, and this one hasn't. I've been as polite as I know how and have responded honestly and factually. I have no argument with your opinion; it's yours to have.

[quote]... it seems that you think ...[/quote]

You misunderstood.

[quote]I haven't seen a commercial release for ten years.[/quote]

I never asserted that you have.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1711&start=10#p13354
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Aurora
User: Mr. Patient / DateTime: 2011-02-09 09:13:47

Any chance that you can provide a solution to the dream sequence?  Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1994&start=0#p13355
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Why does this adjective produce a runtime problem?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-09 09:33:39

[code]A multitude is a kind of backdrop. A multitude has a thing called the specimen.

To decide which object is the collection of (the singleton - a thing):
	Decide on a random multitude that has a specimen of the singleton.
	
Definition: a thing is multitudinous rather than unique if the collection of it is a multitude.

The Quarry is a room. Gravel is a multitude. Gravel is in the Quarry.

A rock is a thing. The specimen of Gravel is a rock.

When play begins:
	say "[The list of multitudinous things] is multitudinous."[/code]
This code produces the following error:
[quote]*** Run-time problem P10: Since yourself is not allowed the property "specimen", it is against the rules to try to use it.


[** Programming error: tried to find the "parent" of nothing **]

[** Programming error: tried to find the "parent" of nothing **]
Nothing is multitudinous.[/quote]

I thought that since my description names "a random multitude" that "yourself" would never be tested. But it seems that it is. Do I have to loop over multitudinous things, or is there a way to make "a random" work here?

Curiously, when I changed "it" to "the item described," I got a different error:

[quote]*** Run-time problem P47 (at paragraph 6 in the source text): Phrase applied to an incompatible kind of value.
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1994&start=0#p13356
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why does this adjective produce a runtime problem?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-02-09 09:59:51

I'm not 100% sure what goes wrong in your code, but the logic is very suspect. You define that a thing X is multitudinous if and only if its collection is a multitude; but also by definition, the collection of X is a random multitude of which X is the specimen. So if X has a collection, X must be multitudinous. But X might have no collection, in which case it is undefined whether X is multitudinous or unique... it makes my head hurt.

Here is some code which achieves what I believe to be your purpose in much cleaner way:

[code]A multitude is a kind of backdrop. 

Specimenship relates various things to one multitude.

The verb to exemplify (he exemplifies, they exemplify, he exemplified, it exemplified, he is exemplifying) implies the specimenship relation.

The Quarry is a room. Gravel is a multitude. Gravel is in the Quarry.

A rock is a thing. The rock exemplifies gravel.


When play begins:
	say "[The list of things which exemplify something] is multitudinous."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1990&start=10#p13357
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Retrospective: Galatea (2000)
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-02-09 10:16:21

[quote="bcressey"][quote="Jacek Pudlo"]I suppose I could present the jury with exhibit A followed by exhibit B and C, only this could easily get tiresome. What I'm going to do instead is offer you a set of keywords you can feed Galatea yourself. Art. Love. Life. Death. Sex. Do any of Galatea's responses strike you as interesting? Did you enjoy the prose? The jerky, stilted diction? The absolute humourlessness?[/quote]

[quote]
> tell galatea about sex
Oh, really.  There are some things that fall outside your job description.
[/quote]

That was worth a chuckle, at least. And asking her about love twice yields a comment about her "pathetic database" which I think is fair to interpret as an authorial intrusion. In the narrator's voice it is a cynical remark; from Short herself it might be construed as a wistful apology. I find that contrast interesting.

It suggests that she is all too aware of the problems you have highlighted, especially in light of a title that cannot fail to suggest hubris to an educated reader. It invites the player to consider whether this constrained and clumsy character might yet deserve to be taken seriously, within the work and in the larger community. Should Galatea the character be condemned because she fails to rise to the ideal of the Pygmalion myth, or can some measure of merit be found amid her flaws?

The story as a whole felt deeply conflicted to me. What artist hasn't felt the desire to create something beautiful, known the despair of falling short? There are no easy solutions or platitudes buried within the work. It offers a space for a like-minded player to interact with the joy and grief of the creative process. That may be all, but it is no mean feat.

I do have to hand it to you, though. Finding fault with a writer and criticizing her story about an art critic who criticizes a sculpture and finds fault with her creator could easily descend into recursive irony, and yet your arguments have been sharp and straightforward. But in this case I think Emily has beaten you to it. If anything you are giving her more credit than she appears to claim.[/quote]

There are certainly plenty of saving clauses in [i]Galatea[/i]. One of the more amusing ones is Galatea announcing that she has the brain of a child. That's an odd thing to say, especially if you happen to have the brain of a child. What is even odder is that she says this with the syntax and vocabulary of an educated adult. Apparently, psychological mimesis was never something the author considered. But if this is not a mimetic work, what is it? It is explicitly based on a myth that takes mimesis to the Sublime, showing us a work of art that not only reflects nature but [i]becomes[/i] nature. "Emily Short" either failed to understand the myth, or hoped that the yokels who play her games would fail to understand it. If the latter is the case, her players have not disappointed her expectations.

[quote="Peter Pears"]But an adult? Doesn't she have a mind of her own? Can't she see for herself what's excess and vulgarity? Isn't she intelligent or emotionally stable enough to take a look at, say, Madoxx's blogs about suicide and realize at once it's not actually a plea to actually commit it?[/quote]

You made my wife laugh and I thank you for that. How odd, by the way, that you should equate excess and vulgarity with suicide. There is nothing inherently vulgar about suicide. Under the right circumstances, self-destruction can be noble and courageous.

You obviously don't mind living in a world pervaded by feminine virtues, where sensitivity is more important than truth, security more precious than courage and where the freedom to destroy your soul is deemed more attractive than the honesty and discipline to cultivate it. This very thread is an apt example of feminine virtues at work. My critique of [i]Galatea[/i] was deemed inappropriate not because my conclusions were untrue, but because they were unsensitive of the author's feelings.

Unlike a certain president who had sex with everyone except his wife, I'm a wifefucker. I fuck my wife and no one but my wife and I'm proud of that. It is a strange world that accepts a philandering president but questions a husband's devotion to his wife.

[quote="Peter Pears"]Actually, I just tried them on, and I thank you for it. It made me really interested in the game. I had only briefly toyed with it, but those responses fleshed out the character in such a way that I'm now compelled to see more. Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean it's crap, you know. Maybe choosing what your family gets to watch and experience makes you believe you're the purveyor of all knowledge, and what you like is law. Well, tough luck. I loved Galatea's responses to those keywords. And since you like dropping names, and since I just know that you're going to start talking about my lack of culture, here's a couple of books I've recently read and loved and cherish: Moby Dick, Jane Eyre, Dicken's The Christmas Books, The Pickwick Papers, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Turn of the Screw, a Sherlock Holmes complete collection and the entire works of Samuel Beckett and Edgar Allan Poe.[/quote]

You can bring a man to the Sistine Chapel, but you can't force him to discern beauty. If you honestly believe that "Emily Short" is the equal of Melville and Beckett, there is nothing I can do for you.

[quote="Juhana"]There's nothing to be won with arguments because these are not his actual opinions. They are carefully crafted just to provoke a response.[/quote]

You've just defined "conversation." Oh, and I'm curious, how [i]do[/i] you know my actual opinions? Do you see them in a crystal ball, or is it just plain old telepathy?

[quote="namekuseijin"]what a lamer...[/quote]

Oscar Wilde reborn!

I'm amused by how many of you find me intimidating.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1993&start=0#p13358
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Errors compiling "Bronze"
User: ChrisNf / DateTime: 2011-02-09 10:31:52

Thanks so much -- problem solved!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1990&start=10#p13359
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Retrospective: Galatea (2000)
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2011-02-09 10:41:16

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]Unlike a certain president who had sex with everyone except his wife, I'm a wifefucker. I fuck my wife and no one but my wife and I'm proud of that.

...
_________________
This is the only Internet forum I allow my wife and daughters to visit. Please show consideration for my family and keep the discussion on a civil level.
[/quote]

are they laughing now too, mormon?  Are you maintaining your virtual wives and kids under drugs?

what a lamer...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1994&start=0#p13360
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why does this adjective produce a runtime problem?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-09 11:23:06

Thanks! That looks good, though it took me a while to sort out the transition from property to relation. I'm not a fan of relation syntax....

It also solves the next problem I was going to ask about, though. I wanted to say:

[code]Understand the specimen property as describing a multitude.[/code]

But that wasn't allowed. Fortunately, this is:

[code]Understand "[something related by reversed specimenship ]" as a multitude.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1990&start=10#p13361
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Retrospective: Galatea (2000)
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-02-09 12:21:17

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]It is explicitly based on a myth that takes mimesis to the Sublime, showing us a work of art that not only reflects nature but [i]becomes[/i] nature.[/quote]

I see. One could look at a more successful retelling of the myth - say, Shelley's [i]Frankenstein[/i] - and conclude that it shows us the same thing, except nature has become debased and cruel. Or Powers' [i]Galatea 2.2[/i], where the bleakness of nature must be hidden behind artifice and obsession to be endured.

I agree that it is difficult to situate Short's [i]Galatea[/i] within that tradition and come away with a sense that she has contributed anything of enduring literary merit. Nature is not sparsely implemented and inconsistent by turns, as her Galatea is. What would that even mean?

However, the myth presupposes that the creator succeeds. Short has very deliberately and explicitly rejected that premise. Whatever her purpose, it is not to retell or subvert the original myth. Arguably her statement is that works of IF cannot truly reflect nature but should try nevertheless. This is not the stuff of timeless poetry or Shakespearean drama but it is relevant, ambitious, and personal in its own right. That is worthwhile and it may be all any artist can achieve nowadays.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1994&start=0#p13362
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why does this adjective produce a runtime problem?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-09 13:11:58

Diagnosing the original error:

[code]
To decide which object is the collection of (the singleton - a thing):
   Decide on a random multitude that has a specimen of the singleton.
[/code]

The "has" here is being interpreted as ownership, not the specimen property. That's why you see the "parent of" error -- it's defining the collection as an object that *contains* the singleton's specimen.

It's possible to select an item by its property, but the relation is a better plan, over all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1995&start=0#p13363
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: What activities are going on?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-09 13:35:40

Is there a debugging tool for finding out what activities are going on? I feel like there must be, but I'm just missing it somehow. It would be so useful for understanding how some of the more complex activities work (like printing room descriptions).

It seems like at least there should be an option for the "rules" command to print the before, for, and after rules of each activity.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1996&start=0#p13364
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: No plural name?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-09 13:42:48

I need to print out the plural name of a thing sometimes for my Multitudes extension. I was surprised to learn that when I invoked the "printing the plural name" activity on my test case, it printed nothing at all. Is that normal behavior? Are things that might be plural always expected to set their own plural name? I'm surprised that a built-in activity like that would print nothing at all, and I wondered if I was doing something wrong...

And if that really is normal behavior, is there some way to check whether something has a printed plural name property so I can fudge it by adding an "s" to the singular name? Why isn't that part of the Standard Library?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1996&start=0#p13365
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: No plural name?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-09 14:05:58

The default behavior of the "printing the plural name activity" is to print the plural of the object's *kind*. ("People", "containers", "supporters", etc.) 

However, it looks like the thing kind does not have "things" defined as its plural. This is a bug, although it probably only comes up in contrived circumstances. For example, if you do

[code]
Ten things are in the Kitchen.
[/code]

You get 

[code]
You can see ten  here.
[/code]

You can work around this by adding

[code]
The printed plural name of a thing is usually "things".
[/code]

However, you presumably want the name of the thing itself, pluralized, rather than the name of its kind. I7 can't do this at runtime.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1990&start=20#p13366
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Retrospective: Galatea (2000)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-02-09 15:19:56

[quote]Under the right circumstances, self-destruction can be noble and courageous.[/quote]

Please, be noble and corageous regarding your whole attitude.

I'm not going to bother feeding you any more, Juhana's perfectly right, but I will briefly reply to this:

[quote]You can bring a man to the Sistine Chapel, but you can't force him to discern beauty. If you honestly believe that "Emily Short" is the equal of Melville and Beckett, there is nothing I can do for you.[/quote]

I do not, and I don't believe anyone does, believe that. However, if we all bash everyone else's efforts for not being equal to the great masters, we would soon have no masters left. What I find in Short's work is quality of writing, and often, a directness and cynicism that I happen to really enjoy. I read what I enjoy. I leave the cathegorization and the nit-picking to the critics, and other people who enjoy destroying art. And while I can't pretend that any of Short's works have gripped me the way Moby Dick has, they've certainly hooked me from the start, amused me, made me think, consider the weight of my actions (as befits IF). I honestly believe that Short is one of the brightest stars in the (thankfully vaster than you'd think) firmament of IF. I also happen to believe that, say, Stephen King is one of the best authors I've read, and comparing him to Poe does nothing to diminish the years of pleasure he gave me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1996&start=0#p13367
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: No plural name?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-09 15:31:19

[quote="zarf"]The default behavior of the "printing the plural name activity" is to print the plural of the object's *kind*. ("People", "containers", "supporters", etc.) 

However, it looks like the thing kind does not have "things" defined as its plural. This is a bug, although it probably only comes up in contrived circumstances.[/quote]

That makes sense. Should I report that?

I can get around this pretty easily:

[code]For printing the plural name of a multitudinous thing when the printed plural name of the item described is empty (this is the default pluralization of specimens rule): say "[item described]s";
[/code]

Overall, I've been very happy with how easy it is to use an adjective to create a "mixin class."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1978&start=10#p13368
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Not-matching an indexed text
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-09 15:38:04

Fair enough.

It turned out that the problem that inspired this question was solved by using an adjective. I don't know how I missed that.

I like that "unless ...., decide yes" phrasing. Is no the default outcome of a to decide whether phrase, or do you need an additional line?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1996&start=0#p13369
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: No plural name?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-02-09 15:51:42

[quote="capmikee"]I can get around this pretty easily:

[code]For printing the plural name of a multitudinous thing when the printed plural name of the item described is empty (this is the default pluralization of specimens rule): say "[item described]s";
[/code][/quote]
English plurals are not quite that reliable. Sometimes you need s, sometimes you need es, sometimes (as with fish) you need neither ... and then of course there are children and oxen. In an actual game, you may be better off making sure that all of your multitudinous things have actual printed plural names, defined in the code.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1990&start=20#p13370
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Retrospective: Galatea (2000)
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-02-09 16:12:05

[quote="George"][quote="Dannii"]Now would be a good time for this topic to be locked/deleted.[/quote][/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1996&start=0#p13371
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: No plural name?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-09 16:18:22

[quote]Should I report that?[/quote]

I reported it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1978&start=10#p13372
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Not-matching an indexed text
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-09 16:19:10

"No" is the default outcome.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1996&start=0#p13373
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: No plural name?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-09 16:25:28

[quote="Jim Aikin"]English plurals are not quite that reliable. Sometimes you need s, sometimes you need es, sometimes (as with fish) you need neither ... and then of course there are children and oxen. In an actual game, you may be better off making sure that all of your multitudinous things have actual printed plural names, defined in the code.

--JA[/quote]
Of course, and I will say so in the extension documentation. I don't expect many games to have more than a handful of multitude/specimen pairs, so it should never get unmanageable. I've also made it easy to override without writing your own printing the plural name rule - it still recognizes the printed plural name property.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1990&start=20#p13374
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Retrospective: Galatea (2000)
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-02-09 17:00:22

If you have a problem with a thread you can choose not to read it, or report a specific message if it's too far over the top. The thread you are quoting from has not actually been locked, which may suggest the futility of a more indirect appeal.

It's Merk's board and he makes the rules. What I find disheartening is that there is absolutely no tradition here of locking threads or banning posters, yet you'd never know that from some of the replies. If you want a different style of moderation, feel free to request that in the Feedback forum.

Jacek is obviously posturing but he is also promoting a discussion of one of the seminal works in IF. At least one poster has admitted to a renewed interest in [i]Galatea[/i] based on his review. Whether or not his remarks are flattering or offensive to the author, at the very least they are not direct personal attacks on her in an unrelated thread.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1990&start=20#p13375
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Retrospective: Galatea (2000)
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-02-09 17:08:47

[quote="Peter Pears"]... to the critics, and other people who enjoy destroying art.[/quote]

QFT.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=0#p13376
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Glk time and date functions
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-09 19:01:52

I've implemented my planned date-and-time functions in C and Javascript, so I'm satisfied that they're possible. :)

The spec for these functions is visible at <a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/erkyrath/glk-dev/wiki/Glk-072-draft-spec-changes">https://github.com/erkyrath/glk-dev/wik ... ec-changes</a>

(I've added some details since I first posted them.)

The only possibly annoying corner is Daylight Saving Time. (It always is.) To make the local-time back-and-forth conversions work sanely (converting a date-and-time to a timestamp and back), I wrote that the library should try to guess whether DST is in effect. This is what Javascript's Date class does, and it's what libc's mktime() function does if you set tm_isdst to -1. But you can't be sure that it will guess right. This is something that people put up with, as far as I can tell.

There is no explicit function to determine your current time zone. But you can work it out converting the current timestamp to a local date, converting it back as UTC, and then comparing. (There's some test code to do this: <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/datetimetest.inf">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/datetimetest.inf</a> )

If anybody has any further questions, now is the time to raise them...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=40#p13377
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-09 19:08:39

[quote]There are more than thirty titles that have been unavailable commercially for actually more than ten years[/quote]

The games were available on Gametap in the 2007-2008 era. I believe it was all of the Masterpieces titles (that is, excluding HHGG and Shogun).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1984&start=0#p13378
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compass and nautical directions
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-02-09 20:25:52

I want to be able to toggle them so that only one type of directions is active at a time.  With the above syntax, there seems to be no way to prevent you from using nautical directions when compass directions are active.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1984&start=0#p13379
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compass and nautical directions
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-09 21:08:45

Here's one way to do it using Emily's syntax:

[code]A direction can be compass, nautical, or positional (this is its category property). A direction is usually compass.

A direction has a direction called the counterpart.

Fore is a direction. The opposite is aft. The counterpart is north.
Aft is a direction. The opposite is fore. The counterpart is south.
Port is a direction. The opposite is starboard. The counterpart is west.
Starboard is a direction. The opposite is port. The counterpart is east.

Fore, aft, port, and starboard are nautical.

Up is positional. [A bug in Inform prevents assigning all four at once.]
Down is positional.
Inside is positional.
Outside is positional.

Compass mode is a truth state variable. Compass mode is false.

Setting action variables for an actor going a compass direction when compass mode is true:
	change the noun to the counterpart of the noun.
	
Setting action variables for the player going a compass direction when compass mode is false:
	change the noun to nothing.
	
Instead of going when the noun is nothing and compass mode is false:
	say "You're shipboard now, lubber. You'll use fore, aft, port, and starboard or you'll walk the plank."[/code]

You'd also want to add some rules for the opposite situation; i.e., when the player types a nautical direction while compass mode is true.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=0#p13380
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: nitfol / DateTime: 2011-02-09 21:14:39

[quote]This allows the glktimeval_t to store a reasonable range of values in the future and past[/quote]

If you're considering allowing the use of past values, you might specify whether weird things are to be expected in 1752 (or another year, depending on locale).


Did you consider adding 64-bit add/subtract/multiply/divide instructions to glulx instead of the "simple" half of the time functions?

add64 L1 L2 L3 L4 S1 S2
adds the 64-bit number represented by ((L1 << 32) | L2) to ((L3 << 32) | L4) and stores into S1 and S2

sub64 L1 L2 L3 L4 S1 S2
subtracts the 64-bit number represented by ((L3 << 32) | L4) from ((L1 << 32) | L2) and stores into S1 and S2

mul64 L1 L2 L3 L4 S1 S2
multiplies the signed 64-bit number represented by ((L1 << 32) | L2) by ((L3 << 32) | L4) and stores into S1 and S2

div64 L1 L2 L3 L4 S1 S2
divides the signed 64-bit number represented by ((L1 << 32) | L2) by ((L3 << 32) | L4) and stores into S1 and S2


[quote]If the time cannot be represented by the platform's time library, this may return -1 for the seconds value (high_sec and low_sec both $FFFFFFFF).[/quote]

I assume 0 should be returned for the microseconds.  For the second time this sentence appears (for the "simple" case), some clarification is needed.  Does it store -1 in both seconds fields and then divide?  So if my factor is 60, it returns 0x44444444?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1998&start=0#p13381
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7 - Desc using if containing two possible values
User: Redux / DateTime: 2011-02-09 21:26:18

Hey folks, got a bit of a problem here.

The idea is simple enough, there is a light swinging back and forth and depending on the position of the light the description of the thing "underneath it" changes.

Half way through one side of the arc of the swinging light is an item, so it stands to reason that the item is lit twice  by the swinging lamp (see diagram). Each turn the lamp moves one "step" further in its arc, changing a variable tied to the player simply called PuzzleNumber. A complete arc (point A and back to A) takes 6 turns, then PuzzleNumber is reset to 1. 

Diagram:
Arc of lamp illustrated using the PuzzleNumber corresponding to each section of the arc (Item placed at point 1&3)

(2) ------ (1 & 3) ------ (4 & 6) ------ (5)


Here is what I have written:

[code]A large wine cask with a torn off label is scenery in the Cargo Hold. "[if the PuzzleNumber of the player is not 1 or 3]You can only see the faint outline of the wine cask in the dark[else]The large wine cask has been secured with ropes, preventing it from moving. The label of the cask has been torn off and you cannot see what is written on the piece still stuck to the cask from your current position[end if]."[/code]

Inform 7 tells me " I was expecting that 'PuzzleNumber of the player is not 1 or if the PuzzleNumber of the player is not 3' would be a condition. It didn't make sense as one long phrase, but because it was divided up by 'and'/'or', I tried breaking it down into smaller conditions, but that didn't work either. 'PuzzleNumber of the player is not 1' was okay; 'if the PuzzleNumber of the player is not 3' did not make sense; so I ran out of ideas."

Do I have to write a separate if statement for each of the possible numbers of the variable? I just want to make some compact code, when I get a long list of if statements it just gets chaotic (especially as I cannot comment inside quotation marks to note what each if corresponds to). It works perfectly when I simply give one value for the PuzzleNumber in the if statement. 

Thank you in advance for any help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1998&start=0#p13382
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 - Desc using if containing two possible values
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-09 21:43:30

I haven't checked this, but try "If the puzzlenumber of the player is not 1 and the puzzlenumber of the player is not 3." This is a bit tricky, since a lot of the syntaxes that would be natural in English don't work, but I think "If [whole sentence] and [whole sentence]" usually works.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1954&start=20#p13383
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 newbie question
User: Arag-e / DateTime: 2011-02-09 22:15:43

Before anything, thanks for the input. I managed to rework the whole thing to act via Methods to fit proper practice and trigger/stop daemons when appropriate.

Now I have an embarrassingly simple issue. I’ve seen in a lot of games that rooms give a long description the first time you see them (On game startup or first time entering), and either a shorter or no description when you enter them again, unless you use the ‘look’ command. 

Now, I know how to use the roomFirstDesc to cause the first scenario (Long description first time, short description every other time) by simply setting a roomFirstDesc and a shorter Desc properties, but by the life of me I can’t figure how to make it so that the game shows a long description the first time and no description every time after unless I use ‘Look’. Setting roomFirstDesc does what I want but makes ‘look’ return blank, which I definitely do not want, and if set, the Desc string ALWAYS shows up whenever I re-enter the room. I was thinking about overrinding Actor.lookAround(), but this behavior is so common that I can't help but feel there's a simpler way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=0#p13384
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-09 23:18:08

I thought about 64-bit values but, as with floats last year, the prospect hurt too much to be worthwhile. The time calculations in my test code only required subtraction of timevals, which is easy enough without 64-bit support in the VM.

[quote]I assume 0 should be returned for the microseconds.[/quote]

The value for microseconds is undefined in the error case.

[quote]For the second time this sentence appears (for the "simple" case), some clarification is needed. Does it store -1 in both seconds fields and then divide? So if my factor is 60, it returns 0x44444444?[/quote]

Sorry, that's another cut-paste error. For the simple case, it should read: "If the time cannot be represented by the platform's time library, this may return -1." (This is easy to arrange: -1 divided by any positive factor, rounded towards negative infinity, is -1.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1999&start=0#p13385
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Approaches and Distant Scenery
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-02-09 23:21:49

Here's a nice little conundrum. I'm using Approaches by Emily Short, which is a neat extension that lets the player 'go to village' (for instance) if the player has previously visited the village. But my setting is outdoors, so certain landmarks (such as the village, which is both distant scenery and the name of the room you can visit) can be seen at a distance. The idea of distantness is from Jon Ingold's Far Away extension.

If the player can see the distant village, but hasn't yet been there, I get this output:

> go to village
That noun did not make sense in this context.

Ah, but it did make sense. What doesn't make sense in this context is the parser's reply!

I don't particularly want the player to be able to bypass normal navigational commands and 'go to village' automatically when she hasn't been there yet. What I want is a better response -- perhaps something like this:

> go to village
What a good idea!

The trouble is, in order to implement this output as an instead rule on the distant scenery object, I have to define an action (perhaps called destinationing) that can handle "go to [something distant]". But if I do that, the functionality of Approaches is derailed, because my new destinationing action runs instead of Emily's approaching action.

I don't know if I'm explaining this well. Has anybody else used both Approaches and Far Away? If so, how did you handle approaching distant things that haven't yet been visited? I guess it would work if the distant thing weren't a room -- if it were an obelisk, say -- but in the case of a distant village, that idea isn't going to help.

Thanks for any tips or ideas.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1984&start=0#p13386
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compass and nautical directions
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-02-09 23:37:01

With that code, there still doesn't seem to be any way to write a rule preventing you from using [i]nautical[/i] directions when the mode is set to [i]compass.[/i]  You can't just do the same thing in reverse because the "instead" statement will trigger for both sets of directions when it's in compass mode.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1954&start=20#p13387
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 newbie question
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-02-09 23:51:42

I believe you can set the mode to brief in your ... uh, my T3 is really, really rusty. In GameMainDef??? Whatever that function is where you put the intro. T3 is set to verbose by default. But this is a player-controlled variable.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1711&start=10#p13388
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Aurora
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-02-10 00:04:33

I'm actually going to post version 5 in a little bit, and it doesn't have the third dream puzzle.  It's the worst puzzle ever and I hate it with a passion.  (But the flow of the dream sequence feels wrong without it, so there you have it.)

It will also have optional compass directions and generally be cleaner and nicer looking (and, alas, poor Dr Liang is gone).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1999&start=0#p13389
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Approaches and Distant Scenery
User: George / DateTime: 2011-02-10 01:59:59

Is there a funny bug in the latest Inform? I get this when including Far Away, 

[quote]
Problem. The sentence 'Distant objects is an object-based rulebook'   seems to be telling me that two descriptions, one a form of object and the other of rulebook, are the same. That's a little puzzling - like saying that 'An open door is a container.' [/quote]

Anyway, what about this:

[code]
"Far Away Approaches"

Include Far Away by Jon Ingold. 
Include Approaches by Emily Short.

Field is north of the Bridge. 
Bridge is north of the Village. 

village-set is a privately-named distant backdrop with description "A village. " and printed name "the village". It is everywhere. Understand "village" as village-set.

Instead of examining village-set when the location is Village, say "You're here.".

Understand "go to [any distant object]" as approaching. 

Instead of approaching when the noun is unvisited, say "What a good idea! ". 

test me with "go to village / s / s / n / n / go to village".
[/code]

[quote]
Far Away Approaches
An Interactive Fiction
Release 1 / Serial number 110209 / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N) SD

Field

>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] go to village
(the village)
What a good idea! 
>[2] s

Bridge

>[3] s

Village

>[4] n

Bridge

>[5] n

Field

>[6] go to village
You go south to the bridge and south again to the village. 

Village

>
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1711&start=10#p13390
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Aurora
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-02-10 02:30:42

[quote]It's the worst puzzle ever and I hate it with a passion. (But the flow of the dream sequence feels wrong without it, so there you have it.)[/quote]

You know, I don't even know what puzzle you're talking about, but I'm already sorry that you have to sacrifice the flow of a sequence because of a puzzle. Before scratching the puzzle, did you try hinting often and heavily? If you don't like a puzzle but feel it's good for the flow of the thing, you can always dampen its effect as a puzzle by clueing and clueing, even if it looks like the puzzle is solving itself. It's a compromise.

As for the rest, glad to hear that compass movement is coming in. [emote]:)[/emote] And glad to know that the game is generally nicer. I'm generally waiting for it so I can generally sink my teeth into it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2000&start=0#p13391
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Trying to work out what's built-in about built-in extensions
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-02-10 07:03:06

Hi. I'm trying to understand what it means for an extension to be 'built-in' to I7.

Built-in extensions appear grayed out in the Open Extensions menu, until you ask them to be installed. What is the significance of installing them? I get it for downloaded extensions, but not for built-in ones.

Do you get any functionality from built-ins  unless you specifically tell your game to 'include (such and such)'? Do you have to install them first? What are they actually built into?

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2000&start=0#p13392
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trying to work out what's built-in about built-in extens
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-02-10 08:03:29

"Built-in" means that the extension comes with the default Inform installation, as opposed to other extensions you have to download separately. There is no other difference.

That the IDE offers to install the built-in extensions is a bug, I think. There's no need to install them separately. Being grayed out just means that they are built-in extensions, you can still use them out of the box by just including them into your project.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2000&start=0#p13393
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trying to work out what's built-in about built-in extens
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-02-10 08:30:45

Thanks much, that cleared me up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1990&start=20#p13394
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Retrospective: Galatea (2000)
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-02-10 08:34:23

[quote="bcressey"]And asking her about love twice yields a comment about her "pathetic database" which I think is fair to interpret as an authorial intrusion. In the narrator's voice it is a cynical remark; from Short herself it might be construed as a wistful apology.[/quote]

Please note that "Emily Short" is being apologetic for the technical limitations of the medium, not her artistic contribution to it. It is a trivially conceded fact that all conversational IF is bound to have pathetic conversational databases for the simple reason that an adequate conversational database would never fit inside any available IF format. The problem with [i]Galatea[/i] is not that its topics are too few, but that Galatea's responses to the extant topics are poorly written. The author is trying to preemptively misdirect criticism by pointing it at the medium and away from her authorial responsibility.

Now that you've mentioned the meta-apologies, I vaguely remember that the original version of the game did not have quite as many.

[quote="bcressey"]At least one poster has admitted to a renewed interest in [i]Galatea[/i] based on his review.[/quote]

If that is the case, then I have failed didactically. I certainly do not recommend that anyone have interactive intercourse with this ugly little scriptoid. I realise that many of the people who play [i]Galatea[/i] nowadays do so solely to spite me. But that is a minor issue compared with the issue of anthologising [i]Galatea[/i]. It is a dismal experience to see this game mentioned in virtually every must-play list and touted as the flagship of IF. I can think of no worse disservice to newbies than telling them that this clunky old stone brain is the best IF has to offer.

[quote="bcressey"]I agree that it is difficult to situate Short's Galatea within that tradition and come away with a sense that she has contributed anything of enduring literary merit. Nature is not sparsely implemented and inconsistent by turns, as her Galatea is. What would that even mean?

However, the myth presupposes that the creator succeeds. Short has very deliberately and explicitly rejected that premise. Whatever her purpose, it is not to retell or subvert the original myth. Arguably her statement is that works of IF cannot truly reflect nature but should try nevertheless. This is not the stuff of timeless poetry or Shakespearean drama but it is relevant, ambitious, and personal in its own right. That is worthwhile and it may be all any artist can achieve nowadays.[/quote]

I agree that although [i]Galatea[/i] is thoroughly bad IF, it is nevertheless not to be confounded with the riffraff of thoroughly bad IF. Its concept alone is so original, it has singlehandedly given birth to a new IF genre: the conversational game. And yet despite the originality of its concept, I do not think it is possible for a person of culture to play it without a lively irritation of their intelligence. To state that its execution does not live up to its concept is only the first step in a constructive criticism. The next step is to direct our attention at the prose, and not, as the author is implying, at the limitations of the medium. The third step is to identify the primary problem as the aesthetics of the character, not the mechanics of the game. The fourth step is to point at each and every instance of poorly written prose. This would be excruciatingly tedious, so I will leave it to the discerning player. Instead I'd like to address two issues. When I said that "Emily Short" had given birth to a new IF genre, what I should have added is that the child was stillborn. Now, more than a decade after [i]Galatea[/i]'s release, there are only three conversationalist games in existence, two authored by the woman in question, the third by a gentleman who goes by the name of James Mitchelhill. I am of course speaking of the infamous [i]Kallisti[/i], an insanely crude and funny caricature of [i]Galatea[/i] that made our resident Virginia Woolf wannabe fly off on one of her more amusing and hypocritical tantrums. Is the paucity of this genre due to limitations of the medium, or has the incompetence of [i]Galatea[/i] and [i]Best of Three[/i] and the crudeness of [i]Kallisti[/i] spoiled our appetite for scripted conversation?

The second issue I'd like to raise is of some interest to those IF authors who have literary ambitions. It concerns the directionlessness of [i]Galatea[/i]. Galatea's demeanor, the way she initially refuses to face the PC during conversation, her evasivenes and flippancy, all these things imply a grievance, and direct the player to explore the source of this implied grievance. But other than the fact of inhabiting the imagination of someone like "Emily Short," Galatea's has no valid grievance. She has no personality, no past, no agenda. She is not a character forged within the mimetic tradition (which is what the myth implies) but rather a crude manipulable object the player is supposed to push and shove into one the 70 endings. This directionlessness and consequent misdirection of the player is not a problem in a game like [i]The Mulldoon Legacy[/i], where the story and characters are mere vehicles for the puzzles. It is, however, a game-breaking hurdle in a game with literary ambitions, like [i]Galatea[/i].

[quote="namekuseijin"][quote="Jacek Pudlo"]Unlike a certain president who had sex with everyone except his wife, I'm a wifefucker. I fuck my wife and no one but my wife and I'm proud of that.[/quote]

are they laughing now too, mormon?  Are you maintaining your virtual wifes and kids under drugs?[/quote]

Had you read the two sentences you quoted with comprehension, you'd have noticed that their very gist is that I am [i]not[/i] a bigamist. I appreciate your passion, but I implore you to infuse it with intelligence. Oh, and accidentally, the plural of "wife" is "wives."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2000&start=0#p13395
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trying to work out what's built-in about built-in extens
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-10 09:30:32

[quote="Juhana"]That the IDE offers to install the built-in extensions is a bug, I think. There's no need to install them separately. Being grayed out just means that they are built-in extensions, you can still use them out of the box by just including them into your project.[/quote]

I don't think it's a bug, precisely--just the wrong terminology. When you "install" a built-in extension in that way, you create a new copy in the user extensions folder (as opposed to the built-in extensions folder). The copy in the user extensions folder will be used before the copy in the built-in folder. It's a handy shortcut if you need to hack up your own version of one of the built-in extensions.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1984&start=0#p13396
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compass and nautical directions
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-10 09:32:08

Sure you can:
[code]
Instead of going nothing when compass mode is true:
    say "You're on land now, friend, so that direction doesn't make any sense. Use compass directions."[/code]

That said, I had some of the original logic backward (should have tested it!) Here's (what seems to be) a fully working version:

[code]A direction can be compass, nautical, or positional (this is its category property). A direction is usually compass.

A direction has a direction called the counterpart.

Fore is a direction. The opposite is aft.
Aft is a direction. The opposite is fore.
Port is a direction. The opposite is starboard.
Starboard is a direction. The opposite is port.

Fore, aft, port, and starboard are nautical.

The counterpart of north is fore.
The counterpart of south is aft.
The counterpart of east is starboard.
The counterpart of west is port.

Up is positional. [A bug in Inform prevents assigning all four at once.]
Down is positional.
Inside is positional.
Outside is positional.

Compass mode is a truth state variable. Compass mode is false.

Setting action variables for an actor going a compass direction when compass mode is true:
   change the noun to the counterpart of the noun.

Setting action variables for the player going a nautical direction when compass mode is true:
   change the noun to nothing.
   
Instead of going a compass direction when compass mode is false:
   say "You're shipboard now, lubber. You'll use fore, aft, port, and starboard or you'll walk the plank."

Instead of going nothing when compass mode is true:
   say "You're on land now, friend, so that direction doesn't make any sense. Use compass directions."[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1998&start=0#p13397
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 - Desc using if containing two possible values
User: Redux / DateTime: 2011-02-10 10:53:35

[quote="matt w"]I haven't checked this, but try "If the puzzlenumber of the player is not 1 and the puzzlenumber of the player is not 3." This is a bit tricky, since a lot of the syntaxes that would be natural in English don't work, but I think "If [whole sentence] and [whole sentence]" usually works.[/quote]

And tricked by the Pod-Person programing language of inform yet again, that works like a charm. Thank you so much. Was tearing my hair out having to maintain several different if statements with the same text.  [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1998&start=0#p13398
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 - Desc using if containing two possible values
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-10 11:08:49

Glad I could help!

What confuses/intrigues me is the error message you got -- it looks like the I7 compiler is trying to turn "if the PuzzleNumber of the player is not 1 or 3" into "if PuzzleNumber of the player is not 1 or if the PuzzleNumber of the player is not 3." Can any more knowledgeable folk explain what's happening there?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1999&start=0#p13399
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Approaches and Distant Scenery
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-02-10 11:28:23

Thanks! That seems to work perfectly.

And yeah, I had forgotten about the problem with Far Away, because I fixed it in my copy. Hyphens have to be added in a few places, because "object" is now a reserved word, or something like that.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1995&start=0#p13400
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What activities are going on?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-10 11:44:05

There isn't, but you can use i6t template section replacement to re-include the Activity I6 code with some extra prints statements included.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1978&start=10#p13401
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Not-matching an indexed text
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-10 11:48:27

[quote="capmikee"]Is no the default outcome of a to decide whether phrase, or do you need an additional line?[/quote] That was added a just few builds ago, for type safety. If a Decide phrase ends without returning anything, it returns [i]the default value of[/i] whatever the return type is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=0#p13402
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: English language questions
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-02-10 13:13:15

[code]The astral influences are Mercurial, Jovian, Lunar, Martian and Venerean.[/code]
Great words, all of them -- except I'm not sure how much the word "Venerean" makes native speakers of English think of "venereal", as in "venereal disease"? That would be unfortunate, so please chime in. [emote]:)[/emote]

(Apparently, I have "Cytherean" as a backup option. "Venusian" is too ugly.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1998&start=0#p13403
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 - Desc using if containing two possible values
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-02-10 13:19:59

Hm, I get a very different (and much more expected) error. Code:
[code]Cargo Hold is a room.

A person has a number called the PuzzleNumber. The PuzzleNumber of a person is usually 1.

Every turn:
	increase the PuzzleNumber of the player by 1;
	if PuzzleNumber of the player is 7:
		now PuzzleNumber of the player is 1.

A large wine cask is scenery in the Cargo Hold. "[if the PuzzleNumber of the player is not 1 or 3]You can only see the faint outline of the wine cask in the dark[else]The large wine cask has been secured with ropes, preventing it from moving. The label of the cask has been torn off and you cannot see what is written on the piece still stuck to the cask from your current position[end if]."[/code]
Error:
[quote]In the sentence '"[if the PuzzleNumber of the player [...] rom your current position[end if]."'  , I was expecting that 'PuzzleNumber of the player is not 1 or 3' would be a condition. It didn't make sense as one long phrase, but because it was divided up by 'and'/'or', I tried breaking it down into smaller conditions, but that didn't work either. 'PuzzleNumber of the player is not 1' was okay; '3' only made sense as a value, which can't be used as a condition; so I ran out of ideas.[/quote]
I really don't understand how Redux could have gotten that particular error message?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=0#p13404
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-02-10 13:38:52

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][code]The astral influences are Mercurial, Jovian, Lunar, Martian and Venerean.[/code]
Great words, all of them -- except I'm not sure how much the word "Venerean" makes native speakers of English think of "venereal", as in "venereal disease"? That would be unfortunate, so please chime in. [emote]:)[/emote]

(Apparently, I have "Cytherean" as a backup option. "Venusian" is too ugly.)[/quote]

I'm not a native speaker, but my English Sprachgefühl is immaculate.

You might as well argue that "Jovian" befuddles the semi-literate who in their ignorance confuse it with "jovial." Unless you write for idiots (but why would you?), there is nothing wrong with "Venerean."

Also, there is nothing ugly about "Venusian."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1998&start=0#p13405
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 - Desc using if containing two possible values
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-10 13:40:03

Well, one possibility is that s/he tried "if PuzzleNumber of the player is not 1 or if the PuzzleNumber of the player is not 3," which would also be natural in English, and accidentally pasted in the error message for that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=0#p13406
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-10 13:41:50

Go for "Cytherean" -- "Venerean" definitely makes me think of "venereal" (and of course they're basically the same word), and if I wanted to say "of or pertaining to Venus" then I would definitely use "Venusian."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=0#p13407
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-02-10 13:46:03

[quote="matt w"]Go for "Cytherean" -- "Venerean" definitely makes me think of "venereal" [/quote]

I suppose "Lunar" makes you think of lunacy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=0#p13408
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-02-10 13:59:19

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][code]The astral influences are Mercurial, Jovian, Lunar, Martian and Venerean.[/code]
Great words, all of them -- except I'm not sure how much the word "Venerean" makes native speakers of English think of "venereal", as in "venereal disease"? That would be unfortunate, so please chime in. [emote]:)[/emote]

(Apparently, I have "Cytherean" as a backup option. "Venusian" is too ugly.)[/quote]

Not being a native speaker, can I still chime in? "Venerean" alone might make me think of "venereal", but in the context you present it, Venus is all that comes to mind. "Cytherean" sounds slightly more mystical. Dunno if that's a good thing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=0#p13409
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-10 13:59:39

"Venerean" makes that part of my brain jump straight to venereal.  It would probably be something I could lose after reading it enough, but if you want to avoid that response completely, I think Cytherean is a better choice.  (Although, I have a good sense of what the others relate to - I had to look up the Cytherea reference.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1954&start=20#p13410
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 newbie question
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-02-10 14:02:18

[quote="Arag-e"]Now, I know how to use the roomFirstDesc to cause the first scenario (Long description first time, short description every other time) by simply setting a roomFirstDesc and a shorter Desc properties, but by the life of me I can’t figure how to make it so that the game shows a long description the first time and no description every time after unless I use ‘Look’. Setting roomFirstDesc does what I want but makes ‘look’ return blank, which I definitely do not want, and if set, the Desc string ALWAYS shows up whenever I re-enter the room. I was thinking about overrinding Actor.lookAround(), but this behavior is so common that I can't help but feel there's a simpler way.[/quote]
As Jim mentioned, this is up to the player. If the player wants a full description only on first visit, he uses the BRIEF command. To switch back, the VERBOSE command is used.

To switch the default in your game, simply set the gameMain.verboseMode.isOn property to nil for "brief" mode. Setting it to true will switch back to "verbose" mode.

Do not use roomFirstDesc for this purpose. This member* is intended to be used for cases where you want a different description the first time the PC enters the room and the normal description for subsequent visits.

(* The term "member" is a generic way to refer to both properties as well as methods. roomFirstDesc can be either one.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=0#p13411
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-02-10 14:07:02

Echoing what the others said about "venerean." I will say that "martian" also got a chuckle, to my embarrassment.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=0#p13412
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-10 14:07:18

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"][quote="matt w"]Go for "Cytherean" -- "Venerean" definitely makes me think of "venereal" [/quote]

I suppose "Lunar" makes you think of lunacy.[/quote]

Nope!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=0#p13413
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-10 14:09:26

Hm, it looks like "Cytherean" may have [url=http://www.google.com/search?q=Cytherea&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a]its own problems[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=0#p13414
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-02-10 14:21:20

[quote="matt w"]Hm, it looks like "Cytherean" may have [url=http://www.google.com/search?q=Cytherea&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a]its own problems[/url].[/quote]
I think I can live with that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=10#p13415
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-10 15:00:58

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="matt w"]Hm, it looks like "Cytherean" may have [url=http://www.google.com/search?q=Cytherea&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a]its own problems[/url].[/quote]
I think I can live with that.[/quote]

Yes, it was just a surprise what happened when I left the "n" off my search for "Cytherean." Never know what'll happen on the internet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=10#p13416
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-02-10 15:15:38

I also immediately thought "venereal," and then "why isn't he just using 'Venusian'?"  I am pretty sure "Venusian" is as standard in [at least American] English as "Martian" is.  It doesn't sound particularly ugly to me, though it sort of reminds me of "venetian." (For data-collection purposes: I speak American English as my first language.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=10#p13417
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-02-10 15:26:57

Ok, I'll also consider Venusian, since I'm the only person who thinks it's ugly. [emote]:)[/emote] Thanks for all your comments!

(By the way, I have give the topic a generic title, so anyone else should feel free to make use of it.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=10#p13418
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-10 15:33:27

I've never been a fan of Venusian, to be honest.  I think it's related to the "eus" sound - I also don't like chartreuse or masseuse.

Edit: But Venusian is used in standard American English.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2002&start=0#p13419
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Multitudes Beta!
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-10 16:06:01

Here for your edifitainment is the first release of Multitudes, an extension that "Provides a kind of backdrop representing a collection of objects, such as gravel or a crowd of people, that may spread across many rooms."

<a class="postlink" href="http://eyeballsun.org/i/Multitudes.i7x">http://eyeballsun.org/i/Multitudes.i7x</a>

Please have a look at it, see if you can break it, let me know if you have suggestions or if you might find it useful sometime, etc.

There is one example right now. I'm thinking of adding a more advanced one with heaps of pastries and swarming cockroaches.

Thanks in advance!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1999&start=0#p13420
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Approaches and Distant Scenery
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-10 16:16:14

I've seen that "noun didn't make sense in that context" error a lot. It's never what you want, is it? - it's almost always a sign of a bug, or at least a breakdown of communication between the parser rules and the action rules. You might as well print out a run-time problem every time it happens. Argh!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=10#p13421
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-10 18:07:43

Venusian does make me think a little bit of off-brand science fiction; they couldn't even afford Martians? It's the way to go if you want to communicate to an American English speaker that you are talking about the planet Venus, but if that's not important then Cytherean does sound more euphonious to me. I don't think many people will recognize it as related to Venus, though; apparently it was introduced because "Venerean" reminded people of "venereal," and "Venusian" sounded ugly (and was a pseudo-Latin hybrid).

(I also am a native speaker of American English.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=10#p13422
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-10 18:40:46

Ditto the off-brand SF comment, though it [i]is[/i] the clearest of all.  But I was [i]not[/i] reminded of VD by venerean.  Cytherean sounds neat but I wouldn't have known what it was, even placed with the other planets.  "Mercury, Jupiter, Mars and... Cyprus?"   Since it looks like I'd have to learn a new word anyway, you could always take back venerean from the tyranny of Health & Human Body high school classes.

(OT: I'm pretty sure the personality descriptors mercurial, jovial, and lunacy/looney all really are rooted in the planet names by some pathway or other.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=10#p13423
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-10 19:25:23

[quote="Ron Newcomb"](OT: I'm pretty sure the personality descriptors mercurial, jovial, and lunacy/looney all really are rooted in the planet names by some pathway or other.)[/quote]

Absolutely, and "martial" too. (Not to mention "saturnine.") Maybe some of these come from the god rather than the celestial body.

Just to be clear, my recommendation is to use "Venusian" if it's important that the player be able to make the connection to the planet Venus, and "Cytherean" if not.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1979&start=0#p13424
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Kayleth — now in English and Russian!
User: George / DateTime: 2011-02-10 19:25:55

I think I'm in the same fix as gravel -- I have no idea how to get past the first puzzle, and I think I've tried literally everything. Unless you have to do actions in a certain order, but [spoiler]none of the actions seem to affect the game state at all?[/spoiler].

Kayleth visuals are awesome. Instead itself seems pretty cool, except for some minor things -- middle mouse button scroll doesn't work, and it'd be cool to be able to hit space to advance pages rather than clicking 'next'.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1976&start=0#p13425
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Action - Hunting
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-10 21:53:03

I've thought about including hunting in a game, but I have to say I haven't come up with very much.

I would like share my inspirations, though, maybe they'll give you some ideas:

"The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan - there's a very interesting discussion of the hunter's state of mind. It made me think that there might be something you could do in the game to increase your focus and improve your chance of success.

"Born to Run" by Chris McDougall - He describes how to succeed at "persistence hunting" - literally running an animal to death. He says it's tricky and takes teamwork - you have to keep the animal separated from the herd.

If hunting isn't the main focus of the game, keeping it simple sounds like a good idea. You didn't give much information about the rest of the game, but I would imagine that it would make a big difference on what sort of implementation would fit in.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1999&start=0#p13426
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Approaches and Distant Scenery
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-10 22:29:38

I find it a lot when I'm missing catches for unexpected grammar.  I try to fix it internally when possible, and then catch as much as possible with individual rules for printing errors.  But it's not an error you ever want the player to see.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1976&start=0#p13427
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Action - Hunting
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-10 22:35:26

Thanks, capmikee.  I'll add those to the pot.  I've been doing a fair amount with physical states, but hadn't considered emotional ones.  Is Born to Run the book by the guy who went down to Mexico to run down deer with the native tribes there?  I think I read that one years ago.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1984&start=10#p13428
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compass and nautical directions
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-02-10 23:33:51

This is strange.  My code is almost identical to yours, but it won't let you use either type of directions on compass mode.

[code]Navigation type is some text that varies.  Navigation Type is "nautical".

A direction can be nautical, compass, or universal.  A direction is usually universal.  Port, starboard, fore, and aft are nautical.  North, south, east, west, northwest, southwest, northeast, and southeast are compass.

Switching navigation is an action applying to nothing.
Understand "switch navigation" or "switch navigation type" or "change navigation" or "change navigation type" as switching navigation.
Carry out switching navigation:
	if navigation type is "nautical":
		now navigation type is "compass";
	otherwise:
		now navigation type is "nautical".
Report switching navigation:
	say "[italic type]You are now using [navigation type] directions.[roman type][paragraph break]"
  
Instead of going when the noun is nothing and the navigation type is "compass":
	say "[italic type]You are using compass directions.  Type 'switch navigation' to switch to nautical directions.[roman type][paragraph break]".
	
Instead of going a compass direction when the navigation type is "nautical":
	say "[italic type]You are using nautical directions.  Type 'switch navigation' to switch to compass directions.[stopping][roman type][paragraph break]".
  
The starboard is a direction. The starboard has opposite port. Understand "s" or "sb" or "st" as starboard. 
The port is a direction. The port has opposite starboard. Understand "p" as port. 
The fore is a direction. The fore has opposite aft. Understand "f" or "front" or "forward" or "forwards" as fore. 
The aft is a direction. The aft has opposite fore. Understand "a" or "backward" or "backwards" as aft.

Setting action variables for an actor going a nautical direction when the navigation type is "compass":
	change the noun to nothing.

Setting action variables for an actor going north when navigation type is "compass":
   change the noun to fore.
Setting action variables for an actor going south when navigation type is "compass":
   change the noun to aft.
Setting action variables for an actor going west when navigation type is "compass":
   change the noun to port.
Setting action variables for an actor going east when navigation type is "compass":
   change the noun to starboard.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=10#p13429
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-02-11 02:23:53

[quote="matt w"]Absolutely, and "martial" too. (Not to mention "saturnine.") Maybe some of these come from the god rather than the celestial body.[/quote]
I'd say that lunar, saturnine, jovial and mercurial certainly come from the heavenly body (through astrology). Martial might come from either the heavenly body or the god. Venereal certainly comes from the goddess.

[quote]Just to be clear, my recommendation is to use "Venusian" if it's important that the player be able to make the connection to the planet Venus, and "Cytherean" if not.[/quote]
Okay, I'm sticking with Venusian for now. (It is good if the connection to the heavenly bodies is clear.) Now I've got a little interface problem because two of the planets start with an "M" and I'd love to be able to represent them with only one letter -- but hey, maybe I can find a font that actually incorporates the astrological signs? [emote]:geek:[/emote] Actually, it seems that this works out-of-the-box.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2003&start=0#p13430
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: pro-death
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-02-11 06:34:58

[quote="Peter Pears"][quote="Jacek Pudlo"]
Under the right circumstances, self-destruction can be noble and courageous.[/quote]


Please, be noble and corageous regarding your whole attitude.[/quote]


I just realised how consistently pro-death I am. I'm pro-assisted suicide, pro-regular suicide, pro-death penalty, pro-abortion, pro-shooting-people-who-drive-40mph-on-a-65mph-highway and pro-tobacco. If you smoke a product with a cancer warning label on it, I believe you [i]ought[/i] to die. I believe that less stupid people will speed things up. I'm pretty much pro-anything that will make the highway move faster.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1984&start=10#p13431
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compass and nautical directions
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-11 09:36:30

The problem is the placement of this sentence:

[code]Port, starboard, fore, and aft are nautical.[/code]

Your code will work if you place it after the declaration of the shipboard directions. It seems that, when placed before the declarative sentences, this line actually creates the directions, and your later "The port is a direction" statements are either ignored or serve to create another direction (with the same name?) I don't have much time to spend looking into this right now, but maybe someone else does. Anyway, the syntax around creating directions seems to have a lot of bugs swirling around it...

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2004&start=0#p13432
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Implementing guards to block passages
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-02-11 10:54:22

I was wondering if anyone can point me to a reference in any of the manuals, or give me an example, about how to create a person or an object which blocks the player from going in a certain direction, until the person or object is either attacked or destroyed with a weapon or item?

For example, a Troll which won't let you cross a bridge unless you attack him with a sword...

Or a passageway in a cave covered with ice, which you have to hit with an ice pick to destroy it...

So far I can't find a reference to creating guarded doorways in the manuals, and the section "Uncooperative Characters" in the Inform7 Handbook pretty much describes what I want to do, but doesn't give an example of how to implement it? If anyone knows of a written script I could easily modify to do this without having to write it from scratch through trial and error, or can give me some guidance, I'd be very grateful. Thanks for any help in advance!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2004&start=0#p13433
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Implementing guards to block passages
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-02-11 11:02:01

Here's a bare-bones example that may help you work out how to handle this.

[code]The Courtyard is a room. The Palace is north of the Courtyard.

The guard dog is a male animal in the Courtyard. The description is "[if hostile]He looks mean and nasty[else]He's busy chomping on the steak[end if]." The guard dog can be either hostile or munching. The guard dog is hostile.

The player carries a steak. Understand "meat" as the steak.

Instead of going north in the Courtyard:
	if the guard dog is hostile:
		say "The dog snarls at you and won't let you through the door!";
	otherwise:
		continue the action.
		
After dropping the steak:
	now the guard dog is munching;
	say "The dog spies the steak and starts munching on it. Looks like it will keep him busy for a while.";
	rule succeeds.[/code]

You would obviously want to add room descriptions and so forth. The point is, you can switch the state of the sentry object (in this case, from hostile to munching) in response to any action you like. Then write an Instead rule that prevents movement in a certain direction unless the sentry is in the proper state.

Also, for purposes of this game stub, I didn't bother checking [i]where [/i]the player dropped the steak. In a real game you would obviously need to make sure the action was being taken in the correct room.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2004&start=0#p13434
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Implementing guards to block passages
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-02-11 11:05:50

The simplest case is just to block access when the obstacle is there and remove it when the player performs the right action.

[code]
The bridge is a room. The pasture is north of the bridge. The troll is in the bridge.

Instead of going north from the bridge when the troll is in the bridge:
	say "'You shall not pass,' the troll says."
	
Instead of attacking the troll:
	say "You slay the troll.";
	remove the troll from play.
	[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2004&start=0#p13435
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Implementing guards to block passages
User: mktacoma / DateTime: 2011-02-11 12:15:09

As is true with most things, there are lots of ways of solving a problem like this.

Here's another option. It creates a subclass of person (called "door guard"). This could be done for things as well (so "ice" could guard a door instead), but I just made the one for ease of example:

[code]
A door guard is a kind of person. A door guard has a door called the guarded door. A door guard can be guarding. A door guard is usually guarding.

Check going through a door (called target) when a door guard is in the location:
	repeat with guard running through guarding door guards in the location:
		if the guarded door of the guard is the target:
			say "[The guard] steps in front of you and blocks you from using [the target]." instead.


The Throne Room is a room. East of the throne room is a door called the king's door. East of the king's door is the King's Bedchamber.

The armed guard is a door guard. The guarded door of the armed guard is the king's door. The armed guard is in the throne room.

[Create some way to get the guard to stop guarding]
Instead of singing when the location is the throne room:
	say "The guard starts laughing and is distracted.";
	now the armed guard is not guarding.
	
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1979&start=0#p13436
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Kayleth — now in English and Russian!
User: gl00my / DateTime: 2011-02-11 12:33:21

[spoiler]1. Get up
2. Use bands (press use, press bands, press bands again) - like menu quests for ZX80
3. Get up[/spoiler]

Btw, mouse wheel is works fine. In all versions. Mouse must be on text area, to scroll... Or you can use drag and drop, or keyboard in one of three modes. Just look in settings.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1984&start=10#p13437
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compass and nautical directions
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-02-11 12:49:08

Ahhh.  Thank you very much!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2004&start=0#p13438
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Implementing guards to block passages
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-02-11 13:00:11

Thanks a lot, I'm going to work with all these examples I'm sure they'll come in useful! It's beginning to feel like creating and writing IF is just about as challenging and rewarding as an experience as playing an IF game, complete with its own puzzles and obstacles and mysteries to solve and get past along the way. Thanks again.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2004&start=0#p13439
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Implementing guards to block passages
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-02-11 13:02:42

[quote="dustinneff"]It's beginning to feel like creating and writing IF is just about as challenging and rewarding as an experience as playing an IF game, complete with its own puzzles and obstacles and mysteries to solve and get past along the way.[/quote]
There are more than a few people (myself included) who find that writing IF is actually [i]more [/i]fun than playing it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2002&start=0#p13440
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Multitudes Beta!
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-11 13:33:09

Okay, maybe not so exciting for anyone else. But I did discover a cool trick today:

[code]Specimen absence relates a multitude (called the set) to a thing (called the element) when the element is the specimen of the set and the element is not visible.

Understand "[something related by specimen absence]" as a multitude.[/code]

conditional relations + understanding by relations = super parsing power!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1984&start=10#p13441
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compass and nautical directions
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-02-11 13:35:47

...

Wait.  No.  That still doesn't work.  Try it; if you switch to compass mode, it won't let you use either set of directions.

Your rules work, though.  So there is still something different between them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1976&start=0#p13442
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Action - Hunting
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-11 13:41:48

More or less. The Tarahumara of Mexico's Copper Canyon have only run down deer in legends. But the Kalahari Bushmen still do it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1984&start=10#p13443
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compass and nautical directions
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-11 14:02:07

Ah, sorry. I should have kept looking after seeing that. Your use of particular direction names in the setting action variables rules (rather than an adjectival description as I used) gives those rules priority over the rule that sets the noun to nothing. Make the latter a "first" rule instead:

[color=#0040FF][b]First[/b] setting action variables for an actor going a nautical direction when the navigation type is "compass":[/color]

That should do it. Also, note that your "s" abbreviation for starboard will raise a disambiguation error (with the "s" in south) unless you wrap in a conditional understand statement.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=10#p13444
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2011-02-11 14:36:18

Venus, goddess of love.  You're bound to get some diseases from too much such activity...

that said, I'd rather use Venusian.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1984&start=10#p13445
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compass and nautical directions
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-02-11 15:25:26

Great, there we go.  That's what it looked like was happening: The "setting action variables" rules were first changing the compass directions to nautical directions, and then changing the nautical directions to nothing.

I've got "does the player mean" statements disambiguating south and starboard.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2003&start=0#p13446
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: pro-death
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-02-11 15:43:12

[quote]I just realised how consistently pro-death I am.[/quote]

[quote]This is the only Internet forum I allow my wife and daughters to visit. Please show consideration for my family and keep the discussion on a civil level.[/quote]

This one is going on my scrapbook. Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1979&start=0#p13448
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Kayleth — now in English and Russian!
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-11 17:49:13

[rant]Wait, what?  Open bands produces a default response, use claws on bands produces a default response, but use bands on bands works?  How does that work, anyway?  You tie the bands around themselves?  

I agree with the game - that is indeed amazing, but not particularly a fair puzzle.[/rant]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2004&start=0#p13449
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Implementing guards to block passages
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-02-11 19:41:50

I've got these examples working so thanks, but one more thing for anyone who cares to answer, what if I want to have the player use a weapon to attack the guard with? And if the player doesn't have a certain weapon, the action fails?

Such as USE/ATTACK/STAB/HIT TROLL with SWORD/CLUB/ECT.?

Trying to get I7 to understand "Instead of attacking the troll with the sword" doesn't compile? [emote]:oops:[/emote] 

Thanks again...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2004&start=0#p13450
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Implementing guards to block passages
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-02-11 19:51:49

You need to create a new action as the standard library has only the attacking action with just one noun. Creating new actions is covered in the manual from chapter 12.7 onward and example "Lanista 2" in chapter 16.3. has an example of creating an attacking it with action.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=40#p13451
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-02-11 20:45:41

[quote="Juhana"]You can buy the Zork games and Planetfall from GOG: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/the_zork_anthology">http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/the_zork_anthology</a>[/quote]
Awesome... that's about what I would consider a reasonable price, too, considering that it includes six games, altogether.  It's sort of like ebook novellas on sale on Amazon or publishers' websites for anywhere from $0.99 to about $3-5.

Thanks for the link.  After I finish [i]Blue Lacuna[/i] and maybe another community or two, I might buy this Zork collection and sit down to seriously try to beat it. [emote]:-)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2007&start=0#p13453
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Using the command line?
User: Bercilac / DateTime: 2011-02-12 02:34:51

Hi folks,

I've used i7 before, but on a different machine.  I ended up installing the command-line version on my current computer (running PCLinuxOS).  I've figured out that I can edit the code with a text editor and go in and compile it through the command line.  But when using the (C)ompile or (G)o commands, Inform compiles the program, and tells me "Inform 7 has finished."  Then it simply flashes "lines 1-38/38 (END)" and I can't figure out how to get to actually running the game!  None of the keys seem to have any effect.  What does it want from me?  A cookie?

It's a pity all the getting-started manuals assume I have the GUI.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2007&start=0#p13455
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using the command line?
User: Bercilac / DateTime: 2011-02-12 02:55:29

Okay.  Pressed q twice and got into the game.  Still, any manual info about working in the command line would be very appreciated.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1979&start=0#p13456
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Kayleth — now in English and Russian!
User: gl00my / DateTime: 2011-02-12 03:14:24

in most zx80 menu quests to use object itself you must use object on object.  [emote]:)[/emote] I agree, that it may not be a clear way, but... Kayleth for INSTEAD uses menu system like some others quests for ZX80. In the "Mirror" game, there are instructions about it, but mirrot is not currently translated. I will tell author of port to add same instructions in Kayleth too.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2007&start=0#p13457
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using the command line?
User: Bercilac / DateTime: 2011-02-12 08:04:54

Okay.  It should be rather clear I'm new to Linux as well.

I've figured out from a programmer's guide that when I say compile, Inform7 compiles my code into Inform6, which then compiles it into the game.  These are two discrete processes.  Pressing q will skip the output and go right to whether it succeeds or fails (not worth doing if I want to see WHY my code is failing).  Once the output is complete I must press q to jump to the next step.  Assuming all goes well, after the second process I will either return to the menu or go into the game (which may be quit using normal text-adventure commands, q or quit with a confirmation), depending on what I've selected.

I'm still wondering how (E)diting works.  It's still confusing what that tool is.  I assume (R)elease compiles it into a stand-alone file to be read with an interpreter, based on my (S)ettings.

Hope this helps some other newb in the distant future who googles just the right phrase...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2009&start=0#p13458
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Directions
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2011-02-12 08:37:02

I have often wondered about doors and directions of movements. 
In the following example, what do you prefer, and why?
You are in the living room of your house and there's a door leading out to the porch.
Would you have the player open the door before being able to leave the living room, or would you just have a direction, “out” for instance (letting the player automatically open and closing the door as s/he leaves the living room?
What would you prefer as a player?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1934&start=0#p13459
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Player takes off blindfold, objects in room become visib
User: Bercilac / DateTime: 2011-02-12 08:42:44

@Juhanna
Might not be convenient if you want to use, say, a blindfold and a candle.  A lit object in a dark room...

@essell
[code]
The player is wearing a blindfold.
Instead of looking when the player is wearing a blindfold, say "You can't see a dern thing."
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1934&start=0#p13460
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Player takes off blindfold, objects in room become visib
User: Bercilac / DateTime: 2011-02-12 08:52:45

Judging from the way you've started it, perhaps:

[code]
The player is on the chair.  The player is wearing the rope.
Instead of doing something when the player is wearing the rope, say "You're tied to this chair."
Instead of cutting the rope:
	remove the rope from play;
	say "You cut the ropes.".
[/code]

Not sure if this is at all relevant.  Something you may or may not want to play around with, and a look at the structure for rules (one of the bits I'm currently learning, and I'm a fair novice).

Note that inform already knows what "cutting" is.  If you want to define new actions (such as untying) you need to tell them that untying is an action, and to understand "untie [something]" as untying.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2010&start=0#p13461
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Transforming one object into another
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-02-12 09:10:38

Hi...I'm trying to find an easy way to transform one object into another, and the examples I've found in the manuals involving magic words and machines don't help much in the way of examples for this situation. Let's say I want a room thats a lawn, and there are some leaves scattered on the ground. I'd like the player to be able to take a rake and rake them into a pile, and transform them into a pile of leaves which can then be picked up. Any suggestions on how to do this? Thanks in advance again!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2011&start=0#p13462
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Stopping cover art from flashing up
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-02-12 09:35:04

Hi. My question today is - can I put something in my inform code to stop Zoom and other interpreters which would like to flash cover art up at gamestart, from doing so?

I'm doing other stuff with the presentation and don't want that flash of graphic.

I did think, 'Well I could cheat Zoom by giving it only a pixel or a transparent image to flash up,' but even if such hacks did work, this would probably aggrieve the standard of including your cover art in your blorb in a standard way.

Any ideas?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1934&start=0#p13463
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Player takes off blindfold, objects in room become visib
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-02-12 09:42:26

I assumed the OP would want to stop the player from manipulating the objects as well. If you only suppress the room description the player can still do whatever they want to the objects in the room, including examining them or using TAKE ALL to find out what objects there are.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2010&start=0#p13464
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Transforming one object into another
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-02-12 10:06:01

[quote="dustinneff"]Hi...I'm trying to find an easy way to transform one object into another, and the examples I've found in the manuals involving magic words and machines don't help much in the way of examples for this situation. Let's say I want a room thats a lawn, and there are some leaves scattered on the ground. I'd like the player to be able to take a rake and rake them into a pile, and transform them into a pile of leaves which can then be picked up. Any suggestions on how to do this? Thanks in advance again![/quote]

For simple things, I'd probably just do something along the lines of

[code]
To transform (original - a thing) into (replacement - a thing):
	let position be the holder of the original;
	remove the original from play;
	now the replacement is in position.
[/code]

In [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1119]an earlier thread[/url] where I tried to do this a bit more systematically, Erik Temple wrote the following, which I think may be closest to what you're looking for.


[code]
A thing has a thing called the replacement.
	
Replacing something is an activity.

For replacing something (called the original):
	let place be the holder of the original;
	let replacement be the replacement of the original;
	if the original holds something:
		if the replacement is a repository:
			repeat with item running through things enclosed by the original:
				now the item is held by the replacement;
		otherwise:
			repeat with item running through things enclosed by the original:
				now the item is held by the place;
	remove the original from play;
	move the replacement to the place.
	
To decide whether (item - an object) is a repository:
	if the item is a container, yes;
	if the item is a supporter, yes;
	if the item is a person, yes;
	no.
	
[Some command variations to allow flexibility for users]
	
To switch (original - a thing) for its replacement:
	carry out the replacing activity with the original.

To switch (original - a thing) for (replacement - a thing):
	change the replacement of the original to the replacement;
	carry out the replacing activity with the original.

[Examples of customization]

[A chest that is wired to explode, destroying everything inside it]
The chest is a container. The replacement is debris.

Before replacing the chest:
	repeat with item running through things contained by the chest:
			remove item from play.
	
[We have containers that become supporter-containers--a chest that is transformed into a sideboard, for example, with a drawer as part of the sideboard. We prefer that any contents in the chest go into the drawer, rather than onto the top of the sideboard (i.e., onto the supporter)]

Before replacing a container (called the original):
	if the replacement of the original is not a container:
		if the replacement of the original incorporates a container:
			repeat with item running through the things contained by the original:
				move item to a random container incorporated by the replacement of the original.
[/code]


Pretty nice general method here. It lets you transform not only one object into another, but handles transference of contents and other situations without complaint. Most situations, anyway; I can imagine a few situations where it would need fine-tuning.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2009&start=0#p13465
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Directions
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-02-12 10:15:09

[quote="Finn Rosenløv"]I have often wondered about doors and directions of movements. 
In the following example, what do you prefer, and why?
You are in the living room of your house and there's a door leading out to the porch.
Would you have the player open the door before being able to leave the living room, or would you just have a direction, “out” for instance (letting the player automatically open and closing the door as s/he leaves the living room?
What would you prefer as a player?[/quote]

The second. No contest.

Maybe I'm one of them wet-behind-me-ears youngsters without grit or gumption, and thus unable to hack it like the oldschoolers did. Actually, I'm pretty sure that's uncontested. But when I type something into the parser, I want the parser, as far as this is possible, to do everything it can to understand the spirit of my request. Unless there's ambiguity or a significant choice to be made, I simply don't see the purpose of forcing the player to do makework.

If the door in question is an airlock behind which you have hard vacuum, then I can understand why the player would feel the need to hesitate or even admonish me ("no, you have to open the airlock door first"). But otherwise? Otherwise it's just a barrier and a speed bump, much like any "red key or gold key?" puzzle. It's not a puzzle, it doesn't provide narration, and it doesn't contribute anything save tedium.


EDIT: Now I feel a bit silly. In my post-dinner comatose state I may have overlooked the thrust of your question. I'd have to say that, direction-wise, it depends. I usually prefer both methods, where you can either go through the door or go in the given direction.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2007&start=0#p13466
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using the command line?
User: Birion / DateTime: 2011-02-12 11:12:39

The main issue with interactive invocation of i7 is that it's actually a very basic set of pipes, stuffing results from one process to another while showing off the results in a pager (<= bunch of scary talk that isn't necessary). So, as you mentioned, it takes story.ni, translates it into I6 code, sends the output (all those percentages) to [i]less[/i] (i.e. a pager, a program that allows you to scroll back and forth in some text in the command line), waits until [i]less[/i] ends (when you press [Q], for quit), tells the I6 compiler "Here's the source code, go do your job!", sends the output from this compiler to [i]less[/i] (again), and optionally either calls an interpreter to play the compiled game (if you chose G) or copies the compiled file, along with every other required file ("Release along with...") to the Materials/Release/ folder. However, from what I can tell, quitting [i]less[/i] before it reaches the end of the text (i.e. if you haven't seen the "Inform 7 has finished." message, along with a blinking (END) below) leads to corrupted source for whatever reason, so once your game grows to a certain size, you'll need to press [SPACE] to get to the end.

In standard setting, i7 uses dumb-frotz for playing the compiled game (i.e. when you press [G] for (G)o in the menu), which is a very simple interpreter for z-code (maybe for glulx as well, but I honestly don't remember, since I changed my settings long ago) running in command line.

And as for (E)diting, it simply opens the story.ni file in a text editor. It doesn't show up, I believe, unless you have some editor set up in your settings (well, there's one other way to do it, but that's probably a bit too arcane for the average user), so (S)ettings > (I)DE Options > Set (E)ditor - if it's a graphical editor (like gedit, Kate, or GVim), you probably want to (&) toggle it to background, so that you don't have to close down the program every time you want to recompile. Command line editors (vim, emacs) need to run in foreground.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2012&start=0#p13467
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I'm using Inform7 and I would like some help please
User: IanTM / DateTime: 2011-02-12 11:14:26

Well my first question is, how do I make something I can fight? Like, I enter a room and theres some hideous monster, how do I create and defeat him?  [emote]:D[/emote]

I'll be asking more questions as I move along.

I now how to make enemies now. Can some one help me with adding a description of an item. So that when I pick it up it will give me some info on it. Thanks for the help so far guys. [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2012&start=0#p13468
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I'm using Inform7 and I would like some help please
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-02-12 11:25:29

You might find these previous threads useful: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1872">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1872</a> and <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1894">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1894</a>.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1979&start=10#p13469
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Kayleth — now in English and Russian!
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-12 11:40:57

I guess my issue with the puzzle is that I don't think I'm "using" the object in question at all.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2011&start=0#p13470
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stopping cover art from flashing up
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-12 12:06:11

There's nothing you can do in your Inform code. The right answer is "don't include cover art", but I7 currently doesn't have a way to do that.

(Mac) Zoom has a preference option for "show cover art when game starts". You can turn that off.

The next easiest way to do what you want is to release a zcode/glulx file without Blorb packaging. (There's a checkbox for this in the Settings pane. Or you can just copy the .z8/.ulx file out of your project's build directory.)

You could also file a feature request for the compiler to not include default cover art.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2009&start=0#p13471
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Directions
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-02-12 12:19:16

I fully agree with Eleas. There's no point in generally forcing the player to type OPEN PORCH DOOR before he can enter it or go south or whatever.
I don't particularly mind some standard response like "(first opening the porch door)", though. 
And of course there may be more or less good reasons to leave it to the player to open doors: as in Eleas's example; or if you're in the middle of a timed puzzle where opening a door should count as one turn—in such a case it's more fair, I think, to let the player knowingly spend one turn on opening the door than to open it automatically for him and counting two turns for that one command.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1934&start=0#p13472
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Player takes off blindfold, objects in room become visib
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-02-12 12:28:30

Unless the player is supposed to just wait around for someone else to take the blindfold off, you'll want them to be able to do *something*.  I don't like just restricting the actions, because there are plenty of things you ought to be able to do, even while tied up and blindfolded (starting with "sing").  Making the room dark is much better.  There are probably plenty of ways to make the room dark even if there's a light source in it (and the OP didn't say there was a light source; if there isn't, so much the easier).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2012&start=0#p13473
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I'm using Inform7 and I would like some help please
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-02-12 13:07:04

Ian, it would help if you have more specific questions. We could give you the code for a monster that can be fought and defeated, but it wouldn't be useful because (a) there are a thousand ways to implement this, and the author should think about how he wants to do it, and (b) you don't learn anything from it.

Here are some basic things you probably want to do. Try to figure out how to do them using the Inform 7 documentation, and post here if you get stuck at something. A question like "I've made a monster that can be dead or alive, but I don't understand how to make sure that the player can only move north when the monster is dead" is going to be much more useful than the overly broad question you started the topic with. [emote]:)[/emote]

(1) Make an object that is the monster. (It should probably be a person.)
(2) Make a dead/alive property such that every person will be either dead or alive.
(3) Make a rule that fires when the player types "attack monster", and which turn the monster dead.
(4) Make a rule that ensures the player cannot do X (with X being whatever you want the monster to stop the player from doing) when the monster is alive.

Have fun!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2009&start=0#p13474
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Directions
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-02-12 13:09:42

A door that can be (has to be) opened and closed can be fine: if your game is about that door. For instance, if you're making a zombie survival game, and it really matters for his survival whether the player remembers to close the door? That's a great reason to implement a door that can be opened and closed.

But if the door is not important to your game, I wouldn't bother implementing it and I [i]certainly[/i] wouldn't force the player to interact with it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2011&start=0#p13475
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stopping cover art from flashing up
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-02-12 14:06:38

Seems as if a "Use no cover art" option would be a highly desirable addition.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2013&start=0#p13476
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 How do you put a description of an item once I pick it up
User: IanTM / DateTime: 2011-02-12 14:49:10

How do I do this?  [emote]:D[/emote]

----------------------------
Thanks to everyone for being so helpful

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2013&start=0#p13477
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 How do you put a description of an item once I pick i
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-02-12 16:10:39

[quote="IanTM"]How do I do this?  [emote]:D[/emote][/quote]

It depends on what you mean. There's the description when taking inventory, that by default would look something like this:

[code]>i
You are carrying:
  a noodle
  a rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle
  ten different recipes of spam[/code]

That is regulated by the "listing contents of yourself" activity (see Chapter 17.13 in the Inform 7 manual). One way to change it at that point is like so:

[code]
Flash is a man. The player is Flash.

Control Room is a room. "The bridge of the rocket is filled with the most modern of contrivances. It's all incredibly futuristic, although most of the machinery seems decorated with brass spokes or tesla coils."

The ray gun is a thing in the Control Room. "Mounted on a wall is your trusty atomic blaster." Understand "atomic" or "blaster" or "sidearm" or "elongated" as the ray gun.

Rule for printing the name of the ray gun while taking inventory: say "ray gun (oddly warm)".


Test me with "get gun/i".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2013&start=0#p13478
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 How do you put a description of an item once I pick i
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-02-12 16:19:18

I can think of at least two different things that you want to do.
1) You may want to print something more informative than "Taken.", when the player takes the orb of eternal fortune (or whatever).
2) Or you may want to print a special paragraph about a thing lying about in a room even if the player has once handled it and it's 'initial appearance' is therefore not printed again.
For 1), use an 'after rule'. You can do that in lots of ways depending on the exact effect you want to achieve. If e.g. you want a special message to be printed only the first time you pick something up, use:
[code]After taking the orb for the first time: say "You pick up the ball and have a look at it. [line break]Wow! It's the orb of eternal fortune! ... Or wait - was that 'misfortune'?"[/code]
For 2), you can tell inform to print special paragraphs without using the initial appearance property with a 'rule for writing a paragraph about' (see the Activities chapter in the built-in Manual). If you simply write a rule for writing a paragraph about something, the game will never print the initial appearance of that thing; but you can tell Inform not to heed that rule until the the thing is handled:
[code]Rule for writing a paragraph about the orb when the orb is handled:
	say "That ball thing you didn't dare to keep is still lying about here. You get the impression that it pulsates with a faint, ominous glow."
[/code]

---
EDIT: And I see Eleas thought of yet a third interpretation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=40#p13479
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-02-12 17:38:16

Alright, the focus seems to be now on proving that I am wrong to dis Activision in particular because there were some commercial games somewhere available to some people for some windows of time. I got distracted watching Al Jazeera almost constantly the last few days, and coming back to this thread now, enh — I don't really want to argue this anymore. I think there is a lot of point-missing going on, let me put it this way. I am concerned with the deleterious effects of commercial unavailability on people's ability to experience gaming history, but not overly concerned (obviously, now) with correctness about particular places or windows or times. This debate is now lost in the details and it's partly my fault because I didn't stay on point, either. (And sorry Ghalev if I misinterpreted your mood.)

So let's just leave it as it lies, with me being wrong on facts as proven by Ghalev and Zarf and keep it an open question whether those altered facts actually rise to the level of defraying the effects I am talking about. I accept what seems to be the community's take (old-fashioned though it may seem to me) on mentioning abandonware specifically, and I was always going to accept it. I suppose I just needed to stand on my soapbox a little first. Nothing anybody has said has been personally convincing to me in the sense of allaying my concerns about Activision and the 'no simple discovery path for the classics' situation, but I'm willing to put those concerns aside within the borders of this forum — after all I have never seen myself as being on any particular 'Pirate Infocom' crusade. Just another dude with an opinion.

Paul.

P.S. For those from here who follow me on Twitter though, where I can make my own rules — there will be [i]links ahoy[/i] over there whenever called for. You've been warned. 8)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2013&start=0#p13480
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 How do you put a description of an item once I pick i
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-02-12 18:14:44

Or, for that matter, he may just be talking about the regular description when you examine something.

Ian:  We also have an Inform-specific board on this forum that might give you better answers to your questions.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2011&start=0#p13481
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stopping cover art from flashing up
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-02-12 19:11:11

Thanks for the ideas.

[quote="zarf"]There's nothing you can do in your Inform code. The right answer is "don't include cover art", but I7 currently doesn't have a way to do that.

(Mac) Zoom has a preference option for "show cover art when game starts". You can turn that off.

The next easiest way to do what you want is to release a zcode/glulx file without Blorb packaging. (There's a checkbox for this in the Settings pane. Or you can just copy the .z8/.ulx file out of your project's build directory.)[/quote]

It's not that I want no cover art at all. I have cover art(s), but I wish to present it in the manner and at the time of my choosing. So I still need the blorbness for my multimedia extravaganza features [emote];)[/emote]

[quote]You could also file a feature request for the compiler to not include default cover art.[/quote]

I'll do this as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2014&start=0#p13482
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Conversation and Orders
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-02-12 19:31:54

I'm wondering if there's a convenient way to get the parser to understand the equivalence of two different inputs. Here's the code:
[code]Include Conversation Framework by Eric Eve.
Include Conversation Responses by Eric Eve.
Include Conversational Defaults by Eric Eve.

The Crypt is a room. Count Dracula is a man in the Crypt.

Test me with "actions / tell count to jump / count, jump"[/code]
The two commands result in different actions (answering Count Dracula that "to jump" and asking Count Dracula to try jumping). But they shouldn't, because they're both ways of giving an order. How might I be able to make these operate the same way, without disrupting the other functionality of Eric's excellent extensions?

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2011&start=0#p13483
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stopping cover art from flashing up
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-02-12 19:38:37

I added 'use no cover art' as an idea at Inform suggestions, so anyone who likes the idea can vote for it over there

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/1486153-add-a-use-no-cover-art-option-or-use-no-defaul">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... -no-defaul</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2012&start=0#p13484
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I'm using Inform7 and I would like some help please
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-02-12 19:40:41

Victor's observation is worth thinking about. I would add this:

Quite often, when people decide to try writing something in Inform, they start right off with something that sounds as if it will be interesting and fun. And it would be! But most of the interesting, fun things you can do in writing interactive fiction are NOT the easiest things to write.

In order to reach the point where you'll be able to do interesting, fun things, you'll most likely have to spend weeks learning to do basic things that are somewhat less interesting and somewhat less fun. You have to crawl before you can walk.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=160#p13485
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: RaynieJordan / DateTime: 2011-02-12 19:48:22

Hi!
I'm Raynie Jordan but most people just call me RJ. I have three children, I work semi-full time, I run and I write... Oh and I'm a pretty serious gamer. *cough* my children think I brought the new playstation for them...  [emote]:lol:[/emote]  
Being an author already and a gamer, both elements of this medium attract me and I'm enjoying playing through all the amazing games that I've found so far.

So now I've just downloaded Inform 7 and have completed the Stateroom tutorial (FYI: I secretly get a thrill out of programming) and really enjoyed playing with what I've learned so far and adding new bits and pieces as I learn how.  I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm hooked so I guess I'm here to stay [emote]:D[/emote]

*waves* [emote]8-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2011&start=0#p13486
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stopping cover art from flashing up
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-12 19:49:29

You can get the desired effect by including a fully transparent PNG image as your cover art. I've attached one that will work: copy it, rename the copy "Small Cover.png", and place both images in your Materials folder. Use the "release along with cover image" option as usual.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1855&start=10#p13487
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Collaborative Interactive Fiction
User: mktacoma / DateTime: 2011-02-12 20:36:17

I'd be up for helping with some large project, particularly if the project was broken down like you described in functional groups. I, for instance, like modelling objects and functionality and would be happy staying away from plots and descriptions for projects besides my own.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2012&start=0#p13488
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I'm using Inform7 and I would like some help please
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-02-12 21:14:34

Based on some help I got the other night, I came up with this (a dog is guarding a doorway, it has hit points, and it won't let you go north until you kill it with one of the weapons available, which also have damage points assigned to them):

[code]Section 1 - Hit Points 

A person has a number called maximum hit points. A person has a number called current hit points. 

An animal has a number called maximum hit points. An animal has a number called current hit points.

The maximum hit points of the player is 35. The maximum hit points of the animal is 5. 
    
When play begins:
	repeat with victim running through people:
		now the current hit points of the victim is the maximum hit points of the victim. 

Definition: a person is dead if his current hit points are less than 0. 

Section 1.1 - Diagnosis 

Diagnosing is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "diagnose [something]" as diagnosing. 

Check diagnosing:
	if the noun is not a person, say "Only people can have diagnoses." instead. 
	
Carry out diagnosing:
	say "[if the noun is the player]You have[otherwise][The noun] has[end if] [current hit points of the noun] out of a possible [maximum hit points of the noun] hit points remaining." 

Section 1.2 -  Weapons

A weapon is a kind of thing. A weapon has a number called the maximum damage. The maximum damage of a weapon is usually 4. 

The player carries a weapon called a mace. The maximum damage of the mace is 3.
    
Understand the commands "attack" and "punch" and "destroy" and "kill" and "murder" and "hit" and "thump" and "break" and "smash" and "torture" and "wreck" as something new. 

Attacking it with is an action applying to one visible thing and one carried thing. Understand "attack [someone] with [something preferably held]" as attacking it with. 
    
Understand the commands "punch" and "destroy" and "kill" and "murder" and "hit" and "thump" and "break" and "smash" and "torture" and "wreck" as "attack". 
    
The attacking it with action has a number called the damage inflicted. 

Setting action variables for attacking something with something:
let the maximum attack be the maximum damage of the second noun;
now the damage inflicted is a random number between 1 and the maximum attack. 

Check an actor attacking something with something (this is the can't attack with something that isn't a weapon rule):
	if the second noun is not a weapon:
		if the actor is the player, say "[The second noun] does not qualify as a weapon.";
		stop the action. 

Check an actor attacking something with something (this is the can't attack a non-person rule):
	if the noun is not a person:
		if the actor is the player, say "[The noun] has no life to lose.";
		stop the action. 

Carry out an actor attacking something with something (this is the standard attacking it with a weapon rule):
decrease the current hit points of the noun by the damage inflicted;
if the noun is dead, remove the noun from play. 
        
Report attacking a dead person with something (this is the death-report priority rule):
	say "You attack with [the second noun], killing [the noun]!" instead. 

Report attacking someone with something (this is the normal attacking report rule):
	say "You attack [the noun] with [the second noun], causing [damage inflicted] point[s] of damage!" instead. 
    
Section 2 - Scene

The Courtyard is a room. The Palace is north of the Courtyard.

The guard dog is a male animal in the Courtyard. The description is "He looks mean and nasty." 

There is a club in the Courtyard. "There's a gnarled old club here studded with thorns." Understand "stick" as club. The club is a weapon.

Instead of going north in the Courtyard:
	if the dog is in the Courtyard:
		say "The dog snarls at you and won't let you through the door!";
	otherwise:
		continue the action.
		

	[/code]

It works for me, and is one way of doing it...

Note: I should add that the dog doesn't fight back, because I don't need it to in the context I'm using this code for - but in the example I copied this code from, Lanista 2 from the Recipe Book Chapter 16.3, its designed to have the monster (or whatever) attack you back, using its own weapons. Its worth checking out and learning how to adapt it to your own needs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2007&start=0#p13489
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using the command line?
User: Bercilac / DateTime: 2011-02-12 21:22:09

A thousand thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1934&start=0#p13490
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Player takes off blindfold, objects in room become visib
User: Bercilac / DateTime: 2011-02-12 21:24:08

Hmm.  Good points from both of you, but I still like the intuitive "You have a blindfold so you can't see."  If it were mine, I'd probably work from there.  Maybe with an "instead of doing something when the player is wearing the blindfold" with a list of exceptions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2011&start=0#p13491
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stopping cover art from flashing up
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-12 21:37:29

[quote]It's not that I want no cover art at all. I have cover art(s), but I wish to present it in the manner and at the time of my choosing.[/quote]

Okay, there are now several issues on the table.

If you have a piece of art that you want to present at a certain point in the game, you can use Glulx image extensions. You'd include the image in the blorb file, but not as cover art per se.

However, the point of "cover art" in the blorb file is that tools can handle it in an automated way. IFDB can thumbnail it, interpreters like Zoom and iPhone Frotz can show it as an icon in a game catalog, and so on.

If you want to buy into that, you're buying into all of it. One of the automated things done with cover art is Zoom flashing it up when the game starts. I don't think it's reasonable for the game to opt out of that. (It's reasonable for the *player* to opt out of it -- that's why there's a player preference for it.) It's essentially a feature of the player's game library, not of the game itself. If you think it's a terrible idea, you can try to convince Andrew Hunter that his interpreter shouldn't do it, or convince players that they don't want it as an interpreter feature.

On the other hand, if you *don't* want any of that, you just have to ensure that your blorb file doesn't have a "cover art" entry. Ideally this would be an I7 option. Lacking that, it would be easy to write a script to delete the cover-art entry from an I7-generated Blorb file.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2010&start=0#p13492
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Transforming one object into another
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-02-12 21:39:32

This example, while not as elegant, mostly does what I want it to do (i.e. not let the player take some leaves until they have raked them into a pile first.) But I wish I could figure out a way for Inform7 to create a new "pile of leaves" which the player can pick up after raking the leaves on the lawn. Right now all I can figure out is how to add some leaves to their inventory after raking them. I would just like to be able to create a new pile instead.

[code]The Yard is a room. "You're near a grassy lawn."

There is a rake in the Yard.

A thing can be raked or not raked.

There is some leaves in the Yard. "Some leaves have fallen from the old tree and are scattered across the lawn." The some leaves are a thing. The some leaves are not raked.

Raking is an action applying to one thing. Understand "rake [thing]" as raking.

Instead of taking the some leaves:
	say "There's too many to pick up all at once.".
	
Check raking:
	if the rake is not held:
		say "You'll need a rake to do that.";
		rule fails.
		
Check raking:
	if the rake is held:
		say "You rake the leaves into a small pile (and then gather some up in your arms).";
		now the some leaves are carried by the player;
		rule succeeds.
		[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2011&start=0#p13493
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stopping cover art from flashing up
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-12 21:58:57

[quote="zarf"]If you want to buy into that, you're buying into all of it. One of the automated things done with cover art is Zoom flashing it up when the game starts. I don't think it's reasonable for the game to opt out of that. (It's reasonable for the *player* to opt out of it -- that's why there's a player preference for it.) It's essentially a feature of the player's game library, not of the game itself. If you think it's a terrible idea, you can try to convince Andrew Hunter that his interpreter shouldn't do it, or convince players that they don't want it as an interpreter feature.[/quote]

Interpreters that want to do things that interfere with the presentation of the game--like flashing a cover art over the top of the game window [i]while the game is running[/i], as Zoom does--should also provide (and publicize) a custom metadata option to suppress that behavior. For games that don't want to have a title screen, the Zoom treatment is fine. But if I have a nice interactive title screen that uses my cover art, that behavior suddenly looks silly.

Or Zoom could mitigate the intrusiveness by having the image appear before the game loads--then you don't have the rather rude preemption of the author's presentation.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2010&start=0#p13494
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Transforming one object into another
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-12 22:04:03

I think you're almost there. Why not say "Instead of taking leaves when the leaves are not raked?" Then you'll be able to take them normally any time.

You can also have the description and the printed name of the leaves depend on their state: "[if raked]pile of[otherwise]scattered[end if] leaves"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2010&start=0#p13495
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Transforming one object into another
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-12 22:13:48

Hmm.  I generally put anything deliberately carried out by an action in the "carry out" section of the rulebook.  Leaving it under checking means that it may be carried out when it shouldn't be.  

Also, be really, really careful that you're not creating unintended consequences.  Right now, even if the player is in the middle of space, if he types "rake computer" while holding a rake, he'll still get the leaves.  You probably want to limit this response to only raking leaves. 

(It might also interest you to know that you don't explicitly have to declare that things are things: "There are some leaves in the Yard" makes that assumption.)

There's quite a few different ways to do this, but the easiest is to create a "pile of leaves" object and then "move the pile of leaves to the location" at the appropriate time.  You may also want to "remove the leaves from play" at the same time.  

Inform doesn't always play well when things have similar names, so I'd recommend using loose leaves and pile of leaves to make sure it doesn't get confused.  There's other options, but this one is pretty straightforward.

If you wanted to keep one object, these changes to your code would be one way of doing it:

[code]"Rake!"

The Yard is a room. "You're near a grassy lawn."

There is a rake in the Yard.

There are some leaves in the Yard. "Some leaves have fallen from the old tree and are scattered across the lawn."  The leaves can be raked or not raked.  

Understand "pile of" and "pile" and "piled" and "piled up" as the leaves when the leaves are raked. 
 Understand "raked" as the leaves when the leaves are raked.

The leaves are not raked.

Before printing the name of the leaves:
	if the leaves are raked:
		say "piled up ";

Raking is an action applying to one thing. Understand "rake [something]" as raking.

Check taking the leaves:
	if the leaves are not raked:
		say "There's too many to pick up all at once." instead.
   
Check raking:
	if the rake is not held:
		say "You'll need a rake to do that." instead;

Check raking: 
	if the noun is not the leaves:
		say "There's a small note on the rake: 'For use with leaves ONLY.'" instead.

Check raking the leaves:
	if the leaves are raked:
		say "The leaves are already in a nice pile." instead.
      
Carry out raking:
	say "You rake the leaves into a small pile (and then gather some up in your arms).";
	now the leaves are carried by the player;
	now the leaves are raked.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2011&start=0#p13496
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stopping cover art from flashing up
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-12 22:49:01

Those are good points.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2011&start=0#p13497
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stopping cover art from flashing up
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-02-12 23:34:34

Yes, I realise that the specific thing called 'cover art' is there to help automate all kinds of things. That's why I was reluctant to go with the 'transparent image' solution, because then anything that crawls the blorb will take the transparent image to be the cover art.

What I have is a thing that's plainly my cover art, but I'm trying to hold it back temporarily when the game starts for presentation reasons -- but I can't if someone runs the game in Zoom or other interpreter that will pluck out the 'cover art' file and flash it atop the running game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1934&start=0#p13498
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Player takes off blindfold, objects in room become visib
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-02-13 04:55:33

I think I know what you're getting at - you don't want to say that the room is dark if it's not "really" dark, the player just has a blindfold on. You can do that with a dark room and just change the texts that are displayed, so instead of the game saying "It is pitch dark, and you can't see a thing" you can make it say "You have a blindfold so you can't see." The effect would be exactly the same and the player could not tell which technique you've used, but using the unlit room would be much, much easier to code and maintain (you wouldn't have to list allowed verbs by hand and you wouldn't need a potentially complex code to disallow TAKE ALL for example).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2015&start=0#p13499
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Renaming Getting Started and General Game Design?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-02-13 05:16:22

I seem to recall this has been discussed before, but I couldn't find the thread. Anyway, the "Getting Started and General Game Design" board is getting a lot of posts that should belong to the "Inform 6 and 7 development" board instead. I think people are interpreting the "getting started" part to mean that if they have just recently started programming they should post their questions there.

If this lowers the barrier to ask questions, that's great, but the small librarian in me dies a little every time a post is miscategorized. It also makes searching for old threads a bit harder when you have to go through two boards. Would it be reasonable to drop the "getting started" part and just call it "General Game Design"?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2014&start=0#p13500
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation and Orders
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-02-13 05:27:18

Persuasion is a special case because (as I have understood) the NPC, COMMAND syntax is hardcoded into the parser and you can't access it easily. Example 412 in the manual has this to change TELL NPC TO X into NPC, X:

[code]After reading a command: 
    let N be indexed text; 
    let N be the player's command; 
    replace the regular expression "\b(ask|tell|order) (.+?) to (.+)" in N with "\2, \3";
    change the text of the player's command to N.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1986&start=0#p13501
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Updated the Programmer's Guide to Inform 7
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-13 05:52:42

aaand now the table of contents even works.    [emote]:oops:[/emote] 


Thanks, tove.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2015&start=0#p13502
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Renaming Getting Started and General Game Design?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-02-13 08:19:23

Sounds good to me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2010&start=0#p13503
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Transforming one object into another
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-02-13 08:37:57

[quote="gravel"]Hmm.  I generally put anything deliberately carried out by an action in the "carry out" section of the rulebook.  Leaving it under checking means that it may be carried out when it shouldn't be.  

Also, be really, really careful that you're not creating unintended consequences.  Right now, even if the player is in the middle of space, if he types "rake computer" while holding a rake, he'll still get the leaves.  You probably want to limit this response to only raking leaves. 

(It might also interest you to know that you don't explicitly have to declare that things are things: "There are some leaves in the Yard" makes that assumption.)

There's quite a few different ways to do this, but the easiest is to create a "pile of leaves" object and then "move the pile of leaves to the location" at the appropriate time.  You may also want to "remove the leaves from play" at the same time.  

Inform doesn't always play well when things have similar names, so I'd recommend using loose leaves and pile of leaves to make sure it doesn't get confused.  There's other options, but this one is pretty straightforward.

If you wanted to keep one object, these changes to your code would be one way of doing it:

[code]"Rake!"

The Yard is a room. "You're near a grassy lawn."

There is a rake in the Yard.

There are some leaves in the Yard. "Some leaves have fallen from the old tree and are scattered across the lawn."  The leaves can be raked or not raked.  

Understand "pile of" and "pile" and "piled" and "piled up" as the leaves when the leaves are raked. 
 Understand "raked" as the leaves when the leaves are raked.

The leaves are not raked.

Before printing the name of the leaves:
	if the leaves are raked:
		say "piled up ";

Raking is an action applying to one thing. Understand "rake [something]" as raking.

Check taking the leaves:
	if the leaves are not raked:
		say "There's too many to pick up all at once." instead.
   
Check raking:
	if the rake is not held:
		say "You'll need a rake to do that." instead;

Check raking: 
	if the noun is not the leaves:
		say "There's a small note on the rake: 'For use with leaves ONLY.'" instead.

Check raking the leaves:
	if the leaves are raked:
		say "The leaves are already in a nice pile." instead.
      
Carry out raking:
	say "You rake the leaves into a small pile (and then gather some up in your arms).";
	now the leaves are carried by the player;
	now the leaves are raked.[/code][/quote]

Thanks so much for this example it explains a lot!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2015&start=0#p13504
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Renaming Getting Started and General Game Design?
User: pglewis / DateTime: 2011-02-13 10:11:12

[quote="Juhana"][...] but the small librarian in me dies a little every time a post is miscategorized [...][/quote]

Are you certain it's not from the stomach acids?  (sorry, couldn't resist, carry on)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2016&start=0#p13505
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Blorb thumbnailer for GNOME
User: lamont / DateTime: 2011-02-13 10:55:51

So, speaking of cover art, I wrote a kind of plugin for GNOME (the desktop environment in Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora) to enable thumbnail previews of Blorbs. The thousand-word screenshot is here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://lg.vblank.net/blorb/">http://lg.vblank.net/blorb/</a>

along with the source code. Hopefully it's portable enough that the sufficiently interested can compile it without any trouble -- if not, let me know!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2014&start=0#p13506
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation and Orders
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-02-13 11:16:18

Brilliant -- thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2017&start=0#p13507
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: The odd behavior of "Decide on"
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-02-13 12:42:45

I'm streamlining my movement algorithms; the idea is to use a "decide on" statement to assign each NPC a destination, but something is very wrong.

When the Commander wakes up, he orders everyone to meet him in the cockpit, so everyone's statement begins like this:

[code]To decide which room is the destination of (character):
If Commander Connor is conscious, decide on the cockpit;
If (second condition), decide on (second location);
(etc, etc.)[/code]

But for some reason, everyone's destination is always coming up as the cockpit, even though the Commander is verifiably unconscious (and yes, unconscious is verifiably the opposite of conscious).

What's going on here?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2017&start=0#p13508
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The odd behavior of "Decide on"
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-13 12:44:42

Did you mean

To decide which room is the destination of (C - character):

Or are you using literal object names in there?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2015&start=0#p13509
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Renaming Getting Started and General Game Design?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-13 13:21:07

I like it.  We might also petition for a little more active moving of threads, if that's a possibility.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2018&start=0#p13510
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: instead of moving - not working, or special case?
User: capnnemo / DateTime: 2011-02-13 14:01:52

I'm new to inform, and forgive me if this is a repost (I searched but couldn't find the topic).  I have this code:

[color=#0040FF]moving is an action applying to one thing.  understand "move [something]" as moving.

the cell is a room.

The secret cache is a container in the cell.  "     Your secret cache is hidden behind a loose stone.".  understand "cache", "hole", "stone", "loose stone" as secret cache.

an escape plan is in the secret cache.

instead of moving the secret cache:  try searching secret cache.[/color]

when executed, the command 'move stone' returns 'nothing obvious happens.' instead of listing the contents of the secret cache.  I've implemented the same exact logic for an action called 'looking behind' and it works fine.  Why not for moving?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2018&start=0#p13511
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: instead of moving - not working, or special case?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-02-13 14:19:57

The command "move [x]" already carries a meaning. It's synonymous with "push". In some cases, you might want to abolish the old command before giving it a new meaning. That can be done by making it refer to "something new":

[code]Understand the command "move" as something new.[/code]

In this instance though, there's no need to change things that much. As "move" already redirects to "push", you could do this instead:

[code]The Cell is a room.

The secret cache is a container in the cell. "Your secret cache is hidden behind a loose stone." Understand "cache", "hole", "stone", "loose stone" as secret cache. It is fixed in place.

An escape plan is in the secret cache.

Instead of pushing or pulling the secret cache: try searching secret cache.[/code]



You can also use this method of combined actions to make it easier on the player:

[code]The Cell is a room.

The secret cache is a container in the cell. It is openable and closed. "Your secret cache is hidden behind a loose stone[if the cache is open] most of the time. Right now it's open, revealing [a list of things in the cache] inside[end if]." Understand "cache", "hole", "stone", "loose stone" as secret cache. It is fixed in place.

An escape plan is in the secret cache.

Instead of pushing or pulling or searching the secret cache when the cache is closed: try opening the secret cache.[/code]

When the secret cache is open, there's really no point in pushing or pulling the stone, but "search cache" still works in its default mode. When the cache is closed, though, searching the cache also opens it.


EDIT: You may ask yourself if there's an easy way to see which actions apply. The command "actions" (or "actions on") is useful for that, as it prints the name of subsequent actions as they fire.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2019&start=0#p13512
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Elevator Movement
User: Batwing / DateTime: 2011-02-13 14:29:08

I am just learning to use Inform 7 and want to have the player enter an elevator. I have created several rooms - one for each floor of the elevator. If the player gets on the elevator at floor 3 I want him/her to just type something like "floor 12" and have him/her moved to floor 12. And I want this to work for every floor of the same elevator.

Is this possible, or am I asking for way too much coding? 

Thanks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2017&start=0#p13513
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The odd behavior of "Decide on"
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-02-13 14:32:43

I'm using literal object names.  The actual code reads:

[code]To decide which room is the destination of Jake:
	if Commander Connor is not unconscious, decide on the Cockpit;
	if the player is Gail, decide on the location of Gail;
	decide on the Sickbay.[/code]

Etc, etc.  But which character it is isn't important because they all do this.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2017&start=0#p13514
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The odd behavior of "Decide on"
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-02-13 14:39:25

I don't see anything immediately wrong with that. You could try it with some debugging commands to see where it goes wrong:

[code]To decide which room is the destination of Jake:
	say "Deciding the destination for Jake.";
	if Commander Connor is not unconscious:
		say "Connor conscious, deciding on Cockpit.";
		decide on the Cockpit;
	say "Connor unconscious, continuing.";
	if the player is Gail:
		say "The player is Gail, heading towards the player.";
		decide on the location of Gail;
	say "The player is not Gail, using the default.";
	decide on the Sickbay.[/code]
This will also tell you if the code is calling this part at all.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2017&start=0#p13515
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The odd behavior of "Decide on"
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-02-13 14:50:51

[code]Jake and Commander Connor are men.
Gail is a woman.

A person can be unconscious.

Q-Leaping is an action applying to one thing. Understand "leap into [person]" as q-leaping. Carry out Q-leaping: now the player is the noun.

Gift of Lethe is an action applying to nothing. Understand "sleep now" as Gift of Lethe. Carry out Gift of Lethe: now Commander Connor is unconscious.


The Cockpit is a room. The Sickbay is west of the Cockpit. The Arboretum is north of the Cockpit.


To decide which room is the destination of Jake:
	if Commander Connor is not unconscious, decide on the Cockpit;
	if the player is Gail, decide on the location of Gail;
	decide on the Sickbay.

Instead of jumping: say the destination of Jake.[/code]

Echoing Juhana here. This seems to compile and run just as advertised.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2019&start=0#p13516
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Elevator Movement
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-02-13 15:07:28

[quote="Batwing"]I am just learning to use Inform 7 and want to have the player enter an elevator. I have created several rooms - one for each floor of the elevator. If the player gets on the elevator at floor 3 I want him/her to just type something like "floor 12" and have him/her moved to floor 12. And I want this to work for every floor of the same elevator.

Is this possible, or am I asking for way too much coding? 

Thanks.[/quote]

It can be done without too much effort. The [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rex118.html#e118]Dubai example[/url] is a bit elaborate, while [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rex391.html#e391]this example[/url] shows how to basically move a room on demand.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2018&start=0#p13517
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: instead of moving - not working, or special case?
User: capnnemo / DateTime: 2011-02-13 15:45:48

Thank you, very much!

I suspected 'move' already carried a meaning, but 'instead of moving x' didn't compile until I tried to declare it as an action.  Now that I know it redirects to 'push', I could see that 'instead of pushing x' compiles properly.

Thanks for demonstrating the open/close alternative, as well!

And for the 'action on' tip!  somehow I missed that trick in the documentation...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2019&start=0#p13518
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Elevator Movement
User: Batwing / DateTime: 2011-02-13 15:50:17

Thank you. I will read over that code and see if I can adapt it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2015&start=0#p13519
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Renaming Getting Started and General Game Design?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-02-13 16:45:36

Second.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2015&start=0#p13520
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Renaming Getting Started and General Game Design?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-02-13 17:47:12

Agreed. Or at least put up a stickied post on that board telling people to post Inform questions on the Inform board (and TADS questions on the TADS board, etc.), and move posts that still end up on the wrong board?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2016&start=0#p13521
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Blorb thumbnailer for GNOME
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-02-13 17:48:40

Brilliant!

Would be great to have it on the Unbuntu IF PPA: <a class="postlink" href="https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-if">https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-if</a> Is that something you could do or should I do it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2017&start=0#p13522
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The odd behavior of "Decide on"
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-13 17:51:31

Turns out that if you want to define a set of "decide" phrases that customize each other, you need to write everything as parameters.

[code]
To decide what number is the weight of (T - thing):
	decide on 1.

To decide what number is the weight of (T - the rock):
	decide on 2.

To decide what number is the weight of (T - the stone):
	decide on 3.
[/code]

You don't have to define the default ("thing") case, but if you don't, invoking the phrase on an undefined object triggers a runtime error.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2011&start=10#p13523
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stopping cover art from flashing up
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-02-13 17:57:32

I think you should have a proper cover image and work on getting Zoom fixed. The source code is available after all. Don't penalise other interpreters with blank covers because of one other annoying interpreter.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2017&start=0#p13524
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The odd behavior of "Decide on"
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-02-13 18:02:17

Juhana: I've used debugging commands; that's how I know that the commander is definitely unconscious, and that the destination is definitely the cockpit.

Here's my debug code, for anyone who's interested (the action delay and mobile/stationary bits are other parts of the algorithm, but they aren't interfering here, as far as I can tell):

[code]Every turn:
	if Commander Connor is unconscious:
		say "Connor is unconscious.";
	repeat with the current character running through another conscious crew members:
		say "[current character][line break]";
		if the action delay of the current character < the max delay of the current character:
			now the action delay of the current character is the action delay of the current character + 1;
			now the current character is stationary;
		otherwise:
			if the current character is not in the destination of the current character:
				let the current direction be the best route from the location of the current character to the destination of the current character, using doors;
				say "Destination is [destination of the current character].";
				say "Best direction is [current direction].";
				if the current direction is not nothing:
					try the current character going the current direction;
					if the location of the current character is the destination of the current character:
						now the current character is stationary;
						now the action delay of the current character is 0;
					otherwise:
						now the current character is mobile;
			otherwise:
				say "In location.";
				now the current character is stationary.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2018&start=0#p13525
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: instead of moving - not working, or special case?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-02-13 18:06:18

A good trick to know is this: if you type "actions on" in your game (while running in the Inform 7 development environment), you get to see all the actions that the game attempts to take. So if you first type "actions on" and then "move stone", you will see something like "[pushing the secret cache]", and you will know that the verb is called "pushing". [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2017&start=0#p13526
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The odd behavior of "Decide on"
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-02-13 18:10:16

zarf:  I'm not exactly sure what you're saying there.  I was going off of 11.17, which has a couple of examples that don't use parameters, and I'm not getting a runtime error or any sort of error at all (just incorrect behavior).

Phrasing the first line as "To decide what room is the destination of (J -Jake):" etc. doesn't have any effect.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2019&start=0#p13527
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Elevator Movement
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-02-13 18:14:29

If I read your post correctly, you have ave created rooms "elevator level 1", "elevator level 2", and so on? I would definitely not do that: the elevator is just one room, and you want to have Inform model it as such. (If the player drops something in the elevator and then moves to a different floor, it shouldn't disappear!)

What you probably want is:
- One room called "Elevator".
- A number that varies, which keeps track of the floor the elevator is supposed to be on.
- A rule that moves the player to the appropriate floor on exiting the elevator.

Instead of exiting when the location is the elevator:
   if the elevator level is 1:
      move the player to Floor 1;
   if the elevator level is 2:
      ...

and so on. (Untested code, I don't have Inform on this PC.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2017&start=0#p13528
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The odd behavior of "Decide on"
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-02-13 18:17:09

Could you post the smallest complete program that exhibits this behaviour? (It's hard to say anything useful without seeing all the code that has a bearing on this problem.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2017&start=0#p13529
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The odd behavior of "Decide on"
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-02-13 18:58:29

OK, here you go:

[code]The cockpit is a room.  The hall is west of the cockpit.  The sickbay is west of the hall.

A person can be conscious or unconscious.  A person is usually conscious.

Jake is a man.  Jake is conscious.  Jake is in the hall.

Gail is a woman.  Gail is conscious.  Gail is in the hall.  The player is Gail.

Connor is a man.  Connor is unconscious.  Connor is in the cockpit.

A person has a room called the destination.

Every turn:
	if Connor is unconscious:
		say "Connor is unconscious."

To decide which room is the destination of Jake:
	if Connor is conscious, decide on the Cockpit;
	decide on the Sickbay.

Definition: a person is another if it is not the player.

Every turn:
	repeat with the current character running through another conscious people:
		say "[current character][line break]";
		if the current character is not in the destination of the current character:
			let the current direction be the best route from the location of the current character to the destination of the current character, using doors;
			say "Destination is [destination of the current character].";
			say "Best direction is [current direction].";
			if the current direction is not nothing:
				try the current character going the current direction;
			otherwise:
				say "In location."[/code]

It plays out like this (at least for me):

[quote]hall
You can see Jake here.

>z
Time passes.

Connor is unconscious.

Jake
Destination is cockpit.
Best direction is east.

Jake goes east.
[/quote]

Is it possible that this is an actual Inform bug?  Because I really don't see what could be wrong with the above code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2017&start=10#p13530
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The odd behavior of "Decide on"
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-13 19:13:08

After a quick look, there are two problems that contribute to the behavior you're seeing:

[list=1]
[*] You can't set a property directly using the "decide on" construction, so you've basically defined a phrase that will never fire (stick a debugging print statement into the phrase as Juhana suggested and you'll see that it is never activated.) Set the property in an every turn rule instead, or do away with the property in favor of a string of decide phrases as suggested by zarf.[/*:m]
[*] The default value for the destination property is the first room created, which happens to be the cockpit, so that room only [i]seems[/i] to be actively selected by the decide phrase.[/*:m][/list:o]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2017&start=10#p13532
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The odd behavior of "Decide on"
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-02-13 20:31:19

OK, but why does it still make the default destination the cockpit in my real game, where the Cockpit is actually the absolute last room created?

And I still don't know what zarf's example was supposed to mean or how it is different from mine, or for that matter how mine is different from the examples given in 11.17.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2017&start=10#p13533
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The odd behavior of "Decide on"
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-13 20:50:57

[quote="katz"]OK, but why does it still make the default destination the cockpit in my real game, where the Cockpit is actually the absolute last room created?[/quote]
I have no idea--you didn't post that code. [emote];)[/emote] Define any other room before the Cockpit in [i]this[/i] example, though, and you'll see that that room becomes Jake's destination.

[quote="katz"]And I still don't know what zarf's example was supposed to mean or how it is different from mine, or for that matter how mine is different from the examples given in 11.17.[/quote]

You have a property called "destination", but writing the phrase

[code]To decide which room is the destination of Jake:[/code]

doesn't set that destination property. It just creates a form of words: Inform has no idea that "destination" in "destination of Jake" refers to the destination property, nor does it know that "Jake" refers to the person Jake. The compiler will simply look for the exact words "destination of Jake" and substitute the contents of your decision phrase. Since "destination of Jake" doesn't appear anywhere in your source text, this phrase effectively doesn't do anything at all.

There are a host of ways you could do this. Here's one way to do it by using the "description" property:

[code]First every turn:
    repeat with subject running through another people:
        select goal of the subject.

To select goal of (J - Jake):
	if Connor is conscious:
		now the destination of J is the Cockpit;
	otherwise:
		now the destination of J is the Sickbay.
	
To select goal of (T - thing):
	now the destination of T is the Hall.[/code]

Another option would be to remove the line that defines the description property and instead use the "form of words" approach, as outlined by zarf:

[code]To decide which room is the destination of (P - a person):
     decide on the Hall.

To decide which room is the destination of (J - Jake):
     if Connor is conscious, decide on the Cockpit;
     decide on the Sickbay.[/code]

In this case, Inform will substitute a function that returns a room for the pattern "destination of <person>" throughout your source code. In this way of doing it, there is no property in which the room is stored--Inform runs a function each time it encounters that pattern. Hope that helps.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2017&start=10#p13534
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The odd behavior of "Decide on"
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-02-13 20:58:02

OK, thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2014&start=0#p13535
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation and Orders
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-13 21:03:37

This is a pet peeve of mine. I feel pretty strongly about avoiding indexed text, but there are aspects of the parser that just can't be accessed any other way (aside from rewriting one or two huge monolithic functions in the I6 code).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2014&start=0#p13536
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation and Orders
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-02-13 21:50:54

[quote="capmikee"]This is a pet peeve of mine. I feel pretty strongly about avoiding indexed text, but there are aspects of the parser that just can't be accessed any other way (aside from rewriting one or two huge monolithic functions in the I6 code).[/quote]
I don't disagree ... but as a practical matter, using indexed text is not unduly painful. It's not like getting a root canal or something. Well, once in a while it can be, but mostly not.

As I understand it (imperfectly, in all likelihood), the whole business of text vs. indexed text is sort of a workaround for how I6 optimizes its text storage in order to accommodate the Z-machine.

As a classical musician, I find this reminiscent of the fact that parts for clarinets and trumpets are written a whole-step higher than they sound ... except that some clarinet parts are written a minor third higher than they sound, and must be played on a different clarinet. It's a living fossil.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1985&start=40#p13537
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Infocom (of course)
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-02-13 22:58:55

[quote](And sorry Ghalev if I misinterpreted your mood.)[/quote]

No worries.

[quote]So let's just [...] keep it an open question whether those altered facts actually rise to the level of defraying the effects I am talking about.[/quote]

As per the OP, this thread is about the best place to buy/get Infocom games. Each of our opinions on this matter are a matter of record upthread.

Discussion of the rationale for these opinions is, IMO, not tangential provided it stays relevant to the question. I think we've [i]all [/i]done just fine so far on that count.

Veering into the broader question you propose would, I think, be better in its own thread. Certainly, it's a question worth visiting, and revisiting now and then, too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2016&start=0#p13538
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Blorb thumbnailer for GNOME
User: lamont / DateTime: 2011-02-13 22:58:55

I'll leave it to you to upload to Launchpad, but I don't mind doing the initial packaging work. Let me see if I can't get you a usable source package.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2018&start=0#p13539
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: instead of moving - not working, or special case?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-02-13 23:56:44

Shouldn't this be considered an Inform bug? Since the grammar line "move [something]" is already assigned to an action, shouldn't the compiler issue an error message on an attempt to use that grammar line to refer to a different action?

I can see that the compiler doesn't want to check this sort of thing with nouns. We want to be able to define a flop-eared puppy and also a bag of puppy kibble without running afoul of the usage of "dog" to refer to two different objects. But verbs are different, I think.

Should this be reported as a bug? As a feature request?

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2018&start=0#p13544
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: instead of moving - not working, or special case?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-14 00:20:46

It's common to redefine actions with the same word but different tokens. For example, defining "move [person]" creates an exception to the usual grammar, with people going to the new action while everything else goes to the original action. (The synonymity of "push" and "move" is preserved.)

The question is what happens if you define another "move [person]". The usual Inform plan (for phrases, rules, etc) is that this is not an error -- one of the uses overrides the other.

It would seem to be most useful if the author's definition overrode the library's definition. I'm not sure why it doesn't. Maybe it's getting caught by a "first defined" technicality.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=160#p13545
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: artao / DateTime: 2011-02-14 00:43:13

Howdy all!
Seeing how this topic exists .... my RL name is Vaughn, I live in SW Wisconsin, and in general I'm an artist in several media. I haven't FINISHED a whole lot of IF games, but have played on and off since the 80s. It's awesome that IF is still alive, and since I discovered Inform, I've been playing more over the last decade. In 2003, I decided to try my hand at writing IF, and TRIED to start small (using Inform 6) but the game kept growing and growing until I just dropped it. Picked it up again in 07, fleshed out the plot and puzzles a bit more, and dropped a lot of the over-expansive ideas I had ... but still, being my first project it got dropped again, even though the code currently sits around 1200 lines. I still hope to finish that game, but am thinking I should step back and code something considerably smaller just as a learning device and to actually COMPLETE something LOLz. I'll be sure to announce it on the beta-test forums when I finally get something done.
...
also, I gotta say, actually getting my account activated was somewhat like solving an IF puzzle. [emote];)[/emote] The original registration activation e-mail never came, and never came .. until I sent an e-mail about it, and got no response .. then looked under the 'Forum Announcements' topic and learned that this was a known issue .... and finally today noticed the 'Resend Activation E-mail' option on the login page. heh. solved. [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2021&start=0#p13546
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Source code of Theatre available?
User: artao / DateTime: 2011-02-14 00:50:24

Howdy. New user here, I introduced myself just now in the appropriate topic in 'General..' forum ...
So, my question ... I just finished playing Theatre and quite enjoyed it. I aspire to someday complete my own IF game(s), and think it would be QUITE informative to have a look through the source for Theatre ... or Anchorhead for that matter, one of the other few games I've fully completed. I don't see the source for either available anywhere. Is that just how it is, or does it exist someplace I have not yet looked?
That is all.
Thanks in advance for any and all responses.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2022&start=0#p13547
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Silly question about 'ask about [something]'
User: whoiscraig / DateTime: 2011-02-14 01:26:24

There must be a way to do this, but I've scoured the manual and I can't for the life of me find it. It's probably right under my nose.

I'm using Conversational Defaults by Eric Eve, and I want to say:

[code]
Default ask response for Jack:
	say "'Jack, what do you know about <<topic>>,' I ask him.[paragraph break]Jack shakes his head. 'Never heard of that, sorry.'"[/code]

where I put <<topic>> I've tried all sorts of things to reference the [something] that the player is asking about, but nothing seems to work. 
[the noun] gives me 'Jack'.
[the second noun] gives me 'nothing'.
And everything else I've tried gives me an error.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2021&start=0#p13548
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Source code of Theatre available?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-02-14 01:28:23

[quote="artao"]Howdy. New user here, I introduced myself just now in the appropriate topic in 'General..' forum ...
So, my question ... I just finished playing Theatre and quite enjoyed it. I aspire to someday complete my own IF game(s), and think it would be QUITE informative to have a look through the source for Theatre ... or Anchorhead for that matter, one of the other few games I've fully completed. I don't see the source for either available anywhere. Is that just how it is, or does it exist someplace I have not yet looked?
That is all.
Thanks in advance for any and all responses.[/quote]

Hi!

I don't know about Theatre, but [url=http://community.livejournal.com/informalize/4421.html]the first five rooms of Anchorhead[/url] has had their source code published. Given the version of Inform 7 intended to run it (3L95), I'd be surprised if (a) several things in it aren't easier to do today and (b) if the code can be made to compile as it is.

Either way, it should be an interesting read. I don't think I'll take a look myself until I've played the game.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2018&start=0#p13549
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: instead of moving - not working, or special case?
User: whoiscraig / DateTime: 2011-02-14 01:32:47

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Shouldn't this be considered an Inform bug? Since the grammar line "move [something]" is already assigned to an action, shouldn't the compiler issue an error message on an attempt to use that grammar line to refer to a different action?
--JA[/quote]

While technically not a bug, I sort of agree with you. It would be nice if the compiler would give you some warnings. Still compile fine, but then say 'oh by the way you tried to define "move [something]", I thought you'd like to know that move is an already known verb."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2023&start=0#p13550
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: First time authoring, quite the slew o' questions.
User: Kiruvi / DateTime: 2011-02-14 01:39:02

So, I just started working with Inform 7. I've been learning by using a combination of the brasslantern.org guide, the Inform 7 manual, and good ol' trial-and-error. I am pretty comfortable with the straightforward activites, but am having trouble with any puzzles involving multiple conditions. For instance, at the end of my test story, I have a portal which the player must use to finish the story. The portal is activated by pulling a lever which activates the engine that powers the portal; however, before the engine can be activated, the player must find a missing gear and replace it in the engine. 
At least... that's the idea. 
I have seen similar logic in other IF (Curses comes to mind, where the flashlight cannot be switched on unless you put in a fresh battery), so I assume the verbage exists in Inform; however, everything I have tried results in either an error or is simply non-functional. I have tried using an instead of statement with multiple possible outcomes; however I cannot get Inform to read the second outcome. The specific requirements I am going for are a) the rust-covered gear must be in the panel before the switch can be activated, b) if the switch is activated before the gear is in the panel, a failure message will be printed. The source text in question is currently written:
[quote]Instead of switching on the motor:
If rust-covered gear is in panel, say "[if motor is switched off]The engine roars to life.[otherwise]The engine grinds to a halt.[endif]";
continue the action.;
If rust-covered gear is not in panel, say "There is a pitiful whine, but nothing happens.";
stop the action.[/quote]
This plays out with the switch being properly functional if the gear is in the panel; however if the gear is not in the panel, no text is printed and the switch is toggled anyway.
In summation... I guess I am trying to ask if there is a better way to build a conditional switch. Inform doesn't seem to like my cobbled-together abomination of verbage, even though it slips past the Problem catcher.
Anyway, thanks for bearing with me and being patient with a newbie IF author, and thanks for any input you can provide.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2023&start=0#p13551
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: First time authoring, quite the slew o' questions.
User: Birion / DateTime: 2011-02-14 01:48:22

I'm not entirely certain, but it seems to me the problem is in the syntax.

Try something like this:

[code]

Instead of switching on the motor:
    if rust-covered gear is in panel:
        say "[if motor is switched off]The engine roars to life.[otherwise]The engine grinds to a halt.[endif]";
        continue the action;
    otherwise:
        say "There is a pitiful whine, but nothing happens.";
        stop the action.

[/code]

From what I could tell, your example checked if the gear were in the panel, printed the text if it were, and continued the action, so it never got to checking if the gear weren't in the panel.

I don't really use the "if .... , do something." syntax, because I'm never sure where to indent. The above feels clearer to me.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2023&start=0#p13552
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: First time authoring, quite the slew o' questions.
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-02-14 02:05:51

Hey there!

This seems to me like an issue with the colon-and-indentation syntax. As it is now, your code basically checks whether the gear is in panel. Then, after the check is complete, it executes "continue the action", meaning instructions beyond that point cannot be reached.

This will technically work.

[code]Instead of switching on the motor:
	If rust-covered gear is in panel:
		say "The engine roars to life.";
		continue the action;
	If rust-covered gear is not in panel:
		say "There is a pitiful whine, but nothing happens.".[/code]

(Using the [color=#008000]code[/color] tag on the forum instead of the quote tag allows you to preserve tab spaces.)

I already removed one part that will never be reached (you will never switch off a machine through the switching on action after all, and 'stop the action' is implicit in Instead rules). However, 'continue the action' is not needed. I get the sense you use it to mean 'continue this instruction set', but what it really does is continue the switching on action; in other words, it will print out "You switch on the engine." after printing "The engine roars to life."

I'd do this by changing the report rules rather than using one single instead rule.


[code]Instead of switching on the motor when the rust-covered gear is not in panel, say "There is a pitiful whine, but nothing happens.".

Report switching on the motor: say "The engine roars to life." instead.
Report switching off the motor: say "The engine grinds to a halt." instead.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2023&start=0#p13553
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: First time authoring, quite the slew o' questions.
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-02-14 02:11:31

[quote="Birion"]I don't really use the "if .... , do something." syntax, because I'm never sure where to indent. The above feels clearer to me.[/quote]

That's good, because using that syntax precludes indenting. [emote]:P[/emote]

In short, "if X is true, say Y;" is a complete logical statement. After the semicolon, the condition ends. You use colon and indentation to create a multi-row condition:

[code]If x is true:
	say "Permit me to introduce myself,";
	say "I am a man of wealth and taste.".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2014&start=0#p13554
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation and Orders
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-02-14 02:31:13

I understand an aversion to indexed text. For my part, it annoys me to have to use regular expressions to do the job of an Understand statement. Granted that the issue doesn't come up all that often, but having to stick all the synonyms of "ask/tell/order/beg/cajole" into a wholly different form for that one purpose... doesn't sit well with me, I guess.

Yeah, it's just a small niggle, and I do get the sense that the I6 code responsible for such substitution is deep magic and fairly opaque one at that, so I can understand how it may be completely different in practice. Still, given how far I7 has come from its first incarnations, part of me wonders if resolving these sorts of issues (giving the author direct control over the persuasion-stage syntax at the I7 level, that is) could be the logical next step.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2021&start=0#p13555
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Source code of Theatre available?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-02-14 03:41:50

The source code for [i]Theatre[/i] is at least not linked from the IFDB, so I guess it's not available. This might be a [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=tag:I7%20source%20available]useful link[/url] for you: a list of games with Inform 7 source code.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2022&start=0#p13556
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Silly question about 'ask about [something]'
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-02-14 03:44:54

I believe you need "[the topic understood]". Does that work?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2015&start=0#p13557
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Renaming Getting Started and General Game Design?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-02-14 04:23:31

[quote="Emerald"]put up a stickied post on that board telling people to post Inform questions on the Inform board (and TADS questions on the TADS board, etc.)[/quote]

This is probably overkill... Anyone who comes to the forum finds sections called "General", "Playing", "Authoring"... and in the authoring section, there are very, very visible TADS and Inform boards. If people post in the wrong board, they'll probably still post in the wrong board if there is a sticky.

I don't see anything wrong with moving, though. In the AGS forums, which I visited very frequently, an overkill was rather necessary, and every board had a sticky saying what sort of things were meant for this board, and what sort of things weren't - and what sort of things would be better in THIS or THAT board. If a post was mis-cathegorized, it was simply moved - the original thread locked, with a courteous message saying that the topic had been moved, and linking to the new topic. Zero fuss.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2021&start=0#p13558
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Source code of Theatre available?
User: artao / DateTime: 2011-02-14 04:32:31

Hey thanks! quick responses.
I'll certainly look at the I7 sources provided, and thank you. I'm still coding in I6 tho as I'm grokking the object oriented nature of I6 much better than the rule-based methods of I7. I certainly have other questions about transitioning from I6 to I7, but haven't had enough experience yet with I7 to know what questions I need to ask.
The biggest one, I guess, so far, is this: I've got a little over 1200 lines of I6 code for a game I've been working on on and off since 2003 ( I know, LONG time ... 1st game, got a bit too ambitious ...). Is there an "easy" way to port my I6 code to I7? Or am I pretty much back at square one there ... descriptive text and whatnot aside?
Also, I know I7 compiles to I6 code, but seems to delete that file once it compiles the I6 code. Is there a way to save the I6 code so I can look through it?
Thanks again.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2017&start=10#p13559
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The odd behavior of "Decide on"
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-02-14 04:57:58

If it's a bug it isn't a very recent one. At least 5Z71 behaves the same way, i.e. the decide phrase is not called or considered (or whatever it's called in Inform) at all. Perhaps it doesn't know to treat "Jake" as a constant rather than a literal?

In 5Z71 you could write:
[code]To decide which room is the destination of (character - Jake):
	if Connor is conscious, decide on the Cockpit;
	decide on the Sickbay.[/code]
And that would work as expected. 
But I think there's non-fixed bug in later builds that prevents it (see the thread about Sanddancer failing to compile: [url]http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1658[/url]).
So perhaps you have to resort to something like this
[code]To decide which room is the destination of (character - person):
	if the character is Jake:
		if Connor is conscious, decide on the Cockpit;
		decide on the Sickbay.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2021&start=0#p13560
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Source code of Theatre available?
User: StJohnLimbo / DateTime: 2011-02-14 05:17:59

Regarding transitioning: I think there's no way to re-use your I6 code (except of course, as you said, the descriptive text). 

If you decide to stay with I6, you might find [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/search?sortby=ratu&newSortBy.x=0&newSortBy.y=0&searchfor=tag%3AI6+source+available]this list of games with available I6 source code[/url] useful.

Regarding the other question:
You can see the I6 output of Inform7 in the "auto.inf" file in the "Build" subdirectory of your "Projectname.inform" directory (leave the IDE running in the background, otherwise it will clean up the files). I'm not an I6 coder, but from what I've read on the forum and newsgroup, since the auto-generated output is not intended for human "consumption", it's not really structured and written like a human programmer would write it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2022&start=0#p13561
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Silly question about 'ask about [something]'
User: whoiscraig / DateTime: 2011-02-14 06:04:21

Ahh, that worked. Thanks [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2018&start=0#p13562
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: instead of moving - not working, or special case?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-14 06:19:47

A question about the index: The original post made me think, "Hm, I think that's the default response for pushing." So I went to the Actions tab of the index and looked up "pushing," where I saw this:

[quote]Typed commands leading to this action

"push [something]"[/quote]

but not "move [something]." Is this just a bug in the Index, or is there a reason why "move [something]" doesn't show up?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2021&start=0#p13563
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Source code of Theatre available?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-14 06:31:43

[quote="StJohnLimbo"]You can see the I6 output of Inform7 in the "auto.inf" file in the "Build" subdirectory of your "Projectname.inform" directory (leave the IDE running in the background, otherwise it will clean up the files).[/quote]

You can set your preferences so that the IDE doesn't clean up the files when you quit it; I think you do it by unchecking "clean build files from projects before closing" on the Advanced tab of the preferences. 

Also, if you're using a Mac, the way you get to the subdirectory is to right-click (or ctrl-click) on the file and choose "Show Package Contents." (And then go to the "Build" folder, I think? The one I just tried is empty, but that may be because I saved the project without compiling it, and in fact it's in an uncompilable state.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2021&start=0#p13564
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Source code of Theatre available?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-02-14 06:33:25

[quote="StJohnLimbo"]I'm not an I6 coder, but from what I've read on the forum and newsgroup, since the auto-generated output is not intended for human "consumption", it's not really structured and written like a human programmer would write it.[/quote]
Yeah, you can glean some things from it (because a lot of the Inform 7 source is added as comments), but it's definitely not code that will be particularly useful for you.

But of course there's nothing wrong with using Inform 6, and StJohn has already posted the appropriate link. If you like the language and have 1200 lines of code in it, I would stick with it at least for this game.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2022&start=0#p13565
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Silly question about 'ask about [something]'
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-02-14 06:37:04

No problem. [emote]:)[/emote]

"noun" and "second noun" must always be objects in the world, and a piece of text is not an object in the world. When you need text, "the topic understood" is generally what you need. Here is a relevant part of the manual about the "understood" grammar in general: <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/learn/man/ex267.html">http://inform7.com/learn/man/ex267.html</a>.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2018&start=0#p13566
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: instead of moving - not working, or special case?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-02-14 06:42:57

In fact, a lot of synonyms don't seem to be showing up. Just check attacking, for instance, which has quite a number of synonyms. None show up. And even worse, check out the two swearing actions, where Inform 7 irritatingly states that he is not going to tell us. (That really annoys me.)

It seems as of these lists are handcrafted rather than automatically generated? Which sounds like a really bad idea?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=820&start=10#p13567
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp Game Names - Merged!
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-02-14 07:46:11

Oh yeah, time to revive [i]this[/i] addiction! Here's the [url=http://nitku.net/if/namegenerator/]link[/url].

[b]Not the Same Familiarity[/b]

It's a totally different familiarity.

[b]Out of Doom[/b]

It's time to kick ass and play Doom. And I'm all out of Doom.

[b]A Paper Infinity[/b]

(That's actually beautiful.)

[b]The Best Labours of Hercules[/b]

It's the [i]Reader's Digest[/i] version. They had an online poll first.

[b]Alcatraz Wonderland[/b]

It's not what it's cracked up to be.

[b]Escape from a Planet Filled with Afterlife[/b]

Much worse than normal life.

[b]Journey to Alpha Centauri (In Overflow [/b]

First attempt, where he used an integer to keep count of the seconds. ([url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=nidzkipeux0uusqk]Second attempt[/url].)

[b]Assault on Pi[/b]

He refused to be rational.

[b]Bane of Africa[/b]

The new biography of Leopold II.

[b]Count Dracula's Breathing[/b]

John Seward's seminal paper on vampiric respiration. 

[b]Dawn of the Deadline[/b]

The day everyone dreads.

[b]Fun and From Hell[/b]

An erotic comedy about succubi.

[b]The Curse Created That Monster?[/b]

We're not quite sure about the causality, but there is certainly correlation.

[b]Choose Your Own Information[/b]

That's why we no longer speak about "data".

[b]Chicks Dig Queen[/b]

Especially fat-bottomed ones.

[b]Saigon: The Agenda[/b]

A chapter from Henry Kissinger's sensational memoirs.

[b]Losing : A Speed IF[/b]

It is exceedingly short.

[b]Inca Paparazzi[/b]

Atahualpa didn't have a moment of privacy.


And without comment: Foreplay Crystal Wand; Depravity Delta; Amateur Adventure; Coming Out of Drool.


Okay, one more. Or two.

[b]Insider Helped by a Squirrel[/b]

They never found out who did it.

[b]Rendition II[/b]

Please, no?

[b]At the Bottom of Zombies![/b]

Uhm.

[b]Eric the Power-Mad Menagerie![/b]

They already killed the gazebo.

[b]Sisyphus in the Big Easy[/b]

He ain't rollin' that stone no more.

[b]-Dank-Dungeon Pink[/b]

The colour of her ball-gag.

[b]Castle of Nazareth[/b]

It's where Jesus poured boiling oil on the Romans.

[b]Escape from the Statue[/b]

(Hint: just type "go north". It's a statue.)

[b]Opium for Flesh[/b]

The darkest game about addiction. Ever.

[b]I Didn't Know You in Seattle[/b]

But I certainly did in Las Vegas!

[b]Dracula Part 1: The First House of O's[/b]

That was before her story.

[b]Planet Supernova[/b]

The real estate prices are really low.

[b]It's Mortal[/b]

Run!

[b]Logic Working Late[/b]

The wife keeps complaining, but he has all the good arguments on his side.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2018&start=0#p13568
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: instead of moving - not working, or special case?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-02-14 08:10:31

They may be automatically generated after all. 
It seems that only the verbs  defined by an 'Understand "VERB" as verbing'  statement will be detailed under its specific action in the Actions A to Z part of the Actions Index. Those defined by an 'Understand the command "ACT" as "VERB"' won't, though they will be found under the Commands A to Z part of the Actions index (with the exception, again, of the curses—you won't find them even in the pdf-version of the Standard Rules, but of course you find them in the Standard Rules extension file that Inform actually uses). 
Here they are, by the way: [spoiler]bother, curses, drat and darn; shit, fuck and damn[/spoiler]

I think the difference between these two ways of creating commands is that the first way (understanding the verb as an action) creates a special syntax line for that verb to check during parsing, while the second way (understanding one verb as another) only provides alternative ways to get at one and the same syntax line.

But why only verbs created in one of these ways should be listed in the actions details is of course another matter. It would certainly be convenient to have the mere synonyms listed there, too.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2014&start=0#p13569
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation and Orders
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-14 09:53:33

It seems to me like indexed text has two completely different applications.

The first, and the one I think it is appropriate for, is output filtering. You can have a rule do some very complicated things with the text, which would be completely impossible if only chunks of compressed text were being used.

The second is input filtering. The reason this bothers me is that the underlying I6 code already has data structures for doing this, in the form of three separate buffers (the two extra ones are needed for keeping track of earlier commands in the case of disambiguation and OOPS). I think it should be possible for I7 to have access to these buffers, or maybe even to create new ones. They are not indexed text, and I don't think they are dynamically allocated at all. It just seems like a waste to me that I6 and I7 can't share.

One of the things on my somewhat unlikely todo list, inspired quite a bit by John Ingold's "Disambiguation Control" and Aaron Reed's "Smarter Parser" is to completely rewrite the main parser routines so they integrate better with I7.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2024&start=0#p13570
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Roll-your-own Run-time Problem
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-14 09:59:09

Can it be done?

I discovered a problem with my extension, and I realized that although the bug was in the Source, the Run-time Problem that I got was not in the least bit helpful. After I tracked down the error, I wrote a little statement like this:

[code]	if S is not a thing, say "*** Multitudes run-time problem: The [printed name of the mess] multitude does not have a specimen defined.";
[/code]

But of course this is not a real RTP and there's no helpful long-winded explanation that tells you how to fix it, appearing in a separate panel of the IDE. Does I7 have hooks for that or are all the RTPs way down in I6 code?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2018&start=10#p13571
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: instead of moving - not working, or special case?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-14 10:13:57

Looks like there's a [url=http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/937641-list-all-synonyms-under-typed-commands-leading-to?ref=title]uservoice suggestion[/url] to list all synonyms in the index. I'm going to go vote it up, and I urge others to do so.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2016&start=0#p13572
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Blorb thumbnailer for GNOME
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-02-14 10:27:39

Wow, must be something in the water. I put together a Babel thumbnailer for OS X 10.5+ last week:
<a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2759298/Bruegel.qlgenerator.zip">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2759298/Bruegel.qlgenerator.zip</a>

[img]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2759298/Bruegel.png[/img]

Does your plugin also work for TADS games with embedded cover art? There aren't too many but for example [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=bxio01ferbyxr4rk]The Sleeping Princess[/url] has one.

I'd planned to do a Windows one and hadn't even looked at the Gnome side yet. Maybe we should put together some sort of project page for these, if only just a set of links on ifwiki?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2025&start=0#p13573
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Weird behavior of zero
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-14 10:46:37

I had a much more complicated bug that I was going to try duplicating, but this turned up while I was doing that, and it's pretty damn weird in itself:

[code]				
Printing an approximate number of something is an activity on numbers.

For printing an approximate number for a number (called N):
	say "approximately [N]";

Test is a room.

When play begins:
	Repeat with num running from -1 to 5:
		say "Now carrying out the printing an approximate number activity with [num]: ";
		carry out the printing an approximate number activity with num;
		say "[line break]";[/code]

This outputs:
[quote]Now carrying out the printing an approximate number activity with -1: approximately -1
Now carrying out the printing an approximate number activity with 0: approximately -1
Now carrying out the printing an approximate number activity with 1: approximately 1
Now carrying out the printing an approximate number activity with 2: approximately 2
Now carrying out the printing an approximate number activity with 3: approximately 3
Now carrying out the printing an approximate number activity with 4: approximately 4
Now carrying out the printing an approximate number activity with 5: approximately 5
[/quote]

Is it impossible to pass 0 to an activity on numbers?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2024&start=0#p13574
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Roll-your-own Run-time Problem
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-02-14 10:47:34

The RTP Template begins thus:
[quote]All RTPs are produced by calling the following routine, which takes one compulsory argument: n, the RTP number. When I7 is being used with the Inform user interface, it’s important that these numbers correspond to the explanatory web pages stored within the interface application: those in turn are created by the inrtps utility. The interface knows to display these pages because it parses the printed output during play to look for the text layout produced by the following routine: so do not reformat RTPs without ensuring that corresponding changes have been made to the Inform user interface applications. [/quote]
The prospects for easy I7 hooks seem bleak. As I understand it, you'd have to hack the IDE. (Or did I get it all wrong?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2025&start=0#p13575
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Weird behavior of zero
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-14 10:52:08

I discovered a workaround that's almost as weird as the original bug:

[code]				
Printing an approximate number of something is an activity on numbers.

For printing an approximate number for a number (called N):
	if the item described is nothing, now N is 0;
	say "approximately [N]";

Test is a room.

When play begins:
	Repeat with num running from -1 to 5:
		say "Now carrying out the printing an approximate number activity with [num]: ";
		carry out the printing an approximate number activity with num;
		say "[line break]";[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2026&start=0#p13576
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: How best to track knowledge/belief for all characters?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-14 10:54:07

I'm brainstorming ways to track PC+NPC knowledge and belief. An example of what I want:

Every object in the game (or at least every object of interest to the characters) has a "last known location" that is tracked independently for each character (PC or NPC). This will be updated each time an object is seen by a character, but it also serves to tell us whether the character is aware of the object's existence: if the character knows the object exists but has no idea where it is, the last known location will be a special "unknown" value, whereas if the player doesn't know of the object's existence, the value will be null. The last known location can also track character's beliefs about objects, whether or not they've ever seen them. For example, the last known location of the Holy Grail for Gawain is a barrow in Wales; he's never seen the Grail, of course, and it isn't in that barrow, but that's where Gawain believes.

The problem, of course, is that this is a three-way relation--for each object, there is a person who thinks it is somewhere--and Inform doesn't do three-way relations (at least not yet). I've thought of a couple of ways to handle this (using tables or lists), but neither of them really satisfy me. I started to explain the models I've come up with and why I don't like them, but in the interests of brevity, maybe I'll just ask how you would implement this. (I'd like for the solution to be flexible enough for an extension, which does impose some limitations.)

Thanks,
Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2024&start=0#p13577
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Roll-your-own Run-time Problem
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-14 11:06:52

Bleak may be a little bit of a strong term, but it certainly doesn't sound worth the effort.

Okay, maybe bleak is the right word.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2025&start=0#p13578
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Weird behavior of zero
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-02-14 11:23:00

You should report that as a bug. I can sort of see why it's happening, but Inform should be smart enough to handle that case!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2026&start=0#p13579
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: How best to track knowledge/belief for all character
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-02-14 11:34:59

My first impulse would be to give every object a table ("every object has a table called the..." or something like that), and fill those tables with the names of all persons at the start of the game. But I might be missing a problem here, because you have already considered tables.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2026&start=0#p13580
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: How best to track knowledge/belief for all character
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-14 11:37:46

I recently had a situation where I wanted a three-way relation, and I ended up using a single three-column table.

The danger, of course, is running out of room in the table. For a three-way relation like this, the number of rows you need will always be X * Y, where X and Y are the numbers of instances of each kind in the domain. (number of people and number of objects in your case).

There is a request on uservoice for three-way relations, but I've started wondering if instead it would be better to put out a request for putting a (constant) numerical expression in the "with X blank rows" declaration for a table. There is already a sort-of hacky syntax for "with blank rows for every thing", so there is a precedent. Since this seems most likely to be used with three-way relations, a syntax like this should cover most cases:

[code]with blank rows for the combination of every person and thing[/code]

What do you think? Should I suggest that? Has someone else suggested something similar? Would you vote for it?

The alternative (if you don't have the opportunity or inclination to calculate the table size by hand) is to do what Aaron Reed did in Remembering, and just give up keeping track of things once the table's full.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2026&start=0#p13581
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: How best to track knowledge/belief for all character
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-14 11:38:36

If you were going to do it Victor's way, it would be nice to have anonymous tables. Is that currently possible?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2025&start=0#p13582
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Weird behavior of zero
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-02-14 11:41:18

Yes, that definitely looks like a bug and should be reported in Mantis.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2026&start=0#p13583
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: How best to track knowledge/belief for all character
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-02-14 11:49:14

[quote="capmikee"]If you were going to do it Victor's way, it would be nice to have anonymous tables. Is that currently possible?[/quote]
Oh, wait, my suggestion is not even possible, is it? You cannot automatically create a table for every thing.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2025&start=0#p13584
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Weird behavior of zero
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-14 12:00:05

Okay then:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=563">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=563</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2026&start=0#p13585
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: How best to track knowledge/belief for all character
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-14 12:44:48

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="capmikee"]If you were going to do it Victor's way, it would be nice to have anonymous tables. Is that currently possible?[/quote]
Oh, wait, my suggestion is not even possible, is it? You cannot automatically create a table for every thing.[/quote]

You can give every thing of a certain kind a table; I have a bit of code now, which compiles, including the following:

[code]A theme is a kind of thing. A theme has a table-name called transition-table.[/code]

Don't know if this would work for "every thing" or not, and writing all those tables seems like it would certainly be a mondo headache. (But one tricky bit is that you need to say "table-name" instead of "table.")

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2015&start=0#p13586
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Renaming Getting Started and General Game Design?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-02-14 12:48:50

I've moved all the Inform threads on the first page into the I6/I7 board.

If you notice a post is mis-categorized, please flag it as off-topic. Moving them is a quick and painless process.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2033&start=0#p13587
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Backdrops argh!
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-14 13:03:06

I think I've already figured this one out, but it caused me such a huge amount of aggravation that I wanted to share it.

[code]The current mess is a backdrop that varies.

Definition: A room (called loc) is messy:
	if the current mess is sand, decide on whether or not loc is sandy;
	if the current mess is water, decide on whether or not loc is wet;
	
To update multitudes:
	Now the current mess is water;
	Move the water backdrop to all messy rooms;
	Now the current mess is sand;
	update backdrop positions;

A backdrop is usually not scenery.
the Water is a backdrop. the Sand is a backdrop.

The Road is a room. The Beach is west of the Road.

A room can be wet. A room can be sandy. The Road is sandy.

When play begins: update multitudes.

Every turn:
	if the road is sandy, now the road is not sandy;
	otherwise now the road is sandy;
	update backdrop positions.
	
test me with "l/l/l/l"[/code]

I thought I could use the "messy" adjective, tied to a "current mess" variable, to update multitudes (a kind of backdrop) independently of each other. I should have realized, though - every time backdrop positions are updated, the description of objects that tells where they should be is checked again! So if "messy" refers to a different backdrop now, it doesn't matter! All the backdrops get lumped together!

I think I can fix this with relations, but if not, I will scream.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2033&start=0#p13588
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Backdrops argh!
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-14 13:22:31

Okay, I'm getting ready to scream.

Why is relation syntax so impenetrable?

[code]Littering relates a multitude (called the mess) to a room (called the site) when the count of the mess in the site is at least 1. The verb to litter (he litters, they litter, he littered, it is littered, it is littering) implies the littering relation.[/code]

[code]To update multitudes:
	Repeat with the mess running through multitudes:
		Move the mess backdrop to all rooms littered by the mess;
	update backdrop positions.
[/code]

[quote]Problem. You wrote 'Move the mess backdrop to all rooms littered by the mess'  : but descriptions used as values are not allowed to contain references to temporary variables defined by 'let' or by loops, because they may very well not exist any more when the description needs to be used, in another time and another place.[/quote]

Why? Why, why, why, why, why? Am I going to have to scrap this whole )(*#&$)%ing extension just because of this idiotic constraint?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2033&start=0#p13589
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Backdrops argh!
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-14 13:25:00

At this point I'm thinking I'll have to forget the idea of using them as actual backdrops, and move them manually, somehow guessing at all the cases where the backdrops would normally get moved. Is there some way to replace or hook into the existing "update backdrop positions" phrase?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2033&start=0#p13590
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Backdrops argh!
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-14 13:26:48

Hmm.. maybe I can just put the damn things everywhere but be more careful about checking when the count is 0.

Oh, and I guess I'll have to be careful to catch any attempt to interact with a multitude that isn't really there...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2033&start=0#p13591
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Backdrops argh!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-14 13:29:43

I haven't tested this, but why doesn't the following work (in the code in your first post)?

[code]To update multitudes:
      Now the current mess is water;
      Move the water backdrop to all messy rooms;
      update backdrop positions;
      Now the current mess is sand;
     Move the sand backdrop to all messy rooms; 
      update backdrop positions;[/code]

Maybe I'm not understanding what you're trying to do, but if you can tell me why that fails it'd be, um, edifying for me.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2033&start=0#p13592
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Backdrops argh!
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-14 13:51:42

That's what I had originally, but I pared it down to illustrate the problem.

What's going on is this. The location of a backdrop isn't a list of rooms or regions, it's a description of objects. When you say "move the water backdrop to every messy room," it sets the location of the water to "every messy room." Every time the "update backdrop positions" phrase runs (e.g., after going), the world model checks if the location belongs to "every messy room." If the meaning of messy has changed since then, the result will be affected. So if messy means sandy at that time, and the location is sandy, then the water will get moved to the location.

What I essentially did was to bypass the error message I got when I used a relation, but I didn't actually solve the problem that the message told me about.

Here's my tentative, hacky fix, which involves replacing the "update backdrop positions" phrase from the Standard Library:

[code]To update multitudes:
	Repeat with the mess running through multitudes:
		If the mess is presently available, move the mess backdrop to all rooms;
		otherwise remove the mess from play;
	
To update backdrop positions:
	update multitudes;
	update I6 backdrop positions;
	
To update I6 backdrop positions:
	(- MoveFloatingObjects(); -)

[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2026&start=0#p13593
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: How best to track knowledge/belief for all character
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-02-14 14:01:07

But creating table-names that vary (variables) is not the same thing as creating tables ("objects"), right? (In ATTACK I give every person a table-name that varies, but I fill those in with the names of pre-existing tables.) Wat you would want here is that as soon as you add an object, the compiler will add a new table (the Table of Knowledge about [Object]). Such a thing is possible with [i]objects[/i] (by using parts), but I don't think it's possible with anything else.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2033&start=0#p13594
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Backdrops argh!
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-14 14:08:58

Understanding has an "[something related by ...]" token that assumes the object of the relation is always the object understood. Since this is also the case with multitudes (a multitude is present in every room that relates to it by the littering relation), I was hoping there was a syntax for that. Did I miss it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2026&start=0#p13595
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: How best to track knowledge/belief for all character
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-14 14:11:04

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]But creating table-names that vary (variables) is not the same thing as creating tables ("objects"), right? (In ATTACK I give every person a table-name that varies, but I fill those in with the names of pre-existing tables.) Wat you would want here is that as soon as you add an object, the compiler will add a new table (the Table of Knowledge about [Object]). Such a thing is possible with [i]objects[/i] (by using parts), but I don't think it's possible with anything else.[/quote]

Ah, sorry, I didn't understand what you were getting at. Yeah, I'd be surprised if you could do this without, at the very least, some I6 wizardry.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2002&start=0#p13596
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Multitudes Beta!
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-14 14:36:39

Some bugfixes have been posted in version 1-110214.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2021&start=0#p13597
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Source code of Theatre available?
User: artao / DateTime: 2011-02-14 14:45:17

autogenerated code never is particularly 'human readable' ... but I do find it interesting that all these 'new features' of Inform 7 are actually parsed down to Inform 6 before they're fully compiled into z-code or glulxe ... that basically means that all the functionality of I7 actually already exists in I6 ... but I'm sure it's a bitch to code by hand [emote];)[/emote]
I7 makes it easier and perhaps more immediately intuitive. i have yet to work that part out, but I DO see how quick it can be to code up a few rooms and objects real real quick. I also VERY MUCH like the IDE, and the way extensions work. I've had problems (lord what problems) incorporating external libraries into my I6 code. Not that I've done much I6 coding ... clearly ... have yet to finish ONE title .... I was trying to use a certain NPC library that eventually totally pooched my code for no apparent reason. Worked fine for awhile, but then just suddenly stopped working, froze up any interpreter I tried to use. I'm still rather curious what happened, 'cause using that NPC library was becoming somewhat critical to my game and getting my NPCs to 'easily' do what I wanted. As I recall, that's what ground me to a halt my last go-round with this damned story I'm trying to finish LOLz
Anyhow, I know this isn't the coding forum, so I should really go there to discuss this stuff. I was just looking for the source of Theatre here. heh.
I'm thinkin I might leave this one set aside for awhile, and try something new and fresh in I7 ......

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2023&start=0#p13598
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: First time authoring, quite the slew o' questions.
User: Kiruvi / DateTime: 2011-02-14 14:59:38

Thanks for all the responses! I used Eleas' suggestion and it seems to be doing what I wanted.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2024&start=0#p13599
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Roll-your-own Run-time Problem
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-14 15:00:33

Perhaps we should create an official suggestion for a generic RTP number in the IDE that says "one of your extensions is unhappy"?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2025&start=0#p13600
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Weird behavior of zero
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-14 15:03:52

The bug holds for all rulebooks in general per <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=513">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=513</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2016&start=0#p13601
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Blorb thumbnailer for GNOME
User: lamont / DateTime: 2011-02-14 15:12:43

Babel indeed -- Windows and KDE to thread!

My version only does blorbs. I had imagined a more general thumbnailer but, when it came to TADS, I couldn't get Babel to actually extract anything. And there were few enough examples that I figured their covers were stored in a non-standard way, perhaps for in-game display. Looking now at Sleeping Princess and Shelter from the Storm, it's clear those covers are intended as metadata, so I must have been doing something wrong -- which means I could start supporting TADS, too.

Then again, it may be easier to add GNOME support on your end than TADS on mine. How are you doing the image processing?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2025&start=0#p13602
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Weird behavior of zero
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-14 15:17:35

Sorry for the duplicate report, then...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2025&start=0#p13603
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Weird behavior of zero
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-14 15:24:46

Apologies I wasn't online earlier to save everyone some time.  I only say something now because the problem isn't restricted to just activities, but seemingly to all rulebooks, and for any value that's implemented as zero.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2034&start=0#p13604
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Coded doors?
User: Xachiavelli / DateTime: 2011-02-14 15:28:18

Hey everyone. I'm a new inform user and i was wondering if it's possible to make coded doors; if so, how?

What's i'm looking to do is have a door with a simple numeric keypad, that when you enter a certain code, the door opens.

Thanks in advance [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2026&start=0#p13605
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: How best to track knowledge/belief for all character
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-14 15:31:44

I would also use a single, 3-column table.  Using lists of lists (i.e. lists of pairs) just seems to beg for errors, plus if you have zillions of such relations, would be slower than tables.  Each column in a table is an I6 array, so are amendable to quick lookup with Glulx opcodes like @linearsearch.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2034&start=0#p13606
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Coded doors?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-02-14 15:33:02

Everything is possible! Here's a simple breakdown:

1. Make a door.
2. Have a rule that stops people from going through it unless [some condition is satisfied].
3. Make a keypad.
4. Define a typing action with grammar like "type [a number] on [noun]".
5. Make a rule that checks whether the correct number was types, and which makes sure the condition of step 2 is satisfied if it was.

How you'd implement that obviously depends on which IF language you're using. If you have trouble with a certain step, just make a post about it (including what you've tried and what exactly isn't working) in the appropriate subforum (for example, the TADS subforum or the Inform subforum).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2035&start=0#p13607
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Coded doors?
User: Xachiavelli / DateTime: 2011-02-14 15:51:21

Hey everyone.

Just wondering how i make a code locked door. What i want to do is make a door with a keypad (Which may or may not be a separate object, i don't care). I want the door to only unlock once the player enters a code (If it matters, i want said code to be '1379')

I'm pretty much a beginner, so any help is apriciated. Thanks in advance [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2026&start=0#p13608
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: How best to track knowledge/belief for all character
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-14 16:04:41

Thanks, all.

I like the single 3-col table approach better than any of my own ideas, despite the annoyances around getting the table sized. I think I'd want to use adjectives to limit the number of objects in the game that need to be tracked, though, which would probably make the compile-time syntax capmikee proposes for calculating the table size ess attractive, at least to I7's developers (e.g., I might need "with blank rows for the combination of every person and knowable thing").

My own frontrunner idea has been to give each object a list of rooms to represent the last known location, with the entry number of each list keyed to the character, e.g. yourself is indexed at entry 1, a certain NPC at entry 2, another at entry 3, etc.):

[code]The last known location of the basketball is
{ [player] Locker,
  [coach] Court,
  [spectator] Bench }[/code]

You'd need a table--or just a list--to look up the index (e.g., player = 1, coach = 2, etc.), and you'd also want to avoid having authors declare or alter the lists directly, since the structure would change when you add a new character to the game. Instead, you'd provide an initialization phrase plus a few phrases for setting particular relations manually, e.g., "(P - a person) believes the last known location of (T - a thing) is (R - a room)". This would be fast enough; for Glimmr, I implemented bitmap fonts with a similar structure (table lookup for glyph index & metadata + list search for drawing individual bits), and the results are pretty zippy. But I don't like the need for the intermediary lookup table in this case, since the author would have to remember to update it manually with the list of people.

I'd also implement the 3-column table with an assumption that the author wouldn't access it directly, but it has the advantage of not requiring the author to make a separate list of characters keyed to numerical index.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2016&start=0#p13609
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Blorb thumbnailer for GNOME
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-02-14 16:11:34

I didn't need any file or image processing to speak of; I just used the babel_handler.h functions to extract the cover art data and processed it using some Core Graphics classes. The full code is [url=https://github.com/bcressey/bruegel/blob/master/macosx/GenerateThumbnailForURL.c#L14]here[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2035&start=0#p13610
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Coded doors?
User: mktacoma / DateTime: 2011-02-14 16:16:17

Example 287 in the Inform documentation talks about spinning a safe to a particular number in order to unlock it. Substituting "spin" for "enter" or "type", you'd have about the same thing.

Search for that example in section 16.6, or search directly for it under the name "safety".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2026&start=10#p13611
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: How best to track knowledge/belief for all character
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-14 16:50:43

Well, at the same time you're making the lists of beliefs, you could make a list of people, and have their entry number be the key code.  So instead of a table, you'd have {yourself, coach, spectator}, and since yourself is entry 1, any entry 1 of an object's list would correspond to the player.

Awkward as all get-out, but it wouldn't rely on the author to remember to do anything.  

(You could also auto-set via giving each person a number property and then just updating them sequentially.)

Edit: Reading comprehension is not top notch today.

[quote="ektemple"]

You'd need a table--or just a list--to look up the index (e.g., player = 1, coach = 2, etc.),[/quote]

Sorry. I missed the "list" bit.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2024&start=0#p13612
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Roll-your-own Run-time Problem
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-14 17:15:21

I like that idea. Further steps: if the RT message included the extension name, the IDE could pop that open, maybe displayed a specially-tagged documentation segment.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1461&start=0#p13613
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gargoyle 2010.1 released
User: Roody_Yogurt / DateTime: 2011-02-14 17:38:42

Gargoyle, of course, is very nice. I have a question, though.

On the screenshots page, the Rat In Control examples have me curious about how the window heading displays the game's title and not its filename. Is that platform-specific behavior or is there something we can put in our .ini files so games are properly titled?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2016&start=0#p13614
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Blorb thumbnailer for GNOME
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-02-14 17:50:13

[quote="bcressey"]Wow, must be something in the water. I put together a Babel thumbnailer for OS X 10.5+ last week:
<a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2759298/Bruegel.qlgenerator.zip">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2759298/Bruegel.qlgenerator.zip</a>[/quote]

Nice! I found one issue with it, though. It looks slightly weird in a small preview. (Viewing it in columns in Finder.) Then there's a large white space to the right of the image. Guessing from how it looks in QuickLook, I suppose you draw tiny white text on a white background there.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1461&start=0#p13615
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gargoyle 2010.1 released
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-02-14 18:50:20

That was a TADS-only feature that didn't survive the Great Interpreter Update of 2009.

I plan to bring it back by way of Babel metadata, so it should work for any Treaty-compliant system regardless of interpreter.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2016&start=0#p13616
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Blorb thumbnailer for GNOME
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-02-14 18:54:20

Can you send me a screenshot? I've seen this happen with [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=m8bc6g3wglbrese]Closed Circles[/url] but nothing else, and I assumed it was an issue with the cover art in that one file.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2024&start=0#p13617
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Roll-your-own Run-time Problem
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-14 18:57:21

Alternately, explode the I6 function RunTimeProblem() into a rulebook, which takes a KOV as the parameter.  That's basically all the I6 func does anyway.... 

I've had many a project throw RTPs on "perfect and tested" code.  If I had added rules to such a rulebook to showme various game-specific variables besides the RTP itself, that would be very handy. 

(It's still not exactly a calltrace, but it's getting there.)

Anyone have any votes left on the [url=http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general]suggestion forum[/url]?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2024&start=0#p13618
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Roll-your-own Run-time Problem
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-02-14 19:06:44

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Anyone have any votes left on the [url=http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general]suggestion forum[/url]?[/quote]

I have one.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1461&start=0#p13619
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gargoyle 2010.1 released
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-14 19:39:42

w00t! thank you Mr. Ben!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2024&start=0#p13620
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Roll-your-own Run-time Problem
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-14 19:45:50

I created it already: <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/1491821-allow-creation-of-customized-runtime-problems">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... e-problems</a>

Although I do seem to never have enough votes. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1461&start=0#p13621
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gargoyle 2010.1 released
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-02-14 20:47:30

Many thankings!!!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2026&start=10#p13622
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: How best to track knowledge/belief for all character
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-14 21:35:38

[quote="ektemple"]My own frontrunner idea has been to give each object a list of rooms to represent the last known location, with the entry number of each list keyed to the character, e.g. yourself is indexed at entry 1, a certain NPC at entry 2, another at entry 3, etc.):

[code]The last known location of the basketball is
{ [player] Locker,
  [coach] Court,
  [spectator] Bench }[/code]

[quote="gravel"]You could also auto-set via giving each person a number property and then just updating them sequentially.[/quote]
[/quote]

That's an idea; I could do that. It's all still a bit fussier than the single-table approach, but it doesn't suffer from the need to maintain the table size. It's also nicely object-centric--look at any object, and you know very quickly what all the characters know or believe about it. On the other hand, to compile a list of all the objects thought to be in the Lounge regardless of who's doing the thinking, you'd have to iterate through all objects and then through all of the lists. The latter is probably at least as time-consuming as the table-based model.

[quote="ektemple"]

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Each column in a table is an I6 array, so are amendable to quick lookup with Glulx opcodes like @linearsearch.[/quote]

This would be fast enough; for Glimmr, I implemented bitmap fonts with a similar structure (table lookup for glyph index & metadata + list search for drawing individual bits), and the results are pretty zippy.[/quote]

Hm, I wonder if glulx acceleration functions really do much for table lookup--tables were already pretty fast, weren't they? Anyway, I'm sure they don't hurt either!

More importantly, are searches of simple lists comparably fast?

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2021&start=0#p13623
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Source code of Theatre available?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-02-15 02:20:51

[quote="artao"] ... that basically means that all the functionality of I7 actually already exists in I6 ... [/quote]
This is in fact true for any Turing-complete programming language. In theory I7 could use BASIC as the intermediary language just as well (although it wouldn't be very practical or efficient).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2021&start=0#p13624
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Source code of Theatre available?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-02-15 02:35:47

[quote="Juhana"][quote="artao"] ... that basically means that all the functionality of I7 actually already exists in I6 ... [/quote]
This is in fact true for any Turing-complete programming language. In theory I7 could use BASIC as the intermediary language just as well (although it wouldn't be very practical or efficient).[/quote]
The fact that a language is Turing-complete only proves that you can implement any algorithm in it; it doesn't guarantee any specific I/O capabilities. For instance, no matter how awesome your programming skills, no Inform 7 program will be able to use my GeForce 9600. You could implement every algorithm in OpenGL 3.0 and DirectX 11 in Inform 7, but there is just nothing that the compiler is going to compile into instructions that will be sent to the video card.

So I would say that there is more to functionality than just Turing-completeness. [emote]:)[/emote] (Of course, the original statement that all I7 functionality exists in I6 because I7-code gets compiled to I6-code is very true.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2021&start=10#p13625
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Source code of Theatre available?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-02-15 02:52:04

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]
The fact that a language is Turing-complete only proves that you can implement any algorithm in it; it doesn't guarantee any specific I/O capabilities.[/quote]
Of course, but that doesn't have much relevance in this particular issue because I6/7 doesn't have any special I/O capabilities either: the only additional capability required here is that the language must be able to create and write to files.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2021&start=10#p13626
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Source code of Theatre available?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-02-15 04:05:46

[quote="Juhana"][quote="VictorGijsbers"]
The fact that a language is Turing-complete only proves that you can implement any algorithm in it; it doesn't guarantee any specific I/O capabilities.[/quote]
Of course, but that doesn't have much relevance in this particular issue because I6/7 doesn't have any special I/O capabilities either: the only additional capability required here is that the language must be able to create and write to files.[/quote]
I agree. But you explicitly generalised to all Turing-complete languages. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2033&start=0#p13627
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Backdrops argh!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-15 07:07:23

[quote="capmikee"]What's going on is this. The location of a backdrop isn't a list of rooms or regions, it's a description of objects. When you say "move the water backdrop to every messy room," it sets the location of the water to "every messy room." Every time the "update backdrop positions" phrase runs (e.g., after going), the world model checks if the location belongs to "every messy room." If the meaning of messy has changed since then, the result will be affected. So if messy means sandy at that time, and the location is sandy, then the water will get moved to the location.[/quote]

I see. Argh indeed.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1461&start=0#p13628
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gargoyle 2010.1 released
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-02-15 07:41:59

[quote="bcressey"]That was a TADS-only feature that didn't survive the Great Interpreter Update of 2009.

I plan to bring it back by way of Babel metadata, so it should work for any Treaty-compliant system regardless of interpreter.[/quote]
Note that TADS games can call an osifc function to set the window title to whatever they want. That call should overwrite any title you've set when reading gameinfo metadata.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2036&start=0#p13629
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: How random is Inform's randomness?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-15 09:59:40

Has anyone done any tests to see how consistently random Inform's random choices are?  I've been testing a function using the "if a random chance of 1 in 10 succeeds" construction, and it's continuing to skew high - much closer to 20% than 10% success.  

It is absolutely possible that I'm just getting a weird distribution, and my experimental tests average out about right, but has anyone done any large-scale data collection?  What about random distribution to prevent bunching?  How is Inform's "random" put together, anyway?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2036&start=0#p13630
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How random is Inform's randomness?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-02-15 10:34:20

You can run the Inform Randomization Test, which I turned up a while ago and kept because it displays pretty shapes and colors.

Source code and compiled file are here:
<a class="postlink" href="http://dslinux.gits.kiev.ua/trunk/user/frotz/src/test/">http://dslinux.gits.kiev.ua/trunk/user/frotz/src/test/</a>

The actual RNG is implemented by the interpreter, e.g. [url=http://code.google.com/p/garglk/source/browse/trunk/terps/frotz/random.c]Frotz[/url] and [url=http://code.google.com/p/garglk/source/browse/trunk/terps/git/terp.c#1169]Git[/url].

Maybe someone can put together a Glulx version?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2036&start=0#p13631
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How random is Inform's randomness?
User: mktacoma / DateTime: 2011-02-15 10:36:00

I didn't spend much time on it, but put together the extremely simple test listed below.

I ran it about twenty times and found that the variation was a bit odd in that 1 and 2 seemed to get about 1/2 of the total distribution versus the 1/3 they should have. Statistically speaking, there were enough tests to make that relevant, though the test isn't a particularly thorough one beyond just pulling numbers.

There'd be straightforward ways of making this test more useful. Not knowing anything about inform's internals, I'd start out assuming that it isn't inform, as such, that generates the random numbers but the interpreter itself being handed the "get me a random value" request, so a test like this would be more helpful tested across multiple clients and OSs.

In practice, I use random pretty regularly and haven't noticed the distribution being off enough to bother me (or even notice until your post), but if you're doing something that's more sensitive to an accurate distribution it would be a bigger deal.

[code]
n1, n2, n3, n4, n5, n6 are numbers that vary.
x is a number that varies. X is 0;

When play begins:
	while x < 100:
		Let y be a random number from 1 to 6;
		increase x by 1;
		if y is 1:
			increase n1 by 1;
		if y is 2:
			increase n2 by 2;
		if y is 3:
			increase n3 by 1;
		if y is 4:
			increase n4 by 1;
		if y is 5:
			increase n5 by 1;
		if y is 6:
			increase n6 by 1;
	Say "Roll distribution:[line break]";
	say "1: [n1], 2: [n2], 3: [n3], 4: [n4], 5: [n5], 6: [n6]";
			

The test room is a room.
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2036&start=0#p13632
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How random is Inform's randomness?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-02-15 10:59:35

I get pretty much the same kind of result: n2 is consistently higher than the other values (though not always a great deal higher).

I also checked whether the bias was consistent from turn to turn by changing your code to an every turn rule. Same result. Then I added a seventh value, to see whether it was an artifact of choosing six values. Nope -- 2 is always selected more often than the others.

This may be an item for a feature request rather than strictly a bug. Not sure.

--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2026&start=10#p13633
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: How best to track knowledge/belief for all character
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-15 11:04:43

[quote="gravel"]You could also auto-set via giving each person a number property and then just updating them sequentially.[/quote]
I think that's what the relations code does. I'm not sure I totally understood it, but it looks like an object has a property corresponding to each kind that it belongs to, which lists its number within that kind. (e.g. if there are five people, the person number would range from one to five). I don't know if the property is accessible within I7.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2024&start=0#p13634
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Roll-your-own Run-time Problem
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-15 11:09:46

I've been pretty stingy with my votes. I gave it one.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2036&start=0#p13635
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How random is Inform's randomness?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-15 11:27:29

It could be a bug. I'm reminded of when I tried to implement Fortune in Perl - I discovered that the Mac stored addresses in the fortune files differently from other *NIX machines (I think they were four-byte addresses instead of two bytes, and there may have been a byte order issue too). The result was that only half of the fortunes were ever chosen. Either it was all even-numbered, or only the first half of the fortune file - I can't remember.

Is everyone using a different interpreter?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2026&start=10#p13636
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: How best to track knowledge/belief for all character
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-15 11:27:43

[quote="capmikee"][quote="gravel"]You could also auto-set via giving each person a number property and then just updating them sequentially.[/quote]
I think that's what the relations code does. I'm not sure I totally understood it, but it looks like an object has a property corresponding to each kind that it belongs to, which lists its number within that kind. (e.g. if there are five people, the person number would range from one to five). I don't know if the property is accessible within I7.[/quote]
That's interesting, I didn't realize that. If it's a number that's stored in an I6 property, it should be quite easy to expose at the I7 level--especially if you don't need to change the number at the I7 level (as you would not for this application). I'll have to look into this when time permits...

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2036&start=0#p13637
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How random is Inform's randomness?
User: mktacoma / DateTime: 2011-02-15 11:30:36

I ran my test in the Inform IDE on my Mac.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2036&start=0#p13638
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How random is Inform's randomness?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-02-15 12:02:54

mktacoma's code is increasing n2 by 2, and everything else by 1, so of course it will end up higher.

Fixing that bug and letting it run for 2m trials yields an apparently random distribution on my system.

[quote]
Roll distribution:
1: 334210, 2: 333172, 3: 333389, 4: 333020, 5: 332473, 6: 333736
[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2036&start=0#p13639
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How random is Inform's randomness?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-02-15 12:38:39

Oops! That's what I get for block-copying code instead of reading it line by line. False alarm.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2036&start=0#p13640
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How random is Inform's randomness?
User: mktacoma / DateTime: 2011-02-15 12:49:04

And that's what I get for typing something in quickly and then trusting the code!

With that fix, the distribution looks a lot more normal to me.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2036&start=0#p13641
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How random is Inform's randomness?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-15 13:12:41

Oh, good.  Probably just a weird outlier, then.  Thanks, everybody.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2036&start=10#p13642
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How random is Inform's randomness?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-02-15 14:21:39

Another 1.000.000 tries using the Gnome Linux IDE:
[quote]Roll distribution:
1: 166269, 2: 167399, 3: 166843, 4: 166788, 5: 166160, 6: 166541[/quote]
And using only 2 values:
[quote]1: 499777, 2: 500223[/quote]
So that's looking pretty good. I also tested whether there was any correlation between the nth and (n+1)th result, but again that doesn't seem to be the case.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2037&start=0#p13643
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: The room description heading rule while moving
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-15 15:01:04

I'd like to be able to move the player at times without triggering the room description heading rule - the one that makes a fresh paragraph and prints the bold room name.  It seems like there should be a "move the player to the Library silently" option that I'm missing.  I've made a number of attempts, but can't quite hack together something that works.  I've also tried suppressing the game from looking after moving the player, with the idea that if the game doesn't look, it won't print the room description heading, but no dice.

Most of the time I don't mind, but I've got an action that moves the player automatically a couple times, and it's . . . bad.  I could reconfigure my action and track a marker or something instead of moving the player, but I don't really want to if I can avoid it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2037&start=0#p13644
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The room description heading rule while moving
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-15 15:06:34

Is what you want "move the player to Aladdin's Cave, without printing a room description"?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2037&start=0#p13645
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The room description heading rule while moving
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-15 15:11:34

No, that only represses the description itself.  In that example, you still get interrupted by 

[b]The Room Name[/b]

in the middle of things.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2037&start=0#p13646
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The room description heading rule while moving
User: mktacoma / DateTime: 2011-02-15 15:30:47

Odd.

I just make a quick test:

[code]
Tiled Room is a room. "Ack! Tiles everywhere!"
Round room is a room. "It's so.... round!"

The player is in the tiled room.

Instead of singing:
	say "The room shimmers a bit as you sing.";
	if the player is in the tiled room:
		move the player to the round room, without printing a room description;
	otherwise:
		move the player to the tiled room, without printing a room description.
[/code]

And it changed the name of the room in the status bar, but the only text I saw was the "the room shimmers a bit" line when I went from room to room.

Are you moving the player a different way?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2037&start=0#p13647
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The room description heading rule while moving
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-15 15:45:43

It also seems to work for me; with the following test code:

[code]
The Road is a room. "A road!" The Beach is west of the Road. "A beach!"
Instead of waiting in the beach:
	say "Back to the road!";
	move the player to the road, without printing a room description.
Test me with "z/l/w/z/l".[/code]

I get 

[quote][b]Road[/b]
A road!

>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] z
Time passes.

>[2] l
[b]Road[/b]
A road!

>[3] w

[b]Beach[/b]
A beach!

>[4] z
Back to the road!

>[5] l
[b]Road[/b]
A road![/quote]

No room name between steps 4 and 5.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2037&start=0#p13648
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The room description heading rule while moving
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-15 15:56:50

If I say that I tried that, and it didn't work, but now  it does, would you believe me?  I mean, I copied and pasted from the manual!

Argh.  Also, thanks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2016&start=0#p13649
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Blorb thumbnailer for GNOME
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-02-15 16:13:09

Here you go: (image deleted)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2016&start=0#p13650
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Blorb thumbnailer for GNOME
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-02-15 16:51:21

Yep, that's what happened with the other game. Maybe I ought to scale the image first, like [url=http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/userexperience/Reference/QLThumbnailRequest_Ref/Reference/reference.html#//apple_ref/c/func/QLThumbnailRequestSetImage]QLThumbnailRequestSetImage[/url] told me to.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2038&start=0#p13651
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Descriptions of supported items.
User: geofmatthews / DateTime: 2011-02-15 17:52:05

Why is the spoon description used but not the knife in this story?

"Story" by Geoffrey Matthews

The kitchen is a room.  "A bright yellow kitchen."
The table is in the kitchen.  "An old oak table."
The knife is on the table.  "A sharp knife."
The spoon is on the table.  The description of the spoon is "A dull spoon."

test me with "x table/x knife/x spoon"

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2038&start=0#p13652
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptions of supported items.
User: mktacoma / DateTime: 2011-02-15 17:59:52

You may want to look at section 3.11 of the help - it talks about the two types of descriptions of things. Because they're on the table, you aren't seeing their initial description in the same way. If you get rid of the table in your example and just put the two things on the floor with the descriptions you have you'll more easily be able to see the difference.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2039&start=0#p13653
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: How do I make the player start with items? [inform7]
User: IanTM / DateTime: 2011-02-15 18:03:10

I would like the player to start with a weapon; how do I make it so it's already in their inventory?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2037&start=0#p13654
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The room description heading rule while moving
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-15 18:12:01

[quote="gravel"]If I say that I tried that, and it didn't work, but now  it does, would you believe me?  I mean, I copied and pasted from the manual!

Argh.  Also, thanks.[/quote]

Ha, no worries. Actually, if you copy-pasted from the manual, my guess is that you accidentally copy-pasted "move the player to Aladdin's Cave, without printing an abbreviated room description," which is surprisingly easy to do if you're reading section 8.7.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2039&start=0#p13655
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do I make the player start with items? [inform7]
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-15 18:15:15

Just "The player carries the rubber chicken" should work.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2039&start=0#p13656
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do I make the player start with items? [inform7]
User: IanTM / DateTime: 2011-02-15 18:27:41

Thank you very much.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2040&start=0#p13657
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Using extensions to split a source file
User: whoiscraig / DateTime: 2011-02-15 18:37:24

So I used TADS for a little bit, just to compare the two, and in the end I like Inform7 better, but one thing I miss is the ability to split up the source file into multiple files. It just makes everything much more organised, neat and tidy.

But I'm just curious if its possible to use custom Extensions to split up my file. IE: put my custom rules in one file, perhaps the characters and conversations in another extension.

Would it work, or are there some things you can't do in an Extension?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2040&start=0#p13658
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using extensions to split a source file
User: mktacoma / DateTime: 2011-02-15 18:40:27

I use multiple files for everything. I generally chunk up rules and sets of "things" into their own extensions. The current project I'm working on has twenty and growing "extensions" included which are all just separate pieces of the code. This makes reuse easier for similar games as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2040&start=0#p13659
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using extensions to split a source file
User: whoiscraig / DateTime: 2011-02-15 18:45:09

Oh excellent. I think this just made my life a whole lot easier [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2038&start=0#p13660
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptions of supported items.
User: geofmatthews / DateTime: 2011-02-15 19:04:29

That's not the problem.  Look carefully at the difference between the knife and the spoon.  Why do we have to say "The description is" in order to attach the description to the object if it is on something?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2038&start=0#p13661
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptions of supported items.
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-15 19:22:31

When you write a bare string like that for a room, it sets the room's description property. But when you write one for a thing, it sets the thing's initial appearance property -- it's not the same thing. Like mktacoma said, read section 3.11.

The initial appearance of the spoon and the knife are not used in this game because they start out on the table. Initial appearances only appear when you "look" in a room, the object is lying on the ground, and the object has never been taken. 

The description of both the spoon and the knife appear when you "examine" them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2040&start=0#p13662
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using extensions to split a source file
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-15 20:37:18

I do, too.  I find somewhere around 10-15,000 words, my coding slows down, and keeps slowing down until I put the stuff I'm not working on into an extension.  Bookmarks are being worked on, which might help.  ([url]https://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/751562-ide-add-bookmarks-in-the-source-text?ref=title[/url])

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2026&start=10#p13663
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: How best to track knowledge/belief for all character
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-15 21:31:36

[quote="capmikee"] It looks like an object has a property corresponding to each kind that it belongs to, which lists its number within that kind. (e.g. if there are five people, the person number would range from one to five). I don't know if the property is accessible within I7.[/quote]

OK, I think I've figured out how this works. The common built-in kinds like "thing" (in I6, described by the constant K2), "direction" (K3), "door" (K4), "person" (K8), "container" (K6), etc. each have their own instance counter property, which counts instances of that kind. The name of the property is derived from the constant number, so the instance counter of "thing" is IK2_Count. The properties are independent of one another: for example, since doors are also things, a given door will likely have different instance counts for its "thing" index and for its "door" index.

Here's how to set I7-accessible versions of these properties:

[code]A person has a number called the person index.
The person index property translates into I6 as "IK8_Count".

A thing has a number called the object index.
The object index property translates into I6 as "IK2_Count".[/code]

Note that these indices seem to begin at 0 rather than 1: the "yourself" object, at least, has index 0 for both IK8_Count (person index) and IK2_Count (thing index). On the other hand, the null value is also 0, so possibly yourself is not actually a member of either kind...?

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=10#p13664
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-02-15 21:38:33

I've got something cooking for TADS [emote]:)[/emote]

<a class="postlink" href="http://community.livejournal.com/tads3/6645.html">http://community.livejournal.com/tads3/6645.html</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=10#p13665
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-02-15 22:46:41

That is excellent news!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=10#p13666
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-02-16 00:00:55

[quote]for google android based phone (like htc dream), there is twisty[/quote]

Twisty is an encouraging start, but the version in the Android Market is not ready for prime time ... In the end I had to uninstall it and go back to playing on my DS Lite. There's apparently a second version of Twisty in development, but my phone doesn't allow side-loading so I can't offer any insights on it [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2041&start=0#p13668
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 never issues the not something you need to refer to error
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-02-16 05:24:27

The I7 parser never prints the not something you need to refer to error. But I don't know if the omission of this parser error is a bug or if it may be intentional and it's just that the comments in the Parser Template haven't been updated.

Anyway this is what the Parser Template says about the CantSee routine:
[quote="B/parst§43"]
The CantSee routine returns a good error number for the situation where the last word looked at didn’t seem to refer to any object in context.
The idea is that: if the actor is in a location (but not inside something like, for instance, a tank which is in that location) then an attempt to refer to one of the words listed as meaningful-but-irrelevant there will cause “you don’t need to refer to that in this game” rather than “no such thing” or “what’s ‘it’ ?”.
(The advantage of not having looked at “irrelevant” local nouns until now is that it stops them from clogging up the ambiguity-resolving process. Thus game objects always triumph over scenery.) 
[/quote]
These comments read just the same in the old Inform 6.11 parser. The CantSee routine, however, has changed since then. In particular, it doesn't invoke SCENERY_PE (which is the I6 name for the not something you need to refer to error) any more.
Compare:
[quote="Inform 7: B/parst§43"][code]
[ CantSee  i w e;
    saved_oops=oops_from;

    if (scope_token ~= 0) {
        scope_error = scope_token; return ASKSCOPE_PE;
    }

    wn--; w = NextWord();
    e = CANTSEE_PE;
    if (w == pronoun_word) {
		w = NextWordStopped(); wn--;
		if ((w == -1) || (line_token-->(pcount) ~= ENDIT_TOKEN)) {
	    	AnalyseToken(line_token-->(pcount-1));
			!DebugToken(pcount-1); print " ", found_ttype, "^";
			if (found_ttype == ROUTINE_FILTER_TT or ATTR_FILTER_TT)
				e = NOTINCONTEXT_PE;
			else {
				pronoun__word = pronoun_word; pronoun__obj = pronoun_obj;
				e = ITGONE_PE;
			}
		}
    }
    
    if (etype > e) return etype;
    return e;
];
[/code][/quote]
[quote="Inform 6.11 Library: parserm.h"][code]
[ CantSee  i w e;
    saved_oops=oops_from;

    if (scope_token ~= 0) {
        scope_error = scope_token;
        return ASKSCOPE_PE;
    }

    wn--; w = NextWord();
    e = CANTSEE_PE;
    if (w == pronoun_word) {
        pronoun__word = pronoun_word; pronoun__obj = pronoun_obj;
        e = ITGONE_PE;
    }
    i = actor; while (parent(i) ~= 0) i = parent(i);

    wn--;
    if (i has visited && Refers(i,wn) == 1) e = SCENERY_PE;
    else {
        Descriptors();  ! skip past THE etc
        if (i has visited && Refers(i,wn) == 1) e = SCENERY_PE;
    }
    wn++;
    if (etype > e) return etype;
    return e;
];
[/code][/quote]
As far as I can tell there is nothing else in the Template Layer that ever sets the parser error to the not something you need to refer to error either.

But is it the intended behavior or a buggy slip of the keyboard?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2040&start=0#p13669
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using extensions to split a source file
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-16 08:52:59

I don't mind having everything in one file, as long as navigating within the file is easy. I can't quite say this for the I7 IDE, but in vi, I usually have two documents split vertically (the module I'm working on goes in the left panel, the unit testing script for it goes on the right), and then if I need to flip back and forth between sections of the same file, I make a horizontal split within its panel. vi also has the awesome `` command (two backticks), which takes you to the last position in the file before you moved the cursor. Oh, and you can search for text and then edit it right away without touching the mouse...

One of these days I will try editing my I7 source in vi, but there are other features of the IDE that I do like, which keep me from starting a new learning curve.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2026&start=10#p13670
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: How best to track knowledge/belief for all character
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-16 09:01:01

You said there's an index property for things, but is there none for objects? I guess you don't need one for objects because you can use the object number. I'm not sure how that works for the relations code, but I would guess that 0 only means nothing when it's an object number - the null object is not a member of any other kind.

The relations code also has a special behavior for Kinds of Value - these seem to always start at 1, so it subtracts 1 from the value before using it as an index into the relation array.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2038&start=0#p13671
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptions of supported items.
User: geofmatthews / DateTime: 2011-02-16 10:18:43

Interesting.  If the knife starts out on the floor, we see the initial description.  If it starts out on the table, there appear to be no circumstances under which we can see that description.  I don't see that information anywhere in the documentation.  I assume it applies to the knife begin in, on, worn, anything except on the floor.  But then, I can't be sure because it's not documented.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2026&start=10#p13672
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: How best to track knowledge/belief for all character
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-16 11:34:17

Well, I'm calling it a null value here because, in addition to being the first index number for a given kind, a zero in the count property also indicates nonmembership in the kind. So, if you define two persons and a thing and then look at IK8_Count (the instance of the object within the person kind) for all things in the game, you'll get:

yourself: 0
Bob: 1
Leroy: 2
axe: 0

"Yourself" is a person and is indexed as the 0th instance of the person kind. "Axe", which isn't a person at all, has the same index value for the IK8_count variable (it's effectively a null or empty value in this case).

This isn't likely to be a problem in practice, since you'll almost always be properly limiting the set before you check the instance counter; that is, you only iterate through people when checking the IK8_Count, and only through things when checking the IK2_Count. But it's probably important to be aware of it, and to realize that you won't be able to reliably use the IKx_Count of an object to (for example) deduce whether it's a member of a given kind.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2041&start=0#p13673
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 never issues the not something you need to refer to e
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-16 12:26:30

It is intended. (At least, it makes sense.)

That error message existed to support an old (Inform 5 and earlier) parser feature: if you added dict words to the *room*, they would be accepted as if there were an uninteresting object visible in the room. That is to say, it was a cheap equivalent of this:

[code]
Object -> room_trash
  with name 'rug' 'wallpaper' 'litter' 'whatever-else'
  before [ 
    default: "That's not something you need to refer to in the course of this game.";
  ],
  has scenery;
[/code]

This was a good tradeoff in v3 games (limited to 256 objects). But in v5+ it was generally better to make the scenery object; it cost little and it let you customize the message. I've never used this feature at all.

In I7, actions that refer directly to the room are supported. (Although, as you know, the standard library doesn't have any.) (Except for debugging commands.) So the old pseudo-scenery feature has been removed. Commands that refer to rooms are parsed the same as commands that refer to any other object.

The modern equivalent of this feature, as in I6, is just to make a scenery object and give it a "instead of doing anything" rule.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2026&start=10#p13674
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: How best to track knowledge/belief for all character
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-16 13:09:38

Good advice!

So does every object have storage for every possible property, whether or not it's allowed to have it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2038&start=0#p13675
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptions of supported items.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-16 13:13:40

It's always bothered me too. From time to time I've thought about writing an extension to change that behavior, or at least look into existing extensions that do similar things.

You can, of course, cheat, and have the initial appearance of the knife say it is on the table even though it is really on the floor. As long as the table is fixed in place, that should be completely safe, except in the case of the removing action, which will give you a parser error. Maybe I should write an extension to fix THAT.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2026&start=10#p13676
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: How best to track knowledge/belief for all character
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-16 13:15:17

Yes, every object has the predefined instance counter properties (see the Definitions template for the list). I'm not sure how user-defined kinds are handled, though, or whether it would be as easy to make their counters accessible at the I7 level.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2042&start=0#p13677
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Conversation a la Ex. 271 Sweeney
User: JDevlin / DateTime: 2011-02-16 13:18:23

Happy New Year everyone!

I'm trying to implement a conversation mode like the Sweeney example, but I can't get it to work with different NPCs. I've tried making individual tables like Table of NPC-A Conversation Subjects and Table of NPC-B Conversation Subjects and just duplicating the "Instead of asking someone about the subject a subject listed in the Table of Conversation Subjects:" with Insteads for NPC-A and NPC-B (redundant and bulky sure, but I thought it would work), but then got into disambiguation problems with the Tables of Conversation Subjects if you wanted to ask different NPCs about the same subject. I'm pretty sure I could get this way to work with a little more time spent on the disambiguation, but the whole system just feels horribly crafted.

I've looked at the other extensions for conversation, but even the topic-based ones don't feel quite what I'm looking for. I've become quite attached to the Sweeney style, and I hope someone here can give me a hand.

Thanks,

Jason

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2041&start=0#p13678
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 never issues the not something you need to refer to e
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-16 13:21:53

[quote="zarf"]IIn I7, actions that refer directly to the room are supported. (Although, as you know, the standard library doesn't have any.) [/quote]
If I remember correctly, the standard library does have an action that refers to the room in some circumstances: smelling. However, there is no grammar for it besides the vague command "smell."

Listening is similar, right? Except that it has separate grammars for "listen" and "listen to..."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=10#p13679
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2011-02-16 13:26:23

[quote="RealNC"]I've got something cooking for TADS [emote]:)[/emote]

<a class="postlink" href="http://community.livejournal.com/tads3/6645.html">http://community.livejournal.com/tads3/6645.html</a>[/quote]

that's great!  Let me know when you need any testing...

hope it gets swype virtual keyboard input method, cause Twisty itself hasn't got.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2042&start=0#p13680
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation a la Ex. 271 Sweeney
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-16 13:31:36

My choice was to use Conversation Framework and parts of Conversation Responses, but to set up the tables and the rest of the matter in my own way. Conversation Framework is pretty minimal - mostly what it does is set up the object-based conversation actions (if you're using topics, you probably don't even need that). Conversation Responses has a concise way of defining responses using the "response of someone" rulebook, and some useful phrases like "asked-or-told about something."

In my own source, I have a generic response rule that checks first for a scene-specific responses table for an NPC, then checks the NPC's general responses table. It would be easy enough to set up a universal generic responses table as a third fallback, but instead I think I had each NPC give a stock non-response. Special circumstances can always be handled with more specific response rules.

I also make use of say phrases like "think about something" that modify the player's state of mind (basically a default variable called "the current subject"). And I mark subjects as "discussed" no matter who they've been talked about with (I don't have a whole lot of talkative characters).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=820&start=10#p13681
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp Game Names - Merged!
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2011-02-16 14:33:27

[b]Beat the Think. Expire. [/b]
Because that's the only way to beat the thinking.

[b]Zombie! Andrew Plotkin [/b]
After all, "glulx" sounds like something the undead would say.

[b]Waldo's Nirvana[/b]
Where is Waldo?  Waldo is [i]everywhere[/i].

[b]A Change in Traveling Swordsman [/b]
Because you don't like the first one you've been travelling with.

[b]Slouching Towards Documents [/b]
The sequel is Slouching Towards Copy Machine.

[b]Death to my X [/b]
For people who want to play the ylophone.

[b]Fort Verb [/b]
You can't guess the verb until you break in.

[b]Stiffy Makane: The Undiscovered Dimension [/b]
...can stay undiscovered, thank you ever so much.

[b]My Name is Packrat[/b] 
Because you've never played a game with that theme before.

[b]Rape, Pillage, Moon [/b]
One of these things is not like the others.

[b]The Last Just Last[/b]
Like Bond James Bond.

[b]Mystery Badger [/b]
Seeks mystery mushroom.

[b]She's Surfing[/b]
Hang ten!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2041&start=0#p13682
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 never issues the not something you need to refer to e
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-02-16 15:19:39

Thank you very much, Zarf, for the detailed explanation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=820&start=10#p13683
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp Game Names - Merged!
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-02-16 17:04:43

Favorite one I got:

[b]Unholy Overflow[/b]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=820&start=10#p13684
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp Game Names - Merged!
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-02-16 17:08:35

I got three names along a common theme:

[b]City of Probing

Enter He-Man

One Night in the Husband[/b]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1938&start=0#p13685
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating a network of verbs
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2011-02-16 17:53:59

Great, thanks Ron. Sorry I didn't respond earlier.

Now I've gotten farther with this planned extension, but I've hit a snag with relations.

I have the following relation defined:
[code]Association relates various lists of things to one number. The verb to be the associated value of implies the reversed association relation.[/code]

After writing "now 25 is the associated value of L", how do I access that number later? Inform doesn't allow you to call a name for the number in that definition, since the relation can't be implemented as properties at the I6 level.

Yes, I could theoretically repeat with N running through every number from -99 to 99, testing if association relates L to N, but surely that's not the most efficient method possible?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=820&start=20#p13686
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp Game Names - Merged!
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-02-16 20:35:01

Speaking of themes:

Aunt Nancy's Out
Uncle Zebulon's from Home

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2026&start=10#p13687
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: How best to track knowledge/belief for all character
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-16 20:44:48

The list property method for implementing this is, using the instance count index, quite simple. Here's the basic code required:

[code]A person has a number called the person index.
The person index property translates into I6 as "IK8_Count".

A thing has a list of rooms called the last known location.

Unkenned is a room with printed name "unknown". ["unkenned" to avoid conflict with Epistemology's "unknown".]

To initialize known locations:
	let L be a list of rooms;
	repeat with N running from 1 to the number of persons:
		add unkenned to L;
	repeat with item running through things:
		now the last known location of the item is L.
			
To (P - a person) thinks/believes/knows (T - a thing) is in/at/-- (R - a room):
	now entry (1 + person index of P) of the last known location of T is R.
	
To (P - a person) knows the location of (T - a thing):[***]
	let O be an object;
	let O be the holder of T;
	while O is not a room:
		let O be the holder of O;
	now entry (1 + person index of P) of the last known location of T is O.
	
To decide what room is the location of (T - a thing) according to (P - a person):
	decide on entry (1 + person index of P) of the last known location of T.[/code]

I'm not sure if the code block marked with the triple asterisk really needs to do the recursive analysis to find the room--I feel like I'm missing some syntax that would do it in a single line. (I tried "let O be a random room that encloses T", but that returned "nothing".)

Anyway, to set the initial knowledge state for a game, you would write things like this:

[code]When play begins:
	initialize known locations;
	Mortimer knows the location of the knife;
	Virginia believes the axe is in the kitchen.[/code]

I still don't know whether this has any advantages (speed or otherwise) over doing the same thing with a 3-column table, but the code is probably a little bit shorter.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1938&start=0#p13688
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating a network of verbs
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-16 21:40:37

My first thought is the phrases [i]the (name of kind) to which (value) relates by (relation)[/i] or [i]the (name of kind) which (value) relates to by (relation)[/i] from chapter 13.13 in the manual. But I don't know if they'll work with lists, and IIRC when I tried testing a few of those phrases they had bugs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2026&start=20#p13689
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: How best to track knowledge/belief for all character
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-16 21:52:11

Does that work? I don't know anything about lists in I7, but it looks to me like every object is going to have a pointer to the same list and not a separate copy of the list at initialization time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2041&start=0#p13690
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 never issues the not something you need to refer to e
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-16 23:43:18

[quote]If I remember correctly, the standard library does have an action that refers to the room in some circumstances: smelling.[/quote]

True. (So did I6, but that case didn't trigger this parser error.) I should have said, no *grammar lines* that refer to rooms.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2043&start=0#p13692
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Conversation Framework in a Crowded Room
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-02-17 02:04:23

Eric Eve's Conversation Framework makes a couple of assumptions that seem mildly problematical -- first, that you're only talking to one person at a time, and second, that before a conversation takes place there will be an implicit (and usually silent) saying hello to action.

I'm working on a scene where there are five people in a room. They've all been there for hours, so it's silly to think that the PC needs to greet any of them before initiating a conversation.

But here's the problem: The player might very reasonably try the command 'talk to fred'. The default response, provided by the extension, is, "You say hello to Fred." Not appropriate in this particular scene. And the only way to provide a more appropriate output seems to be to write a new After rule for the saying hello to action.

Unfortunately, that makes the implicit/silent saying hello action (when the player initiates a conversation) explicit. Writing new After rules will be difficult enough, given that the characters are all hanging around in the same location ... but worse, these rules will run every time the player switches conversation from one NPC to another.

I can rip the guts out of the extension, but before I roll up my sleeves and tackle it, I'm wondering if anyone else has grappled with this particular issue, or has any suggestions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1938&start=0#p13693
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating a network of verbs
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2011-02-17 02:19:27

No, your second was correct, unfortunately. Aside from the first two "if" statements, none of phrases on page 13.3 will function on relations between objects and values, only between values and values OR between objects and objects. So I could relate texts to numbers, and obtain the number variable so stored by stating [code]Let N be the number which relates to T by the textual numeracy relation[/code] and the same with people to things; but I can't relate a thing, or a room, or a list, to a particular number and have any hope of using that number later.

Argh. Can this object-to-values failure to compile really be intended behavior?

There seems to be a few bugs here, as you said: for instance, I notice that a relation of people to one vehicle doesn't work, but various people to one [i]thing[/i] does. I think I'll get to Mantis.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2038&start=0#p13694
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptions of supported items.
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-02-17 05:55:50

[quote="capmikee"]You can, of course, cheat, and have the initial appearance of the knife say it is on the table even though it is really on the floor.[/quote]
Doesn't that then lead to:

[quote]You are in the majestic and expansive table room.

On the table is a knife.

>LOOK ON TABLE
There is nothing on the table.[/quote]
(Well, actually it seems like "look [i]in[/i] table" is the default syntax in I7 for some reason, but still.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2043&start=0#p13695
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Framework in a Crowded Room
User: StJohnLimbo / DateTime: 2011-02-17 06:03:46

I think you can override the "You say hello to ..." response by providing an After rule for the specific case of "explicit greeting":
[code]After saying hello to someone when the greeting type is explicit (this is the new default greeting rule):
  say "You turn to [the noun]."[/code]
I just tested this in a room with two characters, and it seems to work. It says "You turn to NPC" when you type ">talk to NPC", but stays silent when you address another NPC B while you are talking to NPC A.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2044&start=0#p13696
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Lopping off words after the first one typed
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-02-17 08:30:02

Hi helpful folk. Here's what I'm trying to work out today.

Say I want the entering of some communication commands in my game to just produce a message explaining why they aren't needed.

Here's what I've done so far:

[quote]Understand the commands "tell" or "ask" or "answer" as something new.

Understand "tell" or "ask" or "answer" or "order" or "request" or "reply" as being a blabbermouth.

Being a blabbermouth is an action out of world applying to nothing.

Carry out being a blabbermouth:
	say "< BLABBERMOUTH! >"[/quote]

The problem is, if I type 'tell john hi', I get 'I only understood you as far as wanting to tell.' And of course this is the kind of thing a player is most likely to do.

What's the most economical way to define these things and prohibit / lop off extra typed words in these circumstances so the parser just gets the original command (EG 'answer') and calls me a blabbermouth?

(The one that came to me so far involved having a list of the communication commands, and to check if the player typed something from the list in an 'After reading a command:' section, then use regular expression to zap the extra words in such case.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2026&start=20#p13697
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: How best to track knowledge/belief for all character
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-17 09:08:34

Sure. Inform freely copies lists (rather than just pointers). The same isn't true of indexed text, though.

Note: I did manage to forget to add 1 to the instance counter when accessing the lists. I've edited the previous post to fix this. (How I forgot that after discussing it in two posts I don't know!)

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2045&start=0#p13698
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: How safe are I7 lists?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-17 09:08:40

How safe are I7 lists in terms of memory usage? Are they safer than indexed text?

Inspired by the discussion on tracking NPC knowledge, I've been thinking about changing the Multitudes extension to use lists instead of one big table, but I wanted to check whether how that would affect memory usage and stability.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2046&start=0#p13699
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Using a multiple column table index
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-17 09:12:17

The Multitudes extension seems a bit slow, so I was wondering if I could improve the efficiency of table lookups.

I'm using a 3-column table to simulate a three-way relation. As far as I know, there's no way to look up a table row with a particular combination of two columns. Is that true? Is it possible to loop over all entries with a particular value in one column, so I don't have to loop over the entire table to find a particular pair of values?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2045&start=0#p13700
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How safe are I7 lists?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-17 09:20:41

I would also be interested in knowing how lists compare to tables with regard to speed and performance.

(I'm not sure what you mean by safety/stability, though--I've not seen or heard of any issues with either indexed text or lists in this regard.)

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2038&start=0#p13701
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptions of supported items.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-17 09:24:32

That's true. I guess there is a need for such an extension after all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2043&start=0#p13702
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Framework in a Crowded Room
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-17 09:31:17

I am dealing with exactly this situation in my WIP. Let me just go look over my source to see what I did...

This part is not directly relevant, but it defines some additional grammar for conversation that might be useful (and it's used in the more relevant code that follows):

[spoiler][code]Chapter - Conversation tokens

Understand "mind/out/aloud" and "out loud" and "my/your/his/her/its mind" as "[out loud]".
Understand "about it/that" and "it/that/so" as "[so]".
Understand "[so]", "[out loud]", and "[so] [out loud]" as "[so out loud]".

Understand "to/with" and "[so out loud] to/with" as "[so out loud to]"
	
Chapter - Modifying grammar for existing commands

Understand the command "mention" as "answer".

Understand "answer [any known thing] to [someone]" as informing it about (with nouns reversed).
Understand "tell [someone] that [any known thing]" as informing it about.
Understand "tell [someone] [any known thing]" as informing it about.
Understand "talk to/with [someone] about/regarding [any known thing]" as informing it about.
[/code][/spoiler]

This code is partly tied up with an idea I'm using called the "current subject" so that "talk to X" will be converted to informing X about the current subject. But you might be able to use the "skip greetings rule" I've created:

[code]Chapter - Talking 

Talking is an action applying to nothing. Understand "t", "talk", "talk [so out loud]", "answer", "answer [so out loud]" as talking. Talking is implicit-conversing.

Check talking when the current interlocutor is nothing:
	say "You need to specify who you want to talk to." instead.
	
Carry out talking:
	try talking with the current interlocutor.
	
Chapter - Talking With

Talking with is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "answer [someone]", "answer [so out loud to] [something]", and "talk [so out loud to] [something]" as talking with. Talking with is conversing. Talking with is speaking.

Before saying hello to someone when the player's command includes "talk":
	Try talking with the noun instead;
	
Before conversing when the current interlocutor is not the noun (this is the skip greetings rule):
	Now the current interlocutor is the noun.
	
The skip greetings rule is listed instead of the greet a new interlocutor rule in the before rulebook.
	
Check talking with someone when the current subject is not a thing:
	say "There's nothing in particular on your mind to talk about." instead.
	
Carry out talking with:
	try informing the noun about the current subject.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2044&start=0#p13703
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lopping off words after the first one typed
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-02-17 09:35:09

If the goal is that talking to any of the NPCs to just redirects to the same response, I think what you want is:
[code]
Understand "tell [some text]" [...et cetera...] as being a blabbermouth.[/code]
and everything after the tell/ask/whatever just gets treated as text, not things.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2044&start=0#p13704
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lopping off words after the first one typed
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-17 09:38:16

...and if you're just giving a warning, you don't even need to create a blabbing action:

[code]Understand "tell [some text]" [...et cetera...] as a mistake ("<Blabbermouth!>").[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2045&start=0#p13705
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How safe are I7 lists?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-17 09:40:09

I was under the impression that indexed text could crash a game if it took too much memory. Maybe I'm wrong.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2044&start=0#p13706
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lopping off words after the first one typed
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-02-17 09:49:18

Oh hrm I could have sworn that you could only have one thing-understood per mistake line (so "Understand "tell [some text]" as a mistake" would have been fine but not Understand "tell [some text]" or "ask [some text]" as a mistake" would not have been) but apparently that's not the case.

Anyway [i]also[/i], severedhand, pretend I said "tell [text]" not "tell [some text]" because only the former compiles.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2047&start=0#p13707
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Zorkian Trophy Case Example?
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-02-17 10:17:59

Hello - Using Inform7, and I'm trying to implement a feature in my game where the player has to find a number of needed items and put them in a suitcase, like packing your luggage before you go on a vacation. Fore example, lets say I have 10 items you need to find and then put in a suitcase, and when they are all accounted for then the suitcase is now "packed", telling the game you've found all the items. I managed to get this to work with 1 item, but am unsure how to go about creating a list of 10 items which have to be in the suitcase before it is flagged as "packed". Being new, I'm afraid I'm totally lost when it comes to figuring out how to set this up with (tables? checks? variables?)? Does anyone here know of a good example they can point me to somewhere - or give me any pointers? Thanks for any help or responses.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2047&start=0#p13708
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Zorkian Trophy Case Example?
User: mktacoma / DateTime: 2011-02-17 10:27:28

I'd imagine there two main schools of thought on this. One with lists and one with properties.

Doing something like this with properties would follow something along the lines of what I did, below.

Essentially, it just labels various items "important" (or in this case "important to pack") and then declares the suitcase packed when all of those items are in there.

A list would function similarly, but the suitcase would then have the list of important things, instead of items carrying around their "important" flag. I'm sure that the scope of game and number of important items would largely determine which was more efficient from a coding perspective, but here's at least one example to work with.

[code]
A suitcase is a container. 

A thing can be important to pack. A thing is usually not important to pack.

Definition: The suitcase is packed if every important to pack thing is in the suitcase.

Before printing the name of a packed suitcase, say "completely packed ".

A hairbrush is an important to pack thing. A toothbrush is an important to pack thing. 

A pillow is a thing. [Unimportant]

The hotel room is a room. Everything is in the hotel room.

test me with "x suitcase / put hairbrush in suitcase / x suitcase / put pillow in suitcase / x suitcase / get pillow / put toothbrush in suitcase / x suitcase"
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2026&start=20#p13709
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: How best to track knowledge/belief for all character
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-17 11:23:57

[quote="ektemple"]Yes, every object has the predefined instance counter properties (see the Definitions template for the list). I'm not sure how user-defined kinds are handled, though, or whether it would be as easy to make their counters accessible at the I7 level.[/quote]

It would be interesting to know. In the meantime, is this the fastest way to do it?

[code]To decide which number is the multitude-index of (the mess - a multitude):
	let i be 1;
	Repeat with M running through multitudes:
		if M is the mess, decide on i;
		increment i;
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2026&start=20#p13710
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: How best to track knowledge/belief for all character
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-17 11:35:31

I would do it with a property rather than a to-decide function so that the number is cached; otherwise you're iterating the list each time you need to access the index number:

[code]A multitude has a number called the multitude-index.

When play begins:
     let i be 1;
     repeat with item running through multitudes:
          now the multitude-index of the item is i;
          increment i.[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2047&start=0#p13711
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Zorkian Trophy Case Example?
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-02-17 11:37:08

Thanks for the help! By the way, as an aside to this, every now and then when I write a long text and compile I get an error: "too much text in quotation marks - The maximum length is very high, so this is more likely to be because a close quotation mark was forgotten." I don't quite understand it because it doesn't seem like I've written too much text, but I don't know how to get around this error? I could split the text up into different pages in a book which could be read separately, but in some cases I'd rather just write a longish text entry and save the player the trouble of "looking up page 1, 2, ect." Is there some trick to getting Inform7 to run longer text???

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2026&start=20#p13712
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: How best to track knowledge/belief for all character
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-17 11:56:27

Duh! Of course I should do it that way!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2046&start=0#p13713
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using a multiple column table index
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-17 12:10:24

Any "corresponding" phrase just loops through the whole thing anyway, so even if there were a phrase for two-column lookup, it would still be functionally the same as a repeat loop followed by if...next statements. 

If you really need some speed, read this: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1454">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1454</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2047&start=0#p13714
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Zorkian Trophy Case Example?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-02-17 12:12:21

[quote="dustinneff"] I could split the text up into different pages in a book which could be read separately, but in some cases I'd rather just write a longish text entry and save the player the trouble of "looking up page 1, 2, ect." Is there some trick to getting Inform7 to run longer text???[/quote]
I don't know of a trick. What I have done in the past is this:

[code]The description is "[long-desc]."

To say long-desc:
     say "blah blah blah. [run paragraph on]";
     say "more blah blah blah. [run paragraph on]";
     say "the last of the blah blah blah";[/code]
Note that the last one doesn't end with a period, because the period is in the original text block.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2046&start=0#p13715
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using a multiple column table index
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-17 12:39:58

I think I'm going to switch from tables to lists. But thanks for reminding me about that thread.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2047&start=0#p13716
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Zorkian Trophy Case Example?
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2011-02-17 13:21:05

[quote="Jim Aikin"][quote="dustinneff"] I could split the text up into different pages in a book which could be read separately, but in some cases I'd rather just write a longish text entry and save the player the trouble of "looking up page 1, 2, ect." Is there some trick to getting Inform7 to run longer text???[/quote]
I don't know of a trick. What I have done in the past is this:

Note that the last one doesn't end with a period, because the period is in the original text block.[/quote]
As an alternate method:

[code]The ball is a thing. The description is "some particularly long text ... [ball desc 2]".
To say ball desc 2: say "extra long text ... [ball desc 3]".
To say ball desc 3: say "even more very especially long text ... [ball desc 4]".[/code] And so on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=0#p13717
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-17 14:44:24

I've released the spec, CheapGlk, and Quixe. (I'll get to GlkTerm tonight.)

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glk/">http://eblong.com/zarf/glk/</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/</a>

To try the date-time features in Quixe: <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quixe/play-remote.html?story=stories/datetimetest.ulx.js">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quix ... est.ulx.js</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1888&start=0#p13718
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Socrates in your pocket
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-02-17 16:28:42

I can think of two more. The first, which would use regex and a global flag to basically overrule the pronoun handling, is a bit beyond my brain at the moment, tired as I am. The second is to violate the Pronouns extension as below. 

[code]Include Pronouns by Ron Newcomb.

An it-factor is a kind of thing. An it-factor is privately-named.

After doing something to a person (called subject) when the person incorporates an it-factor, change the pronoun it to a random it-factor part of the subject.

Before doing something to an it-factor (called placer):
	let X be the holder of the placer;
	if the placer is the noun, now the noun is X; 
	if the placer is the second noun, now the second noun is X; 
	try the current action instead.

One it-factor is part of every animal.
A dog is a kind of animal.

The hostery is a room. Jim is a dog in the hostery. 

Test me with "x it/x jim/x it".[/code]

Note that the example isn't what any sane person would call a clean one. Biggest beef right now (which I would try to address had there been time tonight) is that I can't easily check whether "it" is unset. Without doing that when play begins or indeed when we enter a new room, the "it" placeholder will only be considered the current "it" pronoun after we've affected the original. 

It's probably something simple that my half-conscious mind has overlooked, but hopefully, someone will get something useful out of this code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2044&start=0#p13719
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lopping off words after the first one typed
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-02-17 17:29:20

Thanks a lot for the pointers, guys. I will try them out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=0#p13720
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-02-17 17:44:30

I had to adjust the glk_date_to_time_utc() and glk_date_to_simple_time_utc() in cgdate.c to deal with some DST weirdness on Windows when using the tzset() function.  I borrowed the [b]tm.tm_isdst = -1;[/b] line from the local time version.

[code]
void glk_date_to_time_utc(glkdate_t *date, glktimeval_t *time)
{
    time_t timestamp;
    struct tm tm;
    glsi32 microsec;

    microsec = gli_date_to_tm(date, &tm);
    tm.tm_isdst = -1;    // let mktime call in timegm() determine DST
    timestamp = timegm(&tm);

    gli_timestamp_to_time(timestamp, microsec, time);
}
[/code]

I'm still getting errors for the Moon landing, but it's a start.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=0#p13721
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-17 18:00:31

Hm. My (Darwin) man page for mktime() says: "The tm_isdst and tm_gmtoff members are forced to zero by timegm()." Does it work better if you set that field to 0 instead of -1 before calling timegm()?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=0#p13722
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-02-17 20:14:13

I had to roll my own timegm() function, and I didn't realize that the tm_isdst field wouldn't simply be ignored when TZ was set to UTC.

Thanks for the man page excerpt; I'll try zeroing out tm_gmtoff as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2045&start=0#p13723
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How safe are I7 lists?
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-02-17 21:17:24

Lists and indexed text both use the code for managing multiblock values, so they are on the same footing in that regard.  For Z-code stories or Glulx stories on interpreters without @malloc they could both cause you to run out of memory at runtime.  But it depends on the circumstances, and in many cases it's not something to worry about.

The block value management associated with lists means that they take more memory per element than tables do, but on the other hand they grow and shrink with their contents; you only pay for the data that you store.  Similarly, lists are generally slower---depending on your usage pattern they can be far slower.

[i]Edit: That's not to say that you shouldn't use lists.  Other factors are important too, like how easily the code can be read, and the fact that lists don't have a fixed size limit.[/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2045&start=0#p13724
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How safe are I7 lists?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-17 22:06:55

Thanks!

I was hoping that using lists instead of tables would speed things up, because every room has a separate list, and all the lookups are done by index - as opposed to a table where a row has to be found with two matching columns.

Unfortunately, the game seems to run just as slowly with lists, and you might have given some of the reasons why.

The curious thing is that when I do "rules," it looks like there's only one rule that runs during the slow command, and it's one that I would expect to be running multiple times during every turn rules - and yet most turns don't take that long. I have no idea how to figure out why it's so slow.

Maybe I'll use the table acceleration code that someone recently pointed me to...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2045&start=0#p13725
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How safe are I7 lists?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-17 22:17:38

Thanks, Emacs. Just speaking anecdotally, I think the way lists are used, which you mentioned, must be the crucial factor, and some interpreters may also be speedier than others. For Glimmr, I implemented the glyph map for entire bitmap fonts (i.e., "pixel fonts") as a single list (see [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Erik%20Temple/Glimmr%20Bitmap%20Font/source_3.html]here[/url]). Printing each glyph to the screen requires a series of table lookups, then a series of seeks through a very long (2500-3000 entries, I think) list to draw each pixel/bit. You'd think it would be exceedingly slow--I wasn't sure it would be usable at all when I started working on it--but in Gargoyle, printing text to a graphics window like this seems about as fast as printing standard text to the buffer window, at least for a moderate number of characters! (Other interpreters like Zoom and WinGit are also pretty fast, but they may be slower, either at drawing to the screen or at block value access. Quixe is another matter; I have no idea how well it would perform when faced with a similar task!)

I'm not sure how widely these results are valid--I'm sure that it is the case that lists are (or at least can be) slower to use than tables. Ron mentioned lists of lists in another thread as particularly slow, for example. But my lonely anecdote does seem to indicate that, at least for simple one-dimensional operations, lists in themselves don't necessarily have any particular performance downsides. 

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2048&start=0#p13726
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Profiling
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-17 22:32:41

So what do you do when your game starts to get slow? I have a particular command that's very slow, and looking at the rules that run during the action, it seems like hardly anything is happening. Is there some way to get deeper than "rules" to see what's really going on? Is there some way to turn on I6 debugging messages, for example?

Any tips would be helpful.

Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=429&start=0#p13727
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Vegitarian
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-17 23:06:15

That reminds me of that bumper sticker: "Red meat isn't bad for you. Green, fuzzy meat is bad for you."

I get pretty close to eating green fuzzy meat sometimes. Well, not actually, but I do love a well-aged steak or an appetizer of raw hamburger marinated in sauerkraut for a couple of days.

By the way, watch out when calling yourself a carnivore. There are people who really do eat nothing but meat. If you eat any grains, fruit or vegetables, you're not really a carnivore.

I tried being vegetarian for about 10 years. I never quite succeeded, because the less meat I ate, the hungrier and sicker and more depressed I got.

For me, the violence involved in obtaining food to eat has been an inspiration to start writing again.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2048&start=0#p13728
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Profiling
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-02-18 01:00:12

You could also use a special profiling interpreter, or use a web browser profiler with parchment/quixe.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2043&start=0#p13729
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Framework in a Crowded Room
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-02-18 01:20:41

[quote="StJohnLimbo"]I think you can override the "You say hello to ..." response by providing an After rule for the specific case of "explicit greeting":
[code]After saying hello to someone when the greeting type is explicit (this is the new default greeting rule):
  say "You turn to [the noun]."[/code][/quote]
Thanks. That seems to work perfectly.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2049&start=0#p13730
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Alternate door locking
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-02-18 01:26:03

This is my absolute last [i]Aurora[/i]-related question (well, [i]Aurora[/i] v5, anyway), I promise.

So I have two doors with retinal scanners.  The basic mechanic is that, from the side with the scanner, you have to use the scanner to open the door and only certain people are allowed through; from the other side, there is no scanner and the door can be opened normally.

There are two ways I've been trying to implement this and both have problems.

First: Don't use locks; just use an "instead" statement to redirect opening attempts from the one side to the scanner.  Problem: This messes up NPC movement algorithms; they will get dead-ended at these rooms because they can't get through (or else will just go through without using the scanner).

Second: Use locks, but have "instead" statements preventing them from ever actually being directly used.  Problem: I can't seem to make it so that you never see the default "you don't have the key" messages (and I'm loath to use the default-messages extension just for this one thing).  

Either way, NPCs are an issue if their destination falls on the other side of the scanner.  Anyone have a good algorithm for "If you can't make it to your destination, see if there is a scanner in the way and try using that?"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=429&start=0#p13731
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Vegitarian
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-02-18 02:27:44

[quote="capmikee"]By the way, watch out when calling yourself a carnivore. There are people who really do eat nothing but meat. If you eat any grains, fruit or vegetables, you're not really a carnivore.[/quote]
Well, just meat gets boring, that's true. I enjoy salads and lots of fruit. I guess it's my subconscious telling me to "healthen-up" as I get older. Cholesterol and high blood pressure is looming in the horizon [emote]:lol:[/emote]

[quote]I tried being vegetarian for about 10 years. I never quite succeeded, because the less meat I ate, the hungrier and sicker and more depressed I got.

For me, the violence involved in obtaining food to eat has been an inspiration to start writing again.[/quote]
That reminds me, we once decapitated a rooster at my grandparents' farm to cook for dinner. I guess it's because the guilt lasted only about a day or so that I refer to myself as a carnivore.

Also, my cat seems to like bread. But cats are still referred to as being carnivores.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2049&start=0#p13732
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Alternate door locking
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-02-18 05:26:19

As for the default message:
I'm not sure it's a library message at all. Are you perhaps using Locksmith or some other extension that may produce such a message?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2048&start=0#p13733
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Profiling
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-02-18 05:38:31

I seem to recall there being a use-for-testing-only command (similar to "actions on" and "rules on") that gave info about the I6 level, but try as I might I can't seem to find it anywhere.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=820&start=20#p13734
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp Game Names - Merged!
User: i-k / DateTime: 2011-02-18 05:49:59

[b]The most unexciting game titles ever:[/b]

Of Grey
On Beans
And Repeating
No Must Play
Don't Be of Importance
Only Jump
You Are To Sleep
Stick Falls
Square Cave
Travels in the Circle

and my personal favourite, the ultimate name for a sequel:

Another II


[b]Games you shouldn't even attempt to play:[/b]

And Dies
Death Adventure
Moments Out of Grim
Undo Optimism
Down Points
Buried At Last
Lost Quest
Ruined Game
Terrible Distress
Don't Man
Congratulations! Out of Time 


[b]Games that could have been designed a bit better:[/b]

The Coast of Errors
Small world
Symetry nowhere
Trapped in Freedom
Not Much Identity
Stupid Tester
Typo Plague
The Lost Verb


[b]Games that are a bit dubious in nature:[/b]

Rape, the Verb
Sins Time!
Beat the Best Man
Strangers in Jane

and my personal favourite, the chance to relive your own birth once more:

Escape from Mother

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=820&start=20#p13735
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp Game Names - Merged!
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-02-18 07:40:45

[quote]They should make a competition out of this name generator. "Speed-IF name generator", or something.[/quote]

Seconded!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2050&start=0#p13736
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Rule order question
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-18 09:34:08

This example does not do what I expected:

[code]The is it raining rules is a rulebook.

is it raining (this is the usually not raining rule): rule fails.

The usually not raining rule is listed last in the is it raining rulebook.

is it raining when the player is yourself and the location is wet (this is the lucky player rule): rule fails.

The lucky player rule is listed before the usually not raining rule in the is it raining rulebook.

is it raining when the location is New York City : rule succeeds.

New York City is a room. New York City can be wet. New York City is wet.

Every turn:
	follow the is it raining rules;
	if rule succeeded, say "It's raining.";
	otherwise say "It's not raining."
	
test me with "rules/z"[/code]

So I have a rule that's listed last, and rule listed before that one, and a third rule without an explicit order. My assumption was that the two named rules would be anchored at the end of the rulebook and the anonymous one would end up first. Unfortunately this is not what happens. The lucky player rule runs first because it is more specific than the anonymous rule, which never gets checked at all. Is this a bug, or is there something I don't understand about rule sorting?

Maybe "listed before" doesn't mean "listed immediately before"?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2050&start=0#p13737
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rule order question
User: George / DateTime: 2011-02-18 09:41:58

[quote="capmikee"]
Maybe "listed before" doesn't mean "listed immediately before"?[/quote]

That's correct, they're still listed in "specificity order" barring other instructions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2048&start=0#p13738
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Profiling
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-18 09:49:51

[quote="Dannii"]You could also use a special profiling interpreter, or use a web browser profiler with parchment/quixe.[/quote]
Where might I find a profiling interpreter?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=429&start=10#p13739
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Vegitarian
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-18 10:04:58

[quote="RealNC"][quote="capmikee"]By the way, watch out when calling yourself a carnivore. There are people who really do eat nothing but meat. If you eat any grains, fruit or vegetables, you're not really a carnivore.[/quote]
Well, just meat gets boring, that's true.[/quote]
For some people, I suppose!  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

[quote]I enjoy salads and lots of fruit. I guess it's my subconscious telling me to "healthen-up" as I get older.[/quote]
That's a funny thing. I thought I was getting older (at 27!). For me, the "healthen-up" message came as cravings for fatty, juicy beef. By the time I reached 33, I had given in and suddenly I looked and felt ten years younger. Now my cholesterol is 375, but it's all good cholesterol. My triglycerides are rock bottom.

[quote]Also, my cat seems to like bread. But cats are still referred to as being carnivores.[/quote]
That's true - the designations aren't as clear-cut as you might think. Cows eat meat sometimes, too!

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9vxHN8_jSE">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9vxHN8_jSE</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2050&start=0#p13740
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rule order question
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-18 10:09:07

[quote="George"][quote="capmikee"]
Maybe "listed before" doesn't mean "listed immediately before"?[/quote]

That's correct, they're still listed in "specificity order" barring other instructions.[/quote]
But there ARE other instructions!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2048&start=0#p13741
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Profiling
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-18 10:15:58

Like most of the nitty-gritty programming requests, it hasn't garnered many votes, but there's a request for one or more profiling terps to be integrated with the IDE:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/751060-ide-glulx-provide-debugging-performance-testing-?ref=comments">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... f=comments</a>

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2050&start=0#p13742
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rule order question
User: George / DateTime: 2011-02-18 10:18:27

Other instructions meaning, first, last, before and after.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=10#p13743
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Genstein / DateTime: 2011-02-18 10:28:25

I've just released a new version of Trizbort, [url=http://trizbort.genstein.net/#download]version 1.1[/url].

The [url=http://trizbort.genstein.net/history.html]full release notes[/url] are online, but most significantly the new version supports multi-select and many operations now work on such selections; keyboard shortcuts and new menu options make it easier to change connection (line) styles; and the installer adds a new document template to Windows Explorer. Some drawing optimisations should mean that large maps will display a little faster too.

As always let me know what you think, and what you'd like to see next, either on this board or by e-mail (my address is on the Trizbort web page). Trizbort is still free (as in beer) software. If anyone would like to donate towards Trizbort's future development, there's a button on the web page.

All the best,
    -eg.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=429&start=10#p13744
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Vegitarian
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-02-18 11:31:19

[quote]For some people, I suppose! [emote]:lol:[/emote][/quote]

I support veganism and vegetarianism on ethical grounds, but sadly don't practice it myself. It's all a bit weird, come to think of it.

[quote]That's true - the designations aren't as clear-cut as you might think. Cows eat meat sometimes, too![/quote]

My view of cats is a bit different. With six of them currently ruling the house, I think it comes with the territory. If there's anything I've learned it's this: the measure of a cat is in its weirdness. 

Any cat should be comfortably weird and luckily, ours are. From a strange craving for plastic bags (tasty tasty. om nom. oh god, gotta hurl) to a male cat convinced he's a 3-week old kitten and oblivious to his body weight of 7 kilo pure muscle, we are safe in the knowledge that life in this apartment is often surprising, occasionally life-threatening, but never boring.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=429&start=10#p13745
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Vegitarian
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-18 12:06:01

[quote="Eleas"]I support veganism and vegetarianism on ethical grounds, but sadly don't practice it myself. It's all a bit weird, come to think of it.[/quote]
I support people doing what they believe is morally right. For me, the question of what is morally right to eat does not have such a simple answer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=429&start=10#p13746
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Vegitarian
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-02-18 12:11:28

[quote="capmikee"]I support people doing what they believe is morally right. For me, the question of what is morally right to eat does not have such a simple answer.[/quote]

True, ethical questions rarely are that simple. I would add the qualifier that I'm not judging anyone here; I simply regret (on a personal level) that I've yet to break what I see as tacit support for a practise I loathe, i.e. the meat industry.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=820&start=20#p13747
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp Game Names - Merged!
User: StJohnLimbo / DateTime: 2011-02-18 12:21:09

[b]Coke and Gertrude[/b]
The Lost Generation celebrates the Roaring Twenties in Paris, snorting blow.

[b]Concrete Island[/b]
Set in Manhattan.

[b]Alcohol Punches[/b]
1001 recipes for your next party!

[b]Need! More! Nothing Less[/b]
These go so well together that I had to look in Baf's Guide to confirm that it's not a real title.

[b]My First Stupid Symbols[/b]
A very honest mathematics edutainment game.

[b]The Loneliness of the Long Distance VirtuaTech[/b]
Moral of the story: Cybersex isn't fulfilling.

[b]Return to Much Exercise[/b]
Remember your New Year's resolution!

[b]DEATH DEATH Francisco 1906[/b]
Macabrely fitting.

[b]Time Aftermath[/b]
Paradoxical.

[b]Grayscale Horizon[/b]
A bleak story about depression.

[b]Fallacy Lobster[/b]
He's gonna pinch you with his claws when you [i]affirm the consequent[/i]!

[b]Bad Maria[/b]
Co-authored by Dan Brown, this game is sure to upset Catholics around the globe.

[b]Leaves Survival[/b]
When autumn comes, beware of the Rake's Progress! ... (sorry for that pun.)

[b]Apprentice of Tell[/b]
Unfortunately, he missed the apple.

[b]Escape from Inevitable[/b]
An exercise in futility.

[b]Crypt Dinnertime![/b]
Yum-yum!

[b]Behind Closed Doors Stowaway[/b]
From the Department of Redundancy Department.

[b]Death IV: The Final Voyage[/b]
I'm quite sure "[b]Death I[/b]" already is the Final Voyage.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2050&start=0#p13748
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rule order question
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-18 12:24:56

So what do you do in this situation:

You have an extension that creates a rulebook with one default rule. The default rule is listed last.

You create a general behavior (maybe in a second extension) that adds some rules that should run right before the default, but are still in some sense too general to come before anything else.

You want to create some specific rules in your main story file that come first, without having to think about all the default cases. You'll list them "first" if you have to, but why should you have to? What if the extensions have some "first" rules you don't want to interfere with? Then you have to go searching for rules to put them "before" or "after."

The principle of most specific rule first still applies in your intention, but for some reason naming one particular object is considered less specific than naming two properties. So you want to tell your extensions to hold off until the rules from the story file have had a chance.

Now, in the Standard Library, this is done by listing every single rule "last," which requires that the rules must be declared in reverse order of execution. That's fine within one single extension, but an extension that is included later can't put a "last" rule before any rules that were already declared. So I thought the thing to do would be to put it "before" the other last rules.

Can anyone argue that this should NOT be the way rulebooks are ordered? Would it be worth suggesting on uservoice if it is not actually a bug?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=429&start=10#p13749
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Vegitarian
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-18 12:30:31

It's true, the "meat industry" in the sense of concentrated animal feedlot operations (CAFOs) is pretty horrific. If that's where you're getting your meat, then I think you're right to have regrets. But that's not the only way to get meat.

In my view, the "meat industry" is really just a part of the "food industry," and all of it is deeply questionable.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=0#p13750
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-02-18 12:36:31

Microsoft's implementation of [url=http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa246472(v=vs.60).aspx]mktime[/url] has the following behavior:

[quote]mktime returns the specified calendar time encoded as a value of type time_t. If timeptr references a date before midnight, January 1, 1970, or if the calendar time cannot be represented, the function returns –1 cast to type time_t.[/quote]

This applies to all versions of Windows, and affects Linux as well, though because Linux has a timegm() function that doesn't rely on mktime(), the error doesn't show up in your test. The BSD mktime() will yield negative time_t values but it looks like the odd man out.

Can you add tests for calling glk_date_to_time_local() and glk_date_to_simple_time_local() with pre-Epoch dates to [url=http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/datetimetest.inf]datetimetest.inf[/url]?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1888&start=10#p13751
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Socrates in your pocket
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-02-18 13:23:22

Okay. This is equally awful, but does fit the bill.

[code]Include Pronouns by Ron Newcomb.

Definition: a person is also-neuter if it incorporates a neuterhood.

A neuterhood is a kind of thing. A neuterhood is usually privately-named.

After doing something to a person (called subject) when the person incorporates a neuterhood, change the pronoun it to a random neuterhood part of the subject.

Before doing something to a neuterhood (called placer):
	let X be the holder of the placer;
	if the placer is the noun, now the noun is X;
	if the placer is the second noun, now the second noun is X;
	try the current action instead.

To gender-set:
	if he is also-neuter or she is also-neuter:
		if he is also-neuter, let X be a random neuterhood part of him;
		if she is also-neuter, let X be a random neuterhood part of her;
		change it to X.

After looking for the first time, gender-set.
Every turn when an also-neuter is in location, gender-set.


An android is a kind of person. One neuterhood is part of every android.
The park is a room. Bionica is an android. Bionica is female. Bionica is in the park.

Test me with "x it/x her".[/code]

Really, though, I'd be much happier if gender pronouns weren't mutually exclusive.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2051&start=0#p13752
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Inform7 vs QDK
User: getLanz / DateTime: 2011-02-18 13:25:41

Hi everyone,

I am new to interactive fiction (aside from playing Infidel as a 12 year old on my commodore 64, as well as titles in the Kings Quest series). I must admit that I have been inspired by the documentary "Get Lamp" and want to learn the art of authoring IF. 

I began by using QDK, but quickly realized that Inform 7 is more popular. QDK seems pretty intuitive and organized with a point and click window interface, whereas Inform seems to involve a lot of coding, albeit in plain English.

So what do you think? Should I stop using QDK before I get attached? Anyone have experience with both? Thanks for any advice/opinions you can give.

Lanz

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2051&start=0#p13753
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inform7 vs QDK
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-18 13:28:54

What's QDK?  I've never heard of it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=0#p13754
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-18 13:35:31

Do we know if any of these new Glulx features will be standardized in Inform 7?  I ask because, if not, I'll be happy to write small extensions exposing the functionality for authors.  But if I7 itself will support them directly I don't wish to duplicate work.  

Also: yay zarf!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2052&start=0#p13755
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Index to @loadw: signed or unsigned?
User: cas / DateTime: 2011-02-18 13:36:32

Note: Thanks to Ben Cressey for bringing this topic to my attention.

The Praxis Z-machine tester contains code that looks like this:
[code]@loadw addr (-1) -> val;[/code]
What it is attempting to test is clear, but I'm not sure that @loadw is supposed to interpret the index argument as signed.  The spec, in §15, explicitly lists some operations as signed, @loadw not among them.  It seems to me that these would be the exceptions proving the general rule of unsigned.

Most interpreters I've tested (fizmo, rezrov, zoom, nitfol, zeal, xzip, zmpp, and zig) do not pass this test.  Frotz passes because, even though it uses unsigned arithmetic in z_loadw(), it stores the result in a 16-bit object, yielding the Praxix-expected value.  ZLR and Parchment also pass.

I suspect this isn't a common construct, since nobody has appeared to complain even though interpreters differ; but I'm wondering if anybody has insight into which is correct?  An Infocom story using an index > $7fff would be nice...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=429&start=10#p13756
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Vegitarian
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-18 13:47:06

I for one never mix ethics with dinner.  Although I minimize the amount of red meat I eat, it's for health reasons.  Maybe once in six months I'll have something, because it's full of iron, but that's about it.  Too much red meat makes me prone to anger for some reason.    

But I eat chicken, salmon, and tuna pretty regularly.  Chicken is ubiquitous, and in Seattle so is salmon.  Tuna is lower on the food chain so it collects less pollutants like mercury.  I think an episode of the Simpsons mentioned religious unity in the context of peace and chicken.  (It being the meat all(?) major religions allow.)

Otherwise, yeah, I hit the veggies pretty hard.  The veggie sandwich at the local Subway (a sandwich restaurant) I practically classify as preventative medicine.  I'm also in my mid-thirties; I was more of a carnivore when younger and growing up in the american midwest.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2051&start=0#p13757
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inform7 vs QDK
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-02-18 13:49:58

Quest games are not held in very high esteem. It's difficult to say this without sounding harsh, but I have yet to find one that is even playable, let alone good.

ADRIFT offers a similar point-and-click style interface and has an active and friendly community. A few of its games have made a splash in the larger scene but in general the ADRIFT folks keep to themselves.

Both systems suffer from the fact that the full-featured client is Windows-only. That means that Mac and Linux players get a second-rate experience, and many people will shun the games for that reason alone. It also means that the prospects for a decent mobile or web-based client are rather grim.

Inform is a better choice if your goal is to get your game in front of the largest number of people.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2050&start=0#p13758
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rule order question
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-18 13:50:07

You'd want this[code]The last is it raining rule (this is the usually not raining rule): rule fails.[/code]I might be a bit off in the syntax, but "last" is the word you want there.  Then you don't need the "is listed" statement for it.

Reason being, I submitted a bug about a month ago about how several "is listed before/after" statements don't work together right in some cases.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2048&start=0#p13759
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Profiling
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-18 13:56:02

I first use RULES ALL because even unexecuted rules take time to consider whether or not they apply, and if you have descriptions in the preamble like examining "someone suspicious" then there's at least one hidden loop right there.  While one or two of those don't make much of a difference, they can add up.  Every Turn rules, printing the name of rules, does the player mean rule, before & instead rules, all are considered frequently. 

If you've narrowed it down to a single rule that's being slow, then I suggest just inspecting the phrases within.  Inform 7 is really good at hiding loops.  Can you add a "let" variable to remember the result of a loop so it needn't be looped again? That sort of thing.  Is recursion occurring anywhere?  Any "topic is listed in table" preamble loops?   How many rules does a simple LOOK consider (not necessarily execute)?  Etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2050&start=0#p13760
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rule order question
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-18 14:02:25

[quote="capmikee"]So what do you do in this situation:

You have an extension that creates a rulebook with one default rule. The default rule is listed last.

You create a general behavior (maybe in a second extension) that adds some rules that should run right before the default, but are still in some sense too general to come before anything else.

You want to create some specific rules in your main story file that come first, without having to think about all the default cases. You'll list them "first" if you have to, but why should you have to? What if the extensions have some "first" rules you don't want to interfere with? Then you have to go searching for rules to put them "before" or "after."

The principle of most specific rule first still applies in your intention, but for some reason naming one particular object is considered less specific than naming two properties. So you want to tell your extensions to hold off until the rules from the story file have had a chance.

Now, in the Standard Library, this is done by listing every single rule "last," which requires that the rules must be declared in reverse order of execution. That's fine within one single extension, but an extension that is included later can't put a "last" rule before any rules that were already declared. So I thought the thing to do would be to put it "before" the other last rules.

Can anyone argue that this should NOT be the way rulebooks are ordered? Would it be worth suggesting on uservoice if it is not actually a bug?[/quote]

Awesome example of convolutedness.  

I'd say the first extension should list its default last, simply because it isn't its job to make the 2nd extension's life easy, but to make its own general usage easy. 

The 2nd extension should list its default last, but un-list the original default completely.  Within its own (new) default, it can call the unlisted old default if need be. 

Then the game can just make rules for the book without worrying about explicit ordering.

EDIT to add:  Oh, if the 2nd really makes the default behavior complicated, then the 2nd may wish to make a whole 'nother rulebook to decide that, so the original rulebook needs only one default rule which asks the 2nd rulebook to do whatever default behavior.    You may or may not wish to use the ability of the 2nd rulebook to return a value, which isn't used much in Inform, but has nice syntax now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2051&start=0#p13761
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inform7 vs QDK
User: getLanz / DateTime: 2011-02-18 14:05:13

Thanks for the advice and honest opinions. Looks like I will be joining the Inform Academy. It makes sense that the more popular/versatile the authoring software, the more support I will get along the way.

"What's QDK? I've never heard of it"
-That says it all right there


Lanz

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2051&start=0#p13762
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inform7 vs QDK
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-18 14:13:42

Oh, Quest, wow, haven't heard of that in awhile.  I'd recommend both Adrift and Hugo over Quest. 

One caveat with Inform 7: it's easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees, precisely because it is so fully-featured (read: complex).  It requires actual coding regardless the facade, while Adrift does not.  (I'm unfamiliar with Hugo, but am warm to most games written in it.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2051&start=0#p13763
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inform7 vs QDK
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-02-18 14:58:14

I'll declare an interest here in that I'm the creator of Quest...

QDK is the name of the Quest Editor. It takes a "point and click" approach, which will suit some people but maybe not others. It is designed to be intuitive, so that features aren't hidden away - the Script Editor for example shows a categorised list of script commands, so you just have to know roughly what you want and then you can find the exact command you're looking for in the list.

This is in contrast to something like Inform where you would have to know the right way to express yourself in Inform's syntax (although I expect the integrated help takes out a lot of the guesswork).

Quest used to be commercial software, which may explain some of its relative unpopularity, but as of January it is now free. There is also a complete rewrite in development which is open source - see <a class="postlink" href="http://quest.codeplex.com">http://quest.codeplex.com</a> and <a class="postlink" href="http://quest5.net">http://quest5.net</a>.

Regarding the accessibility of games, you've been able to play Quest games on multiple platforms since 2007 via the "Play Online" feature at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.textadventures.co.uk">http://www.textadventures.co.uk</a>. This is now the most popular way of playing Quest games - the most popular games are played online about 8 times more than they're downloaded for offline playing.

Because of this I've been putting a lot of effort recently into WebPlayer, which is the new "Play Online" feature for Quest 5.0. This is currently in beta, and if you log in to the site you'll see a link to try it under the regular "Play" link for each game. Unlike the current version, this has been rewritten to get rid of the Flash requirement and is now pure AJAX, which means you can play Quest games not just on PC, Mac and Linux but mobile devices too.

The WebPlayer interface hasn't been refined for other devices yet, but it works on iPhone and iPad. Android seems to be a bit variable, but the latest devices seem to handle WebPlayer well - I was able to play on an HTC Desire HD which I tried the other day.

So while Quest may not currently have a great reputation in the IF community, I'm working hard on it!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2052&start=0#p13764
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Index to @loadw: signed or unsigned?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-18 15:05:57

I wrote that test, and I don't have any great argument in favor of it -- I'm sure that I tested it in Frotz and then said "Must be right." (Then I got Parchment to pass; I was writing Parchment signedness patches at the time.)

Okay, thinking about it... I don't believe that the argument is necessarily signed, but I do believe that the final address is treated as a 16-bit unsigned value. (As you note, this is what Frotz does.)

@loadw with large values is occasionally brought up as a way to reach outside the 64k RAM playground. (That is, you could do "@loadw $FFFE $0001" to read from address $10000.) Given that this can't work in Frotz, I have no compunction about saying that it's illegal, and that addresses should be clipped to 16 bits. If that's the case, the signedness of the @loadw arguments doesn't matter.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=0#p13765
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-18 15:16:20

[quote]Can you add tests for calling glk_date_to_time_local() and glk_date_to_simple_time_local() with pre-Epoch dates to datetimetest.inf?[/quote]

The gizmo will do this if you "set year to 1969". Does that do what you expect?

I didn't realize that BSD was different from Linux. Hm. I'll scrounge up a Linux account and do some testing. I agree that this needs at least a special test, and a note in the spec as well.

[quote]Do we know if any of these new Glulx features will be standardized in Inform 7?[/quote]

I haven't heard. But I see nothing wrong with writing an extension now. If a future I7 release makes it irrelevant, no big deal.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=429&start=10#p13766
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Vegitarian
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-18 15:32:06

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Too much red meat makes me prone to anger for some reason. [/quote]
The same thing happened to me, except it was too much wheat. I had to give up all grains and dairy, but my mood improved a lot after that. I also got less clumsy, would you believe.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=820&start=20#p13767
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp Game Names - Merged!
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2011-02-18 15:32:54

I'm rather frightened that the third title I got, the first time I've tried this, is:

Stiffy Makane: Snatches

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2050&start=0#p13768
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rule order question
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-18 15:41:52

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Awesome example of convolutedness. [/quote]
It's based on my actual WIP, so it's certainly not convoluted on purpose. Perhaps my example doesn't describe a logical situation, but I was just trying to come up with three rules that didn't rely on a bunch of new objects and properties.

There is only one extension involved, but my game has a couple general-principle rules and then some object-specific rules. The general-principle rules look very specific to the compiler, but they're checking for broad swaths of objects that have common properties set.

I thought I might get away with phrasing the "general" rules in the negative (succeeding when the opposite was true) and listing them first. But that didn't do the right thing, and I decided that listing the object-specific rules first instead would involve less debugging.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2048&start=0#p13769
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Profiling
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-18 15:48:31

RULES ALL didn't turn up anything new. There is a loop in one of the phrases, but it's a loop that also runs several times in an every turn rule, and other actions (such as waiting, ironically) aren't slow at all.

I'm wondering if the hangup is actually happening during parsing. There's a conditional understand line that might be slowing things down, but I don't know how to be sure that's the problem, and I don't know how to speed it up:

[code]Specimen absence relates a multitude (called the set) to a thing (called the element) when the element is the specimen of the set and the element is not visible.

Understand "[something related by specimen absence]" as a multitude.[/code]

Yeah, that looks like it. I commented it out and everything went much faster. Maybe I need to write that scope-caching extension.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2051&start=0#p13770
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inform7 vs QDK
User: getLanz / DateTime: 2011-02-18 16:10:34

Thanks for your contribution to this post and to IF in general, Alex. I must say that the QDK tutorial pdf: "How to write games for Quest", was very useful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=10#p13771
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-02-18 16:17:41

"set gizmo to 1969" works on Ubuntu x64. Most of the [url=http://lists.debian.org/debian-glibc/2002/05/msg00013.html]complaints re: mktime()[/url] on Linux seem to center on Red Hat / Fedora (glibc). Debian has since switched to eglibc and may handle things differently.

I will download Fedora and test.

EDIT:

Tested it on Fedora x86 and it works just fine with years between 1901 and 2038. Huh.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2048&start=0#p13772
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Profiling
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-18 16:23:48

Turns out Scope Caching was quick to write, but didn't result in any noticeable speed improvement. Dang!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2048&start=0#p13773
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Profiling
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-02-18 17:04:03

[quote="capmikee"][quote="Dannii"]You could also use a special profiling interpreter, or use a web browser profiler with parchment/quixe.[/quote]
Where might I find a profiling interpreter?[/quote]
I think Zoom lets you profile. The main one I was thinking of was Glulxe though, but you'd have to compile it yourself. Loading Parchment/Quixe with Firebug is very easy though!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2051&start=0#p13774
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inform7 vs QDK
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-02-18 17:06:42

Thanks Alex, that's good news to hear!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2052&start=0#p13775
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Index to @loadw: signed or unsigned?
User: cas / DateTime: 2011-02-18 18:49:41

Ok, that seems like a very reasonable approach.  It's more sensible than what I was doing previously (getting a value above 64K and signaling error).  Thanks for the input.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2053&start=0#p13776
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Another rules order query
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-02-18 20:41:53

I'm setting up my own 'throw' mechanics.

I'm starting off with the command 'throw [noun]' only, so we're not even up to throwing things at other things yet.

I have lately been starting to get the hang of ordering things in check and instead rulebooks so that they do what I want, but I can't get this example to do what I want.

Here I set up 'throw [noun]'

[code]Understand the command "throw" as something new.

Understand "throw [something preferably held]"as throwing without target.

Throwing without target is an action applying to one thing.

Check throwing without target anyone: instead say "A funny but [nonsense] idea." [block stuff like 'throw jane']

Check throwing without target something worn: instead say "No way, clothes thrower!" [block stuff like 'throw panties']

Instead of throwing without target something not carried by the player: say "You can't throw something you aren't carrying." [block throwing things you aren't carrying][/code]

The trick is, if I try to throw a person, the 'not carried by the player' message always fires over the 'anyone' message, when I want it to be the other way around. If I throw Jane, I wanna see 'A funny but dumb idea.', not 'You can't throw something you aren't carrying.'

I've tried swapping the 'anyone' and 'throwing something not carried' rules between check and instead rulesbooks, listed them in different orders and also tried changing 'something preferably held' to just plain old 'something' in the original command definition, but I can't get what I want to happen.

Any insights?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2053&start=0#p13777
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Another rules order query
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-02-18 20:59:02

I typically avoid this kind of problem by putting all of my conditions in one check rule -- something like this:

[code]Check throwing without target:
     if the noun is a person:
          say "But you're not a pro wrestler." instead;
     otherwise if the player wears the noun:
          say "That would leave you feeling under-dressed." instead;
     otherwise if the player does not carry the noun:
          say "But you're not holding [the noun]." instead;
     otherwise:
          [etc.][/code]
This lets me order the responses in the way that seems most natural to me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2048&start=0#p13778
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Profiling
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-18 22:15:20

I still haven't tried out a profiler, but I managed to eliminate many of the slow-parsing cases by adding a redundant condition to the Understand rule:

[code]Understand "[something related by specimen absence]" as a multitude when a visible multitude is abstract.[/code]

(I defined "abstract" to mean the specimen is not visible).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2053&start=0#p13779
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Another rules order query
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-18 22:20:45

The Standard Rules way to do it is name all the rules and then explicitly specify the order. You can do that by listing them in reverse order and making each one "last," or you can do it by making each one "before" or "after" another.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2051&start=0#p13780
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inform7 vs QDK
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-18 22:53:49

Oh very nice, Alex. Web players are definitely the wave of the future.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2053&start=0#p13781
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Another rules order query
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-18 23:04:35

All instead rules run before all check rules, and Jane is certainly a Thing that the player isn't carrying.  I personally would use Check for all three rules, writing them down in the order I want.  But if the something-uncarried-by condition is considered more specific than the anyone condition, then you'll need to move the conditions inside their rule so all the rules have equal precedence, and so, will be ordered in the order you've written them. 

[code]
Check throwing without target: if the noun is someone, instead say "A funny but [nonsense] idea."

Check throwing without target: if the noun is something worn, instead say "No way, clothes thrower!" 

Check throwing without target: if the noun is something not carried by the player, instead say "You can't throw something you aren't carrying."
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=429&start=10#p13782
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Vegitarian
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-18 23:24:51

[quote="capmikee"]The same thing happened to me, except it was too much wheat. I had to give up all grains and dairy, but my mood improved a lot after that. I also got less clumsy, would you believe.[/quote]
I would.  I do yoga in the evening, and my diet that day dramatically affects my abilities.  I once had a big spaghetti dinner about a half hour before class, and I basically exploded in sweat, was shaky, kept losing my balance, etc.  Instructor says carbs (and protein) take a lot of water to digest, and a lot of the body's energy, leaving very little left over for the voluntary muscles.  Wheat is obviously nearly pure carbs, and the only thing that has more protein in it than dairy is meat.  Combine that with a bit of the natural dehydration that results from a lifestyle that tends toward caffeine, or (for men) just from mornings, and you've a perfect storm of mess-you-up.  Veggies & fruit both tend to have a lot of water in them, as a general rule. 

I think it is dehydration that sets off my anger.  I know I can't have caffeine in the morning unless I've had three full glasses of water, or one of those big Gatorades that won't fit in a car's cup holder.  Likewise with dairy: even though milk has no caffeine in it, since it's high protein, I must have a lot of water in the morning before drinking it or else I will murder my coworkers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1711&start=20#p13783
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Aurora
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-02-18 23:31:42

I've just uploaded v5 to IFDB, so it'll be up in a few days.

Things that I changed:
-Navigation, as aforementioned
-Movement algorithms and character descriptions, hopefully for the better
-Removed one character
-Formatting and descriptions have been cleaned up a lot (should have done that a long time ago).

Things I didn't change:
-I haven't changed cyberspace any for the moment.  I don't want it to become my pet scene or anything, but I based it on similar cyberspace sequences in games that I enjoyed, like Beneath a Steel Sky and Wasteland.  (Here's the sequence from Beneath a Steel Sky, with a playthrough commentary, starting at 3:30: [url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIfXILWQlDQ&feature=related[/url]).  I found these scenes to be interesting and creative, so I tried to create something similar.  But if the general consensus is that people don't like it, I can change it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2051&start=0#p13784
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inform7 vs QDK
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-02-18 23:58:29

[quote="Ron Newcomb"] (I'm unfamiliar with Hugo, but am warm to most games written in it.)[/quote]
Hugo is a lot like Inform 6, but has more multimedia features. I'm not sure how actively Kent is maintaining it.

For anyone who is new to IF authoring, wants to write games that are playable in a web browser, and doesn't mind writing (mumble-mumble) code, Inform 7 is really the best choice, in my opinion. Great IDE, great support, lots of features ... plus a few odd bugs and an oddball approach to syntax that only occasionally drives the author completely nuts.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2053&start=0#p13785
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Another rules order query
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-02-19 00:30:59

Ok, so it appears in my case the 'something-uncarried-by' condition is more specific, and therefore fires first ahead of less specific conditions when I list these rules separately.

I didn't know about this behaviour til I read the other 'rules order' topic that appeared today, and it's only now that I understand what it actually means, so well done everyone.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1252&start=20#p13791
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Extra Challenges
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-02-19 02:57:50

[quote="tggdan3"]Sometimes with video games they do special challenges like beating a CRpg with only 1 guy or something. Can we have anything like that for IF?[/quote]

Not sure if it qualifies, but [i][b]ToaSK[/b][/i]'s documentation includes two such things (the "Man of Peace" and "Girls Are Icky" [Man of Cherry Wine] challenges). They're in the PDF for the regular version, and under the MENU in the Glulx version.

And as the documentation specifies, girls are, for the record, yummy, and any puzzle-challenge titles to the contrary do not represent the views of the author or his barbarian.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2054&start=0#p13792
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Newbie Questions: Narrative Voice and Text Format
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-02-19 05:34:05

[size=150][b]First Person[/b][/size]

Way back when I first dabbled in I7, the go-to extension for changes in tense and narrative voice was Custom Library Messages by David Fisher, but using this extension with the latest version (and I notice I had to roll back a version of the CLM to make it compile) there's now an error in one of the most common default messages, which doesn't fill me with confidence about what less obvious errors may be present.

So, basically, what's the best way to write a game in the first person? Given that I'm not really that interested in using the default actions, might it just be better not to use an extension?  (Do I need a default message extension to change, for example, the response to restoring a saved game?)

[size=150][b]Banner Text[/b][/size]

Given the emphasis on making I7 seem extra writerly and all the book metaphors in the IDE, this release/serial/build number thing sticks out like a sore thumb. I understand that I'm duty bound to show it at the start of the game, but is there some way to incorporate it into a better looking title?  

The documentation offers this little gem:

[quote]Simplifying the banner: 
[code]Rule for printing the banner text: say "Welcome." instead.[/code][/quote]
Which is kind of like simplifying someone's job by pushing them off a cliff. Any way to change the way this information is displayed without just chucking it?  (It'd also be nice to do this without messing with the VERSION command.)

[size=150][b]Glulx Text Styles[/b][/size]

Am I really only allowed two?  Really really?  Is there some way to centre text without using up a special style?  I just want a title with normal text and two different sizes of large text - but centred.  Which seems to be three different kinds of custom text under Glulx.

I did try mixing Glulx and Z-machine formats (Basic Screen Effects), but that then leads to an odd mix of formats in Gargoyle (some lines centred, others not).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1711&start=20#p13793
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Aurora
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-02-19 06:43:15

[quote]I based it on similar cyberspace sequences in games that I enjoyed, like Beneath a Steel Sky [/quote]

I know exactly the scene you mean. My point wasn't that it be scratched completely, my point was that what I'd seen of the computer interface was not enough like that - what I'd seen of the computer interaction was what BaSS would have been if the cyberspace had only one room, and lots of icons piled up on the corner. 

Just wanted to make that clear. Looking forward to v5.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2054&start=0#p13794
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Questions: Narrative Voice and Text Format
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-02-19 07:11:33

Re: banner text,

I'm working on my first I7 game now, and I also didn't want it appearing til the moment of my choosing.

Here's what I'm doing:

[code]banner_on is a text variable.

When play begins: banner_on is "no".

Rule for printing the banner text when banner_on is "no": do nothing.[/code]

(Later on, when you want the banner to appear)

[code]say banner text.[/code]

This makes the banner not appear at the start by default, then you can manually print it later on whenever you want. Alternately you can later switch banner_on to "yes", if that's necessary for some reason.

re: Text styles - I'd also like to know if I can easily centre some text.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2054&start=0#p13795
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Questions: Narrative Voice and Text Format
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-02-19 07:14:20

I suppose Ron Newcomb's Default Messages has replaced/will replace David Fisher's for newer builds of Inform 7.
As for the default messages for out or world actions (like restoring a saved game), they are library messages just like any others.
(You could of course hack the Language Template, but that, I'm sure, would be more job than using the new Default Messages extension – and besides you would have to catch those pieces of text printed by Inform that are not included among the library messages per se and that (I think) the extension takes care of.)

When it comes to the banner text, the printing the banner text, as you know, in principle lets you do whatever you want with the banner – even nothing. But then, as you say, you should give the Inform developers their due somewhere else.
The opening  release and serial number pertains to your own game; so, as far those go, you should be free to suppress them entirely. (They're printed by an I6 routine called "VM_Describe_Release".)
The I7 build and I6 version  and library release that you're required to mention are  partly stored as I6 string constants (the I7 build and the I6 library release) and partly (the I6 version) printed by a core Inform 6 statement called "inversion" (see Printing Template B/print§9).

You can get at them in Inform 7 source text with something like this:
[code]
The I7Build is a text that varies. The I7build variable translates into I6 as "NI_BUILD_COUNT".
The I6Lib is a text that varies. The I6Lib variable translates into I6 as "LibRelease".
To say I6version:  (- inversion; -). 
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2054&start=0#p13796
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Questions: Narrative Voice and Text Format
User: StJohnLimbo / DateTime: 2011-02-19 07:44:36

[quote="Pacian"]Any way to change the way this information is displayed without just chucking it? (It'd also be nice to do this without messing with the VERSION command.)
[/quote]
You can do it like this:
[code]Rule for printing the banner text when not requesting the story file version:
	say "[Story title] was written by [story author] in [story creation year]. Have fun!"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2054&start=0#p13797
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Questions: Narrative Voice and Text Format
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-02-19 07:48:52

Stephen Granade's Extended Banner extension offers a lot of ways to tweak this, with access to the individual variables.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2051&start=10#p13798
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inform7 vs QDK
User: getLanz / DateTime: 2011-02-19 08:17:58

I'm definitely experiencing the learning curve with syntax on Inform 7. Once I go through the motions a few more times and learn the language better, I think it will work nicely, but right now I am struggling with things that were super-intuitive using graphical interfaces on other programs (QDK). The only thing keeping me using Inform right now is the VERY helpful documentation tab.

Ex. 
East from the house is a room called east of the house
North from east of the house is the backyard (no longer recognizing east of the house as a room and giving me an error)

Didn't have this problem with the graphical room mapping tool in QDK

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2055&start=0#p13799
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: QTads 2.1.1 has been released
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-02-19 09:54:36

Version 2.1.1 of QTads, a Multimedia/HTML TADS interpreter for Linux, Mac, Windows and other platforms, is now available for download:

<a class="postlink" href="http://qtads.sourceforge.net">http://qtads.sourceforge.net</a>

This version provides new features as well as bug fixes. Changes since 2.1:

[list][*]When the interpreter needs to scale an image, it can now use bilinear filtering. This results in smoother images (without filtering, scaled images can appear pixelated or have other scaling artifacts). However, the configuration dialog provides an option to disable filtering, since it also makes scaled images appear less sharp. Example with/without filtering:

[center][img]http://pics.livejournal.com/realnc/pic/00005dbw[/img][img]http://pics.livejournal.com/realnc/pic/00006fsb[/img][/center]
[/*:m]
[*]The "Game Information" metadata viewer now supports and displays cover art images (as specified by the Treaty of Babel.) Also, the list of recognized names and values (like "Genre", "Headline", "Forgiveness", etc) should now be complete:

[center][img]http://pics.livejournal.com/realnc/pic/00008r5s[/img][/center]
[/*:m]
[*]The list of recently played games now behaves a bit smarter; it will use the actual name from the game's meta data (if available) rather than the path/filename, and will also try to avoid duplicate entries (which can happen when symbolic links are used in the path and/or filename.)

[/*:m]
[*]Fixed a bug that resulted in games using the wrong font in some places. "Six Stories" is one example; it would previously use a wrong font for input, titles and statusbar.

[/*:m]
[*]It is now possible to use the main game font as input font through a new option found in the configuration dialog.

[/*:m]
[*]The file I/O safety level feature of the VM is now configurable through the configuration dialog.

[/*:m]
[*]The interpreter now correctly responds to game queries about whether graphics, audio and hyperlinks are currently enabled or disabled. Previously, the interpreter would always report that these features are enabled, making it impossible for games to adapt their behavior.

[/*:m]
[*]Fades and crossfades are now correctly advertised as being supported. Previously, the interpreter wrongly responded with "not supported" when a game was querying about it.

[/*:m]
[*]Fixed a rare crash that occurred while entering non-latin characters.[/*:m][/list:u]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2051&start=10#p13800
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inform7 vs QDK
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-02-19 11:02:04

[quote="getLanz"]The only thing keeping me using Inform right now is the VERY helpful documentation tab.

Ex. 
East from the house is a room called east of the house
North from east of the house is the backyard (no longer recognizing east of the house as a room and giving me an error)

Didn't have this problem with the graphical room mapping tool in QDK[/quote]
There's a discussion of precisely this problem on page 3.2. As with many pages of Writing with Inform, however, it's less than comprehensive. Here's how to do it:

[code]The house is a room.

East of the house is a room called east of the house.

The backyard is north of the room called east of the house.[/code]
By putting the backyard at the beginning of the sentence, I helped Inform figure out what was meant.

You might also want to download my Handbook (from <a class="postlink" href="http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm">www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm</a>). Although it hasn't been updated to cover the latest version of Inform, it lays out all of the basics, using a task-oriented organization that I felt might be easier to follow than the built-in docs.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2056&start=0#p13801
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Request for help with two peculiar compiler errors
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2011-02-19 11:14:28

When I compile my work in progress, I'm receiving the following error sporadically:

------------------------------------------------

Can't open index file
Offending filename: <C:\...\Inform\Projects\Five and Five.inform\Index\Details\0_A.html>

Compiler finished with code 2

------------------------------------------------

After receiving this error, when I try to compile the project a second time, it works just fine.

I'm also observing a failure of "say", which is causing me some serious debug headaches.  The chunk of code in question is as follows:

(I'm not sure how to get the tabs to work here.  My apologies.  I hope it's legible anyway.)
------------------------------------------------

Z1 is a room.

An contextual memory is a kind of thing.

50 contextual memories are in Z1.

When play begins:
    prepare contextual memories.

To prepare contextual memories:
    say "Preparing contextual memories.";
    say "Step 1";
    say "Step 2";
        repeat with target memory running through the contextual memories:
            say "Step 3";
            let M be 1;
            while M is 1:
                say "Step 4";
        say "Step 5."

------------------------------------------------

This is word for word from my current work in progress.  When I run it outside my work in progress, it prints

Preparing contextual memories.
Step 1Step 2Step 3Step 4Step 4Step 4Step 4Step 4Step 4Step 4....

just as I would expect.

In my current work in progress, this outputs "Preparing contextual memories." and stops there without printing Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, or Step 4..  Trying to hack down the source code to the point where I can get this exact behavior is proving very difficult - I think the error has something to do with the size of the source code.  I suspect I have a MAX_SOMETHINGOROTHER too low, but without an error message to tell me what to increase, I'm stuck.

------------------------------------------------

Does anyone have recommendations for how I could fix (or at least better debug) these two behaviors?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2051&start=10#p13802
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inform7 vs QDK
User: getLanz / DateTime: 2011-02-19 11:38:10

[quote="Jim Aikin"]
There's a discussion of precisely this problem on page 3.2. As with many pages of Writing with Inform, however, it's less than comprehensive. Here's how to do it:

[code]The house is a room.

East of the house is a room called east of the house.

The backyard is north of the room called east of the house.[/code]
By putting the backyard at the beginning of the sentence, I helped Inform figure out what was meant.

You might also want to download my Handbook (from <a class="postlink" href="http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm">http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm</a>). Although it hasn't been updated to cover the latest version of Inform, it lays out all of the basics, using a task-oriented organization that I felt might be easier to follow than the built-in docs.

--JA[/quote]

Thanks, Jim. I did try using 3.2 in the docs to get around this problem, but you are right in that it is less than comprehensive. I will definitely check out your handbook. Your example here is very clear and helpful.

-Lanz

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2056&start=0#p13803
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Request for help with two peculiar compiler errors
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-19 12:51:14

If it's a memory problem, switching your target to glulx should help. But the missing index file sounds more serious. It it possible there are problems with your computer's filesystem, or have any of the files in your project been moved around by something other than Inform?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=160#p13804
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: getLanz / DateTime: 2011-02-19 12:51:42

Hi everyone,

I am a music teacher by trade, and go by Lanz on these forums.

I attribute my interest in IF to "Get Lamp", so let that be a testament to Jason Scott's contribution to spreading the word. Although I am new to this community, I am not entirely new to IF in general. As a 12 year old, I had Infocom's Infidel on my commodore 64, but didn't get very far. Around the same time I also played King's Quest III, but my favorite games were the Monkey Island graphic adventures (with 2 being my fav).

I am currently playing Anchorhead, and you could say that it's my first step back into IF. I am also trying to learn Inform 7 with the help of Jim Aikin's handbook. To make the learning process more fun and to practice learning the basics, I am creating tiny little games for my close friends that contain a bunch of inside jokes and references (mapping a friend's house for example). At this point, that is the extend of my IF authoring, but we shall see where it goes from here as I learn more.

Thanks for the support so far on these forums.

-Lanz

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=429&start=10#p13805
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Vegitarian
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-19 13:12:12

[quote="Ron Newcomb"][quote="capmikee"]The same thing happened to me, except it was too much wheat. I had to give up all grains and dairy, but my mood improved a lot after that. I also got less clumsy, would you believe.[/quote]
I would.  I do yoga in the evening, and my diet that day dramatically affects my abilities.  I once had a big spaghetti dinner about a half hour before class, and I basically exploded in sweat, was shaky, kept losing my balance, etc.  Instructor says carbs (and protein) take a lot of water to digest, and a lot of the body's energy, leaving very little left over for the voluntary muscles.  Wheat is obviously nearly pure carbs, and the only thing that has more protein in it than dairy is meat.[/quote]

Dehydration could be a factor, but I know that's not all it was for me. I didn't go low-carb right away after giving up wheat. Initially I replaced wheat with rice and potatoes - but they didn't make me clumsy. It was the gluten, the protein in wheat, that was causing the problem. Another reason I know it wasn't only dehydration was that the effect lasts for weeks. If I get "glutened," it takes about two weeks for the symptoms to go away again. It became much more obvious when I stopped regularly exposing myself to it.

Gluten and casein (a protein found in milk) both have components called opioid peptides that can cross the blood-brain barrier and have a morphine-like effect. I've been told that spinach has something like that too. (!) Someone with a healthy digestive system shouldn't experience any problems because the proteins are supposed to be broken down in the gut, but in someone who has a "leaky gut," they can escape through the intestinal lining intact and enter the bloodstream. In some people, the opioid peptides in gluten can cause clumsiness, a condition they call "gluten ataxia." Advanced stages of gluten ataxia can involve brain damage, blindness, and death.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2056&start=0#p13806
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Request for help with two peculiar compiler errors
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2011-02-19 13:39:05

[quote="capmikee"]If it's a memory problem, switching your target to glulx should help. But the missing index file sounds more serious. It it possible there are problems with your computer's filesystem, or have any of the files in your project been moved around by something other than Inform?[/quote]

I'm already compiling to Glulx, so unfortunately that won't help.

I won't rule out problems with my file system (I run a rather crabby 4-year-old Vista machine), but it's an on-again off-again problem, rather than a consistent one.  I do remember having a similar problem a few times near the end of One Eye Open, where I could run the compiler twice in a row and have it mysteriously fail once and then pass the next time, but it seems to be getting worse.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2054&start=0#p13807
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Questions: Narrative Voice and Text Format
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-02-19 13:43:53

[quote="Pacian"]I did try mixing Glulx and Z-machine formats (Basic Screen Effects), but that then leads to an odd mix of formats in Gargoyle (some lines centred, others not).[/quote]

Gargoyle doesn't support paragraph indentation hints, font size hints, or any indentation hint apart from the default, flush left.

You can get the box quote effect by setting the text to monospaced output, measuring the width of the window, and padding the output with sufficient spaces on either side.

You have ten styles to work with (not counting input) but eight of these are allocated by default to normal, bold, italic, and bold italic styles in both monospace and proportional flavors. If you don't care about some of these, you can repurpose them to your own ends.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2056&start=0#p13808
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Request for help with two peculiar compiler errors
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-19 14:26:31

I get transient failures like that a lot on my laptop when the machine is overheating, and/or a memory module is going bad.  So it might be a hardware issue with you too.  The inform compiler (not the IDE) seems unusually sensitive to CPU/memory unhappiness.  Since my issue is usually overheating, playing YouTube videos in a web browser frequently causes the browser to crash.  It's very rare though for any other program on my machine to be affected in any way whatsoever.  Weird.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2054&start=0#p13809
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Questions: Narrative Voice and Text Format
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-19 14:34:07

David Fisher has expressed a desire to no longer maintain those venerable extensions Custom Library Messages and Default Messages, so I created replacements for both.  DM is good as early as.. build 5T18 if I remember correctly.  CLM only goes back a build or three IIRC.

The thing with Glulx styles has been a thorn in our sides for too long! [emote]:)[/emote] Er, I mean, I believe it's on zarf's plate to move to CSS, but that work isn't done yet.  I don't know whether or not completing that falls within the scope of his Mad Plan currently in progress.  If it does, I'd suggest just sitting on your hands for a few months.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=429&start=10#p13810
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Vegitarian
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-19 14:44:07

Oh wow, then yeah.  Sorry, I assumed you were normal!   [emote]:P[/emote]   I have a friend who must have a gluten-free diet same way.  I'd never heard of gluten before meeting her, now I see gluten-free labels on packaging everywhere.  And a friend's wife is lactose intolerant, making our periodic pizza parties logistically interesting.  

But yeah, long story short:  diet can do things for you, or do things to you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=429&start=20#p13811
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Vegitarian
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-02-19 15:13:35

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]But yeah, long story short:  diet can do things for you, or do things to you.[/quote]

I can't agree enough with this. I tried paleolithic diet once on the advice of my parents (during a "try everything to see if it works" period before I was properly diagnosed). I lasted about a week before developing a violent and apparently permanent reaction to the courses I had sampled. Six years later I still get sick from a single bite of that stuff, though the why of it has never been clear to me.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2057&start=0#p13812
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Probable Bug with Scene End Logic
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-02-19 20:33:34

Before I report this, I'd like to invite comment on it, just to avoid making a mess on the bug tracker if I'm wrong. It appears that the logic that ends scenes can handle multiple possibilities [i]only[/i] if neither of them is a reference to another scene beginning. If a scene is to end when another scene begins, that must be the [i]only[/i] way that it can end.

In other words, both of these conditions compile and work:
[code]Howard is a scene. Howard begins when play begins. Howard ends when no-more-howard is true or the player carries the apple.

No-more-howard is a truth state that varies. No-more-howard is false.[/code]
...and...
[code]Howard is a scene. Howard begins when play begins. Howard ends when Fred begins.

Fred is a scene. Fred begins when the player carries the apple.[/code]
However, this fails to compile:
[code]Howard is a scene. Howard begins when play begins. Howard ends when Fred begins or no-more-howard is true.

Fred is a scene. Fred begins when the player carries the apple.[/code]
The error message informs me that "'Fred begins' did not make sense." Am I missing something obvious, or is this a bug?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=10#p13813
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-19 22:53:10

Yeah, the Debian box I tried worked from 1902 to 2037. (It had the 32-bit warnings on the calendar.)

From the threads you linked to, it sounds like we can treat the Red Hat behavior as a bug in a small number of versions, in practice.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2056&start=0#p13814
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Request for help with two peculiar compiler errors
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-19 22:55:38

Do you actually have an infinite loop in your code sample? The loss of indenting makes it unclear what's going on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2054&start=0#p13815
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Questions: Narrative Voice and Text Format
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-19 22:58:28

[quote]Er, I mean, I believe it's on zarf's plate to move to CSS, but that work isn't done yet. I don't know whether or not completing that falls within the scope of his Mad Plan currently in progress.[/quote]

It does. Now that I've cleared out the "easy" bits -- the past couple of month of small Glk updates -- styles are the next milestone. But they're not going to be a *fast* milestone. The subject is tangled up with a couple of other ideas: HTML embedding, Javascript calls, and more interpreter control over how text is streamed out.

I can only ask for more patience.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2054&start=0#p13816
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Questions: Narrative Voice and Text Format
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-02-20 01:02:12

I'm thinking of working on an alternative IO system as well. I think it would help everyone if very clear use cases were presented. What would your ideal IO system be capable of?

For example mine would have:
[list]
[*]The ability to specify text styles by a label (in HTML terms by class). No numerical IDs![/*:m]
[*]The ability to specify unique one-off styles that can't be pre calculated (in HTML terms a style attribute)[/*:m]
[*]Specify the basic type of style of each for use in a non-HTML system. This should include things like: block/inline, proportional/monospace, emphasis, header. Of course if you're using the default I7 extension for this IO system it should also support standard Glk as well, using these basic styles as Glk styles.[/*:m]
[*]Generate a structure on the fly, and then stream data to anything in that structure, not only top level structures. Ideally I'd have something like the following:[code]<div class="banner"><span class="room"/><span class="time"/></div>[/code]There is no reason why the banner should be shown in a monospaced font! I could also, at any time, remove the time <div> and have the whole thing centered (but probably not automatically... instead I'd add a second class to .room.  Automatically would be nice but seems too risky.)[/*:m]
[*]Be able to specify fallback content. If I was displaying a video I want to specify a still image to show if we don't have video capability, and if we can't even show images, specify a rich (ie, styleable) text fallback. Even if a system is capable of using these things, the textual fallback should be exposed to accessibility APIs.[/*:m]
[*]Listen to click events and handle them appropriately. It should be possible to attach handlers to anything you can select by class. (Possibly also other types of events?)[/*:m][/list:u]

So everyone, what would your ideal IO system be capable of?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2056&start=0#p13817
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Request for help with two peculiar compiler errors
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2011-02-20 01:32:02

[quote="zarf"]Do you actually have an infinite loop in your code sample? The loss of indenting makes it unclear what's going on.[/quote]
By the way, you can wrap code in [code] blocks to preserve spacing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2054&start=0#p13818
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Questions: Narrative Voice and Text Format
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-02-20 02:15:21

Let's see: I want to be able to easily set default formatting for the whole game, default formatting for certain parts of the game (and different windows, if applicable), and easy on-the-fly changes.

I'd like the ability to import things like fonts, in standard formats.

Numerical IDs don't bother me that much; I'd rather have the flexibility of hex colors than the convenience of named colors.  For things like unicode characters, though, absolutely.

Oh, and (we're still talking about Glulx, right?) syntactic similarity to Z-code Basic Screen Effects would be a plus.  I just know I'll be constantly making mistakes; HTML trips me up enough as it is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2054&start=10#p13819
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Questions: Narrative Voice and Text Format
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-02-20 03:13:08

Importing fonts... hmm it could be done. WOFF support is coming along.

For numerical IDs I was referring to things like "windows", rather than having windows 1, 2, 3 and 4 I'd rather have "main", "status", "map" and "hints" for example. But of course I don't like the idea of windows in the first place. This is particularly the case with the classes. Zarf's original CSS proposal had only numerical classes, and although the expectation was that I7 would take care of the numbers it's still a bad idea IMO.

Also, as I'm envisioning it now, there'd be no direct link from Glulx to the HTML. Possibly a structure could be specified with [url=http://www.yaml.org/]YAML[/url], but the idea would be to keep it super simple. Basically: find the elements of a class and do something to them, which could be to add another class, to remove them, to add children, to stream text. Something similar to jQuery in other words... how does the following sound? The styles for .status and .room would be in a CSS file in the Blorb.

[code]
! Add child node .room to .status
IOmakeChild('status', 'room');

! Replace the contents of .room with the room title
IOreplaceContents('room', (name) location);
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2054&start=10#p13820
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Questions: Narrative Voice and Text Format
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-02-20 05:24:06

[quote="emshort"]Stephen Granade's Extended Banner extension offers a lot of ways to tweak this, with access to the individual variables.[/quote]
That's perfect, thanks.

[quote="zarf"]I can only ask for more patience.[/quote]
It's certainly not my intention to bang the drum for change, I just wanted to be sure I'd properly understood the current state of things.

[quote="bcressey"]You have ten styles to work with (not counting input) but eight of these are allocated by default to normal, bold, italic, and bold italic styles in both monospace and proportional flavors. If you don't care about some of these, you can repurpose them to your own ends.[/quote]
I could probably do away with monospace italic or something.  Could someone provide an example of how to do this?

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]David Fisher has expressed a desire to no longer maintain those venerable extensions Custom Library Messages and Default Messages, so I created replacements for both.[/quote]
I wondered if something like that was the case.  I do wish the extensions page was a little more transparent about which extensions are maintained/functional.

But funnily enough, your extension has an issue in the exact same place as David Fisher's.

[code]"Test Game" by "C.E.J. Pacian"

Include Custom Library Messages by Ron Newcomb.

The story tense is present tense.
The story viewpoint is first person.

The Square is a room.

In the Square is a table.

On the table is an apple.[/code]

Which leads to:

[quote]Square
I can see a table (on which is an apple) here.

>x table
On the table .[/quote]
Am I doing something wrong?  (And is there something about the default description for supporters that makes it especially tricky to get right?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2054&start=10#p13821
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Questions: Narrative Voice and Text Format
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-20 06:07:41

[quote="Pacian"][code]"Test Game" by "C.E.J. Pacian"

Include Custom Library Messages by Ron Newcomb.

The story tense is present tense.
The story viewpoint is first person.

The Square is a room.

In the Square is a table.

On the table is an apple.[/code]

Which leads to:

[quote]Square
I can see a table (on which is an apple) here.

>x table
On the table .[/quote]
Am I doing something wrong?  (And is there something about the default description for supporters that makes it especially tricky to get right?)[/quote]

That looks like a version of (fixed in the latest build) [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=38]bug 38[/url]. The culprit seems to be library message 4 for the looking action, which (in Ron's extension) currently is:

[code]"On [the library message object] [list the contents of library message object with as a sentence list option +  tersely list option + not listing concealed items list option + is-are list option + including contents list option + giving brief inventory information list option + listing marked items only list option]."[/code]

I think the problem is that "on which is an apple" marks the apple, so the "listing marked items only list option" means there isn't anything to list. At least, deleting that option seems to make the bug go away in this case, which you can do by dropping this into your code:

[code]Table of custom library messages (continued)
library-action	library-message-id	library-message-text
looking action	4	"On [the library message object] [list the contents of library message object with as a sentence list option +  tersely list option + not listing concealed items list option + is-are list option + including contents list option + giving brief inventory information list option]."[/code]

(I'm a sleep-deprived noob, so my only reason for thinking this is the problem is that this patch seemed to work. Ron be able to definitively fix it for you when he's up on the West Coast.)

...oh, hm, these messages don't seem to be working well with past tense here. If you change the story to past tense you still get "You could see a table (on which is an apple) there" and "On the table is an apple."

[EDIT: Originally I had a stray "[if something that is not the player is on the library message object]" in my revised rule, because I had bug 38 on my mind.]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2058&start=0#p13822
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: "I didn't understand that number." message
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-02-20 08:36:38

This response from the library messages shows at some weird times.

If you type "put me", you get "I didn't understand that number."

There's no reference to library message 29 in the standard rules, so I don't know how to check what things cause it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2056&start=0#p13823
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Request for help with two peculiar compiler errors
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2011-02-20 09:08:19

ChrisC - Ah-hah!  I did not know about the code block.  I don't know why, since it's staring me in the face at the top of this list (oops.)  Let's try that again!

[code]To prepare contextual memories:
    say "Preparing contextual memories.";
    say "Step 1";
    say "Step 2";
        repeat with target memory running through the contextual memories:
            say "Step 3";
            let M be 1;
            while M is 1:
                say "Step 4";
        say "Step 5."[/code]

Zarf - Yes, I have an infinite loop.  The reason why I have an infinite loop here is that I was trying to debug a supposedly-not-infinite loop (that was apparently going infinite, and I didn't know why.)  I tried adding debugging messaging to my original loop, but even debugging messaging that should have showed up wasn't showing up.  I started cutting code out of the loop in an effort to figure out why the debugging messaging wasn't working, and this was the result.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2058&start=0#p13824
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "I didn't understand that number." message
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-02-20 09:43:13

"Didn't understand that number" is one of the parser errors.
Apparently the game thinks there should be a number at a certain point in that command—as in e.g. ERIS, PUT FIVE APPLES ON THE TABLE—; but it can't find one, so it protests.
To find out exactly which word offends the parser, try typing the debug command TRACE, before entering the offensive command. That will print run-time information about what the parser is doing. 
Simply TRACE will do here; but to look deeper into the workings of the parser you can use TRACE 4, TRACE 5 or TRACE 6–or, for a shallower look, TRACE 1 or TRACE 2 (TRACE is the same as  TRACE 3).
TRACE OFF will, well, switch the trace function off.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2058&start=0#p13825
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "I didn't understand that number." message
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-02-20 10:53:32

Not in 6G60 on Windows. I get "I didn't understand that sentence." Most likely you're either using an extension that handles numbers, or your own code does so.

And thanks for mentioning trace. I love seeing the actual I6 grammar lines. Makes me feel all nostalgic -- plus, it's useful.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2056&start=0#p13826
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Request for help with two peculiar compiler errors
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-20 11:17:02

The behavior of interpreters in infinite loops is poorly defined -- to be polite about it. 

The text-generating code may overrun the text-displaying code and starve it out. Or the text-displaying code may simply be buffering all output until the next input event, in which case you're guaranteed to not see anything. (I write my interpreters with the latter setup -- I find it gives much better printing performance for games that *aren't* infinite loops, which are, you know, most of them.)

Anyhow, that's probably what's going on. You can work around it by waiting for a keystroke inside your loop ("wait for any key" in Basic Screen Effects). Or run your game in CheapGlk, which does no buffering (although it prints through the stdio library, which does a little bit).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2058&start=0#p13827
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "I didn't understand that number." message
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-02-20 11:52:12

Good show. I've recalled the command for some time, but forgot its actual name. Is the Trace command documented anywhere?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2056&start=0#p13828
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Request for help with two peculiar compiler errors
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2011-02-20 11:55:35

[quote="zarf"]The behavior of interpreters in infinite loops is poorly defined -- to be polite about it. 

The text-generating code may overrun the text-displaying code and starve it out. Or the text-displaying code may simply be buffering all output until the next input event, in which case you're guaranteed to not see anything. (I write my interpreters with the latter setup -- I find it gives much better printing performance for games that *aren't* infinite loops, which are, you know, most of them.)

Anyhow, that's probably what's going on. You can work around it by waiting for a keystroke inside your loop ("wait for any key" in Basic Screen Effects). Or run your game in CheapGlk, which does no buffering (although it prints through the stdio library, which does a little bit).[/quote]

Awww.  But "Pick Up The Phone Booth Over And Over And Over And Over And Over...." was going to be such a hit.

Thanks for the recommendations!  I'll try the 'wait for any key' trick the next time I'm trying to debug an infinite loop.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2058&start=0#p13829
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "I didn't understand that number." message
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-02-20 13:17:24

[quote="Eleas"]Good show. I've recalled the command for some time, but forgot its actual name. Is the Trace command documented anywhere?[/quote]
It's discussed briefly in the DM4, the official manual for Inform 6.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2058&start=0#p13830
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "I didn't understand that number." message
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-02-20 13:19:33

I honestly can't recall where I heard of it (though it can't be very long ago).
The only written documentation I can find right now is in the Inform Designer's Manual (Inform 6 that is – downloadable from the old Inform 6 website). It's in §7.5 (p. 100) of that document (though I think the trace levels 0–5 mentioned there corresponds to levels 1–6 in Inform 7).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2059&start=0#p13831
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Story in IF
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-02-20 13:32:58

Looking through my IF bookmarks/favorites, I found [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2007/06/11/inform-7-for-the-fiction-author/]this fascinating discussion[/url] on Emily Short's blog. I'm wondering ... has anyone written the book she outlined? Or anything related thereto?

Although the blog entry refers to I7 and makes use of plenty of I7 examples, there's nothing in it that couldn't be adapted easily to other development systems.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2054&start=10#p13832
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Questions: Narrative Voice and Text Format
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-20 15:02:56

Ah, so it does.  Thanks Matt for the quick diagnoses.  I've also included a patch that should cure the list-writer's insistence on the present:[code]Include (-
[ Switch__TX   t;
	if ((t & 1) == 0) {
		IS__TX = " is"; 
		ARE__TX = " are"; 
		IS2__TX = "is "; 
		ARE2__TX = "are "; 
		IS3__TX = "is"; 
		ARE3__TX = "are"; 
	} else {
		IS__TX = " was"; 
		ARE__TX = " were"; 
		IS2__TX = "was "; 
		ARE2__TX = "were "; 
		IS3__TX = "was"; 
		ARE3__TX = "were"; 
	}	
];-).

[ Overrides the one in the Standard Rules ]
To list the contents of (O - an object), 
	with newlines, 
	indented, 
	giving inventory information, 
	as a sentence, 
	including contents, 
	including all contents, 
	tersely, 
	giving brief inventory information, 
	using the definite article, 
	listing marked items only, 
	prefacing with is/are, 
	not listing concealed items, 
	suppressing all articles 
	and/or with extra indentation: 
	(- Switch__TX((+ story tense +)); WriteListFrom(child({O}), {phrase options}); -). [/code]

I'll submit version 2 of CLM to Mark now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=10#p13833
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-02-20 17:46:25

Having just, just purchased a Nokia C3 for the sole purpose of having an easier time with ZaxMidlet (QWERTY keyboard), and also of getting a more powerful phone that might open the door to other means of mobile IF, I just have a question that will seem extremely silly but which I simply have to ask:

Would it be impossible for a phone, using its browser capabilities, to run a Quixe game? Or a simple HTML page loading ZZMP as an applet? (while we're talking about ZMPP, does anyone know whether it's still trying to get GLulx games to work? And do z6 games work already? I couldn't get Beyond Zork or Zork Zero to run... on my computer, naturally)

On the subject of the applet and the upcoming TADS for Android, there's always Jetty. Would that work on a fairly capable phone, being an applet? It has to be tweaked, of course - no save game capabilities...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2054&start=10#p13834
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Questions: Narrative Voice and Text Format
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-20 18:15:16

[quote="Pacian"](And is there something about the default description for supporters that makes it especially tricky to get right?)[/quote]

I get the sense that anything dealing with the Inform 6 list-writer is particularly tricky to change, at least if you don't know Inform 6 reasonably well. Ron's code looks like a black box to me, through no fault of his own. And the "examine supporters" rule, which is the one that's firing here, is written in Inform 6, I think.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2058&start=0#p13835
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "I didn't understand that number." message
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-02-20 18:25:41

Thanks for the trace info, Felix.

Jim, you're right. I went immediately to a likely suspect, 'Numbered Disambiguation Choices' by Aaron Reed, and turning it off made 'put me' give 'I didn't understand that sentence.'

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2059&start=0#p13836
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Story in IF
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-02-20 20:21:27

As a companion book to a resource like this, I believe it could also be a good idea to put together a storytelling guide which introduces aspiring IF writers to the classic structure of monomyth, and how some of those key elements of storytelling could be translated into the world model of an IF adventure: <a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth</a>

I haven't played a lot of IF yet outside of the early Infocom games, but I would be curious to know if there's any IF which closely follows the structure of mythic stories, as outlined in Joseph Campbell's 'Hero With A Thousand Faces'?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2059&start=0#p13837
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Story in IF
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-02-20 20:54:33

Seems to me Campbell is simply describing the structure of plotted fiction. How and to what extent this structure can be applied to IF ... we can debate about that. In my view, mythic tasks like slaying Medusa or stealing the golden fleece are not too different from puzzles. That is, the hero faces challenges. No challenges = boring story.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2059&start=0#p13838
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Story in IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-02-20 21:32:40

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Seems to me Campbell is simply describing the structure of plotted fiction.[/quote]

Oh, but there's so much more wankery to it than that (ToaSK swipes at Campbell on a couple of occasions) ... Campbell put a lot of work into hammering the square peg of world mythology into the round hole of his monomyth (that sounds dirtier than I meant it to, but on reflection, it should).

Tangentially, the late and groovy George Alec Effinger, when hired to write a [b]Zork [/b]novel, took it as his chance to do a monomyth-based story, and did a very amusing one indeed ... (and there, the swipe turns into a leg-humping, but you know ... in that dignified way).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1952&start=0#p13839
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IF Demo Fair proposal
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-02-20 21:51:40

The intent deadline has passed, and we have an awesome 23 intending participants, with a huge range of different formats and types of content. I'm really excited about this.

However, it also means that we're going to need to change the format a little bit, since the original plan of playing through everything as a group makes a lot less sense with that many entries. If you're an entrant, you should have already received email from me about this; if you didn't get it, please let me know and I'll re-send.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1952&start=0#p13840
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IF Demo Fair proposal
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-02-20 22:10:37

I thought about submitting something interesting, but I'm drowning in work at the moment.

My idea was a traditional IF interface but with all (or most) objects the player can interact with being shown in a different color. When you click one of them, a pop-up appears with possible actions to choose from. Context-sensitive and all. But with 23 intents, I bet someone else also thought about the same interface [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=10#p13841
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-02-20 22:15:19

[quote="namekuseijin"][quote="RealNC"]I've got something cooking for TADS [emote]:)[/emote]

<a class="postlink" href="http://community.livejournal.com/tads3/6645.html">http://community.livejournal.com/tads3/6645.html</a>[/quote]

that's great!  Let me know when you need any testing...

hope it gets swype virtual keyboard input method, cause Twisty itself hasn't got.[/quote]
Right now it doesn't even support an on-screen, virtual keyboard; it only works on devices that have a real keyboard (like those you can slide open to the side of the device).

I'll take a look at Swype when I get the chance. But overall, there's [i]much[/i] work to be done before thinking about releasing a beta or anything.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=10#p13842
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-02-20 22:17:00

[quote="Peter Pears"]Would it be impossible for a phone, using its browser capabilities, to run a Quixe game?[/quote]
If it has JavaScript, sure. I think people reported it works on iPhones and iPads, at least.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1908&start=10#p13843
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: 2010 XYZZY Awards now open
User: inky / DateTime: 2011-02-21 00:14:49

Thanks to the wonders of automatic vote counting, I am extending the deadline a couple days, until Friday, February 25th at 11:59pm PST. Which means you still have just under a week left to vote if you are so inclined.

And whether you're going to vote or have already voted or are just curious how other people voted, then show up this Saturday, February 26th on ifMUD (<a class="postlink" href="http://ifmud.port4000.com">http://ifmud.port4000.com</a>) to see the results announced live at noon PST (3pm EST, 8pm GMT). See you then!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2059&start=0#p13844
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Story in IF
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2011-02-21 00:42:07

I'm only on the second chapter or so, but I think [url=http://inform7.textories.com/]Aaron Reed's book[/url] offers something very similar to this. Maybe a bit more "how to" and less "why", though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2054&start=10#p13845
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Questions: Narrative Voice and Text Format
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-02-21 01:29:51

[quote="matt w"]the "examine supporters" rule, which is the one that's firing here, is written in Inform 6, I think.[/quote]

More or less. The examine supporters rule is itself an Inform 7 carry out rule, but it mainly issues a library message that does very little but calling the WriteListFrom function, which is in Inform 6.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2060&start=0#p13846
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: New to Inform: A Few Key Scenarios
User: Will414 / DateTime: 2011-02-21 01:49:16

Hey all,

I'm new to writing with Inform 7. I'm a more traditional author with limited programming experience. I discovered it after playing a game and thought this might be a unique way to present some of my stories. Problem is... after nearly three weeks of going over the manuals and the Recipe Book, I'm still making remarkably little progress on some of the things I'm attempting.

I get the impression that these are simple things, which bothers me even more. 

Still, I feel that if I can come to understand the mechanics behind these simple things, that the rest will fall into place. I appreciate any and all help toward that end.

In order to demo some of the features I'm trying to learn, I'm going to use a simple scenario of the player (a male) with three rooms. One room (the Ballroom) is empty and where the player starts. To either side are a Lounge and a Private Room, each with a different female NPC in them. Let's call them Mary and Alice.

First Problem: I have been trying to set it up so that if I say 'dance with Mary' it will describe the dancing in one way, and if I say 'dance with Alice' it will describe the dancing in a completely different way. Say Mary dances the tango and Alice dances a waltz. When I attempt this, however, I7 will play the same description first, thus making both Mary and Alice do the tango. How can I set it up so that the 'dancing' action has completely different effects depending on who is targeted?

Second Problem: I have also wanted to set it up so that the clothes they are wearing adds a different description. For instance, they could wear either Street Clothes or a Dress. So in Street Clothes, it would be described in a more mechanical fashion, but when wearing a Dress, there would be more flowery descriptions to include details like the flaring of the skirts or shimmer of the candlelight. To a degree, I've been able to accomplish this... but again, it sees a Dress as a Dress, regardless of who's wearing it. How can I set it so that the description changes based on what the NPC is wearing?

As a note, I can do this with look/examine, but not with actions.

Third Problem: There's the question of confidence. I'd like to set it up so that 'confidence' is an attribute: Mary begins with it and Alice does not. After dancing successfully a few times, Alice gains 'confidence' and the description of her dancing changes accordingly. Further, is it possible to include something like that, and have Alice refuse to wear the Dress or go to the Ballroom until she has 'confidence?'

Fourth Problem: This is something of the finale idea, but I'd like to be able to have the player call one of the NPCs into the Ballroom, and then have the actions described differently to account for the different setting. Is there a simple way to accomplish that?

I know, it's a lot to ask for a first post. If anyone can even point me to the proper documentation that can decipher some of this, it would be greatly appreciated. 

Thanks in advance for any replies.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2061&start=0#p13847
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Recommendations wanted: more plot interactivity, less puzzle
User: Morley / DateTime: 2011-02-21 02:34:16

Okay, so: I know there's lots puzzleless IF in the world, but searching the IFDB for the 'puzzleless' tag presents me with a long list of mostly experimental, surreal, character study, landscape, or otherwise arty IF.  This is cool, but I'm left wondering -- is there not much IF that's light on old-fashioned puzzles, but still heavy on conventional plot?  Or, if there ARE a lot of games like this, is there a term I should be using other than "puzzleless" to find them?

I know I'm not looking for 'choose your own adventure' type-games; generally I dislike multiple choice and (even moreso) hopping over arbitrary periods of time after every turn.  What I am looking for is IF which is mainly about making decisions within a setting and influencing a story, where the player solves plot-related [i]problems[/i] rather than mechanical [i]puzzles[/i]. 

I've yet to figure out how to reliably find games like this, though.  'Puzzle-driven' exists as an IFDB keyword, but not 'story-driven', and references to 'role-playing' tend to point me towards games with settings similar to Dungeons and Dragons rather than games about playing a role in a story.

Anyone have either game recommendations or a better way to find what I'm looking for?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1891&start=20#p13848
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: I7 port of Crowther's Colossal Cave looking for testers
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2011-02-21 03:02:51

By the way, are there any other people interested in testing this? I've found and fixed more bugs, and the display of room descriptions now exactly matches the idiosyncratic behavior of the original.

This should now be a feature-complete version, with all of the original error messages implemented (at least as far as I can trigger, since some apparently go unused). I've decided to use Ron Newcomb's Default Messages extension to centralize and systematize replacing these messages, and I want to make sure that aside from those dealing with the niceties introduced by a modern language, like oops and undo and disambiguation, no really out of place messages have snuck in from Inform.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2060&start=0#p13849
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New to Inform: A Few Key Scenarios
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-02-21 03:27:24

The best way to do it is perhaps to write distinct instead rules for dancing with Mary and dancing with Alice.
[code]Instead of dancing with Mary: say "The two of you fall into a steaming  hot tango."
Instead of dancing with Alice: say "The two of you swirl out into a feather-light Viennese waltz."[/code]
Especially since you want to customize the description of their dance further according to how the women are dressed. You do that with if-clauses inside or outside the double quotes.
[code]Instead of dancing with Mary: say "The two of you fall into a[if Mary wears the red dress] steaming  hot[end if] tango.[run paragraph on][if Mary wears the red dress] Her skirt flares; the candlelight shimmer in her eyes ...[end if][paragraph break]".

Instead of dancing with Alice:
	if Alice wears the blue dress:
		say "The two of you swirl out into a feather-light Viennese waltz. The candlelight shimmers in hers eyes; her skirt flares.";
	otherwise:
		say "The two of you waltz around a bit."
[/code]
(The [run paragraph on] thing is to prevent a line break due to the full stop before the if-clause; the [paragraph break] to force a paragraph break after double quoted text  that doesn't end with a full stop (it ends with an [end if]).)

You can control the description in the same fashion with clauses like [if Mary has confidence] (or [if Mary is confident] or whatever will be the correct syntax).
[code]Instead of dancing with Mary: say "The two of you fall into a[if Mary is not confident] stulting[otherwise if Mary wears the red dress] steaming  hot[end if] tango[if Mary wears the red dress]. Her skirt flares; the candlelight shimmer in her eyes[end if]."
[/code]
You can also specify distinct instead rules for Mary according to whether she is confident or not. 
[code]Instead of dancing with Mary when Mary is not confident: say "'I'm sorry. I don't dance,' she says blushing."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=10#p13850
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-02-21 04:33:10

O-k... so I'm thinking of when I compiled Aotearoa with Quixe (first non-graphical glulx game I could get my hands on), and got it to run on my PC's Firefox, but not on my phone - on my phone I got the error "Out of Memory" (since I have 50Mbs free of phone memory and over about 1Gb free in memory card, I didn't really believe the wording). Since I can't see Quixe/Aotearoa using 50Mbs of free space, I assumed that Quixe simply wouldn't work on my phone. But maybe it's worth investigating further, you think?

BTW, it's not a smartphone; not an iAnything; not Symbian, not Android. It's just a phone with J2ME and browser capabilities. On the other hand, it *is* a bloody brand new model, capable of quite a few neat tricks. 

Maybe I'll try it with some other Glulx game. It's just so much work, Quixing a game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=20#p13851
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-02-21 04:37:07

Which browser engine does it use?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=20#p13852
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-02-21 04:59:41

Heh, I had to go on the net and look for a feature list. [emote]:)[/emote]

- Built-in Opera Mini browser

Though when I started looking, I found I could try and install different browsers. One of them is Opera 10, on which Quixe has been tested. Seems intriguing... I just hope I don't break the thing trying to play GLulx on it. [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=20#p13853
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-02-21 05:28:45

Well, I don't enjoy disappointing people, but I suspect a phone using J2ME should be pretty weak when it comes to CPU power. So even if it runs Quixe, the JavaScript engine is going to run so slow you might have time to make coffee between turns [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2054&start=10#p13854
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Questions: Narrative Voice and Text Format
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-21 05:53:41

[quote="Felix"][quote="matt w"]the "examine supporters" rule, which is the one that's firing here, is written in Inform 6, I think.[/quote]

More or less. The examine supporters rule is itself an Inform 7 carry out rule, but it mainly issues a library message that does very little but calling the WriteListFrom function, which is in Inform 6.[/quote]

What is the rule? I was expecting to find it in the standard rules, but a search on "examine supporters" came up empty.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=20#p13855
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-02-21 06:05:51

Opera Mini is a strange browser and doesn't really support Javascript, so it won't be able to run Parchment or Quixe.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2054&start=10#p13856
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Questions: Narrative Voice and Text Format
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-02-21 06:05:58

[quote="matt w"]What is the rule? I was expecting to find it in the standard rules, but a search on "examine supporters" came up empty.[/quote]
Odd. It's there, far as I can see. Maybe you mistyped?

Anyway, here's the rule:

[code]Carry out examining (this is the examine supporters rule):
	if the noun is a supporter:
		if something described which is not scenery is on the noun and something which is
			not the player is on the noun:
			issue library message looking action number 4 for the noun;
			now examine text printed is true.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2062&start=0#p13857
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Off-Stage problems
User: Euclid / DateTime: 2011-02-21 06:59:39

I'm trying to have a room with a tree and a metal ball, and have the metal ball fall out of the tree when you examine the tree, but have the metal ball be undetectable until you do so. At first I just put the ball on top of the tree, but then I thought it might be simpler to just create the ball offstage and move it into the room after examining the tree. But when I tried to do that it doesn't work. I don't get any errors or anything, but when I test it, the ball doesn't show up.

Here's the code I have:

[code]A palm tree is here. It is fixed in place. It has the description "A closer look at the palms reveals that there are, in fact, several small coconuts around the trunk. Some of them even look loose enough to shake down. You grasp the trunk of the tree and shake experimentally. After a few seconds, something hits you in the head with a satisfying 'klunk'. Slightly dazed, you look at the fallen object. 

It isn't a coconut, you note with sadness. It is something completely foreign and strangely artificial. It is a small, metal sphere, covered in an intricate design. Perplexed, you are unsure what to do with it.". After examining the palm tree, change the description of the palm tree to "Your shakes were in vain; it seems nothing will loosen those coconuts."

Understand "palm" or "tree" as palm tree.

The metal ball is a thing. It has the description "A small, metal sphere, covered in an intricate design.".  Understand "ball" as metal ball.

After examining the palm tree, move the metal ball to Sandy Cove.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2054&start=10#p13858
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Questions: Narrative Voice and Text Format
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-21 07:02:45

I'm starting to feel mildly paranoid now. These are the "carry out examining" rules I found in the copy of the Standard Rules I just opened:

[code]Carry out examining (this is the examine undescribed containers rule):
	if the noun goes undescribed by source text and
		the noun is a container,
		convert to the searching action on the noun.

Carry out examining (this is the examine undescribed devices rule):
	if the noun goes undescribed by source text and
		the noun is a device,
		stop the action with library message examining action number 3
			for the noun.

Carry out examining (this is the examine undescribed things rule):
	if the noun goes undescribed by source text,
		stop the action with library message examining action number 2
			for the noun.

Carry out examining (this is the examine directions rule):
	if the noun is a direction,
		stop the action with library message examining action number 5
			for the noun.

Carry out examining (this is the standard examining rule):
	say "[the description of the noun][line break]".

Carry out examining (this is the examine described devices rule):
	if the noun is a device,
		stop the action with library message examining action number 3
			for the noun.[/code]

The "examine supporters" rule fires and is named as such when I turn on rules tracing, it just doesn't appear when I open the Standard Rules extension.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2062&start=0#p13859
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Off-Stage problems
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-02-21 07:12:56

[quote="Euclid"]I'm trying to have a room with a tree and a metal ball, and have the metal ball fall out of the tree when you examine the tree, but have the metal ball be undetectable until you do so. At first I just put the ball on top of the tree, but then I thought it might be simpler to just create the ball offstage and move it into the room after examining the tree. But when I tried to do that it doesn't work. I don't get any errors or anything, but when I test it, the ball doesn't show up.[/quote]

That's a weird error. The "after examining the tree" rule does not in fact fire when you examine the tree, while "after player examining the tree" does. Looks like a bug to me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2062&start=0#p13860
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Off-Stage problems
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-02-21 07:14:32

I think the problem is that you have two "after examining the palm tree" rules. By default an after rule stops the action so you have to either combine the rules or add "continue the action" to the end of them:

[code]
After examining the palm tree for the first time:
    now the description of the palm tree is "Your shakes were in vain; it seems nothing will loosen those coconuts.";
    now the metal ball is in Sandy Cove.
[/code]
I added "for the first time" so that if you have picked up the ball examining the tree for the second time won't move it out of your inventory. It's also better to use "now" instead of "change", which is deprecated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2062&start=0#p13861
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Off-Stage problems
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-02-21 07:18:04

[quote="Eleas"]That's a weird error. The "after examining the tree" rule does not in fact fire when you examine the tree, while "after player examining the tree" does. Looks like a bug to me.[/quote]
I assume adding "player" makes it more specific than the other rule, so it's considered first. The other rule will still be ignored.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2062&start=0#p13862
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Off-Stage problems
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-02-21 07:31:03

...oh. Now I feel stupid; I must have missed the first "after" I don't know how many times. I'm going to hold off posting any further stuff until this cold clears up, since it seems it's affecting my thought processes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2061&start=0#p13863
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Recommendations wanted: more plot interactivity, less pu
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-02-21 07:31:03

I don't have any advice about how to search for these games, but two recent, big games with a lot of plot that might fit your bill are:
[list][*]Blue Lacuna, by Aaron Reed (played in "story mode", which you can choose after the prologue, there is a lot of story and almost no puzzling)[/*:m]
[*]The King of Shreds and Patches, by Jimmy Maher (does contain quite a number of puzzles, though none very difficult; but also contains lots and lots of story)[/*:m][/list:u]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2061&start=0#p13864
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Recommendations wanted: more plot interactivity, less pu
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-02-21 07:52:11

I'd recommend re-posting your request as an IFDB poll (since that lets you query the collective opinions of IFDB visitors directly), and adding a 'story-driven' tag to some games based on what results you get. It'd be a slippery and subjective tag to be sure, but so are many of the most useful existing ones [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2061&start=0#p13865
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Recommendations wanted: more plot interactivity, less pu
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-21 08:17:28

If you want some shorter games than the ones Victor mentioned, you might try Masquerade by Kathleen Fischer; as I recall it has a couple of puzzles (although they're not "find the object to unlock this" so much as "How do I trick this person into letting me into this room?"), but it's mostly about figuring out how the PC is going to act in the world. 

Into the Open Sky by Matthew Lundquist might also be of interest -- there's a couple of puzzles, but mostly it's about exploring the world and discovering its story. (One caveat: The author isn't a native English speaker, and the prose occasionally gets wobbly; but I liked it anyway.) 

You might also try Emily Short's Best of Three, which does proceed mostly by a multiple-choice conversation system, but which doesn't have the time-skipping effect that CYOAs do. And there isn't anything that you'd call a puzzle.

A lot of puzzleless games seem to proceed on a pretty linear plot, which didn't sound like what you're asking for. I'm thinking of games like Duel in the Snow or East Grove Hills (which I thought was underrated), where there's usually pretty much only one way to go on. (And Photopia too, of course.) But if you don't mind the plot being foreordained, you might try those.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2059&start=0#p13867
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Story in IF
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-02-21 08:48:02

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Seems to me Campbell is simply describing the structure of plotted fiction. How and to what extent this structure can be applied to IF ... we can debate about that. In my view, mythic tasks like slaying Medusa or stealing the golden fleece are not too different from puzzles. That is, the hero faces challenges. No challenges = boring story.[/quote]

In one of my books on writing, I forget the name it was a long time ago, but the author talked about Campbell's monomyth cycle in terms of a 'Golden Paradigm'. Just as some artists will study the proportions of the Divine Ratio and Golden Mean, which tries to describe some principles of what makes a painting attractive and pleasing to the eye, this writing-craft book was an analysis of storytelling along the same lines. In all good storytelling, there are certain underlying themes which resonate deeply with us on a fundamental level, and Campbell made a good study of identifying those. When they all come together in a story, hitting all the right notes, it can be like a masterful symphony. How and to what extent this 'golden paradigm' can be applied to IF...well, I don't know, I haven't played or written enough for an in-depth analysis. But reviewing these principles has given me a lot of food for thought and ideas for constructing and plotting out the structure of my own IF adventure.

I think many examples of mythic storytelling lend themselves naturally to the format of an interactive game. The 'slaying of Medusa' challenge is a good example as a puzzle. But all too often I think games thrust the player directly into conflict and challenges, without any build up to allow the player become emotionally involved in the story or adventure. This is where I think some examples of mythic storytelling could be useful to bear in mind when you're plotting out an adventure. Usually, in the beginning of a story, the protagonist is rather miserable and living under some unfortunate circumstances. The adventure can begin as an accident (he inherits a magic ring, or two droids crash land on his home planet), he can overhear a tale of buried treasure and go forth either of his own boldness - or reluctantly, because he needs the treasure to solve a greater problem facing him at home. But there should be some reason the adventurer picks up his brass lantern and sword of Elvish antiquity and heads down into the Great Underground Empire. There are a lot of ways a preamble like this could work inside the world model of IF.

In some stories the hero is reluctant to leave his hometown, and must be forced into taking drastic action. In IF, for example, a situation like this could be crafted to play out if the player becomes stumped at the beginning, or wanders around aimlessly for a specified number of turns -- some event or action could be made to happen which forces the player to act, and moves the story along to its next phase. If the object for the player is to find a magic ring in the beginning, which sets up the story and adventure, but the player fails to discover it - then you could have a sagely NPC appear and give the magic ring to the player, and push him along on the adventure. Or the adventure could proceed as the result of a blunder, by failing to solve a puzzle in the game or act in time to prevent an event from happening. When it comes to creating your world model for IF, I think there are tons of ideas to be mined in studying the fundamentals of storytelling in this way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2054&start=10#p13868
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Questions: Narrative Voice and Text Format
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-02-21 09:38:04

[quote="matt w"]I'm starting to feel mildly paranoid now. These are the "carry out examining" rules I found in the copy of the Standard Rules I just opened:

[code]Carry out examining (this is the examine undescribed containers rule):
	...[/code][/quote]

From the release notes for 6E59 (June 2010):

[quote]We have withdrawn the:

	examine undescribed containers rule

and replaced it with two new rules:

	examine containers rule
	examine supporters rule
[/quote]

Since in your case:
[quote="matt w"]The "examine supporters" rule fires and is named as such when I turn on rules tracing, it just doesn't appear when I open the Standard Rules extension.[/quote]
It looks like you're using a more current version of I7 for compilation, but an old (pre-June 2010) version of the standard rules for reference purposes.

HTH

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2062&start=0#p13869
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Off-Stage problems
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-02-21 09:38:20

If that makes you feel any better, that first after examining rule totally eluded me, too. And I don't even have a cold.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2054&start=20#p13870
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Questions: Narrative Voice and Text Format
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-21 09:59:34

Thanks Mike; I'm opening the Standard Rules in the IDE, so I'm pretty sure that what's happening is that that's somehow glomming on to the 5Z71 rules, which must be somewhere on my hard drive.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2062&start=0#p13871
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Off-Stage problems
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-02-21 10:00:48

[quote="Felix"]If that makes you feel any better, that first after examining rule totally eluded me, too. And I don't even have a cold.[/quote]

Thanks. Could it be endemic to Swedes, you think? [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2062&start=0#p13872
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Off-Stage problems
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-02-21 10:06:34

[quote="Eleas"]Could it be endemic to Swedes, you think?[/quote]
Wouldn't surprise me. It's been a long, cold, lonely winter. Perfectly natural if we're all a little off gear.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2063&start=0#p13873
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Bug in fast route-finding?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-21 10:20:59

This:

[code]"Relations" by Matt Weiner

Lab is a room.
 A theme is a kind of thing. Love is a theme. Loss is a theme. Lust is a theme.
Suggesting relates various themes to each other. The verb to suggest (he suggests, they suggest, he suggested, it is suggested, he is suggesting) implies the suggesting relation. Love suggests Loss. Loss suggests Love. Loss suggests Lust. Lust suggests Loss.

Every turn: say "[The next step via the suggesting relation from Love to Lust]."[/code]

behaves as expected; every turn it will print "Loss."

But add fast route-finding, thus:

[code]"Relations" by Matt Weiner

Lab is a room.
 A theme is a kind of thing. Love is a theme. Loss is a theme. Lust is a theme.
Suggesting relates various themes to each other with fast route-finding. The verb to suggest (he suggests, they suggest, he suggested, it is suggested, he is suggesting) implies the suggesting relation. Love suggests Loss. Loss suggests Love. Loss suggests Lust. Lust suggests Loss.

Every turn: say "[The next step via the suggesting relation from Love to Lust]."[/code]

and it prints "Class" every turn. 

Anyone got ideas before I head to the bug tracker? (And, where on earth does "Class" come from?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=429&start=20#p13874
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Vegitarian
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-21 10:26:26

Funny thing is, I knew about gluten long before I knew I was gluten intolerant, but I thought it was a good thing. I was cooking with seitan instead of meat (I'll give you three guesses how I pronounce seitan now!), and I was buying "high gluten" flour for making bread!

Hmm... pizza parties. Yeah, that would be a toughie. I've discovered a recipe for cauliflower pizza crust that's pretty good, but it's actually got cheese in it. I tried making it without cheese a couple times, and it's edible, but it's not really pizza crust anymore.

Nowadays my idea of a great pizza is "pepperoni... hold the pizza."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=429&start=20#p13875
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Vegitarian
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-21 10:31:38

[quote="Eleas"]I can't agree enough with this. I tried paleolithic diet once on the advice of my parents (during a "try everything to see if it works" period before I was properly diagnosed). I lasted about a week before developing a violent and apparently permanent reaction to the courses I had sampled. Six years later I still get sick from a single bite of that stuff, though the why of it has never been clear to me.[/quote]
Like hives or like puking? I've heard many times of people who puke when they eat meat. My guess is that it's a lack of stomach acid or possibly low digestive enzymes or low bile acids. I think there's a "use it or lose it" element to some of these things. Hives of course would be allergies.

Paleo is essentially how I eat, but I didn't start out that way. I just eliminated everything else and then found out that was what it was called. There's a wide range of things that can be called Paleo, though, and it's funny what different conclusions people reach about how humans ate a million years ago. Everything from hardcore fruitarian to 100% carnivore is considered "the" Paleo diet by somebody...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=429&start=20#p13876
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Vegitarian
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-02-21 10:44:15

[quote="capmikee"]Like hives or like puking? I've heard many times of people who puke when they eat meat. My guess is that it's a lack of stomach acid or possibly digestive enzymes. Hives of course would be allergies.

Paleo is essentially how I eat, but I didn't start out that way. I just eliminated everything else and then found out that was what it was called.[/quote]

The latter. My own fault, mainly -- I picked up a primer on paleo, tried it out, decided this was something I should try living by to solve my concentration issues, and fixated on a few dishes. Too few, it turns out. Didn't know back then that I'd inherited autoimmune disorder and ADHD either, meaning I had the beginnings of an ulcer before seven years of age. All of these factors may have contributed to my reaction.

So I can understand paleo working for a lot of people, but I'm reluctant to personally repeat the attempt.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=429&start=20#p13877
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Vegitarian
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-21 10:51:51

Yuck! Sorry to hear that.

Have you been treated for H. pylori? H. pylori, which causes ulcers, can also suppress stomach acid production.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=429&start=20#p13878
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Vegitarian
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-02-21 10:54:40

[quote="capmikee"]Yuck! Sorry to hear that.

Have you been treated for H. pylori? H. pylori, which causes ulcers, can also suppress stomach acid production.[/quote]

Nah. [emote]:)[/emote] It's on the agenda, but honestly, I'm busy enough with studies and primary treatments these days as it is. Thanks for the thought and the tip, though -- much appreciated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=20#p13879
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2011-02-21 11:28:29

yep, Opera mini is a javascript no-no.  Android comes with a webkit browser with good support for javascript and is able to run parchment, swype keyboard and all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=429&start=20#p13880
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Vegitarian
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-02-21 11:31:13

I'm an omnivore leaning as much toward vegetarian as I can manage (how much I can manage depends on whether there's a burger, pot roast, smoked pork rib or chicken wing within reach). I try to keep it kind of Japanese, in the sense that I mainly eat plants, but with a bit of meat here and there. I'm the main cook in our house, and I try to do a few all-vegetarian meals each week. They're vegan kind of by default, because we go easy on things like dairy and cheese anyway, so most meals have neither of those things. My life is basically bohemian (with absolutely all that entails), so naturally some of my friends are vegan, and I find it easy to cook for them. A couple of my friends are also into the raw food movement, and I find that a _little_ trickier, but I'm learning [emote]:)[/emote]

I crave veggies and fruit all the time ... lately I've been on a serious kick for fresh oranges, in particular ... but ... well, they say "you are what you eat," and if that's true, then this cow I'm eating is basically just grain, anyway, right? [emote];)[/emote]

Something I've always wondered: where do serious vegans tend to fall on the subject of honey? I would assume that since it's an animal product (comparable to milk in many ways) that it would be off the list, but a lot of the vegan-friendly restaurants and coffeehouses I've been to seem to offer it as a sweetener, anyway, next to the agave and whatnot.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2061&start=0#p13881
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Recommendations wanted: more plot interactivity, less pu
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2011-02-21 11:31:29

Have you tried "Violet" and "Nightfall" yet?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=429&start=20#p13882
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Vegitarian
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-21 11:53:55

Honey's technically off the list for vegans; there's no way to harvest honey without killing some of the bees.  You can minimize casualties, but it's off the list for most of the hardcore vegans I know.  (Like many dietary practices, though, there's a continuum in veganism just like anywhere else, and some self-identified vegans eat honey.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2061&start=0#p13883
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Recommendations wanted: more plot interactivity, less pu
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-21 11:54:57

I love Violet as much as the next person, but I wouldn't put it anywhere near a "less puzzle" category.

What about The Baron?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2061&start=0#p13884
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Recommendations wanted: more plot interactivity, less pu
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-02-21 12:13:05

[quote="Morley"][...] where the player solves plot-related [i]problems[/i] rather than mechanical [i]puzzles[/i].[/quote]

I'm actually a little fuzzy on this distinction (and not in the H. Beam Piper way) ... I guess to me, if the player is making choices to solve a problem, that's a puzzle. A problem is a puzzle is a problem, since either must be solved.

Do you mean puzzles focused on [i]character interaction [/i]rather than [i]inventory[/i]? I think that's my closest guess (for example, helping talk down a jumper from suicide rather than figuring out that the blue potion goes into the bronze bowl to create the green steam to revitalize the white parrot)?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2061&start=0#p13885
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Recommendations wanted: more plot interactivity, less pu
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-02-21 12:14:10

[quote="namekuseijin"]Have you tried "Violet" and "Nightfall" yet?[/quote]

Nightfall has lots of groovy story (mainly backstory ...) but most of the actual gameplay is good old fashioned inventory-based physical puzzles, as I recall.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=429&start=20#p13886
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Vegitarian
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-21 12:30:24

Although I was surprised to learn that Peter Singer (author of "Animal Liberation," a seminal work of vegan rhetoric) said he thought honey was okay. If I remember correctly, it was in correspondence with Stephen Budiansky, published in Budiansky's book "The Covenant of the Wild: Why Animals Chose Domestication."

It's my impression that the exact details of a vegan diet come down to an individual's conscience and opinion. Or any diet, for that matter.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2058&start=0#p13887
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "I didn't understand that number." message
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2011-02-21 12:33:24

I've been wondering about this error message myself.   Not sure whether numbered disambiguation is worth having these extra errors...
--Zack

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1828&start=0#p13888
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Choice of Games Releases Interactive Fiction Apps for Ki
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2011-02-21 12:42:33

Late post, but again, Congrats Dan, fantastic news.  I am sure that games on the kindle would be a big seller.  I bought my wife a Kindle 3 for her birthday and she loves it.  

My hope is that someone (Textfyre?  Zarf?) will port Glulxe to the Kindle.  Would be an awesome platform for IF in general.

--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2061&start=0#p13889
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Recommendations wanted: more plot interactivity, less pu
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-02-21 12:48:27

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="Morley"][...] where the player solves plot-related [i]problems[/i] rather than mechanical [i]puzzles[/i].[/quote]

I'm actually a little fuzzy on this distinction (and not in the H. Beam Piper way) ... I guess to me, if the player is making choices to solve a problem, that's a puzzle. A problem is a puzzle is a problem, since either must be solved.[/quote]

Yeah, I'm confused about that too, though my own reading was that maybe Morley wanted games where the puzzles were very smoothly integrated into the story and didn't stand out as set-piece challenges.

If that's what's desired, I recommend Jon Ingold's "Make It Good" (plotty, lots and lots and LOTS of ways the story can change based on what you do). Also insanely hard to get to come out to the "best" ending, so another way to look at it is that the whole game is an enormous and hugely intricate puzzle. Depends on your definition.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2061&start=0#p13890
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Recommendations wanted: more plot interactivity, less pu
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-21 12:56:27

I thought that Morley might be talking about games where you have choices that will affect people's reactions, but they aren't so much puzzles; it's not a mystery how people will react to your choices, even if it can be something of a surprise. Hence Masquerade; the different choices you make aren't really puzzles for the most part, but you are "making decisions within a setting and influencing a story." Into the Open Sky isn't quite like that -- I'm not sure there's multiple endings -- but the different bits of backstory you can unlock have a similar effect. (And I think you have to choose -- you can't unlock them all.) And I was thinking of Best of Three rather than Alabaster because Alabaster is more about solving various mysteries, which gives it more of a puzzly aspect for me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2062&start=0#p13891
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Off-Stage problems
User: Euclid / DateTime: 2011-02-21 13:06:55

Awesome, I got it working. Thanks so much!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1828&start=0#p13892
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Choice of Games Releases Interactive Fiction Apps for Ki
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-02-21 13:14:01

Textfyre has some sort of Kindle port underway, though it will target FyreVM instead of Glk.

I was pretty excited about Kindle development a year ago when Amazon first announced the KDK. Now I can't help but feel that Amazon has badly mismanaged the program; as it stands there are far more interesting apps outside the official distribution channel, and the majority of "active" content consists of uninspired word puzzles and card games. I just don't see what 12 months of closed beta has produced that could justify the secrecy and delay.

Dan's games are really excellent and feel quite at home on the Kindle. There's also this [url=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004JWHW92]RPG game book[/url] which I may check out at some point.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=429&start=20#p13893
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Vegitarian
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-02-21 13:14:46

My experiences with restricted diets have been mostly out of consideration for friends and significant others.  I dated someone who kept kosher at the time, which was good watch-what-I'm-cooking-with experience for a later significant other, who is lethally treenut-allergic and more-mildly allergic to soy, chocolate, and peanuts.  The latter was a case in which I had to watch my own diet, since I could not eat treenuts myself for fear of, ahem, cross-contamination.  (My housemates first learned about the breakup when they came home to find me eating Nutella straight out of the jar.)  The restriction that is my own comes from the fact that I'm a [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supertaster]supertaster[/url] -- I hate the taste of alcohol, coffee, and leafy vegetables, and prefer spiced-ness to spiciness and milk chocolate to dark chocolate (grapefruit is good, though, and spinach is sort-of acceptable).

I have several friends of varying shades of vegetarianism, so I rarely cook meat for any group of friends larger than myself and one or two specific other people.  But honestly, I rarely cook meat anyway, since it's expensive, finicky to cook, and doesn't store well.  I do use chicken broth as a flavoring fairly regularly (unless I'm cooking for friends, of course, in which case I'd use mushroom bouillon), I eat a fair number of eggs, and I love dairy products.  I drink milk with every meal that I eat at home, and butter and cheese go in pretty much everything.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2059&start=0#p13894
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Story in IF
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-02-21 13:29:09

Games that begin with aimless wandering for a set number of turns are a discredited idea, aren't they?  (Or perhaps I just don't like them.  Planetfall, I'm looking at you.)  They're just begging for a "z z z z z" opening.

Better (IMO):  Start the game as a slice of life, putting the player in a reasonably interesting setting and giving him or her some moderately difficult tasks to complete.  Then, either as a timed event or with a specific trigger, have the real story interrupt.

But there's a reason the hero's journey is largely rejected in modern literature.  It's been done to death, it doesn't require much creativity (as far as the plot goes), and it's completely predictable.  Much of the literature of the 20th century has been an exploration of how, or if, it's possible to tell a complete, satisfying story without just reskinning the same plot over and over.

Of course there will always be room for the hero's journey in the literary canon.  But I don't see any reason to seek it out or purposefully attempt to adhere to it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2064&start=0#p13895
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Replacing within quoted text only
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-21 14:08:01

I'm about to run an experiment which would require going through a tremendous quantity of output and replacing something with a text token (e.g. "box" -> "[box]").

Unfortunately, the words I want to replace also show up with alarming frequency in the actual coding bits.  

Does Inform 7 offer a way to either export/import all the text, or search/replace within the output text?  (I'm using Windows.)

It's not hopeless without it, but it would turn a pretty straightforward thing into a slog.  Plan B is doing the replacements automatically and then dealing with all the compiler errors that appear, which is a lot of work for an experiment.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2063&start=0#p13896
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Bug in fast route-finding?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-21 14:27:43

Reported as [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=578]issue 578[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2064&start=0#p13897
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Replacing within quoted text only
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-21 14:37:43

I do this kind of thing in a separate editor using regular expression (grep) syntax. You can go to [url=http://regexr.com]regexr.com[/url] if you don't have a desktop editor with those capabilities. It has a little reference and tooltips, and also does a live preview of your search/replace expression.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2064&start=0#p13898
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Replacing within quoted text only
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-21 15:04:54

What advantage does that give over Cntl+H (or whatever the replace shortcut is?)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2064&start=0#p13899
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Replacing within quoted text only
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-21 15:23:40

The IDE's replace feature doesn't let you use regular expressions. Regular expressions allow you to, e.g.., specify that the replacement should take place only when the text to be replaced is found within quotes. So, for example, if you search for this regex:

[color=#0000BF]"(.*)\sbox\s(.*)"[/color]

and replace it with this:

[color=#0000BF]"$1 [box] $2"[/color]

then the result of processing 

[code]say "There is a box here."[/code]

will be 

[code]say "There is a [box] here."[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2064&start=0#p13900
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Replacing within quoted text only
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-21 15:24:49

Ah, gotcha.  That's very cool.  Thanks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2038&start=0#p13901
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptions of supported items.
User: cryptoboy / DateTime: 2011-02-21 16:05:36

I have a related question (if this is too off topic, sorry, I'll start a new thread):

[code]The kitchen is a room. "A table stands in a bright yellow kitchen."
The table is in the kitchen.  It is undescribed and fixed in place.
The knife is on the table.
The spoon is on the table.[/code]
Will produce:

[i]kitchen
A table stands in a bright yellow kitchen.[/i]

Q:  How can I get the table description in with the room description paragraph?  It would then read:

[i]A table stands in a bright yellow kitchen.  On the table are a knife and a spoon.[/i]

Is it as easy as something like:
[code]The kitchen is a room. "A table stands in a bright yellow kitchen. [perform examining table]."[/code]?
Preferably, I'd test for the number of items on the table, and only display if it's greater than zero.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=20#p13902
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-02-21 16:06:05

Oh, what a pity... and I can't find any other browser compatible with NC3. Blast.

Ah well. Another reason to keep the ZMachine alive, eh?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2058&start=0#p13903
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "I didn't understand that number." message
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-21 16:06:30

[quote="Felix"]I honestly can't recall where I heard of TRACE (though it can't be very long ago).[/quote]The handy-dandy Programmer's Manual, perhaps?   [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2059&start=0#p13904
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Story in IF
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-02-21 16:15:40

[quote="katz"]Games that begin with aimless wandering for a set number of turns are a discredited idea, aren't they?  (Or perhaps I just don't like them.  Planetfall, I'm looking at you.)  They're just begging for a "z z z z z" opening.

Better (IMO):  Start the game as a slice of life, putting the player in a reasonably interesting setting and giving him or her some moderately difficult tasks to complete.  Then, either as a timed event or with a specific trigger, have the real story interrupt.

But there's a reason the hero's journey is largely rejected in modern literature.  It's been done to death, it doesn't require much creativity (as far as the plot goes), and it's completely predictable.  Much of the literature of the 20th century has been an exploration of how, or if, it's possible to tell a complete, satisfying story without just reskinning the same plot over and over.

Of course there will always be room for the hero's journey in the literary canon.  But I don't see any reason to seek it out or purposefully attempt to adhere to it.[/quote]

I'm no expert on modern literature, but I can't imagine very much of it (outside of purely abstract, experimental fiction) would represent that much of a departure from the hero's journey if it's a coherent piece of writing based on human experience. Most all the themes you find in the hero's journey describe or represent some aspect of life we all face at one time or another. Whether it's setting off from home on some adventure into the unknown, winning over the heart of the love of your life, overcoming fear, being guided by a mentor, picking yourself up after a punishing defeat, or battling against an enemy. These are all things we go through in life, and they're also central elements to good story-telling, and sources of ideas.

I agree in its most hackneyed form the hero's journey is enough to commence eyeball rolling. But I would say let's place the blame where it belongs, with the author who implemented it, rather than dismiss it out of hand entirely. If it's handled with some skill and/or comes from personal experience it's probably going to be transparent in fiction anyhow, at least to most people who don't critically examine plot structure. But if it's done ineptly then I agree it's going to remind you of a badly formulaic story or movie.

There is no one true answer when it comes to story-telling, of course. I only referenced it as a source of ideas and inspiration to consider when building the story around an IF game.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2058&start=0#p13905
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "I didn't understand that number." message
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-02-21 16:16:07

[quote]The handy-dandy Programmer's Manual, perhaps?[/quote]
Doubtless!
 [emote]8-)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2038&start=0#p13906
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptions of supported items.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-21 16:18:05

Probably not quite that simple, but something like that. Defining a "to say perform examining table" phrase would make that work, but to get all the details right, you'd probably need to look at the library code for examining a supporter.

This code is adapted from the describe what's on scenery supporters in room descriptions rule in the Standard Rules. I haven't tested it:

[code]
To say perform examining table:
	if something is on the table:
		say "On the table ";
		list the contents of the table, as a sentence, including contents, giving brief inventory information, tersely, not listing concealed items, prefacing with is/are, listing marked items only;
		say ". ";
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2065&start=0#p13907
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: A newbie question about status line colour
User: whoiscraig / DateTime: 2011-02-21 16:20:52

I understand that the status line is supposed to be reversed colour, but when I "release with website and an interpreter" and try to play in browser, I get an ugly beige colour that's not reversed at all. I even tried Glulx Status Window Control to change the colour, but it seems to ignore it and give me the ugly beige colour anyway. If I play the file with an interpreter on my computer (gargoyle) the status line works fine, but I'd like the play in browser functionality.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2038&start=10#p13908
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptions of supported items.
User: cryptoboy / DateTime: 2011-02-21 16:48:32

Thanks!  That worked (once I removed the "listing marked items only").

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2038&start=10#p13909
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptions of supported items.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-21 16:56:16

[quote="cryptoboy"]I have a related question (if this is too off topic, sorry, I'll start a new thread):

[code]The kitchen is a room. "A table stands in a bright yellow kitchen."
The table is in the kitchen.  It is undescribed and fixed in place.
The knife is on the table.
The spoon is on the table.[/code]
Will produce:

[i]kitchen
A table stands in a bright yellow kitchen.[/i]

Q:  How can I get the table description in with the room description paragraph?  It would then read:

[i]A table stands in a bright yellow kitchen.  On the table are a knife and a spoon.[/i]

Is it as easy as something like:
[code]The kitchen is a room. "A table stands in a bright yellow kitchen. [perform examining table]."[/code]?
Preferably, I'd test for the number of items on the table, and only display if it's greater than zero.[/quote]

Emily Short's [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Emily%20Short/Single%20Paragraph%20Description/index.html]Single Paragraph Description[/url] seems to be designed to do just that out of the box, though I haven't used it.

It requires [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Emily%20Short/Room%20Description%20Control/index.html]the Room Description Control extension[/url], which I haven't used either; combined they're definitely something that wouldn't be easy to come up with on your own, though it might be easier to roll your own single paragraph description if that's all you want. But if you want the functionality without the joy (semi-serious there) of writing the code yourself, that's probably the simplest option.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2065&start=0#p13910
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A newbie question about status line colour
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-21 17:03:41

It's too bad that Quixe's text grid windows don't respond to color hints (which is what Glulx Status Window Control sets). You will need to edit the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascading_Style_Sheets]css[/url] file for your game to get the color scheme you're after. You can find out what to change and which file it's located in by using the Firebug plugin for Firefox, or the built-in developer tools for Safari, Chrome, or (I think) IE 8 or 9.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2038&start=10#p13911
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptions of supported items.
User: mktacoma / DateTime: 2011-02-21 17:17:52

Something along these lines worked for me:
[code]
The kitchen is a room. "A table stands in a bright yellow kitchen.[if the table supports something] On the table is [a list of things on the table].[end if]"

The table is a supporter. It is in the kitchen.  It is undescribed and fixed in place.

The knife is on the table.
The spoon is on the table.

[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=20#p13912
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-02-21 17:20:15

Oh heck, this is frustrating. With Opera Mini 5.1, it actually does load the applet, and the speed seems decent, but I can't actually do anything. Once I type in a command, there seems to be no way to make the browser understand I want the applet to accept a carriage return. Nor can I get the browser to open files in my bloody phone. Frustrating!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2066&start=0#p13913
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Replacing text similar to a pig latin function?
User: mktacoma / DateTime: 2011-02-21 17:26:41

I've been trying to get a translation system working in Inform that essentially would take arbitrary text and "translate" it as appropriate. In my case, I want it to turn into a form of gibberish, but once a player knows how to translate it, the same text isn't transformed. As a simple example:

[code]

The library is a room.
The book is in the library.

Instead of examining the book:
	say "You read the book: [pig-latin]Really interesting stuff.[end pig-latin]"
[/code]

Then there would some process to define the "how to do pig-latin" or some such. If the player was fluent, it would return the text as it was written, but if he/she wasn't it would transform the text and return the mashed up variant.

Is this functionality available in inform? I haven't seen any ways to define new start and end tags like the [if] and [end if] tags. Alternately, is there a better way to get to a solution for something like this?

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2065&start=0#p13915
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A newbie question about status line colour
User: whoiscraig / DateTime: 2011-02-21 17:39:30

Ah thanks

I worked it out. In case anyone else is wondering, the file is "glkote.css", but I had to go into:
Program Files/Inform 7/Inform 7/Extensions/Reserved/Templates/Quixe
and edit it directly from there, otherwise it will just overwrite it when I release

and the setting was .GridWindow

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2066&start=0#p13916
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Replacing text similar to a pig latin function?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-21 18:01:37

25.27. Segmented substitutions   is the manual page describing that.  The following page as well.  Inform 6 is needed, I believe.  

However it looks like you're wanting to "pass" the middle text to a function that prints a transformed version.  I'm not sure how possible that is, but it sounds like a juicy little problem.  [url=http://xyzzy.plover.net/~pscion/Quip%20Menus.i7x]This extension[/url] might also show you some tricks with Say-phrases that may or may not be helpful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2066&start=0#p13917
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Replacing text similar to a pig latin function?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-21 18:28:57

This is actually quite easy to do without any I6 or fancy say phrases; you just need the Text Capture extension. You'd set it up something like this:

[code]To say pig-latin:
       start capturing text.

To say end pig-latin:
	stop capturing text;
	if the player understands pig latin:
		say "[captured text][run paragraph on]";
	otherwise:
		let T be indexed text;
		let T be "[captured text]";
		replace the regular expression "\b(<aeiou>+)(\w*)" in T with "\1\2ay"; 
		replace the regular expression "\b(<bcdfghjklmnpqrstvwxz>+)(\w*)" in T with "\2\1ay";
		say "[T][run paragraph on]";[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=10#p13918
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-02-21 18:41:38

In case anyone finds it helpful, I added wrappers to [url=http://code.google.com/p/garglk/source/diff?spec=svn510&r=510&format=side&path=/trunk/garglk/cgdate.c]mktime and friends[/url] on Windows to handle dates before the epoch.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2066&start=0#p13919
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Replacing text similar to a pig latin function?
User: mktacoma / DateTime: 2011-02-21 18:54:52

That's beautiful. I didn't know anything about "start capturing text" - that solves things perfectly.

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2059&start=0#p13920
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Story in IF
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-02-21 19:19:08

Thinking it over a bit more, the core of what I'm trying to say is that, while useful from a lit crit perspective, I don't think there is much, if any, utility to the author in studying and applying Campbell.  If his base narrative indeed encompasses all coherent fiction, which I doubt, then all stories will naturally fall into it whether they're trying to or not; if it doesn't, then that calls into question why one should attempt to follow his pattern.

(One respect in which the hero's journey is more applicable to IF than to other genres of writing is that IF is almost inevitably goal-oriented; it's hard to draw out the player's participation if he or she isn't trying to accomplish something.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1828&start=0#p13921
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Choice of Games Releases Interactive Fiction Apps for Ki
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-02-21 19:47:53

Web interpreters will also work on new kindles, with varying levels of success. Of course we'd love to have a kindle developer who would work on sorting out the bugs [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2058&start=10#p13922
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "I didn't understand that number." message
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-02-21 20:07:44

[quote="ZUrlocker"]I've been wondering about this error message myself.   Not sure whether numbered disambiguation is worth having these extra errors...
--Zack[/quote]

I wrote Aaron about the bug and he promptly responded with a bugfix. I expect you'll see version 4 of the extension made public soon.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2061&start=10#p13923
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Recommendations wanted: more plot interactivity, less pu
User: Morley / DateTime: 2011-02-21 20:32:19

Thanks for the recommendations. Can't wait to start investigating some of these.

And sorry to have been unclear. I see now that the IF wiki defines a puzzle as "anything that impedes a player's progress towards a goal" when what I meant was more narrow.  

What I mean by a [i]problem[/i] is a situation  which can be approached  in different ways with different consequences, where the question is more "what should I do" than "what can I do". I think of a [i]puzzle[/i] as being  self-contained, binary (either a solution works or it doesn't), and constructed so the correct solution is also the cleverest; a brainteaser standing between the reader and more story.  It's not exactly an issue of being well-integrated into the story, persay.  Violet's puzzles are well-integrated ,  I think,  but they're still about the challenge of finding the clever solution after the author has arranged circumstances so other, less-clever solutions are ruled out.  (I did like Violet, but that's because I don't actually dislike puzzle games, I'm just looking to explore other things).

Basically:   Games played through character interaction, games about choice, games about solving mysteries as long as the brilliant detective never has to get her car keys and revolver off the top of a Snapple machine using only six milk bottles and a tuning fork, no matter how well-rationalized that is in-story.  I'm fairly flexible.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2059&start=0#p13924
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Story in IF
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-02-21 21:01:28

[quote="katz"]But there's a reason the hero's journey is largely rejected in modern literature.  It's been done to death, it doesn't require much creativity (as far as the plot goes), and it's completely predictable.  Much of the literature of the 20th century has been an exploration of how, or if, it's possible to tell a complete, satisfying story without just reskinning the same plot over and over.[/quote]
I prefer to be a bit careful about the terms "literature" and "literary". Assuming you mean by them what I would mean, you're right: Starting with the experimental fiction of the 1920s (Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, and so on), literature began to be conceived of as high art and therefore as divorced from the long and distinguished canon of storytelling. This was emphatically not the case in earlier centuries, although you could certainly make a case for [i]Tristram Shandy [/i]as a precursor of the avant-garde.

While it's true that the traditional plot skeleton is not invariably adhered to in modern literature, it's also the case that modern literature doesn't tend to sell very well, in part because it doesn't push people's emotional buttons very well. If you look at hit films, which rake in millions of dollars, you'll find that the hero's journey is very much alive. And large doses of creativity are required to make it fresh and viable, so the fact that the plot skeleton is familiar does not for a moment preclude creativity. Hit films are not literature, and neither are mystery novels, which also sell pretty well.

In sum, I'm not convinced that an argument on the basis of what works or fails to work in high-art-form literature is very relevant to what may work well in IF.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2038&start=10#p13925
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptions of supported items.
User: StJohnLimbo / DateTime: 2011-02-21 21:25:18

I think it's a textbook case of a scenery supporter:

[code]The Kitchen is a room. "A table stands in a bright yellow kitchen.[if the table supports something] On the table [is-are a list of things on the table].[end if]".
The table is a scenery supporter in the kitchen.
The knife is on the table.
The spoon is on the table.

The describe what's on scenery supporters in room descriptions rule is not listed in any rulebook.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1711&start=20#p13926
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Aurora
User: wolfganger / DateTime: 2011-02-21 21:56:49

Colleen:

E-mail me at <a href="mailto:radical1@evcohs.com">radical1@evcohs.com</a>.
You have several bugs in the latest version.

Al

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=10#p13927
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-21 22:41:26

Good.

I'll copy those WIN32 patches into the cheapglk distro, if that's okay with you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2059&start=10#p13928
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Story in IF
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-21 23:02:24

And there's plenty of works post-Joyce that are literary literature (or at least are celebrated and analyzed and appear in Lit classes and on bookshelves in the Lit section and the review columns of famous magazines) that do fit some version of the hero's journey, even if it requires a little more work to locate it.  

I think it's worth considering whether some structure could be helpful.  Pacing is not one of the strengths that immediately pops to mind when I think of IF, and I strongly suspect much of my discomfort with the endings of many works has to do with the lack of journey; often our protagonist is mentally, emotionally, and often physically in the same place as in the beginning of the game.

I think it can be helpful for an author to consider how their story progresses; the hero's journey is not the only metric possible, but it's vaguely familiar to many of us, so it might be useful.  Similarly, holding a dissatisfying game up to various sorts of things can help pinpoint one's dissatisfaction and hopefully help fix the issue.  It can also do nothing of the kind, but anything's worth a shot.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2062&start=0#p13929
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Off-Stage problems
User: Euclid / DateTime: 2011-02-21 23:23:16

One more question, can you have a supporter that is only allowed to support one kind of object?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=10#p13930
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-02-21 23:26:03

That's fine with me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2059&start=10#p13931
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Story in IF
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-02-21 23:31:18

It seems to me, whether you're writing mythic fantasy, IF, or a modern day tale, at some point or another you have to start out or refer to some skeletal framework in plotting it out and examining the details, as inelegant as that sounds, it's usually necessary to keep things straight for both yourself and your intended reader. Campbell didn't make up an arbitrary set of rules or patterns authors must adhere to, all he did was identify common themes underlying stories which were already there, and which resonate with most people on a deep emotional level. I don't know, but maybe there are some avant-garde writers out there whose literary masterpieces arise fully formed as pure abstract thought and inspiration, like Athena springing from the forehead of Zeus, but I haven't met any yet. Most slog through umpteen drafts of 600 page manuscripts trying to get it right, sometimes over the course of many years, to ensure that the reader doesn't lose interest. At some point or another, every writer needs some kind of direction or guide to keep their inspiration going, and work their way through a complicated story. You could do a lot worse than Campbell.

Many of the stories I remember all share common themes; basically, they're about someone living in a very ordinary and boring world which we can all relate to in some way. Putting us there beside them at the beginning of the story gives us a chance to identify and sympathize with the character, which makes us care enough to invest the time to hang around for awhile. It gives us an opportunity to identify with this characters drives, motives, flaws, interests, quirks, and problems. Usually the characters inner and outer problems are established, and he'll have to come to grips with these at some point later in the story in order to move forward in life. Then, shortly after we've gotten to know him, some disaster usually befalls him which disrupts his life in the ordinary world, representing some challenge or quest he must undertake, and forces him into action. Whatever it is, it throws the character's life into turmoil, and establishes the stakes involved if he ignores the challenge or doesn't take up the quest. A formulaic story pattern? Yes, perhaps, and maybe it's too uncouth for serious avant-garde literature, but its all about very common life experiences which make a lot of people pay attention, because we want to see how the character works out their ordeal. 

Good mythic stories are usually about someone who has to go through Hell to attain a little bit of peace and paradise for themselves - and who can't relate to that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2062&start=10#p13932
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Off-Stage problems
User: mktacoma / DateTime: 2011-02-21 23:34:32

Here's a very simplistic example that can do that:

[code]
The living room is a room.

The very small table is a supporter. It is in the living room.

The rock is in the living room.
A pebble is in the living room.

Check putting something on the very small table:
	If the noun is not the pebble:
		say "The very small table is too small for [the noun]." instead.
[/code]

It could be generalized out if there was a class of items that can fit on the table, but if there's only one thing, doing something like this is probably sufficient.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2061&start=10#p13933
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Recommendations wanted: more plot interactivity, less pu
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-02-22 00:28:46

Ah. In that case, I recommend checking out the tags "conversation" and "moral choice" on IFDB -- not all completely puzzleless, but many of them are closer to what you describe, and reading the reviews will probably give you an idea of whether they're what you want.

Also "An Act of Murder," a mystery about observation and conversation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=10#p13934
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-22 00:33:30

I've got the Inform 7 code up & running, and will wrap it up as an extension soon.  Any suggestions, now's the time. 

[spoiler][code]"Player Time"

There is room. 

When play begins, unless the player's time is available, say "Your interpreter does not support this feature.  Try the Quixe interpreter from http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/ either online, or, downloaded and installed and using the following line of code.[paragraph break]Release along with the 'Quixe' interpreter."

When play begins when the player's time is available, say "It's now [the player's time] on [player's weekday], [player's month] [player's day], [player's year].  Your timezone is [the player's timezone]."

Release along with the "Quixe" interpreter.

Represent time locally is a truth state that varies. The represent time locally variable translates into I6 as "UTCvsLocal". [Represent time locally is usually true.]

A weekday is a kind of value. The weekdays are Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday.  

A month is a kind of value. The months are January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December.

To decide if the player's time is available: (- (glk($0004, 20, 0)) -). [! gestalt_DateTime]

To decide what number	is the player's year:			(- ((FillOutDateTimeArrays() & datetime-->0)) -).
To decide what month	is the player's month: 		(- ((FillOutDateTimeArrays() & datetime-->1)) -).
To decide what number	is the player's day: 			(- ((FillOutDateTimeArrays() & datetime-->2)) -).
To decide what weekday	is the player's weekday: 		(- ((FillOutDateTimeArrays() & datetime-->3) + 1) -).
[To decide what time 		is the player's time: 			(- ((FillOutDateTimeArrays() & ((60 * datetime-->4) + datetime-->5))) -).]
To decide what time 		is the player's time: 			(- ((GetPlayersTime())) -).
To decide what number	is the player's seconds: 		(- ((FillOutDateTimeArrays() & datetime-->6)) -).
To decide what number	is the player's microseconds: 	(- ((FillOutDateTimeArrays() & datetime-->7)) -).

To decide what number	is the player's timezone: 		(- GetPlayersTimezone() -).

Include (-
Array countofseconds --> 4;	! this holds the number of microseconds elapsed since midnight on January 1, 1970, GMT/UTC
Array datetime --> 9; 		! this holds the above broken down into year, month, day, weekday, hour, minute, second, and microseconds
Global UTCvsLocal = 1;		! truth state: 1 = local time; 0 = GMT otherwise known as UTC

[ FillOutDateTimeArrays;
	if (~~(glk($0004, 20, 0))) return 0;  !  glk_gestalt_DateTime(20, 0);
	glk($0160, countofseconds); !  glk_current_time(timeval);
	if (UTCvsLocal)	glk($0169, countofseconds, datetime); ! glk_time_to_date_local(tv, date);
	else			glk($0168, countofseconds, datetime); ! glk_time_to_date_utc(tv, date);
	return -1; ! so this function can be bitwise ANDed with the result of the --> array dereference that's about to happen
];

[ GetPlayersTime;
	FillOutDateTimeArrays();
	return (60 * datetime-->4) + datetime-->5;
];

[ GetPlayersTimezone zonesec;
	if (~~(glk($0004, 20, 0))) return 0;  !  glk_gestalt_DateTime(20, 0);
	glk($0160, countofseconds); ! current_time
	glk($0169, countofseconds, datetime); ! time_to_date_local
	zonesec = countofseconds-->1;
	glk($016C, datetime, countofseconds); ! date_to_time_utc
	return (countofseconds-->1 - zonesec) / 3600;   ! UTC - local 
];
-) after "Definitions.i6t".
[/code][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2059&start=10#p13935
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Story in IF
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-22 00:40:57

Since I'm metaphorically-challenged, I strip the specifics from the Hero's Journey to look at the protag's (and reader's, by proxy) emotions in each phase.  Contentment/comfort/boring instead of "the home life", which precedes confusion/anxiety instead of "the call to adventure", etc.  I find it's easier for me to fit the pattern onto other stories that don't really look like a fantasy quest on the surface of things.  [emote]:?[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2059&start=10#p13936
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Story in IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-02-22 00:42:07

[quote="dustinneff"]Campbell didn't make up an arbitrary set of rules or patterns [...][/quote]

You are adorable. Just sayin'.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2060&start=0#p13937
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New to Inform: A Few Key Scenarios
User: Will414 / DateTime: 2011-02-22 02:11:44

Thanks a great deal. I think I understand some of it a bit better now... but I'm still having problems getting it to work. 

This is what I have so far:

[code]"Dancing Demo" by Will414

Instead of examining player:
	say "You have worn your favorite tuxedo, a slightly older but still refined suit. You have made sure the edges of the suit are crisp and neat. Your face is clean-shaven and your straight black hair is slicked back casually. With ice-blue eyes, you look around, hoping to find a beautiful young woman to dance with."

A person can be confident or not confident.

Persuasion rule for asking a person to try doing something:
    persuasion succeeds. 
     
The Ballroom is a room. "This is the ballroom. There is a wide dance floor surrounded by tables draped with white cloth. Candlelight fills the dimly lit room."

The Lounge is west of the Ballroom. "This is the lounge. There is a bar at one side and a number of small booths. One area of the floor is open and spacious, inviting some private dancing."

A woman called Alice is here. Alice is confident. Alice is carrying a Red Dress. "A dark-haired beauty stands here, giving you a special smile when you look her way. She has on a miniskirt and a low-cut blouse, exposing the cleft of her perky cleavage. You remember her name is Alice."

The description of Alice is "[if Alice is wearing Red Dress]With an eager smile, the dark-haired beauty twirls, lifting the hem of her short, adventurous carmine dress. The sleeveless affair hugs her body, accentuating her slim curves.[end if] Winking your direction, Alice beckons you over to the dance floor, hoping to have some more fun before the night is through."

The Private Room is east of the Ballroom. "This spacious room has a large bed, fancy antique furniture, and a broad open living area. The glass-topped table has been slid to one side, making for even more open floor space."

A woman called Mary is here. Mary is not confident. Mary is carrying a Blue Dress. "Smiling nervously from where she stands in the middle of the room, your friend Mary waves when you look her way. Her curly blond hair cascades down her shoulders and her green eyes sparkle like emeralds. She has on a pair of white slacks and a blue turtleneck sweater."

The description of Mary is "[if Mary is wearing Blue Dress]The radiant young woman before you seems the picture of beauty in her elegant, royal blue dress. The hem of the dress reaches nearly to the floor, modestly covering her ample bosom.[end if] Smiling at you shyly, she holds out her hand, hoping for another chance to dance with you."

Dancing is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "dance [something]" or "tango [something]" or "dance with [something]" or "dancing with [something]" or "waltz [something]" or "waltz with [something]" or "tango with [something]" as dancing.

Check dancing:
	if the noun is not a person, say "The girls might get jealous if you would rather dance with a [noun]." instead.

Instead of dancing with Mary when Mary is confident: say "[if Mary wears the Blue Dress]You can't help but admire her innocent beauty as Mary walks up to you in that blue dress.[end if][run paragraph on] Taking Mary's hands, you lead her out onto the floor, each of you smiling at each other as the music starts. Moving lightly and elegantly, the two of you stay in perfect rhythm, the soft beat of the music the only guidance you both need."

Instead of dancing with Mary when Mary is not confident: 
	say "[if Mary wears the Blue Dress]You can't help but admire her innocent beauty as Mary walks up to you in that blue dress.[end if] [run paragraph on]Taking Mary's hand, you gently lead her out onto the floor, trying to calm her nerves as the slow beat of the music begins. It takes some time, but eventually, Mary's smile becomes more natural and she begins to feel the rhythm of the music. The two of you press closer as her smile grows wider."
	now Mary is confident.

Instead of dancing with Alice: say "The two of you fall into a[if Alice wears the red dress] steaming  hot[end if] tango.[run paragraph on][if Mary wears the red dress] Her skirt flares; the candlelight shimmer in her eyes.[end if] As the music picks up, you match each other stride for stride, both beginning to breathe heavily but grinning even more at each other. By the end of the fast-paced dance, you are both panting and flushed, staring into each other's eyes.[paragraph break]"
[/code]

These are the errors I receive:

[code]This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6G60) on its most recent run through:


Problem. You wrote 'Instead of dancing with Mary when Mary is confident'  , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is 'dancing with Mary when Mary is confident'. The part after 'when' (or 'while') was fine, but the earlier words did not make sense as a description of an action. I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook.

 See the manual: 7.1 > Actions



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem. You wrote 'Instead of dancing with Mary when Mary is not confident'  , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is 'dancing with Mary when Mary is not confident'. The part after 'when' (or 'while') was fine, but the earlier words did not make sense as a description of an action. I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem. You wrote 'Instead of dancing with Alice'  , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is 'dancing with Alice'. But that did not make sense as a description of an action. I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook.
 
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2059&start=10#p13938
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Story in IF
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-02-22 03:55:29

[quote="dustinneff"]Many of the stories I remember all share common themes; basically, they're about someone living in a very ordinary and boring world which we can all relate to in some way. Putting us there beside them at the beginning of the story gives us a chance to identify and sympathize with the character, which makes us care enough to invest the time to hang around for awhile.[/quote]
Or we get bored and wonder why the action hasn't started yet.  [i]In medias res[/i] is one of many obvious ways that stories deviate from this pattern.

[quote="dustinneff"]A formulaic story pattern? Yes, perhaps, and maybe it's too uncouth for serious avant-garde literature, but its all about very common life experiences which make a lot of people pay attention, because we want to see how the character works out their ordeal.[/quote]
But it's a very [i]specific[/i] story pattern.  I don't think think you have to get very avant garde at all to come up with a story that's very different from it.  Pretty much every single one of the plot points Campbell came up with could be replaced with its complete opposite and be just as compelling (what if the hero has to find the strength to eschew leadership, rather than rely on a mentor; what if a dour, single-minded hero has to loosen up a little and give in to temptation, instead of temptation being seen as inherently corrupting etc. etc.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2060&start=0#p13939
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New to Inform: A Few Key Scenarios
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-02-22 04:18:27

The problem is that you have given the action the name "dancing" whereas in the instead rules you call it "dancing with". 
Changing "Instead of dancing with Mary" to "Instead of dancing Mary" (and so on) or, alternatively, changing "dancing" to "dancing with" in a couple of places, will solve the issue.

(I also noted you've forgotten a semicolon after the say phrase in one of the instead rules, before the "now Mary is confident".)

And one more thing that trips everybody up at first.
Defining actions as applying to one visible thing—rather than simply one thing—doesn't do what one would expect it to. 
You define actions as applying to a visible thing when you want it to apply to things that are not "in scope"—i.e. not in the same room as the player, i.e. usually NOT visible to the player. (I guess the idea is that things you may wish to interact with may be visible from afar, even though they are not in the same room as the player. But still, what "visible" does in this context is to make the action apply also to things not present in the location, whether visible from that location or not.) 
Moreover, to make that useful to the player, commands for such an action have to be defined with [any thing] (two words) rather than [something], or the player won't have access to any elsewhere things anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2059&start=10#p13940
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Story in IF
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-02-22 08:06:55

[quote="Pacian"]
Or we get bored and wonder why the action hasn't started yet.  [i]In medias res[/i] is one of many obvious ways that stories deviate from this pattern.

Most of the stories I was thinking of that follow the outline I mentioned do start [i] in media res [i]...Star Wars, Lord of the Rings... There are countless other ways that literary narrative technique is used within the context of the hero's journey.

But it's a very [i]specific[/i] story pattern.  I don't think think you have to get very avant garde at all to come up with a story that's very different from it.  Pretty much every single one of the plot points Campbell came up with could be replaced with its complete opposite and be just as compelling (what if the hero has to find the strength to eschew leadership, rather than rely on a mentor; what if a dour, single-minded hero has to loosen up a little and give in to temptation, instead of temptation being seen as inherently corrupting etc. etc.)[/quote]

I agree totally, there's a million ways to tell a story. But most stories are about a change of state or fortune in somebody's life. The themes Campbell identifies in myths are all largely about adapting to change and growth as it relates to the human experience. And myths have always held an important role in society in showing us how to make that passage.

I'm not saying everyone who writes stories should go out and read Joseph Campbell. But if you examine the structure of most good stories you will find many of those themes embedded in them - intentionally or not.

And there are plenty of examples where authors have tried to rely on that model and failed utterly. But that's the fault of the writer.

BTW, if anyone wants to see a pretty humiliating (but funny) example of how an attempt to tell a mythic story can go horribly wrong, you should check out Mr. Plinkett's review of the Star Wars Prequels: <a class="postlink" href="http://redlettermedia.com/plinkett/star-wars/star-wars-episode-1-the-phantom-menace/">http://redlettermedia.com/plinkett/star ... om-menace/</a>

If you're offended by profanity or off-color humor, or you believe the Star Wars Prequels are the greatest thing, though, I'd skip this one...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2059&start=10#p13941
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Story in IF
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-02-22 10:33:40

[quote="dustinneff"]I agree totally, there's a million ways to tell a story. But most stories are about a change of state or fortune in somebody's life. The themes Campbell identifies in myths are all largely about adapting to change and growth as it relates to the human experience. And myths have always held an important role in society in showing us how to make that passage.

I'm not saying everyone who writes stories should go out and read Joseph Campbell. But if you examine the structure of most good stories you will find many of those themes embedded in them - intentionally or not.[/quote]

That's fair, but when you [i]only[/i] rely on the Hero's Journey as a model for mythic structure, you really have just that one single yardstick with which to measure. Ghalev's reference to a square peg in a round hole is apt. Yes, you can stretch the hallmarks of the monomyth and apply it to most stories, but I can't really see what you'd gain by it in terms of structure and clarity. There's a real risk of grinding down the uniqueness of your work so as to be able to say you've ticked all the Campbellian checkboxes.

[quote="dustinneff"]
And there are plenty of examples where authors have tried to rely on that model and failed utterly. But that's the fault of the writer.[/quote]

I could agree that it's the writer's fault if a work of monomyth fails, but I'd say that's because both success and failure largely rests on the writer.


[quote="dustinneff"]If you're offended by profanity or off-color humor, or you believe the Star Wars Prequels are the greatest thing, though, I'd skip this one...[/quote]

Stoklasa makes a number of good points. Honestly, though, I dearly wish he'd condensed them to the required five minutes. There's something to be said for precision and brevity.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2060&start=0#p13942
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New to Inform: A Few Key Scenarios
User: Will414 / DateTime: 2011-02-22 11:26:10

Aha, that did the trick (changing it to "dancing with" in the original rule). Thanks again.

Now there's one final problem. I already--

Scratch that, I figured out the solution right before I clicked post. "can be worn" is not the same as "is wearable." Easy fix.

Your explanation for visible came at just the right time. In order to get calling them to the Ballroom to work, I had to specify visible. Although technically they wouldn't be visible... but I don't have to tell Inform that. 

Thanks a ton. I think with this, I can move on to the actual game/IF that I was hoping to make.

Here's the end result of the demo:

[code]"Dancing Demo" by Will414

Instead of examining player:
	say "You have worn your favorite tuxedo, a slightly older but still refined suit. You have made sure the edges of the suit are crisp and neat. Your face is clean-shaven and your straight black hair is slicked back casually. With ice-blue eyes, you look around, hoping to find a beautiful young woman to dance with."

A person can be confident or not confident.

Persuasion rule for asking a person to try doing something:
    persuasion succeeds. 
     
Red Dress is a thing. Red Dress is wearable. Blue Dress is a thing. Blue Dress is wearable.

The Ballroom is a room. "This is the ballroom. There is a wide dance floor surrounded by tables draped with white cloth. Candlelight fills the dimly lit room."

Calling is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "call [any thing]" as calling.

Instead of calling Alice: say "Alice enters the ballroom with a demure smile on her face, looking incredibly alluring in her red dress and the soft candlelight.";
	now Alice is wearing Red Dress;
	move Alice to Ballroom

Instead of calling Mary when Mary is not confident: 
	say "There is a gasp from behind the door and a decisive, 'No! I can't!' Your pleading falls on deaf ears."

Instead of calling Mary when Mary is confident: 
	say "Still shy, Mary's cheeks flush a rosy color as she steps out onto the ballroom floor. Still, she smiles as she walks up to you wearing her blue dress and gratefully takes your offered hand.";
	now Mary is wearing Blue Dress;
	move Mary to Ballroom

The Lounge is west of the Ballroom. "This is the lounge. There is a bar at one side and a number of small booths. One area of the floor is open and spacious, inviting some private dancing."

A woman called Alice is here. Alice is confident. Alice is carrying a Red Dress.  "[if Alice is wearing Red Dress]Alice has an exotic beauty about her as she looks your way. Her red dress hugs her hips and curves. Every movement of her lithe body is distractingly apparent.[end if][if Alice is not wearing Red Dress]A dark-haired beauty stands here, giving you a special smile when you look her way. She has on a miniskirt and a low-cut blouse, exposing the cleft of her perky cleavage. You remember her name is Alice.[end if]"

The description of Alice is "[if Alice is wearing Red Dress]With an eager smile, the dark-haired beauty twirls, lifting the hem of her short, adventurous carmine dress. The sleeveless affair hugs her body, accentuating her slim curves.[end if] Winking your direction, Alice beckons you over to the dance floor, hoping to have some more fun before the night is through."

The Private Room is east of the Ballroom. "This spacious room has a large bed, fancy antique furniture, and a broad open living area. The glass-topped table has been slid to one side, making for even more open floor space."

A woman called Mary is here. Mary is not confident. Mary is carrying a Blue Dress. "[if Mary is wearing the Blue Dress]Wearing her long blue dress, the innocent blonde smiles shyly, hands clasped in front of herself. Mary's green eyes sparkle as her curly blonde hair cascades down her back.[end if][if Mary is not wearing the Blue Dress]Smiling nervously from where she stands in the middle of the room, your friend Mary waves when you look her way. Her curly blond hair cascades down her shoulders and her green eyes sparkle like emeralds. She has on a pair of white slacks and a blue turtleneck sweater.[end if]"

The description of Mary is "[if Mary is wearing Blue Dress]The radiant young woman before you seems the picture of beauty in her elegant, royal blue dress. The hem of the dress reaches nearly to the floor, modestly covering her ample bosom.[end if] Smiling at you shyly, she holds out her hand, hoping for another chance to dance with you."

Dancing with is an action applying to one thing. Understand "dance [something]" or "tango [something]" or "dance with [something]" or "dancing with [something]" or "waltz [something]" or "waltz with [something]" or "tango with [something]" as dancing with.

Check dancing with:
	if the noun is not a person, say "The girls might get jealous if you would rather dance with a [noun]." instead.

Instead of dancing with Mary when Mary is in the Ballroom: 
	say "There is soft applause as the music begins, gently dying away as the dance begins. From the surrounding tables, people watch with smiles on their faces, making Mary blush even more. You can't help but admire her innocent beauty as Mary moves with you, her blue dress almost sparkling in the candlelight. The onlookers, too, seem rapt with her beauty. Holding Mary's hands tightly, you lead the way through each beat, your movements becoming more natural as you move through the candlelight, each of you smiling at each other as the music starts. Moving lightly and elegantly, the two of you stay in perfect rhythm, the soft beat of the music the only guidance you both need. As the music comes to a finish, you are both smiling warmly at each other. Applause rises up again, louder than before. [paragraph break]Mary laughs and breaks away, quickly returning to her room.";
	move Mary to the Private Room

Instead of dancing with Mary when Mary is confident: say "[if Mary wears the Blue Dress]You can't help but admire her innocent beauty as Mary walks up to you in that blue dress.[end if] Taking Mary's hands, you lead her out onto the floor, each of you smiling at each other as the music starts. Moving lightly and elegantly, the two of you stay in perfect rhythm, the soft beat of the music the only guidance you both need."

Instead of dancing with Mary when Mary is not confident: 
	say "[if Mary wears the Blue Dress]You can't help but admire her innocent beauty as Mary walks up to you in that blue dress.[end if] Taking Mary's hand, you gently lead her out onto the floor, trying to calm her nerves as the slow beat of the music begins. It takes some time, but eventually, Mary's smile becomes more natural and she begins to feel the rhythm of the music. The two of you press closer as her smile grows wider.";
	now Mary is confident.

Instead of dancing with Alice when Alice is in the Ballroom:
	say "The crowd begins murmuring approval as the two of you move out onto the dance floor. Once the music kicks off, there is an awed silence. You and Alice dance magnificently, your spicy hot tango catching the eyes of everyone around. The hem of her red dress flies up, catching the candlelight, constantly teasing without ever revealing. Her grin becomes more predatory as the dance moves on and your breathing gets heavier. As the song grinds to a halt, you are both left panting, staring into each other's eyes. The onlookers clap loudly, cheering on your performance.[paragraph break]Alice slips away, sauntering back toward the lounge, beckoning you with a look over her shoulder.";
	move Alice to the Lounge
	
Instead of dancing with Alice: say "The two of you fall into a[if Alice wears the red dress] steaming  hot[end if] tango.[run paragraph on][if Mary wears the red dress] Her skirt flares; the candlelight shimmer in her eyes.[end if] As the music picks up, you match each other stride for stride, both beginning to breathe heavily but grinning even more at each other. By the end of the fast-paced dance, you are both panting and flushed, staring into each others' eyes.[paragraph break]"
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=10#p13943
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-22 13:01:18

You have the countofseconds and datetime arrays defined as 4 and 9 words. These only need to be 3 and 8. (I use 4 and 9 in the unit test so that I can add a guard value against interpreter bugs, but the interpreters are passing that test.)

A timezone offset isn't necessarily an even number of hours. In some countries it's a half-hour value.

The way you're giving access to the year/month/day variables isn't guaranteed to be consistent. Since glk_current_time() gets called multiple times, the game could conceivably print "January 1" at the beginning of February, if it's run just at midnight. I realize this is unlikely, but it's worth thinking about ways for the game to handle complete time values.

I don't think user code can create multi-word I7 structures. However, you could define a time scalar -- simple-time in minutes seems appropriate, since the native I7 time representation is in minutes. Or you could define a kind which includes an eight-word property:

[code]
Include (-
  with datetimeprop 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0,
-) when defining a datetime.
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2068&start=0#p13944
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7:  Teaching the Parser
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-22 13:23:30

I thought it would be straightforward and neat if I could get the parser to accept synonyms from the player for certain commands; maybe typos the player uses a lot, or flavor words (ie. "fry" instead of "cook").  

I rather expected I could give each action a list of indexed text or a table with indexed text, and have it understand those entries, and then change/update those entries during play.  It wouldn't be infinitely flexible, but I thought a few synonyms would be fun for the player, maybe even make it a bit easier for some ESL folks.  

Unfortunately, I can't even get the thing off the ground.  Inform does not like this idea AT ALL.  It does not like it in a list, or a table, or in a box, or with a fox, or - ahem.  Sorry.  (Young niece.)  I know 16.1 says that the first word of an action needs to be hardcoded and not a substitution, but I rather thought that was for the foundation action, not all the synonyms.  I guess that's wrong?

This is clearly a fluff thing, and not a Serious Feature, but I'm wondering what the limitation is about.  Is it preventative, or is there some interp feature that needs the action commands set ahead of time?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2051&start=10#p13945
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inform7 vs QDK
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2011-02-22 13:24:52

Alternately, if you add periods at the end of the sentences and capitalize the room name, Inform figures out your intent as well. That's why I'm in the habit of capitalizing room names; since so many room names include a direction, if there's any ambiguity Inform always interprets capitalized directions (after the first word in a sentence) as part of a room name.

[code]East from the house is a room called east of the house.
North from East of the House is the backyard.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2068&start=0#p13946
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Teaching the Parser
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-22 14:10:31

The good news is that this ridiculous and hackish attempt seems to produce the desired result [EDIT: Oh, crap, it doesn't; it only seems to because "frozzle" is understood as the frozzle without reference to the frozzle-list]:

[code]Lab is a room.
Frizzling is an action applying to one thing. Understand "frizzle [something]" as frizzling. 
Frozzling is an action applying to two things. Understand "[frozzle] [something]" as frozzling. 
The Frozzle-list is a list of snippets that varies. 
The frozzle is a backdrop. It is scenery. It is everywhere. Understand "[text]" as the frozzle when the topic understood is listed in the frozzle-list. 
Instead of doing anything when the current action involves the frozzle: 
	if the current action is frozzling:
		continue the action;
	otherwise:
		say "Frozzle wozzle?" 

Booing is an action applying to one topic. Understand "boo [text]" as booing. 
Carry out booing: 
	Add the topic understood to the frozzle-list;
	say "'[The topic understood]' is now an acceptable synonym for frizzling, though it will produce a run-time error."

The grunion is in the lab.
Carry out frizzling:
	say "You frizzle [the noun]."
Carry out frozzling:
	try frizzling the second noun.
	
Test me with "frizzle grunion/boo frozzle/frozzle grunion".[/code]

The bad news is that -- well, the bad news is probably that this is ridiculous and hackish, but the other bad news is that it also produces run-time errors. Still, the grunion gets frizzled. (Another problem is that I can't figure out how to make the frozzle-list start out nonempty; "The frozzle-list is usually {"frumple"}" doesn't compile, because the compiler thinks "frumple" is a text rather than a snippet.)

Probably the best way to do what you want is with an "After reading the command," though I think that would be what your niece would probably call "icky."

Also, I'm not sure exactly what 16.1 is trying to say, but the first word of your "understand" can definitely be a bracketed token; my IF demo includes "Understand "[any theme]" as keywording" and it works as desired.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2068&start=0#p13947
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Teaching the Parser
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-22 14:26:17

I think there's a suggestion to lift the restriction on synonyms for the first word, but until then you gotta do it the long way. Mind, there's a syntax something like [i]Understand the command "fry", "simmer", or "saute" as "cook"[/i] which allows those words wherever cook appears in other grammar lines. The double quotes are all needed.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1711&start=20#p13948
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Aurora
User: Mr. Patient / DateTime: 2011-02-22 14:45:30

The first thing I'm noticing is that Gail and her pod aren't mentioned in the room description for Sickbay.  I thought you had moved her somewhere else, but couldn't find her, and just guessed that she was still there but undescribed.

> l
Sickbay
This room, though crowded with equipment, manages to feel even cleaner and whiter than the 
rest of the clean, white spaceship.  There are two exam tables filling most of the room, a gurney in
the remaining space, and a medical cabinet on the wall.  The door is to the south.

You can hear an alarm going off somewhere on the ship.

> x pod
Gail’s low blood pressure had never caused her problems, but during the preliminary cryo tests, it 
had plummeted dangerously.  For a few weeks, it looked like you and Gail were going to be taken 
off the mission, but then they had designed this custom pod that holds her at a safer, higher 
temperature.  The door is opaque with frost.  There’s a faintly-glowing green display beside it.

You can hear an alarm going off somewhere on the ship.


EDIT: And I guess the second thing I'm noticing is that any attempt to ASK or TELL anyone about anything crashes the game.  I can reproduce this with both Git and Glulxe.

>ask gail about aleksey

*** fatal error: Out-of-bounds memory access ***

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1239&start=30#p13949
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Transcripts collection proposal
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-02-22 14:47:05

I've been contacted recently by several people expressing interest in the [url=http://nitku.net/blog/2010/06/collecting-real-life-gameplay-data-with-parchment/]transcript-saving Parchment[/url] so I'd like to start the conversation again. I'd like to actually make a Parchment fork with transcript collection capabilities from where it could eventually be merged into the official branch.

I've made some changes to Dannii's original proposal: I've dropped everything that would require changes in the Z-machine standard (tagging library messages) and moved some stuff around. The idea is to start with the bare minimum and expand later if needed. The original proposal was meant as a standard for any interpreter that would support it and I've kept that in mind whenever possible, but my immediate goal is to implement this in web interpreters.


[size=150][b]The transcript protocol[/b][/size]

The data is sent as JSON over HTTP POST requests.

[b]The handshake[/b]

Firstly, the interpreter sends a message to the server giving the details of the story file. Either an IFID or a URL must be sent, with an IFID being strongly preferred. The other items are all optional, though as much information should be given as is possible.

[code]{
	"ifid": "ZCODE-2-080406-A377",
	"url": "http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/LostPig.z8",
	"release": 2,
	"serial": "080406",
	"interpreter": "Gargoyle 2009-08-25 (Git 1.2.6)",
	"session": 7253,
	"parent-session": 5629
}[/code]

[i](Note that I've moved the session variable creation from the server to the interpreter, and added a "parent-session" variable; the motivation for this relates to saving/restoring. More on this later.)[/i]

The server replies with HTTP code 200 and content "OK". Any other HTTP code or content means the server does not support transcript logging and the game should not send them.

[b]Sending transcripts[/b]

Again, the client sends transcripts over HTTP POST requests, but after the handshake, it does not need to listen to the response. 

[code]{
	"session": 7253,
	"log": {
			"time": "2010-07-18T03:04:12",
			"turn": 17,
			"input": "x fsih",
			"response": "You can't see any such thing."
		}
}[/code]

[i](I've made a couple of changes: The library message classifications are removed, turn count is included, and the interpreter sends only one turn at a time. Turn count is required because the log is sent asynchronously and there's a small but nonzero chance that the server receives the requests in the wrong order. It can also tell the server that some commands have not been received if the turn count doesn't add up. Note that turn count is more accurately the input count and it's not the same as the turn count the game keeps track of.)[/i]

A client first sends its session ID, followed by the logged commands. Time stamps are sent in the following ISO 8601 format: YYYY-MM-DDTHH-MM-SS. If timestamps are not sent then the server should do its best to keep commands in order, and may use the time of the HTTP request instead. 


[b]Closing the transcript[/b]

[i](The following is my addition:)[/i]

When the interpreter detects that the player has stopped playing (in case of Parchment, the game ends or the player closes the page) it sends the following:

[code]{
	"session": 7253,
	"end": "2010-07-18T07:52:39"
}[/code]

This lets the server know that it should not expect any more input for this play session and it can more accurately calculate the total play time.


[size=150][b]Saving and restoring[/b][/size]

This is the part where things could get messy. What happens if the player saves the game, closes the interpreter and restores later? Ideally the interpreter would save the session number and its own turn count and on restore inform the server that it's continuing from a restore.

This is where the "parent-session" variable in the handshake comes in: the interpreter generates a new session after the restore and informs the server what was the original session that was restored. With this information the server can link sessions together.

(I don't know how Parchment handles save/restore, but I assume this would be doable.)


[size=150][b]Changes to Parchment[/b][/size]

There should be an option to opt out from sending the transcripts. This could be done with a URL GET parameter called "feedback" where value 0 would mean no transcripts are sent. For example "http://example.com/parchment.html?story=zork.z8&feedback=0" would disable transcript collection. The author could then provide this link for people who wish to opt out.

Also there should be options in Parchment for the author to define the transcript collecting server's URL and other stuff, but those are minor details.


So there it is, comments are most welcome.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1239&start=30#p13950
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Transcripts collection proposal
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2011-02-22 15:15:47

Should we name the "turn" filed as something else, so as not to conflict with the game's turn count? I'd prefer something like "input-count" so we don't have to keep explaining that "turn" in the transcript protocol is different from the game turn.

Other than that, I think this looks great!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2069&start=0#p13951
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: vehicles in tabs 3
User: zodraz / DateTime: 2011-02-22 15:40:54

HELP!

I HAVE DEFINED A VEHICLE AS A HELICOPTER AS BELOW WHICH WORKS FINE, JUST WONDERING, IF WHEN THE PC TRIES TO LEAVE (EXCEPT IN ROOM TEN), IS THERE A BETTER METHOD I CAN USE FOR 'OUT=SELF' SO I CAN MODIFY THE MESSAGE ?

+ bellHelicopter : Vehicle, Booth, Heavy 'helicopter' 'helicopter'
    out = self
    desc()
    {
        if(self.isIn(roomTen)) out = nil;
    }
    dobjFor(Examine)
    {
        action()
        {
            "It\'s a Bell 220, 4 seater helicopter. ";
        }
    }
;

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2068&start=0#p13952
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Teaching the Parser
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-22 15:55:43

[quote="matt w"]
Probably the best way to do what you want is with an "After reading the command," though I think that would be what your niece would probably call "icky."[/quote]

Thanks for hacking that together!  I'm trying to do as little post-command modification as possible, but I guess it's nice to know the possibility's open somewhere.

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]I think there's a suggestion to lift the restriction on synonyms for the first word, but until then you gotta do it the long way. Mind, there's a syntax something like Understand the command "fry", "simmer", or "saute" as "cook" which allows those words wherever cook appears in other grammar lines. The double quotes are all needed.[/quote]

Yeah, and I'm adding as many of those as I can.  But there's always some borderline things, and some stuff I'm going to forget.  (Am I going to remember the British spellings for everything?  That seems very unlikely.)  It would be nice to have a semi-customizable base, especially since saves aren't compatible between releases.  Thus, some non-USian who really wants to "organise [something]" can do so until they are ready to play a version where I've added the synonym.  Ideally, of course, all this gets caught in beta-testing, but . . . yeah.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=10#p13953
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-22 16:00:25

[quote="zarf"]These only need to be 3 and 8.[/quote]Ah, excellent.[quote]A timezone offset isn't necessarily an even number of hours. In some countries it's a half-hour value.[/quote]Doh.  OK, it now returns type time rather than type number, and I taught Inform how to print negative time. Oh wait, positive time will have AM/PM on it, won't it.  Grr....[quote]The way you're giving access to the year/month/day variables isn't guaranteed to be consistent. Since glk_current_time() gets called multiple times, the game could conceivably print "January 1" at the beginning of February, if it's run just at midnight. I realize this is unlikely, but it's worth thinking about ways for the game to handle complete time values.[/quote]Hrm.  Well I was ready to handoff the problem of a player playing on a laptop or cell while travelling & crossing time zones to the player anyway.  But OK.  I've added [i]while suspending time[/i] which works like an if-statement: it updates time as its code block begins, but calls to the various [i]player's time/day/month/etc[/i] functions within do not re-get the time.   If that sounds like an odd way to do it, well, I am presuming far more bugs would result from requiring the writer to remember to call "update time" or somesuch every time he uses a [i]player's time[/i] variable.  Doing it this way seems easier for game authors: if they don't care about edge cases and the like, the extension is easy to use as including it and using a variable.  If they do care about it, it's easy to use said variables within a suspending-time block. 

I really didn't want to make an object and class for this piddling thing.  

[code]When play begins when the player's time is available:
	while suspending time:
		say "Your time is [the player's time].";
		say "Your date is [player's weekday], [player's month] [player's day], [player's year].";
		say "Oh, and your timezone is [the player's timezone].";
	say line break;
	while suspending time, say "It's [player's weekday], [player's month] [player's day], [player's year]."[/code]

I'll poke the timezone thing some more.  Is it possible it returns a minute value that isn't exactly :00 or :30?  (My code there now more closely resembles yours.)

(Code in total so far:)[spoiler][code]"Player Time"

There is room. 

When play begins, unless the player's time is available, say "Your interpreter does not support this feature.  Try the Quixe interpreter from http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/ either online, or, downloaded and installed and using the following line of code.[paragraph break]Release along with the 'Quixe' interpreter."

When play begins when the player's time is available, say "It's now [the player's time] on [player's weekday], [player's month] [player's day], [player's year].  Your timezone is [the player's timezone]."

Release along with the "Quixe" interpreter.

Represent time locally is a truth state that varies. The represent time locally variable translates into I6 as "UTCvsLocal". [Represent time locally is usually true.]

A weekday is a kind of value. The weekdays are Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday.  

A month is a kind of value. The months are January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December.

To decide if the player's time is available: (- (glk($0004, 20, 0)) -). [! gestalt_DateTime]

To decide what number   is the player's year:         (- ((FillOutDateTimeArrays() & datetime-->0)) -).
To decide what month   is the player's month:       (- ((FillOutDateTimeArrays() & datetime-->1)) -).
To decide what number   is the player's day:          (- ((FillOutDateTimeArrays() & datetime-->2)) -).
To decide what weekday   is the player's weekday:       (- ((FillOutDateTimeArrays() & datetime-->3) + 1) -).
[To decide what time       is the player's time:          (- ((FillOutDateTimeArrays() & ((60 * datetime-->4) + datetime-->5))) -).]
To decide what time       is the player's time:          (- ((GetPlayersTime())) -).
To decide what number   is the player's seconds:       (- ((FillOutDateTimeArrays() & datetime-->6)) -).
To decide what number   is the player's microseconds:    (- ((FillOutDateTimeArrays() & datetime-->7)) -).

To decide what time   is the player's timezone:       (- GetPlayersTimezone() -).

Include (-
Array countofseconds --> 3;   ! this holds the number of microseconds elapsed since midnight on January 1, 1970, GMT/UTC
Array datetime --> 8;       ! this holds the above broken down into year, month, day, weekday, hour, minute, second, and microseconds
Global UTCvsLocal = 1;      ! truth state: 1 = local time; 0 = GMT otherwise known as UTC
Global suspend_glk_get_time = 0;  !  -1 = suspended; 0 = not suspended

[ FillOutDateTimeArrays;
   if (~~(glk($0004, 20, 0))) return 0;  !  glk_gestalt_DateTime(20, 0);
   if (suspend_glk_get_time == -1) return -1;
   glk($0160, countofseconds); !  glk_current_time(timeval);
   if (UTCvsLocal)   glk($0169, countofseconds, datetime); ! glk_time_to_date_local(tv, date);
   else         glk($0168, countofseconds, datetime); ! glk_time_to_date_utc(tv, date);
   return -1; ! so this function can be bitwise ANDed with the result of the --> array dereference that's about to happen
];

[ GetPlayersTime;
   FillOutDateTimeArrays();
   return (60 * datetime-->4) + datetime-->5;
];

[ GetPlayersTimezone zonesec zonemin zonehour firstsecondcount;
   if (~~(glk($0004, 20, 0))) return 0;  !  glk_gestalt_DateTime(20, 0);
   glk($0160, countofseconds); ! glk_current_time()
   glk($0169, countofseconds, datetime); ! glk_time_to_date_local()
   firstsecondcount = countofseconds-->1;
   glk($016C, datetime, countofseconds); ! glk_date_to_time_utc()
   zonesec = (countofseconds-->1 - firstsecondcount);          ! UTC - local 
   zonehour = zonesec / 3600;
   zonesec = zonesec % 3600;
   zonemin = zonesec / 60;
   return (zonehour * 60) + zonemin;   
];
-) after "Definitions.i6t".


Definition: a time is positive rather than negative if it is at least zero minutes.

To say (T - a negative time):
	if T < 0 minutes:
		say "-";
		now T is 0 minutes minus T;
	let H be the hours part of T;
	let M be the minutes part of T;
	say "[H][unless M is zero]:[M]"

To while suspending time begin -- end: (- for ( suspend_glk_get_time = FillOutDateTimeArrays() :  suspend_glk_get_time == -1 : suspend_glk_get_time++) -).

To while suspending time, (ph - a phrase): (- for ( suspend_glk_get_time = FillOutDateTimeArrays() :  suspend_glk_get_time == -1 : suspend_glk_get_time++) {ph}; -).

When play begins when the player's time is available:
	while suspending time:
		say "Your time is [the player's time].";
		say "Your date is [player's weekday], [player's month] [player's day], [player's year].";
		say "Oh, and your timezone is [the player's timezone].";
	say line break;
	while suspending time, say "It's now [the player's time] on [player's weekday], [player's month] [player's day], [player's year].  Your timezone is [the player's timezone]."
[/code][/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2068&start=0#p13954
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Teaching the Parser
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-22 16:09:03

[quote="matt w"]The other bad news is that it also produces run-time errors.[/quote]

It will work without run-time errors if you use indexed text instead of snippets. That is, make the list a list of indexed texts, and copy the topic understood into a temporary indexed text variable before adding it to the list.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=10#p13955
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-22 16:40:36

Oh, and is there anything to add that might be useful to I7 authors trying to profile parts of their code?  I exposed microseconds only for that reason, but couldn't think if anything else would be handy.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=10#p13956
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-22 17:03:40

Thanks for putting this together, Ron!

I think that one of the potential uses of clock time will be to resync the timer, so that the game can keep relatively accurate time even with a long-fuse timer. How well suited are your current wrappers to that purpose? (Sorry, I'm not savvy enough to follow the discussion with all the mktimers and opcodes and all that, and I'm at work where I have an old Quixe installation w/o these magic powers...)

I also want to investigate the potential for piggybacking on clock time to provide named triggers for real-time events. (In other words, use a T + timer model to check the time when a timer event fires and return a specific named event.)

In both cases, I guess what would be easiest is a number-type representing milliseconds. 

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1239&start=30#p13957
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Transcripts collection proposal
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-02-22 17:53:49

I like the changes, and agree with input-count, or perhaps input-id. I still think that including the server url in the blorb is the way to go... it's just so easy to extract, and shouldn't be hard to add either.

I suggest that the session id and input count be included in the QUETZAL so that they can be continued at a later time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=20#p13958
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-22 17:55:01

I know little of these timers you speak of, save this from the new GLK spec:  The system clock is not guaranteed to line up with timer events (see [url=http://eblong.com/zarf/glk/glk-spec-072_4.html#s.4]"Timer Events"[/url]). Timer events may be delivered late according to the system clock.

I don't know how to repair that.  I don't even think it can be repaired at the I7 level except by turning off the timer, then turning it back on after a busy wait on [i]the player's microseconds[/i].  I guess.

EDIT: Oh, I think I understand, Erik.  Well, I don't want to modify microseconds cause of profiling issues, but if microseconds count straight up to one second, rather than up to the next millisecond, that breaks the pattern. It would be like the day value counting up to a full year before resetting to zero. 

I think I'll add the millisecond line in the documentation with a copy-paste icon and call it a day.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2068&start=0#p13959
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Teaching the Parser
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-22 18:12:55

Thanks! Unfortunately I just realized that my hack doesn't work at all; it only seems to work because "frozzle" is already understood as the frozzle, without consulting the frozzle-list. Back to the drawing board, or the "after reading a command" board. 

It is sometimes possible to use bracketed tokens as the first thing in an "Understand" -- "[foozle] [something]" does work here, and "[text]" works elsewhere, but I don't know if it's possible to dynamically add text as synonyms, since my list thing didn't work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2068&start=0#p13960
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Teaching the Parser
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-22 19:12:26

On further poking, the frozzle-list in my example seems to be working as a repository for synonyms for the frozzle. If you type "boo bam" and then "x bam," you get "Frozzle wozzle?", as you should.

This suggests that it might be possible to use something like my code as a way to let the player create extra synonyms for nouns, if not for verbs; but it might be kind of unstable and I really have no idea what's actually going on under the hood, so I suspect that doing "after reading a command" is safer. Also, when I tried to define a list of synonyms for the frozzle and another for the grunion, the command "frozzle grunion" led to a really ridiculous number of P37 run-time errors, so it may not be a good idea to have syntaxes where two of these understood-by-reference-to-a-list thingies can be showing up.

As you may have guessed from things like "Frozzle wozzle?", I'm feeling a little lightheaded, so I don't think I'm going to really try to fix this now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=20#p13961
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-22 19:51:27

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]
EDIT: Oh, I think I understand, Erik.  Well, I don't want to modify microseconds cause of profiling issues, but if microseconds count straight up to one second, rather than up to the next millisecond, that breaks the pattern. It would be like the day value counting up to a full year before resetting to zero.

I think I'll add the millisecond line in the documentation with a copy-paste icon and call it a day.[/quote]

I don't understand how things are handled well enough to contextualize the technicalities there, but it sounds like we're on the same page, and pasted code in the documentation sounds just fine. I'm excited about the prospects of having a cheap and easy profiler so please keep those microseconds as inviolate as they need to be!

Any thought of adding infglk style commands to make the I6 a little friendlier? It's probably not in the brief for Ron's extension to do this, but I thought I'd toss it out there.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1711&start=20#p13962
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Aurora
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-02-22 20:09:17

^^Thanks, I'll fix that.  Since I was consolidating room descriptions, it was easy to accidentally leave stuff out.

Also if you're playing in compass mode, keep your eyes peeled for any place where the description still mentions nautical directions.  I [i]think[/i] I got them all but I'm not sure.

Stupid conversation bug--I didn't catch it on my play through because the one person you [i]need[/i] to talk to works.  I'll post a new version when I get that fixed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=20#p13963
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-02-22 20:10:26

Thought I'd just add that I'm writing a profiler suite which will be shown at the demo fair. The code you have isn't really ideal as it calls the Glk function twice to get the seconds and the microseconds. My aim is to have an easy extension which will handle all of the profiling for you, with statistically significant results, and you just pass it the code you want to compare.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2059&start=10#p13964
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Story in IF
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-02-22 20:28:03

[quote]I agree totally, there's a million ways to tell a story. But most stories are about a change of state or fortune in somebody's life. [/quote]

True, but this is what my college writing professor would call a TBNI (True But Not Interesting).  In order to make most stories fit into the Hero's Journey, you have to dilute it down to something like "stuff happens to the protagonist," which is far too vague to be used to analyze or plan your own story.  But if you use a more complete version of the Hero's Journey, then not only do most stories no longer fit (including entire genres, like tragedy and most romance), but there's no longer any reason to make them fit.

For instance, I agree with Pacian completely about [i]in medias res[/i].  I also think that the common idea that the hero should be an everyman so that people can relate to him is completely misguided.  It's insulting to the reader (as if you wouldn't care about someone who wasn't like you) and it leads to bland, nondescript heroes who get eclipsed by their supporting casts and who, because of their lack of distinguishing features, are actually harder to relate to, IMO.  As a reader, especially when I was a kid, I always sought out the stories where the protagonist was a dragon or some such and was particularly irritated when the main character was a person from our world who gets brought into the world of the story, as if that's the only way we would care about the story.

[rant]And it's also part of why such a huge preponderance of main characters are straight, white, male, middle-class Americans (and why those who aren't are virtually always only different in one respect).  Leave those weird people in the supporting cast--audiences can't relate to them.[/rant]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=20#p13965
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-22 20:36:17

@Erik: "infglk style commands"?

@Danni:  Well, that's not entirely true as of a couple hours ago: [i]while suspending time, say "Time: [player's seconds]:[player's microseconds]."[/i] But as Erik alludes, I'm not aiming at high-quality profiling anyway, just exposing some new functionality with some simple uses.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=20#p13966
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-22 20:45:02

infglk is the Inform (6) header file--now incorporated into Glulx.i6t--that defines the constants and commands that allow glulx inform code to read reasonably well to human eyes; in other words, it provides a more user-friendly UI overlay for all the opcodes and hex.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=20#p13967
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-02-22 21:03:27

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]@Danni:  Well, that's not entirely true as of a couple hours ago: [i]while suspending time, say "Time: [player's seconds]:[player's microseconds]."[/i] But as Erik alludes, I'm not aiming at high-quality profiling anyway, just exposing some new functionality with some simple uses.[/quote]
Oh, I hadn't noticed that feature.
And yes, it looks like a good general purpose extension.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=20#p13968
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-22 21:45:49

@Erik: Ah.  That .i6t file wouldn't be updated in the current version of Inform, let alone in earlier versions, hence I'll leave the messy hex in.  This is so even older versions of Inform 7 can use the interpreters' new features.  Perhaps in a year or three the new extensions can be rewritten with readable posterity in mind, but considering the slow speed at which hobbyist WIPs progress, I think immediate usability is a more important concern for now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2068&start=0#p13969
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Teaching the Parser
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-22 21:46:01

[quote]Probably the best way to do what you want is with an "After reading the command," though I think that would be what your niece would probably call "icky."[/quote]

That will be be the easiest way to accomplish this, I think. Mixing topics and dynamic grammar lines into the problem is going to (continue to) be a source of a headache.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=20#p13970
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-22 21:54:03

[quote]I think that one of the potential uses of clock time will be to resync the timer, so that the game can keep relatively accurate time even with a long-fuse timer.[/quote]

This sounds like a desire to fix an old solution which should be replaced instead of fixed. It's true that the event timer is not guaranteed to be accurate; neither is the new time system, because just executing the call to retrieve the time takes up time. 

The statement in the spec about "Timer events may be delivered late" is not a description of a bug. It's an attempt to simplify the game author's life by guaranteeing that the error in timer events will *always be positive* rather than negative. Cuts out half of the error cases you might have to think about.

Using a long-running timer event to keep time was just a poor way to watch the system clock; now there's a better way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=20#p13971
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-22 21:56:08

Also: a current version of the infglk.h header (including the latest Glk functions) can always be found at <a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/erkyrath/glk-dev/blob/master/dispatch_dump/infglk.h">https://github.com/erkyrath/glk-dev/blo ... p/infglk.h</a> . (Hit the "download raw" link.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2059&start=10#p13972
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Story in IF
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-02-22 22:01:20

[quote="katz"][quote]I agree totally, there's a million ways to tell a story. But most stories are about a change of state or fortune in somebody's life. [/quote]

True, but this is what my college writing professor would call a TBNI (True But Not Interesting).  In order to make most stories fit into the Hero's Journey, you have to dilute it down to something like "stuff happens to the protagonist," which is far too vague to be used to analyze or plan your own story.  But if you use a more complete version of the Hero's Journey, then not only do most stories no longer fit (including entire genres, like tragedy and most romance), but there's no longer any reason to make them fit.

For instance, I agree with Pacian completely about [i]in medias res[/i].  I also think that the common idea that the hero should be an everyman so that people can relate to him is completely misguided.  It's insulting to the reader (as if you wouldn't care about someone who wasn't like you) and it leads to bland, nondescript heroes who get eclipsed by their supporting casts and who, because of their lack of distinguishing features, are actually harder to relate to, IMO.  As a reader, especially when I was a kid, I always sought out the stories where the protagonist was a dragon or some such and was particularly irritated when the main character was a person from our world who gets brought into the world of the story, as if that's the only way we would care about the story.

[rant]And it's also part of why such a huge preponderance of main characters are straight, white, male, middle-class Americans (and why those who aren't are virtually always only different in one respect).  Leave those weird people in the supporting cast--audiences can't relate to them.[/rant][/quote]

I'll say again [i]in medias res[/i] is not incompatible with the Hero's Journey. All that really means is that the story has a back history to it, which most do.

Actually, many of the main characters in this kind of story categorically *don't* fit into the societies that they're brought up in. They're the complete opposite of the so-called "everymen", the square pegs who won't fit into the round holes, the misfits, the outcasts. I never said the hero should be an everyman, and neither did Campbell as far as I know. I said he should be someone that the audience can relate to. So it all depends who your audience is.

And in answer to your rant, there's an entire thriving world out there of literature and films across every race and culture represented on the planet. If you're tired of the preponderance of straight, white American middle-class characters there's certainly no lack of alternatives to choose from out there, especially in this day and age. But I'd be willing to bet that a lot of them would still conform to the shallow Hero's Journey model.

Much of Campbell's writings on the Hero's Journey doesn't come from European sources exclusively...the themes he writes about are found all over the spectrum of world mythology. I'd guess that the majority of it is probably derived from non-European mythology (Asian, Indian, Native American, Polynesian, African, ect.). Campbell was largely a mythic theorist, there's nothing dogmatic about how you have to use it in writing, unless your imposing it on yourself.

I'll stand by what I said before, it provides a useful lens for plotting out and analyzing different stories. If you disagree with it fine, but don't go around suggesting its obsolete and no longer relevant to storytelling, because that's just simply not true.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2059&start=10#p13973
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Story in IF
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-02-22 22:25:59

You didn't address my first paragraph, which was the point of my post (the second is merely an example).  I'll reiterate:

In order to make the Hero's Journey as applicable as you've previously claimed it was (you've said that it encompasses all stories except avant-garde literature), you need to make it so broad as to be essentially contentless, and consequently useless as a plotting or analytical tool.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2059&start=20#p13974
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Story in IF
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-02-22 23:31:41

[quote="dustinneff"]It seems to me, whether you're writing mythic fantasy, IF, or a modern day tale, at some point or another you have to start out or refer to some skeletal framework in plotting it out and examining the details, as inelegant as that sounds, it's usually necessary to keep things straight for both yourself and your intended reader. Campbell didn't make up an arbitrary set of rules or patterns authors must adhere to, all he did was identify common themes underlying stories which were already there, and which resonate with most people on a deep emotional level. I don't know, but maybe there are some avant-garde writers out there whose literary masterpieces arise fully formed as pure abstract thought and inspiration, like Athena springing from the forehead of Zeus, but I haven't met any yet. Most slog through umpteen drafts of 600 page manuscripts trying to get it right, sometimes over the course of many years, to ensure that the reader doesn't lose interest. At some point or another, every writer needs some kind of direction or guide to keep their inspiration going, and work their way through a complicated story. You could do a lot worse than Campbell.[/quote]

@Katz - That is what I said. I never said you have to make your story fit the Hero's Journey. So I don't know what you're getting at?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=20#p13975
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-02-22 23:47:43

Hey Zarf, maybe you could answer a question I've wondered... how do the arguments to the glk_* functions get magically sent to the @glk? Especially consider that the actual arguments are only defined in the comments...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=30#p13976
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-23 00:34:58

[spoiler]zarf, I might have found a bug.  I seem to get zero in the datetime (destination) array the very first time I call [i]   glk($0169, countofseconds, datetime); ! glk_time_to_date_local [/i].  The following test case reproduces on my machine: [code]"asdf" by Ron Newcomb

The story creation year is 2012.

To decide if the player's time is available: (- (glk($0004, 20, 0) ~= 0) -). [! gestalt_DateTime]

When play begins when the player's time is available [and the story creation year is greater than the pyear], say "I >believe your computer's date is set incorrectly.  This work was published in [story creation year], which is far into the future from where you sit in  p[pyear]p [the player's year] p[pyear]p ([player's month]) [the player's year] ([player's month])."

Release along with the "Quixe" interpreter.

To decide what number is the pyear: 								 (- (datetime-->0) -).  
To decide what number is the player's year:	(- ((FillOutDateTimeArrays() & (datetime-->0))) -).
To decide what number is the player's month:	(- ((FillOutDateTimeArrays() & datetime-->1)) -).


Include (-
Array countofseconds --> 3;   ! this holds the number of microseconds elapsed since midnight on January 1, 1970, GMT/UTC
Array datetime --> 8;       ! this holds the above broken down into year, month, day, weekday, hour, minute, second, and microseconds
Global UTCvsLocal = 1;      ! truth state: 1 = local time; 0 = GMT otherwise known as UTC

[ FillOutDateTimeArrays;
	print "*";
   if (glk($0004, 20, 0) == 0) return 87;  !  glk_gestalt_DateTime(20, 0);
   glk($0160, countofseconds); !  glk_current_time(timeval);
	print "*";
   glk($0169, countofseconds, datetime); ! glk_time_to_date_local(tv, date);
   return -1; ! so this function can be bitwise ANDed with the result of the --> array dereference that's about to happen
];
-).

There is room.[/code]

It reproduces the following. Note that "pyear" is supposed to be zero on its first print -- that happens before any GLK calls to populate the array -- so "p0p" is right, but right after it, "the player's year" returns zero even though the asterisks in front of it prove the calls were all made. [quote]I >believe your computer's date is set incorrectly.  This work was published in 2012, which is far into the future from where you sit in  p0p **0 p2011p (**2) **2011 (**2).
 
asdf
An Interactive Fiction by Ron Newcomb
Release 1 / Serial number 110222 / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N)
 
room
 
> [/quote] Can you confirm? Or did I do something wrong?  (Apologies for the messiness here; it was hard to narrow down.)[/spoiler]Actually, it seems to do with the return value, so nevermind.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=30#p13977
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-23 00:42:28

[quote]how do the arguments to the glk_* functions get magically sent to the @glk?[/quote]

The first I6 function argument is _vararg_count, which is a magical token meaning "the actual arguments are available on the stack." The @glk opcode *takes* its arguments on the stack, so no transfer is necessary. The _vararg_count value itself is the number of arguments.

Ron, I'll try to take a look at that tomorrow.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=30#p13978
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-23 00:53:10

Actually, nevermind, zarf.  I think the Inform 6 assembler is trying to optimize "((FillOutDateTimeArrays() & (datetime-->0)))" by swapping the order of arguments.  It comes out in the right order when I inspect the generated source, but the above test seems to indicate otherwise. Huh. I really need to learn more about Inform 6, it seems.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2061&start=10#p13979
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Recommendations wanted: more plot interactivity, less pu
User: Morley / DateTime: 2011-02-23 03:19:19

I... should have thought of that.  [emote]:oops:[/emote] 

But thank you for helping me get a better handle on what it was I was looking for. 

Incidentally, I downloaded a few games from this thread with the intent of playing a little of each and then picking the one that grabbed me at the moment to play next. 

I'm mentioning this because, while I only played the first bit of Masquerade, the very first thing in the game is a room where there are two exits, one blocked, and the other immediately ending the game. The puzzle there is very simple, but the thing that was blocking my way (a nervous 17-year-old boy) was also something I felt I could reasonably get past in several ways that were more obvious than the solution -- not the least of which being [i]just walking straight by[/i] the kid.

I'm not saying this to comment on Masquerade since I only played a tiny bit of it, and I gather the rest of the game is substantially different (I do intend to play it through eventually). But, forgiving my non-standard IF vocabulary here, this is a good example of what I think of when I think "puzzle" rather than "problem".  Sure, it's a part of the story, but my natural options were seemingly restricted to create a mini-challenge with a clever solution, and I was stopped dead in my tracks until I got it right. 

Regardless: I tried [i]Make It Good[/i] next, which I'm already head over heels for. I have no issue with it being "one big puzzle", and I don't mind that I'm unlikely to solve the case on the first playthrough. 

The thing is, I have a goal, I'm free to take a lot of actions that may bring me closer to that goal or set me back, but in the mean time I'm doing stuff as opposed to not doing stuff. Thus far I haven't hit a moment where I feel like I'm being held back from doing something I could reasonably do in order to create a puzzle where one otherwise would not be. I [i]have [/i] played other games like this, but I wish I had a magic word that I could enter into google in order to play more of them; games that let me risk making mistakes instead of holding me back until I get the right answer; games which prioritize allowing reasonable interactivity within a story over creating that "I was stumped, but now I am triumphant" feeling. 

I feel like I'm grasping for terminology that probably exists.  But maybe not.  I'll stop talking now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2061&start=10#p13980
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Recommendations wanted: more plot interactivity, less pu
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-23 05:23:12

[quote="Morley"]I'm mentioning this because, while I only played the first bit of Masquerade, the very first thing in the game is a room where there are two exits, one blocked, and the other immediately ending the game. The puzzle there is very simple, but the thing that was blocking my way (a nervous 17-year-old boy) was also something I felt I could reasonably get past in several ways that were more obvious than the solution -- not the least of which being [i]just walking straight by[/i] the kid.[/quote]

Yeah, that's what I was thinking of when I mentioned that it had a couple of puzzles -- I really should have said that one of them is [i]the first thing you see[/i]. I also couldn't solve it at first and wound up going out the wrong exit. Sorry.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1239&start=30#p13981
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Transcripts collection proposal
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-02-23 08:32:55

[quote="Dannii"]I still think that including the server url in the blorb is the way to go... it's just so easy to extract, and shouldn't be hard to add either.[/quote]
Ah, I missed that part. Yes, url in the blorb would be the best option, but there should also be a Parchment option for games that don't provide their own url.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2060&start=0#p13982
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New to Inform: A Few Key Scenarios
User: Will414 / DateTime: 2011-02-23 10:35:08

Oh! One last thing that is giving me a bit of trouble, but seems like it should be simple.

How can I get it so that if the player types 'help' it will show a list of possible commands? I know I would need to type in the list, but it keeps giving me errors.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=30#p13983
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-23 11:21:07

[quote="zarf"][quote="ektemple"]I think that one of the potential uses of clock time will be to resync the timer, so that the game can keep relatively accurate time even with a long-fuse timer.[/quote]

This sounds like a desire to fix an old solution which should be replaced instead of fixed. It's true that the event timer is not guaranteed to be accurate; neither is the new time system, because just executing the call to retrieve the time takes up time....Using a long-running timer event to keep time was just a poor way to watch the system clock; now there's a better way.[/quote]

All true: I probably should have chosen a better example. The timer can also get off even if you're calling it, say, every second (due to inherent inaccuracies plus the fact that timer calls can be skipped if the VM is busy with something else). If you're incrementing a counter when the timer code is called, or are otherwise trying to keep track of timer events, the ability to access the system clock is a useful way to calculate errors and to attempt to rectify it. That's really all I was trying to get at.

[quote="zarf"]
The statement in the spec about "Timer events may be delivered late" is not a description of a bug. It's an attempt to simplify the game author's life by guaranteeing that the error in timer events will *always be positive* rather than negative. Cuts out half of the error cases you might have to think about.
[/quote]
Thanks for the clarification!

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2060&start=0#p13984
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New to Inform: A Few Key Scenarios
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-02-23 12:18:14

A primitive but working implementation, I guess, would be just defining helping as an action applying to nothing or perhaps preferably as 'an action out of world', understanding "help" as helping, and writing a report helping rule to say "You can try any of these commands: DANCE, SING, EXAMINE, etc…". 

However, there are several extensions on the Inform 7 site that are useful to this and similar ends, and you may well want to have a look at them (or on Emily Short's built-in Basic Help Menu extension): [url]http://inform7.com/extensions/out-of-world/#Helping_and_Hinting[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2059&start=20#p13985
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Story in IF
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-02-23 12:56:18

Well, back here...

[quote]I'm no expert on modern literature, but I can't imagine very much of it (outside of purely abstract, experimental fiction) would represent that much of a departure from the hero's journey if it's a coherent piece of writing based on human experience. [/quote]

...you said that essentially all stories [i]do[/i] fit the hero's journey, which is a large part of what I have been contesting.  Given your repeated use of the word "good" in reference to the hero's journey, such as here...

[quote]But if you examine the structure of most good stories you will find many of those themes embedded in them - intentionally or not.[/quote]

...you are implying that good stories generally follow the hero's journey, and that therefore, in order to be good, a story needs to follow the hero's journey.  So you have essentially said that stories must follow the hero's journey.

But if that wasn't what you were trying to say at all, then what are you trying to say?  How is the hero's journey "a useful lens for plotting out and analyzing different stories" if a) you don't mean that the stories should follow the journey and b) the journey is as nebulous as "a change of state or fortune in somebody's life"?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=30#p13986
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-23 13:06:21

[quote]I think the Inform 6 assembler is trying to optimize "((FillOutDateTimeArrays() & (datetime-->0)))" by swapping the order of arguments.[/quote]

That doesn't surprise me. Could be an optimization, could be just the way it generates argument data on the VM stack.

I guess you're stuck writing more helper functions, rather than using the & trick.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=30#p13987
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-23 13:16:42

[quote]The timer can also get off even if you're calling it, say, every second (due to inherent inaccuracies plus the fact that timer calls can be skipped if the VM is busy with something else).[/quote]

Or because the VM has been backgrounded on your phone and is therefore suspending all activity.

(No iPhone jokes, please. A mobile game *should* suspend all its game logic processing when backgrounded.)

[quote]If you're incrementing a counter when the timer code is called, or are otherwise trying to keep track of timer events, the ability to access the system clock is a useful way to calculate errors and to attempt to rectify it. That's really all I was trying to get at.[/quote]

Right. A better way to look at it is that the timer events don't tell you the time; they tell you that it's time to consult the system clock and see what time it is.

For example, if you want game event to interrupt every five minutes (real time), you might decide that precision of five seconds is sufficient. (A guard walking down the hall isn't going to be microsecond-precise.) So you set up a timer event with a five second cycle; in that event, you look to see if the "minutes" field has advanced to a multiple of five.

Then you have to worry about the suspension case. I guess you'd hold off on the guard if you see the system clock jump more than thirty seconds between timer events. (You need the same logic anyhow to deal with the player saving, quitting, and restoring.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2068&start=0#p13988
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Teaching the Parser
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-23 14:03:36

[quote="gravel"]I thought it would be straightforward and neat if I could get the parser to accept synonyms from the player for certain commands; maybe typos the player uses a lot, or flavor words (ie. "fry" instead of "cook"). [/quote]
It will probably always be easier for the player to learn from the parser, rather than the other way around. Even for non-native speakers.

However, I totally agree that the parser should be more adaptable to the desires of the author. One of my possible future projects is an extension that allows more I7 access to the parser's behavior.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2064&start=0#p13989
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Replacing within quoted text only
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-23 14:07:51

[quote="ektemple"][color=#0000BF]"(.*)\sbox\s(.*)"[/color]
[/quote]
Although that won't match "You see the box."

Depending on your regex engine, this might:
[code]"(.*)\bbox\b(.*)"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2059&start=20#p13990
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Story in IF
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-02-23 14:10:15

[quote="katz"]Well, back here...

But if that wasn't what you were trying to say at all, then what are you trying to say?  How is the hero's journey "a useful lens for plotting out and analyzing different stories" if a) you don't mean that the stories should follow the journey and b) the journey is as nebulous as "a change of state or fortune in somebody's life"?[/quote]

Wow, you are tenacious! But I think I already made my point clear enough. Being drawn further into a semantic argument is pointless.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2058&start=10#p13991
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "I didn't understand that number." message
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-23 14:17:00

TRACE! I knew there was a command like that, but I couldn't find it in the documentation or the index (must have missed it when I was searching the Actions index for testing commands).

I think the Actions Index needs a Testing Commands section, and testing actions should be documented there. I'm out of votes on Uservoice - does anyone want to suggest it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2048&start=10#p13992
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Profiling
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-23 14:18:14

[quote="Eleas"]I seem to recall there being a use-for-testing-only command (similar to "actions on" and "rules on") that gave info about the I6 level, but try as I might I can't seem to find it anywhere.[/quote]
Someone mentioned it in another thread: TRACE!

I'd love it if testing commands were documented in the Actions index. I'm out of votes on uservoice, but if anyone wants to suggest it, I'd be grateful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2060&start=0#p13993
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New to Inform: A Few Key Scenarios
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-23 14:39:29

A quick answer:  [i]Understand "help" or "hint" as a mistake ("The useful commands are foo, bar, lorem, and ipsom.").[/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2068&start=0#p13994
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Teaching the Parser
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-23 15:21:17

Thanks for the input, all.  I'll chew on this for awhile.  I've got a couple other "after reading the player's command" things happening, and I don't want to throw too many monkeys into the machine.

[quote="capmikee"]It will probably always be easier for the player to learn from the parser, rather than the other way around. Even for non-native speakers.[/quote]

Well, probably, yeah.  But that doesn't necessarily mean that it's not worth the attempt.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1711&start=20#p13995
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Aurora
User: Mr. Patient / DateTime: 2011-02-23 15:56:34

katz, I'm going to PM you later with some other stuff I've found.  Don't know if it's appropriate to post them here in the thread.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2071&start=0#p13996
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Care to revisit a good but neglected game?
User: Rotonoto / DateTime: 2011-02-23 16:33:33

My game RANS came out 11 years ago and promptly fell through the cracks, though it received a fair and balanced review in SPAG and earned a few favorable comments from the likes of Messrs. Cadre and Plotkin (gulp).  I think it's a nifty game in a lot of ways, and I encourage people to play it.  It only got minimal beta-testing, so there could be bugs galore I don't know about. (The ones I do know about aren't enough to make me issue a new version ... yet.  I'd probably have to call on someone proficient in Inform 6 to help with that, since I've forgotten most of what I knew.  Too much work at this point to port it to 7!)  There are probably also lots of people who've played it but whose comments never got back to me.  I took a decade-long hiatus from i.f., and to get back into the rhythm I've produced a new walkthrough for the game which features a lot of inessential wandering about and suggestions for things to try, in addition to *a* complete solution.  The game has always been zipped with a hint file, if you prefer that.  I hope the walkthrough will be up in the archive before too long.  Give my game a try!

Bob Reeves

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2060&start=0#p13997
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New to Inform: A Few Key Scenarios
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-02-23 16:58:17

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]A quick answer:  [i]Understand "help" or "hint" as a mistake ("The useful commands are foo, bar, lorem, and ipsom.").[/i][/quote]
I'd suggest actually implementing a help function -- something like this:

[code]Helping is a command out of world applying to nothing. Understand "help" and "hint" as helping.

Carry out helping:
     say "Complete instructions on how to play the game go here. You could, for instance, UNTIE PRETZEL and observe the results."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2072&start=0#p13998
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Glimmr/Flexible Windows: Window above the status line?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-23 17:06:57

g-placeabove seems to open a window above the main-window, but below the status line.  Attempts to get the status line to spawn a window have failed.  
Do I need to close it down somehow, do window generation, and then open it above the main window?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2072&start=0#p13999
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glimmr/Flexible Windows: Window above the status line?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-23 17:54:21

You should be able to do this by using Glulx Status Window Control, which will let you specify when the status window should be opened. If you open it after your upper window is opened, it will appear between the main window and your upper window.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2073&start=0#p14000
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Postures
User: whoiscraig / DateTime: 2011-02-23 19:22:09

Hi All. First of all I wanted to say how much I love these forums. Everyone is so nice and helpful, makes a nice change from other forums I frequant.

Now to my question:

I'm using the "Slouching" examine to add postures to my IF.
I have a stone slab which allows lying on.
The regular description of the stone slab is "At the end of the pier, this stone slab is low and just long enough for a person to lie on. It is here that the subject will need to lie before the transference can begin."

But if I tell an NPC to lie on the slab, then I examine the slab while she is lying on it, I get this:

[code]> examine slab
At the end of the pier, this stone slab is low and just long enough for a person to lie on. It is here that the subject will need to lie before the transference can begin.

On stone slab .

>[/code]

What is that extra line? Shouldn't it say "On stone slab is Mary"?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2060&start=0#p14001
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New to Inform: A Few Key Scenarios
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-23 19:30:04

Hi, Will! A couple of issues that you might want to think about: Some of the descriptions tend to assume you're in a room, but they can be printed even when you aren't in the room. For instance, if you go into the Private Room and try "call mary/dance with mary/call mary/dance with mary" the results look kind of strange -- the descriptions assume you're in the ballroom. This seems like an issue to watch out for (I mean, I've never written anything with more than one room, so I'm not one to talk, but it seems like an easy trap to fall into). 

Another small point is that the "dance with Alice" rule contains "if Mary wears the red dress," which I think should be Alice.

A prose issue or two: I would think that cleavage couldn't be perky, but only what's on either side of it. And when the hem of a dress is modestly covering someone's bosom, I fear that either a modifying clause or something else is dangling. 

Seriously, it's impressive to code something up that makes any sense at all -- just that it's always worth poking your code to see if it behaves oddly somehow.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2073&start=0#p14002
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Postures
User: mktacoma / DateTime: 2011-02-23 20:47:22

Posting some of your code if you could provide a small version of what you did would be helpful.

Cut and pasted the slouching example into the IDE and added the following lines:

[code]
A stone slab is supporter. The stone slab is enterable. The stone slab allows reclining. The stone slab is in the resort.

Bob is a person. Bob is in the resort.

When play begins,
	try Bob lying on the stone slab.

[/code]

Then looked at the slab and at Bob and it all seemed like it worked fine. To see why your example didn't I'd need to know how you build the NPC and slab and such.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=30#p14013
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-24 00:18:43

[quote="zarf"]I guess you're stuck writing more helper functions, rather than using the & trick.[/quote]
I tried changing the & to the comma, which it probably should have been anyway, but a bug in Inform 6 prevents it from working.  (The construction [i]IntegerDivide( (UpdateTime(), datetime-->7) , 1000)[/i] parses as [i]IntegerDivide(UpdateTime(), datetime-->7, 1000)[/i] rather than [i]UpdateTime(), IntegerDivide(datetime-->7, 1000)[/i].)  I rewrote some stuff, finished the documentation and sole example, and have now sent it off to our tireless extensions librarian Mark Musante.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2072&start=0#p14014
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glimmr/Flexible Windows: Window above the status line?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-24 00:35:14

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2060&start=10#p14015
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New to Inform: A Few Key Scenarios
User: Will414 / DateTime: 2011-02-24 00:50:30

Thanks Jim, Ron, and Felix (again) -- those did the trick!

[quote="matt w"]Hi, Will! A couple of issues that you might want to think about: Some of the descriptions tend to assume you're in a room, but they can be printed even when you aren't in the room. For instance, if you go into the Private Room and try "call mary/dance with mary/call mary/dance with mary" the results look kind of strange -- the descriptions assume you're in the ballroom. This seems like an issue to watch out for (I mean, I've never written anything with more than one room, so I'm not one to talk, but it seems like an easy trap to fall into). 

Another small point is that the "dance with Alice" rule contains "if Mary wears the red dress," which I think should be Alice.

A prose issue or two: I would think that cleavage couldn't be perky, but only what's on either side of it. And when the hem of a dress is modestly covering someone's bosom, I fear that either a modifying clause or something else is dangling. 

Seriously, it's impressive to code something up that makes any sense at all -- just that it's always worth poking your code to see if it behaves oddly somehow.[/quote]

Oh trust me, there'll be a lot of poking going on. I've only had about an hour a day to fiddle with this since that first post of mine. Like half an hour before work and half an hour after. Once I get a day off, I'm sure I'll find a lot of things that need refining or outright fixing.

Also, I did notice the 'perky' thing during a test run earlier, but the hem/bosom one I didn't catch. That... is a rather amusing image.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2069&start=0#p14016
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: vehicles in tabs 3
User: pglewis / DateTime: 2011-02-24 01:17:45

I'm having a little trouble understanding the question.  Can you give an example from the current transcript and an example of how you would prefer it to behave?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1512&start=0#p14017
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 parser errors: what parts *did* the parser understand
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-02-24 02:18:49

I started playing around with this way back when I read this thread, then stopped, then found the file again tonight, and wasn't sure if I was going to have time to get back to it any time soon, so I thought I'd post my early experiment here for posterity.

[code]"showverb test"

Stage is a room.

Include Text Capture by Eric Eve.

After printing a parser error: now VerbToExplain is true.

VerbToExplain is a truth state that varies.

For reading a command when VerbToExplain is true:
	now VerbToExplain is false;
	replace the player's command with "showverb [word number 1 in the player's command]".

VerbExplaining is an action out of world applying to nothing. 

To verb-explain: (- ShowVerbSub(); -).

Include (-

[ ShowVerbSub address lines meta i x;
	wn = 2; x = NextWordStopped();
	if (x == 0 || ((x->#dict_par1) & 1) == 0)
		"Try typing ~showverb~ and then the name of a verb.";
	meta = ((x->#dict_par1) & 2)/2;
	i = DictionaryWordToVerbNum(x);
	address = VM_CommandTableAddress(i);
	lines = address->0;
	address++;
	print "Here are all the ways I know how to use the verb ";
	!if (meta) print "meta ";
	VM_PrintCommandWords_spec(i);
	new_line;
	if (lines == 0) "has no grammar lines.";
	for (: lines>0 : lines-- ) {
		address = UnpackGrammarLine(address);
		print "	"; DebugGrammarLine(x); new_line;
	}
	ParaContent();
];
[ DebugGrammarLine vb pcount;
	print "    >`", (address) vb, "` ";
	for (: line_token-->pcount ~= ENDIT_TOKEN : pcount++) {
		if ((line_token-->pcount)->0 & $10) print "/";
		print "", (DebugToken) line_token-->pcount, "";
	}
	print "  --> to ", (DebugAction) action_to_be;
	if (action_reversed) print "";
];

[ DebugToken token;
	AnalyseToken(token);
	switch (found_ttype) {
	ILLEGAL_TT:
		print "<illegal token number ", token, ">";
	ELEMENTARY_TT:
		switch (found_tdata) {
		NOUN_TOKEN: print "{something} ";
		HELD_TOKEN: print "{something held} ";
		MULTI_TOKEN: print "{something} ";
		MULTIHELD_TOKEN: print "{something held} ";
		MULTIEXCEPT_TOKEN: print "{something} ";
		MULTIINSIDE_TOKEN: print "{something inside another thing} ";
		CREATURE_TOKEN: print "{someone} ";
		SPECIAL_TOKEN: print "{special} ";
		NUMBER_TOKEN: print "{a number} ";
		TOPIC_TOKEN: print "{any text} ";
		ENDIT_TOKEN: print "{END} ";
		}
	PREPOSITION_TT:
		print "", (address) found_tdata, "";
	ROUTINE_FILTER_TT:
		print "noun=Routine(", found_tdata, ")";
	ATTR_FILTER_TT:
		print (DebugAttribute) found_tdata;
	SCOPE_TT:
		print "scope=Routine(", found_tdata, ")";
	GPR_TT:
		print "Routine(", found_tdata, ")";		
	}
];

[ VM_PrintCommandWords_spec i wd j dictlen entrylen ctr;
	ctr = 0;
	dictlen = #dictionary_table-->0;
	entrylen = DICT_WORD_SIZE + 7;
	for (j=0 : j<dictlen : j++) {
		wd = #dictionary_table + WORDSIZE + entrylen*j;
		if (DictionaryWordToVerbNum(wd) == i) {
			print (address) wd;
			if (ctr==0) print " (also ";
			else print ", ";
			ctr++;
		}
	}
	print ")";
];

-) instead of "Showverb Command" in "Tests.i6t".

Test me with "I want to be happy/showverb take/showverb show".
[/code]

Produces output like:
[quote]

>take hold of the handle
You can't see any such thing.

Here are all the ways I know how to use the verb carry (also hold, take, )
     >`take` inventory  --> to Inv
     >`take` {something}   --> to Take
     >`take` off{something}   --> to Disrobe
     >`take` {something} off  --> to Disrobe
     >`take` {something inside another thing} from{something}   --> to Remove
     >`take` {something inside another thing} off{something}   --> to Remove
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1322&start=0#p14018
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Does IF need man pages?
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-02-24 02:29:33

Oops actually. This was probably the thread I should have posted [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=14017#p14017]this thing here[/url] to.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2074&start=0#p14019
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Can I disable disambiguation after particular verbs?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-02-24 04:51:49

'That noun doesn't make sense in this context' is one of my least favourite messages, but rather than rewrite it (in case I make a mess of an occasion when I would actually like to see it, that I haven't seen/anticipated yet), I wondered if I could just divert the parser to custom responses in the case of particular verbs where I know I don't want to see this message.

I haven't been able to do this with BEFORE rules, because disambiguation occurs before BEFORE rules.

For instance, with my custom 'follow' command, defined as applying to [any person], 'That noun doesn't make sense' is triggered if you try to follow a leaf. So I tried changing it to [any thing], hoping to add a check for inanimate objects, but before it even gets to that check, disambiguation goes off -

> follow leaf
'Did you mean the leaf or a pile of leaves?'

I don't want to be asked such a question, I want to be immediately told 'You can only follow people.'

Any advice on how best to attend to this kind of thing?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2073&start=0#p14020
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Postures
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-02-24 05:55:33

Until just recently there was a bug in (both of) the Custom Library Messages extensions that caused games to behave like that (see [url]http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2054&start=10[/url]). If you were using one of them, that may be the issue.
Ron Newcomb promptly fixed the bug, so if that's what messed up things for you, you should only have to install the updated version of his extension.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2074&start=0#p14021
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I disable disambiguation after particular verbs?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-02-24 06:24:02

I [b]think[/b] the asking which do you mean activity is triggered even before the parser knows if the noun you want to follow is animate or not; so it would be hard to check at that point.
Is it possible to write something like this? (Which, obviously, I haven't tested.)
[code]
Rule for printing a parser error when the latest parser error is the noun did not make sense in that context error: if the current action is trying following something and the noun is not a person, instead say "You can only follow people."
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2074&start=0#p14022
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I disable disambiguation after particular verbs?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-24 07:27:01

You could expand the grammar to applying to any thing, and then use check or instead rules to rule out the non-people.  Then you won't ever see the "this noun doesn't make sense" rule.  (I think.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2074&start=0#p14023
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I disable disambiguation after particular verbs?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-02-24 07:50:03

[quote="gravel"]You could expand the grammar to applying to any thing, and then use check or instead rules to rule out the non-people.  Then you won't ever see the "this noun doesn't make sense" rule.  (I think.)[/quote]

I already tried changing to 'any thing', but I forgot to try an Instead rule. Turns out that that still goes to disambiguation first.

Now I will have a look at what Felix was saying...

I was well impressed that Inform took this line in its stride when I added it:

'Rule for printing a parser error when the latest parser error is the noun did not make sense in that context error: if the current action is trying following something and the noun is not a person, instead say "You can only follow people."'

- unfortunately though it didn't go first  [emote]:)[/emote] After 'get leaf', disambiguation occurs, then it says 'You can only follow people.'

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2074&start=0#p14024
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I disable disambiguation after particular verbs?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-02-24 08:35:10

Okay, I came up with something that works but could be loopholey.

First I set the command to apply to [any person].

Then -

[code]Rule for printing a parser error when the latest parser error is the noun did not make sense in that context error:
	if the player's command includes "follow", say "You can only follow people.";
	if the player's command includes "chase", say "You can only follow people."[/code]

If you type follow leaf or chase leaf, even though that would normally go to disambiguation, it redirects to these messages.

Since you are able to attempt to follow any person in this game, but not any objects, I don't see loopholes when the player actually types 'follow' or 'chase' (object). But I was wondering if there were ways I hadn't thought of for this 'includes' thing to trip me up when the player is using some totally different command.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2074&start=0#p14025
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I disable disambiguation after particular verbs?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-02-24 08:43:56

I think you're on the right track with an action applying to "any thing" rather than simply "any person." A "Does the player mean" rule will help you avoid disambiguation:[code]Lab is a room.
The pile of leaves is in the Lab. Understand "leaf" as the pile of leaves.
A leaf is a kind of thing. In the Lab are four leaves.

Following is an action applying to one thing.
Understand "follow [any thing]" as following.

Check following:
	if the noun is not a person,
		say "You can only follow people." instead.
		
Report following:
	say "You follow [the noun]."
	
Does the player mean following the pile of leaves:
	it is very unlikely.[/code]This gives you:[quote]>follow leaf
(the leaf)
You can only follow people.[/quote]If you want to get rid of "(the leaf)", just add:[code]Rule for clarifying the parser's choice of a leaf:
	do nothing.[/code]Unfortunately, this isn't a general solution; you would need to add DTPM rules for each specific case.

HTH

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2074&start=0#p14026
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I disable disambiguation after particular verbs?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-02-24 08:54:35

Thanks Mike. Your way is looking solid. I guess the new catch is, as you say, having to set each case manually. Anyway, now I've got a couple of functional workarounds to play with.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2074&start=0#p14027
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I disable disambiguation after particular verbs?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-24 08:55:05

Hmm.  Sorry, should have tested it.  A couple other things I thought would work didn't, either.

This is clunky, but appears to work for my test cases.  

[code]Following is an action applying to one thing.  Understand "follow [any person]" as following.


Test is a room.  There is a red ball in Test.  There is a blue ball in test.  Bob is a man.

After reading a command:
	if the player's command includes "follow":
		if the player's command does not include "[yourself]" and the player's command does not include "Bob":
			say "You can only follow people.";
			reject the player's command.

test me with "follow me / follow ball / follow Bob".[/code]

But it's icky.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2074&start=0#p14028
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I disable disambiguation after particular verbs?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-02-24 09:15:38

[quote="severedhand"]Thanks Mike. Your way is looking solid. I guess the new catch is, as you say, having to set each case manually.[/quote]
You're welcome. FYI -- if you're going the DTPM route, you probably want to add a qualifier to be on the safe side:[code]Rule for clarifying the parser's choice of a leaf when following:
	do nothing.[/code]Also, I don't know if your leaf / leaves scenario was just a contrived example to trigger disambiguation or if you're actually dealing with duplicate objects which can sometimes be referred to as a group. If it's the latter, you might want to contact "capmikee." I'm pretty sure he's working on an extension for that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1512&start=0#p14029
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 parser errors: what parts *did* the parser understand
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-24 09:48:25

That looks super useful!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2062&start=10#p14030
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Off-Stage problems
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-24 10:00:04

You'd have to write your own rules to create the restriction:

[code]Check putting something that is not an ornament on the Christmas tree:
	say "There's no way to hang that on the tree.";
	stop the action.
[/code]

A note about your first problem: I would probably do the description the other way around - the actual description would be "Your shakes were in vain..." but then I'd write an "Instead of examining the tree for the first time" rule that takes care of all the special things happening, including printing all the one-off text.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2074&start=0#p14031
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I disable disambiguation after particular verbs?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-24 10:53:49

Hi folks.

I've been feeling a bit discouraged about that disambiguation extension idea. Right now I'm thinking it might be part of a much larger extension that does a big parser rewrite (i.e. not something that will be finished in the next year!)

However, I have been thinking about how to deal with stuff like this. Aaron Reed's "Remembering" extension has an example of a  "refusal to disambiguate." My own "Lost Items" extension uses some similar techniques.

In this case, you could handle the problem with a fake verb:

[code]Following is an action applying to one visible thing.
Wrong-following is an action applying to one topic.

Understand "follow [any person]" as following.
Understand "follow [text]" as wrong-following.

Check wrong-following:
	say "You can only follow people." instead.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2074&start=10#p14032
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I disable disambiguation after particular verbs?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-24 11:02:26

[quote="Skinny Mike"]If you want to get rid of "(the leaf)", just add:[code]Rule for clarifying the parser's choice of a leaf:
	do nothing.[/code]Unfortunately, this isn't a general solution; you would need to add DTPM rules for each specific case.
[/quote]
Not necessarily. You could use some general rules:

[code]A thing can be volatile or static. The leaf is volatile.

Does the player mean following a static thing:
    It is very unlikely.

Does the player mean following a visible thing:
    It is very unlikely.

Rule for clarifying the parser's choice of a volatile thing when following:
    Do nothing.
[/code]

Another plug: My Lost Items extension uses the "losable" property in much the same way as this "volatile/static" property.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2075&start=0#p14033
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Weird white space issues
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-24 12:12:56

I was reinspired to spruce up my WIP (and finally actually tackle some of the stuff Glimmr can do), and was dismayed to discover that both Gargoyle and Glulx have weird white space issues (again? I feel like I've had similar issues before).  

Here's Gargoyle:

[img]http://i51.tinypic.com/2550uth.png[/img]

There's a white border around the entire thing, plus a weird gap where the status line doesn't extend the length of the main window.  (This gap is only present in some resizing, but the border is pretty constant.)

So I changed the main window color, hoping it would be less jarring.  And now there's a . . . not a border, but an L shaped piece, with extra main window color border beyond that.  (Main window has been colored blue for clarity.)

[img]http://i54.tinypic.com/2v2gt4n.jpg[/img]

Glulx has the white L, but not the extra border around everything.
What is going on?  I assume the interps are adding some "padding" to make sure everything looks nice, which is fine, but what if I want control over that padding?  
I think I can do without the left-hand border, which will make the white space there look more natural, but I would really like the bottom border to be at the bottom of the user's screen.  (The Photopia screenshot on the Gargoyle website doesn't have this issue.)

Even just a "please make the padding this color" command would be workable.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1787&start=20#p14034
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Must puzzles be at war with stories?
User: adventurechris / DateTime: 2011-02-24 12:18:15

[quote="Pacian"][quote="gravel"]What some people seem to be arguing is that story progression is always based on a puzzle, which just isn't true.  Some story progression feels more interactive than others, but I don't think that interactivity relies on puzzles per se, but on feeling like your character has agency.[/quote]
And, conversely, I've played games with lots of puzzles, but where I felt little agency in the story.  Done badly, a puzzle can just feel like a padlock closing off the next scene, or a needless hurdle in the natural progression of a story.  (As a pacing mechanism they're also highly suspect, as different players will solve different puzzles more quickly than  others, and some will go to the hints after the first stumble.)[/quote]

I used to play a lot of adventure games, so I tend to have a love/hate relationship with puzzles.

The problem with puzzles is that they're the proverbial hammer in an otherwise empty toolbox. That can work (people seemed to like Myst, for example) but it gets old fast. I sat down to play a random adventure game online (Aurora) and despite the awesome visuals and atmosphere, about five minutes in I was thinking "get me out of here I'm playing an inventory game."

I have to think about this more, but here's how I'd put it:

The joy of a game comes from the [i]discovery[/i] and [i]mastery[/i] of something new. That's why I played through Caesar II so many times - at first, because the world was new and novel (discovery), and then because I wanted to try and master the process of optimizing a Roman province (mastery).

In some story-based games, there's a certain joy of discovery that comes even when you haven't gotten any further. Maybe if you try and use the wrong inventory item, you get a funny dialogue response. That feedback - that discovery - is what keeps me playing. Game with good writing get that.

Inventory/puzzle games are interesting to discover, at first, but now that I've played through a lot of them, there's no feeling of deep mastery of the kind a strategy game would provide. Puzzles become a standard game mechanic ticket of admission to a good story. If the puzzles are really good/connected, I may feel like I've earned my progress, which is rewarding. But it would be nice to see innovation with other mechanics. Are there any great games which go beyond puzzles?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2064&start=0#p14035
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Replacing within quoted text only
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-24 12:34:25

I'll do some experimenting.  I'm sure there's some border cases that will require special handling, but this makes it much faster.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1512&start=10#p14036
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 parser errors: what parts *did* the parser understand
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-24 12:49:55

I like it, although I would want to apply some special-case turning. For example, the "I WANT TO..." case you mentioned in the other thread -- that should give a hand-written explanation of inventory and why I isn't a pronoun. Similarly, it's not necessary to show every variant of "PUT X IN/INSIDE/INTO/THROUGH..." (which can be a lot of prepositions, particularly after I get through customizing it.)

But the basic principle is good.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2075&start=0#p14037
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Weird white space issues
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-24 13:16:39

1. The padding around the outside: This is a standard Gargoyle feature. To set your own margin or get rid of the margin entirely, copy the initialization file (.ini) into the same directory as your game file and then edit it to remove the margins. You can distribute the .ini with your game to ensure that players can experience the game the way you intended.

2. Bugs with the above: Make sure you're running the very latest release version of Gargoyle. There was a bug with margins and background colors that was fixed...er, relatively recently, I think. This might be behind the L shape you're seeing...?

3. The "notch" on the status bar: This is also an issue with Zoom and probably other interpreters as well. (It can be even uglier on Zoom because it occurs on both left and right.) The width of the background color is a function of the monotype font width, and if the match between the window width and the background hint isn't exact, you'll see an artifact. I haven't tested it, but you might be able to fix this by affirmatively setting the background color (and perhaps also the font color) of the status window (using Glulx Status Window Control or some library hacking). This has the added benefit of allowing your game to look the same in all terps. If changing the background color of the status window doesn't work, an email to Ben Cressey (Gargoyle) and Andrew Hunter (Zoom) might convince them to use the background color of a grid window to fill any gap left by measurement issues.

4. FYI: Flexible Windows incorporates a little hack that Ben provided for setting the color of the margin. I think you can read about it in some detail by scrolling through the source code.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2075&start=0#p14038
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Weird white space issues
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-02-24 13:17:37

I have no solutions to offer, of course, only a rant. My experience in the past, when bringing up issues around the appearance of the interpreter window, was pretty consistently that I got shot down by people saying, "That's not something the author should want any control over!"

If an author is using the glimmr extensions (which I haven't tried), why should they [i]expect [/i]to be able to control the appearance of the terp window? Just sayin'....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2069&start=0#p14039
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: vehicles in tabs 3
User: zodraz / DateTime: 2011-02-24 13:41:39

Sorry, I have been accused of being obtuse before.  You will have to bear with me since I am an experienced programer but new to tads3.  The long answer is this; I am converting a book into the game and one of the actions is having the pc search for the baddie, who is on the ground, in a helicopter.  In the book it is a simple journey from A to B but I though I would turn it into a maze flying up in the sky by using a series of floorless outdoor rooms.  The original code snippet worked but when you typed [b]'out'[/b] the response was [b]'You can't do that'[/b] which was fine, my question was could this be customised to my own message.  Having slept on the problem, I also found that typing [b]'climb out'[/b] caused the pc to end up standing beside the helicopter up in the air.  So your reply made me think about another way of getting round the problem which I have done, typically the solution was very simple.  So you gave me the answer without giving me the answer...  Thanks for your help, sometimes I need someone to bounce an idea off, which makes me look at the problem from a different angle and point me in the right direction.

[code]+ bellHelicopter : Vehicle, Booth, Heavy 'helicopter' 'helicopter'
    dobjFor(GetOutOf)
    {
        check()
        {
            failCheck('You can\'t get out when you are flying the helicopter. ');
        }
    }
    dobjFor(Examine)
    {
        action()
        {
            "It\'s a Bell 220, 4 seater helicopter. ";
        }
    }
;[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2076&start=0#p14040
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Data Mining Transcripts
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-02-24 14:02:10

I'm data mining all the transcripts I can get my hands on to assist with updating my extensions relating to improving player experiences. Thought I'd post an interesting early result here: [url=http://aaronareed.net/2010/bl-indiecade/commands-by-frequency.txt]a list of all the command entered into Blue Lacuna at IndieCade 2010, sorted by frequency[/url]. The winner is the blank line.

(Coincidentally (or not) [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Aaron%20Reed/Smarter%20Parser/index.html]version 10 of Smarter Parser[/url] now supports mapping blank lines to LOOK or WAIT.)

Here is quick and dirty Python code for anyone who wants to do similar analyses:
[code]
commands = {}

for line in open('lacunalogs.txt', 'r'):
    if line[0] == '>':
		thisCommand = line[1:].rstrip('\n\r').upper()
		if thisCommand in commands:
			commands[thisCommand] = commands[thisCommand] + 1
		else:
			commands[thisCommand] = 1
			
for cmd in sorted(commands, key=commands.get, reverse=True):
	print cmd, commands[cmd]
[/code]

Also, if you have an interesting transcript data set, I'd love to take a look at it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2077&start=0#p14041
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Image able to update after a event happens
User: InsertCoin25 / DateTime: 2011-02-24 14:37:33

I am new to Inform 7 and I am currently reading Aaron Reed's book 'Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7'. So I have a little understanding of Inform 7. So here goes the question. If I have a image showing what the room looks like (using the multimedia extension) and the image has the objects that are listed in the room description and I take a item away can I have it so the image updates as well? Basically showing in the image that the item is no longer there. If I need to clarify more I would be happy to do so.

Thank You
InsertCoin25

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2075&start=0#p14042
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Weird white space issues
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-24 14:44:04

[quote="Jim Aikin"]I have no solutions to offer, of course, only a rant. My experience in the past, when bringing up issues around the appearance of the interpreter window, was pretty consistently that I got shot down by people saying, "That's not something the author should want any control over!"

If an author is using the glimmr extensions (which I haven't tried), why should they [i]expect [/i]to be able to control the appearance of the terp window? Just sayin'....[/quote]

The issue is compounded because I kind of suck at graphic design anyway, so basically all my patience is gone by the time I am double-checking the compilation to "just make sure it works" before moving on to the next bit.  (Oh, god, sprites.)  And since I don't have a background in what's happening onscreen, I just want to open a Photoshop-like editor, throw together the screen, toss in some sprites and a .gif animation or two, toss on a toggle for the players who don't like pretty colors, add a splash and menu screen, push the "compatible for all interps" button, and go watch a movie.  

The tools are there (except for .gifs, I think), but I have trouble using them, and then the interp layer makes everything more complicated.  For instance, in the inventory window in Gargoyle, all the text is at the bottom of the window.  In Glulxe, it's at the top.  I don't mean to be obsessive, but it looks *wrong* to me at the bottom, and there's no easy way to know that a particular interp will do that, or how to fix it, without Serious Effort.  I'm sure there's a way, but it seems like I'm better off picking one interp and wrestling it.  

One of the few pages on Glulxe gives instructions for setting up a config file.  There's two options given for borders, neither of which touches my issue at all.

I don't know.  I know I seem extra petulant, but it's like a perfect storm of ignorance, minimal skill sets, lack of instructions, and near-opaque machinery.  And it's exhausting when your attempts to make something look better only make it look incredibly amateurish.  And then the interps make it amateurish with *gaps*.  

Okay.  Tantrum over.  Let's fix this thing.

[quote="ektemple"]

2. Bugs with the above: Make sure you're running the very latest release version of Gargoyle. There was a bug with margins and background colors that was fixed...er, relatively recently, I think. This might be behind the L shape you're seeing...?

3. The "notch" on the status bar: This is also an issue with Zoom and probably other interpreters as well. (It can be even uglier on Zoom because it occurs on both left and right.) The width of the background color is a function of the monotype font width, and if the match between the window width and the background hint isn't exact, you'll see an artifact. I haven't tested it, but you might be able to fix this by affirmatively setting the background color (and perhaps also the font color) of the status window (using Glulx Status Window Control or some library hacking). This has the added benefit of allowing your game to look the same in all terps. If changing the background color of the status window doesn't work, an email to Ben Cressey (Gargoyle) and Andrew Hunter (Zoom) might convince them to use the background color of a grid window to fill any gap left by measurement issues.

--Erik[/quote]

2. I downloaded a fresh copy of Gargoyle from the Google code page onto a computer that's never had it before, so I don't think that's the problem. 

3. The status window color is customized above; I have the same issue if I change the text color.  I'll email folks.

I'll take a look at the .ini files.  The potential downside I see here is that I would like to allow the player to turn on/off the extra windows for people who like to play traditionally; it sounds like this means giving explicit set-up directions (or releasing two versions).  

The margin hint is great - I'll go see what I can do with that.  Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2077&start=0#p14043
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Image able to update after a event happens
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-02-24 14:48:44

First, decide exactly what sorts of things you want to change the image.  Then, use a rule that will apply to those circumstances.  For example, if you just want to change the image when the player takes a certain thing, it's as simple as [code]After taking the whatever-it-is: 
[tab][code to change the image, specific to the extension you're using];
[tab]continue the action.[/code]  Whereas if you want to be sure that [i]any[/i] action that removes the whatever-it-is from the room triggers the image change (whether it's taken by a Non Player Character, or it melts away, or someone hides it in a box), you might want something more like [code]Every turn:
[tab]if the whatever-it-is is not in the room-it-was-in:
[tab][tab][image-changing code, as before][/code]  So if you can be more specific about the conditions provoking the change, that might be enough to make it easier for you to find your answer in the documentation, and it will definitely help us give you a less-buggy answer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2075&start=0#p14044
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Weird white space issues
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-02-24 14:56:20

IIRC Git 1.2.8 was in the latest release, so I think you're up to date.

The padding is controlled by the last background color hint sent to a textbuffer window. Once you're done opening windows, just set another stylehint like so:

[code]
To reset the padding color:
	(- glk_stylehint_set(wintype_textbuffer, 0, stylehint_backcolor, 16777215);-)
[/code]

By Glulx do you mean WinGlulxe or WinGit? If the L-shape problem appears in both winglk and garglk, it is likely an issue with your code. You may be splitting off a window and not assigning the full width / height of the parent to the new child.

Offhand I would guess that you are getting the window dimensions from glk_window_get_size, and then doing a fixed window split in the amount of the height or width returned. This will not work in the general case for text buffers, since those measurements are based on characters rather than pixels; it's better to do a 100% proportional split instead.

Erik covered the status line issue pretty well. If his suggestion doesn't work to correct it, let me know and I will get a real fix into Gargoyle.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2075&start=0#p14045
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Weird white space issues
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-24 15:05:51

[quote="bcressey"]By Glulx do you mean WinGlulxe or WinGit? If the L-shape problem appears in both winglk and garglk, it is likely an issue with your code. You may be splitting off a window and not assigning the full width / height of the parent to the new child.[/quote]

Ah, I assumed he was referring to using glulxe or git [i]with[/i] Gargoyle (both are included).

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2075&start=0#p14046
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Weird white space issues
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-02-24 16:08:28

[quote="gravel"]For instance, in the inventory window in Gargoyle, all the text is at the bottom of the window.  In Glulxe, it's at the top.  I don't mean to be obsessive, but it looks *wrong* to me at the bottom, and there's no easy way to know that a particular interp will do that, or how to fix it, without Serious Effort.[/quote]

Glk offers no guarantees on how text will flow in a text buffer. In Gargoyle, new text enters at the bottom and scrolls up. In Windows Glk, text enters at the top and scrolls down. The reason Gargoyle does it like that is to make sure the input line is always on the bottom. Obviously if you have a buffer that doesn't need line input, this is not a cardinal virtue. But it's not wrong in the sense that it deviates from the spec. 

If you need precision, use a text grid window, count spaces and move the cursor as needed. Or, use a text buffer, measure the height, and fill empty lines with '\n' so there's something on every line. That way the output should look similar under most Glk libraries.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2075&start=0#p14047
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Weird white space issues
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-24 16:15:33

[quote="bcressey"]If you need precision, use a text grid window, count spaces and move the cursor as needed. Or, use a text buffer, measure the height, and fill empty lines with '\n' so there's something on every line. That way the output should look similar under most Glk libraries.[/quote]

This is a clever suggestion and should work in most Glk implementations. I think that it will not work correctly in Zoom, unfortunately, because Zoom departs from the spec by measuring text-buffer windows in pixels instead of characters.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2075&start=0#p14048
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Weird white space issues
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-24 18:03:55

[quote="bcressey"]
If you need precision, use a text grid window, count spaces and move the cursor as needed. Or, use a text buffer, measure the height, and fill empty lines with '\n' so there's something on every line. That way the output should look similar under most Glk libraries.[/quote]

I'll give it a whirl.  I didn't mean it's inherently "wrong" to start at the bottom - just that there's a big difference to the eye, and visually, it "looks" off to me.  In the main window, that difference goes away eventually; in text buffers it won't.  It's not a judgment on any one interp or implementation choice - just general unhappiness that it's quite so much work to standardize the playing experience.  

Thanks for your help.  Somehow I managed to put together a file without the L-space, but honestly I can't figure out how.  (I switched computers, and a few interim experiments were lost.)  The gap shows up on occasion, because I haven't done anything with it, but the white space is gone.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2074&start=10#p14049
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I disable disambiguation after particular verbs?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-02-24 19:27:07

Thanks cap. The fake verb way does what my parser-message-way did but without the loopholeyness.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1787&start=20#p14050
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Must puzzles be at war with stories?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-02-25 02:00:43

[quote="adventurechris"]The joy of a game comes from the [i]discovery[/i] and [i]mastery[/i] of something new. [/quote]

Except for those who take joy from other aspects.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2075&start=0#p14051
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Weird white space issues
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-25 09:56:21

[quote="gravel"]I didn't mean it's inherently "wrong" to start at the bottom - just that there's a big difference to the eye, and visually, it "looks" off to me.  In the main window, that difference goes away eventually; in text buffers it won't.[/quote]

Well, it [i]is[/i] a bit unnatural, isn't it? Text flows in from the top in books and on the web--twentieth century earth's two major text-based UIs. I have the same feeling about flowing text from the bottom that you do--it's is fine in the main window where it works, as Ben mentioned, to keep the prompt at the bottom of the screen. But if you have text windows without prompts, they just look goofy.

[quote="bcressey"]Or, use a text buffer, measure the height, and fill empty lines with '\n' so there's something on every line. That way the output should look similar under most Glk libraries.[/quote]

You might test whether the player is using Zoom to avoid the massive problem that would result from using this method in that terp (hundreds of blank lines, driving the content way back into the scroll buffer). You could measure the width of the buffer window first; if it comes back greater than 200 or so, it's a good bet that the window is measured in pixels rather than characters. You'd then follow Ben's solution only for windows that are measured in characters.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2075&start=10#p14052
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Weird white space issues
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-25 10:41:30

Does Zoom run glulx games?  I think Glimmr and company are exclusively glulx, and I've only ever used Glulxe and Git (on various incarnations of Windows).  

I can handle testing on two interpreters (sort of), but much beyond that and I start wondering if it's okay just to ask people to use one of the ones that I worked on.  (I remember at least one person complaining bitterly about such a request from one of the comp games, so I'm thinking authors *are* expected to optimize across every major interpreter.)

Do I need to add Quixe to my list even if I'm not planning on doing on-line play?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2078&start=0#p14053
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: found_in
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-25 10:58:06

I think it's back to nuts and bolts with my Multitudes extension.

I just discovered that "move the player" doesn't work with Multitudes. "move the player" (indirectly) calls the I6 routine PlayerTo, which calls MoveFloatingObjects. This sequence of calls is not accessible within I7, which means that Multitudes has no opportunity to update its locations to deal with the problems mentioned in [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2033]this thread[/url].

So it looks like to make this work, I'll have to make multitudes into bona-fide I6 Floating Objects with their very own found_in routine, preferably one that calls on an I7 phrase to check the littering relation. (it's a conditional relation between multitudes and rooms). How hard is that to do? I can read I6 okay, but writing it I'm a little rusty.

Or maybe I should just rewrite the Standard Library phrase "To move (something - object) to (something else - object)" and possibly also "To surreptitiously move (something - object) to (something else - object) during going" to give myself a hook...?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2075&start=10#p14054
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Weird white space issues
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-25 11:10:11

There are multiple levels of terminology (unfortunately confusing) going on here. Glulx is the name of the virtual machine, equivalent to the Z-machine. Glulxe and Git are the names of the two major interpreters. But there's another level: The various Glk libraries are used as the basis for what you might think of as interpreter "viewers". So, Zoom can run either glulxe or git using the CocoaGlk library. Gargoyle runs both glulxe and git using the GarGlk library. And Windows Glulxe and Windows Git are two different executables, each running one of the two (both using the WinGlk library). So, you aren't actually testing on interpreters other than glulxe and git usually, but on different Glk libraries or "viewer" executables...

I don't think it would be wise to ignore Zoom completely in your testing. It's still probably the most-used OS X interpreter, and it's the interpreter that's built into the OS X Inform IDE. I believe it's also a popular *nix interpreter.

For Quixe, console interpreters, etc., I'd just test a gestalt (graphics, for example, if your final game will include graphic windows; see Glulx Entry Points) and, if the terp fails the test, print a message that your game is not supported and quit.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2077&start=0#p14055
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Image able to update after a event happens
User: InsertCoin25 / DateTime: 2011-02-25 11:32:20

Thanks for the reply tove. Example of condition: Player takes hammer off the table (image updates to show hammer is no longer on table). Another condition after taking hammer: Player uses hammer on a vase (destroying the vase) image updates again showing the vase destroyed and hammer not on table. I hope this helps a little.

Thanks
InsertCoin25

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2079&start=0#p14056
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Problem with Disambiguation Control/pronoun "her"?
User: clara / DateTime: 2011-02-25 11:38:21

I'm using Jon Ingold's Disambiguation Control extension and it seems to freak out over the use of the pronoun "her".

I created a new sample game to test this:

[code]"Test" by "CAR"

Home is a room. Mom is a woman in home. Dad is a man in home.

Include Disambiguation Control by Jon Ingold.[/code]

and here is a transcript from that game:

[quote]Home
You can see Mom and Dad here.

>pronouns
At the moment, "it" is unset, "him" means Dad, "her" means Mom and "them" is unset.

>ask him about foo
There is no reply.

>ask her about foo
Whom do you want to ask?

>mom
Whom do you want to ask?
[/quote]

So "him" works as expected, but not only does the game not understand "her" correctly, it also doesn't accept the player's answer to "Whom do you want to ask?"!

Anyone know why this is happening or how to alter it? I tried looking at the extension code, but the Inform 6 is over my head.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2075&start=10#p14057
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Weird white space issues
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-25 11:54:19

[quote="ektemple"]There are multiple levels of terminology (unfortunately confusing) going on here. Glulx is the name of the virtual machine, equivalent to the Z-machine. Glulxe and Git are the names of the two major interpreters. But there's another level: The various Glk libraries are used as the basis for what you might think of as interpreter "viewers". So, Zoom can run either glulxe or git using the CocoaGlk library. Gargoyle runs both glulxe and git using the GarGlk library. And Windows Glulxe and Windows Git are two different executables, each running one of the two (both using the WinGlk library). 

I don't think it would be wise to ignore Zoom completely in your testing. It's still probably the most-used OS X interpreter, and it's the interpreter that's built into the OS X Inform IDE. I believe it's also a popular *nix browser.

For Quixe, console interpreters, etc., I'd just test a gestalt (graphics, for example, if your final game will include graphic windows; see Glulx Entry Points) and, if the terp fails the test, print a message that your game is not supported and quit.

--Erik[/quote]

Oh, crap.  I thought I had all this sorted out.  You're right - I totally missed a layer.  Jesus, that's confusing.  And, sure enough, Zoom's individual page on the ifarchive mentions that it has support for glulx games, but it's not listed under glulx interpreters. So what gets listed under glulx interpreters?  Solely glulx?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2079&start=0#p14058
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with Disambiguation Control/pronoun "her"?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-02-25 13:14:01

I'm away from home and can't make a thorough check, but I do know that Graham [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=162#c522]recently made a change in parsing to improve parsing of the possessive pronoun "her"[/url]. This was following [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1232&p=7208#p7208]a thread on this board[/url] which may also be worth looking at.

I'm not sure of the actual reason for the problem, but I thought I'd throw out a possible culprit.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1787&start=30#p14060
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Must puzzles be at war with stories?
User: adventurechris / DateTime: 2011-02-25 13:32:16

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="adventurechris"]The joy of a game comes from the [i]discovery[/i] and [i]mastery[/i] of something new. [/quote]

Except for those who take joy from other aspects.[/quote]

Well, yes, that's true, except when it isn't. [emote]:ugeek:[/emote] In all seriousness, though, I can think of a few things that I would agree fall outside that realm - socialization is the biggest one I can think of. But I can't think of a story-heavy game I've played where discovery and mastery weren't at least up front and center. What else would you suggest?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2077&start=0#p14061
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Image able to update after a event happens
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-25 13:50:45

InsertCoin25, what is the multimedia extension you are referring to? Simple Graphical Window? It's possible to do the kind of thing you want to do with simple image display (such as you get with the built-in figure display phrase, or the default image display rule in Simple Graphical Window), but you will need many duplicate images--for example, you'll have to create one full image showing the room with the hammer, and one showing the room with the hammer removed. There will be lots of variants if you want to illustrate more than one item per room, e.g.: (1) hammer, no vase; (2) vase, no hammer; (3) hammer, broken vase; (4) no hammer, broken vase.

I think what you want is a better fit for the Glimmr extensions, since what you really want is to be able to display some images (a hammer) independently of others (the room); in other words, you want to display sprites. The Glimmr Canvas-Based Drawing extension is the main one you'd be working with, but while it includes many examples, none of them deal with precisely this set of circumstances. You can check out the [url=http://glimmr.wordpress.com]Glimmr blog[/url], though, to get some sense of what Glimmr does and how it works.

There are lots of ways to structure the code to control whether a sprite is displayed or not. Which is best depends on the specific circumstances and the details of what you're trying to achieve. For example, will each object only be shown in one image? Or will you potentially show every object in every room? Those two circumstances will have very different requirements.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2079&start=0#p14062
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with Disambiguation Control/pronoun "her"?
User: clara / DateTime: 2011-02-25 13:55:08

Hmm. Yeah, it's possible that it's related to that, but this particular issue is definitely related to the Disambiguation Control extension somehow -- if I don't include the extension, then the sample game interprets "ask her about foo" as asking Mom (as expected).

The fact that the parser doesn't accept the player's clarification is the bigger issue for me. I wouldn't mind
[quote]
>ask her about foo
Whom do you want to ask?

>mom
There is no reply.
[/quote] 

But as is the player has to retype the whole "ask mom about foo", which is confusing for them and breaks immersion. I am thinking this may be a bug in Disambiguation Control, but am not sure.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1787&start=30#p14063
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Must puzzles be at war with stories?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-02-25 14:01:24

[quote="adventurechris"]What else would you suggest?[/quote]

Nothing polite.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2079&start=0#p14064
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with Disambiguation Control/pronoun "her"?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-02-25 14:15:29

[quote="clara"]Hmm. Yeah, it's possible that it's related to that, but this particular issue is definitely related to the Disambiguation Control extension somehow -- if I don't include the extension, then the sample game interprets "ask her about foo" as asking Mom (as expected).[/quote]

True, I'm not suggesting the error should be attributed to core Inform. But since Disambiguation Control was last changed in June, while Graham made the change in October, I now wonder whether that change somehow affected the way Disambiguation Control does its magic.

Sadly, however, I'm still not nearly skilled enough at I6 to even begin tracing the problem myself. [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2079&start=0#p14065
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with Disambiguation Control/pronoun "her"?
User: joningold / DateTime: 2011-02-25 14:16:07

Hey there -

I've got to be honest: this is a bug in DC, and it's one I've had reported a while ago, but I'm not sure how to resolve. 

I'll try and take another look at it this weekend and see if I can't crack it, but it's a tricky one!

cheers
jon

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1787&start=30#p14066
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Must puzzles be at war with stories?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-25 14:48:14

Well, in Rameses there's the discovery of the plot, and the discovery that (oh I guess I should spoiler this)

[spoiler]you can't get Alex to do much of anything in response to your commands[/spoiler]

but I don't think there's much mastery going on, unless you count the realization that the thing I spoilered is true as a form of mastery. (OTOH I didn't enjoy it that much.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2079&start=0#p14067
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with Disambiguation Control/pronoun "her"?
User: clara / DateTime: 2011-02-25 15:02:20

Ah, good to know! 

I am sure it is tricky indeed. If you can't figure out the "her" thing, a workaround so that the parser at least explains the player's clarification would be great if possible.

Thanks for taking a look at this and for providing this extension!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1932&start=0#p14068
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: PAX East 2011 posts
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-25 15:08:57

And the schedule of IF-related (and IF-person-involving) events:

<a class="postlink" href="http://gameshelf.jmac.org/2011/02/if-at-pax-east-2011-compleat-schedule/">http://gameshelf.jmac.org/2011/02/if-at ... -schedule/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2079&start=0#p14069
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with Disambiguation Control/pronoun "her"?
User: joningold / DateTime: 2011-02-25 16:26:50

Ah, okay: so it turns out the standard parser actually has a check in to stop this problem; so I've lifted it into the DC process. It's not a very nice solution, but it seems to work - nothing's broken on the standard tests and "her" is now working properly. 

I'll submit the updated version to the Extensions site, but until it goes up, you can grab it from here.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.archimedes.plus.com//public/Disambiguation%20Control.i7x">http://www.archimedes.plus.com//public/ ... ontrol.i7x</a>

cheers
jon

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2079&start=0#p14070
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with Disambiguation Control/pronoun "her"?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-02-25 16:38:13

[quote="joningold"]Ah, okay: so it turns out the standard parser actually has a check in to stop this problem; so I've lifted it into the DC process. It's not a very nice solution, but it seems to work - nothing's broken on the standard tests and "her" is now working properly. 

I'll submit the updated version to the Extensions site, but until it goes up, you can grab it from here.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.archimedes.plus.com//public/Disambiguation%20Control.i7x">http://www.archimedes.plus.com//public/ ... ontrol.i7x</a>[/quote]

*nabs DC* 

Awesome work. Now I'm going to step up my pace in learning I6, mainly, I think, to give something back to all you awesome engines of creation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2078&start=0#p14071
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: found_in
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-25 17:05:37

Am I on the right track with this? It compiles, but it doesn't place sand in the location:

[code]A multitude is a kind of backdrop.

To decide whether (mess - a multitude) multitude is found in (place - a room) (this is multitude finding):
	yes;
	
A multitude has a phrase (multitude, room) -> nothing called the floating location. The floating location of a multitude is usually multitude finding. The floating location property translates into I6 as "found_in".

The beach is a room.

Sand is a multitude. It is not scenery.

test me with "showme sand"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2080&start=0#p14072
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Spring Thing 2011
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-02-25 17:15:01

Is anyone else entering? I just submitted an email that I'm intending on doing it. 

The deadline to submit intentions is March 1st  [emote]:o[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1787&start=30#p14073
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Must puzzles be at war with stories?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-25 18:01:52

[quote="adventurechris"][quote="Ghalev"][quote="adventurechris"]The joy of a game comes from the [i]discovery[/i] and [i]mastery[/i] of something new. [/quote]Except for those who take joy from other aspects.[/quote]Well, yes, that's true, except when it isn't. [emote]:ugeek:[/emote] In all seriousness, though, I can think of a few things that I would agree fall outside that realm - socialization is the biggest one I can think of. But I can't think of a story-heavy game I've played where discovery and mastery weren't at least up front and center. What else would you suggest?[/quote]

I would suggest a great IF is one that engages one's reader-mind rather than game-playing-mind.  While I'm no stranger to the pleasures of mastery -- [i]Street Fighter[/i] scratches that itch -- in a story-heavy work I'd like mastery to come early in the game, say by the end of the first Act, so that I may concentrate on the plot & characters henceforth... and influencing the plot via that mastery.   Story can sometimes be slow-starting; it takes time to emotionally invest, after all.  But once the story is in full gear, wrestling with mechanics is an unwelcome distraction.  IMHO.

Traditional gameplay's whole fail-retry mechanic really dilutes the hell out of a story anyway. (Specifically, the repetition of the same scene/chapter/whatchamacallit.)  I  know that isn't news to anyone, but it supports my point:  mastery should come early, on the first playthrough. 

I give [i]Spider and Web[/i] somewhat high marks here, as mastery comes in the form of knowing what your utility belt tools do, although I dock it points in that it isn't really told to you ahead of time IIRC, so there *is* a bit of die-retry going on, even if the framing story ameliorates it somewhat.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2078&start=0#p14074
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: found_in
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-25 18:13:05

That's not going to work. The compiler sticks in a found_in property for every backdrop (defined as nowhere, unless you change it by saying "move BACKDROP to DESCRIPTION".) I don't see a way to override that at compile time.

The other problems are:

* The definition of "found_in" is a function which takes just one argument, a room. (It implicitly tests the backdrop "self", aka "the item described".)

* The implementation of a function property isn't just a native I6 function pointer. There's a closure object in there. Found_in has to be a native I6 function pointer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2077&start=0#p14075
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Image able to update after a event happens
User: InsertCoin25 / DateTime: 2011-02-25 18:38:09

I was thinking more along the lines of making duplicate images, but if I can make a blank room image and incorporate many sprites to fill the blank room image then I would go that route. I do not know if the Glimmr extension allows me to set sprites at a certain x,y point onto a image. Basically making the sprites transparent and allowing them to overlap the blank room image (thus making the room look full of objects). If this option is not possible I will go the duplicate image way. Is there a way to erase a image when a new image appears or do they just overlap each other (using the duplicate image option)?

Thanks
InsertCoin25

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2078&start=0#p14076
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: found_in
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-25 18:41:34

I did some I6 hacking to try to make this work. Unfortunately, I don't think it can.

The problem is down in the guts of the MoveFloatingObjects() function. By the time the object's found_in property is invoked, the information about what object it *is* has been lost. (The found_in function is presumed to have been written specially for that object.) So there's no way to look up any properties of the object at that time.

This is the problem that closures are intended to solve (a closure wraps up the object identity and the function together). But found_in is not a closure, as I said -- it's an old primitive thing. So that's no help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2077&start=0#p14077
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Image able to update after a event happens
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-25 21:42:43

Sure, you can place as many sprites as you like at any coordinates you like.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2078&start=0#p14078
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: found_in
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-25 21:56:19

If you don't mind me offering for you to do more work: Backdrops are kind of a crappy hack. You could solve more than one problem by providing an alternate implementation of backdrops using relations and scoping, and then building your multitudes functionality on top of that system.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2078&start=0#p14079
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: found_in
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-25 22:07:20

Very true. But rather a lot *more* work than the crappy backdrop hack. :)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2081&start=0#p14080
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Putting TADS games online with jetty?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-26 07:07:30

I was pottering around inky's site the other day and I ran across [url=http://inky.org/if/jetty/index.html]Jetty[/url], a java-based interpreter for TADS 2 that allows you to play games online. Which seems awesome! But it also doesn't seem to have been updated since 2002, and also I guess TADS 2 isn't TADS 3. Is that why people don't use Jetty to post TADS games online?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2081&start=0#p14081
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Putting TADS games online with jetty?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-02-26 07:11:08

There are probably a few examples of Jetty in use, but you're right that it isn't very popular. For good reason - Java is horrid.

Although it's also Java (or JVM at least) ZMPP is having TADS 3 support added to it. I don't know how stable it is yet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2081&start=0#p14082
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Putting TADS games online with jetty?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-26 07:28:50

[quote="Dannii"]There are probably a few examples of Jetty in use, but you're right that it isn't very popular. For good reason - Java is horrid.[/quote]

Here's where I show my total ignorance of the subject -- what does Parchment run on? Javascript, I guess. What's the difference?

[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript]Hmm[/url]:

[quote]The change of name from LiveScript to JavaScript roughly coincided with Netscape adding support for Java technology in its Netscape Navigator web browser. The final choice of name caused confusion, giving the impression that the language was a spin-off of the Java programming language, and the choice has been characterized by many as a marketing ploy by Netscape to give JavaScript the cachet of what was then the hot new web-programming language.[/quote]

Worked on me, I guess! Though perhaps not in the way they expected.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2081&start=0#p14083
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Putting TADS games online with jetty?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-02-26 07:51:23

Yeah, Javascript really has nothing in common with Java other than that they both use curly brackets { }! It's actually becoming more similar to Python in many ways, though it's prototype-based inheritance model is pretty unique for mainstream languages.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2071&start=0#p14084
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Care to revisit a good but neglected game?
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-02-26 09:06:12

I just read the SPAG review, and I'm downloading the game right now.  The concept sounds really good.  I love high fantasy myself; it's my favorite genre for novels.  Even though this game probably isn't high fantasy itself; it sounds as if its [i]about[/i] fantasy, much like the book/movie [i]Inkheart[/i] (of which I've only seen the movie).  I'd really to play [i]Rans[/i] though I can't guarantee that I'll get to it right away.  Thanks for the update. [emote]:-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2082&start=0#p14085
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Redirecting all disambiguation requests?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-26 12:36:18

I'm working on a demo which runs entirely by keywords, and I'd like to be able to prevent the game from ever asking for disambiguation. So if the player just types "x," I'd like to have the game go straight to the routine for processing an invalid keyword rather than ask "What do you want to examine?" and [i]then[/i] go to the routine for processing an invalid keyword.

Is there a hook I can use to stop the disambiguation from happening? The following doesn't work:

[code]Before asking which do you mean: try wrong-keywording instead. Rule for supplying a missing noun: Try wrong-keywording instead.[/code]

("Wrong-keywording" is what I want to happen when a wrong keyword is entered.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2081&start=0#p14086
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Putting TADS games online with jetty?
User: weiju / DateTime: 2011-02-26 13:02:53

[quote="Dannii"]There are probably a few examples of Jetty in use, but you're right that it isn't very popular. For good reason - Java is horrid.

Although it's also Java (or JVM at least) ZMPP is having TADS 3 support added to it. I don't know how stable it is yet.[/quote]

ZMPP's TADS3 support is far from being done. I don't expect to be able to show anything significant beyond the first screen until the second half of this year. Analyzing the execution paths of the reference implementation is *very* tedious.

Wei-ju

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2082&start=0#p14087
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Redirecting all disambiguation requests?
User: joningold / DateTime: 2011-02-26 13:16:18

The most efficient route is to go into NounDomain in Parser.i6t, and tell it to rfalse; before running any of the "which do you mean" activities.

In fact, you can probably just do one rfalse; right after the bit where it returns a match if it's got one; that's about ten lines from the top of the function.

cheers
jon

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2082&start=0#p14088
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Redirecting all disambiguation requests?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-02-26 13:38:31

After fooling around with a lot of stuff that turned out to be not necessary, this is what I came up with:

[code]Section - Disable disambiguation questions

[Here we rewrite NounDomain to stop disambiguation questions.]

Include (-
[ NounDomain domain1 domain2 context
	first_word i j k l answer_words marker;
    #Ifdef DEBUG;
    if (parser_trace >= 4) {
        print "   [NounDomain called at word ", wn, "^";
        print "   ";
        if (indef_mode) {
            print "seeking indefinite object: ";
            if (indef_type & OTHER_BIT)  print "other ";
            if (indef_type & MY_BIT)     print "my ";
            if (indef_type & THAT_BIT)   print "that ";
            if (indef_type & PLURAL_BIT) print "plural ";
            if (indef_type & LIT_BIT)    print "lit ";
            if (indef_type & UNLIT_BIT)  print "unlit ";
            if (indef_owner ~= 0) print "owner:", (name) indef_owner;
            new_line;
            print "   number wanted: ";
            if (indef_wanted == INDEF_ALL_WANTED) print "all"; else
print indef_wanted;
            new_line;
            print "   most likely GNAs of names: ", indef_cases, "^";
        }
        else print "seeking definite object^";
    }
    #Endif; ! DEBUG

    match_length = 0; number_matched = 0; match_from = wn;

    SearchScope(domain1, domain2, context);

    #Ifdef DEBUG;
    if (parser_trace >= 4) print "   [ND made ", number_matched, " matches]^";
    #Endif; ! DEBUG

    wn = match_from+match_length;

    ! If nothing worked at all, leave with the word marker skipped past the
    ! first unmatched word...

    if (number_matched == 0) { wn++; rfalse; }

    ! Suppose that there really were some words being parsed (i.e., we did
    ! not just infer).  If so, and if there was only one match, it must be
    ! right and we return it...

    if (match_from <= num_words) {
        if (number_matched == 1) {
            i=match_list-->0;
            return i;
        }

        ! ...now suppose that there was more typing to come, i.e. suppose that
        ! the user entered something beyond this noun.  If nothing ought to follow,
        ! then there must be a mistake, (unless what does follow is just a full
        ! stop, and or comma)

        if (wn <= num_words) {
            i = NextWord(); wn--;
            if (i ~=  AND1__WD or AND2__WD or AND3__WD or comma_word
                   or THEN1__WD or THEN2__WD or THEN3__WD
                   or BUT1__WD or BUT2__WD or BUT3__WD) {
                if (lookahead == ENDIT_TOKEN) rfalse;
            }
        }
    }

    ! Now look for a good choice, if there's more than one choice...

    number_of_classes = 0;

    if (number_matched == 1) i = match_list-->0;
    if (number_matched > 1) {
        i = Adjudicate(context);
        if (i == -1) rfalse;
        if (i == 1) rtrue;       !  Adjudicate has made a multiple
                             !  object, and we pass it on
   }

    ! If i is non-zero here, one of two things is happening: either
    ! (a) an inference has been successfully made that object i is
    !     the intended one from the user's specification, or
    ! (b) the user finished typing some time ago, but we've decided
    !     on i because it's the only possible choice.
    ! In either case we have to keep the pattern up to date,
    ! note that an inference has been made and return.
    ! (Except, we don't note which of a pile of identical objects.)

    if (i ~= 0) {
        if (dont_infer) return i;
        if (inferfrom == 0) inferfrom=pcount;
        pattern-->pcount = i;
        return i;
    }

    ! If we get here, there was no obvious choice of object to make.
   rfalse;	

]; ! end of NounDomain
-) instead of "Noun Domain" in "Parser.i6t".


Rule for printing a parser error:
	say "This is where Matt's rules intervene." instead.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2082&start=0#p14089
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Redirecting all disambiguation requests?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-02-26 13:46:38

Oh, by the way, that code runs your special rule whenever there is a parser error. This code will only run your special rule instead of a disambiguation question:
[code]Section - Disable disambiguation questions

ambiguity_alert is a number that varies. ambiguity_alert is usually 0.

[Here we rewrite NounDomain to stop disambiguation questions.]


Include (-
[ NounDomain domain1 domain2 context
	first_word i j k l answer_words marker;
    #Ifdef DEBUG;
    if (parser_trace >= 4) {
        print "   [NounDomain called at word ", wn, "^";
        print "   ";
        if (indef_mode) {
            print "seeking indefinite object: ";
            if (indef_type & OTHER_BIT)  print "other ";
            if (indef_type & MY_BIT)     print "my ";
            if (indef_type & THAT_BIT)   print "that ";
            if (indef_type & PLURAL_BIT) print "plural ";
            if (indef_type & LIT_BIT)    print "lit ";
            if (indef_type & UNLIT_BIT)  print "unlit ";
            if (indef_owner ~= 0) print "owner:", (name) indef_owner;
            new_line;
            print "   number wanted: ";
            if (indef_wanted == INDEF_ALL_WANTED) print "all"; else
print indef_wanted;
            new_line;
            print "   most likely GNAs of names: ", indef_cases, "^";
        }
        else print "seeking definite object^";
    }
    #Endif; ! DEBUG

    match_length = 0; number_matched = 0; match_from = wn;

    SearchScope(domain1, domain2, context);

    #Ifdef DEBUG;
    if (parser_trace >= 4) print "   [ND made ", number_matched, " matches]^";
    #Endif; ! DEBUG

    wn = match_from+match_length;

    ! If nothing worked at all, leave with the word marker skipped past the
    ! first unmatched word...

    if (number_matched == 0) { wn++; rfalse; }

    ! Suppose that there really were some words being parsed (i.e., we did
    ! not just infer).  If so, and if there was only one match, it must be
    ! right and we return it...

    if (match_from <= num_words) {
        if (number_matched == 1) {
            i=match_list-->0;
            return i;
        }

        ! ...now suppose that there was more typing to come, i.e. suppose that
        ! the user entered something beyond this noun.  If nothing ought to follow,
        ! then there must be a mistake, (unless what does follow is just a full
        ! stop, and or comma)

        if (wn <= num_words) {
            i = NextWord(); wn--;
            if (i ~=  AND1__WD or AND2__WD or AND3__WD or comma_word
                   or THEN1__WD or THEN2__WD or THEN3__WD
                   or BUT1__WD or BUT2__WD or BUT3__WD) {
                if (lookahead == ENDIT_TOKEN) rfalse;
            }
        }
    }

    ! Now look for a good choice, if there's more than one choice...

    number_of_classes = 0;

    if (number_matched == 1) i = match_list-->0;
    if (number_matched > 1) {
        i = Adjudicate(context);
        if (i == -1) rfalse;
        if (i == 1) rtrue;       !  Adjudicate has made a multiple
                             !  object, and we pass it on
   }

    ! If i is non-zero here, one of two things is happening: either
    ! (a) an inference has been successfully made that object i is
    !     the intended one from the user's specification, or
    ! (b) the user finished typing some time ago, but we've decided
    !     on i because it's the only possible choice.
    ! In either case we have to keep the pattern up to date,
    ! note that an inference has been made and return.
    ! (Except, we don't note which of a pile of identical objects.)

    if (i ~= 0) {
        if (dont_infer) return i;
        if (inferfrom == 0) inferfrom=pcount;
        pattern-->pcount = i;
        return i;
    }

    ! If we get here, there was no obvious choice of object to make.
   (+ ambiguity_alert +) = 1;
   rfalse;	

]; ! end of NounDomain
-) instead of "Noun Domain" in "Parser.i6t".


Rule for printing a parser error when ambiguity_alert is 1:
	now ambiguity_alert is 0;
	say "This is where Matt's rules intervene." instead. [/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2082&start=0#p14090
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Redirecting all disambiguation requests?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-26 13:58:58

Thanks Victor and Jon! As it happens I also want to run the code whenever there's a parser error (though I know how to do that in I7), so I can use your first code. 

It looks like I also need something to replace "block vaguely going," but that shouldn't be a problem.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2082&start=0#p14091
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Redirecting all disambiguation requests?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-02-26 15:50:22

If you don't have any use for the standard grammar at all you could just remove the part that defines it in the Standard Library, leaving just the out of world actions:

[code]Section Grammar (in place of Section SR4/10 - Grammar in Standard Rules by Graham Nelson)

Understand "score" as requesting the score.
Understand "quit" or "q" as quitting the game.
Understand "save" as saving the game.
Understand "restart" as restarting the game.
Understand "restore" as restoring the game.
Understand "verify" as verifying the story file.
Understand "version" as requesting the story file version.
Understand "script" or "script on" or "transcript" or "transcript on" as switching the story
	transcript on.
Understand "script off" or "transcript off" as switching the story transcript off.[/code]
(This is what I did in Starborn and it worked quite well.)

The added benefit is that you still get the disambiguation prompt if the player uses a keyword that's a synonym for more than one object.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2081&start=0#p14092
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Putting TADS games online with jetty?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-02-26 16:34:24

Could [url=http://code.google.com/intl/fi/webtoolkit/overview.html]Google Web Toolkit[/url] be used to turn the Java interpreters into JavaScript? I don't know much about GWT other than that it can be used to compile Java into JavaScript, so I don't know how much work that would require and if it would be feasible at all.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2082&start=0#p14093
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Redirecting all disambiguation requests?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-26 16:36:18

[quote="Juhana"]If you don't have any use for the standard grammar at all you could just remove the part that defines it in the Standard Library, leaving just the out of world actions:

[code]Section Grammar (in place of Section SR4/10 - Grammar in Standard Rules by Graham Nelson)

Understand "score" as requesting the score.
Understand "quit" or "q" as quitting the game.
Understand "save" as saving the game.
Understand "restart" as restarting the game.
Understand "restore" as restoring the game.
Understand "verify" as verifying the story file.
Understand "version" as requesting the story file version.
Understand "script" or "script on" or "transcript" or "transcript on" as switching the story
	transcript on.
Understand "script off" or "transcript off" as switching the story transcript off.[/code]
(This is what I did in Starborn and it worked quite well.)

The added benefit is that you still get the disambiguation prompt if the player uses a keyword that's a synonym for more than one object.[/quote]

Oh, very nice! This is exactly what I want, though I think I'll drop "score."

[EDIT: Though maybe I'll use Victor's code as well, because I'm not sure I want to produce a disambiguation request if the player enters "the"; if they only enter "the" then they get the wrong-keyword code, dammit. This isn't a very gamey game.]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2077&start=0#p14094
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Image able to update after a event happens
User: InsertCoin25 / DateTime: 2011-02-26 16:46:49

This is great news [emote]:D[/emote]. Does this also mean I can change any given sprite image into another sprite image? Example: Sprite of vase (not broken) - vase gets hit with a object - sprite changes to vase broken.

Thanks
InsertCoin25

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2081&start=0#p14095
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Putting TADS games online with jetty?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-02-26 18:02:55

Not worth it, anything it produced would have terrible performance. That said, <a class="postlink" href="http://z-machine.appspot.com/">http://z-machine.appspot.com/</a> is exactly that: a Java interpreter, ZAX, converted to Javascript with GWT.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2077&start=0#p14096
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Image able to update after a event happens
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-26 20:24:15

Yes. The Canvas-Based Drawing extension regards a "sprite" as a kind of container placed at a given set of coordinates (but free to move); you can change the actual image displayed as you like. The compass rose exit lister example on the blog swaps out images to indicate whether the room in a given direction has been visited or not, while the canvas editor uses swapping to implement on and off states for buttons.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2077&start=0#p14097
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Image able to update after a event happens
User: InsertCoin25 / DateTime: 2011-02-26 21:53:40

This is a excellent tutorial ektemple [emote]:D[/emote] Thanks for the info and keep up the great work on Glimmr. Will be working with this extension for a while so I guess its time to learn as much as possible to get my project in full swing. Thanks again.. [emote]:D[/emote] 

InsertCoin25

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2080&start=0#p14098
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2011
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2011-02-26 22:38:43

[quote="Jizaboz"]Is anyone else entering? I just submitted an email that I'm intending on doing it. 

The deadline to submit intentions is March 1st  [emote]:o[/emote][/quote]

Barring disasters, I'm in.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2083&start=0#p14099
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: A chair
User: Icefall / DateTime: 2011-02-27 02:59:03

How do I make a chair sittable and standable?


Edit: I figured it out:

A chair is a kind of supporter. A chair is always enterable.
In the red room is two chairs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2083&start=0#p14100
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A chair
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-02-27 04:34:17

In [b][color=#0000FF]TADS 3[/color][/b] you just need to use a Chair object:

[code]
+Chair 'sturdy chair/seat' 'sturdy chair'
    "It definitely looks like it can take your weight. "
;
[/code]
In [b][color=#0000FF]Inform 7[/color][/b], postures aren't included by default, but the recipe book includes an example of how to add them:

[url]http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rex346.html#e346[/url]

In [b][color=#0000FF]real life[/color][/b] you'll need to learn carpentry:

[url]http://www.woodworking4home.com/ChairPlans.php[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2084&start=0#p14101
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Error Message when trying to Release...
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-02-27 08:48:30

Hello - I'm testing the Automap extension in a small example game, the code I'm using is below and seems to run fine inside Inform7, however when I go to Release it so I can play it via Gargoyle I keep coming up with the error message which I've tacked on at the very end of this post. I have no idea how to resolve it. If anyone could tell me what I'm doing wrong I would much appreciate it. Thanks for any help!

[code]"Glimmr Automap Test" by Dustin Neff

Include Automap by Mark Tilford.
Include Glimmr Automap by Erik Temple.
Include Glimmr Automap Tileset by Erik Temple.

Include Glimmr Bitmap Font by Erik Temple.

Section - Compass





Section - Compass End
	
	



	[Before looking for the first time:
		say "This is a small example for Glimmr Automap, a graphical front-end to Mark Tilford's Automap extension. It generates a map as the player explores the world of the game, with very little effort needed on the part of the author.

	This example for the Glimmr Automap extension adds new behavior to our procedurally generated map. Clicking on a room in the map will now produce the command GO TO <ROOM>. To query the map about the name of a room, press the ? button, then click on the room you wish to query. Zoom the map by using the + and - buttons."]
	
Use automap hide paths through closed doors.

The map-window is a map-display window spawned by the main-window. The position is g-placeabove. The measurement of the map-window is 50. The associated canvas of the map-window is the map-canvas.

The map-canvas is a g-canvas. The associated canvas of a g-element is the map-canvas.

When play begins:
		follow the opening up the map window rules.

Understand "[any room]" as going by name. Understand "go to [any room]" as going by name.

Going by name is an action applying to one thing.

Check going by name:
		if the noun is the location, say "You're already in [the location]." instead;
		if the noun is not adjacent and the noun is unvisited, say "That noun did not make sense in this context." instead.

Carry out going by name:
		let aim be the best route from the location to the noun, using doors;
		if aim is not a direction, say "You can't think how to get there from here." instead;
		say "(heading [aim])[command clarification break]";
		try going aim;
		if the location is not the noun, say "You'll have to stop here."
	
Automap graphlink rule for a room (called the target):
		let target-text be the printed name of the target in upper case;
		change glulx replacement command to "GO TO [target-text]";
		exit.

 
 
 
 







 

Section 1 - Hit Points 

A person has a number called maximum hit points. A person has a number called current hit points. 

An animal has a number called maximum hit points. An animal has a number called current hit points.

The maximum hit points of the player is 35. The maximum hit points of the animal is 5. 
    
When play begins:
	repeat with victim running through people:
		now the current hit points of the victim is the maximum hit points of the victim. 

Definition: a person is dead if his current hit points are less than 0. 

[Section 1.1 - Diagnosis 

Diagnosing is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "diagnose [something]" as diagnosing. 

Check diagnosing:
	if the noun is not a person, say "Only people can have diagnoses." instead. 
	
Carry out diagnosing:
	say "[if the noun is the player]You have[otherwise][The noun] has[end if] [current hit points of the noun] out of a possible [maximum hit points of the noun] hit points remaining." ]

Section 1.2 -  Weapons

A weapon is a kind of thing. A weapon has a number called the maximum damage. The maximum damage of a weapon is usually 4. 

The player carries a weapon called a mace. The maximum damage of the mace is 3.
    
Understand the commands "attack" and "punch" and "destroy" and "kill" and "murder" and "hit" and "thump" and "break" and "smash" and "torture" and "wreck" as something new. 

Attacking it with is an action applying to one visible thing and one carried thing. Understand "attack [someone] with [something preferably held]" as attacking it with. 
    
Understand the commands "punch" and "destroy" and "kill" and "murder" and "hit" and "thump" and "break" and "smash" and "torture" and "wreck" as "attack". 
    
The attacking it with action has a number called the damage inflicted. 

Setting action variables for attacking something with something:
let the maximum attack be the maximum damage of the second noun;
now the damage inflicted is a random number between 1 and the maximum attack. 

Check an actor attacking something with something (this is the can't attack with something that isn't a weapon rule):
	if the second noun is not a weapon:
		if the actor is the player, say "[The second noun] does not qualify as a weapon.";
		stop the action. 

Check an actor attacking something with something (this is the can't attack a non-person rule):
	if the noun is not a person:
		if the actor is the player, say "[The noun] has no life to lose.";
		stop the action. 

Carry out an actor attacking something with something (this is the standard attacking it with a weapon rule):
decrease the current hit points of the noun by the damage inflicted;
if the noun is dead, remove the noun from play. 
        
Report attacking a dead person with something (this is the death-report priority rule):
	say "You attack with [the second noun], killing [the noun]!" instead. 

Report attacking someone with something (this is the normal attacking report rule):
	say "You attack [the noun] with [the second noun], causing [damage inflicted] point[s] of damage!" instead. 
    
Section 2 - Scene

The Courtyard is a room. The Palace is north of the Courtyard.

The guard dog is a male animal in the Courtyard. The description is "He looks mean and nasty." 

There is a club in the Courtyard. "There's a gnarled old club here studded with thorns." Understand "stick" as club. The club is a weapon.

Instead of going north in the Courtyard:
	if the dog is in the Courtyard:
		say "The dog snarls at you and won't let you through the door!";
	otherwise:
		continue the action.

The Fountain is west of the Courtyard.

The Drawbridge is east of the Courtyard.

	
	[/code]


When I Release so I can play the example with Gargoyle I get this error:

**********
Packaging up for Release - Failed 

  Glimmer Automap Test Materials 
 Release 
  Glimmr Automap Test.gblorb 
 

Inform translated your source text as usual, to manufacture a 'story file': all of that worked fine. But the Release then went wrong, for the following reason:


Fatal error: unable to read data: filename 'C:\Documents and Settings\Loree\Desktop\Glimmer Automap 02-27-2011\Glimmer Automap Test Materials\Figures\Automap_Tileset_059.png' 
**********

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2084&start=0#p14102
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error Message when trying to Release...
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-27 09:16:27

It looks like the file Automap_Tileset_059.png is missing from your Materials-->Figures folder. Inform doesn't care if you're missing files when you're playing the game in the IDE, but it's very picky when you do a release (for obvious reasons).

If you downloaded Glimmr Automap before September 22 of 2010, that file and a few others were missing (sorry!). You can download the most recent full Glimmr package to get them; see my signature for the link.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2084&start=0#p14103
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error Message when trying to Release...
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-27 09:25:32

...or I guess it's possible that you have the file, but it's corrupt. Either way, getting it from the latest release should fix things.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2080&start=0#p14104
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2011
User: mktacoma / DateTime: 2011-02-27 09:52:01

Similarly for me - barring disasters...

I have a few "real life" things that are higher priority over writing currently, so if I can get enough time to finish the project, I'll be in.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2079&start=0#p14105
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with Disambiguation Control/pronoun "her"?
User: clara / DateTime: 2011-02-27 10:05:30

Awesome! Thanks so much!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1968&start=0#p14106
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Combine reports extension
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2011-02-27 11:11:10

I can't recall why I did it this way; it may be at the time I wrote the extension I wasn't sure that people would want it to override the single object case in this way. I'll take another look at it in due course and maybe add in an option.

EDIT: Okay, I've now taken a look and made the following tweak at the start of the actionReportManager object:

[code]
actionReportManager: object
    /* 
     *   The minimum number of objects that must be in a list before we 
     *   attempt to summarize it. Normally this will be 2, but it may be 
     *   that some games will want to change it to 1, for example, so that 
     *   the same reporting style is used for singleton objects as for lists.
     */
    
    minLengthToSummarize = 2
    
    afterActionMain()
    {        
        /* 
         *   If the action isn't iterating over at least 
         *   minLengthToSummarize direct objects we have nothing to do, so 
         *   we'll stop before doing any messing with the transcript
         */
        
        if(gAction.dobjList_.length() < minLengthToSummarize)
            return;
[/code]

By default the extension will behave as before, but changing actionReportManager.minLengthToSummarize to 1 will change the behaviour to that requested by the OP.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2080&start=0#p14107
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2011
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-02-27 11:47:02

Cool. I emailed the address at the bottom of the Spring Thing site with my intent Friday night, but haven't heard back yet on where to send my entry fee. Hopefully will hear something soon.

EDIT: Got the email this morning  [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2071&start=0#p14108
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Care to revisit a good but neglected game?
User: Rotonoto / DateTime: 2011-02-27 11:59:22

The walkthrough is available, in case you don't want to deal with the puzzles ("whose difficulty is extreme," according to Duncan Stevens: I disagree).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2084&start=0#p14109
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error Message when trying to Release...
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-02-27 16:55:35

[quote="ektemple"]...or I guess it's possible that you have the file, but it's corrupt. Either way, getting it from the latest release should fix things.[/quote]

Thanks for your help, I thought I downloaded the latest package but must have been mistaken, so I'll do that now. BTW, I'm new to this, but does one of your Glimmr extensions allow you to place a background image behind the automap?

I'm not sure sure if you've played the King of Shreds and Patches--or if he used your automapping--but that's along the lines of what I had in mind. Just curious. Thanks -- Dustin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2084&start=0#p14110
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error Message when trying to Release...
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-27 17:50:03

Ugh, actually the newest version is [i]also[/i] missing those tiles... Somehow, I managed to introduce some strange atavism into my file archives when 6G60 was released. Anyway, I've just posted release 3.3, which restores the missing tiles. Thanks for your patience!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2086&start=0#p14111
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Need help creating action applying to unseen person
User: Mushroom Spider / DateTime: 2011-02-27 19:31:58

Okay, so I'm trying to create an action that allows the player to change which character they control at will. I need the action to apply to the named person, even if that person is not visible or touchable (since most puzzles will probably require the characters being in separate places). Here is the code I have so far.

[code]Defense Solicitor is a man. He is in Defense Solicitor's Office.
Pompous Barrister is a man. He is in Pompous Barrister's Office.
Studious Intern is a man. He is in Studious Intern's Office.
The Wind is a person. It is in the precarious brick ledge.

Being is an action applying to one thing.
Understand "Be [something]" as being.

Check being something: if the noun is not a person, say "How often have you dreamed of being [the noun], but alas it cannot be." instead.
Check being something: if the noun is the player, say "You are already yourself. It's part of being you!" instead.

Carry out being Defense Solicitor: now the player is the noun; now the command prompt is "DS: ".
Carry out being Pompous Barrister: now the player is the noun; now the command prompt is "PB: ".
Carry out being Studious Intern: now the player is the noun; now the command prompt is "SI: ".
Carry out being The Wind: now the player is the noun; now the command prompt is "TW: ".

Report being something: say "You are now [the noun]."[/code]

I know the code isn't perfect or especially elegant, but I'm not worried about that. I'm just want it to work so that regardless of the player's location, they can become the Pompous Barrister by typing in "Be Pompous Barrister".

Right now, the key issue is in this line:
[code]Being is an action applying to one thing.[/code]
I just don't know how to go about making the action able to apply to an untouchable, non-visible thing such as a person in another room.
When two characters are in the same room, this code works perfect for what I need.

I also have this little problem about getting rid of the "former self" generated by:
[code]When play begins: now the command prompt is "DS: "; now the player is Defense Solicitor.[/code]
But that is less of an issue at the moment.

Oh, and this bit isn't working either [code]Report being something: say "You are now [the noun]."[/code]
But again, less important than the problem of performing the action.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2086&start=0#p14112
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need help creating action applying to unseen person
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-27 20:17:03

[quote="Mushroom Spider"]Right now, the key issue is in this line:
[code]Being is an action applying to one thing.[/code]
I just don't know how to go about making the action able to apply to an untouchable, non-visible thing such as a person in another room.[/quote]

You need to do two things here:

[code]Being is an action applying to one visible thing.
Understand "Be [any thing]" as being.[/code]

Note "visible" and "any thing." "Visible" is actually anything the player can refer to, as opposed to "touchable." (See 12.17 of the documentation.) The "[any thing]" token lets the player refer to any thing, not just things that are in scope. (See section 16.7 of the documentation.) Put these two things together, and now the player can type "Be x" to refer to x no matter where it is -- whether the player can see it or not!

The use of "visible" here is super confusing and unfortunate, but the thing to keep in mind is that "visible" is actually much more permissive than the default; "visible" is anything the player can talk about, and in combination with "[any thing]" or "[any person]" often means things that aren't, well, visible. 

[quote]I also have this little problem about getting rid of the "former self" generated by:
[code]When play begins: now the command prompt is "DS: "; now the player is Defense Solicitor.[/code]
But that is less of an issue at the moment.[/quote]

I don't understand the former self object very well, but I think you can get rid of this by saying "The player is Defense Solicitor" (or whoever the player is at the start of the game). 

The report rules are a tricky case; it looks to me as though what's going on is that, since the player's identity changes in the carry out stage, the report rule doesn't fire, because it's not reporting [i]the player[/i] being anymore. (Someone who's better informed may be able to correct me.) I noticed that this does fire:

[code]Report an actor being: say "You are now [the noun]."[/code]

But unfortunately it always says "You are now yourself," which is not enlightening.

I would actually get around this by folding it into the carry out rule. Currently that would mean that you'd have to write something for each of your four cases, and I think it really would pay off to write a general rule for "carry out being" so you could just say "You are now [the noun]" before becoming the noun, which should produce nicer output; but I can't actually get my attempt to compile now, so I won't try to boss you around too much.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2086&start=0#p14113
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need help creating action applying to unseen person
User: Mushroom Spider / DateTime: 2011-02-27 20:48:56

[quote="matt w"]
You need to do two things here:

[code]Being is an action applying to one visible thing.
Understand "Be [any thing]" as being.[/code]
[/quote]
Yes! This worked perfect! I think I'll go read the chapter on scope, I kinda scanned past that one :/
[quote]
I don't understand the former self object very well, but I think you can get rid of this by saying "The player is Defense Solicitor" (or whoever the player is at the start of the game). 
[/quote]
After posting, I got rid of the former self by starting the game in a disconnected room called 'limbo', so that he got left behind after the change in character occurred. However, simply putting "The player is Defense Solicitor" at the start works better, so I'm going with that.
[quote]
I would actually get around this by folding it into the carry out rule. Currently that would mean that you'd have to write something for each of your four cases...[/quote]
I'll go with that, it's not too difficult and I think once all is said and done there will only be maybe 6 characters total. 
Although, now that all those bits are working, I just realized I should probably put in an automated 'Look' command there so the player knows where the new character is. Back to work!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2084&start=0#p14114
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error Message when trying to Release...
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-27 21:49:37

I realized I forgot to answer your question about the background image, so here goes:

The map in King of Shreds and Patches is not an automap--it was carefully laid out and programmed to reveal itself room by room as the player explores. In this, it is more like the map in the Glimmr Canvas-Based Drawing examples, or in [url=http://glimmr.wordpress.com/2010/08/29/basic-floorplan-toolkit-tutorial/]this blog post[/url]. More to the point--because it was laid out in advance, the KoSP map always looks consistent over its background. 

Automaps, on the other hand, are autogenerated and automatically sized to best fit in the available space; they may also be displayed at multiple scales/zoom levels. When you combine this with the fact that, in Glulx, the author can at most control one dimension of the graphics window and can never control the aspect ratio--well, it's just not likely that you're going to get as consistent a result. Faced with this, Glimmr Automap simply drops the idea of a background image; instead, the canvas on which the map is rendered is resized as necessary to fit the optimum number of tiles onscreen. This means you have to do more work to make a background image work well, because there is no fixed canvas to pin it to.  

One way to get close is to restrain as many of these variables as you can. Here's some code that fixes one measurement of the window, as well as allowing only one size for tiles:

[code]The measurement of the map-window is 310.[This sets the window split to 310 pixels. You might want to use a different value, of course.]

The zoom-level set of the Glimmr Automap Tileset is {0.3600}. [This trims us down to 1 zoom level, the most zoomed out.]

The initial zoom level of the Glimmr Automap Tileset is 1.

The display status of the UI-frame is g-inactive. The display status of a UI-button is g-inactive. [With only one zoom level, we don't need the UI buttons.]

map-background is a sprite. The display-layer is 0. It is center-aligned. The image-ID is Figure of Map.

Element scaling the map-background:
	let coords be the center-point of the map-canvas;
	now entry 1 of the origin of map-background is entry 1 of the coords;
	now entry 2 of the origin of map-background is entry 2 of the coords.[/code]

With the window-size variation reduced, we can have a bit more control over how the image will be displayed. For even more control, you can set maximums for the width and height of the automap display (# of tiles); see the Automap documentation.

Another option would be to write a special rule to display the background image so that it is scaled to fit the window, ignoring the canvas entirely. We can cheat a little bit--the map background is here defined as a sprite, but in fact we won't use the standard rules for scaling or displaying sprites (sneaky, huh?)

[code]map-background is a sprite. The display-layer is 0. The image-ID is Figure of Map.

Element scaling rule for the map-background:
	rule succeeds.[We don't need to do the standard scaling, so skip it to save time.]

Element display rule for the map-background:
	let win_width be the width of the map-window;
	let win_height be the height of the map-window;
	let img_width be the image-width of the image-ID of map-background;
	let img_height be the image-height of the image-ID of map-background;
	let scale_factor be 100;
	let width_factor be (win_width * 100) / img_width;
	let height_factor be (win_height * 100) / img_height;
	if width_factor is greater than height_factor:
		let scale_factor be height_factor;
	otherwise:
		 let scale_factor be width_factor;
	let img_width be (img_width * scale_factor) / 100;
	let img_height be (img_height * scale_factor) / 100;
	let offset_width be the greater of 0 or (win_width - img_width) / 2;
	let offset_height be the greater of 0 or (win_height - img_height) / 2;
	display the image-ID of map-background in the map-window at (offset_width) by (offset_height) with dimensions (img_width) by (img_height).[/code]

The two options will look a bit different, so try 'em both. I think I like the second one best, personally. With both options, keep in mind that the Automap will change focal point and shift as the player uncovers more of the map, so you'll never have the kind of consistent display that KoSP has. To get the exact behavior of the KoSP map, where the map is fixed in place over the image, you'd be better off going with Glimmr Canvas-Based Drawing, maybe using the Canvas Editor to build it, as discussed in [url=http://glimmr.wordpress.com/2010/08/29/basic-floorplan-toolkit-tutorial/]this tutorial[/url].

Hope that helps!

--Erik

EDITED to fix an incomplete thought...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2086&start=0#p14115
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need help creating action applying to unseen person
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-27 22:09:15

I got my version to work (and have added in the automatic look that you suggested). The problem was, embarrassingly, a stray double quote mark; also I was trying to write "his prompt" or "the defense solicitor's prompt" when "The prompt of the defense solicitor" is required. I've put it in the spoiler:

[spoiler][code]Defense Solicitor's Office is a room. Pompous Barrister's Office is a room. Studious Intern's Office is a room. The Precarious Brick Ledge is a room.

A person has some text called the prompt. The prompt of a person is usually ">".
Defense Solicitor is a man. He is in Defense Solicitor's Office. The player is Defense Solicitor. The prompt of Defense Solicitor is "DS:".
Pompous Barrister is a man. He is in Pompous Barrister's Office. The prompt of Pompous Barrister is "PB:".
Studious Intern is a man. He is in Studious Intern's Office. The prompt of Studious Intern is "SI:".
The Wind is a person. It is in the precarious brick ledge. The prompt of The Wind is "TW:".
The pen is in studious intern's office.

Being is an action applying to one visible thing.
Understand "Be [any thing]" as being.

Check being something: if the noun is not a person, say "How often have you dreamed of being [the noun], but alas it cannot be." instead.
Check being something: if the noun is the player, say "You are already yourself. It's part of being you!" instead.


Carry out being: say "You are now [the noun]."; now the player is the noun; now the command prompt is the prompt of the noun; try looking.[/code][/spoiler]

Incidentally, you can restrict the command to people by changing "[any thing]" to "[any person]"; but then "be pen" will yield the dread "That noun did not make sense in that context" default response, so your approach is probably better as it lets you write your own response. Also, if you don't want every person to be playable, you can set a property for which people are playable and then restrict your check rule accordingly ("A person can be playable. If the noun is not a playable person...." or something like that).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1366&start=0#p14116
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keeping track of success and failure
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-02-28 00:51:20

An update for posterity: I believe, all the caveats above in mind, this should more or less work:

[code]To decide whether the action succeeded: (- (reason_the_action_failed==0) -).[/code]

The variable gets set to 0, which as of 6G60 is the procedural rulebook; so this may break once procedural rules are withdrawn, but I'm cautiously optimistic that whatever is assigned to 0 to replace it will be a default value.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2080&start=0#p14117
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2011
User: JohnW / DateTime: 2011-02-28 07:40:28

When I started my game in October I fully expected to be entering Spring Thing 2011 with time to spare. Well, that went well. I am starting to doubt it will even enter beta testing this year...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2087&start=0#p14118
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Windows Glulxe and Windows Git updated
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-02-28 09:51:55

I've made new releases of the Windows Glulxe and Windows Git interpreters, available from here
[url]http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXprogrammingXglulxXinterpretersXglulxe.html[/url]
[url]http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXprogrammingXglulxXinterpretersXgit.html[/url]
[url]http://www.davidkinder.co.uk/glulxe.html[/url]

The underlying interpreters have not changed: what is new is an update to the Glk implementation, Windows Glk. This brings support for the shiny new Glk 0.7.1 and 0.7.2 features: control over line input echoing and terminator characters; Unicode string decomposition and normalization; and access to the system's date and time.

One part of Glk 0.7.1 that has not entirely been handled is the new "no window border" flag that can be passed to the Glk function that opens windows. Windows Glk defaults to showing no borders anyway, but if window borders are turned on in the Options dialog, then the above "no window border" flag has no effect. This may be looked at at some point in the future.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2088&start=0#p14119
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Windows Frotz updated
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-02-28 09:58:54

A new release of the Windows Frotz interpreter is available from here
[url]http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXinfocomXinterpretersXfrotz.html[/url]
[url]http://www.davidkinder.co.uk/frotz.html[/url]

The underlying interpreters have not changed: what is new is an update to the Glk implementation, Windows Glk. This brings support for the shiny new Glk 0.7.1 and 0.7.2 features: control over line input echoing and terminator characters; Unicode string decomposition and normalization; and access to the system's date and time.

The changes are:

[list][*]Fixed a long standing bug which led to incorrect Quetzal save files being produced when a Blorbed game file is loaded into the interpreter. The save files worked with previous versions of Windows Frotz as the bug was present in both the loading and saving logic, but such save files could not be loaded into other interpreters.
Unfortunately, fixing this bug means that loading old Windows Frotz saved files when running a Blorbed game is broken, as it is not possible to automatically detect old Windows Frotz saved files. To work around this, old saved files can be renamed to end with ".badsav", which causes the interpreter to load them with the old, incorrect logic. The game position can then be re-saved as a correct Quetzal save file. [/*:m]
[*]The get_prop_len opcode now returns 0 when its argument is 0, as required by the Z-Machine Standard Version 1.1. [/*:m]
[*]Transcript files are now written out encoded as UTF-8, allowing non-ASCII characters to be represented, rather than being replaced by a question mark. [/*:m]
[*]Unicode characters now appear correctly in the scrollback dialog, provided that the dialog font supports them. 
Corrected a problem which could result in the options dialog using the wrong font. [/*:m][/list:u]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2078&start=0#p14120
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: found_in
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-28 10:02:29

What about rewriting MoveFloatingObjects to insert a hook to an I7 "moving floating objects" rulebook? Possible? Dangerous?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2084&start=0#p14121
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error Message when trying to Release...
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-02-28 10:13:37

Thanks a lot the second example works great! BTW, anyone who wants to create an automap can work with this example to make a header/automap for their game, as in this example:

[img]http://www.rive-fantasy.com/screenshot640.jpg[/img]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2084&start=0#p14122
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error Message when trying to Release...
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-28 10:25:45

That looks really nice, thanks for posting it! I'll try to fold that method into an example for the next release of Glimmr Automap.

The default tiles seem to look good with your background, but just FYI for you and anyone else who comes to this thread: You're perfectly welcome to edit the tiles to change their colors (easily done with selective color selection/shifting in Gimp or Photoshop), or to create your own tile designs. The release package includes the original tileset art in a format suitable for import into Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape, for use as a template.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2084&start=0#p14123
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error Message when trying to Release...
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-02-28 10:59:42

[quote="ektemple"]That looks really nice, thanks for posting it! I'll try to fold that method into an example for the next release of Glimmr Automap.

The default tiles seem to look good with your background, but just FYI for you and anyone else who comes to this thread: You're perfectly welcome to edit the tiles to change their colors (easily done with selective color selection/shifting in Gimp or Photoshop), or to create your own tile designs. The release package includes the original tileset art in a format suitable for import into Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape, for use as a template.

--Erik[/quote]

Thanks I'm definitely going to try creating some new tiles to experiment with. I think this is both a great way to add some window-dressing to an IF game, and communicate some useful information to the player. What would really be great, IMO, is another button which could open up a notepad or journal, so the player could take notes and store them, then call them up anytime for review with a mouse-click (should anyone want to take up the challenge of implementing it). Or if you could make little sticky notes and comments specific to each room on the map, which would appear with the tooltip query, and you could enter little comments to remind you of stuff in that room. But anyway thanks again for this example I'll keep working with it!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2084&start=0#p14124
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error Message when trying to Release...
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-28 11:29:12

[quote="dustinneff"][quote="ektemple"]That looks really nice, thanks for posting it! I'll try to fold that method into an example for the next release of Glimmr Automap.

The default tiles seem to look good with your background, but just FYI for you and anyone else who comes to this thread: You're perfectly welcome to edit the tiles to change their colors (easily done with selective color selection/shifting in Gimp or Photoshop), or to create your own tile designs. The release package includes the original tileset art in a format suitable for import into Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape, for use as a template.

--Erik[/quote]

Thanks I'm definitely going to try creating some new tiles to experiment with. I think this is both a great way to add some window-dressing to an IF game, and communicate some useful information to the player. What would really be great, IMO, is another button which could open up a notepad or journal, so the player could take notes and store them, then call them up anytime for review with a mouse-click (should anyone want to take up the challenge of implementing it). Or if you could make little sticky notes and comments specific to each room on the map, which would appear with the tooltip query, and you could enter little comments to remind you of stuff in that room. But anyway thanks again for this example I'll keep working with it![/quote]

I'm not feeling quite ambitious enough to implement it, but I think a notepad would be a great feature.  

The image is really nice - really makes me want to go play.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2084&start=10#p14125
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error Message when trying to Release...
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-28 11:59:19

Thanks for the ideas. I think I'll leave those interface suggestions for other people to implement, though. With Glimmr and my other extensions, I really want to encourage people to try many different kinds of things on the UI side--as well as different implementations of the same things--so the idea of wrapping Glimmr Automap into a fully prepackaged interface isn't something that I personally find motivating. (Glimmr Automap was really just a way to explore the use of Glimmr to deliver a "plug-and-play" option for authors, and since Mark Tilford's Automap was right at hand and relatively easy to hook into, I went ahead and did it.)

But, of course, if anyone else wants to do a little work to create the kind of UI package that dustinneff is describing, please feel free to utilize/adapt Glimmr Automap as needed!

By the way, Glimmr Automap is Quixe-friendly--it will use a text-only (the one provided by the Automap extension--ASCII or Unicode) map in interpreters that don't support graphics. If you are considering creating One Interface to Rule Them All, you might want to extend it with the same "graceful degradation" (as the javascript programmers say) in mind.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1512&start=10#p14126
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 parser errors: what parts *did* the parser understand
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-02-28 12:20:06

Yeah, I'm not convinced myself this is the best solution, since has been repeatedly demonstrated to me in multiple context over the past few weeks, NOBODY EVER READS THE MANUAL. So I'm not sure man pages are the answer.

But it's interesting to play with.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2086&start=0#p14127
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need help creating action applying to unseen person
User: Mushroom Spider / DateTime: 2011-02-28 12:20:14

[quote="matt w"]

[code]Carry out being: say "You are now [the noun]."; now the player is the noun; now the command prompt is the prompt of the noun; try looking.[/code][/quote]

Oh wow! This is far more elegant then the brute force approach I was trying. I think I'll attempt something like this for some of my other custom commands as well [emote]:D[/emote]

I decided I wanted to tell the player who they are last, after looking, so I just moved the line to the end and changed it to "You are now the [printed name of the noun]" and it works perfectly.

[quote]
Incidentally, you can restrict the command to people by changing "[any thing]" to "[any person]"; but then "be pen" will yield the dread "That noun did not make sense in that context" default response, so your approach is probably better as it lets you write your own response. Also, if you don't want every person to be playable, you can set a property for which people are playable and then restrict your check rule accordingly ("A person can be playable. If the noun is not a playable person...." or something like that).[/quote]

I considered using [any person], but decided I wanted a more customized response. However, I like that playable/unplayable rule far better, as it allows me to make some actors that cannot be played yet are not specifically isolated.

I decided to go with this:
[code]A thing can be playable or unplayable or inanimate. A thing is usually inanimate.
The Defense Solicitor is playable.[/code]
This allows me to make separate check rules for unplayable people and inanimate objects. Any new actor will simply be identified as playable or unplayable.
[code]Check being something: if the noun is inanimate, say "How often have you dreamed of being [the noun], but alas it cannot be." instead.
Check being something: if the noun is unplayable, say "Try as hard as you might, you'll never be like [the noun]".[/code]

I may draw up a table of random descriptions, so that every time you try to be an unplayable thing you get a random reason from a list of a dozen or so. This would also allow me to cut down the code to either playable or unplayable, so I only need to specify playable characters. Technically I could do that with only 1 description, but I like variety. I already have 3 other random tables used purely for adding spice, so one more wouldn't hurt!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2078&start=0#p14128
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: found_in
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-28 12:31:19

It appears to be possible, but I'm not sure about the dangers.

Here's a little proof-of-concept. I think the "ObjectFloats" routine needs some finesse - I'm not sure if every method of removing the sand from the beach would work properly:

I was wondering if the "presence rulebook" should fail if a floating object is not present, but "make no decision" if the object doesn't float. Do you think that's an abuse of the rulebook outcome?

[spoiler][code]

Include (-
[ MoveFloatingObjects i k l m address flag;
	if (real_location == nothing) return;
 	objectloop (i) {
		FollowRulebook( (+ presence rulebook +), i );
		if (RulebookSucceeded()) move i to real_location;
		else if (ObjectFloats(i) && parent(i)) remove i;
	}
];

[ ObjectFloats B address;
	return (B.&found_in ~= 0 && B hasnt absent);
];

[ ObjectFoundIn B R k l m address flag;
	if (~~ObjectFloats( B )) rfalse;
	address = B.&found_in;
	if (ZRegion(address-->0) == 2) {
                		m = address-->0;
		return (m.call(R) ~= 0);
	}
	else {
		k = B.#found_in;
                		for (l=0 : l<k/WORDSIZE : l++) {
                    		m = address-->l;
                    		if (ZRegion(m) == 2 && m.call(R) ~= 0) rtrue;
			if (m == R || m in R) rtrue;
           		}
       	}
	rfalse;
];

[ MoveBackdrop bd D x address;
	if (~~(bd ofclass K7_backdrop)) return RunTimeProblem(RTP_BACKDROPONLY, bd);
	if (bd.#found_in > WORDSIZE) {
		address = bd.&found_in;
		address-->0 = D;
	} else bd.found_in = D;
	give bd ~absent;
	MoveFloatingObjects();
];
-) instead of "Floating Objects" in "WorldModel.i6t"

A backdrop can be absent. The absent property translates into I6 as "absent".

presence is an object based rulebook.

To decide whether (item - an object) is found in (place - an object): (- ObjectFoundIn({item}, {place}) -)

A presence rule for something (called the floater) (this is the found_in rule):
	if the floater is found in the location, rule succeeds.
	
A multitude is a kind of thing.

The beach is a room. The road is west of the beach.

Sand is a multitude. It is not scenery. Presence of sand: if the location is beach, rule succeeds.

Water is a backdrop. It is not scenery. It is everywhere.

test me with "showme sand"[/code][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2086&start=0#p14129
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need help creating action applying to unseen person
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-02-28 12:53:03

[quote="matt w"][code]A thing can be playable or unplayable or inanimate. A thing is usually inanimate.The Defense Solicitor is playable.[/code]This allows me to make separate check rules for unplayable people and inanimate objects. Any new actor will simply be identified as playable or unplayable ... I may draw up a table of random descriptions, so that every time you try to be an unplayable thing you get a random reason from a list of a dozen or so. This would also allow me to cut down the code to either playable or unplayable, so I only need to specify playable characters.[/quote]

Variation is certainly good.
I'm pretty sure that even though you understand "Be [any thing]" as being, you can replace «A thing can be playable or unplayable or inanimate. A thing is usually inanimate.» with
[code]A person can be playable or unplayable. A person is usually unplayable.[/code]
and «Check being something: if the noun is inanimate, say "How often have you dreamed of being [the noun], but alas it cannot be." instead.» with
[code]Check being something: if the noun is not a person, instead say "How often have you dreamed of being [a noun], but alas it cannot be."[/code]
And then you need not trouble yourself with specifying which persons are unplayable.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2087&start=0#p14130
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Glulxe and Windows Git updated
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-28 13:02:12

I just went to the 3rd link and downloaded the Glulxe installation program, installed it, ran it, and then released, opened & ran the example programs from the Inform 7 extensions that expose the new Glk features... but they don't work.  The gestalt says they aren't supported, and removing the gestalt check to assume they are anyway still doesn't work.  Has the new version of Glulxe not landed on its server or something?

EDIT to add: I'm on Windows, and did not try Git.

EDIT2: oh, but downloading Glulxe's Installer from the first link works just fine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2086&start=0#p14131
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need help creating action applying to unseen person
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-28 13:03:42

[quote="matt w"]
[code]A person can be playable or unplayable. A person is usually unplayable.[/code][/quote]
Or if you want to save yourself a property and possibly some typing, you can do this:
[code]
Definition: A person is unplayable rather than playable if the prompt of it is ">".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2086&start=0#p14132
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need help creating action applying to unseen person
User: Mushroom Spider / DateTime: 2011-02-28 15:01:12

Thanks for all the help guys! I think I'm going to go with something like this (unless an easier way to achieve the same effect can be found):

[code]
A person has some text called the prompt. The prompt of a person is usually ">".
A thing is either playable or unplayable. A thing is usually unplayable.

Check being something: if the noun is unplayable, say "How often have you dreamed of being [the noun], but alas it cannot be." instead.
Check being something: if the noun is the player, say "You are already yourself. It's part of being you!" instead.

Carry out being: if the noun is a person begin; now the player is the noun; now the command prompt is the prompt of the noun; say "[conditional paragraph break]"; try looking; say "You are now the [printed name of the noun]."; end if.

Carry out being: if the noun is not a person, say "[conditional paragraph break][bold type][printed name of location of noun][roman type][line break][description of location of noun][paragraph break]You can see [list of anything in location of noun][paragraph break]You are now [the noun]. Unfortunately, being an inanimate object, all you can do is sit here. Inanimate.[paragraph break][The noun]: Be [printed name of player][paragraph break]==>[paragraph break]".[/code]

Note that I explicitly kept "A [i]thing[/i] is either playable or unplayable." instead of making it a person. This is so I can choose to make certain non-person things 'playable'. The reason for this is entirely frivolous, except that it could be used as a way of remote viewing a situation. The story will be laid out in such a way to encourage the player to attempt Being certain inanimate objects.

Here is what it looks like in-game:[quote]
DS: be lamp

[b]Pompous Barrister's Office[/b]
A really fancy office

You can see lamp, cup and Pompous Barrister

You are now the lamp. Unfortunately, being an inanimate object, all you can do is sit here. Inanimate.

The lamp: Be Defense Solicitor

==>

DS: 
[/quote]
I know the audience this game is being made for will definitely try commands like that, so it is not wasted time to implement such a response. Foremost this game is a practice run to get a hang of the language, but it is also a fangame of sorts so I'm implementing custom commands I know other fans would want to see.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2087&start=0#p14133
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Glulxe and Windows Git updated
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-02-28 15:33:36

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]EDIT2: oh, but downloading Glulxe's Installer from the first link works just fine.[/quote]The link from my page is to mirror.ifarchive.org, which will re-direct you to a random IF-Archive mirror - unfortunately some of the mirrors take a bit longer to update than others.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2089&start=0#p14134
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Getting elements to display consistently in I7
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-02-28 15:57:14

I am having a heck of a time getting the screen to look the way I'd like.  I'd basically like a series of sprites anchored in a single graphics window above the main window.  It's displaying, thanks to the painstaking tutorial on the Glimmr blog.  But I'm having trouble getting it to display in a consistently attractive manner.  I'm using a combination of Glimmr over Flexible Windows, and even using one graphical window, the only way I've found that works is forcing window size to my personal display.  Proportionally sized windows just never seem to behave as I'd like.  Sometimes they center; sometimes they have extra padding on three sides, sometimes on four sides (meaning the images in the window could scale up, but mysteriously doesn't).  Even with the forced window size, graphical elements still scale, so there's still borders in less-than-ideal places.  

I feel sort of queasy about locking down sizes of things; I suppose people can always play without the graphical elements, but that doesn't seem entirely sporting.  (Besides, even I sometimes play with a half-screen, so I can take notes or watch videos while I play, and that instantly makes the whole thing off again.)  Can any authors who have done the work of adding graphical elements give me some advice on set-up?  It seems like the options may be there, but I'm just not experienced enough to know what combo will give good results.  I feel like I'm 80% of the way there, but that last 20% is the difference between "awkward amateur" and "competent".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2087&start=0#p14135
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Glulxe and Windows Git updated
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-02-28 15:57:17

Ah.


And thank you!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2090&start=0#p14136
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: New action: build a fort. How can I improve it?
User: Mushroom Spider / DateTime: 2011-02-28 16:08:22

Okay, so I'm attempting to make an action that can turn any object with the property 'fortable' into a fort. You know, like building a fort with couch cushions? I know I'm not the only one who did that as a kid.

More than just being descriptive, something that is a fort becomes a gateway to another world (A region called 'Imagination'; but in effect it just moves the player to another room).

I don't plan on having too many possible forts, so I could hard-code every possible example with it's own description etc, but I would like the action to be more than just a rule for what can't be made into a fort. Ideally, all I would have to do to make something into a fort is say "The couch is a supporter. The couch is fortable."

This is the mess that I have at the moment. First, the action:
[code]
Building a fort is an action with past participle built, applying to one thing. 
Understand "build a fort out of [something]" or "build a fort with [something]" or "build a fort from [something]" as building a fort.

A thing can be fortable or unfortable. A thing is usually unfortable.

Check building a fort something: if the noun is unfortable, say "You can't build a fort out of [the noun]." instead.

Carry out building a fort something: choose a random row in the Table of Fort Descriptions; say "[The noun] has made [comment entry] fort."; now the noun is unfortable.[/code]

Fairly straight forward, right? All it does at the moment is give the player a random description and change the property of the noun so that it cannot be made into a fort again. 

The original plan was that a word would be drawn from the Table of Fort Descriptions and permanently become part of the printed name and description, in addition to being understood by that term as well. Not the random flavor text it is now.
I tried to get the action to add the name of the noun to the table so it could be referenced for every instance of 'print name' or 'print description' that occurs later, but I couldn't get it to work.

Here is the aforementioned Table of Fort Descriptions:
[quote]
Table of Fort Descriptions
comment
"a cozy"
"a formidable"
"a terrific"
"an exciting"
"an awesome"
"a super"
"THE BEST"
"a good"
"a spacious"
"a pleasant"
"an inspiring"
"a cool"[/quote]

Now here is what I have hard-coded for one fortable item, a desk:

[code]A desk is in Defense Solicitor's Office. The desk is fortable. A concrete block is part of the desk. The plywood boards are part of the desk. Some legal documents are part of the desk. 

Understand "concrete blocks" and "concrete" and "blocks" as the concrete block.
Understand "wood" and "plywood" and "boards" as the plywood boards.
Understand "cases" as some legal documents.

After building a fort desk: say "You decide to call it the desk fort."; now the printed name of the desk is "the desk fort".
Understand "fort" as the desk.[/code]
Already we see a problem: if somebody says 'examine fort' before building the fort desk, it will still print a description of the desk. However, I'm not sure how to fold the Understand statement into the After statement. As it is I want the After statement to be part of the action rules, so that the name would become something like "the cozy desk fort" or "the formidable tree fort".

[code]
Instead of examining the desk: if the desk is unfortable begin; choose a random row from the Table of Fort Descriptions; say "The plywood boards make for very sturdy walls, and the concrete blocks make a fine front step and chimeny. Over all, it is [comment entry] fort."; otherwise; say "The desk is of simple construction, merely plywood boards resting on a few concrete blocks. Covering it is various legal documents, all very important to cases your working on."; end if.[/code]
Here, the original purpose of the three objects that are part of the desk was to be parts of the fort. An ideal description would look something like:
"The [part 1] make for [part 1 fort description], and the [part 2] make for [part 2 fort description]. The [part 3] make [part 3 fort description]. Over all, it is [comment entry] fort.".

In the above example of the desk, the 3rd part (Legal documents) was going to be a cozy nest. These items also serve secondary purposes: the concrete blocks are also containers and the legal documents are for descriptive flavor. (You might also note how I used the fortable/unfortable property to differentiate descriptions between whether or not the desk was a fort yet. This might have to change if a more comprehensive action solution is ever found).
[code]
Instead of entering the desk: choose a random row from the Table of Fort Descriptions; say "You climb into the fort, closing it's plywood door behind you. You've built [comment entry] nest in here out of all those boring legal documents. Alone in this dark box, you start to drift off into your imagination..."; move player to Imaginary Office.[/code]
Here is another chunk of code that would benefit from not being applicable until after a fort has actually been built. Ideally, this message would be much more simplified and generic. It is only this way right now because it is written specific to the desk fort. A better example might be:
"You climb into the fort, closing its makeshift door behind you. Alone in this dark box, you start to drift off into your imagination..."

[code]
Instead of waking up: if the player is enclosed by imagination begin; say "Your imagination is beginning to get hazy. Maybe it's time to give your brain a rest."; move player to Defense Solicitor's Office; otherwise; continue the action; end if.
Understand "leave fort" as waking up.[/code]

Again, another hacked together bit of code. It has the happy effect of transporting the player from wherever they have wandered in the Imagination region back to the office, and if not in the imagination region it just prints the standard "This is not a dream" reply. But what it really needs is a more comprehensive 'move player to location of the fort they used to travel to imagination'. I think this may require some sort of stored value, along with alot of the other code I need.

Overall, my current code is clumsy and in some places downright awful. I may just cut down the total number of possible forts to 3 (one for each main character) but even so it has some work to do before it's perfect.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1908&start=10#p14137
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: 2010 XYZZY Awards now open
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-28 16:10:16

I don't think anybody's actually gotten the results up here yet.

<a class="postlink" href="http://xyzzyawards.org/winners.php">http://xyzzyawards.org/winners.php</a>

Best Game: Aotearoa (Matt Wigdahl)
Best Writing: Hoist Sail for the Heliopause and Home (Andrew Plotkin)
Best Story: The Warbler's Nest (Jason McIntosh)
Best Setting: Aotearoa (Matt Wigdahl)
Best Puzzles: Aotearoa (Matt Wigdahl)
Best NPCs: Aotearoa (Matt Wigdahl)
Best Individual Puzzle: Crossing the river in Aotearoa (Matt Wigdahl)
Best Individual NPC: Dr Sliss in Rogue of the Multiverse (C.E.J. Pacian)
Best Individual PC: Anthony Saint Germain in Death Off the Cuff (Simon Christiansen)
Best Implementation: Aotearoa (Matt Wigdahl)
Best Use of Innovation: Aotearoa (Matt Wigdahl)
Best Technological Development: Quixe, online Glulx interpreter (Andrew Plotkin)
Best Supplemental Materials: Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7 (Aaron Reed)

Congratulations to everybody, including of course me, but mostly Matt. :)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2078&start=0#p14138
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: found_in
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-28 16:20:29

I don't see anything obviously broken about that (but I haven't compiled it or tested it).

It's probably worth doing an I6 class test in the objectloop, before you call the presence rulebook. This loop is going to run every turn, and it loops over every object in the game. The standard version bypasses non-floating objects quickly, by doing the "i.&found_in ~= 0 && hasnt absent" test. Running a rulebook to make that determination is substantially more work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2090&start=0#p14139
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New action: build a fort. How can I improve it?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-02-28 18:11:23

Ha! I thought [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2086&p=14132]this[/url] looked a lot like Problem Sleuth.

EDIT: I recommend adding this to your code, unless you already have plans that conflict with it:

[spoiler][code]The pumpkin is a backdrop. The pumpkin is scenery. The pumpkin is everywhere. Instead of doing something when the current action involves the pumpkin: say "What pumpkin?"[/code][/spoiler]

...don't have a useful answer to your question right now, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2090&start=0#p14140
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New action: build a fort. How can I improve it?
User: zahariel / DateTime: 2011-02-28 18:47:14

Sounds like fun! See also [url]http://xkcd.com/219/[/url].

My first stab at this would be as follows, especially if you want to make more than one or two of them (massive fail-block of code follows):
[code]
The Boring Office is a room. The Exciting Fairyland is a room.

A fort-location is a kind of container. A fort-location can be built or unbuilt. A fort-location is usually unbuilt. A fort-location is usually not enterable. A fort-location has a text called built-description. A fort-location has a text called old-name. A fort-location has a room called destination. Understand "fort" as a built fort-location.

A fort-part is a kind of thing. A fort-part is usually scenery. A fort-part has a text called fort-description.

The desk is a fort-location in the Boring Office. The description is "The desk is just a few plywood boards on top of a few stacks of cinder blocks. The top is covered in boring legal documents for old cases that no one has got around to throwing away." The built-description of the desk is "An awesome fort built out of a desk and some old legal documents no one really needed anymore." The destination of the desk is the Exciting Fairyland.

Some plywood is a fort-part. The plywood is part of the desk. The fort-description of the plywood is "very sturdy walls". Some cinder blocks are a fort-part. The cinder blocks are part of the desk. The fort-description of the cinder blocks is "a charming chimney". Some legal documents are part of the desk. The legal documents are a fort-part. The legal documents are not scenery. The fort-description of the legal documents is "a comfy nest inside". 

Check taking a fort-part: say "No point. [The noun] is probably better off where it is." instead.

Fort-building is an action with past participle fort-built, applying to one thing. Understand "build a fort from [something]" as fort-building.

Check fort-building something: say "You don't see any way to make [the noun] into a fort." instead.
Check fort-building a built fort-location: say "Someone already built an awesome fort there!" instead.
Check fort-building a fort-location: rule succeeds. [or maybe continue the action, I forget]

Carry out fort-building: [Ideally, I did the check rules right so we can only get here if the noun is an unbuilt fort-location]
    now the noun is enterable;
    now the noun is built;
    now the description of the noun is the built-description of the noun;
    choose a random row from the Table of Fun Adjectives;
    now the old-name of the noun is the printed name of the noun;
    now the printed name of the noun is "[adjective entry] [old-name of the noun] fort".
    
Report fort-building:
    choose a random row from the Table of Fun Adjectives;
    say "You build [an adjective entry] fort out of [the old-name of the noun]";
    repeat with widget running through all fort-parts which are part of the noun:
        choose a random row from the Table of Construction Verbs;
        say ". [The widget] [verb entry] [fort-description of widget]";
    say "."

Instead of entering a built fort-location:
    say "You crawl into the fort, closing the makeshift door behind you. Alone in this dark box, you drift off into your imagination...";
    move player to the destination of the thing understood.

[/code]
Disclaimer: I am writing this at work off the top of my head and I have no idea whether it works or even compiles. But this is the situation from which I would start hacking.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1620&start=20#p14141
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Zarf unveils mad plan to do IF full-time
User: whoiscraig / DateTime: 2011-02-28 20:37:04

Hello, I'm new to these forums and I noticed this thread hasn't been updated in a little while. I'm just wondering how this plan of doing IF full time is working?

I only just started with IF but I love it and I can see myself doing it forever. But atm I'm not working, taking care of my Dad full time, so the idea of being able to make a little money is intreguing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2089&start=0#p14142
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting elements to display consistently in I7
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-02-28 22:07:10

[quote="gravel"]I am having a heck of a time getting the screen to look the way I'd like.... Proportionally sized windows just never seem to behave as I'd like.  Sometimes they center; sometimes they have extra padding on three sides, sometimes on four sides (meaning the images in the window could scale up, but mysteriously doesn't).  Even with the forced window size, graphical elements still scale, so there's still borders in less-than-ideal places.[/quote]

The unpredictable window sizes of Glulx can be difficult to work with. The Treaty of Babel has some guidelines for allowing the author to control the overall window size or at least the aspect ratio via a blorb metadata specification, but I don't think any of the interpreter authors have implemented it. Glimmr's canvas is an attempt to deal with the inherent variability by providing a solution that is likely to work for a large number of applications (but guaranteed not to work for all).

I'm not sure, because your description doesn't seem to match the standard Canvas-Based Drawing behavior, but I think that you might be helped by a bit more on the concept of the "canvas" in Glimmr. I've spoilered the explanation since it's long and may not be what you need:

[spoiler]Glimmr's "canvas" is an independent coordinate system which is scaled down and fitted to the window as need be, but always maintains its integrity; that is, it is always displayed at the same aspect ratio, and with the elements arrayed on it maintaing the same scalar and spatial relationships to one another.

By default, the canvas will always be as centered in the window as we can make it, and it will always be as large as we can make it (without oversizing it; see below). Usually, this means that there will be a margin either above and below or to the right and left of the canvas area. If the canvas is smaller than the window, there will be padding on all sides. You describe seeing padding on just three sides; that's not really something that can happen w/o customization on your part. 

The canvas is not scaled up by default, because that would be a violation of the canvas's integrity; it's usually safe to assume that if the author wanted the canvas larger, she would have simply designed it to be larger. (And it's not a good idea to assume the opposite, because if scaling images larger than their original size will result in degraded quality--that's not fair to the author.) So, if you want to see a larger canvas, you have two options: (1) increase the size of the canvas and images; (2) you can set the "oversize scaling" property of the window to true, which will allow the canvas and the sprites displayed on it be scaled to greater than 100%; again, this can result in degradations of quality for images, which is why it's off by default.

Here's a visual guide to the canvas-window relationship:

[img]http://glimmr.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/canvas.png[/img]

A tip: to see exactly what's happening with your canvas, you can include this code in your game:
[code]The canvas outline is a box primitive. The tint is g-White. The associated canvas is the <your canvas name>.

Element scaling rule for the canvas outline:
	now entry 1 of the endpoint of the canvas outline is the canvas-width of the associated canvas of the canvas outline;
	now entry 2 of the endpoint of the canvas outline is the canvas-height of the associated canvas of the canvas outline;
	continue the action.[/code]
This will draw a box around the canvas so you can see the relationship to the window more clearly.[/spoiler]

Can you describe what you want to see happen at various window sizes? That is, describe how you would like the display to be handled? That would make it easier to provide specific implementation/coding suggestions. You can do just about anything, from anchoring the canvas to one side of the window, to dynamically changing the amount of space between the sprites, to just adding decorative edging elements that ignore the canvas scaling... Of course, some solutions require more specific code than others! [emote]:D[/emote] 

(Please feel free to post screenshots if that will help, or if you want to avoid spoilage, email them to me at erikDOTtempleATgmailDOTyouknowwhat.)

By the way, I wouldn't worry too much about setting a fixed window height, as long as you don't set it to be really large. In principle, it's not really any different from assuming that they will be able to see all the text in a three-part status line (left, middle, right).

[quote="gravel"](Besides, even I sometimes play with a half-screen, so I can take notes or watch videos while I play, and that instantly makes the whole thing off again.)[/quote]
Personally, I never play with the main window wider than about 80 characters or so. Reading long lines is tiring.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1620&start=20#p14143
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Zarf unveils mad plan to do IF full-time
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-02-28 22:13:38

I am making occasional updates at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zarf/hadean-lands-interactive-fiction-for-the-iphone/posts">http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zar ... hone/posts</a> .

I've made good progress on the interpreter, and that code is available at github (<a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/erkyrath/iosglk">https://github.com/erkyrath/iosglk</a>). It isn't a complete library yet by any means.

As for the game itself, I'm not posting day-by-day updates. It'll be done when it's done. That won't be for months yet. It's still a design problem rather than a coding problem, so I can't make meaningful predictions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2078&start=0#p14144
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: found_in
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-02-28 23:10:02

[quote="zarf"]It's probably worth doing an I6 class test in the objectloop, before you call the presence rulebook. This loop is going to run every turn, and it loops over every object in the game. The standard version bypasses non-floating objects quickly, by doing the "i.&found_in ~= 0 && hasnt absent" test. Running a rulebook to make that determination is substantially more work.[/quote]
What sort of class test do you mean? Can I check if the objects are of class "thing" or something? The problem is that we want the rulebook to run on things that [i]don't[/i] have a found_in property. We could give them another "floating" property if that would make it faster...

Working from the other direction, I could restrict floating objects to backdrops and doors, but allow the user to write "presence" rules that supersede the normal found_in property. Less flexible, but potentially faster?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=0#p14145
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-02-28 23:40:51

I'm working on an extension to replace the least-liked library messages with better ones that a) don't make dangerous assumptions, b) don't contain inappropriate narrative tone, and c) do better at explaining what went wrong and how to fix it.

Ideas cribbed from hither and yon, although a special shout-out to Sara Morayati who [url=http://www.sarahmorayati.com/2010/06/default-parser-messages-do-they-need-an-overhaul/]nicely catalogued many of the offenders[/url] last year.

This requires the latest version of [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Ron%20Newcomb/Default%20Messages/index.html]Default Messages by Ron Newcomb[/url] (which, note, is different than the old Default Messages by David Fisher). It's very incomplete as far as documentation, support for other extensions, etc., but since parser messages can be such tricky beasts to write, I wanted to get some feedback. I would love to hear if any of these seem like they're not going to work in certain contexts or will be otherwise problematic, or if you have examples of better wordings.

Meat of the extension pasted below; or [url=http://aaronareed.net/if/Neutral-Library-Messages.i7x]download here[/url].

Oh: I'd like to ultimately address the parser/narrator distinction by having "Undo is not supported" styled differently than "Bob goes east," and so on, but doing so presents tricky challenges and so is not addressed in this version.

[code]

[The main complaints levied against the standard library messages are as follows:
 -- They sometimes imply a certain tone of wry amusement which descends from the Infocom/adventure era, and which is not always appropriate to modern works of IF.
-- There is not a clear distinction between messages narrating story world events and those giving parser refusals, leading to a muddying of the difference between the author's voice and the default system messages.
-- Error messages often do not contain information instructing players how to better restate their command.
-- They can sometimes contradict the story world, as in the assumption "That's plainly inedible," or mislead the player about a course of action, as in "This dangerous action would achieve little."
-- Inconsistencies in style, such as whether command examples are given in CAPS or 'quotes', or which messages are wrapped in square brackets and what that signifies.
]

Section - Better Instruction

[Some messages do not give the player enough information about why their command failed, or what the expected input form is.]

Table of custom library messages (continued)
library-action	library-message-id	library-message-text
--	14	"Nothing to correct. 'Oops' or 'O' followed by a word corrects a single misunderstood word in the last command." ["Sorry, that can't be corrected."]
--	16	"Too many words. 'Oops' or 'O' corrects a single misunderstood word in the last command." ["'Oops' can only correct a single word."]
--	23	"In some stories, you can type CHARACTER, COMMAND to give someone else an order; but I couldn't understand what you said in that context." ["You seem to want to talk to someone, but I can't see whom."]
--	25	"In some stories, you can type CHARACTER, COMMAND to give someone else an order; but I couldn't understand some of what you said before the comma in that context." ["To talk to someone, try 'someone, hello' or some such."]
--	27	"I can't understand your command. Most commands are a verb followed by a noun." ["I didn't understand that sentence."]
--	28	"I can't understand your entire command, although the first part matched the action [ignore library line break]" ["I only understood you as far as wanting to [ignore library line break]"]
--	29	"I can't understand your entire command, although the first part matched an action I expected to include a number." ["I didn't understand that number."]
--	44	"That would exclude everything you could [the quoted verb]." ["There are none at all available!"]
--	67	"Part of your command is not a physical part of the story world, so you can't act on it in that way."  ["You must name something more substantial."]
Exiting action	1	"You're not inside something. To leave this location, try a direction or 'out'." ["But you aren't in anything at the moment."]
climbing action	1	"[That-Those noun] can't be climbed in that way. Sometimes a direction like 'up' or 'down' works instead." ["I don't think much is to be achieved by that." <-- This is to help address a common problem in poorly implemented works with something like a staircase and no support for CLIMBing it.]
taking action	10	"[That-those noun] [is-are] just scenery, and can't be taken." ["That's hardly portable."]
taking action	11	"[That-those noun] can't be taken in this story." ["That's fixed in place."]

Section - Generic action rejections

[Some actions, such as taking, directly interface with the world model and thus can fail with specific explanations as to why. But actions without a detailed world model supporting them can't know whether the player's request is categorically impossible (>DRINK SKY), plausible but not implemented (>DRINK STREAM), or simply not being tried with the correct grammar (>DRINK FROM STREAM).

Unfortunately, many of the default messages attempt to guess which of these situations has arisen, sometimes leading to messages that are counterfactual ("That's plainly inedible") or, more dangerously, misleading ("Violence isn't the answer to this one"). Ideally, these messages should refuse the command without implying anything about the possibility or desireability of the requested action. In addition, since we don't know anything about the author's usage of the verb in question, we can't recommend a better command to try.

Ideally, of course, an author implementing a non-standard verb will replace the default message with his own instructions, but we can't rely on that.
 ]

Table of custom library messages (continued)
library-action	library-message-id	library-message-text
attacking action	1	"You can't attack [that-them noun], or can't do so in that way." ["Violence isn't the answer to this one."]
burning action	1	"You can't burn [that-them noun], or can't do so in that way." ["This dangerous act would achieve little."]
buying action	1	"You can't buy [that-them noun], or can't do so in that way." ["Nothing is on sale."]
Cutting action	1	"You can't cut [that-them noun], or can't do so in that way." ["Cutting that up would achieve little."]
Drinking action	1	"You can't consume [that-them noun], or can't do so in that way." ["There's nothing suitable to drink here."]
Eating action	1	"[if noun is a person]You can't normally consume other characters.[otherwise]You can't consume [that-them noun], or can't do so in that way." ["There's nothing suitable to drink here."]
rubbing action	1	"You can't rub [that-them noun], or can't do so in that way." ["You achieve nothing by this."]
setting it to action	1	"You can't set [that-them noun] to something, or can't do so in that way." ["No, you can't set that to anything."]
singing action	1	"You can't sing in this story, or can't do so in that way." ["Your singing is abominable."]
swinging action	1	"You can't swing [that-them noun], or can't do so in that way." ["There's nothing sensible to swing here."]
throwing it at action	2	"You can't throw [the noun] at [the second noun], or can't do so in that way." ["You lack the nerve when it comes to the crucial moment."]
Tying it to action	1	"You can't tie [that-them noun] to something, or can't do so in that way." ["You would achieve nothing by this."]

Section - NPC action rejections

[Using verbs on people is problematic, since player expectations are so much higher. For this reason the library blocks many actions that are allowed on other objects. Lacking a valid physical objection, these messages fall back on social ones, like "That would be less than courteous." But these messages make assumptions about the player character which may not be appropriate.]

Table of custom library messages (continued)
library-action	library-message-id	library-message-text
[Most of these actions fail, so we must find a neutral way to decline to perform them.]
pulling action	4	"You can't normally pull other characters." ["That would be less than courteous."]
taking action	3	"You can't normally pick up other characters." ["I don't suppose Bob would care for that."]
Turning action	4	"You can't normally turn other characters." ["That would be less than courteous."]
showing it to action	2	"Showing [that-them noun] to [it-them of second noun] may not be the best approach; you might try to ASK or TELL [it-them of second noun] ABOUT [it-them of noun]."  ["Bob is unimpressed."]
giving it to action	3	"Giving [that-them noun] to [it-them of second noun] may not be the best approach; you might try to ASK or TELL [it-them of second noun] ABOUT [it-them of noun]." ["Bob doesn't seem interested."]
pushing action	4	"Try expressing your anger in another way." ["That would be less than courteous."]
touching action	1	"Try expressing your curiosity in another way." ["Keep your hands to yourself!"]
squeezing action	1	"Try expressing your affection in another way." ["Keep your hands to yourself."]
Kissing action	1	"Try expressing your affection in another way." ["Keep your mind on the game."]
Waking action	1	"You can't wake [the noun], or can't do so in that way." ["That seems unnecessary."]


Section - Generic action acceptance messages

[Some actions succeed by default. We want to take care to describe these successes in the vaguest possible terms, so as not to contradict any author-written text. Even the cautious default for some of these, "Nothing obvious happens," seems too suggestive that something non-obvious might be happening elsewhere. The default examining message has been very slightly softened, to reduce the incongruency of rare objects being called "nothing special," and to bring it in line with the other default sensory messages.

Conversation actions that succeed mean the parser must admit the action took place, without implying anything about the NPC's reaction: "The detective is unimpressed" can be particularly misleading if you've just shown him a bloody weapon. The solution adopted here is to narrate the player's action, not the NPC's response.]

Table of custom library messages (continued)
library-action	library-message-id	library-message-text
squeezing action	2	"You squeeze [the noun]." ["You achieve nothing by this."]
pushing action	3	"You push [the noun]." ["Nothing obvious happens."]
pulling action	3	"You pull [the noun]." ["Nothing obvious happens."]
turning action	3	"You turn [the noun]." ["Nothing obvious happens."]
examining action	2	"You see nothing unexpected about [the noun]." ["You see nothing special about Bob."]
thinking action	1	"Time passes." ["What a good idea."]
asking it about action	1	"You learn nothing new."  ["There is no reply."]
telling it about action	2	"You learn nothing new." ["This provokes no reaction."]
asking it for action	1	"You aren't successful." ["There is no reply."]
answering it that action	1	"You speak." ["There is no reply."]

Section - You Can't See Any Such Thing 

 [This famous message has frustrated many. Part of the difficulty is the wide variety of circumstances it can appear under. From the player's perspective, this message appears when she tries to use a verb with
	a) something neither mentioned nor implemented (like the sky)
	b) something mentioned in descriptive text but not implemented
	c) something implemented but not given the specific word used as a synonym
	d) a misspelled word
	e) a word that mistakenly is understood as part of the direct object, rather than a word in the grammar line, as in >TAKE INVENTORY NOW which is matched as {take | inventory now}.
	f) something that exists but has never been seen and is not in scope
	g) something previously seen but no longer in scope, perhaps without the player realizing it's no longer available

In nearly all of these cases, the player believes the object they're referring to should exist, meaning the message is often frustrating. 

Distinguishing between these subtle cases can be difficult. For instance, short of capturing all text output and analyzing it, there is no way to distinguish A from B. Perhaps the easiest distinction to make is between commands containing dictionary words and those that don't, which seperates A-D from E-G. Some IF systems implement this by telling the player when she's used an invalid word. The classic argument against this, that sneaky players can use it to figure out the existence of yet-unseen objects, seems both a Zork-era concern and one vastly outweighed by the benefits of actually telling the player why her command didn't work. A more pressing objection is that messages of this sort can draw attention to the primitive nature of the parser ("I don't know the word 'love.'") I've tried to phrase the message below in the best light possible.

Several additional extensions can help break things down further. "Remembering" carves off G from E-F, while "Poor Man's Mistype" can sometimes address D. "Smarter Parser" can sometimes offer helpful messages for certain types of A command related to body parts and common environmental features like the sky. Eric Eve's Text Capture could be a tool in distinguishing A from B.
]

Table of custom library messages (continued)
library-action	library-message-id	library-message-text
--	30	"[if position of non-dictionary word is 0]That's not something you can see now, or I misunderstood you.[otherwise]You don't need to type the word '[the misunderstood word]' in this story." ["You can't see any such thing."]

[Here are some things you can see: [the list of visible things which are not the player].]



Section - Personality-neutral parser

[Many parser messages are written in too strong of a narrative voice, which can clash with the author's prose. ]

Table of custom library messages (continued)
library-action	library-message-id	library-message-text
--	9	"You can't see anything." ["It is now pitch dark in here!"]
--	10	"No command given." ["I beg your pardon?"]
--	11	"Can't 'undo' on the first turn." ["[You can't 'undo' what hasn't been done!]"]
--	12	"Your interpreter does not support multiple 'undo' commands in a row." ["Can't 'undo' twice in succession. Sorry!"]
--	15	"Nothing to correct. 'Oops' or 'O' followed by a word corrects a single misunderstood word in the last command." ["Think nothing of it."]
--	21	"There is not a command to repeat." ["You can hardly repeat that."]
--	70	"You can't 'undo' in this story." [The use of UNDO is forbidden in this game."]
Eating action	2	"You eat [the noun]." ["You eat [the noun]. Not bad."]
Entering action	1	"You're already [if noun is a supporter]on[otherwise]in[end if] [the noun]." [But you're already in the car.]
Examining action	1	"It's too dark to see." ["Darkness, noun. An absence of light to see by."]
Giving it to action	2	"You're already holding [it-them of noun]." ["You juggle [the noun] for a while, but don't achieve much."]
Jumping action	1	"You jump up and down." ["You jump on the spot, fruitlessly."]
Looking under action	1	"It's too dark to see." ["But it's dark."]
pushing it to action	3	"There is no exit in that direction." ["Not that way you can't."]
putting it on action	3	"[The second noun] doesn't need to hold anything in this story." ["Putting things on the car would achieve nothing."]
putting it on action	4	"[if we are dropping]You can't drop yourself.[else]You can't put anything on [the second noun] while you're holding [it-them of second noun]." ["You lack the dexterity." <-- Also runs in the "can't drop yourself" rule.]
removing it from action	1	"You can't, because [it-they of noun] [is-are] closed." [It is unfortunately closed.]
searching action	1	"It's too dark to see." ["But it's dark."]
sleeping action	1	"You can't sleep right now." ["You aren't feeling especially drowsy."]
taking action	2	"You can't take yourself." ["You are always self-possessed."]
telling it about action	1	"You can't tell yourself about something." ["You talk to yourself a while."]
throwing it at action	1	"You can't throw [that-them noun], or can't do so in that way." ["Futile." <-- for inanimate objects]
touching action	3	"As expected." ["If you think that'll help." <-- for TOUCH SELF]
Waking up action	1	"As far as you know, you're already awake." ["The dreadful truth is, this is not a dream."]
waving action	2	"You wave [the noun]." ["You look ridiculous waving [the noun]."]
waving hands action	1	"You wave." ["You wave, feeling foolish."]


Section - Performance

[This small set of verbs normally produce jokey or out-of-character responses. These may be read as something the player is directing his character to say, or something he's expressing himself. Here, we simply say that the action does nothing under the current circumstances. ]

Table of custom library messages (continued)
library-action	library-message-id	library-message-text
saying yes action	1	"Saying yes here has no effect." ["That was a rhetorical question."]
saying no action	1	"Saying no here has no effect." ["That was a rhetorical question."]
saying sorry action	1	"Saying sorry here has no effect." ["Oh, don't apologise."]
swearing mildly action	1	"Swearing here has no effect." ["Quite."]
swearing obscenely action	1	"Swearing here has no effect." ["Real adventurers do not use such language."]



Section - Less Excited parser

[Some of the default messages end with exclamation points, which can make the parser seem breathless on occasion. Most of these messages are replaced elsewhere, but for the remainder:]

Table of custom library messages (continued)
library-action	library-message-id	library-message-text
--	31	"You seem to have said too little." [This error may possibly be deprecated now, since I can't find where in the library the error type TOOLIT_PE is ever assigned.]
--	32	"You aren't holding that."
--	36	"You excepted something not included anyway."
--	43	"Nothing to do."
wearing action	1	"[if noun is a person]You can't normally wear other characters.[otherwise]You can't wear [that-those noun]."
wearing action	2	"You're not holding [that-those noun]."
wearing action	3	"You're already wearing [that-those noun]."

Section - Story, not Game

[Modern terminology prefers calling an IF a story, not a game. This has been adopted in the main I7 structures, but not yet these messages.]

Table of custom library messages (continued)
library-action	library-message-id	library-message-text
--	70	"The use of UNDO is forbidden in this story."
requesting the pronoun meanings action	4	"no pronouns are known to the story."
requesting the score action	1	"[if the story has ended]You scored [otherwise]You have so far scored [end if][score] out of a possible [the maximum score], in [turn count] turn[s][ignore library line break]"
Verifying the story file action	1	"The story file has verified as intact."
Verifying the story file action	2	"The story file did not verify as intact, and may be corrupt."


Section - Player Description

The description of the player is usually "As expected." [Note: the library still contains Miscellaneous 19 for examining the player, but this is apparently no longer used.]
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1311&start=20#p14146
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Novice Friendly extension
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-03-01 00:00:32

I am happy to bring this thread back to life with an update: I'm prepping an all-in-one newbie extension that will incorporate much of what's been talked about above. To do so I've been updating my own extensions to give them a more solid testing and compatibility with each other, and working on [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091]a new extension I hope to include to improve the standard library messages[/url].

The thought is that this compilation extension will basically copy and paste (and credit) all contributing extensions, and I'll update it at intervals, maybe along with each new I7 build... hardcore authors can always cherry-pick the individual extensions they want or get the latest versions, but the goal is to have a single, one-click download that, especially for new authors, lets them easily and drastically improve the player experience. 

More later in a new thread, hopefully-- I guess I just wanted to ping and see if anyone has been working on similar things in the usual cone of silence.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2092&start=0#p14147
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Frobtads T2 compiler not recognizing config.tc
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2011-03-01 00:46:26

Has anyone else tried using the TADS 2 compiler from Frobtads (compiled with mingw32/msys) with their CONFIG.TC file? It doesn't seem to recognize [i]any[/i] option I place in that file.

My current workaround is using the TC32.exe compiler that comes with the TADS 2 installer, which works in either Windows XP or 7.

Thanks in advance!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2087&start=0#p14149
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Glulxe and Windows Git updated
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-03-01 02:17:20

By the way, do let me know if you find any oddities with the date/time functionality in Windows Glk. I've implemented this in terms of the Windows API, rather than using the Unix/Posix-style functions that Zarf used in CheapGlk and GlkTerm. While this makes the code nice and neat (good) it also means that there's a chance I've made a mistake somewhere (not so good).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=0#p14150
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-03-01 06:23:09

Great – Many thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2092&start=0#p14151
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Frobtads T2 compiler not recognizing config.tc
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-03-01 06:32:40

It seems that this file is not part of the TADS 2 compiler itself but is rather platform specific. I didn't know anything about a CONFIG.TC file, so I've never implemented any support for it.

Will do for the next version.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2093&start=0#p14152
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Betatesters: Salamander
User: Mikawa / DateTime: 2011-03-01 07:07:40

Hi all, 

I need some betatesters who are willing to jump in the line, just 
before deadline of "Textfire Grand Prix 2011", April 1st 2011. 

The genre of my WIP is fantasy, the language (of course) german, 
playable in roughly one hour I guess and I will get out a playable 
version next week. 

Just send me a message. 

Regards, 
-- MI

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=0#p14153
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-03-01 07:53:40

Great job Aaron, thanks!

I'm not sure about your "jumping" message, though. You probably remember a comp game a couple of years ago where the PC starts out strapped to a table but is still able to "... jump on the spot, fruitlessly." In this case, changing the message to "You jump up and down" isn't much better. Also, since jumping is blocked in the check phase and therefore not technically successful, I don't think it should be reported as such. Of course the other problem is that sometimes jumping -- across a chasm, for example -- is a valid idea, but [i]jumping in place[/i] is useless. Obviously, both of these are errors of ommission on the part of the author, but as you said:[quote="aaronius"]Ideally, of course, an author implementing a non-standard verb will replace the default message with his own instructions, but we can't rely on that.[/quote]How about:[quote]"Jumping up and down is either unhelpful or impossible right now."[/quote]... and moving it to the "Generic action rejections" section? Maybe the word "unnecessary" rather than "unhelpful" would be better. Clearly the idea of "nuetral prose" is itself subjective.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=0#p14154
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-01 08:17:48

A great extension idea! Of course, I have many detailed criticisms. [emote];)[/emote]

While I love the removal of the atrocious "There are none at all available!", with its exclamation mark, I don't think the message replacing it is very useful.
[quote]>take all
That would exclude everything you could take.[/quote]
How can 'all' exclude anything? "That includes nothing you could take." would be better.

I must admit that I don't really like message like these:
[quote]>sing
You can't sing in this story, or can't do so in that way.[/quote]
Why would you replace a message that describes my singing with a message that tells me I cannot sing? And what does it mean to claim that I cannot sing "in that way"? You probably mean that I cannot sing "using that command", but this is not entirely clear. Furthermore, this default message will have to be changed by every author who wants "sing" to do _something_ _somewhere_ or _somewhen_ in the story, which seems to defeat the purpose of the extension.

For actions that can be performed but do nothing, I would prefer neutral descriptive messages like "You sing for a while.".
For actions that are impossible, I would prefer something like "That is impossible.". This sounds a lot better than the following kind of exchange:
[quote]>drink me
You can't consume yourself, or can't do so in that way.[/quote]
Just "That is impossible." or "You cannot drink yourself." would be great.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=0#p14155
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-01 08:51:00

This looks very nice.

I concur with Victor, especially about the response to "take all"; here I think we want something a little wordier, like "There is nothing available, or nothing available that matches that description." (Technically, on some conceptions of logic, that's equivalent to your messages, since "all" does exclude everything you can take when there's nothing you can take. But that's frightfully misleading.) 

I'm also not sure I like the messages "You push the noun" etc. It makes it seems like something is happening when it isn't, and might even lead the player to expect a change in the world state. "You push the noun, but nothing obvious happens" might be better. This isn't a problem for "You sing for a while," because that doesn't sound like it'd do anything.

I also think "in that way" might be better changed to something like "using those words." Sometimes I can attack/burn/whatever something in exactly the way I'm trying, but I need to try a different command to do it. (For instance, I need to type KILL ORC WITH SWORD rather than CUT ORC WITH SWORD, or vice versa.) 

Also, I think referring to the interpreter is probably a bad idea, and "quite" in response to "bother" is harmless -- if someone types a swear, they're expecting a silly response, aren't they?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=0#p14156
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-03-01 08:55:33

I see and even agree with most of Victor's points.
With a few exceptions (or perhaps not—well, possibly):
[quote="VictorGijsbers"]this default message will have to be changed by every author who wants "sing" to do _something_ _somewhere_ or _somewhen_ in the story, which seems to defeat the purpose of the extension.[/quote]
Well, something like it is true however you choose to formulate a default message for this and all the other actions in the Standard Rules that are "only implemented in a minimal way". They are not meant really to do anything, unless intercepted by instead rules (or implemented by individual authors). 
However, "You sing for a while", may still be preferable. Since "You can't sing in this story" is really just a customized variety of "That's not a verb I recognize". Players/readers new to IF might well wonder why actions that are not implemented sometimes give rise to a "You can't do that or can't do so in that way" message, sometimes to a "That's not a verb I recognize" message. Indeed, I fear it will give many the impression that they can successfully sing, buy, drink, swing, rub etc., if they only could guess in what way to do so. And that is an impression that might at worst make IF seem more plagued by guess the verb issues than it is.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=0#p14157
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-01 09:02:28

[quote="matt w"]Also, I think referring to the interpreter is probably a bad idea, and "quite" in response to "bother" is harmless -- if someone types a swear, they're expecting a silly response, aren't they?[/quote]
Let's just hope those swear words [url=https://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/873945-show-the-list-of-swear-words-in-the-index]are taken out of Inform[/url] in one of the upcoming releases. Nothing Aaron can do with default messages will make this exchange any more desirable:
[quote]Study
The count is here. He doesn't want to be bothered.

>bother count
I can't understand your entire command, although the first part matched the action bother.[/quote]
Just a joke, of course; but these commands are so superfluous. And is there anyone left in the world who swears by saying "bother" [i]and[/i] plays interactive fiction?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=0#p14158
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-01 09:08:10

[quote="Felix"]Well, something like it is true however you choose to formulate a default message for this and all the other actions in the Standard Rules that are "only implemented in a minimal way". They are not meant really to do anything, unless intercepted by instead rules (or implemented by individual authors).[/quote]
Suppose I want to have something special happen when the PC sings in the church. All I need to do is write an "Instead of singing in the church" rule. That works fine when the default message, which will be shown in all other locations, is something like "You sing for a while.". But if the default message is "You can't sing in this story.", the default message is suddenly made [i]false[/i] by my new instead-rule, and I will have to change the default message. Otherwise, I will have exchanges like this:
[quote]>sing
You can't sing in this story.

>go north
You enter the church.

>sing
You sing a quiet hymn.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=0#p14159
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-01 09:10:12

This looks fantastic!

I also have doubts about the "or can't do so in that way" messages, but it seems like most of them really need to be made specific for each story anyway. Just making the author aware of what they are may be enough to encourage further customization.

Would it be possible to have them all collapse to a single customizable message, "You can't [verb] at this point in the story, or can't do so in that way?" The author could choose to change that one message, and/or override specific actions that are relevant to the story.

It almost seems like this sort of extension would work better as a template for the author than as a usable piece of code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=0#p14160
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-03-01 09:11:27

I agree with Matt here:[quote="matt w"]I also think "in that way" might be better changed to something like "using those words."[/quote]Also -- no disrespect intended -- I'm tempted to write my own extension replacing all parser messages with:[quote]You can't do that... yet![/quote] [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=10#p14161
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-01 09:23:48

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Just a joke, of course; but these commands are so superfluous. And is there anyone left in the world who swears by saying "bother" [i]and[/i] plays interactive fiction?[/quote]

Somehow I think that people who swear by saying "bother" would be [i]more[/i] likely to play interactive fiction. But yeah, I hope these go away.

I didn't say enough how much I like this idea -- I remember getting annoyed at an author (actually I think I was beta-testing) at the default response to "think." (I must have come straight from Galatea.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2078&start=10#p14162
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: found_in
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-01 10:13:44

[quote="zarf"]The problem is down in the guts of the MoveFloatingObjects() function. By the time the object's found_in property is invoked, the information about what object it *is* has been lost. (The found_in function is presumed to have been written specially for that object.) So there's no way to look up any properties of the object at that time.[/quote]
Has that changed since before 5T18? I was just looking at Conditional Backdrops by John Clemens, which looks EXACTLY like what I was trying to do - and it's implemented using the found_in property. Do you think I could stick my code in and call it Version 2...?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=10#p14163
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-03-01 10:27:20

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]For actions that can be performed but do nothing, I would prefer neutral descriptive messages like "You sing for a while.".[/quote]
Isn't the issue with the default sing (and indeed jump) actions that they are actually, secretly blocked, whatever the default message might claim?

Maybe it's me still thinking in TADS mode and wanting to implement verbs consistently where most Inform documentation seems to emphasise "instead" rules, but to my mind if I'm described as actually singing, I should be able to write a rule like:

[code]After singing in the presence of Simon Cowell:
    say "Simon sighs. 'Probably... [italic type]the worst[roman type] performance we've heard all day.'"[/code]
But that isn't the case.  

Admitting that you can't, in fact, sing by default may look ugly, but it's the ugly truth.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2089&start=0#p14164
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting elements to display consistently in I7
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-03-01 10:30:16

Er, screenshots.  Sure!  Elements are theoretically scaled properly, but actual image elements are, um, alpha.  I *might* stretch the canvas out some, but that would probably not change the actual scaling - just involve more trees in the middle or something.  The map size may need altering as well - the inventory window needs a relatively large amount of space, and it's hard wedging in a square map.  Advice welcome!

This seems to be the best look at the moment - it uses the grass color to backfill the top window and the map window:
[img]http://i51.tinypic.com/4igfly.png[/img]

Even when the dimensions change, it's not too horrifying.

[img]http://i56.tinypic.com/dgjuw0.jpg[/img]

(This does require an extra element over previous versions, but I'm assuming a rectangle primitive for the sky is about the least intensive graphic element ever.)
This looks less awesome when the map background and the top window background differ, which they'll need to at some point; as the seasons change, green looks fine for a small area of grass, but sears retinas in larger doses unless it's pretty dark.  One option is extending the status bar color to the map window, which is fine when everything is nicely sized:

[img]http://i53.tinypic.com/13yq6np.png[/img]


But weird otherwise:

[img]http://i54.tinypic.com/29y1umf.png[/img]

I tend to feel best about the pictures where the top image fills the bar.  If the backfill of the top window isn't the grass color, it often "floats", which looks off to me.  
(Although sometimes it looks weird if the sun is cut off by grass color, and it looks "off" at night, when the sky is dark.)

[img]http://i53.tinypic.com/1icw46.png[/img]

I could drop the map and inventory window; that may be the best option.  (There would be a location marker on the map sometime in the future.)

I could also, I suppose, change the top image to, say, looking up.  The essential elements are season, time, and weather; that's possible to communicate by, say, looking up towards the sky through some branches or something.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

Edit: Just realized that I deleted specifics.  I'd like the top image of trees and sky and stuff to fill the top window entirely.  That may mean that in a smaller window, there's only some of the center screen (cutting off the larger tree and/or cliffs).  Barring that option, I'm not sure; bracketing by decorative elements off-canvas would be okay (but not possible?).  Basically, I'd like there not to be any double-takes from the player as they scale the window; right now, there's a couple sweet spots, but a lot of jarring elements where various rectangles come together at off-angles.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=10#p14165
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-01 10:31:22

[quote="Pacian"]Admitting that you can't, in fact, sing by default may look ugly, but it's the ugly truth.[/quote]
All right, let's make an extension that removes all the secret blocking rules and implements all the verbs in a normal way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1398&start=10#p14166
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Theory book?
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2011-03-01 10:37:26

The IF Theory Book (now actually called "IF Theory Reader"; I have no idea why...) has just been released [emote]:!:[/emote] 

It's available both [url=http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/if-theory-reader/15050861]as a printed book[/url] and [url=http://www.lulu.com/product/file-download/if-theory-reader/15050862]as a free PDF file[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2089&start=0#p14167
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting elements to display consistently in I7
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-03-01 12:38:05

Man, I really need to fix that status line thing.  [emote]:([/emote] 

It might be better to have a ground image that extends 1000px down and a sky image that extends 1000px up, both of which are 4000px wide and meet at the horizon, where you are layering in the sprites.

Then regardless of how the player sizes the window, the backdrop will look "right" - you would just need to add in more trees, grass, clouds, etc as new areas were exposed by resize operations.

You could probably leave the ground image as a fixed size, since if the player resizes the window horizontally they will expect to see more trees / landscape, and if they resize vertically they would expect to see more sky. With the possible exception of Nitfol, I don't believe any Glk libraries allow the player to resize internal borders, so the player would be unable to directly express a desire to see more of the ground cover.

[i]Alabaster[/i] uses a similar technique of images that extend extremely far in one direction, which are then scaled and composited together.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=10#p14168
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-01 13:06:41

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]All right, let's make an extension that removes all the secret blocking rules and implements all the verbs in a normal way.[/quote]
I think that's hardly worth a standalone extension -- it would just be a couple of [i]...is not listed in the check...[/i] and [i]...is listed in the report...[/i] assertions per unimplemented action. IIRC.

@Aaron: The new Plurality-like phrase [that-them noun] really should require the word "of" in there, like [that-them OF the noun].  This is because Plurality almost always requires the "of" due to [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=591]this bug[/url], and consistency makes learning & using said phrases easier.  I'm currently updating Custom Library Messages which adheres to this (among fixing another few bugs) as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2089&start=0#p14169
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting elements to display consistently in I7
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-03-01 13:45:31

Here's a [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2759298/gargoyle-2011.1-windows_r520.exe]preview build[/url] of Gargoyle with the status bar issue fixed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2087&start=0#p14170
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Glulxe and Windows Git updated
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-01 14:49:31

It seems to work fine at first blush.  For the code[code]Instead of waiting:
	repeat with foo running from 1 to 3:
		while suspending time:
			say "Seconds & microseconds: [player's seconds]:[player's microseconds].";
			say "Your time is [the player's time].";
			say "Your date is [player's weekday], [player's month] [player's day], [player's year].";
			say "Oh, and your timezone is [the player's timezone].";
			say "Seconds & microseconds: [player's seconds]:[player's microseconds].";
		say "Seconds & microseconds (after suspension): [player's seconds]:[player's microseconds].";
		say line break.[/code] I get this (Glulxe) [quote]>z
Seconds & microseconds: 33:781250.
Your time is 11:58 am.
Your date is Tuesday, March 1, 2011.
Oh, and your timezone is -08.
Seconds & microseconds: 33:781250.
Seconds & microseconds (after suspension): 33:781250.

Seconds & microseconds: 33:781250.
Your time is 11:58 am.
Your date is Tuesday, March 1, 2011.
Oh, and your timezone is -08.
Seconds & microseconds: 33:781250.
Seconds & microseconds (after suspension): 33:781250.

Seconds & microseconds: 33:781250.
Your time is 11:58 am.
Your date is Tuesday, March 1, 2011.
Oh, and your timezone is -08.
Seconds & microseconds: 33:781250.
Seconds & microseconds (after suspension): 33:781250.
[/quote]
Which looks correct (at the time I ran it). (This machine is 2.9 GHz, so cycles are measured in nanoseconds, not microseconds.)

Anything specific I should look out for?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2084&start=10#p14171
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error Message when trying to Release...
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-03-01 14:53:06

I'm not sure if anyone who's used Glimmr Automap has come across this, but in certain places when the map is being drawn onscreen the rooms will overlap each other, covering up the locations of rooms you've visited previously. I'm not sure if I missed something in the documentation which addresses this, or if I just have to be more careful in planning the map layout in advance to avoid overlapping, but it anyone knows of a fix or work-around to prevent this please share it here. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2089&start=0#p14172
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting elements to display consistently in I7
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-01 15:11:55

Thanks for the images; that helps. It definitely seems that the default approach to the canvas doesn't work for you.

Just to clarify: I'm assuming that your separate elements are sky (rectangle primitive) + trees (displayed as a single sprite) + sun (a sprite whose position varies to indicate the time) + grass (a single sprite).

The solution that springs to mind is either write a new rule for managing display, or just interceding a bit with the canvas to change the default behavior. I usually do the latter myself--in most cases, it's easier. To wit:

[list=1][*]Define the sprites so that they are "center-aligned"--this will cause the origin of the sprite to be considered as the center of the image, rather than as the upper-left corner;[/*:m]
[*]Intervene at the beginning of the window-drawing process to change the canvas size dynamically, so that the canvas is always the same size as the window.[/*:m]
[*]Change the element scaling rules for the sprites so that they are repositioned based on the center of the canvas (giving them their own kind will make it easy to manage this with a single rule). This means that the origin coordinates of your objects will be offset from the center of the [i]window[/i], rather than from the upper left corner of the [i]canvas[/i]: {0, 0} would be the center of the window, while {-100, 10} would 100 pixels left and 10 pixels below the center. Now the composite image will always be centered, but will not be scaled, and so will be cut off on the top and sides for smaller window sizes. The element scaling rulebook is probably the best place to do this, and the code would look like this, more or less:[code]Element scaling rule for a stationary-sprite (called the pict):
      let coords be the center-point of the <canvas>;
      now the win-x of the pict is (entry 1 of the coords) + (entry 1 of the origin of the pict);
      now the win-y of the pict is (entry 2 of the coords) + (entry 2 of the origin of the pict).[/code][/*:m]
[*]Draw the sky rectangle dynamically so that it's sized and positioned correctly.[/*:m][/list:o]

I may be forgetting some small thing, but that's about all you need, I think. This may not work well for smaller window sizes (since the canvas and images don't scale down). I would recommend, as Ben also does, that you extend the image wider on both sides, to catch everything (the sky on top and background color/grass on the bottom give you more leeway there).

Let me know if this works for you; I may turn it into a tutorial one day.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2084&start=10#p14173
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error Message when trying to Release...
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-01 15:13:16

I've never seen that. Does it appear to be a display issue, or a map generation issue? Do you have a screenshot or two you could post?

Thanks,
Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2076&start=0#p14174
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Data Mining Transcripts
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-03-01 15:15:33

[url=http://parchment.game-testing.org/demo/html/stats.php]Similar work here.[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2089&start=0#p14175
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting elements to display consistently in I7
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-01 15:21:26

For the map, I'd suggest a solution similar to my suggestion for the status image--don't allow the map to scale (or scale manually based on the window size). This way, the map will be cut off by the edges of the window. If you dynamically recenter the window on the player's location, there will never be any problem with the current region being cut off. Plus, the map may appear to scroll a bit as the player moves; a nice bonus. You'll still see margins when the player is near the edges of the map, of course, but this will now be visually meaningful--the borders appear because the player is close to the limit so the map.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=10#p14176
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-03-01 15:48:33

Thanks all for the comments. Keep them coming!
[quote="Skinny Mike"]Also, since jumping is blocked in the check phase and therefore not technically successful, I don't think it should be reported as such.[/quote]
Oops-- overlooked that jumping is blocked, rather than allowed by default. I've pulled it in line with the other default rejection messages: "You can't jump here, or can't do so in that way."
[quote="VictorGijsbers"]How can 'all' exclude anything? "That includes nothing you could take." would be better.[/quote]
Yes, this is a good point: I wrote this while thinking of the other case in which this message appears, >TAKE ALL BUT APPLE or whatever. I've adopted Matt's suggestion "There is nothing available, or nothing that matches that description." to cover both scenarios.
[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Why would you replace a message that describes my singing with a message that tells me I cannot sing? And what does it mean to claim that I cannot sing "in that way"? You probably mean that I cannot sing "using that command", but this is not entirely clear.[/quote]
As mentioned above, we shouldn't narrate the action happening since it's actually blocked by the library. You're right that "in this story" was overstepping: I've changed it to "You decline to." Which is essentially the same as the original message, but without any value judgements on the player's vocal cords.
[quote="VictorGijsbers"]For actions that are impossible, I would prefer something like "That is impossible.".[/quote]
But we don't know whether the action's impossible-- just that the command the player typed didn't work. As you point out, singing may well be possible if the player types, say, PERFORM ARIA, but we can't know that here. This is what "or can't do so in that way" is trying to get at. I share Felix's concern that this might be dangerous in implying that there's some other way to do what the player wants, but I think it's equally dangerous to imply that there's *no way* to do what the player wants. Very open to tweaking the wording of these messages to try to strike a balance.
[quote="matt w"]I'm also not sure I like the messages "You push the noun" etc. It makes it seems like something is happening when it isn't, and might even lead the player to expect a change in the world state.[/quote]
Well, this is the reverse problem as above: technically, these things *are* happening since the actions succeed. I actually have no problem with actions that succeed but do nothing; if there's no good reason to stop the player pushing or touching something, we'll let him. We just don't want to imply that there was a major change if there's wasn't, which is why I tried to make these as simple and declarative as possible.
[quote="matt w"]I also think "in that way" might be better changed to something like "using those words."[/quote]
I agree this is better in the case where there is actually a better grammar line for the player to try, but I feel like it's more misleading if there isn't, because it seems to imply a specific course of action (try typing different words) instead of a vaguer one (try something different). Hmm.
[quote="matt w"]Also, I think referring to the interpreter is probably a bad idea, [/quote]
Why so?
[quote="matt w"]and "quite" in response to "bother" is harmless.[/quote]
Sure, but it sounds stuffy and British, which I'm trying to avoid. [emote]:)[/emote]
[quote="capmikee"]Would it be possible to have them all collapse to a single customizable message, "You can't [verb] at this point in the story, or can't do so in that way?" The author could choose to change that one message, and/or override specific actions that are relevant to the story.[/quote]
This is not a bad idea. One danger is that the player is going to see this aggregate message quite a lot, probably, so it may be better to instead go the other way and try to differentiate them more in a useful way. Food for thought...
[quote]@Aaron: The new Plurality-like phrase [that-them noun] really should require the word "of" in there[/quote]
Thanks for the explanation on this-- I'll update the syntax accordingly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2089&start=0#p14177
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting elements to display consistently in I7
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-03-01 15:50:07

[quote="bcressey"]It might be better to have a ground image that extends 1000px down and a sky image that extends 1000px up, both of which are 4000px wide and meet at the horizon, where you are layering in the sprites.[/quote]

. . . say!  That's . . . not bad at all.  And better once I get the sprites teased apart and layer extra ones beyond the official canvas so it looks a little less, uh, square.  Somehow I expected that post-canvas sprites would break things, but it's . . . actually landscape-like!

[quote="bcressey"]Here's a [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2759298/gargoyle-2011.1-windows_r520.exe]preview build[/url] of Gargoyle with the status bar issue fixed.[/quote]

Rock [i]on[/i].

[quote="ektemple"]Just to clarify: I'm assuming that your separate elements are sky (rectangle primitive) + trees (displayed as a single sprite) + sun (a sprite whose position varies to indicate the time) + grass (a single sprite).

The solution that springs to mind is either write a new rule for managing display, or just interceding a bit with the canvas to change the default behavior. I usually do the latter myself--in most cases, it's easier. To wit:[/quote]

Your assumptions are nearly right; there's actually a few more pieces than that, but nothing that can't be positioned in the way we're discussing.  (Clouds are their own thing; trees are actually two to four sprites, depending on the final artwork; there's also, at least theoretically, multiple sprites that make up grass (flowers or such), and potentially a couple extra sprites that might be necessary for special game states.)

I am almost always in favor of slight intercession over new rules for managing things.  Thanks for the instructions on non-scaling things - I was just poking at that piece!  I will go and experiment.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=10#p14178
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-03-01 16:10:47

For the "can't do so in that way" messages: what do we think about something like:

[quote]You can't burn the chair like that.[/quote]

This is less verbose and still hints that there might be another command to do the same job, although if there isn't it could still mislead players into fruitless guess the syntax.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2078&start=10#p14179
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: found_in
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-01 16:18:21

It hasn't changed since 5U92, but I don't have a 5T18 handy to look at. Does that extension still work?

[quote]What sort of class test do you mean?[/quote]

"obj ofclass {My Backdrop Kind}" should work. Or you could assign a found_in property for your class.

[quote]We could give them another "floating" property if that would make it faster...[/quote]

That would work too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=10#p14180
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-01 16:24:36

[quote="aaronius"]
[quote="matt w"]I'm also not sure I like the messages "You push the noun" etc. It makes it seems like something is happening when it isn't, and might even lead the player to expect a change in the world state.[/quote]
Well, this is the reverse problem as above: technically, these things *are* happening since the actions succeed. I actually have no problem with actions that succeed but do nothing; if there's no good reason to stop the player pushing or touching something, we'll let him. We just don't want to imply that there was a major change if there's wasn't, which is why I tried to make these as simple and declarative as possible.[/quote]

Well, that's why I like "You push the noun, but nothing obvious happens"; it makes it clear that the pushing did happen but that nothing seems to have come of it.

[quote="aaronius"][quote="matt w"]I also think "in that way" might be better changed to something like "using those words."[/quote]
I agree this is better in the case where there is actually a better grammar line for the player to try, but I feel like it's more misleading if there isn't, because it seems to imply a specific course of action (try typing different words) instead of a vaguer one (try something different). Hmm.[/quote]

Well, we could always go disjunctive; "You can't (whatever), or at least not using those words." I don't know; it's not very elegant.

I do feel that "in that way" somewhat falls between two stools; it suggests that you might be able to do it a different way. So if you can't do it at all, it's a little misleading, and if you can do it but need extra syntax, it's also a little misleading. Of course default messages are by their nature compromises.

[quote="aaronius"][quote="matt w"]Also, I think referring to the interpreter is probably a bad idea, [/quote]
Why so?[/quote]

Too technical -- imagine a new player who's using some iPhone app or something that doesn't support multiple undos. Reference to the "interpreter" will confuse them, I think. (For bonus points, imagine they're playing Floatpoint. "If I have an interpreter, why isn't he helping me talk to these people?")

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=10#p14181
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-03-01 16:25:09

There's also that very generic message telling you that an NPC failed to perform any action you asked him/her to perform: "[The actor] is unable to do that". 
Whatever the reason that action failed, whether the NPC can't open a safe because it's locked or he/she can't sing or jump because those actions fail by default, the player is told simply that the NPC "is unable to do that".

If you're in the process of designing a new set of appropriately neutral library messages, is there still any reason not to use the same actor-based library messages for the player's failed messages and the NPC's?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=10#p14182
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-03-01 16:38:10

Felix: that still has the problem of misleading players in a sequence like >JUMP ("You are unable to do that.") when in fact >JUMP OVER CHASM is what they need to do next. The difficulty is the conflation of you the player ("You are unable to use that command.") with you the player character ("Bob is unable to jump.") Maybe it would be more accurate to invite the parser in and say something like "I am unable to direct your character to do that." But that's kind of a mouthful.

Matt: To me, "nothing obvious happens" always implied that something terribly interesting was going on somewhere else, if only I could figure out what this seemingly innocuous thing I pushed was connected to. Maybe that's just me... good points about the interpreter, I'll rephrase this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=10#p14183
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-03-01 16:57:27

[quote="matt w"]Too technical -- imagine a new player who's using some iPhone app or something that doesn't support multiple undos. Reference to the "interpreter" will confuse them, I think. (For bonus points, imagine they're playing Floatpoint. "If I have an interpreter, why isn't he helping me talk to these people?")[/quote]

It's also not necessarily or even typically the case that the interpreter lacks support for the multiple undo feature. Older versions of the Inform library disabled it by default, until fairly recently. Try UNDO twice in [i]Galatea[/i] or [i]Bronze[/i] and then try it in [i]Whom the Telling Changed[/i].

I believe Zoom allows multiple undo commands even in games that do not support it, via a menu option, but this is not the norm and it is also outside the scope of this message - the game state is simply rolled back and the library has no opportunity to intercede or respond.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=20#p14184
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-01 17:02:04

I'd prefer "You push [the noun], but it doesn't budge."  over the generic "nothing obvious happens".   This is a check rule and not a report rule, right?  

For delineating which messages are coming from in-world and which are out of world (i.e., Mr. Parser Voice), you can create say-phrases like[code]To say error message prefix: say "[italic type][bracket]".
To say error message suffix: say "[close bracket][roman type]".[/code] and wrap those phrases around the appropriate messages.  The author can override them merely by redefining them to do something else, including [i]do nothing[/i].

Another tool in your arsenal is to ask if a particular rulebook "is empty".  For example, asking if the carry out singing rules are empty, or the report singing rules are not empty, etc.  While that won't help the case of Instead rules, it can at least figure out if the author has added anything to those actions. 

Similarly for your TAKE ALL EXCEPT case -- ask if the player's command includes "all except/but" or whatever, and adapt the message accordingly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2090&start=0#p14185
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New action: build a fort. How can I improve it?
User: Mushroom Spider / DateTime: 2011-03-01 17:25:10

[quote="matt w"]Ha! I thought [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2086&p=14132]this[/url] looked a lot like Problem Sleuth.

EDIT: I recommend adding this to your code, unless you already have plans that conflict with it:

[spoiler][code]The pumpkin is a backdrop. The pumpkin is scenery. The pumpkin is everywhere. Instead of doing something when the current action involves the pumpkin: say "What pumpkin?"[/code][/spoiler]

...don't have a useful answer to your question right now, though.[/quote]

Shhhhhh! Don't tell anybody, it's a secret!

Yes, this is sort of a gaiden story to Problem Sleuth. It is what the other people in the 'real' office building where doing while PS and Co. were tearing through their imagination and blowing up mob bosses.

I love the pumpkin code, I'll be implementing that right away. Although I'll probably need to have some places without the pumpkin backdrop so that I can have at least 1 interaction involving pumpkins [emote]:D[/emote].

I think I've changed my mind as far as transporting the players to an Imaginary land via the forts though. I'll leave imagination to the PS crew. Most of the characters in this story are in the legal profession instead (Defense Solicitor, Pompous Barrister, Studious Intern, and more). Building a fort is simply going to be for flavor now, although sleeping in one might confer a stat boost of some sort.

[quote="zahariel"]Sounds like fun! See also [url]http://xkcd.com/219/[/url].

My first stab at this would be as follows, especially if you want to make more than one or two of them (massive fail-block of code follows):[spoiler][code]
The Boring Office is a room. The Exciting Fairyland is a room.

A fort-location is a kind of container. A fort-location can be built or unbuilt. A fort-location is usually unbuilt. A fort-location is usually not enterable. A fort-location has a text called built-description. A fort-location has a text called old-name. A fort-location has a room called destination. Understand "fort" as a built fort-location.

A fort-part is a kind of thing. A fort-part is usually scenery. A fort-part has a text called fort-description.

The desk is a fort-location in the Boring Office. The description is "The desk is just a few plywood boards on top of a few stacks of cinder blocks. The top is covered in boring legal documents for old cases that no one has got around to throwing away." The built-description of the desk is "An awesome fort built out of a desk and some old legal documents no one really needed anymore." The destination of the desk is the Exciting Fairyland.

Some plywood is a fort-part. The plywood is part of the desk. The fort-description of the plywood is "very sturdy walls". Some cinder blocks are a fort-part. The cinder blocks are part of the desk. The fort-description of the cinder blocks is "a charming chimney". Some legal documents are part of the desk. The legal documents are a fort-part. The legal documents are not scenery. The fort-description of the legal documents is "a comfy nest inside". 

Check taking a fort-part: say "No point. [The noun] is probably better off where it is." instead.

Fort-building is an action with past participle fort-built, applying to one thing. Understand "build a fort from [something]" as fort-building.

Check fort-building something: say "You don't see any way to make [the noun] into a fort." instead.
Check fort-building a built fort-location: say "Someone already built an awesome fort there!" instead.
Check fort-building a fort-location: rule succeeds. [or maybe continue the action, I forget]

Carry out fort-building: [Ideally, I did the check rules right so we can only get here if the noun is an unbuilt fort-location]
    now the noun is enterable;
    now the noun is built;
    now the description of the noun is the built-description of the noun;
    choose a random row from the Table of Fun Adjectives;
    now the old-name of the noun is the printed name of the noun;
    now the printed name of the noun is "[adjective entry] [old-name of the noun] fort".
    
Report fort-building:
    choose a random row from the Table of Fun Adjectives;
    say "You build [an adjective entry] fort out of [the old-name of the noun]";
    repeat with widget running through all fort-parts which are part of the noun:
        choose a random row from the Table of Construction Verbs;
        say ". [The widget] [verb entry] [fort-description of widget]";
    say "."

Instead of entering a built fort-location:
    say "You crawl into the fort, closing the makeshift door behind you. Alone in this dark box, you drift off into your imagination...";
    move player to the destination of the thing understood.

[/code][/spoiler]
Disclaimer: I am writing this at work off the top of my head and I have no idea whether it works or even compiles. But this is the situation from which I would start hacking.[/quote]

Thanks! I'll check out this wall-o-code right away. I'm not sure I understand the bit about 'widget', I haven't run across that particular term yet.
Despite being such a large chunk of code, and despite the fact that potential forts would need so much preamble to get them working, this is still a more efficient way to do it then what I was trying.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=20#p14186
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-01 17:40:40

[quote]I'd prefer "You push [the noun], but it doesn't budge." over the generic "nothing obvious happens".[/quote]

It needs to cover both "PUSH SKYSCRAPER" and "PUSH PENCIL".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2090&start=0#p14187
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New action: build a fort. How can I improve it?
User: StJohnLimbo / DateTime: 2011-03-01 18:35:31

[quote="Mushroom Spider"]I'm not sure I understand the bit about 'widget', I haven't run across that particular term yet.[/quote]
'Widget' doesn't have any special meaning, it's just a name for the temporary variable inside the 'repeat ... running through' loop. This way of naming the variables can sometimes be confusing, but it makes for very readable code. The Inform documentation, for instance, gives these examples (see [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc178.html]section 11.11.[/url]):
[code]repeat with dinner guest running through the people in the Dining Room:
...[/code] and
[code]repeat with suspect running through the men who are in a lighted room (called the scene):
	say "[The suspect] is in [the scene].";[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=20#p14188
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-03-01 18:47:15

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]And is there anyone left in the world who swears by saying "bother" [i]and[/i] plays interactive fiction?[/quote]
*raises hand*

Of course, there's usually a pause first, while I think of a fruitier word I could say and then remind myself that real adventurers don't use that kind of language.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2084&start=10#p14189
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error Message when trying to Release...
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-03-01 19:01:02

[quote="ektemple"]I've never seen that. Does it appear to be a display issue, or a map generation issue? Do you have a screenshot or two you could post?

Thanks,
Erik[/quote]

Thanks for your help Erik, here's a "before" and "after" screenshot showing how the rooms are overlapping:

[img]http://www.rive-fantasy.com/overlap1.jpg[/img]

w/nw/e/se (overlaps room started from)

[img]http://www.rive-fantasy.com/overlap2.jpg[/img]

It's kind of a convoluted map example, and I can change the layout to avoid overlapping, was just wondering if anyone's come across this before. - Dustin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2078&start=10#p14190
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: found_in
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-01 19:36:28

[quote="zarf"]It hasn't changed since 5U92, but I don't have a 5T18 handy to look at. Does that extension still work?[/quote]
No, it doesn't seem to work anymore. Aside from a minor I6 syntax change, it uses an object-based rulebook within the found_in function, and that doesn't seem to receive the correct object.

[quote]"obj ofclass {My Backdrop Kind}" should work. Or you could assign a found_in property for your class.

[quote]We could give them another "floating" property if that would make it faster...[/quote]

That would work too.[/quote]
All right, I think I can do this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=20#p14191
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: StJohnLimbo / DateTime: 2011-03-01 20:11:17

[quote="zarf"][quote]I'd prefer "You push [the noun], but it doesn't budge." over the generic "nothing obvious happens".[/quote]

It needs to cover both "PUSH SKYSCRAPER" and "PUSH PENCIL".[/quote]
Yes, what Zarf said.
How about "Nothing interesting happens"? (Or "You push [the noun], but nothing interesting happens"). That doesn't seem to imply too much with regard to movement or non-movement of the pushed object, and at the same time it avoids [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=14182#p14182]Aaron's point[/url] that "nothing obvious happens" could be taken to imply that "something unobvious happens around the corner".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2090&start=0#p14192
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New action: build a fort. How can I improve it?
User: zahariel / DateTime: 2011-03-01 20:11:43

[quote="Mushroom Spider"]
Thanks! I'll check out this wall-o-code right away. I'm not sure I understand the bit about 'widget', I haven't run across that particular term yet.
Despite being such a large chunk of code, and despite the fact that potential forts would need so much preamble to get them working, this is still a more efficient way to do it then what I was trying.[/quote]

Yeah, StJohnLimbo nailed it. I just called it widget because I had already rather overused the term "part" in the loop preamble. "Repeat with ... running through" is the fundamental loop construct in Inform 7 (and Python, Perl, Ruby, and many other scripting languages), because it's very safe; there's no way to make an infinite loop with it because you can't have an infinite number of objects. It's also usually extremely fast because Inform is optimized for it. All that loop says in plain English is "print a sentence for each fort-part."

I don't think each instance of a fort would be too painful too create with this design? The entire definition of the desk itself is the 4th and 5th paragraphs, and the only reason the 5th paragraph is so long is that there are 3 different parts. All the rest is defining the general concept of a fort. Possibly I'm not sure what you mean by "preamble". The definition code is just something you stick at the top of a chapter and never look at it again; then each fort-location is relatively simple.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2084&start=10#p14193
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error Message when trying to Release...
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-01 20:22:21

Ah, I see what you mean. This just reflects the fact that the map has only one dimension. In other words, when Automap (Mark Tilford's extension, the actual mapping engine) creates the map, it's just a single array of tile references. If you have overlapping rooms, then the room that's "on top" overwrites all data about the room "below". This is just the way the Automap engine works (and, incidentally, one of the reasons it's so fast). You can see this in purer form by releasing to Quixe and looking at the ASCII version of the map, or by using the "dump map" command in a debugging build or in the IDE; the latter will show the actual tile reference numbers.

The solution, as you note, is to tweak your layout. Or, where possible, to use Automap's (somewhat idiosyncratic) mapping hints to specify how specific features should be mapped.

I like the look of your custom tileset. When you get around to drawing the icons (up, down, in, out, etc.), see if you can come up with something better than I did for the dual-direction in/out tile... (And if you feel like sharing the tileset with other authors when you're done, you can do so by wrapping it up in its own extension, along the lines of the default tileset.)

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=20#p14194
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-03-01 20:24:51

Why not just have two messages for push depending on whether the object is fixed or not.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2089&start=0#p14195
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting elements to display consistently in I7
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-01 20:33:38

[quote="gravel"][quote="bcressey"]It might be better to have a ground image that extends 1000px down and a sky image that extends 1000px up, both of which are 4000px wide and meet at the horizon, where you are layering in the sprites.[/quote]

. . . say!  That's . . . not bad at all.  And better once I get the sprites teased apart and layer extra ones beyond the official canvas so it looks a little less, uh, square.  Somehow I expected that post-canvas sprites would break things, but it's . . . actually landscape-like![/quote]

Oh yes, you're perfectly able to specify negative coordinates as well as coordinates that are greater than the canvas dimensions. This is in fact the easiest way to eliminate the borders, and I would encourage you to use it if you can. It will save you a little coding, and a lot of subtraction (needed to move from canvas coordinates to center-offset coordinates in the method I suggested). The main difference between the two is that, at smaller window sizes, Ben's suggestion will tend to show you more of the boring stuff (sky and ground) while mine is biased toward showing more of the interesting stuff (trees, sun, clouds, etc.) It will depend on the particular implementation which of these is better--my suggested method could cut off important information, whereas Ben's never cuts anything off.

I really like where you're going with this, by the way; a creative way to extend what you had been doing with window background colors. The graphics are looking good too.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2078&start=10#p14196
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: found_in
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-01 21:03:07

[quote]Aside from a minor I6 syntax change, it uses an object-based rulebook within the found_in function, and that doesn't seem to receive the correct object.[/quote]

That's what I was afraid of.

I suppose I'll file a bug about this, even though it's only a problem for ambitious extension-writers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2090&start=0#p14197
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New action: build a fort. How can I improve it?
User: Mushroom Spider / DateTime: 2011-03-01 21:22:08

[quote="StJohnLimbo"]I don't think each instance of a fort would be too painful too create with this design? The entire definition of the desk itself is the 4th and 5th paragraphs, and the only reason the 5th paragraph is so long is that there are 3 different parts. All the rest is defining the general concept of a fort. Possibly I'm not sure what you mean by "preamble". The definition code is just something you stick at the top of a chapter and never look at it again; then each fort-location is relatively simple.[/quote]

Sorry, I wasn't really clear with my words, I was trying to compliment you for coming up with a better solution than me. I was trying to say, that even though that is a wall of code, it is still better than my code.
By the word "preamble" I didn't mean anything technical, I was just trying to find a way to describe the paragraph used to design each specific fort-location. I think I described that paragraph as being large because I want to try reducing it even further (even if it means cutting out features like the various parts) but I was not trying to offend you in any way.

Thanks for all the help everybody, I'll be posting my final draft once I figure it out [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=20#p14198
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-03-01 21:24:09

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Another tool in your arsenal is to ask if a particular rulebook "is empty".  For example, asking if the carry out singing rules are empty, or the report singing rules are not empty, etc.  While that won't help the case of Instead rules, it can at least figure out if the author has added anything to those actions.[/quote]

Ooh, this is an intriguing idea. After trying a couple test cases, though, I'm not sure it can actually help in practice.

I can think of three major ways an author might try to use one of these do-nothing verbs. First is the "correct" way of unlisting the built-in block rule and making custom rules.

[code]
The block buying rule is not listed in the check buying rulebook.

Check buying: if the player does not hold money, instead say "You can't buy something without money."

Carry out buying: say "Congrats, you now own [a noun]!"; now player holds noun.
[/code]
[quote]
>BUY CAT
You can't buy something without money.

>BUY CAT
(when holding money)
Congrats, you now own a cat!
[/quote]

In this case, as far as I can tell you'll never see the original Check rule at all: every action would either show one of the newly written check rules, or fall through to a carry out rule. So differentiating between non-empty rulebooks in the built-in message wouldn't help, since you never see it.

If a player's creating a custom one-off:

[code]
Instead of buying something when player holds money: now money is off-stage; now player holds noun; say "A successful sale!" 
[/code]
[quote]
>BUY CAT
You can't buy that, or can't do so in that way.

>BUY CAT
(when holding money)
A successful sale!
[/quote]

...the rulebook stays empty and the check can't help us. Which is likewise the case if the author's creating an entirely new action:

[code]
Understand the command "purchase" as something new. Purchasing is an action applying to one thing. Understand "purchase [something]" as purchasing. Carry out purchasing: say "It's yours!"
[/code]
[quote]
>BUY CAT
You can't buy that, or can't do so in that way.

>PURCHASE CAT
It's yours!
[/quote]

I'm leaning towards phrasing the messages like "You can't buy [the noun] like that." I think this reads fairly naturally in all cases-- it makes sense if you can't do the action because you're not holding the right thing, using the right grammar, or there at the right time. If there's no right way to do the action, "that" can be read as referring to the action rather than the way it was performed-- imagine an admonition like "You can't go around just pushing people like that!" It can still be misinterpreted as meaning there's a right way, of course, but I think it's an improvement at least.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=20#p14199
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-01 21:28:35

[quote="capmikee"]Would it be possible to have them all collapse to a single customizable message, "You can't [verb] at this point in the story, or can't do so in that way?" The author could choose to change that one message, and/or override specific actions that are relevant to the story.[/quote]
I wrote an extension long ago called Grouped Messages As Dialogue that attempted that very thing, so authors who wanted to override all 100+ messages in the game could do so without actually writing 100+ different messages.  The extension stopped functioning many builds ago, but one reason I created the activity in Custom Library Messages was so that I might be able to revive the idea later.  I agree that if several messages are going to turn out identical, then rig things to that it's only one parameterized message, and hence, easy to replace.  For example, a say-phrase that is passed the [i]library message verb[/i], which an author can override either on a per-action basis (by using the table) or all at once (by defining the say phrase again, since Inform will use the last one defined).

Incidentally, Aaron, this extension seems to work fine with CLM so far.  I noticed a comment in it wondering something to that effect. 

For SING, I think I once used "You hum a few bars to yourself." which works even when you're gagged and/or surrounded by psychopathic librarians. 

Incidentally, what happened to "You're not that thirsty/hungry."?  I liked it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1398&start=10#p14200
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Theory book released!!!!!!
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-01 21:30:24

This is full of win!!  Thank you to the editors/publishers/curators/grues, and all the contributors!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=20#p14201
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-01 21:37:28

[quote="aaronius"]Ooh, this is an intriguing idea. After trying a couple test cases, though, I'm not sure it can actually help in practice.[/quote]
I can also create short phrases that count the number of rules in a rulebook and/or ask if a named rule is currently listed in the rulebook. I've done so before in extensions like... Repeat Through A Rulebook. [emote]:)[/emote]  That would solve your first case.  Your second case was the Instead exception I already noted.  Your third case is irrelevant -- you are not writing default messages for actions that don't already exist in the standard rules.  Redirecting a previously existing command to the new action doesn't change that.

BTW, I noticed you had some fancy code in that other thread, "how much did the parser understand" or whatever it was called.  Are you not using such bits here?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2078&start=10#p14202
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: found_in
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-01 21:41:05

(It looks like this handling of found_in changed in the Great Templatization of 5T18.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2094&start=0#p14203
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: Property arrays
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-01 21:59:33

The DM4, which doesn't really touch on Glulx, says that the limit on the elements that a property array may contain is 32. That number is for Z5/Z8--I assume that Glulx Inform does away with the limitation, but can anyone confirm this?

Also, @malloc and @linearsearch--I'm probably not smart enough to figure out how to use these anyway, but does @malloc allow for dynamically changing the size of a property array? And I assume @linearsearch will accelerate seeking through one, but is that correct?

Thanks!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=20#p14204
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-01 22:02:45

[quote="aaronius"]I'm leaning towards phrasing the messages like "You can't buy [the noun] like that." I think this reads fairly naturally in all cases-- it makes sense if you can't do the action because you're not holding the right thing, using the right grammar, or there at the right time. If there's no right way to do the action, "that" can be read as referring to the action rather than the way it was performed-- imagine an admonition like "You can't go around just pushing people like that!" It can still be misinterpreted as meaning there's a right way, of course, but I think it's an improvement at least.[/quote]

To continue the nitpick, I'm not sure the elegant one-size-fits-all approach really serves the purpose. If "You can't attack the noun like that" means you can't attack it at all, or you need to attack it with a different thing, or you need to attack it using different words -- then some players will interpret it in the wrong way for the situation. And I think the purpose of the default message should be to convey that the command hasn't been understood without leading an inexperienced player to a wrong understanding of why it hasn't been understood. After all, the real audience of the message is relatively new players; the exact wording of the message doesn't matter much to players who can say "Oh that's a default message which leaves open possibilities X and Y." 

(Quoting [url=http://pissylittlesausages.wordpress.com/2009/10/12/if-comp-09-owen-parishs-the-grand-quest/]Jenni[/url]: "Y’know, every time I read 'Violence isn’t the answer to this one,' I am skeptical, because very often this default message is left as a failure notification in places where you’re simply using the wrong kind of violence, or on the wrong thing." My point being, I know that and you know that, but the target audience for "You can't attack the object like that" doesn't know that.)

So that's why I like the disjunctive responses, which spell out what the parser doesn't know about the situation.

...now of course this is coming off the top of my head, and you've done a lot more combing through transcripts for how people react to them than I have, but that's my reasoning.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2094&start=0#p14205
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Property arrays
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-01 22:04:36

Regarding @linearsearch, [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1454]yes.[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=20#p14206
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-03-02 06:02:04

[quote="aaronius"]Felix: that still has the problem of misleading players in a sequence like >JUMP ("You are unable to do that.") when in fact >JUMP OVER CHASM is what they need to do next. The difficulty is the conflation of you the player ("You are unable to use that command.") with you the player character ("Bob is unable to jump.") Maybe it would be more accurate to invite the parser in and say something like "I am unable to direct your character to do that." But that's kind of a mouthful.[/quote]
I was thinking more in lines of redirecting the NPC-failed-the-action messages to the PC-failed-the-action messages. So that we get ">MUMMY, OPEN SARCOPHAGUS / It's already open" or ">MUMMY, OPEN SARCOPHAGUS / It seems to be locked" as the case may be, rather than ">MUMMY, OPEN SARCOPHAGUS / The mummy is unable to do that" in each and every case.
I know that failed NPC actions are intercepted by the carry out requested actions rule, but I'm not sure if that's merely because the standard library messages only fit when actor is the player or if there is some deeper reason why NPCs' failed actions should be so summarily reported.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2087&start=0#p14207
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Glulxe and Windows Git updated
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-03-02 06:05:56

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Anything specific I should look out for?[/quote]No, nothing specific. I'm just aware that Windows Glk is probably the only Glk implementation that won't copy Zarf's code verbatim.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=30#p14208
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-03-02 06:16:09

[quote="aaronius"]singing may well be possible if the player types, say, PERFORM ARIA, but we can't know that here. This is what "or can't do so in that way" is trying to get at.[/quote]
What about referring not to the action tried but to the verb used in trying?
I mean something like:

[list]«The verb "sing" can't be used at this point in the story.»[/list:u]

That neither precludes that SING may work excellently elsewhere in the game nor that there may be another way to make the PC sing right here and now (and I don't think it suggests too strongly that there has to be another way to sing or that SING will certainly be usable anywhere in the game either).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=30#p14209
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-03-02 10:49:00

[quote="Felix"]I mean something like:
[list]«The verb "sing" can't be used at this point in the story.»[/list:u][/quote]
What will happen if the verb "sing" [i]can [/i]in fact be used at this point in the story, but in a different way, such as "sing to Johnny"? That would be a misleading message.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=30#p14210
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-02 10:57:36

[quote="Ron Newcomb"][quote="VictorGijsbers"]All right, let's make an extension that removes all the secret blocking rules and implements all the verbs in a normal way.[/quote]
I think that's hardly worth a standalone extension -- it would just be a couple of [i]...is not listed in the check...[/i] and [i]...is listed in the report...[/i] assertions per unimplemented action. IIRC.[/quote]
I like this idea. I think a small standalone extension would be fine just to save authors some extra fussing, and it could be included in Neutral Library Messages if that makes sense. It seems to me that most situations where a procedural rule would be handy (or a preamble-rewriting line, as mentioned [url=http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/837651-syntax-a-way-to-change-the-condition-of-an-exist?ref=title]here[/url]), are in those generic "block action" rules. I don't like being forced to use Instead or mess with the standard rulebooks just to implement a verb that already exists.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2080&start=0#p14211
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2011
User: Mr. Patient / DateTime: 2011-03-02 11:04:54

I'm entering a game as well.  But if Carolyn's game is as good as [i]One Eye Open[/i], well, the bar will be set pretty high for the rest of us.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2089&start=0#p14212
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting elements to display consistently in I7
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-03-02 11:15:42

I think I was sort of thrown by the language - I think of a canvas as a complete piece to paint on, but it doesn't make much sense to paint on the easel off the canvas (at least if you're doing a traditional piece!).  I guess I sort of knew you could use negative numbers, but I expected that whatever was off-canvas would be sliced off.  I'm sure this is in the documentation, which I *have* actually read a couple times, but it hasn't been sinking in.  

Also, thanks for the kind words.  It's definitely a Process - and basically the most aggressive procrastination tool ever, due to the options and my near total lack of art skills.    I'll post an update once I've played with stuff a bit, but an extension of sprites along backdrops that are anchored to meet on a set horizon line seems to be the nicest look.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2084&start=10#p14213
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error Message when trying to Release...
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-03-02 12:36:13

[quote="ektemple"]Ah, I see what you mean. This just reflects the fact that the map has only one dimension. In other words, when Automap (Mark Tilford's extension, the actual mapping engine) creates the map, it's just a single array of tile references. If you have overlapping rooms, then the room that's "on top" overwrites all data about the room "below". This is just the way the Automap engine works (and, incidentally, one of the reasons it's so fast). You can see this in purer form by releasing to Quixe and looking at the ASCII version of the map, or by using the "dump map" command in a debugging build or in the IDE; the latter will show the actual tile reference numbers.

The solution, as you note, is to tweak your layout. Or, where possible, to use Automap's (somewhat idiosyncratic) mapping hints to specify how specific features should be mapped.

I like the look of your custom tileset. When you get around to drawing the icons (up, down, in, out, etc.), see if you can come up with something better than I did for the dual-direction in/out tile... (And if you feel like sharing the tileset with other authors when you're done, you can do so by wrapping it up in its own extension, along the lines of the default tileset.)

--Erik[/quote]

Thanks for the explanation. I'm going to make a new tileset which has a grunge hand drawn look to it, and I'll wrap it up in an extension when I'm finished, in case anyone wants to use it as an option. BTW, for anyone interested, I've been experimenting with different ways you could use a background image with your Automapping, as part of a front-end UI, and this example/test was created using the first version you referenced on the previous page (where the map doesn't scale up):

[img]http://www.rive-fantasy.com/UIautomap.jpg[/img]

Thanks again for the help - Dustin Neff

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2087&start=0#p14214
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Glulxe and Windows Git updated
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-02 12:40:34

Oh, I'll use the native Cocoa toolkit for the iOS version. Just for the sake of variety.

The unit test, again, is at <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/datetimetest.ulx">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/datetimetest.ulx</a> .

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2089&start=10#p14215
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting elements to display consistently in I7
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-03-02 12:46:41

This looks great, I hope you make this into an extension when you're finished I would love to play around with it!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2094&start=0#p14216
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Property arrays
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-02 13:01:18

[quote]The DM4, which doesn't really touch on Glulx, says that the limit on the elements that a property array may contain is 32[/quote]

In Glulx the hard limit is 32768 entries. You will have to increase MAX_OBJ_PROP_TABLE_SIZE and MAX_PROP_TABLE_SIZE before you reach that point.

[quote] does @malloc allow for dynamically changing the size of a property array?[/quote]

Not directly. The property array is part of the object property table, which is a fixed-size data table in RAM. However, its format is documented, so building a new one in allocated memory isn't hard. I believe one of vaporware's extensions does this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=30#p14217
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-03-02 13:08:09

I am cautiously open to this, but where do you draw the line? It seems like it definitely does make sense to block some actions by default (like drinking), while others are in a gray area (attacking or cutting). 

The ones which the library currently narrates as if they're actually taking place are jumping, rubbing, pushing (arguably), and singing (arguably).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2078&start=10#p14218
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: found_in
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-02 13:52:33

[quote="zarf"]I suppose I'll file a bug about this, even though it's only a problem for ambitious extension-writers.[/quote]
I've decided to apply a minor hack to deal with the problem. Here is the full source of Conditional Backdrops, Version 2:
[spoiler][code]Version 2/110302 of Conditional Backdrops by Mike Ciul begins here.

"An extension to allow a single rulebook to determine the presence of multiple backdrops."

Include (-
[ MoveFloatingObjects i k l m address flag;
	if (real_location == nothing) return;
 	objectloop (i) {
		if (ObjectFloats(i)) {
			if (ObjectFoundIn(i, real_location)) move i to real_location;
			else remove i;
		}
	}
];

[ ObjectFloats B address;
	return (B.&found_in ~= 0 && B hasnt absent);
];

[ ObjectFoundIn B R k l m address;
	if (~~ObjectFloats( B )) rfalse;
	address = B.&found_in;
	if (ZRegion(address-->0) == 2) {
		m = address-->0;
		parameter_object = B;
		return (m.call(R) ~= 0);
	}
	else {
		k = B.#found_in;
		for (l=0 : l<k/WORDSIZE : l++) {
			m = address-->l;
			if (ZRegion(m) == 2 && m.call(R) ~= 0) rtrue;
			if (m == R || m in R) rtrue;
		}
	}
	rfalse;
];

[ MoveBackdrop bd D x address;
	if (~~(bd ofclass K7_backdrop)) return RunTimeProblem(RTP_BACKDROPONLY, bd);
	if (bd.#found_in > WORDSIZE) {
		address = bd.&found_in;
		address-->0 = D;
	} else bd.found_in = D;
	give bd ~absent;
	MoveFloatingObjects();
];
-)  instead of "Floating Objects" in "WorldModel.i6t"

A conditional backdrop is a kind of thing.

A conditional backdrop is always fixed in place. A conditional backdrop is never portable. A conditional backdrop is usually scenery.

Include (- with found_in [ ; ProcessRulebook( (+ Backdrop condition rules +) );  return (RulebookSucceeded()); ], -) when defining a conditional backdrop.

The specification of conditional backdrop is "Like a backdrop, but allows rules for determining presence or absence in a given room."

Backdrop condition rules are an object-based rulebook.

Backdrop condition rules have outcomes present (success), it is present (success), it is absent (failure) and absent (failure - the default).

To decide which object is new location: (- location -).


Conditional Backdrops ends here.[/code][/spoiler]
The relevant line I've added sets "parameter_object = B" right before calling the found_in function. Is this safe, or can it mess with nested rulebooks? Should I save the old parameter_object on the stack?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2078&start=10#p14219
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: found_in
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-02 14:05:04

I learned a lot from reading auto.inf while working on this. But I'm still not quite sure how certain global variables work.

One obstacle to understanding was that I kept reading lines like this:

[code]Global parameter_object; ! = I7 "parameter-object" = I7 "container in question"[/code]

as [i]"I6's [b]parameter_object[/b] is not equal to I7's [b]parameter-object[/b], it is I7's [b]container in question[/b]."[/i]

I just realized today that the exclamation point doesn't mean "not" (that would be a tilde, wouldn't it?), it means "comment!"

However, I'm still confused about why John Clemens instructs authors of backdrop condition rules to refer to his "new location" variable (translated into the I6 global "location,") rather than having them use the "location," which is equivalent to I6 "real_location." Does anyone know how to contact John Clemens, or why he would have said that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2094&start=0#p14220
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Property arrays
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-02 14:25:56

Excellent, thank you both. I probably don't have the chops to make this work, but--once I find some time--I'll give 'er the old college try!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2089&start=10#p14221
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting elements to display consistently in I7
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-03-02 14:27:34

I'd be happy to pass along whatever code I end up with, maybe with some heavy commenting, but I don't think I'll do an official extension, since I'm not sure I want to be responsible for maintenance (nor for making the code vague yet sturdy enough to drop into anyone's project).  I think it would be pretty easy to clean out, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2080&start=0#p14222
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2011
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2011-03-02 16:02:09

[quote="Mr. Patient"]I'm entering a game as well.  But if Carolyn's game is as good as [i]One Eye Open[/i], well, the bar will be set pretty high for the rest of us.[/quote]

Thank you for the compliment!

I'm entering something fairly offbeat.  I'm very excited about this game, but I was supposed to have it in front of playtesters this Monday, and it hasn't happened yet.  [emote]:([/emote]  So I'm running scared right now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2078&start=10#p14223
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: found_in
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-02 16:08:14

[quote="capmikee"]The relevant line I've added sets "parameter_object = B" right before calling the found_in function. Is this safe, or can it mess with nested rulebooks? Should I save the old parameter_object on the stack?[/quote]
I haven't been following this thread very closely, but I know the answer to that final question:  yes, you should definitely preserve the value of parameter_object, because it's just a global variable and the next rulebook that gets called will almost certainly wipe it out.  In particular, any and all Activities use it, and if you begin an activity with parameter_object of one value but end the activity with it being another value, bugs are almost guaranteed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2089&start=10#p14224
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting elements to display consistently in I7
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-02 16:09:12

[quote="gravel"]I think I was sort of thrown by the language - I think of a canvas as a complete piece to paint on, but it doesn't make much sense to paint on the easel off the canvas (at least if you're doing a traditional piece!).  I guess I sort of knew you could use negative numbers, but I expected that whatever was off-canvas would be sliced off.  I'm sure this is in the documentation, which I *have* actually read a couple times, but it hasn't been sinking in.[/quote]

All metaphors are imperfect, I guess. I originally referred to the canvas as "the background", which was not very productive, and I found I had to continually use phrases like "independent scalable coordinate system" and so on--not very user-friendly... After hitting on the canvas metaphor, which points primarily to the scalability ("stretch") of the canvas, I kind of rationalized the fact that you can have pre- and post-canvas elements with the idea that when you stretch a canvas to a frame, there is canvas (and often paint) on the outside of the frame as well as the inside. Obviously, these days few people but the artist and gallery workers will ever see that, but it's there... Yeah, like I said, it's a rationalization.

There's also the matter of the other "frame" in the extended metaphor, which is the picture frame; i.e., the frame which actually removes screens the edges of the canvas from view. Glimmr has a whole other degree of flexibility there too, which probably violate the metaphor but are very useful--for example, you can change the origin point of the window frame, allowing you to move the frame over the canvas to focus on different areas, etc.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2078&start=10#p14225
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: found_in
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-02 16:19:34

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]I haven't been following this thread very closely, but I know the answer to that final question:  yes, you should definitely preserve the value of parameter_object, because it's just a global variable and the next rulebook that gets called will almost certainly wipe it out.  In particular, any and all Activities use it, and if you begin an activity with parameter_object of one value but end the activity with it being another value, bugs are almost guaranteed.[/quote]
Okay.

I was surprised because that never happens in auto.inf. I think the only time parameter_object is assigned a value is in the ProcessRulebook routine, and the old value is not saved there.

So I'm not really sure what the I6 stack is used for. Is it better to save parameter_object on the stack, or in a local variable?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=30#p14226
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-03-02 16:47:19

I have the impression that I'm in the minority with my opinion, but I think that the standard library should include just the bare minimum set of actions. If the story doesn't use a particular action it's better to just respond with "The story doesn't understand that verb" or similar. It tells the player straight away that they don't need to try that action later on either. If the author does need to implement the action it's almost always just as easy to make the action from scratch than to build on top of an existing minimally implemented standard library action. Personally I tend to start a new project by pruning a whole lot of standard actions and putting them back only if it turns out I need them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2078&start=10#p14227
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: found_in
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-02 17:11:31

It's a matter of code style whether you use a local variable or the stack. There's no practical difference.

(I haven't looked at the library usage of parameter_object, but it makes sense to preserve it, if only for the sake of future hackers.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2078&start=20#p14228
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: found_in
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-02 18:47:45

I7 works correctly when parameter_object is being used *as a parameter*, as you know.  But it is exposed to I7 as a global variable four times:  as the container in question, the supporter in question, the parameter-object, and the scene being changed.   The change log for 5T18 deprecates the first two since Called parentheticals do the same job nowadays.  However, because they are global, not local, Inform 7 allows using any of those four variables from outside the rulebooks for which they were intended.  We can't expect all game authors to not do this unwise thing, but Inform 7 allows it, and it will seem to work most of the time -- until someone sticks a "[the mysterious stranger]" in somewhere, calling the Printing the Name activity, obliterating parameter_object and hence previous code that worked no longer does. 

Or to put that another way, including your backdrops extension will seem to break something elsewhere in the game author's code that has absolutely nothing to do with anything except for parameter_object being shared under the guise of different I7-level names.  I don't know what an author might do to the scene being changed, but it likely isn't something either of you'd want to do to a backdrop.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=30#p14229
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-03-02 19:23:37

I don't think you're in the minority. My sense is that JUMP and SING only exist to provide critics with weapons to use against novice authors (c.f. [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=gl74l6r0m5h4x02]The Lucubrator[/url] which someone mentioned earlier.)

I'd vote for giving them the "That's not a verb I recognize" treatment instead. The problem isn't that the message is bad, it's that the commands contribute nothing to the typical story and are easily overlooked by authors as a result.

As long as you purge every trace of "Nothing obvious happens" I will be happy. I spent hours turning stuff in [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=nnhm4yp172oivtd9]The Reliques of Tolti-Aph[/url], trying to figure out what mysterious event was taking place. I assumed I must be disarming a trap or unlocking a secret passage somewhere on the map; the nature of the scenario added meaning to an otherwise innocuous response.

That's a problem that many of your new defaults have as well. It seems like you are approaching this from an author's perspective, where the important thing is that the messages not stick out from the rest of the prose. I think inexperienced players would prefer that such messages look awkward and jarring, to better signal that the response can be ignored.

For example, all of your "Try expressing ..." replies can be read as unsolicited hints from the author to try the same thing in a different way.

A different approach would be to use the new line echo functionality to erase the entered command, play an error sound, and redisplay the prompt as though nothing had ever happened. If the response to a command is neither interesting nor informative, why show the response at all? The player may be frustrated, but better that than actively misled.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2080&start=0#p14230
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2011
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-03-02 19:30:46

[quote="JohnW"]When I started my game in October I fully expected to be entering Spring Thing 2011 with time to spare. Well, that went well. I am starting to doubt it will even enter beta testing this year...[/quote]
Your not alone.  I'd been thinking about entering since last year's Spring Thing was cancelled, and since then I've burned through three projects (two potentially longer ones that might have been of the typical Spring Thing scope).  Since last November, I've been working on something pretty coherent that I think I have at least a chance at finishing, but it no way could it possibly have been ready.

Congratulations to those who are entering!  You've already won the hardest contest by actually finishing a complicated IF project.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=30#p14231
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-02 20:07:41

[quote="bcressey"]IA different approach would be to use the new line echo functionality to erase the entered command, play an error sound, and redisplay the prompt as though nothing had ever happened. If the response to a command is neither interesting nor informative, why show the response at all? The player may be frustrated, but better that than actively misled.[/quote]
I don't think I'd like that as a player. I often use scrollback and transcripts to check whether I've tried something, so I'd want a permanent record of everything that didn't work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2095&start=0#p14232
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Trouble replacing part of the Standard Rules
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-03-02 20:17:21

The following should nerf the default player entirely, since it's the section that defines the properties, description, etc of people. 

[code]Stage is a room.

Section - Player Description (in place of Section SR1/11 - People in Standard Rules by Graham Nelson

Section - More stuff

test me with "x me / showme me"
[/code]

However, when running, "yourself" seems exactly he would if you hadn't replaced him.

Originally, I was trying to change stuff in here, and got a bunch of I6 compiler errors that I was including things twice. So it seems as if the request to replace the section is silently failing. Is this a bug, or something else?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=30#p14233
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-03-02 20:29:12

Transcripts would not be affected, and the command history would still reflect the entered command even if scrollback didn't.

I agree that a simple beep is no good but suppose the interpreter suppressed the output, then displayed a new command prompt with the invalid command pre-loaded in a different style (bold red vs bold green). That would provide a visual cue that the command had been rejected, which would disappear when the player erased the command and entered new one.

You could also adapt it for the case where the command (JUMP) was invalid but a longer form would work. The prompt could come back preloaded with >JUMP [WHERE].

You could further extend it with something like autocomplete, if the Tab key were allowed as a line terminator. The player could press tab and >JUMP [WHERE] would disappear, to be replaced by >JUMP [OVER CHASM]. Pressing Enter would strip away the brackets and process the command as if the player had typed it, including echoing it back to the window with no brackets and no italics. Pressing Tab again would supply a different autocomplete value.

Getting the actual values for autocomplete would take some effort, though. But it's effort in the right direction: helping the player enter commands for which the game can produce a meaningful response.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=30#p14234
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-02 20:34:17

[quote="bcressey"]You could also adapt it for the case where the command (JUMP) was invalid but a longer form would work. The prompt could come back preloaded with >JUMP [WHERE].

You could further extend it with something like autocomplete, if the Tab key were allowed as a line terminator. The player could press tab and >JUMP [WHERE] would disappear, to be replaced by >JUMP [OVER CHASM]. Pressing Enter would strip away the brackets and process the command as if the player had typed it, including echoing it back to the window with no brackets and no italics. Pressing Tab again would supply a different autocomplete value.[/quote]

I like this.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2095&start=0#p14235
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble replacing part of the Standard Rules
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-02 21:12:53

Appendix A has the line "We have now finished defining the nine fundamental kinds which NI requires in order for it to function."  *right after* that section you just replaced.  Which, by the way, doesn't define or create Person or Yourself so much as expose them to I7 -- they're already in I6.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2095&start=0#p14236
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble replacing part of the Standard Rules
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-03-02 21:14:43

A right parenthesis is missing, no?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2090&start=0#p14237
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New action: build a fort. How can I improve it?
User: Mushroom Spider / DateTime: 2011-03-02 21:23:31

Here it is! This is the version I'm going with from here on out. zahariel, I took what I learned from your code and mixed it with some experimentation of my own, and this is what I arrived at.

I tried to edit my previous post, but the site gave me an 'invalid post' message. Aaaanyways...

First, the bare-bones code, with no added frivolities:
[spoiler][code]
A forte is a kind of supporter. A forte can be fort or unforted. A forte is usually unforted. A forte is usually enterable. A forte has some text called old-name.
The list of fort-parts is a list of objects that varies.
Understand the fort property as describing a forte.

Fort-building is an action with past participle fort-built, applying to one thing. 
Understand "build a fort out of [something]" or "build a fort with [something]" or "build a fort from [something]" or "build fort out of [something]" or "build fort with [something]" or "build fort from [something]" or "build a [something] fort" or "build [something] fort" as Fort-building.

Check fort-building something: If the noun is not a forte, say "You don't see any way to make [the noun] into a fort." instead.
Check fort-building a fort forte: say "Somebody already built an awesome fort there." instead.

Carry out fort-building something: 
	now the noun is enterable; now the noun is fort;
	now the list of fort-parts is the list of things which are part of the noun;
	now the description of the noun is "The [entry 1 of list of fort-parts] make great walls, while the [entry 2 of list of fort-parts] makes a great chimney. Inside, you've built a nest using [entry 3 of list of fort-parts]. It is a really good fort.";
	now the old-name of the noun is the printed name of the noun.
   
Report fort-building: say "Fort built!"; now the printed name of the noun is "the [old-name] fort"; say "I shall call it [printed name of the noun]."

After entering a fort forte: say "You get into [printed name of the noun]."
After getting off a fort forte: say "You get out of [printed name of the noun]."
Understand "leave [forte]" and "exit [forte]" as getting off.
	
Instead of taking something that is part of a unforted forte: say "You should really leave [the noun] there."
Instead of taking something that is part of a fort forte: say "No, that would ruin the fort!".
[/code][/spoiler]
The really great thing about this, is that all you need to make a fort is a sentence like this:
[code]The desk is a forte. The plywood boards, the cinderblocks, and the legal documents are parts of the desk.
[/code]
That's it! Now, if you want the desk or it's parts to have a description before it is built into a fort then of course you'll need that, but that is true of most things. I didn't add any code to change the descriptions of the 3 parts, so if they are described it should be in such a way as to make the description work as both the original thing and the completed fort.

A couple notes about the code:[spoiler]I changed the forte from a container to a supporter. This way, it can act in it's usual capacity if it is a desk or couch by supporting desk lamps or letting people sit on them. The usual response to entering a supporter is "You get on the desk" etc.
However, I also have some After rules that change this message to "You get into the desk fort" if it has been built into a forte.
If a forte need contain something, then make one of it's required 3 parts into a container (such as a drawer).

The supporter type is called 'forte' with an 'e' to distinguish it from the property 'fort'.

The reason for changing the property from "build/unbuilt" to "fort/unforted" was so that I could set the property as also being descriptive of the object. The generic name of an object kind is only recognized as descriptive if it has no proper name. As soon as it recieves a name (desk, tree, etc) then just typing in 'Examine fort' results in an error message ("I only understood you as far as wanting to examine something"). 
By making the property descriptive, then if a forte is unbuilt (unforted) it will ignore commands like 'examine fort', but once the forte has been built (fort) it will recognize the property 'fort' and respond by examining the fort or asking "which do you mean..." if there is more than one thing with the fort property present.[/spoiler]

Now if somebody wanted, they could easily add in a 'fort-type', which could be used to print different descriptions. Right now, part 1 will be walls, part 2 will be a chimney, and part 3 will be a nest. However, other types could be added that only need 1 or 2 parts, or describe those parts as having different roles. Maybe....[spoiler][code]
[Unlike the rest of the code, this is off the top of my head as of writing this. It has not been tested yet]
Fort-Type is a kind of value. The fort-types are WallRoof and WallChimneyNest.
The desk has a fort-type. The fort-type is WallChimneyNest. The boards, blocks, and papers are part of the desk.
The couch has a fort-type. The fort-type is WallRoof. The cushions and blankets are part of the couch.
[nested into Carry Out Fort-building]
     If the fort-type of the noun is WallChimneyNest begin; now the description of the noun is "The [entry 1 of list of fort-parts] make great walls, while the [entry 2 of list of fort-parts] makes a great chimney. Inside, you've built a nest using [entry 3 of list of fort-parts]. It is a really good fort."; end if; If the fort-type of the noun is WallRoof begin, now the description of the noun is "The [entry 1 of list of fort-parts] make great walls, while the [entry 2 of list of fort-parts] makes a fine roof overhead. It is a cozy fort."; otherwise; now the description of the noun is "[The printed name of noun] has been assembled into a fine fort."; end if.
[/code]
Note that here it also prints a generic description is no fort-type is mentioned.[/spoiler]

Now, if you want to try it out here is a more complete scenario, with all kinds of frivolities added in:[spoiler][code]"Building A Fort" by Mushroom Spider

The Quad is a room. In the Quad is a desk. In the Quad is a tree. In the quad is a table. On the table is a box. In the box is a ring.
Watcher is a man. Constructor is a man. The player is Constructor.
Instead of attacking watcher: now the player is Watcher; say "You are watcher".
Instead of attacking Constructor: now the player is Constructor; say "You are constructor".

Watcher is in the quad. Constructor is in the quad.

A person has some text called the kind expression. The kind expression of a person is usually "good".
A person has some text called the rude remark. The rude remark of a person is usually "bad".
The kind expression of Watcher is "great". The rude remark of Watcher is "stupid".

A forte is a kind of supporter. A forte can be fort or unforted. A forte is usually unforted. A forte is usually enterable. A forte has some text called old-name.
The list of fort-parts is a list of objects that varies.
Understand the fort property as describing a forte.

The desk is a forte. The plywood boards, the cinderblocks, and the legal documents are parts of the desk. The cinderblocks are a container.
The tree is a forte. Part of the tree is branches. Part of the tree is coffee cans. Part of the tree is some leaves.

A forte has a person called the builder.


Fort-building is an action with past participle fort-built, applying to one thing. 
Understand "build a fort out of [something]" or "build a fort with [something]" or "build a fort from [something]" or "build fort out of [something]" or "build fort with [something]" or "build fort from [something]" or "build a [something] fort" or "build [something] fort" as Fort-building.

Check fort-building something: If the noun is not a forte, say "You don't see any way to make [the noun] into a fort." instead.
Check fort-building a fort forte: If the player is the builder of the noun begin; say "You already built a fort there. Your fort is [kind expression of the player]."; otherwise; say "[builder of the noun] already built a fort there. The fort is [rude remark of the player]."; end if; stop the action.

Carry out fort-building something: 
	now the noun is enterable; now the noun is fort; 
	now the builder of the noun is the player;
	now the list of fort-parts is the list of things which are part of the noun;
	now the description of the noun is "The [entry 1 of list of fort-parts] make great walls, while the [entry 2 of list of fort-parts] makes a great chimney. Inside, you've built a nest using [entry 3 of list of fort-parts]. It is a really [kind expression of the player] fort.";
	now the old-name of the noun is the printed name of the noun.
   
Report fort-building: say "Fort built!"; now the printed name of the noun is "the [old-name] fort"; say "I shall call it [printed name of the noun]."

After entering a fort forte: say "You get into [printed name of the noun]."
After getting off a fort forte: say "You get out of [printed name of the noun]."
Understand "leave [forte]" and "exit [forte]" as getting off.

Instead of examining a fort forte: 
	now the list of fort-parts is the list of things which are part of the noun; 
	If the builder of the noun is the player begin; continue the action; otherwise; say "Okay, so this 'fort' is made from [entry 1 of list of fort-parts], [entry 2 of list of fort-parts], and [entry 3 of list of fort-parts]. It is a really [rude remark of the player] fort."; end if.
	
Instead of taking something that is part of a unforted forte: say "You should really leave [the noun] there."

Instead of taking something that is part of a fort forte: say "No, that would ruin the fort!".

Understand "ruin [something]" as a mistake ("You really shouldn't ruin stuff. That would be [rude remark of player] of you.")[/code][/spoiler]

This example adds in some more complex interactions with the forts.
It can distinguish between which character built a fort with the property 'builder'.
It generates custom responses to the builder and a non-builder using two new properties of the player-characters; the Kind Expression and the Rude Remark. This allows the builder of the fort to print praise at his accomplishment, while other characters will use mocking words if the fort is not their own. (These can also be used as a leitmotif to distinguish particular character's personalities).
Furthermore, the kind/rude words can be used in many other ways, such as the last line of the above code, which puts the player-character down using his own rude remark if he tries to 'ruin' something.
The 'builder' property can also be arbitrarily assigned to other things as well, allowing the characters to insult each others taste in furniture, clothes, or any other thing you can think of. In fact, I originally called the property 'owner' before re-purposing it for building forts.
If you would like to test out the character interactions in the above demo, just 'attack' the other person and you will become that character.

So anyways, that's the Build a Fort action!

Thanks everybody for all your help in making it happen!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1398&start=10#p14238
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Theory book?
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2011-03-02 21:35:37

Congrats to the authors and editors for getting this finished!  What a pleasant surprise.  I downloaded the PDF and ordered it from Lulu.

--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">http://www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2080&start=0#p14239
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2011
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2011-03-02 21:44:49

I'm gonna miss SpringThing, I still have a ways to go on my game.  (Maybe IntroComp?)  But I have donated a 1936 Dennis Wheatley Crime file book as a prize.  If you've seen "Get Lamp", you'll know what I'm talking about...

Good luck to everyone.

--Zack

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1311&start=20#p14240
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Novice Friendly extension
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2011-03-02 21:54:03

Aaron, sounds very promising, especially with updated "Neutral Library Messages".  I'm tempted to look at Ron Newcomb's "Default Messages", but if you create one big mega-pack maybe I can just follow whatever decisions you make. [emote];-)[/emote]

In case you're curious, below is the list of extensions I'm currently using in The Z-Machine Matter.  (Note this also includes some minor comments to myself on things I need to investigate.  Can't say I've been entirely successful with Measured Liquid, Telephones or Assumed Conversers.)  

As a first-time author, I greatly appreciate how much effort people have contributed to making extensions that are easy to use.  
--Zack

[code]Section - Extensions 

[ Requires Z8 or larger story file to compile]

Include Exit Lister by Eric Eve.	[ Display exits in status bar ]
Include Keyword Interface by Aaron Reed.	[ Highlight objects in text ]
Include Measured Liquid by Emily Short.	[ For liquids, glasses, bottles ]
Include Telephones by George Tryfonas.	[ Not fully  implemented   ]
Include Menus by Emily Short.	[ Basic help & hint system ]

[ Extensions to help with parsing errors.  They also make the game larger ]
Include Extended Grammar by Aaron Reed. 
Include Small Kindnesses by Aaron Reed. 

[ Source of  "I didn't understand that number" errors ]
Include Numbered Disambiguation Choices by Aaron Reed. 

Include Assumed Conversers by Michael Martin. [ Ask About defaults ]
[ Though it does not disambiguate ASK ABOUT Topic with multiple NPCs ]
[ Also, it seems that this creates confusion with Inform / Quiz with objects ]
[ Doesn't work properly with objects - possibly worth skipping ]

[ Note - Smarter Parser requires Glulx interpreter ]
Include Smarter Parser by Aaron Reed. 
Include Poor Man's Mistype by Aaron Reed.    
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2078&start=20#p14241
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: found_in
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-02 23:16:37

Surely saving the value of parameter_object and restoring it immediately after calling the found_in function would be as safe as anything?

I was considering creating a new "backdrop in question" global, but it seemed like needless proliferation of variables to me...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2095&start=0#p14242
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble replacing part of the Standard Rules
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-03-03 02:02:32

It was compiling for me earlier, and now it won't if I try removing the last parenthesis, so I have no idea what happened... but anyway, doing what I want now. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2090&start=0#p14243
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New action: build a fort. How can I improve it?
User: StJohnLimbo / DateTime: 2011-03-03 04:05:29

[quote="Mushroom Spider"]StJohnLimbo, I took what I learned from your code[/quote]
I think there was a misunderstanding. [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=14140#p14140]The code[/url] was entirely [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=14192#p14192]by zahariel[/url], I just provided [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=14187#p14187]an explanation[/url] of the 'widget' variable name in the loop. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=829&start=0#p14244
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Ferret
User: Ferret / DateTime: 2011-03-03 05:07:18

Version 9 of Ferret has been released and is available for download from [url]http://www.jugglingsoot.com[/url].
The new release contains more rooms (over 1,000 in total), more puzzles, more verbs, etc.
Ferret Authors.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2084&start=10#p14246
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error Message when trying to Release...
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-03-03 09:07:34

I'm probably way off base here, but in my test I'm trying to display another button which executes a command: "H" when clicked. So the button displays, but it doesn't launch the command when clicked. Can anyone tell me what to do to get the sprite button to launch the command when clicked? Thanks for any help on this... 

[code]
Figure of button is the file "button.png".

button is a sprite. The display-layer is 0. The graphlink status is g-active. The image-ID is Figure of button. The origin is {10, 10}. The linked replacement-command is "H".[/code]

[img]http://www.rive-fantasy.com/spritebutton.jpg[/img]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2084&start=10#p14247
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error Message when trying to Release...
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-03 09:26:56

The map-window has special rules for handling mouse input, bypassing the standard mouse input rules, which is why this doesn't work. Here's the explanation in the docs:
[quote]Glimmr Automap has special handling for mouse input to the map window. The general handling for mouse input to graphic windows is defined by Glimmr Graphic Hyperlinks: When a mouse click is received in a graphics window that is awaiting input, the "clicking graphlink rules" are consulted for that window; if a hot-linked zone of the window was clicked, we run the "graphlink processing rules" for the corresponding "graphlink". GLAM redirects mouse input to the map window (only) to the "automap graphlink rules". This segregates all input to both the map (clicking on rooms) and the provided UI elements (the zoom and query button) so that they can be handled by a separate rulebook. This is intended to make it easier to use GLAM alongside other graphics windows that might be displaying less specialized content. Be aware of this if you are adding your elements or behavior to the map-window. The best way to see how things operate is to study the source code.[/quote]

I'm not where I can test this right now and my memory is hazy on the details, but the you might be able to fix this simply by writing:

[code]The default command replacement by graphlinks rule is listed first in the clicking graphlink rules.[/code]

If that works, let me know. I may just make it the default behavior.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2084&start=10#p14248
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error Message when trying to Release...
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-03-03 09:38:27

[quote="ektemple"]

I'm not where I can test this right now and my memory is hazy on the details, but the you might be able to fix this simply by writing:

[code]The default command replacement by graphlinks rule is listed first in the clicking graphlink rules.[/code]

If that works, let me know. I may just make it the default behavior.

--Erik[/quote]

Great, it works...Mostly. Only after further testing, the UI elements zoom/query  (+-?) seem to be disabled and not zooming/printing room name when clicked? Now the top X button works but the bottom ones don't. Thanks I'll keep working on it and see what I can do for now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2084&start=10#p14249
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error Message when trying to Release...
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-03 10:21:51

[quote="dustinneff"][quote="ektemple"]

I'm not where I can test this right now and my memory is hazy on the details, but the you might be able to fix this simply by writing:

[code]The default command replacement by graphlinks rule is listed first in the clicking graphlink rules.[/code]

If that works, let me know. I may just make it the default behavior.

--Erik[/quote]

Great, it works...Mostly. Only after further testing, the UI elements zoom/query  (+-?) seem to be disabled and not zooming/printing room name when clicked? Now the top X button works but the bottom ones don't. Thanks I'll keep working on it and see what I can do for now.[/quote]

That's what I was afraid of--that the special case map-window rules wouldn't run. These are the dangers of plug-and-play extensions--they do the thing they were designed for well, but getting them to do other things well is much harder. I'd look into whether you can use the anchor elements for the button--they were designed to be used for added UI elements like this.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2078&start=20#p14250
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: found_in
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-03 10:41:51

All right then, you've scared me into wanting a new global variable. But this brings up a question I've had:

Can I create a global variable (or rulebook, or property, or whatever) and also give it an I6 name? I don't like littering my I6 code with (+ I7 identifier +)... especially since in this case there's no real need for the variable to be accessible from I6 at all.

I wanted to be able to use "floating_object" in I6 and "the floating object in question" in I7, but I can't figure out a way to do that, at least not with the global declaration happening before the variable gets used in auto.inf. The "translates into" phrase seems to assume that the variable already exists and stops its creation (which I think is the opposite of what happens with properties) - is there another phrase that I'm missing?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2078&start=20#p14251
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: found_in
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-03 10:45:55

[quote="zarf"]* The implementation of a function property isn't just a native I6 function pointer. There's a closure object in there. Found_in has to be a native I6 function pointer.[/quote]
Out of curiosity, what is the the value of the "self/item described" object when the found_in property is executed? It's printed as something like [b]<routine 9314>[/b], but I don't see any way to find out what that really is. And why should it be a routine and not the object that the routine is a property of?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2090&start=0#p14252
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New action: build a fort. How can I improve it?
User: Mushroom Spider / DateTime: 2011-03-03 11:54:53

Whoops! Thanks StJohn, I've corrected the above post [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2097&start=0#p14253
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 6 - more sophisticated preposition use
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-03-03 12:00:27

I posted this over on RAIF, but haven't gotten any replies yet so hoping someone here may be able to help me out. I'm trying to imitate the feature that Anson Turner added to Platypus to allow commands such as

>GET THE DOCUMENTS IN THE FOLDER UNDER THE DESK

>PUT THE COINS IN THE BAG IN THE TREASURE CHEST


By following what Anson did in Platypus I've cobbled together the following code. It basically does work, but it breaks the parsing of PUT ALL and GET ALL FROM. I think the problem is that when I enable TRACE 4 I can see that without this extension, PUT ALL IN CHEST treats word 4 as CHEST, but with the extension word 4 is treated as IN. This has me totally baffled, so if anyone can offer any help at all I would be very grateful.

The extension consists of a replacement for TryGivenObject() and two new routines, ParseObj() and WordLeft().


[code]
[ TryGivenObject obj threshold k w;

#ifdef DEBUG;
   if (parser_trace>=5)
       print "    Trying ", (the) obj, " (", obj, ") at word ", wn, "^";
#endif;

   dict_flags_of_noun = 0;

!  If input has run out

    if (wn > num_words) {
        if (indef_mode ~= 0)
            dict_flags_of_noun = $$01110000;  ! Reject "plural" bit
        MakeMatch(obj,0);
        #Ifdef DEBUG;
        if (parser_trace >= 5) print "    Matched (0)^";
        #Endif; ! DEBUG
        return 1;
    }

   parser_action = NULL;

   w = NounWord();

   if (w==1 && player==obj) { k=1; jump MMbyPN; }

   if (w == obj)
   {   k=1; jump MMbyPN; }

   wn--;

   threshold = ParseObj(obj);
#ifdef DEBUG;
   if (threshold>=0 && parser_trace>=5)
       print "    ParseObj returned ", threshold, "^";
#endif;
    k = threshold;


   .MMbyPN;

            if (parser_action == ##PluralFound)
               dict_flags_of_noun = dict_flags_of_noun | 4;

            if (dict_flags_of_noun & 4) {
                if (~~allow_plurals) k = 0;
                else {
                    if (indef_mode == 0) {
                        indef_mode = 1; indef_type = 0; indef_wanted = 0;
                    }
                    indef_type = indef_type | PLURAL_BIT;
                    if (indef_wanted == 0) indef_wanted = 100;
                }
            }

    if (~~k) rfalse;

   #ifdef DEBUG;
       if (parser_trace>=5)
       {   print "    Matched (", k, ")^";
       }
   #endif;
   MakeMatch(obj,k);
   return k;
];

[ ParseObj obj wd m n i ap;

	if (obj.parse_name ~= 0) {
		parser_action = NULL; i = wn;
		n = RunRoutines(obj, parse_name);
		if (n == 0) rfalse;
		if (n > 0) {
			wn = i + n;
			wd = NextWord();
			jump Prepositions1;
			}
	}
	n = ParseNoun(obj);
	if (n == 0) rfalse;
	if (n > 0) jump Prepositions1;
	n = 0;
	wd = NextWord(); i = 0;

	if (indef_wanted == 100) { n++; jump Prepositions1; }
	while (WordInProperty(wd, obj, name)) { n++; wd = NextWord(); }


	! Here we handle the case of PUT THE DAGGER IN THE SHEATH ON THE TABLE.

	.Prepositions1;

	if (~~parent(obj)) jump GiveResult;

	while (parent(obj) has container or supporter) {

        if ((parent(obj) has container && wd == 'in' or 'inside' or 'within')
		|| (parent(obj) has supporter && wd == 'on' or 'upon' or 'off')) {

            ! Are we sure we have PUT (DAGGER) IN (SHEATH) rather than PUT (DAGGER IN SHEATH)?
            if (line_ttype-->pcount == PREPOSITION_TT)
            {   i = pcount;
                if (WordLeft(line_tdata-->i)) jump Prepositions2;
                if ((line_token-->i)->0 & $20)
                {   do
                    {   if (WordLeft(line_tdata-->i)) jump Prepositions2;
                        i++;
                    } until ((line_token-->i == ENDIT_TOKEN)
                              || (((line_token-->i)->0 & $10) == 0));
                }
                jump GiveResult;
            }
            .Prepositions2;

		ap = allow_plurals;
		i = ParseObj(parent(obj));
		allow_plurals = ap;
		if (~~i) break;

		m = m + i + 1;
		obj = parent(obj);
	}
	else break;
	}

	.GiveResult;

	if (n == 0) rfalse; return m + n;
];

[ WordLeft wd o_wn cw flag;
    o_wn = wn;
    while ((cw = NextWordStopped()) ~= -1)
    {   if (flag)
        {   if (cw && (cw->#dict_par1) & 1) break;
            flag = 0;
        }
        if (cw == wd) { wn = o_wn; rtrue; }
        if (wd == COMMA_WORD or AND1__WD or AND2__WD or AND3__WD
        	or THEN1__WD or THEN2__WD or THEN3__WD)
		flag = 1;
    }
    wn = o_wn;
    rfalse;
];
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2078&start=20#p14254
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: found_in
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-03 12:24:04

[quote="capmikee"]Surely saving the value of parameter_object and restoring it immediately after calling the found_in function would be as safe as anything?[/quote]
Well, if your user sets that found_in function to something that uses the reaches in/out rulebooks, then it might still not work properly.  I'm fuzzy on the details at the moment, I just know I got bit once.  I know it's an edge case and all, and you can probably go ahead and do it that way, but be sure to test it just to make sure. I've lost the exact case that exposed it.

Of course, one more variable isn't that much of an additional cost.  This is done, BTW, something like this (typing from memory):[code]
Include (- 
Global backdrop_in_question;
-) after "Definitions.i6t".

The backdrop in question is a backdrop that varies.
The backdrop in question variable translates into I6 as "backdrop_in_question".
[/code]

EDIT TO ADD: ya know, my broken code might have used the parameter_object after it had gone out of scope. But since it was a global, Inform 7 didn't know it was out of scope and I was inadvertently using a leftover value in it -- one that was wiped out by the next activity and left me puzzled.  So I shouldn't have used the variable at the place in code where I did (which happened just after the new activity it belonged to, not while that activity was going on).  

I'd say just save & restore parameter_object, and if you can't break it with user-level code when you try, it ought to be OK.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2078&start=20#p14255
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: found_in
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-03 12:36:30

[quote]Out of curiosity, what is the the value of the "self/item described" object when the found_in property is executed? It's printed as something like <routine 9314>, but I don't see any way to find out what that really is.[/quote]

It's the function itself, the one stored in the object's found_in property.

[quote]And why should it be a routine and not the object that the routine is a property of?[/quote]

Because the current standard implementation of MoveFloatingObjects() does

[code]
address = i.&found_in;
m = address-->0;
if (m.call(real_location) ~= 0)...
[/code]

rather than

[code]
if (i.found_in() ~= 0)...
[/code]

The new code invoking the function's "call" property (all I6 functions implicitly have this) rather than the object's "found_in" property, so "self" is set to the function rather than the object. I filed a bug (or feature) report about this, since there's no advantage to doing it this way -- it's just gone unremarked because the standard backdrops and doors don't require "self".

Note that the semantics of found_in have shifted since I6 (and I7 prior to 5T18) -- in the new model it takes an argument, which will always be real_location. In the old model found_in was assumed to look at the location global variable (which might be either real_location or thedark).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2090&start=10#p14256
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New action: build a fort. How can I improve it?
User: zahariel / DateTime: 2011-03-03 12:47:01

Very nice! I look forward to playing your game when it's finally done.

[quote="Mushroom Spider"]
The reason for changing the property from "build/unbuilt" to "fort/unforted" was so that I could set the property as also being descriptive of the object. The generic name of an object kind is only recognized as descriptive if it has no proper name. As soon as it recieves a name (desk, tree, etc) then just typing in 'Examine fort' results in an error message ("I only understood you as far as wanting to examine something"). 
By making the property descriptive, then if a forte is unbuilt (unforted) it will ignore commands like 'examine fort', but once the forte has been built (fort) it will recognize the property 'fort' and respond by examining the fort or asking "which do you mean..." if there is more than one thing with the fort property present.
[/quote]
I had "Understand "fort" as a built fort-location." to fix this problem. Did this not work? I'm pretty sure you can do something like this anyway, even if I have the syntax wrong. I think with your solution the (admittedly nonobvious) command "examine unforted" will examine the forte. Not sure though, I wouldn't be surprised if yours works fine.

[quote="Mushroom Spider"]
Now if somebody wanted, they could easily add in a 'fort-type', which could be used to print different descriptions. Right now, part 1 will be walls, part 2 will be a chimney, and part 3 will be a nest.
[/quote]
I'm... not sure the ordering of "the list of things which are part of the noun" is 100% reliable. It should usually appear initially in the order you define them, but if any of these things moves for ANY REASON, they'll end up in the wrong order. If the parts are totally immovable, this is probably safe; other than that I'd be worried. The way I did it, the parts are more work to define, but it's robust against any number of parts in any order without getting their descriptions confused. But if this works for you, good enough, right?

Still, well done! Glad I could help!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2098&start=0#p14257
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Can someone look this over and see if they can help.
User: sqib / DateTime: 2011-03-03 15:09:19

Hello I downloaded inform 7 version 6G60 last night and used if with something I
have been working on for awhile and a slew of compiling errors popped up, slowly
but surely I have gone through them and tweaked things here and there til the
errors went away, the one I am currently at and which is stumping me is this
one.
Applicable code cleaned up to make it sfw:

Libido is a kind of value. A person has a libido.
norm is a libido. sated is a libido. tingly is a libido. horny is a libido.
Aroused is a libido. lustful is a libido. peaking is a libido. climax is a
libido.

instead of brushing emily's hair when when emily is peaking:
say " yadda yadda yadda.";
 now jeff is in out of world;
 now emily is in out of world;
 now emily is like;
 now the player is in west main;
 now katie is in out of world;
 now maggie is in out of world.

(just an example of whats getting the errors, it's a whole page full)

the errors are listed as:

Problem. In the sentence 'instead of brushing emily's hair when when emily is
peaking' , it looks as if you intend 'when emily is peaking' to be a condition,
but that would mean comparing two kinds of value which cannot mix - a and a
libido - so this must be incorrect.


Problem. In the sentence 'instead of brushing emily's hair when when emily is
peaking' , it looks as if you intend 'when emily is peaking' to be a condition,
but that seems to involve applying the adjective 'peaking' to a - and I have no
definition of it which would apply in that situation. (Try looking it up in the
Lexicon part of the Phrasebook index to see what definition(s) 'peaking' has.)    / end code:


Any help will be greatly appreciated.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2098&start=0#p14258
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can someone look this over and see if they can help.
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-03-03 15:25:56

You've got to "whens" in a row here. 
[quote="sqib"]instead of brushing emily's hair [b]when when [/b]emily is peaking:[/quote]
Perhaps that's the problem. (It would actually have passed unnoticed in at least some earlier builds of Inform.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2098&start=0#p14259
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can someone look this over and see if they can help.
User: sqib / DateTime: 2011-03-03 17:25:35

DOH!  I thought for certain that I wrote the 2 whens just on here by accident but yes indeed they were in the code somehow and when one "when" was deleted it compiled, I am now having problems with some extensions, if I cant make headway I will prob be back in this thread looking for some guidance.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2098&start=0#p14260
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can someone look this over and see if they can help.
User: sqib / DateTime: 2011-03-03 18:04:33

Consolidated Multiple Actions by John Clemens is causing compiling errors and also this code which used to work is now troublesome: (note) every mention of une was "one" before but that was causing errors so I had to go through all the code changing one to une)

Nada is a garment. The layer of nada is 0.

to decide which garment is the outermost garment covering the chest of (the une - a person):
let the top layer be 0;
repeat with clothing running through garments that are covering the chest worn by the une begin;
if the layer of the clothing is greater than the top layer begin; let X be the clothing; let the top layer be the layer of the clothing; end if; end repeat; 
if X is a garment, decide on X; 
decide on nada.    / code

and the error:

In Volume 1, Book 1 rules, Chapter 5 values:

Problem. In the sentence 'if X is a garment, decide on X'  , I was expecting to read a condition, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'X is a garment'.

I was trying to match this phrase:

if (x is a garment - a condition) , (decide on x - a phrase) 

This was what I found out:

X is a garment = something unrecognised

decide on X = an instruction to do something

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=30#p14261
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-03 18:14:11

I've just started trying out Neutral Library Messages with my WIP. Unfortunately, I've discovered a conflict with my Lost Items extension.

This is about as small as I can make the example:

[spoiler][code]
Include Default Messages by Ron Newcomb.

To decide which snippet is the misunderstood word: (- (((wn - 1) * 100) + 1) -) .
To decide what number is position of non-dictionary word: (- (FindUnknownWordToken(2)) -).
Include (-
[ FindUnknownWordToken wordnum 
w twn numwds;
#ifdef TARGET_GLULX;
numwds = parse-->0;
#ifnot;
numwds = parse->1;
#endif; ! TARGET_GLULX;
! Throw out invalid word numbers
if (wordnum <= 0 || wordnum > numwds) rfalse;
twn=wn; ! save the value of wn so it can be restored
wn=wordnum;
while (1)
{ w=NextWordStopped();
if (w == -1) { wn=twn; rfalse; }
if (w == 0 && TryNumber(wn-1) == -1000) 
{ wordnum=wn-1;
wn=twn;
return wordnum; 
}
}
];
-)

Table of custom library messages (continued)
library-action	library-message-id	library-message-text
--	30	"[if position of non-dictionary word is 0]That's not something you can see right now.[otherwise]You don't need to use the word [the misunderstood word] in this game."

Noticing absence of something is an activity on objects.

For noticing absence of something (called item):
	say "[The item] isn't here right now."

The item sought is an object that varies.
Definition: A thing is sought if it is the item sought.

Rule for printing a parser error when the latest parser error is the can't see any such thing error:
	Repeat with the missing item running through things:
		Now the item sought is the missing item;
		if the player's command includes "[any sought thing]":
			carry out the noticing absence activity with the missing item;
			rule fails;
	now the latest parser error is the can't see any such thing error;
	make no decision;

Test is a room.

Test me with "x foo"[/code][/spoiler]
It looks like looping through things and checking "if the player's command matches" is messing up the information about the misunderstood word, but I don't have enough parser-mojo to be able to figure out how to avoid that. Any suggestions?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2078&start=20#p14262
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: found_in
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-03 18:18:51

[quote="zarf"]Because the current standard implementation of MoveFloatingObjects() does

[code]
address = i.&found_in;
m = address-->0;
if (m.call(real_location) ~= 0)...
[/code]

rather than

[code]
if (i.found_in() ~= 0)...
[/code][/quote]
So if I rewrite it that way, then I don't have to mess around with [i]any[/i] global variables besides self?

That's too easy!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2078&start=20#p14263
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: found_in
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-03 19:15:21

[quote]So if I rewrite it that way, then I don't have to mess around with any global variables besides self?[/quote]

Yes. (And self, as you know, is "the item described".)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=40#p14264
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-03 19:40:41

[quote="capmikee"]I've just started trying out Neutral Library Messages with my WIP. Unfortunately, I've discovered a conflict with my Lost Items extension. Any suggestions?[/quote]
Yep. Save & restore wn:[code]The parser's wn is a number that varies. The parser's wn variable translates into I6 as "wn".

Rule for printing a parser error when the latest parser error is the can't see any such thing error:
	let wn2 be the parser's wn;
	Repeat with the missing item running through things:
		Now the item sought is the missing item;
		if the player's command includes "[any sought thing]":
			carry out the noticing absence activity with the missing item;
			rule fails;
	now the latest parser error is the can't see any such thing error;
	now the parser's wn is wn2;
	make no decision.
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=40#p14265
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-03 22:04:33

Thanks - you're totally getting special credit in Lost Items Version 2!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2099&start=0#p14266
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Testing extensions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-03 22:10:28

Does unit testing make sense in a rule-based language? If not, what kind of testing scenario does make sense?

I've been finding testing extensions to be very inconvenient - and that seems unfortunate because extensions should really be more tested than individual stories, not less.

If you write extensions, do you have a regular method for testing them? What do you do? What's on your wish list for Inform testing capabilities?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2098&start=0#p14267
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can someone look this over and see if they can help.
User: sqib / DateTime: 2011-03-03 23:07:44

I received a very helpful response to the problem I was having and got everything to compile ( I think) problem is now when I compile I receive this:


Translating the Source - Failed 
The application ran your source text through the Inform 7 compiler, as usual, and it found no problems translating the source. Something must have gone wrong all the same, because the second stage of the process - using the Inform 6 compiler to turn this translated source into a viable story file - turned up errors. This should not happen. The errors are written out on the Progress tab, but will only make sense to experienced Inform 6 users (if even to them).

The best option now is probably to reword whatever was last changed and to try again. Subsequent attempts will not be affected by the failure of this one, so there is nothing to be gained by restarting the application or the computer. A failed run should never damage the source text, so your work cannot be lost.

If you are using Inform 6 inclusions, these are the most likely culprits. You might be using these without realising it if you are including an extension which contains Inform 6 inclusions in order to work its magic: so if the problem only seems to occur when a particular extension is in use, then that is probably what is at fault, and you should contact the extension's author directly.

If not, then most likely the Inform 7 compiler is at fault. Please check that you have the currently distributed build of the system: if you have, please consider taking the time to fill out a bug report at the Inform bug tracker (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.inform7.com/bugs">http://www.inform7.com/bugs</a>). 


Sorry for the inconvenience.



clicking the progress button shows this on the bottom:


C:\Program Files (x86)\Inform 7\Compilers\inform-632 \
    -wSDG +include_path=..\Source,.\ auto.inf output.ulx
Inform 6.32 for Win32 (18th November 2010)
(0): Fatal error: Run out of memory allocating array of -1089934592x24 bytes for g-objects

Compiler finished with code 1


any help would be greatly appreciated.


edited to add show the extensions I am currently using.

Include Locksmith by Emily Short.
Include Plurality by Emily Short.
Include Hiding Under by Eric Eve.
Include Text capture by Eric Eve.
Include Considerate Holdall by Jon Ingold.
Include Computers by Emily Short.
Include Conversation Framework by Eric Eve.
Include Title Page by Jon Ingold.
Include Extended Timers by Gavin Lambert.
Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short.
Include Native Time Control by Tim Pittman.
Include Simple Followers by Emily Short.
Include Bulk Limiter by Eric Eve.
Include Hypothetical Questions by Jesse McGrew.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2100&start=0#p14268
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Glimmr: Installing kinda failed?
User: Minkovsky / DateTime: 2011-03-04 00:26:06

I've downloaded Glimmr from the project website, but how do I install it? I installed the files with the normal installer, but Inform thinks they're corrupted (filename doesn't match extension name) and thus doesn't want to include them. What can I do?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1787&start=30#p14269
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Must puzzles be at war with stories?
User: adventurechris / DateTime: 2011-03-04 01:40:17

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]
in a story-heavy work I'd like mastery to come early in the game, say by the end of the first Act, so that I may concentrate on the plot & characters henceforth... and influencing the plot via that mastery. Story can sometimes be slow-starting; it takes time to emotionally invest, after all. But once the story is in full gear, wrestling with mechanics is an unwelcome distraction. IMHO.

Traditional gameplay's whole fail-retry mechanic really dilutes the hell out of a story anyway. (Specifically, the repetition of the same scene/chapter/whatchamacallit.)  I  know that isn't news to anyone, but it supports my point:  mastery should come early, on the first playthrough. 
[/quote]

I like that model. It certainly explains my frustration with certain story-driven games.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=40#p14270
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-03-04 04:54:18

[url=http://aaronareed.net/if/Neutral%20Library%20Messages.i7x]Updated version now posted[/url]. Consider this graduated from alpha to beta. It now styles parser messages differently than in-world messages (even in tricky cases) and delists the original library messages to save memory. Still no documentation but significantly more polished.

On the action rejection messages: I've divided these into two categories, likely-physical rejections (You can't tie X to Y, You can't set that to anything) versus likely-social rejections (You can't sing, you can't attack that.) The former get a stronger message ("You can't tie the feather to that, or that's not the way to do so.") while the latter acknowledge that the action might be possible, just not productive ("Singing would have no effect in these circumstances.") The weasel-words modifiers can be changed. 

Thanks to everyone for all the suggestions-- many of the messages are significantly improved. I wanted to note that after considering, I've decided not to meddle with anything other than the messages themselves-- so no changing the default actions or how they work, or fiddling with the command prompt. It's not that I don't think these are all great ideas-- more like I would prefer to fix the foundation before renovating the upper floors. This approach should also make the extension compatible with nearly everything, including future work along the suggested lines.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2101&start=0#p14271
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Doors in tads 3
User: Icefall / DateTime: 2011-03-04 07:48:26

I am completely new with tads 3.

I have made door between Blue room and Red room. When I go to red room, I can open and close door, but tads don't tell that there is door. Even if I write look, the tads don't tell that there is door. How do I fix that?

[code]
Redroom: Room 'Red room'
    "This is a red room. "
east = Blueroom
;

+ frontDoor: Door 'front door*doors' 'front door'
;


Blueroom: Room 'Blue room'
    desc = "This is the Blue room. "
west = Redroom
;

+ frontDoorOutside: Door 'front door*doors' 'front door'
masterObject = frontDoor;
[/code]

  [emote]:shock:[/emote]  [emote]:shock:[/emote]  [emote]:shock:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2100&start=0#p14272
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glimmr: Installing kinda failed?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-04 09:05:24

Hm, I just downloaded the package onto a Mac (OS 10.5.8) and installed all of the files without any problem, using the dialog from the File-->Install Extension dialog. There are at least 3 methods for installing, though--which are you using? Do you have any trouble installing other extensions?

Edited to add: The easiest thing to try might be just copying the .i7x extensions into a directory named "Erik Temple" in your main extensions directory.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=40#p14273
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-04 09:33:16

I was excited to see that you were replacing the original library messages to save memory, but I'm afraid including Neutral Library Messages into my WIP forced it into glulx territory anyway. For now, I'm going to steal my favorite bits of the extension, but not use the full list of messages. Hope you don't mind! [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2102&start=0#p14274
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Default Messages & Custom Library Messages updated
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-04 10:01:10

Default Messages and Custom Library Messages have both been bumped to version 3.  No changes are needed to the author's source for Default Messages, but Custom Library Messages is now stricter in its say-phrases, in order to more closely emulate Emily Short's Plurality.

Default Messages, version 3:

* In response to Aaron Reed's upcoming extension Neutral Library Messages, the Default Messages extension now looks through the author's table of messages "in reverse order".  Normally the direction makes no difference, but if the author and Aaron's extension both override it, it will now choose the one in the game source, rather than the one in Aaron's extension (which presumably came first).   

* A new example was added due to a snafu with the "I only understood you as far as" error.  Normally when the author changes that message, Inform always tacks on the relevant bit of the player's command. But if the author wants that bit in the middle of the sentence, like "I only understood take yourself, but not the rest," the example shows how to do so.  (Via a rule, using [library message verb].)

Custom Library Messages, also version 3:

* The same example was added to CLM as well.  I considered fixing the snafu in Inform itself, but I didn't want DM and CLM to differ in how they worked.  And to fix it in Inform from the minimalist Default Messages was... not all that minimalist. 

* A bug was fixed to do with the have* irregular verb, specifically when it was used in second person present tense, among other things. 

* It is now possible to include Plurality (version 9) by Emily Short while under the restriction "use no deprecated features".  Plurality has deprecated phrases that begin with "Cap", meaning capitalize, instead using actual capitalization like [It-them] and [it-them].  

* Following Plurality's lead, CLM no longer provides "Cap" phrases itself, instead using actual capitalization in their names.  Apologies to any authors who may need to massage their code as a result.

* Similarly, the word "of" is required in phrases like "[it-them of the noun]", just like Plurality does. 

* The documentation was expanded. Specifically, the part that said, "see the documentation for Default Messages" has been replaced with the relevant part of said documentation.   The small section about the activity was slightly expanded, and a new section was added at the very end with some of the say phrases CLM exposes. 

* A section or two was appearing in the author's Index when it should not have.  This is fixed.

* One phrase, ['s-'ve], was used only in the example Poster Shopping.  This phrase has been removed from both extension and example to conserve space.  It re-appears in the documentation's new section on say phrases as an example of creating new ones, and can be added back into an author's project with a click of the adjacent copy-paste icon.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2103&start=0#p14275
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Line break headache
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-04 10:03:22

I'm getting ready to release Version 2 of Lost Items. There's just one thing I'd like to fix: When used with Remembering, it sometimes prints an extra blank line.

[code]
Include Remembering by Aaron Reed

Include Lost Items by Mike Ciul

For noticing absence of something (called item) (this is the remember lost items rule):
	Try remembering item;
	
The remember lost items rule is listed instead of the default notice absence rule in the for noticing absence rulebook.
    
The Living Room is a room. The dining room is west of the living room.
	
There is a watch in the living room. It is losable.

test me with "w/x watch/touch watch"[/code]
The "x watch" command is parsed directly as remembering, while "touch watch" causes a parser error, which triggers the noticing absence activity, which then initiates the remembering action. The latter case results in an extra blank line. Is there any way I can stop that from happening?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091&start=40#p14276
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Neutral Library Messages: extension beta
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-04 10:11:49

By the way, Aaron, did you remember that the Remembering extension has the words "You can't see any such thing" hardcoded in it? In Lost Items, I used this to get around that issue:

[code]Chapter 5 - Printing Parser Errors for Remembering

[The Remembering extension has "You can't see any such thing" hardcoded into its "replace did not make sense in this context" rule. This rule ensures that the correct library message is issued even if we're using a Custom Library Messages extension.]
	
Rule for printing a parser error when the latest parser error is the noun did not make sense in that context error (this is the custom replace did not make sense in that context rule):
	now the latest parser error is the can't see any such thing error;
	make no decision;

The replace did not make sense in that context rule is not listed in any rulebook.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2103&start=0#p14277
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Line break headache
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-03-04 10:40:09

Seems to me there's a page in the manual about how you can override sections of other extensions. I've never tried it, but this is the kind of situation it's tailored for.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2103&start=0#p14278
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Line break headache
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-04 11:21:11

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Seems to me there's a page in the manual about how you can override sections of other extensions. I've never tried it, but this is the kind of situation it's tailored for.[/quote]
I'm already overriding some sections of Remembering, but I don't even know how to fix this one - the line break is correct in one case but not in the other.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2103&start=0#p14279
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Line break headache
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-04 11:26:04

Here's the same problem illustrated without the use of extensions:
[code]For printing a parser error: try singing.

Test is a room.
	
test me with "sing/foo"[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2101&start=0#p14280
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Doors in tads 3
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2011-03-04 12:26:17

[quote]I have made door between Blue room and Red room. When I go to red room, I can open and close door, but tads don't tell that there is door. Even if I write look, the tads don't tell that there is door. How do I fix that?[/quote]

TADS 3 assumes that you'll normally include a mention of any doors present in the room description, so that it would be redundant to list them separately. If you want doors to be explicitly listed you can add "isListed = true" to the definition of your doors, e.g.:

[code]
+ frontDoor: Door 'front door*doors' 'front door'
    isListed = true
;
[/code]

But I really don't recommend this. It's much better to include "The front door lies to the east" or some such in your room description rather than having "You can see a front door here" appear under the room description; listing a door explicitly in such a way generally looks rather amateurish.

So I think you're trying to fix something that doesn't really need fixing; my advice would be to ensure that you mention any doors in your room descriptions.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2101&start=0#p14281
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Doors in tads 3
User: Icefall / DateTime: 2011-03-04 12:38:10

Thank you for your answer. Tads seems to be very powerfull language, but it's difficult for newbies as I am.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2101&start=0#p14282
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Doors in tads 3
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-03-04 12:39:39

Since Door inherits from Fixture, objects of this class are hidden by default. However, you can supply a specialDesc property that will be used instead.

You also probably want the room exit to point to the door object rather than the next room.

[code]
Redroom: Room 'Red room'
    "This is a red room. "
east = frontDoor
;

+ frontDoor: Door 'front door*doors' 'front door'
    specialDesc = "A door leads inside. "
;

Blueroom: Room 'Blue room'
    "This is the Blue room. "
west = frontDoorOutside
;

+ frontDoorOutside: Door -> frontDoor 'front door*doors' 'front door'
    specialDesc = "A door leads outside. "
;
[/code]

That said, Eric's advice to work the presence of the door into the overall room description is a better way to go. A specialDesc will call a lot of attention to the door, which is not appropriate unless the door is very interesting for some reason. If it's a trap door that the player has discovered or a vault door that he must dynamite open, by all means announce its presence. Otherwise let it fade into the background.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2094&start=0#p14283
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Property arrays
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-04 12:50:15

A couple more questions, I'm afraid. Property arrays are pretty poorly covered in the DM4, but together with the DM4 and Doe's I6 pages, it seems that the only way to define a property array is by spelling it out entry for entry, e.g.:

[code]with my_prop_array 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 [etc.];[/code]

Is it not possible to just declare 

[code]with my_prop_array -> 500 ;[/code] ?

...because that would be a whole lot nicer. To clarify: I've tried the latter syntax, and received compiler errors--but perhaps there's an alternate way to do it?

Also, in the absence of the arrow syntax, how does Inform know whether I'm creating a byte array or a word array? Does it simply infer based on the values given when the property array is declared?

Thanks,
Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2103&start=0#p14284
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Line break headache
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-04 12:58:59

sounds like you need a [i]say run paragraph on;[/i] somewhere.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=820&start=20#p14285
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp Game Names - Merged!
User: duncanstevens / DateTime: 2011-03-04 12:59:21

Kissing the Buddha's Parking
Anatomy Service
Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Typo! 
Adventure in Castle (the most generic IF game ever)
Game 64 (strike that!)
An Important Quest (another strong contender)
Naughty Game (the most generic AIF game ever)
Get Magazine. Open Magazine. Paparazzi 
Revenge of Dungeon (this time with no reversible exits at all)
Station Uh-Oh 
Degeneracy U 
Flexible Death 
Brave Murder
Fiends from Home 
Happy Birthday, and the Cat 
Super Zombies 
Lack of Spiderman
Internal Phlegm (better than the external variety, I guess)
Quest for Exercise
A Fistful of Water?!
Don't Fire Until Marooned

and my favorite:

Aunt God

--Duncan

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2094&start=0#p14286
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Property arrays
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-04 13:13:24

[quote] it seems that the only way to define a property array is by spelling it out entry for entry...[/quote]

Correct. Sorry -- I don't think anybody's considered really huge property arrays before.

[quote]Also, in the absence of the arrow syntax, how does Inform know whether I'm creating a byte array or a word array?[/quote]

Property values are always words. (I have a vague memory that in Z3 they're always bytes. I might be wrong about that.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2102&start=0#p14287
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Default Messages & Custom Library Messages updated
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-03-04 13:29:40

Excellent, Ron! [emote]:)[/emote]

I'd like the final version of my extension to support Custom Library Messages too, probably by tagging all the phrases with the appropriate markup, then making a section for use without CLM that defines the standard versions (i.e. To say We: say "You".) At the moment, I'm deciding whether it's more useful to do that, or to include all the unreplaced messages so I can unlist the original versions to reclaim memory, as per your trick in the Default Messages documentation. (I suppose doing both is an option, although more grunt work...)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2094&start=0#p14288
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Property arrays
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-04 13:37:48

[quote="zarf"][quote] it seems that the only way to define a property array is by spelling it out entry for entry...[/quote]

Correct. Sorry -- I don't think anybody's considered really huge property arrays before.[/quote]

Thanks for the clarification. I'm casting around for the lightest data structures I can use for storing quite a bit of information, but for a variety of reasons (for which this is just the topper), it looks like, for most cases at least, only I7 lists are going to be comfortable to use.

[quote="zarf"]Property values are always words. (I have a vague memory that in Z3 they're always bytes. I might be wrong about that.)[/quote]

The DM4 has this at the end of §3.5: "people fairly often use property arrays as byte arrays to save on memory", which seemed to indicate that there was some way to create a byte property array. But since there is in fact no way to specify the type explicitly, it makes more sense that it would also be a word array.

Thanks!
Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2102&start=0#p14289
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Default Messages & Custom Library Messages updated
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-04 13:45:45

CLM is setup so that its table is in a Section of its own, so Section replacement can completely delete the table, reclaiming all that memory (and the DM's trick is already in effect anyway).   All you'd need to do in NLM is have two versions of all your changed messages, one for DM that hard-codes "you" and the like, and one for CLM that uses CLM's say-phrases.  

I would, however, recommend against using CLM's phrases for DM as well, even if you are re-declaring them to print the hard-coded second person. Reason being is memory: those say-phrases would be functions which wouldn't exist otherwise.  DM is popular partly because it's Z friendly.

The unchanged messages you include merely to make use of DM's trick can be used in both DM and CLM without changes if you use Section replacement to nix CLM's table. 

(Also, the "in reverse order" that DM now uses has been in effect in CLM since the beginning, in case anyone wondered why the change wasn't made in CLM:  it was already there.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2103&start=0#p14290
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Line break headache
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-04 13:46:42

But where? If you put it in the action, you won't get the desired break when it's done normally. I guess you could put an "[if the printing a parser error activity is going on]" around it, but that seems like a weird thing to do to an action. If you put it in the activity, it does nothing at all. Any other suggestions?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2103&start=0#p14291
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Line break headache
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-04 14:00:27

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Seems to me there's a page in the manual about how you can override sections of other extensions. I've never tried it, but this is the kind of situation it's tailored for.[/quote]
I just had a look back - it turns out that I wasn't replacing any sections, just doing a normal rule replacement. Unfortunately, that won't work for the remembering action because Aaron didn't name his rules. The section I'd have to replace constitutes about 40% of the entire extension.

But if that's what I have to do, I can do it. Fortunately the other rule I replaced is in the same section.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1398&start=10#p14292
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Theory book?
User: Genstein / DateTime: 2011-03-04 16:38:52

Dammit, I've got as far as the contents page and I'm already intrigued by five or six chapters. I guess I'll have to read the whole thing now  [emote]:wink:[/emote] Congratulations to all involved, and thanks for your hard work on the book.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2094&start=0#p14293
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Property arrays
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-04 17:05:05

[quote]"people fairly often use property arrays as byte arrays to save on memory"[/quote]

I don't know if that ever was *common*, really. But what that means is simply (say) defining "prop 0 0 0 0" and then using the four words as eight bytes. Since obj.&prop gives you the beginning of the array, and it's contiguous, you can use it as whatever.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2098&start=0#p14294
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Fatal error help with I7
User: sqib / DateTime: 2011-03-04 17:09:05

bumping for help with:

Fatal error: Run out of memory allocating array of -1089934592x24 bytes for g-objects.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2098&start=0#p14295
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can someone look this over and see if they can help.
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-03-04 18:08:22

I don't know anything about that error, but if you feel like emailing me your entire source code, I'll take a look at it and see if I can spot the problem. You need to dig out the file called story.ni. If you're on a Mac, you need to use the "Show Package Contents" command in order to drill down into the .inform folder to find the Source folder.

Attach this to an email and send it to me at <a href="mailto:midiguru23@sbcglobal.net">midiguru23@sbcglobal.net</a>. If I have a few minutes this evening, I'll take a look at it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2104&start=0#p14296
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: l7: Super Newbie Question 1
User: n3ver / DateTime: 2011-03-04 18:19:32

*sigh*

Really tried to get this to work, but I'm doing something wrong.  I want some objects to be examinable only after examining another object.  I set up a new property, noticed/unnoticed, for objects, but the command to change an object's property to noticed doesn't seem to work.

Apologies for the silly question, but a quick example of the right way to do such a thing would be much appreciated.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2102&start=0#p14297
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Default Messages & Custom Library Messages updated
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-03-04 18:30:19

Functions are cheap though, I've never heard of anyone running out of function space before running out of memory.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2104&start=0#p14298
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: l7: Super Newbie Question 1
User: zahariel / DateTime: 2011-03-04 18:42:47

This should get you started.

[code]
A thing can be noticed or unnoticed. A thing is usually unnoticed. After examining something: now the noun is noticed.

Test is a room. The shadow and the light bulb are in Test.

Before examining the shadow: If the light bulb is unnoticed, say "It's too indistinct to make out. Maybe you could try looking at something else." instead.
[/code]

However, if you already have something morally equivalent to this, perhaps your special case examining code isn't working. You can check this out with the testing command RULES ALL, which will tell you about the interpreter considering each rule in turn (although this produces a LOT of spam so use it sparingly).

Short of that, feel free to post a testing game that doesn't work, but that you feel should, and there are lots of smart people here that might be able to teach you where you are going astray.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2103&start=0#p14299
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Line break headache
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-03-04 18:50:32

[quote="capmikee"]Here's the same problem illustrated without the use of extensions:
[code]For printing a parser error: try singing.

Test is a room.
	
test me with "sing/foo"[/code][/quote]
I don't know about with the extensions, but you can fix this example by writing
[code]After printing a parser error:
	say "[run paragraph on]".[/code]
The I6 routine Parser__parse explicitly sets the say__p flag right before running the after printing a parser error rulebook; that means that any [run paragraph on]s before that rulebook have no effect.  Whether this is intentional or not I cannot say.  Someone more familiar with the parser might be able to tell you.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2103&start=0#p14300
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Line break headache
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-04 19:33:00

[quote="EmacsUser"][quote="capmikee"]Here's the same problem illustrated without the use of extensions:
[code]For printing a parser error: try singing.

Test is a room.
	
test me with "sing/foo"[/code][/quote]
I don't know about with the extensions, but you can fix this example by writing
[code]After printing a parser error:
	say "[run paragraph on]".[/code]
The I6 routine Parser__parse explicitly sets the say__p flag right before running the after printing a parser error rulebook; that means that any [run paragraph on]s before that rulebook have no effect.  Whether this is intentional or not I cannot say.  Someone more familiar with the parser might be able to tell you.[/quote]

Thanks -- this is exactly what I need with my demo (which calls another routine instead of printing a parser error).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2103&start=0#p14301
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Line break headache
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-03-04 19:33:50

There should shortly be an updated version of Remembering posted with better internal division and actually some significantly tweaked functionality. I can PM you the new version now if you want it. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2094&start=0#p14302
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Property arrays
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-04 19:53:31

[quote="zarf"]what that means is simply (say) defining "prop 0 0 0 0" and then using the four words as eight bytes.[/quote]

Ah, that explains it. I don't have nearly enough programming background to have seen that interpretation--thanks!

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2104&start=0#p14303
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: l7: Super Newbie Question 1
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-03-04 19:54:46

I would tend to do it a little differently:

[code]The description of the shadow is "[if the lightbulb is unnoticed]Inky and formless[else]The silhouette of a moose -- possibly Bullwinkle[end if]."[/code]
This avoids the use of a before rule. Before rules bypass some of the normal procedures that the parser uses. (You could use an instead rule rather than a before rule, but putting the if-test inside the description is tidier.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2103&start=10#p14306
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Line break headache
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-04 21:03:10

Thanks, Aaron! I'd appreciate that. 

I do have a bit of code that will handle the issue, using EmacsUser's trick, but it's not pretty:

[code]Converting parser error to action is a truth state that varies.

Before printing a parser error:
	Now converting parser error to action is false.

For noticing absence of something (called item) (this is the remember lost items rule):
	Now converting parser error to action is true;
	Try remembering item;

The remember lost items rule is listed instead of the default notice absence rule in the for noticing absence rulebook.

After printing a parser error when converting parser error to action is true:
	say run paragraph on.
[/code]

As usual, I'm having a hard time naming truth states. If there were something I could give a binary property to, I think it could be named and accessed more elegantly, but I can't think of anything.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=820&start=20#p14307
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IFComp Game Names - Merged!
User: duncanstevens / DateTime: 2011-03-04 21:35:52

More:

Cow V: The Great Ultimatum 
Jesus of Adventure
Soul-Searching Death 
Dragon George and the Cat House 
Dog Coveted Mirror 
Dead Bard 
Kaged Raccoon 
Escape Assault of the Big Green Cliches 
A Short Damn Simple Home Adventure 
On my Cardigan 
Pestilence Honeymoon 
Alcatraz Toast 
The Windhall Chronicles, Volume 1: The Path to Nasty Secret
Reality The Game (simulationism's finest hour)
Darth of Nazareth 
Hey, Mansion 
The Big Wizard of Oz 
Perils of Darkest Chicken of Doom 
Rape, Pillage, from Lowell Prison (those furlough policies need an overhaul)
No Adventure 
Losing Your Evil Chicken of Doom
Bears, Bears, Operate! 
In the Cat 
The Loneliness of the AAAAA AAAAAAAAA (maybe loneliness wasn't so bad after all)
Urban Cow!
Screw the Wasp (a very, very difficult game)

And another favorite:

(You're) Phlegm

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2103&start=10#p14308
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Line break headache
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-04 22:07:15

[quote]As usual, I'm having a hard time naming truth states. If there were something I could give a binary property to, I think it could be named and accessed more elegantly, but I can't think of anything.[/quote]
You can create if-statement variants that just take a truth state directly, if you dislike comparing them to true/false.  (I agree that doing so is wordy and not natural language.)[code]

"asdf" by Ron Newcomb

There is a room.

'Tis awkward to compare to booleans is a truth state that varies.  

To if (tr - a truth state), (ph - a phrase): (-	if ({tr}) {ph}; -).
To if (tr - a truth state) begin -- end: (-	if ({tr}) -).


When play begins:
	if 'tis awkward to compare to booleans, say "True.";
	otherwise say "False.";
	if 'tis awkward to compare to booleans:
		say "True 2.";
	otherwise:
		say "False 2."
	
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2105&start=0#p14309
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: randomize()
User: Icefall / DateTime: 2011-03-05 00:30:07

Hello all, I have little problem. To where I put randomize(){}?
If I put it after initialPlayerChar=me 
I get an error The symbol "randomize" is already defined, so you cannot use it as the name of a property here. 



[code]
gameMain: GameMainDef
    initialPlayerChar = me
;
 
startRoom: Room 'Start Room'
    "This is the starting room. <<me.con>> <<me.str>>"
;
  
+ me: Actor
location = startRoom
con=rand(6)
str=rand(6)
;
[/code]
 [emote]:oops:[/emote]  [emote]:oops:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2087&start=0#p14310
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Glulxe and Windows Git updated
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-03-05 02:57:15

Windows Glk seems okay with your unit test, so hopefully it's right [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2105&start=0#p14311
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: randomize()
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-03-05 03:47:10

You want to define a new method called randomize()?  As the compiler tells you, that is an already used name. Pick another, unused name instead.

Or do you mean you want to call the randomize() function? That function initializes the random number generator with a random seed. This is something global, so there's no reason to do that in the 'me' object. You can do that in the newGame() method of your GameMainDef object.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2104&start=0#p14312
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: l7: Super Newbie Question 1
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-03-05 07:07:21

Or just simply:
[code]The description of the secret message is "[if we have examined the encryption key]Decoding the message reveals that it's a local restaurant's takeout menu.[otherwise]The message makes no sense to you.[end if]"[/code]
Although in many similar cases it's easier and more robust to just leave the other object out and move it in place after examining the first object.

[code]After examining the mirror for the first time:
    say "You didn't notice it before, but through the mirror you see that a book has fallen behind the nightstand.";
    now the diary is in the bedroom.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2106&start=0#p14313
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Choosing a random entry from a list?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-05 11:08:58

I've got a bunch of constant lists from which I would like to choose random entries. Is there a nice way to do this? This doesn't compile:

[code]Every turn: say a random entry in {1, 2, 3, 4, 5}.[/code]

I suppose I could define a random entry from a list by getting the length of the list, choosing N randomly from 1 to the length, and choosing the Nth entry, but is there a quicker way to do it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2105&start=0#p14314
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: randomize()
User: Icefall / DateTime: 2011-03-05 11:42:03

I put randomize function to newgame() which is in gamemain. The game compiles normally without errors but it doesn't execute the randomize function, I know that because there comes same random numbers all the time. Did I do something wrong? I am little confused with these object and method things.


[code]
gameMain: GameMainDef
    initialPlayerChar = me
    newgame()
    {
        randomize();
    }
;

startRoom: Room 'Start Room'
    "This is the starting room. <<me.con>> <<me.str>>"
;

+ me: Actor 'me and myself''me'
    "kjkjkj"
location = startRoom    
con=rand(6)
str=rand(6)
;;
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2092&start=0#p14315
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Frobtads T2 compiler not recognizing config.tc
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2011-03-05 12:02:36

Thanks! I'm just trying to limit the number of files I sneak into my *cough* *cough* work *cough* *cough* PC. Since I had a copy of both the Frobtads terp and the corresponding T2 compiler on my USB drive (Workbench GUI not included), I thought I'd be able to set it up.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2100&start=0#p14316
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glimmr: Installing kinda failed?
User: Minkovsky / DateTime: 2011-03-05 12:03:45

I got around it. There was "(for Glulx only)" appended to the filename at some point (maybe even by Inform). However, I simply copied everything to my extensions folder, renamed the files so that they pass the check and installed all the dependencies. However, there is still the question - where do I put the assets folders?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2106&start=0#p14317
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Choosing a random entry from a list?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-05 12:11:12

I do not think there is a one-line syntax for this, no. The method you describe works, as does:
[code]sort X in random order;
now Y is entry 1 of X;[/code]
(assuming that you do not need to preserve the order of X).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2103&start=10#p14318
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Line break headache
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-05 12:12:31

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]You can create if-statement variants that just take a truth state directly, if you dislike comparing them to true/false.  (I agree that doing so is wordy and not natural language.)[code]To if (tr - a truth state), (ph - a phrase): (-	if ({tr}) {ph}; -).
To if (tr - a truth state) begin -- end: (-	if ({tr}) -).
[/code][/quote]
Wow! That's a kludge in a very literal sense - from the German "klug," meaning clever.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2105&start=0#p14319
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: randomize()
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-03-05 12:25:09

You can place the call to randomize in any InitObject, including an anonymous one.

[code]
// seed the RNG
InitObject
    execute()
    {
        randomize();
    }
;
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2098&start=0#p14320
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can someone look this over and see if they can help.
User: sqib / DateTime: 2011-03-05 12:31:33

This line was the culprit:
Use MAX_SYMBOLS of 20000.

I never had that line at all listed before, and I wasnt getting the error message saying to increase it but I did up it to 30000 and it compiled. whew.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2105&start=0#p14321
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: randomize()
User: Icefall / DateTime: 2011-03-05 12:34:43

I am trying to do the following thing: make random numbers to some variables and show them when players commands "examine me". Now the game says "You look the same as usual." I am really a newbie.


[code]
InitObject
    con=rand(6)
    str=rand(6)
    execute()
{
    randomize();
}
;

gameMain: GameMainDef
    initialPlayerChar = me
;
 
startRoom: Room 'Start Room'
    "This is the starting room. "
;

me: Actor 'me and myself' 'me'
    "kjkjkj <<con>> <<str>>"
location = startRoom    
;;
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2106&start=0#p14322
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Choosing a random entry from a list?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-05 12:36:28

So I did this:

[code]To decide what thing is a random member of (L - a list of things):
	let N be the number of entries in L;
	let K be a random number between 1 and N;
	decide on entry K of L.
[/code]

Which doesn't seem totally satisfactory, because it'd require a new definition if you wanted to choose from a list of numbers -- but I only have lists of one kind of thing, so it works for me.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2098&start=0#p14323
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can someone look this over and see if they can help.
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-05 12:43:17

That sounds like a I6 compiler bug, but it's not enough information to track it down. (I don't think it's actually overflowing MAX_SYMBOLS; it's some other memory pointer overflow.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=946&start=20#p14324
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Graphical Interactive Fiction
User: Draxxar / DateTime: 2011-03-05 12:48:37

From a traditional IF point of view I like pure text adventures better. However I've seen a game that had used pictures, not for room illustrations, but for objects you could GET/DROP, as well as READ. Plus the non player characters had pictures. There was also a map you could get and examine, and that depicted what the town looked like in the game. In such a way you could refer to it to get around if you somehow got lost. That way the room descriptions were up to the author to illustrate with words so the player had to still imagine what it all really actually looked like, yet there were plenty of pictures of obtainable objects to keep the game really interesting. There were also graphical progress bars for various things up in a banner (this was a Tads 2 game as I recall, which had banner windows). Another interesting thing with graphics that I've seen and is very useful is using a banner window to display a compass of room exits (having them grayed out if unavailable for that location). However putting in all these bells and whistles doesn't mean your game is automatically going to be well received. You still need a good plot and descriptions and a forgiving parser. The game was called "Moving In" by Friltsar (an adult text adventure - obviously not for everyone - there were no nude or suggestive pics either, so the author used pics purely to enhance the game, not toss it outright in the gutter). It's doubtful the game can be found now though. It drifted off the net quite some time ago.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2105&start=0#p14325
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: randomize()
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-03-05 12:55:40

The [url=http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/libref/source/en_us.h.html#90]Actor template[/url] that you are using is setting the npcDesc with your double-quoted string. For the player character you need to set the pcDesc property instead.

[code]
me: Actor 'me and myself' 'me'
    pcDesc = "kjkjkj <<con>> <<str>>"
    location = startRoom    
;
[/code]

You are doing fine, BTW. I have these sorts of issues all the time. The Library Reference is invaluable in figuring out what is really going on. There's almost always a property or method that does exactly what you want; the trick is finding it.

Oh, and you may also need to wrap your random numbers in a toString() call, to prevent a runtime error.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2105&start=0#p14326
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: randomize()
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-03-05 13:07:44

[quote="Icefall"]I put randomize function to newgame() which is in gamemain. The game compiles normally without errors but it doesn't execute the randomize function, I know that because there comes same random numbers all the time. Did I do something wrong? I am little confused with these object and method things.
[/quote]

It's newGame() not newgame(). TADS is case-sensitive.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2105&start=0#p14327
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: randomize()
User: Draxxar / DateTime: 2011-03-05 13:20:16

To randomize a description for your player character (i.e. the "me" object) you can create a ShuffledEventList object in  your "me" object, then call it in the "desc" tag via doScript() ... like so:

[code]

me: Actor
    location = startRoom // or where your game starts
    vocabWords = '(tall) (thin) (average) (good) (looking) Sherlock male/man/person/guy/dude/me/myself/Holmes'
    name = 'Sherlock'
    properName = 'Sherlock'
    isProperName = true
    desc = myDescList.doScript()

    myDescList : ShuffledEventList {
         eventList = ['You look as good looking as ever. ',
                            'You are tall dark and handsome, except for that ugly scar on your cheek that you got during your stint as a knife thrower\'s assistant in the circus.',
                            new function(){  // this is just an example of using a function instead of just a single quoted string...
                                     "You look the same as you did when you woke up first thing this morning. ";
                            },
                            'You examine yourself but find nothing out of  the ordinary. '
          ]
 }
;
[/code]

... unless you meant to put a [b]permanent[/b] one time random description in there from game start, which I would do in gameMain in the showIntro method (which is where I usually set up weird variables like this at game start up) and use a temp variable that you can edit anytime.

[code]
gameMain
   playerDesc = nil
   // bunch of code goes here.... skipping to example
   showIntro(){
           gameMain.playerDesc = rand('You\'re a big ugly orc but ugliness in your case is a positive trait (whoever heard of a handsome orc?)',
                                                   'You look as daring and educated as you should be, for the world\'s greatest detective. ',
                                                   'You\'re a tall thin elf with a long crooked nose. ');
    
   }
;

me
  desc = "<<gameMain.playerDesc>> "
;

[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2105&start=0#p14328
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: randomize()
User: Icefall / DateTime: 2011-03-05 13:21:32

Now the game says to examine me command "kjkjkj nil nil". I dont know to where I should put "con" and "str" variables so that them are iniatilized when the play begins and how to call them. BTW, the example which you made was interesting and i even understand it, but I need numbers as strength, stamina, health.


[code]
InitObject
    con=rand(6)
    str=rand(6)
    
    execute()
{

    randomize();
}
;

gameMain: GameMainDef
    initialPlayerChar = me
;
 
startRoom: Room 'Start Room'
    "This is the starting room. "
;

me: Actor 'me and myself''me'
pcDesc = "kjkjkj <<toString(InitObject.con)>> <<toString(str)>>"
location = startRoom    
;;
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2069&start=0#p14329
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: vehicles in tabs 3
User: Icefall / DateTime: 2011-03-05 13:36:13

It is fine example how to use dobjFor -thing (I dont know yet how it is called.) Thanks"

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2105&start=0#p14330
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: randomize()
User: Draxxar / DateTime: 2011-03-05 13:51:54

I do this a different way (see my example above of using gameMain.showIntro() to set up variables... I would set up all your random variables there which fires off one time only at game start up. 

[code]
me: Actor
  stats = [20,20,20,20,20,20,5,5,5,5,5,5]
  statNames = ['str','int','dex','agi','wis','cha','nature','death','fire','cold','magic','poison']
  desc {
             "You look as good looking as ever.<.p> ";
             for(local i=0;i < me.stats.length();i++){
                        say(me.statNames[i] + ': ' + me.stats[i] + '<br>');
             }
  }
;

gameMain
  showIntro(){
          // this randomizes your player statistics from 1 to 20 at game start up
          for(local i= 0;i< me.stats.length();i++) me.stats[i] = rand(20) + 1;
  }
;
[/code]

... actually the downside to putting variables in the "me" object is if you wanted to change the player character to another character later on in the game via setPlayer(newActorName). If you had them somewhere global, like in gameMain, you would not have to worry about that possibility.

I'm not sure how familiar you are with arrays. You mentioned you are new to tads, so I'm just going to explain it as if you don't know arrays. On the above example, you refer to the variables by their position in the array. For example, strength ('str') is at the zero (0) position, so...

[code]
   me.stats[0] = 17;
[/code]
   ... would set strength to 17. Str is in the 0 position of the array... 'int' is in the 1 position... 'dex' is in the 2 position.... and so on. To display fire resistance ('fire') you could do this:

[code]
  "Your fire resistance is <<me.stats[8]>>. ";
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2105&start=10#p14331
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: randomize()
User: Icefall / DateTime: 2011-03-05 14:02:39

Yes, I can use that. Thanks! If I am right, it is same what numbers are in quoted text:

[quote]
stats = [20,20,20,20,20,20,5,5,5,5,5,5]
[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2105&start=10#p14332
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: randomize()
User: Draxxar / DateTime: 2011-03-05 14:37:25

Yes the arrays must match in size. So if you have an array with 10 elements, the other array must have 10 also (if you're using them for stat names and actual stat numbers like this) but you can use whatever numbers or names you want. I just put something in there to initialize the array with some data, then randomized it from within the gameMain.showIntro method.

And really, you do not need to use arrays if you don't want to. I'm just showing you a method I use which allows you to use a "for" loop to loop through the array faster than coding it line by line in a huge ugly string of "str = <<me.strength><br>end = <<me.endurance>><br>wis = <<me.wisdom>><br>"  etc.. So the statNames array stores statistic names for looping through and displaying your statistic names and stat values in one nice and simple short block of code. 

If you're going to make weapons and armor that have statistic modifiers and also negative effects (like a curse effect cast on you by a wizard which affects your stats negatively) and also include statistic "buffs" (spells to increase your stats), your code is going to start getting rather complex.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2100&start=0#p14333
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glimmr: Installing kinda failed?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-05 15:34:00

[quote="Minkovsky"]I got around it. There was "(for Glulx only)" appended to the filename at some point (maybe even by Inform).[/quote]

Weird, that sounds like a bug in the IDE, at least if it was added by Inform. You might want to report it.

[quote="Minkovsky"]However, I simply copied everything to my extensions folder, renamed the files so that they pass the check and installed all the dependencies. However, there is still the question - where do I put the assets folders?[/quote]

You can store them anywhere you like, really. When you actually want to include the assets in a project, you should copy the ones you need to the project's Materials-->Figures folder.

I keep the assets folders in the extensions folder so they're easy to find. Inform frowns on this a little and puts unhappy icons next to the folder names in the Extensions Index, but I'm happy to ignore it. IDEs other than the OSX one might frown harder on the practice...

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2106&start=0#p14334
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Choosing a random entry from a list?
User: George / DateTime: 2011-03-05 15:56:13

You could make it more general with:

[code]
To decide what thing is a random member of (L - a list of values):
   let N be the number of entries in L;
   let K be a random number between 1 and N;
   decide on entry K of L.
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2107&start=0#p14335
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: The can't put onto something being carried rule
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-03-05 16:17:03

I'm wondering about the rationale for the can't put onto something being carried rule. Consider:

[code]The Test Lab is a room.

The player carries the antique silver serving tray. A boiled egg is on the tray.

Test me with "take egg / put egg on tray".[/code]
The results are silly. So ... can someone suggest a circumstance in which this rule [i]does [/i]make sense, in terms of creating a realistic simulation? Or should I suggest that it be scrapped?

Slightly more amusing: If you drop the tray and then try to pick it up again, you'll learn that it's fixed in place. Seems to me a supporter that is initially carried should be marked by the compiler as not fixed in place. Should I suggest that?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2107&start=0#p14336
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The can't put onto something being carried rule
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-05 16:51:21

Your second suggestion sounds like a no-brainer. In the first case, I think you're probably right, but I don't have enough brains to be sure there's no counter-example.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2107&start=0#p14337
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The can't put onto something being carried rule
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-05 17:43:01

[quote="Jim Aikin"]I'm wondering about the rationale for the can't put onto something being carried rule. Consider:

[code]The Test Lab is a room.

The player carries the antique silver serving tray. A boiled egg is on the tray.

Test me with "take egg / put egg on tray".[/code]
The results are silly. So ... can someone suggest a circumstance in which this rule [i]does [/i]make sense, in terms of creating a realistic simulation? Or should I suggest that it be scrapped?[/quote]

Here's an arguable case:

[code]Lab is a room.
The mini table is a supporter in Lab. It is portable. The player carries a placard.
Test me with "put placard on table/take placard/take table/put placard on table."
[/code]

Don't know how often it comes up, and if I can't put the placard on the table while I'm carrying it then arguably I shouldn't be able to pick the table up while it has the placard on it. But I'm guessing that the idea is that even portable supporters are usually pretty big, so that you can't put something on one while you're carrying it.

This isn't to say that the rule shouldn't be scrapped, tho' it's easier to delist a rule than to rewrite it. But on the third hand, that requires knowing that the rule's there.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2106&start=0#p14338
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Choosing a random entry from a list?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-05 17:47:19

Thanks Victor and George! Victor, somehow I missed your post when I posted the second time; I'd thought of that, too, but this is something I'll be calling several times a turn, and resorting the lists seems like it'd be too computationally intensive.

George, when I do that I get a compiler error:

[quote]Problem. You wrote 'decide on entry K of L'   as the outcome of a phrase to decide a value, but this was the wrong kind of value: a list entry rather than a thing.[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2100&start=0#p14339
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glimmr: Installing kinda failed?
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-03-05 18:27:26

[quote="ektemple"]Weird, that sounds like a bug in the IDE, at least if it was added by Inform. You might want to report it.[/quote]
[url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=522]522[/url], I'm guessing?  If so, it's been reported and fixed; the install should work in the next release.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2106&start=0#p14340
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Choosing a random entry from a list?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-05 18:35:34

[quote="matt w"]Thanks Victor and George! Victor, somehow I missed your post when I posted the second time; I'd thought of that, too, but this is something I'll be calling several times a turn, and resorting the lists seems like it'd be too computationally intensive.[/quote]
It's a pretty quick operation for anything reasonable-sized. But for your purpose, choosing a random number is certainly more elegant.

Perhaps this should be a feature request? Choosing a random element from a list sounds like a pretty basic operation.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2106&start=0#p14341
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Choosing a random entry from a list?
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-03-05 18:38:08

[quote="matt w"]George, when I do that I get a compiler error:

[quote]Problem. You wrote 'decide on entry K of L'   as the outcome of a phrase to decide a value, but this was the wrong kind of value: a list entry rather than a thing.[/quote][/quote]
You want something much like that:
[code]To decide what K is a random member of (list - list of values of kind K):
	let the count be the number of entries in the list;
	let the index be a random number between one and the count;
	decide on entry index of the list.[/code]
See WI 21.7.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2100&start=0#p14342
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glimmr: Installing kinda failed?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-05 18:50:24

[quote="EmacsUser"][quote="ektemple"]Weird, that sounds like a bug in the IDE, at least if it was added by Inform. You might want to report it.[/quote]
[url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=522]522[/url], I'm guessing?  If so, it's been reported and fixed; the install should work in the next release.[/quote]

That sure looks like the same issue--with a Glimmr extension the proximate cause there, too. Thanks for checking into it!

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2104&start=0#p14343
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: l7: Super Newbie Question 1
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-05 19:43:40

[quote="zahariel"][code]
A thing can be noticed or unnoticed. A thing is usually unnoticed. After examining something: now the noun is noticed.

Test is a room. The shadow and the light bulb are in Test.

Before examining the shadow: If the light bulb is unnoticed, say "It's too indistinct to make out. Maybe you could try looking at something else." instead.
[/code][/quote]
You need a "continue the action" in your After rule, or it won't print anything.

EDIT: Scratch that, I think examine prints a description during the carry out phase. But that's not true for most actions.

Better yet, use a carry out rule, which continues the action by default:
[code]Carry out examining something: now the noun is noticed.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2105&start=10#p14344
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: randomize()
User: Icefall / DateTime: 2011-03-05 21:03:19

I have programmed many languages, but not any of them well. So I know arrays, but thank you anyway.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2107&start=0#p14345
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The can't put onto something being carried rule
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-03-05 23:19:44

Oops. Can't make any suggestions tonight. The link on the I7 site to the suggestions forum reports, "Server unavailable."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2097&start=0#p14346
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6 - more sophisticated preposition use
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-03-06 00:12:57

I've worked out most of the kinks in this and uploaded it to the IF Archive as Positions.h.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2107&start=0#p14347
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The can't put onto something being carried rule
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-03-06 01:14:56

I've assumed it's because you normally carry things in your pockets or in a (implied) bag or something like that instead of in your hands (which would severely limit what you can carry). Then it wouldn't make sense to put things on other things. But since the inventory is a kind of abstraction anyway I wouldn't really notice anything if the game let you put things on other things while carrying them both.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2105&start=10#p14348
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: randomize()
User: Icefall / DateTime: 2011-03-06 01:33:01

The second code produced 2 errors. Could someonefix it? Thanks in advance.
The compiler expected a function or object definition, but found "showIntro".
The symbol "showIntro" is already defined, so you cannot use it as the name of a function here.

I tried to put execute() to the code (first code), it solved the problems, but then came an other error:
Expected a semicolon ';' but found "{"

[code]
gameMain
  showIntro(){
        execute(){
          // this randomizes your player statistics from 1 to 20 at game start up
          for(local i= 0;i< me.stats.length();i++) me.stats[i] = rand(20) + 1;
        }    }
;
[/code]


[code]
me: Actor
  stats = [20,20,20,20,20,20,5,5,5,5,5,5]
  statNames = ['str','int','dex','agi','wis','cha','nature','death','fire','cold','magic','poison']
  desc {
             "You look as good looking as ever.<.p> ";
             for(local i=0;i < me.stats.length();i++){
                        say(me.statNames[i] + ': ' + me.stats[i] + '<br>');
             }
  }
;

gameMain
  showIntro(){
          // this randomizes your player statistics from 1 to 20 at game start up
          for(local i= 0;i< me.stats.length();i++) me.stats[i] = rand(20) + 1;
  }
;
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2108&start=0#p14349
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Attributes to the player
User: Icefall / DateTime: 2011-03-06 06:38:46

How do I make attributes to a player like

[code]The player has numbers strength and health.[/code]

'The player has numbers strength and health'   looked to me as if it might be trying to assign certain properties to something which is not allowed to have them.

How do I do this properly?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2105&start=10#p14350
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: randomize()
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2011-03-06 06:43:44

I think the problem here is that you need to define the class to which gameMain belongs (since this isn't an object defined in the library, although the library expects your game to define it). The following should work:

[code]
gameMain: GameMainDef

  initialPlayerChar = me

  showIntro(){
          // this randomizes your player statistics from 1 to 20 at game start up
          for(local i= 0;i< me.stats.length();i++) me.stats[i] = rand(20) + 1;
  }  
;
[/code]

Note that you also need to define initialPlayerChar = me on the gameMain object, otherwise the game won't know what your player character object is called (by convention TADS 3 games tend to call it 'me' but it can be called anything you like). Specifically the comment in misc.t states:

[code]
 *   Each game MUST define an object called 'gameMain' to define how the
 *   game starts up.  You can use GameMainDef as the base class of your
 *   'gameMain' object, in which case the only thing you're required to
 *   specify in your object is the 'initialPlayerChar' property - you can
 *   inherit everything else from the GameMainDef class if you don't
 *   require any further customizations.  
 */
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2105&start=10#p14351
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: randomize()
User: Icefall / DateTime: 2011-03-06 07:19:47

Now I have done just what I needed, 6 random variables that are initialised when game begins and are showed by command "examine me". They dont change every time when the command is executed and are easily changed later. Thanks for everybody who helped me!

[code]
startRoom: Room 'Start Room'
    "This is the starting room. "
;

me: Actor
    desc {"You look as good looking as ever.<.p> 
        Strength: <<me.Strength>><br> 
        Dexterity: <<me.Dexterity>><br>
        Constitution: <<me.Constitution>><br>
        Intelligence: <<me.Intelligence>><br>
        Wisdom: <<me.Wisdom>><br>
        Charisma: <<me.Charisma>><br>";}
    location=startRoom; 
;

gameMain: GameMainDef

  initialPlayerChar = me

    showIntro(){
        me.Strength=rand(6)+rand(6)+rand(6)+3;
        me.Dexterity=rand(6)+rand(6)+rand(6)+3;
        me.Constitution=rand(6)+rand(6)+rand(6)+3;
        me.Intelligence=rand(6)+rand(6)+rand(6)+3;
        me.Wisdom=rand(6)+rand(6)+rand(6)+3;
        me.Charisma=rand(6)+rand(6)+rand(6)+3;
    }
           
;
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2108&start=0#p14352
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Attributes to the player
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-06 07:20:54

You can only (I think) assign properties to objects by assigning them to every object in a class. [EDIT: WRONG -- see Skinny Mike's post, below.] So you could say:

[code]A person has a number called strength. A person has a number called health. [/code]

If you don't want to give other characters strength and health, you could define a special kind for the player, thus:

[code]A PC is a kind of person. A PC has a number called strength. A PC has a number called health. Conan is a PC in Lab [or whatever the starting location is]. The player is Conan.[/code]

In this case, I don't think you can directly declare "the player is a PC," so you have to create a PC and say that the player is that person.

In these cases, you have to refer to "The strength of the player"; I keep typing "The player's strength" which gives me a compiler error.

Which leads to another suggestion -- if the player is the only character with strength and health, you can just fake it by defining numbers that aren't actually assigned to the player:

[code]The player's strength is a number which varies. The player's health is a number which varies.[/code]

Here you just have numbers named "the player's strength" and "the player's health" -- even though "the player" is part of their names, they don't have any technical association with the player (they could be called "foo" and "bar" with the same effect). But you can do what you want with them; in I7, variables don't have to be attached to objects. I think the only practical difference, if the player is the only character with strength and health, is that when you type the debugging command "showme me" (which shows all properties of the PC) they won't show up.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2105&start=10#p14353
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: randomize()
User: Icefall / DateTime: 2011-03-06 07:38:51

How can I ask from player is he

1. Human
2. Dwarf
3. Elf
4. Gnome
5. Half elf
6 Half orc
7. Halfling

 [emote]:oops:[/emote]  [emote]:oops:[/emote]

I am asking lot of questions, but this is how I learn.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2108&start=0#p14354
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Attributes to the player
User: Icefall / DateTime: 2011-03-06 07:47:24

Thanks a lot!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2108&start=0#p14355
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Attributes to the player
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-06 07:48:50

Unrelated to your question, but if you are planning to set up a combat system, this might be of interest to you: [url]http://inform7.com/news/2010/09/28/attack-combat-extension/[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2108&start=0#p14356
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Attributes to the player
User: Icefall / DateTime: 2011-03-06 08:01:23

Thanks for the hint! I wrote the address down.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1454&start=0#p14357
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Glulx search opcodes and I7 tables
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-06 09:06:47

I've adapted Ron's presentation of @linearsearch above to adapt the TableRowCorr() routine. It seems to work for some seeks on number-typed columns, but not for others.

[code]Include (-
Global seekStartAddress;
Global seekRows;
-) after "Definitions.i6t".

To select a/the/-- row with (TC - a word value valued table column) of (W - a word value) in/from (T - table name):
	(-	{-require-ctvs}
		ct_0 = {T};
		ct_1 = -1;
		seekStartAddress = ({T})-->(TableFindCol({T}, {TC}, true)) + (COL_HSIZE * WORDSIZE);
		seekRows = TableRows({T});
		@linearsearch {W} WORDSIZE seekStartAddress WORDSIZE seekRows 0 4 ct_1;
		if (ct_1 < 1) return RunTimeProblem(RTP_TABLE_NOCORR, {T});
	-).[/code]

Can anyone see what I've done wrong?

Thanks!

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2109&start=0#p14358
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: no thing = nothing, no text = ?
User: n3ver / DateTime: 2011-03-06 09:34:09

I'm trying to set a check that checks is the result is no text, but I'm not sure how to say "no text" in terms Inform understands.  "Blank" seemed likely, but no-go...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2105&start=10#p14359
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: randomize()
User: Draxxar / DateTime: 2011-03-06 09:44:11

There might be a more elegant way but here's one way to do it:

[code]
 local iDone = 0;
 local s0 = '';
 do{
       "<br>Please select a race for your character: 
        <br>1. Human
        <br>2. Dwarf
        <br>3. Elf
        <br>4. Gnome
        <br>5. Half elf
        <br>6. Half orc
        <b4>7. Halfling
        <br> >";
        s0 = inputManager.getInputLine(nil, nil);
        s0 = s0.toLower(); // not really needed for numbers but would be handy for standard alpha character checking
        if((s0 == '1') || 
           (s0 == '2') ||
           (s0 == '3') ||
           (s0 == '4') ||
           (s0 == '5') ||
           (s0 == '6') ||
           (s0 == '7')
        ){ 
            iDone++;
        }else{
            "Please select a number from 1 to 7<br>";
        } 
        "\n";
 }while(iDone==0);
 if(s0 == '1'){
       "You picked human. ";
       me.race = 'human';
 }else if(s0 == '2'){
       "You picked dwarf. ";
       me.race = 'dwarf';
 }else if(s0 == '3'){
       "You picked elf. ";
       me.race = 'elf';
 }else if(s0 == '4'){
       "You picked gnome. ";
       me.race = 'gnome';
 }else if(s0 == '5'){
       "You picked half-elf. ";
       me.race = 'half-elf';
 }else if(s0 == '6'){
       "You picked half-orc.";
       me.race = 'half-orc';
 }else{
       "You picked halfling. ";
       me.race = 'halfling';
 }
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2108&start=0#p14360
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Attributes to the player
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-03-06 09:45:11

I just want to point out that you [i]can[/i] add properties to individual objects (or instances of a class, if you prefer) rather than a whole kind. The problem with your original code is that "the player" is not an [i]object[/i] but rather a [i]variable[/i] which holds whatever person is the player at that moment. You can't give properties to "the player" because code like "now the player is Jane" would mean that the game would have to create those properties for Jane on the fly (at runtime). The default object representing the player is "yourself," which -- like all objects -- can be given unique properties.

I think Matt's idea of giving the properties to all people in the game is probably more flexible and what you're looking for (especially for combat, switching characters, etc.). However if you have some need for memory savings (like making a z-code game), here's an example of what I mean:[code]Lab is a room. Sam is a man in the Lab.

Yourself has a number called strength.  The strength is usually 10.

Instead of examining a person:
	if the noun provides the property strength,
		say "Str = [strength of the noun].";
	otherwise say "[The noun] has no discernible characteristics."
		
test me with "x me / x sam / showme me / showme sam".[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2105&start=10#p14361
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: randomize()
User: Icefall / DateTime: 2011-03-06 09:48:11

Thank you a lot. 

[code]
s0 = inputManager.getInputLine(nil, nil);
[/code]

That was what I was looking for how to do it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2108&start=0#p14362
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Attributes to the player
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-06 09:54:35

[quote="Skinny Mike"]I just want to point out that you [i]can[/i] add properties to individual objects (or instances of a class, if you prefer) rather than a whole kind. The problem with your original code is that "the player" is not an [i]object[/i] but rather a [i]variable[/i] which holds whatever person is the player at that moment. You can't give properties to "the player" because code like "now the player is Jane" would mean that the game would have to create those properties for Jane on the fly (at runtime). The default object representing the player is "yourself," which -- like all objects -- can be given unique properties.[/quote]

Thanks for the clarification, and sorry for the misinformation -- I've edited my original post.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2104&start=0#p14363
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: l7: Super Newbie Question 1
User: n3ver / DateTime: 2011-03-06 09:57:55

Thanks for the tips [emote]:)[/emote] Helped a bunch.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2109&start=0#p14364
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: no thing = nothing, no text = ?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-06 10:10:29

What about ""? (I did not test it, but it seems like the most natural representation of the empty text string.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2107&start=0#p14365
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The can't put onto something being carried rule
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-03-06 10:12:20

[quote="Juhana"]I've assumed it's because you normally carry things in your pockets or in a (implied) bag or something like that instead of in your hands (which would severely limit what you can carry). Then it wouldn't make sense to put things on other things.[/quote]
But if you put a supporter in your pocket, whatever is on it would fall off. So that theory doesn't quite explain why Graham felt this bottleneck modeled the real world.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2107&start=0#p14366
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The can't put onto something being carried rule
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-06 10:20:59

Supporters are assumed to be big things that you cannot move around. Given that assumption, the rules in the standard world model make perfect sense.

I suspect the assumption is made because if you do [i]not[/i] make it, and allow supporters of all sizes, you suddenly need to do a lot of work to avoid absurdities: e.g., carrying a wheelbarrow on a saucer, or a person on a silver tray. (> Tracy, sit on tray. > take tray.) So Inform comes with a limit idea of what supporters can be, just because it is a lot simpler. If you want a more extensive concept of supporter, you will need to do the work yourself (and remove some of the standard rules).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2109&start=0#p14367
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: no thing = nothing, no text = ?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-03-06 10:27:00

Victor's right:[code]Lab is a room.  The bat is in Lab.
The ball is in Lab. The description is "Here's a great description of a ball."

Instead of examining:
	if the description of the noun is "",
		say "The author of this game was to lazy to write a description.";
	otherwise continue the action.
	
test me with "x ball / x me / x bat / showme bat".[/code]

The easiest way of finding out the default value of a kind or kind of value is to look under the Index --> Kinds tab. Not every kind of value in Inform has an equivalent to "nothing," but if not they have a starting value. (Note that in the above example, the player (actually "yourself") has a default description built into the standard rules.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2109&start=0#p14368
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: no thing = nothing, no text = ?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-06 10:28:38

That's correct: ""

If you go to the Kinds tab in the index, it lists the "default value" of every kind. This is is what gets filled in for properties or variables of that kind if you don't set another value. It's also the result of "to decide which..." phrases if you don't decide on a value.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2109&start=0#p14369
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: no thing = nothing, no text = ?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-06 10:28:55

(Timing. :)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2107&start=0#p14370
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The can't put onto something being carried rule
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-06 10:36:44

[quote]Supporters are assumed to be big things that you cannot move around. Given that assumption, the rules in the standard world model make perfect sense.[/quote]

Well, no. That assumption implies a "can't take supporters" rule, not a "can't put onto something being carried" rule.

[quote]I suspect the assumption is made because if you do not make it, and allow supporters of all sizes, you suddenly need to do a lot of work to avoid absurdities: e.g., carrying a wheelbarrow on a saucer, or a person on a silver tray. (> Tracy, sit on tray. > take tray.)[/quote]

But the rule doesn't block those cases! You can put any (takeable) supporter on any other supporter, and you can pick up a (takeable) supporter no matter what it supports.

See, this is why it's vaguely confusing. Most games don't have a takeable supporter, but if there is one, this doesn't make it any more convincing.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2110&start=0#p14371
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: "Use no scoring" as the default?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-06 10:53:52

I've made a [url=http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/1564911-make-use-no-scoring-the-default-with-use-scori]uservoice suggestion[/url] that "Use no scoring" should be the default.

My reasoning is that people who want to use scoring are already mucking around with the score; this lets people who don't want to use scoring ignore the score entirely. And these days, it seems like most people don't want to use scoring. Let us end the tyranny of "You scored 0 out of a possible 0 points, in 53 turns!" (I have one data point that newbies -- well, one newbie -- find that message particularly ridiculous.)

(I don't know if it's the done thing to hock your uservoice suggestions on the forum, but here it is.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2110&start=0#p14372
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Use no scoring" as the default?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-06 12:16:08

Makes sense to me.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2110&start=0#p14373
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Use no scoring" as the default?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-06 12:30:32

Somehow, I was assuming (with zero evidence) that this would already be on the dev-team's to-do-list. So, count me in on this one.

(And while we are at it, what about [url=http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/1565295-strip-turn-count-from-the-status-line-?ref=title]also stripping the turn counter from the status line[/url]?)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2110&start=0#p14374
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Use no scoring" as the default?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-03-06 12:46:05

Thumbs up on both suggestions.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2107&start=0#p14375
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The can't put onto something being carried rule
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-06 13:17:35

[quote="zarf"]Well, no. That assumption implies a "can't take supporters" rule, not a "can't put onto something being carried" rule.[/quote]
If supporters cannot be carried, then logically, anything that is carried cannot be a supporter. So it makes sense to have a "can't put onto something being carried" rule.

But I do agree that this logic collapses as soon as you make any supporter portable or carried, which the standard rules allow you to do. The combination of the rules with that allowance is indeed a recipe for weirdness. I'm not sure you could solve the problem by dropping the "can't put onto something being carried" rule, though. (Because the rest of the rules still don't work well with portable supporters.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1454&start=0#p14376
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Glulx search opcodes and I7 tables
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-06 15:44:32

It's 1:30 pm, and I just woke up.  

I'm pretty sure there was a reason I aliased variables rather than using {w} and such directly on @linearsearch's line.  You might want to try that.

Also, why I forgot to include "of kind K" and such in the parameters I don't remember, but that should probably be there.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2110&start=0#p14377
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Use no scoring" as the default?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-06 15:44:53

Sounds good.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2111&start=0#p14378
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: New Inform7 quick reference available
User: mor / DateTime: 2011-03-06 15:55:05

Dear all,

not having encountered text adventures since the late 80s, I stumbled across Inform7 a few days ago. I have played around with it a little since, mainly out of a general interest in programming languages.  It's really an interesting language and the IDE & documentation is cool.  Great job!

I took a few notes along reading 'Writing with Inform' and 'Inform7 for Programmers' that I compiled into a brief quick reference. The aim is to summarize the most important structures of the language as concisely as possible.

This 'Cheat Sheet' is pretty sketchy. But I thought I make it available in case someone might find it useful / interesting. It can be downloaded from: <a class="postlink" href="http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~moreiser/inform/">http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~moreiser/inform/</a>

I'd be curious to hear what people think, so any feedback is greatly appreciated!

Best,
Oliver

p.s. sorry if this is off topic in this forum!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1454&start=0#p14379
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Glulx search opcodes and I7 tables
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-03-06 16:06:33

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]It's 1:30 pm, and I just woke up.[/quote]
Awesome.  [emote]:)[/emote]  

But seriously guys, you're scaring the newbies (and some of the old bees). Maybe no one wants to look snooty by putting "(Advanced)" in the title of their post, but it's shorter than "super - advanced crap that you'll never need to know or understand for that matter, but when the people on this thread figure it out it will probably make your life easier in unseen ways (or SACtYNN2KoU4tMBWtPotTFIOIWPMU'rLEiUW for short).  [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2111&start=0#p14380
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New Inform7 quick reference available
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-03-06 16:20:20

Looks like a very useful thing!
(... and I hope you might consider extending it to include the same kind of info about relations, tables and lists, too, some sunny day (or rainy night) ...)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2107&start=0#p14381
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The can't put onto something being carried rule
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-03-06 17:23:11

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]I'm not sure you could solve the problem by dropping the "can't put onto something being carried" rule, though. (Because the rest of the rules still don't work well with portable supporters.)[/quote]
Can you give an example? I'm drawing a blank. What "rest of the rules" are you referring to?

The way I look at it (and feel free to offer contrary examples), the only time it would be difficult, in the real world, to put something on a supporter while carrying the supporter would be if you need both hands to carry the supporter -- if it's a table, for instance. But that problem is better dealt with using some sort of "large objects require both hands" rule, which it's up to the author to implement. If I have somehow managed to carry both a table and something else (perhaps by holding the little gold key in my teeth?), then 'put key on table' still makes sense.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2107&start=10#p14382
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The can't put onto something being carried rule
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-06 18:09:57

[quote="Jim Aikin"]The way I look at it (and feel free to offer contrary examples), the only time it would be difficult, in the real world, to put something on a supporter while carrying the supporter would be if you need both hands to carry the supporter -- if it's a table, for instance. But that problem is better dealt with using some sort of "large objects require both hands" rule, which it's up to the author to implement. If I have somehow managed to carry both a table and something else (perhaps by holding the little gold key in my teeth?), then 'put key on table' still makes sense.[/quote]

Man, not for me. I would have to put that table down to have any hope of spitting the key onto it and getting it to stay there. 

I'm pretty clumsy, though; when I ran your initial code, and trying to put the egg on a tray I was carrying produced the response "That is beyond your dexterity," my reaction was "That's pretty plausible." I'm pretty sure I'd find it easier to pick up a tray with something already on it than to put something on a tray I was already holding -- perhaps depending on how balancy the other thing was, with an egg being pretty far to one extreme. But this is idiosyncratic enough that it may not be a good idea to put it in the default model world.

And, on post-"submit" thought, I can't think of hardly any circumstances in which making the player put down the supporter before putting something on it wouldn't just add extra annoyance. Maybe in something like the grocery sequence in "Common Ground," where annoyance is the point, or maybe in something where you're trying for a slapstick effect.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1454&start=0#p14383
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Glulx search opcodes and I7 tables
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-06 19:34:25

Are we seriously scaring newbies? Who?

Really, this is what subject lines are for. 

(Also I have not looked at this question and might not have a chance before PAX. Sorry.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2111&start=0#p14384
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New Inform7 quick reference available
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-03-06 19:59:20

It's not off-topic at all, and it looks very useful. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1454&start=10#p14385
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Glulx search opcodes and I7 tables
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-06 20:56:47

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]I'm pretty sure there was a reason I aliased variables rather than using {w} and such directly on @linearsearch's line.  You might want to try that.

Also, why I forgot to include "of kind K" and such in the parameters I don't remember, but that should probably be there.[/quote]

Thanks, Ron. Neither of these seem to do much, unfortunately. I'll keep at it...

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2110&start=0#p14386
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Use no scoring" as the default?
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2011-03-06 22:36:44

[quote="matt w"]Let us end the tyranny of "You scored 0 out of a possible 0 points, in 53 turns!" (I have one data point that newbies -- well, one newbie -- find that message particularly ridiculous.)[/quote]
I'm not a newbie, but I find that message particularly ridiculous, too...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2110&start=0#p14387
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Use no scoring" as the default?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-06 23:23:02

Thanks for all the support!

I notice that on uservoice it still only has the two votes I gave it, though.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2111&start=0#p14388
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New Inform7 quick reference available
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-06 23:43:17

This does look very nice.

One thing I noticed is that you included "change foo to bar" under "phrases to do something." This is now a deprecated phrase, meaning that the Inform developers hope to remove it in a future build and are trying to get people to stop using it now. At least that's what I think it means. That might be something to flag (the way you flagged procedural rules.)

Anyway, I've downloaded it and will definitely be looking at it.

(By the way, are you related to the mid-twentieth century humanist philosopher Oliver Reiser?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2110&start=0#p14389
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Use no scoring" as the default?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-07 01:19:13

Uservoice has that scarcity problem :)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2110&start=0#p14390
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Use no scoring" as the default?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-03-07 03:40:13

Is there really much '0 out of 0'ing about? Of all the IF I played in the past half year, only 1 did that, and it was a WIP.

I'm not actually against changing the default position to 'use no scoring', though. It seems most games don't use it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2112&start=0#p14391
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: What's the least memory intensive data structure in i7?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-03-07 08:03:39

I have had to up my MAX_STATIC_DATA on my learner's game to over 500000 (I went ahead and bumped it to 1000000 to avoid further messages). I'm worried that I'm going so far outside the 'norm' and it's not like my game is now huge or anything -- I am just making rather extensive use of the non-room-or-object data structures. Essentially 21 complex data objects are all that was required to bust the heck out of MAX_STATIC_DATA.

I have implemented the static data structure by adding text and list properties to kinds of value; I'm thinking now that this may be the most inefficient possible way to store things in i7? Anyway it seems really inefficient. I'd kill right now for just an old-fashioned, plain-vanilla, multi-dimensional array. (Lists of lists are a possibilty? Perhaps I should have avoided starting from a base of kinds of value and adding properties to each value...)

So I'm considering, should I reimplement all of this in the form of a table? It won't be cleaner if I do it that way, it'll actually be uglier, IMO, so I'd only do it if there is significant memory savings. Also if there's any other more efficient way to do this kind of thing, I'd love to know (P.S. this isn't the real data, I've used placeholder values)...

[code]A widget is a kind of value. The widgets are blue, orange, red, yellow, green, blue, violet, white, black.

A widget has some text called the introduction.
A widget has a list of widgets called the connected widgets.
A widget has a list of texts called the passwords.
A widget has a list of texts called the operations.
A widget has a list of objects called the connected objects.[/code]
Each of the above lists would contain no more than two or three items, and yet just 21 of these 'widgets' have managed to send my MAX_STATIC_DATA into an apparent stratosphere. Which worries me because what I will really need in the end is more like 100 of them. Is this just the cost of doing business? I could live with it and just resign myself to glulx and give up any chance of a standard z8, but I get the feeling I am missing something more efficient.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2110&start=0#p14392
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Use no scoring" as the default?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-03-07 08:20:22

I don't care what sort of game you are writing, it should have a score. Or if you don't want to call it a score, call it progress level, and maybe express it as a percentage. But you absolutely need a way to notify the player of how far they are through the story. People say books and movies don't have scores but that is incorrect; or at least, it is only correct in the most meaningless, semantic way. Books and movies don't have a thing called a 'score' but they both have a numerical equivalent with a different name. Books have a page count and movies have a minutes and seconds count. Web pages have a scroll bar. Music has a running time that all makers of music software make every effort to expose to the user. Why? Is it because music is laden down by its legacy origins in puzzle gaming? Obviously not. The reverse is true. Games need a score because they are too free from metrics used to measure progress in older media.

When I'm playing a game without a score, I feel like I'm reading a book with no page numbers and of a largely indeterminate thickness. It puts me off. Whatever it is that I may not be enjoying about certain parts of your story, I imagine that there might be [i]so much more of it[/i] that I just give up on scoreless games, way easier. It also make my time management prediction more difficult, which also makes me more likely to give up because in a battle between prudent use of my time and your game, your game doesn't win. Therefore your game needs to willingly cooperate with time management. Having no score sends the message, 'Screw your time management -- this is Art.' The priorities of that are all wrong, and it's not user-friendly. The score helps people stay aware of what they are getting into and thus stay motivated. Every game needs one, or a functional equivalent -- it doesn't matter whether its focus is on puzzle or on story.

I think the 'problem' authors have with the score is just a word, nothing more. I am more in favour of not calling it a score by default than I am of removing by default the only progress-tracking system the medium has. Why not change 'score' to a percentage by default, and change the standard message to 'You are X% of the way through the story.'? If you want the old scoring you can 'Use scoring' or 'Use old progress'. It would be a more prudent way of leaving behind the legacy of simplistic gaming, without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. 8)

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2113&start=0#p14393
Forum: Feedback / Subject: What do people think about adding a favicon?
User: StJohnLimbo / DateTime: 2011-03-07 09:22:29

This is not really an important suggestion, but I think it might be cool if the forum had a "favicon". So I'd like to know whether other people would consider that a good idea. I'm talking about the little icon that appears next to a web site's name in the browser bookmarks.

The reason for my proposal is that I often check the forum's RSS feed via the Firefox bookmarks toolbar (below the navigation & URL bar). Clicking on the button in the bookmarks toolbar opens a dropdown list with the titles of the most recent posts. Next to the titles, Firefox displays the default RSS bookmark icon. Now, if the forum had a favicon, then that favicon would be shown there for those posts which I would already have visited with the browser. For unvisited posts, there'd be the browser's default icon. So I could see at a glance whether there were new posts.

I'm not familiar with phpbb, but the configuration doesn't seem very complicated ([url=http://www.phpbb.com/kb/article/adding-a-favicon/]explanation on the phpbb site[/url]).

Obviously, we'd also need an appropriate icon. I played around a bit on [url=http://www.favicon.cc/]favicon.cc[/url] and made three [edit: five] rather... well, let's say minimalist designs. [emote]:)[/emote] (See below.) There's also the possibility of [url=http://www.favicon.co.uk/]converting an image to an icon[/url].

So, what do you think about this? And most importantly, what does Merk think?

Regards,
Michael

A) [img]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20660186/favicon.ico[/img]

B) [img]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20660186/intfi-ction_favicon.ico[/img]

C) [img]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20660186/IF_favicon.ico[/img]

D) [img]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20660186/IF_border_favicon.ico[/img]

E) [img]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20660186/ifsmall_border_favicon.ico[/img]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2112&start=0#p14394
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What's the least memory intensive data structure in i7?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-07 09:41:52

I'm no expert on I7 memory management, but I think tables are one of the most efficient ways of storing data in I7. Plus, they're static. Lists are not.

But maybe relations would be a reasonable compromise? I don't know if ordering is important, but if it's not, or even if it is but the order happens to be the builtin order of the values in question, then you could try it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2109&start=0#p14395
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: no thing = nothing, no text = ?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-07 09:49:14

I think "empty" works too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2110&start=10#p14396
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Use no scoring" as the default?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-03-07 10:07:00

[quote="Laroquod"]Games need a score because they are too free from metrics used to measure progress in older media.[/quote]
I don't think there [i]can[/i] be an effective measure of progress in a game, though, unless it's absolutely narrow and linear.  The main reason games defy metrics is because much of their content is optional or conditional.  Although game devs obviously want you to play their game forever, reach every different ending, find every little widget, explore each branch of the plot etc. most players probably only experience a fraction of it, and you have no way of knowing how big a fraction will hold their interest.

And since progress is usually linked to challenge and player skill, you have no way of knowing if the last 5% of the game will take you longer than the preceding 95%.

A better solution is to indicate early on how big the game is, for example with prominent entrances to the areas they have to unlock, or obvious tasks they have to solve or whatever.  Or, you know, just by saying "This is a small/medium/large game and it will take minutes/hours/days to reach one ending/100% completion/the end of the main quest."

Or: having games end with "'You are 0% of the way through the story." by default isn't much of an improvement.  I think this is a design issue, like "You should implement hints."  You should (usually) implement hints, but "There are 0 out of 0 hints available at this time." is obviously not a desirable default message to have in the standard rules.  [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2112&start=0#p14397
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What's the least memory intensive data structure in i7?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-07 10:16:04

Hm, so are lists memory-hoggy? My IF-Demo busted right through the z-machine limits with eight objects, each associated with one table with between four and ten rows -- but each row has a list with between two and five elements. [Besides this, there's pretty much the bare minimum -- a starting location and a yourself object, both completely nominal.] 

Given that the lists are static but I need to access them randomly, is there a more efficient way to do it? It seems like the most ideal thing would be some kind of table within a table, but the only way I can think of to do that is to replace every list entry with a pointer to a new table, and the prospect of coding 62 more tables makes me want to curl up into a ball.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2112&start=0#p14398
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What's the least memory intensive data structure in i7?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-03-07 10:21:50

I just assumed the memory requirements were set for a fairly normal-low level; someone who isn't tracking variables across most objects, or having very many things going on simultaneously.  Full disclosure: I use both tables and lists, and there's some borderline cases, but mostly I'm glad to have access to both.  It would make me very sad to recode tables to lists or vice versa.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2112&start=0#p14399
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What's the least memory intensive data structure in i7?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-07 10:24:57

[quote="matt w"]Hm, so are lists memory-hoggy? My IF-Demo busted right through the z-machine limits with eight objects, each associated with one table with between four and ten rows -- but each row has a list with between two and five elements. [Besides this, there's pretty much the bare minimum -- a starting location and a yourself object, both completely nominal.] 

Given that the lists are static but I need to access them randomly, is there a more efficient way to do it? It seems like the most ideal thing would be some kind of table within a table, but the only way I can think of to do that is to replace every list entry with a pointer to a new table, and the prospect of coding 62 more tables makes me want to curl up into a ball.[/quote]
Table access is pretty fast. Can you make a big table that has a two-column key?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2110&start=10#p14400
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Use no scoring" as the default?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-07 10:41:00

I also like to know how far along I am through a game, but I think "use no scoring" makes sense as a default, because as the original poster said, if the author is using scoring, they're already mucking around with the score.

I don't tend to trust other people's evaluations of how long a game is. How big is a medium-sized game? I give up. How many hours did it take me to play Worlds Apart? No idea. But it would have been nice to be told something like "This is Chapter 2 of 4" or "The story ends at dawn, and it's 9PM right now," or "You've achieved 3 of the 8 goals you need to reach," or ANYTHING. I'm all for letting the author define progress, but I hope that most authors will put some thought into it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2110&start=10#p14401
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Use no scoring" as the default?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-07 10:55:29

[quote="Pacian"][quote="Laroquod"]Games need a score because they are too free from metrics used to measure progress in older media.[/quote]
I don't think there [i]can[/i] be an effective measure of progress in a game, though, unless it's absolutely narrow and linear.  The main reason games defy metrics is because much of their content is optional or conditional.  Although game devs obviously want you to play their game forever, reach every different ending, find every little widget, explore each branch of the plot etc. most players probably only experience a fraction of it, and you have no way of knowing how big a fraction will hold their interest.[/quote]

Well, I disagree here somewhat. A game doesn't have to be [i]linear[/i] to have measurable progress; if you have to solve eight puzzles to finish, but can solve them in any order, you can still have a progress meter.  The question of side this-and-that is more interesting; should we just not fill the meter while you're on an optional sidequest? Should a new meter sprout up for the sidequest? Should there be an array of meters that demonstrate your progress toward all the goals you might have? That might be inordinately spoily. 

And I'm saying "progress meter" here, because I think that's what you (Paul) really want; a passive indication of how far through you are, that you can glance up and check at any time. That's closer to what traditional media provide -- they don't suddenly pop up and say "We have just completed a major plot point!" -- Well, books have chapters and parts, but IF can do that too, and anyway the chapters and parts don't tell you how much you've got left. The telltale compression of the pages does that, and that's more like a progress meter.

One of the problems with the default scoring system is that it serves two masters -- do you have 75% of the points because there's still 25% of the game left to play, or because 24% of the points were tied up in optional achievements and sidequests? The player doesn't know. The progress bar would hopefully be unambiguous here. 

[quote]And since progress is usually linked to challenge and player skill, you have no way of knowing if the last 5% of the game will take you longer than the preceding 95%.[/quote]

Hi, Cave Story! 

In a lot of flash games, your way of measuring progress is by the level select screen, which has the same problem. Really, does any other kind of game use a numerical score as a measure of completion anymore? I get the impression that AAA games signal completion by giving you achievements, though that has the "sidequests and challenges" problem I complained about before. Or just by letting you see how you're progressing through the plot. 

[quote="Pacian"]A better solution is to indicate early on how big the game is, for example with prominent entrances to the areas they have to unlock, or obvious tasks they have to solve or whatever.  Or, you know, just by saying "This is a small/medium/large game and it will take minutes/hours/days to reach one ending/100% completion/the end of the main quest."[/quote]

This, very much. And that's pretty much how theatrical releases of movies do it -- the running time is in promotional materials and whatever, and probably can be figured out from the showtimes, but it's not actually in the movie. Of course time management with movies is much simpler, because you know exactly how long it's going to take. (But that also means that there's no need to monitor your progress while the movie is going on.) 

[quote="Pacian"]Or: having games end with "'You are 0% of the way through the story." by default isn't much of an improvement.  I think this is a design issue, like "You should implement hints."  You should (usually) implement hints, but "There are 0 out of 0 hints available at this time." is obviously not a desirable default message to have in the standard rules.  [emote]:P[/emote][/quote]

Yeah, this is my main point. If you're going to implement scoring, you're going to implement scoring, and putting one more line at the beginning of the code isn't a great burden. As it is, having scoring on by default is basically just another trap for the newbie programmer. (I mean, I guess it can serve the player the way [url=http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/vanhalen.asp]brown M&Ms do[/url] -- if the programmer has forgotten to turn off scoring, there's likely to be other problems -- but feh.)

I guess there is another trap here, in that if scoring is off you can still program in changes to the score, they just won't have any visible effect. Which would be annoying if you forgot to write "Use scoring." But I think that should probably give a compile-time error anyway.

As Zarf said in the uservoice forums, it'd be nice to have scoring as an extension. Then people could write progress-bar extensions, or maybe act-and-scene management extensions, or just drop in Traditional Scoring by Graham Nelson. Or roll a system that's specific to the game. Paul makes a good point about measuring progress, but I think we ought to be thinking about more ways to do it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2038&start=10#p14402
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptions of supported items.
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-03-07 11:00:39

Jon Ingold presents an elegant solution to the OP's question here:
[url]http://threeedgedsword.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/on-the-desk-is-a-helpful-bit-of-code/#comments[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2112&start=0#p14403
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What's the least memory intensive data structure in i7?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-07 11:09:14

[quote="capmikee"][quote="matt w"]Hm, so are lists memory-hoggy? My IF-Demo busted right through the z-machine limits with eight objects, each associated with one table with between four and ten rows -- but each row has a list with between two and five elements. [Besides this, there's pretty much the bare minimum -- a starting location and a yourself object, both completely nominal.] 

Given that the lists are static but I need to access them randomly, is there a more efficient way to do it? It seems like the most ideal thing would be some kind of table within a table, but the only way I can think of to do that is to replace every list entry with a pointer to a new table, and the prospect of coding 62 more tables makes me want to curl up into a ball.[/quote]
Table access is pretty fast. Can you make a big table that has a two-column key?[/quote]

Hm, I guess I could hack it up by replacing something like this:

[code]
Tool     Components
Axe        {handle, blade}
Wheelbarrow    {wheel, left handle, right handle, well}[/code]

with something like this:

[code]
Tool   Component
Axe    handle
Axe    blade
Wheelbarrow    wheel
Wheelbarrow   left handle
Wheelbarrow   right handle
Wheelbarrow    well[/code]

And then instead of [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2106]choosing a random member of[/url] the components entry of the row with tool wheelbarrow, I could choose a random row with tool wheelbarrow and choose the component entry. It wouldn't be that much more typing. What I'm doing with the table is more complicated, so there'd be more workarounds to do, but that might be doable. -- If I didn't have to e-mail it to Emily approximately today, having already been granted an extension.

BTW, does anyone know the name for the part of the wheelbarrow that you put things in?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2112&start=0#p14404
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What's the least memory intensive data structure in i7?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-07 11:24:39

Yeah, that's the kind of thing I was thinking of.

[quote="matt w"]BTW, does anyone know the name for the part of the wheelbarrow that you put things in?[/quote]
Well, WordNet was no help, but I think it's called a bucket. Well sounds good. Maybe basket, payload or just load also.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2109&start=0#p14405
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: no thing = nothing, no text = ?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-03-07 11:37:51

[quote="capmikee"]I think "empty" works too.[/quote]I can confirm this works in the above example: changing[code]if the description of the noun is "",[/code]to[code]if the description of the noun is empty,[/code]I didn't know about this syntax. Thanks Cap.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2110&start=10#p14406
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Use no scoring" as the default?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-07 11:42:48

[quote="matt w"]Well, books have chapters and parts, but IF can do that too, and anyway the chapters and parts don't tell you how much you've got left.[/quote]
I like books that have a Table of Contents at the beginning.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2111&start=0#p14407
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New Inform7 quick reference available
User: mor / DateTime: 2011-03-07 11:48:15

Thanks for the feedback!

You're right, probably it would be nice to also have tables and relations covered. I skipped them at first, because I did not want to exceed 4 pages. But probably a fith won't do much harm.

Thanks for the remark on the deprecated phrase. I'll add a comment on that. And: no I am not related to this philosopher except that I was born the year he died (a few months later). So reincarnation might be on hand here :-)  A polt for an IF!!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2038&start=10#p14408
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptions of supported items.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-07 11:49:39

Nice! That's one of those bits of code that looks too small to be an extension, but it's so useful it probably should be anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2114&start=0#p14409
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: pausing an events table
User: Rotonoto / DateTime: 2011-03-07 12:09:43

Suppose you have a scene which runs through a table of events, like Example 159 in the manual: but you want to allow one action to suspend the scene for exactly one turn, what would that look like?  (For instance, if the player says WAIT after event 6 on the table, event 7 will happen, but if she says JUMP, it'll respond "You can't jump that high!" and event 7 won't happen till the next turn.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2110&start=10#p14410
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Use no scoring" as the default?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-07 12:21:57

[quote]I don't care what sort of game you are writing, it should have a score.[/quote]

I understand your position, although I don't share it. However, it's not a reason for the current scoring default. As others have posted, there is no problem for authors who pay attention to the problem: they will either turn off scoring or implement a meaningful progress display. But for authors who *don't* pay attention to the problem, the current default is both ugly and useless. Changing the default to be absent would be less ugly and no less useless. 

(I don't like motivating the author to put in effort by providing an ugly default. It doesn't always work, and then that makes the author look bad rather than merely careless. It would be like making the default player description "FILL IN DESCRIPTION HERE" -- plausible, but not the road that I7 generally takes.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2110&start=10#p14411
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Use no scoring" as the default?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-07 12:23:12

I'd like to think of not having a progress meter as a distinct [i]advantage[/i]. In a book, you're always partly spoiled: the murderer cannot be the guy who is apprehended on page 130, because you still have 124 pages to go; the protagonist doesn't die in the car crash, because you're only halfway through the book (and you have seen his name come up in the rest when you were thumbing through it, trying to find the page you stopped reading last night.) Interactive fiction doesn't have this problem. It is opaque. You never know what to expect. That is [i]good[/i]. It is one of the strengths of the medium.

I don't buy the time management argument. If you are enjoying the game, play on. If you are not, don't. If you think you might be missing out on something good that is still to come, check the game's score on the IFDB. And if you want to know whether it can be completed in one evening, or takes three months -- well, that shouldn't be too hard to point out in the documentation.

Additionally, as has been pointed out, score is an incredibly bad progress meter. There is zero guarantee that the player will accumulate score at a constant rate, and zero guarantee that you will finish the game with a full score.

And finally, there are many other and more elegant ways for a game to communicate how much of it you have seen. A numerical score will be the right solution for only a small number of games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2112&start=0#p14412
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What's the least memory intensive data structure in i7?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-07 12:37:52

[quotes]Hm, so are lists memory-hoggy?[/quotes]

Lists are memory-hoggy because I7 doesn't just reserve memory for the data, it reserves memory for how much you might expand the lists dynamically during the game. Of course it's only guessing about this, and it doesn't know when you create a list that you intend to never expand. The memory usage increases in jumps, so I'm not sure how to estimate it (estimating I7's estimate!) but that's what's going on.

Tables don't have this problem. If you wanted to be really parsimonious, you'd make a new data structure based on static I6 arrays, but it doesn't sound like you've got so much data that you'd need to think about that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2112&start=0#p14413
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What's the least memory intensive data structure in i7?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-07 13:00:56

[quote="zarf"]If you wanted to be really parsimonious, you'd make a new data structure based on static I6 arrays, but it doesn't sound like you've got so much data that you'd need to think about that.[/quote]

Is this possible to do fully, meaning the ability to declare and refer to a new type at the I7 level? Or would this just mean using an array with a bunch of wrappers for manipulating it? I'm not sure if one would need access to the I7 compiler to do the former, or if it would be enough to add new types to the type template...?

(I've been wanting to do this with arrays attached to objects, hence the recent thread asking about property arrays in I6.)

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2110&start=10#p14414
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Use no scoring" as the default?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-07 13:13:23

On a practical note, I'm looking at the way score is implemented currently. [rant]Allow me to pause for a moment to rant about the state of documentation. In what part of Writing with Inform will I learn the name of the variable that represents the total score? Hmm...

I look in Chapter 2 - The Source Text because it's the first meaty chapter - don't see any useful subheadings.

I look in Chapter 8 - Change, because the score is something that changes - looks like a dead end.

I do a search for "score" in the search bar. It looks like there IS something in Chapter 2 - but alas, it just tells me about "use no scoring." Hmm, if that were the default, it wouldn't even need to be in Chapter 2. But it's just an example of a use option, so it's not what we're expected to be looking for here anyway.

Next hit comes up in Chapter 4 - Kinds, under Values that vary. Sounds promising. Nope, sorry, it's an example of a new variable called "the target score." This text search thing isn't turning out to be very useful.

Skimming around, I see in Chapter 8, the score is mentioned under "Now..." Lets see... no that was more irrelevant examples.

Well, I think increasing the score is done using a phrase. Let's see if I can find something listing phrases in I7. Chapter 11 is all about phrases. Conditions and questions maybe? Well, it happens to mention the score, but it's just another example.

I'm running out of ideas. Maybe I need to search for "increase the score"... Well, 8.12 does tell me how to do that, but still nothing about the total score.

At this point I give up and decide that the source of the Standard Rules is a better form of documentation than the manual. Here we go...

Hmm... searches for "obituary" and "final score" don't turn up anything useful. Requesting the score? Handled in I6. Finally I think of "the score." Now we get a list of variables. Here we go! The maximum score, that's it!

Out of curiosity, let's search for "maximum score" in the documentation. Awarding Points is section 9.2 in the chapter on "Time." Well, I guess since we're talking about progress, running time, and playing time, that kind of makes sense, but it's a stretch if you ask me.

Okay, now I can get to the point.[/rant] Why not behave as though there is no score if the maximum score is zero? A use option could override that, but in almost all cases with or without scoring, the author wouldn't have to think about it at all. This might have to be done at runtime in case the maximum score is added up when play begins, but that doesn't sound too expensive.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2115&start=0#p14415
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Game Release - "SNOW"
User: Tyk-Tok / DateTime: 2011-03-07 13:18:56

Hey everyone! I'm a new guy here, but I was referred to this forum from a comment on my blog.

I was referred here because I was talking about creating and submitting a game to the IF Demo Fair that Emily Short will be holding at PAX East this year.

Well, the game has been released! I kinda had to rush it a tad to get the deadline for the fair, but it pretty much encompasses everything that I wanted. I suppose that at this point it could be in a state of open beta, so I'd still be very helpful for feedback. Also keep in mind that this was my first attempt at using Inform, so I'm not completely conversant, nor are there too many bells and whistles.

The game is called "SNOW" and is designed so that there is no one end goal, and that any action that the player takes has a significant effect on his/her surroundings and how the game turns out.

You can find the game here: [url]http://www.tyk-tok.com/snow[/url]

If you do play, I hope that you'll let me know what you think of it! Thank you very much for reading and (hopefully) playing!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2112&start=0#p14416
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What's the least memory intensive data structure in i7?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-07 13:18:57

[quote="ektemple"][quote="zarf"]If you wanted to be really parsimonious, you'd make a new data structure based on static I6 arrays, but it doesn't sound like you've got so much data that you'd need to think about that.[/quote]

Is this possible to do fully, meaning the ability to declare and refer to a new type? Or would this just mean using an array with a bunch of wrappers for manipulating it? I'm not sure if one would need access to the I7 compiler to do the former, or if it would be enough to add new types to the type template...?[/quote]
I'd love to see an extension that does that. Maybe it could provide a "text buffer" type that behaves like indexed text but has a static  length...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2112&start=10#p14417
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What's the least memory intensive data structure in i7?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-07 13:23:05

[quote] Is this possible to do fully, meaning the ability to declare and refer to a new type?[/quote]

Good question. I was thinking of a bunch of phrase wrappers.

You could define a kind of value and then get the actual values out of phrases. Setting up would be awkward, since you'd have to assign the initial values out of those phrases, but you could have type-safe properties and variables during execution.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2114&start=0#p14418
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: pausing an events table
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-07 13:43:16

If that's all you want to do...
[code]Every turn when not jumping during Lecture:
	repeat through Table of Lecture Events:
		say "[event entry][paragraph break]";
		blank out the whole row;
		rule succeeds.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2110&start=10#p14419
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Use no scoring" as the default?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-03-07 14:14:58

[quote="capmikee"]Why not behave as though there is no score if the maximum score is zero?[/quote]
Yeah, I just suggested that at Uservoice. Inform could just assume the game uses no scoring if the author hasn't provided a "The maximum score is X" instruction.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2110&start=10#p14420
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Use no scoring" as the default?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-07 14:19:36

[quote="capmikee"]On a practical note, I'm looking at the way score is implemented currently. [rant]Allow me to pause for a moment to rant about the state of documentation. In what part of Writing with Inform will I learn the name of the variable that represents the total score? Hmm...

I look in Chapter 2 - The Source Text because it's the first meaty chapter - don't see any useful subheadings.

I look in Chapter 8 - Change, because the score is something that changes - looks like a dead end.

I do a search for "score" in the search bar. It looks like there IS something in Chapter 2 - but alas, it just tells me about "use no scoring." Hmm, if that were the default, it wouldn't even need to be in Chapter 2. But it's just an example of a use option, so it's not what we're expected to be looking for here anyway.

Next hit comes up in Chapter 4 - Kinds, under Values that vary. Sounds promising. Nope, sorry, it's an example of a new variable called "the target score." This text search thing isn't turning out to be very useful.

Skimming around, I see in Chapter 8, the score is mentioned under "Now..." Lets see... no that was more irrelevant examples.

Well, I think increasing the score is done using a phrase. Let's see if I can find something listing phrases in I7. Chapter 11 is all about phrases. Conditions and questions maybe? Well, it happens to mention the score, but it's just another example.

I'm running out of ideas. Maybe I need to search for "increase the score"... Well, 8.12 does tell me how to do that, but still nothing about the total score.

At this point I give up and decide that the source of the Standard Rules is a better form of documentation than the manual. Here we go...

Hmm... searches for "obituary" and "final score" don't turn up anything useful. Requesting the score? Handled in I6. Finally I think of "the score." Now we get a list of variables. Here we go! The maximum score, that's it!

Out of curiosity, let's search for "maximum score" in the documentation. Awarding Points is section 9.2 in the chapter on "Time." Well, I guess since we're talking about progress, running time, and playing time, that kind of makes sense, but it's a stretch if you ask me.

Okay, now I can get to the point.[/rant] [/quote]

For some quirky reason, I had no problem finding this with "scoring" -- there aren't many relevant hits. Of course I was looking for the use option. Anyway, I agree that the chapter on Time is a really weird place to put this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2114&start=0#p14421
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: pausing an events table
User: Rotonoto / DateTime: 2011-03-07 15:03:06

Elegant as usual with Inform, and I thank you. I usually wind up cribbing things like this--the programmer part of my head is broken, if there even is one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2038&start=10#p14422
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptions of supported items.
User: joningold / DateTime: 2011-03-07 15:07:28

[quote="capmikee"]Nice! That's one of those bits of code that looks too small to be an extension, but it's so useful it probably should be anyway.[/quote]

I was thinking of submitting it as a bug-and-fix. After all, there's no ambiguity since the author has positioned the item and provided the initial text, and at first glance it does look like an oversight.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2113&start=0#p14423
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: What do people think about adding a favicon?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-07 15:23:08

I like D.   [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2110&start=10#p14424
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Use no scoring" as the default?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-07 15:42:25

[quote="Laroquod"]Games need a score because they are too free from metrics used to measure progress in older media.[/quote]

They're called bytes, Laroquod.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2110&start=20#p14425
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Use no scoring" as the default?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-07 15:45:26

[quote="matt w"]Of course I was looking for the use option. Anyway, I agree that the chapter on Time is a really weird place to put this.[/quote]
They seem like they'd be more at home next to randomness and other numerical stuff. 

Censoring the line when max score is zero seems a nice compromise.  Isn't max score a compile-time constant, or did they change that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1454&start=10#p14426
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Glulx search opcodes and I7 tables
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-07 15:51:45

You may want to copy my above repeat loop into your code and create your Select line in I7 from that -- it would be used as a phrase but is a value-returning function in the I6.  Once you get that working, you can look  at the generated I6 and whittle down from there. 

If you truly can't get it to go, I can roll up my sleeves... 

(The bit with the "of kind K" is just protection for client code; it wasn't intended to fix anything within the phrase.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2099&start=0#p14427
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Testing extensions
User: Roger / DateTime: 2011-03-07 16:07:44

My attempt at supporting I7 unit tests is:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Automated_Testing">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Automated_Testing</a>

It's still very much a work in progress (well, very slow progress) so I'm happy to hear any feedback you might have.


Cheers,
Roger

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1454&start=10#p14428
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Glulx search opcodes and I7 tables
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-07 16:18:07

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]You may want to copy my above repeat loop into your code and create your Select line in I7 from that -- it would be used as a phrase but is a value-returning function in the I6. Once you get that working, you can look  at the generated I6 and whittle down from there.[/quote]

Hm, I should indeed try looking at the generated I6--I could tell that the phrase can return a value (the run-time error function is returned), but I assumed that the primary intent was not to return anything, but instead to set ct_0 and ct_1. 

My memory is that your code didn't work in my little experiment either, for some reason, but I just tested it bare and it worked nicely. I haven't had a lot of time to work on this, but I'll give it some more attention tonight if I can.

Thanks!

--Erik

EDITED TO ADD: And my code seems to work too, when tested bare. (By which I mean in a separate, simplified project; I'm using the Port Royal 4 example.) So I need to approach this differently. I'm not sure how; the functionality of my "select a row" phrase (or your repeat phrase forced to stop after the first found entry) should be identical to the TableRowCorr() routine called by the library's "choose a row" phrase. Here's the code that appears to be working:

[code]Include (-
Global seekStartAddress;
Global seekRows;
Global seekVal;
-) after "Definitions.i6t".

To select a/the/-- row with (TC - a word value valued table column) of (W - a word value) in/from (T - table name):
	(-	{-require-ctvs}
		ct_0 = {T};
		ct_1 = -1;
		seekStartAddress = ({T})-->(TableFindCol({T}, {TC}, true)) + (COL_HSIZE * WORDSIZE);
		seekRows = TableRows({T});
		seekVal = {W};
		@linearsearch seekVal WORDSIZE seekStartAddress WORDSIZE seekRows 0 4 ct_1;
		if (ct_1 < 1) return RunTimeProblem(RTP_TABLE_NOCORR, {T});
	-).[/code]

It's different from the code posted upthread in just one respect: the addition of seekVal; having a bare {W} in the @linearsearch produced a compiler error in my test project, but not my actual WIP. Odd! Anyway, this points me in the right direction...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2116&start=0#p14429
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Seeking beta-testers: Escape From Santaland
User: jermer / DateTime: 2011-03-07 17:49:23

Seeking beta-testers for my take on the holidays: Escape From Santaland.

I competed in IF Comp 2006 and I've been away from it for a while. Now what started as a little Christmas puzzle for my dad, has grown and grown into something more substantial. I'm hoping to enter IF Comp 2011. [emote]:)[/emote]

Let me know if you'd like to help!

Thanks,
jason

- - - - - - - - - -
ESCAPE FROM SANTALAND

Ugh. Christmastime at the Mall. The last place you want to be, during the worst time of year to be there.

Everything about this place gives you a headache. You have got to get out of here...

But... Where did you park? All of these mall entrances look the same...  Are you going the right way? This doesn't look familiar...

The cartoony plastic signpost points east toward a fake-snowy pathway between fake-holly hedges. One arrow reads "Pictures With Santa" the other reads "Parking Lots A-G".
- - - - - - - - - -

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2110&start=20#p14430
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Use no scoring" as the default?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-03-07 18:30:13

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Isn't max score a compile-time constant, or did they change that?[/quote]
They changed it. Maximum score is just another global variable now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2117&start=0#p14431
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Spell Checker New to this language.
User: omnix32 / DateTime: 2011-03-07 18:36:07

Just going over the starting Tutorial video by Aaron Reed and noticed that he mistyped a word and the spell checker caught it while he was typing. Much like Word, or firefox does for me. 

When attempting to check my spelling (Ctrl+G) Nothing happened. I then highlighted the sentence and found that it did check once I did that, even though it said "Plough" was misspelled. (But so does firefox)

I was wondering how Aaron got that real time spell checker going. I can't seem  to find any options for that in Inform. 

I looked on google for extensions I may have missed and installed something called Spellcasting by Jim Aikin but looking over it, I think it sets up some spell system or something, and won't help with the real time spelling checker.

I know it's got to be something simple I missed, thank you for the help.

Windows 7 64bit AMD Phenom 6-Core 1100T Gforce GTX 460

Once again, this is interesting and very different way to approach programing, but cool enough to want to learn more... loved Zork back in the 80's..

thanx.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1454&start=10#p14432
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Glulx search opcodes and I7 tables
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-07 19:22:58

Well I hadn't had any trouble with the loop in my WIP as far as I know, but I'm interested of course if you find problems with it.  If you can find a test case that breaks it then please post it & I'll try to fix.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2117&start=0#p14433
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Spell Checker New to this language.
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-07 19:25:13

That might be Mac specific, actually.  Mac has "Check Spelling as you Type" as one of the standard Edit menu items.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2118&start=0#p14434
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: web browser interpreters
User: xie / DateTime: 2011-03-07 22:27:11

Hi all,

I'm extremely new to IF but a recent MUD player and also a web development student.  I know a bit about writing webpages as well as server/clientside languages and was wondering what, if any, exist in the area of web interpreters (ie you don't have to download or install anything to play the IF).  I've seen a couple but it says Missing Plugin, I'm suspecting this is the JRE (Java Runtime Environment).  I was especially wondering if there exists any native browser interpreter that doesn't require a third-party plugin - but all ideas and suggestions will be helpful.

Can anyone release their wisdom on me, or point me in the right direction for where to consult?

Thanks much.

Xie

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2118&start=0#p14435
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: web browser interpreters
User: George / DateTime: 2011-03-07 22:43:00

hi Xie, I wrote a summary of the web client environment a while back, here, 

<a class="postlink" href="http://kooneiform.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/playing-text-games-on-the-web/">http://kooneiform.wordpress.com/2010/02 ... n-the-web/</a>

the first half of which covers IF. New since then is Zedt, <a class="postlink" href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lekkdfigcbkleeolmihlebplopohgpen">https://chrome.google.com/webstore/deta ... plopohgpen</a>, though that's a front-end for Parchment.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2111&start=0#p14436
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New Inform7 quick reference available
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-03-08 02:11:17

Very nice, this. Design and typography is clean and makes for pleasant reading. I've needed this kind of summary for a while, so I'll definitely use it. It's almost like a slide rule for I7 writers.

The only comment I can think of concerns the action-processing image. If you made it a vector image like the rest of the document, it would probably read better in printed form.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2118&start=0#p14437
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: web browser interpreters
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-03-08 03:11:12

Quixe has also been released since that post. Work is in progress for TADS web support as well, from a few directions (via a Java client, or via an AJAX system.) David C has some interesting stuff on his blog as well.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2117&start=0#p14438
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Spell Checker New to this language.
User: omnix32 / DateTime: 2011-03-08 03:42:40

Ya, looked like a mac now that I watched the Video again, ummm... has to be a script for windows to run a spell checker somewhere... but if everyone that has windows has the same as me, then all good.

Thank you for the quick response, you were very helpful..

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2113&start=0#p14439
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: What do people think about adding a favicon?
User: riktik / DateTime: 2011-03-08 04:14:28

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]I like D.   [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

D

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2117&start=0#p14440
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Spell Checker New to this language.
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-03-08 09:52:22

Hi,
I'm running Inform 7 build 6f95 under Win7 and I don't believe there's a native spell - check - as - you - go option; that would be something to ask about or suggest to David Kinder (writer and maintainer of the Windows IDE). Having said that, you don't need to make a selection in order to spell - check it. The built - in checker moves from the cursor [i]down[/i] the code. In other words, if you're at the end of the code and hit ctrl-g, you'll get "spell checking complete" but nothing really happened. Move your cursor to where you need it, or just hit ctrl-home to go to the beginning of your source first and then hit ctrl-g.

EDITED to add: You can make suggestions like this on the [url=http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general]uservoice I7 suggestions forum[/url]. I don't see that suggestion on there. Just tag it IDE (as you can see others have done) and David will see it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2111&start=0#p14441
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New Inform7 quick reference available
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2011-03-08 10:28:23

Fantastic!  Thanks very much.  This is awesome.

--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">http://www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2119&start=0#p14442
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: take this piece of code and "shove" it please...
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-03-08 13:02:35

Okay I'm stumped...

[code]Moving stuff is an action applying to one thing.

Understand "lift [something]" or "move [something]" or "drag [something]" or "shove [something]" as moving stuff.

Instead of moving stuff:
	try pulling [the noun] instead.[/code]

This piece of code seems to work in all the cases except when the player types: "shove box" - then it returns "You must supply a noun" when I compile it. It works fine with the other words though. I can't get it to recognize the command "shove" as moving something? Or figure out how to override the command "shove" if it's an action that's already defined in I7.

The answer must be embarrassingly simple but I haven't found it yet. Any help much appreciated...Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2119&start=0#p14443
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: take this piece of code and "shove" it please...
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-08 13:19:52

That should be 

[code] try pulling the noun instead. [/code]

No brackets.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2115&start=0#p14444
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Game Release - "SNOW"
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-03-08 13:25:48

Cool!  Has it been beta tested at all?  I ran across a few things right away that make me think it could use a quick trip through beta.  

[spoiler]For example, the cart is locked, but any attempt to unlock it or look at its lock is swiftly denied, and there's no way to get in the Barracks door without knowing that it's called the Barracks door, which is a bit disconcerting.

Also, maybe spell-check?  ("Lifering"?)[/spoiler]

I found the puzzles too steep for me, but I'm really really bad at puzzles, so I don't know if that's meaningful.  I really like the setting - I haven't done a ship romp in a long time!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2119&start=0#p14445
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: take this piece of code and "shove" it please...
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-03-08 13:27:54

There's a couple of issues with your code, but they're all pretty simple to fix:

First, [edit: as Ron points out] outside of quoted material, anything in brackets is ignored as a comment. You have "try pulling  [the noun] instead" when you mean "try pulling the noun instead."

Second, when defining new actions and synonyms for them, it's best to first check the Index tab --> Actions. Below the actions is a section called "Commands available to the player" which lists (almost) all commands currently defined. You can see (if you comment out your "understand" grammar line) that "move" is already defined as "same as push" and "drag" as "same as pull." This means that those pairs of words are interchangeable. In that case, you need to decouple "move" from its original meaning before redefining it. This is done using "Understand the command <whatever> as something new." Don't use quotes or brackets in this case -- see below:
[edited to add: You don't need to worry about "drag" at all since it's already the same as "pull"][code]Lab is a room.  The ball is in Lab. 

Moving stuff is an action applying to one thing.

Understand the command move as something new.

Understand "lift [something]" or "move [something]" or "shove [something]" as moving stuff.

Instead of moving stuff:
	try pulling  the noun instead.
   
test ball with "lift ball / move it / drag it / shove it".

test me with "test ball / actions / test ball".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2119&start=0#p14446
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: take this piece of code and "shove" it please...
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-03-08 13:54:05

I should add that "Understand the command ... as something new" should be used with caution. Even though you need it in the case of words defined as the "same as" other words, in most cases you don't. The reason you need to be careful with it is that this code essentially eliminates that word from the parser's dictionary. If you say "Understand the command take as something new" you haven't just removed the word "take" from the understood grammar of the "taking" action, but also the "taking inventory" action. Similarly, if you "Understand the command get as something new" Inform won't be able to understand "get [something]," "get up," "get in," "get out," etc. You can always redefine these to work as before, but it's easy to forget to do so in certain cases. That's why I recommend checking the index [i]before[/i] making those kinds of changes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2117&start=0#p14447
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Spell Checker New to this language.
User: omnix32 / DateTime: 2011-03-08 13:55:52

Thank you Skinny Mike... sort of strange a spell checker  would not be included in a app where lot's of typing of story book like text would take place, but I could not have done better.

What I did find is that I could not get Aspell to work at all in windows 7, but found something that does... It checks for spelling in Inform also as You type, so the problem is solved.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-spell-checker.htm">http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-fr ... hecker.htm</a>

It's called tinyspell, and seems to be doing a good job. 

Thank you for all the help everyone.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2119&start=0#p14448
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: take this piece of code and "shove" it please...
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-03-08 14:19:00

[quote="Skinny Mike"]This is done using "Understand the command <whatever> as something new." Don't use quotes or brackets in this case[/quote]
Yes, obviously it works without the quotes. The Manual ("Writing with Inform", that is) actually puts quotes round the commands in such understand statements:
[quote="WI 16.3"]Understand the command "discard" as something new.[/quote]
and
[quote="WI 16.2"]Understand the command "access" as "open".[/quote]
And that seems to work as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2113&start=0#p14449
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: What do people think about adding a favicon?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-03-08 14:24:00

D for me as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2119&start=0#p14450
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: take this piece of code and "shove" it please...
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-03-08 14:27:20

[quote="Felix"]Yes, obviously it works without the quotes. The Manual ("Writing with Inform", that is) actually puts quotes round the commands in such understand statements:[/quote]Thanks, Felix. 
I'm not sure where I got the idea that this case didn't use quotes. In any event, it's best to do as Felix suggests and use quotes, since this is the canonical syntax. Future changes might render my code unusable.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2119&start=0#p14451
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: take this piece of code and "shove" it please...
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-03-08 14:32:12

Thanks to you all, I learned something new today that'll save me a lot of frustration!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2113&start=0#p14452
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: What do people think about adding a favicon?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-03-08 16:31:08

I like E if the box was squished down a bit.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2059&start=20#p14453
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Story in IF
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-03-08 17:35:54

In my Intro to Mass Media course that I'm currently taking, we recently discussed the true story of Randy Pausch, a computer science professor who was dying of cancer when he gave a "last lecture" about achieving one's childhood dreams, which was turned into a popular self-help book.  As the class was discussing Mr. Pausch's last lecture, several students said that he didn't really deserve all the fame he got from the media, because there have been many people faced with similar terminal illness who do not have never had the opportunities to see their deepest dreams come to life.  However, I think we reached a consensus that stories like Mr. Pausch's absorb publicity because people want to see a hero they can sympathize with, someone who has it far worse than they do but managed to achieve the important things in life.  Here's the link to the YouTube video of the lecture:  <a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo</a>

Although I've never formally studied literature or mythology and may never do so, I think this true story demonstrates Campbell's monomyth.  Not only novels and movies, but also many [i]nonfiction[/i] books sell because of the universal appeal of the Hero.  The reason Mr. Pausch's story can't help those terminally ill people who are not as advantaged as he had been is that Pausch is only [i]a[/i] hero.  His story is too specific for everyone to be inspired by it.  There have been many other heroes in literature and media throughout the ages, some of which were real, and some of which expressed true universal insight despite being fictional creations of the imagination.  I don't know about Campbell's work, but I think there is a common inspirational element to all stories of all times.

We can use this principal to great effect in IF, because the player [i]becomes[/i] the Hero, sharing in his or her transcendence.  This can work well in games with a characterized protagonist, as in novels and movies, but it also can work to great effect in games with a generalized protagonist, such as [i]So Far[/i] and [i]Blue Lacuna[/i].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2120&start=0#p14454
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Vectors
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-08 17:41:54

I have been trying to get Inform understand vectors, but no luck. Not terribly important, because I'll probably use another system anyway; but not understanding things irritates me.

One thing that I don't get is this:
[code]A coordinate is a kind of value. (1,1,1) specifies a coordinate with parts x-coordinate, y-coordinate and z-coordinate.

A room has a coordinate. Entrance Hall is a room. The coordinate of Entrance Hall is (0,0,1).

Every turn:
	say 5 times the coordinate of the location.[/code]
One would expect the every turn rule to print (0,0,5). Instead, it prints (1,0,1) -- and if that looks like a binary representation of 5 to you, you're right, as testing with other numbers will show. Why on earth is this happening? Why has Inform ditched base 10?

And why can't I add vectors together? I would expect (0,0,3) + (2,0,1) to evaluate to (2,0,4), but instead, it gives me a syntax error. Why can I multiply coordinates with a scalar, but not add them together?

I did read through Chapter 14 of the manual, but I can't seem to find an answer to my questions. And searching the manual for "vector" just brought up a very complicated example about mixing liquids, which did not in fact seem to define any vectors.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2120&start=0#p14455
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Vectors
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-03-08 17:50:49

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc233.html">http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc233.html</a>

For parts after the first one you must specify the maximum of each part. So (9,9,9) should work fine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2120&start=0#p14456
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Vectors
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-08 17:55:47

Okay... but why would the maximum of my x-coordinate (say) be 9, or any other number for that matter? I'd like to to be infinite. I don't want to specify a maximum, and I don't see why Inform would want to force me to do so?

[b]Edit 1[/b]
Actually, I'm starting to think that these values work completely differently from what I imagined. Is Inform assuming that my three numbers are somehow [i]one[/i] number written down in a weird notation?

[b]Edit 2[/b]
Hm, I see. These things are meant to build non-standard representations of single numbers, not to build vectors. Fair enough. But I still don't understand why you cannot add them together!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2120&start=0#p14457
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Vectors
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-03-08 18:05:08

[quote]Is Inform assuming that my three numbers are somehow one number written down in a weird notation?[/quote]
Yes exactly. You have 16 bits to share between the three parts, which gives you up to 32 for each part. With Glulx you get to share 32 bits, which gives you 1024 for each part. If you need more than this you'll need to use lists.

I'm not sure why adding them doesn't work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2113&start=0#p14458
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: What do people think about adding a favicon?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-08 18:07:43

I don't use RSS feeds myself, but if I did, I would prefer D.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=160#p14459
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Six31 / DateTime: 2011-03-08 18:22:08

Hello fellow IF fans,

My name is Erin and I'm a 29-year-old editor/print designer in Sacramento, Calif. I've been playing text adventure games since I was 9 years old, when my dad introduced me to the classic Zork series on our monochrome Apple IIe. Gaming has always been a part of my life, and I love how IF can be so easily adapted to new technology. I can't tell you how many times I've taken a trip down memory lane with a little bit of Planetfall on my phone in the checkout line at the grocery store.

I'm starting to learn Inform to create my own stories. Eventually I wan to create whole worlds for my fan fiction group to explore, but right now my first project is a basic simulation of my morning (get up, get dressed, eat breakfast, etc.) in my one-bedroom apartment. It's amazing how complex some facets of life can be to model! The manual and the cookbook have been great, but I sure could benefit from the advice of some experienced authors.

I'll try real hard to lurk more often than I beg for advice [emote];-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2120&start=0#p14460
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Vectors
User: zahariel / DateTime: 2011-03-08 19:17:10

Adding them works fine, although you get strange effects if you surpass the maximum of any part (it "carries over" into the next bigger part). The problem you had with trying to add them originally was that (0,0,3) was an invalid vector: the maximum for the last part was 1, not 3. Try it again with "(30,30,30) specifies a coordinate" and it will work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2120&start=0#p14461
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Vectors
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-08 19:31:35

You can add them... as long as you don't use parenthesis anywhere.  Apparently the normal parsing eats parenthesis rather than saving them for the Unit. 
[code]"test" by Ron Newcomb

A coordinate is a kind of value. 99,99,99 specifies a coordinate with parts x-coordinate, y-coordinate and z-coordinate.

A room has a coordinate. Entrance Hall is a room. The coordinate of Entrance Hall is 0,0,1.

Every turn:
   say 5 times the coordinate of the location;
   let x be a coordinate;
   now x is 00,00,03;
   now x is x plus 2,0,1;
   say " [x]".
   


   [/code][quote]>z
Time passes.

0,00,05 2,00,04[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2120&start=0#p14462
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Vectors
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-08 19:37:07

Lists are really the only viable solution for coordinates, unfortunately, since in addition to the upper limit, you also have a lower limit--you can't have negative values on the individual terms.

This is another situation in which an I7 structure that mapped to a simple array would be useful. I'm long since out of uservoice votes, or I'd make a suggestion...

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2121&start=0#p14463
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: What rule triggers the end of the game?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-08 20:48:52

I've been using some funky rules for processing parser errors, and I'm having some trouble with getting the game to actually end when a game-ending rule triggers inside of one. Take this (rather flawed) example code:

[code]"The Great Riddle" by Matt Weiner

Use no scoring [dammit]

Riddletorium is a room. "Remember, that riddle is 'What rises in the morning, goes down at night, and is highest at the noon when the sun is at its height?'".
When play begins: say "A voice booms out, 'In this room I have hidden an object. You must take it to leave. It is the answer to this riddle: [apostrophe]What rises in the morning, goes down at night, and is highest at the noon when the sun is at its height?[apostrophe]'[line break]".
The sun is in Riddletorium. The temperature is in Riddletorium.
Before listing nondescript items when in the Riddletorium:
	now the sun is not marked for listing;
	now the temperature is not marked for listing.
After taking the sun: 
	Say "Congratulations!";
	end the story saying "Your hands are slightly blistered".
Instead of taking the temperature:
	say "A voice booms out, 'How are you going to take the temperature without a thermometer? Anyway, the temperature is highest at about 4 PM.'"
	
Understand the command "take" as something new. Understand "take [something]" as taking. [We'd really have to do this for every synonym for taking.]

To decide what action-name is the action-to-be: (- action_to_be -).
Rule for printing a parser error when the latest parser error is the can't use multiple objects error and the action-to-be is the taking action:
	say "A voice booms out, 'Nice try, smartass.'";
	end the story saying "You have been hit by a bolt of lightning";
	[abide by the turn sequence rules.]
	[abide by the advance time rule.]
		
Test me with "take all/foo/fa/floe/take all/sing".[/code]

As you can see, after trying "take all," the player doesn't actually get hit by a bolt of lightning until entering a valid command. This is a known issue; section 9.4 says of the "end the story" rules, "This phrase ends the story at the next opportunity (typically as soon as the current rule ends)." But when exactly is the next opportunity? I can't figure out how to force it. Abiding by the advance time rule helped me solve a [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=602#c1076]similar issue[/url], but in this case it seems to prevent the story from ending at all. Abiding by the turn sequence rules doesn't change a thing, and neither does considering the scene changing rule. So is there anything I can do?

(The riddle comes from [url=http://goodshipchronicles.com/swindex.php?cid=00008.Riddle_Me_This.jpg]here[/url]. As you can see, I agree with Mr. T.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2121&start=0#p14464
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What rule triggers the end of the game?
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-03-08 21:40:29

The shutdown rulebook is invoked from the I6 main routine when control returns from the turn sequence rulebook and the deadflag is not zero.  That means that you have to stop the turn sequence rulebook, which isn't happening here.

A slightly hacky alternative is to call the shutdown rulebook yourself, as in
[code]To end the story immediately saying (message - some text):
	end the story saying the message;
	follow the shutdown rulebook.[/code]
and then
[code]end the story immediately saying "You have been hit by a bolt of lightning";[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2121&start=0#p14465
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What rule triggers the end of the game?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-08 21:58:34

[quote="EmacsUser"]The shutdown rulebook is invoked from the I6 main routine when control returns from the turn sequence rulebook and the deadflag is not zero.  That means that you have to stop the turn sequence rulebook, which isn't happening here.

A slightly hacky alternative is to call the shutdown rulebook yourself, as in
[code]To end the story immediately saying (message - some text):
	end the story saying the message;
	follow the shutdown rulebook.[/code]
and then
[code]end the story immediately saying "You have been hit by a bolt of lightning";[/code][/quote]

Thanks -- looks like "follow the shutdown rulebook" should work. I guess it manually shuts things down rather than running a check to see if the story has ended, but it should amount to the same thing.

(Of interest only to me: This same issue came up in [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=995]my first post[/url] on this forum, and I've been a member for almost exactly a year.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1461&start=0#p14466
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gargoyle 2010.1 released
User: Roody_Yogurt / DateTime: 2011-03-09 00:26:44

Is it possible to edit garglk.ini to run certain games with particular options set?

If something like this works, I haven't found the right way to do it:
[code][ CUTTHROA.Z3 ]
terp frotz -x[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=0#p14467
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-03-09 00:56:14

Tentative release of two major new I7 extensions are now up on my website:

[list][url=http://aaronareed.net/if/Neutral%20Library%20Messages.i7x]Neutral Library Messages[/url] extracts unwanted personality from the parser and standardizes the default messages to be more consistent and more helpful. I've been [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2091]posting about this here[/url].[/list:u]

[list][url=http://aaronareed.net/if/Player%20Experience%20Upgrade.i7x]Player Experience Upgrade[/url] compiles ten extensions focused on improving various aspects of player experience (including Neutral Library Messages), addressing many of the common complaints we're all so familiar with ("Why can't I just type 'go to kitchen?'" "But it just *told* me I could see such a thing!" "I tried to climb the stairs and it made fun of me." "It's all like, 'I can't get ye flask.'") Targeted especially at new authors, the extension is a one-click download that makes things better out of the box.[/list:u]

These will show up on the I7 extensions page eventually, but I wanted to soft-release them here and see if any obvious bugs can be sorted out first. Particularly if you have a pending project with a Skein of commands that you can easily plug Player Experience Upgrade into and check for naughty behavior, I would appreciate the feedback.

The (self-centered and overly ambitious) goal of this extension is for every new Inform 7 project to use it. Many authors will of course disagree with my assumptions about how things should work, want more customization, etc., but in general I'd be interested in hearing reasons of all sorts as to why you would NOT include this extension or one like it with your next Inform game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=0#p14468
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-03-09 01:03:51

(Note: here's a list of the extensions included in the omnibus package and their versions. Most of these have undergone significant upgrades recently, which will also be arriving on the I7 Extensions page soon.)

Version 3 of Approaches by Emily Short
Version 13 of Smarter Parser by Aaron Reed 
Version 7 of Poor Man's Mistype by Aaron Reed
Version 5 of Numbered Disambiguation Choices by Aaron Reed
Version 3 of Default Messages by Ron Newcomb
Version 1 of Neutral Library Messages by Aaron Reed
Version 7 of Remembering by Aaron Reed
Version 5 of Extended Grammar by Aaron Reed
Version 4 of Punctuation Removal by Emily Short
Version 11 of Small Kindnesses by Aaron Reed

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=0#p14469
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-03-09 01:08:53

Neutral Library Messages makes me very very happy. Thank you [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=0#p14470
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-03-09 01:24:39

I think Punctuation Removal is installed with Inform. That's what the TOC in Windows says, anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=0#p14471
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-03-09 01:52:05

On trying it out ... I'm not sure I care for the italic in the output. It looks forced to me. I think maybe the square brackets would be okay if it weren't for the italic. I would suggest perhaps offering user options for switching off the italic, the brackets, or both.

Simply including Neutral Library Messages in a minimal game overruns the .z5 size limit.

Is there any straightforward way to let the user edit the table, substituting their own output strings for yours in a few places if they feel the need to do so? I'd love to be able to write:
[code]Use the library-message-text "He was already wide awake" in the row of the library-action waking up action in the Table of custom library messages.[/code]
That's wordy, but it's unambiguous, and would have uses other than changing voice and tense.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=0#p14472
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: whoiscraig / DateTime: 2011-03-09 02:19:27

While I like the idea of this mod, I don't like that your Neutral Library Messages has been included with it. I'm already using Custom Library Messages by Ron Newcomb to customize my default messages, which includes first person perspective (because it suits my story), so your Neutral Library Messages would mess up my story. If it weren't included, I'd love to use this collection of extensions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=0#p14473
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-03-09 02:34:41

I'm working on my first Inform game at the moment, and having reviewed the contents of all of the extensions of happiness, I can say that there is only one that I would wish to use for this particular game, and that I'm already using it (numbered disambiguation choices).

My quick perspective on Inform is that there are a couple of broad programming approaches going on that an author has to think about - additive and subtractive. You have to add extensions to add to the base functions (additive - duh!), but to be comprehensive in creating your particular game experience, you also have to review nearly all the content that already exists, then either modify it for your game, or sculpt it away (subtractive).

I've been finding that the subtractive work is the harder work. Your book ( Aaron) has helped me a lot in zooming in on areas I need to cut away, disable or replace with my game, that would be much harder to find all spread out through the Inform manual.

So I see a pack adding this much functionality as significantly increasing the subtractive work. It would make me feel like I have to comprehensively test all of the contents of these new extensions and vet them all against this game. And that's not something I want to do -- unless I need and want all that functionality.

If this pack was a default, obviously it would be adding a mass of unnecessary code, increasing the game size and potentially setting up more circumstances which could create unforeseen bugs or conflicts.

I wouldn't mind the pack being presented as something optionally available to help new authors to adventure games, but I wouldn't want to see it as a default for all the reasons I have described. I also think it's starting to add too many things that I think should be up to the author's discretion about what is right for their game.

- Wade

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=0#p14474
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-09 03:38:56

Great work. I'll have to review each extension separately to see whether I would want to use it, though.

(For instance, although I like the basic idea of Extended Grammar, I'd have to think long and hard whether I really want "melt" to lead to to "burn"; or "steal" to "take"; or "raise" and "lower" as "pull" and "push" respectively. There's a lot of room for wrong interpretation of the player's commands there.)

But this is certainly something I'll come back to for my next piece.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1967&start=0#p14475
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: UML, the Unified Process, and OO programming with Inform
User: Andrew Owen / DateTime: 2011-03-09 07:28:18

Thank you everyone for your responses. OO is not an absolute requirement and using the right tool for the job is more important. I have other valid reasons for wanting to use Inform for this project, which will be a work of IF. Having said that I'm pretty sold on the object model and if I ever write a second work of IF then I will give TADS a go.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2123&start=0#p14476
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Accessing the player's previous command
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-03-09 07:36:43

Can I, within Inform, store what the player typed last turn in a text variable? My attempts to program it have prompted 'you can't store snippets in text variables' kind of messages.

Also, I'd also like to get access to (or make my own version of) the 'again' mechanism, where instead of 'again', I could have the player's actual last bit of typing appear at the prompt and be entered, perhaps in response to a particular other command I set up which they would type.

So if last round they typed 'jump', and the codeword is 'zowie', if they type 'zowie', JUMP appears at the prompt and is entered.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2115&start=0#p14477
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Game Release - "SNOW"
User: Tyk-Tok / DateTime: 2011-03-09 08:04:11

Thank you for the feedback, though there's a reasonable explanation for all the things you've brought up!

[spoiler]In the starting room, there's a key laying beside you that may become useful. As to the doors, you can move through them by simply typing the nautical direction they face. And I actually had to look the word lifering up. [emote]:)[/emote][/spoiler]

And the idea is that it's a little alt; you don't have to do any puzzle you don't want to. But thank you for taking the time!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2115&start=0#p14478
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Game Release - "SNOW"
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-09 08:27:18

Haven't played it yet, but I think it might be easier to understand if you spell that word
[spoiler]"life ring"; I'm more used to seeing it as "life preserver" actually. Assuming that's what you mean.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2123&start=0#p14479
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Accessing the player's previous command
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-09 08:28:26

I think you have to store snippets in indexed text rather than text.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=160#p14480
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-03-09 08:48:52

[quote="Six31"]Hello fellow IF fans,

My name is Erin and I'm a 29-year-old editor/print designer in Sacramento, Calif.[/quote]

Welcome Erin! Aside from various blogs and forums like this one, I'd recommend three sources that might provide further information on I7 writing:
[list][*] [b][url=http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm]The Inform 7 Handbook[/url] by Jim Aikin.[/b] This is an alternative to the I7 manual geared toward teaching I7 in the classroom. The book is distributed for free; just follow the link.[/*:m]
[*] [b][url=http://inform7.textories.com/]Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7[/url] by Aaron Reed.[/b] A 'learning by doing' style course that walks you step by step through the creation of a game called Sand-Dancer. The book is published and available at Amazon.com and (I think) elsewhere.[/*:m]
[*] [b][url=http://if.seattle.wa.us/2010/11/the-inform-7-programmers-manual-has-been-updated/]Inform 7 for Programmers[/url] by Ron Newcomb.[/b] As the name indicates, this is a guide on Inform 7 geared toward people with previous programming experience. If you're uncertain of why Inform 7 is behaving in a certain way or need a broad overview of what it can do in a particular area, this manual may hold the answer. It is a free download; again, just follow the link.[/*:m][/list:u]

Good luck and once again, welcome.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2123&start=0#p14481
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Accessing the player's previous command
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-03-09 08:54:43

Cool, now I've got this much working:

[code]the_last_command is an indexed text that varies.
After reading a command: now the_last_command is "[the player's command]".[/code]

After that I can 'say the_last_command' to print the previous command out.

Edit: Actually I don't need the square braces. This works for the 2nd line:

[code]After reading a command: now the_last_command is the player's command.[/code]

The 'Xot' example from the manual helped me out, though it wasn't one I found initially in my searching of the manual.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1461&start=0#p14482
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gargoyle 2010.1 released
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-03-09 09:58:00

I don't think it works at the moment, but it would be useful if it did. I've added an [url=http://code.google.com/p/garglk/issues/detail?id=141]enhancement request[/url] to the project tracker and will take a look at implementing it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2115&start=0#p14483
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Game Release - "SNOW"
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-03-09 10:39:54

Hmm, I didn't have that experience with the doors (I tried your suggestion).

Edit:

[spoiler]Also, the lifering example (which definitely should be two words) was only an example - there are quite a few grammar/spelling issues.  Fixing them will make the work feel more polished.

The key seemed to be used for the locker - if it is also used for the cart, then I didn't find a way to do that!  [emote]:)[/emote][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1461&start=0#p14484
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gargoyle 2010.1 released
User: Roody_Yogurt / DateTime: 2011-03-09 11:24:52

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2124&start=0#p14485
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Injury and Illness
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-03-09 11:51:59

I've been really vascillating on including injury in my WIP (which is less novel/puzzle-y and more sim-like, if that influences your opinion).  I'm sort of convinced it's worthwhile.

On the one hand, yay realism and diversity of experience and consequences of actions.

On the other, boo random death and unfair expectations and weirdness that is bound to result.  

So I thought I would [size=50]steal your ideas[/size] consult the hivemind to see if there's a way to get the former without the latter.  

(Also, anyone who's experienced a serious injury and wants to volunteer to talk about it, please PM me.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2115&start=0#p14486
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Game Release - "SNOW"
User: StJohnLimbo / DateTime: 2011-03-09 12:27:21

Hi Jonathan,

thanks for writing the game! I liked the atmosphere and enjoyed the setting. I just sent you an e-mail (to the address mentioned on your blog) with some points of criticism and a transcript of my playing session (with comments).

Regards,
Michael

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2123&start=0#p14487
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Accessing the player's previous command
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-03-09 12:40:26

Offhand, I'm thinking this technique might be a nice addition to Aaron's Neutral Messages extension, as it would allow the extension to quote the text that can't be processed (in situations where it needs to do so).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=0#p14488
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-03-09 12:53:25

Thanks for the comments, everyone.

@Jim: Check out the Player Experience documentation-- most of the features you ask for are already included. Punctuation Removal is included with Inform, but not activated, so I suppose you're right-- I don't need to actually duplicate it within the extension, just add a line including it.

On the italics: I have mixed feelings about this, too. It does tend to draw more attention to the parser than normal. But on the other hand I like that it makes it more clear what text is from the author and what text is from the engine. I'm up in the air about what this should look like by default. But for now it's easy to set this to whatever you want (towards the top of the documentation).

@whoiscraig: I hope to eventually make NLM compatible with CLM-- it's more work than it might at first appear, so I've left that out for now. I'm interested to see how many people are using CLM these days to change the person/tense of their game?

@Victor: Nearly all of those come from Emily Short's old I6 NewbieGrammar, and were apparently taken from real verbs people tried in an online Zork. I am extremely sympathetic to the idea of removing superfluous verbs from the library altogether, but if they're there they might as well respond to the words people are using to try to do them. 

@severedhand: Thanks for these detailed thoughts. My general feeling is that if the library is _already_ a giant mass of special cases functionality (the Standard Rules have what, over 500 individual rules?) adding about fifty more to significantly improve the player's experience is a worthwhile trade-off, _especially_ if they're well-labelled enough to always identify exactly where they're coming from with the RULES command (which isn't always true for the Standard Rules)-- althoughI'm aware the non-rules based stuff like new grammar lines isn't as easy to track down. These have already been extensively tested and my goal is to make them as well-tested and reliable as anything that comes with the standard library. 

The concern that something here will interfere with your own code is definitely legit. But as far as "needing and wanting the functionality," I feel like to a certain extent this is the wrong way to think about this extension. It really provides no new functionality at all for authors--- it just gives players more ways to express the same things to interact with your story. 

A lot of my impetus to form this compilation package was a recent experience where a friend wrote a new IF for a graduate art class here, and the class critiqued it. I would estimate more than half the time was spent talking about minor interface difficulties-- "I couldn't tell what direction to go in, I kept typing GO OUT from this one room and it didn't work, I tried some things like WHERE AM I and it never understood my commands." It was frustrating because most of these problems have been fixed by various extensions over the years, except those extensions are not being used by new authors. If my friend added the one line to include Player Experience Upgrade (not that it existed yet at the time), more of the class could have experienced his story, and we could have spent the whole class (or at least more of it) talking about the content of my friend's piece, not the interface.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1454&start=10#p14489
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Glulx search opcodes and I7 tables
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-09 13:27:27

Ron, what is the number of rows that is intended to be passed into your function? I assume that it is the total number of rows in the table. I assume this because I've not been able to get it to work correctly any value other than the total number of rows, and I ask because there is definitely a problem with the code: some kind of misaddressing, apparently based on the number of rows in the table, can cause searches to fail. I haven't been able to identify the precise parameters yet, but since I'm leaving tomorrow morning for a week that will have no Inform in it, I thought I'd post this while what I [i]have[/i] discovered is fresh in my skull.

Both your code and mine (which is based on your code, but with the number of rows supplied by the TableRows() function) fail on the code below, but only if you remove the "with 2 blank rows" from the table definition. Even without the 2 blank rows, the linearsearch functions will work on the first two rows of the table, but fail to return the third row. The number of columns in the table doesn't appear to make any difference (I've tested this table with 2 and 3 columns).

[code]
Include (-
Global seekStartAddress;
Global seekRows;
Global seekVal;
Global seekReturnValue;
-) after "Definitions.i6t".

To select a/the/-- row with (TC - a word value valued table column) of (W - a word value) in/from (T - table name):
	(-	{-require-ctvs}
		ct_0 = {T};
		ct_1 = -1;
		seekRows = TableRows({T});
		!print "rows: ", seekRows, "; value: ", {W}, ". ";
		seekStartAddress = ({T})-->(TableFindCol({T}, {TC}, true)) + (COL_HSIZE * WORDSIZE);
		seekVal = {W};
		@linearsearch seekVal WORDSIZE seekStartAddress WORDSIZE seekRows 0 4 ct_1;
		if (ct_1 < 1) return RunTimeProblem(RTP_TABLE_NOCORR, {T});
	-).


Include (-
Global quickloopSearchFor; 
Global quickloopStartAddress;
Global quickloopRowsLeft;
Global quickloopReturnValue;
-) after "Definitions.i6t".


To repeat through (tab - table name) until (row - number) with (tc - a word value valued table column) as (val - a word value) begin -- end: 
(-	{-require-ctvs} ! {-zero-counter:reviewHistoryCol}  
	ct_0 = {tab};
	!print "rows: ", {row}, "; value: ", {val}, ". ";
	ct_1 = -1;
	quickloopSearchFor = {val}; 
	quickloopStartAddress = ({tab})-->(TableFindCol({tab}, {tc}, true)) + (COL_HSIZE * WORDSIZE); 
	quickloopRowsLeft = {row};
	quickloopReturnValue = -1;
	while (1) {
		@linearsearch quickloopSearchFor WORDSIZE quickloopStartAddress WORDSIZE quickloopRowsLeft 0 4 quickloopReturnValue;
		quickloopReturnValue++;
		if (quickloopReturnValue == 0) break;
		ct_1 = ct_1 + quickloopReturnValue;     ! set the chosen row for I7
		quickloopStartAddress = quickloopStartAddress + (WORDSIZE * quickloopReturnValue);  ! set start point for next iteration
		quickloopRowsLeft = quickloopRowsLeft - quickloopReturnValue;  ! decrease #/rows left to check
!-).	

When play begins:
	say "Rows: [number of rows in the Table of Smiles].";
	select row with a smile number of 2 in the Table of Smiles;
	say "smile 2 is [key entry] by the lights of the new 'select...' phrase.";
	repeat through the Table of Smiles until (the number of rows in the Table of Smiles) with smile number as 2:
		say "smile 2 is [key entry] by the lights of the new 'repeat...' phrase."

There is a room.

Table of Smiles
smile number	key
0	": )"
1	"; )"
2	":->"
with 2 blank rows[***Remove these blank rows to see lookup fail][/code]

My little WIP has another table that seems to work when it is declared empty with 99 blank rows, but not if declared with 100 blank rows; again, much of the table is searched correctly, but data near the bottom (the last two filled rows) is not found.

If I get a chance tonight, I'll try taking a look at the actually I6 array content and see how it matches up with the seek addresses...

Thanks,
Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2123&start=0#p14490
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Accessing the player's previous command
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-09 13:42:42

Although I do like that Neutral Messages is indexed-text-free. Aaron said he's still trying to make his extensions z-friendly, so it might be the sort of thing he would put in a glulx-only section.

To me it sounds more like Smarter Parser's domain, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=0#p14491
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-09 13:51:31

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Is there any straightforward way to let the user edit the table, substituting their own output strings for yours in a few places if they feel the need to do so? I'd love to be able to write:
[code]Use the library-message-text "He was already wide awake" in the row of the library-action waking up action in the Table of custom library messages.[/code][/quote]
For actions, the clm table can be amended.  Look up table amendments in the standard manual.  For messages in which the action is "--" blank, table continuations need be used.  (As well the latest version (3) of Default Messages.)

(@Aaron: I also use the CLM extension in my WIP... unsurprisingly.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=10#p14492
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-09 13:53:42

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Simply including Neutral Library Messages in a minimal game overruns the .z5 size limit.[/quote]
I'm curious as to why this is. I think Aaron said he surgically removed the original library messages, so in theory NLM shouldn't take up much space at all. But I experienced the same problem when I tried it - it pushed my WIP from z8 to Glulx. Can anyone tell me why?

Memory usage is why I probably wouldn't use a package like this. But I'm the kind of programmer who would take it as a suggestion rather than a pre-made solution - I intend to look it over and decide which features to steal for my own work (giving credit where it's due, of course!)  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2123&start=0#p14493
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Accessing the player's previous command
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-09 13:54:06

[code]the_last_command is an indexed text that varies.
After reading a command: now the_last_command is "[the player's command]".[/code]
Er, shouldn't that rule be a *before* reading a command?  Else it's giving you the command typed in that turn, not the previous turn.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2124&start=0#p14494
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Injury and Illness
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-09 13:56:03

What would its game effects be? Are you closing off (or making puzzle-y) certain actions once the PC's passed a threshold value, or is it just a countdown until having to re-play a portion of the story?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1454&start=10#p14495
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Glulx search opcodes and I7 tables
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-09 14:10:24

[quote="ektemple"]Ron, what is the number of rows that is intended to be passed into your function?[/quote]The number of filled rows.  Though it should still work with all rows, IIRC; I added that only as an optimization step.  Unless an entry just happens to have the same value that flags a blank, which is exceedingly rare, it should still work. 

Sometimes the very first row is blank if the type of columns appears under the header row, but that would only lose you one row off the bottom. 

I'll poke around with this example today.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1454&start=10#p14496
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Glulx search opcodes and I7 tables
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-09 14:14:02

Hm. Using filled rows I get even more miserable outcomes--failure in most test cases...

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2124&start=0#p14497
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Injury and Illness
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-03-09 14:20:45

Mmm.  So it's not 100% nailed down, but essentially it's a pacing change:

- longer to do certain things (ie if you're walking around on a twisted ankle, you're probably not going nearly as fast)
- restriction or blocking off of certain activities for severe injuries (ie reduction of carrying capacity with a broken arm)
- increased need for sleep/rest
- secondary symptoms (pain, fever) that left untreated will exacerbate the above

There's also some resource balancing in there, since the PC might want to seek out and keep on hand medical supplies that could speed healing along.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=10#p14498
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-09 14:38:13

Before I make any more complaints, I want to say that these extensions are totally awesome and I'm so glad they're coming out now. Just want to make that clear.  [emote]:)[/emote] 

Okay, so this looks like a couple of bugs:

[code]Include Player Experience Upgrade by Aaron Reed.

The Living Room is a room. The Dining Room is west of Living Room. There is a pretzel in Living Room.

test me with "z/w/x pretzel"[/code]

First of all, the pretzel doesn't get marked as "seen" until the end of the first turn, which is why I put a "z" at the beginning of the test script.

Secondly, the final command has this output:
[quote]>[3] x pretzel
[i][The last time you saw the pretzel, it was [b]the[/b] at "Living Room".][/i]
[/quote]

Note that the "the" comes before "at" - it should come afterwards if a room is not proper-named.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1454&start=10#p14499
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Glulx search opcodes and I7 tables
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-09 15:07:50

My bad, I never meant to put the phrases "the number of filled rows in the table of.." into that phrase, because it finds the answer by looping through the table and counting, which kills any speed gain by using @linearsearch to begin with. 

I had a variable, the next blank history row, which went into that spot.  And like its name implies, it points to the first blank row, not the last filled row.  Hence there's an off-by-1 error in your just-posted test case.  I believe you can fix your select by using [i]  seekRows = TableRows({T}) + 1;[/i]

EDIT TO ADD: I fixed my original loop sample on page 1 of this thread to make its assumptions more clear, including the "of kind K" parameter check.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1454&start=10#p14500
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Glulx search opcodes and I7 tables
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-09 15:29:47

Great, thanks for the clarification. It looks like to search a table completely, though, you need n + 1, not just n. In other words, this table:

[code]Table of Smiles
smile number	key
0	": )"
1	"; )"
2	":->"[/code]

...has 3 rows, but your phrase needs to have 4 passed into it in order to find data in the final row:

[code]repeat through the Table of Smiles until 4 with smile number as 2:[/code]

I'll test this in my WIP when I get a chance, hopefully tonight. I do remember hardcoding n + 1 rows into my main table and still having problems. But that table also has a types header row, which may mean that it needs to be n + 2. (My filled rows should always be consecutive, and I have no blank columns, so those at least shouldn't be issues, at least not for this application.)

--Erik

Edited to add little this note, acknowledging that you added the n + 1 thing to your last post before I put up this reply...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2125&start=0#p14501
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Newbie Question: Locale Priorities
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-03-09 16:11:05

One of my favourite activities when writing IF is obsessing about the order in which objects are listed in the room description.  After defeating the Inform docs in a pitched search-fu battle, I understand that I need to use a property (or is it something else?) called the locale priority.

Naively adding "The locale priority of some guy is 10." to my code fails, so I gather I have to do something extra - although it's tough to tell what, because the documentation mixes it up with an [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rex299.html#e299]example[/url] of how to "check the [priority?] table for debugging purposes", which I have no interest in.

I think the code I need is something like this:
[code]After choosing notable locale objects: 
    set the locale priority of the early bird to 1; [list before everything else -- this would work with any number lower than 5 and higher than 0] 
    set the locale priority of the unseen object to 0; [don't list at all] 
    set the locale priority of the late edition to 10; [list after everything else -- this would work with any number larger than 5][/code]
Or maybe [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/ex229.html]this[/url]:

[code]Rule for choosing notable locale objects for the Misty Moorlands: 
    repeat with item running through large things in the Misty Moorlands: 
        set the locale priority of the item to 5.[/code]
Which, if it's how it's done is how it's done (although doing this for every single room with notable objects seems like a huge bloody pain - assuming that notable objects means objects with initial descriptions, which is all I care about).

[i]But[/i], the number one thing I care about at this stage is ensuring that my NPC sidekick is always listed last out of the objects and people in the room (since he will be the least surprising thing to encounter in any location).  I tried:

[code]After choosing notable locale objects: 
	set the locale priority of this bloke to 10.[/code]
And this:
[code]Rule for choosing notable locale objects: 
	set the locale priority of the handsome fellow to 10.[/code]
But now he shows up [i]everywhere[/i], even where he's not.

Also, why is the syntax "set the locale priority to" and not "now the locale priority is"?  Searching the docs for "set the", it only seems to be used by locale priority.

Basically, you know, help please.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=10#p14502
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-03-09 16:23:14

Hello! I've been experimenting with Player Experience Upgrade, and when I type in a word the parser doesn't understand I get this:

>ksdjfs
You don't need to use the word "
*** Run-time problem P39: Attempt to say a snippet value which is currently invalid: words 0 to 0.

" in that way.

Otherwise seems like a nice addition. At some point shortly I'll probably be testing my WIP with gamers who may have no idea what IF is, so I'll let you know the results. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2124&start=0#p14503
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Injury and Illness
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-03-09 16:24:50

[quote="gravel"]So I thought I would [size=50]steal your ideas[/size] consult the hivemind to see if there's a way to get the former without the latter.[/quote]
I did it by including a robot doctor that would glue your severed limbs back on and by ignoring the fact that people can bleed to death.

(You didn't say [i]realistic[/i] injury.  Well, you implied it, but.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2125&start=0#p14504
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Question: Locale Priorities
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-03-09 16:26:04

You could try Emily Short's extension Room Description Control.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2125&start=0#p14505
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Question: Locale Priorities
User: StJohnLimbo / DateTime: 2011-03-09 16:31:39

I haven't looked at the wider issue, but I think I've got a quick solution to this:
[quote="Pacian"][code]Rule for choosing notable locale objects:
   set the locale priority of the handsome fellow to 10.[/code]

But now he shows up everywhere, even where he's not.[/quote]
You can test for his presence:
[code]Rule for choosing notable locale objects:
	if the location of the handsome fellow is the location of the player:
		set the locale priority of the handsome fellow to 10.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2125&start=0#p14506
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Question: Locale Priorities
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-03-09 16:51:55

[quote="StJohnLimbo"]I haven't looked at the wider issue, but I think I've got a quick solution to this:[/quote]
Ah, clever.  Thanks.  I would still like to get to the root of this, but at least this much is solved.

[quote="Felix"]You could try Emily Short's extension Room Description Control.[/quote]
Thanks.  Would have expected this behaviour to be a part of core Inform though.

And the documentation leaves me with questions.  

[quote]So for instance we might encourage Inform to mention people sooner than everyone else: [/quote]
Does Inform not already separate people from objects?

[quote]or to prefer items with initial appearance properties: [/quote]
Are objects with initial descriptions not already listed after the regular "you see a BLANK here" messages?

What decides the order by default?  Is it just random?

And, um, how do you actually use this extension?  I just added it and now objects aren't getting listed at all.

EDIT: Example (spoiler'd for space):
[spoiler][code]"Test Game" by "C.E.J. Pacian"

Include Room Description Control by Emily Short.

The vague room is a room.

Fred is a man in the vague room.

The apple is a thing in the vague room.

Jabba the Hutt is a man in the vague room.  "Jabba lounges here, corpulent and idle."[/code]
[quote]Test Game
An Interactive Fiction by C.E.J. Pacian
Release 1 / Serial number 110309 / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N) SD

vague room

>[/quote][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2087&start=0#p14507
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Glulxe and Windows Git updated
User: eliukblau / DateTime: 2011-03-09 17:12:47

Thank you, David. [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2088&start=0#p14508
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Frotz updated
User: eliukblau / DateTime: 2011-03-09 17:13:29

Cool. Thanks, David. [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2125&start=0#p14509
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Question: Locale Priorities
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-03-09 17:14:17

In addition to Room Description Control, you have to include something like Ordinary Room Description (also by Emily Short). It pretty much restores Inform's default behavior -- but not entirely. You now need to give every object an initial appearance, or else it won't be mentioned, you'll see only a blank line feed. Ugly.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2124&start=0#p14510
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Injury and Illness
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-09 17:34:21

[quote]yay realism and diversity of experience and consequences of actions[/quote]
Realism is overrated -- never include something just because it is realistic.

Two ways you might want to include illness:
* Include illness as a consequence of certain actions: drinking uncooked water, eating raw meat, et cetera, gives you a certain probability of becoming ill.
* Use it as a narrative device to spice up the player experience: use a drama manager to make interesting things happen, and let illness be one of them.
Which is preferable depends on whether you want more simulation/challenge, or more narrative.

But the real design problem is to make illness [i]interesting[/i]. You want the player to say: "You know, that one game, I got ill, and then I had to... !", and be excited about it. (The first possibility that comes to my sick mind is: "You know, that one game, I got gangrene, and then I had to cut off my leg with a knife made from an old tin can!" That would be memorable.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2123&start=0#p14511
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Accessing the player's previous command
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-09 18:24:57

OK, this might be what you want? Getting the last input to appear again is easy once you've stored it, but redoing the last command seems non-trivial. You can store it as a stored action, but sometimes the last input will yield a parser error, which won't give you an action to store. So I just decided to trap that case by setting the last command to a dummy action whenever a parser error happened. (You could give different responses to different parser errors, depending on how much you like typing, I guess.)

There may be problems with this. Also, note what happens when you try "xyzzy" after "again." (If you want to paste this into the IDE, hit "reply," copy the text within the code tags, and then cancel your reply -- that'll preserve the tab stops.)

[code]"Force Command" by Matt Weiner

Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short.

Holodeck is a room. "It's a holodeck. A screen reads, 'Type XYZZY to repeat your last command.'" Engine Bay is north of Holodeck. "It's an... engine bay?" A wrench is in Engine Bay. Airlock is north of Engine Bay. "It's an airlock, I guess."

Erring is an action applying to nothing. [No understand grammar, no rules, no nothing; this is a dummy action that keeps track of whether the last thing entered was a parser error.]
The last input is an indexed text that varies. The last input is usually "".
The last command is a stored action that varies. The last command is usually the action of erring.

Rule for printing a parser error:
	now the last command is the action of erring;
	continue the action. 

To force command:
	say the command prompt;
	let N be the number of characters in the last input;
	repeat with M running from 1 to N:
		wait for any key;
		say character number M in the last input; [This means whatever the player types turns into the last input]
	wait for any key;
	if the last command is the action of erring:
		say "[line break]That won't work this time, either.";
	otherwise:
		try the last command.
		
Before reading a command:
	now the last input is the player's command.

xyzzying is an action applying to nothing. Understand "xyzzy" as xyzzying.

Every turn while the current action is not the action of xyzzying:
	now the last command is the current action.
	
Carry out xyzzying:
	if the last input exactly matches the text "xyzzy":
		say "You try to repeat repeating the last command, and get thoroughly confused.";
	otherwise:
		say "OK, let's try that again.";
		say line break;
		force command.
		
Test me with "sing/xyzzy/xyzzy/n/xyzzy/get wrench/xyzzy/n/xyzzy/s/get wrench/xyzzy/go north/again/xyzzy". [If you try "test me" the commands in the test will appear automatically, but you'll have to enter the fake commands that are prompted by "xyzzy" yourself.][/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=160#p14512
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Six31 / DateTime: 2011-03-09 18:45:20

[quote="Eleas"]
Welcome Erin! Aside from various blogs and forums like this one, I'd recommend three sources that might provide further information on I7 writing:
[/quote]

Awesome! Thanks so much!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2125&start=0#p14513
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Question: Locale Priorities
User: StJohnLimbo / DateTime: 2011-03-09 18:45:36

[quote="Pacian"]And the documentation leaves me with questions.  

[quote]So for instance we might encourage Inform to mention people sooner than everyone else: [/quote]
Does Inform not already separate people from objects?[/quote]
In the context of printing the room descriptions, no, I don't think so.

[quote="Pacian"]What decides the order by default?  Is it just random?[/quote]
AFAIK, the default sequence is:
first A) objects who get their own paragraphs (because the author made a "writing a paragraph about" rule for them or because he provided an initial appearance),
then B) the rest ("You can (also) see ...").
The order [i]inside[/i] of step A and step B, respectively, equals the order in which the objects are created in the source text (experiment with the order of declarations in your example game to confirm this).

[quote="Pacian"]
And, um, how do you actually use this extension?  I just added it and now objects aren't getting listed at all.[/quote]
Like Jim said, you have to use it in conjunction with another extension by Emily. AFAIK, Room Description Control is just the framework. I'd recommend "Tailored Room Description", because it doesn't have the problem Jim mentioned. You can include it in your example game without having to add any other code, and you'll get the object listing again (which you can then modify using the extension's capabilities).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=10#p14514
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-03-09 19:35:51

Dustin, are you using any other extensions? Do you have the latest release of Inform? On my system with 6G60, I don't get that error.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2126&start=0#p14515
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Do I need to write a scene?
User: Batwing / DateTime: 2011-03-09 19:51:06

I want something like this - 

player in room
after 2 turns NPC enters and makes threat to player
next turn NPC repeats threat
next turn NPC carries out threat and games ends

But this NPC threat can be stopped by the player performing a simple action such as pushing a button

Thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=10#p14516
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-03-09 19:53:14

capmikee, both of those are now fixed in 1/110309, now uploaded; thanks. Sorry I didn't get what you were trying to say earlier with the proper/improper named rooms!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=10#p14517
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-03-09 19:56:32

[quote="capmikee"][quote="Jim Aikin"]Simply including Neutral Library Messages in a minimal game overruns the .z5 size limit.[/quote]
I'm curious as to why this is. I think Aaron said he surgically removed the original library messages, so in theory NLM shouldn't take up much space at all. But I experienced the same problem when I tried it - it pushed my WIP from z8 to Glulx. Can anyone tell me why?

Memory usage is why I probably wouldn't use a package like this.[/quote]

The original messages are actually not being nerfed in this version, because some of the original library messages related to list-making did not seem to work when copy-and-pasted over. I'm not sure exactly what's causing this and it seems like a headache to figure out. Apparently removing all the original messages only saves a relatively small amount of memory, at any rate.

But to play devil's advocate... is it such a bad thing that your project is now Glulx? What are the downsides, these days? Can you give me a compelling reason for working in a 30 year old VM as opposed to a 10 year old one?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1454&start=10#p14518
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Glulx search opcodes and I7 tables
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-09 20:18:52

Great, n + 2 seems to fix everything, and provides a nice speed boost, to boot!

Thanks, Ron!

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=10#p14519
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-09 20:22:49

[quote="aaronius"]But to play devil's advocate... is it such a bad thing that your project is now Glulx? What are the downsides, these days? Can you give me a compelling reason for working in a 30 year old VM as opposed to a 10 year old one?[/quote]

Mobile play? Web-playability in an interpreter other than Quixe, which is great but sometimes hangs up for a little bit on my old computer? (I didn't wind up finishing any of the glulx games during the comp partly because of Parchment vs. Quixe issues, though I had the bad luck to start with the glulx game that crashed Quixe and the one that slowed down severely in every interpreter.)

Anyway, if you've got an extension you want [i]all authors[/i] to use, I don't think it's a good idea to brush off concerns about busting through z-machine limits; if some people will want to release on z-machine, that's their business, and a universal extension ought to accommodate them. Maybe it'd be a good idea to release more and less memory-intensive packages.

[For the very little it's worth, I wouldn't use this extension on my demo project or any real project built on the same machinery -- it doesn't implement any rooms or physical objects, and only accepts keyword input, so I think most of the extension would be moot. Typo Correction might be nice.]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2123&start=0#p14520
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Accessing the player's previous command
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-09 21:32:40

Matt, you might have an easier time with using "change the text of the player's command to the last-input-used" rather than using stored actions.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2112&start=10#p14521
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What's the least memory intensive data structure in i7?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-03-09 21:39:06

[quote="capmikee"]I'm no expert on I7 memory management, but I think tables are one of the most efficient ways of storing data in I7. Plus, they're static. Lists are not.

But maybe relations would be a reasonable compromise? I don't know if ordering is important, but if it's not, or even if it is but the order happens to be the builtin order of the values in question, then you could try it.[/quote]
I probably too-briefly considered that. I also considered defining these interrelationships as directions, since they essentially are directions. But then they would have to be attached to objects and part of the point, I had hoped, was to avoid that kind of overhead for what should just be a simple array. But I seem to have failed to achieve that goal anyway, so maybe I will consider these options. I think I can have relations among values instead of objects, no? I might be optimistically remembering my reading.


[quote="gravel"] It would make me very sad to recode tables to lists or vice versa.[/quote]
I hear ya. I'd rather not do it, myself. Especially since many of the text entries are full English sentences and so don't fit very elegantly into the table model.


[quote="matt w"]Hm, so are lists memory-hoggy? My IF-Demo busted right through the z-machine limits with eight objects, each associated with one table with between four and ten rows -- but each row has a list with between two and five elements. [Besides this, there's pretty much the bare minimum -- a starting location and a yourself object, both completely nominal.][/quote]
[quote="zarf"]Lists are memory-hoggy because I7 doesn't just reserve memory for the data, it reserves memory for how much you might expand the lists dynamically during the game. Of course it's only guessing about this, and it doesn't know when you create a list that you intend to never expand.[/quote]
Funny, my game had only a starting location yet, too when I started busting the limit (it has more like fifteen locations now). But I had already built this teetering structure out of kinds of value, also involving lists and whatnot. If all the excess memory usage is really associated with lists and not kinds of value per se, maybe I could get away with some sort of relations of values or similar.


[quote="matt w"][code]
Tool   Component
Axe    handle
Axe    blade
Wheelbarrow    wheel
Wheelbarrow   left handle
Wheelbarrow   right handle
Wheelbarrow    well[/code]

And then instead of [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2106]choosing a random member of[/url] the components entry of the row with tool wheelbarrow, I could choose a random row with tool wheelbarrow and choose the component entry. It wouldn't be that much more typing.[/quote]
Hey, that's a great idea. Another advantage is you could conveniently add wildcard entries not attached to any particular tool like '* business end'. Doesn't seem to apply much to tools I know but I'm thinking of the wildcard in the context of my scenario which is about conducting a slightly complex dance of scenery.

Thank ye all for all the advice.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2126&start=0#p14522
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Do I need to write a scene?
User: whoiscraig / DateTime: 2011-03-09 21:47:22

You could use scenes if you wanted to, but its fairly simple to do without them.

This is how I would do it:
[code]The Living Room is a room.

The Kitchen is north of the Living Room.

The Cook is in the Kitchen. "The cook glares at you."

ThreatCount is a number that varies. ThreatCount is 0.

Every turn when the location of the player is the kitchen:
	now ThreatCount is ThreatCount plus 1;
	if ThreatCount is 3:
		say "The cook glares menacingly at you. 'Get out of my kitchen,' he growls.";
	otherwise if ThreatCount is 4:
		say "The cook grabs a knife from the counter. 'I'm not going to tell you again.";
	otherwise if ThreatCount is 5:
		say "The cook runs towards you, stabbing you in the heart with the carving knife. 'Nobody enters my kitchen!' he says, over your weakening body.";
		end the game in death.
		
[/code]

Although I am by no means an expert. There might be an easier way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1454&start=20#p14523
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Glulx search opcodes and I7 tables
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-09 21:50:50

[quote="ektemple"]I do remember hardcoding n + 1 rows into my main table and still having problems. But that table also has a types header row, which may mean that it needs to be n + 2.[/quote]Yep. The types header row is an actual blank row, so you're left with consecutive filled rows except for that blank one at top, hence the need for n+2.  (You could fiddle with StartAddress if you really wanted to iron it out... but then remember on tables without the type header row it would be wrong again, etc.)

I'm happy we've finally turbo-charged your WIP.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=10#p14524
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-09 21:57:00

[quote="matt w"][quote="aaronius"]But to play devil's advocate... is it such a bad thing that your project is now Glulx? What are the downsides, these days? Can you give me a compelling reason for working in a 30 year old VM as opposed to a 10 year old one?[/quote]

Mobile play? Web-playability in an interpreter other than Quixe[/quote]
What he said.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2123&start=0#p14525
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Accessing the player's previous command
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-09 21:57:31

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Matt, you might have an easier time with using "change the text of the player's command to the last-input-used" rather than using stored actions.[/quote]

Sounds like a good idea, but do I have a hook for it? At this point I've already parsed the player's command as "xyzzy" and am in the midst of the carry out rule; do I have the chance to change the text of the player's command and re-parse it at that point?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=10#p14526
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-09 22:04:12

A rant:

I hate when we do this: [code]The Living Room is a room. The Dining Room is west of Living Room. There is a pretzel in Living Room.[/code]
instead of this: [code]The living room is a room. The dining room is west of the living room. There is a pretzel in the living room.[/code]
because it leads to messy code that produces this: [quote]The last time you saw the pretzel, it was the at "Living Room".[/quote]
instead of this: [quote]The last time you saw the pretzel, it was in the living room.[/quote]
exclamation point!

And another thing! [code]A thing has some text called the favored preposition. The favored preposition of something is usually "in".[/code]
Grr, and stuff!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=10#p14527
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: whoiscraig / DateTime: 2011-03-09 22:14:25

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]A rant:

I hate when we do this: [code]The Living Room is a room. The Dining Room is west of Living Room. There is a pretzel in Living Room.[/code]
instead of this: [code]The living room is a room. The dining room is west of the living room. There is a pretzel in the living room.[/code]
![/quote]

Maybe its the newbie in me coming out, but I didn't realise there was any difference.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2126&start=0#p14528
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Do I need to write a scene?
User: Batwing / DateTime: 2011-03-09 22:19:34

I like that. Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2127&start=0#p14529
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Having trouble expressing this random choice
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-03-10 03:36:01

In my game I've set up the following adjectives for my rooms:

[code]A room can be superrocking, rocking or verboten. A room is usually superrocking.[/code]

Now, I have a movement rule for moving people around. It includes the following line:

[code]	let target_room be a random rocking room that is adjacent to current actor;[/code]

- where current act is a person who varies.

When I first tested the movement rule, it crashed the game with a runtime error and  talk of my interacting with 'nothing' variables. So I had the game print out the values of 'target_room' and 'current_actor' during the rule for test purposes, and I discovered that 'target_room' was not being set - its contents were 'nothing'.

I then discovered that if I removed one of the three elements from the movement rule, it worked.

The elements are 1. random 2. rocking 3. adjacent-ness

So I could specify a random rocking room, or a random adjacent room etc., but not a random rocking room also adjacent to the actor.

How can I express that I want to randomly select a room adjacent to the current actor, and that it must be 'rocking'? (note that this is always physically possible, no matter where the actor is)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2125&start=0#p14530
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Question: Locale Priorities
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-03-10 03:36:52

[quote="StJohnLimbo"]The order [i]inside[/i] of step A and step B, respectively, equals the order in which the objects are created in the source text (experiment with the order of declarations in your example game to confirm this).[/quote]
This was what I expected to be the case, but the fact that my sidekick is the last thing defined in the source code kind of disproved that to me.  Maybe it's because he moves around?  He is the third thing defined for the room he's in, but appears first in other rooms.

If that is the case at least on a room by room basis, then I guess that's half my problem solved.

[quote="StJohnLimbo"]Like Jim said, you have to use it in conjunction with another extension by Emily. AFAIK, Room Description Control is just the framework. I'd recommend "Tailored Room Description", because it doesn't have the problem Jim mentioned. You can include it in your example game without having to add any other code, and you'll get the object listing again (which you can then modify using the extension's capabilities).[/quote]
Thank you, I'll give it a try.

This does seem like a lot of work for functionality that I've always considered pretty fundamental.  I mean, what's the point of trying to shape computer-generated text into a story if I can't even control the order it's output in?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2123&start=0#p14531
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Accessing the player's previous command
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-03-10 03:37:07

Thanks all for the observations. I agree that I've realised what I was trying to do is non-trivial. As such it's on the backburner, but as usual I learned stuff in the process.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=20#p14532
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-03-10 03:54:16

[quote="aaronius"]On the italics: I have mixed feelings about this, too. It does tend to draw more attention to the parser than normal. But on the other hand I like that it makes it more clear what text is from the author and what text is from the engine. I'm up in the air about what this should look like by default.[/quote]
Nothing wrong with all-caps in that context, it's the most effective way to separate the command grammar from the rest of the language in the player's mind.

I have been secretly peeving about the shift (NPI) away from representing player commands in all-caps, for a long time now though I don't recall exactly when the convention changed from representing player commands in all caps to representing them in no-caps (latter Infocom itself most likely), but I have never liked looking at those no-caps command lines one bit. Italics are definitely not right either. The best solution is the original solution on this; I saw plenty of games in the early days with lower case in the descriptions but always all-caps on the commands, and that was always pleasing to the eye, and there was never a good reason to reject it in the first place, except, 'Oh we're not restricted to upper case exclusively now, so now let's not *ever* use it to dissociate ourselves from the past.' There was an emotional/marketing reason to drop the all-caps commands, perhaps. But I would go back to what the First Imps did; there is infinite wisdom there, because the earliest conventions are often simple, obvious, and good, and might not have been discarded for good reasons, or for reasons that seemed good at the time but aren't really an issue anymore. For example, nobody looks at an all-caps-set word, heading, or phrase today and thinks, 'Wow, dude, haven't you ever heard of an 80-column card? Welcome to the late 80s.' That particular flavour of snark died long ago, so there's no reason to avoid now what was avoided (perhaps for fear of seeming obsolete) then. It just isn't a sign of obsolescence anymore to print player command in all caps. It never should have been.

Well I've made the best case I can for all-caps command lines. My MUD has them and my Inform game will probably have them if it's not too difficult to replace the printing of the player's command.

I probably will not use your extensions though because my game is in third person objective (Jack does this. Jack does that. Mud-style.) Which means I can't even use Ron's version of CLM because it doesn't account for MUD-style objective naming; it wants to use pronouns all the time -- so I'm still using David Fisher's CLM for now but I now think of the CLM extension as merely an early stage shortcut. In the end I'm fairly sure I will have to rewrite every standard library message by hand to represent the protagonist's personality, anyway (and it's decidely non-neutral), so that probably will put me deeper under the hood than your extension operates and it will probably only get in the way with the whole 'neutral' philosophy which is not appropriate for my game. Great idea. But I don't think your goal of universal adoption is going to be workable because at least in my case my protagonists aren't likely to be neutral and I can't see myself wanting my parser responses to be neutral, at least not most of the time.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=20#p14533
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-03-10 05:32:21

[code]Well I've made the best case I can for all-caps command lines. My MUD has them and my Inform game will probably have them if it's not too difficult to replace the printing of the player's command.[/code]

I wasn't able to do it myself. It was one of the things I was poking around with related to my topic here about 'can I intercept the player's last command?'

I couldn't actually replace the player's command with all caps (or anything), because it's not possible to tell Inform to print on 'the current line minus 1' I.E. - you can't print over stuff. The closest you could do is to print it all-capped on the line after the prompt. That is unless there's some I6 method I don't know about.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2110&start=20#p14534
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Use no scoring" as the default?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-03-10 05:47:04

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]I'd like to think of not having a progress meter as a distinct [i]advantage[/i]. In a book, you're always partly spoiled: the murderer cannot be the guy who is apprehended on page 130, because you still have 124 pages to go; the protagonist doesn't die in the car crash, because you're only halfway through the book (and you have seen his name come up in the rest when you were thumbing through it, trying to find the page you stopped reading last night.) Interactive fiction doesn't have this problem. It is opaque. You never know what to expect. That is [i]good[/i]. It is one of the strengths of the medium.[/quote]
I never thought of it that way. Let's just say that if they added that feature to a book, I definitely wouldn't be in favour of it, either. It's not variable length that I have a problem with, particularly. It's simply having no idea whatsoever how long of my time the author expects for this story to take and how far through that range am I at this moment? If my character dies or somehow manages to get to an early ending, fine I'm not going to quibble about the accuracy of the progress bar when its been signalled to me that it's not an optimal ending. Nor if I am seeming to spend forever stuck with no idea how to advance. I don't expect perfect information; it's just hard for me to see [i]zero[/i] attempt to inform as to progress as a feature rather than a bug.

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]I don't buy the time management argument. If you are enjoying the game, play on. If you are not, don't. If you think you might be missing out on something good that is still to come, check the game's score on the IFDB. And if you want to know whether it can be completed in one evening, or takes three months -- well, that shouldn't be too hard to point out in the documentation.[/quote]
Cripes... the documentation, the website, this is getting very complicated, just to find out something very simple. I already know how I feel about the game, by this stage. I just want to know, how much more of it is there from where I'm at. The game knows how much of its text has been printed. IFDB isn't going to tell me that, anyway. The game is in a unique position to give me the information I need.

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Additionally, as has been pointed out, score is an incredibly bad progress meter. There is zero guarantee that the player will accumulate score at a constant rate, and zero guarantee that you will finish the game with a full score.

And finally, there are many other and more elegant ways for a game to communicate how much of it you have seen. A numerical score will be the right solution for only a small number of games.[/quote]
Saying the score doesn't have to be a number does not really argue for having no score. I agree that it doesn't have to be a number -- but it probably should be a number by default and the maximum score by default instead of zero should probably be 10 or 100, and people should just be expected to advance the progress the way they are just expected to code room and directions. In fact, if I had my druthers, far from turning the score into an extension, I'd make advancing the score to 100/100 or setting it negative (for sub-optimal endings) the only way to end the story finally.

You've also, like others, argued that the score can never be precise. These are statements I can agree with but the relevancy of which seems questionable, such as...
[quote="Pacian"]I don't think there [i]can[/i] be an effective measure of progress in a game, though, unless it's absolutely narrow and linear.  The main reason games defy metrics is because much of their content is optional or conditional.  Although game devs obviously want you to play their game forever, reach every different ending, find every little widget, explore each branch of the plot etc. most players probably only experience a fraction of it, and you have no way of knowing how big a fraction will hold their interest.

And since progress is usually linked to challenge and player skill, you have no way of knowing if the last 5% of the game will take you longer than the preceding 95%.[/quote]
This is all true, but as an author I will always have some idea of how far a player is through my interaction plan based on the code that has run. It's a rough idea, sure, and it depends on whether they got stuck at certain points or looped around, yes, I admit these things readily. But as the author I am still going to have a pretty good idea of how much of [i]my[/i] plan for a playthrough they have achieved. That's the information that I am after as a player. But when I get stuck for quite a while as a player, I am aware that any estimate of the length of a game (like 'two hours for a comp game' -- ha!) are no longer going to be accurate. Players are smart that way. But I also know the designer has some personal idea of how far I am through his or her plan at the stage that I'm at, and I just want that information, and don't see why it should be expected to be withheld by default. On the contrary, the game developer should be expected to provide that information by default.

[quote="matt w"]And I'm saying "progress meter" here, because I think that's what you (Paul) really want; a passive indication of how far through you are, that you can glance up and check at any time. That's closer to what traditional media provide -- they don't suddenly pop up and say "We have just completed a major plot point!"[/quote]
I would not say that this is what I [i]really[/i] want. But it does fulfill the requirements of notifying me about the progress, although perhaps with unnecessary ubiquity. The time when I am most in need of knowing how far I made it through the story is when I have arrived at a premature ending, so that is the time to definitely give me the score. (As in many things, the wisdom of the old ways reveals itself.) For the progress to be notified as acquired is also nice because it reduces my guesswork, and educates me more specifically on what the game designer considers to be advancement. For the progress bar to be [i]always[/i] on screen might be a little oppressive and unnecessary, though it would depend on the implementation.

[quote="matt w"]Paul makes a good point about measuring progress, but I think we ought to be thinking about more ways to do it.[/quote]
Well that's all I wanted was to expand the bounds of the discussion a little. It's disconcerting to me when what seems the obvious best practice is oddly unaccounted for, or just considered legacy or something, particularly when I don't see a good reason for rejecting that legacy.

[quote="Ron Newcomb"][quote="Laroquod"]Games need a score because they are too free from metrics used to measure progress in older media.[/quote]

They're called bytes, Laroquod.[/quote]
.............how do the bytes solve the issue of notifying progress, am I missing the point, or are you? 87

[quote="zarf"]I understand your position, although I don't share it. However, it's not a reason for the current scoring default. As others have posted, there is no problem for authors who pay attention to the problem: they will either turn off scoring or implement a meaningful progress display. But for authors who *don't* pay attention to the problem, the current default is both ugly and useless. Changing the default to be absent would be less ugly and no less useless. 

(I don't like motivating the author to put in effort by providing an ugly default. It doesn't always work, and then that makes the author look bad rather than merely careless. It would be like making the default player description "FILL IN DESCRIPTION HERE" -- plausible, but not the road that I7 generally takes.)[/quote]
You nicely anticipated what would have been my first objection in your second paragraph. I'll just reiterate my preferred scenario (not that I seriously expect it to be adopted), which is for maximising the progress to be the only way to end the story finally. Voila -- you will quickly find no more ugly default messages preserved in final games. XD

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2125&start=0#p14535
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Question: Locale Priorities
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-03-10 06:35:52

[quote="StJohnLimbo"]first A) objects who get their own paragraphs (because the author made a "writing a paragraph about" rule for them or because he provided an initial appearance),then B) the rest ("You can (also) see ...").The order inside of step A and step B, respectively, equals the order in which the objects are created in the source text [/quote]

I'm not sure it's that simple.
As far as I can tell from the Standard Rules this is what happens:

Both A and B repeats through the Table of Locale Priorities. But this table is first created with blank rows for each thing in the game, then filled in by a choosing notable locale objects activity each time you look or enter a room etc. 

At the before stage of the printing the locale description activity, the choosing notable locale objects activity puts the things in the room into the Table of Locale Priorities in the order they are "held" by that room and gives them all priority 5.

At the for stage of the printing the locale description activity, the Table of Locale Priorities is sorted in priority order.

I suppose that means that things with the same locale priority will remain sorted in the same order that they are held be the location – but I don't know to what extent that coincides with the order in which those things are created in the source text (the list of things a room holds must change when you move things around, doesn't it?).

If one manually sets the locale priority order of something, that thing will keep its place in the table (or end up last, if it wasn't already in the table).
So I guess one has to see to it that manual settings of locale priorities take place after the standard notable objects rule (that sets the priority of everything to 5) and before the interesting locale paragraphs rule (that sorts the table in priority order).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2124&start=0#p14536
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Injury and Illness
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-03-10 06:46:47

I've also been thinking about how to include some ideas about player health and injury in my WIP too. 

One thing, I would make it so if your character is injured, the whole game does not then grind to a halt and become a tedious search for first aid, as in first person shooters. I would almost rather die and restart than be forced to search all over for med kits, so I could get back to the game.

In my WIP, I'm thinking about making it so if the player is hurt or injured (such as bleeding), if they stray into certain areas they may begin to attract the attention of predators who will stalk and hunt them, as predators will stalk wounded animals out in the wild because they're slower and make easier prey.

Other characters in the game may react to you differently when your wounded too. Some characters may be sympathetic, others uncomfortable around the sight of blood, or even scared to go anywhere near you. Just a few thoughts...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2127&start=0#p14537
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Having trouble expressing this random choice
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-03-10 06:55:21

[quote="severedhand"][code]A room can be superrocking, rocking or verboten. A room is usually superrocking.[/code][/quote]
Can it be that there are no rocking rooms in your game? Only superrocking ones?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=20#p14538
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-03-10 07:09:45

[quote="aaronius"]Dustin, are you using any other extensions? Do you have the latest release of Inform? On my system with 6G60, I don't get that error.[/quote]

Here's a list of the extensions I call up in the beginning, and I'm using the latest release of Inform7:

Include Player Experience Upgrade by Aaron Reed.
Include Keyword Interface by Aaron Reed.
Include Automap by Mark Tilford.
Include Glimmr Automap by Erik Temple.
Include Glimmr Automap Tileset by Erik Temple.
Include Glimmr Bitmap Font by Erik Temple.
Include Locksmith by Emily Short.

When I run Player Experience Upgrade without anything else in a test I don't get that error, it seems fine. But when it's included with the extensions listed above the error occurs. So I'm not sure what is conflicting with what here - or if it's something else entirely, maybe something somewhere buried in my code causing it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=20#p14539
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-03-10 08:44:29

[quote="severedhand"][code]Well I've made the best case I can for all-caps command lines. My MUD has them and my Inform game will probably have them if it's not too difficult to replace the printing of the player's command.[/code]

I couldn't actually replace the player's command with all caps (or anything)[/quote]

There's an extension called "Rewrite the Command Line" (by Ron Newcomb) that seems to do just that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2127&start=0#p14540
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Having trouble expressing this random choice
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-03-10 08:59:53

Ah Felix, you saw through my foolish lies about physical impossibility and pointed me to the nature of the problem.

Then I found another 'nothing' problem that was syntax-related, and solved that too.

.. So, what happened initially was, when the room default type became superrocking (it used to be plain old rocking), I did not catch all the incidences of the change.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=20#p14541
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-03-10 09:08:07

Can this extension also make entry of the magic word 'Zowie' result in the game entering an archived player's command as if they had just typed it now and pressed enter? [emote];)[/emote] .. As that's the idea I was fumbling around in my searchings. But I already changed my mind a whole lot on numerous topics since yesterday, and pretty much been wrong on every punt I've taken.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=20#p14542
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-03-10 10:04:13

Dustin--- thanks. It looks like this error is a result of the command getting changed in an unforeseen way. I think what I may need to do is set up a custom cmd buffer... Anyway, more when back from pax! [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2110&start=20#p14543
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Use no scoring" as the default?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-03-10 11:30:22

I say we should get rid of [i]all[/i] references to scoring in the standard rules and repackage them as a built - in extension. Those authors wishing to use traditional scoring would be able to do so easily and would have the added advantage of having all scoring - related documentation in one place -- allowing for more intuitive customization.

I've seen a bunch of questions here and on raif in the vein of "How do I change where / when / how scoring is reported or calculated?" This is partly because the score is reported in four different ways and places, and governed by rules seemingly scattered at random: the status line (by changing the "right hand status line" variable [i]or[/i] by changing the "constructing the status line" activity), at the end of a turn when the score has changed (the "notify score changes rule" in the "turn sequence rulebook"), when a player requests the score using the "score" command (the "announce the score rule" in the "carry out requesting the score rulebook"), and when the game ends (the "print final score rule" in the "printing the player's obituary" activity).

Paul, while I agree that having some sort of progress metric is desirable, I'm not sure that "the game developer should be expected to provide that information by default." Even if that were true, however, the built - in method does not do this; it merely fills in a bunch of zeros and default text which the author has to figure out how to navigate.

"Severedhand" makes a good point [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122]in this thread[/url] about additive vs. subtractive programming. Unlike some other IF languages -- such as Tads3 -- the standard rules (or library) of Inform are intentionally bare - bones. For example, they make no assumptions about bulk or weight, but two extensions for that are available. Although I realize that scoring is part of the text adventure legacy, I think authors would be better served if the current implementation were moved to an extension.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2123&start=10#p14544
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Accessing the player's previous command
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-10 11:31:38

[quote="matt w"][quote="Ron Newcomb"]Matt, you might have an easier time with using "change the text of the player's command to the last-input-used" rather than using stored actions.[/quote]

Sounds like a good idea, but do I have a hook for it? At this point I've already parsed the player's command as "xyzzy" and am in the midst of the carry out rule; do I have the chance to change the text of the player's command and re-parse it at that point?[/quote]
Oh, I wouldn't have allowed it to go as far as action processing.  [i]After reading a command when the player's command is "xyzzy": now retrying previous is true; reject the player's command.[/i]  and appropriate Before & For rules on the same activity. 
I guess it depends if severedHand wants his AGAIN to be in-world or out-of-world.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=160#p14545
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Rotonoto / DateTime: 2011-03-10 11:37:19

Hi. Bob Reeves here. Philosophy instructor & poet, pushing 60. Albuquerque NM. For some reason, back in '99 when I started posting on the Usenet groups, I picked an obscure Firesign Theatre character from their album "Not Insane" as my alias. Although I've just returned from a 10-year hiatus from IF, I didn't want to confuse people.

A girlfriend had Hitchhiker & Zork I for her Apple II in 1986. I ripped through those, & in the next two years played the rest of the Infocom catalogue without TOO many hints. It wasn't till 1996 or so that I discovered the IF archive & the rec-arts groups. I wrote 5 games in ALAN which I called "Painless Little Stupid Games," mostly to see if I could force ALAN to do things it shouldn't have been able to do. (These games are hard to play with recent computers: I'm in the process of porting them to Inform 7 even as we speak.) My Z-code game "RANS" had the misfortune of coming out the same week as "Varicella" (and of being an inferior game!), so it was largely ignored, though a few people have said nice things about it.

Now I'm busy discovering all the great games written in my absence, like "Violet" and "Lost Pig"--plus I finally finished "Once and Future," which I actually paid for, way back when.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=20#p14546
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-10 11:38:34

[quote="Laroquod"]I have never liked looking at those no-caps command lines one bit.[/quote]Doesn't the caps-lock button on your keyboard work?
:: is confused ::

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2110&start=20#p14547
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Use no scoring" as the default?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-10 11:39:13

[quote="Skinny Mike"]I say we should get rid of [i]all[/i] references to scoring in the standard rules and repackage them as a built - in extension. [/quote]
I like that!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=20#p14548
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-10 11:43:10

Thinking back, I think the reason player commands used to be in all-caps was that most people left caps-lock on when they were using their 8-bit computers. I don't remember how much case sensitivity there was in the OS, but it's possible that keywords and filenames had to be all-caps, so it didn't make sense to turn caps-lock off.

The practice of leaving caps-lock on continued for a while afterwards - remember how people on usenet and early web forums would get in trouble for "shouting" in all caps? I'm not sure it had anything to do with the code at all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2123&start=10#p14549
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Accessing the player's previous command
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-10 12:22:24

[quote="Ron Newcomb"][quote="matt w"][quote="Ron Newcomb"]Matt, you might have an easier time with using "change the text of the player's command to the last-input-used" rather than using stored actions.[/quote]

Sounds like a good idea, but do I have a hook for it? At this point I've already parsed the player's command as "xyzzy" and am in the midst of the carry out rule; do I have the chance to change the text of the player's command and re-parse it at that point?[/quote]
Oh, I wouldn't have allowed it to go as far as action processing.  [i]After reading a command when the player's command is [should be "matches" -- MW] "xyzzy": now retrying previous is true; reject the player's command.[/i]  and appropriate Before & For rules on the same activity. 
I guess it depends if severedHand wants his AGAIN to be in-world or out-of-world.[/quote]

Ah, I see. This is much simpler. It does change the behavior when you input xyzzy twice in a row -- it now retries the previous command again -- but that's probably not a bad thing. (And it turns out what severedhand really wants is something to do with overwriting the command line, which requires an extension of yours that I don't want to mess with.)

It's [i]very[/i] provoking that the syntax required is "change the text of the player's command to," when "change" is deprecated everywhere else.

[code]"Force Command" by Matt Weiner

Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short.

Holodeck is a room. "It's a holodeck. A screen reads, 'Type XYZZY to repeat your last command.'" Engine Bay is north of Holodeck. "It's an... engine bay?" A wrench is in Engine Bay. Airlock is north of Engine Bay. "It's an airlock, I guess."

The last input is an indexed text that varies. The last input is usually "".


To force command:
	say the command prompt;
	let N be the number of characters in the last input;
	repeat with M running from 1 to N:
		wait for any key;
		say character number M in the last input; [This means whatever the player types turns into the last input]
	wait for any key;
	say line break.
		
Before reading a command:
	now the last input is the player's command.

After reading a command when the player's command matches "xyzzy":
	change the text of the player's command to the last input; ["now the text of the player's command is" doesn't work!!!]
	if the player's command matches "xyzzy": [which should probably never happen; since when "xyzzy" is entered the command gets changed, and so "xyzzy" can never be stored as the last input]
		say "You try to repeat repeating the last command, and get thoroughly confused.";
		reject the player's command;
	otherwise:
		say "OK, let's try that again.";
		say line break;
		force command.
		
Test me with "sing/xyzzy/xyzzy/foo/xyzzy/n/xyzzy/get wrench/xyzzy/n/xyzzy/s/get wrench/xyzzy/go north/again/xyzzy". [If you try "test me" the commands in the test will appear automatically, but you'll have to enter the fake commands that are prompted by "xyzzy" yourself.][/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2124&start=0#p14550
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Injury and Illness
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-03-10 12:30:54

I don't know if this makes sense from a game design perspective, but as a player I don't mind injury / illness provided they happen to someone else. If I get sick or crippled in a game, I'm likely to simply restore from an earlier save. The narrative consequences of that are not likely to be interesting in a way that improves my experience.

One of the big improvements in recent (post-Portal) FPS games has been the removal of the fixed health bar, in favor of a system where you only die if you take more than a certain amount of damage in a short period of time. This has made me far less likely to try to optimize each encounter, saving beforehand and restoring unless I succeed with most of my health and ammo intact.

It seems like you could apply that to your game and have sleeping and eating work as a general purpose fix. Then block access to either or both at certain times, such as when hunting. If the player is seriously injured while fighting a grizzly bear, the injuries can slow him down or attract predators while he escapes. But if he gets away then it shouldn't be too difficult to recover, or else players will simply save before they go hunting and restore if it doesn't turn out perfectly.

Dogs or horses, however, should bear the full weight of the player's bad decisions. I am much more likely to undertake risks or deplete precious resources on behalf of an animal companion, especially if it's straightforward to acquire a new one. If you only get one dog, I would just restore from a saved game if he died. However, if you can tame a new one, I would try to keep him alive for emotional reasons and accept his death if it came to that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2110&start=20#p14551
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Use no scoring" as the default?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-03-10 13:11:55

[quote="Skinny Mike"]I say we should get rid of [i]all[/i] references to scoring in the standard rules and repackage them as a built - in extension. [/quote] I just went over to the [url=http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/1564911-make-use-no-scoring-the-default-with-use-scori?ref=title]uservoice thread for this[/url] and can see that Zarf had already made this suggestion.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=160#p14552
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-03-10 13:39:01

Welcome, Bob! Hope you enjoy things here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2128&start=0#p14553
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: How do you feel about my tree?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-03-10 14:04:34

Been working on graphic tie-in (overall idea here: [url]http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2089[/url] ) and have started breaking stuff down to component images.  How do you feel about the tree design?  ([url]http://gravelgamedesign.blogspot.com/2011/03/graphics-stuff.html[/url])

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2124&start=0#p14554
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Injury and Illness
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-03-10 14:06:06

Some really good points.  I'll consider animal injury; I feel like I'm walking a fine line once I start killing people's dogs, but that does seem potentially more compelling.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2129&start=0#p14555
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Convert Dat files to Z5 (Z code) Possible? (for Dungeon)
User: John Phoenix / DateTime: 2011-03-10 14:16:47

Hi. 

I have the latest mainframe version of Dungeon as found here: <a class="postlink" href="http://almy.us/dungeon.html">http://almy.us/dungeon.html</a>

This version is supposed to be the most complete version. The website says,

" As was customary at the time, computer games were free. The source code for this one bears an Infocom copyright, however it allows free noncommercial distribution. I obtained it in 1991 and compiled it for MS/DOS. Of course it will run under Windows! The program was written in Fortran, and I'm not providing the source, lest it spoil the game!

Back around 1980, the folks at Infocom wrote a game interpreter and rewrote Zork to run on it, making it possible to play the game on Apples, TRS-80's, CP/M boxes, and other systems of the day rather than being limited to mainframes. THIS program is the original mainframe version. It is equivalent to Zork I + about half of Zork II + the endgame of Zork III."

Trouble is I hate the interface and would love to play this version on Windows Frotz 2002. 

The game consists of a dungeon.exe and two .Dat files - DINDX.DAT and DTEXT.DAT.

Is this possible? or is there a Z5 version of this exact Dungeon version already out there? 

This version was created 11-Feb-87 - Although that date doesn't sound right this is the date that appears when you run the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2125&start=0#p14556
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Question: Locale Priorities
User: StJohnLimbo / DateTime: 2011-03-10 14:18:47

[quote="Felix"][quote="StJohnLimbo"]first A) objects who get their own paragraphs (because the author made a "writing a paragraph about" rule for them or because he provided an initial appearance),then B) the rest ("You can (also) see ...").The order inside of step A and step B, respectively, equals the order in which the objects are created in the source text [/quote]

I'm not sure it's that simple.
As far as I can tell from the Standard Rules this is what happens:
[...]
things with the same locale priority will remain sorted in the same order that they are held be the location – but I don't know to what extent that coincides with the order in which those things are created in the source text[/quote]
You are right that it's complicated, and I should probably have written "as far as I can tell" instead of "AFAIK". Your analysis of what happens is helpful.
Still, I'm inclined to think that I was right about the equivalence. When I wrote the above, I [i]did[/i] take the Standard Rules into account. I had experimented with the order of declarations, and the best explanation for the observed behaviour, as far as I could tell, seemed to be that the order in which the items are "held" by the location equals the order in the source text. There's also a comment in an unrelated example ([url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/ex191.html#e191]329, Hudsucker Industries[/url], near the end) that seems to suggest something like this. It says there that we need to [quote]"shuffle the order of items in the satchel so that the player will not always encounter the letters in a neatly presorted order, despite our defining them that way."[/quote] The definition was: [code]Two flamingly rude letters are in the satchel. Five polite letters are in the satchel.[/code]

[quote="Felix"](the list of things a room holds must change when you move things around, doesn't it?)[/quote]
Yes, as far as I can tell, when the player drops an object in a room, then the object will become the first in the "you can also see" list.

[quote="Pacian"][referring to "definition order" = "printing order"] the fact that my sidekick is the last thing defined in the source code kind of disproved that to me. Maybe it's because he moves around?[/quote]
Yes, I think that's the reason.

[quote="Pacian"]If that [the proposed ordering] is the case at least on a room by room basis, then I guess that's half my problem solved.[/quote]
AFAICT, it's the case.

[quote="Pacian"]Would have expected this behaviour to be a part of core Inform though.[/quote]
[quote="Pacian"]This does seem like a lot of work for functionality that I've always considered pretty fundamental.[/quote]
Depending on your exact needs for customisability, you might be able to get by without the extension. I only mentioned "Tailored Room Description" because Felix and Jim had brought up the idea of using an extension.
Here's a possible solution that I came up with, which doesn't need an extension (but it's probably not very elegant):
[spoiler][code]Importance is a kind of value. The importances are major, minor and petty.

A thing has an importance. The importance of a thing is usually petty.

The vague room is a room.

The candy bar is a thing in the vague room.

Fred is a man in the vague room.

The apple is a thing in the vague room.

Gloria is a woman in the vague room.

Jabba the Hutt is a man in the vague room. "Jabba lounges here, corpulent and idle."

The handsome fellow is a man in the vague room.

The nonvague room is south of the vague room.

The tome is a thing in the nonvague room. "Your eyes are drawn to a leather-bound tome. What's that doing here?"

Barbara is a major woman in the nonvague room. "A slender woman with short dark hair paces about, seemingly waiting to be >ASKed about herself."

The necklace is a minor thing in the nonvague room. "You see a delicate necklace lying on the floor, glittering brightly."

Every turn:
	if the location of the handsome fellow is not the location of the player:
		let the way be the best route from the location of the handsome fellow to the location of the player, using doors;
		try the handsome fellow going the way.

Rule for choosing notable locale objects:
	repeat with item running through major things in the location:
		set the locale priority of the item to 1;
	repeat with item running through minor things in the location:
		set the locale priority of the item to 2.

After choosing notable locale objects:
	if the handsome fellow is a notable-object listed in the Table of Locale Priorities:
		now the handsome fellow is mentioned.
		[This prevents the fellow from being printed twice.]

The list-the-sidekick rule is listed after the you-can-also-see rule in the for printing the locale description rules.

This is the list-the-sidekick rule:
	if the location of the handsome fellow is the location of the player:
		say "As always, there's your trusty sidekick, the handsome fellow.";
	continue the activity.[/code][/spoiler]

You can specify the order in which things should appear by defining them as major or minor (so there are 2 levels of priority above the standard priority "petty"). I think the typing overhead is rather minimal in this setup, since you can just insert the importance as an adjective - "Barbara is a major woman" and so on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2128&start=0#p14557
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How do you feel about my tree?
User: George / DateTime: 2011-03-10 14:27:38

I like them all very much except for the fully leafed out versions, the proportions look a little top-heavy to me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2128&start=0#p14558
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How do you feel about my tree?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-03-10 14:38:09

Great.  I'll take another look.  (The early fall ones are cloned from the summer proportions; do they need pruning back as well?)

Edit: wait, you said version*s*.  Reading fail.  I'll look at all again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2123&start=10#p14559
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Accessing the player's previous command
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-10 14:48:25

[quote="matt w"]It's very provoking that the syntax required is "change the text of the player's command to," when "change" is deprecated everywhere else.[/quote]Agreed.  And the "text of" makes it look like a property or relation or something when it isn't.  The dev team's stated many times they like to remove odd exceptions in the language like this, so perhaps eventually it'll be replaced with a "now (snippet) is (indexed text)" or something.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2129&start=0#p14560
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Convert Dat files to Z5 (Z code) Possible? (for Dungeon)
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-03-10 14:51:54

It isn't possible to mechanically translate the DAT files to Z-code, as they're just data used by the custom logic in the Dungeon executable. There have been re-implementations of Zork / Dungeon in both TADS and Z-code: see

"TADS Dungeon" in [url]http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXgamesXtads.html[/url]
"ZDungeon" in [url]http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXgamesXzcode.html[/url]

Alternatively, a build of the C version of the Dungeon code with a Windows interface is available: see "dungeon_winglk" in [url]http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXgamesXpc.html[/url].

There's also the absolutely original MDL version, for which we now have an MDL interpreter [url]http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXprogrammingXmdlXinterpretersXconfusion.html[/url] but the Windows build of this just has the basic Command Prompt user interface.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2124&start=0#p14561
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Injury and Illness
User: WMWade / DateTime: 2011-03-10 15:08:17

In a world of SAVE and UNDO it's very difficult to make procedural punishment look like anything other than a mistake. Narrative injury, wherein writing makes it clear that this cost is unavoidable, is more or less the only sort the audience will accept. Even if they do accept it, it's a wildcard complication in difficulty assessment. Each further challenge must be tailored for every possible combination of injuries, or the player could reach a point many turns down the line where they discover the game's either tediously complex or outright unwinnable.

Assuring that a character is precisely as injured as the story requires makes it much easier to maintain player interest and excitement.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2129&start=0#p14562
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Convert Dat files to Z5 (Z code) Possible? (for Dungeon)
User: John Phoenix / DateTime: 2011-03-10 15:26:16

Thanks David for your reply.

 I have seen those versions, and in fact already have most of them.

One thing I don't like about playing the game is I use windows 7 64 bit and it doesn't play 16 bit games.  I have to use DosBox to play Dungeon, and at my default desktop resolution it's window is really small. That and the small fonts with white on black background bug me. Thus the need for another version.

The owner of the above mentioned website has the source code but he's not giving it out. If that could be acquired, perhaps it can be used to make a Z5 version.

Edit:  I just found out about the "version" command.

 The WINGLK version is 3.2b. The version from the above website is 2.6a. It is possible I suppose the the person was mistaken about his version  being the final version of the program as he claims on the website. I was excited by this writeup and wanted to make sure the version I was playing had all the things that were missing from previous versions.

The website states:

 "If by some chance the only version of the game you ever played was on a mainframe, this version may be somewhat of a treat as it is the last mainframe version and has the Bank of Zork and Maze puzzles which didn't appear in early versions."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2124&start=0#p14563
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Injury and Illness
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-10 15:58:21

First thing off the top of my head is, in real life, if you're really alone, injury and illness can mean death a lot more often than most of us experience in everyday life. We depend on people helping us when we're incapacitated.

So if it helps the story (or the simulation, or whatever) to have a friend or lover or family member take care of you when you're sick or injured, then maybe it's worth having. Otherwise, you might consider ending the story as soon as the PC is too beaten up to go on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2125&start=0#p14564
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Question: Locale Priorities
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-03-10 16:27:12

The source/output order things seems to hold as far as I can see.  Cool beans +1.

But Tailored Room Description is written in the second person, so it isn't as simple as just dropping it into my project.  Cool beans -1.

I can see that these messages are stored in tables in the extension source, but it's not immediately obvious to me how to change them (largely because I'm trying not to learn about tables).  I can't find an example in the extension docs.

On the same subject, in your suggested code (and indeed, the priority lab code), the you-can-also-see rule seems to have been replaced or removed by Ron Newcomb's CLM, as including it breaks them both.

I am such a sad panda right now.  I really didn't think my game was going to be very difficult to implement, but I feel completely out of my depth.

[i]The you-can-also-see rule is gone. It must be brought.  I do not have a rock.[/i]

EDIT:  Okay, upshot of the thread: people said a lot of things that went over my head, BUT if I create objects in individual rooms in the order I want them to appear, then that will work, and I can have my sidekick appear last of all (except for the you can also see stuff) with:

[code]After choosing notable locale objects: 
   if(the location of the sidekick is the location of the player):
      set the locale priority of the sidekick to 10.[/code]
Although now that I think about it, part of my intended design was to expand the interact-able objects available to the player by creating them in nothing and moving them into locations after certain actions - which apparently scuppers the source code ordering thing.  Maybe there's a better way to hide objects until a certain point?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2125&start=10#p14565
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Question: Locale Priorities
User: StJohnLimbo / DateTime: 2011-03-10 17:00:05

[quote="Pacian"]On the same subject, in your suggested code (and indeed, the priority lab code), the you-can-also-see rule seems to have been replaced or removed by Ron Newcomb's CLM, as including it breaks them both.[/quote]
Looking through CLM's source code, I see that Ron replaced the you-can-also-see rule with a rule called the "I-could-also-see rule". So, if you use CLM, you'll need to replace the following line in my example:
[code]The list-the-sidekick rule is listed after the you-can-also-see rule in the for printing the locale description rules.[/code]
with
[code]The list-the-sidekick rule is listed after the I-could-also-see rule in the for printing the locale description rules.[/code]
Then it should compile and the sidekick should appear last again. I just tested this, and it seems to work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2124&start=10#p14566
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Injury and Illness
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-10 21:27:07

Well, I think it might be kind of cool to play with injury and illness in the kind of game you're envisioning (as I understand); if it's more of a sim than a majestic procession through various challenges, then it might be interesting to have illness and injury. OTOH, I play roguelikes for fun. I don't play Dwarf Fortress, though, so there's a limit to my masochism; which I guess means I'm with Ben, in that I like being able to recover from it. 

The basic question, as Victor has basically already pointed out, is not is it realistic, but can you make it cool? Dwarf Fortress maybe is something to look to here -- as I understand it, a lot of the appeal is the way things can go horribly, hilariously, awesomely wrong. ([url=http://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-Boatmurdered/Introduction/]Boatmurdered![/url]) If you can turn injury and illness into that, awesome. If not, it could be cool to make it recoverable in a cool way -- one of my nicest moments in a certain [url=http://magicrealm.dewkid.com/]vaguely roguelike boardgame[/url] came when a character just barely managed to survive a boss encounter (running away from the remaining mooks) and had to camp out for a week to recuperate. But it didn't actually take me a week to do it. 

Endangering the player's pet really would have a [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2009/10/11/latest-homer-in-silicon-2/]big emotional impact[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2126&start=0#p14567
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Do I need to write a scene?
User: Batwing / DateTime: 2011-03-10 22:24:48

I plugged you code into Inform 7, ran it and got this error message:

[i]Problem. The phrase or rule definition 'Every turn when the location of the player is the kitchen'   is written using the 'colon and indentation' syntax for its 'if's, 'repeat's and 'while's, where blocks of phrases grouped together are indented one tab step inward from the 'if ...:' or similar phrase to which they belong. But the tabs here seem to be misaligned, and I can't determine the structure. The first phrase going awry in the definition seems to be 'now ThreatCount is ThreatCount plus 1'  , in case that helps. 

 This sometimes happens even when the code looks about right, to the eye, if rows of spaces have been used to indent phrases instead of tabs.
[/i]
I'm not experienced enough with Inform yet to see what must be an obvious error. But this looks like something I could use if I can fix it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2126&start=0#p14568
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Do I need to write a scene?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-10 22:40:04

It sounds like your tabs didn't copy correctly -- if you copy directly from the post the tabs will convert into spaces, which gives you that error. 

Here's how to avoid having to convert the spaces back into tabs by hand:

1. Hit "reply" to the post with the code in it.
2. Copy the code from inside the quoted part of the original post. If the original poster pasted it in with tabs, you'll be able to copy it with tabs. 
3. Hit "cancel" so you aren't actually replying to the post.

Hope this helps!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2126&start=0#p14569
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Do I need to write a scene?
User: Batwing / DateTime: 2011-03-10 22:54:18

That fixed it. Now I can adapt the routine to my game.

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2129&start=0#p14570
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Convert Dat files to Z5 (Z code) Possible? (for Dungeon)
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-03-10 23:41:13

Sorry I can't be much help, but I think you could adjust the windowresolution setting in Dosbox, or start in fullscreen with fullresolution=original.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2129&start=0#p14572
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Convert Dat files to Z5 (Z code) Possible? (for Dungeon)
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-03-11 03:12:57

I can't imagine why the owner of the website won't make source code available: it's all widely distributed. The IF-Archive has source code of several releases, notably 2.6B, 2.7A and 3.2B, see [url]http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXgamesXsource.html[/url]. There is no way to convert any of these to Z-code other than re-implementing the whole game.

The original Zork / Dungeon was written in the Lisp-derivative MDL at MIT, and then converted to Fortran by Bob Supnik, a famous DEC engineer. Version 3.2B was his last release, so any claim about 2.6B being the "last" is quite wrong. You can also get the source to both these from Bob's SIMH website at [url]http://simh.trailing-edge.com/software.html[/url] (look at the bottom of the page).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2129&start=0#p14573
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Convert Dat files to Z5 (Z code) Possible? (for Dungeon)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-03-11 05:51:44

Just a quick question - is "Zork - release 13" the same as "Dungeon - release 3.2B"?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2129&start=0#p14574
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Convert Dat files to Z5 (Z code) Possible? (for Dungeon)
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-03-11 07:14:30

[quote="Peter Pears"]Just a quick question - is "Zork - release 13" the same as "Dungeon - release 3.2B"?[/quote]By "Zork - release 13" do you mean the ZDungeon.z5 file on the IF-Archive, which is at release 13?

Assuming you do, that depends on how good a re-implementation it is. It claims to be based on the original MDL Zork (which ran on ITS on a PDP-10 at MIT), and since Dungeon is a conversion of MDL Zork to Fortran, so it should have all the same text, puzzles, etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2129&start=0#p14575
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Convert Dat files to Z5 (Z code) Possible? (for Dungeon)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-03-11 07:20:34

I did mean that version, yeah - in this sort of discussion, if I meant Zork I I'd have to call it "Zork I", or risk getting the whole conversation confused. [emote]:)[/emote] Thanks, just wanted to check that by playing one I'd get the same puzzles and text as by playing the other.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2129&start=0#p14576
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Convert Dat files to Z5 (Z code) Possible? (for Dungeon)
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-03-11 09:43:39

[quote="Peter Pears"]Thanks, just wanted to check that by playing one I'd get the same puzzles and text as by playing the other.[/quote]That should be what you get. If you haven't already, though, I'd recommend Zork 1-3 over Zork/Dungeon: Zork 1-3 have quite a few of the annoyances removed (fewer sudden deaths etc.) and generally they have a higher standard of polish.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2125&start=10#p14577
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Question: Locale Priorities
User: StJohnLimbo / DateTime: 2011-03-11 09:43:52

With regard to this:
[quote="Pacian"]Although now that I think about it, part of my intended design was to expand the interact-able objects available to the player by creating them in nothing and moving them into locations after certain actions - which apparently scuppers the source code ordering thing. Maybe there's a better way to hide objects until a certain point?[/quote]
If you decide to use my major/minor method from above, you can do the hiding as you described. If you flag the hidden objects as major or minor, they will, when they are moved to a room, appear first among the objects of their importance category in the location. You can try this out by adding the following to my example code:
[code]The stamp is a major thing. "I could spot a tiny blue stamp on the carpet."

After taking the tome for the first time:
	say "Amazing! A tiny stamp was hidden beneath the tome!";
	now the stamp is in the nonvague room.

The emerald is a minor thing. "The emerald that had fallen out of the necklace lay there."

After taking the necklace for the first time:
	say "As I picked up the necklace, an emerald fell from its setting.";
	now the emerald is in the nonvague room.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2130&start=0#p14578
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: IF tabs do not seem to be aligning.
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-03-11 10:16:00

What is wrong with this:

	Check Flashlight Status:
		if flashlight is switched from off to on:
			say "A friendly sounding old voice says Better turn that thing off to save it for later.";
		otherwise:
			say "Leaving it on is a good idea!".

IF tells me the tabs are not properly aligned.  I am running under Windows XP on a Dell. My source is on a thumb drive.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2130&start=0#p14579
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: IF tabs do not seem to be aligning.
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-03-11 10:25:18

If you paste example code into code or quote, I think it preserves your tabs.  Or maybe you didn't put any tabs in originally?

Also, you didn't post any surrounding code, so I'm not sure how I7 deals with check rules that aren't in rulebooks.  (Is it in a rulebook?)  You might want "To check flashlight status:" instead, if you didn't.

If none of that helps, maybe post a short example that gives the error?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2099&start=0#p14580
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Testing extensions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-11 10:27:39

I'm trying this out. It looks awesome - a way to get around all the weirdness with "test me" and the skein/transcript bugs!

Now if only there were a utility to translate the transcript into your test table format...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2131&start=0#p14581
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Seeking John Clemens
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-11 10:31:04

I'm wondering if anyone knows how to contact John Clemens. I've got an updated version of his Conditional Backdrops extension but I'd prefer to discuss it with him before I release it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2131&start=0#p14582
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Seeking John Clemens
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-11 10:50:28

I think he goes by "JDC" on raif.  If you're brave you could search raif and get his email that way.  I think.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2130&start=0#p14583
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: IF tabs do not seem to be aligning.
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-03-11 11:57:40

[quote="wgm003"]What is wrong with this:

	Check Flashlight Status:
		if flashlight is switched from off to on:
			say "A friendly sounding old voice says Better turn that thing off to save it for later.";
		otherwise:
			say "Leaving it on is a good idea!".

IF tells me the tabs are not properly aligned.  I am running under Windows XP on a Dell. My source is on a thumb drive.[/quote]
When I quote your message, I can see your tabs. The tabs are not mis-aligned (unless you have everything indented one tab too far, which is possible). But I'm seeing some other potential problems with this code. I've never seen a rule that checked whether the switching action was "from off to on." I'm not sure you can do that. What you need here is two separate rules, one for the switching on action, the other for the switching off action.

Also, it's not clear to me how you expect the flashlight ever to be switched on, if the voice suggests turning it off when you try to turn it on. I'd offer some sample code, but I really don't know what you're trying to do here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2131&start=0#p14584
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Seeking John Clemens
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-11 12:51:59

Googling JDC John Clemens seems to have turned him up. I tried emailing him at another address, but got no response. Hopefully this one is more current...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2132&start=0#p14585
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Killing players.
User: Flack / DateTime: 2011-03-11 14:48:10

From a design perspective, which of the three options do you all think work best?

Consider the following scenario: to get past a a hungry NPC, players could give the NPC either a regular apple, or a poison apple. The idea is that if the player gives the NPC the apple, the NPC will still be there guarding the same area when the player returns. If given the poison apple, the NPC would get sick, and not be there (the desired result). Here are three different ways I've thought about handling this:

01. If the player gives the NPC the regular apple. end the game. This seems a little harsh because, at the time, it seems like a pretty logical choice. 

02. Prevent the player from giving the NPC the regular apple. This prevents you from putting the game in a later unwinnable state, but the thing is, it's a logical action. Technically either apple would satisfy the NPC's hunger, but only the poison one makes it to where he's not around later, preventing your escape.

03. Allow the player to give the regular apple to the NPC. This is the most "realistic" choice, but this puts the game in an unwinnable state at the halfway point, meaning players might play another 30 minutes only to discover their original blunder. I'm guessing most people wouldn't care for that.

How have people handled this in the past, and what are your thoughts (as both authors and players) on these types of situations?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2132&start=0#p14586
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Killing players.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-11 15:01:19

[quote="Flack"]From a design perspective, which of the three options do you all think work best?

Consider the following scenario: to get past a a hungry NPC, players could give the NPC either a regular apple, or a poison apple. The idea is that if the player gives the NPC the apple, the NPC will still be there guarding the same area when the player returns. If given the poison apple, the NPC would get sick, and not be there (the desired result). Here are three different ways I've thought about handling this:

01. If the player gives the NPC the regular apple. end the game. This seems a little harsh because, at the time, it seems like a pretty logical choice. 

02. Prevent the player from giving the NPC the regular apple. This prevents you from putting the game in a later unwinnable state, but the thing is, it's a logical action. Technically either apple would satisfy the NPC's hunger, but only the poison one makes it to where he's not around later, preventing your escape.

03. Allow the player to give the regular apple to the NPC. This is the most "realistic" choice, but this puts the game in an unwinnable state at the halfway point, meaning players might play another 30 minutes only to discover their original blunder. I'm guessing most people wouldn't care for that.

How have people handled this in the past, and what are your thoughts (as both authors and players) on these types of situations?[/quote]

As a player, not an author: 

01 doesn't seem well-motivated, and is anyway functionally equivalent to 02. "After giving the guard the regular apple, end the story saying 'you're screwed, bub'." The player will undo.

03 would fill me with blind rage, unless you'd already thoroughly established that it was easy to put the game an unwinnable state and you should be saving all the time... in which case I would probably have stopped playing. I don't like messing around with save games, maybe more than other IF players.

Which leaves 02... except what I'd actually do is try to redesign the puzzle in a way that makes it clear what to do. Like have the NPC insist, out of politeness, that you also have something to eat. In which case it'd be perfectly well motivated to end the game if the player eats the poisoned apple. Is the problem that you need the unpoisoned apple for a later puzzle? Maybe give the player three apples, one of which the NPC eats, one of which the player eats, one of which remains. 

It'd depend on the character and relations of the NPC -- and this would make this an even nastier thing to do to the NPC -- but that seems like it'd be more ideal.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2129&start=0#p14587
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Convert Dat files to Z5 (Z code) Possible? (for Dungeon)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-03-11 15:12:55

Oh, I've played all three already, thanks - even have their reviews up at IFDB. At some point, though, I will want to check out Zork/Dungeon, simply for completeness' sake, and wanted to make sure that I had the latest version.

I suspect I won't be willing to play it to the end, but I'll see just how far I get before I get too frustrated by its old-school-ness. My previous knowledge of Zork I-II-III should give me a little bit of an edge.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2133&start=0#p14588
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Making "go left" correspond to the player's position [Inf 7]
User: LCamelot / DateTime: 2011-03-11 15:28:26

Using Inform 7, how can I make it so that the player can type "go left," "go right," "go straight," etc. and go in a direction corresponding to the last place he came from?

For example, let's say the map is

[code]x.3.x
1.2.x
x.4.x[/code]

where the numbers are rooms.  If the player goes from room 1 to room 2, saying "go left" should take him to room 3.  Then, saying "go back" should take him to room 2.  Then, saying "go straight" should take him to room 4.

Thanks for any help!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2132&start=0#p14589
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Killing players.
User: Flack / DateTime: 2011-03-11 15:45:34

Let me describe a better game scenario.

Consider a bank heist. Access to the bank's vault is being blocked by a hungry guard, and the player possesses both a regular apple, and a poison apple. Since the guard is hungry, it stands to reason that he would accept either item. So the player gives the guard an apple, and is allowed to enter the vault. Inside the vault, an alarm sounds and the player must quickly escape. My idea was that if you had given the guard the regular apple, he would still be standing there and nab you -- whereas had you given him the poison apple, he would have become sick and left his post.

(Also note that half the game takes place in the vault, so it's not like players would die two moves later. It would be more like 30 or 40.)

If it helps, neither apple serves any purpose in the game except to solve this puzzle. Removing the regular apple is certainly an option.

Having the guard decline the regular apple is also an option, although it would take some creative writing to explain that one away. Then again, about 10 moves later the player will encounter an alien that looks like a cross between an octopus and a pizza, so I've got a little bit of creative leeway in the explanation department ...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2134&start=0#p14590
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Second Noun? [Inform 6]
User: Flack / DateTime: 2011-03-11 15:50:24

I'm missing this in the manual. How do I refer to the second noun a player types?

For example, the first noun is NOUN: 

ex: [b]if (noun == WINDOW) then { ...[/b]

How can I find the second noun typed in a command? 

ex: Hit WINDOW with HAMMER.
ex: Hit WINDOW with FIST.

How can I find HAMMER or FIST in those command?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2132&start=0#p14591
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Killing players.
User: cas / DateTime: 2011-03-11 16:14:36

[quote="Flack"]Let me describe a better game scenario.

Consider a bank heist. Access to the bank's vault is being blocked by a hungry guard, and the player possesses both a regular apple, and a poison apple. Since the guard is hungry, it stands to reason that he would accept either item. So the player gives the guard an apple, and is allowed to enter the vault. Inside the vault, an alarm sounds and the player must quickly escape. My idea was that if you had given the guard the regular apple, he would still be standing there and nab you -- whereas had you given him the poison apple, he would have become sick and left his post.[/quote]
I've often though of such issues in a "Monkey Island vs Sierra" sort of vein.  Briefly, for those who haven't played either MI or Sierra games, in Monkey Island, you cannot die or put the game in an unwinnable state.  In many Sierra games, you can die without any advance notice, and you can easily put the game in an unwinnable state in such a way that you don't find out until much later.

When I played Monkey Island, I found I was saving my game out of habit only, really; with Sierra games, I saved often as a matter of necessity.  Neither approach is, to me, ideal.  With Monkey Island there's never really any sense of tension.  It's more that you're just solving puzzles.  With Sierra, you can get into endless save-restore cycles as you are killed off in various ways.  It's not fun to replay a section of the game because of some random stupid death, or because you did something innocuous early on that happened to be the wrong thing to do.  Of course, I enjoyed all of these games, in part because of the writing/story, puzzles, graphics, etc; so my criticism is only on a small part of the game.

So: I think it's OK to kill a player or to put the game in an unwinnable state, but only if you do so reasonably.  In your situation, if I know I'm robbing a bank, and I know there's a hungry guard, and I know I have a poison apple, I don't think it's a stretch to penalize the player if he does not feed the guard the poison apple.  In my mind, that is a reasonable puzzle: it's not as though you didn't know you'd need to incapacitate the guard.

Along the same line, I would not consider it evil if you are allowed to eat the apple yourself, putting the game in an unwinnable state.  Innocuous things should not destroy the game, but going around eating everything you see, or chucking it into a chasm, or whatever, is just reckless behavior.  More than once I've done something rash like that, and told myself it was probably not a good idea.  If I recall properly, in Anchorhead, [spoiler]you can throw things into the swirling ocean patch off of the lighthouse.[/spoiler]  I tried that, and immediately felt that it was a stupid idea, because, why would you do that?  It helps that Anchorhead featured a protagonist who performed, for the most part, reasonable actions, so when I did something "out of character", it gave me pause.  Good writing and a good story help!

The main problem, of course, is that there are differing ideas about what "reasonable" means!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2132&start=0#p14592
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Killing players.
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-03-11 16:16:11

3 would be the point where I would rage-quit, and complain bitterly to anyone within hearing distance.

I would want the effect to be immediately apparent (no going away and coming back), and I would only have the one apple (or a regular apple that you *turn into* a poison apple).  Also, if we're talking poison poison, a nonviolent solution would be nice (assuming the guard is a mere obstacle and it's consistent with PC motivation, yada yada.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2134&start=0#p14593
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Second Noun? [Inform 6]
User: StJohnLimbo / DateTime: 2011-03-11 16:25:35

Going by [url=http://www.inform-fiction.org/manual/html/s6.html]§6 of the DM4[/url], I think it's "second".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2132&start=0#p14594
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Killing players.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-11 18:04:44

[quote="Flack"](Also note that half the game takes place in the vault, so it's not like players would die two moves later. It would be more like 30 or 40.)

If it helps, neither apple serves any purpose in the game except to solve this puzzle. Removing the regular apple is certainly an option.[/quote]

That would make it a lot worse for me. (Especially because your 30 or 40 turns would probably be more like 150 for me, probably.) Rage depends more on the amount of time I've just wasted rather than with fairness of the puzzle. 

Now if it was just a question of getting a bad ending instead of a good ending, I might find that kind of funny. [i]The People's Revolutionary Text Adventure Game[/i] did something like that -- it was possible to lock yourself into a situation where you had to do something that led to a suboptimal ending (and was clearly marked as doing so). But it wasn't like you were locked out of further progress in the game. One thing that helped was that there were multiple puzzle solutions, so there was some value in replaying for the better ending. 

Anyway, if the unpoisoned apple is just a red herring, I'd definitely leave it out. (I also agree with gravel that it'd be nice to have it not be poison poison, or to have alternate solutions.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2133&start=0#p14595
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making "go left" correspond to the player's position [In
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-03-11 18:23:27

Here's a partially coded solution (based on Ex. 102, "Polarity") that you can flesh out.

[code]NW-Room is a room. N-Room is east of NW-Room. NE-Room is east of N-Room.

W-Room is south of NW-Room. C-Room is east of W-Room and south of N-Room. E-Room is east of C-Room and south of NE-Room.

SW-Room is south of W-Room. S-Room is east of SW-Room and south of C-Room. SE-Room is east of S-Room and south of E-Room.

The former location is a  room that varies. The travel orientation is a direction that varies.

First carry out going rule: 
    now the former location is the location;
    now the travel orientation is the noun.

Understand "go back" as retreating. Understand "back" or "return" or "retreat" as retreating. 

Retreating is an action applying to nothing. 

Carry out retreating: 
	let way be the best route from the location to the former location, using doors; 
	if way is a direction, try going way; 
	otherwise say "You can't see an open way back."
	
Going left is an action applying to nothing. Understand "go left" as going left.

Check going left:
	let D be an object;
	if the travel orientation is north:
		now D is west;
	otherwise if the travel orientation is west:
		now D is south;
	otherwise if the travel orientation is south:
		now D is east;
	otherwise if the travel orientation is east:
		now D is north;
	otherwise:
		say "Going left doesn't make sense right now." instead;
	try the player going D.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2135&start=0#p14596
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: You know you've played too much IF when...
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-03-11 19:32:28

...you're talking to someone, and you keep imagining a list of possible conversation topics!

I'm a pretty awkward person to talk to, I guess.  A couple times this past week, when I was talking to someone, I found myself thinking of the different subjects that had been brought up as a conversation tree.  When my conversations lull into awkward silence, it actually isn't too much different from the advanced ASK/TELL with topic suggestions IF conversation model.  I think I actually saw the old "topics:  .... " or "(you could ask about...." list in my head!  At those times, I think of all the things I could possibly bring up, and I wonder if I would feel too weird doing so.  Only, there's no UNDO command in a real conversation.  Life is a difficult game indeed.  [emote]:|[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2133&start=0#p14597
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making "go left" correspond to the player's position [In
User: LCamelot / DateTime: 2011-03-11 21:20:49

Thanks, Mr. Aikin.  Your solution works great if working with a completely open series of rooms, but as soon as there is a doorway that the player responds to by saying "go through the doorway," there occurs a run-time problem (P60) because it tries to make "D" into the door, which contradicts the "travel orientation is a direction that varies."

Is there a way to make it so that when a player "goes" without choosing a direction, the program adapts as if the player had gone in that direction?  Or to turn it off or ignore the rule in other cases?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=946&start=20#p14598
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Graphical Interactive Fiction
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-03-12 09:54:58

[quote="namekuseijin"]
I don't know about you, but these depictions are truly crude and laughable, despite being the top "eye candy" for the time.  Even Myst suffers from that today.[/quote]

Both Mystery House and King's Quest use graphics which are abstractions or approximations of the things depicted, achievable by the technology of the time.

Just because photorealism became available in the medium later certainly doesn't mean all graphics should be photorealistic, just because they can be. Au contraire, the graphics of these games are legitimate as ever. I'd also say they work better than stuff which made early gestures towards photorealism, but then really suffered in failing to stand up to that excruciating comparison as technology marched on even a bit, like Myst.

Art is artifice, not artifact, which is why the history of visual art favours degrees of abstraction over the photorealistic. The logical end of photorealism is a kind of boring documentation without the the thing that moves us, an artist's interpretation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2125&start=10#p14599
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Question: Locale Priorities
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-03-12 10:09:28

[quote="StJohnLimbo"]Looking through CLM's source code, I see that Ron replaced the you-can-also-see rule with a rule called the "I-could-also-see rule".[/quote]
And that actually makes a crazy kind of sense, although I could have done without CLM's default:

[quote]The handsome fellow arriveed from the west
.[/quote]
So, I got it working, but now there's an issue with line breaks.  As in, I need an extra one if there are "can also see" objects, but not if there aren't.  This is possibly because line breaks in I7 do my head in anyway.

No wait, that only happens when I include the CLM as well.  Oh man.

Thank you for all your help.  I'm sorry that I seem to have all the Inform 7 parts of my brain missing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2132&start=0#p14600
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Killing players.
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-03-12 10:30:06

I'd just have the guard eat the apple, but still refuse to let the player in, or - even better - make a second puzzle out of getting past him the second time.

I'm completely on the "LucasArts-side" with regards to cruelty to the player. I'm not good enough at solving puzzles to get any enjoyment from unwinnable states, and avoid those games if I can.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2125&start=10#p14601
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Question: Locale Priorities
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-12 11:25:19

Can you put "[conditional paragraph break]" in before the "can also see" stuff? Line breaks confuse me too, and I'm not quite sure what "conditional paragraph break" actually does, but it sounds like it might help if you could figure out where they go.

Ron may or may not be checking this (I forget if he's at PAX), so you might want to let him know about the CLM bug.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=946&start=20#p14602
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Graphical Interactive Fiction
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-12 11:30:56

[quote="severedhand"][quote="namekuseijin"]
I don't know about you, but these depictions are truly crude and laughable, despite being the top "eye candy" for the time.  Even Myst suffers from that today.[/quote]

Both Mystery House and King's Quest use graphics which are abstractions or approximations of the things depicted, achievable by the technology of the time.

Just because photorealism became available in the medium later certainly doesn't mean all graphics should be photorealistic, just because they can be. Au contraire, the graphics of these games are legitimate as ever. I'd also say they work better than stuff which made early gestures towards photorealism, but then really suffered in failing to stand up to that excruciating comparison as technology marched on even a bit, like Myst.

Art is artifice, not artifact, which is why the history of visual art favours degrees of abstraction over the photorealistic. The logical end of photorealism is a kind of boring documentation without the the thing that moves us, an artist's interpretation.[/quote]

Yeah, when I first saw the screenshot of Mystery House posted here my reaction was "That looks great." It's not surprising that people are [url=http://cardboardcomputer.com/games/a-house-in-california/]still making games inspired by the graphics[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=946&start=30#p14603
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Graphical Interactive Fiction
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-03-12 11:42:19

[quote="severedhand"]Art is artifice, not artifact, which is why the history of visual art favours degrees of abstraction over the photorealistic. The logical end of photorealism is a kind of boring documentation without the the thing that moves us, an artist's interpretation.[/quote]Building on that point, when you want to express atmosphere and tone purely in text, you're often constrained by the amount of information a player is able to assimilate at any given time. Images, in contrast, can deliver a heavy payload of atmosphere without overwhelming the player. I'm not sure I agree with the old saw about a picture saying more than a thousand words, though. Sure, it's pithy, but IMO it needlessly implies a competition. Some of the best games I've played have told their tale using text, images and music, each element serving to complement the others.

Which is also pretty banal as opinions go. I do think it's sometimes forgotten or overlooked though, especially when it comes to commercialized games that are almost always forced to showcase spectacular visuals for the audience to take note. Even when you want to make an impact with visuals, you don't have to go overboard or compromise with the message. 

My 2 cents: for a game that illustrates this very well, you need only look to [url=http://http://echobazaar.failbettergames.com/]Echo Bazaar[/url]. Its graphics serve as a mood-setter, its (somewhat trivial grind-based) game mechanics provide pacing, but the core of the game remains the writing. That doesn't mean the other elements are meaningless: these devices all [i]combine[/i] to create the singular experience that is the Neath.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2125&start=10#p14604
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Question: Locale Priorities
User: StJohnLimbo / DateTime: 2011-03-12 14:27:07

[quote="Pacian"]I could have done without CLM's default:

[quote]The handsome fellow arriveed from the west
.[/quote][/quote]
Further experimentation revealed that this can be fixed by adding the following code:
[code]Table of custom library messages (continued)
library-action	library-message-id	library-message-text
going action	13	"[The person asked] [aux]arriv[e-s] from the [library message object][ignore library line break]"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2133&start=0#p14605
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making "go left" correspond to the player's position [In
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-03-12 14:56:07

Oh, dear. Unfortunately, the showme command does not reveal the direction of a door from within a room. This pretty much has to be a property of the room ... but Inform is hiding it from the programmer, which is naughty. I'll do some research on this, but maybe someone else can come up with an elegant solution before I blunder into it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2111&start=0#p14606
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New Inform7 quick reference available
User: mor / DateTime: 2011-03-12 15:08:33

Hi,
a new version is now available. Same link as before:
<a class="postlink" href="http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~moreiser/inform/">http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~moreiser/inform/</a>

The changes are listed on the web page at the above link. I noticed that the pictures in the old PDF were not presented/printed properly in some version of Acrobat Reader on Windows. This should be fixed now.

Thanks again for your feedback!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2136&start=0#p14607
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Finding the door direction
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-03-12 15:23:03

Each room in the I7 model world pretty much has to have a full set of properties of the I6 form n_to, ne_to, etc. Some of these will have the value nothing, some will have the value of another room, and some will have the value of a door. But these properties are not revealed by the I7 showme command.

So the question is, how exactly can the author extract the exit direction of a door that's in a room, in order to look at it and possibly set a variable to that direction? I've tried dropping into I6, which I've never done from I7 before, but this doesn't work at all:
[code]let P be an object;
let P be (- [Funct; return location.n_to;]; -);[/code]
Nor does this:
[code]let P be (- location.n_to -);[/code]
So how does one get at the value of an I6 property? Or is that what I need to do?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2133&start=0#p14608
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making "go left" correspond to the player's position [In
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-12 15:28:02

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Oh, dear. Unfortunately, the showme command does not reveal the direction of a door from within a room. This pretty much has to be a property of the room ... but Inform is hiding it from the programmer, which is naughty. I'll do some research on this, but maybe someone else can come up with an elegant solution before I blunder into it.[/quote]

Can you use "direction of (door) from (room)"? See 3.12 in the documentation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2136&start=0#p14609
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Finding the door direction
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-12 15:46:13

As I posted in the other thread, I think you want the I7 phrase "direction of (door) from (room)" -- see 3.12 in Writing with Inform.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2133&start=0#p14610
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making "go left" correspond to the player's position [In
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-03-12 16:53:06

Thanks, Matt. This new bit of code seems to fix what I posted yesterday:

[code]First carry out going rule: 
	now the former location is the location;
	if the noun is a direction:
		now the travel orientation is the noun;
	otherwise if the noun is a door:
		let N be the noun;
		let D be the direction of N from the location;
		now the travel orientation is D.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2132&start=0#p14611
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Killing players.
User: WMWade / DateTime: 2011-03-12 16:54:12

Puzzles with multiple solutions are always appreciated.

Alternately, make sure the "NPC catches you" ending is funny, fascinating, or otherwise satisfying enough that the player won't mind that there was also a slightly more ideal resolution available. If replays aren't too complex, even casual completionists will want to go back through and find all your AMUSING suggestions anyway.

TP'sRTA had the right idea: Solving the Monkey Island vs. Sierra problem involves allowing the player to make the game "unwinnable" only when doing so creates an interesting alternate to the conventional storyline. Only disallow an action or have it end the game immediately if it will destroy any hope of ending the narrative in an enjoyable way. If doing that action would just lead to a not-so-ideal ending, not-so-gently imply that much at the moment they do it... forbidding neither continued play nor a quick UNDO. If the action leads to a perfectly reasonable alternate ending, gently foreshadow its importance and carry on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2133&start=0#p14612
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making "go left" correspond to the player's position [In
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-12 17:45:05

Cool, Jim; glad that worked. 

Lance: One thing to think about is that, if you're going to do this, you probably want to figure out a way to generalize the directions so they can be used in contexts other than the going command. For instance, if the description of room 2 is always "There are exits to the north, south, and west" then people will be typing "n" instead of "go forward." So you need a way to say something like "There are exits [relative-heading of north], [relative-heading of south], and [relative-heading of west]," and define a "To say relative-heading of (D - a direction)" in order to make that spit out "There are exits ahead, behind, and to the left" when the travel orientation is north, or something like that. And that means you also need to write your code so the travel orientation doesn't get reset to "up" when the player goes up, or that room description will break. And probably you should implement "turn left" so the player can change the travel orientation without going to a new room. 

All this should be doable, but seems pretty annoying. It's worth thinking about whether this functionality is important enough for you to do all that work. It's pretty artificial to have the protagonist be like the [url=http://saucersofmud.wordpress.com/2009/12/22/interactive-fiction-explained/]Kuuk-Thaayorre[/url], always aware of the compass directions, but it does seem to help some players navigate the world. 

Pacian implemented the left/right/forward/backward system very well in "Rogue of the Multiverse," in TADS3; he might have some insight about the issues involved.

Of course what would be really great is if someone would write an extension to do this....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2133&start=0#p14613
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making "go left" correspond to the player's position [In
User: LCamelot / DateTime: 2011-03-12 18:33:12

Yes, each room should be described differently depending on the player's entrance.  Thank you both for the help!  Mr. Aikin, your fix works perfectly.  I also came up with an addition:

[code]Reversing is an action applying to nothing.  Understand "turn around" as reversing.

Carry out reversing:
   if the travel orientation is north:
      now the travel orientation is south;
      say "You turn around.";
   otherwise if the travel orientation is south:
      now the travel orientation is north;
      say "You turn around.";
   otherwise if the travel orientation is east:
      now the travel orientation is west;
      say "You turn around.";
   otherwise if the travel orientation is west:
      now the travel orientation is east;
      say "You turn around.";
   otherwise:
      say "Turning around doesn't make sense right now." instead.[/code]Also, Mr. W, that article about the Kuuk-Thaayorre is really interesting!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2137&start=0#p14614
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: How do you adapt existing story for Text Adventure style ?
User: John Phoenix / DateTime: 2011-03-12 20:29:37

I wanna write a short story to help me learn Inform 7 (or Adrift). trouble is I haven't written anything in over 30 years and I haven't got a clue how to write an entire story. I haven't had a creative bone in my body 'cept that funky one they removed at birth. They said it wasn't supposed to be making humming noises.

I want to pick out a short story from the net and adapt it to Text Adventure style.

 (I don't use the term Interactive Fiction, INFOCOM didn't use it either. (look it up, they never called any of their games Interactive Fiction)  The IF term was made up by some geek who felt the need to coin a new phrase. I'd rather stay true to the masters.)

I need tips and tricks. How to split up the story to fit into the right text adventure bits and pieces?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2137&start=0#p14615
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How do you adapt existing story for Text Adventure style
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-03-12 20:47:51

Uh, yes Infocom did: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.retrology.com/border.jpg">http://www.retrology.com/border.jpg</a> <a class="postlink" href="http://www.mazeforge.com/Words/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/milli0.jpg">http://www.mazeforge.com/Words/wp-conte ... milli0.jpg</a>

Anyways, this might be helpful: <a class="postlink" href="http://onewetsneaker.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/writing-if/">http://onewetsneaker.wordpress.com/2010 ... riting-if/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2137&start=0#p14616
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How do you adapt existing story for Text Adventure style
User: John Phoenix / DateTime: 2011-03-12 20:52:30

Congrats ! I got you to do your homework. I feel anyone willing to look up that simple mis-fact is a Searcher and should have some good resources.

Thanks! I'll check your link.

EDIT:

 I read it. I found it interesting and really not what I was looking for. The writer seems to think a 2 hour game is a good IF length, when in fact Zork I took days or weeks to finish. The writer is drama oriented and does not seem to be able to apply a working 'formula' to other game genres. In fact he shuns popular game mechanics:

"SIMULATOR GATES
These are like puzzles, but they aren’t difficult.  When the player arranges the simulator-objects in a certain way — pours the gasoline into the gas tank, gets in the car, starts the engine, and drives off — then the game transitions to the next moment.

What’s the difference between a simulator gate and a puzzle?

If the above situation were a puzzle, the gas can would be hidden in the sock drawer, the gas pump would be broken, and the PC would need to find the right knife to cut the garden hose to improvise a siphon.  (And half your players would write you complaining:  “This puzzle sucked!”)"

On the contrary, I think this would make a wonderful puzzle. That's what happens in Zork and other games. You collect objects in odd places that are needed for solutions to puzzles.

He does have some good ideas say about Time and red herrings. 

A good read but it doesn't really tell me what I needed. How do you take an existing story and adapt it for use in IF?

Anyone else have ideas on this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2137&start=0#p14617
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How do you adapt existing story for Text Adventure style
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-03-12 23:16:37

Having written both conventional fiction and the interactive kind, I'm not sure the kind of crossover you're talking about can ever really work.

Possibly I'm being too negative (I often am). I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Emily Short has written a long, thought-provoking essay about this very topic in her blog.

The key difference between CF and IF is that IF is [i]interactive[/i]. That is, the reader/player can wander around, doing things in an unanticipated order or failing to do things the author thinks are obvious. As a result, the author has very little control over the pacing. And pacing is an essential component of a successful story.

You could certainly take the characters and setting of a conventional story and recast them in the form of IF. But you would have to rework the story in some basic ways. To the extent that you keep the original linear narrative flow, it won't be interactive. Conversely, to the extent that it's interactive, the story's original narrative flow will be lost.

Another factor is what you put in and what you leave out. In conventional fiction, the author is very careful about deploying every essential detail and pruning away whatever is not essential. But in IF, you can't be sure your readers will ever read the description of the painting over the mantel, or whatever it is. IF tends, in my experience, to contain a fair amount of window-dressing -- stuff that's perhaps evocative, but that if you never read it, you won't miss anything.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2138&start=0#p14618
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: How long is too long?
User: whoiscraig / DateTime: 2011-03-13 00:53:28

I'm in the process of planning/writing my first work of Interactive Fiction now, and after planning it out a bit I realised it would have 105 rooms. Now my question is, what's the average number of rooms for an IF? Is this too big? Should I downscale it a bit since this my first IF project?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2132&start=0#p14619
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Killing players.
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-03-13 01:39:43

Perhaps if you feed the guard the regular apple, it necessitates a bit of combat with him that causes delay and makes it more likely the player is arrested.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2139&start=0#p14620
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Dropping one leaf from a bunch of leaves
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-03-13 01:54:39

Today's problem concerns leaves. It's pretty headache-ish to read, but I hope you'll bear with me.

I've got an immovable pile of leaves. The player can take from it one leaf, or an armful. If they take one leaf the first time, they can either stick with their one leaf or take an armful next time. The pile never runs out.

If they go elsewhere, I want them to be able to throw away either all their leaves (the armful), or one leaf.

If they're carrying one leaf, throwing away one leaf leaves them with nothing.

If they're carrying the armful, throwing one away one leaf should have no real effect -- they should retain the armful, and a message will say something like 'You drop one leaf. It blows away. You have a zillion left.'

I coded 95% of all this behaviour successfully using "leaves" for the armful and "leaf" as the name of the individual leaf (two items which magically zap back to the home location if used or dropped, ready for re-use) . The 5% I haven't been able to do is the 'throwing away one leaf' part.

... If the player is carrying the armful, I can't get the parser to catch the singular word "leaf" when the player tries to drop one leaf from the armful, because the word "leaf" refers explicitly to the single leaf object, which isn't in the room or the player's inventory at the time when they type "drop leaf".

I tried allowing "leaf" to refer to both the armful and the one leaf, but this created a mass of disambiguation horror which kicked down all my programming.

It occurs to me that the moment you let the singular and plural versions of a noun both refer to the plural noun, the parser can't tell me which one the player typed, can it? It just jumps to matching the object. Like ball and balls, stick and sticks, etc.

What I'd really like is for the program to seize on the word "leaf" (after "drop"), and then jump to some routine I write that could easily sort things out, before it even tries matching the word "leaf" to an object in the game.

Is there a way to do that? Or, as is often the case, some solution I'm completely unaware of which you knowledgable folk will impart to me? Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2140&start=0#p14621
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: A woolen mat
User: Icefall / DateTime: 2011-03-13 04:44:32

this is maybe a silly question, but what's wrong with this:

[code]
Blue room is a room.

A dog is animal. The description is "a blue dog". a dog is in the blue room.
Red room is a room.
Blue door is a lockable door. It is locked.
The matching key is metal key.
A blue door is west of blue room and east of red room.
A metal key is under a mat.
A mat is a thing. The description of the mat is "A woolen mat." The mat is in the blue room.
[/code]

The sentence 'A metal key is under a mat'   appears to say two things are the same - I am reading 'metal key' and 'under a mat' as two different things, and therefore it makes no sense to say that one is the other

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2138&start=0#p14622
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How long is too long?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-03-13 04:50:00

It really depends what you're doing in the rooms and how long that takes, whether visiting all the rooms is necessary, whether your game is exploratory or puzzley, whether each room is chock full of content or relatively terse...

All that said, 105 does seem like a big number.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2140&start=0#p14623
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A woolen mat
User: whoiscraig / DateTime: 2011-03-13 04:51:28

Inform doesn't natively understand what 'under' is. You have to program an under relation: this is explained in Chapter 6.6 of the Recipe Book  6.6. Looking Under and Hiding

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2140&start=0#p14624
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A woolen mat
User: Icefall / DateTime: 2011-03-13 04:54:22

Thanks a lot. I'll check that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2125&start=10#p14625
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Question: Locale Priorities
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-03-13 05:40:12

[quote="matt w"]Can you put "[conditional paragraph break]" in before the "can also see" stuff? Line breaks confuse me too, and I'm not quite sure what "conditional paragraph break" actually does, but it sounds like it might help if you could figure out where they go.[/quote]
Unfortunately, in this context it seems to do exactly the same thing as [line break].

[quote="matt w"]Ron may or may not be checking this (I forget if he's at PAX), so you might want to let him know about the CLM bug.[/quote]
I'll shoot him an email.

[quote="StJohnLimbo"]Further experimentation revealed that this can be fixed by adding the following code:[/quote]
Thank you. I'll be replacing the default for this one anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2133&start=0#p14626
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making "go left" correspond to the player's position [In
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-03-13 05:41:47

[quote="matt w"]Pacian implemented the left/right/forward/backward system very well in "Rogue of the Multiverse," in TADS3; he might have some insight about the issues involved.[/quote]
I didn't actually map relative directions onto compass directions, though.  Each room has a four-element array of exits (in clockwise order), which are assigned to forward/left/right/back depending on which one you're coming from.  

Building on compass directions probably would have been easier, but this represented how I wanted to see the layout in my own head.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2137&start=0#p14627
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How do you adapt existing story for Text Adventure style
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-03-13 07:17:50

[quote]I feel anyone willing to look up that simple mis-fact is a Searcher and should have some good resources.[/quote]

Erm, why do you keep calling it a mis-fact if it's already proven to be a fact? And incidently, Danni gave examples of later Infocom games, but if you look at the package from Deadline, it already uses the term. It was part of their sales pitch, on the back of any package. It was also part of their attempt to bring an extra dimension to adventure games, which is easily seen by comparing Deadline (or Starcross, both being '82 titles) to the rest of the IF of the period, mostly Scott Addamses which represented the staple in the genre that Infocom was trying to add to.

But anyway. I was going to say a lot of stuff, but Jim beat me to it. I can only add that what you can try to do is adapt the *concept* from some static fiction story and start developing it as IF. Then, as you develop, you'll surely realise that the interactivity brings new possibilities that you simply wouldn't get if you just tried to port SF (static fiction) to IF. Similarly, if you did try to do a straight port, you'll run into a lot of difficulties - what's happening in this scene? Exposition and internal monologue. Try to port THAT straight into IF and you'll end up with boring screens of text, more likely than not.

Here's a forinstance. When I was interested in making games (now I'm just interested in making them) I got my girlfriend to write up a story (I like her stories) I could adapt into IF. I knew it could be done *if* I were to adapt it to the conventions of IF - the need for continual action, having the *player* trigger the narrative, hinting towards a certain action, disallowing others. I knew it would be a linear game, but since it was so story-driven, it was a deliberate attempt to use the interaction in IF solely for greater immeresion, and not for puzzles or for branching the story. She gave me a .doc file. From that file I selected room descriptions, object descriptions, actions; I chose rooms, I envisioned connecting rooms, I made a mental map. I came up with ways to encourage the player to take the actions I WANTED him to take, but I damned well filled that room with all the things that WEREN't necessary for the story at the moment YET, but were physically there for the player and had to be dealt with.

She cursed a lot at me, because she still wanted to write all the text (which she did with my blessing) and found she had to write replies to "take wind" and "kiss me" and "attack cliffs". [emote]:)[/emote]

Anyway - long-winded post, ended up with little substance apart from a personal experience. Sorry about that, hope it's in any way useful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2141&start=0#p14628
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Indiana Jones puzzle
User: Icefall / DateTime: 2011-03-13 07:41:17

How do I do the Indiana Jones puzzle: If player takes a ball he dies. But if he puts a meat on the pedestal before he takes the ball, he succees?


[code]

Blue room is a room.
A pedestal is in blue room.
On the pedestal is a ball.
A Ball is a thing.

A meat is a thing.
The meat is carried by player.

[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2132&start=0#p14629
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Killing players.
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-03-13 07:50:51

When you give the guard the regular apple, flashing red letters should fill the screen, screaming 'FUTURE IN JEOPARDY!!! FUTURE IN JEOPARDY!!!'

Less dumberly, I don't think having the delayed unwinabble result is inherently bad, it's just a fact that in 95% of contexts, it will piss players off. You either have to create a context for the whole game that's amenable to this kind of savagery, or find a friendlier solution. Since it seems from this topic that you're polling to see what people think of this situation, and what possible solutions might be, the whole vibe you're giving off suggests you're interested in finding the friendlier solution.

Somebody mentioned the fight with the guard. I think that kind of thing is a good strategy. If there's a moment that must be handled in one way to avoid the unwinnable state, each time the player acts against it, throw up another situation immediately that needs dealing with , which may lead back to the thing you wanted them to do initially, or an equivalent. This will strongly suggest to them 'YOU REALLY NEED TO DO THIS'...

If they go all out to fight against, say, 3 such 'strong suggestion situations' in a row, that demonstrates a bloody-mindedness on their part where you can say, 'Well, now you deserver to lose...' And perhaps the player who did that will actually not be so pissed off when they later hit the unwinnable state. After all, the game went all out to signal them, and for whatever reasons, they fobbed it off repeatedly. They may even smile ruefully.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2138&start=0#p14630
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How long is too long?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-03-13 08:23:05

One answer: If you make good use of 105 rooms, it's the right number for you.

Another answer: For a first IF, 105 sounds like a ton of rooms. A huge amount of work to do. By current trends, it's also a lot of rooms (IE most games atm don't have anywhere near that.) I would go smaller, unless there's lot of walking through empty but atmospheric rooms in your game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2138&start=0#p14631
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How long is too long?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-03-13 09:50:27

As others already have said, this is a question with several possible answers.

105 rooms does seem like a lot.

Maybe the game you have in mind is really huge. In that case, it might be a good idea to do something smaller first. That's the conventional wisdom, because for most people that means a larger chance of actually finishing the thing. But maybe you're the kind of person for which a huge project is a better fit than something small. (I'm not really a small project person myself. Each project I've started has taken years to finish.)

But when I read that you wrote "105 rooms", my first thought was that your game probably will be better if you cut most of those. There are better ways to give a feeling of distance or space than including lots of rooms. Especially if they are (mostly) empty. That's likely to bore the player. But then again, you may have an excellent reason for all those rooms to exist. Just don't do it without thinking about it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2142&start=0#p14632
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Real-time parsing I7 demo
User: joningold / DateTime: 2011-03-13 10:26:01

I've put together a working demo of real-time parsing of input for Inform 7, which gives the player feedback on how the game will understand what they type as they type it, including spell-correction via suggestions.

I've [url=http://threeedgedsword.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/a-proposal-for-an-intelligent-if-interface/#more-13]written some notes about it on my blog[/url], but you play the demo online [url=http://www.archimedes.plus.com/public/textdemo/play.html]here[/url]. The [url=http://www.archimedes.plus.com//public/textdemo/The%20Wilds%20Of%20Orkney.gblorb]gblorb[/url] is also available.

Comments and feedback welcome here or on [url=http://threeedgedsword.wordpress.com/]threeedgedsword[/url]. 

Note, the system currently doesn't do anything sensible when the player's answering disambiguation prompts; I'll look at this next.

The whole thing should available as an I7 extension eventually, which you can simply include to enable functionality.

cheers!
jon

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2142&start=0#p14633
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Real-time parsing I7 demo
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-03-13 10:58:09

This is bloody impressive. I usually find ADRIFT's version auto-correction annoying, but this one if fine, and the feeling of added control is remarkable.

Much quicker than I expected, too, but I still wonder if it wouldn't be a bit hefty for some web releases.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2137&start=0#p14634
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How do you adapt existing story for Text Adventure style
User: John Phoenix / DateTime: 2011-03-13 11:01:16

Thanks Jim and Peter. Your insight is helpful. 

 I said "mis-fact" because I purposely misstated a fact.  This is a psychological tool. I use it for fun and cunning. It causes people to get their druthers in a dander and respond to the post emotionally. There is s sense of " I've got to prove to this yahoo where he went wrong". Drop these things in your posts to gain information and usually, If the true answer is not so easily shown as Danni did, you can play this card over and over to get more hard searched emotional responses from people.

I'm just kind of twisted that way, but mean no harm.

I have noticed Emily Short if a popular IF writer and even helped develop Inform though I haven't played any of her games. I will look up her blog to see if she has insight into this matter.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2137&start=0#p14635
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How do you adapt existing story for Text Adventure style
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-03-13 11:06:04

Doing that for the purposes you're describing sounds a lot like "trolling", or at least playing to an unpleasant side of people. You are obviously no troll, but nevertheless, if I were you I'd take it easy on purposefully poisoning conversations.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2141&start=0#p14636
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indiana Jones puzzle
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-03-13 11:11:17

For this, you want to write an Instead rule. In writing the rule, you need to be very logical. Here's a simple version that I whipped up:
[code]The Test Lab is a room.

The pedestal is in the Lab. A golden sphere is on the pedestal. The player carries meat. The indefinite article of the meat is "some".

Instead of taking the sphere:
	if the sphere is not on the pedestal:
		continue the action;
	otherwise if the meat is on the pedestal:
		continue the action;
	end the story saying "Knives shoot out of the wall and slice you apart!"[/code]

Also, by the way, you don't need to write "A ball is a thing" or "A meat is a thing." Inform will figure that out without being told. You only need to add that sentence when the thing starts the game off-stage, and is later brought into play.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2139&start=0#p14637
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dropping one leaf from a bunch of leaves
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-03-13 11:38:40

How about making the single leaf part of the pile? Here's how I'd do it:
[code]The Forest Glade is a room. The Meadow is south of the Glade.

The pile of leaves is in the Glade. The pile is fixed in place.

Instead of taking the pile:
	if the player carries the armload-of-leaves:
		say "You've already got an armload of leaves.";
	otherwise:
		now the player carries the armload-of-leaves;
		now the leaf is part of the armload-of-leaves;
		say "You scoop up an armload of leaves."

An armload-of-leaves is a thing. Understand "armload", "of", "bunch", and "leaves" as the armload-of-leaves. The printed name of armload-of-leaves is "armload of leaves".

Instead of dropping the armload-of-leaves:
	if the location is the Glade:
		remove the armload-of-leaves from play;
		say "You dump the leaves back into the pile.";
	otherwise:
		continue the action.

A leaf is part of the pile.

Instead of taking the leaf:
	if the player carries the armload-of-leaves:
		say "You've already got a whole armload of leaves.";
	otherwise:
		now the player carries the leaf;
		say "You select a single perfect leaf from the pile."
		
After going in the Forest Glade:
	if the player carries the armload-of-leaves:
		now the leaf is part of the armload-of-leaves;
		
Instead of dropping the leaf:
	if the player carries the armload-of-leaves:
		now the player carries the leaf;
		continue the action.

After dropping the leaf:
	if the player is in the Glade:
		say "You drop [leaf-article] leaf, and it drifts back onto the pile.";
		now the leaf is part of the pile of leaves;
	otherwise:
		say "You drop [leaf-article] leaf, and the wind picks it up and carries it away.";
		if the armload-of-leaves is enclosed by a room:
			now the leaf is part of the armload-of-leaves;
		otherwise:
			now the leaf is part of the pile of leaves.
			
To say leaf-article:
	if the player carries the armload-of-leaves:
		say "a";
	otherwise:
		say "the".[/code]
Getting all the circumstances right is not easy, and I may have missed something, but it seems to do what you're talking about.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2141&start=0#p14638
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indiana Jones puzzle
User: Icefall / DateTime: 2011-03-13 12:16:11

In some month's I haven't opened inform at all, and now when I try to remember what I did in the start of the year, I found this topic. I tried to execute the example, but I got an error:

[i]
This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6G60) on its most recent run through:


Problem. The phrase or rule definition 'Instead of taking the sphere'   is written using the 'colon and indentation' syntax for its 'if's, 'repeat's and 'while's, where blocks of phrases grouped together are indented one tab step inward from the 'if ...:' or similar phrase to which they belong. But the tabs here seem to be misaligned, and I can't determine the structure. The first phrase going awry in the definition seems to be 'if the sphere is not on the pedestal'  , in case that helps. 

This sometimes happens even when the code looks about right, to the eye, if rows of spaces have been used to indent phrases instead of tabs.[/i]

If I remember correctly, I have had this kind of errors when I try to copy/paste codes from the forum. How these can be fixed?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2137&start=0#p14639
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How do you adapt existing story for Text Adventure style
User: John Phoenix / DateTime: 2011-03-13 13:59:35

Understood Peter but you only look at it as if I am "poisoning conversations" because I let you in on the trick. It's harmless. If people feel they have an emotional investment in something they are more apt to be strong willed in their convictions. People may not like being tricked like that you may assume but I think people secretly love it. People are tricked in games all the time - they play games to be tricked. People allow themselves to be tricked every day in real world situations willingly. They believe what their doctors and politicians tell them and never research if they are being told the truth or not.

As far as writing goes, practicing these types of things helps keep the mind sharp. Here we digress greatly from the theme of this topic.

Emily Short has a lot of good info on her blog found here: <a class="postlink" href="http://emshort.wordpress.com/">http://emshort.wordpress.com/</a> I think I will write her and ask her if she has any advice on this topic to go with yours and Jim's advice.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=10#p14640
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Genstein / DateTime: 2011-03-13 14:20:12

Hot on the heels of the previous release, [url=http://trizbort.genstein.net/#download]version 1.2[/url] of Trizbort is now out.

This is a major update to Trizbort. The [url=http://trizbort.genstein.net/history.html]full release notes[/url] are online, but most significantly the new version has a [url=http://trizbort.genstein.net/help/help.php]complete online user guide[/url]; supports automapping from game transcripts; exports to Inform 7, TADS and Inform 6; doesn't have select/draw modes any more and features a mini-map, scroll bars (finally), a list of recently used maps on the File menu and assorted other tweaks and fixes.

As always let me know what you think, and what you'd like to see next, either here, on rec.*.int-fiction, or by e-mail (my address is on the Trizbort web site). Questions, bug reports and suggestions are most welcome.

If anyone finds that the new version induces a burning desire to shower me with copper coins, you're welcome to either consult a reputable physician or press the Donate button on [url=http://trizbort.genstein.net/index.php#feedback]the web site[/url].

All the best,

        -eg.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2133&start=0#p14641
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making "go left" correspond to the player's position [In
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-03-13 14:33:30

This may be overkill or currently unnecessary, and it looks like the extension hasn't been changed in a few years, but you might also be interested in Directional Facing by Tim Pittman: <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/Tim%20Pittman/Directional%20Facing/index.html">http://inform7.com/extensions/Tim%20Pit ... index.html</a> .

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2125&start=10#p14642
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Question: Locale Priorities
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-03-13 14:49:22

My WIP uses TRD with a different person; the code required to make it work with David Fisher's CLM (which I think means it should work with Ron's as well) is as follows:

[code]When play begins:  
	now the current-topic-sentences-table is the Table of NBS;
	now the current-room-content-table is the Table of NRCD.

Rule for writing a topic sentence about an introduceable as-yet-unknown thing (called special-target)   which is not in the location:
	if the special-target is initially-described, make no decision;
	if the special-target is flexibly-described, make no decision;
	change the current-subject to special-target;
	let special-exterior be the holder of the special-target; 
	say "[You] can see [a special-target] [in-on special-exterior as a possibly-known item]. [run paragraph on]".

Table of NBS
disclosure 
"[if the current-subject is a person][The current-subject] [is-are] here. [otherwise][You] can see [a current-subject] here. [end if]".

Table of NRCD
disclosure 
"[You] can [optional also]see [a list of mentionable things in the current-subject] [if current-subject is the location]here[otherwise]in [the current-subject][end if]. ".[/code]

I'm not going to get to it right away, but I've made a mental note that it would be nice to re-section Tailored Room Descriptions in such a way that it will dovetail politely with CLM. (Or if anyone else wants to do this, they are welcome.) I had the impression that I was the only user, so it wasn't high on my priority list.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=10#p14643
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-03-13 14:53:06

Automapping? Yay! My most favourite feature of all!

I'll have to test-drive 1.2, but before I do - congratulations. What looked at first like an idle project of an IF enthusiast has grown and, if automapping works as well as IFMapper's, has become my mapper of choice. I've certainly stopped using GUEMap.

EDIT - I particularly like the ">see" feature, it even allows me to quickly make notes to the map without leaving the game (I know you meant it only for objects... hey, if you like, you can even add that as an extra feature - a separate "notes" section, to which with automapping could be added notes starting with ">note" or whatever). Just a couple of questions.

I haven't tested it yet - how do you propose automapping would behave in mazes? IFMapper just throws an error and says automapping isn't possible. Dooes Trizbort gamely try to map as well as it can? Does it - can it - take into account objects dropped to diferentiate?

Also, "Muder in Aero Club" gives the same problem as in IFMapper - possibly because the first room is called "Car park" instead of "Cark Park". I mean, I *think* the issue is the capitalization. You might want to tweak it so that even games with less standard room names (not all of them Have Every Letter Capitalised) get recognised by Trizbort.

Finally, I'd suggest you allow the user to tweak the options in automap even while automapping is going on. Sure, it's easy enough to STOP and START it again, but all the same...

...and now that I've said all this... congratulations, I love it! Seems to work wonders.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2125&start=10#p14644
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Question: Locale Priorities
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-03-13 15:37:34

[quote="emshort"]I had the impression that I was the only user, so it wasn't high on my priority list.[/quote]
I think Tailored Room Description may be overkill for my purposes, if that takes the pressure off.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2142&start=0#p14645
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Real-time parsing I7 demo
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-03-13 18:23:50

It looks like you're using character input. It would be interesting to try using using normal line input and glk_set_echo_line_event()... it might be smoother.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2139&start=0#p14646
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dropping one leaf from a bunch of leaves
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-03-13 19:06:24

Thanks a lot Jim. The example has a few little bugs when run, but before I even ran it, I stared at it for quite a while and it seems that the 'part of' business is likely to be the solution to the problem. And the basic logic is in your code, so I will try this out in my game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=10#p14647
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Genstein / DateTime: 2011-03-13 19:42:56

Hi Peter,

Glad you like it [emote]:)[/emote] That note command is a damned good idea - that's going into the next version. I like the idea of tweaking properties whilst automapping too.

Mazes are tricky and Trizbort doesn't hand them well whilst automapping, though it should be stable and reasonably consistent. In classic mazes where the room names and descriptions are the same in each room, it will most likely create the whole maze as one room with looping connections back onto itself. Once you're completely done with automapping you can of course rearrange the map as you see fit, but if you then automap in the same Trizbort map again it'll probably get confused and make the wrong exits from the wrong parts of the maze, or ask you to disambiguate between "Maze" and "Maze". Not particularly good.

I like the idea of trying to get Trizbort to disambiguate based on objects dropped in the room. I guess I'm not sure how many mazes still work that way, though most of the ones I've played do. I might look at that for the next version. It might require some user intervention, such as flagging rooms as "this is part of maze", so Trizbort knows to start hazarding wilder guesses based on the transcript. I'll think on it.

You're right, irritatingly "Car park" fails one of Trizbort's "it could be a room name" tests by one letter [emote]:)[/emote] It doesn't mind 1-3 letter words being uncapitalised, but at four or more letters it expects it. I could just up this to four (or more), but I'd need to gather a larger corpus of transcripts to be sure I didn't just make things worse for the majority of games at the expense of the minority. Good call though.

Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated!

        -eg.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2143&start=0#p14648
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Players Bill of Rights - does Inform 7 support?
User: John Phoenix / DateTime: 2011-03-13 22:56:34

I have been reading The Craft of Adventure and find the Players Bill of Rights interesting.

( Found under Other Works on Graham Nelson's Wikipedia page <a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Nelson">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Nelson</a>

Direct link: <a class="postlink" href="http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/info/Craft.Of.Adventure.pdf">http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/ ... enture.pdf</a> )

My question is since Gram Nelson invented Inform, and wrote the Players Bill of Rights, is Inform coded in such a way as to make you adhere to the Players Bill of Rights, or at least make it easier for you to stay within the Players Bill of Rights rules?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2143&start=0#p14649
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Players Bill of Rights - does Inform 7 support?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-03-13 23:25:54

Almost all of these are design choices - the only thing authors don't have a powerful hand in is the "decent parser" bit.  It is certainly possible to make a game adhering to the bill of rights, but it's not inherent to the system.  Quite a few of the things listed are pure puzzle design - the admonition not to expect unlikely things, for instance.  

A lot of the things being protested against require active work on the part of the author (and possibly a beta team) to fix.  I7 is all I've used, so I can't compare it to other systems, but I'd say that features like easy synonym creation are aimed at making it easier for authors to make fair games.  And none of them leap out as difficult inherently - a lot depends on the game you're programming.  But it still requires a boat load of work.  

I can also think of a half dozen exceptions to the rules that actually work pretty well, so I think it boils down to asking authors to consider their work from players' perspectives, and be kind to those players.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2143&start=0#p14650
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Players Bill of Rights - does Inform 7 support?
User: John Phoenix / DateTime: 2011-03-14 00:06:44

Thank you for your reply gravel. 

I didn't think the system was designed that way but wanted to be sure.

 I agree with your last statement, " I can also think of a half dozen exceptions to the rules that actually work pretty well, so I think it boils down to asking authors to consider their work from players' perspectives, and be kind to those players."

I have seen some of those things in games and depending on the context they worked pretty well. I'm trying to read everything I can about the ins and outs of writing IF so I can formulate the best approach I'm comfortable with. Some types of writing like screenplays can follow rigid formulas that are proven to work well. These formulas are expected to be seen by potential movie makers. I assume all genres have their own style in this sense. . I have played IF since the 80's and am finding writing IF is far removed from any other popular style of writing - the same rules do not apply.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2080&start=0#p14651
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2011
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2011-03-14 00:16:14

I'm out after all, I'm afraid.  I set my sights too high, and I just can't complete and polish this in time.

Good luck to everyone in the competition!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=20#p14652
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2011-03-14 00:25:02

Aaron,
this looks like an awesome approach.  I'm pretty far into my first game and I've done something like this with several of your extensions as well as those from other sources.  How much trouble do you think I'm gonna run into switching to this mega pack?  (Or maybe that's the purpose of this soft launch.)

Here's what I currently use:
[code]Section - Extensions 

[ Requires Z8 or larger story file to compile]

Include Exit Lister by Eric Eve.	[ Display exits in status bar ]
Include Keyword Interface by Aaron Reed.	[ Highlight objects in text ]
Include Measured Liquid by Emily Short.	[ Overkill for Bourbon & Cola? ]
Include Telephones by George Tryfonas.	[ Not fully  implemented   ]
Include Menus by Emily Short.	[ Basic help & hint system ]

[ Extensions to help with parsing errors.  They also make the game larger ]
Include Extended Grammar by Aaron Reed. 
Include Small Kindnesses by Aaron Reed. 

[ Source of  "I didn't understand that number" errors -- maybe this is now fixed ]
Include Numbered Disambiguation Choices by Aaron Reed. 

Include Assumed Conversers by Michael Martin. [ Ask About defaults ]
[ Though it does not disambiguate ASK ABOUT Topic with multiple NPCs ]
[ Doesn't work properly with objects - possibly worth skipping ]

[ Note - Smarter Parser requires Glulx interpreter ]
Include Smarter Parser by Aaron Reed. 
Include Poor Man's Mistype by Aaron Reed.    
[/code]
If you'd like me to test it I can, but I may need to get the game to a safer state before I do so.
--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">http://www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2143&start=0#p14653
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Players Bill of Rights - does Inform 7 support?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-03-14 02:25:40

My suggestion is you start making your game and find your own approach in the process, rather than try to work out a pile of theories in advance and subject your ideas to them - especially if you haven't made one game yet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2118&start=0#p14654
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: web browser interpreters
User: xie / DateTime: 2011-03-14 02:26:07

thank you both. this has been helpful - especially that blog post.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=20#p14655
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-03-14 03:24:07

[quote="Genstein"]You're right, irritatingly "Car park" fails one of Trizbort's "it could be a room name" tests by one letter [emote]:)[/emote] It doesn't mind 1-3 letter words being uncapitalised, but at four or more letters it expects it. I could just up this to four (or more), but I'd need to gather a larger corpus of transcripts to be sure I didn't just make things worse for the majority of games at the expense of the minority. Good call though.[/quote]

Of course there are always exceptions, and there's always games that do it "their own way" - I'd just like to ensure that your great feature would work as well on a standard game as on a game with, for instance, room descriptions like "By the Cherry Tree farm" - only capitalising the first letter.

Incidently, I haven't yet tested, but how would Trizbort react to automapping, say, Moonmist? 

[quote]>e
(You are in your bedroom.)
Your room is decorated in shades of y and yellow. You see your bathroom to the north and a cozy fireplace in one corner. The room is furnished with a bed, a night table with a lamp on it, a chest of drawers, a wardrobe, a wing chair, and a dressing table with mirror and bench. There's also a full-length wall mirror.
On your bed you see your luggage.

>w
(You are in the gallery.)
The gallery spans the top of the double stairways. You can go east to your bedroom or west to Vivien's bedroom. Hallways lead to the northeast and northwest. On the wall is a series of oil paintings of Lord Jack's ancestors.[/quote]

I suspect it wouldn't map very well. On one hand, it's enough of an exception for you to possibly not worry about it; on the other hand, it's not unfeasible that someone might emulate that style; on the third hand (which is to say, on the foot), the vast, vast, vast majority still uses a "One Line, Capitalised" standard.

I don't expect you to magically have to sort everything out, I'm just showing you the non-standards, in case you didn't think of them, so you can draw a line in your mind saying "THIS is reasonable for automapping, and THIS is not, because I'm not a magic worker".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2142&start=0#p14656
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Real-time parsing I7 demo
User: joningold / DateTime: 2011-03-14 03:56:52

[quote="Dannii"]It looks like you're using character input. It would be interesting to try using using normal line input and glk_set_echo_line_event()... it might be smoother.[/quote]

How would that work? I need to run the parser repeatedly during input: doesn't line input wait until the Return key is pressed before proceeding?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2142&start=0#p14657
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Real-time parsing I7 demo
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-03-14 04:49:54

Not if you cancel it early. <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quixe/play-remote.html?story=stories/inputfeaturetest.ulx.js">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quix ... est.ulx.js</a> shows how the features work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2142&start=0#p14658
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Real-time parsing I7 demo
User: joningold / DateTime: 2011-03-14 05:31:56

[quote="Dannii"]Not if you cancel it early. <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quixe/play-remote.html?story=stories/inputfeaturetest.ulx.js">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quix ... est.ulx.js</a> shows how the features work.[/quote]

A-ha... that's very interesting. Shouldn't be too hard to put in, either. Thanks for the tip!

cheers
jon

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2143&start=0#p14659
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Players Bill of Rights - does Inform 7 support?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-03-14 08:18:34

I don't think it's a bad idea to read around and find out what resonates with you.  Nor is it a bad idea to have *some* idea what the genre expectations tend towards.  (It's a pretty old article, so some of the things Graham talks about have shifted; some have not.)

I mean, if an enterprising designer decides to put a maze into his/her IF game, I wouldn't want beta to be the first time he/she discovers that those have fallen somewhat out of favor.  

I'd say particular rules are unimportant in comparison to what they tell you about the experience that Graham (and many players) want to have with an IF.  They're specifics, which are helpful, but they're really just extensions of a couple general principles: the player shouldn't have to wrestle with the game, the game should represent its winnability in a fair way, the designer should be on the side of the player rather than designing to screw them over.  And that may mean making a very American game, or having little freedom, or any number of things, but the designer should be aware of the issues those bring up for many players so that the game can represent itself to players fairly (so people feel good about their choice to play), and perhaps address some of the problems with those particular strategies (so players aren't unfairly broadsides by, say, the expectation that you know how baseball works).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2139&start=0#p14660
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dropping one leaf from a bunch of leaves
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-14 08:40:53

I wonder if the Multitudes extension I'm working on would be useful to you. It contains code for parsing and managing an individual item which is part of a collective (although in my case, you can't take the collective).

If you have any suggestions for the extension I'd like to hear them.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.eyeballsun.org/i/Multitudes.i7x">http://www.eyeballsun.org/i/Multitudes.i7x</a>

It requires Conditional Backdrops, which is a very short extension:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.eyeballsun.org/i/Conditional%20Backdrops.i7x">http://www.eyeballsun.org/i/Conditional%20Backdrops.i7x</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2099&start=0#p14661
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Testing extensions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-14 08:51:49

Thanks for directing me to your work, Roger. I think I'm going to use it, and I hope you'll keep developing it.

One question: Why are expected outputs entered as regular expressions? Since you can fix the random number seed during testing, wouldn't you want every output to be an exact match?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2144&start=0#p14662
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Conflict between table column and object property
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-14 10:05:07

Is this a bug?

[code]A test is a kind of thing. 
  A test has a number called the index.

Table of Executions
Index
a number
with 100 blank rows

When play begins:
	sort the Table of Executions in index order;

There is a room.[/code]
[quote]Problem. You wrote 'sort the Table of Executions in index order'  , which I tried to match against several possible phrase definitions. None of them worked.
I was trying to match one of these phrases:

1. sort (table of executions - table name) in (index - table column) order 
2. sort (table of executions - list of objects) in (index - property) order 
3. sort (table of executions in index order - list of values) 
This was what I found out:

Table of Executions = a table name
index = a numbers valued property
Table of Executions in index order = something unrecognised[/quote]
Clearly, phrase #1 should have matched, but it didn't. Perhaps phrase #2 is causing a conflict, but I don't really understand what that syntax is supposed to achieve. Can someone explain this?

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2142&start=0#p14663
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Real-time parsing I7 demo
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-03-14 10:07:18

Only special (non-alpha) keys are allowed as line terminators, so line input won't be canceled early unless the player presses one of the function keys or the equivalent.

For your purposes, where you want the parser to check the entry as it is typed, character input seems to be the best fit.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2099&start=0#p14664
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Testing extensions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-14 10:14:00

I've managed to eliminate the need for the Table of Scripts...

[code]Check allasserting:
	if there are no tests, say "There are no tests!" instead.

Carry out allasserting:
	Blank out the whole of Table of Executions;
	Repeat with item running through tests:
		Choose a blank row in Table of Executions;
		now the test-index entry is the index of item;
	sort the Table of Executions in reverse test-index order;
	write File of Scripts from the Table of Executions;
	reboot.
[/code]
For some reason, using the same name for the "index" column of the Table of Extensions as the "index" property of a test causes a conflict when sorting the table, so I also had to rename the column to "test-index." But otherwise I think this works as advertised - just number your tests in the order you want them to be executed and this will take care of the rest.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2099&start=0#p14665
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Testing extensions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-14 10:20:20

Also, it looks like the "order" column in test step tables is completely unused. Were you planning to do something with that, or were you in the process of removing it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2145&start=0#p14666
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: How to change the implicit opening a door default phrase?
User: torpedo48 / DateTime: 2011-03-14 10:29:40

Hi everyone, 

I'm new to the world of IF, so please be patient with me  [emote]:D[/emote] 
How can I change the "(first opening [the noun])" default phrase in IF7? I'd like to translate it in my own language.

Thanks for your help!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2137&start=0#p14667
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How do you adapt existing story for Text Adventure style
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-03-14 10:51:37

Yeah, I think you might want to pull back from that awesome psychological trick.  I haven't noticed any shortage of, uh, "strong willed convictions" even without provocation.  And creating work for people to do (to prove stuff you already know) means there's less time to talk about stuff we don't know yet.  

On topic, I think about half the trick of moving a short story to IF is choosing the right one.  For a practice game, you probably want something *very* short; short stories can pack a movie's worth of material in them, and a movie's worth of material in IF is a full-length game (and then some).  You want something action-based - an introspective short story is much harder to translate into IF and will give you less practice with everyday tools.  There are ways to manage the pacing of games, especially short ones - limit the options you give players, trigger events, suggest things to do.  They don't solve everything, but they help.  

You might find it helpful to look at stories that are still raw and unworked - first hand accounts, or urban legends, or other not fully fleshed fiction.  Not only does this help with copyright, but it means you'll do way less "translation" between genres.  If you're drawn to traditional puzzle-based IF, you might consider a story drawn from explorers - Lewis and Clark or David Livingstone or any of the expeditions up Mt. Everest could provide a wealth of inspiration for both puzzle setup and general exposition without chaining you to a narrative that doesn't work.  Myths or fairytales could give you some of the same framework without too much detail - the facts and story arc of Cinderella are pretty constant, but you could do a lot within that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2099&start=0#p14668
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Testing extensions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-14 11:07:25

I'm on a roll with this! I have now set it up so that the vm doesn't reboot if you only do one test. I've also given tests a "prerequisite" property, so you can specify that one test runs before another test, like a skein branch. And I've added the handle test response rule to the after printing a parser error rulebook so you can test the output for parser errors as well as successfully parsed lines. Now all that's left is out-of-world actions like score...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2137&start=0#p14669
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How do you adapt existing story for Text Adventure style
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-03-14 11:12:08

[quote="John Phoenix"]I said "mis-fact" because I purposely misstated a fact.  This is a psychological tool. I use it for fun and cunning.[/quote]

You come here with your begging bowl out, asking for [i]remedial [/i]advice ... and you want to be abusive to those who might help you?

Woo. Stay classy, firebird.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2132&start=10#p14670
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Killing players.
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-03-14 11:25:27

[quote="Flack"]From a design perspective, which of the three options do you all think work best?

Consider the following scenario: to get past a a hungry NPC, players could give the NPC either a regular apple, or a poison apple. The idea is that if the player gives the NPC the apple, the NPC will still be there guarding the same area when the player returns. If given the poison apple, the NPC would get sick, and not be there (the desired result). Here are three different ways I've thought about handling this:

01. If the player gives the NPC the regular apple. end the game. This seems a little harsh because, at the time, it seems like a pretty logical choice. 

02. Prevent the player from giving the NPC the regular apple. This prevents you from putting the game in a later unwinnable state, but the thing is, it's a logical action. Technically either apple would satisfy the NPC's hunger, but only the poison one makes it to where he's not around later, preventing your escape.

03. Allow the player to give the regular apple to the NPC. This is the most "realistic" choice, but this puts the game in an unwinnable state at the halfway point, meaning players might play another 30 minutes only to discover their original blunder. I'm guessing most people wouldn't care for that.

How have people handled this in the past, and what are your thoughts (as both authors and players) on these types of situations?[/quote]

04. Allow the player to give the regular apple to the NPC. But the supply of apples is not limited to 1.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2132&start=10#p14671
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Killing players.
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-03-14 11:27:46

[quote="Flack"]Let me describe a better game scenario.

Consider a bank heist. Access to the bank's vault is being blocked by a hungry guard, and the player possesses both a regular apple, and a poison apple. Since the guard is hungry, it stands to reason that he would accept either item. So the player gives the guard an apple, and is allowed to enter the vault. Inside the vault, an alarm sounds and the player must quickly escape. My idea was that if you had given the guard the regular apple, he would still be standing there and nab you -- whereas had you given him the poison apple, he would have become sick and left his post.[/quote]

Poison apple makes escape easy. Non-poison apple makes escape more difficult. Neither need put the game in an unwinnable state.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2146&start=0#p14672
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: When the turn sequence is interrupted
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-14 11:34:13

What are all the situations where the turn sequence rulebook fails to reach the end? And at what point do they stop? And how is it determined?

I know that a parser error will cause the turn sequence to stop. In this case I assume that the last rulebook to run is the "after printing a parser error" rulebook. Is that right?

I also know that actions out-of-world skip the Before and After rulebooks, as well as ending the turn sequence early. Is the "report [action]" rulebook the last one to run? Is there a way to have something happen after an out-of-world action of any kind has completed?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2132&start=10#p14673
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Killing players.
User: riktik / DateTime: 2011-03-14 11:38:11

[quote="Ghalev"]
04. Allow the player to give the regular apple to the NPC. But the supply of apples is not limited to 1.[/quote]

yup, this is the best option, the guard is hungry and loves apples, he could eat tons of apple they are healty. No player should complain with this solution.

and... let the player eat apples as well, kill the player if he eats a poisoned apple.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2145&start=0#p14674
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to change the implicit opening a door default phrase
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-14 11:43:53

There are a few ways.

You could replace this rule:

[code]Check an actor going (this is the can't go through closed doors rule):
	if the door gone through is not nothing and the door gone through is closed:
		issue library message going action number 28 for the door gone through;
		silently try the actor opening the door gone through;
		if the door gone through is open, continue the action;
		stop the action.
[/code]

Or you could use one of the various levels of library-message-replacement extensions that are available now. The simplest one is probably Default Messages by Ron Newcomb. You'd use it like this:

[code]Table of custom library messages (continued)
library-action	library-message-id	library-message-text
the going action	28	"(recklessly slamming the door open before you proceed)"[/code]

If you have a specific door that should behave differently from the others, you might use a Before or Instead rule:

[code]Before going through the closed blue door:
	say "You push cautiously against the door... [run paragraph on]";
	silently try opening the blue door;
	if the blue door is open, say "it opens!";
	otherwise stop the action.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2137&start=10#p14675
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How do you adapt existing story for Text Adventure style
User: riktik / DateTime: 2011-03-14 11:48:31

[quote="John Phoenix"]
I want to pick out a short story from the net and adapt it to Text Adventure style.
I need tips and tricks. How to split up the story to fit into the right text adventure bits and pieces?[/quote]

you're not the first one [emote];)[/emote] . Look at this example <a class="postlink" href="http://www.avventuretestuali.com/avventure/cyclops">http://www.avventuretestuali.com/avventure/cyclops</a>

It should answer your question, even if I dont belive there is a magical formula to do it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2144&start=0#p14676
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conflict between table column and object property
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-03-14 11:56:23

Looks to me like "index" is a reserved word. Change it to "indexo" and the game compiles.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2125&start=10#p14677
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Question: Locale Priorities
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-14 12:00:54

Apparently I should pay more attention to threads with Newbie in the title.  

At the moment, several Going lines in CLM need be replaced:
[code]

Going action		8	"[The person asked] [aux][go*] up[ignore library line break]"
Going action		9	"[The person asked] [aux][go*] down[ignore library line break]"
Going action		10	"[The person asked] [aux][go*] [noun][ignore library line break]"
Going action		11	"[The person asked] [aux]arriv[e-s] from above[ignore library line break]"
Going action		12	"[The person asked] [aux]arriv[e-s] from below[ignore library line break]"
Going action		13	"[The person asked] [aux]arriv[e-s] from the [library message object][ignore library line break]"
Going action		14	"[The person asked] [aux]arriv[e-s][ignore library line break]"
Going action		15	"[The person asked] [aux]arriv[e-s] at [the library message object] from above[ignore library line break]"
Going action		16	"[The person asked] [aux]arriv[e-s] at [the library message object] from below[ignore library line break]"
Going action		17	"[The person asked] [aux]arriv[e-s] at [the library message object] from the [second library message object][ignore library line break]" 
Going action		18	"[The person asked] [aux][go*] through [the library message object][ignore library line break]"
Going action		19	"[The person asked] [aux]arriv[e-s] from [the library message object][ignore library line break]"
Going action		20	"on [the library message object]"
Going action		21	"in [the library message object]"
Going action		22	", pushing [the library message object] in front, and [us] along too[ignore library line break]"
Going action		23	", pushing [the library message object] in front[ignore library line break]"
Going action		24	", pushing [the library message object] away[ignore library line break]"
Going action		25	", pushing [the library message object] in[ignore library line break]"
Going action		26	", taking [us] along[ignore library line break]"
[/code]
It's surprising they all need the [ignore] when most actions don't, but whatever. 

But using arrive[-s] instead of arriv[e-s] was a total brain fart on my part.  

I'll poke around with the c-also-see rule's linebreaking next.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2145&start=0#p14678
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to change the implicit opening a door default phrase
User: torpedo48 / DateTime: 2011-03-14 12:03:24

First of all, many thanks for your answers.

I think I've understood how the second method works (while the first remains a mistery for now  [emote]:oops:[/emote] ); unfortunately I'm already using the Italian extension by Massimo Stella, which seems to be incompatible with Default Messages by Ron Newcomb (that's because Italian is based on Custom Library Messages by David Fisher).

I've no idea about how to modify a default message there.

Italian extension uses this syntax:

[code]Table of library messages (continued)
Message Id						Message Text
LibMsg <report implicit take>				"(prima prendi [the % dobj])"[/code]

How do I know which is the message id I want to modify? 

Hope I've explained myself well, thanks for your patience  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2142&start=0#p14679
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Real-time parsing I7 demo
User: joningold / DateTime: 2011-03-14 12:12:59

[quote="bcressey"]Only special (non-alpha) keys are allowed as line terminators, so line input won't be canceled early unless the player presses one of the function keys or the equivalent.

For your purposes, where you want the parser to check the entry as it is typed, character input seems to be the best fit.[/quote]

Some brief looking into this over lunch makes me think,yeah, character input is the way to go, so that when the player presses the space key I can use that input directly without having to start and stop the line-input every few milliseconds to see if anything's happened.

That said, what I was doing was just using VM_KeyDelay() and I can probably smooth the whole thing out a bit by writing my own version which doesn't turn off the character input event when it goes off to do some parsing.

Expect v2 in a few days! [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2138&start=0#p14680
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How long is too long?
User: riktik / DateTime: 2011-03-14 12:17:12

I think the problem isn't the number of rooms but if they're interesting or not.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2132&start=10#p14681
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Killing players.
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-03-14 12:25:29

The idea that a hungry guard would accept food from a stranger while on duty strikes me as completely ridiculous. If that isn't the first thing they teach you in Vault Security 101, it's surely somewhere on the syllabus.

I would recommend a puzzle more in keeping with the scenario. Perhaps the player could execute a hostage every turn until the guard surrenders? Or kidnap his wife and kids, or blackmail him with something sordid.

The problem with the choice of apple vs. poisoned apple is that it's an exercise in reading the designer's mind. It's not an obvious choice to make and it's not obvious what the repercussions will be either way. Punishing the player with an unwinnable state is not justified in those circumstances.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2099&start=0#p14682
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Testing extensions
User: Roger / DateTime: 2011-03-14 12:35:22

Sounds like you're making good use of it!

I don't recall exactly why I decided to go with regular expression matching, actually.  I guess the extra functionality doesn't hurt, per se -- you can still test for an exact match if you want, of course.  Hmmm.

You can fork the development into your own extension, of course.  Or if you think it'd be better to keep it all together, let me know and we can, at some point, incorporate your improvements and release it as a new version (I /think/ extensions allow for multiple authors to be credited, but I'm not entirely sure.)



Cheers,
Roger

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2144&start=0#p14683
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conflict between table column and object property
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-14 13:00:00

The example works if you change either the property or the table column to something else. But it's fine for either one of them to be "index."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2138&start=0#p14684
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How long is too long?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-03-14 13:42:48

[quote="whoiscraig"]I'm in the process of planning/writing my first work of Interactive Fiction now, and after planning it out a bit I realised it would have 105 rooms. Now my question is, what's the average number of rooms for an IF? Is this too big? Should I downscale it a bit since this my first IF project?[/quote]

To add to the chorus: the average number of rooms for an IF is not a useful or valuable number for determining quality or making design decisions.

A work should have the number of rooms that it needs to remain awesome.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2099&start=0#p14685
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Testing extensions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-14 14:34:33

[quote="Roger"]You can fork the development into your own extension, of course.  Or if you think it'd be better to keep it all together, let me know and we can, at some point, incorporate your improvements and release it as a new version (I /think/ extensions allow for multiple authors to be credited, but I'm not entirely sure.)[/quote]
No, extensions are supposed to have only one author in the identifier. Authors are, of course, encouraged to credit all contributors in the documentation.

If you're planning to come back to this yourself, I would definitely prefer to avoid a fork. If you're not able to weigh in on design decisions while I'm fiddling with the extension, I will probably keep my version semi-private for the time being. My preference is for you to remain as the primary author.

For practical reasons, all the extensions I'm working on can be found here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.eyeballsun.org/i/">http://www.eyeballsun.org/i/</a>

These are under version control and are updated pretty frequently. If you'd like to collaborate with me, you can always go there to see my latest check-in, and I'm always open to input on how to keep the extension in sync with your own work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2147&start=0#p14686
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Is there an automapper for playing Z5 (Z Code) games?
User: John Phoenix / DateTime: 2011-03-14 14:47:46

I know a few tools have automappers built in.. and Inform 7 does, but as far as I can tell it's only for help in writing IF, not playing. I'm looking for an application that will create a map as I play the game. Is there an application like that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2145&start=0#p14687
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to change the implicit opening a door default phrase
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-14 15:10:54

It looks to me like David Fisher's CLM doesn't have a message for implicitly opening a door. If I were you I would talk to Massimo Stella about an update...

To explain the rule-replacement I referred to before: What I posted was copied and pasted from the Standard Rules. To change it, you'd need to write something like this:

[code]Check an actor going (this is the Italian can't go through closed doors rule):
	if the door gone through is not nothing and the door gone through is closed:
		say "(Prima di aprire [the door gone through])"; 
		silently try the actor opening the door gone through;
		if the door gone through is open, continue the action;
		stop the action.

The Italian can't go through closed doors rule is listed instead of the can't go through closed doors rule in the check going rulebook.
[/code]
Please forgive my use of Google Translate! I don't know if that is the correct phrase.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2142&start=0#p14688
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Real-time parsing I7 demo
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-14 15:11:02

[quote]Only special (non-alpha) keys are allowed as line terminators, so line input won't be canceled early unless the player presses one of the function keys or the equivalent.[/quote]

You could set up a timer with maybe a quarter-second interval, and re-parse if the input has changed since the last timer event.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2145&start=0#p14689
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to change the implicit opening a door default phrase
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-03-14 15:40:36

Yes, I think there were a couple of library messages added to Inform after David Fisher stopped maintaining the extension. (At least the stand up before going rule in the check going rulebook will produce a message that is nor captured by Fisher's CLM).

[code]Check an actor going when the actor is on a supporter (called the chaise) (this is the Italian stand up before going rule):
    say "(<Italian for 'first getting off [the chaise]'>) [paragraph break]";
    silently try the actor exiting.

The Italian stand up before going rule is listed instead of the stand up before going rule in the check going rulebook.[/code]

(I suppose there should be a paragraph break there – shouldn't it?)

Or you could simply unlist the can't go through closed doors rule and stand up before going rule, so player's will have to get off supporters and open doors explicitly.

[code]The can't go through closed doors rule is not listed in any rulebook.[/code]

However:
I note that all translation extensions (German, Spanish, Italian) except French – which does not depend on Custom Library Messages or Default Library Messages by David Fisher - are gone from the I7 extension site.
Maybe there has been a request from the Inform developers of a general update of these or something ...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2145&start=0#p14690
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to change the implicit opening a door default phrase
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-14 15:54:07

[code]Table of library messages (continued)
Message Id						Message Text
LibMsg <report implicit take>				"(prima prendi [the % dobj])"[/code]

Try (amended) like so in your game. It should override the Italian extension.  (Wasn't that a movie? har-har)

[code]Table of library messages (amended)
Message Id						Message Text
LibMsg <report implicit take>				"(prima prendi [the % dobj])"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2144&start=0#p14691
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conflict between table column and object property
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-14 15:58:12

Yeah, that's a bug.  If the property & column have the same name the problem still appears, so it's not just an issue with the word "index".  And the to-phrases really should have figured that situation out.  Please report it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2125&start=10#p14692
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Question: Locale Priorities
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-14 16:48:22

I can't seem to find any problems with line-breaking with that rule.  I tried it with numerous objects, some with initial appearances, some with writing-a-paragraph-about rules, some with neither for "She could also see a horse there."  No problems found.  Can someone create an example demonstrating it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2128&start=0#p14693
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How do you feel about my tree?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-03-14 17:01:37

Lovely.  The colors are a bit unrealistic on my screen, but in a storybook-ish way that I think works well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2138&start=0#p14694
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How long is too long?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-03-14 17:09:35

Density is the crucial metric here.  Even if your desired setting is somewhere where a lot of trudging around would happen in real life, consider making some player shortcuts.  For example, after the first time traversing ten "rooms" of open field to get between the farm house and the post office, simply print something like "([i]After walking for an hour, you reach...[/i]) [b]The Post Office[/b]," increment the turn counter accordingly, and move on.  Unless your goal is actually to punish your player for forgetting some item back at the post office, in which case you probably still want to have a hard look at whether that's helping you achieve your ludological or narrative goals.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2125&start=20#p14695
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Question: Locale Priorities
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-03-14 17:25:00

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Apparently I should pay more attention to threads with Newbie in the title.[/quote]
It does seem that I am too much of a newbie to realise what is advanced behaviour in Inform.  [emote]:([/emote] 

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]I can't seem to find any problems with line-breaking with that rule.  I tried it with numerous objects, some with initial appearances, some with writing-a-paragraph-about rules, some with neither for "She could also see a horse there."  No problems found.  Can someone create an example demonstrating it?[/quote]
Try this:
[code]"Test Game" by "C.E.J. Pacian"

Include Custom Library Messages by Ron Newcomb.

The Vague Room is a room.  "What a roomy room!"

The Other Room is east of the Vague Room.  "Bit cramped in here."

The apple is a thing in the Other Room.

The handsome fellow is a man in the vague room.

Every turn:
	if the location of the handsome fellow is not the location of the player:
		now the handsome fellow is in the location of the player;
		say "The handsome fellow comes too."

After choosing notable locale objects:
	if the handsome fellow is a notable-object listed in the Table of Locale Priorities:
		now the handsome fellow is mentioned.
      [This prevents the fellow from being printed twice.]

The list-the-sidekick rule is listed after the I-could-also-see rule in the for printing the locale description rules.
[The list-the-sidekick rule is listed after the you-can-also-see rule in the for printing the locale description rules.]

This is the list-the-sidekick rule:
	if the location of the handsome fellow is the location of the player:
		say "As always, there's your trusty sidekick, the handsome fellow.";
	continue the activity.[/code]
Results in:

[quote]Test Game
An Interactive Fiction by C.E.J. Pacian
Release 1 / Serial number 110314 / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N) SD

[b]Vague Room[/b]
What a roomy room!

As always, there's your trusty sidekick, the handsome fellow.

>e

[b]Other Room[/b]
Bit cramped in here.

I could see an apple there.

The handsome fellow comes too.

>l
[b]Other Room[/b]
Bit cramped in here.

I could see an apple there.
As always, there's your trusty sidekick, the handsome fellow.

>[/quote]
Comment out "Include Custom Library Messages by Ron Newcomb", swap I-could-also-see for you-can-also-see, and the game is the same, except the last command results in:

[quote]>l
[b]Other Room[/b]
Bit cramped in here.

You can see an apple here.

As always, there's your trusty sidekick, the handsome fellow.

>[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2142&start=0#p14696
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Real-time parsing I7 demo
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-03-14 17:47:27

The problem with using character input is that you'll be emulating what interpreters do naturally, and you'll never be able to emulate it perfectly. There'll be some situation when it doesn't work as people expect, maybe you won't be able to select text, or move the cursor or copy a command. Using the Glk 0.7.1 features lets you use real line input while also intercepting it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2147&start=0#p14697
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Is there an automapper for playing Z5 (Z Code) games?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-03-14 18:19:33

What a coincidence. [emote]:)[/emote] Trizbort 1.2 has just been released, and it does just that. Check it out. <a class="postlink" href="http://trizbort.genstein.net/index.php#overview">http://trizbort.genstein.net/index.php#overview</a>

Alternatively, you can look at IFMapper.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2125&start=20#p14698
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Question: Locale Priorities
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-14 19:11:45

And that would be the case I did not think to test. [emote]:)[/emote]  For Looking action #6 we need to add [i][ignore library line break][paragraph break][/i] to the very end of it, like this:
[code]Looking action		6	"[if the library message object is not the location].[otherwise if the story tense is in any past tense] there.[otherwise] here.[end if][ignore library line break][paragraph break]"
[/code]
Furthermore, this[code]The list-the-sidekick rule is listed last in the for printing the locale description rules.[/code]works both with and without CLM.

Combined with the fix for Mark Tilford's observation that [i]say "[The player] saw [the player]."[/i] doesn't work outside of 2nd person, I'm about ready to release version 4 of CLM.  (But I think I'll let it bake a few days to see if more issues crop up.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2144&start=0#p14699
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conflict between table column and object property
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-14 21:49:26

Reported!

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=613">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=613</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2137&start=10#p14700
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How do you adapt existing story for Text Adventure style
User: two-star / DateTime: 2011-03-14 22:20:26

Relatedly, last summer I started working on an IF game, and when I was unsatisfied with where it was going, I decided to write a write a short story as a way of deepening my understanding of the character and setting. Hopefully I'll eventually get back to the game, and if I do, I think it will be better for my having undertaken the exercise. Meanwhile, I've gotten a short story out of it. I also think that static fiction set in the universe of an IF game could be a good way to get people without prior IF experience engaged enough to want to climb the IF learning curve.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2148&start=0#p14701
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Background image change for Erik Temple's Automapping
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-03-14 23:40:45

I'm using Erik's automapping in a test demo which is pictured below. I'd like to see if there is a way that I could change the automap's background image, depending on what location you're in, or even call up an new image during some part of the story. Admittedly, figuring out a way to do this is pretty much beyond my limited knowledge of Inform7 at this point, so I'm not even sure where I would start. Or how I would fold it into the existing code.

Could a simple Table be made, which would call up a background image to replace the current one, depending on what location you were in--and/or could a scene also be triggered to replace the current background image using a Table or some other method?

Any ideas, suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[img]http://rive-fantasy.com/UIautomap.jpg[/img]

[code]Section - Automapping

Figure of Map is the file "Figure of Map.jpeg".

The measurement of the map-window is 300.[This sets the window split to 310 pixels. You might want to use a different value, of course.]

The initial zoom level of the Glimmr Automap Tileset is 1.

Element scaling the map-background:
   let coords be the center-point of the map-canvas;
   now entry 1 of the origin of map-background is entry 1 of the coords;
   now entry 2 of the origin of map-background is entry 2 of the coords.
   
map-background is a sprite. The display-layer is 0. The image-ID is Figure of Map.

Element scaling rule for the map-background:
	rule succeeds.[We don't need to do the standard scaling, so skip it to save time.]

Element display rule for the map-background:
	let win_width be the width of the map-window;
	let win_height be the height of the map-window;
	let img_width be the image-width of the image-ID of map-background;
	let img_height be the image-height of the image-ID of map-background;
	let scale_factor be 200;
	let width_factor be (win_width * 200) / img_width;
	let height_factor be (win_height * 200) / img_height;
	if width_factor is greater than height_factor:
		let scale_factor be height_factor;
	otherwise:
		let scale_factor be width_factor;
	let img_width be (img_width * scale_factor) / 200;
	let img_height be (img_height * scale_factor) / 200;
	let offset_width be the greater of 0 or (win_width - img_width) / 2;
	let offset_height be the greater of 0 or (win_height - img_height) / 2;
	display the image-ID of map-background in the map-window at (offset_width) by (offset_height) with dimensions (img_width) by (img_height).

 The background tint of the bitmap automap label is g-Black. The tint of the bitmap automap label is g-White.
 [/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2139&start=0#p14702
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dropping one leaf from a bunch of leaves
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-03-15 03:59:25

I had another look at your multitudes extension. I read about it earlier, but I confess I didn't really understand what it did. I have now read the documentation again, and still don't know entirely, but I have a better idea!

After adding the "part of" shtick to my arsenal, I was able to get all the programming for the leaf/leaves to work, so I think I'll be okay.

By the way, I'm surprised that inform is capable of slowing down a modern desktop computer in any circumstances (except super super extreme ones). You were saying multitudes was capable of inducing slowing in particular circumstances.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2149&start=0#p14703
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Seeking Beta Testers - "The Promise"
User: SeanHuxter / DateTime: 2011-03-15 05:57:15

"The Promise" is an Interactive Folk Tale in Three Acts.

The project has been in the works for just over a year, and I have had several Alpha testers working on it from the beginning. But it now is ready for full-on Beta testers.

The idea is to submit it for the Spring Thing, but due to a memory fault error on my part, I thought I had submitted my intent to enter, but did not. But there is hope. I may get in after all. Either way I am intending on releasing this game soon.

You play a young boy of nine who wakes up in his village on the day before your tenth birthday. You are asked to help out while most of the adults and able older children are on a hunting expedition. Your mother wants you to become a productive member of the village so she asks you to help the villagers out by offering your services to them during a day that starts out like most other days in your village - cold, perpetual winter. 

But as the day progresses you realize that this is no ordinary day, and you soon learn the value of a promise.

It is a longer game, fitting for the Spring Thing, but not the IF Comp (which has a two-hour playtime limit).

Please contact me at promise at huxter dot org, or sean at huxter dot org.

I am making feelies for the game - two "parchment" maps and a "parchment" letter sealed in wax. (Should you open it? Play the game.)

For this I carved a glass bead as a wax seal. I also carved an amulet from a beach rock (the in-game amulet) and I am considering plans to release replicas of that too, if I can find the right bakeable clay. (Sadly I can't release actual carved amulets because it would take me more than a full day to carve a single one.)

All testers get a credit in the game, so please let me know the name/pseudonym you would like used in the credit.

Thanks!

What? Who am I, you rightfully ask?

I'm Sean Huxter. I was a huge INFOCOM fan back in the day. In fact when I got my Commodore 64 in late 1982, I purchased it bundled with "SUSPENDED", by Infocom. I own almost every INFOCOM game available for the Commodore 128 (which I upgraded to specifically so I could play the later INFOCOM games such as "A Mind Forever Voyaging" and "Trinity" which were too large for the C64. I currently work as a Technical Artist for a computer game company, but am always working on personal computer gaming projects, including in 2009, a Bejeweled-like game in Assembler for the Commodore 64 playable under the GEOS operating system. Other than that I'm a huge toy collector and a 7-year contributor to the SyFy Channel's "Science Fiction Weekly" website (now merged with SyFy Wire.)

My only other IF game, written in the modern era, (I did write one in BASIC in 1985) is "Piracy 2.0", An Adventure in Space, based very much on the INFOCOM model and that original BASIC game, took fifth place in the 2008 IF Comp. Please check it out if you wish, but it is polar opposites from this current game/story.

Thanks!

Sean.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2142&start=10#p14704
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Real-time parsing I7 demo
User: joningold / DateTime: 2011-03-15 06:57:54

[quote="Dannii"]The problem with using character input is that you'll be emulating what interpreters do naturally, and you'll never be able to emulate it perfectly. There'll be some situation when it doesn't work as people expect, maybe you won't be able to select text, or move the cursor or copy a command. Using the Glk 0.7.1 features lets you use real line input while also intercepting it.[/quote]

Line input has a couple of big wins - I like that the player could be continuing to type while in the background I'm doing some processing on what the last glimpse of the input line was. That feels smoother. 

But I'm not sure how to best handle big changes between the old input line and the new, after a new "snapshot" is taken - particularly in handling the space-bar-to-accept-suggestions. What if they've deleted several characters and then pressed space? If I have to rerun the parser over the new input data it'll be harder to optimise so probably slower; it might lead to the game making invisible suggestions because they're only computed, and then written in, *after* the player has pressed the space key.

At the moment, I'm looking at using character input, and allowing command processing to be interrupted by the user pressing an additional key. Looking at it this way, it's a real shame that glk_select_poll can't recognise character input, as that would let me say "The user's pressed something, get on with handling that" but without having the pause the gameflow to do that. (I can do something similar using a 1 millisecond timer and a normal glk_select call, but I can't help feeling that introducing a deliberate delay is a weird way to speed things up.)

I'll probably get the current version stabilised and out there, and then look at a line input rewrite and see how it goes. If checking for changes in the input line is really fast, then potentially I could use it as a glorified character input anyway...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2130&start=0#p14705
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: IF tabs do not seem to be aligning.
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-03-15 08:55:13

I am almost ready to believe there is something strange going on. I tried the following and got:

	To Test Flashlight:
		if the flashlight is on: 
			say "A friendly sounding old voice says Better turn that thing off to save it for later";
		otherwise:
			say "Leaving it on is a good idea!".

Problem. The phrase or rule definition 'To Test Flashlight'   is written using the 'colon and indentation' syntax for its 'if's, 'repeat's and 'while's, where blocks of phrases grouped together are indented one tab step inward from the 'if ...:' or similar phrase to which they belong. But the tabs here seem to be misaligned, and I can't determine the structure. The first phrase going awry in the definition seems to be 'if the flashlight is on'  , in case that helps.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2142&start=10#p14706
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Real-time parsing I7 demo
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-03-15 08:58:37

You could also change from space to tab and setting tab as a line input terminator. I'm not sure why space can't be a terminator too though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2130&start=0#p14707
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: IF tabs do not seem to be aligning.
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-15 09:01:30

When you post these here, you need to wrap them in code tags, or your tabs will not be preserved. It's impossible to tell from these last two posts whether the indentation is correct, or indeed whether there is any indentation at all.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2142&start=10#p14708
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Real-time parsing I7 demo
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-15 09:03:26

[quote="Dannii"]You could also change from space to tab and setting tab as a line input terminator. I'm not sure why space can't be a terminator too though.[/quote]
Tab is not available for interrupt, is it? In any case, don't most interpreters hijack the tab key to use to move focus between windows?

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2142&start=10#p14709
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Real-time parsing I7 demo
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-03-15 09:07:32

I'm not sure.

Even if they do for character input, I think if a story file is specifically asking for tab to be a terminator they should do that rather than switch windows.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2139&start=0#p14710
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dropping one leaf from a bunch of leaves
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-15 09:21:31

[quote="severedhand"]I had another look at your multitudes extension. I read about it earlier, but I confess I didn't really understand what it did. I have now read the documentation again, and still don't know entirely, but I have a better idea![/quote]
I'd like to hear more detail, if you're willing. I strive to write good documentation but I don't know how often I succeed.

[quote]By the way, I'm surprised that inform is capable of slowing down a modern desktop computer in any circumstances (except super super extreme ones). You were saying multitudes was capable of inducing slowing in particular circumstances.[/quote]
Yes. It's a drag. Something's going on with the parser there. Yet another reason why I'd like to take a stab at rewriting the parser...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2130&start=0#p14711
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: IF tabs do not seem to be aligning.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-15 09:46:28

If you're saying "How do I get code tags?" there's a button for them above the box where you type your post. Hit the button, copy your code from the Inform development pane, and paste it in between the code tags, thus:

<code>code goes here</code>

The <> will show up as []. (If you like, you can also just type <code> </code>, replacing the angle brackets with square brackets.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2139&start=0#p14712
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dropping one leaf from a bunch of leaves
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-03-15 09:56:13

[quote="capmikee"][quote="severedhand"]I had another look at your multitudes extension. I read about it earlier, but I confess I didn't really understand what it did. I have now read the documentation again, and still don't know entirely, but I have a better idea![/quote]
I'd like to hear more detail, if you're willing. I strive to write good documentation but I don't know how often I succeed.[/quote]

After looking at the Quarry example code and running the test, and noticing how much functionality a person gets from the few lines of code, that's the moment I understood what it did.

I think your doc details are very good, but the capsule summary ("Provides a kind of backdrop representing a collection of objects, such as gravel or a crowd of people, that may spread across many rooms.") didn't sell me on what it did. I guess I think of any backdrop as spreading across many rooms. And "representing a collection of objects" doesn't sound like being able to have the player pull out and muck around with individual bits of gravel from a pile without the author having to program all the details. It sounds a bit abstruse.

So, while I'm only a sample space of one, I found the capsule summary of the extension and the first summarising paragraph in the documentation didn't sufficiently explain to me what the extension could do. (Allow the player to manipulate individual bits of the backdrop)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2130&start=0#p14713
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: IF tabs do not seem to be aligning.
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-03-15 09:56:26

Here is a test game that should compile.  Is this how you're aligning your tabs?

[code]The Basement is a room.
The flashlight is a device in the basement.  

To Test Flashlight:
	if the flashlight is switched on:
		say "A friendly sounding old voice says 'Better turn that thing off to save it for later.'";
	otherwise:
		say "Leaving it on is a good idea!".
		
Instead of examining the flashlight:
	test flashlight.[/code]

Edit: I made a small change to simplify the test case - "switched on" utilizes built-in properties of a device.

Edit edit: You won't be able to copy and paste directly from the code to the example.  You'll need to "quote" my post (button on lower right hand side of the post) and then copy from within the area marked <code> </code> (with square brackets).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2130&start=0#p14714
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: IF tabs do not seem to be aligning.
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-03-15 10:00:51

I think you have this:
[quote="wgm003"]
[code]
<tab>	To Test Flashlight:
<tab>	<tab>	if the flashlight is on: 
<tab>	<tab>	<tab>	say "A friendly sounding old voice says Better turn that thing off to save it for later";
<tab>	<tab>	otherwise:
<tab>	<tab>	<tab>	say "Leaving it on is a good idea!".
[/code]
[/quote]

When using "colon and indentation" Inform requires exactly one tab-stop before the first line of the code block (the code block is everything after the name of the phrase, i.e. everything after "To Test Flashlight:").
It seems that you have two tab-stops there.
This should work:
[code]
<tab>	To Test Flashlight:
<tab>	if the flashlight is on: 
<tab>	<tab>	say "A friendly sounding old voice says Better turn that thing off to save it for later";
<tab>	otherwise:
<tab>	<tab>	say "Leaving it on is a good idea!".
[/code]
(Inform doesn't care about the number of tab-stops before the phrase-name.)

Alternatively you could write:
[code]
	To Test Flashlight:
		if the flashlight is on, say "A friendly sounding old voice says Better turn that thing off to save it for later";
		otherwise say "Leaving it on is a good idea!".
[/code]
Which (I think) doesn't count as "colon and indentation syntax".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2145&start=0#p14715
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to change the implicit opening a door default phrase
User: torpedo48 / DateTime: 2011-03-15 10:12:56

[quote="capmikee"]It looks to me like David Fisher's CLM doesn't have a message for implicitly opening a door. If I were you I would talk to Massimo Stella about an update...[/quote]
I'll try to contact him and see if he's interested in such an update.

[quote="capmikee"]To explain the rule-replacement I referred to before: What I posted was copied and pasted from the Standard Rules. To change it, you'd need to write something like this:

[code]Check an actor going (this is the Italian can't go through closed doors rule):
	if the door gone through is not nothing and the door gone through is closed:
		say "(Prima di aprire [the door gone through])"; 
		silently try the actor opening the door gone through;
		if the door gone through is open, continue the action;
		stop the action.

The Italian can't go through closed doors rule is listed instead of the can't go through closed doors rule in the check going rulebook.
[/code]
[/quote]
[quote="Felix"]Or you could simply unlist the can't go through closed doors rule and stand up before going rule, so player's will have to get off supporters and open doors explicitly.[/quote]
[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Try (amended) like so in your game. It should override the Italian extension.[/quote]
I learned far more things about Inform 7 from these explanations than from the reading of the manual, thanks a lot to everyone!

[quote="capmikee"]Please forgive my use of Google Translate! I don't know if that is the correct phrase.[/quote]
Not exactly, but I appreciate your efforts  [emote]:D[/emote]  [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2150&start=0#p14716
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Port of Infocom games to SCI
User: gumby / DateTime: 2011-03-15 10:14:48

Hello all,

I'm currently in the process of porting Infocom games to SCI (Sierra's Creative Interpreter) - starting with Zork I.  My main goal in the project was to create a tool that could take any Infocom game be able to turn out SCI source code, which could then be compiled into a fully-working game.  The intent is to retain all original game-logic - I'm using the 'Reform' decompiler tool hosted at [url]http://www.darkweb.com/~benrg/if-decompilers/[/url] to accomplish this.

Initially, the project is focusing on simply porting the game into the SCI engine as 'text-only'.  As it matures, I hope to implement a 'first-person' style game (similar to Myst or 7th Guest) & then move on to a more 'traditional-style' Sierra game.  I've hacked together a simple demo, but it's not overly functional - mostly consists of room descriptions & placement of generic objects on-screen.  The project is currently hosted over at [url]http://www.sciprogramming.com[/url].

Any feedback would be appreciated!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2146&start=0#p14717
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: When the turn sequence is interrupted
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-03-15 10:31:37

From the index, the rulebook has these entries:
[list]Parse Command Rule
Generate Action Rule
(consider the scene changing rules)
Every Turn Stage Rule
Timed Events Rule
Advance Time Rule
Update Chronological Records Rule
(consider the scene changing rules)
Adjust Light Rule
Note Object Acquisitions Rule
Notify Score Changes Rule[/list:u]

Opening the Standard Rules, we see that, of the listed rules defined in I7, none makes a decision, so they cannot stop the Turn Sequence Rulebook.  As for those that are implemented in I6, the Standard Rules gives us routine names in lines like:
[code]The adjust light rule translates into I6 as "ADJUST_LIGHT_R".[/code]
Looking in the template layer, most of these routines end in rfalse, so they makes no decision (WI 25.19).  GENERATE_ACTION_R is an exception; it has these lines at then end:
[code]if (meta) { RulebookSucceeds(); rtrue; }
rfalse;[/code]
Searching the .i6t files for |meta| brings up these tidbits:
[quote]The global variable |meta| is set if the action is one marked as such in the I6 grammar. A confusion in the design of I6 is that being out of world, as we would say in I7 terms, is associated not with an action as such but with the command verb triggering it. (This in practice caused no trouble since we never used, say, the word SAVE for both saving the game and saving, I don't know, box top coupons.) The state of |meta| returned by the I6 parser does not quite correspond to I7's ``out of world'' concept, so we will alter it in a few cases.[/quote] and[quote]|##MistakeAction| is a valid I6 action, but not an I7 one. It is used to implement ``Understand ... as a mistake'', which provides a short-cut way for I7 source text to specify responses to mistaken guesses at the syntax expected for commands. It can therefore result from a whole variety of different commands, some of which might be flagged |meta|, others not.  We forcibly set the |meta| flag: a mistake in guessing the command always happens out of world.[/quote]
To summarize, the only thing (barring authorial intervention) that will stop the Turn Sequence Rulebook early is a mistake or an out-of-world action.  Parser errors are a somewhat different case: the parser will loop until it gets a valid input, running the Printing a Parser Error activity (and also the Constructing the Status Line activity twice, though nothing else) for each bad command.  So, strictly speaking, the Turn Sequence Rulebook isn't stopped by parser errors; it just processes more than one command before finishing.

For out-of-world actions, yes, the report rulebook is the last to run, unless you want to count things like the (rule succeeds) at the end of the Specific Action Processing Rulebook.  To make a rulebook act like ``after'' for out-of-world actions, you need to add a hook to the success of the Generate Action Rule, like this:
[code]There is a room.

The out-of-world after rulebook is a rulebook.
This is the revised generate action rule:
	follow the generate action rule;
	if rule succeeded:
		follow the out-of-world after rulebook;
		rule succeeds.
The revised generate action rule is listed instead of the generate action rule in the turn sequence rulebook.

Out-of-world after preferring sometimes abbreviated room descriptions:
	say "You just ran the out-of-world action 'brief.'"

Test me with "superbrief / brief / sing".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=20#p14718
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-03-15 10:43:56

[quote="Ron Newcomb"][quote="Laroquod"]I have never liked looking at those no-caps command lines one bit.[/quote]Doesn't the caps-lock button on your keyboard work?
:: is confused ::[/quote]
Like I expect most people do I leave it off for convenience, so I don't have to keep switching it when I switch apps. It shouldn't be up to me to hit a button every time I switch the app so the font will look nice. That's not good thinking on the part of the dev. The result is a big flaw in current interpreters, in terms of their visual design.

[quote="capmikee"]Thinking back, I think the reason player commands used to be in all-caps was that most people left caps-lock on when they were using their 8-bit computers. I don't remember how much case sensitivity there was in the OS, but it's possible that keywords and filenames had to be all-caps, so it didn't make sense to turn caps-lock off.

The practice of leaving caps-lock on continued for a while afterwards - remember how people on usenet and early web forums would get in trouble for "shouting" in all caps? I'm not sure it had anything to do with the code at all.[/quote]
There were a number of games in the old days when lower case first appeared, that assumed caps lock would be off, but would force certain things you typed into upper case, anyway. I much preferred that approach but it died.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2112&start=10#p14720
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What's the least memory intensive data structure in i7?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-03-15 11:00:18

Well I managed to get my MAX_STATIC_DATA requirement to zero. (literally I compiled it with Use MAX_STATIC_DATA of 0) And I didn't get rid of all the lists, either. I only got rid of the lists of kinds of value. I recoded them as individual property variables, essentially numbered 1, 2, and 3, although I didn't use numbers, the point is there are three sets of each property and the routines have been recoded to check three possible properties to get each value. This turned out to be better than coding as relations because of the text properties involved.

It really surprised me that getting rid of the lists of values reduced my MSD requirements to 0, especially since there are still plenty of lists of objects in my game. {object 1, object 2, object 3} like that. It appears that lists of values take up MAX_STATIC_DATA whereas lists of objects don't, or possibly there is something else going on I don't understand. (And kinds of value don't appear to require any STATIC_DATA by themselves, only in list form. Which is also confusing -- perhaps the compiler is silently ignoring my zero directive and setting a minimum value.)

At any rate, I'm very happy with the outcome.

I will fly by again, I'm sure, and ask a question, and maybe also let fly with another uncouth opinion.

Until that day! 8)

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2112&start=10#p14721
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What's the least memory intensive data structure in i7?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-15 11:05:41

Actually, your MAX_STATIC_DATA was not reduced to 0. Setting a constant using the "Use..." syntax will never set it lower than the default. In other words, the effect of setting MAX_STATIC_DATA to 0 is in fact to set it to the default value.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2112&start=10#p14722
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What's the least memory intensive data structure in i7?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-03-15 11:10:29

[quote="ektemple"]Actually, your MAX_STATIC_DATA was not reduced to 0. Setting a constant using the "Use..." syntax will never set it lower than the default. In other words, the effect of setting MAX_STATIC_DATA to 0 is in fact to set it to the default value.

--Erik[/quote]
Ah. Interesting to have that confirmed, thanks. By coincidence, I was adding that theory in an edit as you were typing this -- I mention it so ppl won't think your post was redundant or anything.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2151&start=0#p14723
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Standing testers
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-03-15 11:24:25

In SPAG 54 ([url]http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/backissues/spag54.html#reed[/url]), Aaron Reed suggests that games be tested early in development process, recommends finding a team and agreeing to play-test one another's games, especially longer games.

I am not to the point where I have anything to play test, but I wonder if anyone has tried this.  How has it gone?  

Are there people that would be interested in trying this? I imagine it would be a bit tricky, since I can't imagine testing long-term a project that had zero appeal, and it might be tricky to organize, but it seems like it's worth a try.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2115&start=0#p14724
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Game Release - "SNOW"
User: Tyk-Tok / DateTime: 2011-03-15 11:42:28

Hey guys, I want to thank you all for taking the time to give me feedback! I appreciate it all!

[spoiler]As to the door thing, I don't really know what to say, I haven't really experienced that problem, nor have I been able to in my playtests.[/spoiler]

But yeah, the responses I've gotten from you guys have been really informative, which has been nice! I'll be able to take these lessons and put it into revisions and new projects. I hope that you were able to take out the ideas from the game, though. If there are any more thoughts, please let me know!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=30#p14725
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-03-15 11:57:29

I've added a configuration option to Gargoyle to force input to uppercase. I got into the habit of entering commands in all caps when playing [i]Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom[/i] and quite like the effect.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2139&start=0#p14726
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dropping one leaf from a bunch of leaves
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-15 12:19:53

[quote="severedhand"]I think your doc details are very good, but the capsule summary ("Provides a kind of backdrop representing a collection of objects, such as gravel or a crowd of people, that may spread across many rooms.") didn't sell me on what it did. I guess I think of any backdrop as spreading across many rooms. And "representing a collection of objects" doesn't sound like being able to have the player pull out and muck around with individual bits of gravel from a pile without the author having to program all the details. It sounds a bit abstruse.

So, while I'm only a sample space of one, I found the capsule summary of the extension and the first summarising paragraph in the documentation didn't sufficiently explain to me what the extension could do. (Allow the player to manipulate individual bits of the backdrop)[/quote]
Thanks - that's very useful to know! Can I borrow your "manipulate individual bits of the backdrop" explanation?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2139&start=0#p14727
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dropping one leaf from a bunch of leaves
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-15 12:24:32

I have a plan for a second example, by the way, that will work out quite differently. Here's the scenario:

You're at a buffet table covered with pastries. Of course you can pick up pastries, eat them, and leave them lying around in other rooms. But at some point, you discover that there are roaches under the pastries, and the roaches start to spread to every room. The roaches are animals, so you can fight them and maybe even talk to them, but you can't pick them up - their spreading is determined by a mechanism beyond the player's control.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2139&start=0#p14728
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dropping one leaf from a bunch of leaves
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-15 12:31:54

How would this sound?

Allows the player to interact with individual parts of a backdrop, such as stones in a pile of gravel or characters in a crowd of people. The extension will keep track of how many there are in each room, even if the pieces are moved around.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2148&start=0#p14729
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Background image change for Erik Temple's Automapping
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-15 12:41:57

You could do this with a table, or a property, or a scene. The important thing is that you change the image-ID property to the figure name of the new location, before the window is redrawn. Here's how to do it with properties (the cleanest way, in my opinion):

[code]A room has a figure name called the background-image. The background-image is usually Figure of Zork. [This is the default background and will be shown for any room where you don't define a figure name specifically, e.g. The Round Room is a room. The background-image is Figure of Round Room.]

This is the background image updating rule: now the image-ID of the map-background is the background-image of the location.

The background image updating rule is listed before the graphic automap updating rule in the after constructing the status line rulebook.[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2146&start=0#p14730
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: When the turn sequence is interrupted
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-15 12:49:11

[quote="EmacsUser"][code]There is a room.

The out-of-world after rulebook is a rulebook.
This is the revised generate action rule:
	follow the generate action rule;
	if rule succeeded:
		follow the out-of-world after rulebook;
		rule succeeds.
The revised generate action rule is listed instead of the generate action rule in the turn sequence rulebook.

Out-of-world after preferring sometimes abbreviated room descriptions:
	say "You just ran the out-of-world action 'brief.'"

Test me with "superbrief / brief / sing".[/code][/quote]
That looks handy! Much cleaner than adding my rule to the report rulebook of every out-of-world action...

I also discovered that ending the game interrupts the turn sequence. It seemed like the best hook for handling that was "after printing the player's obituary" - handling the final question seemed to be too late.

And the reason for that, along with the problems I had with parser errors, was this: The Automated Testing extension that I'm fiddling with wants to capture text output before the vm starts collecting input again. So it turns out that the turn sequence isn't as important as when input is requested. I wonder if I could use "before reading a command" instead? It looks promising, but it seems to be messing with the code for manipulating the player's input - the first command in the test script gets lost.

I think I'm going to have to look into the asking which do you mean activity too...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2139&start=10#p14731
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dropping one leaf from a bunch of leaves
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-15 14:33:53

My two cents: What the extension does is allow the player to interact with a collection of objects that spreads across many rooms. It happens to do this using a backdrop, but maybe that shouldn't be what you emphasize about it. (NB in this, "Provides a kind of backdrop representing a collection of objects, such as gravel or a crowd of people, that may spread across many rooms," I think you meant "that may spread" to modify "objects," but severedhand naturally took it to modify "backdrop.")

So maybe you want to say this: "Gives a way to implement collections of objects that may spread across individual rooms, like stones in a pile of gravel. The player may interact with individual objects from the collection, and the extension will keep track of how many of these objects are in each room. The extension does this by implementing a new kind of backdrop." -- Modified for accuracy, of course.

--By the way, about slowdown, maybe it has something to do with dynamic object creation? "Under, in Erebus" had dynamic object creation (I'm pretty sure), and it seemed to slow down; I was playing it in Quixe where the slowdown became pretty catastrophic, but I heard from other people that it slowed down on the usual interpreters. 

Though on a look at your source, that probably isn't what's happening. Might be worth talking to Brian Rapp anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2137&start=10#p14732
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How do you adapt existing story for Text Adventure style
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2011-03-15 14:53:59

[quote="John Phoenix"](I don't use the term Interactive Fiction, INFOCOM didn't use it either. (look it up, they never called any of their games Interactive Fiction)  The IF term was made up by some geek who felt the need to coin a new phrase. I'd rather stay true to the masters.)[/quote]

Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy is termed "An Infocom interactive fiction".  Their early games were called "Interlogic" whatever that was supposed to mean.  They probably realized it was bogus and from then on started calling them Interactive mistery, Interactive sciece fiction etc.

It makes more sense than text adventure in that it is not necessarily an adventure and puts the focus on interactivity rather than the text medium.  And it's certainly all fiction.  Text adventure is pretty puerile and reminds me of an amusement ride through many rooms in caves full of treasures and dwarfs.  I can understand nostalgia, though...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2112&start=10#p14733
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What's the least memory intensive data structure in i7?
User: biggles2k / DateTime: 2011-03-15 15:17:43

[quote="matt w"]
...

BTW, does anyone know the name for the part of the wheelbarrow that you put things in?[/quote]

"Tray" and/or "bed":

  [url]http://www.madehow.com/Volume-5/Wheelbarrow.html[/url]
  [url]http://www.ehow.com/facts_5021784_parts-wheelbarrow.html[/url]

Hope this helps...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2146&start=0#p14734
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: When the turn sequence is interrupted
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-15 15:21:50

[quote]I also discovered that ending the game interrupts the turn sequence[/quote]

Ending the story (the I6 "deadflag" variable) is a special case. If its value changes, that will interrupt *any* rulebook in progress.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2139&start=10#p14735
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dropping one leaf from a bunch of leaves
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-15 15:27:02

[quote="matt w"]So maybe you want to say this: "Gives a way to implement collections of objects that may spread across individual rooms, like stones in a pile of gravel. The player may interact with individual objects from the collection, and the extension will keep track of how many of these objects are in each room. The extension does this by implementing a new kind of backdrop." -- Modified for accuracy, of course.[/quote]

[quote]--By the way, about slowdown, maybe it has something to do with dynamic object creation? "Under, in Erebus" had dynamic object creation (I'm pretty sure), and it seemed to slow down; I was playing it in Quixe where the slowdown became pretty catastrophic, but I heard from other people that it slowed down on the usual interpreters. [/quote]
No, there's no dynamic object creation. There's a restriction that the player can only ever interact with one instance of the collection. The speed problem is with an Understand line that uses a conditional relation. It seems to be testing every pair of objects in the world with every grammar line, or something on that order.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2142&start=10#p14736
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Real-time parsing I7 demo
User: joningold / DateTime: 2011-03-15 15:29:31

A quick update: I’ve released a version 2 of the example game, which should run substantially faster. 

On Quixe I now get a few flickering/missed key-strokes, but substantially less, but running the native blorb is pretty seamless.

Let me know if you run into problems and please note, I still haven’t looked at how to handle disambiguation prompts!

[url=http://www.archimedes.plus.com/public/textdemo/play.html]Quixe[/url]
[url=http://www.archimedes.plus.com//public/textdemo/The%20Wilds%20Of%20Orkney.gblorb]Gblorb[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2146&start=0#p14737
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: When the turn sequence is interrupted
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-15 15:32:38

Before Reading a Command seems to be the way to go. I figured out how to keep it from firing when there's no command to process yet.

The only hitch that I can see at this point is "undo." I'm not sure if there's much I could do to recover from that. In itself "undo" isn't much of a problem because the extension documentation can just tell users not to put undo, save, or restore in a test script. But I'm not sure if there are other commands that might cause similar havoc.

This whole business has got me curious about Hypothetical Questions. I might end up incorporating it somehow.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2139&start=10#p14738
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dropping one leaf from a bunch of leaves
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-15 15:40:56

[quote="capmikee"][quote="matt w"]So maybe you want to say this: "Gives a way to implement collections of objects that may spread across individual rooms, like stones in a pile of gravel. The player may interact with individual objects from the collection, and the extension will keep track of how many of these objects are in each room. The extension does this by implementing a new kind of backdrop." -- Modified for accuracy, of course.[/quote]

[quote]--By the way, about slowdown, maybe it has something to do with dynamic object creation? "Under, in Erebus" had dynamic object creation (I'm pretty sure), and it seemed to slow down; I was playing it in Quixe where the slowdown became pretty catastrophic, but I heard from other people that it slowed down on the usual interpreters. [/quote]
No, there's no dynamic object creation. There's a restriction that the player can only ever interact with one instance of the collection. The speed problem is with an Understand line that uses a conditional relation. It seems to be testing every pair of objects in the world with every grammar line, or something on that order.[/quote]

This one?

[code]Understand "[something related by specimen absence]" as a multitude when a visible multitude is abstract.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2139&start=10#p14739
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dropping one leaf from a bunch of leaves
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-15 16:28:05

[quote="matt w"]This one?

[code]Understand "[something related by specimen absence]" as a multitude when a visible multitude is abstract.
[/code][/quote]
Exactly. The "when" clause prevents it from happening most of the time, but if you leave your specimen in an inaccessible place, you'll notice that everything slows way down whenever you refer to something out of scope.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2125&start=20#p14740
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Question: Locale Priorities
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-03-15 16:33:59

Huzzah!  [emote]:D[/emote] 

Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2147&start=0#p14741
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Is there an automapper for playing Z5 (Z Code) games?
User: John Phoenix / DateTime: 2011-03-15 17:27:40

Awesome ! Thanks for the info !

Edit: 

 O.k. I looked at Trizbort and IFmapper and they are nice.. I may use them but they don't really work as I want them to.

I'm looking for a map feature that's built into the interrupter and will generate maps automatically as you play the game.

 This way, I won't have to worry about pausing to go to the map software and make a room with directions like I would have to for Trizbort and IFmapper.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=30#p14742
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-03-15 18:40:53

Zach-- yes, the soft launch is definitely to try to tease out some of these issues. [emote]:)[/emote]

I know "Keyword Interface" is still not 100% compatible yet, due to issues with how it and Custom Library Messages both set the style of parser error messages. The solution to this is mostly implemented, but still has a few holes such that if the player changes the style of parser messages the change might not be reflected. This is on my list of things to fix.

As far as I know, none of the rest of the extensions should conflict-- If you see anything that indicates otherwise, let me know.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2152&start=0#p14743
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: IFDB Installer doesn't work on Windows 7 (64-bit)?
User: Ryusui / DateTime: 2011-03-15 18:49:25

Anyone else have this problem where the IFDB installer claims it can't recognize your Windows version under Win7? (Might be a 64-bit-exclusive problem; I dunno...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2142&start=10#p14744
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Real-time parsing I7 demo
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-15 18:57:16

This is really cool.  [emote]:)[/emote]  

also, pressing the left arrow does something weird. It sticks a weird character onto the line and such.  I'm on Google Chrome with your above Quixe link.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2142&start=10#p14745
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Real-time parsing I7 demo
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-15 19:29:12

[quote="joningold"]A quick update: I’ve released a version 2 of the example game, which should run substantially faster. 

On Quixe I now get a few flickering/missed key-strokes, but substantially less[/quote]

I get a multisecond delay and spinning beachball after pressing return when running this second version in Firefox 3.6 (I've tried it on two Macs, one running 10.5.8, the other 10.6). I don't see that issue in Chrome on either machine.

[quote="joningold"]I still haven’t looked at how to handle disambiguation prompts![/quote]

This post discusses ways to ascertain whether you are disambiguating or answering a yes/no question from within VM_ReadKeyboard():

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1340&p=8175#p8175">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1340&p=8175#p8175</a>

An aside: You've already got pretty much got this completed, but if you were just starting, you might have founf the Glulx Input Loops extension useful (it lets you change the behavior of VM_ReadKeyboard pretty easily using I7 code).

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2139&start=10#p14746
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dropping one leaf from a bunch of leaves
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-03-15 19:48:36

Yeah, I think Matt's definition -

"Gives a way to implement collections of objects that may spread across individual rooms, like stones in a pile of gravel. The player may interact with individual objects from the collection ..." etc.

- is looking really good.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2139&start=10#p14747
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dropping one leaf from a bunch of leaves
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-15 20:20:12

In that case, could you both pm me with the names you would like used in the credits?  [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2151&start=0#p14748
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Standing testers
User: George / DateTime: 2011-03-15 20:37:56

In the few cases I've experienced (locally with Seattle IF, reading about it on Emily Short's blog, etc.) it seems to work quite well. One thing is that beta testers will come and go (I've been guilty of that a couple of times  [emote]:oops:[/emote] ), so it's good to plan for that somehow. 

For the record, your project appeals to me and I'd be happy to test it whenever you have something to test [emote]:)[/emote].

Speaking more in general about organizing a group, you could just start by posting alpha builds to the IF beta testing site. It's not normally done but if you're clear about what stage the game is at I think it'd be OK. Actually that might be an interesting addition to that site if its organizer was interested, a kind of beta testing club that used the beta testing site features for organization.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2153&start=0#p14749
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Time
User: ABTrottle / DateTime: 2011-03-15 20:47:21

Hey all, I recently started trying to figure out TADS3 and, frankly, I am succeeding at glacial speed!  That said, I was hoping for some general assistance on the following:  where can I go to learn how to break the game into time segments, i.e., Monday, Tuesday, etc.?  It is very possible that the answer to my question has been right in front of me along, but that would be par for the course.  Any help is appreciated.  Thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2139&start=10#p14751
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dropping one leaf from a bunch of leaves
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-15 20:59:47

[quote="capmikee"][quote="matt w"]This one?

[code]Understand "[something related by specimen absence]" as a multitude when a visible multitude is abstract.
[/code][/quote]
Exactly. The "when" clause prevents it from happening most of the time, but if you leave your specimen in an inaccessible place, you'll notice that everything slows way down whenever you refer to something out of scope.[/quote]

Hrm, I was wondering whether you could fix this by folding the "multitudinous" property into the understand token, but apparently you can understand "[a multitudinous thing]" and you can understand "[something related by specimen absence]" but you can't understand "[a multitudinous thing related by specimen absence]". Oh well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2132&start=10#p14752
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Killing players.
User: Flack / DateTime: 2011-03-15 21:34:33

Boy, everybody's hung up on the apples. I thought I kind of clarified that the apples were just an example in this scenario. My question has nothing to do with apples or poison -- the question was and is, "should you allow a player to make a move that renders a game unbeatable, should you prevent the player from making such a move, or should you kill the player immediately for making such a move?" It really has nothing to do with apples. Next you guys are going to be worried that the guard may have dentures and the apple may hurt his dental work!

If it helps at all, the puzzle is about trying to bribe a guard (and no, it's not at a bank). Of the two food items, one is candy, and the other is a rotten piece of food. When talking to the guard, it is revealed the brand of rotten food is indeed his favorite. Originally I was thinking that both pieces of food would get you past the hungry guard, but the rotten one would send the guard to the bathroom, which would help you return past the guard later. Based on this thread, I think what I will do is allow the guard to accept the candy, but not leave his post because of it.

I appreciate all the feedback and apologize if my scenario contained too many red herrings. If anyone, you guys will be the ones playing the game, so I didn't want to spoil one of the puzzles by posting too many details!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2142&start=10#p14753
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Real-time parsing I7 demo
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-15 21:35:16

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]pressing the left arrow does something weird. It sticks a weird character onto the line and such.  I'm on Google Chrome with your above Quixe link.[/quote]

I see the same character (the thorn) in Chrome, and also in Gargoyle. Odd characters are also added using the scroll wheel(!) in Gargoyle (latest release running on Mac OS 10.6).

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2132&start=10#p14754
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Killing players.
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-03-15 22:25:10

[quote="Flack"]Boy, everybody's hung up on the apples. I thought I kind of clarified that the apples were just an example in this scenario.[/quote]

You did. My answers were structural and in response to your core question; I don't care about the apples any more than you do.

[quote]the question was and is[/quote]

Yes. My answers stand. If they were unclear, I can simplify them for you. If you disagree with them, that's fine, but they are responses to your actual question and would stand no matter what props you choose.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2142&start=10#p14755
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Real-time parsing I7 demo
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-03-15 22:44:56

Gargoyle maps the scroll wheel to keycode_PageUp / keycode_PageDown during character input. The function keys produce similar anomalies.

Also, unsurprisingly, Delete gets remapped to keycode_Delete, which then works like Backspace.

I've never understood why Glk fails to distinguish the two. Maybe I'm showing my age, but I haven't used a computer where both were available and they didn't work as expected. Of course, the Mac keyboard calls backspace 'Delete', which muddies the waters a bit, but the underlying functionality is the same: there's a key that erases input to the left of the cursor, and possibly a key that erases input to the right of the cursor. It seems like we could add a keycode_DeleteRight without causing too much trouble.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2154&start=0#p14756
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Stating Direction(s) in description
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-03-15 23:05:08

First let me say, I have read all 34 pages of this forum (really) and looked at all the in editor docs to answer this before posting.

As I have seen in other worlds (such as Bronze) there is a way to give an items direction (N,S,E,W etc.) 

In Bronze it looks like:

"An iron-barred gate leads [gate direction]." in the source, which produces:

"An iron-barred gate leads north." in the game.

The best I can get without a compile error that states:

"Problem. In the line 'The printed name of a door is usually "a door to [other side][door direction]"'  , I was expecting that 'door direction' would be something to 'say', but it didn't look like any form of 'say' that I know. So I tried to read 'door direction' as a value of some kind (because it's legal to say values), but couldn't make sense of it that way."

Is:

"You can also see a door to Berth 11 and a door to Berth 12 here."

Using:

The printed name of a door is usually "a door to [other side]".

I have tried placing the [door direction] in other places... such as in the description, but continue to get the same error.  I picked Bronze apart looking for a clue, and I am sure I am missing something obvious.  But I can't seem to find it.  

What am I missing here?

Thanks for any help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2153&start=0#p14757
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Time
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-03-15 23:30:14

Have a look at the [url=http://code.google.com/p/garglk/source/browse/trunk/tads/tads3/lib/extensions/subtime.t]subtime.t[/url] extension, which should have come with your TADS 3 compiler.

It has a lengthy essay by MJR about keeping track of time in IF, and implements a timekeeping system like the one in [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=fq26p07f48ckfror]Christminster[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2154&start=0#p14759
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stating Direction(s) in description
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-03-16 01:26:45

The thread from a couple of days ago called "Making 'go left'..." gave me a clue. Try something like this:
[code]The Lab is a room. The iron door is a door. The iron door is south of the Lab and north of the Crypt. The printed name of the iron door is "door [direction of the iron door from the location]ward to [the other side]".[/code]
You may be able to adapt that idea to what you're trying to do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2142&start=10#p14760
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Real-time parsing I7 demo
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-03-16 02:26:26

On a very much less technical note:

With commands addressed to others (like "Anthuk, up"), the first word (the name of the person you address, e.g. "Anthuk"), is mapped to a verb ("attack" in the case of Anthuk). Adding a comma and a blank space will replace the comma with that verb (so "Anthuk, " results in "Anthukattack "). 

"Anthuk,up" (without the blank) works as expected, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2130&start=0#p14761
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: IF tabs do not seem to be aligning.
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-03-16 06:39:17

I round the problem. I had assumed the tab alignment was relative to the if statement and that the if could be anywhere. - Not so, the if must start in column 0(1). Not very conducive to good readable alignment, but if that is the way it has been designed then who am I to complain? [emote]:roll:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2132&start=10#p14762
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Killing players.
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-03-16 09:00:11

I think it is unfair to spring unmerciful game states on players without serious warning, preferably in the direct form of "You should know that this game can be made unwinnable." either at game start or in the about text.  Partly, this is because I am just that bad at puzzles; I don't want to worry about doing the right thing *and* spoiling the game.  An instant, undoable "game over" in case of a mistake is an acceptable substitution.

In the "overthinking it" category: I know it's just a puzzle, but any food rotten enough to make you throw up is more likely than not rotten enough to detect by smell or taste.  Real, undetectably food borne illness takes hours, usually a day, sometimes longer, to show up.  Combined with the fact that the guard might naturally be suspicious if he ate something and immediately got sick, I'd actually expect this choice to make escape harder rather than easier.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2132&start=10#p14763
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Killing players.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-16 10:19:49

[quote="gravel"]In the "overthinking it" category: I know it's just a puzzle, but any food rotten enough to make you throw up is more likely than not rotten enough to detect by smell or taste.  Real, undetectably food borne illness takes hours, usually a day, sometimes longer, to show up.  Combined with the fact that the guard might naturally be suspicious if he ate something and immediately got sick, I'd actually expect this choice to make escape harder rather than easier.[/quote]

Maybe one way to do this would be to make the magic piece of food a giant bag of Olestra-filled potato chips, or a really enormous box of chocolates, or something like that. By the time you come back, it's empty and the guard's in the bathroom. (This idea is inspired by a comic mystery story that I can't find right now.)

Really, the more you describe it the less I'm convinced that you should have the other piece of candy. The puzzle structure is something like "There's two things you can use to get past the guard, but using one puts the game in an unwinnable state that you'll discover much later, and that object has no purpose other than to set this trap." It sounds pretty cruel, unless the game has thoroughly set up the expectation that this sort of thing can happen. Puzzle-impaired folk like me often assume that if the game is letting us progress, we've done something right -- that we'll find some way to get past the guard even if it's not obvious now. 

(And I think I still subscribe to all my other remarks, especially the ones about The People's Revolutionary Text Adventure Game and multiple solutions and why being locked out of the best ending there wasn't so bad.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2154&start=0#p14764
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stating Direction(s) in description
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-03-16 11:32:47

Thanks!  That works if I put it in the individual door descriptions.  The only thing I don't like is then each is printed on a separate line with a blank line in-between.  

Using 'The printed name of a door is usually "a door to [other side]".' prints them all on one line with commas between them.

But hey, it works!  It is what I will use if I can't figure out how to do it the way I was trying to.

Thanks again!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2154&start=0#p14765
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stating Direction(s) in description
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-03-16 12:35:25

First, you need to use "item described" rather than "door" in the printed name:
[code]The printed name of a door is usually "door [item described direction] to [the other side]".[/code]

Second, Emily has defined a couple of custom phrases to do the job.

She has this say-phrase to say what direction a door is in:
[code]To say (item - a thing) direction: 
    let place be a random room; 
    let the place be the other side of the item; 
    if the place is visited, say "[way through the item] to [the place in lower case]"; 
    otherwise say "[way through the item]". 
[/code]
And this phrase to decide what that direction is:
[code]To decide what direction is the way through (threshold - a door): 
let far side be the other side of threshold; 
let way be the best route from the location to the far side, using even locked doors; 
if way is a direction, decide on the way; 
decide on inside.[/code]

If you haven't done that already, add those, and you should be able to make it work (I think).

-- EDIT
"[item described]" refers to the very object that has the text property that it occurs inside (very often, in other words, precisely the object that is described by that text).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=30#p14766
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-03-16 13:13:25

[quote="Laroquod"]It shouldn't be up to me to hit a button every time I switch the app so the font will look nice. That's not good thinking on the part of the dev. The result is a big flaw in current interpreters, in terms of their visual design.[/quote]

I think I'm younger than you, so it's not surprising that I disagree with you about what's visually nicer in this case: I don't associate all-caps with command line input, I associate it with ANGRY INTERNET SCREAMING.  I admit that I did use caps in the How-to-Play-IF card, but one of the major reasons I used the Arno typeface for it was that I could have a caption-proportioned font for the caps, since the standard proportions seemed overly aggressive to me.  I'm not sure if it would really [i]bother[/i] me if interpreters used capital letters for the input lines (if my fonts are antialiased and hinted properly and the colors aren't eye-searing, I'm pretty content), but I certainly don't mind lowercase and would think of caps as a bit atavistic.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=30#p14767
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-03-16 13:24:22

[quote="aaronius"]in general I'd be interested in hearing reasons of all sorts as to why you would NOT include this extension or one like it with your next Inform game.[/quote]

It looks like thorough and thoughtful work, Aaron, so: many thanks and keep it up. [emote]:)[/emote] 

To respond to your query, the two reasons I could think of, off the top of my head, are 1) the aforementioned z5 limitations, and 2) personally, my IF work tends to be kind of meta, and I think that leaving in a lot of the default messages is part of the aesthetic for me (which is not to say that I don't try to be good about synonyms and novel types of puzzles and such).  So far, my games have been blatantly made for people who are already familiar with the genre and its conventions, and subtle changes to the Graham Nelson phrasings are part of the in-jokes and cluing -- if you're not fairly used to IF, you're definitely not going to enjoy my (existing) games, and I don't think a friendlier parser is necessarily going to change that.  For future games, in which I'm potentially trying to make work for a more general audience, I will be much more likely to include this kind of extension.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2113&start=0#p14768
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: What do people think about adding a favicon?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-03-16 13:30:48

I like E best, with D as a close runner-up.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2110&start=20#p14769
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Use no scoring" as the default?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-03-16 13:55:05

[quote="Pacian"]I don't think there [i]can[/i] be an effective measure of progress in a game, though, unless it's absolutely narrow and linear.  The main reason games defy metrics is because much of their content is optional or conditional.[/quote]

I agree -- it would be easy to write a meter for [i]Photopia[/i], but how would one write a progress meter for [i]Aisle[/i] ("You have scored 1 point out of a possible 1, in 1 turn!"), or [i]Galatea[/i]?  Additionally, despite rigorous beta-testing, it can be very difficult to foresee which parts of a game are going to take a given player particularly long, and, it's still not going to help that player gauge the amount of time a game will take to play if they're told that some particular puzzle, which took them days to agonize over, was only 1% of the "play experience," when they had breezed by 50% with no trouble.  If anything, it's misleading.

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]I'd like to think of not having a progress meter as a distinct [i]advantage[/i]. In a book, you're always partly spoiled: the murderer cannot be the guy who is apprehended on page 130, because you still have 124 pages to go; the protagonist doesn't die in the car crash, because you're only halfway through the book (and you have seen his name come up in the rest when you were thumbing through it, trying to find the page you stopped reading last night.)[/quote]

I agree.  Having just finished [i]Infinite Jest[/i], [very mild spoiler for [i]IJ[/i]], [spoiler]I was somewhat delighted that the thick wad of end notes had totally foiled my ability to guess at where the plot was going, since I had sort of subconsciously assumed I had another fifty pages to go.[/spoiler]  I've often thought that, if I were an Actual Writer, it would be interesting to put out a novel[la] with a "short story" at the end that had all the same character names, but no other relation to the main story, just to prevent that sort of metagaming.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2110&start=20#p14770
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Use no scoring" as the default?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-03-16 15:06:59

Well, it would be relatively simple to have an external file keeping track of endings you've gotten and ones you haven't, and give the player a metric.  ("You've found 18 of 126 possible endings!")

I wouldn't want a numeric percentage, but I do want a sense of the story taking shape.  I often find that there's minimal pacing, minimal elements to signal plot shape, and minimal indication of progress, which is very unmooring.  Which might be okay if it was deliberate, but I think often if due to poor storytelling.  The score seems like a helpful half-way metric (and perhaps more than that for games that are extra-gamey), but I hope authors do consider how the story might progress, and how players might make an educated guess as to where they are.  Filling up a map, maybe, or filling in a journal, or even just traditional plot structures, might help a great deal.

Dragon Age II has characters remark to each other "It feels like something is ending." which is the most ridiculous thing ever, but at least the point is made.

[quote="tove"]I've often thought that, if I were an Actual Writer, it would be interesting to put out a novel[la] with a "short story" at the end that had all the same character names, but no other relation to the main story, just to prevent that sort of metagaming.[/quote]

Keep in mind, though, that not everyone reads to discover the story.  Especially in more character driven plots, I like knowing the ending so I can concentrate on the immediate text.  I think it's one of those brain setting things, like whether you like/tolerate/despise spoilers.  Spoilers have never mattered to me, because that's not what it's about for me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2156&start=0#p14771
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: inventory management problem
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-03-16 15:08:35

Can anyone help me with this?

I'd like to have a condition in the game where you can't take the fire axe off the wall without first transferring the contents of your inventory into a trunk and setting it aside, but I'd like the game to handle it automatically.

I've tried every variation of the following, but I'm not sure how to get the game how to transfer all the objects you're holding to the trunk before setting it aside?

[code]Before taking the fire axe while the player is carrying the trunk:
		say "Before lifting the fire-axe down off the wall, you shove the heavy steamer trunk in the back of the sedan.";
		move the contents of the players inventory to the trunk;
		move the trunk to the car;
		try taking the fire axe.[/code]

Thanks in advance for any help or suggestions with this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2151&start=0#p14772
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Standing testers
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-03-16 15:10:49

Thank you!  I appreciate the offer more than I can express.  

Hooking into the existing beta site is a good idea - I've never posted anything there, but I have the sense that few games go away without offers (except possibly the foreign language ones).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2156&start=0#p14773
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: inventory management problem
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-03-16 15:21:45

I'm guessing you're doing something like this.

[code]A thing is either packable or not packable.  A thing is usually packable.

The Garage is a room.
The Car is a room. [?]
The fire axe is in the Garage.
The player is carrying the trunk.  The trunk is a container.
The player is carrying a feather boa and a china plate.  The china plate is not packable.

Instead of dropping the trunk: [ prevents player from dropping trunk, taking axe, and ruining your set-up - assumed the trunk begins held, or will be held when axe needs to be taken]
	say "You can't do that! All your worldly possessions are in it!".
		
Before taking the fire axe while the player is carrying the trunk:
	say "Before lifting the fire-axe down off the wall, you shove the heavy steamer trunk in the back of the sedan.";
	move the trunk to the car; [done first so there's no edge cases with trying to put the trunk in the trunk]
	repeat with N running through the list of things carried by the player: [won't touch stuff worn by the player though]
		if N is packable:   [this would give you a little control in case you didn't want *everything* put away]
			now N is in the trunk;
	[try taking the fire axe. - Redundant - you're about to try taking it, so you don't need to do it twice.][/code]

I think you can also say something like (untested) "Now the packable things carried by the player are in the trunk" but I like if loops because they're easy to change, so that's what I wrote.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2110&start=20#p14774
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Use no scoring" as the default?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-03-16 16:38:07

[quote="gravel"]
Keep in mind, though, that not everyone reads to discover the story.  Especially in more character driven plots, I like knowing the ending so I can concentrate on the immediate text.  I think it's one of those brain setting things, like whether you like/tolerate/despise spoilers.  Spoilers have never mattered to me, because that's not what it's about for me.[/quote]

Hm, it's interesting that you say that, because I think I fall into that category myself.  My taste in movies certainly tends that way, since I tend to either like things in which "not a whole lot happens" (pretty much any charming "indie" movie out there, most recently for me [i]Cold Weather[/i]), or in which there's complexity such that there's no way an offhand remark could "spoil" it ([i]Primer[/i], [i]Exit Through the Gift Shop[/i]), or in which the narrative style is the whole point (things by Jeunet or Gilliam, [i]Big Fish[/i], [i]Hedwig and the Angry Inch[/i], [i]Bronson[/i]).

I think that's why I like the anti-spoiler trick, since it is mostly a joke on anyone who takes the plot too seriously (applicable to my comment on Infinite Jest as well -- I was amusing myself by reading negative reviews of it on amazon, and the people who hated it sort of uniformly disliked its meandering/plotlessness).  So I think we might be in agreement about [i]not caring[/i] about the ending in and of itself, but I don't mind not knowing when it's going to happen or whether it is going to matter, whereas you don't mind just getting it out of the way early.  It's probable that I also just have more spare time than Laroquod, and can afford to squander more of it on the unknown.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2110&start=20#p14775
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Use no scoring" as the default?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-03-16 16:41:11

You know, that said, I do actively enjoy it when I've heard in advance, "This movie/book/whatever doesn't really go anywhere," and it makes me more likely to watch/read/play it.  So maybe I'm just as eager to find out the "ending" in advance as you are.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2138&start=0#p14776
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How long is too long?
User: gumby / DateTime: 2011-03-16 17:02:16

As an aside, Zork I has 110 rooms - but there are quite a few 'pseudo' rooms, or rooms with little content. The mazes come to mind.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2154&start=0#p14777
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stating Direction(s) in description
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-03-16 17:15:26

After playing around a bit with what you posted, I found this works:

To decide what direction is the way through (threshold - a door):
    let far side be the other side of threshold;
    let way be the best route from the location to the far side, using even locked doors;
    if way is a direction, decide on the way;
    decide on inside.
    
To say (item - a thing) direction:
    let place be a random room;
    let the place be the other side of the item;
    if the place is visited, say "[way through the item] to [the other side]";
    otherwise say "[way through the item]". 
    

The printed name of a door is usually "a door leading [direction of item described from the location] to [the other side]".

Now when I enter the area I get this:

You can also see a door leading west to Berth 11 and a door leading east to Berth 12 here.

Perfect!  Just what I was looking for.  Thanks to both of you!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2110&start=30#p14778
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Use no scoring" as the default?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-03-16 18:21:11

[quote="gravel"]Well, it would be relatively simple to have an external file keeping track of endings you've gotten and ones you haven't, and give the player a metric.  ("You've found 18 of 126 possible endings!")
[/quote]
But that makes completionism the goal, something authors may not want to encourage.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=30#p14779
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-16 20:52:06

Using Ron's extension, the microsecond readout I'm getting (in Quixe 1.1.1) is actually in milliseconds. That is, the last three digits of the microseconds readout are always 000. I assume that this is not the intended behavior, but possibly my machine isn't supplying data to the library's expectations...? (I'm on a MacBook, 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo.) 

--Erik

Edited to add: The datetimetest.ulx file running in Quixe gives me similar results.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=30#p14780
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-03-16 21:00:21

[quote="bcressey"]I've added a configuration option to Gargoyle to force input to uppercase. I got into the habit of entering commands in all caps when playing [i]Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom[/i] and quite like the effect.[/quote]

I can now officially refer to ToaSK as "influential!"

(I'm such a dork)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2087&start=10#p14781
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Glulxe and Windows Git updated
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-16 21:38:18

[quote="DavidK"]By the way, do let me know if you find any oddities with the date/time functionality in Windows Glk. I've implemented this in terms of the Windows API, rather than using the Unix/Posix-style functions that Zarf used in CheapGlk and GlkTerm. While this makes the code nice and neat (good) it also means that there's a chance I've made a mistake somewhere (not so good).[/quote]

The date/time functions seem to cache values rather than check the clock each time they are called (or there could be a temporal resolution problem--?). Here's output from a profiling test in the newest WinGit, where I call the date/time functions every few lines or so:

[spoiler]8:26 pm:15:467500: Evaluating walkability.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Walkability evaluated.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Reading next entry from table.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Entry read.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Finding neighbors.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Neighbors found.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:467500: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:467500: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:467500: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Reading next entry from table.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Entry read.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Finding neighbors.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Neighbors found.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:467500: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:467500: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:467500: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Reading next entry from table.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Entry read.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Finding neighbors.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Neighbors found.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:467500: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:467500: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:467500: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Reading next entry from table.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Entry read.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Finding neighbors.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Neighbors found.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:467500: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:467500: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:467500: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:467500: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:467500: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:467500: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Reading next entry from table.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Entry read.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Finding neighbors.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Neighbors found.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:467500: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:467500: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:467500: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Reading next entry from table.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Entry read.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Finding neighbors.
8:26 pm:15:467500: Neighbors found.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Reading next entry from table.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Entry read.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Finding neighbors.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbors found.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Reading next entry from table.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Entry read.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Finding neighbors.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbors found.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Reading next entry from table.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Entry read.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Finding neighbors.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbors found.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Reading next entry from table.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Entry read.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Finding neighbors.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbors found.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Reading next entry from table.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Entry read.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Finding neighbors.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbors found.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Reading next entry from table.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Entry read.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Finding neighbors.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbors found.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Reading next entry from table.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Entry read.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Finding neighbors.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbors found.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Reading next entry from table.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Entry read.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Finding neighbors.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbors found.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Reading next entry from table.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Entry read.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Finding neighbors.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbors found.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Reading next entry from table.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Entry read.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Finding neighbors.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbors found.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Reading next entry from table.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Entry read.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Finding neighbors.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbors found.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Reading next entry from table.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Entry read.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Finding neighbors.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbors found.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Reading next entry from table.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Entry read.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Finding neighbors.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbors found.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Reading next entry from table.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Entry read.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Finding neighbors.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbors found.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Reading next entry from table.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Entry read.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Finding neighbors.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbors found.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Reading next entry from table.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Entry read.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Finding neighbors.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbors found.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Reading next entry from table.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Entry read.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Finding neighbors.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbors found.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Reading next entry from table.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Entry read.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Finding neighbors.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbors found.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Reading next entry from table.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Entry read.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Finding neighbors.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbors found.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:483125: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:483125: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:498750: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:498750: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:498750: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Reading next entry from table.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Entry read.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Finding neighbors.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Neighbors found.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:498750: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:498750: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:498750: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:498750: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Reading next entry from table.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Entry read.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Finding neighbors.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Neighbors found.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:498750: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:498750: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:498750: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:498750: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:498750: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Reading next entry from table.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Entry read.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Finding neighbors.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Neighbors found.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:498750: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:498750: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:498750: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:498750: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:498750: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Reading next entry from table.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Entry read.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Finding neighbors.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Neighbors found.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:498750: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:498750: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:498750: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:498750: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:498750: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:498750: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:498750: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Reading next entry from table.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Entry read.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Finding neighbors.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Neighbors found.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Calculating F-score for neighboring.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Calculating heuristic distance.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Heuristic distance calculated.
8:26 pm:15:498750: F-score for neighboring calculated. Adding neighbor to open list.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Neighbor added to open list.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:498750: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Calculating F-score for neighbor that is already in the open list.
8:26 pm:15:498750: F-score calculated.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Reading next entry from table.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Entry read.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Backtracing path.
8:26 pm:15:498750: Path traced.
Path: 53, 64, 55, 46, 37, 28 and 29.[/spoiler]

Notice the many repetitions of the same time (down to the microsecond), followed by an unreasonably large "jump" in at 15625 microsecond intervals...

--Erik

Edited to add: I'm doing this under emulation on a MacBook.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2087&start=10#p14782
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Glulxe and Windows Git updated
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-16 21:44:07

I saw that, but noted that on a GHz processor, it does things in nanoseconds, not microseconds and certainly not mere milliseconds.  I'm assuming the jump is when the operating system put the program on hold to tend to the other programs running on the computer. 

That's just an educated guess, though. 

Quixe always seems to report time with milliseconds rounded to the nearest thousand, presumably because a millisecond is too small to be a reliable measure in a slow web browser?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2087&start=10#p14783
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Glulxe and Windows Git updated
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-16 21:54:04

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]I saw that, but noted that on a GHz processor, it does things in nanoseconds, not microseconds and certainly not mere milliseconds.  I'm assuming the jump is when the operating system put the program on hold to tend to the other programs running on the computer. 

That's just an educated guess, though.[/quote]

Hm... but that doesn't quite explain why the "jump" would happen precisely at intervals of 15625, does it?

Edited to add: Oh, and I'm pretty sure that at least 1 full microsecond is passing--and not being reflected--for at least some of the operations in the code I'm profiling. I could be wrong, though--WinGit and Gargoyle handle the whole thing pretty much instantaneously, whereas Quixe requires a half-second or so.

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Quixe always seems to report time with milliseconds rounded to the nearest thousand, presumably because a millisecond is too small to be a reliable measure in a slow web browser?[/quote]

That might be the reasoning. On the other hand, Chrome seems to be capable of running & printing multiple (at least 3) checks w/in a single millisecond interval--in addition to the calculations I'm trying to measure--so rounding to the millisecond seems to ignore potentially useful information.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=30#p14784
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-03-16 22:48:03

Some platforms can only provide milisecond precision data (including javascript, on most browsers at least. Chrome has an extension to give you microseconds.) I had originally just suggested miliseconds, but I think Zarf was right to specify the API with microseconds for those platforms that can give you more precision. I'd consider microseconds to be an extra bonus for those archaic desktop interpreters [emote];)[/emote]

The situation is even worse for actual timers. In IE the best resolution is 16ms, so if you want a Glk timer to run quicker than that in Quixe on IE you're out of luck.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2153&start=0#p14785
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Time
User: ABTrottle / DateTime: 2011-03-16 23:47:34

Thanks bcreesey.  It's a good piece.  Not sure I completely get it, but I'll muddle through. Thanks again

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2087&start=10#p14786
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Glulxe and Windows Git updated
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-17 00:04:09

[quote]Quixe always seems to report time with milliseconds rounded to the nearest thousand, presumably because a millisecond is too small to be a reliable measure in a slow web browser?[/quote]

Because Javascript only provides milliseconds. <a class="postlink" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Date">https://developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaSc ... jects/Date</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2087&start=10#p14787
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Glulxe and Windows Git updated
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-03-17 00:13:38

[quote]Hm... but that doesn't quite explain why the "jump" would happen precisely at intervals of 15625, does it?[/quote]

If the library is relying on the OS these results might be expected. There should be a way to get a higher precision timer than the default OS one though.

<a class="postlink" href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/gg463347.aspx#ESB">http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows ... 7.aspx#ESB</a>
[quote]
When Windows XP boots, the typical default clock interrupt period is 10 milliseconds, although a period of 15 milliseconds is used on some systems. That means that every 10 milliseconds, the operating system receives an interrupt from the system timer hardware. [/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2087&start=10#p14788
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Glulxe and Windows Git updated
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-03-17 03:42:14

[quote="ektemple"]Notice the many repetitions of the same time (down to the microsecond), followed by an unreasonably large "jump" in at 15625 microsecond intervals...[/quote]The internal Windows timer has a 15ms interval, so this isn't unexpected: Windows internal representation of the current date and time is only accurate to this limit. As Windows Glk just relies on the operating system for the current time, 15ms resolution is the result.

There are ways to address this involving higher performance timers, but that introduces nasty complications of its own: for example, what happens if the current date and time are adjusted to match an external time synchronization source? There's an article about these sorts of problems here: [url]http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163996.aspx[/url].

Looking at Chrome's source, I can see that they've grappled with these issues and have come up with a reasonably complicated (but presumably stable) way to address this: [url]http://src.chromium.org/svn/trunk/src/base/time_win.cc[/url]. At some point I will look into something similar for Windows Glk.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2087&start=10#p14789
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Glulxe and Windows Git updated
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-17 10:21:17

Then it is a resolution issue in both the javascript and WinGlk cases. I'll wait for a Gargoyle or Zoom update before trying to use this for anything fine-grained.

Thanks everybody!

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2153&start=0#p14790
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Time
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-03-17 10:31:07

It seems like that extension is mostly about getting clocks, watches and the like to show a reasonable approximation of the current in-game time, while still having plot events occur at designated intervals.

That may not be what you're asking for. A lot depends on how you want to present the time to the player. If you just want the status bar to show Sunday, Monday etc, you can get away with an object or global property where you update the string value as needed. Then you just need to adjust the status bar to show that text instead of the turn counter / score.

This is basically the way Anchorhead handles it; it also prints some text in the main window whenever the day value is changed, letting the player know that time has advanced. I would probably tie this in with Eric Eve's scenes extension, so that you trigger the changes in conjunction with major puzzle solutions and other moments of dramatic import.

On the other hand, if you want watches or clocks that the player can inspect, or a TIME command he can issue, you probably need something a little more elaborate to track the current time and increment it in a natural way. That's where subtime.t can help.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2151&start=0#p14791
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Standing testers
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-03-17 11:21:13

[quote="George"]Actually that might be an interesting addition to that site if its organizer was interested, a kind of beta testing club that used the beta testing site features for organization.[/quote]
It's an interesting idea, but I'm not quite sure what kind of features you're thinking about. Could you elaborate a bit?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2113&start=0#p14792
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: What do people think about adding a favicon?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2011-03-17 12:06:42

I like D -- it stands out. I don't mind adding one to the forum folder. I'll try to do it later today.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=30#p14793
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-17 12:16:43

Aaron, I just noticed something interesting. We were discussing how to name rooms in the Remembering extension. Did you notice that Eric Eve's Exit Lister (you're using that in your mega-pack, right?) gives rooms a destination name property that's pretty much the same thing?

I'm thinking maybe I will write a "relative room names" extension, just so it can work with that...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=30#p14794
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-03-17 13:26:21

Yeah, a lot of games have done things like this... Blue Lacuna had a special property for rooms to store their "prose name"... the problem is that I most authors don't want to go through the hassle of creating a custom field to support this. That's why I like the "activity" approach we've been pm-ing about, because it would provide a nice hook for authors to change the default behavior if they had some better approach like this.

(I'm not using Exit Lister as part of the default package, since there are a couple different contradictory opinions about what should go in the status line these days. "Small Kindnesses" includes a bit that lists valid directions after an attempt to go in an invalid one.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=30#p14795
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-17 13:38:30

[quote="aaronius"]...most authors don't want to go through the hassle of creating a custom field to support this. That's why I like the "activity" approach we've been pm-ing about, because it would provide a nice hook for authors to change the default behavior if they had some better approach like this.[/quote]

An activity is a good approach. Another idea would be to initialize the custom text field at startup to use the value of the printed name property if the author doesn't specifically set one, e.g.:

[code]A room has some text called the prose name. The prose name is usually "@@@@".

When play begins:
      repeat with place running through rooms:
            if the prose name of the place is "@@@@", now the prose name of the place is the printed name of the place.[/code]

An activity is more flexible (unfortunately, it also seems to be one of the things that authors come to understand later in the learning curve rather than sooner, but that's not a reason to avoid activities here--at least, I don't think so.)

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=30#p14796
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-17 14:14:53

I'm curious in figuring out how to pinpoint slowness in a WIP with these timers.  On a desktop machine, microseconds isn't fine enough to really see how long particular rules take to execute, and while microseconds would be find for the browser interpreters, they don't give microseconds so the problem exists there too. 

Granted, I don't think this addition to Glk/Glulx was really intended for profiling purposes, but it's natural to try to use it that way.  I'd almost wish for the Glk spec to allow a bit of extra array space in its return values for smaller nanosecond and picosecond readings if the interpreter wishes to provide it, but not actually require those values to be filled in for the interpreter to be considered up-to-spec.  

There's suggestions on the Inform suggestions forum for debugging-interpreters that would print callstack information on runtime error.  Such an interpreter would be a natural for implementing nano- and pico- readings if the hardware made such available.  [url=http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163996.aspx]That article[/url] David linked to shows it to be possible.

Does this make sense?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=40#p14797
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-17 14:20:52

[quote="Dannii"]Some platforms can only provide milisecond precision data (including javascript, on most browsers at least. Chrome has an extension to give you microseconds.)[/quote]

You don't happen to remember the name of that Chrome extension, do you? I spent some time googling for it this morning, but didn't turn up anything. The overall slowness of Quixe works to make milliseconds almost--but not quite--good enough to answer most of my questions, but I'd sure appreciate the ability to go to microseconds if that were available.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=40#p14798
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-17 15:23:05

You can always do what I do, and test Quixe on a really slow machine. :)

(Or do what everybody else does, and test a loop of 100 operations, or a display screen ten times as large, or whatever is appropriate.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=40#p14799
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-03-17 16:21:25

Perhaps we could add a separate monotonic time interface ([url=http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/online/pages/man2/clock_getres.2.html]Linux[/url], [url=http://www.wand.net.nz/~smr26/wordpress/2009/01/19/monotonic-time-in-mac-os-x/]Mac[/url], [url=http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms644904(v=VS.85).aspx]Windows[/url]) to Glk?

That would allow nanosecond resolution for profiling without the baggage of converting the arbitrary number to a wall clock time.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=40#p14800
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-03-17 16:51:42

[quote="ektemple"][quote="Dannii"]Some platforms can only provide milisecond precision data (including javascript, on most browsers at least. Chrome has an extension to give you microseconds.)[/quote]

You don't happen to remember the name of that Chrome extension, do you? I spent some time googling for it this morning, but didn't turn up anything. The overall slowness of Quixe works to make milliseconds almost--but not quite--good enough to answer most of my questions, but I'd sure appreciate the ability to go to microseconds if that were available.

--Erik[/quote]
It's called chrome.Interval, but you also have to run Chrome with a command line argument. It's not an easy replacement for Date because you'd have to change Glk's code.

But yes, the main way to do profiling is to perform each task hundreds or even thousands of times. That will be more accurate as well (one time will be affected by garbage collection etc.)

See the "Some things to consider" section of <a class="postlink" href="http://calendar.perfplanet.com/2010/bulletproof-javascript-benchmarks/">http://calendar.perfplanet.com/2010/bul ... enchmarks/</a>
It also explains how to detect and then account for the minimum resolution.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=40#p14801
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-17 16:59:41

[quote="bcressey"]Perhaps we could add a separate monotonic time interface ([url=http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/online/pages/man2/clock_getres.2.html]Linux[/url], [url=http://www.wand.net.nz/~smr26/wordpress/2009/01/19/monotonic-time-in-mac-os-x/]Mac[/url], [url=http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms644904(v=VS.85).aspx]Windows[/url]) to Glk?

That would allow nanosecond resolution for profiling without the baggage of converting the arbitrary number to a wall clock time.[/quote]

I was imagining the finest resolution return value to be completely divorced from the rest of it.  Glk returns the real time by filling in an array the user code provides, so it would be trivial for the user code to allow an extra word or two of memory for any interpreters who might wish to use them.  

I'm not asking for any code changes whatsoever here, just a line in the Glk spec that says "an interpreter can return the picosecond+(1000*nanosecond) count in this last array element if it wants to, but may utterly ignore it if it wishes."

I'd have to make minor code changes to my extension to allow (and expose "for debugging only") the extra array element, but I'm happy to do so for the one or two interpreters in the world which may actually make use of it.  We really only need one 'terp per platform to implement such a thing anyway.

Again, I'm imagining 'terps that are good for debugging games -- the kind which would print a callstack trace on a runtime error, which is exactly what a normal terp should never do.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=40#p14802
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-03-17 17:55:19

I can't imagine that nanoseconds would ever be useful for profiling IF. Even for the best JITs which could compile to native code and use single clock cycles for VM operations, surely checking the time would be orders of magnitude slower.

And even if somehow they do get that fast, by repeating tasks fractions of a microsecond could still be calculated.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=40#p14803
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-03-17 18:22:35

[quote]I'm not asking for any code changes whatsoever here, just a line in the Glk spec that says "an interpreter can return the picosecond+(1000*nanosecond) count in this last array element if it wants to, but may utterly ignore it if it wishes."[/quote]

But that would require code changes; you'd have to change the [url=http://code.google.com/p/garglk/source/browse/trunk/garglk/gi_dispa.c#613]prototype[/url] and the [url=http://code.google.com/p/garglk/source/browse/trunk/garglk/gi_dispa.c#1223]function call[/url] to reflect the storage space required for the additional return value.

If you compiled a library with those changes, and used it with a story file that wasn't expecting the extra data, you'd overrun the arglist buffer and bad things would happen.

At least I think that's the case; I haven't ever needed to do much with the dispatch layer code.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2151&start=0#p14804
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Standing testers
User: George / DateTime: 2011-03-17 19:16:50

For example, IFGT could also filter calls by an additional attribute of the person's profile -- maybe a group attribute. IFDB already allows group formation and administration, it'd be neat to use that somehow. 

I suppose you could do it all with a mailing list, but it doesn't seem like a testing club would need a mailing list really; it seems like a testing club is a group with a little more motivation and long term obligation to accept games to test than the people already signed up to IFGT.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2137&start=10#p14805
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How do you adapt existing story for Text Adventure style
User: John Phoenix / DateTime: 2011-03-17 19:33:51

Thank you riktik for that fine example. It was very helpful.

two-swords, you say, "  I also think that static fiction set in the universe of an IF game could be a good way to get people without prior IF experience engaged enough to want to climb the IF learning curve. "

I agree. That would be a very good way. I will continue my thoughts on this matter in another Topic as they tend to move the discussion away from this one.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=0#p14806
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive Story?
User: John Phoenix / DateTime: 2011-03-17 19:55:56

Let's say you don't have a static fiction story to mold into an Interactive Fiction Game but still want that IF experience - how do you get That? Trial and error is what most people tell me. "Just practice and find what works for you!" That doesn't cut it.  Thus they are learning to be writers by the seat of their pants with no writing instruction. 

I look around at this forum called : "Getting Started and General Game Design" and I am shocked that most discussion is about the dynamics of various IF writing tools and very little or nothing about the art of writing the story itself. After all, an IF game is still a story although set in a wrapper that lets you interact with it.

I believe this is a Major flaw in the IF community and is what is keeping IF from a broader audience.

Half the focus should be on the writing while the other half on game dynamics - you must have both equally to write an IF game. 

This forum should be filled with people discussing the art of writing and I just don't see it. 

The story must be considered First before you plug that story into an IF tool like Inform or Adrift. If the authors of Inform,TADS, Adrift and the rest, give equal attention to the writing, people would be more apt to try their hand out at making a game. You need Both information about the tool, how it works AND information about story writing accessible in the Literature/Manuals/Forums...

Unless.. you only invite established writers to use the tools. That will work, they already know the craft of writing so they can easily plug a story into the tools - but that isn't done - Ever. These tools are encouraged for use by the masses. Therefore the IF community needs to get it's act together and encourage/discuss/teach the art of writing way more than it does now if they want this genre to survive.

I would like to see more of that in these and other forums.

People say, "Well writing for IF is different..." Hog wash I say. The stories may not progress in a linear fashion like a static story, but you still need all the elements, a beginning, middle and end filled in between with dialog between characters, plots, plot twists, subplots etc. That's the difference between a dull dungeon crawler you play just for the sake of going from beginning to end looking for treasure and a griping adventure that makes you identify with the character's plight, leading them on a roller coaster ride of perils and plot twists to the riveting end.

If you don't know how to be a good writer in the first place, you can never hope to write a good IF game.

That's my take. What do you folks think?

Who wants to see more information on becoming a better writer?

If you are or think you are a good writer, how did you acquire your writing skills?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2158&start=0#p14807
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Quixe: limit on output length in a single turn?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-17 21:27:09

In the process of running some tests that result in a lot of output in a single turn (see the spoiler [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2087&start=10#p14781]here[/url] for approx. quantity), I notice that the first part of the output is never visible in Quixe. The "More" prompt appears only after an (uncertain) quantity of lines have already been printed, and the scrollback does not allow going back beyond the initial printout--in other words, there is no way to ever see the text at the top of the output block.

Is there a limit to the output that Quixe can display "at once", or is this a bug?

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=40#p14808
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-17 21:39:46

[quote="zarf"](Or do what everybody else does, and test a loop of 100 operations, or a display screen ten times as large, or whatever is appropriate.)[/quote]

Hm. Maybe I'm not thinking things through properly, but my present goal is to break down a long and complex algorithm ([url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A*_search_algorithm]A*[/url]) to explore which parts of the code are likely to yield significant optimizations [i]at the scale the algorithm actually runs[/i]. In other words, I might check to see whether storing a certain set of data in an I7 list (more convenient) or in an I6 array (less overhead) results in a significant speed difference given the kinds of situations the algorithm is likely to deal with. I'm reasonably sure that running the operation 100 times would show that storing the data in an I6 array is faster, but what I want to know is whether the difference [i]when running it just once[/i]*, as when the game is actually played, is worth the added inconvenience of storing the data directly in I6. Is this not the right way to think about it?

--Erik

* I'd repeat the actual operation a number of times to get an average--I'm not running just one time and then making a decision based on that single run.

EDITED to answer myself: Well, what I suppose folks are saying is that I should run each variant of the operation 100 times, then divide the results by 100 to arrive at my comparison. Which makes sense.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=30#p14809
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-17 21:58:26

[quote="ektemple"]An activity is more flexible (unfortunately, it also seems to be one of the things that authors come to understand later in the learning curve rather than sooner, but that's not a reason to avoid activities here--at least, I don't think so.)[/quote]
True, true and true. Something perhaps to hope for in future versions of the documentation - encouraging the creation of new activities, and making it less intimidating.

Creating activities was one of the last things that I learned to do, and it totally didn't need to be. Once I understood what they're good for, it was a no-brainer.

Now let me think... someone, probably Ron, gave me a rule of thumb about when to create an activity. Although it's intuitive to me now, I don't think I could explain it like he did. I wish I could remember what the rule was...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=40#p14810
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-17 22:51:14

[quote="bcressey"]But that would require code changes; you'd have to change the [url=http://code.google.com/p/garglk/source/browse/trunk/garglk/gi_dispa.c#613]prototype[/url] and the [url=http://code.google.com/p/garglk/source/browse/trunk/garglk/gi_dispa.c#1223]function call[/url] to reflect the storage space required for the additional return value.[/quote]
Pardon, I meant if an interpreter chose [i]not[/i] to support it. The extra array element in the higher levels of code (i.e., game & extension) would remain unused.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=0#p14811
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interactive Stor
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2011-03-17 23:00:43

I think it's a valid observation.  But maybe it's like complaining about the traffic in LA.  What people will respond to is examples and ideas.  Even if it's just "stone soup" maybe you can share some tips and examples that you think are important in IF story-telling.  No doubt others can chime in.  (And there have been some excellent posts on related topics

I'm just working on my first IF game and I figure my lack of programming prowess is my biggest weakness.  So I am consciously trying to think about how to ensure that the story is interesting.  To help with this, I spent several weeks (ok, months) fleshing out the characters, the backstory and the plot of my story before I wrote any code.  My story is a mystery set in the 1950s where the player is an insurance detective.  So I also defined some "discoveries" that the player could uncover about the characters that would provide more of the backstory and motivations of the characters.  I figured that would help give the story more depth and make it more interesting as the player tries to solve the crime.   And while there are reasons that several of the characters might appear to be suspects, I've defined clues that will help the player draw the correct conclusions.

One idea I picked up somewhere to help with pacing in the early part of the game is to have an NPC character shepherd the player along to a couple of locations so that scenes don't run too long.  It gives the game a sense of urgency which is very helpful.  My early alpha testers liked this approach.   I think I got this technique from a blog post by Emily Short, though perhaps my memory is foggy.

Would love to hear other ideas people have...
--Zack  
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2158&start=0#p14812
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe: limit on output length in a single turn?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-17 23:24:59

[quote]Is there a limit to the output that Quixe can display "at once", or is this a bug?[/quote]

Both. :)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2158&start=0#p14813
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe: limit on output length in a single turn?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-17 23:28:06

The current limit is 200 lines (as measured by line breaks, not wrapped lines). 

You can change this easily in glkote.js (max_buffer_length is set up top). Remember to run Quixe via play-remote-full.html so that you load the version you edited, rather than the version squashed into glkote.min.js.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=40#p14814
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-03-17 23:51:31

Well, I think if profiling is what you're after, a separate time call that consults a monotonic clock and returns a value in microseconds is a better way to go. (I agree with Dannii that nanosecond-level resolution doesn't seem practical.)

It is pretty straightforward to do this on Windows using QueryPerformanceCounter; my laptop had a resolution around 2 microseconds. The problem (which David pointed out elsewhere) comes when you try to synchronize that counter time with the wall clock time. Windows can't really do better than 1 millisecond in that case, and only then by making system-wide changes with a host of negative consequences.

However, for profiling purposes you don't really care what the system time is. You can just query the API once to obtain the current microsecond counter, do some work, then query for the new value and compare the difference. (You will wind up measuring both the time to do the work and the time to query the microsecond counter, but you can do back-to-back queries of the counter to establish how long that takes and adjust the result accordingly.)

You could do this with the existing glktimeval_struct. You'd just need a new API function like [i]void glk_counter_time(glktimeval_t *time);[/i] that would return the seconds / microseconds elapsed since some arbitrary (undefined) event - most likely system start or program start, but specifically not the Epoch. The resulting value wouldn't be good for converting to a "real" date and time; it wouldn't be good for anything but comparing to other counter time values. But it would be ideal for that purpose.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2138&start=0#p14815
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How long is too long?
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2011-03-17 23:53:20

I'm working on my first IF game and I'm at 37 rooms currently.  And man, I feel like I have a lot of work ahead of me to make what I've got interesting.  I think I'm somewhere around 25% complete in terms of the total game, but from a room perspective, maybe 2/3 of the way there.  If I get over 50 rooms, it's probably too many for me.  All that scenery to create.. all those descriptions... and how do I make them interesting?  

If you can do it in less, do it in less. It'll be easier to implement and more interesting for the player.

--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=50#p14816
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-03-18 00:16:13

You could achieve the same effect with a special Glk library that repurposed glk_local_time() to return the high performance counter value instead. It would be broken for regular use but would offer microsecond resolution for profiling purposes.

In lieu of an API update, I'll add the code to Gargoyle and send builds to anyone interested (Ron and Erik).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2159&start=0#p14817
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Font Markup Extension for Web UI's
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2011-03-18 00:49:20

I'm working on Zifmia and needed to reimplement some of the font styles (bold, italcs) that I had removed from the FyreVM engine. I decided to build a series of font objects in I7 that could be used in text. The code below is a work in progress and I'm looking for comments on making it cleaner, safer, and simple to use.

This extension does not necessarily need FyreVM or Zifmia. If you plan to output your code to Quixe and have your own javascript code, the resulting markup can be reformatted (RegEx) to CSS or HTML. Of course Zarf will eventually offer a CSS implementation within Glulx that will supercede my font extension (and do much more), but I'm only focused on font usage. I still believe windowing, text position, and similar things are better served contextually through UI components. In any case, the code is below....comments are welcome.

David C.

--------------------------------------------------

[code]
"Fonts" by David Cornelson

Use Hex Color Values translates as (- Constant HEX_VALUES; -)

A font-color is a kind of thing. It has some text called the hex value.

AliceBlue is a font-color. The hex value of AliceBlue is "#F0F8FF".
AntiqueWhite is a font-color. The hex value of AntiqueWhite is "#FAEBD7".
Aqua is a font-color. The hex value of Aqua is "#00FFFF".
Aquamarine is a font-color. The hex value of Aquamarine is "#7FFFD4".
Azure is a font-color. The hex value of Azure is "#F0FFFF".
Beige is a font-color. The hex value of Beige is "#F5F5DC".
Bisque is a font-color. The hex value of Bisque is "#FFE4C4".
Black is a font-color. The hex value of Black is "#000000".
BlanchedAlmond is a font-color. The hex value of BlanchedAlmond is "#FFEBCD".
Blue is a font-color. The hex value of Blue is "#0000FF".
BlueViolet is a font-color. The hex value of BlueViolet is "#8A2BE2".
Brown is a font-color. The hex value of Brown is "#A52A2A".
BurlyWood is a font-color. The hex value of BurlyWood is "#DEB887".
CadetBlue is a font-color. The hex value of CadetBlue is "#5F9EA0".
Chartreuse is a font-color. The hex value of Chartreuse is "#7FFF00".
Chocolate is a font-color. The hex value of Chocolate is "#D2691E".
Coral is a font-color. The hex value of Coral is "#FF7F50".
CornflowerBlue is a font-color. The hex value of CornflowerBlue is "#6495ED".
Cornsilk is a font-color. The hex value of Cornsilk is "#FFF8DC".
Crimson is a font-color. The hex value of Crimson is "#DC143C".
Cyan is a font-color. The hex value of Cyan is "#00FFFF".
DarkBlue is a font-color. The hex value of DarkBlue is "#00008B".
DarkCyan is a font-color. The hex value of DarkCyan is "#008B8B".
DarkGoldenRod is a font-color. The hex value of DarkGoldenRod is "#B8860B".
DarkGray is a font-color. The hex value of DarkGray is "#A9A9A9".
DarkGrey is a font-color. The hex value of DarkGrey is "#A9A9A9".
DarkGreen is a font-color. The hex value of DarkGreen is "#006400".
DarkKhaki is a font-color. The hex value of DarkKhaki is "#BDB76B".
DarkMagenta is a font-color. The hex value of DarkMagenta is "#8B008B".
DarkOliveGreen is a font-color. The hex value of DarkOliveGreen is "#556B2F".
Darkorange is a font-color. The hex value of Darkorange is "#FF8C00".
DarkOrchid is a font-color. The hex value of DarkOrchid is "#9932CC".
DarkRed is a font-color. The hex value of DarkRed is "#8B0000".
DarkSalmon is a font-color. The hex value of DarkSalmon is "#E9967A".
DarkSeaGreen is a font-color. The hex value of DarkSeaGreen is "#8FBC8F".
DarkSlateBlue is a font-color. The hex value of DarkSlateBlue is "#483D8B".
DarkSlateGray is a font-color. The hex value of DarkSlateGray is "#2F4F4F".
DarkSlateGrey is a font-color. The hex value of DarkSlateGrey is "#2F4F4F".
DarkTurquoise is a font-color. The hex value of DarkTurquoise is "#00CED1".
DarkViolet is a font-color. The hex value of DarkViolet is "#9400D3".
DeepPink is a font-color. The hex value of DeepPink is "#FF1493".
DeepSkyBlue is a font-color. The hex value of DeepSkyBlue is "#00BFFF".
DimGray is a font-color. The hex value of DimGray is "#696969".
DimGrey is a font-color. The hex value of DimGrey is "#696969".
DodgerBlue is a font-color. The hex value of DodgerBlue is "#1E90FF".
FireBrick is a font-color. The hex value of FireBrick is "#B22222".
FloralWhite is a font-color. The hex value of FloralWhite is "#FFFAF0".
ForestGreen is a font-color. The hex value of ForestGreen is "#228B22".
Fuchsia is a font-color. The hex value of Fuchsia is "#FF00FF".
Gainsboro is a font-color. The hex value of Gainsboro is "#DCDCDC".
GhostWhite is a font-color. The hex value of GhostWhite is "#F8F8FF".
Gold is a font-color. The hex value of Gold is "#FFD700".
GoldenRod is a font-color. The hex value of GoldenRod is "#DAA520".
Gray is a font-color. The hex value of Gray is "#808080".
Grey is a font-color. The hex value of Grey is "#808080".
Green is a font-color. The hex value of Green is "#008000".
GreenYellow is a font-color. The hex value of GreenYellow is "#ADFF2F".
HoneyDew is a font-color. The hex value of HoneyDew is "#F0FFF0".
HotPink is a font-color. The hex value of HotPink is "#FF69B4".
IndianRed  is a font-color. The hex value of IndianRed  is "#CD5C5C".
Indigo  is a font-color. The hex value of Indigo  is "#4B0082".
Ivory is a font-color. The hex value of Ivory is "#FFFFF0".
Khaki is a font-color. The hex value of Khaki is "#F0E68C".
Lavender is a font-color. The hex value of Lavender is "#E6E6FA".
LavenderBlush is a font-color. The hex value of LavenderBlush is "#FFF0F5".
LawnGreen is a font-color. The hex value of LawnGreen is "#7CFC00".
LemonChiffon is a font-color. The hex value of LemonChiffon is "#FFFACD".
LightBlue is a font-color. The hex value of LightBlue is "#ADD8E6".
LightCoral is a font-color. The hex value of LightCoral is "#F08080".
LightCyan is a font-color. The hex value of LightCyan is "#E0FFFF".
LightGoldenRodYellow is a font-color. The hex value of LightGoldenRodYellow is "#FAFAD2".
LightGray is a font-color. The hex value of LightGray is "#D3D3D3".
LightGrey is a font-color. The hex value of LightGrey is "#D3D3D3".
LightGreen is a font-color. The hex value of LightGreen is "#90EE90".
LightPink is a font-color. The hex value of LightPink is "#FFB6C1".
LightSalmon is a font-color. The hex value of LightSalmon is "#FFA07A".
LightSeaGreen is a font-color. The hex value of LightSeaGreen is "#20B2AA".
LightSkyBlue is a font-color. The hex value of LightSkyBlue is "#87CEFA".
LightSlateGray is a font-color. The hex value of LightSlateGray is "#778899".
LightSlateGrey is a font-color. The hex value of LightSlateGrey is "#778899".
LightSteelBlue is a font-color. The hex value of LightSteelBlue is "#B0C4DE".
LightYellow is a font-color. The hex value of LightYellow is "#FFFFE0".
Lime is a font-color. The hex value of Lime is "#00FF00".
LimeGreen is a font-color. The hex value of LimeGreen is "#32CD32".
Linen is a font-color. The hex value of Linen is "#FAF0E6".
Magenta is a font-color. The hex value of Magenta is "#FF00FF".
Maroon is a font-color. The hex value of Maroon is "#800000".
MediumAquaMarine is a font-color. The hex value of MediumAquaMarine is "#66CDAA".
MediumBlue is a font-color. The hex value of MediumBlue is "#0000CD".
MediumOrchid is a font-color. The hex value of MediumOrchid is "#BA55D3".
MediumPurple is a font-color. The hex value of MediumPurple is "#9370D8".
MediumSeaGreen is a font-color. The hex value of MediumSeaGreen is "#3CB371".
MediumSlateBlue is a font-color. The hex value of MediumSlateBlue is "#7B68EE".
MediumSpringGreen is a font-color. The hex value of MediumSpringGreen is "#00FA9A".
MediumTurquoise is a font-color. The hex value of MediumTurquoise is "#48D1CC".
MediumVioletRed is a font-color. The hex value of MediumVioletRed is "#C71585".
MidnightBlue is a font-color. The hex value of MidnightBlue is "#191970".
MintCream is a font-color. The hex value of MintCream is "#F5FFFA".
MistyRose is a font-color. The hex value of MistyRose is "#FFE4E1".
Moccasin is a font-color. The hex value of Moccasin is "#FFE4B5".
NavajoWhite is a font-color. The hex value of NavajoWhite is "#FFDEAD".
Navy is a font-color. The hex value of Navy is "#000080".
OldLace is a font-color. The hex value of OldLace is "#FDF5E6".
Olive is a font-color. The hex value of Olive is "#808000".
OliveDrab is a font-color. The hex value of OliveDrab is "#6B8E23".
Orange is a font-color. The hex value of Orange is "#FFA500".
OrangeRed is a font-color. The hex value of OrangeRed is "#FF4500".
Orchid is a font-color. The hex value of Orchid is "#DA70D6".
PaleGoldenRod is a font-color. The hex value of PaleGoldenRod is "#EEE8AA".
PaleGreen is a font-color. The hex value of PaleGreen is "#98FB98".
PaleTurquoise is a font-color. The hex value of PaleTurquoise is "#AFEEEE".
PaleVioletRed is a font-color. The hex value of PaleVioletRed is "#D87093".
PapayaWhip is a font-color. The hex value of PapayaWhip is "#FFEFD5".
PeachPuff is a font-color. The hex value of PeachPuff is "#FFDAB9".
Peru is a font-color. The hex value of Peru is "#CD853F".
Pink is a font-color. The hex value of Pink is "#FFC0CB".
Plum is a font-color. The hex value of Plum is "#DDA0DD".
PowderBlue is a font-color. The hex value of PowderBlue is "#B0E0E6".
Purple is a font-color. The hex value of Purple is "#800080".
Red is a font-color. The hex value of Red is "#FF0000".
RosyBrown is a font-color. The hex value of RosyBrown is "#BC8F8F".
RoyalBlue is a font-color. The hex value of RoyalBlue is "#4169E1".
SaddleBrown is a font-color. The hex value of SaddleBrown is "#8B4513".
Salmon is a font-color. The hex value of Salmon is "#FA8072".
SandyBrown is a font-color. The hex value of SandyBrown is "#F4A460".
SeaGreen is a font-color. The hex value of SeaGreen is "#2E8B57".
SeaShell is a font-color. The hex value of SeaShell is "#FFF5EE".
Sienna is a font-color. The hex value of Sienna is "#A0522D".
Silver is a font-color. The hex value of Silver is "#C0C0C0".
SkyBlue is a font-color. The hex value of SkyBlue is "#87CEEB".
SlateBlue is a font-color. The hex value of SlateBlue is "#6A5ACD".
SlateGray is a font-color. The hex value of SlateGray is "#708090".
SlateGrey is a font-color. The hex value of SlateGrey is "#708090".
Snow is a font-color. The hex value of Snow is "#FFFAFA".
SpringGreen is a font-color. The hex value of SpringGreen is "#00FF7F".
SteelBlue is a font-color. The hex value of SteelBlue is "#4682B4".
Tan is a font-color. The hex value of Tan is "#D2B48C".
Teal is a font-color. The hex value of Teal is "#008080".
Thistle is a font-color. The hex value of Thistle is "#D8BFD8".
Tomato is a font-color. The hex value of Tomato is "#FF6347".
Turquoise is a font-color. The hex value of Turquoise is "#40E0D0".
Violet is a font-color. The hex value of Violet is "#EE82EE".
Wheat is a font-color. The hex value of Wheat is "#F5DEB3".
White is a font-color. The hex value of White is "#FFFFFF".
WhiteSmoke is a font-color. The hex value of WhiteSmoke is "#F5F5F5".
Yellow is a font-color. The hex value of Yellow is "#FFFF00".

The font-family is a kind of value. The font-families are serif, sans-serif, cursive, symbol, or monospace. The font-family is usually sans-serif.

A type-face is a kind of thing. A type-face has a font-family called the font family. A type-face has some text called the name.

Arial is a type-face. The name of Arial is "Arial".
Helvetica is a type-face. The name of Helvetica is "Helvetica".
Arial Black is a type-face. The name of Arial Black is "Arial Black".
Gadget is a type-face. The name of Gadget is "Gadget".
Comic Sans is a type-face. The font family of Comic Sans is cursive. The name of Comic Sans is "Comic Sans".
Courier New is a type-face. The font family of Courier New is monospace. The name of Courier New is "Courier New".
Georgia is a type-face. The font family of Georgia is serif. The name of Georgia is "Georgia".
Impact is a type-face. The name of Impact is "Impact".
Charcoal is a type-face. The name of Charcoal is "Charcoal".
Lucida Console is a type-face. The font family of Lucida Console is monospace. The name of Lucida Console is "Lucida Console".
Lucida Sans Console is a type-face. The name of Lucida Sans Console is "Lucida Sans Console".
Lucida Grande is a type-face. The name of Lucida Grande is "Lucida Grande".
PalatinoLinotype is a type-face. The font family of PalatinoLinotype is serif. The name of PalatinoLinotype is "Palatino Linotype".
Book Antiqua is a type-face. The font family of Book Antiqua is serif. The name of Book Antiqua is "Book Antiqua".
Palatino is a type-face. The font family of Palatino is serif. The name of Palatino is "Palatino".
Tahoma is a type-face. The name of Tahoma is "Tahoma".
Geneva is a type-face. The name of Geneva is "Geneva".
Times Roman is a type-face. The font family of Times Roman is serif. The name of Times Roman is "Times Roman".
TimesFont is a type-face. The font family of TimesFont is serif. The name of TimesFont is "Times".
Trebuchet MS is a type-face. The name of Trebuchet MS is "Trebuchet MS".
Verdana is a type-face. The name of Verdana is "Verdana".
MSSansSerif is a type-face. The name of MSSansSerif is "MS Sans Serif".
MSSerif is a type-face. The font family of MSSerif is serif. The name of MSSerif is "MS Serif".
New York is a type-face. The font family of New York is serif. The name of New York is "New York".

A font-class is a kind of thing.
A font-class has a type-face called typeface. The typeface of font-class is usually Arial.
A font-class has a font-family called the font family.
A font-class has some text called the name.
A font-class has some number called the size. The size of font-class is usually 10.
A font-class has a font-color called the font color. The font color of font-class is usually Black.
A font-class has a truth state called The Bold Style. The Bold Style is usually false.
A font-class has a truth state called The Italic Style. The Italic Style is usually false.
A font-class has a truth state called The Underline Style. The Underline Style is usually false.
A font-class has a truth state called The Strikethrough Style. The Strikethrough Style is usually false.
A font-class has a truth state called The Subscript Style. The Subscript Style is usually false.
A font-class has a truth state called The Superscript Style. The Superscript Style is usually false.

To say (font - font-class):
	say "<font name='[name of typeface of font]' size='[size of font]' ";
	if Hex Color Values option is not active, say "color='[font color of font]'";
	if Hex Color Values option is active, say "color='[hex value of font color of font]'";
	if bold style of font is true, say " +b";
	if italic style of font is true, say " +i";
	if underline style of font is true, say " +u";
	if strikethrough style of font is true, say " +st";
	if subscript style of font is true, say " +sub";
	if superscript style of font is true, say " +sup";
	say ">";
	
To say end font:
	say "</font>".

[Use Hex Color Values.]

The Font Library is a room. "There are fonts lying all over the place."

Green Normal is a font-class. The font color of Green Normal is Green. The Bold Style of Green Normal is true.

Black Normal is a font-class. The typeface of Black Normal is Georgia.

Purple Scribble is a font-class. The font color of Purple Scribble is Purple. The Underline Style of Purple Scribble is true. The typeface of Purple Scribble is Comic Sans.

An egg is in the Font Library. "The [green normal]green[end font], jewel-encrusted egg gleams at you like a rare treasure."

A sign is in the Font Library. "The [black normal]sign[end font] is here."

A garden hose is in the Font Library. "The [purple scribble]purple garden hose[end font] is twisted about the lawn.";

[
* * * Sample Output * * *

Fonts
An Interactive Fiction by David Cornelson
Release 1 / Serial number 110318 / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N) SD

Font Library
There are fonts lying all over the place.

The <font name="Arial" size="10" color="Green" +b>green</font>, jewel-encrusted egg gleams at you like a rare treasure.

The <font name="Georgia" size="10" color="Black">sign</font> is here.

The <font name="Comic Sans" size="10" color="Purple" +u>purple garden hose</font> is twisted about the lawn.

]
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2132&start=10#p14818
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Killing players.
User: adventurechris / DateTime: 2011-03-18 01:17:52

[quote="matt w"]Really, the more you describe it the less I'm convinced that you should have the other piece of candy. The puzzle structure is something like "There's two things you can use to get past the guard, but using one puts the game in an unwinnable state that you'll discover much later, and that object has no purpose other than to set this trap." It sounds pretty cruel, unless the game has thoroughly set up the expectation that this sort of thing can happen. Puzzle-impaired folk like me often assume that if the game is letting us progress, we've done something right -- that we'll find some way to get past the guard even if it's not obvious now.[/quote]

If a game has unnatural barriers, I start playing it like a game designer, looking for ways to break it...I'd be the person who would have to try both pieces of food.
I like Ghalev and mattw's suggestions for a fourth way. Playing games like Deus Ex where you don't feel railroaded, there's a bit of a thrill of agency and power.

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=0#p14819
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-03-18 02:15:48

[quote="John Phoenix"]... but still want that IF experience - how do you get That?[/quote]

Out of all the IF experiences, which IF experience is "That" one?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=50#p14820
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-18 08:53:47

[quote="bcressey"]You could achieve the same effect with a special Glk library that repurposed glk_local_time() to return the high performance counter value instead. It would be broken for regular use but would offer microsecond resolution for profiling purposes.

In lieu of an API update, I'll add the code to Gargoyle and send builds to anyone interested (Ron and Erik).[/quote]

Cool--thanks, Ben!

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=0#p14821
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-03-18 09:18:40

I do think writing for IF is different. It involves a whole set of practicalities that exist specifically for IF - how to guide player attention to things they can interact with without destroying the effect of your writing per se with labored exposition. Anticipating what effect various strings of words will have when encountered in every possible order the player might hit them, and trying to cover your arse for the orders you haven't anticipated. And making sure people know where the exits are!

A negative way to look at is is that you're lumbered with all these extra obligations when you make a text game. A positive way to look at is it's an art to pull it off successfully.

Just because I think writing for IF is a particular branch of writing with particular requirements doesn't mean people shouldn't talk about how to do it better. But writing per se is already such an enormous topic. With teaching or guiding writing, I feel like there's only a few broad things you can tell people, then you have to start looking very specifically at their writing. I think to help someone be a better writer using only online forums takes acres more work and time than to help them with coding. Writing is the more universal part of making a text game. Learning Inform is the specific part.

Nobody's stopping folks making writing topics here, so more power to anyone who does. But writing feedback topics are hard work, and they're already served in a lot of other places online, or in writing groups offline. That's just my punt on why this forum isn't overrun with them.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=0#p14822
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: John Phoenix / DateTime: 2011-03-18 10:49:20

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="John Phoenix"]... but still want that IF experience - how do you get That?[/quote]

Out of all the IF experiences, which IF experience is "That" one?[/quote]

This thread is a branch from another where Two-star writes, " I also think that static fiction set in the universe of an IF game could be a good way to get people without prior IF experience engaged enough to want to climb the IF learning curve. "

We were talking about using an existing story and adapting it to IF, so in this case IF Experience means the craft of writing a good IF story.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2160&start=0#p14823
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: The indefinite article
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-18 11:18:37

My understanding of the meaning and use of definite/indefinite article in linguistics has always been shaky, but in practical terms, I7 doesn't always do what I want. Help me understand this.

[code]Test is a room.

A body part is a kind of thing. The indefinite article of a body part is usually "your".

A hand is a body part. It is part of yourself.

test me with "x hand"[/code]

I know that the game says "the hand" here because the definite article is used in most verb responses - the indefinite article is mostly used in listings. But this seems to be obviously at variance with what players and authors would expect.

It seems like in a case like this, we really want to change the definite article, which you can't change out of the box. What's the rationale for that?

I've come up with this hack, but I'm not sure it will do the right thing in all situations, and of course it won't affect library messages:

[code]To say the indefinite (item - a thing):
	if the indefinite article of item is empty:
		say "[the item]";
	otherwise:
		say "[an item]";
		
To say The indefinite (item - a  thing):
	if the indefinite article of item is empty:
		say "[The item]";
	otherwise:
		say "[An item]";
[/code]

Is this the right way to go?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=50#p14824
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-18 11:29:46

Just to be clear: I do not plan to add further timer functions to the API. I think it is possible to measure performance of anything we need, using what we've got.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=0#p14825
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-03-18 11:36:29

[quote="John Phoenix"]... so in this case IF Experience means the craft of writing a good IF story.[/quote]

Then, to answer your question directly, the Internet is chock full of "writing lessons." Since it is your contention that the differences between static prose and "interacactive" prose is "hog wash," the existing static-prose resources should satisfy your needs.

If you have any specific questions on how to write, just post them. The more specific your questions, the better the answers you'll get.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2160&start=0#p14826
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The indefinite article
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-03-18 11:48:12

There is an I6 property "articles" that lets you set the definite article (capitalized and uncapitalized) as well as the indefinite one (uncapitalized - there is no special capitalized indefinite article to set). 

You can do it thus in I7: 
[code]A gizmo is a thing in the Lab.
Include (- with articles "Your" "your" "a", -) when defining the gizmo.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=0#p14827
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-03-18 11:52:07

[quote="John Phoenix"]Let's say you don't have a static fiction story to mold into an Interactive Fiction Game but still want that IF experience - how do you get That?[/quote]

That's a very good starting point - you want to achieve, with IF, the same thing you'd achieve with SF. You know exactly where you want to go. It's like an game designer going "I want to make a game that achieves the things that a film achieves".

But you've still got to narrow it down. Are you talking about a story with a strong emotional grip, like a Hemmingway? A story with the clinical detachment of Brecht? A story that's composed of letters and diary entries like Dracula? A book that presents you with a different format every other chapter, like Moby Dick? These are all "SF experiences", and there's as many of them as there are "IF experiences". It's like saying "Cruise for a Corpse", "Fahrenheit" and "Another World" are cinematic experiences. They are - but they're still wildly different. So what you have to start with is - exactly WHAT sort of IF/SF experience do you mean?

[quote]Trial and error is what most people tell me. "Just practice and find what works for you!" That doesn't cut it.  Thus they are learning to be writers by the seat of their pants with no writing instruction.[/quote]

I'm pretty sure that's how writers begin. [emote]:)[/emote] At least before they start learning some rules... which are really more like quidelines most of the time. Singers start by singing in the bath, and then they go learn the technique. Composers start by writing stuff they like, and then they learn how music was written in the middle ages, in the Ars Nova periosn, the renaissance... and etc etc. Writers start by writing short stories, poem, things they like about stuff they know BEFORE they take writing courses.

Anyway, you have to remember that IF is still very much a young artform. We've come a long way, and we're able to crystallize some fundaments about gameplay mechanics, and how to achieve what you want to achieve, but as far as writing goes... it's the richest part of IF. I'm talking about wordcraft here, mind you. "Pacing" and "foreshadowing" and the like are probably best left to the "gameplay" and "mechanics" part of IF. Strange but true. Because they're the parts of the game that the PLAYER will control, and not the author.

[quote]After all, an IF game is still a story although set in a wrapper that lets you interact with it.[/quote]

Careful with that statement. An IF game CAN be that. It can also be a Zork. You might be interested in reading Nelson's "The Art and Craft of Adventure", where he describes IF, memorably, as "a crosswords at war with a narrative".

[quote]Half the focus should be on the writing while the other half on game dynamics - you must have both equally to write an IF game.[/quote]

Again, careful with your statements. That's certainly one way to do it, but it's not the only way. I agree that a good IF game requires good writing and good game design. But if one half of the game drags slightly, like the wordsmithing in "Beyond", only to be rescued by a strong storyline and good design... that's very common, and reflective of every author's quest for realising the vision they had when they started making the game.

[quote]This forum should be filled with people discussing the art of writing and I just don't see it.[/quote]

But it is. Except that writing in IF is more that wordcrafting, which you can get in other places. Writing in IF means blending authorial devices with game design. Quite a tricky business.

[quote]People say, "Well writing for IF is different..." Hog wash I say. The stories may not progress in a linear fashion like a static story, but you still need all the elements, a beginning, middle and end filled in between with dialog between characters, plots, plot twists, subplots etc. That's the difference between a dull dungeon crawler you play just for the sake of going from beginning to end looking for treasure and a griping adventure that makes you identify with the character's plight, leading them on a roller coaster ride of perils and plot twists to the riveting end.[/quote]

Not hogwash. You do need all those elements, but they're used differently; they play differenty. Anyway, by listing characters, plot twists and whatnot, you're merely scratching the surface, because you're listing things which are common to SF and IF. It would be much more interesting to ask - what about internal monologues? What about exposition? What about foreshadowing? What about that one move that the protagonist in the SF made which was the key to the whole business... and which the PC may or may not do? In fact, what about that crucial bit of evidence the protagonist may remember at a critical time in order to solve the mystery? How do we force the PC to make that connection?

[quote]If you don't know how to be a good writer in the first place, you can never hope to write a good IF game.[/quote]

Harsh words. Not to mention untrue.

Mind you, if one misspells every other word, then yeah, I grant you - it won't be enjoyable.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2159&start=0#p14828
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Font Markup Extension for Web UI's
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-18 12:04:44

EEEK!  Don't subclass off of Thing, it's an in-game prop!   Use a kind of value instead.  

This compiles and seems to work, and avoids objects which involve more overhead -- especially if the parser is running over them being subclassed from Thing!

[code]

"Fonts" by David Cornelson

Use hex color values translates as (- Constant HEX_VALUES; -).

A font-color is a kind of value.  Some font-colors are defined by the table of font colors.

Table of font colors
font-color	hex value
Black 		 "#000000"
AliceBlue 		 "#F0F8FF"
AntiqueWhite 		 "#FAEBD7"
Aqua 		 "#00FFFF"
Aquamarine 		 "#7FFFD4"
Azure 		 "#F0FFFF"
Beige 		 "#F5F5DC"
Bisque 		 "#FFE4C4"
BlanchedAlmond 		 "#FFEBCD"
Blue 		 "#0000FF"
BlueViolet 		 "#8A2BE2"
Brown 		 "#A52A2A"
BurlyWood 		 "#DEB887"
CadetBlue 		 "#5F9EA0"
Chartreuse 		 "#7FFF00"
Chocolate 		 "#D2691E"
Coral 		 "#FF7F50"
CornflowerBlue 		 "#6495ED"
Cornsilk 		 "#FFF8DC"
Crimson 		 "#DC143C"
Cyan 		 "#00FFFF"
DarkBlue 		 "#00008B"
DarkCyan 		 "#008B8B"
DarkGoldenRod 		 "#B8860B"
DarkGray 		 "#A9A9A9"
DarkGrey 		 "#A9A9A9"
DarkGreen 		 "#006400"
DarkKhaki 		 "#BDB76B"
DarkMagenta 		 "#8B008B"
DarkOliveGreen 		 "#556B2F"
Darkorange 		 "#FF8C00"
DarkOrchid 		 "#9932CC"
DarkRed 		 "#8B0000"
DarkSalmon 		 "#E9967A"
DarkSeaGreen 		 "#8FBC8F"
DarkSlateBlue 		 "#483D8B"
DarkSlateGray 		 "#2F4F4F"
DarkSlateGrey 		 "#2F4F4F"
DarkTurquoise 		 "#00CED1"
DarkViolet 		 "#9400D3"
DeepPink 		 "#FF1493"
DeepSkyBlue 		 "#00BFFF"
DimGray 		 "#696969"
DimGrey 		 "#696969"
DodgerBlue 		 "#1E90FF"
FireBrick 		 "#B22222"
FloralWhite 		 "#FFFAF0"
ForestGreen 		 "#228B22"
Fuchsia 		 "#FF00FF"
Gainsboro 		 "#DCDCDC"
GhostWhite 		 "#F8F8FF"
Gold 		 "#FFD700"
GoldenRod 		 "#DAA520"
Gray 		 "#808080"
Grey 		 "#808080"
Green 		 "#008000"
GreenYellow 		 "#ADFF2F"
HoneyDew 		 "#F0FFF0"
HotPink 		 "#FF69B4"
IndianRed		 "#CD5C5C"
Indigo		 "#4B0082"
Ivory 		 "#FFFFF0"
Khaki 		 "#F0E68C"
Lavender 		 "#E6E6FA"
LavenderBlush 		 "#FFF0F5"
LawnGreen 		 "#7CFC00"
LemonChiffon 		 "#FFFACD"
LightBlue 		 "#ADD8E6"
LightCoral 		 "#F08080"
LightCyan 		 "#E0FFFF"
LightGoldenRodYellow 		 "#FAFAD2"
LightGray 		 "#D3D3D3"
LightGrey 		 "#D3D3D3"
LightGreen 		 "#90EE90"
LightPink 		 "#FFB6C1"
LightSalmon 		 "#FFA07A"
LightSeaGreen 		 "#20B2AA"
LightSkyBlue 		 "#87CEFA"
LightSlateGray 		 "#778899"
LightSlateGrey 		 "#778899"
LightSteelBlue 		 "#B0C4DE"
LightYellow 		 "#FFFFE0"
Lime 		 "#00FF00"
LimeGreen 		 "#32CD32"
Linen 		 "#FAF0E6"
Magenta 		 "#FF00FF"
Maroon 		 "#800000"
MediumAquaMarine 		 "#66CDAA"
MediumBlue 		 "#0000CD"
MediumOrchid 		 "#BA55D3"
MediumPurple 		 "#9370D8"
MediumSeaGreen 		 "#3CB371"
MediumSlateBlue 		 "#7B68EE"
MediumSpringGreen 		 "#00FA9A"
MediumTurquoise 		 "#48D1CC"
MediumVioletRed 		 "#C71585"
MidnightBlue 		 "#191970"
MintCream 		 "#F5FFFA"
MistyRose 		 "#FFE4E1"
Moccasin 		 "#FFE4B5"
NavajoWhite 		 "#FFDEAD"
Navy 		 "#000080"
OldLace 		 "#FDF5E6"
Olive 		 "#808000"
OliveDrab 		 "#6B8E23"
Orange 		 "#FFA500"
OrangeRed 		 "#FF4500"
Orchid 		 "#DA70D6"
PaleGoldenRod 		 "#EEE8AA"
PaleGreen 		 "#98FB98"
PaleTurquoise 		 "#AFEEEE"
PaleVioletRed 		 "#D87093"
PapayaWhip 		 "#FFEFD5"
PeachPuff 		 "#FFDAB9"
Peru 		 "#CD853F"
Pink 		 "#FFC0CB"
Plum 		 "#DDA0DD"
PowderBlue 		 "#B0E0E6"
Purple 		 "#800080"
Red 		 "#FF0000"
RosyBrown 		 "#BC8F8F"
RoyalBlue 		 "#4169E1"
SaddleBrown 		 "#8B4513"
Salmon 		 "#FA8072"
SandyBrown 		 "#F4A460"
SeaGreen 		 "#2E8B57"
SeaShell 		 "#FFF5EE"
Sienna 		 "#A0522D"
Silver 		 "#C0C0C0"
SkyBlue 		 "#87CEEB"
SlateBlue 		 "#6A5ACD"
SlateGray 		 "#708090"
SlateGrey 		 "#708090"
Snow 		 "#FFFAFA"
SpringGreen 		 "#00FF7F"
SteelBlue 		 "#4682B4"
Tan 		 "#D2B48C"
Teal 		 "#008080"
Thistle 		 "#D8BFD8"
Tomato 		 "#FF6347"
Turquoise 		 "#40E0D0"
Violet 		 "#EE82EE"
Wheat 		 "#F5DEB3"
White 		 "#FFFFFF"
WhiteSmoke 		 "#F5F5F5"
Yellow 		 "#FFFF00"


The font-family is a kind of value. The font-families are serif, sans-serif, cursive, symbol, or monospace. The font-family is usually sans-serif.

A type-face is a kind of value.  Some type-faces are defined by the table of type faces.

Table of type faces
type-face	font family		printed name (text)
Arial		font-family		"Arial"
Helvetica 		sans-serif		"Helvetica"
Arial Blac		sans-serif		"Arial Black"
Gadget 		sans-serif		"Gadget"
Comic Sans 	sans-serif		"Comic Sans"
Courier New 	sans-serif		"Courier New"
Georgia 		serif		"Georgia"
Impact 		sans-serif		"Impact"
Charcoal 		sans-serif		"Charcoal"
Lucida Console 	monospace		 "Lucida Console"
Lucida Sans Consol	sans-serif	 "Lucida Sans Console"
Lucida Grand		sans-serif 	"Lucida Grande"
Palatino Linotype	serif 		"Palatino Linotype"
 Book Antiqua 		serif		"Book Antiqua"
Palatino 		serif 		"Palatino"
Tahoma 		sans-serif		"Tahoma"
Geneva 		sans-serif		"Geneva"
Times Roman 	serif		"Times Roman"
TimesFont 	serif 		"Times"
Trebuchet M	sans-serif		"Trebuchet MS"
Verdana 		sans-serif		"Verdana"
MS Sans Serif 	sans-serif			"MS Sans Serif"
MS Serif 		serif 		"MS Serif"
New York 		serif		"New York"

A font-class is a kind of value. Some font-classes are defined by the table of font classes.

Table of font classes
font-class			typeface		printed name		size	font color	bold style	italic style	underline style	strikethrough style	subscript style		superscript style
default font class	Arial			"default font class"	0	Black	false	false	false	false	false	false
Green Normal		Arial			"green normal"		0	Green
Black Normal 		georgia		"black normal"
Purple Scribble		comic sans	"purple scribble"	0	Purple	false	false	true

To say (font - font-class):
   say "<font name='[printed name of typeface of font]' size='[size of font]' ";
   if Hex Color Values option is not active, say "color='[font color of font]'";
   if Hex Color Values option is active, say "color='[hex value of font color of font]'";
   if bold style of font is true, say " +b";
   if italic style of font is true, say " +i";
   if underline style of font is true, say " +u";
   if strikethrough style of font is true, say " +st";
   if subscript style of font is true, say " +sub";
   if superscript style of font is true, say " +sup";
   say ">";
   
To say end font:
   say "</font>".

[Use hex color values.]

The Font Library is a room. "There are fonts lying all over the place."

An egg is in the Font Library. "The [green normal]green[end font], jewel-encrusted egg gleams at you like a rare treasure."

A sign is in the Font Library. "The [black normal]sign[end font] is here."

A garden hose is in the Font Library. "The [purple scribble]purple garden hose[end font] is twisted about the lawn."
[/code]

And...
[quote="transcript"]
Fonts
An Interactive Fiction by David Cornelson
Release 1 / Serial number 110318 / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N) SD

Font Library
There are fonts lying all over the place.

The <font name="Arial" size="0" color="Green">green</font>, jewel-encrusted egg gleams at you like a rare treasure.

The <font name="Georgia" size="0" color="AliceBlue">sign</font> is here.

The <font name="Comic Sans" size="0" color="Purple" +u>purple garden hose</font> is twisted about the lawn.

>[/quote]

I also change "name" to the standard "printed name", and removed the family column from font class because it was redundant.

EDIT: moved Black to the first row of its table so Inform defaults to it rather than AliceBlue, as the example shows.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2159&start=0#p14829
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Font Markup Extension for Web UI's
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-18 12:11:53

I just noticed I missed the bit about font size defaulting to 10.   Set 10 to the size for "default font class" and then the say-phrase can just use [i]the size corresponding to a font-class of the default font class[/i] if the passed-in class has a blank entry for its own size.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=50#p14830
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-18 12:14:12

I guess my simple solution wasn't so simple after all.  Thanks for the clarification, Ben. 

I'll still happily take a modified Gargoyle if you have it done already!   [emote]8-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2160&start=0#p14831
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The indefinite article
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-18 13:15:22

Why isn't that exposed in I7?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=0#p14832
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-18 13:24:58

Most stuff in the programming realm is provably true or false, or at least quantitative enough to quell argument, so consensus on good and bad ways of going about things is fairly easy to reach.  Writing... not so much.  So I think writers are much more cautious about giving advice or saying, "this is how you do this" because someone will call them wrong, and provide counter-examples, and then it's a cat-fight.  Critiquing someone's writing or even methods is very much like critiquing them as a person.  Engineers, by contrast, have more distance from their work. 

There was once a writer on here awhile ago who lamented the same as you, John, but when asked if he could start some threads in that vein (being that he was qualified and all), got huffy and left for awhile. 

What writing advice I [i]have[/i] seen almost always appears on writers' blogs, not public forums.  There's something in that, I think.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=0#p14833
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-03-18 14:13:11

Something I don't think is much remarked on is how much the *practice* of writing IF differs from the practice of writing SF.  You cannot get an idea, sit down, and dash off a draft in the course of an afternoon, get three people's advice on that draft over the weekend (confident that they have seen all that's in there), revise and edit over the next week, and hand off a polished version within a few weeks or months, confident that this is the perfected version of your vision.  

Not only are you writing within a context of programming (usually), but you are doing so in small drips, over a course of months, with constant revision to fix problems.  I've found this makes the experience of writing IF very different than a short story.  (I've never gotten beyond the first chapter on my novel attempts, so I'm not sure I can compare there.)

I don't mean to imply that writing SF is easy, or even easier than writing IF, but it is qualitatively different.  I think even a great SF author would need to practice writing IF, because the practice of writing differs, and the results vary as well.

There is no "that" IF experience; there is only "this" IF experience.  That is: what do you want a specific player of your work to experience?  

John, I find it bewildering that you talk about plugging the story in to IF, as though IF were only the difference between reading a book on paper or on Kindle.  It is entirely different - stories must be adapted, built, shaped, tested.  Some stories are best suited for SF.  Some may be best suited for film, or a full-on graphic game, or IF, or audio, or the stage.  You cannot just jam the same work into each set of tools and expect it to work the same, because the tools are the experience.

I've read quite a few books by writers about the craft of writing, and my theory is that even good writers often can't transfer that skill over.  That is, you can talk about the tools, but the very basic premise - "how do you make your audience experience what you want them to" - is achieved best by massive amounts of trying, combined with some feedback and editing, and then massive amounts of trying more.  Like being a musician - we can talk about pitch and chord structures and vibrato and how the maestros sound, but 99% of becoming a musician is practicing your ass off.

Which is not to say that discussions of writing aren't useful, but it's not the be-all and end-all.  If you want some hands-on advice/dissection, what about writing up a portion of a transcript that you think will convey what you want, and post it, with request for editing?  I think a specific focus, combined with a request *from the author* for specific criticism, may help you more than vague prescriptions/discussions.  Writing transcripts would give you a quicker turn-around than writing the game, and leave out some of the programming bits, but would keep the rhythm of IF, which I suspect you will find is very different from static.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2159&start=0#p14834
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Font Markup Extension for Web UI's
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-18 15:18:35

I guess that personally I'd prefer that the styles be output using span + class names rather than inline font styling. This has the advantage of allowing the author to change styles after the fact w/o having to rebuild the game (black & orange type for Halloween, green & red type for Christmas!). It also requires a bit less in-game processing, since you wouldn't have to reassemble the string each time the font style is called for.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2159&start=0#p14835
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Font Markup Extension for Web UI's
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-03-18 16:25:34

The font tag has also been deprecated for the last [url=http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-html40-19980424/present/graphics.html#h-15.2.2]13 years[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2158&start=0#p14836
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe: limit on output length in a single turn?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-18 16:39:57

Great, thanks! I'll probably trim the output a bit anyway. I think it will be more useful to approach things in larger chunks for now--meaning less output.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=20#p14837
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-03-18 16:50:33

Also, here's another non-standard situation which might be a good idea for Trizbort to pick up on.

[quote]
I`m waiting for your command(s).


>x me


Pausing for a moment you consider your distinguishing features. Swift of mind (but slow on foot), a brave disposition (but slight of frame) and possessing a friendly smile (but with unruly hair) covers the main points.


Tell me what to do next please.


>look


AT THE BUS STOP

A chill wind blows down the empty street. [/quote]

This is from "Even the Devil Must Die", a CAT game. Now, CAT isn't exactly high-profile, so this is unlikely to be an issue - but the above does NOT create a room called "AT THE BUS STOP" as I'd expect. Maybe because it's all caps, maybe because of all the extra lines. At any rate, just wanted to let you know.

EDIT - No point in triple-posting, I'll just edit this post - in "The Evil Sorcerer", there's a room called "Sun room"... again, the capitalization makes Trizbort not recognize that room. I'd say it's starting to look necessary to look into it. [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2161&start=0#p14838
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Need beta-testers for long game
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2011-03-18 19:31:34

I need beta-testers for a long (like, Anchorhead-length) game to be entered into the Spring Thing. Please send me an e-mail at <a href="mailto:mike@edromia.com">mike@edromia.com</a> if you're interested.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=50#p14839
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-03-18 20:32:04

[quote="zarf"]Just to be clear: I do not plan to add further timer functions to the API. I think it is possible to measure performance of anything we need, using what we've got.[/quote]

Would you be willing to reserve a single selector for an undocumented mystery call?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2160&start=0#p14840
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The indefinite article
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-18 21:10:29

It's hard to expose as-is. You can declare an I6 property to be visible in I7, but only as a single word, not a multi-word value.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=0#p14841
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-03-18 23:45:09

You're right that most of the how-to discussion in this forum and on r.a.i-f is about the programming, not the writing. There's some very good prose being written in IF, and there's also some prose that could be improved.

If you want to learn about how to write fiction, an Internet forum may not be the right place to start. I have two shelves packed with books on fiction-writing techniques. The demise of the local bookstore makes it harder to find this type of material than it was 20 years ago, when you could browse. But there are some good books around.

The question of how to adapt conventional fiction techniques to IF is ... well, IF is an art form. Art forms transcend hard-and-fast rules. So it really [i]does [/i]come down to "whatever works for you."

That said, to my mind perhaps the biggest failing of IF, considered as an art form, is not in the area of prose style but the extent to which authors fall back on badly shopworn story ideas -- 75-year-old mystery and sci-fi plots that would be rejected out of hand by an editor at any publishing house that produced conventional fiction. It's possible to use shopworn story ideas for comic effect, of course; that's a different thing entirely.

Coming up with a fresh premise for a story, a premise that will be emotionally compelling on its own terms, is not easy at all. I've written half a dozen games, and only one of them has a story premise that I'll stand behind. The rest of my games are all very silly, and would not be taken seriously by a publisher.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=50#p14842
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-19 00:05:09

I whipped up the following bit of code to copy-paste into an existing WIP.  In the RULES ALL output, it prepends how much time elapsed since the previous rule.   Paste it, RELEASE FOR TESTING, and bring it up in the modified Gargoyle.  Transcript below.  (Has quirks?)
[code]

Include (-
Array countofsecondsnew --> 3;  
Array countofsecondsprev --> 3;  
Array countofsecondsdiff --> 3;  

[ DebugRulebooks subs parameter i;
	spaces(2*process_rulebook_count);
	print "[", (RulePrintingRule) subs;
	if (parameter) print " / on O", parameter;
	print "]^";
];

[ DB_Rule R N blocked;
	if (R==0) return;
	glk($0160, countofsecondsnew); !  glk_current_time(timeval);
	countofsecondsdiff-->0 = countofsecondsnew-->0 - countofsecondsprev-->0;
	countofsecondsdiff-->1 = countofsecondsnew-->1 - countofsecondsprev-->1;
	countofsecondsdiff-->2 = countofsecondsnew-->2 - countofsecondsprev-->2;
	countofsecondsprev-->0 = countofsecondsnew-->0;
	countofsecondsprev-->1 = countofsecondsnew-->1;
	countofsecondsprev-->2 = countofsecondsnew-->2;
	print "[", (countofsecondsdiff-->0), ":", (countofsecondsdiff-->1), ":", (countofsecondsdiff-->2), "] ";
	print "[Rule ~", (RulePrintingRule) R, "~ ";
	#ifdef NUMBERED_RULES; print "(", N, ") "; #endif;
	if (blocked == false) "applies.]";
	"does not apply.]";
];-) instead of "Debugging" in "Rulebooks.i6t".
[/code]

Transcript is longish.  Not sure why I get an occasional negative value. Probably something silly I did. 
[spoiler][quote="transcript"]
> rules all
Rules tracing now switched to “all”. Type “rules off” to switch it off again.

> l
[0:3:427927] [Rule “standard set going variables rule” does not apply.]
[0:0:10842] [Rule “determine visibility ceiling rule” applies.]
[0:0:8295] [Rule “Setting action variables for exiting” does not apply.]
[0:0:10137] [Rule “room description heading rule” applies.]
room
[0:0:15756] [Rule “room description body text rule” applies.]
[0:0:9843] [Rule “room description paragraphs about objects rule” applies.]
[0:0:9335] [Rule “don’t mention player’s supporter in room descriptions rule” applies.]
[0:0:20416] [Rule “don’t mention scenery in room descriptions rule” applies.]
[0:0:8059] [Rule “don’t mention undescribed items in room descriptions rule” applies.]
[0:0:8906] [Rule “set pronouns from items in room descriptions rule” applies.]
[0:0:8406] [Rule “offer items to writing a paragraph about rule” applies.]
[0:0:8897] [Rule “use initial appearance in room descriptions rule” applies.]
[0:0:7970] [Rule “describe what’s on scenery supporters in room descriptions rule” applies.]
[0:0:8840] [Rule “check new arrival rule” applies.]
[0:0:8890] [Rule “other people looking rule” applies.]

> l
[0:1:-545947] [Rule “standard set going variables rule” does not apply.]
[0:0:8866] [Rule “determine visibility ceiling rule” applies.]
[0:0:7970] [Rule “Setting action variables for exiting” does not apply.]
[0:0:8795] [Rule “room description heading rule” applies.]
room
[0:0:15651] [Rule “room description body text rule” applies.]
[0:0:8164] [Rule “room description paragraphs about objects rule” applies.]
[0:0:8841] [Rule “don’t mention player’s supporter in room descriptions rule” applies.]
[0:0:8506] [Rule “don’t mention scenery in room descriptions rule” applies.]
[0:0:17187] [Rule “don’t mention undescribed items in room descriptions rule” applies.]
[0:0:8628] [Rule “set pronouns from items in room descriptions rule” applies.]
[0:0:8868] [Rule “offer items to writing a paragraph about rule” applies.]
[0:0:8026] [Rule “use initial appearance in room descriptions rule” applies.]
[0:0:8431] [Rule “describe what’s on scenery supporters in room descriptions rule” applies.]
[0:0:8743] [Rule “check new arrival rule” applies.]
[0:0:7858] [Rule “other people looking rule” applies.]

> l
[0:2:232691] [Rule “standard set going variables rule” does not apply.]
[0:0:16931] [Rule “determine visibility ceiling rule” applies.]
[0:0:8202] [Rule “Setting action variables for exiting” does not apply.]
[0:0:9008] [Rule “room description heading rule” applies.]
room
[0:0:15721] [Rule “room description body text rule” applies.]
[0:0:8196] [Rule “room description paragraphs about objects rule” applies.]
[0:0:10470] [Rule “don’t mention player’s supporter in room descriptions rule” applies.]
[0:0:8118] [Rule “don’t mention scenery in room descriptions rule” applies.]
[0:0:8370] [Rule “don’t mention undescribed items in room descriptions rule” applies.]
[0:0:8805] [Rule “set pronouns from items in room descriptions rule” applies.]
[0:0:8408] [Rule “offer items to writing a paragraph about rule” applies.]
[0:0:18683] [Rule “use initial appearance in room descriptions rule” applies.]
[0:0:8618] [Rule “describe what’s on scenery supporters in room descriptions rule” applies.]
[0:0:9117] [Rule “check new arrival rule” applies.]
[0:0:7812] [Rule “other people looking rule” applies.]

> l
[0:4:-281894] [Rule “standard set going variables rule” does not apply.]
[0:0:8170] [Rule “determine visibility ceiling rule” applies.]
[0:0:8219] [Rule “Setting action variables for exiting” does not apply.]
[0:0:8573] [Rule “room description heading rule” applies.]
room
[0:0:21832] [Rule “room description body text rule” applies.]
[0:0:12670] [Rule “room description paragraphs about objects rule” applies.]
[0:0:8790] [Rule “don’t mention player’s supporter in room descriptions rule” applies.]
[0:0:8665] [Rule “don’t mention scenery in room descriptions rule” applies.]
[0:0:8782] [Rule “don’t mention undescribed items in room descriptions rule” applies.]
[0:0:8716] [Rule “set pronouns from items in room descriptions rule” applies.]
[0:0:7946] [Rule “offer items to writing a paragraph about rule” applies.]
[0:0:8321] [Rule “use initial appearance in room descriptions rule” applies.]
[0:0:8325] [Rule “describe what’s on scenery supporters in room descriptions rule” applies.]
[0:0:8812] [Rule “check new arrival rule” applies.]
[0:0:7883] [Rule “other people looking rule” applies.]

> [/quote][/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2159&start=0#p14843
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Font Markup Extension for Web UI's
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2011-03-19 01:20:51

[quote="bcressey"]The font tag has also been deprecated for the last [url=http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-html40-19980424/present/graphics.html#h-15.2.2]13 years[/url].[/quote]

That wasn't intended to be a font tag. It's just some way to transmit markup of some text from a game file to a client, which could be a browser or something else, but probably a browser.

David C.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=10#p14844
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-03-19 05:59:48

[quote="Jim Aikin"]That said, to my mind perhaps the biggest failing of IF, considered as an art form, is not in the area of prose style but the extent to which authors fall back on badly shopworn story ideas -- 75-year-old mystery and sci-fi plots that would be rejected out of hand by an editor at any publishing house that produced conventional fiction.[/quote]

That word 'conventional' is important. I don't have any interest in dictating subject matter to people wanting to make IF. I don't care if someone thinks something's been done before or is 'suitable' or whatever, all I care about is whether they end up making a good game in its own right. Fresher ideas may lend to a better game being produced, but they don't guarantee it. A game with a highly novel premise can nosedive as hard as the 1000th dungeoncrawl. An awesomely executed dungeoncrawl can be as great as some other game which conspicuously set out to change the whole world.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=10#p14845
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-03-19 11:57:59

[quote="severedhand"]A game with a highly novel premise can nosedive as hard as the 1000th dungeoncrawl. An awesomely executed dungeoncrawl can be as great as some other game which conspicuously set out to change the whole world.[/quote]

Well said. To riff:

Ideas are like hydrogen: absolutely essential, but also the most readily-available shit in the universe. Only execution separates the awesome from the humdrum, and the most threadbare cliches are, in the end, just colors in the paintbox. Most of the greatest works of this or any other century are made of 100% post-consumer recycled ideas and imagery. Writers should avoid shopworn ideas exactly to the extent that painters should avoid using blue. It's all how you lay it down on canvas, and what you're using those colors to say.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=50#p14846
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-03-19 12:00:13

From the code, it appears you are just subtracting prev_seconds from new_seconds, and prev_micro from new_micro. But if you have values like this in your countofseconds struct:

prev: 3494391 seconds 999999 micro
new: 3494392 seconds 000001 micro

You will calculate a difference of 1 second, -999998 micro. The difference should be 2 microseconds.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=50#p14847
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-19 12:48:36

[quote]Would you be willing to reserve a single selector for an undocumented mystery call?[/quote]

If you want to hack in functionality for testing, you might be better off with an undocumented mystery Glulx opcode. Or @debugtrap -- I don't think anybody's ever used that.

As to whether I will reserve one... um, I think I'm going to stay hands-off here.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1997&start=50#p14848
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk time and date functions
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-03-19 13:07:13

Well, I had the impression you handed out 256 [url=http://eblong.com/zarf/glk/glk-spec-072_12.html#s.1]call selectors[/url] to Carlos Sanchez for the asking. It doesn't seem unreasonable to request one, and it would save me the trouble of maintaining separate builds.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=10#p14849
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-03-19 15:35:35

[quote="Ghalev"]Most of the greatest works of this or any other century are made of 100% post-consumer recycled ideas and imagery. Writers should avoid shopworn ideas exactly to the extent that painters should avoid using blue. It's all how you lay it down on canvas, and what you're using those colors to say.[/quote]
Shakespeare recycled old story ideas. But the "100%" in the sentence above is patently misleading. The new spin Shakespeare contributed in a creative fashion was clearly far more than 50% of the finished work.

I would strenuously disagree with the idea that shopworn ideas are as valid and useful as a primary color to a painter. It's [i]possible [/i]to give fresh meaning to an old, worn-out idea, but it's not easy. Conversely, there is no negative attached to the use of blue pigment.

The history of art shows us repeatedly that old ideas get worn out. They fail to excite, because the reader/viewer/listener knows all too well what's going to happen next. Art needs an element of unpredictability to stimulate audience members, and it is precisely the element of unpredictability that something like a '50s hard-boiled private-eye story lacks -- unless the artist works hard to add something fresh.

What worries me is that defending tired old ideas gives license to aspiring authors to be lazy, to settle for second-rate.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=10#p14850
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-03-19 16:32:48

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Conversely, there is no negative attached to the use of blue pigment.[/quote]

Even [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Klein_Blue]International Klein Blue[/url]?  [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=10#p14851
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: WMWade / DateTime: 2011-03-19 17:34:00

> Where's the Writing Lessons?

The writing lessons you're describing operate on a different level than the programming lessons here do. Most of the questions on these forums span the writing equivalents of "Am this corectly how writer?" to "Is there a simpler way to say 'the car was overly crowded'?" People are literally learning new languages, and are trying to absorb the specifics of their grammars and common usage.

People who have questions that basic about writing can find innumerable books or websites designed to make learning easy. Writing teachers are employed by almost every school on earth. Many of those sources and classes expand beyond such simple questions and offer  specific discussion of narrative framework, description, dialogue, character, and established techniques applied individually to short stories, novels, plays, screenplays, or magazine serials. There are classes which pinpoint focus on specific genre and media: How to write historical mystery novels, for example.

You can count every book ever written about specific IF languages on two hands. The number of teachers paid to teach them would fit comfortably in a phone booth. [i]This website[/i] is one of the few reliable forums in the known universe where programmers can ask fundamental questions about coding IF and expect prompt answers.

If they want to learn how to write, they can go anywhere.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=10#p14852
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-03-19 19:39:17

[quote]The new spin Shakespeare contributed in a creative fashion was clearly far more than 50% of the finished work.[/quote]

Thank you for reiterating my point, but there's no need to be modest on Shakespeare's behalf. His creative contributions (oddball authorship controversies aside), are something approaching 100% of the finished work, I'd say. The difference is the difference between raw materials and actual artwork. A painting (once we've acquired some kind of surface to paint it on) consists of 100% paint. Yet the contribution of the painter is 100% of the work, a separate figure from the raw material.

New works of fiction - both great and mediocre ones - are frequently constructed, 100%, from existing ideas and imagery, just as most new sentences are made of existing words, most new words are made of existing phonemes, and so on.

To be sure, sometimes people also write works of conspicuous novelty (and make up entirely new phrases and entirely new words and even new sounds, now and then), but none of these things insure quality and none of these things are even [i]relevant [/i]to quality. Sometimes, there comes along an artist who decides he can make his mark by painting with feces on oblong sheet metal instead of oil on rectangular canvas. You and I both know he's probably attempting to cover for a lack of skill while at the same time bidding for attention.

Very frequently, there are those who slap a bunch of shopworn ideas together and contribute nothing in the process. But it's valuable to recognize the difference between blaming the ideas (which are innocent, they can't help if they're being abused) and blaming the lazy-ass writers instead. My point is simply to assign blame where it belongs.

[quote]Conversely, there is no negative attached to the use of blue pigment.[/quote]

There are in fact painters (I've known some personally, I'm sorry to say) who have rebelled against paint of every color (and rectangular canvases and so on) as hokey old devices that limit their True Artistic Vision Which Deserves Title-Case Because It's So True and Artistic. If you would dismiss these painters as beneath serious consideration, well, I'd heartily agree, but ... well, let's see if you can't follow the metaphor to its conclusion [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote]The history of art shows us repeatedly that old ideas get worn out.[/quote]

The history of art shows us repeatedly that piss-poor work is piss-poor, but that some people are willing to blame the paint, and in the process throw the baby out with the bathwater, resulting in a particularly [i]messy [/i]mix of metaphor.

[quote]What worries me is that defending tired old ideas gives license to aspiring authors to be lazy, to settle for second-rate.[/quote]

Lazy, second-rate writers will always be the overwhelming norm. Sadly, it requires no license.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2159&start=0#p14853
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Font Markup Extension for Web UI's
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2011-03-19 21:58:06

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]EEEK!  Don't subclass off of Thing, it's an in-game prop!   Use a kind of value instead. [/quote]

I really dislike tables in I7 from an authorial perspective. I understand there is overhead with having a 150 extra objects, but the trade-off of clear, readable code is worth it.

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=10#p14854
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: John Phoenix / DateTime: 2011-03-19 22:40:42

Thank you for all your opinions. I will consider each one as I attempt to learn this craft.

I have spent a few days doing some research and have come to the conclusion that no matter how well you know your IF tools you cannot write a good IF game if you first do not know how to craft a story. 

Those IF writing tips from the IF Theory Reader and Craft of Adventure and the like, you can use to put together your IF game but if you try to write the game before the story, just piecing it together as you go along, is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle without knowing what it's supposed to look like.

So, I have acquired some fiction writing materials.

THE RESOURCES

Writing Fiction for Dummies by Randy Ingermanson and Peter Economy

Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell

The Writer's Journey; Mythic Structure for Writers by Vogler, Christopher

How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy by Orson Scott Card

Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction by Lisa Tuttle

The Complete Guide to Writing Fantasy: Alchemy with words by Tom Dullemond and Darin Park

The Comic Toolbox by John Vorhaus

Comedy Writing Secrets by Mel Helitzer

The Comedy Bible From Stand-up to Sitcom--The Comedy Writer's Ultimate How To Guide by Judy Carter

How to Beat Writers Block by Holly Lisle

How to write a book in 14 days by Steve Manning

I think that's enough to get started with.

Most of these are available as a PDF  or paperback either through  their web sites or Amazon.com - or like I found, a good used book store.

I haven't finished reading all those books yet.. still working on it.

I have also subscribed to a number of free writing courses online. I will detail these and any freely downloadable writing Ebooks I have found in another post.

MY PLAN

My idea is to learn how to put a story together First then adapt it to IF games. The structure would look as follows:

Write your story or story outline and then within the body of your work, interject what to say and where to go in the IF game. Example:

 Title

Preface or chapter or act or scene 1 ( however you like to do it but I think written in scenes is better)

Story Opening Scene 1:
(paragraph)
bla bla bla bla bla bla <-- This gets written First (on paper) before  this -->[IF Game Rooms & dialog] (In Inform, Adrift, Quest etc) all the way down the page till the story or outline is finished.

The [IF Game Rooms & dialog] sections are interjected into this body after your story is written.

~~~~~~~~

This is the opening setup for your story. This introduces the setting, main character, and or main plot, anything you want in the opening to begin the story.

[IF Game Rooms & dialog] <- this is where the opening setup for your story above takes place in the context of the game world.

Now since you story and game will both progress in a liner fashion going down this page until the end of the story, you have to add in here side trips to rooms and other side quests that make up the game - all for adventure purposes until you find the path back that leads you to story and game area Scene 2.

These side trips to rooms for treasure or the like is where all those do's and don'ts of IF theory come in. This is where you craft the adventure part of the game until you get back on the main path to progress the game - to the next set of side trips in scene 2.

Scene 2:
bla bla bla bla bla bla (written first)

[IF Game Rooms & dialog] (added later)

and so on.

This is my thinking oh how beginners can best learn to write an IF game. It has structure that is easy to follow. You will always know what you have to do next to continue the story of the game since your story or outline is already written before you interject the extra [IF Game] parts that lead you away from the main story then back to it again and so on.

Of course you can always introduce subplots and puzzles into the [IF game] sections before you bring the player back to the main path to progress the story of the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=30#p14855
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: karlnp / DateTime: 2011-03-19 22:41:06

I'd really like to use this, as I'm writing IF for newbies.

However:
[quote]This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6G60) on its most recent run through:

In Book - Small Kindnesses by Aaron Reed, Chapter - Show valid directions after going nowhere in the extension Player Experience Upgrade by Aaron Reed:

Problem. You wrote 'try listing exits'  : but this is not an action I recognise, or else is malformed in a way I can't see how to sort out.

 See the manual: 7.4 > Try and try silently

I was trying to match one of these phrases:

1. try (listing exits - an action) 

2. try (listing exits - stored action) 

This was what I found out:

listing exits = something unrecognised
 
[/quote]

Is this fixable by me? The only other extensions I've included are Plurality and Keyword Interface.

edit, an hour later:

I tried to include the elements manually, but this is what I ended up with:
[quote]

     This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6G60) on its most recent run through:

In Chapter - Smarter Parser Core Routines, Section - The Print Rule in the extension Smarter Parser by Aaron Reed:

Problem. You wrote 'if sp-debug is true, parser say "***Smarter Parser: matched on [why]."'  : but this is a phrase which I don't recognise, possibly because it is one you meant to define but never got round to, or because the wording is wrong (see the Phrasebook section of the Index to check). Alternatively, it may be that the text immediately previous to this was a definition whose ending, normally a full stop, is missing?

I was trying to match this phrase:

if (sp-debug is true - a condition) , (parser say "***Smarter Parser: matched on [why]." - a phrase) 

This was what I found out:

sp-debug is true = a condition

parser say "***Smarter Parser: matched on [why]." = something unrecognised
 
[/quote]

For reference:
[quote]
Section A - Includes


Include Smarter Parser by Aaron Reed.



Include Keyword Interface by Aaron Reed.

Include Extended Grammar by Aaron Reed.

Include Remembering by Aaron Reed.

Include Epistemology by Eric Eve.

Include Object Response Tests by Juhana Leinonen.

Include Plurality by Emily Short.[/quote]

When I try to include Small Kindnesses separately from the Player Experience bundle:
[quote]
     This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6G60) on its most recent run through:


Problem. In the table Small Kindnesses Responses, the entry 'Small Kindnesses report on no exits rule'   is not something I recognise, and should either be a value, or a kind (such as 'a number'), or a blank entry '--'.

 See the manual: 15.1 > Laying out tables

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem. In the table Small Kindnesses Responses, the entry 'Small Kindnesses report on one exit rule'   is not something I recognise.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem. In the table Small Kindnesses Responses, the entry 'Small Kindnesses report on exits rule'   is not something I recognise.
 
[/quote]

Sigh. I want to use these, but am not experienced enough to figure out how to fix them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2162&start=0#p14856
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Can an object be renamed?
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-03-20 00:34:45

Okay... another question...

Can an object be renamed so the new name is listed in inventory once it has been taken and examined?

Example:

Player sees a shiny disk on the ground.  If examined game says "A shiny disk".

It is taken.

Inventory now says: "Shiny disk"

It is examined.

Description given is "A small medallion with runes inscribed on it."

Inventory now says: "A small medallion with runes inscribed on it."

I have tried lots of things... I know I can use 'Understand... as...' for user input, but I want to totally rename the object, so even if dropped a "Look" will say "on the ground is a small medallion with runes inscribed on it."  Or at least an examine of the object would say that, as long as it was already known that it was a small medallion with runes inscribed on it and not just a shiny object.

Okay, the 'even if dropped' part is less important than the inventory description, but both would be nice.

Thanks for your help.  This is fun.... and very addicting.  I think I am hooked.   [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2162&start=0#p14857
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can an object be renamed?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-20 00:38:22

You want the "printed name" property, chapter 8.5.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=40#p14858
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-03-20 01:20:47

Hi karlnp,

Thanks for posting-- I expect these problems are probably due to the fact that the various extensions are in a bit of a transitionary period right now, and there are updated versions of some that aren't yet on the I7 extensions site. Sorry for the growing pains.

These will be up officially soon, but for now [url=http://aaronareed.net/tmp/AaronExtensions.zip]here are my current local versions[/url] of all of my extensions-- can you try installing the ones you're using and let me know if you're still getting errors?

(Note BTW that if you're using Player Experience Upgrade you shouldn't include any of the component extensions like Remembering... I wasn't sure from what you posted if this was the case on your end.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2162&start=0#p14859
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can an object be renamed?
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-03-20 01:24:29

[quote="zarf"]You want the "printed name" property, chapter 8.5.[/quote]

Thanks for the quick reply!  

But how do I tie this to it having already been examined?  

I know this will change the description if examined when carried:

[color=#000080]The description of shiny disk is "[if not carried]It looks like a small disk on a chain near the edge of the railing.[end if][if carried]It is a silver pendant on a chain with a deep blue stone in the center surrounded by strange runes."[/color]

And this will change the printed name:

[color=#000080]The printed name of shiny disk is "[if not carried]small disk on a chain near the edge of the railing[end if][if carried]silver pendant on a chain with a deep blue stone in the center surrounded by strange runes." [/color]

But the first does not change name in inventory, and the second changes it before it has been examined, it just has to be taken.  And if dropped, it reverts to the original name.

I guess I am looking for an "If examined change printed name always" rule.  I tried that, it didn't work.   [emote]:)[/emote]   And even if not after being dropped, at least I would like the change of name to wait until after the item has been examined in inventory.

I know I can work around this with creative wording... and just assuming if a player takes something they will examine it immediately.  But I was hoping to hide some details until they actually look deeper, and not just give it to them.

Maybe there is no way... and I will just have to live with it.  But I was hoping.

Edit to add: And not just examined... at a distance the details would not be seen.  It has to be carried, and examined before the name changes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2162&start=0#p14861
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can an object be renamed?
User: karlnp / DateTime: 2011-03-20 01:36:02

Is this what you're looking for?
[code]"Disk Testin'" by Karl Parakenings

The Test Chamber is a room. "A vast and motionless space."

The shiny disk is in the Test Chamber. The description of the shiny disk is "A silver pendant on a chain."

Before examining the shiny disk for the first time:
now the printed name of the shiny disk is "silver pendant".

Test me with "take shiny disk/i/examine disk/i"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=40#p14862
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: karlnp / DateTime: 2011-03-20 01:40:52

Ah, that's got it. Thanks, Aaron!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2162&start=0#p14863
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can an object be renamed?
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-03-20 01:50:39

[quote="karlnp"]Is this what you're looking for?
[code]"Disk Testin'" by Karl Parakenings

The Test Chamber is a room. "A vast and motionless space."

The shiny disk is in the Test Chamber. The description of the shiny disk is "A silver pendant on a chain."

Before examining the shiny disk for the first time:
now the printed name of the shiny disk is "silver pendant".

Test me with "take shiny disk/i/examine disk/i"[/code][/quote]

YES!  Thank you.  That seems to work just the way I wanted.

Hmmmm.... well except they don't have to take it first.  But this is closer.  Is there a way to say:

[color=#000080]Before taking and examining the shiny disk for the first time:
now the printed name of the shiny disk is "silver pendant".[/color]

Sort of rolling in a [if carried] kind of clause to it?  Still, this is much closer.

Edit:  Okay... I thought it was closer... I think I was reading wrong... in inventory I still get "silver pendant", not "A silver pendant on a chain." after examining.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2162&start=0#p14864
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can an object be renamed?
User: karlnp / DateTime: 2011-03-20 02:18:28

[code]"Disk Testin'" by Karl Parakenings

The Test Chamber is a room. "A vast and motionless space."

The shiny disk is in the Test Chamber. The description of the shiny disk is "A silver pendant on a chain."

Before examining the shiny disk while the shiny disk is held by the player:
	now the printed name of the shiny disk is "silver pendant on a chain".

Test me with "x disk/l/take shiny disk/i/examine disk/i/drop disk/l"[/code]

Better? I'm sure this isn't the most elegant way to do it, as it changes the property every time the disk is examined while held, but then I'm only a couple days into learning Inform.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=959&start=10#p14866
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment!
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-03-20 03:34:49

I thought it was worth mentioning here that Parchment now has Glulx support, and a new address: <a class="postlink" href="http://iplayif.com/">http://iplayif.com/</a>!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2163&start=0#p14867
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: TAKE ALL problem in relation to players holdall/container in
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-03-20 08:15:13

I have a problem in my game concerning the player's inventory. Part of the game involves packing a trunk with some needed items. However, if at some point the player types: TAKE ALL as a shortcut, then he takes everything back out of the trunk in his inventory, along with any visible items in the room.

I was wondering if there's a way I could make Inform7 only take items back out of the trunk if they're requested specifically, instead of automatically doing it for every item with the TAKE ALL command? Below is the bit of code I'm using to handle this.

Thanks in advance for any help or ideas with this!


[code]A trunk is a container.

A thing can be important to pack. A thing is usually not important to pack.

Definition: The trunk is packed if every important to pack thing is in the trunk.

Before printing the name of a packed trunk, say "completely packed ".

An umbrella is an important to pack thing. 
A raincoat is an important to pack thing. 

Understand the command "pack" as put.

A thing is either packable or not packable. A thing is usually packable.

A fire axe is not packable.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2163&start=0#p14868
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: TAKE ALL problem in relation to players holdall/containe
User: StJohnLimbo / DateTime: 2011-03-20 09:08:44

One way to do it would be to add the following to your code:
[code]Rule for deciding whether all includes things in the trunk:
	it does not.[/code](cf. chapter 17.34., "Deciding whether all includes")

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2162&start=0#p14869
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can an object be renamed?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-03-20 10:47:47

[quote="Seeker"]if dropped, it reverts to the original name[/quote]
You can always test if something is "handled". Things get handled as soon as they are taken and remain handled even if dropped. Inform keeps track of this automatically.

In this case, however, you want some properties to change the first time you examine an object but only if you are holding it.

You can do it thus:
[code]
The printed name of the shiny disk is "shiny disk".
The initial appearance of the shiny disk is "A small shiny disk lies near the edge of the railing."
The description of the shiny disk is "It looks like a small disk on a chain."

Before examining the shiny disk when the shiny disk is held:
	if the printed name of the shiny disk is not "silver pendant":
		now the printed name of the shiny disk is "silver pendant";
		now the description of the shiny disk is "It is a silver pendant on a chain with a deep blue stone in the center surrounded by strange runes."

Test me with "x disk/take disk/i/drop disk/x disk/take disk/i/x disk/i/drop disk/x disk"
[/code]

(Since you test what the printed name of the disk is, you had better give it a printed name from the start, or you will get a run time error.

The disk can be dropped anywhere, before it's examined; therefore it's a bad idea to let the printed name contain a reference to the edge of the railing.

"Held" means "carried or worn". The chain suggest that the thing can be worn. If a player puts it around his neck before he examines it, I guess you want the text properties to change, even though he wears it rather than carries it. If instead you write "when the shiny disk is carried", the text properties won't change if the player examines the disk while wearing it, only when he carries it in his hands.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2162&start=0#p14870
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can an object be renamed?
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-03-20 11:48:49

Thanks Felix, that does it!  

This is going to be a useful method to know.  I can see using it for several other items I plan on using.

And you are right about using 'near the edge of the railing' in the printed name.  I didn't think about that, but it was obvious the first time I tested your code and everything worked.

Thanks again!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=10#p14871
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-03-20 12:08:38

I'm going to toss in one of my favorite quotes. In the introduction to Frankenstein, we read about how the book was inspired by an informal writing contest. After describing what the other contestants (her husband and his friends) set out to do, Mary Shelley says, "I busied myself to think of a story."

The introduction was, I believe, actually penned by Percy Shelley, but she signed her name to it. She was only 19 years old at the time, and undoubtedly exhausted from writing the novel.

The point is this: A novel, a short story, or a text game starts with an IDEA. A creative spark that (to mix a metaphor) is pregnant with provocative implications.

Orson Scott Card is a fine storyteller. I haven't read that book, but I'm sure it's good. I would tend, personally, to be a bit leery of a Dummies book on writing, because writing is not for dummies! Also, is the co-author's name really Economy? That smells a bit fishy. Look for how-to-write books by writers who have sold stacks of novels, like Card. Lawrence Block wrote a book called "Telling Lies for Fun and Profit." He's a successful author, so his opinions carry some weight.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2162&start=0#p14872
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can an object be renamed?
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-03-20 12:20:35

The only problem I can see after trying every combination of scenarios is that it can still only be referred to as disk, or shiny disk.  

If you say 'drop silver pendant' the reply is 'You can't see any such thing'.  Even after examining it, it can only be called 'disk', not 'silver pendant' even though that is how it is now described.  So if you drop it, and want to pick it up later, the player has to remember even though it is called 'silver pendant' if he wants to pick it up again, he has to call it disk.

Any way around this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=10#p14873
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-03-20 12:59:53

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Look for how-to-write books by writers who have sold stacks of novels [...][/quote]

An alternate strategy would be: look for how-to-write books by writers who produce work that you personally enjoy and admire.

How very righty-lefty of us [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=10#p14874
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: WMWade / DateTime: 2011-03-20 14:08:49

When a game has an obvious coding error, it crashes in obvious ways. Like spelling mistakes in writing, these are easy mistakes to correct. Bad research or awkward dialogue are like more complex bugs: harder to track down because they depend on a deeper understanding. At the very deepest level are authorial choices which mediate audience experience, making text and gameplay smoother and more enjoyable without calling overt attention to themselves at all. Their absence is not a bug so much as it's a tangible difference between the extraordinary and the routine.

Conscious analysis of that final layer is not necessary to produce it. Sometimes luck or experience makes its exercise unconscious.

People with a lot of experience selling books will tend to write entertaining books on writing because that value, entertainment, is one they exercise well. Unfortunately, whether someone is a capable teacher -- whether that person can analyze and express the nuts and bolts of technique in a meaningful way -- is not consistently correlated to producing entertaining prose. Even if they also turn out to be capable teachers, their particular style of teaching may work spectacularly with one person while failing just as spectacularly with another.

Rather than depending on authors which the open market has favored (or even authors you personally enjoy), you might be best served to seek out educational books which are themselves widely regarded... and then, should you discover among them an author who teaches in a way you can absorb, seek out other books by that author. If that is her only book, find reviews by people who absorbed her book the way you did, and see what other books spoke to them that way.

More importantly, write a lot. Developing a critical eye for your own work, and exposing that work to as many editorial eyes as you can find, will teach you things unconsciously in a way that fixed texts are hard pressed to accomplish.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2164&start=0#p14875
Forum: Competitions / Subject: @party interactive fiction competition
User: metoikos / DateTime: 2011-03-20 14:08:54

@party 2011, a demoparty held in Harvard, Massachusetts, 30 minutes outside Boston, has an interactive fiction competiton. 

Remote entries (submit by email to <a href="mailto:val.grimm@gmail.com">val.grimm@gmail.com</a>) are due June 13, 2011. Onsite entries are due 12:30 PM on Saturday, June 18. 

Rules
    * Games cannot be more than approximately a half-hour in play length.
    * Most formats are acceptable, but Z-Machine is preferred.

Check out our website, atparty-demoscene.net, for more info.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2162&start=0#p14876
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can an object be renamed?
User: George / DateTime: 2011-03-20 14:14:25

You can attach conditions to understand statements, like:

[code]

Understand "silver pendant" as the shiny disk when the shiny disk has been held.     
[/code]


eta: see 16.17 in the docs, "Context: understanding when"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2162&start=10#p14877
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can an object be renamed?
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-03-20 15:00:34

DOH!  That is what I had tried to do before and it didn't work for my main purpose.  So I deleted that line.  I forgot you can stack these rules on top of each other.

Thanks for clearing up my brain fart.   [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=20#p14878
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interactive Stor
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2011-03-20 16:54:42

John,
sounds like a good plan.  I have also read some excellent books on novel writing that have helped give me some great ideas on character development, plot etc.  In particular, I recommend "How to write a damn good mystery" by James N Frey.  You can often find this used or on Kindle for a good price.  

Despite the importance of character, plot, etc, I *strongly* recommend that you keep a relatively modest scope for your first piece of IF.  Think of it as a short 3 act play with a few characters and locations, rather than an epic novel.  There's a fair amount of programming required to build locations, objects, Non-Player Characters, so it is often better to concentrate on a few things.  

Be sure to try out different IF games that fit into the genre that you are planning on writing.  In my case, it's a mystery story and I have played many of the classic Infocom games like "The Witness" and more recent works such as "An Act of Murder", "Lord Bellwater's Secret" etc.  These were quite inspirational for me.  And needless to say, I have read my share of mystery and detective novels from the likes of Robert Goddard, Henning Mankell, Lawrence Block, Raymond Chandler, etc.

Not sure why no one recommended this, but the recently published book "IF Theory Reader" (Jackson-Meade & Wheeler) is also a tremendous resource.  You can download a PDF or buy it from Lulu.com

Best of luck
--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2165&start=0#p14879
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Adaptive pacing for puzzles?
User: karlnp / DateTime: 2011-03-20 17:12:57

Are there any resources on adaptive puzzle pacing? I'm thinking here of programming constructs similar to the discovery of the ruins in Photopia, or the plane ticket in Shade.

I'm writing an adventure that is heavily reliant on tension and suspense, and I'd like to have dehydration/oxygen level pressure without actually killing the player immediately. I'm well on my way to implementing it, but I always try to learn from others' mistakes, and I'm having trouble finding similar constructions.

To clarify - 

I'm writing a game where the player has to survive on a space ship not meant for habitation past a particular point in the journey. To do so, they have to deal with heat, cold, thirst, and the ship's automated repair routines. I'm constructing them in such a way that new players will not suffer for not knowing IF tropes - so looking would not decrease their oxygen level in a EVA, for example, nor would most things except actions which lead to the solution of the puzzle. So this is a concept more based around narrative pacing rather than puzzle design, i suppose. It's a bit of a nebulous issue, and I'm probably exposing how new I am as a result.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2166&start=0#p14880
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: writing a letter in IF
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-03-20 17:18:42

I've been toying around with trying to make a command which lets the player write a letter to somebody in a game. Most of my attempts would not compile. The one referenced below works somewhat, but is far from ideal.

I'd like to have a way the player could write a letter to another person in the game (such as "write to Mom"), or a object/noun (such as "write to home/school, ect"). The problem is, and I'm not sure how to get around it, is I can't make a new action which refers to something that is not visible or within reach of the player? So they can't write a letter to someone or something which exists in another part of the game, unless I put within their sight something like a letter which has another part that is attached to it, like a home-address, as in the example below.

I'm sure my example is probably one of the least efficient ways to do this. But if anyone has an example of how I could implement it better, please share or give me some suggestions. Thanks again for any help. 



[code]The studio is a room.

A pen and a letter is in the studio. 

Home-address is a part of the letter. Understand "home" as home-address.

Letter-writing is an action applying to one thing. Understand "write to [something]" or "write [something]" as letter-writing.

Instead of letter-writing when the player is not in the studio:
	say "You need to be in the studio to write a letter."

Instead of letter-writing home-address in the studio:
	if the player is not holding the pen:
		say "You don't have a pen." instead;
	otherwise:
		say "You write home." instead.
			
Yard is a room

The studio is north of the yard.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2166&start=0#p14881
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: writing a letter in IF
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-03-20 17:53:26

[quote="dustinneff"]I've been toying around with trying to make a command which lets the player write a letter to somebody in a game... The problem is, and I'm not sure how to get around it, is I can't make a new action which refers to something that is not visible or within reach of the player?[/quote]
Matt W gives a good explanation for how to do this in [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2086&hilit=scope]this thread[/url] -- specifically the second message down. In this case the OP is trying to make a "being" action, but the basic situation is the same. Here's the relevant quote: 
[quote="matt w"][quote="Mushroom Spider"]Right now, the key issue is [code snipped]
I just don't know how to go about making the action able to apply to an untouchable, non-visible thing such as a person in another room.[/quote]

You need to do two things here:

[code]Being is an action applying to one visible thing.
Understand "Be [any thing]" as being.[/code]

Note "visible" and "any thing." "Visible" is actually anything the player can refer to, as opposed to "touchable." (See 12.17 of the documentation.) The "[any thing]" token lets the player refer to any thing, not just things that are in scope. (See section 16.7 of the documentation.) Put these two things together, and now the player can type "Be x" to refer to x no matter where it is -- whether the player can see it or not!

The use of "visible" here is super confusing and unfortunate, but the thing to keep in mind is that "visible" is actually much more permissive than the default; "visible" is anything the player can talk about, and in combination with "[any thing]" or "[any person]" often means things that aren't, well, visible. [/quote]If you have trouble adapting this to your case, let us know.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2166&start=0#p14882
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: writing a letter in IF
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-03-20 18:28:09

Thank you, that works great!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2165&start=0#p14883
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Adaptive pacing for puzzles?
User: WMWade / DateTime: 2011-03-20 18:40:26

A comprehensive illusion of scarcity works as effectively as scarcity itself.

The most interesting part of any time limit, in narrative terms, is the last few desperate seconds. The preceding countdown is just background detail. If players are wasting turns, let them know in increasingly strenuous language, but there's no reason to actually penalize them until they're almost ready to solve the last critical puzzles... at which point, oh my, the air [i]is[/i] getting thin.

With any real time limit there's a chance players will waste resources early and discover, at a point past their more recent saves, that the game is unwinnable. Instead, let them run out of a resource dramatically -- as or slightly before they use the last bit they need -- regardless of how much they wasted experimenting. So long as the writing drops hints that such waste is real waste, tension remains. Analog descriptions ("the needle is well into the red") work better than digital ones ("10.5%") for obvious reasons.

Those last few seconds, however? As brutally time-sensitive as you care to make them. So long as it's crystal clear that the clock is ticking, the shift from illusion to reality can be both visceral and fair.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=20#p14885
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-03-20 23:32:02

[quote="WMWade"][...] Even if they also turn out to be capable teachers, their particular style of teaching may work spectacularly with one person while failing just as spectacularly with another.[/quote]

So very true.

And honestly, I've never gotten [i]anything [/i]out of a writing how-to other than a general warm-fuzzy pep-talk. And a pep-talk can be valuable at times, but it's juice, not function. I've had some colleagues that swear by the value of particular how-tos, and I've consumed stacks of them out of habit, but the only ones I really love, and keep around, are the ones that make me grin.

In my role as an editor, I've had a lot of writers ask me for books to read to help them hone, and I always sort of blow the question off because, in all seriousness, I think those books are mainly for people who want to [i]daydream [/i]about writing, to kinda-sorta [i]intend [/i]to write. The way to actually hone the craft is ...

[quote]More importantly, write a lot.[/quote]

This.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2172&start=0#p14893
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: A question about doing something with menus.
User: pashaimeru / DateTime: 2011-03-21 10:50:00

I've got a decent grasp of Inform 7 thus far, but this is a bit too complex for me. 

Basically, what I want to see a menu system for exploration, resource gathering etc. The player could, through a menu-based interface
A: Use an item to open the menu.
B: Choose a location from the menu.
C: Choose what to do in the location: explore, gather resources, rescue a person within the area, something along those lines. 
D: Another submenu would open or something might happen, depending on what the player chose to do exactly.

This all is very doable with Menus by Emily Short. But there's one problem I'm having:

Most locations, resources within locations, etc would be hidden initially, until found by exploring or through some other way. How would I go about doing that? Is there some way to hide some things from the menu initially? Add rows to the tables later on? Is Menus the best extension for this, or is there something more suitable?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2165&start=0#p14894
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Adaptive pacing for puzzles?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-03-21 10:54:07

[quote="WMWade"]
Those last few seconds, however? As brutally time-sensitive as you care to make them. So long as it's crystal clear that the clock is ticking, the shift from illusion to reality can be both visceral and fair.[/quote]

Noooooooo!  Mercy!  On behalf of puzzle-challenged players everywhere, I promise to suspend disbelief when I survive my eighth bumbling attempt if I don't have to reload the game eight times.  

I agree that ratcheting up the tension towards the end is great, but I think there are ways to do that that don't involve brutal timing puzzles.  The *threat* of death ratchets up tension - actual death relieves it, because the game is over.  At least for me.  Maybe that's because I tend to die a lot in those situations?

[quote="karlnp"]It's a bit of a nebulous issue, and I'm probably exposing how new I am as a result.[/quote]

It's a really good thing to be considering.  One thing you might think about is whether you're willing to force the plot along when the player is clearly struggling.  Let's say it's been 20 or 30 turns since the player has done anything productive - is there some way you can clue the player in with an updated message (ie "You glance frantically around the cabin, looking for something, anything that will let you get at the Snuggly Bunny Deep Space Warmth Suit . . . and then your eye falls on the bolt cutters, gleaming dully in the emergency lighting.")  I don't think it's too far fetched that panicky people get ideas, and some of those ideas could be failures (that point in a productive direction), but it would keep things moving along, which for a new or stuck player, would probably excuse some heavy handedness.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2172&start=0#p14895
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A question about doing something with menus.
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-21 10:59:50

Yes, you could just move rows from some backup table to the table shown to the player, whenever a new action or location becomes available. I would do this by (a) choosing the right row from the backup table and reading its entries into some global variables; (b) choosing a blank row in the table shown to the player; (c) writing the global variables to the entries in this blank row.

(If the available locations and actions change often, and disappear as well as appear, you could create a routine that custom-builds the table shown to the player whenever it is opened. You'd start by blanking out the Table of Shown Options; then repeat through the Table of Potential Options, and carry out steps a-c for any row that should be copied.)

But there are many other possibilities. For instance, you could change the Menus extension so that menus have another column, "shown", the value of which makes the row appear or not appear. Or you could decide to use a multiple choice conversation system like Simple Chat instead.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2173&start=0#p14896
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Combining while [activity] with other conditions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-21 11:03:57

I can't seem to figure out how to write a rule preamble that includes both "while activity X" and another condition. Consider this:

[code]Test is a room.

A thing has a number called the count. The indefinite article of a thing is usually "[a quantity of the item described]".

To say a quantity of (item - a thing):
	carry out the printing a quantity activity with item.
	
Printing a quantity of something is an activity on objects.

For printing a quantity of a thing (called item):
	say "[count of item in words]"
	
Some balloons is a thing in Test. The count of balloons is 5.[/code]

So far so good. But what if I want say something different in certain narrow circumstances:

[code]For printing a quantity of balloons while listing nondescript items when the count of balloons is 5:
	say "exactly five".[/code]
This compiles, but does nothing.

[code]For printing a quantity of balloons while listing nondescript items and the count of balloons is 5:
	say "exactly five".[/code]
This fails to compile, as do many other permuatations of "when/while/and" with rearrangements of the conditions.

Is the "while activity" syntax restricted to a single condition? This works, but it's awfully wordy:

[code]For printing a quantity of balloons when the listing nondescript items activity is going on and the count of balloons is 5:
	say "exactly five".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2172&start=0#p14897
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A question about doing something with menus.
User: pashaimeru / DateTime: 2011-03-21 11:11:00

Ah, alright. That makes sense, thanks.

Here's what I have as of now:
[code]"Locations test" by pashaimeru

Volume 1 - Engine stuff

Book 1 - Prep

Include Menus by Emily Short.
Use no scoring.
The printed name of yourself is "you".
A thing can be usable or not usable. A thing is usually not usable.

Book 2 - Locations

Section - Using

The crystal ball is a thing. It is fixed in place. It is usable. Crystal ball can be operated or not operated. Crystal ball is not operated.

Using is an action applying to one thing. Understand "use [thing]" as using.

Check using:
If noun is not usable, say "You can't use that.".

Carry out using:
	if noun is crystal ball:
		now the current menu is the Table of Crystalball; 
		carry out the displaying activity;
		clear the screen;
		try looking.

		Table of Crystalball
		title	subtable	description	toggle
		"Location"	Table of Locations	--	--

			Table of Locations
			title	subtable	description	toggle
			"Forest"	Table of Location_forest	--	--
			["Mountains" Table of Location_mountains	--	--]
			with 5 blank rows
			
				Table of Location_forest
				title	subtable	description	toggle
				"Explore"	--	--	explore forest rule
				
				Table of Location_mountains
				title	subtable	description	toggle
				"Explore"	--	--	explore mountains rule
				
Part - Exploring

A rubber ball is a thing.

This is the explore forest rule:
	choose a blank row in Table of Locations; 
	now title entry is "Mountains";
	now subtable entry is Table of Location_mountains;
	decrease the menu depth by 3;
	say "Mountains found etc.";
	
This is the explore mountains rule:
	decrease the menu depth by 3;
	now player is carrying a rubber ball;
	say "You found a rubber ball somehow.";

Volume 2 - The world

Test room is a room. The player is in test room. The crystal ball is here.[/code]

Primitive as hell right now, but I'm trying to get the structure down. Two problems with this:

1. Making a different exploration rule for every location seems a bit uneloquent. Is there a way around that? I'll end up with a hundred different rules at this rate.

2. The says don't appear at all. How do I give the player some feedback for his actions?

EDIT: Rephrased the question a bit~

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2173&start=0#p14898
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combining while [activity] with other conditions
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-21 12:13:12

I think I found two bugs cause of this.  For now, please use the wordy method.  I'll report it on the bugtracker the two bugs I found, one of which being your "shouldn't this work?"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=20#p14899
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: Andrew Owen / DateTime: 2011-03-21 12:21:03

Writing isn't like baking a cake. There's no recipe you can follow. If you want to be a good writer you have to write, over and over, until you stop being a bad writer.

If you want to know what makes a good story that's a little different. Read Artistotle's Poetics. Robert McKee has made a stack of cash selling writing courses which expand on the principles of Poetics, but frankly everything you need is there. Aristotle says the elements in Greek theatre are plot, character, thought, diction, music, and spectacle, in that order. And he complains that, like Hollywood today, they keep getting the order reversed. 

IF already makes it hard to put spectacle and music first. Now you can do other things with adventure games than telling a story, but fiction requires plot, characters, motivation, and dialogue.

There are two basic approaches to interaction: the branching story, and the puzzle. Plenty has been written about these. I'll leave it there for now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2174&start=0#p14900
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Question about Tables
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-03-21 12:25:51

I'm trying to create a way where the player could learn a language by studying a book, which would then be used to translate various documents found later on.

I was able to do it with an exhaustive list of check/carry out routines, but I thought it would be simpler to do by consulting a table which could include all the different languages contained in books that the player can find and study. Below follows my attempt which won't compile...

[code]The Library is a room.

A language is a kind of thing. A language can be learned or unlearned. A language is usually unlearned.

Latin is a language.

A dusty book is in the Library. The description is "[if latin is unlearned]Difficult to comprehend.[otherwise]Readable now." 

Understand "study [text]" as studying. 

Studying is an action applying to one language. 

Carry out studying:
        say "Nothing comes to mind.". 

Instead of studying a language listed in the Table of Books:
        say "[response entry][paragraph break]".

Table of Books
language   	response   
    "latin"   	"[if the player is holding the dusty book]You study the latin text.[now the language is learned][otherwise]There's nothing here to study[end if]?"    [/code]

I'm wondering if there's an easy fix to this? -- Or am I way off base?

Thanks again in advance for any help or tips to try out!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2165&start=0#p14901
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Adaptive pacing for puzzles?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-03-21 12:40:42

[quote="gravel"]I agree that ratcheting up the tension towards the end is great, but I think there are ways to do that that don't involve brutal timing puzzles. The *threat* of death ratchets up tension - actual death relieves it, because the game is over. At least for me. Maybe that's because I tend to die a lot in those situations?[/quote]

I agree, but for me this is partly a result of the awkward UI experience that these puzzles engender. Either I have to remind myself to save when the action picks up, or I have to use UNDO a bunch of times. The first essentially kills the tension and the second destroys immersion by making me guess exactly where I am in the unfolding sequence of events.

TADS has a nice autosave extension that automatically creates a saved checkpoint to roll back to, and extends the usual RESTORE / RESTART / UNDO / QUIT prompt with a RETRY option. It's used to pretty good effect in [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=4l33jjysofp3very]All Hope Abandon[/url]. As a player, it feels about the same as the checkpoint system in open-world games, where some missions require you to succeed to advance the plot. I'm thinking specifically of [i]Assassin's Creed 2[/i] and [i]Red Dead Redemption[/i]. RDR had an additional refinement where you could skip a mission altogether after failing it more than three times, advancing to a "success" outcome without penalty.

[quote="karlnp"]I'm writing an adventure that is heavily reliant on tension and suspense, and I'd like to have dehydration/oxygen level pressure without actually killing the player immediately. I'm well on my way to implementing it, but I always try to learn from others' mistakes, and I'm having trouble finding similar constructions.[/quote]

[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=zkbp7ygz2uafxr1c]The Duel That Spanned the Ages[/url] has a few timed sequences that are well-handled. One puzzle during the midgame has you open an airlock while low on air. You do eventually die but there's a generous amount of time to explore the area in the meantime. As an example of what not to do, I would cite [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=0gp3my5d5wi0owtu]Nevermore[/url] and the need to periodically refresh your alertness.

Also [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=jz2q7uk4gp0zx2ph]Oxygen[/url] may be worth a look; the major puzzle is oxygen-related and the tension arises from danger to others rather than danger to the player. This is an avenue that strikes me as very promising to explore; placing NPCs in jeopardy lets the player formulate a goal ("stop X from dying") rather than reacting to a mandatory, author-imposed one ("avoid dying for the Nth time").

I would encourage you not to rely on atmospheric messages alone. One of the first things I do now when confronted with such messages is to type >Z for a few dozen turns, just to see if I will eventually die and to establish a sense of the turn limit involved. Especially do not make them progressively more urgent if there is no real urgency in game terms. ([url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ihd4d1ewnrf1shmi]Divis Mortis[/url] was a slight offender in this regard.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1465&start=10#p14902
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Funny responses from this year's games
User: kingboo247 / DateTime: 2011-03-21 12:40:44

I particularly thought that this was a funny way to lose:

[spoiler]> take scissors
Just don’t run with them.

[Your score has just gone up by three points.]

> run
You trip.  As you fall, the scissors in your coat pocket impale themselves through your stomach.  
The acid causes you a slow and painful death as you get to know your own personal anatomy 
much better than you ever wanted.




    *** You have died ***[/spoiler]
It warned me and I didn't listen.  What a fool I was.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2174&start=0#p14903
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Tables
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-21 13:27:21

You're pretty close - but here's a couple of your problems:

1. Action definitions can't take specific kinds - and that's a good thing, because it would just make the parser errors more confusing. Use a check rule with your action to limit the kinds of things the player can act on.

2. If you want an action on things that aren't present, you have to define it as an action "one one visible thing."

3. Your Table of Books has texts, not languages, in the language column. Get rid of the quotes around "latin" and it will work.

4. you can't put "now..." phrases inside text. If you don't want to do that in a carry out rule, you'll have to create a say phrase to set that up.

I've also replaced your carry out rule with a check rule, because it's best not to say anything in a carry out rule. Having taken care of that, your Instead rule can be split up into check, carry out and report rules. However, I'm not sure what your intended behavior is for multiple languages. Are they all learned from the same book, or is the language always learned from the same book it's written in? To implement the last two cases, you'll need to add a column to your table, use some properties of languages or books, or use relations.

You don't really need tables at all for this. You could, for example, set up a relation between languages and books, and give each language a "learning" text property that will be printed by the report studying rule.

A possible solution is below:

[code]The Library is a room.

A language is a kind of thing. A language can be learned or unlearned.

A dusty book is in the Library. The description is "[if latin is unlearned]Difficult to comprehend.[otherwise]Readable now." 

Latin is a language.

Understand "study [any thing]" as studying. 

Studying is an action applying to one visible thing. 

Check studying something that is not a language:
	say "Studying a language would be more productive." instead;

Check studying when the noun is not a language listed in the Table of Books:
	say "You don't know what book would teach you [the noun]." instead.
	
Check studying:
	Choose row with language of the noun in Table of Books;
	if the tutorial entry is not held, say "You need to be holding [the tutorial entry] to study [the noun]." instead;

Carry out studying:
	now the noun is learned.
	
Report studying:
	choose row with language of the noun in Table of Books;
	say "[response entry][paragraph break]".

Table of Books
language	tutorial	response   
latin	dusty book	"You study the latin text."    [/code]

Turns out it wasn't nearly as easy as I expected...!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2172&start=0#p14904
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A question about doing something with menus.
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-21 15:08:03

[quote="pashaimeru"]1. Making a different exploration rule for every location seems a bit uneloquent. Is there a way around that? I'll end up with a hundred different rules at this rate.[/quote]
Right, you'd need to find a way to generalise it. In order to give you more specific advice, I think it would be useful to have a little more of an idea of what you want to do with these tables -- what kind of entries should appear in them, and under what circumstance should new entries appear?

[quote]2. The says don't appear at all. How do I give the player some feedback for his actions?[/quote]
Ah -- I don't think you can say things while you are in a menu. (Perhaps they get printed to the main screen but the player will never see this?) If you want to use a menu to do in-game things, and print in-game information to the screen, I think you might be better off using something like Simple Chat. (To get an idea of how this would work, you could check my game [url=http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/springthing/2007/Fate.z8]Fate[/url]: use the commands "open cabinet", "take dagger", "s", "open drawer", "take key", "e", "unlock cage", "open cage", "cut wings" for an example of an in0game menu containing actions. Or simply "s", "talk to charles" to see it for a menu containing conversation topics. The difference is cosmetic. Incidentally, that game also starts out with a crystal ball.)

But again, it is hard to know whether this is good advice without a little more information about what you'll be wanting to do with these menus.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2172&start=0#p14905
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A question about doing something with menus.
User: pashaimeru / DateTime: 2011-03-21 15:51:01

Hmm, I solved the saying problem. But yeah, I better explain myself a bit better here.

Very simply put, I want something like the following with the thing:

1. The player uses the crystal ball (or whatever thingamajing needed to activate the menu)
2. The player chooses a location (in this example, plains). Keep in mind that the locations aren't actual rooms or anything the player could physically enter, they only exist in this menu thing.
3. The player chooses an action to do at the location (in this example, exploration).
4. A random number is generated. Depending on the result, something happens: perhaps he finds an item. Perhaps he finds a new location, like mountains or lake or whatever. Maybe he finds a node of resources. Maybe something else happens: there's gonna be a variety of events possible.

So let's say the player explores the plains a bit. He finds mountains, another location. Then he starts exploring mountains. He finds a node of iron there. Then, he...

1. Uses the crystal ball again
2. Chooses a location (mountains)
3. Chooses an action to do at the location (resource gathering).
4. Chooses a resource to gather from the location (iron).
5. A random amount of iron is gathered.

So basically just that. The way I see it, Menus by Emily Short would basically force me to make a ton of rules: a rule for exploring mountains, a rule for exploring plains, a rule for gathering iron from plains, a rule for gathering wood from plains, a rule for gathering iron from mountains, etc etc. It seems like a pretty absurd way of actually doing it. I might end up needing hundreds of them, and they'd be a nightmare to manage.

In a yet one more additional question: a random result is generated every time the player explores an area. I usually wouldn't want the same event to be able to happen more than once (the player can only discover the mountains one time, for example). Do I have to make a variable for every single event, or is there some neat way of doing it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2175&start=0#p14906
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Parser ignores parts
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-21 16:20:56

Why can't I get the parser to consider a part of something when there's ambiguity in the player's command?

[code]Quarry is a room.

The gravel is a thing in Quarry. Understand "rock" as gravel. A rock is a part of gravel.

Does the player mean doing something with something that is part of gravel: It is very likely.

Does the player mean doing something with gravel: It is very unlikely.

test me with "get rock"[/code]

If there's no conflict between the names, the parser is happy to tell me "that seems to be a part of gravel." But as soon as I let the gravel be understood by the same word, it doesn't even let me know the rock exists.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2175&start=0#p14908
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parser ignores parts
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-21 18:14:25

I feel the solution involves [i]Understand "rock" as gravel when...[/i] but I can't imagine what the condition would be, since the rock is part of the gravel and hence, always, always there.  

Having said this, I'm not sure why this problem you're having is a problem.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2175&start=0#p14909
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parser ignores parts
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-03-21 18:29:49

ScopeCeiling applied to the gravel is the Quarry, the same as ScopeCeiling applied to the player.  ScopeCeiling applied to the rock, on the other hand, is the rock.  If you look at the I6 routine Adjudicate (>TRACE 4 is your friend), you'll see that MULTI_TOKEN verbs (those where you can use the word ``all'') prefer objects whose scope ceiling matches the actor's, a preference that takes priority over does-the-player-mean rulings.  That's why ``x rock'' works while ``get rock'' does not.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2177&start=0#p14910
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Bug? Women getting assigned the male pronoun
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2011-03-21 21:05:41

At some point, my WIP started assigning all female actors the pronoun "him" instead of "her." Like, I can produce a transcript like this:
[quote][b]Crow's Nest[/b]
The crow's nest is a tiny platform perched high above the deck of the ship. From here you would have a beautiful view of the sea.

Zoey, your lookout, is up here.

>[b]showme zoey[/b]
Zoey - woman
location: in the Crow's Nest
singular-named, proper-named; unlit, inedible, portable, ordinarily enumerated, unmarked for special listing, unexamined, nearby, illegible; female, friendly

>[b]pronouns[/b]
At the moment, "it" means the platform, "him" means Zoey, "her" is unset, and "them" means the walls.

>[/quote]

I apologize for not posting any sample code, but I haven't been able to reproduce the error outside the WIP. And my WIP is 178,000 words long. So I have NO idea where the problem actually is.

So, I know it's a long shot, but I was wondering if anyone had experienced a similar problem and how they went about isolating and fixing it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2175&start=0#p14911
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parser ignores parts
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-21 21:11:24

How about this then, guys?

[code]Quarry is a room

The gravel is a thing in Quarry. A rock is a part of gravel. Understand "gravel" as a rock when not examining. 

Does the player mean doing something with a rock: It is very likely.

Does the player mean doing something with gravel: It is very unlikely.

test me with "get gravel/drop gravel/get rock"[/code]

The altered Understand line here matches the actual situation in my extension better - does that help you understand what I'm trying to do?

The "get rock" test demonstrates that the rock is in scope for taking, just not when it shares an Understand token with the gravel. I still want to know why.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2175&start=0#p14912
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parser ignores parts
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-03-21 21:17:24

Is 
[quote]Quarry
You can see a gravel here.

>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] get gravel
(the rock)
That seems to be a part of the gravel.

>[2] drop gravel
(the rock)
You haven't got that.

>[3] get rock
That seems to be a part of the gravel.

>[/quote]
the intended output?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2172&start=0#p14915
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A question about doing something with menus.
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-03-22 07:55:27

[quote="pashaimeru"]It seems like a pretty absurd way of actually doing it. I might end up needing hundreds of them, and they'd be a nightmare to manage.[/quote]

Welcome to Inform. You'll find that there are many aspects of Inform's language and underlying mechanics that rely on you doing relatively absurd things. This facet of Inform is hidden until you really want to do some serious work with it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2125&start=20#p14916
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie Question: Locale Priorities
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-03-22 08:09:11

[quote="Pacian"]This does seem like a lot of work for functionality that I've always considered pretty fundamental.  I mean, what's the point of trying to shape computer-generated text into a story if I can't even control the order it's output in?[/quote]

As others have shown you can do it with some of the extensions. But that in itself points to a problem: that arguably fundamental behavior like this is (1) relegated to an extension (that also requires a framework extension) and (2) that it's not the easiest to set up or even conceptualize from an end-user perspective.

The whole notion of the "locale," while making sense from a back-end, programmatic perspective, is exposed way too much to authors who should not have to worry about so many of the internal mechanics as they clearly do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1366&start=0#p14917
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keeping track of success and failure
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-03-22 08:24:24

[quote="emshort"]Belatedly, part of the trick here is that any given turn might have seen multiple actions happen: the player's action might have expanded out to several actions (TAKE ALL; EAT with an implicit TAKE; etc.), and one or more NPCs might also have taken action. So while it might seem that this is something that could be tracked unambiguously, it's actually trickier than it sounds in the general case.[/quote]

It shouldn't be trickier if actions are granularized. The question should be does the player's action succeed. It's a yes or a no. If something stopped it from happening, then no. If nothing stopped it from happening, then yes. But you can also ask: "how much of the player's action succeeded." Inform's documentation (confusingly) talks about intent and this would actually be a better model.

So if I did TAKE ALL and I could take four objects in the room but a fifth I was prevented from taking (maybe it's too heavy), then the action TAKE ALL failed. Parts of it, however, did succeed. But the action, as a whole failed. That kind of granularity should not be hard for a system to recognize. If I try EAT APPLE (when I don't have it) and this leads to an implicit TAKE action (which then fails), the action EAT APPLE failed. I was not able to eat it because I was not able to take it. There's no ambiguity there.

If an NPC takes an action, it doesn't matter unless the action taken prevents the action the player took from completing. Go with EAT APPLE. Let's say I try but the NPC sees me about to do this and takes the apple before it can be eaten. The the action EAT APPLE has failed. Or maybe I was able to eat a portion of it but then the NPC stopped me. The action thus partially succeeded but was not completed. Or again with TAKE ALL. I start taking everything in the room but the NPC takes the apple before I can get it. In that case TAKE ALL strictly failed -- except certain parts of it did succeed. I took some things but could not take others. Again, that level of granularity should not be hard for a system to model.

So it is very unambigious when you model things as "did the action *as a whole* succeed" and then realize that "as a whole" allows for some elements to succeed while others did not. This also means "success" and "failure" may not be the best ways to model the end states. Perhaps "entirely completed", "somewhat completed", and "not completed at all" are more viable. Again more granularity does allow for this and I think Inform seems to make a very poor design decision regarding how "success" and "failure" are modeled. (The documentation at one point even indicates that it's not quite how you might think of "succeeding" or "failing." The fact that this had to be documented as such should have told someone it was a poor design idea.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2050&start=0#p14918
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rule order question
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-03-22 08:33:09

[quote="capmikee"][quote="Ron Newcomb"]Awesome example of convolutedness. [/quote]
It's based on my actual WIP, so it's certainly not convoluted on purpose.[/quote]

It's funny because when I read this thread I realized I had read many others like it: but usually on CSS forums. In case the reference isn't clear I'm referring to Cascading Style Sheets used in web site design wherein formatting and other elements are given as CSS rules that are applied in specificity order and that rely on a cascade of effects until something "stops" or "contradicts" the currently "successful" rule.

It's intriguing to me that Inform seems to be using a rule-based approach that is very similar to what CSS does and that has the same issues as CSS. I realize this is not just a simple thing of CSS since rules-based systems do tend to have the same mechanics.

Of all the design choices of Inform, I think the one that interests me the most is a combination of the fact that (1) it went rule-based and (2) was extension-based as well. Either one is fine. Together, you almost allow for a recipe of confusion and convolutedness not to mention possible side-effects, edge cases, and corner cases that can be extremely hard to debug until you determine the entire chain path of execution.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2175&start=0#p14919
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parser ignores parts
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-22 09:01:14

Yes, that's the intended output.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1366&start=0#p14920
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keeping track of success and failure
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-22 09:12:31

If you're offering granularity, this would be on my wish list:

Each action has a "success count" which is reset to zero after reading a command.

Whenever the carry out rulebook is called for an action, that action's success count is incremented. If you wanted to get fancy, you could also record the last actor carrying out the action.

For even finer granularity, actions could also have an "attempt count" that gets incremented when the check rulebook is called (and/or a reason the action failed property for the last attempt on each particular action).

Perhaps this is something that could be done in an extension.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2172&start=0#p14921
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A question about doing something with menus.
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-22 09:16:02

[quote="pashaimeru"]1. The player uses the crystal ball (or whatever thingamajing needed to activate the menu)
2. The player chooses a location (in this example, plains). Keep in mind that the locations aren't actual rooms or anything the player could physically enter, they only exist in this menu thing.
3. The player chooses an action to do at the location (in this example, exploration).
4. A random number is generated. Depending on the result, something happens: perhaps he finds an item. Perhaps he finds a new location, like mountains or lake or whatever. Maybe he finds a node of resources. Maybe something else happens: there's gonna be a variety of events possible.[/quote]
I think we can work something out with lists and/or tables. The basic idea would be this: you build a list or table of 'locations'. You then make an explore rule, which chooses a random element from this list and adds it to the Table of Available Locations (or whatever you call your table of locations). You would need only one list and one rule.

Let me know whether that sounds reasonable, and then we can work on whatever would be the next step. [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote="bukayeva"]Welcome to Inform. You'll find that there are many aspects of Inform's language and underlying mechanics that rely on you doing relatively absurd things. This facet of Inform is hidden until you really want to do some serious work with it.[/quote]
I think I might count as someone who has done serious work with Inform (including programming-heavy work like [i]The Art of Fugue[/i], [i]ATTACK[/i], [i]Mid the Sagebrush and the Cactus[/i] and a random dungeon creator I am working on right now), and I have never yet done any absurd Inform coding.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1672&start=0#p14922
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform Attack by Victor Gijsbers
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-22 09:25:54

Ammunition is not implemented in standard ATTACK, but is definitely a plug-in I'm willing to write in the future. Tell me if you still need it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2177&start=0#p14923
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Bug? Women getting assigned the male pronoun
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-03-22 09:32:38

[quote="Michael Gentry"]At some point, my WIP started assigning all female actors the pronoun "him" instead of "her." ... I have NO idea where the problem actually is.[/quote]
Are you using any extensions which deal with pronouns -- Ron's "Pronouns" or Emily's "Plurality" for example?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2177&start=0#p14924
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Bug? Women getting assigned the male pronoun
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2011-03-22 10:12:18

I am using Emily's Plurality, although the bug's not there, or at least not [i]only[/i] there.

I've managed to patch it by adding:
[code]Understand "her" as a person when the item described is female.[/code]

Which doesn't solve the problem, but does eliminate most of the jarring game responses. When I have more time, I'll start taking apart my WIP to figure out what caused it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1366&start=0#p14925
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keeping track of success and failure
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-03-22 10:16:34

[quote="capmikee"]Perhaps this is something that could be done in an extension.[/quote]

Save us from more extensions! [emote]:)[/emote] Seriously, Inform is way too loaded with extensions. When I first started looking at it and was directed to some extensions, the page on the Inform site that listed these was a bit overwhelming. That was before I started using them. Then I found some extensions conflicted. When I tried to learn how certain techniques were done, I found the different coding styles of different authors really precluded that and thus precluded easy modification.

Something like the notion of how an action "succeeds" or "fails" should be a built-in part of Inform and the idea of any sort of granularity that stem from those concepts should similarly be a part of the built-in part of Inform. It's too systemic of an aspect in my opinion to rely on an extension being the driver of it. Now, the granularity mechanism itself could be built such that *it* can be extended. That would be fine. Inform design needs to settle on a notion of what is and is not an extensible mechanism of the platform. Looking at the extensions page as a whole, you can see that from a design perspective it's all over the place. (Programmatically, I'd say Inform development confuses the distinction between orthogonal and non-orthogonal extensions, with suitable modifications for the language domain. Think Extension Methods in C# versus, say, Epsilon Extension Language. Or maybe just think of the programmatic distinction between extendable vs. extensible.)

In any event, I'm still curious why the poster I quoted would say "it's actually trickier than it sounds in the general case." Conceptually it's not and programmatically it doesn't have to be. So is that comment made because of a misperception of granularity or because of how granularity seemingly isn't accounted for in Inform?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2172&start=0#p14926
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A question about doing something with menus.
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-03-22 10:28:00

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]I think I might count as someone who has done serious work with Inform (including programming-heavy work like [i]The Art of Fugue[/i], [i]ATTACK[/i], [i]Mid the Sagebrush and the Cactus[/i] and a random dungeon creator I am working on right now), and I have never yet done any absurd Inform coding.[/quote]

Since I have no idea what your other programming skills are or how well versed you are in effective programmatic design or design patterns in a variety of system and scripting languages (as opposed to a DSL like Inform), this statement doesn't mean as much as you seem to think it does. (When Inform 7 can be put on a resume and not laughed at, let me know. Then my opinion might change.) I'd also say that what you think of as "absurd" may differ from what others do. Even if you personally have never done anything that you personally consider absurd, that doesn't count as a data point against what I said. Go through many of the threads in this forum and you will see people using words that are synonymous with absurd, either in actuality or conceptually. So, again, even if you haven't apparently many others have.

As just one example, some people would consider any approach that utilizes a table-like structure as Inform implements them absurd. Others would consider the fact that you have to completely a remove an action and treat it as something new to be absurd. Others would consider that a language that forces you to worry about line breaks as much as Inform does and use "conditional break" and "run paragraph on" is absurd. I guess it just depends.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2172&start=0#p14927
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A question about doing something with menus.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-22 10:36:02

"Menus" doesn't seem absolutely suitable for what you want to do -- as the extension documentation says, it's designed to let you say things in response to a choice, or to do things in response to a choice, but not both. (And it's mostly designed for out-of-world actions like hints, I think.) It might be the best out-of-the-box solution for what you want to do, though (OTOH on Victor's recommendation you might want to look at "Simple Chat," which I've never used).

But it looks like you might be able to do a workaround by using the capacity inform has to use a "To say" phrase to do stuff other than printing. So if you define the mountains as a thing or a kind of a value, you can drop "[explore mountains]" into something that you're printing, and then use a phrase starting with "To say explore (L - a place)" (or something like that) to do what you want with the exploring. Here's how I modified your code to do this:

[code]"Locations test" by pashaimeru

Volume 1 - Engine stuff

Book 1 - Prep

Include Menus by Emily Short.
Use no scoring.
The printed name of yourself is "you".
A thing can be usable or not usable. A thing is usually not usable.

Book 2 - Locations

Section - Using

The crystal ball is a thing. It is fixed in place. It is usable. Crystal ball can be operated or not operated. Crystal ball is not operated.

Using is an action applying to one thing. Understand "use [thing]" as using.

A place is a kind of value. The places are the forest, the mountains, and the pointless valley.

Check using:
If noun is not usable, say "You can't use that.".

Carry out using:
	if noun is crystal ball:
		now the current menu is the Table of Crystalball; 
		carry out the displaying activity;
		clear the screen;
		try looking.

		Table of Crystalball
		title	subtable	description	toggle
		"Location"	Table of Locations	--	--

			Table of Locations
			title	subtable	description	toggle
			"Forest"	Table of Location_forest	--	--
			"Pointless Valley"	--	"[explore the pointless valley]"	--
			["Mountains" Table of Location_mountains	--	--]
			with 5 blank rows
			
				Table of Location_forest
				title	subtable	description	toggle
				"Explore"	--	"Mountains found etc. [explore forest]"	--
				
				Table of Location_mountains
				title	subtable	description	toggle
				"Explore"	--	"You found a rubber ball somehow. [explore mountains]"	--
				
Part - Exploring

A rubber ball is a thing.

To say explore (L - a place):
	if L is the forest:
		choose a blank row in Table of Locations; 
		now title entry is "Mountains";
		now subtable entry is Table of Location_mountains;
	otherwise if L is the mountains:
		now player is carrying a rubber ball;
	otherwise:
		say "You explore [the L] but don't find much of anything";
	decrease the menu depth by 3.
	
Volume 2 - The world

Test room is a room. The player is in test room. The crystal ball is here.[/code]

As you can see I don't have to write a separate rule for everything I want to explore, and in fact I only have to write "decrease the menu depth by 3" one time instead of once for each case. An annoyance is that it says "You explore pointless valley but don't find much of anything"; this won't happen if you define the locations as things rather than places, though since then "[the L]" appends a definite article. 

Hope this is helpful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2172&start=0#p14928
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A question about doing something with menus.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-22 10:37:58

BTW, you probably want to use a different word than "location" in your code, since Inform reserves "location" for the room where the player is. (If you're wondering why my code says "L - a place," it's because I originally had "location" instead of "place" and it gave me compiler errors.  [emote]:oops:[/emote])

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2050&start=0#p14929
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rule order question
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-22 10:54:12

[quote]Of all the design choices of Inform, I think the one that interests me the most is a combination of the fact that (1) it went rule-based and (2) was extension-based as well.[/quote]

It's not accidental. I argued early on both for rules and for a strong extension mechanism, and I thought that rules were the right way to handle extension.

I still think this. A rule model means, at a minimum, that it's always *possible* for two independent pieces of code to be compiled together; two rule lists can always be merged. So you always have a hope of customizing the thing that you want to customize, as long as it is broken up into manageably small rule-chunks. 

(This is unlike procedural or OO code, in which a given point can only be customized if the original code calls a function or method hook there.)

The problem, which I admit that nobody has solved, is finding a control mechanism which lets the rules come together in a way which is predictable, controllable, and scalable. Source-code order -- which is CSS's main fallback -- is not very controllable, because rearranging your code sucks. The ability to say "this rule is *first*" is predictable and controllable, but not scalable. (You can't use "first"s effectively in a situation where someone has already "first"ed.)

(This is where traditional programming wins. You can stack functions on functions as high as you like, and the results will always be predictable and easy to rearrange -- as long as you're the author of all the functions, of course.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1366&start=10#p14930
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keeping track of success and failure
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-22 10:59:22

I think the goal of Inform is not to be a simulation. In a simulation, granularity is desirable because it increases the accuracy and flexibilty of the simulation. But as with static fiction, attention to irrelevant details in the story world actually takes away from the experience, hence there are a lot of extensions to choose from depending on what aspects of the world are relevant to one particular work. I think a detailed model of every action that goes on during a turn would be a waste of time and memory for at least 95% of all interactive fictions - that's why I suggested it as an extension.

The quality and compatibility of extensions is of course of utmost concern, and I've seen my share of conflicts myself. But for the most part, I'd say I7 extensions are an order of magnitude easier to manage than the old I6 extensions were. I like knowing that the I7 site only contains extensions that have been reviewed by an official team, so I don't have to choose between 10 different extensions for NPC movement, for example. And if you report conflicts as you discover them, you can help to improve the state of extensions further...

Personally, I like to read the source of extensions and include only the bits that I actually want to use. That's a lot easier in I7 than with more procedural or object-oriented languages.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2179&start=0#p14931
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Glimmr performance speed and numbers of sprites
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-03-22 11:06:21

Photoshop is being a giant pain, so right now I have a *bunch* of layers in the mock-up for a graphic window.  I was going to merge these into groups, so there would be fewer for the engine to deal with, but I wasn't sure whether it would help, and it's a bunch of work that is going to make things (very slightly) less flexible.  Is several smallish sprites worse than a single slightly-bigger sprite?  Is it worse enough that it's worth changing?  (It's not like these are animated - there are checks that run through all the sprites, but there's not so many that I'm worried about internal calculations being an issue - I'm just wondering about the display window end of things.)

Also, was there at one time a little application you could drag and drop and scale images on that would let you mock-up Glimmr canvases, complete with some output code?  Or did I hallucinate that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2174&start=0#p14932
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Tables
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-03-22 11:11:32

Just to add to Capmikee's observations, even if you had created an action applying to one thing, your grammar line ("Understand "study [text]" as studying") doesn't match. The bracketed token has to be the same kind as the action is looking for -- in this case a thing, not text.

Below is an alternate example of how you could go about this. I wasn't sure if you wanted the player to study a particular book or a language, so I coded up something that does both. However, there are really only two primary differences between my method and Capmikee's.

First, I made languages a kind of value (KOV) rather than a kind of thing. When things are referred to in commands, they need to be in scope. (The combined use of "visible" and "any thing" is one way of doing this.) KOVs don't have this restriction; they can be referred to (in commands which recognize them) at any time. Also, you can (usually) assign properties to KOVs -- like learned / unlearned -- so you don't lose anything.

The second difference involves the table. I agree with Cap that you don't really need tables (I probably wouldn't have approached it that way), but some authors like the way tables organize info and it's certainly a viable choice. The thing to note is that there are two very distinct ways of using tables in I7. One is the way you're using them now: looking up entries and cross - referencing them. The other is to use a table to actually [i]define[/i] (create) objects or values (see ch. 15.16 of the docs). The downside to this method is that tables used this way can't really be messed with (sorted, changed, in some cases even accessed) in - game. The upside is that you usually don't need to; Inform automatically assigns the other columns as [i]properties[/i] of the thing being defined.

In the example below, I've created a book "kind" and defined the individual books in a table with headings (language, unlearned description, learned description). I don't have to say "A book has a language" because Inform is able to infer from the table that books have that property. More importantly, if I ever need to find the value of that property later, I just have to say "language of the dusty book," rather than "choose the row corresponding to blah blah blah..." 

Sorry if this explanation seem convoluted or complex. The code is actually pretty simple. [emote]:)[/emote] [code]Section - Languages

A language is a kind of value. 
The languages are Latin, Greek, English and Martian.
A language can be learned or unlearned. [<- unlearned is already the default]
English is learned.

Section - Books

A book is a kind of thing. Some books are defined by the Table of Fancy Books.
The description of a book is usually "[The item described] [if the language of the item described is unlearned][unlearned description].[otherwise][learned description]."

Table of Fancy Books
book			language	unlearned description				learned description
a dusty book		latin		"is difficult to comprehend"			"is readable but boring"
Time Magazine	English		"is filled with pictures"				"is filled with ads"
an old scroll		Greek		"has letters like on a frat house"		"tells the tale of Odysseus"

Section - Studying Action

Studying is an action applying to one thing. 
Understand "study [something]" or "learn [something]"as studying.

Check studying:
	if the noun is not a book,
		say "Nothing comes to mind." instead. 

Check studying:
	if the language of the noun is learned,
		say "Since you already know [language of the noun], you are able to determine that [the noun] [learned description]." instead.
		
Carry out studying:
	now the language of the noun is learned.
	
Report studying:
	say "You study [the noun] and find you are now able to read [language of the noun]."

Section - Learning Action

Learning is an action applying to one language.
Understand "learn [language]" or "study [language]" as learning.
The learning action has an object called the studied book.

Setting action variables for learning:
	repeat with B running through books in the location:
		if the language of B is the language understood:
			now the studied book is B.

Check learning:
	if the language understood is learned,
		say "You already know [language understood]." instead.
		
Check learning:
	if the studied book is nothing,
		say "You don't see any books here that look like [language understood]." instead.
		
Carry out learning:
	try studying the studied book instead.
		
Section - Scenario

The Library is a room.
The dusty book, Time Magazine, and the old scroll are in the Library.
A football is in the Library.
	
test me with "study football / x dusty / learn martian / study english / learn latin / x dusty book / x time / study it / x scroll / study it / read it / learn greek / study scroll / learn it".[/code]
P.S. Remember to watch your tabs when cutting / pasting the above. I think the only tab-sensitive rule is the "Setting action variables for learning" rule.

Edit: In the description of the book I originally used "the noun" which works in this case, but changed it to "item described" which is safer and syntactically correct.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2175&start=0#p14933
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parser ignores parts
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-03-22 11:17:38

Maybe the best way to explain it is that multitoken verbs like TAKE try to avoid applying to parts of things when they can, to prevent output like [quote]Quarry
You can see a gravel here.

>take all
rock: That seems to be a part of the gravel.
gravel: Taken.

>[/quote]
rather than [quote]Quarry
You can see a gravel here.

>take all
(the gravel)
Taken.

>[/quote]
One way to get that behavior you want is to modify Inform's notion of the scope ceiling, so that parts aren't treated as a special case.  For instance, replacing ScopeCeiling with [code][ ScopeCeiling pos c;
	if (pos == player && location == thedark) return thedark;
	c = VisibilityParent(pos);
	if (c == 0) return pos;
	while (VisibilityParent(c)) c = VisibilityParent(c);
	return c;
];[/code] in Light.i6t will do the trick.  But the comment immediately above it would suggest that ScopeCeiling wasn't written this way on purpose:[quote]Scope is almost the same thing as visibility, but not quite, and the following routine does not quite duplicate the calculation of |FindVisibilityLevels|. The difference arises in the first step, where we take the |parent| of |pos|, not the core of the |parent| of the core of |pos|: this makes a difference if |pos| is inside a container which is itself part of something else.[/quote]
(Aside: we're getting into areas of the template layer that are more nebulous to me, but I don't think ``this makes a difference if |pos| is inside a container which is itself part of something else'' is correct---I think that the difference only matters when |pos| is directly part of something.)

If you make this change, you ought to compensate with at least a to-decide-whether-all-includes rule.  And then there are still cases like when a plural is defined and the player enters > TAKE TWO ROCKS.  I guess it depends on how much you're willing to alter the current parser behavior.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2179&start=0#p14934
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glimmr performance speed and numbers of sprites
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-22 11:59:53

The more important limiting factor will usually be the size of the images you're displaying, not the number. For a point of comparison, take a look at the canvas editor*--it displays, I believe, over a hundred images before the user even places a single custom sprite, but it's still pretty snappy (in the up-to-date interpreters). The UI images are pretty small, which is one reason for the lack of slowdown, but they are in fact actually twice the maximum size at which they will be displayed; I left the extra information in because it didn't seem to affect performance at all. 

Anyway, I wouldn't worry too much about optimizing right now--wait until you identify a performance problem. Make the images as big as you think you'll need them, and as numerous as is convenient. You can automate the process of reducing the size later if you need to (using a Photoshop batch operation, for example). There's less chance that you'd need to reduce the number of sprites, but of course that can also be done as needed as well.

* The canvas editor is, I believe, the code-generating mock-up application you're thinking of, but there's no dragging and dropping images onto it (because I7 needs to compile any images used). It's an extension (called Glimmr Canvas Editor): fire up a new Inform project, add a list of figure names, and press Release. You'll then be able to place, scale, and otherwise manipulate the images, exporting source code as needed along the way.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2179&start=0#p14935
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glimmr performance speed and numbers of sprites
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-03-22 12:51:31

Thanks, Erik.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2180&start=0#p14936
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Forcing the player to examine objects
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-03-22 15:08:19

In my project, I currently have to decide whether to introduce an NPC automatically after a certain number of turns, or whether I want to force the player to examine a scenery object (albeit a fairly conspicuous one), after which the NPC will be revealed.  I somewhat favor the second approach, because it's more interactive.  If the player doesn't have to examine the object, the player will merely have to wait (or look) while the internal fuse runs down and the routine brings the NPC into play.  However, I believe that people inexperienced with IF would be unlikely to examine scenery objects.  Even though I would say that I'm primarily writing for the IF community, I don't want my friends and family to give up on me if I manage to get them to play it at all.  Furthermore, I don't want to break the pacing by having the game stall out indefinitely; I think that could spoil the effect.

It's also not as if the player would have to kill many turns just waiting.  In fact, she would only have to wait once, or else do three other moves. (I'm using Hugo, which causes three turns to pass on the WAIT command.)  I'm pretty much leaning on introducing the NPC after the fuse runs down, even though I wish I could add something interactive about it.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1366&start=10#p14937
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keeping track of success and failure
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-03-22 15:18:48

[quote="capmikee"]I think the goal of Inform is not to be a simulation.[/quote]

The goal of Inform as I understand it is to produce games that are a type of simulation of some sort of model world.

[quote]But as with static fiction, attention to irrelevant details in the story world actually takes away from the experience, ...[/quote]

What do you mean by "static" fiction? Do you mean a book? Inform isn't about producing that. The 'irrelevant details' don't have to be used even if they part of Inform's built-in set. That's not an argument for making an extension. Imagine if the .NET library or MFC or the JFC were all treated as individual extensions to the language. It would be madness.

Built-in elements do not detract from the "experience" as long as there are ways to make sure the built-in elements you don't want to use do not intrude. A good system makes sure of that without having to rely on extensions. Certainly the notion of whether actions succeed or fail would be relevant to all model worlds, even if how the granularity is used would differ.

[quote]I think a detailed model of every action that goes on during a turn would be a waste of time and memory for at least 95% of all interactive fictions - that's why I suggested it as an extension.[/quote]

I think we're talking about a different aspect of "detailed model." I was just pointing out that "success" and "failure" do not have to be as ambiguous as some claim (and as Inform seems to treat them).

[quote]I like knowing that the I7 site only contains extensions that have been reviewed by an official team, so I don't have to choose between 10 different extensions for NPC movement, for example.[/quote]

The whole point of extensions would be to allow you to choose between ten such different NPC movement models if they were all different. That's why you have extensions. If the goal is to center around an established "official" movement model, then that should be incorporated -- but also extensible. If this official team is reviewing the extensions, as you're saying, I don't understand why I still find bugs in some (or why some say I shouldn't use them at all anymore). Or why some don't work with "use no deprecated features."

Keeping the thread on track, though, I still don't see why keeping track of success and failure is considered to be so ambiguous or problematic and I'm surprised more people didn't question that assumption when it was brought up.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2180&start=0#p14938
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Forcing the player to examine objects
User: gumby / DateTime: 2011-03-22 15:23:52

Would the scenario support doing both?  I would be like a timed hint.  If the player fails to examine the scenery in the amount of time, then the NPC is introduced.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2172&start=10#p14939
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A question about doing something with menus.
User: pashaimeru / DateTime: 2011-03-22 15:26:44

Oh wow, thanks a ton. That's actually really nice, compared to the horrible mess I was about to do.

[code]To say explore (L - a place):
   if L is the forest:
      choose a blank row in Table of Locations;
      now title entry is "Mountains";
      now subtable entry is Table of Location_mountains;
   otherwise if L is the mountains:
      now player is carrying a rubber ball;
   otherwise:
      say "You explore [the L] but don't find much of anything";
   decrease the menu depth by 3.[/code]
About this, though. Let's say I want fifty different things that can happen when the player explores the forest. This seems like a bit subpar way of doing it, if it gets long like that; what'd be a better one? Lists or tables as VictorGijsbers recommended?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2050&start=10#p14940
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rule order question
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-03-22 15:32:15

You've basically argued (at least in my mind) for why I wouldn't choose a rule-based system and an extension-based mechanic. I hear you saying you still think it's the right way to go -- but I don't hear why. There are functional programming approaches that languages like Clojure, Scala, or Haskell take that obviate the problem you mention with non-rule based setups. Even Ruby removes the assumption about what can and can't be dynamically customized, unless I'm misunderstanding how you're using that phrase.

All that being said, I'm actually somewhat happy to see a rules-based system being attempted because I do think they have their places, although moreso in the "expert system" or "domain knowledge" area rather than in the DSL space.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2172&start=10#p14941
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A question about doing something with menus.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-22 15:36:36

[quote="pashaimeru"]Oh wow, thanks a ton. That's actually really nice, compared to the horrible mess I was about to do.

[code]To say explore (L - a place):
   if L is the forest:
      choose a blank row in Table of Locations;
      now title entry is "Mountains";
      now subtable entry is Table of Location_mountains;
   otherwise if L is the mountains:
      now player is carrying a rubber ball;
   otherwise:
      say "You explore [the L] but don't find much of anything";
   decrease the menu depth by 3.[/code]
About this, though. Let's say I want fifty different things that can happen when the player explores the forest. This seems like a bit subpar way of doing it, if it gets long like that; what'd be a better one? Lists or tables as VictorGijsbers recommended?[/quote]

I'm not super-informed on this, but I would go for tables. They can be more flexible -- you can include additional columns to keep track of things like whether the row can be used again or should be blanked out after use, and whether the row has been used, and things like that. Also, as I learned the hard way, [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2112]lists are memory hogs[/url]; they can be expanded dynamically, so Inform leaves a lot of space for them to expand.

EDIT: And, depending on how you manage the tables, you might find that this lets you streamline the to-say phrase further. Declare "Every place has a table called exploration-table. The exploration-table is usually the Table of Nothing Interesting Happening." and then you could just have the "explore L" phrase call a random row from the exploration-table of L and do -- well, whatever it is you're planning to do with the table. You'd need to find some way of having a table row do things like adding "mountains" to the available locations; maybe this could be done by having a column of stored actions that might be called, and then defining an action on a place that adds the place to the Table of Locations?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2181&start=0#p14942
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Z machine memory usage, in exact bytes?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-22 15:40:43

Question:  I'm trying to shrink the memory footprint of an extension, so I compile two versions of it, Plan A and Plan B.  I compare the sizes of the resulting .z8 files using the command line, but they're the exact same number of bytes for both plans!  What the hey?  I thought it was my filesystem playing tricks on me, but Windows and Mac both do this.  But the resulting sizes cannot be the same.  In one case I turned a single-column I7 table into an I6 array.  The array method should be smaller -- it lacks header bytes, lacks a parallel "blanks" array, lacks a lot of auto-created debugging information, etc.  But the .z8 filesizes per the "ls" or "dir" command are precisely equal.

What am I missing?  Is there maybe an interpreter that can give me some details about what's going on here?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1366&start=10#p14943
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keeping track of success and failure
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-22 15:47:24

It sounds like TADS 3 might be a better language for you. It's object-oriented and there's a lot of world modeling built in.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2181&start=0#p14944
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Z machine memory usage, in exact bytes?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-22 15:58:15

Is it possible that all the extra memory usage happens at runtime? There was something about that in the last discussion of measuring memory usage, and the result was a uservoice suggestion for a runtime memory report command.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2180&start=0#p14945
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Forcing the player to examine objects
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-22 16:22:19

If the scenery is fairly obvious, then I'd say go ahead an use a timer. Maybe not 3 turns, but something, just as a fail-safe.  I don't tend to examine lots of stuff as a general rule, but not because I don't know how.  It's just not a habit with me. 

OT @gumby:  Honda, grr.  My Juri will beat you yet.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2180&start=0#p14946
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Forcing the player to examine objects
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-03-22 16:35:53

Or take the middle ground.  Add a timer to hint at examining the scenery object.

[quote][b]The Greenhouse[/b]
The sun glares through the glass sides of this sweltering greenhouse. Plant pots full of verdant shrubs crowd around the base of a tall palm tree.

>mess around for a few turns
You waste time doing irrelevant actions and arguing with the parser.

Did that palm tree just sneeze? It might be worth examining this sternutating foliage to see what's up with it!

>examine foliage
On closer examination, a man in a gorilla suit is clinging to the top of the palm tree.

"Oh, hello there," he says. "I was rather hoping you wouldn't notice me."[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1366&start=10#p14947
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keeping track of success and failure
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-03-22 16:55:13

I've always assumed that Inform's extension model was required to keep the Z-Machine formats viable, by limiting the library size to something that could fit in z5.

Graham Nelson's "Afterword" article in the IF Theory Book says that Glulx will become the default format soon, and that floating-point number support will be added to the core language - the first such feature that will not work for the Z-Machine format. So there's some hope that Inform will become more feature-rich out of the box.

That said, he seems to view Inform's extension ecosystem as a strong advantage:
[quote="Graham Nelson"]Extensions, on the other hand, have been universally welcomed as a packaging mechanism, and 236 have been published on the Inform website. Expectations of quality are evidently higher than in Inform 6 days, and many extensions have a high degree of “finish,” supplying documentation and test cases.[/quote]

I would second the recommendation to look at TADS 3. It is better aligned with expectations of a thorough but extensible core library. I've found that its reflection capabilities permit a "rules light" style, giving me what feels like the best of both worlds.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2172&start=10#p14948
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A question about doing something with menus.
User: pashaimeru / DateTime: 2011-03-22 16:55:43

[quote="matt w"]You'd need to find some way of having a table row do things like adding "mountains" to the available locations; maybe this could be done by having a column of stored actions that might be called, and then defining an action on a place that adds the place to the Table of Locations?[/quote]
Hrmm, how would I do that? I haven't really played around with tables at all. It seems like a liiittle ugly way of organising it too, though it's not too bad. Furthermore, choosing a random row from the table would actually be a kind of a bad idea: that'd give every exploration result the same chance of triggering, but I want some to be common and some to be rare.

Here's really what I want to do. This is doing it in a really ugly way, mainly due to the horrible "exploration event" thing that I have to find a proper way around, but it'll give you the idea:
[code]An exploration event is a kind of thing. Exploration event can be triggered or not triggered. Mountains found, foo, bar and event something are exploration events.

To say explore (P - a place):
	now r is a random number from 1 to 100;
	if P is the forest:
		if r >= 1 and r <= 5 and mountains found is not triggered:
			choose a blank row in Table of Locations; 
			now title entry is "Mountains";
			now subtable entry is Table of Location_mountains;
			now result is "Mountains found etc.";
			now mountains found is triggered;
		otherwise if r >= 6 and r <= 15 and foo is not triggered:
			now result is "Foo";
			now foo is triggered;
		otherwise if r >= 16 and r <= 35 and bar is not triggered:
			now result is "Bar";
			now bar is triggered;
		otherwise if r >= 36 and r <= 55 and event something is not triggered:
			now result is "Something";
			now event something is triggered;
		otherwise if r >= 56 and r <= 100:
			now result is "Nothing happens";
		otherwise:
			now result is "You explore, but don't find much of anything";
	otherwise if P is the mountains:
		now result is "You explore the mountains but don't find much of anything";
	otherwise:
		now result is "You explore, but don't find much of anything";
	decrease the menu depth by 3;[/code]
Are tables really the best way of implementing this properly? If so, how do I actually do it in the best way?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2162&start=10#p14949
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can an object be renamed?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-03-22 17:25:30

I wonder why?

Why, after both examining the object and picking it up, do I have to examine it again to discover the runes on it? It seems strange and something that'd be likely to get me (not exactly a master of puzzle-solving) stuck.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2181&start=0#p14950
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Z machine memory usage, in exact bytes?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-03-22 18:18:14

Header address $0e well tell you exactly how much dynamic memory is used. I suspect Inform 7 is making up the reduction with something else, maybe a larger heap for example.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2180&start=0#p14951
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Forcing the player to examine objects
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-03-22 18:29:52

Will the player be able to move to different rooms and still be able to examine the scenery object? (I don't know Hugo so I'm not sure about the specific terminology.) As long as it's not possible for players to miss the encounter completely by moving to a new location, a three - turn timed hint (as Pacian described) seems fine to me. Forcing a player to perform some useless action in the same location for three turns or wait (even if that would automatically take three turns), would be annoying as hell.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2162&start=10#p14952
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can an object be renamed?
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-03-22 19:37:45

[quote="Trumgottist"]I wonder why?

Why, after both examining the object and picking it up, do I have to examine it again to discover the runes on it? It seems strange and something that'd be likely to get me (not exactly a master of puzzle-solving) stuck.[/quote]

Sometimes it takes a closer look, and taking the time to do it that shows the finer details.  How many times do you pick something up (in real life) and not really look closely at the details?  Details that couldn't be seen if not in your hand and looking closely...  for example... how many coins are in your pocket?  Do you know what year they were made, or which "version" of that coin they are?  To do that, you would have to pick them up and look closely.  A disk is just a disk unless you look at the other side and see there is writing etched on it.  I don't want to take a persons observation skills for granted.  Years of DM'ing in D&D have influenced this decision.  Don't just give it to the player.  Require them to think and ask for more.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2175&start=0#p14953
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parser ignores parts
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-22 20:05:42

Forgive me if I'm being thick-headed, but are you saying that ScopeCeiling is being called when the command includes "gravel" and it's not being called when the command includes "rock?" And from where is ScopeCeiling called? I'm a little vague on what the "pos" parameter represents and what the "core" of an object is.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2180&start=0#p14954
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Forcing the player to examine objects
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-03-22 21:22:02

Allowing the player to examine the scenery object [i]and[/i] making the encounter happen automatically in three turns is something I hadn't thought of.  It's a good idea.  I'm not sure if I could come up with a good way to drop a hint that the scenery object has to be examined, other than by making it the most interesting element of the room.  The way I have it now, the scenery object itself only just becomes visible, because the PC was in the dark and has just acquired light, so I think most veteran IF players would naturally choose to examine it.

[quote="Skinny Mike"]Will the player be able to move to different rooms and still be able to examine the scenery object?[/quote]No, at this point, the player has no other room to travel to, and the majority of the game will not open to the player until she interacts with this NPC.  There's pretty much nothing to do except examine the object, so I definitely need some mechanism to either trigger the encounter or leave an explicit hint in the player doesn't.

Thanks for the suggestions! [emote]:)[/emote] Why don't we transform this thread from a discussion of my particular situation to a more general discussion of adventure craft.  Is it ever appropriate to force the player to examine any object, halting advancement until she does so?  Sometimes we may have written a description that we feel is critical for the player to read in order to best appreciate the game.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2182&start=0#p14955
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: should I7 recognize "row of the table"?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-22 21:48:41

I just generated about twenty compiler errors because I kept typing "row N of the table of blahdebloo" and Inform wanted "Row N in the table of blahdebloo." If I'd been paying closer attention to the documentation this wouldn't have happened -- but isn't "Row N of the table" more natural?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2175&start=0#p14956
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parser ignores parts
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-22 22:11:27

I'm reading through the Adjudicate routine in Parser.i6t, and I have a pet peeve. I like every function in code to fit on one screen. It's not that hard to do, it helps modularity, and it increases readability exponentially. Unfortunately, most parser-related functions in i6 and the templates fill 5 or 6 screens. That's actually a big selfish reason I'd like to do a parser-rewrite extension.

But I think I'm getting a picture of what's going on. Parts of things are always last-choice options for the parser, and if anything else matches, they're considered unimportant. Is that the basic philosophy? Is it any different in Disambiguation Control?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2172&start=10#p14957
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A question about doing something with menus.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-22 22:16:22

Well, here I'm seriously not an expert. In fact, this is kind of kicking my rear at the moment; the solution that I thought would be simple turns out to be not so. To give non-equal random weights to the rows, you could put in a column for the rank (in your example, 5 for discovering the mountains, 15 for foo, up to 100 for bar), choose a random r, and pick the row whose rank is at least r; but that turned out to be surprisingly difficult, at least for me. Here's the start of the rule I came up with:

[code]
To say explore (L - a place):
	if L is the forest:
		let r be a random number from 1 to 25;
		let N be 0 [this is a very unlovely hack because I can't figure out how to say "choose a row with rank at least r"];
		repeat with M running from 1 to the number of rows in the Table of Forest Explorations: [can't even use "repeat through the Table of Forest Explorations" because I'm not sure how to reverse-engineer M from that]
			if N is 0:
				choose row M in the Table of Forest Explorations;
				if rank entry is at least r:
					now N is M; [and now I don't know how to just quit the loop, so we repeat through the rest of the table even though it's pointless]
		if N is 0:
			let N be the number of rows in the Table of Forest Explorations; [panic in case we never chose a row]
		choose row N in the Table of Forest Explorations;
[/code]

Then there's a question of what you want to do with the Table of Forest Explorations. My original idea was to have a column for the description you print when you hit your random entry, and a column with a stored action that would be carried out if applicable. But most of those entries would be blank, and I couldn't get my blank entries to behave. I kludged it up by creating a dummy action that does nothing, which went wherever I really wanted a blank entry, but that's awful.

One alternative would be to reuse the say-phrase trick; instead of having a stored action, pop "[discover mountains]" into the text that gets said in that row, and use "To say discover mountains" (or something even more generalizable) to add the mountains to the table of locations. That might even be more generalizable, since you could put as many of those say-phrases in as you want, instead of being restricted to one stored action.

Anyway, I'll paste what I currently have below a spoiler tag. You'd want to generalize it in some ways -- every place would have a table of outcomes associated with it (some of them might be a table with one row, saying "nothing happens," and the carry out rule for discovering would also be something you'd want to generalize. Maybe someone more competent than I will explain why blank entries are [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juAmEb_r1NA]the messenger of my doom and destruction[/url].

[spoiler][code]"Locations test" by pashaimeru

Volume 1 - Engine stuff

Book 1 - Prep

Include Menus by Emily Short.
Use no scoring.
The printed name of yourself is "you".
A thing can be usable or not usable. A thing is usually not usable.

Book 2 - Locations

Section - Using

The crystal ball is a thing. It is fixed in place. It is usable. Crystal ball can be operated or not operated. Crystal ball is not operated.

Using is an action applying to one thing. Understand "use [thing]" as using.

A place is a kind of thing. The forest is a place. The mountains is a place. The pointless valley is a place.

Check using:
If noun is not usable, say "You can't use that.".

Carry out using:
	if noun is crystal ball:
		now the current menu is the Table of Crystalball; 
		carry out the displaying activity;
		clear the screen;
		try looking.

		Table of Crystalball
		title	subtable	description	toggle
		"Location"	Table of Locations	--	--

			Table of Locations
			title	subtable	description	toggle
			"Forest"	Table of Location_forest	--	--
			"Pointless Valley"	--	"[explore the pointless valley]"	--
			["Mountains" Table of Location_mountains	--	--]
			with 5 blank rows
			
				Table of Location_forest
				title	subtable	description	toggle
				"Explore"	--	"[explore forest]"	--
				
				Table of Location_mountains
				title	subtable	description	toggle
				"Explore"	--	"You found a rubber ball somehow. [explore mountains]"	--
				
Part - Exploring

A rubber ball is a thing.

To say explore (L - a place):
	if L is the forest:
		let r be a random number from 1 to 25;
		let N be 0 [this is a very unlovely hack because I can't figure out how to say "choose a row with rank at least r"];
		repeat with M running from 1 to the number of rows in the Table of Forest Explorations:
			if N is 0:
				choose row M in the Table of Forest Explorations;
				if rank entry is at least r:
					now N is M;
		if N is 0:
			let N be the number of rows in the Table of Forest Explorations;
		choose row N in the Table of Forest Explorations;
		say the description entry; 
		try the outcome entry; [I'd like to have this be conditional on "if there is an outcome entry:" but that never seems to trigger; even with that condition in, when it hits a blank outcome entry it produces a run-time error]
		now the description entry is "Nothing happens.";
		now the outcome entry is the action of booping; [I'd like to say "blank out the outcome entry" but that doesn't seem to do anything]
	otherwise if L is the mountains:
		now player is carrying a rubber ball;
	otherwise:
		say "You explore [the L] but don't find much of anything";
	decrease the menu depth by 3.

Table of Forest Explorations
rank	description	outcome
15	"Mountains found etc."	the action of discovering the mountains
20	"foo"	the action of booping [these really should be blank entries, but I can't get that to work]
25	"Nothing happens."	the action of booping

Discovering is an action applying to one visible thing. ["visible" because it won't be "touchable"; see 12.7 of the documentation]
Carry out discovering:
	if the noun is the mountains:
		choose a blank row in Table of Locations; 
		now title entry is "Mountains";
		now subtable entry is Table of Location_mountains;
	otherwise:
		stop the action.
Booping is an action applying to nothing. [and it does nothing]

Volume 2 - The world

Test room is a room. The player is in test room. The crystal ball is here.[/code][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2175&start=0#p14958
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parser ignores parts
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-03-22 23:51:46

In terms of performance, please don't use extra functions. For web interpreters they are a major source of slowness. The fewer functions the better! If that's a problem... get a bigger screen?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2175&start=10#p14959
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parser ignores parts
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-23 00:13:26

[quote]For web interpreters they are a major source of slowness.[/quote]

I do not actually believe this. Even if it is true, the functions in the code that will be called often enough to hurt performance are a *tiny* fraction of the total. This is true even in the parser.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2181&start=0#p14960
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Z machine memory usage, in exact bytes?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-23 00:18:05

Z-machine files are rounded up in size to the nearest 512 bytes. (Infocom did this to make their page-swapping interpreters easier to write. Actually I'm not sure Infocom always did it, but I6 always does.) (In Glulx, I made all the memory boundaries multiples of 256, for simplicity and in case anyone cared.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2181&start=0#p14961
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Z machine memory usage, in exact bytes?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-23 00:23:32

[quote]Is it possible that all the extra memory usage happens at runtime?[/quote]

No, for Z-code that's impossible. The compiler pre-allocates a large buffer and that's it.

If you want to know the memory layout in more detail, re-run the I6 compiler on auto.inf and include the "-z" flag. It's not super-explicit, but it shows how much memory goes to array data, object properties, and a few other categories.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2175&start=10#p14963
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parser ignores parts
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-03-23 02:24:23

From my tests usually around 30% of the processing time is spent building new functions, which won't be a problem for commonly run code like the parser.

BUT, another 25% of processing code is spent in the two functions which implement @call and @ret. (Sometimes up to 60%!) It's that infrastructure which is slow, and sometimes far outweighs the code itself. I'd love to be able to improve the situation, but I think I've optimised those functions as much as I can. Sometimes there's 100k function calls a turn or more, but if they could be reduced to 20k or so then the whole time would take 20% less. The only strategy I've yet to try is to inline all of the function calling/return code in the JIT code itself.

The situation could be different for Quixe... have you done much testing to determine how much time is spent for enter_function() and leave_function()?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2172&start=10#p14964
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A question about doing something with menus.
User: pashaimeru / DateTime: 2011-03-23 04:34:30

Hehheh, thanks a ton. That's pretty good, already, I'll see if I can't work with that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=959&start=10#p14965
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment!
User: karlnp / DateTime: 2011-03-23 04:41:44

I noticed that the saving and recording of transcripts was in "considering" status. As I'm looking to release my game to people who mostly don't know anything about IF, I'd like to stress how much of a 'must have' this feature is for me.

Juhana Leinonen made a hack to save scripts to the server, but it's not a public release. It would be awesome if I didn't have to add 'okay, now type this command, and save the file, and remember that you did that and email it to me when you're done playing, as well as any other scripts you might have made over the course of play' to the already considerable IF learning curve.

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2172&start=10#p14966
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A question about doing something with menus.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-23 06:09:18

Glad it helped. I'll send up a couple distress flags to see if someone can help me with the parts that don't work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2184&start=0#p14967
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Weird parser errors?
User: Minkovsky / DateTime: 2011-03-23 06:37:15

So... Is the parser doing weird stuff or is my code bugged? Here are some examples.

>turn of switch
I only understood you as far as wanting to turn Pile of Leaves.

>drop 1 on stand
(Crystal Shard 2 on Triangle Stand)
You try to place Crystal Shard 2 on the "triangle stand", but it gets ejected back by some strange energy

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2185&start=0#p14968
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Blanking out stored actions in a table
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-23 06:53:48

I'm having trouble blanking out entries in a table that has stored actions in it. Thus:

[code]Table of Frank
rank	proverb
1	the action of jumping
2	the action of singing
3	--
4	the action of waiting
5	the action of looking
6	--

Lab is a room. Franking is an action applying to nothing. Understand "Frank" as franking.

Carry out franking:
	repeat through the Table of Frank:
		say the rank entry;
		if there is a proverb entry:
			try the proverb entry;
			blank out the proverb entry;
		otherwise:
			say "nothing".
				
Test me with "frank/frank".[/code]

The second time through, everything should come up nothing, shouldn't it? But it doesn't -- the proverb entry doesn't seem to get blanked out. If the second column is text, something similar works, so it seems like it's specific to stored actions.

(I also was having a problem with a test to see if the stored action entry was blank, but that didn't reproduce in this small code, so I'll poke around a little to see what caused that.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2172&start=10#p14969
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A question about doing something with menus.
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-23 06:56:23

[quote="matt w"]Well, here I'm seriously not an expert. In fact, this is kind of kicking my rear at the moment; the solution that I thought would be simple turns out to be not so. To give non-equal random weights to the rows, you could put in a column for the rank (in your example, 5 for discovering the mountains, 15 for foo, up to 100 for bar), choose a random r, and pick the row whose rank is at least r; but that turned out to be surprisingly difficult, at least for me.[/quote]
Let's say we want the probability of choosing a row to be (rank of this row / total rank of all rows). This would ensure that a row with a rank of 20 gets chosen exactly two times as often as a row with rank 10, and so on -- lovely, and we don't need to rewrite all the numbers if we decide to take out one of the earlier rows. Here's some (untested, so there may be small mistakes) code that would do that:

[code]Total rank is a number that varies.

To calculate total rank:
	let m be 0;
	repeat through the Table of Exploration:
		increase m by rank entry;
	now total rank is m.

To decide which number is chosen row:
	calculate total rank;
	let x be a random number between 1 and total rank;
	repeat with n running from 1 to the number of rows in the Table of Exploration:
		choose row n in the Table of Exploration;
		if x is not greater than rank entry:
			decide on n;
		decrease x by rank entry;
	decide on 1. [This should never happen.]
[/code]
And we can now use the phrase "choose row chosen row in the Table of Exploration".

(To see how the algorithm works, let's say that the rank entries are 5, 10, 20 and 7. That means total rank evaluates to 5 + 10 + 20 + 7 = 42. We choose a random number between 1 and 42. If it is not greater than 5 (probability 5/42), we choose the first row. If it is greater than 5, we decrease it by 5, leaving us with a random number between 1 and 37. If this is not greater than 10 (total probability 10 / 42), we choose the second row. If not, we decrease it by 10... and so on.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2184&start=0#p14970
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Weird parser errors?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-03-23 07:01:34

[quote="Minkovsky"]>turn of switch
I only understood you as far as wanting to turn Pile of Leaves.[/quote]
The parser can't tell when you type "turn [i]of[/i]" that you really mean "turn [i]off[/i]" (i.e. the [i]switching off[/i] action). It's mapping that command to the [i]turning[/i] action and the "of" to the only available object with the word "of" in it -- the "pile of leaves." If you want to guard against this, don't name the object "pile of leaves," just use that as the [i]printed name[/i] property and create understand grammar to match:
[code]Lab is a room.
The leaves are here. The printed name is "pile of leaves".
Understand "pile" and "pile of leaves" as the leaves.[/code]
As far as this:
[quote]>drop 1 on stand
(Crystal Shard 2 on Triangle Stand)
You try to place Crystal Shard 2 on the "triangle stand", but it gets ejected back by some strange energy[/quote]
I can't tell without seeing the code for the crystal shard.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2185&start=0#p14971
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Blanking out stored actions in a table
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-23 07:10:01

Looks like a bug in Inform to me, so I think you should report it.

(For a moment I thought that maybe blanking out wasn't possible for kinds which have a non-trivial default value, but this turns out not to be the case: you can blank out directions, for instance, so you should also be able to blank out stored actions.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2185&start=0#p14972
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Blanking out stored actions in a table
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-23 07:27:16

Thanks, will do. (I couldn't reproduce the other problem I had, so it was probably some mistake I was making in the code.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2182&start=0#p14973
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: should I7 recognize "row of the table"?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-03-23 08:21:39

It is for me; I think it might be one of those American/UK English things.  I usually have to double-check my table grammar.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2182&start=0#p14974
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: should I7 recognize "row of the table"?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-23 08:46:10

This bugs me, too. As does the fact that the corresponding syntax is slightly different for lists. It'd be easy enough for an author to tweak--you'd just copy all of the relevant phrases from the Standard Rules and paste them into a new project/extension with tweaked syntax options; the new phrase definitions will override the SR phrases. However, it makes a lot of sense for the Standard Rules themselves to be more permissive in this instance.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2162&start=10#p14975
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can an object be renamed?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-03-23 08:50:25

[quote="Seeker"]A disk is just a disk unless you look at the other side and see there is writing etched on it.  I don't want to take a persons observation skills for granted.  Years of DM'ing in D&D have influenced this decision.  Don't just give it to the player.  Require them to think and ask for more.[/quote]
True; still I feel that Trumgottist has a point. I think there should be some hint that the player has not examined a thing as carefully as possible unless he holds it in his hands. 

In a DM'ing situation the players may casually ask something like "So, what's that shiny thing, then?" or he may tell you straight from the beginning that "I go over to the railing and take a close look at that shiny disk I saw there". And as DM you would give rather different responses to those rather different actions.

But in an IF situation both of these actions map onto the X DISK command! 
The player may very intend to be taking a real close look at an object when X'ing it, and if he can't do that unless he picks it up, I think it's only fair that the object's description should at least suggest that he hasn't as yet performed a thorough examination of it:
"From here you can only see that it's a small disk on a chain."
"A casual glance only reveals a small disk on a chain."
"The disk is fastened to a chain. The visible side of it is quite plain."
or something to a similar more or less obvious effect.

(Adverbs are so rarely used in IF that hardly anyone's gonna try X DISK CLOSELY. I wouldn't recommend going that way.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2182&start=0#p14976
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: should I7 recognize "row of the table"?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-23 08:53:10

I have no votes left, but maybe someone else can post a uservoice suggestion? <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2184&start=0#p14977
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Weird parser errors?
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-03-23 09:33:48

"Drop one" just chooses a random item to drop, no?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2182&start=0#p14978
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: should I7 recognize "row of the table"?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-23 09:40:08

There is a serious lack of liquidity in uservoice votes. It reminds me of Paul Krugman's [url=http://www.slate.com/id/1937/]baby-sitting co-op[/url]. But I will reclaim my votes from "bundle default library messages" to suggest this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2162&start=10#p14979
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can an object be renamed?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-23 10:07:19

[quote="Felix"](Adverbs are so rarely used in IF that hardly anyone's gonna try X DISK CLOSELY. I wouldn't recommend going that way.)[/quote]

The thing people actually use for "x closely" is "search"; but disks aren't the sort of thing that they will search. I agree that most players will reasonably expect that once they've examined something, they've seen what there is to see about it, unless they get a pretty good hint that it needs to be reexamined under different circumstances. For instance, there are some games where the initial examination of an object hints that you need to examine it again in better light. In live DMing it may be easier to convey the difference between a casual glance and a good look.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2050&start=10#p14980
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rule order question
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-03-23 10:42:41

Philosophically, I don't care for a system in which the compiler gets to sort the rules in rulebooks. Seems to me such a system is almost bound to lead to this type of problem.</rant>

As a practical matter, perhaps Inform could be upgraded to allow code like this:
[code]The ABC rule is listed immediately before [or immediately after] the XYZ rule in the badabing rulebook.[/code]
This is syntactically clear at the author level, and would give the compiler unambiguous instructions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2182&start=0#p14981
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: should I7 recognize "row of the table"?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-23 10:55:07

I'm also fresh out of votes, but another potential route might be extensions. In other words, if the desired behavior is extensible (as in this case), a packaged extension in the online library may also be noticed by the developers and eventually incorporated into the core library--particularly if a lot of folks are downloading and including said extension.

That said, this particularly request is pretty much a no-brainer and shouldn't really need much if any voter attention on uservoice to be accepted.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2050&start=10#p14982
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rule order question
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-03-23 11:01:03

[quote="Jim Aikin"]As a practical matter, perhaps Inform could be upgraded to allow code like this:
[code]The ABC rule is listed immediately before [or immediately after] the XYZ rule in the badabing rulebook.[/code]
This is syntactically clear at the author level, and would give the compiler unambiguous instructions.[/quote]
What if I [i]need[/i] to place a rule between those two rules? Now I have to replace both of them and add the new one. It seems like a good idea, but I think it might create at least as many problems as it solves.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2181&start=0#p14983
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Z machine memory usage, in exact bytes?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-23 11:37:19

Thanks zarf, I've give it a whirl.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2175&start=10#p14984
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parser ignores parts
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-23 11:42:33

I've always been curious what, if any, optimizations the I6 code generator does.  Will it inline very short functions? Will it inline functions that are only called from one spot?  Does it eliminate dead code?  Does it use at least a peephole optimizer?  Etc.  

I used to program action videogames in assembly, sometimes mixing in some C, so I've always had a love for making programs go faster. 

(Step one: add racing stripes!)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2182&start=0#p14985
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: should I7 recognize "row of the table"?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-23 11:52:11

[quote="matt w"]I just generated about twenty compiler errors because I kept typing "row N of the table of blahdebloo" and Inform wanted "Row N in the table of blahdebloo." If I'd been paying closer attention to the documentation this wouldn't have happened -- but isn't "Row N of the table" more natural?[/quote]

Perhaps because "of" usually means "property of object", meaning the computer would get confused if you replaced N with a property...?
I dunno.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2050&start=10#p14986
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rule order question
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-03-23 13:48:17

[quote="Skinny Mike"]What if I [i]need[/i] to place a rule between those two rules? Now I have to replace both of them and add the new one. It seems like a good idea, but I think it might create at least as many problems as it solves.[/quote]
Then it would fall back to the order of the declarations in the source. If I were to write:

[code]The AB rule is listed immediately before the CD rule in the badabing rulebook.

The EF rule is listed immediately before the CD rule in the badabing rulebook.[/code]
...then the order would be:

AB
EF
CD

...because EF would interpose itself between AB and CD. This would also apply to extensions. If two extensions both try to insert a rule immediately before another rule, then you could change the order of rules in the rulebook by changing the order of the Include lines for the extensions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2180&start=0#p14987
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Forcing the player to examine objects
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-03-23 13:49:16

[quote="Bainespal"]In my project, I currently have to decide whether to introduce an NPC automatically after a certain number of turns, or whether I want to force the player to examine a scenery object (albeit a fairly conspicuous one), after which the NPC will be revealed.  I somewhat favor the second approach, because it's more interactive. [/quote]

Heh. It's difficult to imagine how a forced action is "more interactive" than a forced meeting. But beyond that, here's another vote for "both." If something needs to happen, leave it as an opportunity for the player, but otherwise, make it happen one way or the other.

[quote]I'm not sure if I could come up with a good way to drop a hint that the scenery object has to be examined, other than by making it the most interesting element of the room.[/quote]

I'm sure we could offer suggestions if we knew more about the object [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2162&start=10#p14988
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can an object be renamed?
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-03-23 13:50:40

Oh, I completely agree that a hint should be given.  For another object I say "It looks like blah blah blah...but it is hard to tell from a distance."

I like "A casual glance only reveals a small disk on a chain."  Thanks Felix.  I hope you don't mind if I use it.   [emote];)[/emote]  Although "The disk is fastened to a chain. The visible side of it is quite plain." is pretty good too.

I am not trying to frustrate the player, just make them think to look at things and to take them if they might be useful later.  And it is very much a 'tongue in cheek' game... so sometimes when they look closer it will just be a humorous response to get a laugh. 

I don't want them to miss any important clues or my bad jokes.  So a gentle nudge in the right direction was my plan.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2175&start=10#p14989
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parser ignores parts
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-23 13:52:14

Okay then, if I get around to working on this idea, I'm asking Ron to help optimize it!

I assume you're excellent at painting racing stripes, Ron.... [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2050&start=10#p14990
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rule order question
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-23 14:12:52

[quote="Skinny Mike"]What if I [i]need[/i] to place a rule between those two rules? Now I have to replace both of them and add the new one. It seems like a good idea, but I think it might create at least as many problems as it solves.[/quote]

It's no more of a problem than declaring that a rule is listed last or first, as Jim demonstrated. I like Jim's suggestion, but I'm not sure what would be lost by making "listed before" and "listed after" behave exactly the same way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2181&start=0#p14991
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Z machine memory usage, in exact bytes?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-23 14:15:19

That's good to know... I'm going to attempt to bookmark this discussion.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2186&start=0#p14992
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6 optimizations
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-23 14:17:55

(Forking off from a different thread...)

[quote]BUT, another 25% of processing code is spent in the two functions which implement @call and @ret. (Sometimes up to 60%!) It's that infrastructure which is slow, and sometimes far outweighs the code itself.[/quote]

If I'm reading this profiling output right, Quixe spends 40% of its time running compiled code. 6.5% is in execute_loop(), which does work whenever the interpreter jumps code paths -- that includes branches, calls, and returns. 18% is associated directly with function calls and returns. 8% is reading from memory. 15.5% is accelerated opcodes. The rest is assorted stuff.

(Safari 5.0.4 on a MacBook Pro. Tested Reliques after a restart, so no new functions were being compiled.)

Function calls are certainly significant. But refactoring the I6-level parser isn't going to change performance noticeably, not unless you add a function call inside the most critical tight loops. What were your numbers -- hundreds of thousands of function calls? The parser has no major code paths that are repeated hundreds of thousands of times per turn. That's all inefficiency in low-level property-checking and activity-invoking.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2186&start=0#p14993
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6 optimizations
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-23 14:23:55

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]I've always been curious what, if any, optimizations the I6 code generator does.[/quote]

It's been a few years since I looked. But it doesn't do a lot, that I remember. (Take the below with a grain of hazy memory.) 

No function inlining. No eliminating entire dead functions. Not much that you'd call peephole optimizing, although I think it's pretty good at compiling expressions into efficient code.

Things it *does* do: Folding constants in arithmetic operations. Eliminating dead code inside functions -- I think.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2175&start=10#p14994
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parser ignores parts
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-23 14:39:34

[quote="capmikee"]But I think I'm getting a picture of what's going on. Parts of things are always last-choice options for the parser, and if anything else matches, they're considered unimportant. Is that the basic philosophy? Is it any different in Disambiguation Control?[/quote]
Tell me if I'm understanding this correctly - the Adjudicate routine runs before ChooseObjects, which calls the Does the Player Mean Rules. Adjudicate can eliminate some choices on its own (at least if the verb can take multiple objects), so the DPMR never gets to some things. Am I starting to understand the limitations of the DPMR?

I think in a sense it's reasonable to do things this way, because determining what the player meant will probably always rely on some sort of score calculation. Since a rulebook stops running rules when it returns a value, it doesn't make sense to have DPMR make the decision all on its own - it can only get a decision from a single rule.

To achieve my goal of exposing more of the parser to I7, I think there would need to be an activity similar to choosing notable locale objects, where we set or adjust a match score as opposed to making a single decision and exiting. Would it be possible to express all the existing parser logic with such a thing?

Also, even if a verb can take multiple objects, can't the parser tell when there's only one object listed in a command? Why can't it treat that as a non-MULTI object?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1311&start=20#p14995
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Novice Friendly extension
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-03-23 17:26:22

[url=http://lacunagame.blogspot.com/2011/03/understanding-more.html]Success![/url] Well, it's a start anyway.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2187&start=0#p14996
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Local Scope for Dobj and Global Scope for Iobj.  How?
User: DavidPT / DateTime: 2011-03-23 17:38:44

In TADS3, I am trying to create a TIaction where the indirect object of the command will be an out of scope item that relates to a spell in my game.  I have the scope adjusted to include the spell objects but the library doesn't appear to check scope rules for indirect objects which leads to the "you see no ... here" response.  I haven't found where the library makes the assumption that all indirect objects must be visible.

Does anyone know which methods on the action class needs adjustments to allow for a global indirect object in a command?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2181&start=0#p14997
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Z machine memory usage, in exact bytes?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-23 17:56:52

For posterity (and in case I lose it) this is what I entered in the DOS prompt and got back.  Know that the switches are "p" for percentages (the final part), "s" for statistics (the first part), "w" to not print those 1400 warning messages, and "z" for the pretty map.
[code]
C:\Program Files\Inform 7\Compilers>inform-631.exe -pswz "c:\Documents and Settings\ron\My Documents\Inform\Projects\CLM\custom lib msg.inform\Build\auto.inf"

Inform 6.31N for Win32 (22nd April 2010)
In:  1 source code files             31010 syntactic lines
 36738 textual lines                1364903 characters (ISO 8859-1 Latin1)
Allocated:
  5268 symbols (maximum 20000)       2674600 bytes of memory
Out:   Version 5 "Advanced" story file 1.110323 (203K long):
    21 classes (maximum 200)             42 objects (maximum 639)
   208 global vars (maximum 233)     13946 variable/array space (maximum 180000)
    84 verbs (maximum 255)             313 dictionary entries (maximum 2000)
   153 grammar lines (version 2)       239 grammar tokens (unlimited)
    81 actions (maximum 200)            36 attributes (maximum 48)
    38 common props (maximum 62)        17 individual props (unlimited)
 52498 characters used in text       40486 bytes compressed (rate 0.771)
     0 abbreviations (maximum 64)     1643 routines (unlimited)
 34471 instructions of Z-code        19179 sequence points
 22748 bytes readable memory used (maximum 65536)
207624 bytes used in Z-machine       54520 bytes free in Z-machine
Dynamic +---------------------+   00000
memory  |       header        |
        +---------------------+   00040
        |    abbreviations    |
        + - - - - - - - - - - +   00042
        | abbreviations table |
        +---------------------+   00102
        |  header extension   |
        +---------------------+   0010a
        |  property defaults  |
        + - - - - - - - - - - +   00188
        |       objects       |
        + - - - - - - - - - - +   003d4
        | object short names, |
        | common prop values  |
        + - - - - - - - - - - +   00a88
        | class numbers table |
        + - - - - - - - - - - +   00ab4
        | symbol names table  |
        + - - - - - - - - - - +   00e82
        | indiv prop values   |
        +---------------------+   0111e
        |  global variables   |
        + - - - - - - - - - - +   012fe
        |       arrays        |
        +=====================+   04799
Readable|    grammar table    |
memory  + - - - - - - - - - - +   04d2d
        |       actions       |
        + - - - - - - - - - - +   04dcf
        |   parsing routines  |
        + - - - - - - - - - - +   04dd1
        |     adjectives      |
        +---------------------+   04dd1
        |     dictionary      |
        +=====================+   058dc
Above   |       Z-code        |
readable+---------------------+   2adc8
memory  |       strings       |
        +---------------------+   32b08
Approximate percentage breakdown of story file:
   Z-code               73.6%
   Static strings       15.4%
   Dictionary            1.3%
   Objects               1.9%
   Globals               6.7%
   Parsing tables        0.7%
   Header and synonyms   0.1%
   Total of save area    8.8%
   Total of text        19.4%
Compiled with 1491 suppressed warnings
Completed in 0 seconds

C:\Program Files\Inform 7\Compilers>[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2187&start=0#p14998
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Local Scope for Dobj and Global Scope for Iobj.  How?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-03-23 18:27:58

Here's one way I've handled scope and visibility for offstage indirect objects. In my case these were rooms but it should be obvious how to adapt that; just generate a list of the appropriate objects and plug it into the getScopeList() functions.

[code]
// put all rooms in scope for USE WITH
modify UseWithAction
    objInScope(obj) { local scope = getScopeList(); return scope.indexOf(obj); }
    getScopeList()  { return scope_ + allRooms.lst(); }

    createIobjResolver(issuingActor, targetActor)
    {
        return new CustomIobjResolver(self, issuingActor, targetActor);
    }

    resolveFirst = DirectObject
    execFirst = DirectObject
;

// make rooms available as indirect objects for USE WITH
CustomIobjResolver: IobjResolver
    objInScope(obj) { return true; }
    getScopeList()  { return scope_ + allRooms.lst(); }
;
[/code]

Here, the [i]objInScope(obj)[/i] and [i]getScopeList()[/i] functions in the UseWithAction object handle scope resolution for the direct object, and the corresponding functions in the CustomIobjResolver handle it for the indirect object. The code is similar but not quite identical; I had to lobotomize [i]objInScope(obj)[/i] on the indirect resolver in order to make things work.

(The execFirst / resolveFirst modifications aren't strictly necessary, but I found that the default responses tended to be more logical that way.)

I also needed a custom precondition for my UseWith action that would let objects through verification even if they were not visible to the player.

[code]
// can only USE WITH rooms and visible objects
objUsable: PreCondition
    verifyPreCondition(obj)
    {
        if (obj != nil && !(gActor.canSee(obj) || obj.ofKind(Room)))
        {
            inaccessible(&mustBeVisibleMsg, obj);
        }
    }
;

modify Thing
    dobjFor(UseWith)   { preCond = [objUsable] }       // is direct object usable?
    iobjFor(UseWith)   { preCond = [objUsable] }       // is indirect object usable?
;
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2162&start=10#p14999
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can an object be renamed?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-23 19:32:23

There are some games where examining an object reveals components that may themselves be examined.

[quote]
> x disk

It's a small disk with some kind of inscription on it.

> x inscription

You can't quite make out the inscription from here. If you were holding the disk, maybe you could see it better.

> get disk

Taken.

> x inscription

The inscription says "Made you look!"
[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2162&start=10#p15000
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can an object be renamed?
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-03-23 19:41:56

[quote="capmikee"]There are some games where examining an object reveals components that may themselves be examined.

[quote]
> x disk

It's a small disk with some kind of inscription on it.

> x inscription

You can't quite make out the inscription from here. If you were holding the disk, maybe you could see it better.

> get disk

Taken.

> x inscription

The inscription says "Made you look!"
[/quote][/quote]

That is great!  I hadn't even thought I could take it to that level.  What game(s) is that used in so I can see an example of the coding?  

Thanks... for the help, and the laugh.   [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2172&start=10#p15001
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A question about doing something with menus.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-23 19:42:23

That's very nice, Victor. Another advantage of having using total rank as the denominator is that it lets you (for instance) zero out the rank after a row gets used, so you don't have to make "nothing happens" more and more frequent. 

I guess the decide-phrase is the thing that I want to interrupt the repeat-loop once I've hit an outcome, though I'm still somewhat grumpy that there's no easier way to say something like "choose the first row with a rank greater than n." (The Table of Rankings for scores must do something like that, but it seems to be hard-coded in I6. Boo for both scoring and I6 hard-coding.)

pashaimeru, the part where "if there is no outcome entry" didn't work must have been some weird error on my part -- but the inability to blank out the outcome entry looks like a real bug, so if you want to adapt my code it looks like you'll have to use the booping kludge until that bug is fixed.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2175&start=10#p15002
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parser ignores parts
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-03-23 19:51:27

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]I've always been curious what, if any, optimizations the I6 code generator does.  Will it inline very short functions? Will it inline functions that are only called from one spot?  Does it eliminate dead code?  Does it use at least a peephole optimizer?  Etc.  [/quote]No to all of those, I think. Which is fine in my opinion, it's more of an assembler than a compiler. We can get much better performance through the I7 compiler than the I6 compiler.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2186&start=0#p15003
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6 optimizations
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-03-23 20:00:45

<a class="postlink" href="http://code.google.com/p/parchment/issues/attachmentText?id=93&aid=-6241330313356584952&name=violet.log">http://code.google.com/p/parchment/issu ... violet.log</a>
Is the worst example I've found so far, from a single command in Violet. Now there is sure to be some buggy I7 code there, but the I7 compiler must still be generating a whole lot of recursive code.

But perhaps Quixe performs a lot better because of it's accelerated function support. That would bypass the function enter/exit infrastructure entirely wouldn't it? Especially when those functions call each other. Maybe the best optimisation for Gnusto would be acceleration too.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2182&start=0#p15004
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: should I7 recognize "row of the table"?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-23 20:38:33

Here's a list of table- and list-related phrases that will standardize "of" alongside "in" (and "from", in the case of tables): "of" is currently allowed inconsistently with lists, but not at all with tables. If you paste this anywhere you like in your source code (or a separate personal codebase extension), you won't have to worry about being bitten by the "of" vs "in" thing again.
[code]To choose a/the/-- row (N - number) in/from/of (T - table name):
	(- {-require-ctvs}ct_0 = {T}; ct_1 = {N}; -).
	
To choose a/the/-- row with (TC - K valued table column) of (w - value of kind K)
	in/from/of (T - table name):
	(- {-require-ctvs}ct_0 = {T}; ct_1 = TableRowCorr(ct_0, {TC}, {w}); -).
	
To choose a/the/-- blank row in/from/of (T - table name):
	(- {-require-ctvs}ct_0 = {T}; ct_1 = TableBlankRow(ct_0); -).
	
To choose a/the/-- random row in/from/of (T - table name):
	(- {-require-ctvs}ct_0 = {T}; ct_1 = TableRandomRow(ct_0); -).
	
To decide which number is number of rows in/from/of (T - table name)
	(documented at ph_numrows):
	(- TableRows({T}) -).
	
To decide which number is number of blank rows in/from/of (T - table name)
	(documented at ph_numblank):
	(- TableBlankRows({T}) -).
	
To decide which number is number of filled rows in/from/of (T - table name):
	(- TableFilledRows({T}) -).

To blank out the whole (TC - table column) in/from/of (T - table name):
	(- TableBlankOutColumn({T}, {TC}); -).


To add (new entry - K) at entry (E - number) in/of (L - list of values of kind K), if absent:
	(- LIST_OF_TY_InsertItem({-pointer-to:L}, {new entry}, 1, {E}, {phrase options}); -).

To add (LX - list of Ks) at entry (E - number) in/of (L - list of values of kind K):
	(- LIST_OF_TY_AppendList({-pointer-to:L}, {-pointer-to:LX}, 1, {E}, 0); -).[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2162&start=10#p15005
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can an object be renamed?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-23 21:06:36

Errrr.. I'm not sure what games have levels of detail like that, but probably someone else around here does...

In I7 that sort of thing is usually implemented with parts:
[code]An inscription is part of the disc. The description of the inscription is "Made you look!"

Instead of examining the inscription when the disc is not held: say "You can't make it out from here..."[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2162&start=10#p15006
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can an object be renamed?
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-03-23 21:25:03

[quote="capmikee"]Errrr.. I'm not sure what games have levels of detail like that, but probably someone else around here does...

In I7 that sort of thing is usually implemented with parts:
[code]An inscription is part of the disc. The description of the inscription is "Made you look!"

Instead of examining the inscription when the disc is not held: say "You can't make it out from here..."[/code][/quote]

That was pretty much my guess.  A separate part of the object, attached to it, using similar code to what was discussed above in the thread will all of its variations.

Damn.  Do you people know what you are doing to me?  Crack is less addicting.  This just keeps getting better and better.  I am just trying to keep up.

Thanks dude/dudette (hey, I can't assume anything from a nic unless I pick him/her up and examine it closely... and my fiance might not approve).   [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

And just in case anyone is wondering... I am a dude... and that is a recent picture of me in Petergof.   [emote];)[/emote]  Though I doubt anyone cares.  But if you are going to code me into a game, I hope you get it right.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2175&start=10#p15007
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parser ignores parts
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-03-23 22:13:50

[quote="capmikee"]Tell me if I'm understanding this correctly - the Adjudicate routine runs before ChooseObjects, which calls the Does the Player Mean Rules.  Adjudicate can eliminate some choices on its own (at least if the verb can take multiple objects), so the DPMR never gets to some things.[/quote]Right.  Sorry that I failed to write clearly.  As you probably saw if you trudged through Adjudicate, the parser identifies both the gravel and the rock as possible interpretations, and then divides that set into two categories: the good ones and the bad ones.  When there are any good ones, the bad ones aren't considered.  And for a MULTI_TOKEN verb like TAKE, the gravel qualilfies as a good one because ScopeCeiling returns the same thing when pos is the player as it does when pos is the gravel.  Because of a funny quirk in ScopeCeiling, the rock doesn't enjoy the same luxury.  (But things contained by the rock would.)

[quote="capmikee"]Also, even if a verb can take multiple objects, can't the parser tell when there's only one object listed in a command? Why can't it treat that as a non-MULTI object?[/quote]It can tell.  But why it's testing what the verb is looking for (the MULTI_TOKEN) rather than what it was given, I do not know.  Maybe someone else can explain?

I haven't tested with Disambiguation Control, but reading its override of Adjudicate, it seems to make the same special case for MUTI_TOKEN verbs.

Also, belated: An object's core is whatever it is ultimately a part of.  So if the tine is part of the fork, the fork is part of the place setting, the tine's core is the setting.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2124&start=10#p15008
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Injury and Illness
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-23 22:55:26

[quote="VictorGijsbers"](The first possibility that comes to my sick mind is: "You know, that one game, I got gangrene, and then I had to cut off my leg with a knife made from an old tin can!" That would be memorable.)[/quote]
Sounds like you've been following Aron Ralston.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2138&start=0#p15009
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How long is too long?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-23 23:03:27

It's funny, this thread made me go check the room count on my WIP. I've been working on it for about 6 months and I expect it to take at least another 6 months to be really finished. It's hard to guess how big it will be for players but I'm guessing it will be too big for IFComp. It has all of 14 rooms and I keep debating whether to get rid of two of them...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=959&start=10#p15010
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment!
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-03-23 23:14:18

[quote="karlnp"]Juhana Leinonen made a hack to save scripts to the server, but it's not a public release.[/quote]
I am planning to turn that hack into an actual feature and release it later this year. I'm aiming for late spring or early summer if everything goes as planned. If you're in a hurry and want to use the current version, you can point the players to [url]http://parchment.game-testing.org/play/parchment.full.html?story=XX[/url] where XX is the url to your z-code game file (this is an older version of Parchment that doesn't support Glulx). Some statistics will be available to the public (<a class="postlink" href="http://parchment.game-testing.org/play/html/stats.php">http://parchment.game-testing.org/play/html/stats.php</a>) and you can e-mail/PM me for the full transcripts. Or preferably if it's not urgent, skip the hassle and wait for the feature release.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2132&start=10#p15011
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Killing players.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-23 23:17:56

Reminds me of the time when a kid I knew in school gave me some chocolates without mentioning that they were laxatives!

I'm dealing with questions like this in my WIP, and I've decided that the fair thing to do is let the player make the wrong choice, but fix their mistake later with an optional puzzle. I'm not totally happy with this, because I'd like it to be possible to "see" all the important parts of the game in one play-through -- I'm not a fan of multiple endings. But I'm also not clever enough to design a nonlinear set of puzzles that all must be solved, while still preventing the player from getting stuck.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2165&start=0#p15012
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Adaptive pacing for puzzles?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-23 23:29:12

[quote="bcressey"]I would encourage you not to rely on atmospheric messages alone. One of the first things I do now when confronted with such messages is to type >Z for a few dozen turns, just to see if I will eventually die and to establish a sense of the turn limit involved.[/quote]
Ooh, you're bad!  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

In my WIP, I have a situation where there's a threat. I made a simple "every turn" message that keeps repeating until you start to deal with the threat. Originally I intended to have this escalate until you die, but I was surprised how effective it was at directing my attention to the situation - when playing seriously, I never felt compelled to let it drag on. I think I will eventually change it so it doesn't get boring if you try to mess with it like bcressey, but I haven't decided how yet.

Just sitting with the game and adding little bits of encouragement to push the player towards a goal has resulted in a lot of drama. I've really been surprised how well this has worked out. My approach has been to define the beginning and the end pretty clearly, and then fill in the middle bit by bit. It's been a great way to control how long the game will be, and how much interesting stuff happens along the way.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2188&start=0#p15013
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [paragraph break] after room name
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-03-24 00:05:24

I have tried at least a dozen combinations of:

Rule for printing the name of a room: Say "[paragraph break]"

Rule for printing the name of a room: Say "[room name][paragraph break]"

Rule after entering room: Say "[paragraph break]"

Rule after entering room: Say "[room name][paragraph break]"

Rule before printing room description details: Say "[paragraph break]"

Rule after printing the name of a room: Say "[paragraph break]"

etc....

Some work, but they add a break after saying the name of any room, even in a description of the room on the other side of a door.

I know there have been complaints about the line breaks that get added when we don't want them, but how can I add one, just after the name of the room the player is now in?

Example.... I want:

[color=#000080]Bow
You are on the bow.[/color]

To say:

[color=#000080]Bow

You are on the bow.[/color]

I know I can add a [paragraph break] before every description of a room, both the [if visited] and the [if not visited], and all of the other versions of how the room might be printed if entered into.  But this is going to get tedious as the world grows, and I am bound to miss a few.  Is there a simple way to add a page break between the title of the room the player is in, and the following text that does not add a break if a room is just mentioned in a description?

The default print method just looks so cramped compared to all of the other white-space on the page.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=959&start=10#p15014
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment!
User: karlnp / DateTime: 2011-03-24 00:27:50

You are my hero/ine, Juhana. I'm writing this as part of an academic project, so most/all of the playerbase is going to be unused to IF. I figure it'll be an interesting study on how well all the tutorialish stuff I've included helps.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2188&start=0#p15015
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [paragraph break] after room name
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-03-24 00:27:54

One possibility is [code]Carry out looking (this is the print an extra line break under a room description heading rule):
	say "[line break][run paragraph on]".
The print an extra line break under a room description heading rule is listed before the room description body text rule in the carry out looking rulebook.[/code]
The carry out looking rulebook is the one responsible for the heading and description text.  This code just adds another step.

You could also get away with [code]Carry out looking (this is the print an extra line break under a room description heading rule):
	say "".
The print an extra line break under a room description heading rule is listed before the room description body text rule in the carry out looking rulebook.[/code] because output from different rules is normally put on separate lines.  But it's probably harder to tell at a glance why this version works.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2187&start=0#p15016
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Local Scope for Dobj and Global Scope for Iobj.  How?
User: DavidPT / DateTime: 2011-03-24 00:30:07

Thanks for the info.  I tested the modified version of your code and it appears to be working so far.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2181&start=0#p15017
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Z machine memory usage, in exact bytes?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-24 00:38:00

And my fabulous results:   

The I7 table produces a smaller Z8 file than an I6 array. 

 [emote]:shock:[/emote] 

The details, straight from the UNIX prompt's mouth:
[spoiler][code]~/Desktop> inform-6.32-biplatform -pszw withI6array.inf  > aboutI6array.txt
~/Desktop> inform-6.32-biplatform -pszw withI7table.inf  > aboutI7table.txt
~/Desktop> diff aboutI6array.txt aboutI7table.txt 
In:  1 source code files             30756 syntactic lines    | In:  1 source code files             30791 syntactic lines
 38134 textual lines                1354919 characters (ISO 8 |  38180 textual lines                1356447 characters (ISO 8
  5223 symbols (maximum 20000)       2643464 bytes of memory  |   5252 symbols (maximum 20000)       2643655 bytes of memory
   208 global vars (maximum 233)     13936 variable/array spa |    208 global vars (maximum 233)     13953 variable/array spa
 52136 characters used in text       40172 bytes compressed ( |  52121 characters used in text       40162 bytes compressed (
 33972 instructions of Z-code        18965 sequence points    |  33967 instructions of Z-code        18970 sequence points
 22664 bytes readable memory used (maximum 65536)             |  22684 bytes readable memory used (maximum 65536)
205164 bytes used in Z-machine       56980 bytes free in Z-ma | 205136 bytes used in Z-machine       57008 bytes free in Z-ma
        + - - - - - - - - - - +   00e7e                       |         + - - - - - - - - - - +   00e80
        +---------------------+   01113                       |         +---------------------+   01115
        + - - - - - - - - - - +   012f3                       |         + - - - - - - - - - - +   012f5
        +=====================+   04784                       |         +=====================+   04797
memory  + - - - - - - - - - - +   04cf7                       | memory  + - - - - - - - - - - +   04d0a
        + - - - - - - - - - - +   04d99                       |         + - - - - - - - - - - +   04dac
        + - - - - - - - - - - +   04d9b                       |         + - - - - - - - - - - +   04dae
        +---------------------+   04d9b                       |         +---------------------+   04dae
        +=====================+   05888                       |         +=====================+   0589c
readable+---------------------+   2a4e0                       | readable+---------------------+   2a4e8
        +---------------------+   3216c                       |         +---------------------+   32150
   Globals               6.7%                                 |    Globals               6.8%
Compiled with 1487 suppressed warnings                        | Compiled with 1488 suppressed warnings
[/code][/spoiler]

I tried with the Release versions of both, and got similar results.  I would've expected the I7 version to shrink some in that case anyway, but it didn't.  Presumably the Use Memory Economy option would've removed the ability to print table names, maybe?

After further digging, I think I did find out why the I7 was smaller than the I6.  Observe the I6 code, which is just part of the extension:[code]To decide which text is the pronoun corresponding to (decl - a declension) in (gcase - a grammatical case): (- CorrespondingPronoun({gcase} + {decl}) -).

Include (-
[ CorrespondingPronoun decl_case;
	(+ the prior named noun +) = nothing; 
	return declensions-->(decl_case - 1);
];

Array declensions --> "I" "you" "he" "she" "it" "we" "you" "they" "me" "you" "him" "her" "it" "us" "you" "them" "mine" "yours" "his" "hers" "its" "ours" "yours" "theirs" "myself" "yourself" "himself" "herself" "itself" "ourselves" "yourselves" "themselves" "my" "your" "his" "her" "its" "our" "your" "their";  -).[/code]
It's the strings.  I7, when finding a piece of text that's identical to another piece of text, will include it only once and have both places point to it with a name like SC_178.  When the text is included via I6 inclusion like the above, it cannot do this, so loses the opportunity to merge them. When I changed the array to numbers, I got more sensible results.
[spoiler][code]~/Desktop> inform-6.32-biplatform -pszw withI6arrayNums.inf > aboutI6arrayNums.txt      
~/Desktop> inform-6.32-biplatform -pszw withI7tableNums.inf > aboutI7tableNums.txt
~/Desktop> diff aboutI6arrayNums.txt aboutI7tableNums.txt       
In:  1 source code files             30756 syntactic lines    | In:  1 source code files             30765 syntactic lines
 38134 textual lines                1354695 characters (ISO 8 |  38153 textual lines                1355426 characters (ISO 8
  5223 symbols (maximum 20000)       2643446 bytes of memory  |   5224 symbols (maximum 20000)       2643468 bytes of memory
   208 global vars (maximum 233)     13918 variable/array spa |    208 global vars (maximum 233)     13934 variable/array spa
 51970 characters used in text       40038 bytes compressed ( |  51994 characters used in text       40060 bytes compressed (
 33972 instructions of Z-code        18965 sequence points    |  33969 instructions of Z-code        18971 sequence points
 22648 bytes readable memory used (maximum 65536)             |  22664 bytes readable memory used (maximum 65536)
204964 bytes used in Z-machine       57180 bytes free in Z-ma | 204984 bytes used in Z-machine       57160 bytes free in Z-ma
        + - - - - - - - - - - +   00e7e                       |         + - - - - - - - - - - +   00e80
        +---------------------+   01113                       |         +---------------------+   01115
        + - - - - - - - - - - +   012f3                       |         + - - - - - - - - - - +   012f5
        +=====================+   04772                       |         +=====================+   04784
memory  + - - - - - - - - - - +   04ce5                       | memory  + - - - - - - - - - - +   04cf7
        + - - - - - - - - - - +   04d87                       |         + - - - - - - - - - - +   04d99
        + - - - - - - - - - - +   04d89                       |         + - - - - - - - - - - +   04d9b
        +---------------------+   04d89                       |         +---------------------+   04d9b
        +=====================+   05878                       |         +=====================+   05888
readable+---------------------+   2a4d0                       | readable+---------------------+   2a4d8
        +---------------------+   320a4                       |         +---------------------+   320b8
Compiled with 1487 suppressed warnings                        | Compiled with 1488 suppressed warnings
[/code][/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2188&start=0#p15018
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [paragraph break] after room name
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-03-24 00:55:21

Thanks.  That worked.  I used the first version.  I might need to read it later, and you are right... it reads a lot easier than the second version.  And I know later on I would wonder why I put in a say "" rule.

Is there some kind of a secret tome somewhere that spells out what default rules come from where and why?  I see bits and pieces mentioned in various paces... but is there a comprehensive list someplace?  Sort of like in the 'Default Messages' extension there is 'The Complete Table' listed as an example.  That sure makes understanding how messages work (and how/what to change) so much easier.  The default rules/rulebook list and the names/source/usage would be GREAT!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2180&start=0#p15019
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Forcing the player to examine objects
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-03-24 02:06:40

[quote="Bainespal"]Is it ever appropriate to force the player to examine any object, halting advancement until she does so?  Sometimes we may have written a description that we feel is critical for the player to read in order to best appreciate the game.[/quote]
To help the player appreciate the game ... maybe not. To allow advancement, certainly.

>x oak panel
On close scrutiny, the worm-eaten oak panel proves to have hinges on one edge!

This is a simple puzzle, and a pretty common type, I'm sure.

My personal suggestion would be, if examining something in the room is important, make the object stand out in the room description in some way. Call it "an interesting-looking painting" in the room description, or something like that. I mean, that's a lame but serviceable example. Better might be something like, "Recessed lighting plays down across the painting, and an armchair has been drawn up facing it, as if the owner of the mansion spent many hours in contemplation of the gilt-framed portrait." The reader who fails to examine the painting is just being stubborn.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2188&start=0#p15022
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [paragraph break] after room name
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-03-24 06:04:21

You'll find the Standard Rules at the Inform 7 site:
[url]http://inform7.com/sources/webs/[/url].

(Or you can open the extension Standard Rules by Graham Nelson from the IDE, but the "webs" from the site contain useful and informative comments on these standard rules and the default workings of Inform 7 - a must read for any aspiring I7 junkie.  [emote];)[/emote] )

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2165&start=0#p15023
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Adaptive pacing for puzzles?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-24 07:07:07

[quote="bcressey"]I would encourage you not to rely on atmospheric messages alone. One of the first things I do now when confronted with such messages is to type >Z for a few dozen turns, just to see if I will eventually die and to establish a sense of the turn limit involved. Especially do not make them progressively more urgent if there is no real urgency in game terms. ([url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ihd4d1ewnrf1shmi]Divis Mortis[/url] was a slight offender in this regard.)[/quote]

Hmyeah, I think like capnmikee I pretty much agree with this. I still haven't caught up to Divis Mortis, but Kevin Mintmeier's "Containment" from the JayIsGames comp did something similar; it started with a bunch of atmospheric messages about how the nuclear power plant was about to melt down, and my [url=http://saucersofmud.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/more-jayisgames-interactive-fiction-comp-reviews/]reaction[/url] was "Am I about to suffer an annoying timed death?" It was a relief when I realized they weren't. A timer would have been especially problematic in that game, because it involved a lot of backtracking and experimentation to see what was going on. 

I suppose you could argue that, if you're trying to establish tension, you won't want the player to feel the relief of knowing that there isn't really a timer. But you have to balance that against the sheer annoyingness of timed deaths, which scales with how much of the game the player will have to replay. Especially if it's not really clear that you have to save before the game becomes unwinnable. (And if the puzzle requires a long enough sequence of moves that the player may save after the game becomes unwinnable, that's -- well, hello there, sludge puzzle from Losing Your Grip!) For myself, I suspend disbelief enough that I'm happy to treat a situation as urgent even if I really have unlimited turns. But (like gravel) I'm really bad at puzzles. 

(Now that I've read Ben Cressey's approach, I'd be tempted to add a counter that counts the number of times the player waits after the atmospheric messages start ratcheting up. Eventually it would say "You're just messing around to see if there's really a timer, aren't you? A [url=http://www.google.com/images?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=s&hl=en&q=monty+python+foot&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&sa=X&ei=EDKLTc_gEsa3tweulojrBQ&ved=0CCMQsAQ&biw=1256&bih=620]giant foot[/url] comes from the sky and squashes you.")

Oh, and one thing you can do is hand-roll the sort of checkpoint system Ben talked about -- in [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=lyblvftb8xtlo0a1]Everybody Dies[/url] there's a timed puzzle at the end that automatically rolls back to the beginning if you run out of time, and [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=wznex7prhy59rg]Earl Grey[/url] does that throughout as does [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=l8a855raojckgxkx]I Expect You To Die[/url]. Might be more or less technically difficult depending on what your game is like -- all three of those games are very linear, I think, so it's easy for them to roll the state back. It's also kind of frame-breaking (though there's some justification in "Everybody Dies") -- but ragequits are even more frame-breaking.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2190&start=0#p15024
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Photo back up on ipad
User: Harvey / DateTime: 2011-03-24 08:02:28

> look

You are in a smart study with a large oak desk.  On that desk you can see an IPad 2 and a computer.

> take ipad

Taken.

> plug ipad into computer

The computer although not made by Apple, loads Apple iTunes and the iPad begins to sync.

----

Seriously tho...

...you know the filename of the photos, I would select your computer and do a search for one of the file names.  When it comes up right click on it and choose "Open File Location" in explorer and it should have then all there.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2190&start=0#p15025
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Photo back up on ipad
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-24 08:10:55

[quote="Harvey"]Seriously tho...[/quote]
I don't think serious replies to spam are needed.  [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2190&start=0#p15026
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Photo back up on ipad
User: Harvey / DateTime: 2011-03-24 08:39:30

Very true...

...however perhaps they ran intfiction.org through a spellchecker and it game up with "IPad Support Forum - All Questions Answered, No Question Too Hard"...

...but I think you're probably right as I am sure that I am reading too much into this!  [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2165&start=0#p15027
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Adaptive pacing for puzzles?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-03-24 08:40:13

[quote]One of the first things I do now when confronted with such messages is to type >Z for a few dozen turns, just to see if I will eventually die and to establish a sense of the turn limit involved.[/quote]

Same here. I also start "z.z.z.z.z.z.z.z.z.z.z.z"ing if I get a light source - I want to see if it's got a limit, and if it does, how long I've got.

If a game wants me NOT to do it, it had better have proved itself to be engaging, immersive and fair (it may be difficult, as long as it's fair). I've approached too much crap with too much goodwill, and that's made me set a few hard limits on what I'm prepared to endure.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2138&start=10#p15028
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How long is too long?
User: Harvey / DateTime: 2011-03-24 08:47:12

[emote]:shock:[/emote] 

On the game I am working on I have over 70 rooms and that is just the opening act and bits of pieces without even getting to the "main" dungeon.

Yes a group of them work as a maze (only nine) and the other form part of a landscape to give the illusion of depth if you stray off the main pathways.

Other then that, they are paths, forests, some buildings, a temple, a pub, a cliff (not Richard) and a few other bits and pieces.

I was thinking the final total was going to come in about 300 or so.  Perhaps I need to step back a bit.  [emote]:ugeek:[/emote] 

In my world there is easter eggs ( actually a selection of eggs ) and so much daftness to find, that it just needs so many rooms.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2138&start=10#p15029
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How long is too long?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-24 09:12:02

[quote="Harvey"]On the game I am working on I have over 70 rooms and that is just the opening act and bits of pieces without even getting to the "main" dungeon.[/quote]
How deeply are your rooms implemented? If you have implemented 70 rooms with the kind of depth that is usual in modern IF, I am impressed. If not -- if they are mainly just names with perhaps one or two lines of description and few or no objects -- then you should definitely think about your design. I certainly believe that a "many rooms, sparse implementation"-approach can work for some games, but you will have to convince your players (and yourself) that your game belongs to that category.

Obviously, if you have put all your rooms full of fun stuff, there is nothing to worry about. But if there are fifteen rooms called "Road" that the player has to traverse whenever he wishes to go from A to B, you might be in for some tough reviews.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2180&start=0#p15030
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Forcing the player to examine objects
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-24 09:24:36

I read somewhere that one of the purposes of puzzles in IF is pacing. Not just a built-in delay before the story can continue, but a sort of test of whether the player is ready to learn more. By performing certain actions (e.g. solving a puzzle), the player demonstrates that they understand enough about the game world to appreciate the bit of story you're about to give them.

For that reason, I'm against timed auto-solutions. On the other hand, I'm fully in favor of timed hints - the point is for the player to understand what's expected of them, so if they don't seem to be getting that, it's perfectly appropriate to give them a nudge.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2188&start=0#p15031
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [paragraph break] after room name
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-24 09:56:33

The Index can tell you a lot of this sort of thing, but it takes a while to learn where to find things. Before, Instead, Check, Carry Out and Report rules are listed in the Actions tab, although somewhat frustratingly, you have to choose an action first to see which rules affect it, even if the rules apply to all actions.

Another frustrating issue with the Index is that it will only tell you where rules come from in the source if they're defined in your story file. Otherwise all it gives you is documentation for the extension that they come from. If there's no link for a rule at all, I think that means it's in the Standard Rules.

I've gotten a lot out of reading the Standard Rules and the extensions that I use. I think Zarf once confessed that the Standard Rules are his main source of documentation. But as I learn to use the Index, I've found that it can occasionally tell me things faster. It's especially useful for seeing what order rulebooks are actually arranged in.

To open the Standard Rules from the IDE, choose File-->Open Extension-->Graham Nelson-->Standard Rules.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2191&start=0#p15032
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Things inside token
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-24 10:36:34

Hey folks, (I'm talking to you, Aaronius!)

The removing action uses a "[things inside]" token. What that means is that if the noun doesn't match something inside the second noun, even if it's plainly visible, the parser says "You can't see any such thing." In fact, it looks like the parser error is the actual you can't see any such thing error, and not a customized "That's not inside" error like you'd think it ought to be. Is there a good way to tell when the parser failed because of a [things inside] token? Is it already implemented in one of those newfangled newbie-friendly extensions?

I notice that Neutral Library messages has an "But it isn't there now." message for the removing it from action, but it doesn't seem to fire.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2191&start=0#p15033
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Things inside token
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-24 10:48:17

Another thought: For actions that take a second noun, is there a way to have the parser error tell you WHICH noun failed to match? It's very frustrating to see "You can't see any such thing" when you can't tell which thing is supposedly not visible.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2191&start=0#p15034
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Things inside token
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-24 11:35:44

For now, I'm creating new grammar lines for removing that replace [things inside] with [something]. Are there any situations where that would be undesirable?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2191&start=0#p15035
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Things inside token
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-24 11:44:21

[quote="capmikee"]For now, I'm creating new grammar lines for removing that replace [things inside] with [something]. Are there any situations where that would be undesirable?[/quote]

Wouldn't that risk producing the following?

[quote]You can see a bowl (in which is an egg) and an egg here.

>TAKE EGG FROM BOWL

Which do you mean, the egg or the egg?[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2192&start=0#p15036
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Signs of a Newbie - How do I avoid them?
User: rae_bot / DateTime: 2011-03-24 11:46:06

Hey folks,

I'm doing an independent study at my college, in which I create an IF piece (my Writing for Digital Media class was required to play through Bronze, and I fell madly in love with IF [emote]:D[/emote] ).  The first version of the work is more or less finished, but I know that for people who have been doing this for some time, there are probably some terribly obvious signs of a first time author - stuff I never would have considered on my own.  For example, I recently saw a post on here about a "neutral library" extension, and somebody complained that new authors don't override most of the default actions.  And then, there's all this stuff about "tone breaking" when the parser gives a response you didn't want.

So my question is this - what basic holes should I plug, so that people playing it don't stop and think, "Noob!"?

Thanks guys.
Rae

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2192&start=0#p15037
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Signs of a Newbie - How do I avoid them?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-03-24 11:51:45

The most obvious answer is to have good beta testers, and to listen to what they have to say.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2192&start=0#p15038
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Signs of a Newbie - How do I avoid them?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-03-24 12:00:13

Another vote for testers. Absolute #1 noob error is releasing a game that hasn't been thrashed around by a few testers.

There are others, but ... testers will find them [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2191&start=0#p15039
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Things inside token
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-24 12:06:52

Apparently not:

[code]understand "get [something] from [something]" as removing it from.

An egg is a kind of thing.

Test is a room. A bowl is in test. In the bowl is an egg. In test is an egg.

Test me with "get egg from bowl"[/code]

This also works:
[code]understand "get [something] from [something]" as removing it from.

Test is a room. A bowl is in test. Egg-1 is in the bowl. Understand "egg" as Egg-1. Egg-2 is in test. Understand "egg" as Egg-2.

Test me with "get egg from bowl"[/code]

Any other possibilities?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2191&start=0#p15040
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Things inside token
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-24 12:30:01

[quote]'m creating new grammar lines for removing that replace [things inside] with [something]. Are there any situations where that would be undesirable?[/quote]

The situation where this bites you:

You can see a bowl (in which is an egg) and a box (in which is an egg) here.

However, I rate this as a *lesser* problem than the "You can't see any such thing" message. I hate that message too.

Possible workarounds (I haven't tried them): Add a "does the player mean" rule to up-rate removing X from Y if X is in Y. Or, have *two* grammar lines, one with the [things inside] token and one with [something].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2192&start=0#p15041
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Signs of a Newbie - How do I avoid them?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-24 12:31:52

[quote]So my question is this - what basic holes should I plug, so that people playing it don't stop and think, "Noob!"?[/quote]
Some questions you could ask yourself are:
[list][*]Did you implement the nouns mentioned in your room description? (If your room description mentions a table, the player should at least be able to examine the table.)[/*:m]
[*]Have you considered the plausible actions people will try with the objects you have created? (Trying to turn on a computer, eat the forbidden fruit, or pet the cat should at least give [i]some[/i] response.)[/*:m]
[*]Have you thought about how the player is supposed to know how to proceed through the game -- what his/her goals are, how the puzzles (if there are any) could be solved, and so on?[/*:m][/list:u]
If the answers to all those questions are "yes", you have already avoided the worst pitfalls. Sure, it's not [i]good[/i] if the response to "examine me" is the default "As good-looking as ever.", but it is not [i]awful[/i] either.

But, yes: testers. Always a necessary step, and they'll quickly identify any "signs of a newbie".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2192&start=0#p15042
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Signs of a Newbie - How do I avoid them?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-24 12:33:20

That's good advice. If you're looking for must-have user-friendly extensions, why not try out Aaron Reed's new "Player Experience Upgrade?"

<a class="postlink" href="http://lacunagame.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2011-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&updated-max=2012-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&max-results=2">http://lacunagame.blogspot.com/search?u ... -results=2</a>

The only thing I would add is this: It's your first game. There's no need to pretend that it's not. Make it the best that you can and don't worry about making mistakes. You will learn from them and your next game will be better! For that reason, it might be wise to start with a project that is small in scope.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2191&start=0#p15043
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Things inside token
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-24 12:38:28

[quote="zarf"]Possible workarounds (I haven't tried them): Add a "does the player mean" rule to up-rate removing X from Y if X is in Y. Or, have *two* grammar lines, one with the [things inside] token and one with [something].[/quote]
I'm not removing the line with the [things inside] token. Is that even possible without completely replacing the entire Grammar Section of the Standard Rules?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2191&start=0#p15044
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Things inside token
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-24 12:45:43

This is looking like a 100% win. It even works if the new grammar lines use the "[things]" token. I'd like to propose it as an addition to the growing set of player-friendly features.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=170#p15045
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: ViePostmodern / DateTime: 2011-03-24 13:04:02

Hello,

I was a hobbyist a decade or so ago, and I'm looking to get involved again - shake the rust off my keyboard, that sort of thing. Other than this forum and the newsgroup, what are the other manifestations of the IF community?

Thanks in advance,
Michael

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2192&start=0#p15046
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Signs of a Newbie - How do I avoid them?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-03-24 13:08:18

Depending on how much time you can afford to squander, it may be helpful to read recent-ish reviews of existing games, to get a feel for what the current community standards are.  For example, the annual Competition has a wide quality spread, and in recent years, plenty of bloggers have been erudite in pointing out the good and the bad.  Reading some past reviews will also get you acclimated to some of the tired tropes that you probably shouldn't include unless you have a genuinely new take on them; for example, "set in my apartment!!!", mazes of twisty passages all alike, and "amnesia!!!" have all been done many, many times before.

Learn about the [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Cruelty_scale]Zarfian Cruelty scale[/url] and take a stance on where you want your game to fall on it.  Personally, I prefer to play games that are no crueler than "Tough," (or leave Nastiness to the endgame), and I think the general community feeling has been in that direction lately, but it's fine to make a Nasty or Cruel game as long as you're aware you're doing it (ahem, [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ywwlr3tpxnktjasd]Varicella[/url]).  And if you do, it would be polite to include a note about it, unless extra cruelty is really Part of Your Game (in which case, think long and hard about whether you're doing a good thing).

As others have said, beta-testing is a must, and it's considered good etiquette to thank your beta-testers in a reasonably obvious place (such as an "About" or "Credits" text), both out of politeness for your testers and as an assurance to your players.  Don't forget to run your text by someone who is a good copy editor.

If you're having doubts about the direction of your story, it's not out of the question to have alpha-testers, either, even before you've written code.  Pull some friends in early to get their opinions about the kind of story you're telling and how you're telling it; try describing any puzzles you might include to see if they think the puzzles are fair and clever.

[quote="capmikee"]The only thing I would add is this: It's your first game. There's no need to pretend that it's not.[/quote]
The flip side of this is that there's no need to keep reminding us of it, either.  Don't be self-deprecating! One of the most obvious noob-type mistakes is the game in which every object is described with "um it is just ur sofa there is nothing really interesting about it. i don't even know why it's in this game" or some such.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2192&start=0#p15047
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Signs of a Newbie - How do I avoid them?
User: cas / DateTime: 2011-03-24 14:08:09

Browse through the following links:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.xyzzynews.com/xyzzy.1e.html">http://www.xyzzynews.com/xyzzy.1e.html</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://web.archive.org/web/20050619081931/http://www.geocities.com/aetus_kane/writing/cam.html">http://web.archive.org/web/200506190819 ... g/cam.html</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://brasslantern.org/editorials/wrong.html">http://brasslantern.org/editorials/wrong.html</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://inky.org/if/great-games.html">http://inky.org/if/great-games.html</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://inky.org/if/think-player.html">http://inky.org/if/think-player.html</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://inky.org/if/notes.html">http://inky.org/if/notes.html</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/info/Craft.Of.Adventure.txt">http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/inf ... enture.txt</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20081014103119/http://www.strangebreezes.com/if/writings/compguide.htm">http://replay.waybackmachine.org/200810 ... pguide.htm</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/comp2000.htm">http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/comp2000.htm</a>

Some of these are geared toward the IF Comp, but they all contain a lot of useful information on good game design.  “Crimes Against Mimesis” is also available in the recently-released [i]IF Theory Reader[/i], and “The Craft of Adventure” is available in the [i]DM4[/i] ([i]The Inform Designer's Manual[/i], 4ed).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2138&start=10#p15048
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How long is too long?
User: ViePostmodern / DateTime: 2011-03-24 14:08:25

[quote="VictorGijsbers"] I certainly believe that a "many rooms, sparse implementation"-approach can work for some games, but you will have to convince your players (and yourself) that your game belongs to that category.[/quote]

What games, or what kind of games?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2192&start=0#p15049
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Signs of a Newbie - How do I avoid them?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-03-24 14:36:31

I wrote a short article on the subject a while back that identifies a couple of things that have the sloppyness vibe: <a class="postlink" href="http://nitku.net/blog/2009/12/five-easy-improvements-to-your-game/">http://nitku.net/blog/2009/12/five-easy ... your-game/</a>

Also David Fisher's [i]IF Gems[/i] is a great collection of elements reviewers have liked and not liked. The web site seems to be defunct now but it's available in the IF archive: <a class="postlink" href="http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/programming/general-discussion/IFGems.zip">http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/ ... IFGems.zip</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2138&start=10#p15050
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How long is too long?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-24 14:48:17

[quote="ViePostmodern"]What games, or what kind of games?[/quote]
Certain types of dungeon crawl. A game where travelling through expansive landscapes is an important part of the experience (an IF version of [i]Shadow of the Colossus[/i]?). Probably many more, but I cannot do an exhaustive brainstorm of unmapped artistic territory.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=170#p15051
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-24 14:49:59

[quote="ViePostmodern"]I was a hobbyist a decade or so ago, and I'm looking to get involved again - shake the rust off my keyboard, that sort of thing. Other than this forum and the newsgroup, what are the other manifestations of the IF community?[/quote]
I'd say the two most important other websites are <a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/">http://ifdb.tads.org/</a> and <a class="postlink" href="http://planet-if.com/">http://planet-if.com/</a> . (The latter does tend to show a fair amount of non-IF posts as well, but it is a good way to keepn up with the IF blogosphere.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2138&start=10#p15052
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How long is too long?
User: Harvey / DateTime: 2011-03-24 15:39:28

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="Harvey"]On the game I am working on I have over 70 rooms and that is just the opening act and bits of pieces without even getting to the "main" dungeon.[/quote]
How deeply are your rooms implemented? If you have implemented 70 rooms with the kind of depth that is usual in modern IF, I am impressed. If not -- if they are mainly just names with perhaps one or two lines of description and few or no objects -- then you should definitely think about your design. I certainly believe that a "many rooms, sparse implementation"-approach can work for some games, but you will have to convince your players (and yourself) that your game belongs to that category.

Obviously, if you have put all your rooms full of fun stuff, there is nothing to worry about. But if there are fifteen rooms called "Road" that the player has to traverse whenever he wishes to go from A to B, you might be in for some tough reviews.[/quote]

Damn you, you have got me sat here seriously thinking now on what should I do...

 [emote]:idea:[/emote]  [emote]:idea:[/emote]  [emote]:idea:[/emote] 

...more flesh on the bones on perhaps less bones to cover?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2138&start=10#p15053
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How long is too long?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-24 15:41:18

[quote="Harvey"]Damn you, you have got me sat here seriously thinking now on what should I do...

 [emote]:idea:[/emote]  [emote]:idea:[/emote]  [emote]:idea:[/emote] 

...more flesh on the bones on perhaps less bones to cover?[/quote]
You could of course try what you have now on one or more alpha testers, and see what they think of it. Perhaps what you have is perfect -- there is certainly no hard rule valid for all works.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2188&start=0#p15054
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [paragraph break] after room name
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-03-24 15:48:53

Thanks.

I am glad to see it is a PDF as well as in the program so I can print it out and have it in front of me to reference when I need it.  I find that is much more efficient when working on something while hunting for details.

Okay... back to creating!  Have to feed the habit.   [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2196&start=0#p15055
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: losing things only in certain rooms
User: zodraz / DateTime: 2011-03-24 17:48:20

HELP!

I am trying to find a method for a pc who drops an object to lose the object.  That in itself is simple enough, just define a dobjFor(Drop) and move to it to nil.  In the game I would like to have the pc be able to drop items which the pc needs, only in certain places, ie in buildings, while in outdoor rooms the item would be lost.  Is there a room property for example to test for the kind of room the pc is in?  Using if or switch statements would work but there are about 50 outdoor rooms so far, so if there is an easier way to check for the room type that would be easier.  Any ideas anybody?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2196&start=0#p15056
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: losing things only in certain rooms
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-03-24 18:14:54

You can use the ofKind method (defined on all objects) to check the room type.

[code]
modify Thing
    dobjFor(Drop)
    {
        action()
        {
            if (!gActor.getOutermostRoom().ofKind(OutdoorRoom))
            {
                "You drop <<theName>>. ";
                inherited();
            }
            else
            {
                "You drop <<theName>>. It is carried away by the wind! ";
                moveInto(nil);
            }
        }
    }
;
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2192&start=0#p15057
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Signs of a Newbie - How do I avoid them?
User: rae_bot / DateTime: 2011-03-24 19:06:19

Thanks, folks. You're incredibly helpful, and I'll go through those links. At the very least I can say that it isn't set in an apartment, there are no twisty little passages (except for Nick Montfort book on my shelf [emote];)[/emote] ), nobody has amnesia, and it isn't crazy difficult (I didn't even have time to make it as complex as I wanted). I think it qualifies as "polite" in its current state.  And I have descriptions of almost everything, and plans to make descriptions of everything else before I submit it as "finished." Hooray!

And evidently, I have to go acquire testers. Do you recommend testers who are new to IF, somewhat familiar with IF, or frequent users of IF? Or some mix? Like 20-60-20 or something? I may be making this more complicated than necessary.


[quote="tove"]One of the most obvious noob-type mistakes is the game in which every object is described with "um it is just ur sofa there is nothing really interesting about it. i don't even know why it's in this game" or some such.[/quote]

I giggled. I hope that's never been an actual object description.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2192&start=0#p15058
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Signs of a Newbie - How do I avoid them?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-24 19:18:58

[quote="rae_bot"]I may be making this more complicated than necessary.[/quote]
I think so, yes.  [emote]:)[/emote] Having at least one person who has played some IF before would seem helpful, but otherwise I wouldn't worry about this too much.

[quote]I giggled. I hope that's never been an actual object description.[/quote]
Well. After hope comes despair, but after despair resignation and perhaps even [i]Gelassenheit[/i].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=170#p15059
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: George / DateTime: 2011-03-24 19:38:23

Browsing back through <a class="postlink" href="http://ifurls.tumblr.com">http://ifurls.tumblr.com</a> would give you a fairly complete picture of what IF has been up to for the last year as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2181&start=0#p15060
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Z machine memory usage, in exact bytes?
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-03-24 19:57:28

If you want strings in your I6 to be interned, you can always use (+ +): [code]Array declensions --> (+ "I" +) (+ "you" +) (+ "he" +) (+ "she" +) (+ "it" +) (+ "we" +) (+ "you" +) (+ "they" +) (+ "me" +) (+ "you" +) (+ "him" +) (+ "her" +) (+ "it" +) (+ "us" +) (+ "you" +) (+ "them" +) (+ "mine" +) (+ "yours" +) (+ "his" +) (+ "hers" +) (+ "its" +) (+ "ours" +) (+ "yours" +) (+ "theirs" +) (+ "myself" +) (+ "yourself" +) (+ "himself" +) (+ "herself" +) (+ "itself" +) (+ "ourselves" +) (+ "yourselves" +) (+ "themselves" +) (+ "my" +) (+ "your" +) (+ "his" +) (+ "her" +) (+ "its" +) (+ "our" +) (+ "your" +) (+ "their" +);[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2197&start=0#p15061
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Drop all silently
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-03-25 02:28:24

I have a situation where the player has been knocked unconscious.  It is silly to think that when they awaken everything is still in their hands.

I have tried various ways of saying "Drop all silently" or "Try to drop all silently" since I don't want a message to be printed that all was dropped.  After a dozen attempts, I (once again) am going to be the lame newbie and ask.

How can I force all items to be dropped without it reporting the action on the screen?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2196&start=0#p15062
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: losing things only in certain rooms
User: zodraz / DateTime: 2011-03-25 03:57:59

A simple and elegant solution to my problem.  Thank you!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2197&start=0#p15063
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Drop all silently
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-03-25 04:16:59

"All" is only understood in commands from the player to the game, I think.
As author you need something like:

[code]
repeat with foo running through carried things:
	silently try dropping foo.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2197&start=0#p15064
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Drop all silently
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-25 07:39:57

Untested code, so there may be small mistakes, but this should work:

[code]To have the player lose his inventory:
	repeat with item running through things carried by the player:
		move item to the location.[/code]

Invoke with "have the player lose his inventory".

(I suspect that Felix's code will also drop all thing carried by [i]other people[/i]?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2147&start=0#p15065
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Is there an automapper for playing Z5 (Z Code) games?
User: Genstein / DateTime: 2011-03-25 08:08:01

(Author bias) Trizbort can do that for you. If you fire up the game in an interpreter supporting transcripts, start a transcript (> SCRIPT in most) and point Trizbort at said transcript, Trizbort will generate a map as you play.

IFMapper apparently has similar functionality, and though I haven't used it much it does have a lot of fans.

Automapping isn't a precise science so automapping tools can make mistakes. They also have trouble with mazes, and Trizbort in particular can't map certain "unconventional" games. If anyone does use Trizbort and decides that its automapping sucks, let me know - my email is on [url=http://trizbort.genstein.net/]the Trizbort site[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2147&start=0#p15066
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Is there an automapper for playing Z5 (Z Code) games?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-03-25 08:59:09

[quote="John Phoenix"]Awesome ! Thanks for the info !

Edit: 

 O.k. I looked at Trizbort and IFmapper and they are nice.. I may use them but they don't really work as I want them to.

I'm looking for a map feature that's built into the interrupter and will generate maps automatically as you play the game.

 This way, I won't have to worry about pausing to go to the map software and make a room with directions like I would have to for Trizbort and IFmapper.[/quote]

Hadn't seen your edit, that's why I didn't reply earlier. You proibably didn0t really explore either of them, as they do have built-in automappers. It's not built into the interpreter - for that you may try Nitfol, though I never got it to work myself - but it will generate the map automatically as you play.

And having used both IFMapper and Trizbort, I heavily reccomend Trizbort. IFMapper is almost as good... but Trizbort is much friendlier in disambiguating between rooms, and for me that was the winner. In a normal game session, if you have both your game window and your mapping window side by side, you can always see where you are and only have to switch to Trizbort if you want to tidy it up visually (which is another thing that Trizbort, in my experience, managed better than IFMapper).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2198&start=0#p15067
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: a uber-super-nooby guestion
User: If-geek / DateTime: 2011-03-25 09:30:36

Well as you might or might not of noticed, this isn't the same question. *shock* Well I have a new question and here it is.
Whats some code that will more or less, if the player uses a different object(fore say a sword verses a muffin) that will have a consiquence for using the wrong object.(Like eating the sword will either kill you or say you cant swollow a sword.)
  [color=#000080]i like green![/color]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2199&start=0#p15068
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: No rope extensions? Really?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-25 10:25:21

I've got some rope-like objects in my WIP and so far I've been managing them on a case-by-case basis. But I've decided that maybe an extension would be better. So I went on the I7 website and looked at the extensions section titled "Physics: Substances, Ropes, Energy and Weight," thinking that if "Ropes" were in the title of the sections, there would be some rope extensions there. But did this dope find rope? Nope!

I wonder why that is? Are the examples in the manual good enough for rope users? Are ropes unpopular? Is every rope implementation too particular? Are there rope extensions elsewhere? Or is it simply that nobody's done the work?

I think I'm ready to get started on this if the latter is true. Does anyone want to offer input on a rope extension? Here's how I'm starting out:

[code]A connector is a kind of thing. A connector has a number called the carrying capacity. The carrying capacity of a connector is usually 2. A connector can be leavable or draggable.

Connection relates various things to one connector. The verb to connect to (he connects to, they connect to, he connected to, it is connected to, he is connected to) implies the connection relation.

Attachment relates a thing (called the first item) to a thing (called the second item) when the first item connects to the second item or the second item connects to the first item.

The verb to be attached to implies the attachment relation.[/code]

I'm not attempting to model ropes that can be in more than one room at once, but I do already have a bunch of code that can deal with "dragging" items - things that aren't carried, but that are attached to something carried. What do you think?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2199&start=0#p15069
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: No rope extensions? Really?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-03-25 10:58:33

Ropes, fire, and liquids are classically hell on earth to do properly, so most people elide them, and those that don't are pretty selective with the implementation.  

If you're going to program one, it would be kind to do it in releasable extension form, but it's not for the faint of heart or short of beta-testers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2199&start=0#p15070
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: No rope extensions? Really?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-25 11:10:09

The trick with rope (and all of these classically painful cases) is that an extension for *your* set of assumptions isn't too hard. But combining everybody's desires into a single extension is very hard.

Still, that argues for a set of extensions. "Single-room ropes with dragging" would be good to have.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2197&start=0#p15071
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Drop all silently
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-25 11:12:48

"now all things carried by the player are in the location" should work. (Not tested.)

You only need "try dropping silently" if you need to respect check/instead limitations on dropping objects. And you probably don't.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2198&start=0#p15072
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: a uber-super-nooby guestion
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-03-25 11:15:52

I'm not sure what you're looking for with "-If (enemy) is attacked move to (a room)".
Do you want something like:

[code]After attacking:
   move the noun to the Graveyard;
   continue the action; [you'll need a tab at the beginning of these two lines][/code]

You might look at the ATTACK! extension.  There are really a near-infinite number of ways to handle combat, though.  

The game should be as long as it needs to be, and will take you as long as it does.  This sounds incredibly vague, but IF is a particular medium.  There are one term games and ones that can take days to complete, much less fully explore.  I would aim for something small, since it's your first project - if there's a small project that interests you.  What most people discover is that even small projects take a lot of time to do well, and by the time you finish, you'll have a better command of the tools.

I've been working on my WIP for closing in on two years, and am not nearly as far along as I'd like, but I'm slow and the project is huge.  I think most comp games take less than a year to put together, but I'm not certain of that.  (And some would benefit from some extra time.)  Keep in mind that you'll need extra time as you learn the tools.  I7 is a great language, but in my experience, it can take months to get comfortable with anything beyond the bare bone basics.  (Use the forum a lot.)  You'll also need to consider how long it'll take to design and write and tweak and beta and fix bugs, in addition to the core programming.  All of those are highly variable.  It sounds like you want to do some non-standard things, such as combat, and those systems usually will take extra time, both initially and in testing.  In short, if you're going to write IF, you should be passionate about your game idea, and enjoy at least some aspects of the process, because most games take time.  

Check out the IFDB ([url]http://ifdb.tads.org/[/url]). 

By the way, it's much easier for me to read text that uses capitals and punctuation; would you consider using a little more formal English on the forum?  Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2199&start=0#p15073
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: No rope extensions? Really?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-25 13:12:18

I seem to remember there were some bugs in I7's relation-pathfinding code. Is that still true? I'm realizing how important that's going to be to generalizing the dragging behavior.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2199&start=0#p15074
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: No rope extensions? Really?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-25 13:38:25

[quote="capmikee"]I seem to remember there were some bugs in I7's relation-pathfinding code. Is that still true? I'm realizing how important that's going to be to generalizing the dragging behavior.[/quote]

There's [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=578]578; fast route-finding fails with relations[/url]. And there's [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=497]this one[/url], where the explanation is that "pathfinding isn't implemented for dynamic relations between any types" and isn't supposed to be, though that might not be an issue for you if you're using relations between objects.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2197&start=0#p15075
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Drop all silently
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-03-25 13:38:28

Well the first two ideas compiled fine up to trying to invoke "have the player lose his inventory" where Inform complained about verbs.

"...but I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with, so I am ignoring this sentence altogether."

And using "Now all things carried by the player are in the location." causes 4 problems with the Conversation Framework extension to occur.

Hmmmmm... there has to be away.  I am going to keep playing with it, if you have any other ideas I would love to hear them.  And if I come up with anything I'll let you know.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2199&start=0#p15076
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: No rope extensions? Really?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-25 13:53:48

I gave this problem a cursory glance cause it looked juicy, and decided that I would've implemented a rope as a series of knots... including the default non-knot which is a straight length of rope.  The wikipedia articles on knots gave all kinds of interesting knot properties, and TIE A SHEEPSHANK would be fun to enter in a game. 

One (or a few) property of knots is how they behave under parallel tension vs. perpendicular tension.  Some knots actually morph into different defined knots under tension in particular directional ranges.  And sometimes the fastest way to tie a knot is to tie a different knot and morph it to the one wanted in that way.  I even learned something about my friend's family's boat, in how they tie it to the dock.  

Seriously, check out Wikipedia on knots.  Gameplay and coding ideas just leap from the page.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2197&start=0#p15077
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Drop all silently
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-25 13:56:49

[quote="Seeker"]Well the first two ideas compiled fine up to trying to invoke "have the player lose his inventory" where Inform complained about verbs.

"...but I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with, so I am ignoring this sentence altogether."[/quote]
I don't understand how that is possible? This example game compiles perfectly fine on my system:
[code]"Test" by Victor Gijsbers

Test is a room.

The player carries an apple. The player carries a pear.

To have the player lose his inventory:
	repeat with item running through things carried by the player:
		move item to the location.
		
Every turn:
	have the player lose his inventory.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2197&start=0#p15078
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Drop all silently
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-03-25 14:06:24

[quote="Seeker"]"...but I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with, so I am ignoring this sentence altogether."[/quote]
This is most often caused by using a full stop instead of a semicolon inside a block. You probably have something like this:

[code]
When the knockout scene begins:
	say "Some thug hits you in the head and everything goes dark!";
	now the player is in the basement.  [<-- should be a semicolon]
	have the player lose his inventory.
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2199&start=0#p15079
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: No rope extensions? Really?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-25 14:11:25

Have I mentioned how much I hate relations syntax? Why doesn't this work?

[code]Connection relates one connector to various things. The verb to connect to (he connects to, they connect to, he connected to, it is connected to, he is connecting to) implies the connection relation. 

Definition: A connector (called the rope) is used up rather than free:
	Let used ends be the number of things connected by the rope;
	Decide on whether or not used ends is at least the carrying capacity of the rope.
[/code]
[quote]Problem. In the sentence 'Let used ends be the number of things connected by the rope'  , I was expecting to read a description of values, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'things connected by the rope'.[/quote]

EDIT: Aha. The correct phrase was "connected to by" the rope. I was trying to bypass that whole boondoggle by defining a verb for the reversed relation, but that wasn't working out either. Except now it is. Sheesh.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2199&start=0#p15080
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: No rope extensions? Really?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-25 14:23:05

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]I gave this problem a cursory glance cause it looked juicy, and decided that I would've implemented a rope as a series of knots... including the default non-knot which is a straight length of rope.[/quote]
I think that would be a different sort of rope extension. My idea is for chains and tubes and other things that might not necessarily be ropes. But yes, knots are fun!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2199&start=0#p15081
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: No rope extensions? Really?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-25 14:25:24

[quote="matt w"]And there's [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=497]this one[/url], where the explanation is that "pathfinding isn't implemented for dynamic relations between any types" and isn't supposed to be, though that might not be an issue for you if you're using relations between objects.[/quote]
That would be an issue. I have a dynamic relation that checks whether anything enclosed by one thing is connected to anything enclosed by another thing. I would need to follow that relation in order to determine what things are dragging, and if any of them are fixed in place. But I suppose I can write my own dang pathfinding algorithm...

Oh wait, looking at the bug report it seems that I was thinking of conditional relations, not dynamic relations, which appear to be a totally different thing.... um, but also not allowed.

Maybe it would make sense to define a static relation that mirrors the conditional one, and manually set all the connections before running the built-in pathfinding. Does that sound like it would be better than writing my own pathfinding routine?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2199&start=0#p15082
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: No rope extensions? Really?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-25 14:55:40

[quote="capmikee"][quote="matt w"]And there's [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=497]this one[/url], where the explanation is that "pathfinding isn't implemented for dynamic relations between any types" and isn't supposed to be, though that might not be an issue for you if you're using relations between objects.[/quote]
That would be an issue. I have a dynamic relation that checks whether anything enclosed by one thing is connected to anything enclosed by another thing. I would need to follow that relation in order to determine what things are dragging, and if any of them are fixed in place. But I suppose I can write my own dang pathfinding algorithm...

Oh wait, looking at the bug report it seems that I was thinking of conditional relations, not dynamic relations, which appear to be a totally different thing.... um, but also not allowed.

Maybe it would make sense to define a static relation that mirrors the conditional one, and manually set all the connections before running the built-in pathfinding. Does that sound like it would be better than writing my own pathfinding routine?[/quote]

Well, if your relation is relating things, I think it's OK even if you're changing it as it's going along? The comments at the bug tracker confuse me, but here's an extension from something I have that does work (I think the actual code may be entirely by Aaron Reed):

[code]A theme is a kind of thing. being lost, the wild, fear, change, cold, astronomy, what's really important, career, marriage, and senility are themes.


Suggesting relates various themes to each other. The verb to suggest (he suggests, they suggest, he suggested, it is suggested, he is suggesting) implies the suggesting relation.


Being lost suggests fear and the wild. The wild suggests what's really important and change. Fear suggests change and senility. Change suggests what's really important and senility. Cold suggests the wild and astronomy. Astronomy suggests career and what's really important. What's really important suggests marriage and change. Senility suggests fear. Marriage suggests change.[/code]

and somewhere in the middle of a rule:

[code]let the next idea be the next step via the suggesting relation from current idea to the dominant metaphor;[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2199&start=10#p15083
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: No rope extensions? Really?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-25 15:06:44

Proof of concept!

[spoiler][code]"connectors"

Volume - The Connector Kind

Book - A Connector

A connector is a kind of thing. A connector has a number called the carrying capacity. The carrying capacity of a connector is usually 2. A connector can be leavable or draggable.

Book - Relations

Part - Encompassment - Enclosure or Identity

Encompassment relates a thing (called the whole) to a thing (called the component) when the whole is the component or the whole encloses the component.

The verb to encompass (he encompasses, they encompass, he encompassed, it is encompassed, he is encompassing) implies the encompassment relation.

Part - Connection

Connection relates one connector to various things. The verb to connect to (he connects to, they connect to, he connected to, it is connected to, he is connecting to) implies the connection relation. 

The verb to be connected to implies the reversed connection relation.

Definition: A connector (called the rope) is used up rather than free:
	Let used ends be the number of things connected to the rope;
	Decide on whether or not used ends is at least the carrying capacity of the rope.
	
Part - Attachment - Reversable Connection

Attachment relates a thing (called the first item) to a thing (called the second item) when the first item connects to the second item or the second item connects to the first item.

The verb to be attached to implies the attachment relation.
	
Part - Linkage - Indirect Attachment

Chapter - The Anchor - An Object Ceiling

To decide which thing is the anchor of (component - a thing):
	let H be the not-counting-parts holder of component;
	while H is a thing:
		now component is H;
		now H is the not-counting-parts holder of component;
	decide on component;

Chapter - Whether a Connector Binds a Thing to Another Thing

To decide whether (the link - a thing) bind/binds (the prisoner - a thing) to (the chain - a thing):
	unless the link is a connector, no;
	Now the chain is the anchor of the chain;
	unless the chain encompasses the link, no;
	Now the prisoner is the anchor of the prisoner;
	Repeat with the appendage running through things encompassed by the prisoner:
		if the link connects to the appendage, yes;
	no.

Chapter - Whether a Thing is Indirectly Attached to a Thing
	
To decide whether (first item - a thing) is/are indirectly attached to (second item - a thing):
	Repeat with the link running through connectors:
		if the link binds first item to second item, yes;
		if the link binds second item to first item, yes;
	no.
	
Chapter - The Linkage Relation

Linkage relates a thing (called the first item) to a thing (called the second item) when the first item is indirectly attached to the second item.

The verb to be linked to implies the linkage relation.

Chapter - Static Linkage - for Pathfinding

Static linkage relates various connectors to various connectors. The verb to be statically linked to implies the static linkage relation.

Volume - Verbs

Book - Connecting

Part - Grammar

Understand "to" and "onto" and "on to" and "with" as "[onto]"

Understand "tie [something] [onto] [something]" as tying it to.
Understand "attach [something] [onto] [something]" as tying it to.
Understand "connect [something] [onto] [something]" as tying it to.

Part - Action

Check inserting something into a connector (this is the convert inserting into a connector to tying rule):
	try tying the second noun to the noun instead.
	
Check tying something that is not a connector to a connector (this is the reverse nouns when tying a non-connector to a connector rule):
	try tying the second noun to the noun instead.
		
Check tying a used up connector to something (this is the can't tie without a free end rule):
	if the second noun is a free connector:
		say "(Connecting a free end of [the second noun] to [the noun])[command clarification break]";
		Silently try tying the second noun to the noun;
	otherwise:
		say "[The noun] doesn't have a free end.";
	stop the action.
		
Check tying a connector to something when the noun is attached to the second noun (this is the can't make two connections to one thing rule):
	say "[The noun] is already attached to [the second noun]" instead;
	
Check tying a connector to a connector (this is the can't connect a connector to itself rule):
	if the second noun is the noun, say "There's no need to connect [the noun] to itself." instead;
			
Carry out tying a connector to something:
	Now the noun connects to the second noun.
	
Report tying something to something:
	say "You connect [the noun] to [the second noun].";
	
Book - Disconnecting

Part - Grammar

Understand "from" and "out of" as "[out of]".
Understand "off" and "off of" as "[off of]".
Understand "from [off of]" and "[off of]" and "off [out of]" and "[out of]" as "[off out of]".

Understand "take [something] [off out of] [something]" as removing it from.
Understand "get [something] [off out of] [something]" as removing it from.
Understand "remove [something] [off out of] [something]" as removing it from.
Understand "pull [something] [off out of] [something]" as removing it from.
[Understand "pull [things inside] [off out of] [something]" as removing it from.]

Understand the command "disconnect" as "remove".
Understand the command "detach" as "remove".

Does the player mean removing something from something that is attached to the noun: It is very likely.
Does the player mean removing something from something that is linked to the noun: It is likely.

Part - Action

Chapter - Removing Something From a Connector

Check removing something from a connector (This is the can't remove from a connector rule):
	say "[The noun] isn't connected to [the second noun]." instead;
	
The can't remove from a connector rule is listed first in the check removing it from rulebook.
		
Check removing something from something that is linked to the noun (this is the redirect removal to compound disconnecting rule):
	Let first anchor be the anchor of the noun;
	Let second anchor be the anchor of the second noun;
	Repeat with the link running through connectors encompassed by first anchor:
		repeat with component running through things encompassed by second anchor:
			if the link connects to component, try disconnecting the link from component;
	Repeat with the link running through connectors encompassed by second anchor:
		repeat with component running through things encompassed by first anchor:
			if the link connects to component, try disconnecting the link from component;	
	stop the action.

The redirect removal to compound disconnecting rule is listed first in the check removing it from rulebook.

Check removing something from something that is attached to the noun (this is the redirect removal to simple disconnecting rule):
	Try disconnecting the noun from the second noun instead.
	
The redirect removal to simple disconnecting rule is listed first in the check removing it from rulebook.

Check removing a connector from something that is not a connector (this is the reverse nouns when removing a connector from a non-connector rule):
	Try removing the second noun from the noun instead.
	
The reverse nouns when removing a connector from a non-connector rule is listed first in the check removing it from rulebook.

Chapter - The Disconnecting Action

Disconnecting it from is an action applying to two things.

Check disconnecting something from something that is not attached to the noun:
	say "[The noun] isn't attached to [the second noun]." instead.
	
Carry out disconnecting something from:
	if the noun is a connector, now the noun does not connect to the second noun;
	if the second noun is a connector, now the second noun does not connect to the noun;
	
Report disconnecting something from:
	say "You disconnect [the noun] from [the second noun]."

Book - Dragging

To decide whether (I - an object) comes after (J - an object): (- {I} > {J} -)

To decide whether (start - a thing) is remotely linked to (end - a thing):
	let loc be the location of start;
	if loc is not the location of end, no;
	if no connector is linked to start, no;
	if no connector is linked to end, no;
	Repeat with link running through connectors in loc:
		Now every connector is not statically linked to link;
	Repeat with link running through connectors in loc:
		Repeat with second link running through connectors in loc:
			if second link comes after link and second link is linked to link:
				now link is statically linked to second link;
				now second link is statically linked to link;
	Repeat with starting link running through connectors linked to start:
		Repeat with ending link running through connectors linked to end:
			If the number of steps via the static linkage relation from starting link to ending link is not -1, yes;
	no;
		
Check going when the player is linked to something:
	Repeat with the shackle running through fixed in place things in the location:
		if the player is remotely linked to the shackle:
			say "You can't go anywhere because you're connected to [the shackle]." instead;


Book - Testing

Cell is a room. A rope is a connector in cell. A bolt is a fixed in place thing in cell.

Corridor is south of Cell.

The rope connects to the bolt. The rope connects to yourself.

test me with "s/disconnect rope from bolt/s"

[/code][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2199&start=10#p15084
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: No rope extensions? Really?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-25 15:57:04

After I tried that out, I realized that pathfinding wasn't so scary after all, since I don't actually have to find a path. I think I'll do it this way:

[code]A connector is a kind of thing. A connector has a number called dragging links.

Definition: A connector is dragging rather than loose if the dragging links of it is at least 1.

To calculate dragging for (the prisoner - a thing), recursing:
	[Hello Dijkstra!]
	Unless recursing:
		Repeat with link running through connectors:
			Now the dragging links of link is 0;
	Let count be 0;
	If the prisoner is a connector, now count is the dragging links of the prisoner;
	increment count;
	Repeat with link running through connectors linked to the prisoner:
		if link is the prisoner, next;
		if link is loose or the dragging links of link is greater than count:
			Now the dragging links of link is count;
			Calculate dragging for link, recursing;
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2200&start=0#p15085
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: ...instead
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-25 16:16:17

Let's look at these two pieces of code. First piece:
[code]A piercing rule:
	say "FAIL!" instead.[/code]
Second piece:
[code]A piercing rule:
	say "FAIL!";
	rule fails.[/code]
Now, the manual section 18.10 says
[quote]... instead; means "end this rule in failure"[/quote]
and it also says:
[quote]["rule fails"] causes the current rule to end immediately, with its outcome considered to be a failure.[/quote]
So these two pieces of code should be identical. Right? But they are not. If I consider the piercing rules, and then have an "if rule failed" clause, the clause will fire when the second piece of code is used but not when the first piece of code is used.

This leaves me confused. Is there an explanation for this phenomenon?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2200&start=0#p15086
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: ...instead
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-25 16:39:15

possible bug?  The first is missing it's RuleFails() call .. or a RuleSucceeds() call, or whatever. 
[code]
! No specific request
! This is the first-piercing rule:
[ R_740 ;
      ! phrase 1
      ! [1: say ~FAIL!~ instead]
      say__p=1;ParaContent();  print (PrintText) SC_32;  new_line; rtrue; .L_Say47; .L_SayX47; rtrue;
   rfalse;
];
! No specific request
! This is the second-piercing rule:
[ R_741 ;
      ! phrase 1
      ! [1: say ~FAIL!~]
      say__p=1;ParaContent();  print (PrintText) SC_32;  new_line; .L_Say48; .L_SayX48;
      ! phrase 2
      ! [2: rule fails]
       RulebookFails(); rtrue; 
   rfalse;
];[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2197&start=0#p15087
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Drop all silently
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-03-25 17:15:45

[quote="Juhana"][quote="Seeker"]"...but I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with, so I am ignoring this sentence altogether."[/quote]
This is most often caused by using a full stop instead of a semicolon inside a block. You probably have something like this:

[code]
When the knockout scene begins:
	say "Some thug hits you in the head and everything goes dark!";
	now the player is in the basement.  [<-- should be a semicolon]
	have the player lose his inventory.
[/code][/quote]

I went to look, and no... it wasn't a period.  So I kept trying things.  Then I looked a little closer...  AHHHHHHHHH!!!   [emote]:shock:[/emote] 

50 year old eyes.... it was a colon.  My only excuse is age, and that it is a notebook computer.  I think I need a larger screen.   [emote];)[/emote] 

Thanks again everyone.  You all are great for taking the time to help out like you do!  I have learned so much reading this forum, even things I have no need for yet... it all helps add to the total sum of knowledge.  I owe you all a beer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2197&start=0#p15088
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Drop all silently
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-03-25 17:59:28

[quote="VictorGijsbers"](I suspect that Felix's code will also drop all thing carried by other people?)[/quote]
I always fall into that trap, and I was pretty sure your suspicion was right; but, when I tested it, "things that are carried" only quantified over the things carried by the player (at least in this context); to move other people's possessions I had to write "things that are carried by someone". A little surprising, perhaps - at least to me ...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2197&start=0#p15089
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Drop all silently
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-03-25 18:04:13

[quote="Felix"]"All" is only understood in commands from the player to the game[/quote]
This, by the way, is not strictly true.
Authors can use "all" in the source text in at least one context: testing if [b]all[/b] things of a kind fulfill some condition (as in "if all doors are closed:" etc. etc.).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2200&start=0#p15090
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: ...instead
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-25 18:28:51

There are two cases here, although the manual isn't clear about it.

"instead ..." means to exit the *rule*, with a value that halts the rulebook. "rule fails" means to end rule *and* the rulebook, setting the rulebook's result to failure.

"stop" is equivalent to the "instead ..." case.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2200&start=0#p15091
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: ...instead
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-25 18:37:36

Hm, I guess I should file a report about the documentation then. Is there a reason for this behaviour? I.e., would anything be broken is "... instead" behaved just like "rule fails"?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2201&start=0#p15092
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: How can I kill the player?
User: Carryonmyway / DateTime: 2011-03-25 20:46:07

I'm new to IF games as well as programming them and I'm wondering how I would go about killing the player. I've read the manual and can't find it anywhere in there. 

Thanks in advance, 

Carry.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2201&start=0#p15093
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How can I kill the player?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-25 21:19:03

Used to be you would say something like this:

[code]Crippen's Bakery is a room. A poisonous cake is an edible thing in Crippen's bakery.
Instead of eating the poisonous cake:
	say "That was dumb.";
	end the game in death.[/code]

Now the preferred way to do it is to say "end the story," thus:

[code]Crippen's Bakery is a room. A poisonous cake is an edible thing in Crippen's bakery.
Instead of eating the poisonous cake:
	say "That was dumb.";
	end the story saying "You have died".[/code]

And of course you can change what's in the quotes to a more, um, flavorful death message if you like.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2201&start=0#p15094
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How can I kill the player?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-03-25 21:36:54

When I need to kill the player, I generally use a pointed stick.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2202&start=0#p15095
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Menu-based Conversations
User: whoiscraig / DateTime: 2011-03-25 22:18:30

Just wondering if there was any way to do this? I took a look through the extensions and there doesn't seem to be one that suits my purpose. I just want the player to be able to select what they want to say, like old RPG's used to do:

eg: <a class="postlink" href="http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/5641/4baldr014.png">http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/5641/4baldr014.png</a>

I've tried using Eric Eve's Conversation Package, but I find it overly complicated. And the standard "ask [person] about [topic]" feels a bit archaic to me. I want to simplify conversations by just providing a menu of things they can say.

Anyone know how I should start to tackle this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2202&start=0#p15096
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Menu-based Conversations
User: George / DateTime: 2011-03-25 22:48:49

Maybe this, <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/Mark%20Tilford/Simple%20Chat/index.html">http://inform7.com/extensions/Mark%20Ti ... index.html</a> or <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/Michael%20Martin/Quip-Based%20Conversation/index.html">http://inform7.com/extensions/Michael%2 ... index.html</a>.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2203&start=0#p15097
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: A vs The
User: whoiscraig / DateTime: 2011-03-25 22:49:33

Another quicky question. I can't seem to work out when Inform chooses to use A vs when it will use THE.

EG:

[code]"A vs The" by Craig Peters

The white office is a room.

A blue desk is a supporter in the white office. "There is a blue desk against the wall, upon which is [the contents of the blue desk]."

A red book is on the blue desk.

An apple is on the blue desk.

The Holy Grail is on the blue desk.

Mary's false teeth are on the blue desk.
[/code]

The following code will produce:
[quote]
[b]A vs The[/b]
An Interactive Fiction by Craig Peters
Release 1 / Serial number 110326 / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N) SD

[b]white office[/b]
There is a blue desk against the wall, upon which is the red book, the apple, the Holy Grail and Mary's false teeth.
>[/quote]

Now it doesn't make much sense to describe the book and the apple as 'the red book' and 'the apple' when you've never seen them before. How do I get Inform to write 'a red book' and 'an apple' just like I initially described them?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2202&start=0#p15098
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Menu-based Conversations
User: whoiscraig / DateTime: 2011-03-25 22:59:49

Ah, I didn't notice that simple chat extenstion, perhaps that will suit my purposes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2203&start=0#p15099
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A vs The
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-25 23:00:47

[code]
A blue desk is a supporter in the white office. "There is a blue desk against the wall, upon which is [contents of the blue desk]."
[/code]

By not using "the" in the contents substitution line, you will get a list with "a" instead of "the".

But you presumably want the Holy Grail to *always* be "the Holy Grail". You can effect that by adding

[code]
The indefinite article of the Holy Grail is "the".
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2203&start=0#p15100
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A vs The
User: whoiscraig / DateTime: 2011-03-25 23:09:52

Aha! Thank you very much.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2200&start=0#p15101
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: ...instead
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-25 23:47:12

That makes me nervous since whether an NPC's Check rule ends with rule fails or rule succeeds determines whether the Unsuccessful Attempt rules fire.  A bare rtrue isn't setting the success/fail value one way or the other.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2181&start=10#p15102
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Z machine memory usage, in exact bytes?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-25 23:47:48

Oh very nice, EmacsUser.  Thank you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2186&start=0#p15103
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6 optimizations
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-26 00:05:38

[quote="zarf"]No function inlining. No eliminating entire dead functions. Not much that you'd call peephole optimizing, although I think it's pretty good at compiling expressions into efficient code.

Things it *does* do: Folding constants in arithmetic operations. Eliminating dead code inside functions -- I think.[/quote]

I6 throws warning messages on unreachable code, most of it   return EMPTY_TEXT_VALUE;   and the like that I7 appends to everything to ensure a to-decide phrase has a return value, so it's not unreasonable to assume it can eliminate dead code inside a function, at least if that code follows a naked return statement.  

It also throws lots of warnings about unused routines, variables, constants, etc.  It looks like the potential for dead code removal exists if it doesn't do so already. 

Thanks for the haze-dump, zarf.  My curiosity is sated for now, I think. Back to CLM.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2201&start=0#p15106
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How can I kill the player?
User: Carryonmyway / DateTime: 2011-03-26 00:13:40

OK, I intend on killing the player with a pack of wolfs, how could I do that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2201&start=0#p15107
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How can I kill the player?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-03-26 00:38:57

[code]Crippen's Bakery is a room. A poisonous cake is an edible thing in Crippen's bakery.
Instead of eating the poisonous cake:
   say "As soon as you touch the cake a pack of ravenous wolves crashes into the bakery and devours you!";
   end the story saying "You have died".[/code]
But seriously, you need to be a bit more specific. What have you tried and what kind of situation are you thinking of exactly?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2201&start=0#p15108
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How can I kill the player?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-26 06:42:35

[quote="Juhana"][code]Crippen's Bakery is a room. A poisonous cake is an edible thing in Crippen's bakery.
Instead of eating the poisonous cake:
   say "As soon as you touch the cake a pack of ravenous wolves crashes into the bakery and devours you!";
   end the story saying "You have died".[/code]
[/quote]

Ahem, you should make this "Instead of taking the cake," or "get cake/eat cake" will yield an incongruous message.

...but yeah, it depends on what you specifically want to do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=170#p15109
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Kytaari / DateTime: 2011-03-26 12:19:37

Hello, everyone. 

My name is Collin; I'm 21 years old, I have passionately, constantly created stories in my head for as long as I can remember. I have always wanted to tell stories for a living, despite having many, many different interests; and feeling highly curious towards other artistic pursuits, such as music, visual art, and poetry (I'm not very experienced with either playing musical instruments or drawing accurate lines, but I've been told by many, many different people that my prose has a very poetic flair.)

I have a very deep appreciation for interactive storytelling mediums, one that I find uncommon in most people. However, I have very little appreciation for most interactive stories themselves; I believe most game designers just aren't cut out to be good writers. That being said, I do share an opinion that story isn't everything in video games, that "left-brain investment" is just essential as "right-brain investment." I enjoy good puzzles that are cohesive with in-game narratives and make perfect sense, and do not stand out as puzzles within the exposition of the game itself. Apparently these kinds of puzzles don't come very naturally to many IF writers, but feel free to correct me if you disagree; I have very little experience playing IF as is, and have only played some of the most very old stories.

Aside from IF, I do play video games very voraciously; I watch videos of "Let's Plays" (you can look that up if you don't know what that is) even more voraciously on youtube. Watching instead of playing it never detracts from the experience for me, I think; apparently atmosphere and content is what matters to me most in this and almost every other creative medium, not challenge really. And aside from video games, I also do a lot of reading, when my mood is right [emote]:)[/emote] I used to read fantasy literature chiefly, but have since strayed to classic literature and occasionally some science-fiction. I still read a little bit of fantasy every now and then, however. I also read a lot of non-fiction, especially subjects on ancient history (particularly India) and Western philosophy and comparative religion. I am particularly interested in Hinduism, but I don't wish to discuss that very much on these forums.

I'm currently aspiring to become a "professional IF writer", and if not then at least I can write IF in my spare time as a recreational hobby and work a job that teaches me some meaningful life lessons. I won't allow myself to do anything routine or noneducational for a living under almost any circumstances, really; most of the careers I have in mind either have something to do with Philosophy, History, or computer programming. I have considered writing prose since elementary school, but have decided only recently that my real passion is writing interactive stories, not linear ones. I would rather spend my creative energy writing in the medium I care most about, even if my priorities seem foolish.

Apparently I've taken enough of your time. I would like to express my deep appreciation for this community; I admire the way that not only this forum, but the entire IF community itself is so thriving and industrious, even when the general public generally doesn't understand why people would like playing text-based video games in the first place. Currently I have a youtube channel set up to portray IF games; but I feel reluctant to upload any videos just yet, do to my lack of expertise and freshness in experience. I intend on providing the playthroughs with invoice commentary and music (I particularly like Jazz fusion [emote]:)[/emote]) If you have any suggestions about this, or simply think this is a good or bad idea, please feel free to express your thoughts. 

I've taken enough of all your time; hopefully I find more opportunities to get more active within this community in the future. Thank you, everybody, for listening to me ramble [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=170#p15110
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: George / DateTime: 2011-03-26 12:47:12

Welcome to the forum Collin, and on the contrary, I think that your newness to IF would be a plus in any LPs that you create, so just go for it [emote]:)[/emote].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=170#p15112
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-03-26 16:33:47

[quote="Kytaari"](I particularly like Jazz fusion [emote]:)[/emote])[/quote]
 [emote]8-)[/emote] (There's some Weather Report in my speakers right now. (And eels in my hovercraft, but never mind that.))

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2201&start=0#p15113
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How can I kill the player?
User: Carryonmyway / DateTime: 2011-03-26 16:42:42

I have a forest, 'Northern Forest' it's call, and I just want the player to die if and when he/she enters it. But I think it would be better if it only happened say...10% of the time? I don't know if you can do that...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2201&start=0#p15114
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How can I kill the player?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-26 17:55:18

[quote="Carryonmyway"]I have a forest, 'Northern Forest' it's call, and I just want the player to die if and when he/she enters it. But I think it would be better if it only happened say...10% of the time? I don't know if you can do that...[/quote]

Sure, that's no problem:

[code]Safe Meadow is a room. "This meadow is entirely safe. The forest to the north is reportedly infested by dangerous wolves." Northern Forest is north of Safe Meadow. "This forest looks very dangerous and probably wolf-infested!"

After going to Northern Forest:
	if a random chance of 1 in 10 succeeds:
		say "A ravenous pack of wolves eats you!";
		end the story saying "You have died";
	otherwise:
		continue the action.[/code]

"Continue the action" is necessary because, without it, the "after" rule will interrupt the stuff that usually goes on after the player goes. In particular, without it the game won't print the name and room description of the Northern Forest. (An "after" rule might not be the best way to do this; more experienced folk might be able to say.)

And, as in this example, it's only fair to the player to warn them about the wolves before they go to the forest.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2201&start=0#p15115
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How can I kill the player?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-26 18:02:47

[quote="Carryonmyway"]I have a forest, 'Northern Forest' it's call, and I just want the player to die if and when he/she enters it. But I think it would be better if it only happened say...10% of the time? I don't know if you can do that...[/quote]
Did you read the Inform manual? It has sections on doing things at random. Trying to write a game without working through at least the first half of the manual first is [i]not[/i] a good idea.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2204&start=0#p15116
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 - Capturing The "look in" command.
User: Harvey / DateTime: 2011-03-26 19:39:05

Hi,

I wonder if anyone can help please?

I am coding a room and doing general bug testing.  I have a sink and a shower in one room, the sink is a container and can hold objects in the basin of the sink which is fine.

The shower is not a container.  When you issue the "look in" commands you get the following.

>look in sink
The sink is empty.

>look in shower
You find nothing of interest.

This works in principle, but I want to alter the message for the shower response.  I have tried the below and various alternitives that I believe it should be, all with no success.

Instead of looking into shower:
	say "The shower is empty.";

Can anyone please help?

Thank you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2204&start=0#p15118
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Capturing The "look in" command.
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-26 20:48:09

The "actions" debugging command will show you the exact names of every action you type. You can also look in the "Actions" index tab, down near the bottom, in the alphabetical list of verbs.

In this case you will find that "look in/inside" is understood as the Searching action.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2206&start=0#p15119
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Changing gender rules
User: This is my username / DateTime: 2011-03-26 21:01:51

I'm trying to do something a little complicated with I7. My primary target audience is the LGBT community, so I'm trying to get rid of the following restrictive rules:

* A person cannot be both male and female
* A person who is not male must be female
* A person who is not female must be male

Trying to add new kinds of people is driving me up the wall. I was able to add "neutrois" with the rule that a neutrois person is always neuter, but I can't say "A neutrois is never male. A neutrois is never female." because Inform thinks I'm contradicting myself. Likewise, I can't add "bigender", someone who's more than one gender at the same time.

Basically what I think I need to do is reconstruct the concepts of "male" and "female" from the ground up, but I have no idea how to do this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2207&start=0#p15120
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Seeking beta-testers for 'Koios'
User: rae_bot / DateTime: 2011-03-26 22:06:21

Hey guys,

My IF piece is more or less finished (as in, should be sufficient for beta-testers by Tuesday or Wednesday), and I very much would like beta-testers, soon.

[b]Tester details:[/b]
1. I'm hoping for 3 to 5 people to thrash it around a bit.
2. I will e-mail you the Z-file (it's not a public beta).
3. I'll want your transcripts as well as any other feedback you can give.
4. I will put a "Beta-tested by" line in the credits, with your name/username/pseudonym of choice.

[b]Piece details:[/b]
1. One PC, two NPCs
2. Four rooms
3. Five scenes
4. I've played a limited number of games, but I can at least tell you that it is far shorter than Bronze, but it is longer than 9:05 (the game, not the number of hours/minutes [emote];)[/emote] ).
5. I'm hoping to put it in a comp that's in June - IntroComp. If it's sufficiently awesome, I mean.

I graciously request your assistance. S'il vous plaît!
Merci.
Rae

P.S. I have seen <a class="postlink" href="http://if.game-testing.org/">http://if.game-testing.org/</a> and will also post this there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=170#p15121
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: rae_bot / DateTime: 2011-03-26 23:34:12

Oh, I forgot to introduce myself.

I'm Rae, I'm 21, I'm about to graduate college, and I want to be a writer. A novelist, actually, with non-fiction as well. I want to follow in the footsteps of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, and when I'm feeling crazy, I want to write a book for every section of the Dewey Decimal System (Isaac Asimov got 9 out of 10).

I also have a computer science minor, and since IF is an elegant blend of comp sci and writing, I fell into it without resistance.

I got started with IF when my Writing for Digital Media professor had us read part of "Hamlet on the Holodeck," and it mentioned Zork, and I was summarily distracted for the next half hour playing a version that I found online. We were then required to play through Bronze, and I fell madly in love. I was utterly hooked. I wouldn't stop until I found all the endings...well, I wanted to get the optimal ending, and I happened to get all the wrong ones first  [emote]:oops:[/emote] .

So I asked the professor if I could do an IF piece for an independent study. She agreed, I started making one, I came on here to ask a question (recently) as I was finishing up the piece, and...somehow ended up on ifMUD. And I've read most of Twisty Little Passages and I want to order Get Lamp (mostly because the coin is amazing) and I'm addicted to the medium and slightly annoyed that more people don't like it.

But, if they did, the community would lose its small-town feel, and that would be quite a shame.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2206&start=0#p15122
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing gender rules
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-03-27 03:59:18

I agree you're best off ignoring I7's built in "gender" concepts and rolling your own, as you're suggesting. The biggest difficulty is that Inform has already reserved the words male, female, and neuter, and it's tricky to replace all the sections of code in the Standard Rules that mention them. (Possible, though... this really calls out for a nice "Gender" extension, which would properly work all this out, but until then...) The quickest way to get around this is by just using different words... or adopting some convention like beginning any gender identifier with an underscore.

We need a couple tricky Inform 7 concepts to implement this. First we want to create a relation that lets us connect people to any number of gender identities.

[code]
A gender identifier is a kind of value. The gender identifiers are _male, _female, _neutrois, and _genderqueer. [And whatever else you want to add.]

Identifying relates various people to various gender identifiers. The verb to identify as (he identifies as, they identify as, he identified as, it is identified as, he is identifying as) implies the identifying relation.

Bob is a person. Bob identifies as _neutrois. Jean is a person. Jean identifies as _female and _genderqueer. 
[/code]

Things get complex (natch) when pronouns come into play. What you'll probably want is a rulebook for each type of pronoun (or at least, each type you need to use) that makes a decision as to what pronoun to use based on which identifiers a person is attached to. It might be a useful shortcut to name the rulebooks after the plural form, which is both gender-neutral and distinct for each pronoun (Custom Library Messages by Ron Newcomb takes advantage of this). For example, to say the 3rd person subject pronoun (he/she/it), we could make a rulebook called "we pronoun of":

[code]
Instead of asking a person about something: say "Unfortunately, [we pronoun of noun] can't tell you anything new." 

To say we pronoun of (subject - a thing): follow the we pronoun of rulebook for subject.

The we pronoun of rulebook is an object based rulebook. The we pronoun of rulebook has default success.

we pronoun of someone who identifies as _genderqueer: say "zhe".
we pronoun of someone who identifies as _neutrois: say "they".
we pronoun of someone who identifies as _male: say "he".
we pronoun of someone who identifies as _female: say "she".
[/code]

This will pick the first rule in the order listed that matches, which might not always be what we what; we could replace these with more elaborate rules if, say, we wanted different behavior for someone with a more complex gender identity.

Of course, there are a number of other tricky English-related issues to deal with (such as writing "has" or "have" correctly based on plurality)... looking through the extension "Plurality by Emily Short" is a good way to think through how to deal with these issues, although you may not need all of these for your project depending on how much text needs to be procedurally vs. hand-generated.

(Note for anyone writing a future "Gender" extension (which may well be me eventually): it looks like bits of the Standard Rules that will need to be replaced include Section SR1/11 - People, Section SR1/12 - Animals, men and women, and Section SR1/16 - Inform 6 equivalents.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2206&start=0#p15123
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing gender rules
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-03-27 07:29:55

Things get a little more complex, if you want the player to be able to use custom pronouns (like "zhe") in input as well (or to use standard pronouns in novel ways), rather than merely have the game use them in ouput. Then you have to change things in the I6 templates, too (like: Language §§ 2, 3 & 8; and Definitions § 5, if you want more than three genders).

Edit:
(At least, I suppose that's true, if you want new pronouns to behave just like standard ones (with pronouns being automatically set to objects and the PRONOUNS directive working and what not), and unless you don't write something of your own that implements that same functionality.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2204&start=0#p15124
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Capturing The "look in" command.
User: Harvey / DateTime: 2011-03-27 08:59:09

Thanks Zarf, all sorted now.

Apprichate your help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2207&start=0#p15125
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Seeking beta-testers for 'Koios'
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-03-27 09:25:39

Could you tell us a little about its difficulty?  I'm good at general copy editing, but get frustrated by hard puzzles.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2208&start=0#p15126
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Two (yes two) IF clients for the Kindle... Oh, and Hi =)
User: Tanga / DateTime: 2011-03-27 09:44:04

Hi guys.  I was directed this way from the games.int-fiction group (may it RIP =( ).  I've been into IF for a long time, off and on.  I'm on again now, since getting it running on my Kindle3.  I thought I'd see if anyone else was doing the same thing (or was interested in doing so).

Not that I want to take anything away from textfyre - who I've bought some stuff from with the hope that money = quicker Kindle releases =).  I'm stoked that it may be a possibility for some of our writers to make money (if not a living) doing this.

See inside the spoiler tags for details on how I got it up and running.

[spoiler][color=#BF0000]!Disclaimer!  Either of these programs require jailbreaking the Kindle.  It's not illegal, but it will break your Terms of Service agreement and thus void your warranty.[/color].  So far it hasn't come to that, but be warned.  Some hacks have been known to 'brick' the device (the USB hack most famously).  I haven't heard of anyone having trouble with these hacks, but fair warning, etc.  I recommend having a look at the mobileread forums if you're thinking about it to get the most up to date info:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=150">http://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=150</a>

All of that stuff worried me a bit when I came across KIF (Kindle IF) but I [i]really[/i] wanted to play IF on my Kindle.  Andrew is the developer and the instructions for installing KIF are on his site:
<a class="postlink" href="http://adq.livejournal.com/108011.html">http://adq.livejournal.com/108011.html</a>

His instructions are pretty easy to follow, but the first step (the jailbreak) is out-of-date.  Use these jailbreak instructions instead:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=122519">http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showth ... p?t=122519</a>

Then install the keys, and KIF as per Andrew's instructions.

Final step:  Play IF games on your Kindle (a pretty sweet experience) - the keyboard isn't as fast as a full-sized keyboard, but it's superior to any of my tablet / smartphone IF experiences.

I did mention a second IF client (this one is a dumbfrotz port):
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=126768">http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showth ... p?t=126768</a>
But it's definitely [color=#BF0000]for advanced users only[/color]. You need to be Linux and Hack savy.  The USBhack (required to get it running) is open to abuse, and new users have been known to 'brick' their kindles.[/spoiler]

Good-luck!  Sorry for such a long first post.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2135&start=0#p15128
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: You know you've played too much IF when...
User: dott.Piergiorgio / DateTime: 2011-03-27 10:45:54

well, for me happens when I type look instead of ls (really !)

Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2061&start=10#p15129
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Recommendations wanted: more plot interactivity, less pu
User: dott.Piergiorgio / DateTime: 2011-03-27 10:49:39

well, what I recommend is locations, locations, more locations !

What I most like in IF is exploring and mapping every location  [emote]8-)[/emote] 

Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2201&start=0#p15130
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How can I kill the player?
User: Carryonmyway / DateTime: 2011-03-27 11:19:59

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="Carryonmyway"]I have a forest, 'Northern Forest' it's call, and I just want the player to die if and when he/she enters it. But I think it would be better if it only happened say...10% of the time? I don't know if you can do that...[/quote]
Did you read the Inform manual? It has sections on doing things at random. Trying to write a game without working through at least the first half of the manual first is [i]not[/i] a good idea.[/quote]

I know, I briefly read it, and have referred to it as necessary. But really, what are the forums for? For helping noobs like myself learn. 

Next time I'll try not to be so quick on coming to the forums for help. 

Also thank you to everyone who helped me here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2207&start=0#p15131
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Seeking beta-testers for 'Koios'
User: rae_bot / DateTime: 2011-03-27 13:00:55

I honestly don't know how to address it.  I don't think the puzzles are terribly hard, and I think I did a decent job of cueing, but I've heard that authors tend to underestimate the difficulty of their puzzles.  I don't have a lot though - it's a story IF - and if you try one and can't get it and have to ask me for hints/answers I can give them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2209&start=0#p15132
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: The Simple Tale
User: Harvey / DateTime: 2011-03-27 13:28:47

For anyone that is interested I offer a very early, but playable (at least for the first act and 70 or so locations) my game called [b]The Simple Tale[/b].

I have added an entry in the IFDB at [url]http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ldpvbmfnb8p34cp4[/url].

The game is I7 and has been in constant development since the early 1990's on various versions of Inform.  That being said, I am pleased to say that I have done more in the past week or so on this then in the last four years and realistically it is not far from Act 2 being started.

Any questions, comments, abuse then please feel free to post to this thread!!!  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote] 

I will look at doing the next update by end of April and post here and to IFDB.

Thanks for reading...

...oh and I appreciate that I have not said much about the game, that’s for anyone who decides to give it a shot to discover for themselves! [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2209&start=0#p15133
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Simple Tale
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-03-27 13:37:24

Just letting you know a couple of things...

...first, you might want to include a download link to the IFDB page. It's frustrating to see new entries with no download links. Makes me want to hurl my computer monitor at the face of whoever did it.

Second, your post makes me think you're likely to keep bettering and updating your game. When you do, be sure to used IFDB's "News" feature, so that everyone knows about it and can enjoy the new version. [emote]:)[/emote] Otherwise it might get buried without anyone knowing it's been re-released. I feel this feature of IFDB is one of the most useful and least used.

Finally, I don't understand whether the game you're offering is completed/completeable. Does the game end after the first act? Or is there an uncompleted, untested second act in this version?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2209&start=0#p15134
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Simple Tale
User: Harvey / DateTime: 2011-03-27 13:56:28

Thanks for your comments.

The first act is available to complete and there is a lot of stuff already there but I felt it would be a good reason to release to see generally what people felt generally about it.  If we ended up with lots of it's crap etc, don't bother and so on then I'd need to seriously take a step back and try to find out what they don't like about it or what (if anything) can be done to fix things.

I myself have tried to replay some games from the 80's and I feel that I am wanting more then one line locations etc.  A good case in point was the thread here where it's talking about game sizes etc.  I think although good writing is the source to triggering an active mind and vision of what the author is trying to say, in this day and age we need to really flesh everything out as multimedia has moved on so much it's a case of getting the player to actually see want to see what happens next.

Based on my thoughts above, this is really testing the water with it to see "What now?" and how things go.

I have actually put the game on IFDB but unfortunatly it has to be moderated first, but it seemed a logical place to host it.  I would have liked the file to be available from the word go, but in the age of spam and all the rubbish they bring, it's understandable.

Finally, thank you for the tip about the IFDB news feature.  All of this is fairly new to me as IF is something I have only recently returned to and I hope that this one game is going to be a worthwhile journey for myself and anyone that cares to play it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2210&start=0#p15135
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I7] Overriding "yourself", and "[the noun]" in context
User: Genstein / DateTime: 2011-03-27 14:24:09

I'm toying with a WIP in which I'm fiddling with tenses and the story viewpoint, courtesy of Ron Newcomb's excellent Custom Library Messages extension.

I now have most messages as I'd like them, except for exchanges like:
[code]> PUT ME IN ME
(First taking yourself)
You would have to be holding yourself first.[/code]
I can change the "You" thanks to Custom Library Messages' "[We]" feature. But I can't seem to change "yourself" without special casing it for every verb and message.

Digging deeper I am suspicious - though I may be wrong - that this might be coming from the underly I6 library's YOURSELF__TX constant and/or the PSN__ or equivalent routine; it doesn't seem to be coming from the yourself object's saved_short_name (which is for changing player characters?) and setting the printed name of the yourself object, or indeed changing the player character to someone else, doesn't seem to do anything. Is there a way of changing "yourself" in I7? I don't mind the solution being ugly [emote];)[/emote]

Secondarily, I've had to replace most library messages because I want a particular character other than the player to be referred to as "I" or "me" or "myself" depending on context (for example, "I would have to be holding myself first." vs "You would have to be holding me first.") I've added "[the-noun-me]", [the-noun-I]" etc. to handle this, and I just use the right one depending on the context. Any less clumsy suggestions would be appreciated.

[Edited for clarity]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2206&start=0#p15136
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing gender rules
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-03-27 14:49:19

This would be a really worthwhile extension, and it might be more broadly useful than one might initially expect. For instance, the player ought to be able to refer to a ship as either "it" or "her" (as in 'x her'), and the author ought to be able to specify the ship as female without also making her animate, so that outputs like "You can't board her right now" would appear as expected, alongside outputs like "You can only do that to something animate," which probably would get waylaid if the female ship had to be created as a person.

On a philosophical level, I'd say that Inform's insistence on a hard-coded male/female gender dyad is slipping, or ought to slip, down the rearward slope of history, along with the now-outmoded idea that "he" and "men" can be used to refer to either men or women.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2203&start=0#p15137
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A vs The
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-03-27 15:06:16

Another tip: If you include Plurality by Emily Short, you can (and grammatically, you should) use "[is-are]", like this:

[code]"There is a blue desk against the wall, upon which [is-are] [contents of the blue desk]."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2206&start=0#p15138
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing gender rules
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-03-27 16:07:29

[quote="Jim Aikin"]
On a philosophical level, I'd say that Inform's insistence on a hard-coded male/female gender dyad is slipping, or ought to slip, down the rearward slope of history, along with the now-outmoded idea that "he" and "men" can be used to refer to either men or women.[/quote]

I wish there was an applaud in the smilies.  Since there isn't I will just add...

I applaud this idea.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2210&start=0#p15139
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Overriding "yourself", and "[the noun]" in context
User: Genstein / DateTime: 2011-03-27 18:14:24

Aha, well, I think I've found enough of a solution for my purposes.

I can replace "you" and "yourself" in the way I generally want to without resorting to I6 code.
[code]Rule for printing the name of the player: say "George".[/code]
This bypasses the you/yourself magic inside I6. Less hackily:
[code]Rule for printing the name of the player:
	say "[the printed name of the player]".[/code]
Which bypasses the I6 magic and directs it to use the player's I6 short_name directly. By default of course our player is still named "yourself" by the I7 standard library. So we need one (and only one) of the following to change the player's printed name from "yourself":
[code]The printed name of the player is "George". [which sets player.short_name in I6]
George is a man. The player is George. [which sets player to George, and George.short_name is "George" anyway in I6][/code]
Which about wraps it up for my first question. I may post a follow up w.r.t. my in-game narrator, since I think I've found a nicer approach to saying "my" and "I" in the right places, though still not an automatic one [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2061&start=10#p15140
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Recommendations wanted: more plot interactivity, less pu
User: Tanga / DateTime: 2011-03-27 19:38:11

I can't believe no-one's recommended 'Vespers' yet.  It's very much about plot and moral choice.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2206&start=0#p15141
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing gender rules
User: This is my username / DateTime: 2011-03-27 20:29:05

Thank you all for your helpful replies. This gives me an idea of where to go. I really appreciate it.

At this point I'm actually thinking of just coming up with a classification that will assign pronouns to characters without actually identifying their gender since, for example, I go by "it" but other neutrois people I know use "they", "he", "zie", and others; and any gender identification I need to give to the player I'll just put in the character's description. It seems to me that that would also make it easier to allow the player to tell the game what their pronoun is, for other characters to use when referring to them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2211&start=0#p15142
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7 reference for kids
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-03-27 20:57:15

My housemate and I are running a short workshop series on Inform 7 (two weeknight sessions, 1.5 hours each, with a group of about 30 middle-school girls).  I put together a simplified quick reference for the kids to refer to while they're writing, and I figured I'd share it with y'all.  It's not beautiful, and if you're reading this board it is way too basic for you (may I suggest [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2111]mor's quick reference[/url] instead?), but if you're in a position to be teaching kids about Inform, you may find it helpful.  There's a diagram showing the relationship between author, compiler, interpreter, and player, and a page each on rules (only Before/After), kinds, properties, and actions.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.instamatique.com/if/inform_reference.pdf">http://www.instamatique.com/if/inform_reference.pdf</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2212&start=0#p15143
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Two Stream-of-Consciousness Experiments
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-27 21:59:17

I've posted a couple of experiments -- [i]not[/i] completed works or even parts of works that will be completed -- in producing stream-of-consciousness output. One of them was my entry in the IF Demo Fair, the other is a modification of something by Aaron Reed that got me thinking about that area. I talk about them [url=http://saucersofmud.wordpress.com/2011/03/27/two-stream-of-consciousness-experiments-in-interactive-fiction/]here[/url]; I wouldn't necessarily recommend playing them if you're not interested in the discussion, but just in case you can play "The Table" (the IF Demo Fair entry) [url=http://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A//mattweiner.net/ifiction/table.ulx]here[/url] and see its source code [url=http://mattweiner.net/ifiction/table%20source.txt]here[/url], and you can play my modification of Aaron's "Experiment 1" [url=http://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A//mattweiner.net/ifiction/aaron%20reed%27s%20experiment%201.z8]here[/url] and see its source code [url=http://mattweiner.net/ifiction/experiment%20one%20source.txt]here[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2211&start=0#p15144
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 reference for kids
User: Minkovsky / DateTime: 2011-03-28 00:29:17

Interesting, however you should include check/carry out rules and conditional structures. However, as an introduction to Inform 7 for kids, it looks good.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2211&start=0#p15145
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 reference for kids
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-03-28 09:46:15

Well, I'd include Every Turn rules and text substitutions before I included Check/Carry out (which are mostly useful when you're defining your own verbs, which we are Not Even Getting Into), but the "design goal" here was to be as un-overwhelming as possible.  I'm definitely going to cover conditionals in the lecture portion, but there's not a lot of reminder text needed for them ("if [something]:" is pretty intuitive).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2210&start=0#p15146
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Overriding "yourself", and "[the noun]" in context
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-28 11:52:29

I'm working heavily on the next version of CLM, and it will solve that you/yourself issue out of the box.  

[quote="Genstein"]Secondarily, I've had to replace most library messages because I want a particular character other than the player to be referred to as "I" or "me" or "myself" depending on context (for example, "I would have to be holding myself first." vs "You would have to be holding me first.") I've added "[the-noun-me]", [the-noun-I]" etc. to handle this, and I just use the right one depending on the context. Any less clumsy suggestions would be appreciated.[/quote]

The question of a second (and third, etc) referent is a trickier one, and one I specifically decided to avoid for the time being.  However, I am considering adding a family of phrases like [We of the noun] to tackle the problem.  Would that solve this 2nd issue?  I guess the primary question is, are the commands entered into the prompt addressed to the omniscient narrator (like usual) or to an in-game character who is distinct from the player (as you seem to be doing?)

Another bug was discovered when Plurality is included: apparently the standard library disagrees with Plurality as to whether the lower-case version of [that-those of the noun] should print that/those/him/her or that/those/he/she.  CLM is caught in the middle, so I'm thinking of using the same types of say-phrases as David's CLM to avoid the issue entirely.

Any input or ideas would be welcome.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2213&start=0#p15147
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Tutorial Code doesn't work...
User: math4tots / DateTime: 2011-03-28 12:46:55

I'm just getting started with writing Inform 7 code, and it seems like a lot of simple things I read in the tutorial doesn't work...

For instance, when My code is:

[code]"Pilot" by math4tots

BLANK is a room.

Let X be 5.
[/code]

I get 

[code]This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6G60) on its most recent run through:


Problem. You wrote 'Let X be 5'  : but I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with, so I am ignoring this sentence altogether.

 See the manual: 2.17 > Review of Chapter 2: The Source Text
 
[/code]

Or even when I just try to get it to print something:

[code]"Pilot" by math4tots

BLANK is a room.

say "text".[/code]

I get:

[code]This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6G60) on its most recent run through:


Problem. You wrote 'say "text"'  : but I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with, so I am ignoring this sentence altogether.

 See the manual: 2.17 > Review of Chapter 2: The Source Text
 
[/code]

I'd appreciate any help to get this to work. Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2213&start=0#p15148
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tutorial Code doesn't work...
User: George / DateTime: 2011-03-28 13:04:03

[quote]but I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with[/quote]

is basically saying that statements like [b][i]let X be 5 [/i][/b] or[i][b] say "text"[/b][/i] can't be written down by themselves, but need to be put inside something like a rule, phrase, activity, etcetera. For example, 

[code]
When play begins:
    let X be 5;
    say "[X]".
[/code]

(note that if you copy that directly to the IDE, you'll probably have to replace the spacing of the indented lines with TABs). 

It's confusing for people new to I7 and never really explained as far as I can see in the docs, but you'll quickly get the hang of it I think.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2213&start=0#p15149
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tutorial Code doesn't work...
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-28 13:12:05

Well, chapter 2 of the documentation might help here -- especially 2.2.

The way Inform works is that every turn it reads a command and has rules to do things in response to that command. In order to tell Inform to do something, you have to wrap it in a rule telling it [i]when[/i] to do it. So 

[code]Say "text."[/code]

doesn't do anything, because it doesn't have anything saying when to say "text." You can have something like 

[code]When play begins: say "text."[/code]

which will print it at the very beginning when the game runs, or 

[code]Every turn: say "text."[/code]

which will print it every single turn, or

[code]Instead of jumping: say "text."[/code]

which will print it whenever the player tries to jump (by entering the command "JUMP"). 

So, keep reading the manual to see how this works (you might want to skip sections 2.5 through 2.15 or so on your first run through, as they involve stuff you won't need to use until after you've got this down.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2206&start=0#p15150
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing gender rules
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-03-28 13:13:10

This sounds fantastic. I've long been vexed with I7's handling of pronouns in this situation, and I'd be ecstatic to see it done away with entirely and (hopefully) replaced with something under the author's direct control.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2211&start=0#p15151
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 reference for kids
User: karlnp / DateTime: 2011-03-28 13:29:58

Would I be able to get the source text for this? I'd like to try designing a layout.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2213&start=0#p15152
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tutorial Code doesn't work...
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-28 14:47:26

When you're writing an Inform 7 program, you're writing two kinds of statements. (1) Statements that describe the initial situation of the game world. (2) Rules. Rules govern how the world will change based on the player's input, as well as some other things.

You can write things like this:
[code]The church is a room.
A fruit is a kind of thing. An apple is a kind of fruit.
In the church are two apples. The description of an apple is "Nice and green.".[/code]
All of those statements describe the initial situation of the world.

Everything else must be a rule, of which Matt gave some good examples.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2210&start=0#p15153
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Overriding "yourself", and "[the noun]" in context
User: Genstein / DateTime: 2011-03-28 15:21:57

That's great news Ron, thanks [emote]:)[/emote]

Just as a footnote, and not because I'd expect any future CLM version to necessarily care, I'm trying to clearly distinguish between parser messages (present tense "I" and "you" style) and in game messages (past tense story style) using Zork Zero style square brackets, so I've also had to manually override score printing (the announce the score rule); disambiguation (currently via Disambiguation Control by Jon Ingold, but only because it has a handy message table) and the print the final question rule. It's amazing how many little details are buried in odd places.

You're right that in my case I'm toying with an in-game character as the narrator, which does make for exciting messages. "Me" "my" "myself" and "I" are certainly giving me a little jip.

I like your [We of the noun] style approach, that's pretty much what I'm going to end up with; since I really don't want the narrator to refer to himself by his full name, I'd actually like to redact the [the (object)] phrases entirely, making it a compile error, and force myself to use more specialised constructs throughout. I'm not sure if that's possible; I might try making [the (object)] start a segmented substitution which cannot be finished, so as to get a compile error.

At the moment I'm toying with notation like:
[code]When play begins, say "[The subjective narrator] was playing catch with [the subjective narrator 's] friend [the objective protagonist]. A strange feeling came over [the objective narrator], as if [the subjective protagonist] and [the subjective narrator] were being watched. [The narrator 's] instincts seemed in accord with [the protagonist 's] own, as [the subjective pronoun of the protagonist] turned and scanned the horizon."
--
I was playing catch with Lennie. A strange feeling came over me, as if Lennie and I were being watched. My instincts seemed in accord with Lennie's own, as he turned and scanned the horizon.[/code]
But I keep confusing that even when typing it, so I may go for [I the library message object], [me the noun], [my of the second noun], [myself the person asked], etc. instead since they're easier for me to parse when writing the text.

Oh, a trivial oddity with CLM version 3:
[code]
Include Custom Library Messages by Ron Newcomb.
The story tense is past tense. The story viewpoint is third person masculine.
Cave is a room. George is a man in Cave. Lennie is a man in Cave. The player is Lennie. A persuasion rule: rule succeeds. An apple is in the cave.
--
> PUT GEORGE IN ME. GEORGE, GET APPLE.
(first taking George)
He didn't suppose George would have cared for that.

George pick up the apple.
[/code]
Perhaps I did something wrong, but the preceeding failure seems to upset CLM and leads to "pick up" rather than "picked up".

Thanks,
        -eg.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=429&start=30#p15154
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Vegitarian
User: Tanga / DateTime: 2011-03-28 16:13:47

=( - to those with dietary issues.  I have a couple of gluten intolerant friends, and it can be difficult.  A big change. 

I grew up on a farm, so trained to eat a lot of meat from an early age.  These days I don't eat so much, partly because I'm on a tight budget, but also because I don't like it as much as I used to.

I have changed the meat I do eat too.  I eat Kangaroo, rather than beef.  It's cheaper, healthier, and better for the environment.  I also like rabbit, though eat that less often.  I really should cut back on the amount of pig products (bacon) I eat though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2206&start=0#p15155
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing gender rules
User: Tanga / DateTime: 2011-03-28 16:33:46

Very interesting - I'd be interested in seeing what the results of this are.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=946&start=30#p15156
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Graphical Interactive Fiction
User: Tanga / DateTime: 2011-03-28 17:12:48

For a game that does a good job at using pictures in the way you want check out [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=b7zs6ocxlntb1u7c]Arrival[/url] by Stephen Granade.  Take note of the spaceship map especially - though obviously you will want something a little more basic.  ASCII art is another alternative for mapping - though I can't think of one off the top of my head some inform games use something called 'the compass rose' that shows available travel directions.

PS - [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=b2g8je1xxtqzei4u]Alabaster[/url] is an example of simple line drawings as a great mood-setter.  And the homestarrunner folk have [url=http://www.homestarrunner.com/dman3.html]something in flash[/url] that you might be able to emulate.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=20#p15157
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Genstein / DateTime: 2011-03-28 17:29:21

Thanks Peter, they're very good examples I hadn't seen. At the moment "AT THE BUS STOP" is rejected because of the all caps; "Sun room" because of the lack of a capital R. 

I might relax Trizbort's rules a little next version such that if a line is entirely unpunctuated, consists entirely of letters and whitespace, has more than one word, and has a preceeding blank line, and no more than say 5 words, then words with no caps or all caps are permitted provided that the first letter on the line is capitalised. Existing rules would still apply (and there are plenty of them), but this would be an extra case. Of course there are doubtless couter-examples where this would create an unnecessary room ("NOTE TO PLAYERS" or similar) but perhaps they're rarer. What do you reckon?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2206&start=0#p15158
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing gender rules
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-28 18:00:30

In response to this thread (and in deference to a former transgendered roommate of mine) I've modified the upcoming next version of Custom Library Messages to support adding new pronouns.  Meaning, new viewpoints like "third person neutrois" can be created, and the standard [we], [us], etc. phrases will honor them when the story viewpoint is set to said viewpoint. 

The same feature may also be useful for the international IF community who wish to adapt CLM to non-English languages, as I'm sure each comes with a slightly different set of pronouns (gender, case, number, etc.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2210&start=0#p15159
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Overriding "yourself", and "[the noun]" in context
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-28 18:14:13

[quote="Genstein"]Just as a footnote, and not because I'd expect any future CLM version to necessarily care, I'm trying to clearly distinguish between parser messages (present tense "I" and "you" style) and in game messages (past tense story style) using Zork Zero style square brackets[/quote]

En-bracketing messages can be done relatively easily with the Activity that the extension provides.  I think. You might still need to tack on a [ignore library line break] on the corrected message so the closing bracket stays on the same line, but that's the intention.

[quote]I've also had to manually override the print the final question rule. It's amazing how many little details are buried in odd places.[/quote]

Indeed, though [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=203]my bug report[/url] on that one in particular was downgraded to feature request. [emote]:([/emote]

As for the second referent, one way may be:
[code]The second viewpoint is a declension that varies. The second viewpoint is usually first person.[/code]
..and then create a [they] [them] set that works just like the [we] set except for consulting above variable. Then change both viewpoints simultaneously when the pov shifts, I becoming you and you becoming I.

If capitalization isn't an issue (i.e., names not pronouns are printed) then the [I] [me] set become available.

My interest is, are there some standard messages that could be [they]-ified now, permanently, so that any author could use a second referent just by setting said variable to differ from the story viewpoint variable.

[quote]Oh, a trivial oddity with CLM version 3:[/quote]
Was already fixed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=20#p15160
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-03-28 18:18:50

Good point. IFMapper does that quite often, actually - accidently create rooms which aren't meant to be rooms.

Well, thinking about it, you know what would be even best? Leave the rules as they are - I considered asking you to make those "more relaxed rules" toggleable by the user, but that's extra work for you with little foreseeable payoff - but make Trizbort a little bit smarter. Let's say, in Murder at the AeroClub, Trizbort didn't spot "Car park". So let's say I create "Car park" myself, and even fill in the description. It's an exception, so it's not any skin off my nose. It would be bothersome if I had to do it every room in every game, but the odd room in the odd game? Best to have a little bit of extra work and ensure that the rest of the program is tightly coded.

So, with that manually-created room, and even with the directions created manually, I would expect Trizbort to recognise that it *is* a room, and whenever it sees "Car park" in a single line with no punctuation - in fact, whenever it sees something that is a perfect match to a ROOM NAME and is followed by a perfect match to that room's DESCRIPTION - it would assume that it IS a valid room, and would behave accordingly, even if it would, left by itself, assume otherwise.

How does this sound?

Also, Trizbort gets confused by "UNDOing". [emote];)[/emote] Might want to check that, let it know that "[Previous turn undone.]" (and maybe make that text optionally editable by the user, as some games, like Crystal and Stone Beetle and Bone, use different UNDO messages) is not a room description.

Finally, I'd like to suggest something extra for confusing layout. What if it were possible to "tag" a certain room as non-mappable? Here's a concrete example: in "Dawn of the Demon", there's a sort of maze where [spoiler]you can only navigate it with the lights off. When you turn the lights on, the room's name and description changes to a blander version, with no exits in any direction... although as far as the player is concerned, he's still in the same room, and turning the lights back off will revert to the previous name and description and exits.[/spoiler] I assume Trizbort would balk at this, and with reason... but if I could just have those "lit rooms" listed on the map but off to one corner, unconnected to anything else... and if Trizbort was given instructions to DISREGARD any connections to/from those rooms... then I could just keep on mapping as normal. It would also, I imagine, be helpful in a maze - disregard rooms with a certain title and description (such as "MAZE. You are in a maze of twisty passages all alike."), make no assumptions or connections, and then just let the player sort it out for himself without Trizbort interfering.

Well, this is just a thought. I've no idea how hard it would be to implement, or even how useful it would be in modern-day IF... but even in modern-day IF there are rooms with the same name, or puzzles like the one I described from Dawn of the Demon, which would confuse Trizbort as much as a maze with twisty passages.

Ah well, it's late and I'm starting to get sleep-muddled. Consider these points, but feel free to slap me on the wrist if they're just utopical, unpractical or not worth the effort. I mean, Trizbort's great as it is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=20#p15161
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Genstein / DateTime: 2011-03-28 18:37:49

That idea about accepting known existing room names is a damned good plan. Top notch in fact. I'd probably slot that in after Trizbort strips off anything it thinks is an " (on the bed)" style suffix, and then match against the whole line excluding leading/trailing whitespace. Description matching should then be automatic; if Trizbort didn't have one already it'd accept a new one from the transcript happily; if it did have one which differs it'd display its disambiguation dialog. Next version methinks.

Whoops on the UNDO front [emote]:)[/emote] Does it really think "[Previous turn undone.]" is a room name? Lawks. That may, as you point out, need some tweaking [emote];)[/emote]

I also like the idea of marking rooms as unmappable, it fits in nicely with Trizbort's "have a go and then let the user correct things" approach. As you say I've no idea how often it'd be used, but I do like it. Definitely up for consideration.

I probably won't be rushing out a new version unless there are horrible bugs, but it's great to have some good ideas to go into it. The more the merrier [emote]:)[/emote]

Thanks,
    -eg.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=20#p15162
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-03-28 18:51:27

[quote]Whoops on the UNDO front [emote]:)[/emote] Does it really think "[Previous turn undone.]" is a room name? Lawks. That may, as you point out, need some tweaking [/quote]

Heh, not quite as bad as that. [emote]:)[/emote] But when one types undo, one gets, for instance,

Front of Lawn
[Previous turn undone.]

...so Trizbort thinks it's another room with the description "prev turn undone", and brings up the disambiguation dialog. Not ideal, but far from being so confused as to thinking it's another room. [emote];)[/emote]

As for the rest, glad to have been of help. Trizbort is what I've been waiting for ever since I started IFfing in earnest, and I'm all too happy to help it get better and better.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2210&start=0#p15163
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Overriding "yourself", and "[the noun]" in context
User: Genstein / DateTime: 2011-03-28 19:08:32

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]En-bracketing messages can be done relatively easily with the Activity that the extension provides.  I think. You might still need to tack on a [ignore library line break] on the corrected message so the closing bracket stays on the same line, but that's the intention.[/quote]
Oh, I hadn't thought of that. Yes, that's a nice idea; if I created a table describing which messages I want bracketed, that could work nicely and avoid tedious retyping, especially when upgrading to a new CLM version. I might have to do that.

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Indeed, though [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=203]my bug report[/url] on that one in particular was downgraded to feature request. [emote]:([/emote][/quote]
Curses! I've certainly been guilty of that sort of code in the past, but somehow other people doing it is always more vexing [emote];)[/emote] It always feels somewhat dirty to cut and paste a whole rule just to change a piece of text. Now if it libraries could and did label their text like rules - 'say "hello" (this is the standard greeting)' - and authors could change it without changing the rules - 'the standard greeting is "what ho"' - I'd be breaking out the callooh callay. I don't have to work on foreign language translations of course.

As far as [they]-ification, my adjusted custom library messages are shaping up in this sort of way:

[code]
Inserting it into action	9	"[We] [aux][put*] [me the noun] into [me the second noun]."
Inserting it into action	10	"[We the person asked] [aux][put*] [me the noun] into [me the second noun]."
Inserting it into action	1	"[We] [aux]need[-s] to be holding [me the noun] before [we] [can] put [it-them] into something else."
Inserting it into action	2	"[That-Those of the noun] [can't] contain things."
Inserting it into action	3	"[We the noun] [is-are] closed."
Inserting it into action	4	"[We]'ll need to take [it-them of noun] off first."
Inserting it into action	5	"[We] [can't] put something inside itself."[/code]
So far I have [We the (object)], [Me the (object)], [Myself the (object)] and [The (object) 's], plus lowercase versions. I've declared "the narrator" as a thing that varies (though in my case it may not), and am pointing it at a story character. The "to say" substitutions such as [we the (object)] will check against the narrator to see whether they should say I/me/myself/etc. or "the object". Then I can write [We the narrator] etc. in descriptive passages, and my adjusted library messages are happy too.

Now whether this approach is sane or useful to anyone else I've no idea at all, but it's looking promising for me.

I like the second referent idea; assuming I'm following it correctly (feeling dim today), where the narrator wasn't an in-game character per se but might change during play that could be handy.

Incidentally in the spirit of forcing myself down this road and avoiding accidents I tried to create a compile error for "[the (object)]" by redefining it as opening an uncloseable segmented substitution. This works great, but sadly then the Standard Library and various extensions then won't compile (d'oh). So I'm now just printing an error message in bold each time to remind myself to fix the offenders wherever I see them.

[quote="Ron Newcomb"][A trivial oddity with CLM version 3] was already fixed.[/quote]
Fantastic stuff, thanks Ron [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2215&start=0#p15164
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Facebook and Beta-Testers?
User: rae_bot / DateTime: 2011-03-28 20:25:34

If you're seeking beta-testers for a piece, and you have a Facebook with a decent number of friends, have you tried just posting a status asking who's up for it?

I made a post here, a call on game-testing.org, a public tweet, and a Facebook status all around the same time, and the only one that yielded responses that day was Facebook, with two people willing to try it. I re-posted the status today and got another five people willing to give my piece a try - so in less than three full days I got seven people without thinking about it, all from posting a status on my FB.

Has anyone else tried leveraging modern social media to get beta-testers or to release a piece or anything?

Rae

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2206&start=0#p15165
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing gender rules
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-03-28 20:50:03

This thread makes me so happy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2215&start=0#p15166
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Facebook and Beta-Testers?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-03-28 20:51:06

I usually get my first round of beta-testers through my livejournal; does that count as modern? [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2215&start=0#p15167
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Facebook and Beta-Testers?
User: rae_bot / DateTime: 2011-03-28 21:10:05

[quote="tove"]I usually get my first round of beta-testers through my livejournal; does that count as modern? [emote]:P[/emote][/quote]

Today one of my professors was discussing leveraging social media for e-commerce, and afterwards (half as a joke) I said, "You never mentioned Multi-User Dungeons!" His response was, "MUDS!? Nobody uses MUDs! Nobody used MUDs when they first came out!"

So if you're on here and you're using LiveJournal...you may still be twenty years more modern than you could be.  But I definitely make no value judgments on varying levels of modernness.  [emote]:?[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2206&start=10#p15168
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing gender rules
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-03-28 21:16:05

[quote="tove"]This thread makes me so happy.[/quote]
It certainly has, if not restored my faith in humanity, but reinforced the faith in the awesomeness of this community.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2206&start=10#p15169
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing gender rules
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-03-28 21:29:34

[quote="tove"]This thread makes me so happy.[/quote]

Me too.  It shows that the world (real and IF) is bigger than each of our own lives and experiences.  We all need to grow out of the subset that defines our own past, teachings, and thinking.  I was worried when the OP posted this.  Not because I judge, but I was worried it would create a controversy and division in the community.  I am so glad it is being accepted as a valid point, and people are working on making it happen.  In the end it will be better for us all.  We will have new rules to deal with, but it will give us so many other options, and ways of expressing ourselves.

Now... If Inform only had a Cyrillic extension/translation...  My fiance is a Russian psychologist, and I can see this platform being useful as a teaching tool in her work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2206&start=10#p15170
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing gender rules
User: rae_bot / DateTime: 2011-03-28 22:01:22

[quote="Seeker"]Not because I judge, but I was worried it would create a controversy and division in the community.  I am so glad it is being accepted as a valid point, and people are working on making it happen.[/quote]

I feel the need to point out that lack of verbal opposition on this thread doesn't mean that everyone is accepting this as a valid point.  It could very well mean that any opposition in the community is willing to ignore this post, to avoid contributing to "division in the community." Or, that anyone who is willing to oppose it simply hasn't read it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2217&start=0#p15172
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: actions involving more than 2 things?
User: Divarin / DateTime: 2011-03-28 22:01:56

I'm making a game (my first attempt at IF) in inform 7.  In the game the player needs to lockpick a safe, and can optionally lockpick other locks throughout the game.

I really want the lockpicking to require two items (only because I know a little about it and I know you need one thing to apply turning pressure to the lock while another thing is inserted into the lock to set the pins in place).
what I want to do is this:

[code]lockpicking is an action applying to 3 things.
understand "pick [something] with [something] and [something]" as lockpicking.[/code]

unfortunately it seems that inform doesn't let me have actions that involve more than 2 nouns.  The only work around I have right now is to have the player do a "make lockpick", which takes away the two items that would be used to pick the lock and gives an item called "lockpick"

is there any way to make an action like this? that involves 3 or more things?
I've toyed with the idea of using:
[code]understand "pick safe with [something] and [something]" as lockpicking.[/code]
but that will get rather complicated if the player tries to pick other locks (which they should be able to do).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2206&start=10#p15173
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing gender rules
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-03-28 22:24:32

[quote="rae_bot"][quote="Seeker"]Not because I judge, but I was worried it would create a controversy and division in the community.  I am so glad it is being accepted as a valid point, and people are working on making it happen.[/quote]

I feel the need to point out that lack of verbal opposition on this thread doesn't mean that everyone is accepting this as a valid point.  It could very well mean that any opposition in the community is willing to ignore this post, to avoid contributing to "division in the community." Or, that anyone who is willing to oppose it simply hasn't read it.[/quote]

True.

I guess I was overly enthusiastic hoping in the goodness and acceptance of humanity and this community.  Real life tells me otherwise at times, but overall, I am not disappointed.  As Dylan said "The times they are a-changin".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2206&start=10#p15174
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing gender rules
User: This is my username / DateTime: 2011-03-28 22:40:40

I'm sure there are people reading this thread and thinking, "Wow, what a bunch of smug, self-congratulatory whining," but I'm perfectly content to pretend they don't exist. To those of you who did reply, thank you for being so supportive. I know where I'm coming to ask for Inform help in the future. [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2206&start=10#p15175
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing gender rules
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-03-28 22:44:57

Even if someone didn't accept our modern society's conception of sexuality and gender, the changes to I7 should be welcomed for the potential they give for telling very alien stories, such as something inspired by Asimov's [i]The Gods Themselves[/i].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2206&start=10#p15176
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing gender rules
User: rae_bot / DateTime: 2011-03-28 23:04:46

[quote="Dannii"]Even if someone didn't accept our modern society's conception of sexuality and gender, the changes to I7 should be welcomed for the potential they give for telling very alien stories, such as something inspired by Asimov's [i]The Gods Themselves[/i].[/quote]

That's a really excellent point.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2206&start=10#p15177
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing gender rules
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-03-29 00:59:18

It would also be interesting to specify that the parser shouldn't reveal a character's gender at all, instead always using a full name. While this might lead to awkward auto-generated messages, it would at least give the author more control over what's being revealed in a case where, say, a shadowy figure enters the story.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2210&start=0#p15178
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Overriding "yourself", and "[the noun]" in context
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-29 01:01:46

I made an alpha version of Version 4 of Custom Library Messages available [url=http://www.plover.net/~pscion/Custom%20Library%20Messages.i7x]here[/url].  It still has at least one bug that I know of when used in combination with Plurality -- try CUTting a NPC -- but that's fewer bugs than version 3.  Things are still morphing in its more rarefied features, but I imagine your prose will appreciate having all those boondoggles removed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2206&start=10#p15179
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing gender rules
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-29 01:05:01

For the adventurous, an alpha version of Version 4 of Custom Library Messages is available [url=http://www.plover.net/~pscion/Custom%20Library%20Messages.i7x]here[/url].  It still has at least one bug that I know of when used in combination with Plurality -- try CUTting a NPC -- but that's fewer bugs than version 3.  

I've added a new example showing how new pronouns are made. As it happens, I had a couple of sci-fi stories in mind when I wrote it, but I opted for zie rather than et or yt that I'd seen in the books.  Also, some credit must go to the [url=http://aetherlumina.com/gnp/]gender-neutral pronouns FAQ[/url] that Google introduced me to.  (I pray it isn't out of date.)

(Otherwise: for authors who just use CLM for it's tense & viewpoint changing abilities, nothing's changed I believe. Well, a neater index and smoother working with Plurality (still undergoing testing).  But the more rarefied features such as irregular verbs received an extensive rewrite, and modal auxiliaries are still morphing.  Constructions like [aux][have*] are now just [have*].  The as-auxiliary say-phrases can now be written how David's extension writes them: [have+], [are+], [do+].  And the [^] capitalise-next-word phrase from Mentioned in Room Descriptions has joined the party!)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2132&start=20#p15180
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Killing players.
User: Ryusui / DateTime: 2011-03-29 03:55:25

[quote="matt w"]Really, the more you describe it the less I'm convinced that you should have the other piece of candy. The puzzle structure is something like "There's two things you can use to get past the guard, but using one puts the game in an unwinnable state that you'll discover much later, and that object has no purpose other than to set this trap." It sounds pretty cruel, unless the game has thoroughly set up the expectation that this sort of thing can happen. Puzzle-impaired folk like me often assume that if the game is letting us progress, we've done something right -- that we'll find some way to get past the guard even if it's not obvious now.[/quote]

I agree. You say the player will likely spend 30-40 turns after committing a game-killing blunder doing something else, and then return to find that the seemingly obvious course of action (is it possible for the character to find the candy but not the rotten food?) has doomed them. In fact, if I were in that situation - having fed the guard the candy only to discover he catches me if I return, and having never seen the rotten food nor determined its purpose - my immediate assumption would be that my fatal blunder was something I did [i]during the escape itself,[/i] and not my choice of bribe. So unless there's something in this setup you haven't explained adequately, it's likely that the player will not only be stuck, but left clutching at straws as to [i]why.[/i]

May I make a recommendation? Put a laxative or some such into the player's hands (seriously, find some excuse to force them to bring it along - maybe stash it in a first aid kit or other container that the player will need to obtain) and clue its potential use [i]before[/i] the player finds the candy. This way, the player can doctor the candy before he gives it to the guard - or not. Then the onus of failure falls on the player for not disposing of the guard with the supplied tools, instead of the designer for making it possible to stumble upon an irrevocable false solution before finding the correct one.

Alternately, put the laxative wherever you like, and make it so that the guard simply accepts the candy as a gift - only the doctored candy will make him leave his post. (Depending on whether you can get more candy after this, this either presents a more "fair" unwinnable condition which can be immediately UNDO'd, or simply another obstacle the player must overcome to proceed.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2206&start=10#p15181
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing gender rules
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-03-29 06:33:06

Oh, almost forgot: I took a stab at the issue in I7, and (as stabs tend to be) it was... well... hacky, to say nothing about its crudity. Anyway, [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1888&start=10]link is here[/url], on the off chance that it'll help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2217&start=0#p15182
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: actions involving more than 2 things?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-03-29 10:11:12

You're correct that Inform does not support three-thing commands, so, yes, if you want two-tool picking, you'll have to go with a more "creative" solution.  Here are two possibilities:
-If there's only ever one locked thing in the location, you could indeed say "pick [locked-thing] with [something] and [something]," where [locked-thing] is a token that expands to include all of the names of lockable things in your game, and you decide on which one they mean by assuming they mean the one that is in front of them. Obviously this fails if you have several locks available at any given time.

-Have lockpicking be a separate "mode," like how some games model conversations.  So your player types "pick lock," which brings up a prompt saying "what is the first tool you want to use?" and then "what is the second tool you want to use?"  This has the main drawback of being tedious for the player, especially if several tool combinations will be needed to pick a single lock.

However, that said, isn't the-part-applying-torque always the same?  If I were a player, I'd feel like mimesis was pretty well served if I just typed "pick brass lock with half-diamond pick" (thanks, Wikipedia!), and just have the torsion wrench part assumed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2218&start=0#p15183
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Future-safe library messages
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-29 10:33:49

I'm working on an extension, and I'd like the messages that the extension gives to be treated as library messages in such a way that ANY library message extension can handle them (CLM by any author, Default Messages, etc). I thought the best way to do that would be to have them pretend to be actual library messages... but it seems that those messages are buried in the template layer. I notice comments in the templates indicating that the structure of library messages is going to change, as well, so I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to manage compatibility.

Is the best option to have several "For use with..." sections in my extension, or is there some kind of base-level message system I can make use of that won't cause troubles?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2202&start=0#p15184
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Menu-based Conversations
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-29 11:22:25

I've tried Simple Chat and I wasn't all that happy with it. It holds up the turn sequence during conversation and you have to explicitly exit chat mode before entering any other commands. I also think it overuses Instead rules to get things done, which makes writing for it a bit wordy. I haven't looked at Quip-Based Conversation, but I would recommend giving it an evaluation if you think either of those drawbacks would cause problems for you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2201&start=10#p15185
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How can I kill the player?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-29 11:34:00

[quote="Carryonmyway"]I know, I briefly read it, and have referred to it as necessary. But really, what are the forums for? For helping noobs like myself learn. 

Next time I'll try not to be so quick on coming to the forums for help. 

Also thank you to everyone who helped me here.[/quote]
Actually, I've found that on this forum, someone will usually answer ANY question, no matter how basic. So don't be afraid to ask. The documentation is notoriously unhelpful, which is a shame for something created by and for writers. But unfortunately the language is still under development and the creators don't want to waste time updating documentation for something that might change again a few more times. Personally, I think asking questions here is a good way to show the people involved what areas of the documentation need more work.

I think the bigger issue in this case was that your original question was not specific enough.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2218&start=0#p15186
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Future-safe library messages
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-29 11:37:51

Your extension can use the "issue library message...." phrases seen in Appendix A, which all the LM extensions will support. But you'll still need (for use with..) sections. 

While it may be true those issue... phrases will disappear in the future, they've been around since 5T18 or so, and with the selection of LM extensions available I don't think replacing that is high on the dev team's priority list, just because the need isn't urgent. 

(I'm speculating, of course.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2217&start=0#p15187
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: actions involving more than 2 things?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-29 11:46:20

WARNING! I don't really know what I'm doing and what problems this code might cause.

It seems to me that if you want "Do X with Y and Z" you might be able to fudge it up by declaring that the second takes multiple objects and then using the multiple-object list, thus:

[code]Jewelry Store is a room. "A jewelry store with a locked door to the north." The glass case is a transparent locked container in Jewelry Store. It is fixed in place. It contains a ring. The safe is a locked container in Jewelry store. It is fixed in place. It contains a pendant. The glass box is a transparent openable container in Jewelry Store.
The street is a room. 
The store door is a door. It is scenery. The store door is north of Jewelry store and south of the street. The store door is locked.

The player carries a thingummy, a hoojab, and a whatsit. The description of the thingummy is "A thingummy. You can use it and the hoojab together to pick a lock." The description of the hoojab is "A hoojab. You can use it and the thingummy together to pick a lock." The description of the whatsit is "A whatsit. It... doesn't really do anything."

Picking it with is an action applying to one thing and one visible thing. Understand "Pick [something] with [things]" as picking it with. [The second noun is "visible," meaning that we don't have to touch it to perform the action, because our "check picking" rule requires us to be able to pick it up anyway. So if one of our lockpicks is visible but not reachable the action will be stopped when we try to pick it up. Making the second noun visible prevents Inform from doing extra accessibility checks; otherwise, if we tried "pick safe with thingummy and hoojab" when the hoojab couldn't be accessed, we'd get one "failed the basic accessbility rule" message when we tried to take the hoojab while checking picking the safe with the thingummy, and another "failed the basic accessibility rule" while picking the safe with the hoojab.]

Check picking:
	if picking-completed is true:
		stop the action;
	otherwise if the noun is not locked:
		say "[The noun] is not locked."; [this is short a line break, for reasons I don't understand]
		now picking-completed is true;
		stop the action;
	otherwise: [we try to pick up everything we're using to pick before doing anything else]
		repeat with item running through the multiple object list:
			if the player does not hold the item:
				say "(first taking [the item])[command clarification break]";
				try taking the item;
				if the player does not hold the item:
					now picking-completed is true;
					stop the action.
						
Picking-completed is a truth state that varies. Picking-completed is usually false.
After reading a command: now picking-completed is false.	

Carry out picking:
	if picking-completed is true:
		stop the action;
	let L be the multiple object list;
 	unless L is {thingummy, hoojab} or L is {hoojab, thingummy}:
		say "You need both the thingummy and hoojab to pick a lock, and nothing else.";
		now picking-completed is true;
		stop the action;
	otherwise:
		say "Using the thingummy and the hoojab, you unlock [the noun].";
		now picking-completed is true;
		now the noun is unlocked.

The silently announce items from multiple object lists rule is listed instead of the announce items from multiple object lists rule in the action-processing rules.
This is the silently announce items from multiple object lists rule: 
	unless picking: 
		if the current item from the multiple object list is not nothing, say "[current item from the multiple object list]: [run paragraph on]".

After going north from Jewelry Store:
	if the player carries the ring and the player carries the pendant:
		say "Success!";
		end the story saying "You're a great burglar";
	otherwise:
		say "You get away without everything you came for.";
		end the story saying "Oh well".

[/code]

This is obviously very non-robust -- it lets you pick [i]anything[/i] with the thingummy and the hoojab, and it would take some messing around with lists to allow for other lockpick sets. Also the rule-succeeds/rule-fails business is kind of messed up; if the object is already unlocked, then the rule is deemed to have succeeded. And there's a missing line break (which, if it's consistent, could just be added in manually). And you really want to let people pick the lock, instead of the case/door/safe. And probably redirect unlocking to picking where appropriate. But it might be a start. 

The example [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/ex219.html#e219]"The Left Hand of Autumn"[/url] might be useful here; it's where I got the "silently announce items etc." rule, which prevents extraneous "thingummy:" and "hoojab:"s from appearing. 

All that said, I think tove is right that it's enough to let people pick locks with one thing. Note also that I know even less of the art of lockpicking than she does (not that I believe your protestations of ignorance, Ms. Byzantine Perspective).

Also, this method won't work at all for commands like "Put butter on bread with knife"; it only works because the multiple-object list and [things] token allow us to cram more than one noun into the second-noun slot.

[UPDATED because I forgot to make the door scenery.]
[UPDATED Oct. 2013: The code for implicitly taking the lockpicks was all messed up; changed it.]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2219&start=0#p15188
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Matching Items in Ask/Tell
User: ChrisNf / DateTime: 2011-03-29 11:54:56

Hello,

I want to make a generic response for "asking" about all members of a particular kind, for example animals.  I am able to get that working, but I can't manage to figure how to place the specific animal asked about back into the response.  

This is what I have (which doesn't work):

Instead of asking Mr Black about "[any animal]":
	say "Mr. Black says he doesn't even like [the animal]."

I tried "the noun" in the response and got "Mr Black".  I tried "the second noun" and got "nothing".

I want to be able to have this work for a cat and a dog without having to write the rule twice.  

Can anyone help?

Thanks!

Chris

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2218&start=0#p15189
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Future-safe library messages
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-29 11:55:25

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Your extension can use the "issue library message...." phrases seen in Appendix A, which all the LM extensions will support. But you'll still need (for use with..) sections. 

While it may be true those issue... phrases will disappear in the future, they've been around since 5T18 or so, and with the selection of LM extensions available I don't think replacing that is high on the dev team's priority list, just because the need isn't urgent. 

(I'm speculating, of course.)[/quote]
The "issue library message" phrase isn't very useful if you can't add messages for new actions. I'm also seeing in Appendix A that the "to decide if intervened" phrases are on the way out too. I guess I should just expect to rewrite for later versions.

Does anyone have a list of Library Messages extensions that are currenly in use? I seem to recall that David Fisher's CLM is used for some foreign language versions still. In addition to your two, would you recommend supporting anything else?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2217&start=0#p15190
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: actions involving more than 2 things?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-29 12:05:05

Actually, your idea of collecting the two items into a lockpick set is probably a lot better. It would be user-friendly to automate it, so that whenever the player has the thingummy and the hoojab the game automatically takes them away and replaces them with a lockpick set.

Here's how I might do that -- making it so you can never break up the lockpick set, which is much simpler. (And I added a case for where the thing you're trying to pick doesn't even have a lock.)

[code]Jewelry Store is a room. "A jewelry store with a locked door to the north." The glass case is a transparent locked container in Jewelry Store. It is fixed in place. It contains a ring. The safe is a locked container in Jewelry store. It is fixed in place. It contains a pendant.
The street is a room. 
The store door is a door. It is scenery. The store door is north of Jewelry store and south of the street. The store door is locked.

A thingummy is in Jewelry Store. A hoojab is in Jewelry store. A lockpick set is a thing.
Every turn:
	if the player carries the thingummy and the player carries the hoojab:
		say "The thingummy and the hoojab together form an excellent lockpick set! You will never separate them ever again.";
		now the thingummy is off-stage;
		now the hoojab is off-stage;
		now the player carries the lockpick set.
		
Understand "thingummy" and "hoojab" as the lockpick set when the lockpick set is not off-stage.

PIcking is an action applying to two things. Understand "Pick [something] with [something]" as picking.

Check picking:
	if the noun is not lockable:
		say "[The noun] doesn't even have a lock.";
		stop the action;
	otherwise if the noun is not locked:
		say "[The noun] is already unlocked.";
		stop the action;
	otherwise if the second noun is not the lockpick set:
		say "You'll need a complete lockpick set, consisting of a thingummy and a hoojab.";
		stop the action.
	
Carry out picking:
	say "You pick the lock of [the noun].";
	now the noun is unlocked.
		
After going north from Jewelry Store:
	if the player carries the ring and the player carries the pendant:
		say "Success!";
		end the game saying "You're a great burglar";
	otherwise:
		say "You get away without everything you came for.";
		end the game saying "Oh well".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2213&start=0#p15191
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tutorial Code doesn't work...
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-29 12:08:38

It sounds like you're coming from a procedural programming perspective, where you expect to start by writing a program that prints "hello world" and exits. I7 is not a very procedural language - it has an event loop built in, as others have mentioned, and most of what you're doing is writing what other languages would call "callbacks." It can be hard to get your head around the principles, but I've found it very rewarding.

I would perhaps argue with Victor to say that phrases are not rules, but they do behave in much the same way - you write them without necessarily knowing when they will execute. They are more like functions in other programming languages than rules are, though, in the sense that they are invoked directly rather than through a rulebook.

Have you seen Ron Newcomb's "Inform 7 for Programmers?"

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Inform_7_for_Programmers">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Inform_ ... rogrammers</a>

Hopefully someone can let me know if there's a more recent version - I think there's a nice PDF somewhere.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2201&start=10#p15192
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How can I kill the player?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-03-29 12:14:34

[quote="Carryonmyway"][quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="Carryonmyway"]I have a forest, 'Northern Forest' it's call, and I just want the player to die if and when he/she enters it. But I think it would be better if it only happened say...10% of the time? I don't know if you can do that...[/quote]
Did you read the Inform manual? It has sections on doing things at random. Trying to write a game without working through at least the first half of the manual first is [i]not[/i] a good idea.[/quote]

I know, I briefly read it, and have referred to it as necessary. But really, what are the forums for? For helping noobs like myself learn. 

Next time I'll try not to be so quick on coming to the forums for help. 

Also thank you to everyone who helped me here.[/quote]

The forums are a great resource, and I think you should feel free to ask questions - but before you do, think about what you want to have happen.

Your initial question was sort of equivalent of asking "how can I cook?"  There's eighteen bazillion ways that can go, so even professional chefs can't help you much unless you clarify.

The most helpful thing would be a blow-by-blow of what you want to happen internally, ie "when Bob gives John the bomb, I want him to die, ending the game" or "I want the game to tell the player he's dead, and move him to the Graveyard, where he wakes as a zombie and has a new set of actions".  If you're not sure what's happening internally, write a transcript.  Or write a scenario, and ask for advice.

Otherwise, you're going to be frustrated, because we can tell you how to cook an omelette, or a stew, or a delicious raspberry gelatto, but those aren't necessarily good responses to vague inquiries.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2217&start=0#p15193
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: actions involving more than 2 things?
User: ChristianB / DateTime: 2011-03-29 12:40:19

[quote="Divarin"]unfortunately it seems that inform doesn't let me have actions that involve more than 2 nouns.[/quote]

If you're still into actions with more than two nouns you might want to try the following code. It is based on an example in DM4 (the I6 Designer's Manual):

[code]The third noun is an object that varies. The third noun variable translates into I6 as "third".

The understand token third something translates into I6 as "THIRD_NOUN_TOKEN".

[cf. DM4, p. 489]

Include (-
Global third;
-) after "Definitions.i6t".

Include (-
[ THIRD_NOUN_TOKEN  x;
    x  =  ParseToken(ELEMENTARY_TT,  NOUN_TOKEN);
    if  (x  ==  GPR_FAIL  or  GPR_REPARSE)  return  x;
    third  =  x;  return  GPR_PREPOSITION;
];
-).[/code]

Now you can define your 3-noun action like this:

[code]Lockpicking is an action applying to two things.

Understand "pick [something] with [something] and [third something]" as lockpicking.

Report lockpicking: say "You pick [the noun] with [the second noun] and [the third noun]."[/code]

Accordingly, you can add a fourth noun (or even more).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2211&start=0#p15194
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 reference for kids
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-03-29 12:49:20

karlnp:  I'm not really sure what you're asking for.  I composed the text in parallel with composing the layout, so there's not really a single text document that I could send you, and you can copy the text from the multiple textboxes in the pdf as easily as I can.  I can send you the master Illustrator document, if you'd like.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2217&start=0#p15195
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: actions involving more than 2 things?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-29 13:19:21

[quote="ChristianB"]If you're still into actions with more than two nouns you might want to try the following code. It is based on an example in DM4 (the I6 Designer's Manual)

[snip]
Now you can define your 3-noun action like this:

[code]Lockpicking is an action applying to two things.

Understand "pick [something] with [something] and [third something]" as lockpicking.

Report lockpicking: say "You pick [the noun] with [the second noun] and [the third noun]."[/code]
[/quote]

Have you tested this? I tried using this example, but the parser failed to resolve the grammar line, giving only the response "I didn't understand that sentence". Here's the code I used:

[code]    The third noun is an object that varies. The third noun variable translates into I6 as "third".

    The understand token third something translates into I6 as "THIRD_NOUN_TOKEN".

    [cf. DM4, p. 489]

    Include (-
    Global third;
    -) after "Definitions.i6t".

    Include (-
    [ THIRD_NOUN_TOKEN  x;
        x  =  ParseToken(ELEMENTARY_TT,  NOUN_TOKEN);
        if  (x  ==  GPR_FAIL  or  GPR_REPARSE)  return  x;
        third  =  x;  return  GPR_PREPOSITION;
    ];
    -).

Lockpicking is an action applying to two things.

Understand "pick [something] with [something] and [third something]" as lockpicking.

Report lockpicking: say "You pick [the noun] with [the second noun] and [the third noun]."

The Paranoia Chamber is a room.

The safe is a thing in the Paranoia Chamber. The player carries a pick and a pliers.

Test me with "pick the safe with the pick and the pliers / pick the safe with the pliers and the pick".[/code]

[quote="ChristianB"]Accordingly, you can add a fourth noun (or even more).[/quote]
Hm, I'm not sure you can do this. Doesn't having more than three understand tokens total in the grammar line cause the I7 compiler to throw an error? 

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2217&start=0#p15196
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: actions involving more than 2 things?
User: ChristianB / DateTime: 2011-03-29 13:35:49

Sorry, you're right, my example is not working here. I've tested the DM4 code before -- but with different grammar. The "and" is causing problems.

It works, without "and", though.

[code]Understand "pick [something] with [something] in combination with [third something]" as lockpicking.[/code]

I have no idea how to work around the "and", sorry.

[b]Edit:[/b] At least, one could avoid the "and" the dirty way:

[code]After reading a command:
	if the player's command includes "pick":
		if the player's command includes "and":
			replace the matched text with "plus";

Lockpicking is an action applying to two things.

Understand "pick [something] with [something] plus [third something]" as lockpicking.

Report lockpicking: say "You pick [the noun] with [the second noun] and [the third noun]."[/code]

[quote="ektemple"]Hm, I'm not sure you can do this.[/quote]

It works fine with four nouns:

[code]Understand "pick [something] with [something] plus [third something] plus [fourth something]" as lockpicking.[/code]

[quote]>pick safe with pick plus pliers plus toothpick
You pick the safe with the pick, the pliers, and the toothpick.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2217&start=0#p15197
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: actions involving more than 2 things?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-29 13:43:05

[quote="ChristianB"]Sorry, you're right, my example is not working here. I've tested the DM4 code before -- but with different grammar. The "and" is causing problems.

It works, without "and", though.

[code]Understand "pick [something] with [something] in combination with [third something]" as lockpicking.[/code]

I have no idea how to work around the "and", sorry.[/quote]

I think "and" probably invokes the multiple-object list, so you'd have to do it my way (or something like it), or maybe hack up the multiple-object list. If you wanted to allow both forms, maybe you could define one action with an understand statement resembling yours and another ("picking-and" or some such) with an understand statement resembling mine.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2217&start=0#p15198
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: actions involving more than 2 things?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-29 13:47:52

[quote="ChristianB"]]It works fine with four nouns:

[code]Understand "pick [something] with [something] plus [third something] plus [fourth something]" as lockpicking.[/code]

[quote]>pick safe with pick plus pliers plus toothpick
You pick the safe with the pick, the pliers, and the toothpick.[/quote][/quote]

Excellent, I'm glad to hear that the compiler doesn't throw an error. I'm also sad that it throws an error if you try to use four built-in grammar tokens.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2219&start=0#p15199
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Matching Items in Ask/Tell
User: Genstein / DateTime: 2011-03-29 14:29:26

You want:
[code]say "Mr Black says he doesn't like [the topic understood]."[/code]Ask, tell and the like work with topics rather than nouns, so that the player can ask about things which aren't objects in game.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2220&start=0#p15200
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Remapping the blank command to wait
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-03-29 15:19:52

I wanted to remap a blank command from the player to wait, but neither "after reading the player's command" nor "before printing a parser error" seem cooperative.  I can fake wait - the game claims that time passes, but it doesn't, even with an explicit command to follow the every turn rules.

Smarter Parser seems to fake progression as well, which suggests that this behavior is hardwired.  Can I get confirmation on that?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2213&start=0#p15201
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tutorial Code doesn't work...
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-03-29 15:24:34

I sometimes wonder if it wouldn't be easier for new Inform programmers if bare phrases were implicitly treated as "when play begins" rules, or if that would just lead to more confusion.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2113&start=0#p15202
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: What do people think about adding a favicon?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2011-03-29 15:43:07

I added it, but it appears to have not worked. Odd, because I've put a favicon on some of my other sites without a problem. I'll have to investigate.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2215&start=0#p15203
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Facebook and Beta-Testers?
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2011-03-29 15:49:42

[quote="tove"]I usually get my first round of beta-testers through my livejournal; does that count as modern? [emote]:P[/emote][/quote]

This is how I do it, too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2222&start=0#p15204
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Second Gender - The Extension
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-03-29 16:00:31

Fredrik Ramsberg's Swedish translation of Inform 6 features the ability to give things two distinct genders.
So I wrote an extension for Inform 7 (in English) based on his implementation of that feature.

It's not too long. I'll post the beta here for all and everyone to test, comment, spot faults and dissuade me from submitting it to the Extension site. (The code shouldn't be sensitive to tab issues.)

[rant][code]Version 1 of Second Gender by Felix Larsson begins here.

"Lets you give any person or thing any one or two (or none) of the genders male, female and/or neuter."

"based on original Inform 6 code by Fredrik Ramsberg"



Chapter - Changes in I6 Templates

Section - Get Secondary GNA of Object
[This code is adapted from Fredrik Ramsberg's Swedish translation of Inform 6.]

[GetSecondaryGNAofObject does just the same thing as GetGNAofObject only backwards; it tests what gender an object has in reverse order compared to GetGNAofObject.]
Include (- 
[ GetGNAOfObject obj case gender;
   if (obj hasnt animate) case = 6;

   if (obj has male) gender = male; 
   if (obj has neuter) gender = neuter; 
   if (obj has female) gender = female; 

   if (gender == 0) {
!       if (case == 0) 
!         gender = LanguageAnimateGender;
!       else 
         gender = LanguageInanimateGender;
   }

   if (gender == female) case = case + 1; 
   if (gender == neuter) case = case + 2; 
   if (obj has pluralname) case = case + 3;

   return case;

]; 

[ GetSecondaryGNAOfObject obj case gender;
   if (obj hasnt animate) case = 6;

   if (obj has female) gender = female; 
   if (obj has neuter) gender = neuter; 
   if (obj has male) gender = male; 

   if (gender == 0) {
!       if (case == 0) 
!         gender = LanguageAnimateGender;
!       else 
         gender = LanguageInanimateGender;
   }

   if (gender == female) case = case + 1; 
   if (gender == neuter) case = case + 2; 
   if (obj has pluralname) case = case + 3;

   return case;

]; 
-) instead of "Gender" in "Parser.i6t".


Section - Pronoun Handling
[This code is adapted from Fredrik Ramsberg's Swedish translation of Inform 6.]

[PronounNotice should consider GetSecondaryObject.]
Include (- 
[ SetPronoun dword value x;
    for (x=1 : x<=LanguagePronouns-->0 : x=x+3)
        if (LanguagePronouns-->x == dword) {
            LanguagePronouns-->(x+2) = value; return;
        }
    RunTimeError(14);
];

[ PronounValue dword x;
    for (x=1 : x<=LanguagePronouns-->0 : x=x+3)
        if (LanguagePronouns-->x == dword)
            return LanguagePronouns-->(x+2);
    return 0;
];

[ ResetVagueWords obj; PronounNotice(obj); ];

[ PronounNotice obj x bm;
   if (obj == player) return;

   bm = PowersOfTwo_TB-->(GetGNAOfObject(obj));
! §#§ Added one line, to allow for an object to have two genders
   bm = bm | (PowersOfTwo_TB-->(GetSecondaryGNAOfObject(obj)));

   for (x = 1 : x <= LanguagePronouns-->0: x = x+3)
       if (bm & (LanguagePronouns-->(x+1)) ~= 0)
           LanguagePronouns-->(x+2) = obj;
];

[ PronounNoticeHeldObjects x;
#IFNDEF MANUAL_PRONOUNS;
   objectloop(x in player) PronounNotice(x);
#ENDIF;
   x = 0; ! To prevent a "not used" error
   rfalse;
]; 
-) instead of "Pronoun Handling" in "Parser.i6t".


Section - Pronouns

[We see to it that "him" and "her" can be used of inanimate objects, too.]
Include (-
Array LanguagePronouns table 
! word possible GNAs connected 
! to follow: to: 
!        a     i 
!        s  p  s  p 
!        mfnmfnmfnmfn 
’it’   $$001000001000 NULL 
’her’  $$010000010000 NULL 
’him’  $$100000100000 NULL 
’them’ $$000111000111 NULL; 

-) instead of "Pronouns" in "Language.i6t".


Chapter - Changes in Standard Rules

Section - (in place of Section SR1/11 - People in Standard Rules by Graham Nelson)

The specification of person is "Despite the name, not necessarily a human being, but anything animate enough to envisage having a conversation with, or bartering with." 

[We don't want male and female to be exclusive options, and we want all genders to be avialable for inanimate objects as well.
(For some reason Inform protests unless we put these changes inside a section replacement.)]
A thing can be female. A thing is usually not female.
A thing can be male. A thing is usually not male.
A thing can be neuter. A thing is usually neuter. 
The male property translates into I6 as "male". 
[End of changes.]

A person has a number called carrying capacity.
The carrying capacity of a person is usually 100. 

Include (- 
    has transparent animate 
    with before NULL, 
-) when defining a person.

The yourself is an undescribed person. The yourself is proper-named. 

The description of yourself is usually "As good-looking as ever." 

The yourself object translates into I6 as "selfobj". 
Include (- 
    with saved_short_name "yourself", 
-) when defining yourself. 


Section - (in place of Section SR1/12 - Animals, men and women in Standard Rules by Graham Nelson)

The plural of man is men. The plural of woman is women. 

A man is a kind of person. 
The specification of man is "Represents a man or boy." 
A man is always male. A man is usually not neuter. 

A woman is a kind of person. 
The specification of woman is "Represents a woman or girl." 
A woman is always female. A woman is usually not neuter. 

An animal is a kind of person. 
The specification of animal is "Represents an animal, or at any rate a non-human living creature reasonably large and possible to interact with: a giant Venus fly-trap might qualify, but not a patch of lichen." 


Second Gender ends here.



---- Documentation ----


Things of all kinds (not only persons) can be neuter, female and/or male.

Any combinations of any two of these genders are possible, as are single-gendered and even (in a sense) non-gendered things.

Giving a thing two genders means that the player will be able to refer to that thing with two distinct pronouns (e.g. calling a ship both "it" and "her", calling a dog both "it" and "him", calling Hermaphroditus both "him" and "her")

You can actually a single thing all three genders, but then the player will only be able to refer to that thing with the pronouns "her" and "him" (not with "it").

N.B.! A thing without any gender property set at all will still be referable to as "it".

All things except men and women are neuter by default. Persons, too, are neuter by default (as long as they are not declared men or women).

Men are always male; women are always female. 

(A thing or person that is declared to be both male or female will be secretly neuter: it won't react to the pronoun "it", but it can still be tested for its neuter gender.)

You set genders the ordinary way:
	Hermaphroditus is a person in the Woods of Caria. Hermaphroditus is male. Hermaphroditus is female.

The above lines makes Hermaphroditus both male and female (but neither man, woman, or animal).

Compare this with the line below:
	Hermaphroditus is a female man in the Woods of Caria. 

That line makes Hermaphroditus both male and female but also makes him a man rather than a woman.

Animals are neuter be default, so we dont have to say that explicitly:
	Felix the Cat is a male animal.

The above line will make Felix the Cat both male and neuter.

The same goes for things:
	The Black Pearl is a female vehicle in the Docks of Tortuga.

That makes the Black Pearl both female and neuter.

To make a thing or a person that has no gender, tell inform that is not neuter:
	The omniscient narrator is a person. The omniscient narrator is not neuter.

As remarked above a genderless thing will still answer to the pronoun "it", however.
[/code][/rant]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2220&start=0#p15205
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Remapping the blank command to wait
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-29 16:08:08

I think...[code]
For printing a parser error when the latest parser error is the I beg your pardon error: try waiting instead.[/code] should do it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2215&start=0#p15206
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Facebook and Beta-Testers?
User: rae_bot / DateTime: 2011-03-29 16:08:57

Is there a group on LJ for IF, or what?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2113&start=0#p15207
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: What do people think about adding a favicon?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-29 16:09:00

My experience with those things it that they sometimes take days to filter into one's browser.  The fedex icon, for example, tends to come and go in my browser like a summer guest.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2220&start=0#p15208
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Remapping the blank command to wait
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-03-29 16:15:49

Hmm.  Using 6G60, the time at the end of this code is only 9:01 am.  Do you get something different?

[code]"Test" by Gravel

Testing is a room.

Every turn: 
	say "It is now [time of day]."
	
For printing a parser error when the latest parser error is the I beg your pardon error: try waiting instead.	

Test me with "z / / / z"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2213&start=0#p15209
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tutorial Code doesn't work...
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-29 16:17:46

In cases like that, I think the best approach is a suggestion in the compiler error.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2208&start=0#p15210
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Two (yes two) IF clients for the Kindle... Oh, and Hi =)
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-03-29 16:26:52

I love my Kindle but I'm not excited about the idea of jailbreaking it. I am more enthusiastic about its potential for standalone, self-published IF games.

In that vein, I'm terribly excited about [url=http://www.filfre.net/2011/03/the-madness-spreads/]The King of Shreds and Patches[/url] coming to the Kindle.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2220&start=0#p15211
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Remapping the blank command to wait
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-29 16:57:32

How about (untested) waiting and then abiding by the advance time rule?

That seems related to the issue I had with [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=602]this bug[/url], and that was my fix.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2215&start=0#p15212
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Facebook and Beta-Testers?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-03-29 17:40:30

If there is, I'm not part of it.  I'm not really into LJ communities; all of my LJ friends are real-life friends.  Conveniently many of them are at least casually into IF (with arguably [i]most[/i] of them into at least one of storytelling, puzzles, and writing/debugging code), and it's worked out reasonably well for me to use testers who are a bit IF-naive but good at trying to find loopholes and/or breaking points.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2220&start=0#p15213
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Remapping the blank command to wait
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-29 18:05:24

oh, time isn't advancing. I misunderstood the missing piece.  (And thought that was fixed in any event.)  Try adding this:[code]
out-of-world is a truth state that varies. 
The out-of-world variable translates into I6 as "meta".
[/code]
And then stick in a [i]now out-of-world is false;[/i] right before the Try statement.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2219&start=0#p15214
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Matching Items in Ask/Tell
User: ChrisNf / DateTime: 2011-03-29 18:22:55

Thanks a lot!  I also had tried [the topic asked] and got a compilation error.  This is a big help!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2220&start=0#p15215
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Remapping the blank command to wait
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-29 18:35:46

Well that's a lot more convenient than trying to solve this sort of problem by kludging around in I7. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2215&start=0#p15216
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Facebook and Beta-Testers?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-03-29 18:43:40

There's at least one IF LJ group (I'm a member) but it's completely inactive. There may be others?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2113&start=10#p15217
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: What do people think about adding a favicon?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-03-29 18:59:51

Maybe move it to <a class="postlink" href="http://www.intfiction.org/favicon.ico">http://www.intfiction.org/favicon.ico</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2208&start=0#p15218
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Two (yes two) IF clients for the Kindle... Oh, and Hi =)
User: Tanga / DateTime: 2011-03-29 19:10:36

That game does look like fun.  Doesn't look like it's stand-alone though.  Looks like he's porting his glulxe/inform interpreter (Filfre) to the Kindle - but with Amazon support... very exciting.  I just played Alabaster, and it would look gorgeous on the Kindle.

If you're looking for stand-alone games check out [url=http://textfyre.com/]these guys[/url].  Nothing released for Kindle as yet, but they seem to be getting there, and they too have the official Kindle KDKs.

Thanks for the link though - I'm going to sign up to be a tester, if he'll have me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2206&start=20#p15219
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing gender rules
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-29 19:27:23

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]The same feature may also be useful for the international IF community who wish to adapt CLM to non-English languages, as I'm sure each comes with a slightly different set of pronouns (gender, case, number, etc.)[/quote]
My job involves computational linguistics, with a focus on the Arabic language. I'm not a linguist by training, so I was fascinated to learn that Arabic has a dual number in addition to singular and plural. I've been told it's not the only language that does, either.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2219&start=0#p15220
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Matching Items in Ask/Tell
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-29 19:35:17

If you intend to have your conversation revolve around in-game objects rather than simply text-matching topics, you might find Eric Eve's "Conversation Framework" extension useful. It adds two new actions, "quizzing it about" which is like asking but works on things, and "informing it about" which is like telling but for things. There are a number of add-ons for Conversation Framework that are useful too. I quite like Conversation Responses.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2220&start=0#p15221
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Remapping the blank command to wait
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-29 19:38:17

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]oh, time isn't advancing. I misunderstood the missing piece.  (And thought that was fixed in any event.)  Try adding this:[code]
out-of-world is a truth state that varies. 
The out-of-world variable translates into I6 as "meta".
[/code]
And then stick in a [i]now out-of-world is false;[/i] right before the Try statement.[/quote]
I like that! It looks much better than trying to "follow the turn sequence rules" or whatnot. Very useful.

Actually, it looks so useful that I wouldn't mind it being added to the language: whenever trying an action that is not out-of-world, the "meta" variable should be set to false. Anyone got votes on Uservoice?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2223&start=0#p15222
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Curveship and Pyweek
User: George / DateTime: 2011-03-29 20:33:41

[url=http://curveship.com/][img]http://i52.tinypic.com/25zmcyo.png[/img][/url]________           [url=http://pyweek.org/][img]http://media.pyweek.org/static/pyweek.png[/img][/url]

[b]PyWeek [/b]is a week of Python game making starting April 3rd. [b]Curveship [/b]is a new Python IF system. I'd like to give PyWeek a shot, does anyone fancy trying out Curveship too as a team? I was thinking of a simple web-based IF, maybe something massively single-player. 

No big time commitment from any teammate required -- my feeling with Curveship is that given decent organization many hands might make light work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2208&start=0#p15223
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Two (yes two) IF clients for the Kindle... Oh, and Hi =)
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-03-29 20:35:03

My sense is quite the opposite - that it's primarily a port of KSP, with the goal of getting an "Active Content" game to sell on Amazon, and the Filfre port is a means to that end. I guess time will tell.  [emote]:)[/emote]

Not sure what's up with Textfyre these days. They've gone dark except for the occasional post about future IF interfaces. I suspect that [i]Empath's Gift[/i] is stalled, awaiting approval from Amazon/Apple so that they can do a simultaneous release on all desktop and mobile platforms, but I don't really know.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2208&start=0#p15224
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Two (yes two) IF clients for the Kindle... Oh, and Hi =)
User: Tanga / DateTime: 2011-03-29 21:16:47

Ooh, title sounds interesting.  Hopefully it'll be out soon, though I just checked the [url=http://chicagodave.wordpress.com/2010/05/25/poets-empaths-and-more/]blog[/url] and it's quite delayed - hopefully for the reason you suggest.  That'd be awesome.  I've only partly played 'The Shadow of the Cathedral' but I really like the attention to detail (down to the curses and insults generally being based on failed clockwork).

Kindle is a pretty good IF platform, so I'm looking forward to the new stuff too.  But I do like being able to play stuff from the archives on the bus already.  =)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2206&start=20#p15225
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing gender rules
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-03-29 21:58:44

Oh it's very common. Even ancient Greek had a dual. And then you get inclusive and exclusive pronouns...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2206&start=20#p15226
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing gender rules
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-03-29 22:13:57

In case anyone wants to read further...  some languages are even more complicated in how they apply the "dual".

<a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_%28grammatical_number%29">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_%28gr ... _number%29</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2224&start=0#p15227
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Nightfall-style "go to x" with Approaches
User: jwideman / DateTime: 2011-03-29 23:52:58

How would I modify Approaches to duplicate the "go to x" command as used in Nightfall?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2225&start=0#p15228
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Vancouver IF Facebook group
User: karlnp / DateTime: 2011-03-30 03:21:33

[url=http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_188527774524536&ap=1]Here it is[/url], I think. I don't get the impression that Vancouver has nearly as many IF folk as Boston, but I'd like to meet any that are here. If the group gains a few members, then I'll start organizing pub nights or something similar to get together and talk game design and IF theory.

Thanks for reading.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2226&start=0#p15229
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: nevermind! (Formerly "Writing description for something...")
User: This is my username / DateTime: 2011-03-30 05:52:29

[b]Nevermind![/b] I managed to solve it by writing, The description of a person is usually "This is not a description."

Original post, for posterity:

I'm trying to write a default description for things that don't have descriptions, so that I can have different ones for animals, people, objects, etc. So I tried: 
[code]Hell is a room. "Welcome to Hell."

Instead of examining a person who doesn't have a description, say "This is not a description."

Anna is a person in Hell. The description of Anna is "This is a description." Hal is a person in Hell.[/code]
But I got the error, "You wrote 'Instead of examining a person who doesn't have a description'  , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is 'examining a person who doesn't have a description'. But that did not make sense as a description of an action. I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook."

So then I tried,
[code]Instead of examining a person:
	if the person has a description: 
		say the description;
	otherwise: 
		say "This is not a description."[/code]
And was told, "Problem. In the sentence 'if the person has a description begin'  , it looks as if you intend 'person has a description' to be a condition, but that would mean applying the possession relation (between an object and an object) to kinds of value which do not fit - a texts valued property and an object - so this must be incorrect.
I was trying to match this phrase:

if (person has a description - a condition): 
This was what I found out:

person has a description = a condition

Problem. You wrote 'otherwise'  : but this is an 'else' or 'otherwise' with no matching 'if' (or 'unless'), which must be wrong."

So even though it has no problem with "The description of X is..." and "say the description", it doesn't recognize it if I refer to the description anywhere else? (And on a side note I don't understand the last "problem", since my otherwise did too have a matching "if".)

If I change it to just "Instead of examining a person", it reads "This is not a description" for Anna, too.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2226&start=0#p15231
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: nevermind! (Formerly "Writing description for something.
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-30 06:44:58

Also for posterity: you can in fact do this with a rule, using the following code.
[code]First carry out examining:
	if the description of the noun is "":
		say "Looks good." instead.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2226&start=0#p15232
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: nevermind! (Formerly "Writing description for something.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-30 08:16:01

Another point -- this is one of the easiest ways to get confused in Inform -- is that "the person" wouldn't do what you want, even if the rule had compiled. Inform ignores both "the" and "a" in most cases, so if you write 
[code]
If the description of the person is "" [/code]

Inform treats it as the same as "If the description of [b]a[/b] person....", which will be true if the description of [i]any[/i] person is "". In these cases you need to use "the noun" (or some other appropriate Inform construct -- "the second noun" if you're talking about the second noun, for instance).

As I said, this is one of the most common things that confuses people -- and it really tends to cause a lot of head-scratching, because the code [i]looks[/i] OK. 

Also, the general form you were looking for is "If the noun provides the property description" [for the record, I typed "if the person" before I caught myself]. See section 4.8. However, that won't work in this case (I don't think), because every thing is provided with the default description ""; the example in section 4.8 shows you the kind of case where that does work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2200&start=0#p15233
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: ...instead
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-30 09:18:13

In light of this discussion, I've decided to always use "stop the action" when a check rule prints a refusal, and only use "instead" in a check rule when trying a different action.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2227&start=0#p15234
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Redirecting action in Check, Instead, and Before rules
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-30 09:30:10

I keep changing my mind about how to redirect action in a check rule. I'm trying to formulate some principles.

Occasionally I use the "convert" phrase like the Standard Rules does. I feel like I'm messing with something I don't understand, but it looks like something that's built to handle just this situation.

Other times I just want to change the noun or the second noun, so I do that without changing the action.

The rest of the time I use a "try" phrase.

I've had issues in testing with various methods, so I'd like to try to make the differences plain. I'm guessing at some of this, so let me know if I've missed anything or made any mistakes.

A "try" phrase invokes ALL the relevant rules for the new action. So if the source says "instead of taking the red ball" and your code says "try taking a random ball that is in the box," that might be invoked some times.

Changing nouns continues the current rulebook, so if the action was originally taking the box, the Instead rule will never run. In fact a "check taking the red ball" would not apply if it was listed before the rule that changed the noun.

I'm not really sure if "convert" runs all the rulebooks that "try" does - I've never looked into it.

I know that I've had situations where I really don't want to run all the rules for the new action, but I can't remember what they were. But dealing with this sort of complicated rule interaction has made me extremely wary of Before rules. They almost always end up preempting some important Instead rules.

I try to avoid using Instead rules when more than one object might be affected, especially in extensions, but sometimes I want to catch a lot of different actions. Lately I've been experimenting with adding the same rule to multiple check rulebooks instead. But there are still times, even in extensions, when I decide to use Instead rules. And there are still times when I regret it...

What's your approach?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2225&start=0#p15235
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Vancouver IF Facebook group
User: George / DateTime: 2011-03-30 09:34:49

You might want to give [url=http://www.deirdrakiai.com/]Deirdra Kiai[/url] a shout, she's joined in some IF stuff before.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2225&start=0#p15236
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Vancouver IF Facebook group
User: karlnp / DateTime: 2011-03-30 10:49:18

Oh, cool! I met her at an IGDA  meeting earlier this week. Thanks, George.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2220&start=0#p15237
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Remapping the blank command to wait
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-03-30 11:09:52

I see what's supposed to happen with out-of-world, but it isn't working for me.  

Matt's solution seems to in combination with firing the every turn rules, although I admit that I'm a little anxious that some vital piece is getting left out along the way.  I guess we'll find out along the way!

[code]For printing a parser error when the latest parser error is the I beg your pardon error: 
	try waiting;
	follow the every turn rules;
	abide by the advance time rule.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2224&start=0#p15238
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Nightfall-style "go to x" with Approaches
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2011-03-30 11:28:30

I didn't use "Approaches" in Nightfall. In case it's any help here's the relevant Chapter of Nightfall's code, which you're welcome to borrow and/or adapt.

I've attempted to remove bits that are purely specific to Nightfall, and to add comments pointing out other semi-Nightfall specific code that you'd need to remove or adapt.

[code]
Chapter 8 - Travelling by name

A room can be blocked or unblocked. A room is usually unblocked.

[ Some properties for optimizing route finding ]

A room has a direction called inboard. The inboard of a room is usually inside.
A room has a direction called outboard. The outboard of a room is usually inside.

Instead of going outside when the outboard of the location is not inside (this is the use outboard to go out rule):
  let way be the outboard of the location;
  try going way.

The  use outboard to go out rule is listed first in the instead rules.

Gating relates various rooms to various rooms.
The verb to be a gateway to implies the gating relation.

Travelling to is an action applying to one visible thing.

Understand "go to [any room]" as travelling to.

Understand "go to [any known thing]" as travelling to.

Understand "find [any room]" as travelling to.

Understand "find [any known thing]" as travelling to.

Rule for printing a parser error when parser error is noun did not make sense in that context and (the player's command includes "go" or the player's command includes "find"):
  say "You haven't come across any such thing."

[ Note that previously the game says a thing can be distant or near ]
[ Note that no-time is defined in my Variable Time Control extension - if you're not using that you'll need to remove all references to no-time ]
[ Note that the Noplace location is also specific to Nightfall]

Before travelling to when the noun is not a room:
  if the noun is distant then
     say "[no-time][The noun] [is-are] too far away." instead;
  if the noun is carried then 
      say "[no-time]You are carrying [the noun]." instead;
  if the noun is worn then
      say "[no-time]You are wearing [the noun]." instead;
  if the noun is visible then
      say "[no-time][The noun] [is-are] right here." instead;
  if the noun is a backdrop then
     say "[no-time][The noun] [is-are] in more than one place; you'll have to be more specific." instead;
  if the noun is unknown then        
     say "[no-time]You haven't come across any such thing." instead;  
  if the noun is a building and the entry direction of the noun is not outside begin;
    let way be the entry direction of the noun;
    let dest be the room way from the location of the noun;
  otherwise;
      let dest be the location of the noun;      
  end if;
  change the noun to dest; [ now noun is dest ]
  if the dest is Noplace then say "[no-time]You can't go there." instead;
  if the dest is a room then say "(going to [the dest])[command clarification break]". 

Check travelling to when the noun is the location:
  take no time;
  say "You are already there." instead.

Check travelling to when the noun is the travel destination:
  say "[bracket]To continue an existing journey you can use the command CONTINUE or just C[close bracket][command clarification break]"
  
Carry out travelling to:
  change the travel destination to the noun;
  try continuing the journey.

The travel destination is a room that varies. The travel destination is Noplace.

Continuing the journey is an action applying to nothing.

Understand "c" or "continue" as continuing the journey.

[
continued-before is a truth state that varies.
continued-before is false.

Before continuing the journey when continued-before is false:
  say "[bracket]Please wait - the first routefinding calculation can be quite slow, but it should be much faster after that.[close bracket][command clarification break]";
 change continued-before to true.
]

Check continuing the journey when the travel destination is Noplace:
 take no time;
 say "You aren't going anywhere in particular right now." instead.

Check continuing the journey when the travel destination is the location:
  take no time;
  say "You are already at your destination." instead.

Check continuing the journey when the location is not passable: 
  say "[no-time]It looks like you'll have to go back and find another route." instead.

Carry out continuing the journey:
  Let way be nothing;
  if the outboard of the location is not inside begin;
     if the location is a gateway to the travel destination begin;     
       if the inboard of the location is not inside then
          change way to the inboard of the location;
    otherwise;
       change way to the outboard of the location;
    end if;
  end if;
  if way is nothing begin;
    if pathfinding-used is false, say "(please wait...)";
    change pathfinding-used to true;
    let way be the best route from the location to the travel destination through passable rooms, using even locked doors;
  end if;
  if way is nothing and (the location is blocked or the travel destination is blocked) then let way be the best route from the location to the travel destination, using even locked doors;
  if way is nothing begin;        
    say "[no-time]You can't get there right now.";
    rule fails;
end if;
say "(going [way])[command clarification break]";
try going way.

pathfinding-used is a truth state that varies.
pathfinding-used is false.


Report continuing the journey when the location is the travel destination:
  say "You have arrived at your destination."

Does the player mean travelling to a room: it is likely.

Does the player mean travelling to the location: it is very unlikely.
Does the player mean travelling to something unknown: it is unlikely.


Rule for printing a parser error when parser error is noun did not make sense in that context and the player's command includes "[find]":
	say "You don't know how to get there." instead.

Understand "find" or "go to" as "[find]".

[ The following definition is specific to Nightfall: you'll need to adjust it for your own game]

Definition: a room is passable:
  if it is unblocked, decide yes;
  if it is Church Street Bus Stop and the player has the bottle of booze, decide yes;
  decide no.
[/code]

Hopefully that may get you started. But note the above code uses the now deprecated "change x to y" phrase; you'll probably want to change each of those to "now x is y" to be sure of compatibility with future releases of Inform.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2227&start=0#p15239
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Redirecting action in Check, Instead, and Before rules
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-30 11:31:08

I always say "instead try ...". It's simple and it invokes all the code that the action should.

The only down-side is that if several redirects chain (and I chain plenty of redirects), it can eat stack space quickly. Heliopause has trouble on old interpreters because they allocate a small Z-machine stack.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2220&start=0#p15240
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Remapping the blank command to wait
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-30 11:33:14

If I were doing this, I would write an after-reading-command rule to replace the blank line with "wait". That will keep things in the normal command path, which means you don't have to sort through the issues that you've been sorting through.

EDIT-ADD: Duh, you tried that and of course it doesn't work, because that path short-circuits. Well, I'd apply the necessary I6 hacking to avoid that. Sorry about the uglier-than-I-thought suggestion.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2220&start=0#p15241
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Remapping the blank command to wait
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-03-30 11:37:08

Zarf, that was my first attempt, too.  The issue with that is that the after reading a command doesn't seem to fire at all when the command is blank - it skips straight to the "I beg your pardon" parser error.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2228&start=0#p15242
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Relation syntax: Past participle?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-30 11:47:19

What is wrong with this?

[code]Adhesion relates various things to various things.

The verb to stick with (he sticks to, they stick to, he stuck to, it is stuck to, he is sticking to) implies the adhesion relation.

test is a room.

When play begins: If something is stuck to something, say "stuck!"[/code]

Did I get something wrong with the verb conjugation?

[quote]Problem. In the sentence 'If something is stuck to something, say "stuck!"'  , I was expecting to read a condition, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'something is stuck to something'.
I was trying to match this phrase:

if (something is stuck to something - a condition) , (say "stuck!" - a phrase) 
This was what I found out:

something is stuck to something = something unrecognised
say "stuck!" = an instruction to do something[/quote]

It works if I say "if something sticks to something," but I thought the past participle implied the reversed relation and was equally usable.

Oh wait, I figured it out. I've almost asked this question before, and remembered at the last minute. You have to say "is stuck to by", not "is stuck to." Is there any way to give the author a hint about this before they go insane?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2228&start=0#p15243
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Relation syntax: Past participle?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-30 12:40:37

The verb is "stick to", not "to be stuck to".  Don't use "is". 

Also, you have "with" in the infinitive and "to" in the others.  That's bound to cause confusion eventually.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2220&start=10#p15244
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Remapping the blank command to wait
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-30 12:42:37

Here it is, the whole mess, put between spoilers because it is long. If you want to use it, quote this topic and copy-paste the code from there: that way you'll actually get all the tabs. (Indenting the Inform 6 code by hand is a pain.)

[spoiler][code]After reading a command:
	let T be indexed text; 
	let T be the player's command;
	if T is "":
		change the text of the player's command to "z".

Include (- [ Keyboard  a_buffer a_table  nw i w w2 x1 x2;
	sline1 = score; sline2 = turns;

	while (true) {
		! Save the start of the buffer, in case "oops" needs to restore it
		for (i=0 : i<64 : i++) oops_workspace->i = a_buffer->i;
	
		! In case of an array entry corruption that shouldn't happen, but would be
		! disastrous if it did:
		#Ifdef TARGET_ZCODE;
		a_buffer->0 = INPUT_BUFFER_LEN;
		a_table->0 = 15;  ! Allow to split input into this many words
		#Endif; ! TARGET_
	
		! Print the prompt, and read in the words and dictionary addresses
		PrintPrompt();
		DrawStatusLine();
		KeyboardPrimitive(a_buffer, a_table);
	
		! Set nw to the number of words
		#Ifdef TARGET_ZCODE; nw = a_table->1; #Ifnot; nw = a_table-->0; #Endif;
	
		! If the line was blank, get a fresh line
		!if (nw == 0) {
		!	@push etype; etype = BLANKLINE_PE;
		!	players_command = 100;
		!	BeginActivity(PRINTING_A_PARSER_ERROR_ACT);
		!	if (ForActivity(PRINTING_A_PARSER_ERROR_ACT) == false) L__M(##Miscellany,10);
		!	EndActivity(PRINTING_A_PARSER_ERROR_ACT);
		!	@pull etype;
		!	continue;
		!}
	
		! Unless the opening word was OOPS, return
		! Conveniently, a_table-->1 is the first word on both the Z-machine and Glulx
	
		w = a_table-->1;
		if (w == OOPS1__WD or OOPS2__WD or OOPS3__WD) {
			if (oops_from == 0) { L__M(##Miscellany, 14); continue; }
			if (nw == 1) { L__M(##Miscellany, 15); continue; }
			if (nw > 2) { L__M(##Miscellany, 16); continue; }
		
			! So now we know: there was a previous mistake, and the player has
			! attempted to correct a single word of it.
		
			for (i=0 : i<INPUT_BUFFER_LEN : i++) buffer2->i = a_buffer->i;
			#Ifdef TARGET_ZCODE;
			x1 = a_table->9;  ! Start of word following "oops"
			x2 = a_table->8;  ! Length of word following "oops"
			#Ifnot; ! TARGET_GLULX
			x1 = a_table-->6; ! Start of word following "oops"
			x2 = a_table-->5; ! Length of word following "oops"
			#Endif; ! TARGET_
		
			! Repair the buffer to the text that was in it before the "oops"
			! was typed:
			for (i=0 : i<64 : i++) a_buffer->i = oops_workspace->i;
			VM_Tokenise(a_buffer,a_table);
		
			! Work out the position in the buffer of the word to be corrected:
			#Ifdef TARGET_ZCODE;
			w = a_table->(4*oops_from + 1); ! Start of word to go
			w2 = a_table->(4*oops_from);    ! Length of word to go
			#Ifnot; ! TARGET_GLULX
			w = a_table-->(3*oops_from);      ! Start of word to go
			w2 = a_table-->(3*oops_from - 1); ! Length of word to go
			#Endif; ! TARGET_
		
			! Write spaces over the word to be corrected:
			for (i=0 : i<w2 : i++) a_buffer->(i+w) = ' ';
		
			if (w2 < x2) {
				! If the replacement is longer than the original, move up...
				for (i=INPUT_BUFFER_LEN-1 : i>=w+x2 : i-- )
					a_buffer->i = a_buffer->(i-x2+w2);

				! ...increasing buffer size accordingly.
				#Ifdef TARGET_ZCODE;
				a_buffer->1 = (a_buffer->1) + (x2-w2);
				#Ifnot; ! TARGET_GLULX
				a_buffer-->0 = (a_buffer-->0) + (x2-w2);
				#Endif; ! TARGET_
			}
		
			! Write the correction in:
			for (i=0 : i<x2 : i++) a_buffer->(i+w) = buffer2->(i+x1);
		
			VM_Tokenise(a_buffer, a_table);
			#Ifdef TARGET_ZCODE; nw = a_table->1; #Ifnot; nw = a_table-->0; #Endif;
		
			return nw;
		}

		! Undo handling
	
		if ((w == UNDO1__WD or UNDO2__WD or UNDO3__WD) && (nw==1)) {
			Perform_Undo();
			continue;
		}
		i = VM_Save_Undo();
		#ifdef PREVENT_UNDO; undo_flag = 0; #endif;
		#ifndef PREVENT_UNDO; undo_flag = 2; #endif;
		if (i == -1) undo_flag = 0;
		if (i == 0) undo_flag = 1;
		if (i == 2) {
			VM_RestoreWindowColours();
			VM_Style(SUBHEADER_VMSTY);
			SL_Location(); print "^";
			! print (name) location, "^";
			VM_Style(NORMAL_VMSTY);
			L__M(##Miscellany, 13);
			continue;
		}
		return nw;
	}
]; -) instead of "Reading the Command" in "Parser.i6t".[/code][/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2220&start=10#p15245
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Remapping the blank command to wait
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-30 12:45:10

oh you're right; it doesn't work.  That's surprising cause i use that trick in Understand..as a mistake. 

I'll poke around with it some more and see what's going on.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2220&start=10#p15246
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Remapping the blank command to wait
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-30 12:49:41

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]I'll poke around with it some more and see what's going on.[/quote]
The every turn rules are never encountered, because "try" only fires the action rulebooks. (Before, Instead, Check, and so on.) Meanwhile, we're still within the "parse command rule" in the turn sequence rules.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2225&start=0#p15247
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Vancouver IF Facebook group
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-03-30 12:58:40

I posted about it on Seattle's blog, so it'll appear in the Planet IF feed soon.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2220&start=10#p15248
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Remapping the blank command to wait
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-03-30 13:11:49

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Here it is, the whole mess, put between spoilers because it is long. If you want to use it, quote this topic and copy-paste the code from there: that way you'll actually get all the tabs. (Indenting the Inform 6 code by hand is a pain.)
[/quote]

This works great!  Thanks much; it's nice to know straight up there's no difference between a wait and a blank line entry.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2229&start=0#p15249
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: How to bring up a menu using a command...?
User: amanda.marie22 / DateTime: 2011-03-30 13:29:41

So, what I'm trying to do is give the player four options:
TAUNT, BARGAIN, BLACKMAIL, and REASON.

When the player types in one of those commands, a menu appears with choices that the player can say. 
However, I don't know how to do that. :/ I have the Quip-Based Conversation extension by Michael Martin and I'm using Inform 7.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2228&start=0#p15250
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Relation syntax: Past participle?
User: zahariel / DateTime: 2011-03-30 13:32:07

I would just use the verb to be stuck to here. Inform already knows how to conjugate that and you won't run into any strange cases like this.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2227&start=0#p15251
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Redirecting action in Check, Instead, and Before rules
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-30 13:41:31

Uh oh! I never thought I might run out of stack space. The extension I'm working on does a whole lot of redirecting.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2228&start=0#p15252
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Relation syntax: Past participle?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-30 13:43:45

That's exactly what I did.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2228&start=0#p15253
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Relation syntax: Past participle?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-30 13:50:39

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]The verb is "stick to", not "to be stuck to".  Don't use "is".[/quote]
That's how I changed it at first. But I like being able to write grammatical conditions that don't use the word "that," and when the direction of the relation doesn't matter, using the passive voice can make that look better. Is it possible to use the present participle instead of the simple present?

e.g. does this:
[code]things that stick to the hoojab[/code]

equal this?
[code]things sticking to the hoojab[/code]

[quote]Also, you have "with" in the infinitive and "to" in the others.  That's bound to cause confusion eventually.[/quote]
That was a typo. I copied and pasted from the extension I'm working on, intending to change "with" to "to" in all cases, but I missed one.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2226&start=0#p15254
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: nevermind! (Formerly "Writing description for something.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-30 13:54:18

An empty text can be described by the adjective "empty." In other words:

[code]if the description of the noun is empty:[/code]

will do what you want.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2230&start=0#p15255
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Beginning with Inform 6 in 2011...
User: sajon77 / DateTime: 2011-03-30 15:52:02

I would like to start writing IF, but I don't like Inform 7. I want to use Inform 6, but I like Inform 7's nice IDE. I seem to remember it was possible to write Inform 6 code in Inform 7's IDE... but only on the Mac side. I am a Windows user, so is there any way I can write in Inform 6 without going back to the old interpreters, editors, etc.?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2232&start=0#p15256
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Hello all
User: slackman / DateTime: 2011-03-30 17:08:27

My name is Bob from SE Florida, USA and I picked this forum because it seems to have 1) A good number of people and posts, 2) A friendly vibe, and 3) Lots of posts in the Inform section.

I'm 56 (today actually!) and have used computers since DOS 1.0. My career has mostly been computer related including network tech but I left that and now am a librarian. 

I'm also a musician playing mainly guitar and lately bass, and a variety of styles.

Anyway, I played some of the old Infocom stuff back in the day and have played some of those again over the last year. Also, I played around with AGT a bit but that was when it was already out of date. I stumbled on all the current IF activity and that got me interested to write a game/story of my own.

After some research, I think that Inform 7 will be my platform of choice, although the other main ones were very tempting. I'll mostly be lurking about but may need help at some point (don't we all) so I say "Thanks" in advance. I've already learned quite a bit from this forum.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2233&start=0#p15257
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: End game with "You have found x/6 endings possible."
User: amanda.marie22 / DateTime: 2011-03-30 18:06:04

How do you do that?

And also, how do I use a variable with a stored value?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2229&start=0#p15258
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to bring up a menu using a command...?
User: amanda.marie22 / DateTime: 2011-03-30 18:06:39

Figured it out. Nevermind. :]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1398&start=10#p15259
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Theory book?
User: slackman / DateTime: 2011-03-30 18:10:01

All I can say is "Thanks" from the bottom of my IF NOOB Heart. I guess it really pays to look over posts when you join a forum.  [emote]:idea:[/emote]

And "Thanks" as well to Ron for the I7 Programmers Handbook.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2233&start=0#p15260
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: End game with "You have found x/6 endings possible."
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-03-30 19:31:10

There's an extension available for saving information about previous endings: <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/Emily%20Short/Recorded%20Endings/index.html">http://inform7.com/extensions/Emily%20S ... index.html</a>

[quote="amanda.marie22"]And also, how do I use a variable with a stored value?[/quote]
I'm not sure what you're asking. Chapter 8.1 of the manual covers variables, is there something specific you're having trouble with?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2234&start=0#p15261
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Phloston Paradise
User: George / DateTime: 2011-03-30 20:03:59

I'll just let this speak for itself for now. 

<a class="postlink" href="http://wiki.xxiivv.com/068">http://wiki.xxiivv.com/068</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2233&start=0#p15262
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: End game with "You have found x/6 endings possible."
User: amanda.marie22 / DateTime: 2011-03-30 20:33:05

Yes. Ok, so in my game, the player chooses whether to TAUNT, BARGAIN WITH, REASON WITH, or BLACKMAIL an NPC to get them to do what they want. Each time the player performs one of those actions, a variable is incremented by one. At the end of the game, whichever variable is the greatest will determine which ending the player gets. 

Here's part of the code:
	Instead of getting:
		sort the Table of Win in reverse order;
		if the first row of the Table of Win>3 begin;
			if the first row is IndignantCount;
				say "‘If you’re so strong, why can’t you get the ball?’ ";
				choose a random row in the Table of Indignant Events;
				say "[events entry][paragraph break]";
				say "[bold type]FAIL[roman type][paragraph break]Next time, don't tease Tommy so much or try to butter him up.";
				end the story finally;
			else if the first tow is ForcedCount;
				say "Tommy looks at you, look at the fence, looks back at you. ‘Finnneee…’. Tommy climbs the fence. ";
				choose a random row in the Table of Forced Events;
				say "[events entry][paragraph break]";
				say "[bold type]SUCCESS[roman type][paragraph break]But this isn't the best ending. Try something other than forcing him to go.";
				end the story finally;
			else if the first row is TerrifiedCount;
				say "I think I broke Tommy. He just sits there, looking at me.";
				choose a random row in the Table of Terrified Events;
				say "[event entry][paragraph break]";
				say "[bold type]FAIL[roman type][paragraph break]How did you expect to get anywhere by making the kid too afraid to go? Try being nicer next time.";
				end the story finally;
			else if the first row is RighteousCount;
				say "Tommy agrees. ‘I’ll go get the ball.’ He marches up to the fence, looking like a warrior.";
				choose a random row in the Table of Righteous Events;
				say "[event entry][paragraph break]";
				say "[bold type]BEST ENDING[roman type][paragraph break]Congratulations! You convinced Tommy, and did it in the best way possible.";
				end the story finally;
		otherwise;
			say "[bold type]FAIL[roman type][paragraph break]Tommy feels confused, and, not knowing what to do, just sits and stares. [paragraph break]Have a more focused attack next time.";
			end the story finally;
		end if.

Table of Win
counter			
RighteousCount		
IntimidateCount
TerrifiedCount
ForceCount

However, Inform gives me this error when I do this:
Problem. In the table Win, the entry 'RighteousCount'   is the name of a value which varies, not a constant, and therefore can't be stored as a table entry.

Help, please. :/

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2224&start=0#p15263
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Nightfall-style "go to x" with Approaches
User: jwideman / DateTime: 2011-03-30 20:34:35

Thanks. I had figured you rolled your own, but wasn't expecting you to respond so quick.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2233&start=0#p15264
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: End game with "You have found x/6 endings possible."
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-30 22:07:09

Well, the error suggests that you can't use the name of a variable as an entry in a table. In this case, what I think I'd do (totally untested) is define the four types of ending as a kind of value ("Attitude is a kind of value. The attitudes are indignant, righteous, terrified, and forced.") Then I'd use a two-column table, where the first column is the attitudes and the second column is the attitude count -- starting at zero, and getting increased whenever you're currently increasing righteouscount or whatever. Then you can sort the Table of Win in reverse count order and read off the attitude that is at the top. As I said, though, I haven't tried this.

By the way, to make your code more readable, you can use code tags -- type <code> </code> around your code (except with [] instead of <>) or just use the "code" formatting button. This lets you copy and paste your code in and preserve the tabs -- though it looks like you're using begin/endifs instead of tabbed code blocks anyway. Still, it'll set the code off. (Also, you have "tow" one place where you should have "row.")

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2230&start=0#p15265
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beginning with Inform 6 in 2011...
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-03-30 22:51:33

I don't know of any I6 IDE for Windows. With an I6 project that I was working on last fall (still unfinished), I found a very nice freeware text editor called Notepad++. It has user-definable syntax coloring and code folding.

To compile the game while working on it, I created a batch file (as described in Roger Firth's Inform pages). No need to open a Command Prompt -- just double-click the .bat file in Windows Explorer, and then double-click the .z8 (or whatever) file to launch the game in the interpreter of your choice. It's a pretty transparent workflow.

There's no index or map creation utility, but if I recall correctly you can save and run .rec script files. Don't remember the details, but it's almost as good as the Replay button.

BTW, I happen to think I6 is a very nice authoring system, easy to use and not obsolete at all. On the I6 extensions page you'll find an extension I wrote last fall that provides TADS-3-style event lists, which I found very convenient for implementing flexible conversation systems. (They have other uses as well.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2222&start=0#p15266
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Second Gender - The Extension
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-03-31 02:19:42

Damn, that is impressive. Not having tested it yet I'll refrain from further comments, but I will say that I've begun my recent forays into I6 for this exact reason, although I never expected to actually succeed for years yet.

*doffs hat*

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2235&start=0#p15269
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Using Default Messages by Ron Newcomb
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-03-31 03:38:58

Okay... this one has me confused (yet again).

Using Default Messages by Ron Newcomb I am trying to replace library message 30.

In the examples I see:

-- 30 "I don't know the word '[the misunderstood word]'."

and even this should work:

-- 30 "I don't know the word [the noun]."

But my attempt of:

--	30	"Are you having flashbacks again?  I am not seeing a [the noun] here."

or

--	30	"Are you having flashbacks again?  I am not seeing a [noun] here."

Gives me the this if player tries to take an imaginary object:

>take unicorn
Are you having flashbacks again?  I am not seeing a nothing here.

If I use [the noun] or [noun] this is what I get...  and I get a compile error if I use the [misunderstood word]:

Problem. In the sentence '"Are you having flashbacks again? [...]"'  I was expecting to read an object, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'misunderstood word'.

As usual, I am probably missing the obvious.... but if someone tries to take an imaginary object (in my tests, a unicorn) I wanted something better than "You can't see any such thing."

Other replacements have worked fine...  Using just straight text and [noun] in the replacement message.  For example, this works fine:

going action	2	"You can't go [noun] from here.  [list the exits]"

So what am I missing?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2225&start=0#p15270
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Vancouver IF Facebook group
User: karlnp / DateTime: 2011-03-31 04:06:13

Thanks for the mention, Ron! I appreciate it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2230&start=0#p15271
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beginning with Inform 6 in 2011...
User: JohnW / DateTime: 2011-03-31 04:41:57

Similar to Jim, though I use Textpad. Its also described on Roger's page how to set it up. Colour coding if required using a config file from Textpad's website. Compilation and execution is done from commands added into Textpad so very easy and quick. I6 fan here as well [emote]:-)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2222&start=0#p15272
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Second Gender - The Extension
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-03-31 06:12:30

Thanks (well... obviously the credit for the impressive stuff goes to Fredrik Ramsberg).

I expect a couple of bugs concerning the output of pronouns in Library Messages:
1) They will choose a neuter pronoun for inanimate things (i.e. non-people), whether or not these things are neuter at all.
2) They will choose male pronouns for animate things (i.e. people) that are totally genderless (though genderless)
Both of these should be easy to fix, however.

By the way:
I've be working (on and off) on a Swedish translation of Inform 7 since last summer; it should be beta soonish. (A pretty futile enterprise I fear, considering that apparently there has only been eight full games written in or ported to the Swedish edition of Inform 6 since its publication 2003. However, it has been fun. And perhaps – just possibly - Inform 7 may appear less intimidating than Inform 6 to would-be Swedish authors.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2235&start=0#p15273
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using Default Messages by Ron Newcomb
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-03-31 06:13:45

Does your source contain the decide phrase that identifies the misunderstood word?	
[code]To decide which snippet is the misunderstood word: 
	(- (((wn - 1) * 100) + 1) -).
[/code]
I suppose that phrase is what makes it all work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2222&start=0#p15274
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Second Gender - The Extension
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-03-31 06:20:39

[quote="Felix"]By the way:
I've be working (on and off) on a Swedish translation of Inform 7 since last summer; it should be beta soonish. (A pretty futile enterprise I fear, considering that apparently there has only been eight full games written in or ported to the Swedish edition of Inform 6 since its publication 2003. However, it has been fun. And perhaps – just possibly - Inform 7 may appear less intimidating than Inform 6 to would-be Swedish authors.)[/quote]

That's really cool. I should be available as a tester at the end of this semester and onwards, and wouldn't be averse to writing a short game or two, even if it's only for purposes of demonstrating the functionality.

(gah, apologies for the verbiage, I'm not at my best today)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2227&start=0#p15275
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Redirecting action in Check, Instead, and Before rules
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-03-31 06:37:58

[quote="zarf"]I always say "instead try ...". It's simple and it invokes all the code that the action should.

The only down-side is that if several redirects chain (and I chain plenty of redirects), it can eat stack space quickly. Heliopause has trouble on old interpreters because they allocate a small Z-machine stack.[/quote]

This sounds like incredibly useful information to know. Are these kinds of rules-of-thumb documented anywhere? I've seen lots of useful tidbits like this but I've had to go through tons of threads to get many of them.

On the other hand, I find a lot of these limitations stem from Z-machine usage and yet it seems Inform provides for the Glulx format which obviates any need for someone to be worried about such things. Since Glulx has apparently been around for quite a few years now, I'm assuming people would adopt that rather than deal with Z-machine limits. Is that an accurate assumption on my part?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2200&start=0#p15276
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: ...instead
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-03-31 06:40:19

[quote="capmikee"]In light of this discussion, I've decided to always use "stop the action" when a check rule prints a refusal, and only use "instead" in a check rule when trying a different action.[/quote]

Here's another really useful heuristic based on how Inform works. I asked this in another thread but I'll ask here as well: are any of these little design notes or design considerations documented anywhere? It sounds like the manual may not always be the best place to go for this kind of thing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2211&start=0#p15277
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 reference for kids
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-03-31 06:49:50

This seems pretty easy to read. On your second page, I know I was immediately asking in my mind why it was "move the player to the Ball Factory" rather than "now the player is in the Ball Factory." It immediately stands out that Inform does something different in that context. You have two "now ..." statements and one "move ..." statement. It might be good for people to know why that is because I find Inform does that kind of thing a lot.

The only other comment I have is that this reference may be a little to dense in terms of a lot of content shoved into the pages. The content is good but it's just a lot of it on the eye and it seems to mostly restate what's in the manual, which means you could just point the kids to those pages of the manual. (Except for certain things like the built-in properties side table you have, which the Inform manual doesn't make very obvious.)

On your first page I wouldn't say the interpreter "writes" the story. It doesn't write it -- it just plays it. The author presumably wrote the story.

Overall I'd be curious to know how helpful this reference is for the kids. It does cover some good basics but I also find it covers the basics that are easy to remember once you use Inform for a bit. Inform has lots of little complications and "gotchas" that can crop up and those are the things that you really need a reference for. I mentioned little design heuristics in two threads just today and, again, those are ultimately the things that need referencing for anyone who wants to do serious work in Inform. Maybe for kids just using Inform as a bit of a toy language, that's not as necessary.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1366&start=10#p15278
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keeping track of success and failure
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-03-31 07:04:24

[quote="Graham Nelson"]Extensions, on the other hand, have been universally welcomed as a packaging mechanism, and 236 have been published on the Inform website. Expectations of quality are evidently higher than in Inform 6 days, and many extensions have a high degree of “finish,” supplying documentation and test cases.[/quote]

The "236" indicates some of the problem right there. Look at that from a new person's perspective or someone who hasn't been with Inform 7 since it's been evolving. Then look at how extensions can clash. Or how different authors have different ways of writing them. Or how extending and using extensions can differ based on what you have to know or the level of Inform knowledge required in some cases. There's definitely a good argument to be made for systems that can be extended but a community-driven approach like this along with a somewhat seemingly inconsistent approach to what is considered "core" behavior -- and thus not an extension -- hampers that quite a bit, at least in my opinon.

[quote]I would second the recommendation to look at TADS 3. It is better aligned with expectations of a thorough but extensible core library. I've found that its reflection capabilities permit a "rules light" style, giving me what feels like the best of both worlds.[/quote]

I did in fact do this, hence my lateless of reply here. Thanks for pointing this out. TADS 3 is indeed a very powerful system and I completely agree with you on the reflection aspects and the fact that it's an extensible system rather than just one that can be extended. It's a pity TADS 3 doesn't have the apparent momentum that Inform 7 does because I do think TADS 3 is ultimately a more robust system with a much more cohesive design philosophy, at least so far as I can discern from implementation alone. One issue I can see with it, in looking over the VM specs, is that it could be difficult to port to various formats. A good example might be a browser-based format, which would seem very simple with Z-machine and not too much more horrible with Glulx.

The last update for TADS seems to have been 5 May 2009. I don't know if that's because it's more "done" than Inform or because active development is not going on any more.

The plus side is that Inform 7 and TADS 3 are so apparently different in so many ways that it does give people a nice compare and contrast as well as a way to choose a tool that works best for them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2200&start=0#p15279
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: ...instead
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-31 08:04:24

[quote="bukayeva"]are any of these little design notes or design considerations documented anywhere?[/quote]
Not really; there is no Inform Designer's Manual for Inform 7 yet. (As there was for Inform 6.) I suspect this will come once Inform 7 is out of beta, but who knows how long that will take?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2200&start=0#p15280
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: ...instead
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-03-31 08:28:24

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Not really; there is no Inform Designer's Manual for Inform 7 yet. (As there was for Inform 6.) I suspect this will come once Inform 7 is out of beta, but who knows how long that will take?[/quote]

Interesting; I didn't even see that Inform was in beta. Is the "Writing with Inform" or the "Recipe Book" manuals that come with Inform 7 not meant to be the equivalent of the older "Inform Designer's Manual"? I think it still might benefit people for those who know the design heuristics to write them down in one central place. That central place can be updated if something changes as a result of moving from beta to general release. Maybe a wiki page or even a sticky forum thread?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2230&start=0#p15281
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beginning with Inform 6 in 2011...
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-03-31 08:38:16

Beyond the use of an IDE, is there any inherent loss of functionality from a language standpoint in with going with Inform 6 rather than Inform 7?

I know Inform 7 has the nice IDE and the (to some) nice natural language approach. There are constructs that I could do without (tables) and constructs that I like (relations). But what's not clear is if the same overall gaming experience, from a game-writer perspective, could be provided by Inform 6. I can see how it might be harder in some ways to code an equivalent experience in Inform 6, but is it possible? Is there anything that can be done in Inform 7 that just can't be done in Inform 6?

I'm guessing not since Inform 7 seems to be, when you really get down to it, just a pretty face for Inform 6 and, in fact, a high-level DSL for Inform 6. But it would nice to know if that impression of mine is true. I guess what I'm trying to figure out is whether the relationship between Inform 6 and 7 is more like that between Java and C# (i.e., real close but some things are made easier based on what you choose) or is it more like that between, say, Visual Basic 6 and Ruby (i.e., some conceptual things are similar but there are just certain aspects you aren't going to get in the one versus the other).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2226&start=0#p15282
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: nevermind! (Formerly "Writing description for something.
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-03-31 08:49:03

[quote="matt w"]As I said, this is one of the most common things that confuses people -- and it really tends to cause a lot of head-scratching, because the code [i]looks[/i] OK.[/quote]

Here's another addition perhaps to the idea of design gotchas that should be written down. I see so many forum threads that say "this often causes confusion" or "don't worry, this part of Inform always causes a little confusion."

Why is this stuff not gathered together in some place? I'd perhaps recommend a sticky thread -- Common Inform 7 Confusions or something -- that can be updated maybe only some people to make sure there's consistency of format and information. Maybe then such a thread could be referenced by whomever tries to write the Inform 7 manual so that it can actually contain information to help wiht material that is often confusing. (Or maybe it can serve as input into how to make design decisions that avoid things that are confusing.)

I have lots of examples that I've found in the forum threads and I'd be happy to contribute.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2200&start=0#p15283
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: ...instead
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-03-31 08:53:08

Graham Nelson's chapter in the IF Theory book seems to indicate that I7 is actually no longer in public beta, having "graduated" a few build ago. Still, I think that the primary development thrust remains on the software rather than on a complete retooling documentation, which as others have said will likely wait until the pace of addition of new features has slowed.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2200&start=10#p15284
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: ...instead
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-03-31 09:02:06

[quote="ektemple"]Graham Nelson's chapter in the IF Theory book seems to indicate that I7 is actually no longer in public beta, having "graduated" a few build ago. Still, I think that the primary development thrust remains on the software rather than on a complete retooling documentation, which as others have said will likely wait until the pace of addition of new features has slowed.[/quote]

Given Inform 7's emphasis on executable documentation within the manual, I would think it would actually be smarter to have an acceptance-based development approach, where the documentation guides the development of the software features. Then the documentation always serves as a true test, both feature and regression. It seems like this is sort of done but not as a full design process. So documentation should definitely come first but I also don't really know the makeup of Inform's development team. If the team has any understanding of agile practices, that would probably be the way to go.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2227&start=0#p15285
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Redirecting action in Check, Instead, and Before rules
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-31 09:26:12

[quote="bukayeva"]Since Glulx has apparently been around for quite a few years now, I'm assuming people would adopt that rather than deal with Z-machine limits. Is that an accurate assumption on my part?[/quote]
There has definitely been pressure to use Glulx more, but there are still interpreters being used that don't support it. I think many mobile device interpreters are z-machine only, and I've heard that the new Kindle interpreters are also z-machine only.

Some people have been taking a dual-release approach, with some extra features (such as more robust parsing with more helpful error messages) added to the glulx-only release.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1366&start=10#p15286
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keeping track of success and failure
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-31 09:35:06

[quote="bukayeva"]It's a pity TADS 3 doesn't have the apparent momentum that Inform 7 does because I do think TADS 3 is ultimately a more robust system with a much more cohesive design philosophy, at least so far as I can discern from implementation alone. One issue I can see with it, in looking over the VM specs, is that it could be difficult to port to various formats. A good example might be a browser-based format, which would seem very simple with Z-machine and not too much more horrible with Glulx.

The last update for TADS seems to have been 5 May 2009. I don't know if that's because it's more "done" than Inform or because active development is not going on any more.[/quote]
That's too bad - I had the impression that TADS was still going strong. Maybe it needs more passionate, dedicated authors and programmers to give it a breath of life....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2211&start=0#p15287
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 reference for kids
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-03-31 09:46:41

Thanks for your comments!

[quote="bukayeva"]It does cover some good basics but I also find it covers the basics that are easy to remember once you use Inform for a bit.[/quote]

It's really not intended for anyone with [i]any[/i] Inform experience -- it was for use within 1.5 hour workshops, with 20-30 kids.  Subtract the first half hour for lecture, and an hour is really not a lot of time to get into intricacies (especially when half the kids are txting their friends or otherwise unengaged) -- just getting home the point that, no really, you need to use consistent spelling and punctuation for it to work took the hour for many of the kids.  The hard choice for me was in not mentioning other kinds of rules (notably, Every Turn and When Play Begins), but, as I predicted, it didn't even come up.  

The reference was also intended as sort of a stopgap to minimize how much time I had to spend saying "that's in Chapter [Whatever] of the Documentation," to better spend my time on helping with actual non-routine questions (and also, it's not like [i]I[/i] know that off the top of my head, either!) -- again, 20-30 kids, two of us.  The Documentation itself can be kind of a firehose; just working through it could take many times the length of the workshop.  Basically, I kept wanting to add pages to this reference, and I kept having to reign myself in.  [emote]:)[/emote] 

Lots of content per page was intended to keep printing costs down (volunteer workshop and I'm unemployed).

I included the "move the player" example because that was far and away the thing that most of the kids asked me how to do in the first session (before I put together these pages).  Who knew teleportation was such a fascinating narrative concept? (FYI, you actually can just do a "now the player is [wherever]," but you lose some of the player-moving niceness, like printing the new room's description.)

[quote]On your first page I wouldn't say the interpreter "writes" the story. It doesn't write it -- it just plays it. The author presumably wrote the story.[/quote]

Hmm, it seems to me that "plays" there would be just as ambiguous -- do I mean that the computer really plays the game itself, like with an AI?  I think the right word would be "prints," but I was worried that the kids might think that "prints" means, you know, with a printer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2211&start=0#p15288
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 reference for kids
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-03-31 09:53:53

[quote="tove"]Hmm, it seems to me that "plays" there would be just as ambiguous -- do I mean that the computer really plays the game itself, like with an AI?  I think the right word would be "prints," but I was worried that the kids might think that "prints" means, you know, with a printer.[/quote]

Interesting point. Depending on the kids, many of them are exposed to little game systems (like Leapfrog) and they're often told the little device "plays the game" although, of course, really the kids are playing it. I can see your point that "plays" could be interpreted that way. Maybe just the interpreter "presents the story/game" to the reader, just like how a bound book presents the written story to the reader or how a DVD computer game presents the game to the player. On the other hand, if it caused no confusion at all as is it's probably best to just leave it. In any event, that was more a pedantic point on my part. Overall: I like it; your reference is nice and concise and can certainly stand as a good starting point to look at.

Did the kids find Inform interesting? How easy was it for them to pick up? You mentioned the punctuation stuff but, in general, was it easy for them? Did it seem to be enjoyable? Inform certainly caters to a certain style. As a programmer it leaves me really cold in a lot of ways but I can also see how that would greatly appeal to someone who was "scared" of programming or simply didn't want to get into the nuts and bolts of programming.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2230&start=0#p15289
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beginning with Inform 6 in 2011...
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-31 09:56:07

[quote="bukayeva"]Is there anything that can be done in Inform 7 that just can't be done in Inform 6?[/quote]

Inform 7 programs compile into Inform 6, so the answer is "no" (if I understand your question aright).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2230&start=0#p15290
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beginning with Inform 6 in 2011...
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-03-31 10:01:37

[quote="matt w"]Inform 7 programs compile into Inform 6, so the answer is "no" (if I understand your question aright).[/quote]

That's what I figured. So that would mean that relations -- a seemingly key feature of Inform 7 -- could be done in Inform 6, albeit with perhaps more apparent work on the part of the programmer since you'd have to do all the back-end work yourself. The tables, I'm guessing, would be done with arrays or something of that nature.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2230&start=0#p15292
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beginning with Inform 6 in 2011...
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-03-31 10:22:30

There is the matter of extensions to consider. Inform 7 has, I believe, more (and more modern) 3rd-party extensions. There's a nice set of I6 extensions in the archive, but many of them are older, some are definitely obsolete, and many are no longer supported by the authors.

Things like relations, scenes, and tables are easier to code in Inform 7; you'll have to do it yourself in I6, and that will take some mental effort. Directions on the map require a bit more coding, because you have to specify the exits for each room; I6 doesn't attempt to guess.

For my personal taste, I6 is a better programming language, simply because its syntax is always conceptually clear. In trying to be friendly to novice authors, I7 provides a forest -- seemingly scenic, but nonetheless a forest -- in which confusion lurks behind every tree.

I6 has multiple inheritance; I7 doesn't. For some types of programming, this may become a useful tool.

Perhaps the most attractive feature of I6 is that it's stable. New features are not being added; old features are not being deprecated. There are still a few known bugs (and you can find the list online if you hunt for it), but they're rather obscure.

The I7 IDE will wrap your game inside of a web page for online publishing on your own site. This is very cool -- but you can use the I7 IDE to wrap your I6 game in exactly the same way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2211&start=0#p15293
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 reference for kids
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-03-31 10:26:23

If you haven't looked at my Inform 7 Handbook (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm">www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm</a>), you might want to consider providing it to your students as well. It's specifically written for newcomers. It hasn't been updated since 5Z71, but the basics of I7 haven't changed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2226&start=0#p15294
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: nevermind! (Formerly "Writing description for something.
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-03-31 10:30:49

[quote="bukayeva"]Here's another addition perhaps to the idea of design gotchas that should be written down. I see so many forum threads that say "this often causes confusion" or "don't worry, this part of Inform always causes a little confusion."

Why is this stuff not gathered together in some place? I'd perhaps recommend a sticky thread -- Common Inform 7 Confusions or something -- that can be updated maybe only some people to make sure there's consistency of format and information.[/quote]
This is a terrific idea!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2230&start=0#p15295
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beginning with Inform 6 in 2011...
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-03-31 10:40:04

[quote="Jim Aikin"]For my personal taste, I6 is a better programming language, simply because its syntax is always conceptually clear. In trying to be friendly to novice authors, I7 provides a forest -- seemingly scenic, but nonetheless a forest -- in which confusion lurks behind every tree.[/quote]

Even for experienced authors I think I7 presents that forest -- it's just one that's been slightly better charted. I say that because I find that even as you get used to some of the aspects of the forest, you still find yourself having to jump through hoops. Sometimes I get the feeling these hoops exist because of Inform 7's heritage, which is apparently Inform 6. That's why I started investingating Inform 6 itself.

[quote]I6 has multiple inheritance; I7 doesn't. For some types of programming, this may become a useful tool.[/quote]

Most programmers who have been in the industry awhile will prefer composition over inheritance so this isn't that big of a deal to me.

Overall, though, interesting points you bring up. Like you say, Inform 7 is clearly the way that Inform development is going. To be honest, I see Inform 7 more as an experiment with natural language and rules. As such, I almost wish the development team had just come up with a new system rather than trying to rely on an existing one like Inform 6. (That, of course, would make Inform 7 something different entirely; maybe Inform NG: Next Generation.) I see why Inform 7 wanted to maintain the past with Inform 6 but in that case I would have just had people use Inform 6 to keep connection with the past and use Inform 7 for the future. I think some design limitations are built in to Inform 7 due to the nature of the baggage it brings from Inform 6 and from the fact that it still tries to support the Z-machine.

I've found where Inform 7 stores the auto.inf file which appears to be the Inform 6 code. I'm looking at that and comparing it with "non coverted" Inform 6 code to get a feel for what makes sense. The programmer in me screams for TADS 3 but like I said elsewhere, it looks like Inform has the momentum and I usually try to stick with what has the momentum.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2236&start=0#p15296
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Complicated description with multiple relations.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-31 11:24:35

I can't get this description of objects to work. I think there may be some kind of operator-precedence problem, but I can't figure out how to debug it. Should I give up and write a loop?

[code]Cohesion relates a thing (called the first item) to a thing (called the second item) when the first item is the second item or the first item incorporates the second item or the second item incorporates the first item.

The verb to be stuck with implies the cohesion relation.

Connection relates various things to various things.

The verb to connect to (he connects to, they connect to, he connected to, it is connected to, he is connecting to) implies the connection relation.

test is a room.

The rope is a thing.

The chain is a thing.

The chain connects to the rope.

When play begins: say "Long version: [the list of things stuck with the chain that connect to something stuck with the rope]. Short version: [the list of things stuck with the chain that connect to the rope]."[/code]

The output is "Long version: the rope. Short version: the chain." I would expect both versions to give the chain. Why don't they?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2235&start=0#p15297
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using Default Messages by Ron Newcomb
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-31 11:29:07

Or you could use my extension Lost Items. This is exactly the kind of thing I intended it for. It is compatible with Default Mesages, and I can offer personal technical support... [emote]:D[/emote]

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/Mike%20Ciul/Lost%20Items/index.html">http://inform7.com/extensions/Mike%20Ci ... index.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2230&start=0#p15298
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beginning with Inform 6 in 2011...
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-31 11:32:45

[quote]I almost wish the development team had just come up with a new system rather than trying to rely on an existing one like Inform 6.[/quote]

The use of I6 as an intermediate language was not due to a desire to keep I6 around, but a desire to keep the Z-machine around (with Glulx as a planned upgrade path). I6 is pretty good as a thin layer over Z-machine capabilities. I7 could have been built to generate Z-machine assembly output, but that would have been a lot more work for very little benefit.

Whether I7 should have jettisoned the Z-machine/Glulx-style "primitive VM" model is a deeper question. There is indeed a lot of baggage there, but also a lot of advantages, and I don't think you can conclude anything other than "it would have been a really, really different situation".

Whether I7 should have jettisoned the *name* "Inform 7", and positioned itself as something other than a successor to I6, is a much shallower question. :)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2236&start=0#p15299
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Complicated description with multiple relations.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-31 11:37:44

Seems to me that in "the list of things stuck with the chain that connect to something stuck with the rope," "that connect to..." is being taken to modify "chain" rather than "things stuck with the chain." --Or something like that. Anyway, this seems to work:

[code]When play begins: say "Long version: [the list of (things stuck with the chain) that connect to something stuck with the rope]. Short version: [the list of (things stuck with the chain) that connect to the rope]."[/code]

UPDATE: This is probably one for bukayeva's gotcha list.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2236&start=0#p15300
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Complicated description with multiple relations.
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-31 11:38:54

This does not immediately answer your question, but you can always avoid writing a loop in these cases, by instead writing a definition or to-decide-whether phrase that sums up your desired property in a single term.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2222&start=0#p15301
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Second Gender - The Extension
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-03-31 11:44:10

[quote="Eleas"] I should be available as a tester at the end of this semester and onwards, and wouldn't be averse to writing a short game or two, even if it's only for purposes of demonstrating the functionality.[/quote]
 [emote]:D[/emote]  I'd really appreciate any kind of testing you are prepared to give it!!  [emote]:D[/emote] 
 
I've had some troubles over testing. There are not really many people to ask. And, anyway, I can't really go round asking people to take the trouble to write full games just to test my extension. On the other hand, I suppose, an extension like this one can't be properly tested in any other way. But then, also, writing games will necessarily introduce lots of bugs that is not directly due to the extension.
So, I was thinking about translating Sanddancer (or possibly some other working game, but the copyright license of Sanddancer makes it no-fuss), just to prove to myself that the translation works as intended and to avoid non-extension generated bugs.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2227&start=0#p15302
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Redirecting action in Check, Instead, and Before rules
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-03-31 11:46:15

[quote]Since Glulx has apparently been around for quite a few years now, I'm assuming people would adopt that rather than deal with Z-machine limits.[/quote]

I think people do.

In the case of Heliopause, my decision to stick with Z-machine was based on two considerations. One, Quixe was not (quite) finished at that point (last June). And two, this was only a marginal restriction -- it only affected a few extant interpreters. (Properly it's a limit on a given implementation, not on the Z-machine design itself. I ran into the limit on iPhone Frotz, which has since been upgraded to have a larger stack.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2230&start=0#p15303
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beginning with Inform 6 in 2011...
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-03-31 11:46:33

[quote="zarf"]I7 could have been built to generate Z-machine assembly output, but that would have been a lot more work for very little benefit.[/quote]

Agreed on that. But I would argue keeping the z-machine around probably didn't need to be such a focus. After all, Inform 6 could be used for that. There was already something perfectly viable and, as others have indicated, stable for those who wanted to focus on the z-machine. The fact that Inform 7 exposes aspects of the virtual machine logistics to a game author is potentially a questionable design decision as it is. Not wrong, mind. Just one at least open for debate.

[quote="zarf"]Whether I7 should have jettisoned the *name* "Inform 7", and positioned itself as something other than a successor to I6, is a much shallower question. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

True enough. Although the names of things can set expectations and also serve as a banner aspect that does matter in development projects. That's why Visual Basic .NET was not originally called Visual Basic 7. Essentially because the break from Visual Basic 6's model was quite severe in some cases. Positioning yourself as a successor and a new kind of entity is not a bad thing at all, particularly if you hope to bring in new audiences or get people of different skill levels involved. That's certainly the case, for example, with C++ vs. C#. I think maybe it's sometimes hard to tell the separation between Inform 6 and Inform 7 (particularly since many extensions have so-called "I6 inclusions"). So maybe calling Inform 7 by some different name would have been misleading since Inform 7 is really, at heart, a pretty face for an existing implementation while adding in a few frills of its own.

I agree though: there are some deep questions and them some not so deep ones.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2236&start=0#p15304
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Complicated description with multiple relations.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-31 11:50:16

[quote="zarf"]This does not immediately answer your question, but you can always avoid writing a loop in these cases, by instead writing a definition or to-decide-whether phrase that sums up your desired property in a single term.[/quote]
That's exactly what I'm trying to do - this code is going into a to-decide-which phrase so I don't have to fuss with it anymore.

I'm going crazy trying to figure out how it's being parsed, though. All the alternate parsings that I can see would resolve to nothing, not the rope. Can anyone tell me what's actually going on?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1366&start=10#p15305
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keeping track of success and failure
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-03-31 12:28:58

Development for [url=http://community.livejournal.com/tads3/765.html]TADS 3.1[/url] is underway. That link goes to a series of posts from last April / May covering the planned features, including web publishing capabilities and a new library.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2226&start=0#p15306
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: nevermind! (Formerly "Writing description for something.
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-03-31 12:39:08

I'd be happy to sticky the post if you put something together.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2229&start=0#p15307
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to bring up a menu using a command...?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-03-31 12:46:13

Would you be willing to post a sample of your code? Other authors are bound to have this same question sooner or later and it would be nice if they could search this forum and find an answer. It wouldn't need to be the whole code; the implementation of one verb (e.g. "TAUNT") and how you integrated it with QBC would be sufficient.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2211&start=0#p15308
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 reference for kids
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-03-31 13:38:07

[quote="bukayeva"]Maybe just the interpreter "presents the story/game" to the reader, just like how a bound book presents the written story to the reader or how a DVD computer game presents the game to the player. On the other hand, if it caused no confusion at all as is it's probably best to just leave it.[/quote]

Yeah, there was a pretty wide range of computer literacy among the kids, from one that immediately said, "oh, I've played games like that!" to one who needed help entering a URL into a browser.  The particular usage of "writes" didn't seem to cause confusion, but sometimes it's hard to tell (they can be kind of shy when they don't understand something).  I like "presents" as an option if I ever edit it, though, thanks!

[quote]Did the kids find Inform interesting? How easy was it for them to pick up? You mentioned the punctuation stuff but, in general, was it easy for them? Did it seem to be enjoyable? Inform certainly caters to a certain style. As a programmer it leaves me really cold in a lot of ways but I can also see how that would greatly appeal to someone who was "scared" of programming or simply didn't want to get into the nuts and bolts of programming.[/quote]

Well, I'd say the breakdown was as follows: of the roughly 20 kids in the more recent session, about five were barely paying attention (yelling at each other, staring off into space, whatever), about five were totally into it and writing elaborate stories with rules and multiple locations, and the rest were mostly adding things-with-descriptions to a single location, with varying degrees of enthusiasm.  Unsurprisingly, many of them spent the majority of the time writing prose for descriptions.  I had the top tier reading new stuff in the documentation as it came up -- for example, one wanted a lockable door (the very same one who'd played some text locked-room games, not-so-coincidentally...), another wanted multiple similar objects in a room, and one pair wanted win/lose conditions.  Many of them at all success levels grumbled that Inform was "a very weird system," but I don't know if any of them had much programming experience (though next week's session is Mindstorms) so it is hard to tell whether they meant [i]in general[/i] or in comparison to other programming environments.

As an aside, I definitely have a love-hate relationship with the natural language aspects of Inform, but this is not really the thread to air that. [emote]:P[/emote] With respect to the kids' ability learn it, though, I'd say that the similarity to English helped a lot with them understanding what punctuation/spelling they [i]should[/i] use (even if convincing them to actually use it was difficult -- I suspect their actual English teachers have much the same problems), but of course we had a lot of problems with them trying random English sentences in the hopes that they'd compile.  This was especially a problem when they'd go wandering through the Documentation and grab single sentences of example code; looking at the text files I grabbed from the end of the session, I can't help but think that was the problem for this piece of code:
[code]The basic action is that " Don't be dancing to close together to them, our you can be kicked out."[/code]or[code]The understanding of the theme is that " LETS GO CRAZY is that it really means to have fun and have fun partying, but not having to much fun."[/code]

Something that seemed to especially disappoint many of kids was the lack of a simple built-in conversation system.  I suspect that part of that is the demographic -- a lot of media aimed at middle-school girls is about talking/socializing.  (Heartbreakingly, at least one of them was trying to write a game that centered around "flirting with a man," although equally heartbreakingly many were about "forbidden"-type foods... but to stay on track with the actual programming aspect...)  So I've been mulling over the possibility of using something like Twine (which creates HTML CYOA) instead -- it's less of an introduction to programming, but it may allow them to make something much closer to what they want to make.  Maybe I should look into Ren'Py, I dunno, though that has the major drawback of me having to learn it first.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2217&start=0#p15309
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: actions involving more than 2 things?
User: Divarin / DateTime: 2011-03-31 13:52:04

wow lots of great ideas, thanks all!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=959&start=20#p15310
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment!
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-03-31 14:33:57

Hero.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2236&start=0#p15311
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Complicated description with multiple relations.
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-03-31 14:37:23

If you look at the generated I6 for such expressions, it will contain a call to a Prop_* routine, which will explain the parsing in its comments.  In this case, for Prop_0, your long version is parsed as asking for[code]the list of x such that for some y:
	x is a thing
	x is stuck with y *
	the chain is connected to y
	y is a thing
	y is stuck with the rope[/code]
So Matt is right about ``that connect to something stuck with the rope'' applying to the chain (Inform doesn't realize that the chain, being singular, should use ``connects'' rather than ``connect'').  But also, on the starred line, the first ``stuck with'' is being interpreted as relating the thing being considered for the list and the ``something'' between the chain and the rope.  This looks like a bug; please report it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2236&start=0#p15312
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Complicated description with multiple relations.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-31 14:48:53

Okay, but I'm still so confused that my report might be a little hard to understand...

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=632">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=632</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1366&start=10#p15313
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keeping track of success and failure
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-03-31 14:53:49

Also, there's definitely an active community of authors using TADS 3. Just reading through the comments on that series of blog posts, I recognize a lot of the names from their participation in the broader IF scene or from reports on the Gargoyle issue tracker.

Part of the reason TADS has a lower profile on the forums is because it isn't as attractive to newcomers. There are some technical reasons for that. Lack of browser support is cited as the big drawback these days, but it's only in the last couple years that Parchment has come along, and it's been less than a year since Quixe's release. Before that, it was the absence of a full-featured interpreter on Linux and OS X. The official IDE isn't as nice, and is still Windows-only.

Even in a world where those technical differences did not exist, Inform 7 would still have more "curb appeal" than TADS 3. It's designed to be more attractive to writers, and the evidence suggests that it is. However, that distinction blurs somewhat among the initiated; a number of established authors are proficient with both systems.

Much of the buzz here can be attributed to the shortcomings in Inform's design and documentation. If you took away all the "How do I do this?" and "Why doesn't this work?" questions, you'd be left with a similar volume of posts in the Inform and TADS areas. It's not that TADS authors don't have similar questions, but there you can answer just about anything using the Library Reference Manual, and presumably everyone figures that out eventually or gives up in frustration.

Furthermore, if you look at the [url=http://www.adrift.org.uk/cgi/f/ikonboard.cgi?act=SF;f=1]ADRIFT forum[/url], you will see just as many novice authors and arguably a richer discussion of game design in theory and practice. Their community is relatively insular and the average quality of their games is somewhat low, but they have a lot of repeat authors, a lot of competitions, and a lot of games published every year. By nearly every non-technical standard, ADRIFT has greater momentum. It only lacks the promotional efforts of community celebrities like Emily Short and Andrew Plotkin.

Hence I see the decision to use Inform or TADS as making a choice to privilege the technical aspects of craft over convenience. As a consequence, implementation quality and portability count for a lot among the authors here. No one wants to put more effort into the programming side, only to be faced with crippling platform-specific bugs on release.

TADS has historically had a very high quality but monolithic reference implementation, and fared rather poorly on the portability metric. Inform is doing better these days, but two or three years ago the picture was different:

[list]
[*]Git, the preferred Glulx interpreter, [url=http://code.google.com/p/garglk/source/browse/trunk/terps/git/README.txt#192]languished for several years[/url] after Iain Merrick moved on to other things. (His departure also halted development of HyperTADS for OS X, which would have changed the landscape for multimedia TADS.) Missing features and various bugs plagued the interpreter until David Kinder took over maintenance in 2009.
[/*:m]
[*]Inform's indexed text feature was implemented for Glulx in a way that depended on Unicode support in the Glk API; as a result, only a handful of the existing [url=http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXprogrammingXglkXimplementations.html]Glk implementations[/url] can properly run new Inform games. All of the libraries in that list that don't mention support for the 0.7.0 API are effectively obsolete now. This had the unhappy result of breaking the Glulx games in [url=http://www.ifcomp.org/comp08/]IF Comp 2008[/url] for many players. [/*:m][/list:u]

The small number of developers working on infrastructure means there will always be a lag between the desired availability of features and the corresponding implementation. Inform has mostly caught up at the moment, but there's at least one major shift planned - the promised CSS / HTML extensions to Glk - and essentially no guarantee that everything will come along for the ride.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2230&start=10#p15314
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beginning with Inform 6 in 2011...
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-03-31 15:19:47

I can't argue with anyone bashing I7 - it's a grotesquely baroque language that requires an insane level of obsessive dedication to make things work. And yet, it's the reason I got back into writing IF. I started a project in I6 a decade ago and never finished it because I felt like there was too much programming tedium in the way of writing a story. The irony is that I probably spend even more time on programming tedium now, but in I7, I find it fun. Is that because it's a weird backwards way of thinking about things that presents a fun challenge on its own, or because it's actually appropriate for IF? I don't know.

But the thing is, I7 appeals to me [i]as a programmer[/i] who was getting sick of OO programming. I get the sense that I was never the target audience.

It seems to me that the opposition to I7 is growing now. Is that because more people are discovering it and and its shortcomings, or because it's changing in some way that makes it less popular? It seems like an important one to answer while the language is still in flux. Even if the answer is that the best audience for I7 is not the originally intended one, and that it's changing to suit the new audience.

One thing I can say about I7 is that although it can be fiendishly difficult to [i]write,[/i] it's usually quite pleasant to [i]read.[/i] I've always felt gratified when it's easy to read code that I (or someone else) wrote and forgot about.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2237&start=0#p15315
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [6G60] Inform 7 and Natty (Ubuntu 11.04).
User: Sslaxx / DateTime: 2011-03-31 15:23:47

As of Beta 1, at least, none of the .deb packages will install under Natty Newt due to the required version of libwebkit no longer existing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2230&start=10#p15316
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beginning with Inform 6 in 2011...
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-03-31 15:31:20

[quote="capmikee"]I started a project in I6 a decade ago and never finished it because I felt like there was too much programming tedium in the way of writing a story.[/quote]

I think that might be the issue there. You're not really writing a story. You're writing a game. Yeah, it's a game with a story but approaching Inform (or any game system) if your goal is to write a story may be counter productive. If I wanted to write a story -- purely for the purpose of telling a story -- I wouldn't be turning to game systems, even if they are said to be produce "interactive fiction." In reality any game that has a story produces interactive fiction.

[quote]The irony is that I probably spend even more time on programming tedium now, but in I7, I find it fun.[/quote]

I could understand that. I've worked with programmers who have worked with, say, Java or C# for many years and get really tired of it. But then they jump into Ruby and have a great deal of fun. They too are doing just as much programming as before, but the language has a different feel and flavor that makes it seem more fun, usually because it makes harder things easier to do. I can certainly see that being the case between Inform 6 and Inform 7.

[quote]But the thing is, I7 appeals to me [i]as a programmer[/i] who was getting sick of OO programming.[/quote]

Hmm, that's interesting in that clearly Inform 7 does hide a lot of object-basis behind its rules system. But ultimately it translates down to Inform 6 which is an object-based language. So maybe it is just the presentation, which certainly can matter.

[quote]It seems to me that the opposition to I7 is growing now. Is that because more people are discovering it and and its shortcomings, or because it's changing in some way that makes it less popular?[/quote]

I couldn't say. I'm way too new to this. What I can say is that Inform 7 feels to me like an experiment that as tried for a specific purpose that's related to game production but that has the feel more of an academic experiment of sorts. For me Inform seems like a clever toy but ultimately just a pretty face for Inform 6 which seems like a very dated kind of system when I compare it to something like TADS 3. (I did take a brief look at Hugo as well and Hugo seems very much like Inform 6.)

[quote]Even if the answer is that the best audience for I7 is not the originally intended one, and that it's changing to suit the new audience.[/quote]

I would assume the audience for Inform 7 as a game authoring system is for those who want to create games based on the old style text adventure format. Inform 7's documentation seems to have some affectation for appealing to writers but I highly doubt you're going to find established authors that are willing to give Inform 7 more than a passing glance and certainly wouldn't stick with it for the purposes of writing a story. It's a game producing system when all is said and done.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1366&start=10#p15317
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keeping track of success and failure
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-03-31 15:44:07

Excellent post and very informative!

[quote="bcressey"]Even in a world where those technical differences did not exist, Inform 7 would still have more "curb appeal" than TADS 3. It's designed to be more attractive to writers, and the evidence suggests that it is.[/quote]

Seriously? There are established authors writing with Inform? If true, that's impressive. (I assume you don't mean just authors of interactive fiction games since that wouldn't be as indicative.) I'm not entirely sure what they would find so accommodating about it but it would be good to hear. If it's just the natural language gloss, I would think they're in for a rude awakening as they become more entrenched in detailed implementation.

I would actually be surprised if someone who wanted to write a book or something would be wasting their time with either TADS 3 or Inform 7, to be honest.


[quote]Hence I see the decision to use Inform or TADS as making a choice to privilege the technical aspects of craft over convenience. As a consequence, implementation quality and portability count for a lot among the authors here.[/quote]

Portability is an interesting one. How portable -- in terms of platform -- do these systems need to be? Are there stats of how many players (as opposed to game writers) are using systems like Linux, OS X, Windows, etc? Are there stats indicating whether people do or don't prefer playing in browsers (and, if so, is the preference equal for working experiences in IE, Firefox, Chrome, etc)?

As far as implementation quality, I can definitely see that. I've often worked with languages that are quite a bit more difficult in a lot of respects -- i.e., C++ over C# -- because I knew my implementation quality could be better given the possibilities of the one language over the other. Likewise, I can see the portability argument in this same context. I would use Ruby or Python if I had to do something cross-platform rather than rely on, say, C# and Mono. Graphically, I'd use toolkits like wxWidgets (or bindings such as with wxPython). I would only do that if portability mattered, of course. And portability between authoring and portability for those playing can be quite a different beast.

So going with implementation quality -- and considering the original nature of this thread -- I'm still confused why some people were saying that Inform couldn't or doesn't treat "success" and "failure" more granularly or, at the very least, use "success" and "failure" a bit more consistently. From an implementation side on the game player's perspective, that doesn't matter as long as the effect works. For a game author I suppose the same could be said to be true. So I wonder if there's a common set of expectations (from game authors) around how to express concepts.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2237&start=0#p15318
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [6G60] Inform 7 and Natty (Ubuntu 11.04).
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-31 16:24:53

Perhaps you can just make a symbolic link from the old version of libwebkit to the new version? I'm still on 10.10, so I haven't tried this, but I used it for another library a while ago: <a class="postlink" href="http://gamingphilosopher.blogspot.com/2009/04/gnome-inform-7-on-ubuntu-904.html">http://gamingphilosopher.blogspot.com/2 ... u-904.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1366&start=10#p15319
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keeping track of success and failure
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-03-31 16:54:39

[quote="bukayeva"]Seriously? There are established authors writing with Inform? If true, that's impressive. (I assume you don't mean just authors of interactive fiction games since that wouldn't be as indicative.) I'm not entirely sure what they would find so accommodating about it but it would be good to hear.[/quote]

[url=http://amzn.to/fEoziU]Adam Cadre[/url] has a novel. I assume he's still in the Inform camp although he's been away from the scene for a few years. (In [i]Get Lamp[/i] he promised that he'd return once he had a year to spare for a new project.)

[url=http://amzn.to/hnmkdU]Jon Ingold[/url] has a new Kindle book I've been meaning to check out. He's also had stories published in Interzone. He is an active Inform 7 author.

[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._John_Ross_(writer)]S. John Ross[/url] is a Notable Figure in the tabletop RPG industry. (He also wrote a delicious recipe for [url=http://www.io.com/~sjohn/food3.htm]General Tso's Chicken[/url] that I discovered years before I played my first IF game.) He uses Inform 7.

[url=http://amzn.to/hYAbCe]Eric Eve[/url] has two nonfiction books on New Testament scholarship. He wrote much of the TADS documentation and has done quite a bit in Inform 7 as well.

Jim Aikin is the most widely published author hereabouts, in both fiction and nonfiction. You can read some of his stories [url=http://www.musicwords.net/stories/stories.htm]here[/url]. He's used Inform 6, TADS 3, and Inform 7.

[quote="bukayeva"]Portability is an interesting one. How portable -- in terms of platform -- do these systems need to be? Are there stats of how many players (as opposed to game writers) are using systems like Linux, OS X, Windows, etc?[/quote]

You can get a rough sense of the player distribution by looking at [url=http://code.google.com/p/garglk/downloads/list]Gargoyle's downloads[/url]. Both Mac and Linux users are likely under-represented; Mac users because the OS X port is new to this release, and Linux users because many use distribution-specific packages hosted elsewhere. Still, I'd guess it breaks down to about 25% OS X, 10% Linux, 65% Windows.

It seems to be the kiss of death to release a Windows-only game for IF Comp. Such games nearly always finish last. Cross-platform support is arguably more important because of the focus on competitions as the venue of choice for new authors; you aren't likely to win if 30-40% of potential players can't play your game.

There's something of a platform divide in terms of the major IF language implementors: Graham Nelson, Andrew Plotkin and Emily Short use Macs; I assume MJR uses Windows. This matters more on the TADS side now, but it's been relevant for Inform in the past. (See [url=https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rec.arts.int-fiction/CTUUy-FCFgc/BgYEky-8Hd8J]this discussion[/url], which explains why Glk went from 2000-2005 without adding new features.)


[quote="bukayeva"]Are there stats indicating whether people do or don't prefer playing in browsers (and, if so, is the preference equal for working experiences in IE, Firefox, Chrome, etc)?[/quote]

I'm not aware of any statistics. I think most people who play IF now prefer to do it with a desktop interpreter. But there's been a lot of selective evolution over the years, and anyone who found the desktop offerings unpalatable likely checked out a while ago. On the other hand, when discussing potential new players, I don't think preferences enter into it - if it's in the browser, they'll play it; if not, not.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2235&start=0#p15320
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using Default Messages by Ron Newcomb
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-03-31 17:08:03

[quote="Felix"]Does your source contain the decide phrase that identifies the misunderstood word?	
[code]To decide which snippet is the misunderstood word: 
	(- (((wn - 1) * 100) + 1) -).
[/code]
I suppose that phrase is what makes it all work.[/quote]

That is what I was missing!  Thank you very much.

I will look into Lost Items too... it might come in useful for other things I may try.

Sorry for the late reply, a huge storm came through last night and my internet connection has been down all day.  I have been going through withdrawals all day!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1366&start=20#p15321
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keeping track of success and failure
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-03-31 17:35:52

To add to Ben's list:

[url=http://nomediakings.org/]Jim Munroe[/url] has had four novels published (the first by HarperCollins, the rest self - published). He wrote [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=lyblvftb8xtlo0a1]Everybody Dies[/url] (3rd place -- IF Comp '08) and [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=7rt7gxoc2nf1muao]Roofed[/url] in Inform 7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2235&start=0#p15322
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using Default Messages by Ron Newcomb
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-03-31 17:47:47

OT:[quote="Seeker"]... a huge storm came through last night and my internet connection has been down all day.[/quote]
A storm knocked mine out last night too (for about 9 hrs). You don't live in central FL do you? (And yes, I realize that storms are a worldwide phenomenon and that internet outages are common enough that this isn't really that big of a coincidence -- I'm just curious.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2236&start=0#p15323
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Complicated description with multiple relations.
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-03-31 17:53:36

Looks good to me.  I have added another test case to try to show how Inform is misreading such conditions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1366&start=20#p15324
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keeping track of success and failure
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-03-31 17:58:07

[quote="bukayeva"]I would actually be surprised if someone who wanted to write a book or something would be wasting their time with either TADS 3 or Inform 7, to be honest.[/quote]
Uh, no of course not. Being attractive to authors of static fiction doesn't mean attracting authors to write static fiction!

As to web stats, I can say that in the last three weeks Parchment had just over 2000 visitors, though there may be some returning visitors counted in that. When a popular blog links to Parchment then several thousand easily will use it in a day.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1366&start=20#p15325
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keeping track of success and failure
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-03-31 18:13:48

My two cents...

I decided to use Inform because of z-machine support, and web browser playability.  My programming experience is mostly for embedded processors and very application specific needs (and languages) so I have always done most of my work in assembler or in proprietary languages designed for specific industries or individual processors. In fact it was a z-machine interpreter (z3 only) for a chip called the Propeller that led me here.  I loved Zork and all of its offspring.  And the people I see as my audience (friends) are more likely to try it if it can be run in a web browser.

So blame Parallax (and its creation the Propeller) if you get tired of my posts.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2235&start=0#p15326
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using Default Messages by Ron Newcomb
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-03-31 18:20:34

[quote="Skinny Mike"]OT:[quote="Seeker"]... a huge storm came through last night and my internet connection has been down all day.[/quote]
A storm knocked mine out last night too (for about 9 hrs). You don't live in central FL do you? (And yes, I realize that storms are a worldwide phenomenon and that internet outages are common enough that this isn't really that big of a coincidence -- I'm just curious.)[/quote]

Yeah, southeast Tampa near the fairgrounds.  It was rough night, and it hasn't stopped yet.  Still up and down.  I have to carefully time hitting the submit button.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1366&start=20#p15327
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keeping track of success and failure
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-03-31 18:31:29

[quote="Dannii"][quote="bukayeva"]I would actually be surprised if someone who wanted to write a book or something would be wasting their time with either TADS 3 or Inform 7, to be honest.[/quote]
Uh, no of course not. Being attractive to authors of static fiction doesn't mean attracting authors to write static fiction![/quote]

Right. I just more meant that if I wanted to write "static fiction" -- I notice people here use that term quite a bit -- I would spend my time doing that. If I wanted to write "static fiction" and that was my primary goal, I wouldn't be doing it via tools like Inform 7 or TADS 3. If I was someone who wanted to write a game that had a story and I didn't want it to be a game with lots of graphics, then I'd probably use something like Inform 7 or TADS 3. I realize the the two aren't mutually exclusive but people were saying Inform 7 was meant to appeal to writers and I was just indicating that only would work if those writers didn't want to just write "static fiction."

So if I want to write a book or short story, then even if Inform 7 was designed to "appeal to writers," I don't think it would appeal to me because, after all, I want to write a book or a short story. Of course if I was an author that was interested in trying out interactive fiction, then the situation is different. The assumption seems to be that Inform 7's natural language approach is what makes it something that would target or at least appeal to writers. I would be more curious if interactive fiction as a whole appealed to writers of "static fiction" rather than worrying about whether Inform 7 or TADS 3 (or whatever else) was designed to appeal to them.

It was interesting to hear how many writers have been interested in interactive fiction, though. And it does bring into question if some of the writers mentioned above were or are part of the development team, such as subject matter experts or the equivalent of business analysts. If I'm making a tool to appeal to writers, I'd want as much design input from them as possible.

[quote="Dannii"]As to web stats, I can say that in the last three weeks Parchment had just over 2000 visitors, though there may be some returning visitors counted in that. When a popular blog links to Parchment then several thousand easily will use it in a day.[/quote]

What does this mean? I had to look Parchment so I see it's a web-based interpreter for z-machine games. Do these 2000 visitors actually play a game all the way through? Do they just try things for a bit and then move on? (I'm thinking of the old "hits" vs. "page views" distinction.) 2000 visitors could be fantastic but without a usage pattern I have no idea what to make of it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1366&start=20#p15328
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keeping track of success and failure
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-03-31 18:38:28

[quote]If I wanted to write "static fiction" and that was my primary goal, I wouldn't be doing it via tools like Inform 7 or TADS 3.[/quote]No one has been suggesting that! When people say I7 is supposed to be attractive to writers they mean that it's supposed to be fairly easily approachable for writers who don't have programming experience and would like to try writing interactive fiction. The jury is still out on whether or not I7's natural language subset is really easier to learn than a traditional language like TADS3.

[quote]
What does this mean? I had to look Parchment so I see it's a web-based interpreter for z-machine games. Do these 2000 visitors actually play a game all the way through? Do they just try things for a bit and then move on? (I'm thinking of the old "hits" vs. "page views" distinction.) 2000 visitors could be fantastic but without a usage pattern I have no idea what to make of it.[/quote]Well it supports Glulx now too. Hits is the same as page views, and the visitors visit an average of 2.25 pages/visit currently. There currently isn't any way to tell how long they play for, but for comparing web terps to traditional desktop terps that doesn't matter because you can always stop playing in a desktop terp before the story is finished too!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1366&start=20#p15329
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keeping track of success and failure
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-03-31 18:47:51

[quote="Dannii"]
[quote]
Well it supports Glulx now too. Hits is the same as page views, and the visitors visit an average of 2.25 pages/visit currently. There currently isn't any way to tell how long they play for, but for comparing web terps to traditional desktop terps that doesn't matter because you can always stop playing in a desktop terp before the story is finished too![/quote][/quote]

And some of us just visited the Parchment site to download the tools so we can host it ourselves for our own creations.  I am not sure why this is even in question.  Parchment is a fantastic (and growing) tool for all of us to use if we choose to... or not if we choose not to.  It opens up other venues for our play/work to be seen in.  Remember, it isn't how many play on Parchment's servers... it is how many of us can use it for our own sites too.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1366&start=20#p15330
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keeping track of success and failure
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-03-31 18:50:47

[quote="bcressey"]It seems to be the kiss of death to release a Windows-only game for IF Comp. Such games nearly always finish last.[/quote]

But is this because they're Windows-only games, or because they're done in homebrewed systems? Browsing a smattering of the reviews of these games, I got the idea that it was the latter -- either they lacked the niceties that other systems give authors automatically, or they weren't much like traditional IF at all.

[quote]I think most people who play IF now prefer to do it with a desktop interpreter. But there's been a lot of selective evolution over the years, and anyone who found the desktop offerings unpalatable likely checked out a while ago. On the other hand, when discussing potential new players, I don't think preferences enter into it - if it's in the browser, they'll play it; if not, not.[/quote]

For an anecdote (not the singular of "data"), I prefer playing IF in the browser if I can. I started playing a little before Parchment rolled out; I played several games like Galatea, Photopia, The Dreamhold, and Spider and Web using ZMPP, I think, before I decided I needed to download an interpreter.)

[quote="Seeker"]And some of us just visited the Parchment site to download the tools so we can host it ourselves for our own creations.[/quote]

Or to get the URL we'd use if we wanted to host it on the Parchment server.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2230&start=10#p15331
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beginning with Inform 6 in 2011...
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-03-31 19:04:19

[quote="bukayeva"]I would assume the audience for Inform 7 as a game authoring system is for those who want to create games based on the old style text adventure format. Inform 7's documentation seems to have some affectation for appealing to writers but I highly doubt you're going to find established authors that are willing to give Inform 7 more than a passing glance and certainly wouldn't stick with it for the purposes of writing a story. It's a game producing system when all is said and done.[/quote]
I don't understand what you're getting at. Who do you mean with "established authors"? Philip Roth? Thomas Pynchon? I too highly doubt that you're going to find any of them who are willing to give Inform 7 more than a passing glance... because these people don't write interactive fiction. But if you're talking about established [i]interactive fiction[/i] writers, well, many of them are using Inform 7. So... what do you mean?

You also bring into play the story/game dichotomy, and claim that Inform 7 is more useful for writing "games" than for writing "stories". But such a dichotomy simply doesn't exist: the amount of "story" (which I'll define as plot and character development) has very little to do with the amount of "game (which I'll define as puzzles and tactics). An interactive fiction could contain a lot of both, a lot of one but not the other, or little of both. Four extremes would be [i]Make It Good[/i] (story and game), [i]The Art of Fugue[/i] (game, no story), [i]Photopia[/i] (story, no game), and [i]Being There[/i] (no story, no game). Two of those were written in Inform 7, and the other two were written in Inform 6 but could easily have been written in Inform 7 (had it been available at the time).

When all is said and done, Inform 7 is neither a game producing system nor a story producing system: it is an interactive fiction producing system. It allows you to model a world with places, objects and actions, and whether you use that world to tell stories, create challenges, or do something else is up to you. I fail to see how Inform's features would force you to choose any particular path here.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2235&start=0#p15332
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using Default Messages by Ron Newcomb
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-03-31 20:11:58

[quote="Felix"]Does your source contain the decide phrase that identifies the misunderstood word?	
[code]To decide which snippet is the misunderstood word: 
	(- (((wn - 1) * 100) + 1) -).
[/code]
I suppose that phrase is what makes it all work.[/quote]

Also, I was wondering, can you explain what the math means that made this work?  It works, so I don't NEED to understand, but I am the type that likes to understand... and to know why something works.  It helps in overall knowledge of the programming structure, and will help in the future if other cases where something similar might come up.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2238&start=0#p15333
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Single paragraph room descriptions
User: Divarin / DateTime: 2011-03-31 21:20:47

I have tried using Emily Short's single paragraph room description extension but I would also like to have the game use BRIEF room descriptions.
Regardless of whether the player types "brief" or I include the statement "use brief room descriptions." in the code, the extension seems to circumvent this and causes a description to be printed every time the player enters a room even if it's one they've been in before.

Is there a fix for this, or a better way to have a description of the room, and all of the objects in the room, all in one paragraph?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2240&start=0#p15335
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Escape The Toilet: A Triple Flush
User: vpodobaev / DateTime: 2011-04-01 01:11:23

We have released the game on the INSTEAD platform.

<a class="postlink" href="http://toilet.syscall.ru">http://toilet.syscall.ru</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2241&start=0#p15336
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Change property of the location of the actor?
User: jwideman / DateTime: 2011-04-01 01:54:03

So I made an NPC that wanders around "cleaning" the rooms. The rooms are indicated as clean or dirty by a property: clean or dirty.
Since the NPC wouldn't necessarily be in the room with the player when it cleans, how would I do this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2222&start=0#p15337
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Second Gender - The Extension
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-04-01 03:02:13

It's a good idea. I think, though, that we (see how quickly the pronouns change? [emote]:P[/emote]) should start with a first milestone, which in my proposal would be Cloak of Darkness. 

The choice of Sand-Dancer specifically I'm not so sure about. It is an interesting and atmospheric game possessed of a strong narrative voice, which is good; it's also the story of a disenfranchised young man faced with hard choices, and it's told in his own words. 

Translating those words into Swedish would risk cutting out the heart of the story, because all those little slang expressions, all the mangled grammar, and all the run-on-sentences wouldn't carry over, yet they represent a strong element of the story. They show us a character who [i]isn't[/i] prim and neat and proper, who isn't considered part of respectable society and has to deal with this fact.

I wouldn't be averse to translating most games, but Sand-Dancer would suffer for it. I'd therefore suggest a different game, one that didn't attempt to convey quite as much flavour through region-specific prose. As to which specific game that would be, I'm not sure. This is where my unfamiliarity with the vast majority of IF starts to show.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2235&start=0#p15338
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using Default Messages by Ron Newcomb
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-04-01 03:52:12

Well, a snippet is an I7 concept. It's one or more consecutive words in the last input from the player. The whole of this input (the maximum snippet of any "turn" of the game) is aptly referred to as "the player's command" in I7 source text. -- I guess you knew all that already.

In I6 a snippet is represented as a number: The first word in the player's command is number 1, the second number 2 and so on; multiply the number of the word where the snippet starts with 100 and then add the number of consecutive words in the snippet and you get the I6 value of the snippet.

A five words player's command like GIVE BANANA TO HUNGRY ORANGUTAN is thus represented by the number 105 (meaning the snippet begins with word #1 and is five words long); the snippet BANANA is represented by the number 201 (begins with word #2 and is one word long); the number 402 would represent the snippet HUNGRY ORANGUTAN, etc.

"wn" is a global I6 variable (the number of the currently parsed word in the input) (guess its an acronym for "word number"). After reading a word the parser increments wn, so the last word read becomes wn-1. 

So

((wn - 1) * 100) + 1

means that the snippet value for the misunderstood word begins at the last parsed word (wn - 1) and is one word long.

(And -- though, again, I'm sure you already know it -- the "(- -)" notation simply means that we enter I6 code.)


(If you want to go to the sources, this is explained in the comments to §§ 4 & 5 of the Parser Template in Appendix B – and I think the I6 Designer's Manual goes into some details about the way the parser reads input etc.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2241&start=0#p15339
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Change property of the location of the actor?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-04-01 04:03:23

You already have the right syntax in your topic title. The room in which X is can be referred to as "the location of X". So a phrase like "now the location of X is clean" should do the trick.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2222&start=0#p15340
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Second Gender - The Extension
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-04-01 04:07:02

Well, yes, that's certainly a valid point. Informal language is hard to translate well. It might be wise to choose something that doesn't present that kind of extra challenges.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2241&start=0#p15341
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Change property of the location of the actor?
User: jwideman / DateTime: 2011-04-01 04:14:21

Okay, I was having trouble when the player orders the NPC to do it, and wasn't sure where things were buggering up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2242&start=0#p15342
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Motel California
User: PegamooseG / DateTime: 2011-04-01 05:44:19

Hello.  I am new to this forum.  I web-published my first IF today on my website.  May I present to you... [url=http://www.pegamoosegames.com/games/puzzles/challenge/pc2011/index.php]Motel California[/url]!  In this game, you can check out anytime you'd like, but first you must return your room key, claim your luggage, and find your car key.

I've started a tradition at Pegamoose Games in which I try to release a new puzzle challenge each April Fools Day (no, really, this is not a joke).  This year, I tried my hand at using Inform to write my first IF.  And, I must say, I had a blast doing this project.  I wanted to blend, not only the elements of a text adventure, but some of our other styles of puzzles, too.  So, in this IF, you may need pencil and paper to work out a puzzle or two.

Anyway... I'd love to hear what you think of it.  I look forward to working on more IF games in the future.  Enjoy!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2222&start=0#p15343
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Second Gender - The Extension
User: Tanga / DateTime: 2011-04-01 07:32:09

I think it's so polite that you are both having this conversation in English.  Good-luck with the project.  =) - help us take over the world, or Sweden at least.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2230&start=10#p15344
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beginning with Inform 6 in 2011...
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-04-01 08:06:04

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]I don't understand what you're getting at. Who do you mean with "established authors"? Philip Roth? Thomas Pynchon? I too highly doubt that you're going to find any of them who are willing to give Inform 7 more than a passing glance... because these people don't write interactive fiction. But if you're talking about established [i]interactive fiction[/i] writers, well, many of them are using Inform 7. So... what do you mean?[/quote]

Your distinction is what I meant. Saying established interactive fiction authors use interactive fiction systems means nothing except the obvious. Yes, obviously [b]interactive fiction authors[/b] use [b]interactive fiction systems[/b]. Saying established authors of fiction (novels, short stories) use interactive fiction systems would say a bit more because it would suggest they are trying new routes to for a fictional experience. This was tried with some games like Mindwheel and Amensia. I remember that much. That would be a different thing entirely if that was happening again and to me kind of interesting. So when I heard Inform 7 was designed to appeal to writers, it seemed obvious (given that it extended from Inform 6) that this would imply interactive fiction writers. The only reason I figured someone would mention "appeal to writers" is if they meant that in a wider context.

[quote]You also bring into play the story/game dichotomy, and claim that Inform 7 is more useful for writing "games" than for writing "stories".[/quote]

I think it does both. It allows you to produce a game that has a story component. (I suppose you could produce a game that has no story at all.) But any game engine can do this. The games out there now on the market are games created with an engine and that create an interactive fiction experience. How is a game like Dragon Age not interactive fiction? It's a game you play (interact with) that tells a story. Or if you want to go with past games, consider Monkey Island or Maniac Mansion. Those were interactive fiction. The word interactive fiction doesn't automatically mean "text only" although it seems like some people treat it that way. I know that Infocom used the term and no other game companies really picked it up but, again, that doesn't mean that any game that has a story is not a form of interactive fiction unless you qualify that phrase to only apply to text-based games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1366&start=20#p15345
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keeping track of success and failure
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-04-01 08:10:49

All of this is cool: but I [b]still[/b] don't understand why it was originally said that Inform's implementation makes success and failure not so simple. [emote]:)[/emote] Is it just because it's not implemented that way or because it can't be implemented that way? I gave some counter examples as to what I was talking about to show why it seems success and failure could be modeled perfectly well.

Something like the implementation of success and failure for actions seems like an important point of consideration and it does seem important to understand if this was a deliberate design choice of Inform or a limitation imposed by Inform.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1323&start=0#p15346
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: what tools do you use for mapping interactive fiction ga
User: ThatPenguinOverThere / DateTime: 2011-04-01 08:19:36

I use a text editor and a rather strange notation. Here an example from Zork 1:

[code]
 * Cellar
  *n: troll room
   *e: East-West passge
    *e: Round room
     *se: Engravings Cave
      *e: Dome room
     *e: Loud room
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2238&start=0#p15347
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Single paragraph room descriptions
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-04-01 08:32:38

Single Paragraph Description unlists "the room description body text rule" (one of the carry out looking rules), which is responsible for checking the long, brief and superbrief modes. 

The relevant part of the code of that rule is this:
[code]
	if set to abbreviated room descriptions, continue the action;
	if set to sometimes abbreviated room descriptions 
		and abbreviated form allowed is true
		and the location is visited, continue the action; 
[/code]
You can put that at the top of "the new reporting descriptions rule" in the Single Paragraph Description extension, thus:
[code]
This is the new reporting descriptions rule:
	if set to abbreviated room descriptions, continue the action;
	if set to sometimes abbreviated room descriptions 
		and abbreviated form allowed is true
		and the location is visited, continue the action;  
	[rest of the rule goes here ...]
[/code]
And I think the game will respect the brief and superbrief modes. 
(However, it also means that the player has to type LOOK to see not only the room description but also any objects in the room.)

If this is the [b]best [/b] way to do it, I really can't tell, though ...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2230&start=10#p15348
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beginning with Inform 6 in 2011...
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-04-01 09:35:06

[quote="bukayeva"]I could understand that. I've worked with programmers who have worked with, say, Java or C# for many years and get really tired of it. But then they jump into Ruby and have a great deal of fun. They too are doing just as much programming as before, but the language has a different feel and flavor that makes it seem more fun, usually because it makes harder things easier to do. I can certainly see that being the case between Inform 6 and Inform 7.[/quote]
I love Python. I think programming in Python is fun too. But I use Python for data munging and GUI development. I don't think it would be fun for writing IF. For me, traditional OO programming is great at GUI development, but not at the kind of parsing and world modeling needed in IF. OO programming is all about generalizing. It's about separating data and logic. Realtime 3D games depend a lot on physics, which can be modeled well with OO code. But turn-based, text-only IF uses only as much physics as absolutely necessary. It's more about special cases, where it would be difficult to separate data and logic.  For that purpose, I7 feels more like a data language than a programming language.

As a matter of fact, I'm working on an application at my job that involves morphological analysis of natural language. The application is written in Python, but I've gotten very frustrated with the difficulty of implementing rules of grammar and morphology. I've been considering rewriting the code to use an I7-like rules model, where a text can be processed by a rulebook and if there is a problem, I can easily identify the rule that raised the error, and where the error occurred.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2236&start=0#p15349
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Complicated description with multiple relations.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-04-01 09:50:07

Man, I don't know how you can get your head around this! So this:

[code]There is a room.
When play begins:
    showme the list of things enclosing the player that encloses something;
    showme the list of things that enclose something enclosed by the player.
[/code]

...should match the player in the second case, but not in the first case, right?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2236&start=0#p15350
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Complicated description with multiple relations.
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-04-01 10:06:26

Sure, as long as you add a line like[code]The player carries a box.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2230&start=10#p15351
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beginning with Inform 6 in 2011...
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-04-01 10:06:39

[quote="capmikee"]As a matter of fact, I'm working on an application at my job that involves morphological analysis of natural language. The application is written in Python, but I've gotten very frustrated with the difficulty of implementing rules of grammar and morphology. I've been considering rewriting the code to use an I7-like rules model, where a text can be processed by a rulebook and if there is a problem, I can easily identify the rule that raised the error, and where the error occurred.[/quote]
As an aside, how are you doing that in Python? I've had some success with NLTK, even for a non-configurational language it wasn't really aimed at AFAIK. Lots of regexs are really essential and of course should be used for IF too, but the NLTK classifier I used did some fancy complex AI maths in the background and would be too slow for IF I fear.

Also, how did you get the job and can you set me up with one [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2215&start=0#p15352
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Facebook and Beta-Testers?
User: rae_bot / DateTime: 2011-04-01 10:16:36

[quote="tove"] Conveniently many of them are at least casually into IF (with arguably [i]most[/i] of them into at least one of storytelling, puzzles, and writing/debugging code), and it's worked out reasonably well for me to use testers who are a bit IF-naive but good at trying to find loopholes and/or breaking points.[/quote]

That, I imagine, is very helpful.  I suppose it is useful to acquire a large group of intelligent and curious friends with a decent amount of spare time?

[quote="Dannii"]There's at least one IF LJ group (I'm a member) but it's completely inactive. There may be others?[/quote]

I'm not surprised it's inactive, though I am mildly disappointed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2230&start=10#p15353
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beginning with Inform 6 in 2011...
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-04-01 10:24:40

[quote="Dannii"]As an aside, how are you doing that in Python? I've had some success with NLTK, even for a non-configurational language it wasn't really aimed at AFAIK. Lots of regexs are really essential and of course should be used for IF too, but the NLTK classifier I used did some fancy complex AI maths in the background and would be too slow for IF I fear.[/quote]
Nothing fancy, just some data files and a bunch of regexes. The main morphological analyzer is written in Perl (though someone here is working on a Python port) and mostly I just use the output. My code comes into play when the morphological analyzer doesn't provide the correct output.

[quote]Also, how did you get the job and can you set me up with one [emote]:P[/emote][/quote]
 [emote]:lol:[/emote] Truthfully? I knew somebody who works here. But if you live in Philly, I'd say you have a shot. It's at the University of Pennsylvania.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2236&start=0#p15354
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Complicated description with multiple relations.
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-04-01 11:02:59

[code]There is a room.
When play begins:
    showme the list of things enclosing the player that encloses something;
    showme the list of things that enclose something enclosed by the player.
[/code]

So, "that" is a low-precedence operator, then?  Lower than "something" next to "<relation>ed / <relation>ing" I mean.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1366&start=20#p15355
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keeping track of success and failure
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-04-01 11:11:13

To do something on an action's success, you want an [i]After doing something[/i] rule.  Be sure to end it with [i]continue the action;[/i] so the report rules will happen.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2243&start=0#p15356
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Counting Rules
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2011-04-01 12:07:16

Anyone know of a way to (quickly, easily) determine how many rules you've written into a game?

Not an urgent matter -- I just like how the compiler tells you that your game contains "50 rooms and 200 things." It would be neat to see the same count for rules.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2215&start=0#p15357
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Facebook and Beta-Testers?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-04-01 12:32:35

[quote="rae_bot"]Has anyone else tried leveraging modern social media to get beta-testers or to release a piece or anything?[/quote]

I've done both my testing-calls so far using one of my Yahoogroups, but I'm not sure Yahoogroups counts as "modern" anymore [emote]:)[/emote]

Especially considering most of my Yahoogroups were egroups back before Yahoogroups bought egroups ... eek ...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2222&start=0#p15358
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Second Gender - The Extension
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-04-01 12:44:03

[quote="Tanga"]I think it's so polite that you are both having this conversation in English.  Good-luck with the project.  =) - help us take over the world, or Sweden at least.[/quote]

You're Norwegian, aren't you? *squints suspiciously*

[emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2222&start=0#p15359
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Second Gender - The Extension
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-04-01 13:35:16

[emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1366&start=20#p15360
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keeping track of success and failure
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-04-01 14:09:22

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]To do something on an action's success, you want an [i]After doing something[/i] rule.  Be sure to end it with [i]continue the action;[/i] so the report rules will happen.[/quote]

Is this in response to what I [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=14917#p14917]posted here[/url]? If so, I have absolutely no idea how that answers the question. Is this a response to the original poster? If so, why did everyone say this was trickier than it sounded?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2230&start=10#p15361
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beginning with Inform 6 in 2011...
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-04-01 14:30:55

[quote="capmikee"]OO programming is all about generalizing. It's about separating data and logic.[/quote]

Well, OOP is also about encapsulating, meaning you put data and logic together where they are relevant or operative with each other. OOP is not just about generalizing; you can also say it's about specializing. You create more specific instances of a general class. I agree that if you look at things in terms of polymorphism or patterns, then, yeah, the focus is on generalization. Which, of course, doesn't mean that's always how people conceptualize. Interactive fiction offers an interesting play ground for this because it's a type of thing that has a relatively low barrier towards entry. You don't have to be a musical composer. You don't have to be a graphics artist. You don't even have to necessarily be all that good at telling a story. All you work with is text. So really interactive fiction, which would seem to open itself up to people who want a slightly less demanding game-creating platform in terms of graphics/sound/etc, would be a good venue in which to see how people prefer to express ideas.

[quote]It's more about special cases, where it would be difficult to separate data and logic.[/quote]

By this logic, it would mean Inform 6 and TADS 3 have had difficulties separating the data and the logic. I don't necessarily see that.

[quote]For that purpose, I7 feels more like a data language than a programming language.[/quote]

In some ways I do think Inform 7's natural language front-end is like SQL or maybe even LINQ to a certain extent. The rules make it more imperative than declarative although, obviously, the interior of rules (with the phrases) act largely procedural in nature, which is in effect similar to how the logic of a method in an OO language would work. In fact, I can see Rulebook and Rule as a class and then specific instances of each being objects. Then the actual phrase set that goes along with a rule would simply be a method that can be passed different parameters (to qualify the execution of the rule).

Since Inform 7 ultimately converts to Inform 6 behind the scenes, I'm guessing this sort of conceptual underpinning is realized in some way. I don't really see the OOP versus Rules-based distinction to be all that much of a distinction. But in terms of how it feels, like you said: yeah, I can see that. That's what I meant about Ruby versus a language like Java or C#. People often really don't care that Java is strict OOP while Ruby is multi-paradigm. They care about how easy the language makes it to do what they want and how much the language stays out of their way while accomplishing their goals. I can definitely see Inform 7 satisfying that. I don't see that Inform 7 necessarily did anything programmatically significant over Inform 6 but I certainly see that it may have opened Inform 6 (since that's what Inform 7 translates down to) up to more people. Whether that's because of the rules-based aspect is hard for me to say. The IDE and the natural language aspects probably did a lot for that but both of those could be operative with an object-based language as well.

As I think on it though, speaking to design paradigms, I could see a good argument made for aspect-oriented systems for interactive fiction (or maybe the subject-oriented subset). Hmmm.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2235&start=0#p15362
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using Default Messages by Ron Newcomb
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-04-01 16:00:52

Wow!  Thank you.  That is an excellent explanation.

And knowing this will be very useful.

Now I have another 510 page appendix to digest.  This is one I hadn't looked at yet.  Appendix A was hard enough.   [emote];)[/emote]   But it is definitely "need to know" information.  

Thanks again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2243&start=0#p15363
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Counting Rules
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-04-01 16:02:38

Ron Newcomb has a nice extension [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Ron%20Newcomb/Repeat%20Through%20a%20Rulebook/index.html]here[/url] that will let you write[code]When play begins:
	let the rule set be a list of rules;
	repeat with the index running from zero to the number of rulebooks:
		let the current rulebook be the index as rulebook;
		repeat with the current rule running through the unmodified current rulebook:
			add the current rule to the rule set, if absent;
	say "The story has [the number of entries in the rule set minus one] rules listed (not counting this one)."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2215&start=0#p15364
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Facebook and Beta-Testers?
User: rae_bot / DateTime: 2011-04-01 16:40:09

[quote="Ghalev"]I've done both my testing-calls so far using one of my Yahoogroups, but I'm not sure Yahoogroups counts as "modern" anymore [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]


How well does that work?  And...it's modern enough, I guess. haha.

Tbh I don't even know what's a normal amount of beta testers to use on a given piece   [emote]:?[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2238&start=0#p15365
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Single paragraph room descriptions
User: Divarin / DateTime: 2011-04-01 16:42:01

nice thank you [emote]:)[/emote]
although, now whenever the player gets into his car (and presumably anything else the player might be able to get into) I get the error "Variable unavailable for this action, activity or rulebook: internal ID number 20011/1"
it looks like adding:
[code]if the current action is entering something, continue the action;[/code]

helps, as the act of getting into the car doesn't change the location so there's no need to re-display the room description.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2244&start=0#p15366
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Implying yet blocking an area
User: rae_bot / DateTime: 2011-04-01 17:42:15

Hey folks,

I've got a bit in my current IF work that's bothering me.  It's a short piece, so I wanted to keep it small, yet the setting is a castle, and those typically have more than four rooms - just, y'know, in general.

The way I've set it up so far is that in the hallway, there is "impassable darkness" in the direction of the rest of the castle, and if the PC tries to go that way, it says "It seems illogical to you to delve into the darkness, when even the light parts of this place make little sense." I'm reading through IFGems, though, and I've come to a part that complains fairly heavily about use of poor excuses to block actions.

Now, I've been trying to avoid implying that the area will eventually be open, yet I don't know how else to confine the PC to this corner of the castle, AND imply that a larger castle exists, without getting it into the player's head that the next step is trying to go in that direction.  Suggestions would be really excellent.

Thanks!
Rae

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=170#p15367
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-04-01 20:19:50

I'd like to welcome all the new members, too. [emote]:-)[/emote]

I'll add that it sounds like Collin and Rae have share some common interests with me.  I look forward to seeing your contributions to the IF community!

[quote="rae_bot"]I want to follow in the footsteps of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien[/quote]
Cheers!  I don't know where I would be today were it not for the writings of Lewis and Tolkien.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2238&start=0#p15368
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Single paragraph room descriptions
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-04-01 20:31:36

Had a look at this and discovered a horrifying number of ants crawling about under the unturned rock. 

I've now fixed Single Paragraph Description so 

-- it shouldn't run the room entry text at all when getting into a vehicle or enterable thing
-- it will accept brief/superbrief as an instruction to leave out the room description text. It will still mention the items in the room, which is different behavior than you're probably currently getting -- but that's closer to Inform's default behavior for BRIEF and SUPERBRIEF, so I don't want to go too far from that. If you don't want any description here at all, you can just continue to use the rule modification you are using
-- (most importantly) a bug to do with detecting initial appearance has been removed, which should fix a problem whereby some items might not be listed in the room if they have no initial appearance defined. This bug is almost certainly affecting your output.

That brings SPD to version 4. I'm emailing it in for the extensions page, but if you need it more immediately, let me know and I can email you a copy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2245&start=0#p15369
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Guide for kids?
User: RedTulip / DateTime: 2011-04-01 22:03:07

Are there any Inform 7 guides for kids, or at least easy-to-understand? I'm interested in making interactive fiction and I can't find a good-enough guide.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2245&start=0#p15370
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Guide for kids?
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-04-01 22:04:13

Tove posted something in this thread: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2211">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2211</a>.  It's more of a quick-reference.  You might also look [url=http://inform7.com/teach/resources-by-grade/]here[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2246&start=0#p15371
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: seems like it should work but dosn't
User: sqib / DateTime: 2011-04-01 23:08:45

Hello all, here is what I am trying to accomplish, a picnic where depending on what you bring to eat is either going to be a swell time or a disaster. I am just going simple now testing it out til it works so here is an example of applicable code:


A person has a number called the picnic readiness.
the picnic readiness of a person is usually 0.

check taking grapes:
     say "yada yada yada";
         increase the picnic readiness of the player by 3.

check going north in park during name of a scene:
	say "this is a lovely spot for a picnic.";
		picnic begins happens in 1 turn from now.

at the time when picnic begins:
      if the picnic readiness of the player is 3:
             say "yada yada."                     /


eventually there will be multiple items that will increase picnic readiness and present a more suitable and enjoyable picnic.   So where am I going astray here?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2245&start=0#p15372
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Guide for kids?
User: RedTulip / DateTime: 2011-04-01 23:09:51

Thanks for the quick answer. [rant]I'll be checking out the handbook by Jim Aikin.[/rant]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2230&start=10#p15373
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beginning with Inform 6 in 2011...
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-04-02 01:44:22

I'm not a computer scientist (well, yet) but I feel it's fairly misleading to say that Inform 7 can do everything Inform 6 can do because I7 compiles to I6. This is sort of like saying a spoon can do everything a dump truck can do because they both can pick up and drop material. Technically true, but for a lot of tasks you're going to be extremely sorry you chose the spoon.

For me at least, I7 lets me move my thinking up to a much higher level. When I want to make all the doors in a story close, I like being able to say

[quote]now every door is closed[/quote]

instead of setting up a loop, iterating through doors, setting the isOpen variable to false or whatever, and so on. My stock example of how this scales well is the line:

[quote]
Instead of attacking Tom when something lethal is held, now every visible watchdog owned by Tom hates the player.
[/quote]

This takes 8-9 lines of setup I7 code to actually compile (telling it what sort of thing a watchdog is, how ownership works, that some creatures can relate to others via a hatred relation, etc) but once you've done that setup, you're suddenly expressing things much more elegantly and clearly than you could in any other language I'm aware of.

The idea of a domain-specific language is to make things easier for working in a given domain, and I think for the domain of IF, Inform 7 does that very well. (Full disclosure: see my sig, I'm probably biased.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2246&start=0#p15374
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: seems like it should work but dosn't
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-04-02 03:05:48

What is going wrong? (I assume you have defined all the objects, locations and scenes you mention here. Also, I suspect that were you wrote "check going north in park during name of a scene:" you mean "check going north in park during picnic begins:".)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2246&start=0#p15375
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: seems like it should work but dosn't
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-02 07:40:54

One thing (untested): It looks like if the player picks up the grapes, then drops them, then picks them up again, picnic readiness will be 6 and your rule won't fire. And if the player picks up the grapes, then drops them, picnic readiness will be 3 even though the picnic won't be any good. Maybe you want to make that dependent on the items enclosed by the player at the time when picnic begins (or maybe the turn before)?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2244&start=0#p15376
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Implying yet blocking an area
User: gumby / DateTime: 2011-04-02 07:54:38

Yeah, 'darkness' doesn't work well as a barrier for me either (that one room in Planetfall comes to mind).  Would the game support a scenario of implementing a physical barrier - perhaps a door which cannot be opened without a key?  Confine the player 'physically' rather than redirecting their actions through the game, if you get my drift.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2244&start=0#p15377
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Implying yet blocking an area
User: jwideman / DateTime: 2011-04-02 08:57:37

As a player, I've never objected to a message that told me "there's nothing interesting in that direction".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2247&start=0#p15378
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Equating "verb x with y" and "verb x and y"?
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-04-02 09:40:37

Howdy,
Apologies if this has been asked before; I couldn't find a way to search the forum (edit: bah, [i]now[/i] there's a search link; guess I had to register first).

I have a verb "combining it with" that takes two objects as input and returns one.  "combine x with y" works fine, but "combine x and y" runs combine twice, once with just x and once with just y, resulting in two "You must supply a second noun." messages.  Is it possible to intercept "combine x and y" before that check happens?  Using 'Understand "combine [something] and [something]" as combining it with' doesn't seem to have any effect.

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2247&start=0#p15379
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Equating "verb x with y" and "verb x and y"?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-04-02 10:31:52

This is the second time in the last few days that someone has mentioned that the "and" in grammar lines is superseded by the parser's assumption that "and" refers to multiple nouns. Shouldn't this be considered a bug? If "and" is part of the grammar, surely that should be privileged over the invocation of the multiple object list...?

If the current behavior is in fact the intended behavior, then the manual should definitely mention that "and" should be avoided in command grammar. It doesn't seem to do that.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2246&start=0#p15381
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: seems like it should work but dosn't
User: sqib / DateTime: 2011-04-02 10:47:39

OMG I am such an idiot.  So here was the deal I have a habit of throwing temporary code in to test things then I "usually" remove it it right after, in this case I totally forgot I had this little gem in:


check going north in park for the first time during day 3 evening:
	if someone is invitpar:
		if contessa is tre:
			if the player encloses grapes:
				say "mmmgrapppppes";
				increase the picnic readiness of the player by 3.

so obviously now the picnic readiness was 6 and nothing triggered.  sorry to waste your time [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2247&start=0#p15382
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Equating "verb x with y" and "verb x and y"?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-04-02 10:51:43

[quote="ektemple"]This is the second time in the last few days that someone has mentioned that the "and" in grammar lines is superseded by the parser's assumption that "and" refers to multiple nouns. Shouldn't this be considered a bug? If "and" is part of the grammar, surely that should be privileged over the invocation of the multiple object list...?

If the current behavior is in fact the intended behavior, then the manual should definitely mention that "and" should be avoided in command grammar. It doesn't seem to do that.[/quote]
If it's the intended behavior, it's a design defect that should be remedied. (In effect, that makes it a bug.) The grammar line should always be given precedence during parsing. We could probably think of other good examples where a native English speaker (the player) might type a line that the author thought of and wrote grammar for, but that the parser failed to handle.

Here's one: Commas and periods. It ought to be allowed to use commas and periods in grammar lines. The parser should consult the grammar line [i]first[/i], to determine whether it contains a comma or period, before going on to split the input up into separate commands.

Is that an extreme case? No, because of the natural-sounding input 'hello, bob', which at present requires a workaround.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2247&start=0#p15383
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Equating "verb x with y" and "verb x and y"?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-02 11:31:00

I agree with Erik; it'd be nice if it were possible to override invocation of the multiple-object list (which is one of those hard-code things that in general makes me feel ooky). 

For your original question, shammack, the deal as I understand it is that when the player enters a command of the form "Do something to this and that," Inform effectively breaks it up into two commands, "Do something to this" and "Do something to that," and tries to execute them in turn. This is the same behavior as "Take all"; when that is entered, Inform figures out what the list of takeable things is and tries to take them all, one by one. It does this by using the "multiple object list," which is the list of the objects that it's going to try taking (or whatever the action is).  

In this case, we can work around your issue by invoking the multiple object list. We have to detect it when the player is trying to combine more than one thing using "and." Then, for the [i]first[/i] one, we look at the multiple object list and see if it contains exactly two things. If it does, we try combining them. If not, we issue an error message. But the tricky thing is that, if the player had entered "combine x and y," the game will have done all this while processing the command "combine x," and it still needs to process "combine y." So we have to set a flag that tells us whether we've already tried this multi-combine once this turn; if so, we ignore the rest of the multi-combines. 

So I'd come up with something like this (not tested):

[code]Combining it with is an action applying to two things. Understand "combine [something] with [something]" as combining it with. [and then you have whatever code you want for combining]

Multi-combining-complete is a truth-state that varies. Multi-combining-complete is usually false. 
After reading a command: Now multi-combining-complete is false. [This sets the flag to false at the beginning of every turn.]

Multi-combining is an action applying to one thing. Understand "combine [things]" as multi-combining. [The "[things]" token allows the game to understand "combine this and that" as multi-combining.]

Check multi-combining when multi-combining-complete is true: stop the action. [This means after we've already tried the multi-combining action on the first thing, we don't try it again.]

Carry out multi-combining:
	let L be the multiple object list;
 	if the number of objects in L is 0 or the number of objects in L is 1: [I think that if the player types "combine fruit" the multiple object list has 0 entries, but if the player types "combine all on table" and there's only one thing on the table then the multiple object list has 1 entry]
		say "You must specify two things to combine.";
		now multi-combining-complete is true;
		stop the action;
 	otherwise if the number of objects in L is greater than 2:
		say "You can only combine two things at once.";
		now multi-combining-complete is true;
		stop the action;
	otherwise: [this should happen only when there are exactly two things to be combined]
		now multi-combining-complete is true;
		try combining entry 1 of L with entry 2 of L.

The silently announce items from multiple object lists rule is listed instead of the announce items from multiple object lists rule in the action-processing rules. [The announce items... rule is the one that prints things like "Ball: taken. Bat: taken" when you enter "take ball and bat." We don't want that to happen when you're multi-combining, so we replace it with something that doesn't do that when you're multi-combining.]

This is the silently announce items from multiple object lists rule: 
	unless multi-combining: 
		if the current item from the multiple object list is not nothing, say "[current item from the multiple object list]: [run paragraph on]".[/code]

Usual warnings: I am not super expert, I haven't tested this at all, and I typed some of it straight into the browser window, so there may be goofs (and watch the tab stops). Hopefully it's something to start with.

The previous thread with some related stuff is [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&p=15187#p15187]here[/url]. (I don't think that thread actually involves a bug, since I was using the multiple object list to hack up a command with three nouns, which Inform usually doesn't allow.) It's basically based on the example [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/ex219.html#e219]The Left Hand of Autumn[/url] from the manual.

(BTW, there's a "search" button on the upper right-hand corner of the window, next to the "FAQ" button; but in this case I don't think it would've been easy for you to find what you wanted with a search, anyway.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2230&start=10#p15384
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beginning with Inform 6 in 2011...
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-04-02 11:59:07

The TADS equivalent to your example is something like:

[code]
modify Tom
    dobjFor(Attack)
    {
        check()
        {
            if (!gPlayerChar.isArmed())
                failCheck('...');
        }
        action()
        {
            foreach (local dog in allDogs.subset({dog: dog.isVisible() && dog.isOwnedBy(self)}))
                dog.makeHostile();
        }
    }
;
[/code]

Which has more boilerplate to be sure, but the substance is similar and the style not radically different.

Is the Inform 7 way more elegant? Sure. Is it "much" more? I wouldn't say so, even in this somewhat contrived case. (In a real game, Tom would not stand by in silence while being attacked, at which point your rule would sprout colons, semicolons, and significant whitespace.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2244&start=0#p15385
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Implying yet blocking an area
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-04-02 13:01:02

I think context is important. 

If the player is a tourist visiting a castle, it's only to be expected that most parts of the castle is off limits, and as long as you don't indicate that the PC would like to go to the private sections, that shouldn't be a problem.

If the PC is a thief, you can fill the blocking room with guards.

And I'm sure there are situations where your "impassable darkness" is just the right thing.

[quote]I don't know how else to confine the PC to this corner of the castle, AND imply that a larger castle exists[/quote]
I think I'd try to let the scale come from other things. If, for example one of the locations is the kitchen, have it contain tons of food.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2230&start=20#p15386
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beginning with Inform 6 in 2011...
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-04-02 13:42:54

[quote]It seems to me that the opposition to I7 is growing now.[/quote]

Why do you say that?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2244&start=0#p15387
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Implying yet blocking an area
User: rae_bot / DateTime: 2011-04-02 15:00:50

I didn't want to include a door that needs a key, because I didn't want the player to get stuck on trying to find the key (since it's a fairly common IF puzzle).

The guy is...well, he wakes up here and the King is keeping him confined to this corner of the castle until he decides what to do with him. So I guess a guard or something would work, if he seems sufficiently immovable and/or uninteresting. I don't just want to stick a wall there because I do want it to be clear that more of this place exists, but "there's nothing interesting that way" also seems like a cop-out. Maybe some kind of heavy gate that can only be opened by the king? Or would that induce a player to try to follow the king, when he appears? Argh.

Rae

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2244&start=0#p15388
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Implying yet blocking an area
User: joelsanda / DateTime: 2011-04-02 15:58:31

[quote="rae_bot"]Hey folks,
<snip>
Now, I've been trying to avoid implying that the area will eventually be open, yet I don't know how else to confine the PC to this corner of the castle, AND imply that a larger castle exists, without getting it into the player's head that the next step is trying to go in that direction.  Suggestions would be really excellent.
[/quote]

Emily Short addresses this in her essay "Challenges of a Broad Geography", printed in the [url=http://www.lulu.com/product/file-download/if-theory-reader/15325305?productTrackingContext=search_results/search_shelf/center/1]IF Theory Reader[/url]. Seeing areas I [i]can't[/i] get to has been a long-held gaming frustration of mine, and for some reason it seems all that more apparent and frustrating in interactive fiction. Anyway, she provides some good ways of dealing with that, particularly in the section "'Can't Go' Parser Messages" - the book is a free PDF download or can be bought as a bound book.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=170#p15389
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Lionheart / DateTime: 2011-04-02 17:57:51

Good afternoon,

I'm not new to IFs, but I've played very few games - most I never finished and one that I did and liked a lot.

The only IF I really ever finished was [i]Winter Wonderland,[/i] by Laura Knauth, using Frotz on XP. The game was cute, creative and festive. This was back in 2004, when I was 16; now, I'm 22 and a late college bloomer. I never really figured out what I wanted to take in college until last year (business).
When it comes to writing/creating, I've dabbled with Inform 7, but I never realized back then that learning how to make IFs is so involved, so I gave up. Now, I'm going to try again and learn as much of Inform 7 as I can!

Other things that I am interested in: fine arts, reading (mostly non-fiction), geography and martial arts films.

Hope to see the other users' works! I'll also hope that I can create something you will all like!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2215&start=10#p15390
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Facebook and Beta-Testers?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-04-02 21:08:08

[quote="rae_bot"]Tbh I don't even know what's a normal amount of beta testers to use on a given piece   :?[/quote]
My estimate of the average is three to five, but that's just what people usually have - if you're asking what's the [i]best[/i] amount of testers to have, the answer is the more you can find the better.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2237&start=0#p15391
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [6G60] Inform 7 and Natty (Ubuntu 11.04).
User: Sslaxx / DateTime: 2011-04-03 04:35:23

No dice. And compiling from source gives this on running it:

[quote="stuart@stuart-desktop:~/src/gnome-inform7-6G60$ gnome-inform7 &"](gnome-inform7:21756): GtkSourceView-CRITICAL **: gtk_source_style_scheme_manager_get_scheme: assertion `scheme_id != NULL' failed

(gnome-inform7:21756): GConf-CRITICAL **: gconf_value_get_string: assertion `value != NULL' failed

(gnome-inform7:21756): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_font_button_set_font_name: assertion `fontname != NULL' failed

(gnome-inform7:21756): GConf-CRITICAL **: gconf_value_get_string: assertion `value != NULL' failed
Segmentation fault (core dumped)[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2247&start=0#p15392
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Equating "verb x with y" and "verb x and y"?
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-04-03 09:40:53

Ah, brilliant; that looks like what I need.  Thanks!  I agree that this seems like a bug/bad design decision.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2230&start=20#p15393
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beginning with Inform 6 in 2011...
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-04-03 09:43:35

[quote="bcressey"]Is the Inform 7 way more elegant? Sure. Is it "much" more? I wouldn't say so, even in this somewhat contrived case. (In a real game, Tom would not stand by in silence while being attacked, at which point your rule would sprout colons, semicolons, and significant whitespace.)[/quote]

I'm not even sure why the Inform 7 way would be more "elegant." By what measure? By conciseness, perhaps. The ability to have a lot of code handled by a higher-level construct can be nice. (Although anyone who uses Ruby on Rails may eventually learn that having a system do things for behind the scenes under the guise of higher-level code constructs eventually comes back to bite you. I don't know if that's the case with Inform 7 yet.)

This does show what I've been suspecting and have found now that I've played around with both systems. Inform 7's natural language does make the "easy" stuff look good. It's easy to read when it's just some basic elements. But when I want to string together a series of actions and a series of rules the code starts to get a little more baroque. Combined with the fact that the rules are the only organizing principle but the rest is left up to either source code order concerns or the whims of the author, Inform 7 can easily become quite unreadable or, at the very least, the natural language aspects are lost because you have to traverse the code looking for various elements anyway. The Index certainly helps that, much like an object browser for OO languages.

Inform 6, from what little I've played around with it, is structurally similar enough to TADS 3 that I don't think it has that same problem. Then again this also answers my interest in this thread. I really don't see any benefit to using Inform 6 at this point. For me -- at least with the system-level type languages for interactive fiction -- TADS 3 and Inform 7 seem to be the players. I actually like many elements of ADRIFT, where there's more of a builder aspect that allows you to dip into the programming only when you want to deal with more specific situations. But I've only looked at ADRIFT from afar at this point.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2248&start=0#p15394
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Prairie Fire
User: JDevlin / DateTime: 2011-04-03 10:35:36

[i]Karen Svoboda had a lot of secrets, but which one killed her?
[/i]
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onfUYVx5iRQ">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onfUYVx5iRQ</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2230&start=20#p15395
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beginning with Inform 6 in 2011...
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-04-03 10:57:52

[quote="bukayeva"]Inform 6, from what little I've played around with it, is structurally similar enough to TADS 3 that I don't think it has that same problem. Then again this also answers my interest in this thread. I really don't see any benefit to using Inform 6 at this point. For me -- at least with the system-level type languages for interactive fiction -- TADS 3 and Inform 7 seem to be the players.[/quote]
The advantage of Inform over TADS lies mostly in the existence of browser-based interpreters, which (in theory, at least) vastly broaden the potential audience for your games by making it much easier for newcomers to try out IF at all, or to try out your game. To me, that's a significant factor.

If we set that aside, I would see no reason to work with Inform. Not that I'm writing a game this spring, but if I were....

It's true that Inform has a concise way of setting up relations between objects. But you can accomplish the same thing in T3 using a foreach loop. Also, I've never been entirely sure what one would use relations for in an actual game. The examples I've seen -- stuff like "now every guard dog that can see Michael hates David" -- tend to be rather artificial. I mean, how often do people write games with multiple guard dogs that wander around the map?

My experience echoes yours: Inform 7 makes it easy for the beginning author to do easy stuff, but once you start trying to do complicated stuff (and I've observed plenty of plaintive queries from novice authors who jump right in and try to do complicated stuff!), the syntax of I7 proves to be (a) fussy, (b) poorly documented, and (c) subject to change when the next version appears.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2247&start=0#p15396
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Equating "verb x with y" and "verb x and y"?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-04-03 11:38:29

Another approach -- simpler, but untidy -- is to go through the command after reading and just change each occurence of "and" to "with". (If the command begins with "combine" or a synonym.)

You have to mind your synonyms, and things would to hell if you had a "ball and chain" object (not that I've ever tried doing that anyway). But it could be a good-enough solution.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2249&start=0#p15397
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform Extensions Search
User: jmac / DateTime: 2011-04-03 13:09:28

Howdy y'all,

I am pleased to announce the [url=http://i7search.jmac.org]Inform Extensions Search[/url] website: <a class="postlink" href="http://i7search.jmac.org">http://i7search.jmac.org</a>.

It's exactly what it sounds like: a simple search engine for the Creative Commons-licensed Inform 7 language extensions known to the inform7.com website. I created it to provide an alternate interface to eyeball-browsing [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/all-extensions-by-title/]that site's extensions list[/url], something that becomes harder to do as people continue releasing new extensions to the public. (The count is over 230, as I write this.)

It indexes extensions' documentation as well as their titles and authors' names and such, so I hope it proves a useful tool for authors to discover new extensions (or discover that it's time to write a new one themselves). I just made it public this morning, and would be grateful for any suggestions, bug reports, or other feedback.

Enjoy!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2230&start=20#p15398
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beginning with Inform 6 in 2011...
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-04-03 14:03:25

[quote="Jim Aikin"]The advantage of Inform over TADS lies mostly in the existence of browser-based interpreters, which (in theory, at least) vastly broaden the potential audience for your games by making it much easier for newcomers to try out IF at all, or to try out your game. To me, that's a significant factor.[/quote]

I'm a little surprised browser-based elements are so much of a concern but I've seen that concern voiced as I've browsed the forum. The reason I say that is because it's not that hard to have a game that bundles the interpreter, either via batch file or via an installer or even via something like TADS 3's bundler mechanism. (Granted though that the bundler only works for Windows-based systems. I bet if that could be extended for a Mac installer/executable as well, that would be a major point in TADS' favor.)

In terms of newcomers, having to download a game to play it is not really all that alien. World of Warcraft and Lego Universe are used by people of all ages (newcomers and experienced) and rarely is there a call for browser-based experiences. People download games from services like Steam all the time these days. Even homebrew venus, like Wintermute or AGS or the "visual novel" engines or just about all of them really, require downloading a game to play it. If people want to liken interactive fiction to "static fiction" as I've seen done, most people don't like reading whole books via a browser. They usually get them in a mobi, epub, or pdf format and read them via some client application.

I don't know. I guess if it's something that people who play interactive fiction really want, then it does make a difference. I suppose part of this my natural reluctance to have any gaming experience in a browser. Having been a web developer (with libraries like jQuery and ExtJs) for many years, I'm often a little wary of emulating things within a browser environment. It also probably depends how much of a rich experience is preferred and/or can be delivered. For example, will web-based formats allow you to make UI or control aspects that a client application would? Maybe that doesn't matter to people as much. I should probably play around with Parchment a bit to get a better feel for it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2250&start=0#p15399
Forum: Competitions / Subject: SpeedIF Jacket 4
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-04-03 14:24:19

SpeedIF is interactive fiction written to a premise in a short time, in a mini-minicomp-like format. SpeedIF Jacket is one way of producing those premises. (Normally we just run SpeedIF on ifMUD, but I thought I'd try opening it up a little.)

People interested in participating should supply a list of jacket blurbs -- five is a minimum requirement, ten to fifteen is a good number, more is not a problem -- by [b]5 PM EDT on Friday, April 8th[/b]. Then I shuffle them up and randomly assign each individual author their own set of quotes, and they set to work on making a game that fits those quotes. They turn it in by, let's say, [b]23:59 EDT on Friday, April 15th[/b]. Both of these operations should be addressed to magadog, care of gmail.

Previous examples of how this has worked: [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Speed-IF_Jacket]1[/url] [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Speed-IF_Jacket_2]2[/url] [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Speed-IF_Jacket_3]3[/url]

[b]What's a blurb?[/b]
A blurb is one of those short quotes that appear on book jackets, movie posters and similar forms of advertising dressed up as bite-sized review. Often they're meaningless praise -- "A tour de force", "A major new talent has emerged" -- but lampooning the form is a long-established tradition, some writers include excerpts from their more entertainingly critical reviews, and some do both (as in the Metropolitan Police spokesman quoted on the back cover of Banksy's [i]Wall and Piece[/i], "There's no way you're going to get a quote from us to use on your book cover".) Usually, they're a single sentence or a fragment. Two sentences is okay if they're short and snappy.

The sort of blurbs that would be useful here are ones that give *some* information, but only a little. "A masterpiece of ironic perversity set in a brilliantly realized city" is pretty good, although 'masterpiece' and 'brilliantly realized' don't add much except style. "I liked the bit with the dog" isn't bad. "A brilliant work of the imagination and the intellect working in union" may be true, but is worthless for our purposes. Scathing criticism -- "[The author] does not appear to actually understand most of the jargon that bloats [their] unremarkable prose" -- is every bit as helpful as praise.

[b]Can I use quotes excerpted from existing reviews?[/b]
If you want to and you find some good ones, sure, although it's probably more fun to write your own. In any case, it's a good idea to poke at a few examples beforehand, just to get a feel for the style.

[b]Can I still take part if I turn up after April 8?[/b]
Yes, but you'll have less time to finish and you won't be able to supply blurbs. You'll get leftovers from existing participants instead, and less time to finish your game. If you show up after April 15 you're out of luck.

[b]Aren't these things meant to be written in two hours?[/b]
That's the classic ideal, yes. Personally, I find speedIF more satisfying when it's had a little more time and thought invested in it, but YMMV. Do as your heart mandates.

[b]What if I get blurbs that I don't like?[/b]
You don't have to use every blurb. To be honest, if your creative process goes off on a series of wild tangents and ends up looking totally unrelated to the quotes, that's okay too.

[b]Who judges the entries?[/b]
SpeedIF isn't a contest.

[b]Then what's to stop me submitting any old unfinished crap?[/b]
Honour system. The respect of your peers. It's polite to enter something that is reasonably winnable.

[b]I am a very serious person and disdain to squander my creative energies upon the tomfoolery that is SpeedIF.[/b]
Serious speed-IF makes up a pretty small minority of the form, but [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=7yiyxcnrlwejoffd]it's[/url] [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=1ugd7bxtrg2457y1]not[/url] [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=8o4lnoya4kg6ud7h]unknown.[/url] A few speedIFs have [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=g4bppjzcsezfuwah]won[/url] or [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=f2oyetp93zdpg4k4]been nominated for[/url] Xyzzies. Some speedIFs have even been [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Mango]betatested.[/url]

That said, the baseline for speedIF is definitely silly, inconsequential, sketchily-implemented games; anything more than that is great, of course, but there's no pressure to write anything spectacular.

[b]I'd rather not use email -- can I just post my quotes on the forum or talk to you on ifMUD or something?[/b]
Yes, as long as it gets to me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2215&start=10#p15400
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Facebook and Beta-Testers?
User: rae_bot / DateTime: 2011-04-03 15:18:36

In that case, fate and Facebook have been kind to me.  I've got 14 or 15 and I'm going to have to start turning people away.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2244&start=0#p15401
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Implying yet blocking an area
User: rae_bot / DateTime: 2011-04-03 15:26:37

[quote="joelsanda"]
Emily Short addresses this in her essay "Challenges of a Broad Geography", printed in the [url=http://www.lulu.com/product/file-download/if-theory-reader/15325305?productTrackingContext=search_results/search_shelf/center/1]IF Theory Reader[/url]. Seeing areas I [i]can't[/i] get to has been a long-held gaming frustration of mine, and for some reason it seems all that more apparent and frustrating in interactive fiction. Anyway, she provides some good ways of dealing with that, particularly in the section "'Can't Go' Parser Messages" - the book is a free PDF download or can be bought as a bound book.[/quote]

That seems like it's going to be an extremely useful resource; thank you for that!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2244&start=0#p15402
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Implying yet blocking an area
User: rae_bot / DateTime: 2011-04-03 15:35:48

[quote="joelsanda"]Anyway, she provides some good ways of dealing with that, particularly in the section "'Can't Go' Parser Messages" - the book is a free PDF download or can be bought as a bound book.[/quote]

It seems that what I'm looking for is in the "At the Edge of the World" section and it's very helpful indeed. I think I can come up with something after toying around with this.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2247&start=0#p15403
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Equating "verb x with y" and "verb x and y"?
User: ChristianB / DateTime: 2011-04-03 16:22:17

I tried a more general way, applying three small changes to the parser (in "Parser Letter A", "Parser Letter G", and "Parse Token Letter E" in the Parser.i6t template file. Because the replaced code sections are too long to post here, I put them into an (experimental) extension together with a very small example (changes to the original code are marked #####).

<a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2691966/Connectives.i7x">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2691966/Connectives.i7x</a>

I have no idea whether this is really usable for larger projects, but it seems to work, for starters.

-- Christian

[b]Edit:[/b] Okay, I boiled it down to only a few additional lines in "Parse Token Letter E". There are no additional global variables defined anymore. Here's the remaining code:

[code][Parse Token Letter E]
Include (-
    ! Object(s) specified now: is that the end of the list, or have we reached
    ! "and", "but" and so on?  If so, create a multiple-object list if we
    ! haven't already (and are allowed to).

  .NextInList;

    o = NextWord();
    
    ! ##### Check if the next token is a connective; if so, ignore the standard multiple object
    !       treatment.
    
    j = true;
    AnalyseToken(line_token-->pcount);
    if (found_ttype == PREPOSITION_TT
        && o == AND1__WD or AND2__WD or AND3__WD or BUT1__WD or BUT2__WD or BUT3__WD
        && PrepositionChain(o, pcount) ~= -1)
            j = false;
            
    if (j && o == AND1__WD or AND2__WD or AND3__WD or BUT1__WD or BUT2__WD or BUT3__WD or comma_word) {

        #Ifdef DEBUG;
        if (parser_trace >= 3) print "  [Read connective '", (address) o, "']^";
        #Endif; ! DEBUG

        if (~~token_allows_multiple) {
            if (multiflag) jump PassToken; ! give UPTO_PE error
            etype=MULTI_PE;
            jump FailToken;
        }

        if (o == BUT1__WD or BUT2__WD or BUT3__WD) and_parity = 1-and_parity;

        if (~~many_flag) {
            multiple_object-->0 = 1;
            multiple_object-->1 = single_object;
            many_flag = true;
            #Ifdef DEBUG;
            if (parser_trace >= 3) print "  [Making new list from ", (the) single_object, "]^";
            #Endif; ! DEBUG
        }
        dont_infer = true; inferfrom=0;           ! Don't print (inferences)
        jump ObjectList;                          ! And back around
    }

    wn--;   ! Word marker back to first not-understood word
-) instead of "Parse Token Letter E" in "Parser.i6t".[/code]

Example:

[code]"Mixit"

The Kitchen is a room.

Some milk is a thing, here.

Some honey is a thing, here.

Some pesto is a thing, here. Understand "walnut and cilantro pesto" and "pesto" as the pesto.

Mixing is an action applying to two things. Report mixing: say "You mix [the noun] and [the second noun]."

Understand "mix [something] with/and [something]" as mixing.

Test me with "mix milk and honey / mix milk with honey / take milk and honey / mix walnut and cilantro pesto and honey".[/code]

Result:

[quote]>[1] mix milk and honey
You mix the milk and the honey.

>[2] mix milk with honey
You mix the milk and the honey.

>[3] take milk and honey
milk: Taken.
honey: Taken.

>[4] mix walnut and cilantro pesto and honey
You mix the pesto and the honey.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2251&start=0#p15404
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Problem with multiexcept lookahead
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-04-03 18:02:10

In the current version of Inform 7, incomplete input which depends on a multiexcept token, such as a player typing INSERT COIN rather than INSERT COIN INTO VENDING MACHINE, produces "I didn't understand that sentence." rather than "What do you want to insert the coin in?", which is what library 6/11 produces.

I think the bug stems from Jesse McGrew's patch for the multiexcept lookahead, which I assume has been incorporated into the 6/11N library:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.inform-fiction.org/patches/L61127.html">http://www.inform-fiction.org/patches/L61127.html</a>

Specifically, this is the point where the input is rejected:

                         if (wn > num_words) {
                             #Ifdef DEBUG;
                             if (parser_trace >= 2)
                                 print " [Look-ahead aborted: prepositions missing]^";
                             #Endif;
                             jump LineFailed;
                         }

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2252&start=0#p15405
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: ADRIFT 5 goes Beta
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-04-04 02:22:55

Coinciding with the latest release, ADRIFT 5.0 has finally gone Beta.  This means it is now freely available to download by everyone.  Details can be found on the ADRIFT website or on the v5 blog at [url]http://adrift5.blogspot.com/[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2148&start=0#p15406
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Background image change for Erik Temple's Automapping
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-04-04 07:40:18

Another question for automap & windows.

I was using Emily Short's Simple Graphical Windows to display a small window at the bottom of the screen below the player's input. So that the main body of game text was sandwiched between the automap window (above) and a small graphics footer window (below).

It seemed to work fine until I compiled the game and tried to SAVE and RESTORE. Then things went crazy. The automap stopped working right, and began to display in both windows simultaneously.

Here's the code for the bottom window:

	[code]The graphics window proportion is 10. The graphics window position is g-below.
	
	Currently shown picture is Figure of Logo.[/code]

Do you know a simple way I can create a bottom footer window using Glimmr commands? One that won't conflict with automap after SAVE and RESTORE games.

Thanks for any help or ideas with this.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2253&start=0#p15407
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Windows Gluxe Scrollback
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-04-04 07:55:36

Does anyone know if there's a way to configure Windows Gluxe to use either scroll bars (or scroll back the screen text on the mouse-wheel, as in Gargoyle), so you don't have to click the "scroll back" button to back up and see the previous text input/output on screen?

The reason I ask is that I have some graphical charts that can be called up to display with various commands, but when I play in Windows Gluxe, the graphics just zip up the screen with the [MORE] prompt, and after its displayed you can't scroll back up to look at the graphics from the main screen. And when you push the "scroll back" button above, it shows you the text input/output - but no the graphics...

Thanks for any tips or help with this.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2148&start=0#p15408
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Background image change for Erik Temple's Automapping
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-04-04 09:15:55

This actually has nothing to do with Automap. It sounds like using Simple Graphical Window at the same time as Flexible Windows is messing with the assignment of window references. I'd remove SGW from your project and create your smaller window with Flexible Windows instead. Those two extensions aren't really compatible, and Flexible Windows is the more powerful.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2230&start=20#p15409
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beginning with Inform 6 in 2011...
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-04-04 09:29:12

[quote="Jim Aikin"]It's true that Inform has a concise way of setting up relations between objects. But you can accomplish the same thing in T3 using a foreach loop. Also, I've never been entirely sure what one would use relations for in an actual game. The examples I've seen -- stuff like "now every guard dog that can see Michael hates David" -- tend to be rather artificial. I mean, how often do people write games with multiple guard dogs that wander around the map?[/quote]
I've been working on simulating ropes, and relations turn out to be a great way to do that:

[code]connection relates various things to one rope.[/code]

I've also started using conditional relations a lot:

[code]attachment relates a thing (called the first item) to a thing (called the second item) when the first item is connected to the second item or the second item is connected to the first item.[/code]

I think of conditional relations as adjectives that apply to pairs of things - Sometimes they're a little more flexible than "to decide" phrases.

It's true that you can model one-to-various relations with properties, but sometimes the syntax for relations looks better. It takes some getting used to, which is why I stuck with properties for a long time, but I'm getting the hang of it now. And you can't do various-to-various relations with properties, which you might need for a more complex rope scenario.

Because of the steep learning curve with relations, I think it's often not worth it to define new ones within an individual game. But I think they're often the best thing to use when writing extensions. After all, many frequently-used features of the Standard Library are expressed as relations (containment, mapping, etc).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2230&start=20#p15410
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beginning with Inform 6 in 2011...
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-04-04 09:30:44

[quote="zarf"][quote]It seems to me that the opposition to I7 is growing now.[/quote]

Why do you say that?[/quote]
Just an impression. It might just be one or two people who've appeared in the last couple weeks...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2230&start=20#p15411
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beginning with Inform 6 in 2011...
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2011-04-04 09:33:53

[quote="bukayeva"]I'm a little surprised browser-based elements are so much of a concern but I've seen that concern voiced as I've browsed the forum. The reason I say that is because it's not that hard to have a game that bundles the interpreter, either via batch file or via an installer or even via something like TADS 3's bundler mechanism. (Granted though that the bundler only works for Windows-based systems. I bet if that could be extended for a Mac installer/executable as well, that would be a major point in TADS' favor.)

In terms of newcomers, having to download a game to play it is not really all that alien.[/quote]

That may have been true five years ago, but with the rise of casual gaming and browser-based games, it's becoming far less so. Every additional step someone has to take to play my game is an additional chance for them to say, "Screw this, I'mo play something from JayIsGames." We're at a point in time where the problem many people have is not too little entertainment but too much. Given that, I want any player's effort to go from being interested in my game to playing the game to be as minimal as possible.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2211&start=10#p15412
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 reference for kids
User: Minkovsky / DateTime: 2011-04-04 10:09:20

Maybe it's my inability to learn anything Pythonic, but I find Ren'Py extremely weird.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2237&start=0#p15413
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [6G60] Inform 7 and Natty (Ubuntu 11.04).
User: Minkovsky / DateTime: 2011-04-04 10:12:00

Well, this may be because of new GLib... I think they went with Gnome 3's GLib in Natty. Also, try reporting it as a bug to GInform devs.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2230&start=20#p15414
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beginning with Inform 6 in 2011...
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-04-04 11:13:39

[quote="Sargent"]That may have been true five years ago, but with the rise of casual gaming and browser-based games, it's becoming far less so.[/quote]

I can't claim to know too much about casual gaming but if the casual gaming crowd is the only niche interactive fiction is carving for itself, then I guess maybe the browser-based need is valid. Maybe getting the casual gamers to respond to interactive fiction -- as opposed to shooters, 2D level scrollers, or whatever -- will be a way to get those gamers to experiment more with other options in interactive fiction. Given that, I can almost see two tiers of interactive fiction authoring because a casual crowd's game may not have the same breadth and depth as the non-casual crowd. Interesting dynamic to think about.

With that understood, then I guess I can see some value in Inform 6 in 2011 if people have conceptual difficulties with Inform 7 but even with that, it still seems best to go with the momentum then, which is Inform 7. (Which is a pity to me because I [i]really[/i] like TADS 3, after having played around with it. Having looked at the VM documentation for TADS, I can see some fo the challenges to getting it working in a web browser via Javascript but not so much of a challenge, relatively speaking, via a technology like Silverlight.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2252&start=0#p15415
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 5 goes Beta
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-04-04 12:22:48

Congrats on the release! [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1965&start=10#p15416
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Curveship released
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-04-04 13:35:25

I'm really confused about this thing. Is this meant to be an alternative to Inform 7? I saw the [url=http://curveship.com/artmaking.html]Artmaking example code[/url]. But what this looks like is a little bit of TADS (in terms of assigning values to properties) and a little bit like Inform 7 in terms of the Pythonic indentation. I also looked at the [url=http://curveship.com/lost_one.html]Lost One possible narrative[/url] and this seems really unwieldy to read from a play-through experience.

So color me confused. What is this Curveship thing doing that Inform or TADS currently can't do? I see that it says "Curveship includes a text generator and has the ability to produce different texts depending upon how high-level narrative parameters are set." This apparently means I create templated contexts. But why is that a desirable way to construct interactive fiction? What's gained by this approach?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1965&start=10#p15417
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Curveship released
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-04-04 15:17:38

Nick's dissertation is the best vehicle for understanding where Curveship is coming from and what it's trying to do:

<a class="postlink" href="http://nickm.com/if/Generating_Narrative_Variation_in_Interactive_Fiction.pdf">http://nickm.com/if/Generating_Narrativ ... iction.pdf</a>

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2254&start=0#p15418
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: IF Event in Munich on May 7 2011
User: stadtgorilla / DateTime: 2011-04-04 16:53:43

Hi,

if there are IF fans from Germany on here, i just wanted to inform you that a culture collective from Munich that I'm part of is doing an IF event on May 7. We'll screen GET LAMP and contact Jason Scott for a skype q+a. There will be terminals to play games on, including a game we're programming for this special occasion (it's taking place during the event...).

More about the event (in German) can be found here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.mischwaldserver.de/volxvergnuegen/index.php/veranstaltungsleser/items/254.html">http://www.mischwaldserver.de/volxvergn ... s/254.html</a>

Thanks for reading! This is my first post here! Cheers!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2247&start=0#p15419
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Equating "verb x with y" and "verb x and y"?
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-04-04 18:07:12

Fantastic.  ChristianB's extension seems to be working perfectly, with no messy side effects so far.  Thanks again, everyone.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2252&start=0#p15420
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 5 goes Beta
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-04-04 19:18:02

Congratulations.   [emote]:ugeek:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2254&start=0#p15421
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Event in Munich on May 7 2011
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-04-04 19:19:17

Is there an offline gathering place for Munich on a regular basis such as the Boston & Seattle groups?  If so I can add Munich to Seattle's list of city-centric IF groups.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2248&start=0#p15422
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Prairie Fire
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-04-04 19:25:02

Looking forward to the game!

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2255&start=0#p15423
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: TADS 3 : Silence spell. *Resolved*  Thanks to bcressey
User: Selva / DateTime: 2011-04-04 21:52:19

The silence spell in my game, as well as a few other spells, work on the player by giving him/her a "hidden" object.  (Actually it's an object derived from a specialized class.)  Since it's hidden and moved into the players inv automatically, it never becomes discovered and thus can't be dropped or anything.  Be that as it may...

The hidden spell stops the player from speaking by catching the various speach actions in the spell/objects "BeforeAction" ... er... structure.  (Method?)  Whatever.  Most of this works fine.  It all works off of the following code snippet:

[code]
     beforeAction()
    {
        if (!(self.location == gPlayerChar)) exit; 
        if (gActionIs(Yell) || gActionIs(ConvI) || gActionIs(TopicT))
        { 
            say(cantSpeakMsg); 
            exit; 
        };
        
       
    }
[/code]

The problem is this, I can't get it to catch commands to actors.   You type yell, You get the "Magic stops you from speaking." message.  You Type "Tell Bob about McGuffin." you get the "Magic stops you from speaking." message.  But it you type "Tell bob to go North" you either get the standard "Bob refuses your request" message or off Bob goes, depending on if he's set to accept commands or not.   [emote]:cry:[/emote] 

The library reference lists a "CommandActor" action type.  (I found the other action type references in the library reference manual.)  However this action type does not respond the way the others do.  I just get an error when I use it.  

Any help or hints with this would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.  [emote]:D[/emote] 

   - Selva

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2256&start=0#p15424
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Flexible Windows problem
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-04-04 22:44:41

I was hoping somebody familiar with Flexible Windows extension can show me how to make an image display in a bottom window. Using this code, the bottom window opens, but I can't get it to display any image?

I tried to adapt the only example I could find of making an image display, but so far with no luck...

Thanks for any help in figuring this out!

[code]Include Flexible Windows by Jon Ingold.

Figure 10 is the file "pic10.jpg".

	The Study is a room. In the study is an old oak desk. On the desk is a Parker pen, a letter, an envelope and twenty dollars.
	
	The Study is north of the Library.
	
	The Library is a room.
	
	The Library is south of the Study.

	The bottom-window is a graphics g-window spawned by the main-window. The position of the bottom-window is g-placebelow.
	
	The bottom-window has back-colour g-black.


	The measurement of the bottom-window is 30.

	When play begins:
	open up the bottom-window.
	
The current image is a figure-name that varies.

    To depict (f - a figure-name):
        change the current image to f;
        follow the window-drawing rules for the bottom-window.
        
        
Window-drawing rule for the bottom-window (this is the construct inventory rule):
		move focus to bottom-window, clearing the window;
		depict Figure 10;
		return to main screen.        
        
Window-drawing rule for the bottom-window (this is the draw scaled image rule):
        if bottom-window is g-unpresent, rule fails;
        clear the bottom-window;
        draw scaled copy of current image in bottom-window.

    To draw scaled copy of (f - a figure-name) in (g - a g-window):
        (- DrawScaled({f}, {g}); -).
        
 Include (-

        ! Doing scaling calculations in I6 lets us handle bigger numbers

        [ GetImageSize curimg index result;
            result = glk_image_get_info( ResourceIDsOfFigures-->curimg, gg_arguments, gg_arguments+WORDSIZE);
            return gg_arguments-->index;
        ];

        [ DrawScaled figure g w_total h_total graph_height graph_width w_offset h_offset;
        graph_height = WindowSize(g, 1);
        graph_width = gg_arguments-->0;
        w_total = GetImageSize(figure, 0);
        h_total = gg_arguments-->1;
    
        if (graph_height - h_total < 0) ! if the image won't fit, find the scaling factor
        {
            w_total = (graph_height * w_total)/h_total;
            h_total = graph_height;

        }

        if (graph_width - w_total < 0)
        {
            h_total = (graph_width * h_total)/w_total;
            w_total = graph_width;
        }

        w_offset = (graph_width - w_total)/2; if (w_offset < 0) w_offset = 0;
        h_offset = (graph_height - h_total)/2; if (h_offset < 0) h_offset = 0;
    
        glk_image_draw_scaled(g.ref_number, ResourceIDsOfFigures-->figure, w_offset, h_offset, w_total, h_total);
        ];
    
    -).


[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2255&start=0#p15425
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 : Silence spell.
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-04-05 00:11:40

You may get more mileage out of adjusting handleConversation() in ActorState. That would let you test the condition in one place and avoid the need to modify all of the conversation actions - ASK, TELL, HELLO, etc.

Commands to the actor get routed to handleConversation() as well, though I'm not quite sure how that process works. So this should do the trick:

[code]
modify ActorState
    handleConversation(otherActor, topic, convType)
    {
        if (gPlayerChar.silenced())
        {
            "Magic stops you from speaking. ";
            return;
        }
        inherited(otherActor, topic, convType);
    }
;
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2250&start=0#p15426
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: SpeedIF Jacket 4
User: Tanga / DateTime: 2011-04-05 00:57:03

Damn, I wish this started on the 15th, rather than the 8th.  I might have a go at something anyway (Uni holidays start then).  It will give me a reason to learn to program, and a bit of direction for the game.

EDIT:  Just found this:  Just found this:  [url]http://www.ehow.com/how_2074207_write-book-blurb.html[/url]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2253&start=0#p15427
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Gluxe Scrollback
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-04-05 01:18:03

[quote="dustinneff"]Does anyone know if there's a way to configure Windows Gluxe to use either scroll bars (or scroll back the screen text on the mouse-wheel, as in Gargoyle), so you don't have to click the "scroll back" button to back up and see the previous text input/output on screen?[/quote]There isn't any way to do this. It has been on my "to do" list for a while to look at this but it's not currently a priority, sorry.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2256&start=0#p15428
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Flexible Windows problem
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-04-05 02:57:44

I don't know if your source ever evokes the window-drawing rules for the bottom-window?

You tell the game to open the bottom-window up when play begins; but (in the code you posted) it seems you only tell it to follow the window-drawing rules in the "depict" phrase, which in turn is only used inside one of the window-drawing rules. 

So at the moment you can't get the game to depict anything unless it follows the construct inventory rule; and that rule won't fire unless you get the game to depict something.

I guess you need to put a phrase like "depict Figure 10" or "follow the window-drawing rules for the bottom-window" inside a rule that fires for some other reason (like an every turn rule or a before taking inventory rule or whatever).

Also, if you get the "depict Figure 10"-phrase to execute as it is, (by sticking it at the end of the when play begins rule, say), won't it lead to a bad loop? It will run the window-drawing rules for the bottom-window, of which the first is the construct inventory rule, which itself invokes the depict phrase, which will run the window-drawing rules, which will invoke the depict phrase etc., won't it?

I know too little about this extension, but I'm also somewhat suspicious about the interplay between the two window-drawing rules. Actually, the documentation suggests that the 'move focus' and 'return to main screen' phrases are only needed for text windows, not for graphic ones (I don't think Jon Ingold uses them for the graphics window in the example game). So, it might be that you should drop the construct inventory rule altogether.

(Unless, of course, I am – as we put it in Sweden – "helt ute och cyklar".)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2250&start=0#p15429
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: SpeedIF Jacket 4
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-04-05 03:10:26

[quote="maga"][b]Who judges the entries?[/b]
SpeedIF isn't a contest.
[/quote]

Woot. I'm in [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2255&start=0#p15430
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 : Silence spell.
User: Selva / DateTime: 2011-04-05 03:12:38

Thanks bcressey.  However, while that would work, I'm really trying to keep the code encapsulated in the "spell" object/class as much as possible.  Your solution, if I understand it correctly, would require entering modification into all actors in the game, something I'm trying to avoid.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2252&start=0#p15431
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 5 goes Beta
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-04-05 03:27:35

Thanks.  I think, had I known it was going to take me six years to get to this point, I never would have started!  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2257&start=0#p15432
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: City of Secrets hint needed for complete novice, please?
User: Susan7639 / DateTime: 2011-04-05 06:04:34

My 6 year old and I are on level three of COS.  We see the dogs footprints and are assuming the jail is to the left of them but can not figure out how to move further in that direction.  Any help would be so appreciated!  Thank you!
Susan

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2247&start=0#p15433
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Equating "verb x with y" and "verb x and y"?
User: ChristianB / DateTime: 2011-04-05 06:33:20

[quote="shammack"]ChristianB's extension seems to be working perfectly, with no messy side effects so far.[/quote]
Good to hear. But I found at least one restriction concerning grouped tokens:

[code]Understand "mix [something] and/with [something]" as mixing.[/code]
This works fine, whereas...

[code]Understand "mix [something] with/and [something]" as mixing.[/code]
... throws the standard message:

[quote]>[1] mix milk and honey
You can't use multiple objects with that verb.[/quote]
Does anyone know how to address the post-slash part of a grouped grammar line token in I6?

[b]Edit:[/b] Problem solved (I hope). The I6 routine PrepositionChain() came in handy. (I changed the code in my previous post if you like to try it out).

<a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2691966/Connectives.i7x">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2691966/Connectives.i7x</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1965&start=10#p15434
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Curveship released
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-04-05 06:44:41

[quote="ektemple"]Nick's dissertation is the best vehicle for understanding where Curveship is coming from and what it's trying to do:[/quote]

Yeah, I read all that. You can get it from the [url=http://curveship.com/publications.html]publications page of the main site[/url]. While it sounds like an interesting academic thing based on the paper, I'm looking at the actual output -- meaning the logic you use as an author and what you experience as a player. That's the part I'm having trouble understanding in terms of how or what Curveship is practically supposed to provide that other systems currently cannot. I can generate "narrative variation" now in Inform 7 and TADS 3. It basically looks like this system just formalizes a bit the concept of a narrative engine.

The paper does say this: "This project has not yet resulted in a system that is simple to use for teaching about narrative or one that is easy for IF developers to use, and certainly has not yielded a system that can be carefully evaluated in either of these capacities. However, the project has built the foundation for the further development of educational and expressive systems. The basic implementation allows for a range of narrative variation that will be useful for students and teachers as well as IF authors."

What I don't get is why this Curveship approach will be more effective tool for creating those "educational and expressive systems." I'm hoping it's capable of being explained without having to read a dissertation on the subject. [emote]:)[/emote] A lot of work and thought clearly went into this so I'm just curious what potential interactive fiction authors see in this system. Specifically, I'd be curious why this system couldn't have been done as some sort of MegaExtension to, say, Inform 7 or TADS 3 particularly since I can see the basis of this stuff in both authorhing systems.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2254&start=0#p15435
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Event in Munich on May 7 2011
User: stadtgorilla / DateTime: 2011-04-05 06:52:45

none that i know of, but i haven't dug deep into the german scene so far. Right now, the only Munich scene I know of is our team that's putting our game together; but after the event, everything will change very fast, of course. Everybody will want to play IF [emote]:D[/emote] 
Let's say we're working on it...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2256&start=0#p15436
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Flexible Windows problem
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-04-05 08:04:08

Thanks Felix, a lot of times I try to use the examples included in the extensions to get them to do what I need. Sometimes it works. But I don't do so well with programming logic, horrible at it.

This versions does what I want it to, except center the image in the window I open up. I can't find any syntax in the extensions which tell it to center the image, there's commands to do that in other extensions, but they don't work here.

If anyone knows how to get an image to display and center please help. Do a need to include another extension on top of these to have the image centered?

[code]

Include Flexible Windows by Jon Ingold.
Include Glulx Entry Points by Emily Short.

Figure 0 is the file "sample.jpg".
	
 The banner-window is a graphics g-window spawned by the main-window.
    
    The measurement of the banner-window is 15.The position of the banner-window is g-placebelow.

    Every turn when the banner-window is g-present: follow the window-drawing rules for the banner-window.

    The graphics-window is a graphics g-window spawned by the banner-window.

    When play begins:
        open up the graphics-window.

    The current image is a figure-name that varies.

    Carry out looking:
	depict Figure 0;

    To depict (f - a figure-name):
        change the current image to f;
        follow the window-drawing rules for the graphics-window.

    Window-drawing rule for the graphics-window (this is the draw scaled image rule):
        if graphics-window is g-unpresent, rule fails;
        clear the graphics-window;
        draw scaled copy of current image in graphics-window.

    [/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2256&start=0#p15437
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Flexible Windows problem
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-04-05 09:20:16

There are a few problems in your second code posting. The most important seems to be that you shift from referring to the "banner-window" to the "graphics-window" about halfway through. You have a call to the window-drawing rule for the banner-window, but you don't actually have such a rule; there's only a rule for the graphics-window, and the I6 code (from your first code posting) that you're invoking with "draw scaled copy of current image in graphics-window" would scale and center the image in the [i]graphics-window[/i] rather than the banner-window. Due to Flexible Windows' defaults, the graphics-window you've defined will occupy the rightmost 40% of the banner-window. This will cause your image to appear off-center, on the right side of the screen. Is that what you're seeing? If so, the solution is to eliminate the graphics-window from your code entirely. 

You can also get rid of the rule that redraws the window every turn. That's not necessary because you're already updating the window whenever the image changes (in the carry out looking rules).

I also feel the need to point out that, if this is for the same project you're using Glimmr Automap with, you have an easier solution that doesn't require including a new I6 drawing rule. Glimmr Canvas-Based Drawing, which runs under the hood of Glimmr Automap, will automatically take over the window-drawing rule of any graphics window if you don't provide your own specific rule for it. So, this is all you'd need to do to display an image centered in the window:

[code]The banner-window is a graphics g-window spawned by the main-window. The position is g-placebelow. The back-colour is g-black. The measurement is 30.

The banner-canvas is a graphics-canvas. The background image is Figure 10. The associated canvas of the banner-window is the banner-canvas.

When play begins:
   open up the banner-window.[/code]

This will make the background image as large as it can and center it in the available space. All that you'd need to add is an rule (e.g. in the look command, as you have done already) to assign the background image of the banner-canvas and trigger the drawing.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2255&start=0#p15438
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 : Silence spell.
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-04-05 10:31:05

Well, you can make the one modification to the core ActorState class, and every instance of it will inherit that change. From a technical standpoint, you're correct that you're adding the code to every actor. But from a source code file standpoint, it only has to be added once.

Another place to perform the modification would be in the player character's [url=http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/libref/source/actor.t.html#7354]canTalkTo()[/url] method. This has the virtue of not subverting the sense passing aspects of the world model, but the drawback that certain actions (like YELL) don't respect it.

In order to do it your way, I think you would need to call the [url=http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/libref/object/Action.html#addBeforeAfterObj]addBeforeAfterObj()[/url] on the CommandActorAction object, passing your silence object as the parameter. It looks like this initializes a persistent vector - beforeAfterObjs - so you shouldn't need to do this more than once.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2247&start=0#p15439
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Equating "verb x with y" and "verb x and y"?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-04-05 10:48:40

So much of I7 is well-developed now, and ready for a whole new generation of IF. But the parser seems to be hanging on to a lot of I6 conventions that don't seem to make much sense any more. I've said it before - I think the parser needs a total rewrite. I know it's a big job and I don't expect anyone to volunteer, but it would be great if it happened. I may do it myself someday, but not too soon...

At this point maybe the best thing would be to catalog all the problems with the current parser. Some things are in uservoice, but maybe it needs its very own page. Does anyone have a place for that?

What I see so far:

1. Punctuation, especially commas, should be allowed in grammar lines.
2. "and" should be allowed as a grammar token.
3. Perhaps handling of multiple objects should be completely reconsidered.
4. More parser features (like when disambiguation occurs, what noun matches are ruled out before they even reach the disambiguation stage, multiple object lists and the name of an NPC who is being given a command) should be handled at the I7 level, so new grammar lines and rules can be applied to them.
4a. Disambiguation might be an activity. The match list should be made available and rules should be able to add and remove items from it. It should be possible to generate a match list from a grammar line such as "if the player's command includes '[any known thing]'," and it should be possible to optionally invoke disambiguation from such a grammar line.
4b. (a personal pet peeve) It should be possible to manipulate the player's command using the underlying buffer system, not indexed text. This might provide access to the text of "again" and "oops" commands as well.
4c. The major functions of NounDomain and Adjudicate should be implemented as rulebooks or activities.
4d. Some means of expressing a complete command, including not only action, noun and second noun, but also the person asked, should be expressed in a sensible I7 data set. This may be difficult because there's a possibility for recursion as in Rematch. But once it was handled, I think a lot of things (such as parsing commas) might be easier.
5. The first word of a command (after the comma) should not be treated specially, creating a need for the special "understand the command..." syntax of I7. Maybe this is too much to ask, but I'm throwing it in there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2258&start=0#p15440
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Spring Thing 2011 has begun!
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-04-05 11:46:15

(Copied from Greg Boettcher's post on raif, since I didn't see it mentioned here.)

The Spring Thing 2011 games are now available for download. There are six games this year:

Bonehead, by Sean M. Shore
Hallow Eve, by Michael Wayne Phipps Jr.
The Lost Islands of Alabaz, by Michael Gentry
Mentula Macanus: Apocolocyntosis, by One of the Bruces and Drunken Bastard
The Promise, by Sean Huxter
Wetlands, by Clara Raubertas

If you've never heard of the Spring Thing, it's an annual competition, and you get to participate in playing and judging the games. There are less than six weeks to judge all six games, so the time to get started is... well, soon. Pretty soon.

You can find out everything you need to know at:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.springthing.net/2011/">http://www.springthing.net/2011/</a>

You'll find the links to download the games on that page.

The deadline for voting is 11:59 PM EDT, Sunday, May 15, 2011.

Greg will decide the details of how to vote later. For more info on this, check the "Vote" section of the Spring Thing home page in the coming days, at:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.springthing.net/2011/index.htm#vote">http://www.springthing.net/2011/index.htm#vote</a>

To all the players, have fun! To all the entrants, good luck!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2247&start=10#p15441
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Equating "verb x with y" and "verb x and y"?
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-04-05 11:52:22

[quote="capmikee"]So much of I7 is well-developed now, and ready for a whole new generation of IF. But the parser seems to be hanging on to a lot of I6 conventions that don't seem to make much sense any more. I've said it before - I think the parser needs a total rewrite.[/quote]

You might be answering a question I was planning on asking here but was trying to investigate before I did so. How do I hook into the parser in order to change things like what you mentioned here? I'm assuming (hoping) the parser was designed in a modular fashion so that you essentially have "hooks" into so that you can modify it selectively. Your comment makes me think this is where I probably have to learn to jump into the Inform 6 logic. However, this doesn't seem like a job for "I6 inclusions" but maybe I'm wrong.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2247&start=10#p15442
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Equating "verb x with y" and "verb x and y"?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-04-05 12:06:28

Parts of it are modular, but most of those parts are already exposed to I7 as "Understand" lines. The bulk of the parser is one huge long gigantic routine, so big it has to be divided up into "letters" A through K. There are a few important functions outside that, such as NounDomain and Adjudicate, but they're pretty monstrous themselves.

Like I said, the parser is my least favorite part of I7.

As for the question of "how," have a look at Parser.i6t. You can find it in Appendix B here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/sources/src/i6template/Woven/index.html">http://inform7.com/sources/src/i6templa ... index.html</a>

This section of the manual explains how to replace sections of the template layer:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc442.html">http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc442.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2259&start=0#p15443
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Creating RIA Interpreter for TADS 3
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-04-05 12:08:08

So it's pretty clear to me that TADS 3 is a vastly superior system than Inform 7 in many of the mechanics. Presentation-wise, maybe not so much. But the underlying mechanics? Yeah. Much better. That's an opinion but it's a strong one on my part. The one thing I've heard is that one reason people still want to stick with the clunky z-machine or the apparently not-so-clunky Glulx/g-machine is because those can be played on a browser. If that's one of the major things holding TADS back, I'd like to see about developing a browser-playable interpreter.

Has anyone started work in this area? Beyond the Jetty I found (that only works for TADS 2), are there any projects people are aware of that have been started? Whether or not there is, what have the thoughts been regarding technology implementation?

I can't see doing this via Java applets or just in JavaScript. I could maybe be convinced on a JavaScript-type engine but I'd rather provide an RIA. I'm not too keen yet on the Google Web Toolkit, Apache's Pivot, or JavaFX. (Anything Java worries me a little bit until Oracle stops being weird.) But I'm thinking something like Flash or Silverlight seem like much better options. I'd actually rather stay away from Adobe than Microsoft.

I'm curious what people think. If nothing else, I think this would be an interesting coding challenge.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2259&start=0#p15444
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Creating RIA Interpreter for TADS 3
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-04-05 12:29:24

One project that is currently under development is the online part of Tads 3. This is done by Mike Roberts himself. It should normally have been released by now, but real-life work got the better of him and so it got delayed. From what I know, it's in good shape and he just needs a bit of time for wrapping it all up and doing the release.

Note that it's not a Javascript interpreter. It's a game server. Pretty much like any other game server (Counter-Strike, etc), but for Tads. The reason for this model is performance and language-level network support (like the Socket class in Java), allowing people to write multiplayer games in Tads.

For more info, you can browse the posts on the official Tads 3 blog:

<a class="postlink" href="http://community.livejournal.com/tads3">http://community.livejournal.com/tads3</a>

(Scroll down a bit to get to the relevant, 3-part series of posts about Tads networking support.)

As for a Javascript player, someone here mentioned that he's experimenting with a Javascript implementation of the T3VM, but that at this point it's just that: an experiment that doesn't really work yet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2259&start=0#p15445
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Creating RIA Interpreter for TADS 3
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-04-05 12:40:18

In the web application arena, I only know of two projects underway.
 
- Wei-ju is adding TADS 3 support to [url=https://github.com/weiju/zmpp2]ZMPP[/url], which is JVM based. That could eventually lead to an applet or provide the server side of an AJAX client interface. I am more interested in it as the core of a Kindle publishing option.

- MJR is adding web server capabilities to the main TADS virtual machine. When finished this can be used to deploy a TADS server in a suitable hosting environment; players would use a web browser to connect. My tentative plan is to add Webkit to Gargoyle and offer a desktop client that consumes the web output.

A Flash or Silverlight-based app would definitely fill a need, both now and down the road. Even with the options above, there'd be no provision for an author who just wants a quick and attractive way to deploy games on commodity web hosting. Something like [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Leaflet]Leaflet[/url] would be a big step forward.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2257&start=0#p15446
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: City of Secrets hint needed for complete novice, please?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-04-05 13:55:27

Welcome! Just to clear up some almost inevitable confusion before it begins: you are probably talking about the graphical adventure game [url=http://www.macappsdude.com/city-of-secrets-games/]City of Secrets[/url], which is not the same as Emily Short's interactive fiction game [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=u6wzkckne4zsafyl]City of Secrets[/url]. This being an interactive fiction forum, a lot of people here will know the second game, but I'm not sure many people will know the first. You will probably have a better chance of success [url=http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?s=c1acf37ed66dafd8f82e1712cf2f8ebb&t=88917]here[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2211&start=10#p15447
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 reference for kids
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-04-05 15:05:34

[quote="Minkovsky"]Maybe it's my inability to learn anything Pythonic, but I find Ren'Py extremely weird.[/quote]

The language of Inform 7 is very Pythonic in a lot of ways. You use colons and indentations for the most part identically. Ren'Py allows something like this:

define floyd = Character("Floyd")
floyd "Hello, world."

You can basically define "floyd" as a reference to a Character object and then, in this case, easily display text based on that context. This is what Inform 7 does (at least conceptually) when it makes a decision about double-quoted text being a description or an initial appearance.

What's (maybe) interesting is that there are more Python books out there geared for kids than for just about any language. There has been certain assumptions that Python is more geared for younger people to learn. Not saying I agree or disagree necessarily; just that it's a language often used for kid-based language tutorials.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2247&start=10#p15448
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Equating "verb x with y" and "verb x and y"?
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-04-05 15:07:22

Thanks for the links. I hadn't come across those documents yet. I will say this: Inform 7 covers up some very ugly internals. It does quite a good job at it, too. The problem seems to be when those internals bubble up to the top, which I suppose the first manifestation of is the "I6 inclusions" and the second manifestation is a desire to interact at various points in the parsing. I do agree that an overhaul of the parsing implementation would probably have been warranted even before Inform 7 was released or at least certainly before it got this far. (I say that because the implementation to rewire the parser may lead to a lot of language design decisions in terms of how constructs are expressed. That's the fun part of natural language overlays.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2252&start=0#p15449
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 5 goes Beta
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-04-05 16:28:31

Good thing you didn't know it, then!

(I can relate.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2256&start=0#p15450
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Flexible Windows problem
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-04-05 16:59:18

Thanks again for your help, your first suggestion worked, and now the windows no longer conflict when saving and restoring games. I also tried adding the code below, and it returned a problem when compiling:

[code]The banner-window is a graphics g-window spawned by the main-window. The position is g-placebelow. The back-colour is g-black. The measurement is 30.

The banner-canvas is a graphics-canvas. The background image is Figure 10. The associated canvas of the banner-window is the banner-canvas.

When play begins:
   open up the banner-window.[/code]

***
Problem. The sentence 'The banner-canvas is a graphics-canvas'   appears to say two things are the same - I am reading 'banner-canvas' and 'graphics-canvas' as two different things, and therefore it makes no sense to say that one is the other: it would be like saying that 'Tom is Jerry'. It would be all right if the second thing were the name of a kind, perhaps with properties: for instance 'Mouse-Hole is a lighted room' says that something called Mouse-Hole exists and that it is a 'room', which is a kind I know about, combined with a property called 'lighted' which I also know about.
***

I don't if it's something else in my code causing the problem, or one of the extensions, but on down the road I might prefer your simpler solution, if you can tell off-hand what's causing it.

But seems its working now, and I hope I'm done with graphics for awhile!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2256&start=0#p15451
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Flexible Windows problem
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-04-05 18:18:05

[quote="dustinneff"]***
Problem. The sentence 'The banner-canvas is a graphics-canvas'   appears to say two things are the same - I am reading 'banner-canvas' and 'graphics-canvas' as two different things, and therefore it makes no sense to say that one is the other: it would be like saying that 'Tom is Jerry'. It would be all right if the second thing were the name of a kind, perhaps with properties: for instance 'Mouse-Hole is a lighted room' says that something called Mouse-Hole exists and that it is a 'room', which is a kind I know about, combined with a property called 'lighted' which I also know about.
***[/quote]

Ah, silly me. It should be "g-canvas", not "graphics-canvas"...

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2259&start=0#p15452
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Creating RIA Interpreter for TADS 3
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-04-05 19:08:55

The TADS3 VM is orders more complex than the Z-Machine and Glulx, so it's little surprise that there is only the reference implementation currently. Wei-ju should be commended for making the second implementation ever.

I think that a pure JS interpreter is possible, but it will be difficult. I'm currently working on a generic VM system (ifvms.js at my Github) and am thinking that I'll at least write a disassembler for it. I think it would be great if a team worked on it though, each person taking a chapter of the VM spec for example.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2260&start=0#p15453
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Programmable robot?
User: jwideman / DateTime: 2011-04-05 19:16:06

I want a robot that can be programmed, and also will improve its ability to do the task for which it is programmed. Difficulty: the task has multiple steps and how well it performs relates to all the steps being included and in order. Some steps can be skipped or put in an arbitrary order, and the task will still be complete.
Now, I know there's an example of a robot that can learn by watching the player, but I want the robot to be told to complete each step and know that it's part of the task it's being taught. Any help would be appreciated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2260&start=0#p15454
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Programmable robot?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-04-05 20:17:48

Here's how I would do this:

Borrow the implementation from Robo 2 that allows the player to give a robot a set of commands to follow as a program. (Not Robo 1, which is not detailed enough.)

When the player starts writing a new robot program, though:

-- change the command prompt to show that the player is in a new mode of interaction and commands will be taken as robot instructions;
-- parse the player's commands but don't actually follow through on them. Intercept really early in the action sequence -- putting something in 'setting action variables for...' might work [hacky] or [cleaner] you might add a step to the action sequence entirely that just checks whether the player is in programming mode and if so aborts the action and stores it as part of the robot's program. See the "Delicious, Delicious Rocks" example for how to add a step to the action processing rules in general;
-- end this mode when the player stops programming.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2260&start=0#p15458
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Programmable robot?
User: jwideman / DateTime: 2011-04-05 22:21:49

Interesting solution. I was thinking I would use "robot, blah" but this seems more elegant.
Now, what about the other half of it: determining that the training is complete (has all the steps and in the right order), while allowing the task to be done anyway if the training is half-assed?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2215&start=10#p15459
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Facebook and Beta-Testers?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-04-05 22:28:37

[quote="rae_bot"]How well does that work?[/quote]

Well enough so far. They haven't gotten sick of me yet, but give me a few more games and I bet I can start scaring them off ...

[quote]Tbh I don't even know what's a normal amount of beta testers to use on a given piece   [emote]:?[/emote][/quote]

I can't personally imagine having fewer than seven or eight for a full-sized game (less would probably be fine for a snack-sized one). So far, I've been targeting a dozen per game, with the understanding that there may be a dropout or two. The level of redundancy at a dozen is pretty high, but absolutely every tester (in my experience) will find at least [i]one [/i]thing to make you grateful you signed them on. If I ever go larger in scope than I've gone so far (which one of my WIPs is likely to) I'll go above a dozen.

[quote]I've got 14 or 15 and I'm going to have to start turning people away.[/quote]

No worries then [emote]:)[/emote] It'll be interesting to learn if your dropout rate is higher/lower/same, etc ... keep us posted!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2253&start=0#p15460
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Gluxe Scrollback
User: Tanga / DateTime: 2011-04-06 00:03:15

Filfre does this.  It is a Gluxe interpreter that runs on Windows, it was designed by a guy who wanted just that functionality:
<a class="postlink" href="http://maher.filfre.net/filfre/">http://maher.filfre.net/filfre/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2260&start=0#p15461
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Programmable robot?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-04-06 00:16:24

[quote="jwideman"]Interesting solution. I was thinking I would use "robot, blah" but this seems more elegant.[/quote]

You could do that, if you wanted to instead redirect from the persuasion rules (say). But this way would be less typing for the player.

[quote="jwideman"]Now, what about the other half of it: determining that the training is complete (has all the steps and in the right order), while allowing the task to be done anyway if the training is half-assed?[/quote]

Need more information there. I was assuming that you had a world model for the robot to interact with using its programming, and you were just going to test afterward whether the thing it was [i]supposed[/i] to be achieving had, in fact, been achieved. 

If that's not the case, then I guess you write some code to look at the program and decide whether it fits certain requirements you have -- but without knowing what the requirements are in more detail, I can't advise.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2260&start=0#p15462
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Programmable robot?
User: jwideman / DateTime: 2011-04-06 01:02:10

Hmmm... let's say the robot's task is to clean the room. It has to pick up the trash and put it to the garbage can. It has to dust corners and wipe down the walls, as well as mop the floor. Each of those sub-tasks has a cleaning item it has to pick up. If it does everything, the task is 100% complete. However, it could just pick up the trash or just run the dry mop over the floor, and the player will get some feedback that it completed the task, but not very well. So they can retrain it and add more to the task. This should also allow some screwups too - after mopping the floor, it picks up the trash which just gets the floor dirty again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2259&start=0#p15463
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Creating RIA Interpreter for TADS 3
User: weiju / DateTime: 2011-04-06 01:06:00

When I started working on a TADS3 VM, I initially thought "yeah cool, a Smalltalk-like VM for IF".

Having put quite a bit of work into the implementation, I have learned to appreciate what the Z-Machine and Glulx offer to a VM implementor: awesome, comprehensive technical documentation, simple elegant designs and reference implementations that are easy to understand. You are actually able to write a VM by reading the specifications alone, that's how good the specifications are.

The T3 documentation is huge - yet I would say it is impossible to write a VM by reading the specification alone, you do need to look at the reference implementation, which is not nearly as easy to understand as e.g. Glulxe. There are also some aspects of TADS3 which make it hard to simply reuse what your implementation language already offers, e.g. containers and regular expressions.  

TADS3 has a lot of stuff built-in so it has potentially less runtime overhead than Inform where a lot is implemented in Inform itself. Yet, by making it easier for VM implementors, you can actually see more people successfully implementing a Glulx VM or Z-Machine. People who work on IF VMs in their spare time (which in my wild guess is the majority) can only spend so much time on it. So while ZMPP implements quite a bit of T3, there's still quite a bit of way to go.

As for Java vs .NET, it's like we germans say "the choice between plague and cholera". Pick your favorite Evil Empire(TM), there are plenty to choose from these days. The folks who use pure Javascript are probably the luckiest in this respect.

ZMPP currently does use Swing as a frontend technology, but one of the reasons I have picked Scala was Lift, which has good Ajax and Comet integration. So this is ZMPP's RIA strategy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2260&start=0#p15464
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Programmable robot?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-04-06 02:05:12

In that case, yeah, I would definitely just code this as an actual simulation of a cleanable room, and let the robot actually interact with it. That way the player gets to see the step-by-step interaction the robot has with the environment and get full feedback on what goes wrong at each step.

So: 

-- model the room that needs to be cleaned and the cleaning tools required; 

-- write any custom cleaning commands you need using the instructions in the Advanced Actions chapter so that they can be performed by someone other than the player; make these commands have Carry Out rules that do whatever world state changes you need (e.g., when someone moves the trash, the floor becomes dirty again). Also add some responses if the player tries to do these cleaning actions himself. (A check rule to say "That's the robot's job!" or the like, if you want to make sure that the player delegates.)

-- if you need to do scoring/a puzzle solution based on this, check the world state every time the robot program ends and confirm that everything that needs to be clean is clean. If so, mark the puzzle complete; if not, add some comment to the player that the cleaning attempt could have gone better. (They will presumably already have seen *why* it went wrong by watching the robot.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2261&start=0#p15465
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Images in Inform7
User: Kellychouchou / DateTime: 2011-04-06 05:04:56

I know there's probably a thread for this already but im pressed for time as im making an interactive fiction game for my game design degree and need to crack on (and i might be freaking out about it). This is inform 7 btw. 

When my game opens up in any interpreter i want the 'cover art' to appear at the very beginning (much like Emily Short's Floatpoint and many other games etc). I've tried multiple different pieces of code (including the documentation ut inbuild into the platform and a few extensions including emily shorts location images) but there has always been problems with them so i was wondering if anyone's implimented this successfully and how?

Any comments are appreciated thanks [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2261&start=0#p15466
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Images in Inform7
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-04-06 07:22:42

[quote]but there has always been problems with them[/quote]
Please tell us more, otherwise there's no way to help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2261&start=0#p15467
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Images in Inform7
User: Kellychouchou / DateTime: 2011-04-06 08:30:18

Oh it's ok! I've fixed it now with some help but thankyou for trying to help [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2261&start=0#p15468
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Images in Inform7
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-04-06 08:32:14

I referred to this:

[url]http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc391.html[/url]

EDIT: Doh, too slow. Oh well, leaving this here for someone else with the same question.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2262&start=0#p15469
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform ATTACK release
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-04-06 09:41:19

I just released version 2 of Inform ATTACK (Advanced Turn-based TActical Combat Kit), the tactical combat extension for Inform 7. For details and download link, see [url=http://gamingphilosopher.blogspot.com/2011/04/attack-inform-attack-version-2-released.html]here[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2211&start=10#p15470
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 reference for kids
User: mor / DateTime: 2011-04-06 11:09:29

This is very interesting and I really like the layout.  Also the kids' reaction is interesting. I do not have much experience teaching kids of that age (or kids of any age ;) but to me this sounds like a nice success.  Around 25% seem to have fully grasped the idea of IF and Inform7 (they made up their own, non-trivial experiements) and probably most of the 50% in the 'middle group' could somehow benefit from the experience (if only in some obscure, meta-physical way, hehe). You can't expect more, I guess. So it doesn't seem that Inform7 was too difficult or complex, I'd say.

And if only one of the 5 enthusiastic kids ends up publishing stories on IFDB, then the IF community has benefited as well :-)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2263&start=0#p15471
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Loading blorb files for infocom games in Gargoyle windows?
User: Legend / DateTime: 2011-04-06 13:10:32

Not sure if this is in the right forum.

I'm having trouble getting the blorb files to work when playing some of the infocom games with graphics and sounds like lurking horror and beyond zork. 

Gargoyle doesn't seem to read the .dat files from the infocom compilation discs so I found the old infocom games in z3, z4, z6, etc format. I also found .blb files on the if-archive for the games with graphics and sounds but I can't get them to work. I put the in the corresponding folders like the z3 and blb for lurking horror both in the same folder, but I can't get the sound to play. 
Beyond zork won't play at all since the graphics won't load.

I am using the windows version of gargoyle. Sound and graphics are enabled. 

Anyone know how to get them to work?

I read that it is possible to insert the story file into the blb file. How would I go about doing that? Would it help? Is there anyway to open the blorb file and look at it or edit it?

Thanks for any help.

***edit: I guess it does play .dat files. I just had to configure it to. Still doesn't play with sound or graphics though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2263&start=0#p15472
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Loading blorb files for infocom games in Gargoyle window
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-04-06 14:26:28

Gargoyle doesn't offer (much) support for V6 games, and can't display graphics in Z-Machine games. You will need to use Windows Frotz for Beyond Zork.

For sound support, it should work if the files are in the same folder as the Lurking Horror game file and have names like SND3, SND18 etc. You can extract these from the [url=http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXinfocomXmediaXblorb.html]ifarchive blorbs[/url] with a tool like [url=http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXprogrammingXblorb.html]gblorb[/url].

You should also be able to reassemble the blorb to include the Lurking Horror story file. Extract the files using gblorb, then edit the SPEC file in a text editor. Add the first line so the complete file looks like this:

[code]
0	STORY0
3	SND3
4	SND4
6	SND6
7	SND7
8	SND8
9	SND9
10	SND10
11	SND11
12	SND12
13	SND13
15	SND15
16	SND16
17	SND17
18	SND18
[/code]

Now, rename your copy of the Lurking Horror data file to STORY0. Open gblorb and load the SPEC file you edited, then type create. Save the resulting file as lurking.zblorb. If you see errors, make sure all the files (including gblorb.ulx) are in the same folder.

I've only tested this as far as creating the unified blorb file. I'm not familiar with LH and don't know how to get it to play sounds.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2251&start=0#p15473
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with multiexcept lookahead
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-04-06 14:35:15

Here's a partial patch:

                         if (wn > num_words) {				     
                             #Ifdef DEBUG;
                             if (parser_trace >= 2)
                                 print " [Look-ahead aborted: prepositions missing]^";
                             #Endif;
 
	-			     jump LineFailed;
	+			     jump EmptyLine;
                         }

                         .....

                         } until (line_ttype-->pcount ~= PREPOSITION_TT);

	+				.EmptyLine;

                         ! put back the non-preposition we just read

                         wn--;


The remaining bug with this is objects with prepositions in their name. PUT PURSE OF GOLD ON TABLE will work; PUT PURSE will generate the correct question; but PUT PURSE OF GOLD will still fail.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2250&start=0#p15474
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: SpeedIF Jacket 4
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2011-04-06 14:47:19

[quote="Ghalev"]Woot. I'm in [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Me too.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2255&start=0#p15475
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 : Silence spell.
User: Selva / DateTime: 2011-04-06 14:55:57

If you could give me a basic example of how to do these it would be most helpful and I would greatly appreciate it..  My experience with this is... uneven.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2255&start=0#p15476
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 : Silence spell.
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-04-06 15:17:43

You can create a class that inherits from ActorState and implement the desired behavior there. Then, use that new class instead of ActorState for every case you want the new behavior. This is the standard (I'd even say intended) way of doing this in object oriented languages.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2263&start=0#p15477
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Loading blorb files for infocom games in Gargoyle window
User: Legend / DateTime: 2011-04-06 15:23:00

I gave it a try to edit the blb file with gblorb, I was able to extract the files from one of the blb file, but I keep getting errors when I try to load them. 

I got this error when trying to load the spec file.


> load
Loading the resources table from a specification file...
    Error: unable to open file, at line 1: 0 STORY0
    Error: unable to open file, at line 2: 3 SND3
    Error: unable to open file, at line 4: 4 SND4
    Error: unable to open file, at line 6: 5 SND5
    Error: unable to open file, at line 8: 6 SND6
    Error: unable to open file, at line 10: 7 SND7
    Error: unable to open file, at line 12: 8 SND8
    Error: unable to open file, at line 14: 9 SND9
    Error: unable to open file, at line 16: 10 SND10
    Error: unable to open file, at line 18: 11 SND11
    Error: unable to open file, at line 20: 12 SND12
    Error: unable to open file, at line 22: 13 SND13
    Error: unable to open file, at line 24: 14 SND14
    Error: unable to open file, at line 26: 15 SND15
    Error: unable to open file, at line 28: 16 SND16
    Error: unable to open file, at line 30: 17 SND17
No resources were loaded into the table.  There were errors in 16 entries.

I was trying this with sherlock holmes btw.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2263&start=0#p15479
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Loading blorb files for infocom games in Gargoyle window
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-04-06 15:40:54

You will get those errors if the files don't exist, or if gblorb.ulx is in a different folder.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2263&start=0#p15480
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Loading blorb files for infocom games in Gargoyle window
User: Legend / DateTime: 2011-04-06 15:44:35

So gblorb.ulx has to be in the exact same folder as the files I want to put together? I put all the files into another folder called sherlock which is in the gblorb folder.

The files are all there. I just extracted them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2215&start=10#p15481
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Facebook and Beta-Testers?
User: rae_bot / DateTime: 2011-04-06 15:45:35

My story is definitely snack-sized but I haven't the remotest idea how many people are actually going to stick around or provide useful feedback, especially since most of them aren't super-familiar with IF.  There's a lot of "I don't really understand what you did but I want to try it out anyway!"

[quote="Ghalev"]It'll be interesting to learn if your dropout rate is higher/lower/same, etc ... keep us posted![/quote]

Will do!  Almost all of my beta-testers are in college right now, and it's reached the crazy part of the semester for pretty much everyone, so I can't even get a good idea of who's actually testing until after the first week of May. >_< Demographics problems I hadn't even considered.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2262&start=0#p15482
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform ATTACK release
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-04-06 15:47:32

I will definitely check this out. I really like your blog, by the way. You've got me excited for some randomly-generated dungeon crawling.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=800&start=0#p15483
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The King of Shreds and Patches -- help
User: popebabylon / DateTime: 2011-04-06 17:14:51

Thank you for this tip.  I was stuck in the same place.  Damned annoying IMHO, and I was sure I'd tried something with the walking stick before and it hadn't worked (perhaps I only pushed instead of pulled or vice versa).

Thankfully you don't [b]need[/b] to be alone.  If that had been the case I would have been starting from a much earlier save.  Cheers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2251&start=0#p15484
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with multiexcept lookahead
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-04-06 17:29:56

This seems to take care of it:

                                 ! try to find another preposition word
                                 do {
                                     l = NextWord();
                                 } until ((wn >= num_words) ||
                                          (l && (l->#dict_par1) & 8 ~= 0));

                                 if (l && (l->#dict_par1) & 8) continue;
			+       if (wn >= num_words) jump EmptyLine;

                                 ! lookahead failed

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2251&start=0#p15485
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with multiexcept lookahead
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-06 18:31:45

Have you filed this as a bug report?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2255&start=0#p15486
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 : Silence spell.
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-04-06 18:42:55

I gave up on modifying the CommandActorAction - it's not really good for anything except a placeholder. Commands from the player to NPCs are transformed into NPC actions during execution, and beforeAction() isn't used for NPCs.

Consequently I don't think you can do what you want with the spell object alone. I worked through a variety of approaches and came up with this one.

[code]
modify Actor
    acceptCommand(issuingActor)
    {
        if (issuingActor != self && issuingActor.silenced())
        {
            reportFailure(&cantSpeakMsg);
            return nil;
        }
        return inherited(issuingActor);
    }
    silenced()
    {
        return (silenceSpell.location == self);
    }
;

canSpeak: PreCondition
    checkPreCondition(obj, allowImplicit)
    {
        if (gActor.silenced())
        {
            reportFailure(&cantSpeakMsg);
            exit;
        }
        return nil;
    }
;

modify ConvIAction
    preCond = [canSpeak]
;

modify TopicTAction
    preCond = [canSpeak]
;

modify YellAction
    preCond = [canSpeak]
;

modify playerActionMessages
    cantSpeakMsg = 'Magic prevents {you/him} from speaking. ';
;
[/code]

It creates a new precondition to check whether the actor is silenced, which depends in turn on whether the actor carries the silenceSpell object. Overriding acceptCommand() on Actor prevents the player from issuing commands while silenced.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2263&start=0#p15487
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Loading blorb files for infocom games in Gargoyle window
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-04-06 18:53:38

Yes, exactly the same folder (not a subfolder). For example if you follow the steps for Lurking Horror you would have a folder that looks like this:

[img]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2759298/gblorb_LH.PNG[/img]

For Sherlock it would be this:

[img]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2759298/gblorb_SH.PNG[/img]

Then you would just need to supply STORY0, and you could load the edited SPEC and build the file.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2263&start=0#p15488
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Loading blorb files for infocom games in Gargoyle window
User: Legend / DateTime: 2011-04-06 19:18:06

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. I did it exactly as you said with all files in the same folder, but no luck. 

I extracted the blb file
Then took the z5 file and renamed it story0
opened the spec file in notepad and added story0 to it

But then when I try to load the spec file to create the new blorb file, I get that same error.  [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2255&start=0#p15489
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 : Silence spell.
User: Selva / DateTime: 2011-04-06 19:57:42

@bcressey Thank you so much!!!  That works perfectly!!!  I have been pulling my hair out for a week trying to get this to work right.  Thank you!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2251&start=0#p15490
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with multiexcept lookahead
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-04-06 20:07:47

Yes, just did it now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2051&start=10#p15491
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inform7 vs QDK
User: RedTulip / DateTime: 2011-04-06 20:17:09

Sorry for interruping the discussion, but I personally like Quest since it is point-and-click.

Well, I think that is all I've gotta say...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2208&start=0#p15492
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Two (yes two) IF clients for the Kindle... Oh, and Hi =)
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2011-04-06 21:19:57

Would be great to see some IF games on Kindle -- but please, no jailbreaking!  The average person Kindle user is not going to want to be a Linux kernel hacker to get games on their Kindle.  I don't know of Dan has published his stats for his Choose Your Own Adventure games, but they are very good sellers on the Kindle.   I think a nice simple iFrotz like interface for Glulx or Z-code game files would be popular.  Heck, I'd gladly kick in towards a kickstarter project to do that.  Would be a great way to expand the market for IF.

--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2264&start=0#p15494
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Quest: Run Script on Description
User: RedTulip / DateTime: 2011-04-07 02:10:35

Is there a way to do something like this....

(I think this is a way to do it on Inform 7)
"The Shore is a room. The description is "Along the shore, you see the
tips of sharp rocks through the waves of the water. You note in your
head that you will [italic type]never[roman type] (unless if there are
any emergencies), ever swim on that water. [if key is in the
shore]Your eyes are blinded by a shine of an object.[end if] [if
amulet is in the shore]Lying on the sand is a familiar, emerald green
amulet.[end if]"

A key is a thing. It is in the shore. It is undescribed. The
description is "A rusty key with silver specks and [']House[']
engraved on it."

A amulet is an object. It is in the shore. It is undescribed. The
description is "You faintly remember that the amulet belongs to you,
but that's all you know."."

... On Quest? I'm trying to do it on the Run script option, but I
can't get it to work.

What I am trying to say is, I want "Lying on the sand is a familiar, emerald green
amulet." to appear only if the amulet is on the 'shore' room, and "Your eyes are blinded by a shine of an object." to appear only if the key is, also, on the shore room.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2208&start=0#p15495
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Two (yes two) IF clients for the Kindle... Oh, and Hi =)
User: Tanga / DateTime: 2011-04-07 07:39:22

Heh, jailbreaking isn't that hard.  Read the above.

Don't think it's going to be necessary at all soon though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=0#p15496
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2011-04-07 07:50:45

[b]Foxaroo project #1 - TARDIS Adrift[/b]

(Sounds like TADS Adrift, doesn't it?  [emote]:lol:[/emote] Pure co-incidence I assure you)

Hi all, I'm back from Canada and very keen to make progress on my 1st Inform 7 project, from which I hope to learn enough to then progress onto more sophisticated projects.  My progress to date has been impossibly slow, I cite lack of time and lack of talent so I'm throwing myself at your mercy, or else this will never materialise (pun intended).

I've chosen the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Who_classic_series]classic Doctor Who series[/url] for the theme.

The premise I've devised for my first project is that the player takes the role of a young time lord/lady not long out of the Gallifreyan Academy whose TARDIS suffers an in-flight disaster and makes planetfall in a completely inoperative state.  The player is tasked with scavenging the components to restore his/her TARDIS to nominal function (Similar to Infocom's [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy_%28video_game%29]The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams[/url] where the player as Arthur Dent scavenges for various tools).  This will not only involve searching, but also identifying ways to move the TARDIS by external means until the point where the player has re-enabled flight functionality.  For example, the player departs their starting planet by scooping up the TARDIS with a [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots_of_death]sandminer[/url] and loading it onto a modified maglev track to propel it up to escape velocity.

I chose this theme for flexibility; no requirement for a linear narrative, and the structure of locations and puzzles can be moved around if needed.  Interactive characters in the game will initially be very basic (a non-talking robot from the sandminer) until I learn how to establish rules for more sophisticated interactive characters.  The player also has 12 "lives" in the form of regenerations, although there will be some hazards that do not allow regeneration, such as drifting off into space.

Now the first difficulty confronting me is [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=12965#p12965]one I've already asked about[/url]: the early puzzle requiring the player to break open the fire extinguisher cabinet.  The player needs to use the sonic screwdriver to either cut (preferred) or bludgeon (alternative) the glass plate.  The purpose of the puzzle is to ensure that the player has located the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_screwdriver]sonic screwdriver[/url] before he/she can exit the TARDIS, since the object will be indispensable throughout much of the game.

Matt W devised a code that enables the player to accomplish the breaking of the glass by the player

[code]Instead of attacking the case glass:
   say "Crash!";
   now the case glass is shattered;
   now the small metal case is open.[/code]
However I need to refine the command so that only the below can be accepted.

[b]CUT GLASS WITH {SONIC} SCREWDRIVER

BREAK GLASS WITH {SONIC} SCREWDRIVER

SMASH GLASS WITH {SONIC} SCREWDRIVER[/b]

(Rule fails without visible possession of the sonic screwdriver, and if attempted in an unlit room)

The problem being that Inform7 already has "break" in the group of synonyms for attack, including (but not limited to) "smash", "hit", "fight", "torture", "wreck", "crack", "destroy", "murder", "kill", "punch" and "thump."  While I was searching the manual, I stumbled upon a paragraph somewhere that spoke of the need to tell Inform to forget or unlearn a verb so that it is no longer a synonym of something else.  That sounds like what I need to do, but I neglected to bookmark the place where I read the syntax. [emote]:cry:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2250&start=0#p15497
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: SpeedIF Jacket 4
User: Tanga / DateTime: 2011-04-07 08:08:48

Just sent in my blurbs.  Not sure if I got it right, but I tried to make them interesting.  I hope they're not too specific.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=0#p15498
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-04-07 08:58:01

[quote="thefoxaroo"][b]Foxaroo project #1 - TARDIS Adrift[/b]

(Sounds like TADS Adrift, doesn't it?  [emote]:lol:[/emote] Pure co-incidence I assure you)[/quote]
Yes, that's how I read it at first, and was surprised to find it an Inform post. [emote]:)[/emote] (Btw, there's a special section of the forum for Inform.)

[i]Regarding your actual question, I'm not qualified to answer that (I've not yet done anything in Inform 7, except reading posts here), but the phrase "Understand … as something new" comes to mind. I don't know if that's right, but someone else with better knowledge will no doubt post soon.[/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2264&start=0#p15499
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Quest: Run Script on Description
User: RedTulip / DateTime: 2011-04-07 09:02:12

Never mind, found out a way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=0#p15500
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-04-07 10:53:47

You don't need to remove the grammar for "break glass". What you need to do is define a new action called attacking it with. Here's a working example:
[code]
The Test Lab is a room. 

The window is fixed in place in the Lab. The window can be broken. The window is not broken. The printed name of the window is "[if broken]broken [end if]window".

Instead of attacking the window:
	say "With your bare hands?"

The hammer is in the Lab.

Attacking it with is an action applying to two visible things and requiring light. Understand "attack [something] with [something]", "break [something] with [something]", "smash [something] with [something]" as attacking it with.

Check attacking it with:
	say "That's not a useful action."
	
Instead of attacking the window with the hammer:
	if the player does not carry the hammer:
		try silently taking the hammer;
		if the player carries the hammer:
			say "(first picking up the hammer)[line break]";
	if the player carries the hammer:
		say "Crash!";
		now the window is broken.
		
Test me with "break window / break window with hammer / look".[/code]
Naturally, you'll need to refine this further.

A point you may want to ponder is this: Doctor Who is subject to copyright law. You can certainly write a game using Doctor Who -- nobody is going to come into your house and erase the files from your computer. But you won't be able to upload the game to the Interactive Fiction Archive, which means that players will have a hard time finding it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=0#p15501
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-04-07 12:31:59

[quote="Jim Aikin"]A point you may want to ponder is this: Doctor Who is subject to copyright law. You can certainly write a game using Doctor Who -- nobody is going to come into your house and erase the files from your computer. But you won't be able to upload the game to the Interactive Fiction Archive, which means that players will have a hard time finding it.[/quote]

Total aside here but there's tons of fanfic out there for Dr. Who and no one has had any trouble. Some franchises do give you trouble (Star Trek being one). But the Dr. Who fan fiction has been going strong for quite some time. The owners of the Dr. Who copyright have pretty much stuck to the idea that as long as you (1) aren't claiming the intellectual property as your own and (2) you're not making money from it, then you're fine. Whether the Interactive Fiction Archive will or won't upload it, I suppose, is a different issue. But it would be pretty silly to exclude it since, again, Dr. Who fan fiction of various types has been out there for a very long time with the explicit okay from the owners of the copyright with the above stated caveats. I also don't think the owners would treat interactive fiction as too much different from the written fanfic.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=0#p15502
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2011-04-07 15:59:53

[b]This is just going to be a student project.[/b]  Profit isn't on my mind for this piece, and I probably wont be uploading it anyway unless asked to.

[quote="Jim Aikin"]You don't need to remove the grammar for "break glass". What you need to do is define a new action called attacking it with.[/quote]That's what was suggested before, but I don't want the commands for "Break" and "Attack" to be interchangeable.  If at a later stage in the design I want the player to "Attack Dalek with rocket launcher" I don't want the player becoming confused by finding that they can successfully enter "[i]Break Dalek with rocket launcher.[/i]"

[quote="Trumgottist"]the phrase "Understand … as something new" comes to mind. I don't know if that's right, but someone else with better knowledge will no doubt post soon.[/quote]That may well have been what I was reading earlier.  I'll take another look through the chapters on new rules.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=0#p15503
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-04-07 17:11:03

I'd try something like this:

[code]Understand the command "break" as something new.

Breaking it with is an action applying to two things.
Understand "break [thing] with [thing]" as breaking it with.
Understand "cut [thing] with [thing]" as breaking it with.
Understand "smash [thing] with [thing]" as breaking it with.

Carry out breaking it with:  [default messages for using the wrong combinations of things]
	if the second noun is not the sonic screwdriver, say "You need to use [the sonic screwdriver] to break stuff.";
	else say "[The sonic screwdriver] fails to penetrate [the noun]."

Instead of breaking the glass with the sonic screwdriver:
	if in darkness:
		say "You can't see what you're doing.";
		stop the action;
	if the case glass is shattered:
		say "That's already broken.";
		stop the action;
	say "Crash!";
	now the case glass is shattered;
	now the small metal case is open.[/code]

That should give you break/cut/smash and leave "attack" unaffected.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=0#p15504
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-07 19:43:01

[quote="thefoxaroo"][quote="Jim Aikin"]You don't need to remove the grammar for "break glass". What you need to do is define a new action called attacking it with.[/quote]That's what was suggested before, but I don't want the commands for "Break" and "Attack" to be interchangeable.  If at a later stage in the design I want the player to "Attack Dalek with rocket launcher" I don't want the player becoming confused by finding that they can successfully enter "[i]Break Dalek with rocket launcher.[/i]"[/quote]

I wouldn't actually worry about this. Most players won't try "Break Dalek with rocket launcher," and if they do it won't be a problem if it results in them attacking the Dalek. The big problem is understanding too few synonyms, not too many.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1923&start=0#p15505
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Storybook
User: Tanga / DateTime: 2011-04-07 19:43:08

If you're still around [b]thank-you![/b]  I've been searching for something like this to keep my novel in order.  And it even runs in Ubuntu *joy*.  It also looks good for script writers.  Even more-so for IF writers.  Thanks again!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2267&start=0#p15506
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Need Your Help With A Game.
User: WickedBuddhi / DateTime: 2011-04-07 19:50:09

Several weeks ago, I was wandering around Goodwill and came across a game I had never seen for a device I never heard of. Only later after having done some searching on the internet did I learn it was for Sony's first attempt at creating an electronic book reader back in the late 80s and early-90s called the Sony Data Discman.

I've searched and searched and found nothing on this text-based adventure game for the Sony Data Discman. All I know is that the Data Discman released several reference and literature books, nothing is ever mentioned about a text-based game. I'm convinced no one has heard of it. I've thought about contacting the developers. 

[img]http://a7.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/196919_10150446434735198_645040197_17979265_3801080_n.jpg[/img]

[img]http://a3.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/198107_10150446435020198_645040197_17979278_7490105_n.jpg[/img]

The game is titled Adventure 101: Intro to Tourist, Traps, Dwarfs, and Chivalry. It was published in 1991 by Tsunami Media, Inc in conjunction with Sony Electronic Publishing.... I believe it is remake of Colossal Cave Adventure or Adventure

MobyGames - Tsunami Media, Inc.

Tsunami Media, Inc started off making adventure games then moving on to interactive movies... I can find nothing on Tsunami Media, Inc ever releasing an interactive e-book for the Sony Data Discman.


I'm very curious to know more if anyone has any information or point in the right direction, I'd appreciate it. To be honest, I am thinking of putting this up for sale-- I just don't know how rare or if it worth anything besides the $1.49 that it cost me.

Note: The Data Discman used 8cm CD-ROMs. It's capable of playing from a computer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2268&start=0#p15507
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Hidden doors and compass rose
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-04-08 01:26:07

I am using the compass rose on the status bar as demonstrated in Bronze...

And I have a hidden room.  And I cannot figure out how to hide it from the compass rose, and reveal it when the door is opened.  I have tried both Secret Doors by Andrew Owen and Hidden Items by Krister Fundin to hide the door.

I can get it to work (with a bit of editing) with Exit Lister by Eric Eve and using Hidden Items, but the rose always shows the room.  Secret Doors has been a bit tougher to work into this combo, but either would be okay if I could get them to work correctly with the compass rose.  But decided to use Hidden Items because at least I can get it to work consistently in Exit Lister.

I can get it to be hidden from both... but not revealed when door is found... at least in compass rose.  In the rose I can get it to be hidden or shown, but no way to change it as the status of the hidden door changes.  I can make the room "invisible" to the rose... but not bring it back... and I can make it always show, but not hide it when the door is hidden, and then show it when the door in no longer hidden.

Okay... to be fair I have to add, I have blended the compass rose routine with Exit Lister into a custom status bar extension.  I thought it would make things easier to have a personal "default status bar".  Here is how it stands now:

[spoiler][code]Seekers Status Bar by Seeker begins here.

[Based in part on Exit Lister by Eric Eve and the status bar from 'Bronze' by Emily Short]

Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short.

Section 1 - Apparent

A room has a text called destination name. The destination name of a room is usually "".

A door can be apparent or not apparent. A door is usually apparent.
A hidden door is not apparent.
A revealed door is apparent.
A room can be apparent or not apparent.  A room is usually apparent.

Section 2 - Dark Stuff

dark-exits-invisible is a truth state that varies. dark-exits-invisible is true.

The light-meter is a privately-named scenery thing. 

Definition: a room (called the target room) is light-filled: 
    if the target room is lighted, decide yes; 
    move the light-meter to the target room; 
    if the light-meter can see a lit thing, decide yes; 
    remove the light-meter from play; 
    decide no. 


Definition: a room (called target-destination) is darkness-occluded: 
    if dark-exits-invisible is false, decide no;
    if not in darkness, decide no;    
    decide on whether or not target-destination is not light-filled.


Chapter 3 - Exit Lister Tables

To say exit list:
  let exits count be 0;
  let farplace be location;   
  say "Exits: ";
  repeat with way running through directions
  begin;
    let farplace be the room way from the location;
    now direction-object is the room-or-door way from the location;
    if direction-object is apparent and farplace is not darkness-occluded
    begin;      
      increase the exits count by 1;      
      if farplace is unvisited and indicate-unvisited is show-unvisited,  say "[unvisited-mark][u-v way][end-unvisited-mark]";
      otherwise say "[way]";          
      say " ";
    end if;
  end repeat;
  if exits count is 0,
  say "[italic type][no-exits][roman type]".
 
To say no-exits: say "None".

Chapter 5 - Exit Lister Values

A listing_state is a kind of value. The listing_states are enabled and disabled.

Exit listing is a listing_state that varies. Exit Listing is enabled.

A visiting-mark is a kind of value. The visiting-marks are show-unvisited and dont-show-unvisited.

indicate-unvisited is a visiting-mark that varies.

indicate-unvisited is show-unvisited.

The direction-object is an object that varies.

Chapter 6 - Exit Lister Actions

Section 1 - ExitStarting and ExitStopping

ExitStarting is an action out of world.

ExitStopping is an action out of world.

Carry out ExitStopping (this is the standard Exit Stopping rule):
  now exit listing is disabled.
  

Report ExitStopping:
  clear only the status line;
  say "Exit listing is now off."


Understand "exits off" as ExitStopping.

Understand "exits on" as ExitStarting.

Carry out ExitStarting (this is the standard Exit Starting rule):
  now exit listing is enabled.

Report ExitStarting:
  say "Exit listing is now on.";
  
Section 2- ExitListing
  
ExitListing is an action out of world.

Understand "exits" as ExitListing.

Carry out ExitListing (this is the standard carry out exit listing rule):
  list the exits.

[ This is defined as a separate phrase so that it can be called from
  user code, e.g. to replace the standard "You can't go that way" message. ]  
  
To list the exits:
  let exits count be 0;
  let farplace be location;    
  repeat with way running through directions
  begin;
    let farplace be the room way from the location;
    now direction-object is the room-or-door way from the location;
    if the direction-object is apparent and farplace is not darkness-occluded, increase exits count by 1;
  end repeat;
  if exits count is 0
  begin;
    say "[no-obvious-exits]";
    rule fails;
  end if;
  let i be exits count;
  if exits count is 1, say "The only obvious exit is ";
  otherwise say "The obvious exits are ";
  repeat with way running through directions
  begin;
    let farplace be the room way from the location;   
    now direction-object is the room-or-door way from the location;
    if direction-object is apparent and farplace is not darkness-occluded
    begin;
        say "[way]";
        if farplace is visited, say " (to [destname farplace])";       
        decrease i by 1;
        if i is 0, say ".";
        if i is 1, say " and ";
        if i > 1, say ", ";       
    end if;   
  end repeat.

To say list the exits: list the exits. 
    
To say no-obvious-exits: say "There are no obvious exits."

Report ExitListing when listing explained is false (this is the explain exit listing rule):
  now listing explained is true;
  say "(Use EXITS ON to enable the status line exit lister and EXITS OFF to turn it
 off.)"
  
To say destname (place - a room):
  if the destination name of place is "", say "[the place]" in lower case;
  otherwise say "[destination name of place]".
 
listing explained is a truth state that varies.  
  
Chapter 7 - Exit Lister Indicating Unvisited

exit colouring is an action out of world.
understand "exit colour/color" as exit colouring.

exit-colour-num is a number that varies.
exit-colour-num is 1.
exit-symbol-num is a number that varies.


exit symboling is an action out of world.

Understand "exit symbol" as exit symboling.

exit-marker is a text that varies.


Carry out exit symboling (this is the standard exit symboling rule):
  increase exit-symbol-num by 1;
  if exit-symbol-num > the number of rows in the Table of Exit Symbols,  now exit-symbol-num is 1;
  choose row exit-symbol-num in the Table of Exit Symbols;
  now exit-marker is the exit-symbol entry.

Report exit symboling:
  say "Done."


Table of Exit Symbols
exit-symbol
""
"="
"-"
"*"
"+"


Section 7G (for Glulx Only)

exit-symbol-num is 1.
exit-marker is "".

Carry out exit colouring (this is the standard exit colouring rule):
   now indicate-unvisited is the visiting-mark after indicate-unvisited.

to say unvisited-mark:
  say "[exit-marker]".

to say end-unvisited-mark:  
  say "[exit-marker]".

to say u-v (way - a direction):
   let cap-way be indexed text;
   now cap-way is "[way]";
   say "[cap-way in upper case] ".


Section 7Z (for Z-machine only)


Carry out exit colouring (this is the standard exit colouring rule):
  increase exit-colour-num by 1;
  if exit-colour-num > 4  begin;
    now exit-colour-num is 0;
    now indicate-unvisited is dont-show-unvisited;
 otherwise;
   now indicate-unvisited is show-unvisited;
 end if.

Report exit colouring:
 say "Done."



to say unvisited-mark:
if exit-colour-num is 1 begin;
  turn the background red;
otherwise if exit-colour-num is 2;
  turn the background yellow;
otherwise if exit-colour-num is 3;
  turn the background blue;
otherwise;
  turn the background green;
end if;
say "[exit-marker]".

to say end-unvisited-mark:
  say "[exit-marker][default letters]".


exit-symbol-num is 1.
exit-marker is "".

to say u-v (way - a direction):
  say "[way]".
  
Table of Fancy Status
left    central    right 
" [if in darkness]Darkness[otherwise]Location: [location][end if]"    "Current Time: [time of day]"    "[top rose]" 
" "    ""    "[middle rose]" 
" Rooms seen : [number of rooms which are visited]/[number of rooms]"    "[exit list]"    "[bottom rose]" 

To say red reverse:
    turn the background red.
    
To say black reverse:
    turn the background black.
    
To say white reverse:
    turn the background white.

[Definition: a room is apparent: 
    [if it is the Dank Room and the trapdoor is scenery, no;]
    if it is lit, yes;
    [if it is the ultimate location of the candle, yes;]
    if in darkness, no;
    if it is apparent, yes;
    yes.]


To say top rose:
    let place be the room up from the location;
    if the place is a apparent room, say "[if the place is unvisited][red reverse][end if]U   [default letters]"; otherwise say "    "; 
    let place be the room northwest from the location;
    if place is a apparent room, say "[if the place is unvisited][red reverse][end if]NW[default letters]"; otherwise say "  ";
    let place be the room north from the location;
    if place is a apparent room, say "[if the place is unvisited][red reverse][end if] N [default letters]"; otherwise say "   ";
    let place be the room northeast from the location;
    if place is a apparent room, say "[if the place is unvisited][red reverse][end if]NE[default letters]"; otherwise say "  ".
    
To say middle rose:
    say "    ";
    let place be the room west from the location;
    if place is a apparent room, say "[if the place is unvisited][red reverse][end if]W [default letters]"; otherwise say "  ";
    say " . ";
    let place be the room east from the location;
    if place is a apparent room, say "[if the place is unvisited][red reverse][end if] E[default letters]"; otherwise say "  ".
    
To say bottom rose:
    let place be the room down from the location;
    if the place is a apparent room, say "[if the place is unvisited][red reverse][end if]D   [default letters]"; otherwise say "    ";
    let place be the room southwest from the location;
    if place is a apparent room, say "[if the place is unvisited][red reverse][end if]SW[default letters]"; otherwise say "  ";
    let place be the room south from the location;
    if place is a apparent room, say "[if the place is unvisited][red reverse][end if] S [default letters]"; otherwise say "   ";
    let place be the room southeast from the location;
    if place is a apparent room, say "[if the place is unvisited][red reverse][end if]SE[default letters]"; otherwise say "  ".

Rule for constructing the status line:
    fill status bar with Table of Fancy Status;
    say default letters;
    rule succeeds. 

Seekers Status Bar ends here.
[/code][/spoiler]

Any ideas?  I know it is silly, but I would like to use both the Exit Lister and compass rose on the status bar.  Different people like different ways of visualizing things.  I think it is a left brain/right brain type of thing.  Personally, I prefer the rose or I would just remove it.  So I want the hidden rooms hidden in it till they have been revealed...

I hope this makes sense... it is almost 2:30 am here... and this has been one of those "I will keep trying till I figure it out" type of problems.  I should have been in bed hours ago.   [emote];)[/emote]


Edit: to put code into a spoiler... I didn't realize how long it would look in the forum.

Second edit to add: I think it is because Exit Lister looks at the door, and the compass rose looks at the room.  And if I try to hide the room, I get a compile error that hidden can apply to things but not a room.  I hope that might help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2268&start=0#p15508
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hidden doors and compass rose
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-04-08 02:20:08

Okay.. solved my own problem.

I had tried so many combination's of things, I thought I had tried them all.  But I missed the key one....

Door 11 is a hidden door.  It is closed.

Hallway is a room.  Hallway is not apparent.

and then, when the proper item had been taken...

 After taking the pillow:
     reveal door 11;
     now the door 11 is open;
     now door 11 is apparent;
     now hallway is apparent;
     say "As you take the pillow, a secret door opens, revealing a secret passage!"

It was the "now hallway is apparent;" line.  I had tried it before, but not in the right combination with the others.

Sorry for giving you all a long winded read and then realizing I missed the obvious answer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=0#p15509
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-04-08 03:43:08

I agree with Matt. 
Inform's Standard Rules contains lot of synonyms for verbs that would in actual life be synonymous only in specific contexts (i.e. for some actions both verbs can be naturally used but for many actions only one of them would be a natural choice): e.g. since "carry" and "hold" are understood as "take", Inform let's you HOLD INVENTORY or CARRY INVENTORY, and if you're wearing something the command HOLD OFF will take it off; you can UNWRAP DOOR; you can PAY BANANA TO HUNGRY ORANGUTAN; you can COVER OFF a device; you can try to CLEAR WHEELBARROW TO OUT (meaning you try to push it outside); and if you can CUT THE GLASS WITH THE SONIC SCREWDRIVER, Inform will also let you PRUNE THE GLASS WITH SCREWDRIVER, SLICE THE GLASS WITH SCREWDRIVER and CHOP THE GLASS WITH SCREWDRIVER (since "slice", "prune" and "chop" are all understood as "cut").

It's probably not worth the drudgery to replace them all with more fine-grained actions that only accept a natural choice of words, and I'm not sure if it's even desirable. 

Normally, I suppose, this is not a problem, since few players would try those commands, other than for the fun of it (I can't remember ever trying to unwrap a door).
At least, I guess that's true for native speakers of English. Foreigners like me—and I'm sure there are lots of other non-Anglophones playing IF in English—may well make wilder guesses at a verb, and in that case these way off synonyms might conceivably even be of some weird kind of help.

This, of course, is not to say that there can't be reasons to fine-tune [i]certain [/i]synonyms [i]in a specific game[/i]. If there is any reason to think that BREAK DAREK would be a natural command for players to try in some other sense than that of attacking him, then you have a good reason for understanding "break" as something new. 
Or if you've implemented to different actions that can be performed to different effects on the same kind of things, e.g. if you want players to be able either to open or to unwrap a door as two distinct actions with distinct effects on the door; then, of course, the verbs mustn't remain synonymous.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=20#p15510
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: Tanga / DateTime: 2011-04-08 05:36:50

Just had an interesting Uni talk yesterday about storytelling in the games, and short film industry that I think is pretty relevant.  He was also a big believer in the 3 act story.  I'm thinking his ideas would be useful for would-be game makers who don't come from a writing background (and even some that do).  They have a (good) idea, and go about making a story out of it in a very scientific way - none of their crew are 'writers'  as such, so it would be a useful technique for people who don't come from a writing background.

Talk:
<a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25659759/Storytelling.mp3">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25659759/Storytelling.mp3</a>

The website for the company Hugh's with, with many of the videos being talked about:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.thepra.com.au/">http://www.thepra.com.au/</a>

PS - Andrew - they are also big fans of the 3-act story you mentioned.  It seems to be a film technique.

PPS - He quoted Blake Snyder a lot.  I just googled it - sure enough he's a screenwriter:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.suite101.com/content/save-the-cat-screenwriting-book-by-blake-snyder-saves-the-script-a246058">http://www.suite101.com/content/save-th ... pt-a246058</a>

[b]I have just been reading Inform 7 by Aaron A Reed.  Chapter 4 is highly recommended for getting the game / story balance right.  It has a lot of info on writing good descriptions that also achieve what the game needs[/b] eg a suspenseful description that also lets the player know they do (or don't) need to explore further.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2268&start=0#p15511
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hidden doors and compass rose
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-08 06:05:21

Just a note: When you're posting if you use a code tag (the "code" button above the text box) and then copy and paste your text from the IDE, your tab stops will show up. That's really helpful in making your code legible. 

(Advanced kludge: If you copy someone's code directly from the post, the tabs will convert to spaces, which means Inform won't read them; but if you hit "reply" and copy the code from their quoted post, you usually will preserve the tabs.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=0#p15512
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-08 06:26:22

Foxaroo, I see you're in Sydney like me. Are you a DWCA member? (like me.) They might be interested to hear about your game at some point. Preferably a point when you know the game's definitely gonna be completed [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=170#p15513
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-04-08 06:56:37

Yo,

Name: Baldur
Age: 29 (since quite a while)
Location: Hamburg, Germany
Profession: Project manager for a market research company
Interests: Traveling, diving, browser games, my blog.

IF: 
    Passive: Started on a C64 in the early 80s. Infocom, Magnetic Scrolls, Level 9. Still own most original Infocom boxes.
                Interest ceased when LucasArts caught me. Revival in the late 90s while I was programming for a MUD.
                Nowadays I don't play any more. Switched from graphic adventures to WoW to strategic browser games.
    Active:  Back on the C64 I programmed a lot. A decent but slow BASIC parser, and a not-so-decent but fast one in
                Assembler. Then, years later, programmed lots of quests for the MUD I was working for. Dropped the subject
                for more than 10 years. Now it's 2011, PS3 and casual games rule the world, and I start programming in Inform.
                LOL. I used to be skilled in programming, I'm now planning to write a book and need practice in writing, that's
                why I'm here. 

I registered coz I stumble across compiler warnings every minute, and sometimes I can't google a solution. So, if everything works out as intended, you'll find tons of "HELP!!!!!1 What is teh correct syntax?!?!? lol" posts from me in the near future. Hope there's somebody reading them. [emote];-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=180#p15514
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-04-08 07:27:56

I guess now that I'm finished demanding programming help, I should actually introduce myself, eh?  My name is Scott and I'm a 27-year-old video editor in Tallahassee, Florida.  I've dabbled in Inform here and there over the years, but never finished any projects.  I have a couple of friends who have participated in IF competitions over the last couple of years, and they persuaded me to come to the demo fair at PAX East this year, which rejuvenated my interest in the medium.  (If you were there, I was the long-haired guy wearing a shirt covered with tetrominoes.)  I'm thinking of attempting the IntroComp this year, since finishing an intro seems like a more realistic goal for me than finishing an entire game.  I'm hoping that having mentioned this here will make me feel obligated to actually follow through with it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=0#p15515
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2011-04-08 08:09:03

[quote="shammack"]I'd try something like this:

[code]Understand the command "break" as something new.

...
	now the small metal case is open.[/code]

That should give you break/cut/smash and leave "attack" unaffected.[/quote]
That is [b][i]**PERFECT!!!**[/i][/b]  I think you've covered every possible contingency, including the if-in-darkness rule.  I've incorporated it into my project exactly as you've written it, and it worked immediately without any tweaking.  I've tested the present/not present visible/not visible rules and they all worked as desired.  Thanks Shammack! [emote]:D[/emote]

@ Matt w and Felix.  I quote from the in-game commentary of the Valve software game [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal_%28video_game%29]Portal[/url].  "We try not to take the easy way out."  I recall some of the bugs in the commercial Infocom games, and some commands that worked despite peculiar grammar.  None off the top of my head, but if I dig Zork out I'm sure I'll remember.

[quote="severedhand"]Foxaroo, I see you're in Sydney like me. Are you a DWCA member? (like me.) They might be interested to hear about your game at some point. Preferably a point when you know the game's definitely gonna be completed. [emote]:)[/emote] [/quote]Long as they're not holding their breath for it [emote];)[/emote]

Like I mentioned above, I chose Dr Who as the theme for my 1st project due to the flexibility; go anywhere anytime in the universe and with few restrictions on the order of activities in the game.  Eg: If I find that a puzzle on Skaro isn't working out as planned I'll switch to Zeos, Zolfa-Thura or Terra-Omega instead.  Anything goes.  Even the rooms inside the TARDIS don't need to follow a pattern.  I've moved Boot Cupboard 12 to be in a hallway opposite the player's bedroom, whereas it started out aft of the console room.

For my 2nd project I aim to have a [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furry_fandom]furry[/url] theme, and my ultimate goal is an Inform7 game based on [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goon_Show]The Goon Show[/url] which will be extremely challenging due to the surrealism - I'll have to write custom code for nearly everything.

Aside: I used to be fairly active in the Doctor Who community when I was in high school and TAFE.  I met Dudley Simpson (always liked his music) at Novacon '91, at which were also Katy Manning and Mark Strickson.  In my (sadly-on-long-term-hiatus) [url=http://sauerpuss.anobviousdistraction.com/d/20070710.html]web comic[/url], my character's companion "GG1" is based on K9 (he was a tin dog, she's an iron horse; IE a robotic locomotive).  These days, most depressingly, I have little to no spare time, being stuck in an especially demanding job.  I'd very much like to continue my web comic, but Inform7 projects are something I might have more success with, as I can learn and design while on the go (even on the train to work) whereas my comic requires me to be at my drawing desk (not that I'm pretending to have any talent for drawing [emote]:cry:[/emote]).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=10#p15516
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-04-08 09:48:13

[quote="Jim Aikin"]A point you may want to ponder is this: Doctor Who is subject to copyright law. You can certainly write a game using Doctor Who -- nobody is going to come into your house and erase the files from your computer. But you won't be able to upload the game to the Interactive Fiction Archive, which means that players will have a hard time finding it.[/quote]
Maybe it SHOULD be called TADS ADRIFT!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2269&start=0#p15517
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I6] VerbSub with multiple objects
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-04-08 09:53:11

How can I create a verb sub with multiple objects? The input to parse is "rip page from pad" or the likes. So far I've only handed over a single noun (e.g. "* noun -> Rip;"), and I can't find any hints on how to handle multiple objects.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2270&start=0#p15518
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Graphics Disappeared
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-04-08 09:53:36

I have a bit of a problem -- I installed a jpg file to be shown at startup. All was fine until I deleted a few excess lines (none of which referred to the graphic) Now it is gone and I don't seem to have anyway of bringing it back! Am I the only one in this waste land?

BTW As relating to the general posts relating to the difficulties of using IF7 - I wrote my first program in about 1961 and Inform has the steepest learning curve of any I have used. And that includes languages such as ADA, COBOL and several machine level languages.

Any any suggestions will be appreciated.

Greg

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2268&start=0#p15519
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hidden doors and compass rose
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-04-08 09:58:43

I came across a curious problem involving hidden doors recently:

[code]Dark Passage is a room. Dim Corner is north of Dark Passage. Bright Entry is southeast of Dim Corner. Dingy Hairpin is southwest of Bright Entry and south of Dark Passage.

Bright Entry is mapped east of Dark Passage.[/code]

My intention was to implement a secret door between Dark Passage and Bright Entry using "instead of going east in Dark Passage," etc. But the "mapped east" declaration, intended to make my Index map prettier, actually created a connection. Is that supposed to happen?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2263&start=0#p15520
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Loading blorb files for infocom games in Gargoyle window
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-04-08 10:05:16

Well, if you're not able to create the blorb file, you can still run the game with the SND* resources in the same folder as the story file. It's not as compact but the functionality should work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2269&start=0#p15521
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] VerbSub with multiple objects
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-04-08 10:43:21

It's simply

[code]
Verb 'rip' * noun 'from' noun  -> Rip
[/code]

Although in this case you might want to just say 

[code]
Verb 'rip' = 'remove';
[/code]

...and put your code in the Remove action.

There are several examples of this in chapter 30, "How Verbs are Parsed".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=10#p15522
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-04-08 10:45:56

[quote]But you won't be able to upload the game to the Interactive Fiction Archive, which means that players will have a hard time finding it.[/quote]

Jim, where did you get this idea? It's not true. There are several fanfic games on the Archive, include a handful of Dr Who ones.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2269&start=0#p15523
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] VerbSub with multiple objects
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-04-08 11:13:59

[img]http://www.newflirt.de/media/uploads/gift_heart.png[/img]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2270&start=0#p15524
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Graphics Disappeared
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-04-08 11:21:03

Do you remember what the lines were on?  Do you still have a copy of the code you deleted?  If you set up a simple test game with the graphics code, does it display?  Are you able to add your own code until you see what goes away?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2268&start=0#p15525
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hidden doors and compass rose
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-08 12:20:25

[quote="capmikee"]I came across a curious problem involving hidden doors recently:

[code]Dark Passage is a room. Dim Corner is north of Dark Passage. Bright Entry is southeast of Dim Corner. Dingy Hairpin is southwest of Bright Entry and south of Dark Passage.

Bright Entry is mapped east of Dark Passage.[/code]

My intention was to implement a secret door between Dark Passage and Bright Entry using "instead of going east in Dark Passage," etc. But the "mapped east" declaration, intended to make my Index map prettier, actually created a connection. Is that supposed to happen?[/quote]

Yup: see [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rex28.html]Bee Chambers[/url]. It looks like the phrase you're looking for is "Index map with Bright Entry mapped east of Dark Passage"; see [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc400.html]here[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=10#p15526
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-04-08 12:29:41

[quote="thefoxaroo"]my ultimate goal is an Inform7 game based on The Goon Show[/quote]

And a worthy goal it is! I do look forward to that!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2268&start=0#p15527
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hidden doors and compass rose
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-04-08 13:48:16

Thanks. I knew I'd read about that, but I couldn't find the documentation when I was actually writing the source.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2272&start=0#p15528
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Pulling Something Free/Out - I7
User: LCamelot / DateTime: 2011-04-08 14:36:34

I want the commands "pull [something] free" and "pull [something] out" to work the same as if the player had typed "pull [something]".  I don't want to have to go through the loop of understanding "pull" as something new.  Is there another way?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2250&start=0#p15529
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: SpeedIF Jacket 4
User: Gerynar / DateTime: 2011-04-08 14:43:20

Sent my blurbs as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2272&start=0#p15530
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pulling Something Free/Out - I7
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-04-08 15:59:37

I may be misunderstanding your question, but does this work?

[code]Understand "pull [something] free" as pulling. Understand "pull [something] out" as pulling.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2263&start=0#p15531
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Loading blorb files for infocom games in Gargoyle window
User: Legend / DateTime: 2011-04-08 16:01:26

For the life of me, I can't get it to work. 

I'm using sherlock.dat version 26 which supports sound. 

Tried putting the sound files in the same folder, in a folder named "sound", putting the blb file in the same folder, and in a sound folder. No luck. 

Tried using frotz that came with gargoyle and tried windows frotz. 

Is there some sort of setting I'm missing? Maybe another interpretor? I'm using windows xp btw in case it matters.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2263&start=0#p15532
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Loading blorb files for infocom games in Gargoyle window
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-04-08 16:12:00

Can you post a transcript of a series of turns that would produce a sound in Sherlock?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2263&start=10#p15533
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Loading blorb files for infocom games in Gargoyle window
User: Legend / DateTime: 2011-04-08 16:52:05

from the first screen, 

"Knock on door" to enter the house

"UP" to go up stairs

"N" to go into Holmes' room

"get violin" to pick up the violin in the room

"Play violin" to play the violin which should trigger the first sound sample.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2272&start=0#p15534
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pulling Something Free/Out - I7
User: LCamelot / DateTime: 2011-04-08 17:13:32

I see what I was doing wrong.  I was typing "Understand [i]the command[/i] "pull [something] free/out" as pulling." and it wasn't accepting it.  Without "the command," it works fine.  Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2272&start=0#p15535
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pulling Something Free/Out - I7
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-04-08 17:23:59

Right, that's a common point of confusion. "Understand the command" is when you're adjusting simply the verb word used, not the entire grammar line. So if you wanted "yank" to be identical to "pull" in every grammar line that mentioned pull, you'd say:
[code]Understand the command "yank" as "pull".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2258&start=0#p15536
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2011 has begun!
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-04-08 17:27:28

It appears to be a really good year for the Spring Thing.  Apparently, the skipped competition last year and early announcement for this year has paid off!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2252&start=0#p15537
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 5 goes Beta
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-04-08 17:38:29

It looks really nice - visually, it actually reminds me of SUDS. Well, Andy Elliot's SUDS - I haven't really used the new one all that much.

Quick question, though. I noticed that the 5.xx runner can also run 4.xx games. Would you consider it to be adviseable to keep using a 4.xx runner for 4.xx games, the same way that you consider it adviseable to use a 3.xx runner for 3.xx games instead of updating them to 4.xx, or are you aiming for the 5.xx runner to fully support 4.xx games? And maybe 3.xx games as well?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2263&start=10#p15538
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Loading blorb files for infocom games in Gargoyle window
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-04-08 18:29:13

Seems like it doesn't like the AIFF format. I've repackaged [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2759298/Lurking.blorb]Lurking.blorb[/url] and [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2759298/Sherlock.blorb]Sherlock.blorb[/url] with Ogg conversions of the sound effects.

Unfortunately Gargoyle currently fails to identify external Ogg resources. I've fixed the bug but until the next release, extracting the SND files using gblorb won't help. You'll need to add the story file to the blorb instead.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2230&start=20#p15539
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beginning with Inform 6 in 2011...
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-04-08 18:39:07

[quote="bukayeva"]
With that understood, then I guess I can see some value in Inform 6 in 2011 if people have conceptual difficulties with Inform 7 but even with that, it still seems best to go with the momentum then, which is Inform 7. (Which is a pity to me because I [i]really[/i] like TADS 3, after having played around with it. Having looked at the VM documentation for TADS, I can see some fo the challenges to getting it working in a web browser via Javascript but not so much of a challenge, relatively speaking, via a technology like Silverlight.)[/quote]
Even one new TADS 3 user posting new games on the IFDB and entering competitions now and then would probably do much to revive that system's "momentum."  Hugo hasn't been developed in years, but it still has some degree of momentum due to the efforts of three or four dedicated users who keep supporting and documenting it.  I haven't looked into the TADS 3 community, but I bet there's a lot of momentum there that just isn't immediately visible on the surface of the IF community as a whole.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2250&start=0#p15540
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: SpeedIF Jacket 4
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-04-08 18:50:00

Okay, things are underway:  everybody should have received their very own set of quotes. If by some chance you haven't, it's probably my fault; apply a sharp kick to some portion of my anatomy and I'll try and rectify things.

Have fun, everyone; I'm looking forwards to your games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2264&start=0#p15541
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Quest: Run Script on Description
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-04-08 18:53:52

[quote="RedTulip"]Never mind, found out a way.[/quote]
I tried to get into Quest twice in my experience in IF.  I gave it up because I couldn't really figure out how to write conditions, or to launch scripts conditional based on game state (which of course is very important in any game).  So, you found out how to insert conditions into the text of a room description.  Without resorting to manual coding by editing the ASL file?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1923&start=0#p15542
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Storybook
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-04-08 19:04:23

I'm glad you like it, too!  The idea-tracking feature has really been helpful during the first round of implementation of my game in Hugo.  If I ever actually finish this project, Storybook will be one of the several factors that will have made it possible.  I couldn't have gotten as far as I already have without it. [emote]:-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2250&start=0#p15543
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: SpeedIF Jacket 4
User: Tanga / DateTime: 2011-04-08 20:22:40

Got mine.  Some are pretty tricky for a first time coder.  But they are all interesting (some inspired blurbs guys), and should keep me focused.

How many people are taking part?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2250&start=0#p15544
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: SpeedIF Jacket 4
User: Lucea / DateTime: 2011-04-08 20:29:25

I apologize in advance for the plot of my entry. YOUR BLURBS MADE ME DO IT.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2263&start=10#p15545
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Loading blorb files for infocom games in Gargoyle window
User: Legend / DateTime: 2011-04-08 22:38:49

So I would have to download the repackaged blorb sound files that you made and insert the story file the way you described earlier in the post but I need a different program other than gblorb? What program?

Should the story file keep the .dat extension? Would it be "story0.dat"?

When you say that you "fixed that bug", does that mean you made gargoyle?

Have you tried this out and gotten the sound to work then? Did you use Windows Frotz?

Thanks for all the help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2250&start=0#p15546
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: SpeedIF Jacket 4
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-04-08 22:51:11

If SpeedIF means anything, it means never having to say you're sorry.

(Except for [i]Final Attack of the Big Green Cliches[/i]. But I'm not sure that that even counts as a game.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1923&start=0#p15547
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Storybook
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-04-08 23:43:47

That's a great find! Thanks for the link!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2263&start=10#p15548
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Loading blorb files for infocom games in Gargoyle window
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-04-08 23:46:42

I did fix the bug in Gargoyle, and tested the sound effects - such as they are.

The Lurking Horror ones seem to be not much more than samples of white noise. (I wonder if Audacity was playing them correctly?) One was recognizable as a scream. The violin sound effect from Sherlock was identifiable as such. But I didn't get much out of the others; perhaps they would make sense in context.

It would be cool to see a fan project that offered a high quality sound pack with new source files.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2263&start=10#p15549
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Loading blorb files for infocom games in Gargoyle window
User: Legend / DateTime: 2011-04-09 01:38:00

would the same principle of adding the story file to the blb files found on the if-archive into a blorb/zblorb file work for the graphical z6 games like arthur or journey? 

Gargoyle uses frotz and frotz is supposed to run z6 files (at least that is the impression that I have), but I can't seem to get them to work with it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2273&start=0#p15550
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: restricting player movement for the first five minutes
User: Decovelet / DateTime: 2011-04-09 02:20:19

Hi folks, first let me say how impressed I am with all the contributions I've seen so far on this site. 

Two things strike me as almost unbelievable about this site so far...

1) Everyone seems to be polite and get along even when they disagree.

2) You really can ask a lazy, banal, brain-dead, and generally tired basic question without being skewered by several people.

I'm a member of a forum dedicated to South Carolina High School football and as you can imagine with a bunch of beer swilling
red-necks with their favorite teams competing against each other, it's usually one big monkeysh*t fight from week to week.

Intelligence, patience, and moderation are in short supply on that forum so I must say what a breath of fresh air it is to have found
this forum recently. 

I stumbled across I7 on google and thought it'd be fun to try with my 8 year old but I have to admit that I'm finding
a lot of I7 terribly cryptic. Not so much in it's logic but the actual syntax of the system. The code that I try to write that doesn't compile makes logical sense I think but I don't understand the exact syntax that I need to use (though I suspect that I'm close.) 

For instance when I tried to get the program to output the time I just used [time] and discover later that it had to be [time of day]. In some respects I do prefer the nuts and bolts approach of other languages because I get less errors that way but it does seem to take WAY more code in another language to do what a little bit of I7 code can do. The problem that I find is that I7 is less like talking to a computer and more like talking to my wife if you know what I mean....I know what I wanna say and there's a way to say it so it will be understood but I'll be damned if I can figure it out! Sometimes I think I should just take I7 on the Dr. Phil show. 

That's why I came to you guys. I'll just consider you guys marriage counselors if it's all the same to you.

But I digress...

Here's the (what I consider) insanely simple problem that I can't seem to solve and I've searched the documentation, several tutorials, and this forum with no luck yet...

I just want the player to lay on the bed and not be able to get up for the first five minutes.

I was able to restrict him to the bed finally with a statement like...
[code]Instead of doing anything other than looking, examining, or searching:
say "You're too tired to get out of bed."[/code]

I've since deleted the code so I'm just going from memory what I typed but it was something like that and it worked fine except that I don't know how to be able to let the player get up after the first five minutes.

I think I tried something like this...
[code]While time of day < 9:05 am:
Instead of doing anything other than looking, examining, or searching:
say "You're too tired to get out of bed."[/code]
The error is...
Problem. You wrote 'While time of day < 9:05 am'  : but the punctuation here ':' makes me think this should be a definition of a phrase and it doesn't begin as it should, with either 'To' (e.g. 'To flood the riverplain:'), 'Definition:', a name for a rule (e.g. 'This is the devilishly cunning rule:'), 'At' plus a time (e.g. 'At 11:12 PM:' or 'At the time when the clock chimes') or the name of a rulebook, possibly followed by some description of the action or value to apply to (e.g. 'Instead of taking something:' or 'Every turn:').

I imagine I could do something like
At 9:05 am:
(some statement that would undo my earlier statement about restricting the player to the bed) 
but again I just don't know what to say in the code.

Thanks for any help. The format at this forum alone is enough I think to keep me at it with I7 if for no other reason than to get a break from the knuckleheads on other forums. (Especially during the fall!)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2263&start=10#p15551
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Loading blorb files for infocom games in Gargoyle window
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-04-09 02:43:50

I've just quickly checked the sounds with Windows Frotz and it all still works for me, with both Lurking Horror and Sherlock. For Windows Frotz the Blorb-format sound files (from [url]http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXinfocomXmediaXblorb.html[/url]) need to be in the same directory as the Z-code file with the same name, e.g. "Sherlock.z5" and "Sherlock.blb".

The sounds I recall in Sherlock are a violin and horses hooves (try "blow whisle" then "wait" at the start of the game). Lurking Horror sounds are various chants and screams, not white noise.

[quote="bcressey"]It would be cool to see a fan project that offered a high quality sound pack with new source files.[/quote]This is not necessary: the AIFF sounds in the Blorb files were mechanically converted from the original Infocom sound files, which in turn were raw waveform data: the Blorb contains exactly the original Infocom sounds. If Gargoyle (or anything else) is playing those as white-noise, it would suggest a problem with the AIFF sound decoder somewhere. Fix the AIFF decoder! It would be good if Gargoyle were also fixed to look for a suitably named Blorb file if it is run on a Z-code file (so it would pick up "Sherlock.blb" if run on "Sherlock.z5").

Just to be sure I've checked the Z6 games under Windows Frotz with the Blorb graphics files from the same URL, and they still all seem fine, too. (To answer Legend's last post: The Z6 games won't work under Gargoyle: Gargoyle uses a screen model that isn't really compatible with the way the Z6 display works. Windows Frotz goes out of its way to support Z6, though that causes other annoying limitations in Windows Frotz's screen handling that Gargoyle doesn't suffer from. You pick an interpreter that best suits you ...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2273&start=0#p15552
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: restricting player movement for the first five minutes
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-04-09 02:46:29

You have to put the condition inside the instead rule:

[code]Instead of doing anything other than looking, examining, or searching when time of day is less than 9:05 AM:
	say "You're too tired to get out of bed."[/code]
That said it might be better to use some other approach: this rule assumes that a) the game starts at 9:00 AM and b) the game will end before the next day (otherwise the same restriction will apply again) and if either of those assumptions change you have a bug. You probably want to tell the player when they can move around again, so you could create a scene that gives a mechanism for both the restriction and announcing when it's lifted:

[code]Bedroom is a room. Too tired is a scene. Too tired begins when play begins. Too tired ends when time since too tired began is 5 minutes.

Instead of doing anything other than looking, examining, or searching when too tired is happening:
	say "You're too tired to get out of bed."

When too tired ends:
	say "Ok, you feel like you've rested enough."

Test me with "jump/jump/jump/jump/jump/jump".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2273&start=0#p15553
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: restricting player movement for the first five minutes
User: Decovelet / DateTime: 2011-04-09 03:03:51

Thanks so much. That definitely does the trick and the advice about using scenes makes sense. I'd have surely experience the bug the next day like you said. I've never seen those commands till now and didn't think to look in the "Scenes" section for the answer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2274&start=0#p15554
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I6] Adding grammar rules
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-04-09 05:09:55

On to my next newbie problem. The input to parse is "push paper under door". Paper and door are existing objects. Standard output is "You can't see any such thing." because (I assume) "under" is not recognized as an object. I tried to hold off the parser with [code]Extend 'push' first * 'under' -> MyPush;[/code], but nothing changed. How can I insert my own additions, but let the Push command work normal for any situation I don't care about?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2252&start=0#p15555
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 5 goes Beta
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-04-09 05:45:06

Thanks!  A friendly user interface is one of my goals.

Well. I am hoping that it won't be necessary to use v4 Runner at all. That being said, there are still a few things that don't quite work yet, but I am working on it. If there is anything specific that you notice that doesn't run as it should, please let me know and I'll prioritise it. As for v3, I will add support for that at a later date. After all, we wouldn't want to miss out on all those AIF games would we.... [emote];-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2270&start=0#p15556
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Graphics Disappeared
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-04-09 05:48:36

[quote="gravel"]Do you remember what the lines were on?  Do you still have a copy of the code you deleted?  If you set up a simple test game with the graphics code, does it display?  Are you able to add your own code until you see what goes away?[/quote]

All of the above. Fortunately, one thing I have learned over 50 years of programming is to always backup before making any significant changes. [emote]:roll:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2274&start=0#p15557
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Adding grammar rules
User: ChristianB / DateTime: 2011-04-09 07:26:39

You need to specify where the nouns go every time you define a grammar line.

Please try

[code]Extend 'push' first * noun 'under' noun -> MyPush;[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2274&start=0#p15558
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Adding grammar rules
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-04-09 08:23:10

Works! Thanks!!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1855&start=10#p15559
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Collaborative Interactive Fiction
User: slackman / DateTime: 2011-04-09 09:51:17

"The collaborators could form two groups, those interested in implementing the map/model world, and those interested in creating the story, puzzles, and NPCs."

I'm a total noob with Inform 7 so I think I'd be more of a drag than wind but this way of doing a colab sounds good to me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2270&start=0#p15560
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Graphics Disappeared
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-04-09 11:04:07

Great!  If you posted some/all of those things, then it might be clearer what's happening.  Unfortunately, "this doesn't work" is pretty hard to debug without a little more background.

(If you encase them in the code tags, then we can see your tabs and copy them to test.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2264&start=0#p15561
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Quest: Run Script on Description
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-04-09 11:21:06

It is straightforward to add an "if" to any script - there's an "Add If" button on the Script Editor toolbar.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2263&start=10#p15562
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Loading blorb files for infocom games in Gargoyle window
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-04-09 11:54:37

[quote="DavidK"]This is not necessary: the AIFF sounds in the Blorb files were mechanically converted from the original Infocom sound files, which in turn were raw waveform data: the Blorb contains exactly the original Infocom sounds. If Gargoyle (or anything else) is playing those as white-noise, it would suggest a problem with the AIFF sound decoder somewhere. Fix the AIFF decoder![/quote]

Audacity played the files as white noise. Every other sound program I tried - Windows Media Player, VLC - refused to do anything with the sounds at all. I've just attempted to use iTunes and afplay on OS X, and neither would play anything. I can accept that Audacity did a poor job of it but the rest are all nominally programs that support the format. That's a lot of decoders to fix!

If AIFF is as temperamental a format as that, it seems like a high quality Ogg conversion would be more generally useful.

There's at least one Gargoyle bug here - it can't play AIFF sounds that differ from SDL_mixer's preset sample rate of 44.1k. (It can handle Ogg / MP3, but does a relatively terrible job of resampling the files.) That is more of an upstream library issue: I will either need to replace SDL_mixer or find a way to patch SDL_sound with a quality resampling algorithm.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2263&start=10#p15563
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Loading blorb files for infocom games in Gargoyle window
User: cas / DateTime: 2011-04-09 13:19:26

[quote]
If AIFF is as temperamental a format as that, it seems like a high quality Ogg conversion would be more generally useful.
[/quote]
I agree (the AIFF files play fine for me on a number of players, but it's an annoying format at any rate, and Ogg Vorbis files should be smaller, to boot).

I tried your Vorbis blorbs, and the sound was very distorted; this is due to a bug in oggenc's AIFF reader (I'm almost certain that it treats the samples as unsigned when they should be signed).  If you have Sox, it does the conversion properly.  I'm apparently too dense to get perlBlorb working properly, or else I would have created blorbs with Sox-encoded files.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2208&start=0#p15564
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Two (yes two) IF clients for the Kindle... Oh, and Hi =)
User: vivdunstan / DateTime: 2011-04-09 15:25:34

I'm another interested in playing IF on my Kindle, but I have no wish to jailbreak, and won't. I can play IF easily enough on other things like my laptop, without going to that extreme.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2208&start=0#p15565
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Two (yes two) IF clients for the Kindle... Oh, and Hi =)
User: Tanga / DateTime: 2011-04-09 20:14:55

I recommend holding off on playing "The King of Shred's and Patches" then.  From what I've seen it's coming to the Kindle soon:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.filfre.net/2011/03/the-madness-spreads/">http://www.filfre.net/2011/03/the-madness-spreads/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=10#p15566
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2011-04-10 03:20:00

[quote="Felix"][quote="thefoxaroo"]my ultimate goal is an Inform7 game based on The Goon Show[/quote]And a worthy goal it is! I do look forward to that![/quote][b][i]Bloodnok: Oooh!  It's gonna be Hell in the CPU! [emote];)[/emote][/i][/b]

Let me just finish Projects #1 and #2 first... My learning experiences. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2275&start=0#p15567
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I6] Entering distinguishable rooms
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-04-10 07:28:29

Yet another problem. I got a room with two attached cabins. I defined the two cabins as rooms and as objects as well. Examining the cabins works fine, but when I enter one, I'm teleported into an object I think. Code is [code]Object ->	obj_cabin1 "Carl's and Naomi's cabin"
		with	name 'carls' 'naomis' 'cabin',
					description "From the outside you can't say much about Carl's and Naomi's cabin.",
					before [;
						Enter: 	
							print "You enter Carl's and Naomi's cabin.^^";
							move player to cabin1;
							rtrue;
						],
		has		static scenery proper enterable;
[/code]
Input to parse is "enter carls cabin". The print command is executed, but then I'm in a room or object called "The In carl's and Naomi's cabin". What have I done wrong? The room code is [code]Room			cabin1 "In Carl's and Naomi's cabin"
		with	description "Minimalistic, to use an euphemism. Well, the Fiona was not the most expensive yacht to
											rent, so you'll have to live with the six square metre cabins it offers. A bunk bed for
											Carl and Naomi is the single furniture of this dark and airless hole. But it's clean and
											features nice wooden paneling. A door leads out.",
					each_turn [;
							dummy=random(4);
									if (dummy==1) "The Fiona is heeling dangerously.";
									if (dummy==2) "The Fiona creaks and moans miserably.";
									rfalse;
							],
					out_to ship_lounge;
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2276&start=0#p15568
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Question about the must hold rules in Locksmith
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-04-10 07:40:26

The built-in extension Locksmith defines a pair of rules called 'the must hold the noun rule' and 'the must hold the second noun rule'.
However, I can't see that they belong to any rulebook, nor that they are triggered by any other rule in that extension.
It's plain what they do, but when are they meant to do it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2277&start=0#p15569
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I6] Scenery containers
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-04-10 08:56:22

A cupboard is scenery. How can I have an individual description, but standard output regarding its status and contents? Like,

This is my cupboard description.
The cupboard is closed.

or

This is my cupboard description.
Inside the cupboard is an object.

Do I have to program that myself, or is there library support? If there's no support, how do I print out all contents of the cupboard?

My problem is that the output is always "This is my cupboard description.", no matter if the cupboard is closed, open but empty or open and containing something.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2247&start=10#p15570
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Equating "verb x with y" and "verb x and y"?
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-04-10 09:29:43

Following up on this, I have encountered a sort of related problem: I have to write separate rules for "instead of combining x with y" and "instead of combining y with x".  I want the order of the nouns to be completely irrelevant.

The way I was thinking of dealing with this was to write all my "instead of combining..." rules with the nouns in a standard order (say, alphabetical), and then add a rule to sort the nouns into that order before attempting to combine them.  But I'm not sure where in the process that rule needs to go for it to happen before the nouns get passed to the "combining it with" rules, but after checking to make sure that both nouns are valid targets for combining.

I hope that explanation makes sense.  Can anyone point me in the right direction, or is there a better way of handling this?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2275&start=0#p15571
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Entering distinguishable rooms
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-04-10 11:08:15

In I6 you must use the PlayerTo() function to move the player around.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2247&start=10#p15572
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Equating "verb x with y" and "verb x and y"?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-04-10 11:21:53

Well, it could be either after all the checking-that-both-ingredients-are-valid, or before all of that. You can arrange either setup using instead rules, if you're careful.

However, this is easier if you break it down into multiple phases. Instead rules block out the whole action. Check/carry-out lets you write two phases of rules, but in this case I'd add more by creating a "virtual" action (an action with no grammar, so it can only be invoked by code).

I would set up something like this:

"instead of combining x with y": redirect non-chemical cases to other actions (e.g., the player might type "mix soup with stick", which should be sent off to the soup-stirring action rather than treated as a reaction)
"check combining x with y": eliminate completely unsuitable objects (things that are not reagents)
"carry out combining x with y": try reacting x with y, or try reacting y with x, depending on the canonical order

"check reacting x with y": eliminate specific combinations that the protagonist refuses to try
"carry out reacting x with y": stinks and bangs occur here

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2275&start=0#p15573
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Entering distinguishable rooms
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-04-10 12:03:06

...

Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2263&start=10#p15574
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Loading blorb files for infocom games in Gargoyle window
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-04-10 13:34:35

[quote="bcressey"]Every other sound program I tried - Windows Media Player, VLC - refused to do anything with the sounds at all.[/quote]I've just extracted the sounds with BlorbScan and the resulting AIFF files play fine in Windows Media Player for me. Not sure why it wouldn't work for you. As cas notes, the Blorb files you posted with Ogg format versions of the sounds in are definitely not right: would you remove those files for now?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2263&start=10#p15575
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Loading blorb files for infocom games in Gargoyle window
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-04-10 14:44:39

I've removed the files.

After extracting the sound resources with blorbscan, I was able to play them easily and they sound just fine. Looks like a bug in gblorb.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2264&start=0#p15576
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Quest: Run Script on Description
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-04-10 17:16:45

Oh, there's the "Add Condition" command in the Script drop-down menu on the toolbar (next to Edit).  Before, I tried expanding all the options in the list in the main window of the dialog box (Print, Game Control, Objects, etc.), going through every sub-option to try to find how to set conditions.  And now I see that the second "+" button is a shortcut for adding a condition.  Thank you. [emote]:)[/emote]

Someday I'd like to look into Quest more.  I like the fact that it uses both a GUI [i]and[/i] a script language that can be manually editted or written.  But I want to look into JACL and ALAN, and maybe ADRIFT again, too.  [emote]:roll:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2278&start=0#p15577
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Hint request -- Anchorhead
User: skomand / DateTime: 2011-04-10 18:02:28

I'm loving this game but I'm afraid I've stumbled into one of its unwinnable situations. Any help would be appreciated.

Spoilers....
[[[spoiler]I'm on Day 3. I've found the large door behind the wine rack. I've already crossed the rope bridge a few times, and now that I know how to open the door I want to return. Every time I try to cross the bridge, though, it breaks and I fall to my death. I'm worried there are only a limited number of times you can cross, and I've exceeded this number. If there's any way around this, please let me know.[/spoiler]]]

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2279&start=0#p15578
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: IF interpreter with embedded dictionary
User: joepereira / DateTime: 2011-04-10 18:44:02

HI. I'm new to the forum but I've been a fan of IF for over 25 years. I teach English as a foreign language and am starting to do some serious research into how IF can be used as a language learning tool. Iwas hoping someone could shed a light on the following questions- is there an interpreter that has a built in dictionary where words can be highlighted and its definition can be read - or even links to an online dictionary?. Can this even be supported by an interpreter, or would this need to be implemented in the game itself - has anybody tried doing this in Inform 7? I've searched high and low for the answers, but have not come up with any answers. Any help would be appreciated!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2279&start=0#p15579
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF interpreter with embedded dictionary
User: George / DateTime: 2011-04-10 19:33:36

I have a feeling that your best bet here is to hook something into the Inform browser interpreters Parchment/Quixe. There's another project, Vorple, that potentially could work for this too but that's not released yet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2280&start=0#p15580
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Square Brackets for objects in ask/tell
User: ChrisNf / DateTime: 2011-04-10 20:42:56

Hello,

I read about the use of square brackets for matching objects in the InformHandbook I found here
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.musicwords.net/if/InformHandbook.pdf">http://www.musicwords.net/if/InformHandbook.pdf</a>
(page 161)

I want to be able to ask about an object called the laser gun with "laser", "gun" and "laser gun".  I thought I could use "[laser gun]"

However, the short story I wrote below only matches the white glove.  If I switch the first two instead statements, it will only match the laser gun.  Basically, asking only works for the first statement, and then doesn't work for square bracket substitutions thereafter.  The final statement, using exact string matching, always works.

So, "ask Adam about glove" -> OK
"ask Adam about white glove" -> OK
"ask Adam about laser gun" -> There is no reply.

Thanks for any insight into what's going wrong here...

Chris

"Substitution in Ask" by Christopher

Plaza is a room.

A laser gun and white glove are in Plaza.

Adam is a man in plaza.
	
[this works]
Instead of asking Adam about "[white glove]":
	say "Glove test."
	
[this does not work]
Instead of asking Adam about "[laser gun]":
	say "Laser gun test."

[this works]
Instead of asking Adam about "exact text":
        say "Exact text test."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2280&start=0#p15581
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Square Brackets for objects in ask/tell
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2011-04-10 21:26:57

In my view this is primarily a documentation issue.  The Inform7 docs are not particularly clear about "topics" e.g. text that's defined in quotes and used in Ask or Tell About commands.   What I do is define a topic explicitly and then use that, e.g.

[code]Understand "war/germany/ww2/army/marines/officer/nazi/nazis" or "the war" or "the germans" or "the army" or "the marines" as "[war]".
Instead of asking Sgt Duffy about "[war]":
	say "'Johnny, I fought in the Army during the war.  So believe me, going out to Cabeza Plana to investigate a death is not a big deal to me.  Maybe as a team we can figure this out.'";
	now Sgt Duffy is Friendly.[/code]
This might be overkill, but you could write something like:
[code]Understand "lazer/gun" or "lazer gun" as "[lazer]".
Instead of asking Adam about "[lazer]",say "'Get your own darned lazer.'";[/code]
Note that I'm kind of a noob myself, but hopefully this points you in the right direction.  Also, Aaron Reed's book "Creating Interactive Fiction" is quite good at explaining all this stuff.
Good luck.
--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">http://www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2270&start=0#p15582
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Graphics Disappeared
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2011-04-10 21:30:41

Agree.  I have been an occasional programmer going back many years (Basic, COBOL, Fortran, Pascal, C++, Actor...) and Inform7 can be tricky.  I strongly recommend Aaron Reed's book "Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform7."   I think the hardest part is that there's no clear reference documentation.  Luckily, people are pretty friendly on the forums and there are some good articles and resources out there.
--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2261&start=0#p15583
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Images in Inform7
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2011-04-10 21:32:46

I think the confusion stems from the fact that you often have to ensure that the appropriate setting is enabled in the interpreter also.  By default, some interpreters show the graphic and some do not.  
--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2258&start=0#p15584
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2011 has begun!
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-04-10 21:35:27

100% Glulx! The age of Glulx has truly arrived.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=60#p15585
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: Tanga / DateTime: 2011-04-10 23:01:55

I've played IF on the Kindle and phone, and I think mobile platforms have the potential to open up IF to a new audience.  What Em is saying is important to take into consideration.  I think typing a noun (or on the phone touching the noun), and getting a list of applicable verbs would be an excellent solution for beginning players.  But not spoilery (for lack of a better word) as to how they could solve puzzles (for example you still have to choose what to cut with the knife, or jimmy with the crowbar, etc).  There is also the benefit of teaching the players to play traditional IF (once they've played one of these games through they will know what verbs to use, how to move around, how to examine things, how to think about puzzle solving).  Especially if you have the parser retype the command in the proper order (eg. they select 'sword,' 'kill,' and 'orc' but it appears as 'kill orc with sword' in the game).

I've recently played a game (not sure if I should mention which, as it's still in Beta-testing on the Kindle platform), but it has a drop down menu with "think about goals" (you can also type 'think') which is a useful addition to any long IF for beginning players (heck, even for experienced players).  It doesn't tell you how to achieve those goals, but just as a reminder (oh, yeah, I forgot about that dude, hmmm, I really should go and ask him about xxxx, kill him, ask for his daughter's hand in marriage, etc).

I think including a map of (at least most) places in the game would also be beneficial for games intended for mobile platforms (like the kindle, but also ipad/pod, android tablets, etc), as you are not going to be at a desk with paper and pen to hand for making maps, and tbh, even as an experienced IF player I can rarely be bothered (games with large environments that require mapping just don't get much playtime from me), expecting a new player to work out that they need to map, and making them want to, would be even harder.  Of course you can still have secret passageways, and doors, etc - as long as the writer doesn't go overboard the player should be able to remember where they are.

Just a few ways that IF could be made more accessible.  I think Em's idea of the drop down menu of verbs is a good one (though have no idea how hard it would be to code for this).  If it can be made to work it will definitely make games more accessible, and I don't really see how it will 'ruin' games.  Sure, being able to type bizarre stuff and get a response is awesome, but not necessary for the enjoyment of most games I've played.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2279&start=0#p15586
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF interpreter with embedded dictionary
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-04-11 01:44:43

If you use an online interpreter on Firefox you can install Answers extension ([url]https://addons.mozilla.org/fi/firefox/addon/answers/[/url]) with which you can alt-click on any word and get its definition from [url=http://answers.com]answers.com[/url].

I've looked into integrating the Answers plugin as a standard feature to Vorple, but unfortunately licensing issues might prevent this. Authors will be able to add it into individual games at least.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2247&start=10#p15587
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Equating "verb x with y" and "verb x and y"?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-04-11 09:28:16

Sometimes this phrase comes in handy:

[code]Definition: An object is involved if it is the noun or it is the second noun.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2280&start=0#p15588
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Square Brackets for objects in ask/tell
User: Genstein / DateTime: 2011-04-11 11:30:53

Yes, this is undocumented behavior which I've tripped over in the past.

If this is what I think it is, then what's happening is that when any (yours or the standard library's) code tries to match against "the topic understood", I7 places the result of any parsed object into "the noun", overwriting the previous value. This is problematic in conversation where "the noun" usually refers to the person you're talking to, not the object you're talking about.

It's possible to work around this by saving the value of "the noun" before "the topic understood" is processed, and if necessary restoring it before it's used later on. (Edit: See the post after this one for a reasonable workaround.)

By the by, I recently raised a request for further documentation on topics which covers this issue and others - feel free to vote it up (or not) as you see fit [emote]:)[/emote]
> [url=http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/1673835-thoroughly-document-topics-or-make-them-far-more-]Inform 7 / General / Thoroughly document topics, or make them far more intuitive[/url]

     -eg.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2280&start=0#p15589
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Square Brackets for objects in ask/tell
User: Genstein / DateTime: 2011-04-11 11:59:07

On closer inspection you're hitting more complex issues, so that workaround was poor; sorry.

Here's a better one:
[code]
To decide whether the subject is (x - a topic):	
	let the former-noun be the noun;
	if the topic understood matches x:
		now the noun is the former-noun;
		decide yes;
	otherwise:
		now the noun is the former-noun;
		decide no.
		
Instead of asking Adam about when the subject is "[white glove]":
	say "Glove test."

Instead of asking Adam about when subject is "[laser gun]":
	say "Laser gun test."

Instead of asking Adam about when the subject is "exact text":
	say "Exact text test."[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2276&start=0#p15590
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about the must hold rules in Locksmith
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-04-11 12:49:53

Good question. I'm curious now.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2281&start=0#p15591
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Seeking beta testers for Adrift game
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2011-04-11 12:58:37

This is a sequel to my earlier game “Camelot”
It is created using the new Adrift V.5 
You take the role of a, not so successful, private eye who gets transferred back to medieval England, to the court of Camelot. 
Merlin tells you that there are rumors that Queen Guinevere will be kidnapped and he wants you to protect her.
You will find a few references to the first game but none of them are essential to solving the game.

Interested? Give me a shout: Rosenloev.1 at gmail dot com

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2280&start=0#p15592
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Square Brackets for objects in ask/tell
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-11 13:29:17

[quote="Genstein"]On closer inspection you're hitting more complex issues, so that workaround was poor; sorry.

Here's a better one:
[code]
To decide whether the subject is (x - a topic):	
	let the former-noun be the noun;
	if the topic understood matches x:
		now the noun is the former-noun;
		decide yes;
	otherwise:
		now the noun is the former-noun;
		decide no.
		
Instead of asking Adam about when the subject is "[white glove]":
	say "Glove test."

Instead of asking Adam about when subject is "[laser gun]":
	say "Laser gun test."

Instead of asking Adam about when the subject is "exact text":
	say "Exact text test."[/code][/quote]

Why does the noun/former noun business work? I've tested that it doesn't work when you take it out, but I don't understand what it's actually doing.

UPDATE: Ah, I see, from your uservoice suggestion:

[quote]- Matching against a topic such as "[Mr Jones]" appears to cause the global variable "the noun" to be altered. This turns out to be quite handy, and is a very nice feature of topics, but is not explained anywhere that I could find, and it can be necessary to manually save and restore the noun around the matching in order to proceed. [/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2282&start=0#p15593
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Referring to an Object by a Part of its Name [I7]
User: LCamelot / DateTime: 2011-04-11 14:46:42

How can I tell a player that referring to a specific object by a part of it's name is not allowed?  An example of when I wouldn't want them to be able to do so:

[code]>Examine car.
You see nothing special about the car keys.[/code]

The annoying thing is that I think I saw how to do this somewhere recently, but I can't find it anywhere.  All help is greatly appreciated, as ever!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2282&start=0#p15594
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Referring to an Object by a Part of its Name [I7]
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-04-11 15:43:06

You can make the object privately-named and give the vocabulary explicitly, although unless you anticipate trouble with disambiguation when there's a car in the same location it's better not to remove vocabulary because some players will try to refer to them as "car" when there's no ambiguity.

[code]The car keys are a privately-named thing. Understand "car keys" and "keys" as the car keys.
The garage is a room. The car keys are in the garage.

Test me with "x keys/x car keys/x car".
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2283&start=0#p15595
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Digital: A Love Story
User: ViePostmodern / DateTime: 2011-04-11 15:59:34

I'm not entirely sure whether it really counts as Interactive Fiction or just a form of Visual Novel, but I stumbled across [url=http://www.scoutshonour.com/digital/]Digital: A Love Story[/url] a short while ago and it really impressed me. The game, produced in 2010, is an 80s hacker romance/mystery. The entire interface is very similar to an Amiga or early Apple computer and is played via connecting to, downloading messages from, and posting to different BBSs. I found the experience to be fairly accurate - down the the sound of a dial-up modem connecting, and having to manually enter the phone number to every site you connected to without recourse to copy/paste.

On the downside there is a certain lack of interactivity involved. When you reply to a message or post to a BBS, as a player you never even see what it is that your character writes - you just get the responses the next time you dial in. There are a few hacking/phreaking related puzzles (though you don't need to know anything about 80s cyberpunk culture to figure it out), but beyond that you're basically following a story told to you through the messages you receive. This is really the only sort of "exploration" the game provides. You're ALWAYS a guy sitting at a computer dialing out to other computers.

I'm interested in getting some other opinions on this. It's freely downloadable from the site I link to above, and there's a longer review of it [url=http://pomoconsumption.wordpress.com/2011/04/10/digital-a-love-story/]here[/url] if you need a bit more prodding before bothering to download it. I'm particularly interested in hearing opinions regarding whether or not it qualifies as Interactive Fiction.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2280&start=0#p15596
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Square Brackets for objects in ask/tell
User: ChrisNf / DateTime: 2011-04-11 16:22:14

This might be overkill, but you could write something like:
[code]Understand "lazer/gun" or "lazer gun" as "[lazer]".
Instead of asking Adam about "[lazer]",say "'Get your own darned lazer.'";[/code]

Thanks - this works, but it doesn't allow you to say "Ask Adam about the lazer gun".  

Chris

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2284&start=0#p15597
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: What do you look for in your IF?
User: ViePostmodern / DateTime: 2011-04-11 16:22:46

As a player, what kind of interactive fiction do you enjoy? I don't really have a categorical taxonomy in mind here, but I've noticed that high minded "artsy" IF gets most of the press and attention. Is that all that people are looking for?

If not, what ARE you looking for? Any particular genres? Styles? Simulationist feats of puzzle engineering? Dramatic interactions focusing on personal angst? Pornographic romps? Rip-roaring adventure yarns like likes of which will echo through the halls of valhalla? Heavy and terrifying atmospheric horror? Slice of life vignettes about unjamming the copy machine without getting ink on your tie before the Big Meeting? Pick Up The Phonebooth and Die?

All of the above, while juggling flaming chainsaws?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2280&start=0#p15598
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Square Brackets for objects in ask/tell
User: ChrisNf / DateTime: 2011-04-11 16:25:18

[quote="matt w"][quote="Genstein"]On closer inspection you're hitting more complex issues, so that workaround was poor; sorry.

Here's a better one:
[code]
To decide whether the subject is (x - a topic):	
	let the former-noun be the noun;
	if the topic understood matches x:
		now the noun is the former-noun;
		decide yes;
	otherwise:
		now the noun is the former-noun;
		decide no.
		
Instead of asking Adam about when the subject is "[white glove]":
	say "Glove test."

Instead of asking Adam about when subject is "[laser gun]":
	say "Laser gun test."

Instead of asking Adam about when the subject is "exact text":
	say "Exact text test."[/code][/quote][/quote]


This works but I also don't understand why.  I'm still not sure why in my original version it appears to stop processing after the first ask statement with square brackets.  If it doesn't match on that, why not continue to try to match on the next one?  It appears that the first statement with square brackets is consuming the input somehow. 

I'll just use this workaround for now.  

Thanks again everyone!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2283&start=0#p15599
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Digital: A Love Story
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-04-11 16:46:15

You may enjoy reading Em Short's Gamasutra article on it: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/28629/Analysis_Examining_Digital_A_Love_Story.php">http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/2862 ... _Story.php</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2284&start=0#p15600
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you look for in your IF?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-04-11 17:00:44

The primary thing that will get me to actually play a game, walkthroughless, is the assurance that it's reasonably short.  Things that get me interested in finding out more about a game -- probably in the form of reading more reviews and taking a loose walkthrough or reading a ClubFloyd transcript -- are mostly about creative uses of the medium.  That means that, yes, a lot of the games I'm interested in tend towards "art" games*, but it also includes a lot of Plotkin and Cadre classics and, for example, [i]Rover's Day Out[/i].  Genuinely good writing and unique worldbuilding (games by Emily Short and Pacian, for example) get my attention, too.  I don't exactly care about genre, but as with movies, I'm turned off by horror and perfunctory/cliché romance (which is not nearly as much a problem in IF as in movies) and generally prefer something mediated by humor unless there's compelling reason for it not to be.

*I've said it before and I'll say it again: [i]The Gostak[/i] is a perfect thing.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2280&start=0#p15601
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Square Brackets for objects in ask/tell
User: Genstein / DateTime: 2011-04-11 17:04:22

What's happening is when you write something like 'Instead of asking Adam about "[white glove]"', Inform 7 is quietly changing which object is "the noun" half way through handling the asking about action, which causes some apparently strange behaviour.

With the rules as originally written, Inform 7 causes the game to run code which you could imagine looked roughly like this:

[code]Read the player's command;
Work out what verb, noun and second noun are used;
if the verb is "ask":
    ...
[1] if the noun is Adam and the topic understood matches "[white glove]" [This CHANGES "the noun" to white glove if the noun is Adam]
            say "Glove test."
[2] otherwise if the noun is Adam and the topic understood matches "[laser gun]" [This CHANGES "the noun" to laser gun if the noun is Adam]
            say "Laser gun test."
    otherwise if the noun is Adam and the topic understood matches "exact text":
            say "Exact text test."
    otherwise:
            say "There is no reply."
    ...[/code]

So when Inform hits point [1], the noun is Adam. But the phrase "the topic understood matches..." sneakily changes the noun to white glove. So the test at point [2] will always fail because the noun isn't Adam any more.

The workaround works by ensuring that we remember what the noun was before we try any "the topic understood matches..." business, and put the noun back afterwards so all is well.

Arguably it'd be nicer if matching topics against objects set something like "the topic noun" rather than "the noun"; I'm not even sure that its changing "the noun" is intentional. It may just a side effect of the way parsing works, or it may be a bug.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2283&start=0#p15602
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Digital: A Love Story
User: ViePostmodern / DateTime: 2011-04-11 17:12:29

Oh, neat! But what do you think about it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2280&start=0#p15603
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Square Brackets for objects in ask/tell
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-11 19:13:48

I would file it as a bug report (and if it's intentional, they can let you know).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2282&start=0#p15604
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Referring to an Object by a Part of its Name [I7]
User: LCamelot / DateTime: 2011-04-11 20:35:35

Thanks for the tips!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2280&start=0#p15605
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Square Brackets for objects in ask/tell
User: Genstein / DateTime: 2011-04-11 20:46:58

I like your thinking. Filed here: [url]http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=642[/url]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2285&start=0#p15606
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 6: Maximum Boolean Amount for Objects
User: DrkStarr / DateTime: 2011-04-11 22:31:26

Does anybody know what the maximum amount of boolean variables can be for an object?  I like boolean variables vs an array because I can give them meaningful names, and I'm wondering how many I can get away with within one object.

Thanks for the help - D

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2285&start=0#p15607
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Maximum Boolean Amount for Objects
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-04-11 23:30:15

Are you asking about object properties, like "obj.foo = 1", or object attributes, like "give obj fooattr"?

In Z-code you can use a whole lot of object properties -- about 16000 is the limit. Attributes are limited to 48 (but the library uses many of those already).

Glulx goes somewhat higher.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2285&start=0#p15608
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Maximum Boolean Amount for Objects
User: DrkStarr / DateTime: 2011-04-12 00:05:26

[quote="zarf"]Are you asking about object properties, like "obj.foo = 1", or object attributes, like "give obj fooattr"?[/quote]

I'm trying to do something like this with my own version of topic variables:

aunt.tpcmurder = true;

In this object:

Object  aunt "Mildred"
   with name 'mildred',
   description [;
       ....
   ],
   tpcaunt false,
   tpcuncle false,
   tpcmurder false,
   has animate female proper;

At around 20 the list starts to look long, and I've already funneled off my conversation topics into another object.  If 16,000 is the limit, which is incredible, should this work in all interpreters like Frotz and Parchment?

Thanks - D

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2286&start=0#p15610
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Display for the first time?
User: RedTulip / DateTime: 2011-04-12 00:49:21

Is there a way to display for the first time in the middle of quoted text? Maybe like this:

The beach is a room. The description is "[if the player goes to the beach for the first time]You remember running around with your parents here before...[end if] The beach is known for it's white sand.".

That doesn't work, unfortunately.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2285&start=0#p15611
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Maximum Boolean Amount for Objects
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-04-12 00:57:07

That will work in all interpreters. 

(The limit is 16000 property names across *all* objects. But it looks like you're sharing the same set of property names across many objects, so that's okay.)

These properties do use up Z-machine memory, which is a separate limit. However, it doesn't look like you're really using a lot of memory for this purpose. If you defined twenty properties on *every object in the game*, it might start to be a problem.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2284&start=0#p15612
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you look for in your IF?
User: Tanga / DateTime: 2011-04-12 01:56:39

Hmmm, not sure what you mean by 'artsy' IF taking over - but then I haven't really been looking into the competition stuff, just recommendations on the IF database.  I recommend having a look at the lists, and 'I've played this' list and 'I want to play this' list if you want to get a real look at the trend of what people are playing.

---

What I look for these days is pretty much the same as tove - except for a lack of interest in (at least what I think of as) artsy IF.  I also have an aversion to horror - to my detriment I think.  I really would love to play Nevermore (<3 Poe), but get too creeped out.

I like short IF too, mostly because I don't really have time to play IF at all (though I do anyway =p).  The right game will get me in though.  I replayed Arthur again recently - lovely - though some of those old games make me realise how spoilt we are these days.  I can't stand Scott Adams games because of the parser wrestling they require (and lack short-cuts like x for examine).  Bad writing is a turn-off too, and lack of detail.

Turn-ons are writing that reveals the player character slowly, through the way they describe things, etc.  I really enjoyed playing Sand-dancer recently.

PS - I also love Em Short's games.  I think it's the world-building, and the atmosphere.  Plus I like the spec-fic genre (a LOT - just ask my Prose Writing class at Uni how much of a fangirl I am).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2286&start=0#p15613
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Display for the first time?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-04-12 02:01:30

Inform keeps track of what rooms have been visited, so if you want some text to be printed only if a room has not been visited before you can use: 
[code]The beach is a room. The description is "[if visited]You remember running around with your parents here before... [end if]The beach is known for it's white sand."[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2286&start=0#p15614
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Display for the first time?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-04-12 02:05:11

[quote="Felix"]Inform keeps track of what rooms have been visited, so if you want some text to be printed only if a room has not been visited before you can use: 
[code]The beach is a room. The description is "[if visited]You remember running around with your parents here before... [end if]The beach is known for it's white sand."[/code][/quote]

Also, there's first time - only, which only displays the first time the text in question is printed:

[code]The beach is a room. The description is "[first time]You remember running around with your parents here before... [only]The beach is known for its white sand."[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1144&start=60#p15615
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Emily Short -- Down with Parsers!
User: Tanga / DateTime: 2011-04-12 02:12:35

[quote="RealNC"][quote="Pacian"][quote="emshort"]I've talked to many, MANY people in the last couple years who said some variation of "I love the idea of interactive fiction, but I can't stand the parser."[/quote]
I discussed Walker & Silhouette with some indie game devs while I was working on it, and this was what pretty much each of them said - some of them also referred to having tried to write IF but getting bogged down handling actions they didn't care about.[/quote]
I only recently (well, today actually) played "Ecdysis", a 2007 game by Peter Nepstad:

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=aqtol7ejlzadgnsz">http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=aqtol7ejlzadgnsz</a>

I wasn't aware of the way it presents itself. It's almost identical to Walker & Silhouette, but you don't click on keywords like in W&L, but on words [i]and[/i] sentences. Clicking them executes actual meaningful commands. For example:

"Your side of the bed is [color=#0000FF]soaked with sweat[/color]."

Clicking on "soaked with sweat" results in an automatic FEEL THE BED. I like this approach. It takes absolutely nothing away from traditional IF. Yet new players don't even have to understand the parser but can still experience it and, most importantly perhaps, learn about it. If they see the kind of commands generated by simple clicking, they soon figure out how to step in themselves from time to time if they feel like it.

In my opinion, it's a very smart way to offer a full-blown parser yet unobtrusive ease of use at the same time.[/quote]

Oops, beaten to the punch.  Said better too.  Such a good way to teach newbies how to play.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2283&start=0#p15616
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Digital: A Love Story
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-04-12 03:11:45

I really like Digital.  The lack of interaction (really I suppose we really mean choice or branching) doesn't bother me.  

There's all sorts of ways to tell stories, and I don't believe that we always have to make maximum use of interaction.  I'd take a strong story that I can't change over a weak story that responds to my choices any day. Not because linearity is superior to interaction (or vice versa) but because what matters is whether the story has impact the way it's told. This isn't true for every story or game, but I think Digital would only be a weaker story if different things could happen.

[quote="ViePostmodern"]You're ALWAYS a guy sitting at a computer dialing out to other computers.[/quote]
I think the author might question whether [i]one[/i] of the words in that sentence is always the case.  [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2287&start=0#p15617
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Electrical Appliances - How to make them usuable easily
User: Kellychouchou / DateTime: 2011-04-12 05:51:00

Hi guys, it's me again probably with a silly question but yet again any help is really appreciated [emote]:)[/emote]

I'm trying to create a few rooms which desire electrical appliances to be used as part of the puzzles (or at least, just to make some of the rooms appear more realistic) and i was just wondering if anyone had any suggestions on how i could make them interacable? as in the player could easily just type in "use cooker" or "use shower" and be able to use it without reservation. I've tried creating new commands but inform7 keeps screaming me saying i don't have the right verb. I've used instead and before rules but it's sort of diverting the players attention away from the object rather than directly to it

So yes, thankyou for anything you have to suggest code wise [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2288&start=0#p15618
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Help with Timing and Scenes Please!
User: Jennifer8 / DateTime: 2011-04-12 06:13:00

I am writing an IF for a class. Our game takes place during WWII and focuses on the dropping of the atomic bomb. We are having the pre-bomb setting in a schoolhouse, then scene II will be after the bomb. I'm having trouble with the timing of the bomb dropping, then moving onto a new scene post bomb. Here is a sample of what we have for this section: 


At 8:15 AM: say "A flash of light and a loud boom comes."

Section II

Post Bomb School is a scene. Post Bomb School begins at 8:15 AM. When Post Bomb School begins:
	move the player to the Collapsed Schoolhouse;
	say "Something has happened. Everything is destroyed. You are confused and afraid."

The Collapsed Schoolhouse is a room. 

_________________
This is what inform tells me: In Section II:
Problem. You wrote 'Post Bomb School begins at 8:15 AM'  : but I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with, so I am ignoring this sentence altogether.

Any suggestions? Anything would be very helpful! Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2289&start=0#p15619
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Webified Quixe, snapshop
User: Huck Hooks / DateTime: 2011-04-12 06:39:40

<a class="postlink" href="http://daqgit.appspot.com/">http://daqgit.appspot.com/</a>
Enter the Keyboard explorer [emote]:D[/emote]

Added some stuff to quixe to interact better with the external web. I am not sure how i feel about it, thought i throw it into this forum and run away (looking back sometimes).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2283&start=0#p15620
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Digital: A Love Story
User: ViePostmodern / DateTime: 2011-04-12 06:49:15

I meant "guy" in the generic sense of "individual". Curse my subconscious gender bias!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2283&start=0#p15621
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Digital: A Love Story
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-04-12 07:10:52

I enjoyed it, too, although the design isn't perfect.  There were quite a few bits where I was just flailing about, looking for the next trigger, and that really weakened the story for me.  I loved the random messages from others - the flavor text, so to speak.  I'd definitely recommend it to others.

The protagonist was interesting in that s/he (I don't remember an explicit gender, but he did seem very male to me) is both a nameless, faceless adventure person, and a personality - just one we don't get to see much of, because we can't read his emails and don't get commentary on what he's thinking.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2288&start=0#p15622
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with Timing and Scenes Please!
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-04-12 07:13:11

[quote="Jennifer8"]Problem. You wrote 'Post Bomb School begins at 8:15 AM'  : but I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with, so I am ignoring this sentence altogether.[/quote]
Untested, but shouldn't that be something like "Post Bomb School begins when the time of day is 8:15 AM."? In the chapter on scenes, scenes are always started with "begins when"; and in the section on times (section 9.6 of the manual), we always call "time of day", not just a time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2288&start=0#p15623
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with Timing and Scenes Please!
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-04-12 07:14:50

The phrasing you're looking for is "Post Bomb School begins when the time of day is 8:15 AM."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2247&start=10#p15624
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Equating "verb x with y" and "verb x and y"?
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-04-12 07:25:43

Thanks.  I didn't realize you could "nest" actions like that.  That should come in handy (along with that definition tip).

So am I right in thinking that:
- a "before" rule will execute before the check phase
- an "instead" rule will execute after the check phase succeeds, but before the carry out phase (and will prevent the carry out phase from executing unless "continue the action" is used)
- an "after" rule will execute after the carry out phase succeeds, but before the report phase?

If so, is it possible to have something execute only after successful completion of the report phase?

Sorry for so many questions. I have a really hard time finding this sort of specific info in the documentation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2287&start=0#p15625
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Electrical Appliances - How to make them usuable easily
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-12 07:48:55

You can try something along these lines:

[code]Studio Apartment is a room. The cooker is a device in Studio Apartment. The shower is an enterable container in Studio Apartment. The hoojab is in Studio Apartment. 

Using is an action applying to one thing. Understand "use [something]" as using. 
Instead of using: say "You'll have to be more specific about how you want to use [the noun]."
Instead of using the cooker: try switching on the cooker.
Instead of using the shower: try entering the shower.[/code]

And so on for other things that you can use. You'll probably want to implement switching on the devices so that they'll do something.

What was the code you were trying that didn't work? (One trap I fell into: you can't write "switching the cooker on," it has to be "switching on the cooker.")

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2283&start=0#p15626
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Digital: A Love Story
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-12 07:54:51

I like it quite a lot. It tells its story very well, and the incidental details (like "Ni hao, bitches!") are great. The music helps set the atmosphere too. And before I ramble on any further, the author seems to have [url=http://jayisgames.com/archives/2011/04/dont_take_it_personally_babe_it_just_aint_your_story.php#comment-panels]just released another visual novel[/url]; hooray!

I'd say there's definitely interaction; typing in the phone numbers and hitting "dial" is an interaction, even when there's only one number to dial. It's the physical quality of dialing the computer that gets you involved in the story. Off-topic rant:

[rant]I think people who talk about games don't take nearly enough account of the extent to which they can be about physically  interacting with the game, even when the rules don't give you a choice about what to do. Chutes & Ladders gives you no choices, I think, but rolling the dice and moving the pieces yourself is what makes the game. One reason the combat of Reliques of Tolti-Aph is so much less fun than that of D&D is that you don't get to roll your own dice. And isn't Trouble! entirely about the Pop-o-matic?[/rant]  

And there are places where you can choose what to read, or whether to go into a side conversation, or something like that. It does lack branching, but so do many IF games. It's not even entirely linear, in that I think you can take certain steps in different orders; see the end of the post. I think what we're getting at is that it almost entirely lacks puzzles -- which I don't think detracts from the gameplay at all -- and that it's not always obvious what effect your message will have. When you reply, you don't always know what you'll say. (Though sometimes you do; after the first BBS crashes, you know exactly what message you'll send.) 

I don't think it's IF, though, in the sense we're talking about in this forum. The way you interact is just too different; not that I think that IF has to consist of typed commands, but, well, there's something not-this about it. It reminds me more of RPG dialogue systems, except done well.  [emote]:P[/emote] 

Some parts of my experience with Digital were not completely ideal; comments on another game gave me a big spoiler, and I got stuck at a few points, one or two of which diminished the impact:

[spoiler]I ran the program that unblinds you before I actually got blinded, because I thought I should run everything when it becomes available, and then at the very end I was expecting/hoping that my last action would be something a little more dramatic than simply replying to Emilia's last message.[/spoiler]

[UPDATE: gravel, it's interesting you read the protagonist as male; I poked around the author's website a bit, and there aren't a lot of boy-girl relationships in her other work. Anyway, I agree that she did a great job of making me identify with the genderless faceless voiceless PC.]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2290&start=0#p15627
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: getting storyline to show
User: whitney / DateTime: 2011-04-12 08:26:43

This is a first attempt using Inform 7. The game starts at the first "room," omitting the "story description." How do I get the Story Description to show rather than going directly to the room identified?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2247&start=10#p15628
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Equating "verb x with y" and "verb x and y"?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-04-12 08:43:26

The rulebooks execute in this order:

1) before
2) instead
3) check
4) carry out
5) after
6) report

Instead rules [i]and[/i] after rules both stop the action, unless you tack on a "continue the action" to them. (Instead rules stop it with the result ”failure” and after rules stop it with the result "success".)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2290&start=0#p15629
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: getting storyline to show
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-04-12 09:18:30

Are you looking for something like:

[code]When play begins: say "BLAH!";[/code]

If not, I'm not sure what you're asking for - can you give an example?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2285&start=0#p15630
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Maximum Boolean Amount for Objects
User: DrkStarr / DateTime: 2011-04-12 09:34:37

Thanks for the help Zarf.

With this amount of flexibility I'll be able to control conversations the way I want to.

Hopefully my characters will feel a bit more real.  [emote]:D[/emote]

- D

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2283&start=0#p15631
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Digital: A Love Story
User: Tanga / DateTime: 2011-04-12 09:40:47

After reading the posts on here, and looking this game up (and seeing more positive comments) I gave it a go.  Wow!  I really enjoyed it, thanks for bringing it to my attention.  A strong interactive story.  Not sure if I'd call it interactive fiction though, it's too different.

I'll definitely be checking out more of this author's offerings.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2247&start=10#p15632
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Equating "verb x with y" and "verb x and y"?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-04-12 10:40:32

I often write a "last report" rule if I want to say something after the normal reporting messages. Depending on the circumstances, an Every Turn rule may sometimes be more appropriate.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2280&start=10#p15633
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Square Brackets for objects in ask/tell
User: ChrisNf / DateTime: 2011-04-12 10:47:35

Genstein thanks for explaining it so carefully - now I see what the problem is and why the workaround works.

Also, cheers for filing the bug report.

Chris

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2293&start=0#p15634
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: vim syntax document for I7
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-04-12 11:36:56

I just discovered this nice little syntax file for writing I7 with vim:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.lesismore.co.za/viminform7.html">http://www.lesismore.co.za/viminform7.html</a>

It's working pretty well, although I think it may need some tweaking. Does anyone know of a more recent version? Is anyone experienced at writing vim syntax files who could help?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2286&start=0#p15635
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Display for the first time?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-04-12 11:41:01

That's handy. I would have done it with "[one of]First time text[or][stopping]," which isn't as elegant.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2283&start=0#p15636
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Digital: A Love Story
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2011-04-12 12:49:17

I posted my thoughts on Digital a while back at <a class="postlink" href="http://granades.com/2010/04/02/digital-a-love-story/">http://granades.com/2010/04/02/digital-a-love-story/</a>

TLDR version: I thought it a remarkable game, well worth playing, that got a lot of things right.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2290&start=0#p15637
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: getting storyline to show
User: whitney / DateTime: 2011-04-12 14:20:15

I've already used the prompt - 
When play begins: change the right hand status line to [color=#00BFFF]"8:00 a.m." [/color]

from what I understand this will allow me to have time sensitive alterations as time goes by w/ the inclusion of an extension. Using this phrase at this earlier point prevents me from introducing the Story Description and jumps me to the first room.

I've tried to add the Story Description to the room description, but result in Errors.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2290&start=0#p15638
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: getting storyline to show
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-12 14:46:39

You could do both in a single "when play begins" rule:

[code]When play begins:
    change the right hand status line to "8:00 a.m.";
    say "This is a story of dread, of wonder, of mystery, but most of all of cute kittens. This is the story of..."[/code]

Or I think you could have two separate "When play begins" rules. Is that what you want to do? You're right that you don't want to put it in the initial room description, because that will cause it to print every time you're in the room. (By the way, change the indentations in my code to tabs, and you probably also want to use a different story description.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2290&start=0#p15639
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: getting storyline to show
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-04-12 15:08:14

[quote="whitney"]This is a first attempt using Inform 7. The game starts at the first "room," omitting the "story description." How do I get the Story Description to show rather than going directly to the room identified?[/quote]

[code]When play begins: 
     Say "[Story Description][paragraph break]";[/code]

And as far as time, someplace after this, but before play begins say:

[code]The time of day is 8:00 AM.[/code]

At least this is how it works for me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2290&start=0#p15640
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: getting storyline to show
User: whitney / DateTime: 2011-04-12 15:13:17

THANK YOU!!!! It worked.  [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2290&start=0#p15641
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: getting storyline to show
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-04-12 15:36:07

As a footnote.... 

To get even more fancy, I am using "Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short" and for time control "Native Time Control by Tim Pittman"....

Here is the full "When play begins" statement:

[code]When play begins: 
     Say "[Story Description][paragraph break]";
     Center "-------------------------------------------------[paragraph break]";
     Center "-- [story title] --[paragraph break]";
     Center "[story headline] by [story author][paragraph break]";
     Center "-------------------------------------------------[paragraph break]";
     Center "Version 0.3h";
     Center "Press any key to begin.";
     wait for any key;
     clear the screen;
     Say "[paragraph break]";
     restore the speed of time to normal.[/code]

I guess it all depends how far you want to go.   [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2208&start=0#p15642
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Two (yes two) IF clients for the Kindle... Oh, and Hi =)
User: joningold / DateTime: 2011-04-12 16:13:42

I'm having tons of fun with the Kindle at the mo, but not doing parser IF; just simple click'n'read stuff. Like a complicated table of contents. I've blogged a little about it [url=http://threeedgedsword.wordpress.com/2011/04/10/flaws-an-interactive-story-for-kindle/]here[/url], and my first experiment is on Amazon [url=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004VFO8SA]UK[/url] / [url=http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004VFO8SA]US[/url].

It's not exactly Undum in terms of slickness or extensibility, but it's still a pretty nice way to do a IF story.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2294&start=0#p15643
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: action words
User: whitney / DateTime: 2011-04-12 18:32:26

does anyone have a list of action / prompt words? I am very new to this and trying to imagine the questions possibly asked by a gamer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2294&start=0#p15644
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: action words
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-04-12 18:51:47

[quote="whitney"]does anyone have a list of action / prompt words? I am very new to this and trying to imagine the questions possibly asked by a gamer.[/quote]

What you need is "The Inform Handbook" by Jim Aikin.

Page 126 starts the chapter on actions.  I can't find the link to it right this second, but it is a free pdf download.

Also, you can compile any game, then click on the "Index" tab.... then the "Actions" button.  There will be a very long list there... scroll down... you will see it.

Edit to add: Click on the magnifying glass next to the action... it will take you to the "parent" action if there is one (carry to take for example).  Click on the magnifying glass next to a "parent" action (take in this example), and it will take you to a full description of it and how it can be used.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2294&start=0#p15645
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: action words
User: joelsanda / DateTime: 2011-04-12 20:03:42

[quote]
What you need is "The Inform Handbook" by Jim Aikin.

Page 126 starts the chapter on actions. I can't find the link to it right this second, but it is a free pdf download.
[/quote]

[url]http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2294&start=0#p15646
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: action words
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-04-12 20:07:02

[quote="joelsanda"][quote]
What you need is "The Inform Handbook" by Jim Aikin.

Page 126 starts the chapter on actions. I can't find the link to it right this second, but it is a free pdf download.
[/quote]

[url]http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm[/url][/quote]

Thanks... I bookmarked it this time for future needs.  Personally, I printed it out.  I never thought about referring others to it in the future.

Again, thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2295&start=0#p15647
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Containers.... (well, sort of)
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-04-12 21:09:36

I have a new problem.  Imagine that.   [emote];)[/emote] 

There is an item, that when taken, causes a reaction.  Basically changes the scene (player gets knocked out... etc).  Everything works well... until I tried to take that item when the players hands were full.

I am using "After taking the electric lantern for the first time:" then the reaction...  that works fine.

But if the players hands are full, I get the usual message.  After dropping something, or placing it in the players holdall, I can take the item, but the reaction does not trigger.

Is there a way of saying "After taking the electric lantern for the first time and it succeeds:"?

I have tried that, and other variations, but with no luck.

"After [b]holding[/b] the electric lantern for the first time:" is what I am trying to do.  Until actually held, I don't want the trigger to occur.  But I can not find the right combination of events to cause the trigger to occur.

And of course first time is important, they will have to pick it up later, and I don't want the reaction to trigger again at that point.

Any ideas?

Oh, and the reason I called this subject "Containers" is because I was trying to make it automatic that a player put things in his holdall to take another item if hands are full.  But that messes up the "Take all".  Well, it works, but also takes all from the holdall or exchanges items from it to hands.  Very confusing with the inventory.  And if I make the holdall closed, then I have the original problem.  Player opens, puts another item in, then takes the lantern with no reaction.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2289&start=0#p15648
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Webified Quixe, snapshop
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-04-12 21:17:19

I see you have done cool stuff, but the scope of what you're doing is not clear to me. Could you post more explanation?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2248&start=0#p15649
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Prairie Fire
User: JDevlin / DateTime: 2011-04-12 22:09:31

Hi folks!

I need just a couple of people to test out the interface of my new game, Prairie Fire (and definitely some more betatesters down the road, but it's not at that point yet). It's still a fairly conventional piece of IF, but with some atmospheric and plot-essential graphics.

Basically, I don't need anyone to try to break the interface at this point; I'm mainly interested in comments on clarity, usability, design that could be better. As such, it'd probably be best if you were using a system similar to mine (Git interpreter, so Windows would be best). Not super-small resolution would also help - everything's been designed for up to 1024x768.

The plot, sound effects, and graphics are relatively complete up to the end of Day One, so there is some stuff you can play around with, but I'm mainly interested in hearing about the interface design. The game itself is set in Madison, WS during 1970 and it's a fairly conventional murder mystery.

If you could help, that'd be great! Please message me on here or send an email to my gmail. I don't know how best to fool the bots, but try adding 1984 to my handle here, and it should work. Then I'll let you know where you can download the package.

Thanks, and look forwarding to hearing from you!

Jason

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2250&start=10#p15650
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: SpeedIF Jacket 4
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2011-04-12 22:57:51

Mine a) needs a walkthrough, and b) will only work if you cling to the walkthrough, and c) is one of the buggiest things I've ever seen.

But I think there's probably nothing like it anywhere else in IF, which makes me feel fuzzy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2295&start=0#p15651
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Containers.... (well, sort of)
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-04-13 01:21:53

Try it this way:

[code]After taking the electric lantern:
	if the player carries the electric lantern for the first time:
		say "Bingo!";
	otherwise:
		continue the action.[/code]
Substitute whatever you like for the say Bingo line.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=10#p15652
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2011-04-13 05:21:23

Working happily on the project and haven't run into any obstacles as yet.  Just had a question about streamlining a bit of code.  The part highlighted with comment markers:

[code]Instead of breaking the glass with the sonic screwdriver:
	if in darkness:
		say "It is too dark to see what you are doing.";
		stop the action;
	if the case glass is shattered:
		say "The [case glass] is already broken.";
		stop the action;
	if the player is not holding the sonic screwdriver:[ <--  T h i s]
		try silently taking the sonic screwdriver;[       <--  P a r t]
		say "(taking [the sonic screwdriver] first)";[    <--  H e r e]
		say line break;
	say "You power on [the sonic screwdriver] which emits its familiar high-pitched buzz.  The glass front of the case is no match for the potent vibrations and quickly shatters into tiny fragments.  You are now able to reach [the contents of the metal case] inside.";
	now the case glass is shattered;
	now the small metal case is open.[/code]
Each time the player goes to use a particular tool, whether it's the sonic screwdriver, an etheric beam locator, laserson probe or lumricator core tracer, I intend to put in a check like the one above to ensure that the player is holding the noun in their hand(s).  I was particularly fond of the way that the old Infocom adventures would do so, and explain in parenthesis that the picking up was being performed automatically (eliminating an all-too-obvious step for the player).

Rather than repeat those same three lines of code ad nauseum, is there a way to encode them in a general rule, or a definition?

2nd question, when you're posting a bit of code in this forum, is there any way to highlight a section?  I tried colouring and bold, but they didn't work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2296&start=0#p15653
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: How to make game title appear before any descriptions
User: Jennifer8 / DateTime: 2011-04-13 05:38:35

Hi! In my game's source code I have:

"Title" by name

When play begins, say "Description of Story."

Then I have the room description, then the list of the things that are in the room.

When I hit "go" the game reads: 
Description of Story text
TITLE 
Room Description
Blank is in the room.
Blank is in the room, etc.

How to do I make the story title appear first, then the description of the story?

Also, how to I program the game so the list of objects in the room don't automatically pop up, instead, the player has to examine the room to see them?

Thank you so much for any help!!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=10#p15654
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-13 06:05:49

[quote="thefoxaroo"]Working happily on the project and haven't run into any obstacles as yet.  Just had a question about streamlining a bit of code.  The part highlighted with comment markers:

[code]Instead of breaking the glass with the sonic screwdriver:
	if in darkness:
		say "It is too dark to see what you are doing.";
		stop the action;
	if the case glass is shattered:
		say "The [case glass] is already broken.";
		stop the action;
	if the player is not holding the sonic screwdriver:[ <--  T h i s]
		try silently taking the sonic screwdriver;[       <--  P a r t]
		say "(taking [the sonic screwdriver] first)";[    <--  H e r e]
		say line break;
	say "You power on [the sonic screwdriver] which emits its familiar high-pitched buzz.  The glass front of the case is no match for the potent vibrations and quickly shatters into tiny fragments.  You are now able to reach [the contents of the metal case] inside.";
	now the case glass is shattered;
	now the small metal case is open.[/code]
Each time the player goes to use a particular tool, whether it's the sonic screwdriver, an etheric beam locator, laserson probe or lumricator core tracer, I intend to put in a check like the one above to ensure that the player is holding the noun in their hand(s).  I was particularly fond of the way that the old Infocom adventures would do so, and explain in parenthesis that the picking up was being performed automatically (eliminating an all-too-obvious step for the player).

Rather than repeat those same three lines of code ad nauseum, is there a way to encode them in a general rule, or a definition?[/quote]

UPDATE: What shammack said. Duh. The last thing I say about "if the case is not empty" still probably makes sense.

Well, I don't know what the best way to do this is, but you could try a kind of action, thus:

[code]Breaking the case glass with the sonic screwdriver [when the case glass is not shattered when not in darkness] is handy action.
Before handy action:
	if the second noun is not held:
		say "(taking [the second noun] first)[command clarification break]";
		try silently taking the second noun;
		if the second noun is not held:
			stop the action.[/code]

The problem is that I can't get Inform to recognize the commented-out code; apparently conditions in the definition of a kind of action don't work? The documentation on kinds of action (7.15) is not super helpful. Which means that you'll try taking the screwdriver even when the glass is already shattered. It might just be better to keep typing those lines.

Incidentally, the difference between "command clarification break" and "line break" is probably moot here -- it apparently only manifests itself when the command takes you to another room and prints its description. More seriously, you need to print the "(taking the screwdriver first)" before the try-silently; otherwise the action will stop when the try-silently fails and you'll never see the command clarification. (Put the screwdriver in the case and you'll see what I mean.) --It looks like the code I wrote about "if the second noun is not held" may not be necessary, since if taking fails then the action stops, though you might want it in anyway, in case there's a situation where the "taking" action can succeed without actually giving you the second noun. Also, you should probably add "[if the case is not empty]" before the "you are now able to reach sentence," to rule out the possibility of saying "You can now reach nothing inside."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=10#p15655
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-04-13 06:47:45

Isn't this behavior already built into the standard rules?  From the manual section on "Implicitly taking something" (17.32):
[quote]1. When it happens. When an action is tried which requires the actor (normally the player, of course) to be carrying something, but which is not in fact carried by that person. For instance, if the player types WEAR OVERCOAT in reference to a Moroccan overcoat currently draped over a chair.

2. The default behaviour. To print text such as "(first taking the Moroccan overcoat)" and then silently try taking the object in question (the overcoat). If the take succeeds, the silence means that nothing else is printed: if it fails, it will say why.[/quote]
So it may just be a matter of making your breaking it with action require a carried noun (which it probably should have done anyway).  Try changing the definition of breaking it with to "Breaking it with is an action applying to one touchable thing and one carried thing."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2296&start=0#p15656
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to make game title appear before any descriptions
User: Jennifer8 / DateTime: 2011-04-13 06:49:46

I found that if I list an object as scenery it does not show up.

Any ideas on making the title appear first? Thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2297&start=0#p15657
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: How to make time pass
User: Jennifer8 / DateTime: 2011-04-13 07:06:54

In the game the clock at the top does not change.

I have added Native time control by tim pattman and entered in things to happen at certain times. This all works, but the clock at the top stays at the same time throughout the game.

How do I make the game time clock reflect the time in the game?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2296&start=0#p15658
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to make game title appear before any descriptions
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-13 07:07:46

You can say this:

[code]Before looking for the first time, say "Description of Story."[/code]

The game runs an automatic look action after printing the title, which prints the room and initial description, so this command will make the Description of Story appear between the title and the room name/description.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2296&start=0#p15659
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to make game title appear before any descriptions
User: Jennifer8 / DateTime: 2011-04-13 07:08:58

That works! Thank you so much!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2298&start=0#p15660
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Separate Scenes/Rooms
User: Jennifer8 / DateTime: 2011-04-13 08:51:30

My story contains 2 scenes, each are in a different room. The scenes both begin and end at certain times and contain the same objects.

The scenes/rooms keep mixing up together so when you try to touch something in scene 1 it will give you the response for scene 2.

Any ideas? Thank you!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=10#p15661
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-04-13 09:26:13

I'm not sure that's quite right. I thought putting "carried" in action definitions was deprecated because it led to parsing problems.

If that doesn't generate an automatic take, you could always make a rule to apply wherever it's needed. I like to base my code on the Standard Library as much as possible. This is the can't insert what's not held rule:

[code]Check an actor inserting something into (this is the can’t insert what’s not held rule):
if the actor is carrying the noun, continue the action;
if the actor is wearing the noun, continue the action;
issue miscellaneous library message number 26 for the noun;
silently try the actor taking the noun;
if the actor is carrying the noun, continue the action;
stop the action.[/code]

To modify that for the second noun, you could do this:
[code]Check an actor breaking something with something (this is the second noun must be held rule):
    if the actor is carrying the noun, continue the action;
    if the actor is wearing the noun, continue the action;
    issue miscellaneous library message number 26 for the second noun; ["(first taking [the item described])[command clarification break]"]
    silently try the actor taking the second noun;
    if the actor is carrying the second noun, continue the action;
    stop the action.[/code]

And then you can put "abide by the second noun must be held rule" in any other Instead rules that need it, or just say "the second noun must be held rule is listed [somewhere in] the check [specific action] rulebook."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=10#p15663
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-04-13 10:12:05

[quote="thefoxaroo"]Rather than repeat those same three lines of code ad nauseum, is there a way to encode them in a general rule, or a definition?
[/quote]
I think it's as easy as this:
[code]Breaking it with is an action applying to one thing and one carried thing.
Understand "break [something] with [something preferably held]" as breaking it with.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=20#p15664
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: jwideman / DateTime: 2011-04-13 10:41:22

Well... it kind of is, actually, and there are indeed recipes you can follow. The difference is that you don't want to follow the recipe for writing too closely, or be a clone of other writers. Mostly because those other writers are better at being themselves than you are at being them. Much of what you do in writing practice is not improving your writing but developing your own style.

[quote="Andrew Owen"]Writing isn't like baking a cake. There's no recipe you can follow. If you want to be a good writer you have to write, over and over, until you stop being a bad writer.

If you want to know what makes a good story that's a little different. Read Artistotle's Poetics. Robert McKee has made a stack of cash selling writing courses which expand on the principles of Poetics, but frankly everything you need is there. Aristotle says the elements in Greek theatre are plot, character, thought, diction, music, and spectacle, in that order. And he complains that, like Hollywood today, they keep getting the order reversed. 

IF already makes it hard to put spectacle and music first. Now you can do other things with adventure games than telling a story, but fiction requires plot, characters, motivation, and dialogue.

There are two basic approaches to interaction: the branching story, and the puzzle. Plenty has been written about these. I'll leave it there for now.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2298&start=0#p15665
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Separate Scenes/Rooms
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-04-13 10:44:35

This is what makes writing IF fun (not). There are lots of weird ways this could happen. You need to get very meticulous about troubleshooting your code.

Turn on the actions and rules while running your game. Turn on scenes as well. This will give you more information. Try commenting out sections until the problem goes away.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2286&start=0#p15666
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Display for the first time?
User: jwideman / DateTime: 2011-04-13 10:45:49

[quote="capmikee"]That's handy. I would have done it with "[one of]First time text[or][stopping]," which isn't as elegant.[/quote]

It might not be elegant, but I can see that being more extensible if you feel like making subtle changes with each visit.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2297&start=0#p15667
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to make time pass
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-04-13 10:49:07

Are you sure there [i]is[/i] a clock in the status bar? By default, an Inform 7 game shows the name of room, the score, and the number of turns in the status bar, but not the time of day.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2302&start=0#p15668
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Allowing the player to ask WHO AM I, etc.
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-04-13 10:50:04

I'm strongly thinking about implementing this in my WIP for two reasons - a) I'm under the impression that inputting questions about the game world is something newbie players are likely to do, and b) I think it could very helpful for people learning English. Someday I would like to use IF in the classroom somehow.

Anyway, I couldn't find much advice about the best way for the game to respond to these questions. The main issue I'm thinking of is having the game notice the difference between WHAT IS THE MAGAZINE and WHAT IS A MAGAZINE. These really aren't the same question, especially for second-language learners. I'm afraid that guaranteeing a sensible response to the second question will involve a lot of extra coding.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2287&start=0#p15669
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Electrical Appliances - How to make them usuable easily
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-04-13 10:55:25

You might want to look at the extension Modern Conveniences by Emily Short. I've never used it, but it creates some basic kitchen and bathroom appliances.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=10#p15670
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-04-13 10:56:29

[quote="Felix"][quote="thefoxaroo"]Rather than repeat those same three lines of code ad nauseum, is there a way to encode them in a general rule, or a definition?
[/quote]
I think it's as easy as this:
[code]Breaking it with is an action applying to one thing and one carried thing.
Understand "break [something] with [something preferably held]" as breaking it with.[/code][/quote]
I just checked. "carried" does seem to generate an automatic take. I don't remember where I heard it was deprecated - it's used in several places in the Standard Rules, including for the second noun in "locking it with."

"[something preferably held]" causes the parser to choose a held object over a not held object when there is ambiguity, but it doesn't ever generate an automatic take.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2259&start=0#p15671
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Creating RIA Interpreter for TADS 3
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-04-13 11:06:37

[quote="RealNC"]One project that is currently under development is the online part of Tads 3. This is done by Mike Roberts himself. It should normally have been released by now, but real-life work got the better of him and so it got delayed. From what I know, it's in good shape and he just needs a bit of time for wrapping it all up and doing the release.[/quote]
This is good news indeed. I had more or less lost hope as the months slid by.

The thing I still don't understand is, who will be hosting the server? Will it be part of Mike's web setup? The reason I'm asking is because I'm just a poor dumb game author. I have a website, but I lack the technical background I would need to even ask my site host the right questions about setting up a virtual T3 server within my site.

I have a vague recollection that there was also some question about whether existing games will run on the new machine, or whether they will need to be recompiled, or what. Am I totally off-base about this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=20#p15672
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-04-13 11:14:43

[quote="Andrew Owen"]Writing isn't like baking a cake. There's no recipe you can follow. If you want to be a good writer you have to write, over and over, until you stop being a bad writer.[/quote]
On the most basic level, it's true that there isn't a recipe. But there are most definitely principles! If you never take the time to learn the principles, all you'll accomplish by writing reams of stuff is to write reams of bad stuff and get very frustrated that nobody will buy the stories you write.

As a professional writer, I can assure you that there are ways to write well (many of them), and ways to write badly (ditto). If you hope to learn to write well, you need to learn the principles of good writing. Do not, I beg of you, choose to remain ignorant.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2295&start=0#p15673
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Containers.... (well, sort of)
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-04-13 11:38:06

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Try it this way:

[code]After taking the electric lantern:
	if the player carries the electric lantern for the first time:
		say "Bingo!";
	otherwise:
		continue the action.[/code]
Substitute whatever you like for the say Bingo line.[/quote]

That seems to do it!  I have a VERY long "Bingo" statement, containing several paragraphs and a half dozen actions, so I had to play with the punctuation a bit... but I am getting used to that.


I am going to test it a bit more to see if I can break it, but like I said, it seems to work.

Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=20#p15674
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-04-13 13:05:18

[quote]I don't remember where I heard it was deprecated[/quote]

I don't think it's officially deprecated. But it's hard to customize. (E.g., it's hard to make a scenery object which can be eaten, because the "carried" designation really, really wants to kill the action when the implicit take fails.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2289&start=0#p15675
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Webified Quixe, snapshop
User: Huck Hooks / DateTime: 2011-04-13 13:17:08

Hi Zarf, i am honored [emote]:)[/emote]

General theme is collaboration with multiple Authors. 
Instead of each knowing inform7 only one would need that. Sort of human compiler. 
The others would be dragged in by force because they are family members or something ^^

Means it has to be easy to access and to share. 
Those coauthors may comment, contribute stories, roleplay-transcripts or write weird inform7 themself. 
But only a few of them would be qualified human compilers.

Or they would be dragged in because the Author has magic teacher powers. 
Like in this thread: http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2211 . 
Which motivated me to show this halfready stuff.

I currently have this features:

1) Url with embedded history in hash. Autoupdating while playing. 
Result: A transcript which you can continue to play. By clicking a url. 
And copying the changed url after playing. 
Can be bookmarked (with informative title), and such replace "save". 
But history-replay is better because updated stories break saves. 
(May suck with long histories, but still comperable to ide-skein).

(I just noticed the parser here does not like the parens. 
I switched it off. TODO: Have to base64 the hash).

Please copypaste the example:

http://daqgit.appspot.com/quixe-work/play.html#%20{%22log%22:[%22#%28OOC%20starts%20with%20\%22#\%22%29%22,%22#type%20something,%20then%20bookmark%22,%22#type%20something%20more,%20then%20bookmark%20to.%22,%22#look%20at%20the%20bookmark%20and%20notice%20the%20nice%20title%22,%22#click%20at%20the%20bookmarks%20to%20replay.%22,%22#copy%20the%20url%20and%20paste%20it%20in%20your%20favorite%20forum.%22],%22base_md5%22:null}

This way works offline with file:// - urls too.

2) Modified parchement-proxy which can store histories. makes them shorter.

http://daqgit.appspot.com/quixe-work/play-ajax.html#%20{%22log%22:[],%22base_md5%22:%22d42cc808717a5c3e2e3d4f12374a58bd%22}

3) A plugin-ready Templates/Custom-Quixe. 
Except that its somewhere in the download at github. 
So you can publish and host with passive webservers (but full urls-histories). 
And test the webfeeling locally.

http://daqgit.appspot.com/quixe-work/spaceless_named/Hack_Hooks_Demo/Release/play.html#%20{%22log%22:[%22#Has%20history%22],%22base_md5%22:null}

4) Command-links - i do not like the name hyperlinks because that is confusing. 
Writing basic examine/go-links is quite automatic, and should help new players to get started.
(They are not glulx ones because glulx uses numbers, and that easily breaks updated stories IMHO. 
I regex the sayed stuff for own markup. And inject a command as if entered.)

5) Real weblinks (should i say hyperlinks? better not? [emote];)[/emote]

For one i do not like the ide-way with the explicit links. 
I like it much better when i can use the keyboard like "examine quixe url", and a new tab opens. 
And closes with ^w. [emote]:)[/emote]

For the other, i imagine "augmented" games, where part of important info has to be found outside. 
A scenario is a Zombie attack, where you wake up a week later, and have good info about the time before. 
That can be articles in newspapers ("static" fiction), 3d-maps made with sketchup (so you can examine the house. 
Except without the now present Zombies). 
Some riddles may need a real search engine (how to repair something). 
Or parts could be placed in the real world (sort of geocaching, real book).
In case one has magic teaching powers, different teachlings could work on different parts. 
(teachlings - to much fantasy today...)


I do not know if something of this appeals to others. I am bad with judging such things. 
And i do not claim i have a clean implementation. 
But i thought either i come in smart and want this features, or i have some fun prototyping and people can judge a real thing. 
I know they need to add a lot imagination to go from "Hey, i found the homepage of quixe" to something more playworthy.

Zarf, i am not familiar with your code. Found the places to hack in hooks by debugger [emote];)[/emote]
If you want some of this in quixe, i need some direction, maybe some annotations with comments like "put x here". 
Or maybe you prefer to reimplement parts but like some snippets, looking apis up can be a timewaster and i did it already.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2303&start=0#p15676
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Text Properties of Classes
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-04-13 15:22:37

I keep wanting to define classes of objects with some default text that refers to the object in some way, and I keep stumbling.

[b]First Issue:[/b]

I might want to define a property which should default to having the value of some other property. I've tried stuff like:

[code]A thing has some text called the secret name. The secret name is usually the printed name.[/code]
But the compiler always complains. In this case, I basically want the property to be the same as the printed name, unless I say otherwise on a specific instance of the class.

[b]Second Issue:[/b]

I might want to define a property that is some text including the object's name.  E.g. I might want every thing to have an "eating description" which should default to "You swallow <the object> whole."

I don't even know where to start with this one. Printed name gives me the name of the object, but not the article (in this case "the", but possibly "a" or even nothing depending on what I'm doing).  Adding [indefinite article] doesn't result in any new output. [definite article] won't compile.

It seems to me that the following fits the Inform syntax:

[code]A thing has some text called the eating description. The eating description of a thing (called the whatsit) is usually, "I eat the [whatsit]."[/code]
But that doesn't compile.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2303&start=0#p15677
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Text Properties of Classes
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-04-13 15:34:28

[quote="Pacian"]
[b]First Issue:[/b]

I might want to define a property which should default to having the value of some other property. I've tried stuff like:

[code]A thing has some text called the secret name. The secret name is usually the printed name.[/code]
But the compiler always complains. In this case, I basically want the property to be the same as the printed name, unless I say otherwise on a specific instance of the class.[/quote]

I also view this as a fundamental feature that the system ought to have. There is a uservoice request here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/751122-syntax-allow-for-properties-of-objects-to-be-def">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... -to-be-def</a>

Like most nitty-gritty programming requests, unfortunately, it has garnered very few votes. Until everyone starts to think like us, you'll need to initialize these in a loop at the beginning of the game. (*Oops--Ron's post below reminds me that you were asking specifically about a text property--in that case, you can use bracketed text to refer to the [i]current state[/i] of another property; but that isn't a solution that's generalizable to other types.)
[quote="Pacian"]
[b]Second Issue:[/b]

I might want to define a property that is some text including the object's name.  E.g. I might want every thing to have an "eating description" which should default to "You swallow <the object> whole."
[snip]
[code]A thing has some text called the eating description. The eating description of a thing (called the whatsit) is usually, "I eat the [whatsit]."[/code]
But that doesn't compile.[/quote]

Try "[the item described]".

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2303&start=0#p15678
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Text Properties of Classes
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-04-13 15:34:49

maybe...[code]A thing has some text called the secret name. The secret name is usually "[the printed name of the item described]". A thing has some text called the eating description. The eating description is usually "I eat the [printed name of the item described]."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2303&start=0#p15679
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Text Properties of Classes
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-04-13 16:24:14

[quote="ektemple"]you'll need to initialize these in a loop at the beginning of the game.[/quote]
Yuck.

[quote="ektemple"]Try "[the item described]".[/quote]
Thank you! I knew there had to be a way to do this, but I was damned if I could figure out how to find it.

[quote="Ron Newcomb"][code]A thing has some text called the secret name. The secret name is usually "[the printed name of the item described]".[/code][/quote]
Oooh, yeah! I remember I stumbled onto that solution myself, although I suppose it only works for text... (Which, admittedly, is what my thread title says.)

[quote="ektemple"](*Oops--Ron's post below reminds me that you were asking specifically about a text property--in that case, you can use bracketed text to refer to the [i]current state[/i] of another property; but that isn't a solution that's generalizable to other types.)[/quote]
My second question is the one that moved me to post, but I thought I'd throw the first one in while I was at it. I've only encountered the issue with text so far, but I think it would be useful to be able to do it with other values as well. Sometimes you just want an attribute that is usually some other attribute, but may differ in specific instances/subclasses.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2297&start=0#p15680
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to make time pass
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-04-13 16:54:29

Does your code read something like this?[code]When play begins:
	change the right hand status line to "[the time of day]".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2302&start=0#p15681
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Allowing the player to ask WHO AM I, etc.
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-04-13 17:02:48

For that particular problem, what about a brief paragraph of general object-type description, followed by a brief paragraph of specific details?

ie, "A magazine is a group of articles and pictures, usually published monthly.  Most magazines have a single subject, like fashion or football.

This magazine appears to be devoted to yachts."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2259&start=0#p15682
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Creating RIA Interpreter for TADS 3
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-04-13 17:16:27

Games will need to be rebuilt. As for which people will be hosting servers, I've no idea [emote]:P[/emote]

Usually they say "you lose some, you gain some", but in this case it's more like "you lose a hell of a lot, you gain a hell of a lot". Meaning that network services at the language level is something totally awesome, but not being able to simply post a game somewhere and have it run on the browser in Javascript is totally not-awesome.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2302&start=0#p15683
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Allowing the player to ask WHO AM I, etc.
User: gumby / DateTime: 2011-04-13 17:23:02

[quote="gravel"]For that particular problem, what about a brief paragraph of general object-type description, followed by a brief paragraph of specific details?

ie, "A magazine is a group of articles and pictures, usually published monthly.  Most magazines have a single subject, like fashion or football.

This magazine appears to be devoted to yachts."[/quote]
I think this would work well not just for ESL's, but for the distinction between US & British English.  I remember playing Planetfall as a kid & wondering just what a 'spanner' was.  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2250&start=10#p15705
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: SpeedIF Jacket 4
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-04-14 00:16:56

Aww horsefeathers I am [i]not[/i] seriously contemplating a speedIF with three plot-functional NPCs. NO. SIMPLIFY.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2298&start=0#p15706
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Separate Scenes/Rooms
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-04-14 03:28:47

The situation is probably that both scenes are running at the same time. As Jim suggested, you can type ACTIONS in the game to see which scenes are running at a given moment. If you want each scene to run only when the player is in a certain room, there's probably something missing from the scene ending rules that would stop the scene when the player leaves the room.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2306&start=0#p15708
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Conversational suggestions - failing to appear/be recognized
User: Kellychouchou / DateTime: 2011-04-14 08:10:21

Ok so within my game i'm implimenting a series of conversations which are integral to the story line. they're fairly long and complicated in area's so i've attempted to use Eric Eve's Conversational Suggestions (within the Conversational Package) so that the player is in part directed in the case that they are stuck. Here is a short sample of my code:

[i][i]Part 1 - Setup and Topics

Include Conversation Package by Eric Eve. 

The Personal Attendant is a familiar woman. 

The Attendants name is a familiar thing. 

Genetic Code is a familiar  thing. 

being disabled is a familiar thing. 

your suspicions are a familiar thing. 

the drug is a familiar thing. 

Alan's history is a familiar subject. 

Alan's disability is a familiar subject. 


Part 2 - Scenario

The canteen is a room.

Alan is a man in the canteen. "Alan is, you notice, confined to a wheelchair. As his legs are unable to move he is accompanied day and night by his Personal Attendant, a young un-named female". 

The ask-suggestions are {drug}

Corin is a woman in the canteen. "Sat silently on the right side of Alan's wheelchair, a young female appears attentive to his every need". 

Understand "teenager","man", "disabled" and "Alan" as Alan. 

Understand "attendant","woman","girl","quiet" and "Corin" as Corin. 

The node of Alan is neutral-node. 

the ask-suggestions are { self-suggestion, personal attendant, attendants name, disability, your suspicions }. 

the tell-suggestions are { yourself }.


Part 3 - Coversation 

Chapter 1 - Node Specific Responses

neutral-node is a convnode.  neutral-node is an open convnode. 
the ask-suggestions are {Alan's history, Personal Attendant, Attendants name, being disabled, Genetic Code}.
the tell-suggestions are {your suspicions}.  

Response of Alan when asked about Alan's History: 
say "'So, what brought you here? I didn’t think Ishiguro County was responsible for physically disabled teenagers' you exclaim ignorantly, missing entirely the dark look passing over the young man’s face.[paragraph break] A chuckle can be heard lacing his words. 'Well, it’s certainly refreshing to meet someone who speaks their mind. You must be new.' He breathes out lowly, a smile plastered between his lips as you notice, for the first time, the officially dressed attendant sat beside him.". 
[/i][/i]

Everything works whe i asked the questions that i have specified (such as ask alan about his history) but topic suggestions do not appear below the text, nor do they appear when i type in 'topics'. 

I have also tried to code this simply using the conversational suggestion extention file (outside of the package) but error messages come up in relation to this part of the code as it claims that i am trying to add a value to it and brackets cannot be used:

the ask-suggestions are { self-suggestion, personal attendant, attendants name, disability, your suspicions }. 


Any help on this or suggestions would be greatly, greatly appreciated, thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2306&start=0#p15709
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversational suggestions - failing to appear/be recogn
User: Kellychouchou / DateTime: 2011-04-14 08:23:30

Also, has anyone got any suggestions on how to customize it? so instead of saying "You could ask him about his history..." it could instead say in italics "you could discuss his past, how he became disabled..". etc

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2298&start=0#p15710
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Separate Scenes/Rooms
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-04-14 09:11:35

Does it have to be the same objects each time?

I don't know how much you've got set up, and how much trouble it would be to rewrite vs. fix, but one option I might look at would be having privately named objects.  (The before_chair is a privately named object in Room One.  The printed name of the before_chair is "chair".  The after_chair is a privately named object in Room Two.)

Because the objects would be privately named, the player would never notice a difference, and you could give each of them their own descriptions.  The only transitions you'd need to write would be when one has a state that needs to be transferred; if you have a box in the first scene, and the PC puts in an apple, do you want the apple to show up in the second scene?  If so, you'd need to transfer it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2298&start=0#p15711
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Separate Scenes/Rooms
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-04-14 10:05:28

Depends on the exact situation, obviously, but I prefer having one virtual object per actual game world object whenever possible. With the same effort as making two objects you can just as well give the one object a property, like "the chair can be intact or broken", and refer to it as the intact chair or the broken chair (instead of using separate broken_chair and intact_chair objects). You can then refer to it as "chair" when the state doesn't matter (and therefore don't have to write rules that apply to both broken_chair and intact_chair).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2306&start=0#p15712
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversational suggestions - failing to appear/be recogn
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-04-14 11:15:30

I've never used convnodes, which are one of Eric's more complex creations. But when I try 'showme alan' in your game, I see that Alan is in null-node, not neutral-node. That may be part of the problem. You may also need to specify "the ask-suggestions of neutral-node", not just "the ask-suggestions".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2259&start=0#p15713
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Creating RIA Interpreter for TADS 3
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-04-14 11:22:42

[quote="RealNC"]Games will need to be rebuilt. As for which people will be hosting servers, I've no idea [emote]:P[/emote]

Usually they say "you lose some, you gain some", but in this case it's more like "you lose a hell of a lot, you gain a hell of a lot". Meaning that network services at the language level is something totally awesome, but not being able to simply post a game somewhere and have it run on the browser in Javascript is totally not-awesome.[/quote]
It's a standard-issue Mike Roberts solution, in other words.  [emote]:P[/emote]

Seriously, I have enormous respect for Mike's prowess as a code designer, and I'm sure once this solution is available, it will be amazingly slick. But as with T3 itself, there will be barriers to entry that new authors may find a bit daunting.

If he provides a virtual server himself, that will help a lot. I'm just hoping I can still find the source code for Lydia's Heart so I can recompile it....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2306&start=0#p15714
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversational suggestions - failing to appear/be recogn
User: Kellychouchou / DateTime: 2011-04-14 11:25:29

oh thanks! that works perfectly now! The trouble i appear to be having now is that i am trying to end the conversation scene with a change in mood, which generates this message when i attempt to approach that part of the conversation: - 

P31 - Attempt to use a property of nothing 

Most problems are detected when Inform translates the source text, but this is one of the exceptions, a "run-time problem" which emerges only during play.
The special value nothing is used to mean no object at all, and sometimes appears where an object might be expected if it was impossible to find a genuine object, or no genuine object was specified.

Nothing is not an object in its own right, and so it makes no sense to look at its properties.



Are there any suggestions on how i can use a mood change to end a scene? i know you can begin a scene with a mood change but im having a lot of trouble! thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2307&start=0#p15715
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Acting Fast
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-14 11:39:22

I'm about to add some timekeeping code to my game because some scenes in it are time sensitive.

I'm looking at the example 'Timeless' in Chapter 4 of the Inform Recipe Book. It all makes good sense, but the way it works is by defining entire actions as 'acting fast' (they don't make a turn pass) or not (they do).

How can I make different parts of the same action result in acting fast or not acting fast?

For instance - if the player bumps into a wall by accident, I want that to not take a turn. But if they move to a new room, that should take a turn. Stuff like that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2308&start=0#p15716
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: assigning conversations to Scenes
User: Kellychouchou / DateTime: 2011-04-14 11:46:49

Hello everyone, again! I'm attempting to sign specific conversations to spefic scenes. I have read about the possibilities of this on all sorts of websites/ manuals but no suggestion on how to approach it or code it. I was just wondering if anyone had done it before and how, it'd be of great help thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=180#p15717
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: calindreams / DateTime: 2011-04-14 11:50:47

Hi. It's good to learn the old 'text adventure' isn't dead!

But after playing through the first day of 'Anchorhead' I can certainly see why it's called interactive fiction nowadays. Really atmospheric with none of the old 'guess the exact verb to use' carry on. 

I've not got internet access at home, but have installed the Twisty app on my new phone, which works pretty well despite some reviews to the contrary.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2259&start=0#p15718
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Creating RIA Interpreter for TADS 3
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-04-14 12:04:06

My sense is that Mike plans to host a server, perhaps even [i]the[/i] server, but he's understandably reluctant to make a stronger commitment in the absence of actual metrics for VM performance, game quantity, and player count.

I don't think you need to worry. If you don't care about the plumbing, you'll be able to upload a game file somewhere, publish a hyperlink, and have it all work. If you want to host a server, someone will help you figure out your options once the software is released.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=20#p15719
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: calindreams / DateTime: 2011-04-14 12:15:59

I'm playing if on my Android phone. Installed Twisty and it seems to work fine for me. Playing the games that come with it and javw downloaded a few. Sometimes the scroll down menus can be a bit temperamental.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2307&start=0#p15720
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Acting Fast
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-04-14 13:11:30

I tried to tighten the definition and make the definition of "going nowhere" somewhat conditional.
[code]Going nowhere is acting fast.

The take visual actions out of world rule is listed before the every turn stage rule in the turn sequence rules. 
This is the take visual actions out of world rule: if acting fast, rule succeeds. 

RoomOne is a room. RoomTwo is west of RoomOne. RoomThree is west of RoomTwo.

When play begins: now the right hand status line is "[time of day]".[/code]
The result is interesting and sadly results the going action being frozen in time. Although my idea seemed far-fetched, I don't understand how "going nowhere" can apply when, in fact, we're manifestly going somewhere. Unless, of course, the direction hasn't been parsed yet.  [emote]:?[/emote]

Curious.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2307&start=0#p15721
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Acting Fast
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-04-14 13:37:36

I suspect the problem is that "nowhere" is not the kind of thing that gets parsed: what gets parsed is "north", and it is up to the rules of the game to decide what effect that action has. This has probably not been decided before it is decided whether we are acting fast.

Whether this diagnosis is correct or not, you might want to use the following trick:
[code]To take no time:
    (- meta = true; -).[/code]
and then add the phrase "take no time" to home-made version of the relevant check rules. In this case, however, because going has so many check rules, you might be better off just writing an after rule that checks whether the player has actually changed his location.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=40#p15722
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-04-14 13:38:22

I just noticed that Empty Transfer by Emily Short is not included in the Player Experience Upgrade. Maybe that's an expert-friendly extension, but I pretty much expect the "empty" command to work in every game I play. What do you think about adding it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2309&start=0#p15723
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Why does Empty Transfer use Locksmith?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-04-14 13:44:42

I just added Empty Transfer by Emily Short to my WIP, and it stopped compiling. I tracked it down to my use of the word "keychain," which is a kind defined in Locksmith. I didn't really want Locksmith. How important is it to Empty Transfer? Would it be possible to rewrite Empty Transfer with sections for use with/without Locksmith?

I would be happy to do that if so, either as an "editor" for Emily or republishing it under my own name.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2309&start=0#p15724
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why does Empty Transfer use Locksmith?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-04-14 13:48:17

Copy-paste Empty Transfer into your code without the invocation of Locksmith, and check where it fails to compile. That will show you where it invokes Locksmith, and you can then determine how to fix it. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2310&start=0#p15725
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Help me understand Hypothetical Questions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-04-14 13:49:54

I think I'm nearing the limits of what I can do by tweaking Automated Testing by Roger Carbol. What I really want is a bit different - a "programmable skein" that is written into the game's source, following the skein's node model rather than a bunch of flat tables. But to avoid the problems that Automated Testing encounters, I think I need to use Hypothetical Questions, which is a baffling bit of code if I ever saw one. Where are these fancy memory-mashing features (like "protect") documented?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2309&start=0#p15726
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why does Empty Transfer use Locksmith?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-04-14 16:11:56

As far as I can tell Empty Transfer only depends on the use option defined in Locksmith—the sequential action option, that, if I remember correctly, makes the game report two actions in sequence rather than the first one as an implicit action in brackets.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2250&start=10#p15727
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: SpeedIF Jacket 4
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-04-14 16:21:56

I've almost bitten off more than I can chew, but I fully expect to pull it out of the bag at the last moment, as is usually my way.

(Usually.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2309&start=0#p15728
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why does Empty Transfer use Locksmith?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-04-14 16:44:57

Yeah, it is down to an attempt to offer compatible handling of implicit actions, but hasn't been updated since Inform got the ability to include things conditionally depending on what other extensions are around. 

I'll try to remember to get to this, but I will not be offended if someone else wants to offer an edit: what needs to happen is for the Locksmith inclusion to be replaced with a code section that honors the sequential action option and is compiled only if Locksmith is also included.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2307&start=0#p15729
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Acting Fast
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-04-14 16:53:25

If you want to do a lot of this, I recommend Eric Eve's Variable Time Control extension.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2311&start=0#p15730
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Recipes for Storytelling
User: jwideman / DateTime: 2011-04-14 18:27:32

It has been said that writing a story is not like baking a cake and there are no recipes to follow.
*challenge accepted*
Stories do, in fact, have recipes. As you progress as a writer, you'll be able to spot them, identify them, and even determine where the storyteller went wrong. This isn't just literature either - the recipes behind movies will be laid bare before you as well. You may find your favorite action movie no longer appealing because you see where the director substituted the wrong ingredient, you may find a new appreciation in a drama where the recipe was executed perfectly.
When I say recipe, I'm not just talking about plot. Much has been written about "the X basic plots", and depending on the value of X you may find these other writings useful or exhausting. What I'm talking about is more like formula. First, formula is NOT bad. It is only bad when the formula is cliche or because the narrative isn't interesting enough. All stories are written to a formula - or recipe - of some kind.
There is no better proof that formulas work than Lester Dent, who wrote the "Doc Savage" stories to a formula he created and shared with others. I bring this up because the sort of story he wrote, if you haven't heard of him or "Doc Savage", is [i]adventure[/i]. I suggest you read the "Master Fiction Plot" for yourself before we continue.
[url]http://altuspress.com/lesterdentproperties/the-master-fiction-plot/[/url]
You'll notice it can be adapted for any genre, with enough work. You'll also notice that it is based on creating a 6000 word short story. You can make it shorter or longer, but you can't make a novel out of it without weaving in side plots.
Now, I've written a story myself using this formula and it's a lot of fun. I took it out 6 months later (I like to leave stories to stew awhile) to edit for publication and it's fun to read. I've shown it to people who know about these things and they've said it had them at the edge of their seat. What I'm getting at here is that this formula makes for a compelling story and translated as IF should make for a compelling game.
As I describe what I'm doing here, I'll be writing a game in Inform 7. Note that I'm no expert with that system, or even other IF systems. My focus is on the fiction itself. So let's begin:
First we need characters. Since this will be story driven IF and not puzzle IF, the protagonist should be more than just a stand in for the player. Yet he (or she) needs to be someone for the player to identify with, so we don't want him (or her) to be TOO superhuman. I'm making him a "wild west" style gunslinger, with some modern anti-hero grit. NPCs will refer to him as "stranger" (man with no name) and treat him with distrust. We'll give him a red duster, just for flavor, as well as a revolver in a holster. To make him a bit "bigger than life" we're going to let the player "shoot" without first drawing his gun and making his aim perfect "from the hip".
For our villain, let's call him "Marcus 'The Thug' Andrews". He's a bank robber, an obvious thug that leads a gang. Let's define his gang while we're at it. Remember, we don't want the mooks to overshadow the Big Bad, so don't get carried away.
Warren Andrews is Marcus' brother.
Bill Alexander "the Gambler" is a man that bets on anything.
Steven "Loco" Newman is a peyote user prone to wild hallucinations.
Ron "Gravedigger" O'Brien is a gunslinger known for his "winning" streak.
We can give them props if we want, like Marcus Andrews has a black hat, the gambler has dice, and so on. Don't get too wrapped up in it though. We're not making a sidescrolling platformer with a string of mini-bosses - these guys present a threat to the player because they are working together. Gravedigger may be a gunslinger, but he is no match for the player by himself. He's just better known.
We have a hero and a villain (well, gang of villains). That's really all we need at this point. We might introduce more characters as we go along, but we have the foundation of dramatic conflict. Whatever goal the hero has, the villains will get in his way.
Now, our setting. Let's have a typical "wild west" town, with a dusty street running through it. I'm only going to make the rooms as they are needed. The important thing is to give enough detail for the player to feel immersed, without so much they feel overwhelmed.
I'll start with the saloon, which is where I'll put the gang. Now, a tricky thing about IF is that keyword "interactive". If you try to force the player through your story rather than letting him decide what to do next, he's not going to be happy. But you've got a story, how are you going to push him through it. You're not. But your NPCs are. [emote]8-)[/emote] Especially your villains. [emote]:twisted:[/emote]
Bartenders that see a lot of trouble learn to demand people disarm in their saloon. Getting the place shot up tends to be bad for business. So the first thing we do is have a bartender ask for the player's gun. This will give us the opportunity to show the player the hero's potential, as well as set him up for the inevitable trouble he's about to get into.
We won't let the player do anything until he hands over his weapon, but we'll do it by speaking through the NPCs. If he attempts to leave, the gang can bully him into staying. This way the bartender is just a neutral party - he doesn't want any shooting in his place of business. The gang are the bad guys, and we're going to show it by the way they treat the player.
The player can either try to avoid antagonizing the gang, or he can assert himself early. Either way, he's going to get into a fight, ending with him being thrown through the window of the saloon and waking up in the Sheriff's jail cell. This last bit is for his protection, of course, and the Sheriff will let him out, giving him back his gun. This starts off the second act.
From here the player can explore the town. If he returns to the saloon, he can drink in peace. But if he enters the bank, he'll find the gang is holding it up. Naturally, he gets caught in the middle regardless of what he does. He's outnumbered, the gang is armed, and they have a hostage (the tied up and unconscious banker) so a shoot out is unwise at this stage. The gang get away, and the sheriff shows up just in time to arrest the player.
Back to the jail cell. This time the player will need to solve a puzzle to get out. Important: make sure the puzzle doesn't rely on the player having picked up an item or talking to someone before this point, or it's a frustrating restart. That ends the second act.
Note that I'm substituting a puzzle for the violence that Lester Dent would have here. You could easily thrown in another spot of fighting, or do all puzzles.
After the jail break, the player can escape into the desert... and stumble right into the gang's camp. This time he has the upper hand. Only the gunslinger is armed, and the player can outshoot him. He can dispatch the others easily as they go for their guns. However, Marcus - being the bastard he is - gets away.
Thus ends act three.
The player can return to the town with the stolen money and be received as a hero. That is until Marcus shows up, holding a wanted poster. There is no picture, but the description is of "a tall man, wearing a red duster, and carrying a silver handgun". The bounty is a substantial amount, more than the take from the bank, and the condition is "dead or alive".
This should be a tough shoot out between the player, Marcus, and the Sheriff. For distraction, throw in townspeople who can't shoot straight. Marcus takes two shots to kill and will play possum for 1 round after being shot the first time if the sheriff is still alive.
Wrap it up and serve with a side dish of your choice. Season to taste.
I'll post my inform game file once I finish it up. The actual coding is taking me a little longer than the plotting, which goes to show how Lester Dent was able to be so prolific.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2308&start=0#p15731
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: assigning conversations to Scenes
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-04-14 18:57:42

Here's a simple scenario that does what you're describing:

[code]Include Conversation Package by Eric Eve.

The Lab is a room. Roger is a man in the Lab.

The hobbit is a familiar thing.

Instead of quizzing  Roger about the hobbit:
	say "'Hmm -- interesting,' Roger muses[if weasel-carrying is happening]. 'The hobbit reminds me of your cute little weasel, in fact,' he adds[end if]."
	
The player carries a weasel.

Weasel-carrying is a recurring scene. Weasel-carrying begins when the player carries the weasel. Weasel-carrying ends when the player does not carry the weasel.

Weasel-not-carrying is a recurring scene. Weasel-not-carrying begins when the player does not carry the weasel. Weasel-not-carrying ends when the player carries the weasel.[/code]

The response of Roger when asked about the hobbit will vary, depending on which scene is active.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2307&start=0#p15732
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Acting Fast
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-14 23:17:11

Thanks all.

Yeah, Variable..Control is what I need. I'd read the docs before but I forgot about its existence during the month away from working on my game.

- Wade

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2312&start=0#p15733
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Any great games in the public domain?
User: Pelican / DateTime: 2011-04-15 02:36:03

I'm looking for some classic IF games in the public domain or with some open license terms, like the GPL, as I'd like to port them to the Chinese language.  I first considered Colossal Cave, but can't determine if it is free or not.  Most of my favorite games are from Level 9, but I'd be interesting in trying something else too.  Older is better as the language is generally easier.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2312&start=0#p15734
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Any great games in the public domain?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-04-15 09:19:26

I once made a list of free software games on the IF Archive; it is [b]very incomplete[/b], but can be found here: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Free_Software_IF">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Free_Software_IF</a>

These are mostly newer works, though. If I were you, I would just take Adventure / Colossal Cave: there have been a million editions, ports and translations of it, and the original authors presumably condone this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2312&start=0#p15735
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Any great games in the public domain?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-04-15 09:27:24

It is long-standing tradition that Colossal Cave and the MIT edition of Dungeon are community property, and can be ported to any language (human) or language (IF programming) freely. Both games predate the era of formal open-source licensing, but that's how we treat them.

For more recent games, you can try contacting the authors. I'm open to people translating my games -- send me email.

The <a class="postlink" href="http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/source">http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/source</a> directory has some games' source code, including Colossal Cave and Dungeon. You might have to download a bunch and look at the the licenses, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2313&start=0#p15736
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Thoughts on provisioning an IF game...
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-04-15 10:04:21

A few months back, since I became reintroduced to IF, I wanted to try making a short IF game to see if I could do it. Without the help of this community forum I probably would've never been able to pull it together, and all the help I've received has been much appreciated, so thank you! Text adventures were one of my favorite games back in the day, and I really liked Infocom's "feelies" concept, so I wanted to experiment in creating some of my own to go along with the game.

I remember reading David Cornelson's post about this, which gave me some good direction and motivation:
<a class="postlink" href="http://chicagodave.wordpress.com/2010/11/09/provisioning-an-if-game/">http://chicagodave.wordpress.com/2010/1 ... n-if-game/</a>

I created some props and a nostalgic Infocom-style screenshot to go along with the game. These will be PDF's, of course, but they should print out fine should anyone want material copies. So mouldering inside every copy of "The Unnamed" will be a map, a Playing IF Command reference card (using Zarf's concept), a scholarship award letter from Miskatonic University, and a Miskatonic student ID card.

I'll reshoot this scene using some different lighting and prop elements, so the final composite will turn out better overall. This early version is more of a test of what I have in mind.

The game's in an alpha-beta state right now being tested by a few friends, and once I work out a few more kinks and do a bit of polishing, I'll post a request for anyone here on the forums who wants to help beta test it further.

Thanks again to everyone who answered my questions here on the forum, this has really been a fun and challenging project and I'm looking forward to more!


[img]http://www.rive-fantasy.com/theunnamed_promo.jpg[/img]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2313&start=0#p15737
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Thoughts on provisioning an IF game...
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-04-15 10:40:15

Awesome.  The screenshot is doing its job - I totally want to play!

I love getting and making feelies - it's a win-win, as far as I'm concerned.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2312&start=0#p15738
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Any great games in the public domain?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-04-15 10:42:16

If you're interested in translating non-commercial work, you can get a fairly complete list of available source code from IFDB: <a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchbar=tag%3Asource+available">http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchbar=t ... +available</a>. Some of them specify a license, some don't.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=20#p15739
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2011-04-15 10:46:41

Although I don't think writing is quite like baking a cake, I do think there are some standard techniques that are used in many different forms of writing.  And these are true both in fiction and non-fiction. (Think about classic journalism, 3 act plays, hero's quests, mysteries, whodunnits, etc.) I'm not suggesting that the greatest writing can be reduced to formula, but rather that there are conventions and best practices that can help provide a newcomer some structure and ideas on how to write well.  

The IF Theory Reader book is a good start, but it would be fantastic for folks to share their ideas about what structures work well in IF with regards to pacing, character development, etc.

--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">http://www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2309&start=0#p15740
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why does Empty Transfer use Locksmith?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-04-15 11:45:48

Okay, then, here's my offer:

"Version 5 of Empty Transfer"
[spoiler][code]Version 5 of Empty Transfer by Emily Short begins here.

"Adds actions for emptying containers."

Volume - General Requirements

Chapter - Holding Requirements (for use without Locksmith by Emily Short)

Section - Autotaking Rules

This is the noun autotaking rule:
	if the player is the person asked:
		say "(first taking [the noun])";
		silently try taking the noun;
	otherwise:
		try the person asked trying taking the noun.
	
This is the second noun autotaking rule:
	if the player is the person asked:
		say "(first taking [the second noun])";
		silently try taking the second noun;
	otherwise:
		try the person asked trying taking the second noun.
	
Section - Must Hold Nouns Rules 

This is the must hold the noun rule:
	if the person asked does not have the noun, follow the noun autotaking rule;
	if the person asked does not have the noun, stop the action; 
	make no decision.

This is the must hold the second noun rule:
	if the person asked does not have the second noun, follow the second noun autotaking rule;
	if the person asked does not have the second noun, stop the action;
	make no decision.

Chapter - Opening Requirements

Section - Nouns Must Be Open Rules
 
This is the noun must be open rule:
	if the noun is closed:
		follow the noun autoopening rule;
	if the noun is closed:
		stop the action; 
	make no decision.

This is the second noun must be open rule:
	if the second noun is closed:
		follow the second noun autoopening rule;
	if the second noun is closed:
		stop the action;
	make no decision. 
	
Section - Autoopening (for use with Locksmith by Emily Short)

This is the noun autoopening rule:
	if the sequential action option is active:
		if the player is the person asked:
			try opening the noun;
		otherwise:
			try the person asked trying opening the noun;
	otherwise:
		if the player is the person asked:
			say "(first opening [the noun])[command clarification break]";
			silently try opening the noun;
		otherwise:
			try the person asked trying opening the noun; 

This is the second noun autoopening rule:
	if the sequential action option is active:
		if the player is the person asked:
			try opening the second noun;
		otherwise:
			try the person asked trying opening the second noun;
	otherwise:
		if the player is the person asked:
			say "(first opening [the second noun])[line break]";
			silently try opening the second noun;
		otherwise:
			try the person asked trying opening the second noun.

Section - Autoopening (for use without Locksmith by Emily Short)

This is the noun autoopening rule:
	if the player is the person asked:
		say "(first opening [the noun])[command clarification break]";
		silently try opening the noun;
	otherwise:
		try the person asked trying opening the noun; 

This is the second noun autoopening rule:
	if the player is the person asked:
		say "(first opening [the second noun])[line break]";
		silently try opening the second noun;
	otherwise:
		try the person asked trying opening the second noun.

Volume - Emptying

Section - Emptying Grammar

Understand "empty [container]" as emptying. Understand "empty [something]" as emptying.

Section - The Emptying Action

Emptying is an action applying to one thing.

Section - Check Emptying

Check an actor emptying something (this is the can't empty what's not a container rule):
	if the noun is not a container:
		if the player is the person asked:
			say "You can't empty [a noun].";
		stop the action.

Check an actor emptying (this is the can't empty what's closed rule):
	abide by the noun must be open rule.
	
Check an actor emptying (this is the can't empty what's empty rule):
	if the noun does not contain something:
		if the player is the person asked:
			say  "There is nothing in [the noun].";
		stop the action;   
	
Section - Carry Out Emptying

Carry out an actor emptying (this is the move emptied items rule):
	now every thing is unmarked for listing;
	repeat with item running through things in the noun:
		if the person asked is the player:
			silently try taking the item; 
		otherwise:
			silently try the person asked trying taking the item;
		if the person asked carries the item:
			if the person asked is the player:
				silently try dropping the item;
			otherwise:
				silently try the person asked trying dropping the item;
			if the person asked does not carry the item:
				now the item is marked for listing;  

Section - Report Emptying

Report an actor emptying (this is the standard empty report rule):
	if the number of marked for listing things is 0:
		say "Nothing comes out of [the noun]." instead;
	if the player is the person asked:
		say "You empty ";
	otherwise:
		say "[The person asked] empties ";
	say "[the list of marked for listing things] from [the noun].";
	now every thing is unmarked for listing. 
	
Volume - Transferring it Into

Section - Transferring Grammar

Understand "empty [container] into/in [container]" as transferring it into. Understand "empty [something] into/in [something]" as transferring it into. Understand the command "dump" as "empty".

Section - The Transferring it Into Action

Transferring it into is an action applying to two things. 

Section - Check Transferring Something Into Something

Check an actor transferring something into something (this is the can't transfer what's not a container rule): 
	abide by the can't empty what's not a container rule.

Check an actor transferring something into something  (this is the can't transfer from closed containers rule): 
	abide by the noun must be open rule.

Check an actor transferring something into something  (this is the can't transfer from empty containers rule): 
	abide by the can't empty what's empty rule.

Check an actor transferring something into something  (this is the can't transfer into what's not a container rule): 
	if the second noun is not a container:
		if the player is the person asked:
			say "[The second noun] cannot contain things.";
		stop the action.

Check an actor transferring something into something  (this is the can't transfer to closed containers rule):
	abide by the second noun must be open rule.
	
Check an actor transferring something into something  (this is the can't transfer something within itself rule):
	if the noun encloses the second noun:
		abide by the must hold the second noun rule.

Section - Carry Out Transferring Something Into Something

Carry out an actor transferring something into something (this is the move transferred items rule):
	now every thing is unmarked for listing;
	repeat with item running through things in the noun:
		if the player is the person asked:
			silently try taking the item;
		otherwise:
			silently try the person asked trying taking the item;
		if the person asked carries the item:
			if the person asked is the player:
				try silently inserting the item into the second noun;
			otherwise:
				silently try the person asked trying inserting the item into the second noun;
			if the item is in the second noun:
				now the item is marked for listing.

Section - Report Transferring Something Into Something

Report an actor transferring something into something (this is the standard transfer report rule):
	if the number of marked for listing things is 0:
		say "Nothing comes out of [the noun]." instead;
	if the player is the person asked:
		say "You empty ";
	otherwise:
		say "[The person asked] empties ";
	say "[the list of marked for listing things] from [the noun] ";
	if the second noun is a container:
		say "into";
	otherwise:
		say "onto";
	say " [the second noun][if something is in the noun]. [The list of things in the noun] remain[s] in [the noun][end if].";
	now every thing is unmarked for listing.

Volume - Dumping it Onto

Section - Dumping Grammar

Understand "empty [container] on/onto [supporter]" as dumping it onto. Understand "empty [something] on/onto [something]" as dumping it onto.

Section - The Dumping it Onto Action

Dumping it onto is an action applying to two things.

Section - Check Dumping Something Onto Something

Check an actor dumping something onto something (this is the can't dump from unheld containers rule):
	abide by the must hold the noun rule.

Check an actor dumping something onto something (this is the can't dump from non containers rule): 
	abide by the can't empty what's not a container rule.

Check an actor dumping something onto something (this is the can't dump from closed containers rule): 
	abide by the noun must be open rule.

Check an actor dumping something onto something (this is the can't dump empty containers rule): 
	abide by the can't empty what's empty rule.

Check an actor dumping something onto something (this is the can't dump onto what's not a supporter rule): 
	if the second noun is not a supporter:
		if the player is the person asked, say "[The second noun] cannot support things.";
		stop the action; 
	
Check an actor dumping something onto something (this is the can't dump onto itself rule):
	abide by the can't transfer something within itself rule.  

Section - Carry Out Dumping Something Onto Something

Carry out an actor dumping something onto something (this is the move dumped items rule):
	now every thing is unmarked for listing;
	repeat with item running through things in the noun:
		if the player is the person asked:
			silently try taking the item;
		otherwise:
			silently try the person asked trying taking the item;
		if the person asked carries the item:
			if the person asked is the player:
				try silently putting the item on the second noun;
			otherwise:
				silently try the person asked trying putting the item on the second noun;
			if the item is on the second noun:
				now the item is marked for listing. 

Section - Report Dumping Something Onto Something

Report an actor dumping something onto something (this is the standard report dumping rule):
	follow the standard transfer report rule. 

Empty Transfer ends here.

---- Documentation ----

This extension adds three actions: emptying something (for emptying a container onto the floor); transferring something into something (for moving the contents of a container into another container); and dumping something onto something (for moving the contents of a container onto a table). All three actions are implemented for non-player characters as well as for the player.

If an object in a container should not be movable, it is enough to supply an "instead of taking" rule (and another "instead of someone trying taking..." rule, if other characters than the player are going to interact with the object). These insteads will be honored in the process of emptying. (A note of warning: because of the way messages are printed, the results may be infelicitous if we rely on making the contained object "fixed in place" rather than writing an instead of taking rule. In that case, Inform may print "That's fixed in place." at a point in the action where it is unclear what "That" refers to.) 

Example: * Sorting - A test case with boxes and enclosed items.

	*: "Sorting"

	Include Empty Transfer by Emily Short.	

	 Start Room is a room. 

	The grey box, the silver box, the blue box, and the white box are openable open containers in the Start Room. The grey box contains an apple, an orange, a chocolate, and a mint. The white box contains a napkin. The blue box contains an anchovy and a key. The silver box contains a sense of wonder.

	The pedestal is a supporter in the Start Room.

	Clark is a man in the Start room. A persuasion rule: persuasion succeeds.

	Instead of taking the mint: say "The mint has melted in place." Instead of someone trying taking the mint: say "[The person asked] tries to pry the mint from place, but it is melted there."

	Instead of taking something which is in the silver box: say "You can't reach into the silver box." Instead of someone trying taking something which is in the silver box: say "[The person asked] cannot fit a hand into the silver box."

	Test empty with "empty grey / put all in grey / close grey / empty grey / empty apple / empty silver box".

	Test transfer with "empty grey into white / dump white into grey / put white in grey / empty grey into white / get all / put all in white / get grey / empty white into grey / dump grey into blue / dump blue onto pedestal".

	Test Clark1 with "get grey / drop grey / put all but grey in grey / close grey / clark, empty grey / clark, get orange and apple / clark, put orange and apple in grey / clark, empty silver box/ clark, drop grey / get grey / put all in grey / clark, empty grey".

	Test Clark2 with "clark, empty grey into white / clark, get white / clark, put orange into white / clark, empty white onto pedestal / clark, empty silver box".[/code][/spoiler]

I'd be happy to send it as a file if that's preferred.

It turns out that in addition to the sequential actions option, Empty Transfer also makes use of Locksmith's autotaking rules, which I duplicated for use without Locksmith.

Now this is the sort of situation where my mind wanders. First of all, I imagine lots of tiny little extensions that work well together. An "autotake" extension could combine all the shared functionality of both extensions and they could both include it.

As my mind wanders further, I think, why not make all shared check rules truly shared? Most of the time the only thing that differs is the failure message. So maybe an "unsuccessful attempt by the player" extension that regroups all the check rules in the Standard Library to avoid duplication, printing out the appropriate message for each combination of actor, action, and reason the action failed. Now here is where I get really happy. Ron Newcomb already wrote an extension that does most of that, in an amazingly brief amount of code! Now all I'd have to do is rewrite all the check rules and library messages!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2303&start=0#p15741
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Text Properties of Classes
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-04-15 11:55:56

[quote="Pacian"]My second question is the one that moved me to post, but I thought I'd throw the first one in while I was at it. I've only encountered the issue with text so far, but I think it would be useful to be able to do it with other values as well. Sometimes you just want an attribute that is usually some other attribute, but may differ in specific instances/subclasses.[/quote]
I usually do that with To Decide phrase. I have a feeling that rulebooks or maybe activities can return objects, but I've never tried it. 
A rulebook in this situation would be a flexible way to return a default value in the general case while being overridden easily.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2293&start=0#p15742
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: vim syntax document for I7
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-04-15 12:06:57

I've been in contact with the author. Les sent me an update that works a little better. phpBB doesn't allow the .vim extension, so I had to add .txt at the end of the filename. To use the extension, you'll have to remove it again.

[attachment=0]inform7.vim.txt[/attachment]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2314&start=0#p15743
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Large maps
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-04-15 12:44:31

Just checking in on design choices for large maps.

My WIP has a large map.  In game, there's about 130 sq km/50 sq miles, with only a few areas technically inaccessible.  

There's two things in tension here: there's a mechanical need for large numbers of locations, but the PC will spend a fair amount of time moving around, and I would prefer that she not have to troop through a dozen rooms every time.

The way I've got things set up is a map consisting of fairly location-dense regions - a forest that may have 25 rooms, say.  The regions are bisected by location-sparse roads and paths, so that it might only take 4 moves to travel 3 miles on a road, but 25-40 if the PC cuts through a dense area.  I'm hoping to add a "go to road" feature that will automatically get the PC to a road/path.  (He can already "go home", of course.)

Does this seem like a rational way to go about things?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2315&start=0#p15744
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Convert from Zblorb to I7 Source Code
User: chaoslink / DateTime: 2011-04-15 13:08:20

Hi

I am relatively new to inform, for a class i am in, an assignment was to create an inform 7 game, by accident i submitted the .zblorb without the source file so the teacher was unable to read the source code. She will no longer accept any furthur submisssions . So i was wondering if their is a way you can convert .zblorb files back to the original source code?
If anyone could help i would greatly appreciate it 

Thankyou

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2309&start=0#p15745
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why does Empty Transfer use Locksmith?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-04-15 14:43:48

So, does this look useful?

"Autotaking"
[spoiler][code]Autotaking by Mike Ciul begins here.

"Implicit taking of noun or second noun that may be invoked by (or used as) a check rule."

Section - Sequential Action Option

Use sequential action translates as (- Constant SEQUENTIAL_ACTION; -).

Section - Autotaking Nouns Rules

This is the noun autotaking rule:
	if sequential action option is active:
		if the player is the person asked:
			try taking the noun;
		otherwise:
			try the person asked trying taking the noun;
	otherwise:
		if the player is the person asked:
			say "(first taking [the noun])";
			silently try taking the noun;
		otherwise:
			try the person asked trying taking the noun.
	
This is the second noun autotaking rule:
	if sequential action option is active:
		if the player is the person asked:
			try taking the second noun;
		otherwise:
			try the person asked trying taking the second noun;
	otherwise:
		if the player is the person asked:
			say "(first taking [the second noun])";
			silently try taking the second noun;
		otherwise:
			try the person asked trying taking the second noun.

Section - Must Hold Nouns Rules	

This is the must hold the noun rule:
	if the person asked does not have the noun, follow the noun autotaking rule;
	if the person asked does not have the noun, stop the action; 
	make no decision.

This is the must hold the second noun rule:
	if the person asked does not have the second noun, follow the second noun autotaking rule;
	if the person asked does not have the second noun, stop the action;
	make no decision.

Autotaking ends here.

---- DOCUMENTATION ----

Derived from (and largely copied and pasted from) Emily Short's extension "Locksmith," Autotaking provides a convenient way for any action to ensure that the noun or the second noun is held before being carried out. It also provides for the "sequential action" output style to be used instead of the default "(first taking the noun)" message.

Whenever we create an action that involves a noun or second noun that must be held, we can invoke the "must hold the noun" rule or the "must hold the second noun" rule:

	Attacking it with is an action applying to two things.

	The must hold the second noun rule is listed first in the check attacking it with rulebook.

This will generate an automatic take if the actor doesn't have the second noun, and the action will be stopped if the autotake fails.

We can also invoke the "noun autotaking" and "second noun autotaking" rules explicitly:

	Check an actor attacking something with something (this is the weapons must be held rule):
		if the actor does not hold the second noun, follow the second noun autotaking rule;
		if the actor does not hold the second noun, stop the action.

By default, automatic taking actions are described as other automatic actions usually are in Inform: the player sees something like "(first taking...)" before he takes an object used in an action. The "Use sequential action" mode is provided for the case where we would prefer to see "Taken." instead. 

Example: * Butterfingers - Making sure the "attacking it with" action always uses a held weapon.

	*: "Butterfingers"

	Include Autotaking by Mike Ciul.

	Attacking it with is an action applying to two things.

	Understand "attack [something] with [something]" as attacking it with.

	The must hold the second noun rule is listed first in the check attacking it with rulebook.

	Check attacking something with something:
		If the noun is not a person:
			say "You do very little damage to [the noun].";
			stop the action.

	Check attacking the player with something:
		say "You wound yourself slightly, but the pain causes you to stop.";
		stop the action.

	Carry out attacking something with something:
		Now the second noun is in the location.

	Report attacking something with something:
		say "With a mighty yell, you swing [the second noun] at [the noun]. Unfortunately, it slips from your sweaty fingers and falls to the ground."

	Arena is a room.

	The gladiator is a man in Arena.

	There is a sword in Arena. There is a big rock in Arena.

	Instead of taking the big rock, say "You strain to lift the rock, but it's too heavy for you."

	test me with "i/attack rock with sword/i/attack me with sword/attack gladiator with sword/g/attack gladiator with rock"[/code][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2296&start=0#p15746
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to make game title appear before any descriptions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-04-15 14:52:54

Are you thinking of the "story headline?" That's what normally prints right after the title, and it's also used in the "library card:"

[code]"Title" by Author.

The story headline is "Description of story."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2309&start=0#p15747
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why does Empty Transfer use Locksmith?
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-04-15 15:23:12

[quote="capmikee"]So, does this look useful?

"Autotaking"
[spoiler][code]Autotaking by Mike Ciul begins here.

"Implicit taking of noun or second noun that may be invoked by (or used as) a check rule."

Section - Sequential Action Option

Use sequential action translates as (- Constant SEQUENTIAL_ACTION; -).

Section - Autotaking Nouns Rules

This is the noun autotaking rule:
	if sequential action option is active:
		if the player is the person asked:
			try taking the noun;
		otherwise:
			try the person asked trying taking the noun;
	otherwise:
		if the player is the person asked:
			say "(first taking [the noun])";
			silently try taking the noun;
		otherwise:
			try the person asked trying taking the noun.
	
This is the second noun autotaking rule:
	if sequential action option is active:
		if the player is the person asked:
			try taking the second noun;
		otherwise:
			try the person asked trying taking the second noun;
	otherwise:
		if the player is the person asked:
			say "(first taking [the second noun])";
			silently try taking the second noun;
		otherwise:
			try the person asked trying taking the second noun.

Section - Must Hold Nouns Rules	

This is the must hold the noun rule:
	if the person asked does not have the noun, follow the noun autotaking rule;
	if the person asked does not have the noun, stop the action; 
	make no decision.

This is the must hold the second noun rule:
	if the person asked does not have the second noun, follow the second noun autotaking rule;
	if the person asked does not have the second noun, stop the action;
	make no decision.

Autotaking ends here.

---- DOCUMENTATION ----

Derived from (and largely copied and pasted from) Emily Short's extension "Locksmith," Autotaking provides a convenient way for any action to ensure that the noun or the second noun is held before being carried out. It also provides for the "sequential action" output style to be used instead of the default "(first taking the noun)" message.

Whenever we create an action that involves a noun or second noun that must be held, we can invoke the "must hold the noun" rule or the "must hold the second noun" rule:

	Attacking it with is an action applying to two things.

	The must hold the second noun rule is listed first in the check attacking it with rulebook.

This will generate an automatic take if the actor doesn't have the second noun, and the action will be stopped if the autotake fails.

We can also invoke the "noun autotaking" and "second noun autotaking" rules explicitly:

	Check an actor attacking something with something (this is the weapons must be held rule):
		if the actor does not hold the second noun, follow the second noun autotaking rule;
		if the actor does not hold the second noun, stop the action.

By default, automatic taking actions are described as other automatic actions usually are in Inform: the player sees something like "(first taking...)" before he takes an object used in an action. The "Use sequential action" mode is provided for the case where we would prefer to see "Taken." instead. 

Example: * Butterfingers - Making sure the "attacking it with" action always uses a held weapon.

	*: "Butterfingers"

	Include Autotaking by Mike Ciul.

	Attacking it with is an action applying to two things.

	Understand "attack [something] with [something]" as attacking it with.

	The must hold the second noun rule is listed first in the check attacking it with rulebook.

	Check attacking something with something:
		If the noun is not a person:
			say "You do very little damage to [the noun].";
			stop the action.

	Check attacking the player with something:
		say "You wound yourself slightly, but the pain causes you to stop.";
		stop the action.

	Carry out attacking something with something:
		Now the second noun is in the location.

	Report attacking something with something:
		say "With a mighty yell, you swing [the second noun] at [the noun]. Unfortunately, it slips from your sweaty fingers and falls to the ground."

	Arena is a room.

	The gladiator is a man in Arena.

	There is a sword in Arena. There is a big rock in Arena.

	Instead of taking the big rock, say "You strain to lift the rock, but it's too heavy for you."

	test me with "i/attack rock with sword/i/attack me with sword/attack gladiator with sword/g/attack gladiator with rock"[/code][/spoiler][/quote]

I haven't had a chance to test it yet... but yes, looks very useful.

I look forward to seeing it in the extension catalog. 

My guess is the player gets his butt kicked by the gladiator in the example.   [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2315&start=0#p15748
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Convert from Zblorb to I7 Source Code
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-04-15 16:19:18

No, that's not possible. Sorry.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2309&start=0#p15749
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why does Empty Transfer use Locksmith?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-04-15 16:28:36

[quote="capmikee"]does this look useful?[/quote]
What about the commands that already result in implicit takings by default? I think it would be nice if this extension made the sequential action options work for them, too, without the author having to add the must hold rules to their check rulebooks.

Perhaps some less naïve version of
[code]Rule for implicitly taking the noun: follow the must hold the noun rule.
Rule for implicitly taking the second noun: follow the must hold the second noun rule.[/code]
might be made to work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2250&start=10#p15750
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: SpeedIF Jacket 4
User: Roger / DateTime: 2011-04-15 16:29:01

Submitted!


Cheers,
Roger

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2313&start=0#p15751
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Thoughts on provisioning an IF game...
User: George / DateTime: 2011-04-15 16:36:48

That looks great. It's a photograph?  [emote]:shock:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2310&start=0#p15752
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help me understand Hypothetical Questions
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-04-15 17:00:21

[url=http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/glulx-spec_2.html#s.10]Here[/url].  The [url=http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/glulx-spec.ps]Glulx Specification[/url] is a handy file if you plan on low-level Glulx hacking.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2316&start=0#p15753
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I6] Attributes
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-04-15 17:26:30

Dear all,

I have an object "X's and Y's rucksacks". I gave it "static" and "pluralname". In the room decription it's listed as "some X's and Y's rucksacks". How can I get rid of the "some"?

Thanks and kind regards,

G.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2313&start=0#p15754
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Thoughts on provisioning an IF game...
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-04-15 17:52:18

Really nice!

(Funny how that old floppy disk to the right looks more obsolete than a wax sealed letter ...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2312&start=0#p15755
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Any great games in the public domain?
User: Pelican / DateTime: 2011-04-15 18:00:56

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]I once made a list of free software games on the IF Archive; it is [b]very incomplete[/b], but can be found here: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Free_Software_IF">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Free_Software_IF</a>

These are mostly newer works, though. If I were you, I would just take Adventure / Colossal Cave: there have been a million editions, ports and translations of it, and the original authors presumably condone this.[/quote]Okay, I think I'll stick with the original version of Colossal Cave, for my first game.  I wonder, in your list here, are there any new games that are well-liked, or award-winning?

[quote="zarf"]For more recent games, you can try contacting the authors. I'm open to people translating my games -- send me email.[/quote]Unfortunately, my Chinese is far from any professional level.  I'm a student, and just want to find something interesting to work on.  Also, I don't have a Chinese engine yet.  I've already designed a hypothetical engine for Chinese, but don't have time to write the source code for it or to learn how to convert this to something Inform or TADS can use.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2316&start=0#p15756
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Attributes
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-04-15 18:03:16

You set the property [b]article[/b], adding a [code]with article "",[/code] to the definition of the object.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2316&start=0#p15757
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Attributes
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-04-15 18:09:45

Thanks! Only flaw: Now there's a space before the object ("You see  X's and Y's rucksacks here.").

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2317&start=0#p15758
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Recommended games for a classroom activity?
User: Pelican / DateTime: 2011-04-15 18:19:59

I work with students who are studying English as a second language.  Many are looking for fun ways to practice their English outside of class, and some have shown an interest in interactive fiction.  As I personally haven't spent much time playing such games, I don't have many ideas to suggest.  Here's what I'm looking for:

[list]
[*]A good first game that will get people "hooked".[/*:m]
[*]Well-written, but without colorful, poetic, or college-level language.  The students can understand books like Tom Sawyer just fine.[/*:m]
[*]Plot constrained to a G-rating.[/*:m]
[*]Lots of space to explore initially.[/*:m]
[*]A smart parser that understands lots of verbs, so that students don't get frustrated too quickly by the computer's ignorance.[/*:m][/list:u]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2316&start=0#p15759
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Attributes
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-04-15 18:26:47

Ah, yes! It adds that blank space after the article.
Well, you can get rid of it by using the property [b]articles[/b] (in the plural) instead.
Then you have to specify all three articles for the object: capitalized definite article, non-capitalized definite article and non-capitalized indefinite article (there is no distinct capitalized indefinite article). [i]This[/i] property does not add a blank space automatically.

So:
[code]with articles "The " "the " "",[/code]
or perhaps for this object you'd prefer
[code]with articles "" "" "",[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2316&start=0#p15760
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Attributes
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-04-15 18:33:17

Thanks, didn't know the "articles" attribute before. Didn't help here, but it seems the "proper" attribute does the trick.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2317&start=0#p15761
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Recommended games for a classroom activity?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-04-15 18:40:19

I suppose Admiral Jota's "Lost Pig" would meet those requirements well enough (except, perhaps, the one about having lots of space initially).
Or try Matt Wigdahl's "Aotearoa".
Or just roam the Interactive Fiction Database ([url]ifdb.tads.org[/url]) till you find what your after. It shouldn't take too long.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2307&start=0#p15762
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Acting Fast
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-15 20:49:08

I've added in Variable Time Control, and it works  as far as the numerical turn counter is concerned. So if I walk into a wall, the turn counter in the upper right corner doesn't move.

However, it doesn't seem to be having any effect on the timed events, which is the important part.

If I say 'typhoon strikes in 3 turns from now', the typhoon will occur after you type 3 more commands, whether or not those commands eat up lots of moves/time or none at all (the [no-time] schtick, which is supposed to make a command happen as if it was out-of-world). The player could walk into a wall 3 times, and the displayed turn counter won't move during that time, but the typhoon still happens after the third wall collision.

This potentially should go to the author, but I wanted to check if this is a known issue?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2250&start=10#p15763
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: SpeedIF Jacket 4
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-04-15 23:59:09

Aaaand we're done! I hope it was as exhilarating and ultimately humiliating for you as it was for me.

Thanks for taking part, all. Each of you receives your very own, personalised fist-bump, raised glass and knowing exchange of glances, eyes hooded, from across a crowded room.

The games are temporarily at diden. (Edit: they're now at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/unprocessed/SpeedIFJacket4.zip">http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/unp ... acket4.zip</a> ) . If anybody objects to having the bundle uploaded to the IF Archive, speak soon-ish or forever hold your peace. We'll be playing as many of the games as we can on ClubFloyd tomorrow: ifMUD, 2pm Eastern US. Hope to see you there. (Also, if blackmail is required: with eight submitted games we may not get through them all, so we'll probably end up giving priority to authors who can attend.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2317&start=0#p15764
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Recommended games for a classroom activity?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-04-16 02:07:12

[quote="Felix"]I suppose Admiral Jota's "Lost Pig" would meet those requirements well enough (except, perhaps, the one about having lots of space initially).[/quote]
Lost Pig is good for beginners, but not the best game for learning English :)

Here's a good list of recommendations: <a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/poll?id=memavsp06v1oc571">http://ifdb.tads.org/poll?id=memavsp06v1oc571</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=20#p15765
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-04-16 02:55:18

I'll go ahead and be the odd man out and say that writing is exactly like baking a cake.

There is a foundation craft (more than one, really), which can be learned, taught, formulated and possibly even perfected. The principles of craft are largely objective and achieve (for the most part) the objective portion of a work's goals.

There is, on top of that foundation craft, an art (more than one, really), which cannot be learned, taught, formulated or ever perfected (thought it's fun and often constructive to try). The principles of the art are largely subjective and achieve (for the most part) the subjective (emotional/aesthetic) portion of a work's goals.

The efforts of the art, over time, also uncover new points of craft. New points of craft, in turn, can enhance the experience of creating the art.

Just like baking - cakes or otherwise. Just like any creative endeavor worth doing, really.

And anyone who thinks there's no art in baking a great cake has never, I suspect, met one.

And just as you can buy crappy formulaic cakes at any supermarket, you can buy crappy formulaic games at any game store and crappy formulaic novels at any bookshop. But while the crappy formulaic stuff will always dominate every field (both commercially and in artsy and/or fartsy circles) it's never the thing to judge a medium's potential by.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2284&start=0#p15766
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you look for in your IF?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-04-16 03:06:25

[quote="ViePostmodern"]As a player, what kind of interactive fiction do you enjoy?[/quote]

The good stuff. The crappy stuff, not so much. But sometimes.

[quote]I don't really have a categorical taxonomy in mind here, but I've noticed that high minded "artsy" IF gets most of the press and attention. Is that all that people are looking for?[/quote]

I hope not. I think it's fascinating and even cool that people bother to make high-minded artsy IF, but I'm not in it for the homework; I want stuff that rocks.

[quote]If not, what ARE you looking for? Any particular genres? Styles? Simulationist feats of puzzle engineering? Dramatic interactions focusing on personal angst? Pornographic romps? Rip-roaring adventure yarns like likes of which will echo through the halls of valhalla? Heavy and terrifying atmospheric horror? Slice of life vignettes about unjamming the copy machine without getting ink on your tie before the Big Meeting? Pick Up The Phonebooth and Die?

All of the above, while juggling flaming chainsaws?[/quote]

Just ordinary chainsaws would be fine; no need to overdo things.

I like easy puzzles. I like a sense of exploration. I like evocative, confident, lean writing. I like satire. I like humor. I like social commentary as fuel but not as structure.

I definitely think there is vast potential for erotic IF that's never been approached (AIF in its current form seems to go out of its way to avoid the kind of games I'm hoping for/imagining/must one day write myself if I want any such games to play, I guess).

If I were to boil it down (and in fairness, I have on many occasions): I want games by designers more interested in seeing their work [i]enjoyed [/i]than in seeing their work [i]appreciated[/i].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2250&start=10#p15767
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: SpeedIF Jacket 4
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-04-16 03:15:10

[quote]I'll have a much-more-polished version out sometime in the next two days in vain hopes of whitewashing the game's reputation before it even gets one [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Okay, took me longer than two days, but I was still recovering from the con [emote]:)[/emote]

[shakes fist playfully at ClubFloyd] If not for you meddling kids, people would always think of this game as completely half-assed, rather than barely-one-sixth-assed!

Added a listing for it at IFDB, not sure of the etiquette for games tied to events like this ... if anyone need to go behind me and repair some faux pas in my entry, please have at it, and I shall be educated in the process. Apologies in advance for that (and, of course, for the game).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2284&start=0#p15768
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you look for in your IF?
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-04-16 03:25:28

Hm. My answer probably isn't helpful since I'm not your target group - I'm not into the IF scene, and if I play games, then it's state-of-the-art RPGs, maybe a shooter, or a strategy MMO browser game. But every now and then I give a text adventure a look for the same reason why I read a book on the train instead of playing a game mentioned above, and looking for the same stuff I'm looking for in a book: Entertainment. A story. Additionally, I wouldn't mind learning something (a story within a historical setting e.g.) or getting something to think about (e.g. a scifi story within a political system different from the ones we know). But the story would be most important; especially in the beginning I'd appreciate if something's actually happening. Once the story has caught me, it'd be okay to work on a puzzle for hours, but in the beginning I need action, nothing complicated. Oh, and if there's NPCs, I love em lively, or rather "in character", like doing and saying stuff I'd expect them to (with the occasional surprise). Not just standing there and giving me a quest and that's it. Just my 2ct from the off.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2318&start=0#p15769
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I6] Random Moves
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-04-16 03:32:18

How can I have an NPC move to a random direction? I could switch the valid exits of the current location, but I would rather like to have an array of the possible exits of the current location and have the NPC chose one at random so that he can move across the whole map. Something like
exit_list=possible_exits();
npc->move(exit_list(random(sizeof(exit_list))));
Know what I mean? Any help appreciated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2319&start=0#p15770
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: How to write a book?
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-04-16 04:07:57

Sorry for this very off-topic post, but I have a vague feeling a few people here might be able to spare a valuable hint or two for me.

The basic reason why I've joined this forum is that I want to write a book [size=50](in German)[/size]. I never thought about that before, I had no shares in writing before, I don't even read much, but I suddenly had a vague idea of a story I consider interesting, and when I quitted playing World of Warcraft (which wasted most of my spare time) I needed a new activity I could enjoy and thought about turning this idea into something real. So, now I have this vage plot idea, but no clue what to do since I never wrote anything apart from postcards from my holidays.

Now, I don't want to write like a semiilliterate, I don't want to fritter, I don't want millions of logical bugs, and I don't want to write 100 pages and suddenly look into them like into something completely strange. I know some of you are experienced in writing - what do you do if you have a plot idea, and how would you advise a complete novice to start? What I did so far is -

- starting a blog to practice writing short funny paragraphs (the plot idea itself is not funny).
- starting to learn Inform6 to practice embellishing my scant writing.
- starting to develop a plot for an IF game which I write down in a Word document (couldn't make friends with Storybook).
- starting to write down headwords about my plot idea, like a detailed abstract, with remarks on where research is necessary.
I'm also thinking about trying to write an ultra short story for a poetry slam to get more practice. 

So, if you have an idea for a book, how do you advance? How do you prepare? And how could a complete novice like me get into reasonably decent writing? Any thoughts on this are probably a great help to me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2319&start=0#p15771
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: How to write a book?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-04-16 04:35:42

Perhaps not the most directly applicable advice, but I still think it is immensely important: read good books. You will [i]only[/i] be able to recognise what is bad and what is good in your own writing once you have learned to appreciate excellent writing through reading at least some of the great authors.

My more directly applicable advice is to start writing, and then revise, revise, revise -- ruthlessly. When you have written something, revise it a day later, by which time you will hate most of your sentences. Revise it again a week later. Reread the whole chapter after a month, and decide which passages work, which have to be cut, and which need to be totally rewritten. Writing takes time. [emote]:)[/emote] On the positive side, knowing that you are going to revise everything should make it easier to start writing in the first place, because you know it doesn't have to be perfect the first time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2284&start=0#p15772
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you look for in your IF?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-04-16 04:40:11

[quote="Ghalev"]I like easy puzzles. I like a sense of exploration. I like evocative, confident, lean writing. I like satire. I like humor. I like social commentary as fuel but not as structure. I definitely think there is vast potential for erotic IF that's never been approached.[/quote]
You know that there is a Spring Thing 2011 game you should be playing right now? [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=20#p15773
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-04-16 05:30:50

Funny that many people have started to say how writing *is* like baking a cake. Here's a thought, though - is writing for IF also like baking a cake? Is there also a recipe? Because that's what this discussion is all about, and although some of the most basic recipes will work for some of the basic wordsmithing in IF (namely, the actual text in descriptions and dialog and whatnot) there's all the other elements, like story progression and structure and stuff, that don't translate well from a Static Fiction recipe.

Ghalev - I'm pretty sure you're not describing a recipe. Following a recipe is like cooking with Bimby (which I do a lot of, and am otherwise useless in a kitchen, so I should know [emote];)[/emote] ). It's all there - the ingredients, the times, the temperatures. You just follow evertyhing exactly and wham, you have a great-tasting dish. You can get creative, but then you're not following recipes anymore.

You CAN follow a basic recipe and add stuff to it. That's the sort of recipe I think exists for SF - there's a lot of guides, rules, guidelines that amount to a fair number of different basic recepies (like "avoid over-using the passive mode" - saw that one in Stephen King's "On Writing", but it's only a single ingredient to his own particular recipe).

What you're describing isn't a recipe, exactly - you're describing the whole process of cake-baking, with the recipe being the foundation craft. And it's that foundation that is a bit murky in IF. By now we've got excellent pointers, and one could say that if there IS a basic recipe for IF it lies in "The Craft of Adventure". But other than that, we're still experimenting as wildly as ever.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2277&start=0#p15774
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Scenery containers
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-04-16 06:13:06

May I ask for help again? My desired target output is -

>x cupboard
A cupboard.
>open cupboard
You open the cupboard, revealing an item.
>x cupboard
A cupboard. It contains an item.

But what I currently have is -

>x cupboard
A cupboard.
>open cupboard
You open the cupboard, revealing an item.
>x cupboard
A cupboard.

How can I get the open cupboard to show what's inside, without these items being shown while the cupboard is closed?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=20#p15775
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2011-04-16 07:06:06

[quote="capmikee"][quote="Felix"][quote="thefoxaroo"]Rather than repeat those same three lines of code ad nauseum, is there a way to encode them in a general rule, or a definition?
[/quote]
I think it's as easy as this:
[code]Breaking it with is an action applying to one thing and one carried thing.
Understand "break [something] with [something preferably held]" as breaking it with.[/code][/quote]
I just checked. "carried" does seem to generate an automatic take. I don't remember where I heard it was deprecated - it's used in several places in the Standard Rules, including for the second noun in "locking it with."

"[something preferably held]" causes the parser to choose a held object over a not held object when there is ambiguity, but it doesn't ever generate an automatic take.[/quote]
Thanks Felix and Capmikee! [emote]:)[/emote]  "[color=#008000][b]Breaking it with is an action applying to one touchable thing and one carried thing[/b][/color]" has stood up to all the tests I've thrown at it.  For the time being I've also amended it to "[color=#008000][b]Breaking it with is an action [i]requiring light[/i] applying to one touchable thing and one carried thing.[/b][/color]"  At this stage I haven't yet decided whether it's advantageous for the player to break things in the dark, but I'll have a chance to find out because after the player extinguishes the fire on the TARDIS console all the rooms will be darkened.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=20#p15776
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: jwideman / DateTime: 2011-04-16 08:25:43

I did post a recipe. [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote="Peter Pears"]Funny that many people have started to say how writing *is* like baking a cake. Here's a thought, though - is writing for IF also like baking a cake? Is there also a recipe? Because that's what this discussion is all about, and although some of the most basic recipes will work for some of the basic wordsmithing in IF (namely, the actual text in descriptions and dialog and whatnot) there's all the other elements, like story progression and structure and stuff, that don't translate well from a Static Fiction recipe.

Ghalev - I'm pretty sure you're not describing a recipe. Following a recipe is like cooking with Bimby (which I do a lot of, and am otherwise useless in a kitchen, so I should know [emote];)[/emote] ). It's all there - the ingredients, the times, the temperatures. You just follow evertyhing exactly and wham, you have a great-tasting dish. You can get creative, but then you're not following recipes anymore.

You CAN follow a basic recipe and add stuff to it. That's the sort of recipe I think exists for SF - there's a lot of guides, rules, guidelines that amount to a fair number of different basic recepies (like "avoid over-using the passive mode" - saw that one in Stephen King's "On Writing", but it's only a single ingredient to his own particular recipe).

What you're describing isn't a recipe, exactly - you're describing the whole process of cake-baking, with the recipe being the foundation craft. And it's that foundation that is a bit murky in IF. By now we've got excellent pointers, and one could say that if there IS a basic recipe for IF it lies in "The Craft of Adventure". But other than that, we're still experimenting as wildly as ever.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=30#p15777
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-04-16 08:35:52

[quote]What you're describing isn't a recipe, exactly - you're describing the whole process of cake-baking, with the recipe being the foundation craft.[/quote]

Kinda-sorta. The recipe is only a tiny part of the foundation craft, and following a recipe (really [i]following [/i]it) would indicate a cake-baker who doesn't even have all the basic foundations at hand yet. 

Someone can follow a cake recipe without even knowing the difference between baking soda and baking powder, or without understanding the difference butter, low-vegetable margarine or high-vegetable margarine will have on crumb and texture, or without knowing the difference between cane sugar or honey in a cake's moisture retention ... Recipes are rote procedure that can be followed without understanding, while real craftsmanship can alter, subvert, vary, improvise change and ultimately discard the recipe based on objective understanding of what works. A good craftsman can make you hundreds of distinct cakes without any recipe at hand (though, without art, none of them will be cakes particularly worth remembering or celebrating), because he understands the principles on which the recipes are built.

I disagree that the craft foundations in IF are murky. What's murky, I think, is the line between the craft foundations and the art built on them, and I think the blade that cuts the line cleanly is understanding that objective methods are useful mainly for objective goals, and any attempt to seek objective methods for subjective goals is fundamentally ... well, noobish, really,* and that remains my take on the thread ... it's not some lack inherent to IF or some lack inherent to IF's youth as a form ... it's a disconnect of understanding that applies universally to every creative endeavor in every time in history.


* Technically I consider it ritualistic, but that's for another thread in another context [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2284&start=0#p15778
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you look for in your IF?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-04-16 08:40:58

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="Ghalev"]I like easy puzzles. I like a sense of exploration. I like evocative, confident, lean writing. I like satire. I like humor. I like social commentary as fuel but not as structure. I definitely think there is vast potential for erotic IF that's never been approached.[/quote]
You know that there is a Spring Thing 2011 game you should be playing right now? [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

If it's the game I think you mean, I'm already in the testing credits [emote]:)[/emote]

If it's not, then please point me to which one ... I never get around to these things 'til years later without reviews! [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2277&start=0#p15779
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Scenery containers
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-04-16 09:07:52

Read S27 of the DM4, "Listing and grouping objects". Then you can have your description routine make use of WriteListFrom.

Or, you could have your description routine call L__M(##Search, 7, cupboard). But still, you should get to know the listmaker because it's very useful.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=30#p15780
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-04-16 09:52:41

[quote]Someone can follow a cake recipe without even knowing the difference between baking soda and baking powder, or without understanding the difference butter, low-vegetable margarine or high-vegetable margarine will have on crumb and texture, or without knowing the difference between cane sugar or honey in a cake's moisture retention ... Recipes are rote procedure that can be followed without understanding, while real craftsmanship can alter, subvert, vary, improvise change and ultimately discard the recipe based on objective understanding of what works. A good craftsman can make you hundreds of distinct cakes without any recipe at hand (though, without art, none of them will be cakes particularly worth remembering or celebrating), because he understands the principles on which the recipes are built.[quote]

Well, in that case yes, we do have a recipe. We don't even have to do anything about it in Inform 7, because the recipe's already made - world-modelling, inventory management, general interaction. But it's hardly an interesting recipe. If that's what you mean, and that the craft is all the extras like using exposition, pacing and foreshadowing - and that the art is an extra step that makes all the difference - then you leave me choice but to agree with you. [emote]:)[/emote] Yes, there is a recipe, and yes, there are foundations. But they're so insipid by themselves as to be useless. I got the feeling people were talking about a Black Forest Cake recipe, whereas you're talking about the recipe for making dough. 

Although we do have pointers (again, Nelson's article) about how to make REALLY INTERESTING dough.

So I do think you'll agree that there isn't a recipe for making a Black Forest Cake in IF.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2317&start=0#p15781
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Recommended games for a classroom activity?
User: Tanga / DateTime: 2011-04-16 10:31:03

Out of those I-0 is a definite no-no.  There's some pretty adult content in that one.  I don't know most of them, but Glowgrass would probably be pretty good (from memory).

A Bear's Night Out is great.  I really love this game, though some might consider it a child's game, it's not really.
<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=c9ll6cr8zr1txtfe">http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=c9ll6cr8zr1txtfe</a>

Ralph is another one I'd recommend.  It has a lot of good verbs (you play as a dog).  The puzzles aren't obvious though:
<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=og54uzaryp1nh1jh&ratings">http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=og54uz ... jh&ratings</a>

The Lesson of the Tortoise was fun:
<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=h6yue7liyshi27rp">http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=h6yue7liyshi27rp</a>

There are more, but I'm knackered.  Good-luck!

Ooh, just remembered an awesome one:
<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=b7zs6ocxlntb1u7c">http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=b7zs6ocxlntb1u7c</a> - it's multimedia (has a few sounds and pictures), and is really fun, and pretty forgiving.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2319&start=0#p15782
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: How to write a book?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-04-16 10:36:50

Write it.  Write without your internal editor, write while it's still raw and hot.  Then set it aside, and come back to it after some time - a few weeks, a few months.  There will be plot holes and purple prose and parts that don't fit.  You'll probably have to rewrite, but you'll have had some time to grow away from the text, so it won't be so much about self-doubt.  If you revise the very next day, your internal editor will be on all the time, and (for me, at least), that crushes creativity and confidence.

No one produces a first draft of a novel that is perfect, but there's a difference between looking at 1,000 words and trying to decide what should go in relation to an entire book to come, and looking at 60,000 words and revising with an eye to the whole.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=30#p15783
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: Tanga / DateTime: 2011-04-16 11:07:09

[quote="Peter Pears"]So I do think you'll agree that there isn't a recipe for making a Black Forest Cake in IF.[/quote]

Inform 7 by Aaron A Reed.  It shows you how to make Black Forest Cake (Sand-Dancer), or at least a good choc-mud cake.  Sure it won't be your game, but it will give you the fundamentals to begin making up your own recipes (like you said).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2319&start=0#p15784
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: How to write a book?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-16 11:11:07

I'm more on gravel's side than Victor's here -- I've never written a novel, but I did write a dissertation, and I find that when I get caught up in revise revise revising each piece before I get to the next I never do get to the next, whereas if I write it all at once and then write it over again occasionally I finish something.

That was a truly awfully long sentence but I'm not going to rewrite it. [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=30#p15785
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-04-16 11:12:53

Touche.

So there, Original Poster - get Inform 7 and you'll have your lessons, your recipe. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2317&start=0#p15786
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Recommended games for a classroom activity?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-16 11:21:54

More from the list: Violet also is a bit less than G-rated, I think, and you should stay very very far away from Rendition for this purpose. Gun Mute is a shoot-em-up which will also not work. The Gostak is so hilariously inappropriate for ESL learners that you should play a few turns just to check it out. Suveh Nux probably won't work for similar reasons (there are at least a few acronyms in it as well as some made-up words), which is a pity because otherwise it seems pretty suitable. 

The Dreamhold could be a good idea. And maybe Sara Dee's Mite, from the most recent IFComp? The map is pretty constrained, but otherwise it fits your criteria pretty well, I think .

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2284&start=0#p15787
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you look for in your IF?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-16 11:25:23

[quote="Ghalev"][quote]I don't really have a categorical taxonomy in mind here, but I've noticed that high minded "artsy" IF gets most of the press and attention. Is that all that people are looking for?[/quote]

I hope not. I think it's fascinating and even cool that people bother to make high-minded artsy IF, but I'm not in it for the homework[/quote]

Huh, that's exactly why I like the artsy stuff. No art game has ever given me as much homework as Zork did.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2320&start=0#p15788
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Ways to reboot a game
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-16 11:26:46

Hi again.

What are the differences between these methods of restarting and stopping a game?

1. 'stop game abruptly' versus 'follow the immediately quit rule' ?
2. 'try (silently) restarting the game' versus 'follow the immediately restart the VM rule' ?

I found no differences to the eye in the case of number 1, but for number 2, 'try restarting the game' hasn't been dependable for me at different times in the game. For instance, it works from an end game menu, but not from my custom restart code during the game, whereas 'follow the immediately restart the VM rule' does work.

I just wanted to know if there's any particular danger to using any one of these over another. The docs don't seem to say.

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2277&start=0#p15789
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Scenery containers
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-04-16 11:36:11

Almost works as intended, thanks! Except, there's a weird "1" at the end ("The cupboard contains an item1."). Also happens with a tall inventory:
The cupboard contains:
an item
1.
Any idea where [b]that[/b]'s coming from?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=30#p15790
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-04-16 11:54:53

[quote="Peter Pears"]:) Yes, there is a recipe, and yes, there are foundations. But they're so insipid by themselves as to be useless.[/quote]

Useful as far as they go, like any recipe. Useless if pressed into service for something they're not meant for, certainly.

[quote]So I do think you'll agree that there isn't a recipe for making a Black Forest Cake in IF.[/quote]

I'm not sure I understand the distinction (though if we're sticking to metaphor it's batter at any rate, not dough). But that may just mean the metaphor has exhausted its value for us [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2319&start=0#p15791
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: How to write a book?
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-04-16 11:59:10

Okay, that gives me a direction: Start. Thanks for that!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=30#p15792
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-04-16 11:59:13

[quote]I'm not sure I understand the distinction (though if we're sticking to metaphor it's batter at any rate, not dough). But that may just mean the metaphor has exhausted its value for us [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Thanks for the correction. [emote]:)[/emote] By "BFCake recipe" I meant a recipe for something more substantial than just the bare, bare basics - like Sand-Dancer, as Tanga pointed out. Because from what I understood from your post, the "batter" would be the plain recipe, without the craft, the recipe for the foundation; and a BFCake would be something built up from the foundation with craft, if not necessarily art.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=30#p15793
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-04-16 12:06:21

[quote="Peter Pears"][quote]I'm not sure I understand the distinction (though if we're sticking to metaphor it's batter at any rate, not dough). But that may just mean the metaphor has exhausted its value for us [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Thanks for the correction. [emote]:)[/emote] By "BFCake recipe" I meant a recipe for something more substantial than just the bare, bare basics - like Sand-Dancer, as Tanga pointed out. Because from what I understood from your post, the "batter" would be the plain recipe, without the craft, the recipe for the foundation; and a BFCake would be something built up from the foundation with craft, if not necessarily art.[/quote]

Thank you, gotcha.

Well, in that case I think we've had recipes for every kind of cake for years, with more always on the way. Given that a recipe is rote procedure based on prior success (which is to say, an imitation of the work of someone with greater understanding), we have as many recipes as we have working examples, copies of source code, or even the capacity to decompile [emote]:)[/emote]

But Sand-Dancer's a recipe worth reading (and then a cake worth noshing), to be sure, despite its heavy-handed use of artificial color [emote];)[/emote] [but I already did that review ...]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2317&start=0#p15794
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Recommended games for a classroom activity?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-04-16 13:06:59

_Bronze_ might work.  It's a good how-to-play-IF game and is well-written.  It's a Beauty and the Beast tale as well; I don't know if your students have familiarity with [some version of] that story.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2320&start=0#p15795
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Ways to reboot a game
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-04-16 13:26:33

The immediately restart the VM rule simply restarts.
The restarting action first checks that the "actor" variable is set to (the same value as) "player" before it restarts.
The actor variable only exists for certain rulebooks, though, (such as before, instead, check, carry out, after and report), and your custom restart code probably doesn't belong to any of them.
When the game asks the final question (Would you like to RESTART, RESTORE … etc.), the command "restart" actually doesn't trigger the restarting action but the immediately restart the VM rule.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2319&start=0#p15796
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: How to write a book?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-04-16 13:45:23

[quote="matt w"]I'm more on gravel's side than Victor's here -- I've never written a novel, but I did write a dissertation, and I find that when I get caught up in revise revise revising each piece before I get to the next I never do get to the next, whereas if I write it all at once and then write it over again occasionally I finish something.[/quote]
I don't disagree with this at all. Unlike gravel, I really like doing a revision the next day; but the second revision comes much later, and after you have written more parts.

I put the emphasis on the revising because the original poster expressed concern about being able to write good prose, but did not express concern about being able to get things done.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2277&start=0#p15797
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Scenery containers
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-04-16 13:59:25

Your code should say

L__M(##Search, 7, cupboard);

and not

print L__M(##Search, 7, cupboard);


This is explained in the Designer's Manual.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2277&start=0#p15798
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Scenery containers
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-04-16 17:19:37

[quote="Grueslayer"]Almost works as intended, thanks! Except, there's a weird "1" at the end ("The cupboard contains an item1."). Also happens with a tall inventory:
The cupboard contains:
an item
1.
Any idea where [b]that[/b]'s coming from?[/quote]
That happens because something in your code is returning true, and true is the same as 1, so a 1 is printed. I forget how to work around it, but it's a well-known and trivial I6 issue.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2317&start=0#p15799
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Recommended games for a classroom activity?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-04-16 18:04:29

Although "Carma" is a much more linear experience, and not traditional IF, you might want to take a look at it. At least one puzzle (you'll know it when you see it) can be quite interesting to play in group.

Also - an Alan game called "The Chasing". The parser could be better, but apart from that, I think it's quite, quite fitting.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2277&start=0#p15800
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Scenery containers
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-04-16 19:42:50

While I didn't find any clues on how L__M works in the manual, it works, and for the future I know what to do. Thanks Egon and everyone else!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2320&start=0#p15801
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Ways to reboot a game
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-16 20:26:41

Cool. Thanks Felix.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2307&start=0#p15802
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Acting Fast
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-16 21:29:37

OK I worked out the issue here.

Variable Time Control works so long as you address all timing in terms of seconds, minutes, hours, etc - explicit amounts of time.

If you use the term 'turns' (which is interchangeable with 'minutes' in a default game setup) you get a different result.

Saying 'Typhoon strikes in 3 minutes from now' will play nice with your Variable Time assignments.

Saying 'Typhoon strikes in 3 turns from now' will not play nice. The typhoon will strike even if you perform a series of actions which are supposed to take no time.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2321&start=0#p15803
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Custom Library Messages, version 4
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-04-16 23:55:50

Version 4 of Custom Library Messages is now posted.  I sincerely hope this is the last version I need create for a long, long time.  (Wish me luck on that.)  I've removed the most abstruse functionality and moved it into a separate extension, "Automated Verb Phrases".  Otherwise, this is what's changed:

* Saying "[The player] saw [the player]" now works correctly for non-second person viewpoints. Thanks Mark Tilford. 

* Several Going action messages were corrected for obvious faults, and looking action #6 was touched to deal with line break issues when additional rules follow the I-could-also-see rule. Thanks CEJ Pacian, StJohnLimbo, and Matt W.

* Fixed many more messages for particular tense-viewpoint combinations. Thanks Ben Sokal.

* Informed the list writer to observe past & present tenses. 

* Modified the [n't] say-phrase so it always prints n't/not when used, rather than hinging on a variable.

*  Removed a few say-phrases that weren't used at all. Documented the remaining say-phrases. 

* Re-arranged documentation, added new examples.  Final section of documentation no longer exists as it was moved to the new extension.

* Added the "any third person singular" and "any third person plural" objects to cover some edge cases like "Time pass[-es]."

* New irregular verbs require only 3 table rows per entry rather than four.  Moreover, these forms are in the same order as a new relation:  [i]The verb to weigh (he weighs, they weigh, he weighed) implies the...[/i]

* Polished the extension's appearance in the author's index. 

* Added the [^] capitalisation say-phrase from the extension Mentioned In Room Descriptions.

* Added [have+], [are+], and [do+] as the helping verb versions of have*, are*, and do*.  This is partly to ease migration from David's CLM extension, and partly for correctness.  

* Removed from the big table the messages that Inform no longer actually uses.  They're commented out just in case.  If you're interested in what messages no longer appear, and my best guess as to why, I took notes:[spoiler]Asking it for	1
*** is always converted to NPC, GIVE the noun TO ME

##CommandsRead,5   "would come after the prompt" (no 1,2,3,4, exist
*** not supported in I7... but could be, theoretically

Examining action	1	"Darkness, noun.  An absence of light to see by."
*** no way to refer to the Darkness.

Exiting action		4	"But [we] [is-are][n't] [if library message object is a supporter]on[otherwise]in[end if] [the library message object]."
***

Inserting it into action	1	"[We] [aux]need[-s] to be holding [the noun] before [we] [can] put [it-them of the noun] into something else."
*** the can't insert what's not held rule will *always* implicitly TAKE, but if the take itself fails, then it printed something so Insert needn't do so. 

Inserting it into action	4	"[We][']ll need to take [it-them of noun] off first."
*** as above, DOFF is implicitly done. 


Looking action		1	" (on [the library message object])[ignore library line break]"
Looking action		2	" (in [the library message object])[ignore library line break]"
*** both of these were subsumed into LOOK #8, which neatens the code which uses it

Looking action		3	" (as [library message object])[ignore library line break]"
*** deprecated?

Looking action		7	"[We] [see*] nothing unexpected in that direction."
*** EXAMINE #5 is identical, and used.


Looking under action	1	"But it[if the story tense is in any past tense] was[else]'s[end if] dark."
*** if it's dark, the noun is either out of scope so processing stops at the parser ("You can't see any such thing.") or if in scope, stopped within the visibility rules  (library #17 "..pitch dark and you can't see..") 

Searching action  	1	"But it[if the story tense is in any past tense] was[else]'s[end if] dark."
*** if it's dark, the noun is either out of scope so processing stops at the parser ("You can't see any such thing.") or if in scope, stopped within the visibility rules  (library #17 "..pitch dark and you can't see..") 


Removing it from action	1	"[It-they of noun] [is-are] unfortunately closed."
Removing it from action	3	"Removed."
*** this action delegates to TAKE, so almost all successes & failures are printed by TAKE


requesting the pronoun meanings action	5	"."
*** The period is hard-coded in ANNOUNCE_PRONOUN_MEANINGS_R


Taking inventory action	3	":[line break]" 
Taking inventory action	4	"." 
*** as above, these are hard-coded where needed


--		18	"[ourselves]"  [deprecated?]
** is now YOURSELF__TX, which is only used in the Printing the Name of, which CLM rewrites to deprecate

--		19	"As good-looking as ever."
** redeclared in the standard rules as a property

--		12	"[bracket]Can't 'undo' twice in succession. Sorry.[close bracket]"
--		52	"[line break]Type a number from 1 to [library message amount], 0 to redisplay or press ENTER."
--		53	"[line break][bracket]Please press SPACE.[close bracket]"
** farmed off to the interpreter?

--		54	"[bracket]Comment recorded.[close bracket]"
--		55	"[bracket]Comment NOT recorded.[close bracket]"
*** the action that previously led to these does not exist.[/spoiler]

* For Glulx builds only, I've split the I-could-also-see rule in twain, so the former can be replaced without nixing the listing nondescript items activity.  There's no functional difference, but normally, the default behavior of the listing nondescript items activity is entirely coded within the also-see rule, so replacing said rule also gutted the activity.  I didn't make any change here to the Z machine due to extra memory, and no one's complained about the existing state of matters so far. 

* Added the ability to expand the list of pronouns (and hence story viewpoints) for members of the LGBT and SFF communities.  

* Added a new example to demonstrate creating new pronouns and story viewpoints.

* Removed support for second person plural to conserve memory.  The above example demonstrates how to add it back in. 

* Added a run-time problem callout in the case of a missing library message, which prints which table the message is missing from. The use option "library message alerts" is effectively always on in testing builds: it only fires if a message is completely missing from the custom library messages table.  

* Moved the default behaviour of the new Printing Library Message activity to an actual For rule.  Now the author can place new rules before and/or after it, or even replace it entirely.  New say phrases of the general shape "library message corresponding to.." ease creation of new activity rules.  

* Corrected the extension's ability to detect missing messages. 

* Rewrote from scratch the code to decide on verb inflections -- it's really elegant now and I'm quite proud of it, though the full version only appears in "Automated Verb Phrases":[spoiler][code]To decide which number is the appropriate inflection [for a main verb]:
	if passive voice is true, decide on the -en past participle form;
	if the story tense is in any continuous tense, decide on the -ing present participle form; 
	if the story tense is in any perfect tense, decide on the -en past participle form; 
	if suffix eaten by auxiliary is true, decide on the infinitive form;
	if the story tense is the past tense, decide on the -ed past form;   
	if the prior named noun acts plural, decide on the base present plural form;
	decide on the -s present singular form. 
[/code][/spoiler]

* Gave names to the grammatical cases and verb inflections.  This is only internal, but improves readability.

* Now uses section replacement on Plurality for smoother integration. 

* Rewrote L__M() and completely removed LanguageLM() so there's only one intervened phrase, which is now an activity For rule which works better with rules placed before & after it.  

* Added the irregular verb aren't* because of issues with trying to negate are*

* Renamed the [that-those of...] phrase to [that-those-us of...] because Plurality's is in nominative case, while CLM needs dative case.  Hence when including Plurality, CLM cannot simply use Plurality's instead.  Thanks Ben Sokal.  

* Fixed a few messages to use the library message object or the second noun instead of the noun. Thanks CEJ Pacian.

* Finally, replaced the pronoun in "You have died" with [We] because, even though the message is arguably out of world, the player at the keyboard presumably does not die.   Thanks CEJ Pacian.

When including the new extension "Automated Verb Phrases" along with CLM, all the previous functionality regarding [aux] helping phrase creation, etc. is restored.  I don't know of anyone personally that was using this, but here it is.  Most of the documentation and examples are carried over unchanged from CLM.  Changes in this functionality:

* New modal auxiliary verbs may be created, such as may, might, or dare, or whatever must needs exist in your WIP. 

* New irregular verbs require 5 table rows per entry rather than four (or three, as with vanilla CLM).  Moreover, the five forms of the verb are in the same order as a new relation:  [i]The verb to weigh (he weighs, they weigh, he weighed, he has weighed, it is weighing) implies the...[/i]

* The say phrase [n't?] works like [n't] used to:  whether it says anything depends on the global Negation Pending variable.


... I think that's about it.  A lot of changes, to be sure, but CLM is more correct and smaller(!) than it used to be.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2319&start=0#p15804
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: How to write a book?
User: Tanga / DateTime: 2011-04-17 05:22:47

I agree with not proof reading before finishing your writing, and with doing some more reading, but tbh, even though I'm an English major, don't think the 'great' books have as much to offer a writer as good modern ones. The pacing and language is not what you want.   Can I ask what genre?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2277&start=0#p15805
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Scenery containers
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-04-17 05:31:29

The Designer's Manual was surprisingly silent on the matter. 
However, L__M calls the LanguageLM routine which runs the library message for the choosen action. Those messages are already print_ret statements, so they end with an rtrue. If you print (rather than simply run) a print_ret statement, you will print the return value too (as Jim Aikin explained).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2307&start=0#p15806
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Acting Fast
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-04-17 05:34:30

Good! That actually sounds like a potentially useful distinction.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2319&start=0#p15807
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: How to write a book?
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-04-17 06:00:32

[quote="Tanga"]Can I ask what genre?[/quote]
SciFi. Kind of Space Opera, but with a more serious (political) background. Not exactly high literature, but that's the flash of inspiration I had.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=20#p15808
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-04-17 07:52:12

Again, I may be wrong, but I think you only need "requiring light" if you want to disallow even objects in your inventory when it is dark.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2319&start=0#p15809
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: How to write a book?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-04-17 09:00:32

[quote="Tanga"]I [...] don't think the 'great' books have as much to offer a writer as good modern ones. The pacing and language is not what you want.[/quote]
Given that the canon shows us every possible pace and register of language, how could you make such a sweeping claim? Sure, the pace of Apuleius and Lucian might a bit too fast for a modern reader to follow; and anyone raised on modern "high fantasy" would be shocked by the narrative speed, the moral skepticism and the eroticism of Ariosto; but that doesn't mean you cannot learn from these authors. Exact imitation was never the point; it was the opposite of the point; and if anything, I'd say that older authors are less dangerous to read because there's less of a chance that you will unconsciously imitate their writing. But recent great works are of course excellent as well -- nothing wrong with reading some Beckett, Roth, or (since the original poster is going to write in German) Hesse or Kafka or Mann. They all have something to teach you, even if you are going to write a book completely different from anything they ever did. Perhaps especially if you are going to write a book completely different from anything they ever did. I think it would be wonderful to read those weird, insane little parables of Kafka while continually asking yourself how you could apply them to Space Opera! (If you like Kafka on a basic level, that is. I'm not advocating reading writers that you do not connect with. Also, and I should stress this, I'm [i]not[/i] saying that you should postpone writing until you have "read more", because that way, you can postpone forever.)

There are probably many strategies of revision, but I personally have always found it easier to start revising than to start writing; and I have used the revising as a springboard from which to move to the writing. By revising a part I have written earlier, I get into the mood, and then go on to write new stuff. But you should do whatever works for you, and if you tend to get bogged down in revising, you should probably skip it until you have your first draft ready. (Which is my strategy for writing [i]non-fiction[/i], an activity that I experience as very different from writing fiction. Again, that may be more me than anyone else.)

In the same vein, some people may find it easier to write a detailed plot overview first, while others may prefer to start writing a scene they have a good imaginative grip on and see where it takes them. You'll have to find out what your own preferred way is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1711&start=20#p15810
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Aurora
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-04-17 09:18:52

So, what's the status on this? Are there any fixes post release 5?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2319&start=0#p15811
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: How to write a book?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-04-17 09:20:24

[quote="Grueslayer"]SciFi. Kind of Space Opera, but with a more serious (political) background. Not exactly high literature, but that's the flash of inspiration I had.[/quote]
Whether it's high literature or not doesn't depend on the genre, but only on the execution. [emote]:)[/emote] Anyway, you are of course completely right to stick to your inspiration and not worry about its external merits. I'm not sure whether you are just going to write for the fun of it, or would actually like to publish the result, but either way your own vision of what the story should be is your best guide.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2319&start=10#p15812
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: How to write a book?
User: Tanga / DateTime: 2011-04-17 09:23:06

I'm not really a fan of space opera as a genre.   I enjoyed Elizabeth Moon's though.  I think her military background gave her a solid base to work from, so a bit of military research is something I'd recommend, if that's the direction your ideas are coming from, or about sea traders, if you're doing space trading, etc.

If it were me I'd write at least a bit first (possibly even all of it if I could).  It helps me get my mind in writing mode, and I'm more likely to have ideas when researching.  The idea for one of my novels (all unfinished, as yet, but this one's got legs) came from a local history titbit that came up.  I have hit a wall, and when I have time I plan to look into getting some more info from the Adelaide museum.

My work is spec-fic.  But there is so much we can take from the past and apply to the future, so that we get the details right.  Obviously different writing styles work for different people (as this thread demonstrates).  We can only really give advice on what works (and doesn't work) for us.

Good-luck!

Good-luck!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2277&start=0#p15813
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Scenery containers
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-04-17 11:05:01

More fundamentally, you should never print a function call.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2307&start=0#p15814
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Acting Fast
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-04-17 11:05:35

[quote="severedhand"]Saying 'Typhoon strikes in 3 minutes from now' will play nice with your Variable Time assignments.

Saying 'Typhoon strikes in 3 turns from now' will not play nice. The typhoon will strike even if you perform a series of actions which are supposed to take no time.[/quote]
As Felix noted, that could be considered a feature, not a bug. Not sure when you'd want to use it, but it's nice to have the flexibility.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2319&start=10#p15815
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: How to write a book?
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-04-17 11:55:06

[quote="Tanga"]We can only really give advice on what works (and doesn't work) for us.[/quote]
I'm aware of that, and that's exactly what I'm looking for. Like, this "just write, and put emphasis on revision" already gave me confidence that I have a chance to get beyond the first pages. I'll continue with my abstract though, in order to have a concept to brachiate through.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2319&start=10#p15816
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: How to write a book?
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2011-04-17 12:33:42

While there are many different approaches to writing a story or novel, one thing that I think can be very helpful is to spend some time defining your characters.  Really try to get inside their heads about who they are, their backgrounds, their motivations etc.  Then try to define the plot or challenges in regard to those characters.  (James N. Frey has some excellent books in this regard, e.g. "How to Write a Damn Good Novel" etc)

For my game-in-progress The Z-Machine Matter, before I wrote a line of Inform7 code, I spent several weeks (months?) writing out a Word document (now around 30+ pages) that defines the characters (e.g. the player and NPCs) and their secrets, a timeline of events prior to the start of the game (e.g. what actually happened) and the events that unfold during gameplay.  I also defined the settings (1950s cold war era research lab) some ties to historical events etc. It's a murder mystery where the player is a detective, so the plot is somewhat conventional about trying to discover what happened, gather evidence etc.  I also wrote up a game description in the style of classic Infocom games to convey the ideas.
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com/2011/03/back-cover.html">http://www.z-machine-matter.com/2011/03/back-cover.html</a>

Now I'm perhaps about 25%-30% through the coding (now alpha testing), but without this kind of character study and outline, I don't think I would have been able to have a story or game that converges.  I've found it helpful to keep me on track.

Best of luck.
--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2302&start=0#p15817
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Allowing the player to ask WHO AM I, etc.
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-04-17 12:37:46

[quote="gravel"]For that particular problem, what about a brief paragraph of general object-type description, followed by a brief paragraph of specific details?

ie, "A magazine is a group of articles and pictures, usually published monthly.  Most magazines have a single subject, like fashion or football.

This magazine appears to be devoted to yachts."[/quote]


That's a pretty good solution. For now though I've decided to go with printing the object's description if a definite article was used, and printing a definition of the word if the indefinite article was used. The generic response to WHAT IS A MAGAZINE is "That hardly requires explanation." So then the author could override that by providing an actual definition.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2313&start=0#p15818
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Thoughts on provisioning an IF game...
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2011-04-17 12:46:12

Holy smokes that's awesome!  That is really impressive.  I think one of the things the Infocom team did really well was the whole packaging, feelies, etc.  Even if its PDFs rather than physical props, I think it helps convey the atmoshphere of the game and make it much more than just what you see on screen.

There's a whole universe of HP Lovecraft props out there on sites like 
 <a class="postlink" href="http://propnomicon.blogspot.com/">http://propnomicon.blogspot.com/</a>
 <a class="postlink" href="http://www.cthulhulives.org/">http://www.cthulhulives.org/</a>
and much of it is available under creative commons license.

I've created faux Infocom packaging for the alpha release of my game (1950's murder mystery):
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com/2011/02/box-art.html">http://www.z-machine-matter.com/2011/02/box-art.html</a>

(And there's also a mild tie-in to Mistkatonic U.)
--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2322&start=0#p15819
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I6] Parsing various stuff
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-04-17 13:25:38

Sorry for this newbie question, but despite consulting the manual and various example files, I don't understand how to parse stuff. Input is "type xxx", and after various tries I'm clueless on how to do it. I'm catching "type" via Verb, but whatever I try, either NextWord() gives back a number, or I receive "I only understood you as far as you want to type". What do I have to do if I have a verb and want to know what text was typed after it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2302&start=0#p15820
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Allowing the player to ask WHO AM I, etc.
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-04-17 14:07:20

[quote="Egon"]I've decided to go with printing the object's description if a definite article was used, and printing a definition of the word if the indefinite article was used.[/quote]
In some cases, I guess, the generic question could be put without use of the indefinite article, though: What is water? What are hamsters?
(And in some cases, I guess, the specific question, too, can be put without using the definite article: Who is Emily Short? What is Bohemia?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2321&start=0#p15821
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Custom Library Messages, version 4
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-04-17 14:35:24

Way to go, Ron! Looks like a fantastic update. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=40#p15822
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-04-17 14:42:08

Yeah, this would probably be a nice addition. I'll consider it for the next release (although that may not be for a while). I'm a little concerned that it adds a lot of new rules for a fairly uncommon functionality improvement (how often do people really need to empty everything from a container? I'm not sure...) but I don't really have a reasoned-out philosophy for when this tradeoff is worth it or not yet, anyway.

In general, I suppose I'm tending to err on the side of functionality for now, but if I start hearing a lot of complaints that nobody's using the extension because it's slowing down their game too much, I'd revisit things.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=0#p15823
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: Jacqueline / DateTime: 2011-04-17 15:10:19

Hello, everyone!

I'm organizing another speed-IF hot on the heels of our last one.  Here are the constraints:

[list][b]You must code in a programming language you've never written a game in before.[/b] 
What's that mean, precisely?  Half-hearted pokes at a language don't count, but if you've ever had the thought, [i]Okay, let's try programming a game in X![/i], that counts.  This is a Speed IF, not a minicomp, so I'm not going to be a dictator on what this means.  I think if people take to the spirit of how they interpret this constraint that is fine.

[b]Games must be in English.[/b]

[b]The game must be loosely themed around the word [i]indigo[/i].[/b]

[b]Games due at the end of the month.[/b]
The deadline, given that you're using a new language and may need extra time, is two weeks instead of two hours.  Entries due to my jacqueline.a.lott gmail account by the end of the month: [b]Midnight Alaskan, April 30th[/b].  That gives you four more hours to procrastinate than if I had set the deadline via the rather arbitrary Eastern time zone - huzzah![/list:u]

I guess we'll try to play the games that we can as part of ClubFloyd (just like we did for [url=http://www.allthingsjacq.com/intfic_clubfloyd_20110403.html]Speed IF Jacket 4[/url], but Floyd can only run games in ADRIFT, AGT, Glulx, Hugo, z-code, or TADS (2 or 3)--though of course, Floyd can't display graphics or sound or anything fancy like that. But don't let any of that constrain you!  I'm hoping some folks try some other stuff... Curveship, Undum, Quest, Alan, ChoiceScript, AAS, JotaCode, who knows what.  

[NB: Top People are working on getting ChoiceScript and Curveship to run on Floyd.  We're not there yet, but we might get there soon, maybe even by the end of the month. Maybe.]

I think that tying to kick it old skool would count as well... say, if you've only ever programmed in I7, I6 would be valid for this speed IF, because it's so different from I7.

Have fun!  Hopefully it will be a good experience and not too frustrating for those of us who take this speed for a spin...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=0#p15824
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-04-17 16:16:06

Ooh! Maybe I should take this as my cue to try and make something in Inform? Particularly as I'm free from work from now until Easter, so unlike the previous Speed IF, I may have the time for it.

On the other hand, what I'd be able to make probably won't be any good.

On the first foot, this is Speed IF, so maybe that's ok. And it might be fun to do.

On the second foot, I don't know where to start. Indigo? Hmm. This is something to think about.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=0#p15825
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-04-17 16:20:06

I'm awfully tempted to try something in Curveship, but I sincerely doubt that I can learn rudimentary Python [i]and[/i] Curveship [i]and[/i] knock out something playable in two weeks. Well, not if I plan on doing anything else.

But I've been meaning to play around with Undum, so I may go with that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=0#p15826
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: Jacqueline / DateTime: 2011-04-17 16:22:23

[quote="Trumgottist"]On the other hand, what I'd be able to make probably won't be any good. On the first foot, this is Speed IF, so maybe that's ok. And it might be fun to do.[/quote]Exactly - the bar is set much lower for Speed IFs.  This is your opportunity to take a new IF language for a test drive.  I really hope you put something together, Rikard!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=20#p15827
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2011-04-17 16:23:30

[quote="capmikee"]Again, I may be wrong, but I think you only need "requiring light" if you want to disallow even objects in your inventory when it is dark.[/quote]That sounds about right.  I've checked in Chapter 12.17 - "Visible vs touchable vs carried"
[quote="The Inform7 Manual"]- To be "visible", something needs only to be possible to refer to by the player, which in practice means that it must be visible to the player-character. The noun or second noun produced by any action resulting from a command at the keyboard will always satisfy this minimal condition. 
- To be "touchable", the player-character must be able to physically touch the thing in question: this normally means that it must be in the same room, and there must be no physical barriers in between. 
- To be "carried", the player-character must (directly) carry the thing in question. (But if the player types a command using an action requiring something "carried", like WEAR HAT, the thing in question - the hat - will sometimes be picked up automatically. This is called "implicit taking", and results in text like "(first taking the top hat)" being printed.) 

Thus to "wave magic wand at banyan tree", the player must be holding the wand, but need only be able to see the tree. [/quote]

At a later stage in the development of my project I'll work out which best suits the command to break objects.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=0#p15828
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2011-04-17 17:14:54

[quote="Jacqueline"]I'm organizing another speed-IF hot on the heels of our last one.  Here are the constraints:

[list][b]You must code in a programming language you've never written a game in before.[/b] 
What's that mean, precisely?  Half-hearted pokes at a language don't count, but if you've ever had the thought, [i]Okay, let's try programming a game in X![/i], that counts.  This is a Speed IF, not a minicomp, so I'm not going to be a dictator on what this means.  I think if people take to the spirit of how they interpret this constraint that is fine.

[b]Games must be in English.[/b]

[b]The game must be loosely themed around the word [i]indigo[/i].[/b]

[b]Games due at the end of the month.[/b]
The deadline, given that you're using a new language and may need extra time, is two weeks instead of two hours.  Entries due to my jacqueline.a.lott gmail account by the end of the month: [b]Midnight Alaskan, April 30th[/b].  That gives you four more hours to procrastinate than if I had set the deadline via the rather arbitrary Eastern time zone - huzzah![/list:u]
[/quote]So as long as the game meets these constraints, and it's a [i]complete[/i] game, it will be a valid entry, right?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=0#p15829
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: Jacqueline / DateTime: 2011-04-17 17:18:48

[quote="Isxek"]So as long as the game meets these constraints, and it's a [i]complete[/i] game, it will be a valid entry, right?[/quote]Um, yeah.  This is Speed-IF, after all.  Why, what're you thinking?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=0#p15830
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2011-04-17 17:30:30

[quote="Jacqueline"][quote="Isxek"]So as long as the game meets these constraints, and it's a [i]complete[/i] game, it will be a valid entry, right?[/quote]Um, yeah.  This is Speed-IF, after all.  Why, what're you thinking?[/quote]Just that if I do join, I [i]might[/i] not be able to put in time to get the game tested, even with the 2-week limit. Completing an actual game is still a big hurdle for me at the moment.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2302&start=0#p15831
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Allowing the player to ask WHO AM I, etc.
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-04-17 17:31:15

Good points. Thanks for pointing them out! For questions involving proper nouns I don't think it really matters. For the other cases I'll have to think about how to handle it in terms of coding.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=0#p15832
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: Jacqueline / DateTime: 2011-04-17 17:39:04

[quote="Isxek"]Just that if I do join, I [i]might[/i] not be able to put in time to get the game tested, even with the 2-week limit. Completing an actual game is still a big hurdle for me at the moment.[/quote]Heh - no worries.  I don't think *anyone* tests Speed IFs.  They're usually written in a couple of hours, or an evening.  The only reason for the absurdly long (by Speed IF standards) deadline is so that people also have time to get their head around the new language they'll be using.  

I thought maybe you meant 'Can I just do an excerpt?' or something.  And quite frankly, if you start a game with a clever premise but then run out of time, nothing prevents you from this:


[center][img]http://www.insanejournal.com/userpic/167172/34043[/img][/center]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=0#p15833
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2011-04-17 17:46:17

[quote="Jacqueline"]Heh - no worries.  I don't think *anyone* tests Speed IFs.  They're usually written in a couple of hours, or an evening.  The only reason for the absurdly long (by Speed IF standards) deadline is so that people also have time to get their head around the new language they'll be using.  

I thought maybe you meant 'Can I just do an excerpt?' or something.  And quite frankly, if you start a game with a clever premise but then run out of time, nothing prevents you from this:[/quote] [emote]:lol:[/emote] 
Well, we'll see. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=0#p15834
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-04-17 18:00:57

I have been a tester on more than one speedIF, so it's not [i]totally[/i] unknown. But yes, it is not common, or expected.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=10#p15835
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-17 18:32:40

[quote="Jacqueline"]][b]You must code in a programming language you've never written a game in before.[/b] 
What's that mean, precisely?  Half-hearted pokes at a language don't count, but if you've ever had the thought, [i]Okay, let's try programming a game in X![/i], that counts.[/quote]

Still a little confused as to what this means... though my IFDemo thing (not to mention TWIFComp) probably rules out Inform 7 for me, and nothing else is remotely ruled out except maybe BASIC, so I guess it's moot. Hm.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=10#p15836
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: Jacqueline / DateTime: 2011-04-17 18:41:11

[quote="matt w"][quote="Jacqueline"][b]You must code in a programming language you've never written a game in before.[/b] 
What's that mean, precisely?  Half-hearted pokes at a language don't count, but if you've ever had the thought, [i]Okay, let's try programming a game in X![/i], that counts.[/quote]Still a little confused as to what this means... though my IFDemo thing (not to mention TWIFComp) probably rules out Inform 7 for me, and nothing else is remotely ruled out except maybe BASIC, so I guess it's moot. Hm.[/quote]Hm... please explain your confusion, and I'll try to clarify.  If you mean [i]Does "Hello, World!" count?[/i], no.  It doesn't.  From what you've said, sounds like you can try lots of different things, just not BASIC or I7.  

The spirit of this is to try something new in a more in a substantive way.  (For values of substantive that equal Speed-IF quality, that is.  [emote];)[/emote] )

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=10#p15837
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: Gerynar / DateTime: 2011-04-17 18:45:02

OK, this time...I'm really, [i]really[/i] gonna try and actually complete an entry...and I mean it.


[i]I hope[/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1014&start=0#p15838
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: "How to Play IF" card
User: willhopkins / DateTime: 2011-04-17 18:56:58

Thanks to the stack Zarf brought to Swarthmore I've been dropping these on the train to Philly and in various libraries. Hoping to win some converts by ambush.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=10#p15839
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-17 19:40:53

[quote="Jacqueline"][quote="matt w"][quote="Jacqueline"][b]You must code in a programming language you've never written a game in before.[/b] 
What's that mean, precisely?  Half-hearted pokes at a language don't count, but if you've ever had the thought, [i]Okay, let's try programming a game in X![/i], that counts.[/quote]Still a little confused as to what this means... though my IFDemo thing (not to mention TWIFComp) probably rules out Inform 7 for me, and nothing else is remotely ruled out except maybe BASIC, so I guess it's moot. Hm.[/quote]Hm... please explain your confusion, and I'll try to clarify.  If you mean [i]Does "Hello, World!" count?[/i], no.  It doesn't.  From what you've said, sounds like you can try lots of different things, just not BASIC or I7.  

The spirit of this is to try something new in a more in a substantive way.  (For values of substantive that equal Speed-IF quality, that is.  [emote];)[/emote] )[/quote]

Well, what I meant was something like this: I've had the thought "hey, let's try programming a game in ChoiceScript!", but I haven't actually ever programmed a game in ChoiceScript, or even downloaded the source. So I still wasn't sure exactly how far one could go and still have something count as a new language... but I'm pretty sure that I've gone farther than that in I7, and I've never gone anywhere with any other language, so this would be an "Anything but I7" comp for me. 

So, never mind.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2322&start=0#p15840
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Parsing various stuff
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-04-17 19:50:21

Have you looked at Chapter 31 of the DM4? The player's input text will be matched by the topic token.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=10#p15841
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: Jacqueline / DateTime: 2011-04-17 19:51:49

[quote="matt w"]Well, what I meant was something like this: I've had the thought "hey, let's try programming a game in ChoiceScript!", but I haven't actually ever programmed a game in ChoiceScript, or even downloaded the source. So I still wasn't sure exactly how far one could go and still have something count as a new language... but I'm pretty sure that I've gone farther than that in I7, and I've never gone anywhere with any other language, so this would be an "Anything but I7" comp for me. [/quote]Yeah, that sounds right.  I guess a better way to say it is simply this: experience a new-to-you IF programming language in a substantive way.  I'd downloaded ADRIFT Generator, for example, but never actually written so much as a room description with it.  I've toyed with the idea of ChoiceScript, but not gotten so far as to code anything up.  I've downloaded Curveship, miraculously gotten it to run, and looked at some sample code, but never tried to code anything for myself. Any of those would be valid for me for this Speed.  Just be honest with yourself - the purpose is to break you out of your comfort zone a wee bit, and to experience something novel.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2313&start=0#p15842
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Thoughts on provisioning an IF game...
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-04-17 20:52:20

Lovely!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2314&start=0#p15843
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Large maps
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-04-17 21:05:42

That seems pretty reasonable, and spiritually in keeping with the rest of what we've heard about your game.

I just had the thought that something like the following could also work:
">go north
Do you wish to go all the way through the woods? y/n"

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2321&start=0#p15844
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Custom Library Messages, version 4
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-17 21:32:13

I concur [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=40#p15845
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-17 21:37:08

[quote="aaronius"]but if I start hearing a lot of complaints that nobody's using the extension because it's slowing down their game too much, I'd revisit things.[/quote]

Do games really suffer from slowdown in Inform when they're running on a modern computer (and not through an online interpreter)?

I guess the answer is 'yes' and I'm being rhetorical to learn stuff, 'cos I remember there was talk of slowdown in the multitudes extension thread.

It just kinda amazes me that a text adventure could ever experience slowdown with the brain-pulverising CPU power of today's computers. Is it to do with the legacy nature of the Z-machine?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=40#p15846
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-04-17 22:39:28

My 1.6Ghz Atom-based netbook definitely experiences mild slowdown whenever there is a significant number of custom parsing routines, active timers, etc. present.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=40#p15847
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-04-17 22:55:05

[quote="aaronius"]In general, I suppose I'm tending to err on the side of functionality for now, but if I start hearing a lot of complaints that nobody's using the extension because it's slowing down their game too much, I'd revisit things.[/quote]

If you do get reports of slowness talk to me. I've got a big block of accelerated function codes I'd love to specify.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2324&start=0#p15849
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I6] Using Inform 7 IDE with Inform 6 code?
User: Pelican / DateTime: 2011-04-18 04:17:16

I'm kind of new to learning this whole IF stuff, so after comparing some code at the Cloak of Darkness, I think I prefer Inform 6 to Inform 7, however, I really like Inform 7's IDE (for GNOME), with its built-in ability to play, built in documentation, etc.  Is there a way I can use Inform 7's IDE, but write Inform 6 code?  Or is there some tool I should check-out (Linux-compatible) for developing Inform 6 with some similar features (I don't like VIM/Emacs)?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2325&start=0#p15850
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I6] Navigating with "left" and "right"
User: Pelican / DateTime: 2011-04-18 04:24:40

I played some older game (Battlestar) which used "left" "right" "forward" and "back".  The directions depend on which way the player is facing.  I like this way, as it seems so rare for people to carry a compass in daily situations and its also not common that "i" shows a compass in a person's inventory.  Are there any Inform 6 games that use this I can look at the code to to see how it can be done?  How do you feel about this style of navigation?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2326&start=0#p15851
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I6] Random room descriptions
User: Pelican / DateTime: 2011-04-18 04:28:41

I have rooms where parts of the description randomly changes every time the player 'looks'.

"You are in a cave with RAND1 and RAND2."

RAND1 pulls randomly from a list of words.
RAND2 pulls randomly from another list of words.

Can it be done?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2325&start=0#p15852
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [6] Navigating with "left" and "right"
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-04-18 04:45:01

[quote="Pelican"]I played some older game (Battlestar) which used "left" "right" "forward" and "back".  The directions depend on which way the player is facing.  I like this way, as it seems so rare for people to carry a compass in daily situations and its also not common that "i" shows a compass in a person's inventory.  Are there any Inform 6 games that use this I can look at the code to to see how it can be done?  How do you feel about this style of navigation?[/quote]
As a player I would very much hope that an absolute navigation system like the compass directions or a GO TO system would also be provided. I tend to picture the geography from outside the player character's view and not relative to the direction where the PC entered the room. It's easy to remember that "the kitchen is north from the living room", but "the kitchen is forward from the living room if entered from the foyer and left if living room was entered from the bedroom and right if living room was entered from the bathroom" is not that simple.

You would also need to somehow show which way the player [i]is[/i] facing--what if the player moves around the room, is he still facing the same direction as when he entered the room?

This did work very nicely when I played a game that showed pictures of locations in top part of the screen and directional commands were in relation to the picture (typing LEFT meant the left part of the picture).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2327&start=0#p15853
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Which perspective do you prefer?
User: Pelican / DateTime: 2011-04-18 05:19:40

As I'm starting to write room descriptions for my game, I want something consistent, but don't know a good pattern to follow.

I'm trying to examine how changing some words can change the perspective of the player and also pull the player into the game.  How do you feel about these?  Which do you prefer?  Why?

"You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully."

"You're standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully. Exits are south to a building and south, east, and west to a forest."

"I am standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. Around me is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully."

"Standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. Around is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully."

"At the end of a road before a small brick building. Around is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully.""

"There is a small brick building. Around is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully."

"Before a small brick building, surrounded by a forest.  A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully.""

Do you know any good articles on this?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2327&start=0#p15854
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which perspective do you prefer?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-04-18 05:34:43

This one is confusing:
[quote="Pelican"]"You're standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully. Exits are south to a building and south, east, and west to a forest."[/quote]
South leads both to a forest and a building?

I also find it slightly odd to read that there are exits to a forest when I'm outside. Maybe something like this: "You can enter the building to the south, or head east or west into the forest." I do like to be told where I can go. Trying all directions just in case is not fun.

As for choosing a style in general, I say write it in whatever way feels best to you and what fits the game. It's usually a good thing to be clear (about objects and geography in particular), but there is room for exceptions to that rule too.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2302&start=0#p15855
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Allowing the player to ask WHO AM I, etc.
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-04-18 07:25:55

Something else to consider is that even ESL players may have gotten into the habit of leaving out articles, and it's generally acceptable to do so (">TAKE LAMP").

It seems odd that the help feature would be more picky about this than the general parser.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2325&start=0#p15856
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Navigating with "left" and "right"
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-18 07:27:39

Another vote that compass directions are an acceptable break from realism, just like letting the player hold many things rather than forcing him to goof around with inventory limits. (I like to pretend that the protagonist is [url=http://saucersofmud.wordpress.com/2009/12/22/interactive-fiction-explained/]Kuuk Thaayorre[/url] and doesn't need a compass.) It's easier for me to navigate when I can always type the same command to go from point A to point B. You can also check out Blue Lacuna, in which you can only get around by typing the name of the location you want to go to, until you find a compass.

This doesn't answer your I6 question; there's an I7 extension that does this, [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Tim%20Pittman/Directional%20Facing/index.html]Directional Facing by Tim Pittman[/url], which might give you some ideas how to do it in I6.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2302&start=0#p15857
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Allowing the player to ask WHO AM I, etc.
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-04-18 07:29:52

True, but something else I'm thinking of is, for the ESL version, either forcing the use of grammatically correct sentences or having the parser point out errors such as dropped articles.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2325&start=0#p15858
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Navigating with "left" and "right"
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-04-18 08:11:05

See also [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/779259eb98f6e67]Rat in Control[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2327&start=0#p15859
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which perspective do you prefer?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-04-18 08:31:01

[quote="Pelican"]"You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully."[/quote]
I was going to provide some criticism for this, but then I realised it's from a classic adventure. Briefly, I think it's possible to be as concise as this and still provide a little atmosphere - just a couple of words mentioning the weather, say, or the time of day. 

The other major issue is the use of the word "standing" which might have been okay in Colossal Cave, but in most modern IF systems would need to change if the player is in another position.

[quote="Pelican"]"You're standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully. Exits are south to a building and south, east, and west to a forest."[/quote]
I don't like the word "exits" here, especially since to me it seems like the path into a building should be an entrance. I'm all for making the rules and structure of your game transparent to the player, but I still think it's possible to describe the possible routes more naturally, e.g. "[b]You can go[/b] south to a building... etc."

(Or basically what Trumgottist said.)

[quote="Pelican"]"I am standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. Around me is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully."[/quote]
I'm a big believer in IF not being exclusively second person present tense, but I think this is something which is largely separate from how to write your room descriptions, and more about how you want the player to relate to your game. If you have a player character with a strong personality and/or who's a big part of the story, for example, you might want to consider using the first person.

[quote="Pelican"]"Standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. Around is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully."[/quote]
This lends the game an unusual voice. I could see it being used for something interesting, but I wouldn't expect it to be a very typical text adventure.

[quote="Pelican"]"At the end of a road before a small brick building. Around is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully.""[/quote]
Even assuming a player character with an interesting perspective, to me the first sentence makes me wonder just [i]what[/i] is at the end of the road.

[quote="Pelican"]"There is a small brick building. Around is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully."[/quote]
I think this could be used to great effect in an unusual game, e.g. if there's no player character and instead the game is about the story of the brick building itself.

[quote="Pelican"]"Before a small brick building, surrounded by a forest.  A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully.""[/quote]
I like combining some of the rather simplistic sentences from the original, but this seems a bit [i]too[/i] terse to me.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=40#p15860
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-04-18 10:39:38

[quote="severedhand"]It just kinda amazes me that a text adventure could ever experience slowdown with the brain-pulverising CPU power of today's computers. Is it to do with the legacy nature of the Z-machine?[/quote]

So this is a good question. Modern computers should have aboslutely no problem running a text game. But clearly that depends on the interpreter that's being used. And that in turn is dependent upon the nature of the z-machine itself.

What I'm most curious about (since my personal opinion is that the z-machine should be relegated to history) is whether this same situation applies to Glulx. Personally if I was going to invest a lot of time in a language and tool, [i]any[/i] sign of performance limitations is something to worry about with a rules-based system. Do these slowdowns happen with Glulx? Acceleration routines are great stuff, but the very fact that you need them at all can often lead to a lot of band-aid approaches.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=40#p15861
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-04-18 12:30:47

Accelerated functions are a relatively recent addition to the Glulx spec; raif has the original [url=https://groups.google.com/forum/#!search/glulx$20opcode$20acceleration/rec.arts.int-fiction/FIIdUPhsWy4/tRcjlscyYC4J]discussion[/url]. There were indeed some performance issues with Glulx games in the late 2008 / early 2009 era; Nightfall and Alabaster are the ones that come to mind.

Speaking as a player, this feels like a solved problem. I haven't seen a Glulx game with comparable speed issues since.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=40#p15862
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-04-18 12:45:40

[quote]So this is a good question. Modern computers should have aboslutely no problem running a text game. But clearly that depends on the interpreter that's being used. And that in turn is dependent upon the nature of the z-machine itself.[/quote]

You are skipping over the compiler, the library/extension code, and the compiler-generated code. You can't ignore those levels. (That should be obvious from the fact that we've been using the same interpreters and z-machine spec for the past fifteen years, and we see slower games on faster computers.)

(For what it's worth, Glulx has the same kind of architecture as the z-machine, and the I6 compiler generates the same kind of code for it. So you can expect the same sort of performance out of each, down to a constant factor.)

I think it's just that I7 offers a lot of tools to do powerful things, but it doesn't give clear insight into how expensive they are. So it's easy to wind up with a lot of exponents on your big O, as it were.

This is not a problem with easy technological solutions. (Function acceleration is helpful, but ultimately it's trying to fight those exponents with constant factors.) I'm sure that I could implement any *given* text game very efficiently for Z/Glulx, but that's because I know the system and can dive in to rewrite stuff when necessary.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2326&start=0#p15863
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Random room descriptions
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-04-18 12:49:02

I'm programming since about two weeks only, so while I'm sure there's an elegant solution, I'd do it with SWITCH for now. Like,

Object my_cave "in a cave"
with description [;
print "You are in a cave with ";
i=random(3);
switch(i){
    1: print "Muammar al-Gaddafi";
    2: print "Kermit the Frog";
    3: print "an animate giant testicle";
    }
print ".";
],
has light etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2328&start=0#p15864
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I7] Saying a list of things with phrase options
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-04-18 12:50:04

I have a custom action for taking inventory so I can list the things carried by the player and the things worn by the player separately. I want to list them in a format similar to that of "list the contents of the player, as a sentence, including all contents, listing marked items only, using the indefinite article". But I can't just do that because I need to list the contents of different lists than that phrase is written for. Short of writing a whole new listing routine, is there any way I can apply those same options to any arbitrary list?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2328&start=0#p15865
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Saying a list of things with phrase options
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-04-18 12:59:07

[spoiler]Unless I'm missing something, for most purposes you should be well off with 

[code]say "You are carrying [a list of things carried by the player] and wearing [a list of things worn by the player]."[/code][/spoiler]

Edit: Whoops, sorry, I did miss the listing all contents option. Anyway, example 177 (Equipment List) in the manual chapter 11.14. shows how to list worn and carried items separately.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2328&start=0#p15866
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Saying a list of things with phrase options
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-04-18 13:04:16

[quote="Juhana"]Unless I'm missing something, for most purposes you should be well off with 

[code]say "You are carrying [a list of things carried by the player] and wearing [a list of things worn by the player]."[/code][/quote]
That's adequate for most purposes, but I specifically need to include all contents and not list the items not marked for listing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=50#p15867
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-18 13:23:23

[quote="bcressey"]Accelerated functions are a relatively recent addition to the Glulx spec; raif has the original [url=https://groups.google.com/forum/#!search/glulx$20opcode$20acceleration/rec.arts.int-fiction/FIIdUPhsWy4/tRcjlscyYC4J]discussion[/url]. There were indeed some performance issues with Glulx games in the late 2008 / early 2009 era; Nightfall and Alabaster are the ones that come to mind.

Speaking as a player, this feels like a solved problem. I haven't seen a Glulx game with comparable speed issues since.[/quote]

Try Under, In Erebus -- Jenni and baf reported performance issues in standalone/offline terps (Jenni: "when I tried typing in the walkthrough last night, the standalone interpreter hung so badly that it took me over ten minutes to get through those, like, thirty or forty commands.") 

(Relying on their reports because I tried to play it in quixe on a slightly balky computer. That did not work well.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2327&start=0#p15868
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which perspective do you prefer?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-18 13:36:38

For some of your impersonal descriptions, you could use the room name to finesse Pacian's worry about just what is the end of the road. Something like this:

[quote][b]At the End of the Road[/b]
There is a small brick building here. Around is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully.[/quote]

Come to think of it, this could be just as well without the room name:

[quote]At the end of the road there is a small brick building. Around is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully.[/quote]

(Mild spoilers for a non-plot/puzzle aspect of [i]Slouching Toward Bedlam[/i] follow.) 

[spoiler]Sloucing Toward Bedlam did something interesting with this, where narration never refers to the PC in first, second, or third person; this is done subtly enough that I played through the whole game and didn't notice until it was pointed out to me. Here's a sample:

[quote]LOBBY
The walls and floor are a clinical white tile and marble. However, the dim lights set above this echoing space hiss and pop fitfully, giving the small maze of desks and workspaces within a tarnished, decaying look.

A set of solid gates lie opened and unlocked to the east and west. A small corridor runs northward and from the south, the bright light of day is visible through a set of glass doors.

Behind the most prominent desk sits a nervous young man.

The young man looks up and the corners of his mouth lift into a smile that is not quite strong enough to reach his eyes.[/quote][/spoiler]

Also, I agree with Trumgottist; I want to be told which directions I can go.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2327&start=0#p15869
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which perspective do you prefer?
User: jwideman / DateTime: 2011-04-18 13:41:34

Having experience with MUDs, I don't care for referencing the player in the room description. Describe the room as what can be readily observed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2322&start=0#p15870
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Parsing various stuff
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-04-18 14:06:17

Sorry, but I don't get it.

[code]
[ TypeSub t;
		t==NextWord();
		"You typed ",t,".";
		];

Verb 'type' * topic -> Type;
[/code]

"type test" results in "You typed 0.", so NextWord() seems to return an rfalse. Why? How do I correctly parse this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2326&start=0#p15871
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Random room descriptions
User: cas / DateTime: 2011-04-18 14:15:18

Per §1.14 of DM4:
[code]
print "You are in a cave with ", (string)random("a", "b", "c"), " and ", (string)random("x", "y", "z"), ".^";
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1666&start=20#p15885
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Zork: Activision gives it some love in an unusual way!
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-04-18 14:29:09

So that's what Inform 8 code looks like?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2322&start=0#p15894
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Parsing various stuff
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-04-18 14:45:33

First off, there are some errors in your code. You have to change "t == NextWord()" to "t = NextWord()". Also, in the next line you have to put "(address) t" rather than just "t".

However, you are not home free because NextWord() does not behave the way you want it to (or that, probably most people would expect). If the word it finds is in the game's dictionary then it returns that word. If the word it finds is not in the game's dictionary then it returns 0. So attempting to directly print the output of NextWord() will often fail. Also, when you work with NextWord() you have to be sure of the location of the word marker, which is set by the global variable wn.

However, there is a very limited way to get it to do what you want, basically by adding words to the dictionary.

[code][ TypeSub wd;

  wn = consult_from;
  wd = NextWord();
  if (wd == 'hello') ;
  "You typed ", (address) wd, ".";
];[/code]

The addition of the third line causes it to work correctly when wd is either a recognized dictionary word or the word "hello". If it is anything else it will produce garbage. If you don't include that line it will print garbage even when wd is a recognized dictionary word.

Also, that will only work for the first word typed. The player could type as many words as she likes.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2322&start=0#p15895
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Parsing various stuff
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-04-18 14:58:49

Cool, works! Thanks for the help!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=50#p15896
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-04-18 15:02:47

FWIW, the performance issues with Alabaster were mostly due to the expense of scaling down graphics on some terps. The routines that do this have since been improved, but it would also have helped if I hadn't accidentally blorbed in some overly-large versions of those files.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2330&start=0#p15897
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: IF and IP
User: Genstein / DateTime: 2011-04-18 16:08:49

What ho,

As one who dabbles with various coding projects in their spare time, including several teensy IF WIPs and [url=http://trizbort.genstein.net]Trizbort[/url] I wondered if I might ask other IF game, tool and/or publication authors: how many of you have a day job (with a company, academic institution, etc.) with a contract which states that it owns all of your intellectual property, works of IF included, unless you agree otherwise with the company? How many of you have had to negotiate in order to release your IF works, tools, publications or the like?

I ask because over n years as a "professional" software developer I've encountered about a 50/50 split between companies where this is the case and companies where it isn't (or is, but with sufficient exceptions and general leeway). Sometimes it's for sound contractual reasons (say the company supplies software to other large companies and *their* contracts have indemnity clauses, yada yada) and sometimes just because the company prefers it that way. I'm curious what the split is in a broader sense; I'm concerned that it's becoming more common, and as someone who enjoys attempting to be creative in their spare time it's beginning to worry me. Anecdotes and related links appreciated.

All the best,
     -eg.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2330&start=0#p15898
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF and IP
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-04-18 17:17:23

AFAIK they can't hold a claim on anything you make at home in your spare time, but if you work on it at work, it becomes... negotiable.  [emote]:evil:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=50#p15899
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-04-18 17:22:40

[quote="zarf"]I think it's just that I7 offers a lot of tools to do powerful things, but it doesn't give clear insight into how expensive they are. So it's easy to wind up with a lot of exponents on your big O, as it were.[/quote]

For those who didn't major in Comp Sci, zarf did not mean Orgasm.   [emote]:lol:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=50#p15900
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-04-18 18:42:43

One thing that does slow games down is using lots of regular expressions. They're a relatively new feature which the old terps could never have made feasible. But they would also be very easy to accelerate.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2330&start=0#p15901
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF and IP
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-04-18 19:00:07

I've never had a company try to push a policy that they owned all my creative output. I *have* had a company ask me to declare what kind of programming work I did in my spare time. I was honest, and since IF work had no overlap with the company's line of business, they never mentioned it again.

I once (briefly) worked for a computer game company. I brought up the subject before I signed on, and they were happy with a declaration that I was writing a shareware Mac puzzle game in my spare time and it had no relation to company projects. (This was, yes, before _A Change in the Weather_.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2330&start=0#p15902
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF and IP
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-04-18 19:00:53

PS: Yeah, don't work on your own project on company time or on company hardware. That should go without saying.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2331&start=0#p15903
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Tables and functional programming
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-04-18 20:04:26

Given a table that has a column with objects in each row, and other columns headed by property names, such as this one:

[code]Table of Object Parameters
object	strength	size	available	
salamander	12	20	true
Kitchen	--	800	--
north	--	--	true[/code]

...can you, for each row of the table, apply the given value for each property to the object--without knowing in advance what kinds of object or specific properties will be used? In other words, can a phrase be written using Inform's new(ish) "functional programming" capabilities that would be able to recognize a property from a table column heading and apply the given value to the required object? How do you reference to the column/property in a way that Inform understands?

(Note: I'm aware that you can [i]initially define[/i] objects using such a table; I want to use the table to [i]change properties during play[/i], without hardcoding property names into the code that reassigns values using lots of if statements.)

Hope this explanation is clear enough... Thanks!

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2331&start=0#p15904
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Tables and functional programming
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-04-18 22:51:33

I'm confused if you're actually using properties at all, or are just calling the columns "properties".  

The functional programming aspects of Inform are basically syntactic sugar -- they don't do any magic that the rest of the language can't already do.  But since it seems you might be constructing something like { { strength, height }, { 10, 45 } } kind of lists that represent changes to be made to the objects in that table, you can of course make a new decide phrase which accepts a list of K based table columns and a list of K, and use said phrase on a filter/map/reduce conveyor belt.  (Well, it would accept a single list of list of values, since "value" is the only commonality between a table column and a number. You get the idea, I hope.)

I could be completely missing your question, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2324&start=0#p15905
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Using Inform 7 IDE with Inform 6 code?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-04-18 23:13:36

[quote="Pelican"]I'm kind of new to learning this whole IF stuff, so after comparing some code at the Cloak of Darkness, I think I prefer Inform 6 to Inform 7, however, I really like Inform 7's IDE (for GNOME), with its built-in ability to play, built in documentation, etc.  Is there a way I can use Inform 7's IDE, but write Inform 6 code?  Or is there some tool I should check-out (Linux-compatible) for developing Inform 6 with some similar features (I don't like VIM/Emacs)?[/quote]
Basically, no. You can use any text editor to write I6 code, and some editors will let you do the appropriate syntax coloring (I've had good luck with Notepad++, but I'm running Windows 7, not Linux), or even code folding. I6 has a few of the same testing features as I7, including the ability to record and replay a transcript of commands. But there's no equivalent for the Index or the Skein, and you'll need to write a batch file if you want a double-click game launch, as there's no Play button.

Personally, I'm a big fan of I6. The initial setup to create a game is a bit more finicky, but once you've got it set up, the I6 syntax is (in my personal opinion) easier to work with.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2331&start=0#p15906
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Tables and functional programming
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-04-18 23:22:48

No, I want to use actual properties of actual objects, and to use the table to change them in-game. The main difficulty--probably insurmountable--is how to communicate to Inform that it should treat the column name as the name of property. The I7 compiler (?) can use table columns in just this way to define objects initially, but I'm not seeing how one could do this in any situation except for the special case of declaring objects. 

Something like (pseudo-code):

[code]repeat through the Table of Object Parameters:
	let item be the object entry;
	repeat through columns:
		if the item has the property (column name):
			now the (column name) of the item is (column name) entry.[/code]

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1666&start=20#p15907
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Zork: Activision gives it some love in an unusual way!
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-04-18 23:43:12

[quote="Sslaxx"][url]http://www.destructoid.com/zork-also-hidden-in-call-of-duty-black-ops-186858.phtml[/url] - via Call of Duty.

How bizarre.[/quote]

I think it's a cool little Easter egg.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2330&start=0#p15909
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF and IP
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-04-19 01:36:36

I find it hard to imagine that such a clause would have legal validity, but then (a) I am not a lawyer and (b) I have no idea where you live. At any rate, I would be surprised if it were legal here in the Netherlands.

You might be interested in this post I cam across some time ago; it quotes a part of California law that also indicates that such clauses would be legal only in very special circumstances:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.plushapocalypse.com/borut/?p=421">http://www.plushapocalypse.com/borut/?p=421</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2332&start=0#p15910
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7 bugs...
User: jennyW / DateTime: 2011-04-19 04:50:51

Hi!

Does anyone know what's happening with the inform 7 development these days?

I've just started playing with i7, but I've come across a bug that's been known about since november last year. I know this because I searched the bug tracker.

So... this bug I've got is just confirmed. There's about 9 resolved bugs listed, and about 797 reported bugs. That's not very good stats.

So, is everyone having a long holiday, or are lower level systems being worked on, or... what? Or, are the bugs just being fixed behind the scenes and when a new build comes out will most of the bug miraculously be resolved?

First post, but... this was what I wanted to talk about!! [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2332&start=0#p15911
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 bugs...
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-04-19 05:24:54

[quote="jennyW"]Or, are the bugs just being fixed behind the scenes and when a new build comes out will most of the bug miraculously be resolved?[/quote]
Yes.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2332&start=0#p15912
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 bugs...
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-04-19 05:27:52

I don't know what bug tracker you're going to, but I only see 227 unresolved bugs at <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view_all_bug_page.php">http://inform7.com/mantis/view_all_bug_page.php</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2333&start=0#p15913
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Smarter Parser slowdown?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-19 06:07:00

Having talked about slowdown in other topics on here, I hadn't actually experienced any until tonight (coincidentally).

I added Smarter Parser to my game, and now when testing the game in Inform, there's a one second pause after each Smarter Parser-invoking command is entered.

The delay goes away in the release version of the game (at least under Gargoyle) but - has this happened to anyone else or been observed before?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2332&start=0#p15914
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 bugs...
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-04-19 06:49:43

[quote="jennyW"]Or, are the bugs just being fixed behind the scenes and when a new build comes out will most of the bug miraculously be resolved?[/quote]
Yes, it's more a "report bugs to us" then "we report fixes to you" website. I believe that every time a new version came out, all known bugs were fixed.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=20#p15915
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2011-04-19 07:17:50

New problem:
I want to assign an electric charge (or energy level) to certain objects in the game, particularly the gadgets and power tools.  I've tried doing so with the following:
[code]A PoweredGadget is a kind of thing.  A PoweredGadget has a number called PowerCharge.  The Powercharge of a PoweredGadget is usually 0.  The frost projector, small battery-powered torch, size AA battery and personal force field pendant are PoweredGadgets.[/code]
It's most important for the torch, where 1 unit of PowerCharge equates to illuminating a room for 1 move.

I've encountered a conflict with those objects that I've marked as devices in the game.

[color=#FF0000]Error: "[b]Problem[/b]. You wrote 'The small battery-powered torch and personal force field pendant are devices', but that seems to contradict 'The frost projector, small battery-powered torch, size AA battery and personal force field pendant are PoweredGadgets', as a device and a poweredgadget are incompatible. (If a device were a kind of a poweredgadget or vice versa there'd be no problem, but they aren't.)"[/color]

Devices in Inform7 are things that can be switched on and off.  [i]Some[/i] of the powered objects in my game will be devices, others such as the battery have a charge but cannot themselves have an on/off state.  Equally not every device in my game will require a power charge, for example an oil lamp (similar to the one used by the 3rd Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith at the start of "[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_to_the_daleks]Death to the Daleks[/url]").

[b]Question: Is there a way to assign the power charge to specific objects, regardless of whether they are devices or not?[/b]

(Aside to the Dr Who fans: Rather than a battery I'll probably be using an optical energy crystal similar to the much larger crystals in the story [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfire_%28Doctor_Who%29]Dragonfire[/url].  I've identified it above as a battery for sake of clarity for everyone in the forum not familiar with the Dr Who lore).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=20#p15916
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-04-19 08:41:40

I think the easiest way to do this would be to separately define two kinds that both have a PowerCharge. At least that seems to be how the Standard Rules gives both supporters and containers a carrying capacity.

[code]A PoweredGadget is a kind of device.  A PoweredGadget has a number called PowerCharge.  The Powercharge of a PoweredGadget is usually 0.  
The frost projector, small battery-powered torch and personal force field pendant are PoweredGadgets.

A PoweredGimmick is a kind of thing.  A PoweredGimmick has a number called PowerCharge.  The Powercharge of a PoweredGimmick is usually 0.  
The size AA battery is a PoweredGimmick.[/code]

EDIT: And it should also be possible to have code that says that [code]The optical energy crystal has a number called PowerCharge.[/code], without making the crystal either a PoweredGadget or PoweredGimmick (I think).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2164&start=0#p15917
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: @party interactive fiction competition
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2011-04-19 09:02:25

[quote="metoikos"]Remote entries (submit by email to <a href="mailto:val.grimm@gmail.com">val.grimm@gmail.com</a>) are due June 13, 2011.[/quote]
The website states the remote submission deadline is "Midnight June 6th 2011." Which is the correct one?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=24&start=10#p15918
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Interpreters!
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2011-04-19 09:10:02

[quote="kadneera"]What can I do to get on the right path to becoming a Sign Language Interpreter? I'm a senior in high school and really striving to become a sign language interpreter. I've taken ASL 1, 2 and 3 (and have tried to find a class that's higher than ASL 3) and would really love to get involved with a lot more sign language. Since my goal is to become a interpreter, I need to know what I can possibly start doing to get my career started. I appreciate the help![/quote]
Sorry to say, but this is not the right forum for your question. "Interpreters" here mean those software that run interactive fiction programs.

Googling will help. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1014&start=10#p15919
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: "How to Play IF" card
User: Tanga / DateTime: 2011-04-19 09:21:23

Thanks for this.  I included it in on my [url=http://speconspec.blogspot.com/]blog[/url].  Hope that's OK Andrew.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=24&start=10#p15920
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Interpreters!
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-04-19 09:47:20

It's a spam account, most likely.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2334&start=0#p15921
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Need help running babel-infocom.pl
User: Ezekiel000 / DateTime: 2011-04-19 10:44:59

First of all I do not know perl but I downloaded the babel-infocom perl script to allow me to pack my Infocom Story files into blorb files. I have compiled all the external tools I need for the script but when I run the script it does nothing.
This is the page I got the tool and instructions from:
<a class="postlink" href="http://babel.ifarchive.org/infocom.html">http://babel.ifarchive.org/infocom.html</a>

I am running Ubuntu 10.10 amd64 with Perl v5.10.1 (*) built for x86_64-linux-gnu-thread-multi.

[code]
#!/usr/bin/perl

# Babel-infocom is a special-purpose script for bundling infocom games
#
# usage: babel-infocom.pl [-from dir] file[s]
#
#
# If specified, it will look in the -from dir for the infocom
# metadata collection.  the from-directory should end in your platform's
# directory separator (so "babel-infocom.pl -from data/ foo.z5")
#
# This program will search the infocom metadata collection for
# the corresponding metadata for your game, and create a
# blorb bundle containing cover art and metadata.
#
# Requires babel, babel-get, and ifiction-xtract from babel.
#
# For the infocom games with multimedia, babel-infocom will also combine
# the story file with its multimedia resources.  This functionality requires
# bmerge, which is available at http://www.trenchcoatsoft.com/downloads/iblorbs.zip
#


$held_mode=0;
$fromdir= "";
$BABEL = "babel";
$BMERGE = "bmerge";
$IFIX = "ifiction-xtract";
$BABELGET = "babel-get";

foreach $file (@ARGV)
{
 if ($file eq "-from")
 {
  $held_mode=1;
  next;
 }
 if ($held_mode)
 {
  $fromdir=$file;
  $held_mode=0;
  next;
 }
next if $file =~ m/.iFiction$/i;
next if $file =~ m/.png$/i;
next if $file =~ m/.jpg$/i;
next if $file =~ m/.[zg]?blorb$/i;

$fmt = `$BABEL -format $file`;
next if $fmt =~ m/Error:/;
next if $fmt =~ m/non-authoritative/;
next if $fmt =~ m/Format: executable/;
next if !($fmt =~ m/.+/);

print "$file: ";

$ifid = `$BABEL -ifid $file`;
$ifid =~ s/^IFID: //;
$ifid =~ s/IFID: .+//;
$ifid =~ s/\n//;
chomp($ifid);

# find ifiction
if (-e "$fromdir$ifid.iFiction")
{
 $ifiction="$fromdir$ifid.iFiction";
}
elsif (-e "$fromdir"."babel.iFiction")
{
 $str="$BABELGET -ifiction $ifid -ifiction $fromdir"."babel.iFiction > temp.iFiction";

 system($str);
 $ifiction="temp.iFiction";
}
else
{
 print "No iFiction record found.\n";
 next;
}
$cifid=`$IFIX $ifiction identification ifid`;
#print "$IFIX $ifiction identification ifid\n";
#print "$cifid\n";
chomp($cifid);
# find cover
if (-e "$fromdir$ifid.png")
{
 $cvr="$fromdir$ifid.png";
}
elsif (-e "$fromdir$ifid.jpg")
{
 $cvr="$fromdir$ifid.jpg";
}
elsif (-e "$fromdir$cifid.png")
{
 $cvr="$fromdir$cifid.png";
}
elsif (-e "$fromdir$cifid.jpg")
{
 $cvr="$fromdir$cifid.jpg";
}
else { $cvr=""; }

$blorb_mode=0;
print "$fromdir$cifid.blorb\n";
if (-e "$fromdir$cifid.blorb")
{
 $blorb_mode="$fromdir$cifid.blorb";
}
print "Bundling with $ifiction $cvr\n";
if ($blorb_mode)
{
 system("$BABEL -blorb $file $ifiction");
 $file =~ s/\..+$/\.zblorb/;
 system("$BMERGE $ifid.zblorb $blorb_mode $file");
 unlink("$ifid.zblorb");
}
else
{
 system("$BABEL -blorbs $file $ifiction $cvr");
}
if ($ifiction eq "temp.iFiction") { unlink($ifiction); }


}
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=10#p15922
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-04-19 11:02:06

I've now started a project in Inform 7. If I'll finish it remains to be seen, but I'll try.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2307&start=0#p15923
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Acting Fast
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-19 11:44:34

Well, it could be a feature, but I've realised the extension doesn't address 'every turn' rules at all.

Since you can't write 'every minute:' - all rules that begin with 'every turn:' keep happening no matter what else you try to govern with this extension.

EDIT - OK! I concocted this little fix myself and am reasonably chuffed, given I still consider myself pretty new to Inform 7. With this in place, if the [no-time] tag is used at any time during a turn, the every turn rules will not fire at the end of that turn:
[code]
This is the NEW every turn stage rule:
	if time-reset is true, do nothing;
	otherwise follow the every turn rules.

The NEW every turn stage rule is listed instead of the every turn stage rule in the turn sequence rulebook.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2332&start=0#p15924
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 bugs...
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-04-19 12:21:29

jennyW:

I realize your question is more about development status rather than a specific bug -- but are you experiencing a bug that is preventing you from continuing your project? If so, you should post it here.

I took a quick look at the reports for Nov. '10 and it looks like there are workarounds for the serious bugs -- mostly involving rephrasing of the source code. These are still bugs of course, but for the benefit of others following this thread: anyone running into a bug shouldn't feel like they need to wait for the next build for it to be fixed. Someone here will almost certainly be able to patch or work around it. With the possible exception of the guys working on extending graphics and sound support, I don't think there are many [i]truly[/i] show - stopping bugs left in I7.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2333&start=0#p15925
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Smarter Parser slowdown?
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-04-19 12:52:42

If the game is running acceptably in one interpreter (Gargoyle, which will use Git or Glulxe under the hood) and slow in another (the one built into Inform 7), my first guess would be that the accelerated opcode support is only active in the former and not the latter. Is this on Windows, Mac or Linux? On Windows I know for sure that the accelerated opcodes are active in the interpreter in the I7 front end, but I've no idea on Mac. One way to check this would be a small Inform 6 inclusion to print out the result of calling the gestalt function with the appropriate selector and running the result in different places.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2332&start=0#p15926
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 bugs...
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-04-19 13:04:57

[quote="jennyW"]There's about 9 resolved bugs listed...[/quote]
Part of the reason behind that dismal-looking figure is that bugs are moved into the closed state once their fixes have been released, and closed bugs are hidden by default.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2332&start=0#p15927
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 bugs...
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-04-19 13:22:48

Also, there tends to be no changes on the bug tracker except for new bugs appearing, until one day 30 bugs will be marked resolved all at once. 

I imagine the "batch processing" cuts down on admin overhead. 

Also, current intervals between Inform releases are at about 14 months, roughly.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2331&start=0#p15928
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Tables and functional programming
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-04-19 13:25:07

Unfortunately, there's no good way to iterate through table columns in pure I7 because table columns don't share a common kind; number valued table columns, for instance, are difficult to reconcile with indexed text valued table columns.  Also, by the time ni has emitted the I6 any correspondence between table column names and property names has been lost.

You can do what you want by dropping to I6 and associating columns with properties yourself.  I'm afraid it's a little messy:

[spoiler][code]Section "Setup"

To decide what number is (V - a value) converted to a number: (- {V} -).
To decide what number valued table column is the column with column number (N - a number): (- {N} -).

To decide whether (O - an object) has property number (P - a number): (- WhetherProvides({O},({P}<attributed_property_offsets_SIZE)&&((attributed_property_offsets-->{P})~=-1),{P}) -).
To store non-block value (V - a value) as property number (P - a number) in (O - an object): (- {O}.{P}={V}; -).
To store block value (V - a value) as property number (P - a number) in (O - an object): (- BlkValueCopy(GProperty(OBJECT_TY,{O},{P}),{V}); -).

To decide what number is the number of columns in (T - a table name): (- ({T}-->0) -).
To decide what number is table column (I - a number) in (T - a table name): (- ((({T}-->{I})-->1)&TB_COLUMN_NUMBER) -).
To decide whether table column (C - a number) is a block-value table column: (- KOVIsBlockValue(TC_KOV({C})) -)

To decide whether there is a value at row (R - a number) and column (C - a number) in (T - a table name): (- ExistsTableLookUpEntry({T},{C},{R}) -).
To decide what number is the value at row (R - a number) and column (C - a number) in (T - a table name): (- TableLookUpEntry({T},{C},{R}) -).

Column correspondence relates numbers to numbers.  The verb to be the column corresponding to implies the column correspondence relation.
To associate (C - a value of kind K valued table column) with (P - a K valued property):
	let the column number be C converted to a number;
	let the property number be P converted to a number;
	now the column number is the column corresponding to the property number.

To apply the properties in (T - a table name):
	repeat with the column index running from two [not one; that's the object column] to the number of columns in T:
		let the column number be the table column column index in T;
		unless the column number relates to a number by the column correspondence relation:
			next;
		let the property number be the number that the column number relates to by the column correspondence relation;
		repeat with the row index running from one to the number of rows in T:
			let the named object be the object column in row row index of T;
			unless the named object has property number property number:
				next;
			unless there is a value at row row index and column column number in T:
				next;
			let the value be the value at row row index and column column number in T;
			if table column column number is a block-value table column:
				store block value value as property number property number in the named object;
			otherwise:
				store non-block value value as property number property number in the named object.

Section "Demonstration"

The Kitchen is a room.
Here is an animal called the salamander.

Every object has a number called strength.
Every object has a number called size.
Every direction has a truth state called available.
Every animal has some indexed text called tagline.

Table of Object Parameters
object column	strength column	size column	available column	tagline column (indexed text)
salamander	12	201234	true	"x"
Kitchen	--	800	--	"y"
north	92	--	true	"z"

When play begins:
	associate the strength column with strength;
	associate the size column with size;
	associate the available column with available;
	associate the tagline column with tagline.

Instead of jumping:
	apply the properties in the Table of Object Parameters;
	say "Done."

Test me with "showme salamander / showme north / jump / showme salamander / showme north".[/code][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2321&start=0#p15929
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Custom Library Messages, version 4
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-04-19 13:31:38

Very nice.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2335&start=0#p15930
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: IDE in a browser :)
User: Huck Hooks / DateTime: 2011-04-19 13:35:32

Actually it must run locally, but needs only firefox und cli-inform. Sort of like an addon. Just in case gnome-inform7 does not like my version of ubuntu when Natty comes out^^

Tried shrinkwrapping, hope installation is somewhat understandable.

Active screenshot (editing left works, but no online compiler or saving): <a class="postlink" href="http://daqgit.appspot.com/quixe-work/edit-i7-firefox.html">http://daqgit.appspot.com/quixe-work/ed ... refox.html</a>

Docu: <a class="postlink" href="http://daqgit.appspot.com/quixe-work/play-ajax.html#eyJsb2ciOltdLCJiYXNlX21kNSI6Ijk1OTQzYzY1ODUzN2MwOTg1Zjg4ODVjMjU3Y2U2NWQwIn0=">http://daqgit.appspot.com/quixe-work/pl ... U2NWQwIn0=</a>

Download: <a class="postlink" href="http://huckhooks.github.com/quixe/shrinkwrapped/newest-edit.tar.gz">http://huckhooks.github.com/quixe/shrin ... dit.tar.gz</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2332&start=0#p15931
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 bugs...
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-04-19 13:43:17

Actually, despite how it may appear, bugs usually *are* marked as resolved at the time of resolution, and closed when the new build is actually released. The many-bugs-at-once days are generally days when Graham goes through a bunch of minor problems at once.

Most of the work that is happening on Inform these days (and this has been true for the last couple of years) is revision of core functionality to make the code more elegant, maintainable, and easy to read. That's still happening, but it's harder to show a progress bar for. It is very likely that a bunch of bug fixes will occur again before the next release.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2331&start=0#p15932
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Tables and functional programming
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-04-19 13:44:48

Ah. Then my first question would be "Good gods, why?" but that would be rude. [emote]:)[/emote]  

Um... maybe copy-paste the relevant phrases dealing with tables from the standard rules into your WIP, but change the parameter types from K valued table column to K valued property (or whatever it's called). And so on.  

Is my best guess....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2336&start=0#p15933
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: carrying a person; verbose debugging output
User: mander_if / DateTime: 2011-04-19 14:39:36

Hi --

I'm an experienced programmer, but new to Inform 7.  

In trying to understand how the parts of the system fit together, I was reading through the Standard Rules, coming across the second rule in the "check" section:[quote]
Check an actor taking (this is the can’t take other people rule): if the noun is a person, stop the action with library message taking action number 3 for the noun.
[/quote]
I'd like to make one or more classes of "people" carryable (which means takable?).  Say, a baby or a miniaturized person or a pet cat -- I want to be able to pick up such a character and move him / her / it, and set the character down again in some other room or some container or the like.

I tried a couple of things (alternatively):
[quote]A cat is a kind of Animal.
Check an actor taking (this is the can take cats rule): if the noun is a cat, continue the action.
The can take cats rule is listed first in the check rules.[/quote]and[quote]The can't take other people rule is not listed in the check rules.[/quote]

But neither of these seemed to allow me to pick up the cat:[quote] >take spot
I don't suppose Spot would care for that.[/quote]

So, a couple questions:
[list]
[*] What steps are required to make persons "takable"? Should this have worked, or am I missing other rules that need to be tweaked to allow this to happen?[/*:m]
[*] Is there some other approach to carrying around a person that isn't the "take" action that could be more appropriate?  [/*:m]
[*] Is there a known example of doing something like this in an inform 7 IF game that I could take a look at as an example?[/*:m][/list:u]

In a related note, is there any way to put Inform into a verbose/debug mode so I can see in excruciating detail how it's responding to my command?  I want to know what series of rules/rulebooks/steps my command "take spot" went through, and which rule actually rejected it and produced the message I see printed in response?

I kind of like Inform 7, but I find the Natural Language "squishiness" kind of hard to reason about and to know what all the rules are.  I think given some time, I can learn the rules of it and work with it, and might even like it.  But for other folks out there who are programmers and have used both I6 and I7, might I6 be a better fit for an IF author who is starting from the perspective of "software engineer"?

Thanks,
Matt

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2330&start=0#p15934
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF and IP
User: Genstein / DateTime: 2011-04-19 15:00:04

Thanks guys, that's very interesting.

I certainly don't produce anything with company resources, on company time or on their premises; that would indeed be asking for trouble.

It's rather that I seem to be tripping over more and more (well, two, of late) employment contracts along these lines, and they vex me somewhat. The gist is pretty much "all your IPs are belong to us". I have no objection to employers owning anything I do which is even conceivably related to their business, but it strikes me as perhaps excessive that they might lay claim to any non-rhyming limericks, monotonic sonnets, operas for the bass kazoo and paper comb, or new kinds of tea cozy that I might invent. It also seems to put something of a damper on working on open source projects; the Niagra Falls over a guttering candle during a tornado kind of damper.

I may have to bite the slightly expensive bullet of consulting an actual contract/IP lawyer before signing said contract. I'm just slightly concerned that if this is spreading, I may have similar difficulties elsewhere.

Sadly I'm not in California and nor are my employers; that law is superb and clearly crafted by people who understand where innovation comes from. It rains far too much here to be California; it's a British kind of rain.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2336&start=0#p15935
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: carrying a person; verbose debugging output
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-19 15:20:53

[quote="mander_if"]In a related note, is there any way to put Inform into a verbose/debug mode so I can see in excruciating detail how it's responding to my command?  I want to know what series of rules/rulebooks/steps my command "take spot" went through, and which rule actually rejected it and produced the message I see printed in response?[/quote]

Try typing the command "rules" (or "rules on") while the game is running in the Inform Development Environment -- does that do what you want? (You can also try typing "actions" to see what actions it is performing.)

...and I think your problem is that the name of the rulebook is the "check taking" rulebook rather than the "check" rulebook; each action has its own check/carry out/report rulebook. So this should work:

[code]The can take cats rule is listed instead of the can't take other people rule in the check taking rules.[/code]

Though you'll need to write the rule so that it stops you from taking people who aren't cats (or other takeable people), thus:

[code]Check an actor taking (this is the can take cats rule):
	if the noun is a person and the noun is not a cat, stop the action with library message taking
		action number 3 for the noun.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2337&start=0#p15936
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I6] Maximum name length
User: DrkStarr / DateTime: 2011-04-19 15:28:22

What is the maximum name length for an object property?

Like:

Object.tpctmpl1 = true;
Object.tpctmpl2 = true;

Both of these are 8 characters in length, they don't seem to collide, and I don't notice a problem, but what is the maximum length?

If I started to use 19 characters, would Inform 6 start to have problems:

Object.tpcimplcrtstksttrm1 = true;
Object.tpcimplcrtstksttrm2 = true;
Object.tpcimplcrtstksttrm3 = true;

It seems minor, but I think I remember C having name lengths, I'm just wondering where the cut off is.

Thanks - D

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2330&start=0#p15937
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF and IP
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-04-19 15:32:01

You could just ask to have those lines removed or changed in the contract, of course.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2321&start=0#p15938
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Custom Library Messages, version 4
User: Genstein / DateTime: 2011-04-19 15:41:42

Great stuff [emote]:)[/emote] This is probably my favourite extension. Thanks Ron!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2330&start=0#p15939
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF and IP
User: Genstein / DateTime: 2011-04-19 15:53:03

Absolutely, and such was my initial approach after having the odd negative experience with contract IP in the past. Sadly this latest one appears to be for genuine, torturous and plausible commercial reasons, at least to some degree. Which doesn't so much limit my options as polarize them.

Perhaps this is more of a UK-centric phenomenon, or maybe I've just been unlucky; but the notion that this might be more widespread is not a pleasant thought, hence my rambling enquiry.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2336&start=0#p15940
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: carrying a person; verbose debugging output
User: mander_if / DateTime: 2011-04-19 15:59:13

Thank you sir!  Yes, that was the problem; don't use the "check rules", use the "check taking rules".

This seems to work well:
[code][*** Take some people rule ***]
A person can be takable or untakable. A person is usually untakable.
Check an actor taking (this is the can take some people rule):
     if the noun is a person and the noun is untakable, stop the action with library message taking 
         action number 3 for the noun.
The can take some people rule is listed instead of the can't take other people rule in the check taking rules.
[/code]

I didn't know about tracing with "rules" and "actions" -- that's the kind of thing I was looking for.  Good to know.  Thanks for that too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2338&start=0#p15941
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: changing the "kind" of an I7 object
User: mander_if / DateTime: 2011-04-19 16:19:00

Is it possible to change the "kind" of an existing object in Inform 7?  

Say you're trying to make a magic spell that turns a prince (a man) into a frog (an animal). Or, a prince (a man) into a statue (a thing).  Can you actually alter the kind of the object, or do you have to make a new object and swap out the old one for the new one?

If it's possible, can someone give me an example of how it would be done?

Thanks,
Matt

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=20#p15942
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2011-04-19 16:19:04

[quote="Felix"]I think the easiest way to do this would be to separately define two kinds that both have a PowerCharge. At least that seems to be how the Standard Rules gives both supporters and containers a carrying capacity.

[code]A PoweredGadget is a kind of device.  A PoweredGadget has a number called PowerCharge.  The Powercharge of a PoweredGadget is usually 0.  
The frost projector, small battery-powered torch and personal force field pendant are PoweredGadgets.

A PoweredGimmick is a kind of thing.  A PoweredGimmick has a number called PowerCharge.  The Powercharge of a PoweredGimmick is usually 0.  
The size AA battery is a PoweredGimmick.[/code]

EDIT: And it should also be possible to have code that says that [code]The optical energy crystal has a number called PowerCharge.[/code], without making the crystal either a PoweredGadget or PoweredGimmick (I think).[/quote]Excellent!  Thanks Felix!

There's why I'm such a poor student; I make bad deductions - I assumed that a number property would be unique to a particular kind of thing. [emote]:roll:[/emote]

Cheers! [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2337&start=0#p15943
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Maximum name length
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-04-19 16:21:56

If you try to use a symbol name over 5000 letters long, I think you'll have to increase SYMBOLS_CHUNK_SIZE. That's the only limit I know of.

(C hasn't had symbol size limits like those in a long time, either.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2337&start=0#p15944
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Maximum name length
User: DrkStarr / DateTime: 2011-04-19 16:34:47

Nice, thanks again.

Inform does go back to the mid 90s, so I did know if it had old limitations.

And not knowing was like wondering if I was programing a time bomb into my game.   [emote]:shock:[/emote] 

Thanks for all the help - D

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2307&start=10#p15945
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Acting Fast
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-04-19 16:39:34

[emote]8-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2330&start=0#p15946
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF and IP
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-04-19 16:59:18

Well, I for one would be demanding that sort of clause to be removed from any contract I signed. I have to say that I have not seen anything like that in my UK work contracts.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2338&start=0#p15947
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: changing the "kind" of an I7 object
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-04-19 17:21:03

You have to make a new object and swap.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2334&start=0#p15948
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Need help running babel-infocom.pl
User: gumby / DateTime: 2011-04-19 18:42:59

No output at all?  At first glance, it looks like you'll get no output if you don't specify a file name as an argument...  how did you kick off the script (full command please)?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2333&start=0#p15949
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Smarter Parser slowdown?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-04-19 20:10:10

I would think that it's the difference between the debug build used for the IDE, and the release build it generates. It could be strict mode error checking for example.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2331&start=0#p15950
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Tables and functional programming
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-04-19 21:16:38

[quote="Ron Newcomb"][M]y first question would be "Good gods, why?" but that would be rude. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Well, I'm casting about for ways to deal with some annoying weaknesses in Inform. I want to provide the simplest possible structure, in an extension, for animating any number of independent graphics elements using the glulx timer. Graphic elements are implemented as objects, and different kinds of elements can have different properties; it's the properties that define how they are drawn. There are probably fifteen or more possible properties to act on (colors, scaling parameters, etc.), and properties of the window can also be animated (origin coordinate, background color).

That's a lot of potential complexity, but for simple animations, procedural rules ("add 10% to the scaling ratio of the object each frame until it reaches 100%") suffice, while switch statements can work for animations that can't be described procedurally, e.g.:

[code]if the current frame is:
	-- 1: now the origin coordinate of the bunny is {12, 12};
	-- 2: now the origin coordinate of the bunny is {200, 95};
	-- 3: now the origin coordinate of the bunny is {66, 230}; [/code]

But try to do any more in that same animation, and you hit a wall: Inform won't let you provide multiple instructions on the same line of a switch statement. This doesn't work, for example:

[code]if the current frame is:
	-- 1: now the origin coordinate of the bunny is {12, 12};
		now the origin coordinate of the carrot is {200, 95};
	-- 2: now the origin coordinate of the bunny is {200, 95};
		now the origin coordinate of the carrot is {66, 230};
	-- 3: now the origin coordinate of the bunny is {66, 230}; [/code]

Even if it did work, that method would start to get cumbersome: Multiple objects and multiple properties of each of those objects might be changing in the same frame, and I don't really want the author to have to type "now..." phrases for each object-property combination needed. 

A generalized record or hash might be appropriate for this kind of thing, but aside from the "combination" type, which is not yet available at the I7 level--and may never be--there is no such thing in Inform. Lists aren't a solution, since you can't have multiple types in the same list. 

And that leaves tables (though I am open to other solutions!--let me know!). As long as an author can use only the columns he needs, tables can be relatively compact. For example, the following table performs three different operations on two graphic entities, sliding a cover image in from the left and painted text (the title) in from the right, while at the same time swapping out the letters in the title:

[code]Table of Cover Animation
frame	object	origin	text-string
1	Cover-image	{-200, 20}	--
1	Title-slug	{800, 30}	"A@7D^arkz"
2	Cover-image	{-100, 20}	--
2	Title-slug	{700, 30}	"A@rd^arkz"
3	Cover-image	{0, 20}	--
3	Title-slug	{600, 30}	"A@rdvarkz"[/code]

If anyone has made it this far and doesn't find convincing my justification for focusing on tables -- please feel free to post! I'm happy to consider other ideas. (Note that the drawing by properties scheme [i]is[/i] set in stone, though...)

[spoiler]In the actual extension, the kind of compact, semi-automated animation I'm discussing will be just one of several options. There will also be some prepackaged procedural animations of varying complexity, and the author will also be able to supply her own rules.[/spoiler]

[quote="EmacsUser"][B]y the time ni has emitted the I6 any correspondence between table column names and property names has been lost. You can do what you want by dropping to I6 and associating columns with properties yourself.  I'm afraid it's a little messy: [wizardly code follows][/quote]

Wow, this is great--thanks Emacs! I do wish that this was a feature that Inform/NI provided, because even with this code, authors will need to do some mild bookkeeping if they want to add new properties. That's not such a big deal, but I hate having to require those kinds of tasks. I'll need to figure out how to add some optional columns that aren't properties (for callback functions, among other things), but this ought to work. Thanks again!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2333&start=0#p15951
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Smarter Parser slowdown?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-19 21:44:19

Thanks for the observations.

For your info, it's running in the latest build of Inform in Mac OS X.

I haven't tried it in Spatterlight yet. I haven't been in the habit of testing the game in Zoom because the game uses sounds.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2333&start=0#p15952
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Smarter Parser slowdown?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-04-19 21:52:26

[quote="severedhand"]Thanks for the observations.

For your info, it's running in the latest build of Inform in Mac OS X.

I haven't tried it in Spatterlight yet. I haven't been in the habit of testing the game in Zoom because the game uses sounds.[/quote]

The IDE interpreter on OS X is markedly slower for many operations than external interpreters. This may have something to do with how features like the skein is implemented, among other factors such as those mentioned by others in this thread. In any case, you're definitely not alone in observing this.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2330&start=0#p15953
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF and IP
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-04-19 23:28:28

Just adding to the chorus: I've had employers who've claimed ownership of anything created on company time/premises/hardware ... and that was fine. I had one employer who asked that I not do freelance work of the same kind while employed there .... and that was fine (I had another who didn't mind creative moonlighting provided it didn't interfere with my company work) ... But an employer claiming all rights to unrelated creative work I do at home? I can't imagine the kind of perks that would have to be provided before I'd even entertain the idea of signing away my entire private output ... what anyone does at home, provided it doesn't undermine the employer in any way, is none of the employer's business, let alone property.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2333&start=0#p15954
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Smarter Parser slowdown?
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-04-20 00:58:42

[quote="Dannii"]It could be strict mode error checking for example.[/quote]Yes, that's true: strict mode will bypass much of the Glulx acceleration work, as it has to provide its own version of the low-level routines that do much of the strict mode checking.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2334&start=0#p15955
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Need help running babel-infocom.pl
User: Ezekiel000 / DateTime: 2011-04-20 01:28:40

The full command I used for my test runs was:
./babel-infocom.pl -from ./data ./Zork\ 1.z3

I get no output and no files are created once I'm returned to the command prompt.
I also get nothing when I tried "./babel-infocom.pl" & "./babel-infocom.pl --help"

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2334&start=0#p15956
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Need help running babel-infocom.pl
User: lamont / DateTime: 2011-04-20 03:42:55

[quote="Ezekiel000"]I have compiled all the external tools I need for the script but when I run the script it does nothing.[/quote]
And just to make sure, are those external tools in your PATH? You'll need at least these three:

[code]$ which babel babel-get ifiction-xtract
/usr/local/bin/babel
/usr/local/bin/babel-get
/usr/local/bin/ifiction-xtract[/code]
You may also need to rename the iFiction records file (note the capital "F").

[code]$ mv data/babel.ifiction data/babel.iFiction[/code]
I think the script itself is fine (if terse); the trick is pre-arranging everything to meet its expectations.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2334&start=0#p15957
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Need help running babel-infocom.pl
User: Ezekiel000 / DateTime: 2011-04-20 04:17:07

I didn't think that I needed to install the tools so I modified the perl script to:
[code]
$fromdir= "./data/";
$BABEL = "./babel";
$BMERGE = "./bmerge";
$IFIX = "./ifiction-xtract";
$BABELGET = "./babel-get";
[/code]

And renamed babel.ifiction to babel.iFiction.
And now it works as long as there are no spaces in the story files name.
I don't have to specify the data directory as it is now in the script, so it ran fine with this:
./babel-infocom.pl Zork1.z3

Thank you for your help.

Edit:
[url]http://www.mediafire.com/?cfl2c7p7ud1vbf8[/url]
I uploaded all the tools just encase anyone else needed all this set-up already, but it was all compiled amd64 so probably won't work on i386. Also blorbalize is included to check that blorbs produced are ok.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2328&start=0#p15958
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Saying a list of things with phrase options
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-04-20 07:38:18

[quote="Juhana"]Edit: Whoops, sorry, I did miss the listing all contents option. Anyway, example 177 (Equipment List) in the manual chapter 11.14. shows how to list worn and carried items separately.[/quote]

I considered that example, but it works by overwriting the existing marked for listing properties of the objects, so it wouldn't work for listing only the things that I've declared elsewhere as marked for listing.

I suppose I could get around that by creating a new "unlistable" property, declaring all the items I don't want listed to be unlistable, and then in the inventory action, change all the unlistable objects to be unmarked for listing. I was hoping not to have to change my object definitions, but it sounds like there isn't a simpler way of doing this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2328&start=0#p15959
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Saying a list of things with phrase options
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-04-20 09:07:35

[quote="shammack"]I want to list them in a format similar to that of "list the contents of the player, as a sentence, including all contents, listing marked items only, using the indefinite article". But I can't just do that because I need to list the contents of different lists than that phrase is written for[/quote]
I kind of suspect I'm totally missing the point, but anyway the "list the contents of" phrase (with all its options) should work for listing the contents of any object, not just the player.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2328&start=0#p15960
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Saying a list of things with phrase options
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-04-20 09:29:10

The issue is that "list the contents of" only does exactly that: lists the objects that are contained by another object. The list I want to print is not the objects that have the contained by relationship with the player, but the worn by relationship, so I can't use "list the contents of" for that. What I really need is the equivalent of saying "[list of description of objects]", but that only prints the entire list in sentence form with definite or indefinite articles, whereas I need more control over the output than that.

Practical example: if the player is carrying a container with something in it, the default inventory action will say "a container (in which is a something)". I want that. But if you say "[list of things carried by the player]", you only get "a container". Now, because I'm listing the things carried by the player and the things worn by the player separately, I don't have the option of using "list the contents of" because it doesn't make that distinction. So I have to say "You are wearing [list of things worn by the player]," and that doesn't show the "(in which is a something)" because (presumably) that message is generated by the "list the contents of" function, which is never getting called.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2328&start=0#p15961
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Saying a list of things with phrase options
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-04-20 09:30:43

The built-in extension Complex Listing might also be helpful.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2339&start=0#p15962
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Change "on the [supporter]" to "lying down" for the ground?
User: aszecsei / DateTime: 2011-04-20 09:31:42

For my latest IF game, I've got a sequence in which the PC is lying down and must get up within a certain amount of time.  For the implementation, I created a supporter "ground" and put the character on it when they were lying down.

[code]Waterfall is a room.  "[if the player is on the ground]Blah blah description blah.[else]Blah blah new description blah.[end if]".  The ground is a supporter in Waterfall.  When LobbyFlashback ends, now the player is on the ground.[/code]

Unfortunately, this:

[quote][b]Waterfall[/b] (on the ground)
Blah blah description blah.[/quote]

doesn't fit my desired output:

[quote][b]Waterfall[/b] (lying down)
Blah blah description blah.[/quote]

Is there a specific rule I should change to make this work, or should I have a totally different implementation?  Basically, I just need the command "get up" to 1, change the location header (no idea if this is what it's called, but you get my drift) and 2, get a different scene description.  Any help would be really really appreciated.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2328&start=0#p15963
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Saying a list of things with phrase options
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-04-20 09:36:40

Ah, yes, that does look very useful. Thanks.

(edit: though including contents still isn't one of the style options. Damn. Oh well, it's a starting point)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2328&start=0#p15964
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Saying a list of things with phrase options
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-04-20 09:43:53

I'm sure this is not the most elegant way to do it, but it may work.

[code]
Carry out taking inventory (this is the print custom inventory rule):
	let C be the list of things carried by the player;
	let W be the list of things worn by the player;
	repeat with item running through W:
		remove the item from play;
	say "You are carrying ";
	list the contents of the player, as a sentence, including all contents, listing marked items only;
	say ".";
	repeat with item running through C:
		remove the item from play;
	repeat with item running through W:
		now the player wears the item;
	say "You are wearing ";
	list the contents of the player, as a sentence, including all contents, listing marked items only;
	say ".";
	repeat with item running through C:
		now the player carries the item.

The print custom inventory rule is listed instead of the print standard inventory rule in the carry out taking inventory rulebook.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2339&start=0#p15965
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Change "on the [supporter]" to "lying down" for the grou
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-20 10:15:05

Looks like you need to change the room description heading rule in the Carry out looking rulebooks. The relevant part is the part about the visibility-holder of the actor; here's a stab:

[code]Carry out looking (this is the new room description heading rule):
	say bold type;
	if the visibility level count is 0:
		begin the printing the name of a dark room activity;
		if handling the printing the name of a dark room activity,
			issue miscellaneous library message number 71;
		end the printing the name of a dark room activity;
	otherwise if the visibility ceiling is the location:
		say "[visibility ceiling]";
	otherwise:
		say "[The visibility ceiling]";
	say roman type;
	let intermediate level be the visibility-holder of the actor;
	if intermediate level is the ground: [this is the new bit]
		say " (lying on the ground)";
	otherwise:
		repeat with intermediate level count running from 2 to the visibility level count:
			issue library message looking action number 8 for the intermediate level;
			let the intermediate level be the visibility-holder of the intermediate level;
	say line break;
	say run paragraph on with special look spacing.
	
The new room description heading rule is listed instead of the room description heading rule in the carry out looking rules.[/code]

This might be a little hinky, because I didn't do anything to address the case where you have another supporter on the ground. You probably don't want to let anything but the player wind up on the ground (except maybe when the player is on the ground); once the player is up, "PUT X ON GROUND" should move X to the location, and anything on the ground should move to the location too. So maybe you'll never get "[b]Waterfall[/b] (on the stool) (on the ground)". But you might want to deal with it anyway. (Also, I think once you do this you have to implement "PUT X ON GROUND" for every location.) 

It looks to me like the code you've written to get a different scene description should already be working.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=10#p15966
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: Gerynar / DateTime: 2011-04-20 11:51:34

I've started and now have a few objects and two rooms [emote]:)[/emote]

Getting ready to do the hard part, adding a couple simple puzzles and then a semi-decent (or at least good by Speed-IF definition) NPC.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2331&start=0#p15967
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Tables and functional programming
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-04-20 12:20:22

Oh you wanted to block copy from tables to properties. I misunderstood twice.  I point at EmacsUser and say "what he said".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2340&start=0#p15968
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: "Painless Little Stupid Games" now in Z-Code
User: Rotonoto / DateTime: 2011-04-20 15:30:19

I've now ported my collection of "Painless Little Stupid Games," formerly only available in ALAN and only playable on older PCs, to Inform 7 and released them as z-code games.  They should be up on the Archive before too long.  The five games are zipped together but playable separately.  All have built-in hints (though "HELP" sometimes gets you something different from "HINT") and all are absurdly easy.  They don't need beta-testing--I wrote them in 1998, so any testing would be omega-testing by now--but if anyone detects serious bugs, please report them to me at (symbols for words) payyasi at hotmail dot com.

The contents are:

Dinnertime:  not a game but a single puzzle, a simple and ancient one.

To Get To The Other Side:  my first actual game.  Fun with boxes, painted rooms, broken tv sets, toy nuclear bombs, homicidal truckdrivers, and more (but no chickens).  Eliminates a pair of doors and their key which were only in the original game to be annoying.  (The game’s annoying enough.)

They're After You!:  a chase scene ... yeah, that's about it.

Mazemapper:  dedicated to everyone who loves mapping mazes.  I think there might be three of us.

The Mean Story:  what can I say?  An egregiously heartless and un-p.c. example of black humor, inspired by fantasies two of my friends came up with in high school.  We've all grown since high school.  You'd think.

And there were going to be five more, before I took my eleven-year break from IF.  Maybe there still will be!  In the meantime, there's always my long game RANS.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2331&start=0#p15969
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Tables and functional programming
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-04-20 16:04:44

Er, my previous post doesn't handle attributes correctly [emote]:oops:[/emote].  Let me try again:
[spoiler][code]Section "Setup"

To decide what number is (V - a value) converted to a number: (- {V} -).

To decide whether property number (P - a number) is an attributed property: (- ({P}<attributed_property_offsets_SIZE)&&((attributed_property_offsets-->{P})~=-1) -).
To decide whether (O - an object) has property number (P - a number): (- WhetherProvides({O},({P}<attributed_property_offsets_SIZE)&&((attributed_property_offsets-->{P})~=-1),{P}) -).

To store non-block value (V - a value) as attributed property number (P - a number) in (O - an object): (- SetEitherOrProperty({O},{P},{V}==0); -).
To store non-block value (V - a value) as property number (P - a number) in (O - an object): (- {O}.{P}={V}; -).
To store block value (V - a value) as property number (P - a number) in (O - an object): (- BlkValueCopy(GProperty(OBJECT_TY,{O},{P}),{V}); -).

To decide what number is the number of columns in (T - a table name): (- ({T}-->0) -).
To decide what number is table column (I - a number) in (T - a table name): (- ((({T}-->{I})-->1)&TB_COLUMN_NUMBER) -).
To decide whether table column (C - a number) is a block-value table column: (- KOVIsBlockValue(TC_KOV({C})) -)

To decide whether there is a value at row (R - a number) and column (C - a number) in (T - a table name): (- ExistsTableLookUpEntry({T},{C},{R}) -).
To decide what number is the value at row (R - a number) and column (C - a number) in (T - a table name): (- TableLookUpEntry({T},{C},{R}) -).

Column correspondence relates numbers to numbers.  The verb to be the column corresponding to implies the column correspondence relation.
To associate (C - a value of kind K valued table column) with (P - a K valued property):
	let the column number be C converted to a number;
	let the property number be P converted to a number;
	now the column number is the column corresponding to the property number.

To apply the properties in (T - a table name):
	repeat with the column index running from two [not one; that's the object column] to the number of columns in T:
		let the column number be the table column column index in T;
		unless the column number relates to a number by the column correspondence relation:
			next;
		let the property number be the number that the column number relates to by the column correspondence relation;
		repeat with the row index running from one to the number of rows in T:
			let the named object be the object column in row row index of T;
			unless the named object has property number property number:
				next;
			unless there is a value at row row index and column column number in T:
				next;
			let the value be the value at row row index and column column number in T;
			if table column column number is a block-value table column:
				store block value value as property number property number in the named object;
			otherwise if property number property number is an attributed property:
				store non-block value value as attributed property number property number in the named object;
			otherwise:
				store non-block value value as property number property number in the named object.

Section "Demonstration"

The Kitchen is a room.
Here is an animal called the salamander.

Every object has a number called strength.
Every object has a number called size.
A direction can be available.
Every animal has some indexed text called tagline.

Table of Object Parameters
object column	strength column	size column	available column	tagline column (indexed text)
salamander	12	201234	true	"x"
Kitchen	--	800	--	"y"
north	92	--	true	"z"

When play begins:
	associate the strength column with strength;
	associate the size column with size;
	associate the available column with available;
	associate the tagline column with tagline.

Instead of jumping:
	apply the properties in the Table of Object Parameters;
	say "Done."

Test me with "showme salamander / showme north / jump / showme salamander / showme north".[/code][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2331&start=0#p15970
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Tables and functional programming
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-04-20 16:09:52

Also, I know it doesn't address all of your concerns, but you can write[code]Rule:
	if the current frame is:
		-- 1:
			now the origin coordinate of the bunny is {12, 12};
			now the origin coordinate of the carrot is {200, 95};
		-- 2: 
			now the origin coordinate of the bunny is {200, 95};
			now the origin coordinate of the carrot is {66, 230};
		-- 3: 
			now the origin coordinate of the bunny is {66, 230}.[/code]as long as the -- : lines have no other text on them.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2339&start=0#p15971
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Change "on the [supporter]" to "lying down" for the grou
User: Genstein / DateTime: 2011-04-20 17:04:40

I also wanted to change this sort of thing in crazy ways for one of my WIPs and ended up writing an extension for it. I've been sitting on it for a while, but now seems as good a time as any to release it. I've submitted it to inform7.com, but in the meantime here's a direct link:

[url]http://genstein.net/Room%20Description%20Headings.i7x[/url]

With this extension you could solve this as follows:
[code]Include Room Description Headings by Erwin Genstein.

Rule for describing the player's enclosure when the player's enclosure is the ground: say " (lying down)".
Rule for printing an enclosure description when the described enclosure is the ground: rule succeeds.[/code]

This will only say " (lying down)" when the player is directly on the ground, rather than if the player is on something on the ground. It also will omit " (on the ground)" if the player is on something which is on the ground, so if they're on a chair on the ground you'll just see " (on the chair)" not " (on the chair) (on the ground)".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2340&start=0#p15972
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: "Painless Little Stupid Games" now in Z-Code
User: Mr. Patient / DateTime: 2011-04-20 17:26:56

I played two of these in ALAN form a couple of months back.  They were definitely a lot of fun, but I found them pretty challenging.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2339&start=0#p15973
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Change "on the [supporter]" to "lying down" for the grou
User: aszecsei / DateTime: 2011-04-20 17:30:26

Thanks, Matt!  I was trying to figure out which rule was relevant.  And yes, the code for the different scene description is working.  I was throwing out "things I want in an implementation" in case something other than a supporter was necessary.

I ended up using the extension, which is really great (and simple!) so extra-special thanks to Genstein.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1666&start=20#p15974
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Zork: Activision gives it some love in an unusual way!
User: MikeDesert / DateTime: 2011-04-20 18:11:18

I don't know how that black ops thing works (I assume it's not in the xbox version?), but 25 years after trying to write text adventures on my TRS-80 I happened to watch "Get Lamp", so now I'm writing them again...and until I relearn basic I'm using ADRIFT. So whatever motivates people! 
I have replayed old games over the years...Bedlam, Pyramid, Zork..liked Curses...but I didn't even know about all the IF communities till last month!
Since my AGT game of 10 years ago never made it past two rooms, I'm looking forward to writing games...and hopefully for whatever reason lots of other people will too! (Even if all their first games have a LOUD room).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=180#p15975
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: MikeDesert / DateTime: 2011-04-20 18:17:28

Hello, I'm mike. 38 year old graphic designer from California.
Used to make simple crappy text adventures as a kid on my TRS-80 coco, and thanks to watching Get Lamp, checking out ADRIFT (and other great programs) I'm taking up the hobby again!
Aside from all that I watch a lot of old movies-mostly horror and noir, like to surf, sail, drink, play music and watch the giants.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=429&start=30#p15976
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Vegitarian
User: MikeDesert / DateTime: 2011-04-20 18:27:43

Been vegan for 11 years and veg since 1988.

I like my fiction violent though!   [emote]:twisted:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=7&start=20#p15977
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: How does ADRIFT's parsing work?
User: MikeDesert / DateTime: 2011-04-20 18:45:50

Adrift was the easiet to jump right into for me, and maybe it's the same for a lot of people. And maybe some of those people don't spend enough time beta testing and thinking things through. It's easy enough to create a task so that the parsing works well if something's screwy. I've only clocked in 10 or so hours, but I dig it so far.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2331&start=0#p15978
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Tables and functional programming
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-04-20 18:58:27

[quote="EmacsUser"]Let me try again:[another iteration of wizardly code][/quote]

Even better, thanks!

[quote="EmacsUser"]Also, I know it doesn't address all of your concerns, but you can write[code]Rule:
	if the current frame is:
		-- 1:
			now the origin coordinate of the bunny is {12, 12};
			now the origin coordinate of the carrot is {200, 95};
		-- 2: 
			now the origin coordinate of the bunny is {200, 95};
			now the origin coordinate of the carrot is {66, 230};
		-- 3: 
			now the origin coordinate of the bunny is {66, 230}.[/code]as long as the -- : lines have no other text on them.[/quote]

I would not have thought to try that--I have always thought of this syntax as a special case, and didn't consider that tabs and line breaks would allow for grouping in the same way as with full "if" statements. Thanks!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2341&start=0#p15979
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Easiest way to give specific movement blocking message(s)
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-21 01:06:09

Hey guys,

What is the easiest way to set up specific messages preventing movement in certain directions in certain locations?

EG - In a particular room, you might want west to give, 'The forest is too thick that way.'

I couldn't work this out, since the 'You can't go that way' message kicks in before 'Instead of...' and other similar rules, if there's no room connection in the direction the player tried.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2341&start=0#p15980
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Easiest way to give specific movement blocking message(s
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-04-21 01:17:42

[quote="severedhand"]I couldn't work this out, since the 'You can't go that way' message kicks in before 'Instead of...' and other similar rules, if there's no room connection in the direction the player tried.[/quote]

No, an instead rule works just fine. I tried it.

[code]Instead of going west when the player is in The Garden, say "The forest is too thick that way."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2341&start=0#p15981
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Easiest way to give specific movement blocking message(s
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-21 04:23:33

Hm, you're right. I must have used different phrasing than this or something. Thanks.

Edit: OK here's what I had, which doesn't work:

[code]Instead of going east from Shade Mud: say "The forest's too thick."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2339&start=0#p15982
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Change "on the [supporter]" to "lying down" for the grou
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-04-21 05:12:09

I haven't checked out your extension yet, but it's definitely a good thing to be able to customize those messages in some easy way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2341&start=0#p15983
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Easiest way to give specific movement blocking message(s
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-04-21 06:12:13

Apparently, there is a sense in which you don't go east from Shade Mud unless there is a room east from Shade Mud (if there were a room east of Shade Mud, your original instead rule would work). Rather, Inform takes it that you go nowhere from a room if there isn't a room to go to in the direction you're trying to go (so "Instead of going nowhere from Shade Mud, say ..." will work for all directions in which you can exit Shade Mud).

So, I guess it makes sense; but it still doesn't really explain WHY the instead rule doesn't apply. (I wasn't really helped by the explanation of these issues in the built-in WI 7.13.)

Is it a general feature that before, instead and after rules will not apply, if you try to put restrictions on an action's action variables inside them, or what?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2341&start=0#p15984
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Easiest way to give specific movement blocking message(s
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-21 06:50:37

[quote="Felix"]Is it a general feature that before, instead and after rules will not apply, if you try to put restrictions on an action's action variables inside them, or what?[/quote]

Well, is that any different from the fact that "Instead of taking the lamp" won't work when the object you're taking isn't the lamp? It's just that, because of the oddities of the going action, you're considered to be going east [i]in[/i] Shade Mud but going nowhere [i]from[/i] Shade Mud. Or I may have misunderstood your question.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2340&start=0#p15986
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: "Painless Little Stupid Games" now in Z-Code
User: Rotonoto / DateTime: 2011-04-21 08:46:08

Oops. I guess I said they were easy cuz I didn't wanna disappoint anyone who was [i]looking[/i] for a challenge. But I'm happy a good i.f. author found them fun, if challenging.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2341&start=0#p15987
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Easiest way to give specific movement blocking message(s
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-04-21 09:05:39

[quote="matt w"]Well, is that any different from the fact that "Instead of taking the lamp" won't work when the object you're taking isn't the lamp? It's just that, because of the oddities of the going action, you're considered to be going east in Shade Mud but going nowhere from Shade Mud. Or I may have misunderstood your question.[/quote]

No. Yes. You're quite right; I was confused. 

Just as you can't take the lamp where there is no lamp to be taken, you can't go east where there is no direction east to go.
The odd thing was rather why the instead rule fired when you tried going east IN Shade Mud, even though there was no direction east to go. 

But the answer to that question, I suppose, is that the going action applies to one [b]visible[/b] thing: i.e. all directions are in scope for the going action regardless of whether there is such direction from the current location (whereas taking applies only to things in the current location; so, if there is no lamp in the room, an instead rule specifying a lamp as the noun won't apply). 

OK. I get it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2318&start=0#p16009
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Random Moves
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-04-21 16:31:07

May I address this again? My NPC has a daemon where he prints out some random stuff, and I want him to move at random occasionally. How do I find out which exits his current location has?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2318&start=0#p16010
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Random Moves
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-04-21 18:48:03

I haven't tested this, but something like this:

[code]
objectloop (dirobj in Compass) {
  dir = dirobj.door_dir;
  dest = curroom.dir;
  if (dest ofclass Object && dest has door) {
    dest = dest.door_to();
  }
  if (dest ofclass Object) {
    ! ... dest is the room dir-ward of curroom.
  }
} 
[/code]

You can use this loop to build an array of valid exit destinations, and then randomly select among them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2343&start=0#p16011
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Bizarre situation involving four cheeses
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-04-21 20:16:49

This is a longish code chunk, for which I apologize. It is essentially a carbon copy of the [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rex370.html]Four Cheeses example[/url], but with changes made to account for the fact that replacing the scenario throws a compiler error (I suspect conversation tables may have to be supplied for every character).

Anyway, the more serious problem is demonstrated by the following example. For conciseness' sake, I've put it under a rant tag - the example consists of most of the Four Cheeses code, minus "A person has a table name called chatter." and onward. The small scenario I added demonstrates the error.

[rant][code]"Four Cheeses"

Section 1 - Telephones and Connections

A telephone is a kind of thing. Understand "phone" as a telephone.

Understand "call [any telephone] on [something]" as calling it on. Understand "call [any telephone]" as calling it on. Understand the commands "dial" or "phone" or "telephone" as "call".

Connection relates one thing to another (called the other party).

The verb to reach (it reaches, they reach, it reached) implies the connection relation.

Calling it on is an action applying to one visible thing and one thing.

Check calling it on:
	if the second noun is not a telephone, say "[The second noun] is unlikely to be much use in that respect." instead;
	if the second noun is the noun, say "You get a busy signal." instead.

Carry out calling it on:
	if a person (called the listener) can see the noun, now the player reaches the listener.

[Because we've said that connection is a reciprocal, one-to-one relationship, Inform will do the rest of the bookkeeping: if (for instance) we telephone someone else, the first connection will be broken automatically.]

Report calling it on:
	say "'Hello?' says [the other party of the player]."

[To avoid annoyance, we should also let the player use CALL #### as well as CALL #### ON TELEPHONE. A rule from Chapter 16 comes in handy here:]

Rule for supplying a missing second noun while calling something on:
	assign a phone.

To assign a phone:
	if the player can touch a telephone (called the current phone):
		say "(on [the current phone])[line break]";
		now the second noun is the current phone;
	otherwise:
		say "You don't have a phone handy."

[Things might be a little more complicated if we had cell phones that could be moved around, but for right now the player can only touch a maximum of one phone at a time.]

[Suppose we further want to allow the player to call people up by name, but only if they've already been encountered or are familiar to the player for some reason.]

A person can be known or unknown.

Understand "call [any known person] on [something]" as calling it by name on.

Rule for supplying a missing second noun while calling something by name on:
	assign a phone.

Calling it by name on is an action applying to one visible thing and one thing.

Check calling it by name on:
	if the noun is in the location, say "[The noun] is right here." instead.

Carry out calling it by name on:
	if the noun can touch a telephone (called the link), try calling the link on the second noun;
	otherwise say "You can't reach [the noun]." instead.

Before calling something on something when the player reaches someone:
	say "(first ending your conversation with [the other party of the player])[command clarification break]";
	end current conversation.

Understand "hang up [something]" as hanging up.

Hanging up is an action applying to one thing.

Check hanging up:
	if the noun is not a telephone, say "You can't hang up [the noun]." instead;
	if the player does not reach someone, say "You're not on the line with anyone." instead.

Carry out hanging up:
	now the player does not reach anyone.

Report hanging up:
	say "You put down [the noun], cutting the connection."

Before going somewhere when the player reaches someone:
	say "(first hanging up on [the other party of the player])[command clarification break]";
	end current conversation.

[And finally we want to make sure that calling random other numbers produces a sensible result:]

Understand "call [text]" as misdialling. Misdialling is an action applying to one topic. Carry out misdialling: say "The phone rings and rings but no one answers."

Understand "call 911" or "call 999" or "call police" or "call fire department" as a mistake ("After strict warnings, you've given up making prank calls to emergency services.").

Before misdialling when the player reaches someone:
	say "(first ending your conversation with [the other party of the player])[command clarification break]";
	end current conversation.

To end current conversation:
	let the current phone be a random telephone which can be touched by the player;
	silently try hanging up the current phone.

After deciding the scope of the player while the player reaches someone:
	place the other party of the player in scope, but not its contents.

[A note about this scope addition: the player can refer to the other party whenever he has the other person on the phone. He can't, however, see or refer to anything that person might be holding or wearing, thanks to the "but not its contents" option.]

[Furthermore, the player can't actually do anything to that person that requires touching. That's because of the reaching inside rules, which govern whether the player can reach through intervening barriers such as rooms. (See the Advanced Actions chapter for more about changing reachability.) There are two things we might want to be careful about, though.]

[First, we should specifically disallow the player from looking at the person on the other end of the line. Since sight doesn't require touching, the reaching inside rules will not be consulted about a command such as EXAMINE BOSS or LOOK UNDER BOSS. We can, however, intervene in such cases using the visibility rules, which are consulted for any actions that "require light" (including EXAMINE and LOOK UNDER). Here again we borrow some options from the Advanced Actions chapter:]

To decide whether acting through the line:
	if the noun is something and the location of the noun is not the location of the player:
		yes;
	if the second noun is something and the location of the second noun is not the location of the player:
		yes;
	no.

Visibility rule when acting through the line:
	there is insufficient light.

Rule for printing a refusal to act in the dark when acting through the line:
	say "You're not on a video phone, so you can only hear." instead.

[Second, though the existing reaching inside rules are adequate to stop us from touching the person on the other end of the line, the response that's currently printed is a bit generic: it just says "You can't reach into [the room containing the person]." Let's add our own custom reply, instead:]

A rule for reaching inside a room (called destination):
	if the other party of the player is enclosed by the destination:
		say "Though you're on the line with [the other party of the player], you can't physically reach to [the destination].";
		deny access.

Section 2 - Conversation over the Phone, In General

[This portion supplies a simple method of conversation; but we could substitute some completely different conversation system if appropriate. The effect of the telephones is that we are allowed to talk to characters in distant locations under certain circumstances, after which the usual conversation rules apply.]

Instead of listening to a telephone when the player reaches someone:
	say "You can hear [the other party of the player] breathing."

Before listening to someone when the player cannot touch the noun:
	say "[The noun] is waiting for you to carry on the conversation." instead.


The Oblong Office is a room. The desk is a scenery supporter in the Office. The red phone is a telephone. It is on the desk.

The Line of Fire is a room. General Kilgore is a known man in the line of fire. The black phone is a telephone in the line of fire.

Test me with "Call kilgore".[/code][/rant]

To me, this looks like a problem with the underlying logic structures. I hope I'm mistaken. Any thoughts and/or thumps to the back of me head?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2344&start=0#p16012
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Which exits to describe?  How many is too many exits?
User: Pelican / DateTime: 2011-04-21 20:42:00

In another [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2327]post[/url], many people mentioned they like to have possible exits listed in the room descriptions.

What do I do when I encounter situations with a wide-open area?  E.g.:

"You are on a field.  etc.

West is a campground, northwest is a highway, north is a stream, northeast is a lake, east is a beach, southeast is a house, south is a road, southwest is a fire pit."

Too verbose?  Am I listing too many exits?  Should I select only important places?  Should I only list N, S, E, and W locations?  Should I add artificial barriers to the map (e.g. a fence) so that movement is not so free?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2343&start=0#p16013
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Bizarre situation involving four cheeses
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-21 21:10:50

Well, the problem arises whenever the phone is on the desk; take the phone and it doesn't arise. I suppose you know that. 

Adding this line seems to make it work:

[code]Understand "call [any known person]" as calling it by name on.[/code]

And section 16.22 suggests that you need something like that:

[quote]We may also occasionally write understand rules that supply less information that the action needs to go forward (by offering too few nouns or values), when we intend to use the "supplying a missing noun" or "supplying a missing second noun" activities.[/quote] 

But I wonder why it works when the phone isn't on the desk. That doesn't seem like it should make a difference, since the phone is touchable; it seems as though the built-in rules for supplying a missing second noun should either interrupt the rules we've written whether or not the phone is on the desk, or shouldn't interrupt them at all.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2321&start=0#p16014
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Custom Library Messages, version 4
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-04-21 23:11:02

... and I almost made it a whole week before another bug was found. 

The definition of the I6 function Switch__TX should read:

	if (((t - 1) & 1) == 0)

..to mirror the "is in any present tense" phrase defined earlier.  Right now it gives precisely backward results. 

Thank you for the continued support, everyone.  I'll have this thing licked yet.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2318&start=0#p16015
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Random Moves
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-04-22 02:08:57

Hm. That gave me some inspiration. Not having any clues about arrays, I tried it the very hard way:

[code][ random_move npc oldroom newroom counter dirs i diro;
		oldroom=parent(npc);
		if(oldroom.n_to) {diro=diro+oldroom.n_obj; dirs=dirs+oldroom.n_to; counter++;}
		if(oldroom.w_to) {diro=diro+oldroom.w_obj; dirs=dirs+oldroom.w_to; counter++;}
		if(oldroom.s_to) {diro=diro+oldroom.s_obj; dirs=dirs+oldroom.s_to; counter++;}
		if(oldroom.e_to) {diro=diro+oldroom.e_obj; dirs=dirs+oldroom.e_to; counter++;}
		if(counter){ 
				i=random(counter)-1;
				newroom=diro-->i;
				if(player in oldroom) print (name)npc," walks off to the ",dirs-->i,".^";
				if(player in newroom) print (name)npc," heads in from the ",dirs-->i,".^";
				move npc to newroom;
				}
];
[/code]

Ignore the spaghetti look and the lack of validation checks please. [emote];-)[/emote] Works except one basic thing: When newroom is allocated, it's not an object (debugs as "Routine 6907"). How can I get diro to be an array of objects? oldroom.x_to is the room I want, it's just not properly added to diro which I want to be an array.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2345&start=0#p16016
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I6] Tracing Movement
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-04-22 03:50:09

I have an object which in its description features something that needs to be interactable (a camping stove features a petrol tank which the player needs to interact with). While there's probably an elegant solution, the first thing I came up with is placing two objects (camping stove (visible) and petrol tank (invisible)) next to each other and move the second one whenever the first one is moved. 
Now, how can I detect if object 1 is moved so that I can move object 2 as well?
More elegant solution appreciated as well. [emote];-)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2345&start=0#p16017
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Tracing Movement
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2011-04-22 04:01:53

from the built-in manual, 

3.23. Parts of things


[quote]The Confectionary Workshop is a room. The Chocolate Machine is here. "The Chocolate Machine has pride of place. A lever and two buttons, one white, the other brown, seem to be the only controls. On top is a hopper."
A container called the hopper is part of the Chocolate Machine. The lever, the white button and the brown button are parts of the Chocolate Machine.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2344&start=0#p16018
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which exits to describe?  How many is too many exits?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-04-22 04:02:00

Sometimes it's entirely okay to say "paths lead off in all directions."

Sometimes it's entirely okay to say it when it isn't even 100% true.

Sometimes it's not. Whatever reads well and plays fair, really.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2345&start=0#p16019
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Tracing Movement
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-04-22 04:54:06

While that probably works perfectly, do you have any idea how to realize that in I6?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2344&start=0#p16020
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which exits to describe?  How many is too many exits?
User: gumby / DateTime: 2011-04-22 06:14:36

That example is a bit verbose (for me).  Perhaps the use of 'negative space' here would be a better approach - list where you can't go rather than where you can?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2344&start=0#p16021
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which exits to describe?  How many is too many exits?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-04-22 06:25:36

Maybe thinking about the layout is more important than the wording? I don't know - maybe you already have done that, and have a great and really clever layout of things - but your example sounds like it might use a bit of tidying up at a lower level than the words.

In general, I agree with Ghalev.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2346&start=0#p16022
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Future of Text Games (and impact on game design)
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-04-22 08:59:21

I'm curious what people see the future of text games as being. I've played around in the AGI and SCI space (and a little in AGS) so I can see why people do those even as a hobby, because the graphics aspects can be scaled up as you learn more about game programming. So there's a steady progression from AGI, SCI, AGS to maybe something like Panda3D or OGRE or whatever. What you've learned in the old, outdated systems definitely translates well to the newer systems that produce output people will actually play.

But what about text games?

I've seen it mentioned numerous times that the casual gaming crowd seems to be one of the major (if not only) areas that text games have any chance for traction within. Checking Wikipedia I see that casual games are "typically distinguished by their simple rules and lack of commitment required." So is that what text games essentially are now? Something simple and with a lack of committment necessary? I remember the old Infocom games (and the Magnetic Scrolls and Legend games) and those certainly weren't simple in the sense that I think casual gaming refers to and they certainly required committment. I've seen other people, particularly in regard to Inform 7, say that now writers (who aren't programmers) can make stories and these are often contrasted with "static fiction." (Although text in a text game is also static; it's just a different form of reveal. But never mind.) So that would imply at least the level of committment that an audience would give to a book that they were willing to read. Again, not necessarily fitting the "casual" aspect. I think the definition of "casual reader" is a bit different in focus than "casual gamer" so I wouldn't be too quick to bring the two together necessarily.

So as I started to think on all this, I realized "Wow, text games have just about no future if the only community supporting them is going for the casual gaming focus." But then I thought, "Maybe I should see if that's true." So who do you write your text games for? Are they just for the people familiar with Infocom/Magnetic Scrolls/Legend? Are they for people new to text games? Are they for purely casual gamers? Are they for some combination of all of the above?

If the last question is answered "yes", that must have some impact on how text games are designed and that seems like a fruitful area of discussion, but I really don't see a lot of that discussion going on as I've trawled this particular forum. In fact, I see almost nothing about reaching audiences except for discussions about catering to "newbies" but those all seem to circle the same particular drain after awhile; namely, a refocusing of certain techniques rather than discussions of rethinking the design and presentation of text games.

I also checked out the Casual Gaming section of Steam -- something I hadn't done up to this point -- and tried to imagine the entries there interspersed with some text games. It was hard to imagine enough people flocking to that to make it worthwhile. Unless there was some real compelling value-add over the existing casual games. But I don't know what that value add would be. More involved story? But these are "casual gamers" who often don't want in depth story and don't even want to rely on saving a game necessarily. Smarter parser? But how "smart" does it have to be if the game is going to be relatively short and constrained to fit within a casual gaming mindset? Better graphics? But it's a text game and there are already games with graphics if people want that. Better interface? Yeah, but for what: the text, graphics, and smarter parser? We already said those might not cut it.

Curious what people think. Do you think there's a future for this? Does it even matter to you? What motivates you to create text games? What drives your design decisions?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2346&start=0#p16023
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Future of Text Games (and impact on game design)
User: George / DateTime: 2011-04-22 09:24:44

[quote="bukayeva"]I'm curious what people see the future of text games as being.[/quote]

Echo Bazaar.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2346&start=0#p16025
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Future of Text Games (and impact on game design)
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-04-22 09:42:12

[quote]I see almost nothing about reaching audiences except for discussions about catering to "newbies"[/quote]
In act, a lot of virtual ink has been spilled on that topic in the past year or two. Check out Emily Short's blog, search for "IF outreach" -- there's been a lot of discussion. (Not necessarily on this forum, which tends to be more about specific programming and game design questions.)

Like you, I am sceptical about the idea that IF is a medium especially suited to casual gamers. In fact, I find IF to be the opposite of casual: each play session in challenging and unique, and thus quite the opposite of, oh, playing your twentieth [i]Bejeweled[/i] clone. However, some of the outreach towards causal gamers seems to works. I believe that the Casual Gameplay Design Competition #7 organised by jayisgames was quite a success.

But it's certainly not the case that everyone is trying to seduce casual gamers. Textfire markets its games as educational tools for middle school children. I myself have recently published a piece about experimental IF in a Flemish literary journal. There is no consensus about the future of IF; nor do I think it would be useful to have such a consensus. We're not here to set up a focused marketing campaign, but to make whatever games we want to make. That will necessarily be a very diverse bunch, from casual to educational, from literary experiments to RPG-like games, from old-school adventures to interactive journalism.

I guess that the only true answer I can give to your question "So who do you write your text games for?" is the most clichéd of all: myself. But as to who would enjoy them: [i]The Baron[/i] can be anjoyed by anyone who wishes to explore serious themes in an interactive medium; [i]Fate[/i] by people interested in moral choice and adventure puzzles; [i]Figaro[/i], [i]'Mid the Sagebrush and the Cactus[/i] and [i]Jason and Medea[/i] mostly by IF authors or other game designers interested in exploring new ideas about player choice, combat and/or conversation; [i]The Art of Fugue[/i] by people who like logic puzzles; and the game I'm currently working on by anyone who enjoys roguelikes and tactical combat. I write for as many audiences as I belong to. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2346&start=0#p16026
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Future of Text Games (and impact on game design)
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-04-22 09:43:03

[quote="George"]Echo Bazaar.[/quote]
How do you even play that? I went to the website and could find no link that led to the actual game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2345&start=0#p16028
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Tracing Movement
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-04-22 11:23:56

Best way to do this is with the [url=http://www.inform-fiction.org/manual/html/s32.html]add_to_scope property.[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2345&start=0#p16029
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Tracing Movement
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-04-22 11:35:12

As Emily said -- read up on add_to_scope. It's very handy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2346&start=0#p16030
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Future of Text Games (and impact on game design)
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-04-22 12:21:32

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="George"]Echo Bazaar.[/quote]
How do you even play that? I went to the website and could find no link that led to the actual game.[/quote]

You have to login to play; you login with either Twitter or Facebook.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2345&start=0#p16031
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Tracing Movement
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-04-22 12:47:52

Works as intended! Thanks for the help!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2346&start=0#p16032
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Future of Text Games (and impact on game design)
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-04-22 13:07:37

I confess that I'm not entirely sure what the difference between casual gaming and non-casual gaming is, and I don't think other people do, either.  I see games on casual game sites that take hours, days, weeks to complete.  I see games that require sophisticated use of tactics and management of resources.  I see games that require punishing amounts of hand-eye coordination.  So the games don't seem to be necessarily casual in length or brain power or raw skill.  Maybe they're games that can be picked up/put down at any time, but that's not too far off from many serious commercial releases, so . . . I don't know.  

Single works can revitalize entire genres and ways of making games; I suspect it's only a matter of time before we get a fad that happens to be IF and we see a sudden explosion of interest (probably short-lived, but still).  But in general, I see the future of IF being somewhat similar to what it is now, perhaps with gentle upswings in audience and writers as fads are born, and not-so-gentle downswings as the baby boomers pass on.  What will be interesting is whether it will last much beyond the lifetime of those of us who grew up playing Zork.  But guessing that far ahead in technical fields is almost totally worthless; we just have no way to predict that far ahead.  (For example, if I had quick, easy to use, easy to program tools for making a pretty 2D (or possibly 3D) game on my own that did the stuff I wanted, I probably would have gone that route.)

Programming stuff you learn in IF can be carried over into graphical systems, too; maybe not directly, but I've learned a ton from my work in Inform, and a lot of it is general good practice.  There's still plenty I'd have to learn if I went to another language, but I'd be a stronger programmer.  Too, I've learned some things about what I value as a designer, programmer, author, and player that would carry well outside IF.  But that's not a main goal, unless I decide to make a game that requires moving outside IF.

(The rest of this comment is totally skippable, self-centered musing about Me and My Game.)

I don't particularly expect my game to be a mega-smash hit.  In fact, I suspect that there may be an audience of one.  I have a game that I really want to play, and I waited a long time for someone else to make it, and no one did, or looked like they were going to, so . . . I guess it's up to me.  I am taking some pains to make it accessible in the ways that I know how, and I hope other people will enjoy it, but it's mostly for me.  Other people that might enjoy it?  People who like games like Harvest Moon or Animal Crossing - games where there's a fair amount of slogging, but with payoff in the sense of narrative expansion.  People who enjoy working out systems of things - there's a lot of tiny internal rules in the game, and some people really like poking complex systems and seeing what happens. People who have fantasies about self-sufficiency - smallholders or homesteaders (*cough* Americans *cough*).  Geneticists.  People who like open worlds and sandbox play, and like reassurance that the game is not going to kick them out after a certain period of time.  These are some of the groups I'll probably target on release, probably with targeted appeals.  

But that's just the game I'm working on now.  My other ideas would have other audiences, because they're different, and I think that's true of most works of IF.  The Venn diagram of the audience for Treasures of a Slavers Kingdom, Aisle, and Earl Gray are going to look pretty different - probably as different as any three books.  I think specific, because the work itself is specific.  I don't spend much time thinking much about the future of IF, to be honest.  I hope people write more of it, but in the same way I want people to write more books, make more movies, create more games, paint more paintings. 

I'm not sure how I'm going to reach people I think might be interested; self-promotion is not something I'm particularly good at, but I don't necessarily think it's just a genre issue.  Trying to get any game/movie/book beyond the inner circle is tough; it's why there are marketing teams.  If you are your own marketing team, things are tougher.  I'll probably look into social networks and forums; try to get reviewed by as many people as possible; put gameplay excerpts online; pimp to various other communities that I have a presence in, including people who have already put out effort to understand various other games that require dedication to "get".  (If you're willing to learn Minecraft, learning IF conventions should be a piece of cake.) 

I'm not going to lie - I would like to know that at least one other person loves my game.  And my design decisions boil down to making it possible for the other person to discover they love the game, while making the game I want to play when I'm finished.  I think the best decisions I make are those that are based on a concrete plan for how this will improve the game and/or the player's experience of the game.  I can tell you very clearly why each of the difficulty settings is a setting and not a default, and do so in terms of play style and things I've experienced or other people have experienced and described in detail.  Trying to keep the game accessible for blind gamers, trying to reduce the number of parser errors, trying to keep disambiguation issues to a bare minimum - these are things that I hope will improve accessibility.  I added graphics because it made my game experience better.  You can turn them off if you disagree, but I wanted to encourage player-character identification, and cut down on some of the sillier commands the player was forced to type to find out information the character would just *know*.  It's not about [i]better [/i]graphics - it's about information/immersion.  (Oh, okay, yes, it's also for curb appeal.)  

I think it's absolutely possible that there are design elements that would help my game appeal to casual gamers, assuming I had any idea what defined the group.  Since I don't, I guess I'll just have to muddle along without.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2344&start=0#p16033
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which exits to describe?  How many is too many exits?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-04-22 13:50:49

Can you work the exits into the description in a fairly concise manner?  "The highway stretches as far as you can see to the north and south.  A dented sign with a couple bullet-hole indicates that campgrounds are west, and fire pits southwest."

Too many incongruous elements is confusing, though; I have a hard time picturing what that location could possibly look like.  (To get from the campground to the lake, campers have to cross a highway?  Yikes.)  So part of it's layout, and part of it's finesse.

I am very fond of the Exit Lister extension in addition to mentions in the description, because after I finish reading, I can glance up and get a summary.  It saves you from the ultra-short list at the end of a description for lots of paths.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2344&start=0#p16034
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which exits to describe?  How many is too many exits?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-22 14:33:34

I agree with Trumgottist that the problem may be Too Many Rooms -- though I suppose shortcuts make me happy, all things being equal. That is, I'm not sure it's better to make the player go west and then north to the highway. 

Actually I don't even really mind the big listing of exits, as long as it's broken off at the end. It's OK by me if you have some functional prose at the end of your room description. But gravel is right that it's nice to work them into the description.

gravel's recommendation of [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Eric%20Eve/Exit%20Lister/index.html]Exit Lister[/url] is good, and you can use it to allow the player to control whether a list of exits is printed at the end of every room description; something like this:

[code]Last report looking rule:
	if exit listing is enabled, list the exits.[/code]

Then, when the player types "exits on" the exits will show up automatically, and when they type "exits off" the exits won't show up anymore. (I'm not sure whether it's actually a good idea to make this a report looking rule.)

UPDATE: I was actually thinking of [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Gavin%20Lambert/Exit%20Lister/index.html]Gavin Lambert's Exit Lister[/url], which prints the list of exits at the end of the room description.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2318&start=0#p16035
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Random Moves
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-04-22 22:23:29

Under the hood everything in I6 is represented as a number.  So, rather than the bits of code like [code]dirs=dirs+oldroom.n_to;[/code] adding elements to dynamic arrays, they are actually summing up numeric encodings.  Whenever this sum contains more than one term, there's a good chance that you end up with a number that isn't the encoding of anything sensible, and it will debug as gibberish like ``Routine 6907.''

What you probably want to do is declare the arrays outside of the routine, for instance, [code]Array dirs --> 4; ! an array with space for four elements, numbered zero to three[/code] and then use a statement like [code]dirs-->counter=oldroom.n_to;[/code] to store to a particular element.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2346&start=0#p16036
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Future of Text Games (and impact on game design)
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-04-22 22:24:21

In the future, I will write more text games (even some serious ones). Others will, too. My target audience is my existing commercial fanbase.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2343&start=0#p16037
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Bizarre situation involving four cheeses
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-04-22 22:58:49

[quote="matt w"]But I wonder why it works when the phone isn't on the desk. That doesn't seem like it should make a difference, since the phone is touchable; it seems as though the built-in rules for supplying a missing second noun should either interrupt the rules we've written whether or not the phone is on the desk, or shouldn't interrupt them at all.[/quote]
Without the line [code]Understand "call [any known person]" as calling it by name on.[/code] the code [code]Rule for supplying a missing second noun while calling something by name on:
	assign a phone.[/code] isn't run in either situation (which matches the behavior described in WI 17.30).  It's just that the parser thinks the desk a slightly more likely candidate in the first case, but prefers the phone otherwise.

Also, this should be reported as a bug in the examples.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2318&start=0#p16038
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Random Moves
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-04-23 00:27:30

Chapeau! Finally it works... Thanks a lot!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2343&start=0#p16039
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Bizarre situation involving four cheeses
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-23 07:02:07

Thanks EmacsUser! I thought I had checked that "assign a phone" was running in that case (I added something to the disambiguation message it prints), but checking Four Cheeses again, it isn't. I'll report it at a bug.

When your code compiles successfully today you get a picture of a little chickie, presumably in honor of Easter weekend. And a compiler error gives you... a broken egg. That's kind of sad, actually.  [emote]:([/emote] 

Oh, and I guess it's... an Easter egg.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=24&start=10#p16040
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Interpreters!
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-23 07:19:31

I know about the major interpreters for the Mac, which I use (Gargoyle, Spatterlight and Zoom), but on the PC side, do people use anything apart from Gargoyle to play glulx games these days? I'm developing a glulx game and I just wanna get a feel for what the state of the art is generally.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=24&start=10#p16041
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Interpreters!
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-04-23 07:28:47

Er, yeah. I use Git, and whenever a game doesn't like Git, I use Glulx. I never used Gargoyle because it doesn't support v6, or graphics in HTML TADS, and I figure I might as well stick to the "official" interpreters which do support everything.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2349&start=0#p16042
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Setting conditions in phrases
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-04-23 07:59:50

I7 allows you to create "conditions" for objects, and this is said to be "an even more abbreviated way to create a new kind of value, and at the same time create a property to hold it." (WI 4.10). For example, quoting from WI 4.10:

[quote][code]A fruit can be unripened, ripe, overripe, or mushy (this is its squishiness property).[/code]
And now the resulting property and kind of value would be called "squishiness".[/quote]

In addition to being a quicker way to define a kind of value and a property, conditions also have a very nice attribute that you don't get with non-condition KOV properties, which is that can be used a bit like an adjective: you can say "The apple is an unripe fruit" to define an apple with that property/condition, for example, instead of "The squishiness of the apple is unripe".

My problem is that I'd like to be able to allow an author to pass a condition into a phrase as if it were a KOV. Like so:

[code]Test is a room.

A fruit is a kind of thing.

A fruit can be unripened, ripe, overripe, or mushy (this is its squishiness property).
The description of a fruit is "[squishiness] [item described]."

The apple is a fruit in Test.

To set (O - an object) to (S - a squishiness):
	now the squishiness of O is S.

Instead of jumping:
	set the apple to mushy.[/code].

But this triggers a run-time error about trying to access the squishiness of the nothing non-object. The generated I6 looks OK:

[code]! Request 3: phrase (object, squishiness) -> nothing
! To set ( O - an object ) to ( S - a squishiness ):
[ PHR_740_r3 
    t_0 ! Call parameter 'O' = object
    t_1 ! Call parameter 'S' = squishiness
    ;
      ! phrase 1
      ! [1: now the squishiness of o is s]
       WriteGProperty(OBJECT_TY, t_0,p56_squishiness,t_1); 
   rfalse;
];[/code]

...so I can only guess that the "squishiness" being set into the t_1 variable is not what I think it is...? On the other hand, if you change the phrase definition to "To set (O - an object) to (S - a value):", the same error results. Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=24&start=10#p16043
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Interpreters!
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-04-23 08:06:20

[quote="Peter Pears"]Er, yeah. I use Git, and whenever a game doesn't like Git, I use Glulx.[/quote]

I assume you mean [i]Windows Git[/i] and [i]Windows Glulxe[/i]. Those are the names of the applications. (Gargoyle uses the interpreters git and glulxe under the hood, too, but with a different display library front-end.)

I would guess that these are more commonly used that Gargoyle for Windows, just as Zoom is more common than Gargoyle on the Mac. 

[quote="Peter Pears"]I never used Gargoyle because it doesn't support v6, or graphics in HTML TADS, and I figure I might as well stick to the "official" interpreters which do support everything.[/quote]

This puzzles me. Windows Git doesn't support Z-code nor TADS games. Or are you just saying that you prefer applications that provide only one interpreter to those that provide many? There really isn't any difference, at least with Glulx--they are all using the same interpreters under the hood, but with different Glk and display libraries.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=24&start=20#p16044
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Interpreters!
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-04-23 08:14:03

<duplicate post deleted>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=24&start=20#p16045
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Interpreters!
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-04-23 08:44:16

<sigh> Fine, ok, let's split hairs, if you'd rather.

[quote="ektemple"][quote="Peter Pears"]Er, yeah. I use Git, and whenever a game doesn't like Git, I use Glulx.[/quote]

I assume you mean [i]Windows Git[/i] and [i]Windows Glulxe[/i]. Those are the names of the applications.[/quote]

Right. Completely unguessable, since I had just said I didn't use Gargoyle and the question specifically targeted the PC. 

[quote][quote="Peter Pears"]I never used Gargoyle because it doesn't support v6, or graphics in HTML TADS, and I figure I might as well stick to the "official" interpreters which do support everything.[/quote]

This puzzles me. Windows Git doesn't support Z-code nor TADS games. Or are you just saying that you prefer applications that provide only one interpreter to those that provide many?[/quote]

I'll rephrase.

"I never used Gargoyle because it doesn't support v6, or graphics in HTML TADS, and I figure I might as well stick to the "official" interpreters [b]of each language[/b], which do support everything [b]for that particular language[/b]."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=24&start=20#p16046
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Interpreters!
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-04-23 09:20:08

I'm not splitting hairs, I'm trying to unclog your post for newbies. The terminology around Glulx is already very confusing and, especially for authors who are trying to get a handle on what's out there (like the OP), it's very helpful if things are not over-muddied. But the way I did it was subject to misinterpretation, so let me give it another go:

There are really only two Glulx interpreters, called "Git" and "Glulxe". Those two are the basis for all of the various Glulx applications, from Gargoyle to Zoom to Windows Glulxe and Windows Git. Those applications also incorporate a Glk library and display and UI libraries:

[list][*] Windows Glulxe/Windows Git use Windows Glk, plus Windows-native display libraries (I assume)[/*:m]
[*] Gargoyle uses GarGlk, plus cross-platform display libraries[/*:m]
[*] Zoom uses CocoaGlk, plus native OS X display libraries[/*:m][/list:u]

There are other Glk implementations (CheapGlk, for example), but they don't provide multimedia support.

The situation is probably even more complex than this, but that's about as deep as my understanding goes... Probably someone will offer some corrections.

There are no "official" interpreters that are really consumer-grade, except perhaps for Mike Robert's TADS interpreters, which also serve as the reference implementations for TADS (I think). If you are going to develop games for Glulx, though, you need to be sure that your game runs well on the interpreters in the bulleted list above. (I wouldn't worry about Spatterlight too much. It's no longer updated, a bit buggy, and a bit slow. Major new features are being incorporated into Glulx this year, and Spatterlight is unlikely to get any of them.)

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=24&start=20#p16047
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Interpreters!
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-04-23 09:38:29

[quote]I'm not splitting hairs, I'm trying to unclog your post for newbies.[/quote]

Ah. In that case, I apologise for the sarcasm in my reply. Cheers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=24&start=20#p16048
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Interpreters!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-23 10:24:30

If you don't mind unclogging it a little more, what is Glk exactly? What is a "Glk library," and what's the significance of different Glk implementations?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2349&start=0#p16049
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Setting conditions in phrases
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-04-23 10:47:16

The problem is on the calling side. It's generating

[code]
(PHR_740_r3 (I95_apple,GProperty(OBJECT_TY, self,p56_squishiness)));
[/code]

The PHR_740_r3 is correct, the first argument is correct, the second argument is some kind of bug. (Note that "self" is unset at this point -- that's where the run-time error comes from.) Report it, I guess.

The way that works is to say:

[code]
Squishiness is a kind of value. The squishinesses are unripened, ripe, overripe, or mushy.
A fruit has a squishiness.
[/code]

This still lets you declare "The apple is an unripened fruit," but the phrase now works.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2346&start=0#p16050
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Future of Text Games (and impact on game design)
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-04-23 11:33:02

[quote="Ghalev"]In the future, I will write more text games (even some serious ones). Others will, too. My target audience is my existing commercial fanbase.[/quote]

Cool. So why text-based games rather than other types? Is that your preference? Or the preference of your fanbase? (That may seem obvious, but some people choose a format based on where they think they can get traction rather than necessarily the one they want to write in. This happens a lot in the modding community where people's aspirations take a backseat to a certain reality of skill.) Also, if your fanbase wasn't commercial, would that matter to you? Would you still want to produce games for them?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=24&start=20#p16051
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Interpreters!
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-04-23 14:53:23

[quote="matt w"]If you don't mind unclogging it a little more, what is Glk exactly? What is a "Glk library,"[/quote]
Glk is code that sits between a Glulx interpreter and the operating system. It takes care of stuff like reading input from the player, data from files, opening windows and displaying stuff on them, etc. It has been used for VMs other than Glulx too though.

[quote]and what's the significance of different Glk implementations?[/quote]
If someone implements Glk for a new operating system, then porting all interpreters that use Glk to that system is much easier, because Glk contains the bulk of the system-specific code. The rest of the code is portable which compiles and runs everywhere.

You can imagine Glk as being a cross-platform, IF-specific, text, graphics and sound library.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2349&start=0#p16052
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Setting conditions in phrases
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-04-23 15:03:58

[quote="zarf"]The problem is on the calling side. It's generating

[code]
(PHR_740_r3 (I95_apple,GProperty(OBJECT_TY, self,p56_squishiness)));
[/code]

The PHR_740_r3 is correct, the first argument is correct, the second argument is some kind of bug. (Note that "self" is unset at this point -- that's where the run-time error comes from.) Report it, I guess.[/quote]

Aha! Bug reported: <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=646">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=646</a>

[quote="zarf"]The way that works is to say:

[code]
Squishiness is a kind of value. The squishinesses are unripened, ripe, overripe, or mushy.
A fruit has a squishiness.
[/code]

This still lets you declare "The apple is an unripened fruit," but the phrase now works.[/quote]

Geez, thanks. I'd forgotten all about that particular syntax!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2346&start=0#p16053
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Future of Text Games (and impact on game design)
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-04-23 15:04:23

[quote="bukayeva"]So why text-based games rather than other types?[/quote]
The attraction of text games for me is simple: I'm a writer. My ability to produce attractive graphics is close to nil. I enjoy the programming challenges, and I enjoy crafting a scenario that I feel can work in an interactive form.

If I were concerned with attracting a fan base, I'd be doing something entirely different.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=24&start=20#p16054
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Interpreters!
User: cas / DateTime: 2011-04-23 15:06:47

[quote="matt w"]If you don't mind unclogging it a little more, what is Glk exactly? What is a "Glk library," and what's the significance of different Glk implementations?[/quote]
No matter what interactive fiction system you use, there are going to be a lot of operations that they all provide: draw text, request user input, show a save-file dialog, and so on.  The problem is that each operating system has its own method for doing these things.  If I wrote code to display text on a Unix terminal, that same code would not work to display in a window on a Windows system.

Glk serves as a layer between an interpreter and the operating system.  Instead of writing Unix-specific code, you instead write Glk-specific code.  Once this is done, the same interpreter can be built to run on any system for which a Glk library is available.

So a Glk library contains the operating system-specific code, which means you have one Glk implementation for Windows, another for Unix, and so on.  The advantage to this is analogous to the advantage of using the Z-machine instead of writing your game for a particular operating system.  Once you've written an interpreter that uses Glk, it will run wherever Glk is ported, much the way that a game written for the Z-machine will run everywhere a Z-machine interpreter has been written.

Different Glk libraries provide different user interfaces, more or less.  Windows Glk, for example, provides an interface that is familiar to Windows users, complete with Windows-based file dialogs.  glkterm, on the other hand, is a completely text-based interface for Unix users, presenting an interface similar to, say, Infocom's games on MS-DOS.  However, an interpreter doesn't have to care which version is being used: the [i]programmer's[/i] interface is identical for all Glk libraries; it's just the [i]user[/i] interface that varies.

As such, end-users need not care about Glk.  If you use Gargoyle, for example, you're using a Glk library, but that knowledge is immaterial.  Glk should be invisible to the end-user.  If you're writing an interpreter, on the other hand, using Glk is probably a smart choice.  By using Glk, you'll get an interpreter that works on at least Unix, MacOS, and Windows; and what's more, when a new Glk library is released (say, for a smartphone), your interpreter will automatically work with it.

The biggest downside to Glk, currently, is probably the lack of control over text styles.  This is an understandable choice, because Glk has to cater to systems where text style support might be minimal or non-existent, but it does limit fine-grained control over text appearance (you can say text is emphasized, or is being used as a header, and so on, but ultimately the Glk library gets to choose what happens).  And if you're writing a Z-machine interpreter, you will not be able to support version 6 stories, at least not properly.  Zarf made the reasonable choice to accommodate future games rather than ensuring that Journey, Shogun, and Arthur will be playable on Glk interpreters.  I've tried shoehorning V6 support into a Glk interpreter and it just doesn't work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=180#p16055
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: pelle / DateTime: 2011-04-23 16:41:57

Hi, Pelle, Sweden, 30-something, program computers.

Played Zork and a few other games in the 80's. Tried to write some text adventures in BASIC. Got on the Internet a few years later in 1995 and soon found out about inform and the ifcomp, ifarchive and all that. Last game I wrote was in Lisp for a university course 1996. Remember the engine was heavily inspired by what I knew about Inform, but the parser was probably not very good. Got the Masterpieces collection when it was still in available, kept lurking, maybe posted once or twice on the newsgroups over the years. I think I have checked back to see how the things are going about every other year or so, playing some games from the latest ifcomp and reading the latest news threads and blog posts. I play if games slightly more often than that. Still always make sure I have frotz and inform6 installed as soon as I get a new computer. Sometimes I even compile something.

This week I watched Get Lamp (and ordered the dvd), read raif for the first time in maybe two years today, saw a link here, registered. Now that I have introduced myself maybe I even dare join in on some thread some day.

Other than this I play board wargames, sometimes design my own. Got a small game published by a small dtp publisher two years ago. Must have this thing for obscure hobbies that used to be mainstream a few decades ago, now that I think about it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2346&start=0#p16056
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Future of Text Games (and impact on game design)
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-04-23 16:56:29

[quote="bukayeva"]Cool.[/quote]

I think so too [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote]So why text-based games rather than other types?[/quote]

Well, there is no "rather than," really, since text-games are already a secondary medium for me, and I do tie-ins in other media as well. As for why text-adventures at all: I enjoy them more than most things, so it follows that I do them more than most things, in proportion, and in proportion to what I'm able to do.

[quote]Is that your preference? Or the preference of your fanbase?[/quote]

I make things that I love passionately (pen-and-paper RPG material, and then tie-in material because I'm restless and enjoy tangents). That created (and grows) the fanbase; not the other way around. All of my large text-adventure projects are tie-ins to my existing RPG material in some way.

[quote]Also, if your fanbase wasn't commercial, would that matter to you?[/quote]

It would matter in practical terms, inevitably. In [i]personal [/i]terms ... I guess I'd wonder [i]why [/i]they left and worry that I'd gone all "Steve Jackson" or "George Lucas" on them. Fortunately, I haven't had to face that question yet. [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote]Would you still want to produce games for them?[/quote]

Well, I write games because it's what I love more than anything apart from sex and food. I'll always write games. If they stop selling, the process would change a bit, probably ... I'd probably stop spending so much time fussing over things like the typography or the index, since those are about keeping things clear and accessible to the reader and aren't nearly as critical to my [i]own [/i]enjoyment of what I make. I'm meticulous with my work but I'm also lazy and a sensualist, so there'd be more sex and food, less indexing, at least to the extent that I could afford to support that lifestyle [emote]:)[/emote] I guess it would take me back to where I was when I was mainly freelancing: I'd be more purely a writer again, and less of a publisher. Plus, you know, whatever job I'd end up taking to pay my share of the rent [emote]:)[/emote]

But it is amazingly useful to have the fans, not just as a source of encouragement and support (honestly, they knock me the fuck out with some of the stuff they do to share the love) but also as the aforementioned target for the tie-in efforts ... because otherwise I'd suffer from a [i]kid-in-a-candy-store syndrome.[/i] There are hundreds of text adventures I'd love to write, and I don't have the time or free resources to write hundreds, so I have to choose. Having the arbitrary compass of an existing audience makes the choices easier, which is pretty valuable. Without them there, I'd probably have three-dozen WIPs, none of which ever get complete [emote]:)[/emote] With them there, I have four WIPs that I'm going too slowly on, which isn't perfect but it's [i]better [/i]...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2346&start=10#p16057
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Future of Text Games (and impact on game design)
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-04-23 16:58:24

[quote="Jim Aikin"]
If I were concerned with attracting a fan base, I'd be doing something entirely different.[/quote]

Yes, exactly so. If the idea were to [i]attract [/i]a fan base, that'd be another story entirely.

I do love text-adventures, but I don't love them [i]enough [/i]to devote that kind of center-of-life, center-of-career focus to them.

For that, there's only paper-and-pencil RPGs for me (and for you, presumably prose fiction or music or whatever your primary focus is).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=24&start=20#p16058
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Interpreters!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-23 17:33:06

Thanks for the explanations!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=24&start=20#p16059
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Interpreters!
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-23 21:43:26

Yes, this has cleared up a heap of stuff for me. Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2346&start=10#p16060
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Future of Text Games (and impact on game design)
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-23 22:20:55

Re: talk of outreach.

I would say the first step of reaching out beyond the IF community is simply placing your games before people in non-IF community gaming venues, so they have a chance to look at them and/or play them. This is the thing I don't see happening around here.

I entered Leadlight in IFComp 2010. As far as I can see, I was the only entrant to put out a press release for their game to gaming media. The release showed up all around the place and led to the game being reviewed at gamasutra, and other articles appearing.

I don't mean to disparage the other entrants, as each person's goal for their game is their own. My point is actually about what the response from 'the outside world' was to a piece of IF.

Since I started hanging in this community post IFComp I have read lots of blogs and posts fretting about the state of the parser and the fear of turning bewildered newbies off I, but I put an 8-bit IF with limited parser and requiring an emulator in front of general gaming media, and it received coverage, favourable response and no complaints about how intolerable modern players might find it (the latter being a primary focus of some IF community reviews).

This might read as vindication or something, and it's a sample space of 1, but what I'm trying to say is - if a neutral modern gaming media responded this okay-ly to Leadlight, might not much of the fretting about IF itself be misplaced?

I think at this point, new people aren't playing IF because nobody is even putting new IF in front of them. I would encourage anyone who releases an IF game that they believe has the quality to withstand (or bask!) in general coverage to seek that coverage. You may be pleasantly surprised at the response from outside the bubble, and I think putting text games out and about is a more fundamental step than any other for widening the audience base, for those who want that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2350&start=0#p16061
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: On the nature of puzzles and immersion
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-04-24 05:06:30

I've been doing a lot of thinking on my experience with puzzles, particularly after having completed Delusions and John Saul's Blackstone Chronicles (and Clock Tower: The First Fear yesterday, but that's largely puzzleless so it doesn't count). In this post are the conclusions to which I arrived. It's all subjective stuff, but maybe it'll come in useful. Sometime. For someone. Maybe.

By now, I pretty much take for granted that at some point in any given game I'm going to need clues, hints, a walkthrough. I'm going to resist it like hell, but eventually I'll need them. And whether I go "Oh. I could have solved this on my own, if I'd thought about it" (Eric the Unready, Blackstone Chronicles) or "What? How was I supposed to guess THAT?" (Delusions), from then on I'll pretty much follow the hints. I become dependent on them. I try to avoid them, I really do, but then timed puzzles start happening; possible dead ends; and I know that with just a couple of clicks I'll relieve the anxiety of not knowing whether I can still beat the game, or whether I'm walking down a less-than-favourable path. 

But this is to do with my relationship with puzzles. I've noticed a pattern in my game-playing.

When I begin a game, I'm all for it. I'm ready to explore, to tinker, to think analytically. That's when I solve most puzzles. I'm still thinking of the game world as a diagram, of the objects as potential anythings and everythings. I'm fresh. I'm sparkling. And most of all, I'm not emotionally connected to the experience, though I may be immersed.

But here's the thing. As the game goes on, I become more and more immersed. As Blackstone Chronicles went on and I started getting to know the inmates, and seeing what was forced upon them, I become emmotionally very involved. If the safe combination puzzle (and here's a side-note about that sort of puzzle - I ABHOR it, because there's been a trend, and I'm looking at YOU Black Dahlia, of hiding the safe combination amongts all sorts of numbers in all sorts of places with all sorts of "add first then subtract last then look at it upside down" shennanigas. When I find a safe, I automatically shudder, because I know there're tons, TONS, of possible combinations, and unless the author TELLS me the combination I'm in for a lot of guesswork, finding birthdays. I mean, in Blackstone Chronicles, there were all these important days in Malcolm's life! How was I to know which was the correct one!) had appeared at the beginning, maybe I'd have cracked it. Maybe. But when it does appear, and I've met so many of those people, and time is running out, and Joshua keeps calling for me to save him... I lose patience.

Similarly on the music box puzzle. I'm not going to stop to think that maybe opening the music box in front of the organist is a good idea, because I've met Abby and learned of his atrocious fate; because I've just narrowly escaped a deathtrap, and learned how all the other inmates died. I'm not thinking logically, I'm thinking emotionally.

And that's the way I WANT to think. If I'm going to start being logical at that point, I'm going to have to distance myself from the gane, risk breaking that emotional connection.

Mind you, looking at hints does not improve the emotional connection either.

In Delusions, I happen to completely agree with Plotkin. There's tons and tons and tons of plot - I get swamped, and puzzles start to annoy me because I don't even know in which direction to move (plus the computer GUI is the most cumbersome, unwieldy thing I've ever ever ever seen in IF). It's even worse because I HAVE connected emotionally, but it's not the puzzles that are stopping me - it's the lack of direction.

So, do I mean that puzzles should be easier? Well, no. No, not at all. One of the biggest thrills was solving the elevator puzzle in Hollywood Hijinx, all by myself. But you see, HH does not exactly create an emotional experience. Same with... with... hang on, let me check.

<checks>

Ah, here they are. "Aura: Fate of the Ages" and "Sentinel: Descendents in Time". And I spotted "Shivers", too, which I ALMOST finished when I was a kid (solved everything but the damn chinese checkers!). Those three games are quality puzzle-fests. They provide immersion, but little emotional connection. Your logic is never put in check by your emotions, and yet you are compelled to go on. Heck, that's the secret behind Myst, I'm sure. And the reason why Phantasmagoria is such as easy game - the puzzles acknowledge that the player must stop thinking logically, because the story makes that happen.

Graham Nelson said, in his Craft of Adventure, that the endgame should be easier than the midgame - forcing a bottleneck, limiting the rooms and objects available. I'm not saying that the whole midgame should be easier too, but maybe it's time to start thinking about the nature of the puzzles we're using - adjusting the puzzles to the experience we want to give the player - , and how logically one must think to solve them. If I have to think too logically in a game where I'm too emotionally attached (heck, the Iron Maiden puzzle in Blackstone Chronicles - made worse by me not even understanding what some of those symbols were!), then I my enjoyment *will* decrease. I'm not even clear-headed at that point - I want to follow the story through. I've no objection to being thwarted by a puzzle, but by then my mind is formatted to certain patterns. I still want to solve puzzles, make connections, but not the kind of connections that force me to distance myself from the moment in the game I'm currently playing. For instance, the BACH puzzle in Blackstone was brilliant in that aspect, forcing me to think like the man who set that particular lock; piece, from his love of music, the correct numerical combination, all the while knowing that I had all the necessary information and needed only to stare at the lock and *think*. The "Rhinovirus" puzzle was not - it sent me on a wild goose chase, walking by all the rooms, hoping for something to click. Needless to say, I didn't bother with it, especially not when I was so close to the endgame.

So this was my rant. I'd been wondering about my experiences with puzzles, my sucesses and failures, and finally arrived to this conclusion. Now, here's the big question: am I talking sense?

Here's another big question: has this all been covered somewhere before?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2350&start=0#p16062
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On the nature of puzzles and immersion
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-04-24 08:26:03

I'm sure this ground has been covered many times, but *I* hadn't heard it before -- except as frustrated whispers and exasperated sighs in my own mind. 

I wouldn't say (and I think you're not saying) that puzzle-solving must needs detract from emotional involvement, but I do agree that some (kinds of?) puzzle tend to do just that, and that it's a pity.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2351&start=0#p16063
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Return to Ditch Day - Getting Network Analyser problem
User: Ash / DateTime: 2011-04-24 21:12:18

I've dispatched Plisnik from the tunnel with the rat-car, but the blokes up top still won't hand over the analyser, as the hint suggests. 

They still say “Our guy down in the tunnel might need it.” 

Is there anything else that should be done before they recognise that he's gone? I've told them about Plisnik:

“Did you guys know Plisnik saw a rat and ran off?” you ask. The two roll their eyes. “Yep, he does that every day,” one of them says.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2352&start=0#p16064
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: How many sounds can glulx play at once?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-25 01:00:31

Hi guys. I can't find any documentation about the max # of audio channels a glulx/glk game can handle that gels with my hands-on experience.

The most up to date info I have is from one 8 year old source which says a game can handle two audio channels at max, and advises not mixing types:

'Sound Channels  -  {Objects}   Sounds are played in channels, one sound per channel. Technically two sounds could play in two channels at once, creating a mixing effect (a sound effect heard over background music). However, this can get tricky and is not guaranteed to work in all instances. MOD files demand more of each player's computer resources and players' computers differ. So L. Ross Raszewski recommends when "mixing", combine one AIFF with one MOD, or combine two AIFFs. While David Kinder states that one MOD file will take all Windows Glulxe's resources, so if playing two sound files simultaneously they should both be AIFF '

(<a class="postlink" href="http://www.iffydoemain.org/glkdunces/glkdunces2.htm#format">http://www.iffydoemain.org/glkdunces/gl ... htm#format</a>)

These days, glulx can handle ogg files. Massimo Stella's 'Multiple Sounds' extension comes equipped to play two sound channels at a time. I cribbed a line of code from it to add a 3rd channel to my game, and the resulting gblorb file ran fine in Gargoyle - IE it was indeed capable of playing 3 ogg sounds at once.

My question to anyone who may know is -- does anyone know the real limit? Is there one? Is a game with more than 2 sound channels going to make some interpreters crash or stress the system?

It's not that I'm barraging the player with quadrophonic sound with my 4 channels, but you need extra channels to prevent music, atmos and spot fx cutting each other off.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2352&start=0#p16065
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How many sounds can glulx play at once?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-25 01:03:51

Argh, wait!... not that I don't want an answer to this question(s) but I have to doublecheck I didn't just trick myself into thinking I had 3 sounds going at once [emote];)[/emote]

Edit - Yeah, I cannot reproduce my 3 channels, ergo I figure I must have tricked myself. This suggests the limit is 2 channels, but I'd appreciate any further info.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2314&start=0#p16066
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Large maps
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-04-25 01:47:11

Sure, as long as you make it clear what's happening so the player doesn't think that going one room up the road is the same as going one room up the woods.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2352&start=0#p16067
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How many sounds can glulx play at once?
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-04-25 01:51:30

[quote="severedhand"]David Kinder states that one MOD file will take all Windows Glulxe's resources, so if playing two sound files simultaneously they should both be AIFF[/quote]That's a very old quote from me that's not been correct for a long time!

The basic answer to your question is 'it depends on what the interpreter's Glk library can do'. These days Windows Glk uses Windows' DirectSound interface under the hood, which is very powerful, so with a Windows Glk-based interpreter (i.e. Windows Glulxe or Windows Git) there is no limit on how many different sound channels you can create, and they can all play any different sounds without problems. Gargoyle I know relies on the SDL library for sound support, which has a few limitations, such as not liking playing multiple sounds simultaneously that have different sampling rates.

Partly this is a reflection of the fact that few games use sound, so Glk library authors have tended to not worry about this too much. (Does Zoom even support sound? It didn't a while back.)

Anyway, I would certainly expect three simultaneous channels to work on a Windows Glk based interpreter. Personally I would assume that such a thing should work and complain to the appropriate interpreter authors if it does not  [emote]:)[/emote]

Additional thought: your code could print out the result of the Glk sound calls, which will give information on what the Glk library itself thinks is going on. Sound channels are created by calling glk_schannel_create(): if this returns 0, the Glk library couldn't create any more channels. Similarly, sounds are played by calling glk_schannel_play() or glk_schannel_play_ext(): these return 0 if the Glk library hit a problem when starting to play.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2353&start=0#p16068
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Emily Short's Pytho's Mask
User: Shadobright / DateTime: 2011-04-25 03:03:44

I am stuck in Pytho's Mask. I've heard this game is not particularly difficult, but I seem to have hit a wall and don't know how to proceed. In the beginning of the game you must talk to the Physician about the king to progress the plot. I have talked to the physician about various topics, king included, and still I can't move forward. Does anyone know how to approach this conversation?

Let me add that I am fairly new to IF. I've played various stories before and I am familiar enough with the commands, but I haven't been playing for long. My biggest introduction to IF was Blue Lacuna, which is a bit different from most other IF games. I may be approaching this with the wrong mindset.

Thank you to anyone who can help! I'd hate to miss out on this game; it's lovely so far.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2352&start=0#p16069
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How many sounds can glulx play at once?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-04-25 03:15:26

[quote="DavidK"]Gargoyle I know relies on the SDL library for sound support, which has a few limitations, such as not liking playing multiple sounds simultaneously that have different sampling rates.[/quote]
Depends. This is usually a limitation when you choose to go the quick route and use an under-performing, buggy and very out of date helper library (SDL_mixer). Which is what most people end up doing, since you can implement sound support in your application with it in about 15 minutes (and this isn't an exaggeration.) But then of course you pay the price when authors use non-uniform sample rates or slightly non-standard-conforming sound formats.

Anyway, the point is that SDL itself has no limitations in this regard, since all it does is play one single audio stream. It's up to you to mix your sources together into that single stream [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2352&start=0#p16070
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How many sounds can glulx play at once?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-25 07:05:32

Thanks a lot guys.

Okay, my problem is I don't know how to implement the glk calls.

I'm usually pretty good at looking at a sample chunk of code (from some language/environment I don't know) and deriving what I need from it, but for instance, I haven't been able to add 3rd and 4th channels (called, say, third, and fourth) by cutting and pasting bits of Massimo's extension. I'll paste the whole extension below, as it's not very long. If you could tell me the actual code needed to add 3rd and 4th channels, I'll be super happy.

What I tried, btw, was to add this to my game (with the extension already in place):

[code]To play (SND - a sound name) in midground:
(- SoundReproduce(ResourceIDsOfSounds-->{SND},gg_thirdchan,1); -)[/code]

Then I tried to 'play sound of blah in midground' during my game. But this wouldn't compile - it suggested I6 errors as the culprit.

The extension: (which sets up two channels called foreground and background)

[code]Version 2 of Multiple Sounds by Massimo Stella begins here.

"Provides facilities for the basic reproduction of multiple-channel audio with loops under Glulx."

Use authorial modesty.

[The idea for this extension was born from some code written by Eliak Blauk on rec.arts.int-fiction in 2008. Thanks to Sarganar for his bug report.]

Section - IF6 Code

Include (-
[ SoundReproduce sound chan loop;
if (glk_gestalt(gestalt_Sound,0) && glk_gestalt(gestalt_SoundMusic,0))  { 
	glk_schannel_play_ext(chan,sound,loop,0); 
	}
else { 
	"Your interpreter doesn't support sound reproduction."; 
	}
];

[ VolumeControl chan val;
if (glk_gestalt(gestalt_SoundVolume,0)) {
	if ((val <= 5) && (val >=0)) {
		glk_schannel_set_volume(chan, val * 16384);
		}
	else {
		"Invalid Volume Level: please insert a value between 0 and 5.";
		}
	}
else {
	"Your interpreter doesn't support volume control."; 
	}
];

[ SoundStop chan;
if (glk_gestalt(gestalt_Sound,0) && glk_gestalt(gestalt_SoundMusic,0))  { 
	glk_schannel_stop(chan);  
	}
else { 
	"Your interpreter doesn't support sound stopping."; 
	}
]; -).

Section - Declaring Commands

To play (SND - a sound name) in foreground:
(- SoundReproduce(ResourceIDsOfSounds-->{SND},gg_foregroundchan,1); -)

To play (SND - a sound name) in background:
(- SoundReproduce(ResourceIDsOfSounds-->{SND},gg_backgroundchan,1); -)

To play (SND - a sound name) in foreground with loop:
(- SoundReproduce(ResourceIDsOfSounds-->{SND},gg_foregroundchan,-1); -)

To play (SND - a sound name) in background with loop:
(- SoundReproduce(ResourceIDsOfSounds-->{SND},gg_backgroundchan,-1); -)

To play (SND - a sound name) in foreground for (loop - a number) times:
(- SoundReproduce(ResourceIDsOfSounds-->{SND},gg_foregroundchan,{loop}); -)

To play (SND - a sound name) in background for (loop - a number) times:
(- SoundReproduce(ResourceIDsOfSounds-->{SND},gg_backgroundchan,{loop}); -)

To set the foreground volume to (VOL - a number):
(- VolumeControl(gg_foregroundchan,{VOL}); -)

To set the background volume to (VOL - a number):
(- VolumeControl(gg_backgroundchan,{VOL}); -)

To stop the foreground sound:
(- SoundStop(gg_foregroundchan); -)

To stop the background sound:
(- SoundStop(gg_backgroundchan); -)

Multiple Sounds ends here.

---- DOCUMENTATION ---- 

This extention allows the reproduction of two audio layers at once under the Glulx envinronment. It implements only a few features regarding the audio files management (such as loops, double channel reproduction, volume control and sound stops) and it will become obsolete when Damusix by Eliuk Blau will eventually be released for Inform 7. 

After having declared the name of an audio file, like indicated in the IF7 main documentation:

	Sound of frogs is the file "Frogs.ogg". 

We can choose how to reproduce it, on the background channel or on the foreground one:

	play the sound of frogs in background;
	play the sound of frogs in foreground;

Sometimes a continuous loop might be useful:

	play the sound of frogs in background with loop;
	play the sound of frogs in foreground with loop;

Also the repetition of a specific audio file for N times is supported:

	play the sound of frogs in background for 5 times;
	play the sound of sea in foreground for 10 times;
	
Glulx allows to play multiple sounds at the same time, provided they are reproduced on different channels:

	play the sound of frogs in background;
	play the sound of birds in foreground;

To stop an audio file:

	stop the foreground sound;
	stop the background sound;

To modify volume from a minimum level of 0 (silence) to a maximum level of 5 (full volume):

	set the foreground volume to 2;
	set the background volume to 1;
	
Example: * Rainforest - Shows how to use multiple sounds effects to mimic a natural environment.

	*:	"Rainforest"
	
	Include Multiple Sounds by Massimo Stella.
	
	The Swamp is a room. The description is "A beautiful mirror of water is in front of your eyes while behind you there are the tallest trees you've ever seen. You can hear the sound of some frogs in the distance."
	
	Sound of frogs is the file "Frogs.ogg". 
	Sound of water is the file "Water.ogg".
	
	When play begins:
		set the background volume to 2;
		play the sound of frogs in background;
		set the foreground volume to 3;
		play the sound of water in foreground with loop.
	[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2346&start=10#p16071
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Future of Text Games (and impact on game design)
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-04-25 07:44:29

[quote="severedhand"]I think at this point, new people aren't playing IF because nobody is even putting new IF in front of them.[/quote]

If this isn't part of whatever the "IF outreach" project is -- assuming it's a project of some sort -- then it's probably not doing it's job well. I agree that if nobody is putting IF in front of people, it won't get played. Then again, nobody put it in front of me. I just happened to stumble upon it via other gaming venues I frequent. As did many of my friends. However, of those, I'm the only one that has tried to figure out if text games are still viable or worthwhile as an effort, even if only a hobbyist effort for gamers. So I'd be curious if people are getting IF "put in front of them" -- or coming to it on their own -- but simply not playing because they don't like it.

[quote]Since I started hanging in this community post IFComp I have read lots of blogs and posts fretting about the state of the parser and the fear of turning bewildered newbies off ...[/quote]

It's interesting because I've heard similar things about text games from non-IF gamers but far from talking about the state of the parser, the conversation is often about the inclusion of the parser itself. From what I can gather, it seems many people would prefer the parser to be far more constrained and/or relegated to the background than it currently is. Typing out strings of commands is not necessarily everyone's cup of tea, particularly when in most other media they simply don't have to do that. It's a matter of not seeing the value-add. I don't know if that turns off "newbies" necessarily, but I can say that it does seem to turn off many gamers.

[quote]I would encourage anyone who releases an IF game that they believe has the quality to withstand (or bask!) in general coverage to seek that coverage. You may be pleasantly surprised at the response from outside the bubble, and I think putting text games out and about is a more fundamental step than any other for widening the audience base, for those who want that.[/quote]

I think I would agree. And widening the audience base would always seem to be a good goal. Not too many people want to work in something where the audience base is static or, worse, shrinking. Not only does that seem like an incredible waste of time when there are other options, but a changing and increasing audience base keeps authors on their toes and keeps innovation high. One thing I think Inform 7 did is bring people in who may not have ever considered authoring text games. (Whether it brings in more people to play text games is harder to say since the output of an Inform 6 game seems to be largely the same as an Inform 7 game.) Whether there is any effort to capitalize on this is what's hard for me to see. If you want more interested gamers who enjoy text games, you also have to keep up the pace on bringing in people interested in authoring them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2354&start=0#p16072
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: Overlaying Verbs
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-04-25 08:30:12

If I've overlayed a verb, how can I get the parser to get back to the "normal" processing of the input? Like, I want to catch a special input ("throw kedge at tree"), but my catch try [code]Extend 'throw' first * noun "at" noun -> Throw;[/code] spoils the normal "drop" procedure ("drop item" -> "What do you want to drop the item at?"). Any help appreciated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2351&start=0#p16073
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Return to Ditch Day - Getting Network Analyser problem
User: Ash / DateTime: 2011-04-25 09:07:25

Ah - sorted. I have to be in the tunnel to ask for it, which makes sense.  [emote]:oops:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2354&start=0#p16074
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Overlaying Verbs
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-04-25 09:51:31

In this case you want "throw" to have a different grammar from "drop", which it is normally a synonym of. So you have to split it off:

[code]
Extend only 'throw' replace
    * noun 'at'/'against'/'on'/'onto' noun -> ThrowAt;
[/code]

(I'm using the ThrowAt action because it's already in the library, and it's set up to use two nouns.)

With this setup, you lose the normal use of "throw object" to mean Drop, but that's reasonable -- that default only makes sense in a game without throwing.

EDIT: Forgot the "only" keyword! Fixed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2352&start=0#p16075
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How many sounds can glulx play at once?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-04-25 09:52:05

Did you set up the midground channel first? You would need to create that channel (I think that the foreground and background channels used by the extension are created by the I7 library). You could try searching the Inform template files for gg_foregroundchan to see how to do this. This reference might also be useful for you:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.iffydoemain.org/glkdunces/summary.txt">http://www.iffydoemain.org/glkdunces/summary.txt</a>

You might also be interested in the Damusix I6 extension, which has been ported to I7, but sadly never released...

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.caad.es/eliukblau/damusix.html">http://www.caad.es/eliukblau/damusix.html</a>

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2354&start=0#p16076
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Overlaying Verbs
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-25 09:57:40

[quote="zarf"]With this setup, you lose the normal use of "throw object" to mean Drop, but that's reasonable -- that default only makes sense in a game without throwing.[/quote]

If then. I hate that default.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2355&start=0#p16077
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Swearing obscenely (at Inform 7)
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-04-25 10:14:17

This morning I decided to tackle the problem of this false, inappropriate, and irrelevant obscenity:

[b]"Real adventurers do not use such language."[/b]

Now I know I could just replace the library message, but I think my WIP is just scatological enough to provide distinct responses to requests to defecate, copulate, or just f*** something up. So my first step was to look for what command words I need to modify.

I looked in the index under "swearing obscenely," and I was informed:

[quote]Typed commands leading to this action

None that I wish to tell you about[/quote]

Really?

On top of that, I don't believe the index page for any action ever provides synonyms for command words used in the typed commands. For example, the page for attacking:

[quote]Typed commands leading to this action

"attack [something]"[/quote]

...does not mention the synonyms listed on the "commands A-Z" page:

[quote]"break", same as "attack"
"crack", same as "attack"
"destroy", same as "attack"
"fight", same as "attack"
"hit", same as "attack"
"kill", same as "attack"
"murder", same as "attack"
"punch", same as "attack"
"smash", same as "attack"
"thump", same as "attack"
"torture", same as "attack"
"wreck", same as "attack"
[/quote]

That's bad enough, but I can't even find obscene words in the Commands A-Z page. If it's so important to prevent authors from inadvertently seeing these words, they ought to be simply hidden, with an option to reveal them. Or perhaps even better, if the IDE is smart enough to know whether it "cares to tell you about a word," it could at least describe them as the F-word, the S-word, etc.

Is there some way to find out what they all are, and how they are parsed?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2355&start=0#p16078
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Swearing obscenely (at Inform 7)
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-04-25 10:23:00

Yes, the [url=http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/873945-show-the-list-of-swear-words-in-the-index?ref=title]list should be shown[/url] or those actions removed from the standard library altogether; I'm leaning towards the latter solution. You can find the grammar in the Standard Library:

[code]Understand "bother" as swearing mildly.
Understand the commands "curses", "drat" and "darn" as "bother".
Understand "shit" as swearing obscenely.
Understand the commands "fuck" and "damn" as "shit".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2355&start=0#p16079
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Swearing obscenely (at Inform 7)
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-04-25 10:29:00

Actually, you won't find this list even in the pdf for the Standard Rules but have to look at the very text file used for the Standard Rules extension!

Synonyms introduced by the statement 
[code]Understand the commands "x" and "y" as "z".[/code]
for some or no reason, never go into the index. 
(Drat!)
I think there was a uservoice request to change that, too ...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2355&start=0#p16080
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Swearing obscenely (at Inform 7)
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-04-25 11:17:52

[quote="Juhana"]Yes, the [url=http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/873945-show-the-list-of-swear-words-in-the-index?ref=title]list should be shown[/url] or those actions removed from the standard library altogether; I'm leaning towards the latter solution.[/quote]
That sounds like the best solution to me.

[quote]You can find the grammar in the Standard Library:

[code]Understand "bother" as swearing mildly.
Understand the commands "curses", "drat" and "darn" as "bother".
Understand "shit" as swearing obscenely.
Understand the commands "fuck" and "damn" as "shit".[/code][/quote]
It's bizarre that even swearing mildly is censored. But it was a relief to find these in the Standard Rules. I was beginning to fear that the words were stored in encrypted form deep in the bowels of I6...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2355&start=0#p16081
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Swearing obscenely (at Inform 7)
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-04-25 11:59:27

There was a thread about this awhile back.  Inform is used in educational environments, so the list cannot be shown, but such words are commonly typed in by players....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2355&start=0#p16082
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Swearing obscenely (at Inform 7)
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-04-25 12:09:27

Right - which is why Juhana's solution makes sense. "That's not a verb I recognize" is a perfectly reasonable response to profanity. It's the half-supported, half-hidden nature of swearing obscenely that makes it obnoxious for authors.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2355&start=0#p16083
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Swearing obscenely (at Inform 7)
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-04-25 13:23:36

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/873945-show-the-list-of-swear-words-in-the-index">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... -the-index</a>

Edit: Oh, uh, Juhana posted that already.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1711&start=20#p16084
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Aurora
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-04-25 13:33:15

Sorry I've been so AFK--tendonitis, unfortunately.  I'm supposed to spend less time on the computer.

The next version will eventually be forthcoming (and I think I'll finally take out the 'use' command, which clearly seemed like a much better idea to me than to anyone else), but consider it shelved for the moment.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2354&start=0#p16085
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Overlaying Verbs
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-04-25 13:39:45

WORKS! Thanks a lot...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2113&start=10#p16086
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: What do people think about adding a favicon?
User: Merk / DateTime: 2011-04-25 14:35:57

Oddly enough (or perhaps not so oddly if I knew what the heck I was doing), that seems to have worked.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2346&start=10#p16087
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Future of Text Games (and impact on game design)
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-04-25 14:59:26

[quote="bukayeva"] However, of those, I'm the only one that has tried to figure out if text games are still viable or worthwhile as an effort, even if only a hobbyist effort for gamers.[/quote]

What does this mean, exactly? Obviously there are still people who enjoy playing and writing them, so in what way might they not be viable/worthwhile?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2113&start=10#p16088
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: What do people think about adding a favicon?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-04-25 14:59:31

[quote="Dannii"]Maybe move it to <a class="postlink" href="http://www.intfiction.org/favicon.ico">http://www.intfiction.org/favicon.ico</a>[/quote][quote="Merk"]Oddly enough (or perhaps not so oddly if I knew what the heck I was doing), that seems to have worked.[/quote]
I can confirm this works in Firefox under win7. I dl'd the icon from the link above and after restarting my browser, the favicon was automagically associated with the site in the url box, bookmarks list, and tab headings. This is despite the fact that I definitely don't know what I'm doing and didn't even know what a favicon was (or more precisely, that it was called that).  [emote]:)[/emote]
Thanks y'all!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2355&start=0#p16089
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Swearing obscenely (at Inform 7)
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-04-25 16:57:37

[quote="capmikee"]
That's bad enough, but I can't even find obscene words in the [b]Commands A-Z page[/b]. [/quote]

Okay, I have hunted every which way I can think of... where is this page?  I thought I had downloaded all of the texts and manuals, and I can't find anything like this.  Well, the Syntax guide seems to have it all, but not in an easy to read format.

It sure would be nice to have as a reference...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2113&start=10#p16090
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: What do people think about adding a favicon?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-04-25 17:13:20

hey, it just lit up in Chrome all on its own.

Also: sweeeet!  (and thanks, Merk)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2355&start=0#p16091
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Swearing obscenely (at Inform 7)
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-04-25 17:14:28

[quote="Seeker"][quote]That's bad enough, but I can't even find obscene words in the Commands A-Z page.[/quote] Okay, I have hunted every which way I can think of... where is this page?[/quote]
It's a "virtual" page. You find it under the Actions Index in the Index part of the Inform IDE.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2355&start=0#p16092
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Swearing obscenely (at Inform 7)
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-04-25 17:42:25

[quote="Felix"][quote="Seeker"][quote]That's bad enough, but I can't even find obscene words in the Commands A-Z page.[/quote] Okay, I have hunted every which way I can think of... where is this page?[/quote]
It's a "virtual" page. You find it under the Actions Index in the Index part of the Inform IDE.[/quote]

Ahhhhh yes... I had seen this before.  So I will just copy this out into a doc for printing.  I am the type that prefers paper for a reference.  But for a quick look... to figure out where a command comes from (standard or extension), and one button click (well, two) to unlist rules, this will be very handy.

Thanks for jogging my memory!  I need to spend more time in the index.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2356&start=0#p16093
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I7] Referring to nonexistent but possible things
User: Gorobay / DateTime: 2011-04-25 18:11:13

I want the player to be able to refer to nonexistent but possible things. An example will show my meaning better.

[code]Temperature is a kind of value. The temperatures are hot and cold.

A thing has a temperature. Understand the temperature property as referring to a thing.

Temperature Lab is a room. "The perfect place to HEAT or COOL things!"

The very mysterious substance is a cold thing, here. The description of the substance is "Very mysterious and [temperature]."

Heating is an action applying to one thing. Understand "heat [thing]" as heating.

Carry out heating: now the noun is hot.

Report heating: say "You heat [the noun]."

Cooling is an action applying to one thing. Understand "cool [thing]" as cooling.

Carry out cooling: now the noun is cold.

Report cooling: say "You cool [the noun].".

Pondering is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "ponder [any thing]"  as pondering.

Report pondering: say "You ponder [the noun]."

Considering is an action applying to one temperature and one visible thing. Understand "consider [temperature] [any thing]" as considering.

Report considering: say "You consider [the second noun], which is [temperature understood]."[/code]
In this example, I have a substance with a temperature. I can say TAKE COLD SUBSTANCE when it is cold, but not when it is hot, and vice versa. This I expect and it is not the problem.

Then I have pondering. I want PONDER COLD SUBSTANCE to always work, but it fails if the substance is hot. How can I make it always work?

A solution like considering (see code) is not ideal, because I would like to be able to do this with an arbitrary number of adjectives in any order, like PONDER TEPID STICKY VISCOUS GREEN SUBSTANCE.

If I understand Inform right, this problem happens because the parser is equipped to only look for things that do exist, not things that could exist. I have looked at Parser.i6t to see if I could mess around with it but I really don't know what I'm doing, so I didn't.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2356&start=0#p16094
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Referring to nonexistent but possible things
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-25 19:51:59

Does this do what you want?

[code]
To decide what action-name is the action-to-be: (- action_to_be -).
Understand "[temperature]" as a thing when the action-to-be is the pondering action.
[/code]

I tried something fancier that would allow you to restrict the range of temperatures avaliable (so that if the substance was possibly hot or possibly warm but not possibly cold, you could make it so that only hot and warm would work), but it [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=647]produced an internal error[/url]. Actually it would probably be better to have that be understood but give a message along the line of "The substance could never be cold!"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2356&start=0#p16095
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Referring to nonexistent but possible things
User: Gorobay / DateTime: 2011-04-25 20:28:34

That does not work. The parser accepts the input, but if I change the report of pondering to say "You ponder [the noun], which is [temperature of the noun]." and I input PONDER HOT SUBSTANCE when it is cold, it prints "You ponder the very mysterious substance, which is cold."

I want the game, given PONDER HOT SUBSTANCE, to print "You ponder the very mysterious substance, which is hot."

EDIT:
Here is a more fleshed out example:
[rant][code]Section - New Kinds

A substance is a kind of thing.

Temperature is a kind of value. The temperatures are hot and cold. A substance has a temperature. A substance is usually cold. Understand the temperature property as referring to a substance.

Humidity is a kind of value. The humidities are dry and moist. A substance has a humidity. A substance is usually dry. Understand the humidity property as referring to a substance.

Section - Setting

The Laboratory is a room. "A perfect place to practice pondering."

The lump of slag is a substance, here. The description of the slag is "It is cold, dry, and worthless."

Section - Pondering

Pondering is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "ponder [any thing]"  as pondering.

Report pondering:
	if the noun is hot begin;
		if the noun is dry begin;
			say "Fire.";
		otherwise;
			say "Air.";
		end if;
	otherwise;
		if the noun is dry begin;
			say "Earth.";
		otherwise;
			say "Water.";
		end if;
	end if.

To decide what action-name is the action-to-be: (- action_to_be -).

Understand "[humidity]" as a substance when the action-to-be is the pondering action.

[Understand "[temperature]" as a substance when the action-to-be is the pondering action.] [Inform will only accept one of these two lines at a time.][/code][/rant]

Here is what I want:
[quote]>ponder moist hot substance
Air.
>ponder cold dry substance
Earth.[/quote]

Here is what I get:
[quote]>ponder moist
Earth.
>ponder dry
Earth.[/quote]

This happens because any humidity is understood as referring to a substance when pondering, and the only substance there is the slag, which is cold and dry (earth).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2352&start=0#p16096
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How many sounds can glulx play at once?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-25 20:42:49

[quote="ektemple"]Did you set up the midground channel first? You would need to create that channel (I think that the foreground and background channels used by the extension are created by the I7 library).[/quote]

I figured that might be where I was coming undone, as I couldn't see anything in the extension I just used actually establishing a foreground and background channel. Thanks for the pointers. They ought to help me extrapolate what I need.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2356&start=0#p16097
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Referring to nonexistent but possible things
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-25 21:53:35

Hm. Well, the "action-to-be" business exhausts my knowledge of how to get stuff out of the parser internals, so I don't know whether it's possible to figure out whether the player input "hot substance" or "cold substance" given my code.

For the behavior in your ranted example, would it help to have some archetypes of the various possibilities in some inaccessible room? This gets you part of the way, but you'll have to decide how to disambiguate when the player types "ponder hot." Also, it seems to me that if you want "ponder hot" to work you need to say "Understand the temperature property as describing a substance"; if you have "referring to" it'll require you to add "substance" or some other name. 

[rant][code]"Forms and Things"

Section - New Kinds

A substance is a kind of thing. Understand "substance" as a substance.

Temperature is a kind of value. The temperatures are hot and cold. A substance has a temperature. A substance is usually cold. Understand the temperature property as describing a substance.

Humidity is a kind of value. The humidities are dry and moist. A substance has a humidity. A substance is usually dry. Understand the humidity property as describing a substance.

Section - Setting

The Laboratory is a room. "A perfect place to practice pondering."

The lump of slag is a substance, here. The description of the slag is "It is cold, dry, and worthless."

Section - Archetypes

The Formitorium is a room. 
Earth is a substance in Formitorium. Earth is cold and dry.
Air is a substance in Formitorium. Air is hot and moist.
Water is a substance in Formitorium. Water is cold and moist.
Fire is a substance in Formitorium. Fire is hot and dry.

Section - Pondering

Pondering is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "ponder [any thing]"  as pondering.

Report pondering:
	if the noun is hot begin;
		if the noun is dry begin;
			say "Fire.";
		otherwise;
			say "Air.";
		end if;
	otherwise;
		if the noun is dry begin;
			say "Earth.";
		otherwise;
			say "Water.";
		end if;
	end if.

To decide what action-name is the action-to-be: (- action_to_be -).

After deciding the scope of the player when the action-to-be is the pondering action: 
	place the contents of the Formitorium in scope.
[/code][/rant]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2356&start=0#p16098
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Referring to nonexistent but possible things
User: Gorobay / DateTime: 2011-04-25 22:11:20

This works, for this short example with temperature and humidity. But what if I wanted ten such variables? Twenty? There must be a better way to do this than creating thousands of objects hidden away in a secret room.

If Inform 7 were the perfect language, I would code something like "Understand "ponder [list of adjectives] [any thing]" as a pondering a thing." and then refer to the list of adjectives understood or something like that. But alas! I cannot.

I have been poking around the page of I7 extensions and I saw one called Dynamic Objects. Could I use that to parse the player's command, then create an object customized to the player's input? If so, how?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2352&start=0#p16099
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How many sounds can glulx play at once?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-25 22:46:58

I found the sound channel init routines in the Glulx.i6t file contained in the I6 template on this page:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/sources/webs/">http://inform7.com/sources/webs/</a>

... but after much copying, pasting, poking, extrapolating and struggling, I have to accept initialising another one is beyond my capabilities. I don't know i6 and each change I make increases the number of i6 compile errors I'm getting. It may even be I'm typing the correct lines (it looked like it may only take about 5 or 6 lines of code) but simply have the formatting or placement wrong.

This operation also looks to be difficult in terms of ... there are comments in the glulx.i6t file about closing the channel down and making various glk calls at initialisation and restart times, so I wondered if there's more programming involved than just turning the channel on.

In any case, I humbly extend a request for help to anyone who does understand glk and i6 programming as to how to initialise a 3rd and maybe 4th sound channel.

In the meantime, I'll go back to doing the programming I know how to do [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2356&start=0#p16100
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Referring to nonexistent but possible things
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-25 22:53:13

Well, if you don't mind you can mess around with the player's command directly. This will become very annoying if you have a lot of synonyms for your adjectives, but it's probably the best I can do now. (Someone else may well be able to do better.) 

[rant][code]"Forms and Things"

Section - New Kinds

A substance is a kind of thing. Understand "substance" as a substance.

Temperature is a kind of value. The temperatures are hot and cold. A substance has a temperature. A substance is usually cold.
Humidity is a kind of value. The humidities are dry and moist. A substance has a humidity. A substance is usually dry.

Section - Setting

The Laboratory is a room. "A perfect place to practice pondering."

The lump of slag is a substance, here. The description of the slag is "It is cold, dry, and worthless."
The glob of mud is a substance, here. The glob of mud has humidity moist.

Section - Temperature-Settings

The temperature-in-question is a temperature that varies. Temperature-changed is a truth-state that varies.
The humidity-in-question is a humidity that varies. Humidity-changed is a truth-state that varies.

After reading a command when the player's command includes "ponder":
	now temperature-changed is false;
	now humidity-changed is false;
	if the player's command includes "hot" and the player's command includes "cold":
		say "You're blowing hot and cold!";
		reject the player's command;
	otherwise if the player's command includes "hot":
		now the temperature-in-question is hot;
		cut the matched text;
		now temperature-changed is true;
	otherwise if the player's command includes "cold":
		now the temperature-in-question is cold;
		cut the matched text;
		now temperature-changed is true;
	if the player's command includes "moist" and the player's command includes "dry":
		say "You can't be both moist and dry.";
		reject the player's command;
	otherwise if the player's command includes "moist":
		now the humidity-in-question is moist;
		now humidity-changed is true;
		cut the matched text;
	otherwise if the player's command includes "dry":
		now the humidity-in-question is dry;
		cut the matched text;
		now humidity-changed is true;
	let T be indexed text;
	let T be the player's command;
	change the text of the player's command to "[T] substance". [in case we've removed everything but 'ponder', we add "substance" in so there's an available noun] 
	
Section - Pondering

Pondering is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "ponder [any thing]"  as pondering.
Report pondering:
	unless temperature-changed is true:
		now the temperature-in-question is the temperature of the noun;
	unless humidity-changed is true:
		now the humidity-in-question is the humidity of the noun;
	if the temperature-in-question is hot:
		if the humidity-in-question is dry:
			say "Fire.";
		otherwise:
			say "Air.";
	otherwise:
		if the humidity-in-question is dry:
			say "Earth.";
		otherwise:
			say "Water."

[If there is more than one substance present and the player specified pondering a specific adjective, we want to default to pondering the one that matches]
Does the player mean pondering a hot substance when temperature-changed is true and the temperature-in-question is hot: it is likely.
Does the player mean pondering a cold substance when temperature-changed is true and the temperature-in-question is cold: it is likely.
Does the player mean pondering a moist substance when humidity-changed is true and the humidity-in-question is moist: it is likely.
Does the player mean pondering a dry substance when humidity-changed is true and the humidity-in-question is dry: it is likely.
[/code][/rant] 

I don't know that "Dynamic Objects" would do what you want -- you could just as well create a dummy object in an offstage room and change its properties as you like.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1711&start=20#p16101
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Aurora
User: Tanga / DateTime: 2011-04-25 23:17:58

I haven't played this yet (looking forward to it), but a suggestion for the box of crew stuff.  Perhaps have it in separate boxes in the wardrobe (separate for each character).  Maybe even have a picture of the crew member on the box (as well as their name).  It can have it's own shelf perhaps?  Or even scrap the wardrobe, since it doesn't seem to fit (one person's feedback), and have a trunk at the base of each of the cryo-chambers.  Perhaps even clue the trunks so the player has to use the computer on each cryo to open it (they try to open it and the computer talks to them??) - that way you 'meet' each character one by one, the computers on the cryo are clued more, and the scene fits (ie the trunks can be smooth white plastic, or matt black plastic, or mirrored steel, whatever fits with your scene).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2353&start=0#p16103
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Emily Short's Pytho's Mask
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-04-26 03:24:26

I've now posted a walkthrough here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://emshort.wordpress.com/2011/04/26/pythos-mask-walkthrough/">http://emshort.wordpress.com/2011/04/26 ... lkthrough/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2357&start=0#p16104
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: [SPAG] #60 Now Available
User: RandomExile / DateTime: 2011-04-26 03:58:11

Hi, all!

I've just finished migrating all of our subscribers from the old mailing list to the new Google Group, which functions exactly the same but is easier to manage and more transparent (to the list owners).  This is the first step in a process of modernization and upgrades we'll see in the next couple months.

One cool addition, as you'll see when you head over to the SPAG site, is a never-before-featured magazine cover, designed by Rob Wheeler, which will be a regular part of SPAG in the future.

Once you get past Rob's immersive Demo Fair send-up, you'll find the issue packed with observations from the Demo Fair itself, game reviews, a book review, interviews with IF Comp and XYZZY winners, an actions flow chart, and a SPAG Specifics on Gigantomania by Victor Gijsbers which may make you reconsider the work.

Come on inside and check it out!
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/index.html">http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/index.html</a>

------------------------
Editorial

IF Demo Fair 2011

SPAG Specifics:
--Gigantomania

Interviews with IF Comp and XYZZY 2010 Award Winners:
--Simon Christiansen
--Jason McIntosh
--Iain Merrick
--CEJ Pacian
--Colin Sandel & Carolyn VanEseltine
--Matt Wigdahl

Technical Direction:
--Action Flow Chart -- Hoist Sail for the Heliopause and Home

Game Reviews:
--Death off the Cuff
--Gris et Jaune
--The People's Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure Game
--Starborn

Book Review:
--Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7

It's not too early to start thinking about submissions for SPAG #61, so if you have a paper you're working on related to IF, or would like a forum in which to cover a technical issue, concepts in game design, story craft, or other topic (e.g., incorporating cultural differences in interactive fiction), send it in!  If inspiration fails, drop by Planet-IF for leads or e-mail me at davidm.spag SP@G gmail.com.

Cheers,

David

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2357&start=0#p16105
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: [SPAG] #60 Now Available
User: RandomExile / DateTime: 2011-04-26 04:07:42

Just a reminder -- the new Google Group (which functions purely as an identity-protected mailing list, per the old SPAG subscription list) can be found at:

<a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/spagmagazine">http://groups.google.com/group/spagmagazine</a>

Cheers!

David

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1711&start=20#p16106
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Aurora
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-04-26 04:54:19

[quote="katz"]Sorry I've been so AFK--tendonitis, unfortunately.  I'm supposed to spend less time on the computer.[/quote]

Oh, sorry to hear it. Hope you get better.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2113&start=10#p16107
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: What do people think about adding a favicon?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-04-26 05:03:36

I downloaded the icon, and then I dragged it to the Firefox bookmark toolbar next to IntFiction, just trying anything for it to work. I have no idea how or why, but work it did, it's showing up and it's spiffy!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2356&start=0#p16109
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Referring to nonexistent but possible things
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-26 07:58:41

For what it's worth, the bug I reported with "something related by reversed possibilizing" seems to have been [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=647]upgraded from mild to critical[/url], indicating that the thing I was doing there was supposed to work. Maybe if that gets fixed it'll help with your problem. 

By the way, if you want to cut down the amount of typing you have to do for my solution, you might be able to make some tables with the text you want -- so you have a table with the texts "moist," "wet," "damp" and any other synonyms you like, all associated with the humidity moist, and in the "after reading a command" rule you loop through that table to extract any synonyms that may be there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2356&start=0#p16110
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Referring to nonexistent but possible things
User: Gorobay / DateTime: 2011-04-26 08:23:05

I'm glad to hear of the acknowledgement of the bug.  I wrote this last night:

[rant][code]"Forms and Things"

Section - New Stuff

A substance is a kind of thing. Understand "substance" as a substance.

Adjective is a kind of value. Some adjectives are defined by the Table of Adjectives.
[N.B. Adjectives are never used themselves. Just their word and domain entries are. I left them in case they ever are needed.]

Table of Adjectives
adjective	[tab]	word (indexed text)	[tab]	domain
cold		[tab]	"cold"				[tab]	"temperature"
hot			[tab]	"hot"				[tab]	"temperature"
dry			[tab]	"dry"				[tab]	"humidity"
moist		[tab]	"moist"				[tab]	"humidity"

The adjective stack is a list of indexed texts which varies.

The domain stack is a list of texts which varies.

Section - Setting

The Laboratory is a room. "A perfect place to practice pondering."

The lump of slag is a substance, here.

The glob of mud is a substance, here.

Section - Pondering

Pondering is an action applying to one topic. Understand "ponder [text]"  as pondering. Pondering is irrealis behavior.

Before irrealis behavior:
	now the adjective stack is {};
	now the domain stack is {};
	let T be indexed text;
	let T be the topic understood;
	repeat with i running from 1 to the number of words in T begin;
		let W be word number i in T;
		if W is listed in the adjective stack, next;
		repeat through the Table of Adjectives begin;
			if the word entry exactly matches the text W begin;
				let D be the domain entry;
				if D is listed in the domain stack begin;
					say "You may only specify one [D].";
					stop the action;
				otherwise;
					add D to the domain stack;
				end if;
				break;
			end if;
		end repeat;
		add W to the adjective stack;
	end repeat.

Report pondering:
	[say "[adjective stack in brace notation][line break]";]
	if "cold" is listed in the adjective stack begin;
		if "dry" is listed in the adjective stack begin;
			say "Earth.";
		otherwise if "moist" is listed in the adjective stack;
			say "Water.";
		otherwise;
			say "Pure cold.";
		end if;
	otherwise if "hot" is listed in the adjective stack;
		if "dry" is listed in the adjective stack begin;
			say "Fire.";
		otherwise if "moist" is listed in the adjective stack;
			say "Air.";
		otherwise;
			say "Pure heat.";
		end if;
	otherwise;
		if "dry" is listed in the adjective stack begin;
			say "Pure aridity.";
		otherwise if "moist" is listed in the adjective stack;
			say "Pure humidity.";
		otherwise;
			say "There is nothing to ponder.";
		end if;
	end if.[/code][/rant]

Is this efficient? It works fine now, but how fast is table look-up when the table has e.g. 100 rows?

I didn't do synonyms in this code but it shouldn't be hard to add them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2352&start=0#p16111
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How many sounds can glulx play at once?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-26 08:37:53

(the next day..)

Okay, it was bloody frustrating to work out, but I got my 3rd channel, and now could add as many as I want.

For the millions champing at the bit for this spunky bit of code, here it is.

[code]Section - IF6 Code

Include (-

Global gg_midgroundchan=0;
Constant GG_MIDGROUNDCHAN_ROCK 412;

[ MidCreate;
	if (glk_gestalt(gestalt_Sound, 0)) {
		if (gg_midgroundchan == 0)
			gg_midgroundchan = glk_schannel_create(GG_MIDGROUNDCHAN_ROCK);
	}
];

Section - Declaring Commands

To create the midground channel:
(- MidCreate(GG_MIDGROUNDCHAN_ROCK); -)

To play (SND - a sound name) in midground:
(- SoundReproduce(ResourceIDsOfSounds-->{SND},gg_midgroundchan,1); -)
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2356&start=0#p16112
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Referring to nonexistent but possible things
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-26 09:05:42

[quote="Gorobay"]Is this efficient? It works fine now, but how fast is table look-up when the table has e.g. 100 rows?

I didn't do synonyms in this code but it shouldn't be hard to add them.[/quote]

I'm very much non-expert on this, but I'm told [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=14399#p14399]table access is fast[/url].

Anyway, your code looks it does some very nice adjective extracting. One potential issue is that it doesn't involve direct reference to substances anymore (the slag isn't doing anything, it seems), though that might be what you want. Another thing is that it completely ignores irrelevant words, so that "ponder hot moist throbbing quivering jello" gives you "Air."

But hey, at this point you're better at this than I am.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2355&start=10#p16113
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Swearing obscenely (at Inform 7)
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-04-26 09:11:30

Well, I'm done ranting now, but I have a technical question.

Regarding the "I only understood you as far as wanting to fuck" problem: Is it possible to have a grammar line swallow up text and throw it away? It seems that the compiler complains if I put a "[text]" token into a grammar line for an action that doesn't take a topic. This solution (which also creates a grammar line to prevent "screw [someone]" from redirecting to turning) seems a little awkward:

[code]Masturbating is an action applying to nothing.

Check masturbating:
	say "Your body is no longer capable of performing sexual acts, and attempts to do them invariably result in violent acts instead.";
	stop the action.

Copulating is an action applying to one topic.

Understand "copulate" as copulating. Understand "copulate [text]" as copulating.

Understand the commands "shag" and "sex" as "copulate".

Understand "fuck" and "fuck [text]" as copulating.

Check copulating:
	instead try masturbating.
	
[Prevent "screw person" from redirecting to the turning action]

Copulating with is an action applying to one thing.

Understand the command "screw" as something new.

Understand "screw [someone]" as copulating with.

Understand "screw [something]" as turning.

Understand "screw [text]" as copulating.

Check copulating with:
	instead try masturbating.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2355&start=10#p16114
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Swearing obscenely (at Inform 7)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-26 09:38:39

I think you can try something like this (untested, and may not match the particular actions you're defining):

[code]Copulating is an action applying to nothing. Understand "copulate" as copulating.
Copulating-with-text is an action applying to one topic. Understand "copulate [text]" as copulating-with-text.
Instead of copulating-with-text: try copulating.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2356&start=0#p16115
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Referring to nonexistent but possible things
User: Gorobay / DateTime: 2011-04-26 10:17:25

The parser now accepts only adjectives and nouns it knows. It also supports synonyms. As long as it doesn't get slow, I think this approach is acceptable, though I would prefer not writing needing to specify an indexed text version of every adjective.

[rant][code]"Forms and Things"

Section - New Stuff

Adjective is a kind of value. Some adjectives are defined by the Table of Adjectives.
[N.B. Adjectives are never used for any objects in this example. I left them in case they ever are needed.]

Table of Adjectives
adjective	[tab]	domain
cold		[tab]	"temperature"
hot		[tab]	"temperature"
dry		[tab]	"humidity"
moist		[tab]	"humidity"

Table of Adjective Words
word (indexed text)	[tab]	adjective
"cold"				[tab]	cold
"hot"				[tab]	hot
"dry"				[tab]	dry
"moist"			[tab]	moist
"wet"				[tab]	moist [a synonym]

The adjective stack is a list of adjectives which varies.

The domain stack is a list of texts which varies.

The archetype is an object which varies.

Section - Setting

The Sophists' Lounge is a room. "A perfect place to practice pondering."

Section - Archetypes

The Archetype Case is a room. A humor is here. An element is here.

Section - Pondering

Pondering is an action applying to one topic. Understand "ponder [text]" as pondering. Pondering is irrealis behavior.

Before irrealis behavior:
	now the adjective stack is {};
	now the domain stack is {};
	now the archetype is nothing;
	let T be the topic understood;
	let N be the number of words in T;
	repeat with i running from 1 to N - 1 begin;
		let W be word number i in T;
		let A be an adjective;
		if there is an adjective corresponding to a word of W in the Table of Adjective Words, let A be the adjective corresponding to a word of W in the Table of Adjective Words;
		unless there is an adjective of A in the Table of Adjectives begin;
			say "I do not know the adjective '[W].'";
			stop the action;
		end unless;
		if A is listed in the adjective stack, next;
		if there is a domain corresponding to an adjective of A in the Table of Adjectives begin;
			let D be the domain corresponding to an adjective of A in the Table of Adjectives;
			if D is listed in the domain stack begin;
				say "You may only specify one [D].";
				stop the action;
			otherwise;
				add D to the domain stack;
			end if;
		end if;
		add A to the adjective stack;
	end repeat;
	let W be indexed text;
	let W be word number N in T;
	repeat with item running through objects in the Archetype Case begin;
		if W exactly matches the text "[item]" begin;
			now the archetype is the item;
			break;
		end if;
	end repeat;
	if archetype is nothing begin;
		say "I do not know what this so-called '[W]' is.";
		stop the action;
	end if.

Report pondering:
	[say "[adjective stack in brace notation][line break]";]
	if cold is listed in the adjective stack begin;
		if dry is listed in the adjective stack begin;
			if the archetype is an element begin;
				say "Earth.";
			otherwise if the archetype is a humor;
				say "Black bile.";
			otherwise;
				say "Cold and dry.";
			end if;
		otherwise if moist is listed in the adjective stack;
			if the archetype is an element begin;
				say "Water.";
			otherwise if the archetype is a humor;
				say "Phlegm.";
			otherwise;
				say "Cold and moist.";
			end if;
		otherwise;
			say "Pure cold.";
		end if;
	otherwise if hot is listed in the adjective stack;
		if dry is listed in the adjective stack begin;
			if the archetype is an element begin;
				say "Fire.";
			otherwise if the archetype is a humor;
				say "Yellow bile.";
			otherwise;
				say "Hot and dry.";
			end if;
		otherwise if moist is listed in the adjective stack;
			if the archetype is an element begin;
				say "Air.";
			otherwise if the archetype is a humor;
				say "Blood.";
			otherwise;
				say "Hot and moist.";
			end if;
		otherwise;
			say "Pure heat.";
		end if;
	otherwise;
		if dry is listed in the adjective stack begin;
			say "Pure aridity.";
		otherwise if moist is listed in the adjective stack;
			say "Pure humidity.";
		otherwise if the archetype is an element;
			say "Elementary.";
		otherwise if the archetype is a humor;
			say "Humorous.";
		otherwise if the archetype is nothing;
			say "[The archetype] is not worth pondering.";
		end if;
	end if.[/code][/rant]
[quote="matt w"]But hey, at this point you're better at this than I am.[/quote]
I guess I just needed some help getting started. Thanks for your catalysis!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2358&start=0#p16116
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Hyperlink Interface -- Wrong Kind of Value
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-04-26 10:28:42

I started using the "Hyperlink Interface" extension just to see what it does. What it currently does is fail upon compile, with the error: "You wrote 'carry out the direction hyperlinking activity', but 'direction hyperlinking' has the wrong kind of value: an activity on objects rather than an activity."

Verbally I think I understand what's trying to tell me but it's not clear what to do to fix it. I can certainly ram through the manual and try to figure it out but I'm hoping someone else has run into this and can short-circuit my path.


(Incidentally, for the InformDev team is it a requirement that extensions must at least be able to compile prior to inclusion in the repo? I'm just getting into extensions and this is the first one I've tried so now I'm nervous I'm going to be spending time wading through someone else's bugs. I'm sure I'll have enough of my own. [emote]:)[/emote] )

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2352&start=0#p16117
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How many sounds can glulx play at once?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-04-26 10:40:14

IIRC some of the complexity of Damusix came from the edge cases: what happens to a looping sound when you restore from a saved game, or undo/redo a command that triggers a sound?

If you're waiting on notification to tell you when playback finishes, in those cases you could see the event arrive before the sound is even played (in game terms).

I assume that the I7 library handles the bookkeeping for the normal sound channels, but it's something to keep in mind if you start chaining effects together or intend to use the new channels for background music.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2352&start=10#p16118
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How many sounds can glulx play at once?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-26 10:51:59

I should be okay. 'Multiple Sounds' has some easy to use calls in it that let you manually look after things at the moment of restart or restoring.

'Undo'ing while music is playing already cuts off the music in interpreters I've tried, which is fine by me. (I'm not using looping, well, at least in-game, or Yet.)

Basically I just wanted one more channel so that in the rare moment when 3 different kinds of sounds play at once, no one kind will be cancelled. And I'm putting only one shots fx on the new channel. Longer music will stay on one of the official channels.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2358&start=0#p16119
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hyperlink Interface -- Wrong Kind of Value
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-04-26 10:55:19

I was able to solve the immediate problem by commenting out the word "something":

[code]Direction hyperlinking [something] is an activity.[/code]

But at that point I get another error, something to do with printing parser errors. This topic has been poked at in this forum, but I don't remember offhand how to fix the problem.

[quote="bukayeva"](Incidentally, for the InformDev team is it a requirement that extensions must at least be able to compile prior to inclusion in the repo? I'm just getting into extensions and this is the first one I've tried so now I'm nervous I'm going to be spending time wading through someone else's bugs. I'm sure I'll have enough of my own. [emote]:)[/emote] )[/quote]
This extension antedates the most recent Inform build, and that is the most likely source of the problem. As to whether anyone goes through all of the published extensions before a release in order to figure out whether they're compatible with a new build -- it is very unlikely.

Does anyone even run a new extension when an author submits it? I don't know. It would be nice to think that that minimal step, at least, is being taken.

The existence of moldy extensions is a weakness of Inform's open-community model of development. If the IF programming community were 50 times larger, there would probably be volunteers tackling jobs of this sort. You can contact Leonardo and ask him to update the extension, or you can figure out how to edit it so that it works.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2355&start=10#p16120
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Swearing obscenely (at Inform 7)
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-26 10:55:40

Yeah, I now use the 'Understand (verb) [text]' trick all the time to prevent the parser giving stock error messages when people type additional garbage or stuff that doesn't match the kind of second noun that is actually sought.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2358&start=0#p16121
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hyperlink Interface -- Wrong Kind of Value
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-04-26 11:07:31

[quote="Jim Aikin"]But at that point I get another error, something to do with printing parser errors. This topic has been poked at in this forum, but I don't remember offhand how to fix the problem.[/quote]

Yeah, I found a few things I tried would lead to even more errors.

[quote="Jim Aiken"]The existence of moldy extensions is a weakness of Inform's open-community model of development. If the IF programming community were 50 times larger, there would probably be volunteers tackling jobs of this sort.[/quote]

Actually I thought the examples in the extensions could be used as unit tests. If you write a script that runs all examples in all extensions (or the documentation) for each build, you should be able to catch these things immediately. That way the documentation can serve as its own test.

[quote="Jim Aiken"]You can contact Leonardo and ask him to update the extension, or you can figure out how to edit it so that it works.[/quote]

Yeah, I'll just figure it out myself. It'll probably be good experience.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2358&start=0#p16122
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hyperlink Interface -- Wrong Kind of Value
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-04-26 11:13:44

Extensions are checked to see whether they compile before they are posted to the site. Possibly other checks are done as well; I've been asked to provide code examples, for instance, and Mark frequently fixes typos in my documentation.

But, like Jim, I don't think anyone downloads and recompiles all of the extensions for each new build. It would be a nice community service if anyone wanted to provide it. But since the last thing most of us need in our life is more soul-crushingly repetitive busy work, I wouldn't hold my breath....

On the other hand, there might be some out there who would find it interesting to create a script that could automatically extract the code examples from the extension files and batch them through the compiler. There would be some minor difficulties in that enterprises, I think, but it ought to be doable.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2358&start=0#p16123
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hyperlink Interface -- Wrong Kind of Value
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-04-26 11:17:44

Inform is now, it seems, requiring that variables be defined before use at a level of indentation less than or equal to the point where they're being used. Thus the extension needs four lines added to the top of the run the hyperlinks routine code:

[code]To run the hyperlinks routine:
	let mychar be 1;   
	let object-number be a number;
	let direction-number be a number;
	let scenery-number be a number;
	let topic-number be a number;[/code]You also need to change two usages of the word "increment" to "increase", as "increment X by 1" is no longer allowed.

If you do all of that, the extension appears to work as expected. At least, it compiles, and the rather odd-looking but useful prompt appears and functions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2358&start=0#p16124
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hyperlink Interface -- Wrong Kind of Value
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-04-26 11:19:54

[quote="ektemple"]On the other hand, there might be some out there who would find it interesting to create a script that could automatically extract the code examples from the extension files and batch them through the compiler. There would be some minor difficulties in that enterprises, I think, but it ought to be doable.[/quote]

Yeah, that's what I was talking about regarding unit tests above. (Technically they'd be integration tests.) I'm somewhat surprised that at least some mechanism isn't in place to do this already given that Inform has opted for an extension based mechanism. Are we sure something like this isn't already in place, at least to some extent? If it isn't, I'd be happy to throw something together in Ruby or Python. (I could do Perl but I'd prefer not.)

UPDATE: Thanks, Jim. Just saw your code fix. I'll give it a shot.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2358&start=0#p16125
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hyperlink Interface -- Wrong Kind of Value
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-04-26 11:27:49

From <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/contribute/extensions/">http://inform7.com/contribute/extensions/</a>:
[quote]When we build each new release, the extension librarian runs an automated script testing all the examples of all the submitted games. If there are compiler failures, she can then notify you that the extension needs an update, or even (with your permission and if the required changes are small) make and upload a revised version.[/quote]
And later,[quote]To help the user quickly see what the example can do, you may want to include a "test me" line, like those found in the manual examples. For instance:

Test me with "eat roquefort / smell gruyere / taste gruyere".

RATIONALE: This not only helps the user, but also means that automated tests can check that everything behaves as it is supposed to. Without such a test case, all we can do to check your extension after a new build of Inform is to see that it still compiles. An example isn't really finished without a test script.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2358&start=0#p16126
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hyperlink Interface -- Wrong Kind of Value
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-04-26 11:32:34

[quote="EmacsUser"]From <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/contribute/extensions/">http://inform7.com/contribute/extensions/</a>:
[quote]When we build each new release, the extension librarian runs an automated script testing all the examples of all the submitted games. If there are compiler failures, she can then notify you that the extension needs an update, or even (with your permission and if the required changes are small) make and upload a revised version.[/quote][/quote]

Cool -- if it's done. So a script does exist. I would make this part of the integration of the build process. I assume InformDev is following a relatively standard continuous integration build process? If so, any build tool worth it's salt could run these tests and even automatically send out email notifications to the relevant parties.

The problem of course is when the person so contacted doesn't want to fix their extension or can't be reached. I presume then InformDev must fix the extension themselves? Or is that just left up to the first person who wanders into the problem.

The InformDev process is a bit opaque to me at the moment.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2358&start=0#p16127
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hyperlink Interface -- Wrong Kind of Value
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-04-26 11:37:34

[quote="EmacsUser"]From <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/contribute/extensions/">http://inform7.com/contribute/extensions/</a>:
[quote]When we build each new release, the extension librarian runs an automated script testing all the examples of all the submitted games. If there are compiler failures, she can then notify you that the extension needs an update, or even (with your permission and if the required changes are small) make and upload a revised version.[/quote][/quote]

Yes, the Contribute page has long said that. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to actually happen. I have authored a number of extensions (the first in 2007 or so, I think), and many of them have been rendered unable to compile by one build or another. But I have never, ever received an email alerting me to that fact. Also, just as important as emailing the author, would be flagging the extension's blurb on the site to indicate to potential users that it is currently broken. That does not happen either.

I have always assumed that this reference to the script was more of a "we hope to have this functionality by the time it matters" kind of thing.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2355&start=10#p16128
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Swearing obscenely (at Inform 7)
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-04-26 12:23:42

I suppose I would have tried something like
[code]
Rule for printing a parser error when the latest parser error is the only understood as far as error:
	if the current action is swearing obscenely and (the player's command includes "fuck" or the player's command includes "screw"):
		instead say "Your body is no longer capable of performing sexual acts, and attempts to do them invariably result in violent acts instead."
		
Check turning something when the player's command includes "screw":
	if the noun is a person: 
		try swearing obscenely;
		stop the action.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2355&start=10#p16129
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Swearing obscenely (at Inform 7)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-26 12:44:43

[quote="Felix"]I suppose I would have tried something like
[code]
Rule for printing a parser error when the latest parser error is the only understood as far as error:
	if the current action is swearing obscenely and (the player's command includes "fuck" or the player's command includes "screw"):
		instead say "Your body is no longer capable of performing sexual acts, and attempts to do them invariably result in violent acts instead."
		
Check turning something when the player's command includes "screw":
	if the noun is a person: 
		try swearing obscenely;
		stop the action.
[/code][/quote]

Don't think that works -- if there's a parser error, then the current action doesn't get changed from "waiting." If you try this:

[code]Rule for printing a parser error when the latest parser error is the only understood as far as error:
	 if the current action is swearing obscenely and (the player's command includes "fuck" or the player's command includes "screw"):
		instead say "Your body is no longer capable of performing sexual acts, and attempts to do them invariably result in violent acts instead.";
	otherwise:
		say "I only understood you as far as wanting to perform [the current action]."[/code]

then "fuck you" yields "I only understood you as far as wanting to perform waiting."

UPDATE: You can use the action_to_be trick, I guess:

[code]To decide which action name is the action to be: (- action_to_be -).

Rule for printing a parser error when the latest parser error is the only understood as far as error and the action to be is the swearing obscenely action and (the player's command includes "fuck" or the player's command includes "screw"):
	instead say "Your body is no longer capable of performing sexual acts, and attempts to do them invariably result in violent acts instead."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2355&start=10#p16130
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Swearing obscenely (at Inform 7)
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-04-26 12:56:12

I'm pretty satisfied now that the solution I came up with is about as clean as it can be. I made a few changes: "Copulating with" is the main action, which actually prints the refusal message. Text-copulating got renamed "Sexually cursing" and it redirects to copulating with yourself. Which of course makes masturbating redundant, so it was removed.

I also remembered that you can throw extra tokens into an "understand ... as a mistake" line, so I've used that in other places where I want a [text] token.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2355&start=10#p16131
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Swearing obscenely (at Inform 7)
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-04-26 14:04:46

[quote="matt w"]if there's a parser error, then the current action doesn't get changed from "waiting."[/quote]
Aha! That's good to know. Thanks for pointing it out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2330&start=10#p16132
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF and IP
User: Genstein / DateTime: 2011-04-26 14:17:46

Thanks all [emote];)[/emote] As a footnote, I discussed it further with the M.D., who made very intelligent observations about the state of IP law and contract enforcability, and in particular observed that the default position in law is probably rather less favourable I appear to believe, which if true (and it may be) is somewhat concerning. He did his best to accommodate me - an excellent fellow he was in fact - but wasn't able to go as far as I wanted, for what I suspect are indeed (his) very sound business reasons.

In the end it was a case of "our way or the highway". Rather to their surprise, I found little alternative but to express a penchant for highways.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2358&start=0#p16133
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hyperlink Interface -- Wrong Kind of Value
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-04-26 14:21:14

When I was running the extension library, I did have a script that would run the extension examples and tell me if compilation failed. (Checking to see whether they did what the author [i]intended[/i] is another question, and I didn't always have a way to check that, since it required a second file containing intended output. We did this with all the built-in extensions, but not with external ones.) If I found something, I would either make a minor tweak myself and alert the author that this had been done, or I would email the author. I was also marking up the website to indicate which extensions had been successfully run against which builds.

So it did happen at one time. These days, I know that the extension team (well, mostly Mark Musante) does test every new incoming extension and bounce those that don't meet certain standards; he's actually more rigorous about this than I was. 

To the best of my knowledge, however, the verification of extensions against new builds has gone by the wayside. I don't know whether this is down to a lack of tools or simply to the fact that it would be a fair amount of work to do -- much larger now that the selection of extensions has grown so much.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2358&start=10#p16134
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hyperlink Interface -- Wrong Kind of Value
User: Gorobay / DateTime: 2011-04-26 14:52:14

[quote="emshort"]To the best of my knowledge, however, the verification of extensions against new builds has gone by the wayside. I don't know whether this is down to a lack of tools or simply to the fact that it would be a fair amount of work to do -- much larger now that the selection of extensions has grown so much.[/quote]
In that case, it might be useful to put a note beside each extension giving the last build of Inform the extension is guaranteed to work in.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2358&start=10#p16135
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hyperlink Interface -- Wrong Kind of Value
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-04-26 14:58:58

This is no longer something I control. There are some people who volunteered last year-ish to do an overhaul on the extensions page, which might well include things like this as well as user feedback; I don't know whether that is coming to anything. 

If people are interested in volunteering their services in some respect (and I don't know enough about the current situation to know whether those services will be useful), the thing to do is to ping the I7 extensions email address and see what response comes back.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2359&start=0#p16136
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Help My Protagonist Escape from Danger
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-04-26 16:41:04

[code]Understand "run" as up when the location is the throne room.[/code]
[quote]>run
You'll have to say which compass direction to go in.[/quote]
1. It's not a compass direction you need to go in.

2. The parser chooses a partial match with a command that doesn't succeed (at least from the player's perspective) over an exact match with a command that does succeed.

3. In any case, how do I make this work?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2359&start=0#p16137
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help My Protagonist Escape from Danger
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-04-26 17:17:57

From the parser's perspective it did find an exact match.  The standard rules have the line[code]Understand "go" as going.[/code]and then later[code]Understand the commands "walk" and "run" as "go".[/code]
So if you want to replace this meaning of ``run,'' you must write[code]Understand the command "run" as something new.[/code]
But what you probably want is something completely different: to supply a direction to the going action when one isn't provided.  You can do that with this code:[code]Rule for supplying a missing noun while an actor going in the throne room (this is the flee upwards from the throne room rule):
	now the noun is up.
The flee upwards from the throne room rule is listed before the block vaguely going rule in the for supplying a missing noun rulebook.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2358&start=10#p16138
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hyperlink Interface -- Wrong Kind of Value
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-04-26 18:43:38

Mark has caught more than one dumb thing I nearly published, so I can attest to his diligence as far as manually reading an extension before posting.   But I'm not surprised he doesn't do regression tests for the reasons Em said.  (Em, if you have a fancy tool, can you just give it to Mark?) 

As for the error itself, the syntax changed to be "activity on numbers" or "activity on colors" or whatever.  The "something" is still needed unless the activity is 'on nothing'.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2330&start=10#p16139
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF and IP
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-04-26 18:47:38

What Ghalev said. 

If your company's legalese overreaches, bring it up with HR to have it corrected.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=959&start=20#p16140
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment!
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-04-26 20:44:13

I have been using Parchment on my own server, as a way of introducing people to IF.

All of the z formats work great (I use the zcode2js converter) but I can't seem to get Glulx games to load... either converted or straight as they were created by Inform 7.

I get the error "Parchment could not load load the story. Check your connection, and that the URL is correct." using the straight xyz.ulx file, and a blank screen after loading if I use the xyz.ulx.js file from the converter.

Is it not possible for me to host Glulx games on my server?  Or am I just missing something?

Oh, and I am using the parchment version from 3/24/2011.

Thanks!

Edit to add:  Okay, the xyz.ulx.js file is loading... it is just taking about 30 seconds after the screen blanks.  I wasn't waiting that long after the "Parchment is Loading" screen went away.  So everything is working.  I was just used to faster z-code loads.  So, never mind.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=959&start=20#p16141
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment!
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-04-26 21:35:12

Okay, here is a real issue....  [emote];)[/emote]

In The Reliques of Tolti-Aph (game I decided to test with) the status bar is not showing.  It shows in Inform, but not Parchment.

Do I need to change something to get it to show?  The z-code games all show the status bar.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2359&start=0#p16142
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help My Protagonist Escape from Danger
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-26 22:11:31

Or if you only want "run" to be a useful command when in the throne room, this is a more specific solution that unplugs "run" from going in general.

[code]"Runny McRun"

Throne room is a room. "You're in the throne room. Corinth is up from here."

Corinth is up from throne room. "You're in Corinth. The throne room is down from here."

Understand the command "run" as something new. [detaches 'run' from the go action]

Understand "run" as running.

Running is an action applying to nothing.

Check running:
	if the player is in the throne room, try going up;
	otherwise say "You don't need to run right now." [or your alternate message/code here]

Test me with "up / down / run / run".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=959&start=20#p16143
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment!
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-04-26 22:23:49

Try the quixe branch which shows the status line. There are likely to be bugs, so please report them in the bug tracker.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=959&start=20#p16144
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment!
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-04-26 22:32:08

[quote="Dannii"]Try the quixe branch which shows the status line. There are likely to be bugs, so please report them in the bug tracker.[/quote]

Quixe branch?  Do you mean the Quixe branch off of github?  <a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/erkyrath/quixe">https://github.com/erkyrath/quixe</a>?  Or the src/quixe folder under Parchment for a different quixe.js?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2358&start=10#p16145
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hyperlink Interface -- Wrong Kind of Value
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-04-26 22:41:53

I believe the perl script I had was passed on with everything else. What I dont know is whether there are reasons why that script is no longer adequate to the task.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=959&start=20#p16146
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment!
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-04-26 22:47:10

No, Parchment's quixe branch: <a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/curiousdannii/parchment/tree/quixe">https://github.com/curiousdannii/parchment/tree/quixe</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=10#p16147
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2011-04-26 22:49:50

Oh wow, I hadn't even heard of ChoiceScript before.

Thanks for this. I think I might actually release a game for once!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=959&start=20#p16148
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment!
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-04-26 22:50:07

[quote="Dannii"]No, Parchment's quixe branch: <a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/curiousdannii/parchment/tree/quixe">https://github.com/curiousdannii/parchment/tree/quixe</a>[/quote]

Cool!  Thanks, I hadn't seen this.

Will it still play z-code games as well, or should I install it in another directory for testing Glulx games?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=959&start=20#p16149
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment!
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-04-26 22:52:15

No it plays both. I just ported GlkOte to jQuery, but I haven't tested it thoroughly so there are still likely to be bugs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=959&start=20#p16150
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment!
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-04-26 22:57:43

Alright, I will report any problems I find in the bug tracker!

Thanks again!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=959&start=20#p16151
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment!
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-04-26 23:15:39

So far it looks great!

I will torture it more tomorrow and let you know what I find.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2358&start=10#p16152
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hyperlink Interface -- Wrong Kind of Value
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-04-27 06:51:59

[quote="emshort"]I believe the perl script I had was passed on with everything else. What I dont know is whether there are reasons why that script is no longer adequate to the task.[/quote]

Is the script part of a repository? Do you use Git, SVN, Mercurial? If so, we can presumably just grab it and update it ourselves. Personally I'd recommend making this script part of the build process, whether that be continuous integration or whatever you do. I can't imagine why there would be a lack of desire to make sure all builds still work with extensions. This really is a build process function and not relegated to "maintainers." I'm starting to get the picture that there is either a very closed development process or it's not one that's backed up by a lot of effective build processes of this sort. Given the fact that the IDE, the compiler, and the extensions are separate moving parts, a centralized build process seems almost a necessity. Probably a topic for a different thread, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2346&start=10#p16153
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Future of Text Games (and impact on game design)
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-04-27 08:33:36

[quote="shammack"][quote="bukayeva"] However, of those, I'm the only one that has tried to figure out if text games are still viable or worthwhile as an effort, even if only a hobbyist effort for gamers.[/quote]

What does this mean, exactly? Obviously there are still people who enjoy playing and writing them, so in what way might they not be viable/worthwhile?[/quote]

To game makers, "viable" usually doesn't just mean there's lots of people playing around with it. Or even a lot of people writing it. It means there's a critical enough and receptive enough audience to help us further our skills as game developers by providing an appropriate level of critique, analysis and code sharing. For game makers, even our hobby tends to be one we use for a lot of learning. We also tend to spend our time on things that at least ostensibly have something of a future so that audience of authors and players continue to increase, not just in number but in terms of the input and sharing of resources.

To someone who has already invested the time and/or effort, the question of "am I wasting my time" has probably already been answered or was never a concern. To others, that's not the case.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2358&start=10#p16154
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hyperlink Interface -- Wrong Kind of Value
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-04-27 13:14:19

No, there is not a general repository to which the public has access. 

I don't intend to join in a general discussion on the development process. It is indeed not as open as many people would prefer, but it's how Graham is willing to do this project, and he is the only one in a position to change how development is done. His discussion of this point can be found here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/learn/documents/January2007Document.txt">http://inform7.com/learn/documents/Janu ... cument.txt</a> (under "2b").

I am sorry this is frustrating to many people, but I don't run the builds, can't change the process, and have no insights on the project that I haven't already shared many times over the years. There are lots of threads on this both here and at rec.arts.int-fiction if you're interested, but I doubt I could say anything new at this point that would be helpful to anyone.

What I can offer is the occasional suggestion about how to accomplish something specific given the project structure that does exist. In this case, I think the best bet is to contact the extensions maintainers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2355&start=10#p16155
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Swearing obscenely (at Inform 7)
User: Minkovsky / DateTime: 2011-04-27 13:18:03

[quote="capmikee"]Right - which is why Juhana's solution makes sense. "That's not a verb I recognize" is a perfectly reasonable response to profanity. It's the half-supported, half-hidden nature of swearing obscenely that makes it obnoxious for authors.[/quote]
Yet still, don't forget that "damn" also means to put curse upon something, which may be used by some games or stories, for instance when there's a priest involved and you have to damn the dragon to stop it from killing you... Or something like that. So this can't really be ruled offensive by default. IMHO, "damn" is a mild-to-subHeavy curse.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2330&start=10#p16156
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF and IP
User: Minkovsky / DateTime: 2011-04-27 13:24:42

But what about schools? I kinda got interested about it, since the GNU pages said something about getting a disclaimer from work [i]or school[/i] in order to license the software properly. I wonder to what kinds of schools does this apply and why exactly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2330&start=10#p16157
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF and IP
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-04-27 13:34:00

There are schools that make IP claims on the creations of their students. See for instance this article about Digipen:

<a class="postlink" href="http://underdevelopmentlaw.com/solutions-to-student-ownership-and-the-digipen-ip-problem/">http://underdevelopmentlaw.com/solution ... p-problem/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2359&start=0#p16158
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help My Protagonist Escape from Danger
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-04-27 13:59:05

Two excellent answers. I think EmacsUser has answered my question as I asked it, whereas severedhand's answer is probably what I'd prefer. Both teach me something. Thank you.

(Also, now I know to search the documentation for "as something new" I notice there's an entire chapter on "Understanding" that I seem to have missed.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2355&start=10#p16159
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Swearing obscenely (at Inform 7)
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-04-27 13:59:51

[quote="Minkovsky"]Yet still, don't forget that "damn" also means to put curse upon something, which may be used by some games or stories, for instance when there's a priest involved and you have to damn the dragon to stop it from killing you... Or something like that. So this can't really be ruled offensive by default. IMHO, "damn" is a mild-to-subHeavy curse.[/quote]
That's a good argument for removing it from the Standard Library completely.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2360&start=0#p16160
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: The Unnamed - Beta Testers wanted
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-04-27 14:01:57

Greetings!

If anyone would like to help beta test a Lovecraft-inspired horror IF game, and are willing to provide feedback privately offline while it's still a WIP, please get in touch with me at: <a href="mailto:dwnaef@rive-fantasy.com">dwnaef@rive-fantasy.com</a>.

Over the next week or so I'll be working on polishing the props and game some more, and would appreciate any help. I think I've weeded out a lot of bugs and issues through alpha-phase testing, but doubtless there's more to be found.

It's a Glulx-sized game and runs best on Gargoyle. Other interpreters don't seem to support some of the in-game graphics displays I'd like to include in the final version, though I haven't tried them all yet.

Thanks in advance for any help or interest -- Dustin Neff

[img]http://rive-fantasy.com/Cover.jpg[/img]
[img]http://rive-fantasy.com/theunnamed_promo.jpg[/img]
[img]http://rive-fantasy.com/screenshot.jpg[/img]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2325&start=0#p16161
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Navigating with "left" and "right"
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-04-27 14:17:42

[url=http://eblong.com/zarf/if.html#huntdark]Hunter, In Darkness[/url] uses relative directions, but it's also a game that requires no mapping. For most games, the ease of play is well worth the sacrifice of realism. Breaking from convention will cause many players to think consciously about how you've implemented movement. If that's what you want, then you can make it a feature of the game. Otherwise, it may distract players from what's more important.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=20#p16162
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-04-27 14:26:49

Offtopic a bit:

RIP Elisabeth Sladen.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.atvtoday.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1069:bbc-to-repeat-classic-who-story-in-tribute-to-elisabeth-sladen&catid=2:cult-sci-fi&Itemid=5">http://www.atvtoday.co.uk/index.php?opt ... i&Itemid=5</a>

Even more offtopic:

Eldrad, King of Nothing (a track by my old band, featuring samples from The Hand of Fear)

<a class="postlink" href="http://eyeballsun.org/yearone.html#eldrad">http://eyeballsun.org/yearone.html#eldrad</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2325&start=0#p16163
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Navigating with "left" and "right"
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-04-27 14:29:37

My personal preference these days is to keep the compass -- it's much easier for me to build a mental model of the map that way, whereas I get totally lost in left/right games -- but to include a GO TO ROOM command that allows the player to interact without *using* the compass directions after the initial exploration.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2338&start=0#p16164
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: changing the "kind" of an I7 object
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-04-27 14:57:58

You always have the option of writing your own rules for an object, though...

A person can be petrified.

... and then rewrite instead or replacement check rules for actions that affect petrified people.

Depending on whether the object in question is more complex than the collection of affected rules, one or the other might be a more reasonable approach.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2325&start=0#p16165
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Navigating with "left" and "right"
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-04-27 15:24:14

If you must use relative directions, [i]please[/i] make sure the player has an easy way of finding out what each of the directions is set to.  Or perhaps have a rotating map graphic, where the "forward" room is always up on the screen from the current location, for example.

I played a game just last night that used relative directions, and half the time I ended up cycling in small loops as I tried to orient myself. (And, later in the same game, I somehow managed to enter a room in which "left" always brought me back to the same room, and all the other directions gave "You cannot go in that direction," without the usual exit lister kicking in.  Turned out I needed to go "out" first.)  It was arguably in character for the easily-confused kitten PC, but, augh.

The only game I could actually say I've enjoyed with relative directions is Pacian's [i]Rogue of the Multiverse[/i], and honestly that game was so much fun in all other respects that I'd have probably forgiven it an even more baroque navigational scheme (and, actually, the scheme worked well for a certain sequence later in the game).  I'm not saying that cardinal directions are the One True Right Answer, but relative directions seem to cause more problems than they solve.  Absolute directions (">go to kitchen"/">kitchen") seem to be more appropriate for giving the impression that the PC does know her way around but doesn't carry a compass.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2355&start=10#p16166
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Swearing obscenely (at Inform 7)
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-04-27 15:57:29

[quote]That's a good argument for removing it from the Standard Library completely.[/quote]

Mm, no, it isn't.

I'm not arguing for keeping it *in*. But saying that it might have to be changed in a game about a priest? That sort of argument can be levelled against every single verb. It should not be a criterion for building the standard library.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2361&start=0#p16167
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Getting started with Undum?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-27 16:01:11

I've downloaded Undum to try to do something for the Indigo SpeedIF (though I think I'll probably miss the deadline), and I'm finding the documentation kind of opaque on basic questions. 

Starting with the very basic: How do I edit an Undum game? Do I just open tutorial.game.en.js in a text editor and hack away? Do tab stops matter?

Also -- assuming that I'm ever ready to release a game, how do I do it? What files do I need to package together? 

The documentation mentions a .js file and an HTML file. When I open the HTML file that was included with the game, it just starts the game up. How do I edit it? 

Also, what's all [url=http://undum.com/API.html#h_28]this stuff[/url] talking about? Where does it go?

I sort of get the impression that the documentation is designed for people who have the slightest little clue about javascript, which is not me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2361&start=0#p16168
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Getting started with Undum?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-04-27 16:05:41

My impression is that Undum does require a lot of developer knowledge. However, I know Jon Ingold has made some tools to help create Undum content, and [url=http://threeedgedsword.wordpress.com/2011/03/31/undum-say-function/]this post[/url] suggests that some of those tools are already published and more may be forthcoming.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2361&start=0#p16169
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Getting started with Undum?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-27 16:15:15

Oh dear. That seems to make it very unlikely that I will make the deadline. Well, I can always release it some day as an annex to the SpeedIF. Speed-limit IF or something.

I think I'm actually OK with encasing my text in HTML tags, which is what that link of Jon's seems to help with.My project would involve lots of different colored text anyway, so I'd have to go into HTML for that, I think.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2361&start=0#p16170
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Getting started with Undum?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-04-27 16:19:08

What looked promising to me there was that it sounded as though he also does have (though may not have released) a thing that turns script files into whatever javascript format Undum needs. If you're interested, maybe email him? (Then again, speed-IF completed after the deadline has a long and honorable tradition of its own.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2361&start=0#p16171
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Getting started with Undum?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-04-27 16:44:10

I took a look at it a few days ago. Lacking other tools, yeah, you have to edit the tutorial files, see what they're doing, and change them. In a text editor. You'll have to know HTML, and enough Javascript to imitate some code.

The files in question: games/tutorial.en.html , games/media/games/tutorial/tutorial.game.en.js

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=20#p16172
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2011-04-27 16:52:14

[quote="capmikee"]Offtopic a bit:

RIP Elisabeth Sladen.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.atvtoday.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1069:bbc-to-repeat-classic-who-story-in-tribute-to-elisabeth-sladen&catid=2:cult-sci-fi&Itemid=5">http://www.atvtoday.co.uk/index.php?opt ... i&Itemid=5</a>[/quote]Yes my friends and I also grieved.  At 65 I regard this as still too young to depart this world, and I feel for her husband Brian and her daughter Sadie Miller who at the mere age of 26 has lost her mother.  The world has lost a great actress who created a memorable character.

PS I don't mind people discussing Dr Who in this thread, so long as the moderators approve.

Progress update: Was stuck for a while trying to design the code that actually [i]allows[/i] the player to pass a charge from one device to another, however I [i]have[/i] now solved it.

Meanwhile I've been accumulating a list of leser problems that I [i]haven't[/i] been able to figure out on my own.  These aren't actually interfering with my current project, but I'm keen to hear advice from anyone on these.

Three problems, all of these fairly minor in terms of my current project

[b]Problem #1:[/b]
I recently upgraded to the version of Inform7 "24th December 2010" when I started using my new PC.   While looking for answers in one of my experimental maps I received an error on code which had been accepted previously.  The newer version of Inform7 didn't like the fact that have a door which is situated between both north & south as well as between inside & outside.

[code]North of Delta Street Alleyway and south of the Musty Foyer is the scratched wooden door.  Inside of Delta Street Alleyway and outside of the Musty Foyer is the scratched wooden door.  The scratched wooden door is a door.  The scratched wooden door is closed.[/code]
Error: "[i]scratched wooden door seems to be a door with three ways out (specified 'North of Delta Street Alleyway and south of the Musty Foyer is the scratched wooden door'  , 'North of Delta Street Alleyway and south of the Musty Foyer is the scratched wooden door'   and 'Inside of Delta Street Alleyway and outside of the Musty Foyer is the scratched wooden door'  ), but you can only have one or two sides to a door in Inform: a one-sided door means a door which is only touchable and usable from one side, and an example might be a window through which one falls to the ground below. If you really need a three-sided cavity, best to make it a room in its own right[/i]."

Worked fine in the old version.  I guess it's not really essential to provide "Inside" and "Outside" as supplementary to the compass directions, but if there's a workaround to this I'll be very keen to know.  In TARDIS adrift it will be handy to offer the player "Inside" and "Outside" for egress through the TARDIS door rather than having to remember which direction the TARDIS is facing at a particular location.

[b]Problem #2:[/b]
How do you override the text for when the player is left in darkness?  Saying "It is now pitch dark in here!" doesn't work if night falls, or if the player steps out of the TARDIS onto a planet with a permanently dark region.

[b]Problem #3:[/b]
Follows on from the one above.  Can you illuminate or darken regions instead of individual rooms?

A TARDIS (like many inter-stellar spaceships) is vast and fully lit when powered up, but fully dark when powered down.  Power will be on and off several times during the game.  I've tried the below, but it produces a run-time error:

[code]The TARDIS Interior is a region.  The Console Room, TARDIS Kitchen, Fore end of TARDIS Broadway, Your Bedroom and Boot Cupboard 12 are in the TARDIS Interior.

To Darken the TARDIS:
	Now the TARDIS Interior is dark.

To Illuminate the TARDIS:
	Now the TARDIS Interior is lit.[/code]
The rough approach would be a full list:

[code]To Darken the TARDIS:
  	[Now the Console Room is dark;
	Now the TARDIS Kitchen is dark;
	Now the Fore end of TARDIS Broadway is dark;
	Now Your Bedroom is dark;
	Now Boot Cupboard 12 is dark.[/code]
However I'd like to avoid that if possible, so that I can more freely add or delete rooms inside the TARDIS.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=20#p16173
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-04-27 17:42:50

[quote="thefoxaroo"]
[b]Problem #3:[/b]
Follows on from the one above.  Can you illuminate or darken regions instead of individual rooms?[/quote]
I don't know the other answers off the top of my head, but I think you should just be able to do:
[code]To darken the TARDIS:
   now all rooms in the TARDIS Interior are dark.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2325&start=0#p16174
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Navigating with "left" and "right"
User: Pelican / DateTime: 2011-04-27 17:58:50

How would you handle a situation like this:

The character is on a ship/airplane with a large number of rooms, but as the ship/airplane itself can turn, n/s/e/w directions become less useful for navigation, in fact, it seems rather strange to use.

Is left/right navigation okay in this situation?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2325&start=0#p16175
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Navigating with "left" and "right"
User: Gorobay / DateTime: 2011-04-27 18:24:08

The same problem (it's hard to build a mental map with left/right) applies on a ship or a plane. As you say, compass directions make less sense on a ship, so you might consider using the extension Shipboard Directions. I don't know how appropriate that would be for a plane, but something similar would.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=30#p16176
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-27 18:42:29

[quote="thefoxaroo"]
[code]North of Delta Street Alleyway and south of the Musty Foyer is the scratched wooden door.  Inside of Delta Street Alleyway and outside of the Musty Foyer is the scratched wooden door.  The scratched wooden door is a door.  The scratched wooden door is closed.[/code]
Error: "[i]scratched wooden door seems to be a door with three ways out (specified 'North of Delta Street Alleyway and south of the Musty Foyer is the scratched wooden door'  , 'North of Delta Street Alleyway and south of the Musty Foyer is the scratched wooden door'   and 'Inside of Delta Street Alleyway and outside of the Musty Foyer is the scratched wooden door'  ), but you can only have one or two sides to a door in Inform: a one-sided door means a door which is only touchable and usable from one side, and an example might be a window through which one falls to the ground below. If you really need a three-sided cavity, best to make it a room in its own right[/i]."

Worked fine in the old version.  I guess it's not really essential to provide "Inside" and "Outside" as supplementary to the compass directions, but if there's a workaround to this I'll be very keen to know.  In TARDIS adrift it will be handy to offer the player "Inside" and "Outside" for egress through the TARDIS door rather than having to remember which direction the TARDIS is facing at a particular location.[/quote]

In the first example you could try something like this (untested):

[code]Instead of going outside in the Musty Foyer: try going south.
Instead of going inside in the Delta Street Alleyway: try going north.[/code]

(I think it's "in" and not "from.") 

In the general case you could maybe say something like this:

[code]Instead of going outside in the Tardis Entryway [or whatever it's called]: try entering the Tardis Door.
Instead of going inside when the location is the front side of the Tardis Door or the location is the back side of the Tardis Door: Try entering the Tardis Door.[/code]

though I'm particularly not entirely sure about that last bit. Anyway, 3.12 of the documentation might give you some ideas; another thing you can play around with is "the direction of the Tardis Door from the location."

I do recommend including this; it always bothers me when I'm in a building or something and I can't use "out" to leave.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2361&start=0#p16177
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Getting started with Undum?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-27 18:52:28

[quote="emshort"]What looked promising to me there was that it sounded as though he also does have (though may not have released) a thing that turns script files into whatever javascript format Undum needs. If you're interested, maybe email him? (Then again, speed-IF completed after the deadline has a long and honorable tradition of its own.)[/quote]

Those both look like good options -- I mean, I think I'll e-mail Jon eventually, and also complete this after the deadline, maybe in 2012. I can't even figure out how to open the HTML file in a text editor (the file opens, but it looks like the opening screen of the tutorial game instead of showing me the HTML tags). Also, it's the end of the term.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2358&start=10#p16179
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hyperlink Interface -- Wrong Kind of Value
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-04-27 21:14:12

You know, communication is also a big time-sink: if the extension maintainers are expected to email all authors when a new build breaks something--recent builds have been very destructive of old code!--well, with more than 200 extensions, that is now a mammoth task. Add to that responsibility the expectation that some seem to have that maintainers should themselves fix extensions if the authors don't step up to the plate to do so, and--well, that's a lot to ask an unpaid guy to do in his spare time just for love of the I7 user community. (Thanks again to Mark, Emily, and others for present and past contributions!)

User commenting, as Emily mentioned, has been discussed for the official I7 extension site; this would help immensely with the problem of alerting unsuspecting users to an extension's compatibility limitations (the major problem I see with the site at present; it's just too easy for a user to download an extension, try to use it, and find themselves wondering if the extension's failure to function is their fault, Inform's fault, or the extension author's fault.)

Maybe what's really needed to deal with the problem of broken code that stays broken is a way for users, rather than maintainers, to more easily branch extensions and post the fixes publicly. That way, if Mortimer Q. Procrastinate doesn't update his extension before I need to use it, I can make the required changes to get it working and post it for others to use. Maybe the IFWiki would be an appropriate place for this kind of activity; in any case, it wouldn't require much development to get it going.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2325&start=0#p16180
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Navigating with "left" and "right"
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-04-27 21:35:47

Nthing the compass directions as an acceptable suspension of disbelief.  I don't think of rooms as being any more "left" than "north", honestly - when I'm in a space, it's mostly a kinesthetic sense, relative to landmarks.  I still have to think twice about left vs. right - north, as a landmark relative to a mountain range or local cathedral, is easier to parse out.  Inside, my mental map of rooms relate to *each other* more than me, and the compass directions fit better with that.  (And the "GO TO [ROOM]" even better.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=30#p16181
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2011-04-27 21:49:01

[quote="shammack"][quote="thefoxaroo"]
[b]Problem #3:[/b]
Follows on from the one above.  Can you illuminate or darken regions instead of individual rooms?[/quote]
I don't know the other answers off the top of my head, but I think you should just be able to do:
[code]To darken the TARDIS:
   now all rooms in the TARDIS Interior are dark.[/code][/quote]
That worked a treat, thanks shammack!


[quote="matt w"]In the first example you could try something like this (untested):

[code]Instead of going outside in the Musty Foyer: try going south.
Instead of going inside in the Delta Street Alleyway: try going north.[/code]
(I think it's "in" and not "from.") 

In the general case you could maybe say something like this:

[code]Instead of going outside in the Tardis Entryway [or whatever it's called]: try entering the Tardis Door.
Instead of going inside when the location is the front side of the Tardis Door or the location is the back side of the Tardis Door: Try entering the Tardis Door.[/code]

though I'm particularly not entirely sure about that last bit. Anyway, 3.12 of the documentation might give you some ideas; another thing you can play around with is "the direction of the Tardis Door from the location."[/quote]
Approaches such as these occured to me, but are they able to be re-mapped later in the game?  The TARDIS will relocate to different places as the game progresses.  I've read through chapter 3.12 of the manual and this type of situation doesn't appear to be covered.  I'm sure though that other game designers have had a need for this though.  Any large vehicle such as a train, riverboat, ocean liner, submarine, aircraft or other spaceship type would incurr this situation (or maybe they took the easy way out and had the door face the same compass direction each time).

(BTW the name of the location immediately inside the TARDIS door is 'The Console Room'.)

[quote="matt w"]I do recommend including this; it always bothers me when I'm in a building or something and I can't use "out" to leave.[/quote]Same here. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=30#p16182
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-27 22:47:27

[quote="the foxaroo"]Approaches such as these occured to me, but are they able to be re-mapped later in the game?[/quote]

[quote]Runtime problem: Doors cannot be moved in play[/quote]

Well, poop. 

OK, here's what I got [EDIT: Someone with more of a clue might have something better]:

[code]The Console Room is a room. Og is a room. Bog is a room. Log is a room. Nog is a room.

The big dial is in the Console Room. The big dial has a room called the destination. The destination of the big dial is usually Og. The initial appearance of the big dial is "A big dial with a pointer is in the middle of the room." The description of the big dial is "It can be set to Og, Bog, Log, or Nog. It is currently set to [destination of the big dial]."

The Tardis Door is a door. The Tardis door is open. The Tardis Door is not openable. [Because I don't want to mess around with "open door". You might want to, depending on your puzzles.] The Tardis Door is north of the console room. "The Tardis door sits in its usual place, always to the north, thank Zog." 
Instead of entering the Tardis door: [This is the easy part]
	move the Tardis-door-prop to the destination of the big dial;
	move the player to the destination of the big dial.
	.
[And we have to set up a fake door to allow you to return. You could write some code to give the door a direction in each of these places, too, if you like.]
The Tardis-door-prop is a container. The Tardis-door-prop is privately-named. The Tardis-door-prop is enterable. The printed name of the Tardis-door-prop is "Tardis door." Understand "Tardis" and "door" as the Tardis-door-prop. The description of the Tardis-door-prop is "The Tardis door mysteriously sits in the middle of this trackless wilderness." The initial appearance of the Tardis-door-prop is  "The Tardis door mysteriously sits in the middle of this trackless wilderness."
Instead of entering the Tardis-door-prop:
	move the player to the Console Room;
	remove the Tardis-door-prop from play. 
Instead of inserting something into the Tardis-door-prop: [It would be a huge mess if you could do this, though it's probably wiser just to block this completely]
	say "You bestow [the noun] to the safety of the Tardis.";
	move the noun to the console room.

The fort is a container in the Console Room. The fort is enterable. The description of the fort is "You're not sure exactly why you built this fort."

Instead of setting the big dial to:
	if the topic understood matches "Og":
		now the destination of the big dial is Og;
		say "You set the dial to Og.";
	otherwise if the topic understood matches "Bog":
		now the destination of the big dial is Bog;
		say "You set the dial to Bog.";
	otherwise if the topic understood matches "Log":
		now the destination of the big dial is Log;
		say "You set the dial to Log.";
	otherwise if the topic understood matches "Nog":
		now the destination of the big dial is Nog;
		say "You set the dial to Nog.";
	otherwise:
		say "You have to set it to Og, Bog, Log, or Nog."

[Here's the stuff you were actually interested in.]
Instead of going outside in the Console Room: try entering the Tardis Door.
Instead of exiting when the player is in the Console Room: try entering the Tardis Door. [You have to say "the player is in the console room" rather than "the location is the console room" to cover cases where the player is exiting something that's in the console room -- "in the console room" is only true when the player isn't inside anything else. I think. The fort is there to test this.]
Instead of going inside when the Tardis-Door-Prop is in the location: try entering the Tardis-Door-Prop.

The player carries an ordinary whatsit. [For putting into the Tardis-Door-Prop.][/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2325&start=10#p16183
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Navigating with "left" and "right"
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-04-28 02:16:25

Compass navigation is almost always an abstraction and it's more than acceptable to expect that the player will and usually wants to suspend disbelief when compass directions wouldn't make sense in the game world, much like when you play a FPS you accept that the character in the game doesn't actually operate the gun by pushing a button on a mouse. 

Some games do give a reason for using compass directions: the player character might mention that they just choose an arbitrary direction as "north" and go with that. On boarding a ship your character might comment that it's easier to keep using compass directions even though they wouldn't map to actual compass directions, or you could start using aft/port etc and mention that compass directions are accepted as synonyms.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2325&start=10#p16184
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I6] Navigating with "left" and "right"
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-04-28 02:48:59

[quote="Juhana"][...] much like when you play a FPS you accept that the character in the game doesn't actually operate the gun by pushing a button on a mouse.[/quote]

Exactly so; the compass scheme is for the player, not the player-character.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=30#p16185
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-04-28 06:34:55

It's quite possible I'm misunderstanding the situation, but have you considered creating the TARDIS as an enterable container, and then just doing something like:

[code]instead of entering the TARDIS, now the player is in the Console Room;
instead of exiting when the location is the Console Room, now the player is in the location of the TARDIS;
instead of going inside when the TARDIS is in the location, try entering the TARDIS;
[/code]
That way:
[list][*]you could move the TARDIS object wherever you want during the game[/*:m]
[*]in/out should always go between the interior and wherever the TARDIS is[/*:m]
[*]you wouldn't have to worry about moving rooms and doors around[/*:m]
[*]you'd have an automatic "You can see the TARDIS here" (or whatever) message wherever the TARDIS is[/*:m][/list:u]

If you need a door on it, you could make the TARDIS object itself openable and understand "TARDIS door" as the TARDIS, which should cover entering from the outside. For the inside, put a separate door adjacent to the Console Room, and instead of going in that direction when the location is the console room, try exiting? (not sure if I have the right syntax for going through a door there, but you get the idea)  You would of course also want to check for putting things into the TARDIS, looking inside/outside it, etc. and respond appropriately.

I'm not sure how well that solution fits with your existing world layout, but if I were implementing a TARDIS that's how I'd do it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2358&start=10#p16186
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hyperlink Interface -- Wrong Kind of Value
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-04-28 06:51:06

[quote="ektemple"]You know, communication is also a big time-sink: if the extension maintainers are expected to email all authors when a new build breaks something--recent builds have been very destructive of old code!--well, with more than 200 extensions, that is now a mammoth task.[/quote]

Which is when developers usually turn to automation. [emote]:)[/emote] This is easily solvable given that the extensions mostly have examples that can serve as executable tests. Why not use that? That's a great feature of Inform, as far as I'm concerned.

[quote]Maybe what's really needed to deal with the problem of broken code that stays broken is a way for users, rather than maintainers, to more easily branch extensions and post the fixes publicly.[/quote]

I still think a better way is to use the script that allegedly exists, make it part of the build process, and then you know [i]right away[/i] if things don't work with the new build. This is build automation --- Development 101. Presumably the main development team knows the changes that are likely to have broken the extension so they could be in a great position to make the required change. Make that a known condition of submitting an extension to the site: i.e., "Your extension may be updated in terms of implementation when code changes to Inform break the logic of your extension. However, nothing will be done to change the intent of your extension." If you run the build a week before release (for a "beta bake" or equivalent), that gives the authors of extensions a week to respond with updated extensions. If they don't respond, the InformDev team makes the necessary implementation changes, which should be relatively small for any given release.

Again, this is all Development 101 so I don't mean to sound like I'm insulting anyone's intelligence. But this problem is easily solvable. Development teams do this all the time -- even on closed development projects.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=180#p16187
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Stew / DateTime: 2011-04-28 07:14:51

Welcome, pelle! I am the resident lurking guy with a bad elbow who registered at the start of last summer. [emote];)[/emote] Not many people probably remember me. (My elbow wasn't bad back then.  [emote]:lol:[/emote]) Just being goofy. Seriously, it's good to have you here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=30#p16188
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-04-28 07:15:06

I like it...

[code]Space is a scene.

When Space begins:
  move the TARDIS to the Console Room.

[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2362&start=0#p16189
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Unix interpreters
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-28 08:00:53

What's the state of glulx interpreters for unix/linux? Especially sound-capable ones?

I'm doing compatibility tests for my sound and graphics-using glulx game and at the front of the game, I want to give a list of sound+graphics capable interpreters for Mac, Windows and Unix. I'm not sure what to say for Unix. My research isn't turning up reliable answers (nor ones I can test. It's the only system I don't have.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2362&start=0#p16190
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Unix interpreters
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-04-28 08:08:10

At the very least, make sure it runs in Gargoyle. Really, that goes without saying for all platforms. [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2362&start=0#p16191
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Unix interpreters
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-28 08:39:20

Heh. So... are you saying, Gargoyle runs on Unix too and it sports sound?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=30#p16192
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-04-28 08:44:57

Inspired by this discussion, I've submitted my updated version of Conditional Backdrops to the i7 site. Unless and until it is accepted there, you can find it at:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.eyeballsun.org/i/Conditional%20Backdrops.i7x">http://www.eyeballsun.org/i/Conditional%20Backdrops.i7x</a>

"An extension to allow a single rulebook to determine the presence of multiple backdrops."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2362&start=0#p16193
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Unix interpreters
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-04-28 08:57:52

[quote="severedhand"]Heh. So... are you saying, Gargoyle runs on Unix too and it sports sound?[/quote]
It was written primarily for Unix so how could it not run there? [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2361&start=0#p16194
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Getting started with Undum?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-04-28 09:32:01

[quote="zarf"]I took a look at it a few days ago. Lacking other tools, yeah, you have to edit the tutorial files, see what they're doing, and change them. In a text editor. You'll have to know HTML, and enough Javascript to imitate some code.
[/quote]

I'm doing okay, and my Javascript is both rudimentary and much-decayed; it is, at least, pretty easy to make it function as a vanilla CYOA -- which ignores most of the stuff that makes Undum attractive, but it's something. (It is very persnickety about typing everything just so, though, so Jon's extension should be highly useful.)

Matt: what text editor are you using?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2362&start=0#p16195
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Unix interpreters
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-28 09:32:02

You guys may know all this, but random strangers like me don't [emote]:)[/emote]

Gargoyle's homepage doesn't have the word Linux anywhere -

<a class="postlink" href="http://ccxvii.net/gargoyle/">http://ccxvii.net/gargoyle/</a>

and neither does the downloads page:

<a class="postlink" href="http://code.google.com/p/garglk/downloads/list">http://code.google.com/p/garglk/downloads/list</a>

I went to IFArchive too, where I saw some older versions for Unix, but then I didn't know if they had sound, or if sound was a recent addition.

In conclusion, I had no idea where Gargoyle came from, but now I do - a little bit. I still wouldn't want to have to field a quiz on the subject of its origins.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2362&start=0#p16196
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Unix interpreters
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-04-28 09:44:35

That's because they're listed here: <a class="postlink" href="http://code.google.com/p/garglk/wiki/Packages">http://code.google.com/p/garglk/wiki/Packages</a>

If you haven't got a linux install, and you care about ensuring it works, you should really get yourself a linux install! Through much ingenuity you can even install distributions like Ubuntu as Windows programs: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/windows-installer">http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/windows-installer</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2361&start=0#p16197
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Getting started with Undum?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-28 09:48:23

[quote="maga"]Matt: what text editor are you using?[/quote]

TextEdit, on the Mac, and I just got it to work. (For posterity: Turn on "Ignore rich text commands in HTML files" in the Open and Save tab of the preferences. Opening it with the rich text commands on and converting to plain text doesn't work.) This means I'll probably finish sooner than I'd thought, though the deadline is right out.

If your Javascript is rudimentary and decayed, that means you've forgotten more of it than I know. ([url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2081&p=14082#p14082]For instance.[/url]) 

...I don't need to understand CSS if I don't want to modify the default look (besides the font color), do I?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2363&start=0#p16198
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Paging Erik Temple re: Real-Time Delays
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-28 09:50:19

Sorry for the page, but your blog has no contact details and I couldn't find your email addy in the extension or in your profile.

I added RTD to my game this eve for the purpose of putting tiny unbreakable pauses between successive requests of the player to 'press space to continue' - since one time my finger slipped and I went through 2 pages of text at once. It's working fine. Also, I tried it without also including Fixed Point Maths and it still works fine, I'm guessing because I'm only using small numbers in a simple fashion (like 500ms pauses.) Is there any danger in not including Fixed Point Maths?

I noticed a sideeffect of RTD in Gargoyle, though - when a delay ends, it seems to generate a line feed. You notice this in Gargoyle because the text comes up from the bottom, so what happens is - you see a bunch of text - then there's a pause for the delay you asked for - then the text bumps up one more line.

There's no noticeable effect in interpreters that print from the top down.

I did find one really cheap workaround - request a super short delay, which generates the line feed so fast it appears to come as part of the original text dump - then trigger the delay you actually want. Two delays in a row does not generate more than one line bump.

Thanks for the extension.

Edit - Actually the two delay method is kinda neat! It gives the screen a tiny bit of motion which helps draw your attention to the fact new information has appeared. Something you can miss when static blobs appear instantly...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2361&start=0#p16199
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Getting started with Undum?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-04-28 10:23:32

[quote]...I don't need to understand CSS if I don't want to modify the default look (besides the font color), do I?[/quote]

Not in the slightest. An HTML font tag will do the trick.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2363&start=0#p16200
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Paging Erik Temple re: Real-Time Delays
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-04-28 10:24:49

While my email address is available from a number of sources, I actually prefer that folks post to the forums for most questions so that the answers remain publically available. (I'd love for my email to appear in my profile here, but the profile refuses to show it even though I've indicated that it should. I've always assumed that the absence of profile emails is a general configuration set by the maintainer.)

The officially released version of Real-Time Delays, at least, doesn't require Fixed Point Maths. There was a preliminary version that might have required FPM, but I don't remember. Did you download RTD from the inform7.com?

Could you post the code that is giving you spurious line breaks? I couldn't reproduce that issue, and RTD itself is very unlikely to be the cause in any case. I suspect that you are printing in such a way that the "press any key" instruction interrupts line input, which will result in a line break on all interpreters but Zoom and the OS X IDE. A code excerpt should indicate whether that's the case or not.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2363&start=0#p16201
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Paging Erik Temple re: Real-Time Delays
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-28 11:00:27

Hey Erik. In answer to your 1st question, I did download the extension from

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/time/#The_Passage_of_Time">http://inform7.com/extensions/time/#The_Passage_of_Time</a>

The documentation on the site and in the extension, once downloaded, says it needs FPM, but if it's working without, maybe it's just that note that got missed?

Re: spuriousness - Each delay comes right after a 'say' that ended with typesetting (either [roman type] or [normal style], a glulx style I defined) and is followed by a keypress-getting loop.

Here's a typical chunk:

[code]To reeeally wait:
	wait 500 milliseconds before continuing, strictly.

		say "[italic type]SUCCESS[roman type] - Sound is supported![paragraph break]You should be hearing an introductory tune playing. Press 'T' to hear it again. If you find you can't hear the tune, you may need to unmute or turn up your computer's (or speakers') sound volume.[paragraph break][line break][bold type]<<  Press SPACE to continue to the next test when you're ready  >>[roman type]"; 
		reeeally wait; [prevent hitting space twice accidentally]
		while the infinite_loop is 1 begin;
			let k be the chosen letter;
			if k is 32, make no decision; [proceed with checks if space pressed]
			if k is 84 or k is 116, play_mischief_music;
		end while.[/code]

Though I experimented with removing the [roman type] and the bump still happened.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2358&start=10#p16202
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hyperlink Interface -- Wrong Kind of Value
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-04-28 11:30:07

[quote="bukayeva"][quote="ektemple"]You know, communication is also a big time-sink: if the extension maintainers are expected to email all authors when a new build breaks something--recent builds have been very destructive of old code!--well, with more than 200 extensions, that is now a mammoth task.[/quote]

Which is when developers usually turn to automation. [emote]:)[/emote] This is easily solvable given that the extensions mostly have examples that can serve as executable tests. Why not use that? That's a great feature of Inform, as far as I'm concerned.[/quote]

You must be responding to someone else's post  [emote];)[/emote]. Automation is non-controversial. I was talking about email communication, and none of the extensions have an email field to automate.

[quote="bukayeva"][quote="ektemple"]Maybe what's really needed to deal with the problem of broken code that stays broken is a way for users, rather than maintainers, to more easily branch extensions and post the fixes publicly.[/quote]
I still think a better way is to use the script that allegedly exists, make it part of the build process, and then you know [i]right away[/i] if things don't work with the new build. This is build automation --- Development 101.[/quote]

Leveraging the extension examples would definitely be a good way to test new builds of Inform. If the extension examples had been used to automatically test the 6Exx build of Inform, for example, the bugs that made it necessary to release 6Fxx immediately afterward would have been caught. But that's a different issue from actually fixing the extensions, which I'm still not willing to volunteer anyone else's labor to do.  [emote];)[/emote] 

[quote]Presumably the main development team knows the changes that are likely to have broken the extension so they could be in a great position to make the required change. Make that a known condition of submitting an extension to the site: i.e., "Your extension may be updated in terms of implementation when code changes to Inform break the logic of your extension. However, nothing will be done to change the intent of your extension." If you run the build a week before release (for a "beta bake" or equivalent), that gives the authors of extensions a week to respond with updated extensions. If they don't respond, the InformDev team makes the necessary implementation changes, which should be relatively small for any given release.[/quote]

I think you're overly sanguine about the ease of fixing up other people's extensions, as well as the havoc that a new build can wreak. As just one example, I spent hours fixing just a couple of my extensions due to a simple syntax deprecation in a recent build; this revealed a number of other bugs and...well, it just ballooned into a lot of pretty tiresome work. And there are more than 200 extensions in the library.

[quote]Again, this is all Development 101 so I don't mean to sound like I'm insulting anyone's intelligence. But this problem is easily solvable. Development teams do this all the time -- even on closed development projects.[/quote]

What you're saying is not something anyone here would argue with on the merits, nor do our intelligences have any difficulty grasping it. The problem is that you're talking about ideal solutions, whereas other folks are taking the whole sociology into account: the development process as it stands, the history of the extension librarian's duties, and so on. Personally, I'm also doing things like putting myself in the shoes of the guy who signed up to be the extension library maintainer, with my main task being to test and post author's extensions to the website. Now someone comes along and says that the I should actually maintain not just the [i]library[/i] but also everyone's [i]individual extensions[/i]. I think that I might resent that a little...

Anyway, to be honest I think you're expending energy in the wrong way. As Emily also suggested, you will have more impact if you contact the extension library maintainers and volunteer your services helping out with some aspect of this. Or write to Graham and offer to run the next build on all the extension examples before release and log bug reports as needed.

Personally, I don't have time to do either of those things, nor would I feel qualified to try to fix everyone's extensions (Jesse McGrew's being a good case in point). But I would have time to contribute once in a while to a crowdsourced effort at maintaining abandoned extensions such as the one I suggested in my previous post (which is why I suggested it).

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2363&start=0#p16203
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Paging Erik Temple re: Real-Time Delays
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-04-28 12:11:43

[quote="severedhand"]The documentation on the site and in the extension, once downloaded, says it needs FPM, but if it's working without, maybe it's just that note that got missed?[/quote]

Yep, that's what happened--I missed deleting the description of the dependencies from the first paragraph when I cleaned up the extension for official release. The only dependency is Glulx Entry Points. Thanks for pointing that out!

[quote="severedhand"]Re: spuriousness - Each delay comes right after a 'say' that ended with typesetting (either [roman type] or [normal style], a glulx style I defined) and is followed by a keypress-getting loop.[/quote]

Huh, it's an odd sort of break, in that if you don't actually print anything during the input loops, the next text to be printed will fill the empty line. It looks like GarGlk is printing a break on the first glk_select call, but printing over that break unless the game actively prints something in the meantime. I'm not positive about that, though... Anyway, this seems to fix it:

[code]To reeeally wait:
	say "[run paragraph on]";
	wait 500 milliseconds before continuing, strictly;

When play begins:
	say "[italic type]SUCCESS[roman type] - Sound is supported![paragraph break]You should be hearing an introductory tune playing. Press 'T' to hear it again. If you find you can't hear the tune, you may need to unmute or turn up your computer's (or speakers') sound volume.[paragraph break][line break][bold type]<<  Press SPACE to continue to the next test when you're ready  >>[roman type] ";
	reeeally wait; [prevent hitting space twice accidentally]
	wait for any key;
	say "[line break]".[/code]

By the way, you might want to consider whether you really want to do this, at least in precisely this way. If I'm replaying your game, for example, and not really reading the text, there is a half-second in which "press space" is printed on screen but won't respond to input. I could hit the spacebar once, twice, or even more times before it actually does anything.

It might be better to wait for the half-second before printing "press space". But possibly that suffers from the same issue that prompted you to look at this...

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2362&start=0#p16204
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Unix interpreters
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-04-28 12:19:02

I believe Gargoyle is the only Glk implementation on Unix that supports sound, and apart from Spatterlight it is also the only one for OS X.

For best results when using Ogg, your sound files should be in stereo and have a 44.1 kHz sample rate, 16 bit samples. Other formats will work but will get piped through the SDL_sound conversion routines, the results of which are passable but deeply unsatisfying. (Sample rate conversions represent the worst case scenario.)

This is a Gargoyle-ism that I hope to eliminate at some point in the future. SDL development has picked back up recently and the forthcoming SDL_sound 2.0 is supposed to have its own mixer capabilities.

I know it's bad form to encourage authors to work around library limitations and I apologize for that. David Kinder's mantra of "fix the interpreter!" is appropriate and definitely applies here. But I haven't been able to find a good alternative to SDL that works reliably on the target platforms, so the best I can do for now is to point out that there's a "ideal" format for sounds played by Gargoyle and let you make the call.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2358&start=10#p16205
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hyperlink Interface -- Wrong Kind of Value
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-04-28 12:26:47

[quote]You must be responding to someone else's post  [emote];)[/emote]. Automation is non-controversial. I was talking about email communication, and none of the extensions have an email field to automate.[/quote]

Build process planning would have suggested that this was needed. But, yeah, if that's not there then currently you couldn't automate that part.

[quote]But that's a different issue from actually fixing the extensions, which I'm still not willing to volunteer anyone else's labor to do.[/quote]

Agreed. But presumably InformDev kinda thought this problem through when they decided to make Inform an extension-based tool. There are active communities out there -- like Eclipse or Firefox -- that use plugs-ins and extensions regularly and could be used as a model for how extension maintenance and update is done. These are problems that have already been solved by groups very similar to Inform's apparent development model. And those are, for the most part, acting with volunteer communities.

[quote]I think you're overly sanguine about the ease of fixing up other people's extensions, as well as the havoc that a new build can wreak. As just one example, I spent hours fixing just a couple of my extensions due to a simple syntax deprecation in a recent build; this revealed a number of other bugs and...well, it just ballooned into a lot of pretty tiresome work. And there are more than 200 extensions in the library.[/quote]

Did the "number of other bugs" have anything to do with the syntax deprecation? If not, then that's a different issue. Existing bugs are not what we're talking about here. We're talking about extensions that break solely because of a change to a build. Quality control of the sort you may be referring to is not going to be handled by a build process. That's up to the person writing the code in the first place.

[quote]Anyway, to be honest I think you're expending energy in the wrong way. As Emily also suggested, you will have more impact if you contact the extension library maintainers and volunteer your services helping out with some aspect of this. Or write to Graham and offer to run the next build on all the extension examples before release and log bug reports as needed.[/quote]

Fair enough. Although the impression I got from Emily is that the development process was the way it was and there wasn't a lot of room for input, since she indicated this seemed to be a frustration point for various people. So I'm not sure what the "right way" is to expend energy since it seems like someone new here has to learn all this by asking questions here and getting information piece-meal. I do allow that I might have missed some page or some information, like that little section that Emily referred to. Likewise, if the development process has been a source of frustration and has been discussed before, I'm not sure how someone new is supposed to find that information to know what the right way to expend energy is. I see a lot of references to Graham but when I search, I don't see that he posts much and so it seems the lead developer may not be participating in these discussions much.

Anyway, I agree. This isn't the thread to discuss this. I'm not sure where the appropriate place is -- but that's another discussion. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2362&start=0#p16206
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Unix interpreters
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-04-28 12:45:35

Vorbis for audio is a good idea anyway, regardless of platform or interpreter. It's high fidelity at low size. MP3 makes zero sense anymore.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2361&start=0#p16207
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Getting started with Undum?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-04-28 12:47:10

[quote="maga"]An HTML font tag will do the trick.[/quote]
Somewhere a web developer is coughing up blood.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2362&start=0#p16208
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Unix interpreters
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-04-28 12:55:39

[quote="bcressey"]I haven't been able to find a good alternative to SDL that works reliably on the target platforms,[/quote]
I use OpenAL with [url=http://kcat.strangesoft.net/alure.html]Alure[/url]. It may be overkill for Gargoyle, but I find it works well on all platforms. It was a bit of a hassle to compile on Mac (but so are many libraries that's started on Linux - universal binaries is not something they expect), but otherwise I've had no problems and my engine ([url=http://opensludge.sourceforge.net/]SLUDGE[/url]) runs on all three platforms.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2358&start=20#p16209
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hyperlink Interface -- Wrong Kind of Value
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-04-28 13:02:17

[quote]This is easily solvable given that the extensions mostly have examples that can serve as executable tests. Why not use that? [/quote]

Examples demonstrate how to use an extension; they make poor tests.  The notion that the three examples could be a good test of Custom Library Messages is laughable.  

I'm generally fine with the process as-is.  While the occasional broken extension happens, I don't expect Inform to upgrade its core self forever.  When the project's complete, the broken extension problem will disappear.   We're just experiencing growing pains in the meantime.   

I do not want the extensions page to look as complex as a source code repository.  It's off-putting enough for many authors in its current, simple form. 

Moreover, many of those extensions can be taken down, their features now absorbed into the core language.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2362&start=0#p16210
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Unix interpreters
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-04-28 13:03:46

Thanks for the pointer. I'll check it out. Do you happen to know if it works on PPC / OS X 10.4?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2362&start=10#p16211
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Unix interpreters
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-04-28 13:09:33

Yes, it does.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2361&start=10#p16212
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Getting started with Undum?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-04-28 13:38:33

[quote="Juhana"][quote="maga"]An HTML font tag will do the trick.[/quote]
Somewhere a web developer is coughing up blood.[/quote]
MY WORK HERE IS DONE

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2358&start=20#p16213
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hyperlink Interface -- Wrong Kind of Value
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-04-28 13:42:30

[quote="bukayeva"][quote]I think you're overly sanguine about the ease of fixing up other people's extensions, as well as the havoc that a new build can wreak. As just one example, I spent hours fixing just a couple of my extensions due to a simple syntax deprecation in a recent build; this revealed a number of other bugs and...well, it just ballooned into a lot of pretty tiresome work. And there are more than 200 extensions in the library.[/quote]

Did the "number of other bugs" have anything to do with the syntax deprecation? If not, then that's a different issue. Existing bugs are not what we're talking about here. We're talking about extensions that break solely because of a change to a build. Quality control of the sort you may be referring to is not going to be handled by a build process. That's up to the person writing the code in the first place.[/quote]

No, I'm not referring to bugs in my code. The bugs I'm talking about were existing bugs in I7 that were exposed by the fact that the newly deprecated syntax could handle situations that the syntax meant to take up the slack could not. (The latter was [i]supposed[/i] to be able to handle them, but there were bugs in the I7 parsing that kept it from working as it should have. I believe that these bugs have since been fixed, but due to other limitations in Inform and the complexity of my code, the workarounds ramified into long trial-and-error sessions to get the extensions working again.) 

[quote="bukayeva"]I'm not sure what the "right way" is to expend energy since it seems like someone new here has to learn all this by asking questions here and getting information piece-meal.[/quote]

I can see why you might perceive this forum as a place to communicate with the developers of I7 (most posts are about I7, after all), but in fact, as you noted, the core developer (Graham) isn't at all a regular participant. Still, I'm not sure everything is quite as opaque as you make out. Emailing the developers or posting to the public suggestions site (linked from the I7 home page) don't seem like wild-card approaches, anyway.  [emote]:)[/emote] 

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2360&start=0#p16214
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Unnamed - Beta Testers wanted
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-04-28 14:28:46

No time to beta, but I totally want to play on release!

(Grammar pedant/
Corpulent: I do not think that word means what you think it means. /pedant)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2360&start=0#p16215
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Unnamed - Beta Testers wanted
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-04-28 15:48:47

Thanks All, I've got enough testers now to put it through its paces! - Dustin Neff

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2360&start=0#p16216
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Unnamed - Beta Testers wanted
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-04-28 15:50:30

Good to hear! If you have time, could you post about the graphics incompatibilities you're seeing? As far as I know, most interpreters should have similar graphics capabilities.

Thanks!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=30#p16217
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-28 15:56:14

shammack's solution seems very nice and much more true to the TARDIS than having a door in the middle of nowhere. Not sure what I was thinking with that description.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2363&start=0#p16218
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Paging Erik Temple re: Real-Time Delays
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-04-28 16:31:45

Just a note: I did a little more poking around and determined that it isn't the glk_select call in itself that's printing the blank line, and it's not characteristic of any particular variety of Glk. The culprit seems to be the call to the "timed activity rulebook"--there's no request for printing a line break in that rulebook; the call to the rulebook itself generates the break. I haven't studied Inform's line break algorithm's well enough to understand why, but that's the basic etiology.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2361&start=10#p16219
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Getting started with Undum?
User: joningold / DateTime: 2011-04-28 16:48:52

To chip in on this: I found writing for Undum absolutely horrible until I made a tool, because JS is a language full of punctuation and with a very slow test/debug cycle. (The HTML tag thing I released earlier is because, if you get your tags wrong, that bit of content disappears [i]silently[/i]. If you can live with that, great, but I couldn't.)

For the games I've written I've used a perl script to turn a plain-text format into the .game.js file. 

The perl script will get a release soon, once I've documented it properly. It's grown to be pretty powerful, so that's taking longer than I'd hoped. Also, it requires some changes to the undum.js file where I've added features, so I need to tidy that up too.

Anyway, once done, you release by copying the entire file-structure from Undum down to a server or something, and make your games main .html page by copying the example and changing the .game.js file it points to.

For authoring on a Mac I can't rave enough about TextWrangler, which is free, does syntax colouring for js (especially helpful if you're writing it straight), as well as html and perl and others, and [i]it can run a perl script on a keypress[/i] (Apple-R). Perl script + TextWrangler = IDE.

I think Undum is fantastic, and it's opened a lot of creative doors for me. I think it's well worth a hike up the learning curve for. [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=30#p16220
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2011-04-28 17:20:00

Thanks guys.  I'll have a play around with both matt w's and shammack's suggestions as soon as I can.  Hopefully this weekend.

To clarify: Yes there will definitely be a door on the TARDIS, one that has a key.  The door will be pivotal (pun not intended) to several puzzles, the first being how the player will find their way out of the TARDIS having no power available to operate the door mechanism (which forces the player to explore the TARDIS a little before being able to venture outside).  They'll be doing so using the crank handle that appeared in the 3rd Doctor Story "Death to the Daleks" where the TARDIS was left completely without power due to an energy-absorbing tower on the Exxilon city.

The 2nd puzzle I haven't fully fleshed out the details yet.  The TARDIS will still be unpowered when the player has catapulted it into space via the mag-lev rail.  While in space the player encounters something (another spaceship, space station, etc - I haven't yet decided) and gains entry by spacewalking using a personal force field generator (similar to the one used by Borusa in The Invasion of Time, but also able to contain a bubble of breathable air) and gloves so that their hands don't freeze onto the exterior hull of said spaceship/station.  To prevent the TARDIS' entire reserve of air being drawn out into space, the player has to apply a temporary resin to the internal doors as an air seal before opening the external door.

I also had another idea.  Is it possible to have a null room outside the TARDIS acting as a go-between?  IE when the player moves through the TARDIS doorway they enter this never-seen room and are transported either inside or outside the TARDIS (depending which way they were going).  That way the door could function as a normal door, never needing to actually be moved, and I could easily re-map the movement directions of the null room to suit the current location of the TARDIS?  I'll experiment with that too.

Movable doors will be a vital component when I go to work on my intended project #3, based on The Goon Show where this is very typical of the show's brand of cartoon physics.
Examples:
[url=http://www.thegoonshow.net/scripts_show.asp?title=s08e07_the_red_fort]The Red Fort[/url]. Seagoon's raiding party steal the door to the Red Bladder's fort and carry it back to their base, only to have Major Bloodnok abducted through the door when he opens it.
[url=http://www.thegoonshow.net/scripts_show.asp?title=svge06_the_vanishing_room]The Vanishing Room[/url].  Partway through a murder investigation that Seagoon is bumbling his way through as the detective, the room with the deceased is suddenly shifted to a hotel in Paris, along with Eccles who emerges thinking that he is still in London.
[url=http://www.thegoonshow.net/scripts_show.asp?title=s06e24_the_treasure_in_the_lake]The Treasure in the Lake[/url].  In an effort to escape two men he believes to be the police, Seagoon and Willium [SIC] fold up the walls of a house, hide the floor in a sack and put the door up on the (unsuported) ceiling.

(I'm sure there are others, but I need to get to work right now).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2361&start=10#p16221
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Getting started with Undum?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-04-28 17:58:50

Are you using something like Firebug? It makes designing CSS, and even JS, a lot easier and friendlier.

Aside: I'm always surprised about how many IF people use Perl! It's always felt like an archaic user-unfriendly language to me. Where's the Python-love?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2361&start=10#p16222
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Getting started with Undum?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-28 19:40:57

Thanks for the tips! I guess I'll give Firebug and TextWrangler a look. This has definitely moved into the "start working on sometime after the end of the term" pile, though. 

And the next time someone complains about I7's learning curve I will laugh.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2361&start=10#p16223
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Getting started with Undum?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-04-28 20:25:11

[quote]To chip in on this: I found writing for Undum absolutely horrible until I made a tool[/quote]

I will be curious to see this. I too felt like Undum-plus-a-tool would be a complete system.

(Until then, use Firebug. Or whatever tool makes your browser's javascript error log visible. That's how you see those wrong-tags-and-my-content-disappeared errors.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2363&start=0#p16224
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Paging Erik Temple re: Real-Time Delays
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-28 20:37:16

Thanks a lot for looking into this. I will try out your fix.

[quote="ektemple"]By the way, you might want to consider whether you really want to do this, at least in precisely this way. If I'm replaying your game, for example, and not really reading the text, there is a half-second in which "press space" is printed on screen but won't respond to input. I could hit the spacebar once, twice, or even more times before it actually does anything.[/quote]

Don't worry, I already thought about the issue of inconvenience. I don't enforce this gap every single time the game asks you to hit space, only during this configuration process. And this process only runs the first time you boot the game - or if you ask to go through it again later from a menu. By its nature, this segment is all about the player reading the responses in a state of attention.

If I do anything, I might change the loop length, but I already tested it on myself and 500ms seems pretty good. By the time you've read a few words of new info, you can press space, but if your finger just slipped, it won't go off.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2362&start=10#p16225
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Unix interpreters
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-28 21:08:05

[quote="bcressey"]I believe Gargoyle is the only Glk implementation on Unix that supports sound, and apart from Spatterlight it is also the only one for OS X.

For best results when using Ogg, your sound files should be in stereo and have a 44.1 kHz sample rate, 16 bit samples. Other formats will work but will get piped through the SDL_sound conversion routines, the results of which are passable but deeply unsatisfying. (Sample rate conversions represent the worst case scenario.)[/quote]

Thanks for that tip. Actually you may have just explained why a piece of music I did for a game at GameJam Sydney this year came out sounding slightly different in game to out of game. The game used SDL.

Good news for my glulx game though is that conveniently, I've been going 44/16 for all the ogg files anyway. It's all working and sounding really good. Gargoyle's my home base in both playing and testing, since I'm a Mac guy, as you say, the only other sound option is Spatterlight.

I have had just one weird glitch - there's one ogg file I made that, while being 44/16 and identically created to all the others, when I compile it in Inform, the index says 'unknown sound format'. But it  plays fine in the compiled game. Also none of my ogg players have any trouble recognising or playing it. If I re-ogg the source sound file at a different quality level (just to make a different file), it is recognised. Any ideas?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=30#p16226
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-04-28 21:16:17

[quote="thefoxaroo"](similar to the one used by Borusa in The Invasion of Time, but also able to contain a bubble of breathable air)[/quote]
It was my bandmate Jim who was the real Dr. Who fan... he named another one of his bands "Invasion of Time!"

Jim's also really into the Goon Show. Please make sure you announce when these projects are finished because I want to show them to him...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=30#p16227
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2011-04-28 21:39:33

[quote="capmikee"][quote="thefoxaroo"](similar to the one used by Borusa in The Invasion of Time, but also able to contain a bubble of breathable air)[/quote]
It was my bandmate Jim who was the real Dr. Who fan... he named another one of his bands "Invasion of Time!"

Jim's also really into the Goon Show. Please make sure you announce when these projects are finished because I want to show them to him...[/quote]I expect he would have wanted to go with "[i]Ned's Atomic Dustbin[/i]" if it hadn't already been taken? [emote]:D[/emote]

I'll be sure to make an announcement when each is ready.  There will be a long wait for each however; as a labour of love I'm only able to work on these in my spare time (I've even written parts of the code while going to & from work on the train) and as this thread shows, I have a lot to learn before I'm proficient in Inform.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2362&start=10#p16228
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Unix interpreters
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-04-28 23:36:51

Seems like a bug with the Inform index. garglk and presumably most other implementations rely on the blorb file to identify the resource type. If Inform's blorb tool wasn't recognizing and packing it properly, I doubt it would play at all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2362&start=10#p16229
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Unix interpreters
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-04-29 00:14:37

Wild guess: is the index failing when the file length is odd?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2362&start=10#p16230
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Unix interpreters
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-29 00:33:10

Do you mean in whole kb? The index is kind enough to give tenths of a kb.

Either way, I've got 12 oggs so far of all kinds of lengths - EGs: 116.2 kb, 207.2, 108.9, 11.9 - and the index likes them all except this one sound. OS X gives its length as 131kb on disk, or 127,588 bytes in size.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2164&start=0#p16231
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: @party interactive fiction competition
User: metoikos / DateTime: 2011-04-29 01:51:21

Submission deadline is 13th. Have updated website.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2279&start=0#p16232
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF interpreter with embedded dictionary
User: joepereira / DateTime: 2011-04-29 04:56:40

Hi. Thank you both for your suggestions! Yes, it seems that one of the web interpreters might be the way forward. Let's wait and see.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=40#p16233
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-04-29 07:08:28

[quote="thefoxaroo"]To clarify: Yes there will definitely be a door on the TARDIS, one that has a key.  The door will be pivotal (pun not intended) to several puzzles, the first being how the player will find their way out of the TARDIS having no power available to operate the door mechanism (which forces the player to explore the TARDIS a little before being able to venture outside).  They'll be doing so using the crank handle that appeared in the 3rd Doctor Story "Death to the Daleks" where the TARDIS was left completely without power due to an energy-absorbing tower on the Exxilon city.[/quote]

In that case, you should still be able to use my suggestion; you'll just want to make sure that every time an action opens/closes/locks/unlocks the container or the door, it also sets the other one to the same state (so you don't end up with the door being open on the inside and closed on the outside, etc.).

[quote]The 2nd puzzle I haven't fully fleshed out the details yet.  The TARDIS will still be unpowered when the player has catapulted it into space via the mag-lev rail.  While in space the player encounters something (another spaceship, space station, etc - I haven't yet decided) and gains entry by spacewalking using a personal force field generator (similar to the one used by Borusa in The Invasion of Time, but also able to contain a bubble of breathable air) and gloves so that their hands don't freeze onto the exterior hull of said spaceship/station.  To prevent the TARDIS' entire reserve of air being drawn out into space, the player has to apply a temporary resin to the internal doors as an air seal before opening the external door.[/quote]

Ah, I hadn't realized you needed two sets of doors. The same principles apply, but instead of moving the player directly to/from the Console Room, you'd probably want a new TARDIS Entryway room that's separated from the Console Room by a normal door.

[quote]I also had another idea.  Is it possible to have a null room outside the TARDIS acting as a go-between?  IE when the player moves through the TARDIS doorway they enter this never-seen room and are transported either inside or outside the TARDIS (depending which way they were going).  That way the door could function as a normal door, never needing to actually be moved, and I could easily re-map the movement directions of the null room to suit the current location of the TARDIS?  I'll experiment with that too.[/quote]

I'm not sure I understand this... since you can't move rooms around during play, you would have to fake it by remapping all the possible entrances/exits using instead rules or something... and if the door is between the null room and the TARDIS, it's still not going to be accessible from the outside.

[quote]Movable doors will be a vital component when I go to work on my intended project #3, based on The Goon Show where this is very typical of the show's brand of cartoon physics.[/quote]

If you're going to be doing a lot of that kind of stuff, I recommend against trying to use the actual "door" kind, since it's required to be permanently physically located between two rooms. Since you need the doors to be connected in physically impossible ways, you're going to have to write your own rules for going through the door anyway, so there's not really any advantage to its being a door. All you really need is an openable, lockable (if desired), enterable object, and containers and vehicles have all those properties built in.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2355&start=20#p16234
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Swearing obscenely (at Inform 7)
User: Stew / DateTime: 2011-04-29 07:22:00

Digging through the Standard Library Text definition file, I found that in the actual Standard Library text it says:

[quote]The Standard Rules define this action in only a minimal way, blocking it
with a check rule which stops it in all cases. It exists so that before
or instead rules can be written to make it do interesting things in special
cases. (Or to reconstruct the action as something more substantial, unlist
the block rule and supply carry out and report rules, together perhaps
with some further check rules.)[/quote]
By removing the blocking rule, we can write code as such:
[code]The block swearing obscenely rule is not listed in any rulebook.

Instead of swearing obscenely:
	say "Watch your mouth!";
	continue the action;
	
After swearing obscenely in the Lit Room:
	say "Inexplicably, you have the faint aftertaste of soap in your mouth.";
	
After swearing obscenely in the Dark Room:
	say "Your profanity echoes through the room as the ceiling groans loudly. The roof falls on your head."; end the story finally;[/code]
Hope you find that useful. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2364&start=0#p16235
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Different Versions of The Original Adventure
User: Stew / DateTime: 2011-04-29 07:42:51

We've all probably played the 350 point version. But what about the 370 Paul Munoz-Colman version, the 440 point version, 550 point David Platt version? I'm going now to play Crowther's original version (before modified by Woods, as resurrected by Dennis Jerz and Matthew Russotto.)

How many versions of Adventure have you tried, and which ones did you finish?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=40#p16236
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-29 07:49:23

[quote="shammack"][quote="thefoxaroo"]To clarify: Yes there will definitely be a door on the TARDIS, one that has a key.  The door will be pivotal (pun not intended) to several puzzles, the first being how the player will find their way out of the TARDIS having no power available to operate the door mechanism (which forces the player to explore the TARDIS a little before being able to venture outside).  They'll be doing so using the crank handle that appeared in the 3rd Doctor Story "Death to the Daleks" where the TARDIS was left completely without power due to an energy-absorbing tower on the Exxilon city.[/quote]

In that case, you should still be able to use my suggestion; you'll just want to make sure that every time an action opens/closes/locks/unlocks the container or the door, it also sets the other one to the same state (so you don't end up with the door being open on the inside and closed on the outside, etc.).[/quote]

Another possibility is that, if you don't have any puzzles involving getting back [i]into[/i] the TARDIS, you could not bother implementing the door on the outside side; just allow the player to enter the TARDIS without messing about with doors. The players may not notice that they don't have to open a door to get in, and if they do notice they may not mind. (No one likes seeing "The TARDIS door is in the way" when the TARDIS door is openable.)

[quote]If you're going to be doing a lot of that kind of stuff, I recommend against trying to use the actual "door" kind, since it's required to be permanently physically located between two rooms.[/quote]

Well, it isn't strictly true that you need two rooms -- in my example there's a room on one side of the door and not on the other, and you intercept all attempts to go through the door. But this point is a good one, that the door kind might not be the most suitable for what you want to do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2360&start=0#p16237
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Unnamed - Beta Testers wanted
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-04-29 08:38:57

[quote="ektemple"]Good to hear! If you have time, could you post about the graphics incompatibilities you're seeing? As far as I know, most interpreters should have similar graphics capabilities.

Thanks!

--Erik[/quote]

Erik:

The graphics issue is on Windows Glulx, and it doesn't involve your automapping or any of your extensions. It happens when I want to display a picture in the text body, after typing a command in. The interpreter displays it and zips it up the screen after [MORE] prompts, and if it scrolls off-screen there's no way to scroll backwards to look at it. So you get a real quick-shot view of any graphic you want to display.

So if I want the player to be able to type a command and display a more detailed map, or the Play IF reference card below the command line, on Windows Glulx that feature doesn't integrate well. So that's why I've recommended Gargoyle. I haven't tested it on all interpreters yet.

The only performance issues I've noticed with automapping is the lag when playing on an iPad, where iFrotz doesn't render the automap without the map window blinking on and off, then redrawing everything on every turn. 

I haven't been able to get iFrotz to display graphics beneath the command line prompt either, only in a defined header or footer window. So I've had to disable automapping and text-body graphics to have a version that runs okay on the iPad, but I can still display them in a header window on that device with no problems.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2360&start=0#p16238
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Unnamed - Beta Testers wanted
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-04-29 09:01:20

[quote="dustinneff"]The graphics issue is on Windows Glulx, and it doesn't involve your automapping or any of your extensions. It happens when I want to display a picture in the text body, after typing a command in. The interpreter displays it and zips it up the screen after [MORE] prompts, and if it scrolls off-screen there's no way to scroll backwards to look at it. So you get a real quick-shot view of any graphic you want to display.[/quote]

OK, thanks! that's an inherent limitation in the way scrollback is handled in Windows Glulx and Windows Git. I just wanted to find out if there were bugs in any of the interpreters that had gone unnoticed, or any bugs in my extensions that hadn't shown up in any of the interpreters I usually test on.

[quote="dustinneff"]The only performance issues I've noticed with automapping is the lag when playing on an iPad, where iFrotz doesn't render the automap without the map window blinking on and off, then redrawing everything on every turn. 

I haven't been able to get iFrotz to display graphics beneath the command line prompt either, only in a defined header or footer window. So I've had to disable automapping and text-body graphics to have a version that runs okay on the iPad, but I can still display them in a header window on that device with no problems.[/quote]

Whoa, I didn't know that iFrotz's new Glulx support included graphics--I assumed it was still a text-only interpreter. The first problem you describe could be due to inherent performance limitations on the iPad, or to kinks in iFrotz, it's hard to guess which. I see some testing in my future...

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2365&start=0#p16239
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Relation holding by steps via two relations?
User: Gorobay / DateTime: 2011-04-29 10:22:59

I have two relations, requirement and suggestion, and I want Inform to be able to calculate another relation via steps taking through either. Here is my code:

[code]A whatsit is a kind of thing.

Requirement relates various whatsits to various whatsits.
The verb to require (it requires, they require, it required, it is required, it is requiring) implies the requirement relation.

Suggestion relates various whatsits to various whatsits.
The verb to suggest (it suggests, they suggest, it suggested, it is suggested, it is suggesting) implies the suggestion relation.[/code]
I want a transitive relation for these. I know I can do:

[code]Indirect-requirement relates various themes to various themes.
The verb to i-require (it i-requires, they i-require, it i-required, it is i-required, it is i-requiring) implies the indirect-requirement relation.[/code]
and similarly for suggestion. But if I have the set-up:

[code]A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, and B3 are whatsits.
A1 requires A2. A2 requires A3.
A3 suggests B1.
B1 suggests B2. B2 suggests B3.[/code]
and I want Inform to recognize the connection between A1 and B3 (that is, A1 => A2 => A3 by requirement and then A3 => B1 => B2 => B3 by suggestion), how can I do that?

I have tried the following which does not work:

[code]Connection relates a whatsit (called A) to a whatsit (called B) when the number of steps via the requirement relation from A to B > 0 or the number of steps via the suggestion relation from A to B > 0.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2362&start=10#p16240
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Unix interpreters
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-04-29 10:32:28

I meant in bytes. Okay, theory wrong.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2365&start=0#p16241
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Relation holding by steps via two relations?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-04-29 10:48:30

I don't see an easy way to do this, as Inform doesn't support route-finding through implicit relations.

If these relations are static, you could precalculate the connection relation at startup: go through all the whatsits and set every pair connected if its either suggested or required.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2365&start=0#p16242
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Relation holding by steps via two relations?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-29 12:47:19

Can you brute force it? This seems to be working:

[code]No-where is a room.

A whatsit is a kind of thing.

Requirement relates various whatsits to various whatsits.
The verb to require (it requires, they require, it required, it is required, it is requiring) implies the requirement relation.

Suggestion relates various whatsits to various whatsits.
The verb to suggest (it suggests, they suggest, it suggested, it is suggested, it is suggesting) implies the suggestion relation.

A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, B4, B5, and B3 are whatsits.
A1 requires A2. A2 requires A3.
A3 suggests B1.
B1 suggests B2. B2 suggests B3.
B4 suggests B5.

To decide whether (A - a whatsit) is connected to (B - a whatsit):
	if the next step via the suggestion relation from A to B is not nothing:
		decide yes;
	if the next step via the requirement relation from A to B is not nothing:
		decide yes;
	repeat with C running through whatsits:
		if the next step via the suggestion relation from A to C is not nothing and the next step via the requirement relation from C to B is not nothing, decide yes;
		if the next step via the requirement relation from A to C is not nothing and the next step via the suggestion relation from C to B is not nothing, decide yes;
	decide no.

Connection relates a whatsit (called A) to a whatsit (called B) when A is connected to B. The verb to be stuck to implies the connection relation. 

Booping is an action applying to two visible things. Understand "boop [any thing] with [any thing]" as booping.

Carry out booping:
	if the noun is not a whatsit or the second noun is not a whatsit:
		say "Only whatsits can be booped.";
	otherwise:
		if the noun is stuck to the second noun:
			say "[Noun] is connected to [second noun].";
		otherwise:
			say "[Noun] is not connected to [second noun]."[/code]

The connection relation isn't doing any work here (you could have "is connected to" instead of "is stuck to" in the carry out booping rule), but I added it to show that a relation seems to be getting defined here. It's not symmetric or reflexive, but you didn't say it should be (and those can be added easily). 

I could be misunderstanding the question, though -- I've never quite been able to figure out what Inform doesn't support here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=10#p16243
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: farvardin / DateTime: 2011-04-29 15:16:13

The deadline is near... my project is almost done!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2365&start=0#p16244
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Relation holding by steps via two relations?
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-04-29 16:08:10

You do have to be careful; the code above will only allow one alteration in the relation by which the whatsits are connected (though maybe that's what you wanted).  For instance, A1 and B1 in[code]A1, A2, A3, B1 are whatsits.
A1 requires A2.
A2 suggests A3.
A3 requires B1.[/code] are not reported as connected.

If you add the code[code]When play begins:
	showme the next step via the connection relation from A1 to A2.[/code] you can see what Zarf was talking about.  ``The next step via...'' will throw runtime problems when used with a relation defined by ``... relates ... to ... when ....''  This is why one can't simply say[code]Connection relates a whatsit (called A) to a whatsit (called B) when A suggests B or A requires B.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2360&start=0#p16245
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Unnamed - Beta Testers wanted
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-04-29 17:48:05

One simple way to elliminate that graphics problem would be to pause the game, waiting for a keypress, just after displaying the graphic. It could even be toggleable, so only those who are using interpreters in which it becomes an issue need turn it on.

You can also add another window, and display the graphics there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2364&start=0#p16246
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Different Versions of The Original Adventure
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-04-29 17:58:57

Don't forget Adventure770, Adventure4+ (a mix of 550 and 440) and Humongous cave. [emote];)[/emote] Or *smaller* versions of Adventure, like Cavern of Riches (120) (a hodgepodge mixture from Adventure elements), Classic Adventure (210) or Colossal Cave Adventure (235).

The only one I've actually tried to play was the 350 version. I wouldn't want to try to tackle a larger version without winning the "original" version. But then, just the thought of Bedquilt, the pirate, the mazes and the lamp's finite life is enough to make me shiver...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2364&start=0#p16247
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Different Versions of The Original Adventure
User: Stew / DateTime: 2011-04-29 18:12:12

Yeah, I never finished the 350 Adventure either. The pirate and mazes caused me to curse loudly, headdesk, and erase Adventure off the drive. I should try it again soon, though. Once I beat the [i]real[/i] original.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2366&start=0#p16248
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Radio Telescopes
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-04-29 18:21:00

Does anyone of you accidentally roughly know how a radiotelescope works or rather what kind of data you can get from one? I went through Wikipedia, but what I want to know is what kind of data you receive when an object is detected and how long it would approximately take the object to get "here" once detected at location X - and how that location could be entitled. Any help appreciated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2367&start=0#p16249
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Overriding default descriptions
User: Monarch / DateTime: 2011-04-29 18:26:45

I'm new to interactive fiction -- I apologize for my lack of correct terminology. 

I cannot for the life of me find a way to override the default description of things. For rooms that one cannot enter, the description is 'You cannot go there'. I've been adding 'Instead of going south, say "such and such".' No matter what I do, the tagline 'You cannot go there' appears after my substitution.

Is this something that can be easily fixed?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2366&start=0#p16250
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Radio Telescopes
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-04-29 19:05:59

Roughly how it works is that it's a radio with a very directional antenna. That's all. You pick up radio signals with it, which is to say electromagnetic radiation of very low frequencies.

I'm not sure what else you're asking. If you detect an object with one, it's because the object was emitting radio signals. The signals travel at the speed of light; how long the object takes to arrive depends on how fast the object moves.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2365&start=0#p16251
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Relation holding by steps via two relations?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-29 20:35:29

[quote="EmacsUser"]You do have to be careful; the code above will only allow one alteration in the relation by which the whatsits are connected (though maybe that's what you wanted).  For instance, A1 and B1 in[code]A1, A2, A3, B1 are whatsits.
A1 requires A2.
A2 suggests A3.
A3 requires B1.[/code] are not reported as connected.
[/quote]

*facepalm* Of course. Yeah, I don't think my hack does what the original poster wants, then. 

[quote]If you add the code[code]When play begins:
	showme the next step via the connection relation from A1 to A2.[/code] you can see what Zarf was talking about.  ``The next step via...'' will throw runtime problems when used with a relation defined by ``... relates ... to ... when ....''  This is why one can't simply say[code]Connection relates a whatsit (called A) to a whatsit (called B) when A suggests B or A requires B.[/code][/quote]

Ah, OK then. That's the missing thing that I wasn't following.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2367&start=0#p16252
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding default descriptions
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-29 20:46:21

For movement, have a look at the 'Easiest way to give specific movement blocking message(s)' topic on this same board.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2362&start=10#p16253
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Unix interpreters
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-29 20:49:21

The file name is 'sound_of_wind'. Maybe Inform is trying to clamp down on what it suspects may be fart-related humour.

PS - It's not really the sound of a fart.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2353&start=0#p16254
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Emily Short's Pytho's Mask
User: Shadobright / DateTime: 2011-04-29 21:26:12

Ah, thank you! It was an unexpected and pleasant surprise to see you had written a walkthrough and replied to my post. I guess the IF community is more tightly-knit and involved than I had realized. I was able to get past that conversation and enjoy the rest of the game, so thanks again! [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2367&start=0#p16255
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding default descriptions
User: Stew / DateTime: 2011-04-29 21:53:37

Here is the way that I use for specific directions, another way may be better...

[code]Placid Room is a room with the printed name "The Placid Room".
The description of the Placid Room is "This room is very quiet. Many people are sleeping on the floor. There is a doorless entryway to the north with two of the sleepy peeple laying in it.";

the sleeping people are an undescribed thing in the Placid Room.

Understand "sleepy" as the sleeping people.

Before going north:
	say "Ahem! That would wake them up!";
	stop the action.[/code]

That "stop the action." statement is the key, it keeps the action from going on with a "You can't go that way."

If you want to change that default message too, you can do this... first get the Custom Library Messages by David Fisher library. It's free and will help you a lot with changing the default messages.

Include the library, then do this:

[code]Table of custom library messages (continued)
Message Id	Message Text 
LibMsg <cannot go that way> 	"You can't walk through a solid wall, now, can you?" [/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2367&start=0#p16256
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding default descriptions
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-29 22:07:41

[quote="Ste"]If you want to change that default message too, you can do this... first get the Custom Library Messages by David Fisher library. It's free and will help you a lot with changing the default messages.[/quote]

I don't wanna too-confuse a new person, but rather than David Fisher's extension, you could potentially use Ron Newcomb's Default Messages extension, which is an updated rewrite of David's, and a bit simpler and cleaner.

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/Ron%20Newcomb/Default%20Messages/index.html">http://inform7.com/extensions/Ron%20New ... index.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2366&start=0#p16257
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Radio Telescopes
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-04-29 22:40:29

If it's even heading this way... most space stuff emit radio waves in multiple directions, not just the direction they're traveling.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2368&start=0#p16258
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Putting objects in rooms that share names.
User: HulkHandsome / DateTime: 2011-04-30 01:36:11

Hello! I'm new here. This is a problem that has been frustrating me for a while. It's probably explained in the documentation and I'm making a fool of myself here, but here it is anyway.

Here is an example of my problem. I have a room called "The Bermuda Dessert" (yes, dessert, not desert). I also want a thing in the room (scenery, to be precise) called "dessert". However, inform7 gets all up in my grill telling me I can't put an object inside itself even though they are clearly different things.

So far I've been getting around it by calling the thing something else, and making Inform7 understand it as the name I actually want it to be known as but surely there is a more elegant solution? Plus my little trick is easily revealed.

Here is the basic code, not that it's of much interest:

The description of the Bermuda Dessert is "You've landed in the middle of the Bermuda Dessert. It extends in every direction."

treats is scenery in the Bermuda Dessert. Understand "dessert" as treats.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2366&start=0#p16259
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Radio Telescopes
User: Tanga / DateTime: 2011-04-30 02:17:30

The only ones I know about are the Cangaroo project in Woomera (I used to live there and managed to get myself a tour by writing an article for the local paper):
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.physics.adelaide.edu.au/astrophysics/cangaroo/">http://www.physics.adelaide.edu.au/astr ... /cangaroo/</a>

My understanding of it was that stars give out radiation (in many different spectrums).  The dishes pick up those waves (usually in the gamma band), and the computer interprets them and creates a composite image.  Of course it only works at night, because the radiation from the sun floods the telescope.  Even the reflected sunlight from the moon creates too much interference, thus the radio telescopes can only be used for about 2 weeks a month (when the moon is dark, and about a week to either side).

PS - these things are monsters, they're huge!  The inside of them is full of computer equipment, so I'm thinking it's pretty CPU intensive, and of course requires special software.

PPS - those mirrors have to be PERFECT, even more so than normal telescopes.  That's why Cangaroo use lots of small ones, rather than one large one, because they're easier and cheaper (by millions).


EDIT:  These are set up in the middle of the Aussie outback so they don't get buzzed with lots of Electromagnetic radiation.

As for your questions, as stated above, the info travels at the speed of light.  The telescopes are basically picking up what's out there in space (from that small patch of sky directly in front of it).  Apparently it has the potential to be sensitive enough to check if there are planets circling the stars (ie the stars will 'dim' as the planet travels in front of them) but whether or not they've had any success I don't know.


EDIT2:  <a class="postlink" href="http://icrhp9.icrr.u-tokyo.ac.jp/image/GibberGabber.gif">http://icrhp9.icrr.u-tokyo.ac.jp/image/GibberGabber.gif</a> - here's a copy of the article.  It was one of the first I wrote, so don't judge me, but it is in pretty easy to understand terms.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2368&start=0#p16260
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Putting objects in rooms that share names.
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-30 03:41:56

You're right about the problem, and your solution is what I do as well.

I think the only thing you need to do is to close out the use of 'treat' to refer to the dessert object (unless you want 'treat' to work). Is that what you meant about your trick being easily revealed?

To detach an obect's internal Inform name from the words players can type to refer to it, you describe it as 'privately-named'.

So in your case, change your second line to this:

[code]treats is privately-named scenery in the Bermuda Dessert. Understand "dessert" as treats.[/code]

Now you  refer to it as 'treats' in the code, but if a player types '(anything) treats', Inform won't recognise 'treats' as the dessert object.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2366&start=0#p16261
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Radio Telescopes
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-04-30 04:31:18

[quote="Grueslayer"]Does anyone of you accidentally roughly know how a radiotelescope works or rather what kind of data you can get from one? I went through Wikipedia, but what I want to know is what kind of data you receive when an object is detected and how long it would approximately take the object to get "here" once detected at location X - and how that location could be entitled. Any help appreciated.[/quote]
Like the previous posters, I'm not too certain what you are asking for. Just to be sure this is clear, a radio telescope is not a radar: whereas a radar detects objects by emitting radio waves and then detecting the reflections of those waves, a radio telescope doesn't emit anything. It just sits there waiting for radio signals to be emitted by objects in outer space.

Like other telescopes, a radio telescope does not detect an object at a certain [i]location[/i]. The most it can do is detect radio signals coming from a certain [i]direction[/i]. If we want to know how far away the object is, we need to use additional techniques. (This, again, is different from radar and sonar, which can check how long it took for their signal to reach the object and come back, and can therefore calculate the distance to the object.) When humans use their eyes, they gauge the distance using stereopsis: the slight differences in how things look to the left eye and the right eye can be used to decide how far the object is away. Unfortunately, for most objects in space, the distance you would need between your two telescopes in order to make a good guess at how far they are away is far larger than the diameter of the earth.

There are a couple of techniques used in astronomy for deciding how far an object is:
[list][*]You can increase the distance between your telescopes by making use of the fact that the Earth revolves around the sun. If you make a measurement in spring and another one in autumn (and the object you're looking at doesn't move a lot in six months, compared to how distant it is from us), you have effectively increased the distance between the telescopes to the diameter of the earth's orbit.[/*:m]
[*]If you know how much light (or other electromagnetic radiation) the object emits, you can measure its apparent brightness and decide how far it is away. (The amount of radiation received goes down as the square of the distance.) This only works if you have a correct theory about the kind of object it is and the amount of light such an object emits.[/*:m]
[*]Because of the expansion of the Universe, the Doppler red shift can be used to gauge the distance of objects that are very far away (outside our own galaxy).[/*:m][/list:u]
and there are probably more, but it has been some time since I followed astronomy courses.

The place in the sky at which a radio source is detected is named in the standard astronomical way: [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_ascension]Right ascension[/url] and [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declination]declination[/url].

There is absolutely no way to say how long it would take an object to get "here". Most radio sources will never get here, since they move away from us. A radio source that suddenly appears on our image of the sky could be here almost immediately after: if it travels near the speed of light, it will almost keep up (from our point of view) with the radiation it emits, and will thus arrive shortly after -- even shortly after radiation that it emitted many, many years ago. (Although note that an object moving towards us near the speed of light will, by the Doppler effect, have a blue shifted spectrum, making it rather unlikely that we would detect radio waves. Red shift brings radiation closer to the radio end of the spectrum, whereas blue shift brings it closer to the gamma ray end of the spectrum.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2366&start=0#p16262
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Radio Telescopes
User: Tanga / DateTime: 2011-04-30 06:09:15

Wow, nice post.

Interestingly enough the Cangaroo telescopes detect radiation in the gamma ranges.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2368&start=0#p16263
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Putting objects in rooms that share names.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-30 06:50:28

One thing that's useful here is the "printed name" property, which governs the name that Inform prints. So if you do what severedhand suggested then "x dessert" yields "You see nothing special about treats," which is undesirable (of course that default message is undesirable in the first place). If you add:

[code]The printed name of treats is "dessert".[/code]

then that will behave more as you wish.

Another possibility is to change the name of the room, instead of the name of the scenery object. So if you have:

[code]The Bermuda D is a room. The printed name of the Bermuda D is "Bermuda Dessert".[/code]

then that will get the name to display as you wish. Since the player doesn't usually refer to rooms by name, this also means you won't need to worry as much about adding understand lines to get references to the room right.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2367&start=0#p16264
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding default descriptions
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-30 06:54:39

"Instead of going south, say such and such" works for me; though it [i]always[/i] blocks going south, no matter where you are.

Is it possible that you've been using "Instead of going south [i]from[/i] My Room" instead of "Instead of going south [i]in[/i] My Room"? The two are slightly different; going south from My Room doesn't happen when there isn't a map connection south from My Room, going south in My Room does. (This is explained in the documentation at 7.13.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=40#p16265
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2011-04-30 08:18:00

Hi All,

[quote="matt w"]shammack's solution seems very nice and much more true to the TARDIS than having a door in the middle of nowhere. Not sure what I was thinking with that description.[/quote]Glad to hear. [emote]:)[/emote]  I always try to avoid playing favourites, but yes I did find shammack's suggestion easy to implement.  More on that further down.  I did however study your suggestion in great detail to ensure that I learned from it.  Your code about inserting objects into the TARDIS from outside was valuable.  Some of the terms are unfamiliar to me though.  I recall reading about Inform7 things that are “privately-named” but I’m yet to comprehend the concept.  The same goes for “the topic understood” used in the code.

I’m learning… slowly… slowly…

[quote="TheFoxaroo"] The 2nd puzzle I haven't fully fleshed out the details yet. The TARDIS will still be unpowered when the player has catapulted it into space via the mag-lev rail. While in space the player encounters something (another spaceship, space station, etc - I haven't yet decided) and gains entry by spacewalking using a personal force field generator (similar to the one used by Borusa in The Invasion of Time, but also able to contain a bubble of breathable air) and gloves so that their hands don't freeze onto the exterior hull of said spaceship/station. To prevent the TARDIS' entire reserve of air being drawn out into space, the player has to apply a temporary resin to the internal doors as an air seal before opening the external door. [quote="shammack"]Ah, I hadn't realized you needed two sets of doors. The same principles apply, but instead of moving the player directly to/from the Console Room, you'd probably want a new TARDIS Entryway room that's separated from the Console Room by a normal door.[/quote][/quote]Um… now this is going to get confusing.  The internal doors in the abovementioned puzzle are going to be the kitchen door and the aft door, with the player needing to use the entire console room itself as a temporary airlock.

However what you’ve said about needing two sets of doors is still correct.

In the current series of Dr Who they’ve taken the lazy way out and had just the one set of doors serving both the inside and outside.  These being the iconic police box’s rather unremarkable hinged doors opened by hand power.  However in the classic series, of which my Inform game is based, there were separate internal and external doors on either side of the deus ex machina threshold.  The external doors were the aforementioned unremarkable doors of the police box, and again hand powered.  The internal doors however were much larger, made of the same material as the walls of the console room, swinging wide open like a pair of gates.  They were power driven, operated by one of the switches on the TARDIS console.  As best my memory serves, “Death to the Daleks” was the only occasion that they were opened manually, although it can be assumed that they automatically opened and closed in synch with the external doors.  It is also important to note that the lock for the TARDIS key was fitted to the external doors.  (For sake of clarity I also need to mention that in Season 14, from “The Masque of Mandragora” to “Robots of Death” there was an alternative console room in use which did not appear to have internal doors).

[quote="shammack"]I'm not sure I understand this... since you can't move rooms around during play, you would have to fake it by remapping all the possible entrances/exits using instead rules or something... and if the door is between the null room and the TARDIS, it's still not going to be accessible from the outside.[/quote]The room wont need to move, I’ll just be remapping the directions.  There are a couple of advantages.  One being that I can use your enterable container as the external doors, and also have the internal doors functioning as a normal openable doorway.  I’ve coded it below.  Another being that I can equip the player with a homing device (as featured in the Dr Who stories “Full Circle” and “Mawdryn Undead”) that always points to the null room, effectively pointing to the TARDIS.  *IF* I can get the remapping to work.  I seem to be running into a syntax error there.

[code]Fore is a direction. The opposite of Fore is Aft.  Understand "f" as fore when the location is nautical.
Aft is a direction. The opposite of Aft is Fore.  Understand "af" as aft when the location is nautical.
Port is a direction. The opposite of Port is Starboard. Understand "p" as port when the location is nautical.
Starboard is a direction. The opposite of Starboard is Port. Understand "sb" as starboard when the location is nautical.

Index map with fore mapped as north. Index map with aft mapped as south. Index map with port mapped as west. Index map with starboard mapped as east.

A room can be nautical or groundbased. A room is usually not nautical.

A direction can be nautical, groundbased. A direction is usually not nautical. Starboard, port, fore and aft are nautical.

Before going a nautical direction when the location is not nautical, say "Nautical directions can only be used on board ship." instead.

Before going an groundbased direction when the location is nautical, say "Compass directions make no sense on board ship, but you can use [list of nautical directions] instead." instead.

A door is usually scenery.

The player carries the TARDIS key, and the homing device.  The description of the homing device is "A small gadget that beeps when aimed in the direction of [best route from the location to The TARDIS Threshold]."

The Console Room is a room.  The description of the Console Room is "You are in what serves as the control deck of your time machine, or rather what remains of one.  Surrounding you are smooth white walls with a honeycomb of recessed opaque circles.  In the centre of the room is a fire-damaged piece of apparatus; a pentagonal arrangement of five inclined consoles, each with an array of different controls and instruments, all inactive, some still smouldering.
The main doors of the TARDIS lie fore of the console and are currently [if  the main TARDIS doors are open]open[else]closed[end if], while the kitchen is starboard through a wide pair of restaurant-style swinging doors and the TARDIS Broadway lies south through a regular door.  A free-standing storage locker sits against the portside wall opposite a coat rack on the starboard wall."  Fore of the console room and aft of The TARDIS Threshold is the main TARDIS doors.   The main TARDIS doors are a door.

The big dial is in the Console Room. The big dial has a room called the destination. The destination of the big dial is usually The Rocky Outcrop. The initial appearance of the big dial is "A big dial with a pointer is in the middle of the room." The description of the big dial is "It can be set to The Rocky Outcrop, The Eden Nightmare, The Empress Broadway, or Nerva Beacon Control Centre. It is currently set to [destination of the big dial]."

Instead of setting the big dial to:
	if the topic understood matches "The Rocky Outcrop":
		now the destination of the big dial is The Rocky Outcrop;
		move the TARDIS exterior to the destination of the big dial;
[		now The Rocky Outcrop is mapped outside of the TARDIS exterior;][Produces a syntax error]
		say "You set the dial to The Rocky Outcrop.";
	otherwise if the topic understood matches "The Eden Nightmare":
		now the destination of the big dial is The Eden Nightmare;
		move the TARDIS exterior to the destination of the big dial;
[		now The Eden Nightmare is mapped outside of the TARDIS exterior;][Produces a syntax error]
		say "You set the dial to The Eden Nightmare.";
	otherwise if the topic understood matches "The Empress Broadway":
		now the destination of the big dial is The Empress Broadway;
		move the TARDIS exterior to the destination of the big dial;
[		now The Empress Broadway is mapped outside of the TARDIS exterior;][Produces a syntax error]
		say "You set the dial to The Empress Broadway.";
	otherwise if the topic understood matches "Nerva Beacon Control Centre":
		now the destination of the big dial is Nerva Beacon Control Centre;
		move the TARDIS exterior to the destination of the big dial;
[		now Nerva Beacon Control Centre is mapped outside of the TARDIS exterior;][Produces a syntax error]
		say "You set the dial to Nerva Beacon Control Centre.";
	otherwise:
		say "You have to set it to The Rocky Outcrop, The Eden Nightmare, The Empress Broadway, or Nerva Beacon Control Centre."

The TARDIS Threshold is a room. [This is a transient or null room and does not require a description as the player never actually stands in this room].  Outside of The TARDIS Threshold is The Rocky Outcrop [Initial setting, and will be changed as the game progresses].

Starboard of the Console Room is TARDIS Kitchen.
Aft of the Console Room is Fore end of TARDIS Broadway.

The Console Room, TARDIS Kitchen and Fore end of TARDIS Broadway are nautical.

The Rocky Outcrop is a room.  The description of The Rocky Outcrop is "You are standing on a wind-swept rock formation, gazing across what looks to be an endless desert of shifting sands.  The outcrop is not alone; there are many here, some the size of small mountains, but spread out randomly across the somewhat garsih landscape of red and yellow colours.  Sand envelops the rock immediately in front of you."

The Eden Nightmare is a room.  The description is "You are surrounded by dense jungle, which includes tangled undergrowth, low-hanging vines, a high canopy that completely obscures the sun, and a few man-eating plants".

The Empress Broadway is a room.  The description is "A long, polished corridor aboard the luxury spaceliner.  In the forward direction you can see the unstable matter interface where the two ships were joined during the rematerialisation collsion".

Nerva Beacon Control Centre is a room.  The description is "The forward control room of the Nerva Beacon space station, set up to guide and service space craft navigating their way past Jupiter's moons".

The TARDIS exterior is a lockable container in the rocky outcrop.   Understand "TARDIS" as TARDIS exterior.  The matching key of the TARDIS exterior is the TARDIS key. The TARDIS exterior is enterable.  Rule for writing a paragraph about The TARDIS exterior:
	say "The TARDIS stands solemnly nearby."

Instead of inserting something into TARDIS exterior:
   say "You bestow [the noun] to the safety of the TARDIS.";
   move the noun to the console room.

Instead of going outside from the Console Room:
	try going fore.
Instead of exiting from the Console Room:
	try going fore.

Instead of going to the TARDIS Threshold from the Console Room:
	if the main TARDIS doors are closed:
		say "The TARDIS doors are still closed.";
		stop the action;
	otherwise:
		say "(You exit the TARDIS)."; [This is just for testing purposes]
		now the player is in the location of the TARDIS exterior.
	
Instead of going to the TARDIS Threshold from The Rocky Outcrop: [Is there a way to make this generic?]
	try entering the TARDIS exterior.
	
Instead of going to the TARDIS Threshold from The Eden Nightmare: [Is there a way to make this generic?]
	try entering the TARDIS exterior.
	
Instead of going to the TARDIS Threshold from The Empress Broadway: [Is there a way to make this generic?]
	try entering the TARDIS exterior.
	
Instead of going to the TARDIS Threshold from Nerva Beacon Control Centre: [Is there a way to make this generic?]
	try entering the TARDIS exterior.

Instead of entering the TARDIS exterior when the TARDIS exterior is open:
	say "(You enter the TARDIS)"; [This is just for testing purposes]
	now the player is in The Console Room.[/code]

I've run into the following problems:

#1 : Those syntax errors when I try to re-map the null room to the locaiton of the TARDIS exterior.  As far as I can tell those ought to work fine.

#2 : In, out, up and down are not recognised when the location is nautical.  Result: "Compass directions make no sense on board ship, but you can use Fore, Aft, Port and Starboard instead."  Seems that the player can "exit" the TARDIS just fine, but not go "outside."  Is there a way to make In, out, up and down recognisable in both types of locations?

#3 : When outside, typing in the commands to open, close, lock, unlock or enter the "TARDIS" causes Inform to try doing these things to the TARDIS key and not to the TARDIS exterior.  This happens even though I've coded "Understand "TARDIS" as TARDIS exterior".

#4 : The homing device isn't functioning within the TARDIS.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2368&start=0#p16266
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Putting objects in rooms that share names.
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-04-30 08:19:01

[quote="matt w"]So if you do what severedhand suggested then "x dessert" yields "You see nothing special about treats," which is undesirable (of course that default message is undesirable in the first place). If you add:
[/quote]

Oh yeah, I forgot to say it, but I do that too - the printed name stuff!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2366&start=0#p16267
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Radio Telescopes
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-04-30 08:38:11

Yeah, gamma rays are not radio waves (very high frequency, not very low frequency). The telescope constructions are different. Radio telescopes don't need very good mirrors; a sheet of wire mesh will work. They work in the day time, too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2368&start=0#p16268
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Putting objects in rooms that share names.
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-04-30 08:59:59

Also (to repeat a hobbyhorse) there's no reason to use "privately named" in this case. Unless the thought of usable synonyms strikes fear in your heart.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2369&start=0#p16269
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Typecasting and phrases
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-04-30 09:32:06

I'm trying to define a single phrase that allows one to pass in the name of a property, associate that property with a specific list property of a different object, and then update the first property with values from the second. I'm almost there, but I'm stymied by what may be a bug in the treatment of type-casting (or just something I'm overlooking). Here's a mini version of the set-up:

[code]Glulx color value is a kind of value. Some glulx color values are defined by the Table of Common Color Values.

Table of Common Color Values
glulx color value	assigned number
g-black	0
g-white	16777215

An animation track is a kind of object.
An animation track has an object called the animation-target.
An animation track has a number called animation-length.
An animation track has a number called the property-storage.
An animation track has a list of glulx color values called the color-reel. 
An animation track has a list of numbers called the numerical-reel. 

A g-element is a kind of object.
A g-element has a glulx color value called the tint.
A g-element has a number called the numerical-value.

The default track is an animation track. The color-reel is {g-black, g-white, g-black, g-white}. The numerical-reel is {12, 6, 8, 10, 7, 3}.

The animatee is a g-element. The tint is g-white. The numerical-value is 5.

To animate (track - an animation track) targeting (P - a property) of (targ - an object):
	now the animation-target of the track is targ;
	let P1 be P converted to a number;
	now the property-storage of the track is P1;
	now the animation-length of the track is the number of entries in the reel-list appropriate to P of the track;[works, but can't be printed--notice that the list-length is correct, however.]
	say "The chosen list (length: [animation-length of the track]) is [the reel-list appropriate to (P1 as a property) of the track]."


To decide what number is (P - a property) converted to a number: (- {P} -).
To decide what property is (N - a number) as a property: (- {N} -).

To decide what list of glulx color values is the reel-list appropriate to (P - a glulx color value valued property) of (track - an animation track):
	decide on the color-reel of the track.
	
To decide what list of numbers is the reel-list appropriate to (P - a number valued property) of (track - an animation track):
	decide on the numerical-reel of the track.


There is a room.

When play begins:
	animate the default track targeting the numerical-value of the animatee.[/code]

The problem is with the "reel-list appropriate to..." phrases. The intention is to have a stack of these phrases that can filter properties of different types to select the appropriate list property for that type. This works just fine if you pass in the property name directly (using the P variable in the "to animate..." block above): the stacked phrases pick out the right type. But if, as in the example above, you typecast the property to a number so you can store it for later use (P1 in the "to animate" block) and then try to typecast back to a property again, using "To decide what property is (N - a number) as a property: (- {N} -)", Inform always matches to the first-defined phrase in that stack. What that means for the present example is that the color-reel is chosen instead of the numerical-reel.

In other words, when the property is typecast to a number and back again, Inform allows it to match as a specific "x valued property" in a phrase regardless of whether the property actually is of that type. Is there a way around this? Am I naively assuming that you can just typecast back to a property without some other bookkeeping?

I hope this is clear--it's when writing up questions like these that I feel my lack of programming background most acutely... Thanks for any help!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2367&start=0#p16270
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding default descriptions
User: Monarch / DateTime: 2011-04-30 09:34:54

Thank you all very much! I've been using 'from' instead of 'in' without realizing they were different, and I'd misunderstood the use of the 'stop the action' command. 

I'll definitely download that extension -- I've been doing all sorts of silly things to simulate just that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=10#p16271
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2011-04-30 10:20:09

When it comes to distributing ChoiceScript, would I just need to zip up the entirety of the /web folder?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2368&start=0#p16272
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Putting objects in rooms that share names.
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-04-30 10:28:18

In situations like this where one object's name is a substring of another's, you can just declare the object with the shorter name first:[code]The dessert is scenery.
The Bermuda Dessert is a room.
The description of the Bermuda Dessert is "You've landed in the middle of the Bermuda Dessert. It extends in every direction."
The dessert is in the Bermuda Dessert.[/code]
At the time when Inform creates source text synonyms for the room, it will already know about the scenery dessert and throw out ``dessert'' as a possible shortening of the room's name.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=40#p16273
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-04-30 10:47:02

[quote="thefoxaroo"]#2 : In, out, up and down are not recognised when the location is nautical.  Result: "Compass directions make no sense on board ship, but you can use Fore, Aft, Port and Starboard instead."  Seems that the player can "exit" the TARDIS just fine, but not go "outside."  Is there a way to make In, out, up and down recognisable in both types of locations?

#3 : When outside, typing in the commands to open, close, lock, unlock or enter the "TARDIS" causes Inform to try doing these things to the TARDIS key and not to the TARDIS exterior.  This happens even though I've coded "Understand "TARDIS" as TARDIS exterior".[/quote]

The phrase "can be nautical or ground-based" makes "ground-based" the negation of "nautical". So any room or direction that's not nautical is ground-based. You can however easily define those properties separately:

[code]A room can be nautical. A room is usually not nautical.

A direction can be nautical. A direction can be groundbased. Starboard, port, fore and aft are nautical.
North, northeast, northwest, south, southeast, southwest, east and west are groundbased.

Before going a nautical direction when the location is not nautical, say "Nautical directions can only be used on board ship." instead.

Before going an groundbased direction when the location is nautical, say "Compass directions make no sense on board ship, but you can use [list of nautical directions] instead." instead.
[/code]

One way to make the parser not choose the key is to add a "Does the player mean rule".
[code]
Does the player mean opening, closing, locking, unlocking or entering the TARDIS key: it is very unlikely.
[/code]
(or simply "it is unlikely"). You may want to extend the list of actions that shouldn't be understood to apply to the key.

Another, more radical way, would be:
[code]
The TARDIS key is privately-named. Understand "key" and "TARDIS key" as the TARDIS key.
[/code]
Making it privately-named, ensures that the game will not understand either "TARDIS", "key" or "TARDIS key" as the TARDIS key (that's what the privately-named property's for). From there you tell the game (afresh as it were) to understand "key" and "TARDIS key" as the TARDIS key; but it still won't ever understand the mere word "TARDIS" as the TARDIS key.

Also, you may want to do something like this:
[code]The printed name of the TARDIS exterior is "TARDIS".[/code]
to prevent exhanges like "> CLOSE TARDIS   You close the TARDIS exterior", when you're in the same location with the TARDIS exterior.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=40#p16274
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-30 11:03:59

[quote="thefoxaroo"]Some of the terms are unfamiliar to me though.  I recall reading about Inform7 things that are “privately-named” but I’m yet to comprehend the concept.[/quote]

Just to repeat what Felix said, when we declare that something is "privately-named," it means that the parser won't interpret the name that object has in the code as referring to it. Ordinarily when you call an object something like "the TARDIS key," Inform automatically interprets "Tardis" and "key" and "tardis key" as possibly referring to that object. If you declare "The TARDIS key is privately-named," then Inform won't have that automatic understanding.

In my code, if I hadn't said "The Tardis-door-prop is privately-named," then player would've been able to say "Enter tardis-door-prop" and it would've worked. (Which wouldn't actually have been a big deal, because no one would ever use that command.)

[quote]The same goes for “the topic understood” used in the code.[/quote]

This comes up because the "setting it to" action that lets you enter free-form text; the player can say "set the dial to Og" even though Og isn't an object in scope, and even "set the dial to frabjous" would be accepted as a command. In a case like this, "the topic understood" is the free-form text that the player has entered. It's basically analogous to "the second noun," except it's a string of text (technically a snippet, I think) instead of an object. 

See section 16.5 of the documentation; the grammar for setting it to that's built in to the standard rules is "set [something] to [text]", so that text token gives us a value for the topic understood.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2369&start=0#p16275
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Typecasting and phrases
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-04-30 11:10:00

I'm pretty sure that this is a bug.  When Inform sees a phrase like[code]To animate (track - an animation track) targeting (P - a property) of (targ - an object):
	....[/code]it normally identifies all of the possible kinds of properties that could be referenced by P and then clones the routine, specializing lines like[code]now the animation-length of the track is the number of entries in the reel-list appropriate to P of the track;[/code]so that they invoke the right to-decide phrase.  But if a macro like[code]To decide what property is (N - a number) as a property: (- {N} -).[/code]is to be supported, Inform needs to (1) write any phrase that uses the macro so that it can handle any kind of property in the story, and (2) have a way to determine a property's kind at runtime.  Neither happens: like you say, it's just matching against the first likely phrase, and, even if it weren't, the only place I see with centralized kind information for properties is ShowMeSub.

You could report this as ``story compiles but misbehaves,'' but my gut feeling is that [code]To decide what property is (N - a number) as a property: (- {N} -).[/code] will be ruled invalid.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2366&start=0#p16276
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Radio Telescopes
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-04-30 11:37:15

Thanks already. "Speed of light" is great for me to determine when an object will impact, and I'll have several RTs to make it plausible the location has been detected. 
This post was to plug a story hole, in case that was unclear. Thanks again!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2360&start=0#p16277
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Unnamed - Beta Testers wanted
User: dustinneff / DateTime: 2011-04-30 12:11:45

[quote="Peter Pears"]One simple way to elliminate that graphics problem would be to pause the game, waiting for a keypress, just after displaying the graphic. It could even be toggleable, so only those who are using interpreters in which it becomes an issue need turn it on.

You can also add another window, and display the graphics there.[/quote]

Thanks for that tip, I may try something like that sounds like a good idea.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=20#p16278
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: Jacqueline / DateTime: 2011-04-30 12:19:35

This is your last weekend to code your game that's written in a new-to-you language, but I really don't need them until Friday.  So please send them to my gmail account by Friday afternoon Alaska time so I can see which ones are Floyd-accessible, and which ones can be hacked to be.  (i.e. I may volunteer to painfully cut and past Undum text into the mud or something)  

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2366&start=0#p16279
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Radio Telescopes
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-04-30 13:27:06

[quote="Grueslayer"]Thanks already. "Speed of light" is great for me to determine when an object will impact[/quote]
How so? Is something coming at the earth at that speed? If so, it's impossible to see it coming in the first place. (We ignore the fact that it's not possible for anything that has mass to travel at the speed of light though.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2368&start=0#p16280
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Putting objects in rooms that share names.
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-04-30 13:43:26

If you want to declare them in the other order, can't you just use "A thing called..."

[code]The Bermuda Dessert is a room.
The description of the Bermuda Dessert is "You've landed in the middle of the Bermuda Dessert. It extends in every direction."
A thing called the dessert is in the Bermuda Dessert.  It is scenery.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2370&start=0#p16281
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Incorporation grammar
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-04-30 14:01:50

So I'm getting hung up on the grammar for things that are parts of other things.  For instance, say a door has a knob.  I might want something like:

[code]Carry out turning the knob:
Try opening the door which the noun is part of.[/code]

Or, more generally, "let the current door be the door that the noun is part of."  Except that doesn't work because that's not the correct grammar.  "The door that incorporates the noun" doesn't work; "The door that the noun is incorporated by" doesn't work...I'm out of ways to say this.

("if the knob is part of something (called the current door)" works, but then I have an empty "if" statement.)

How exactly does the grammar for the incorporation verb work?  And is there a place I can look up the grammar for relational verbs?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2370&start=0#p16282
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Incorporation grammar
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-04-30 14:26:51

I'm not feeling all that good, but would not

[code]Instead of trying turning the knob when the knob is part of a door (called current door), try opening the current door.[/code]

work?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2371&start=0#p16283
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Novella feelie
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-04-30 14:29:01

So one other game I'm (thinking about) working on is based on a novella I wrote.  Would it be worth including the novella as a feelie?  If it were a short story, I definitely would, but I tend to think that no one would be interested in something longer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2370&start=0#p16284
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Incorporation grammar
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-04-30 15:04:40

I think in general you can't say "the X that has this relation to Y" and have it work, you have to say "a random X that has this relation to Y" (because Inform doesn't recognize at compile time that there will always be only one such X). So, I haven't tested this, but I would try "Try opening a random door that incorporates the noun."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2371&start=0#p16285
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Novella feelie
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-04-30 15:22:22

[quote="katz"]So one other game I'm (thinking about) working on is based on a novella I wrote.  Would it be worth including the novella as a feelie?  If it were a short story, I definitely would, but I tend to think that no one would be interested in something longer.[/quote]

It wouldn't be without precedent, but whether it's defensible depends entirely on how good it is, really [emote]:)[/emote]

And how essential it is for playing. Is the game not self-contained?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2369&start=0#p16286
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Typecasting and phrases
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-04-30 16:20:34

Thanks, EmacsUser. My own feeling is that the support for types ought to be as uniform as possible: if I can typecast an object in that way and find its kind, I ought to be able to the same with properties. On the other hand, I can see why the developers wouldn't want to encourage greater proliferation of all this curly braces stuff!

So, plan B is to try to look at the value held in the property and select the type based on that, accessing it with a property name that has been typecast as described above, e.g. given this:

[code]To decide what property is (N - a number) as a property: (- {N} -).

To decide what list of glulx color values is the reel-list appropriate to (P - a glulx color value) of (track - an animation track):
   decide on the color-reel of the track.
   
To decide what list of numbers is the reel-list appropriate to (P - a number) of (track - an animation track):
   decide on the numerical-reel of the track.[/code]

...writing something like:

[code]let V be the value of [number]property-storage of the track [typecast to a property]as a property of the [object]animation-target of the track.[/code]

But I can't get this kind of thing to work; I'm having a hard time figuring out how to get at the value of the property starting from the typecast property name. Any suggestions?

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=20#p16287
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2011-04-30 17:16:52

[quote="Jacqueline"]This is your last weekend to code your game that's written in a new-to-you language, but I really don't need them until Friday.  So please send them to my gmail account by Friday afternoon Alaska time so I can see which ones are Floyd-accessible, and which ones can be hacked to be.  (i.e. I may volunteer to painfully cut and past Undum text into the mud or something)  

Thanks![/quote]
Is that Friday the 6th?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2366&start=0#p16288
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Radio Telescopes
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-04-30 17:42:54

[quote="RealNC"]How so? Is something coming at the earth at that speed? If so, it's impossible to see it coming in the first place. (We ignore the fact that it's not possible for anything that has mass to travel at the speed of light though.)[/quote]

Hm, no, the object is slower, but the radio waves received by several RTs should enable me to determine the time of impact of the object, right?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=20#p16289
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: Jacqueline / DateTime: 2011-04-30 18:01:16

[quote="ChrisC"]Is that Friday the 6th?[/quote]
Yep, this coming Friday, the 6th.  If I can figure out a way to share your game via ClubFloyd, I will - on Saturday the 7th, 2pm Eastern, on ifMUD.   [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2366&start=10#p16290
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Radio Telescopes
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-04-30 18:37:57

[quote="Grueslayer"]Hm, no, the object is slower, but the radio waves received by several RTs should enable me to determine the time of impact of the object, right?[/quote]
Only if it is relatively close compared to the distance between the radio telescopes. I'm sure two telescopes at opposite ends of the earth could easily pinpoint an object as far away from us a Pluto, and probably farther; but perhaps not something that is several dozen light years away.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2371&start=0#p16291
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Novella feelie
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-04-30 18:47:12

Consider this:

The main reason why Brimstone, Breakers, Essex, Mindwheel, Deadline, Moonmist, and heck, most if not all Infocom games are so much fun experiences is because by the time the player gets into the game proper, he's already immersed in the game world - in the case of Moonmist, he already knows the layout and history of the mansion; in the case of Essex, he knows all the main characters. In the case of Brimstone, Ballyhoo, Hollywood Hijinx and Enchanter, he's got a good feel for the style of the game, and is able to jump right into the right atmosphere.

If your novella can achieve any of the previous, then by all means include it. Please. I print out every feelie.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=20#p16292
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: Jacqueline / DateTime: 2011-04-30 19:18:41

Apropos of this speed IF, I'm thinking of putting together an article on our experiences with new-to-us languages.  Anyone who's interested in sharing their thoughts from the experience of this speed, please send me your thoughts.  I've sent SPAG a note to see if David'd like to run the article (no word back yet, but I think it's worth writing regardless of whether or not SPAG accepts the article idea).  

Of course, work on your INLS first.  The thoughts can be turned in to me later, and can take whatever written format you'd like (bullet points, vague ramblings, formal essay, whatever).  The deadline for the follow-up thoughts from our experience will kind of depend on whether or not SPAG accepts the article idea, my workload, things like that... but I think turning it into me sooner rather than later will mean your thoughts are fresh, and that's a Good Thing.

Hope you're enjoying your new language experience as much as I am.   [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2237&start=0#p16293
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [6G60] Inform 7 and Natty (Ubuntu 11.04).
User: snowdrop / DateTime: 2011-04-30 19:23:57

I can confirm that Gnome Inform7 is unrunnable on Ubuntu 11.04 (64). I get the same message when compiling:

snowdrop@air:~$ gnome-inform7

[code](gnome-inform7:13263): GtkSourceView-CRITICAL **: gtk_source_style_scheme_manager_get_scheme: assertion `scheme_id != NULL' failed

(gnome-inform7:13263): GConf-CRITICAL **: gconf_engine_set: assertion `value != NULL' failed

(gnome-inform7:13263): GConf-CRITICAL **: gconf_value_get_string: assertion `value != NULL' failed

(gnome-inform7:13263): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_font_button_set_font_name: assertion `fontname != NULL' failed

(gnome-inform7:13263): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_ascii_strcasecmp: assertion `s2 != NULL' failed

(gnome-inform7:13263): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_ascii_strcasecmp: assertion `s2 != NULL' failed

(gnome-inform7:13263): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_ascii_strcasecmp: assertion `s2 != NULL' failed

(gnome-inform7:13263): GConf-CRITICAL **: gconf_value_get_string: assertion `value != NULL' failed
Segmenteringsfel
snowdrop@air:~$ 
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2372&start=0#p16294
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Events upon room entrance and randomiizing stuff
User: Arag-e / DateTime: 2011-04-30 19:39:51

My questions are rather to the point, but I guess I’d better explain where I’m going with all this:

The ultimate goal here is to create a system of random encounters similar to a basic RPG video game. That is, when wandering into a certain area, there should be a random chance of certain monsters being moved into the area and attacking the player until they are killed. I have… quite a load of stuff to figure out before I can get all the mechanics down and this is mostly proof of concept just to see If I can do it, but for the moment I at least succeeded in creating a killable monster to attack my character. This is the map and player character:

[rant][code]startRoom: Room 'Starting Room'
    "This is the start room. "
    west = activeBattleRoom
    east = randomEncounterRoom
;
 
activeBattleRoom: Room 'Active Battle Room'
    "This is the active battle room. "
    east = startRoom
;

randomEncounterRoom: Room 'Random Encounter Room'
    "This is the testing area for random encounters. "
    west = startRoom
;

me: Actor
    location = startRoom
;
+myHP: Component 'my hp/health/life/point*points' 'your HP'
    desc = "Current Health: <<CurrentHP>>"
    CurrentHP = 2000
    LoseHP(Damage)
    {
        CurrentHP -= Damage;
        if (CurrentHP <= 0)
            finishGameMsg('You lose!', [finishOptionUndo]);
    }
;
+myATK: Component 'my attack/point*points'
    desc = "ATK: <<CurrentATK>>"
    CurrentATK = 100
;[/code][/rant]

Slime here :[rant][code]slime: UntakeableActor 'blue slime' 'Slime' @activeBattleRoom
    "It looks like a small gelatinous puddle of blue sludge with eyes. "
    HP = 1000
    MaxHP = 1000
    ATK = 100 
    LoseHP(Damage)
    {
        HP -= Damage;
    }    
    HealHP(Amount)
    {
        HP += Amount;
        HP = min(HP, MaxHP);
    }
    dobjFor(Attack)
    {
        action()
        {
            LoseHP(myATK.CurrentATK);
            "You strike the Slime. ";
            if (HP <= 0)
            {
                moveInto(nil);         
                "You defeated the Slime. ";
                HP = MaxHP;       
            }
            else
                "The Slime has <<HP>> HP left. ";
        }
    }
;

+slimeAttackAgenda: AgendaItem
    isReady = (inherited() && me.location == slime.location)
    initiallyActive = true
    invokeItem()
    {
        "The Slime charges at you! ";
        myHP.LoseHP(slime.ATK);
    }
;[/code][/rant]
just sits on its ass until I walk into its room and it attacks me. If it wins, I lose, if I win, Slime is moved to nil and its HP is returned to full (1000). The idea is to, coding-wise, only have a single of each monster that will be moved to nil upon defeat, healed completely and randomly have a chance of being moved back into a certain area whenever I step into it.

This approach… may very likely not be optimal, and I need to work out a way to prevent the player from leaving an area before killing the monster (stop him from fleeing, basically), but there are other issues to work out before then so I’ll ignore that and a slew of other problems I’m thinking of for now.

Right now, my first order of business is to figure out how to trigger a method when I step the into randomEcnounterRoom area (some form of EventList perhaps?). I created a clone of Slime for this:
[code]redSlime: UntakeableActor 'red slime' 'Red Slime' @nil
    "It looks like a small gelatinous puddle of red sludge with eyes. "
    HP = 1000
    MaxHP = 1000
    ATK = 100 
    LoseHP(Damage)
    {
        HP -= Damage;
    }    
    HealHP(Amount)
    {
        HP += Amount;
        HP = min(HP, MaxHP);
    }
    dobjFor(Attack)
    {
        action()
        {
            LoseHP(myATK.CurrentATK);
            "You strike the Red Slime. ";
            if (HP <= 0)
            {
                moveInto(nil);               
                "You defeated the Red Slime. ";
                HP = MaxHP; 
            }
            else
                "The Red Slime has <<HP>> HP left. ";
        }
    }
;

+redSlimeAttackAgenda: AgendaItem
    isReady = (inherited() && me.location == redSlime.location)
    initiallyActive = true
    invokeItem()
    {
        "The Red Slime charges at you! ";
        myHP.LoseHP(redSlime.ATK);
    }
;[/code]

So I need to find a way to call redSlime.moveInto(randomEncounterRoom) when I step into the room.

With that done, I’d need to figure out how to make it so that this method is called [i]sometimes[/i] and not others, thus making Red Slime’s appearance a random occurrence. And I’d need to add a check to make sure that the method isn’t called if (me.location == redSlime.location) return true, so that the game doesn’t keep trying to summon Red Slime when it’s already fighting me.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2368&start=0#p16295
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Putting objects in rooms that share names.
User: HulkHandsome / DateTime: 2011-04-30 19:55:35

Wow, so many solutions! I'm sure one will fit my needs perfectly. Thanks to everyone for helping!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2369&start=0#p16296
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Typecasting and phrases
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-04-30 22:55:43

OK, I've taken a bit of a cop-out route. Inform just doesn't seem to be able to deal well with this kind of thing, so I'm resigned to doing this with spaghetti. Luckily, Inform does have some nice ways of managing spaghetti. For example, passing a text instead of the actual property name:

[code]To decide which list of glulx color values is the reel-list appropriate to ("tint" or "background tint" - a text) for (track - an animation track):
	decide on the color-reel of the track.
	
To decide which list of real numbers is the reel-list appropriate to ("scaling factor" or "x-scaling factor" or "y-scaling factor" or "arbitrary scaling factor" - a text) for (track - an animation track):
	decide on the scaling-reel of the track.[/code]

So at least the spaghetti can be moved into individual decision phrases instead of being handled using switch statements in a single phrase. This makes it more easily extensible. If I add a new color property, for example, I just need to add a new phrase:

[code]To decide which list of glulx color values is the reel-list appropriate to ("hue" - a text) for (track - an animation track):
	decide on the color-reel of the track.[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2372&start=0#p16297
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Events upon room entrance and randomiizing stuff
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-05-01 01:07:32

Something like this should work.

[code]
modify randomEncounterRoom
	enteringRoom(traveler)
	{
		inherited(traveler);
		
		// yields a number between 0 and 99
		local roll = rand(100);

		// % chance of random encounter
		local freq = 20;

		if (roll < freq && !redSlime.getOutermostRoom() == this)
			redSlime.moveInto(this);
	}

	beforeTravel(traveler, connector)
	{
		if (redSlime.getOutermostRoom() == this)
		{
			failCheck('You cannot run from the RED SLIME! ');
		}
		
		inherited(traveler, connector);
	}
;
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2373&start=0#p16298
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Synonyms for the location of the player
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-05-01 01:48:56

I've got a rocky gorge and want to set some common synonyms (gorge, cliff, etc) to refer to any of the rooms in the gorge--that is, to the location of the player.  The rooms are all of a type, but giving synonyms to a type of course doesn't do anything, and "understand 'cliff' as the location of the player" doesn't work.  Anyone know a way to do this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2374&start=0#p16299
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Beta tester for Adrift game
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2011-05-01 02:23:01

The game ”Return to Camelot” (RtC) is a sequel to my entry for the Adrift Summer Comp. 2010.
I have taken the criticism into consideration and tried to make this game better than the first (You’ve got to improve haven’t you?)
I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to tell about the game since I am planning on entering the Spring Thing 2011 (About time an Adrift game was entered  ) But in short… Having spent most of the reward Merlin gave you last time you visited Camelot you realized that you needed a job, and you needed it badly. After having seen an advert on the internet you signed up for an online crash course “How to become a private detective in ten easy lessons (No previous experience needed.) Having completed the course you set up office in the lower part of Bronx and expect the money to come rolling in… Well, as we all know things don’t always go as we hope, and quite a few weeks has passed without the phone ringing…
Needless to say that you will at some point be going to Camelot... (Why else call the game "Return to Camelot”)?
More details will be revealed to the beta tester if necessary… off course…

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2366&start=10#p16300
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Radio Telescopes
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-05-01 03:43:55

This is called parallax and can be used to determine distances. Parallax is the "effect" you can see when you put your finger in front of you, close one eye, then the other, then the other again, and see how the finger moves left and right, depending on which eye you're using to see. This can be used to calculate distances. And indeed that's what the brain does to make out how far away something is.

The distance between our eyes is only good enough to calculate relatively short distances. The width of the earth (with one telescope at each side of the earth, or by measuring each 12 hours with one telescope, so that it gets to the other side due to earth's rotation) is good enough to make out distances in our own solar system. For objects too far away, like in another galaxy, measurements can be performed each 6 months, when the earth is at opposite places in its orbit around the sun. The width of earth's orbit is good enough to use parallax in order to make out distances light years away.

All the above is IIRC though, it's been ages since I delved into that stuff. You might want to read further on the subject of parallax in astronomy to make sure your plot is accurate.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2373&start=0#p16301
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Synonyms for the location of the player
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-01 05:35:18

I'm not 100% sure I understand the question. But when you want to refer to the player's location in the code, you will always have to say 'the location of the player' - there's no shorthand. It is what it is.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2375&start=0#p16302
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: Supporters, Concealed etc.
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-05-01 05:35:21

I don't get it, I'm too stupid.

I have a supporter, and I have an object on it. I can overrule the supporter description and print out what it contains. But the object on the supporter is also mentioned in the room description, which I don't want. If I give the object concealed, it's not mentioned in my supporter description (L__M(##Search, 7, glass_table);). Ain't there a simple yet working way to conceal objects on supporters from the room description, yet have them in the supporter description? I could do spaghetti code by giving the object ~concealed before and concealed after the supporter description, but that'd suck, and I'm sure there must be an easier way I just can't come up with.

Bad:
You're in a room. There's a supporter here.
On the supporter is an object.
>x supporter
It's a supporter. There's an object on it.

Also bad (with concealed):
You're in a room. There's a supporter here.
>x supporter
It's a supporter. There's on it.

Good:
You're in a room. There's a supporter here.
>x supporter
It's a supporter. There's an object on it.

Oh, and btw. how can I tell the parser it's ON the supporter, not IN?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2373&start=0#p16303
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Synonyms for the location of the player
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-01 06:33:27

This seems to be working (except that I think I've goofed the line spacing, but that's not your problem):

[code]Mountain is a room. "The high mountain looms over the gorge." Ledges is north of Mountain. "A shaky bridge joins ledge to ledge[if the location is ledges] here[end if]." High Pass is north of Ledges. "High up there is a notch in the mountains in between impassable peaks." Crag is north of High Pass. "The path ends in a bleak crag."

Peering is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "x [any room]" as peering. Understand "gorge" as a room when the item described is the location. Understand "Cliff" as a room when the item described is the location.

Carry out peering: say the description of the noun.[/code]

This took some fiddling, but it looks like instead of saying "Understand 'foo' as a boojumy whatsit" the general thing to do is say "Understand 'foo' as a whatsit when the item described is boojumy" -- understand won't take adjective + kind or kind + that-clause, but it will take a bare kind with a condition on the item described, so you just offload your descriptions and adjectives into that condition. I fear that that explanation was considerably less clear than the example. Anyway, this is documented somewhat in 16.17.

(severedhand, the usual way of referring to the location of the player is just "the location," isn't it?)

EDIT: Room names courtesy the awesome old board game [url=http://realmspeak.dewkid.com/]Magic Realm[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2376&start=0#p16304
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Actions that apply to non-visible things?
User: HulkHandsome / DateTime: 2011-05-01 06:46:56

Hello again!

I need some more help, and you were all very informative last time! This is the last problem I'm having with this game so hopefully it should all be hunky dory after this.

I'm trying to make an action that applies to something that isn't visible! The player has a marker and I want them to be able to draw anything they want (everything will get the same response, though). This is the coding I have so far:

Drawing is an action applying to one thing.
Understand "draw [something]" as Drawing.

Of course, when I try to do this in game with a command like "draw sausage" it will tell me it can't see one anywhere. A sausage that is.

I even tried this hack to get around it:

Before Drawing anything: end the game saying "GAME TEXT HERE"; stop the action.

But even then it gives me the same result! Apparently Inform7 checks whether the player can see something before it does anything else.

So, any suggestions?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2376&start=0#p16305
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Actions that apply to non-visible things?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-01 07:03:51

UPDATE: Actually, rereading your post, it looks like you don't actually want what I posted. The code I give below, which I've now hidden under the rant tag, applies whenever you want to let the player draw any object [i]that you've defined in the game[/i], whether or not it's in their location. But it sounds as though you want them to be able to draw anything -- "DRAW SAUSAGE," "DRAW MONA LISA," "DRAW A FETCHING GRAPH OF THE IS-LM CURVE" -- in which case you want a [text] token, which allows for entering free-form text:

[code]Drawing is an action applying to one topic. Understand "draw [text]" as drawing.[/code]

When you are using a text token, you have to declare the action as applying to a topic rather than a thing. If you want to recover the text the player entered, you use "the topic understood," thus:

[code]Carry out drawing: Say "You skillfully draw a picture of [the topic understood]."[/code]

which probably won't handle articles gracefully, but oh well. [END UPDATE]

[rant]This is paradoxical; to have an action apply to non-visible things, you need to declare it as applying to visible things!

[code]Drawing is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "draw [any thing]" as drawing.[/code]

And then of course whatever instead/carry out/etc. rules you want to apply to drawing.

Note "visible" and "any thing." "Visible" is actually anything the player can refer to, as opposed to "touchable." (See 12.17 of the documentation.) The "[any thing]" token lets the player refer to any thing, not just things that are in scope. (See section 16.7 of the documentation.) Put these two things together, and now the player can type "Draw foo" to refer to foo no matter where it is -- whether the player can see it or not!

The use of "visible" here is super confusing and unfortunate, but the thing to keep in mind is that "visible" is actually much more permissive than the default; "visible" is anything the player can talk about, and in combination with "[any thing]" or "[any person]" often means things that aren't, well, visible. 

[see [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=14112#p14112]here[/url] for a little more; I just mostly copy-pasted my old comment, because this is a very confusing issue that comes up pretty often.)[/rant]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2372&start=0#p16306
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Events upon room entrance and randomiizing stuff
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-05-01 07:14:11

Bcressey's enteringRoom method is fine for making the monster appear, but personally, I'd try and keep as much of the code regarding the monster's behaviour as possible in a parent class. That way, you can be certain that things will happen the way you expect whenever the player is in the same room as a monster - and you don't have to worry about what happens if you put a monster in a room that doesn't normally have combat, or if the player enters the arena when there are no monsters there.

The Actor class has its own beforeTravel method, which fires whenever travel is about to occur in the presence of that actor (or, at least, full on travel, as opposed to teleporting things around with moveIntoForTravel). So now we just check that the person travelling is actually the player (or anyone else the monster might want to interfere with) and call exit or failCheck if we want to stop them.

[code]class Monster: Person
    beforeTravel(traveller, connector)
    {
        if(traveller==gPlayerChar)
        {
            failCheck(blockTravelMsg);
        }
        else
            inherited(traveller, connector); //I always forget this bit and bad things always happen
    }
    blockTravelMsg='\^'+theName+' blocks your path!'
;[/code]
theName outputs the name of the monster, plus the word "the" if necessary, and since the "the" (if it appears) will be lower case, we add \^ to the start to make the first letter upper case.

Implementing the class, you'd have something like this:

[code]
blah: Monster 'blah' 'blah'
    blockTravelMsg='The blah works its apathetic magic, and you feel too lethargic to leave.'
;[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2376&start=0#p16307
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Actions that apply to non-visible things?
User: HulkHandsome / DateTime: 2011-05-01 07:26:01

Ah, perfect! I did experiment with [text] but didn't pick up on the "topic" thing. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2377&start=0#p16308
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: A random action that won't repeat?
User: pashaimeru / DateTime: 2011-05-01 09:08:23

Let's say I have a switch that causes something random to happen when pulled, but that action would only happen once, and once only. Essentially, it's removed from the list of possible actions to happen after it's triggered.

What's a good, clean way to do that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2371&start=0#p16309
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Novella feelie
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-05-01 09:19:50

I’m all for feelies.
Apart from downright spoilers, it should be the odd case when any feelie would ruin a game. 
(Such as, perhaps, if the novella happens to be much better than the game [emote];)[/emote] … which would be all the more reason not to withhold us the novella, right?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2369&start=0#p16310
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Typecasting and phrases
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-05-01 09:38:41

Like Plan A, Plan C (spaghetti!) has been stymied by a bug--a pretty massively bad one. Inform is misinterpreting type designations like this one:

[code]To decide which text is the text version of (P - lists of lists of numbers valued property)[/code]

to mean 

[code]list of lists of numbers valued properties[/code]

...which of course is a totally different thing. I've [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=649]reported this[/url], but I'm posting here as a desperate attempt to find a workaround for this problem (or any of the others described above, really)!

--Erik

EDITED TO ADD: What an exercise in frustration. Here are the bug reports associated with my attempts to code this up--almost every potential solution is defeated by a bug...

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=648">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=648</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=649">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=649</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=650">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=650</a>

I'm resigned to just requiring authors to do their own bookkeeping, until a new version of Inform fixes this train-wreck.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2373&start=0#p16311
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Synonyms for the location of the player
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-01 09:43:56

I didn't know that. The Inform docs examples go with 'location of the player', probably for clarity. I guess it also makes it easier to search your source text for just 'location of the player', and also makes lines of code that have multiple incidences of 'the location' in them look less vague at a glance.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2375&start=0#p16312
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Supporters, Concealed etc.
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-05-01 10:02:38

This is why I suggested getting to know the listmaker so you can always put together a custom list. Read chapter 27 of the Designer's Manual, "Listing and grouping objects". Off the top of my head I think WORKFLAG_BIT will be the easiest way to do what you want.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2373&start=0#p16313
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Synonyms for the location of the player
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-01 10:08:49

[quote="severedhand"]I didn't know that. The Inform docs examples go with 'location of the player', probably for clarity. I guess it also makes it easier to search your source text for just 'location of the player', and also makes lines of code that have multiple incidences of 'the location' in them look less vague at a glance.[/quote]

Well, the examples usually do use "the location" -- searching for the docs for "the location of the player," the only examples that use them are Van Helsing and Four Cheeses, and Van Helsing explains that they could've used "the location" but "location of the player" is less confusing in that context. (Similar deal with Four Cheeses.) 

It's a good point about searching your text for "location of the player," though. It also seems possible that they might compile to I6 differently, but not in a way that should make any difference.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2373&start=0#p16314
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Synonyms for the location of the player
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-01 10:23:49

Thanks. It's all more knowledge for me to stick in my pipe.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2377&start=0#p16315
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A random action that won't repeat?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-05-01 10:55:04

[quote="pashaimeru"]Let's say I have a switch that causes something random to happen when pulled, but that action would only happen once, and once only. Essentially, it's removed from the list of possible actions to happen after it's triggered.

What's a good, clean way to do that?[/quote]

It's an exception. That sounds like a good reason to use an Instead rule.

[code]The Cavern is a room. "A cavernous cavern."

Some rocks are a thing. "Huge rocks lie here."

The suspicious lever is a thing. The initial appearance is "A suspicious-looking lever protrudes from the wall." It is fixed in place in the cavern. Instead of trying pulling the lever for the first time, have the player trigger a cave-in. Instead of pulling the lever, say "The lever is stuck."

To have the player trigger a cave-in:
	say "You pull the lever. With an ominous rrrrumble, rocks begin to fall, and you leap aside just in time.";
	now the rocks are fixed in place in the cavern.[/code]

As for whether that constitutes a good or clean way of doing it, I'll defer to more experienced authors. The above works and is, I think, reasonably succinct.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2377&start=0#p16316
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A random action that won't repeat?
User: pashaimeru / DateTime: 2011-05-01 11:07:34

No, emphasis on the word 'random'. Maybe pulling the lever would cause a cave in, maybe it'd turn off the lights, maybe a whale would materialise out of thin air.

BUT, the same action couldn't repeat. So only one cave in could be caused, only one whale would be summoned, you get the idea.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2377&start=0#p16317
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A random action that won't repeat?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-05-01 11:15:40

[quote="pashaimeru"]Let's say I have a switch that causes something random to happen when pulled, but that action would only happen once, and once only. Essentially, it's removed from the list of possible actions to happen after it's triggered.[/quote]
Hm, I read this a little differently than Eleas. I was thinking you were looking for a lever that when pulled, triggered a random event from a list of possibilities and then if pulled again, would trigger a different random event. This would continue until all the possible events were triggered (only one time each) and [i]then[/i] some sort of default would be triggered.

This scenario made me think of text substitutions, which can execute code in addition to (or instead of) printing text. There are also a variety of different ways to randomize them using the "[one of]" tag (see ch 5.7). Anyway, this is what I came up with:[code]Lab is a room.  The lever and a magic ball are in Lab. 
North of Lab is a locked door called a red door. South of Lab is a locked door called a blue door.
North of the red door is the Back. South of the blue door is the Front.

After pulling the lever:
	if we have pulled the lever more than three times,
		continue the action; [<-- goes to the default report rule ("Nothing obvious happens.")]
	otherwise say "[one of][option 1][or][option 2][or][option 3][in random order]".

To say option 1:
	now the red door is unlocked;
	now the red door is open;
	say "The red door opens."
	
To say option 2:
	now the blue door is unlocked;
	now the blue door is open;
	say "The blue door opens."
	
To say option 3:
	now the magic ball is off-stage;
	say "The magic ball dissappears!"
	
test me with "n / s  /pull lever / g / g / g /  x magic ball / n / s / s".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2377&start=0#p16318
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A random action that won't repeat?
User: pashaimeru / DateTime: 2011-05-01 11:22:28

Oh yes, perfect. Thanks a ton.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2352&start=10#p16319
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How many sounds can glulx play at once?
User: eliukblau / DateTime: 2011-05-01 11:42:09

[quote="bcressey"]IIRC some of the complexity of Damusix came from the edge cases: what happens to a looping sound when you restore from a saved game, or undo/redo a command that triggers a sound?[/quote]

Yes. [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2352&start=10#p16320
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How many sounds can glulx play at once?
User: eliukblau / DateTime: 2011-05-01 12:03:36

Damusix not dead. I am currently working on the fourth version of the audio engine.

Recent changes in I7's resource management I have had to reconsider some features of Damusix, besides the well-known delay was due to translation of the documentation (and a new place of work where I am now).

Damusix worked correctly until it ceased to work two or three I7 releases ago. However, as I said, the delay of the Damusix release was due to the translation of documentation, which is very detailed.

Because of this, Damusix 4 for I7 will be released with a "preliminary" version of the documentation, and henceforth this will be completed. (The documentation in Spanish for Inform6 already exists and is complete, but now we have to adapt to I7 and translate it into English.)

Hopefully it is, finally!, for this year. [emote]:-)[/emote] Thank you all for your patient waiting.

Saludos! [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote] 

P.S: this message is google translated, sorry.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2378&start=0#p16321
Forum: Competitions / Subject: IntroComp 2011 - Intent to Enter Deadline end of May
User: Jacqueline / DateTime: 2011-05-01 12:11:29

Just a reminder that the end of May is the Intent to Enter Deadline for IntroComp 2011, the competition in which you write the beginning of a work of interactive fiction, and people vote on how much they'd like to see you finish that game.  

Information on how to sign up, rules, prizes, and all that good stuff can be found at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.allthingsjacq.com/introcomp/">http://www.allthingsjacq.com/introcomp/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2352&start=10#p16322
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How many sounds can glulx play at once?
User: eliukblau / DateTime: 2011-05-01 12:11:53

[code]The idea for this extension was born from some code written by Eliak Blauk on rec.arts.int-fiction in 2008[/code]

Is Eliuk Blau. [emote]:lol:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=40#p16323
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-05-01 12:13:01

[quote="thefoxaroo"]In the current series of Dr Who they’ve taken the lazy way out and had just the one set of doors serving both the inside and outside.  These being the iconic police box’s rather unremarkable hinged doors opened by hand power.  However in the classic series, of which my Inform game is based, there were separate internal and external doors on either side of the deus ex machina threshold.[/quote]

Ah, I see. I'm less familiar with the classic series, unfortunately.

[quote]Is there a way to make this generic?[/quote]

I've not tested it, but you should be able to do this:
[code]Instead of going to the TARDIS Threshold from the Console Room:
	if the main TARDIS doors are closed:
		say "The TARDIS doors are still closed.";
		stop the action;
	otherwise:
		if the location is the Console Room:
			say "(You exit the TARDIS)."; [This is just for testing purposes]
			now the player is in the location of the TARDIS exterior;
		otherwise:
			try entering the TARDIS exterior.[/code]

[quote]I've run into the following problems:

#1 : Those syntax errors when I try to re-map the null room to the locaiton of the TARDIS exterior.  As far as I can tell those ought to work fine.[/quote]

I'm confused about this too... that appears to work for other directions, just not inside/outside. Hopefully someone else knows why.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2377&start=0#p16324
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A random action that won't repeat?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-05-01 12:13:05

D'oh. It took a while for the penny to drop, but Skinny Mike's take on it does sound a lot more sensible.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2377&start=0#p16325
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A random action that won't repeat?
User: pashaimeru / DateTime: 2011-05-01 13:28:13

Another question: is there some easy way to solve the he/she problem?

I could do "[if target is male]he[if target is female]she[end if] blah blah", but is there a shorthand for that?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379&start=0#p16326
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: How about left/right/up/down as compass directions?
User: Huck Hooks / DateTime: 2011-05-01 13:39:46

Sometimes i play strategy browser games.
When i chat about the map with others, we rarely use far northwest etc.
We use "the green army top left, below the red one."

Could that be helpfull for IF too? Using left instead of west etc?

If, how can i design that best in inform7, to stay compatible with north etc? In a switchable way? Subtle things:
- i thought about: now the printed name of north is "up".
But sometimes north should stay north, like if i look at a treasure map.
- up/down can mean north/south, or staircase up/down.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2346&start=10#p16327
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Future of Text Games (and impact on game design)
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-05-01 13:47:20

[quote="severedhand"]
I would say the first step of reaching out beyond the IF community is simply placing your games before people in non-IF community gaming venues, so they have a chance to look at them and/or play them.
[/quote]
That's probably all that we need to do in order to keep IF alive, and I don't think there's much more we [i]can[/i] do to try to make it thrive.  Obviously, we write and play IF because we see value in IF, and despite the small size of the IF community, it's not so small as to suggest that the value we see in IF is irrelevant to the culture at large.  I think IF will never die out completely [i]as long as it is known among the general public[/i], because there are at least enough people in the general public who could potentially see value in IF to keep the form going.  Those of us -- myself included -- who were either not born or else did not know about IF during the commercial period have either learned about IF through the media (probably the Internet) or by word of mouth, so obviously knowledge of IF is still "out there" somewhat.

But is word about IF widespread [i]enough[/i]?  If we can keep IF visible to the public, we can maximize the potential of the IF community by allowing the greatest number of people who may be interested to come and experience IF for themselves.  I don't think there is anything else we can do to encourage people to like text games, since the form is admittedly pretty narrow in focus (only for people who like literature or at least don't mind reading, [i]and[/i] are in to gaming or at least don't mind the odd "puzzle", [i]and[/i] own and know how to use either a computer or a compatible portable device).  IF may never be widely popular, but I'm sure that there are enough people who fit the bill for IF to keep the form alive and well.

[quote="severedhand"]
I entered Leadlight in IFComp 2010. As far as I can see, I was the only entrant to put out a press release for their game to gaming media.
[/quote]
Would you mind telling us how to do that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2373&start=0#p16328
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Synonyms for the location of the player
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-05-01 14:05:38

[code]Peering is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "x [any room]" as peering. Understand "gorge" as a room when the item described is the location. Understand "Cliff" as a room when the item described is the location.[/code]

I don't understand what we're doing here.  Why do we need to create a new action equivalent to looking?  I don't want these synonyms to just apply to examining--if the player tries to CLIMB CLIFF, for instance, I won't want it to say "You can't see any such thing."

And, at least in my game, "Understand 'gorge' as a room when the item described is the location" doesn't work.  (I'm also not sure how it's supposed work--if the parser hasn't understood the noun yet, how can it know what the item described is?)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2377&start=0#p16329
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A random action that won't repeat?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-05-01 14:14:27

[quote="pashaimeru"]Another question: is there some easy way to solve the he/she problem?

I could do "[if target is male]he[if target is female]she[end if] blah blah", but is there a shorthand for that?[/quote]

Hopefully this is not a dud as well, but

[code]To say gender of (whoever - a person): say "[if whoever is male]he[otherwise if whoever is female]she[otherwise]it[end if]".[/code]

seems the simplest solution to me. Then you just invoke it as "[gender of target] blah blah" in any To Say phrase.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2380&start=0#p16330
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: GOD DAMN WRITER'S BLOCK!
User: Minkovsky / DateTime: 2011-05-01 14:22:47

Artifact: House on Druid Lane is just sitting there on my hard drive and I can't freaking shake a stick at it now! I just hate when it happens!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2372&start=0#p16331
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Events upon room entrance and randomiizing stuff
User: Arag-e / DateTime: 2011-05-01 14:28:23

Sorry to be a bother, but I can’t seem to get this to work. Just putting the code in as it is doesn’t work and I’ve already tried putting the enteringRoom(traveller) method in the actual randomEncounterRoom code (Why use Modify in this case btw?) and increasing freq to 99 to ensure I’m not just getting bad rolls. Nothing shows up no matter how long I exit and re-enter. Also the compiler gives me warning regarding the “this” in “!redSlime.getOutermostRoom() == this” and “redSlime.moveInto(this);” which I’m not sure of what they are in the first place. Are they placeholders that I’m meant to replace with the room names? I tried that and the warnings go away, but the Slime still doesn’t show up.

[code]startRoom: Room 'Starting Room'
    "This is the start room. "
    north = battleRoom
    west = activeBattleRoom
    east = randomEncounterRoom
;

battleRoom: Room 'Battle Room'
    "This is the battle room. "
    south = startRoom
;
    
activeBattleRoom: Room 'Active Battle Room'
    "This is the active battle room. "
    east = startRoom
;

randomEncounterRoom: Room 'Random Encounter Room'
    "This is the testing area for random encounters. "
    west = startRoom
;

modify randomEncounterRoom
    enteringRoom(traveler)
    {
        inherited(traveler);
        local roll = rand(100);
        local freq = 20;
        if (roll < freq && !redSlime.getOutermostRoom() == this)
            redSlime.moveInto(this);
    }
;[/code]

As for the Monster class thing, yes I’m aware of that. Once I got most of the individual mechanics down, I was planning on cleaning up the code by nesting all the generic monster behaviour in a custom actor class. Thanks for the theName part, that solves another problem I was thinking of.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2377&start=0#p16332
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A random action that won't repeat?
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-05-01 14:34:14

Emily Post's Plurality handles the he/she problem.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2372&start=0#p16333
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Events upon room entrance and randomiizing stuff
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-05-01 14:50:53

[quote="Arag-e"]Also the compiler gives me warning regarding the “this” in “!redSlime.getOutermostRoom() == this” and “redSlime.moveInto(this);” which I’m not sure of what they are in the first place. Are they placeholders that I’m meant to replace with the room names? I tried that and the warnings go away, but the Slime still doesn’t show up.[/quote]
I think Ben meant to use "self" instead of "this", which basically is a short-hand way to refer to the object that contains the function.

Try changing the condition to:

[code]if (roll < freq && redSlime.getOutermostRoom() != self)[/code]
I'm not entirely sure why the original condition didn't work, but:

[code]if (roll < freq && !(redSlime.getOutermostRoom() == self))[/code]
is also fine. My guess is that the not operator is applying to the getOutermostRoom() for some reason, and, uh... No, I don't get it.  [emote]:?[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2373&start=0#p16334
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Synonyms for the location of the player
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-05-01 15:21:01

You probably need a backdrop. Normal commands never accept rooms as nouns and making synonyms doesn't change that. (You can't CLIMB <room name> anywhere, even if you're in that room.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2373&start=0#p16335
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Synonyms for the location of the player
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-05-01 15:35:02

[quote="Juhana"]You probably need a backdrop.[/quote]
I agree w/ Juhana. Since he already provided an explanation, I'll provide a very simple example:[code]The Gorge-region is a region.
The Western End of the Gorge is a room in Gorge-region. "The gorge extends east of here."
The Central Gorge is a room in Gorge-region. It is east of Western End of the Gorge. "The gorge extends to the east and west here."
The Eastern End of the Gorge is a room in Gorge-region. It is east of the Central Gorge. "The gorge extends west of here."
The Canyon's Rim is up from Eastern End of the Gorge. "You see the gorge below you."

The cliff-face is a backdrop. It is in Gorge-region. 
The description is "[if the location is the eastern end of the gorge]It looks like the rocks here are stable enough for you to climb.[otherwise]It looks like the rocks are too loose for you to climb."
Understand  "cliff" , "face" ,"canyon" ,"gorge" and "rocks" as the cliff-face.

Instead of climbing the cliff-face: try going up.

Instead of going up in the Gorge-region:
	if the location is the Eastern End of the Gorge, continue the action;
	otherwise say "You try to climb the rocks, but they're too loose to get a good handhold."

test me with "x cliff / climb cliff-face / up / e / x canyon / climb up gorge / e / x rocks / climb rocks".[/code]
Note that since backdrops are a kind of thing, they'll be accepted by most commands. You'd still only get the defaults ("attack cliff" yields "Violence isn't the answer to this one," but that's better than "You don't see...") If this is the kind of thing you're looking for, let me know so I can give you a few tips on how it could be fleshed out better (i.e. providing grammar when the player types "climb" w/out using a noun, etc.) If not, maybe you could give us a sample transcript of what you're looking for. Your original post kind of confused me as to why you would need room synonyms.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2375&start=0#p16336
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Supporters, Concealed etc.
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-05-01 15:50:14

Works! Thanks! WriteListFrom(child(self),ENGLISH_BIT); did the trick.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2377&start=0#p16337
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A random action that won't repeat?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-05-01 15:59:03

[quote="katz"]Emily Post's Plurality handles the he/she problem.[/quote]

 [emote]:oops:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=40#p16338
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-05-01 16:20:59

[quote="thefoxaroo"][code]
now The Rocky Outcrop is mapped outside of the TARDIS exterior;[Produces a syntax error] [/code][/quote]
The required syntax, I believe, is [code]now The Rocky Outcrop is mapped outside the TARDIS exterior[/code] without the "of"—similarly for all the non-compass compass directions: above, below, inside and outside.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2372&start=0#p16339
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Events upon room entrance and randomiizing stuff
User: Arag-e / DateTime: 2011-05-01 16:49:37

[quote="Pacian"][code]if (roll < freq && !(redSlime.getOutermostRoom() == self))[/code]
is also fine. My guess is that the not operator is applying to the getOutermostRoom() for some reason, and, uh... No, I don't get it.  [emote]:?[/emote][/quote]

That did it! The system works now and everything I set up to happen upon death is executed perfectly.

One last thing before I go back into getting way over my head: I'm trying to find a way to make the game check if [i]any[/i] object of a certain class is present (the closest I've found are ways to check if particular objects are of certain classes). The reason is that I've created this:
[code]class Monster: UntakeableActor
    LoseHP(Damage)
    {
        HP -= Damage;
    }    
    HealHP(Amount)
    {
        HP += Amount;
        HP = min(HP, MaxHP);
    }
    dobjFor(Attack)
    {
        action()
        {
            LoseHP(myATK.CurrentATK);
            "You strike the <<theName>>. ";
            if (HP <= 0)
            {
                moveInto(nil);                
                "You defeated the <<theName>>. ";
                HP = MaxHP; 
            }
            else
                "\^<<theName>> has <<HP>> HP left. ";
        }
    }
;[/code]
to include all the generic behaviour for monsters.

My intention is to have the !(redSlime.getOutermostRoom() == self) part of the random encounter trigger check for the prescence of ANY object of the Monster class instead of the redSlime in particular. There are several reasons for this, but the most imperative is so that I can add a second random roll to select from a pool of monsters to summon, instead of a particular one. Something like
[code]        local roll = rand(100);
        if (roll <= 20)
            redSlime.moveInto(self);
        if (roll >= 21 && <= 40)
            someOtherMonster.moveInto(self);
        if (roll >= 41 && <= 60)
            And so on and so forth[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=40#p16340
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-05-01 16:56:39

[quote="Felix"]The required syntax, I believe, is [code]now The Rocky Outcrop is mapped outside the TARDIS exterior[/code] without the "of"—similarly for all the non-compass compass directions: above, below, inside and outside.[/quote]
Well, what do you know... that works.  It's a bit confusing that that's the opposite of the syntax you have to use when defining the rooms in the first place.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2372&start=0#p16341
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Events upon room entrance and randomiizing stuff
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-05-01 17:35:42

Thanks for the fixes, Pacian. That's what I get for posting untested code (and working with languages other than TADS).

[quote]I'm trying to find a way to make the game check if any object of a certain class is present (the closest I've found are ways to check if particular objects are of certain classes).[/quote]

My usual way of handling this is to maintain lists of significant class objects. I do this with a helper list object created by this macro:

[rant][code]#define MakeClassList(K, N) \
##N : object \
 \
    lst() \
    { \
    if (lst_ == nil) \
        initLst(); \
    return lst_; \
    } \
 \
    initLst() \
    { \
        lst_ = new Vector(50); \
        local obj = firstObj(); \
        while (obj != nil) \
        { \
            if(obj.ofKind(##K)) \
                lst_.append(obj); \
            obj = nextObj(obj); \
        } \
        lst_ = lst_.toList(); \
    } \
 \
    indexOf(val) \
    { \
        if (lst_ == nil) \
            initLst(); \
        return lst_.indexOf(val); \
    } \
 \
	indexWhich(func) \
	{ \
		if (lst_ == nil) \
			initLst(); \
		return lst_.indexWhich(func); \
	} \
 \
    subset(func) \
    { \
        if (lst_ == nil) \
            initLst(); \
        return lst_.subset(func); \
    } \
 \
    lst_ = nil \
[/code][/rant]

This is complete overkill if all you want is a list of monster objects, but comes in handy if you also need lists of armor, weapons, rooms, and so forth.

With that macro in place, your code becomes something like this:

[code]
MakeClassList(Monster, allMonsters);

randomEncounterRoom: Room 'Random room'
	"This is the random encounter room. "

	enteringRoom(traveler)
	{
		inherited(traveler);
		
		// yields a number between 0 and 99
		local roll = rand(100);

		// % chance of random encounter
		local freq = 80;

		if (roll < freq && !(allMonsters.indexWhich({x: x.getOutermostRoom() == self})))
		{
			local roll = rand(100);
			
			if (roll < 33)
				redSlime.moveInto(self);
			else if (roll < 66)
				blueSlime.moveInto(self);
			else
				greenSlime.moveInto(self);	
		}
	}
;

class Monster: UntakeableActor;

redSlime: Monster 'red slime' 'RED SLIME';
blueSlime: Monster 'blue slime' 'BLUE SLIME';
greenSlime: Monster 'green slime' 'GREEN SLIME';
[/code]

If the first random roll succeeds and there are no monsters in the room, the second roll will randomly pick one of the slimes to teleport in.

To generalize this a little more, you could have a RandomMonster subclass of Monster and make your random encounters descend from that class. Then instead of rolling 100 and breaking down the choice by hand, you could roll for the length of the allRandomMonsters list, and summon the monster corresponding to the index of the rolled value in the list.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379&start=0#p16342
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How about left/right/up/down as compass directions?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-05-01 18:17:46

It can certainly be done, programming-wise, but I think it's a recipe for disaster.

You see, in the strategy games you mean, what you have is a top-down map. Even if you *don't* - if you render it all in 3D - you still have a bird's eye view. From what little I know, in those sort of games this sort of superficiality is a most desirable thing, because you don't want to bother about the lone soldier amidst the trees - you want to globally see where everything is, and what's happening. So you have a superficial map, and sure, within that map it makes sense to use left/right/up/down.

But believe it or not, IF is actually 3d. For starters, "up" means going up a level, and "north" means going a direction the same level. Although we map it in a 2d fashion, we most often don't play it like that. We might assume, for our own mental convenience, in our mental map of the room, that north is the "top of the screen" and south is the "bottom of the screen"... but it exists, for us, as a 3d environment, where our own position *is not specified*. In a typical IF description, "left" and "right" would be absolutely meaningless, because who knows what direction you're facing. And if in a single room you can face 4 or 8 directions, then suddenly right/left/forward/backward (and forget about up/down) can mean eight different things. Depending on where the PC is facing, which is irrelevant information.

So I don't think it's really a good idea, or even useful. It's like adding adverbs - "Hey, it would be cool to CAREFULLY OPEN DOOR!". Then all of a sudden every possible action multiplies like hell, and the player gets lost and encumbered, and the programmer's tearing his hair out in clumps because those damn adverbs are sucking up all his will to live.

THAT SAID... if in a short game, or a short sequence of a game, you feel it's a good idea for whatever reason, then go ahead. But don't just replace east/west with left/right, if you want to do it properly (and if you're not doing it properly why do it at all?) you'll have to give the PC a direction to face, and then give him the ability to face any other direction, or rotate. You'll also have to make your descriptions fairly dynamic to reflect the changes that happen when the player turns, unless you want to give the player compass directions and force him to move with relative directions, which is just plain cruel. And if you do want to go this way, I think there are extensions about "facing". Not sure it's the same thing, but it might help.

EDIT - Dig out "Countdown to Doom" and check out one of the mazes. It does exactly this - relative movement. Judge it for yourself.

EDIT 2 - There. It's no big brainteaser, but I got a savegame for you. Just restore it and type "IN". And then judge for yourself whether this would work in a full-scale IF. The file is obviously very very small, but I had to RAR it because the forum didn't allow me to upload a SAV file.

EDIT 3 - And another thing. Notice in the example I give you how there are certain objects described as being "to the left" or "to the right" of the player. Now imagine doing that for every single object in the entire game, depenging on whether he came into the room via the east door or the west passage. My mind's spinning just thinking about it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2382&start=0#p16343
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: Overruling the Status Bar
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-05-01 19:25:06

I wish to overrule the status bar. Instead of location, score and turns I want to display the location and a set of variables. I did read about @set_window etc., but have no clue how to actually get my text into the top line. Something with DrawStatusLine - no idea how that works. I wrote me a Class for the rooms I intend to use, and there I'd like to insert the code to write to the status line. Any hint on how to achieve this appreciated. Please note I'm a total n00b and got no clue about a lot of concepts, so please keep your explanations simple. Thanks! [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2382&start=0#p16344
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Overruling the Status Bar
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-05-01 20:30:33

You'll need to read [url=http://www.inform-fiction.org/manual/html/s42.html]section 42[/url]. There are a number of exercises for changing the status line there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2372&start=0#p16345
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Events upon room entrance and randomiizing stuff
User: Arag-e / DateTime: 2011-05-01 21:32:13

[quote="bcressey"]This is complete overkill if all you want is a list of monster objects, but comes in handy if you also need lists of armor, weapons, rooms, and so forth.[/quote]
Yes, I can already see how that’ll come in handy. Thank you very much.

[quote="bcressey"]To generalize this a little more, you could have a RandomMonster subclass of Monster and make your random encounters descend from that class. Then instead of rolling 100 and breaking down the choice by hand, you could roll for the length of the allRandomMonsters list, and summon the monster corresponding to the index of the rolled value in the list.[/quote]
I did that but with a Room class. That way I can easily designate whole areas to have the exact same monster encounters:

Finally, I really wanted to say that “This will last me for a while”; but I ran into another weird problem right away:

This time, it was implementing a system for accuracy and dodging attacks. Its rather simple, I just gave the player character a numerical property to designate his accuracy:
[code]+myACC: Component 'my accuracy'
    desc = "ACC: <<CurrentACC>> "
    CurrentACC = 100
;[/code]
I gave the monster another to designate its speed:
[code]slime: Monster 'blue slime monster' 'Slime' @activeBattleRoom
    "It looks like a small gelatinous puddle of blue sludge with eyes. "
    HP = 1000
    MaxHP = 1000
    ATK = 100 
    SPD = 10 //Here
;[/code]
And then added the following check to the dobjFor(Attack) method in the Monster class definition:
[code]
            local roll = rand(100);
            local hitChance = (myACC.CurrentACC -= SPD);
            if (hitChance >= roll)
[/code]
So it looks like this:
[code]dobjFor(Attack)
    {
        action()
        {
            local roll = rand(100);
            local hitChance = (myACC.CurrentACC -= SPD);
            if (hitChance >= roll)
            {
                LoseHP(myATK.CurrentATK);
                "You strike the <<theName>>. ";
                if (HP <= 0)
                {
                    moveInto(nil);                
                    "You defeated the <<theName>>. ";
                    HP = MaxHP; 
                }
                else
                    "\^<<theName>> has <<HP>> HP left. ";
            }
            else
                "\^<<theName>> dodged your attack! ";
        }
    }[/code]
The formula should be rather simple: Get a random roll between 0 and 99, then subtract the target monster’s speed (10) from the player’s accuracy (100) to get the hit chance value. If the hit chance value is lower than the roll, the attack misses. Otherwise, it hits and the attack method triggers as before. With these values, any roll between 0 and 90 will ensure a hit, whereas anything between 91 and 99 will be a miss.

Also, I did call the randomize() function on game startup:
[code]gameMain: GameMainDef
    showIntro()
    {
        "Welcome to the testing arena for a theoretical combat system. Soon to be Spaghetti Code Clusterfuck. ";
        randomize();
    }
    initialPlayerChar = me
;[/code]

It works… at first. I hit most of the time and miss others, but eventually I miss and I just keep missing forever in statistically impossible ways. Somehow, the roll result gets jammed at >90 at some point. No matter what, I never hit after the 9th  attack.

So I’m drawing a blank on what-[color=#FF0000]NEVERMIND, I'M A MORON, I GOT THE PROBLEM, I just don't know how to solve it even though it's probably really simple.[/color] Obviously, each time I call 
[code]local hitChance = (myACC.CurrentACC -= SPD);[/code]
the game actually sustracts SPD from myACC.CurrentACC instead of using them as stable values, so obviously I can't hit past the ninth because by then myACC.CurrentACC = 10 and so myACC.CurrentACC -= SPD is always 10 -= 10, which is obviously going to be lower than the roll... problem is, I don't recall how to tell the game to just use those values to get a number instead of changing them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2383&start=0#p16346
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Compiler error 10
User: Missing Number / DateTime: 2011-05-01 22:02:01

Hey guys, I've been playing around with Inform 7 for years and love it dearly, but have never visited the forums or newsgroups much, so I apologize in advance if I'm doing things a bit wrong here.

I haven't been able to consistently compile projects for a few versions of Inform 7 now.  I'm not sure why; the compiler returns error number 10, but does not offer an explanation for that error code.  The chance of it failing increases with the complexity of the project; a project with a few rules and a dozen rooms will fail better than half the time, a project with only a title will fail occasionally as well.  Once it has failed, it will continue to fail, no matter what I attempt to compile (even if the project is blank), until I restart the program.

I have read the development log a few times, and I started having the problem with version 6E59.  Strangely, uninstalling it and going back to an earlier version doesn't seem to fix the problem.  I have no idea why.  I thought maybe one of the extensions was corrupt originally, so I removed all of them I could find, but had no luck.  Newest version doesn't seem to work any better than the old ones.

This has been going on for a long time, with me usually trying it after a few weeks for a few hours and getting frustrated and leaving it alone for another few weeks.  I decided to give breaking the cycle a shot.  Does any have any idea what to do or what to look at to fix it myself?  I'm computer literate enough I might be able to figure it out with a hint in the right direction, like what the error code means or suggest a way to see what the compiler is failing to do specifically.

I admit my computer is slightly unstable; there's a driver or something buried in there somewhere that crashes it rather reliably under certain rare conditions, in case error code 10 secretly means "I kept the program from exploding your computer", don't hesitate to tell me.

Some information:
* currently have 6G60 installed
* operating system is Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit
* 4 GB memory

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2383&start=0#p16347
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Compiler error 10
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-01 22:26:53

Try adding these lines:

[code]
Use MAX_PROP_TABLE_SIZE of 500000.
Use MAX_INDIV_PROP_TABLE_SIZE of 60000.
Use MAX_STATIC_DATA of 360000.
[/code]

There are cases where the compiler crashes, instead of reporting overflows (and telling you to raise these values).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379&start=0#p16348
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How about left/right/up/down as compass directions?
User: Huck Hooks / DateTime: 2011-05-01 22:55:32

Thanks for responding.
I hoped i made clear it is not about facing, it is the same as north and compass directings. Fixed, related to a map. Its just that i have to translate north etc to something usefull, ie north is up on the map, and southwest is - one moment, back right? No, wrong again, west is left...
If people would never think in 2d, there would be no need for automappers, also, playing with facing would not be confusing [emote];)[/emote]

Forward/backward instead of up/down is a good suggestion.

Edit: Do i sound to harsh? English is not my first language..

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2372&start=0#p16349
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Events upon room entrance and randomiizing stuff
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-05-01 23:22:34

You want this instead:

[code]
local hitChance = myACC.CurrentACC - SPD;
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379&start=0#p16350
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How about left/right/up/down as compass directions?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-02 02:28:52

You sound fine [emote]:)[/emote]

I do know what you mean about swapping north for up, west for left, etc

I think compass directions do their job extremely well, and I agree with the people who say they are worth keeping as as something the player can depend upon, but I wouldn't object to a game which also allowed 'left' for west, 'right' for east, etc. - so long as it was clear about these commands in the instructions. There's also potential confusion when talking about going up or down stairs and ladders, but I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to work around. Basically it would be up to the author to make it work, and I'm sure people could make it work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2237&start=0#p16351
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [6G60] Inform 7 and Natty (Ubuntu 11.04).
User: Minkovsky / DateTime: 2011-05-02 04:07:05

Did someone report this or is it still unreported?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379&start=0#p16352
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How about left/right/up/down as compass directions?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-05-02 05:25:21

A few years back, an experiment was made to see whether people cope better with compass directions or directional commands. IIRC, the result was that it was 50/50. The experiment was a game in which you were playing a lab rat, and you were given tasks. The game supported directional commands as well as compass directions. The game was "Rat in Control":

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=gakwspx3ip7xo7kk">http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=gakwspx3ip7xo7kk</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2372&start=0#p16353
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Events upon room entrance and randomiizing stuff
User: Arag-e / DateTime: 2011-05-02 06:11:34

I feel both stupid and grateful. Thank you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379&start=0#p16354
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How about left/right/up/down as compass directions?
User: Huck Hooks / DateTime: 2011-05-02 06:16:23

severedhand,
I was thinking about using both. Allowing north as well as forward. And having a switch for display. Need some good descriptions. Would "mapwise" work? Map up, Map left? Something like

>compasswise
You are in a forest, with a nice campfire. In the north is a road, at least you see sometimes people moving behind the trees. From west to south flows a stream with cool fresh water.

> mapwise
You are in a forest, with a nice campfire. Mapwise up is a road, at least you see sometimes people moving behind the trees. From mapwise left to mapwise down flows a stream with cool fresh water.


RealNC,
regarding the Rats game, it uses left etc for relative directions. Relative to me. But i think with fixed directions. I agree with About/The Hypotheses, i think in maps. But

>look
Here is the floor. Left of the floor is the bathroom, and a picture on the wall. Right of the floor is the living room. Left in the bathroom is the bathtube.

This does not turn when i turn. When i turn to the image, the bathroom is still left of the floor. Or think of a ship, it always has starboard and backboard everywhere the same.

Such a map is not oriented north, it is oriented to something. Something containing the location, the direction i have when i enter something. And when i talk with others (except sailors), its left/right based on that map. And when i explore, i add a location left of my mental map. So i thought, i save the translation of compass<->mind and use mind-directions directly. But not enforced, since old textadventurers would need to do the opposite, translating west to - "what was this left-thing about"?

Which now clashes with the left of turning, the up of staircases. So i look for some good verbal conventions. And maybe some coding help later [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2346&start=10#p16355
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Future of Text Games (and impact on game design)
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-02 06:57:22

[quote="Bainespal"][quote="severedhand"]
I entered Leadlight in IFComp 2010. As far as I can see, I was the only entrant to put out a press release for their game to gaming media.
[/quote]
Would you mind telling us how to do that?[/quote]

A good idea. What I'll do is write about what I learned, and put it in a new topic as something of a how to.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379&start=0#p16356
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How about left/right/up/down as compass directions?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-05-02 07:07:28

I still say I'm all for experimenting (I tried out the "rats" game and actually felt the relative directions worked very nicely), but I still think you're trying to adapt something for IF which doesn't really conform with it.

[quote]>look
Here is the floor. Left of the floor is the bathroom, and a picture on the wall. Right of the floor is the living room. Left in the bathroom is the bathtube.[/quote]

When I read this, the image I have is of a solid block of wood, man-high and man-wide, labeled "The Floor". Anyway, you can't say that anything is "left of the floor" - everything is ON the floor.

Also, you're making the floor the most important thing in the room by placing everything relative to it. That's not a good thing. There may be instances in which making everything relevant to a single important object might work, but even then, overdoing it like that is not going to be good.

What I think you keep missing is that you keep talking about maps. Strategy maps. Real-life maps. But the point is that IF is not about *reading* maps. If anything, it's about *making* them. Maps represent topography and geography. The IF experience is to walk around, see what is what, and then represent it - in paper or in the mind - via any number of ways, the diagram being the most widely used. The player experiences it, and then translates that experience to something that'll help him/her get around.

What you're trying to do is to enforce the language of map-reading on the experience itself. It doesn't work like that, unless you want to give the player the map from the word go. And you can't really have such map-styled descriptions, because at the interaction level, things are not happening from a bird's-eye view. When the player is playing and reading room descriptions, he's not hovering above it all like a strategist - or someone trying to follow a road map - must do when considering all the geography. The player is right smack in the middle of it, and he's not thinking about the room as though it were a point in the map. He's thinking about the room as though it were a three-dimensional space.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379&start=0#p16357
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How about left/right/up/down as compass directions?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-02 07:41:23

I'll tell you what's mildly bugging me about compass directions in the game I'm developing now - nearly everyone in the game is really young, and it's written from their POV, but they still have to say things like 'such and such arrives from the west'. 'There's a path to the north'.

Since the language already has to exhibit a degree of concession to their ages and mental processes, but without boring adult players or just being too plain or uninteresting in the process, the compass directions stick out to me. But I've got nothing better. I dunno, maybe nobody will blink at them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379&start=0#p16358
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How about left/right/up/down as compass directions?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-05-02 07:48:01

See, that's a very specific situation with very real reasons to avoid compass directions. If you, as the developer, are really concerned about it, then I would urge you - URGE you - to seek alternatives. You could keep compass directions for those who'd rather use them (see Aurora and Blue Lacuna), and present an alternative default method. You could have relative directions, if you're ready to deal with all that facing (that "rats" game did that very well. I'd reccommend it as a model). You can have landmarks and "go to" (go to bedroom, go to bathroom. Such and such arrives from the kitchen). You should never feel unhappy with your work just because of existing conventions - though if you could ALSO support said conventions, it would only earn you points with the players.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379&start=0#p16359
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How about left/right/up/down as compass directions?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-02 08:19:09

The only kind of movement suitable for this game is discrete steps of 'up a room', 'across a room', etc. - basically, compass directions are ideal.

Offering keywords for movement only could be psychologically realistic (a kid might point at the beach to the west and say 'the beach is over there' - then point at the road and say 'the road is over there') but, then in the prose, what would I actually say? 'You see the beach ahead and the road to your right'. I see myself entering a world of  semantic vagueness.

The trouble is, the cartesian relationships between the rooms are totally grid-ish, because this is a game in which moving around is half the game, so the geography is totally unlike the more 'natural' / variable geography of Blue Lacuna whose nature makes keywords believable in the prose.

By the time I'm adding compass directions in the prose in brackets to reinforce the cartesian-ness of my game... I might as well just be using compass directions in the first place [emote]:)[/emote]

I'm still thinking about the issue.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379&start=10#p16360
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How about left/right/up/down as compass directions?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-05-02 08:50:32

I wouldn't dismiss the idea of using left/right/forward/back as fixed directions rather than relative directions straight away. You'd definitely want to use forward/back, not up/down, though, since up/down already have their own meaning. If I remember correctly, [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=mh1a6hizgwjdbeg7]Hunter, in Darkness[/url] used left/right/forward/back as fixed directions. Then again, aside from the maze section, it had a very restricted map, and rarely allowed much backtracking.

Articles on IF design often warn against simulating unimportant details. Maybe it's worth considering: is it important to track which direction the PC is facing when using relative directions? Or is it an acceptable simplification to have the PC always face the same way in any given room, no matter where s/he entered the room?

A few problems with using left/right/forward/back as fixed directions spring to mind. For instance, players might expect BACK to always return them the way they came, rather than being a fixed exit, and become confused when it doesn't actually work that way. More generally, how does the player know that the directions are fixed rather than relative? That could be an issue for players trying to map the game.

I imagine it would work best if the map was designed to be quite linear. If the player is supposed to be continually pushing forwards towards some particular goal (like the Wumpus in Hunter, in Darkness or Elias in [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=xwedbibfksczn7eq]Gun Mute[/url]), then it makes sense for the directions to be fixed according to that goal. So forward takes the PC further along the main path towards the goal, back moves away from it, and left, right, up and down allow for detours along the way.

(Can anyone think of any other games that used left/right/forward/back as fixed directions? I can only come up with Hunter, in Darkness and Gun Mute, and Gun Mute hardly counts since the only directions it used were forward and back.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379&start=10#p16362
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How about left/right/up/down as compass directions?
User: Huck Hooks / DateTime: 2011-05-02 09:18:17

Peter,
sorry about the floor, i guess its called corridor.
Was looking up german "Flur". <a class="postlink" href="http://dict.leo.org/ende?lp=ende&lang=de&searchLoc=0&cmpType=relaxed&sectHdr=on&spellToler=&search=flur">http://dict.leo.org/ende?lp=ende&lang=d ... earch=flur</a>

About grammar, adjacent rooms, can the bathroom be left of the corridor, or how is that called? Or a wing left on a plane? And the plane facing to the end of the runway, and left of the runway is the tower?
Which are all local maps, and i can easily navigate in my mind with them, once i know a base orientation on the map.
In case of the corridor, i think: i come in, left is the baseroom etc, and then i use that orientation while inside the house. If i go right to the kitchen, the bathroom is still left of the kitchen, but two steps. I do not need much birdseying for that. But i use birds feeling when navigating in grids (and everyone using compass directions does that too).

Emerald,
good points. I hoped i could come up with some language, which still relates to left/right/back/forward, to save people using a drawn compassrose for training. But which hints that i am talking relative to the current map, not to the player. And some help-language to introduce that.

Or to understand that this is really no issue and i am a special case, but then comes severedhand and shows it is.

Severedhand,
a vague idea:
How to give them a bigger textmap to get the idea? Something given at start.

You look at the map.
Left of the center is the pond, then the mountains, forward a house, then a forest.

Could that lead to the idea of gridthinking?
(Sorry, West of here is the pond, then the mountains, north a house, then a forest.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2087&start=10#p16363
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Glulxe and Windows Git updated
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-05-02 09:32:21

Another set of new releases for the Windows Glulxe and Windows Git interpreters, available from here:
<a class="postlink" href="http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXprogrammingXglulxXinterpretersXglulxe.html">http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archive ... lulxe.html</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXprogrammingXglulxXinterpretersXgit.html">http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archive ... sXgit.html</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.davidkinder.co.uk/glulxe.html">http://www.davidkinder.co.uk/glulxe.html</a>

The only change is to bump the Windows Glk version to 1.42. This introduces a high-resolution timer approach to determining the system time, as discussed previously in this thread (following approximately the same approach as used by Mozilla Firefox, for anyone who is interested).

As a result, the microsecond value in the structure filled in by glk_current_time() should be accurate to the nearest few microseconds, depending on operating system version and underlying hardware. (At worst, it'll be no worse than before, which is accurate to 15.625ms, in the case of no higher resolution timer being available.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379&start=10#p16364
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How about left/right/up/down as compass directions?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-05-02 09:37:16

[quote="Huck Hooks"]But i use birds feeling when navigating in grids (and everyone using compass directions does that too).[/quote]

Ok, we obviously disagree, and I won't insist upon it. But no, not *everyone* does that. When I set up a map, I do use bird's-eye, as many people do, but speaking for myself, I certainly don't see "West of House" as being "down and left of North of House", or the "Clearing" as being "up of North of House". I may place them like that on the diagram, but in my mind it's always SW, N, NE, S. I may be navigating in a grid, superficially, but what I'm really doing is zipping through my mental construction of space, and I always think about it in terms of compass directions.

I'm not looking for further discussion here, but it does seem to me that you're missing the step of the "mental construction of space", which makes sense given your experience with strategy games. It's perfectly allright - that experience makes you look at IF differently. I was trying to make you realise that, but I guess I went the long way around and no-one gained much from it. Anyway, your ideas are as valid as any other, I was merely trying to explain why, from the outset, it wouldn't be an easy job, by letting you know all the things you weren't considering that happen in the mind of an IF player.

Not *all* IF players, accourse.

And regarding the writing... I shouldn't worry about it *too* much, just make sure that you'll get your finished work proofread by a native speaker. Just write it up as best you can, and trust your proofreader as he'll probably have to rewrite it all up. Hey, I played a couple of games from a guy who came up with good games, good story, but was a very messy writer. Eventually he got someone else to rewrite all the text, and it was the smartest thing he did, because the games just got that much better.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379&start=10#p16365
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How about left/right/up/down as compass directions?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-02 10:29:35

[quote="Huck Hooks"]
Severedhand,
a vague idea:
How to give them a bigger textmap to get the idea? Something given at start.

You look at the map.
Left of the center is the pond, then the mountains, forward a house, then a forest.

Could that lead to the idea of gridthinking?
(Sorry, West of here is the pond, then the mountains, north a house, then a forest.)[/quote]

Thanks. Yes, I was starting to have ideas about maps. Either an in-game map, or a feelie map. And Emerald reminded me that 'forward' and 'back' are better than 'up' and 'down'.

So I'm going to start thinking about having an absolute forward/back/left/right direction set which would work as well as compass directions. Of course I would have to work out how to code it, too, and I'm trying not to kill myself with my first game in a new language, hehe.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2386&start=0#p16366
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Level 9 interpreter 5.0
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-05-02 11:08:42

A mere four years after the last release, a new version 5.0 of the Level 9 interpreter is out:
[url]http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXlevel9XinterpretersXlevel9.html[/url]

Level 9 were a prolific and successful British text adventure producer in the 1980s. This interpreter allows their games to be played on modern computers without needing an emulator.

There are new builds of the Windows, DOS and Amiga ports, as well as the new source code. The major new features are:
[list][*]The earliest releases of Level 9 games (the 'V1 format') are now supported.[/*:m]
[*]Andreas Scherrer has gone through all the games and produced solutions for them all, which has been used to verify that all games can be finished with the interpreter, and fix a few issues along the way.[/*:m]
[*]Andreas has also reviewed all the pictures in the games, which has led to fixes in the interpreter's graphics drawing routines.[/*:m][/list:u]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2387&start=0#p16367
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Transmedia IF Experiment
User: RobMagus / DateTime: 2011-05-02 11:53:35

Hallo all,

A friend is experimenting with IF in transmedia storytelling, and has released his first work as an open beta: <a class="postlink" href="http://silverstringmedia.com/2011/05/01/azraels-stop-if-release/">http://silverstringmedia.com/2011/05/01 ... f-release/</a>

Please register in the beta and leave some feedback!

Thanks,

- r

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379&start=10#p16368
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How about left/right/up/down as compass directions?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-05-02 12:02:14

[quote="Emerald"]Can anyone think of any other games that used left/right/forward/back as fixed directions?[/quote]
No, but a similar idea often reoccurs to me. I imagine an IF game about a journey, where you might decide to take the left path or the right path or the path straight ahead, and back would always take you back to the previous room. The map would look kind of like a tree rather than the usual right-angled IF map.  (Actually, now that I think about it, I almost used this for [i]Dead Like Ants[/i] for that very reason.)

The chief defence of IF conventions is often that they're a perfect fit for conventional IF games, which is usually quite true (and in this case, I think, in keeping with the OP), but rather limited.

When somebody says "Never do this in IF", my first thought is always to try and think of a way that it could work, and I usually come up with a way to do it that would at least please me. (One of these days I'll have to make my maze game...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2237&start=0#p16369
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [6G60] Inform 7 and Natty (Ubuntu 11.04).
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-05-02 12:10:12

Someone reported it: [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=651]651[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379&start=10#p16370
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How about left/right/up/down as compass directions?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-02 12:13:27

[quote="Emerald"]A few problems with using left/right/forward/back as fixed directions spring to mind. For instance, players might expect BACK to always return them the way they came, rather than being a fixed exit, and become confused when it doesn't actually work that way.[/quote]

Would "ahead" and "behind" be better than "forward" and "back" in this way? Anyway, to my ear "ahead" and "behind" sound more natural as descriptive directions, and "forward" and "back" as part of your action, like this:

[quote]You are by the merry-go-round. The slide is ahead of you, the swings are to your left, and the balance beam is behind you.
>GO FORWARD
You are at the slide.[/quote]

...which makes me think that if you use "ahead" and "behind" in your descriptions, you should definitely allow "forward" and "back" as synonyms. I don't know, I think that ahead/behind/left/right might make it harder for me to visualize the map, but like [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7BDS19H9OM]dead finks[/url] I have a bad sense of direction anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2369&start=0#p16371
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Typecasting and phrases
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-05-02 12:24:15

[quote="ektemple"]Like Plan A, Plan C (spaghetti!) has been stymied by a bug--a pretty massively bad one. Inform is misinterpreting type designations like this one:

[code]To decide which text is the text version of (P - lists of lists of numbers valued property)[/code]

to mean 

[code]list of lists of numbers valued properties[/code]

...which of course is a totally different thing.[/quote]

For the benefit of anyone who runs across this page in the future, EmacsUser points out in a comment on the Mantis report page that brackets can be used in this case to work around the mis-parsing:

To decide which text is the text version of (P - (lists of lists of numbers) valued property)

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2237&start=0#p16372
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [6G60] Inform 7 and Natty (Ubuntu 11.04).
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-05-02 12:26:01

Glad I haven't upgraded! I may never upgrade on this machine, after seeing the changelog for 11.04

I guess this may mean that the next version of Inform7 for Gnome will be Natty Narwhal -only? Oh, no...  [emote]:evil:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2383&start=0#p16373
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Compiler error 10
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-05-02 12:26:24

My laptop would start throwing code 10s quite often when it got too warm.  Inform seems more sensitive to faulty hardware than a lot of other programs.  (As a compiler should be.)  

Since you get them even on brand new projects, I'm inclined to blame your hardware.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2369&start=0#p16374
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Typecasting and phrases
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-02 13:23:43

Just out of curiosity, what is the difference between "lists of lists of numbers valued property" and "list of lists of numbers valued properties"? I'm having trouble parsing either of them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2369&start=0#p16375
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Typecasting and phrases
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-05-02 13:40:55

[quote="matt w"]Just out of curiosity, what is the difference between "lists of lists of numbers valued property" and "list of lists of numbers valued properties"? I'm having trouble parsing either of them.[/quote]

This is well within the zone where natural language no longer has any advantage over standard computer-language notation!

A [b]list of lists of numbers valued property[/b] is a property that contains a value that is a list of lists of numbers, e.g. {{1, 2, 3}, {4, 5, 6}}.
A [b]list of lists of numbers valued properties[/b] is a list that contains lists of number-valued properties, e.g. {{weight, speed}, {mass, energy}}, if we have previously declared such things as "A thing has a number called the weight" etc.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2382&start=0#p16376
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Overruling the Status Bar
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-05-02 14:54:16

Works now. I didn't know I had to overrule the lib include at the beginning.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2383&start=0#p16377
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Compiler error 10
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-05-02 15:00:18

Weird -- I got a slew of these yesterday, too.  I was working with code I hadn't touched in six months, so I had no idea what the most recent thing I'd written in it was; I started commenting out chunks until I had the code down to [code]A foo is a kind of thing.  The plural of foo is foos. The description of a foo is usually "It's too foggy to make out clearly."  
Over There is a room. Some foos in Over There are defined by the Table of Existent Foos.  The description of a foo is usually "[Description]".
When play begins: now the player carries your quest.
[with the Table of Existent Foos not commented out][/code] and it was still giving me "Code 10."  I ended up downloading the latest version (6G60, when I'd had 6E59) and that got me back to seeing normal, fixable compiler errors.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2237&start=0#p16378
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [6G60] Inform 7 and Natty (Ubuntu 11.04).
User: Minkovsky / DateTime: 2011-05-02 15:39:01

[quote="Jizaboz"]I guess this may mean that the next version of Inform7 for Gnome will be Natty Narwhal -only? Oh, no...  [emote]:evil:[/emote][/quote]
So... Are they going to split it up and release pre-Natty and post-Natty separately, recode conflicting stuff to suit both systems, or should I break out my C++ IDE and try to make a little rewrite myself? I can think of few changes that may be useful, like Scintilla instead of GTKSourceView and Gecko instead of Webkit...  [emote]:geek:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2376&start=0#p16379
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Actions that apply to non-visible things?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-05-02 15:57:00

You might want to look at my Notepad extension. You should be able to add "draw" to the code for "write" pretty easily. This extension has a couple of things you might find useful, such as the ability to erase what has been drawn/written and the optional requirement that the player be holding a pen-type object.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2388&start=0#p16380
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Dynamic Objects and Programming Error
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-05-02 16:05:57

So I have a large group of items of a single kind, and many of them have additional "understand" conditions.  A number of these items are cloned via Dynamic Objects and randomly distributed throughout the world map upon start.  They're all table defined.

When I run the first room, I get:

[quote]You can see
** Programming error: tried to read from -->-1 in the array "parse", which has entries 0 up to 60 **
[list of objects in the location] here.[/quote]

Sometimes I get one message per item; sometimes less.  When there's duplicates, they *all* occur before the list of objects in the location.  

It *seems* to happen especially when multiple items have the same "understand" conditions for their plural (ie "Understand 'x' as the plural of y" and "Understand 'x' as the plural of z").

This error seems to go away when I remove either the long list of "understand 'x' as the plural of 'y'" *or* when I hand-place these objects in the world.  However, it doesn't seem to be caused by these, either. Similar test conditions could provoke no similar bug.  Dynamic Objects and Tables are updated to the most recent versions.

It *only* happens on the first look of the game.  If the first room doesn't contain these particular objects, it never fires.  If the PC leaves and comes back to a room where the error occurred, everything is fine.  

Anybody know what might be going on?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2386&start=0#p16381
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Level 9 interpreter 5.0
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-05-02 16:21:38

Sweet! Thanks to all involved!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2237&start=0#p16382
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [6G60] Inform 7 and Natty (Ubuntu 11.04).
User: snowdrop / DateTime: 2011-05-02 16:30:23

After discussing it with the developer the following was brought into the light:

1) The problem is known, as suggested above. A solution is to just do the "make install" again (that worked for me). The end result is however somewhat unstable or me, but works well most of the time.

2) A .deb for 11.04 is on it's way and should already be released at the projects sourceforge page. Last time I tried it though it refused to install on my 11.04

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2237&start=10#p16383
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [6G60] Inform 7 and Natty (Ubuntu 11.04).
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2011-05-02 17:24:26

As of yesterday gnome-inform7 has been repackaged for the 64-bit version of Ubuntu 11.04, and that package is available from inform7.com. (I built it myself as soon as I upgraded to 11.04, and I am testing it on my own system, where it has been working just fine.) [rant]By the way, am I the only person who can't get Unity to run at all? It's not even defaulting to Gnome 2, it's just leaving me with the default Ubuntu wallpaper and a cursor that can't do anything, though I can hear Skype starting. The Ubuntu forums have been of no help so far. It's probably my stupid Radeon videocard...[/rant] I imagine a new i386 package will follow shortly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2376&start=0#p16384
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Actions that apply to non-visible things?
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-02 18:02:14

[quote="Jim Aikin"]You might want to look at my Notepad extension. You should be able to add "draw" to the code for "write" pretty easily. This extension has a couple of things you might find useful, such as the ability to erase what has been drawn/written and the optional requirement that the player be holding a pen-type object.[/quote]

I have tried to use the notepad extension, but had problems... I get this on compile:

[code]This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6G60) on its most recent run through:

In Section 4 - Adding It To in the extension Notepad by Jim Aikin:

Problem. In the sentence 'now carrying-pen is true'  , I was expecting to read a condition, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'carrying-pen is true'.

I was trying to match this phrase:

now (carrying-pen is true - a condition) 

This was what I found out:

carrying-pen is true = something unrecognised



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem. In the sentence 'if carrying-pen is false begin'  , I was expecting to read a condition, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'carrying-pen is false'.

I was trying to match this phrase:

if (carrying-pen is false - a condition): 

This was what I found out:

carrying-pen is false = something unrecognised



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In Section 5 - Copying It To in the extension Notepad by Jim Aikin:

Problem. In the sentence 'now carrying-pen is true'  , I was expecting to read a condition, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'carrying-pen is true'.

I was trying to match this phrase:

now (carrying-pen is true - a condition) 

This was what I found out:

carrying-pen is true = something unrecognised



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem. In the sentence 'if carrying-pen is false begin'  , I was expecting to read a condition, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'carrying-pen is false'.

I was trying to match this phrase:

if (carrying-pen is false - a condition): 

This was what I found out:

carrying-pen is false = something unrecognised
 
[/code]

As it wasn't really critical for this project, I just removed the include for the extension... but always thought it would be nice to use.  An idea how to correct these errors?

Edit to add: I get these errors even when using the examples that come with the extension, not just with my own convoluted project.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2369&start=0#p16385
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Typecasting and phrases
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-02 18:22:00

What got me was that you said "which [b]of course[/b] is a totally different thing."  (Emph. added.)

In this case, if the parentheses work, I wouldn't want Inform trying to puzzle things out by which plurals you're using (as suggested in the bug report) -- it's convoluted enough that it would be hard for me to predict what would happen.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2383&start=0#p16386
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Compiler error 10
User: Missing Number / DateTime: 2011-05-02 18:32:39

Thank you for the suggestion for the possible overflow errors, that doesn't seem to be the solution though.

I suspect it may be faulty hardware as well, but I haven't been able to narrow it down to anything specific.  Most programs run fine, it's just a few that have problems, and they don't seem to have any relation to each other.  I can run things like Mass Effect 2, GIMP, and Microsoft Word and have no issues at all.

Anyone have any idea how I could narrow it down?  I appreciate your thoughts!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2383&start=0#p16387
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Compiler error 10
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-02 18:43:39

[quote="Missing Number"]Thank you for the suggestion for the possible overflow errors, that doesn't seem to be the solution though.

I suspect it may be faulty hardware as well, but I haven't been able to narrow it down to anything specific.  Most programs run fine, it's just a few that have problems, and they don't seem to have any relation to each other.  I can run things like Mass Effect 2, GIMP, and Microsoft Word and have no issues at all.

Anyone have any idea how I could narrow it down?  I appreciate your thoughts![/quote]

My first question would be what is the list of things that do cause problems?  That is the place to start... and then try to figure out what they have in common.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2369&start=0#p16388
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Typecasting and phrases
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-05-02 18:43:41

Hm, I don't think I agree. On any noun in those phrases except for "property/ies", I concur that the plurality is just style, and Inform rightly ignores it. But the plurality of property/properties is absolutely necessary to parsing the phrase in English, at least in the absence of hyphens or [url=http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/CMS_FAQ/HyphensEnDashesEmDashes/HyphensEnDashesEmDashes65.html]en dashes[/url]. I don't think that mathematical grouping parentheses should be the only way to express this sort of concept when it can be done in natural language.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2389&start=0#p16389
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Question about Global Remapping
User: Morana / DateTime: 2011-05-02 18:50:22

I have been trying to code a global remapping such that a command of the form KISS X becomes GIVE KISS TO X. This is what I have so far:

[code]kissToGiveKissTo: GlobalRemapping
    getRemapping(issuingActor, targetActor, action)
    {
        if (action.ofKind(KissAction))
        {
            local newAction = GiveToAction.createActionInstance();
            newAction.setOriginalAction(action);
            local dobj = 'kiss';
            local iobj = action.dobjMatch;
            newAction.setObjectMatches(dobj, iobj);
            return [targetActor, newAction];
        }
        return nil;
    }
;[/code]
I already have a kiss object that allows commands of the form GIVE KISS TO X to work. The string 'kiss' obviously needs to be replaced (it is just a placeholder here), but even after reading "Global Command Remapping" in the Technical Manual and "GrammarProd" in the System Manual I don't know what a viable substitution would be. PreResolvedProd is not an option here, because the kiss object is not directly used in an action (I have instead made it an object in the inventory of an off-stage actor from which other actors inherit). So what do I do? Also, this is the first time I have attempted global remapping, so any other suggested improvements would be appreciated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2390&start=0#p16390
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: A small Glk issue with external files
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-02 19:04:39

I was writing some rather arbitrary unit tests yesterday, and I ran into a situation where cheapglk failed to do what I expected. Investigation led me to this comment in the fopen() man page:

"ANSI C requires that a file positioning function [i.e., fseek()]) intervene between output and input, unless an input operation encounters end-of-file."

That's for files opened with fopen("r+"), which I'm using for ReadWrite files. Indeed, if I open a ReadWrite Glk stream, and do a read and then a write, I get a crazy result -- the data is written at the end of the file rather than at the mark.

I'm pretty sure that nobody's ever run into this before. However, I still want to resolve it, and I'd rather not resolve it by adding this statement of limitation to the Glk spec.

Therefore, it's the Glk library's responsibility to work around this for the ReadWrite case. I have updated CheapGlk to do this. Patch: <a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/erkyrath/cheapglk/commit/f58aa928dd925ba34f1121ce1c58abfd68c28235">https://github.com/erkyrath/cheapglk/co ... fd68c28235</a>

Unit test: <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/externalfile.ulx">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/externalfile.ulx</a>
Unit test source: <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/externalfile.inf">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/externalfile.inf</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2369&start=10#p16391
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Typecasting and phrases
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-02 19:49:05

[quote="ektemple"]Hm, I don't think I agree. On any noun in those phrases except for "property/ies", I concur that the plurality is just style, and Inform rightly ignores it. But the plurality of property/properties is absolutely necessary to parsing the phrase in English, at least in the absence of hyphens or [url=http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/CMS_FAQ/HyphensEnDashesEmDashes/HyphensEnDashesEmDashes65.html]en dashes[/url]. I don't think that mathematical grouping parentheses should be the only way to express this sort of concept when it can be done in natural language.

--Erik[/quote]

Well, my argument would be that the plurality isn't actually helpful in parsing it in English; I can't make head or tail of these constructions in English, even with the plurality. Part of it may be that I really want those en dashes to be there; I used to have a copyediting job where most of my responsibilities consisted of making sure those dashes were in the right place. (Though in this case the dashes will be de trop; we're talking the difference between a list of lists of numbers-valued properties and a lists-of-lists-of-numbers—valued property, right?) When the parentheses are easier to follow than the natural language, I think it's OK to enforce the parentheses.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2321&start=0#p16392
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Custom Library Messages, version 4
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-05-02 22:51:21

Version 4/110422 has been posted to the Inform site.  The above bug plus a pair of snafus with the documentation were corrected. Also thanks to Mark for correcting a few of my typos in the documentation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2369&start=10#p16393
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Typecasting and phrases
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-05-02 22:56:41

It's always bugged me that we don't hyphenate "number-valued property" or "text-valued table column" because it reads much better that way to my eye.  OTOH, I can see how that would be a pain for the compiler, since a hyphen is treated like a letter. (A  *-valued kind-of-value could help solve that.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2383&start=0#p16394
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Compiler error 10
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-05-02 23:02:48

[quote="Missing Number"]I suspect it may be faulty hardware as well, but I haven't been able to narrow it down to anything specific.  Most programs run fine, it's just a few that have problems, and they don't seem to have any relation to each other.  I can run things like Mass Effect 2, GIMP, and Microsoft Word and have no issues at all. Anyone have any idea how I could narrow it down?  I appreciate your thoughts![/quote]

Eh, this sounds like a question for Hardware People, not IF people.  Surely there's some diagnostic programs you can run to test the integrity of the computer's memory, hard drive, CPU operations, while under stress.  I don't know what or where such programs are, though. 

Sorry I'm not more helpful.  [emote]:([/emote]

(Cute avatar pic, BTW.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2376&start=0#p16395
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Actions that apply to non-visible things?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-05-02 23:05:05

[quote="Seeker"]I have tried to use the notepad extension, but had problems...[/quote]
Thanks for letting me know about this. Inform is now stricter than before about the scope of temporary variables. In Sections 4 and 5, in the Check rules, the phrase "let carrying-pen be a truth state" has to be moved up to the head of the rule and deleted from its current position lower down in the code. If you do this, it should compile. I'll resubmit it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2369&start=10#p16396
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Typecasting and phrases
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-05-02 23:19:21

[quote="matt w"]Well, my argument would be that the plurality isn't actually helpful in parsing it in English; I can't make head or tail of these constructions in English, even with the plurality.[/quote]

I guess I just don't find it that hard to parse. It's work to think through what "list of list of list of...kind that not's quite a kind" [i]means[/i], but actually parsing what the phrases [i]says [/i]I don't find hard. You would never say in English that you have a "list of number", since by general rules of English implicature, a list suggests more than one. The same plurality flag serves to provide a marker of the kind of thing that composes the list in the examples we were discussing--properties in the one example, and numbers in the other. If you don't make use of the plural, I'm not sure even hyphenation would help; this [i]is[/i] hard to parse:

list of list of number-valued property
list of list of number valued-property

...though I agree with both you and Ron that it's too bad that the decision was made to rescind hyphenated compounds from the language, because they would help.

[quote="matt w"]When the parentheses are easier to follow than the natural language, I think it's OK to enforce the parentheses.[/quote]

Again, in all honesty, I think the language is clearer than the parentheses. It never occurred to me to use mathematical grouping in that context, and (as I said) I think the difference between the two constructions is clear enough when plurality is employed as a marker.

But then, none of us will be making this decision, so all of this is really more academic than anything...

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2376&start=0#p16397
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Actions that apply to non-visible things?
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-02 23:22:28

[quote="Jim Aikin"][quote="Seeker"]I have tried to use the notepad extension, but had problems...[/quote]
Thanks for letting me know about this. Inform is now stricter than before about the scope of temporary variables. In Sections 4 and 5, in the Check rules, the phrase "let carrying-pen be a truth state" has to be moved up to the head of the rule and deleted from its current position lower down in the code. If you do this, it should compile. I'll resubmit it.[/quote]

Yeah, that seemed to fix it.  I wrote on the foggy mirror.  [emote]:D[/emote]

Well, and on the slate and in the notebook.  But the mirror made me laugh.  [emote];)[/emote]

Don't ask...  But thanks... I see good uses for this now that I know I can use it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2376&start=0#p16398
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Actions that apply to non-visible things?
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-02 23:53:02

[quote="Seeker"][quote="Jim Aikin"][quote="Seeker"]I have tried to use the notepad extension, but had problems...[/quote]
Thanks for letting me know about this. Inform is now stricter than before about the scope of temporary variables. In Sections 4 and 5, in the Check rules, the phrase "let carrying-pen be a truth state" has to be moved up to the head of the rule and deleted from its current position lower down in the code. If you do this, it should compile. I'll resubmit it.[/quote]

Yeah, that seemed to fix it.  I wrote on the foggy mirror.  [emote]:D[/emote]

Well, and on the slate and in the notebook.  But the mirror made me laugh.  [emote];)[/emote]

Don't ask...  But thanks... I see good uses for this now that I know I can use it.[/quote]
(I always feel weird quoting myself)

But one thing I would like to suggest... since write is the obvious command... I wish it would not overwrite what was written before.  The ability to "add" to the notebook contents with "write" is more intuitive than saying "add" to notebook.  I can see a lot of inadvertent overwrites....

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2389&start=0#p16399
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Global Remapping
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-05-03 00:28:12

Remapping any command to GiveTo seems to cause a nil reference error. I can get this code to work:

[rant][code]
kissToGiveKissTo: GlobalRemapping
	getRemapping(issuingActor, targetActor, action)
	{
		if (action.ofKind(KissAction))
		{
			local newAction = LockWithAction.createActionInstance();
			newAction.setOriginalAction(action);
			local dobj = new PreResolvedProd(kiss);
			local iobj = action.dobjMatch;
			newAction.setObjectMatches(dobj,iobj);

			if (!(iobj.length() == 0))
				return [issuingActor, newAction];
		}
		
		return nil;
	}
;
[/code][/rant]

But if I change the newAction instance to GiveToAction, it fails.

Could you use the more straightforward approach of replacing the action during resolution?

[rant][code]
kiss: Thing 'kiss' 'KISS'
	"A kiss! "
;

modify Thing
	dobjFor(Kiss)
	{
		check()
		{
			replaceAction(GiveTo, kiss, self);
		}
	}
;
[/code][/rant]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2383&start=0#p16400
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Compiler error 10
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-05-03 01:01:12

You can use [url=http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp]Windows Memory Diagnostic[/url] to create a bootable CD that will test the RAM in your PC. Let it do 2-3 passes; it should not fail any tests.

[url=http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft/]Prime95[/url] has a torture test mode that will stress your CPU. It should be able to run at least a few hours before it encounters an error.

If those check out OK, it could be a faulty hard disk. Laptops usually have a hard disk scan tool in the BIOS; non-generic desktops may as well. Otherwise the disk manufacturer will have a downloadable tool.

Offhand I'd guess it's one of those three, more or less in that order of likelihood. If you have errors or BSOD messages, that could help narrow it down. Same if you know how to reliably trigger a crash.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379&start=10#p16401
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How about left/right/up/down as compass directions?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-05-03 01:31:02

Yeah, I think that the main problem with [i]any[/i] system that uses left/right as absolute directions is that, well, in IF the only uses of left/right have been relative, and in the real world the main use of left/right navigation -- giving someone directions, or navigating along a road or a path yourself -- is also relative. Absolute left/right strikes me as something that a) is used by a pretty specific set of people, of maps that don't work very much like IF maps, and b) is very likely to suggest relative left/right to the player, even if you explain it to them explicitly.

The standard IF navigation idiom is a weird chimera of first-person and third-person omniscient, which works because it reflects two major components of our chimeric approach to real-world mapping. I'm all in favour of experiments that challenge the standard -- I've tried to write games where there's no navigation idiom at all, initially, and the player has to invent one -- but I really dislike systems where a NESW idiom is replaced by synonyms. Port/starboard/fore/aft is basically the worst thing ever.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2389&start=0#p16402
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Global Remapping
User: Morana / DateTime: 2011-05-03 02:03:22

Thank you for the help.

[quote="bcressey"]Could you use the more straightforward approach of replacing the action during resolution?[/quote]
I had somehow forgotten about replaceAction(). This works well. It does not seem to matter that the kiss object is in the inventory of the object from which the actor inherits. The only problem for my purposes is that while commands of the form X, GIVE ME A KISS are remapped to ASK X FOR A KISS, commands of the form X, KISS ME are not. If nothing else works, there is always StringPreParser, but I was hoping for something a little more elegant.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2369&start=10#p16403
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Typecasting and phrases
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-03 07:34:36

[quote="ektemple"]You would never say in English that you have a "list of number", since by general rules of English implicature, a list suggests more than one.[/quote]

I think it's actually a syntactic requirement rather than an implicature. Compare: "This command prints out a list of the objects the player can pick up. Since this is Dual Transform, there's only one." Though I suppose you could say that that's a canceled implicature. [/pedant who sometimes works on implicature]

Anyway, on the comprehensibility question I can offer it up as a datum that I just find the strings in question hard to parse. Part of it is the dashes (and also perhaps that I've never had to use "number valued property" in Inform), but also I don't think "numbers-valued property" is quite correct English; you'd usually say "number-valued property," wouldn't you? So we should really be trying to distinguish "list of lists of numbers valued property" and "list of lists of number valued properties." And then there's "list of list of numbers valued properties," which is a list of properties whose values are lists of numbers. I'd hate to have to write a compiler that got the right answer here.

(Similarly I don't really have a problem with the hyphen thing, though I often do manage to goof myself up by forgetting that I defined a variable with a hyphen in its name.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2369&start=10#p16404
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Typecasting and phrases
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-05-03 08:59:17

[quote="matt w"]I think it's actually a syntactic requirement rather than an implicature.[/quote]
Yeah, I agree. I was hedging against the argument that "a list of one number" is arguably sane usage, and therefore the more general "list of numbers" rests logically on a mere [i]assumption[/i] that a "list" would have multiple items...

[quote="matt w"]Also I don't think "numbers-valued property" is quite correct English; you'd usually say "number-valued property," wouldn't you? So we should really be trying to distinguish "list of lists of numbers valued property" and "list of lists of number valued properties." And then there's "list of list of numbers valued properties," which is a list of properties whose values are lists of numbers. I'd hate to have to write a compiler that got the right answer here.[/quote]

"Number-valued property" sounds right to my ear too, but Inform has actually adopted the plural as conventional. While the user is free to type "number valued property", the name Inform uses internally is "numbers valued property". So, while "number" vs. "numbers" could be useful to parsing the kind of thing we've been discussing, Inform instead prefers the latter form in all cases.

On the other hand, the names of the two lists we've been talking about [i]are[/i] distinguished internally by Inform, as "lists of lists of numbers valued property" and "lists of lists of numbers valued properties" respectively. It's just that it's impossible to type the former because the compiler erroneously reads it as the latter.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2391&start=0#p16405
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Promoting an IF game with a press release
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-03 10:05:03

Bainespal asked me about promoting an IF game via a press release. I have some PR experience in relation to the music I produce, but putting out a press release for a video game was a first for me when I did it for Leadlight, and I found it to be a positive experience that worked to attract attention to the game. So I will share in this topic some information about press releases in general, and some advice I hope will help anyone who might be interested in trying to promote their interactive fiction game this way.

Putting out a press release will usually cost you a little bit of money and be a one-time event for an IF game ('Here's my game!' - as opposed to a series of press releases building hype, announcing the game and then giving updates on it - that's more the style of million unit-shifting games for consoles) - therefore it's not something you should do until your game is extremely polished. In the world of IF, this might mean the game has gone through a revision release or two first. Your game has to be ready to stand up to any publicity received as a result of the press release, and to make a good impression. You don't want any showstopping bugs in the game at the time that it attracts a lot of attention; au contraire, you want zero bugs, or close to zero. So don't be impatient. After you've finished your game, there's no immediate rush to publicise it widely. Wait till you are completely ready.

In general, gaming media sites collect press releases for new games by a couple of methods:

[b]1.[/b] By scanning press release aggregator websites and lists / RSS feeds
[b]2.[/b] By having press releases sent directly to them.

The staff at each site scan incoming press releases and pick out the ones they think are likely to be of interest to the audience for their site/magazine. Sometimes they will reproduce press releases verbatim, sometimes they will make a few personal tweaks (to make it more of a story rather than a straight press release). If the game is big, or appeals particularly to someone on the staff, someone might review or write about the game.

I wrote my own press release for Leadlight after studying the style and manner of a lot of other PRs. If you make IF, you probably have some of the writerly about you, and therefore writing your own release after studying others is likely to be a good idea. There are services which will write your release for you as well as distribute it, but given how nichey IF is to begin with, and how niche your particular game may seem to yourself on top of that, it may be difficult for third parties to succinctly capture what it is that you imagine is appealing (and to whom) about the game. Even though (or because) the release is not a particularly long document, the exact wording is important. You want to make sure it will catch the attention of the kind of person you think falls into the game's audience. An accurate and engaging headline is also important, as the headline can determine whether website staff browsing your PR on an aggregator read more of it or skip over it.

And of course, having others write your release can add to the expense.

[b]So once you have a press release, how do you get it out there? [/b]You use one of the press release distribution services that exist.

Most press release distribution services cost money to use. What you are paying for in these cases is the particular service's ability to distribute your release to all of their gaming media contacts, to other aggregators and to RSS feeds.

This may prompt the question - could you do these things yourself? Unless you already work in PR and/or have extensive contacts, the answer is mostly, 'No, it's not worth it'. The time and effort of trying to replicate what a PR service does will cost you way more (in time/money, stress, work and learning - whatever ways you want to measure it) than what you will pay to a PR service in dollars, assuming you were in any position to assemble particular gaming media contacts in the first place.

This doesn't mean you can't supplement a service's release of your PR by making sure you send it yourself to any sites you personally know or use where you think people potentially interested in your game may hang out. In fact this is a good idea, because it's often smaller or more niche sites which are missed by the services (or because folks at such sites may not scan PR aggregators as aggressively or consistently). The thing about using a distribution service is that it is covering you for a wide range of sites, including lots of medium and large scale ones, and of course a ton you would never have been aware of yourself without sitting around googling and note-taking for months on end.

[b]How can you tell what the reach of any particular distribution service is like?..[/b] This is a bit of a black area, because each service keeps its full contact list close to its chest. The major release services are reputable (blitzkriegy) and accordingly expensive to use. As such, they are probably overkill for most IF games.

Some smaller PR services are run by indie game developers who have amassed their own contact list over time. These services can be pretty good for IF purposes, because they can include a more diverse range of indie sites, and of course they're cheaper. But the catch is, you can't tell how good a smaller service is except by word of mouth, or until you try it, and then use Google to see all the places your PR showed up. You can also just ask people who run such services how they see their own service. They should have a decent idea of the nature of their own reach, or what they think the suitability of your game may be to their service. (Note - folks who don't know anything about IF may not be able to make any kind of estimation in this area, but part of my motivation in writing this topic you're reading is my sense that basically, potential interest in IF is currently underestimated.)… and be able to talk about it without being cagey.

[b]Are there any free press release distribution services?[/b] One free option which is pretty good is UK-based GamesPress (note that their reach is international, not just the UK). They post submitted press releases which can then be browsed on their site or received via e-mail digests by folks in the trade. They will also allow you to have screenshots or artwork accompany the release, though there are size/number restrictions for non-premium users, restrictions of a kind that will hardly bother IF authors. The catch here is that just writing GamesPress and saying 'I'm Joe Duder and I have a game to publicise,' does not qualify you to register in their eyes. You need to show you are 'in the trade'. If you're involved in games journalism, they will want to see your site. If you're a developer, which you are, they will ask for your developer (company) name and a website for your company or game (probably with its own domain).

So if you have access to web space, can present your game on it in some fashion, and are prepared to present your game under the auspices of a developer entity (come up with a good name for your army-of-you development body), you can make free use of GamesPress's PR service. It's not as reachy as targeted services but it's infinitely better than a poke in the eye, and you can go on using it in future.

Coming up are a bunch of links to gaming-only PR distribution services I know of. Note that it's possible to use more general PR distribution businesses who also work in areas other than gaming, but I have no personal experience of them. You can google around to seek out others' experiences with these and other services. Indie developers often write about their experiences in their development blogs.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.softpressrelease.com/services/games.php">http://www.softpressrelease.com/services/games.php</a> (commercial, very expensive - probably overkill for IF)
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.gamerelease.net/">http://www.gamerelease.net/</a> (indie, paid - a very good service - even if you don't use them for a release, a good place to read other press releases)
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.mitorahgames.com/Submit-Game-Press-Release.html">http://www.mitorahgames.com/Submit-Game ... lease.html</a> (indie, paid - have a good reputation generally, unsure of their contact suitability re: IF)
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.games-pr.com/">http://www.games-pr.com/</a> (looks to be pretty new, and currently free - I don't know anything about them at all)
<a class="postlink" href="http://prmac.com/">http://prmac.com/</a> (paid, mac-only (which therefore includes all modern IF) - very cheap way to ensure your release goes before the eyes of tons of Mac sites.)
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.gamespress.com/">http://www.gamespress.com/</a> (well-established free service, though to use it you must first demonstrate that you are 'trade')

While a press release is a form of advertising, it's worth remembering that even when you pay to release one, that  – unlike with television or magazine or web ads, for instance – there is no guaranteeing that your release will appear on such-and-such a site, or even A site -- though it's also extraordinarily unlikely that your release would show up nowhere, unless you wrote it abysmally!.. but the point is, press releases are vetted by gaming press, who then reproduce, personalise or follow up any they are interested in. A release needs to be both engaging and accurate so that it (a) will speak to target audiences for the game and (b) get folks who scan through tons of press releases every day on side, to the extent that that is controllable.

So if you think your new IF game has sufficient polish, quality and appeal that it could be enjoyed by a wider audience than word-of-mouth is going to get you, and you would like to promote it, it's worth considering doing a press release, as it will definitely improve your reach. The mantra on many indie game development forums is - 'if you do nothing else, do a press release'.

With IF's relative nicheness, you would expect your release to appear on fewer gaming sites than if it were for an indie action game, etc., but that's still a ton more sites than zero. And within that range, the better the quality of the press release itself is, which is entirely a function of how well it is written, the further its reach can be.

- Wade

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2392&start=0#p16406
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Codewords as arbitrary alphanumeric strings
User: jcharra / DateTime: 2011-05-03 10:35:09

Hi everyone,

I just finished my first IF game, and I'm pretty excited about Inform7. I'm a programmer by trade, and hacking Inform7 reminds me strongly of my Prolog days ... [emote]:)[/emote] There is still a feeling I'm doing things in a cumbersome way, though. Maybe someone can help.

I implemented a "sentinel" in one of my games, who blocked the path into a certain direction if the "utteredness" of some codeword was yet "untold" (I know this sounds extremely cumbersome right from the start ...):

[code]
codeword is a kind of thing.
utteredness is a kind of value. the utterednesses are told, untold.
a codeword has an utteredness. The utteredness of a codeword is usually untold.

ic0510 is a codeword.

Room1 is a room. 
Room2 is a room.
Room2 is west of Room1.

Instead of going west from Room1:
	if ic0510 is told:
		move the player to Room2;
	otherwise: 
                say "You have to say the code first.".
	
Saying is an action applying to one visible thing.
Understand "say [any thing]" as saying.
Carry out saying:
	if the noun is ic0510:
		if the location of the player is Room1:
                        say "The way is clear!";
			now the utteredness of ic0510 is told;

[/code]

This works as expected. BUT: I want to extend this to arbitrary alphanumerical codewords, especially pure numbers. But then I'd have to make the action "saying" applicable to numbers, too, which I didn't manage yet. Any hints?

Kind regards,
Johannes

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2392&start=0#p16407
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Codewords as arbitrary alphanumeric strings
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-03 10:42:11

To let saying apply to any string, do this:

[code]Saying is an action applying to one topic. Understand "Say [text]" as saying.[/code]

And then the thing said is "the topic understood" rather than "the noun". In your case I'd just use a truth state rather than a property to record whether the password has been said:

[code]Password-said is a truth state that varies. Password-said is usually false.
Carry out saying:
   if the topic understood matches "ic1050":
      say "The way is clear!";
      now password-said is true;
    otherwise:
      say "That's not the password."[/code]

and so on. 

See [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/ex244.html]section 16.5, "The text token,"[/url] for more.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2392&start=0#p16408
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Codewords as arbitrary alphanumeric strings
User: jcharra / DateTime: 2011-05-03 11:27:50

Awesome, that did the trick!  [emote]:D[/emote] 

Thanks a lot, Matt! 

Kind regards,
Johannes

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2391&start=0#p16409
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Promoting an IF game with a press release
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-03 11:39:04

Thanks for this post.

When I launched my kickstarter project, I sent a post to gamespress.com. A functional kickstarter page (even though it was just starting to gather money) was apparently enough to demonstrate my real-ness. That covered most of the publicity I got. The rest was from good old networking -- people who knew of me and who I'd met at PAX, Boston game-dev events, or general internettiness.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379&start=10#p16410
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How about left/right/up/down as compass directions?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-03 11:49:29

[quote]...in IF the only uses of left/right have been relative[/quote]

I'll repeat the example of Hunter in Darkness. They're absolute there. It's not as unnatural as you might imagine. I used a few tricks:

- In much of the game, there's no backtracking. You enter a room once. So it's natural to describe the room from the orientation where you enter it, and never change that.
- The maze is all one-way paths, so you get the same effect even though the graph has loops.
- You can backtrack a little in the beginning. But I made that passageway so narrow that you have no room to turn around! You type "back" and the game describes you literally backing up. So you return to the starting room in the same orientation you started in.
- In some of the rooms, there's strong plot motivation to move forwards. So I can describe the room in terms of a fixed "ahead", and the player won't think that's weird.
- And everywhere else, I just kept to the pattern and figured nobody would complain. :)

In a larger, less constrained game, the absolute trick would certainly have broken down.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2377&start=10#p16411
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A random action that won't repeat?
User: J. J. Guest / DateTime: 2011-05-03 12:17:23

Wow, I had no idea that text substitutions could execute code - that's like finding a magic wand down the back of the sofa! Thanks Skinny Mike.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2391&start=0#p16413
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Promoting an IF game with a press release
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-03 13:14:17

Would it be a good idea for some, probably somewhat established, authors to make a sort of co-op entity to release games under? It seems to me as though "Malyon Games presents: A Game of Awesomeness by Jordan McSomewhatEstablishedAuthor" might look a little better to gamespress than just "A Game of Awesomeness by Jordan McSomewhatEstablishedAuthor."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2389&start=0#p16414
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Global Remapping
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-05-03 16:16:44

OK, I figured out why GlobalRemapping caused a nil error. It's because the kiss remap succeeds, but then transitions into the giveMeToAskFor remapping which fails for complicated reasons that I don't fully understand. The fix I came up with was to track whether or not the GiveTo action being considered was already the result of a remapping, and if so to avoid a second remapping.

[rant][code]
kissToGiveKissTo: GlobalRemapping
	getRemapping(issuingActor, targetActor, action)
	{
		if (action.ofKind(KissAction))
		{
			local newAction = GiveToAction.createActionInstance();
			newAction.setOriginalAction(action);
			newAction.setRemapped();
			local dobj = new PreResolvedProd(kiss);
			local iobj = action.dobjMatch;
			newAction.setObjectMatches(dobj,iobj);
			return [targetActor, newAction];
		}
		
		return nil;
	}
;

modify giveMeToAskFor
	getRemapping(issuingActor, targetActor, action)
	{
		if (!(action.isRemapped()))
			return inherited(issuingActor, targetActor, action);
		else
			return nil;
	}
;

modify GiveToAction
	isRemapped() { return remapped_ != nil; }
	setRemapped() { remapped_ = true; }
	remapped_ = nil
;
[/code][/rant]

This will remap all commands in the >KISS X form to the equivalent >GIVE KISS TO X form.

I'm not entirely sure if you want any remapping from >GIVE KISS TO X to >ASK X FOR KISS, however. That's a little more difficult to accomplish, because it only holds when X is an actor and the kiss has to be transformed into a topic. I have a partial start on this but will happily abandon it unless it's something you need.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2377&start=10#p16415
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A random action that won't repeat?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-05-03 16:29:28

[quote="J. J. Guest"]Wow, I had no idea that text substitutions could execute code - that's like finding a magic wand down the back of the sofa! Thanks Skinny Mike.[/quote]

One of my favorite tricks comes from [url=http://www.math.psu.edu/clemens/IF/I7tricks.html#command]John Clemens[/url]. Include this in your code:

[code]To say @ (ph - a phrase):
(- if (0==0) {ph} -)[/code]

You will now be able to insert any phrase into a text substitution, e.g.:

[code]say "You look at your shoes. [run paragraph on][@ try the player examining the shoes]";[/code]

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2389&start=0#p16416
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Global Remapping
User: Morana / DateTime: 2011-05-03 17:00:51

This resolves the problem wonderfully. I would still like to remap orders to commands of the form ASK X FOR KISS, if at all possible. But this certainly gets me past the obstacle I had kept running into. Thank you.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2259&start=0#p16417
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Creating RIA Interpreter for TADS 3
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-05-03 17:24:37

Good news. The system is pretty much feature-complete. Ironing out the last rough edges should hopefully not take that long. Mike Roberts also provided the modifications to make frobtads able to serve games through HTTP, so I was able to give this a go on my Linux box.

The result is quite nice. The system is able to support multimedia TADS through the web [emote]:D[/emote] As far as I know, the below are the first screenshots to demonstrate TADS on the web:

<a class="postlink" href="http://foss.math.aegean.gr/~realnc/pics/tadsweb1.png">http://foss.math.aegean.gr/~realnc/pics/tadsweb1.png</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://foss.math.aegean.gr/~realnc/pics/tadsweb2.png">http://foss.math.aegean.gr/~realnc/pics/tadsweb2.png</a>

Speed feels very nice, since the game itself runs on the server, not on the player's machine.

Although it's possible to try out this stuff yourself (by building frobtads yourself from its Git repository), it's a bit of manual work as there's zero documentation for this right now (MJR is writing it, along with the needed PHP code so that people will be able to host their own game servers.)

This is quite exciting [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2393&start=0#p16418
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Changing 'change'
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-05-03 17:29:32

In trying to update my Notepad extension so that it won't contain the now deprecated "change X to Y" syntax, I've hit a snag. I was able to amend the code in the extension itself, but the code in the Beethoven example also uses this syntax, and I'll be damned if I can figure out how to fix it. Here's the offending rule:

[code]
The queued command is indexed text that varies.

Rule for reading a command:
	if the queued command is empty:
		now Beethoven-willing is false;
		make no decision;
	otherwise:
		now Beethoven-willing is true;
		change the text of the player's command to the queued command;
		change the queued command to "".[/code]
I'm sure there's a simple way to fix this, but what is it? There's something going on here between text, indexed text, and snippets, but if the syntax for making the required conversions is explained in [i]Writing with Inform[/i], I haven't been able to find it. It doesn't seem to be on page 17.31, which is the most likely place to look.

Suggestions, anyone?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2259&start=10#p16419
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Creating RIA Interpreter for TADS 3
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-05-03 18:08:21

This rocks. (I've totally given up on I7, but this is not the place for a rant.) If I ever write another game, it will be in T3. Thanks for keeping us updated, and thanks to MJR for the hard work!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2389&start=0#p16420
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Global Remapping
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-05-03 18:12:27

Here's a version that will remap >KISS X to >ASK X FOR KISS, when X is an Actor. Commands in the form >X, KISS Y will be likewise transformed into >X, ASK Y FOR KISS.

[code]
kissToGiveKissTo: GlobalRemapping
	getRemapping(issuingActor, targetActor, action)
	{
		if (action.ofKind(KissAction))
		{
			local dobjActor = nil;
			local obj = firstObj();
			while (obj != nil)
			{
				if (obj.ofKind(Actor) && action.canDobjResolveTo(obj))
					dobjActor = true;
				obj = nextObj(obj);
			}

			local newAction, dobj, iobj;

			if (!dobjActor)
			{
				newAction = GiveToAction.createActionInstance();
				dobj = new PreResolvedProd(kiss);
				iobj = action.dobjMatch;
			}
			else
			{
				newAction = AskForAction.createActionInstance();
				dobj = action.dobjMatch;
				iobj = new ResolveInfo(kiss, 0);
			}
			
			newAction.setOriginalAction(action);
			newAction.setRemapped();
			newAction.setObjectMatches(dobj,iobj);
			return [targetActor, newAction];
		}
		
		return nil;
	}
;

modify giveMeToAskFor
	getRemapping(issuingActor, targetActor, action)
	{
		if (!(action.isRemapped()))
			return inherited(issuingActor, targetActor, action);
		else
			return nil;
	}
;

modify TAction
	isRemapped() { return remapped_ != nil; }
	setRemapped() { remapped_ = true; }
	remapped_ = nil
;
[/code]

It's a bit clunky in performance terms because it has to iterate through every object in the game, check whether that object is an actor, and then check whether that actor could resolve as the direct object.

Transcript with results.

[rant][quote]
> kiss me
Talking to yourself won’t accomplish anything.

> slime, kiss me
You do not respond.

> slime, ask me for a kiss
You do not respond.

> kiss slime
The RED SLIME does not respond.

> slime, give me a kiss
The RED SLIME does not respond.

> ask slime for a kiss
The RED SLIME does not respond.

> kiss widget
You cannot give anything to a WIDGET.

> slime, kiss widget
The RED SLIME cannot give anything to a WIDGET.
[/quote][/rant]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2259&start=10#p16421
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Creating RIA Interpreter for TADS 3
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-05-03 18:15:18

Totally awesome.  [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2393&start=0#p16422
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing 'change'
User: Gorobay / DateTime: 2011-05-03 19:00:30

I don't see what the problem is; all I did was change "change X to Y" to "now X is Y". But here is what I did, which works:

[code]The queued command is indexed text that varies.

Rule for reading a command:
	if the queued command is empty:
		now Beethoven-willing is false;
		make no decision;
	otherwise:
		now Beethoven-willing is true;
		change the text of the player's command to the queued command;
		now the queued command is "".[/code]

Note that "change the text of the player's command to (indexed text)" is different from "change (a stored value) to (value)", and as such is not deprecated. Also, "now the text of the player's command is the queued command" will [i]not[/i] work, because "the text of the player's command" is unrecognized.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2389&start=0#p16423
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Global Remapping
User: Morana / DateTime: 2011-05-03 19:43:38

This code worked pretty well, but it still did not transform commands in the form X, KISS ME into commands of the form ASK X FOR KISS. However, thanks to your code (especially your use of ResolveInfo(), which I was not familiar with), I was able to write this:

[rant][code]kissToGiveKissTo: GlobalRemapping
   getRemapping(issuingActor, targetActor, action)
   {
      if (action.ofKind(KissAction))
      {
         local newAction, dobj, iobj;
         if (action.canDobjResolveTo(issuingActor))
         {
            newAction = AskForAction.createActionInstance();
            newAction.setOriginalAction(action);
            newAction.setPronounOverride(PronounYou, targetActor);
            dobj = new PreResolvedProd(targetActor);
            iobj = new ResolveInfo(kiss, 0);
            newAction.setObjectMatches(dobj, iobj);
            return [issuingActor, newAction];
         }
         else
         {
            newAction = GiveToAction.createActionInstance();
            newAction.setOriginalAction(action);
            newAction.setRemapped();
            dobj = new PreResolvedProd(kiss);
            iobj = action.dobjMatch;
            newAction.setObjectMatches(dobj, iobj);
            return [targetActor, newAction];
         }
      }
      return nil;
   }
;[/code][/rant]

When I use this code, I get the responses I want from my NPC and no undesirable behavior (so far as I have seen).

Thank you so much! Without your help I would still be stuck in front of a number of obstacles.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2377&start=10#p16424
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A random action that won't repeat?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-03 20:24:01

Huh. Cute. Thanks.

Can you work quoted text into the phrase when you do that? Or does the parser still get grumpy about that?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2377&start=10#p16425
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A random action that won't repeat?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-05-03 20:24:24

That's a great resource.  Thanks, Erik!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2393&start=0#p16426
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing 'change'
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-05-03 20:49:08

[quote="Gorobay"]Note that "change the text of the player's command to (indexed text)" is different from "change (a stored value) to (value)", and as such is not deprecated.[/quote]
Yet another special case in Inform syntax? I'm shocked, shocked!

Thanks for the clarification. I'll resubmit the extension to Mark Musante. Let's hope he likes "change the text of the player's command," because I don't feel very inspired to keep working on this.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2391&start=0#p16427
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Promoting an IF game with a press release
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-05-03 21:12:14

I sprayed press-releases to [most of] my usual places when I released ToaSK; I have a standard package of targets that I use. I'll be doing a press-release again for the forthcoming Uresia, Risus, and FFE text-adventures when the right time rolls around.

They do, absolutely serve a critical function in getting the word out (though in my case I'm getting the word out to a slightly different audience, neither IF nor computer-game focused).

But definitely: rah-rah press releases. At their worst, they do no harm [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379&start=10#p16428
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How about left/right/up/down as compass directions?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-05-03 21:22:22

[quote="severedhand"][...] nearly everyone in the game is really young, and it's written from their POV [...] I dunno, maybe nobody will blink at them.[/quote]

I think most people just accept that, at the player's level, there is artifice. The parser itself is artificial; no more or less than the compass. Both are for the player, rather than the player-character, and I think trying to extend the player-character experience that far up the perceptual ladder (especially if the protagonists are very young) might just come off as a bit twee.

Actually, I think most of us accept a truckload of artifice at the character level too, but that's another story (and different kinds of artifice) [emote]:)[/emote]

That said, I'm all in favor of anything that works. If you've got a strong left-right thing that will work, go for it. There's almost never harm in implementing a GO TO type alternative, either, or combining them or allowing the player to choose, etc. I just think it's okay to say "[i]this [/i]is the character experience, and [i]this [/i]is the player experience, and one doesn't have to pretend to be the other unless such pretense can be either effortless or genuinely rewarding or both."

Don't [i]ever [/i]feel obliged to cleave to convention, but be sure of your reasons and be clear on your goals.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2393&start=0#p16429
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing 'change'
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-03 21:30:23

It's right there in the section you were looking at, you know:

[quote](e) Finally, we can make still more detailed alterations to the text of the command using the techniques for indexed text presented in the Advanced Text chapter. For instance:

change the text of the player's command to (indexed text)[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2377&start=10#p16430
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A random action that won't repeat?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-05-03 21:33:40

[quote="zarf"]Can you work quoted text into the phrase when you do that? Or does the parser still get grumpy about that?[/quote]
Unfortunately, no. The I7 compiler doesn't seem to be able to parse a quote within a bracket no matter what you do (the Mac IDE syntax coloring can't deal with it either).

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379&start=10#p16431
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How about left/right/up/down as compass directions?
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-05-03 22:18:52

Child's Play used compass directions and they didn't feel jarring, even though a lot of the rest of the language is very stylized, so I wouldn't worry about young protagonists.

Two observations about absolute left/right directions from personal experience:

1.  Aurora got a lot of complaints for using nautical directions.  If you use a different set of directions, everyone is immediately going to ask "Why can't I use the regular directions?"; in Aurora's case, at least there was a reason regular directions didn't make sense, but if you're using a regular landbound setting, be prepared for people to think that it adds nothing but confusion.  (And learn from my mistakes: definitely don't do it to add immersion.  Nothing kills immersion like players not remembering the directions.)

2.  If I played a game like this, no matter how long it was, I would always be thinking it was relative.  When I walk into a room, I assume I'm facing the direction I just walked, so if I go east and the description says "The forest is to the left," I'll immediately think that the forest is to the north.  If the forest is back to the west, it'll feel like I crabwalked sideways.  Big immersion breaker, since it forces me to think top-down rather than from my character's perspective.

One case where the latter wouldn't be as much of a problem were if your game were more strategy-ish--if there were many characters and you switched from one to the next and did different things with them.  Immersion wouldn't be an issue, anyway.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379&start=20#p16432
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How about left/right/up/down as compass directions?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-03 22:53:13

[quote]Don't ever feel obliged to cleave to convention[/quote]

Nor from it. :)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=20#p16433
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: Gerynar / DateTime: 2011-05-04 00:56:18

OK, I've got my game submitted (it should run fine on Floyd, as it's T3)
And even better, I'll be off on Saturday the 7th, so I can participate in ClubFloyd (although I [i]might[/i] run into computer issues when my game comes up (so I don't die of embarrassment)

Thanks for organizing this!

Oh, I'm scribbling a few notes down for your article thingie, if they come out somewhat coherently, I'll send them to ya...when do you want these by?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379&start=20#p16434
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How about left/right/up/down as compass directions?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-04 01:07:21

[quote="katz"]Child's Play used compass directions and they didn't feel jarring, even though a lot of the rest of the language is very stylized, so I wouldn't worry about young protagonists.[/quote]

But was it a game that kids might try playing themselves? Or a game for adults about kids? Or both?

I know some of you are probably talking to the topic creator, others are talking to me, and others are shooting ideas generally. But here's where I'm at.

It occurred to me in looking at my game's output that occasionally I felt weird reading all the compass directions. My kids aren't toddlers, they walk and talk and such. But it's the only part that makes me feel weird... occasionally. Without getting into it, I've already spent a lot of time pitching the prose generally and I like how it is.

Something else that happened was that, where originally I figured this was a game basically adults would play, I started to realise maybe kids who were directed to it would be interested in playing it. This in turn made me wonder, 'Do they know compass directions? Will they find them weird?'

I learned compass directions in 1980 playing Mystery House with my dad, and so feel like I never didn't know them, but times have changed.

What I programmed for this game yesterday is a switch. Compass directions always work when typed. But if you throw the switch (choosable at startup, changeable any time), it lets you also type 'left, right, forward, backward' for w,e,n and s respectively, plus a bunch of synonyms (ahead, back, front, anything like that.)

Also when the switch is thrown, all directions are described in the game in terms of ahead, behind, left and right, and the exit lister displays them that way.

People keep talking up their pain at the idea of being confused by even the appearance of direction information they might confuse for relative, but I think if it's clearly stated at startup when you choose your set, that ahead = north, left = west, etc., I see no problem - besides which, such folk will choose compass directions anyway and never even see left/right and friends.

If you ask, 'Why even add this layer then if left, right and friends equal the compass directions, which you're going to have to state?'... the only answer now is, kids already get left, right, forward, back, especially when pointing at a map, which I will probably provide, and it's a cartesiany map.

So actually my idea of psychological worry about compass directions became one about 'maybe kids would like left and right etc. instead' over about 48 hours. By making it optional, and changeable anytime, I feel I will have covered the bases. That's if I don't change my mind before then anyway, but hey, it's all programmed [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=20#p16435
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: Jacqueline / DateTime: 2011-05-04 01:21:17

[quote="Gerynar"]OK, I've got my game submitted (it should run fine on Floyd, as it's T3)
And even better, I'll be off on Saturday the 7th, so I can participate in ClubFloyd (although I [i]might[/i] run into computer issues when my game comes up (so I don't die of embarrassment)

Thanks for organizing this!

Oh, I'm scribbling a few notes down for your article thingie, if they come out somewhat coherently, I'll send them to ya...when do you want these by?[/quote]
Soon enough that your thoughts on the experience are still fresh, but no rush.  The next SPAG doesn't come out for quite awhile, and while I'll edit these together into a (hopefully interesting) article, I probably won't be able to work on it until June due to work stuff I have going on.  So, sooner is better for capturing your experience, but you'll probably have forgotten all about this just in time to be surprised when you read about it in SPAG!  Cool, huh?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379&start=20#p16436
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How about left/right/up/down as compass directions?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-04 01:41:21

.. I think I changed my mind again. I googled and found sites about teaching compass directions to 2nd graders. So if 7 year olds (and probably hothoused and helicoptered 5 year old) are likely to have been exposed to a compass, well, my ahead/behind dealie isn't necessary.

However, if anyone wants to use the code I lovingly put together for it, plus the hacked version of Eric Eve's exit lister which works with it, just ping me.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=20#p16437
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: Sig / DateTime: 2011-05-04 02:57:24

I played an hour or two into Anchorhead using something called [url=http://www.appbrain.com/app/hunky-punk/org.andglk.hunkypunk]Hunky Punk[/url] on my Android G1.  It seemed to work fairly well.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2254&start=0#p16438
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Event in Munich on May 7 2011
User: stadtgorilla / DateTime: 2011-05-04 03:26:04

Latest developments: A workshop for writers and players will be held. And a team from a nationwide TV station will record interviews and footage from the event. Awesome!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379&start=20#p16439
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How about left/right/up/down as compass directions?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-05-04 03:49:37

[quote="katz"]Aurora got a lot of complaints for using nautical directions.  If you use a different set of directions, everyone is immediately going to ask "Why can't I use the regular directions?"[/quote]
Only if your new directions are as complicated as compass directions, or more complicated. I think there's a lot of scope for linear directions (forward, back; up,down) and circular directions.

[quote="severedhand"].. I think I changed my mind again. I googled and found sites about teaching compass directions to 2nd graders. So if 7 year olds (and probably hothoused and helicoptered 5 year old) are likely to have been exposed to a compass, well, my ahead/behind dealie isn't necessary.[/quote]
I've been exposed to a compass, but it doesn't mean I know which way is north.

Really, I think the questions is: is your game in the first person?  Otherwise, it isn't really your characters speaking in compass directions, so it doesn't need to have much bearing on their mindsets.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379&start=20#p16440
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How about left/right/up/down as compass directions?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-05-04 05:14:39

[quote][quote]Aurora got a lot of complaints for using nautical directions. If you use a different set of directions, everyone is immediately going to ask "Why can't I use the regular directions?"[/quote]

Only if your new directions are as complicated as compass directions, or more complicated. I think there's a lot of scope for linear directions (forward, back; up,down) and circular directions.[/quote]

Here's an interesting thought. I have more trouble with fore/aft/port/starboard (I never know whether fore is north or south, and whether port is east or west) than with the old Spectrum game "Colour of Magic"... which has the bizarre directions hubward/rimward/turnwise/widdershins. Thing is, it's a game set on Discworld, so they rearranged directions to make sense on a circular surface. And after the inital confusion, it actually works pretty well. I may never be able to tell the difference between fore and aft, but I know where the hub and the rim of a circle are.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379&start=20#p16441
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How about left/right/up/down as compass directions?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-04 07:47:57

[quote="Pacian"]Really, I think the questions is: is your game in the first person?  Otherwise, it isn't really your characters speaking in compass directions, so it doesn't need to have much bearing on their mindsets.[/quote]

I don't really draw such a clear distinction between first person and other persons, but rather I think about whose POV it is, and what is the balance in the writing between the thoughts in the characters' heads - as if they were speaking them - and omniscient narration. And also what conceits I'm prepared to go with concerning what language the protagonists may or may not have themselves.

So we know we already make a bunch of handy concessions between the player and the character in IF, but since my game consists entirely of kids moving around, their thoughts reflected in the prose, and talking about the other kids moving around, as I say, there were moments when I saw lots of compass directions at once and it suddenly didn't seem right. But - psychologically speaking, it's been both not-easily-overcomeable, and as far as almost everyone in this topic has thought, not worth overcoming. Leaving only the issue of, would kids (EG going down to 7-8 years old?) who might play the game have problems with compass directions? And if so, would they benefit from 'forward/back/left/right' standins?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2394&start=0#p16442
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Hourly clock chimes
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-05-04 07:54:53

I'm trying to make a clock that starts chiming on the hour and continues chiming once per turn for (hours part of the time of day) turns. This seems like it should be a simple task, but for some reason I'm having a lot of trouble getting it right. Here's what I have currently:

[code]Chiming is a truth-state that varies. Chiming is usually false.

Every turn while chiming is true:
	if the location is not indoors, say "'BONG!'";

The Tolling Bell is a recurring scene. The Tolling Bell begins when the minutes part of the time of day is 0. The Tolling Bell ends when chiming is false.

When the Tolling Bell begins:
	if the location is not indoors, say "You hear the tolling of a distant bell. 'BONG!'";
	[the first bong gets its own message, both so it can be more specific and because my every turn while chiming is true rule won't take effect until the next turn]
	let x be the remainder after dividing hours part of the time of day by 12;
	if x is 0, now x is 12;
	if x is not 1:
		now chiming is true;
		the clock stops chiming in x minus 2 turns from now;
	
At the time when the clock stops chiming:
	now chiming is false.
[/code]

This seems to work as long as it's not 1:00 or 2:00. At 1:00, I don't want any more bongs after the initial one, so I'm not setting chiming to true. Unfortunately this seems to be causing the scene to end and then immediately start again in an infinite loop. I think the problem is stemming from the order that activities are processed.

In an ideal world, the code that I would like to work would be just:

[code]The Tolling Bell is a scene. The Tolling Bell begins when the minutes part of the time of day is 0. The Tolling Bell ends when the clock stops chiming.

Every turn during the Tolling Bell:
	if the location is not indoors, say "BONG!";

When the Tolling Bell begins:
	now chiming is true;
	if the location is not indoors, say "You hear the tolling of a distant bell. 'BONG!'";
	let x be the remainder after dividing hours part of the time of day by 12;
	if x is 0, now x is 12;
	the clock stops chiming in x minus 1 turns from now;[/code]

But stopping 0 turns from now apparently doesn't make it happen immediately, and Inform doesn't accept "the clock stops chiming" as a condition for ending the scene, which is why I'm using the chiming truth-state, which is introducing problems because of the delay between toggling it and deciding whether to say "bong."

I suspect there's a much better way of doing this, but surprisingly I couldn't find an example of this sort of thing in the documentation. Help!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2394&start=0#p16443
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Hourly clock chimes
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-05-04 08:18:53

Here's a simple way to do it without using scenes (you need to add checks for being outdoors and so on):

[code]To decide which number is the 12-hour part of (X - a time):
	if the hours part of X is 0 or the hours part of X is 12:
		decide on 12;
	decide on the remainder after dividing hours part of X by 12.

Every turn when the minutes part of time of day is less than the 12-hour part of time of day:
	if minutes part of time of day is 0:
		say "You hear the tolling of a distant bell. [run paragraph on]";
	say "'BONG!'".[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379&start=20#p16444
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How about left/right/up/down as compass directions?
User: Huck Hooks / DateTime: 2011-05-04 09:32:48

due to lack of english i try to stay short.

Peter, it was fun to read you. Did agree much. I think with fore and hubward you finally got my point. It is not about the right words, it is about words "native" to the player. Which changes with experience and - but i learned not to try to explain [emote];)[/emote]

Severedhand, you sayed you already have written the testbed, and testers, how about using it? [emote]:)[/emote]
Btw, can you post it somewhere? And could rimwise and fore be added too, so everyone can be tortured? [emote]:)[/emote]

About language, i think IF is artificial anyway (at start), so a bit artificial left/right/birdseyethinking is in order.
How about quoting it, so the forest is 'left', not left? Its short and i would think "that 'other' left". But thinking in 'left' and map would have avoided some starving once (muds are so realtime...)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379&start=20#p16445
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How about left/right/up/down as compass directions?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-04 09:55:41

Hi Huck,

I will try to organise the code and put it somewhere it can be downloaded. I already tried it in my game and it works fine. But it will require me to write some notes on how to use it, as well.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2394&start=0#p16446
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Hourly clock chimes
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-05-04 10:46:19

That appears to be exactly what I need, and a lot neater than the way I was trying to do it. Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2254&start=0#p16447
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Event in Munich on May 7 2011
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-05-04 11:40:30

Duly blogged.  Congrats on the coverage!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379&start=20#p16448
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How about left/right/up/down as compass directions?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-05-04 11:52:52

[quote="Pacian"]I've been exposed to a compass, but it doesn't mean I know which way is north.[/quote]
I have the opposite problem.  I learned compass directions from stargazing with my dad, and later the Boy Scouts, but I can't deal with them inside a videogame, IF included.  I think I know them only proprioceptively, not verbally or whatever?  Likewise, even if my character in a videogame is upside down, I don't "feel" that way myself.  The videogame is too disembodied.

I mean, if I stop and think about it I can figure things out, but my in-game orientation still won't "stick" in my mind.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2331&start=10#p16449
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Tables and functional programming
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-05-04 13:08:19

Well, that's not right either, because I forgot that properties' and attributes' numbers can coincide.  For instance,[code]There is a room.
To decide what number is description converted to a number: (- description -).
To decide what number is locked converted to a number: (- locked -).

When play begins:
	showme description converted to a number;
	showme locked converted to a number.[/code]
So best to stick to non-attributes, I guess: [spoiler][code]Section "Setup"

To decide what number is (V - a value) converted to a number: (- {V} -).

To decide whether (O - an object) has property number (P - a number): (- WhetherProvides({O},0,{P}) -).

To store non-block value (V - a value) as property number (P - a number) in (O - an object): (- {O}.{P}={V}; -).
To store block value (V - a value) as property number (P - a number) in (O - an object): (- BlkValueCopy(GProperty(OBJECT_TY,{O},{P}),{V}); -).

To decide what number is the number of columns in (T - a table name): (- ({T}-->0) -).
To decide what number is table column (I - a number) in (T - a table name): (- ((({T}-->{I})-->1)&TB_COLUMN_NUMBER) -).
To decide whether table column (C - a number) is a block-value table column: (- KOVIsBlockValue(TC_KOV({C})) -)

To decide whether there is a value at row (R - a number) and column (C - a number) in (T - a table name): (- ExistsTableLookUpEntry({T},{C},{R}) -).
To decide what number is the value at row (R - a number) and column (C - a number) in (T - a table name): (- TableLookUpEntry({T},{C},{R}) -).

Column correspondence relates numbers to numbers.  The verb to be the column corresponding to implies the column correspondence relation.
To associate (C - a value of kind K valued table column) with (P - a K valued property):
	let the column number be C converted to a number;
	let the property number be P converted to a number;
	now the column number is the column corresponding to the property number.

To apply the properties in (T - a table name):
	repeat with the column index running from two [not one; that's the object column] to the number of columns in T:
		let the column number be the table column column index in T;
		unless the column number relates to a number by the column correspondence relation:
			next;
		let the property number be the number that the column number relates to by the column correspondence relation;
		repeat with the row index running from one to the number of rows in T:
			let the named object be the object column in row row index of T;
			unless the named object has property number property number:
				next;
			unless there is a value at row row index and column column number in T:
				next;
			let the value be the value at row row index and column column number in T;
			if table column column number is a block-value table column:
				store block value value as property number property number in the named object;
			otherwise:
				store non-block value value as property number property number in the named object.

Section "Demonstration"

The Kitchen is a room.
Here is an animal called the salamander.

Every object has a number called strength.
Every object has a number called size.
Every animal has some indexed text called tagline.

Table of Object Parameters
object column	description column	strength column	size column	tagline column (indexed text)
salamander	"A mythical lizardlike creature said to live in fire or to be able to withstand its effects."	12	201234	"x"
Kitchen	--	--	800	"y"
north	--	92	--	"z"

When play begins:
	associate the description column with description;
	associate the strength column with strength;
	associate the size column with size;
	associate the tagline column with tagline.

Instead of jumping:
	apply the properties in the Table of Object Parameters;
	say "Done."

Test me with "showme salamander / showme north / jump / showme salamander / showme north".[/code][/spoiler]
(Based on your other posts, I take it that you're using a different strategy.  But I didn't want to leave up code that I know to be wrong.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2254&start=0#p16450
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Event in Munich on May 7 2011
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-05-04 13:17:54

Damn! Moved from Munich to Hamburg short time ago...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2331&start=10#p16451
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Tables and functional programming
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-05-04 13:59:31

Thanks for the fix/trim! I've got the code on file and may yet figure out a way to use it. I had intended to use the table approach alongside the other approach, but I'm finding that using a table will require a bit more bookkeeping from authors than I want to make necessary. I may still offer it as a "plug-in" extension later on if interest points that way...

(Basically, the table would work as a kind of keyframe register, with automatic tweening of frames in between the keys. This would be an easy way to specify complex animations at one time and with a minimum of fiddliness. For example, you could have a shape move in a continuous ellipse on the screen with just 2 entries in the list, and three such shapes zipping all over the place with just 6 lines. However, you also need a way to store data about the state of the tweens, which is one of the areas where the bookkeeping comes in...)

Anyway, thanks again for the help!

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379&start=20#p16452
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How about left/right/up/down as compass directions?
User: Sig / DateTime: 2011-05-04 15:13:03

I hesitate to even mention it, since that would feel like I'm committing to actually completing it, but I've been planning implementation of the opening levels of the original Metroid game from the Nintendo Entertainment System as an IF.  Once you take out the tedious jumping (and falling) and abstract the shooting, you have the core of an interesting (if not overly complicated) puzzler.

I thought this project would have a target audience of exactly one, but I casually mentioned it (in the context of a discussion about labors of love with no real benefit) and was surprised that several people got really excited about it.  Apparently, I'm not the only one who really enjoyed platform shooters in the mid-80s while being terrible at them.

Left/right/up/down is eminently appropriate for this case.  But I'd be hard-pressed to think of another one for which it would fit so well.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=30#p16453
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: Sig / DateTime: 2011-05-04 15:50:36

[quote]The history of art shows us repeatedly that piss-poor work is piss-poor, but that some people are willing to blame the paint, and in the process throw the baby out with the bathwater, resulting in a particularly messy mix of metaphor.[/quote]
I'm afraid I don't quite understand.  Why are we painting babies again?

This has been a very helpful discussion.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=30#p16454
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-05-04 18:23:00

[quote="Sig"]I'm afraid I don't quite understand.  Why are we painting babies again?[/quote]

To bake a dark horse of a different color.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=30#p16455
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-05-04 18:32:35

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="Sig"]I'm afraid I don't quite understand.  Why are we painting babies again?[/quote]

To bake a dark horse of a different color.[/quote]

...I just had the best idea for an IF game...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379&start=30#p16456
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How about left/right/up/down as compass directions?
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-05-04 18:33:11

[quote]Only if your new directions are as complicated as compass directions, or more complicated. I think there's a lot of scope for linear directions (forward, back; up,down) and circular directions.[/quote]

Assuming your game takes place in at least a two-dimensional world, then the directions will be equally complicated, since two vectors are the basis of a plane and consequently you'll need at least two pairs of directions (FBUD is mathematically equivalent to NSWE, after all).  What's more or less intuitive is another question, but that's subjective.

Anyway I'm just saying that I was surprised at how many objections I got (and that the people who made them are being reasonable to do so), and you'll probably get them as well.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2395&start=0#p16458
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: On modifying pre-existing code (Inheritance?)
User: Arag-e / DateTime: 2011-05-04 21:47:52

Hi again.

I’m trying to stick as much repetitive code as possible into custom classes, but I hit a snag as to how to, or whether it is possible, to make small modifications to relatively long objects. I know how to use Inherited() to add something to the end of a pre-existing method, but not how to mess with chunks from the middle.

For instance, here is Slime’s behaviour, represented by the agenda item slimeAttackAgenda:
[code]
+slimeAttackAgenda: AgendaItem
    isReady = (inherited() && player.location == slime.location)
    initiallyActive = true
    invokeItem()
    {
        local roll = rand(100);
        if (roll >= 50)
            "The Slime stares blankly and loses its turn. ";
        else
        {
            local roll = rand(100);
            local hitChance = 100 - player.SPD;
            if (hitChance >= roll)
            {
                "The Slime charges at you! ";
                player.LoseHP(slime.ATK);
            }
            else
                "The Slime charges at you, but its attack missed! ";
        }
    }
;[/code]

Suppose I want a lot of this to work much the same for other monsters, more or less like this:

[code]class MonsterAttackAgenda: AgendaItem
    isReady = (inherited() && player.location == slime.location)
    initiallyActive = true
    invokeItem()
    {
        local roll = rand(100);
        local hitChance = 100 - player.SPD;
        if (hitChance >= roll)
        {
            "Monster attacks you message. ";
            player.LoseHP(slime.ATK);
        }
        else
            "Monster missed message. ";
    }
;[/code]

This would be generic monster behaviour. From here, I would want to customize the two double quoted strings for each monster, as well as the “slime” in 
[code]player.LoseHP(slime.ATK);[/code]
since I would need to change that to point to each respective monster, else all of them would be using slime’s ATK property to calculate damage.

Additionally Slime has another random 50/50 chance of just staring blankly and doing nothing instead of following with all the hitChance and attack behaviour. That’s there just as a placeholder for some other customized behaviour I might want to implement.

Basically, the point of this exercise is that I want to keep a block of code in a class definition and freely mess with chunks of the content on individual instances. Is this doable?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2396&start=0#p16459
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: LeftRight Directions - beta of a new extension
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-04 23:51:24

Here's an extension bound to make you a hit with grizzled IF players ... NOT!

I call it 'LeftRight Directions'. I extrapolated this from code in the game I'm developing. What it does is this:

"Adds a mode to your game which lets the player use left/right/forward/backward and variants as absolute direction commands to stand in for west/east/north/south. It also  provides text tokens you can use to make the prose and character movements in your game compatible with both the new left-right mode and regular compass mode."

So this is a total beta of this extension - it's raw, doesn't support the corner directions (nw, ne, sw, se) and you may not like some of its prose inflections, but it puts all the mechanics in place and, basically, it works. It's ready to be refined, to have niceties injected or glommed onto it, to have grammatical work done, etc.

Since I've done this much, my eventual goal will be to nicen and tighten it all up, but I don't expect to do this in a real hurry; I'd rather get back to my game.

If you see an easier way of doing stuff in the code, find bugs, like the way it says stuff, don't like the way it says stuff, please leave your comments in this topic and eventually I'll collect and benefit from them all. If it really excites someone, they may end up doing the honing themselves.

Hope ya dig it.

Btw, to use this extension, you'll first need to install the 'Default Messages' extension by Ron Newcomb, and the 'Plurality' extension (this one you should have by default anyway) by Emily Short. This info is also in the extension docs, as is a demo entertainment.

[url]http://home.iprimus.com.au/bloomer/disallow/LeftRight%20Directions.i7x[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379&start=30#p16460
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How about left/right/up/down as compass directions?
User: Huck Hooks / DateTime: 2011-05-04 23:53:57

But only two commands. Think of railroads. The only choice is at switches.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2395&start=0#p16461
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: On modifying pre-existing code (Inheritance?)
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-05-04 23:57:25

You have the right idea. The trick is to keep the core logic the same for all members of the class, and limit the differences to properties that can be easily modified.

Mostly this means factoring out any strings, and being careful with the way you reference properties.

[code]
class MonsterAttackAgenda: AgendaItem
	isReady = (inherited() && gPlayerChar.location == owner.location)
	initiallyActive = true
	invokeItem()
	{
		local roll = rand(100);
		local hitChance = 100 - gPlayerChar.SPD;
		if (hitChance >= roll)
		{
			hitMsg();
			gPlayerChar.LoseHP(owner.ATK);
		}
		else
			missMsg();
	}

	hitMsg  { "The <<owner.name>> charges at you! "; }
	missMsg { "The <<owner.name>> charges at you, but its attack missed! "; }
	owner = location
;

yellowSlime: Monster 'yellow slime' 'YELLOW SLIME' @Redroom
	ATK = 100
	SPD = 100
;

+ MonsterAttackAgenda
	invokeItem()
	{
		local roll = rand(100);
		if (roll < dazeChance)
			dazeMsg();
		else
			inherited();
	}

	dazeChance = 50
	dazeMsg { "The <<owner.name>> stares blankly and loses its turn. "; }
;

purpleSlime: Monster 'purple slime' 'PURPLE SLIME' @Redroom
	ATK = 1000
	SPD = 100
;

+ MonsterAttackAgenda	
	hitMsg  { "The <<owner.name>> slimes you! "; }
	missMsg { "The <<owner.name>> quivers with rage! "; }
;
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2397&start=0#p16462
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7: Scene Begins After....
User: RedTulip / DateTime: 2011-05-05 00:35:02

I want to know to to make a scene begin [i]after[/i] something, but I can't seem to do that. 

When I type, for example:

[code]The Moving Train begins after one turn when Ellen is awake. [I added that a person can be awake or sleeping][/code]

It doesn't work, says it doesn't understand.

But this...

[code]The Moving Train begins when Ellen is awake.[/code]

...Works well. Any idea?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2396&start=0#p16463
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: LeftRight Directions - beta of a new extension
User: Huck Hooks / DateTime: 2011-05-05 01:35:21

Weird. The map builds easier in my head, but i still type compass when i walk. And left/right is a focus thing. When i think across multiple rooms (well, ok, "birdseye" [emote];)[/emote] my intuition uses absolute-left.
When i think "inside" a room i turn direction. Also i am more "in 3d" with relative. Imaging adjacent rooms is easier than with absolute, regardless of compass or absolute-left mode.
Thinking aloud: Maybe there could be a command "read map/m" with "You turn north. Left is etc".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2397&start=0#p16464
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: Scene Begins After....
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-05-05 02:52:06

Try
[code]
Moving Train begins when Ellen has been awake for exactly two turns.
[/code]
or
[code]
Moving Train begins when Ellen is awake for the second turn.
[/code]
(À la §9.15 of Writing with Inform.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379&start=30#p16466
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How about left/right/up/down as compass directions?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-05-05 04:17:07

[quote="katz"]Assuming your game takes place in at least a two-dimensional world, then the directions will be equally complicated, since two vectors are the basis of a plane and consequently you'll need at least two pairs of directions (FBUD is mathematically equivalent to NSWE, after all).[/quote]
Nope, I mean linear. Forward/back [i]or[/i] up/down. The world is three dimensional, but the movement doesn't have to be.  [emote]:P[/emote] 

[quote="katz"]Anyway I'm just saying that I was surprised at how many objections I got (and that the people who made them are being reasonable to do so), and you'll probably get them as well.[/quote]
I'm telling you what objections I [i]did[/i] get over three games with non-standard movement.

People complained about relative directions (but didn't seem to have [i]too much[/i] trouble with them, probably because I listed the exists prominently).  Some people complained about radial directions and other people praised them. And lots of people liked linear movement, including people who said they got confused by standard IF navigation. (My other games are either set in one location, or handle movement automatically.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379&start=30#p16467
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How about left/right/up/down as compass directions?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-05 06:46:13

[quote="Pacian"]Some people complained about radial directions and other people praised them.[/quote]

One thing that helped there, IIRC, was that you didn't have to take anything much from one location to another, or at least from one branch to another; the branches were basically all self-contained episodes, weren't they? It might have been much more annoying if we'd had to shuttle things around the map. Of course, it's often annoying when you have to shuttle things around the map, no matter what directions you're using.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2397&start=0#p16468
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: Scene Begins After....
User: RedTulip / DateTime: 2011-05-05 07:20:46

I'll try that...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2399&start=0#p16469
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Open-source but not GPL zcode interpreters?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-05 10:35:29

What's the best codebase that isn't GPL?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2397&start=0#p16470
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: Scene Begins After....
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-05-05 11:16:16

The extension Phrases For Adaptive Pacing has several miscellaneous things that may or may not be useful there. Just FYI.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2367&start=0#p16471
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding default descriptions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-05 11:41:48

It's also helpful to know that Before rules continue the action by default, while Instead rules stop the action by default. So if you use an Instead rule, you don't need the "stop the action" phrase.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2399&start=0#p16472
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Open-source but not GPL zcode interpreters?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-05-05 12:15:26

[url=http://spellbreaker.org/~chrender/fizmo/license/]Fizmo[/url] is not GPL. It uses curses for I/O.

[url=http://code.google.com/p/bocfel/]Bocfel[/url] is GPL, but it's a single author effort - you could ask Chris Spiegel about a special licensing arrangement. It uses Glk for I/O.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2388&start=0#p16473
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Dynamic Objects and Programming Error
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-05 13:26:35

Is this something that Multitudes would help with?

<a class="postlink" href="http://eyeballsun.org/i/Multitudes.i7x">http://eyeballsun.org/i/Multitudes.i7x</a>

[quote]A way to implement collections of objects that can spread across multiple rooms, like stones in a pile of gravel. The player may interact with individual objects from the collection, and the extension will keep track of how many are in each room. Requires Conditional Backdrops by Mike Ciul.[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2394&start=0#p16474
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Hourly clock chimes
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-05 13:46:36

I've run into that infinite-loop problem with recurring scenes before. I think it almost qualifies as a bug - when would anyone want a recurring scene to start on the same turn that it ended?

In this case, however, it can be avoided. Having a variable that does nothing but tell whether a scene should be happening is a red flag for me, and indeed, you don't need it here:

[code]Chimes is a number that varies.

Every turn during The Tolling Bell:
    decrement chimes;
    if the location is not indoors and chimes is at least 1, say "BONG!"

The Tolling Bell is a recurring scene. The Tolling Bell begins when the minutes part of the time of day is 0. The Tolling Bell ends when chimes is 0.

When The Tolling Bell begins:
    now chimes is the remainder after dividing the hours part of the time of day by 12;
    if chimes is 0, now chimes is 12;
    If the location is not indoors, say "You hear the tolling of a distant bell. BONG!"
[/code]

Of course you still don't need scenes, because the chimes variable tells you all you need to know:

[code]Chimes is a number that varies.

Every turn when chimes is at least 1:
    if the location is not indoors, say "BONG!";
    decrement chimes;

Every turn when the minutes part of the time of day is 0:
    now chimes is the remainder after dividing the hours part of the time of day by 12;
    if chimes is 0, now chimes is 12;
    if the location is not indoors, say "You hear the tolling of a distant bell. BONG!";
    decrement chimes;[/code]

The timing of this is slightly different if the game begins precisely on the hour, though - Scene changes happen before the banner text, and every turn rules happen after the player's actions are complete.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379&start=30#p16475
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How about left/right/up/down as compass directions?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-05 14:44:22

[quote="severedhand"].. I think I changed my mind again. I googled and found sites about teaching compass directions to 2nd graders. So if 7 year olds (and probably hothoused and helicoptered 5 year old) are likely to have been exposed to a compass, well, my ahead/behind dealie isn't necessary.[/quote]
My oldest is 8, and even she isn't very good with left and right yet, but I talk to all of my kids about compass directions. Maybe it's because our family is very place-oriented, and we live in a city with a grid pattern of streets.

I do think characterization is a good reason to change anything fundamental about a game, though. If you have a PC who views the world in an unusual set of directions, or a world that affects the PC's sense of direction in an unusual way, that's a good reason to change the interface of the game.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=40#p16476
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-05-05 15:34:07

This metaphor has gone too far.  Besides, everyone knows that the cake is a lie.  (And does every conversation about writing need to devolve into "Is anything really original?")

To return to the original topic, I second that I've never found writing books to be terribly useful; they may give you more tools to add to your arsenal, but usually the problem, at least for me, is not that I need more tricks, but that I'm having trouble with the application.  In other words, specifics.

But it's difficult to get, with IF, the sort of specific feedback I always solicit with written fiction.  I would never consider a novel done if I hadn't carefully proofread it and had someone (or, preferably, multiple someones) also proofread it and offer corrections, yet there's no real way to do that with IF because of the difficulty of seeing the entire manuscript.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2400&start=0#p16477
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Script command not working
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-05 15:34:30

I was trying to experiment with Trizbort as a mapping tool (auto-mapping) and I can not get scripting to work in Inform (using ver 6G60).  I did a search of this forum and saw another mention of this, but no real reply if there was a problem or not.

I have tried script, script on, transcript, transcript on... and the reply from Inform is always the same:

"Attempt to begin transcript failed."

I am using the Windows version of Inform, I mention that because in the other thread where this problem was mentioned I saw that someone said the script command worked for them on the Mac.

So is there a way to get the script function to work?  Or do I have to wait and hope this problem will be fixed in the next Windows version?

Thanks for any help.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2388&start=0#p16478
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Dynamic Objects and Programming Error
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-05-05 15:36:53

I'm sure it could be useful in that way, but it would require a pretty aggressive reworking of what I've got now.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2400&start=0#p16479
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Script command not working
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-05-05 15:39:52

You can "Release for testing" and script from there, at least on my machines.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2388&start=0#p16480
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Dynamic Objects and Programming Error
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-05 15:47:05

Fair enough. I'm too scared of dynamic objects to actually be able to help you with this, but if you get to the point where you are considering Multitudes, feel free to write to me with suggestions or requests - I'd like to make Multitudes more widely usable before I submit it to the inform7 site, and having feedback from other authors who are actually trying to use it would help a lot.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2399&start=0#p16481
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Open-source but not GPL zcode interpreters?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-05 15:55:39

Fizmo seems right. (Although I'm still open to suggestions.) Thanks.

(I want to Glk-ize it, and Bocfel is already there. Hm. Well, options are good.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2259&start=10#p16482
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Creating RIA Interpreter for TADS 3
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-05-05 16:17:58

Can you offer some modest guidance on getting this up and running?  [emote]:)[/emote] 

I've rebuilt the sample game with the new t3make and tried this command line:
[quote]
frob -w localhost:5933 sample.t3
[/quote]

The resulting process shows the first screen in the game and then exits immediately.

(It prints a warning about tadsweb.config but as far as I can tell from the source code, this is only used to connect to the optional storage server.)

Does it have to be started by Apache in order to stay running?

[b]EDIT:[/b] it looks like all the web functionality is contained in new library modules like webui.t and browser.t, which weren't included in the sample build. So I guess I have to include those somehow.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2401&start=0#p16483
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: To Blorb or not to Blorb
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-05-05 16:36:30

I am starting to think about packaging media soon in ADRIFT 5, and am thinking about how best to do this.  It has been suggested on the ADRIFT forum that using the Blorb format might be a good way to implement it.

I like this idea as it would assist global IF applications in identifying media, displaying thumbnails etc.  However, the restricted media puts me off (i.e. ADRIFT 4 supports GIFs and MP3s, neither of which are allowed in Blorb).

Does anyone have any opinions on whether this would be a good thing or not?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2400&start=0#p16484
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Script command not working
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-05 16:37:51

[quote="gravel"]You can "Release for testing" and script from there, at least on my machines.[/quote]

I just tried, and it does.  I was trying to do it from within the Inform IDE for simplicities sake.  Not having to switch back and forth between programs.

If I have to, I will.  But it would be easier to do it all within Inform.

But thanks, at last now I can play with Trizbort and see how well it maps.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2259&start=10#p16485
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Creating RIA Interpreter for TADS 3
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-05-05 16:41:46

[quote="RealNC"]Good news. The system is pretty much feature-complete. Ironing out the last rough edges should hopefully not take that long. Mike Roberts also provided the modifications to make frobtads able to serve games through HTTP, so I was able to give this a go on my Linux box.

This is quite exciting [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote][/quote]

Yes indeed! I'm still going to wait for the newer, smaller library* before giving T3 a serious look, but it's great to see so many decisive moves out of the Windows ghetto over the past year!

--Erik

* and, realistically, a nice Mac-native IDE solution as well....

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2400&start=0#p16486
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Script command not working
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-05-05 16:44:49

If you're running a Glulx game, it ought to be possible to rig up your own transcript command using an external file and the window-echoing phrase wrappers in Flexible Windows. However, it may be that the Windows IDE disallows *all* external files, not just the SCRIPT command...?

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2400&start=0#p16487
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Script command not working
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-05 17:12:12

[quote="ektemple"]If you're running a Glulx game, it ought to be possible to rig up your own transcript command using an external file and the window-echoing phrase wrappers in Flexible Windows. However, it may be that the Windows IDE disallows *all* external files, not just the SCRIPT command...?

--Erik[/quote]

Maybe, I am not sure.  This was really my first attempt at creating an external file.  And it is (so far at least) a z-code game.  But as I learn more that might change.  I just hadn't gotten to a point where I needed to go to Glulx... and I would need to change a few things to get it to look right.  For example, the changing of colors in the exit lister extension.  I use a version of it in my status bar and the color coding makes it much easier to tell what rooms have been visited in the list of exits and in the compass rose.  There may be a way to accomplish the same thing in Glulx, but I haven't found it yet.

But like I said, still learning.  [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2259&start=10#p16488
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Creating RIA Interpreter for TADS 3
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-05-05 17:40:36

[quote="bcressey"]Can you offer some modest guidance on getting this up and running?  [emote]:)[/emote] 

I've rebuilt the sample game with the new t3make and tried this command line:
[quote]
frob -w localhost:5933 sample.t3
[/quote]

The resulting process shows the first screen in the game and then exits immediately.
[/quote]
Oops, there are some needed files missing (adv3web). I've got the ready-made t3 file of Return to Ditch Day for testing purposes and ran it, and didn't notice that you actually can't build web-enabled games yet [emote]:P[/emote] I'll be waiting for the next update from MJR, as I don't have those files.

[quote]Does it have to be started by Apache in order to stay running?[/quote]
Nope, it can be launched stand-alone. For example, Gargoyle would run the VM like that, and then launch a browser window on localhost. Voila, there's your HTML TADS 'terp [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote], at least for games build with WebUI.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2401&start=0#p16489
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: To Blorb or not to Blorb
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-05 17:57:11

The format restrictions are there to aid Glk implementations. (That is, to define a baseline for game authors and Glk library authors to agree on.)

If you're porting a totally new system, I can add spec notes on how to tag the extra data types. I don't want the format list to block that sort of thing. 

However, you'd probably want to ensure that the *system-neutral* contents -- namely, the cover art chunk -- is never a GIF. (That way, systems like IFDB don't have to change.)

An alternative to Blorb would be a Zip-style package format. That's what most platforms have used in the past decade; if I were inventing Blorb today, it's what I would use.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2394&start=0#p16490
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Hourly clock chimes
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-05-05 18:57:12

[quote="capmikee"]I've run into that infinite-loop problem with recurring scenes before. I think it almost qualifies as a bug - when would anyone want a recurring scene to start on the same turn that it ended?

In this case, however, it can be avoided. Having a variable that does nothing but tell whether a scene should be happening is a red flag for me[/quote]

I agree.  I did try counting the number of chimes in an earlier attempt, but it annoyed me to have to use a global variable. I figured if I'm going to do that, I'd rather use a boolean and save a few bytes.  That may be a ridiculous thing to worry about in this day and age, but old habits die hard. [emote]:P[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2401&start=0#p16491
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: To Blorb or not to Blorb
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-05-05 19:03:50

While zipping may have been a nicer format, it's worked out well IMO because unzipping packages in javascript wouldn't be feasible, while HTTP gzipping takes care of the file size.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2394&start=0#p16492
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Hourly clock chimes
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-05 20:42:35

Booleans ("truth states") and integers are the same size in I7. Sorry. :)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2399&start=0#p16493
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Open-source but not GPL zcode interpreters?
User: gumby / DateTime: 2011-05-05 21:02:33

There is a Perl offering: 'rezrov' - Perl does have a non-GPL licensing option, their 'artistic licence' as they put it, but I have no clue what that means.  Additionally, I cannot speak to rezrov's capabilities...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2399&start=0#p16494
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Open-source but not GPL zcode interpreters?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-05 22:09:28

Artistic License is Perl's open-source license, which is good for the purposes of this question. Unfortunately I'm looking for C, not Perl. (I forgot to specify that -- sorry.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2254&start=0#p16495
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Event in Munich on May 7 2011
User: stadtgorilla / DateTime: 2011-05-06 00:21:14

thanks for sharing! we will report back!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2220&start=10#p16496
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Remapping the blank command to wait
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-06 01:11:39

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Here it is, the whole mess[/quote]

Hey Victor,

Will your quoted routine work for any command of the author's choice? For instance, I'd like to remap a blank entry to 'again'. I tested this and it seems to work fine, but since I don't understand the I6 code you wrote, I wondered if there was anything specific about it that makes it safe for 'wait' only, as per your original example?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2401&start=0#p16497
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: To Blorb or not to Blorb
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-05-06 02:27:27

[quote="zarf"]If you're porting a totally new system, I can add spec notes on how to tag the extra data types. I don't want the format list to block that sort of thing.[/quote]Thanks zarf, that would be fab.  I think that would be a good compromise. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2402&start=0#p16498
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Making an action applying to two things
User: RedTulip / DateTime: 2011-05-06 02:32:36

I tried making an action to ask someone about something, but I don't know how to do it...

I tried this:
[code]Understand "ask [someone] about [something]" as asking about. Asking about is an action applying to two visible things.[/code]

But when I type:
[code]Instead of asking John about the apple:
   say "'Just an apple.' John says.".[/code]

But it would say that Inform couldn't place the rule in the rulebook. How, exactly, do you make a rule for the rulebook?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2402&start=0#p16499
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Making an action applying to two things
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-05-06 02:50:16

It's just that Inform doesn't know where the first noun should go in the "asking X about Y" action. You have to add this information with "it", but you also have to change the action's name: "asking it about" is already defined in the standard library (as applying to one thing and one topic).

    [code]Understand "ask [someone] about [something]" as querying it about. Querying it about is an action applying to two visible things.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2157&start=40#p16500
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Where's the Writing Lessons? Isnt IF an Interacactive St
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-05-06 02:55:43

[quote="katz"]This metaphor has gone too far.[/quote]

I think it's a marvelous alternative to the actual topic, myself [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote]Besides, everyone knows that the cake is a lie.[/quote]

Touché.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2259&start=10#p16501
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Creating RIA Interpreter for TADS 3
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-05-06 06:42:09

Btw, I'd recommend poking MJR about getting the updated porting kit sources, because the TADS 3.1 compiler breaks backwards compatibility, meaning games won't run in existing terps (WebUI or not doesn't matter). That way you'll have a chance in updating Gargoyle by the time 3.1 is officially released.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2403&start=0#p16502
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Error in EXIT LISTER V10
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-05-06 07:20:25

I need to talk with Eric Eve. I was using EXIT LISTER V10 and recieved a series of error messages that appear to have no relation to my program. Please have him drop me a note at <a href="mailto:wgm003@bellsouth.net">wgm003@bellsouth.net</a>. [emote]:?:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2403&start=0#p16503
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error in EXIT LISTER V10
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-06 07:46:42

His e-mail address is on his [url=http://www.ecse.ukf.net/]web page[/url] (click on his name at the bottom of the page). When I contacted him with a minor issue about this extension he responded very quickly.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2404&start=0#p16504
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Contextual parts of room description
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-05-06 07:54:11

Okay, I think I might see why Curveship and narrative variation was put in place. But let's see. Say I've got a situation like this:

[quote]> wear amulet[/quote]

What happens when the player performs this action is that the game processes a series of objects that now appear in the room. These objects weren't there before. When the player then does a look action (or I do one for them), I get this:

[quote]> look
Room description goes here.

You can see a scabbard, a moonstone, and a dead snake here.[/quote]

What I want to do is make the objects that appear called out a bit more contextually. The code I'm using to get the objects in place is this:

[code]After wearing the amulet in the Chamber:
	repeat with appeared object running through things in Storage:
		move appeared object to Chamber;
	continue the action.[/code]

What I was initially thinking was also giving each newly appeared object a property such as "newly added." But then I didn't see how to actually use that property to override the "You can see" part and have it say something like this (with an implicit look happening after wearing the amulet):

[quote]> wear amulet
Room description goes here.

Wearing the amulet has revealed the following items: a scabbard, a moonstone, and a dead snake.[/quote]

And, ideally, I'd only want that special "Wearing the amulet has revealed" text to appear on the first look after wearing the amulet. On subsequent looks, I'd just want the normal "You can see" text.

I've been through various parts of the the manual and I see some tricks about the "locale" but it's still very unclear to me how I would do what I describe above.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2404&start=0#p16505
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Contextual parts of room description
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-06 08:55:13

Have you tried looking at 17.22 "writing a paragraph about"? It looks to me as though that might help, as it allows you to make a list and then marks every object in the list as "mentioned," which prevents it from appearing in the "You can also see" paragraph. You might have to be careful about what the "rule for writing a paragraph about" is attached to, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2404&start=0#p16506
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Contextual parts of room description
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-05-06 09:16:37

[quote="matt w"]Have you tried looking at 17.22 "writing a paragraph about"? It looks to me as though that might help, as it allows you to make a list and then marks every object in the list as "mentioned," which prevents it from appearing in the "You can also see" paragraph.[/quote]

I did see that and I'm still learning this locale stuff. It's mostly that I just want to suppress the normal "you can see" part for one turn -- i.e., after the amulet is worn and the implicit look is generated. After that point, I'm fine with the regular "you can see." It's like I want to override the rule just once and then have it work as normal from that point on. That seems like a perfect application of what rules would be good at so I'm guessing I'm missing something obvious.

Another element, though, is that I need this to take place any time the player is in a room and wears the amulet. In other words, different rooms will have different "revealed items."

I'll keep plugging away.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2402&start=0#p16507
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Making an action applying to two things
User: RedTulip / DateTime: 2011-05-06 09:17:29

It works well, thanks alot [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2404&start=0#p16508
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Contextual parts of room description
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-05-06 09:32:38

I think inserting a rule before the you-can-also-see rule might work fine.

[code]A thing can be newly added.

After wearing the amulet:
	repeat with appeared object running through things in Storage:
		move appeared object to the location;
		now appeared object is newly added;
	say "You put on the amulet.";
	continue the action.

After wearing the amulet:
	try looking.

For printing the locale description (this is the revealed by amulet rule):
	if the list of newly added things is not empty:
		say "Wearing the amulet has revealed the following items: [a list of newly added things].[paragraph break]";
		now all newly added things are not marked for listing;
		now all newly added things are not newly added;
	continue the activity.
	
The revealed by amulet rule is listed before the you-can-also-see rule in the for printing the locale description rulebook.[/code]

That way the you-can-also-see rule would still work for whatever other so called non-descript items might be in the location.
(The you-can-also-see rule only prints things that are "marked for listing".)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2394&start=0#p16509
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Hourly clock chimes
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-06 09:36:04

and "whether The Tolling Bell is happening" is in effect a global variable anyway.

But if you really hate global variables, why not make chimes a property of the clock object? Or of The Tolling Bell scene? Or of the room where the tolling takes place?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2402&start=0#p16510
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Making an action applying to two things
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-06 10:30:14

You might want to check out the "Conversation Framework" extension by Eric Eve. It creates a "quizzing it about" action (to distinguish from "asking it about," which is a built-in action on text) as well as an "informing it about" action to go along with the text-based "telling it about."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2404&start=0#p16511
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Contextual parts of room description
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-06 10:37:44

[quote="bukayeva"][quote="matt w"]Have you tried looking at 17.22 "writing a paragraph about"? It looks to me as though that might help, as it allows you to make a list and then marks every object in the list as "mentioned," which prevents it from appearing in the "You can also see" paragraph.[/quote]

I did see that and I'm still learning this locale stuff. It's mostly that I just want to suppress the normal "you can see" part for one turn -- i.e., after the amulet is worn and the implicit look is generated. After that point, I'm fine with the regular "you can see." It's like I want to override the rule just once and then have it work as normal from that point on.[/quote]

My idea was to do that by the "newly revealed" flag -- have the Rule for Writing a Paragraph About kick in whenever there's a newly revealed item in the location, and have it set all the newly revealed items be not newly revealed anymore; which would mea it doesn't suppress the regular "you can see" anymore either.. As Felix has it. I'm still learning this too, though, so there may be better hooks than the rules for writing a paragraph about.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2406&start=0#p16512
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Now the player is not in the boat.
User: RedTulip / DateTime: 2011-05-06 11:07:54

I want to move the player [i]off[/i] a vehicle, but when I type...

[code]now the player is off the boat.[/code]

or....

[code]now the player is not in the boat.[/code]

...It won't work. Anyone know how to do this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2406&start=0#p16513
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Now the player is not in the boat.
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-06 11:10:19

"now the player is in the location of the boat". Or just "now the player is in the Seaside Wharf".

"now the player is not in the boat" fails because there are so many game locations which are not in the boat. Tom Stoppard would be proud. :)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2406&start=0#p16514
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Now the player is not in the boat.
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-05-06 11:13:18

The game doesn't know where to put the player.  A positive formulation, like "Now the player is in the Docks" should work.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2406&start=0#p16515
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Now the player is not in the boat.
User: RedTulip / DateTime: 2011-05-06 11:20:19

Thanks, I tried it. It works well.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2404&start=0#p16516
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Contextual parts of room description
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-05-06 11:45:52

Got it. I now see the mental block I was having with activities and how they fit in with rules. The above ideas work just fine. Thanks for the help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2388&start=0#p16517
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Dynamic Objects, Numbered Disambig and Programming E
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-05-06 13:02:34

Update: this appears to be a weird obscure thing happening between Dynamic Objects and Numbered Disambiguation.  I can't see anything that explains it on the Numbered Disambiguation end, and I can't "read" the I6 in Dynamic Objects, but it only happens when both are in play.  (While testing, I upgraded from version 3 to version 5 of Numbered Disambiguation, but get the same error.)

Anyone have any idea what might be happening, and better yet how I could fix it?  

Test code:

[code]
Include Dynamic Objects by Jesse Mcgrew.
Include Numbered Disambiguation Choices by Aaron Reed.

Test Room is a room.
A spiffle is a kind of thing.  A blip is a spiffle.  A bloop is a spiffle.

When play begins:
	repeat with N running from 0 to 2:
		let new spiffle be a new object cloned from a random spiffle;
		move new spiffle to the Test Room.

Understand "spiffy" as a blip.  
Understand "spiffy" as a bloop.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2406&start=0#p16518
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Now the player is not in the boat.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-06 13:12:01

Another formulation besides "the location of the boat" is "the holder of the boat." If the Dock is an enterable container in the Wharf, and the dock contains the boat, the former would put you in the Wharf, while the latter would put you in the Dock.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=20#p16519
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: Gerynar / DateTime: 2011-05-06 14:02:48

Just a friendly reminder that tonight's the last night to get your entry to Jacqueline. We will be gathering at the ifMUD, in the toyroom tomorrow afternoon to play these games together.

Hop on over to ifmud.port4000.com for information on how to join in on the fun.

Hope to see y'all there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2388&start=0#p16520
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Dynamic Objects and Programming Error
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2011-05-06 14:12:11

I'm looking into it.. the bug is somehow related to the generated parsing routines. The error still appears if you remove Numbered Disambiguation Choices and add this instead:
[code]A thing has a number called foo. Understand the foo property as describing a thing.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=20#p16521
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: Jacqueline / DateTime: 2011-05-06 14:14:18

[quote="Gerynar"]Just a friendly reminder that tonight's the last night to get your entry to Jacqueline. We will be gathering at the ifMUD, in the toyroom tomorrow afternoon to play these games together.  Hop on over to ifmud.port4000.com for information on how to join in on the fun. Hope to see y'all there.[/quote]
Indeed.  Thanks, Gerynar!  

Thanks to everyone who's submitted their games already, and for those who have not (or to those who have last minute updates...): another few hours reprieve.  Get them to me before, say, midnight Alaska time.  I've had some stuff come up, so I won't be dealing with the uploads until late tonight or tomorrow morning.  So far it looks like we have some ADRIFT, TADS 3, and ALAN 3 stuff, which we can (mostly) play on Floyd, plus a couple of Undum games (which we can't play on Floyd but I have three potential work-around ideas that I'll float with the people who shop up for ClubFloyd tomorrow.  2pm Easter in the Toyshop on ifMUD, as usual.  

- Jacq

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=20#p16522
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-05-06 14:22:29

I didn't manage to make anything*, but I plan on being there to see what others created!

* Not because of my chosen new language, which was Inform 7, but because I found myself unable to come up with any ideas. That's a bit depressing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=20#p16523
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-05-06 14:26:49

[quote="Jacqueline"][quote="Gerynar"] So far it looks like we have some ADRIFT, TADS 3, and ALAN 3 stuff, which we can (mostly) play on Floyd, plus a couple of Undum games 
[/quote][/quote]

And an Inform 7 thing is right now beeing slapped out of bugs... well, almost, some of them I don't even have a clue of how to deal with... but that was part of the fun of beeing a first-timer!  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

--

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=30#p16524
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: Jacqueline / DateTime: 2011-05-06 14:30:28

[quote="Trumgottist"]I didn't manage to make anything, but I plan on being there to see what others created![/quote]
Aw... there's still time!  Embrace the normal speed-IF constraint of 2 hours of work!  Do something short and fun in that quirky style of yours that I love!  (Or don't... I do understand the whole Real Life thing.  We'll see you tomorrow, it sounds like... hooray!)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=30#p16525
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-05-06 14:38:04

[quote="Jacqueline"]Aw... there's still time!  Embrace the normal speed-IF constraint of 2 hours of work![/quote]
It's not time that's the issue. I actually gave up two weeks ago, if the timestamp on the inform file is to be believed. (See the edit in my previous post for the reason.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=30#p16526
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: Jacqueline / DateTime: 2011-05-06 14:51:16

[quote="rockersuke"]And an Inform 7 thing is right now beeing slapped out of bugs... well, almost, some of them I don't even have a clue of how to deal with... but that was part of the fun of beeing a first-timer!  [emote]:lol:[/emote][/quote]
Excellent!  Yeah, I"ve had my share of bugs, too.  Things that I *swear* worked just fine the other day now don't work and I can't see in the documentation how they possibly could have ever worked.  Isn't learning a new coding language fun?!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=30#p16527
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: Jacqueline / DateTime: 2011-05-06 15:01:12

[quote="Trumgottist"]I didn't manage to make anything*, but I plan on being there to see what others created!

* Not because of my chosen new language, which was Inform 7, but because I found myself unable to come up with any ideas. That's a bit depressing.[/quote]
Oh, ah.  Yeah, that's a bummer.  [emote]:?[/emote]  See you tomorrow, though...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=30#p16528
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2011-05-06 15:46:13

Awesome. With this extra time I may actually be able to make a thing that is somewhat complete from beginning to end with all choices making at least some sort of difference!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2259&start=10#p16529
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Creating RIA Interpreter for TADS 3
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-05-06 16:23:45

OK, if you pull from Git again, t3make should now work correctly.

To build a WebUI game, add the following to its Makefile.t3m:

[code]-D TADS_INCLUDE_NET
-lib adv3/adv3web
-lib webui
-source tadsnet[/code]
(Use only "adv3web", not "adv3".)

To run it, use "frob -i plain -N 44 sample.t3". You don't need to specify the hostname, unless it doesn't detect it on its own. It will then print an address on stdout. Simply open that in a browser.

There's a catch in this. If you have a game that uses the banner API (other than just using the default statusline), those parts need to be rewritten to use the new web API. Direct I/O calls will also need to be rewritten in games that use them, but that should be easy since Adv3 now provides equivalents functions.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2407&start=0#p16530
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7:  Eric Eve's Conversation Package
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-06 19:39:08

I wonder if anybody can suggest a source for learning more about the use of Eric Eve's Conversation Package for Inform 7.  My sense is that this is a powerful system which can do what I need, but I'm having a lot of trouble following the documentation.

A few examples of the kinds of things that I'm having trouble with:

     1.  I've set up a closed convnode.  I'm using closed rather than open because I need it to stay active until a particular response from the player is triggered.  (In fact, the response which triggers the termination of that node is not a conversational response but a non-conversational action, but there will be conversation going on in the interim so this still seemed like a reasonable way to handle it.)  I've set up a suggestion list for the convnode, and that works correctly.  However, what I'd  really like to do is have both those suggestions that are specific to the convnode and those that are more generally attached to the NPC to appear.  Generally, this is not what one wants when using a closed convnode (where the goal is to "force" the player to respond in a certain way), but in this case I want to allow the player more freedom to talk about various things, but to keep the convnode open until he does the "right" thing.  Short of duplicating all of the "general" suggestions as convnode-specific suggestions (which seems awfully cumbersome) I can't seem to find a way to do this.

     2.  The documentation describes how to effect NPC-initiated conversation which immediately starts in a particular convnode.  However, I can't figure out how to start an NPC-initiated conversation (i.e., as soon as the player enters the location where the NPC is, a conversation is begun  that sets that NPC as the current interlocutor) without also opening a specific convnode.

     3.  The documentation describes a mechanism for controlling the order of other-suggestions vis-a-vis each other, but I can't seem to figure out how to make the ask-suggestions and the tell-suggestions appear before the other-suggestions.

     4.  I can't figure out why some suggestions automatically disappear from the list once they've been "used," but others do not.

I'd certainly appreciate any insights on these specific issues, but what I'm really looking for is a general source for learning about how to use the system, and for looking up these kinds of things, which goes beyond (or is at least easier to follow) than the documentation.

Thanks.

      Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2088&start=0#p16531
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Frotz updated
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-06 20:49:31

One problem I am having is that Frotz does not seem to play well with large status bars.  It scrolls new text beneath them, even on the opening screens.  My current status bar has 8 lines (I know some will object, but I have my reasons).  The first and last are blank just for formatting purposes.  Still, it would be nice if it could sense where the status bar ended and start text from there.

Right now, four lines of text and three "spacer" lines are hidden beneath the status bar, for a total of seven lines that cannot be seen.  Does Frotz only allow a single line for status bar?  The Inform IDE and Parchment (on the web) read it fine and place all of the text below the status bar.

Is there a way to fix this?  Especially if I send files (and Frotz) to "non-computer" people for them to play?

Thanks for any help.

Edit to add:  Using Frotz 1.17 for Windows.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2388&start=0#p16532
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Dynamic Objects and Programming Error
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2011-05-06 22:17:10

OK, this seems to be a bug in Inform's generated parse_name routines. It might not technically even be a bug, just an optimization that's usually safe, but dangerous when Dynamic Objects is involved.

When a number property is understood as describing an object, that's supposed to affect the parse_name in two ways, since the parse_name routine serves two roles: it parses an object's name and also decides whether two objects are "identical" and can be combined in lists (since objects are considered identical only when the player can't type anything to distinguish them).

When the routine is being called to check whether objects are identical, it's not supposed to read words from the command line, since this use has nothing to do with what the player typed (and in this case, it's called before they've typed anything). But the parse_name routines generated for "blip" and "bloop" -- specifically the parts that deal with the understood-as-describing property -- ignore that guideline. This is normally safe since their parse_name routines are unique, and Inform always assumes that objects with different parse_names are non-identical, so they'll never be asked to distinguish between objects anyway.

However, when you clone blip or bloop, you end up with two objects that both use the same parse_name routine: one which was generated with the assumption that it would always be unique. Inform calls the parse_name routine to check whether the cloned objects are identical, it tries to read words that aren't there, and you get a runtime error.

So... you can work around this by manually setting the parse_name routine back to the version that was generated for the "thing" kind, which handles this situation correctly:
[code]When play begins:
	repeat with N running from 0 to 2:
		let new spiffle be a new object cloned from a random spiffle;
		correct parse_name of new spiffle;
		move new spiffle to the Test Room.

To correct parse_name of (O - object): (- {O}.parse_name = K2_thing.parse_name; -).[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2088&start=0#p16533
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Frotz updated
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-06 22:36:08

This status-line thing should only be a problem if you print text before the status window's size is set. (The text is printed, and then the window opens up and covers it.) Unfortunately this is how the I6/I7 libraries do it.

The standard way to deal is simply to print eight (or however many) newlines before your opening text.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2237&start=10#p16534
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [6G60] Inform 7 and Natty (Ubuntu 11.04).
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2011-05-06 22:44:25

[quote="Kazuki Mishima"]I imagine a new i386 package will follow shortly.[/quote]
And it has.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2088&start=0#p16535
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Frotz updated
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-07 00:02:37

[quote="zarf"]This status-line thing should only be a problem if you print text before the status window's size is set. (The text is printed, and then the window opens up and covers it.) Unfortunately this is how the I6/I7 libraries do it.

The standard way to deal is simply to print eight (or however many) newlines before your opening text.[/quote]

Actually I have several breaks (chapters if you will) where the screen gets cleared.  It happens after all of them.  If I add 3 or 4 [paragraph break]'s it looks good in Frotz, but crappy in the IDE and Parchment.  If it was just the intro screen, it would be okay.  But repeatedly as the story progresses, it just looks lame.

Is there a way to get Frotz to pause before writing the text, so the status bar has time to load after a clear screen, or at start up?

I guess I could do 40 [paragraph break]'s instead of a clear screen.  But that seems awfully wasteful, and really not the answer, to what should be built into the interpreter (as it is in others).  And depending on the window size it is being run in, it will probably look worse since there is no way of knowing where it will end up starting the first line.  

Okay, just for grins I tried it.  Yes, it does look worse.  The slow scrolls... Not to mention [more] coming up a few times.

Is there another way around this?  Or do I need two versions of every story... Normal, and Frotz friendly?

Maybe Frotz could load the status bar before printing the text?  Just an idea.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2259&start=10#p16536
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Creating RIA Interpreter for TADS 3
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-05-07 00:09:24

Great, thanks! Now I have a new toy to occupy me this weekend.

I've rebuilt a small game and it worked just fine. I have another one that uses banners so I need to dig deeper to find the web API equivalent.

Network performance is decent. I spun up an Amazon EC2 micro instance which handles a single session with no apparent difficulty. It'll be interesting to see how many sessions it can handle once the PHP scripts are ready.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2408&start=0#p16537
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Programming error
User: RedTulip / DateTime: 2011-05-07 01:25:03

A bug, I think...

On Inform 7, I'd change the story headline, example:

[code]The story headline is "An Interactive [']Story[']".[/code]

After I press go, under the title of the game, it says...

[** Programming error: tried to print (string) on something not a string **]

Something like:

[i][b]The Story Title[/b]

[** Programming error: tried to print (string) on something not a string **]
 by (RedTulip)
Release 1 / Serial number [6-charactered number] / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N) SD[/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=50#p16538
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2011-05-07 01:40:44

Aaron, sorry to be late on this thread; I wanted to get things in my game to a safe state before upgrading your extensions.  Nonetheless, I thought I found a bug in Smarter Parser causing a crash in Mac ZOOM with a "Glk Error - Unable to re-find array argument in Glk call" on the user command "What should i do"  (also crashes iPad Frotz).  I was using several older versions of your extensions (V10 of Smarter Parser, if that's helpful).  

So I figured I'd upgrade to the latest Extensions from the Inform7 site to see if that error still occurs.  Using Inform7 IDE Mac 6G60 I got the compile time message [code]"Problem. You wrote 'if sp-debug is true, parser say "***Smarter Parser: matched on [why]."[/code]

I tried downloading the latest versions of your ZIP file extension as mentioned earlier on this thread and I've seemingly installed them, but I'm still getting the same compiler error message.  Not sure if the order of included files is relevant here or not, but here's what my includes are:
[code]Section - Extensions 

Include Exit Lister by Eric Eve.	
Include Measured Liquid by Emily Short.	
Include Telephones by George Tryfonas.	
Include Menus by Emily Short.          
Include Assumed Conversers by Michael Martin.

Include Keyword Interface by Aaron Reed.
Include Extended Grammar by Aaron Reed.
Include Small Kindnesses by Aaron Reed.
Include Numbered Disambiguation Choices by Aaron Reed. 
Include Smarter Parser by Aaron Reed.  [v10 "what should i do" crashes ipad, Zoom ]
Include Poor Man's Mistype by Aaron Reed. 

[/code]
Because I use some other extensions (Exit Lister) and don't use others (Remembering, Neutral Library), I wanted to upgrade these extensions one at a time rather than switch completely to the Player Experience Upgrade jumbo-pack.  But if you tell me to bite the bullet, I'll do that.

It may be that I'm doing something completely boneheaded here.  Any suggestions?  
I love these extensions, but I'm at a bit of a loss when I get error messages like the above.  My only work around is to comment most of the extensions out.  Any help is appreciated.
--Zack

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2408&start=0#p16539
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Programming error
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-05-07 02:16:53

Yeah, please report this as a bug. It directly contradicts the docs:[quote="ch. 23.2. Bibliographic data"]The text of these bibliographic descriptions cannot normally include text substitutions, since they are written into external descriptions of the story file as part of its "binding". One exception is allowed, though: "[']" makes a literal apostrophe, and can be used if we need to override Inform's normal conventions to do with converting apostrophes at the ends of words to double-quotes. For instance: 

"Summer of [']69" by Buzz Aldrin 
[/quote]
If you need quotes, you can just do this:[code]The story headline is "An Interactive 'Story'".[/code]
If you need an apostrophe, I'm not sure if there's a workaround.
Edited to add: the example ("Summer of [']69" by Buzz Aldrin) works, but the docs indicate that this substitution should work with [i]all[/i] bibliographic descriptions which as you've found, it does not.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2088&start=0#p16540
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Frotz updated
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-05-07 03:03:59

As Zarf indicates, this is really an issue with the underlying I6/7 code, not the interpreter. The library code clears the screen in such a way that the status line is reset to zero height, and only puts it back when about to prompt the user for input: in doing so it assumes that any text that is printed to the main window will get pushed down by making the status bar bigger, but it's not entitled to do that: the Z-Machine specification provides no promise that that will happen. This isn't just Frotz: most (though not all) of Infocom's original interpreters behave in the same way.

Anyway, enough of such finger pointing. The simplest way round this is to ensure that the status line height is correctly set at the start, and whenever the screen is cleared. I've just written and checked the following example, which works correctly for me in all interpreters I've tried:
[code]"Status Line Fun" by David Kinder.

Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short.

The Starting Point is a room.

Table of Fancy Status
left	central	right 
"Line 1"	"a"	"b"
"Line 2"	"a"	"b"
"Line 3"	"a"	"b"
"Line 4"	"a"	"b"
"Line 5"	"a"	"b"
"Line 6"	"a"	"b"
"Line 7"	"a"	"b"
"Line 8"	"a"	"b"

Rule for constructing the status line:
	 fill status bar with Table of Fancy Status;
	 rule succeeds.

To reset the status line height:
	(- VM_StatusLineHeight(8); -).

When play begins:
	reset the status line height;

Clearing is an action applying to nothing.
Understand "clear" as clearing.
Carry out clearing:
	clear the screen;
	reset the status line height;
	say "The display has been cleared.".
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2237&start=10#p16541
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [6G60] Inform 7 and Natty (Ubuntu 11.04).
User: Minkovsky / DateTime: 2011-05-07 03:09:16

[quote="Kazuki Mishima"][rant]By the way, am I the only person who can't get Unity to run at all? It's not even defaulting to Gnome 2, it's just leaving me with the default Ubuntu wallpaper and a cursor that can't do anything, though I can hear Skype starting. The Ubuntu forums have been of no help so far. It's probably my stupid Radeon videocard...[/rant][/quote]
What display manager are you using? gdm or kdm? I couldn't get Unity running on my netbook until I disabled kdm.
[rant]Unity is still a rushed product IMO. It barely works on netbooks - [i]the intended target[/i], and various chipset/video card combinations have too great effect on it. Also, on my netbook, whenever I click on anything in Qt, X server crashes. Anyone else gets that?[/rant]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=30#p16542
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2011-05-07 03:11:21

And finished. Ish.

There's tons more I would have liked to have added, but I got a lot done today. Now I need to go collapse.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2408&start=0#p16543
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Programming error
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-07 05:37:59

Looks like it's already been reported:

[url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=553]Issue 553[/url]

Graham fixed the related bug for the story title, so I imagine this bug won't be too hard to fix in the next version. Doesn't make it less annoying in the meantime.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2409&start=0#p16544
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: When a scene begins rulebooks
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-07 07:27:50

I just discovered something rather unexpected.

[code]Include Epistemology by Eric Eve

A scene can be surprising.

The Spanish Inquisition is a surprising scene. "'No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!'" The Spanish Inquisition begins when the turn count is 2.

Last when a surprising scene begins:
	Now every unseen visible thing is seen.

Living Room is a room.

The inquisitor is a man.

When The Spanish Inquisition begins:
	say "[bracket]Rule 'When The Spanish Inquisition Begins' is not mentioned when rules tracing is switched on.[close bracket]";
	Now the inquisitor is in the location.
	
test me with "rules/z/showme inquisitor/epistat inquisitor"[/code]

First of all, I don't understand why the "When The Spanish Inquisition begins" rule is not mentioned when rules tracing is switched on. But more importantly, I don't understand how "when a scene begins" rulebooks are organized. I assumed that they'd all be in one rulebook, but it appears there's a separate rulebook for each scene that runs after any nonspecific "when a scene begins" rulebooks. Why is that, and how can I make a nonspecific rule that runs AFTER all "when a specific scene begins" rules?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2409&start=0#p16545
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: When a scene begins rulebooks
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-07 08:55:01

You can type 'scenes' to switch on scene monitoring.

I'm guessing that by their nature, scenes are generally (hehe) expected to be specific. If the scene isn't specific, it could have been set up as recurring.

What I would do in your case is make the common part an action, and drop it in at the start of each scene definition.

[code]To abracadabra:
   Now every unseen visible thing is seen.

When The Spanish Inquisition begins:
   abracadabra;
   Now the inquisitor is in the location.[/code]

Admittedly 'abracadabra' isn't that much shorter than the thing it replaces here, but it's easier to type and remember.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=50#p16546
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-07 10:45:21

The "Unable to re-find array argument in Glk call" error should not happen under any circumstances. I don't suppose you can condense a simple case that reproduces it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2410&start=0#p16547
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: Money
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-05-07 11:01:38

Hi all,

I need money. And I want the player to have a certain amount, while an event may create further money. First I looked into the documentation of money.h, but didn't understand how to handle it. Then I created a multiple object, and it works fine but for one flaw:
> take euro
Euro taken.
Euro taken.
Euro taken.
Euro taken.
Euro taken.

How can I turn this into "5 Euro taken."?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2409&start=0#p16548
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: When a scene begins rulebooks
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-05-07 11:36:54

You can use adjectives on scenes:[code]A scene can be major or minor.  When a major scene begins:[/code]
To answer your final question, you can also insert rules into the scene-changing rulebook.  However, that rulebook runs multiple times in a row, and doesn't necessarily say whether it changed anything or not.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2409&start=0#p16549
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: When a scene begins rulebooks
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-07 12:12:00

[quote="severedhand"][code]To abracadabra:
   Now every unseen visible thing is seen.

When The Spanish Inquisition begins:
   abracadabra;
   Now the inquisitor is in the location.[/code]
[/quote]
Well, that would do exactly the same thing my code does now. What I want is to recognize any new objects that have arrived as a result of the scene change:

[code]When the Spanish Inquisition begins:
    Now the inquisitor is in the location;
    Now every unseen visible thing is seen.[/code]

I must say I'm not a fan of that scene mechanism. They could at least have run all the specific scene changing rules before the general ones, like the rest of the rulebooks are organized. But maybe it would be easier to hook into the "move [something] to [somewhere]" rule:

[code]To move (item - a thing) to (place - an object):
    Now item is in place;
    If item is visible:
        Now item is seen;
        Now every unseen visible thing enclosed by item is seen.

When the Spanish Inquisition begins:
    Move the inquisitor to the location.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2409&start=0#p16550
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: When a scene begins rulebooks
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-07 12:51:03

I've got an even better idea.

[code]Appearance-making relates various things to various scenes. The verb to appear in (etc.) implies the appearance-making relation.

The inquisitor appears in The Spanish Inquisition.

When a scene (called the act) begins:
    Now everything that appears in the act is in the location;
    Now every unseen visible thing in the location is seen.[/code]

By the way, why can't you create a kind of scene? It would certainly reduce the memory usage of this particular approach.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2410&start=0#p16551
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Money
User: Minkovsky / DateTime: 2011-05-07 12:53:24

[quote="Grueslayer"]Hi all,

I need money. And I want the player to have a certain amount, while an event may create further money. First I looked into the documentation of money.h, but didn't understand how to handle it. Then I created a multiple object, and it works fine but for one flaw:
> take euro
Euro taken.
Euro taken.
Euro taken.
Euro taken.
Euro taken.

How can I turn this into "5 Euro taken."?[/quote]
Everyone needs money. You should either try to understand money.h or compile the Multitudes extension into inform6 (not sure if it works). Or create a moneyobject class and have money bags or caches, and have them disappear when taken but add their money-value to player's money-balance. (That's what I'd do in an object-oriented language).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2411&start=0#p16552
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Understanding "w" as new fails to work
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-05-07 13:02:49

[code]The Porch is a room. The Kitchen is west of the Porch.

Understand the command "w" as something new.

Test me with "w".[/code]

This is pretty odd to me. Why does the command still work, and how do I deal with it when standard directions aren't desired?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2411&start=0#p16553
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Understanding "w" as new fails to work
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-05-07 13:24:21

"W" and similar commands are not technically verbs; they are names of objects, viz. compass directions.

The parser treats them specially: it checks if the first word in a command refers to direction, and if so it converts the command into a go that direction action.

(Thanks! I see I got this wrong in the I7 translation.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2411&start=0#p16554
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Understanding "w" as new fails to work
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-05-07 13:42:47

[quote="Felix"]"W" and similar commands are not technically verbs; they are names of objects, viz. compass directions.

The parser treats them specially: it checks if the first word in a command refers to direction, and if so it converts the command into a go that direction action.

(Thanks! I see I got this wrong in the I7 translation.)[/quote]

Ha! And I thought I'd surprise you by handling this on my own. Outsmarted my own good self there, I did. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2088&start=0#p16555
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Frotz updated
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-07 13:49:41

Thanks!  I will give it a try this evening when I actually get my 'fun' time.  Back to the mowing.  [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2237&start=10#p16556
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [6G60] Inform 7 and Natty (Ubuntu 11.04).
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2011-05-07 16:45:57

[quote="Minkovsky"]What display manager are you using? gdm or kdm? I couldn't get Unity running on my netbook until I disabled kdm.[/quote]
Thanks for the advice, but I don't even have kdm installed. And now I've totally derailed this thread. Sorry, folks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2088&start=0#p16557
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Frotz updated
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-07 17:32:45

[quote="DavidK"][code]

To reset the status line height:
	(- VM_StatusLineHeight(8); -).

When play begins:
	reset the status line height;

......

	clear the screen;
	reset the status line height;
	
[/code][/quote]

Those were the magic lines!  Now it looks good everywhere.  Thank you VERY much!

And I am sorry if I sounded a bit pissy before.  I re-read what I wrote last night and realized it came across that way.  That is not my usual style... It was late, and I was half asleep, so I didn't proof-read before I hit submit.  I usually type off the top of my head, then go back and edit.  Looking back, I wish I had done this last night instead of just hitting submit and going to bed.

Thanks again!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2395&start=0#p16558
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: On modifying pre-existing code (Inheritance?)
User: Arag-e / DateTime: 2011-05-07 20:18:15

That worked. I ended up fragmenting the more of the processes into methods so that I could override them individually if necessary or just have inherited() let it all carry as default.

I have a question that has absolutely nothing to do with this but doesn't really warrant a new thread: how do I override a preCond in an item? thing.t tells me this can be overriden on an individual basis but doesn't bother to tell me how, and simply leaving it off from the custom dobjFor(Drink) doesn't seem to do it. For instance, I made a fountain and set everything up to be able to drink from it, but I can't seem to get rid of the preCond = [objHeld] check, which of course always fails since the object is a Fixture.

[code]+fountain: Fixture 'water/fountain/pool' 'Water fountain'
    "A fountain. "
    dobjFor(Drink)
    {
        verify() {}
        action()
        {
            "You took a sip" ;
        }
    }
;[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2411&start=0#p16559
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Understanding "w" as new fails to work
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-07 20:18:30

In addition, the "something new" statement only affects synonyms. It doesn't remove grammar lines.

For example, "hit" is a synonym for "attack." This is achieved in the Standard Rules using this statement:

[code]Understand the commands "break", "smash", "hit", "fight", "torture", "wreck", "crack", "destroy",
	"murder", "kill", "punch" and "thump" as "attack".[/code]

Now, if you wanted to use the command "hit" to mean "push," you'd have to break that synonym connection:

[code]Understand the command "hit" as something new.

Understand "hit [something]" as pushing.[/code]

On the other hand, this statement would do nothing at all:

[code]Understand the command "attack" as something new[/code]

Because "attack" isn't mapped to any other command word.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2401&start=0#p16560
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: To Blorb or not to Blorb
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-07 20:31:14

Is it just GIF and MP3 that you need?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2410&start=0#p16561
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Money
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-07 22:38:03

[quote="Minkovsky"]Everyone needs money. You should either try to understand money.h or compile the Multitudes extension into inform6 (not sure if it works).[/quote]
Which Multitudes extension do you mean?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2412&start=0#p16562
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: inform 7 coding question! pleez HALP!
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-05-07 22:53:02

Hey all, why doesn't this work?

[b]
Mantle Battle One begins eleven turns after Druid Ritual begins.

Druid Ritual ends when Mantle Battle One begins.[/b]


i get this error:
[b]
Problem. You wrote 'Mantle Battle One begins eleven turns after Druid Ritual begins'  : but I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with, so I am ignoring this sentence altogether.[/b]

inform7

thanks,
Neil!!!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2395&start=0#p16563
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: On modifying pre-existing code (Inheritance?)
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-05-08 00:06:55

You override the list of PreCondition objects with an empty list.

[code]
preCond = []
[/code]

That should do the trick.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2411&start=0#p16564
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Understanding "w" as new fails to work
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-05-08 02:53:43

I'm not sure what you mean by that. There's no difference if it's a synonym of a verb or an independent grammar line. If you try

[code]The sparring area is a room. A training dummy is here.
Understand the command "attack" as something new.
Understand the command "hit" as something new.

Test me with "fight dummy/attack dummy/hit dummy".[/code]
You'll see that FIGHT still works, ATTACK and HIT are removed as expected.

On the other hand you are correct in that individual grammar lines aren't affected, but "understand...as something new" removes every meaning of the word. For example

[code]Understand the command "get" as something new.[/code]
will affect every action that has "get" as a verb, including taking, getting off, and entering (get in).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2412&start=0#p16565
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7 coding question! pleez HALP!
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-05-08 02:59:32

Here is some code which does what you want.
[code]Mantle Battle One is a scene. Druid Ritual is a scene.	

Druid Ritual ends when time since Druid Ritual began is 11 minutes.
Mantle Battle One begins when Druid Ritual ends.[/code]
How did you come up with the "X turns after Y begins" syntax? I couldn't find it anywhere in the manual, and it doesn't seem to be legal. The legal syntax is "when time since Y began is X minutes" (manual 10.3).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2088&start=0#p16566
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Frotz updated
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-05-08 04:49:55

[quote="Seeker"]And I am sorry if I sounded a bit pissy before.[/quote]That's okay, I know how annoying it can be when things don't work quite right [emote]:-)[/emote]

I've also realised that my example code, though working, is a bit more complicated than needed. "Basic Screen Effects" provides "clear the screen" which clears the text and deletes the status line, but it also provides "clear only the main screen", which leaves the status line alone, which is what you want. Using that only leaves the problem of the initial message on startup: either you can just print enough spaces, or do the following to set the status line height early enough that the initial text is not over-written.
[code]"Status Line Fun" by David Kinder.

Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short.

The Starting Point is a room.

Table of Fancy Status
left	central	right 
"Line 1"	"a"	"b"
"Line 2"	"a"	"b"
"Line 3"	"a"	"b"
"Line 4"	"a"	"b"
"Line 5"	"a"	"b"
"Line 6"	"a"	"b"
"Line 7"	"a"	"b"
"Line 8"	"a"	"b"

Rule for constructing the status line:
	 fill status bar with Table of Fancy Status;
	 rule succeeds.

Clearing is an action applying to nothing.
Understand "clear" as clearing.
Carry out clearing:
	clear only the main screen;
	say "The display has been cleared.".

To set the status line height to (n - a number) rows:
	(- VM_StatusLineHeight({n}); -).
This is the set status line height rule:
	let __n be the number of rows in the Table of Fancy Status;
	set the status line height to __n rows.
The set status line height rule is listed first in the startup rulebook.[/code]
(As an aside, this trick of setting the status line early on in the startup rulebook is fine for Z-code, but will probably have bad results with Glulx. But with Glulx this whole problem goes away, since the Glulx screen model works how you want, anyway.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2413&start=0#p16567
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: i7: Description of items in containers?
User: snowdrop / DateTime: 2011-05-08 05:21:11

When walking into a room all object "descriptions" are shown to the player.  How can I make it behave the same when looking inside a container that holds object x? When opening the container with x it just says "In the container there is a letter." 

[code]>look at container
It gives an impression of being important due to it having worn the sigill. Rumor has it only the emperor, his nearest of kin and a few selected advisors are authorised to use it. The container is of good craftmanship. It has a cylindrical shape made of just a single piece of leather to better protect its content in case it would be exposed to water. 

[b]In the scroll container is a letter.[/b][/code]

How do I get inform7 to replace the bolded text above with something more interesting to the player, like a nice description of how the letter is waiting there, resting and just longing for it to be read?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2412&start=0#p16568
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7 coding question! pleez HALP!
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-05-08 05:48:36

hey, im a novice.  its my first work.  i guess i thought that was legal code.  it sounds right, but it aint.

thanks a ton for the example of what should work!!!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2413&start=0#p16569
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: i7: Description of items in containers?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-08 06:41:31

There may be an easier way to do this, but you could try this (I've used different objects, but you should be able to adapt it OK):

[code]The chest is a container in Ledges. A pile of gold is in chest. A rock is in chest.

Rule for printing room description details of chest when we have not examined the chest: omit contents in listing.

Carry out examining the chest for the first time: 
	if the gold is in the chest:
		say "A pile of gold lies in the chest.";
		if a thing that is not the pile of gold is in the chest:
			say "The chest also contains [list of (things that are not the pile of gold) in the chest with indefinite articles].";
		rule succeeds.
[/code]

The "omit contents in listing" rule stops the game from printing the parenthesised part of "You can also see a chest (in which is a pile of gold and a rock) here" in the room description; if you want that, you can suppress that line. After examining the chest it will print that when you look; you can delete "when we have not examined the chest" if you don't want it printed ever. 

The "examine for the first time" rule prints the special text about the gold if the gold is still in the chest, but there are special cases for when the gold isn't in the chest or something else is, in case some savvy player has started messing around with it before examining it. "

"Rule succeeds" means that the rest of the carry out examining rules won't fire, in particular not the standard rule that prints the contents of the container. (And it means that Inform processes the examine action as having succeeded, I think.) After the first examination of the chest, this rule gets skipped, and it goes on to the standard "examine containers rule" that tells you what's in the chest, "In the chest is a pile of gold and a rock" or what have you. 

By the way, the things that get printed when you walk into a room are object initial appearances, not descriptions; the descriptions are what's printed when you examine an object. Also, I think "sigil" has one L.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2401&start=0#p16570
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: To Blorb or not to Blorb
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-05-08 06:43:52

Well, the supported list in v4 is as follows:

Graphics: BMP, DIB, GIF, JPG, WMF, EMF, ICO, CUR
Sound: WAV, MID, RMI, MP3

To be honest, I'd be quite happy to drop some of these.  However, MID and WAV (I know, it's a terrible format, but there are a lot of little clips out there) would also be quite useful.

If you don't want to taint the format too much then I could live with just GIF and MP3.  [emote];)[/emote] 

Thanks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2410&start=0#p16571
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Money
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-05-08 07:01:11

Help still needed with this. Can anyone explain to me how money.h works?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2413&start=0#p16572
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: i7: Description of items in containers?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-05-08 07:44:20

Another way to go about it – and that may be useful at times is this:
[code]Rule for printing the name of the letter while (we are examining the scroll container or we are searching the scroll container) and we have not examined the letter and the letter is in the scroll container: say "letter, waiting there, resting in its case, just longing to be read - by you".[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2410&start=0#p16573
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Money
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-05-08 10:24:38

I've never used money.h, but have you taken a look at greenbacks.inf? It seems to illustrate how to use it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2414&start=0#p16574
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: Wielding a Weapon
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-05-08 13:23:51

Me again, sorry...

Now I have an object which I want to be a weapon which can be wielded. While my weapon mechanics work fine, I got no clue how to have the short string to say "a weapon (being wielded)" instead of just "a weapon". I tried to overlay the short_name, but to no avail. Any hints, please?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2403&start=0#p16575
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error in EXIT LISTER V10
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-05-08 13:57:50

Thank's for the response,although it appears that Gavin Lambert's EXIT LISTER may fit my requirements a bit closer. [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=50#p16576
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-05-08 14:07:32

Hi Zack-- the version on the I7 extensions page should be the latest version right now, not the ones from the ZIP file.

Can you paste or email me the whole problem message you get related to sp-debug? I can't replicate this on my system. It's possible it's a conflict with another extension--- if possible, you might try commenting out the other extensions one at a time to see if the problem goes away at some point.

It's definitely better for your purposes to stick to the individual extensions instead of using Player Experience Upgrade; it's a nice omnibus, one-click solution, but not very flexible for doing lots of extensions mixing and matching.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2414&start=0#p16577
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Wielding a Weapon
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-05-08 14:31:44

Look up the invent property starting on p196 of the DM.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2415&start=0#p16578
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: Vitems in Class Rooms
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-05-08 15:22:54

Can I somehow put scenery objects into class rooms? I got a class room "Jungle Room" which I use for quite a lot of rooms, and I want to have a scenery object "jungle" there. I could give the jungle object "found_in" and allocate it to all those rooms, but is there a more elegant way to allocate it to the Class room itself so that it's present in all rooms of that class?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2416&start=0#p16579
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Designing a magic system
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-05-08 15:41:19

Not sure if anyone here is interested, but I just stumbled across a blog written by a developer of Rogue-like games. He has an interesting series of articles on designing an RPG-type magic system that could also apply to tech trees and so on. It's a lengthy series that starts here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://roguelikedeveloper.blogspot.com/2008/05/unangband-magic-system-part-one.html">http://roguelikedeveloper.blogspot.com/ ... t-one.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2088&start=0#p16580
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Frotz updated
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-08 16:02:30

I think I will play it safe, since I may need to go to Glulx as the size increases.

But I do like the idea of a variable size, instead of hard-coding '8' as the size. I have the status bar routine as an extension... and it would be nice if later I wanted to use only 6 lines, I would just have to edit the table.

Is something like this possible?

[code]To reset the status line height:
    (- VM_StatusLineHeight(n); -)
    let __n be the number of rows in the Table of Fancy Status.[/code]

Then for the opening screen, or full screen clears later, I just need to add the line:

[code]reset the status line height;[/code]

I have tried hacking the two methods together myself, but can't seem to get it right.

Most of the time I will just be clearing the main screen, but I'd like to leave the option open to do a full clear sometimes.  I know, I expect a lot.  [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2321&start=0#p16581
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Custom Library Messages, version 4
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-05-08 18:01:18

Hello!

I observed this in Version 4/110416 using the past tense.

[quote]
>x drawer
I saw nothing special about the drawer.

>open it
I opened the drawer, revealing a pile of correspondence and a handful of press clippings.

>x drawer
In the drawer [b][u][i]are[/i][/u][/b] a pile of correspondence and a handful of press clippings.
[/quote]

Is that [b]"are"[/b] in the last line listing the contents of the drawer (a container) correct when past tense is used?
BTW, thanks for this great extension, without it I could never have used the past tense in my Indigo speed-comp entry!

--

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2417&start=0#p16582
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: What am I doing wrong? -- I7
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-08 18:28:49

I've been playing around with Inform 7 for about a year, but I'm just starting to work with conversations with NPCs.  The following fragment of code illustrates a problem I'm having:

"hellotest" by Me

Include Conversation Package by Eric Eve
This Place is a room.
Joe is a man.  Joe is in This Place.
A Gadget is a familiar thing.
The ask-suggestions of Joe are {self-suggestion, the gadget}.


It compiles just fine, but when I try to say hello to Joe I get the correct list of suggestions, followed by a cryptic statement that it doesn't recognize a verb.  To wit:


hellotest
An Interactive Fiction by Me
Release 1 / Serial number 110508 / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N) SD

This Place
You can see Joe here.

>hello, joe
(addressing Joe)
You say hello to Joe.

(You could ask him about himself or the Gadget.)

That's not a verb I recognise.



I'm probably missing something pretty basic, but any help would be appreciated.  Thanks.

    Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2415&start=0#p16583
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Vitems in Class Rooms
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-08 18:43:45

No, I6 has no feature for generating objects associated with class instances. A found_in object is the easiest (and cheapest) way to handle this.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2417&start=0#p16584
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What am I doing wrong? -- I7
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-05-08 18:49:53

Inform is parsing your command line as two separate commands -- 'hello' (to which it responds as expected, implicitly addressing the NPC who is in the room), followed by 'joe', which is a command it doesn't recognize.

There's an extension that flips inputs of this type ('hello, joe') to a type that Inform understands ('joe, hello'). I don't remember offhand what that extension is.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2412&start=0#p16585
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7 coding question! pleez HALP!
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-05-08 18:52:09

[quote="ezfreemann"] i guess i thought that was legal code.  it sounds right, but it aint.[/quote]
That's quite normal with Inform syntax. There are many, many ways of phrasing things that look sensible, but that either fail to compile or compile but produce unexpected results.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2321&start=0#p16586
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Custom Library Messages, version 4
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-05-08 20:56:45

thanks rockersuke. Try downloading the latest version from the Inform site, a la my previous message.  It fixes that specific bug.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2403&start=0#p16587
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error in EXIT LISTER V10
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-08 21:05:00

Oh hey, Gavin Lambert's extension is actually the one that does what I originally thought Eric Eve's did. Thanks for pointing it out.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2418&start=0#p16591
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Having something happen when a particular phrase is written
User: BishyT / DateTime: 2011-05-08 21:30:30

Basically, I want to be able to have something happen whenever the player types in a very specific phrase. Examples include:

"Skip tutorial"
I want to be able to have something happen (such as ending the tutorial scene) when this is typed out, without having to create a new action called Skipping applying to one thing, an invisible thing named tutorial, and then checking to see if the player is skipping tutorial.

"Password"
Typing in a single phrase as a password. Context sensitive, so I need to able to say "No need to say it here" if in the wrong room, and "Access granted" when in the correct room.

"F*ck"
For a humorous message to appear if the player should try typing in a swear word, or an instant death if they type "Die".

So how do I do this? I already tried [u]Check "word":[/u], but that didn't work.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2419&start=0#p16592
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Simple Newbie question
User: Gerynar / DateTime: 2011-05-08 21:49:19

Howdy,

After playing around with TADS 3 for the Indigo New Language Speed-IF, I'm working on cleaning up some of my code. The thing that I'm having the most trouble with is getting rid of articles in front of some items,

For example, I have a simple container, but it's listed in the room as "The Tommy's box", and I'd like it just to say "Tommy's box"

[code]
tommysPaints: Container, Fixture 'tommy\'s tommys paint box' 'Tommy\'s box' @classRoom
    "Tommy's paint box sits in his easel."

    dobjFor(Take)
    {
        check()
        {
            failCheck( 'You decide against taking Tommy\'s paint box.');
        }
    }
;
[/code]

I've gone through the documentation, but I'm just not seeing what I need (or I am seeing it, but I'm not understanding it)

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=50#p16593
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2011-05-08 21:50:09

Aaron, 
I tried seeing what I could do to fix it or narrow down the issue to make it more reproducible but had no luck.  So in the end, I just went with the whole "Player Experience Upgrade" and both issues (compiler error, Glk error) seemed to solve themselves.  Maybe that wasn't the bravest solution, but it was expedient.  So far, I've not seen any other errors or conflicts with the other extensions I'm using, so maybe things are ok. 

Nonetheless, I will try to pay attention if I see anything else that's odd and report it in a more timely fashion.
Thanks again for all these great extensions and for making them work together.  I hope to enter The Z-Machine Matter into IntroComp and I think your extensions give the game a lot more fit & finish.

--Zack

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2418&start=0#p16594
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Having something happen when a particular phrase is writ
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-08 23:34:49

Create a new action called tutorial-skipping applying to nothing. Then understand "skip tutorial" as tutorial-skipping. This saves you the fussing around with invisible objects.

While you're at it, make it an action out of world. (See chapter 12.15.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2419&start=0#p16596
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Simple Newbie question
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-05-09 04:17:23

I think

[code]isProperName=true[/code]
is what you need.

You can also change the way the object is referred to in different contexts by setting the [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/libref/object/Thing.html#theName]theName[/url], [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/libref/object/Thing.html#aName]aName[/url], [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/libref/object/Thing.html#disambigName]disambigName[/url] etc. properties.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2421&start=0#p16597
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: [Inform 6] Inform 6 grammar?
User: due / DateTime: 2011-05-09 04:46:22

Hi all!

Does anyone know if there's a comprehensive Inform 6 grammar around? I imagine it would be possible to compile one from the compiler source, but I'm not very inclined to go about doing that unless it's really necessary. [emote]:)[/emote]

-d

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2417&start=0#p16598
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What am I doing wrong? -- I7
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-05-09 04:57:05

It's Reversed Persuasion Correction by Juhana Leinonen.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2412&start=0#p16599
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7 coding question! pleez HALP!
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-05-09 05:07:41

I guess that's the downside of using a fairly large fragment of natural English for programming: it's easy to think that the fragment is even larger, and it's hard to remember the exact shape of it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2254&start=0#p16600
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Event in Munich on May 7 2011
User: stadtgorilla / DateTime: 2011-05-09 06:03:47

woohoo!
that was fun!
when i have my mind back, i will report in a more concise manner. jason scott on skype was so much fun. the people really enjoyed playing the games. my stupid little game was played by the audience after the film. good stuff.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2388&start=0#p16602
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Dynamic Objects and Programming Error
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-05-09 06:57:29

Fantastic.  Thanks so much for looking into this for me.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2417&start=0#p16603
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What am I doing wrong? -- I7
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-09 07:37:07

Thanks.  It looks like I got the coding right, it was the "playing" that I got wrong.

I knew (or at least thought I knew) that the conversation extensions I included broadened the class of formulations that the parser would accept to start a conversation.  For some reason, I thought that that broadened class included the "hello, Joe" formulation.  Somehow I never even thought of testing it with the more traditional "Joe, hello."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2421&start=0#p16604
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: [Inform 6] Inform 6 grammar?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-09 08:16:18

I don't recall ever seeing one. 

You might be able to work from one of the syntax-coloring files at <a class="postlink" href="http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXprogrammingXeditors.html">http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archive ... itors.html</a> .

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2411&start=0#p16605
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Understanding "w" as new fails to work
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-09 08:27:16

[quote="Juhana"]I'm not sure what you mean by that. There's no difference if it's a synonym of a verb or an independent grammar line. If you try

[code]The sparring area is a room. A training dummy is here.
Understand the command "attack" as something new.
Understand the command "hit" as something new.

Test me with "fight dummy/attack dummy/hit dummy".[/code]
You'll see that FIGHT still works, ATTACK and HIT are removed as expected.[/quote]
I should have checked before I said anything. That's very interesting. I was curious how that would affect the index, and look at this!

[quote]Typed commands leading to this action

"thump [something]"[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2418&start=0#p16606
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Having something happen when a particular phrase is writ
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-09 08:27:45

There's already a "swearing obscenely" action built in to Inform, which captures many of the most popular curse words, so you can just write new rules for it:

[code]Instead of swearing obscenely, say "Naughty naughty."[/code]

(There's [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2355]some annoyance[/url] about the "swearing obscenely" action, since the Index doesn't actually list its synonyms, but if you want one catchall response to swear words then it should work for you.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2416&start=0#p16607
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Designing a magic system
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-05-09 09:46:55

Ooh, neat!  Thanks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2422&start=0#p16608
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: I have a great idea...
User: Minkovsky / DateTime: 2011-05-09 10:43:52

I was thinking once about a game based on jumping between worlds, to create some kind of a multi-world puzzle. I also wanted to incorporate elements of video into the game. I think that I may have a solution for that one, namely using python scripts and any video module to play video files (to keep everything cross-platform). Now, for the game itself:

The story will be about an AFGNCAAP who has a strange condition: they can remember their every dream completely, and discovers that the world isn't quite what it seems like.

The main gimmick of the game would be jumping from conversation-oriented main world to puzzle-oriented dreams. During the awake world scenes, the player would collect clues that will be relevant to solving the dream puzzle, and if solving the dream puzzle will be impossible, then instant groundhog day reset ensues (thus the player would have to repeat the clue search).

The game should utilise every tool of timekeeping from Inform7's arsenal, that means scenes, timed missions and other stuff. After each successful dream sequence, a new detail from the awake world would be unmasked, until the player has enough evidence to discover the truth, thus ending the game in a sequel hook.

As for actually doing it, there are still some things to do.

[b]1: Name the thing[/b] - yeah, I still don't have the name for it.
[b]2: Build a detailed story[/b]
...

So, what do you think?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2419&start=0#p16609
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Simple Newbie question
User: Morana / DateTime: 2011-05-09 11:33:57

You can also do this if you want to eliminate articles without indicating that the name is proper:

[code]isQualifiedName = true[/code]
I do not know what difference this makes in practice.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2423&start=0#p16610
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: 'Give' and Possessives
User: Morana / DateTime: 2011-05-09 11:44:31

Once again I have encountered a problem that can be resolved using the StringPreParser, and once again I am hoping to find a different solution.

The trouble arises when I enter commands of the form GIVE X TO Y'S Z. Here is my code:

[rant][code]room: Room 'room' 'Room'
;

me: Actor
    location = room
;

+ key: Thing 'key' 'key'
;

monster: Actor 'two-headed monster' 'two-headed monster'
    location = room
;

+ leftHead: Head 'left head' 'left head'
;

+ rightHead: Head 'right head' 'right head'
;

Head: Component
    iobjFor(GiveTo)
    {
        verify() { }
        action()
        {
            replaceAction(GiveTo,gDobj,monster);
        }
    }
;[/code][/rant]
And here is my transcript:
[rant]Room

The two-headed monster is standing here. 

>give key to right head
The two-headed monster does not appear interested. 

>put key on monster's right head
There’s no good surface on the right head. 

>give key to monster's right head
[At this point I receive an error: "nil object reference"][/rant]
Any thoughts?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2237&start=10#p16611
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [6G60] Inform 7 and Natty (Ubuntu 11.04).
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-05-09 12:47:53

Hmm.. now the Ubuntu 10.10 downloads have been removed from the 6G60 downloads section. Good thing I already have it installed. Why remove a perfectly good distribution just because a newer version of Ubuntu is available?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2423&start=0#p16612
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: 'Give' and Possessives
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-05-09 14:39:50

This is the giveMeToAskFor remapping in action again. This time it probably deserves a bug report - the [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/libref/source/actions.t.html#2152]action.canIobjResolveTo(issuingActor)[/url] test eventually causes the nil reference error.

You can work around the bug by modifying the earlier giveMeToAskFor code to skip the remapping if the issuingActor and targetActor are the same.

[code]
modify giveMeToAskFor
	getRemapping(issuingActor, targetActor, action)
	{
		if (!(action.isRemapped()) && !(issuingActor == targetActor))
			return inherited(issuingActor, targetActor, action);
		else
			return nil;
	}
;
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2423&start=0#p16613
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: 'Give' and Possessives
User: Morana / DateTime: 2011-05-09 15:06:08

You have solved the problem. Thank you!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2327&start=0#p16614
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which perspective do you prefer?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-09 16:16:38

I've gone to some lengths in my WIP to make exit listing look clean. Although directions aren't always mentioned in room-descriptions, failure messages all contain exit listings in full prose:

[quote]
Cell

You're in a prison cell with minimal fixtures. The bars are opened, allowing exit to the south.

> n

You can't go that way. The only way out is south to the corridor.[/quote]

[quote]Clearing

A path leads away from this clearing to the south.

> n

You can't go that way. The path leads south to the stream, and the forest is passable to the east, west, and northwest.
[/quote]

(not real examples, but a fairly accurate demonstration of the level of detail)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2312&start=0#p16615
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Any great games in the public domain?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-09 16:25:02

If you're still developing a Chinese language library, you might want to start with Cloak of Darkness.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2327&start=0#p16616
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which perspective do you prefer?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-05-09 16:39:15

[quote="capmikee"]failure messages all contain exit listings in full prose:[/quote]
I like that. Even though those messages ideally never would be seen, when they do show themselves that extra touch is very welcome.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2327&start=0#p16617
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which perspective do you prefer?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-05-09 16:45:23

[quote="capmikee"]failure messages all contain exit listings in full prose[/quote]

Yeah, I love it when a game does this.  I bump into walls a lot, and sometimes I'll just cycle through directions instead of scrolling up in the transcript to see what direction brought me here (especially if it's been a while and the room description doesn't blatantly mention directions).  Games that use this method make me feel a little less clumsy.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2352&start=10#p16618
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How many sounds can glulx play at once?
User: JDevlin / DateTime: 2011-05-09 17:23:28

[quote="severedhand"]

For the millions champing at the bit for this spunky bit of code, here it is.

[/quote]

Haha, hey, there's at least one of us. I'm having the same problem as you were - wanting the option to have more than two sounds going at once - but your solution isn't working for me. 

I think there was a missing " -) " just before the Section - Declaring Commands, but when I fix that, I get an I6 error.

Error:  Variable must be defined before use: "gg_midgroundchan"

It's been a while since I used I6, and I never got a good grasp the first time around. I don't really get the error, because you defined it with "Global gg_midgroundchan = 0;"

Any tips?

Jason

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2321&start=0#p16619
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Custom Library Messages, version 4
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-05-09 18:00:11

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]thanks rockersuke. Try downloading the latest version from the Inform site, a la my previous message.  It fixes that specific bug.[/quote]

Ow! and I thought I double-checked the version I had before posting  [emote]:oops:[/emote]  Remark: don´t try to report bugs when you haven´t had your proper sleep hours. Thanks a lot again! I downloaded it and it all works OK now! 

--

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2352&start=10#p16620
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How many sounds can glulx play at once?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-05-09 20:44:43

[quote="JDevlin"]
Your solution isn't working for me. 

I think there was a missing " -) " just before the Section - Declaring Commands, but when I fix that, I get an I6 error.

Error:  Variable must be defined before use: "gg_midgroundchan"

It's been a while since I used I6, and I never got a good grasp the first time around. I don't really get the error, because you defined it with "Global gg_midgroundchan = 0;"[/quote]

It sounds like maybe the positioning of the included I6 block was left out, along with the -). Try something like:

[code]Include (-
   ...
-) after "Definitions.i6t".[/code]

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2248&start=0#p16621
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Prairie Fire
User: JDevlin / DateTime: 2011-05-09 20:55:42

Hey everyone!

I've now completed the first act of Prairie Fire - my new hybrid IF - and it's ready for betatesting. It's written in Inform 7 with heavy Glimmr support, and I'm aiming for a mid-summer release. There's a fairly even mix of puzzles and story, and at its heart it's a neo-noir, murder mystery game. 

If you can help me out, please PM me here or send an email to my gmail account, and I'll send you the link for the download. My handle is jdevlin1984. 

Thanks in advance,

Jason

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2352&start=10#p16622
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How many sounds can glulx play at once?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-09 21:32:33

[quote="JDevlin"]Any tips?

Jason[/quote]

Hey Jason,

In my moment of triumph, I don't think I quoted the whole enchilada, just the bit that I had to nut out to make the 3rd channel work - and that was already on a base of the MultipleSounds extension. I believe the compiling problem you're having is that the 'SoundReproduce' line from my quoted code only works on top of the extension.

What I'll do is past the whole modified extension below (which gives 3 channels, foreground, background and midground.) Note also I haven't added looping or on-demand stopping for the midground yet, but that's as easy as duplicating the one-line foreground looping and stopping lines in the extension, and dropping the word 'midground' in in place of foreground.

I put comments in the code for myself explaining how to add any more channels if you want them. They're not super explicit so let me know if you need elaboration. Beyond the I6 code, something to remember is that the foreground and background channels are created by Inform by default at game init. For all further sound channels the author adds, he must issue a 'create' instruction for them when his game starts (or at least before they are used in the game). So you'll see the 'create midground channel' command is the first thing defined in the 'Section - Declaring Commands'.

[spoiler][code]
Version 2 of MultipleSoundsForSix by Massimo Stella begins here.

[This is NOT the raw version of MultipleSounds. This is Wade Clarke's edit, adding a midground channel. For the original extension, go to the Inform 7 Website extensions page]

"Provides facilities for the basic reproduction of multiple-channel audio with loops under Glulx."

Use authorial modesty.

[The idea for this extension was born from some code written by Eliak Blauk on rec.arts.int-fiction in 2008. Thanks to Sarganar for his bug report.]

Section - IF6 Code

Include (-
[ SoundReproduce sound chan loop;
if (glk_gestalt(gestalt_Sound,0) && glk_gestalt(gestalt_SoundMusic,0))  { 
	glk_schannel_play_ext(chan,sound,loop,0); 
	}
else { 
	"Your interpreter doesn't support sound reproduction."; 
	}
];

[ VolumeControl chan val;
if (glk_gestalt(gestalt_SoundVolume,0)) {
	if ((val <= 5) && (val >=0)) {
		glk_schannel_set_volume(chan, val * 16384);
		}
	else {
		"Invalid Volume Level: please insert a value between 0 and 5.";
		}
	}
else {
	"Your interpreter doesn't support volume control."; 
	}
];

[ SoundStop chan;
if (glk_gestalt(gestalt_Sound,0) && glk_gestalt(gestalt_SoundMusic,0))  { 
	glk_schannel_stop(chan);  
	}
else { 
	"Your interpreter doesn't support sound stopping."; 
	}
];

! Between here and 'Section - Declaring...' is my new stuff needed to add a new sound channel. I called it 'midground'.
! To add further channels, give each one a new name, a global and constant (as per midground), increase the ROCK number by 1 each time (midground is 412, so the channel after should be 413, the one after that 414, etc).
! Add a 'create' instruction for each new channel and call all 'create' instructions when your game starts.
! Cobble together appropriate 'play a sound in (whatever)ground instructions, etc. Voila!

Global gg_midgroundchan=0;
Constant GG_MIDGROUNDCHAN_ROCK 412;

[ MidCreate;
	if (glk_gestalt(gestalt_Sound, 0)) {
		if (gg_midgroundchan == 0)
			gg_midgroundchan = glk_schannel_create(GG_MIDGROUNDCHAN_ROCK);
	}
]; -).






Section - Declaring Commands

To create the midground channel:
(- MidCreate(GG_MIDGROUNDCHAN_ROCK); -)


To play (SND - a sound name) in foreground:
(- SoundReproduce(ResourceIDsOfSounds-->{SND},gg_foregroundchan,1); -)

To play (SND - a sound name) in midground:
(- SoundReproduce(ResourceIDsOfSounds-->{SND},gg_midgroundchan,1); -)

To play (SND - a sound name) in background:
(- SoundReproduce(ResourceIDsOfSounds-->{SND},gg_backgroundchan,1); -)


To play (SND - a sound name) in foreground with loop:
(- SoundReproduce(ResourceIDsOfSounds-->{SND},gg_foregroundchan,-1); -)

To play (SND - a sound name) in background with loop:
(- SoundReproduce(ResourceIDsOfSounds-->{SND},gg_backgroundchan,-1); -)

To play (SND - a sound name) in foreground for (loop - a number) times:
(- SoundReproduce(ResourceIDsOfSounds-->{SND},gg_foregroundchan,{loop}); -)

To play (SND - a sound name) in background for (loop - a number) times:
(- SoundReproduce(ResourceIDsOfSounds-->{SND},gg_backgroundchan,{loop}); -)


To set the foreground volume to (VOL - a number):
(- VolumeControl(gg_foregroundchan,{VOL}); -)

To set the midground volume to (VOL - a number):
(- VolumeControl(gg_midgroundchan,{VOL}); -)

To set the background volume to (VOL - a number):
(- VolumeControl(gg_backgroundchan,{VOL}); -)


To stop the foreground sound:
(- SoundStop(gg_foregroundchan); -)

To stop the background sound:
(- SoundStop(gg_backgroundchan); -)


MultipleSoundsForSix ends here.

---- DOCUMENTATION ---- 

This extention allows the reproduction of two audio layers at once under the Glulx envinronment. It implements only a few features regarding the audio files management (such as loops, double channel reproduction, volume control and sound stops) and it will become obsolete when Damusix by Eliuk Blau will eventually be released for Inform 7. 

After having declared the name of an audio file, like indicated in the IF7 main documentation:

	Sound of frogs is the file "Frogs.ogg". 

We can choose how to reproduce it, on the background channel or on the foreground one:

	play the sound of frogs in background;
	play the sound of frogs in foreground;

Sometimes a continuous loop might be useful:

	play the sound of frogs in background with loop;
	play the sound of frogs in foreground with loop;

Also the repetition of a specific audio file for N times is supported:

	play the sound of frogs in background for 5 times;
	play the sound of sea in foreground for 10 times;
	
Glulx allows to play multiple sounds at the same time, provided they are reproduced on different channels:

	play the sound of frogs in background;
	play the sound of birds in foreground;

To stop an audio file:

	stop the foreground sound;
	stop the background sound;

To modify volume from a minimum level of 0 (silence) to a maximum level of 5 (full volume):

	set the foreground volume to 2;
	set the background volume to 1;
	
Example: * Rainforest - Shows how to use multiple sounds effects to mimic a natural environment.

	*:	"Rainforest"
	
	Include Multiple Sounds by Massimo Stella.
	
	The Swamp is a room. The description is "A beautiful mirror of water is in front of your eyes while behind you there are the tallest trees you've ever seen. You can hear the sound of some frogs in the distance."
	
	Sound of frogs is the file "Frogs.ogg". 
	Sound of water is the file "Water.ogg".
	
	When play begins:
		set the background volume to 2;
		play the sound of frogs in background;
		set the foreground volume to 3;
		play the sound of water in foreground with loop.
[/code][/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2088&start=10#p16623
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Frotz updated
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-05-09 22:52:34

[quote="Seeker"]Is something like this possible?[/quote]It is. The trick is that the Inform 6 code has to live in a phrase on its own. The following does this (this code omits doing anything about the initial text, just to keep it a bit smaller):[code]"Status Line Fun" by David Kinder.

Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short.

The Starting Point is a room.

Table of Fancy Status
left	central	right 
"Line 1"	"a"	"b"
"Line 2"	"a"	"b"
"Line 3"	"a"	"b"
"Line 4"	"a"	"b"
"Line 5"	"a"	"b"
"Line 6"	"a"	"b"
"Line 7"	"a"	"b"
"Line 8"	"a"	"b"

Rule for constructing the status line:
	 fill status bar with Table of Fancy Status;
	 rule succeeds.

To set the status line height to (n - a number) rows:
	(- VM_StatusLineHeight({n}); -).
To reset the status line height:
	let __n be the number of rows in the Table of Fancy Status;
	set the status line height to __n rows.

Clearing is an action applying to nothing.
Understand "clear" as clearing.
Carry out clearing:
	clear the screen;
	reset the status line height;
	say "The display has been cleared.".[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2088&start=10#p16624
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Frotz updated
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-09 23:51:14

[quote="DavidK"][quote="Seeker"]Is something like this possible?[/quote]It is. The trick is that the Inform 6 code has to live in a phrase on its own. The following does this (this code omits doing anything about the initial text, just to keep it a bit smaller):[code]"Status Line Fun" by David Kinder.

Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short.

The Starting Point is a room.

Table of Fancy Status
left	central	right 
"Line 1"	"a"	"b"
"Line 2"	"a"	"b"
"Line 3"	"a"	"b"
"Line 4"	"a"	"b"
"Line 5"	"a"	"b"
"Line 6"	"a"	"b"
"Line 7"	"a"	"b"
"Line 8"	"a"	"b"

Rule for constructing the status line:
	 fill status bar with Table of Fancy Status;
	 rule succeeds.

To set the status line height to (n - a number) rows:
	(- VM_StatusLineHeight({n}); -).
To reset the status line height:
	let __n be the number of rows in the Table of Fancy Status;
	set the status line height to __n rows.

Clearing is an action applying to nothing.
Understand "clear" as clearing.
Carry out clearing:
	clear the screen;
	reset the status line height;
	say "The display has been cleared.".[/code][/quote]

Okay, now that makes sense.  Thank you!  I was trying to reduce everything to a simple expression, like it was a mathematical equation. That explains why some of my attempts would compile, but then I got an apology saying that it couldn't continue because my use of Inform 6 code was confusing.

I really need to start looking into the Inform 6 documentation.  I was planning on it, once I felt more comfortable with Inform 7.  But it seems like now is a good time to start.

Thanks again!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2421&start=0#p16625
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: [Inform 6] Inform 6 grammar?
User: due / DateTime: 2011-05-10 05:32:15

Ah, thanks! That's definitely easier to work with than trying to parse the source code. In fact, Stephen Thomas' VIM highlighting (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.gowarthomas.com/informvim/stable/inform.vim">http://www.gowarthomas.com/informvim/stable/inform.vim</a>) seems to be the most comprehensive I've found so far.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2237&start=10#p16626
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [6G60] Inform 7 and Natty (Ubuntu 11.04).
User: ChristianB / DateTime: 2011-05-10 06:33:27

The 6G60 versions for Ubuntu 10.10 are still available on the project page:

<a class="postlink" href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnome-inform7/files/gnome-inform7/6G60/">http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnome-i ... orm7/6G60/</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2222&start=10#p16627
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Second Gender - The Extension
User: fredrik / DateTime: 2011-05-10 06:40:08

It's good to see the second gender feature coming to use outside Swedish Inform 6!

I'm very glad to see that someone is working on a Swedish Inform 7 translation. Please let me know if I can be of service somehow in this.

I also wanted to let you know that Eirik Krogstad has made a Norwegian Inform 6 translation, based on the Swedish one. It's available here: <a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/tangram/Norwegian-Inform">https://github.com/tangram/Norwegian-Inform</a>

Additionally, there may be a Danish translation coming up.

/Fredrik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2401&start=0#p16628
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: To Blorb or not to Blorb
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-10 11:08:27

I've adding this text to the draft spec:

[quote]
* Intro

...ADRIFT 5 (see <a class="postlink" href="http://www.adrift.org.uk/">http://www.adrift.org.uk/</a>) also uses Blorb, albeit with an extended format list.

* ADRIFT 5 Compatibility Issues

ADRIFT supports more media formats than Blorb, but has adopted Blorb as a packaging format. To permit this, the following chunk types may be used in ADRIFT blorbs:

For images: 'GIF '.

For sounds: 'WAV ', 'MIDI', 'MP3 '.

ADRIFT Blorb files should use MIME type application/x-blorb;profile="adrift". The filename suffix should be ".blorb" or ".adriftblorb". **"A" or "AD" is unfortunately not a unique prefix when it comes to IF systems!**

* FAQ

- So why does ADRIFT get a bye on these format decisions?

Game authors and interpreters need to agree on what formats they will use. Z-code had no cross-platform agreement when Blorb was invented, and Glulx was created to use Blorb, so Blorb's role for them is normative. GIF and MP3 are not going to become standard Blorb format types.

ADRIFT, in contrast, already had cross-platform interpreters when it adopted Blorb. Blorb can therefore be valuable to ADRIFT as a packaging and metadata format, while taking a descriptive role on media formats. (The alternative would be to disallow ADRIFT Blorb files, which seems silly.)

**It is worth noting, however, that IF interpreters are often ported by adapting existing IF display code. IF interpreter ports can also be based on Glk libraries and the Glk API. Both routes entail the Blorb standard media format list, to some extent. Therefore, game authors have some reason to consider sticking to those formats.**
[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2401&start=0#p16629
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: To Blorb or not to Blorb
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-10 11:09:29

The question of which formats to list and which to drop is really up to you. Please let me know.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2424&start=0#p16630
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Blue Sun Betatesting
User: aszecsei / DateTime: 2011-05-10 11:09:56

I need betatesters for my first game.  It's an exercise in [i]engaging[/i] puzzle-less IF - namely, a mystery in which "winning" is easy, but complete exploration (and therefore complete understanding) takes a bit more time.

One of the things I'm worried about is conversation with my NPCs (though that's hardly new).  Basically, I'm working on adding the conversation suggestions - but to do so, I need to know what people want to know.  I've coded up a few responses that change during gameplay, so you should ask questions, but don't expect responses.

Download the zblorb file [url=http://www.mediafire.com/?1ml1lhk4swfafor]here[/url].

Things I want to know:
[list]
[*] Can you tell what's going on by the end of the story at least?[/*:m]
[*] Can you tell what's going on too early?[/*:m]
[*] Are there things I forgot to implement?[/*:m]
[*] What conversation topics do I need to implement, and at which points?[/*:m][/list:u]

Send me a PM or email me at <a href="mailto:aszecsei@gmail.com">aszecsei@gmail.com</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2237&start=10#p16631
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [6G60] Inform 7 and Natty (Ubuntu 11.04).
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-05-10 14:53:56

Ah, didn't look there. Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2401&start=0#p16632
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: To Blorb or not to Blorb
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-05-10 16:16:47

Fab, thank you. I'll keep you posted once I do the implementation.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2248&start=0#p16633
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Prairie Fire
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-05-10 21:03:03

Jason has let me look at Prairie Fire once or twice as he's been preparing this beta. When Jason calls it a "hybrid IF", he isn't kidding--it's a very ambitious attempt to place parser-based interactive fiction alongside a point-and-click visual interface, and the graphics integrate nicely with the mystery and detection mechanics. There is a clickable album of photographs representing evidence that the player has gathered in the course of investigation, with each photo serving not only as a reminder of the information that's been gathered but also as a source of new clues (you can explore most photos further by clicking on details to see more text). The game also provides a kind of non-spoilery hint system, using a notebook metaphor. This is especially interesting, as it combines a straight list of the clues that have been gathered with a kind of alchemy mechanic--you can click on any two of the clues to attempt to combine them to reveal an inference or conclusion. There is also a period-appropriate map on which the PC marks out the progress as the game proceeds, as well as location images, sound effects, and music.

Jason is an established author with some great games to his credit ([i]Vespers[/i] and [i]Sting of the Wasp[/i] being the most well known). What he's trying to do with Prairie Fire is new and pretty darn exciting, and I'd definitely encourage folks to help him give it some testing!

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2425&start=0#p16634
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Menu-based conversation
User: Arag-e / DateTime: 2011-05-10 21:03:39

This is likely too long to ask to be walked through it, I understand, but I haven’t been able to find any tutorials online about how to pull one of these off.

Reading the article on Creating Dynamic Characters in TADS 3 on the TADS webpage, I find that the menu-based approach to NPC communication fits my writing style better. The kind of conversations I’m envisioning function much better in dialogue-tree format than fractioned on an ASK/TELL scheme, so I think it’s well worth the trouble to figure this one out.

The closest thing I’ve managed to do was set up something through a menuItem. This is functionally close to what I want, but the graphical result is pretty off.

[code]peasant: Actor 'peasant' 'Peasant' @dialogueSystemRoom
    dobjFor(TalkTo)
    {
        action()
        {
            showPeasantTalk();
        }
    }
    showPeasantTalk()
    {
        peasantTalk.display();
    }
;

peasantTalk: MenuItem 'Peasant Talk'
;

+MenuLongTopicItem 'Can you hear me'
    'Yes I can. '
;
+MenuLongTopicItem 'Are we talking? '
    'Yes, seriously. '
;
dialogueSystemRoom: Room 'Dialogue System Room'
;
[/code]

The dialogue I’m envisioning (and for that matter, the one described in the article) is more along the lines of a menu of responses being displayed on the main window (Without going to another page or flushing the current page) from which the player would select them by typing something. Such as:

[code]What do you wish to talk about?
---
A) Who are you?
B) What are you doing?
C) What can change the nature of a man?
D) Nevermind (End conversation)
Select: <- Here inputting A/B/C/D would trigger each choice.[/code]

This would show up following the execution of a TalkTo action, and ideally would look as unintrusive as possible. That is, not flushing the current page, no moving to another page, no requiring a specific button to exit and no [THE END] signal after each response. Ideally, responses should either exit the conversation without further markings or lead to more options. The idea is not to suddenly slap the player with a different type of interface all of a sudden if they’ve been using the command line up to there.

So, is there anywhere I can look up some tutorial on this kind of system?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2426&start=0#p16635
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Having trouble with rule for multiple actions
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-10 21:23:24

I'm trying to write an "instead" rule which applies to all actions other than a few specified actions.  The specified actions (i.e., those to which the instead rule does [i]not[/i] apply) include some actions that take no objects, some that take one object and some that take two objects.

I first tried "Instead of doing something other than looking, examining the gadget or putting the gizmo on the table . . ."  This did not compile; the error message indicated that it can only handle mutiple actions in this context where they involve the same set of nouns.  It also suggested using a definition.

For my next try, I defined a term to include each of the specified actions (Looking is QQQQing.  Examining the gadget is QQQQing.  Putting the gizmo on the table is QQQQing) and then wrote the instead rule as "Instead of doing something other than QQQQing . . ."  It still didn't compile.

Interestingly, "Instead of QQQQing" does work (well, it compiles -- I didn't test to see if it actually behaves as expected).  Unfortunately, that doesn't help me, since in order to use that formulation I would have to define hundreds of actions as QQQQing, instead of the few that I want as exceptions to the rule.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

      Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2426&start=0#p16636
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Having trouble with rule for multiple actions
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-10 23:32:06

I have A way. As with most of my suggestions, someone will probably come up with a more typically Inform-y one in a post right after me [emote]:)[/emote] but this way seems to work well.

Basically you have a flag. Before performing one of the 3 allowed actions, we turn the flag on. Then an instead rule checks All actions in the world, and activates if the flag is off. After performing our allowed action, we turn the flag off again.

You only have to add two lines of code for each allowed action, hence this is a good method to use when you want only 1% of actions to be allowed.

Compile this code in Inform then type 'test me' at the prompt:

[code]"Legend of Test Room: The Jericho Files" by Wade Clarke.

There is a room called The Test Room. "Try actions here. Only looking, examining the gizmo and putting the gizmo on the table will be allowed. All others will produce 'NO WAY!'"

The allowed flag is a number which varies.
The allowed flag is 0.

There is a supporter called a table in the test room.

When play begins: say "(You're carrying the gizmo. I thought I'd tell you this now because I'm not going to let you take inventory. HA!)"

The player carries the gizmo. The description of gizmo is "This looks freaking interesting!"

Instead of doing something when the allowed flag is 0, say "NO WAY!"

Before looking:
	now the allowed flag is 1.
After looking:
	now the allowed flag is 0.
Before examining the gizmo:
	now the allowed flag is 1.
After examining the gizmo:
	now the allowed flag is 0.
Before putting the gizmo on the table:
	now the allowed flag is 1.
Carry out putting the gizmo on the table:
	say "The gizmo is now on the table. You don't have to take my word on this. Try doing a 'look'. You might as well, I'm only gonna let you perform 3 actions in this game."
After putting the gizmo on the table:
	now the allowed flag is 0.
   
test me with "look / jump / examine gizmo / sing / put gizmo on table / look / get gizmo / inventory"[/code]

- Wade

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2426&start=0#p16637
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Having trouble with rule for multiple actions
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-10 23:44:34

[quote="severedhand"]I have A way. As with most of my suggestions, someone will probably come up with a more typically Inform-y one in a post right after me [emote]:)[/emote] but this way seems to work well.

Basically you have a flag. Before performing one of the 3 allowed actions, we turn the flag on. Then an instead rule checks All actions in the world, and activates if the flag is off. After performing our allowed action, we turn the flag off again.

You only have to add two lines of code for each allowed action, hence this is a good method to use when you want only 1% of actions to be allowed.

Compile this code in Inform then type 'test me' at the prompt:

[code]"Legend of Test Room: The Jericho Files" by Wade Clarke.

There is a room called The Test Room. "Try actions here. Only looking, examining the gizmo and putting the gizmo on the table will be allowed. All others will produce 'NO WAY!'"

The allowed flag is a number which varies.
The allowed flag is 0.

There is a supporter called a table in the test room.

When play begins: say "(You're carrying the gizmo. I thought I'd tell you this now because I'm not going to let you take inventory. HA!)"

The player carries the gizmo. The description of gizmo is "This looks freaking interesting!"

Instead of doing something when the allowed flag is 0, say "NO WAY!"

Before looking:
	now the allowed flag is 1.
After looking:
	now the allowed flag is 0.
Before examining the gizmo:
	now the allowed flag is 1.
After examining the gizmo:
	now the allowed flag is 0.
Before putting the gizmo on the table:
	now the allowed flag is 1.
Carry out putting the gizmo on the table:
	say "The gizmo is now on the table. You don't have to take my word on this. Try doing a 'look'. You might as well, I'm only gonna let you perform 3 actions in this game."
After putting the gizmo on the table:
	now the allowed flag is 0.
   
test me with "look / jump / examine gizmo / sing / put gizmo on table / look / get gizmo / inventory"[/code]

- Wade[/quote]

Okay, that wasn't only educational, it was also VERY funny!  I am not the OP... but I thank you for the useful technique.  And the laugh.  [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2426&start=0#p16641
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Having trouble with rule for multiple actions
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-05-11 02:34:30

This is maybe a bit more concise:

[code]
Looking is QQQQing.
Examining the gadget is QQQQing.
Putting the gizmo on the table is QQQQing.

Instead of doing something when not QQQQing:
	say "No time for that, you have to QQQQ!"[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2426&start=0#p16642
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Having trouble with rule for multiple actions
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-11 03:10:44

[quote="Juhana"]This is maybe a bit more concise:

[code]
Looking is QQQQing.
Examining the gadget is QQQQing.
Putting the gizmo on the table is QQQQing.

Instead of doing something when not QQQQing:
	say "No time for that, you have to QQQQ!"[/code][/quote]

But in the context of a single room... with specific item(s) that the rules will apply to, and others it will not apply to.... or in multiple rooms with multiple items that might not have the same rules applied depending on the item, and the room (and region, etc), Wade's is more logical, and more readable, even if more verbose.

A few more "if's" would be needed.  But one of the things I have learned recently is that it is better to write more lines of readable, and reusable code, that is specific to the room/items being mentioned, than to create a rule that can bite you on the ass later when Inform decides to use it where you did not intend it to be used.  QQQQing could work the same way.  QQing,  QQQing someplace else, and QQQQing in another place... and so on.  But it is harder to read and follow the logic over multiple rooms, scenes, and regions.

I think this is where it comes down to personal ways of programming and visualizing the flow of the program.  Plus, each instance could/would have a variety of situational responses if each was coded with a separate list of flags.  And, just to spice things up... 0 and 1 do not need to be the only flag options.  [emote];)[/emote]

Just a thought...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2425&start=0#p16643
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Menu-based conversation
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-05-11 04:08:38

I don't know of any tutorial, but there is an extension, [url=http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/programming/tads3/library/contributions/qtalk.zip]qtalk[/url] by Greg Boettcher, for creating Photopia-style conversation menus. You could give that a try and see if it fits your requirements.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2426&start=0#p16644
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Having trouble with rule for multiple actions
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-11 07:54:41

Thanks to all.  I think that in the particular context in which I'll be using it, Juhana's approach may work for me.  All of the rules in question will be limited to a particular scene, which is otherwise set up so that it all takes place within a single room.  I'll give it a try tonight.

The context here is that I'm trying to create what is effectively a cinematic interlude, while still giving the player the illusion that he is not just a passive observer.  The player, a spy, is being briefed on his new mission (the execution of which will form most of the game).  Once the briefing starts, the only thing that I will actually let him do is wait (so that he is basically forced to sit through several turns while an NPC goes through the "installments" that together give the player the information he needs).  There will be a few specific disallowed actions which will trigger "you can't do that" messages tailored to the particular attempted action. Any attempted action other than (i) waiting, (ii) listening (which will be redirected to waiting) or (iii) one of the specific disallowed actions, will trigger a generic "you can't do that" message.  The rule for the latter case is what we're talking about here.  (To add a little more variety, a separate variable will keep track of the NPC's mood; he will get more annoyed each time the player attempts a disallowed action instead of paying attention to the briefing.  All of the "you can't do that" messages will vary depending on the NPC's mood.)  It all adds up to a fair amount of coding for what is basically a simple situation, but I'm hoping the effect works.

Thanks again.

   Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2222&start=10#p16645
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Second Gender - The Extension
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2011-05-11 08:27:55

I haven't coded in inform 7 in months now, since the project I'm working on requires me to write a (little?) text synthesizer.
Eventually, it will incorporate various concepts coming from the field of linguistics : an enunciation layer, bits of componential semantics, probably greimas' semiotic square as well, phonology, chomsky-esque universal grammar (I haven't decided which "implementation" to choose yet, but since we're only synthesizing text, that should be enough).
This is a pretty big project and the main reason I stopped developing it is because I feel like I don't know enough about linguistics to code something well-structured.

This project is also aimed to be "linguistically universal" (*looks aloof*) and I really want to separate the [b]L[/b]anguage layer from the [b]l[/b]anguage (tongue) layer (since I'm french and want my system to work for the english language (among other ones)).

Anyway, i'll make a thread about it before going wild.


Now, i have a question for you, dear scandinavian fellows :
In my experience (latin, greek, french, english, german, portuguese and somehow japanese) the linguistic genders follow a complementary distribution : a name only has one gender : either male or female or sometimes neutral when the language provides a neutral gender.
Is it different for Scandinavian tongues ? Can names in these languages bear several linguistic genders at the same time ?
I'm not talking about "natural gender". For example in German, "the young lady" translates as "das mädchen". Its natural gender is of course female, but linguistically this name has a neutral gender. These belong to two separate analytical levels that shouldn't be mixed up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2426&start=0#p16646
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Having trouble with rule for multiple actions
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-11 08:34:23

To diverge slightly to the topic of programming methods -- the reason I often program Inform via numerical flags is because I'm very used to them from BASIC and assembly language, the places I developed all my programming chops. Sometimes these flags can be unnecessary but equally efficient as the English language equivalents, sometimes more efficient and less verbose, sometimes less efficient and more verbose (like in the example in this topic - see, I knew someone would do it one post after mine [emote]:)[/emote]).

I would say an area in which I've noticed the 'flag attitude' is a good way of programming is when you want some  tight control over timing in Inform. With things like actions and rules, the precise moments at which they start and end can feel a bit loose. You have to do playtests to see when things begin and end, both 'to the eye' and within the code. Then there are actions which tick over on the turn, and others which may be fired during the turn. Getting things to line up, descriptions to change at exactly the right moment, etc., I've found can be fiddly just using 'every turn', 'when' and 'while'.

The good thing about explicitly telling Inform to change a flag or equivalent, or to consider the value of one and react, is that you always know where in the sequence of things it will occur. You can get the change to happen at any particular point during a turn. I'm working on a game which is very time/move sensitive, so this is important to me at the moment. Anyway, this is the main observation I've made so far in the course of bringing my 8 and 16 bit programming experience to Inform 7.

PS Glad you liked 'Legend of Test Room', Seeker!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2426&start=0#p16647
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Having trouble with rule for multiple actions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-11 09:12:44

Inform isn't very nice with flags, in my opinion. There's no flag equivalent that reads as nicely as a "to decide whether" phrase. Fortunately, you can use the "to decide whether" phrase in this case:

[code]Instead of doing something when the action is inappropriate for the briefing, say "NO WAY!"

To decide whether the action is inappropriate for the briefing:
	if looking, no;
	if examining the gizmo, no;
	if putting the gizmo on the table, no;
	yes.[/code]

Another trick that's handy in this sort of situation is to use "continue the action" within an Instead rule. Then you don't have to put every single condition in the preamble:

[code]Instead of doing anything:
	if looking, continue the action;
	if examining the gizmo, continue the action;
	if putting the gizmo on the table, continue the action;
	say "NO WAY!"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2284&start=0#p16648
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you look for in your IF?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-11 09:28:18

I think the artsy games are fun to talk about, which is perhaps why they attract more discussion. But I don't think that necessarily means they're more fun to play.

Personally, I like long games and hard puzzles as long as there's some "juice," to use a human interface term. But I don't play them all that often - maybe one a year or so. I also like short games.

I like creative world-modeling, and clever ways of restricting the player's action that serve both the game and the world model.

I like writing that draws you into the setting and reads smoothly.

I like having a clear goal - I'm not so into multiple endings.

I like character interactions that serve the story without seeming contrived. NPCs can really brighten up a game-world, but they can also sidetrack a game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2222&start=10#p16649
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Second Gender - The Extension
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-05-11 09:42:49

Grammatical gender is slightly confused in Swedish usage.

For some purposes there are four genders, for some purposes there are two (for some, perhaps, there are three).

There are four different third person singular personal pronouns ("han", "hon", "den, "det"), corresponding to each of the four genders (masculine, feminine, common and neuter). The common gender is really a mix of all the Old Norse masculine and feminine nouns that didn't stand for male or female people or animals.

So for the purpose of choosing a personal pronoun, Swedish behaves as if it had four genders.

However, for the purpose of declination it behaves (mostly) as if it had only two: common and neuter.

Adjectives, past participles and articles all agree with their noun as to number and species (definite or indefinite) and gender. But adjectives etc. decline the same (mostly) whether the noun is masculine, feminine or common-gendered. It is as if these were all of one gender, and indeed the common gender is often considered to comprise all nouns that are not neuter (making the masculine and the feminine a kind of sub-genders under the common). Actually this is the unmarked form of the words (so I guess you might say adjectives etc. don't decline at all when agreeing with common-gendered nouns); it's the neuter forms that are the marked ones.

"En stor pojke", "en stor flicka", "en stor stad", "ett stort troll": the first three are masculine, feminine and common; the last is neuter. (Meaning "a big boy", "a big girl", "a big city", "a big troll".)

At least this is so mostly. Adjectives agreeing with a masculine singular definite noun may decline specially: you can say "den store pojken" (the big boy) instead of "den stora pojken" (the big boy), if you wish to. It is standard Swedish, but the usage is more common in some parts of the country than in others, and I suspect it's becoming less common over-all. ("Stora" would be the only acceptable form if the adjective were to agree with a definite noun of any other gender than the masculine.) In that sense, then, a third gender (masculine) is added to common and neuter for the purpose of declining adjectives.

Besides there are a few noun like "apelsin" (orange), "paraply" (umbrella), "paket" (parcel) where speakers have so long been divided as to whether they have neuter or common gender that standard grammars recognize both varieties. Individual speakers always give them one of the genders, though, and stick to it. It would be very strange for any one person to use any of these words now as neuter, now as common-gendered.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2344&start=0#p16650
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which exits to describe?  How many is too many exits?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-11 09:46:12

I think you can get away with one, maybe two "hub" rooms in a game. It doesn't take much to make the world easily navigable. But they need a reason for existing.

In your example, you could make it clearer and more interesting by writing descriptions that logically connect neighboring areas:

[quote][b]Field[/b]

You're in a fallow field between a highway in the northwest and a dirt access road in the south. The highway leads over a small stream in the north and past a lake that lies to the northeast.

To the east of you the lakeshore becomes sandy, and a house abuts the beach to the southeast.

To the west, in the triangle of land between the highway and the access road, there is a campground. At the edge of the campground is a fire pit, which you can reach by going southwest.[/quote]

Because a hub mainly exists to provide access to other parts of the map, it description should probably consist mostly of geography, and needn't give the room itself as much independent character as other places.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2427&start=0#p16651
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 - Glimmr sizing and alignment standards?
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-05-11 10:00:01

For a while I was having a hard time getting elements of a GUI appear in the right "graphics windows" using Glimmr. After getting that done, I have a new problem. How portable is a story that uses a lot of Glimmr stuff? I'm finding that loading my story in different versions of Gargoyle provides different results, and I suspect other glitches with other devices and interpreters. 

Here is a summary and visualizations of my issue...

[url]http://jizaboz.blogspot.com/2011/05/glimmr-ui-progress-problems.html[/url]

Any thoughts?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2350&start=0#p16652
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On the nature of puzzles and immersion
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-11 10:02:36

I am taking this to heart. One reason I've never made a game in the past is I find the design of puzzles intimidating. How could I tell if they were too easy or too hard? I'm going ahead now on a project, which I'm guessing is on the easy side, but I think tailoring the final puzzles to fit the player's state of mind sounds like a good guideline.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2344&start=0#p16653
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which exits to describe?  How many is too many exits?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-11 10:30:41

Someone pointed out on another thread that the extension that lists exits in a room description is [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Gavin%20Lambert/Exit%20Lister/index.html]Exit Lister by Gavin Lambert[/url], not Exit Lister by Eric Eve (which may be hackable to put exits in the room description, as I posted above, but it's surely simpler to use Gavin's extension).

Also, Mike makes a good point about the room description of the hub -- his description is nice and tells you where you can go.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=180#p16655
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-11 12:07:20

I've made a few posts on the Inform 6&7 authoring board over the past few days, and I realized that it would be polite to introduce myself.

I was first introduced to Adventure while a student at Cornell University in the mid-1970s.  I spent many nights in a computer terminal room, typing commands and reading the responses that were printed out on a long roll of paper (CRT monitors were pretty rare in those days).  To this day I take pride in having slain the dragon with the very first command I tried.

Fast forward a few years . . . during the 1980s, I played most, if not all, of the Infocom games on a friend's Apple IIE.  For the next twenty or so years after Infocom bit the dust, I lamented the fact that there were no more text adventures being written (or so I thought).

About a year ago, a friend (the same one with whom I played most of the Infocom games) discovered Inform and brought it to my attention.  I was like the proverbial kid in a candy store.  I managed to finish one fairly sizeable game.  Unfortunately, I can't make it public because, while the plot is wholly original, it is based on characters to which certain notoriously litigious people claim the rights; in order to avoid aggravation and expense, I'm using it only for my own amusement and that of a very few close friends.

I'm now working on a second game which does not have the same constraints.  Unlike the first one, where interaction with NPCs was extremely limited, this one will have a good deal of interaction, including conversation.  Learning the techniques to make this work is not easy, but I'm having a ball.


         Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2427&start=0#p16656
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Glimmr sizing and alignment standards?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-05-11 12:27:21

You are comparing the 2010 release of Gargoyle on Windows to the 2009 release for Linux. The more recent version contains numerous fixes for graphics and performance, most of which were a direct result of Erik's input.

Any given build of Gargoyle should display text and graphics the same way regardless of platform. The only platform-specific differences come in the file browser (for save/restore) and keyboard/mouse input (for Unicode characters and clipboard ops).

You will see some differences between the Glk libraries - garglk, WinGlk, and cocoaglk - but for the most part these variations will be legal according to the API spec, if not necessarily convenient for your purposes.

I don't know what's going on in [url=http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hGXGUVsx--s/TchnvBkpLbI/AAAAAAAAAC8/08kU9MMEsXg/s1600/WinBumpGarg.jpg]your second screenshot[/url] but it looks very odd. You might need to post some code so Erik can tell us who owns the bug.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2429&start=0#p16657
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 and images for the nOOb
User: west / DateTime: 2011-05-11 12:37:26

I discovered Inform7 last week and I have zero previous programming experience.
I downloaded Windows Glulxe

I found this code online which promises to be exactly what I want. Issue is when I insert it into Inform7 and press the GO button its chocked full of problems. What am I doing wrong? How do you write and test within Inform7 with images? 
Sorry for the rookie question!

! SGW - a Simple Glulxe Wrapper
!===============================================================================!
! (by Alessandro Schillaci) 
! WeB   : <a class="postlink" href="http://slade.altervista.org">http://slade.altervista.org</a>
! @mail : <a href="mailto:silver.slade@tiscalinet.it">silver.slade@tiscalinet.it</a>
!
! Version 1.1 2005-07-04
!===============================================================================!
! WHAT IS THIS FOR ?
! ==================
! "sgw.h" (this file) is a simple and small glulxe wrapper, created for a novice 
! inform programming level.
! With this library it's possible to visualize an image or simply to play a sound
! (or a music) by using a small set of functions that wrap the glulx functions.
!
! It's possible to convert a z-code adventure to a glulx adventure with 
! multimedia support.
!
! You can use 3 audio channles:
! - music : for the music channel
! - chan1 : channel 1 for audio (sound effects)
! - chan2 : channel 2 for audio (sound effects)
!
!===============================================================================!
! HOW TO USE
! ==========
!
! Just follow these points:
!
! 1) Put in your main file the directive
!    include "sgw.h";
!    before the Include "Parser"; directive
!
! 2) Use the initializeWrap() function in your initialize standard function.
!
!    Example:
!
!    initializeWrap(240);	
!	
!    This will set the main graphic window to have an height=240 pixels but
!    you can change this resolution as you like.
!
! 3) Now you can play a sound or visualize an image simply using
!    these two functions: viewImage and playSound
!
! 4) You can customize colors settings, by create these Globals
!    before you include the "sgw.h" library, to override them
!
!    Constant SCBACK $110101;	
!    Constant SCTEXT $DDBB99;
!    Constant SCSOFT $665544;
!    Constant SCEMPH $FFFFDD;
!    Constant SCHEAD $EEDDAA;
!    Constant SCINPU $DDEEAA;
!
! You can use these new simple functions in your game, also :
! 
! GRAPHIC FUNCTIONS
! =================
! clearMainWindow()	= clears the main window
! closeAllWindows	()	= closes all graphic windows
! initializeWrap(w,h)	= graphic window dimension is set to w=width h=height
! viewImage(image)	= shows the "image" in the graphic window
!
!
! AUDIO FUNCTIONS
! ===============
! playSound(channel,sound,lenght,volume)	= plays a sound/music
! silenceAll()							= silences all audio channels
! silenceChannel(channel)					= silences the audio "channel"
! setVolume(val, channel)					= set "val" for volume of the channel
!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2429&start=0#p16658
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 and images for the nOOb
User: west / DateTime: 2011-05-11 12:39:44

The actual code im using:

!===============================================================================!

message "Using the SGW 1.1 (Simple Glulxe Wrapper) library by Alessandro Schillaci"; 

Global music					= 0;			! Music Channel
Global chan1			 		= 0;			! Channel 1 sound effects
Global chan2			 		= 0;			! Channel 2 sound effects	

Constant VOLUME_HIGH			5;
Constant VOLUME_NORMAL 		3;
Constant VOLUME_LOW	 		2;

#IfDef TARGET_GLULX;	
Global current_music			= 0;
Global gg_VolumeSupport		= false;		! Change Volume supported?
Global gg_statuswin;
Global gg_mainwin;						! Text window
Global gg_bigwin ;						! Image Location window
Global curr_pic;

Constant GG_MUSICCHAN_ROCK 		410;
Constant GG_MUSICCHANSOUND1_ROCK 	411;
Constant GG_MUSICCHANSOUND2_ROCK 	412;
Constant GG_BIGWIN_ROCK 			210;		! Image Location window

#Ifndef SCBACK;
	Constant SCBACK 					$110101;	! Colors settings
#Endif;
#Ifndef SCTEXT;
	Constant SCTEXT 					$DDBB99;
#Endif;
#Ifndef SCSOFT;
	Constant SCSOFT 					$665544;
#Endif;
#Ifndef SCEMPH;
	Constant SCEMPH 					$FFFFDD;
#Endif;
#Ifndef SCHEAD;
	Constant SCHEAD 					$EEDDAA;
#Endif;
#Ifndef SCINPU;
	Constant SCINPU 					$DDEEAA;
#Endif;
#Endif;


[ initializeSGW h;
	#Ifdef TARGET_GLULX;
		if (music == 0) {music = glk_schannel_create(GG_MUSICCHAN_ROCK);			}
		if (chan1 == 0) {chan1 = glk_schannel_create(GG_MUSICCHANSOUND1_ROCK);	}
		if (chan2 == 0) {chan2 = glk_schannel_create(GG_MUSICCHANSOUND2_ROCK);	}
		testGlulx();			! Test about Interpreter's performances 
		closeAllWindows();	! Closing all window
		silenceAll();		! Silence all audio channels
		inizializeGlulx(h);	! Inizialize the glulx system
	#Endif; 
];


! --- Graphics functions -------------------------------------------------------------

! View an image on main graphic window
[ viewImage image;
	#Ifdef TARGET_GLULX;
		curr_pic = image;
		if (gg_bigwin && glk_gestalt(gestalt_Graphics, 0)) {
			glk_image_draw(gg_bigwin, curr_pic, 0, 0);
		}
	#Endif; ! TARGET_
];


! Clean the main window
[ clearMainWindow;
	#Ifdef TARGET_GLULX;
		glk_window_set_background_color(gg_mainwin,$00000000);
		glk_window_clear(gg_mainwin);
		glk_window_set_background_color(gg_bigwin,$00000000);
		glk_window_clear(gg_bigwin);			
	#endif;
];

! Close all windows
[ closeAllWindows;
	#Ifdef TARGET_GLULX;
		if (gg_bigwin) {
			glk_window_close(gg_bigwin,0);
			gg_bigwin = 0;
		}
	#endif;	
];

! Redraws an image
[ MyRedrawGraphicsWindows;
	#Ifdef TARGET_GLULX;
	if (gg_bigwin && glk_gestalt(gestalt_Graphics, 0)) {
		glk_image_draw(gg_bigwin, curr_pic, 0, 0);
	}
	#endif;	
];




! --- Audio functions -------------------------------------------------------------

! Plays the sound "sound" for the channel "channel" , with "lenght" and "volume"
[ playSound channel sound lenght volume;
	#Ifdef TARGET_GLULX;
		if (channel) {
			current_music = sound;
			glk_schannel_stop(channel);
			SetVolume(volume,channel);
			glk_schannel_play_ext(channel, sound, lenght, 0);
		}
	#endif; 
];

! Sileces all the audio channels
[ silenceAll;
	#Ifdef TARGET_GLULX;
		if (chan1) {		glk_schannel_stop(chan1); 	}
		if (chan2) {		glk_schannel_stop(chan2); 	}	
		if (music) {		glk_schannel_stop(music); 	}	
	#Endif;
];

! Silences the channel "channel"
[ silenceChannel channel;
	#Ifdef TARGET_GLULX;
		if (channel) {
			glk_schannel_stop(channel);
		}
	#endif;
];

! Reset all audio channels
[ resetMusicChannel;
	#Ifdef TARGET_GLULX;
		glk_schannel_stop(music);
		glk_schannel_stop(chan1);
		glk_schannel_stop(chan2);	    
	#endif;	
];

! Set a volume for the channel
[ setVolume val chan;
	#Ifdef TARGET_GLULX;
	    if (~~gg_VolumeSupport) return;
		if (val > 0) glk_schannel_set_volume(chan, val * 16384);
	#endif;
];



! --- GLULX functions ------------------------------------------------------------- !

#Ifdef TARGET_GLULX;

[ HandleGlkEvent event ;
	switch (event-->0) {
	    	evtype_Redraw, evtype_Arrange  :	MyRedrawGraphicsWindows();
					evtype_SoundNotify:	glk_schannel_play_ext(music, current_music, 1, 1);
					evtype_SoundNotify:	glk_schannel_play_ext(music, , 1, 1);

		4:				! mouse
		1:				! timer
		5, 6:			! arrange/redraw
	}
];

! Glk window initialization entry point.
[ InitGlkWindow winrock;
	switch (winrock) {
 		GG_MAINWIN_ROCK:
			glk_stylehint_set(wintype_AllTypes, style_Normal, stylehint_TextColor, SCTEXT);
			glk_stylehint_set(wintype_AllTypes, style_Normal, stylehint_BackColor, SCBACK);
			glk_stylehint_set(wintype_AllTypes, style_Normal, stylehint_Justification, stylehint_just_LeftRight);        
			glk_stylehint_set(wintype_AllTypes, style_Emphasized, stylehint_TextColor, SCEMPH);
			glk_stylehint_set(wintype_AllTypes, style_Emphasized, stylehint_BackColor, SCBACK);
			glk_stylehint_set(wintype_AllTypes, style_Header, stylehint_TextColor, SCEMPH);
			glk_stylehint_set(wintype_AllTypes, style_Header, stylehint_BackColor, SCBACK);
			glk_stylehint_set(wintype_AllTypes, style_Subheader, stylehint_TextColor, SCHEAD);
			glk_stylehint_set(wintype_AllTypes, style_Subheader, stylehint_BackColor, SCBACK);
			glk_stylehint_set(wintype_AllTypes, style_Alert, stylehint_TextColor, SCBACK);
			glk_stylehint_set(wintype_AllTypes, style_Alert, stylehint_BackColor, SCTEXT);
			glk_stylehint_set(wintype_AllTypes, style_Note, stylehint_TextColor, SCINPU);
			glk_stylehint_set(wintype_AllTypes, style_Note, stylehint_BackColor, SCBACK);       
			glk_stylehint_set(wintype_AllTypes, style_Blockquote, stylehint_TextColor, SCINPU);
			glk_stylehint_set(wintype_AllTypes, style_Blockquote, stylehint_BackColor, SCBACK); 
			glk_stylehint_set(wintype_AllTypes, style_Input, stylehint_TextColor, SCINPU);
			glk_stylehint_set(wintype_AllTypes, style_Input, stylehint_BackColor, SCBACK);
			glk_stylehint_set(wintype_AllTypes, style_Preformatted, stylehint_TextColor, SCINPU);
			glk_stylehint_set(wintype_AllTypes, style_Preformatted, stylehint_BackColor, SCBACK);  
			glk_stylehint_set(wintype_AllTypes, style_User1, stylehint_TextColor, SCSOFT);      
			glk_stylehint_set(wintype_AllTypes, style_User1, stylehint_BackColor, SCBACK);   		
	}
	rfalse;
];


! Glk object identification entry point.
[ IdentifyGlkObject phase type ref rock id;
    
	switch (phase) {
	0:	! start
		gg_bigwin			= 0;
		gg_statuswin			= 0;
		music				= 0;
		chan1				= 0;
		chan2				= 0;
		return;
	1:	! pass ref
		switch (type) {
		0:	! window ref
			switch (rock) {
				GG_BIGWIN_ROCK	:	gg_bigwin	= ref;
			}
		}
		return;
	2:  ! Update objects
         id = glk_schannel_iterate(0, gg_arguments);
         while (id) {
            switch (gg_arguments-->0) {
               GG_MUSICCHAN_ROCK		: music	= id;
               GG_MUSICCHANSOUND1_ROCK	: chan1	= id;
               GG_MUSICCHANSOUND2_ROCK	: chan2	= id;
           }
           id = glk_schannel_iterate(id, gg_arguments);
         }
         ResetMusicChannel(); 
         MyRedrawGraphicsWindows();        
         return;
	}
    return;	
];


! Test the Glulx Interpreter's performances
[ testGlulx;
	if (~~glk_gestalt(gestalt_Graphics, 0)) {
		print "^[This Interpreter doesn't support graphics.]^";
	}
	
	if (~~glk_gestalt(gestalt_Sound, 0)){
		print "^[This Interpreter doesn't support audio files.]^^";		
	}	
	
	if (~~glk_gestalt(gestalt_SoundVolume, 0)){
		print "^[This Interpreter doesn't support audio volume.]^";
	}
];


! Glulx Inizialize function
[ inizializeGlulx h;	

	! Graphics
	if (gg_statuswin == 0) {
		gg_statuswin = glk_window_open(gg_mainwin,(winmethod_Above+winmethod_Fixed), 2, wintype_TextGrid, GG_BIGWIN_ROCK);
	}
	
	if (gg_bigwin == 0) {
		gg_bigwin = glk_window_open(gg_mainwin,(winmethod_Above+winmethod_Fixed), h , wintype_Graphics, GG_BIGWIN_ROCK);
	}
	
	! Set black as background colour for all windows
	glk_window_set_background_color(gg_bigwin,$00000000);
	glk_window_clear(gg_bigwin);
	glk_window_set_background_color(gg_mainwin,$00000000);
	glk_window_clear(gg_mainwin);
];

#Endif;

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2429&start=0#p16659
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 and images for the nOOb
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-11 12:52:39

You're looking at Inform 6 code there, not Inform 7.

Look through the multimedia extensions at <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/typography/">http://inform7.com/extensions/typography/</a> .

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2427&start=0#p16660
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Glimmr sizing and alignment standards?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-05-11 12:55:57

I actually don't think the issues you identified on your blog are related to different versions of the interpreter, or to Glimmr code. But first, to address the more general concern about portability: As Ben said, we* found and squashed bugs and performance issues in most of the major interpreters/Glk libraries while working on Glimmr. You should get pretty reliable behavior across interpreters if you are using the latest versions of Gargoyle, Windows Glulxe, or Windows Git. Zoom is almost there, but a long-standing bug with color remains to be fixed (your blue boxes will be drawn in red even in the latest version of Zoom). I haven't tested much with Filfre, but hope to some day soon.

Coming back to your game's UI: It looks to me like, while the right-hand window uses Glimmr Canvas-Based Drawing's drawing rule, you have written your own window-drawing rule for the upper window. If that diagnosis is right, you have two options: You can fix your custom rule, or you can just use the Canvas-Based Drawing rule in the upper window. I'd highly recommend the latter option, as it will be quite a bit easier--Glimmr Canvas-Based Drawing automates all of the scaling and redrawing for you, and it can be a challenge to get that stuff right for a bunch of objects otherwise.

Using Canvas-Based Drawing will involve declaring a few different "g-element" objects, associating them with the canvas of the upper window, and specifying their coordinates on that canvas. The drawing rule will then take care of centering the canvas in the window, scaling it to the right size, and ensuring that graphics aren't repeated. See the Canvas-Based Drawing extension documentation for more info.

Hope that helps!

--Erik

* By "we", I mean I reported some bugs, and smarter people than me, like Ben, David Kinder, and Andrew Hunter, fixed those bugs (and more).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2410&start=0#p16661
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Money
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-05-11 13:44:25

Sorry, but I still got no idea what to do. I can initially create me X Euro, but how do I create further money that I can pick up and thos combine with the one originally created? Greenbacks.inf doesn't help me at all I'm afraid.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2222&start=10#p16662
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Second Gender - The Extension
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-05-11 14:15:12

[quote="Felix"]Besides there are a few noun like "apelsin" (orange), "paraply" (umbrella), "paket" (parcel) where speakers have so long been divided as to whether they have neuter or common gender that standard grammars recognize both varieties. Individual speakers always give them one of the genders, though, and stick to it. It would be very strange for any one person to use any of these words now as neuter, now as common-gendered.[/quote]

That was interesting. I don't doubt that what you say is true, but I don't think I've heard (or even heard of) those variations. Anything but "en apelsin", "ett paraply" or "ett paket" would sound strange (wrong) to me.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2222&start=10#p16663
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Second Gender - The Extension
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-05-11 14:31:05

I checked the most recent edition of the Swedish Academy Glossary and one older dictionary to make sure.

I would seem that of the examples I gave one was spurious: "apelsin" is common gender in standard Swedish – the neuter form is Gothenburg dialect  [emote]:roll:[/emote] –; "paket" was listed as neuter  or common gender in an older dictionary, but the latest edition of the Swedish Academy Glossary has no mention of a common gender variant form; but in the case of "paraply" linguistic authorities at last seem to agree with my statement; and I might add the case of "finger" (finger), which the Swedish Academy Glossary lists as having neuter or common gender.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2430&start=0#p16664
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Geocaching and IF combined
User: jcharra / DateTime: 2011-05-11 15:33:10

Dear IF folks,

I just wanted to let you know that I recently finished an interesting project involving interactive fiction. It's not a pure work of IF, but combines geocaching and IF into a sort of augmented reality game. It cannot be finished without visiting the real places mentioned in the game via GPS coordinates.

For those among you who are geocachers themselves or just want to have a look at my work, check out 

<a class="postlink" href="http://hackingjohnnz.blogspot.com/2011/05/marriage-of-inform7-and-geocaching.html">http://hackingjohnnz.blogspot.com/2011/ ... ching.html</a>

I was able to finish the game thanks to help from this forum, that was great (and fast!) support!

Kind regards,
Johannes

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2427&start=0#p16665
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Glimmr sizing and alignment standards?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-05-11 16:18:53

Two additional thoughts:

- The compass rose tutorial on the Glimmr blog (link below) might be a quicker introduction to the way that Canvas-Based Drawing works, if you just want to see whether you want to adopt that approach.

- You might want to try to add your blog to the [url=http://www.planet-if.com/]Planet IF[/url] aggregator--more IF folks are likely to see it that way!

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2430&start=0#p16666
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Geocaching and IF combined
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-05-11 16:21:38

Adorable!  I did something similar, though way less involved, for my significant other last Valentine's Day.  Mine was just did a virtual version of my house, with a virtual version of my housemate's cat giving clues about where the treasure was stashed.  It was much easier than training the real cat. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2430&start=0#p16667
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Geocaching and IF combined
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-05-11 16:55:04

I don't know a huge amount about geocaching, but I have run into a few other references to people doing things like this:


<a class="postlink" href="http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?wp=GC1XBVY">http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_de ... wp=GC1XBVY</a>

<a class="postlink" href="http://geocache-if.appspot.com/">http://geocache-if.appspot.com/</a>

(Possibly you've already seen these, but just in case...)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2427&start=0#p16668
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Glimmr sizing and alignment standards?
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-05-11 16:57:20

Oh, this does help. Thanks guys. I've already squashed the graphic window resizing glitch by just making the figure jpeg load as the background of the upper window. I removed most of the simple-graphics window example code I had in; most of which referred to resizing. I'm using 640x480 as the resolution for every scenic picture and just allowing it to resize accordingly so far.

Now comes figuring out where to plug my bars in. "scenic window" is the name of the window above. I've created it very much like the "graphics-window" from the compass example. This is the code for the bars which I'm trying to get drawn in that window:

[code]
draw a box (r 0 g 0 b 200) in the scenic-window from {160, 10} to {170, 80} with 2 pixel line-weight;
		draw a box (r 0 g 0 b 200) in the scenic-window from {470, 10} to {480, 80} with 2 pixel line-weight;
		paint a bitmap text (color g-White) of "LUCIDITY" in the scenic-window at { 133, 90} using Glimmr C&C with dot size 2 px;
		paint a bitmap text (color g-White) of "ANXIETY" in the scenic-window at { 444, 90} using Glimmr C&C with dot size 2 px;[/code]

After reading your posts and doing the changes, I temporarily threw the above code into "When play begins", but it doesn't display unless I restart. Plus, one bar still gets over-lapped when resizing. I'll mess around with that a little more tonight before dinner. I don't completely understand the g-element concept quite yet, and so far my only instance of it is "The associated canvas of a g-element is usually the graphics-canvas." which was included in the compass tutorial. At this point I'm scratching my head as to how I add my bars as elements of their own.

Erik, I apologize for not grasping some basic concepts of your system, but I think it's a great system and I'm slowly but surely learning  [emote]8-)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2412&start=0#p16669
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7 coding question! pleez HALP!
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-05-11 18:39:17

[quote="Felix"]I guess that's the downside of using a fairly large fragment of natural English for programming: it's easy to think that the fragment is even larger, and it's hard to remember the exact shape of it.[/quote]
Yeah, as someone said -- and I completely agree: Inform 7 code is not easier to write than Inform 6 code, but it is a lot easier to read.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2431&start=0#p16670
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Possession in i7?
User: tryguy / DateTime: 2011-05-11 18:57:37

Sorry to make a new topic, because I'm sure this has come up before at some point. I can't seem to find it though.

Anyway, I've noticed this behavior while writing my game:

>i
You are carrying:
  a ham

>drop my ham
Dropped.

>x ham
You see nothing special about the ham.

>x my ham
You see nothing special about the ham.

>x your ham
You can't see any such thing.

I'm wondering why inform 7 so readily accepts "x my ham" when it's now just a ham on the floor? It's just an ordinary object, so the player doesn't have any inherent possession over it, whether held or not. But, I'd really like the game to be able to distinguish these things.

I should say I'm only up to halfway through chapter 4 of the manual. This is just irking me though. So... I thought I'd ask.

BTW, I already know why "x your ham" doesn't work. I just left it in there for completeness.

Any help would be great. Back to reading the manual, I guess... [emote]:([/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2426&start=0#p16671
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Having trouble with rule for multiple actions
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-11 19:26:06

Thanks to all.  I wound up using Capmikee's suggestion of a "to decide" phrase.

    Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2432&start=0#p16672
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Temporarily blocking an exit
User: ladlehaus / DateTime: 2011-05-11 19:37:01

Hi, everyone. This is my first piece of IF, and I'm having trouble doing something that doesn't seem like it should be all that complicated. Basically I have a room, the Seaboard, with an exit going east. I want the player to be blocked from going east unless they are wearing a bracer. I can't get the code to work properly. It either won't compile or the player is blocked from going east on the entire map or even when wearing the bracer, he can't go east in the Seaboard.

I'm working with[code]Before going east:
	If the player is in the Seaboard:
		unless the player is wearing the bracer:
			Instead of going east:
				say "Brecca laughs, 'You're not serious, are you?'"[/code]

This will compile, but it prevents the player from going east at all.

Thanks! I really appreciate any advice.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2344&start=0#p16673
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which exits to describe?  How many is too many exits?
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-11 19:51:45

My own personal view -- and this is based on very limited experience writing IF but extensive experience playing it -- is that, with rare exceptions, you should either tell the player explicitly about all of the exits, or, if there are exits in almost every direction, include a general statement indicating that it is possible to go in lots of different directions.  As a player, I generally get pretty annoyed if a room has only two doorways and the only way I can find them is by first bumping into a bunch of walls.

In terms of how to list the exits, the two polar approaches are to include a laundry list at the end of the room description or to work the necessary information into your prose.  There's something to be said for both approaches.  The former is certainly inelegant as a literary matter, but it has the advantage of making it very easy for the player to see at a glance where he can go (which may or may not be what you want).  The latter approach may be less convenient for the player, but can be more enjoyable if done well.  If not done well, it can seem even more contrived than the laundry list approach.  Ultimately, its a question of what works best in light of the situation and your own writing style.

Of course, there are exceptions to the principle that you should tell the player where the exits are, such as situations where they would not be obvious to someone actually in the room.  Another exception might be where a particular effect depends on the exits not being described.  For example, I have used a location where I want to throw the player into a momentary panic by causing him to think that he has wandered into a dreaded "twisty little passages" maze (in fact, there is no maze).  The way I implemented this is by having a single room described as the desert.  I tell the player that the sand extends endlessly in all directions.  In fact, all directions except two lead right back to the same desert room.  To keep the illusion from being exposed too easily, I block any objects from being dropped, explaining that the shifting sands would cover up any dropped objects and they would be lost forever.  I also include a warning that the desert light sometimes plays tricks with the eyes, and a chance of  one of several mirages appearing during each turn the player is in the desert.  The effect is that the player seems to be wandering around in a vast desert until he chances upon one of the exits.  Obviously, this effect depends on [i]not[/i] telling the player where the exits are.

      Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2432&start=0#p16674
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Temporarily blocking an exit
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-11 20:00:40

Try something like this:

Instead of going east when the player is in the Seaboard:
     If the player is not wearing the bracer:
          Say "A hollow voice says 'Sure you jest!'";
     If the player is wearing the bracer:
          Continue the action.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2432&start=0#p16675
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Temporarily blocking an exit
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-11 20:12:53

This works for me:

[code]Instead of going east:
    If the player is in the Seaboard and the player is not wearing the bracer:
        say "Brecca laughs, 'You're not serious, are you?'";
    Otherwise:
        continue the action.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2432&start=0#p16676
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Temporarily blocking an exit
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-11 20:17:24

I just noticed that the indents didn't come through in the code I suggested.  For it to work, the second and fourth lines need to be indented one tab stop, and the third and fifth lines should be indented two tab stops.

     Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2432&start=0#p16677
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Temporarily blocking an exit
User: ladlehaus / DateTime: 2011-05-11 20:19:15

Thank you so much, Seeker and Robert!  I couldn't get it, but this works perfectly  [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2427&start=0#p16678
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Glimmr sizing and alignment standards?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-05-11 20:20:34

No problem--Glimmr is a complex modular system where each component builds on the next, so it's not necessarily the easiest beast to approach. I think the fact that you started out using Glimmr Drawing Commands has made learning it harder on you. Glimmr Drawing Commands is for experts only, and to use it independently of Canvas-Based Drawing, you would need to understand both Flexible Windows and the Glulx screen model pretty darn well. To quote from the Glimmr Drawing Commands documentation:

[quote="Glimmr Drawing Commands documentation"]A note on what GDC will *not* do: It does not:

1) Provide any window-drawing rule structure. Users will need to write their own window-drawing rules from scratch.
2) Scale drawing instructions down (or up) to fit in the window, though of course users can write their own code to do this.
3) Ensure that drawing instructions are properly ordered so as to "rebuild" the window whenever needed. (Because a Glulx window can be resized at any time by the player, the window-drawing rules for that window need to completely encapsulate the state of the window.)

For these reasons, GDC should be considered a low-level extension, mostly to be used by experts. Users wanting a robust solution that *does* handle all of the above points should use Glimmr Canvas-Based Drawing.[/quote]

The code you posted is running head-on into the difficulties mentioned in those three points. First, you are mixing direct drawing instructions with automated centering and scaling. This means that, while your scenery images are automatically scaled and centered in the window, your direct drawing instructions are not. The simple coordinates being passed to the box-drawing commands mean that those elements will always display in the same place no matter how the screen is resized. So, while the location image gets centered and scaled, allowing it to look good no matter how the game window is resized, the boxes and bitmaps are always drawn at the same coordinates and at the same size--they do not move or scale. They can be cut off or overlapped when the window is smaller than the size you wrote them for (both of which can be seen in one of your sample screenshots).

Another problem is that you are placing your drawing instructions inside "every turn" and "when play begins" rules. This won't work as expected--these instructions need to be in Flexible Windows's "window-drawing" rulebook to function properly. A Glulx window needs to be able to redraw itself whenever the window size changes, whether that's due to the user changing the size of the game window, or to the screen resolution changing, or to some other factor. If some of the instructions are hidden inside other rules, then the game won't have access to them when it tries to redraw the window. This is why putting drawing commands in "when play begins" fails miserably--most interpreters automatically redraw windows at least once when there are multiple windows to be laid out. When your drawing commands are in a when play begins rule, they fire once and then are immediately cleared when the window redraws.

What Glimmr Canvas-Based Drawing does is introduce the concept of the "canvas", which is essentially a separate coordinate system that can be stretched and centered to best fit in the shape and size of the graphics window. CBD also uses an object-oriented strategy to define the what gets drawn; instead of writing "draw a box...", you define a box object (a g-element) and define it using properties of the element. I think this system is fairly well described by the documentation for the CBD extension as well as the compass rose tutorial on the blog, so I won't elaborate beyond giving a little example, showing how to present the meters and the scenery image. Before trying this, get rid of your existing drawing instructions, and remove the image as the canvas background (the canvas background actually defines the size of the canvas, which isn't what's needed here). I haven't tested this, so there may be some issues, but it should give you an idea of how the code will be structured:

[code]The scenic-canvas is a g-canvas. The canvas-width of the scenic-canvas is 640. The canvas-height of the scenic-canvas is 190.

Table of Common Color Values (continued)
glulx color value	assigned number
meter-box-blue	200

A meter-box is a kind of box primitive. The associated canvas of a meter-box is the scenic-canvas. Some meter-boxes are defined by the Table of Meters.

Table of Meters
box primitive	origin	endpoint	tint	line-weight
Lucidity_box	{160, 10}	{170, 80}	meter-box-blue	2
Anxiety_box	{470, 10}	{480, 80}	meter-box-blue	2

The scenery-container is a sprite. The associated canvas is the scenic-canvas. The origin is {195, 0}. The image-ID is Figure of Bridge. [The size of the image file should be 250 pixels wide for this example to work.][/code]

Again, CBD will automatically scale and draw the elements to the window in proper relation to each other, no matter how the window is resized. Note, though, that you do need to define when it should be redrawn, e.g. "Every turn: refresh windows" or "Every turn: follow the window-drawing rules for the scenic-window."

To make changes to the elements, change their properties, then redraw the window, e.g.:

[code]After looking:
	now the image-ID of the scenery-container is the location-image of the location.

Every turn:
	refresh windows.[/code]

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2350&start=0#p16679
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On the nature of puzzles and immersion
User: gumby / DateTime: 2011-05-11 21:54:10

Capmikee, I'm thinking about what you said about walk-throughs, and about all the games that I started and never was able to finish - the Infocom ones.  When they first came out, I didn't have access to the Invisi-clues, and I ultimately put them down until an 'ah-ha' moment (if it ever came).

To this day, my brain is wired in such a way that I can pick up the same game that I dead-ended on way back in the 80's, and I'll dead-end the same way again.  It's frustrating, but I don't want to give up and go to a walk-through on these games.  But only these games.  Others (especially non-IF ones), I won't hesitate to stop the insanity and 'cheat'.  Like you said, once the floodgates are open, it's cheating from there on out.   

Has the appearance of the Internet made us lazy players?  Is the ease of an answer at our fingertips to much of a temptation?  Can we not handle the idea of failure when it comes to gaming?  I know that for gaming I have much less patience than I used to, so the idea appeals to me that a game should get easier as it progresses - which until I read this, the idea sounded insane to me.

In my opinion, make the game easier as it progresses.  Don't ruin the illusion of the world, don't let the player lose the immersion.  Make it so that 'cheating' is not necessary, but don't tip your hand that the game is getting easier; it's important to make the player feel like they are accomplishing something (seemingly difficult?) throughout the game to the end.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2433&start=0#p16680
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Setting up the player...?
User: tryguy / DateTime: 2011-05-11 21:58:26

Am I missing something?

[code]
The Prison Cell is a room.

Robert is a man in the Prison Cell.

A prison tattoo is a kind of thing. A prison tattoo is part of every man.
[/code]

When I play, everything goes as expected, just another person in the cell with Robert.

But if I have this instead:

[code]
The Prison Cell is a room.

Robert is a man in the Prison Cell. The player is Robert.

A prison tattoo is a kind of thing. A prison tattoo is part of every man.
[/code]

Then the tattoo doesn't appear in scope at all. It just disappears for some reason.

However if I define things like this:

[code]
The Prison Cell is a room.

Robert is a man in the Prison Cell. The player is Robert.

A tattoo is a kind of thing. A tattoo is part of every person.
[/code]

Then suddenly the tattoo comes back into scope and everything is fine and dandy again.

But I don't want to use the generic "person" for this at all. So... what's happening here? Is it a bug that hasn't been worked on yet? Can someone suggest a work around?

You see, I'm attempting to make a game with two possible protagonists, and a lot of things like this will be determined when the player chooses who to play. So, it's rather important.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2432&start=0#p16681
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Temporarily blocking an exit
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-11 23:20:27

Or just:

[code]
Instead of going east when the player is in the Seaboard and the player is not wearing the bracer:
	 say "Brecca laughs, 'You're not serious, are you?'";
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2350&start=0#p16682
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On the nature of puzzles and immersion
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-05-11 23:40:38

It's interesting that this is much more infrequently a problem in action games, even those that are more story- and puzzle-oriented (Deus Ex, Portal). I think this may be because action games tend to have dynamic environments that draw the player's attention to 'where things are happening' or 'where I haven't been yet', where after arriving whatever action is underway makes it clear what needs to be done. Adventure games tend to have static environments that don't change until the player figures out what to do. By their natures, a dynamic environment almost can't help but clue you in while a static environment is likely to leave you floundering unless very well-designed.

Of course, many action games also to avoid this issue by having exposition fairies tell you what to do, and adventure games tend to shun that approach. I'm not sure I could think of a long list of adventure games with an equivalent of Polito in System Shock 2.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2433&start=0#p16683
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting up the player...?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-12 02:15:56

I did notice when I last visited the bug tracker site (<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/my_view_page.php">http://inform7.com/mantis/my_view_page.php</a>) that there are some bugs in existence to do with setting up characters and making the player a particular character, as opposed to just setting up an entity called 'the player'.

And just now I noticed that your 2nd example, which doesn't work as you gave it, does work if you reorder the lines like this:

[code]The Prison Cell is a room.

A prison tattoo is a kind of thing. A prison tattoo is part of every man.

Robert is a man in the Prison Cell. The player is Robert.[/code]

I can't explain why exactly, but what I can say is I'm also working on a game where you have a choice of characters, and I haven't hit any show-stopping bugs even though I'm using the same method you are (create  characters, then make the player one of those characters), and I'm well into programming. So what you experienced may be a bug, or some subtlety I don't understand.

Also note that if you are giving a choice of characters in your game, after the player chooses, you will need to use the phrase 'now the player is (character)' during run-time to effect the change.

I have a feeling the bug here may grow out of saying  'the player is Robert' and its ordering in the code. Because another rewording of your 2nd example which also works to make the tattoo is this:

[code]The Prison Cell is a room.

Robert is a man in the Prison Cell.

When play begins: Now the player is Robert.

A prison tattoo is a kind of thing. A prison tattoo is part of every man.[/code]

- Wade

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2222&start=10#p16684
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Second Gender - The Extension
User: fredrik / DateTime: 2011-05-12 02:26:11

Interesting discussion. Just a few notes:

The original reason for writing the code to handle an object having two genders was the possibility of natural gender not being the same as linguistic gender.

I was confronted with "ett apelsin" when I moved to Västervik (which is not anywhere near Gothenburg), and I'm pretty sure I have seen SAOL (the Swedish reference dictionary to end all quarrels) state it can be either common gendered or neuter. But SAOL changes over the years too, so this may have changed.

I came to think of a really funny case in adjective infliction: "rädd" (scared) has no neuter form. So if you're trying to say "A scared child" in Swedish, you just can't - you need to choose some other word or phrasing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2433&start=0#p16685
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting up the player...?
User: tryguy / DateTime: 2011-05-12 03:49:44

Oh, thanks for the input, Wade.

There's a page in the manual (4.14) that talks about slight variation you get when the order of those lines are reversed, namely "your prison tattoo" becomes "Robert's prison tattoo". So, that's why I ended up defining things like that.

And, I strangely get... "your former self" when I test your second suggestion. So, that's a bit weird.

What I've been thinking of doing is to just define these things on the actual characters, rather than giving them out to everyone with one line. I'm not sure if that will make it more or less efficient, but I'm pretty sure I'll be able to avoid this issue that way.

I'm still going through the manual, testing this and that, and right now my "game" is filled with experiments, to test if ideas work.

I'm hoping to whip things into shape and start the actual story once I'm a bit more familiar with i7.

Thanks again, and I'll probably have some more questions at some point, so we'll maybe talk later. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2350&start=0#p16686
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On the nature of puzzles and immersion
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-05-12 04:53:09

[quote="gumby"]Capmikee, I'm thinking about what you said about walk-throughs[/quote]

I think I was the one to talk about walkthroughs.  [emote]:roll:[/emote] 

[quote]Has the appearance of the Internet made us lazy players?  Is the ease of an answer at our fingertips to much of a temptation?  Can we not handle the idea of failure when it comes to gaming?  I know that for gaming I have much less patience than I used to, [/quote]

Actually, I've just had a very interesting experience. I've just finished playing Leather Goddesses of Phobos, the Solid Gold version - i.e., the one with the hints built-in. I accessed the hints some times - the very first time just to make sure that I hadn't put myself in an unwinnable situation (that damn barge...). Other times when I thought I'd finished a puzzle and nothing happened (the orphanage puzzle). And many times I came *this* close to revealing hints for something I was stuck on... and I always stopped myself and said "not until I'm sure I can't work it out for myself".

And here's another interesting thing. If I'd been strapped to my PC, I would have given it up, and have most of the game unsolved. But I played it in ZaxMidlet, carrying it with me everywhere. Whenever I had some free time, I dabbled with it. I played it at different parts of the day, in different environments. Eventually, this relaxed state in a scavenger puzzlefest allowed me to solve practically all of the game by myself. Exceptions: the riddle, getting to the sultan's palace (but then, as I realised later, the barge WASN'T the only way to do it), opening the door to the igloo (AFTER having solved the puzzle - it's amazing how these little things thwart you), defeating the assassin, and of course I $CATACOMBed my way out of that maze as soon as I saw it. I'm not sorry, either - these were classic sticking points for me, and I'm pretty sure I would have been stuck in them too long for me to continue enjoying myself. The other puzzles? I had faith in them and in my abilities, and boy, neither disappointed.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2432&start=0#p16687
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Temporarily blocking an exit
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-05-12 04:58:56

Robert: To preserve indentation, you can use the forum's code tags.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2432&start=0#p16688
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Temporarily blocking an exit
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-12 06:43:38

Thanks, Trumgottist.  I gathered that there was a way to do that, but please pardon a very basic question:  How do I use the Code tag?  Do I just hit the Code button before typing in a slug of code and then hit it again at the end of the block?  Or is there more to it?

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2350&start=0#p16689
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On the nature of puzzles and immersion
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-12 07:08:30

A couple of personal observations:

     1.  If you have a friend who's also into IF, playing together can be productive.  Different people think in different ways, and a puzzle which seems impossible to you might be obvious to somebody else; even if its not obvious, by bringing different insights to the table you're more likely to reach the solution before frustration drives you to give it up.  The aphorism that "two heads are better than one" works here.

     2.  Early IF was often more free-form than some  more modern work.  Even if you ultimately had to do things in a particular order to "win" the game, in the early stages typically a number of puzzles presented themselves and if you got stumped on one you could always turn your attention to another for a while.  Thus, it was more likely that you could maintain a sense of making progress.  Later on, when you come back to the puzzle you temporarily abandoned, you might have learned additional things in the interim which help you solve it; even if not, just the exercise of clearing your mind by turning to something else might allow you to get an idea that you never thought of originally.  The more linear the plot structure, the less ability you have to do this, and the greater the likelihood of frustration.

     3.  To me, a "great" puzzle has the following characteristics:  You try some ideas; they don't work.  You try more things.  Eventually, you reach the point where you're tearing your hair out and cursing the day the author was born.  Eventually, you either solve it by brute force or you resort to the cheatbook.  And at that point, as soon as you get the answer, you hit yourself on the side of the head and say "Of course, it was so obvious!  I must have been an idiot not to see it!"

     Of course, I would not want to play a game where every puzzle was "great" in this sense.  I want a number of puzzles of varying levels of difficulty.  One "great" puzzle per game seems about right.

     What's a "terrible" puzzle?  It's just like a "great" puzzle until you get the solution -- at which point you either still don't understand it, or you do understand it but conclude that there was no way the player could have reasonably been expected to figure it out other than brute force or looking at the cheatbook.

     Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2350&start=0#p16690
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On the nature of puzzles and immersion
User: gumby / DateTime: 2011-05-12 07:18:23

[quote="Peter Pears"][quote="gumby"]Capmikee, I'm thinking about what you said about walk-throughs[/quote]

I think I was the one to talk about walkthroughs.  [emote]:roll:[/emote] 

[/quote]
Of course.  My apologies  [emote]:oops:[/emote] 

[quote="Peter Pears"]
Actually, I've just had a very interesting experience. I've just finished playing Leather Goddesses of Phobos, the Solid Gold version - i.e., the one with the hints built-in. I accessed the hints some times - the very first time just to make sure that I hadn't put myself in an unwinnable situation (that damn barge...). Other times when I thought I'd finished a puzzle and nothing happened (the orphanage puzzle). And many times I came *this* close to revealing hints for something I was stuck on... and I always stopped myself and said "not until I'm sure I can't work it out for myself".

And here's another interesting thing. If I'd been strapped to my PC, I would have given it up, and have most of the game unsolved. But I played it in ZaxMidlet, carrying it with me everywhere. Whenever I had some free time, I dabbled with it. I played it at different parts of the day, in different environments. Eventually, this relaxed state in a scavenger puzzlefest allowed me to solve practically all of the game by myself. Exceptions: the riddle, getting to the sultan's palace (but then, as I realised later, the barge WASN'T the only way to do it), opening the door to the igloo (AFTER having solved the puzzle - it's amazing how these little things thwart you), defeating the assassin, and of course I $CATACOMBed my way out of that maze as soon as I saw it. I'm not sorry, either - these were classic sticking points for me, and I'm pretty sure I would have been stuck in them too long for me to continue enjoying myself. The other puzzles? I had faith in them and in my abilities, and boy, neither disappointed.[/quote]
Interesting.  I hadn't considered that the platform would assist with the avoidance of peeking for a hint.  Perhaps it might be sufficient to make hints difficult enough to obtain to keep the player playing & not peeking.  There have been attempts at this in the past, where a small hint is given and then it's a matter of escalation (in various forms), but on the internet it seems that some things cannot be kept hidden.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2432&start=0#p16691
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Temporarily blocking an exit
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-05-12 07:27:09

I usually just hit the code button, which pastes the tags "code" and "/code" (surrounded by brackets) into the message. Then I copy and paste the code from the IDE between the tags.

The other method is to copy and paste the code first, then select it using the mouse. Then when you hit the code button, it will automatically place the proper tags around the selected text.

Edited to add: If you can help it (i.e. you're at a computer with I7 installed), don't just type the code in -- the tabs won't be preserved. Paste it from the IDE. (This works on windows and presumably mac -- I don't know about the various Linux versions.) In addition to preserving the tabs, it insures you won't make a typo. If it compiles in your IDE, the pasted version should compile for others. Note also that for pasting code [i]from[/i] the forum [i]back into[/i] the IDE, you'll need to follow Matt W's instructions [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2268&p=15511&hilit=paste#p15511]here[/url]:
[quote="matt w"]If you copy someone's code directly from the post, the tabs will convert to spaces, which means Inform won't read them; but if you hit "reply" and copy the code from their quoted post, you usually will preserve the tabs.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2222&start=10#p16692
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Second Gender - The Extension
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-05-12 07:29:12

[quote="fredrik"]The original reason for writing the code to handle an object having two genders was the possibility of natural gender not being the same as linguistic gender.[/quote]
That's probably the use it can be put to in English. As for IF in languages with two (or more) grammatical genders, it might also be useful when the author wants to provide a synonym for an object and thereby ends up with two words with different genders for the same thing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2350&start=0#p16693
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On the nature of puzzles and immersion
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-05-12 08:00:16

Rothman: I always found the experience of IF most enjoyable as a single player, but that's just me (and I do realise I'm a minority in this). As regards your other two points - 100% beyond you. In fact, those points sum up why I had so much FUN with both Hollywood Hijinx and Leather Goddesses. And Sorcerer, come to think of it. Aw heck, and most Infocom titles I've played so far.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2434&start=0#p16694
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Save & Restore
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-05-12 08:12:12

How do I code something as simple as Save or Restore? I can't find any references that have examples.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2434&start=0#p16695
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Save & Restore
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-05-12 08:28:46

You haven't said which authoring system, but since your other posts were about Inform 7, I'll assume that. The good news is that you don't need to do anything: save and restore functionality comes for free (as is the case in nearly all authoring systems).

Note that the game tab in the Inform 7 front-end doesn't provide a working save/restore, as it wouldn't make sense here: a save file is a complete snapshot of the internal state of the game, so save files aren't compatible across different versions of the same game. If you click the 'Release' button and run the resulting Z-code or Glulx game file in one of the many interpreters, you'll find save and restore should work fine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2434&start=0#p16696
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Save & Restore
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-05-12 08:37:59

Based on your other posts, it looks like you're using Inform 7. The built - in "Saving the game" action translates directly into an i6 action for saving. I think the actual saving / restoring mechanism is handled by the interpreter. What specifically are you trying to do? If you're just trying to change the message printed when saving the game, that should be relatively easy. Trying to do something like have the game automatically create save points will be more difficult.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2433&start=0#p16697
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting up the player...?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-12 08:41:08

[quote="tryguy"]There's a page in the manual (4.14) that talks about slight variation you get when the order of those lines are reversed, namely "your prison tattoo" becomes "Robert's prison tattoo". So, that's why I ended up defining things like that.

And, I strangely get... "your former self" when I test your second suggestion. So, that's a bit weird.[/quote]

On the first point, you can change the printed name of Robert's prison tattoo to "your prison tattoo."

By default (that is, if you don't have a line like "The player is Robert" in your source code) Inform defines a "yourself" object as the player -- your typical undefined IF protagonist. If you then say "Now the player is Robert" the "yourself" object is still hanging around. The solution is to remove the yourself object from play after turning the player into Robert -- I forget the exact formulation I used to test it, but I think "Now yourself is off-stage" works, or maybe "Remove yourself from play." 

So I'd do this:

[code]When play begins:
   now the player is Robert;
   now the printed name of Robert's prison tattoo is "your prison tattoo";
   now yourself is off-stage.[/code]

Oh, and given the advice in 4.14 to define the player as early as possible, I think the behavior of your original code should probably be reported as a bug.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2350&start=0#p16698
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On the nature of puzzles and immersion
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-12 09:25:46

[quote="Peter Pears"] and of course I $CATACOMBed my way out of that maze as soon as I saw it. I'm not sorry, either - these were classic sticking points for me, and I'm pretty sure I would have been stuck in them too long for me to continue enjoying myself. The other puzzles? I had faith in them and in my abilities, and boy, neither disappointed.[/quote]
I think I used hints too much with LGOP. The riddle was one of those puzzles where I thought to myself "I [i]swear[/i] I already tried that one" - it was so obvious, and yet so cruel. But the catacombs - I think perhaps they were the most tedious maze ever invented. Nevertheless, I bullied my way through them without cheating. I have an inexplicable compulsion to carefully map mazes, and make sure I've visited every room. Having a partial map made it seem more reasonable, and I did a lot of copy-and-paste with long sets of commands.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2412&start=0#p16699
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7 coding question! pleez HALP!
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-12 09:36:15

Which is why I like it. Contrary to complaints from a couple vociferous individuals, I like I7 more and more. You only write code once, but you have to read it over and over.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2431&start=0#p16700
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Possession in i7?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-12 09:46:21

I7 has come under fire before for its handling of pronouns. I've heard that TADS 3 handles them better, although I don't know what it does with possessive pronouns. There are a couple extensions on the inform7 site that might help, but I have no idea what they do. Have a look at Plurality by Emily Short (built-in) and Pronouns by Ron Newcomb.

It may be necessary to extend their behavior to do what you want though, and I would be cautious about doing it. The parser is designed to accept as many commands as possible, so if a command is worded in a funny way, but it could possibly match [i]something[/i] it will probably be accepted. "My" does have meaning in some cases:

[code]Test is a room.

A widget is a kind of thing. There are two widgets in Test.

test me with "take widget/take my widget/take widget"[/code]
[quote]
>[1] take widget
Taken.

>[2] take my widget
You already have that.

>[3] take widget
Taken.
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2350&start=10#p16701
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On the nature of puzzles and immersion
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-12 09:57:33

[quote="gumby"]There have been attempts at this in the past, where a small hint is given and then it's a matter of escalation (in various forms), but on the internet it seems that some things cannot be kept hidden.[/quote]

I really like gradually revealed hints, culminating after ten hints or so in a conclusion. Jim Aikin's hint systems are always superb in this way. Sometimes just seeing the hint topic will get me going by reminded me that I haven't investigated some object, sometimes I need to see the whole thing (as in one puzzle from "A Flustered Duck" where the next-to-last hint was

[spoiler]"How do you turn left when you're on a surfboard?"[/spoiler]

to which my answer was "I have absolutely no idea"). And of course different people will have different reactions to those puzzles. Making hints difficult to access doesn't work for me -- the point-and-click game Machinarium did this, where you could get a complete walkthrough for a screen by playing a platform game that was so frustrating that I just looked for hints on the internet. 

I like Robert's definition of great and terrible puzzles. And I think Egon makes an interesting point about action games. For me, the thing about action games is that I often get the sense that I'm closer to my goal when I fail, so I'll try again to get more practice. With IF, when I'm stuck I'm just stuck, and I can feel that I'm making no progress whatsoever. (Though I often get just plain stuck in action games, too.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2432&start=0#p16702
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Temporarily blocking an exit
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-12 10:06:13

Of course the third method is just to type (bracket)code(bracket) and (bracket)/code(bracket). [emote]:D[/emote]

[quote="ladlehaus"][code]Before going east:
	If the player is in the Seaboard:
		unless the player is wearing the bracer:
			Instead of going east:
				say "Brecca laughs, 'You're not serious, are you?'"[/code]

This will compile, but it prevents the player from going east at all.
[/quote]
It might be helpful to know why this code doesn't work. "Instead" has two meanings. One is the name of a rulebook (The Instead rules) and the other is a keyword meaning (approximately) "exit the current rulebook with a failure outcome."

It looks like you were attempting to use the latter form, but that form can't take a condition in the same way that a "rule preamble" does. I think the compiler interpreted "Instead of going east" as a rule preamble defining an Instead rule that applies when going east. It's a little weird that this compiled at all, and I'd almost say that was a bug in the compiler. But you can see what happened when you look at the going action in the Actions Index. There are two rules created, not one:

[quote]before    going east   

instead of    going east   
[/quote]

To use "instead" as a keyword within a rule, you could have done this:
[code]Before going east:
	If the player is in the Seaboard:
		unless the player is wearing the bracer:
			instead say "Brecca laughs, 'You're not serious, are you?'";[/code]
You can put this form of "instead" before or after a [i]phrase[/i] (i.e. an instruction to do something), but not a [i]condition[/i] (i.e. an "if statement").

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2433&start=0#p16703
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting up the player...?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-12 10:20:23

Yes, report that as a bug. "A tattoo is part of every man" ought to work in this case.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2222&start=10#p16704
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Second Gender - The Extension
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-12 10:29:25

[quote="Felix"][quote="fredrik"]The original reason for writing the code to handle an object having two genders was the possibility of natural gender not being the same as linguistic gender.[/quote]
That's probably the use it can be put to in English. As for IF in languages with two (or more) grammatical genders, it might also be useful when the author wants to provide a synonym for an object and thereby ends up with two words with different genders for the same thing.[/quote]
This reminds me of something I've encountered frequently in I7 - synonyms that have different [i]number[/i] from the main noun. e.g.:

[code]The crowd is a person. Understand "people" as the crowd.[/code]

Although it's usually acceptable to allow either number to refer to the object, sometimes I wish it were possible to apply number (or gender) to a particular synonym only. It might help with disambiguation in some cases.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2142&start=20#p16705
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Real-time parsing I7 demo
User: Minkovsky / DateTime: 2011-05-12 12:16:47

>[i]get the fucking goat[/i]

And it crashed... (web version)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2423&start=0#p16706
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: 'Give' and Possessives
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-05-12 13:25:09

The [url=http://bugdb.tads.org/view.php?id=103]giveMeToAskFor bug[/url] will be fixed in the 3.1 release.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2423&start=0#p16707
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: 'Give' and Possessives
User: Morana / DateTime: 2011-05-12 13:49:12

Thank you for reporting the bug, bcressey. Also, kudos to Michael Roberts for addressing the matter so quickly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2430&start=0#p16708
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Geocaching and IF combined
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-05-12 15:50:45

Huh.  Is this a major rewrite of a game that was betaed a year or so ago, or is this just a second geocaching game with waterfalls and Japanese gardens and parks?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2433&start=0#p16709
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting up the player...?
User: tryguy / DateTime: 2011-05-12 18:53:09

I submitted a bug report.

Also, the last version of code does exactly what I was wanting, so I'm going to use it as is. I didn't think to manually correct things like that. But I'll definitely keep it in mind when I come across similar things. [emote]:)[/emote]

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2431&start=0#p16710
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Possession in i7?
User: tryguy / DateTime: 2011-05-12 19:01:34

Haha, thanks for going to that much trouble. [emote];)[/emote]

My game is very bare-bones right now, so I'm not that surprised it doesn't do everything that I'd expect.

And by the sounds of it, maybe things like this will be handled in extensions at some point. I won't look into those until I've finished the manual though.

From my limited play, I have noticed some other things I'd like to (eventually) customize, and I'm writing them down, just in case I see something to fix it. [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2350&start=10#p16711
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On the nature of puzzles and immersion
User: Sig / DateTime: 2011-05-13 00:11:10

I'm almost ashamed to say how often I get stuck in action games because I can't figure out where to go next.  Only happened a few times in Portal, but I seem to have real problems with things like Half-Life 2.  You'd think I would notice everything important playing on a 22" widescreen, but you'd be wrong.  I do better in some respects with text adventures because I'm able to read and re-read and pick apart the sentences in a way I can't do as easily (or at least, without getting bored) with a graphical game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2284&start=0#p16712
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you look for in your IF?
User: Sig / DateTime: 2011-05-13 00:13:51

I like the same thing I like in most of my entertainment: compelling characters and a compelling story.

(Full disclosure: I just spent an hour playing Left 4 Dead 2, which has compelling dismemberment but not so much the other things.  This is an exception to the general rule.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2433&start=0#p16713
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting up the player...?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-13 09:12:36

[quote="matt w"]On the first point, you can change the printed name of Robert's prison tattoo to "your prison tattoo."[/quote]
If the player changes more than once during the game, it might be safer to use a rule like this:

[code]Rule for printing the name of a prison tattoo which is part of the player:
	say "your prison tattoo"
	
Understand "my" and "mine" as a thing when the item described is part of the player.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2430&start=0#p16714
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Geocaching and IF combined
User: jcharra / DateTime: 2011-05-13 10:09:32

@emshort: Darn, I knew I couldn't possibly the first to think of that. [emote];)[/emote] Thanks for mentioning those. They look better than mine ... maybe I'll polish mine a little more. [emote]:)[/emote]

@gravel: No, pure coincidence, apparently. [emote]:)[/emote] Where did you see the other one?

Regards,
Johannes

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2435&start=0#p16715
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Something new as a synonym target
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-13 10:54:06

I want the keyword "open" to be used with some words to mean attacking, but not all:
[code]Test is a room.

There is an egg in test.

Understand the commands "crack" and "break" as something new.
Understand the command "crack" as "break".

Understand "break [something]" as attacking.
Understand "break open [something]" as attacking.
Understand "break [something] open" as attacking.[/code]
Unfortunately, this doesn't compile unless I remove "break" from the "something new" line.

Now I suppose that wouldn't be the worst thing, but I don't really want to interpret ATTACK OPEN EGG as a valid command (unless the egg is already broken, maybe). Should I just allow it, or try to fix this problem? And how?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2435&start=0#p16716
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Something new as a synonym target
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-13 11:05:45

I figured it out: it's all about the order. The "something new" has to come before the grammar lines, but the synonym assignment has to come after:

[code]Test is a room.

There is an egg in test.

Understand the commands "crack" and "break" as something new.

Understand "break [something]" as attacking.
Understand "break open [something]" as attacking.
Understand "break [something] open" as attacking.

Understand the command "crack" as "break".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2435&start=0#p16717
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Something new as a synonym target
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-05-13 11:12:03

You may want to make this a suggestion for a manual update. (Assuming they're interested in manual updates....)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2435&start=0#p16718
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Something new as a synonym target
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-05-13 11:52:19

Agreed w/Jim. If that's not in the documentation, it should be.  I say submit a bug, but leave it open as to whether the compiler or docs need changing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2433&start=0#p16719
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting up the player...?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-05-13 11:57:32

Isn't the "yourself" object declared as a Person, rather than the more specific Man, hence the scope problem in the original post?  "People" don't have tattoos, only men do, and the player isn't a man.  This was the first thing that popped into my head, anyway.   ::shrug::

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2284&start=10#p16720
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you look for in your IF?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-05-13 12:11:56

[quote="Sig"]I like the same thing I like in most of my entertainment: compelling characters and a compelling story.

(Full disclosure: I just spent an hour playing Left 4 Dead 2, which has compelling dismemberment but not so much the other things.  This is an exception to the general rule.)[/quote]

I prefer compelling characters and story in my IF, but there has to be some agency / interaction / whatchamacallit too, else it's just a failed book.   I look for very different things in my videogames than IF.  Since videogames are primarily spatial, and facial expressions & lip sync are so difficult to get right, I really don't ask for such from them.  Yet. 

I need to try out Dragon Age.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2433&start=0#p16721
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting up the player...?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-13 12:16:24

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Isn't the "yourself" object declared as a Person, rather than the more specific Man, hence the scope problem in the original post?  "People" don't have tattoos, only men do, and the player isn't a man.  This was the first thing that popped into my head, anyway.   ::shrug::[/quote]

If you type "showme robert" or "showme me" you get "yourself - man," though. ("showme yourself" yields your former self, which is a person, but that shouldn't obviously affect Robert's properties.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2142&start=20#p16722
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Real-time parsing I7 demo
User: joningold / DateTime: 2011-05-13 13:50:01

[quote="Minkovsky"]>[i]get the fucking goat[/i]

And it crashed... (web version)[/quote]

Yeah? Darn it. 

I couldn't replicate it here (and I don't know how you managed to type that in, anyway, since pressing SPACE after the unrecognised word will change it to SLOPING. Did you use Escape?)

Any error code displayed?

jon

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2430&start=0#p16723
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Geocaching and IF combined
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-05-13 14:27:05

Geoquest: it's one of the links Emily posted.  .  
 
Is there a squirrel?  If so, then I will be officially weirded out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2436&start=0#p16724
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Examine scenery, place person
User: Legba / DateTime: 2011-05-13 15:26:19

Hi,

I'm getting into writing my first IF game; a small detective story that let's me muck about, write something (hopefully) fun and learn how this Inform 7 malakey works. So far I've managed to brute-force my way through any coding problems, but I'm stumped by this one, and figured maybe someone here would be able to offer some suggestions.

In my game, most NPCs aren't readily available to talk to. You have to examine scenery, and then you take note of them. This is what I wrote to account for this, which has worked pretty well:

[code]An NPC is a kind of person. An NPC is usually scenery. Before examining NPC (called the target): Now the target is not scenery.

The gambling den is a room with the description "The den is a single open hall, packed with gamblers."

Harry Balls is a male NPC in the gambling den with the description "[one of]The gamblers stare intently at their cards; a single older gentleman catches your eye.[or]An affable older gentleman reclines with his cards held almost disparagingly in front of him.[stop]" Understand "gambler", "gamblers", "approachable", "approachable gambler" as Harry Balls. Harry Balls has the printed name "an approachable gambler".[/code]

In conversation, he'll give his name which will change the printed name to Harry Balls.

There are a couple of problems with this code. First off, what if the player wants to examine the other gamblers after Harry makes an appearance? Second, I don't want the key to the walkthrough to be 'enter the gambling den and type "talk to Harry",' when there is no Harry there. Without the step of finding Harry that'll just seem really cheap.

So I'm trying to write a piece of code that will link an NPC to a piece of scenery; the NPC will be off-stage until the player examines the scenery, at which point he'll be placed in the room.

I've tried a bunch of different ways of doing things, and here's what I've got right now:

[code]NPC grabber is a kind of thing. NPC grabber has a person called designated NPC. An NPC grabber is usually scenery.

After examining the NPC grabber (called the target):
If designated NPC is off-stage:
Say "[paragraph break]A [designated NPC] catches your eye.";
Move the designated NPC to the target.

Gambling den is a room.

Gamblers are an NPC grabber in the Gambling den with the description "The gamblers stare intently at their cards." The designated NPC of gamblers is Harry Balls.

Harry Balls is a man with the description "yo." [/code]

But that doesn't seem to work. Can someone help me figure this one out, or show me how to write something that will do what I want?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2436&start=0#p16725
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Examine scenery, place person
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-13 16:10:48

A couple of thoughts (and I'm sure the people who really know will correct me):

With regard to your first block of code, I don't think you can change the kind of a thing (from scenery to not scenery).

With regard to your second block of code, I think this basic approach may work.  However, this form of "if" statement requires indentation for the various lines which are subject to the "if" condition.  Also, you tried to move the designated NPC to the "target."  However, "target" is defined as the piece of scenery.  I think what you need to do is move the designated NPC to the room which contains the target.

      Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2436&start=0#p16726
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Examine scenery, place person
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-05-13 16:15:45

You're almost there. You just have to tell Inform exactly what designated NPC you want to move (viz. the designated NPC of the NPC grabber in question). Do this:
[code]After examining the NPC grabber (called the target):
	if the designated NPC of the target is off-stage:
		say "[paragraph break]A [designated NPC] catches your eye.";
		move the designated NPC of the target to the location of the target.
[/code]
You'll  also want to move him to the location of the gamblers (i.e. the gambling den) rather than to the piece of scenery that is the gamblers, or you won't see him in the room when you LOOK.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2437&start=0#p16727
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Adjacency, a rant about documentation
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-13 16:41:22

Why is it so hard to find out if two rooms are adjacent when there is a door between them?

I spent at least 30 minutes trying to find something in the Documentation. Eventually I found section 6.14 (in the chapter on Descriptions????) but it still doesn't answer my question - it just tells me I'll be stuck at the door again.

I know there's a handy phrase for dealing with this, but why is it so hard to find?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2436&start=0#p16728
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Examine scenery, place person
User: Legba / DateTime: 2011-05-13 17:12:49

Thanks for the help, guys! That worked like a charm.

[quote="Robert Rothman"]With regard to your first block of code, I don't think you can change the kind of a thing (from scenery to not scenery).[/quote]

It took a bit of iteration, but the code I use works perfectly fine. It's not exactly what I needed, but I could see it being a useful trick in other situations.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2427&start=0#p16729
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Glimmr sizing and alignment standards?
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-05-13 17:14:37

Alright, here's a screen shot of how it looks now:
[url]http://imageshack.us/m/96/9964/screentgw.jpg[/url]

I pretty much re-wrote the code since my last post with the tips given, and works it great! I think I get the mechanics better now, and I'll worry about repositioning the bars later. The scenic image doesn't glitch when resizing either. Awesome.

I'm afraid I'm going to need a bit more help though. I'm trying to get the words into it using the same template as the box table. The problem is that I really am not sure how to refer to the painting of the bitmap text. I tried using "A stat-word is a kind of bitmap text." and it didn't accept that. Then, I removed the word "text" and it compiled, but from there I don't know exactly what to put in my table.

When attempting something like:

[code]A stat-word is a kind of bitmap. The associated canvas of stat-word is the scenic-canvas. Some stat-words are defined by the Table of Stats.

Table of Stats
bitmap text	origin	tint		line-weight
Lucidity_text	{500, 10}	lucid-blue		2
Anxiety_text	{500, 80}	lucid-blue		2
[/code]

I end up with this:
[code]*** Couldn't read from entry 1 of a list which is empty ***

*** Run-time problem P50: Attempt to use list item which does not exist.

*** Couldn't read from entry 1 of a list which is empty ***
[/code]

I think if I just knew what variables I should be using I'll be OK. Or, perhaps I'm going about adding this text completely wrong! 

Thanks again for your help, Erik.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2436&start=0#p16730
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Examine scenery, place person
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-05-13 17:24:48

[quote="Robert Rothman"]With regard to your first block of code, I don't think you can change the kind of a thing (from scenery to not scenery).[/quote]
Scenery isn't a kind but a property, so you can switch it on and off during the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=180#p16731
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-05-13 17:38:36

[quote="Robert Rothman"]
I was first introduced to Adventure while a student at Cornell University in the mid-1970s.  I spent many nights in a computer terminal room, typing commands and reading the responses that were printed out on a long roll of paper (CRT monitors were pretty rare in those days).  To this day I take pride in having slain the dragon with the very first command I tried.[/quote]
Wow! That must have been a magical experience indeed.  I can only imagine. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2436&start=0#p16732
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Examine scenery, place person
User: Legba / DateTime: 2011-05-13 17:59:16

Thanks again for the help, guys. I just figured I'd show the updated version; the "A [designated NPC] catches your eye" line didn't sit well with me, since it didn't allow for any individuality in the first impression; which as anyone will tell you, is important!

So now my test game looks like this:

[code]"test" by Emanuel Nordrum

A person has a text called first impression. The first impression is usually "[the noun] catches your eye."

NPC grabber is a kind of thing. An NPC grabber has an person called the designated NPC. An NPC grabber is usually scenery.

After examining the NPC grabber (called the target):
	if the designated NPC of the target is off-stage:
		say "[the first impression of the designated NPC of the target]";
		move the designated NPC of the target to the location of the target.
      		
Gambling den is a room with the description "loads of gamblers here."

Gamblers is an NPC grabber in the Gambling den with the description "description of gamblers". The designated NPC of Gamblers is Harry.

Harry is an man with the description "Harry's description." Harry has the first impression "Harry's first impression."[/code]

Inform 7 can be really daunting when you get started, but I have to say, it's incredibly satisfying to get these things working.

Of course, saying this, I've just realised that [the noun] calls on Gamblers in this example, not on Harry as it's supposed to. [the person] doesn't work, nor [the noun of the person]. Any suggestions?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2438&start=0#p16733
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Spring Thing: Voting nearly finished
User: gregb / DateTime: 2011-05-13 17:59:33

There's just a couple more days to vote on the six games in this year's
Spring Thing. The deadline for voting is Sunday, May 15 (at 11:59
pm EDT).

To download the games and find out all the details, visit:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.springthing.net/2011/">http://www.springthing.net/2011/</a>

To vote, please visit:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.springthing.net/2011/#vote">http://www.springthing.net/2011/#vote</a>

Email your votes to me at:
greg@springthing.X, where X = net

For details, see also:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.springthing.net/2011/rules.htm#rulesforjudges">http://www.springthing.net/2011/rules.h ... sforjudges</a>

Greg

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2436&start=0#p16734
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Examine scenery, place person
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-13 18:18:22

For this kind of thing you want "[the item described]"; when you're dealing with a property of something like its printed name or description, "the item described" gives you the thing you're talking about. It's like "the noun" for things that aren't being called from actions, if that makes sense. [EDITED in a vain attempt to make that make more sense.]

Oddly, the "item described" token seems to be first documented in section 5.14, which is a review section, but it's very useful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2436&start=0#p16735
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Examine scenery, place person
User: Legba / DateTime: 2011-05-13 18:33:27

Fantastic. I should have started asking questions weeks ago.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2439&start=0#p16736
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: A question about regions
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-13 19:48:55

Is there a way to give a "Usually" property to all the rooms in a region?  So that it applies to all rooms unless a specific room is listed differently.

Example (not working of course):

[code]A room can be indoors or outdoors.

The South Beaches is a region.
A room in the South Beaches is usually outdoors.

----the stuff that happens in this region----

The hut is a room.  The hut is in the South Beaches. The hut is indoors.

----the stuff that happens in the hut----

The Caves is a region.
A room in the Caves is usually indoors.

----all the stuff that happens in this region----

etc.
[/code]

I know I can make all rooms usually outdoors, and just remember to add the "Room X is indoors" where needed.  But some regions have almost all indoor rooms, and others have almost all outdoor rooms.  Something like this would make it easier.

Or if I put each region into its own chapter, could I just declare "A room is usually outdoors" (or indoors) on a chapter by chapter basis instead of doing it by region?

I hope that makes sense.  

Any ideas?

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2437&start=0#p16737
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Adjacency, a rant about documentation
User: George / DateTime: 2011-05-13 20:16:41

I don't recall where I saw this in the docs to be honest, I think I just extrapolated from adjacency. 

[code]
adjacent-by-doors relates a room (called A) to a room (called B) when A encloses a door (called D) and the other side of D from A is B. The verb to be adjacent-by-doors to implies the adjacent-by-doors relation.

Definition: a room is adjacent-using-doors:
	if it is adjacent-by-doors to the location, yes;
	if it is adjacent to the location, yes;
	no.
[/code]

I'm not sure if that's an effective way of solving the issue, but hope it helps.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2427&start=0#p16739
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Glimmr sizing and alignment standards?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-05-13 21:42:35

Glad to hear you're on the move again! 

You are looking for a "bitmap-rendered string", which is a painted text rendered that uses a bitmap for each letter. A "bitmap," as you hit on by trail and error, is not text-painting--a bitmap is a pixel-by-pixel rendering. Your table, because it refers to "bitmap texts", doesn't actually define the bitmaps, and so you get errors. Here's the right set-up:

[code]A stat-word is a kind of bitmap-rendered string. The associated canvas of a stat-word is the scenic-canvas. [The associated font of a stat-word is Glimmr C&C.[If you've only included the one font extension (Glimmr Bitmap Font), you shouldn't need to specify this.]] Some stat-words are defined by the Table of Stats.

Table of Stats
bitmap-rendered string	origin	tint	bit-size	text-string
Lucidity_text	{500, 10}	lucid-blue	2	"Lucidity"
Anxiety_text	{500, 80}	lucid-blue	2	"Anxiety"[/code]

But there's no reason to try to do this using trial-and-error! Glimmr Canvas-Based Drawing, like all the other Glimmr extensions, comes with extensive documentation that explains the kinds of graphic elements and their properties. In the Documentation tab in the IDE, look right below the table of contents for the Writing with Inform manual, look for the link to "Installed Extensions". Click on that, scroll down to the Erik Temple section, and finally click on Glimmr Canvas-Based Drawing link. The table of contents there indicates that Chapter 4 is the place to look for descriptions of all the graphic elements. Here's the section that introduces rendered strings:

[quote="Glimmr documentation"][b]Section 4.5: Rendered strings[/b]

A rendered string is a graphic element that renders an indexed text string graphically. The string is read character by character from the element's "text string" property, and each character is drawn to the screen using either an image file or a bitmap. Note that rendered strings are not accessible to screen readers.

Rendered strings need to have a font specified in their "associated font" property in order to function... Two fonts are available with Glimmr (Glimmr Image Font and Glimmr Bitmap Font)... [The font will probably be set automatically for you if you've included the Glimmr Bitmap Font.]

...There are two types of rendered string:

	[i]Bitmap-rendered string[/i] - Each glyph is drawn as a bitmap; that is, with individual pixels or 'bits' drawn directly to the screen by Glimmr.
	[i]Image-rendered string[/i] - Each glyph is drawn using a separate, external image file, preferably in PNG format.[/quote]

Chapter 11 of the documentation provides a complete reference to all of the properties of each type. I've spoilered the sections on bitmap rendered texts here to save space:

[spoiler][b]Section 11.9: Summary of the properties of rendered strings[/b]

This section presents a list of the properties associated with rendered strings. Properties which the extension uses internally, and should not be referred to by the author, are marked with a double asterisk (**). All rendered strings also inherit the properties common to the g-element kind (see above for those properties).

Note that the alignment property functions differently for rendered strings than for other g-elements. For center-aligned and right-aligned rendered strings, the origin is always located along the upper edge of the element; not at the center or the bottom edge.

[list][i]associated font[/i] - a font object, which is the font that should be used to draw the rendered text element. A bitmap-rendered text must use a bitmap font, and an image-rendered font an image font.
[i]text-string[/i] - an indexed text containing the string to be rendered by the element. Default value: "" (empty string, no output)
[i]tint[/i] - a glulx color value (see the Glulx Text Effects extension) that defines the color of the letterforms and cursor of a bitmap-rendered string; defines only the cursor color of an image-rendered string. Default value: g-White
[i]background tint[/i] - a glulx color value (see the Glulx Text Effects extension) that defines the color of the background of the rendered string element. Will be drawn as a single block of color behind the letterforms. Default value: g-PlaceNullCol (null, no background will appear)
[i]cursor[/i] - a number defining the position of the cursor in the display of the rendered string. The cursor is only displayed when this property is 0 or higher. The cursor wil placed immediately after the string position; i.e., when cursor is 1, the cursor will be positioned immediately after the first character in the string. Default value: -99 (no cursor displayed)[/list:u]

[b]Section 11.10: Summary of the properties of bitmap-rendered strings[/b]

This section presents a list of the properties associated with bitmap-rendered strings. These are more or less equivalent to the properties of bitmap elements. Properties which the extension uses internally, and should not be referred to by the author, are marked with a double asterisk (**). All bitmap-rendered strings also inherit the properties common to the g-element and rendered string kinds (see above for those properties).

[list][i]bit-size[/i] - the size, relative to the canvas, of each bit in the bitmaps of the associated font's letterforms. For example, a bit-size of 2 will be two units wide and two units high. The bit-size is subject to scaling both by the scaling factor (or x-scaling factor) of the rendered-string, and by the window scaling factor. Default value: 1
[i]dot-size**[/i] - the final display size of each bit in the bitmaps of the associated font's letterforms, measured in pixels as output on-screen. Default value: 1[/list:u][/spoiler]

Finally, the examples show the different types of g-element in action: "Simpler Buttons" and "Deal Me In" both use bitmap-rendered strings.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2439&start=0#p16740
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A question about regions
User: Blecki / DateTime: 2011-05-13 22:00:28

Specifying a property each time you declare a room is simple : Beach is an outdoors room. 
Or you could create a new kind : An outdoor room is a kind of room. An outdoor room is always outdoors. Beach is an outdoor room. Better grammar, but not any better.

This might work for you, though.

[code]
"test" by Blecki

A region can be indoor or outdoor. A region is usually outdoor.

Definition : A room is indoors if the map region of it is indoor.
Definition : A room is outdoors if the map region of it is outdoor.

Great Outdoors is an outdoor region.

The beach is a room in the Great Outdoors.

Interior Space is an indoor region.

The cave is a room in the Interior Space. The cave is north of the beach.

Shouting is an action applying to nothing.
Understand "shout" as shouting.
Report Shouting:
	if the location of the player is indoors:
		say "Echo! Echo! Echo!";
	otherwise:
		say "That doesn't seem to do anything, except make you hoarse.".


test me with "shout/n/shout".
[/code]

To change this property for a room, you'll have to move the room to a different region.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2437&start=0#p16741
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Adjacency, a rant about documentation
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2011-05-14 01:06:58

[quote="George"][code]adjacent-by-doors relates a room (called A) to a room (called B) when A encloses a door (called D) and the other side of D from A is B. The verb to be adjacent-by-doors to implies the adjacent-by-doors relation.[/code][/quote]
This will work most of the time, but it can fail for rooms that contain more than one door. Whichever door Inform finds first is assigned to "D", and only the other side of that particular door is checked. One solution is to use route-finding instead:[code]Adjacent-by-doors relates a room (called A) to a room (called B) when the number of moves from A to B, using even locked doors is 1.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2410&start=0#p16742
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Money
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-05-14 01:58:59

Does anyone know a game with an in-game currency that has the source code available?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2441&start=0#p16744
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: Going directions
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-05-14 04:36:45

I'm in a boat, and the river runs west. I want to parse "row west". Could anyone help me on parsing that? I got my RowSub, but how do I catch the input? If I had the string "west" in a variable, I would be able to do the rest myself. Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2437&start=0#p16745
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Adjacency, a rant about documentation
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-14 06:08:09

[quote="vaporware"][quote="George"][code]adjacent-by-doors relates a room (called A) to a room (called B) when A encloses a door (called D) and the other side of D from A is B. The verb to be adjacent-by-doors to implies the adjacent-by-doors relation.[/code][/quote]
This will work most of the time, but it can fail for rooms that contain more than one door. Whichever door Inform finds first is assigned to "D", and only the other side of that particular door is checked. One solution is to use route-finding instead:[code]Adjacent-by-doors relates a room (called A) to a room (called B) when the number of moves from A to B, using even locked doors is 1.[/code][/quote]

Aw, man. I spent a long time trying to use this and getting compiler errors, because I didn't realize that the comma before "using even locked doors" was necessary. I now see that this is a PEBKAC, because the comma is in section 6.14, but -- well, I'm not sure whether that should be highlighted better or if I should just read more carefully.

I see that when you try to put one of these into a text substitution, the compiler error specifically tells you a workaround for using-door-routefinding within a text substitution, which is nice. 

Is there a way to do routefinding through open doors only?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2439&start=0#p16746
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A question about regions
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-05-14 11:14:02

Yeah, what Blecki is saying should fix you up. I've used a similar scheme. 

You could also add another "layer" if you will, by specifying something like CaveInteriors being a [b]type[/b] of room and telling it that the map region of a CaveiInterior is Interior Space, and that rooms like "cave1", "cave2", etc can all be declared as that type or not.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2441&start=0#p16747
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Going directions
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-05-14 11:27:27

I would understand rowing the boat as moving the boat, with an exception for the player not being in the boat.

Also, as far as I know, you'll have to tell the boat to move to a room, not move to a direction.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2442&start=0#p16748
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Testers for The Z-Machine Matter
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2011-05-14 11:30:42

I'm opening up for an additional round of alpha testers for my first game The Z-Machine Matter, a murder mystery in the style of The Witness or Deadline.  It's written using Inform7 and uses Aaron Reed's Player Experience Upgrade among other extensions. The game is not complete, but I'd like to get some external testers before submitting to IntroComp next month.   For those who are curious, I've posted the documentation to pique your interest.  Any and all testers welcome as long as you can give me a SCRIPT transcript or list of any commands you try.

Here's a link with more info.
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com/2011/05/z-machine-manual.html">http://www.z-machine-matter.com/2011/05 ... anual.html</a>

Feel free to contact me via hotmail at ZUrlocker or on the blog
Thanks in advance!
--Zack

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2439&start=0#p16749
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A question about regions
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-14 11:55:01

[quote="Jizaboz"]
You could also add another "layer" if you will, by specifying something like CaveInteriors being a [b]type[/b] of room and telling it that the map region of a CaveiInterior is Interior Space, and that rooms like "cave1", "cave2", etc can all be declared as that type or not.[/quote]

That is closer to what I am looking for.  Right now I am saying "A room is usually outdoors" and just noting the indoor rooms individually since about 70% of the rooms are outdoors.  But some regions are all indoors except one room, and some all outdoors except one or two rooms.  My thought was to assign the property by region to make things simpler.

I don't have time to experiment now, but later I will try to figure out the correct wording to get what you said to work.  We all know how picky the compiler can be.  [emote];)[/emote]

It sure would be nice if we could assign these types of properties by region, or per chapter.

Edit to add: For clarification, outdoors just means there are no walls surrounding the room, and you can see into the adjacent rooms.  For example, a large gymnasium, made up of 12 (3x4) sections (rooms).  Of course it can also apply to actual outdoor spaces.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2427&start=0#p16750
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Glimmr sizing and alignment standards?
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-05-14 12:00:18

Ah, "bitmap-rendered string"! Great, good to know I wasn't too far off from the right idea. You're right, trying "bitmap" didn't feel right at all. When I think of a bitmap, I think of the old days of drawing sprites for doom characters. I was just sort of stabbing in the dark with that one. 

I have been looking at your extensive documentation from the beginning actually, I guess it's just that there's a lot to take in. Which is good though, slowly learning how things work is a lot more fun and productive than just plugging my own input into numerous examples.

However, that being said, I hope this thread ends up being a good example for future users of your system to understand setting up a basic gui better! The code you posted instantly worked by the way, it displays both words to the right in the window. I will be working some more on polishing this in the next few days and update my blog with the results. I appreciate your help in getting this solved.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2435&start=0#p16751
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Something new as a synonym target
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-14 13:12:42

Okey dokey.

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=656">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=656</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2284&start=10#p16752
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you look for in your IF?
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-05-14 13:33:27

I'm sure it's just me, but surrealist games.  I love them.  Never had any luck writing them, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2439&start=0#p16753
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A question about regions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-14 14:14:54

I've been dealing with this sort of thing too. Areas, properties, and relations can all be used to handle intervisibility between rooms. I ended up going with relations in groups, although all the alternatives can be tedious to set up.

I was thinking you could do what you want with a "when play begins" rule if it's not possible to do it by implication. It's tricky, because of the syntax for defining and assigning properties, but I think I got it:

[code]Space-designation is a kind of value. The space-designations are default, indoors and outdoors.

A room has a space-designation. A region has a space-designation. A region is usually outdoors.

The South Beaches is a region.

The hut is an indoors room in the South Beaches.

The shore is a room in the South Beaches.

The Caves is an indoors region.

Dark Shaft is a room in The Caves.

Yawning Chasm is an outdoors room in The Caves.

When play begins:
	repeat with area running through regions:
		now every default room in area is (space-designation of area).[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2443&start=0#p16754
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Problem with writing a paragraph about?
User: Minkovsky / DateTime: 2011-05-14 15:48:08

I kinda wanted to make a sound puzzle in one of my rooms, which involves a radio and a sanctuary which is too silent for a player to act in without music (well not really.) Only the description part is kind of weird. My code is:
[code]The Sanctuary is a room.
Rule for writing a paragraph about the Sanctuary:
	If the Magitek Radio is in the Sanctuary:
		If the Magitek Radio is switched on:
			say "A relatively small sanctum. The silence that once filled your head is now gone thanks to the radio. It's still eerie, though. You notice a wooden inner sanctum in the middle of the sanctuary." instead;
		Else:
			say "A relatively small sanctum. The silence is staggering, and you can't hear yourself think. You notice a wooden inner sanctum in the middle of the sanctuary." instead;
	Else:
		say "A relatively small sanctum. The silence is staggering, and you can't hear yourself think. You notice a wooden inner sanctum in the middle of the sanctuary." instead.[/code]
But then in the output, it just says "Sanctuary. You can see a sanctum door here." How can I fix this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2443&start=0#p16755
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with writing a paragraph about?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-05-14 16:09:03

The rule for writing a paragraph about applies only to things in rooms, not to rooms themselves. You can turn it into a to say phrase and call it from the description:

[code]
The description of the Sanctuary is "[Sanctuary desc][run paragraph on]".

To say Sanctuary desc:
	If the Magitek Radio is in the Sanctuary:
		If the Magitek Radio is switched on:
			say "A relatively small sanctum. The silence that once filled your head is now gone thanks to the radio. It's still eerie, though. You notice a wooden inner sanctum in the middle of the sanctuary.";
		Else:
			say "A relatively small sanctum. The silence is staggering, and you can't hear yourself think. You notice a wooden inner sanctum in the middle of the sanctuary.";
	Else:
		say "A relatively small sanctum. The silence is staggering, and you can't hear yourself think. You notice a wooden inner sanctum in the middle of the sanctuary.".[/code]

But in this case when there's only one sentence with two alternatives it's easier just to compress everything into the description itself:

[code]
The description of the Sanctuary is "A relatively small sanctum[if the Magitek Radio is in the Sanctuary and the Magitek Radio is switched on]. The silence that once filled your head is now gone thanks to the radio[otherwise]. The silence is staggering, and you can't hear yourself think[end if]. You notice a wooden inner sanctum in the middle of the sanctuary."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2443&start=0#p16756
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with writing a paragraph about?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-05-14 16:29:47

[quote="Juhana"]But in this case when there's only one sentence with two alternatives it's easier just to compress everything into the description itself:

[code]
The description of the Sanctuary is "A relatively small sanctum[if the Magitek Radio is in the Sanctuary and the Magitek Radio is switched on]. The silence that once filled your head is now gone thanks to the radio[otherwise]. The silence is staggering, and you can't hear yourself think[end if]. You notice a wooden inner sanctum in the middle of the sanctuary."[/code][/quote]

Also, since you can use properties when referring to objects, you can reduce this slightly further:
[code]The description of the Sanctuary is "A relatively small sanctum[if the switched on Magitek Radio is in the Sanctuary]. The silence that once filled your head is now gone thanks to the radio[otherwise]. The silence is staggering, and you can't hear yourself think[end if]. You notice a wooden inner sanctum in the middle of the sanctuary."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2441&start=0#p16757
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Going directions
User: fredrik / DateTime: 2011-05-14 17:09:07

Look at the Go verb to see the details on how to set up a verb which takes a direction as its argument.

Each direction is an object. The direction used will end up in the variable 'noun'.  Code could look something like this:

if(noun==w_obj && location.w_to) move Boat to location.w_to;

This is not a complete and general solution, but I hope you get the idea.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2222&start=10#p16758
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Second Gender - The Extension
User: fredrik / DateTime: 2011-05-14 17:18:25

This is a flaw of Inform 6 - there are several properties and attributes of game objects which should really belong to synonyms for objects. However, beginners would perhaps find a system that separated synonyms from objects hard to comprehend.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2441&start=0#p16759
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Going directions
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-14 17:26:32

I would do something like this (untested):

[code]
Verb 'row'
    * -> VagueGo
    * noun=ADirection -> Row
    * noun -> Push;
[/code]

The Push ("move") action for the boat would have to do something appropriate.

Then have the Row action invoke <Go noun> if you're in the boat, and print a useful error message if you're not.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2439&start=0#p16760
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A question about regions
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-14 18:18:31

Perfect! It works even better than I had hoped.

All of the routines for outdoors vs. indoors I have in an extension.  It handles what you can see, and from how far, based on the height of the object and what might be in the way (like walls).  Most of what you wrote I added to the extension.

The only changes to the game are to say "A region is usually outdoors." and to designate the indoors regions.  Or I can skip the  "A region is usually outdoors." all together, and just label all regions as indoors or outdoors, so it is easy to use in other games that have a different balance of indoors vs. outdoors regions. All of the rest runs from the extension.

Thank you so much capmikee!  This makes things much easier.

Edit: Okay, I was able to create a situation where not setting a default of indoors/outdoors for regions didn't work as expected.  So I will just stick to saying "A region is usually outdoors." and designate the indoors regions separately.  Still works perfectly!  I might just add "A region is usually outdoors." to the extension... not sure yet.  Not having it there makes it easier if most regions/rooms are indoors.  I have to keep future usage in mind.  So probably not.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2284&start=10#p16761
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you look for in your IF?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-14 19:58:42

I look for a couple different things in my games, including IF. Puzzles and challenges th be great, especially when presented with panache or humor. Dual Transform was awesome, and I can enjoy puzzlefests like Raising the Flag on Mount Yo Momma and The People's Revolutionary Text Adventure Game too. 

But I'm not great at puzzles, I don't find it too rewarding to be flat stuck because I haven't figured something out, and anyway it seems to me that the real potential of IF lies in story and the like. My favorite kind of puzzle/challenge relies on systems in a way that aren't best presented in IF (logic puzzley things and roguelikelikes). IF is prose and can play to prose's strengths. And even in non-IF games I don't need crazy twitch challenges if there's an engaging story. [url=http://lackofbanjos.com/games/small-worlds/]Small Worlds[/url] is the best thing ever, and making the jumps hard wouldn't improve it; and [url=http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/569046]Alphaland[/url], [url=http://adamatomic.com/fathom/]Fathom[/url], [url=http://ludusnovus.net/my-games/the-day/]The Day[/url], and [url=http://www.scoutshonour.com/calligraphy/#MA==]A Single Word in Her Beautiful Calligraphy[/url] are all good games that are made by their story, not by challenging gameplay. 

I like that in IF too; if the story is engaging and the interaction suits the story, I don't need to spend fifteen minutes worrying about how to untie myself from this chair. In fact, that tends to detract from my immersion. (Ditto for non-IF games; I still don't know what the normal ending for Cave Story is like.) And yes, there's interaction. Photopia has interaction, East Grove Hills has interaction, Rameses has interaction, even Constraints has interaction. An IF without interaction wouldn't be a failed novel, it'd be a novel. (Or [url=http://retts.net/after_parthenope/]this[/url].) 

So, hooray for stories. They should have a reason to be IF -- make me move through the stories, and show me how to do it -- but no need to get me stuck. Galatea, Best of Three, All Roads, the first half of Rover's Day Out (before the puzzles that made it seem as though I should've been reading the status line the whole time), The Baron, those all worked for me without getting me stuck. I recently went back and played Blue Chairs and The Act of Misdirection, and they were great; and when the About text of Anchorhead said "It isn't meant to be puzzle-intensive, and what puzzles there are aren't meant to be difficult," that made me happy. 

(BTW, katz, if you haven't played Blue Chairs you should.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2444&start=0#p16762
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Frustrated with Zork I
User: Supernaut / DateTime: 2011-05-14 22:05:43

I recently got back into the text adventures I played as a kid (and never get very far in). Now that I'm a bit older I'm finding it a bit easier, but there is something going on in the first Zork that I cannot work out. Just be warned there will be spoilers here.

When I needed to use the matchbook to light the candles I could not find it anywhere, I searched every room I had been in. I figured it could have been a bug or something. So I restarted the whole game, now when I go to the Dam maintenance room there is no wrench or tube. Which is crazy because when I visited the room before they were there but I did not pick them up at the time. I figured this might mean the thief had taken them (I'm not real sure how the thief works though to be honest). Thing is though I have already killed the thief and those items did not drop, nor are they in the treasure room. Can anyone help me? This is driving me insane because I just want to finish this game. I figured you guys would be the best bet as to knowing whats going on.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2441&start=0#p16763
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Going directions
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-05-15 01:49:21

Thanks for that. And how do I prevent the player from going in a direction because he's supposed to row, but not walk there?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2441&start=0#p16764
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Going directions
User: fredrik / DateTime: 2011-05-15 07:03:54

Trap it in a before-rule. If there are several rooms with rowing, create a class for those rooms.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2445&start=0#p16765
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7:  Customizing Extension Code
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-15 12:24:45

I need to customize one "carry out" rule that is part of an extension which I have included in an I7 project, so that it operates slightly differently than as originally written.  I tried copying the relevant "carry out" rule into my source code, and then modifying the relevant parts to achieve what I need.  What happens is that, at run-time, it executes [i]both[/i] the modified version (which operates correctly) and the unmodified version.  How can I "turn off" the unmodified rule so that only my modified version is executed?  I don't want to play around with the extension itself, I just want to change its behavior in this one respect for purposes of this one project.

The rule in question is not a "named" rule, so "The blah-blah-blah rule is not listed in any rulebook" is not an option.

Thanks.

    Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2445&start=0#p16766
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Customizing Extension Code
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-05-15 12:37:26

You can say that your new rule is "listed first" (see section 18.4 in the Documentation) in the relevant rulebook, then "stop the action" or whatever to prevent the old one from taking place as well.

Or -- and I don't know if this is something that only works from another extension, but you could try it -- maybe you could use the "Section 6 - Hacked locking (in place of Section 1 - Regular locking in Locksmith by Emily Short)" syntax that is described in chapter 25.8, if you have an entire section of the extension to override.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2445&start=0#p16767
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Customizing Extension Code
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-15 12:54:51

Thaks, Tove.  It looks like your first suggestion does the job.  I need to do a little more testing to ensure that stopping the action doesn't also turn off any critical "report" or "after" rules that relate to the action in question, but in this particular case it doesn't look there are any.

    Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2441&start=0#p16768
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Going directions
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-05-15 13:15:35

I'll do. Is there something like "if player in vehicle"?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2441&start=0#p16769
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Going directions
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-05-15 13:39:30

[quote="Grueslayer"]I'll do. Is there something like "if player in vehicle"?[/quote]
Check the discussion of the object tree in the DM4.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2410&start=0#p16770
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Money
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-05-15 13:47:36

Have you looked at Chapter 29 of the DM4? It seems to address precisely the problem you're running into.

If you've attempted to use the techniques in this chapter, and they aren't giving you the results you're hoping for, perhaps you can provide more specifics on where the snag is.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2446&start=0#p16771
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Michael Martin
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-05-15 14:26:39

Can anyone give me Michael Martin's e-mail address. I just installed a couple of his/her extensions and they don't work for me.  [emote]:?:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2447&start=0#p16772
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: Multiple Objects
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-05-15 14:44:16

I don't get it. I define a Class myobject(10); and obj=myobject.create(); move obj to player; results in a "Store out of dynamic memory" error when I do "inv". What am I doing wrong?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2446&start=0#p16773
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Michael Martin
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-05-15 14:53:23

I'm sure Michael would be glad to help you out, but it's considered polite to contact the author only after you haven't found the answer on the forums or when you're sure it's a bug in the extension. Are you having some specific problems with the extensions?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2441&start=0#p16774
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Going directions
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-05-15 15:18:29

Ha, works! Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2410&start=0#p16775
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Money
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-05-15 16:08:58

What I've achieved so far is to create some Euros and give them to the player. What I want to do is to create some more Euros and put them on the ground. I did so, but they're individual objects, so "get all" results in "You take the Euro." X times. I'd like to have the player get them all at once, like "You take the 20 Euros.". That's my problem. I can't seem to find a solution for this in the manual. I assume money.h provides a solution, but I don't understand how it works.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2447&start=0#p16776
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Multiple Objects
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-15 16:15:59

What you've posted does not look wrong. You'll have to supply more information.

This compiles and runs without errors:

[code]
Include "Parser";
Include "VerbLib";

Class myobject(10);

[ Initialise obj;
  location = Kitchen;
  obj=myobject.create();
  move obj to player;
];

Object Kitchen "Kitchen"
  with
    description "This is a room.",
  has light;

Include "Grammar";
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2447&start=0#p16777
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Multiple Objects
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-05-15 16:49:10

Ah... Short_name was too long. Sorry for bothering.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2448&start=0#p16778
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Disambiguation Problem
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-15 17:16:28

I'm sure this is something very basic, but it's driving me crazy.

[code]"BinocTest" by Me

The laboratory is a room.  A microscope slide is in the laboratory.  An open container called a binocular microscope is in the laboratory.

Does the player mean doing something with the binocular microscope:  It is likely.
[/code]

The intention is that, when a player types a command refers to the microscope, the game should interpret that as a reference to the binocular microscope and not to the microscope slide.  However, when I get the slide and then type "put slide in microscope" it thinks I'm trying to put the slide into itself.

I thought that perhaps the slide was getting some "extra credit" because it is held by the player and therefore takes precedence over non-held items; to counteract this I tried bumping the priority of the binocular microscope up to "very likely" and adding an "unlikely" statement to doing something with the binocular slide.  Same problem.

What am I missing here?

Thanks.

     Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2449&start=0#p16779
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6 weird answers to actions referred to "all"
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-05-15 18:08:07

First of all, sorry if this has been mentioned before elsewhere!

I've read about fixes made in earlier versions of I6 libraries concerning adequate answers to actions like "get all" or "put all" in or on something. Now I see unexpected answers with actions as "drop" or "examine"

For example, "drop all" seems to work fine untill you try to do it when you aren't actually carrying anything. Under such circumstance I would expect an answer similar to "You've got nothing to drop" or "You're carrying nothing", but library seems to get confused in a weird way: if there are no objects at current location it will try to "drop yuorself" (which you lack the required dexterity to do  [emote]:)[/emote]  ) and if there are other objects in the same room it will understand that you are trying to put your belongings "in" something and will ask you exactly where.

Incidentally, earlier versions of the I6 spanish translation made a workaround for this with a little hack to message 44 of the miscellany action. It worked nice in 6.10 but, for some reason, seems to be broken in current spanish 6.11 library.

In a similar vein, "examine all" warns you that "examine" is not meant to be used with "all" when you use it in the presence of any object, but it will describe yourself if you are in an empty room.

Is that meant to work that way or is it some unexpected behaviour?

--

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2449&start=0#p16780
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6 weird answers to actions referred to "all"
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-15 19:18:52

It's expected. The parser tries to construct a list of referred-to objects first, and then invokes the action on the result. If the only object in scope is yourself, then "drop all" invokes "drop me" -- there's no special check that could lead to a "you've got nothing to drop" message.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2448&start=0#p16781
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation Problem
User: tryguy / DateTime: 2011-05-15 19:31:08

I think the confusion comes from having the same word as both noun and adjective. Maybe it's a special case that needs to be looked at by the developers.

I played around using your terms, but I couldn't find a solution.

My personal preference would be to rename the slide to "glass slide". But... that's just sidestepping the issue.

Well, maybe someone with a better understanding of disambiguation will see this. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2448&start=0#p16782
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation Problem
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-15 19:37:27

I don't know what's going on, but you can catch "Put slide in microscope" with this line:

[code]Does the player mean inserting the noun into the noun: It is very unlikely.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2430&start=0#p16783
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Geocaching and IF combined
User: gumby / DateTime: 2011-05-15 21:20:26

Johannes, where does one need to live to play this game for the geocaching?  Is it limited to Germany and it's immediate neighbors?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2450&start=0#p16784
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Pale Blue Light
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2011-05-16 01:57:42

Against my better judgment, I'm releasing a "final" (non-testing) version of my work-no-longer-in-progress, "Pale Blue Light." It's a small thing, probably still underimplemented, and maybe even buggy, but I've been tinkering with it, writing and rewriting it for ages, and after one round of testing I just couldn't stand it anymore, so I fixed what I could and now I'm releasing it.

It's fantasy, period drama, and real life stuff all bundled together. I'm also inclined to tell you it's crap, but it [i]is[/i] very late, and, as I mentioned earlier, I've had it up to here with working on this thing, so I may be biased against it at the moment.

Here's the zblorb: [url]http://www.mediafire.com/?6i1ex93ce6140bw[/url]
And here's the unblorbed z5 file: [url]http://www.mediafire.com/?y8osa16ibdcg161[/url]

I'll also upload the zblorb to the IF Archive and make an IFDB entry.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2451&start=0#p16785
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Question about Quip-Based Conversation by Michael Martin
User: Legba / DateTime: 2011-05-16 03:16:09

Hi,

I'm trying to create the following scenario in my game, which uses Michael Martin's Quip-Based Conversation for its dialogue:

After entering the casino, you need to talk to the waitress. However, she ignores you until after you talk to the bartender.

It's a pretty straightforward scenario, but I can't get the code to work. Here's what I've got so far:

[code]
"test" by Emanuel Nordrum
 
Include Version 5 of Quip-Based Conversation by Michael Martin.
 
Casino is a room.

Bartender is a person in Casino. The greeting of Bartender is bartender-g. The litany of Bartender is Table of Bartender Conversation.

Waitress is a person in Casino. The greeting of Waitress is waitress-g. The litany of Waitress is Table of Waitress Conversation.

Table of Quip Texts (continued)
quip	quiptext
bartender-g	"The bartender speaks to you."
bartender-1	"Let me tell you about the waitress."
waitress-g	"The waitress notices you."
waitress-1	"Oh hi."

Table of Bartender Conversation
prompt	response	enabled
"Waitress?"	bartender-1	0

Table of Waitress Conversation
prompt	response	enabled
"Hello."	waitress-1	1

After quipping when the current quip is bartender-1:
	enable the bartender-1 quip;
	terminate the conversation.

Waitress Ignores You is a scene. Waitress Ignores You begins when the player is in Casino.

Before talking to Waitress during Waitress Ignores You:
	say "She ignores you." instead;
	enable the bartender-1 quip. 
	
After examining Waitress during Waitress Ignores You:
	say "She ignores you.";
	enable the bartender-1 quip.
	
Waitress Ignores You ends after quipping when the current quip is bartender-1.
[/code]

The trouble spot is the "enable the bartender-1 quip" line; I know it fires - or rather, I know the "She ignores you." line right above it fires - but when I talk to the bartender again the option isn't there. 

The syntax I use is the same as Quip-Based Conversation uses (as seen slightly further up), so the only thing I can think is that Quip-Based Conversation requires the "after quipping when the current quip is" line in order to enable or disable quips. Which would be kind of a downer if true.

If anyone could show me the correct way to go about things, I'd be most grateful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2448&start=0#p16786
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation Problem
User: joningold / DateTime: 2011-05-16 03:28:33

[quote="matt w"]I don't know what's going on, but you can catch "Put slide in microscope" with this line:

[code]Does the player mean inserting the noun into the noun: It is very unlikely.[/code][/quote]

The top poster is right; objects get a bump for being carried, despite that often not making much sense.

Can I plug, as ever, Disambiguation Control, which will make the problem go away?

all the best!
jon

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2284&start=10#p16787
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you look for in your IF?
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2011-05-16 04:13:12

Although I really enjoyed playing some IFs, I think this kind of games lacks ambition and is mainly grounded in nostalgia. This can be seen in the technology used by inform (the i6 layer, lack of a universal type (kinda like java's Object class, which makes the writing of some rules a real pain) )as well as in the if-writing style encouraged by the i7 layer.
To me, Interactive fictions are too simplistic, too static and lack content : most of IF games are puzzle-driven, yet nothing is done to prevent the same text from being printed over and over again(like when you type 'look' for the 10th time in the same room) ; this is probably because i7 has no "module" for text-generation.
But to me, the worst thing about IFs is the feeling of emptiness they imply : NPCs are very rare, no passer-by, no crowd. Most of them are unable to move.

My ideal game would be a kind of text-based GTA - a vast territory, with generated NPCs, with no main plot but plenty of "miniquests", and a robust social model that would allow "stories" to be naturally generated through the players actions. For example you could follow some random guy, and figure out he lives in a small house with a wife and two children. You could figure out he is having an affair with another woman and send compromising pics to his wife. All of this being randomly generated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2142&start=20#p16788
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Real-time parsing I7 demo
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2011-05-16 04:53:42

aha, great job. I had been thinking about doing something similar (my own source of inspiration being sh/bash tab autocompletion).
On a similar note : i've just given a look at Reed's Poor Man's Mistype extension. I haven't checked the source-code but from what the doc says :

[quote]
This extension tries to fix spelling errors in misunderstood input by looking for words in the "printed name" of nearby objects that start with the first three letters of the first misunderstood word in the player's input. While a simple approach, this still catches about 40% of IF typos, including common cases where the player uses an abbreviated form or a unimplemented plural or singular form of a noun.
[/quote]

i think he didn't choose the right heuristic.
Recently i've been learning a couple stuffs about auto-correction algorithms:
•around 90% of mistypes are caused by mistyping only one character.
•Subsequently, auto-correction can be done easily. One technique relies in creating a confusion matrix on the basis of a word list (ie a database of mistyped words) in order to guess the closest word. It has the advantage of being extremely fast and can be written in less than 50 lines of code. Candidate words having the minimal edit score/distance among a set of candidates can be discriminated further from each other by looking at other factors like their lexical (either surface-based or stem-based) frequency.
Since we're talking about IF, I think the system should take into account the objects proximity, and whether the candidate word is the printed name of an existing object or not.
I'll try to smurch out something in this vein (for now i HAVE to finish another obj-c project), first using that single-character mistype auto-correction algorithm but I doubt it is appropriate for the iPhone (since a smaller keyboard leads to a greater number of mistypes per misspelling (differentiating the articulatory level (in this case, "misproducing" letters) from the lexical level))).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2430&start=0#p16789
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Geocaching and IF combined
User: jcharra / DateTime: 2011-05-16 05:08:08

@gumby: You'd have to visit Freiburg, Germany, to find the real cache locations, sorry.

In order to finish only the virtual part, you have to find a clue in the Japanese Garden (which really exists there). I can tell you this clue (I hope none of the geocachers find this via Google ...), it is "ic0510". That's what you have to tell the dragons. To get past "Wisteria Bridge" you need to find two more clues and calculate their sum, which is 199. With those two pieces of information you are able to play through the whole game, if you'd like to try.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2448&start=0#p16790
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation Problem
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-16 06:59:57

Thanks to all.  I wound up using Matt's suggestion as the path of least resistance.  It's an easy fix to the most immediate aspect of the problem (although there may still be other things that the player might try with the 'scope that could be misunderstood if he has already picked up the slide).  Jon's extension seems like a more complete solution, but I'm already trying to learn a few new (for me) extensions in connection with this project and am trying to keep the learning curve at a manageable level.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2451&start=0#p16791
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Question about Quip-Based Conversation by Michael Ma
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-05-16 08:30:26

The "enable the bartender-1 quip" line actually does not fire. The reason is you end the line before it with "instead", which stops the action short, before the last line of the rule is ever executed.
Either move the "instead" to the last line of the rule:
[code]Before talking to Waitress during Waitress Ignores You:
   say "She ignores you.";
   enable the bartender-1 quip instead. [/code]
or put it all in an instead rule instead:
[code]Instead of talking to Waitress during Waitress Ignores You:
   say "She ignores you.";
   enable the bartender-1 quip. [/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2451&start=0#p16792
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Question about Quip-Based Conversation by Michael Ma
User: Legba / DateTime: 2011-05-16 10:00:49

Thank you for correcting my mistake, but unfortunately the bartender-1 quip still doesn't become enabled.

Something I forgot to mention above; I don't want to just talk to the bartender and learn about the waitress, you have to look or attempt to talk to the waitress first in order to "activate" the dialogue option. So the required order of action should be:

Look at waitress/talk to waitress >  talk to bartender > ask about waitress > talk to waitress.

Any ideas?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2451&start=0#p16793
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Question about Quip-Based Conversation by Michael Ma
User: Legba / DateTime: 2011-05-16 10:11:59

Ah, I found the solution:

[code]
Instead of talking to Waitress during Waitress Ignores You:
	enable the bartender-1 quip for Bartender;
	say "She ignores you."
[/code]

I didn't realise I had to specify that the bartender-1 quip belongs to the Bartender; I thought each quip was unique.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2284&start=10#p16794
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you look for in your IF?
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-05-16 10:52:45

[quote="Phonatacid"]My ideal game would be a kind of text-based GTA - a vast territory, with generated NPCs, with no main plot but plenty of "miniquests", and a robust social model that would allow "stories" to be naturally generated through the players actions. For example you could follow some random guy, and figure out he lives in a small house with a wife and two children. You could figure out he is having an affair with another woman and send compromising pics to his wife. All of this being randomly generated.[/quote]

The problem is that people have this now: World of Warcraft, GTA, and so on. I don't think those audiences would even want that stuff all text-based. You would be giving up most of what makes that stuff entertaining for people: the graphics and audio capabilities that try to fully immerse you in the world. The "naturally generated" and "randomly generated" stuff you mention probably wouldn't appeal to people who are more readers of books because they want the emotive experience they are used to when they read good fiction.

So, once again, I see text games and IF sitting on the periphery of an area that very few people (relatively speaking) want. Personally, I've almost-but-not-quite given up on IF at this point as anything worth pursuing, even as a hobby. Like you mention, I see it very nostalgia-based which I suppose is to be expected to a certain extent. I just don't think that IF can provide what two core audiences may want (reading experience, gaming experience) to the extent they want it. And, quite frankly, I don't think the current author-base (as opposed to player-base) of IF is effective enough to change the expectations of those core audiences to make IF fun beyond the self-enclosed community of practice that currently supports IF creation. I sort of feel like it's a place to stagnate if you don't really want to be a novelist/short story writer or you don't want to be a game writer. It's like this nebulous middle ground where you have the delusion that you can satisfy one or the other urge or audience if you just had a slighty better parser, or slightly more natural way of expressing it, or a slightly better tool, and so on.

Highly opinionated, I realize. I don't expect people to share that opinion but it's there for what it's worth. I guess I'll also throw in that I grew up on text-based games and fondly remember reading Choose Your Own Adventure and Interplanetary Spy. So I didn't come in to this predisposed to find problems or be negative. Ultimately I guess I agee with your sentiment (but for a different reason): a feeling of emptiness.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2284&start=10#p16795
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you look for in your IF?
User: Huck Hooks / DateTime: 2011-05-16 11:05:43

Actually there are two quite sucessfull "IF-games".

Phonatacid describes the gameplay of facebook pretty good.

The other one is google: commandline, quite good parser, each session is like solving a puzzle.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2445&start=0#p16796
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Customizing Extension Code
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-16 11:18:16

"stop the action" will prevent report and after rulebooks from firing. You'll need to use section replacement if you want to use the extension, or handle all reporting with your own (instead?) rules.

And write to the author, asking them to name every rule in their next release! Better yet, modify the extension and send the fixed version to the author with your request.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2445&start=0#p16797
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Customizing Extension Code
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-05-16 12:16:35

Would something along these lines be safe, or is it but an horrid abomination?
[code]Carry out grueing (this is the new grueing rule):
	say "You're about to eat a grue.";
	anonymously abide by the after stage rule;
	consider the investigate player's awareness after action rule;
	consider the report stage rule:
	rule succeeds.

The new grueing rule is listed first in the carry out grueing rulebook.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2445&start=0#p16798
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Customizing Extension Code
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-16 12:40:50

[quote="Felix"]Would something along these lines be safe, or is it but an horrid abomination?
[code]Carry out grueing (this is the new grueing rule):
	say "You're about to eat a grue.";
	anonymously abide by the after stage rule;
	consider the investigate player's awareness after action rule;
	consider the report stage rule:
	rule succeeds.

The new grueing rule is listed first in the carry out grueing rulebook.[/code][/quote]

It looks pretty ugly to me, but I think it could work if you're careful. The question is going to be, how complex is the action that you're modifying? If it's something fundamental like going or looking, there are going to be a lot of gotchas. But if its range of possibilities is narrow enough, you can probably get away with a single Instead rule that covers the entire action.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2284&start=10#p16799
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you look for in your IF?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-05-16 12:55:11

[quote="bukayeva"]I sort of feel like it's a place to stagnate if you don't really want to be a novelist/short story writer or you don't want to be a game writer. It's like this nebulous middle ground where you have the delusion that you can satisfy one or the other urge or audience if you just had a slighty better parser, or slightly more natural way of expressing it, or a slightly better tool, and so on.[/quote]

I disagree more or less completely with your two propositions. It's not stagnation if people who aren't interested in writing novels or short stories don't write them. It's a great thing. There are enough good short stories and novels to last modern readers a lifetime, and enough of the bad to line the world's parrot cages a thousand times over.

Moreover anyone truly interested in writing for games could not ask for a better format than IF. There are a bare handful of commercial games with a distinctive, well-written narrative. It's not a quality that the industry prizes, to put it mildly. A few companies like Blizzard and Bioware employ a fair number of writers, then set them to work producing flavor text and quips which even the target audience of 13 year old males must find insipid and trite. The AAA titles are unwilling to take risks and the smaller titles don't bother.

There are only a few notable game writers. [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Avellone]Chris Avellone[/url], who peaked with [i]Planescape: Torment[/i] and has spent the last decade writing the same game. [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Lake]Sam Lake[/url], whose [i]Max Payne[/i] and [i]Alan Wake[/i] are deliciously overwritten. [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Levine_(video_game_designer)]Ken Levine[/url], who raised the commercial bar with [i]Bioshock[/i].

There are many more first rate IF writers. Even the run of the mill IF writer fares pretty well against his industry counterpart; each year the top half of the IF Comp contains more original thought and displays more raw talent than the vast bulk of commercial games released in the last twelve months. But the significance of IF is not in the authors but in the audience. Any gamer who genuinely cares about narrative quality should be familiar with IF. That constituency is really the only group we need appeal to, and improvements to the parser and player experience are only useful to the extent that they enhance that appeal.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2445&start=0#p16800
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Customizing Extension Code
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-16 13:32:04

What I usually do is open the extension, and save it under a new name (if extension is name blah, I call it blah2).  Of course changing the name on the first line and the last line (before documentation) within the extension, then I edit the new copy to create the changes I want.  Also, now I still have the original for other projects, or in case I screw it up.

This way nothing needs to be changed in the game code, and the extension does the work the way you want it to without having to battle with it in the game code.

Not sure if this would work for you.  But it is another way to customize extension code that I find useful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2284&start=10#p16801
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you look for in your IF?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-16 14:13:45

[quote="matt w"](BTW, katz, if you haven't played Blue Chairs you should.)[/quote]
I just went and played through Blue Chairs out of curiosity. I'm afraid it didn't make me any more a fan of surrealist IF, but I did like the way the opening scenes modeled the experience of being intoxicated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2427&start=0#p16802
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Glimmr sizing and alignment standards?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-05-16 14:55:58

[quote="Jizaboz"]I have been looking at your extensive documentation from the beginning actually, I guess it's just that there's a lot to take in.[/quote]

Yes, with 11 extensions (and another one on the way) I'm sure that Glimmr is a bit difficult to approach. I know I found Eric Eve's Conversation framework a bit confusing when I first looked at, and it only has 4! (Believe it or not, the original plan for Glimmr called for there to be nearly 20 extensions, with the core functionality divided up among multiple extensions.) Just FYI: for the most part, only the first few sections of the docs for each extension are intended to be must-reads; you can then just browse as needed to answer questions. It seems that most people are learning from the examples, which is pretty much what I expected. 

Anyway, I'm glad you've got things a-rolling!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2445&start=0#p16803
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Customizing Extension Code
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-16 15:32:07

[quote="Seeker"]What I usually do is open the extension, and save it under a new name (if extension is name blah, I call it blah2).  Of course changing the name on the first line and the last line (before documentation) within the extension, then I edit the new copy to create the changes I want.  Also, now I still have the original for other projects, or in case I screw it up.[/quote]
I usually leave the name the same, but change the author to myself and update the version number. Then you don't have to change the last line, though you may have to move the file to the extension directory with your name on it (this is done automatically when you install an extension).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2445&start=0#p16804
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Customizing Extension Code
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-16 16:06:05

[quote="capmikee"][quote="Seeker"]What I usually do is open the extension, and save it under a new name (if extension is name blah, I call it blah2).  Of course changing the name on the first line and the last line (before documentation) within the extension, then I edit the new copy to create the changes I want.  Also, now I still have the original for other projects, or in case I screw it up.[/quote]
I usually leave the name the same, but change the author to myself and update the version number. Then you don't have to change the last line, though you may have to move the file to the extension directory with your name on it (this is done automatically when you install an extension).[/quote]

I do that too.  But I usually wait till I have perverted it so much, the original author would not want her/his name on it.  [emote]:D[/emote]

Either way, I think editing the extension is better than trying to work around the things you do not like about it in the game.  And then when you are done, you have a personalized version that is tailored to your own style and tastes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2284&start=10#p16805
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you look for in your IF?
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-05-16 17:57:08

[quote="bcressey"]I disagree more or less completely with your two propositions.[/quote]

A proposition is a suggestion for something to be considered, accepted, adopted, or done. I didn't offer any propositions. I offered an opinion. It's cool to disagree, of course. I didn't expect people who didn't share my view to also share my opinions.

[quote]It's not stagnation if people who aren't interested in writing novels or short stories don't write them. It's a great thing.[/quote]

I agree. I would imagine it is an interesting ground in which to stake a certain amount of creativity. If that's all you want, go for it. I wasn't suggesting people shouldn't work on IF. (I do notice people get overly defensive in the IF community; I don't see this same defensiveness in any other gaming community of which I'm a part.)

[quote]Moreover anyone truly interested in writing for games could not ask for a better format than IF.[/quote]

That's way too categorical and I know many, many, many game developers who do ask for (and find) better formats than IF. But they are also looking to reach much wider audiences and also bolster some other skill set. I actually could see IF being used to bolster a skill set in being a writer since I imagine many of the same skills in telling a story could apply. I rarely if ever see those discussions here, though.

[quote]There are a bare handful of commercial games with a distinctive, well-written narrative. It's not a quality that the industry prizes, to put it mildly.[/quote]

Since I work in the game industry (and have done so for the last fifteen years), I can tell you this is totally incorrect. It is a qualitly that the industry is coming to prize and respect more and more. Yes, there are many games that don't display "distinctive, well-written narrative." But the same applies to IF. Even going back aways, lots of people did respond to the characters and story lines of old Sierra games and certainly games like The Dig, Monkey Island, Broken Sword, Tunguska, Beneath a Steel Sky, and so on. More recently, games like Alpha Protocol, Call of Duty (the modern warfare and black ops variants), Fallout, Longest Journey, Splinter Cell, Culpa Innata, Old Republic, and many others are just some of those trying to incorporate better writing and provide a more diverse experience. You may argue that they don't succeed by your criterion -- but those writers are reaching a much wider audience and having their experiments at writing and telling stories put to much greater test than just about any work of IF. As such, the industry has a wide user base to learn from and it's a user base that continually experiments with RPG, first-person shooter, and hybrid games, often moving between them, allowing a good interplay of idea and technique.

[quote]There are many more first rate IF writers .... each year the top half of the IF Comp contains more original thought and displays more raw talent than the vast bulk of commercial games released in the last twelve months[/quote]

Way too categorical for me and way too subjective. As a opinion, it's cool. But you seem to state it as fact and then just expect others to accept that. (Again, a trait I notice in people who seem to feel the need to defend IF.)

You seem to have a lot of opinions -- like me -- so that's cool. But you seem to have a categorical view of how much better IF writers are than those in other game venues. Since IF is never put to any real test except within its own isolated community (or forays into the "casual gaming" crowd), I guess for the time being you don't have to worry about your claims being tested in any sort of overly critical way.

[quote]Any gamer who genuinely cares about narrative quality should be familiar with IF.[/quote]

Rather, I would say that any gamer who likes a narrative component to their game play experience should, if they are a well-rounded gamer, be familiar with those IF games that do put a focus on narrative so they can determine if this is yet one more gaming experience they would enjoy. To say it is "narrative quality" begs the question. It's not "quality" unless the gamer thinks it is.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2422&start=0#p16806
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: I have a great idea...
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-05-16 17:59:46

Since having taken a class called Creative Video Techniques during the semester that literally just ended, I've been wondering how video would work in IF.  It sounds like you want to have elements in real-time as well, instead of having no game time pass in between commands, as is typical?

Can you even get video to play in an interpreter using Inform 7 and Glulx/Blorb?  I honestly don't know; I would point to Hugo as a good system to try an experimental piece with video.  It supports MPEG and AVI files.

Anyway, it sounds like a good project, but you still have a lot of details to fill in.  I hope you suceed! [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2452&start=0#p16807
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 Volunteerin'
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-05-16 18:02:30

This weekend Graham and I spent some time on the [url=http://inform7.uservoice.com/]UserVoice suggestions forum[/url], responding to a number of requests and tidying up a few that had become moot. Thanks again to everyone who has participated in that forum over the last year or so -- your input has been truly useful. Some of you may find you have votes back.

While we were at it, we identified a couple of areas where the core team is too overextended to do the work, but where there is clearly strong community desire to see changes made: extensions handling and version control. A number of other smaller items have also been tagged as places where volunteers could potentially help out. I've posted about all these, and some options for getting started, here:

[url]http://inform7.com/news/2011/05/16/inform-7-suggestions-in-want-of-volunteers/[/url]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2267&start=0#p16808
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Need Your Help With A Game.
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-05-16 18:07:05

Well, that certainly is fascinating.  Do you think this [i]Adventure 101[/i] has graphics, seeing as it was published so late in the commercial era that it probably would have needed something graphical to be on the market (from what I've heard -- I was born in 1991).  Was the Sony Discman some early attempt at a dedicated ereader, like what we have now with the Kindle and similar devices, loading books off of CD-ROM?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2364&start=0#p16809
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Different Versions of The Original Adventure
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-05-16 18:13:22

I made a valiant attempt to beat the standard 350-point version last summer.  I've thought about playing one of the extended versions, but I didn't really want to spoil the experience of the true classic.  It may be worth looking at Crowther's restored original, but I think I still would rather play the 350-point version first, since [i]that[/i] version is the one that is essentially gave birth to all adventure games.

Maybe I'll try again this year! [emote]:evil:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2452&start=0#p16810
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 Volunteerin'
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-16 19:04:45

[quote="emshort"]This weekend Graham and I spent some time on the [url=http://inform7.uservoice.com/]UserVoice suggestions forum[/url], responding to a number of requests and tidying up a few that had become moot. Thanks again to everyone who has participated in that forum over the last year or so -- your input has been truly useful. Some of you may find you have votes back.

While we were at it, we identified a couple of areas where the core team is too overextended to do the work, but where there is clearly strong community desire to see changes made: extensions handling and version control. A number of other smaller items have also been tagged as places where volunteers could potentially help out. I've posted about all these, and some options for getting started, here:

[url]http://inform7.com/news/2011/05/16/inform-7-suggestions-in-want-of-volunteers/[/url][/quote]

I would be glad to help where I could be useful.  I even see a few areas that would apply to me and my personal goals.  One in particular is in extensions.  [emote];)[/emote]   I would be glad to help with any projects there since that seems to be the need.

One question though... would a single download of extensions be useful (I see it in the list)?  It seems there is a limit to what can be seen in the "Open Extension" list.  I have hit that limit many times, and had to remove extensions just so I can see the ones I use towards the bottom of the list.  Yes, I read all of the ones I use.  I am strange that way.

I tried loading the Blue Lacuna extensions, and lost three authors from the bottom of the list.  And one of them was me!  (I write my own for my use... I have thought of submitting them, but am waiting till I test them more).

Just a thought.  Either way, I am willing to help.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2422&start=0#p16811
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: I have a great idea...
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-16 19:31:37

Video is currently not supported in Glulx. 

(The path forward that I plan is to support HTML/Javascript in Glulx, and then people can do whatever HTML can handle.) (Sorry it's been going slowly.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2449&start=0#p16812
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6 weird answers to actions referred to "all"
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-05-16 21:03:29

You can probably get around this with a ChooseObjects routine.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2445&start=0#p16813
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Customizing Extension Code
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-16 21:11:35

Yeah, I make a copy, change the author to me, and also change the name to 'Locksmith for (my game name here)'.

Whether or not you change the name, one thing you probably want to watch for is the fact that if someone types 'version' in your game, it's gonna list you as the author of all those extensions, and the original authors' names won't be anywhere.

I suppose if you consider the result of typing 'version' to be tech info only (and technically true info generated by the game itself), and you mention the original authors and their work in your credits, that's probably enough.

My own workaround is to add 'authorial modesty' to all the extensions I mutilate, so they aren't listed automatically, then I add reporting to the version command which says 'I used modified versions of the following extensions...' And then I list the original names, authors and version numbers.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2453&start=0#p16814
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Interactive Fiction on Law & Order: Los Angeles
User: Silas Greenback / DateTime: 2011-05-16 21:22:39

The show is on as I'm typing this...the game is called "Shadow Hills". 

They explicitly called it interactive fiction, but it sounds like they're talking more about a MUD. The screen shot they showed looked a lot more like a RAGS game. 

Not bad for network television.

Edit: As the show rolls on, this seems like the 80's all over again. I guess it's time for a new Satanic Panic and MUDs will be the new D&D.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2445&start=10#p16815
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Customizing Extension Code
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-16 21:29:22

[quote="severedhand"]Yeah, I make a copy, change the author to me, and also change the name to 'Locksmith for (my game name here)'.

...edit...

My own workaround is to add 'authorial modesty' to all the extensions I mutilate, so they aren't listed automatically, then I add reporting to the version command which says 'I used modified versions of the following extensions...' And then I list the original names, authors and version numbers.[/quote]

Now that is a good idea.  I do add comments in the documentation of the extension, but no one ever sees that.

I am not sure how to add reporting to the version command, I will have to look into that.  I do not want to be a thief, but I do like to borrow things.  And giving proper credit in the version report would be a nice thing to do.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2454&start=0#p16816
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: glulx sound observations
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-16 22:00:58

I just thought I'd report a few of my observations on using glulx sound in a game (which I am), since it's not a very charted area yet.

The basic features - easily start, stop and loop sounds  - are pretty neat.

If you want to address sound in terms of real time (EG play this for two minutes, turn this off in 30 seconds), that is currently not easy. You have to start to program the glulx timer, or hack extensions that interact with it. Your best bet here is probably to wait for (or start to fiddle with the i6 version of) the fabled DaMusix extension, which has audio timers built-in.

There is currently one issue which cannot be overcome by any user programming, as it would have to be addressed at the glulx source level (by moving the volume only at zero crossings of sound waves?). When you stop a channel which is playing, you will usually get a click in the audio. You will also get clicks when you change a channel's volume level.

This also means you can't program a clean sound fade-in or out from within your game unless the gradient of the fade is very shallow, because every time the volume is adjusted you can get a click, resulting in a crackly overall fade. I fiddled around with this a lot yesterday, tweaking the delay between steps in volume while fading and the size of the steps. In the end I did come up with a decent approximation of an exponential curve type fade, where the crackling will be faint on most people's average speakers, but you can't really eliminate it.

This may sound picky, but producing fades on-the-fly is probably the most commonly required activity in any game delivering audio, so if glulx is to support audio, I would say that removing the crackles that occur on volume changes is the one fix required for the future. Adding built-in fade support would be killer, but they're actually easy to program so I'm sure folks can do that themselves.

Apart from that, I think all the tools are there for you to do what you want with your sound.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2284&start=10#p16817
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you look for in your IF?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-05-16 23:44:26

[quote]Since I work in the game industry (and have done so for the last fifteen years), I can tell you this is totally incorrect. It is a qualitly that the industry is coming to prize and respect more and more.[/quote]

I meant in terms of compensation and respect. It's easy to pay lip service to the idea of better writing, especially when console graphics have hit a plateau and production costs have stabilized. I have talked to a fair number of industry writers, both in Seattle and Austin, and the impression I get is that they are essentially second class citizens. They get brought on late and kicked off early. Pay is unremarkable and credit protection is non-existent. For every staff writer with a stable job there are a dozen freelancers trying to land gigs writing everything from manuals to boxes to translations. It was rare to find anyone with genuine enthusiasm for the material they'd worked on.

The situation may have changed dramatically since 2008 but what with the recession and the slow recovery I would be surprised if much progress had been made. Last I heard rates were down and less experienced people were having trouble making their quote.

[quote]You may argue that they don't succeed by your criterion -- but those writers are reaching a much wider audience and having their experiments at writing and telling stories put to much greater test than just about any work of IF. As such, the industry has a wide user base to learn from and it's a user base that continually experiments with RPG, first-person shooter, and hybrid games, often moving between them, allowing a good interplay of idea and technique.[/quote]

Again I can only offer my perspective, which seems diametrically opposed to yours. I don't see much experimentation in FPS games. I happen to know that Bungie Studios hired a few game writers during the development of [i]Halo: Reach[/i]. They may as well have been locked in a closet and denied essential supplies because I've never seen such useless and hackneyed writing.

I don't mean that as a reflection on their talent; it's just that there's only so much you can do with a story whose salient points are know to everyone who sits down to play. I guarantee that it wasn't the story they wanted to tell, but the word came down from On High that it would be a prequel, and so their hands were tied. (That is why compensation and respect are important; they make it more likely that when you hire a professional to do a job, you will actually let him do it.)

Still, better that than the other routine industry "experiment": cut out part of the middle and most of the end when faced with budget overruns and deadlines, then have the writers struggle to repair the damage with a few lines of dialogue. Then cut those lines because who wants to see talking heads, right? (See [i]Knights of the Old Republic II[/i] for the most egregious example.)

There is some experimentation with gameplay mechanics at the indie / XBLA level, but has there been anything since [i]Braid[/i] that even pretended to break new ground in storytelling?


[quote]Way too categorical for me and way too subjective. As a opinion, it's cool. But you seem to state it as fact and then just expect others to accept that. (Again, a trait I notice in people who seem to feel the need to defend IF.)

You seem to have a lot of opinions -- like me -- so that's cool. But you seem to have a categorical view of how much better IF writers are than those in other game venues. Since IF is never put to any real test except within its own isolated community (or forays into the "casual gaming" crowd), I guess for the time being you don't have to worry about your claims being tested in any sort of overly critical way.[/quote]

I would say that what you are characterizing as defensiveness is more of a zealous enthusiasm. While both traits are awkward in polite company, as far as I know we are all friends here.

I did not mean to suggest that IF writers are uniformly better than industry writers. However, IF writers have the advantage in that the medium puts writing front and center. Industry games rarely privilege writing to such an extent; the writers I name-checked are perhaps simply fortunate to have worked on titles that did. Perhaps too they are amazingly talented.

I play a lot of IF and I've played a good number of commercial games over the years. I try to remember the names of writers who have delivered a compelling interactive narrative. There are many, many more names on the IF side of my mental ledger. I happen to find this persuasive; your mileage will obviously vary.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2410&start=0#p16818
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Money
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-05-16 23:59:48

I haven't done this before, but have you given the euros the plural and list_together properties?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2284&start=20#p16819
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you look for in your IF?
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-05-17 00:03:50

I did like Blue Chairs, and I loved Shade!  Unfortunately those were the only two really surrealist games I've been able to find.

[quote]My ideal game would be a kind of text-based GTA - a vast territory, with generated NPCs, with no main plot but plenty of "miniquests", and a robust social model that would allow "stories" to be naturally generated through the players actions. For example you could follow some random guy, and figure out he lives in a small house with a wife and two children. You could figure out he is having an affair with another woman and send compromising pics to his wife. All of this being randomly generated.[/quote]

Of course you're welcome to like whatever sorts of games you like, but for me, "randomly generated" is a huge turn-off.  A randomly generated game, to me, seems to have no meaning or purpose--you're just doing stuff to do stuff.  And a game that randomly generates the illusion of purpose (ie, you visit the guy's house and there's a "hook" that he's having an affair) would be an incredibly, practically impossibly complex undertaking.  

[quote]And, quite frankly, I don't think the current author-base (as opposed to player-base) of IF is effective enough to change the expectations of those core audiences to make IF fun beyond the self-enclosed community of practice that currently supports IF creation. I sort of feel like it's a place to stagnate if you don't really want to be a novelist/short story writer or you don't want to be a game writer. It's like this nebulous middle ground where you have the delusion that you can satisfy one or the other urge or audience if you just had a slighty better parser, or slightly more natural way of expressing it, or a slightly better tool, and so on.[/quote]

You could just say you don't like them, since your thesis boils down to "nobody likes IF except people who like IF."  (I'm a writer/reader/game player myself who found my way into the periphery of the IF community because I quite like doing all of them and enjoy how they work in combination.  I think the community is small because, most people don't know it exists.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2449&start=0#p16820
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6 weird answers to actions referred to "all"
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-17 01:11:02

Doesn't work, actually. ChooseObjects only breaks ties in the list of referred-to objects.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2254&start=0#p16821
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Event in Munich on May 7 2011
User: stadtgorilla / DateTime: 2011-05-17 04:27:30

just a little heads-up for everyone who's interested:

we set up a gallery with pics from the event at:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.mischwaldserver.de/volxvergnuegen/index.php/galerieleser/items/258.html">http://www.mischwaldserver.de/volxvergn ... s/258.html</a>

It was great fun. GET LAMP on a big screen, Jason Scott on skype was tremendously funny and informative, and people really enjoyed playing on the terminals we set up (a pink Imac running Leather Goddesses Of Phobos, an old OS 8-powerbook running The Lurking Horror and several slightly more modern laptops running our own game, "Dr. Kong in: Plan DSDS from practice space", Planetfall, Lost Pig and Spider And Web). After the interview, the audience played our game collectively over the big screen, which also was great fun (our crew sported special clothes and accessories that were implemented in the game, see the banana in one of the pictures, we even got Jason Scott to mention it at the end of the interview). An authors' workshop was held during the day which was really inspiring (even if I couldn't attend very much of it). What a night!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2445&start=10#p16822
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Customizing Extension Code
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-17 05:48:18

[quote="Seeker"]I am not sure how to add reporting to the version command, I will have to look into that.  I do not want to be a thief, but I do like to borrow things.  And giving proper credit in the version report would be a nice thing to do.[/quote]

All you have to do is add this line to your game code:

[code]Report requesting the story file version:
	say "This game also uses modified versions of the following extensions:[line break]Exit Lister version 9 by Eric Eve[line break]Put the next extension here, etc."[/code]

If a person types version when they play your game, first everything that Inform generates itself is printed out, then it prints any stuff you've added with this 'Report requesting the story file version' rule.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2422&start=0#p16823
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: I have a great idea...
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-05-17 05:52:05

There's an extension for allowing animations... it's not the same as video, but until video exists, I guess it'll do in a pinch...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2455&start=0#p16824
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: What are some surrealist IF, like Shade and Blue Chairs?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-17 07:03:23

[url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=16819#p16819]Here[/url] katz says she likes surrealist games, and

[quote="katz"]I did like Blue Chairs, and I loved Shade! Unfortunately those were the only two really surrealist games I've been able to find.[/quote]

So can we come up with any more surrealist games that are worth playing? And to avoid any arguments about the meaning of "surrealist," let's say games that are recommended if you loved Shade and liked Blue Chairs. I'll start by saying maybe [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=akinghyw9jcrg02z]Lurid Dreams[/url] by Torgrim Mellum Stene (which is much more Blue Chairs than Shade, I think).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2284&start=20#p16825
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you look for in your IF?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-17 07:04:43

[quote="katz"]I did like Blue Chairs, and I loved Shade!  Unfortunately those were the only two really surrealist games I've been able to find.[/quote]

This seems like a case for an IFDB poll! I'm not registered on IFDB, though, so I started a thread for people to suggest surrealist games [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2455]here[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2445&start=10#p16826
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Customizing Extension Code
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-17 08:05:05

Thanks to all who replied.  The particular action that I needed to customize has (as far as I can tell) no "report" or "after" rules, so Tove's idea seemed like the easiest approach.  In other situations, I would probably use the approach of copying the extension, customizing it and including the copy.

The suggestions for how to provide proper attribution in reponse to the "version" command are very helpful in this regard.  Those who write extensions (and, for that matter, Inform itself) very generously make their work available for all to use, and I would not want to use their work without appropriate attribution.  (This is something that I may be particularly sensitive to, having once been, in a totally different context, the victim of plagiarism.)  At the same time, I'm always leery of attributing a work to somebody if it contains anything (even a single word) that he has not approved.  (Again, my own personal experiences in other contexts may have colored my thinking here -- I have had more than one experience where editors have taken an overly heavy hand to my work and have, to my way of thinking, mangled what started out as rather elegant bits of prose.)  The idea of adding a specific reference which explains that the game makes use of "a modified version of Extension Whatever-it-is by Joe Blow" seems to address both of these concerns.

    Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2410&start=10#p16827
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Money
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-05-17 11:53:55

I've just done some experimenting with this. I don't think it is possible to achieve what you want without directly hacking the library. Even then I can't immediately think of an easy way to do it. Try to live with it for now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2455&start=0#p16828
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: What are some surrealist IF, like Shade and Blue Chairs?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-05-17 12:11:01

[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=7rcl3tz5xrrhxgds]Opening Night[/url] was pretty good. [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=3oez457dpng7ktzb]Snowquest[/url] echoes Shade in certain respects.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2445&start=10#p16829
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Customizing Extension Code
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-05-17 12:22:30

[quote]The idea of adding a specific reference which explains that the game makes use of "a modified version of Extension Whatever-it-is by Joe Blow" seems to address both of these concerns.[/quote]

If you are not making substantial changes, I think it would be more respectful to leave the byline intact. Calling it out as a modified version suggests that you have invested more effort than simply fixing the bugs that arise from interactions with your code and other extensions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2456&start=0#p16830
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: how can you put an intorduction in the game
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-05-17 12:36:14

i want an intro story before the game starts

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2457&start=0#p16831
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: how can you start the game out holding somthing?
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-05-17 12:43:24

i just cant figure this out please help!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2445&start=10#p16832
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Customizing Extension Code
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-17 12:50:22

[quote="bcressey"]If you are not making substantial changes, I think it would be more respectful to leave the byline intact. Calling it out as a modified version suggests that you have invested more effort than simply fixing the bugs that arise from interactions with your code and other extensions.[/quote]
I'm all for giving credit where credit is due, but I also don't want to assign blame where it's not due. Even if there are minor tweaks, I'd want to say so - it's simple enough to say that the changes were minor.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2456&start=0#p16833
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: how can you put an intorduction in the game
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-05-17 12:54:07

It can be done in a number of ways. Here's one: remove the status line, clear the screen, show the intro text, prompt for a key, clear the screen, show the text again, add the status line back, and begin the game.

[code]
gameMain: GameMainDef
	showIntro()
	{
		statuslineBanner.removeBanner();
		cls();
		showText();
		"<p>";
		"<i>Press any key to continue.</i>";
		inputManager.getKey(nil,nil);
		cls();
		showText();
		"<p>";
		statusLine.initBannerWindow(statuslineBanner);
		inherited();
	}

	showText()
	{
		"Welcome to ilovemyhedgehog's IF adventure! ";
	}
;
[/code]

I've heard from a number of players that they don't read anything before the bold room name. The method above makes sure that the intro text is the only thing on the screen at first; after the player reads it, the game begins as normal. I print the text a second time to get it above the room name without any intervening prompt.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2452&start=0#p16834
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 Volunteerin'
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-17 13:05:34

Thanks, Inform 7 team! That's exciting.

I'd be interested in working on the Standard Rules Lite extension. Curiously, it doesn't turn up in a search for VW, maybe because it has 0 votes. Has anyone else expressed interest?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2455&start=0#p16835
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: What are some surrealist IF, like Shade and Blue Chairs?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-17 13:12:22

Does The Space Under the Window count?

And does The 12:54 to Asgard count as worth playing? After playing Blue Chairs, I thought it might have been an influence.

Maybe The Mind Electric? And of course Nord and Bert.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2457&start=0#p16836
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: how can you start the game out holding somthing?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-05-17 13:13:17

Easiest way is just to add the item below the player character object using the + syntax. This will start the player character with a widget.

[code]
me: Actor
    vocabWords = 'self'
    location = Redroom
;

+ widget: Thing 'widget' 'WIDGET'
;
[/code]

You can also set the item's location property directly.

[code]
widget: Thing 'widget' 'WIDGET'
    location = me
;
[/code]

Or do the same thing using the Thing template.

[code]
widget: Thing 'widget' 'WIDGET' @me
;
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2457&start=0#p16837
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: how can you start the game out holding somthing?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-05-17 13:18:38

Note that if you start with the default advanced project, the "me" object already has a plus to place it in its room, so we'll need [i]two[/i] pluses to put an object inside it. 

Essentially, each plus that you add is a deeper layer of containment in the world - things inside things inside things.

If your code looks like this:

[code]startRoom: Room 'Start Room'
    "This is the starting room. "
;

+ me: Actor
;

++Thing 'banana' 'banana'
   "The yellowest of all fruit."
;

+Thing 'apple' 'apple'
   "Not nearly yellow enough."
;[/code]
The banana will appear in your inventory, while the apple will appear in Start Room.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2445&start=10#p16838
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Customizing Extension Code
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-05-17 13:21:30

Just a note that the extensions at inform7.com are licensed with Creative Commons Attribution license. It means that the original author [i]must[/i] be credited somewhere in the game even if you've made substantial changes to the extension, so it's not just a matter of common courtesy.

(Strictly speaking even extension authors who use the authorial modesty option should be credited, but perhaps it's considered that the authors have waivered their rights in these cases.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2278&start=0#p16839
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Hint request -- Anchorhead
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-17 14:01:33

If I remember correctly, I don't think that's an unwinnable situation. [spoiler]I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure you need to find a different way back. Just finish what you're doing there and see what happens.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2422&start=0#p16840
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: I have a great idea...
User: Minkovsky / DateTime: 2011-05-17 14:13:26

Well, on online interpreters, I could do an escape and just use <video> tag... And that's about it. The desktop version would just be a bunch of scripts (python or shell/vbs) launching videos in the native player. So, you know, the web version would be superior to the desktop version in terms of video integration.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2458&start=0#p16841
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Painless Little Stupid Games #6:  Mahadev
User: Rotonoto / DateTime: 2011-05-17 14:50:38

The first five Painless Little Stupid Games didn't include a puzzleless game:  I thought I'd better write one for the decade-postponed second five.  Oh, maybe not entirely puzzleless, but what puzzles there are are basically solved for you if you show the game you're trying.  If anyone wants to beta-test it, I'd appreciate it (send comments to payyasi AT hotmail DOT com:  symbols for words), but really, it's so linear that the player isn't given a lot of freedom (or opportunity to run into bugs, I hope).  Religious people might or might not be offended by the content of this game--or more accurately, by one obvious interpretation of the content--but I'm not sure myself that that interpretation would be correct.  Other than that, there's nothing to say about it.

You can get the z-code game from <a class="postlink" href="http://w3.cnm.edu/~mrblonde/Mahadev.z5">http://w3.cnm.edu/~mrblonde/Mahadev.z5</a>, or wait till I put it on the archive.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2444&start=0#p16842
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Frustrated with Zork I
User: Rotonoto / DateTime: 2011-05-17 15:40:00

The thief takes things you've seen but not picked up, except the coffin, I think. He keeps treasures, but discards non-treasures in random rooms. That means the wrench and tube are somewhere, but maybe not somewhere you've been to yet.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2452&start=0#p16843
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 Volunteerin'
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-05-17 15:57:18

[quote="capmikee"]Thanks, Inform 7 team! That's exciting.

I'd be interested in working on the Standard Rules Lite extension. Curiously, it doesn't turn up in a search for VW, maybe because it has 0 votes. Has anyone else expressed interest?[/quote]

I haven't heard from anyone else wanting to do it. Votes or no, though, I know of at least two authors who've asked for such a thing. ( <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/751266-world-model-standard-rules-lite-vw-?ref=title">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... ?ref=title</a> , for those of you following along at home.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2452&start=0#p16844
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 Volunteerin'
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-05-17 17:14:11

The suggestions site only pulls up 10 hits when searching for VW.   The above one about Standard Lite is not one of them.  Odd.  

This one could probably remove its VW since its marked as Completed already:  <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/834467-version-control-extensions-require-the-i7x-file-?ref=title">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... ?ref=title</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2452&start=0#p16845
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 Volunteerin'
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-05-17 17:33:45

Okay, I've tweaked the completed one, and also the portable app request, since Nyx is working on that actively already.

That does still only give you 10 options when you search for vw. It appears that this is only visible as a full list from the admin console, which is very annoying. [emote]:([/emote]

There are 16 requests in total. Of those, the SCM and extensions-related ones are already linked from the Inform site. The others are:

(Windows and GNOME/IDE) Allow writing of Inform 6 projects *VW*
<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/898407-windows-and-gnome-ide-allow-writing-of-inform-6-?ref=title">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... ?ref=title</a>

Compile a PPC Ubuntu or Debian version of 6E72 *VW*
<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/902207-compile-a-ppc-ubuntu-or-debian-version-of-6e72-vw?ref=title">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... ?ref=title</a>

(World model) Standard Rules Lite *VW*
<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/751266-world-model-standard-rules-lite-vw-?ref=title">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... ?ref=title</a>

(extension request) expose the callstack *VW*
<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/859775-extension-request-expose-the-callstack-vw-?ref=title">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... ?ref=title</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2452&start=0#p16846
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 Volunteerin'
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-05-17 17:42:52

[quote="Seeker"] One question though... would a single download of extensions be useful (I see it in the list)?  It seems there is a limit to what can be seen in the "Open Extension" list.  I have hit that limit many times, and had to remove extensions just so I can see the ones I use towards the bottom of the list. [/quote]

Hm. That is not a problem I've run into on the Mac, to my knowledge. (Though I may not have absolutely everything loaded, I do have quite a lot of extensions.) This sounds like it might be a reportable bug on whatever system you're using.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2450&start=0#p16847
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Pale Blue Light
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-05-17 17:59:14

I know that feeling, but I think if you don't hate a project by the time you've finished it, you can't trust that you've been working hard to fix its flaws. And don't sell yourself short - trying to pitch your game to players in spite of the problems you see with it is part of the post-development healing process.

Anyway, I liked it. I didn't always get what was going on, but it always managed to convey emotion. (And there was one part that gave me serious chills.)

If you're interested, I saved a transcript of my playthrough.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2445&start=10#p16848
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Customizing Extension Code
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-17 18:22:43

[quote="severedhand"][quote="Seeker"]I am not sure how to add reporting to the version command, I will have to look into that.  I do not want to be a thief, but I do like to borrow things.  And giving proper credit in the version report would be a nice thing to do.[/quote]

All you have to do is add this line to your game code:

[code]Report requesting the story file version:
	say "This game also uses modified versions of the following extensions:[line break]Exit Lister version 9 by Eric Eve[line break]Put the next extension here, etc."[/code]

If a person types version when they play your game, first everything that Inform generates itself is printed out, then it prints any stuff you've added with this 'Report requesting the story file version' rule.[/quote]

Perfect.  I just added a similar line to every extension I have renamed and modified, or even just used small parts of someone elses code, to add into my extension(s).  Thanks, now my conscience is clear.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2450&start=0#p16849
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Pale Blue Light
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2011-05-17 18:24:13

Thanks for the encouragement, Pacian.

It's not so much the frustration of debugging that bothered me. Actually, I enjoy that process to some degree. It was just being stuck in the same small story for nigh on three years. When I started the thing it was an Inform 6 project called "One More Painted Lantern," and the idea was that what later became the first part of the story would be longer, and that would be the whole project. I switched tense and person a few times, migrated to Inform 7, entered university and endured the prolonged sputtering out of my disastrous first romantic relationship in the intervening years. So, you see, I really had to let go.  [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2452&start=0#p16850
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 Volunteerin'
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-17 18:29:41

[quote="emshort"][quote="Seeker"] One question though... would a single download of extensions be useful (I see it in the list)?  It seems there is a limit to what can be seen in the "Open Extension" list.  I have hit that limit many times, and had to remove extensions just so I can see the ones I use towards the bottom of the list. [/quote]

Hm. That is not a problem I've run into on the Mac, to my knowledge. (Though I may not have absolutely everything loaded, I do have quite a lot of extensions.) This sounds like it might be a reportable bug on whatever system you're using.[/quote]

I am on the Windows version.  So maybe it is Windows specific.  I will report it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2445&start=10#p16851
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Customizing Extension Code
User: Blecki / DateTime: 2011-05-17 20:40:14

What should I do in the case where I've modified an extension that is a modification of another extension?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2444&start=0#p16852
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Frustrated with Zork I
User: Supernaut / DateTime: 2011-05-17 20:48:11

Ooh right. Thanks for explaining that I had no idea haha. I just hope he hasn't put them somewhere north of the "resevoir south" because I haven't opened the gates on the dam yet and need the wrench for that. Otherwise I'll be doing another restart.   [emote]:shock:[/emote] 

But seriously thanks for that, I understand how the thief works now too.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2455&start=0#p16853
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: What are some surrealist IF, like Shade and Blue Chairs?
User: Roody_Yogurt / DateTime: 2011-05-17 20:55:39

I would suggest [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=0f4x5i2elojxez6l]The Act of Misdirection[/url]. Granted, it's more fantastic than surreal, but like those others, it is very atmospheric and gets one doubting one's senses.

It's been a while since I've played it, but I think [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=x7lnh94mmylkk6ng]No Time To Squeal[/url] was entertainingly weird, too.

Roody, Blue Chairs betatester

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2454&start=0#p16854
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: glulx sound observations
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-05-17 21:00:21

I agree that smooth volume adjustments are a highly valuable addition to the spec. I grumbled about the absence of fade-ins and fade-outs in TADS 3, and eventually Mike added support for them.

The point is, in IF the author cannot know in advance how long the player will remain in a room. When the player discovers the trapdoor beneath the Queen's Scented Bedchamber and descends to the Ghoul-Packed Crypt, the music bed will quite likely need to change. There's just no way to manage this without a smooth cross-fade.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2459&start=0#p16855
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Retrieving text from 'ask it about' or 'answer it that'?
User: Big J Money / DateTime: 2011-05-17 21:01:44

I am using a token to allow a player to answer a bartender about many different words to get the same result.

For example:

[code]
Understand "beer/wine/liquor" as "[order]".

After answering bartender that "[order]", say "The bartender brings you your order."
[/code]

But what I'd REALLY like it to be able to do here is repeat back to the player the same thing they typed.  Here are three things I tried, but none of these work properly:

[code]
After answering bartender that "[order]", say "The bartender brings you your [order]."

After answering bartender that "[order]", say "The bartender brings you your [text]."

After answering bartender that "[order]", say "The bartender brings you your [noun]."
[/code]

The last one actually compiles, but the only noun it returns is "bartender".  Apparently the word the player inputs as text is ignored as a noun.

Any ideas on how I could get this to work?  Thank you.

-- John M.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2452&start=0#p16856
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 Volunteerin'
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-05-17 21:08:05

[quote="Seeker"]One question though... would a single download of extensions be useful (I see it in the list)?  It seems there is a limit to what can be seen in the "Open Extension" list.  I have hit that limit many times, and had to remove extensions just so I can see the ones I use towards the bottom of the list.  Yes, I read all of the ones I use.  I am strange that way.[/quote]
Just out of curiosity, what's the limit you're hitting? I have 33 authors listed under the Open Extension menu item, for a total of 159 extensions, including about 17 built-ins.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2459&start=0#p16857
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Retrieving text from 'ask it about' or 'answer it that'?
User: Blecki / DateTime: 2011-05-17 21:22:56

The token you are looking for is (probably) '[the topic understood]'.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2445&start=10#p16858
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Customizing Extension Code
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-17 21:27:09

[quote="Blecki"]What should I do in the case where I've modified an extension that is a modification of another extension?[/quote]

Okay, I have to admit, that made me laugh.  You add another layer to the mix.

I would say give both authors credit, in order of first author, then first modification author, at least that is what I would do.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2433&start=0#p16859
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting up the player...?
User: tryguy / DateTime: 2011-05-17 21:32:36

Hi again,

I've decided to incorporate capmikee's ideas, since that's a little more future proof, and the additional vocab seems to work very well.

I still have the problem of "yourself" referring to the off-stage "your former self" object though.

[code]The compiler won't accept this:

Understand "yourself" as the player.[/code]

Is there a way to rewrite this to be valid?

[code]Understand "yourself" as a thing when the item described is the player.
[/code]

Is based off of what capmikee did, and it compiles and works (for what testing I've done with it), but I think it's probably a hack-type piece of code (which I don't really follow).

So... does anyone have any suggestions?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2452&start=0#p16860
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 Volunteerin'
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-17 21:43:37

[quote="Jim Aikin"][quote="Seeker"]One question though... would a single download of extensions be useful (I see it in the list)?  It seems there is a limit to what can be seen in the "Open Extension" list.  I have hit that limit many times, and had to remove extensions just so I can see the ones I use towards the bottom of the list.  Yes, I read all of the ones I use.  I am strange that way.[/quote]
Just out of curiosity, what's the limit you're hitting? I have 33 authors listed under the Open Extension menu item, for a total of 159 extensions, including about 17 built-ins.[/quote]

I have 38 authors and 184 files in the extension folder under "MyDocuments/Inform".  If I add one... one at the end drops off.  So that seems to be my limit.  I think it is number of extensions though, not number of authors.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2455&start=0#p16861
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: What are some surrealist IF, like Shade and Blue Chairs?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-05-17 21:43:50

For A Change. Acid Whiplash. Deadline Enchanter. Shrapnel. Ferrous Ring.  The Trip.

Also, <a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Category:Surreal">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Category:Surreal</a> may be helpful.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2454&start=0#p16862
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: glulx sound observations
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-17 21:46:01

Noted for the Glk to-do list.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2433&start=10#p16863
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting up the player...?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-17 21:48:52

That last is in fact what I'd do, for a game with player-switching.

If the player is going to stay as the original (default) player object through the whole game, you can just say

Understand "foo" as yourself.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2460&start=0#p16864
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: New here, trying to get started on my first IF
User: Cyris / DateTime: 2011-05-18 01:42:22

I have recently discovered Inform 7 and am quite enthralled at its premise, to say the least. As interested in adventure games as I am, however, I am not sure how I would go about making one.

I came up with a story for my IF (I can post a summary here if requested) and thought of all the characters and locations involved, but I'm not sure how the puzzles will be implemented, or even some of the basic functions.

For example, my story takes place in a city, and the player has to drive around by car to go from location to location, with more places being unlocked as the story progresses. However, I ran into a number of problems with this. How do I keep the player from hitting the road without his car? It would also be silly for the player to still be in his car while indoors, so how do I prevent him from going to certain places while in his car? How do I allow the player to visit all the relevant locations from his car and only from his car? How do I prevent the player from going to locations he has not unlocked and break the script?

And what's the best way for me to handle scenes changing over the course of the story? The first puzzle in my game has the player going to the police to inform them of a crime scene he has just discovered. When he goes back to the scene later, the police will be all over the place, conducting their investigation. How am I going to make everything in the scene operate differently when the police are there?

And that's just the problems that are readily apparent at this point. I'll probably run into many more as I progress in this project.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2431&start=0#p16865
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Possession in i7?
User: tryguy / DateTime: 2011-05-18 03:17:44

I'm coming back to this thread with some working code because I've discovered another thing I'd like to find a solution for.

Here's the current code for my test project:

[code]"Escape"

When play begins:
	now the player is Robert;
	now yourself is off-stage.

The Cell is a room.

Robert is a man in the Cell. Michael is a man in the Cell.

A tattoo is a kind of thing. A tattoo is part of every man.

Rule for printing the name of the tattoo which is part of the player: say "your tattoo".
   
Understand "mine" and "my" and "your" as a thing when the item described is part of the player.

Understand "yourself" as a thing when the item described is the player.[/code]

And I'm pretty happy with how things behave, but I've identified something I'd like address.

This is a transcript:

[code]>x my tattoo
You see nothing special about your tattoo.

>x your tattoo
You see nothing special about your tattoo.

>x his tattoo
You can't see any such thing.

>x michael's tattoo
You see nothing special about Michael's tattoo.

>x robert's tattoo
You see nothing special about your tattoo.[/code]

"x his tattoo" doesn't work. Anyone know why not?

If I change Robert's sex to female, thereby having only one male in the room, i7 has no trouble understanding "x his tattoo" is asking about Michael's tattoo. Like so:

[code]>x my tattoo
You see nothing special about Michael's tattoo.

>x your tattoo
You can't see any such thing.

>x his tattoo
You see nothing special about Michael's tattoo.

>x michael's tattoo
You see nothing special about Michael's tattoo.

>x robert's tattoo
You can't see any such thing.
[/code]

But, as you might notice, this configuration brings up the thread's original issue, namely "x my tattoo" being treated as "x tattoo". There's probably no need to dwell on that...

So, can anyone offer a suggestion how I might catch the "x his tattoo" (in the first configuration) problem? Is it just because the interpretor isn't bothering to ask for clarification when it can't work out which tattoo the user means?

I have downloaded/tried Plurality by Emily Short, Disambiguation Control by Jon Ingold and Pronouns by Ron Newcomb, but I haven't written any custom code from them into my game. I just wanted to see if they would pick this situation up natively, but they didn't.

Umm, so I guess I'll go back to reading the manual.

Any help would be great, because it's these little things that really irritate me while I'm playing a game like this.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2460&start=0#p16866
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: New here, trying to get started on my first IF
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-05-18 03:25:20

I think a good first step is to try and find games that have done similar things, and see how they did it. If you find a method you like, pinch it. If you don't like it, try and figure out [i]why[/i] you don't like it and that may inspire you to change that method to your liking, or come up with your own method.

Some IF games implement vehicles as containers that you can drive around between rooms as you might walk (this is probably the most liable to bugs like driving inside a house). Others implement them as objects that, when used ("drive motorbike", "get in car") offer you a list of places to (essentially) teleport to. In my work in progress I'm implementing a car as its own room, where, while inside, you'll get to choose to change the external location from a set of important places.

[quote="Cyris"]How do I keep the player from hitting the road without his car? It would also be silly for the player to still be in his car while indoors, so how do I prevent him from going to certain places while in his car? How do I allow the player to visit all the relevant locations from his car and only from his car? How do I prevent the player from going to locations he has not unlocked and break the script?[/quote]
This is pretty universal across IF languages (and even non-IF languages). It's all a question of either only allowing the player certain options, or setting the right conditions on the options you do offer. (Although since, in IF, a player who knows where the game is going can type options not offered, you usually still need to set conditions on them.)

Figuring out how best to set conditions in different circumstances (in certain locations, in certain scenes, in the presence of certain NPCs...) will vary from language to language. (Someone more proficient in I7 than me may be able to offer some specific advice.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2460&start=0#p16867
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: New here, trying to get started on my first IF
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-05-18 04:41:02

[quote="Cyris"] And what's the best way for me to handle scenes changing over the course of the story? The first puzzle in my game has the player going to the police to inform them of a crime scene he has just discovered. When he goes back to the scene later, the police will be all over the place, conducting their investigation. How am I going to make everything in the scene operate differently when the police are there?[/quote]

This is exactly what the "scene" mechanism in Inform 7 exists to do. It allows you to define different scenes with conditions for starting and stopping, and then make some rules apply only during a given scene. So for instance you might write instructions like

[code]Police investigation is a scene. Police investigation begins when the cops are in the Crime Scene.

Instead of touching the body during Police Investigation:
  say "'Hey! No tampering with the evidence,' says Officer Duffy sharply."[/code]

The manual chapter on scenes should give you some more ideas.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2455&start=0#p16868
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: What are some surrealist IF, like Shade and Blue Chairs?
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-05-18 06:12:23

I'm surprised no one has mentioned [i]So Far[/i], the classic that was one of the first games I played with a walkthrough, and one my favorites.  [i]The Dreamhold[/i], by the same author, also may be worth mentioning.  Actually, [i]Blue Lacuna[/i], though less surrealist than [i]So Far[/i], could probably fall into this category as well.  Now that I think about it, [i]Blue Lacuna[/i] may be fairly strongly derived from [i]So Far[/i], using essentially the same plot device in regard to the PC, although [i]Blue Lacuna[/i] explains the jumping between worlds more.

Then there's [i]On Optimism[/i], a little-known entry to the 2005 competition that I really liked.

[Edited on May 18 to add:]
Now that I think of it, [i]All Hope Abandon[/i] is another one of my favorites that belongs at least nominally in the surrealist category.  It has a unifying theme, but not a very consistent story world.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2431&start=0#p16869
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Possession in i7?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-18 06:41:41

Try adding this:

[code]Definition: A person (called subject) is NPC if the subject is not the player.
Understand "his" as a thing when the item described is enclosed by an NPC man.[/code]

I'm not sure that I7 automatically understands "his," so this makes "his" refer to things that are carried, worn, or part of some man who isn't the player. (And I remember from somewhere that things get messy when you try to deal with "her," because there the possessive is the same as the pronoun referring to the woman herself, but in prison you may not need to worry about that.) 

Unfortunately this doesn't tell I7 to use "his" to whatever the pronoun "him" refers to -- try putting two men in the cell, examine one of them, then examine "his tattoo." If there's a way of exposing the referent of "his" to the source code, you could maybe use that to line "his" up with "him," so that this would work, but I'm not sure how to do it; I suspect it involves a bit of I6 code.

Also, there may be an extension floating around to do this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2380&start=0#p16870
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: GOD DAMN WRITER'S BLOCK!
User: Argus Swift / DateTime: 2011-05-18 07:57:42

Ugh, I hear ya. Writer's Block often seems to hit at the worst of times.

Whenever it hits me, though, I usually leave the work in question alone for a bit and do something else. Usually, after a bit, having been separated from the work for a while, idea's start to flow and the work commences.

In my experience, at least..

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2459&start=0#p16871
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Retrieving text from 'ask it about' or 'answer it that'?
User: Big J Money / DateTime: 2011-05-18 08:20:51

Thanks, I'll try this when I get home!

Quick question: where could I find this in the documentation?  I had tried searching tokens; also I believe I ended up reading the entire chapter 'Understanding' but did not see this information.

I'm sure there is a more verbose way I could have figured out how to do this with IF statements, but this seems more elegant to me. Again, thank you [emote]:)[/emote]

-- John M.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2444&start=0#p16872
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Frustrated with Zork I
User: Rotonoto / DateTime: 2011-05-18 08:22:47

There's another way to go north of the reservoir too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2459&start=0#p16873
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Retrieving text from 'ask it about' or 'answer it that'?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-05-18 08:35:29

[quote="Big J Money"]Quick question: where could I find this in the documentation?[/quote]
"Topic understood" is first mentioned in passing in review of chapter on basic actions (7.19.) and more thoroughly in chapter 16.5. (The text token) and in the review of chapter on understanding (16.22.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2461&start=0#p16874
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Indistiguishable (sometimes) objects
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-18 08:35:40

I need to create the following effect, and am at a loss for how to approach it:

[b]1.[/b]  There will be a thing (we'll call it a widget).  There will be two widgets in the world, one of which starts out offstage.

[b]2.[/b]  A widget can be in one of two states, frobodlicated or unfrobodlicated.  However, I don't want this to be too obvious to the player until he figures out how to frobodlicate a widget; therefore, I want an unfrobodlicated widget to be described as (and referred to by the player in commands) simply as a widget.

[b]3.[/b]  When two widgets are in the same place [i]and[/i] the same state, I need them to be indistinguishable.  Thus, for example, if the player is carrying two widgets which are both frobodlicated, I want them to appear in his inventory as "2 frobodlicated widgets"; if he then types "drop frobodlicated widget" it will drop one without the necessity (or even the possibility) of specifying which one.

[b]4.[/b]  If the two widgets are in different locations, I need to be able to specify which one is referred to.  In particular, when the trigger occurs to move the initially offstage widget onstage, I need to be able to specify that that is the one which gets moved, regardless of the state that the other one is in.

[b]5.[/b]  If the two widgets are in different states, I need to be able to distinguish them for all purposes.  For example, if the player holds both and they are in different states, the inventory list would contain entries for "a frobodlicated widget" and "a widget"; if he then wants to drop (or do something else with) one of them, it would understand a reference to "widget" as the unfrobodlicated widget and a reference to "frobodlicated widget" as the frobodlicated widget.


I understand from the documentation that to create multiple indistiguishable widgets I would create widget as a kind, not a thing; each widget would then be implemented as an unnamed instance of the widget kind.  However, I need to be able to distinguish them in certain situations (i.e., where they are in different places or different states).  On top of this, I need to avoid the dreaded disambiguation loop problem where the printed (and understood) name of one item (the unfrobodlicated widget, which I want to appear as "widget") is a subset of the name of another (the frobodlicated widget).

Frankly, I can't figure out where to begin with this.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

   Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2445&start=10#p16875
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Customizing Extension Code
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-18 08:36:06

[quote="Seeker"][quote="Severedhand"][code]Report requesting the story file version:
	say "This game also uses modified versions of the following extensions:[line break]Exit Lister version 9 by Eric Eve[line break]Put the next extension here, etc."[/code]

If a person types version when they play your game, first everything that Inform generates itself is printed out, then it prints any stuff you've added with this 'Report requesting the story file version' rule.[/quote]

Perfect.  I just added a similar line to every extension I have renamed and modified, or even just used small parts of someone elses code, to add into my extension(s).  Thanks, now my conscience is clear.[/quote]
Could we define a protocol for the way this is done? If this is a matter of complying with the Creative Commons license, it seems like every extension with multiple authors should follow the same format, so the "version" output looks consistent.

Ideally the protocol should be in the documentation. Better yet, add some kind of Table of Previous Authors that gets formatted the right way automatically.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2380&start=0#p16876
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: GOD DAMN WRITER'S BLOCK!
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-05-18 08:49:09

Giving it a little break sometimes helps.

I don't always have that option, especially on work projects, so here's what I do instead: treat the writing as a design problem. 

- Write down a list of things that the story is still missing, or that I think aren't working properly. Like this: "Needs a stronger hook to get the reader interested in the mystery of Clare's identity" or "Pacing lags right after the mugging scene" or "Coffee shop setting feels too generic." 
- Be as specific as possible, as though I were explaining these problems to some third party who is going to come help me out. Frequently, identifying the problem gives me at least an idea about what the solution could be.
- If the problem has to do with content -- lack of good imagery and local color -- figure out some related topics and spend an hour or so on internet research on those topics. Often something I see will spark a new concept.
- Once I know roughly what the solution is that I want to try, dive back into the writing. Sometimes I still haven't come up with the best possible structure/content, but I won't know what's wrong with my new idea until I've spent some time with it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2431&start=0#p16877
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Possession in i7?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-05-18 08:49:30

I7 does understand "his". On the I6 level it's considered a "descriptor" like "that" etc. And it is connected somehow to the pronoun "him". However, it seems that "his" only captures possessions in the sense of things worn or carrried, not parts. (Which is a little confusing, since genitives—like "Michael's"—captures parts but not things worn or carried.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2461&start=0#p16878
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Indistiguishable (sometimes) objects
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-05-18 08:50:17

The example "Hot Glass Looks Like Cold Glass" handles pretty much exactly this. You can make a certain property of an object determine whether it should be parsed differently and described differently to the player.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2461&start=0#p16879
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Indistiguishable (sometimes) objects
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-18 08:58:37

Thanks.  I will study the example.

   Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2460&start=0#p16880
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: New here, trying to get started on my first IF
User: Big J Money / DateTime: 2011-05-18 09:31:19

Cyris, where are you located?  I've been kind of wanting to break into Inform myself, but don't really have any great story ideas (I'm starting out with short story ideas right now).

But I would have fun helping someone else solve their structural/organizational problems, since I'm more interested in the natural scripting aspect anyway.  Is there some way we could collaborate?  I'm thinking I can send you suggested I7 script snippets for your requests, and you can implement them and see how they work out.  The catch is that you'd have to start sharing the full script with me at some point for us to continue.

Hm, GoogleDocs allows sharing of documents and this might actually work very well.  It would involve Cut/Past from GoogleDocs into I7 and vice-cersa.  Anyway, I won't be upset if you say no [emote]:)[/emote]

Cheers,

-- John M.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2431&start=0#p16881
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Possession in i7?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-18 09:38:36

[quote="Felix"]I7 does understand "his". On the I6 level it's considered a "descriptor" like "that" etc. And it is connected somehow to the pronoun "him".[/quote]

Oops. Shouldn't post on things I don't know about first thing in the morning. Or perhaps at all. Can you say more about how descriptors work, and if there's any way to hack this?
 
[quote]However, it seems that "his" only captures possessions in the sense of things worn or carrried, not parts. (Which is a little confusing, since genitives—like "Michael's"—captures parts but not things worn or carried.)[/quote]

Well (breaking my own rule), I [i]think[/i] the thing with genitives is that when you create a tattoo as a part of every person, the actual name it gets is "Michael's tattoo" etc. So "Michael's" works in this case because it's part of the name. 

You can maybe get genitives to work more generally with a little bit of hacking -- use an "after reading a command" rule to turn apostrophe-s into a separate word, and use a [something related by reversed enclosure] token with it so that "Michael 's" gets understood as things Michael encloses. There's some code [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&p=6893#p6893]here[/url] under the spoiler tags (if you copy-paste it you need to fix the tabs and line breaks). It should mostly work, except that "random person enclosing the noun" should be "random person enclosing the item described" or perhaps something slightly more complicated involving conditions to deal with loose noses and noses that are carried by but not part of anyone. The other bugs mentioned in the thread are either fixed or never existed, I think.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2431&start=0#p16882
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Possession in i7?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-18 09:48:20

[quote="matt w"][Well (breaking my own rule), I [i]think[/i] the thing with genitives is that when you create a tattoo as a part of every person, the actual name it gets is "Michael's tattoo" etc. So "Michael's" works in this case because it's part of the name.[/quote]
I'm pretty sure that's right. If you have a person named Michael William Fitzpatrick, you'll be able to refer to "Fitzpatrick's tattoo" but not "Michael's tattoo" or "Michael William's tattoo" - because the full name that Inform gives it is "Michael William Fitzpatrick's tattoo."

Unless you use indexed text, I think the only way around that is:

[code]Understand "Michael's" and "William's" as a thing when the item described is part of Michael.[/code]

...separately for each person.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2410&start=10#p16883
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Money
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-05-18 10:20:03

[quote="Grueslayer"]What I've achieved so far is to create some Euros and give them to the player. What I want to do is to create some more Euros and put them on the ground. I did so, but they're individual objects, so "get all" results in "You take the Euro." X times. I'd like to have the player get them all at once, like "You take the 20 Euros.". That's my problem. I can't seem to find a solution for this in the manual. I assume money.h provides a solution, but I don't understand how it works.[/quote]
Have you tried creating a big pile of indistinguishable Euros offstage at the start of the game and then moving some of them to the player and others to the room when you need them? If you do that, does Inform still end up thinking some of them are indistinguishable and some are distinguishable?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2431&start=0#p16884
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Possession in i7?
User: tryguy / DateTime: 2011-05-18 11:12:43

Thanks for looking into this. [emote]:)[/emote]

I really appreciate it, to all. I think it's a bit over my head at this stage, but I'll be sure to refer back to this when I've gotten a bit further along in the manual. For now, I'll just write a note to revisit these things later.

Oh, I did come up with another line that solved one problem. I'm not sure if it'll work under all situations, but it seems to work under the testing I've done. It might be of interest.

[code]Understand "his/hers/her" as a thing when the item described is not held by the player.

Understand "mine/my/your" as a thing when the item described is held by the player.

Understand "yourself" as a person when the item described is the player.
[/code]

I don't need the hers/her part really, but I put it in anyway just to see. It works as well.

I won't know if all this really works until I start putting more into the world and play test things. But I'm putting that off for a little bit.

Thanks again for the great resources.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2431&start=0#p16885
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Possession in i7?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-18 11:55:04

[quote="tryguy"][code]Understand "his/hers/her" as a thing when the item described is not held by the player.

Understand "mine/my/your" as a thing when the item described is held by the player.

Understand "yourself" as a person when the item described is the player.
[/code][/quote]
Be careful: "held by the player" means "carried or worn," not "enclosed by the player." So if there's a widget in the rucksack you're wearing, you'll be able to refer it to "his" but not as "mine." Enclosed also covers component parts, while held does not.

An addendum to my previous post about genitives: If I'm not mistaken, you don't have to worry about words that are longer than the character limit, because past that point the apostrophe-s will be ignored.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2364&start=0#p16886
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Different Versions of The Original Adventure
User: Rotonoto / DateTime: 2011-05-18 12:02:46

I'm not sure about the status of this, or how you feel about the whole "abandonware" issue, but there was a great collection called Software Golden Oldies back in the '90's which contained the 350 Adventure in Fortran. I own a copy of this and it still plays nicely in DOSBox. There were Mac releases too. This version has a more genuine "primitive" mainframe feel to it than the Z-code port, which is the only other I've played.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2445&start=20#p16887
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Customizing Extension Code
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-18 13:20:51

I came up with 3 versions (no pun intended) depending on how I modified the extension, of if I just used pieces of it.

Minor modification:

Blah 2 is a slightly modified version of the following extension:
Blah version 5 by Author

Major modification:

Blah 2 is a modified version of the following extension:
Blah version 5 by Author

Only minor pieces used:

Blah uses parts of the following extension:
Exit Lister version 10 by Eric Eve

That is how they print out after typing 'version'.  For me at least, that covers all of the options I could think of.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2445&start=20#p16888
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Customizing Extension Code
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-05-18 13:46:51

I still think that calling out modifications in this fashion cheapens the contribution from the extension author. It's fair to say that you don't want to tarnish his or her reputation by association, but players by and large have no idea what any extension does and will assume that all bugs and defects are your own fault.

It's a bit like a film director insisting on a shared credit for everything from writing to catering, just because he improvised a few lines of dialog or told the craft services people to move a table. You already have the authorial credit ("An Interactive Fiction by So-and-So"). Implying an additional credit for all the constituent parts just seems like grasping.

IMO Matt Wigdahl handled this like a pro with [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=lrbpmlpsknsgvgem]Aotearoa[/url]. Despite what sounds like an inordinate amount of work [url=http://www.wigdahl.net/quern/2010/11/16/aotearoa-postmortem-part-1-convenience-features/]fitting various extensions together[/url], he left the version information intact. In the game's credits he only mentioned his modifications to Tutorial Mode, which seem to have amounted to a major rewrite.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2450&start=0#p16889
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Pale Blue Light
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-05-18 13:56:50

[quote="Pacian"]I think if you don't hate a project by the time you've finished it, you can't trust that you've been working hard to fix its flaws.[/quote]
I totally agree. There's not one past project I've done that I am currently satisfied with that didn't involve at least one period of abject misery and and what-was-I-thinking/this-is-and-always-will-be-crap.  Realizing that, and learning to see that down point as actually a [i]good sign[/i], has been tremendously helpful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2445&start=20#p16890
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Customizing Extension Code
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-18 14:06:31

[quote="bcressey"]IMO Matt Wigdahl handled this like a pro with [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=lrbpmlpsknsgvgem]Aotearoa[/url]. Despite what sounds like an inordinate amount of work [url=http://www.wigdahl.net/quern/2010/11/16/aotearoa-postmortem-part-1-convenience-features/]fitting various extensions together[/url], he left the version information intact. In the game's credits he only mentioned his modifications to Tutorial Mode, which seem to have amounted to a major rewrite.[/quote]
I agree that that's a gracious and admirable approach, however, I'm trying to figure out the "official" approach:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc420.html">http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc420.html</a>
[quote]Sometimes authorship is complicated. What if Mary Brown finds some Inform 6 code written by John Smith in the mid-90s, and puts an I7 gloss on it to make an I7 extension, but then Pierre Dupont translates it into French: who's the author of the result? The rule is that the person making the current, latest version is the author listed in the titling line, so we end up with

    ... by Pierre Dupont begins here. 

But Mary and John deserve their credits too: see the next section for how to give them.[/quote]

And here's the key. I missed it last time I read this chapter, perhaps because the previous section seems to suggest that it will be explained right away, while it's actually the very last thing in the section:
<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc421.html">http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc421.html</a>
[quote]A second double-quoted text can also, optionally, be added in yet a third special starting paragraph. This is to provide additional credits to people who have contributed to this or earlier versions. For instance:

    The Ducking Action by Graham Nelson begins here. 

    "An action for ducking one's head." 

    "based on original Inform 6 code by Marc Canard" 

Note the typical style here: it's a phrase rather than a sentence, and neither starts with an upper-case letter nor ends with a full stop. (The additional credit is then used in documentation and also in the VERSION text of any Inform story file using the extension.) [/quote]

And look at that! Exactly the feature I was asking for. It's already there, yet again the only problem is that it's buried in an unexpected place in the documentation.

Perhaps the right thing to do when making minor modifications to an extension is to add a line saying simply "with minor modifications" or "slightly tweaked for this game," without giving any additional author names at all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2445&start=20#p16891
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Customizing Extension Code
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-18 14:19:17

What about cases where you do massive modifications, or just use a small portion of another extension?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2445&start=20#p16892
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Customizing Extension Code
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-18 14:54:01

Since I seem to have stirred up a bit of a hornet's nest, I'll kick in my own couple of pence.

In the world of "traditional" writing, if I've written a piece and somebody quotes it (with attribution, of course) but changes one word in the quote, standard practice requires that the modification be set off in square brackets to indicate that it is not the word that the original author used.

Granted, an extension is different in that what the ultimate reader (the player) see is not the actual language that the extension author wrote but rather something that such language indirectly generated (putting aside the case where the author releases the source code along with the story file).  Nonetheless, the possibility exists that my modification, no matter how minor, may be such that the original extension author would consider it a crime against nature.  If I don't, somehow, flag the fact that it contains something which he has not specifically approved, I might be attributing something to him to which he would not want his name attached.

How about something like:  "This incorporates Extension So-and-so by Joe Blow, with minor modifications by Robert Rothman.  Any errors, inconsistencies or bugs therein are solely the responsibility of Robert Rothman."

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2445&start=20#p16893
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Customizing Extension Code
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-18 15:08:28

[quote="Robert Rothman"]Since I seem to have stirred up a bit of a hornet's nest, I'll kick in my own couple of pence.

In the world of "traditional" writing, if I've written a piece and somebody quotes it (with attribution, of course) but changes one word in the quote, standard practice requires that the modification be set off in square brackets to indicate that it is not the word that the original author used.

Granted, an extension is different in that what the ultimate reader (the player) see is not the actual language that the extension author wrote but rather something that such language indirectly generated (putting aside the case where the author releases the source code along with the story file).  Nonetheless, the possibility exists that my modification, no matter how minor, may be such that the original extension author would consider it a crime against nature.  If I don't, somehow, flag the fact that it contains something which he has not specifically approved, I might be attributing something to him to which he would not want his name attached.

How about something like:  "This incorporates Extension So-and-so by Joe Blow, with minor modifications by Robert Rothman.  Any errors, inconsistencies or bugs therein are solely the responsibility of Robert Rothman."

Robert Rothman[/quote]

That is what I lean towards.  I look at it this way... If I were to publish an extension, and someone else were to use it and modify it too better suit them, that is how I would want my original work to be treated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2460&start=0#p16894
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: New here, trying to get started on my first IF
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-05-18 17:33:44

Cyris: Are you Cysma on TVTropes?   [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2380&start=0#p16895
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: GOD DAMN WRITER'S BLOCK!
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-05-18 18:17:15

I only seem to get writers block when things start to not make sense to me or conflict, in that case I also use a sort of "listing" method as Emily mentions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2427&start=10#p16896
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Glimmr sizing and alignment standards?
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-05-18 18:24:06

Yes sir, thanks!

Just wanted to add that today I went back to this and have got rectangle primitives added to the meters within the scenic-canvas and they are being properly manipulated by commands within the game [emote]:D[/emote] 

I'll update my blog later after I add a few more elements and start finishing things with the GUI..

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2080&start=10#p16897
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2011
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-05-18 18:30:13

I placed 6 out of 6, but I must say this was both an informative and fun competition!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2080&start=10#p16898
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2011
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-05-18 18:38:21

[quote="Jizaboz"]I placed 6 out of 6, but I must say this was both an informative and fun competition![/quote]
I really enjoyed "Hallow Eve" until I got stuck, pretty far into it.  Congratulations!  I would call your game a success. [emote]:-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2080&start=10#p16899
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Spring Thing 2011
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-05-18 18:40:38

[quote="Bainespal"]
I really enjoyed "Hallow Eve" until I got stuck, pretty far into it.  Congratulations!  I would call your game a success. [emote]:-)[/emote][/quote]

Thank you very much, sir. That means a lot to me  [emote]:twisted:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2380&start=0#p16900
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: GOD DAMN WRITER'S BLOCK!
User: Argus Swift / DateTime: 2011-05-18 19:11:10

Hm, that's actually a really good idea, emshort. Thank ya!
Next I'm hit with the dreaded writer's block, I'll give that a shot. [i](even though I write recreationally...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2462&start=0#p16901
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: anonymous recursive functions?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-05-18 20:04:30

Is there language support for anonymous recursive functions in TADS 3? Something like arguments.callee in Javascript, so the function can reference itself even though it doesn't have a name?

The Y combinator approach works but is somewhat opaque.

[code]
test() {
	local Y = new function(f) {
		local g = {h: {x: f(h(h))(x)}};
		return g(g);
	};

	local factorial = Y({f: {x: x == 0 ? 1 : x * f(x-1)}});
	local fibonacci = Y({f: {x: x == 0 ? 0 : (x == 1 ? 1 : f(x-1) + f(x-2))}});

	tadsSay(toString(factorial(5)),'\n');
	tadsSay(toString(fibonacci(10)),'\n');
}
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2431&start=10#p16902
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Possession in i7?
User: tryguy / DateTime: 2011-05-18 20:20:42

Thanks for the pointer, capmikee.

I think I'll be using matt_w's suggestion though, because it does exactly what I was aiming at, and I think my try might pick up a little extra. So, for now I'll integrate that and then do some writing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2445&start=20#p16903
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Customizing Extension Code
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-18 20:50:00

Another thought...

capmikee, DavidK, and others have helped me with problems in my code. They gave me the fixes I needed when I had a coding issue I couldn't figure out.  There was a problem making an aspect of the extension work the way I wanted it, and they posted the fix for me to use.  And I did.

And, as I am sure we all do, I have used ideas and code (modified) from the examples in the documentation in my games and in extensions.  How far should this go?  Do we need to list every source of every idea that went into the final product so it shows up in a 'version' response?  I do mention them (the people and example references) in the extension docs.... but really, does it all need to be in the 'version' response?  If I use 20 lines (or even 50 or 100) from another extension (or helpful forum post, or Inform doc example), in a 400 line extension, do I note it?

I think this is a point that we each must deal with in our own way.  There is no right way or wrong way.  Nor can we make a 'rule'. Maybe general guidelines.  But a 300 line response to 'version' is not in anyone's interest.

Trust the community to be honest.  Personal integrity goes a long way...  And in the great scheme of things, we have no other choice.

I am sure to some this sounds like a silly post about the issue... But really, how anal do we need to be?  And I think this is a subject that is wide open to anal analysis.  Pun intended.   [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2444&start=0#p16904
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Frustrated with Zork I
User: Supernaut / DateTime: 2011-05-18 21:02:24

Ah yeah. I know the way you mean. I have actually finished the game now (to be honest I used the walkthrough a bit too much.) Onto Zork II now, going to see if I can do that one without a walkthrough. I always get so impatient haha.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2460&start=0#p16905
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: New here, trying to get started on my first IF
User: Argus Swift / DateTime: 2011-05-18 21:09:10

[quote="Big J Money"]But I would have fun helping someone else solve their structural/organizational problems, since I'm more interested in the natural scripting aspect anyway.[/quote]Oh man, that's the opposite problem I'm having. I'm bursting with story idea's, and in my head, I can see how I can implement them, but I need more Inform 7 experience first.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=180#p16906
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Argus Swift / DateTime: 2011-05-18 21:15:30

Oh man, an age when monitors were rare....
Young'uns like me just can't comprehend. I love hearing and reading about the old days of computers, though. Must have been a magical time, so to say.


I basically started using Inform 7 yesterday. Bursting with story idea's, and it's a blast looking up ways of which I can implement them. Never been much good with text adventures, but I've always enjoyed them highly. Hopefully this will help me out!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2445&start=20#p16907
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Customizing Extension Code
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-18 22:11:46

[quote="Seeker"]I think this is a point that we each must deal with in our own way.  There is no right way or wrong way.  Nor can we make a 'rule'. Maybe general guidelines.  But a 300 line response to 'version' is not in anyone's interest.

Trust the community to be honest.  Personal integrity goes a long way...  And in the great scheme of things, we have no other choice.[/quote]

Yes, this is what I believe as well. I'm happy with the way I'm handling these issues now. I started doing what I'm doing to avoid outright errors... inform not mentioning an extension I used cos I changed its author to me for purely technical reasons. And I've dealt with it, and I also describe what's going on with other stuff I've used in a way Inform itself could never account for.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2463&start=0#p16908
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: More disambiguation trickiness
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-18 22:30:38

Say I'm playing a character named Bob who is dressed as E.T., and is wearing an E.T. mask.

I might later be playing a character called Sue, who can look at Bob and refer to him, parser-wise, as Bob or as E.T.

To allow this to happen I have to 'Understand "E.T." as Bob.' Of course, Bob's mask is called "E.T. mask"

After all that's in place, if I'm Bob and I type "drop E.T." in an attempt to drop my mask, I get the disambiguation question:

"Which do you mean, yourself or your E.T. mask?"

Is there a way I can stop character pseudonyms from being offered at disambiguation time? I've got a headache here as I've got a heap of people in costume and the player might be any one of them. And obviously I don't only want to stop it happening for 'drop'.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2445&start=20#p16909
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Customizing Extension Code
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-05-18 23:53:53

[quote="Seeker"]Another thought...

capmikee, DavidK, and others have helped me with problems in my code. They gave me the fixes I needed when I had a coding issue I couldn't figure out.  There was a problem making an aspect of the extension work the way I wanted it, and they posted the fix for me to use.  And I did.
:[/quote]

As you say, no need to be too guideline-obsessed about this. There is something of an unofficial community tradition of including a "credits" command or menu item that lists people who helped you in substantial ways, such as beta-testers or people who gave you lots of code advice. It is hardly carved in stone, though. As for crediting the manual, I wouldn't worry about that at all, unless you really want to call out some useful third party guide.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2454&start=0#p16910
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: glulx sound observations
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-05-19 00:46:11

[quote="severedhand"]This also means you can't program a clean sound fade-in or out from within your game unless the gradient of the fade is very shallow, because every time the volume is adjusted you can get a click, resulting in a crackly overall fade.[/quote]Naively, I would have expected the Glk volume control to be fine enough for volume changes to be possible without crackling. Is this with a specific interpreter, or with the interpreter in the Inform 7 front-end, or all interpreters you've tried?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2463&start=0#p16911
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More disambiguation trickiness
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-19 01:24:54

I haven't tried it, but I suspect that you want:

Does the player mean doing something with the player: it is unlikely.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2364&start=0#p16912
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Different Versions of The Original Adventure
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-19 01:26:03

The Fortran source is on the Archive.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2445&start=20#p16913
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Customizing Extension Code
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-19 01:50:43

I like the idea of a credits command.  The credits could be part of the story file, and the extension files...

I imagine it looking like what we do now with "The story description is" but instead say "The story credits are" and/or "The extension credits are" and have them all lumped together at compile time so if the player types "credits" or in the code we add 'Say "[Story Credits]"' they are printed out.

I think this should be part of the standard rules.  A built in, as opposed to a 'how do I do this in a way that is consistent across all games and interpreters and pleases everyone' type of approach.

I know, easy for me to say.  I don't have to write it into the parser and the compiler.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2460&start=0#p16914
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: New here, trying to get started on my first IF
User: Cyris / DateTime: 2011-05-19 02:24:47

Big J Money: I would have no problems with that. In fact, I would be quite delighted to be able to work with someone on this.

Katz: Yes, I am Cysma. Why do you ask?

For everyone, here is the synopsis of the story that I plan to make into an IF:

[i]You are a young man named Daniel "Steely Dan" Steel, who has awakened inside of a small chapel one evening with a headache and no memory of the past 24 hours. The chapel is empty except for him and the corpse of a mysterious woman. He heads out to the parking lot and enters its sole vehicle, an REO Speedwagon, to the police station where he meets Chief Sting, who begins the investigation into the murder of this woman, whose name turns out to be Eleanor Rigby, but nothing else is known about her.

Dan sets off to find out more about this incident by gathering information from around this town called Paradise City. He finds out that he is a member of a band scheduled to play a gig at Lonely Hearts, a club owned by war veteran Sgt. Pepper. Problem is, their road crew ran into Hal Ford and his motorcycle gang, the Freewheel Burners, and they vanished along with their instruments and equipment.

To make matters worse, the streets of Paradise City are unsafe to wander at night due to a group of murderers collectively known as the Manalishis terrorizing the city, and are suspected to be behind the unlawful smashing of pumpkins and the theft of a jewelry store called Neil's Diamonds & Rust. Chief Sting has been hot on their trail and has uncovered some information about them. Each Manalishi is identified by a color and a code name: The Red Manalishi goes by the name of Chainsaw Charlie, The Blue Manalishi is called Johnny Blade, the Yellow Manalishi is named Molly Hatchet, and the Black Manalishi is none other than Maxwell "Silver Hammer" Edison. Their leader is the Green Manalishi, but nothing is known about him or her other than being said to wear a two-pronged crown.

There is quite a mystery for Dan to unravel, but he is not without help. He is told to seek the Man on the Silver Mountain, and sure enough, at a place called Silver Mountain near the city, he finds the home of an eccentric toymaker called Mr. Tinkertrain, who may be able to help...[/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2463&start=0#p16915
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More disambiguation trickiness
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-19 03:01:36

[quote="zarf"]I haven't tried it, but I suspect that you want:

Does the player mean doing something with the player: it is unlikely.[/quote]

I previously tried either that or something like it without success, but to make sure, I tried it the way you wrote here and... sadly, it doesn't do the trick.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2463&start=0#p16916
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More disambiguation trickiness
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-05-19 03:06:04

Another trick would be limiting the understand phrase:

[code]Understand "E.T." as Bob when the player is not Bob.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2463&start=0#p16917
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More disambiguation trickiness
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-19 03:35:01

[quote="Juhana"]Another trick would be limiting the understand phrase:

[code]Understand "E.T." as Bob when the player is not Bob.[/code][/quote]

Oh cool, I didn't know you could add qualification to 'understand' phrases. Thanks.

And here I was already starting to hack Aaron Reed's 'Numbered Disambiguation Choices' to eliminate 'yourself' as an option. I had made some progress, too!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2454&start=0#p16918
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: glulx sound observations
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-19 04:04:22

I tried Gargoyle on Mac, Glulxe and Wingit on a PC, and they all behaved the same. The Mac Inform front-end doesn't support sound, so if you write on a Mac, you always have to make a release of your game to check audio stuff.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2454&start=0#p16919
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: glulx sound observations
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-05-19 04:56:46

Could you post an example Glulx file to test with?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2284&start=20#p16920
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you look for in your IF?
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2011-05-19 06:55:25

[quote="bukayeva"][quote="Phonatacid"]My ideal game would be a kind of text-based GTA - a vast territory, with generated NPCs, with no main plot but plenty of "miniquests", and a robust social model that would allow "stories" to be naturally generated through the players actions. For example you could follow some random guy, and figure out he lives in a small house with a wife and two children. You could figure out he is having an affair with another woman and send compromising pics to his wife. All of this being randomly generated.[/quote]

The problem is that people have this now: World of Warcraft, GTA, and so on. I don't think those audiences would even want that stuff all text-based. You would be giving up most of what makes that stuff entertaining for people: the graphics and audio capabilities that try to fully immerse you in the world. The "naturally generated" and "randomly generated" stuff you mention probably wouldn't appeal to people who are more readers of books because they want the emotive experience they are used to when they read good fiction.
[/quote]

People don't have this. I've never played World of Warcraft, but I suppose the heart of the game, what keeps people playing, are player-to-player interactions. I played the last GTA and found it was incredibly empty : you can steal cars, drive around, kill people, buy a hot-dog - and of course conform yourself to the player-character by completing predefined missions. That's all.
I envisage text as a convenient short-cut. When you can't afford the means to produce, write and direct a movie, what do you do ? You write a novel. I don't have the skills nor the time to sculpt 3D models and animate them, nor do I have time to paint textures or build audio and physical engines. But I do think text is as efficient if not superior to images when it comes to transmitting certain mental structures to the audience, all the more so when you have no budget at all.

[quote]The "naturally generated" and "randomly generated" stuff you mention probably wouldn't appeal to people who are more readers of books because they want the emotive experience they are used to when they read good fiction.[/quote]
I don't think people come to IF because they want to read good literature : personally, I discovered the word "interactive fiction" by looking up "text-based game" in google. Actually, the fact that IFs mostly rely on puzzles (as opposed to "freedom-generating"/exploration-based games, like GTA, WOW, or Minecraft) and that the same piece of text will get printed 5, 10, 50 times during the process in which the player engages in order to find clues/keys/doors and get to the next step of the puzzle, is rather appalling to most of people who come to IF with the hope of finding literary texts.

[quote="katz"]
Of course you're welcome to like whatever sorts of games you like, but for me, "randomly generated" is a huge turn-off.  A randomly generated game, to me, seems to have no meaning or purpose--you're just doing stuff to do stuff.  And a game that randomly generates the illusion of purpose (ie, you visit the guy's house and there's a "hook" that he's having an affair) would be an incredibly, practically impossibly complex undertaking.
[/quote]

It's not really the "randomly generated" bit that matters to me. I'd just like to play a piece of IF that is genuinely oriented towards the feeling-of-freedom side of video games. I'm in my 20s and I stopped playing video-games a few years ago because most of time they don't satisfy my expectations. The last games I played are : Animal Crossing (it's all about social interactions), fallout 1 or 2 (again, social interactions), and minecraft. This latter is quite an amazing game to me, since it relies on a very simple atomic concept : blocks. As a consequence, it opens a vast field of possibilities, new traps and mechanisms the game's inventor hadn't planned are invented every day. This is the kind of game i'd like to create : as a player, I'd like to be confronted to situations I did not plan when writing the game as an author. I want to be surprised.
I know what I am describing is far from the way IFs are designed nowadays (and 30 years ago), but when I started searching for text-based games, I was surprised by the hidden mechanisms they rely on : mostly, IFs look like [if … else if … else …] static tree structures. Actually, I haven't found a game that develops its own narrative schemes (there are theories for this).



I know this an ambitious project and that I have like 20 years of development ahead of me, but I also consider it an occasion to learn new theories : of course that spying-the-husband-telling-the-wife-about-it example I picked seems to be extraordinary hard to implement. But it might be easier than you think once you've defined a social engine based on theories coming from the field of sociology, and people coming to IF in the hope of finding something similar to literature, might be more interested in playing a sandbox kind of game that offer a (hopefully) wide range of "superficial" social interactions than a game with a strong linear "emotional plot" punctuated with numerous puzzles that force you to read the same never-changing piece of text over and over again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=180#p16921
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-19 07:08:24

Bainespal and Argus:

One of the other things about playing Adventure on the University mainframe in those days was that there was no way to save a game.  If you got killed or just did things in the wrong order and wound up in an unwinnable position, you had to start all over.

Of course, at least with Adventure you could type a command and get an immediate response (even if was in the form of a line printed on a roll of paper).  For a lot of the stuff we did, we had to type our code and data on punchcards (we generally called them "IBM cards" or just "computer cards") using a keypunch machine.  Then we took our deck of cards to a card-reader machine which zipped through the deck (I believe using a compressed-air mechanism) and read each card (I think it read them by determining where light passed through a card, indicated that a hole had been punched in that spot).  Then we would wait, anywhere from perhaps an hour to 24 hours depending on the priority of our job (lowly undergraduates like me always had the lowest prority) and at the end of that time we would come back to pick up our output, printed on wide tractor-fed sheets of green-and-white "computer paper."  If you made even a single typo in preparing the cards, it was not unusual to come back after waiting a day only to find that your "output" was no more than an error message. [emote]:cry:[/emote]   It made debugging even a simple program a time-consuming job!

On the other hand, in a lot of ways life was easier--or at least simpler--in those days . . . . 

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2460&start=0#p16922
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: New here, trying to get started on my first IF
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-19 07:13:10

Cyris, I think I figured out whodunnit.  It was either Mac Heath or Leroy Brown -- they both are pretty mean dudes.  (Sorry if I've given it away)

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2445&start=30#p16923
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Customizing Extension Code
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-19 07:19:08

I generally try to build the acknowledgements page (testers, people who helped with ideas, etc.) into the game world itself.  For example, in one game I have an otherwise-unused computer in a room; if the player turns it on the acknowledgements appear on the screen.  In the game I'm working on now, the player finds a file folder in a filing cabinet; if he examines the file he sees the acknowledgements.  That way the credits appear without the need for a special command, and it becomes part of the game experience.
  
I'd never thought of the idea of using the same acknowledgements page for extension authors who are also credited automatically under the "version" command, but its an idea.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=180#p16924
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Argus Swift / DateTime: 2011-05-19 07:50:09

While I can wrap my head around the days of keyboard computers, punch-card computers are a completely different world to me. It's hard for me to fathom... Did you have another machine to make the punch cards for you? Was printing onto paper the only means of visual output? Was data storage limited only to punch cards? What sort of data did punch card computers process anyways?

Being in my early 20's and the oldest computer I've worked with is a Commodore 64 [i](I grew up on DOS computers, though)[/i], it fascinates me to think of how old punch card computers may have worked.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2460&start=0#p16925
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: New here, trying to get started on my first IF
User: Argus Swift / DateTime: 2011-05-19 07:54:01

[quote="Cyris"][i]Problem is, their road crew ran into Hal Ford and his motorcycle gang, the Freewheel Burners, and they vanished along with their instruments and equipment.[/i][/quote]That just made my day. <3
Can't wait to see the finished product!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=190#p16926
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-19 08:11:12

Argus:

To prepare the cards, we used a keypunch machine.  It looked like a big typewriter.   (That may not be too helpful--typewriters may be as foreign to you as keypunch machines.)  There was a keyboard, and a device that held a stack of cards.  When you pressed a key, the machine would punch a hole in the card at the appropriate location to represent the character.  There were probably hundreds of these machines at various locations throughout the campus.

As far as output was concerned, there were some CRT monitors, but generally only people with some pull or who had a good reason got to use them.  For most of us, the only means of output was on paper.

With respect to your other questions, I'm afraid they're  a little beyond my ken.  I took an introductory computer course (Bits for NitWits?) and, of course, played Adventure, but I never was (and still am not) really into the technical aspects.  I'm sure there there was some means of storage (maybe magnetic tape or punched paper tape?) but it was not available to the great unwashed (and I was pretty dirty).  Perhaps some other, more technically-savvy, old-timer can chime in and correct me.


Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2452&start=10#p16927
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 Volunteerin'
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2011-05-19 08:19:25

I'm willing to help, : I think I can take care of this request:

[quote]
<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/1606805-ide-add-a-find-more-extensions-option-to-the-f?ref=title">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... ?ref=title</a>

Add a new menu item to the IDEs under the File menu after the other extension related options called "Find More Extensions," which opens up the system default web browser to the Inform 7 Extensions download page. This makes it easier for new authors to see where they can find more extensions.
[/quote]

So I downloaded the osx version of the IDE, then opened "Inform.xcode" which got converted to "Inform.xcodeproj" since i'm using xcode 3.2 (a newer version).
As indicated in "BUILDING.rtf", I placed zoom's sources directory next to the IDE's sources directory. I also added inform63 sources there. (xcode was asking for them, i found them on the inform6 website).
[spoiler]./
.//Sources
.//Sources/Inform
.//Sources/Inform/AppleScript
.//Sources/Inform/build
.//Sources/Inform/cblorb
.//Sources/Inform/Compiler
.//Sources/Inform/Distribution
.//Sources/Inform/Doc
.//Sources/Inform/English.lproj
.//Sources/Inform/Find
.//Sources/Inform/Headers
.//Sources/Inform/Images
.//Sources/Inform/Inform-xc2.xcode
.//Sources/Inform/Inform-xc2.xcodeproj
.//Sources/Inform/Inform.xcode
.//Sources/Inform/Inform.xcodeproj
.//Sources/Inform/Injection
.//Sources/Inform/Inspector
.//Sources/Inform/Leopard
.//Sources/Inform/Library
.//Sources/Inform/Matcher
.//Sources/Inform/Notes
.//Sources/Inform/Pages
.//Sources/Inform/Preferences
.//Sources/Inform/QuickLook
.//Sources/Inform/SingleFile
.//Sources/Inform/Spotlight
.//Sources/Inform/Transcript
.//Sources/Inform/uuid
.//Sources/inform63
.//Sources/zoom
.//Sources/zoom/bonus
.//Sources/zoom/build
.//Sources/zoom/builder
.//Sources/zoom/m4
.//Sources/zoom/manual
.//Sources/zoom/ProjectBuilder
.//Sources/zoom/src
.//Sources/zoom/Zoom.pbproj
.//Sources/zoom/ZoomCocoa.xcodeproj[/spoiler]

I aslo edited the "ZoomCocoa.xcode" project to "ZoomCocoa.xcodeproj" . It seems like I should do the same  for the "CocoaGlk.xcode" project (as of now, it is printed in red) …

I'm only getting one error now, but quite a strange one:
[quote]
Build Compiler-ZCode of project Inform with configuration Development
Check dependencies

Jam is deprecated and has been removed; targets that use Jam must be upgraded to native targets. For more information on doing this, consult the Xcode documentation.
[/quote]

The version of xcode i'm using (3.2) doesn't support java natively anymore. I added the old java templates to xcode around a year ago (because I like developing java projects within xcode, don't ask me why) so maybe is the error stemming from this. Could someone try to build the IDE with a "regular" version of xcode, or at least give me some hints as to whether it's not working for me ?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2452&start=10#p16928
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 Volunteerin'
User: Phonatacid / DateTime: 2011-05-19 08:40:23

I'm also willing to help enhancing how inform handles pronouns. I've been studying linguistics (with the hope of doing Natural Language Processing later) and I've been taught a few theories guidelines about it (focus, topicalization, etc).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2445&start=30#p16929
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Customizing Extension Code
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-19 09:45:10

I had a "credits" command until I saw this thread, and then I moved the credits into the "version" command. But you could always have a one-liner at the end of the "version" output that says "for full acknowledgments, type CREDITS."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2454&start=0#p16931
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: glulx sound observations
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-05-19 10:10:38

Also, can you try the Damusix demo and see if it has the same issues with volume changes and fades?

<a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2759298/damusix_demo.blb">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2759298/damusix_demo.blb</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2284&start=20#p16932
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you look for in your IF?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-19 10:11:12

Phonatacid, what do you think about MUDs?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2452&start=10#p16933
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 Volunteerin'
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-05-19 10:25:32

Jam is a build utility, and is unrelated to Java. XCode may be telling you that it found a Jamfile in one of the source directories and no longer supports Jam, and therefore can't build that component.

You may need to get in touch with one of the Inform 7 maintainers to get the most recent compiler sources. I don't think they are publicly available.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2460&start=0#p16934
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: New here, trying to get started on my first IF
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-19 10:54:03

I love the song title/band name gag!

You might want to be aware that amnesia is stigmatized as overused in IF. It's a convenient way to allow exposition to happen gradually, but if there's another way to do it, you might be rewarded with a more positive reaction. Even with the amnesia, though, that sounds like a fun game and I look forward to its completion.

As far as driving around, either a menu of destinations or a "drive to/go to" command could handle movement. Occasionally I've seen games where driving is implemented like this, too:

[quote][b]Route 30 East[/b]

You're driving east on US Route 30.

> z

Signs indicate that Leacock Road is to the left, and Paradise Road is right.

> right

You turn right onto Paradise Road.

[b]Paradise Road, going south
[/b]
You're driving south on Paradise Road.

>[/quote]

...but that sounds like it would just get in the way of what you're trying to do.

Preventing the car from going indoors is really an implementation issue, and you should feel welcome to post all your implementation questions in the Inform section.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2454&start=0#p16935
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: glulx sound observations
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-19 10:54:42

I tried DaMusix. It does have the same (subtle) issues. Also it uses very gently sloped fades, which click less often or not at all.

I put together a sound demo with Inform 7. You can download it here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://aeriae.com/no/GlulxSoundDemogblorb.zip">http://aeriae.com/no/GlulxSoundDemogblorb.zip</a>

It lets you jam the volume on and off, run multiple fades in a row, etc. In an ideal situation, none of these actions would ever cause a click, but as is, sometimes they will. The steeper a fade, the more clicky it can be.

The appearance of these clicks etc. is entirely dependant on the nature of the sound wave at the moment the volume is changed. For instance, if you 'volume off' at a particular moment in a piece of audio and no click happens, and you supernaturally had the ability to 'volume off' at that exact same moment in the audio when it came around again, it also would generate no click the second time. The same goes for a moment that would produce a click, etc.

I've pasted source code of the demo below. If you wish to compile it and play with it yourself, you will need to first have the following 2 extensions in your inform kit:

Multiple Sounds
<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/Massimo%20Stella/Multiple%20Sounds/Multiple%20Sounds.i7x">http://inform7.com/extensions/Massimo%2 ... Sounds.i7x</a>

Real-Time Delays
<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/Erik%20Temple/Real-Time%20Delays/Real-Time%20Delays.i7x">http://inform7.com/extensions/Erik%20Te ... Delays.i7x</a>

Btw, Damusix uses the glulx timer in such a way that the user can keep performing actions while fading, etc. I used Erik Temple's real-time delays to do the fades in my demo, but either way can generate artifacts as the timer itself has nothing to do with the issue.

Code below:[spoiler][code]"Glulx Sound Demo" by Wade Clarke

Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short.
Include Multiple Sounds by Massimo Stella.
Include Real-Time Delays by Erik Temple.

There is a room called Don't Plank.

To decide whether glulx sound is supported:
	(- ( glk_gestalt(gestalt_Sound, 0) ) -)

Include (-

[ VolumeRaw chan val;
if (glk_gestalt(gestalt_SoundVolume,0)) {
	if ((val <= 81920) && (val >=0)) {
		glk_schannel_set_volume(chan, val);
		}
	else {
		"Invalid Volume Level: please insert a value between 0 and 81920.";
		}
	}
else {
	"Your interpreter doesn't support volume control."; 
	}
]; -).

To set the raw foreground volume to (VOL - a number):
(- VolumeRaw(gg_foregroundchan,{VOL}); -)

Sound of StartingMusic is the file "tench_seg.ogg".

To play_start_music: if glulx sound is supported, play the sound of StartingMusic in foreground with loop.

The infinite_loop is a number that varies. The infinite_loop is 1.

when play begins:
	say "[italic type]Glulx Sound Demo - by Wade Clarke[roman type][line break]";
	try requesting the story file version;
	say "and Version 2 of Multiple Sounds by Massimo Stella[paragraph break]";
	say "The sample in this tech demo is a brief passage from PS1 game Tenchu.[line break]";
	if glulx sound is supported, rock out;
	otherwise switch off.

To switch off:
	say "This demo only works in an interpreter with sound. This demo has stopped running.";
	stop game abruptly.

To rock out:
	while the infinite_loop is 1 begin;
		say "[line break]Music will be play on the foreground audio channel. Hit the number keys to do things with it. Kick off by pressing 1 to start music. Fades cannot be interrupted by keypresses![paragraph break]";
		say "1 Set volume to max then play song from beginning. Song will loop.[line break]";
		say "2 Immediately stop song dead (volume dial is untouched).[line break]";
		say "3 Immediately drop volume to OFF (song keeps playing but you can't hear it)[line break]";
		say "4 Immediately bump volume to MAX[line break]";
		say "5 Max Volume then Fade track out with a nice-ish fade curve in steps of 25 ms (song keeps playing after fade but you won't hear it)[line break]";
		say "6 Max Volume then Fade track out with a numerical straight line fade in steps of 25 ms (song keeps playing after fade but you won't hear it)[line break]";
		say "7 Max Volume then Fade out with minimum possible gradient but unlimited CPU speed (fade will be so fast it will be perceived as a cut - song keeps playing after fade but you won't hear it)[line break]";
		say "8 Max Volume then Fade out with minimum possible gradient in steps of 1 ms. This is the shallowest possible fade you can program, so bring a good book, as it will take 82 seconds to fade the track out. (song keeps playing after fade but you won't hear it)[line break]";
		say "9 Quit this demo[paragraph break]";
		let k be 0;
		while k is 0 begin;
			let k be the chosen letter;
		if k is 49 begin; [1]
			set the foreground volume to 5;
			play_start_music;
		otherwise if k is 50; [2]
			stop the foreground sound;
		otherwise if k is 51; [3]
			set the foreground volume to 0;
		otherwise if k is 52; [4]
			set the foreground volume to 5;
		otherwise if k is 53; [5]
			say "[line break]Fading out with a curve...[line break]";
			let CV be 81920;
			repeat with N running from 1 to 1000 begin;
				if CV is less than 300, break;
				now CV is CV minus 64;
				if CV is greater than 2561, now CV is CV minus 128;
				if CV is greater than 5121, now CV is CV minus 256;
				if CV is greater than 10241, now CV is CV minus 512;
				if CV is greater than 20481, now CV is CV minus 1024;
				if CV is greater than 40961, now CV is CV minus 2048;
				set the raw foreground volume to CV;
				wait 25 milliseconds before continuing, strictly;
			end repeat;
			set the foreground volume to 0;
			say "Fade complete.";
		otherwise if k is 54; [6]
			say "[line break]Fading out in a numerical a straight line...[line break]";
			let CV be 81920;
			repeat with N running from 1 to 1000 begin;
				if CV is less than 2050, break;
				now CV is CV minus 2048;
				set the raw foreground volume to CV;
				wait 25 milliseconds before continuing, strictly;
			end repeat;
			set the foreground volume to 0;
			say "Fade complete.";
		otherwise if k is 55; [7]
			say "[line break]Fading out at max CPU speed...[line break]";
			let CV be 81920;
			repeat with N running from 1 to 82000 begin;
				if CV is less than 2, break;
				now CV is CV minus 1;
				set the raw foreground volume to CV;
			end repeat;
			set the foreground volume to 0;
			say "Fade complete.";
		otherwise if k is 56; [8]
			say "[line break]Fading out with minimum fade gradient...[line break]";
			let CV be 81920;
			repeat with N running from 1 to 82000 begin;
				if CV is less than 2, break;
				now CV is CV minus 1;
				set the raw foreground volume to CV;
				wait 1 millisecond before continuing, strictly;
			end repeat;
			set the foreground volume to 0;
			say "Fade complete.";
		otherwise if k is 57; [9]
			say "You've quit, so now you can do whatever you want. / end of line";
			stop game abruptly;
		if k is less than 49 or k is greater than 57, say "Press a number between 1 and 7, please.[line break]";
		end if;
		end while;
	end while.[/code][/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2463&start=0#p16936
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More disambiguation trickiness
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-19 11:10:42

[quote]I previously tried either that or something like it without success, but to make sure, I tried it the way you wrote here and... sadly, it doesn't do the trick.[/quote]

Ok, I'm trying it now.

The thing is, the following works *without* any disambiguation:

[code]
The Kitchen is a room.

The monster mask is a thing.

The player carries the mask.

Understand "monster" as yourself.
[/code]

[quote]
>x monster
(the monster mask)
You see nothing special about the monster mask.

>drop monster
(the monster mask)
Dropped.

>get monster
(the monster mask)
Taken.
[/quote]

So you must be doing something more complicated.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2454&start=0#p16937
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: glulx sound observations
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-05-19 11:51:29

[quote="severedhand"]The appearance of these clicks etc. is entirely dependant on the nature of the sound wave at the moment the volume is changed.[/quote]
Yes and no. It also depends on how often the playback engine updates the audio level. This is a multiplication. That is, at full volume we can assume the audio words are being multiplied by 1. As the volume drops, the audio stream (which is constantly changing) is multiplied by, perhaps, 0.999, 0.998, and so on. If this happens rapidly enough, the individual changes won't be perceived. You won't hear clicking. But if you want a fade to silence in 1 second, and the volume level is only being updated 100 times per second, each stair-step in the descending volume ramp will be rather large, resulting in clicks.

Pro audio apps perform a smoothing function during level changes, in order to prevent clicking. I don't know how this is done, exactly, but it might work like this: If you're only going to update the amplitude level 100 times per second, you grab 441 samples at a time (assuming the engine is playing audio at 44.1kHz) and perform a vector operation on them. That is, you don't multiply all 441 samples by 0.99 and then spit them out. You interpolate smoothly between 1.00 and 0.99 over the range of 441 samples, and then send the resulting data block to the output buffer.

It's doubtful that IF interpreters can do this type of operation on their own; they're dependent on whatever audio software the OS provides. I have no idea how that works -- it almost certainly depends on what hooks the OS makes available for sound manipulation.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2456&start=0#p16938
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: how can you put an intorduction in the game
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-05-19 11:57:08

so do you write the text where it says show text?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2464&start=0#p16939
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: how can you make new commands
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-05-19 12:02:04

i want to be able to holster my gun, draw my gun and shoot my gun,

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2465&start=0#p16940
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: can you put sound in tads two and three?
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-05-19 12:07:03

if so how?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2456&start=0#p16941
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: how can you put an intorduction in the game
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-05-19 12:14:19

Yes.  [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2456&start=0#p16942
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: how can you put an intorduction in the game
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-05-19 12:16:59

thanks i will try this!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2467&start=0#p16943
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: making actors
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-05-19 12:21:01

i just cant figure out how to make them interact with you

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2468&start=0#p16944
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: how to make your charicter die
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-05-19 12:23:44

i want to make my charicter die in a bog but i can figure out how

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2464&start=0#p16945
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: how can you make new commands
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-05-19 14:50:55

Here's a very rough skeleton for all three actions. You will need to add more synonyms for the verbs and many more checks around shooting.

[code]
DefineTAction(Holster);
VerbRule(Holster)
	'holster' singleDobj
	: HolsterAction
	verbPhrase = 'holster/holstering (what)'
;

DefineTAction(Draw);
VerbRule(Draw)
	'draw' singleDobj
	: DrawAction
	verbPhrase = 'draw/drawing (what)'
;

DefineTIAction(ShootWith);
VerbRule(ShootWith)
	'shoot' singleDobj 'with' singleIobj
	: ShootWithAction
	verbPhrase = 'shoot/shooting (what) (with what)'
;

modify Thing
	dobjFor(Holster)
	{
		preCond = [objHeld]
		verify() { illogical('You can\'t holster {that dobj/him}. '); }
	}

	dobjFor(Draw)
	{
		preCond = [objHeld]
		verify() { illogical('You can\'t draw {that dobj/him}. '); }
	}

	dobjFor(ShootWith)
	{
		preCond = [objVisible]
		verify() { illogical('You see no need to shoot {the dobj/him}. '); }
	}

	iobjFor(ShootWith)
	{
		preCond = [objHeld]
		verify() { illogical('You never learned to shoot {a iobj/him}. '); }
	}
;

class Gun: Thing
	dobjFor(Holster)
	{
		verify() {}

		check()
		{
			if (isHolstered())
				failCheck('{The dobj/him} is already holstered. ');
		}

		action()
		{
			"You holster {the dobj/him}. ";
			holster();
		}
	}

	dobjFor(Draw)
	{
		verify() {}

		check()
		{
			if (isDrawn())
				failCheck('{The dobj/him} is already drawn. ');
		}

		action()
		{
			"You draw {the dobj/him}. ";
			unholster();
		}
	}

	iobjFor(ShootWith)
	{
		verify() {}

		check()
		{
			if (isHolstered())
				failCheck('You cannot shoot {the iobj/him} from the holster! ');
		}

		action()
		{
			"You take aim at {the dobj/him} with {the iobj/him} and open fire! ";
		}
	}

	notifyMoveInto(newCont)
	{
		unholster();
		inherited(newCont);
	}

	isDrawn() { return !holstered_; }
	isHolstered() { return holstered_; }
	holster() { holstered_ = true; }
	unholster() { holstered_ = nil; }
	holstered_ = nil;
;

class Target: Thing
	dobjFor(ShootWith)
	{
		verify() {}
	}
;

revolver: Gun 'revolver' 'REVOLVER' @me
	"An old-fashioned six shooter. "
;

apple: Target 'apple' 'APPLE' @me
	"A large red apple. "
;
[/code]

If you haven't seen it already, you should read [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/gsg/index.html]Getting Started in TADS 3[/url]. TADS 3 is a pretty easy language to pick up, but the adv3 library is quite complex and will take a fair bit of effort to bend to your will.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2284&start=20#p16946
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you look for in your IF?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-05-19 15:03:37

[quote="Phonatacid"]When you can't afford the means to produce, write and direct a movie, what do you do ? You write a novel.[/quote]
I suspect that novel may not be as satisfying to its audience or its author as one written by someone who writes a novel because they want to write a novel. (Love of the written word and so on…) I can't see treating one medium as a cheaper alternative to another as a good way to look at things. Yes, IF is easier for one person to make than most kinds of games, and IF can even be used to prototype another game (unless my memory is playing tricks on me, the developers of one of the graphical Zork games did that), but to think of a novel as a poor man's movie or IF as a poor man's computer game is missing the point. Each medium has its unique strengths and weaknesses (even if we discount production costs).

I realise (or at least hope) that your intention wasn't to value novels less than movies, but that's how it read to me and that kind of statement rubs me the wrong way. I'll stop my rant now. "kthxbye", as the kids say.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2284&start=20#p16947
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you look for in your IF?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-05-19 15:43:48

To echo Trumgottist, there [i]are[/i] actual good solid reasons for choosing the text medium other than budget constraints.  As I said way back in my original response in this thread, I particularly like IF that uses the medium as part of its message.  [i]The Gostak: The Graphical Adventure[/i] would simply not be interesting or fun, and [i]For a Change[/i] with 3D graphics and music might be okay (it would probably be basically a [i]Myst[/i] knockoff) but wouldn't have much to recommend it.  Similarly, games such as [i]Delightful Wallpaper[/i] and [i]Shrapnel[/i] work precisely because of the very peculiar spatial paradigm IF has developed, and [i]Shade[/i] and [i]Rover's Day Out[/i] play merry havoc with tropes that other genres just don't have.  I could imagine an illustrated Pacian game, but his prose is so fun that honestly I'd be a little sad to be pinned down to any particular visual interpretation of it.

Sure, some people use the text medium as a way of prototyping a game (and I say "prototype" when the envisioned gamed could well encompass more expensive assets, even if, as a necessarily time-limited hobbyist, the author has no intent to ever make the "real thing"), much as people may write scripts or create storyboards for movies that will never be produced.  And that is great and noble.  But text (and the specific medium of parser IF, with all its shorthands and quirks) can be more than just a short-cut.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2460&start=10#p16948
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: New here, trying to get started on my first IF
User: Cyris / DateTime: 2011-05-19 16:00:11

[quote="Robert Rothman"]Cyris, I think I figured out whodunnit.  It was either Mac Heath or Leroy Brown -- they both are pretty mean dudes.  (Sorry if I've given it away)

Robert Rothman[/quote]

Nope, the murderer is someone already mentioned in the synopsis.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2465&start=0#p16949
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: can you put sound in tads two and three?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-05-19 16:08:01

Yep, it's possible. Documentation can be found in the TADS 3 Bookshelf:

<a class="postlink" href="http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/index.htm">http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/index.htm</a>

("Introduction to HTML TADS", at the bottom of the page.)

Note that between MP3 and Ogg Vorbis, the latter is preferred. Here's why:

With Vorbis you get a much higher audio quality at a much lower file size. Vorbis audio is also safer to use, because some popular Linux distros are disabling MP3 support when shipping QTads in order to avoid infringing the MPEG patents (you are required to pay royalties to use the MP3 format, even in software that is open source), which would result in no sound at all on those systems.

As for possible limitations mentioned in the article, the info is a bit outdated. All currently existing multimedia 'terps do not have a limit to the amount of layers playing simultaneously, and fades and cross-fades are supported everywhere.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2454&start=0#p16950
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: glulx sound observations
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-05-19 16:51:17

[quote="severedhand"]I put together a sound demo with Inform 7.[/quote]Thanks for this. I will do some experiments with Windows Glk. As Jim notes, though, this sort of thing will always be dependent on what sort of support the interpreter gets from the operating system or framework it's based on.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2468&start=0#p16951
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: how to make your charicter die
User: Morana / DateTime: 2011-05-19 17:03:33

This is likely too simple for your purposes, but perhaps it will give you some idea of how to go about it:

[code]woodedArea: Room 'wooded area' 'Wooded Area'
;

+ me: Actor
;

+ Bog: Booth 'bog' 'bog'
    dobjFor(Board)
    {
        action()
        {
            "You sink in the bog and die.<p.> ";
            finishGameMsg(ftDeath, [finishOptionUndo]);
        }
    }
;[/code]Here is the transcript of a session:

[rant]Wooded area

You see a bog here. 

>enter bog
You sink in the bog and die. 

*** YOU HAVE DIED ***

Would you like to RESTORE a saved position, RESTART the story, UNDO the last move, or QUIT?[/rant]
If I had so desired, I could have replaced ftDeath with another object. I could have also included finish options besides finishOptionUndo in the list. If you want some ideas on how to do either of these, I recommend consulting Section 9.4 of [i]Learning TADS 3[/i]. And, of course, come back here if you need more help. Happy coding!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2445&start=30#p16952
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Customizing Extension Code
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-05-19 17:47:21

[quote="Seeker"]I think this should be part of the standard rules.  A built in, as opposed to a 'how do I do this in a way that is consistent across all games and interpreters and pleases everyone' type of approach.[/quote] I think this already is built-in under the VERSION command, no additional work needed.  I [i]understand[/i] CREDITS as a synonym for VERSION.  Granted, after collecting some beta testers I'll likely include an [i]After printing the banner text while versioning[/i] or however that rule goes in order to append the beta tester names, but otherwise, rolling credits is a done deal. 

I would never remove an author's name from their extension, nor insert an Authorial Modesty which amounts to the same thing.  If I did heavy modifications, I'll use the 2nd line that the manual mentioned, so VERSION prints "Plurality Plus by Ron Newcomb, based on version 5 of Plurality by Emily Short".  This is because I still need the original Plurality (and its upgrades) so I can't just edit the file in-place.  But their name remains.  For minor modifications, I change nothing.  It's so rare than an extension can be included without at least a little tweaking that changing credit for minor modifications seems, as someone wrote, like grasping. 

As an extension writer, especially for the more community-driven ones, I'll add the names of forum people who assisted with debugging / suggesting stuff, in the comments of the extension at the very least.  Custom Library Messages has a big block of comments at the top of its source because of this. 

As the manual says, "we're all in this together."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2445&start=30#p16953
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Customizing Extension Code
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-19 18:38:08

Chapter 25.3 of the on-line docs says:

[code]Sometimes authorship is complicated. What if Mary Brown finds some Inform 6 code written by John Smith in the mid-90s, and puts an I7 gloss on it to make an I7 extension, but then Pierre Dupont translates it into French: who's the author of the result? The rule is that the person making the current, latest version is the author listed in the titling line, so we end up with 

... by Pierre Dupont begins here. 

But Mary and John deserve their credits too: see the next section for how to give them. 

[/code]

And the next section says:

[code]A second double-quoted text can also, optionally, be added in yet a third special starting paragraph. This is to provide additional credits to people who have contributed to this or earlier versions. For instance: 

The Ducking Action by Graham Nelson begins here. 

"An action for ducking one's head." 

"based on original Inform 6 code by Marc Canard" 

Note the typical style here: it's a phrase rather than a sentence, and neither starts with an upper-case letter nor ends with a full stop. (The additional credit is then used in documentation and also in the VERSION text of any Inform story file using the extension.) 

[/code]

I had read this, and understood it conceptually, I was just thinking that 'version' and 'credits' may compliment each other, but they are not the same thing.  And added comments to an extensions doc will never be seen by a player that types 'version'.

Having a new command would allow ALL to be mentioned... even those that helped or contribute to an extension we might just use, but didn't modify.  Within the game there could be a line:

[code]Story credits: blah blah blah[/code]

Which would cover the story. Then within the extensions:

[code]Extension credits: blah... more credits on only this extension[/code]

This way if we use an extension and do not modify it, its embedded credits from the author get mentioned too.  As the manual states (see above):

[code]The rule is that the person making the current, latest version is the author listed in the titling line...[/code]

Which could be read to say "It is okay to change authors name, as long as the modification is more than just minor tweaks".  

And we are all in this together, that is why I want to give credit where credit is due, in a meaningful way.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2456&start=0#p16954
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: how can you put an intorduction in the game
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-05-19 18:58:38

it dosnt work

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2457&start=0#p16955
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: how can you start the game out holding somthing?
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-05-19 19:16:19

this didnt work for me but i figured sothing ut thanks anyways

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=190#p16956
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Argus Swift / DateTime: 2011-05-19 19:42:42

I'm quite familiar with typewriters. For some reason, my grandfather collected them. I used them quite a lot as a kid, until we got a DOS computer for me to type into. So I can easily picture the same mechanical hands swinging and imprinting the letters on the paper doing the same to a thicker piece of plastic.

Some of those old ones had CRT monitors for output? Hm... It's hard for me to picture an Altair 8800 or Imsai 8080 [i](something of that caliber, at least)[/i] putting output into a monitor. I barely know anything about CP\M, though I think that came some time later...
*checks Wikipedia*
Well! To my surprise, it was used in the 70's and 80's, in particular on the aforementioned Altair 8800!
I love learning about this kind of stuff.

One of my uncles said that old computers he used as a kid, you had to put the code into it manually in binary for it to do anything. Was this done pre or post punch cards, do you know of?

[i](sorry if I seem to be sending a battery of questions at you. My curiosity is rather boundless, and I always always always prefer to learn from someone who experienced things directly than from an encyclopedia. =D)[/i]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=190#p16957
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-19 20:30:55

Argus:

Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear on one point.  There was one mainframe computer, which lived in its own building a few miles away.  The various means of communicating with it -- punchcards or keyboards for input and CRT monitors or line printers for output -- all were connected to the same machine over telephone wires.  So if you were one of the lucky ones who got to sit at a monitor, it was not connected to its own computer, it was just that you would communicate with the "big" computer through a monitor-equipped terminal.

Sorry, I didn't mean to sound patronizing about typewriters; it simply occurred to me that a lot of people who grew up in the digital age may have never seen one except maybe in the movies.  I read recently that the last manufacturer of typewriters just went out of business.

   Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2463&start=0#p16958
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More disambiguation trickiness
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-19 20:32:27

It may be the difference is in this part - you wrote 'Understand "monster" as yourself.'

In my game, I can't use that construction without qualification because who you are changes. You might not be the monster.

But if it's not that alone, you're right, I do have a bunch of other code going on due to the fact the player could be different people.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2469&start=0#p16959
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7:  Just curious
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-19 20:37:30

In testing, if I transport the player to a room with an "abstract me to . . ." command, I understand why it does not do an automatic "look" upon arrival as it would do if I arrived by more conventional transportation.  What puzzles is me is why, if, having arrived via the "abstract" magic carpet, I then do a manual "look," I still don't get a room description.  It obviously "knows" where the player is, since it is possible to examine or otherwise interact with any object in the room.  It's not a big deal, but it seems odd enough to pique my curiosity.

Thanks.

    Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2469&start=0#p16960
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Just curious
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-19 20:54:48

[quote="Robert Rothman"]In testing, if I transport the player to a room with an "abstract me to . . ." command, I understand why it does not do an automatic "look" upon arrival as it would do if I arrived by more conventional transportation.  What puzzles is me is why, if, having arrived via the "abstract" magic carpet, I then do a manual "look," I still don't get a room description.  It obviously "knows" where the player is, since it is possible to examine or otherwise interact with any object in the room.  It's not a big deal, but it seems odd enough to pique my curiosity.

Thanks.

    Robert Rothman[/quote]

I do something similar, except the player is hit over the head and blacks out, then awakens in another room and region.  I do get a full room description on entering, which is coded with a [if the blah room is unvisited] for the initial description, and then if the player does a 'look', he/she gets the [if the blah room is visited] part that I also wrote into the room description. On the 'look' they also get the other usual add-ons to the area description... "You also see a piano, a bench, and a mutant frog singing while he plays by bouncing around on the piano keys.  And in the corner is a gecko selling car insurance."

Or something like that.  [emote];)[/emote]

How are you doing it?  Maybe it is a subtle difference in the code.  We all know how one misplaced tab or punctuation can change the results.

Oh, and I do it with a "Now the player is in the blah room;" command.  Maybe that is the difference.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2445&start=30#p16961
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Customizing Extension Code
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-19 20:55:06

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]It's so rare than an extension can be included without at least a little tweaking that changing credit for minor modifications seems, as someone wrote, like grasping.[/quote]

The reason I disagree with this line of thinking and 'grasping' ideas is that it's a subjective assessment of a command which tries to be objective (version), but can't necessarily do it.

Typing 'version' gives a raw tech dump of info on extension files used in the game, generated by the game from programming. I see this as tech info and help for programmers, not info that a player really needs or is even interested in, at least to this extent. And in that list the game produces itself, if it's no longer the file  'Rockin Sounds by Mr Dude Version 2' as provided by whoever made it, it's no longer strictly true.

If there were no 'version' command, we might not be having this discussion. Everyone can work out what to write in their credits and they will do it.

What I've done in my workaround is tried to make up for version's understandable inability to work out exactly what I've done with all the extension code I use, and a truthful splat to the end of it. I also have a credits command separately which is less techy and also the real credits with everybody, not just a list of extensions. People should handle this how they like.

I have to program in the handiest way for me. If I find it handiest to change extension names or authors to move the files around my system, or throw away the extension file and move the code into my game, I will do it. 'Version' can't handle that, so I just make up for that fact myself. If an extension was corrupted or removed from the auto generated list because of what I did, I stick it back there with a realistic appraisal of what I did to the file if necessary.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2469&start=0#p16962
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Just curious
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-19 21:03:41

Seeker, Robert's talking about the 'abstract' command you can use while testplaying your game, as opposed to coding [emote]:)[/emote]

You can use it to teleport people and objects around, to cheat and to test things that would otherwise take some playing to reach.

But yeah, I also noticed look-related weirdness if you abstract yourself to another location.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2469&start=0#p16963
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Just curious
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-19 21:18:53

[quote="severedhand"]Seeker, Robert's talking about the 'abstract' command you can use while testplaying your game, as opposed to coding [emote]:)[/emote]

You can use it to teleport people and objects around, to cheat and to test things that would otherwise take some playing to reach.

But yeah, I also noticed look-related weirdness if you abstract yourself to another location.[/quote]

Oops... I hadn't tried that.  I even did a search for "abstract" and didn't find it in the docs.

But now that I try it (and understand it) I see how it works, no initial room description as stated.  But if I do a 'look' I do get the correct reply.  So I still get what I would expect in that regard, but I get stuck in the location and can't leave (It seems I can only go to places I visited before I said 'abstract me to... but that might just be because of my choices, not a real clue)

But very cool command.  It will save me hours when I just want to see a single room way down in the game.  Up till now I did it the long way.

Edit to add: I notice in playing with it, it also screws up my status bar compass rose and exit listing (based in part on Exit Lister by Eric Eve... but just a few parts of it)  [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2469&start=0#p16964
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Just curious
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-19 22:04:04

Seeker, if you haven't used "abstract" before you'll find it a real timesaver.  You can use it to move anything, not just the player.  For example, let's say you've just written an action which can only be performed if the player has a whatchamacallit.  In the ordinary course of play, getting hold of a whatchamacallit might require doing a bunch of other things.  You can test your new action without going through all that by using "astract whatchamacallit to me" -- it will immediately show up in your inventory.  It even works if the whatchamacallit is offstage.

It's very strange that, after abstracting yourself somewhere, you can get a room description but can't move.  I can move around freely but can't get a room description.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=190#p16965
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Argus Swift / DateTime: 2011-05-19 22:11:19

It's all good, Mr. Rothman. =D I seem like a young, energetic whippersnapper, but I'm fascinated by technology both old and new, in equal measure. I've surprised many people simply by knowing that old phones work in power outages. [i](my Grandma had a phone like that. Was very handy!)[/i] My Grandpa liked old old old technology, my Dad likes 60's-70's age technology, my older brother loves his 90's tech, and I love it all.


Ahhh, so it was one of those building-sized computers. Amazing! And all the inputs outputs were simply routed to it via phone cables. Interesting.... And it was situated a few miles away? Hm... I'm guessing ethernet cables weren't invented/perfected/in widespread use yet, hence the phone line connection. [i](then again, since it's a few miles away, I'd imagine phone lines were all there were for connecting it all... This must have been an early version of ARPANET. I wonder what year it was...
*scrolls down*
Mid-70's! At Cornell University, which is at New York State. [i](I'm Canadian, so my knowledge of US geography is.... Well, better than most Americans that I've met. >_>)[/i]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2470&start=0#p16966
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Hiding an inventory possession
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-19 22:47:00

Say I don't want a particular item to appear when you type inventory, because it's part of your personage. Not like your face or arms, but say collectively your hat, boots and gloves amount to a 'costume'.

I made an actual costume object, rather than use grouping tactics, because then I'll get nice disambiguation when more than one costumed person is in the room. And other people can look at each other's costumes and receive custom messages.

I just don't want it to say 'costume' when you check your inventory, as it already lists the parts.

I couldn't get 'rule for printing description' or concealment to not list it. I found a workaround I'm totally happy to use, since I only have to program this exception for two objects in the game -

[code]Before taking inventory when the player is Jane
	now zombie costume is off-stage.

After taking inventory when the player is Jane:
	now Jane wears zombie costume.[/code]

but I wondered if there was a more regular way of hiding an inventory item I should learn about.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2469&start=0#p16967
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Just curious
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-19 23:19:53

Wow... that is an odd command.  Useful but with strange results.  I just tried abstracting an object that is a trigger for later events, and it broke the trigger.  I even dropped it and took it again, in the correct location, but nothing happened. 

Then I tried it with a different item, one that when held opens a secret panel.  I got the message that the panel opened, even though it was in a region I had already left and no longer had access to.

I need to try this in a game where I always get killed by taking a certain object  [emote];)[/emote]  Damn harpies.

Kidding, but I see how this can be useful and it will save me lots of time.  Like  said, I always did it the long way before.

And I seem to only be locked into the room if it is certain locations...rooms not in a region, but linked through doors in a region without directions... just enter room/exit room type of commands work.  I have a few of those 'hidden' rooms.  Odd.  But either way, the status bar with compass rose and exit listing break.  And I get room descriptions fine if I abstract to the 'hidden' rooms, but not if I go to normal rooms in a normal region.  Same as you describe.

I guess as with any 'magic' tool, it has its limitations.  But they are fun to play with.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2469&start=0#p16968
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Just curious
User: Minkovsky / DateTime: 2011-05-20 00:32:39

Now the player is in the noun.
 ^ Your best bet. I use that in unit testing my puzzles.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2469&start=0#p16969
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Just curious
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-20 00:51:44

"Abstract" is a leftover from the I6 debugging system. It does not play well with I7 constructs like part-of.

It's also just flat-out buggy if you abstract the player around. Always has been. I'm sure that's the biggest reason it's not documented.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2469&start=0#p16970
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Just curious
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-05-20 01:14:18

The testing command for moving the player is "gonear" which you can use to go to specific rooms or to game objects (GONEAR LAMP moves the player to the room where the lamp is).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2469&start=0#p16971
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Just curious
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-20 01:32:24

[quote="Juhana"]The testing command for moving the player is "gonear" which you can use to go to specific rooms or to game objects (GONEAR LAMP moves the player to the room where the lamp is).[/quote]

WOW!!!!  Now that does just teleport you around!  And does not seem to have any bad side-effects.

Thank you!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2469&start=10#p16985
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Just curious
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-20 06:56:24

Thanks, Juhana.  I'll use "gonear" in the future and avoid the weird behavior of "abstract."

    Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=190#p16986
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-20 07:04:11

Argus, it sounds like you're actually more familiar with a lot of the technical aspects than I am.  I remember what we had to do, and what things looked like "from the outside," but I never did understand a lot of what made it tick.  (Actually, I still don't--to this day I'm amazed when the little men who live inside my computer do what I tell them to do and then reply to my questions by mirror-writing on the inside of my monitor screen. [emote]:lol:[/emote] )  I do recall that "the computer" was an IBM mainframe.  At the time, at least in the public mind IBM was practically synonymous with the word "computer."

    Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2470&start=0#p16987
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hiding an inventory possession
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-05-20 07:46:08

I had a similar problem recently; [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2328]this thread[/url] may be of interest.

I ended up doing this:

[code]A thing can be listable or unlistable. A thing is usually listable.

Instead of taking inventory:
	if the player is carrying no listable things:
		say "You are empty-handed. ";
	else:
		now all things enclosed by the player are unmarked for listing;
		now all listable things carried by the player are marked for listing;
		say "You are carrying ";
		list the contents of the player, as a sentence, listing marked items only, tersely, including contents;
		say ". ";
	if the player is wearing a listable thing:
		now all things enclosed by the player are unmarked for listing;
		now all listable things worn by the player are marked for listing;
		say "You are wearing ";
		list the contents of the player, as a sentence, listing marked items only, including all contents;
		say ".";
	else:
		say "You are wearing nothing but [a smile]."[/code]

So now I can just define anything I don't want printed when taking inventory as unlistable.  This may not be the most efficient solution, but it gets the job done and doesn't have any side effects from moving the object.

(In my case this was because I wanted the message if you're not wearing anything to be "You are wearing nothing but a smile" and also allow for the smartass player to try removing the smile.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=190#p16988
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Argus Swift / DateTime: 2011-05-20 08:03:09

I can read all I want about old technology, but it will never compare to having actually been there. I can plug away on a Commodore 64 all I want, but it can't ever come close to having had one back when it was top of the line.

A friend of mine reminds me of you a little. She said she paid attention to computers a lot 'back in the day'. When I asked her about different models of old computers, he knowledge tends to stop around 1987, when the Amiga line started coming out. She says she doesn't have a clue about computers these days; Facebook almost baffles her still.


Hm, so IBM was almost synonymous with computer back then.... Were they the only company that you know of that made them? Was the computer ever referred to as "the IBM"? [i](similar to how Nintendo used to be synonymous with home consoles)[/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2470&start=0#p16989
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hiding an inventory possession
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-20 08:07:21

Shammack:

I hope that you provided an appropriate response to the smart-ass player.  Perhaps something like "You try to wipe the smile off your face (as your first-grade teacher often told you to do) but, despite your best efforts, you remain happy."

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=190#p16990
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-20 08:42:17

IBM was not the only computer manufacturer, but it was the biggest, particularly for mainframes used by universities and major corporations.

I remember one summer around that time (it might have been a little bit later) I had a summer job in a small office which was pretty advanced technologically (one of the principals was a former IBM employee).  They had a Wang computer, and some of my tasks required working on that.  The one thing I remember about it was the disk drive, which sat on the floor and was about the height and overall size of an end table.  Each disk (actually, I think it contained several physical disks, but we called it a disk) was about 14 inches in diameter and 2 inches thick.  You would place the disk on top of the drive, where there was a mechanism which engaged the disk with the inner workings of the drive.  Then you turned on the power, and had to wait about ten minutes for it to come up to speed.  I'm not sure what the capacity of the disk was, but my guess is that it was far less than you could fit today on a 3.5 inch floppy.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2284&start=20#p16991
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you look for in your IF?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-20 08:53:28

[quote="Trumgottist"]Yes, IF is easier for one person to make than most kinds of games[/quote]

I'm not even sure this is true anymore, with the rise of cheap/free game-making systems like Flixel, Unity, and GameMaker. (Though you might be able to say better than I have, as you've actually made games with graphics.) 

One difference I can think of is in level of polish; it costs money to make graphics like Shadow of the Colossus, but it doesn't cost any more money to write prose that's as polished as that found in any professional game; you just have to be able to write it. OTOH, I've seen a lot of absolutely gorgeous games made with free tools; they just didn't have the kind of 3d graphics that basically every big-studio game has, as far as I can tell (don't play them).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2469&start=10#p16992
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Just curious
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-20 08:56:00

[quote="Robert Rothman"]You can test your new action without going through all that by using "astract whatchamacallit to me" -- it will immediately show up in your inventory.  It even works if the whatchamacallit is offstage.[/quote]

"purloin whatchamacallit" has this effect too (and is probably the approved I7 way of doing it).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2469&start=10#p16993
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Just curious
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-20 08:57:29

[quote="Seeker"]I need to try this in a game where I always get killed by taking a certain object  [emote];)[/emote]  Damn harpies.[/quote]

[spoiler]The "aerial shield" spell is your friend. (And yeah, you have to do a lot of stuff to get that spell, and you might get killed anyway.)

UPDATE: My god, there's even a hint about that in the [url=http://inform7.com/learn/eg/rota/Collegio.pdf]feelie (pdf)[/url], not to mention a list of the stars in whateveritis constellation that doesn't require use of Wikipedia. I didn't even know there was a feelie -- though suspect the hints are best appreciated when you've already solved (or looked up the solution to) the puzzle for which they're hints.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2471&start=0#p16994
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: what are Beta testers and Programmers
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-05-20 09:35:26

what do they do ?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2446&start=0#p16995
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Michael Martin
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-05-20 09:43:19

I don't request help unless I need it! [emote]:evil:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2284&start=20#p16996
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you look for in your IF?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-20 09:59:18

All that said, I would really like to play Phonatacid's game (and even share some of the concerns about the general design of IF; not that I think it's fatal that you have to reread text sometimes, it's just part of the medium, but I think IF could do more to exploit different ways of playing. Part of the reason gravel's game seems so cool.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2471&start=0#p16997
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: what are Beta testers and Programmers
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-05-20 10:42:21

Programmers write code in one or more languages, like Inform 6 or TADS.  This code, when packaged, creates what players will see - the game or website or whatever.
  
It's traditional to talk about the completeness of the pre-release code in terms of Greek letters.  A bare-bones version, or a version that doesn't have all the features yet, might be "alpha".  Something that may be just in place to test a certain thing, or is temporary, might be "pre-alpha".  Generally, code that the programmer believes to be complete with regards to features is "beta".  It's complete as far as the programmers know, but it hasn't been rigorously tested and debugged by a larger group.

Programmers will often give beta versions of their program to other people - usually people who didn't work on it, so they don't have as many preconceptions and inside knowledge about how it works.  Official beta testers will experiment with the program, note bugs or missing features they'd like to see, document problems, and give feedback to the programmers, who decide which changes are worth making, and which aren't.  

Different betas tend to be good at finding different kinds of stuff, so a thorough testing should probably have several different beta testers, preferably with different backgrounds or focuses.  

It's totally possible to be both a programmer and a beta tester.  You can't really beta test your own work - you're just too close to it.  However, beta testing for others is a good public service, and may give you good insight into stuff you want to do, or pitfalls you may want to avoid.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=190#p16998
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-20 10:58:58

[quote="Robert Rothman"]I'm not sure what the capacity of the disk was, but my guess is that it was far less than you could fit today on a 3.5 inch floppy.[/quote]

I'm afraid 3.5 inch floppies are gone too. I had an iMac in the late '90s that had no floppy drive built in -- I think you were supposed to transfer your data using a CD drive or the internet. Apparently it was the first so-called [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy-free_PC]legacy-free PC[/url] without floppy drives; I bought a floppy drive that hooked into the USB port. Now physical data transfer is all on USB drives, I think, or probably on some more advanced things that I haven't heard about, like kids with bar-code tattoos that get scanned by their iPads or whatever. I probably have my old floppy drives around somewhere, with invaluable things from the history of me like my undergrad college papers. I was going to say that I hope someone is preparing to archive the data from old floppies, but having just typed the previous sentence I don't want to.

(I'm 40 and not quite as much of an old fogey as I sound, though I wonder if anyone actually is getting a tattoo in the form of those square scan codes you see on flyers and the like. They're going to replace plastic with flesh! [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnDHDtzs8-Q]Fact![/url] BTW, happy end of the world tomorrow.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2164&start=0#p16999
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: @party interactive fiction competition
User: metoikos / DateTime: 2011-05-20 11:08:19

Reminder! Deadline approaching! (June 13)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=190#p17000
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-20 11:25:08

Time (and technology) marches on.  It sounds like pretty soon I may to have to consider trading in my horse and buggy for one of those new-fangled "automobile" thingies.  Given the relative prices of gasoline and oats, maybe I should stick with four-legged transportation. [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2467&start=0#p17001
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: making actors
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2011-05-20 12:08:00

I suspect the reason you haven't had a reply to this yet is that your question is so broad and general.

If you haven't already done so you should read [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/gsg/settingthescene.htm]Chapter 5[/url] of [i]Getting Started in TADS 3[/i] and/or the articles on [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/techman/t3actor.htm]Creating Dynamic Actors[/url] in the [i]TADS 3 Technical Manual[/i] and/or Chapter 14 in [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/learning/Learning%20T3.pdf]Learning TADS 3[/url]. Between them these three sources give a pretty comprehensive overview of how to create responsive actors in TADS 3.

If you are having a specific problem creating actors, you really need to give details of what your problem is before anyone can help you with it.

-- Eric

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2472&start=0#p17002
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7 Portable
User: Nyx / DateTime: 2011-05-20 12:23:04

Hi everyone!
 
I am trying to build a portable application out of the Windows port of inform 7 as suggested on uservoice “Suggestions for Inform 7” (<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/1330371-make-inform-7-a-portable-app?ref=title">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... ?ref=title</a>).

First I want to share what I learned about Inform 7. I share it because I may not have come up with the best solution. I want to encourage others to work on a solution too.

1.
Inform 7 has its own “Home Directory” which defaults to the user’s “My Documents” folder.
 
2.
In this “Home Directory” Inform 7 creates its own directory named “Inform”. Here the program stores all related project files and directories.
 
3.
Inform creates those files and directories only if it doesn’t find the registry entry “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\David Kinder\Inform\Window\Last Project”.
 
4.
The registry key “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\David Kinder\” and all subsequent entries will be created on the very first launch of Inform 7 on a computer.
 
5.
The default location of the “Home Directory” can be changed using a “home.txt” file in the same directory as the “inform7.exe”. You will find a short description under “Help -> Windows Inform Notes”.
 
7.
If the project is stored in a different location than the “Home Directory” only the project files will be stored. The following directories will be missing:
 
Inform
+ Documentation
+ Extensions
+ Projects
+ Templates
 
 
Tools:
I chose the tools on PortableApps.com ([url]http://portableapps.com/[/url]) to help make this work. At the time of my decision I didn’t know how to work with their tools. They have a healthy community and they provide a lot of portable software for free. So why not try it out?
 
Any volunteers for testing the development version will be greatly appreciated. Please post your feedback.
 
[i]Outdated![/i]
[i]You find my test version 2 at the following link:[/i]
[i]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/29620803/Inform7Portable_0.9_Test_2_English.paf.exe[/i]

[i]Here you can get the md5-checksum:[/i]
[i]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/29620803/Inform7Portable_0.9_Test_2_English.paf.md5[/i]

Please download the latest revision down this thread.

Installation:
 
1. Without PortableApps.com Platform
After starting the Installation (Inform7Portable_0.9_Test_2_English.paf.exe) choose a directory where you want to store the files. Then start the Inform7Portable.exe inside the installation directory.
 
2. With PortableApps.com Platform
Insert the USB-stick on which you installed the PortableApps.com Platform. Just start the Installation and don’t change the default destination folder. Run “Inform7 6G60 Portable” from the menu.
 
The Program will create a new folder “Inform” in the root of the storage (eg. C:\Inform) where it creates the “Home Directory”.
 
Deleting:
- Delete the installation folder.
- Delete the Inform folder.
- Delete the registry key “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\David Kinder”
 
Please take care of your Inform projects. As with any test version, Inform 7 Portable should be treated with caution.
 
I thank Emily Short for reviewing and correcting my draft for this post.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2469&start=10#p17003
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Just curious
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-05-20 12:38:08

I sometimes need follow an ABSTRACT with an EXIT.  I've had the player climb out of newspaper vending machines, out of blades of grass, out of other people....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2472&start=0#p17004
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Portable
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-05-20 12:45:51

[quote="Nyx"]I am trying to build a portable application out of the Windows port of inform 7 as suggested on uservoice “Suggestions for Inform 7” (<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/1330371-make-inform-7-a-portable-app?ref=title">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... ?ref=title</a>).
... 
Any volunteers for testing the development version will be greatly appreciated. Please post your feedback.[/quote]

I'm currently running I7 (6g60) under windows 7 home premium. I'd like to help with your testing, but am wondering: if I install your portable version of I7 onto a USB stick, would that affect or conflict with my current installation or projects? I realize you might not be able to answer with complete certainty since this is a test, but what precautions should I take?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2472&start=0#p17005
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Portable
User: Nyx / DateTime: 2011-05-20 12:56:55

[quote="Skinny Mike"][quote="Nyx"]I am trying to build a portable application out of the Windows port of inform 7 as suggested on uservoice “Suggestions for Inform 7” (<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/1330371-make-inform-7-a-portable-app?ref=title">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... ?ref=title</a>).
... 
Any volunteers for testing the development version will be greatly appreciated. Please post your feedback.[/quote]

I'm currently running I7 (6g60) under windows 7 home premium. I'd like to help with your testing, but am wondering: if I install your portable version of I7 onto a USB stick, would that affect or conflict with my current installation or projects? I realize you might not be able to answer with complete certainty since this is a test, but what precautions should I take?[/quote]

The Testversion will build two folders on a drive.
The installation directory which you can choose on your own which holds the Inform 7 application and a "Inform" folder in the root of the drive where the portable app is installed which is the "Home Directory". It doesn't matter if the drive is a USB-stick or a harddrive. The behaviour is all the same.

Because of the new "Home Directory" and a different installation folder the portable inform 7 should not interfere with installed versions on the computer.

I tested this version on different computers, harddrives and USB-Sticks. I had never any worries with it. 

But it is a testversion. I cannot guarantee that it always works as planned. Basicly I advise you to save your projects at a secure place where they cannot be overwritten by accident.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2473&start=0#p17006
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: inform7 problems - combat and machines
User: mjnurney / DateTime: 2011-05-20 13:24:00

hello all,

im new to inform7 and im learning as i go...

i have a couple of issues that are stopping me writing a quick game, if anyone can help that would be great!

Combat - i would like a man in a room who will attack you with random hits - but i dont know how...

Machines - i would like also a machine with levers or buttons , for example a machine with 3 levers , one lever opens a door?

thank you all

[emote]:-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2473&start=0#p17007
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform7 problems - combat and machines
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-05-20 13:39:00

The ATTACK extension (I believe the latest version is here: [url]http://gamingphilosopher.blogspot.com/2011/04/attack-inform-attack-version-2-released.html[/url]) is worth a look for combat purposes.  There are other ways to do it, of course!  Consider, too, whether you genuinely want random attacks - are you willing to end the game for certain unlucky players?  Even if it means they may not replay?

You may find the documentation about parts of things instructive, as well as that on devices.  Here's a simple example that unlocks and opens a door when you pull a lever.

[code]The Machine Room is a room.  The Main Lab is a room.  The steel door is east of the Machine Room and west of the Main Lab.  The steel door is a door.  The steel door is lockable and locked.

The heavy lever is in the Machine Room.  

Instead of pulling the heavy lever:
	if the steel door is locked or the steel door is closed:
		say "There is a click from the steel door and it slides open.";
	otherwise:
		say "You pull the lever, but nothing happens.";
	now the steel door is unlocked;
	now the steel door is open;


test me with "e / pull lever / e"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2473&start=0#p17008
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform7 problems - combat and machines
User: mjnurney / DateTime: 2011-05-20 13:46:30

thank you for the quick response, as for random combat , i mean random hit points to within a limited range

ive just tried to test that by copying it but i get this error?


Problem. The phrase or rule definition 'Instead of pulling the heavy lever'   is written using the 'colon and indentation' syntax for its 'if's, 'repeat's and 'while's, where blocks of phrases grouped together are indented one tab step inward from the 'if ...:' or similar phrase to which they belong. But the tabs here seem to be misaligned, and I can't determine the structure. The first phrase going awry in the definition seems to be 'if the steel door is locked or the steel door is closed'  , in case that helps.

i take it thats a TAB error or spacing?

how do i adjust or change that?

thank you

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2473&start=0#p17009
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform7 problems - combat and machines
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-05-20 14:03:49

Try "quoting" my reply, and then copying and pasting from there.  A straight copy-paste from the forum removes tabs.  (You can also manually re-enter tabs in the appropriate places, but where's the fun in that?)

If the PC isn't going to be doing combat hirself, it might be more straightforward to do something like the following:

[code]The Dojo is a room.  "You are sparring.[if Julie is in the location]  Julie circles you, watching for an opening.[end if]".
The Locker Room is a room.


The player has a number called health.  The health of the player is 25.

Instead of attacking Julie:
	say "You try your best, but you don't even come close to landing a blow."

Julie is a woman in the Dojo.  

Every turn while Julie is in the location and the location is the Dojo:
	say "[one of]Julie darts in a strikes your leg, hard enough to bruise[or]You move back, and Julie's fist strikes your upper arm, which tingles and goes numb[or]A blow catches you in the stomach[at random].";
	decrease the health of the player by a random number between 5 and 15;
	if the health of the player is less than 1:
		say "The match ends, with Julie victorious.  You bow to each other, and hit the showers.";
		now the player is in the Locker Room.
		
test me with "z / z / z".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2473&start=0#p17010
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform7 problems - combat and machines
User: mjnurney / DateTime: 2011-05-20 14:10:10

you sir are a superstar!!!!!!


many thanks....i'll be playing with your code and trying different things.

i have tried many times copying bits from the web and usually none of it works...

indents screwed up i think.

again thank you

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2473&start=0#p17011
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform7 problems - combat and machines
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-05-20 14:17:59

No prob.  You do have to watch the indents really carefully; if you're getting code from the rec arts if feed, you'll always have to manually tab.  But when you post code here, just put it in "code" tags, and the indents can be retrieved by others.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2284&start=20#p17012
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you look for in your IF?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-05-20 14:23:54

[quote="matt w"][quote="Trumgottist"]Yes, IF is easier for one person to make than most kinds of games[/quote]

I'm not even sure this is true anymore, with the rise of cheap/free game-making systems like Flixel, Unity, and GameMaker. (Though you might be able to say better than I have, as you've actually made games with graphics.)[/quote]

It's easier in the sense that fewer different skills are needed. To make IF, you need to be a writer, a designer and a programmer. To make a graphical adventure game, you need the same [i]and[/i] a musician and a visual artist. And possibly voice actors.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2446&start=0#p17013
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Michael Martin
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-05-20 14:30:34

[quote="wgm003"]I don't request help unless I need it! [emote]:evil:[/emote][/quote]
No need to be angry. Juhana was trying to help, by suggesting that you could ask for help in the Imform section of the forum instead of mailing Michael. There are plenty of people here that know lots about Inform 7 that would be able to help out with your problem if you told them about it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2473&start=0#p17014
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform7 problems - combat and machines
User: mjnurney / DateTime: 2011-05-20 14:47:07

ive copy bits of code from here there and everywhere while i try things but unless its a simple sentence i usually get error about indents / tabs or spaces

but now ive joined here, hopefully people can guide me through the pitfalls...

thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2474&start=0#p17015
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Hello People, My intro and a question about Agility
User: LexTaylor.AAA / DateTime: 2011-05-20 15:19:59

Hello,
        I wanted to write IF since I was in pre-puberty in the 80ies but, except for some little efforts at it in early adolescence with GWBasic I couldn't get around to realize my dream; until early 2000s when I finally started coding a game.

I designed and coded my game for around two years and then, at around 70% completion, filed it until now.  Now that I've returned to this scene I will like to know whatever you may want to tell me about your thoughts/feelings on the interpreter known as MAGX (Make Adventure Game toolkit eXtended)... if any.

I say if any because I know that although (from my personal point of view) it's very good, I know that isn't among the top, most popular like Z-Machine, Tadz and Alan and AGT.

Do you think you can make a MAGX game executable? Do you think it's possible to port it to, say, Z-Machine? Whatever info tidbits on the line of this two questions will be greatly appreciated since this isn't a topic easy to find on the web, at least on google/yahoo/m$'s web.

Thanking you in advanced,
Lex Taylor

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2446&start=0#p17016
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Michael Martin
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-05-20 15:25:20

Plus, if the answer is posted publicly, other people with the same problem/question might be able to find it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2473&start=0#p17017
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform7 problems - combat and machines
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-05-20 15:41:32

The rules about indentation are explained in my Handbook (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm">www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm</a>). Basically, Inform is finicky about indentation with tabs, and it's finicky about how you end a line -- with a semicolon or period, for example. It's no different from other computer programming languages in that respect.

Your best bet is to study the documentation in a systematic way. Inform [i]looks [/i]easy, but in reality it's a form of computer programming. Getting numerous error messages from the compiler is absolutely normal.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2474&start=0#p17018
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Hello People, My intro and a question about Agility
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-05-20 15:59:33

[url=http://code.google.com/p/garglk/]Gargoyle[/url] includes the Glk port of Agility, which supports the AGT/AGX formats. There are [url=http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXprogrammingXagtXagility.html]other variants on ifarchive[/url], notably David Kinder's Windows port.

Is that what you're looking for?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2284&start=20#p17019
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you look for in your IF?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-20 16:14:37

[quote="Trumgottist"][quote="matt w"][quote="Trumgottist"]Yes, IF is easier for one person to make than most kinds of games[/quote]

I'm not even sure this is true anymore, with the rise of cheap/free game-making systems like Flixel, Unity, and GameMaker. (Though you might be able to say better than I have, as you've actually made games with graphics.)[/quote]

It's easier in the sense that fewer different skills are needed. To make IF, you need to be a writer, a designer and a programmer. To make a graphical adventure game, you need the same [i]and[/i] a musician and a visual artist. And possibly voice actors.[/quote]

You're right about adventure games; I was thinking about platformers and other such things, which can get along without writing. ([url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/08/11/bissell-braid-and-the-use-of-words/]Though if they don't, there needs to be a good writer involved.[/url]) Music is still an issue, I guess, though you can get some nice stuff from [url=http://incompetech.com/]Kevin MacLeod[/url]. 

IF should definitely be easier for me, because I have absolutely no hope as a visual artist; but some of the games I play seem to have better art than writing.

(Maybe roguelikes should be the easiest? You can do without writing or graphics. Design is pretty hard though.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2473&start=0#p17020
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform7 problems - combat and machines
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-05-20 16:53:34

Haha.  I'm always suspicious when I write more than a single line or two and the game compiles smoothly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2446&start=0#p17021
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Michael Martin
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-05-20 17:31:03

Sorry about the rant but this is my problem:  [emote]:roll:[/emote] 

From inside the Extensions:

[quote]In Section 2 - Member fields and default values in the extension Quip-Based Conversation by Michael Martin:

Problem. You wrote 'A person has a quip called a greeting'  , but 'quip' is not the name of a kind of value which I know (such as 'number' or 'text').

 See the manual: 4.8 > New value properties



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In Section 1 - Quips in the extension Reactable Quips by Michael Martin:

Problem. You wrote 'The quips are defined by the Table of Quip Texts'  , and one of the entries in the first column of that table is 'quip_null'  , which I ought to create as a new value of a quip. But I can't do that: it already has a meaning (as an object).[/quote]

Now it is not so much these exact Extensions (straws and camels backs), but the whole language - I am getting to the point of not wanting to even try writing a new line of text when I know that what I will get back is not a functioning line or two but some obscure error messages. I have been programming for up to 50 years and this is the strangest language I have ever encountered. And I have used a lot of them!
Greg

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2475&start=0#p17022
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Memorable Moments in IF
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-05-20 17:37:29

Some of you may read PC Gamer this month and have seen the article "Designing for the Moment". This is being discussed a lot in the halls of game programming shops these days: making the moments that people talk about, similar to a film or a TV show. (Think of how reveals were handled in shows like [i]Lost[/i], [i]Dexter[/i], [i]Battlestar Galactica[/i], [i]Babylon 5[/i] and so on or movies like [i]Memento[/i], [i]Identity[/i], [i]Mulholland Drive[/i] and so on.) What you usually need is a defined character and a clever situation or use of that character in a reveal moment.

The article says:

[quote]"You know the feeling - those moments in games that make you talk about it with your friends. The things that stick with you after the PC shuts down."[/quote]

and:

[quote]"Love the gameplay mechanics. Be blown away by the art style. Adore the story line, dialog, and characters. But I guarantee you, after you're finished, it's the moments that you'll remember. Who knows, maybe the kids of this generation will remember a moment in a game the way I remember 'No, Luke. [i]I[/i] am your father.'"[/quote]

The article gives a good example:

[spoiler]The "revealation" that you as the player eventually come to when you realize that Reznov in [i]Call of Duty: Black Ops[/i] does not exist. He's a figment of your imagination, at least starting from a certain point. Your character had gone crazy. It was the revelation moment -- sort of like in [i]Sixth Sense[/i], when you realize "Oh, he's dead." Or in [i]Fallen[/i] when you realize "Oh! It was the demon narrating the whole thing!"[/spoiler]

Does IF have moments like that? Can people call out their most memorable IF moments? Obviously this would require lots of spoilers but this forum seems to have the capacity for that. I'm really curious if IF can provide the emotional impact that other games can and have with many players. (Obviously this doesn't have to mean emotional solely in terms of making you cry or laugh, but also in terms of providing surprise, astonishment, the "cool reveal", the subtle twist that you just had to bring up to others because it was so darn cool. Or just the really effective scene that either gave you tingles, chills, or was just plain cool in how it was handled.)

My personal belief is that IF wants to be ultimately relevant to more game players, it needs to prove that it can provide these moments to gamers who are not only accommodating them but starting to demand them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2475&start=0#p17023
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Memorable Moments in IF
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-20 18:28:13

First three off the top of my head: the maze in Photopia, the very beginning of Spider and Web, and Grant's tea order in Best of Three.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2475&start=0#p17024
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Memorable Moments in IF
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-20 18:33:43

No. I have never had any emotional reaction to IF. I played the games obsessively in the 1980s because whenever I did, a small dial on my left nipple would go up by 30% or so.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2475&start=0#p17025
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Memorable Moments in IF
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-05-20 19:20:36

First ten that come to mind:

[list]
[*]Solving that one puzzle in [i]Spider and Web[/i].[/*:m]
[*]Playing after the first scene in [i]De Baron[/i].[/*:m]
[*]Exploring the creepy setting in [i]Vespers[/i].[/*:m]
[*]Talking to the doctor in [i]Anchorhead[/i].[/*:m]
[*]Talking to Shakespeare in [i]King of Shreds and Patches[/i].[/*:m]
[*]Beating [i]All Things Devours[/i].[/*:m]
[*]Defeating the VOLTAIC WRAITH in [i]Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom[/i].[/*:m]
[*]Getting through the dark room in [i]Leadlight[/i].[/*:m]
[*]Learning about functional programming in [i]Lists and Lists[/i].[/*:m]
[*]Performing surgery in [i]Cry Wolf[/i].[/*:m][/list:u]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2475&start=0#p17026
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Memorable Moments in IF
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-20 21:29:07

Not really emotional, but memorable:  defeating the dragon in Adventure with the very first thing I tried.  A friend, who had introduced me to the game and was standing behind me and watching me play, burst out laughing.  It turned out he had spent several days trying different things before he hit on the solution, and was laughing at the fact that I did not hesitate an instant before typing in the correct answer.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2470&start=0#p17027
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hiding an inventory possession
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-20 21:51:26

Thanks for the routine Shammack.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2471&start=0#p17028
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: what are Beta testers and Programmers
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-05-20 22:22:03

The traditional team actually requires at least three groups: Writers, programmers and beta testers. Writers are those who write the plot and prose, but aren't usually major participants in the implementation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2475&start=0#p17029
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Memorable Moments in IF
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-20 22:43:42

Learning (and using) the magic word in Anchorhead. I still remember how to spell it, and I even have a guess how to pronounce it.

I'm always mentioning this one in various contexts: The elevator in The Lurking Horror.

Finding out what the cubes were for in Spellbreaker.

I'm surprised no one's mentioned this one from Planetfall:

[spoiler]Floyd's death.[/spoiler]
Maybe that's not a spoiler, but I felt a little bit spoiled when I heard about it before I got there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2446&start=0#p17030
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Michael Martin
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-20 22:58:09

[quote="wgm003"]I have been programming for up to 50 years and this is the strangest language I have ever encountered. And I have used a lot of them![/quote]
Well, that's the problem right there!  [emote]:lol:[/emote] It's like that New Math song...

Inform 7 is definitely aggravating at times, and one of the worst problems it has is documentation. In my opinion the error messages are part of the documentation, and they're no exception.

Fortunately, this here forum more than makes up for the shortcomings of the documentation. I bet you'll have an answer to this by Monday afternoon.

The thing for me, besides the addictive yet oddly counter-productive thrill of learning a programming language that's not like any other I know, is that after hours of grinding my teeth and tearing my hair to get the syntax right, I have readable code that I can come back to later and still understand.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2446&start=0#p17031
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Michael Martin
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-20 23:00:38

Anyway, your problem sounds like some kind of namespace conflict. Best bet would be to make a trimmed-down copy that duplicates the problem. If trimming it down until you see the conflict doesn't present a solution, then post the code here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2476&start=0#p17032
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Darkness
User: tryguy / DateTime: 2011-05-20 23:25:55

Hi, I'm currently playing with darkness. I have implemented audible things and such into my game and have worked out most of the messages associated with detecting them. I'm quite happy with how it behaves.

But I wanted to customize the player's interactions with things they could hear (but not see) in the darkness.

This code approximates what I'm dealing with:

[code]After deciding the scope of the player while in darkness:
	place the clock in scope;
	place the table in scope;
	place the watch in scope.

Instead of taking something when in darkness:
	if the noun is handled:
		say "Even in this darkness, you still have a sense of where you placed [the noun], and after only a few fumbled attempts, succeed in putting your hands on it. [run paragraph on]";
		continue the action;
	otherwise:
		say "It's much too dark in here to attempt to try taking [the noun]. Better to leave it until you can actually see what you're doing." instead.

Hallway is a dark room. Closet is north of the Hallway.

A clock is in the Hallway.

A table is a supporter in the Hallway.

The player is wearing a watch. The watch is handled.[/code]

This is how the code might perform:

[code]>get clock
It's much too dark in here to attempt to try taking the clock. Better to leave it until you can actually see what you're doing.

>put clock on table
(first taking the clock)

It's much too dark in here to attempt to try taking the clock. Better to leave it until you can actually see what you're doing.
You need to be holding the clock before you can put it on top of something else.

>drop watch
(first taking the watch off)
Dropped.

>get watch
Even in this darkness, you still have a sense of where you placed the watch, and after only a few fumbled attempts, succeed in putting your hands on it. Taken.[/code]

Can anyone suggest a way to better handle the implicit taking? Inform 7 believes a new line is needed, and the formatting doesn't look that great.

I've tried to put a [run paragraph on] after my message, but that messes up the normal taking messages. I've also tried to [stop the action] afterwards, but it doesn't seem to have any visible effect on things. So, can anyone suggest something?

Also, I'd like to reduce the actions a player is allowed to do while in darkness (even when things might be in scope). So I've come up with this:

[code]Instead of doing anything other than looking, examining, listening, smelling, taking, dropping or going while in darkness:
	say "It's too dark for that!" instead.[/code]

And this seems to work too. Are there any special cases I've left out? I don't want them to be able to do much while in complete darkness, but I figure I can write exceptions when needed to supersede this rule. BTW, I only put the "going" exception in there after I discovered that I could no longer go into another room. So... I'm guessing there might be other things that I should look out for.

Again, thanks for any help with this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2475&start=0#p17033
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Memorable Moments in IF
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-05-21 03:31:28

[quote="bukayeva"](Obviously this doesn't have to mean emotional solely in terms of making you cry or laugh, but also in terms of providing surprise, astonishment, the "cool reveal", the subtle twist that you just had to bring up to others because it was so darn cool. Or just the really effective scene that either gave you tingles, chills, or was just plain cool in how it was handled.)

My personal belief is that IF wants to be ultimately relevant to more game players, it needs to prove that it can provide these moments to gamers who are not only accommodating them but starting to demand them.[/quote]
I think there are a lot of things that IF struggles with as a medium - not because of the form, but because of what authors want to use it for. But this kind of thing - the incredible twist on your expectations, the devastating reversal, it's something I think many IF games have done really well. An important part of it is that in text it's easy to hide things - you just don't mention them, even if, in a graphical game, the truth would be obvious from the first screen.

This isn't a new thing for IF, or even for graphical games (it's obvious from the intro that [i]Snatcher[/i] (1988) is building up to a twist, and it managed to misdirect me, at least). I guess it may be a new thing for gazillion dollar studio games like [i]Call of Duty[/i], but the people on the fringes of any medium are always doing interesting stuff with every part of it - and that includes the IF fringe, the storytelling part, and where they overlap.

Games you might want to try include [b]9.05[/b], [b]Shrapnel[/b], [b]Fail-Safe[/b], [b]August[/b], [b]Slouching Towards Bedlam[/b], and, for a more silly example, [b]The Tale of the Kissing Bandit[/b].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2446&start=0#p17034
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Michael Martin
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-05-21 05:56:41

[quote]"xxx" 

test Room is a room.

Include Quip-Based Conversation by Michael Martin.


Include Reactable Quips by Michael Martin.[/quote]

The above short program produced the following:

[quote]In Section 2 - Member fields and default values in the extension Quip-Based Conversation by Michael Martin:

Problem. You wrote 'A person has a quip called a greeting'  , but 'quip' is not the name of a kind of value which I know (such as 'number' or 'text').

 See the manual: 4.8 > New value properties

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In Section 1 - Quips in the extension Reactable Quips by Michael Martin:

Problem. You wrote 'The quips are defined by the Table of Quip Texts'  , and one of the entries in the first column of that table is 'quip_null'  , which I ought to create as a new value of a quip. But I can't do that: it already has a meaning (as an object).[/quote] 

The messages are for the Extension programmer, not the end user!

I rest my case! [emote]:ugeek:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2446&start=0#p17035
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Michael Martin
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-05-21 06:40:52

It's an interesting case, but it's not the extension's fault; the problem seems to be that Inform includes the two extensions in the wrong order or parses the other before it has included the other one. You can fix it by just leaving out the instruction to include Reactable Quips (QBC already does it automatically).

[code]"xxx"

test Room is a room.

Include Quip-Based Conversation by Michael Martin.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2446&start=10#p17036
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Michael Martin
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-21 07:01:03

This compiles for me:

[code]"xxx"

test Room is a room.

Include Quip-Based Conversation by Michael Martin.[/code]

What I think is happening (I'm not experienced in using extensions) is that Quip-Based Conversation begins with the line "Include Version 10 of Reactable Quips by Michael Martin," so when you use that line again in your code, you're effectively pasting two copies of Reactable Quips into your code, which leads to the problems you've encountered. (Inform really should automatically catch it when an extension is included twice -- though maybe the business with "version 10" is making a difference here.)

UPDATE: Right, what Juhana said.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2446&start=10#p17037
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Michael Martin
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-05-21 07:18:35

I've reported it (<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=666">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=666</a>) but I'm not sure if it's a bug or a feature request.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2476&start=0#p17038
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Darkness
User: Blecki / DateTime: 2011-05-21 07:21:16

I don't know why you're getting both failure messages, but a better idea might be to never put un-handled objects in scope in the first place.

[code]
After deciding the scope of the player while in darkness:
	repeat with item running through the list of handled things:
		place the item in scope.
[/code]

Though keep in mind that this will put the objects in scope even when the player can't interact with them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2476&start=0#p17039
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Darkness
User: tryguy / DateTime: 2011-05-21 08:02:02

Thanks for the suggestion. [emote]:)[/emote]

I've been playing with my game a little more, and I think this code fragment works pretty well to control a player's more ambition actions (it's the same as before):

[code]Instead of doing anything other than looking, examining, listening, smelling, taking, dropping or going while in darkness:
   say "It's too dark for that!" instead.[/code]

This cancels out the situation I originally presented fairly well.

I would still like to know if there are dangers in using this. I guess I'll just code some more and see if I meet with any road blocks...

I'm up to chapter 10 of the manual now. Just 50 billion more text and examples to go! [emote]:)[/emote] But, seriously, I'm wanting to make some progress on my own game, so I'm putting off learning the advanced stuff (until I can be bothered, or lack inspiration.)

Check back on the next problem. [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2476&start=0#p17040
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Darkness
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-21 09:42:25

AFAICT, what's happening is that when you try to put the clock on the table, the "can't put what's not held" rule has you silently try taking the clock. When you put "instead" or "stop the action" in your rule for taking the clock, it stops the taking action; but this kicks you right back into the "can't put what's not held" rule, which is a "check an actor putting something on" rule, and that continues to fire.

Blecki's solution might well be the best; failing that, I would probably try to handle this by setting a flag within the taking rule to determine whether we'd already printed the refusal to take in darkness, and then rewriting the "can't put what's not held" rule so that when that flag was set it didn't issue the "you have to be holding that" message. Seems a little kludgy, though; others might have a better idea. 

For your "Instead of doing anything other than" rule, have you looked at kinds of action (7.15)? It might help streamline your rule, though they can be a bit tetchy too. Not that this would address your worry (and I don't know whether you want to be able to put the clock on the table in darkness if both are handled, anyway).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2446&start=10#p17041
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Michael Martin
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-05-21 10:22:22

Thanks, that worked - but how did you know?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2446&start=10#p17042
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Michael Martin
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-21 11:24:38

Juhana has more experience than I do, but the first error message you got indicated that something had gone wrong with the definition of "quip," and the second one sounded like the sort of thing that happens if you try to define quip_null twice. Obviously you yourself weren't defining quip_null twice, so the problem was something to do with the extensions. I looked in the code for Quip-Based Conversation, and noticed that it already had the command to include Reactable Quips, so I suspected that the problem might be that Reactable Quips was somehow getting included twice, and so quip_null was getting defined twice. Then I tested it by deleting the "Include Reactable Quips" line from your code. 

One thing I've found is that it has helped me some to just try doing some simple programs that don't include any extensions before experimenting with extensions, because it helps me figure out what the error messages really mean. For instance, one of the most common error messages is "The sentence 'The watch is hot'   appears to say two things are the same - I am reading 'watch' and 'hot' as two different things" etc. This is the message you get when you've forgotten to define "hot" as a property, but the error message doesn't help you figure it out that much. Not that I'm an I7 expert or anything, and I've spent an irritatingly long time trying to figure out what my error was when it turned out I had put a semicolon where a colon could be, but I find making my own syntax errors was more useful than making syntax errors with other folks' extensions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2476&start=0#p17043
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Darkness
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-05-21 13:00:21

[quote="tryguy"]Can anyone suggest a way to better handle the implicit taking? Inform 7 believes a new line is needed, and the formatting doesn't look that great.[/quote]
Ugh. Implicit taking -- the Lex Luthor to my Jimmy Olsen. The answer to your question [i]should[/i] be see ch. 17.32 on how to add a "rule for implicitly taking something." Unfortunately, Inform handles implicit takes in two different ways. Actions defined as requiring a carried thing automatically fire the implicitly taking activity (which makes sense). Some actions like "putting it on" however, generate implicit taking using a hard - coded "silently try taking" command within its check rulebook. Zarf has already suggested that this behavior be unified [url=http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/1207603-use-implicitly-taking-activity-for-putting-inser?ref=title]here[/url], and it looks like the next build will do this. In the meantime, try this:

[code]Hallway is a dark room. Closet is north of the Hallway.
A clock is in the Hallway. A table is a supporter in the Hallway.
The player is wearing a watch. The watch is handled.

After deciding the scope of the player while in darkness:
	place the clock in scope;
	place the table in scope;
	place the watch in scope.

Check taking something when in darkness:
	unless the noun is handled:
		say "It's much too dark in here to attempt to try taking [the noun]. Better to leave it until you can actually see what you're doing." instead.

Report taking something when in darkness: [<-- only fires when a successful take has been performed]
	say "Even in this darkness, you still have a sense of where you placed [the noun], and after only a few fumbled attempts, succeed in putting your hands on it.[command clarification break]".

Rule for implicitly taking something (called target) when in darkness:
	say "(first trying to take [the noun])[command clarification break]";
	silently try taking the target.
	
[The following 2 blocks are to change the hard-coded implicit taking behavior of "putting it on" to match the behavior with the implicit take activity above. You'll need to do the same type of thing for "inserting it into" if you've got containers in your game. ]

Check an actor putting something on (this is the new can’t put what’s not held rule):
	if the actor is carrying the noun, continue the action;
	if the actor is wearing the noun, continue the action;
	carry out the implicitly taking activity with the noun; [<-- redirect to the activity] 
	if the actor is carrying the noun, continue the action;
	if in darkness, stop the action; [<-- no additional message needed]
	otherwise stop the action with library message putting it on action number 1 for the noun.
	
The new can’t put what’s not held rule is listed instead of the can't put what's not held rule in the check putting it on rules.
	
test me with "put clock on table / wear clock / put watch on table / get watch / drop it / put it on table / wear it".[/code]
Note that I broke up your instead rule into separate check and report rules. (I don't like using instead rules to report the successful outcome of an action -- especially one that hasn't been completed yet.) Here's the output:

[quote]Darkness
It is pitch dark, and you can't see a thing.

>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] put clock on table
(first trying to take the clock)
It's much too dark in here to attempt to try taking the clock. Better to leave it until you can actually see what you're doing.

>[2] wear clock
(first trying to take the clock)
It's much too dark in here to attempt to try taking the clock. Better to leave it until you can actually see what you're doing.

>[3] put watch on table
(first taking it off)
You put the watch on the table.

>[4] get watch
Even in this darkness, you still have a sense of where you placed the watch, and after only a few fumbled attempts, succeed in putting your hands on it.
Taken.

>[5] drop it
Dropped.

>[6] put it on table
(first trying to take the watch)
You put the watch on the table.

>[7] wear it
(first trying to take the watch)
You put on the watch.[/quote]
If this isn't what you need, post an example of the desired output and one of us here can re-jigger it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2476&start=0#p17044
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Darkness
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-05-21 13:24:55

Actually, if you change the report rule to an after rule and add "continue the action":
[code]After taking something when in darkness: [<-- only fires when a successful take has been performed]
	say "Even in this darkness, you still have a sense of where you placed [the noun], and after only a few fumbled attempts, succeed in putting your hands on it.[command clarification break]";
	continue the action.[/code]
... you get what's probably a more desirable output for the last two commands:
[quote]>[6] put it on table
(first trying to take the watch)
Even in this darkness, you still have a sense of where you placed the watch, and after only a few fumbled attempts, succeed in putting your hands on it.
You put the watch on the table.

>[7] wear it
(first trying to take the watch)
Even in this darkness, you still have a sense of where you placed the watch, and after only a few fumbled attempts, succeed in putting your hands on it.
You put on the watch.[/quote]
I think this is because "silently" skips the report stage, but not the after stage.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2454&start=10#p17045
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: glulx sound observations
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-05-21 14:54:03

I've spent a bit of time playing with the example, but I can't hear any cracking on my system. Possibly I'm insufficiently aurally sensitive, but most likely it's dependent on the sound card hardware in your system.

I think that the only way to do a completely smooth fade is to as Jim notes, and scale down the waveform data as the sound data is sent to the operating system. Doing that really will need a new Glk call - it's something different from changing the volume, more along the lines of "Fade this sound out over 3 seconds: I don't mind if it takes 1/2 a second or so longer than that in order to keep it smooth".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=30#p17046
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-21 16:29:45

By popular request, I've added a download link for The Matter of the Monster. See <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/if.html#matter">http://eblong.com/zarf/if.html#matter</a> .

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2470&start=0#p17047
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hiding an inventory possession
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-05-21 20:20:14

[quote="Robert Rothman"]I hope that you provided an appropriate response to the smart-ass player.[/quote]
I did, but I don't want to give everything away; you'll just have to play the game to find out. [emote];)[/emote]  I'm spending an inordinate amount of time trying to include appropriate responses for stupid things the player might try to do. That time would probably be better spent working on puzzles or something, but this is more fun.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2470&start=0#p17048
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hiding an inventory possession
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-21 20:33:45

[quote="shammack"]I'm spending an inordinate amount of time trying to include appropriate responses for stupid things the player might try to do. That time would probably be better spent working on puzzles or something, but this is more fun.[/quote]

I am doing the exact same thing, and I kick myself for wasting all of this time.  But you are right, it is more fun.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2477&start=0#p17049
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: August by Matt Fendahleen -- opening text and more
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-21 22:49:09

When I start Matt Fendahleen's "August," some text seems to flash up on the screen that I can't see before I get to the pre-title text. Does anyone know what that is?

Also, I hear rumors of a walkthrough that discloses multiple endings; does anyone have access to it? I've only been able to get one ending, and that only via a bug (I leave the dance hall and return, and a conversation resumes as if I'd never left).

Any ideas about what's going on would also be appreciated.

[spoiler]I think the people who are drinking green wine are all dead and those with red wine are still alive, but that's about all I got.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2478&start=0#p17050
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: Verb with multiple objects
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-05-22 01:14:15

I didn't expect to stumble across a problem here, but... I'd like to parse "disconnect hatchet and rope".

[code]
[ DisconnectSub;
    if(noun~=rope && noun~=hatchet) "You cannot disconnect that.";
    if(second~=rope && second~=hatchet) "You cannot disconnect that.";
    ...
    ];

Verb 'disconnect' * noun -> Disconnect;
Extend 'disconnect' * noun 'and' noun -> Disconnect;
[/code]

That as a start, to be refined later. Result:


>disconnect
What do you want to disconnec?

>disconnect hatchet
What do you want to disconnec the hatchet and?

>disconnect hatchet and rope
You can't use multiple objects with that verb.

Erm... What am I doing wrong again?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2478&start=0#p17051
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Verb with multiple objects
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-05-22 02:07:19

The parser thinks you are trying to refer to a multiple object. In other words it thinks "disconnect hatchet and rope" is the same as "take hatchet and rope" before it even finds the 'and' preposition in your verb definition.

The solution is to change 'and' to another preposition, such as 'from'.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2477&start=0#p17052
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: August by Matt Fendahleen -- opening text and more
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-05-22 02:33:26

It's not the best implemented game, for sure. Which is a shame, because it's long been one of my favourites.

All the opening text that I get is below (enclosed in spoiler tags to save space):

[spoiler]The crags of Panhelios still haunt your waking. The thin scream of the wind rushing in your ears. The pale, rocky spires like petrified talons clawing at the sky. The impossible vastness of the canyons.  The heat.  And the distance.  Especially the distance. 

Manfred isn't breathing.  He isn't breathing. He died in your arms as you tried pathetically to staunch the flow of blood from his side. And she, she watches from a distance, stalking back and forth like a hunting cat. Her hair is a bloody halo against the wind.  Her every movement is a naked threat. 

A few moments ago, the world made sense. 

"Maybe you should just surrender, Ikthanadar." she calls out to you, lips twitching in inhuman amusement. 
You do not reply.  You just kneel there, staring at nothing, cradling your comerade's head in your bloodied hands as her soft, lilting voice sings you its fatal lullaby, and... 

You tried so hard. 

The woman sighs.  "Perhaps I should be more specific." she says, gathering up the child and shoving her roughly into the arms of a black-armored attendant.  "Surrender now, or the girl dies.  Slowly."  Heat and horror.  Revulsion. 

Why?

August
By Matt Fendahleen

Why?

"Begging your pardon, milord?"

You blink, glance around you.  The doorkeeper gazes at you with a sort of... sympathetic absence of concern.  Quite a feat.
"Nothing." you tell him.  "I was just..." you shake your head.  "Nothing."

The man raises an eyebrow.  "I'll just be announcing you then, so I shall." he gives you a tight smile.  "And welcome to Luna Plina, Lord."[/spoiler]
Unless you think there's more you should be getting? (What 'terp are you using?)

In terms of finishing the thing, I have done in the past, and I think the multiple endings are obvious once you get to the end (you're offered a choice), but it's been too long to remember how you get there.

Okay, trying to replay it... it's annoying that none of the party-goers appear in the room description.  Here's how to get to the meat of the game:

[spoiler]From what I can tell, you basically need to hang around for [i]42[/i] turns, and then, after hanging around a bit longer, you'll finally get to make some meaningful interactions.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2479&start=0#p17053
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Font shrinkage?
User: paulobrian / DateTime: 2011-05-22 02:57:40

Can anybody think of a reason why the font size of the documentation, index, errors, and settings window in I7 would suddenly shrink? The fonts in each of those windows is a point size or two smaller tonight than it was last night, and I can't figure out why. It's especially bothersome in the documentation window, as I strain to pore through it. 

Windows 7 updated itself last night, including an install of IE9, which makes me suspicious, but it's not immediately clear to me how that would cause the shrinkage I'm experiencing. Any ideas?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2479&start=0#p17054
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Font shrinkage?
User: Minkovsky / DateTime: 2011-05-22 03:31:30

I don't know what HTML engine is used by WInform. Try IE's zoom in and zoom out keys, maybe I'll find a CSS that can be modified to help the problem.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2479&start=0#p17055
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Font shrinkage?
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-05-22 04:44:32

[quote="paulobrian"]Windows 7 updated itself last night, including an install of IE9, which makes me suspicious, but it's not immediately clear to me how that would cause the shrinkage I'm experiencing. Any ideas?[/quote]Windows Inform 7 uses an IE component to display HTML, which is basically the documentation, index and errors, so it's possible that IE9 has caused the change. I have checked Inform 7 on Windows 7 with IE9 and didn't see any problems, but possibly I didn't check thoroughly enough.

However, this will not affect the settings pane at all, so it seems very odd that that has changed font size. Are you sure about the settings pane? If the font has changed size in the settings pane, it should also be changed in the source pane. If that's changed then are you sure you haven't changed the font size in the options dialog? That should affect all font sizes for all panes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2479&start=0#p17056
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Font shrinkage?
User: i-k / DateTime: 2011-05-22 04:53:16

This happened to me too, a while ago though, might indeed have been around the time IE was updated (my default is Opera, so I cannot really remember for sure when that happened). Changing the font or its size in preferences affects only the source, nothing else, not even the settings pane.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2479&start=0#p17057
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Font shrinkage?
User: i-k / DateTime: 2011-05-22 05:45:45

Adding to that:

Ctrl + mouse scroll affects the font size in both the source and the game pane (and nowhere else), but Ctrl + [plus/minus] only in the source pane.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2479&start=0#p17058
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Font shrinkage?
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-05-22 10:21:10

The real pain is not beeing able to change font-size in the documentation panel. Last time I was writting something with I7 I went so far as to stop using the IDE documentation and open my web browser to consult it on-line so I could read it without adding more strain to my eyes (yes, it is [i]that[/i] bad!). There are a couple of comments about it in [url=http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/751134]this suggestion at the I7 forums[/url], but I'm not sure wether we should open a new specific suggestion about font-size in the docs. Should we?

--

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2477&start=0#p17059
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: August by Matt Fendahleen -- opening text and more
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-22 10:42:44

Thanks -- there's a window at the top of the screen that blanks out the first two paragraphs in Zoom. I think it might be there to cover the status bar at the beginning.

...oh hey, the description of the Long Hall gets the exits backward. That accounts for some of my confusion in the endgame.

So this is what tends to happen:

[spoiler]I've got to the 42-turn point, and I'm dancing with whatsername, and I've run out of things to say to her ("talk to [her]" yields a blank response, as I think it always does). Then I exit to the long hall. Then I return west, and go east again, and [i]that[/i] triggers the ending I think I should've got when I exited. I'm not sure what the choice was supposed to be. Am I offered it if I go east instead of exiting?[/spoiler]

UPDATE: Oh, and the partygoers I found to talk to were

[spoiler]The Prince and Orlock, Cathbad (who had many topics of conversation -- "Fendahleen put you up to that, the bastard!") -- and Felicity, when she came (she ignored me until a cutscene).[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2479&start=0#p17060
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Font shrinkage?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-05-22 11:38:08

[quote="rockersuke"]There are a couple of comments about it in [url=http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/751134]this suggestion at the I7 forums[/url], but I'm not sure wether we should open a new specific suggestion about font-size in the docs. Should we?[/quote]
Given that some users are visually impaired, it would be highly desirable to have the font size of EVERYTHING be user-controllable.

I believe there may be an OS-level way to do that, but it would affect all apps, not just I7 IDE.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2480&start=0#p17061
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Stupid Inform 7 Compilation Errors
User: somekidwithhtml / DateTime: 2011-05-22 11:59:21

Hi,
I'm really new to inform, and i am writing a game with inform 7. However, my source code has gotten quite long so i started using headers. But these headers didn't make anything easier, they gave a ton more errors. I've gotten really stupid errors such as [quote] You wrote 'Section 2 - Setup Release along with cover art, and an interpreter'  : but I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with, so I am ignoring this sentence altogether. [/quote]
The "Setup" and the "Release" are on two different lines, i don't know why it is reading them as one. I also get stupid errors where Inform doesn't seem to recognize some basic rules:
[quote]Problem. In the sentence 'if the usp match is carried by the player begin'  , I was expecting to read a condition, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'usp match is carried by the player'.

I was trying to match this phrase:

if (usp match is carried by the player - a condition): 

This was what I found out:

usp match is carried by the player = something unrecognised



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem. In the sentence 'if the usp match is not carried by the player begin'  , I was expecting to read a condition, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'usp match is not carried by the player'.

I was trying to match this phrase:

if (usp match is not carried by the player - a condition): 

This was what I found out:

usp match is not carried by the player = something unrecognised

[/quote]
I know that Inform will understand the syntax "something carried by the player" and that's what is in these sentinces.
What am i doing wrong?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2478&start=0#p17062
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Verb with multiple objects
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-05-22 12:04:38

Works, thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2480&start=0#p17063
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stupid Inform 7 Compilation Errors
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-05-22 12:05:21

You need an empty row between a header and the following code (and the preceding code as well). You probably have:

[code]Section 2 - Setup 
Release along with cover art, and an interpreter.[/code]
You need to add the extra space so it becomes

[code]Section 2 - Setup 

Release along with cover art, and an interpreter.[/code]
The later errors can be caused by the previous ones, so it's best to fix the issues starting from the first and seeing if it resolves the later ones as well.

(Edit: I tried it out and you get that exact error message only if you have no space before nor after the header. So you have to add one empty line before the header as well.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2479&start=0#p17064
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Font shrinkage?
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-05-22 12:11:54

Oops, it turns out I wasn't right about the settings panel, even though I wrote that code. Sigh. Since there are several different strands developing in this thread, I should state how the font handling in Windows Inform 7 [b]should[/b] work. Note that this is for the latest build 6G60: if you're using an earlier build, your mileage may vary - that's just how it is.

The font used for everything that's not inside one of the panes (e.g. the menus, all dialogs, etc.), plus the settings pane, is always taken from the operating system. Specifically, it's the message box font: on XP this is usually Tahoma 8pt, on Vista and 7 it's usually Seego UI 9pt, but if you change your OS font settings, those will be used when Inform 7 is started. This isn't going to change: allowing them to be modified from the preferences dialog is too much messing around for too little reward.

The font used for the non-HTML panes (which is Source, Skein, Transcript and Game) comes from the preferences dialog (which in turn starts with the above message box font, but can be changed by the user).

The font used for the HTML panes (Errors, Index and Documentation) is the closest that IE can be made to get to the above preferences dialog font. Normally it should be exactly this font, but due to IE being extremely annoying in terms of its programmable font support, it might possibly be slightly out in a few corner cases of very small or large fonts.

Anyway, that's how things should work. If this does not work for you, and you're definitely running 6G60, feel free to report this. I have not tested extensively with IE9 based systems, but I'll look into it to see if anything has changed there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2460&start=10#p17065
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: New here, trying to get started on my first IF
User: Cyris / DateTime: 2011-05-22 13:03:44

So let me make a quick list of the places you would be able to go to from your car:

[b]Chapel[/b] -- The scene of the murder
[b]Police Station[/b] -- Where you can talk to Sting and exchange info on the Manalishis
[b]Sgt. Pepper's Club[/b] -- Where your instrument-less bandmates are hanging out
[b]Neil's Diamonds & Rust[/b] -- Recently-robbed jewelery store, also derusting
[b]Silver Mountain[/b] -- Site of Mr. Tinkertrain's workshop
[b]Highway[/b] -- Where the Freewheel Burners may appear and attack you
[b]Port Royal Docks[/b] -- Sting eventually tells you that there's something of interest here
[b]Abandoned Warehouse[/b] -- Temporary HQ of the Freewheel Burners. You'll have to deal with them on the highway first

I suppose that the car could be treated as a room and each destination is in one of the 8 directions from it, but when the player first enters the car, the only places he should be able to go to are the chapel and police station, with the other six locations opening up as the story progresses. How do I change the room description to reflect where he can currently go and prevent him from going in directions that aren't available yet?

Now, I also know that my story will be divided into three acts, with the situation at each destination changing in each act. In the first act, the player needs to recover his band's missing instruments and rescue the kidnapped roadies so that Dan's band can have their show at Pepper's club.

In the second act, Chief Sting needs help identifying the five Manalishis:
Red Manalishi
Blue Manalishi
Yellow Manalishi
Black Manalishi
Green Manalishi

Forget about what I wrote in my synopsis, it's most likely going to be different: Sting needs to find out which suspect is which Manalishi:
Johnny Blade
Chainsaw Charlie
Molly Hatchet
Maxwell "Silver Hammer" Edison

Obviously there's one missing, but he'll figure that out later. Finally, he needs to find out which Manalishi committed which crime:
Murdering Eleanor Rigby
Robbing Neil's Diamonds & Rust
Smashing Pumpkins
Stealing Instruments
Kidnapping Roadies

If all goes well, you'll be given just enough clues in the second act to figure out who is who and who did what. It's one big deduction puzzle. Then, in the third and final act, you will track down these villains one at a time, bring them to justice, and uncover the identity of the fifth Manalishi.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2481&start=0#p17066
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Crowther's 1976 Adventure ported to I7, with source
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2011-05-22 13:42:04

I've finally finished my work on converting Crowther's original 1976 version of Colossal Cave, pre-Woods, to Inform 7. The source is available here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/source/inform/Advent_Crowther_source.txt">http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/s ... source.txt</a> listed on <a class="postlink" href="http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXgamesXsourceXinform.html">http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archive ... nform.html</a>

and the compiled z-machine file is available here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/Advent_Crowther.z5">http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/z ... rowther.z5</a> listed on <a class="postlink" href="http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXgamesXzcode.html">http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archive ... zcode.html</a>

which means the game is playable online here: 

<a class="postlink" href="http://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ifarchive.org%2Fif-archive%2Fgames%2Fzcode%2FAdvent_Crowther.z5">http://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A%2F%2F ... rowther.z5</a>

I took a few liberties with the formatting, in a kind of compromise between the all caps and line spacings of the original and the standard modern IF presentation; bold names before every description seemed too out of place given the text printing behavior of Crowther's. And in fact, I think the way that Parchment renders bold text makes my experimental approach surprisingly striking in this online version.

More details about my design decisions and implementation are available in [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1891]the original thread about my port.[/url] I should emphasize that, being the first of the genre, it may be more accurate to name this an experimental work rather than a game; there is no way to win and no points, so collecting treasure does nothing; the dwarves behave [i]very[/i] differently from Wood's implementation; and the map connections sometime feel inconsistent.

I also took the liberty of correcting a few bugs found in the executable form of the game; whether they existed in the original, or were introduced by conversion from the PDP-10 version of FORTRAN to a form that could be compiled to an MS-DOS compatible executable, the code intended to be executed was fully extant in the original FORTRAN source. They involve going down the steps while carrying the nugget of gold, and going south from bedquilt, both of which crash the compiled executable.

I hope the source code is useful to people interested in learning Inform 7, and that others can enjoy playing through this z-machine version and comparing its behavior to that of the famous Crowther-Woods version.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2460&start=10#p17067
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: New here, trying to get started on my first IF
User: Cyris / DateTime: 2011-05-22 13:42:56

This is all I've got so far: <a class="postlink" href="http://pastebin.com/Bc0XXXBS">http://pastebin.com/Bc0XXXBS</a>

But when I try to run the game, I get this error:

You wrote 'The Car is south of the parking lot and north of the road'  , but in another sentence 'The Road is south of the parking lot'  : but this looks like a contradiction, which might be because I have misunderstood what was meant to be the subject of one or both of those sentences.

I don't get it! I clearly stated that "The Car" is supposed to be treated as a door, and did exactly what the manual said concerning doors!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2364&start=0#p17068
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Different Versions of The Original Adventure
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-05-22 13:54:22

When I was in college (during mid 80's) the computers accesible to students weren't even networked, so there was no adventure there at all! Most of us did know about it all through articles in computing magazines and, of course, the comercial versions.


[center][url=http://img221.imageshack.us/i/pepo5706a.jpg/][img]http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/1044/pepo5706a.th.jpg[/img][/url][/center]


Those in the pic are Level 9, Melbourne and Aventuras AD releases. The first 2 (which I guess are the ones Peter Pears refers to as 210 and 235 versions) were never released here in Spain (I acquired them in recent years through ebay for my personal collection) so the one I actually played and finished was Aventuras AD's... the spanish version!


[center][url=http://img204.imageshack.us/i/pepo2gu4.jpg/][img]http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/2486/pepo2gu4.th.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://img694.imageshack.us/i/pepo5715.jpg/][img]http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/1853/pepo5715.th.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://img815.imageshack.us/i/pepo5718.jpg/][img]http://img815.imageshack.us/img815/7248/pepo5718.th.jpg[/img][/url][/center]


It was called "Aventura Original" and was made in 1989 for most extended 8 and 16 bits home computers systems of the time in Spain. In the pics you can see it beeing played in a 48k ZX Spectrum +, the same computer I had back in the day. It had nice graphics and a lot of spanish puns and situations which with time would become local tropes in the spanish IF fandom.

The company "Aventuras AD" was the only spanish video-games producer focused only in text adventures. Just like the rest of the big ones, it didn't survive beyond the early nineties. Last friday, its founder, Andrés Samudio, was interviewed in a retrogaming podcast giving us all a lot of cheerful memories from the time (so if you feel like practising your spanish and taking a peek into spanish IF History then take a look at the second hour of 2x30 issue of Fase Bonus podcast, [url=http://www.ivoox.com/fase-bonus-2x30-ghostbusters-sanctum-of-audios-mp3_rf_662816_1.html]right here![/url] )

--

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2460&start=10#p17069
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: New here, trying to get started on my first IF
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-05-22 13:59:50

I would take another approach: It'd be simpler if you made the car an enterable container and created a driving to action that checks if the player is in the car. Then you don't need to worry about room placement. Here's a bare-bones solution:

[code]
A road is a kind of room. A road can be accessible or inaccessible.

The car is an enterable, openable, open container. The car is in the chapel.

Driving to is an action applying to one visible thing.
Understand "drive to [any accessible road]" as driving to.

Carry out driving to:
	say "You start the car and drive to [the noun].";
	now the car is in the noun;
	try looking.

Check driving to when the player is not in the car:
	say "You need to be in a car to drive." instead.

[places you can drive to]
The chapel is an accessible road.
The police station is an accessible road.

[places you can't yet drive to]
The club is an inaccessible road.
The mountain is an inaccessible road.

[places you can never drive to]
The jail is north of the police station.
The back room is east of the club.

[making a destination accessible]
Instead of climbing:
	say "Why climb here when there's a perfectly good mountain nearby?";
	now the mountain is accessible.
	
Test me with "drive to police station/enter car/drive to police station/drive to club/drive to mountain/drive to jail/climb car/drive to mountain"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2482&start=0#p17070
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 does not like my floating spirit.
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-05-22 14:05:08

I have a new one for you'all:

[quote]DR7536 is a room with printed name "Equipment Room". "Even though the sign outside the room says 'Equipment Room' it appears the room is empty except for a fiew pieces of rusted and broken equipment. The previous owners probably stripped it bare for the salvage value of whatever was here. You can see several old pieces of rust that look like an air compressor, a sledge hammer, a hole drilling machine, and a large flat topped bolder.".

DR7536 is dark.

There is an Air Compressor here."The Air Compressor is old and rusty. The fly wheel which was used to drive it is broken and several of the spokes are missing.". It is fixed in place.
The Air Compressor is here.

[b]The Salt Miner is here. You can see the Salt Miner floating up above the air compressor[/b]. [emote]:roll:[/emote] 

There is a Hole Drilling Machine here."The  Hole Drilling Machine is old and rusty. Its broken drill rods are missing.". It is fixed in place.
The Hole Drilling Machine is here. 

The Sledge Hammer is here. "The rusty head of the hammer is all that is left. The handle was broken off years ago." It is fixed in place. 

The large bolder is here.

There is  a Copper Key on the bolder. The Copper Key unlocks the Stone Door. "The Copper Key is tarnished and appears to have been dropped long years ago.".[/quote]

The bold line is flaged by I7 as an error.

[quote]Problem. You wrote 'You can see the Salt Miner floating up above the air compressor'  : but the relationship you describe is not exact enough, so that I do not know how to make this assertion come true. For instance, saying 'The Study is adjacent to the Hallway.' is not good enough because I need to know in what direction: is it east of the Hallway, perhaps, or west?[/quote]

I'm not quite sure how to fix this one. I7 won't accept GPS coordinates and I don't know how to be more specific. [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2460&start=10#p17071
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: New here, trying to get started on my first IF
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-05-22 14:07:04

[quote="Cyris"]You wrote 'The Car is south of the parking lot and north of the road'  , but in another sentence 'The Road is south of the parking lot'  : but this looks like a contradiction, which might be because I have misunderstood what was meant to be the subject of one or both of those sentences.

I don't get it! I clearly stated that "The Car" is supposed to be treated as a door, and did exactly what the manual said concerning doors![/quote]
You don't need to declare the relation between the rooms, it's enough to give the directions to the door from both rooms. (In Inform's point of view the road is not directly south of the parking lot, because there's a door in between them, just like the road is not south of the chapel because the parking lot room is between them.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2477&start=0#p17072
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: August by Matt Fendahleen -- opening text and more
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-05-22 14:12:32

Man, I feel so bad-ass right now. I can't solve even the simplest puzzles, but I've never had the same problems with conversation games that other players seem to, even unprompted ask/tell games like August.

So playing it through again and trying to figure out where the triggers are, I'm not sure that it isn't possible to get it into an unwinnable state if you ask about topics in the wrong order. Certainly, the first time I played it just now I completed it easily, but rearranging the ASK ABOUT commands, I seem to get stuck. (Basically, I suspect that there's a condition set by a topic if another condition is true, but if you use that topic early, you can't trigger it a second time and the condition will never be set.)

So, assuming that I'm right, in general you need to steer your conversation in these general terms to progress:
[spoiler]First talk to Bloodwyn about herself.
[i]Then [/i]talk to her about recent events.
Finally talk to her about an abstract topic that presents itself.[/spoiler]
So a [color=#FF0000]minimal walkthrough[/color] for the conversation is:
[spoiler]>ask bloodwyn about herself
>ask bloodwyn about rosalyn
>ask bloodwyn about rosalyn
>ask bloodwyn about rage
>ask bloodwyn about rage[/spoiler]
Although, of course, players should ask about plenty of other topics if they want to find out what's going on and get the best sense of the characters' feelings.

A meta-spoiler on my walkthrough:
[spoiler]There [i]are[/i] different paths through the conversation, especially topics which become synonymous or separate out from one another, or change the contents of subsequent topics. The last two commands above can also incorporate the topic "fear" (synonym "hurt"), for example by asking about rage and then fear - but I think the second rage response is the most interesting, and so was the one I included above.[/spoiler]
And it seems that the multiple-endings are hit by a glitch as well, so if you want the [color=#FF0000]bad ending[/color] first:
[spoiler]After the major reveal, say BLOODWYN, FAREWELL immediately. [i]Twice[/i]. Although she's mentioned in the next room, and it's clearly implied that you should be able to leave her there, her object isn't actually moved with you, so the farewell command won't work.[/spoiler]
And for the [color=#FF0000]good ending[/color]:
[spoiler]After the major reveal, go EAST twice.[/spoiler]
And I suppose you can mix them up a bit like so:
[spoiler]>BLOODWYN, FAREWELL
>EAST
>EAST[/spoiler]
And you can also throw in [spoiler]>KISS BLOODWYN[/spoiler] at the end as well, at least [spoiler]before you move to the room where she's supposed to be present but isn't implemented.[/spoiler]
So, yeah, it's a game that's pretty thoroughly broken in some major ways, but I still love it to bits.

EDIT:

Another ending, the one I think you may have already found (the [color=#FF0000]really bad ending[/color], I'd say):
[spoiler]During the dance:
>EAST
>TALK TO SENTINEL[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2460&start=10#p17073
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: New here, trying to get started on my first IF
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-05-22 14:36:02

Hi and welcome to the forum!  [emote]:D[/emote] 

Don't take this the wrong way, but we've now moved from a general design issue (useful regardless of which IF language you're using) to a coding / implementation issue specific to I7. As capmikee pointed out, these should be posted as a separate thread in the Inform 6 and 7 Development section (with a title that describes your specific problem). It's not a matter of pickiness; posting in the correct sub-forum insures that it is seen by the right people (not everyone uses I7) and makes it easier for others with the same or related questions to find the information later.

As far as your question:
[quote="Cyris"]You wrote 'The Car is south of the parking lot and north of the road'  , but in another sentence 'The Road is south of the parking lot'  : but this looks like a contradiction, which might be because I have misunderstood what was meant to be the subject of one or both of those sentences.

I don't get it! I clearly stated that "The Car" is supposed to be treated as a door, and did exactly what the manual said concerning doors![/quote]
Actually, you did exactly what the manual tells you [i]not[/i] to do:
[quote="Inform docs ch.3.12. Doors"]... The grating really does come in between the two rooms: the grating is what lies immediately east of the Orchard, not the Undertomb room. So if we wrote the following: 

The Undertomb is east of the Orchard. The heavy iron grating is east of the Orchard and west of the Undertomb. The grating is a door. 

then Inform would say that this is a contradiction: we said the Undertomb was east of the Orchard, but then we said that the grating was east of the Orchard.[/quote]
Remove the line "The Road is south of the parking lot." and the error goes away. (Edit: Oops, I see Juhana already explained that.) Unfortunately a new error pops up, involving your after rule. I'm taking a look at it now, but I agree with Juhana -- implementing the car as a door is not how I would approach this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2460&start=10#p17074
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: New here, trying to get started on my first IF
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-05-22 14:42:54

Also, if you could give Paradise a suitably named theater, it would make at least one Styx fan very happy.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2483&start=0#p17075
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: inserting code after a successful restore
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2011-05-22 14:51:27

What normally happens after you restore a game is: nothing. The game prints "Ok," and there is no obvious sign that anything in the game world has changed, except for (maybe) a change in the status line.

What I would like to happen is: the screen clears, and the game prints the room description, as if the player had just typed LOOK.

I can't figure out how to make this happen, though. Adding more carry out rules to the "restoring the game" action doesn't seem to work, and you can't write after rules for an out-of-game action.

Any ideas on how to do this? Is this something where you'd have to hack into the interpreter?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2482&start=0#p17076
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 does not like my floating spirit.
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-05-22 15:03:22

[quote="wgm003"][code]The Salt Miner is here. You can see the Salt Miner floating up above the air compressor.[/code]
I'm not quite sure how to fix this one. I7 won't accept GPS coordinates and I don't know how to be more specific. [emote]:([/emote][/quote]
You didn't put quotes around the description (the second sentence) above. Do that and it compiles fine. Inform has no built-in notion of floating, so it guessed you were trying to declare a relationship that it didn't understand. If this wasn't meant as a description, but rather some sort of specially coded "floating" action or activity, then you'll need to let us know what specific behavior you're looking for. (Note that this thread might get moved to the Inform sub-forum.)

HTH,

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2483&start=0#p17077
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inserting code after a successful restore
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-05-22 15:14:51

Assuming you're using Glulx:

[code]The output from restoring rules are a rulebook.

The last output from restoring rule (this is the default restoring the game rule):
	rule fails.
	
Output from restoring:
	say "[bracket]Saved file successfully restored.[close bracket][paragraph break]";
	try looking;
	rule succeeds.

Include (-

[ RESTORE_THE_GAME_R res fref;
	if (actor ~= player) rfalse;
	fref = glk_fileref_create_by_prompt($01, $02, 0);
	if (fref == 0) jump RFailed;
	gg_savestr = glk_stream_open_file(fref, $02, GG_SAVESTR_ROCK);
	glk_fileref_destroy(fref);
	if (gg_savestr == 0) jump RFailed;
	@restore gg_savestr res;
	glk_stream_close(gg_savestr, 0);
	gg_savestr = 0;
	.RFailed;
	GL__M(##Restore, 1);
];

-) instead of "Restore The Game Rule" in "Glulx.i6t".

Include (-
[ SAVE_THE_GAME_R res fref;
	if (actor ~= player) rfalse;
	fref = glk_fileref_create_by_prompt($01, $01, 0);
	if (fref == 0) jump SFailed;
	gg_savestr = glk_stream_open_file(fref, $01, GG_SAVESTR_ROCK);
	glk_fileref_destroy(fref);
	if (gg_savestr == 0) jump SFailed;
	@save gg_savestr res;
	if (res == -1) {
		! The player actually just typed "restore". We're going to print
		!  a successful restore message; the Z-Code Inform library does this correctly
		! now. But first, we have to recover all the Glk objects; the values
		! in our global variables are all wrong.
		GGRecoverObjects();
		glk_stream_close(gg_savestr, 0); ! stream_close
		gg_savestr = 0;
		if ( FollowRulebook( (+ output from restoring rules +) ) && RulebookFailed())
		{
			return GL__M(##Restore, 2);
		}
		return;
	}
	glk_stream_close(gg_savestr, 0); ! stream_close
	gg_savestr = 0;
	if (res == 0) return GL__M(##Save, 2);
	.SFailed;
	GL__M(##Save, 1);
];

-) instead of "Save The Game Rule" in "Glulx.i6t".[/code]

Note that the standard message ("OK") will be printed if the output from restoring rules end in failure. Otherwise, only what you place in the output from restoring rules will be printed.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2484&start=0#p17078
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Areas within a Room
User: Morana / DateTime: 2011-05-22 15:15:22

I have been trying to figure out how to divide a room into areas. Currently I want to make a sports field. Here is what I have come up with so far:

[rant][code]modify Platform
    dobjFor(Enter) asDobjFor(StandOn)
    connectorStagingLocation
    {
        return gActor.roomLocation.ofKind(Platform);
    }
    canObjReachSelf(obj)
    {
        return obj.roomLocation.ofKind(Platform) && gActor.posture == standing;
    }
;

field: Room 'Field'
    desc = "This is the field. "
;

+ homeSide: Platform 'home side' 'home side'
;

++ me: Actor
;

+ visitorSide: Platform 'visitor side' 'visitor side'
;[/code][/rant]
And here is my transcript:

[rant]Field (standing on the home side)

This is the field.

You see a visitor side and a home side here.

>enter visitor side

(first getting off of the home side)
Okay, you’re now standing on the visitor side.

>leave
(off of the visitor side)
Okay, you’re no longer on the visitor side. 

>enter home side
Okay, you’re now standing on the home side.[/rant]
For the most part my areas do what I want them to do, but as the transcript shows there are two problems with what I have coded so far. The first is that I would prefer to replace the line [i]first getting off of the home side[/i] with something more natural (e.g. [i]first leaving the home side[/i]). Second, I do not want to let the PC leave the visitor side without making her enter the home side (or vice versa). While I would appreciate suggestions on how to modify my current code to avoid these two problems, I think it's probably first worth asking this: Am I going about this all wrong? It seems that both problems are the logical consequences of trying to push platforms into service to do something they were never intended to do. Have I been overlooking a better way to create areas of the sort I am envisioning?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2483&start=0#p17079
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inserting code after a successful restore
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2011-05-22 15:28:36

That is perfect. Thank you!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2479&start=0#p17080
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Font shrinkage?
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-05-22 15:41:27

[quote="DavidK"]
Anyway, that's how things should work. If this does not work for you, and you're definitely running 6G60, feel free to report this. I have not tested extensively with IE9 based systems, but I'll look into it to see if anything has changed there.[/quote]

Well, this is curious. I've got 6G60 installed both in my netbook (wich has IE8) and in my desktop PC (with IE9).
In the netbook (IE8) I can change font-size in edit -> preferences menu and see how the documentation font size changes acordingly (and inmediately). This definitively is not happening in my desktop PC (IE9) in which it won't change no matter what I try.

Anyway, in none of them I can change it using CTRL + mouse wheel on the documentation itself.

--

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2482&start=0#p17081
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 does not like my floating spirit.
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-05-22 16:00:11

I just noticed something else with your code:
[code]There is an Air Compressor here."The Air Compressor is old and rusty. The fly wheel which was used to drive it is broken and several of the spokes are missing.". It is fixed in place.
The Air Compressor is here.[/code]
You've mixed up the syntax; you can say:
[code]There is an Air Compressor.[/code]
... which creates an offstage object called "an air compressor", [i]or[/i]
[code]An Air Compressor is here.[/code]
... which creates an object called "an air compressor" in the most recently referenced room. You can combine the two this way:
[code]There is an Air Compressor. The Air Compressor is here.[/code]
... which creates the object and then declares it to be in that location, but [b]don't do this:[/b]
[code]There is an Air Compressor here.[/code]
This creates an object called "an Air Compressor [b]here[/b]" (the word "here" is part of the name). See the output:
[quote]>x air compressor
You see nothing special about the Air Compressor here.

>x miner
You see nothing special about the Salt Miner.
[/quote]
I usually just say, "An Air Compressor is in DR7536." Some people like using "here" and it's a matter of style / preference. But if you think you've created an object in a location and it doesn't show up, check the world index to make sure you haven't accidentally created an offstage object with an unintended name. (Hope that makes sense.)

Edited to add: you did the same thing with "the Hole Drilling Machine."
Edited again to add: Jim Aikin is going to love this post.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2479&start=0#p17082
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Font shrinkage?
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-05-22 16:22:49

[quote="rockersuke"]In the netbook (IE8) I can change font-size in edit -> preferences menu and see how the documentation font size changes acordingly (and inmediately). This definitively is not happening in my desktop PC (IE9) in which it won't change no matter what I try.[/quote]Hmmm, it would appear that Microsoft couldn't resist messing with how font sizes are specified. I will look into it.

[quote="rockersuke"]Anyway, in none of them I can change it using CTRL + mouse wheel on the documentation itself.[/quote]Indeed, but I wouldn't expect that to work - that was never a supported feature, just a side effect of the controls used for the source and game tabs, that will get disabled.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2477&start=0#p17083
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: August by Matt Fendahleen -- opening text and more
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-22 16:35:33

Yup, it's the really bad ending that I got, and I did screw up the conversation by asking wossname about something in the wrong order -- it redirected to "ask wossname about that," which was confusing. I'm glad to see that there's a major reveal that I've missed, because everything I read about the game suggested that you discover what's going on all at once and then the game ends, and that was not what happened for me.

Conversation systems really kick my ass sometimes. Had to hit the walkthrough for every single topic in Losing Your Grip (well, I also had to hit the walkthrough for everything else in Losing Your Grip before I discovered that I had made my save file unwinnable).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2482&start=0#p17084
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 does not like my floating spirit.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-22 16:40:13

[quote="Skinny Mike"][quote="wgm003"][code]The Salt Miner is here. You can see the Salt Miner floating up above the air compressor.[/code]
I'm not quite sure how to fix this one. I7 won't accept GPS coordinates and I don't know how to be more specific. [emote]:([/emote][/quote]
You didn't put quotes around the description (the second sentence) above.[/quote]

This is actually the initial appearance and not the description, isn't it? See 3.11 (for wgm) -- the initial appearance is the paragraph that prints in the room description until you pick the object up, the description is what you get when you examine it.

Oh, and wgm: I think reason you got that particular error message is because "can see" is a relation that's understood by Inform, so when you say "You can see the salt miner floating up above the air compressor" without quotes, Inform thinks you're trying to declare a relationship between you and an object called "the salt miner floating up above the air compressor." (And you can't declare that relationship that way, since you can see an object if e.g. it's in a lit room with you and nothing else is interfering.) If you removed quotes from one of the other initial appearances, I bet you'd get a different error message. You walked into something where your prose was partially understood as code in an unexpected way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2460&start=10#p17085
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: New here, trying to get started on my first IF
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-22 16:59:29

Here's another thread in the I7 forum about implementing a room as a vehicle:

[url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265]Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2371&start=0#p17086
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Novella feelie
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2011-05-22 17:15:29

I think it's an interesting idea.  There was a DOS based game back in the 80s that did something with an introductory novella -- not sure it counts as a complete story -- called Guardians of Infinity.  You can find some more info here.  I had the game back many years ago and found the story compelling but the game less so.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.hotud.org/home/45-interactive-fiction/20169-guardians-of-infinity-to-save-kennedy">http://www.hotud.org/home/45-interactiv ... ve-kennedy</a>

--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">http://www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2479&start=10#p17087
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Font shrinkage?
User: paulobrian / DateTime: 2011-05-22 17:35:40

David et al, thanks for the many rapid replies. Indeed I'm not sure about the Settings pane -- the letters looked tiny to me, but then again maybe they were always tiny. It's not a pane I visit often. 

What appears to be happening for me is that the HTML font sizes are separate from the non-HTML font sizes. I can go into the preferences window and make the game and source fonts just as big as I please, but I can't seem to provoke a less squintworthy documentation font size. I can confirm rockersuke's result, that on a desktop where IE9 is not installed, they change in unison. (And I am running 6G60, FWIW.) 

Thanks for pursuing the issue, David. In the meantime, I think my workaround will be to kick IE9 to the curb. Hopefully it won't leave this particular undesirable behavior lingering around when I uninstall it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2479&start=10#p17088
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Font shrinkage?
User: paulobrian / DateTime: 2011-05-22 17:50:14

[quote="paulobrian"] In the meantime, I think my workaround will be to kick IE9 to the curb.[/quote]

Hooray, that worked, and wasn't hard to do. If anybody else wants to dump IE9 in order to alleviate font headaches, good instructions for how to do so are at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/29112/revert-back-to-ie-8-from-internet-explorer-9-beta/">http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/29112/re ... er-9-beta/</a>.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2481&start=0#p17089
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Crowther's 1976 Adventure ported to I7, with source
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-22 17:51:05

I haven't looked at the source, but thanks for doing this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2460&start=10#p17090
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: New here, trying to get started on my first IF
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-22 19:16:55

Why not implement the car as a vehicle, as per 3.16 of the Inform docs? That seems like it would automatically do some of what you want. If you're in a vehicle you can go along with it using compass directions, and you can use "instead" rules to keep people from going where they shouldn't:

[code]A road is a kind of room.
The Parking Lot is a road. "A plain parking lot. The office is to the west and the highway is far off to the north." The Highway is a road. "Ah, the endless highway. The parking lot is back to the south. There is a rest stop to the east." The Highway is north of the Parking Lot. The Office is a room. "The office, whee. The parking lot is to the east." The Office is west of the parking lot. The Rest Stop is a road. "Nothing of interest here but the bathroom, which you can go inside. The highway is back to the west." The Rest Stop is east of the highway. The Bathroom is a room. The Bathroom is inside from the Rest Stop. "It's a bathroom, but thankfully none of the details are implemented."

The car is a vehicle in the Parking Lot. The player is in the Office.

Instead of going from a road to road when the player is not in the car: say "It's much too far to go unless you're driving."

Instead of going to a room that is not a road when the player is in the car: say "You can't drive there!"

Instead of going north in the highway when the player is in the car: say "You drive further up the highway and arrive at a spot that looks exactly the same, down to the rest stop to the east."

Instead of going in the highway when the player is not in the car: say "No pedestrian traffic on the highway!"[/code]

This isn't tested much, but it seems like it should work, and it can easily be combined with Juhana's accessible/inaccessible rooms and even his "drive to" code (which is a very player-friendly feature). Note that some bits of it are crude -- you really shouldn't be able to get out of the car on the highway, and the message for going back to the highway from the rest stop on foot isn't quite apt. But those could be got around by more specific rules.

I haven't looked at the code you put in pastebin, but implementing the car as a door almost certainly won't work -- in the TARDIS thread capnmikee just linked, I discovered that you can't move doors around in play.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2480&start=0#p17091
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stupid Inform 7 Compilation Errors
User: somekidwithhtml / DateTime: 2011-05-22 19:19:09

Thanks, i've done that for all of my headers, but it is still giving me the error message:
[quote]In Section 5 - Combat:

Problem. In the sentence 'if the usp match is carried by the player begin'  , I was expecting to read a condition, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'usp match is carried by the player'.

I was trying to match this phrase:

if (usp match is carried by the player - a condition): 

This was what I found out:

usp match is carried by the player = something unrecognised



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem. In the sentence 'if the usp match is not carried by the player begin'  , I was expecting to read a condition, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'usp match is not carried by the player'.

I was trying to match this phrase:

if (usp match is not carried by the player - a condition): 

This was what I found out:

usp match is not carried by the player = something unrecognised



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem. In the sentence 'if the usp match is carried by the player begin'  , I was expecting to read a condition, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'usp match is carried by the player'.

I was trying to match this phrase:

if (usp match is carried by the player - a condition): 

This was what I found out:

usp match is carried by the player = something unrecognised



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem. In the sentence 'if the usp match is not carried by the player begin'  , I was expecting to read a condition, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'usp match is not carried by the player'.

I was trying to match this phrase:

if (usp match is not carried by the player - a condition): 

This was what I found out:

usp match is not carried by the player = something unrecognised
 
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=30#p17092
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2011-05-22 19:23:27

Where can we get the rest of the games? They're not yet on the Archive at this time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2480&start=0#p17093
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stupid Inform 7 Compilation Errors
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-22 19:25:23

Are you sure you've defined the usp match in your code? That looks like the error you get when you haven't defined an object (or have accidentally defined something like the "usp macth", as I've learned from bitter experience.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2480&start=0#p17094
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stupid Inform 7 Compilation Errors
User: somekidwithhtml / DateTime: 2011-05-22 20:05:24

you... are good. somehow the object got deleted when i was moving stuff around. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2486&start=0#p17095
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: in, during, in the presence of, and when
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-22 21:33:26

These rule conditions always trip me up, so I tried a little experiment:

[code]"Uncertainty Principle"
 
The catbox is a room.

The cat is an animal in the catbox.

[
Every turn in the catbox:
	say "This only compiles for actions, not Every Turn rules."
]	

Every turn during the Entire Game:
	say "It is known that the entire game is happening."
	
Every turn when jumping:
	say "It is known that you are jumping."
	
[
Every turn in the presence of the cat:
	say "This also works for actions only."
]	

Every turn in the catbox when jumping:
	say "It is known that you are in the catbox when jumping."
	
Every turn when jumping in the catbox:
	say "It is known that you are jumping in the catbox."
	
Every turn when in the catbox and jumping:
	say "It is known that you in the catbox and jumping."
	
[
Every turn during the Entire Game when jumping:
	say "This does not compile, and the error message is particularly unhelpful."
]	

Every turn when jumping during the Entire Game:
	say "It is known that you are jumping during the Entire Game."
	
Every turn when jumping in the presence of the cat:
	say "It is known that you are jumping in the presence of the cat."
	
Every turn in the presence of the cat when jumping:
	say "It is known in the presence of the cat that you are jumping."

[	
Every turn during the Entire Game in the catbox:
	say "This fails to compile with another unhelpful message."
]
	
[
Every turn in the catbox during the Entire Game:
	say "This is restricted to actions, even though 'Every turn in the catbox when jumping' is allowed."
][/code]
The result is not as I expected. Maybe if I reread the documentation I'd have gotten a hint of this, but it's certainly not intuitive: "in" and "in the presence of" require that an action be involved in the condition, although the action needn't always be mentioned before the preposition.

"During" is even tricker. It doesn't require an action, but it can't be used before "when."

Part of this starts to make sense as I think about rulebooks. The default basis of a rulebook is an action, so the syntax of [b][rulebook] [action] [when clause][/b] makes sense to a certain degree. That explains some of the problems with "during," except it doesn't. Does "Every turn when jumping during the Entire Game" just ignore the word "when?" Does "in the catbox when jumping" count as an action description?

Why can't "during X" be interpreted as "when X is happening" in every case? Changing any "whens" after the first one to "and" doesn't seem like a difficult or ambiguous parsing. And why are "in X" and "in the presence of Y" restricted to actions? Can't they always be reparsed as "when the location is X" and "when the player can see Y?" Is it because they must refer to the actor and not the player? It seems to me that interpreting "the actor" as "the player" in every case where someone else is not in the middle of an action would be perfectly safe. How is it any safer to assume that they refer to an action that is mentioned after them?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2484&start=0#p17096
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Areas within a Room
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-05-22 22:19:42

You might want to look at the ConSpace.t extension. (It's at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXprogrammingXtads3XlibraryXcontributions">http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-arc ... tributions</a>). I used this in "April in Paris." It handles a certain number of things you may want to think about, such as whether things are visible from a distance.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2486&start=0#p17097
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: in, during, in the presence of, and when
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-22 22:43:44

"Every turn when in the catbox" compiles, as does "Every turn when in the catbox during the Entire Game." Could it just be that you need a "when" or a "during," and you can't put the "when" after the "during"? I haven't tested most of these combinations, though.

This looks to me to be documentedish in 18.6, though from a quick scan of that I wouldn't have expected "Every turn in the presence of the cat when jumping" to compile. Maybe someone who can decipher the Backus-Naur form can elaborate.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2484&start=0#p17098
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Areas within a Room
User: Morana / DateTime: 2011-05-22 22:45:49

This looks like it will do exactly what I have been wanting. Thank you!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2470&start=0#p17099
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hiding an inventory possession
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-22 23:11:21

They call it the "detail trap." I've decided to run with it as long as it's fun, but I also don't expect to finish my WIP by any particular deadline. My goal is to get a little bit done every day. If that means adding one little response to one unlikely action, fine - at least I'm keeping my hand in.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=190#p17100
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-05-22 23:32:54

[quote="Robert Rothman"](That may not be too helpful--typewriters may be as foreign to you as keypunch machines.)[/quote]

I'm probably in the "young'un" set on this board, and I obtained my very first typewriter on Craigslist just last week.  (To be fair, it's For An Art Project, but one that requires it to be functional, so I did clean it all up and such.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2371&start=0#p17101
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Novella feelie
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-05-23 00:47:00

[quote="ZUrlocker"]I think it's an interesting idea.  There was a DOS based game back in the 80s that did something with an introductory novella -- not sure it counts as a complete story -- called Guardians of Infinity.  You can find some more info here.  [/quote]

There was a fantasy computer-game in the 90s that came with a novella, too ... I don't remember the title, but I remember that David Pulver was coathor on the novella (possibly with the U.S. Steve Jackson?)

[edited addendum] The game was "Stonekeep" from Interplay, and yep, it was Dave and Steve.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2475&start=0#p17102
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Memorable Moments in IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-05-23 00:59:34

I still tell the tale of the Sultan's Riddle in[i] Leather Goddesses of Phobos.[/i] I mean, I [i]literally [/i]tell anyone who'll listen the story of my struggle with the thing, and my eventual triumph after days of RESTOREd games and yet-another-wrong-attempt ... and it's a good story. I even do my Sultan and Trent voices (not that Trent gets many lines in that bit).

Not sure if anyone else sees that riddle the same way ... I mean, if you get it fairly quickly, it's just a cute joke. But if you actually struggle with it, it's an almost [i]supernaturally [/i]cute joke, because (well, to avoid spoilers) you feel the solution on a gut level when it finally kicks in.

It's somewhere in the tension-space between a triumph designed into the game, and a found/emergent triumph, with all the emotional impact and endurance of each.

There have been many others, in games old and new, but that's a fave.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2471&start=0#p17103
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: what are Beta testers and Programmers
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-05-23 01:05:43

[quote="ilovemyhedgehog"]what do they do ?[/quote]

In IF, anyway ...

Programmers implement the work of writers and game designers. Given the hobby nature of most IF (or the shoestring nature of even some non-hobby projects) the writers, game designers, and programmers are often just piles of hats on a single noggin.

Beta testers test "complete" (somewhere in my mind the term "release candidate" is bouncing around as if I have a sweet clue about this stuff; I do not) versions of games, games the writers/designers/programmers (or that one person with all the hats) feel is ready. They prove that it is [i]not [/i]really ready, and they keep proving that it is not until (ideally) they can't prove it anymore.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2487&start=0#p17104
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Things and parts of things in the location
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-05-23 01:39:37

I have some actions that depend on whether something is in the location, but the noun in question is always part of something else.  How do I make this work?  "If (the noun) is part of something in the location" compiles but doesn't seem to do anything.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2488&start=0#p17105
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Getting around "That can't contain things"
User: HulkHandsome / DateTime: 2011-05-23 02:20:56

Hi again! I'm trying to let the player throw (drop) seeds into a fountain, but I keep getting told that the fountain can't contain things! Here's the code...

[quote]a fountain is in garden. a fountain is fixed in place. The description of a fountain is "Insert a description later."

Instead of dropping seeds in a fountain: say "You throw the seeds into the fountain. Suddenly a flock of white homing pigeons burst from beneath the water! They circle you and pick you up with their tiny little claws, carrying you above the clouds and eventually dropping you off at an..."; remove seeds from play; move player to Intersection.[/quote]

I also tried using "Before" but got the same result. Strangely, after making the fountain a container (which I want to avoid), the game still would ignore my code and would say "You put the seeds in the fountain."

Anyone know how to make the code behave?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2488&start=0#p17106
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting around "That can't contain things"
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-05-23 02:46:35

The issue is that there is no action called "dropping in". Inform interprets your rule as "Instead of dropping seeds (while the player is) in the fountain". You can verify this by making the fountain an enterable container, going inside the fountain and typing DROP SEEDS.

The command DROP x IN y translates into the "inserting into" action, so if you change the rule into "Instead of inserting seeds into the fountain" it should work. (You can find out the names of actions in the actions tab of the index, or by commanding ACTIONS in the game before trying the action.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2488&start=0#p17107
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting around "That can't contain things"
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-05-23 02:48:47

This works (well, it works as far as it goes) but it does the container thing. Is it critical that it can't be a container (here, it's a container you can't put anything into):

[code]
Garden is a room. "This is a lovely garden, with a fountain in the middle."

The fountain is in the garden. The fountain is scenery. The fountain is a container. The description is "It's the finest fountain you've seen all day."
 
 The player carries some seeds. The player carries a rock.
 
 Check inserting:
     if the noun is not the seeds and the second noun is the fountain begin;
        say "Nah." instead;
        end if;
     if the noun is the seeds and the second noun is the fountain begin;
        remove the seeds from play;
        say "Woot. You totally did that." instead;
        end if;
        
 [/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2487&start=0#p17108
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Things and parts of things in the location
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-05-23 02:54:09

Both "if the noun is enclosed by the location" or "if the location of the noun is the location of the player" should work. If you need to check if the thing is directly in the location (and not, for example, in a container) you can use "if the noun is in the location or the holder of the noun is in the location".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2488&start=0#p17109
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting around "That can't contain things"
User: HulkHandsome / DateTime: 2011-05-23 02:55:19

Dern it, I hate it when it's something simple I missed. Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2164&start=0#p17110
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: @party interactive fiction competition
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2011-05-23 03:11:35

Rules
* Games cannot be more than approximately a half-hour in play length.
* Most formats are acceptable, but Z-Machine is preferred.

What formats aren't acceptable?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2487&start=0#p17111
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Things and parts of things in the location
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-23 07:00:13

On a related point, is there a convenient way to test whether something is, directly or indirectly, inside something else, while ignoring things that are parts of something else?  I have the following situation:

I am implementing a dimensional transmogrification apparatus.  As everybody knows, simultaneous multiple dimensional transmogrification, while perhaps theoretically possible, raises a risk that it might warp the Einsteinian space-time watchamawhozit and cause the entire universe to collapse into the Black Hole of Calcutta.  Accordingly, when the player tries to effect dimensional transmogrification, I want to check whether there is more than one object in the DTA; if so, it will abort dimensional transmogrification and generate an appropriate error message.

If I do this by testing whether the number of things in the DTA is greater than 1, the player can get around the restriction (and possible destroy the universe) by putting a container, which in turn holds one or more other things, into the DTA.  Alternatively, if the test keys off the number of things "enclosed by" the DTA, the restriction will be violated even by a single object, if that object has parts (which is not what I want).

I think I can get where I need by the following approach:

1.  Generate a list of things enclosed by the DTA.
2.  Step through the list, testing each entry to see if it is a part of something; if so remove it from the list.
3.  Test the number of entries in the pared-down list to see if it is greater than zero.

This seems pretty cumbersome, and I was wondering if there is a more direct way to do it.

Thanks.

  Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2487&start=0#p17112
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Things and parts of things in the location
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-23 07:03:06

Sorry, the third step in the "cumbersome" approach should be testing to see if the number of entries in the list is greater than [i]one[/i].


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2164&start=0#p17113
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: @party interactive fiction competition
User: metoikos / DateTime: 2011-05-23 07:17:20

Something that is so custom that it either hasn't been tested on more than one computer, or something whose interpreter is unavailable (although you could submit it in that case w your entry.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2470&start=0#p17114
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hiding an inventory possession
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-23 07:28:00

[quote]I'm spending an inordinate amount of time trying to include appropriate responses for stupid things the player might try to do. That time would probably be better spent working on puzzles or something, but this is more fun.[/quote]

I don't view that as a waste of time.  From the player's perspective, I think a lot of the fun is in the way the game responds to attempts to do the "wrong" things.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2487&start=0#p17115
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Things and parts of things in the location
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-05-23 07:39:52

You could try a definition:

[code]Definition: a thing is independent if it is not a part of something.

Every turn when the number of independent things enclosed by the DTA > 1:
	say "Oh dear.";
	end the story saying "The universe has been destroyed".
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2489&start=0#p17116
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Gargoyle and Game Collection
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-05-23 07:46:08

I'm a Linux-Gargoyle user. Thus far, Gargoyle is proving itself worthy, opening the most demanding of games without an issue, so I don't count on using anything else.

On the other hand, I miss a collection manager, and a way to see the embedded covers. Gargoyle does none of the two, to my knowledge. Are such features planned? Is there a way to combine Gargoyle with a collection manager that works on Linux?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2487&start=0#p17117
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Things and parts of things in the location
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-23 08:20:06

Thanks, Juhana.  That sounds like an efficient way to do it.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2470&start=0#p17118
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hiding an inventory possession
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-23 08:41:12

The challenge is guessing which "wrong" things the player will try. There are a lot more "wrong" actions than "right" ones.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2488&start=0#p17119
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting around "That can't contain things"
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-23 09:22:17

Juhana's got good advice. The debugging command "actions" can tell you the name of every action you try during the game. It's useful!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2490&start=0#p17120
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: looking for programers for IfComp for two games
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-05-23 09:23:29

Journey to Valhalla: a viking game
Spurs on a horse: a western

please message me if your interested or for more details (im not sure how much can be said on a forum if its going to be entered in IFcomp) we currently have two writers.

inform 7

sample of some of my writings i wrote the plot in the hybrid experiment and all the poems under the tribes heading [url]http://www.creaturesinthegreen.proboards.com/[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2489&start=0#p17121
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gargoyle and Game Collection
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-05-23 11:53:27

You might have a look at [url=http://grotesque.sourceforge.net/]Grotesque[/url]. And there's also [url=http://lg.vblank.net/blorb/]a blorb thumbnailer for Gnome[/url].

I don't have any plans for a full-featured game browser as part of Gargoyle.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2489&start=0#p17122
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gargoyle and Game Collection
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-05-23 12:53:19

I mainly use KDE, so the second one is out. If Grotesque is able to call Gargoyle, then that's what I'm looking for. I'll try to install it. Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2371&start=0#p17123
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Novella feelie
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-05-23 13:27:18

[quote="katz"]Would it be worth including the novella as a feelie?[/quote]

I think it would be worth. In the worst case scenario only people with enough time or much interest would read it. Other than that, it won't do any harm, as long as you state somewhere visible that reading the novella is not a requirement for playing the game but enhances the whole experience of it.

In good old days quite a few text adventure games based on well known novels were released with a trade paperback copy of the book. Some examples in the pic are Melbourne's Tolkien related stuff (Hobit, Lord Of The Rings), that 1984 [url=http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0006789&loadpics=3]Peter Pan game[/url] from Hodder & Stoughton, that [url=http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0006748&loadpics=3]Not A Penny More Not A Penny Less[/url] 1987 game based on Jeff ARcher financial melodrama of the same title... 
On the other hand other IF games were released with books written specially for the ocassion. Ferguss McNeill (the guy from Delta 4) [url=http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0006690&loadpics=3]Mindfighter[/url] was sold in 1988 with a 160 page novel by his future wife Anna Popkes, Carnell Software's [url=http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0007205&loadpics=3]Wrath Of Magra[/url] came with a beautifully illustrated 158 page book called "The Book Of Shadows" with a story of previous events in the game universe...
A peculiar twist was made in recent years by spanish autor Josep Coletas. He wrote a series of oldskool mystery text adventure games available as freeware downloads for the ZX Spectrum computer, "[url=http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0014370&loadpics=3]Los Extraordinarios Casos Del Dr Van Halen[/url]" and then wrote a book about the main character, basically a novelized walkthrough of the games, which he is now selling as a comercial download for e-books and had a very limited physical edition.


[center][url=http://img98.imageshack.us/i/pepo5723.jpg/][img]http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/6780/pepo5723.th.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://img853.imageshack.us/i/pepo5720.jpg/][img]http://img853.imageshack.us/img853/213/pepo5720.th.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/231/pepoz5724.jpg/][img]http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/2862/pepoz5724.th.jpg[/img][/url][/center]

Not to mention that when Level 9 made "trilogy" editions of their previous games they used to include some kind of medium size novel in the instructions booklet which were also written exclusively for those releases. In all of those cases we're not talking about full lenght hundreds of pages novels, but surely more than the usual stuff inside Infocom's browsies.

--

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2470&start=0#p17124
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hiding an inventory possession
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-05-23 13:48:50

[quote="capmikee"]My goal is to get a little bit done every day. If that means adding one little response to one unlikely action, fine - at least I'm keeping my hand in.[/quote]
That sounds like a good goal to have.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=30#p17125
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-05-23 13:57:08

At this moment my unpolished, non proofread (and it shows!), bug-infested "Haunted House" entry is temporaly available at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.megaupload.com/?d=M8O735RS">http://www.megaupload.com/?d=M8O735RS</a> . Hey! I love that sequence discovered at clubfloyd where you can leave from a bedroom carrying the bed... yohoo!  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

All of the entries were quite interesting and I would like to take a closer look to Emily Short's and Jaqueline's works. Hope they will be also available soon.

--

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2491&start=0#p17126
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Obscure question on Glulx/Glk
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-05-23 14:44:40

If one calls glk_gestalt_ext(x,y,-1,zlen) with the Glulx @glk opcode (for which the -1 means write to the stack rather than a main memory address), and x is a selector unknown to the interpreter, how many values will be pushed on the stack?  Is any number between zero and zlen possible, or is there a point in the spec that I'm not seeing?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2475&start=0#p17127
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Memorable Moments in IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-05-23 14:59:42

Heh. I actually played LGOP a couple of weeks back... and boy, did I hate that riddle. For starters, as with other riddles, there were other things (I disremember which, but trust me, I came up with many) that actually fit the solution. Which turned the puzzle from "riddle" to "read the author's mind for his preferred solution". At one point the Sultan actually said "Good guess. But wrong." Yeah, it was a good guess. Yeah, it fit every bit of the riddle. And if the game's just going to discard it like that, then screw the puzzle, give me the solution.

Plus, I'm not too god on riddles anyway, but that's another issue. Riddles and safe combinations. Real blind spot there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2475&start=0#p17128
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Memorable Moments in IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-05-23 15:06:27

[quote="Peter Pears"][...] there were other things (I disremember which, but trust me, I came up with many) that actually fit the solution. [/quote]

Very very yes. [emote]:)[/emote] Not only are there are things that fit ... when you first encounter the riddle, they fit [i]BETTER[/i].

[quote]And if the game's just going to discard it like that[/quote]

It doesn't discard it; it's part of the structure of it ... part of what constructs the solution.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2491&start=0#p17129
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Obscure question on Glulx/Glk
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-05-23 16:00:13

This doesn't sound right: glk_gestalt_ext() won't ever push values onto the stack in that way. If the array argument is to be anything other than 0, it must be the address of an array at least as big as the arraylength argument, whether that array is on the stack or not. The point is that the call may write to the array, but the array must be set up by whatever makes the call: there's no sense in which glk_gestalt_ext() will create the array for you on the stack. What leads you to believe that using -1 in this way will have this effect?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2491&start=0#p17130
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Obscure question on Glulx/Glk
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-23 16:06:39

[quote]What leads you to believe that using -1 in this way will have this effect?[/quote]

Iin the glkop.c layer (the Glulx-to-Glk dispatch code), there's a thing which says that reading/writing to address $FFFFFFFF is a stack read/write rather than a memory read/write. I'm not sure where I documented that, or whether anything uses it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2491&start=0#p17131
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Obscure question on Glulx/Glk
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-23 16:10:18

The answer to the original question is... um... I think the answer is "you can't use the -1 trick for array arguments."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2475&start=10#p17132
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Memorable Moments in IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-05-23 16:55:49

[quote][quote]And if the game's just going to discard it like that[/quote]

It doesn't discard it; it's part of the structure of it ... part of what constructs the solution.[/quote]

I just thought of an early episode of QI - Quite Interesting, season 1. I think it was the first one in which Rich Hall appeared. Stephen Fry gave the contestants four different people (I think it was people, but it's not really the point), and asked them what was the similarity - or diference, I disremember, but let's stick to similarity - between them.

Eventually, he gave the answer. He prefaced it by saying "Actually, there [i]is[/i] no similarity between them." At which point Rich Hall, looking horribly shocked, said something like "What the hell kind of show is this anyway?". All the funnier because, heck, it's true - you get asked what the similarity is and you get told the answer is "none"?

Which is my point regarding the riddle. Yes, it's a clever riddle - but discarding replies that fit well doesn't make it good, just frustrating. Which I understand was the point, of course; it fit in with the characters, the situation, the overall theme. I happen to hate it with a passion, but I'm not saying it's out of place.

Bah, should be like the riddles in Turandot - the woman asks the riddle, the man gives the answer, and then, regardless of whether it was the answer she was expecting, it gets tested by three wise men who then decide for themselves whether it's a good answer.

A good riddle is often misleading, but not so misleading that the wrong answer also happens to fit in perfectly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2475&start=10#p17133
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Memorable Moments in IF
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-23 17:15:59

It is the nature of puzzles in IF that not everything which is "logical" (in a real world sense) will be the "right" solution.  If the correct solution was not adequately clued, or otherwise could not reasonably have been arrived at based on knoweldge that someone in the position of the player character would have possessed, then you have a legitimate gripe about unfair puzzle design.  If the author hasn't provided at least a thought-out response to a reasonable, but incorrect, thing to try, you have a legitimate complaint (in this case, more about incomplete implementation than about design).  However, I don't think the mere fact that something was reasonable to try but still wasn't the solution means that the author has been unfair.  To me the best puzzles are the ones where the obvious things to try don't work (but do generate meaningful responses), and where the correct solution doesn't seem obvious except with hindsight (at which point it seems so obvious that you wonder how you missed it for so long).

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2475&start=10#p17134
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Memorable Moments in IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-05-23 17:18:38

[quote="Peter Pears"] Yes, it's a clever riddle - but discarding replies that fit well doesn't make it good, just frustrating.[/quote]

You're welcome to your opinion that it is frustrating and not-good.

On the more objective matter of fact, you've already been politely corrected. That correction stands.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2454&start=10#p17135
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: glulx sound observations
User: eliukblau / DateTime: 2011-05-23 17:20:44

I don't hear the clicks that severedhand mentioned. And I do have a really good hearing.

I don't hear clicks in Damusix Demo (otherwise I would have corrected it) or in the test published by severedhand.

I think the problem has to do with a hardware issue of severedhand's machine. Or maybe the problems have to do with the way he has programmed the fade effects.

The sound fades gave me a lot of work to make them function properly in all configurations.

As a rule of thumb (to avoid glk timer related clicks), never use a candence under 100ms. 100ms work correctly, at the same speed, in almost all terps.

Under 100ms, the results can begin to be random.

Damusix uses a dirty trick to make fades of less than 100ms of length. The trick has the side effect that fade may take longer than indicated (on some terps), but with the benefit that the effect occurs smoothly.

This, of course, only happens with fades of less than 100ms of length, which are exceptional cases. For fades with more than 100ms of length, Damusix uses a time based linear fade with proportional volume units increments/decrements, according to an algorithm that I wrote (do not ask how, because I've never been good at math and I'm not sure how I got that equation) xD

Saludos!

P.S: This message is google-translated. Thanks to anonymous friend for translation help, too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2491&start=0#p17136
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Obscure question on Glulx/Glk
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-05-23 17:34:30

Okay, that answer works for me.  You did document it in the Glulx spec, and the standard templates use that trick, Glulx_PrintAnyToArray for instance.  Just not with array arguments.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2475&start=10#p17137
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Memorable Moments in IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-05-23 19:08:01

Yeah, I got that, sorry if I wasn't clear. I was commenting on the structure of it needing such subterfuge, and how it affected the "riddling" experience, and even how it resembled an episode on a TV show. I was not disputing the fact. Merely lamenting it.

Rothman - I understand that, but we're talking about riddles, not puzzles. In puzzles, it's natural that there may be 50 different ways to solve a puzzle - and we'll have to come up with the one (or the ones) that the programmer intended. That's another matter, and I agree with you as far as *puzzles* go. But riddles come up with a list of characteristics, often misleading. Unless the riddle specifically says "...and I'm not a XXX", then XXX is a valid answer to the riddle. So are many other. If the riddle is constructed as to allow many several answers - and I'm not talking about LGOP anymore, I'm speaking generally - then it's a shoddy riddle that needs to be reworked, rephrased, retuned. Either that or allow all the possible responses.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2454&start=10#p17138
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: glulx sound observations
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-23 21:39:33

Thanks for the info on how you did the fades Eliuk. Yes, I'm aware clicks are related to how one programs the fades.

If any of the clicking is hardware related, all Macintosh users should be able to hear it because we all have what-PC-users-would-say-is 'the same sound card' - which is CoreAudio.

I think the easiest place to hear clicks in my demo is by playing the song, waiting for 3 seconds (past the yelly vocal intro), then doing what I call the linear fade (option 6) - as it races through the lower half of the volume range, that's where I often hear a few clicks, like a tiny stuttering machine gun. When it gets to the groove part of the music later, I find it almost impossible to get many clicks. The sound wave in that area is too consistent. But what I called the 'linear fade' in my demo is the most aggro fade which, if you do it enough and at different times, you should be able to get some clicks.

I would like to be able to share the piece of music for my game, which by its nature produces the clicks extremely easily when I fade over it, and thus caused me to look into this whole thing, but I don't want to reveal any content from my game before I release it [emote]:)[/emote]

But here's what I'm going to attempt to do - record my computer's audio output while it's fading and making what I consider to be clicks. If I can then turn this into an mp3 and I can still hear them, then I can hand it to you guys and you can listen and see if you can hear it. If that works we can agree it is not a hearing issue.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2492&start=0#p17139
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: implicitly repeating through indexed texts
User: Gorobay / DateTime: 2011-05-23 21:48:44

I want some things to have text associated with them and I want to use relations to do it. This is a distillation of my goal:

[code]The Storeroom is a room.

An adze is here.
An apple is here.

Translation relates various indexed texts to various things.
The verb to translate (it translates, it is translating, it is translated) implies the translation relation.

"adze", "aisette", and "Breitbeil" translate the adze.
"apple", "pomme", and "Apfel" translate the apple.

Instead of examining:
	say "[list of indexed texts translating the noun in brace notation][paragraph break]".

Instead of answering:
	say "[list of things translated by the topic understood in brace notation][paragraph break]".[/code]
This compiles, but upon examining anything, I get:

[quote]*** Run-time problem P59: You can't implicitly repeat through the values of this kind: a problem arising from a description which started out here - "say "[list of indexed texts translating the noun in brace notation][paragraph break]"".[/quote]
Upon answering anything, I get:

[quote][** Programming error: tried to read outside memory using --> **]
*** Impossible runtime hashing ***[/quote]
three times (once for each thing in the game).

How can I get around these two issues using relations? I would like to avoid "A thing has a list of indexed texts called the dictionary." if possible.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2454&start=10#p17140
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: glulx sound observations
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-23 22:15:46

Okay, here's an mp3 capturing the sound output of my Mac.

<a class="postlink" href="http://aeriae.com/no/edit_together.zip">http://aeriae.com/no/edit_together.zip</a>

First, the DaMusix demo. I use the 'simple fade' command, which fades in and out a few times in a row. This happens between 1 and 4 seconds.

At 8 seconds, we switch to my glulx sound demo. Here, I repeatedly restore the volume to max and perform the linear fade.

Now I should point out, these recordings are only to demonstrate that clicks can happen, not that they always do. I only included the clickingest takes. I ran both demos for a couple of minutes to capture a bunch of clicks I expect others will be able to hear. I should also point out I'm in a music studio with monitors pointed at my head and I have a big pair of headphones, and like Eliuk, good ears [emote]:)[/emote] But I'm hoping someone will say 'oh yeah, I can hear that'. It is subtle, but it is there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2371&start=0#p17141
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Novella feelie
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-05-24 00:37:01

Interesting!  I never played the original releases of any of these games, so I don't know much about feelies as originally packaged.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2487&start=0#p17142
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Things and parts of things in the location
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-05-24 01:03:47

Juhana's method isn't working for me.  I'm writing a check rule about it, so it's phrased in the negative, and it's a type of noun, not a single thing.  But anyway "if a (noun type) is not enclosed by the location" seems to always trigger.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2487&start=0#p17143
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Things and parts of things in the location
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-05-24 02:08:02

What's the check for, exactly? Something like "if a container is not enclosed by the location" is true when there's at least one container somewhere else (so it's the same as writing "if every container is enclosed by the location.")

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2454&start=10#p17144
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: glulx sound observations
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-05-24 02:25:29

I tried the demo on my MacBook but I can't hear the clicks. There [i]might[/i] be some slight stuttering audible in Gargoyle with option 6, but it's so slight that you have to strain to hear it, and even then I'm not sure if it's just part of the song (might not be the best choice for the demo). On Spatterlight the fades take much longer but I can't hear any anomalies. Certainly nothing like in that mp3.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2481&start=0#p17146
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Crowther's 1976 Adventure ported to I7, with source
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-05-24 03:15:54

This is very nice indeed  [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2475&start=10#p17147
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Memorable Moments in IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-05-24 04:28:56

[quote="Peter Pears"]I was commenting on the structure of it needing such subterfuge ... I was not disputing the fact. Merely lamenting it.[/quote]

Fair play then. Though, for my own part, I see it more as subversion than subterfuge (see next post).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2475&start=10#p17148
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Memorable Moments in IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-05-24 04:35:55

[quote="Robert Rothman"]If the correct solution was not adequately clued, or otherwise could not reasonably have been arrived at based on knowledge that someone in the position of the player character would have possessed, then you have a legitimate gripe about unfair puzzle design.[/quote]

And to be clear, the Sultan's Riddle absolutely [i]is[/i] 100% unquestionably [i]unfair [/i]in every reasonable sense of that word, but its unfairness is central to its design, and it's dismissive responses to legitimate guesses is also central to its design.

It plays on (and this is probably why I like it so much, and perhaps at least part of why Peter disliked it) the relationship between the player and the player-character ... the PC is getting a riddle, but the player really [i]isn't[/i] getting a riddle at all, but rather an out-of-character, out-of-world, fourth-wall-shattering alternate puzzle draped in ragged riddle's clothing.

Clearly, this is a risky design decision for some tastes - and probably for some playing styles. I can certainly understand why it might rub someone the wrong way, or why certain playing styles might collide with it at an unpleasant angle, let's say.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2493&start=0#p17149
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Glulx Timer question
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-24 06:23:16

I've a question about the glulx timer.

If you get it running - y'know like Real-Time Delays lets you do this to start the timer:

[code]start a 1000 millisecond timer[/code]

do you need to do any tidying at all if you want to immediately start it off again with a different value?

If the 1000 ms are ticking away and I decide I want to forget that and start a 5000 ms timer, do I have to do anything other than ask a 5000 ms timer to start? Quick tests of mine suggest no, but I want to be sure what I'm doing is okay.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2493&start=0#p17150
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx Timer question
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-24 09:28:36

No, you don't have to do anything else.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2493&start=0#p17151
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx Timer question
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-24 09:32:19

Thanks. That's happy days, then.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2454&start=10#p17152
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: glulx sound observations
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-05-24 09:59:51

I'm also on a MacBook and don't hear those crackles and pops using Gargoyle (or Spatterlight).

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2492&start=0#p17153
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: implicitly repeating through indexed texts
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-24 10:49:57

Being an indexed text hater, I use kinds of value for this sort of thing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2487&start=0#p17154
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Things and parts of things in the location
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-24 10:56:23

You can try this out to be sure, but I think you can phrase it as "if no K is enclosed by the location." Otherwise, you'll have to say "if the number of K enclosed by the location is 0." If it's a single condition by itself, you can say "Unless a K is enclosed by the location."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2492&start=0#p17155
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: implicitly repeating through indexed texts
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-05-24 11:17:21

I've had issues with creating lists of indexed text or whatever via relations like that.  It's one of the newest parts of Inform, and I don't think the bugs are fully wrung out yet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2494&start=0#p17156
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Release 2 of Lost Islands of Alabaz
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2011-05-24 11:28:54

Release 2 of The Lost Islands of Alabaz is now available in the usual places. In addition to sending it to the IF archive and springthing.net, I have set up a version for in-browser play at my website, <a class="postlink" href="http://www.edromia.com/alabaz/">www.edromia.com/alabaz/</a>.

Release 2 is a bug-fix release. In particular: you may now, for example, ASK ABOUT QUEST without specifying to whom you are speaking (the game makes an educated guess); the journal no longer tells you about puzzles you have not encountered yet; and it is no longer possible to put the game into an unwinnable state by doing things in the wrong order on Koral. There are a handful of other improvements, none of which change the story or gameplay in any significant way.

I chose to focus only on the most egregious problems that surfaced during the competition. By no means is the game bug-free. If you encounter a bug in Release 2, please email me (preferably with a transcript or at least a copy-paste of the last few moves' worth of text output, if at all possible).

Later this year, I hope to clean up the source code a bit and release that as well, along with any bug fixes I've managed to accumulate in the interim.

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2492&start=0#p17157
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: implicitly repeating through indexed texts
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-05-24 11:44:07

As Ron suggests, block value types like indexed texts have historically been buggier than others as new features have been added. 

You might want to consider whether you need indexed texts at all; maybe a standard text would work? If your example reflects your actual code, there doesn't appear to be much reason to use indexed texts (unless you wanted the player to be able to contribute her own translations). As a general rule, if you can specify the texts in advance or assemble them easily from other pieces, you don't need indexed text.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2492&start=0#p17158
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: implicitly repeating through indexed texts
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-05-24 12:45:12

[quote="capmikee"]Being an indexed text hater, I use kinds of value for this sort of thing.[/quote]
 [emote]:lol:[/emote]  [emote]:lol:[/emote] I'm with you here, Mike -- both anti - indexed text and pro KOVs.

Gorobay, I'm assuming you're using indexed text because nouns in German ("Apfel") must be capitalized. What specifically are you trying to do? If all you need is a way to make sure the game's output is correct, you can do this without indexed text. If you're trying to enforce the correct capitalization on the player's input (for example, making a game for language instruction) you will need indexed text to process the command, but not necessarily in the relation. (Also you'll need to compile to Glulx, since player commands in z-code games are are case insensitive.) BTW, I tried your code with text instead of indexed text and it still doesn't work. 

Also, I'm curious as to why:
[quote="Gorobay"]I would like to avoid "A thing has a list of indexed texts called the dictionary." if possible.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2494&start=0#p17159
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Release 2 of Lost Islands of Alabaz
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-05-24 13:28:06

Sweet. Thank you!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2492&start=0#p17160
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: implicitly repeating through indexed texts
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-05-24 13:28:39

Here's a minimal example of how you could use kinds of value for this:

[code]A word is a kind of value.

aisette, Breitbeil, pomme, and Apfel are words. [<-- note the capitalization]

Translation relates various words to various things.
The verb to translate (it translates, it is translating, it is translated) implies the translation relation.

Instead of examining:
	say "[Noun] = [the list of words that translate the noun].".

Word-saying is an action applying to one word.
Understand "say [word]" as word-saying.
	
Report word-saying:
	say "[word understood] = [the list of things translated by the word understood].".
	
The Storeroom is a room.

An adze is here.
An apple is here.

aisette and Breitbeil translate the adze.
pomme and Apfel translate the apple.

test me with "x adze / x apple / say pomme / say apfel / say aisette / say breitbeil".[/code]
Note that the output is correctly capitalized, but the input capitalization is ignored. Also, I left out the English words from the KOV list, because Inform can get easily confused when you try to use the same word for both an object and a KOV. Both of these limitations can be worked around, but I didn't want to clutter up the example since I'm not sure what precise behavior you're after.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2479&start=10#p17161
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Font shrinkage?
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-05-24 15:08:01

I've now got a Virtual PC image with IE9, and I can see what's going on - it seems to be due to a bug in IE9. Sigh. Hopefully this can be worked around.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2490&start=0#p17162
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: looking for programers for IfComp for two games
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-05-24 15:45:43

I'm not interested (I've got plenty of projects of my own!) but just a word of advice: it may help inspire confidence in potential collaborators if you post a link to some samples of writing by your writers or show some past projects you've worked on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2489&start=0#p17163
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gargoyle and Game Collection
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-05-24 16:44:53

So, I've installed Grotesque. At this moment it doesn't show the covers, but it works well as a collection manager. Maybe that's in the development map.

In the meanwhile, I'll just steal the covers from IFDB.

[size=85]I wonder if python is hard to learn...[/size]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2492&start=0#p17164
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: implicitly repeating through indexed texts
User: Gorobay / DateTime: 2011-05-24 18:29:54

[quote="ektemple"]You might want to consider whether you need indexed texts at all; maybe a standard text would work? If your example reflects your actual code, there doesn't appear to be much reason to use indexed texts (unless you wanted the player to be able to contribute her own translations). As a general rule, if you can specify the texts in advance or assemble them easily from other pieces, you don't need indexed text.[/quote]
Elsewhere in my code I compare snippets to these texts, and I think that means I need indexed texts. If texts work too, are they better?

[quote="Skinny Mike"]Gorobay, I'm assuming you're using indexed text because nouns in German ("Apfel") must be capitalized. What specifically are you trying to do?[/quote]
The code I gave above was just an example. My actual game has nothing to do with translations; it was just the first simple example I could think of. Specifically, I am cobbling together my own parser to deal with [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2356]references to nonexistent but possible things[/url], so I need to process the player's input.

[quote="Skinny Mike"]Also, I'm curious as to why:
[quote="Gorobay"]I would like to avoid "A thing has a list of indexed texts called the dictionary." if possible.[/quote][/quote]
I would prefer to be able to say ""pomme" translates the apple." in one part of the source, and ""Apfel" translates the apple." in a different part. With a single property I would have to declare everything at once. If there is something that allows me to extend lists (e.g. "The thesaurus of the apple (extended) is {"manzana"}.) I would use that.

Skinny Mike, the code you posted looks useful; thank you. Is there a way I expand it to allow multiple words? I have tried "Word-saying is an action applying to words. Understand "say [words]" as word-saying." but that does not seem to work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2487&start=0#p17165
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Things and parts of things in the location
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-05-24 20:09:05

Perfect, thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2492&start=0#p17166
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: implicitly repeating through indexed texts
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-05-24 21:41:39

[quote="Gorobay"][quote="ektemple"]You might want to consider whether you need indexed texts at all; maybe a standard text would work? If your example reflects your actual code, there doesn't appear to be much reason to use indexed texts (unless you wanted the player to be able to contribute her own translations). As a general rule, if you can specify the texts in advance or assemble them easily from other pieces, you don't need indexed text.[/quote]
Elsewhere in my code I compare snippets to these texts, and I think that means I need indexed texts. If texts work too, are they better?[/quote]

I wouldn't say that text is better per se, but a text does use fewer resources than an indexed text. You can just cast to indexed text when you need it, e.g.

[code]let T be an indexed text;
let T be the text in question...[/code]

That doesn't help you with the relations problem, though, because you can't repeat through texts any more than you can through indexed texts. For that reason, kinds of value might be a better option. KOVs can also have properties, which might come in handy.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2479&start=10#p17167
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Font shrinkage?
User: i-k / DateTime: 2011-05-25 02:14:13

Hopefully there's some way to work around this other than downgrading to IE8 - I like to keep IE as no-fuss as possible (let it upgrade if it wants to, and so on), since I only keep it around for important web content - forms and such - that sometimes refuse to work properly in Opera. I'd hate to switch back just for Inform.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2495&start=0#p17168
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Quest 5.0 - Release Candidate 1 is now available
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-05-25 03:54:43

Quest 5.0 Beta 1 is now available.

The Editor is now fully functional, and although there is still some way to go to make it slicker and easier to use, it is now possible to create a Quest 5.0 game from scratch - in English, Dutch or German.

You can download Quest 5.0 from: <a class="postlink" href="http://quest5.net/index.php?title=Downloads">http://quest5.net/index.php?title=Downloads</a>

Full details on what's new are in this blog post: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.textadventures.co.uk/blog/2011/05/24/quest-5-0-beta-1-now-available/">http://www.textadventures.co.uk/blog/20 ... available/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2482&start=0#p17169
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 does not like my floating spirit.
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-05-25 09:01:37

Sorry about the delay in answering your last hints, but I have been digging into my code and finding several "stupidities". The hint about how to declare names has help tremendously.  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote] 

Now if I can fix the rest of the program I'll be on my way - Actually, a lot of my problems have been in learning the syntax and once I do that I suspect my writing will go faster and a bit smoother.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2496&start=0#p17171
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: anyone elce getting a error when they go to the main page?
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-05-25 11:07:25

i keep getting it, it says

 SQL ERROR [ mysqli ]

Out of memory (Needed 1048544 bytes) [5]

An SQL error occurred while fetching this page. Please contact the Board Administrator if this problem persists.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2497&start=0#p17172
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Every turn timing
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-25 11:14:34

Ok, of all the questions I've asked, I've spent more brain time on the following sync issues over the weeks than on anything else, and I haven't been able to hack or fully solve them. So I'm here to grovel for help.

Say I have it so a character shows their health in their initial appearance:

'Undamaged guy is here', then 'Hurt guy is here,' (after 1 hp damage) for instance...

... and this character heals 1 hp per turn, thanks to an every turn rule.

If I punch a guy into the next room so he's down a hp and follow him, his printed description as I enter says 'Hurt guy is here'... but then before the prompt appears, but after it's said that he's hurt, he heals a hp and is no longer hurt.

If I type 'look' now (which is a take-no-time command in this game), it will say 'he looks to be in perfect health', right after having said 'hurt guy is here', so that's the most obvious problem. His description is permanently out of sync with his health.

Many other problems grow from this sync issue. All workarounds I've tried interact with each other and create more problems in one place or another at different times. Some I've tried include:

- Having his descriptions correspond to his health on a delay of 1. (IE when his hp are really x, you see the message for when they are x+1)

- I've tried moving the moment of healing, and/or the moment of updating his description to some other part of the turn. This is hard. I tried to cram them into the moment of writing a paragraph about the guy, but of course, not all time-consuming actions print a paragraph about him. Then you also have to stop the healing happening if you repeatedly 'look' at the guy, or when other actions cause extra 'looks'.

Is there some simple approach to this issue that I've overlooked or am unaware of? I guess what I want ideally is the equivalent of an every turn rule that goes off before all the descriptions are printed (or at turn start), not after (at turn end). But I don't know if such a thing exists.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2498&start=0#p17173
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: The parser is choosing for me, and I don't want it to.
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-05-25 12:05:50

When I have soething like:

[code]A garden is a room. "Someone planted it."

The white rose, the pink rose and the vodka rose are in the garden.

test me with "x rose/x a rose"[/code]

The result is:

[code]garden
Someone planted it.

You can see a white rose, a pink rose and a vodka rose here.

>x rose
Which do you mean, the white rose, the pink rose or the vodka rose?

>x a rose
(the white rose)
You see nothing special about the white rose.[/code]

In the second situation, the parser assumes I'm talking about the rose which comes first in the source, but I want him to behave just as he would in the first case.

Any ideas?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2498&start=0#p17174
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The parser is choosing for me, and I don't want it to.
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-05-25 12:38:18

I have no idea what's going on here, but using the debug command 'trace 3' reveals that NounDomain is operating differently in the two cases. Unfortunately, NounDomain is buried in the I6 layer -- it's not in the Standard Rules at all.

You can open the files in the Reserved folder using a text editor and search for NounDomain. That might give you a clue. I strongly recommend against editing those files, however.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2497&start=0#p17175
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Every turn timing
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-05-25 12:38:50

The way you're describing it, it sounds like it should work:
[list]1. punch NPC ( -1 hp) during carry out punching (or whatever) rules
2. NPC moved into next room (also presumably during carry out)
3. action finished and every turn rules fire (NPC regains 1 HP) (turn ends)
4. Player types "GO NORTH" or whatever and enters a room with the NPC at full health
5. automatic "Look" action fires, with description accurately reflecting NPC HP[/list:u]

Now if by "follow" you mean the game automatically moves the player into the second room during the act of punching (i.e. before the every turn rules fire and the turn ends), there's your problem. When the player is moved, a "look" is automatically generated and since it's still part of the last turn, the HP hasn't been updated yet. The solution will depend on the exact specifics of when in the turn sequence these events are taking place.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2498&start=0#p17176
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The parser is choosing for me, and I don't want it to.
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-05-25 12:59:14

As far as I6 is concerned, I confess myself clueless, so I guess I'll take your advice against messing with it, for the time being.

But this is bugging me. In this case, the differences between the two are of little to no consequence, but in my WIP, if the player writes "burn a note", the parser burns "the wrong note" without asking twice.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2496&start=0#p17177
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: anyone elce getting a error when they go to the main pag
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-05-25 13:32:33

This is a known problem. See: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1276">viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1276</a>

I don't know if anything has been done about it since then, but it's been less common lately for me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2497&start=0#p17178
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Every turn timing
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-05-25 13:35:45

Does the problem pretty much go away if you report the healing to the player at the moment it happens?

[quote]You land a honey of a haymaker right on Joeschmo's right mandibular condyle. He goes flying, crashing through the wall and into the next room.

>GO TO NEXT ROOM

Joe is lying on a pile of rubble, looking pretty bad.

[Every turn rule heals NPC]Joeschmo stumbles to his feet, shakes his head, and grits his teeth. He looks ready for anything.

>X HIM

Joe looks like he's in perfect health.[/quote]

--Erik

EDITED to arrange the faux transcript correctly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2497&start=0#p17179
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Every turn timing
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-05-25 13:41:51

[quote="severedhand"]I guess what I want ideally is the equivalent of an every turn rule that goes off before all the descriptions are printed (or at turn start), not after (at turn end). But I don't know if such a thing exists.[/quote]
For completeness, the way you would do that is:[code]The before each turn rulebook is a rulebook.
This is the before each turn stage rule:
	follow the before each turn rulebook.
The before each turn stage rule is listed before the parse command rule in the turn sequence rulebook.

There is a room.
Before each turn:
	say "(Healing here.)"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2498&start=0#p17180
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The parser is choosing for me, and I don't want it to.
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-05-25 13:48:15

Actually, this behavior makes good sense to me.

Inform regards X ROSE as short for EXAMINE THE ROSE. Because "the" is English's definite article, X [i]THE[/i] ROSE implies that the player has a [i]particular[/i] rose in mind. So, Inform enter disambiguation mode to find out exactly which rose you are interested in.

In contrast, X A ROSE specifies the indefinite article "a", which implies that the player [i]doesn't care which rose he examines[/i]; any rose will do. So, since the player has already indicated that he isn't interested in any particular rose, Inform avoids the intrusive disambiguation process.

I think that's pretty much how the system should act, but it is a productive question to ask whether X ROSE should default to X A ROSE instead of X THE ROSE. I'm not sure how to change that default; it may require hacking the parser or it may not. Someone else might have more insight into the technicalities.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2499&start=0#p17181
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: following npc's
User: zodraz / DateTime: 2011-05-25 13:55:37

HELP!

I am trying to get a npc to move along a track – when the pc enters room 1 the npc moves from nil to room 1, then room 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, 1 and back into nil with the pc following, who may or may not fail to spot the npc.  I will be using a random fuse to move the npc into the adjoining room 5 for the pc to follow and find out what the npc does in room 5.  It sounds obtuse but makes sense in the context of the game.  The object being, instead of using the npc tourguide method, to have the pc fail or succeed in getting the information in room 5.  I tried the example in the manual but all the npc did was bounce between one room and another when the pc entered; pc enters room 1, npc moves to room 2, pc moves to room 2, npc moves to room 1, not room 3, also tried starting the pc in room 4 and moving to room 1, same thing happened.  Can anyone help?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2498&start=0#p17182
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The parser is choosing for me, and I don't want it to.
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-05-25 14:00:12

The bits of interest here are the I6 routine Descriptors and the flag indef_mode.  One could certainly hack the parser to change their meanings, but I would recommend a does-the-player-mean rule instead:[code]Does the player mean examining the pink rose: it is likely.[/code]  You won't get the disambiguation prompt, but you do keep the parser from choosing the wrong noun without any mucking in I6.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2479&start=10#p17183
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Font shrinkage?
User: veryalien / DateTime: 2011-05-25 14:47:20

I've tried the following 'quick fix' for the font problem in IE9:

In IE9: 

Open the Tools Menu (or if you haven't enabled the menu bar: click the geared wheel, top-right, or ALT+X)

Open Internet Options and on the General Tab select Fonts (in the Appearance section at the bottom of the list of options)

On the Webpage-font list (the left-hand list), pick a new font. If you open a documentation page in inform7 it will pick-up the new font as soon as you click ok.

After upgrading to IE9 my inform7 showed the docs in Times New Roman and it was a little bit smaller on my netbook display. I'm not really sure which font/size it was using before but after the IE9 install it didn't look as nice, that's for sure!

I then discovered that different fonts seem to have a different default size?! I now use Arial because it's nice and clean and it's displayed a little larger than some of the other fonts DavidK mentioned as the system defaults. Has anyone got any ideas why different fonts seem to have different default sizes?? Or is that not really the problem?

EDIT: I noticed that on the Accessibility settings (next to Fonts), you seem to be able to use your own css. Maybe that's a (better) way of doing it? But I can't seem to get it to work - probably because I haven't found a good example for my brain to cope with!

Your mileage may vary with this solution! I don't care about IE9 at the moment - I (stupidly) installed it because windows update was nagging me and maybe next time I'll look for potential pitfalls before installing a non-critical upgrade....

Give it a try....it might even work! I will just stick with Firefox 4 for browsing, you might need to tweak things here and there if you really, really need IE9. Yes it's true, I also upgraded to Firefox 4 (because it was also nagging) and no problems yet to be seen!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2498&start=0#p17184
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The parser is choosing for me, and I don't want it to.
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-05-25 15:15:13

[quote="EmacsUser"]I would recommend a does-the-player-mean rule instead:[code]Does the player mean examining the pink rose: it is likely.[/code]  You won't get the disambiguation prompt, but you do keep the parser from choosing the wrong noun without any mucking in I6.[/quote]

That's a good, easy solution to the burning of the wrong note, although honestly I'm not convinced that there really is much of a problem, at least for native English speakers. I can't imagine that too many native speakers would write BURN A NOTE in the situation originally described; far more likely would be BURN THE NOTE (i.e., the particular note I'm thinking of, which will result in disambiguation), or just plain BURN NOTE.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2500&start=0#p17185
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7: A container that is also a device.
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2011-05-25 15:32:30

I've got a bit of a dilemma on my hands. I'd like to implement a car (which is, of course, a vehicle) and an ignition (which is part of the car). I'd like the player to be able to both switch on the ignition and insert a key into it. But an Inform 7 thing can't be both a device and a container. I could translate switching on the ignition to switching on the car, but the car can't be both a device and a vehicle. So what's the most elegant and functional solution?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2500&start=0#p17186
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: A container that is also a device.
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-05-25 15:50:30

[quote="Kazuki Mishima"]So what's the most elegant and functional solution?[/quote]

Depends on the full scope of your needs for each action ... but it's often easy to build multiple objects that just _seem_ like one object, and work it that way. The car interior can be entirely distinct from the car exterior, for example; the part of the ignition that accepts the key can be distinct from the part you switch (and so on and so forth) and it can all appear seamless to the player with judicious re-direction of verbs and use of hidden object names printed as other things.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2501&start=0#p17187
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Interactive elements in static fiction
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-05-25 15:59:26

Last week, I read an incredible short story that seemed to have many elements of interactive fiction.  I have also recently read Nick Montfort's [i]Twisty Little Passages[/i] as a source for a research paper on digital storytelling that I wrote for a mass media course.  Montfort's argument for riddles as a literary ancestor of IF got me thinking about levels of interactivity in traditional linear or "static" literary works, and I think that short story displays interactive forms of immersion and problem-solving.

First, the story.  It's called "Shell", written by G.L. Francis, published in a freely-available online periodical called [i]The Cross and the Cosmos[/i].  It can be downloaded from <a class="postlink" href="http://www.crossandcosmos.com/">http://www.crossandcosmos.com/</a> (click on the thumbnail of the cover image of Issue 7).  "Shell" is the last of three stories found in the PDF document, starting on page 12.  The actual plot of this story is simple and would be boring if it were the whole point.  It's written in present tense, alternating between second and first person.  It calls attention to different levels of narration by always italicizing the sections in second person, separating them from those in first person.

[i]The Cross and the Cosmos[/i] owns the publication rights to the short story, but I thought the form was so notable from the perspective of IF that I received permission from its author and the publishers to post the first few paragraphs here:
[quote="G.L. Francis"][i]Walk barefoot on this warm, soft beach where sea foam sighs along the long border of sand that
marks the seam between land and sea.

Yesterday's storms stirred shells from the depths. Crashing waves scattered them like so many
jewels tossed on the sand. They lay shining, tide-polished—abandoned homes of creatures that breathe
brine and perceive the sun through blue-green distortions of water.

Crabs amble around knots of seaweed in a sideward dance. Shore birds pick through larger
tangles, searching for small fish or mussels netted in the green-gray-brown masses.

Look. There's a shell unlike any you've gathered so far. Pick it up. Brush away the sand sticking to
it and raise it to your ear. Listen to the shell echo the sound of the waves. As you watch seagulls wheeling
above the shore, you begin to hear voices—hollow, delicate voices the shell gathered throughout its
watery life.[/i][/quote]
The immediate similarity with IF is that imperative sentences (which look a great deal like IF commands in the last of the quoted paragraphs) seem to control, or at least indicate, the actions of the reader-protagonist.  Notice how the first paragraph is a "command" to walk on the beach, and then the second paragraph is a description of that beach, almost like walking from one room to another in IF, resulting in a room description.

In IF, the human player issues the commands, but who is doing the commanding in this static short story?  There has to be some implied first-person presence, both telling the reader-protagonist what to do and reporting on what has happened.  IF has an implied first-person voice too, which in the older games was more than implied ("I don't know the word '....'").  The omniscient IF narrator does not have direct control of the protagonist, while here the implied narrator is doing all the commanding, in the absence of a parser.  So, these first four paragraphs contain at least three IF-like elements -- the immediacy and immersion of second person, present-tense prose; imperative commands guiding the actions of the reader-protagonist; and an implied omniscient first-person narrator.

"Shell" goes on to tell the stories of these voices trapped in the shell that the protagonist picked up.  While the protagonist is listening to the voices in the shell, the prose switches to first-person (still present tense), and the text becomes non-italic, indicating a jump to a different level of narrative.  The second-person "frame story" reappears four more times to describe the top-level story of the protagonist, including the last paragraphs of the story.

The first-person voices of the Sea present another IF-like characteristic -- puzzles, or at least problem-solving.  Many of them are intentionally obscure references to Greek mythology, the Bible, and historical events.  I didn't know anything at all about some of them and had only a vague understanding of the situations surrounding many, I was able to decipher many others by careful reading.  A large part of the pleasure of the story comes from the challenge of figuring out who the narrators of the individual voices are.  Thus, at least many of these short segments of the story could be called riddles, and as riddles, puzzles.

I was pretty excited to see the similarities that this amazing short story seems to share with IF.  Does anyone else see anything in this?  It looks like static fiction can actually be a lot more interactive than it would appear at a glance.  We can probably learn more about IF through studying interactive techniques in static fiction.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2500&start=0#p17188
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: A container that is also a device.
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-05-25 16:05:43

It isn't actually necessary for something to be a device for it to have the basic device functionality. It just needs to have the "switched on" property. So, you can define the ignition using something like this:

[code]The ignition can be switched on or switched off.[/code]

...and now you'll be able to turn the ignition on and off using the standard commands.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2498&start=0#p17189
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The parser is choosing for me, and I don't want it to.
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-05-25 16:46:45

Well, I'm assuming that if this has never been a problem before, then I shouldn't be worried.

I've added a "does the player mean..." rule, and also a new "rule for clarifying the parser's choice", so that I get a (I don't think there will be a problem in burning this one, but I better stop torching things at random) kind of answer, instead of (the dark note)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2501&start=0#p17190
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Interactive elements in static fiction
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-05-25 18:42:51

While I see the IF-reminiscent elements, I don't think you can call something "interactive" unless the reader is does something besides just reading.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2498&start=0#p17191
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The parser is choosing for me, and I don't want it to.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-25 19:33:42

[quote="ektemple"]it is a productive question to ask whether X ROSE should default to X A ROSE instead of X THE ROSE.[/quote]

[img]http://smilepanic.com/wp-content/uploads/do_not_want8.jpg[/img]

X ROSE is pretty much the standard thing for an experienced IF player to type, isn't it, going back to Adventure? And it takes less typing than either of the alternatives. It should definitely be parsed as the safest alternative -- it would be unimaginably obnoxious if X ROSE picked a random rose for you rather than asking you which you wanted. Especially, as sometimes happens, when the player doesn't know that there's an ambiguity in the area, and so takes the response to X ROSE to apply to the wrong object.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2500&start=0#p17192
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: A container that is also a device.
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2011-05-25 20:37:12

Thanks, folks. I'm using E. Temple's solution, a container that "can be switched on or switched off."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2502&start=0#p17193
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Hint request -- Wetlands
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-05-25 21:45:08

I would like to complete [i]Wetlands[/i] by Clara Raubertas from the recent Spring Thing competition.  I'm at 70 points.  I'm not so much stuck at any particular puzzle as lost without a clue of what to do with anything.

Here's a run-down of my situation:
[spoiler]I've just found the Pondside Community Center and the mural of the crystal city underneath the newer mural.  I have no idea of what to do with the green flag that was in the Center.  I've explored the lake and seen the emerging spire.  Elsewhere, I've shut down two of the pumps -- the one in the hut in the forest and the one in the building near the starting location.

The immediate puzzle that I've been hoping to work on is the large pump in the forest.  I've climbed up it and discovered that the wheel is not attached.  I tried using the wind chimes from the tree as bolts to attach the wheel to the pipe, but they didn't fit the holes.[/spoiler]

Here's my completed tasks:
[spoiler]turning on the complicated pump (10 points)
entering the Pump Room (5 points)
turning on the underground pump (10 points)
opening a secret panel (2 points)
climbing the tank (3 points)
traveling to other parts of the pond (5 points)
acquiring a wrench (2 points)
acquiring a screwdriver (2 points)
acquiring a flashlight (2 points)
getting on a train (2 points)
finding a ticket (5 points)
climbing the fence (5 points)
traveling to further parts of the pond (5 points)
launching the boat (3 points)
entering the boathouse (5 points)
finding a key (2 points)
finding a magnet (2 points)[/spoiler]

Any help would be appreciated.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2477&start=0#p17194
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: August by Matt Fendahleen -- opening text and more
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-05-25 21:50:03

I played [i]August[/i] fairly recently.  I would say the main puzzle is discovering the conversation topics.  It took me a long time and a lot of fruitless guessing, but I eventually did stumble upon the right ones.  Although the puzzle is simple and possibly unfair by many players' standards, solving actually does characterize the main NPC very well, and arriving at the best ending, revealing the not-so-secret gimmick of the story, really is satisfying.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2501&start=0#p17195
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Interactive elements in static fiction
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-05-25 22:07:48

[quote="katz"]While I see the IF-reminiscent elements, I don't think you can call something "interactive" unless the reader is does something besides just reading.[/quote]
In one very important sense of interactivity, that's definitely true.  However, in a broader sense of reader participation, some forms of static fiction are more interactive than others.  For instance, novels are more interactive than movies, because you ultimately have to participate by filling in the details of the narrative in your mind.  I got this from an interview of the thriller novelist Tedd Dekker by the website Goodreads (see Dekker's answer to the second question): <a class="postlink" href="http://www.goodreads.com/interviews/show/579.Ted_Dekker?utm_medium=email&utm_source=Apr_newsletter&utm_content=dekker">http://www.goodreads.com/interviews/sho ... ent=dekker</a>

Generally, I think the more interactive a form of fiction, the harder it is to appreciate, but the greater the potential reward.  Consider how difficult poetry can be, but also its powerful potential when done right.  And one of the most difficult forms of poetry is the riddle, which according to [i]Twisty Little Passages[/i] is part of the literary tradition of IF.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2501&start=0#p17196
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Interactive elements in static fiction
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-05-25 22:35:06

[quote]For instance, novels are more interactive than movies, because you ultimately have to participate by filling in the details of the narrative in your mind.[/quote]

Movies require (and invite) different types of filling-in, but both movies _and_ novels (and, indeed, all forms of fiction, static and otherwise) require (and invite) filling-in on the part of the audience. The question of which requires "more" (or which requires details which are more immersive) is a question that can only be answered on a work-by-work and audience-by-audience basis.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2479&start=10#p17197
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Font shrinkage?
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-05-26 01:50:15

[quote="veryalien"]I've tried the following 'quick fix' for the font problem in IE9[/quote]Yes, this is probably the best way to work round this for now. The bug is that IE9 is not picking up the custom settings that Inform 7 has configured for it, so all pages are just displayed with the default font settings. As a result, making the default font name and size something more sensible will help.

I have an idea for how to fix this properly, but it will take a little while to get around to trying it.

At some point I should really get round to using something like WebKit for the HTML display, but that's a fair bit of work, and other things have priority ...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2479&start=10#p17198
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Font shrinkage?
User: i-k / DateTime: 2011-05-26 02:29:48

[quote="veryalien"]I've tried the following 'quick fix' for the font problem in IE9[/quote]
Thanks for this!

I changed my default to Segoe UI, and also checked the 'ignore font sizes specified on webpages' -option in the Accessibility tab, which further increased the font size in Inform documentation.

Much easier to read now, though I still hate I can't change the text size on the fly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2471&start=0#p17199
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: what are Beta testers and Programmers
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2011-05-26 04:12:46

Or if you're using Adrift.
You are the designer, writer and "programmer" all in one... (I have placed programmer in quotes on purpose since there are people who claim that "drifters" don't program... [emote];)[/emote] )

One thing you'll never be is beta tester, at least not in your own game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2502&start=0#p17200
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Hint request -- Wetlands
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-26 05:57:52

You've got the right idea of the immediate puzzle to work on. (Hmm, nested spoilers don't work. Oh well.)

[spoiler]Have you tried turning the wheel on that pump?[/spoiler]
[spoiler]It spins freely, doesn't it?[/spoiler]
[spoiler]And it has holes.[/spoiler]
[spoiler]You need to find something to put in the holes.[/spoiler]
[spoiler]Have you tried the flashlight, the screwdriver, the big stick, and the wind chimes?[/spoiler]
[spoiler]Most of them, except the wind chimes, are too thick.[/spoiler]
[spoiler]Do you have anything that was described as long and thin?[/spoiler]
[spoiler]The flagpole from the flag.[/spoiler]
[spoiler]Put the flag in the holes and turn the wheel (I forget the exact phrasing).[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2471&start=0#p17201
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: what are Beta testers and Programmers
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-05-26 08:16:15

[quote="Finn Rosenløv"]Or if you're using Adrift.
You are the designer, writer and "programmer" all in one...[/quote]
Which authoring tool you choose doesn't really have anything to do with it. You can be both the writer and programmer even if you implement it in x86 assembly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2497&start=0#p17202
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Every turn timing
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-26 08:58:28

That's an elegant way to do it. More commonly, stuff that happens at the beginning of a turn is done with an "After reading a command" rule.

I tend to do things like Erik does, though - I don't worry so much about when the rule fires, as long as it gives you a message that something has changed.

You should know about the Rules Chart. It's a useful PDF giving a detailed map of all the major rulebooks and when they run. It's linked at the bottom of this page:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/learn/">http://inform7.com/learn/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2498&start=0#p17203
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The parser is choosing for me, and I don't want it to.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-26 09:07:52

This is interesting. I'm filing indef_mode away with my far-off plans for a parser rewrite. It would be useful to be able to switch it on for manual parsing. (e.g. "if the player's command includes...")

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2111&start=0#p17205
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New Inform7 quick reference available
User: sarganar / DateTime: 2011-05-26 10:51:57

Hi!

Good job.
Can we translate it to spanish?(for caad.es spanish IF comunity).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2499&start=0#p17206
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: following npc's
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-05-26 11:21:25

Without seeing your code it's difficult to know where it's breaking down.

Have you thought of using an AgendaItem for the NPC? I don't know if that would work in this case -- it's been a couple of years since I did any T3 -- but maybe if you recode it as an AgendaItem, you'll spot the bug.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2501&start=0#p17207
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Interactive elements in static fiction
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-05-26 13:39:08

[quote="Ghalev"]Movies require (and invite) different types of filling-in, but both movies _and_ novels (and, indeed, all forms of fiction, static and otherwise) require (and invite) filling-in on the part of the audience.[/quote]
Okay, I think I understand.  Movies also require the viewer to piece together the narrative between the specified details -- in this case, shots.  Watching a movie, you might see a medium-distance shot of an actor walking toward a door, and then a close-up of that actor's hand pulling the doorknob to open the door.  The viewer "fills in" that the person on-screen has walked all the way to the door and opened it, even though he or she didn't see all that in one sequence.  The movie watcher must figure out the relationship between shots that are cut together and imagine a narrative to connect them, following the story as it develops from shot to shot and from scene to scene.  So, I can agree that movies also require audience participation.  I stand corrected.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2499&start=0#p17208
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: following npc's
User: zodraz / DateTime: 2011-05-26 13:47:20

The code is as per learning tads 3 page 237 all I did was add the extra rooms, reset idx to routeList.indexOf() (which may be wrong if the idx is now set to the last item in the list), and I removed isDone so the whole thing is repeated, if this worked then I would use a check on the fuse to set isDone to true so it repeats a set number of times.

[code]+ bobWanderAgenda: AgendaItem
isReady = (bob.curState == bobWalking)
initiallyActive = true
agendaOrder = 10
routeList = [highStreet, northStreet, southPark, northPark]
invokeItem()
    {
        local idx = routeList.indexOf(bob.getOutermostRoom);
        if(idx && idx < routeList.length())
        {
            local dest = routeList[++idx];
            bob.scriptedTravelTo(dest);
            if(idx >= routeList.length())
            isDone = true;
        }
    }
;[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2501&start=0#p17209
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Interactive elements in static fiction
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-26 13:49:25

It is also the case that movies show exteriority -- they don't show the characters' thoughts or points of view. (There are of course a bag of cinematic tricks and conventions to work around that.)  Novels, on the other hand, are good at showing interiority, and leaving the physical details of the world undescribed. (Again, a novel can go to effort to overcome that bias.)

Each form gives you room to tell a sneaky story that requires the reader-viewer to put things together from incomplete evidence -- or be misled by their assumptions about what's in the gaps. The techniques will differ, because they're different sorts of gaps.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2503&start=0#p17210
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Remapping actions, default message outputs and... stuff.
User: Arag-e / DateTime: 2011-05-26 14:16:28

This is long and... miscellaneous. I have three issues, the first two are probably dumb and quick but require explanation of what I'm doing. The third one I don't know where to begin...

First problem: Remapping actions to other actions:
[rant]I wanted a small water spring from which you could drink:

[code]spirngArea: OutdoorRoom 'Forest Spring'
;
+spring: Fixture 'divine holy water/spring/pool' 'water spring'
    "A water spring"
;[/code]

Then I messed with the dobjFor(Drink) so you could actually drink from it:

[code]    
+spring: Fixture 'divine holy water/spring/pool' 'water spring'
    "A water spring"
    dobjFor(Drink)
    {
        preCond = [] 
        verify() {}
        action()
        {
         "You drank from the spring. ";
        }
    }
;[/code]
THEN I realized I wanted to make sure additional verb inputs like "drink from spring" and "drink water from spring" worked, so I created two new actions:

[code]
DefineTAction(DrinkFrom)
;

VerbRule(DrinkFrom)
    ('drink' | 'quaff' | 'imbibe')
        ('from' | 'out' 'of' | 'off' | 'off' 'of') dobjList
    : DrinkFromAction
    verbPhrase = 'drink/drinking (what)'
;

DefineTIAction(DrinkXFrom)
;

VerbRule(DrinkXFrom)
    ('drink' | 'quaff' | 'imbibe') dobjList
        ('from' | 'out' 'of' | 'off' | 'off' 'of') singleIobj
    : DrinkXFromAction
    verbPhrase = 'drink/drinking (what)'
;[/code]

Aaaand here's where I probably went crazy: The only way I could figure out for these two actions to have the exact same effect as Drink was to copy the exact same code three times, so the spring object ends up looking like this:

[code]    
+spring: Fixture 'divine holy water/spring/pool' 'water spring'
    "A water spring"
    dobjFor(Drink)
    {
        preCond = [] 
        verify() {}
        action()
        {
         "You drank from the spring. ";
        }
    }
    dobjFor(DrinkFrom)
    {
        preCond = [] 
        verify() {}
        action()
        {
         "You drank from the spring. ";
        }
    }
    dobjFor(DrinkXFrom)
    {
        preCond = [] 
        verify() {}
        action()
        {
         "You drank from the spring. ";
        }
    }
;[/code]

I get the feeling that there should probably be a tidier way to do this, but I can't figure out how to make Remap work for me here.[/rant]

Second and third problems are about Wearables, or rather my custom class of Wearables, called Equipment. This first one has to do with default message responses. Here's the gist of the code:
[rant][code]class Equipment: Wearable
    dobjFor(Wear)
    {
        preCond = [objHeld]
        verify()
        {
            if (isWornBy(gActor))
                illogicalAlready(&alreadyWearingMsg);
        }
        action()
        {
            equipAlterStats();
            makeWornBy(gActor);
            defaultReport(&okayWearMsg);
        }
    }
    dobjFor(Doff)
    {
        preCond = [roomToHoldObj]
        verify()
        {
            if (!isWornBy(gActor))
                illogicalAlready(&notWearingMsg);
            else
                logicalRank(150, 'worn');
        }
        action()
        {
            unequipAlterStats();
            makeWornBy(nil);
            defaultReport(&okayDoffMsg);
        }
    }
    equipAlterStats()
    {
        gPlayerChar.ATK += ATK;
    }
    unequipAlterStats()
    {
        gPlayerChar.ATK -= ATK;
    }
;

class Weapon: Equipment
    okayWearMsg = "You are now wielding <<theName>>. "
    alreadyWearingMsg = "You are already wielding <<theName>>. "
    notWearingMsg = "You are not currently wielding <<theName>>. "
    okayDoffMsg = "You are no longer wielding <<theName>>. "
;

dagger: Weapon 'steel small rusted knife/dagger' 'rusted dagger' @springArea
    "It's a small rusted dagger. "
    ATK = 10
;[/code]

The main point of this mess is to have the (still very unfinished) equipAlterStats() and unequipAlterStats() methods executed when the objects are equipped or unequipped, thus having the typical effect of RPG equipment: altering stats. The point of the subClass Weapon is to customize the messages according to the type of object (You [b]wield[/b] a weapon, but you'd [b]wear[/b] an armor and so on). It all works pretty well except for [b]illogicalAlready(&alreadyWearingMsg)[/b] and [b]illogicalAlready(&notWearingMsg)[/b], since these already print their own "you are already..." messages, so the output ends up looking as:

>equip dagger
(first taking the rusted dagger)
You are now wielding the rusted dagger. 

>equip dagger
You are already wielding the rusted dagger. [b]You’re already wearing it. [/b]

>unequip dagger
You are no longer wielding the rusted dagger. 

>unequip dagger
You are not currently wielding the rusted dagger. [b]You’re not wearing that. [/b]

The parts in bold are redundant and I can't figure out how to get rid of them.[/rant]

The third issue... I don't even know where to begin. The aim here is to no allow for more than a single sample of each type of equipment to be equipped at once. So if an item from the Weapon class (like the dagger above) is equipped and the player tries to Equip another Weapon item, like say:
[rant][code]sword: Weapon 'steel rusted sword/blade' 'rusted sword' @springArea
    "It's a small rusted blade. "
    ATK = 10
;[/code]

I'd want the game to automatically unequip the dagger and equip the sword.

The macro bcressey showed me before...

[code]#define MakeClassList(K, N) \
##N : object \
\
    lst() \
    { \
    if (lst_ == nil) \
        initLst(); \
    return lst_; \
    } \
\
    initLst() \
    { \
        lst_ = new Vector(50); \
        local obj = firstObj(); \
        while (obj != nil) \
        { \
            if(obj.ofKind(##K)) \
                lst_.append(obj); \
            obj = nextObj(obj); \
        } \
        lst_ = lst_.toList(); \
    } \
\
    indexOf(val) \
    { \
        if (lst_ == nil) \
            initLst(); \
        return lst_.indexOf(val); \
    } \
\
   indexWhich(func) \
   { \
      if (lst_ == nil) \
         initLst(); \
      return lst_.indexWhich(func); \
   } \
\
    subset(func) \
    { \
        if (lst_ == nil) \
            initLst(); \
        return lst_.subset(func); \
    } \
\
    lst_ = nil \[/code]

...allows me to create a list with all Weapon-class objects via [b]MakeClassList(Weapon, allWeapons)[/b], but I can't figure out a way to use it in away that I could add a check so that, upon trying to execute the (customized above) dobjFor(Wear) action of one of these Weapons, it'd check if any other objects of its class are already being worn, and if so, would execute that respective object's (customized) dobjFor(Doff) action. If that's not doable, I'd settle for simply stopping the Wear action and having the player manually unequip the Weapon before equipping the new one. This is... probably because I don't actually understand how to use the macro's lists, I just rolled with the code bcressey handed me already made when I used it for rooms and now I'm paying the price of using code I don't even understand fully.[/rant]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2502&start=0#p17211
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Hint request -- Wetlands
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-05-26 15:42:25

Awesome, thanks!  Those two puzzle elements were the two current things that I didn't understand, and yet I never even thought of connecting them.  [emote]:oops:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2501&start=0#p17212
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Interactive elements in static fiction
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-26 16:52:44

One genre of traditional fiction which certainly has interactive elements is the classic murder mystery.  The reader of such a work is not expected to read passively, letting the detective-protagonist do all the work of figuring out whodunnit.  Rather, it is assumed that the reader will compete with the fictional detective, trying to solve the case in his own mind [i]before[/i] he gets to the dramatic final scene where the detective calls all of the suspects into the drawing room and reveals who did the dastardly deed.  It is for this very reason that the author of a classic mystery is viewed as having been "unfair" if the solution depends on facts which were not revealed, or at least hinted at, to the reader in advance of the big reveal -- just as an IF puzzle can legitimately be viewed as "unfair" if it requires knowledge unavailable to the player.

   Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2502&start=0#p17213
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Hint request -- Wetlands
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-26 18:22:54

Oh hey wait:

[spoiler]You found a mural under the newer mural? Is it possible to get the flagpole without doing that? I think I missed it.[/spoiler]

I had to hit the walkthrough several times, but I actually got that puzzle quickly, because I'd spent so long trying everything I could find on that puzzle that I was on the alert for the object whose description indicated it might work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2502&start=0#p17214
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Hint request -- Wetlands
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-05-26 18:31:28

[quote="matt w"]
[spoiler]You found a mural under the newer mural? Is it possible to get the flagpole without doing that? I think I missed it.[/spoiler][/quote]

[spoiler]I didn't even take the flag until I revealed the older mural, but there's nothing to indicate that the two actions are related to each other other than the fact that the hint for the older mural appears in the same paragraph that the flag is mentioned in:
[quote]Some paint in the center of the mural seems to be peeling away. A green flag hangs from a pole stuck into the wall.[/quote][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2504&start=0#p17215
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: help with shopping
User: VTYVP / DateTime: 2011-05-26 20:36:33

hi i have found code in inform7 in money for nothing, frozen assets and juggling. do i put the code from all three in or just one? I amtrying to set up buying or shopping. i will have more than one vendor but each vendor will be selling only one thing. I am trying to put the money in the wallet. but when i look in the wallet it gives the description only. when i try to buy or give money it says i have no money. i have made the wallet a player's holdall and said "there is money in the wallet." i have said a hundred-dollar bill is a kind of money then said "there are 8 hundered-dollar bills in the wallet." still there is nothing in the wallet. What am i doing wrong?? [emote]:?:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2505&start=0#p17216
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Laziness is setting in
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-26 21:01:17

Not a question, just a bit of a lament:

I've created a bunch of interesting objects, and written the code so they behave the way they're supposed to when the player does the "right" thing with them (that is, when he uses them in the way which will move the story forward and eventually lead to a "winning" ending).  Now the time has come to deal with all the [i]other[/i] things the player might try with each object.  And since each object can be in a number of different states (each representing a particular permutation of all of the various things that can change about the object throughout the course of a game) the possibilities add up.

No big deal -- the number of permutations is not at the totally unmanageable level, and coding the necessary responses is pretty straightforward.  The problem is, I'm starting to get lazy.  I'm starting to think of reasons to prevent a particular object from getting into a particular state, just so I don't have to deal with writing responses for every action for that object in that state.

I know it's a mistake.  I know the game will suffer for it.  I know what I [i]should[/i] do.   But I can't seem to get up the energy to do it.

The other approach would be to move on to something else for now (like working out plotting problems or creating additional interesting objects) and try to convince myself that I'll come back later to fill in all the missing responses.  The problem is, I'm not quite gullible enough to buy that (if any of you believe it, I've got a bridge going to Brooklyn that you might be interested in).

Ah, well.   [emote]:([/emote]


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2506&start=0#p17217
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: i think this is the only interactive fiction forum
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-05-26 21:02:19

i cant beleve it if is awsome! is it the only one?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2497&start=0#p17218
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Every turn timing
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-26 21:40:09

Thanks for all the approaches folks.

I think EmacsUser's approach will address all my problems in this case. There were lots of offshoot issues I didn't go into. After reading that bit of code, I dug into Standard Rules again and got a stronger sense of the every turn rules.

Also thanks for the link to the chart file.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2506&start=0#p17219
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: i think this is the only interactive fiction forum
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-05-26 22:11:02

[url=http://forum.adrift.co/]Adrift[/url] has a fairly active forum as well. It's largely independent of this one.

Many of us are refugees from [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/topics]raif[/url], though the exodus is not yet complete.

You may also be interested in [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Main_Page]IFWiki[/url] and [url=http://ifdb.tads.org]IFDB[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2508&start=0#p17220
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Short, kid-friendly IF
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2011-05-26 23:45:17

A friend of mine wants to introduce her not-quite-eight-year-old to interactive fiction, and she's looking for a short, kid-appropriate game that is extremely newbie-friendly.  I suggested Wishbringer and Aotearoa, but they're not all that short.  Does anyone have a great bite-sized suggestion?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=0#p17221
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Glk sound API plans
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-27 00:14:31

I had intended to get into the stylesheet question as my next Glk project. However, it occurs to me that none of the libraries I support *have* sound. So I can toss in new APIs without doing any hard work. :)

By the same token, I don't exactly know what the implementation issues are. So I'll start with some questions.

My plan is to add two Glk calls:

[code]
schanid_t glk_schannel_create_ext(glui32 rock, glui32 volume);
[/code]

This is just like glk_schannel_create(), except you can specify a start volume other than the default 0x10000. I don't anticipate any implementation problems with this.

[code]
void glk_schannel_set_volume_ext(schanid_t chan, glui32 vol, glui32 duration, glui32 notify);
[/code]

If duration and notify are zero, this is just like glk_schannel_set_volume().

If the duration is nonzero, the volume change occurs smoothly over the given number of milliseconds. (Specify 1000 for a one-second volume change.)

If the notify flag is nonzero, you'll get an evtype_VolumeNotify when the volume change is complete (or shortly thereafter, since Glk events err on the side of late).

At most one volume change can be occurring on a sound channel at any time. If you call a volume-setting function while a previous volume change is in progress, the previous change is interrupted.

--------

Open questions, for people who support sound-capable Glk libraries:

First, is this volume change stuff viable? (Both on the OS side and on the libmodplug side.) It's clearly what audio I7 extensions need to stop being hacked-up monstrosities -- no offense to Damusix, but there's no good way to do volume changes now, and this would permit it. *If* it can actually be implemented.

If you interrupt a volume change, can I specify that the new volume change starts at wherever the volume was where it was interrupted? Can you implement that? The other options are to leave the behavior unspecified, or specify that the volume jumps to the end of the interrupted volume change before starting its new change. The latter is mandating clicks, and the former leaves the possibility of clicks open (which means authors have to avoid the whole situation).

Are there any libraries that support sound but don't support sound notification events? I'd like to tighten that up, and say that notification events (sound and volume) are a mandatory feature rather than optional. This would make I7 extension code much simpler.

EDIT-ADD: I also considered an API call for "destroy this sound channel, after reducing the volume to zero over N milliseconds". Clearly this isn't necessary; you can make it happen using a volume change with notification. However, it might be convenient. If not all libraries wind up supporting volume notifications, it might be necessary after all. But maybe those libraries couldn't provide the feature at all?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2508&start=0#p17222
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Short, kid-friendly IF
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-05-27 00:35:06

[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=bxio01ferbyxr4rk]The Sleeping Princess[/url] might be your best bet. It's a bit bigger than bite-sized, but still very short. Kids are the intended audience, so the language and puzzles are simple. It even has a built-in tutorial. The only drawback is that the tutorial isn't integrated into the story; it's a separate mode invoked by typing TUTORIAL at the beginning of the game. (And you have to read the ABOUT text to find out about the TUTORIAL command. And if you don't play the tutorial before you start the story mode, it won't let you do it later, even though the ABOUT text still suggests it.)

You can also have a look at the IFDB poll [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/poll?id=z9shyw6mdia3jdud]Games suitable for children[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2503&start=0#p17223
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Remapping actions, default message outputs and... stuff.
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-05-27 01:14:45

My T3 is extremely rusty ... but with respect to your third query, you might look at p. 140 of "Learning T3." That page might suggest code like the following (totally untested and may not compile even if you substitute your own class and method names):

[code]foreach (local cur in me.contents) {
     if (cur.ofKind(sameWeaponClass) {
          cur.specialDoffMethod();
     }
}[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2504&start=0#p17224
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: help with shopping
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-05-27 01:22:20

Difficult to tell without seeing your code ... but I note that you've spelled "hundred" two different ways in your message. Inform won't be able to guess that that's a typo. If you say:
[code]
A hundred-dollar bill is a kind of thing.

Eight hundered-dollar bills are in the wallet.[/code]

...Inform will cheerfully create a different thing called "eight hundered-dollar bills" and put it in the wallet. There will be only one object in the wallet, not eight.

That's just one example of what might be going wrong. Probably it's something completely different.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2501&start=0#p17225
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Interactive elements in static fiction
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-05-27 04:25:10

[quote="Bainespal"]The movie watcher must figure out the relationship between shots that are cut together and imagine a narrative to connect them, following the story as it develops from shot to shot and from scene to scene. So, I can agree that movies also require audience participation.[/quote]
Even if you're not into comics you'll find Scott MCloud's [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_Comics]Understanding Comics[/url] an interesting piece of research, as it digs [i]a lot[/i] into that "filling the gaps" subject, beeing comics a medium in which ellipsis is just everywhere you look at and the reader is expected to be constantly filling the details from panel to panel. No one has ever suggested, though, that this feature make comics qualify as an interactive medium at all. Incidentally, I recently aquired (but haven't found the time to read yet) Jason Shiga's [url=http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2010/04/take-your-pick-with-meanwhile-by-jason-shiga/]Meanwhile[/url], sort of a cleverly implemented CYOA graphic novel whith tons of diferent endings which looks fun!

[quote="zarf"]Each form gives you room to tell a sneaky story that requires the reader-viewer to put things together from incomplete evidence -- or be misled by their assumptions about what's in the gaps. The techniques will differ, because they're different sorts of gaps.[/quote]
[quote="Robert Rothman"]One genre of traditional fiction which certainly has interactive elements is the classic murder mystery. The reader of such a work is not expected to read passively, letting the detective-protagonist do all the work of figuring out whodunnit. Rather, it is assumed that the reader will compete with the fictional detective, trying to solve the case in his own mind before he gets to the dramatic final scene where the detective calls all of the suspects into the drawing room and reveals who did the dastardly deed.[/quote]
Denis Wheatley anyone? [emote]:-)[/emote] I mean, both quotes from zarf and Robert reminded me inmediately of this popular British author of both mystery novels and board games who mixed those interests in his 1930's series "[url=http://www.denniswheatley.info/crimedossiers.htm]The Crime Dossiers[/url]". They are considered as a variant of "murder mystery novels" even when they consisted of an actual dossier in a folder filled with evidence of the crime (photos, interviews, reports, items as cigarettes ends, pills...) and a sealed envelope with the mystery solution the reader could open and check when she thought she had figured out who the real suspect was. Quotting the web linked before:

[quote]The physical clues in all four of the dossiers included both real items such as cigarette ends, curls of hair, bloodstained material, 'poison' pills, scene of crime photographs etc. and clever facsimiles of spoof cablegrams, reports, interviews with suspects, handwritten letters and newspaper cuttings.  The very complex mysteries presented, required the reader to be a fully engaged and active participant in the investigation rather than merely absorbing a story in a largely passive way as with most detective fiction.  There is no narrative as such, the reader provides that himself, by assimilating the facts and assessing the evidence surrounding the case.  The result is therefore a curious cross between a work of fiction to be read and a game to be played.[/quote]
Sounds familiar? Of course the "There's no narrative as such" bit is quite a challenging statement, as suggesting that a suppossed static antecedent of interactive fiction is to be considered as that due to its lack of narrative is likely to open a vivid debate [emote]:-)[/emote] . Anyway, the relation between these Wheatly's Crime Dossiers and IF goes as afr as the first of them "Murder Off Miami" [url=http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0006726&loadpics=3]beeing adapted in 1986 to an actual IF work[/url] by the people of Delta 4. Not to mention that the very first thing the people at Infocom did right after releasing their version of an "explore-the-cave" game was a murder mystery game packaged in a folder with tons of feelies in form of crime evidence. I'm not sure right now wether Infocom's Deadline was Wheatly inspired or not, but the concept has quite a few similarities.


[center][url=http://img22.imageshack.us/i/dscn1437h.jpg/][img]http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/8889/dscn1437h.th.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://img20.imageshack.us/i/dscn1440.jpg/][img]http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/8532/dscn1440.th.jpg[/img][/url]
[url=http://img266.imageshack.us/i/dscn2040.jpg/][img]http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/9171/dscn2040.th.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://img146.imageshack.us/i/dscn2044h.jpg/][img]http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/6294/dscn2044h.th.jpg[/img][/url][/center]


--

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2505&start=0#p17226
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Laziness is setting in
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-05-27 05:41:58

I know you didn't ask for advice, but here's some anyway:

Code all the essential stuff first. Get a working, beginning-to-end draft of your game going. Make sure every activity functions, of course (and make sure your code is well-organized so you can tweak bits of it easily down the road).

Then, do buttloads of testing with as many testers as you can find, have them send in their complete game transcripts, and I can almost guarantee you that [i]when you see them hitting generic responses to things that need clever responses,[/i] you [i]will [/i]be motivated to code in those clever responses. They'll also help you prioritize, because you'll see some of those unacceptably generic responses multiple times, and that'll be a nice red flag for you.

Really. Laziness on fringe stuff is fine for now, because it won't survive the testing process. Those testing transcripts will light the appropriate fire under your butt, at exactly the right time for your butt to start burning.

For now, forgive yourself your lack of superhuman energy, and just focus on getting that sucker playable from A to Z.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2505&start=0#p17227
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Laziness is setting in
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-05-27 07:26:46

I think Ghalev's advice is really critical, because I've given up on many IF projects mainly because I was trying to implement all the details of sections of the model world without having a clue of how the whole game would fit together.  Sometimes I knew the story I wanted to tell and sometimes I didn't, but I never developed and implemented a coherently-designed game, and as a result, I always became frustrated and gave up.

I've learned that I always need to develop a moderately detailed plan before I implement anything at all.  My objective right now is to get a working prototype going.  After having implemented most of the locations in the game, as well as a couple puzzles connecting the early-game locations to the midgame region, I discovered that my original plan (which I had somewhat diverged from) was not detailed or accurate enough.  I know what puzzles I want, but I'm not clear as to how all the necessary objects are going to work together.  I could start coding objects that I think I need, but that would probably be a recipe for another failure, based on my past experiences.  Therefore, I decided to call what I have "ALPHA 1" and to step back from implementation until I rewrite my notes more accurately.  I may offer my current, very crude and incomplete prototype to a couple people to test.

Robert, it sounds like you've developed your game a lot more thoroughly so far than I have mine.  You may be well past the "critical" point in development already, whatever that is.  I'm sure you will be able to finish your project.  I offer my experiences in case they may be relevant in any way. [emote]:-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2505&start=0#p17228
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Laziness is setting in
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-05-27 07:27:37

No matter what language I have been working in (from Basic through ADA) I have found that doing a skeletal code first then comming back and filling in the details after the skeleten is working is a quite convenient and rappid method. [emote]:ugeek:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2505&start=0#p17229
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Laziness is setting in
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-05-27 07:30:33

Should have checked my spelling:

No matter what language I have been working in (from Basic through ADA) I have found that doing a skeletal code first then coming back and filling in the details after the skeleton is working is a quite convenient and rapid method. [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2510&start=0#p17230
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: An Odd Idea - Feedback Requested
User: Biophysicist / DateTime: 2011-05-27 08:12:10

I don't exactly know where I got this idea, but I think it may be cool. On the other hand, it may suck. So I'm asking for your opinion. ...The idea is a form of two-player interactive fiction, where one player controls a character as normal, and the other player is a narrator. The narrator is, in terms of the effect on the game, similar to an interpreter, with the obvious difference being that the narrator can respond much more freely. More specifically, there WOULD be a standard interpreter, but its output goes through the narrator, who can change it. The narrator can also give commands to the game world, like "spawn a kitten at the location and make it edible", using a "scripting language" (in quotes because the "scripts" will usually be one line long). Properties would be defined as needed - in the example, the kitten's description would not need to be defined until the player examines the kitten.

So... Is this stupid?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2508&start=0#p17231
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Short, kid-friendly IF
User: Mr. Patient / DateTime: 2011-05-27 08:26:04

The name might take a bit of explaining, but The Game Formerly Known as Hidden Nazi Mode is very kid-friendly and can be played in just a few minutes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2505&start=0#p17232
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Laziness is setting in
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-05-27 08:53:57

Move on for now.  If it makes you feel better, make notes in the code that are easy to find; if you ever hit a point where you want to do one or two things, but don't have time to get into code, you can always knock a couple responses down.  

If you're using Inform 7, I stole someone else's method (Matt's, maybe?) of including << in comments that I want to come back to for sure, ie [<<Incomplete>>].  It works really well - it's a good reminder of the issues I need to work on, especially when outputted in the transcript:

>throw someone a bone
<<Snarky response required>>.

Then you can search the transcripts later for stuff you need to add.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2510&start=0#p17233
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: An Odd Idea - Feedback Requested
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-27 09:56:18

It's not really a new idea at all.  Back in the days before it was taken for granted that computers would be used for everything, we used to play D&D-type games much as you are describing.  One individual--call him dungeonmaster, gamemaster, narrator or whatever--would have created a world (or he might use somebody else's "canned" world).  One or more other players would explore the world; they would tell the DM what they wanted to do, and he would describe the responses of the world to their actions.  Generally, the DM would work from previously planned ideas, but he could always ad-lib if the players did something unexpected or the game just went in a different direction than he had anticipated.  Interposing a computer to transmit and perhaps interpret the communications between the DM and the player(s) doesn't really change the basic nature.  It's certainly fun -- different than conventional IF, but a valid and fun approach in its own right.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2510&start=0#p17234
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: An Odd Idea - Feedback Requested
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-05-27 09:57:36

You may want to check out Jason Rohrer's [i]Sleep Is Death[/i] for a graphical version of something like what you describe: <a class="postlink" href="http://sleepisdeath.net/">http://sleepisdeath.net/</a>

Personally, I find it hard to gauge whether a [i]mechanic[/i] is stupid; it's all in what you do with it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2508&start=0#p17235
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Short, kid-friendly IF
User: Rotonoto / DateTime: 2011-05-27 11:07:20

"Winter Wonderland" (the one by Laura Knauth) is very cool, but also not short. Why not "For a Change?"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2503&start=0#p17236
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Remapping actions, default message outputs and... stuff.
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-05-27 11:09:59

For the first issue, it's trivial to [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/gsg/remap.htm]remap one action to another[/url] when they are both TAction. 

[code]
modify Thing
    dobjFor(DrinkFrom)    remapTo(Drink, self)
;
[/code]

It gets slightly more complex when you are mapping a TIAction to a TAction, because then you are discarding some information. I would make all your springs, fountains etc inherit from a common class to simplify the remapping.

[rant][code]
// this code kind of works, but see below for a better way
class WaterSource: Fixture
    iobjFor(DrinkXFrom)    remapTo(Drink, self)
;
[/code][/rant]

Here you just want to make sure that every logical thing that the player could drink from the source is included in the vocabWords for that source. So >DRINK WATER FROM SPRING would be the same as >DRINK SPRING FROM SPRING, and you can happily collapse it to >DRINK SPRING without any risk.

When the player types something random like >DRINK CHERRY COKE FROM SPRING it should fail with an appropriate message. But if they enter >DRINK GLADIUS SWORD FROM SPRING and the player has that sword equipped it will accept the input.

If that bothers you, you have to handle this on the direct object instead of the indirect object:
[code]
modify Thing
    dobjFor(DrinkXFrom)
    {
        remap = (isDrinkable ? [DrinkAction, gIobj] : nil)
        verify() { nonObvious; }
        check() { failCheck('You wouldn\'t know where to begin. '); }
    }
    isDrinkable() { return nil; }
;

class WaterSource: Fixture
    isDrinkable() { return true; }
;
[/code]

This should fail >DRINK GLADIUS SWORD FROM SPRING and allow >DRINK WATER FROM TREE. The latter collapses to >DRINK TREE which should be covered by the DrinkAction's default failure messages.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2508&start=0#p17237
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Short, kid-friendly IF
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-27 11:10:21

"Mite" is short and kid-oriented, but I don't know if it's really newbie-friendly enough -- it doesn't have tutorial mode or anything as I recall.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2511&start=0#p17238
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: [New Game] Cryptozookeeper
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2011-05-27 12:37:17

Cryptozookeeper is a graphical text adventure written in Hugo 3.1. It's available for download via the Internet Archive here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.archive.org/details/Cryptozookeeper">http://www.archive.org/details/Cryptozookeeper</a>

(Grab cryptozookeeper.zip for the whole thing.)

A Windows Hugo terp is included, but I put together the links for the Mac and Linux interpreters at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.cryptozookeeper.com">http://www.cryptozookeeper.com</a> - thanks, and I hope you enjoy the game.

Robb Sherwin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2505&start=0#p17239
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Laziness is setting in
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-27 13:00:26

[quote="Robert Rothman"]The problem is, I'm starting to get lazy.  I'm starting to think of reasons to prevent a particular object from getting into a particular state, just so I don't have to deal with writing responses for every action for that object in that state.[/quote]
That's not necessarily lazy. Think of it from the player's point of view. The player wants to advance the story. Will putting a particular object into a particular state derail the story? If so, does the player really want to derail the story? If the answer is no, than an excuse for not taking that action (or a reason why the action failed) may be exactly what the player wants. Just make it a good one - it could be funny or reasonable or even provide new light on the situation.

But if it's stopping you from getting it done, don't do it. I certainly don't have the same "broken windows" approach to writing as I do to programming. Programming is building a tool according to a specification: Every component has to work a certain way, and that way is clearly defined. So every component has to be right when it's built. Writing is not like that. All forms of writing start out as a rough draft and then go through a process of editing. IF is no different - you can't build it to spec because the measure of success is not objective. You have to make [i]something[/i] first, and then see how successful it is before you fix it.

In general, my method for combating laziness is to make sure I get [i]something[/i] done every day. It could be a line of flavor text, tweaking an extension, a response to an unproductive action, [i]anything[/i]. No judgment - judgment kills creativity. There will be time for playtesting and editing later. If you were to ask me what's stopping you from finishing your project, I would say it's not laziness, but self-criticism.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2501&start=0#p17240
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Interactive elements in static fiction
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-27 13:14:23

[quote="Bainespal"]Movies also require the viewer to piece together the narrative between the specified details -- in this case, shots.  Watching a movie, you might see a medium-distance shot of an actor walking toward a door, and then a close-up of that actor's hand pulling the doorknob to open the door.  The viewer "fills in" that the person on-screen has walked all the way to the door and opened it, even though he or she didn't see all that in one sequence.  The movie watcher must figure out the relationship between shots that are cut together and imagine a narrative to connect them, following the story as it develops from shot to shot and from scene to scene.[/quote]
This is a weird concidence. I was just talking about this article in a completely different context:

<a class="postlink" href="http://blog.techfun.org/zentv/">http://blog.techfun.org/zentv/</a>
[quote]For 10 minutes simply count the technical events that occur while you are watching any show. This is a TET or Technical Events Test as Jerry Mander discusses it in Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television. What is a technical event? We’ve all seen TV cameras in banks and jewelry stores. A stationary video camera simply recording what’s in front of it is what I will call "pure TV." Anything other than pure TV is a technical event: the camera zooms up, that’s a technical event; you are watching someone’s profile talking and suddenly you are switched to another person responding, that’s a technical event; a car is driving down the road and you also hear music playing, that’s a technical event. Simply count the number of times there is a cut, zoom, superimposition, voice-over, appearance of words on the screen, fade in/out, etc.[/quote]
[quote]In doing the TET, we notice the discrete segments of independent footage that are presented with a rapid-fire quality. As we watch, we, the "passive" viewers, apparently put together, synthesize and integrate the scenes: we link, we knit, we chain, we retain the past and anticipate the future. We methodically weave them all together into a coherent narrative. A high-speed filling-in-the-blanks and connecting-the-dots occurs. Our actively synthesizing mind, our labor, goes on while we sit back, relax and absorb. This high-speed integration of often wildly disconnected phenomena (angles, scenes, persons, music) is experienced in the mode of blank and passive absorption. It would seem that our minds are in high gear without our knowing.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2504&start=0#p17241
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: help with shopping
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-05-27 14:04:08

[quote="VTYVP"]hi i have found code in inform7 in money for nothing, frozen assets and juggling. do i put the code from all three in or just one?[/quote]
There are different methods for implementing money and buying in Interactive Fiction. The I7 examples take a variety of different approaches, and are therefore not necessarily compatible with one another. It sounds as though you want to simulate money by implementing individual bills and / or coins. The three examples you're working with ("Money for Nothing," "Frozen Assets," and "Introduction to Juggling") don't do this. They merely keep track of how much a thing costs and how much the player has by storing that info as a numerically - based property. If you want to implement individual bills, use the code from "Nickel and Dimed." (Also, as Jim pointed out, watch your spelling.) Also note that ch 9.4 of the Inform Recipe Book (the second half of the documentation that came with I7) groups all the money - related examples together to help you better compare and contrast them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2501&start=0#p17242
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Interactive elements in static fiction
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-05-27 14:57:34

I still think that "interactive" is a misleading term to use in cases where the only energy the reader/viewer applies is mental, but I can't think of a better one-word term for works that encourage mental engagement; perhaps the closest term is simply "interesting."  It seems to me that there's a big difference between those crime dossiers and an ordinary murder mystery: If the box described the former as "an interactive mystery," I would probably accept it, since you're actively handling objects and such, but I wouldn't accept the same description of the latter.  (You can construct even more of a continuum if you include things like those books of five-minute mysteries where you look up the answer in the back.)

Still, all these examples are quite different from the OP's example, which doesn't invite mental engagement in the form of problem-solving or predicting what will happen at all.  In that case, "immersive" is probably the most accurate term for what it has in common with IF (making it feel like it's happening to you).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2511&start=0#p17243
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: [New Game] Cryptozookeeper
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-05-27 15:33:11

A new Robb Sherwin game! Yey!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=0#p17244
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-05-27 16:06:35

[quote="zarf"]First, is this volume change stuff viable? (Both on the OS side and on the libmodplug side.)[/quote]As far as Windows Glk goes, this seems doable. In Windows Glk all the various sound format decoders (including libmodplug) are used to produce raw waveform data, which is then fed into DirectSound (the bit of Windows that plays the sounds) via a rolling buffer. There are two obvious ways of tackling this with DirectSound:
[list]
[*]Repeatedly change the volume in small increments on the DirectSound buffers directly (as there is a SetVolume() call). This call is what's used at present, but might that give rise to clicks as mentioned by the recent poster on this subject? Hopefully not.[/*:m]
[*]Scale the raw waveform data as it goes into DirectSound. More complicated, but possibly allowing more control.[/*:m][/list:u]
Anyway, more investigation is needed, but it should be possible one way or the other. I should also have a look to see how Mike's Windows TADS code handles fades. libmodplug seems to have some sort of volume related interface, but I'm not keen to use it here.
[quote="zarf"]If you interrupt a volume change, can I specify that the new volume change starts at wherever the volume was where it was interrupted?[/quote]That seems okay.
[quote="zarf"]Are there any libraries that support sound but don't support sound notification events?[/quote]Windows Glk supports the events, so I'm okay to make them mandatory. It's nearly always better to make life harder for interpreter authors than for game authors.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2512&start=0#p17245
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Clarifying the parser's choice
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-27 17:10:43

I like being able to supply a "rule for clarifying the parser's choice" of something, but there seem to be a lot of parser messages that this doesn't cover. For example, I don't think it affects the second noun. I think there may be other cases too (sometimes I've seen the parser write out the whole action including the verb). Is there any way to get at these?

[code]
Rule for clarifying the parser's choice of the lawnmower:
    Do nothing.
[/code]
[quote]
> mow grass
(with the lawnmower)
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2512&start=0#p17246
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Clarifying the parser's choice
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-27 17:14:29

Duh. This particular case was caused by one of my own rules. Damn.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2512&start=0#p17247
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Clarifying the parser's choice
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-27 18:28:41

[quote="capmikee"]Duh. This particular case was caused by one of my own rules. Damn.[/quote]

We've all done it.  And will do it again.

But don't you hate it when it happens, and you realize you did it to yourself?  Then you have to figure out which is more important, and/or how to reword things so they all still work the way you intended them to.

That's part of the fun...  I think.   [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2503&start=0#p17248
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Remapping actions, default message outputs and... stuff.
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-05-27 18:58:13

For the second issue, change defaultReport to either mainReport or reportFailure.

The article on [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/techman/t3transcript.htm]transcript manipulation[/url] has more details. Essentially all library messages are implemented as defaultReports, and they silently disappear as long as one of the main report types is used.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2511&start=0#p17249
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: [New Game] Cryptozookeeper
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2011-05-27 19:16:33

I think you just won $60 [emote]:-)[/emote]

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2511&start=0#p17250
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: [New Game] Cryptozookeeper
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2011-05-27 19:22:37

[quote="jacksonmead"]I think you just won $60 [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Haha!  I was telling Jacq on the mud today that one of the silliest motivating factors was the IFDB link that just had the IntroComp version up. It did drive me a little crazy, but it was motivating nonetheless!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2513&start=0#p17251
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: J.D. Berry's "Sparrow Song" -- getting past the beginning?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-27 20:44:16

I've started playing "Sparrow's Song," and I've gone to basically all the locations that seem to be available from the beginning, talked to several NPCs about various topics, and picked up a couple of things... and I basically have no idea how to make any further progress. Is there something obvious to do?

[spoiler]I currently have a locket, a peace treaty, my stick, and some clothes. I've talked to Cordelia, Tilson, Arctos, and the beholder. I'm considering kissing Cordelia just to see if I can advance the plot (though I'm sure the game would refuse).[/spoiler]

If anyone is aware of a walkthrough or better yet hints, that would be super peachy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2514&start=0#p17252
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: June 4th: Combination Online/Offline Playthrough
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-05-27 20:57:12

This week, the SF Bay Area IF Group is going to try something that (to the best of my knowledge) has never been done before: we're going to try to play some interactive fiction in a combination online/offline event.
 
Every Saturday at 11am Pacific, ClubFloyd meets online to play interactive fiction together in ifMUD.
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.allthingsjacq.com/interactive_fiction.html#clubfloyd">http://www.allthingsjacq.com/interactiv ... #clubfloyd</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://ifmud.port4000.com/">http://ifmud.port4000.com/</a>
 
On Saturday, June 4th we'll meet in person (location TBD) in front of a big monitor and a streaming webcam; we're going to try playing a ClubFloyd game in person together with everyone playing online.
 
Which game? Uh, well, we'll be playing my game, "Choice of Broadsides," which now has an offline command-line version specifically designed for ClubFloyd. [emote]:-)[/emote]
 
(The location will most likely be my office in San Francisco, right by Montgomery St. BART, but I'll have to confirm that on Tuesday.)
 
Will it work? Will it be a catastrophe? Nobody knows. That's why you should be there, either logged into ifMUD at 11am Pacific or in person at the SF Bay Area IF Meetup!

For more details, see the full listing:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.meetup.com/sf-bay-area-interactive-fiction/events/20019741/">http://www.meetup.com/sf-bay-area-inter ... /20019741/</a>

When: Saturday, June 4, 2011 11:00 AM

Where: (A location has not been chosen yet.)

This Meetup repeats on the 1st Saturday of every month.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2511&start=0#p17253
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: [New Game] Cryptozookeeper
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-05-27 20:57:44

Woo; congrats on the release!

Downloading now via the pub's glacially-slow and overloaded wireless. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2501&start=10#p17254
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Interactive elements in static fiction
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-05-27 21:03:27

[quote="katz"]I still think that "interactive" is a misleading term to use in cases where the only energy the reader/viewer applies is mental, but I can't think of a better one-word term for works that encourage mental engagement; perhaps the closest term is simply "interesting."[/quote]

Sometimes "interesting." Sometimes "engaging." Sometimes "immersive." Sometimes "thought-provoking." Sometimes "inspiring." Sometimes "so annoying I want to throttle the writer," which would be the closest thing to real interaction ... [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote](You can construct even more of a continuum if you include things like those books of five-minute mysteries where you look up the answer in the back.)[/quote]

Or their non-identical-twin sibling, Encyclopedia Brown stories. Ah, memories.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2505&start=0#p17255
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Laziness is setting in
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-05-27 21:06:32

[quote="wgm003"]No matter what language I have been working in (from Basic through ADA) I have found that doing a skeletal code first then coming back and filling in the details after the skeleton is working is a quite convenient and rapid method. [emote];)[/emote][/quote]

Likewise, even though I'm a non-programmer working solely in I7 [emote]:)[/emote]

[i]My [/i]problem is ... and it's really kind of embarrassing ... is that I can't resist the temptation to refer to my bare-bones functional version as the "wireframe" version of the game. [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2501&start=10#p17256
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Interactive elements in static fiction
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-05-27 21:34:20

[quote="katz"]Still, all these examples are quite different from the OP's example, which doesn't invite mental engagement in the form of problem-solving or predicting what will happen at all.  In that case, "immersive" is probably the most accurate term for what it has in common with IF (making it feel like it's happening to you).[/quote]
I agree that what seems IF-like to me about the story "Shell" is that it uses some of the same techniques as IF to produce [i]immersion[/i].  I suppose the IF-like immersiveness of the story made me read interactivity into it.  However, the relationship between interactivity and immersion is something I've been thinking through quite a bit, and I keep coming up mostly dry.

[quote="rockersuke"]Even if you're not into comics you'll find Scott MCloud's Understanding Comics an interesting piece of research, as it digs a lot into that "filling the gaps" subject, beeing comics a medium in which ellipsis is just everywhere you look at and the reader is expected to be constantly filling the details from panel to panel. No one has ever suggested, though, that this feature make comics qualify as an interactive medium at all. Incidentally, I recently aquired (but haven't found the time to read yet) Jason Shiga's Meanwhile, sort of a cleverly implemented CYOA graphic novel whith tons of diferent endings which looks fun![/quote]
Although I don't know much about comics, this analogy helps clarify the role of interactivity in my mind.  All narratives will have pre-written segments of story that convey the plot, whether these segments are called "frames" or "shots" or whatever the best equivalent is in IF (we had a big discussion about that a while ago; some people argued for the object as the fundamental unit of meaning in IF, others argued for the "chunk" of text).  In every form, some degree of involvement (if not "interactivity") takes place in the "gaps" between the fundamental segments, while the audience uses its imagination to construct the story from the bits of narrative.  

Actual interactivity takes place when the audience has the ability to supply the gaps, or to input their formulations about what has happened in those gaps into the narrative itself.  I think of commands in IF as the reader literally supplying the "gaps" in the pre-written story.  It does not matter whether different frames/shots/segments are output depending on how a "gap" is formulated; what makes it interactive is that the audience's conception of the gap becomes part of the narrative.  By the definition I'm suggesting here, a CYOA is probably not interactive, because although it takes the reader's conception of the gap into consideration to produce different sections of narrative, the reader's conception of the gap never becomes part of the developing narrative.  (On other threads on this forum, I used to refer to CYOAs as a form of IF; I think I've changed my mind about that.)  On the other hand, a completely linear work that prompts its player to supply his or her ideas of how to connect the sections of plot [i]is[/i] interactive, even with no alternate solutions or endings.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2501&start=10#p17257
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Interactive elements in static fiction
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-05-27 22:11:56

[quote="Bainespal"]By the definition I'm suggesting here, a CYOA is probably not interactive, because although it takes the reader's conception of the gap into consideration to produce different sections of narrative, the reader's conception of the gap never becomes part of the developing narrative.[/quote]

I think you're looking at different levels of illusion, rather than different levels of anything that might reasonably be called "interactivity." The CYOA illusion of interactivity is simpler, sturdier, with clearly-visible boundaries. The IF illusion of interactivity is more complex, brittle, and has uncertain (to the player) boundaries ... but they're both really pulling exactly the same rabbit out of very similar hats.

In both, I (as player) tend to imagine events, sensations, and thoughts that are not considered by the programmed experience ... in one, I can type some of them in get a polite refusal or simple error message. That's not really a greater contribution to the narrative, or any form of "interactivity."

But this is all deep into the shadowy jungles of the purely semantic, so I'm not actually [i]disagreeing [/i]with you, just trying to contrast the terms as I use them with the terms as you use them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2515&start=0#p17258
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Breaking down a story file with extensions...?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-05-27 22:56:54

Brand new to Inform and basically brand new to writing IF. This may have been answered already, but for the love of Miracle Whip, I can't find it. 

I dabbled a bit with AGT some years ago and loved it, but reading the reviews I get the sense that Inform is the generally "preferred" way to go. (No offense to the TADS guys out there.) So, I'm trying to cobble some things together. However, coming from a PHP background, this whole "you must cram everything into a single text file" is driving me absolutely insane. While it the pain may ease slightly once the foundation of the project is in place, I'm currently scrolling all over the place trying to update things as it occurs to me that they need to be updated. As heavily as I comment things,  it's even more difficult to find what I'm looking for.

It seems to me that when you "install" an extension, it does absolutely nothing more than copy it to another directory. Inform reads these directories when it opens and allows you to include them in your story file. I see no indication that it does any sort of "pre-compile" or even touches the extensions once it loads except to read the first and last lines and whatever included documentation. I also see no indication that it attempts to actually load the extension file until it compiles the story, which leads me to wonder if editing the extension while Inform is open even matters.

I also looked at the extension files. They seem to be nothing more than Inform "coding" stored in an external file. They can also be edited inside of Inform.

So my question...

Could a project theoretically be broken down into a collection of "extensions" to ease the editing of a massive story file?

For example, say I want all of my "Every turn" rules to go in a single file, so I know exactly where to find them. I want my tables to go in a single file, so I know where to edit them. I want my rule re-writes to go into a single file, so I know where to edit them.

I "install" these "extensions" and include them in my main story file, preferably in an order that doesn't break the compile. When I'm finished with them, if I don't want to use them in another project, I move them out of the extensions folder and Inform no longer recognizes them and thus they are "uninstalled".

Is there a TECHNICAL reason or limitation in Inform that would prevent this from being feasible?

Include Game Name Globals by I4L.
Include Game Name Coversation Tables by I4L.
Include Game Name Turn Rules by I4L.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2515&start=0#p17259
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Breaking down a story file with extensions...?
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-27 23:07:29

That is what I do.

The main file is the "story".  The rest of it (rules, perversions of rules, tables, etc) are in extensions I create, modify, or both.

For me it keeps the story file clean, and just the story.  And it is easier to find things I need to change or add to if they are in clearly named extensions.  Sort of like writing in C.  Main file has the main routines, the rest of the program is in the include files.  To me each is a module, reusable and self contained.

Edit to add: I do keep things that are used as a whole, together.  So if I have an extension that requires a table, it is in that extension, not a separate one with just tables.  I just find it easier to edit that way as I build it.  Though I see no reason all tables couldn't be in a separate file
(maybe I am wrong in this thinking).  But to me, it seems more organized (and easier to edit) to keep things like tables with the code that uses them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2515&start=0#p17260
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Breaking down a story file with extensions...?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-05-27 23:11:14

Fantastic, that's exactly what I'd hoped to hear.

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2515&start=0#p17261
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Breaking down a story file with extensions...?
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-27 23:21:46

[quote="I4L"]Fantastic, that's exactly what I'd hoped to hear.

Thanks.[/quote]

Make sure you read my edit to add part (see above).  Sanity is a fleeting thing.  [emote];)[/emote]  And to split tables from the code that uses them might be pushing it.  In 3 months, you might have to edit both code and table(s).  Together, that is easy... separated.... especially if there are many tables used by the extension, or all bunched with those from other extensions in the "tables" file... well that could get ugly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2516&start=0#p17262
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: Armour
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-05-27 23:23:48

Dear all,

I'm currently working on weapons and armour which shall be wielable/wearable and provide certain attributes. That was rather easy for weapons as you're supposed to have only one, but for armour I want to heave a head, body and feet slot. I'm new to the properties concept and all other stuff I probably need to know. I made my armours a class Armour. If I have an armour object, how can I detect if the player is already wearing another one for the same slot as the first one?

Thanks,

G.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2515&start=0#p17263
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Breaking down a story file with extensions...?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-05-27 23:36:18

I'm pretty used to the database/table being stored in a completely different place from the code. Also, the tables I'm putting together now are pretty specific to certain facets of this project, so I don't see them being re-used down the road. However, I can see some wisdom in putting the code in the same file as the table and will certainly take that suggestion to heart. As long as it doesn't violate Inform's "read things in this sequence" mentality, I'll probably go that route. Doesn't seem to, since you've been doing it that way.

I definitely don't want the tables in the main story file, that's for absolute certain. The ones in question will, in theory, make a certain character behave a certain way based on the "room" he's in, the current condition of the player, HOPEFULLY the current point in the story and whether or not he's already said/done that thing before. I can't think of a better way to do it besides tables, but they're going to be pretty massive and I don't want them in the main story file. (To clarify, "can't think of a better way" translates to "haven't been doing this long enough to know better".)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2515&start=0#p17264
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Breaking down a story file with extensions...?
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-27 23:50:28

I see no reason it couldn't work, as long as things load and compile in the correct order.  Maybe someone else knows another 'catch' to this strategy.  I know I have to be careful what loads in what order, but so far that hasn't caused any real problems (yet).  [emote];)[/emote]

[quote]
To clarify, "can't think of a better way" translates to "haven't been doing this long enough to know better".
[/quote]
Ditto, but so far it has worked out fine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2506&start=0#p17265
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: i think this is the only interactive fiction forum
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-05-28 00:05:43

There's also justadventure.com which doesn't seem to be very active, but has a lot of IF stuff.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2517&start=0#p17266
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Tapatalk Suggestion
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-05-28 00:27:16

Any of the admins ever considered this? While it is perfectly feasible to hit the forum on my phone in any of the browsers on it, frankly it's a little hard to deal with. Would be nice to have something "on the go" so I can catch up on everything. Might also gain some Google exposure and would put the site in their "directory".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2517&start=0#p17267
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Tapatalk Suggestion
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-05-28 00:38:07

You have my vote! And from what our WoW guild forum admin said, it's not that hard to implement as the board software supplies all you need.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2515&start=0#p17268
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Breaking down a story file with extensions...?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-05-28 02:11:01

[quote="I4L"]I'm currently scrolling all over the place trying to update things as it occurs to me that they need to be updated. As heavily as I comment things, it's even more difficult to find what I'm looking for.[/quote]
Have you noticed that you can jump directly to headings from the contents tab? On a Mac it even hides the rest of the code so it looks as if you were editing a separate file.

(This is of course not the same thing as having separate files, and it's a personal preference, but I find it easier to use the contents tab than extensions.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2518&start=0#p17269
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: Presence of Objects
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-05-28 02:32:50

I used to program in LPC, and to determine if something specific is present in a container it had a present() function, used like 
[code]
obj=present("unique#id",container)
[/code]
Does something like that exist in Inform?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2505&start=0#p17270
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Laziness is setting in
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-05-28 03:17:41

Curiously, I have the exact opposite problem: I focus so much on side track detail and response, that I still don't have a playable story. The worst part is, a heavy load of the stuff I've written is so, so hidden, that I'm starting to think nobody will ever read it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2505&start=0#p17271
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Laziness is setting in
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-05-28 03:43:23

[quote="lribeiro"]The worst part is, a heavy load of the stuff I've written is so, so hidden, that I'm starting to think nobody will ever read it.[/quote]

In my personal opinion, it's a) fun for the player to discover hidden gimmicks and b) fun for the author to create them. When I used to program for a MUD my friends and I often sat in a bar, drinking beer and coming up with weird stuff very hard to discover. Was a lot of fun coming up with ideas, and even more fun watching players discovering something and yelling "Whoah, THAT WORKS?!?"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2519&start=0#p17272
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: IF and Linux
User: MrCat / DateTime: 2011-05-28 03:46:57

Hi folks,

I've now moved over to Linux Mint as my OS of choice. Does anyone else here use Linux, and would anyone know of any software for both the reading and writing of interactive fiction? I could get some stuff for windows and just use Linux's windows simulator but it would be nice if there was some native stuff. I've had a fish about and found 'gargoyle' but not used it yet, I think it's just for playing stuff and I want to have a go at creating sometime.

I have frotz on my phone naturally so I'll never be truly stuck [emote]:)[/emote] but I ought to make use of my big screen too, plus write stuff.

Any info most welcome
Cheers

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2497&start=0#p17273
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Every turn timing
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-28 03:59:30

Just an update on this topic. I tried adding a new every turn type rulebook before the players command is parsed, ala EmacsUser, but that doesn't actually get things to happen before the room description is printed.

You can go nuts if you aren't sure  when the time sensitive stuff is happening, so I nailed down the moment of healing to one spot (every turn rules) and let the description of the person be updated whenever a  writing a paragraph about' him rule went off. 

Then, whenever circumstances would lead to a paragraph being written which would prove inaccurate by the time the player got to enter another command, I got the game to set a flag at that moment which would trigger a one-off fix in the 'writing the paragraph about' rule.

I eventually got this combination of stuff working.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2519&start=0#p17274
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: IF and Linux
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-05-28 04:00:20

This is a good place to get info:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifwiki.org">http://www.ifwiki.org</a>

The "Authoring Systems" and "Interpreters" sections should give you an idea of what's available.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2519&start=0#p17275
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: IF and Linux
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-05-28 05:01:52

ADRIFT 5 Runner now has a Linux version that runs under Mono. See [url]http://forum.adrift.co/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7202[/url] for details. This is still at a very early stage however.  I guess that doesn't help you if you want to write games tho...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2515&start=0#p17276
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Breaking down a story file with extensions...?
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-05-28 05:26:06

Are you using chapters, sections, parts, et cetera?

Using your own code as an extension can be useful if you're working on some mechanics that you can then apply other projects, but if internal organization is your only issue, then you could try breaking down your code with chapters, and then follow Juhana's suggestion.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2519&start=0#p17277
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: IF and Linux
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-05-28 05:34:28

My personal experience, as a Linux user, is:

[url=http://ccxvii.net/gargoyle/]Gargoyle[/url] to play the games. It reads almost everything, but it has some issues with Hugo files, I think.

I'm using [url=http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnome-inform7/]gnome-inform7[/url] to write my story, and it works very well. I haven't used other languages*, so my personal experience report ends here :)

[size=85]* Question from a non native: is it 'I haven't use' or 'I haven't used'?[/size]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2518&start=0#p17278
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Presence of Objects
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-05-28 06:06:40

You can use "Obj1 in Obj2" as a condition which is true if Obj1 is a direct child (directly contained by) Obj2. There are also functions available like "child(Obj)" and "parent(Obj)" (among others). See DM4 Ch I Sec. 3 "The Model World, especially 3.2 "The Object Tree" & 3.4 "Tree Statements" for details.

There is also "IndirectlyContains(obj1,obj2)" which checks for indirect containment and is described in appendix A3 "Library Routines."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2519&start=0#p17279
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: IF and Linux
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-28 06:41:05

[quote="lribeiro"][size=85]* Question from a non native: is it 'I haven't use' or 'I haven't used'?[/size][/quote]

"I haven't used" is correct.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2519&start=0#p17280
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: IF and Linux
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-05-28 07:08:32

[quote="matt w"]
"I haven't used" is correct.[/quote]

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2515&start=0#p17281
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Breaking down a story file with extensions...?
User: Blecki / DateTime: 2011-05-28 07:11:05

Further, having tried this, there are cases where having rooms or objects defined in extensions causes the glulx packager to fail.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2517&start=0#p17282
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Tapatalk Suggestion
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-05-28 08:24:37

You're absolutely right, it's not difficult at all. I've used it on several forums.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2515&start=0#p17283
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Breaking down a story file with extensions...?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-05-28 08:33:42

[quote="Juhana"][quote="I4L"]I'm currently scrolling all over the place trying to update things as it occurs to me that they need to be updated. As heavily as I comment things, it's even more difficult to find what I'm looking for.[/quote]
Have you noticed that you can jump directly to headings from the contents tab? On a Mac it even hides the rest of the code so it looks as if you were editing a separate file.

(This is of course not the same thing as having separate files, and it's a personal preference, but I find it easier to use the contents tab than extensions.)[/quote]

Exactly, it's really just a matter of preference. It's not that I mind using the Index to navigate (and I still do), it's just that I don't LIKE having everything in one massive file. I prefer things to be more compartmentalized, if that makes sense. It may be that at some point I decide that this is the better way to go, but for the time being, my brain just doesn't work that way. [emote]:D[/emote] 

Blecki, I don't think at this point I'm really considering breaking it down that far, though I might tinker at some point just to see what breaks and what doesn't.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=0#p17284
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-05-28 08:38:32

Zarf,

I apologize in advance if this request is outside the scope of your post; I don't know if this is the sort of thing that should / could be called via Glk or indeed if it is even feasible to implement on the interpreter end. (It is also possible that this feature already exists, but I just don't know how to work it.)

It would be awesome if multiple sound files could be [i]started[/i] simultaneously -- i.e. played back in sync with one another. This would allow an author to use cross-fading between channels to implement effects (stereo panning being an obvious one, but pseudo - filtering and other special effects would also be possible). I'm not asking the various 'terp authors to implement this themselves, but if the sound libraries currently in use already have this capability, it would be nice to be able to access it from within the various IF languages via a Glk call.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2519&start=0#p17285
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: IF and Linux
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-05-28 09:50:57

I second the recommendation of Gargoyle. It's beautiful and plays all the major game formats (although, as Iribeiro noted, it has issues with a few formats - Hugo and Adrift, mainly).

I also use [url=http://qtads.sourceforge.net/]QTADS[/url] for TADS 2 and 3 games. Gargoyle can run TADS games, but it doesn't support multimedia or text formatting, whereas QTADS does. QTADS is also a very nice interpreter - not as stylish as Gargoyle, but clean, functional and easy to customise.

For authoring, Inform 7 runs natively on Linux. TADS 2 and 3 also do if you're willing to use the command line, but if you want to use the TADS Workbench, you'll need Wine. (It does run quite well under Wine, although there are a few nagging problems.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2519&start=0#p17286
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: IF and Linux
User: cas / DateTime: 2011-05-28 10:25:44

Gargoyle is unable to properly play V6 Z-machine games (which basically means Journey, Shogun, Zork 0, and Arthur), and probably never will be able to.  Other than for V6, though, Gargoyle is my interpreter (or interpreter collection) of choice.

[url=http://www.logicalshift.demon.co.uk/unix/zoom/]Zoom[/url] can play V6 and runs natively on Linux.  For V6 you might also consider Windows Frotz running under Wine.  In my experience Windows Frotz does V6 a bit better than Zoom, and it runs flawlessly with Wine.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2517&start=0#p17287
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Tapatalk Suggestion
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-05-28 11:19:00

What is it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2511&start=0#p17288
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: [New Game] Cryptozookeeper
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-05-28 12:28:06

I was ready to start playing this, at last, but came to the realization that there are no graphics or sound in Gargoyle [emote]:|[/emote] The Linux "hewx" interpreter I downloaded doesn't work, and doesn't compile either. It seems it uses very outdated libraries.

I suppose there's no way to play this on Linux? (Running in Wine has the usual ugly as hell font rendering, known to cause epilepsy.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=0#p17289
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-05-28 13:29:59

[quote="DavidK"]I should also have a look to see how Mike's Windows TADS code handles fades. libmodplug seems to have some sort of volume related interface, but I'm not keen to use it here.[/quote]The Windows TADS code just has a thread that periodically calls the DirectSound SetVolume() method, which suggests that what I was imagining for Windows Glk should be fine.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2520&start=0#p17290
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Translating Interactive Fiction
User: Blattdorf / DateTime: 2011-05-28 13:34:59

Hello everyone!

I want to translate an IF game into Polish, but I have no idea where to start. I've looked around a little and it seems I will probably need the source file and then I will have to rework the scripting system, but other than that I'm stumped.

Any help in this matter would be greatly appreciated!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2520&start=0#p17291
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Translating Interactive Fiction
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-28 13:55:14

Is the original game in a language like Inform 6, which has basic support for IF in other languages? If so, you can probably build an Inform 6 Polish library, and then use that to build a translated game.

If not, you probably *still* should start by creating an Inform 6 Polish library, and then just implement the game using that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2520&start=0#p17292
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Translating Interactive Fiction
User: Minkovsky / DateTime: 2011-05-28 14:17:12

[quote="Blattdorf"]Hello everyone!

I want to translate an IF game into Polish, but I have no idea where to start. I've looked around a little and it seems I will probably need the source file and then I will have to rework the scripting system, but other than that I'm stumped.

Any help in this matter would be greatly appreciated![/quote]

Parser will be the hardest. It's easy to translate into a language with similar rules (English→French, German), but Polish... można se piwa nawarzyć. You'll need to rework EVERYTHING, and rewrite some grammar rules just for that. The diacritic characters (ęąśłźń) will also cause problems since most systems tend to prefer ASCII.

But alas, the idea itself is indeed pretty nice.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2517&start=0#p17293
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Tapatalk Suggestion
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-05-28 14:24:43

Mobile forum app.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2520&start=0#p17294
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Translating Interactive Fiction
User: Blattdorf / DateTime: 2011-05-28 14:48:09

There is a Polish library by Zajaczkowski that does work.

<a class="postlink" href="http://zajaczkowski.org/if-ruiny/">http://zajaczkowski.org/if-ruiny/</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2517&start=0#p17295
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Tapatalk Suggestion
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-05-28 15:04:19

[quote="Trumgottist"]What is it?[/quote]
Yeah, I didn't know what this was either, and the phrase "mobile forum app" didn't really help me much. (I don't have one of them smarty phones.) Somewhat surprisingly, the app's [url=http://www.tapatalk.com/]home page[/url] doesn't even seem to explain it, but it does link to [url=http://www.tipb.com/2010/09/28/tapatalk-iphone-app-review/]this review[/url], which does. Skip the embedded YouTube video; it's sort of annoying.  [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2520&start=0#p17296
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Translating Interactive Fiction
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-05-28 15:29:42

[quote="Blattdorf"]There is a Polish library by Zajaczkowski that does work.<a class="postlink" href="http://zajaczkowski.org/if-ruiny/">http://zajaczkowski.org/if-ruiny/</a>[/quote]

Cool!
I suppose there is a Polish Inform 6 library then (since the game is apparently Ruins).

(I know no Polish, but I managed to X GRZYB. Is that the mushroom?)

This translation of the I6 library seems not to be posted at the if-archive, so I guess you'd have to ask Bartosz Zajączkowski for it. And then, yes, you'll need to copy the source code of the game you want to translate, modify it as needed to work with the Polish library, and translate the output from English or whatever to Polish. And compile it along with the Polish libraries.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2511&start=0#p17297
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: [New Game] Cryptozookeeper
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2011-05-28 15:34:12

I know Johnny on the ifMud was looking at Hugo terps in Linux. I am going to ask him what he was doing to get it to go, and if he had graphics. I'll post back here when I hear from him.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2520&start=0#p17298
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Translating Interactive Fiction
User: Blattdorf / DateTime: 2011-05-28 15:53:38

Oh no, [url=http://code.google.com/p/inform-pl/]everything is here[/url].

And yes, that is the mushroom.

You've confirmed my suspicions: Translating the text is perhaps the easiest part. It's going to be lovely.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2520&start=0#p17299
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Translating Interactive Fiction
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-28 16:00:41

I was going to be asking a similar question in the near future...but about Russian not Polish.

I have seen a few games in Russian... three I think, all translated by the same guy.  

Here is a site with what I think are the needed files.  Maybe you can see what he changed, and get an idea of what you have to change.

[url]https://github.com/yandexx/RInform[/url]

Or maybe there is a similar site in Polish.

Edit:  Oops.. I typed too slow.  [emote];)[/emote]  Guess you found what you needed.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2511&start=0#p17300
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: [New Game] Cryptozookeeper
User: Gerynar / DateTime: 2011-05-28 16:14:33

I have a statically linked version of the WXWindows version of the Hugo engine available.

[url]http://www.gerynarsabode.org/Downloads/hewx.zip[/url]

Just download it, unzip it and you can use it to play games (it will not play any of the MP3 music, but you do get the graphics)

Maybe someday, when I get decent at programming, I can work on a new version of the 'terp so it'll run on a modern linux distro.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2520&start=0#p17301
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Translating Interactive Fiction
User: Blattdorf / DateTime: 2011-05-28 17:30:27

I'll have a look at this anyway. Every little bit helps!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=10#p17302
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: Kate McKee / DateTime: 2011-05-28 17:53:36

At least you aren't using the outer planets.   Uranian makes me think of Oscar Wilde.  Plutonian brings to mind "1.21 jigawatts! The Libyans!"

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2517&start=0#p17303
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Tapatalk Suggestion
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-05-28 18:21:17

I apologize for being vague. Basically, at its core, Tapatalk is a mobile application that delivers the content of Tapatalk enabled forums through the app. While it's entirely plausible to view the forum through any web browser, some browsers handle them poorly or differently, depending on what browser you're using. If the forum isn't "optimized" for mobile browsing, you get the full blown forum template in a tiny little screen.

Using it also, as far as I know, gets you listed in their "directory". IF could use some exposure there.

Well, maybe or maybe not. Couldn't hurt, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=20#p17304
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-05-28 18:37:15

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"][quote="VictorGijsbers"][code]The astral influences are Mercurial, Jovian, Lunar, Martian and Venerean.[/code]
Great words, all of them -- except I'm not sure how much the word "Venerean" makes native speakers of English think of "venereal", as in "venereal disease"? That would be unfortunate, so please chime in. [emote]:)[/emote]

(Apparently, I have "Cytherean" as a backup option. "Venusian" is too ugly.)[/quote]

I'm not a native speaker, but my English Sprachgefühl is immaculate.

You might as well argue that "Jovian" befuddles the semi-literate who in their ignorance confuse it with "jovial." Unless you write for idiots (but why would you?), there is nothing wrong with "Venerean."

Also, there is nothing ugly about "Venusian."[/quote]

While not the most intelligent primate on the face of the planet, I do not consider myself an idiot. Yet... I also immediately saw "venereal". Jovian also makes me think of jovial, but it doesn't "befuddle" me. Brains are designed to make connections to familiar things. There is that subliminal expectation for me, however, that if you're calling something "Jovian", my brain links it to "jovial" and I expect it to be so. I do not speak for the majority, just weighing in.

I think there is some merit to avoiding terms that link to negative connotation in your audience. If I created a creature called a Sock Tucker, who does nothing more criminal than stealing your socks from the laundry (mystery solved), I have a pretty good idea of the conclusion that a majority of my English speaking audience is going arrive at, and it does follow the Cytherean line of thinking. Which makes me wonder if they're going to take it seriously. (Not that a sock stealing creature SHOULD be taken seriously.)

I also think Venusian could be "ugly" depending on how it's pronounced.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=0#p17305
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-28 23:00:46

DavidK: Sounds good. I'll email around the interpreter authors too, but it sounds like this plan will work.

[code]It would be awesome if multiple sound files could be started simultaneously -- i.e. played back in sync with one another.[/code]

Good point. Thanks for bringing that up.

The problem of doing truly synchronized sound effects is a large problem, and the solutions generally require a heavy API. You want to be able to schedule samples for precise moments, know exactly when they will end, probably get regular callbacks to schedule new ones. I don't want to get into that for Glk. 

Your proposal covers a few simple cases. I think it's definitely simple enough to handle; my only question is whether it offers enough to be worthwhile. Your examples are stereo panning, and -- I think -- sliding between a filtered and unfiltered form of a given sound? Like between outdoor footsteps and indoor, echoey ones?

The cost is that you have to have both variations running all the time (one at zero volume), because you can only start them together, not sync up a new one. My first feeling is that that's a lot of overhead for a fairly limited trick.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2501&start=10#p17306
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Interactive elements in static fiction
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-28 23:19:01

[quote]The CYOA illusion of interactivity is simpler, sturdier, with clearly-visible boundaries. The IF illusion of interactivity is more complex, brittle, and has uncertain (to the player) boundaries ... but they're both really pulling exactly the same rabbit out of very similar hats.[/quote]

My take is different. Parser IF permits experimentation and engagement with game mechanics; CYOA generally does not. That's the distinction I see between them. (The CYOA exercise I released a few weeks ago was fun to write, but it didn't have any room for the kind of experience that I put in IF.)

Shiga's _Meanwhile_ is an interesting example because it works very hard to *include* a sort of interactivity, beyond the basic CYOA tree idiom. First, the story is about a time machine and a mind-probe -- so it naturally includes many loops, "retries", and glimpses of the past and future. Second, the comic panels are woven together, so that you often *see* other branches on the pages you're traversing. And third, it's a very cruel book with many failure endings! So you have to restart many times to "win". It's not the same as IF-style action-exploration, but your decisions are still informed by experience and experiment in a way not common to the CYOA genre.

None of this is really applicable to the original question. Static fiction can be very obscure, with multiple re-readings or even collaborative effort required to understand everything the author put in. But it's not *explorative* effort -- the book doesn't respond informatively to experiment. 

Or rather, a book that did that would have to use an interesting bag of tricks indeed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2503&start=0#p17307
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Remapping actions, default message outputs and... stuff.
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-05-29 02:52:24

[quote="Arag-e"]The third issue... I don't even know where to begin. The aim here is to no allow for more than a single sample of each type of equipment to be equipped at once.[/quote]
The way I've done this is simply to modify the Actor object to include variables that will be set to the different kinds of equipment you can have.  For example, here's a bit of code from an unfinished project:

[spoiler][code]modify Actor
    equippedWeapon=nil
;

class Weapon: Thing
    dobjFor(Equip)
    {
        preCond = [objHeld]
        verify(){}
        check()
        {
            if(gPlayerChar.equippedWeapon==self)
            {
                failCheck('{You/he} {have} already got that equipped. ');
            }
        }
        action()
        {
            if(gPlayerChar.equippedWeapon!=nil)
            {
                gPlayerChar.equippedWeapon.doUnequip();
                "<.p>";
            }
            equipDesc;
            gPlayerChar.equippedWeapon=self;
        }
    }

    doUnequip()
    {
        unequipDesc;
        gPlayerChar.equippedWeapon=nil;
    }

    dobjFor(UnEquip)
    {
        if(gPlayerChar.equippedWeapon==nil)
            "You don't have a weapon equipped. ";
        else
        {
            doUnequip();
        }
    }
    //unequip if drop, place on something etc.
    moveInto(newCont)
    {
        if(gPlayerChar.equippedWeapon==self)
        {
            doUnequip();
        }
        inherited(newCont);
    }
    equipDesc="You equip <<self.theName>>. "
    unequipDesc="You unequip <<self.theName>>. "
;
[/code][/spoiler]
Obviously, you'll need to have defined Equip and UnEquip actions for that code to work (and probably some other stuff I've forgotten.  But the gist of it is that you store the equipped weapon in gPlayerChar.equippedWeapon, and by checking what (if anything) is in that variable we have access to the equipped weapon (for example, to unequip it before equipping a new one). 

In another project the PC has a variable for jackets, and I defined the following class:
[spoiler][code]class Jacket: Wearable
    dobjFor(Wear)
    {
        check()
        {
            if(gActor==gPlayerChar && gPlayerChar.jacket!=nil)
            {
                reportFailure('You can\'t wear that over your ' + gPlayerChar.jacket.name + '. ');
                exit;
            }
        }
        action()
        {
            gPlayerChar.jacket=self;
            inherited();
        }
    }
    dobjFor(Doff)
    {
        action()
        {
            gPlayerChar.jacket=nil;
            inherited();
        }
    }
;[/code][/spoiler]
I think this takes advantage of how Doff is always called before dropping or moving something you're wearing.

Anyway, hopefully you get the idea.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2501&start=10#p17308
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Interactive elements in static fiction
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-05-29 02:53:27

[quote="zarf"]My take is different. Parser IF permits experimentation and engagement with game mechanics; CYOA generally does not. That's the distinction I see between them.[/quote]

That's exactly the distinction I was referring to with the bit about uncertain boundaries. In CYOA, the experience is bound by clear, explicit choices. In IF, the experience is open to that kind of exploration (which is to say, it's still bound ... but it's bound in ways that the player can't entirely see, and has to explore to find ... and furthermore, even after exploring in IF, you can never really be 100% sure you've found all the boundaries, which adds an illusion of tactical infinity to the illusion of interactivity).*

So I must disagree that your take is different. [emote]:)[/emote] Unless your take is (semantically) that such exploration literally adds interactivity rather than a more complex illusion of same.


----
* Honestly this is my very favorite aspect of IF, which is why when people start talking about alternates to the parser it makes me sad inside. I love how I can play a game I've played dozens of times, type something slightly different, and find a whole new response that I never knew was there before ... not only can you explore in IF, you can always imagine there's a little bit more over the horizon.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2518&start=0#p17309
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Presence of Objects
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-05-29 02:58:33

The problem is that I'd need object pointers for that. But what if I don't have one? I have a class Currency, and on several occasions I generate copies which the player can take. Now he has, say, five credits, and he's in a shop, and I want to determine IF he has any money on him, and if yes, how much.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2521&start=0#p17310
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Identical Room Names
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-05-29 06:52:30

How can I have rooms with identical short descriptions? Like, I have a room "The Street is a room." - how can I have another room to the north which also has the short description "The Street"?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2521&start=0#p17311
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Identical Room Names
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2011-05-29 07:31:48

You want the "printed name" property. Give them distinct internal names and then set the printed name to whatever. You can use printed name for other cases where it's difficult to refer to things in your source with similar names.
[code]Street1 is a room. "This is a street." The printed name is "The Street".

Street2 is north of Street1. "This is another street." The printed name is "The Street".[/code]

EDIT: And let me expand on this a bit to tell how I found this out. I went to the Index tab and the Kinds tab under that. Near the top, next to the room kind, I clicked on the little magnifying glass. I see the room kind and I look under "Can have", but there's nothing there that looks promising. So then I scroll up and look at room's parent, object. Under object's "Can have" is "printed name (text)", and this looks promising, so I try setting the printed name property.

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2521&start=0#p17312
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Identical Room Names
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-05-29 07:40:05

Thaaanks!! [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2516&start=0#p17313
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Armour
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-05-29 08:10:50

I can think of two approaches offhand.

1. The brute force approach. Use objectloop to go through the player's possessions and test which of them are of the armour class and are worn in a certain slot.

2. Give the player three properties corresponding to the three slots. When the player puts on a piece of armour, set the corresponding slot property to true. When that armour is removed, set it to false.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2516&start=0#p17314
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Armour
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-05-29 08:13:32

Objectloop. Didn't think of that. Thanks for the hint!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2522&start=0#p17315
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: About previous knowledge assumption (and an equation)
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-05-29 08:23:39

I'm considering a puzzle regarding a physics problem.

One implementation hypothesis is to "drop" a physics book in the game, which literally teaches the player the physics of the problem. Another hypothesis is to not do that, and assume the player either knows the physics of the problem, or goes outside the game to study it.

The second one adds to the challenge, but if the player doesn't know his physics and goes to the outside world for information, then I get this feeling I'm disrupting something in the suspension of disbelief, since the PC itself "cannot leave" the game world to study.

I, therefore, come before you for advice.

My second existential doubt regards an equation. This physics problem will have one to solve, which will involve a simple division operation. Here I have two choices: either to assume the player will use his own calculator to get the result; or to implement an ingame calculator. What are your thoughts? Is it acceptable to ask the player to use an out of the game item?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2511&start=0#p17316
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: [New Game] Cryptozookeeper
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-05-29 08:48:18

Thanks for the tips. I ended up running it in Windows inside VMWare under Linux. Overkill, but I simply want to play this The Way It's Meant To Be Played [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

PS:
I'm toying around with the idea of doing a new Hugo 'terp port myself [emote]:P[/emote] It's a shame if Linux people can't play Robb's games in their full glory.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2522&start=0#p17317
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: About previous knowledge assumption (and an equation)
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-05-29 09:38:25

Unless you're deliberately shooting for a gap in player/character knowledge (which might work if you're making a learning game, for example), you should probably let them learn things in-game.  I kind of like the idea of the player being able to use a high-level command like "> divide 12345 by 78" to receive an answer like (depending on the setting) "You whip out a scroll and a quill, and determine that [n] divided by [m] is [n/m]" or "You punch the equation into your trusty calculator: [n/m]" or "You do the math in your head: [n/m]."  That might minimize the fiddling about with buttons that fully implementing a calculator might require, and if you do something like the middle one, you can just redirect anything having to do with the calculator to "You can use it to ADD, SUBTRACT, DIVIDE, or MULTIPLY."

For the book dropping, does it make sense with the pacing of puzzle to give the player control over whether or not the book drops?  That way, if they already know the physics, they can feel clever, but anyone else (or anyone who wants to make sure in-game physics are the same as in the real world) can experiment with the book first.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2522&start=0#p17318
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: About previous knowledge assumption (and an equation)
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-05-29 09:46:48

Yape, I'm more inclined to implementing some sort of calculator. I'll try to think of a natural way to word it.

The game will have an NPC to help the player around, so, as for the book, you just gave me an idea: I can have the NPC give it to the player, if he asks.

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2523&start=0#p17319
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Descriptive text meant for players that Inform 7 ignores
User: EvaCatHerder / DateTime: 2011-05-29 10:45:39

I am writing a game in Inform 7 when I write text within double-quotes, prefaces by the word "say" I keep getting error messages saying "but I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with so I am ignoring this sentence all together."

What I am trying to do is integrate both descriptive and instructional text, but Inform 7 keeps trying to do something with my text, when all I want it to do is print out text for the reader.  For example, I want my players to be able to read the following: 

"You will need to raise money to run your campaign. You can recruit volunteers to help with the  work, but you need to pay rent for your campaign office, pay for the pins, bumper stickers and lawn signs, rent a photocopier, buy computers, etc. Oregon has some rules to ensure transparency. 
The campaign needs to have its own bank account. Information about that account needs to be filed with the Secretary of State’s office so they can monitor compliance with reporting rules. 
 The campaign treasurer has 30 days to report both contributions and expenditures to the Secretary of State’s office.
Any campaign funds left at the end of an election CANNOT be converted to anyone's personal use.
Subject to spot checks
There are financial penalties for any campaign that does not follow these rules."

Is there a way to tell Inform not to try to parse content within double quotes? 

Any assistance would be wonderful, thank you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2523&start=0#p17320
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptive text meant for players that Inform 7 ignores
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-05-29 10:54:53

Quotes within quotes?

""You will need to raise money... that does not follow these rules.""

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2523&start=0#p17321
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptive text meant for players that Inform 7 ignores
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-05-29 11:00:26

Inform doesn't know when do you want those things to be printed to the player, and so it is patiently waiting for you to tell him. The "say" instruction never works on it's own, because the question [i]"When shall I say such thing?"[/i] wouldn't be answered.

When, in the context of the game, do you want that text to show up? Is it after the player does something?
[code]After doing this:
    say "You did that, yes you did!"[/code]

Is it when the player examines a document?
[code]The god written document is in the bathroom. The description is "Hello! I am God and I feel lonely!"[/code]

You should go and read what's on [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc12.html]2.2[/url] (and beyond) of Writing with Inform for more details.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2523&start=0#p17322
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptive text meant for players that Inform 7 ignores
User: EvaCatHerder / DateTime: 2011-05-29 11:01:09

I have already tried that, and unfortunately it doesn't resolve the problem.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2523&start=0#p17323
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptive text meant for players that Inform 7 ignores
User: EvaCatHerder / DateTime: 2011-05-29 11:05:05

Right now, I have the text appearing right after the player enters a room.  I have not gotten any errors regarding the say " " instruction that I have given it, which is too bad, because that is a problem I know how to deal with.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2523&start=0#p17324
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptive text meant for players that Inform 7 ignores
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-05-29 11:07:31

If you post an example of what you've tried that didn't work, it'll be easier for people to figure out where it went wrong.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2523&start=0#p17325
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptive text meant for players that Inform 7 ignores
User: EvaCatHerder / DateTime: 2011-05-29 11:09:18

Here is how I have it set up right now:

Campaign Finance is a room. 
When player enters Campaign finance, say "You will need to raise money to run your campaign. You can recruit volunteers to help with the  work, but you need to pay rent for your campaign office, pay for the pins, bumper stickers and lawn signs, rent a photocopier, buy computers, etc. Oregon has some rules to ensure transparency. 
The campaign needs to have its own bank account. Information about that account needs to be filed with the Secretary of State’s office so they can monitor compliance with reporting rules. 
 The campaign treasurer has 30 days to report both contributions and expenditures to the Secretary of State’s office.
Any campaign funds left at the end of an election CANNOT be converted to anyone's personal use.
Subject to spot checks
There are financial penalties for any campaign that does not follow these rules."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2523&start=0#p17326
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptive text meant for players that Inform 7 ignores
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-05-29 11:10:36

Is this something that you only want displayed once or is it a recurring thing?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2523&start=0#p17327
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptive text meant for players that Inform 7 ignores
User: EvaCatHerder / DateTime: 2011-05-29 11:16:14

I only want this text displayed once.  I have other places where I want to do the same thing with different text, but if I figure out how to make this work, presumably I will be able to do it again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2523&start=0#p17328
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptive text meant for players that Inform 7 ignores
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-05-29 11:17:52

I mean... I'm not all that great at this Inform stuff yet, but it would seem like you could use something like the following:

[quote]
Campaign Finance is a room.
"[if unvisited]You will need to raise money to run your campaign. You can recruit volunteers to help with the work, but you need to pay rent for your campaign office, pay for the pins, bumper stickers and lawn signs, rent a photocopier, buy computers, etc. Oregon has some rules to ensure transparency. [paragraph break]The campaign needs to have its own bank account. Information about that account needs to be filed with the Secretary of State’s office so they can monitor compliance with reporting rules. [paragraph break]The campaign treasurer has 30 days to report both contributions and expenditures to the Secretary of State’s office.[paragraph break]Any campaign funds left at the end of an election CANNOT be converted to anyone's personal use.[paragraph break]Subject to spot checks[paragraph break]There are financial penalties for any campaign that does not follow these rules.[end if]"
[/quote]

It would only display it once, so maybe you would have to write some kind of new rule to display it if the player wanted to see it again? I'm sure there are rules that you could set up to make it actually use SAY, but I don't know what they are. [emote]:)[/emote]

Probably throw an actual room description in there after the [end if]?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2523&start=10#p17329
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptive text meant for players that Inform 7 ignores
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-29 11:21:53

I think you need to change "when" to "after" --"when" is a condition, not a rule heading. So you can have a rule that starts "Every turn when the player is in Campaign Finance," but in general you can't have a rule that starts with a plain "when" (except "when play begins" and maybe some others I can't remember).

Given that you only want it to show the first time, the rule should probably start "After entering Campaign Finance for the first time..." And it maybe should end "continue the action," because otherwise the "after" rule will prevent some other rules from firing that you might want to fire, I think. Or you could take I4L's suggestion and fold this text into the room description.

This looks like a cool game idea, btw.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2523&start=10#p17330
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptive text meant for players that Inform 7 ignores
User: EvaCatHerder / DateTime: 2011-05-29 11:24:56

I4L,

I thought that was a great idea, but it didn't solve the problem. 

But, I think you are now getting why this is making me so crazy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2523&start=10#p17331
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptive text meant for players that Inform 7 ignores
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-05-29 11:30:07

Strange: I4L compiles and runs fine here, and it seems a very good solution to your problem.

Copy+paste the error message here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2523&start=10#p17332
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptive text meant for players that Inform 7 ignores
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-05-29 11:31:15

Hm... How 'bout:

"'You will need to raise money to run your campaign. You can recruit volunteers to help with the work, but you need to pay rent for your campaign office, pay for the pins, bumper stickers and lawn signs, rent a photocopier, buy computers, etc. Oregon has some rules to ensure transparency. [paragraph break]The campaign needs to have its own bank account. Information about that account needs to be filed with the Secretary of State’s office so they can monitor compliance with reporting rules. [paragraph break]The campaign treasurer has 30 days to report both contributions and expenditures to the Secretary of State’s office.[paragraph break]Any campaign funds left at the end of an election CANNOT be converted to anyone's personal use.[paragraph break]Subject to spot checks[paragraph break]There are financial penalties for any campaign that does not follow these rules.'"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2523&start=10#p17333
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptive text meant for players that Inform 7 ignores
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-05-29 11:32:58

I think the "meat of the matter" is to force it to display the quotes. In which case, I read the docs wrong. I initially said "" instead of '".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2523&start=10#p17334
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptive text meant for players that Inform 7 ignores
User: EvaCatHerder / DateTime: 2011-05-29 11:33:29

Matt W - Thanks. It is a game meant to teach high school students the process of running for a state elected office in Oregon. I was planning on putting it and its source code up on both the Inform 7 site (as an example of how to use IF in an educational context) and on IFDB when I finally get the %@%##& thing working.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2523&start=10#p17335
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptive text meant for players that Inform 7 ignores
User: EvaCatHerder / DateTime: 2011-05-29 11:36:39

Here is the error message I keep getting: 

    	
This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6G60) on its most recent run through:

Problem. You wrote 'You can recruit volunteers to help with the work, but you need to pay rent for your campaign office, pay for the pins, bumper stickers and lawn signs, rent a photocopier, buy computers, etc'  : but I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with, so I am ignoring this sentence altogether. (I notice there's a comma here, which is sometimes used to abbreviate rules which would normally be written with a colon - for instance, 'Before taking: say "You draw breath."' can be abbreviated to 'Before taking, say...' - but that's only allowed for Before, Instead and After rules. I mention all this in case you meant this sentence as a rule in some rulebook, but used a comma where there should have been a colon ':'?
 See the manual: 2.17 > Review of Chapter 2: The Source Text

Problem. You wrote 'Information about that account needs to be filed with the Secretary of State's office so they can monitor compliance with reporting rules'  : but I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with, so I am ignoring this sentence altogether.
Problem. You wrote 'Any campaign funds left at the end of an election CANNOT be converted to anyone's personal use'  : again, I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with.

Problem. The sentence 'Subject to spot checks There are financial penalties for any campaign that does not follow these rules'  appears to say two things are the same - I am reading 'Subject to spot checks There' and 'financial penalties for any campaign that does not follow these rules' as two different things, and therefore it makes no sense to say that one is the other: it would be like saying that 'St Peter is St Paul'. It would be all right if the second thing were the name of a kind, perhaps with properties: for instance 'Pearly Gates is a lighted room' says that something called Pearly Gates exists and that it is a 'room', which is a kind I know about, combined with a property called 'lighted' which I also know about.
Problem. You wrote '"; continue the action.

BTW, I am now fairly convinced that the problem is a small typo or error that I am just not seeing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2523&start=10#p17336
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptive text meant for players that Inform 7 ignores
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-05-29 11:39:10

This worked for me to display the quotes:

[code]
Campaign Finance is a room. "'[if unvisited]You will need to raise money to run your campaign. You can recruit volunteers to help with the work, but you need to pay rent for your campaign office, pay for the pins, bumper stickers and lawn signs, rent a photocopier, buy computers, etc. Oregon has some rules to ensure transparency. [paragraph break]The campaign needs to have its own bank account. Information about that account needs to be filed with the Secretary of State’s office so they can monitor compliance with reporting rules. [paragraph break]The campaign treasurer has 30 days to report both contributions and expenditures to the Secretary of State’s office.[paragraph break]Any campaign funds left at the end of an election CANNOT be converted to anyone's personal use.[paragraph break]Subject to spot checks[paragraph break]There are financial penalties for any campaign that does not follow these rules.[end if]'".
[/code]

But again, you're using the room description to display the text. I can't make Inform do it any other way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2523&start=10#p17337
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptive text meant for players that Inform 7 ignores
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-05-29 11:39:54

If the problem is printing the text with quotes, then the only thing you should watch out for is to use ' instead of ". Inform will print ' as ". So, this code:
[code]Campaign Finance is a room.

"[if unvisited]There are some rules here for you to read:[paragraph break]'You will need to raise money to run your campaign.'[paragraph break]I hope you follow these rules.[end if]"[/code]

Will result in:
[code]Campaign Finance
There are some rules here for you to read:

"You will need to raise money to run your campaign."

I hope you follow these rules.

>[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2523&start=10#p17338
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptive text meant for players that Inform 7 ignores
User: EvaCatHerder / DateTime: 2011-05-29 11:43:01

You are absolutely right, When I put 14L's code in to a test game, it works just fine. I clearly need to go backwards and figure out why it isn't working in my game version.

Thank you all for your help. I may be back with more questions, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2523&start=20#p17339
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptive text meant for players that Inform 7 ignores
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-29 11:48:47

Another documentation section that might be useful is 18.1, which basically tells you a lot of phrases* that can be used to start rules, and some that start things that look like rules but aren't.

*There's a technical meaning of "phrase" in Inform, but I mean "phrase" as in "a bunch of words."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2521&start=0#p17340
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Identical Room Names
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-05-29 12:56:16

For bonus points (or rather, if you wanted many such rooms), you could use a kind:

[code]A Streetroom is a kind of room.  The printed name of a Streetroom is usually "The Street".  Northstreet and Southstreet are Streetrooms.  Northstreet is north of Southstreet.[/code]

Check out the "Tiny Garden" example (#62) for a way to have many similar rooms that are distinguishable using auto-generated descriptions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2511&start=0#p17341
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: [New Game] Cryptozookeeper
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2011-05-29 13:47:26

I also heard that it would work in Wine. Now, I use Ubuntu at work every day, but not to play games. [i](Confidential to future employers: not to make them, either.)[/i] So if a suggestion of Wine is like saying "Tempest plays great through M.A.M.E.," I'll understand if told to kill myself. No harm, no foul there.

I used what Gerynar linked to, and I was able to get Crypto to run without having to do much of anything else. I was sort of anticipating this problem because of what Johnny said he went through, so the page on archive.org does split the game up so a Linux user doesn't have to download the 510MB of music files that aren't playable on that operating system at the moment. It's been my understanding that the Mac and Linux ports may very well get looked at my Kent Tessman, and cleaned up again. So that's cool. 

(Now I need to find someone with an Amiga and see how that Hugo for Amiga port looks!)

Also, I found that, to make the graphics look right, I needed to do the following through the terp:
Options->Fonts->Fixed Width-> and then any font, but with a size of 8. The spacing on the top windows is then good. I should probably note this on the game's page.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2497&start=0#p17342
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Every turn timing
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-05-29 14:55:22

[quote="severedhand"]...but that doesn't actually get things to happen before the room description is printed.[/quote]Oh I see---you want the healing to happen before the report rulebook for some actions (like going), but after for others (like looking).  Sorry for my misunderstanding. Perhaps you want something along the lines of [code]There is a room.  South is another room.
Bob is a man in another room.  Bob has a number called hp.  The hp of Bob is four.  The printed name of Bob is "Bob ([the hp of Bob] hp)".

Looking is taking no time.

This is the healing rule:
	say "(Healing here.)";
	increment the hp of Bob.
Carry out going:
	follow the healing rule.
Every turn:
	unless the current action is going or the current action is taking no time:
		follow the healing rule.

Test me with "s / l / jump / l".[/code]Or perhaps you just want to stick with what you have.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2511&start=10#p17343
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: [New Game] Cryptozookeeper
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-05-29 15:02:10

[quote]Also, I found that, to make the graphics look right, I needed to do the following through the terp:
Options->Fonts->Fixed Width-> and then any font, but with a size of 8. The spacing on the top windows is then good. I should probably note this on the game's page.[/quote]

Oh, it happened to you too? I thought it was some weird combination of my fonts and desktop resolution, the graphics filled up the entire screen and rendered the game unplayable.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2522&start=0#p17344
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: About previous knowledge assumption (and an equation)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-05-29 15:04:02

Heh, it would be interesting to be able to type in "12345/78" at the command prompt. Sure it could be done, in I7 at least.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2523&start=20#p17345
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptive text meant for players that Inform 7 ignores
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-05-29 15:59:33

[quote="EvaCatHerder"]You are absolutely right, When I put 14L's code in to a test game, it works just fine. I clearly need to go backwards and figure out why it isn't working in my game version.

Thank you all for your help. I may be back with more questions, though.[/quote]

Best guess: a stray incorrect quotation mark earlier in the source is screwing up Inform's interpretation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2524&start=0#p17346
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Can I use Inform 7 with Wordpress? If so how?
User: Michelle / DateTime: 2011-05-29 17:10:46

Hi all,

I hear from a knowledgeable source that this is the place to go for wisdom and know-how. Thanks in advance to anyone who has information for me!

My situation and question:  

I have a site hosted on "my" server (actually Blue Host's) using Wordpress. 

Would it be possible to have users run an interactive fiction game built in Inform 7 and using something web-based (like Quixe or Parchment?) that would run from the site? If so, how would we do it?

We'd prefer to stay inside the Wordpress environment and existing theme (a child theme of Twenty Ten) if at all possible. But not closed to other possibilities - the main thing is we want this as integrated with our site as possible, and able to be played on the web but site visitors. 

I have to keep in mind that my technical know-how is self-taught based on need, and very spotty.

In case it is of any use, the site itself (a satire site) is here: [url=http://www.thatzeffedup.com]Thatz Effed Up[/url]

Again, thanks in advance for any advice, info etc.

Michelle

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2525&start=0#p17347
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: [Announce] Z-machine assembler and disassembler
User: cas / DateTime: 2011-05-29 17:27:39

While working on a Z-machine interpreter, I found it useful to be able to create story files containing arbitrary Z-machine instructions for testing.  While Inform's inline assembly is usually the best way to get this done, I found a particular case where I needed something extra (specifically I wanted to run tests with instructions outside of any routine); so I wrote an assembler.

The assembler is not meant to be useful for anybody apart from Z-machine interpreter authors, and even then it's probably not all that useful.  It's rough around the edges, but it works, and a few people might find it interesting, so I'm offering it up.

I wrote the disassembler because txd seems to have trouble with non-Infocom/Inform games.  So unless you want to disassemble stories created with this assembler (or, perhaps, with zapf or zilf), txd is still the way to go.

After that enticing introduction, I'm sure you're champing at the bit to try these out, so here you go: [url]http://zdevtools.googlecode.com/[/url].

Only the source code is provided, and a POSIX environment (Linux, FreeBSD, etc) is required to build.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2524&start=0#p17348
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I use Inform 7 with Wordpress? If so how?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-05-29 17:37:53

I'm on it!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2524&start=0#p17349
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I use Inform 7 with Wordpress? If so how?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-05-29 18:17:56

Looks like you'd have to use an Iframe plugin without modifying WP and/or the template files.

Note: Iframes are evil.

Also Note: There would be zero communication between the game and Wordpress. So WP couldn't automatically grab a player's score for a leaderboard or anything.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2524&start=0#p17350
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I use Inform 7 with Wordpress? If so how?
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-29 18:31:04

I think creating a WP template file for Parchment would be the only good way.  I haven't tried it, but I see no reason it couldn't be made to work.

And as I4L stated, without getting really fancy, there is no communication between WP and the game, so it would just be a stand-alone game.

Interesting idea though... I may give it a shot when I have a bit more time.  I have a WP site that could use an IF game for instructional purposes.  In fact I had planned on writing one, but running it outside of WP.  This could be an interesting challenge.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2513&start=0#p17351
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: J.D. Berry's "Sparrow Song" -- getting past the beginnin
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-29 19:15:52

Aha!

[spoiler]SHOW TREATY TO TILSON (or cordelia, or maybe someone else)[/spoiler]

(Although that seems to lead to some fencing with the topic system. Still, progress!)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2524&start=0#p17352
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I use Inform 7 with Wordpress? If so how?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-05-29 19:21:45

You'd have to add the JS to the header of your template files, or possibly to the PHP files themselves. (I don't remember anymore how WP is built and I'm too lazy to look at the moment.) You can't call it from inside a page or post for security reasons, though there might be a plugin for that as well.

I don't think it would be extremely difficult to do. But if you're trying to keep it basic, something like an Iframe embed is the only way to really go with it. Plus if you add your JS includes to the template, you're calling them from every single page, even if that page isn't game related. This in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing, just kinda sloppy.

I do wish there was some kind of output for the score. Maybe in the save...?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2526&start=0#p17353
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Cannot open include file adv3.h and en_us.h
User: drayakir / DateTime: 2011-05-29 19:28:52

Yes, hello. Aspiring new Interactive Fiction writer here, but I seem to have hit a bit of a snag when I try to compile my stuff. 

I'm working with qtads, under Debian sid, and here's what happens when I do the command [b]t3make -d -f Firstgame[/b]:

[quote]TADS Compiler 3.0.8  Copyright 1999, 2004 Michael J. Roberts
	Files to build: 4
	symbol_export .t -> obj/.t3s
error: unable to open source file ".t"
Errors:   1
Warnings: 0
[/quote]

When I just do [b]t3make Firstgame[/b]:

[quote]TADS Compiler 3.0.8  Copyright 1999, 2004 Michael J. Roberts
	Files to build: 5
	symbol_export Firstgame.t -> Firstgame.t3s
Firstgame.t(2): error: cannot open include file "adv3.h"
Firstgame.t(3): error: cannot open include file "en_us.h"
Errors:   2
Warnings: 0
[/quote]

I can post the code I used if that would help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2513&start=0#p17354
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: J.D. Berry's "Sparrow Song" -- getting past the beginnin
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-29 19:50:19

OK, now I'm at the puzzle that every reviewer seems to have got stuck on.

[spoiler]How can I get past the nymph? It seems that there is a different solution for each item you have -- I have the locket.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]I understand that it involves something unobvious that must be done four times. (Have I mentioned that I hate puzzles sometimes?)[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2518&start=0#p17355
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Presence of Objects
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-29 19:54:31

The objectloop statement lets you iterate through the contents of the player (or any other object).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2476&start=0#p17356
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Darkness
User: tryguy / DateTime: 2011-05-29 19:58:18

Excuse the delay in getting back to this. I've been trying to focus on getting through the manual as quick as possible and avoiding both this forum and adding to my game. The good news is that I'm halfway through chapter 16 now (which is pretty interesting).

Thanks for the replies. And thanks very much for your code, Mike. It handles things much better than I was even attempting. And it's just nice to get pointers about how to organize things a bit better. And why.

I'm again going to focus on getting through the rest of the manual for a while, but when I do come back to working on my game, I'll be using this code. So thanks. [emote]:)[/emote]

No doubt there will be other things that come up in the near future, so see you all then!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2524&start=0#p17357
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I use Inform 7 with Wordpress? If so how?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-05-29 20:05:43

The easiest way is to use an <iframe>. By adding [code];options=%7B%22width%22%3A42%7D[/code] to the end of the URL you can specify the width. This is [code];options={"width":42}[/code] encoded. If you need to change the width use <a class="postlink" href="http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/dencoder/">http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/dencoder/</a> to encode it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2524&start=0#p17358
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I use Inform 7 with Wordpress? If so how?
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-29 20:12:45

[quote="I4L"]You'd have to add the JS to the header of your template files, or possibly to the PHP files themselves. (I don't remember anymore how WP is built and I'm too lazy to look at the moment.) You can't call it from inside a page or post for security reasons, though there might be a plugin for that as well.

I don't think it would be extremely difficult to do. But if you're trying to keep it basic, something like an Iframe embed is the only way to really go with it. Plus if you add your JS includes to the template, you're calling them from every single page, even if that page isn't game related. This in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing, just kinda sloppy.

I do wish there was some kind of output for the score. Maybe in the save...?[/quote]

Actually, you can just create a new template, and only use it for your Inform games.  I had to do this for a purchasing system in WP.  All of the scripting is hidden on the page itself at the bottom.  Then when you create a WP page where you want to embed a Parchment game, you change to that template and use the standard template for all of your normal pages.

There is a plugin that allows you to run script files from within a page, but I have never tried it so I can't say how well it works.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2524&start=0#p17359
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I use Inform 7 with Wordpress? If so how?
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-29 20:18:32

[quote="Dannii"]The easiest way is to use an <iframe>. By adding [code];options=%7B%22width%22%3A42%7D[/code] to the end of the URL you can specify the width. This is [code];options={"width":42}[/code] encoded. If you need to change the width use <a class="postlink" href="http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/dencoder/">http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/dencoder/</a> to encode it.[/quote]

That does sound like an easy way.  Any drawbacks to the iframe approach?  

I'll have to give it a try once I get done creating the site I am working on.  Ironically, it is a WordPress site.   [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2519&start=0#p17360
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: IF and Linux
User: drayakir / DateTime: 2011-05-29 20:24:14

[quote="Emerald"]For authoring, Inform 7 runs natively on Linux.[/quote]

Whoah, how? When I tried installing it, it told me something along the lines of "I need these libraries, but I'm not going to install them, and no, I won't tell you why." And when I tried to automatically resolve the issue, it just deleted gnome-inform7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2524&start=0#p17361
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I use Inform 7 with Wordpress? If so how?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-05-29 20:48:05

There are a LOT of drawbacks to iframes in general, but I don't think there's any real harm in this instance, since the IF is the only thing that would be running in it and you wouldn't really be able to navigate anywhere else.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2519&start=0#p17362
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: IF and Linux
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-05-29 20:52:09

[quote="drayakir"][quote="Emerald"]For authoring, Inform 7 runs natively on Linux.[/quote]

Whoah, how? When I tried installing it, it told me something along the lines of "I need these libraries, but I'm not going to install them, and no, I won't tell you why." And when I tried to automatically resolve the issue, it just deleted gnome-inform7.[/quote]
Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu, right? Which version of Ubuntu? The .deb on the Inform 7 website is compiled for Ubuntu 11.04 and doesn't work on earlier versions, so you might need to use [url=http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnome-inform7/files/gnome-inform7/6G60/gnome-inform7_6G60-0ubuntu1_i386.deb/download]this .deb[/url] instead. It's the same version of Inform 7, just compiled for Ubuntu 10.10 instead of 11.04.

If neither .deb is working for you, it might be a problem specific to Linux Mint. Let us know which libraries are causing the issue and we'll see if we can help you get it working.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2524&start=0#p17364
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I use Inform 7 with Wordpress? If so how?
User: Michelle / DateTime: 2011-05-29 21:44:19

I'm[b] really[/b] appreciating the info flowing in here. 

Thank you all! Keep it coming as you have it, please!

Much of this is beyond my current knowledge level but feels quite possibly learn-able (at least some of it). I'm sure I'll have more questions as this project proceeds. 

Michelle

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2526&start=0#p17365
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Cannot open include file adv3.h and en_us.h
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-05-29 22:25:45

That looks like a really old version of the T3 compiler - it's up to 3.0.18.1 now. IIRC the Debian package for frobtads includes 3.0.8, which may be where it came from.

Your best bet would be to uninstall the Debian package and then build [url=http://www.tads.org/frobtads.htm]frobtads[/url] from source.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2526&start=0#p17366
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Cannot open include file adv3.h and en_us.h
User: drayakir / DateTime: 2011-05-29 22:47:09

Well, is there a difference on whether I run qtads or frobtads? And does it really matter, what version of the compiler I'm using? I mean, maybe I did a coding error?

[code]#charset "us-ascii"
#include <adv3.h>
#include <en_us.h>

versionINfo: GameID
	name = 'My Practice Game'
	byLine = 'by Silver Smoulder'
	verision = '1'
;

gameMain: GameMainDef
	initialPlayerCharacter = me
;
me: Actor
	location = startRoom
;

bedroom: Room
	roomName = 'Bedroom'
	desc = "Your bed lurks in one corner of the room. There's a pile of clothing in another corner. The moon is bright in the sky, as can be seen from your window. The only way out is to the east."
	east = landing
;

landing: Room 
	roomName = 'Landing'
	desc = "This is a landing on the staircase. The only place to go is back to your room, to the west."
	west = bedroom
;
[/code]

Am I forgetting something, or is it really the compiler?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2519&start=10#p17367
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: IF and Linux
User: drayakir / DateTime: 2011-05-29 23:00:27

[quote]Unpacking inform (from .../inform_6.31.1+dfsg-1_i386.deb) ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
Setting up inform (6.31.1+dfsg-1) ...
update-alternatives: error: alternative path /usr/bin/inform-6.31 doesn't exist.
dpkg: error processing inform (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 2
configured to not write apport reports
                                      Errors were encountered while processing:
 inform
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
A package failed to install.  Trying to recover:
Setting up inform (6.31.1+dfsg-1) ...
update-alternatives: error: alternative path /usr/bin/inform-6.31 doesn't exist.
dpkg: error processing inform (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 2
Errors were encountered while processing:
 inform[/quote]

That's what happens when I try to install the package provided by Synaptic Package Manager. BTW, I'm using Debian.

[quote]dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of gnome-inform7:
 gnome-inform7 depends on libwebkit-1.0-1 (>= 1.0.1); however:
  Package libwebkit-1.0-1 is not installed.
dpkg: error processing gnome-inform7 (--install):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Processing triggers for menu ...
Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme ...
Processing triggers for gnome-menus ...
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils ...
Processing triggers for gconf2 ...
Errors were encountered while processing:
 gnome-inform7[/quote]

Okay, says I, and try to install libwebkit-1.0.1:

[quote]Note, selecting 'libwebkit-1.0-1' for regex 'libwebkit-1.0.1'
You might want to run 'apt-get -f install' to correct these:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 gnome-inform7 : Depends: libwebkit-1.0-1 (>= 1.0.1) but it is not installable
E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or specify a solution).
[/quote]

It does say however that I do have libwekit-1.0.2 installed, but apparently it does nothing.

EDIT:

And when I do apt-get -f install, it just uninstalls gnome-inform7:

[quote]Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree        
Reading state information... Done
Correcting dependencies... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  gnome-inform7
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 53 not upgraded.
2 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 43.5 MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? [/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2523&start=20#p17368
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptive text meant for players that Inform 7 ignores
User: Blecki / DateTime: 2011-05-30 00:10:14

It looks like there are newlines embedded within the string in the first example. Is that allowed?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2519&start=10#p17369
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: IF and Linux
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-05-30 00:31:41

[quote="drayakir"]BTW, I'm using Debian.[/quote]
Oh, sorry, I just assumed you were the original poster. Not paying attention...  [emote]:oops:[/emote] 

The Debian gnome-inform7 was packaged for Lenny, which supplied libwebkit-1.0-1, but later versions of Debian no longer include it. You'd better report it as a bug on the [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/my_view_page.php]Inform 7 bug tracker[/url] and ask for a new Debian package to be built, with the correct dependencies. (Especially since Lenny is now officially obsolete.) I don't know how long that will take to be fixed, but when Ubuntu 11.04 came out and the old Ubuntu packages stopped working, it wasn't that long before a new package was released.

In the mean time, if you're impatient, you could try building it from [url=http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnome-inform7/files/gnome-inform7/6G60/I7_6G60_GNOME_Source.tar.gz/download]source[/url]...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2526&start=0#p17370
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Cannot open include file adv3.h and en_us.h
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-05-30 00:50:55

[quote="drayakir"]Well, is there a difference on whether I run qtads or frobtads?[/quote]
Nope. The only difference is that the former is an HTML TADS interpreter, the other a text-only one. And of course, frobtads also provides the TADS compiler (the "frob" utility is the interpreter, "t3make" the compiler.)

[quote]And does it really matter, what version of the compiler I'm using? I mean, maybe I did a coding error?[/quote]
Only that you're missing out on many bug fixes and new features. The version you're using is *really* ancient and pretty much unsupported. You should be using the compiler that comes with frobtads instead. Being a command-line tool, it's really easy to build on your own. It only requires ncurses. On Debian Lenny, that means installing the "libncurses5-dev" package should be enough. After that, it's the usual "unpack, ./configure, make install" business.

Anyway, to solve your specific problem: you should create a makefile for your game. Frobtads comes with a sample game and sample makefile in the "t3compiler/samples" directory. Here's an example makefile:

[code]
# The game will be built with "sample.t3" as filename.
-o sample.t3

# US English.
-D LANGUAGE=en_us
-D MESSAGESTYLE=neu

# Tell the compiler to put object and symbol files in the "obj"
# directory, so that they don't pollute the current directory.
# "obj" should be an already existing directory, it won't be created
# automatically.
-Fy obj
-Fo obj


# This is the list of source files making up the sample game.
#

# TADS libraries.
-lib system
-lib adv3/adv3

# Game sources.
-source myawesome_game.t
-source rooms.t
-source custom_verbs.t

# Game information resource to embed in the game.
-res
GameInfo.txt[/code]

If you name your makefile "Makefile.t3m", then you only need to call "t3make" without any options to compile your game (not sure if this is true on the old version you're using.) If you named your makefile differently, then you need to use "t3make -f mymakefile".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2505&start=10#p17371
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Laziness is setting in
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-30 04:17:56

Following the way of "rapid prototyping", like Ghalev described, is good advice to give people in general if they're flagging in developing a game.

Still, that's not what I'm actually doing with my game per se. There are different kinds of tasks involved in making these games. There is the writing of prose, the rote writing of code that you know how to write but that has to be done, and working out how to code what you don't know how to do.

I get bored if I do any one of these tasks for too long stretch, so usually, to break sensations of weariness or laziness, I just switch to a different type of task from the one I'm on whenever I get that feeling. For instance if I'm in a writing mood, I might fill a text file with a bunch of descriptions for different items, rather than code each item in full. Then when I'm in a programming mood, I pull out the text file and start implementing the items I described, one at a time.

So regularly changing which parts of the game you're working on, rather than doing things sequentially, can be another way to keep yourself stimulated.

Re: using playtesters, there are lots of different approaches as to how and when to give your stuff to play testers. I don't like to show testers the game until it is very complete, basically because I want the play testers to be concentrating on the game itself more than on the bugs they are hitting. The more technical hitches they strike, the less comparable their experience will be to that of the end user. So I'm sort of 'preserving' them, because each of them can only have one first experience with the game.

If I had a pool of testers double the size - and more time, because communicating with your testers is a significant time and energy pull - I would probably have a group who would test the game as I made it, then a second group who would only see it once it was essentially complete (but still with hidden bugs, which they will un-earth [emote]:)[/emote]) Anyway, since I test my own games pretty strenuously, I like to keep the testers out until late. It's just worth thinking about what you want from testers before you bring any in. It has to suit your working style.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2528&start=0#p17372
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Eyes Beyond
User: Admortire / DateTime: 2011-05-30 05:53:55

Hello everybody, 

Eyes beyond is my very first interactive fiction and I need your help testing it!
Claire needs to find her way back home together with her dog Viktor.
It's a fairly short game and probably easy (?) for experienced gamers, 
but I need your input on:
- how the game is played.
- what do you think about the puzzles. 
- see any spelling/ grammatical mistakes (I'm a non-English speaker)
- and anything else you can come up with!

You can email me at admortire @ gmail . com 
and I can sent you the z file 
or you can play it here: [url]http://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A//student-kmt.hku.nl/~rian/cgi-bin/Release/prototype.zblorb[/url]

I'd be really grateful for your help!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2529&start=0#p17373
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform7: Reoccuring room descriptions
User: Kellychouchou / DateTime: 2011-05-30 07:57:58

Hey guys!

I've finished the majority of my game and now i'm running through it trying to sort out any problems/bugs that have occured. One of them (i stupidly didn't address before) is that when the player decides to "look around the room" or "X bedroom" as is the case as the moment the output message is "you can't see any such thing". 

So basically I'm asking how I can allow the player to look at the room's description that they're in as many times as they want without that error message coming up

cheers guys

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2529&start=0#p17374
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform7: Reoccuring room descriptions
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-30 08:15:30

If you have a look at Aaron Reed's 'Small Kindnesses' extension, it adds that facility to your game, assuming the room names behind the scenes are the same room names the player would type. It also adds lots of other things. You may want all of them or just some, but either way, it can show you how to do what you're talking about.

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/Aaron%20Reed/Small%20Kindnesses/index.html">http://inform7.com/extensions/Aaron%20R ... index.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2530&start=0#p17375
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform7: How can I code a 'restart game' option
User: Kellychouchou / DateTime: 2011-05-30 08:22:20

I'm entering my IF game into my uni's summer show and as a result i need (it is a must) there to be a restart option which hopefully i can customize. Does anyone know of any easy way I can do this? I couldn't find anything 

thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2529&start=0#p17376
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform7: Reoccuring room descriptions
User: Kellychouchou / DateTime: 2011-05-30 08:26:50

Can i just say that you're a legend. im two weeks away from deadline and you saved me hours of banging my head against a tired wall [emote]:)[/emote] thankyou!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2530&start=0#p17377
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform7: How can I code a 'restart game' option
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-05-30 08:40:10

What kind of customization do you need? The standard library already includes the RESTART command.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2530&start=0#p17378
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform7: How can I code a 'restart game' option
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-05-30 09:11:15

You can't write before, instead or after rules for out of world actions, but you can easily do things like this:

[code]
Check restarting the game for the first time:
	instead say "No way. Not now."
	
Check restarting the game for the second time:
	instead follow the restart the game rule.
	
Check restarting the game for the third time:
	instead say "Again?! Can you make your mind up, please?"
	
Check restarting the game for the fourth time:
	instead follow the immediately restart the VM rule.

Test me with "restart / restart / yes / restart /restart / no / restart / restart".
[/code]

The restart the game rule is what ordinarily fires when you type RESTART.
The immediately restart the VM rule asks no questions before it restarts the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2530&start=0#p17379
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform7: How can I code a 'restart game' option
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-05-30 09:29:55

Felix, that works as long as the player doesn't actually restart the game (that is, replies "no" to the confirmation question). Once the game restarts the action counter resets.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2531&start=0#p17380
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Is hugo any easier than Tads 2 or 3
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-05-30 09:56:20

is it an easier to program?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2531&start=0#p17381
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Is hugo any easier than Tads 2 or 3
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-05-30 10:01:38

[quote="ilovemyhedgehog"]is it an easier to program?[/quote]
It should be. It's a much simpler system compared to T3 (both library as well as language-wise), meaning the learning curve is quite low.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2530&start=0#p17382
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform7: How can I code a 'restart game' option
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-05-30 10:11:38

[quote="Juhana"]Felix, that works as long as the player doesn't actually restart the game (that is, replies "no" to the confirmation question). Once the game restarts the action counter resets.[/quote]
Yes. 


(The example was only meant to show a simple way to gain some control over the restart mechanism and to demonstrate the two restart rules.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2532&start=0#p17383
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: are there any hugo help sites?
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-05-30 10:46:15

how to hugo?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2533&start=0#p17384
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Is inform 7 easier to program or harder than TADS 3?
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-05-30 10:57:22

and what is better and worse about it compared to TADS 3

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2533&start=0#p17385
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is inform 7 easier to program or harder than TADS 3?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-05-30 11:51:19

You might find this article helpful: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.brasslantern.org/writers/iftheory/tads3andi7.html">http://www.brasslantern.org/writers/ift ... andi7.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2526&start=0#p17386
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Cannot open include file adv3.h and en_us.h
User: drayakir / DateTime: 2011-05-30 11:56:03

O...kay. Well, I got Frobtads, and it "make"d almost perfectly well, until:

[quote]  CXX    t3compiler/tads3/tcprs.o
t3compiler/tads3/tcprs.cpp:123:25: error: uninitialized const ‘S_op_if’ [-fpermissive]
t3compiler/tads3/tcprs.h:3431:7: note: ‘const class CTcPrsOpIf’ has no user-provided default constructor
make[1]: *** [t3compiler/tads3/tcprs.o] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/drayakir/frob/frobtads-1.0'
make: *** [all] Error 2
[/quote]

./configure worked fine, and it stopped at tcprs.cpp. I have NO idea what this means.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2529&start=0#p17387
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform7: Reoccuring room descriptions
User: Blecki / DateTime: 2011-05-30 12:01:35

While that extension might allow things like 'look around' and such, it just makes them aliases for the command 'look' which already allows the player to 'view the room' as often as they want.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2533&start=0#p17388
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is inform 7 easier to program or harder than TADS 3?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-05-30 12:06:33

Eric's article (the link above) is very good. I've written games using both systems, and I can summarize my experiences briefly:

I7 is easier to get started with than T3. But as you get more familiar with the language and want to do more complex things, T3 becomes easier to work with than I7. For that and other reasons, I tend to think of T3 as "the IF programming language for grown-ups." I can articulate my reasons for thinking this if you're interested.

If you're using Windows, T3 has a very nice front end called Workbench, which is similar in concept (though not in details) to the I7 IDE. However, Workbench does not run natively on Mac or Linux. I've used it under Crossover (currently $29) on the Mac, and it works about 99% -- a couple of features aren't quite right.

T3 has a much larger built-in library of game features than I7. You can create a flashlight or a ship's deck and cabins, for instance, using built-in widgets, and never need extensions. However, I7 has a large and enthusiastic community of folks who are writing extensions; T3 doesn't.

T3 is stable. I7 is still in development, which means it's in a state of flux.

If you're interested in letting players run your games in a web browser, I7 (and for that matter, I6) has a big advantage: the Parchment and Quixe interpreters. Before too long T3 may have something even cooler in the way of a Web-based gaming experience, but it's going to require that the author jump through some extra hoops, and it's still not released.

Let's not forget Inform 6, though. It's fully functional, it's stable, it has its own suite of debugging tools, it's considerably easier to learn than T3, there's a good-sized list of extensions you can download, and it presents the author with a programming syntax that is, in my opinion, more straightforward than I7's. Of course, there's no front end for programming -- you'll have to download a text editor and an interpreter. But that's not a deal-breaker.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2526&start=0#p17390
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Cannot open include file adv3.h and en_us.h
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-05-30 12:19:42

[quote="drayakir"]O...kay. Well, I got Frobtads, and it "make"d almost perfectly well, until:
[...]
./configure worked fine, and it stopped at tcprs.cpp. I have NO idea what this means.[/quote]
I answered the email, but I'll reply here too for anyone else encountering the issue:

It's a new error recognized by GCC 4.6.  As a temporary work-around, try to configure by adding "-fpermissive" in CXXFLAGS.  Something like:
[code]./configure CXXFLAGS="-pipe -O2 -fpermissive -fno-strict-aliasing"[/code]
should work.  This has been fixed properly in current Git a while ago, so this won't be necessary in the next release.

GCC 4.5 and older is not affected.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2531&start=0#p17391
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Is hugo any easier than Tads 2 or 3
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-05-30 12:29:27

Hugo is similar in difficulty to Inform 6, or so I've been told. (I've never used Hugo.) In the old days, the word was that Hugo had better multimedia capabilities than Inform ... but I don't think Kent Tessman is actively maintaining Hugo at this point, so you'd have to download and play a few Hugo games to find out how well their multimedia features work on current interpreters.

If your main interest is in writing a text-based game, then Inform 6 would probably be a better choice than Hugo, as you'll find it easier to get answers to your technical questions.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2361&start=10#p17392
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Getting started with Undum?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-05-30 12:33:28

[quote="joningold"]For authoring on a Mac I can't rave enough about TextWrangler, which is free, does syntax colouring for js (especially helpful if you're writing it straight), as well as html and perl and others, and [i]it can run a perl script on a keypress[/i] (Apple-R).[/quote]
+1.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2526&start=0#p17393
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Cannot open include file adv3.h and en_us.h
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-05-30 12:36:52

Btw, I just checked Debian Sid's packages, and (thanks to Daniel Schepler who maintains the various IF Debian packages) it seems to already provide the latest frobtads version in the "non-free" repository:

<a class="postlink" href="http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=tads&searchon=names&suite=unstable&section=all">http://packages.debian.org/search?keywo ... ection=all</a>

So it looks like you don't need to build it from source. Adding the non-free repo and doing "aptitude install tads3-dev" should install everything you need.

PS:
I noticed that you need to install the "1:0.13-2" version. The "3.0.8-1" which is also listed there, is the older, deprecated version.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2533&start=0#p17394
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is inform 7 easier to program or harder than TADS 3?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-05-30 13:55:55

This is a question that has been asked many times, and people tend to have very strong opinions on the topic.  If I recall correctly, you're planning on working with other people on this project, so it may be relevant to you that one of the nice things about Inform7's syntax is that it's fairly easy to read*, which may help if you are in the habit of regularly passing code between project partners.

*which is not at all to say that it's necessarily easy to write!  Personally, I've gotten used to it and am quite happy with I7, but the "natural language" aspect of Inform7 (that is, where the code "looks like" real English) can be very, very frustrating to work with.  Some people claim that it's even worse for programmers who are used to writing in other languages, because it looks wrong, but I'd actually say that it's worse for people who [i]don't[/i] have much experience programming and therefore don't have a built-up understanding of what kinds of things ought to work.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2535&start=0#p17395
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Trouble with Quip-Based Conversations
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-05-30 14:28:27

I'm using Quip-Based Conversation and, in the third scene, the quips won't show up when enabled.  One place is this:

[code]Before consulting the Gem Compendium about "meteorite" for the first time during Starfall:
	now the greeting of the witch is meteoriteS;
	enable the useS quip.[/code]

I know the statement triggers because the greeting changes.  The useS quip is in the Table of Quip Texts and in the witch's litany.  It shows up if I enable it in the table, but if I use the code above it won't work.  This is true for all the quips in this scene.  All the conversations before that scene work perfectly.

I know this is vague but I really have no idea what could be causing this.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2533&start=0#p17396
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is inform 7 easier to program or harder than TADS 3?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-05-30 14:38:04

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Let's not forget Inform 6, though. […] Of course, there's no front end for programming -- you'll have to download a text editor and an interpreter.[/quote]
Unless you happen to use a Mac, I think. Doesn't Inform's IDE for the Mac function as a front end to Inform 6 as well?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2533&start=0#p17397
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is inform 7 easier to program or harder than TADS 3?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-05-30 14:58:43

[quote="Felix"][quote="Jim Aikin"]Let's not forget Inform 6, though. […] Of course, there's no front end for programming -- you'll have to download a text editor and an interpreter.[/quote]
Unless you happen to use a Mac, I think. Doesn't Inform's IDE for the Mac function as a front end to Inform 6 as well?[/quote]
No. Those features are non-functional. They're stubs that have never been properly fleshed out.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2533&start=0#p17398
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is inform 7 easier to program or harder than TADS 3?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-05-30 15:11:56

Ah, that's a pity.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2524&start=10#p17399
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I use Inform 7 with Wordpress? If so how?
User: Michelle / DateTime: 2011-05-30 16:26:13

And now that I've thought about it, the first avenue I'm going to try is what Seeker suggested:

[quote]Actually, you can just create a new template, and only use it for your Inform games. I had to do this for a purchasing system in WP. All of the scripting is hidden on the page itself at the bottom. Then when you create a WP page where you want to embed a Parchment game, you change to that template and use the standard template for all of your normal pages.[/quote]
Of course I haven't ever created a new template (just made a child theme of something already existing and in that just messed with the css side), let alone tried to have it apply only to a specific page, but all of this is a learning curve for me. I know I'll have questions.

If that doesn't work I'll look at Iframe.

Onward... and with appreciation,
Michelle

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2524&start=10#p17400
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I use Inform 7 with Wordpress? If so how?
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-30 16:36:21

Okay, I had to give it a try... and iframes seem to work well.  Except Parchment uses a wide enough gameport that you have to scroll right to be able to read an entire line of the game.

I am "self-hosting" Parchment and using individual HTML pages to load different games.

Maybe Dannii can help here... is there a way to shrink the window of Parchment down so it fits in a narrow window?  I tried playing with this line in the HTML file that loads the game:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,user-scalable=no">

By changing the "width=device-width" part and adding literal values...

But nothing seemed to change.  Is it in the CSS file maybe?  This kind of a cool idea, and I would like to get it working without the scroll bar at the bottom if possible.

Thanks for any help.


Edit to add:  I am going to try the template method also at some point.  Iframes was just a quicker test.  [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2526&start=0#p17401
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Cannot open include file adv3.h and en_us.h
User: drayakir / DateTime: 2011-05-30 17:42:21

Well, the good news is that with your expert adivce, it compiled like a song.

The bad news is that when I [b]frob Firstgame[/b], it gives me this:

[code]Runtime error: nil object reference
Stack trace:
->/usr/local/share/frobtads/tads3/lib/adv3/misc.t, line 511
  /usr/local/share/frobtads/tads3/lib/adv3/report.t, line 1926
  /usr/local/share/frobtads/tads3/lib/adv3/exec.t, line 1270
  /usr/local/share/frobtads/tads3/lib/adv3/misc.t, line 516
  /usr/local/share/frobtads/tads3/lib/adv3/misc.t, line 121
  /usr/local/share/frobtads/tads3/lib/adv3/misc.t, line 536
  /usr/local/share/frobtads/tads3/lib/_main.t, line 126
  /usr/local/share/frobtads/tads3/lib/_main.t, line 30
[Hit any key to exit.]
[/code]

I'm guessing this means that there's a problem with the adv3.h file... namely that it's missing these... objects on those lines?

EDIT:

Okay, nevermind. It seems I have made a coding error of some kind, because the game text I copied from "Getting Started in TADS 3" worked like a charm, so now I'm just trying to figure out what I did wrong.

But seriously, thank you SO much for your help. I have to say that it was mega-cool that you responded in like... 5 minutes after I sent you my e-mail. That makes you better than like... 99% of most tech support places, heh.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2524&start=10#p17402
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I use Inform 7 with Wordpress? If so how?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-05-30 18:59:32

Seeker, do what I said and add the options parameter to the end of the iframe's URL. Then there will be no need to self host it (though you still could if you wanted to.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2508&start=0#p17403
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Short, kid-friendly IF
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-05-30 19:04:51

Lost Pig would be very appealing to kids, though some of the puzzles are conceptually tricky, so have an adult around too [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2536&start=0#p17404
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Tri-Part Inventory?
User: QueenoftheCapes / DateTime: 2011-05-30 19:38:44

Okay, I knew that monkeying around with the inventory settings would be complicated, but I'd thought I'd had it mostly figured out.  Basically, I wanted to tweak the inventory lister so that it shows three subdivisions, not just two, so that you'd get a read-out like:
[quote]
>[i]Inventory[/i]
You have a Dagger Of Fail, a Red Gem and an Oil Lamp.  You're wearing a Tunic.  You're wielding a Sword Of Armaggedon.
[/quote]

However, upon testing, I find that my code seems to choke if check inventory while I'm holding the sword. Not even wielding, mind you, just [i]holding[/i] it.  And 

it's only the weapon; the gem gets a free pass, but holding a sword results in "Wrong Number of Arguments".  I'm stumped.  What am I missing? [emote]:([/emote] 

Here's my code:
[code]
#charset "us-ascii"
#include <adv3.h>
#include <en_us.h>

/*A hack to modify the Inventory Lister.*/

modify ThingState
    wieldedName(lst) { return listName(lst); }
;

modify Thing
showWieldedItem(options, pov, infoTab)
    {
        /* show the item, using the worn-listing state name */
        showListItemGen(options, pov, infoTab, &wieldedName);
    }
    showWieldedItemCounted(lst, options, pov, infoTab)
    {
        /* show the item, using the worn-listing state name */
        showListItemCountedGen(lst, options, pov, infoTab, &wieldedName);
    }
;

class WieldingLister: InventoryLister
    /* show the list item using the "worn listing" name */
    showListItem(obj, options, pov, infoTab)
        { obj.showWieldedItem(options, pov, infoTab); }
    showListItemCounted(lst, options, pov, infoTab)
        { lst[1].showWieldedItemCounted(lst, options, pov, infoTab); }
;

class WieldingSublister: WieldingLister
    /* don't show any prefix, suffix, or 'empty' messages */
    showListPrefixWide(itemCount, pov, parent) { }
    showListSuffixWide(itemCount, pov, parent) { }
    showListEmpty(pov, parent) { }

    /* don't show out-of-line contents */
    showSeparateContents(pov, lst, options, infoTab) { }
;

actorWieldingSublister: WieldingSublister;

modify actorInventoryLister
    /*
     *   Show the combined inventory listing, putting together the raw
     *   lists of the items being carried and the items being worn. 
     */
    showCombinedInventoryList(parent, carrying, wearing, wielding)
    {
        /* if one or the other sentence is empty, the format is simple */
        if (carrying == '' && wearing == '' && wielding == '')
        {
            /* the parent is completely empty-handed */
            showInventoryEmpty(parent);
        }
        else if (carrying == '' && wielding == '')
        {
            /* the whole list is being worn */
            showInventoryWearingOnly(parent, wearing);
        }
        else if (wearing == '' && wielding == '')
        {
            /* the whole list is being carried */
            showInventoryCarryingOnly(parent, carrying);
        }
        //HAX
        else if (carrying == '' && wearing == '')
        {
            /* the whole list is being worn */
            showInventoryWieldingOnly(parent, wielding);
        } 
        //Odd one out:
        else if (carrying == '' )
        {
            /* the whole list is being worn */
            showInventoryCarryNot(parent, wearing, wielding);
        }    
        else if (wearing == '' )
        {
            /* the whole list is being worn */
            showInventoryWearNot(parent, carrying, wielding);
        }           
        else if (wielding == '' )
        {
            /* the whole list is being worn */
            showInventoryWieldNot(parent, carrying, wearing);
        }           
        else
        {
            /*
             *   ALL listings are populated.  Count the number of
             *   comma-separated or semicolon-separated phrases in each
             *   list.  This will give us an estimate of the grammatical
             *   complexity of each list.  If we have very short lists, a
             *   single sentence will be easier to read; if the lists are
             *   long, we'll show the lists in separate sentences.  
             */
            if (countPhrases(carrying) + countPhrases(wearing) + countPhrases(wielding)
                <= singleSentenceMaxNouns)
            {
                /* short enough: use a single-sentence format */
                showInventoryShortLists(parent, carrying, wearing, wielding);
            }
            else
            {
                /* long: use a two-sentence format */
                showInventoryLongLists(parent, carrying, wearing, wielding);
            }
        }
    }

    /*
     *   Count the noun phrases in a string.  We'll count the number of
     *   elements in the list as indicated by commas and semicolons.  This
     *   might not be a perfect count of the actual number of noun phrases,
     *   since we could have commas setting off some other kind of clauses,
     *   but it nonetheless will give us a good estimate of the overall
     *   complexity of the text, which is what we're really after.  The
     *   point is that we want to break up the listings if they're long,
     *   but combine them into a single sentence if they're short.  
     */
    countPhrases(txt)
    {
        local cnt;
        
        /* if the string is empty, there are no phrases at all */
        if (txt == '')
            return 0;

        /* a non-empty string has at least one phrase */
        cnt = 1;

        /* scan for commas and semicolons */
        for (local startIdx = 1 ;;)
        {
            local idx;
            
            /* find the next phrase separator */
            idx = rexSearch(phraseSepPat, txt, startIdx);

            /* if we didn't find it, we're done */
            if (idx == nil)
                break;

            /* count it */
            ++cnt;

            /* continue scanning after the separator */
            startIdx = idx[1] + idx[2];
        }

        /* return the count */
        return cnt;
    }

    phraseSepPat = static new RexPattern(',(?! and )|;| and |<rparen>')

    /*
     *   Once we've made up our mind about the format, we'll call one of
     *   these methods to show the final sentence.  These are all separate
     *   methods so that the individual formats can be easily tweaked
     *   without overriding the whole combined-inventory-listing method. 
     */
    showInventoryEmpty(parent)
    {
        /* empty inventory */
        "<<buildSynthParam('The/he', parent)>> {is} empty-handed. ";
    }
    //HAX
    showInventoryWieldingOnly(parent, wielding)
    {
        /* we're carrying nothing but WIELDING some items */
        "<<buildSynthParam('The/he', parent)>> {is} wielding <<wielding>>, but {has} nothing else besides. ";        
    }
    showInventoryWearingOnly(parent, wearing)
    {
        /* we're carrying nothing but wearing some items */
        "<<buildSynthParam('The/he', parent)>> {is} carrying nothing,
        and {is} wearing <<wearing>>. ";
    }
    showInventoryCarryingOnly(parent, carrying)
    {
        /* we have only carried items to report */
        "<<buildSynthParam('The/he', parent)>> {is} carrying <<carrying>>. ";
    }
    showInventoryCarryNot(parent, wearing, wielding)
        {
          if (countPhrases(wearing) + countPhrases(wielding)
                <= singleSentenceMaxNouns)
            {
                /* short enough: use a single-sentence format */
                showInventoryShortLists1(parent, wearing, wielding);
            }
            else
            {
                /* long: use a two-sentence format */
                showInventoryLongLists1(parent, wearing, wielding);
            }
    }
    showInventoryWearNot(parent, carrying, wielding)
        {
         if (countPhrases(carrying) + countPhrases(wielding)
                <= singleSentenceMaxNouns)
            {
                /* short enough: use a single-sentence format */
                showInventoryShortLists2(parent, carrying, wielding);
            }
            else
            {
                /* long: use a two-sentence format */
                showInventoryLongLists2(parent, carrying, wielding);
            }        
    }    
    showInventoryWieldNot(parent, carrying, wearing)
        {
            if (countPhrases(carrying) + countPhrases(wearing)
                <= singleSentenceMaxNouns)
            {
                /* short enough: use a single-sentence format */
                showInventoryShortLists3(parent, carrying, wearing);
            }
            else
            {
                /* long: use a two-sentence format */
                showInventoryLongLists3(parent, carrying, wearing);
            }    
    }    
    showInventoryShortLists1(parent, wearing, wielding)
    {
        local nm = gSynthMessageParam(parent);
        
        /* short lists - combine carried and worn in a single sentence */
        "<<buildParam('The/he', nm)>> {is} wearing <<wearing>>,
        and <<buildParam('it\'s', nm)>>{subj} wielding <<wielding>>. ";
    }
    showInventoryLongLists1(parent, wearing, wielding)
    {
        local nm = gSynthMessageParam(parent);

        /* long lists - show carried and worn in separate sentences */
        "<<buildParam('The/he', nm)>> {is} wearing <<wearing>>.
        <<buildParam('It\'s', nm)>> wielding <<wielding>>. ";
    }    
    showInventoryShortLists2(parent, carrying, wielding)
    {
        local nm = gSynthMessageParam(parent);
        
        /* short lists - combine carried and worn in a single sentence */
        "<<buildParam('The/he', nm)>> {is} carrying <<carrying>>,
        and <<buildParam('it\'s', nm)>>{subj} wielding <<wielding>>. ";
    }
    showInventoryLongLists2(parent, carrying, wielding)
    {
        local nm = gSynthMessageParam(parent);

        /* long lists - show carried and worn in separate sentences */
        "<<buildParam('The/he', nm)>> {is} carrying <<carrying>>.
        <<buildParam('It\'s', nm)>> wielding <<wielding>>. ";
    }    
    showInventoryShortLists3(parent, carrying, wearing)
    {
        local nm = gSynthMessageParam(parent);
        
        /* short lists - combine carried and worn in a single sentence */
        "<<buildParam('The/he', nm)>> {is} carrying <<carrying>>,
        and <<buildParam('it\'s', nm)>>{subj} wearing <<wearing>>. ";
    }
    showInventoryLongLists3(parent, carrying, wearing)
    {
        local nm = gSynthMessageParam(parent);

        /* long lists - show carried and worn in separate sentences */
        "<<buildParam('The/he', nm)>> {is} carrying <<carrying>>.
        <<buildParam('It\'s', nm)>> wearing <<wearing>>. ";
    }    
    showInventoryShortLists(parent, carrying, wearing, wielding)
    {
        local nm = gSynthMessageParam(parent);
        
        /* short lists - combine carried and worn in a single sentence */
        "<<buildParam('The/he', nm)>> {is} carrying <<carrying>>, wearing <<wearing>>, and
        <<buildParam('it\'s', nm)>>{subj} wielding <<wielding>>. ";
    }
    showInventoryLongLists(parent, carrying, wearing, wielding)
    {
        local nm = gSynthMessageParam(parent);

        /* long lists - show carried and worn in separate sentences */
        "<<buildParam('The/he', nm)>> {is} carrying <<carrying>>.
        <<buildParam('It\'s', nm)>> wearing <<wearing>>.
        <<buildParam('It\'s', nm)>> wielding <<wielding>>.
        ";
    }

    /*
     *   For 'tall' listings, we'll use the standard listing style, so we
     *   need to provide the framing messages for the tall-mode listing.  
     */
    showListPrefixTall(itemCount, pov, parent)
        { "<<buildSynthParam('The/he', parent)>> {is} carrying:"; }
    showListContentsPrefixTall(itemCount, pov, parent)
        { "<<buildSynthParam('A/he', parent)>>, who {is} carrying:"; }
    showListEmpty(pov, parent)
        { "<<buildSynthParam('The/he', parent)>> {is} empty-handed. "; }
;

modify DividedInventoryLister
    /*
     *   Show the list.  We completely override the main lister method so
     *   that we can show our two lists.  
     */
    showList(pov, parent, lst, options, indent, infoTab, parentGroup)
    {
        /* 
         *   If this is a 'tall' listing, use the normal listing style; for
         *   a 'wide' listing, use our special segregated style.  If we're
         *   being invoked recursively to show a contents listing, we
         *   similarly want to use the base handling. 
         */
        if ((options & (ListTall | ListContents)) != 0)
        {
            /* inherit the standard behavior */
            inherited(pov, parent, lst, options, indent, infoTab,
                      parentGroup);
        }
        else
        {
            local carryingLst, wearingLst, wieldingLst;
            local carryingStr, wearingStr, wieldingStr;

            /* divide the lists into 'carrying' and 'wearing' sublists */
            carryingLst = new Vector(32);
            wearingLst = new Vector(32);
            wieldingLst = new Vector(32);
            foreach (local cur in lst)
            {
                if(cur.isWornBy(parent)) 
                    wearingLst.append(cur);
                else if (cur.wieldedBy(parent)) 
                    wieldingLst.append(cur);
                else carryingLst.append(cur);
            }


            /* generate and capture the 'carried' listing */
            carryingStr = outputManager.curOutputStream.captureOutput({:
                carryingLister.showList(pov, parent, carryingLst, options,
                                        indent, infoTab, parentGroup)});

            /* generate and capture the 'worn' listing */
            wearingStr = outputManager.curOutputStream.captureOutput({:
                wearingLister.showList(pov, parent, wearingLst, options,
                                       indent, infoTab, parentGroup)});
            
            /*HAXX MUAHAHAHAHA*/
            wieldingStr = outputManager.curOutputStream.captureOutput({:
                wieldingLister.showList(pov, parent, wieldingLst, options,
                                       indent, infoTab, parentGroup)});

            /* generate the combined listing */
            showCombinedInventoryList(parent, carryingStr, wearingStr, wieldingStr);

            /* 
             *   Now show the out-of-line contents for the whole list, if
             *   appropriate.  We save this until after showing both parts
             *   of the list, to keep the direct inventory parts together
             *   at the beginning of the output.  
             */
            if ((options & ListRecurse) != 0
                && indent == 0
                && (options & ListContents) == 0)
            {
                /* show the contents of each object we didn't list */
                showSeparateContents(pov, lst, options | ListContents,
                                     infoTab);
            }
        }
    }

    /*
     *   Show the combined listing.  This must be provided by each
     *   language-specific subclass.  The inputs are the results (strings)
     *   of the captured output of the sublistings of the items being
     *   carried and the items being worn.  These will be "raw" listings,
     *   without any prefix or suffix text.  This routine's job is to
     *   display the final output, adding the framing text.  
     */
    showCombinedInventoryList(parent, carrying, wearing, wielding) { }

    /* 
     *   The recommended maximum number of number of noun phrases to show
     *   in the single-sentence format.  This should be used by the
     *   showCombinedInventoryList() method to decide whether to display
     *   the combined listing as a single sentence or as two separate
     *   sentences.  
     */
    singleSentenceMaxNouns = 7

    /*
     *   Our associated sub-listers for items begin carried and worn,
     *   respectively.  We'll use these to list our sublist of items being
     *   worn.  
     */
    carryingLister = actorCarryingSublister
    wearingLister = actorWearingSublister
    wieldingLister = actorWieldingSublister
;
[/code]

Also, some copy-pasta and stuff to illustrate how it fails to work:
[code]

DefineTAction(Wield);

   VerbRule(Wield)
     ('wield') singleDobj
     : WieldAction
     verbPhrase = 'wield/wielding (what)'
   ;

   modify Thing
     dobjFor(Wield)
     {
       verify() 
       {
         illogical('{You/he} cannot wield that. ');
       }
     }
   ;


  DefineTAction(Unwield);

   VerbRule(Unwield)
     ('unwield') singleDobj
     : UnwieldAction
     verbPhrase = 'unwield/unwielding (what)'
   ;

   modify Thing
     dobjFor(Unwield)
     {
       verify() 
       {
         illogical('{You/he} {are} not wielding that. ');
       }
     }
   ;

class Weapon : Thing 'weapon*weapons' 'weapon'
atk = 2
isWielded = nil 
wieldedBy = nil
dobjFor(Drop) maybeRemapTo(isWielded, Unwield, self) 
iobjFor(AttackWith)
{
verify(){}
check(){}
action()
  {
   } 
}
dobjFor(Wield)
{
verify(){}
check() 
  {
   if(gActor.wielding)
    failCheck('{You/he} already have a weapon. ');
   }
action()
  {
   moveInto(gActor);
   gActor.atk += gDobj.atk;
   gActor.wielding = true;
   gActor.weapon = gDobj;
   gDobj.isWielded = true;
   gDobj.wieldedBy = gActor;
 "{You/he} wield {the dobj/him} as {your/his} weapon. ";
   }
}
dobjFor(Unwield)
{
verify(){}
check() 
  {
   if(!gDobj.isWielded)
     failCheck('{You/he} are not wielding {the dobj/him} ') ;
   }
action()
  {
   gActor.atk -= gDobj.atk;
   gDobj.isWielded = nil;
   gActor.wielding=nil;
   gActor.weapon = nil;
   gDobj.wieldedBy = nil;
 "You stop wielding {the dobj/him} as your weapon. ";
   }
}
;

sword : Weapon 'sword' 'sword of beta testing'
;

modify Actor
atk = 0
wielding = nil
weapon = nil
;

tunic : Wearable 'tunic' 'tunic'
@me
"A midieval tunic, of the sort often worn by DnD characters. "
wornBy = me
;

gem : Thing 'sparkly gem/jewel' 'sparkly gem'
"It's so sparkly! "
;
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2524&start=10#p17405
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I use Inform 7 with Wordpress? If so how?
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-30 19:49:15

[quote="Dannii"]Seeker, do what I said and add the options parameter to the end of the iframe's URL. Then there will be no need to self host it (though you still could if you wanted to.)[/quote]

I am not sure where to put this to make it work.  Is this to pass a parameter to Parchment to shorten the lines it outputs?  My first test was using:

<iframe src="http://mysite.org/parchment/zork1.html" width="100%" height="600">
</iframe>

As the iframe call.  This works, but the text output is too long per line.  I know I can change the iframe width by changing the width command.  I tried adding  ;options=%7B%22width%22%3A30%7D (should be a width of 30) at various places, with and without removing the existing width command.  At best it just changes the iframe width, the text from the game is still longer than the iframe window and there is a scroll bar at the bottom.  

I am trying to get Parchment to shorten its output lines.  As it is now, Zork (which I am using as a test) displays this no matter what width or option I choose:

[color=#0000BF]You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.[/color]
(all on a single line with a scroll bar to scroll right to see what does not fit in the iframe)

What I need it to display is:

[color=#0000BF]You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a 
boarded front door.[/color]
(line wraps after "with a" so it ends up being 2 lines)

Am I just missing where to put the ";options=%7B%22width%22%3A30%7D" command so that it is passed to Parchment correctly?

It is a 3 column WordPress install, so the center window, where this plays, is narrow.  Maybe 68 characters max.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2533&start=0#p17406
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is inform 7 easier to program or harder than TADS 3?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-05-30 20:13:52

I've been struggling with Inform. It isn't so much a "programming language" as it just "just a language". Tads seems more like a programming language. I can't disagree with Jim, as he obviously as worlds more experience than I do and I'm copying stuff from his "Inform Handbook" more than I'm writing stuff on my own.

I honestly think, from what I've seen, that Inform is just as powerful as Tads, there's just a different way of getting there. As far as I can tell, extensions for Inform don't ADD anything to the system. They simply give you a different (and sometimes easier) way of coming to the same solution. 

My struggle with Inform has been accepting it as a programming language. I think I would have a much easier time picking up and learning something like Tads or Inform 6. But because I'm stubborn, I choose to try to learn the "natural language" structure of Inform 7.

I all boils down to how your brain works. If you can more easily "visualize" code as a set of variables, functions, classes and declarations read in the sequence and structure that YOU define, then by all means go with Tads or Inform 6. If, however, you have no foundation or preconceived notion of what a programming language should look like and your brain is more comfortable reading sentences instead of lines of code, Inform 7 should definitely be your cup o' tea.

That said, I do think Inform's sense of precedence and structure should be heavily re-evaluated.

But that's a segue.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2533&start=0#p17407
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is inform 7 easier to program or harder than TADS 3?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-30 21:39:24

[quote]Doesn't Inform's IDE for the Mac function as a front end to Inform 6 as well?[/quote]

Yes. When you create a new project, you can select either Inform 7 or Inform 6.3. The Index tab doesn't work with an I6 project, and the I6 designer's manual isn't included, but the IDE works.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2533&start=0#p17408
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is inform 7 easier to program or harder than TADS 3?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-30 22:02:53

In coming to make my first IF in a modern language, I was coming from being a black belt in Applesoft BASIC and a green belt in 8/16 bit assembly language. I was open to using either TADS or Inform. I just wanted to use whichever one I felt I could understand and learn more easily.

I downloaded the TADs docs first, and in reading them I learned more about these modern concepts like classes and such than I ever learned from past casual encounters. So that was a good learning experience. But it was still apparent that TADs would be far more like those other modern languages in syntax than Inform would, and I didn't really want to get into that. So I got Aaron Reed's book and I got into Inform. It's working out great with my game. I don't like command lines much either, and the TADs graphical frontend for Mac is not up to date, whereas Inform's IDE is integral to it, so that was another choice for a person like me.

I've no doubt both systems are great. Individuals just need to find the one that suits their programming styles and habits, what OS they use, how they like to use that OS, are there any post-game issues you're interested in (like Inform's online-ability.) etc.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2529&start=0#p17409
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform7: Reoccuring room descriptions
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-05-30 22:22:18

The real legend here is Aaron Reed. -flutters eyelids-

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2537&start=0#p17410
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7 Kinds
User: somekidwithhtml / DateTime: 2011-05-30 22:55:17

Hi,
I'm trying to create a "kind" that i can assign to someone "a type of man" that will change their printed name and description. Inform finds no error in the code [code]A zombie is a kind of man. The printed name of a zombie is "zombie". The description of a zombie is "A horrible creature. The zombie is so scary that you cannot stand looking at it."[/code] but when i play it, the game wants me to refer to the "zombie" by it's object's name. Here is what i have:
The kind: [code]A zombie is a kind of man. The printed name of a zombie is "zombie". The description of a zombie is "A horrible creature. The zombie is so scary that you cannot stand looking at it."[/code]
The person who is the kind (i will have more than one "person" with this kind once i get it working): [code]The man_1 is a man in the Maintenence Closet. The man_1 is a zombie. [/code]
When i play the game, the game makes me talk about man_1, even though i have said that man_1 is a zombie, which should have a printed name of "zombie". I'm pretty sure that you can refer to things or rooms by their printed name instead of their "code-name", but this is what happens when i encounter the zombie in the game:[quote]Maintenence Closet
A room whos walls are plastered with cords and pipes. There is a small overhead light. The Maintenece Closet is very cramped. There is something sticking out of the floor that looks like a trapdoor.

You can see a zombie here.

>look at zombie
You can't see any such thing.

>look at man_1
A horrible creature. The zombie is so scary that you cannot stand looking at it.

[/quote]
What is going on?
thanks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2536&start=0#p17411
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Tri-Part Inventory?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-05-30 23:05:17

Sorry to say this question is completely beyond me. I do have a comment, though: I think there would be other situations than wielding where a three-part list would be useful. For instance:

[quote]You are carrying a battered leather suitcase, wearing a fedora and some spats, and juggling three bowling balls, a double-bladed battle axe, a small vial of nitroglycerine, and a scale model of the Taj Mahal.[/quote]

This may seem unlikely, in that juggling normally requires both hands. But dare we assume that the PC will always be a two-handed life form? I'm not actually kidding. I think wielding, juggling, fondling, munching on, and perhaps other forms of containment should also be able to be handled by a multi-part lister. And not only for inventory.

The article on listers has a good example of grouping writing implements on a table, but I just plain don't know enough to see how to adapt that example to an InventoryLister.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2505&start=10#p17412
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Laziness is setting in
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-30 23:09:08

[quote="severedhand"]I get bored if I do any one of these tasks for too long stretch, so usually, to break sensations of weariness or laziness, I just switch to a different type of task from the one I'm on whenever I get that feeling. For instance if I'm in a writing mood, I might fill a text file with a bunch of descriptions for different items, rather than code each item in full. Then when I'm in a programming mood, I pull out the text file and start implementing the items I described, one at a time.[/quote]

I do that too. I also switch around between different areas of the game. I have the ending pretty nearly done now, while the beginning still has a lot of question marks. But I feel like having that ending means that no matter what, the story will have a definite arc and things will work out eventually - I always know what direction I'm headed in. Still, whenever I get stuck on a point of mechanics, or overwhelmed by coding a complicated situation, I skip back to an earlier section and add some conversation topics, or advance the plot a little there.

[quote]Re: using playtesters, there are lots of different approaches as to how and when to give your stuff to play testers. I don't like to show testers the game until it is very complete, basically because I want the play testers to be concentrating on the game itself more than on the bugs they are hitting. The more technical hitches they strike, the less comparable their experience will be to that of the end user. So I'm sort of 'preserving' them, because each of them can only have one first experience with the game.[/quote]
I feel the same way. If the world revolved around me, I might have testers at every stage to check for bugs and bounce ideas off. On the other hand, maybe I wouldn't. Getting feedback too early can be distracting.

At this point I want to get everything working to my own satisfaction, and when there's a complete game to play with no known bugs, I'll start begging for beta testers. My biggest fear for this approach is that I'll discover major plot holes, fundamentally broken game mechanics, or just generally negative player responses - I am trying to prepare myself for a major rewrite after I start getting feedback, but I'm a little afraid I won't be up to it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2537&start=0#p17413
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Kinds
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-05-30 23:17:12

You need to either add an Understand statement or give the actual zombie a name that includes the word "zombie". This works:

[code]A zombie is a kind of man. The printed name of a zombie is usually "zombie". The description of a zombie is usually "A horrible creature. The zombie is so scary that you cannot stand looking at it."

The disgusting green zombie is in the Maintenance Closet. The disgusting green zombie is a zombie.[/code]
As does this:

[code]A zombie is a kind of man. The printed name of a zombie is usually "zombie". The description of a zombie is usually "A horrible creature. The zombie is so scary that you cannot stand looking at it." Understand "zombie" as a zombie.

The disgusting green wretch is in the Maintenance Closet. The disgusting green wretch is a zombie.[/code]

It may seem counter-intuitive or even half-baked that Inform doesn't tag the name of a kind as a vocabulary word that can be used to refer to the kind, but it doesn't. If you want to be able to refer to a man as "man", for instance, you have to add:

[code]Understand "man" as a man.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2537&start=0#p17414
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Kinds
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-30 23:28:39

It also doesn't understand the printed name of an object. The printed name property is a text, and the parser can't be made to recognize any property that is a text. There are other data types in Inform that [i]can[/i] be parsed, however: indexed text, token, and kind of value. When you say:

[code]Understand "zombie" as a zombie[/code]

...you are creating a token. A token can be a literal text, as above, or it can be a complex set of rules assigned to a phrase in brackets:

[code]Understand "zombie/undead/ghoul/dead" and "living dead" as "[zombie]".
Understand "[zombie] man" as a zombie when the item described is male.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2531&start=0#p17415
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Is hugo any easier than Tads 2 or 3
User: Roody_Yogurt / DateTime: 2011-05-31 00:06:52

Hugo has a code example site called [url=http://hugo.gerynarsabode.org./index.php?title=Main_Page]Hugo by Example[/url]. Traditionally, we've answered Hugo questions over at Robb Sherwin's [url=http://www.joltcountry.com/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=8]joltcountry.com[/url] site, but if people ask them here, I'm sure that I or someone else will get here eventually.

Anyhow, yeah, everyone should go with what looks most sensible to them.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2533&start=10#p17416
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is inform 7 easier to program or harder than TADS 3?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-05-31 03:28:11

[quote="tove"]one of the nice things about Inform7's syntax is that it's fairly easy to read[/quote]
Is it though?

Compared to T3 code separated out into different files and demarcated into classes and methods with braces, I struggle to actually find my place in I7. (I think something that might help would be if the headers were more like the headers in Microsoft Office 2007+, with increasing sizes and boldness as you move up the hierarchy.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2538&start=0#p17417
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Who is You?
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-05-31 04:12:04

x me, x myself and x yourself all correspond to the same thing.  But x you does not*.  So who does 'you' refer to?

Can anyone point me towards documentation explaining how Inform changes whether the player character is first, second or third person perspective?  I couldn't seem to find anything in the official manual.

Thanks.

*  I'm sure this could change depending on other settings, but this was the result in the sample I was looking at.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2539&start=0#p17418
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform7: How can i stop the player from 'taking all'
User: Kellychouchou / DateTime: 2011-05-31 04:49:26

Hey everyone, I was wondering if anyone had any idea how I could stop the player from using the command 'take all' during my game? It gives away too many secrets in my game

thanks

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2537&start=0#p17419
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Kinds
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-05-31 05:39:06

Another approach here is just to write

The kitchen contains a zombie. 

Once you've defined a kind, you can instantiate examples, which will have the name "zombie" and respond to being called zombie. 

By contrast, if you define a zombie with a unique internal code name such as man_1, Inform will assume that man is intended to be a special case and will give it its own name and understand rules unless you say otherwise.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2539&start=0#p17420
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform7: How can i stop the player from 'taking all'
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-05-31 05:52:54

Instead of risking frustrating players and disabling it completely you can exclude things from "all" (manual ch. 17.34):

[code]Rule for deciding whether all includes the hidden diary: it does not.
Rule for deciding whether all includes things in the secret compartment: it does not.[/code]
(Although optimally you'd place the secret items in the room only after the player has learned of their existence and avoid this and other snafus altogether.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2526&start=0#p17421
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Cannot open include file adv3.h and en_us.h
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-05-31 05:54:14

[quote="drayakir"]Well, the good news is that with your expert adivce, it compiled like a song.

The bad news is that when I [b]frob Firstgame[/b], it gives me this:

[code]Runtime error: nil object reference
Stack trace:
->/usr/local/share/frobtads/tads3/lib/adv3/misc.t, line 511
  /usr/local/share/frobtads/tads3/lib/adv3/report.t, line 1926
  /usr/local/share/frobtads/tads3/lib/adv3/exec.t, line 1270
  /usr/local/share/frobtads/tads3/lib/adv3/misc.t, line 516
  /usr/local/share/frobtads/tads3/lib/adv3/misc.t, line 121
  /usr/local/share/frobtads/tads3/lib/adv3/misc.t, line 536
  /usr/local/share/frobtads/tads3/lib/_main.t, line 126
  /usr/local/share/frobtads/tads3/lib/_main.t, line 30
[Hit any key to exit.]
[/code]

I'm guessing this means that there's a problem with the adv3.h file... namely that it's missing these... objects on those lines?[/quote]
This is a so called "stack trace". It lists the chain of function calls ("call stack") that led to the error. The line numbers represent the line at which a function call happens. The "->" represents the place where the actual crash happened. The relevant place to look for mistakes is near the bottom of the stack trace (since it's near the place where the error originates from.)

To give you a better idea of it, imagine you have a function (or object method) named foo(val) in the file "foo.t". Now that function calls bar(val) which is implemented in bar.t, and bar(val) calls another one, baz(val) which resides in baz.t. If you call foo(val) from one of your game source files, say "myfile.t", with a wrong argument (say you pass 'nil' to it, but that isn't allowed), then foo() calls bar() which calls baz(). baz() crashes because of the 'nil'. The stack trace is going to look something like:

[code]
->baz.t, line X
bar.t, line X
foo.t, line X
myfile.t, line X
...
[/code]

So in this case, the place to look for the error is in line X of myfile.t. It might not be obvious, since more files can be listed under myfile.t (since the call stack can go back to the very beginning of the program, like the main() function of the TADS system library.) The way to track down the error is to look at the files you wrote yourself, since it is assumed that the library files that come with TADS don't have bugs. (They do, of course, as all software has bugs, but it's not common.)

[quote]I have to say that it was mega-cool that you responded in like... 5 minutes after I sent you my e-mail. That makes you better than like... 99% of most tech support places, heh.[/quote]
Heh, OK; I don't have a support line or something like that set up [emote]:lol:[/emote]. It just happened that at the time I was sitting in front of the computer.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2538&start=0#p17422
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Who is You?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-05-31 06:54:26

[quote]explaining how Inform changes whether the player character is first, second or third person perspective?[/quote]

I'm pretty sure it doesn't (change), because it's not something built-into Inform. What *is* built-in is "which person is the PC", so if there are many NPCs in a room and the player takes control of an NPC you will notice a change.

But 1st, 2nd and 3rd person aren't built-into. To achieve them you have to manually edit most, if not all, of the responses. However, there are a couple of extensions that do provide an entire framework for diferent perspectives as well as different tenses (present, past). Maybe those extensions do take care of "you", updating as necessary, I don't know. But you certainly won't find anything about it in the built-in stuff.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2524&start=10#p17423
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I use Inform 7 with Wordpress? If so how?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-05-31 08:44:21

[code]<iframe src="http://iplayif.com/?story=http://www.batmantis.com/zorks/zork1.z5;options=%7B%22width%22%3A30%7D"></iframe>[/code]

Should do what you want.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2533&start=10#p17424
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is inform 7 easier to program or harder than TADS 3?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-05-31 09:03:06

Hm, I meant more at the sentence level.  (I don't find I7 particularly bad at the overall project level either, but 1) I tend to make small projects, and 2) my code organization skills are not great anyway.)  Now, I've never actually worked with T3, but in other similarly-syntaxed languages I've used, my problem is always that I'll inevitably have to look at the documentation for a method when I'm reading it again later because I've forgotten what the arguments are or what order they are supposed to be supplied in.  For an obvious case that would probably never actually be a problem if I'd written a game using it, but to grab some code from that comparison page, in "redBall:Thing 'red ball' 'red ball' @garden;" I could very easily see myself wondering, "wait, is the first 'red ball' the [in Informese] printed name, or the understood name?"  Now, in Inform, if I wanted to change the "printed name" I'd still possibly be dicey on whether or not I remembered the "printed name" incantation in the first place to write it, but I would have no trouble reading it later.  

But again, of course, it all comes down to personal style, and maybe I'm more forgetful than average (I do tend to comment the heck out of my non-Inform code).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=20#p17425
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-31 09:46:17

In point of fact, "jovial" and "jovian" come from the same root.  The Roman god Jupiter (aka Jove) was associated with good humor (and I don't mean the men in the white suits who used to sell ice cream).  As for "venusian" and "venereal," recall that Venus was the goddess of love, mother of Cupid (aka Eros).

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2540&start=0#p17426
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: inform 7 guns and gun shooting
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-05-31 10:08:36

how can you make a gun shoot?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2541&start=0#p17427
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: inform 7: vomiting?
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-05-31 10:10:35

somthing like mouldly goats cheese you eat it and vomit all over your tunic

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2522&start=0#p17428
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: About previous knowledge assumption (and an equation)
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-31 10:11:07

As to the first issue, I think it depends on the level of of physics knowledge required.  I have no problem with a game that requires basic "common-sense" knowledge of how the world works and even a basic level of education; thus, I would be quite happy if the game requires you to know that if you fall asleep under an apple tree an apple might fall on your head.  On the other hand, if the level of knowledge is closer to understanding Einstein's general relativity (which I probably wouldn't understand anyway even if you built a textbook into the game), better to build it in than to require the player to do research external to the game.

As far as calculation is concerned, if we're talking basic arithmetic, people ought to be able to do it without the need for electronic assistance (and if somebody really does need a calculator they can use their own).  If you're talking about a level of math that goes beyond adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing, you may be limiting your class of potential players.  That's true even if you build in a calculator; people would still need to understand the math well enough to use the calculator, and that pretty much eliminates a lot of people (I'm one of them).

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2542&start=0#p17429
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: inform 7: intro
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-05-31 10:12:46

can you make an introduction story start before your game?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2543&start=0#p17430
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [i6/blorb] Pictures not showing up in a blorbed game?
User: joningold / DateTime: 2011-05-31 10:13:11

Hey all -

I'm trying, for no good reason, to get images to display in a glulx game without using I7. I've borrowed the cBlorb.exe from Inform's release package and written a blurb file, and the whole thing compiles fine, except that the blorb program says:

Completed: wrote blorb file of size 792624 bytes (2 picture(s), 0 sound(s))

but calling glk_image_draw on the resource numbers does nothing (Resource numbers 2 & 3, because I have a cover image, which now I think about it also never shows up). (Specifically, I'm calling:

glk_image_draw(BaseWindow.refnum, i, imagealign_InlineCenter, 0);

and it's returning false.)

Am I missing something? Using the trace option suggests cBlorb is finding the images correctly. 

cheers!
jon

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2541&start=0#p17431
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: can you make your charictor vomit?
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-31 10:18:36

[code]Instead of eating the disgusting-looking stuff that you don't know what it is and don't want to know:
     Say "You manage to get the stuff down your gullet, but can[apostrophe]t quite keep it down once it gets there."
     Now the disgusting-looking stuff that you don't know what it is and don't want to know is off-stage;
     If the player is wearing the clean white shirt:
          Now the printed name of the clean white shirt is "puke-stained shirt";
          Now the description of the clean white shirt is "This shirt is stained with some sort of greenish-yellow substance.".[/code]

I'll leave it to you to add appropriate code for smelling the shirt afterwards.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2537&start=0#p17432
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Kinds
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-31 10:40:45

[quote="Jim Aikin"]It may seem counter-intuitive or even half-baked that Inform doesn't tag the name of a kind as a vocabulary word that can be used to refer to the kind, but it doesn't.[/quote]

Note that there will be some situations where you might not want it too. Suppose I declared "A secret door is a kind of door" and then had lots of rules for secret doors -- say, you can't open one unless you've discovered it somehow. It would be very annoying if the game processed "open door" as referring to the secret door when I hadn't discovered it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2540&start=0#p17433
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7 guns and gun shooting
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-05-31 10:47:16

Pull the trigger.  (sorry!)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2540&start=0#p17434
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7 guns and gun shooting
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-05-31 11:05:41

Campbell is kidding, of course, but in general you'll probably find that you'll get better responses to your questions on this forum if you try out some specific things first and then post a specific question about whatever isn't working.

In this case, you will need to (a) create a gun, (b) create the shooting action, (c) write a default for the shooting action (in case the player tries "shoot lamp"), and then (d) write an Instead rule for what happens when the player tries "shoot gun".

This particular design concept faces an added hurdle, however, in that "shoot lamp" is a perfectly sensible input when the player is holding the gun! The English grammar for "shoot" can branch in two different directions. You will need to work out a way to handle that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2541&start=0#p17435
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: vomiting?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-05-31 11:06:50

I'm starting to wonder if this individual is serious about writing a game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2522&start=0#p17436
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: About previous knowledge assumption (and an equation)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-05-31 11:23:02

Just a technical note on all this: I7 isn't going to be able to parse something like "divide 20 by 4" out of the box, because you are limited to one value when defining a command's grammar. There are ways around this, though, such as parsing commands containing "divide" iteratively to grab second, third, or more values. Here are some links to discussions about matching more objects and texts (a kind of value) than Inform normally allows:

<a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/8711ab0f70167102/99914a61b9823115">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts ... 61b9823115</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/8b7ca0bf314dd714/e67520b1dadc372f">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts ... b1dadc372f</a>
<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2217">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2217</a>

None of these will do just what you're looking for, but the code examples should give you some ideas.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2533&start=10#p17437
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is inform 7 easier to program or harder than TADS 3?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-05-31 11:23:40

[quote="tove"]For an obvious case that would probably never actually be a problem if I'd written a game using it, but to grab some code from that comparison page, in "redBall:Thing 'red ball' 'red ball' @garden;" I could very easily see myself wondering, "wait, is the first 'red ball' the [in Informese] printed name, or the understood name?"[/quote]
The macro abbreviations are one of things I love most about T3, but you don't have to use them. You can name those properties explicitly when you set them ("name" and "vocabWords" respectively).

[quote="tove"]Hm, I meant more at the sentence level.[/quote]
I don't see much difference myself. It's really cool that a declaration in I7 can be exactly what you mean in game terms ("After looking in the grassy knoll, now the JFK conspiracy is solved.") but the conciseness of T3 makes it nicely to the point.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2499&start=0#p17438
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: following npc's
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-05-31 11:29:57

It would be more useful to see your code, rather than the code from "Learning TADS 3," as I have a copy of that already.

From your description of the edits you've made in that code, I don't understand how your edits relate to the design concept you initially set forth. For instance, "then back into nil with the PC following." Surely that's not what you meant to say. I'm also wondering what happens if the player follows the NPC back and forth through rooms 1 to 4, but then does not follow the NPC into room 5 to observe what happens there. Won't the whole cycle need to be repeated until the PC gets the right idea?

Puzzle design is sometimes a compromise between our original, more literary vision of the scene on the one hand and, on the other hand, what it's practical to code. If you want the player to follow the NPC into room 5, you might be better advised simply to put room 5 on the NPC's route list.

With respect to your idea of having the NPC go up and down through rooms 1, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, 1, etc., you'll need to do more than reset idx. Think about the logic. You need a separate, persistent variable (one that's not local to the method -- let's call it wanderDirection, and let's say it's either 1 or -1) to keep track of whether the NPC is progressing upward through the room list (1-2-3-4) or downward (4-3-2-1). If wanderDirection is 1 and idx is room 4, then you first need to switch the wanderDirection to -1. And conversely. If wanderDirection is -1 and idx is room 1, you need to switch wanderDirection to 1. You would then add the value of wanderDirection:

[code]idx = idx + wanderDirection;
local dest = routeList[idx];[/code]

...and so forth. That should cause the NPC to pace back and forth. As far as getting him to go to room 5 with a fuse? I don't know. Everything depends on how you've set it up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2522&start=0#p17439
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: About previous knowledge assumption (and an equation)
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-31 11:31:09

[quote="tove"]"You whip out a scroll and a quill, and determine that [n] divided by [m] is [n/m]" or "You punch the equation into your trusty calculator: [n/m]" or "You do the math in your head: [n/m]."  That might minimize the fiddling about with buttons that fully implementing a calculator might require, and if you do something like the middle one, you can just redirect anything having to do with the calculator to "You can use it to ADD, SUBTRACT, DIVIDE, or MULTIPLY."[/quote]
I've always wanted to play with a slide rule, but I've never had a chance. This would be a great opportunity to make a virtual one!

Plus...
[img]http://punditkitchen.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/129120477987646988.jpg[/img]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2522&start=0#p17440
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: About previous knowledge assumption (and an equation)
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-31 11:37:31

When I was in high school, we actually did have to use slide rules.  I remember when the very first electronic calculators (as distinct from the old mechanical adding machines) came out.  They cost about $400 (that's in early 1970's dollars) and could actually do square roots as well as the four basic arithmetic operations.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2515&start=10#p17441
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Breaking down a story file with extensions...?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-31 11:52:56

[quote="I4L"]Exactly, it's really just a matter of preference. It's not that I mind using the Index to navigate (and I still do), it's just that I don't LIKE having everything in one massive file. I prefer things to be more compartmentalized, if that makes sense. It may be that at some point I decide that this is the better way to go, but for the time being, my brain just doesn't work that way. [emote]:D[/emote] [/quote]
I hear you. One of my favorite IDEs ever was an old version of Microsoft Basic (GBasic? QBasic?) that kept every FUNCTION in a separate window. It may have been stored in one file together, but you never saw that.

But with I7, I've been reasonably comfortable with the one-big-file approach. I've even heard it rumored that it's a technique used by rarefied uber-geeks.

Here's the thing for me. I like to separate code and data, but I7 is [i]almost all data[/i]. Is a rule for modeling a specific object code or data? The line is especially blurry because text is output by just about every bit of code. (I've thought about changing that, perhaps by using Ron Newcomb's Unsuccessful PC Attempt extension.)

So my general philosophy with I7 is that code goes into extensions and data goes into the story file. I have a middle-ground at the beginning of the story file that contains kinds and verbs that are very specific to the story, but as they get codified and refactored, they move into extensions.

Although source order isn't all at critical in I7, I try to start with generalities and put more specific stuff later. This helps if I need to trim a file down in order to find a bug - I can usually delete (or comment out) later segments without breaking anything earlier.

There is one major drawback to using one big file on the Mac, though: Typing an open square bracket may result in a [b]very long wait[/b] while the whole document gets reformatted. The uber-geeks with one big text file are using vi for the most part, a very fast, very powerful editor. I've also considered switching to vi as my editor instead of the IDE, but I like having the index and documentation in the same window.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2543&start=0#p17442
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i6/blorb] Pictures not showing up in a blorbed game?
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-05-31 11:56:44

What interpreter are you using to test with? It might be that the interpreter doesn't support inline images in text buffer windows: one way to check would be to make the game call

  glk_gestalt(gestalt_DrawImage,wintype_TextBuffer);

and then print the result. If that doesn't help but the Blorb file somewhere publicly available and I'm happy to have a look at it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=0#p17443
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-05-31 12:01:08

Andrew,

Thank you for looking into this.

I don't know anything about APIs so my naive thinking was: I request audio file sync, Zarf waves his hands and creates a Glk call with the appropriate parameters (based on whatever timing mechanism Glk uses) and adds it to the spec, interpreter authors wave their hands and hook this call into some existing code already contained in the sound library they're using, and someone else wraps it all up in I7 phrases and releases it as an extension. Ok, I didn't really believe it would be quite that simple but I figured it was worth a shot. (I also realize you're wearing a minimum of two hats in this scenario.)

[quote="zarf"]The problem of doing truly synchronized sound effects is a large problem... My first feeling is that that's a lot of overhead for a fairly limited trick.[/quote]
I agree, although a variety of effects could be bought for the same price.

As background, in the process of beta - testing an early version of Eliuk Blau's Damusix, I began coding up a sense - passing extension compatible with it. Automatic volume changes when the player moves farther away from a sound source or closes an intervening door were relatively easy to implement, so I started to think about atmospheric effects. (I was specifically thinking of how Eric Eve's "Nightfall" would feel with sound.) It's funny you should mention dry vs. reverberant footsteps; it was the first effect that occurred to me. Since it would be normal to expect a break in the rhythm of one's footfalls when going from an outdoor to an indoor location, this could be implemented by simply changing the file of the sound effect. But then I thought, "What if I wanted to implement a portable radio which plays continuous music?" I'd want the reverb to affect [i]that[/i] sound as well.

The ability to crossfade a looped sound with another version of itself would allow for this and other effects. Putting the radio inside a box and then closing the box could result in not just a simple volume change, but a crossfade to a muffled (low pass filtered) version of the sound without interrupting the music. Games using relative directions could use panning to enhance the sense of location in space. As you point out, these effects would only work if both files were started at precisely the same time (with one playing at zero volume until the crossfade was initiated). Although it [i]is[/i] extra overhead, Damusix offered 20 sound channels so I figured, why not try it? Unfortunately, there didn't appear to be any way to control the start times to any usable degree of precision -- even multiple replays of the same test script resulted in different timing offsets -- so I scrapped the idea.

Since MOD formats are supported I thought that maybe they could be leveraged for this, because MODs play multiple samples using strict timing. However, based on what I've read about libModPlug, the library just takes the resources and renders the result to a buffer which is then streamed to the sound device; it doesn't look like it's possible to dynamically change the parameters of a MOD [i]while it is playing[/i] using this library. (Please correct me if that's wrong.) I'm not suggesting the library be changed -- free, fast, and format - friendly are good things -- it just won't help with this proposal. 

I admit that time spent on this by the various people involved would probably be better spent on something else. There's no way of knowing whether or not authors will even make use of this feature or that players will embrace the use of sound in this way. (Although to be fair, we can't find that out if the functionality doesn't exist.) I'm just throwing it out there so it will be in the backs of your minds. Maybe at some point in the future a less painful solution will present itself.

Thanks again,

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2515&start=10#p17444
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Breaking down a story file with extensions...?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-31 12:12:35

[quote="capmikee"]There is one major drawback to using one big file on the Mac, though: Typing an open square bracket may result in a [b]very long wait[/b] while the whole document gets reformatted. The uber-geeks with one big text file are using vi for the most part, a very fast, very powerful editor. I've also considered switching to vi as my editor instead of the IDE, but I like having the index and documentation in the same window.[/quote]

Hm. Should we make a uservoice suggestion to add buttons that automatically drop bracket pairs and double-quote pairs into your file, kind of like the code and spoiler buttons in this forum? So you hit the button, [] appears (or ""), the cursor moves in between the two objects, and you don't have to wait forever for reformatting. Think that would be doable?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2515&start=10#p17445
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Breaking down a story file with extensions...?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-31 12:23:55

[quote="matt w"]Hm. Should we make a uservoice suggestion to add buttons that automatically drop bracket pairs and double-quote pairs into your file, kind of like the code and spoiler buttons in this forum? So you hit the button, [] appears (or ""), the cursor moves in between the two objects, and you don't have to wait forever for reformatting. Think that would be doable?[/quote]

There's already a menu option to "comment out selection" and it even has a shortcut key (cmd-/). The problem comes up more often from forgetting to use it, or hitting a key by accident. I'd rather focus my requests on fixing the actual problem - perhaps by delaying reformatting when brackets are not balanced, or while the user is still typing.

or... by making other text editors usable as plugins...!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2540&start=0#p17446
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7 guns and gun shooting
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-05-31 12:42:12

Jim's advice is good, and suggests a simple general approach.  In this specific case, you don't even need to do that, though, since there's example code in the documentation that you can just paste right into your code.  Example #127, called "Technological Terror," in the "Combat and Death" section of the Recipe Book makes a gun and a "shoot" verb.  I found it by typing "gun" into the Documentation search.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2515&start=10#p17447
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Breaking down a story file with extensions...?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-31 12:50:55

[quote="capmikee"]There's already a menu option to "comment out selection" and it even has a shortcut key (cmd-/).[/quote]

How about that! There's still a problem with quotes, though, and that can't even be got around by typing the close bracket first.

Anyway, I agree, it would be nice if this didn't come up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2523&start=20#p17448
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Descriptive text meant for players that Inform 7 ignores
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-31 13:00:14

[quote="matt w"]*There's a technical meaning of "phrase" in Inform, but I mean "phrase" as in "a bunch of words."[/quote]
I think Ron Newcomb calls those "constructs."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2542&start=0#p17449
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: intro
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-05-31 13:09:23

[quote="ilovemyhedgehog"]can you make an introduction story start before your game?[/quote]

Sure, but it's usually a good idea to keep it very, very, [i]very [/i]brief [emote]:)[/emote]

It's just a matter of doing something like:

When play begins:
   say "Blah de blah ...";

And keeping the blah de blah very brief. Also, short. It also helps if it isn't at all long.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2539&start=0#p17450
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform7: How can i stop the player from 'taking all'
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-05-31 13:20:48

Either that, or:

[code]After reading a command:
   if the player's command matches "take all":
      replace the player's command with "suicide".

Committing suicide is an action applying to nothing. Understand "suicide" as commiting suicide.

Carry out committing suicide:
   end the story saying "Take All is for sissies."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2538&start=0#p17451
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Who is You?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-05-31 13:38:07

I think "yourself" works because it's the name of the default player character. But "you" isn't defined as a synonym for the "yourself" person - it's handled by pronouns code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2499&start=0#p17452
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: following npc's
User: zodraz / DateTime: 2011-05-31 14:05:17

Thanks for coming back to me on this.  There is no code because I got fed up trying to make it work and deleted it, which is why I asked the question in the first place. Sorry about the saying the pc would move into nil, my mistake.

I agree with your point about writing code that works and trying to write code that follows a particular idea, which in this case may be more trouble that it’s worth.

The problem with the idx in the sample is it does not do what is should; make the npc move through the agenda list, if it did that then the problem is fixed.  I’m sorry but I don’t understand the concept of changing the value of another variable to match the movement, the npc should move right through the agenda list and finish at room 1 with idx set to the end of the list.  My fuse should set the npc off, with a random check to move into room 5 and set a checksum to record the action, then at room 1, into nil, if the checksum is nil then whole thing is repeated with (hopefully) the idx reset as the npc enters the new actor state as per the code, if not nil, then the fuse is stopped.  If pc knows what has happened he can tell the other npc who told him to do this, and continue with the next task, which is the whole point of the exercise.

As to the pc knowing what to do, he is told by another npc at another point in the game, so he knows  to follow this npc through the rooms, with the possibility of the npc moving to one of several other rooms, as test so he keeps track, if he fails to do so, then end of game.

On the other hand the solution may be to use my original idea to inform the pc about what has happened, a sort of electronic post-it, but I though it would be more interesting to have the pc do some leg work.  I will have another hack at it and see if I can make any progress using your idea for wanderDirection.  Sorry for the long winded reply.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2539&start=0#p17453
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform7: How can i stop the player from 'taking all'
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-31 14:52:42

[quote="Juhana"]Instead of risking frustrating players and disabling it completely you can exclude things from "all" (manual ch. 17.34):[/quote]

I might find it less frustrating to be explicitly told that my "take all" wasn't succeeding than to have it apparently succeed and then discover that there were more objects in the room I hadn't succeeded in taking. If the game says "You can't take multiple objects in this game," then at least I know where I stand. (Though perhaps I'd take it that "take all" only applies to obvious things.)

Anyway, if you want to disable "take all," there are a couple of ideas in [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/3eb505cc45857578?fwc=1]this[/url] raif thread. The most sensible one, but tedious, is probably Andrew Plotkin's, which involves going through the standard rules and rewriting the parser lines that refer to taking "[things]" with lines that refer to taking "[something]". It also might be possible to use a "Rule for deciding whether all includes" to exclude everything (when taking) and writing a special parser error rule to give the player a useful message, but that involves diving into I6. (Just one simple line, as described in the linked thread, but maybe more than you want.)

Incidentally note that lribeiro's solution, besides being a joke (I think), won't actually block "get all" or "pick up all" or a couple other synonyms.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2499&start=0#p17454
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: following npc's
User: zodraz / DateTime: 2011-05-31 14:56:04

re the code for the wandering npc, copy and run this and you see what I mean about bouncing between rooms.

[code]#charset "us-ascii"
#include <adv3.h>
#include <en_us.h>

versionInfo: GameID
    IFID = '64633ec6-ae02-509a-26a4-b76b69540da8'
    name = 'Your New Game Title'
    byline = 'by Your Name'
    htmlByline = 'by <a href="mailto:your-email@host.com">
                  Your Name</a>'
    version = '1'
    authorEmail = 'Your Name <your-email@host.com>'
    desc = 'Put a brief "blurb" about your game here.'
    htmlDesc = 'Put a brief "blurb" about your game here.'
;

gameMain: GameMainDef
    initialPlayerChar = me
;

roomZero: Room 'room zero'
    ""
    east = roomOne
;

+ me: Actor
;

roomOne : Room 'room one'
    ""
    west = roomZero
    east = roomTwo
;

+ bob : Person 'bob' 'bob'
    ""
    isHim = true
    isProperName = true
;

++ bobWanderAgenda: AgendaItem
    isReady = true
    initiallyActive = true
    agendaOrder = 10
    routeList = [roomOne, roomTwo, roomThree, roomFour, roomThree, roomTwo, roomOne]
    invokeItem()
    {
        local idx = routeList.indexOf(bob.getOutermostRoom);
        if(idx && idx < routeList.length())
        {
            local dest = routeList[++idx];
            bob.scriptedTravelTo(dest);
            if(idx >= routeList.length()) isDone = true;
        }
    }
;

roomTwo : Room 'room two'
    ""
    west = roomOne
    east = roomThree
;

roomThree : Room 'room three'
    ""
    west = roomTwo
    east = roomFour
;

roomFour : Room 'room four'
    ""
    west = roomThree
;

// special room
roomFive : Room 'room five'
    ""
;[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=0#p17455
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: Uto / DateTime: 2011-05-31 15:01:29

Hi,

I would like to point out that there is a general problem with volume and Glk: for the different Glk implementations the same volume value produces different real volumes in dBs.

I know that is quite out of the scope of Glk, as it depends so much on the different sound libraries used by the implementations. It obviously will also depend on the volume set on the speakers or the OS itself, but it is a problem for a programmer to find that with same OS settings and same speaker volume your game sounds louder or softer depending on interpreter.

I have found this issue when programming distance based sounds and cross-fades in Superglus. Once I had all set and tested with gargoyleGlk, I tested the game with winglk and it was almost impossible to hear anything except when volume was on maximum value (that for this game was 32768 if I can recall properly). Then I tried with ZMPP and the volume was quite different to the other two as well.

Probably there is not a good solution, but I wonder if anyone here can think of any (solution). I don't know how the different libraries measure the volume, but there should be a way to standarize it all.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=0#p17456
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: eliukblau / DateTime: 2011-05-31 15:14:40

[quote="zarf"]First, is this volume change stuff viable? (Both on the OS side and on the libmodplug side.) It's clearly what audio I7 extensions need to stop being hacked-up monstrosities -- no offense to Damusix, but there's no good way to do volume changes now, and this would permit it. *If* it can actually be implemented.[/quote]

Damusix already does this.

[quote="zarf"]If you interrupt a volume change, can I specify that the new volume change starts at wherever the volume was where it was interrupted? Can you implement that?[/quote]

Damusix already does this, too... since 2008.

[quote]Los efectos de Fade en "tiempo-real" funcionan perfectamente, incluso si el jugador utiliza los comandos UNDO/RESTORE/RESTART. Si se guarda la partida mientras un Fade está en progreso, su estado actual también será guardado; entonces cuando el jugador cargue esa partida, el efecto de Fade será continuado correctamente desde el punto en que había quedado cuando se guardó la partida. Esto funciona igualmente en el caso de usar el comando UNDO.
[/quote]
(Spanish Damusix Documentation - Sorry for text in spanish)

EDIT:
[quote]Real-time fading effects work fine, even if player uses undo/restore/restart commands. If a game is saved while a fading effect is in progress, its actual state are saved too; then, when this saved game is restored, the fading effect saved continues fine at exactly the saved point. This works fine too if player is using undo command.[/quote]

[quote="zarf"]Are there any libraries that support sound but don't support sound notification events? I'd like to tighten that up, and say that notification events (sound and volume) are a mandatory feature rather than optional. This would make I7 extension code much simpler.[/quote]

Damusix also supports volume changes, global volume and Glk sound notifications.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2539&start=0#p17457
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform7: How can i stop the player from 'taking all'
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-05-31 15:21:06

Yes, it was a joke, but with a bit of tinkering I think it can make a clean and hassle free solution.

[code]After reading a command:
   if the player's command includes "all/everything/every":
      say "In this game, the ability to perform actions on more than one item simultaneously is disabled.";
      reject the player's command.[/code]

Unless "After reading a command" slows the game terribly down, it should work. Are there any other ways to "take all"? I'm guessing that these are the natural ones, and anyone going beyond it is just trying to break it anyway.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2539&start=0#p17458
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform7: How can i stop the player from 'taking all'
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-05-31 15:34:55

[quote="matt w"]I might find it less frustrating to be explicitly told that my "take all" wasn't succeeding than to have it apparently succeed and then discover that there were more objects in the room I hadn't succeeded in taking.[/quote]
Sure, but I understood from the OP's question that in this case there are items that are actually hidden so that you're not supposed to discover them at all (not until a plot point reveals that they are there). That's what the disclaimer about better solutions was meant to address.

[quote]It also might be possible to use a "Rule for deciding whether all includes" to exclude everything (when taking) and writing a special parser error rule to give the player a useful message, but that involves diving into I6.[/quote]
You can do this easily in pure I7:

[code]
Rule for deciding whether all includes something: it does not.

Rule for printing a parser error when the latest parser error is the nothing to do error:
	say "Sorry, but ALL is disabled in this story." instead.[/code]

(EDIT: Oh, I see that restricting it to the taking action requires I6 but in case of hidden items you'll probably want to disable it for every action anyway.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=0#p17459
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: eliukblau / DateTime: 2011-05-31 15:49:58

[quote="Skinny Mike"]As background, in the process of beta - testing an early version of Eliuk Blau's Damusix, I began coding up a sense - passing extension compatible with it. Automatic volume changes when the player moves farther away from a sound source or closes an intervening door were relatively easy to implement, so I started to think about atmospheric effects. (I was specifically thinking of how Eric Eve's "Nightfall" would feel with sound.)[/quote]

Please "ear" (play) the spanish adventure "El Anillo III", first I7 adventure that uses Damusix for I7 (beta). The adventure has a "Random Sound [i]Environment-er[/i]" that plays different real-time sounds depending on the location (or region [I7]) where the player is.

Download:
<a class="postlink" href="http://sites.google.com/site/johanilatos/ri/anillo3.zip?attredirects=0">http://sites.google.com/site/johanilato ... edirects=0</a>

Info (English):
<a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/de9430e3c206f1df/ce8d055d294bd594">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts ... 5d294bd594</a>

Info (Spanish):
<a class="postlink" href="http://wiki.caad.es/El_anillo_3">http://wiki.caad.es/El_anillo_3</a>

Saludos! [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=0#p17460
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: eliukblau / DateTime: 2011-05-31 16:19:22

I've been [i]abusing[/i] the Glulx machine since 2008 in a piece of code of mine.

Although I plan releasing it in a more complete status, given the amount of changes into the Glulx specification and the fine reception Andrew gives to suggestions and contributions from the community, I think it worth doing it now, even unfinished.

It's abusing on several aspects. Graphics (complex animations), audio (realtime crossfades) and real-time events (DaCronox: a library that manages as many "virtual" Glk timers as needed, mine too).

I hope this demo could help on making decisions, as an use case.

I need to recompile it. I'll post a link soon.

P.S: Damuxis is not a hack, nor is that [i]abusing[/i] code. They're just the result of trying using efficiently the actual Glk.

P.S.2: Andrew, I congratulate and support your decision of working full-time on Glulx development. Best wishes.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2499&start=0#p17461
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: following npc's
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-05-31 16:29:57

Ah, yes. The problem (I just compiled and ran your code) is that this line:

[code]local idx = routeList.indexOf(bob.getOutermostRoom);[/code]

misfires when your routeList includes the series [roomThree, roomFour, roomThree]. In that situation, indexOf is always going to find the FIRST instance of roomThree in the list. It's never going to find the second one. That's why my original suggestion, of using a simple list [roomOne, roomTwo, roomThree, roomFour] and a wanderDirection property (a property of the AgendaItem) will work, while your method won't.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2499&start=0#p17462
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: following npc's
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-05-31 16:38:18

This code causes Bob to follow route 1-2-3-4-3-2-1-2-3-4-3-2-1-etc.:

[code]++ bobWanderAgenda: AgendaItem
    isReady = true
    initiallyActive = true
    agendaOrder = 10
    wanderDirection = 1
    routeList = [roomOne, roomTwo, roomThree, roomFour]
    invokeItem()
    {
        local idx = routeList.indexOf(bob.getOutermostRoom);
        if (idx == 1) wanderDirection = 1;
        else if (idx == 4) wanderDirection = -1;
        idx = idx + wanderDirection;
        local dest = routeList[idx];
        bob.scriptedTravelTo(dest);
    }
;[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2538&start=0#p17463
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Who is You?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-05-31 18:02:43

I think you can add it.  [i]Understand "you" as yourself.[/i] or somesuch.  ("as the player", "as Bob when..", etc.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2539&start=0#p17464
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform7: How can i stop the player from 'taking all'
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-31 18:09:10

[quote="lribeiro"]Yes, it was a joke, but with a bit of tinkering I think it can make a clean and hassle free solution.

[code]After reading a command:
   if the player's command includes "all/everything/every":
      say "In this game, the ability to perform actions on more than one item simultaneously is disabled.";
      reject the player's command.[/code]

Unless "After reading a command" slows the game terribly down, it should work. Are there any other ways to "take all"? I'm guessing that these are the natural ones, and anyone going beyond it is just trying to break it anyway.[/quote]

Well, there's "TAKE HAT AND COAT," which I believe uses the same machinery as "take all." But you might not want to disable that. 

Nothing really wrong with your solution, but it's all-or-nothing; the more solutions the better, definitely. If you want to allow "drop all" but not "take all," which might make sense in the OP's situation, then you'll have to do something else, though (probably the tedious elimination of [things] tokens or the I6 trickery).

Juhana: huh, the "nothing to do" error. I didn't know about that. That's not new in the last couple of builds, is it? It's what I was looking for in my first post on that raif thread.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2461&start=0#p17465
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Indistiguishable (sometimes) objects
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-05-31 19:48:08

Having studied the example, I thought I understood the concepts, but I'm running into trouble right off the bat.

[code]"SizeTest" by Me

Size is a kind of value.  The sizes are normal and shrunken.  A thing has a size.  The size of a thing is usually normal.   Understand the size property as referring to a thing.
Before printing the name of a thing (called thisthing) when the size of thisthing is shrunken: say "shrunken ".
Before printing the plural name of a thing (called thisthing) when the size of thisthing is shrunken: say "shrunken ".

A card key is a kind of thing.

Someplace is a room.  A normal card key is in Someplace.[/code]

Stripped to its barest essentials, this seems to be the first part of the principle illustrated by the Hot Glass example.  When I try to compile it, I get an error message telling me that the statement "A normal card key is in Someplace" does not describe the object with sufficient specificity.  In the Hot Glass example, the line "Three room temperature glass dishes are on the counter" describes the object by its kind and its heat property, just as my statement describes the object by its kind and its size property.  What am I missing?

Thanks.

Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2524&start=10#p17466
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I use Inform 7 with Wordpress? If so how?
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-05-31 20:41:44

[quote="Dannii"][code]<iframe src="http://iplayif.com/?story=http://www.batmantis.com/zorks/zork1.z5;options=%7B%22width%22%3A30%7D"></iframe>[/code]

Should do what you want.[/quote]

That code works great!  Loads up perfect.  But I can't load any files from my own server.  In my HTML files (the index.html from the Parchment download, altered and renamed) I am using:

<script>parchment_options = { default_story: [ 'stories/zork.z3.js', 'zork.z3.txt' ] } ;</script>

To auto load a file, and that loads the file fine.  But if I try:

<iframe src="http://iplayif.com/?story=http://myserver.org/parchment/stories/zork1.z5;options=%7B%22width%22%3A30%7D"></iframe>

I get a red box that reads:

[quote]An error occurred:

Parchment could not load load the story. Check your connection, and that the URL is correct.

Traceback (most recent call last):

  (anonymous function)
  v
  (anonymous function)
  (anonymous function)
  (anonymous function)[/quote]

I know the path is correct...

Is it maybe using a non-standard port that I need to open on the firewall?  Something other than port 80?  Or is there a way to add the "options=%7B%22width%22%3A30%7D" to the auto load line in the html file?  That would be the best solution, at least for me.  I tried several variations, but none worked.

And by the way, thanks for the help.  I know it isn't your problem.  I appreciate your time on this.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2542&start=0#p17467
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: intro
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-05-31 20:42:56

thanks very much this works perfectly!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2544&start=0#p17468
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: are there any gamers where you play as an animal or beast?
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-05-31 21:20:24

other than futmutz

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2461&start=0#p17469
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Indistiguishable (sometimes) objects
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-05-31 21:25:32

When it tried to compile it:

[quote] You wrote 'A card key is in Someplace'  : but something described only by its kind should not be given a specific place or role in the world, to avoid ambiguity. For instance, suppose 'car' is a kind. [/quote]

When I kill the line that defines a card key as a kind of thing, it compiles and runs fine. If I add a line telling inform to preface it with the word "normal", that works too. If I then go on to say "The size of the card key is shrunken." that produces the anticipated result. If I introduce a second card key using private names, it also produces the desired result. I get one normal card key and one shrunken card key.

So I guess the problem line is defining the card key as a kind of thing? Or maybe not. But taking it out does what I want it to do. [emote]:)[/emote] Not sure what other issues that would cause.

[EDIT]

To clarify:

[code]
"SizeTest" by Me

Size is a kind of value.  The sizes are normal and shrunken.  A thing has a size.  The size of a thing is usually normal.   Understand the size property as referring to a thing.
Before printing the name of a thing (called thisthing) when the size of thisthing is shrunken: say "shrunken ".
Before printing the plural name of a thing (called thisthing) when the size of thisthing is shrunken: say "shrunken ".
Before printing the name of a thing (called thisthing) when the size of thisthing is normal: say "normal ".

[A card key is a kind of thing.]

Someplace is a room.  A card_key01 is in Someplace. The printed name of card_key01 is "card key". The size of the card_key01 is shrunken. A card_key02 is in Someplace. The printed name of card_key02 is "card key". The size of the card_key02 is normal.
[/code]

Gets me:

[code]
SizeTest
An Interactive Fiction by Me
Release 1 / Serial number 110531 / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N) SD

Someplace
You can see a shrunken card key and a normal card key here.

>
[/code]

[Second edit because I'm stoopit.]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2461&start=0#p17470
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Indistiguishable (sometimes) objects
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-05-31 21:27:28

It looks like you have to say "One normal card key is in Someplace." I suppose this is to distinguish sentences that place one generic object of a certain kind in a room, like that, from sentences that declare the properties of a kind, like "A card key has a door called target" (I didn't actually check to see if that compiles).

EDIT: "You" = Robert; hadn't seen I4L's comment when I posted.

EDIT 2: "In Someplace is a normal card key" also works, as per the I7 error message.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2542&start=0#p17471
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: intro
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-05-31 21:49:03

Also the Title Page extension.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=10#p17472
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-05-31 22:00:24

[quote]Damusix already does this.[/quote]

As I said, I mean no offense to Damusix. You built it to work the only way that is currently possible: by requesting very rapid timer events and changing the volume at very short intervals. That's horribly inefficient and ugly -- even though there's no alternative! Once this API goes in, you'll be able to make the same features work with a much lower CPU load.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2526&start=0#p17473
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Cannot open include file adv3.h and en_us.h
User: drayakir / DateTime: 2011-05-31 22:04:41

So, let me see if I got it theoretically:

When I tell it to run Firstgame.t, something in it causes an error because of line 30 in _main.t, then line 126 in _main.t, then line 536 in misc.t, and so on and so forth. 

So in order to fix it, I have to find the line in my file, which causes a problem at line 30?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=10#p17474
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-05-31 22:54:42

Creating a sound channel with a specific volume is trivial.

The other new API call, lowering the volume over a specified number of milliseconds, poses some difficulties. It's not a feature that SDL_mixer provides. I'd need to use OS timers for that, which would be workable under Windows and Linux but would mean a complete rewrite of the way I handle timers in OS X to avoid clashing with the Glk timer functionality.

OpenAL may offer a way to accomplish the same thing out of the box, but I'm not quite ready to go there.

Given the small number of IF games that use sound and the potential availability of Damusix for the ones that do, I don't welcome the idea of more sound API functions. It's a pile of work with a very small payoff.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2544&start=0#p17475
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: are there any gamers where you play as an animal or beas
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-05-31 23:51:51

Yes. There's a (probably incomplete) list in this [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/poll?id=8vgm7vu8b2viaxno]IFDB poll[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2461&start=0#p17476
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Indistiguishable (sometimes) objects
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-01 00:12:27

Thanks. Matt's solution worked.  Who'd a thunk there'd be such a diffference between "a card key" and "one card key"?

14L, giving unique identifiers to different card keys does indeed avoid the problem I was having, but it doesn't work for what I need it to do in other respects.  Basically, there is a way that the player will be able to change the size of a card key (figuring out how and when to do that will be one of the puzzles).  If the player is in possession of more than one of the same size, I need them to be indistinguishable.  One the other hand, if the player has one of each size, I need him to be able to specify which he is referring to.  And just to add to the fun, until the player figures it out, I don't want to give away the fact that there is a size property which can be changed, so a normal-size card key (which is the only one available until he figures out how to shrink it) needs to be described as just a "card key."

I'm sure I'll run into a bunch of other problems before I get all this to work, but tis got me over the first hurdle.

Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2526&start=10#p17477
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Cannot open include file adv3.h and en_us.h
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-06-01 01:18:15

Well, main.t should be error-free. Can you check the version info on t3make? An old compiler building a new version of the library could run into trouble.

[quote]
firx:~ bcressey$ t3make
TADS Compiler 3.0.18.1  Copyright 1999, 2007 Michael J. Roberts
[/quote]

Also try removing the files in your obj/ directory and recompile the project.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2524&start=10#p17478
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I use Inform 7 with Wordpress? If so how?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-06-01 02:20:22

It's very hard to help without knowing the actual file you want to load... can you just post the actual URL?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2543&start=0#p17479
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i6/blorb] Pictures not showing up in a blorbed game?
User: joningold / DateTime: 2011-06-01 03:55:41

Aw, heck. I ran it this morning and there they were. My compile-and-run batchfile was pointing to the .ulx and not the .gblorb.

Going back to sleep now...

cheers
jon

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2461&start=0#p17480
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Indistiguishable (sometimes) objects
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-01 08:27:24

I'm new at this. I just like to hear myself talk. [emote];)[/emote]

Plus you never know what can be learned when you "think out loud".

Glad it's worked out!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2524&start=10#p17481
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I use Inform 7 with Wordpress? If so how?
User: Minkovsky / DateTime: 2011-06-01 09:34:36

What I'm thinking about is AJAX. Just ajax the interpreter onto the page, and modify it so that everything is an accessible variable. Then have a script somewhere else on the page which would regularly grab saves, scores and suchlike and store them server-side. This would require much work, but if you just want score, then it's doable. No iframes involved. Also, with enough CSS, you could restyle the console so that it wraps the content nicely.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=10#p17482
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: Minkovsky / DateTime: 2011-06-01 09:46:48

I'd like to see an OpenAL implementation rather than a DirectSound one, since this would provide portability. Or better yet, SDL.

An interpreter using SDL for display and sound... This has potential.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=10#p17483
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-01 10:06:05

[quote="bcressey"]The other new API call, lowering the volume over a specified number of milliseconds, poses some difficulties. It's not a feature that SDL_mixer provides.[/quote]
Don't Mix_FadeOutMusic(), Mix_FadeInMusic(), Mix_FadeInChannel(), Mix_FadeInChannelTimed() and Mix_FadeOutChannel() do exactly that? I've used them for the timed cross-fade implementation in QTads, and they work OK.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2461&start=0#p17484
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Indistiguishable (sometimes) objects
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-01 10:11:19

[quote="I4L"]Plus you never know what can be learned when you "think out loud".[/quote]
One of my favorite programming tools is a rubber duck. Well, not a literal one.

<a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging</a>

This might be a good time to say thanks to all the forum members who have performed so admirably (stoically?) as rubber ducks for me. Plus, I got tons of helpful feedback too!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=10#p17485
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-06-01 10:21:22

They do allow a timed fade, but not bounded by a specific volume - only to full or zero.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=10#p17486
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: eliukblau / DateTime: 2011-06-01 10:41:47

[quote="bcressey"]Creating a sound channel with a specific volume is trivial.[/quote]

Damusix already does that [emote]:lol:[/emote] It does the following: to assign a sound to a channel ...

1) Channel is previously created.
2) Damusix changes the channel volume.
3) Eventually the sound plays.

Damusix stores in its kernel several information of its managed channels, including volume, repetitions, sound notifications, etc. So whenever the channels are initialized with the specified volume at the time of the assignment.

I understand that having a formal Glk call to do this can be optimal, but I want to say that Damusix already does by itself. [emote];)[/emote] 

[emote]:D[/emote] Saludos!

EDITED:

[quote="bcressey"]They do allow a timed fade, but not bounded by a specific volume - only to full or zero.[/quote]

OMG. Damusix already does this. [emote]:oops:[/emote] Damusix's fades can have arbitrary volumes... 25% to 80%, 100% to 50%, etc. You can even do that after a fade occurs another, producing a lot of fun effects.

[emote]:P[/emote] See ya!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2461&start=0#p17487
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Indistiguishable (sometimes) objects
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-01 10:49:14

I've got a rubber chicken (a real one).  Would that work?  If not, how about a whoopee cushion or a joy buzzer?

(Come to think of it, maybe I should use some of those objects in a game; perhaps the player is stuck in a novelty shop and has to figure out how to use the inventory to escape).

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=10#p17488
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-01 10:51:10

[quote="bcressey"]They do allow a timed fade, but not bounded by a specific volume - only to full or zero.[/quote]
There's also Mix_RegisterEffect() to do it manually, but I guess this is where it will get hairy as you'd need to modify the sound data directly. Your effects processor would need to modify the amplitude of each waveform chunk it receives, keeping track of where it left off previously. This approach is for the brave though, which is why I never bothered [emote]:P[/emote] It does produce the best results however.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=10#p17489
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-01 11:25:07

As long as we're talking about the sound API...

I would like to be able to specify the starting point as an optional parameter for glk_schannel_play_ext. By default, the sound would start at the beginning, otherwise, it would track to the time passed by the parameter. Concomitantly, glk_schannel_stop could return the stopping point, allowing for a sound to be restarted in the same place after stopping (in other words, providing a "pause" functionality). 

Another related feature--likely (much?) more work to implement, and not central to anything I'd like to do--would be to allow the notify flag in glk_schannel_play_ext to specify *when* the sound notification event would be fired, e.g. a flag of 0 would request no notification (as it currently does), while -1 could request a notification when the sound finishes playing, while a positive value would indicate the point at which the sound notification should be returned.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2545&start=0#p17490
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Two days with IF
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-06-01 11:33:28

School is almost ending where I teach. Today, during class, I got an idea: challenging my students to an after-school-two-day-IF-fest. I asked which of them would like to be part of something involving computer games and literature, and then told them to stick around for five minutes after class. Ten of them stayed. All boys, which got me wondering...

Anyway, I explained a bit about IF and asked them if they would like to come to school for two days after the end of the school year, so that we could play a few games and create our own. They liked the idea, so now I have this IF thing I need to prepare myself for.

They're all between fifteen and sixteen years of age, and today was the first time someone told them about IF.

[i]My plan is...[/i]

[b]Morning one:[/b] tell them about IF, about some of the conventions, show them a few games of past and present, play them. Give each a copy of that [url=http://www.instamatique.com/lea/interactivefiction.html]IF card[/url] Lea made. Tell them about the community and it's activities.

[b]Afternoon one:[/b] show them the basics about Inform7, and how to build a simple world. Then show a few ways to make such world react. Give them copies of [url=http://newmedia.hpiweb.com/]the handouts by John Timmons[/url]. I found them simple enough for this purpose.

[b]Morning two:[/b] divide them into groups, so that each can plot a map and a story on paper.

[b]Afternoon two:[/b] help them code their stories. By the end of the afternoon, each group would present their game to the others.

So, any suggestions? What games would you use in morning one? What documents would you give?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2545&start=0#p17491
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Two days with IF
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-01 11:59:58

Back at school we were being taught some stupid programming language, and when it came to project work, I managed to get a team together to create some veeery simple IF game. Took us three weeks, mainly coz we didn't meet after school to get going (better things to do;), and because debugging simply takes time.

My conclusion: Your schedule is - in MY eyes - very sportive. I'd rather say that's something for a project group which has enough time to put something together.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=10#p17492
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-06-01 12:18:23

[quote="eliukblau"]
OMG. Damusix already does this. [emote]:oops:[/emote] Damusix's fades can have arbitrary volumes... 25% to 80%, 100% to 50%, etc. You can even do that after a fade occurs another, producing a lot of fun effects.[/quote]

Hi Eliuk! [emote]:)[/emote] I realize that Damusix already does all this. It rocks! I think you should just release it as-is; authors who want to use it can put the documentation through Google Translate or ask usage questions here. 

From a philosophical perspective I thought that the motivation behind adding Glk API functions was to enable broadly new capabilities, rather than to make existing features more convenient and accessible. I see that focus slipping here and it's not clear that the benefits to authors outweigh the hassle to library maintainers.

There are many more people creating extensions than working on Glk implementations; if it's territory that extensions can cover, let them cover it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2545&start=0#p17493
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Two days with IF
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-06-01 12:28:17

My goal here is to make them achieve a very - VERY! - small and simple game, so that 1) they get to know the medium, and 2) some interest in developing IF can sprout out of them.

Who knows: If I succeed in making them interested, and if I point them to the right resources, maybe some of them will start coding (alone or in groups) in their free time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2545&start=0#p17494
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Two days with IF
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-06-01 13:00:12

In my experience, if you've only got a few hours, it's easier to write playable IF in the style of CYOA (in ChoiceScript or Undum) than it is to write parser-based IF in Inform 7.

Parser-based IF is better for games with complex puzzles and environments to explore, but in a few hours, there's no time to learn Inform and create a meaningfully explorable space, or even an interesting puzzle.

On the other hand, setting up an interesting decision (e.g. a moral dilemma) can be very quick and easy, and can form the basis of a larger story.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=10#p17495
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-01 13:00:56

This thread isn't about Damusix, but I beg indulgence to add: 

[quote="bcressey"]I realize that Damusix already does all this. It rocks! I think you should just release it as-is; authors who want to use it can put the documentation through Google Translate or ask usage questions here. [/quote]

I agree with Ben--just release it now if the code is ready. People do their best to get by w/o reading documentation anyway! You could try putting the documentation up in wiki format at Google Code or IFWiki; maybe folks will be motivated to contribute to a group-mind translation.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2546&start=0#p17496
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I7] which object is being tested by the reachability rules
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2011-06-01 13:04:58

Say I have a character on a high platform -- like a wobbly stool -- and I want the character to be unable to reach anything in the room when she's on the stool, [i]except[/i] for a light bulb.

[code]
A reachability rule for the wobbly stool:
    if the ___________ is the light bulb:
        allow access;
    otherwise:
        say "You'll have to get down from the stool first.";
        deny access.
[/code]

What do I put in the blank? At the time that the reachability rules are checked, the light bulb might be the noun (UNSCREW THE LIGHT BULB) or it might be the second noun (TIE THE DENTAL FLOSS TO THE LIGHT BULB). What label does Inform use to mean "the item we're trying to reach"?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2545&start=0#p17497
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Two days with IF
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-01 13:07:00

[quote="dfabulich"]In my experience, if you've only got a few hours, it's easier to write playable IF in the style of CYOA (in ChoiceScript or Undum) than it is to write parser-based IF in Inform 7.

Parser-based IF is better for games with complex puzzles and environments to explore, but in a few hours, there's no time to learn Inform and create a meaningfully explorable space, or even an interesting puzzle.

On the other hand, setting up an interesting decision (e.g. a moral dilemma) can be very quick and easy, and can form the basis of a larger story.[/quote]

I think you'd have time to create an environment in I7, though not a full game with puzzles and complex behavior. This is probably nothing but personal prejudice, but I have a hard time imagining CYOA captivating kids the way that an implemented IF spatial environment (even a small one) could.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2545&start=0#p17498
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Two days with IF
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-06-01 13:24:06

[quote="lribeiro"]My goal here is to make them achieve a very - VERY! - small and simple game, so that 1) they get to know the medium, and 2) some interest in developing IF can sprout out of them.[/quote]
[quote="lribeiro"]What games would you use in morning one? [/quote]
My advice is to show them very small (and, if possible, very good) but not very complicated games. 
This is the first IF they ever see, and most of the kids are bound to try doing something pretty similar to the games you show them. 
There are two polls for short games at the IFDB; I'd play through a number of them (which need not take too long, since they are short) and choose the best one's that will not tempt your students to try overly complicated things.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2546&start=0#p17499
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] which object is being tested by the reachability ru
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-01 13:44:38

You'd probably want to store the object in question in a global variable before you invoke the reachability rules.

Alternatively, you could change your reachability rulebook so that it is parameterized on the target, rather than on the stool, e.g. "A reachability rule for something (called the object-in-question) when the player is on the wobbly stool".

Alternatively, you could look at the contents of the noun and second noun variables and try to make a guess based on their contents. (E.g., if there is no second noun, then the target is the noun. If there is a noun and a second noun, and the player carries the noun, then the target is the second noun.)

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2546&start=0#p17500
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] which object is being tested by the reachability ru
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-01 13:47:17

Where does the reachability rulebook come from? I'm not familiar with it.

I think the "electrified" example (#397) covers this situation pretty well. You have to test the noun and the second noun separately using "the action requires a touchable noun/second noun" phrases.

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/learn/man/ex116.html#e116">http://inform7.com/learn/man/ex116.html#e116</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2546&start=0#p17501
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] which object is being tested by the reachability ru
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-06-01 14:10:58

Capmikee's right, Michael. It looks like you've got the accessibility rule mixed up with the "reaching inside" and "reaching outside" rulebooks. The reaching rulebooks both use the deny / allow access outcomes, but accessibility doesn't appear to. This seems to work:[code]An accessibility rule when the player is on the wobbly stool:
	if the current action involves the light bulb:
		say "You'll have to get down from the stool first." instead.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2536&start=0#p17502
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Tri-Part Inventory?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-06-01 14:39:45

The issue is the use of the wieldedBy in showList().

[code]
...
if(cur.isWornBy(parent)) 
    wearingLst.append(cur);
else if (cur.wieldedBy(parent)) 
    wieldingLst.append(cur);
...
[/code]

wieldedBy is not a function and takes no arguments. You need to define an isWieldedBy equivalent to isWornBy.

[code]
class Weapon : Thing 'weapon*weapons' 'weapon'
    atk = 2
    dobjFor(Drop) maybeRemapTo(isWielded, Unwield, self) 
    iobjFor(AttackWith)
    {
        verify(){}
        check(){}
        action()
        {
        } 
    }
    
    dobjFor(Wield)
    {
        verify(){}
        check() 
        {
            if(isWieldedBy(gActor))
                failCheck('{You/he} are already wielding {the dobj/him}. ');
            
            if(gActor.isWielding())
                failCheck('{You/he} are already wielding a weapon. ');
        }
        action()
        {
            moveInto(gActor);
            gActor.wield(self);
            "{You/he} wield {the dobj/him} as {your/his} weapon. ";
        }
    }
    
    dobjFor(Unwield)
    {
        verify(){}
        check() 
        {
            if(!isWieldedBy(gActor))
                failCheck('{You/he} are not wielding {the dobj/him} ') ;
        }
        action()
        {
            gActor.unwield(self);
            "You stop wielding {the dobj/him} as your weapon. ";
        }
    }
    
    wieldedBy = nil
    isWielded() { return wieldedBy != nil; }
    isWieldedBy(actor) { return wieldedBy == actor; }
    makeWieldedBy(actor) { wieldedBy = actor; }
    getAtk() { return atk; }
;

modify Actor
    atk = 0
    weapon = nil
    wield(obj) { weapon = obj; obj.makeWieldedBy(self); atk += obj.getAtk(); }
    unwield(obj) { weapon = nil; obj.makeWieldedBy(nil); atk -= obj.getAtk(); }
    isWielding { return weapon != nil; }
;
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2545&start=0#p17503
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Two days with IF
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-01 14:41:18

[quote="ektemple"]This is probably nothing but personal prejudice, but I have a hard time imagining CYOA captivating kids the way that an implemented IF spatial environment (even a small one) could.

--Erik[/quote]

Dunno -- the CYOA name itself comes from a popular series of children's books, which certainly captivated me as a kid.

[i]Designing[/i] something parser-based might be more captivating, though -- you can just program a little stuff in the environment and it would open up lots of possibilities. (This is just a priori theorizing, though, I don't actually work with kids of the appropriate age.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2545&start=0#p17504
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Two days with IF
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-06-01 14:42:17

[quote="ektemple"]This is probably nothing but personal prejudice, but I have a hard time imagining CYOA captivating kids the way that an implemented IF spatial environment (even a small one) could.[/quote]
It's probably my personal prejudice, too... I designed ChoiceScript because IMO people have underestimated what's possible in CYOA.

But I'll stand by my claim that where CYOA really shines is in writing a dramatic scene fast. Sling together a few meaningful moral choices and thoughtful strategy choices and you've already got the skeleton of an interesting story. Plus, it's easy to parallelize: you work on branch X, I'll work on branch Y.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2546&start=0#p17505
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] which object is being tested by the reachability ru
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-01 14:49:17

This brings up something weird. I knew there was an accessibility rulebook, but when I was trying this out earlier, I got enough syntax errors that I thought I must be remembering wrong. So I went to the "rules" section of the index. Couldn't find it. I searched the manual for "accessibility." Nothing about the accessibility rulebook in chapters (I later found a mention of it in the change log, but still no documentation). Eventually this led me to an explicit mention of the rulebook in the "Waterworld" example, but why doesn't this rulebook have its own section, and why doesn't it show up in the index? There's even a section of the "rules" tab called "How accessibility is judged," but it doesn't mention the accessibility rulebook.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2545&start=0#p17506
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Two days with IF
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-01 14:53:56

[quote="matt w"][quote="ektemple"]This is probably nothing but personal prejudice, but I have a hard time imagining CYOA captivating kids the way that an implemented IF spatial environment (even a small one) could.

--Erik[/quote]

Dunno -- the CYOA name itself comes from a popular series of children's books, which certainly captivated me as a kid.[/quote]

They captivated me too. But when I discovered Zork, it captivated me even more. And when I tried to create my own games in TI Extended Basic, it was Zork I emulated, not CYOA. That probably says nothing meaningful, though, beyond "Erik likes simulated worlds more than he likes choice trees"...

[quote="matt w"][i]Designing[/i] something parser-based might be more captivating, though -- you can just program a little stuff in the environment and it would open up lots of possibilities. (This is just a priori theorizing, though, I don't actually work with kids of the appropriate age.)[/quote]

This is pretty much all I was saying with my original post. World-model based IF creates a crystalline structure, whereas CYOA is pretty flat. Captivating enough when you're exploring someone else's choice tree, I guess, but fairly dull when you're implementing a tree you designed yourself. As you said, though, I have no real sense of what the kids we're talking about would actually like--I'm just projecting my own rather narrow opinion!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2547&start=0#p17507
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Sink Your Teeth into "Choice of the Vampire" for Kindle
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-06-01 15:00:23

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.amazon.com/Choice-of-the-Vampire/dp/B004QV9XPW">http://www.amazon.com/Choice-of-the-Vam ... B004QV9XPW</a>

Choice of Games, a quirky independent games company, has released their bestselling interactive novel, "Choice of the Vampire," for Amazon Kindle.

At more than 160,000 words, "Choice of the Vampire" is one of the longest works ever written in the "choose your own adventure" style, allowing players to choose their gender, sexual orientation, ethnic background, and feeding habits.

Play as a young vampire, from the Battle of New Orleans in 1815 through the end of the Civil War in 1866. You'll meet (and possibly feed from) Andrew Jackson, Marie Laveau and Jefferson Davis along the way. Struggling to increase your standing among elder vampires, you must balance an insatiable thirst for blood against your dwindling vestiges of humanity. Will you choose the winning side of the Civil War? Will you rule the German coast with an iron fist? Will you find a love that can transcend death itself?

Enjoy!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=20#p17508
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-06-01 15:15:54

[quote="Uto"]I would like to point out that there is a general problem with volume and Glk: for the different Glk implementations the same volume value produces different real volumes in dBs.

I know that is quite out of the scope of Glk, as it depends so much on the different sound libraries used by the implementations. It obviously will also depend on the volume set on the speakers or the OS itself, but it is a problem for a programmer to find that with same OS settings and same speaker volume your game sounds louder or softer depending on interpreter.[/quote]In theory there should not be too much variation between Glk libraries. The Glk specification says, with regard to the glk_schannel_set_volume() call:
[quote]Sets the volume in the channel. When you create a channel, it has full volume, represented by the value 0x10000. Half volume would be 0x8000, three-quarters volume would be 0xC000, and so on. A volume of zero represents silence, although the sound is still considered to be playing.[/quote]The question then becomes what exactly is meant by a phrase such as "half volume". I would take what I hope is a common sense position on this: if a game plays a sound at half volume and I have my amplifier volume dial set to (say) 8, then it should have the same perceived loudness as when the game plays a sound at full volume and I have my amplifier volume dial set to 4.

When talking about perceived loudness, the usual rule applied (see for example [url]http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-levelchange.htm[/url]) is that a -10 decibel change in volume is equal to a halving of the perceived volume. This is what Windows Glk does: it uses Windows' DirectSound interface to play sounds, and a call to the Glk volume function with a volume of 0x10000 causes DirectSound to be set to a volume of 0 dB; a call to the Glk volume function with a volume of 0x8000 causes DirectSound to be set to a volume of -10 dB; a call to the Glk volume function with a volume of 0x4000 causes DirectSound to be set to a volume of -20 dB; and so on. I don't know what the other Glk libraries do but I would hope it would be something similar.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2545&start=0#p17509
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Two days with IF
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-06-01 15:23:09

Oh those John Timmons handouts are great; I'd never seen them before.

Just some thoughts from my own similar session (the kids were younger, 11-13ish, so that's a pretty big difference, and also they were all girls because it was part of a university-run series of workshops for middle-school girls):  they got very bored very quickly with playing existing games.  We had them playing [i]Snack Time[/i] and [i]Lost Pig[/i], which were too puzzley for the "go! play!" structure of the time we gave them to play in.  (I considered [i]A Day for Fresh Sushi[/i] but balked at the mild swearing at the last minute.)  When we started writing games, far and away the most-requested thing they wanted to implement was NPC conversations.  If I do the workshop again, I plan to have some minimal conversation extension for them to use, even if it only defines "talk to" as a verb.  Oddly enough, the second most common request was for player teleportation, and it's only tricky because of the slightly different syntax for moving the player ("move the player to [whatever location]") as opposed to moving anything else ("now the ball is in [whatever location]").

I definitely recommend working in pairs and playing games between pairs.  I posted some miscellaneous other anecdata from my last Inform-for-kids session at this thread: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2211">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2211</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2545&start=10#p17510
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Two days with IF
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-06-01 15:28:49

Oh, and in response to the CYOA subthread here:  I am definitely considering switching to [url=http://gimcrackd.com/etc/src/]Twine[/url] for [at least part of] the next time I do this workshop.  This would be motivated by the kids' desire to do conversation-type games, especially since a lot of them seemed to be trying to write CYOA-style games ("If the player leaves the room, the dragon attacks!  Otherwise, they win.") anyway.  But my kids were younger and my workshop shorter than lribeiro's.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2546&start=0#p17511
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] which object is being tested by the reachability ru
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2011-06-01 15:40:31

Er, sorry, I mistyped. The [b]reaching outside rules[/b] is in fact what I meant. This is what the code sample should have looked like:

[code]Rule for reaching outside the wobbly stool:
    if the ___________ is the light bulb:
        allow access;
    otherwise:
        say "You'll have to get down from the stool first.";
        deny access.[/code]

Here's a complete working example of what I'm trying to do:

[code]The Garage is a room. "The light bulb in the ceiling is burned out again, and all you have to stand on is that wretched stool. One day you're going to break your neck on that thing."

A light bulb is here. It is scenery.

The wobbly stool is here. It is a scenery, enterable supporter.

Instead of doing something when the current action involves the light bulb and the player is not on the wobbly stool:
	say "You can't reach the light bulb from here."
	
A dental floss is here. The indefinite article is "some".

Instead of tying the dental floss to something:
	say "You loop the dental floss around [the second noun] and knot it tight.";
	now the dental floss is part of the second noun.

Rule for reaching outside the wobbly stool:
	if the noun is the light bulb:
		allow access;
	otherwise:
		say "You'll have to get down off the wobbly stool first.";
		deny access.

Test me with "touch bulb / get on stool / touch bulb / get floss / get off stool / get floss / get on stool / tie floss to bulb".[/code]

You can see the problem at move 8. The action fails because the light bulb is the second noun, not the noun.

I was hoping that there was some variable that stored what, exactly, the game is trying to reach each time the reaching rules are invoked. I suppose I can do something like this:

[code]if the current action involves something that is not stool-accessible, deny access.

Definition: a thing is stool-accessible if the wobbly stool does not enclose it and it is not the light bulb.[/code]

Too bad it's so ugly and awkward.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=20#p17512
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-06-01 16:13:32

Gargoyle does a linear conversion of the volume parameter into the SDL_mixer level, which ranges from 0-128.

[code]
0x10000 / 512 = 128  (max)
0x8000  / 512 = 64   (half)
0x4000  / 512 = 32   (quarter)
[/code]

Based on your numbers it seems like the results should be similar, but reports from the field suggest otherwise.

What I don't know is whether SDL_mixer amplifies the volume, and if so how to calculate the zero point of the unadjusted volume. Maybe 128 is not linked to the sound file at all but represents the highest volume the system can output? Then two sounds with different volumes would have the same apparent loudness if both were played at 0x10000.

I guess I need to do some testing.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2546&start=0#p17513
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] which object is being tested by the reachability ru
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-01 16:24:02

[quote="Michael Gentry"]
You can see the problem at move 8. The action fails because the light bulb is the second noun, not the noun.
[code]if the current action involves something that is not stool-accessible, deny access.

Definition: a thing is stool-accessible if the wobbly stool does not enclose it and it is not the light bulb.[/code]

Too bad it's so ugly and awkward.[/quote]
It looks like the best way. I'd like to know more about the reaching outside rulebook, but it looks like it's just not well defined for actions involving two nouns.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2524&start=10#p17514
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I use Inform 7 with Wordpress? If so how?
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-06-01 16:38:56

[quote="Dannii"]It's very hard to help without knowing the actual file you want to load... can you just post the actual URL?[/quote]

Here is the URL of a game file... 

<a class="postlink" href="http://seekerspath.org/parchment/stories/curses.z5">http://seekerspath.org/parchment/stories/curses.z5</a>

There is also a curses.z5.js file in the same folder if you would prefer to use it.  And if you enter the URL with the .js extension into a browser, the code comes up, so I know the folder is accessible and it probably isn't a permissions issue.

Not my game of course, but I chose it for the test since I had both versions of it available in the stories folder.

Thanks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=20#p17515
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-01 16:40:44

[quote="bcressey"]What I don't know is whether SDL_mixer amplifies the volume, and if so how to calculate the zero point of the unadjusted volume. Maybe 128 is not linked to the sound file at all but represents the highest volume the system can output?[/quote]
It does not use the system's mixer. It alters the sound by itself, before the final mixing step. MIX_MAX_VOLUME (which is defined as 128) means "don't touch the sound" (in other words, a 0db attenuation).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2545&start=10#p17516
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Two days with IF
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-06-01 16:51:32

What platform are you using? ADRIFT 5 might be a good choice for such a short event...  [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2546&start=0#p17517
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] which object is being tested by the reachability ru
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-01 17:03:10

It's interesting that these issues are coming up now.  I've been thinking ahead to develop the plotline for a game I'm working on, and there will be a point where the player will need to hide inside a cabinet inside a room and reach outside the cabinet to place an object (which he carries) inside another object (which is on a table and which is pretty much the only thing outside the cabinet that he can reach).  It will be a while before I'm ready to start coding that piece, but it looks like I'm going to have to face exactly the same issues.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2546&start=0#p17518
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] which object is being tested by the reachability ru
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-06-01 17:14:57

Won't 
[code]
Rule for reaching outside the wobbly stool:
	if the noun is the light bulb or the second noun is the light bulb:
		allow access;
	otherwise:
		say "You'll have to get down off the wobbly stool first.";
		deny access.
[/code]
work?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2531&start=0#p17519
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Is hugo any easier than Tads 2 or 3
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-06-01 17:36:16

Hugo's syntax is reletively simple compared to TADS and even Inform 6.  Its structure is highly derrivative of Inform 6.  At any rate, I don't find the experience of implementing in Hugo to be particularly easy, but I do find the syntax logical and comfortable to work with.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2546&start=0#p17520
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] which object is being tested by the reachability ru
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2011-06-01 17:38:34

[quote="Felix"]Won't 
[code]
Rule for reaching outside the wobbly stool:
	if the noun is the light bulb or the second noun is the light bulb:
		allow access;
	otherwise:
		say "You'll have to get down off the wobbly stool first.";
		deny access.
[/code]
work?[/quote]

No, because as long as the action involves the light bulb, the rule will allow access every time, even if the *other* object should be out of reach. You'd get a transcript like this:

[quote]>get on stool
You get onto the wobbly stool.

>get floss
You'll have to get down off the wobbly stool first.

>tie floss to bulb
You loop the dental floss around the light bulb and knot it tight.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2545&start=10#p17521
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Two days with IF
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-06-01 17:53:13

Wow... you're really an awesome teacher!  I imagine it takes a special kind of student to volunteer to come to school two extra days to learn something new.  I wish I had you in middle school!  I was trying to write games with Inform 6 and ADRIFT 4 back then, and nobody else in my whole school even knew about IF. [emote]:)[/emote] 

I'm really glad to hear of this, and I pray that it will suceed.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2547&start=0#p17522
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Sink Your Teeth into "Choice of the Vampire" for Kindle
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-06-01 18:02:51

Will it work on the virtual Kindle applications for PC, Mac, and portable platforms, or do you have to have a physical Kindle in order to run it?  I sometimes buy static fiction Kindle ebooks and read them on my laptop with the free PC application.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2546&start=10#p17523
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] which object is being tested by the reachability ru
User: Michael Gentry / DateTime: 2011-06-01 18:06:47

Oh, hey, I figured it out, sort of.

The name of the variable that I want is "item described". Simply checking to see if "the item described is the light bulb" still doesn't quite work, however, because the reaching outside rules apparently get checked for both the noun and the second noun every time, regardless of whether or not you actually have to reach outside of something to touch them. This means that if the action has two nouns, then eventually "the item described" will be something that isn't the light bulb, and the action will fail even if both items were technically within reach.

So, for the curious, here's how I ended up solving the problem:

[code]The Garage is a room. "The light bulb in the ceiling is burned out again, and all you have to stand on is that wretched stool. One day you're going to break your neck on that thing."

A light bulb is here. It is scenery.

The wobbly stool is here. It is a scenery, enterable supporter.

Instead of doing something when the current action involves the light bulb and the player is not on the wobbly stool (this is the can't reach the light bulb rule):
	say "You can't reach the light bulb from here."

The can't reach the light bulb rule is listed first in the instead rules.
   
A dental floss is here. The indefinite article is "some".

Instead of tying the dental floss to something:
	say "You loop the dental floss around [the second noun] and knot it tight.";
	now the dental floss is part of the second noun.

Rule for reaching outside the wobbly stool:
	if the item described is the light bulb or the item described is enclosed by the wobbly stool:
		allow access;
	otherwise:
		say "You'll have to get down off the wobbly stool first.";
		deny access.

Test me with "touch bulb / get on stool / touch bulb / get floss / tie floss to bulb / get off stool / get floss / tie floss to bulb / get on stool / tie floss to bulb".[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2547&start=0#p17524
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Sink Your Teeth into "Choice of the Vampire" for Kindle
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-06-01 18:26:13

[quote="Bainespal"]Will it work on the virtual Kindle applications for PC, Mac, and portable platforms, or do you have to have a physical Kindle in order to run it?  I sometimes buy static fiction Kindle ebooks and read them on my laptop with the free PC application.[/quote]

Kindle apps only run on physical Kindles, (and are only available for purchase in the United States!) but you can also play our games worldwide on iPhone, Android, Palm and on the web at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.choiceofgames.com/">http://www.choiceofgames.com/</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2546&start=10#p17525
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] which object is being tested by the reachability ru
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-01 18:26:18

I suspected that it was "the item described," but I couldn't get the formulation quite right. It's a bit counter-intuitive that you have to specify "enclosed by the wobbly stool" in a rule for reaching OUTSIDE the wobbly stool!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2548&start=0#p17526
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: [New Release] A Simple Theft 2: A Simple Theftier
User: markm / DateTime: 2011-06-01 19:17:21

Some of you have already read the [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/461ff87a39683d53/9f4836793af2e46a]announcement on rgif[/url] of my latest game, but now it is available on the web instead of only through Get Lamp.

My personal website for it is here: [url]http://ministryofpeace.com/people/mark/quick2/[/url]

Feedback and transcripts are most welcome.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2536&start=0#p17527
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Tri-Part Inventory?
User: QueenoftheCapes / DateTime: 2011-06-01 19:18:00

It works!!! \(^o^)/

Thanks, Bcressy! [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2549&start=0#p17528
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: ofclass
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-01 20:07:40

How do I negate ofclass, i.e. what's the syntax for checking if something is [b]not[/b] ofclass something? I've worked around it now, but I would have expected something like ~ofclass or notofclass to work - is there a syntax, or do I really have to work around it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2549&start=0#p17529
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: ofclass
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-06-01 20:29:49

Maybe try something like this --


if (~~object ofclass class)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2550&start=0#p17530
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Limitations of GONEAR or code problem?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-01 20:34:24

Okay, so I define a room. I define a person in that room. If I GONEAR that room, the person never exists. I can leave the room and come back and still no person. If I GONEAR that person, the person suddenly exists in that room. If I GONEAR and adjoining room and THEN go to that room without ever having visited that room first, the person exists.

I'm concerned that, though I know GONEAR is intended only as a debugging tool, I may not be defining my persons or rooms correctly. Right now, it's very basic and standard stuff. There's a room. There is a person in that room.

Is there something I'm missing?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2550&start=0#p17531
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Limitations of GONEAR or code problem?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-01 20:38:40

It only does this with NPCs, by the way. Objects appear to show up fine.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2551&start=0#p17532
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: "Phasing"?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-01 20:51:05

Alright, using the term "phasing" loosely here. I remember a game way back when I first started investigating IF called "Shades of Grey (Gray?)" I think it was written in AGT. Anyway, it was one of my favorite games, probably for no good reason.

Point being, the player "shifted" between one "reality" and another. I think. It's been a minute.

Question being, because I know the subject is vague... What are the opinions on the best way to handle this? Would it be creating whole separate rooms with separate objects and NPCs and whatever? Or making them conditionally different based on X? I can see creating whole new regions/rooms/items/et cetera being nightmarish. But I can see problems with the other approach as well.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2551&start=0#p17533
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Phasing"?
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-06-01 21:11:38

[quote="I4L"]Alright, using the term "phasing" loosely here. I remember a game way back when I first started investigating IF called "Shades of Grey (Gray?)" I think it was written in AGT. Anyway, it was one of my favorite games, probably for no good reason.

Point being, the player "shifted" between one "reality" and another. I think. It's been a minute.

Question being, because I know the subject is vague... What are the opinions on the best way to handle this? Would it be creating whole separate rooms with separate objects and NPCs and whatever? Or making them conditionally different based on X? I can see creating whole new regions/rooms/items/et cetera being nightmarish. But I can see problems with the other approach as well.[/quote]

I think both ways could/would work.  But I would do whole new regions/rooms/objects for the "other world" (just because I think I would make it so different that rules would be cumbersome) but just give NPC's different attributes when in the other world.

I have a bit of this in my WIP, and for me, this was the best way to go.  Rooms and objects took on so many new aspects that the if/when/while/instead rules became unreadable.  So I made a new "Part" and "Chapters" for the regions in the "other world" and just gave the same NPC's different properties when they are there.  I only have 5 NPC's (so far) that this applies to.  But it seems to work so far.

Basically I just copied the rooms and objects, renamed them, then added the new descriptions and properties to them.  So it is a whole separate "Part/Chapter" scheme, copied over and altered.  I saved the if/when/while/instead rules for the PC and NPC's.  And I name (and comment) the "mirrored" areas in a way to make finding the same place in the other world easier.

But like I said, both ways could work.  But when I edit in a week, a month, whatever... or someone else reads my code, I hope this will be more readable.  I think this comes down to a programmer philosophy decision.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2551&start=0#p17534
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Phasing"?
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-01 21:13:45

As a beginner to Inform, but not to programming itself, my guess would be to make use of classes in where you define as much as possible that's possible to be done in both layers, then use individual rooms/objects/... for finetuning. That way you'd save time AND keep your code readable/manageable. Just my guess.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2551&start=0#p17535
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Phasing"?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-01 21:26:26

Alright, allow me to further complicate the situation... Let's say that the "phases" are not dramatically different. Let's say, as a harsh example, you have a heroin addict exploring a room. Doesn't matter why. He's just there. [emote]:)[/emote] Different objects take on different properties based on how much he's smoked. (He's afraid of needles.)

Let's say he has a number called "stoned". In the room is a clock. If stoned is somewhere around 10, the clock looks mostly normal. At 20, the numbers on the clock turn blue. At 40, the hands on the clock become insects. At 60, the clock begins talking to him.

And so on...

I'm assuming that making entirely new rooms for this kind of thing would begin to get... unweildy?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2552&start=0#p17536
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: A Search-and-Replace Dilemma
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-06-01 21:33:43

Here's the goal:

Take a folder full of HTML files (different filenames, different contents) ...

And gut only the _contents_ of the files, leaving the filenames intact, but otherwise making the contents of every single file identical.

I is stumped [emote]:([/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2551&start=0#p17537
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Phasing"?
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-06-01 21:35:30

[quote="I4L"]Alright, allow me to further complicate the situation... Let's say that the "phases" are not dramatically different. Let's say, as a harsh example, you have a heroin addict exploring a room. Doesn't matter why. He's just there. [emote]:)[/emote] Different objects take on different properties based on how much he's smoked. (He's afraid of needles.)

Let's say he has a number called "stoned". In the room is a clock. If stoned is somewhere around 10, the clock looks mostly normal. At 20, the numbers on the clock turn blue. At 40, the hands on the clock become insects. At 60, the clock begins talking to him.

And so on...

I'm assuming that making entirely new rooms for this kind of thing would begin to get... unweildy?[/quote]

Probably.  I am doing more of a Alice/Wonka/OZ (or Wicked if you prefer) on mescaline type of reality change.  I guess it all depends on the extent of the variance from "reality".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2551&start=0#p17538
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Phasing"?
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-01 21:51:30

[quote="I4L"]Alright, allow me to further complicate the situation... [/quote]

If you're just going for description changes, this sounds to me like you should make the descriptions functions and switch() according to the variable you have.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2552&start=0#p17539
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A Search-and-Replace Dilemma
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-01 21:54:44

[code]
foreach foo ( *.html )
cp /tmp/template.html $foo
end
[/code]

But that's csh shell syntax, and I'm sure everybody will hoot at me for it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2549&start=0#p17540
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: ofclass
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-01 21:58:22

I don't remember the order of precedence, so to be safer: if (~~(x ofclass y))

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2551&start=0#p17541
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Phasing"?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-01 22:06:47

Well, I'm thinking it wouldn't just be description changes. But I guess I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2551&start=0#p17542
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Phasing"?
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-06-01 22:11:11

[quote="Grueslayer"][quote="I4L"]Alright, allow me to further complicate the situation... [/quote]

If you're just going for description changes, this sounds to me like you should make the descriptions functions and switch() according to the variable you have.[/quote]

I agree.  Given the limited scope of change, it would be better to vary the descriptions (and reactions) based on the variables.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2549&start=0#p17543
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: ofclass
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-01 22:23:48

Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2553&start=0#p17544
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: Comparing Properties
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-01 22:31:57

I have two objects which share a class. Both have a property (called "slot") which contains a string. For both objects it's [i]slot "head"[/i]. Now I want to check (in the class object) if these properties are identical. So I objectloop til I find the object I want object 1 to compare with, and compare the properties.
[code]
objectloop(obj){
  if(obj~=self && obj ofclass Armour && parent(obj)==player){
    if(obj.slot==self.slot){
      if(obj.is_worn==1){
        "You're wearing ",(the)obj," already!";
      }
    }
  }
}
[/code]
Problem: obj.slot and self.slot are not identical, though they both have the value "head". Debugging shows they have different integer values. Why is that so, and how can I work around it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2553&start=0#p17546
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Comparing Properties
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-01 23:23:03

You want the I6 extension istring.h, which can be downloaded from <a class="postlink" href="http://www.inform-fiction.org/extensions/complete.html">http://www.inform-fiction.org/extensions/complete.html</a>. I've never used it, but it should allow you to compare two strings and find out if they're identical.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2551&start=0#p17547
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Phasing"?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-01 23:26:24

This sounds to me like a good opportunity to apply Inform 7's Scenes functionality. It's relatively easy to change things like descriptions and vocabulary words based on "when [scene] X is happening".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2553&start=0#p17548
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Comparing Properties
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-01 23:36:26

*sigh*

Thanks, according to the dox that's exactly what I need.

It slowly deems to me that the concept behind Inform takes getting used to it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2551&start=0#p17549
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Phasing"?
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-06-02 00:03:35

[quote="Jim Aikin"]This sounds to me like a good opportunity to apply Inform 7's Scenes functionality. It's relatively easy to change things like descriptions and vocabulary words based on "when [scene] X is happening".[/quote]

That is probably the best solution if the situation is just a few variables.  Or even several spread around.  I had tried this, but in my case the exceptions became greater than the norms (example: if in this scene, with this item, already knowing this, and/or having triggered that, and/or PC has spoken to the NPC clock, 10 things might change.  But maybe only 2 or 3 will change if one or more of those variables was not true)... 

And with the "other world" being only a subset of the real world, but twice as complicated (normal scenery items and objects might have new meaning, or become animate, sometimes randomly or by triggers, and other paths and rooms appear that did not exist before in the "real" world, also at random or by triggers) it seemed easier to create a separate "mirrored" world for these regions.

And none of these variables are deal breakers for completing the game.  They are just to add color and make it so every game follows a different path to the outcome.  So I am only making my life harder... not the players.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2552&start=0#p17550
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A Search-and-Replace Dilemma
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-06-02 00:36:26

You don't say what OS: if you're on a Unix system, or a Windows system with Cygwin present, I'd use Zarf's suggestion. However on Windows there's also the evil of the [b][i]for[/i][/b] command from the command prompt:
[code]for %a in (c:\htmldir\*.html) do copy c:\temp\template.html %a[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2521&start=0#p17551
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Identical Room Names
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-02 00:46:21

Okay, I got that. Now what's the equivalent of I6 "found in" in I7? Can I define a "kind of room" with (static scenery) obejcts to look at, or do I have to define them in one specific room and spread them over the other rooms via the equivalent of "found in"?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2553&start=0#p17552
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Comparing Properties
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-02 01:08:17

Also, BTW, the link that I gave was to the list of extensions on the I6 website. That list hasn't been updated in about 4 years. There may be a few newer extensions in the if-archive.

In fact, I'm pretty sure there's at least one. I didn't see my EventList.h extension on the I6 list, and it was in the archive the last time I looked (at [url]http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXinfocomXcompilersXinform6XlibraryXcontributions.html[/url]). You might find it useful. It implements TADS-style event lists in I6. These objects are useful, among other things, for having your NPC choose from a list of default conversation responses (for a less boring game transcript). They can also fire off complex events, if desired.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2553&start=0#p17553
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Comparing Properties
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-02 01:17:17

I6 is generally not conducive to comparing strings. Can you replace the slot values with integer constants? Or objects? It'll be a lot faster.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2553&start=0#p17554
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Comparing Properties
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-02 01:24:24

Great idea! I'll turn the strings into integers and give them constant names.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=20#p17555
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-06-02 01:39:10

Good to know, thanks NC!

It looks like I can get volume changes broadly similar to WinGlk's by using a logarithmic approach instead of a linear one. I'll get that fix merged in for the next release.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2552&start=0#p17556
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A Search-and-Replace Dilemma
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-06-02 02:00:52

Many thankings to both of you (sorry about the OS thing)!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2521&start=0#p17557
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Identical Room Names
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-06-02 02:29:32

You need a backdrop (chapter 3.9. in the manual).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2521&start=0#p17558
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Identical Room Names
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-02 02:31:42

Yeah! Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2524&start=10#p17559
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I use Inform 7 with Wordpress? If so how?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-06-02 02:33:19

[quote="Seeker"]Here is the URL of a game file... 

<a class="postlink" href="http://seekerspath.org/parchment/stories/curses.z5">http://seekerspath.org/parchment/stories/curses.z5</a>[/quote]
That URL gives me a 404 error.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2555&start=0#p17563
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: inform 7: why wont my gun action work
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-06-02 10:33:50

Whats wrong with my shooting action?

Check shooting something with something:
if the player is not carrying the Henry Rifle Gun, say "you are unarmed!"
  instead;
if the second noun is not the Henry Rifle Gun, say "[the second noun] does not fire." instead;
if the noun is the Henry Rifle Gun, say " You cant do that." instead;
if the noun is the player, say "you cant die yet." instead.

Understand " shoot[gun] at [something ungunlike]" as shooting it with (with nouns reversed).
Definition: a thing is ungunlike if it is not the gun.
Understand "shoot [something ungunlike] with [gun]" as shooting it with.
Understand "shoot [something ungunlike] with [somthing]" as shooting it with.
Understand "shoot [something] with [something]" as shooting it with (with nouns reversed). 
Understand "fire [gun] at [something ungunlike]" as shooting it with (with nouns reversed).
Understand "fire at [something ungunlike] with [gun]" as shooting it with.
Understand "fire at [something] with [something]" as shooting it with.

Carry out shooting something with something:
say "bang![the noun] clutches its heart and falls down dead. [if something is part of the noun][the list of things which are part of the noun] fall to the ground! [end if][paragraph break]";

now every thing which is part of the noun is in the location;
remove the noun from play.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2555&start=0#p17564
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: why wont my gun action work
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-06-02 10:42:37

It's spelled "som[b]e[/b]thing", not "somthing". The second line of the check rule is missing a semicolon. The first understand line is missing spaces around tokens. The definition is misspelled: [b]it is[/b], not its. The last understand line is missing a closing bracket after the second token. "Paragraph break" is misspelled in the carry out rule. There's an extra line inside the the carry out rule.

There might be more, but these are the ones I spotted at the first glance.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2555&start=0#p17565
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: why wont my gun action work
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-06-02 11:18:20

Sadly instead of copying the writing from my game, i wrote it all out here. So actually these errors were not in my game they were just my post. my shooting action still doesnt work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2555&start=0#p17566
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: why wont my gun action work
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-02 11:25:11

[quote="ilovemyhedgehog"]Sadly instead of copying the writing from my game, i wrote it all out here. So actually these errors were not in my game they were just my post. my shooting action still doesnt work.[/quote]
Ah ... well, rewriting it to post it is a bad idea, as you can see. If you'll copy the code into your next post, possibly someone will be able to help.

A second point: "Doesn't work" is extremely vague. I can think of half a dozen problems that would be covered by that description. If you can be specific about what goes wrong, it's far more likely that someone will be able to make a useful suggestions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2540&start=0#p17567
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7 guns and gun shooting
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-02 11:31:25

Did you define the action ("Shooting it with is an action applying to two things.")?

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2555&start=0#p17568
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: why wont my gun action work
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-02 11:32:48

Did you define the action ("Shooting it with is an action applying to two things.")?

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2555&start=0#p17569
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: why wont my gun action work
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-06-02 11:34:29

For all the understand lines its says understand as should be followed by a meaning.

Check shooting something with something: 
    if the player is not carrying the Henry Rifle Gun, say "You are pathetically unarmed!" instead; 
    if the second noun is not the Henry Rifle Gun, say "[The second noun] does not fire." instead; 
    if the noun is the Henry Rifle Gun, say "Nice trick if you can do it!" instead; 
    if the noun is the player, say "That would be disastrous!" instead. 
    
  Understand "shoot [gun] at [something ungunlike]" as shooting it with (with nouns reversed). 


Definition: a thing is ungunlike if it is not the gun. 

Understand "shoot [something ungunlike] with [gun]" as shooting it with. Understand "shoot [something] with [something]" as shooting it with. 


Understand "shoot [something] at [something]" as shooting it with (with nouns reversed). Understand "fire [gun] at [something ungunlike]" as shooting it with (with nouns reversed). Understand "fire at [something ungunlike] with [gun]" as shooting it with. Understand "fire at [something] with [something]" as shooting it with.
  
Carry out shooting something with something: 
    say "Bang! [The noun] Clutches its heart and falls down dead! [if something is part of the noun][The list of things which are part of the noun] clatter to the ground! [end if][paragraph break]"; 
    now every thing which is part of the noun is in the location; 
    remove the noun from play.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2555&start=0#p17570
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: why wont my gun action work
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-06-02 11:37:26

[quote="Robert Rothman"]Did you define the action ("Shooting it with is an action applying to two things.")?

Robert Rothman[/quote]

i dont know waht that means

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2555&start=0#p17571
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: why wont my gun action work
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-02 11:41:37

The understand lines just tell the machine that particular commands typed by the player should invoke the "shooting it with" action.  The check and carryout rules tell the machine what to do when that action is invoked.  But it doesn't know what to do unless you also create an action called "shooting it with" and tell the machine that that action takes two nouns.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2556&start=0#p17572
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Conversation Framework Question
User: JDevlin / DateTime: 2011-06-02 11:41:56

Hey all,

I'm having a bit of trouble with Erik Eve's conversation extensions. 

Basically, to make a NPC recognize a topic, I have to make that topic a person. If I make it a subject or a thing, familiar or not, the NPC won't recognize it, even though the game acknowledges that the quizzing is successful. Quizzing about a subject or a thing, rather than a person, will redirect to the default. 

Incidentally, if I write an instead rule for a subject or a thing, that will successfully intercept it.

[code]
Liberty is a familiar man. 

Equality is a subject.

Fraternity is a familiar thing.

Table of Guard's Answers
subject	response rule	response table	suggest
Liberty	Liberty rule	--	--
Equality	Equality rule	--	--
Fraternity	Fraternity rule	--	--

This is the Liberty rule:
	say "Asking about Liberty successful.";

This is the Equality rule:
	say "Asking about Equality successful.";

This is the Fraternity rule:
	say "Asking about Fraternity successful.";

[/code]

Gets this response:

[i]> ask guard about liberty
[quizzing the security guard about Liberty]
Asking about Liberty successful.
[quizzing the security guard about Liberty - succeeded]

> ask guard about equality
[quizzing the security guard about Equality]
He just ignores you.

[quizzing the security guard about Equality - succeeded]

> ask guard about fraternity
[quizzing the security guard about Fraternity]
He just ignores you.

[quizzing the security guard about Fraternity - succeeded]

> ask guard about justice
[asking the security guard about “justice”]
He just ignores you.

[asking the security guard about “justice” - failed]
[/i]

I have mucked around a bit with some other code (from the Sweeney Todd example in the recipe book) that I could possibly see causing a namespace issue with "subject", but I'm pretty sure I went through that carefully (renamed those to Tsub).

Even so, I don't really understand why asking about people works, but asking about things doesn't.

Any ideas?

Jason

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2555&start=0#p17573
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: why wont my gun action work
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-06-02 11:43:48

how would i do that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2555&start=0#p17574
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: why wont my gun action work
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-02 11:46:40

I think (I may be remembering the precise syntax incorrectly, but I'm pretty sure its in the example that was cited earlier) that what you need is an additional line:

[code]Shooting it with is an action applying to two things.[/code]


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2556&start=0#p17575
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Framework Question
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-02 11:50:40

Just guessing, but could it have something to do with the fact that equality -- the topic that didn't behave correctly -- was not familiar?

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2555&start=10#p17576
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: why wont my gun action work
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-06-02 11:55:41

now the check linesare not working

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2556&start=0#p17577
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Framework Question
User: JDevlin / DateTime: 2011-06-02 13:18:59

Hey Robert, thanks for answering.

I don't think that's the case because subjects are automatically familiar (and I've tried explicitly making them familiar: doesn't work). Also Fraternity is familiar, but it doesn't give the right behaviour either.

Anything else you can think that might be the problem?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2499&start=0#p17578
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: following npc's
User: zodraz / DateTime: 2011-06-02 13:19:24

As usual the problem is easily solved.  I was thinking of doing it another and more complicated  way.  Thank you.

I was under the impression that indexOf() returned an integer value and just increased until the end of the list is reached.  So can I ask, why does the item in the agenda list matter to the index of the list?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2499&start=0#p17579
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: following npc's
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-02 13:32:11

[quote="zodraz"]I was under the impression that indexOf() returned an integer value and just increased until the end of the list is reached.  So can I ask, why does the item in the agenda list matter to the index of the list?[/quote]
It returns an integer, yes. But there's no mechanism that causes it to move forward (increase) from the previous thing it found, because every time you enter that method indexOf() starts at the beginning of the list. It starts with item 1 in the list and moves forward until it finds a match. If a given item is present multiple times in the list, indexOf() will never find the second one, no matter how often you call it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2499&start=10#p17580
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: following npc's
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-02 13:36:25

[quote="zodraz"]I was under the impression that indexOf() returned an integer value and just increased until the end of the list is reached.[/quote]
It returns the position of its argument in the list. It's an information-giving routine only. A list does not have any notion of "current item". It just has items in it, and each one has a unique position in the list (first, second, etc.) So "current index" does not make sense to a list.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2550&start=0#p17581
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Limitations of GONEAR or code problem?
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-02 14:44:05

This doesn't directly address the "invisible NPC" problem, but it might provide a diagnostic clue:  When you're in the room where the NPC is supposed to be but isn't, try using "showme" to take a look at the NPC in question; it should tell you, among other things, where he is.  That should tell you whether (i) the game thinks he's in the room but you can't interact with him, or (ii) he's really not in the room.  At least that might be useful information to know even though it does not, in itself provide an explanation for the odd behavior.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2550&start=0#p17582
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Limitations of GONEAR or code problem?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-06-02 15:06:41

[quote="I4L"]Okay, so I define a room. I define a person in that room. If I GONEAR that room, the person never exists. I can leave the room and come back and still no person. If I GONEAR that person, the person suddenly exists in that room. If I GONEAR and adjoining room and THEN go to that room without ever having visited that room first, the person exists.[/quote]
I am unable to reproduce this problem, so I'm guessing it's something in your code. Robert's suggestion to use "showme" is a good one. Also, you might want to check the world index of your game to make sure things are really where you think they are. As a very minimal test, this:
[code]Lab is a room. North of Lab is Back.
Sam is a man in Back.[/code]
... results in this:
[quote]Lab

>gonear back
Back
You can see Sam here.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2557&start=0#p17583
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7 Issue Too many Rulebooks
User: nuku_v / DateTime: 2011-06-02 15:11:45

Hey there. I have an interactive fiction online at <a class="postlink" href="http://nukuv.blogspot.com">http://nukuv.blogspot.com</a> and I use the awesome quixe interpreter to let people play it.

First, a warning: This is an adult game.(And a very strange one at that)

But the more important matter. Many many many players run into a *** Run-time problem P7: Too many rulebooks in simultaneous use. error that I never run into when I run it offline. What is going wrong, what can I do! There are no neverending loops that I can detect, and when it comes up, players often report they can't reload, and all saves are lost.

Any help would be appreciated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2557&start=0#p17584
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Issue Too many Rulebooks
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-02 15:31:45

Too many rulebooks?  Sounds like the name of a Rex Stout novel. [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2550&start=0#p17585
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Limitations of GONEAR or code problem?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-02 18:49:53

All great suggestions. And all told me that everything was fine.

So I figured out the problem, but not WHY the problem is happening. Stupid on my part because I should have seen the "placeholder" objects that I have in the room that told me immediately I was in the wrong place. Again... Probably something stupid or it could be some code that I've never used before. I'm probably not defining the rooms properly...

I'm using private names for the rooms because many of the rooms are the same thing. In this example, we'll say bedroom.

[code]Bedroom2 is a room. The printed name of bedroom2 is "The Bedroom".
A chair is bedroom2.

Bedroom3 is a room. The printed name of bedroom3 is "The Bedroom".
Sam is a man in bedroom3.[/code]

If I put that in its own game, it does exactly what it's supposed to. But in my main game file, it always takes me to bedroom2 instead. So there has to be some code in there somewhere that is forcing me to bedroom2 instead.

I'm not particularly keen on posting large chunks of the game file in here, because I don't know what exactly is causing the issue. I don't know if it's a loaded extension or if it's some arbitrary piece of code I've added somewhere.

I'm going to start stripping things and testing. If anyone has any immediate ideas as to where I can begin looking, please share!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2550&start=0#p17586
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Limitations of GONEAR or code problem?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-02 18:52:21

Come to think of it, it was doing this with placeholder items as well. If I had placeholder2 and placeholder3 and tried to go near 3, it would always take me to 2. So I changed the item names. One is a rubber ducky, one is a desk lamp, et cetera.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2524&start=20#p17587
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I use Inform 7 with Wordpress? If so how?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-06-02 18:55:28

Same...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2524&start=20#p17588
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I use Inform 7 with Wordpress? If so how?
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-06-02 19:18:09

[quote="Juhana"][quote="Seeker"]Here is the URL of a game file... 

<a class="postlink" href="http://seekerspath.org/parchment/stories/curses.z5">http://seekerspath.org/parchment/stories/curses.z5</a>[/quote]
That URL gives me a 404 error.[/quote]


Try <a class="postlink" href="http://seekerspath.org/parchment/stories/curses.z5.js">http://seekerspath.org/parchment/stories/curses.z5.js</a>

This link loads the js file (as text... browser does not know what to do with it).

It is in the same folder, with same permissions on the individual files.  That is why I am thinking it might be a port issue.  Something with .z5 files is different.  Maybe it is the fact it is associated locally with Frotz.  But that shouldn't matter when using Parchment to load it.  Unless it is trying to load it through a port other than port 80.

And it loads the .js if I use the Parchment html file on my server.  But not the straight .z5 file.  Shouldn't Parchment load both .js and .z5 version?  So that is why I keep thinking it is a port issue.  Java script loads through port 80.  

And <a class="postlink" href="http://iplayif.com/">http://iplayif.com/</a> won't load either type.  I am using this code:

[code]<iframe src="http://iplayif.com/?story=http://seekerspath.org/parchment/stories/curses.z5.js; options=%7B%22width%22%3A60%7D" width="100%" height="600"></iframe><br />[/code]

I have tried it with and without the .js at the end of the file name, and with and without the width="100%" height="600" which should just effect the iframe window size.

And I have tried other files, not just Curses.  With the same results.

If I use the included (in Parchment download) .html file to load the .js it works fine.  I just can't re-size it to fit the iframe window.  That is why I was hoping the was a way to add the re-size option to the...

<script>parchment_options = { default_story: [ 'stories/curses.z5.js', 'curses.txt' ] };</script>

...line in the .html file.

I am baffled.  Try this and let me know if it works for you:

<a class="postlink" href="http://seekerspath.org/parchment/curses.html">http://seekerspath.org/parchment/curses.html</a>

This is a direct link to the .html file that loads "stories/curses.z5.js" from my server.

It does load for me... locally, and on other computers I have tried.  Well, I admit, I have only tried it on one non-local computer, but it worked.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2558&start=0#p17589
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: The scene begins when...
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-02 19:47:34

I'd like the scene to begin when the player examines an object. Inform ain't havin' none of that. Why is that? Syntax issues?

Scene is a scene. Scene begins when the player examines the rock.

Inform says there's no condition for it to check.

I don't see this in the documentation. I don't see this in the examples I've been reading. Is there a list somewhere that tells what a scene can and cannot start with? Or am I phrasing it wrong? Do I need to just sit down and read all of the rule books? I didn't see anything in the scene index, but since I can't run the game, it's not generating a new scene index for me to look through...

Grr.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2559&start=0#p17590
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Attaching text to an object.
User: kanato / DateTime: 2011-06-02 19:58:39

How can I attach alternate text to an object?  I want to do something like this:

[code]
A thing can be printed or not printed.  Things are usually not printed.

Understand the command "read" as something new.
Reading is an action applying to one visible thing.
Understand "read [something]" as reading.
A check reading rule:
	if the noun is not printed:
		say "There is nothing to read on [the noun]." instead.

The instruction manual is the awesome room. The description of the cryo-bed instruction manual is "The title reads [bold type]Care and Operation of your Centron AX3400-S Cryo-Stasis Bed (tm).[roman type] It appears to be about 600 pages long." 
The instruction manual is printed with "There is large bold print on the first page which says [bold type]Warning! If any incidental damage is sustained by the control panel on your Centron AX3400-S cryo-stasis bed, the warranty will be voided.[roman type] Aside from that, it's the most boring thing you've ever read."
[/code]

So that this way I can simply give text to an object that has to be read by saying [the object] is printed with "my text."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2558&start=0#p17591
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The scene begins when...
User: Blecki / DateTime: 2011-06-02 20:11:18

I don't think scenes can begin when an action happens.

But 'Scene begins when the rock has been examined' might work.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2559&start=0#p17592
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Attaching text to an object.
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-02 20:14:35

In this specific example, there doesn't appear to be any reason for the first line.

This works for me:

[code]
Understand the command "read" as something new.
Reading is an action applying to one visible thing.
Understand "read [something]" as reading.

The awesome room is a room.

The instruction manual is in the awesome room. The description of the instruction manual is "The title reads [bold type]Care and Operation of your Centron AX3400-S Cryo-Stasis Bed (tm).[roman type] It appears to be about 600 pages long." 

Instead of reading the instruction manual: say "There is large bold print on the first page which says [bold type]Warning! If any incidental damage is sustained by the control panel on your Centron AX3400-S cryo-stasis bed, the warranty will be voided.[roman type] Aside from that, it's the most boring thing you've ever read."
[/code]

I personally, in my Inform ignorance, don't see a reason to make something printed or not if you're just creating a "read" command for it. If something can't be read, don't make an "Instead" rule for it? I'm sure someone who actually knows what they're talking about will have better advice.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2556&start=0#p17593
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Framework Question
User: Blecki / DateTime: 2011-06-02 20:16:12

I don't know what's wrong, but Dr Eve's 'conversation responses' provides a much better way of doing the same thing. Instead of a table, you write rules like

Response of Bob when asked about Equality:
  say "whatever".

His 'conversation package' combines all of his conversation extensions into one.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2558&start=0#p17594
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The scene begins when...
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-02 20:17:31

No go.

I'll dig some more into it. There has to be a way to work around it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2524&start=20#p17595
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I use Inform 7 with Wordpress? If so how?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-06-02 20:18:15

The problem is that your domain is using frames to redirect to where your actual website is hosted. Either stop using those frames, or use the real URL: <a class="postlink" href="http://iplayif.com/?story=http://68.200.78.215/parchment/stories/curses.z5.js">http://iplayif.com/?story=http://68.200 ... rses.z5.js</a>

I'd really recommend setting your DNS settings properly rather than using frames.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2524&start=20#p17596
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I use Inform 7 with Wordpress? If so how?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-06-02 20:23:21

Your web server (IIS) won't serve up files of an unknown type like .z5 unless you configure it to.

If you're running your own server, you'll need to [url=http://www.hosting.com/support/dedicated/IIS/newmime]add a new file extension to IIS[/url], picking the type from [url=http://www.ifarchive.org/misc/mime.html]the list of IF MIME types[/url].

Otherwise you'll have to ask your hosting provider to do it for you.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2559&start=0#p17597
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Attaching text to an object.
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-06-02 20:26:27

Similar to I4L... but I left the printed so it can say "You can't read the coffee pot" if it comes up...

[code]A thing can be printed or not printed.  Things are usually not printed.

Understand the command "read" as something new.
Reading is an action applying to one visible thing.
Understand "read [something]" as reading.
A check reading rule:
	if the noun is not printed:
		say "There is nothing to read on [the noun]." instead.
		
	
		
The awesome room is a room.

The instruction manual is in the awesome room. The description of the instruction manual is "The title reads [bold type]Care and Operation of your Centron AX3400-S Cryo-Stasis Bed (tm).[roman type] It appears to be about 600 pages long." 

The instruction manual is printed.

Instead of reading the instruction manual: say "There is large bold print on the first page which says [bold type]Warning! If any incidental damage is sustained by the control panel on your Centron AX3400-S cryo-stasis bed, the warranty will be voided.[roman type] Aside from that, its the most boring thing you've ever read."[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2559&start=0#p17598
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Attaching text to an object.
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-02 20:37:40

See? Like I said...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2524&start=20#p17599
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I use Inform 7 with Wordpress? If so how?
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-06-02 20:38:43

[quote="Dannii"]The problem is that your domain is using frames to redirect to where your actual website is hosted. Either stop using those frames, or use the real URL: <a class="postlink" href="http://iplayif.com/?story=http://68.200.78.215/parchment/stories/curses.z5.js">http://iplayif.com/?story=http://68.200 ... rses.z5.js</a>

I'd really recommend setting your DNS settings properly rather than using frames.[/quote]

I thought for sure I had tried using the literal IP instead of the redirect name... but maybe it was in combination with other things that kept it from working.  Maybe it was with the .z5 and like bcressey mentioned, IIS was dumb and didn't know what to do.

Damn GoDaddy redirects. 

But it works like this.  Thanks!

And I will add the mime settings to IIS and see what happens.  Server is in the other room... not a long walk.  [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2558&start=0#p17600
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The scene begins when...
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-02 20:45:35

I'm sure that those who know what they are doing will suggest a much better approach, but have you tried creating a truth state variable, using an "after" rule to set it to "true" after the object has been examined, and having the scene begin when that variable is true?

[code]

LookedAt is a truth state that varies.  LookedAt is false.
After examining the whatchamawhozit:
     Now LookedAt is true.
Newscene is a scene.  Newscene begins when LookedAt is true.[/code]

Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2560&start=0#p17601
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: OSX IDE crashing when viewing documentation
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-06-02 21:00:34

For some reason, the Inform7 IDE keeps crashing, and it seems to be linked to viewing the documentation.  After I open the program, when I navigate within the docs, it seems like changing the page has a 1/4ish chance of crashing the program.  I don't think it's linked to any particular page, though -- I've been opening a test document, then flipping through the documentation, and a page that crashed it before does not necessarily crash it again.  I deleted Inform and re-downloaded it at the site (6G60), and the problem persists.  I don't think this is already on Mantis, but I'm not very good at searching it (I tried words like "mac ide crash").  I'm on OSX 10.5.8 and have also seen some Finder-related flakiness lately, so that might be involved.  Anybody got any ideas or advice?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2524&start=20#p17602
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I use Inform 7 with Wordpress? If so how?
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-06-02 21:47:59

Okay... using both fixes and now everything works.  Z-files and J-Script files.  Thanks to both of you.

Just one more question... 

It only re-sizes when I use <a class="postlink" href="http://iplayif.com/">http://iplayif.com/</a> as the "player" and not when I use my own hosted version.  What do I have to change in the index.html file to allow re-sizing?  I tried changing (in several ways, and even deleting this line):

[quote]<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,user-scalable=no">[/quote]

And that didn't help.  I know... I should just be happy that I can play it through <a class="postlink" href="http://iplayif.com/">http://iplayif.com/</a> and get the results I want.  But I am the annoying type that likes to know the 'whys' about things.

I promise to shut up after this.  [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2556&start=0#p17603
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Framework Question
User: JDevlin / DateTime: 2011-06-02 21:49:50

Ah, thanks Blecki.

Sorry, I didn't give the whole code. I'm actually using the tables for more (most of the responses are actually in the more complicated sequential tables from Conversation Framework/Rules), but I've narrowed down the problem to be among the declaring of topics, not the actual quizzing table.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2561&start=0#p17604
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: contentsListedInExamine and a Booth
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-02 21:54:31

I have a Booth/Fixture in my starting location, and an Actor is in the Booth. When I use 'look', I get the Actor's specialDesc, as desired, even though the player is in the Room, not in the Booth. But when I 'x cabin' (the booth is a small cabin on the deck of a boat), I get the description of the cabin followed, in a new paragraph, by:

Nikolaides is standing in the cabin.

This happens even though I have set contentsListedInExamine = nil for the Booth object, and also isListedInContents = nil for the Actor. (And no, I didn't misspell the property names.) (And anyway, isListedInContents = nil is the default for an Actor.)

However, an ordinary object placed in the cabin is NOT listed when I 'x cabin' (though it is listed in 'look in cabin', as it should be). So it appears that Actor objects are handled in a different way by the examine action. But I'm not finding any special property of the Actor class that would cause it to be omitted from the list of what's in a Booth (or any other container).

I'm sure I'm missing something obvious ... but what?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2524&start=20#p17605
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I use Inform 7 with Wordpress? If so how?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-06-02 22:20:21

Your local version is probably old. The changes for resizing it came after the last inform 7 release.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2524&start=20#p17606
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I use Inform 7 with Wordpress? If so how?
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-06-02 22:31:49

[quote="Dannii"]Your local version is probably old. The changes for resizing it came after the last inform 7 release.[/quote]

I am using the most recent quixe version from <a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/curiousdannii/parchment/tree/quixe">https://github.com/curiousdannii/parchment/tree/quixe</a> on the website with the most recent files updated as of April 13, 2011.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2556&start=0#p17607
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Framework Question
User: JDevlin / DateTime: 2011-06-02 22:34:07

A little update... I stripped it to bare bones, but it's still not working. What am I missing?

[code]"A" by Jason Devlin

Include Conversation Rules by Eric Eve.

Love is a subject.

Hate is a familiar man.

Indifference is a subject.

Instead of quizzing Abigail about Indifference:
	say "Asking about Indifference successful!"

Abigail is a woman. The quizzing table of Abigail is Table of AAnswers.

Table of AAnswers
subject	response rule	response table	suggest
Love	--	Table of ALove	--
Hate	--	Table of AHate	--

Table of ALove
response
"Asking about Love succesful!"

Table of AHate
response
"Asking about hate successful!"

The Laboratory is a room. Abigail is in the Laboratory.[/code]

Tests as...

[quote]A
An Interactive Fiction by Jason Devlin
Release 1 / Serial number 110602 / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N) SD

Laboratory
You can see Abigail here.

>ask abigail about love
There is no response.

>ask abigail about hate

*** Run-time problem P21: Attempt to look up a non-existent correspondence in the table 'Table of Table Types'.

Asking about hate successful!

>ask abigail about indifference
Asking about Indifference successful![/quote]

Just ignore that run-time problem - it's because in this snippet I'm not defining the Table of Table Types, which shouldn't interfere with my subject/person problem.

Jason

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2559&start=0#p17608
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Attaching text to an object.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-02 22:45:06

I think you could do something like this instead of defining "printed" as a property (totally untested):

[code]A thing has a text called the inscription. The inscription of a thing is usually "".
Definition: A thing is printed if its inscription does not match "". [or should that be is not ""?]
Definition: A thing is unprinted if it is not printed.
Instead of reading an unprinted thing: say "There's nothing written on [the noun]."
Instead of reading a printed thing: say "[The noun] reads: [inscription of the noun]."[/code]

And then special rules if you want to have different outputs for different printed things. As I said, this is untested so I may have goofed a detail.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2524&start=20#p17609
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I use Inform 7 with Wordpress? If so how?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-06-02 22:56:22

Use the master branch instead.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2519&start=10#p17610
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: IF and Linux
User: Sig / DateTime: 2011-06-02 22:58:13

I will have to mess with this again, too.  It's the only thing that I wasn't immediately able to get up and running with Linux Mint Debian Edition when I switched from Ubuntu 10.04.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=20#p17611
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: Sig / DateTime: 2011-06-02 23:01:10

My wife has been playing on Hunky Punk for several weeks now on her Android phone; this is her only exposure to IF, so it can't be too horrible an experience.  I keep trying to get her to try it on her laptop, but she only gets short windows of time to play when neither kid desperately needs her attention...  I suspect she's probably played almost as much as I have, but in 5-10 minute increments...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2462&start=0#p17612
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: anonymous recursive functions?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-06-02 23:17:52

I asked Mike and it turns out this will be possible in the next release using the pseudo-variable [b]invokee[/b].

[code]
lst = lst.mapAll({x: x <= 1 ? 1 : x * invokee(x-1)});
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2558&start=0#p17613
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The scene begins when...
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-02 23:29:09

[code]
Scene-x is a scene. Scene-x begins when we have examined the rock.
[/code]

The history mechanism doesn't store enough information to distinguish who did the examining (a player or NPC). Thus, the vague wording "...we have examined..."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2557&start=0#p17614
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Issue Too many Rulebooks
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-02 23:31:05

This is most likely a sign that a rulebook has invoked itself. (Or rulebook A has invoked B which invokes A, etc.)

I can't think of a reason why other players would run into it when you don't, however. Have you pinned down a specific sequence of commands that reproduces the problem?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2560&start=0#p17615
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: OSX IDE crashing when viewing documentation
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-02 23:33:49

Flakiness in the Finder is a bad sign. Do you see any error messages in the system console logs? (Console utility.)

Might be worth verifying the hard drive with Disk Utility.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2524&start=20#p17616
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I use Inform 7 with Wordpress? If so how?
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-06-02 23:56:46

[quote="Dannii"]Use the master branch instead.[/quote]

That works.  Does it still have the improved quixe support?

For now, I have 2 Parchment directories, one for WP (master branch) and one for "normal" use (quixe branch).  If I replace the quixe version with the master branch (I see it has been recently updated) will I lose the quixe improvements? 

I had problems with the quixe status bar showing in the previous master branch version... that is why I am using the quixe branch for general use.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2557&start=0#p17617
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Issue Too many Rulebooks
User: nuku_v / DateTime: 2011-06-02 23:59:33

This I have not.

For sake of argument, I swapped from quixe to parchment to see if it works better.

However parchment seems to not do gluxe extensions? I lost my status bars.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2562&start=0#p17618
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: specialDescOrder and Actors
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-03 00:20:02

The notes in the Library Reference Manual clearly seem to imply that specialDescOrder will apply to both Actors and other objects. The default specialDescOrder for the Actor class is 200, and the notes say, "By default, put all of the actor special descriptions after the special descriptions of ordinary objects, by giving actors a higher listing order value."

However, what I'm finding is that ordinary objects with a specialDesc are listed in a room description BEFORE Actors, irrespective of my non-default settings for specialDescOrder. I have four Actors in the room, and I can change the relative order in which they're shown by fiddling with their specialDescOrders. But the ordinary object is listed before the Actors, even though I've given it a much higher specialDescOrder.

As the Actors' specialDesc text is coming from their ActorStates, I tried giving an ActorState a lower specialDescOrder, to see if that would pop its specialDesc up above the specialDesc for the ordinary object (which happens to be a Collective -- I also tried giving the member objects of the Collective a higher specialDescOrder -- no luck there). No matter what I do, the ordinary object is displayed in the room description output text before the Actors.

Suggestions would be welcome.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2561&start=0#p17619
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: contentsListedInExamine and a Booth
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-06-03 00:21:19

You're looking for [url=http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/libref/source/travel.t.html#3607]roomListActorPosture[/url], I think.

[code]
modify cabin
    roomListActorPosture(actor) {}
;
[/code]

This is called by [url=http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/libref/source/actor.t.html#7146]listActorPosture[/url], which is another place you can override it if the behavior is specific to a particular actor.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2562&start=0#p17620
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: specialDescOrder and Actors
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-06-03 00:35:16

You can set the [url=http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/libref/source/actor.t.html#5843]specialDescBeforeContents[/url] property to true on the actors you want listed before portable objects.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2562&start=0#p17621
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: specialDescOrder and Actors
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-03 00:46:56

Brilliant -- thanks! And thanks for the info about listActorPosture as well. It's been a couple of years since I did anything with T3, but I don't think I ever knew these two bits.

I'm pretty much a maniac about getting the output to read the way I want it to. I had forgotten how to banish "It's closed.", but I managed to find that information in Learning TADS 3.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2550&start=0#p17622
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Limitations of GONEAR or code problem?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-06-03 01:15:00

If the names are long the problem might be that the parser reads only the first 9 characters of each word, so if you have "placeholder1" and "placeholder2" and you type GONEAR PLACEHOLDER2 the parser reads up until GONEAR PLACEHOLD and picks the first it can find. ("Bedroom" has only 7 letters but I assumed that was only an example.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2524&start=30#p17623
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I use Inform 7 with Wordpress? If so how?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-06-03 03:12:56

The master branch uses the original Quixe. The code for changing the width is currently Z-Code only though so that doesn't matter. Quixe (from the quixe branch) may or may not resize itself correctly in an iframe, I'm not sure.

Of course the best thing would be to merge the quixe branch back to master, but I need more people testing it. Have you found any bugs with it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2508&start=0#p17624
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Short, kid-friendly IF
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2011-06-03 08:46:38

Thank you all for the help!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2562&start=0#p17625
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: specialDescOrder and Actors
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-06-03 09:21:24

The main bit of library code that controls room descriptions is [url=http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/libref/source/thing.t.html#2721]lookAroundWithin[/url]. The code is dense but the comments make it readable. 

That's where I found the specialDescBeforeContents property. But other parts of the display order aren't so easily changed. If you wanted sounds or odors listed earlier, for example, you'd need to rewrite that function and move the relevant blocks around.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2555&start=10#p17626
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: why wont my gun action work
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-06-03 09:39:31

ok i fixed it, i t works now.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2555&start=10#p17627
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: why wont my gun action work
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-06-03 09:43:41

When you copy and paste code to the forums, it is a good idea to enclose it in the code tags.  That way folks don't have to recreate your tabs.  

This works for me.  I highly recommend Plurity by Emily Short, as it will allow for lines like:
say "[The noun] clutches [his-her] heart and falls to the ground."

[code]The Bar is a room.  There is a vase in the Bar.  Bob is a man in the Bar.

Shooting it with is an action applying to two things.
Understand "shoot [something ungunlike] with [gun]" as shooting it with. 
Understand "shoot [gun] at [something ungunlike]" as shooting it with (with nouns reversed).
Understand "fire [gun] at [something ungunlike]" as shooting it with (with nouns reversed). 
Understand "fire at [something ungunlike] with [gun]" as shooting it with. 
Understand "shoot [something] with [something]" as shooting it with.
Understand "shoot [something] at [something]" as shooting it with (with nouns reversed). Understand "fire at [something] with [something]" as shooting it with.

A gun is a kind of thing.  Understand "gun" as a gun.
The Henry Rifle Gun is a gun in the Bar.


Check shooting something with something when the player is unarmed (this is the must be armed to shoot rule):
	if the Henry Rifle Gun is in the location:
		say "(first taking the Henry rifle)[command clarification break]";
		try taking the Henry Rifle Gun;
	if the player is not carrying the Henry Rifle Gun, say "You are pathetically unarmed!" instead;

Check shooting something with something (this is the general shooting rule):	
	if the second noun is not the Henry Rifle Gun, say "[The second noun] does not fire." instead;
	if the noun is the Henry Rifle Gun, say "Nice trick if you can do it!" instead;
	if the noun is the player, say "That would be disastrous!" instead.

Check shooting something with something (this is the only shoot people rule):
	if the noun is not a person, say "If you shot [the noun], you'd have to pay for it." instead;

Definition: a person is unarmed if it is not holding a gun.

Definition: a thing is ungunlike if it is not a gun.


Carry out shooting something with something:
	say "Bang! [The noun] Clutches its heart and falls down dead! [if something is part of the noun][The list of things which are part of the noun] clatter to the ground! [end if][paragraph break]";
	now every thing which is part of the noun is in the location;
	remove the noun from play.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=20#p17628
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-06-03 09:46:32

[quote="bcressey"]It looks like I can get volume changes broadly similar to WinGlk's by using a logarithmic approach instead of a linear one.[/quote]That would be good, but in doing this I suspect you'll need to look into what SDL_mixer does with its volume argument. Looking at the documentation for SDL I couldn't see anything that explained what it does: is it a linear scaling of the waveform data by the volume argument?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2524&start=30#p17629
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I use Inform 7 with Wordpress? If so how?
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-06-03 10:38:30

[quote="Dannii"]The master branch uses the original Quixe. The code for changing the width is currently Z-Code only though so that doesn't matter. Quixe (from the quixe branch) may or may not resize itself correctly in an iframe, I'm not sure.

Of course the best thing would be to merge the quixe branch back to master, but I need more people testing it. Have you found any bugs with it?[/quote]

As it stands now, the Quixe branch version does not re-size in the iframe.  At least not for me.

But other than that, I have had no problems with it.  I use it daily for my own project testing and a few friends have played entire games on it without a glitch.  So no bugs to report.  Just a big thank you for giving us a great web interpreter to use.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2524&start=30#p17630
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I use Inform 7 with Wordpress? If so how?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-03 10:53:28

Quixe is intended to always resize itself to its container, whether that's a div in a window or an iframe. I haven't tested the version that's integrated with Parchment, however.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=20#p17631
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: eliukblau / DateTime: 2011-06-03 11:48:37

[quote="ektemple"]This thread isn't about Damusix, but I beg indulgence to add: 

[quote="bcressey"]I realize that Damusix already does all this. It rocks! I think you should just release it as-is; authors who want to use it can put the documentation through Google Translate or ask usage questions here. [/quote]

I agree with Ben--just release it now if the code is ready. People do their best to get by w/o reading documentation anyway! You could try putting the documentation up in wiki format at Google Code or IFWiki; maybe folks will be motivated to contribute to a group-mind translation.

--Erik[/quote]

Yes, you are right. Both. [emote];)[/emote] 

I will publish a beta version of DamusixI7 just finished my internship (in 2 weeks more). After that, I guess I will take about two to three weeks to have a working version ready and tested (given the recent changes in I7, and the release of the next Damusix 4, more user-friendly for English-speaking).

I take this time because I have had many changes this quarter: my internship, moving to a new home, moving to a new operating system (now I'm using Linux [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]), etc.

Thank you for your support. [emote]:D[/emote]

PS: The "abuse" I promised, I will try to publish it in 1 week more. [emote]:D[/emote] I have not forgotten it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2563&start=0#p17632
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: IFMapper 1.1.1
User: gga / DateTime: 2011-06-03 12:03:37

IFMapper, the PD and cross platform mapping solution, is now at
v1.1.1.  What's new in this version is compatibility with Trizbort
file format.

You can obtain ifmapper by rubygems doing:

> gem install -r ifmapper

or by downloading the zip file or gem file from <a class="postlink" href="http://www.rubyforge.org">www.rubyforge.org</a>:
<a class="postlink" href="https://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=852">https://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=852</a>

For instructions on installing, please refer to:
<a class="postlink" href="http://ifmapper.rubyforge.org/start.html">http://ifmapper.rubyforge.org/start.html</a> 

In order to install ifmapper, you need to have the fox library installed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2556&start=0#p17633
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Framework Question
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2011-06-03 12:33:11

I'm afraid I'm as baffled by this as you are. Precisely the same problem afflicts the sample game that comes with the extension.

I do have a very vague recollection that this has come up before, and that someone thought that it was down to an obscure bug in Inform 7. What seems to be going on is that the game is failing to match things in the subject column of the table unless the thing is also a person, but I've no idea why that should be.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2559&start=0#p17634
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Attaching text to an object.
User: kanato / DateTime: 2011-06-03 12:47:55

Ok thanks guys.  I went with matt w's solution because I want to be able to write text like "The inscription of the object is" rather than writing "Instead of reading the object" for every single object.  Plus I have other texts I want attached to other objects (like a medical description attached to dead bodies that is printed once the player reads a text on pathology).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2564&start=0#p17635
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: inform 7: Digging problem
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-06-03 13:00:39

Here is the whole code with numbers for my problems (the numbers are not in my code there just there to pin point where my problem is). my problem is for the check digging with something the only options that work are 1,2 and 3if i try options 4 or five it just says what option 2 says.  


  [code]A tree is here. The shovel is a thing carried by the player. 
    
    digging it with is an action applying to two things.
    Check digging something with something: 
   1. if the player is not carrying the Shovel, say "You Have absolutely nothing at all to dig with!" instead; 
   2. if the second noun is not the shovel, say "[The second noun] is not digging materal." instead; 
   3. if the noun is the shovel, say "Nice trick if you can do it!" instead; 
   4. if the noun is the player, say "That would be disastrous!" instead; 
   5. if the noun is a tree, say "You dont want holes in your beautiful desk." instead.
     
 Understand "dig [something unshovellike] with [shovel]" as digging it with (with nouns reversed). 

Definition: a thing is unshovellike if it is not the shovel. 


Understand "dig [something unshovellike] with [shovel]" as digging it with.
Understand "dig [something] with [something]" as digging it with. 

Understand "dig [something] with [something]" as digging it with (with nouns reversed). 

Carry out digging something with something: 
    say "wow! [The noun] Clutches its chest and falls down dead! [if something is part of the noun][The list of things which are part of the noun] clatter to the ground! [end if][paragraph break]"; 
    now every thing which is part of the noun is in the location; 
    remove the noun from play.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2541&start=0#p17636
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: vomiting?
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-06-03 13:05:15

[quote="Jim Aikin"]I'm starting to wonder if this individual is serious about writing a game.[/quote]
there is nothing wrong with trying to make your game funny in some parts. i am using mouldy goats cheese in my game.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2564&start=0#p17637
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: Digging problem
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-06-03 13:10:34

Why did you reverse the nouns?  That's the root of your problem.  Since you wrote the understand phrase with nouns reversed, it's expecting "dig [shovel] with [non-shovel]", which is going to give you problems.

Also, for the love of all things good and beautiful, PLEASE put your code in code tags.

Edit: Also, why would you need to specify "with a shovel"?  Why not just "dig hole"?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2564&start=0#p17638
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: Digging problem
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-06-03 13:16:17

sorry about the code tags fixed that. so reverse the nouns means to switch them? i was reading it re verse like a verse from a poem.
i need they player to use a shovel because its part of one of my puzzles. the shovel is a hint for what to do in a certan ash pile.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2544&start=0#p17640
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: are there any gamers where you play as an animal or beas
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-06-03 13:21:13

Emerald is there a way to download and play these games? i cant figure it out.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2556&start=0#p17641
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Framework Question
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-06-03 13:26:19

The problem was discussed on raif, here: [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/17b3eee1cc31e40b/]"Problems with Eric Eve's Conversation Rules extension."[/url]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2556&start=0#p17642
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Framework Question
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2011-06-03 13:43:43

The problem can be illustrated with this minimal test game:
[code]
frobbing is an action applying to one visible thing.

Understand "frob [any thing]" as frobbing.

Angela is a woman.
The pie is a thing.

Table of Foo
gizzmo	response
Angela	"She's a woman."
pie		"Crusty!"

Report frobbing when the noun is a gizzmo listed in the Table of Foo:
    say "[response entry][line break]";
    stop the action.

Report frobbing: 
say "I don't know anything about that."

The Place is a room.

Test me with "frob pie/frob angela"
[/code]

Note that the problem goes away if the pie and Angela are listed in the opposite order in the Table of Foo.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2559&start=0#p17643
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Attaching text to an object.
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-06-03 14:10:39

Yet another different way to do it:
[code]
A thing has a text called an inscription. The inscription of a thing is usually "".

Reading is an action with past participle read, applying to one thing. 
Understand the command "read" as something new.
Understand "read [something]" as reading.

Check reading:
	if the inscription of the noun is empty:
		say "There's nothing on [the noun] to be read.";
		stop the action.
	
Report reading something:
	say the inscription of the noun;
	say paragraph break.


The Library is a room.

The book is a thing in the Library. The description is "It's a  book on pathology." The inscription is "You read everything about all deadly diseases."

A chair is a thing in the Library.

A dead body is a thing in the Library. The description is "[if we have not read the book]A dead man, that's all you can tell.[otherwise]How extraordinarily interesting! This looks like a genuine case of bubonic plague."
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2556&start=0#p17644
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Framework Question
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-03 14:12:37

Hrm, I tried to see if it could be worked around by forcing the gizzmo column to be "a thing," but Inform rejects it if you make the column heading "gizzmo (a thing)". However, it does seem to be possible to work around the bug in the example game by starting the table with a blank row that specifies what kind of object the column contains:

[code]frobbing is an action applying to one visible thing.

Understand "frob [any thing]" as frobbing.

Angela is a woman.
The pie is a thing.

Table of Foo
gizzmo 	response (indexed text)
a thing	--
Angela	"She's a woman."
pie	"Crusty!"

Report frobbing when the noun is a gizzmo listed in the Table of Foo:
    say "[response entry][line break]";
    stop the action.

Report frobbing: 
say "I don't know anything about that."

The Place is a room.

Test me with "frob pie/frob angela"[/code]

The test now works. If the presence of a blank line creates a problem I suppose one could close it up with a "when play begins" rule, though that would be super ugly. 

Anyway, this might be a workaround for now.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2541&start=0#p17645
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: vomiting?
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-03 14:35:23

I actually wrote a game which is set partly in ancient Rome.  In the interest of verisimilitude, one of the rooms in the Senator's villa is a vomitorium (right next to the banquet hall, of course).  And, although it had nothing to do with the plot, I had to provide appropriate responses for the things a player might reasonably be expected to try.

Another part of the same game is set in the wild west -- and every general store in the wild west had to have a barrel full of beans.  And since eating the beans had to produce the expected physical response -- well, you get the idea.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2541&start=0#p17646
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: vomiting?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-03 14:59:09

[quote="ilovemyhedgehog"]there is nothing wrong with trying to make your game funny in some parts. i am using mouldy goats cheese in my game.[/quote]
Funny games are cool -- I'm not trying to dissuade you! (Portions of "A Flustered Duck" were intended to be funny. Whether I succeeded ... I've heard no complaints so far.) I just made that comment because it didn't seem you were asking a question.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2544&start=0#p17647
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: are there any gamers where you play as an animal or beas
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-06-03 15:36:56

The titles of the games on that list are links to pages about those games.  Each game's main page has a download link or links in the upper right corner.  For common formats, there is also a "Show me how!" button that should give you even more specific directions on how to play that game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2556&start=10#p17648
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Framework Question
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-03 15:53:04

Matt's solution should work. There are a number of bug reports on Mantis related to this:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=444">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=444</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=446">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=446</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=448">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=448</a>

...which might help if you run into any more trouble.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2499&start=10#p17649
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: following npc's
User: zodraz / DateTime: 2011-06-03 17:39:06

Thanks for telling me how routeList() works, now I know what to do in the future.

I’ve  manage to modify your code to fit the game and it works fine.  No doubt I will be asking  questions again in the future.  Thank you for your help.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2564&start=0#p17650
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: Digging problem
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-06-03 18:25:20

Thanks for fixing the code tags.

What were you expecting the "(with nouns reversed)" to do?  What were you expecting from a poetry-verse understand clause?  

Let's pretend you want an action with two things, but you've got two different places for the subject of the sentence.  For example, "give [x] to [y]" is functionally the same as "give [y] [x]".  But Inform doesn't really understand grammar.  By default, the first "thing" named in a sentence is the noun, and the second one is the second noun.  But "give [y] [x]" is not functionally equivalent to "give [y] to [x]", so you need to indicate that in this instance, the second noun is where the first one usually is, and vice versa.  That's what "(with nouns reversed)" means - the nouns are in a reversed order from where you originally defined them.

You can include the shovel in the game, and require it for digging, without making the player specify it in the action.  

Consider:

[code]Digging is an action applying to one thing.  Understand "dig in [something]" or "dig [something]" or "dig [something] up" as digging.

Check digging:
     if the player does not enclose the shovel, say "You're not going to dig with your bare hands!" instead.[/code]

Or:

[code]Digging is an action applying to nothing.  Understand "dig" or "dig a hole" as digging.

A thing is either diggable or not diggable.  A thing is usually not diggable.

Check digging:
   if the player does not enclose the shovel, say "You're not going to dig with your bare hands!" instead;
   if the location does not enclose a diggable thing, say "There's nothing here to dig." instead.[/code]

(Not tested, but that's the general idea, assuming there will be only one diggable thing per location, and they're not portable.)

You can also auto-select the second noun if you really feel like it's necessary (I believe there's an example in the manual).  But if the player is only ever going to dig with the shovel, and it's always clear what he's going to dig, then it's kind to simplify things a bit.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2565&start=0#p17651
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Reactions requested
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-03 19:35:16

I'd like to get people's reactions to an approach I'm thinking of using:

I'm writing a game which will include a "manual."  The player will be told that the manual contains "everything you need to know."  This is, of course, an exaggeration, but the book will contain a lot of background information on various topics which are useful (and, in some cases, essential) to playing the game.

Among other things, the book would contain entries for most of the objects that the player will encounter in the game, which entries will, among other things, tell the player how to use them.  The format of this information will clarify the proper command syntax for any actions which are specific to the object.

My thinking is that if I do this, I don't really need to go overboard in including "understand" statements to cover every possible other way a player might try to phrase a command.  I would pick up the obvious ones, but that's about it.  My thinking is that the player can always avoid a "guess the verb" situation by looking at what has been described to him as the repository of all knowledge in the game, and that fairness therefore does not require that I also deal with every possible command syntax.

Am I just taking the lazy way out, or does this sound reasonable?  (By the way, the manual is not included just for this purpose; it makes sense that the character (a spy) would have an agency-issued manual, and the book performs important functions in the game whether or not I use it as an excuse(?) to skimp on the synonyms).

Any thoughts would be appreciated.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2565&start=0#p17652
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Reactions requested
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-03 19:50:01

Hm. While I personally would appreciate a book object to look up stuff, I could imagine it could ruin the atmosphere you want to create if that book takes refernce to game mechanics by displaying syntaxes. In my personal opinion the description of syntaxes is something for tutorial-like introductions, but shouldn't come up later in the game. Feels a little like "my parser is limited, so I'm revealing you the syntax". Just my 2ct.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2565&start=0#p17653
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Reactions requested
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-03 19:55:59

I can only imagine that this would be a very boring game to play; it reminds me of homework, which I always try to avoid [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2565&start=0#p17654
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Reactions requested
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-06-03 20:22:02

How about a manual feelie?  If there's a lot of look ups, it might be more practical, and you could make it look nice.  (Otherwise it might feel like a less convenient version of "examine.")

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2565&start=0#p17655
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Reactions requested
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-03 20:40:22

Thanks to all.

The feelie idea might work if the book were not otherwise an important part of the game, but it doesn't work in light of some of other functions that the manual will have in the game.  Basically, the player will have to solve a major multi-part puzzle before he can get the book open -- which is important, because a certain necessary object will only appear once the player reads a hint about its location in the book.  Also, certain codes, which will change randomly from game to game, will only be found in the book.  Making it a feelie would make it too easy to get this information, and eliminate the whole puzzle on how to get it open.

It looks like the consensus is to deal with the synonyms the hard way.  I'll probably also try to use the book to give hints on how to use the objects (while keeping it "in character") but I won't rely on it as a substitute for "understand" statements.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2541&start=0#p17656
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: vomiting?
User: Gorobay / DateTime: 2011-06-03 21:22:31

[quote="Robert Rothman"]I actually wrote a game which is set partly in ancient Rome.  In the interest of verisimilitude, one of the rooms in the Senator's villa is a vomitorium (right next to the banquet hall, of course).  And, although it had nothing to do with the plot, I had to provide appropriate responses for the things a player might reasonably be expected to try.[/quote]
I do not think [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vomitorium#Historical_notes][b]it means[/b][/url] what you think it means.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2541&start=0#p17657
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: vomiting?
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-06-03 21:38:05

[quote="Gorobay"]
I do not think it means what you think it means.  — Inigo Montoya[/quote]

A quote from my favorite movie of all time...

(I added the — Inigo Montoya)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2564&start=0#p17658
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: Digging problem
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-03 22:37:51

[quote="gravel"]Thanks for fixing the code tags.

What were you expecting the "(with nouns reversed)" to do?  What were you expecting from a poetry-verse understand clause?  

Let's pretend you want an action with two things, but you've got two different places for the subject of the sentence.  For example, "give [x] to [y]" is functionally the same as "give [y] [x]".  But Inform doesn't really understand grammar.  By default, the first "thing" named in a sentence is the noun, and the second one is the second noun.  But "give [y] [x]" is not functionally equivalent to "give [y] to [x]", so you need to indicate that in this instance, the second noun is where the first one usually is, and vice versa.  That's what "(with nouns reversed)" means - the nouns are in a reversed order from where you originally defined them.

You can include the shovel in the game, and require it for digging, without making the player specify it in the action.  

Consider:

[code]Digging is an action applying to one thing.  Understand "dig in [something]" or "dig [something]" or "dig [something] up" as digging.

Check digging:
     if the player does not enclose the shovel, say "You're not going to dig with your bare hands!" instead.[/code]

Or:

[code]Digging is an action applying to nothing.  Understand "dig" or "dig a hole" as digging.

A thing is either diggable or not diggable.  A thing is usually not diggable.

Check digging:
   if the player does not enclose the shovel, say "You're not going to dig with your bare hands!" instead;
   if the location does not enclose a diggable thing, say "There's nothing here to dig." instead.[/code]

(Not tested, but that's the general idea, assuming there will be only one diggable thing per location, and they're not portable.)

You can also auto-select the second noun if you really feel like it's necessary (I believe there's an example in the manual).  But if the player is only ever going to dig with the shovel, and it's always clear what he's going to dig, then it's kind to simplify things a bit.[/quote]

On the other hand, you should probably also code whatever's necessary for "dig in dirt with shovel" or "dig with shovel" or whatever -- it's pretty annoying to try "dig in dirt with shovel" and get the message "I only understood you as far as wanting to dig."

--Well, really, if I were you I'd get [i]something[/i] working first, and then program in the alternatives later.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2558&start=0#p17659
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The scene begins when...
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-03 23:04:29

Oddly, neither of those solutions worked. I tied the scene start into a number I already had attached to the object, which is a perfectly acceptable work around.

Scene1 begins when the number of the rock is less than 50.

Something along those lines. That seemed to fire the scene.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2566&start=0#p17660
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: AgendaItem Question
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-03 23:08:30

AgendaItems have two parameters that seem redundant to me -- initiallyActive and isReady. Is there some reason why AgendaItems should be made active during game initialization? If not (and indeed, the default is nil), does it make any difference whether I delay the activity of the AgendaItem by setting initiallyActive = true and isReady = nil or vice-versa?

Or is this distinction only of value for an NPC who needs to do something on the very first turn (hence initiallyActive)?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2550&start=0#p17661
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Limitations of GONEAR or code problem?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-03 23:17:05

The length does APPEAR to be the issue. Moving the NPC into rooms with shorter names SEEMS to have solved it. I'm not going to lose a lot of sleep over it right now. Hopefully it doesn't cause issues later in the game.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2548&start=0#p17662
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: [New Release] A Simple Theft 2: A Simple Theftier
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2011-06-03 23:24:41

Very good to see! Congrats, Mark!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2565&start=0#p17663
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Reactions requested
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-03 23:45:53

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the inquiry and the dissent. I don't think a manual is unreasonable or would break the atmosphere of the game, provided it was addressed properly. For example, you wouldn't want the response to be:

"This is the XL-3000 laser. To use it, <point laser at object>."

Not to say that Grueslayer was insinuating anything this direct. You could, however, say something along the lines of:

"The XL-3000 is the 'cutting edge' of innovative covert entry technology, quietly and quickly slicing through even the thickest glass obstacles. Its highly focused rotating beam array requires only that it be adhered to a surface and activated."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2565&start=0#p17664
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Reactions requested
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-03 23:59:39

I think players will be more receptive to in-game cues than to jumping into a manual all the time.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2566&start=0#p17665
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: AgendaItem Question
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-06-04 01:07:02

initiallyActive is purely for convenience - a way to add an AgendaItem to an NPC's agenda at startup without having to roll your own InitObject / PreInitObject for that purpose. You have to add them somewhere; the NPC's [url=http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/libref/source/actor.t.html#6755]executeAgenda[/url] routine only knows about the AgendaItems in their list. It checks them all, picks the first one where isReady returns true, and then runs it.

You might have a guard NPC with a lot of behaviors - patrolling a route, calling for help if attacked, running away if wounded, heading toward suspicious noises - all of which are always active and ordered by priority, but which are only ready under the right conditions. It would make sense for those AgendaItems to be initiallyActive so your guard starts the game able to react without having to call addToAgenda() in the action handling for any input that might trigger a response.

You could also have an NPC that only does a few, more heavily scripted things - like disarming a bomb - only one of which will be active at a time, and which will always be ready when active. Here you can set initiallyActive to nil, isReady to true, and call addToAgenda() in the code that starts the scene.

Or you could have a hybrid approach - a guard that does the normal stuff and then tries to disarm the bomb once the player tells him about it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2514&start=0#p17666
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: June 4th: Combination Online/Offline Playthrough
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-06-04 01:11:53

Location posted! We'll be at 88 Kearny St in San Francisco, and also on the interwebs of ifMUD.

See you there at 11AM Pacific 2PM Eastern, either online or in person!

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.meetup.com/sf-bay-area-interactive-fiction/events/20019741/">http://www.meetup.com/sf-bay-area-inter ... /20019741/</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2566&start=0#p17667
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: AgendaItem Question
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-04 02:00:26

Thanks -- addToAgenda() is the piece of the puzzle that I didn't know about.

But unless I'm misunderstanding something, there doesn't seem to be a reason not to always make initiallyActive true for every AgendaItem. There seems to be no penalty for doing this.

It seems to be purely a matter of taste whether to use the defaults for the class (initiallyActive = nil, isReady = true) and call addToAgenda; or whether to make initiallyActive true for an AgendaItem and then either (a) write a method for isReady that will return true when certain conditions are met, or (b) just leave isReady = nil and add a line like

[code]juliaTrekToRidge.isReady = true;[/code]

...when it's time for that AgendaItem to start running.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2565&start=0#p17668
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Reactions requested
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-06-04 03:42:33

While an in - game manual for supplementary hints would be fine with me, if I were playing a game (particularly as a comp judge) which substituted "look up the verb" for "guess the verb," it would go like this:[quote]
>shoot man with laser

I don't know the verb shoot. For information on how to use the various objects in the game, consult the manual by typing "Consult manual".

>quit
[/quote]
If you're worried about missing some synonyms, don't be -- you will -- but that's precisely the sort of thing that having plenty of beta testers is designed to mitigate.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2558&start=0#p17669
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The scene begins when...
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-06-04 04:58:28

If you have a rule that stops the action sequence in a failure the game will not mark the action as successfully executed. For example if you have an "Instead of examining the rock" rule, you have to add "rule succeeds" at the end for the "when we have examined the rock" to work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2565&start=0#p17670
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Reactions requested
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-04 08:35:44

Thanks again.

To clarify, my intention was never to use the book as a "how to play the game" manual (which would indeed confuse the Player Character's "in-game" world with the player's out-of-the-game world).  Rather it was to make the manual very much a part of the game world itself (which the Player Character would need to consult from time to time as a normal part of his job in the game world), but also to work into it some clues which an even moderately experienced player would recognize as suggesting commands -- along the lines of what I4L has suggested.

Nonetheless, I'm getting a clear sense that most players would be pretty pissed off if I relied on that as a substitute for fully developed parser instructions, so I will write the game with that in mind.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2558&start=0#p17671
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The scene begins when...
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-04 08:50:37

That may very well have been the problem, Juhana. I've been taking a "learn as you go" approach to this entire process and have yet to come across a need to the "rule succeeds" bit (not counting this)  and so I'm not entirely sure what it means or when to use it. I've been skimming through Jim Aikin's excellent Inform Handbook and haven't come across it yet. I've only today said to myself, "Self.. read the friggin documentation. "

So that's what I've been doing. For now, the way it's set up is fine. Hopefully should the need arises again, I'll remember about the rule succeeding bit. 

I appreciate everyone's input.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=30#p17672
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2011-06-04 11:32:17

Jacqueline tells me that Choicescript is now working on Floyd, which theoretically should mean that my game is now playable on there as well. But I have no idea exactly what sequence of commands will make that happen, and I'm about to become potentially very isolated starting tomorrow.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2565&start=0#p17673
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Reactions requested
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-04 11:35:07

[quote="I4L"]Maybe I'm misunderstanding the inquiry and the dissent. I don't think a manual is unreasonable or would break the atmosphere of the game, provided it was addressed properly. For example, you wouldn't want the response to be:

"This is the XL-3000 laser. To use it, <point laser at object>."

Not to say that Grueslayer was insinuating anything this direct. You could, however, say something along the lines of:

"The XL-3000 is the 'cutting edge' of innovative covert entry technology, quietly and quickly slicing through even the thickest glass obstacles. Its highly focused rotating beam array requires only that it be adhered to a surface and activated."[/quote]

I would be fine with saying "To use it, point it at something" or even (and maybe preferably" "To use it, POINT it AT something." It doesn't break my immersion too much if some command syntax is highlighted in one of these things -- certainly it doesn't break it nearly as much as being unable to guess the syntax later.

Similarly, I don't much like the latter example. What is it I'm supposed to be doing? ADHERE XL-3000 TO DOOR followed by ACTIVATE XL-3000? I suppose it's more likely to be PUT XL-3000 ON DOOR and SWITCH ON XL-3000, maybe with a puzzle about how I can get it to stick, but the description shouldn't make it harder to guess the syntax.

Anyway, I agree with the general consensus that you need to implement the synonyms anyway.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2565&start=10#p17674
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Reactions requested
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-04 11:46:37

[quote="matt w"]Similarly, I don't much like the latter example. What is it I'm supposed to be doing? ADHERE XL-3000 TO DOOR followed by ACTIVATE XL-3000? I suppose it's more likely to be PUT XL-3000 ON DOOR and SWITCH ON XL-3000, maybe with a puzzle about how I can get it to stick, but the description shouldn't make it harder to guess the syntax.[/quote]

Well, to be fair, my point was in regards to breaking game immersion by blatantly quoting the necessary syntax to make the item function. I wouldn't want to check the manual to be given a list of commands that I was supposed to type in order to use a particular item.

I also wasn't expecting people to read too deeply into my hastily cobbled together example checking for whether it gave convoluted or multi-part instructions. [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=30#p17675
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-06-04 12:00:18

[quote="Sig"]I played an hour or two into Anchorhead using something called [url=http://www.appbrain.com/app/hunky-punk/org.andglk.hunkypunk]Hunky Punk[/url] on my Android G1.  It seemed to work fairly well.[/quote]

Thank you so much for this. Hunky Punk seems [i]awesome [/i]so far.

I really prefer playing IF on portable devices; it fits both my tastes and my schedule better than playing on my home 'puter or laptop. For a long time, this meant GBA Frotz, then DS Frotz ... but when my portable-gizmo attention turned to my Android phone, my experiences with Twisty left me ... well, playing IF a lot less, basically.

Hunky Punk not only does the job beautifully (Swype support, pulling covers and info from the IFDB, etc) it also has the one feature that none of my prior portable-frotzy things ever had: saving transcripts, so I can finally test WIPs portably as well. [i]Heck [/i]yeah.

It even plays ToaSK without noticeable lag ... the first portable 'terp I've seen do that!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2566&start=0#p17676
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: AgendaItem Question
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-06-04 12:15:07

Right, you can definitely do that. I like your a & b approaches.

If you had a lot of AgendaItems with very complex isReady conditions - ones that iterated through the object tree, or tested whether some very big number modulo the turn count was relatively prime - you might see a performance hit, especially if most of the conditions returned nil. The penalty in this case is that you do a lot of calculation every turn and the NPC winds up not doing anything at all.

On modern hardware this is not something I would lose sleep over, but I suspect it's half the reason behind the current defaults. The other half could be that addToAgenda(x) is better from an object-oriented perspective than x.isReady = true, since you aren't breaking the object metaphor by reaching inside a nominally black box and setting a property directly.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2567&start=0#p17677
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Timing Issue
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-04 12:23:39

The following illustrates a problem I'm running into.  Basically, a certain event (in the example, examining a whoozeewhatchamacallit) triggers a sequence of events to occur a certain number of turns later.  When that time comes, I want an NPC to arrive and immediately initiate a conversation (using Eric Eve's conversation package and its constituent extensions).  What happens is that the NPC arrives on schedule, but the conversation is not actually initiated until the [i]following[/i] turn.  I surmise that the problem has something to do with the order in which the various instructions are processed, but I don't know how to fix it.

I know that in the example (which is simplified to illustrate the point), I could avoid the issue entirely by having the text of Fred's greeting printed as a "say" statement (which is how the text announcing his arrival is handled) rather than through a node introduction rule.  This would not do what I need in the actual game (I need to set up a conv-node so that when Fred arrives, he is immediately set to give certain responses which are specific to this stage of the game, and I also want to set a list of suggested topics to talk to him about).

Given my own lack of sophistication in these matters, I'm afraid of tinkering much with the innards of the extensions, so I'm trying to find a solution which avoids the need to do that.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.


[code]"TimingTest" by Me

Include Conversation Package by Eric Eve.

Anywhere You Like is a room.  A whoozeewhatchamacallit is in Anywhere You Like.

Fred is a man.

FredsHere-Node is a convnode. 
Node-introduction for FredsHere-Node:
	Say "'Hiya, old buddy,' Fred says, slapping you on the back.".
	
After examining the whoozeewhatchamacallit for the first time:
	FredReturns in 3 turns from now.
	
At the time when FredReturns:
	Say "Your old pal Fred enters the room.";
	Initiate a conversation with Fred at FredsHere-Node.[/code]

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2499&start=10#p17678
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: following npc's
User: zodraz / DateTime: 2011-06-04 12:46:56

Thanks for telling me how routeList() works, now I know what to do in the future.

I’ve  manage to modify your code to fit the game and it works fine.  No doubt I will be asking  questions again in the future.  Thank you for your help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=40#p17679
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: Jacqueline / DateTime: 2011-06-04 12:52:01

Hi, folks.

My life has been busier than usual as of late (and it's usually busy).  I won't bore you with the details, but things should in theory lighten up sorta soon.  Will sort out the zip and get it uploaded next week, hopefully.

- Jacqueline

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2565&start=10#p17680
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Reactions requested
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-04 13:10:29

[quote="I4L"][quote="matt w"]Similarly, I don't much like the latter example. What is it I'm supposed to be doing? ADHERE XL-3000 TO DOOR followed by ACTIVATE XL-3000? I suppose it's more likely to be PUT XL-3000 ON DOOR and SWITCH ON XL-3000, maybe with a puzzle about how I can get it to stick, but the description shouldn't make it harder to guess the syntax.[/quote]

Well, to be fair, my point was in regards to breaking game immersion by blatantly quoting the necessary syntax to make the item function. I wouldn't want to check the manual to be given a list of commands that I was supposed to type in order to use a particular item.

I also wasn't expecting people to read too deeply into my hastily cobbled together example checking for whether it gave convoluted or multi-part instructions. [emote];)[/emote][/quote]

Oh, no offense intended -- just trying to make the point that it's nicer if the command is fairly clear from the text you're given. Not just in manuals; if you climb up on something and the next command is "Throw rope at stalactite," it's better if your text reads "You could probably throw the rope at the stalactite from here" than "You could probably reach the stalactite with the rope from here"; that kind of thing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2568&start=0#p17681
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: [TADS 2] Creating a 'bug' command for the transcript
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2011-06-04 14:25:32

(This question is inspired by this [url=http://www.joltcountry.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4944]Jolt Country thread[/url], btw).

Is it possible to do this in TADS 2? If so, what built-in functions (parseUnknownVerb(), etc.) should I look into?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2284&start=30#p17682
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you look for in your IF?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-06-04 14:52:20

[quote="bukayeva"]You may argue that they don't succeed by your criterion -- but those writers are reaching a much wider audience and having their experiments at writing and telling stories put to much greater test than just about any work of IF. As such, the industry has a wide user base to learn from and it's a user base that continually experiments with RPG, first-person shooter, and hybrid games, often moving between them, allowing a good interplay of idea and technique.[/quote]
Do you really think there is a link between the size of your userbase and the amount of learning you can do as a writer? Yourself and two or three insightful critics -- wouldn't that be enough to learn what can be learned, and move on to the next attempt? I am certain that several thousand user reviews on Metacritic will not help, and my opinion of professional game journalism is not much higher. (Or maybe I am expressing that too negatively: many professional and non-professional game journalists do a good job reviewing games, but there is little worthwhile criticism going on.)

Also, as far as I can see most industry writers are (a) working on a team, and (b) not the creative director of the game they are making. This is surely a formula for failure, since ruthless solipsism is the hallmark of all good writing. Art is, I wouldn't say the [i]expression[/i], but certainly the [i]product[/i] of a unique consciousness.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2567&start=0#p17683
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Timing Issue
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-06-04 15:50:49

There was a thread concerning this or a similar problem last winter:
[url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1630]"Trouble with NPC-initiated Conversation Nodes"[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2548&start=0#p17684
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: [New Release] A Simple Theft 2: A Simple Theftier
User: markm / DateTime: 2011-06-04 16:03:52

Thanks man.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2567&start=0#p17685
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Timing Issue
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-04 16:05:58

Thanks, Felix -- you have a good memory.

The problem that was addressed in that earlier thread seems to be exactly what I am experiencing.  Since that poster apparently came up with a solution, I will try his approach and see what happens.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2569&start=0#p17686
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: T3: Generating Actions
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-04 18:11:23

I'm attempting to implement an Inform-style 'test me' action, and I can't seem to figure out how to use nestedAction or nestedActorAction without causing a run-time error. Here's my code:

[code]DefineIAction (X1)
    execAction() {
        trawlerItself.turnCount = 13; // this line works fine...
        nestedActorAction(me, TravelVia, trawlerDeck.west); // ...but this one causes an error
        nestedActorAction(me, Take, tiedRope);
        "Advancing.... ";
    }
;
VerbRule(X1)
    'x1'
    : X1Action
    verbPhrase = 'advance/advancing the game'
;
[/code]
I get a nil object reference in the constructor for this class in parser.t, on the line shown:

[code]class PreResolvedProd: BasicProd
    construct(obj)
    {
        /* if it's not a collection, we need to make it a list */
        if (!obj.ofKind(Collection))[/code]
The same thing happens if I replace nestedActorAction with nestedAction (and get rid of "me, " in the parameters). I don't think the syntax for my nestedActions can be wrong, because the same syntax works in another part of the game. 

To make matters more interesting, I'm not sure how to use Workbench's Watch Expressions window to troubleshoot this, since I would need to step [i]backward [/i]through the code in order to find out what method is trying to construct a new PreResolvedProd (with a nil object). I don't know how to do that.

There has to be a way to build a list of actions that can be generated automatically from an in-game debugging command. Maybe I'm doing it all wrong. Suggestions welcome....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2569&start=0#p17687
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Generating Actions
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-04 18:22:33

On further reflection, I can see the problem. The problem is that the end-of-turn rules (I7 term, but you know what I mean) are not being run. The nestedActions are being attempted in a context where trawlerDeck.west is still nil.

What I need, then, is a programmatic way to run the end-of-turn rules before each of my nestedActions, so as to arrange the model world appropriately (and generate output) before the next nestedAction is generated. Is there a way to do that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2566&start=0#p17688
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: AgendaItem Question
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-06-04 19:12:39

[quote="bcressey"]The other half could be that addToAgenda(x) is better from an object-oriented perspective than x.isReady = true, since you aren't breaking the object metaphor by reaching inside a nominally black box and setting a property directly.[/quote]
From my point of view, setting isReady seems better than using addToAgenda, because it encapsulates all the AgendaItem's logic within the item. I can just look at a particular AgendaItem and say, "Right, that's activated when the NPC learns this piece of information," which saves time writing comments and/or being confused about what I was trying to achieve.

For what it's worth, all the AgendaItems in my WIP are initiallyActive, and use isReady to check whether they're available or not. I haven't had any problems with that approach, but I don't have that many AgendaItems and the way they interact is tightly controlled. If I had more AgendaItems, or if I was going for a less scripted, more AI-ish approach to NPC actions, addToAgenda might be a more attractive choice.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2570&start=0#p17689
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Hugor: A new Linux/Mac OS X/Windows port of the Hugo engine
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-04 19:50:58

Since I wanted to play [url=http://www.cryptozookeeper.com]Cryptozookeeper[/url] natively on my Linux computer (including music) I decided to write a new port of the Hugo engine. It also runs on Macs (OS X 10.5+) and MS Windows (XP, Vista, 7). Most stuff should work. Screenshot:

[url=http://foss.aegean.gr/~realnc/hugor/czk1.png][img]http://foss.aegean.gr/~realnc/hugor/czk1_small.jpg[/img][/url]

Graphics, music and sound effects are supported, but video is not. Download links for version 0.9:

[url=http://foss.aegean.gr/~realnc/hugor/hugor-linux.tar.bz2]Linux[/url]
[url=http://foss.aegean.gr/~realnc/hugor/Hugor-intel.dmg]Intel Macs (OS X 10.5+)[/url]
[url=http://foss.aegean.gr/~realnc/hugor/Hugor-ppc.dmg]PPC Macs (OS X 10.5)[/url]
[url=http://foss.aegean.gr/~realnc/hugor/Hugor-w32.zip]Microsoft Windows[/url]

You can also find the downloads at the [url=http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXprogrammingXhugoXexecutables.html]IF Archive[/url].

On Linux, please consult the included README.linux-bin file in case you don't have some of the needed libraries installed (SDL and Qt).

The full source code is hosted in a Git repository at:

<a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/realnc/hugor">https://github.com/realnc/hugor</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2511&start=10#p17690
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: [New Game] Cryptozookeeper
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-04 19:52:59

[quote="RealNC"]I'm toying around with the idea of doing a new Hugo 'terp port myself [emote]:P[/emote] It's a shame if Linux people can't play Robb's games in their full glory.[/quote]
OK, it took me a whole week, but I finally wrote one [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

[url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2570]More info in this thread.[/url]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2569&start=0#p17691
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Generating Actions
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-06-04 20:23:55

I would probably tackle this using [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/sysman/scripts.htm]input scripts[/url] instead.

It might be nice to have an extension that implemented a "test me" equivalent by letting you define an object X with a list of inputs, writing those inputs to a file on startup, then replaying that file when the "test X" command was issued.

Workbench may provide that sort of thing already but I don't use Workbench, so the above is how I'd go about it. I'll see what I can put together.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2569&start=0#p17692
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Generating Actions
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-04 20:49:37

Replaying an event script works -- but it requires that the tester (namely, me) find the script file in a dialog box. This is slow and annoying. Once I've defined a script, it shows up in the Workbench Scripts window -- but right-clicking on a file in this window and choosing Replay causes the game to start afresh, which is NOT what's wanted for this type of testing command.

I'm seeking a command structure (a) that won't require me to navigate a file dialog -- that I can type as a single command in the game window -- and (b) that can be run at a later point in the game -- perhaps after I've reached the wicked witch's hut and want to try out the 13 steps required to mix a potion.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2569&start=0#p17693
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Generating Actions
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-04 21:01:19

Doesn't setScriptFile() pretty much offer exactly what you want?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2284&start=30#p17694
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you look for in your IF?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-04 22:16:24

There's so much about this thread that pisses me off...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2569&start=0#p17695
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Generating Actions
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-04 23:30:14

[quote="RealNC"]Doesn't setScriptFile() pretty much offer exactly what you want?[/quote]
It does indeed. The trick is figuring out where to put the command script file. I tried putting it in the Scripts folder -- no go. I tried putting it in the folder with the interpreter app -- no go.

Turns out, the place to put the script is in the same folder with your source files. That works.

This method is still a little more roundabout than the I7 equivalent, but it's not too bad. You can create (and edit as needed) a number of testing scripts and invoke them from within the game. For each script, you need either to define a separate IAction or to create a new Topic object for a 'test' TAction to access. Or else keep editing the 'test me' code before compiling so it will load whatever script you need.

Probably there's a way to use a LiteralTAction, grab the string ('test elixir' giving you the string 'elixir') and then tuck the string into the argument to setScriptFile(). I'll have to try that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2569&start=0#p17696
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Generating Actions
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-04 23:46:22

This is probably cool enough to qualify as a tip:

[code]DefineLiteralAction(Test)
    execAction() {
        local str = getLiteral() + '.cmd';
        setScriptFile(str);
    }
;
VerbRule(Test)
    'test' singleLiteral
    : TestAction
    verbPhrase = 'test/testing (what)'
;[/code]

Just create a test .cmd file with whatever series of commands you like, of the form:

[quote]>s
>s
>in
>drink potion[/quote]

...then name it something like 'potion.cmd' and save it to the same directory as your source files. Now the command 'test potion' in the game will run that series of commands.

The advantage of this method over the Scripts window, as already noted, is that the command script doesn't have to start at the beginning of the game. The advantage over the 'replay' command is that it doesn't open a dialog box.

Grooviness!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2570&start=0#p17697
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor: A new Linux (for now) port of the Hugo engine
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2011-06-05 00:43:55

Whoa.

I caught this right before I am meant to grab some sleep. But this is really great news. I can't properly express my excitement that you put this together (and so quickly!). It's pretty amazing.

I am going to get it to work ASAP and run my scripts through the game, to ensure that there aren't any bugbears that I introduced down the line. I'll try to play around with other multimedia Hugo games as well. I don't want to oversell anything, but you pretty much won the entire Internet here tonight. The estate of Jon Postel should be sending you a certificate for free packets or something, because this rules. Thank you so much!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2571&start=0#p17698
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: gAction Tracing
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-05 00:45:09

Here's a nice little puzzle. At what point in the command execution cycle (and yes, I looked in that article in the Tech Manual, and it doesn't seem to have this information) is gAction reset to nil?

It seems to happen before daemons are run. I'm attempting to bypass the running of a daemon when gActionIn(AskAbout, TellAbout) ... and it doesn't work. That test always returns false, so the daemon runs anyhow. I can only conclude that at some point gAction is being reset to nil.

I've been able to kludge around it by setting a flag in the afterAction for the me object and then testing the value of the flag in the code for the daemon, but that's a bit messy. Is the value of the most recent action stored anywhere even after gAction is reset to nil?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2569&start=0#p17699
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Generating Actions
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-06-05 02:03:19

Here's what I came up with, based on your code and my earlier ruminations.

[code]
DefineLiteralAction(Test)
	execAction()
	{
		local target = getLiteral().toLower();
		local script = allTests.valWhich({x: x.testName.toLower == target});
		if (script)
			script.run();
		else
			"Test sequence not found. ";
	}
;

VerbRule(Test)
	'test' singleLiteral
	: TestAction
	verbPhrase = 'test/testing (what)'
;

class Test: object
	testName = 'nil'
	testList = [ 'z' ]
	testFile = 'TEST_' + testName + '.TCMD'

	run
	{
		"Testing sequence: \"<<testName>>\". ";
		local out = File.openTextFile(testFile, FileAccessWrite);
		testList.forEach({x: out.writeFile('>' + x + '\n')});
		out.closeFile();
		setScriptFile(testFile);
	}
;

allTests: object
	lst()
	{
		if (lst_ == nil)
			initLst();
		return lst_;
	}

	initLst()
	{
		lst_ = new Vector(50);
		local obj = firstObj();
		while (obj != nil)
		{
			if(obj.ofKind(Test))
				lst_.append(obj);
			obj = nextObj(obj);
		}
		lst_ = lst_.toList();
	}

	valWhich(cond)
	{
		if (lst_ == nil)
			initLst();
		return lst_.valWhich(cond);
	}

	lst_ = nil
;
[/code]

Then you can define new tests like so:

[code]
foo: Test
    testName = 'foo'
    testList =
    [
        'x me',
        'i'
    ]
;

bar: Test
    testName = 'bar'
    testList =
    [
        'look',
        'listen'
    ]
;

all: Test
    testName = 'all'
    testList =
    [
        'test foo',
        'test bar'
    ]
;
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2572&start=0#p17700
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Each interpreter does its own thing
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-06-05 03:44:06

Sometimes I feel like I can't control the game I'm developing, because every interpreter does things differently enough that I have to hack around them.

This evening I discovered both WinGit and Glulxe don't seem to activate the sound support immediately when launched, resulting in the first half second of the game's title music being cut off.

Then I went to Filfre, and discovered that over there, the volume control scale doesn't work. Instead of getting 6 volume positions between off and 5/5, you get 5 slight variations of 'extremely loud'.

Over in Gargoyle, which I consider my home interpreter (I can't test my sound-including game on my mac without it), the fact that text scrolls up from the bottom creates some weird line break issues in interaction with the glulx timer. If you start a timer and don't 'run paragraph on', a line break occurs when the timer ends, which can result in the screen suddenly seeming to shudder up a line for no reason. Erik Temple worked that fix out for me and the source of the problem.

Over in Spatterlight, the glulx timer seems wackier. Every timer delay you start in Spatterlight takes longer than in its counterparts to finish.

When I wrote Leadlight on the Apple II, I had total control of the game and its presentation. It seems a struggle to get that in this interpreter environment. It's not that I don't appreciate the work of everyone slaving away on these things, but the inconsistencies have been bugging me and I wanna vent. It also doesn't help the project of user friendliness when I have to write instructions at the head of the game explaining the situation for each interpreter. I don't think players should have to worry about these things.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2572&start=0#p17701
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Each interpreter does its own thing
User: Minkovsky / DateTime: 2011-06-05 04:25:18

Git is the only interpreter I know that handles graphics well and fast. Whatever's in I7, it sucks on Glimmr.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2572&start=0#p17702
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Each interpreter does its own thing
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-06-05 04:33:42

[quote="severedhand"]Sometimes I feel like I can't control the game I'm developing, because every interpreter does things differently enough that I have to hack around them.[/quote]Usually interpreter authors will respond to help if you email them with specific issues. Bugs and inconsistencies in interpreters are annoying, but you have a role to play in solving such problems too: generate some sort of test case, email whoever is behind the interpreter, and see if whatever the problem is can be solved. Writing all your complaints without much detail in one post is unlikely to get you (or anyone else) anywhere.

If you think you've got it bad, try writing web applications commercially: does it work on Internet Explorer 6 on a Finnish install of Windows 2000? Gah ... 
[quote="Minkovsky"]Git is the only interpreter I know that handles graphics well and fast.[/quote]Git, of itself, has no graphics support: it's just an interpreter core. The graphics support will depend on the Glk library it's built with.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2572&start=0#p17703
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Each interpreter does its own thing
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-06-05 04:52:45

[quote="DavidK"]Writing all your complaints without much detail in one post is unlikely to get you (or anyone else) anywhere.[/quote]

Au contraire, if everyone solves all their problems in silent consultation with other programmers, you see a lot more clone topics and complaints, and no-one knows what others are working on or what issues exist. You need to get yelly as well as communicating one-on-one. I guarantee that anonymous people are feeling better about life already for having read my post as I type these very words!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2571&start=0#p17704
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: gAction Tracing
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2011-06-05 05:10:10

I don't know the exact point at which gAction is set to nil, but I'm pretty sure you're right that it's before any daemoms are run. I also don't know of anywhere where the last action is stored as standard. In my current WIP I do roughly what you've tried, namely add a lastAction property to the me object and then modify Action thus:

[code]
modify Action
    beforeActionMain()
    {
        if(gActor == me && !isImplicit && !ofKind(SystemAction))
            me.lastAction = self;
    } 
;
[/code]

You may or may not want to include the check for excluding the storing of implicit actions depending what you want to use the stored information for.

Storing the complete action in this way (rather than just setting a flag) allows you to get at the complete set of details about the immediate past action (I'm using it in connection with a series of ExtraHints, of the kind we put in [i]Mrs Pepper's Nasty Secret[/i]), for which purpose I also defined a number of convenient macros:

[quote]
#define gActionWas(action)\
    (me.lastAction != nil && me.lastAction.actionOfKind(action##Action))
#define gLastDobj (me.lastAction.getDobj())
#define gLastIobj (me.lastAction.getIobj())
#define gLastTopic (me.lastAction.getTopic())
#define gLastTopicText (gLastTopic.getTopicText.toLower())
[/quote]

Hopefully there's something here you can adapt for your own use.

-- Eric

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2569&start=0#p17705
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Generating Actions
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2011-06-05 05:59:14

This looks really useful, so I've packaged it up as an extension for my own use, with one addition:

[code]
DefineSystemAction(ListTests)
    execSystemAction
    {

        if(allTests.lst.length == 0)
        {
            reportFailure('There are no test scripts defined in this game. ');
            exit;
        }
        
        foreach(local testObj in allTests.lst)
        {
            "<<testObj.testName>>";
            if(gAction.fully)                
            {
                ": ";
                foreach(local txt in testObj.testList)
                    "<<txt>>/";
            }
            "\n";
        }
    }
    fully = nil
;

VerbRule(ListTests)
    ('list' | 'l') 'tests' (| 'fully' -> fully)
    : ListTestsAction
    verbPhrase = 'list/listing test scripts'
;
[/code]

This might be useful if you've set up a number of test scripts and need reminding of what they're called and what they do while testing. The command [b]LIST TESTS[/b] simply lists the names of the test script while the command [b]LIST TESTS FULLY[/b] additionally supplies the list of commands that each test script invokes.

-- Eric

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2567&start=0#p17706
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Timing Issue
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2011-06-05 06:17:12

It so happens that I shortly need to submit a new version of Conversation Nodes to the Inform Extension site in any case to fix a small bug that's just come to light, so I'll see if I can do something to address this issue as well while I'm at it. I'll probably add 'immediately' as a phrase option to the 'initiate a conversation' phrase, so that command like INITIATE A CONVERSATION WITH FRED AT FRED-HERE NODE IMMEDIATELY will do just that, rather than waiting for the end of the turn. With any luck I should be able to get this sorted and sent to the I7 Extensions site later today.
 
-- Eric

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2572&start=0#p17707
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Each interpreter does its own thing
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-05 06:56:53

[quote="Minkovsky"]Git is the only interpreter I know that handles graphics well and fast. Whatever's in I7, it sucks on Glimmr.[/quote]

The interpreters used in the IDEs are modified versions of their standalone counterparts--Windows Glulxe and Windows Git, on Windows; Zoom (glulxe & git) on Mac OS)--and they have additional tasks that they must perform beyond just playing the game. When used with something resource-intensive (e.g., graphics), they will always give poorer performance--sometimes much poorer--than the standalone version of the same interpreter. The [i]standalone[/i] versions of Windows Git, Windows Glulxe, and Zoom perform quite respectably*, though it must be admitted that Gargoyle is a bit faster than all of these.

The answer to this is to test outside the IDE, at least when you're focusing on multimedia. Glimmr includes its own debugging mechanisms that aren't dependent on being run in the IDE, and the Extended Debugging extension allows the built-in debugging commands, as well as new debugging commands you might write, to be used in a released game.

[quote="severedhand"]Over in Spatterlight, the glulx timer seems wackier. Every timer delay you start in Spatterlight takes longer than in its counterparts to finish.[/quote]

I would advise you to ignore Spatterlight completely in your testing. It is no longer updated, is relatively slow, and will soon be completely obsolete. When you post your game, you can mention that Spatterlight is not a good fit and suggest that folks download Gargoyle instead.

For the other interpreters, I would definitely second David's advice that the best thing to do is to write each interpreter author individually with a detailed explanation of the issues you're seeing.

--Erik

*Standalone Zoom does have some bugs that the IDE version doesn't, and both still have some issues that need to be set aright...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2564&start=0#p17708
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: Digging problem
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-06-05 07:29:14

Ah, right, the alternative command structures should totally be handled.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2570&start=0#p17709
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor: A new Linux (for now) port of the Hugo engine
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-06-05 08:43:11

Yeah, this doesn't actually affect me, since I don't run Linux, but I have to say I'm impressed.  This sort of thing is why I love the IF community.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2556&start=10#p17710
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Framework Question
User: JDevlin / DateTime: 2011-06-05 08:43:50

Thanks for all your help, everyone. 

Even with Eric's and Matt's suggestions, I can't get it to work with the conversation extension. It's still easy enough to intercept the quizzing with Instead of rules, and I don't have a whole lot of things that the PC needs to ask about, so I think I'll just work around it for now. Good to know I'm not crazy though.

Thanks again!

Jason

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2567&start=0#p17711
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Timing Issue
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-05 08:58:40

Thanks, Eric.

I'll keep checking the Inform 7 site and wait to download the new version rather than implementing the other suggested solution.


Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2570&start=0#p17712
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor: A new Linux (for now) port of the Hugo engine
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-05 09:29:48

Thanks for the kind words. A big "thank you" should go to Kent Tessman, who always responds quickly to my inquiries about the Hugo engine internals. I was only able to write this quickly because he was fast with providing answers.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2570&start=0#p17713
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor: A new Linux (for now) port of the Hugo engine
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2011-06-05 10:33:26

Well, I got it to work, apt-get installing the lib I didn't have like a villain, and it looks great. I then remembered that I never got my Soundblaster card working on my Ubuntu setup when I first threw it together, so I am going to try that next. Congrats again on the terp!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2571&start=0#p17714
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: gAction Tracing
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-05 12:01:41

Thanks, Eric. That's much more thorough, and may prove to have other uses as my game develops. All I'm needing to do at the moment is check for AskAbout and TellAbout.

I'm using your Scenes.t extension (and by the way, you didn't put a byline in the code comments ... such modesty!) rather than an AgendaItem. An AgendaItem will pause if the NPC is in conversation, but a daemon won't. Hence the need to check for those actions.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2569&start=0#p17715
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Generating Actions
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-05 12:29:26

Brilliant! It's still a bit more fussy for the author to set up than in I7 (yes, I was re-reading your comparison article on Brass Lantern yesterday, Eric), but it neatly eliminates the need to have separate files on disk for each test script.

I hope you'll upload this extension to the Archive.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2568&start=0#p17716
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: [TADS 2] Creating a 'bug' command for the transcript
User: uux02 / DateTime: 2011-06-05 14:43:36

[quote="Isxek"](This question is inspired by this [url=http://www.joltcountry.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4944]Jolt Country thread[/url], btw).

Is it possible to do this in TADS 2? If so, what built-in functions (parseUnknownVerb(), etc.) should I look into?[/quote]

There are several ways to arrange it in TADS 2, but the easiest one probably is using the [b]preparse[/b] function. It's automatically called at the very beginning of the parsing process, with a single argument of the string type that actually represents the command entered by the player. The preparse function may return one of the following values:

[b]nil[/b] - in this case, the system assumes all the processing has been done by preparse, and skips to the command prompt without any further processing;
[b]true[/b] - the system resumes processing the original player input normally;
[b]string value[/b] - the system resumes parsing, using the returned string value instead of the original command entered by the player.

More on it see [url=http://tads.org/t2doc/doc/tads-6.html]here[/url] (use text search by the name of the function).

To recognize a command with an asterisk at the beginning as a comment, the preparse function could be set up like this:
[code]
preparse: function(str)
{local i, symb;
 if(length(str)<=0) // Default processing for empty input 
   {return true;
   }
// Initializing the loop to find the asterisk
 i:=1;
 symb:=substr(str, i, 1);
 while((symb=' ') and (i<length(str))) // We're skipping leading spaces
   {i++;
    symb:=substr(str, i, 1);
   }
 if(symb='*') // This is a comment
   {"COMMENT RECORDED";
    return nil; // No further processing needed - return nil
   }
 return true; // It wasn't a comment - process the command normally
}
[/code]

Note that it's a little bit more sophisticated - it doesn't just check the first symbol of the player input, but also skips the leading spaces. If such behaviour is unwanted, just erase the entire while loop.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2522&start=0#p17717
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: About previous knowledge assumption (and an equation)
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-06-05 15:06:47

[quote="lribeiro"]The second one adds to the challenge, but if the player doesn't know his physics and goes to the outside world for information, then I get this feeling I'm disrupting something in the suspension of disbelief, since the PC itself "cannot leave" the game world to study.[/quote]
In my SPAG specifics analysis of Rendition, I wrote:
[quote]We suddenly realise that it would be great to have puzzle-fests where finding the solutions involves real-life investigation (for instance on the Internet). What could be more fun than a game that has me explore fake Facebook-profiles (set up by the author of the game), search for clues in Hamlet and use Google Earth as a map? A world of possibilities is opened.[/quote]
What I was getting at is that there is no reason to limit the puzzle world to the game world, and not doing so opens many possibilities. Look up physics on Wikipedia? Sure!

Now, if you want to have the player "get into" the game and "suspend disbelief", you should avoid such out-of-game tricks. But although mimesis and suspension of disbelief can be good things for a game to aim at, they are not good things for all games to aim at; they don't [i]have[/i] to be among your design goals. Whether they should be for this particular game is something you'll have to decide for yourself, of course.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2569&start=10#p17718
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Generating Actions
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2011-06-05 15:24:07

[quote="Jim Aikin"] It's still a bit more fussy for the author to set up than in I7[/quote]

Yes, but you can abbreviate it by defining a template:
[code]Test template 'testName' [testList];[/code]

Then you can define your individual test scripts simply as:
[code]
Test 'foo' ['x me', 'i', 'jump'];
Test 'bar' ['pray', 'jump'];
[/code]

Which is pretty much as brief at I7.

-- Eric

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2522&start=0#p17719
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: About previous knowledge assumption (and an equation)
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-06-05 15:36:46

If you did instruct your player to look at outside sources, how would you cloak those instructions in-game without breaking mimesis?  If you just have an out-of-game [try wikipedia] message, that just seems lazy and the player wouldn't return. 

Secondly, imagine sending a player to TVtropes.com or something.  They might get stuck there and never return! 

The calculator I could see having fun with.  Make the in-game one, but make it real easy to lose or never get it.  You could have some meta-fun along the lines of an unwinnable-game scenario because you (the player) can't divide, so will *never* solve this puzzle!

Come to think of it, that might work for my first question.

Oh, I also think a distinction needs be drawn between sending players to outside sources of in-fiction material -- like a character's Facebook page, which works like [url=http://www.shadowunit.org]Shadow Unit[/url] have done successfully -- and outside sources of outside-fiction material, such as textbook physics. 

Then again, Vorple might render this hand-wringing moot.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2522&start=10#p17720
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: About previous knowledge assumption (and an equation)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-05 15:51:25

In Yon Astounding Castle! of Some Sort, there's a riddling gnome who asks you two easy questions, followed by a third that's obscure enough that you were obviously expected to look it up. Lots of reviewers hated this, but I thought it was hilarious, kind of like the Hitchhiker's Guide-style puzzles mentioned [url=http://www.filfre.net/2011/06/the-completed-adventure-part-2/]here[/url] (the actual puzzle is from Adventure, for which, spoilers). Except, since it was pretty easy to look up, it wasn't unfair in a way that stopped my progress in the game. But YAC!oSS goes to a lot of work to establish that some of the time it's basically trolling the player (for instance the business with the

[spoiler]pixel[/spoiler]

), and anyway a lot of people didn't like it. And if I had been playing on a train (where I wouldn't have internet), it would've been annoying.

There's a similar thing in Reliques of Tolti-Aph -- you can get some hintlike things from your journal, but the pages of the journal are numbered according to the stars in some constellation, so you have to look that constellation up on Wikipedia [i]in order to read your own journal[/i]. (There's actually a feelie that mentions all the relevant stars, I think, but it's pretty well buried.) This did not amuse me as much.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2522&start=10#p17721
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: About previous knowledge assumption (and an equation)
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-06-05 17:46:37

[quote]If you did instruct your player to look at outside sources, how would you cloak those instructions in-game without breaking mimesis? If you just have an out-of-game [try wikipedia] message, that just seems lazy and the player wouldn't return. [/quote]

I actually found it interesting to break or manipulate this fourth wall. I sometimes do it with this WIP of mine, but I still don't know if I want to in this particular detail. Giving the tone of it, it wouldn't be hard, though. And a devilish calculator does sound... devilish :)

Gijsbers ideas are also compelling. They're great for a team IF effort of sorts, in which multiple authors are responsible for multiple parts, like one for the facebook page, one for the blog, et cetera.

[quote]
Lots of reviewers hated this.[/quote]

I have a friend who says that a work that nobody hates isn't a worthy one ;)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2569&start=10#p17722
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Generating Actions
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-05 17:53:57

Good suggestion! The one limitation, based on my attempts to use the template, is that the template can't be defined in the tests.t extension file itself. A template, it appears, has to be defined in an .h file that is #included -- or else in the same file where the template structure is being used.

This is not a terribly difficult thing for the author to manage, it's just something to point out in the comments in the extension, if you decide to make it publicly available.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2570&start=0#p17723
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor: A new Linux (for now) port of the Hugo engine
User: Roody_Yogurt / DateTime: 2011-06-05 21:35:24

Thanks, RealNC! When you expressed interest in building the interpreter yourself, I was skeptical. I am very glad that skepticism was unfounded and that many people will be able to enjoy Cryptozookeeper more. So yeah, thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2570&start=0#p17724
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor: A new Linux (for now) port of the Hugo engine
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2011-06-05 23:42:01

[quote="Roody_Yogurt"]Thanks, RealNC! When you expressed interest in building the interpreter yourself, I was skeptical. I am very glad that skepticism was unfounded and that many people will be able to enjoy Cryptozookeeper more. So yeah, thanks![/quote]

So what did we learn in this thread? Never doubt RealNC, always bet on black, and it's time to sell your homes, because HUGOR is coming to blow them off their foundations!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2569&start=10#p17725
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Generating Actions
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-06-06 00:17:33

The inability to provide new templates as part of an extension is one of the few gripes I have with T3. You can work around it if your new classes inherit from existing ones, but that only takes you so far.

I have a couple custom ShuffledList types that bring TADS up to par with Inform 7 - one that provides an equivalent to "as decreasingly likely outcomes" and one that lets you randomize bits of otherwise static ShuffledList items, in approximately the same way as bracketed text and a "To say" rule.

Nothing terribly impressive but perhaps useful to others who cross over from I7. Trouble is they are awkward to use relative to their stock adv3 counterparts without template support. (I don't think I've ever defined a ShuffledList or ShuffledEventList directly, and can't imagine why anyone would want to.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2573&start=0#p17726
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Fluids & Fluid Containers
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-06 00:43:58

Looking through the list of extensions in the Archive, I didn't spot anything to do with implementing fluids and fluid containers. Nor am I spotting anything very relevant in the LRM (other than a Drink action and three Pour actions). Certainly, there is no Fluid or Liquid class.

Before I start cobbling something together (in my usual ham-fisted way), I figured I should ask ... has anyone done anything along these lines?

I'm thinking a full-featured Fluids extension should include, at a minimum, the classes Fluid, Cup, Basin, Pond, Faucet, Bottle, StopperedBottle, and Stopper. It should define actions such as Fill, FillFrom, FillWith, DrinkFrom, DrinkItFrom, EmptyInto, and possibly a few marginal or cosmetic actions like Stir and SwimIn.

Among the interesting little puzzles that such an implementation would need to wrestle with: When the StopperedBottle is closed the water/fluid is not in scope, yet its vocabWords need to be usable -- for instance, in 'drink water from canteen' (which would implicitly open the canteen). Likewise, when the Cup object contains a Fluid, 'take water' refers to the cup, not the contents, but 'drink water' refers to the contents.

What other essential or desirable features would such an implementation have?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2479&start=10#p17727
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Font shrinkage?
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-06-06 02:18:02

I now have a fix for this that seems to work when Internet Explorer 9 is installed. It's something of a hack, though, so I would like to get some wider testing for it. If you have IE9 installed, you're affected by this and would like to test a new build of the front-end, send me a private message on this board.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2479&start=10#p17728
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Font shrinkage?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-06-06 03:01:19

I have been wanting to make a joke about not leaving your fonts in your jeans when you wash them for a long time now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2522&start=10#p17729
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: About previous knowledge assumption (and an equation)
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-06 08:33:10

I've kind of grown to like the Infocom tradition of putting hints in the feelies. Although originally intended for copy-protection, it makes the game world feel a little bigger (though I usually forget to look things up in the feelies unless it's obvious that I need to - minor spoiler for Sorceror - [spoiler]e.g. the yipples[/spoiler]).

It seems reasonable in a modern-day game that feelies could be available online, and might not even be created by the author. Sufficient introduction to the game might give the player enough warning that they could download the relevant information before actually encountering the puzzle. For example, a feelie or bit of introductory text could mention something obscure without giving an explanation of what it is, perhaps assuming that the PC already knows about it. I think that could be done in a way that would encourage research. Later in the game it would not seem so fair.

There's also a wealth of information that is easily available in places other than the Internet. An old game called "The Golden Wombat of Destiny" contains a clue in the form of a Shakespeare quote. I didn't have regular internet access at the time, but I did happen to have the complete works of Shakespeare in the house, so it seemed fair and it was fun to look up. The play, act, and scene were mentioned in the quote, so no fancy searching was necessary.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2569&start=10#p17730
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Generating Actions
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-06 09:25:33

I thought templates were a core language feature, not tied to any kind of class or object and that you can write new templates with no restrictions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2573&start=0#p17731
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Fluids & Fluid Containers
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-06 09:37:04

[quote="Jim Aikin"]What other essential or desirable features would such an implementation have?[/quote]
Probably a new material property for "wet" and "dry" states.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2569&start=10#p17732
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Generating Actions
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-06-06 10:02:15

You're right that templates can be freely defined. They just can't be bundled up with an extension, since they need to be defined in the source file where they are ultimately used - either directly in that file or in a header that the file includes.

It's not the end of the world, but it does add some busywork for authors.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2573&start=0#p17733
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Fluids & Fluid Containers
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-06 11:11:26

[quote="RealNC"][quote="Jim Aikin"]What other essential or desirable features would such an implementation have?[/quote]
Probably a new material property for "wet" and "dry" states.[/quote]
Thought of that last night after I went to bed. You'd want dry, damp, moist, and wet, I think. These could apply to anything, so you could, for instance, dip a cookie in the tea and have the cookie's description change because it's now moist.

I'm also thinking of a Puddle class (which might inherit from Fluid rather than FluidContainer, because you can't very well fill anything from a puddle).

What I may need help with is how to apply the vocabulary of a contained fluid to the container for purposes of the Take and Drop actions, so that 'pick up tea' (or bottle, or bucket) applies to the cup object, not the tea in the cup. The best way to do it may be to have the contained fluid be in scope (somehow ... that should be possible) even when the FluidContainer is closed. The fluid would then respond to the Take and Drop actions by sending them to location.lexicalParent. Or something like that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2569&start=10#p17734
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Generating Actions
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-06 11:15:07

[quote="bcressey"]It's not the end of the world, but it does add some busywork for authors.[/quote]
If you're going to use your new template in many source files, you could always hack adv3.h. That's what I'd do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2569&start=10#p17735
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Generating Actions
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-06 11:18:13

#including everything you need in your source files is something most programmers find intuitive though. Given that T3 is modeled somewhat after C++, I think having a header file for the extension would seem natural. Only non-programmers would find it a strange requirement. After all, you *are* programming when using T3. Also, having a header file gives you the ability to provide macros to the extension user, which gives you the ability to provide short syntax for otherwise multi-line code. Headers are a nice feature, not something to get annoyed about [emote]:)[/emote]

Or we could file a new wish at the T3 tracker for templates to be exported.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2573&start=0#p17736
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Fluids & Fluid Containers
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-06-06 15:43:02

Fluid mixing?  Refilling of partially drained containers?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2574&start=0#p17737
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Redirecting a command to a part of an object
User: kanato / DateTime: 2011-06-06 16:35:24

I'm have a few dressers with drawers in my game and I'm trying to make inform understand that "open dresser" should operate as "open drawer."  However when I type "open dresser" in one room I get a message like "You can't reach into [some other room with a dresser]."  What do I need to fix?

[code]
A dresser is a kind of supporter.  A drawer is a kind of container.  A drawer is part of every dresser. Drawers are openable.  Drawers are usually closed.  The description of a dresser is usually "It's a rather plain dresser.  The drawer is [if the drawer is open]open[else]closed[end if]." The description of a drawer is usually "The drawer is [if the drawer is open]open.[else]closed.[end if]".
Instead of opening a dresser:
	try opening the dresser's drawer.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2574&start=0#p17738
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Redirecting a command to a part of an object
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-06 16:48:08

[quote="kanato"]I'm have a few dressers with drawers in my game and I'm trying to make inform understand that "open dresser" should operate as "open drawer."  However when I type "open dresser" in one room I get a message like "You can't reach into [some other room with a dresser]."  What do I need to fix?

[code]
A dresser is a kind of supporter.  A drawer is a kind of container.  A drawer is part of every dresser. Drawers are openable.  Drawers are usually closed.  The description of a dresser is usually "It's a rather plain dresser.  The drawer is [if the drawer is open]open[else]closed[end if]." The description of a drawer is usually "The drawer is [if the drawer is open]open.[else]closed.[end if]".
Instead of opening a dresser:
	try opening the dresser's drawer.
[/code][/quote]

The reason that the game is giving you the "reach" message it that it reads the instruction "try opening the dresser's drawer" to refer to a specific dresser drawer, specifically the first one you created in your source code. It is trying to have the player open [i]that[/i] drawer; since it's in another room, we get the reminder that the player is not Plastic Man.

There is more than one way to handle this. My preference is to provide an alias for the dresser in the preamble, and then refer to it in rule's body:

[code]Instead of opening a dresser (called the hutch):
	try opening a random drawer that is part of the hutch.[/code]

You'll also note the use of the "random x that part of the y" construction. You'll need to use this syntax, at least for the present. It is pretty universally despised, so I expect that there will be a more natural way to refer to this one day, but for now that's how it's done.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2573&start=0#p17739
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Fluids & Fluid Containers
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-06 17:39:19

[quote="gravel"]Fluid mixing?  Refilling of partially drained containers?[/quote]
Mixing, possibly. I'm wondering, if I have fluid A in container X and fluid B in container Y, and I 'mix A with B', which container does the mixProduct end up in?

A container can be given a fullCapacity value and a fluidLevel value, so that 'sip from cup' will reduce fluidLevel by 1. That's easy.

It occurred to me that when you put a key or a pearl in a cup that contains a fluid, the key or pearl may be visible or invisible depending on whether the fluid is transparent. Transparency is already modeled by the Material class (it would be either glass or adventium in this case).

But that leads to the question of floating vs. sinking. If you drop the balsa wood model in the lake, it should float. The bowling ball shouldn't. Things that are put in a Pond would be moved into nil if canFloat = nil, whereas they would have to remain on the FluidSurface if they canFloat.

I don't want to make myself completely crazy, though....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2574&start=0#p17740
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Redirecting a command to a part of an object
User: kanato / DateTime: 2011-06-06 18:53:53

Thanks, Erik that worked.  Hey you've got the same name as me, that's awesome.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2570&start=0#p17741
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor: A new Linux (for now) port of the Hugo engine
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2011-06-06 18:58:33

So, a bunch of us are wondering - does this terp work on OSX as well?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2570&start=0#p17742
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor: A new Linux (for now) port of the Hugo engine
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-06 19:15:46

[quote="Ice Cream Jonsey"]So, a bunch of us are wondering - does this terp work on OSX as well?[/quote]
Yes, it also runs on Macs. Also on Windows and Haiku (that "BeOS" thingy). Problem with OS X is though that I'm unable to build the SDL_mixer library with libmad support. I am only able to get a version that uses smpeg instead of libmad, and that means half of the songs in your games won't work, some MP3s play at double speed ("chipmunk" sound) and many will have an annoying, loud random noise glitch at the start due to the ID tags of the MP3 files not being recognized by smpeg. In other words, smpeg is a broken piece of crap.

If anyone has an OS X framework bundle of SDL_mixer that uses libmad and feels like sharing, please do [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2575&start=0#p17743
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Easier Name/Gender Selection?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-06 19:21:12

I haven't yet figured out how to code this myself, so in looking for assistance (and in how to handle conversation), I came across Michael Callaghan's excellent (in my opinion) "Questions" extension. The example game that is included with the documentation works flawlessly, but I'm having some timing issues in my own game. Primarily because I have zero understanding of how his extension is interacting with my horrible code.

I've tried searching the forums, but stock phpBB has a completely inept search function. I also can't find anything in the many awesome PDF manuals and quick starts that I have archived.

"Questions" seems overly complicated for what I'm wanting to do. I assume that there's going to be some indexed text involved. I know, it's evil. I also assume that the gender can be changed simply with a "Now the player is a woman" or whatever. (Haven't tried this, but this is the least of my concerns.) Questions seems to use its own value for gender, though I forgot to test it. Maybe it changes the gender too, though that seems to be a questionable topic as well.

I don't want to "break immersion" by having to force the player to "say male" or "say female". I want to change the prompt to "Are you a man or woman" and let the player just type that word.

Now, this is where I assume (an unfortunate thing) that indexed text comes in. I also assume (again with that) that the player can have a text called player_name or something along those lines.

If anyone can just point me in the right direction, that'd be fantastic.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2570&start=0#p17744
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor: A new Linux (for now) port of the Hugo engine
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-06 20:36:31

I just uploaded beta 2 and updated the first post. Changelog:

[list]
[*]Soft scrolling support (can be disabled.)[/*:m]
[*]Sound effects support.[/*:m]
[*]Command history (up/down arrow keys).[/*:m]
[*]Whether or not the sound is muted when the application loses focus is now configurable.[/*:m]
[*]You can now double click on words and they'll appear in the current command line.[/*:m]
[*]Bug fixes here and there.[/*:m][/list:u]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2503&start=0#p17745
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Remapping actions, default message outputs and... stuff.
User: Arag-e / DateTime: 2011-06-06 21:30:41

Took me a while to implement all that, but I got it all to work. Thank you all for your assistance.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2522&start=10#p17746
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: About previous knowledge assumption (and an equation)
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-06-06 21:33:47

[quote="capmikee"]I've kind of grown to like the Infocom tradition of putting hints in the feelies. Although originally intended for copy-protection, it makes the game world feel a little bigger [...][/quote]

Amen. My current megaWIP (not to be confused with all the little WIP whelps yapping at its heels) takes this approach shamelessly (ToaSK only flirted near it without crossing the line). Constructing the feelies is a big part of the work and a big part of the fun, and while I appreciate the idea of a "completely self-contained" file, I'm content with [i]that [/i]file being the ZIP the whole package is bundled in [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote]It seems reasonable in a modern-day game that feelies could be available online, and might not even be created by the author.[/quote]

I agree, and echo what an earlier poster said about "mimesis:" if your goal is total, constant immersion, then obviously you'll want to avoid making a game where most players will need to break out and go do some reading. But immersion isn't the be-all-end-all, and real-world out-of-game "feelies" and virtual scavenger-hunting for facts sounds like a rip-roaring time to me. I'd be very eager for such a game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2573&start=0#p17747
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Fluids & Fluid Containers
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-06-06 22:25:32

You may enjoy reading Emily Short's list of criteria for her original I6 Liquids extension ( <a class="postlink" href="http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/WEInstructions.html#features">http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/WEIn ... l#features</a> ) or the documentation for her I7 Measure Liquid extension ( <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/Emily%20Short/Measured%20Liquid/doc_0.html">http://inform7.com/extensions/Emily%20S ... doc_0.html</a> ).  Her notes on how liquids are handled in Savoir Faire ( <a class="postlink" href="http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/liquids.html">http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/liquids.html</a> ) also list some things she didn't implement, but considered.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2575&start=0#p17748
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Easier Name/Gender Selection?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-06-06 22:34:40

What's with the indexed text hate? I love those little guys.

I was looking to Questions for my own game at first, but it turned out to be overkill for what I needed. Something else I realised in general from playing with it was that, if you seek to make the player type a word and press enter, the only way inform can do that is via the parser. So whenever you wanna lock people off into answering a question by typing-and-entering, your answer must travel through the whole parser mechanism, and you have to block everything else while the question is being answered. I'm not a fan of going the road that unless I have to.

When might you not have to? Well, when the answer doesn't really need to be typed.

Would you be happy for a menu to appear saying "1 male" and "2" female" and let the player press 1 or 2?

This is an aesthetic decision as well, obviously. You may want the player to type everything and press enter, depending on your game, or you may hate menus, or whatever. But if you're cool to go the menu route, I definitely prefer it because it creates a bulletproof moment where the player can't do anything but press 1 or 2, and all the code required to respond to that moment is in one place, not scattered in rulebooks. And it's easy to understand and program. I agree that Questions can be confusing to deal with.

Below here there's a bunch of code, so I folded it in a 'rant' tag.

[rant]Here's my code blob which basically sets up this kind of menu. Think of it as the extension:

[code]Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short.

The infinite_loop is a number variable. The infinite_loop is 1.

Current question is text variable.
Current question menu is a list of text that varies.
Current question answer is a number variable.

Asking a menu question is a rulebook.

To ask a menu question: follow the asking a menu question rules.

An asking a menu question rule:
	while the infinite_loop is 1 begin;
		say current question;
		say line break;
		say fixed letter spacing;
		repeat with counter running from 1 to the number of entries in the current question menu begin;
			say "[counter] - [entry counter of the current question menu][line break]";
		end repeat;
		say variable letter spacing;
		let k be 0;
		while k is 0 begin;
			let k be the chosen letter;
		end while;
		now k is k minus 48;
		now current question answer is k;
		if k is less than 1 or k is greater than number of entries in the current question menu, say "[line break]You need to press a number between 1 and [number of entries in the current question menu].[paragraph break]";
		otherwise make no decision;
	end while.[/code]

With this in place, here's how to ask a question:
[code]now current question is  "Do you want to be male or female?";
now current question menu is { "Male", "Female" };
ask a menu question;[/code]

After the 'ask a menu question' line, 'current question answer' is the player's numeric choice. So in this case, it would 1 if they picked male, and 2 if they picked female. The program will not proceed until the player has made a valid choice.

You can have up to 9 choices in your menu in this system. Obviously when it gets to 10, a person can't type '10' in one keypress.

Here's a runtime example of the whole thing you can dump in your compiler to see it in action:

[code]Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short.

There is a room called Question Arena.

The infinite_loop is a number variable. The infinite_loop is 1.

Current question is text variable.
Current question menu is a list of text that varies.
Current question answer is a number variable.

Asking a menu question is a rulebook.

To ask a menu question: follow the asking a menu question rules.

An asking a menu question rule:
	while the infinite_loop is 1 begin;
		say current question;
		say line break;
		say fixed letter spacing;
		repeat with counter running from 1 to the number of entries in the current question menu begin;
			say "[counter] - [entry counter of the current question menu][line break]";
		end repeat;
		say variable letter spacing;
		let k be 0;
		while k is 0 begin;
			let k be the chosen letter;
		end while;
		now k is k minus 48;
		now current question answer is k;
		if k is less than 1 or k is greater than number of entries in the current question menu, say "[line break]You need to press a number between 1 and [number of entries in the current question menu].[paragraph break]";
		otherwise make no decision;
	end while.

When play begins:
	now current question is  "Do you want to be male or female?";
	now current question menu is { "Male", "Female" };
	ask a menu question;
	say line break;
	if current question answer is 1:
		say "You chose male.";
		now player is male;
	otherwise:
		say "You chose female.";
		now player is female.[/code][/rant]

After choosing a sex in the demo, you can verify you really are of that sex by typing 'showme me'.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=20#p17749
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-06 23:38:25

Sorry, I let this thread slip away from me...

[quote]From a philosophical perspective I thought that the motivation behind adding Glk API functions was to enable broadly new capabilities, rather than to make existing features more convenient and accessible.[/quote]

In this case, I want to make features available *efficiently*. The fact that they can be approximated in VM code at the cost of rapid timer-looping is not a reason to skimp on the Glk API level. If the result is that a future version of Damusix provides the same features, but produces a cleaner compiled game, that's still a win.

Now, Ben's earlier point *is* a concern:

[quote]The other new API call, lowering the volume over a specified number of milliseconds, poses some difficulties. It's not a feature that SDL_mixer provides. I'd need to use OS timers for that, which would be workable under Windows and Linux but would mean a complete rewrite of the way I handle timers in OS X to avoid clashing with the Glk timer functionality.[/quote]

That's a significant cost and I don't want to impose it without good reason. 

Let me ask this: do you already have a callback that takes buffers of sound output from SDL_mixer and passes them to the OSX sound library? If so, it might be better (and produce a better result) to scale each buffer as it goes by. That way, the volume during a change would change smoothly rather than being stairstepped by any timer at all.

The code to scale a buffer by a linearly-changing factor is very simple -- I've written it a couple of times for other projects. (It would be harder if there were multiple volume changes going on at the same time, but I've explicitly ruled that out.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=20#p17750
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-06 23:40:35

[quote]This is what Windows Glk does: it uses Windows' DirectSound interface to play sounds, and a call to the Glk volume function with a volume of 0x10000 causes DirectSound to be set to a volume of 0 dB; a call to the Glk volume function with a volume of 0x8000 causes DirectSound to be set to a volume of -10 dB; a call to the Glk volume function with a volume of 0x4000 causes DirectSound to be set to a volume of -20 dB; and so on.[/quote]

This is basically equivalent to multiplying the raw waveform data by V/0x10000, right?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2576&start=0#p17751
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Anybody in Toronto?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-06-06 23:42:59

Hi all, this is totally off-topic, but I find myself suddenly planning to move to Toronto next week for most of this summer.  

Among other things, I'm rather desperately looking for a [very] cheap sublet, and possibly some couch space until I find one.  I'm respectful of material possessions and willing to trade some domestic labor (cooking, fixing non-computer things, cleaning) or simple design-type work (posters for your band, feelies for your IF game) for said couch space or discounted sublet.  References and more concrete information about me are available by off-forum (email or private message) request.  Got any leads?

Any other sundry thoughts or advice about Toronto are welcome as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2522&start=10#p17752
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: About previous knowledge assumption (and an equation)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-06-07 01:07:16

This whole discussion reminds me of that game, "In Memoriam".

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.adventuregamers.com/display.php?id=310">http://www.adventuregamers.com/display.php?id=310</a>

A glorified collection of flash minigames, but with a lot a cool out-of-game gimmicks, specifically designed to blur the line between game-world and real-world. Playing through it was exciting, until the simple structure of the game became painfully clear.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2575&start=0#p17753
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Easier Name/Gender Selection?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-06-07 02:59:43

One of the curious aspects of Inform is that it seems to arouse strong feelings of compassion or avoidance towards some of its elements. Some people dislike tables, some scenes, some lists, some indexed text. I know because I myself avoid relations even though I know doing so is completely irrational.

Avoiding indexed text is purely a personal preference. It is an aspect of the language like any other and you don't gain anything by intentionally avoiding it. You may have seen forum posts where people ask how to do certain things without using indexed text. Sometimes they ask because they do something really memory-intensive or that requires speed optimization, but more often than not it's because of the indexed text phobia. It's unfortunate that it sometimes comes across as if using indexed text is something everyone should avoid in all situations.

Granted, if you have a situation where you can substitute normal text for indexed text, you should do that because of good programming practices. (nb: Substitute, as in changing variable's type from indexed to normal text, not rewrite to work with normal text.) But if you have a simple issue that indexed text is [i]meant for[/i] and you spend considerable time and effort to come up with a solution that doesn't use indexed text, you're wasting your time for little to no benefit. More often than not the workarounds use up much more of the game's resources than a simple indexed text variable ever could.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=20#p17754
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-06-07 02:59:53

[quote="zarf"]This is basically equivalent to multiplying the raw waveform data by V/0x10000, right?[/quote]This is where, as far as my limited understanding goes, things get difficult: I have a nasty suspicion that the above, while seeming obvious on the first glance, is not in fact correct.

When talking about sound volume, we could be talking about one of three things: the power in the sound wave, the amplitude of the sound wave (which would be the definition used by you in the above) and the perceived loudness. None of these three are equivalent. Most sound libraries' documentation dodge this issue by not specifying what is meant by volume. The Microsoft DirectSound SetVolume documentation is as bad as any other in this: there's much talk of decibels, but no talk of what precisely the volume argument applies to.

If this sounds like I'm generating problems without offering solutions: I am. Sorry about that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2575&start=0#p17755
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Easier Name/Gender Selection?
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-06-07 03:14:28

Here's one way you can do this without avoiding the parser.

[code]
"Example"

Rule for printing the banner text when waiting for gender is true: do nothing. Instead of looking for the first time: do nothing. [These prevent anything from appearing when the game begins.]

waiting for name is a truth state variable. waiting for name is true.
waiting for gender is a truth state variable. waiting for gender is true.
player's name is an indexed text variable. 
A person can be ambiguously gendered.

When play begins: say "First, we need to know your name. What is it?"; now waiting for name is true.
	
After reading a command when waiting for name is true: now waiting for name is false; now player's name is "[the player's command in title case]"; replace the player's command with "gender".
	
Gendering is an action out of world applying to nothing. Understand "gender" as gendering when waiting for gender is true. Carry out gendering: say "And which gender are you?".

To tidy up introduction: now waiting for gender is false; say "Very well then![paragraph break]"; say banner text; try looking. 

Identifying as male is an action out of world applying to nothing. Understand "male" as identifying as male when waiting for gender is true. Carry out identifying as male: now the player is male; tidy up introduction.

Identifying as female is an action out of world applying to nothing. Understand "female" as identifying as female when waiting for gender is true. Carry out identifying as female: now the player is female; tidy up introduction.

Identifying as neither is an action out of world applying to nothing. Understand "neither" as identifying as neither when waiting for gender is true. Carry out identifying as neither: now the player is ambiguously gendered; tidy up introduction.

Instead of doing anything other than gendering, identifying as male,  identifying as female or identifying as neither when waiting for gender is true: say "Please, answer the question."

Starting Room is a room with printed name "[player's name]'s Room". "Well, young [if player is ambiguously gendered]one[else if player is male]man[else]lady[end if], here you are."
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2568&start=0#p17756
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: [TADS 2] Creating a 'bug' command for the transcript
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2011-06-07 03:32:02

Thanks, uux02! I had initially drafted something like this before, using find() instead of substr(), and without stripping the leading spaces. It looks like this part is where I got confused when I tried to write it on my own:
[quote][b]nil[/b] - in this case, the system assumes all the processing has been done by preparse, and skips to the command prompt without any further processing;
[b]true[/b] - the system resumes processing the original player input normally;
[b]string value[/b] - the system resumes parsing, using the returned string value instead of the original command entered by the player.[/quote]as well as:
[code]if(symb='*') // This is a comment
   {"COMMENT RECORDED";
    return nil; // No further processing needed - return nil
   }
return true; // It wasn't a comment - process the command normally[/code]I should have returned nil after recognizing the '*' (I kept getting "I don't understand the punctuation '*'" errors before) and returned true instead of the actual command string at the end. Sheesh  [emote]:roll:[/emote]

Thanks again!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2575&start=0#p17757
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Easier Name/Gender Selection?
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-07 07:26:08

Being a wiseass by nature, I might suggest some other kind of response should the player actually enter "neither" as his/her/its gender.  Of course, you might also want to allow for "both" -- which is (I think) biologically possible, although it might further complicate pronoun choice.

Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2522&start=10#p17758
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: About previous knowledge assumption (and an equation)
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-07 07:48:12

To me there is a major difference between information which is necessary to complete the game and that which is merely tangential.  When it comes to things which are essential to the game and which go beyond what a reasonably educated person might be expected to know (taking into account the fact that there could be cultural differences in what is "common knowledge"), I would not want, as a player, to have to do actual extra-game research.  (Feelies are fine; I view them as part of the "game world" nothwithstanding that they are provided in a different form).

On the other hand, I have no problem whatsoever with allusions which might enhance the game experience or provide an additional chuckle to those who are "in the know," as long as they are not crucial to successful completion of the game.

I wrote a game based on certain characters from popular culture (or at least the popular culture of a few decades ago).   In order to get through the game, you have to have a basic idea of who those characters are and how they behave, but you don't need detailed knowledge of their work.  If you happen to have that detailed knowledge, you will understand a lot of references and allusions that would go right by somebody without that background, but you can still play the game.  I also have a place (which the player encounters quite early in the game) where he is referred to a couple of sources (outside the game world) for learning more about the characters if he wants to, but doing so is purely optional.

One exception to the notion that no extra-game knowledge beyond common knowledge should be required is where a game is aimed towards a specific audience who would be expected to have that additional knowledge (or, to put it another way, the notion of what knowledge is "common" might be viewed with the intended audience in mind).  To take an example, let's say you're writing a game set in the world of modern popular music.  Players who would be attracted to such a game would likely have a certain amount of knowledge (e.g., the names of performers or songs) that somebody like me would not likely possess.  I'm fine with assuming such knowledge, as long as the nature of the game is clear.  If I see such a game, I'll probably pass it up on the theory that it is set in a world which does not appeal to me.  On the other hand, if the game appears to be set in the world of jazz (which would attract my interest) and then turns out to require extra-game knowledge of rock songs, I would be very disappointed indeed.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2576&start=0#p17759
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anybody in Toronto?
User: George / DateTime: 2011-06-07 09:19:45

Doesn't [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=author%3AJim+Munroe]Jim Munroe[/url] live in Toronto? 

His website is <a class="postlink" href="http://nomediakings.org">http://nomediakings.org</a>

The Hand Eye Society is pretty cool too. <a class="postlink" href="http://handeyesociety.com/">http://handeyesociety.com/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=20#p17760
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-06-07 09:43:00

[quote="zarf"]Let me ask this: do you already have a callback that takes buffers of sound output from SDL_mixer and passes them to the OSX sound library? If so, it might be better (and produce a better result) to scale each buffer as it goes by. That way, the volume during a change would change smoothly rather than being stairstepped by any timer at all.[/quote]

I have something similar: a callback that queues up a new sound buffer for SDL_sound to play (via SDL_mixer, which masks the OS interface).

The trouble with using the SDL_sound callback to handle volume change is that that the buffers are somewhat large - 128 KB - to minimize the processing / decoding overhead. This code path is used for Ogg / MP3 at the moment but could be extended to the other sound types.

The 128K size is somewhat arbitrary; I had Eliuk run a lot of tests using different buffer sizes and that's the one he liked best. I think it works out to be 1-2 seconds of audio per pass, which is a bit coarse for the proposed API. I could tune it to a lower amount at the cost of performance and audio quality.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=30#p17761
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-06-07 09:58:24

[quote="zarf"]This is basically equivalent to multiplying the raw waveform data by V/0x10000, right?[/quote]On further reflection, perhaps it would be best to cut through the proverbial knot and have the Glk define volume as meaning the above. This puts more work on interpreter authors as they need to figure out how their sound library handles volume and, if it doesn't match the above, scale appropriately, but making work for interpreter authors is nearly always better than making work for game authors.

This might screw up some games that rely on whatever the author's current favourite interpreter does, but that's always going to be the case if we pick a fixed definition.
[quote="bcressey"]The 128K size is somewhat arbitrary; I had Eliuk run a lot of tests using different buffer sizes and that's the one he liked best. I think it works out to be 1-2 seconds of audio per pass, which is a bit coarse for the proposed API. I could tune it to a lower amount at the cost of performance and audio quality.[/quote]That sounds about right: on Windows I use a 2 second buffer that a thread writes sound data into. Experiments showed that anything less than that caused stuttering on slow machines under load. It also means I'd be reluctant to implement a Glk call by directly modifying the buffer, given the time delay involved.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2522&start=10#p17762
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: About previous knowledge assumption (and an equation)
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-06-07 15:31:54

[quote="Robert Rothman"]On the other hand, I have no problem whatsoever with allusions which might enhance the game experience or provide an additional chuckle to those who are "in the know," as long as they are not crucial to successful completion of the game.[/quote]

This can backfire.  My Comp entry (in 2009) had a title that was intended as a mildly punnish allusion, which tied the central puzzle to the setting. (Slightly more specific information: [spoiler]If you knew what the title meant, it might give you a clue that Something Was Up, but certainly not exactly what, and in fact too literal an interpretation of the title could be considered a red herring.  Additionally, the title and theme were chosen after the central mechanic was solidified and coded, and after the first round of puzzle-testers.[/spoiler])  So the review that I was saddest to read -- unlike the reviews that simply hated the game, thought it was unfair because of the sneaky presentation of the puzzle, or found bugs, which were of course a bit unfun to read, but did not actually make me sad -- was the review that stated that the game was unfair because the puzzle was downright unsolvable without knowledge of the allusion.  Sure, the game had some intentional unfairness (in the way that I presented the puzzle, particularly in the Comp context), but this particular review thought I was being unfair in a way that I did not at all intend, or even think could possibly be a problem.  As far as I knew, none of my testers caught the reference and they solved the puzzle just fine.  So it's possible that just knowing there's an allusion at all is enough to make players that weren't "in the know" feel left out.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2575&start=0#p17763
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Easier Name/Gender Selection?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-06-07 15:35:08

"Neither" and "both" are both genders belonging to some humans on this planet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=30#p17764
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-07 16:21:20

Two seconds? Yeah, that's too long to use as a quantum for volume change control. If it were 0.5 second, I'd consider going with it.

[quote]On further reflection, perhaps it would be best to cut through the proverbial knot and have the Glk define volume as meaning the above.[/quote]

I will do that if everyone thinks they can cope.

[quote]I would like to be able to specify the starting point as an optional parameter for glk_schannel_play_ext.[/quote]

Hm. Is that possible with the MOD library?

As for the basic question: I still have to choose between dropping this volume-change proposal and asking Ben to rewrite a bunch of timer code. Is there any other factor to throw in here? Is the timer code going to have to change for other reasons, say if I add Javascript callbacks or (perhaps) video-playing calls to the spec?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2522&start=10#p17765
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: About previous knowledge assumption (and an equation)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-07 18:22:27

[quote="tove"] So the review that I was saddest to read -- unlike the reviews that simply hated the game, thought it was unfair because of the sneaky presentation of the puzzle, or found bugs, which were of course a bit unfun to read, but did not actually make me sad -- was the review that stated that the game was unfair because the puzzle was downright unsolvable without knowledge of the allusion.[/quote]

Yeah, that confused me. I was like, "I looked up the allusion, and it didn't help me solve the puzzle one bit."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2575&start=0#p17766
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Easier Name/Gender Selection?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-07 19:10:18

I looked at Menus, but again, unnecessarily complicated for what I'm trying to do. I couldn't exactly get a feel for how it handled things.

I haven't tried it yet, but I do appreciate the Aaronius Approach to the situation. Simple, no additional extensions required and will probably play better with my code. I do have Questions implemented and it WORKS, but the way I had to do it is UGLY and I suspect there are going to be some issues down the road.

I'm hoping this simpler approach works better.

No offence to eunuchs, transgenders, transvestites and the rest of the ambiguously gendered individuals of the world who may or may not be reading, but you will not be represented here.

As for indexed text hate, I'm ashamed to say that I'm a victim of herd mentality here. I don't really understand it or what it's for, so I basically go on what I read from others until I have learned enough to have my own opinion on the matter. Individuals with YEARS more experience than me hate it, so I figure they hate it for a reason.

The jury is still out for me on tables. Again, I'm not entirely sure how they work in Inform. I reserve judgement.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=30#p17767
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-06-07 19:26:30

[quote]As for the basic question: I still have to choose between dropping this volume-change proposal and asking Ben to rewrite a bunch of timer code. Is there any other factor to throw in here? Is the timer code going to have to change for other reasons, say if I add Javascript callbacks or (perhaps) video-playing calls to the spec?[/quote]

It might need to change if it breaks in Lion, and there's a fair chance it will.

Right now there's kind of a horrible kludge going on where the interpreters run as NSTasks and put themselves to sleep via [NSThread sleepuntilDate: ...], either until the next Glk timer tick (if one is active) or forever. The trick is that the launcher sends the blocked process a POSIX signal when an event for it arrives, and that signal breaks it out of the blocked state. This arrangement can sometimes delay hardware sleep from kicking in, which sucks.

I could improve it quite a lot if I could figure out how to give an NSTask its own run loop to listen on for timer events, but I pounded my head against that particular wall for a long time with no luck. I know there must be a way to use [url=http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/CoreFoundation/Reference/CFRunLoopRef/Reference/reference.html]CFRunLoop[/url] for this purpose. I just need to pick my way through [url=http://src.chromium.org/svn/trunk/src/base/message_pump_mac.h]the Chromium source[/url] until I figure out how Google made it work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2575&start=0#p17768
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Easier Name/Gender Selection?
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-06-07 19:35:34

[quote="I4L"]
No offence to eunuchs, transgenders, transvestites and the rest of the ambiguously gendered individuals of the world who may or may not be reading, but you will not be represented here.
[/quote]

As a transgendered eunuch that dresses as a furry, I am offended!

(just kidding... as he tucks his tail between his hind legs and sulks off...)

[quote="I4L"]
As for indexed text hate, I'm ashamed to say that I'm a victim of herd mentality here. I don't really understand it or what it's for, so I basically go on what I read from others until I have learned enough to have my own opinion on the matter. Individuals with YEARS more experience than me hate it, so I figure they hate it for a reason.

The jury is still out for me on tables. Again, I'm not entirely sure how they work in Inform. I reserve judgement.[/quote]

Tables is my newest favorite tool.  I am sure I will over-use it.  But for now, it is letting me do things that were very ugly before when I did it the hard-coded way.

Indexed text is something I have used (based on others help) but I am far from being able to claim understanding of the full depth to which it can be used.  I think once I know more, I will go "Duh!" and be more open to this deviance of nature.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=20#p17769
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-07 19:48:53

I just checked this out for the first time. Something I personally would like to see would be segregation of "regions" and maybe even "floors" as separate linked and nameable layers.

For example, I just discovered Anchorhead. (I know, shame on me. But I have to say, though the writing is fantastic, I disagree with the reviews of the ambiance and level of creepiness so far, being the Lovecraft nut that I am. I digress...)

The map is getting a little cluttered. I could drag rooms WAY away from one another to segregate them from one another, but then the map file just gets huge. I'd love to be able to bring up the properties for a room and define it as, for example, "Verlac Mansion - 1F". This room would then link to another layer so that when I entered it, it would switch layers to another map.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2570&start=10#p17770
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor: A new Linux (for now) port of the Hugo engine
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-07 20:15:23

I've made a boo boo with the supplied libraries. Please download beta 3 (see first post) which should now work as intended.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2575&start=0#p17771
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Easier Name/Gender Selection?
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-07 20:41:18

I guess this is a little off-topic for the original post, but since tables have been discussed I would add that, as one without much experience in these matters, I find tables extraordinarily  useful.  For example, I use them all the time to generate random "business" in the background as part of an "every turn" rule when the player is in a particular location.  I could do it using a "say [one of] A [or] B [or] C [at random]" statement, but I find it a lot more convenient to list all of the possible items in a single-column table; my every turn rule chooses a random entry from the table and plugs that into a "say" statement.  It's easy to see at a glance what the items are, and easy to change or add items.

As another example, I am currently writing a game which includes a rather complicated machine; if a player tries to use the machine incorrectly, it generates an error message (depending on exactly what the player did wrong) which shows up on a screen which is part of the machine.  The rule which tests all of the machine settings to determine which, if any, error message is appropriate is complicated enough as it is without building the text of all the error messages into the rule.  Instead, I use the rule to set a numerical code corresponding to the particular errror; I then use a table to associate each code with the text of the corresponding error message.

Another example (which I just coded a few days ago):  The game includes a camera with a limited number of frames of film, and I want to keep track of what the player has photographed.  I created a table with a number of rows equal to the number of frames of film, but left the entry for each row blank.  Each time the player photographs an object, I have it choose a blank row and substitute the object photographed for the blank entry.  Thus, as the game progresses, the table will effectively become a list (not in the Inform 7 sense of the word) of the things that the player has photographed.  I wouldn't know how to do this without using tables.



Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2575&start=0#p17772
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Easier Name/Gender Selection?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-07 21:19:38

I don't mind the thread hijack, since the issue has been resolved. Aaron's approach to the issue was stunningly simple and fit perfectly into the game without messing up anything else. (I will be buying the book, by the way.)

Anyway, I love the IDEA of tables. I just haven't yet found a good explanation on how to use them. Or rather, I did, but I keep losing it. I just want to look up a certain value in a certain row. I don't want to have to TELL Inform to cycle through the table to find it. It should do that automatically and invisibly without my prompting it to do so. There's no other way to look anything up in a table. I keep finding the syntax and losing it again.

I foresee needing a table. Or maybe several. Or maybe a very large one. I don't really know yet. But like I said, coming from a programming background that leans heavily on databases (though I'm not very good at it), I'm definitely glad that this functionality exists and I intend to lean heavily on it. I hope it doesn't let me down. (Or I it.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2577&start=0#p17773
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: T3: Lister options
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-07 21:24:05

As I poke away at the idea of a Fluids extension, I'm needing to construct and display a list of an arbitrary number of objects. (This is a side effect of the concepts in the extension: I want to have an Empty action, which needs a default for non-FluidContainer objects. The question naturally arises, what if the player tries to empty a basket? Answer: Stuff gets dumped on the floor. So we need to fly in a list of the stuff.)

So I create a local, temporary SimpleLister and pass the list of items being moved to its makeSimpleList method. Works like a charm ... except that I'm getting the aName string, when I want the theName string:

[quote]>empty basket
You remove a box, a banana, and a sponge from the basket. [/quote]

I'm betting (or hoping) that I can fix this by overriding showListAll and giving it some value in the "options" argument. But I can't find any documentation on this value. The comments in the source say only this: "'options' gives a set of ListXxx option flags." Unfortunately, "ListXxx" is not to be found in the All Symbols page of the LRM, nor is it mentioned anywhere in the article on "Lists and Listers." The latter article contains the word "options" only once, and it's as an argument to showListItem ... an argument whose possible values don't seem to be mentioned. So I'm kinda stumped.

How can I get a SimpleLister to give me a comma-separated string of theNames, rather than aNames? If that's not possible, what sort of Lister should I use, and are there any tricks to setting it up to produce a string?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2575&start=10#p17774
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Easier Name/Gender Selection?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-07 21:54:44

Also, props to severedhand for that suggestion. It was a bit over my head at this current juncture in time, but I don't want you to think I'm unappreciative for the input and an alternative. I might certainly put your example to use in the future and I definitely may learn something from it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2575&start=10#p17775
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Easier Name/Gender Selection?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-07 22:02:00

[quote="I4L"] I just want to look up a certain value in a certain row. I don't want to have to TELL Inform to cycle through the table to find it. It should do that automatically and invisibly without my prompting it to do so. There's no other way to look anything up in a table.[/quote]

There are many ways to do this, and it isn't at all necessary to iterate through the table (Chapter 15.5, Choosing Rows):

[code]choose row 2 in Table of Quips
choose row with quip-text of "Hi!" in Table of Quips
choose a blank row in Table of Quips
choose a random row in Table of Quips[/code]

You may find the syntax document useful:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/learn/documents/I7_syntax.txt">http://inform7.com/learn/documents/I7_syntax.txt</a>

(It's not quite up to date, I don't think, but it will usually be good enough.)

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2575&start=10#p17776
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Easier Name/Gender Selection?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-06-07 22:11:26

[quote="I4L"]Also, props to severedhand for that suggestion. It was a bit over my head at this current juncture in time, but I don't want you to think I'm unappreciative for the input and an alternative. I might certainly put your example to use in the future and I definitely may learn something from it.[/quote]

No worries. Actually I'm so chuffed with my little blob, I may turn it into an extension [emote]:)[/emote] - but first I'll change all the variable names to avoid namespace collisions with Questions, which was my starting place for writing it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2575&start=10#p17777
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Easier Name/Gender Selection?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-07 22:17:50

I didn't mean "There's no other way to tell Inform to do this." I meant that, universally, there's no other way to tell anything to look anything up in a table. Doesn't matter what you use, that software or service starts at row one and goes down until it finds the value you're looking for.

I can just never remember the Inform syntax for "Get value of column X where value of column Y is Z".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2578&start=0#p17778
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I just want to create a door with a password (ANSWERED!)
User: anamri / DateTime: 2011-06-07 22:25:21

Firstly off, please take pity on me. - I am very new to Inform7 (I just started my story last week)  I have been cruising along, with a few tiny bumps in the road... but this recent one just baffles me!

I want to create a door which when examined opens an interface to give the password.  The password being text that the user enters. (let's say "giggity")  I have tried a few different approaches.  I have been at this for 2 days now.  Can anyone please help me out?
Here is my most recent try [i](which includes "Questions" by Micheal Callaghan, but I have obviously butchered it - as it throws out errors-galore)[/i]:

[code][size=85]A text question rule:
	if the current question is "Can you picture the password?":
		if text understood is giggity:
			say, "**BUZZ**  You have unlocked the security door.";
			now the security terminal is unlocked;
			exit;
		otherwise:
			exit;
	otherwise:
		exit.

A yes/no question rule (this is the confirm answers rule):
	if the current question is "Would you like to try again? (Yes or No)":
		if the decision understood is yes:
			examine security terminal;
		otherwise:
			say "Goodbye.";
			exit;
	otherwise:
		exit.

Instead of inspecting security terminal:
	now the current question is "Can you picture the password?";
		now current prompt is "Please enter the password now. >";
		now punctuation removal is true;
		ask a closed question, in text mode;
	now the current question is "Would you like to try again? (Yes or No)";
	ask a closed question, in yes/no mode.[/size][/code]
I did consider making the security door the door and security terminal a person, who can ask for the password using the [topic] table.  I do not know if a dialog can trigger an action though(like 'now the security door is unlocked.').  Plus, I haven't played around with adding characters yet and don't really know what I'm doing at [b]all[/b] there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2575&start=10#p17779
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Easier Name/Gender Selection?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-07 22:25:40

[quote="ektemple"]There are many ways to do this, and it isn't at all necessary to iterate through the table (Chapter 15.5, Choosing Rows):[/quote]

And that's what I meant. For example, if I say

[code]
query = "SELECT gender FROM player_variables WHERE id=0";
[/code]

It's going to start at row 0 of the table and zip down through the rows until it finds ID 0. I'm not TELLING it to do this, it just knows automatically to do this. There's never a reason where I have to manually tell it to start at row 0 and go down until it finds what I'm looking for.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the use for tables as described in the documentation everywhere but 15.5.

[code]repeat with N running from 1 to the number of rows in the Table of Recent Monarchs:[/code]

Honestly, that makes my head a'splode.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2578&start=0#p17780
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I just want to create a door with a password... ?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-07 22:28:16

Props on the Family Guy reference, if that's what it was. My favorite show of all time.

Otherwise, I can't help you. Sorry.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2578&start=0#p17781
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I just want to create a door with a password... ?
User: anamri / DateTime: 2011-06-07 22:33:07

Yeah, I was watching it earlier today and it was the first thing that popped into my head. [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2579&start=0#p17782
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Best way to implement a background image?
User: Sig / DateTime: 2011-06-07 23:42:46

I apologize profusely if this is any of the following: obvious, already answered, a terrible idea, beating a dead horse, better solved through some other medium, or other unspecified offense to the IF universe.

I've got an idea I've been sketching out for a while. This isn't my current project, and possibly not even the one after that, but the project that I want to work up to. So if this can't be done yet (or done easily), it may very well be simple by the time I'm able to get to it.

Basically, I would like to create a story with the optional ability (for those with a supporting interpreter) to have a background image.  This would ideally change at key points in the story line.  The story should theoretically be strongly-enough written that it wouldn't be necessary (so my wife can still play on her phone*), but would add to the atmosphere.  Nothing in the images would be necessary to successfully play.

I'm probably not explaining it very well.  Mockup done in [url=http://gottcode.org/focuswriter/]FocusWriter[/url]:
[attachment=0]mockup.JPG[/attachment]
I imagine this would be easiest in a web interpreter, which is convenient since that would be the mostly likely vector for the target audience. Would it be possible to embed the interpreter into a page which handles this (i.e. partial transparency, etc) via CSS? [I could break the story up into parts and load the new part as a new page (and thus image), perhaps?] Is there some obvious solution that I missed? I tried searching, but I'm afraid I may not know enough to ask the right questions. Finally, has anyone else done something similar?

[EDIT: Almost certainly, this would be written in Inform 7.]

[size=85]*She's already seen all of my photos a hundred times, anyway.[/size]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2579&start=0#p17783
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Best way to implement a background image?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-06-08 01:14:58

I don't have an answer for you, sorry, but I just want you to know that I would spend at least five minutes playing the hypothetical game for which your placeholder text was the actual text.  Very [i]If on a winter's night a traveler[/i].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=30#p17784
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-06-08 02:06:11

[quote="zarf"][quote]I would like to be able to specify the starting point as an optional parameter for glk_schannel_play_ext.[/quote]Hm. Is that possible with the MOD library?[/quote]The libmodplug code has GetCurrentPos() and SetCurrentPos() which return and take an integer specifying, in an arbitrary sense, where the decoder has got to. The problem I can see with this, while sound decoders have some notion of a position of where they are, it's usually arbitrary: what if the value was stored in saved game file, then loaded in a different interpreter using a different MOD decoding library? It would be better if the position were in terms of, say "I'm 34.5 seconds into the song" but I don't know any sound decoder that offers that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2577&start=0#p17785
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Lister options
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2011-06-08 02:48:05

I had exactly the same issue in my WIP. I dealt with it by overriding showListItem() on the SimpleLister thus:

[code]
/* 
 *   A variation of the object lister that uses definite rather than 
 *   indefinite articles to describe its members.
 */

objectDefLister: SimpleLister
    showListItem(obj, options, pov, infoTab)
    {
        say(obj.theName);
    }
;
[/code]

-- Eric

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2578&start=0#p17786
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I just want to create a door with a password... ?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-06-08 03:26:40

Here's a way:
[code]
The description of the security terminal is "Can you picture the password?"
After examining the security terminal:
	now the command prompt is "Please enter the password now. >";
	continue the action.
	
After reading a command when the command prompt is "Please enter the password now. >":
	increment the turn count;
	if the player's command matches "giggity": 
		now the security door is unlocked;
		say "**BUZZ**  You have unlocked the security door.";
		now the command prompt is ">";
	otherwise:
		say "The security door remains closed.";
		now the command prompt is "Would you like to try again? (Yes or No) >";
	reject the player's command.	
	
After reading a command when the command prompt is "Would you like to try again? (Yes or No) >":
	if the player's command matches "yes" or the player's command matches "y": 
		now the command prompt is "Please enter the password now. >";
		say line break;
		say run paragraph on;
		reject the player's command;
	if the player's command matches "no" or the player's command matches "n": 
		now the command prompt is ">";
		say line break;
		say run paragraph on;
		reject the player's command;
	otherwise:
		say line break;
		say run paragraph on;
		reject the player's command.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2579&start=0#p17787
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Best way to implement a background image?
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-06-08 03:34:37

Using images with Inform 7 means Glulx, and Glulx interpreters, IIRC, doesn't support transparencies under the main text box. I've seen some cases where authors made an image frame around it joining several image boxes around the text and making sure they rescaled properly, which was tedious and not quite effective.

As an alternative, you can go the textfyre way: use the text input/output stream from a customized frotz interpreter through your own GUI written in something like Visual C# or Visual Basic and make it go web through silverlight. I think they made freely available some sort of kit to do something like that, but I'm not sure if that's just my memory mixing things.

--

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2577&start=0#p17788
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Lister options
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-06-08 03:43:45

I once wrote an extension to make Listers simpler to use, including allowing different options for articles and letting you use them in message parameter substitutions ("{The/list yourList} {is} here."). At the time I used the same method as Eric - it was simple and didn't seem to cause any problems. But when I looked at it again today I wondered if that might cause issues in certain complicated situations, since it omits some of the standard listing code, so I rewrote it to be a bit more respectful of the library code.

I never did much testing on it - either the original version or the new version I just whipped up - so I'm not sure it's actually safe to use. And Eric's code is probably quite adequate. But hey, if you're interested, it's attached to this post.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2578&start=0#p17789
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I just want to create a door with a password... ?
User: anamri / DateTime: 2011-06-08 08:54:00

Thank you SO much for your time and for trying to help!
That looks similar to my first try, but  i have never used "run paragraph on" before.  What does that do?

Also it's still giving me errors (I just copied and pasted, so that I wouldn't mess up your code):
[code]Problem. The phrase or rule definition 'After reading a command when the command prompt is "Please enter the password now. >"'   is written using the 'colon and indentation' syntax for its 'if's, 'repeat's and 'while's, where blocks of phrases grouped together are indented one tab step inward from the 'if ...:' or similar phrase to which they belong. But the tabs here seem to be misaligned, and I can't determine the structure. The first phrase going awry in the definition seems to be 'if the player's command matches "Keep" or the player's command matches "keep"'  , in case that helps. 

 This sometimes happens even when the code looks about right, to the eye, if rows of spaces have been used to indent phrases instead of tabs.[/code]
It is giving me the same error for the first line in the next set also [i]'After reading a command when the command prompt is "Would you like to try again? (Yes or No) >":'[/i]
Perhaps there is some extension that you usually include that makes this work?  If so, which one?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2521&start=0#p17790
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Identical Room Names
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-08 09:24:56

I discovered that doing tricky things with found_in is problematic in I7. If you need something more complex than a backdrop, you might want to check out my update of John Clemens' "Conditional Backdrops:"

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/Mike%20Ciul/Conditional%20Backdrops/index.html">http://inform7.com/extensions/Mike%20Ci ... index.html</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=30#p17791
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-08 09:28:23

[quote="DavidK"][quote="zarf"][quote]I would like to be able to specify the starting point as an optional parameter for glk_schannel_play_ext.[/quote]Hm. Is that possible with the MOD library?[/quote]The libmodplug code has GetCurrentPos() and SetCurrentPos() which return and take an integer specifying, in an arbitrary sense, where the decoder has got to. The problem I can see with this, while sound decoders have some notion of a position of where they are, it's usually arbitrary: what if the value was stored in saved game file, then loaded in a different interpreter using a different MOD decoding library? It would be better if the position were in terms of, say "I'm 34.5 seconds into the song" but I don't know any sound decoder that offers that.[/quote]

The game could standardize this, though, if there were also an API call to get the length--e.g., divide the one by the other before saving, then on reloading, expand that ratio to the appropriate ratio used by the new terp. (Or maybe the Glk API could even go so far as to use a percentage rather than an arbitrary tracking number or a value in seconds?)

Let me add a quick note to explain why I suggested this functionality:

Currently, there are essentially two uses for sound in a glulx IF game: background music and momentary effects (footsteps, a siren, etc.). The ability to pause and resume playback (i.e., the ability to control file tracking) would allow sound to take on other roles, such as exposition. Moreover, if we can give the player control over the playback of at least some sounds, we might be able to foster a different kind of relationship with sound in-game. For example, when background music has been discussed on the forums, there have always been a number of people who step in to say that they would generally prefer to simply shut it off (I tend to be one of these people, and almost always do shut the music off in Flash games or anything else that I might be playing.) If instead of playing background music through the course of the game, we offer the player a music widget* (whether in a graphics window or a set of unicode "buttons" in the status bar) where he can control what he listens to and when, there is at least a possibility that we would get more player buy-in. The cost would be that we couldn't use those tracks for dramatic purposes, but players might be more interested in using them for general mood- and place-setting purposes.

In such a model, sounds could also be used as achievements or to mark progress through the game -- "A new track has been added to your player!". Such tracks need not be music, either. They could contain spoken text, for example, to serve as exposition/backstory.

Anyway, that's the background to the request. Thanks for giving it some thought.

--Erik

* I suppose that such a widget is possible without the ability to pause and restart, but it would seem pretty underfunded--we're surrounded by music players everywhere these days, and *all* of them offer pause/restart. (For spoken word tracks, the ability to pause/restart is likely even more important.) Also note that the same API functions needed to provide pause and restart would also allow for author-created seek functionality.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2578&start=0#p17792
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I just want to create a door with a password... ?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-06-08 09:30:20

Ah, you're being caught by the forum trick.  The problem with copying and pasting from the forum is that if you copy from a post, the tabs have all been converted to spaces, and Inform really requires them to be tabs.  One way to quickly work around that is to make as if to reply to the post containing the code (so, hit the "quote" button), then copy the code from within the reply-to text box, where the tabs will be magically restored to how the original poster typed them in.  Of course, if the original poster typed them in as spaces, you'll still need to convert them to tabs by hand.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2578&start=0#p17793
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I just want to create a door with a password... ?
User: anamri / DateTime: 2011-06-08 09:31:37

Ok, I figured it out - my copy and paste job reads your code as having 3 spaces instead of a tab.  I replaced all of the spacing with tabs and it worked PERFECTLY!!

THANK YOU Felix!!  [emote]:D[/emote]

[i](thank you Trove - you were replying just as i was!  That certainly beats the way I did it!  I will keep that in mind for the future.)[/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2578&start=0#p17794
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I just want to create a door with a password... ?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-06-08 09:34:22

This happens so often that maybe it would be a good idea to make a post with general instructions and make it sticky?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2577&start=0#p17795
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Lister options
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-08 10:13:55

Thanks, Eric. That works.

Emily, I've downloaded your extension and I'll take a look at it soon. It sounds very useful.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2578&start=0#p17796
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I just want to create a door with a password... ?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-06-08 10:21:10

[quote="anamri"]I have never used "run paragraph on" before.  What does that do?[/quote]

You need to print a line break (or paragraph break) after the player has answered the question or there will be no blank line between the line with the answer and the  new command prompt that follows the answer.
However, I found when testing the code, that (for some I6 reason, I think) the game would then print TWO blank lines between the lines rather than one.
This happens every now and then in Inform 7, and "run paragraph on" prevents it. It stops the next paragraph from beginning on a new line, and runs it immediately on as a single paragraph with the preceeding one (or something).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=30#p17797
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-06-08 10:37:28

[quote="DavidK"]The libmodplug code has GetCurrentPos() and SetCurrentPos() which return and take an integer specifying, in an arbitrary sense, where the decoder has got to. The problem I can see with this, while sound decoders have some notion of a position of where they are, it's usually arbitrary[/quote]
I haven't used libmodplug, but it seems strange if the position is an arbitrary value. Are you sure about that? The sound libraries that I have used (BASS, FMOD and DUMB) are consistent in their handling of MOD songs (and related formats). The value for position isn't directly linked to time, because that's not how MOD files are constructed. Orders (the terminology may vary - orders may also be called patterns) makes more sense than seconds for setting a starting point in a MOD file.

Pause and resume is a different issue, and usually easiest handled by special case functions.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2580&start=0#p17798
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: T3: notifyRemove, exit, and group actions
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-08 10:58:38

I'm attempting to implement an Empty action (for containers). It works -- but if an object can't be removed from the container for some reason (such as notifyRemove on the container calling exit on some object), my report never appears on-screen. What's worse, the order of objects in the container's contents list may cause the action to stop before some objects are moved -- again, because exit stops the process. Here's my code:

[code]action() {
    local dest = nil;
    local floorless = nil;
    local removed = [];
    local loc = me.getOutermostRoom();
    // If there is no floor, then we're in a FloorlessRoom. If the FloorlessRoom
    // has no bottomRoom, we don't care ... we'll just empty the container into nil.
    if (!loc.roomFloor) {
        floorless = true;
        dest = loc.bottomRoom;
    }
    else dest = loc;
    foreach(local cur in contents) {
        cur.moveInto(dest);
        // There might be a reason why something doesn't get moved, so don't add it
        // to the list unless the moveInto was successful.
        if (cur.isIn(dest))
            removed = removed + cur;
    }
    // Now we have a list of the emptied-out items.
    local lister = objectDefLister;
    local liststr = lister.makeSimpleList(removed);
    local len = removed.length();
    local str = '{You/he} remove{s} ' + liststr + ' from ' + theName;
    local termstr = '';
    if (!floorless)
        termstr = '. ';
    else {
        termstr = ', and ';
        if ((len > 1) || (removed[1].isPlural)) termstr = termstr + 'they plunge';
        else termstr = termstr + 'it plunges';
        termstr = termstr + ' out of sight. ';
    }
    mainReport(str + termstr);
}[/code]
I observe that when I use the library's 'take all from X' command, this problem doesn't appear. On the other hand, I don't much care for how the library reports the action, but that may (or may not) be a separate issue.

I can use nestedAction(Take, cur) followed by nestedAction(Drop, cur) to move the items in the container ... but then I won't get my nicely formatted list of the objects being emptied.

The real question, I guess, is this: Is there a way for notifyRemove to stop the current move, other than by calling exit?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2580&start=0#p17799
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: notifyRemove, exit, and group actions
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2011-06-08 12:05:21

exit is just macro shorthand for throw new ExitSignal(), so, although I haven't tested it, it occurs to me that another way round your problem is to catch an ExitSignal() (using try... catch) in your own code so that it doesn't exit the action. Something like:

[code]
foreach(local cur in contents) {
       try
       {
           cur.moveInto(dest);
       }
       catch (ExitSignal es)
       {
            continue;
        }
       
        // There might be a reason why something doesn't get moved, so don't add it
        // to the list unless the moveInto was successful.
        if (cur.isIn(dest))
            removed = removed + cur;
    }

[/code]

This comes with the standard health warning: I've not tested it (beyond ensuring that it compiles) so you may need to tweak it to get it to do what you want, assuming it works at all! But hopefully it may help point you in the right direction.

-- Eric

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2578&start=0#p17800
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I just want to create a door with a password (ANSWERED!)
User: anamri / DateTime: 2011-06-08 12:10:55

Thank you again Felix, you have been very helpful!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2580&start=0#p17801
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: notifyRemove, exit, and group actions
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-08 12:16:06

Thanks, Eric. That works nicely.

I can see that this project is going to teach me a bit more about listers, exceptions, and probably other things as well!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2580&start=0#p17802
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: notifyRemove, exit, and group actions
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-06-08 12:35:24

Eric beat me to it, but this should work.

[code]
action() {
	local removed = [];
	local invalid = [];
	local dest = gPlayerChar.getOutermostRoom();
	t3SetSay({x: reportAfter(x)});
	foreach(local cur in contents) {
		try {
			cur.moveInto(dest);
		}
		catch (ExitSignal es) {
			invalid = invalid + cur;
		}
		finally {
			if (cur.isDirectlyIn(dest))
				removed = removed + cur;
		}
	}
	t3SetSay(say);
	local liststr = objectDefLister.makeSimpleList(removed);
	local errstr = objectDefLister.makeSimpleList(invalid); 
	mainReport('{You/he} remove{s} ' + liststr + ' from ' + theName + '. ');
	if (errstr.length)
		mainReport('However, {you/he} {are} unable to move{s} ' + errstr + '. '); 
}
[/code]

It uses a custom tadsSay function to redirect any output from moving the individual items to the end.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2557&start=0#p17803
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Issue Too many Rulebooks
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-08 12:49:53

That's right. Parchment is z-machine only, not glulx.

How is progress going on automatic transcription of online games for author use?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2557&start=0#p17804
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Issue Too many Rulebooks
User: nuku_v / DateTime: 2011-06-08 12:56:37

[quote]How is progress going on automatic transcription of online games for author use?[/quote] Huh?

The error seems like it might be related to restoring the game. Too many restores, and boom. Any idea why this might be?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2557&start=0#p17805
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Issue Too many Rulebooks
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-08 13:11:15

[quote="nuku_v"][quote]How is progress going on automatic transcription of online games for author use?[/quote] Huh?[/quote]
That question was not directed at you, but at the general community. I think there's been some talk of doing it, and some people (Aaronius?) have done it with hacks. It's something I'd like to have for my own games, and it would make it much easier to debug this kind of problem.

[quote]The error seems like it might be related to restoring the game. Too many restores, and boom. Any idea why this might be?[/quote]
Although my first guess would be the same as Zarf's, this sounds like some kind of memory overflow problem. Is that possible?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2557&start=0#p17806
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Issue Too many Rulebooks
User: nuku_v / DateTime: 2011-06-08 13:16:02

It sounds 'possible', but how can I combat it? Is this something even really related to any inform code I make?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2557&start=0#p17807
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Issue Too many Rulebooks
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-06-08 13:22:18

[quote="capmikee"]That's right. Parchment is z-machine only, not glulx.[/quote]
Actually, Glulx support was added to Parchment a couple of months ago.

[quote="capmikee"]How is progress going on automatic transcription of online games for author use?[/quote]
The plugin is done and available at <a class="postlink" href="http://code.google.com/p/parchment-transcript/">http://code.google.com/p/parchment-transcript/</a>, but the plugin itself doesn't support Glulx yet; Glulx support is almost ready but it doesn't save single-key input correctly at the moment so I haven't made it available yet.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2557&start=0#p17808
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Issue Too many Rulebooks
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-06-08 13:25:54

[quote="nuku_v"]It sounds 'possible', but how can I combat it? Is this something even really related to any inform code I make?[/quote]
The most probable explanation is that you have a circular reference somewhere that puts the rulebooks in an infinite loop, like "Instead of doing something when scene X is happening: try jumping" except less obvious of course. The first step is to reproduce the bug so that you can test it yourself. When you know what situation triggers the bug, you can narrow it down or you can try typing RULES ON in the game (inside Inform IDE) so you'll see what rules are involved in the loop.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2558&start=0#p17809
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The scene begins when...
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-08 13:32:22

I don't think anyone here is going to criticize you for not reading the documentation closely enough. Although Jim's book seems pretty good, the built-in documentation is notoriously poor. I consider this forum to be the primary source of documentation!

Success and failure of actions takes some time to understand. Here's a summary:

The command "stop the action" and "rule fails" are roughly equivalent. They will abort the current action whether you're in the check, carry out, or report rulebook. Not only will the current rulebook halt, but none of the following action specific rulebooks will execute. Therefore, it is a bad idea to use these phrases in a carry out or report rule.

If you "silently try" an action, the check and carry out rulebooks will run, but the report rulebook will not.

A rulebook has a default outcome. All the action specific rulebooks have a default of "continue the action," which means the same as "make no decision."

The Before rulebook also defaults to "continue the action," but the Instead and After rulebooks stop the action by default (Instead stops the action with failure, and After stops the action with success). Before, Instead, and After rulebooks can apply to multiple actions (e.g. "doing something," "examining or touching") - check, carry out and report rules only apply to a single action (e.g. "examining").

This is the order of action processing rulebooks:

[b]Before[/b]
[b]Instead[/b]
check
carry out
[b]After[/b]
report

An action is considered successful if it makes it through the entire check rulebook without a "stop the action" or "rule fails." You can abort an action and call it a success by saying "rule succeeds." Here's a twist I discovered when playing around: an action is also considered successful if a check rule triggered a "try" that ended in success, even if the triggering rule exited with an "instead" or "stop the action." "Rule fails" always causes the action to fail, though, and this is seems to be the default for Instead rules.

The "actions" debugging command is really useful in this kind of case - it will tell you what actions are triggered, and whether each one was successful.

One last note: "we have examined the notebook" is only true if the action was successful, but "examining the notebook" is true even if it failed. A warning, though - the latter phrase is only true if a command was parsed as the action - it won't be true if the action was triggered by a "try" phrase.

Here's an example:
[code]Test is a room.

A newspaper is in test.

Check touching:
	instead try examining the noun.
		
Every turn when we have touched the newspaper:
	say "You successfully touched the newspaper."
	
Every turn when examining the newspaper:
	say "You tried examining the newspaper."
	
test me with "actions/touch newspaper/x newspaper"[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2557&start=10#p17810
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Issue Too many Rulebooks
User: nuku_v / DateTime: 2011-06-08 13:39:46

You can't save and restore from the IDE.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=30#p17811
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-06-08 13:42:07

[quote="Trumgottist"]I haven't used libmodplug, but it seems strange if the position is an arbitrary value.[/quote]Well, yes, you're right: the value returned can be related to a position in the file. I'm just a little uncomfortable with assuming that, for any given sound format, all players will have some way to set and get a position in that sound, and that a particular value will have the same meaning for all players of a particular format.

On reflection, if we did any of this, I think I'd prefer a way to just pause and resume a Glk sound channel.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2557&start=10#p17812
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Issue Too many Rulebooks
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-06-08 13:51:47

[quote="nuku_v"]You can't save and restore from the IDE.[/quote]
Why is that an issue?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2557&start=10#p17813
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Issue Too many Rulebooks
User: nuku_v / DateTime: 2011-06-08 13:57:09

Those who run into the problem seem to be restoring their game a lot.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=30#p17814
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-08 13:58:00

[quote="DavidK"]On reflection, if we did any of this, I think I'd prefer a way to just pause and resume a Glk sound channel.[/quote]

If pause/resume doesn't require specifying the current position, that sounds fine. Knowing nothing about sound libraries, I naively assumed that it would require that.

Note, though, that a simple pause/resume Glk call couldn't emulate a seek function. (Less important to me personally, but it might open up possibilities.)

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2557&start=10#p17815
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Issue Too many Rulebooks
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-08 13:59:03

[quote="nuku_v"]You can't save and restore from the IDE.[/quote]

You can in the Mac OS IDE; I assume you must be on another platform.

In any case, unless you've hacked some code into save-restore, it is very unlikely that this has anything to do with that functionality.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2580&start=0#p17816
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: notifyRemove, exit, and group actions
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-08 14:35:43

[quote="bcressey"]Eric beat me to it, but this should work.

It uses a custom tadsSay function to redirect any output from moving the individual items to the end.[/quote]
I suspect (not sure) that in many cases, notifyRemove on the container will already have printed something -- depending on the author, via a double-quoted string. So reiterating the failure to move in the manner you're showing would cause a redundant output.

I need to do more testing, but since this code is intended to be wrapped up in an extension, I don't want the author to have to alter his/her normal code any more than is unavoidable.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2557&start=10#p17817
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Issue Too many Rulebooks
User: nuku_v / DateTime: 2011-06-08 14:51:18

Yup, windows.

Only seems to happen while using quixe, so far the reports have been. Which is why I thought it was a quixe bug perhaps.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2557&start=10#p17818
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Issue Too many Rulebooks
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-08 15:01:18

Actually, Parchment is itself using Quixe, at least if this is a Glulx game (as it seems to be). So it's not likely that there's a Quixe bug that you're avoiding by using Parchment. But I don't know anything about the details of the integration (what's Parchmenty about Parchment + Quixe?), so I could be wrong about that.

In any case, given the nature of the error, I would presume very strongly that the problem is in your code. Regardless of where the issue comes from, you need to figure out how to replicate it before you're going to be able to tackle it.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2557&start=10#p17819
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Issue Too many Rulebooks
User: nuku_v / DateTime: 2011-06-08 15:11:24

Parchment brought in so many other problems I had to abandon it before I could see if it cleared up the rulebook issue or not. Blarg, more testing ahoy.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2580&start=0#p17820
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: notifyRemove, exit, and group actions
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-06-08 15:14:54

Changing the t3SetSay() function causes any output that would normally be printed to be intercepted, so there's not much redundancy. It produces output like this.

[quote]
STORAGE ROOM
Old books are heaped in piles on the floor.

The SHELF contains a SCROLL, a POTION, a SEALING WAX, and a GRIMOIRE.

> empty shelf
You remove the POTION and the SEALING WAX from the SHELF.  However, you are unable to move the SCROLL and the GRIMOIRE.  The scroll crumbles to dust when you touch it.  The grimoire is too heavy to lift.
[/quote]

As opposed to:

[quote]
STORAGE ROOM
Old books are heaped in piles on the floor.

The SHELF contains a SCROLL, a POTION, a SEALING WAX, and a GRIMOIRE.

> empty shelf
The scroll crumbles to dust when you touch it.  The grimoire is too heavy to lift.  You remove the POTION and the SEALING WAX from the SHELF.
[/quote]

The "however" clause is a bit over the top, but IMO it reads much better to print the failures at the end rather than the beginning.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2581&start=0#p17821
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Problems with the verb MOVE
User: StridingDragon / DateTime: 2011-06-08 17:26:29

I'm having trouble with, what seems to me, a very trivial thing. I want to allow the player to move something. so, in my code I inserted

[code]
Instead of moving the corpse, say "I'd rather not."
[/code]

Unfortunately Inform balks at this. Even though the parser clearly understands the verb "move" I can't seem to use "moving" to override behavior.

So I though I'd try adding this…
[code]
Understand "move [something]" as moving.
[/code]

But for some reason, Inform balks at that, too.

Am I missing something here? Move is such a basic word that I think it has to be part of the overall database, and I can't imagine I'm the first one to encounter this problem, but for some reason I just can't seem to get it to work for me or find information about it.

Thanks for any suggestions.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2581&start=0#p17822
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problems with the verb MOVE
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-06-08 17:34:44

The problem is that "move" is a parser synonym for "push," and in your code, you need to refer to actions by their root name: "instead of pushing the corpse".  The way that I figured out that "pushing" is the ur-action here (I guessed, but did not know off the top of my head) was that I went to the Index, then looked at the "Actions" tab, and searched that page for "move."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2581&start=0#p17823
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problems with the verb MOVE
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-06-08 17:38:03

I should say that another way to figure out the name of the action being invoked is, in playing-the-game mode, to type "actions," which will list the actions taking place by their internal names.  Like so:
[quote]>actions
Actions listing on.

>move corpse
[pushing the corpse]
That would be less than courteous.
[pushing the corpse - failed the can't push people rule]
[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2581&start=0#p17824
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problems with the verb MOVE
User: StridingDragon / DateTime: 2011-06-08 17:39:49

Thanks so much, guys. To use "Actions" on this never occurred to me - doh, stupid beginner mistake, I guess.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2582&start=0#p17825
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: conditionally moving hidden objects
User: zodraz / DateTime: 2011-06-08 17:54:49

HELP!

I want to move an item A (Hidden, OpenableContainer) from nil to the underside of item B (OpenableContainer, with an underside component), the trigger is an AskTopic in a NPC.  Moving item A into B is works fine but how do I move it underneath?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2545&start=10#p17826
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Two days with IF
User: Sig / DateTime: 2011-06-08 18:00:11

We had to design and write CYOA stories once when I was in 4th or 5th grade (so maybe 10 or 11 years old).  We got to map out the decision trees and do the cover art and bind the books ourselves.

Unfortunately, the teacher required that all of the decision trees eventually collapse back to a single ending (!).  The thinking was that this would prevent it from getting too complex for us.  I spent more time trying to write an elegant ending that somehow made sense for my protagonist (a mouse trying to compete in a hot air balloon race) than I did anything else, and I'm still a little annoyed over two decades later that I wasn't allowed to go wherever I wanted with it.

But it was clearly a memorable exercise nonetheless.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=30#p17827
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-08 18:58:32

Pause and resume (of a channel) sounds like it will be easier for everybody to implement.

[quote]I could improve it quite a lot if I could figure out how to give an NSTask its own run loop to listen on for timer events, but I pounded my head against that particular wall for a long time with no luck. I know there must be a way to use CFRunLoop for this purpose.[/quote]

I agree. I haven't done much with runloops, but this is indeed what they're for. 

For a single-threaded interpreter, the model would be to do work until the glk_select() call, at which point you call CFRunLoopRun (on the thread's run loop). The loop will run on its own, executing the callbacks for all the timers and event sources you set up, until one of them needs to cause a Glk event, at which point you stash the event data somewhere and call CFRunLoopStop. The interpreter then returns from CFRunLoopRun, looks at the stashed event data, and continues doing VM work.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2579&start=0#p17828
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Best way to implement a background image?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-08 19:09:17

Yes, you can definitely do this in one of the javascript web interpreters (Parchment or Quixe, depending on whether you have a z-code or a glulx game). The image would be rendered by the browser, so it doesn't matter whether the interpreter itself supports graphics (neither Parchment or Quixe does, in fact). Here's an example of a game running in Quixe with a (presumably nondynamic) CSS background:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.archimedes.plus.com/public/makeitgood/play.html">http://www.archimedes.plus.com/public/m ... /play.html</a>

So, that's easy. The trick comes in getting the game to communicate with the HTML/CSS/Javascript layer. Here's one way it could be done:

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1623">viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1623</a>

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2583&start=0#p17829
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Unfortunate software naming synergy
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-08 19:13:01

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.quixey.com/">http://www.quixey.com/</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2581&start=0#p17830
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problems with the verb MOVE
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-06-08 19:15:40

It's a pretty common mistake, so you shouldn't feel bad about it at all.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2583&start=0#p17831
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Unfortunate software naming synergy
User: George / DateTime: 2011-06-08 20:14:44

[emote]:)[/emote]

btw, <a class="postlink" href="http://www.quixey.com/#q=interactive+fiction">http://www.quixey.com/#q=interactive+fiction</a> is interesting.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2570&start=10#p17832
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor: A new Linux and Mac OS X port of the Hugo engine
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-08 20:58:14

I uploaded Linux and Mac versions of beta 4. (FMOD is used for the sound implementation.) I am not really sure whether these will run on OS X 10.5. I can only verify for 10.6. If you have a 10.5 installation, especially PowerPC, please let me know if it runs.

Note that currently, the Mac version has a weird bug: fixed-width text layout can be messed up. Try different fixed-width font sizes if that happens. This does not happen on Linux.

The only other change compared to beta 3 is support for smart formatting (typographical quotes and such.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=30#p17833
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-08 22:22:38

...If the problem is passing data into and out of the NSTask, then I think you create a couple of NSPipes and use them for stdin and stdout. Inside the NSTask, stdin can be hooked up as a data source for your run loop.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2582&start=0#p17834
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: conditionally moving hidden objects
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-08 23:34:50

[code]myWidget.moveInto(cabinet.subUnderside);[/code]

I found the correct terminology on p. 81 of "Learning TADS 3."

A second comment, though ... if the item is still !discovered, why not just have it be in the underside to begin with? All you should need to do is call myWidget.discover() in the AskTopic.

To do this, if your AskTopic is also a StopEventList (because you need more than one response to the player's question), you may need to use a short-form anonymous function (the syntax for which is on p. 131):

[code]+AskTopic, StopEventList @someTopic
    [
        'First answer. ',
        {: "Second answer, blah blah blah<<myWidget.discover()>>. " },
        'Final answer, which repeats. '
    ]
;[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2584&start=0#p17835
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: More Silly I7 Build Errors
User: somekidwithhtml / DateTime: 2011-06-08 23:44:06

Okay, what am i doing wrong here?
[quote]In Section 3- Things:

Problem. You wrote 'The Trophy is in the Trophy Case'  : but this asks to put something inside itself, like saying 'the bottle is in the bottle'.

 See the manual: 3.5 > Kinds

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem. You wrote 'The description of the Trophy is "A large golen trophy. The type you see in sports."'  , but in another sentence 'The description of the Trophy Case is "A wooden case with glass doors. Pretty simple."'  : but this looks like a contradiction, because the same property seems to be being set in each of these sentences, but with a different outcome.
 
[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2580&start=0#p17836
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: notifyRemove, exit, and group actions
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-08 23:48:54

This is deeper than I understand. I had never run into t3SetSay(val), but if you're setting it to the say function, won't it stay that way for the rest of the game ... and in that case, will there be any side effects?

Or is it the say function already? If so, then you seem to be causing it to re-order the stuff it's preparing to output, but I wouldn't even know where to look to find an explanation of how that works. It's probably in the System Manual somewhere....

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2584&start=0#p17837
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More Silly I7 Build Errors
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-06-09 00:10:50

It looks like you're running into the issue discussed [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2368]here[/url].  The simplest solution is probably to make sure that you declare the trophy before the case, say by adding a line [code]The trophy is a thing.[/code] early on.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2580&start=0#p17838
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: notifyRemove, exit, and group actions
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-06-09 02:15:50

t3SetSay is documented in the System Manual article on [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/sysman/dispfn.htm]display functions[/url].

The first t3SetSay line is the custom function. It won't affect any messages that already use the transcript, but it will catch the output from double-quoted strings and add them to the transcript using reportAfter. AFAIK there's no other way to intercept double-quoted strings, so it's a handy trick to have.

The second t3SetSay line changes the behavior back to normal. 'say' is the [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/libref/source/misc.t.html#756]default adv3 display function[/url]; not sure if that's documented somewhere. I had to search the source code to find it.

So the transcript redirect is only in effect during the foreach loop, when objects might be printing stuff to the screen in an uncontrolled way.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2579&start=0#p17839
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Best way to implement a background image?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-06-09 04:30:04

[quote="tove"]I don't have an answer for you, sorry, but I just want you to know that I would spend at least five minutes playing the hypothetical game for which your placeholder text was the actual text.  Very [i]If on a winter's night a traveler[/i].[/quote]

Hear hear.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2585&start=0#p17840
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: i7
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-06-09 06:46:38

[quote]Index map with EPS file.[/quote]

Again, I find references in the documentation that does not produce anything but error messages. Does anybody know how to make this work?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2582&start=0#p17841
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: conditionally moving hidden objects
User: zodraz / DateTime: 2011-06-09 07:25:00

#@$%!, problem solved.  I was using the full room name instead of just the underside name.

The item starts out in nil, so if the pc searches the location before talking to the npc, he won't find anything, hence the AskTopic trigger to move it.

By the way the code on p.81 is just a bit different to the code for underside in the html tourguide, which is the one I am using.  The learning tads 3 version looks to be a lot clearer.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2584&start=0#p17842
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More Silly I7 Build Errors
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-09 08:19:26

I once ran into a similar (although not quite the same) problem.  In my case, it was not a noun that had a name which was subsumed in a longer name for another noun, but rather an action whose name was a subset of the name of a noun.

Specifically, I tried to create an object called a "drinking straw."  I immediately ran into a bunch of errors; I'm not sure, but I think the problem flowed (no pun intended) from the fact that there is also a (built-in) action called drinking.  I never bothered to run this down, since it was easier just to change the name of the object to "soda straw," after which it compiled just fine.

I'm curious, however: does anybody know of a way to deal with this without having to use non-overlapping names?

Thanks.


Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2556&start=10#p17843
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Framework Question
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-09 09:56:07

Here's another thread about the same problem:

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1747">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1747</a>

I can't remember the details, but I think you can avoid the problem by being careful about how you create your tables.

In the meantime, perhaps someone should ask Eric Eve to update his extensions with some hints and examples about avoiding the problem. I found an email address for him at Harris Manchester College and wrote there, but I don't know if it's current.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2567&start=0#p17844
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Timing Issue
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-09 10:39:46

Sounds like you're already addressing the other issue I just bugged you about. Sorry about the cyber-stalking!  [emote]:oops:[/emote] 

Mike

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2574&start=0#p17845
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Redirecting a command to a part of an object
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-09 10:50:28

[quote="kanato"][code]
A dresser is a kind of supporter.  A drawer is a kind of container.  A drawer is part of every dresser. Drawers are openable.  Drawers are usually closed.  The description of a dresser is usually "It's a rather plain dresser.  The drawer is [if the drawer is open]open[else]closed[end if]." The description of a drawer is usually "The drawer is [if the drawer is open]open.[else]closed.[end if]".[/code][/quote]

You've also done the same thing with your descriptions. You may find that drawers are described as open when a dresser elsewhere is open. To refer to an object in its description, you need to call it "the item described." Sometimes you can get away without mentioning the object at all by saying "if closed," but I don't understand that well enough to tell you when it works.

Try this:
[code]The description of a dresser is usually "It's a rather plain dresser. The drawer is [if an open drawer is part of the item described]open[else]closed[end if]." The description of a drawer is usually "The drawer is [if open]open.[else]closed.[end if]"[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2584&start=0#p17846
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More Silly I7 Build Errors
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-06-09 11:01:27

Re-phrased like this it compiles: 
[code]A thing called the Trophy is in the Trophy Case.[/code]

You may still be in for disambiguation problems when playing the game, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2584&start=0#p17847
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More Silly I7 Build Errors
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-09 11:01:56

There are some extensions that allow the game-parser to deal with this (Numbered Disambiguation Choices comes to mind), but most of the time, you have to fix it with bullheaded rigor. And sometimes name-changing.

[code]The case is a container. The printed name of the case is "trophy case". Understand "trophy" as the trophy case.

Does the player mean taking the trophy case: It is very unlikely
Does the player mean inserting the trophy case into something: It is very unlikely
Does the player mean... etc[/code]
I've heard murmurings about wanting Inform to assign different properties to different synonyms for the same thing, but this is a very anti-I6 idea. Feel free to poke around uservoice for suggestions related to it.

One thing I'd like to see is a phrase similar to "the player's command includes..." but for each specific noun - e.g. something like this:

[code]Is the item described the trophy case when the noun phrase does not include "case": It is unlikely.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2585&start=0#p17848
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: i7
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-09 11:47:04

[code]
"Test Case" by Andrew Plotkin.

The Kitchen is a room.

Index map with EPS file.
[/code]

This works and generates a file called "Inform Map.eps". (On my desktop -- this is a Mac.) What problems are you having? Are you getting an error message?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2574&start=0#p17849
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Redirecting a command to a part of an object
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-09 11:49:57

Rule of thumb: if you've declared "drawer" as a kind of thing, then writing "the dresser" in your code is a bug. You will only ever use "a dresser", or sometimes "all dressers" or "a random dresser". Never "the".

Same goes for "the thing", "the room", etc.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2556&start=10#p17850
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Framework Question
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-09 12:00:41

After some indirect encouragement from Eric Eve, I had another look at the problem with the Conversation Rules extension. I got "The Tribune's Report" to work correctly by changing [b]two[/b] things:

1. Change the name of the "subject" table column to "subject-column." This seems to resolve confusion between the table column and the kind defined in Epistemology.

2. Explicitly state the kind of the subject-column in the Table of Null Response:

[code]Table of Null Response
subject-column (object)		response rule			response table	suggest
yourself		default no response rule		table-name	0
[/code]

Eric, what do you think about this change? It would break the API for earlier versions (too bad there's no "include version no greater than 7" directive in I7...) but since the extension is currently broken, I don't know how serious an issue that is.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2574&start=0#p17851
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Redirecting a command to a part of an object
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-09 12:06:57

[quote="zarf"]Rule of thumb: if you've declared [u]"drawer"[/u] as a kind of thing, then writing "the dresser" in your code is a bug. You will only ever use "a dresser", or sometimes "all dressers" or "a random dresser". Never "the".

Same goes for "the thing", "the room", etc.[/quote]
[I assume you meant [u]"dresser"[/u] and not [u]"drawer."[/u]]

The I7 compiler doesn't produce warnings, does it? Then again, if it's really always a bug, then it should be a compiler error. Are there any suggestions for this on uservoice?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=40#p17852
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-06-09 12:16:09

I shied away from the NSPipe method early in development and I forget exactly why. I recall reading some scattered reports online that NSPipes had a relatively low lifetime data limit - some tens of MB before they get clogged. I switched to Distributed Objects for moving data around, in much the same way cocoaglk does it except not as well engineered.

I took another crack at CFRunLoop last night, and learned it's safe to send Mach messages inside a signal handler (!!). So CFRunLoop can listen on a Mach port and wake up when it sees the message. Now everything works great - hardware sleep, lower CPU when idle - except timers, which is convenient since I have to rewrite that code anyhow.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2585&start=0#p17853
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: i7
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-06-09 12:29:43

(Posts like this are a pet peeve of mine and I've been seeing more and more of them.)

To the OP:

Your subject line is totally uninformative. (Better example might have been: "I7: Trouble with index map feature.")

You don't give the full context to your problem. (Better would have been to show your code or at least some of it. We can't tell from your quoted section if you're quoting the manual or your own code. If the above line is all you have in your code, yeah, it ain't going to work.)

You don't indicate what error messages you are seeing. (Better would have been "When I run the code I posted, I get the following error ....")

Think of these kinds of posts as a bug report. Steps to reproduce. Expected results. Actual results.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2531&start=0#p17854
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Is hugo any easier than Tads 2 or 3
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-06-09 12:35:15

Having looked at all of these, if you can program in TADS 2, you can program in Hugo. If you can program in Hugo, you can program in TADS 2. The same applies for TADS 3. None is necessarily harder or easier but you do have to learn the syntax. That's the case for any programming language. All of them have constructs that you have to learn.

Is it easier to express your intent in one language or the other? Well, that's a different (and better) question. I think TADS 3 wins out in this over both TADS 2 and Hugo. It does mean there is more to learn about the language but, on the other hand, that doesn't make it "harder." It just means there is more to learn. TADS 3 has a nice library reference that, if you're willing to put in the time, makes it quite easy to traverse the library. Some people say that the time it takes to do this makes the language "harder." I disagree but your mileage may vary.

Since "harder" or "easier" is is subjective, why not just try them out and see for yourself? Then you can make your own judgment.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2545&start=10#p17855
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Two days with IF
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-06-09 15:53:58

Well, bad news.

I chose a few titles from the suggested list of short games; I prepared the documentation I wanted to give; I did a sketch of a small map so that they could build on top of it; I was actually quite excited.

Until today.

Today the school's principal told me that, due to national exams that will take place here in the following days, I won't be allowed to bring the students in.

I'm still trying to think of an alternative, but it's proving itself hard. Taking them to some other place will raise issues concerning parents authorization; an online meeting won't be the same thing. I'm kind of stuck, but I still want to do it.

Anyway, a lot of cool ideas came from this thread, and next year I can plan this up with more time, maybe even creating a group.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2545&start=10#p17856
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Two days with IF
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-09 16:06:27

It sounds like the screwed-up mindset which views testing as more important than education is pretty universal.

Teachers like yourself, who care enough to go the extra mile to come with something which can be both enjoyable for the students and a useful learning experience, are a rare and valuable resource.  Its truly a shame when the administrators stand in your way.

Good luck with next year.


Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2574&start=0#p17857
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Redirecting a command to a part of an object
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-09 16:47:37

Yes, mistyped there. :)

It's filed: <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/754190-syntax-flag-the-kind-as-an-error">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... s-an-error</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=40#p17858
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-09 16:52:45

The only discussions I see about NSPipe look like buffer size problems, not lifetime transfer problems. (Or people who are failing to read their buffers.) But if your plan works, great. :)

I am going to take this as a signal to go ahead and write up the sound API proposal.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=40#p17859
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-06-09 17:04:41

Write away. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2587&start=0#p17860
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: [log] Porting Inform 6 to Chinese
User: minus273 / DateTime: 2011-06-09 17:25:01

Hi all!

I'm trying to do a Chinese translation of Inform 6. (context: [url=http://ifiction.free.fr/taverne/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=7&start=120]IFictionFR[/url]) In order not to lose my head, I'll note my progresses and ideas here. I'll extremely appreciate if you have any ideas or comments.

I set out to add a new option (-Cu) to allow typing the program text in UTF-8. (instead of '@{304A}@{3059}@{3082}', one should be allowed to type 'おすも' directly) It quickly turned out that the current string compression mechanism isn't done for Chinese. (MAX_UNICODE_CHARS is 64 not 3000, and the compression would be quite inefficient with 3000) So currently I'm trying to change the semantics of strings: when -Cu is on, strings will become polyvalent. If a string is entirely within ISO8859-1, it will stay as compressed (E1). If the string comprises a Unicode character > 0xFF, it will be uncompressed (E2). I think this will not be a great nuisance: the major use of a string is to be printed; the printing is done with @streamstr which takes either string type.

I'll come back to say if the change works.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2587&start=0#p17861
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: [log] Porting Inform 6 to Chinese
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-09 19:28:37

I think it would be better if there were a separate string compression option to control whether strings are polyvalent. People might want to use -Cu with Roman alphabets, or even within English. (I've wanted -Cu for years now.)

For the past few years, we've mostly been adding compilation options as $SETTING entries rather than command-line switches. (Too many command-line switches!) So the string compression option could be called $COMPRESS_UNICODE_CHARS, with a default value of 1, but you'd set it to 0 for your system.

I also think the compression system will work better than you expect for Chinese text. But you can test that when you get there.

Thanks for working on this.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2579&start=0#p17862
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Best way to implement a background image?
User: Sig / DateTime: 2011-06-09 20:30:47

I would think implementation in Inform 7 could be somewhat problematic: "There is a room called a room.  A thing called a thing is in a room under a thing that is over the thing but is not the thing that you were thinking of previously.  Oh bother."

Likewise for game play.

>x thing

You're trying to induce a schizophrenic episode, aren't you?

>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2588&start=0#p17863
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Font colors in Glulx
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-06-09 22:23:16

I have been battling this off and on for awhile.  I fight with it when I don't feel like writing the story.

I am using the compass rose in a custom status bar (borrowed from Bronze) and I like the ability to show unvisited rooms in another color.  In fact, 6 different colors depending on region.  In z-code this is easy.  But in Glulx I can't even get a single color to change in the status bar.

I have used the extension Glulx Text Effects by Emily Short to try and do this.  I defined the tables like this:

[code]Section 7G (for Glulx Only)

Include Glulx Text Effects by Emily Short.

To say default letters: say roman type. 

Table of User Styles (continued)
style name	justification	obliquity	indentation	first-line indentation	boldness	fixed width	relative size	glulx color 
special-style-2	--	--	--	--	--	--	--	g-pure-red

Table of Common Color Values (continued)
glulx color value	assigned number 
g-pure-red	16711680 
[/code]

Then try to use (in the code for the compass rose):

[code]To say top rose:
	let place be the room up from the location;
	if the place is a apparent room, say "[if the place is unvisited][second custom style][end if]U   [default letters]"; otherwise say "    "; [/code]

(just a single sample line, there are many others) in the lines that write the rose marker... and nothing happens.  It compiles, but the color never changes.  I have even tried copying the tables directly from the examples (where they work) for the different styles like bold, italic, etc... and tried to apply them to the compass rose lines but nothing changes.

But, to add to my confusion... this works:

[code]RM is a room.

Gw is a room.  Gw is north of RM.

Section 7G (for Glulx Only)

Include Glulx Text Effects by Emily Short.

To say default letters: say roman type. 

Table of User Styles (continued)
style name	justification	obliquity	indentation	first-line indentation	boldness	fixed width	relative size	glulx color 
special-style-2	--	--	--	--	--	--	--	g-pure-red

Table of Common Color Values (continued)
glulx color value	assigned number 
g-pure-red	16711680 

The description of RM is "[if Gw is unvisited][second custom style][end if]U[default letters]P"; [/code]

It prints the red 'U' in "[color=#BF0000]U[/color]P" if Gw is unvisited, and "UP" if it is visited.

Which to me, seems to be basically the same thing, just not being printed in the status bar.

Why does something as simple as color have to be so difficult?  Is it because it is the status bar and not normal game text?

In z-code, it works using the basic commands for color (I have them separated into a Section 7Z) but I can not get it to work in Glulx.  Any ideas?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=40#p17864
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-10 00:29:36

The draft chapter is posted:

<a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/erkyrath/glk-dev/wiki/Glk-073-draft-spec-changes">https://github.com/erkyrath/glk-dev/wik ... ec-changes</a>

Please let me know what I got wrong. :)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2590&start=0#p17866
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Jacaranda Jim
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-06-10 03:14:16

Has anyone here ever played Jacaranda Jim by Graham Cluley and managed to get full points?  There are plenty of solutions online, but they all point to the same one which gives you a total of 2175 points out of 2400.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2587&start=0#p17867
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: [log] Porting Inform 6 to Chinese
User: minus273 / DateTime: 2011-06-10 03:21:35

[quote="zarf"]I think it would be better if there were a separate string compression option to control whether strings are polyvalent. People might want to use -Cu with Roman alphabets, or even within English. (I've wanted -Cu for years now.)

For the past few years, we've mostly been adding compilation options as $SETTING entries rather than command-line switches. (Too many command-line switches!) So the string compression option could be called $COMPRESS_UNICODE_CHARS, with a default value of 1, but you'd set it to 0 for your system.

I also think the compression system will work better than you expect for Chinese text. But you can test that when you get there.

Thanks for working on this.[/quote]

Great zarf replying in person!

Thanks for the info. I initially wanted to add a command-line option to switch the system to "Unicode mode", but neither -u nor -U is available. It's conceptually ugly to have -Cu as a "global Unicode switch", so indeed, better leave the internal workings to $SETTING entries.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2570&start=10#p17868
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor: A new Linux and Mac OS X port of the Hugo engine
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-10 08:56:58

There was an issue when trying to run in OS X 10.5 (Leopard). I believe I fixed it, so simply re-download if you're on 10.5 and couldn't get it to run; it should now work.

OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) is not affected.

(I wonder if Steve Jobs is of Native American heritage.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2570&start=10#p17869
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor: A new Linux and Mac OS X port of the Hugo engine
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-06-10 10:22:53

I tried to start a transcript, but the file dialog that popped up was for "Restore a saved game". Does the transcript command accidentally equate to restoring a game? I'm on an Intel Mac (10.6.).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2570&start=10#p17870
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor: A new Linux and Mac OS X port of the Hugo engine
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-10 10:27:48

Thanks for catching that!

No, it doesn't restore a game. The file you enter will be used to save transcripts. But this is potentially dangerous, since by default it uses a *.sav extension for the filename, which means you can overwrite your savegames by mistake! Even worse, it doesn't ask for confirmation. So I'll upload a fixed version sooner rather than later.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2591&start=0#p17871
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Alabaster / Missing Extensions
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-06-10 10:35:51

I'm trying to learn how to do complex conversation systems that drive plot. I've finally felt brave enough to tackle the source code to Alabaster given my knowledge of I7 at this point. (<a class="postlink" href="http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/Alabaster/source.html">http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/Alab ... ource.html</a>) However, I see it has this line:

Include Threaded Conversation by Emily Short.

I can't find this anywhere. Since the whole game is predicated upon conversation, I'm worried about missing a whole segment that's necessary for learning. (This extension is also mentioned in the book "Creative Writing With Inform 7" but the book does say it wasn't public at the time of publishing.) 

I also see these listed in the source:

Include Collage Tools by Emily Short.
Include Gesture Variations by Emily Short.

I can't find those either.

Is it worth the time going through the code of Alabaster if some of the main extensions are missing? Or am I just not aware of where these things are? Beta extensions, maybe?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2570&start=10#p17872
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor: A new Linux and Mac OS X port of the Hugo engine
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-06-10 10:52:59

Great! (I got it working by first creating an empty file with a .sav ending; the file dialog forces you to pick an existing file.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2591&start=0#p17873
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Alabaster / Missing Extensions
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-10 11:15:35

My vague recollection is that Alabaster is an old game. Even with the extensions, it might not compile under the current rev of I7 ... but you could always email Emily and ask about the extensions.

Have you looked at Eric Eve's conversation package? IMO, that's the way to go.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2591&start=0#p17874
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Alabaster / Missing Extensions
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-10 12:02:37

As of November, Threaded Conversations hadn't been publicly released. A little discussion [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1649]here[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2592&start=0#p17875
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: WinGlulxe Difficulty
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-10 12:13:05

When last I ran WinGlulxe (that is, Glulxe.exe) in my Windows 7 machine, I had a dual monitor setup, and the interpreter window was over in the other monitor. As a result, when I try to run a game today, it's invisible. I know it's in the other monitor, because when I minimize and restore the game from the taskbar, the window zooms on and off the left side of my screen.

I uninstalled the program from the Control Panel, downloaded the new version, and installed it. The problem persists.

Therefore, the preferences file didn't get overwritten by the fresh install. I do understand that there are many circumstances in which one doesn't [i]want [/i]the preferences overwritten, so this is not precisely an installer bug (though it would be nice if the installer would query the user). But it's clearly a bug in WinGlulxe, because the software should query the system about the monitor configuration and rewrite its own preferences if the window location is in a monitor that isn't connected.

The question remains: Where is the preferences file stored, so I can trash it? It doesn't seem to be in C:\Program Files(x86)\WinGlulxe.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2592&start=0#p17876
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: WinGlulxe Difficulty
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-10 12:19:13

It's probably either in "\Users\YOU\Local Settings", or in the registry. In that case, run regedit.exe and search for "glulxe".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2592&start=0#p17877
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: WinGlulxe Difficulty
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-10 12:41:17

There's no Local Settings folder in my user folder. There are several glulxe entries in the Registry, and I would have no way of knowing which of them might be the source of the problem. At the moment, for instance, I'm looking at an entry for Glulxe.exe under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT/Local Settings/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Shell/MuiCache. There's also an entry under WGlulxGame/shell/open/command.

Before deleting either of them, I'd like to have a better idea what I'm doing....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2588&start=0#p17878
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Font colors in Glulx
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-06-10 12:46:43

I ran the source text you posted, and all of the Glk calls looked fine.  So there's nothing wrong with your Inform code.  My best guess is that your interpreter has opted not to honor color in text grid windows, which is legal according to the specification: [quote="Section 5.5.1 of the Glk Spec"]There are no guarantees of how styles will look, but you can make suggestions.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2592&start=0#p17879
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: WinGlulxe Difficulty
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-10 12:48:36

[quote="Jim Aikin"]There's no Local Settings folder in my user folder.[/quote]
There is. It's just that Windows chooses not to show it to you. You need to tweak your setting to show hidden files and folders. Or you can enter it manually by typing its URL in Explorer's location bar.


[quote]There are several glulxe entries in the Registry, and I would have no way of knowing which of them might be the source of the problem. At the moment, for instance, I'm looking at an entry for Glulxe.exe under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT/Local Settings/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Shell/MuiCache. There's also an entry under WGlulxGame/shell/open/command.

Before deleting either of them, I'd like to have a better idea what I'm doing....[/quote]

It's usually in "HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2592&start=0#p17880
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: WinGlulxe Difficulty
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-06-10 12:50:31

Windows 7 should be smart enough to figure this out. If you right-click the desktop and choose "Screen resolution", does it show only the one monitor?

If so, do you have any third-party utilities installed that manage screen / display settings? OEMs often like to install these and mostly they are garbage. (The Lenovo one is particularly awful.)

If not, we'll need to figure out why it thinks the second display is still attached.

Or you could just switch to Windows Git  [emote];)[/emote].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2588&start=0#p17881
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Font colors in Glulx
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-06-10 13:12:36

Glulx Text Effects only sets the styles associated with text buffer windows, not text grid windows. Since the status bar is a text grid window, it has no effect.

If you look at the Glulx Text Effects source, you can see Inform 6 code like
[code]
[ SetColor S N;
	glk_stylehint_set(wintype_TextBuffer, S, stylehint_TextColor, N); 
];
[/code]To have any effect on the status bar, you'd want similar code, but with "wintype_TextBuffer" replaced with "wintype_TextGrid".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2592&start=0#p17882
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: WinGlulxe Difficulty
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-10 13:14:43

Yes, it shows only the one monitor. I clicked the Detect Monitors button and then clicked Okay, just to be sure. That didn't help. No third-party helpers are installed -- this is a stock HP Win7 Home Premium 64-bit system.

The Control Panel : Folder Options : View list shows me that hidden files and folders ARE being shown.

When I try typing "\Local Settings" in the URL bar for Windows Explorer, I get an "Access is denied" Error box.

In RegEdit, I can look at HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/WinGlulxe. There are two keys in that folder -- (Default) and Startmenu_Folder. The value of (Default) is not set, so that's not likely to be it. There's nothing else that I'm spotting in HKEY_CURRENT_USER, but of course I didn't pore through every sub-folder.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2588&start=0#p17883
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Font colors in Glulx
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-10 13:30:17

David is correct that Glulx Text Effects is limited to changing text buffer window colors. The [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Erik%20Temple/Glulx%20Status%20Window%20Control/source.txt]Glulx Status Window Control[/url] extension is the easiest way to get control over the status window.

Side note: When the new Glulx style system is ready for implementation in I7, we need to handle it better, with a far more unified approach to making Glulx functionality available.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2592&start=0#p17884
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: WinGlulxe Difficulty
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-10 13:38:34

You can delete HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/WinGlulxe completely. It's just settings and will be recreated when you run the WinGlulxe the next time. Hopefully this will fix the issue.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2592&start=0#p17885
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: WinGlulxe Difficulty
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-10 13:41:02

Btw, there's a trick you can do to get at the second screen. Most monitors have two video inputs, usually a DVI and SUB-D, and sometimes two DVI ports. And most graphics cards have two video outputs. Connect both to the same monitor and use the monitor's controls to switch to other input. That other input should be the second desktop screen.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2592&start=0#p17886
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: WinGlulxe Difficulty
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-10 13:43:24

[quote="RealNC"]You can delete HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/WinGlulxe completely. It's just settings and will be recreated when you run the WinGlulxe the next time. Hopefully this will fix the issue.[/quote]
No luck yet. I was able to delete the StartMenu item from that Registry folder, but I couldn't delete the (Default) item, as I got an error box saying "Unable to delete all specified values." Since the value for that item is not set, this is perhaps not too surprising.

In any event, the problem persists.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2592&start=0#p17887
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: WinGlulxe Difficulty
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-10 13:44:34

[quote="RealNC"]Btw, there's a trick you can do to get at the second screen. Most monitors have two video inputs, usually a DVI and SUB-D, and sometimes two DVI ports. And most graphics cards have two video outputs. Connect both to the same monitor and use the monitor's controls to switch to other input. That other input should be the second desktop screen.[/quote]
...or I could just get out the second screen, hook it up, and drag the Glulxe window over to the main window. But I'm hoping for a software solution, since it's a software problem.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2592&start=10#p17888
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: WinGlulxe Difficulty
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-06-10 13:45:40

The registry key you want to delete is "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Glk Applications\Glulxe".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2588&start=0#p17889
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Font colors in Glulx
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-06-10 13:45:43

Oh, good catch.  Sorry about my misleading answer.  I saw the glk_stylehint_set call but didn't look closely at the arguments.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2592&start=10#p17890
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: WinGlulxe Difficulty
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-10 13:49:48

[quote="DavidK"]The registry key you want to delete is "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Glk Applications\Glulxe".[/quote]
That's a folder. RegEdit won't let me delete folders, only keys. And there's a whole buncha stuff in that folder -- folders for Glk Buffer Styles, Glk Grid Styles, Glk Settings, Known Games, etc.

I tried deleting the (Default) item from the Glk Applications/Glulxe folder itself, but RegEdit wouldn't let me do that.

The keys I want are probably in the Glk Settings folder. They're Window Bottom, Window Left, Window Right, and Window Top. Is it safe to delete those?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2592&start=10#p17891
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: WinGlulxe Difficulty
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-06-10 13:51:58

[quote="Jim Aikin"]That's a folder. RegEdit won't let me delete folders, only keys.[/quote]Then there's something screwed up in your system. Regedit should let you delete the whole lot.
[quote="Jim Aikin"]The keys I want are probably in the Glk Settings folder. They're Window Bottom, Window Left, Window Right, and Window Top. Is it safe to delete those?[/quote]Yes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2588&start=0#p17892
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Font colors in Glulx
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-06-10 13:53:24

[quote="ektemple"]David is correct that Glulx Text Effects is limited to changing text buffer window colors. The [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Erik%20Temple/Glulx%20Status%20Window%20Control/source.txt]Glulx Status Window Control[/url] extension is the easiest way to get control over the status window.

Side note: When the new Glulx style system is ready for implementation in I7, we need to handle it better, with a far more unified approach to making Glulx functionality available.

--Erik[/quote]

After reading through the extension docs, and playing with the demo code, that seems to do exactly what I want.  

Thanks.  This is actually going to be easier than the way I was trying to do it, and will give me even more color options than I need.  I am sure I will figure out how to use them (or misuse them).   [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2592&start=10#p17893
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: WinGlulxe Difficulty
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-10 14:03:13

Okay, that fixed it. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2593&start=0#p17894
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7 Teleportation?
User: mike111 / DateTime: 2011-06-10 14:09:24

I have been trying to create a Teleportation code for inform 7 but can't. Can someone help? 

The command would go something like this.

Go to [place].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2593&start=0#p17895
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Teleportation?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-10 14:33:59

This might be a start:

[code]Teleporting is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "go to [any room]" as teleporting. Carry out teleporting: move the player to the noun.[/code]

You'll obviously want to add some conditions, and probably some text to explain that you're teleporting; also the spacing is a bit goofed up when I test this. Also if you put in something that's not the name of the room you get an annoying "That noun did not make sense in that context." But it does what you basically want, I think. 

The key thing is the [any room] token, which allows the player to input the name of any room -- if you don't use that token, you'll get "You can't see any such thing" when you try to teleport.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2594&start=0#p17896
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Quixe not working on FF...?
User: anamri / DateTime: 2011-06-10 14:41:41

Ok, I tested my project with z-machine coding.  It implemented on the website fabulously!  Well, I decided to use a map, which means graphics... which means no z-machine.  So I compiled integrating Quixe.  Now it won't load.  I have heard that there are problems with IE, but I can't find anything about it not working on Firefox.  

What happens is when I click the link to play, it starts to load then throws up an error with a script - "quixe.min.js".  I have no idea what is going wrong.  I don't know what you may need to know to try and help, but ask and I will supply any info.

This is really frustrating!  ANY help would be greatly appreciated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2595&start=0#p17897
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Beginners visibility rule question [i7]
User: starwed / DateTime: 2011-06-10 14:43:42

I'd like for an object to "glow in the dark" -- for it to be visible to the player even in dark rooms, without actually providing enough light to see by.

Ignoring the issue of printing the room descriptions, I can't seem to get the simplest visibility rule working:
[code]Visibility rule when examining the gem: there is sufficient light.[/code]

If I then examine the gem in a dark room, I get the standard response "You can't see any such thing."  I imagine I'm just totally misunderstanding how visibility rules work, but can't seem to find anything that answers my questions in the docs/examples.  [emote]:)[/emote]

(Even if there is a much simpler way to accomplish this goal, I'd also like to understand how visibility rules work.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2594&start=0#p17898
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe not working on FF...?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-10 14:49:34

Quixe doesn't support graphics. It's a glulx interpreter, but graphics have not been implemented yet, and if you try to open a graphics window (for example), it will crash. There's some info related to how you might be able to implement the graphics in the browser with some javascript to interact with the game linked from this recent thread:

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2579&p=17828">viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2579&p=17828</a>

There have also been a number of other discussions of this, both here and at rec.arts.int-fiction, and on the Parchment newsgroup.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2579&start=0#p17899
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Best way to implement a background image?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-10 15:09:56

[quote="Sig"]I would think implementation in Inform 7 could be somewhat problematic: "There is a room called a room.  A thing called a thing is in a room under a thing that is over the thing but is not the thing that you were thinking of previously.  Oh bother."

Likewise for game play.

>x thing

You're trying to induce a schizophrenic episode, aren't you?

>[/quote]

Well, there's always [url=http://www.allthingsjacq.com/intfic_things.html]Things[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2594&start=0#p17900
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe not working on FF...?
User: anamri / DateTime: 2011-06-10 15:21:42

I'm sorry for rehashing old topics.  The reason I posted is because I searched the website (and googled for hours) and could not find anything to help.  Thank you for pointing out this thread, but it did not help with my problem.  I am not trying to use a background image, I am trying to use a game map.  Also, I got the same sort of error when trying to load the example [url]http://www.archimedes.plus.com/public/makeitgood/play.html[/url] from the link you gave that poster. 

Is there any interpreter that can implement in game graphics (like a map) onto a website?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2596&start=0#p17901
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Site with game ratings?
User: Karl / DateTime: 2011-06-10 15:26:42

I was wondering if there's a site with IF games that have user ratings and comments as well?  I am looking for games that users consider to be the best.

Failing that, I would love recommendations!  I am familiar with how to play, but haven't played any in a long time, and none that were produced in "modern times".   [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2594&start=0#p17902
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe not working on FF...?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-10 15:31:32

Sorry, I wasn't suggesting that you were rehashing old topics, just that there was more info on how to do it elsewhere. 

Anyway, this is the link I was hoping you would click through to, not the Make It Good link:

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1623">viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1623</a>

(Make It Good should not crash on loading in recent versions of Firefox; if it does, you probably have a separate issue there.)

Briefly, there's no javascript interpreter that will do this out the box; you will need to use javascript to pass data between game text and the browser. The link above discusses the implementation of a special call in Parchment to pass any kind of data (not just images). Other people have hacked together other solutions.

There is at least one other online interpreter that can do graphics, but it will require some work from you and may not be very performant. You can find out more and try out some examples here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://zmpp.sourceforge.net/games/index.html">http://zmpp.sourceforge.net/games/index.html</a>

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2596&start=0#p17903
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Site with game ratings?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-10 15:32:13

[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/]IFDB[/url] -- ratings, recommendations, reviews, and polls!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2593&start=0#p17904
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Teleportation?
User: mike111 / DateTime: 2011-06-10 15:36:29

Thanks! It worked great. I dont need to add any text btw because its not for the release but It works great for getting around in the unpublished work. THANK YOU! [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2592&start=10#p17905
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: WinGlulxe Difficulty
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-10 16:08:30

[quote="Jim Aikin"][quote="DavidK"]The registry key you want to delete is "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Glk Applications\Glulxe".[/quote]
That's a folder. RegEdit won't let me delete folders, only keys.[/quote]
Btw, that's most probably because you didn't run regedit with administrator rights and it seems you have UAC active, which limits the kind of stuff you can do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2570&start=10#p17906
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor: A new Linux/Mac OS X/Windows port of the Hugo eng
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-10 16:53:59

I uploaded beta 5 which fixes the issue. I also uploaded a Microsoft Windows build. See first post.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2594&start=0#p17907
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe not working on FF...?
User: anamri / DateTime: 2011-06-10 17:00:33

Thank you Erik, that link to ZMPP seems to be exactly what I'm looking for... only I have been trying to use it to read my story file and it does not seem to be working.  It just loads a blank page.  I haven't even tried to use it as an applet yet (not until I know it will read the file).  I am reading the usage file right now and it says, 
[code]Reading Blorb files
---------------------

Blorb files must have the same filename as their story files, with a suffix of ".blb". The
name is case-sensitive, so the name should be exactly the same way as the respective
story file.
Note: ZMPP can handle Blorb-wrapped story files which are recognized by
having either a ".zblb" or ".zblorb" extension.[/code]

I have tried running my .zblorb release file to no avail.  I tried releasing without wrapping it and using the suffix .blb - not working either.  Just to be clear here is the name of my story file "TESTING.ni"  so when I tried releasing it with the other suffix it is "TESTING.blb".

I know you said that I would have to do some work if I want to use ZMPP, and I am willing to do whatever it takes... I just don't know what work that may be.  Could you possible point me in the direction of some resourses I could turn to?  I have been all over the ZMPP site and I can't find anything.

** Update
Ok, I found out that I need ZMPP2... so I downloaded it.  I cannot find a .exe file though.  I have been searching for some sort of tutorial or use guide or manual or anything on how to use it, but I am coming up blank.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2597&start=0#p17908
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: How to implement ZMPP2 for glulx(ANSWERED)
User: anamri / DateTime: 2011-06-10 17:20:54

I thought maybe I should start this as a new topic, as my question has changed considerably.

So I downloaded it, because it looks like exactly what I need, but I can't find an .exe file.  So I searched and found a bunch of scala files in a folder labeled ZMPP2 for glulx... 

So my question is, what do I do with them?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2591&start=0#p17909
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Alabaster / Missing Extensions
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-06-10 17:51:33

Thanks, guys. If the extensions haven't been released even after eight months or so and if Alabaster won't even compile if they were available, I think I'll take a look at the Conversation extensions instead as suggested.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2570&start=10#p17910
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor: A new Linux/Mac OS X/Windows port of the Hugo eng
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2011-06-10 18:05:41

Say, there was a bug in an old Linux terp where accented characters caused the terp to crash. I am going to try to replicate that with Hugor and see what I find. Exciting news on the Windows port!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2570&start=10#p17911
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor: A new Linux/Mac OS X/Windows port of the Hugo eng
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-10 18:08:35

As far as I can tell, Hugo pretty much only supports games written using the Windows-1252 character set. So the 'terp converts all incoming text from the game from 1252 to Unicode for display. So I hope it can cope with accents.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2593&start=0#p17912
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Teleportation?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-10 18:49:54

GONEAR name_of_room also works for getting around, doesn't get compiled in a live game and doesn't require that you write any code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2460&start=10#p17913
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: New here, trying to get started on my first IF
User: Big J Money / DateTime: 2011-06-10 18:53:19

Hey cyris I just wanted to jump in quickly to say sorry, but my PC at home conked out on me.  I remembered this thread and decided to pop in to let you know!  If I can get it fixed soon, I'll try to get in touch again to see if there is anything I can help with.  Cheers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2570&start=10#p17914
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor: A new Linux/Mac OS X/Windows port of the Hugo eng
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2011-06-10 18:55:58

Hey, random question - so, when Hugo terps start up with Cryptozookeeper, the inventory window ends up looking too big. It's as if the face and location window are "centered" in between.

If I choose the Fixed-Width font Lucida Console, and put it at 8 points and refresh the screen (I go into help, come out and make a move to refresh the screen) everything lines up perfectly.

Do you know why Fixed-Width font would have a bearing on the graphics and inventory windows? I would love it if the fonts used had no effect on how the screen displays at all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2597&start=0#p17915
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: How to implement ZMPP2 for glulx
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-10 19:01:29

Did you download the compiled version from <a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/weiju/zmpp2/downloads">https://github.com/weiju/zmpp2/downloads</a> ?

You should be able to launch the zmpp-glulx.jar file in that package.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2570&start=20#p17916
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor: A new Linux/Mac OS X/Windows port of the Hugo eng
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-10 19:19:09

This is due to the way Hugo lays out the screen. It's character based. Graphics and windowing was developed later on top of that and with backwards compatibility in mind. The result is that Hugo measures the screen dimensions in terms of character cells. Just like it did for terminals in the DOS days (80x25 anyone?) And the basis for measurement is the width and height of the fixed width font; it is used as a multiplier.

So when the game requests a window with a width of, say, 50, in pixels that's 50 * width_of_fixed_font. So when you choose a smaller fixed-width font, the window size changes too.

I think the way you implemented the windows in Necrotic Drift was preferable; they didn't shift downwards, taking up valuable screen scrolling space.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2597&start=0#p17917
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: How to implement ZMPP2 for glulx
User: anamri / DateTime: 2011-06-10 19:32:09

WHEW!  Thank you so much Zarf!  That is exactly what my problem was!  It works very well as a stand-alone.  In order to use it as an applet, I know I have to put it in the same file as my story file... but do I have to alter the code in the play.html file? in order for it to use the ZMPP instead of the Quixe player? (obviously I should get rid of that anyway)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2595&start=0#p17918
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beginners visibility rule question [i7]
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-10 20:25:26

Section 12.19 of the oft-maligned documentation seems helpful here:

[quote="Writing with Inform"]We first need to remember that darkness affects what actions are even tried, as far as the player's typed commands go. If the player is in a dark room, and there is a screwdriver on the floor, the command EXAMINE SCREWDRIVER will not try any action: the screwdriver is not "in scope", which means that the parser thinks the player does not have any means of knowing it exists. (The rules for scope can be modified - see the chapter on Activities.) But let's suppose that the player types EXAMINE BOOK, and is holding the book in question. The book is now "in scope", so the action "examining the book" is tried.[/quote]

So you aren't even reaching the visibility rules in this case (unless you're holding the gem); when in darkness, anything that you don't enclose isn't in scope, so the parser treats the gem as something that isn't in the room with you (or isn't even implemented), and doesn't check for light. To change this, we need to manually place the gem in scope, as in section 17.27 of the documentation. Maybe something like this (untested):

[code]After deciding the scope of the player when the location encloses the gem: place the gem in scope.[/code] 

(This may not produce the right results if the gem is in an opaque container in the location -- I'm not sure how to handle that, you might have to write it in by hand. And I may have got the phrasing of the if-clause off anyway.) 

Once this is in, you need your visibility rule anyway (it looks like), to allow examining to succeed even though you're in darkness.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2597&start=0#p17919
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: How to implement ZMPP2 for glulx
User: anamri / DateTime: 2011-06-10 21:46:16

There must be some sort of instruction or manual or tutorial on getting this to run as an applet...  if anyone can help I would greatly appreciate it.  I have the story files and the .jar file loaded to the server (in the same file)... but now what???

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2588&start=0#p17920
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Font colors in Glulx
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-06-10 21:53:21

Okay... I can get the color change to work, but I am having no luck applying it to just one character.  It is all of the status bar, or nothing.  But I will keep trying.

There is one command that no matter where I use it causes a recursive type update to the status bar on loading the game (it seems to try to load it over and over, but never completes), then crashes with a message "Glulxe fatal error: Stack overflow in function call."  That command is "update the status line;".

It always dies the same way.  Without it, I can change the color of all text in the status bar (even if I just apply the change to a single character, it all changes), but even that is only on the second turn.  Before that it is all white text.  Second turn, all of the status bar text changes, even things I have set to not change...  I know there is a clue in there... and I am still searching for it.

Just an update.  As I experiment, I may come back with a real question.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2597&start=0#p17921
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: How to implement ZMPP2 for glulx
User: George / DateTime: 2011-06-10 22:53:03

You need to look up how to embed an applet into a web page. In the embed you'll set the parameters of the applet, which are (according to the usage file from the zmpp download)

[code]

**************************
Running as an applet
**************************

applet parameters:

1. story-file:
--------------
the URL of the story file, must be on the same server as the jar file

2. blorb-file (optional):
------------------------
the URL of the blorb file, must be on the same server as the jar file

3. save-to (optional):
---------------------
if set to "file", the applet will try to save a game state to the
user's file system, the default value is "memory" which saves a game
within the Java VM's memory

4. fixed-font-name/std-font-name (optional):
--------------------------------------------
the name of the standard and fixed fonts, the fixed font should be
a font with a fixed width like Courier or Monospaced

5. fixed-font-size/std-font-size (optional):
--------------------------------------------
the point size of the fixed font and the standard font. Can be set to any
integer number, however, it is recommended to set them to reasonable values
(e.g. 10-20)

6. default-background/default-foreground (optional):
----------------------------------------------------
specify default background and foreground colors for the applet.

possible values are:

- black
- red
- green
- yellow
- blue
- magenta
- cyan
- white
- gray

6. antialias (optional):
------------------------

turns the antialias for text rendering on/off.
possible values: "on", "off", "true", "false"
[/code]

The parameters are used in the object tag, something like so

[code]
<html>
<head>
<title>My Applet</title>
</head>

<body>
My Applet<br><br>
<object type="application/x-java-applet">
<param name="code" value="zmpp-1.5-preview1.jar">
<param name="blorb-file" value="my-game.gblorb">
<p>You do not have Java available, or it is disabled.</p>
</object>
</body>
</html>
[/code]

Note that there is an <applet> tag, which may work too, but it's not recommended.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2597&start=0#p17922
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: How to implement ZMPP2 for glulx
User: anamri / DateTime: 2011-06-11 01:04:49

I don't know if this is the problem or not, but that is for zmpp and I am using zmpp2 for glulx.  I did try that code (thank you for trying to work this out with me, btw!), but it didn't work... just a blank white page with the title on in.

I looked at the html for the zork game running on zmpp... (but again it's not zmpp2) it had this (I altered with my file names and my preferences):
[code]<html>
  <script language="javascript">
    function focusapplet() {
      window.document.applets[0].focus();
    }
  </script>
  <body onLoad="window.onclick = focusapplet;">
    <applet code="zmpp-glulx.jar" codebase="."
            width="640" height="400">
      <param name="story-file" value="Testing.gblorb">
      <param name="fixed-font-name" value="Courier">
      <param name="fixed-font-size" value="14">
      <param name="std-font-name" value="Times">

      <param name="std-font-size" value="14">
      <param name="default-background" value="black">
      <param name="default-foreground" value="green">
      <param name="antialias" value="true">
    </applet>
  </body>
</html>[/code]
it does use the applet tag you advised against though.  I did manage to get the java loading icon - and then error saying it couldn't find "zmpp-glulx.jar".  Although it is in the same server in the same file.  I do have a question about that am I supposed to be putting just the file name or the file path? I am not sure what else to do.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2597&start=0#p17923
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: How to implement ZMPP2 for glulx
User: George / DateTime: 2011-06-11 01:40:53

Maybe as a starting point use a Glulx game ZMPP demoes instead of Zork:

[code]

<html> 
  <head> 
  <title>ZMPP/Glulx - Dead Cities</title> 
  <script language="javascript"> 
    function focusapplet() {
      window.document.applets[0].focus();
    }
  </script> 
  </head> 
  <body onLoad="window.onclick = focusapplet;"> 
    <h1>Dead Cities</h1> 
    <applet code="org.zmpp.glulx.swing.GlulxApplet" codebase="."
            archive="zmpp-glulx-8.jar,muxm-spi-0.1.jar,tritonus-share-0.3.6.jar,jogg-0.0.7.jar,jorbis-0.0.15.jar,vorbisspi-1.0.3.jar" width="640" height="520"> 
      <param name="java_arguments" value="-Dapple.awt.graphics.UseQuartz=true -Xmx512m"> 
      <param name="story-file" value="DeadCities.gblorb"> 
    </applet> 
  </body> 
</html> 
[/code]

[quote]
Although it is in the same server in the same file. I do have a question about that am I supposed to be putting just the file name or the file path[/quote]

When you say 'same file' do you mean the same directory? If everything is in the same directory you shouldn't need to put the file path. If they're in different directories, you'll need to specify paths, or at least relative paths. 

If the above doesn't help you're probably best off contacting Wei-ju, he reads the forums sometimes but maybe not very often.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2570&start=20#p17924
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor: A new Linux/Mac OS X/Windows port of the Hugo eng
User: Roody_Yogurt / DateTime: 2011-06-11 02:12:03

Cool, it'll be nice to have the Windows build to check in on the status of this. I tried it out myself tonight. One of my games starts off with a text box that relies on fixed width spacing. I noticed that Hugo's default fixed width font (for me), Courier New, is not actually fixed width (several other fonts in my fixed width list also weren't).

Here's a link to my game for easy testing:
[url]http://roody.gerynarsabode.org/games/buny.hex[/url]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2597&start=0#p17925
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: How to implement ZMPP2 for glulx
User: anamri / DateTime: 2011-06-11 02:53:56

YES! THANK YOU!  It took me a bit, because I don't really know what I'm doing but:
[code]<html>
  <head>
  <title>ZMPP2/Glulx Testing</title>
  <script language="javascript">
    function focusapplet() {
      window.document.applets[0].focus();
    }
  </script>
  </head>
  <body onLoad="window.onclick = focusapplet;">
    <h1>Testing</h1>
    <applet code="org.zmpp.glulx.swing.GlulxApplet" 

codebase="."
            archive="zmpp-glulx.jar" width="1000" 

height="600">
      <param name="java_arguments" value="-

Dapple.awt.graphics.UseQuartz=true -Xmx512m">
      <param name="story-file" value="Testing.gblorb">
    </applet>
  </body>
</html> [/code]
[size=85]Leave this alone(I kept trying to replace it  [emote]:roll:[/emote] :
    [color=#BF0000]<applet code="org.zmpp.glulx.swing.GlulxApplet"[/color] 

This needs to be replace with the name of your .jar file:
            archive="[color=#008000]zmpp-glulx.jar[/color]" width="1000" 
height="600">

This needs to be replaced with the name of your.gblorb story:
      <param name="story-file" value="[color=#008000]Testing[/color].gblorb">
lor][/size]

Again, THANK YOU for all of the help!!   [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2588&start=0#p17926
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Font colors in Glulx
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-11 07:13:35

Sorry, I didn't really look back at your original request when I responded. Glulx Status Window Control isn't intended to give you per-style controls like Glux Text Effects does--that's why you're having so much trouble doing anything but changing all of the colors! This is the kind of thing I meant about taking a more unified approach to Glulx support in the future: Emily wasn't interested (I presume) in making Glulx Text Effects apply to the status window, so she didn't implement them. I wasn't interested in having multiple styles in my status window when I wrote Status Window Control, so I didn't implement them--and so we have an extension that purports to give you control over Glulx text styles, which doesn't cover text in the status window, and we have an extension that purports to give you control over the status window, but doesn't give you control over the text styles therein...

Anyway, here's how you can add this, using the first custom user style:

[code]Include Glulx Status Window Control by Erik Temple.

When play begins:
	now the right hand status line is "[first custom style]A[roman type]ardvark";
	set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-red;
	open the status window.

To set color for custom user style 1 in status window to (color - a glulx color value):
	(- glk_stylehint_set(wintype_TextGrid, style_User1, stylehint_BackColor, ColVal({color})); -).	


Table of Common Color Values (continued)
glulx color value	assigned number
g-red	16711680

There is a room.[/code]

If you are using Status Window Control to create a non-reversed status window, you need to use stylehint_Color in place of stylehint_BackColor in the I6 segment. Be sure to call the style before you open the status window; if you don't, you'll need to reconstruct the window before the change will take effect.

I'm not sure what you might have done to cause the stack overflow error, but you probably don't need to use the "update the status line" call. The status line is normally updated (by the library) right before input is requested. Sometimes that's not what's needed, but if your game follows the standard turn-based input flow, it should work fine.

--Erik

P.S. By the way, if this is all you want to do, then you don't need Glulx Status Window Control; you can implement it without that extension, like so:
[code]
Include Glulx Text Effects by Emily Short.

After starting the virtual machine:
	now the right hand status line is "[first custom style]A[roman type]ardvark";
	set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-red.

To set color for custom user style 1 in status window to (color - a glulx color value):
	(- glk_stylehint_set(wintype_TextGrid, style_User1, stylehint_BackColor, ColVal({color})); -).
	
Include (-

Constant glulx_colour_table = (+Table of Common color Values+);

[ ColVal c i max;
	max=TableRows(glulx_colour_table);
	for ( i=1:i<=max:i++ ) {
		if (TableLookUpEntry(glulx_colour_table, 1, i) ==  c) 
			return TableLookUpEntry(glulx_colour_table, 2, i);
	} 
];

-)	


Table of Common Color Values (continued)
glulx color value	assigned number
g-red	16711680

There is a room.
 [/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2596&start=0#p17927
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Site with game ratings?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-06-11 07:55:51

There are a number of lists of recommended games at [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Recommended_games]this link[/url], some more up-to-date than others.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1923&start=0#p17928
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Storybook
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-06-11 09:33:03

The current version of Storybook now supports an "Item" database, providing all the tools necessary to sketch out an IF object tree.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2570&start=20#p17929
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor: A new Linux/Mac OS X/Windows port of the Hugo eng
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-11 10:06:20

Thanks. I can reproduce it on my system tool. Looks like something doesn't add up in the way text widths are calculated.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2598&start=0#p17930
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: AltMenu Error
User: DrkStarr / DateTime: 2011-06-11 11:13:30

I was hoping someone could help me with this error:
[color=#004000]
[** Programming error: Across The Stars: Help System (object number 521) has a
property banner_tags, but it is longer than 2 bytes so you cannot use "." to
read **]

[** Programming error: About The Game (object number 522) has a property
banner_tags, but it is longer than 2 bytes so you cannot use "." to read **]
[/color]
One of my beta-testers found it when opening up the help menu system.  I'm not sure what interpreter was used.  I'm programming in Inform 6.31 and using AltMenu & Hints By L. Ross Raszewski

I'm not sure what's going on, if anyone can help I'd appreciate it - D

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2588&start=0#p17931
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Font colors in Glulx
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-06-11 14:54:01

I compiled your second version (because it seemed simpler for my purpose) and the result seems to be what I am looking for.  Now I just need to fold it into my code.  This is for an extension, and my goal is to make the z-machine usage look and work exactly like the Glulx.

Thank you VERY much!

As far as the stack overflow... I was testing all of the functions in Glulx Status Window Control to see what they did within my extension.  And there is one thing I have found in my time working with Inform... if there is an unusual way to crash the compiler, I will find it!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2570&start=20#p17932
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor: A new Linux/Mac OS X/Windows port of the Hugo eng
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-11 14:54:38

I uploaded beta 6, which fixes the issue reported by Roody along with a few other ones:

[list]
[*]Fixed-font text widths are now calculated correctly.[/*:m]
[*]An issue where transcript files didn't contain the player's commands has been fixed.[/*:m]
[*]The interpreter will now refrain from using font sizes that would not look good on screen. This is usually important for bitmap fonts that only have fixed sizes. Scaling those would result in ugly, pixelated font rendering.[/*:m]
[*]Other small bugfixes not worth mentioning.[/*:m][/list:u]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2588&start=0#p17933
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Font colors in Glulx
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-11 15:21:53

Excellent. If this is for an extension, you might want to consider offering both versions: one for folks that want to use Glulx Status Window Control and one for folks who don't. Personally, for example, I would prefer to have a non-reversed status line in my game. Other folks might want to be able to change their status bar color (e.g., as a health or danger meter), while others might want to have the status bar disappear for some sections of the game. You need GSWC to do any of these.*

Just something to think about. If you aren't familiar, check out Chapter 25.8 for info about how to include code conditionally based on what other extensions are installed.

--Erik

* More accurately, you need GSWC if you don't know I6 and don't want to have the hack the library...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2585&start=0#p17934
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: i7
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-06-11 16:42:58

Actually, the exchange of short messages was all it took to solve my problem. [emote]:lol:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2599&start=0#p17935
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Glimmr Canvas Animation extension (testing)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-11 16:55:02

Some of you may have seen the demos I've been posting for a new extension in the Glimmr family, Glimmr Canvas Animation. A number of people have expressed interest in testing this extension, so I thought I'd post a link here for that purpose. There is no documentation as yet, but the source code for the [url=http://glimmr.wordpress.com/2011/06/05/glimmr-animation-series-1/]two[/url] [url=http://glimmr.wordpress.com/2011/06/11/animation-demo-series-2/]demos[/url] that have been released is included, so there is some basic info to get started with. (I'll keep adding the code for the examples as I release them.)

The link below is live, by which I meant that it will update as I make changes to the extension or its documentation. I'll try to update the version/date to allow for easier comparison (e.g., as I post on June 11 2011, the version number is 1/110611). 

[url=http://goo.gl/zNcKF]Glimmr Canvas Animation[/url]

Thanks in advance for any time you have to try this out!

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2588&start=10#p17936
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Font colors in Glulx
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-06-11 18:02:14

[quote="ektemple"]Excellent. If this is for an extension, you might want to consider offering both versions: one for folks that want to use Glulx Status Window Control and one for folks who don't. Personally, for example, I would prefer to have a non-reversed status line in my game. Other folks might want to be able to change their status bar color (e.g., as a health or danger meter), while others might want to have the status bar disappear for some sections of the game. You need GSWC to do any of these.*

Just something to think about. If you aren't familiar, check out Chapter 25.8 for info about how to include code conditionally based on what other extensions are installed.

--Erik

* More accurately, you need GSWC if you don't know I6 and don't want to have the hack the library...[/quote]

I had thought of that... and had noticed how "include code conditionally based on what other extensions are installed" was used in GSCW and it seemed like a good idea for what I am doing.  So that is an idea for version 2.

So far I have it working under Glulx with red as the color for unvisited rooms, just as the original z-machine version did.  Of course I can never leave well enough alone, so I expanded the original to include 8 colors so the unvisited room color can change with region.  Green for forest, cyan for lake, yellow for desert, etc.

In the z version it looks like this:

[code]to say unvisited-mark:
if exit-colour-num is 1 begin;
  turn the background red;
 otherwise if exit-colour-num is 2;
  turn the background yellow;
 otherwise if exit-colour-num is 3;
  turn the background green;
  otherwise if exit-colour-num is 4;
  turn the background blue;
  otherwise if exit-colour-num is 5;
  turn the background magenta;
  otherwise if exit-colour-num is 6;
  turn the background cyan;
  otherwise if exit-colour-num is 7;
  turn the background black;
  otherwise if exit-colour-num is 8;
  turn the background white;
end if;[/code]

As you can see, exit-colour-num is a variable from the game that can be changed depending on the region, or current mood of the programmer.

Now I am trying to get the same effect in the Glulx code.  Red works... but I like being able to change it as needed.

So instead of:

[code]After starting the virtual machine: 
	set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-red.[/code]

I would like to be able to say:

[code]After starting the virtual machine: 
	Every turn:	
		if exit-colour-num is 1 begin;
			set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-red;
			otherwise if exit-colour-num is 2;
				set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-yellow;
			otherwise if exit-colour-num is 3;
				set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-green;
			otherwise if exit-colour-num is 4;
				set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-blue;
			otherwise if exit-colour-num is 5;
				set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-magenta;
			otherwise if exit-colour-num is 6;
				set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-cyan;
			otherwise if exit-colour-num is 7;
				set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-black;
			otherwise if exit-colour-num is 8;
				set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-white;
		end if.[/code]

But it doesn't work.. and I have tried many variations of it.  This is just the most recent version that doesn't work.  It compiles, but the color remains white.  The use of the 'if' statement has caused me problems before.  It never works the way I expect it to.  Maybe this is why you wrote GSCW... because my way just isn't possible?  Or am I looking at the problem wrong?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2588&start=10#p17937
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Font colors in Glulx
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-11 18:31:05

[quote="Seeker"]It compiles, but the color remains white....Maybe this is why you wrote GSCW... because my way just isn't possible?  Or am I looking at the problem wrong?[/quote]

Exactly so. Glulx stylehints have a major limitation in that they cannot be changed once the window is opened. Any stylehint you set on text-grid windows won't take effect until the next text-grid is opened. So, as with the Kaleidoscope example in GSCW, you need to invoke the "reconstruct the status window" phrase after changing the color, e.g.:

[code]Every turn:	
	if exit-colour-num is:
		-- 1: set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-red;
		-- 2: set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-yellow;
		-- 3: set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-green;
		-- 4: set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-blue;
		-- 5: set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-magenta;
		-- 6: set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-cyan;
		-- 7: set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-black;
		-- 8: set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-white;
	reconstruct the status window.[/code]

"Reconstruct the status window" is a GSWC phrases that closes and then reopens the status window.

Note that your original code, which has an "every turn" rule inside a "after starting the virtual machine" rule, shouldn't even compile. The starting the virtual machine is pretty much the earliest place in the game sequence that an author can intervene with I7 code; it happens before the status window opens and is therefore the place you need to set the text-grid stylehint if you aren't using GSWC. (GSWC lets you open the status window whenever you want, so the same constraint does not apply.) Of course, that makes no sense alongside an every turn rule; the first every turn rule fires long, long after the virtual machine starts.

For Glulx, you might consider letting the author set the color directly. It seems cruel to limit Glulx authors to the awful Z-machine colors when they could just as easily specify their own perfectly nice ones.

Anyway, this is a good idea for an extension; a lot of people do want to include this status bar compass, and especially for Glulx, there are some hoops to jump through right now to make it happen.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2588&start=10#p17938
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Font colors in Glulx
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-06-11 18:56:51

I had a feeling you were going to say that.

Okay, time for a re-write using GSCW.  Probably the best way anyhow.  Then the background could be changed the same way.  And that could be useful, as you mentioned.

I had to laugh at "the awful Z-machine colors" comment.  I agree, and it shouldn't be hard to add that as a feature once I get the basics worked out.

And thanks again for all of your help.  This has been bugging me for months.  Now I see a light at the end of the tunnel, not just compiler errors.   [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2588&start=10#p17939
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Font colors in Glulx
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-06-11 19:38:21

This ended up working perfect:

[code]Include Glulx Status Window Control by Erik Temple.

Table of Common Color Values (continued)
glulx color value	assigned number 
g-blue	255 
g-green	65280 
g-cyan	65535 
g-yellow	16776960 
g-magenta	16711935 
g-red	16711680 

When play begins:
	if exit-colour-num is:
		-- 1: set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-red;
		-- 2: set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-yellow;
		-- 3: set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-green;
		-- 4: set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-blue;
		-- 5: set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-magenta;
		-- 6: set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-cyan;
		-- 7: set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-black;
		-- 8: set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-white;
	open the status window;
		

To set color for custom user style 1 in status window to (color - a glulx color value):
	(- glk_stylehint_set(wintype_TextGrid, style_User1, stylehint_BackColor, ColVal({color})); -).	

Every turn:	
	if exit-colour-num is:
		-- 1: set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-red;
		-- 2: set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-yellow;
		-- 3: set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-green;
		-- 4: set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-blue;
		-- 5: set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-magenta;
		-- 6: set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-cyan;
		-- 7: set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-black;
		-- 8: set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-white;
	reconstruct the status window.[/code]

And the opening line of the game is:

[code]After starting the virtual machine: 
	now exit-colour-num is 2;[/code]

To set the color before the status window is drawn.  That is the reason for the first set of 'ifs' before opening the window.  Without this, it opened to red if I had:

[code]When play begins:
	set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-red;
	open the status window.[/code]

And didn't change until after the first turn.  Or white if I omitted the "set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-red;" line all together.

But it works.  Now to add background color change and user definable colors.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2588&start=10#p17940
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Font colors in Glulx
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-06-11 20:10:25

Okay... this works too, and is much shorter:

[code]Include Glulx Status Window Control by Erik Temple.

Table of Common Color Values (continued)
glulx color value	assigned number 
g-blue	255 
g-green	65280 
g-cyan	65535 
g-yellow	16776960 
g-magenta	16711935 
g-red	16711680 

When play begins:
	Every turn:	
	if exit-colour-num is:
		-- 1: set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-red;
		-- 2: set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-yellow;
		-- 3: set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-green;
		-- 4: set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-blue;
		-- 5: set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-magenta;
		-- 6: set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-cyan;
		-- 7: set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-black;
		-- 8: set color for custom user style 1 in status window to g-white;
	reconstruct the status window.
			
To set color for custom user style 1 in status window to (color - a glulx color value):
	(- glk_stylehint_set(wintype_TextGrid, style_User1, stylehint_BackColor, ColVal({color})); -).	[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2588&start=10#p17941
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Font colors in Glulx
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-06-11 21:01:40

Okay, back to the longer version.  I was able to create a situation where the shorter version doesn't work right during testing.

Just thought I'd add the update.   [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2557&start=10#p17942
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Issue Too many Rulebooks
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-06-11 21:24:11

I've ported GlkOte (the UI part of Quixe) to use jQuery, and have fixed the missing status line in the process, but it really needs more testing. I'd appreciate any testing the community can help with, just try it with this download of Parchment: <a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/curiousdannii/parchment/zipball/quixe">https://github.com/curiousdannii/parchm ... ball/quixe</a>

Parchment's Quixe is still fundamentally the same as Zarf's, the main difference (aside from the QlkOte port in the quixe branch) is that it uses Parchment's loading code rather than Zarf's. Which btw, now includes full support for IE! In the future though I plan to mix in more Parchment code into Quixe. For example I want to unify the code which manages getting input from the user so that both VMs feel consistent.

And in the distant future I want to write my own javascript implementation of both Glulx and Glk. And maybe even TADS. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1923&start=0#p17943
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Storybook
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-11 23:14:54

Possibly useful. Thanks for the link. My fear is that a tool like this could simply insert an extra layer of busywork between me and the story.

In most cases, once I have a plot outline I'm able to keep all of the characters, scenes, and so on straight in my head. Once in a while I have a "wait a minute, did I mention the pancake breakfast in the sky-diving scene?" moment, and tracking down the needed tidbit of information can be a chore. But that doesn't happen often enough for me to want to test-drive a tool like Storybook.

On the other hand, the process of developing a plot outline (for either IF or conventional fiction) involves a lot more thrashing and groping. I do that with a word processor, and it usually works okay, but maybe I'll try Storybook next time. That might be a reasonable use of Storybook ... dunno.

What I would want would be, for instance, if I change Ann's name to Judith, I would like the software to change it for me globally. You can do that with search-and-replace in a word processor -- but not if you've used words like "announce" and "anniversary." Not unless you want to find your outline sprinkled with Judithounce and Judithiversary. An object-oriented database might handle such a situation more gracefully.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2595&start=0#p17944
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beginners visibility rule question [i7]
User: starwed / DateTime: 2011-06-12 02:00:59

Thanks, that did it!  The generalised code I came up with is:
[code]An object is either glowing or nonradiant.  An object is usually nonradiant. 

After deciding the scope of the player while in darkness: 
	Repeat with glower running through glowing objects in location:
		Place glower in scope.
		
Visibility rule when examining a glowing object: there is sufficient light.

After printing the description of a dark room:
	Repeat with glower running through glowing objects in location:
		Say "There is a glowing [glower] here."[/code]
The bit for printing descriptions is a bit ugly, but everything seems to work fine even when opaque containers are involved.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2600&start=0#p17945
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Can I restrict character pathfinding?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-06-12 03:01:42

Say I've got a map, and a character will be plodding towards random destinations all over it, one after the other, for eternity.

Now there are some rooms I don't want them to enter. The map is such that no matter where A and B are, there's always physically a way for the person to get to B from A while avoiding the no-no rooms, but such paths will require the character to take not-the-most-direct-route.

I couldn't work out a way for the pathfinding routine to take this kind of thing into account. I could trick it if I could physically deactivate the routes into the no-no rooms temporarily (whenever paths were decided) and restore them immediately after, but I don't think you can do this. I don't think doors can act in such a manner, either?

Is there a way to do what I'm thinking about here? I wondered if it might be relations, though I imagined that would take a lot of setting up.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2601&start=0#p17946
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: Fractions
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-12 03:45:45

How do I handle fractions? I have an integer variable which I want to be rounded of itself x 1.1 (100 becomes 110). Any help appreciated.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2600&start=0#p17947
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I restrict character pathfinding?
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2011-06-12 04:08:36

You need to define an adjective that defines whether a room is usable for a path or not, for example passable or impassable, then you can give the impassable property for rooms you don't want included in the path, and instruct the pathfinding code to use only passable rooms:

[code]
A room can be passable or impassable. A room is usually passable.

To take the next step to (destination - a room):
   let way be the best route from the location to destination through passable rooms;
   try going way.
[/code]

-- Eric

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2601&start=0#p17948
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Fractions
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2011-06-12 04:21:25

If all you need is the integer that's 1.1 times another integer rounded to the nearest integer, you could simply add one tenth of the original integer to itself:

[code]
The Place is a room.

Instead of jumping:
   let num be 100;
   now num is num + num / 10;
   say "Num is now [num]."
[/code]

If you need something more complicated than that you might want to use [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Michael%20Callaghan/Fixed%20Point%20Maths/index.html]the Fixed Point Maths[/url] extension by Michael Callaghan.

-- Eric Eve

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2600&start=0#p17949
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can I restrict character pathfinding?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-06-12 04:34:34

Thanks Eric. That makes it really easy.

- Wade

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2601&start=0#p17950
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Fractions
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-12 04:47:26

Guess that was way easier than I thought it was. Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2595&start=0#p17951
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beginners visibility rule question [i7]
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-12 05:48:52

[quote="starwed"]Thanks, that did it!  The generalised code I came up with is:
[code]An object is either glowing or nonradiant.  An object is usually nonradiant. 

After deciding the scope of the player while in darkness: 
	Repeat with glower running through glowing objects in location:
		Place glower in scope.
		
Visibility rule when examining a glowing object: there is sufficient light.

After printing the description of a dark room:
	Repeat with glower running through glowing objects in location:
		Say "There is a glowing [glower] here."[/code]
The bit for printing descriptions is a bit ugly, but everything seems to work fine even when opaque containers are involved.[/quote]

Unfortunately, I think what's going on is that you're missing out on anything in any container or on any supporter. If you try this as your test scenario with that code:

[code]Kitchen is a dark room. A counter is in kitchen. A gem is on the counter. The gem is glowing.
[/code]

the gem doesn't show up in the room description. The issue is that "in location" only applies to things that are in the location and nothing else; the gem isn't in the location because it's on the counter. We can catch this by changing "in location" to "enclosed by the location," but then we get the things that are in opaque containers too, as we can see by adding this:

[code]A refrigerator is an opaque closed container in the kitchen. An egg is in the refrigerator. The egg is glowing.[/code]

And then if the player is in an enterable closed opaque container, things get even more complicated. I'm not sure if there's a simple way to do this, exploiting the rules that I7 already has for determining visibility (since what you want is that the glowing things should show up if the player could see them, were the room lit), or if you have to write a bunch of complicated special cases, or if you can just copy something from the standard rules, changing everything you need to.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2585&start=0#p17952
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: i7
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-06-12 08:32:43

If that was enough to fix your problem (whatever it was), you probably would have found the solution yourself while typing the post if you'd written the post the way bukayeva suggested. Taking a step back and trying to formulate what the problem is often leads to the solution.

That aside, choosing a meaningful subject for a post is always helpful for everyone reading the forum.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2430&start=0#p17953
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Geocaching and IF combined
User: Sig / DateTime: 2011-06-12 08:49:08

[quote="tove"]Adorable!  I did something similar, though way less involved, for my significant other last Valentine's Day.  Mine was just did a virtual version of my house, with a virtual version of my housemate's cat giving clues about where the treasure was stashed.  It was much easier than training the real cat. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
I am stealing this idea.  Including the cat issue.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2585&start=0#p17954
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: i7
User: Sig / DateTime: 2011-06-12 08:56:55

You could always retrocon it and give it a descriptive subject now.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2602&start=0#p17955
Forum: Feedback / Subject: This is a very nice place.
User: Sig / DateTime: 2011-06-12 09:11:32

People here seem very nice and quite dedicated to the promotion of the medium.  My dumb questions have been addressed nicely.  Even questions that I thought were dumb (with all that implies) have been addressed rather politely.  I wish my coworkers were as helpful. I feel encouraged to interact, play, and write.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=40#p17956
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-12 11:33:09

Well, I got one obvious thing wrong: the glk_schannel_play_multi() call has no way to start the two sounds on two different channels, which makes it pointless.

For technical reasons, the only practical way to define this capability is to say:

glui32 glk_schannel_play_multi(schanid_t *chanarray, glui32 chancount, glui32 *sndarray, glui32 soundcount, glui32 notify);

...and require that the channel and sound arrays be the same length. Does that seem sufficiently sane?

I also left in some new gestalt selectors from an earlier draft. gestalt_Sound2 is the only new selector in this proposal.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=40#p17957
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: nitfol / DateTime: 2011-06-12 12:14:13

[quote="zarf"]
glui32 glk_schannel_play_multi(schanid_t *chanarray, glui32 chancount, glui32 *sndarray, glui32 soundcount, glui32 notify);
[/quote]

Can you just say that sounds do not start immediately when requested, but are queued up and all start simultaneously at the next glk_select call?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2603&start=0#p17958
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: Leaving a Vehicle
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-12 12:19:38

Hi all,

if I want to catch a player entering a vehicle I use before[] and Enter:. How do I catch him leaving the vehicle?

Thanks,

Grue

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2604&start=0#p17959
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Basic Screen Effects
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-12 15:12:10

So I'm trying to make use of Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short. Since I'm completely new to I7, I have no idea how to use it. I want to have one of these old school text boxes in the middle of the screen, press space, and then the game continues. For now I even don't know how to have the player press space.

[code]
When play begins: 
	say "So you've come to hear a story?[paragraph break]".
	pause the game.
[/code]

That's my feeble attempt, and it don't work. Furthermore, any hint on how to do text boxes is appreciated. Summary:
- How do I wait for the player to press space?
- How do I clear the screen?
- How do I write a text box?

I've read the documentation of Basic Screen Effects, problem is maybe that I got no idea when I may do what under I7. Under I6 it's just a function call, and I don't know how to do that under I7.

Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=20#p17960
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Genstein / DateTime: 2011-06-12 15:19:38

Thanks I4L, I do like this idea. One or two people have suggested something similar, and it's an issue I encounter when using Trizbort with large maps as well.

I've vaguely thought about this in the past, and could envisage floors or layers being separate tabs in the interface, each with its own rooms and connections, but with visible "stubs" allowing automatic switching between the two as you suggest.

I also still like the idea of permitting multiple regions on each layer, each as their own labelled area, possibly with its own background colour for clarity. (I'd like to permit rooms to be individually coloured as well, at some stage.) The main thing that puts me off this is how it would fit in with automapping, which uses a pretty primitive algorithm to lay out the map and would be difficult to imbue with intelligence. Mind you the same can be said for layers I imagine; in either case automapping would I suspect have to default to placing new rooms in the same region, and on the same layer as the previous room, which could be irritating since they'd have to be fixed up by hand. For games like Anchorhead this might work quite well; for some games - with many different ways of getting between "regions" - I imagine it could be rather more frustrating.

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll definitely think on them [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2592&start=10#p17961
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: WinGlulxe Difficulty
User: Genstein / DateTime: 2011-06-12 15:32:36

Another easy way around this is to employ Windows' little used keyboard move/resize shortcuts: click the application on the taskbar so that it's selected, make sure it's not minimized. Hold the Alt key and press space, then release both. Press M and release it. Now you can use the cursor keys to move the window back onto the screen (so if it's off to the left, hold down the right arrow until it appears.) Press Return to confirm the move, or Escape to cancel it.

In many situations, once you've hit a cursor key in the above sequence, you can also then wave the mouse around and the window will follow it. This can be less tiresome than holding down cursor keys.

(Edit: The above is the same as right clicking on the window in the task bar and selecting Move, and then using the cursor keys. For some reason when I start with the keyboard I can't stop...sigh [emote]:)[/emote])

You can also employ an app such as [url=http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd.html]NirCmd[/url] to do grubby low level things to Windows without writing code. From a command prompt, [code]nircmd win center ititle "Frotz"[/code] will grab any window with "Frotz" in the title and center it in the middle of the screen. Caveat: You can do horrible things with Nircmd, and its command line interface isn't for the faint hearted. But if you ever wanted to open your CD tray without moving your hands from the keyboard, it's the app for you [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2604&start=0#p17962
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Basic Screen Effects
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-12 15:46:08

The last character in the second line of your code should be a semicolon, not a period. Otherwise the rule seems like it should do what you want, according to the Basic Screen Effects documentation.

There's a section on making a boxed-quotation splash screen in Basic Screen Effects, under the "display the current quotation" section -- it relies on "display the boxed quotation," which is actually part of core I7 (see section 5.12), but it looks like you need BSE to get the quotation to appear and disappear when you want. Here's the example:

[code]When play begins:
	display the boxed quotation 
	"What's this room? I've forgotten my compass.
	Well, this'll be south-south-west parlour by living room.
	-- Philadelphia Story";
	show the current quotation;
	pause the game.[/code]

(though it looked like the tabs were funny to me, and I deleted one layer of tabs but I'm not sure that will work. I've never used any of this so I don't know exactly how to make it work.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2604&start=0#p17963
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Basic Screen Effects
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-12 15:59:15

Works, and taught me some basic concepts on the way. Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2604&start=0#p17964
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Basic Screen Effects
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-12 16:29:15

There's also:

[code]Wait for SPACE key;[/code]

Which doesn't display a "Press Space to Continue" prompt, unless you write one.

Which makes me wonder why the command exists...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2605&start=0#p17965
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Memorialising Paul Allen Panks
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-06-12 17:33:46

When an author kills himself it is utterly human and perfectly ghoulish to scavange his work for hints of his "impending" suicide. This is good in one sense as it attracts new readers to his work and makes old ones return. But in another sense it is bad because it invites an existentialist reading -- suddenly everything is permeated with angst. This is how we've always read Sylvia Plath and it is also how we've recently come to read David Foster Wallace. In the case of Wallace it is perhaps an unfortunate approach, but it certainly is valid. Both writers touch upon such subjects as mental illness, suicide, emotional alienation and the individual's relation to society. Finding clues to their self-destruction in their work isn't difficult. What about Paul Allen Panks? Is there anything at all in his work that could cast light on his suicide?

No, there isn't. Not because Paul's interactive fiction was a gospel of life-affirming optimism, but because it lacked sufficient substance to express any meaningful idea. The characters that populate Paul's fictional universes lack the cognizance to express anything that could inform on the human condition.

I want you all now to do a thought exercise. Pick your favourite IF writer and ask yourself this. If he or she were to commit suicide, would I find anything in their work that could reasonably cast light on their decision? Or better still, can you think of any IF writer whose work has sufficient substance to inform on the human condition? If not, do you see that as a problem?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2605&start=0#p17966
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Memorialising Paul Allen Panks
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-12 17:43:59

This makes as much sense as analyzing the ReiserFS filesystem in an attempt to show how Hans Reiser was bound to murder his wife.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2606&start=0#p17967
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: xyzzynews
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-06-12 18:23:24

Whatever happened to this site, and Eileen? Doesn't look to have any updates since 2009.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2607&start=0#p17968
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Starting a Scene upon Examining
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-12 19:37:36

How do I start a scene when the player examines an object?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2607&start=0#p17969
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Starting a Scene upon Examining
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-12 19:55:20

I had that exact same question.

[url]http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2558[/url]

The suggestions didn't work for me. I suspect it was my code, as I never tried to compile it in a test game. Maybe you'll have better luck with it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2602&start=0#p17970
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: This is a very nice place.
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-12 20:05:57

I agree. Even most of the typical forum faux paus is tolerated here. Granted, there are very few active members. But they are all very helpful and understanding. Seldom do they "retaliate" and onl when they absolutely have no other choice.

If someone would install some Tapatalk, I'd be in heaven.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2606&start=0#p17971
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: xyzzynews
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-12 20:37:18

Doesn't look like she's done much with it in a while anyway. Probably just got caught up in real life. I'm not a haunter of the site, but just glancing over the page... Seems like there was only ever anything posted after an IF competition. Couple of times every year or two. But she obviously cares enough to keep paying the hosting and domain fees.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=20#p17972
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-12 21:08:53

I'm running Win7 Home Premium 64-bit. My OS doesn't want to install the .NET framework, claiming there's a compatibility problem with something called IIS. Since these are both Microsoft technologies, it's a bit hard to see why there should be a problem, but there it is. And of course the Trizbort installer won't run without installing .NET.

I'm not planning to take a chance on hosing my system in order to try out a mapping program. Can anyone shed any light on the nature of this conflict, and whether I should ignore the message and install .NET anyway?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2607&start=0#p17973
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Starting a Scene upon Examining
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-06-12 22:05:47

My way to do this is to use a flag.

You create your scene, then you create a number variable. You have a 'carry out' rule for the action you want to launch the scene, which sets the flag to 1. You have the scene start condition be 'when this flag is 1'. Then, the first thing the scene does when it goes off is set the flag to 2, to prevent a double launch. Once the scene's over, the scene can either clear the flag (if you want the scene to be relaunchable) or ignore it, or whatever. The main point is - you can attach the flag to any action and it always works, regardless of whether rules failed, succeeded... it launches the scene when you set the flag to 1.

Here's a demo game using a recurring scene with this method, so this scene you can launch again after it's over, as many times as you want. Boot it up and type 'test me'.

[code]"The Wrath of Explosionor" by Wade Clarke

There is a room called the Temple. "You're in the temple. Everything in here looks dangerous. A sign says 'HANDS OFF THE RELIC'."

There is a supporter called the altar. The altar is in the temple. Description of altar is "It's neat, but not as neat as that relic, you bet. You're dying to examine the relic."

The relic is on the altar.
The relic has a number called wrath_flag.

Instead of doing anything to relic:
	if wrath_flag of relic is 2, say "Get real. With the Wrath of Explosionor occurring, you can't examine the relic.";
	otherwise now wrath_flag of relic is 1. [launches the scene]

Wrath of Explosionor is a recurring scene.
Wrath of Explosionor begins when wrath_flag of relic is 1.

When Wrath of Explosionor begins:
	now the wrath_flag of relic is 2; [prevents scene starting twice in a row]
	say "A loud voice proclaims: 'INTERLOPER! DARES'T LOOK AT MY RELIC? YOU HAVE INCURRED THE WRATH OF ME, EXPLOSIONOR! ENDURE MY WRATH FOR 2 TURNS!'"
	
Every turn during Wrath of Explosionor: say "You're currently experiencing the Wrath of Explosionor, and believe me, it's impressive, but it's not actually killing you, thus you can continue to get on with your life."

Wrath of Explosionor ends when the time since Wrath of Explosionor began is 2 minutes.

When Wrath of Explosionor ends:
	say "Ah, the Wrath of Explosionor has passed. What a relief. But it could happen again! And that would suck.";
	now the wrath_flag of relic is 0.

test me with "x altar / x relic / wait / wait / get relic / wait / wait".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=20#p17974
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-12 22:20:53

IIS is Microsoft's web server. I doubt you're running a web server on your PC [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

Just make sure to install the .NET framework from Windows Update. That way you can be sure you get the correct version.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=30#p17975
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-12 22:37:44

[quote="RealNC"]IIS is Microsoft's web server. I doubt you're running a web server on your PC [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

Just make sure to install the .NET framework from Windows Update. That way you can be sure you get the correct version.[/quote]
It doesn't show up in Windows Update. That could mean it's not installed at all, so Microsoft is not trying to update it. On the other hand, updates for Office 2007 [i]do [/i]show up, and I don't have that installed either.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=30#p17976
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-12 23:26:24

I have an installation of Win7 and it shows up under the "optional" group.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=40#p17977
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-12 23:58:10

Well, that's a not entirely unelegant solution. :)

What do people think?

Would we want to queue other sound commands as well? (Volume changes, stops, pauses...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2605&start=0#p17978
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Memorialising Paul Allen Panks
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-06-13 00:17:03

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]This is how we've always read Sylvia Plath and it is also how we've recently come to read David Foster Wallace.[/quote]

"We", who, Jacek?  

I'm pretty wary of drawing any conclusions about authors from their fiction, especially retrospective conclusions.  I think writing can give readers a false sense of intimacy with authors, especially when they connect strongly with a work.  And generally, it's easy to read in implications when that's what we're looking for.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2592&start=10#p17979
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: WinGlulxe Difficulty
User: Sig / DateTime: 2011-06-13 00:19:39

I'm not sure about Windows 7 (still using XP if I have to use Windows for something), but in older versions you can run regedt32.exe (vice regedit.exe), which gave you some additional capabilities to delete protected things.  With great power comes great potential to FUBAR the system, of course...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=40#p17980
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-06-13 00:33:51

[quote="zarf"]Well, that's a not entirely unelegant solution. [emote]:)[/emote]

What do people think?

Would we want to queue other sound commands as well? (Volume changes, stops, pauses...)[/quote]It seems a slightly arbitrary rule to introduce. Given that we're introducing pause and unpause calls, would it perhaps be better to have calls to pause and unpause several channels at once? These could then be the only calls that operate on multiple channels. If you want multiple sounds to start all together, create the channels, pause them, play sounds on them, then unpause them all together. This would require that the spec make it explicit that playing a sound on a paused channel sets it up ready to go but doesn't unpause, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2608&start=0#p17981
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Main window color and text color...
User: anamri / DateTime: 2011-06-13 00:37:24

Yes I know about Basic Text Effects, but I think it's a little unreasonable to have to code each and every line that is written that way, when really I just want to change ALL the text color... besides if I can't change the background, what's the point. 

I would also like to change the main window color to black, for the duration of the game.

At the very least I would like to reverse out the colors of the main window screen.

I'm assuming my first step is changing the screen from null to color, but I do not know how to do that.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated!!

[i]*I have googled for days and I have to say it looks like this is one of the biggest concerns that goes unanswered.  I find it strange that this is not a built-in "preferences" option.  It's a pretty basic need.*[/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=30#p17982
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-06-13 03:39:30

What version of .Net is Trizbort written for?  Different versions of Windows come pre-installed with different versions of .Net (XP - 1.1, 2003 - 2.0, Vista - 3.0, Win7 - 3.5).  So unless Trizbort is using 4.0, you shouldn't need to install anything - it may just be an incorrect dependency.  I know the ADRIFT installer tried to create a dependency for 4.0 when it actually only uses 2.0.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=30#p17983
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-13 04:20:31

[quote="Campbell"]Different versions of Windows come pre-installed with different versions of .Net (XP - 1.1[/quote]
Actually, XP does not come with any version of .Net pre-installed (it's only included on the CD to be installed manually.) An exception are XP Media Center and Tablet PC Editions, which have 1.0. 2003 has 1,1.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=30#p17984
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-06-13 04:48:40

Damn, sorry, you're right about XP.  Later versions of 2003 come with 2.0, but you're right, earlier versions do come with 1.1.  But it's a moot point really, as the machines being discussed were Vista/Win7.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2605&start=0#p17985
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Memorialising Paul Allen Panks
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-06-13 05:29:48

It seems that the three of us are in complete agreement about the suicide thing, which still leaves the main question unanswered. Penguin implied that interactive fiction has the expressive capabilities of a file system. Here I disagree. I think that interactive fiction has the same potential as static fiction. The only reason why we don't have a Raskolnikov is because we don't have a Dostoevsky. In fact, we don't even have a Sylvia Plath.

Most IF writers live in a Tolkienesque landscape where everyone is semi-immortal and where the infantile dichotomy of Good versus Evil extinguishes any possibility of a moral polemic. Now, imagine Frodo says "Fuck it" and cuts his throat with his cute little Elf sword. The landscapes changes suddenly and rudely and Frodo's little buddies are forced to face... yes, what exactly? What have we been forced to face as a consequence of Paul's suicide? Could it be that we've finally reached the point where everyone is forced to acknowledge that talking statues, zombies, wizards, dragons and space monsters are no longer relevant?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2605&start=0#p17987
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Memorialising Paul Allen Panks
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-06-13 08:49:20

Uh, I'm missing the Tolkien reference, I think.  In fact, I'm not sure what you're angling for.  Some static fiction writers that writer about mental illness, ennui, depression, etc. suffer from it themselves, and unsurprisingly, you can dig deep into their work and make connections.  That's useful, I suppose, for some professionals in mental health, and academics.  But I don't know that it's a good thing, or a bad thing - it's just a thing.  Plenty of writers who do not suffer from depression write about it, too, and there's no conclusions to be drawn there.  Plenty of static fiction writers write books where no conclusions can be drawn about the mental state of the writer.  I'd say that's actually the default state.  Plenty of writers have committed suicide; only a handful of their works provide fruit when excavated.  (Metaphor mixing is fun, y'all.)

Nor do I think the nouns used make much of a difference to the content.  It's perfectly possible to write about depression using fantasy elements.  It's perfectly possible to write about *anything* using fantasy elements.  I wonder if the "problem" you perceive is that people aren't writing much about depression, mental illness, and ennui?  I'm not actually sure if it's a smaller proportion here than static fiction; I can think of several works that, if not explicitly about depression, at least could be analyzed from that direction.  

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]Most IF writers live in a Tolkienesque landscape where everyone is semi-immortal and where the infantile dichotomy of Good versus Evil extinguishes any possibility of a moral polemic.[/quote]
(ref needed)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=30#p17988
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Genstein / DateTime: 2011-06-13 09:10:57

Trizbort requires .NET 2.0 or higher; it is true that the installer isn't very bright and is easily confused, particularly by Windows 7. This is entirely my fault, I did rather assemble the original installer in a hurry via Frankensteinian cut and paste. I should revisit it and give it an overhaul. Apologies!

If it's giving you issues you can try the [url=http://trizbort.genstein.net/Trizbort120.zip]zip file[/url] instead. On recent versions of Windows you shouldn't need to install .NET.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2604&start=0#p17989
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Basic Screen Effects
User: anamri / DateTime: 2011-06-13 09:16:55

[quote="Grueslayer"]So I'm trying to make use of Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short. Since I'm completely new to I7, I have no idea how to use it. I want to have one of these old school text boxes in the middle of the screen, press space, and then the game continues. For now I even don't know how to have the player press space.

[code]
When play begins: 
	say "So you've come to hear a story?[paragraph break]".
	pause the game.
[/code]

That's my feeble attempt, and it don't work. Furthermore, any hint on how to do text boxes is appreciated. Summary:
- How do I wait for the player to press space?
- How do I clear the screen?
- How do I write a text box?

I've read the documentation of Basic Screen Effects, problem is maybe that I got no idea when I may do what under I7. Under I6 it's just a function call, and I don't know how to do that under I7.

Thanks![/quote]
Since you are new, I thought I would point out what was probably giving you troubles in your code.  The period at the end of your say statement ends the action.  As you can see by the code suggested by the others, you need a semi-colon at the end of each line, until you get to the end of that clause.  In other words, a period means "full stop".
If this was just a typo, then just ignore me.  I'm a newbie too (I just started last week) and I thought it's something I would have liked to know, if I didn't know otherwise.
Btw, you also can do (similar to what IL4 said, if you don't want to use a boxed statement):

[code]When play begins:
   say "So you want to hear a story?...";
   wait for any key;
   clear the screen.[/code]

To tell you the truth, I thought it would be easier than it has been for me to learn I7.  I thought, "Great! - An English based programming language, this should be easy.".  Oh boy... was I ever wrong!
It's so worth the effort, though!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2558&start=0#p17990
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The scene begins when...
User: anamri / DateTime: 2011-06-13 09:32:59

Capmikee, your post was very enlightening to me!  I have used the "stop the action" and the "continue the action" phrases, when I figured out that the action was being stopped, but I did not see a pattern before as to when this was happening!    The "rule succeeds" phrasing is also new to me. -

THANKS!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2608&start=0#p17991
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Main window color and text color...
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-13 09:53:55

Traditionally, the look of the main window has mostly been left to the player to decide. That doesn't mean you can't change the basic styles, it just means that most people don't bother--the player will be able to override your decisions with most interpreters anyway. Here are some tips:

If you're targeting one of the javascript interpreters, then you can use CSS to change the basic styles (z-code or Glulx). For desktop interpreters, you'll need to change styles in-game. For Glulx, the Glulx Text Effects extension (built in) is what you need. (I'm afraid that I don't know how to change these things in z-code.)

You might consider, though, whether what you want to do is wise. When you start to bring your own color choices to the overall look of the game, you open up the possibility to annoy people. This is especially the case for javascript interpreters, where it's more difficult (though certainly not impossible) for the player to override your choices. As an example: Personally, I have no interest in reading light text on a black background for more than a few short lines. So, if you do that with your game, I probably won't play it. Losing me as a player is no great shakes, but if other folks feel like I do (whether for clinical reasons or just personal preference), that wouldn't be a good thing.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2605&start=0#p17992
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Memorialising Paul Allen Panks
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-06-13 10:34:45

[quote="RealNC"]This makes as much sense as analyzing the ReiserFS filesystem in an attempt to show how Hans Reiser was bound to murder his wife.[/quote]

You'd want to focus on the code for journals.

[quote="gravel"][quote="Jacek Pudlo"]Most IF writers live in a Tolkienesque landscape where everyone is semi-immortal and where the infantile dichotomy of Good versus Evil extinguishes any possibility of a moral polemic.[/quote]
(ref needed)[/quote]

He's referring to Boston. I hear it's nice.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2558&start=10#p17993
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The scene begins when...
User: mike111 / DateTime: 2011-06-13 10:45:38

I dont understand. Could someone please post the code for beginning the scene. Sorry.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2609&start=0#p17994
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 Theme-park?
User: mike111 / DateTime: 2011-06-13 10:53:19

I have been working on a project that recreates a real world theme park. I have been successful thus far but I am stuck with a roller coaster and no ideas as to how I can recreate it. I turned a different roller coaster into a themed quiz, but I have no ideas for this one.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2603&start=0#p17995
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Leaving a Vehicle
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-13 11:00:54

Sorry for pushing this, but I got no clue what's going wrong. I thought "Exit:" would catch the player, but

[code]
Object canoe "canoe" at_the_river
with name 'canoe',
description "A wooden canoe dug out of a trunk of a large tree.  It's about three metres long. Given its primitivity 
		 it looks rather comfortable, with a wooden bench in the back to sit on and loads of space for your legs.
		 Though you're not sure if you know how to operate it professionally, it's probably your only choice to
		 proceed.",
before [target;
  Enter:	print "texttexttext.";
		rfalse;
  Exit:	"TEST";
  Go:		target=location.(noun.door_dir)();
		if(~~(target ofclass River_Room)){
  		  print "doesn't work^";
		  return 2;}
		return 1;
 		],
has enterable static;
[/code]

has no effect - when I sit in the canoe and type 'out', the player just exits the canoe and stands in the middle of the river. What am I doing wrong?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2609&start=0#p17996
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 Theme-park?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-06-13 11:39:00

Can you talk a little more about the project, or the ride in question?  I'm a little confused - "recreation" doesn't seem to match up to "themed quiz" for me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2603&start=0#p17997
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Leaving a Vehicle
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-06-13 12:21:51

[quote="Grueslayer"]
has no effect - when I sit in the canoe and type 'out', the player just exits the canoe and stands in the middle of the river. What am I doing wrong?[/quote]

To sucessfully catch an "exit" action when player is inside the boat try using "react_before" instead of "before", something like:

[code]react_before
[;
	exit:
		if (player in self) "TEST";
],[/code]

It will require some more polishing, but I think it will finally do.

--

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2610&start=0#p17998
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: inform7: trying to go to one room but ending up in another
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-06-13 12:25:12

instead of going to the Enemy Town when ive stolen a sword from the blacksmith shop a scene play out then the town blindfolds me and brings me to a runins that ive never been before.  how can i do this?

basically if you take the sword from the blacksmith shop and go back to town you end up somewhere elce.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2607&start=0#p17999
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Starting a Scene upon Examining
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-13 12:39:27

Puh. I had to look up quite a lot of stuff on the way, but now it works, thanks to this flag solution. Muchas gracias!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2610&start=0#p18000
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform7: going to one place gets you to another
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-06-13 12:54:38

Check for the player going to the Enemy Town. If the sword is stolen, print the text you want, and then move the player to the ruins.

No, this isn't actual code, but it's also a couple different things going on here. Which one is it you're having trouble with?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2610&start=0#p18001
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform7: trying to go to one room but ending up in anoth
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-06-13 12:57:22

if my character has the sword and goes back to town i want to end up in a ruins instead

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2607&start=0#p18002
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Starting a Scene upon Examining
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-06-13 13:01:04

[code]A thing can be examined. A thing is usually not examined.

After examining something:
   now the noun is examined.[/code]

I find this bit of code to be very usefull, since it allows you to monitor if anything is or isn't examined.

You have to be carefull, though: if, at some point of the source, you add an 'After examining sock:' thing and forget to add the 'now the noun is examined', then it will override the above code and your sock won't be flagged as examined.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2610&start=0#p18003
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform7: trying to go to one room but ending up in anoth
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-06-13 13:11:23

To move the player you can simply [code]move player to RoomName[/code].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2610&start=0#p18004
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform7: trying to go to one room but ending up in anoth
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-06-13 13:16:08

that easy eh thanks i will try that

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2610&start=0#p18005
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform7: trying to go to one room but ending up in anoth
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-06-13 13:17:57

Or to give you a more complete solution: 
[code]
Instead of going east in SomeRoom when the player carries foo, move player to Ruins.
[/code]

The parts here are:

[code]Instead of going[/code]

This is the action you want to capture

[code]when the player carries[/code]

Check for the carried thing.

[code]move player to[/code]

Move the player.

Printing the text about the blindfold and so on is left as an exercise for you.

(Oh, and I found the syntax for moving the player by simply searching the documentation for "move player".)

Edit: And please do attempt to write properly. It makes things easier for the rest of us, particularly those of us who are not native speakers of English. Your posts are harder to read than most.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2610&start=0#p18006
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform7: trying to go to one room but ending up in anoth
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-06-13 13:24:31

i searched lots of things but never thought of that thanks

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=30#p18007
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-13 13:27:57

[quote="Genstein"]If it's giving you issues you can try the [url=http://trizbort.genstein.net/Trizbort120.zip]zip file[/url] instead. On recent versions of Windows you shouldn't need to install .NET.[/quote]
Very nice. Thanks! I tried doing an on-screen mapping once using OpenOffice, and found it rather laborious. I can see that Trizbort will be a big improvement, either for playing games or for designing them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2611&start=0#p18008
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Multiple Choice
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-13 13:44:03

Is there an extension that supports multiple choice for dialogues?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2612&start=0#p18009
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: ADRIFT 5 - Linux
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-06-13 14:02:21

I have just uploaded the Linux version of ADRIFT 5 Runner to the [url=http://www.adrift.org.uk/cgi/new/adrift.cgi?page=download]ADRIFT website[/url].  This runs using [url=http://www.mono-project.com/]Mono[/url].

The software is still pretty buggy, especially the Mono version which is not 100% compatible with Windows, but it should be possible to run games (for example [url=http://forum.adrift.co/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=7265]this[/url]) reasonably well.

I'm obviously new at creating Linux distributions, so if anyone has any suggestions of improvements, please let me know.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2603&start=0#p18010
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Leaving a Vehicle
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-13 14:12:05

Doesn't work either.

Done some debugging. What I don't understand is - I have a room A and a room B. Both are of class River_Room. My canoe is in room A. In both rooms I give out debug text via before [; Enter: print "TEST";], Now, if I enter the canoe the debug text is printed. I move to room B and don't get the debug text, probably because I'm in the canoe. Now I get out of the canoe - no debug text. Now I get back into the canoe - debug text! I'm confused...

EDIT: Okay, found a workaround, probably. before [; Exit: catches my "out" command - in the [b]target[/b] room. I don't know why, but I can make somethig out of it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2563&start=0#p18011
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: IFMapper 1.1.1
User: gga / DateTime: 2011-06-13 14:34:16

[quote="gga"]IFMapper, the PD and cross platform mapping solution, is now at
v1.1.3.  What's new in this version is bug fixes to the Trizbort
file format.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2607&start=0#p18012
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Starting a Scene upon Examining
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-13 15:48:42

An ugly-looking, but precisely deployable, solution:

[code]
To say note-examined (T - thing):
   now T is examined.

The description of the relic is "[note-examined relic]You recognize the Dagger of Foofaraw."
[/code]

The "[note-examined relic]" substitution prints as nothing; it just sets the flag. You have to embed it in each description that counts as examining, but then you always know when one of them has triggered.

I find this useful when the same information can come in various ways. For example

[code]
Report taking the relic:
  say "[note-examined relic]You pick it up, and recognize the Dagger of Foofaraw."
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2608&start=0#p18013
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Main window color and text color...
User: anamri / DateTime: 2011-06-13 16:52:14

I am using Zmpp2 (which I believe you pointed me towards - thank you again for your help with that!), which does not give a choice in changing the look.  I have tried every known parameter tag name I can thing of, or find online for changing the background and font, to no avail.

If you know of another VM applet that interprets gluxe and lets you change the screen and text colors - I would happily try that. ( I am using old school 8-bit graphics, btw)

As for personal choice - I get that not everyone has the same likes (personally, the brightness of this site kills my eyes, less yet the stark white of inform7 games).  The thing is, the game I am making is for a larger game (an arg), and it needs to fit in with the theme of that game, which is old school games.  So, my HOPE is to be able to make the background a very dark gray or black and make the text green, like an old text adventure (or interactive fiction, if you prefer, I'm not sure if that is different or just another name for it, sorry).

I have written the designer of the VM to get the names of the parameter tags, but I highly doubt that I will hear back in time.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2608&start=0#p18014
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Main window color and text color...
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-13 17:02:14

OK, if you're using ZMPP it will be much easier to set these colors w/in the VM. Glulx Text Effects should let you do that, I think (at least by reversing out). If Glulx Text Effects [i]doesn't[/i] let you change the background color of the main-window, or you don't want to use reversed type, you can include Flexible Windows:

[code]Include Flexible Windows by Jon Ingold.
After starting the virtual machine:
	now the back-colour of the main-window is g-black.[/code]

If you're after the old-school terminal look, you might want to set the whole game in fixed-width fonts (again, Glulx Text Effects will do this for you)...

If not, post again and we can help you write the I6 calls you need.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2611&start=0#p18015
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Multiple Choice
User: anamri / DateTime: 2011-06-13 17:20:10

I used this extension in mine:

[url]http://inform7.com/extensions/Michael%20Callaghan/Questions/index.html[/url]

It has a section dealing with exactly what you're looking for, I believe.

Particularly this page I believe (but I think there are rules or declarations to make before that part, so read the entire extension):

[url]http://inform7.com/extensions/Michael%20Callaghan/Questions/doc_8.html[/url]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2605&start=0#p18016
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Memorialising Paul Allen Panks
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-06-13 17:33:11

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]I want you all now to do a thought exercise. Pick your favourite IF writer and ask yourself this. If he or she were to commit suicide, would I find anything in their work that could reasonably cast light on their decision? Or better still, can you think of any IF writer whose work has sufficient substance to inform on the human condition? If not, do you see that as a problem?[/quote]

I don't know who Paul Allen Panks is nor can I say much about finding people's later actions in their writing. But I can say that playing most IF does not even show me much of an author voice, much less substance that speaks to the human condition. I'm still struggling to see what many people here see in terms of IF being entertaining. As an example, so many people seem to recommend Photopia. I think it's dreadfully dull and not very interactive, with a story that you can see the end coming fairly easily. I tried Shrapnel. Another one that gets recommend quite a bit. Take away the "gimmick" aspect and I don't find it all that interesting. (Spider and Web was like that as well; nifty gimmick to keep you playing, but not much of a story, per se). I sort of liked Anchorhead (another one that people recommend) but I liked it more just because I only had other IF to compare it against and most of the other stuff wasn't so great.

I actually did like Rameses but I don't think there was enough substance there, but perhaps there was the start of the human condition to a certain limited extent. Tapestry (also recommended by some) left me less than thrilled. People recommend Galatea a lot -- and I just don't get it. It's boring. I checked out Alabaster and while it's clear the game was showcasing a mechanic, it wasn't showcasing that mechanic in the context of telling a better or more engaging story (at least to me). When I first got into Inform 7, I looked at the 'Worked Examples' and those are all clearly showcasing mechanics but are singularly disappointing in terms of showcasing how IF can be a medium for telling stories. Which is doubly worse considering Inform 7 has pretensions to appealing to writers.

I bring this up mainly because it's hard to detect an actual author voice in many cases. I don't know if that's because the mechanics of IF swamp out the voice -- since authors are so busy trying to build puzzles in. I don't know. So when you talk about the "substance to express any meaningful idea", I guess I just don't see a lot of that in IF.

So do I see that as a problem? I don't know. I guess I do largely because I think IF has potential but it's always swamped in its mechanics. I see threads where people are terribly excited about being able to fade sound or play in a browser, but virtually nothing about how to be more effective authors of stories that allow agency but that still tell a meaningful story. I guess I don't know what audience IF would like to tap into. It's probably not just one audience, I realize, but there's going to be certain core things that the audience will have to have and one of those is a willingess to read a story as if they were reading a book and then interact with it.

I just don't know. I guess I keep seeing a lot of emphasis put in what I consider to be the wrong place with IF. But then the logical question is: "So why not do something to change that?" Yeah. I could -- it's just that's it's really hard to get enthused by IF for me. It's a hard community to really respect sometimes because you definitely see the cult of personality aspects. And I just don't see it going anywhere too far beyond where it is. When I look at IF today and I look at IF games from the past, I basically see the same stuff. Better parsers (maybe) and definitely improved development systems: but the output to me is distressingly similar in many cases. I think the IF community sometimes conflates changes in mechanics with progress in medium.

Bottom-line: I'd love to find a work of IF that had something demonstrable to say about depression, mental illness, the happiness of being, the angst of growing up, etc, and could put that in the context of agency in a way that people actually cared about. I've looked at games that people have pointed me to but in all cases, those experiences don't come close to some of the books I've read, some of the films I've seen, or even some of the games in other formats that I've played.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2608&start=0#p18017
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Main window color and text color...
User: anamri / DateTime: 2011-06-13 17:35:02

Thanks for your help!

Well, Zmpp-glulx totally ignored that code... Although, I did try something similar (but not with the "After starting the virtual machine") before and got the background of JUST the text to change - like a highlighting type of effect.  Is changing the color of the text even possible?  If not, like I said, I will gladly accept a reversed-out look.

I am wondering how to call the "special-style-1" into effect for the whole game(if that's possible).  A "when play begins"?  And after that what? - "set style-hints to special-style-1" doesn't do the job.... like I said, I'm a novice, sorry, if I am just being stupid about it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2608&start=0#p18018
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Main window color and text color...
User: anamri / DateTime: 2011-06-13 18:22:10

Ok, I tested trying to use Text Effects, this is what I have:


[code]Table of User Styles (continued)
style name	justification	obliquity	indentation	first-line indentation	boldness	fixed width	relative size	glulx color 
special-style-1	center-justified	no-obliquity	0	0	regular-weight	fixed-width-font	0	g-green 
special-style-2	left-justified	no-obliquity	0	4	regular-weight	fixed-width-font	0	g-green 

Table of Common Color Values (continued)
glulx color value	assigned number 
g-pure-green     65280  

When play begins:
	say "[second custom style]You are in a castle's ward with 4 other people.[/code]  
Then I compiled it and put it up on the server... it totally ignored the it.  - Though when I ran it with Inform, it worked just fine.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2605&start=0#p18019
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Memorialising Paul Allen Panks
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-06-13 18:29:04

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]What about Paul Allen Panks? Is there anything at all in his work that could cast light on his suicide?[/quote]

My own Panks memorial project (a game still in development entirely due to the limits of my programming skill ... all the writing and design is long done) simply celebrates his work without indulging in analysis.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2605&start=0#p18020
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Memorialising Paul Allen Panks
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-06-13 18:30:27

[quote="bukayeva"]Bottom-line: I'd love to find a work of IF that had something demonstrable to say about depression, mental illness, the happiness of being, the angst of growing up, etc, and could put that in the context of agency in a way that people actually cared about.[/quote]

I won't say you're wrong - I'd be hard-pressed to think of an IF game that did more than touch the outer edges of those themes, let alone engaged them in a sustained way. Perhaps [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=author%3AKazuki+Mishima]Kazuki Mishima's stories[/url] are the closest example.

If you are serious about finding works like that, you might consider running a competition. (I know, I know - save us from more competitions!) I don't know if you'd get many entries, or any good ones. But it could provide an outlet for any pent up stories that might otherwise lack an audience. I have a WIP that could use a venue like that, if you set the deadline far enough away.

Spring Thing may have served that niche in the past, though now it seems to produce long, kid-friendly games. IF Comp tends to reward short, well-polished, highly playable games in the conventional mold.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2613&start=0#p18021
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7:  Problem with supplying a mssing noun
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-13 18:48:39

For some reason (and I'm sure it must be something very basic), I'm running into a problem with  "supplying a missing noun" activity.

[code]"Firing Range" by Me

This Room is a room.  That room is east of This Room

Shooting it with is an action applying to two things.
Understand "shoot [anything] with [something]" as shooting it with.  Understand  "shoot [something] at [anything]" as shooting it with (with nouns reversed).

Rule for supplying a missing second noun while shooting:
	If the player has the gun:
		Now the second noun is the gun;
	Otherwise:
		Say "You have nothing to shoot with" instead.
		
Check shooting it with:
	If the second noun is not the gun:
		say "You can[apostrophe]t shoot with that!" instead;
	If the player does not have the gun:
		say "You can[apostrophe]t shoot with a gun that you aren[apostrophe]t carrying." instead.
		
		
Carry out shooting:
	Say "BANG!";
	If the second noun is a person, say "[Noun] falls to the ground dead.";
	If the second noun is not a person, say "You put a nice round hole in [the noun].".
		
A sofa is in This Room.

George is a man.  George is in That Room.  A gun is in That Room.[/code]

produces the following:

[quote]
Firing Range
An Interactive Fiction by Me
Release 1 / Serial number 110613 / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N) SD

This Room
You can see a sofa here.

>shoot sofa
(with the sofa)
You can't shoot with that!

>e

That room
You can see George and a gun here.

>shoot george
What do you want to shoot George with?

>shoot george with gun
You can't shoot with a gun that you aren't carrying.

>get gun
Taken.

>shoot george
(with the gun)
BANG!
You put a nice round hole in George.

>w

This Room
You can see a sofa here.

>shoot sofa
(with the gun)
BANG!
You put a nice round hole in the sofa.

>[/quote]

Obviously, this is not working correctly in several respects:

     1.  When I try to shoot the sofa without the gun being either in my possession or in sight, it does not apply the rule which generates the "You have nothing to shoot with" response; instead, it thinks the sofa is both the first and second noun, and gives me the reponse that I have specified for a situation where the player has actually specified a second noun other than the gun.

     2.  When I go into That Room (where the gun is visible but I haven't yet picked it up) and try to shoot George, it doesn't apply the rule which generates the "You have nothing to shoot with" response; instead, this time it prompts for a second noun.

In the other two situations (where I specify the gun but I'm not carrying it, and where I don't specify the second noun but I have the gun) it behaves properly as far as understanding what I want to do.  However, another problem (which I assume is unrelated) shows up when I successfully send George to his maker:  Although I have specified that George is a man, I get the response for shooting something other than a person.

What dumb errors am I making?

Thanks.

    Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2608&start=0#p18022
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Main window color and text color...
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-13 19:19:08

I can't tell you anything about ZMPP--maybe it doesn't support all of the stylehints. You'll probably want to go straight to the author about that.

Regarding special-style-1 and special-style-2, the idea isn't that you would define them and then apply them to the whole text, it's that you would redefine the built-in styles (bold, header, italics, etc.)  See the code below for a working example.

Oddly, though, Glulx Text Effects actually doesn't allow you to change the normal style--i.e., most of the text you read. I have no idea why that was left out, but I will try to include it for the next release of I7 (also left out are the background color and reversed-out stylehints--I assume these were left out to keep the table from getting too wide, but they really should also be included for completeness as well. Heck, I may even add support for [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2588]changing styles in the status bar[/url]).

Anyway, for now, I've attached a new version of GTE that allows you to change the look of normal text. If you use this, the following code will work and do what you want. (Don't forget to hack your copy of Flexible Windows to include "Glulx Text Effects - New" instead of plain "Glulx Text Effects".)

[code]Include Glulx Text Effects - New by Emily Short.
Include Flexible Windows by Jon Ingold.


Table of User Styles (continued)
style name	justification	obliquity	indentation	first-line indentation	boldness	fixed width	relative size	glulx color
normal-style	--	--	--	--	--	fixed-width-font	--	g-lime
header-style	--	--	--	--	bold-weight	fixed-width-font	--	g-lime
bold-style	--	--	--	--	bold-weight	fixed-width-font	--	g-lime
input-style	--	--	--	--	bold-weight	fixed-width-font	--	g-lime

The back-colour of the main-window is g-black.

When play begins:
	say "You are in a castle's ward with 4 other people."
	
There is a Room.[/code]

You'll need to keep adding built-in styles to the table if you decide to use them--italic, for example, is not included here. 

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2613&start=0#p18023
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Problem with supplying a mssing noun
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-06-13 19:46:08

[quote="ch. 17.30 of Writing w/ Inform"]Note that, in order for our activity to succeed, we do need to supply a grammar line allowing the player to try "unlocking it with" using only one noun. Otherwise, the command "unlock something" will still produce the question "What do you want to unlock the door with?" [/quote]

You haven't created a grammar line which allows for a missing noun. Add this:
[code]Understand "shoot [something]" as shooting it with.[/code]
P. S. You're also missing a period after "You have nothing to shoot with."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2613&start=0#p18024
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Problem with supplying a mssing noun
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-13 19:54:36

Thanks.  I knew it had to be a very basic error, but somehow it went right by me.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2614&start=0#p18025
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Bug with Flexible Windows--or Quixe?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-13 20:11:02

The following I7 code causes an init error in Quixe ("glk_window_clear: invalid window"):

[code]Include Flexible Windows by Jon Ingold.

The back-colour of the main-window is g-lavender.
	
There is a Room.[/code]

I haven't found any other interpreter that has difficulty with this--all the rest . I believe that the code that causes the crash is Flexible Window's InitGlkWindow, pasted below, which calls glk_window_clear. Possibly it is being called before the window exists (I can't remember how that works) and is therefore truly invalid; but if so, why do GarGlk, CocoaGlk, and WinGlk not also choke on what would be a fundamental error...? 

On the other hand, I also can't figure out any reason why one would call glk_window_clear at that point, and removing the call does prevent the crash. So there's a simple fix, but I thought I'd post about this in case there might be an obscure bug with the interpreter that might prove more troublesome in a later case.

--Erik

InitGlkWindow code:
[code]
Include
(-
	[ InitGlkWindow winrock i col;
		switch(winrock){
			GG_MAINWIN_ROCK:	
				if ((+main-window+).back_colour ~=  (+g-placenullcol+))
				{ 	col = ColVal((+main-window+).back_colour);
					for (i = 0: i < style_NUMSTYLES : i++)
					glk_stylehint_set(wintype_TextBuffer, i, stylehint_BackColor, col);
					glk_window_clear((+main-window+).ref_number);
  glk_stylehint_set(wintype_TextBuffer, style_Emphasized, stylehint_Oblique, 1);
  glk_stylehint_set(wintype_TextBuffer, style_Emphasized, stylehint_weight, 0);

					rfalse;
				}
			GG_STATUSWIN_ROCK: 
				if (USE_NO_STATUS_LINE == 1) rtrue;		! - Aaron Reed
		}
		
		rfalse;

	];

-) after "Definitions.i6t". [/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2605&start=0#p18026
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Memorialising Paul Allen Panks
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-06-13 20:38:27

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]Most IF writers live in a Tolkienesque landscape where everyone is semi-immortal and where the infantile dichotomy of Good versus Evil extinguishes any possibility of a moral polemic. Now, imagine Frodo says "Fuck it" and cuts his throat with his cute little Elf sword. The landscapes changes suddenly and rudely and Frodo's little buddies are forced to face... yes, what exactly? What have we been forced to face as a consequence of Paul's suicide? Could it be that we've finally reached the point where everyone is forced to acknowledge that talking statues, zombies, wizards, dragons and space monsters are no longer relevant?[/quote]
I've often heard people quote G.K. Chesterton as saying that the purpose of fairy tales is not to teach us that dragons are real, but rather that dragons can be defeated. The simple adventure mold might not be deeply literary, but I think it is relevant to life, because we're all looking for an escape from our disappointing reality.  (Well, I guess I can't make universal statements like that -- [i]I'm[/i] always looking for such an escape, searching for the significance that I cannot believe does not exist. I suppose this is largely why I love high fantasy so much.)

Of course, we can never know why Paul Panks killed himself.  However, if we must evaluate his unapologetically simple, morally straightforward text adventures in terms of his suicide, one possible conclusion is that Panks became disillusioned with his vision of heroism.  Maybe he didn't see that kind of adventure in his life, and he lost faith that such adventure and honor exists at all.  If so, I would not say that the "infantile" dichotomy between good and evil is false; rather, I would say that the dichotomy is far greater than we can ever hope to bridge.

For me, fantasy (and science fiction) is a desperate attempt to believe in the other side of that dichotomy.  It can be a struggle for life itself at times, because I think if this disappointing reality is all that I believed in, I would kill myself.  I have struggled with suicidal thoughts at times, but my fantasy helps to give me the strength to persevere in this world that I have no desire to live in.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2608&start=0#p18033
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Main window color and text color...
User: anamri / DateTime: 2011-06-13 21:06:52

Thank you SO much Erik!  I will definitely be working on that tomorrow(gotta sleep sometime [emote]:lol:[/emote] )!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2588&start=10#p18035
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Font colors in Glulx
User: Seeker / DateTime: 2011-06-13 21:46:49

Update:

I am writing the docs now, and I will probably be ready to send this extension in as a completed, and ready for the masses version in a day or two.  I have added optional support for hidden doors and rooms (hiding them or showing them in the compass rose and list of exits) if the right extension is also installed.  [emote];)[/emote]

The next version will add selectable background color for the status bar, and at least 4 user definable slots in the table of colors that can be used as text or background.  I figured it would be better to get a stable version out that is 100% equal between z-machine and Glulx usage first... then work on one that adds separate functionality for just the Glulx games.

Of course if you are going to change the way [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2608]all of this is done in GSCW[/url] I will just have to re-write it.  But that is cool. All the more reason to work on the next version.  

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2614&start=0#p18036
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Bug with Flexible Windows--or Quixe?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-13 21:54:31

[quote]Possibly it is being called before the window exists (I can't remember how that works) and is therefore truly invalid; but if so, why do GarGlk, CocoaGlk, and WinGlk not also choke on what would be a fundamental error...?[/quote]

An unfortunate adherence to Postel's Mistake?

I suspect that that clear_window should not be removed, but should instead be wrapped in an "if the window actually exists right now" test. This may be "if ((+main-window+).ref_number) ..." but I'm not exactly sure what the library semantics are.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2607&start=0#p18037
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Starting a Scene upon Examining
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-13 22:07:52

All this flag nonsense is very AGT... [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2612&start=0#p18038
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 5 - Linux
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-06-13 22:29:38

I managed to get it to run (once I installed the Visual Basic library), but it crashes when I click File -> Open Adventure, with these error messages:
[code]System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not find file ""
  at System.IO.Directory.GetCurrentDirectory () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at System.Environment.get_CurrentDirectory () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at System.Windows.Forms.FileDialog.ReadConfigValues () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at System.Windows.Forms.FileDialog.RunDialog (IntPtr hWndOwner) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at System.Windows.Forms.CommonDialog.ShowDialog (IWin32Window owner) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at System.Windows.Forms.CommonDialog.ShowDialog () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at (wrapper remoting-invoke-with-check) System.Windows.Forms.CommonDialog:ShowDialog ()
  at ADRIFT.SharedModule. (System.Windows.Forms.OpenFileDialog ) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at .. (System.Object , System.EventArgs ) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.OnClick (System.EventArgs e) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripMenuItem.OnClick (System.EventArgs e) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripMenuItem.HandleClick (System.EventArgs e) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.FireEvent (System.EventArgs e, ToolStripItemEventType met) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at (wrapper remoting-invoke-with-check) System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem:FireEvent (System.EventArgs,System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItemEventType)
  at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStrip.OnMouseUp (System.Windows.Forms.MouseEventArgs mea) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripDropDown.OnMouseUp (System.Windows.Forms.MouseEventArgs mea) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmLButtonUp (System.Windows.Forms.Message& m) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc (System.Windows.Forms.Message& m) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at System.Windows.Forms.ScrollableControl.WndProc (System.Windows.Forms.Message& m) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStrip.WndProc (System.Windows.Forms.Message& m) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripDropDown.WndProc (System.Windows.Forms.Message& m) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at System.Windows.Forms.Control+ControlWindowTarget.OnMessage (System.Windows.Forms.Message& m) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at System.Windows.Forms.Control+ControlNativeWindow.WndProc (System.Windows.Forms.Message& m) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.WndProc (IntPtr hWnd, Msg msg, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 [/code]
Do I need to install some extra Mono library/ies, or is it an ADRIFT bug?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2614&start=0#p18039
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Bug with Flexible Windows--or Quixe?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-06-13 23:17:00

FYI, since you run Gargoyle under OS X, you can see some of these errors by launching it from the Terminal.

If you have it installed in Applications, you would start Terminal and enter this as the command:

[code]
/Applications/Gargoyle.app/Contents/MacOS/Gargoyle
[/code]

It will print any warnings to the Terminal window.

I'm fairly sure garglk doesn't turn anything into a fatal error; for any given Glk call, you can find at least one Glulx game that is careless about its use of the API.

Failing to cancel line events is the most typical problem; I have a "strict" mode in garglk that enforces it, but it's disabled by default since nearly every game that uses hyperlinks doesn't properly cancel line events before writing output.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2605&start=10#p18040
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Memorialising Paul Allen Panks
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-06-14 05:03:26

[quote="Bainespal"]I've often heard people quote G.K. Chesterton as saying that the purpose of fairy tales is not to teach us that dragons are real, but rather that dragons can be defeated.[/quote]

Chesterton may have been ironic. The reason why we create false horrors that can be defeated is because we can't face the true horror within, the horror that is invincible. This true horror, the one that lurks within each and everyone of us, is far richer and more eloquent than all the dragons and giant spiders put together. Serious literature teaches us how to live with the horror within. Any literature that fails to address the true horror within and instead fabricates false external horrors is not only dishonest but also undignified.

In the Panksian era we were all jolly Hobbits fighting dragons and giant spiders, with the occasional murder mystery and space alien thrown in for good measure. Oh, and let's not forget the talking statue that suffered from severe constipation, or whatever her problem was. Now that the jolly Hobbits have witnessed Frodo erase his own map, they've halted at a juncture. Should we take lesson from Paul's life and his artistic endeavor and continue to write in the time-honoured tradition of D&W (Dragons & Wenches), or should we go post-Panksian and take lesson from Paul's self-destruction?

[quote="bukayeva"]I don't know who Paul Allen Panks is nor can I say much about finding people's later actions in their writing. But I can say that playing most IF does not even show me much of an author voice, much less substance that speaks to the human condition. I'm still struggling to see what many people here see in terms of IF being entertaining. As an example, so many people seem to recommend Photopia. I think it's dreadfully dull and not very interactive, with a story that you can see the end coming fairly easily. I tried Shrapnel. Another one that gets recommend quite a bit. Take away the "gimmick" aspect and I don't find it all that interesting. (Spider and Web was like that as well; nifty gimmick to keep you playing, but not much of a story, per se). I sort of liked Anchorhead (another one that people recommend) but I liked it more just because I only had other IF to compare it against and most of the other stuff wasn't so great. [...] I bring this up mainly because it's hard to detect an actual author voice in many cases. I don't know if that's because the mechanics of IF swamp out the voice -- since authors are so busy trying to build puzzles in. I don't know. So when you talk about the "substance to express any meaningful idea", I guess I just don't see a lot of that in IF. [/quote]

I think this reflects a lack of talent in the IF community, the absence of seriously gifted writers. But perhaps an even greater issue is the absence of intelligent expectations. The woman who gave us the constipated statue has recently released a game based on Snow White. It is beyond me why an educated person in their mid-thirties would waste their time on fairy tales. What is stranger still is the fact that this woman is a classicist. Presumably she's read Plato in the original, and yet she seems to have understood nothing and retained nothing. Sadly, it is people like her who set the expectations for what constitutes good IF.

[quote="Bainespal"]Of course, we can never know why Paul Panks killed himself.  However, if we must evaluate his unapologetically simple, morally straightforward text adventures in terms of his suicide, one possible conclusion is that Panks became disillusioned with his vision of heroism.  Maybe he didn't see that kind of adventure in his life, and he lost faith that such adventure and honor exists at all.  If so, I would not say that the "infantile" dichotomy between good and evil is false; rather, I would say that the dichotomy is far greater than we can ever hope to bridge.

For me, fantasy (and science fiction) is a desperate attempt to believe in the other side of that dichotomy.  It can be a struggle for life itself at times, because I think if this disappointing reality is all that I believed in, I would kill myself.  I have struggled with suicidal thoughts at times, but my fantasy helps to give me the strength to persevere in this world that I have no desire to live in.[/quote]

All I can say is that the horror you feel within is the stuff of true literature. Look it squarely in the eye and write about it. This is how serious writers are made.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2612&start=0#p18041
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 5 - Linux
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-06-14 05:26:15

Is it getting as far as displaying the Open File Dialog, or is it crashing at that point?  Also, what version of Mono and which Linux distro are you using?

If it's crashing at the OFD, try running "adrift <file.taf>", to launch a file directly, which should bypass the dialog.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2611&start=0#p18042
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Multiple Choice
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-06-14 05:34:05

[quote="Grueslayer"]Is there an extension that supports multiple choice for dialogues?[/quote]
You should use Simple Chat.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2605&start=10#p18043
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Memorialising Paul Allen Panks
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-14 07:34:15

[quote="bukayeva"]It's a hard community to really respect sometimes because you definitely see the cult of personality aspects.[/quote]

I don't have any skill with graphics, so let's just pretend that I've inserted an image of the picture from [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_personality]here[/url] with Graham Nelson's face photoshopped in. 

[quote]Bottom-line: I'd love to find a work of IF that had something demonstrable to say about depression, mental illness, the happiness of being, the angst of growing up, etc, and could put that in the context of agency in a way that people actually cared about. I've looked at games that people have pointed me to but in all cases, those experiences don't come close to some of the books I've read, some of the films I've seen, or even some of the games in other formats that I've played.[/quote]

Well, I liked many of the games that you were complaining about, so I'm not the best person to make recommendations. (I could say that Photopia and Galatea do put these in a way that people care about, you're just not one of those people; but that wouldn't be helpful.) But Emily Short's Best of Three is a puzzleless slice-of-life game that has demonstrable things to say about the angst of growing up, and gives you agency too. Victor Gijsbers's The Baron might also be worth trying -- it seems to be a standard fantasy thing at first, but it isn't.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2620&start=0#p18044
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: running code withing a StopEventList
User: zodraz / DateTime: 2011-06-14 07:55:58

HELP!

Can anyone tell me why conclusion1(), in askTopic item 1, in the code below is never called?  No doubt I doing something daft with the syntax although at present the code works fine.

The reason for the multiple checks is in case the player asks about the topic items in a random order, so after asking all three topics you get the end message and game over.  The message texts are quite long so I thought splitting it up would help instead of putting it all in the helloTopic.

[code]#charset "us-ascii"
#include <adv3.h>
#include <en_us.h>

versionInfo: GameID
    IFID = '5159989e-1ef5-8d2e-61db-08fe7d5c82ab'
    name = 'Your New Game Title'
    byline = 'by Your Name'
    htmlByline = 'by <a href="mailto:your-email@host.com">
                  Your Name</a>'
    version = '1'
    authorEmail = 'Your Name <your-email@host.com>'
    desc = 'Put a brief "blurb" about your game here.'
    htmlDesc = 'Put a brief "blurb" about your game here.'
;

gameMain: GameMainDef
    initialPlayerChar = me
;

stJamesDining : Room 'st James'
    desc()
    {
        "room description";
    }
;

+ me: Actor
    end1 = 0
    end2 = 0
    end3 = 0
;

+ nigelIrving : Person 'sir nigel irving' 'sir nigel'
    isHim = true
    isProperName = true
    conclusion()
    {
        cls();
        "end message";
        finishGameMsg(ftGameOver,'');
    }
    desc()
    {
        cls();
        "<center><img src='irving.png'></center>";
    }
;

++ HelloTopic, StopEventList
    [
        'prompt to ask about item 1 item 2 item 3 ',
        'Ask me about the information. '
    ]
;

++ AskTopic, StopEventList 'item 1'
    [
        new function
        {
            "message 1";
            me.end1 = 1;
    if(me.end1==1 && me.end2==1 && me.end3==1) &conclusion1;
            if(me.end1==1 && me.end2==1 && me.end3==1) nigelIrving.conclusion;
        },
        'You should ask me about the other information. '
    ]
    conclusion1()
    {
        "final message";
    }
;

++ AskTopic, StopEventList 'item 2'
    [
        new function
        {
            "message 2";
            me.end2 = 1;
            if(me.end1==1 && me.end2==1 && me.end3==1) nigelIrving.conclusion;
        },
        'You should ask me about the other information. '
    ]
;

++ AskTopic, StopEventList 'item 3'
    [
        new function
        {
            "message 3";
            me.end3 = 1;
            if(me.end1==1 && me.end2==1 && me.end3==1) nigelIrving.conclusion;
        },
        'You should ask me about the other information. '
    ]
;

+ nigelIrvingTalking : InConversationState
;

++ nigelIrvingReady : ConversationReadyState
    isInitState = true
;
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2614&start=0#p18045
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Bug with Flexible Windows--or Quixe?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-14 09:12:24

Thanks, guys. I'll email Jon with the suggestion to test the existence of the window before clearing it, which does seem wiser than simply deleting the call (he very probably had some reason for putting there, after all!).

Ben, thanks for the tip about starting Gargoyle from the command line; that will be very useful. The issue of different levels of permissiveness from different interpreters definitely causes issues, if only because folks aren't always able to test on the whole variety of terps available. It would be nice if the built-in IDE interpreters were either highly intolerant of errors, or (maybe better) if they spat out warning messages to a log in the IDE. It would also be useful if you could put the IDE terp in a minimal mode, where only the core Glk library was supported and any unprotected calls to optional functions would error out. (I sometimes use Quixe as a semi-minimal terp, but that won't be an option forever.)

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2612&start=0#p18046
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 5 - Linux
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-06-14 09:30:25

[quote="Campbell"]Is it getting as far as displaying the Open File Dialog, or is it crashing at that point?  Also, what version of Mono and which Linux distro are you using?[/quote]
It was crashing immediately, before the file dialog could appear. This is on Ubuntu 11.04, Mono 2.6.7.

[quote="Campbell"]If it's crashing at the OFD, try running "adrift <file.taf>", to launch a file directly, which should bypass the dialog.[/quote]
Okay, that works. And strangely, having managed to start a game that way once, the crash isn't happening any more, even if I start ADRIFT without a game. (Or maybe it's just because I restarted the computer before I tried it? I don't know. It was crashing every time earlier...)

Anyway, the Runner looks pretty nice! I don't have time right now to actually play anything, but I put in a few commands and saved and restored the game, which all worked fine.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2620&start=0#p18047
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: running code withing a StopEventList
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-06-14 09:38:43

It looks to me like the problem is here:
[code]&conclusion1;[/code]
More specifically, it's the stray "&" before "conclusion1". The "&" creates a reference to conclusion1, instead of calling it. Take out the "&", and it should work.

(I'd offer an explanation of references, but it's too late at night and my brain won't work. Maybe in the morning...)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2612&start=0#p18048
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 5 - Linux
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-06-14 09:40:14

Ok, that's encouraging.  The crash looks to be within Mono itself then.  Perhaps the reboot just sorted something out, maybe as a result of the VB add-on.

Thanks for giving it a go.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2605&start=10#p18049
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Memorialising Paul Allen Panks
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-06-14 10:07:01

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]Chesterton may have been ironic. The reason why we create false horrors that can be defeated is because we can't face the true horror within, the horror that is invincible. This true horror, the one that lurks within each and everyone of us, is far richer and more eloquent than all the dragons and giant spiders put together. Serious literature teaches us how to live with the horror within. Any literature that fails to address the true horror within and instead fabricates false external horrors is not only dishonest but also undignified.[/quote]
I agree with the part about false external horrors in literature.  However, I think the true, internal horror that you talk about can never be "eloquent" in itself.  This is the horror that, I do believe, gives each of us the potential to be another Hitler (not necessarily in scope, but at heart), if we give in to it.  This is the horror that makes people destroy each other and crave domination of others and of the world.  It's the horror that each day causes our natural environment to be desecrated and innocent children to be raped.  There's nothing "eloquent" or romantic in this horror at all.  The only eloquence is in resisting it to the bitter death, in sacrificing one's self to see love triumph even in some small way over selfishness.  That's what I think literature is.

And I don't think the conventional fairy tale is unworthy of dealing with the true inner horror.  Realistic literature certainly has its place, but fairy tales (fantasy and science fiction, etc.) can reveal the struggle against the inner horror more clearly in some ways by creating a system of concrete symbols to represent the abstract struggle.  A dishonest fantasy with a phony dragon that the Hero can conquer by his own brute strength would indeed be undignified, as you eloquently expressed in your last post.  However, I think we need to believe that dragons can be defeated, or else we might as well follow Panks, because our suffering would be meaningless.

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]In the Panksian era we were all jolly Hobbits fighting dragons and giant spiders, with the occasional murder mystery and space alien thrown in for good measure. Oh, and let's not forget the talking statue that suffered from severe constipation, or whatever her problem was. Now that the jolly Hobbits have witnessed Frodo erase his own map, they've halted at a juncture. Should we take lesson from Paul's life and his artistic endeavor and continue to write in the time-honoured tradition of D&W (Dragons & Wenches), or should we go post-Panksian and take lesson from Paul's self-destruction?[/quote]
You keep giving examples of the kinds of "Panksian-era" stories that you want us to move beyond.  What kind of stories, exactly, do you want to see replace them?  Also, no one has yet pointed out that Panks's work, at least as far as I know, was never considered to be descriptive of the contemporary state of IF.  From everything I've heard, Panks and his works were generally disliked and not taken seriously (which I think is a tragedy, especially in light his demise).

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]All I can say is that the horror you feel within is the stuff of true literature. Look it squarely in the eye and write about it. This is how serious writers are made.[/quote]
Thank you, sir.  That's an insightful statement, and very good advice, I think. [emote]:-)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2614&start=0#p18050
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Bug with Flexible Windows--or Quixe?
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-06-14 10:14:33

[quote="ektemple"]It would also be useful if you could put the IDE terp in a minimal mode, where only the core Glk library was supported and any unprotected calls to optional functions would error out.[/quote]  If you don't mind using a development snapshot, you might try [url=http://i7grip.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/i7grip/Floyd%20Mode.i7x?revision=45&view=markup]Floyd Mode[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2612&start=0#p18051
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 5 - Linux
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-14 10:39:12

Maybe I'm talking nonsense, but can it be that you have implemented some form of "last opened directory", and try to use it as the initial directory of the "open file" dialog, but since the user runs the app for the first time there is no last opened directory yet?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2612&start=0#p18052
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 5 - Linux
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-06-14 12:13:46

Well, I do assign OFD.FileName = "" if it currently contains a value that doesn't end in "taf".  But this seems to work fine for me.  So it sounds like it's something in the initialization of the OFD itself.  I might be able to work around it by pre-assigning the current directory or something similar.  It would be interesting to see if anyone else gets this same issue.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2607&start=0#p18053
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Starting a Scene upon Examining
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-14 12:19:22

I developed my IF-writing habits in Inform 5. I like flags. If you can make scenes work for you, by all means use them.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2614&start=0#p18054
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Bug with Flexible Windows--or Quixe?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-14 12:26:16

[quote] It would also be useful if you could put the IDE terp in a minimal mode, where only the core Glk library was supported and any unprotected calls to optional functions would error out.[/quote]

I agree. Actually, it should be two separate features. The IDE should always be strict about erroneous calls (such as glk_window_clear(0)), and it should have a switch for various minimal-feature regimes (floyd=one window; terminal=multiple text windows but no graphics).

The latter is already up as a uservoice suggestion: <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/1240283-have-a-no-graphics-and-one-window-options-for-">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... tions-for-</a>

I'll add the former now.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=40#p18055
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-14 12:43:33

[quote]Given that we're introducing pause and unpause calls, would it perhaps be better to have calls to pause and unpause several channels at once?[/quote]

That would work too. 

However, I'm looking at the OSX/iOS audio toolbox API, and it doesn't have a synchronized pause call. (There's an "unpause at a given time" call, but using that to do synchronized unpauses would require a bit of guesswork.) So I suspect that the Mac/iOS implementation of this stuff will fall more naturally into a synchronized-play model, where the app code synchronizes its decoding of sound data to the audio queue rather than pausing the audio queue itself.

Possibly I'm overthinking this, since I haven't looked at how the current Mac libraries do it. :)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2605&start=10#p18056
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Memorialising Paul Allen Panks
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-06-14 13:51:35

[quote="Bainespal"]
[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]All I can say is that the horror you feel within is the stuff of true literature. Look it squarely in the eye and write about it. This is how serious writers are made.[/quote]
Thank you, sir.  That's an insightful statement, and very good advice, I think. [emote]:-)[/emote][/quote]

Just don't forget that when you gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you, or spits into you, or both, or whichever comes first in the abyss's mind. The abyss is an unstable fella, sometimes he eats good fruit and tries to stay fit, but most of the time he doesn't have money for the gym and gets fat real quick. It is not uncommon to watch him ask random people in the streets "Whose death did you wish for today?", or the immeasurably violent "What is the color of your lover's voice?", and then runs away without hearing the answer, jumping high on the trees, screaming "THEY ARE ALL ORANGE, YOU BASTARDS!" He always has a notebook with him, but it's empty, he never wrote a word, because, poor thing!, he's afraid that the world will turn into an impressionist painting when he does, because he knows the world will turn into an impressionist painting when he does, and the thing is - [rant][i]he fucking hates Monet[/i].[/rant]

But I digress, and what I wanted to say was - be careful with that true literature thing; you could end up with your face smudged.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2621&start=0#p18057
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7 images/glulx: Problems with location images
User: Kellychouchou / DateTime: 2011-06-14 14:26:09

Hey everyone, im having some trouble with location images and inserting simple graphical windows.

the code all works fine and the images all appear in the allocated section (left hand side in my game) but when i enter another location the image for that room prints over the top of the last one. how can i stop this? 

any help is welcome thankyou

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2622&start=0#p18058
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Printing Hard Copy from Skein and Transcript
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-06-14 14:36:30

(I7) Is there a way to print (via a hard copy printer) a copy of the Skein, Transcript and source? I know I can copy the source and past it onto a blank page then print from there but I don't seem to be able to print the others. This also applies to saving the Skein and Transcript?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2620&start=0#p18059
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: running code withing a StopEventList
User: zodraz / DateTime: 2011-06-14 14:48:10

Told you it would be something daft that I did.  Works fine of course, thank you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2621&start=0#p18060
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 images/glulx: Problems with location images
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-14 14:51:07

It's hard to say for sure w/o a glimpse of your code. What it sounds like, though, is that you are using your own custom drawing rule, but forgot to include a phrase to clear the window before the actual drawing happens. The most common way to clear with SGW would be:

[code]
blank window to graphics background color[/code]

followed immediately by whatever phrase invokes your drawing rule.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2621&start=0#p18061
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 images/glulx: Problems with location images
User: Kellychouchou / DateTime: 2011-06-14 15:16:46

I'm just using the standard graphic rules that come with the extension simple graphic rule. i'll give you a sample of my code: [code]Rule for starting the virtual machine:
	now the current graphics drawing rule is the standard placement rule. 
	
Carry out looking:
	blank window to graphics background color;
	follow the current graphics drawing rule. 
	
The graphics background color is g-white. Graphics window position is g-left. 

Figure of bedroom is the file "panel2.jpg". [/code]

Now, the game has stopped showing image locations and simply prints out a blank screen instead, any movement or examining only prints out the release cover art [emote]:([/emote] im stuck

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2611&start=0#p18062
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Multiple Choice
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-14 15:20:48

I think Michael Callaghans extension is quite exactly what I need, thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2605&start=10#p18063
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Memorialising Paul Allen Panks
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-06-14 18:15:28

[quote="lribeiro"]But I digress, and what I wanted to say was - be careful with that true literature thing; you could end up with your face smudged.[/quote]
Absolutely!  In my opinion, literature fails us when it tries to make nice with the evil nature in man.  I was merely agreeing that we need to look the "horror" squarely in the eye -- that is, acknowledge it -- and then fight it with all that we are.  Your characterization of the abyss is both wise and funny, and I deeply appreciate the admonition!  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2614&start=0#p18064
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Bug with Flexible Windows--or Quixe?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-14 19:29:00

Thanks, zarf--I'm all out of votes [emote];)[/emote]

Emacs, thanks for introducing me to Floyd Mode! I7grip more generally looks interesting too.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2621&start=0#p18065
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 images/glulx: Problems with location images
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-14 19:38:02

I don't see any problem with that code, except that since you're using one of the built-in drawing rules, you don't need to clear the window manually; that's pretty minor, though--just makes things a bit slower (probably not even noticeable on most systems).

But of course, that's not the full code needed to implement the feature you're going for; you'd have to put all of the relevant code up for us to try and diagnose what's going on. 

Have you tried using the Location Images extensions with SGW? That automates the whole thing, and I think the result would be exactly the same as the code you are trying to write. If you use Location Images, all you need to do for each room is write "The Llama Creche is a room. The room illustration is Figure of Llamitas Nursing".

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2608&start=0#p18066
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Main window color and text color...
User: anamri / DateTime: 2011-06-14 21:56:27

Well, I have been at it, trying to implement the color changes with the hacked extension, but it keeps telling me it compiled just fine, but that I6 is throwing some errors...

Could you help me out with some code to reverse out the colors of the main-window?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2605&start=10#p18067
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Memorialising Paul Allen Panks
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-14 22:28:46

I didn't want to do this. But I have to. I have to because it's fair. I have to because being immortalized by death is pathetic. I have to because this conversation has been turned into something that it shouldn't be. Not because the conversation doesn't need to happen, but because of the way it started.

Let me preface this by saying that I am not an accomplished writer. I've been published ONCE and that one didn't even count. I've never completely written a work of IF. I doubt I ever will. Maybe I just dabble. Maybe I just dream. But I don't pretend to be something I'm not. But I do read. A lot.

I went back and read Panks' stuff. A lot of it. Frankly... None of it was very good. With the exception of a couple of proverbial diamonds, most of it was downright bad. This is entirely my opinion. I didn't know the man. I didn't idolize him. For me there will never be a "Panksian Era". For a label like that, one must have made a significant contribution to his art. Or at least been bad enough that people view it as exceptional out of pity. The same could be said for Andy Warhol. There's no way in creation that Warhol could be the figure that he is without pity. There was nothing good about ANYTHING that he did. 

Neither did Panks put out anything that deserved this level of deep examination beyond those close to him. It reaks of one coming to one's own funeral.

In a complete segue from the original conversation, there's this discussion about horror. Horror is subjective. VERY subjective. There's no one work of horror that is going to twist every person's psyche into a pretzel. I am in love with Lovecraft. I have been for many, many years. His brand of "alluding" always struck a chord with me. But I also love King and Barker, who are very descriptive and direct. 

But while you may fear spiders or intruders into your home or the end of the world, I fear the loss of love or the death of my children. I'll crush a spider with my hand without flinching. I have firearms in almost every room of my house. I have more than one weapon on my person at any given time. There isn't a man, beast or thing on the face of the planet that I fear or that I don't think I can deal with. Even if I can't deal with it, I'm confident enough to believe that I can. It's those things that I cannot control, I cannot fight, that I'm afraid of. My kids killed in a car wreck by a drunk driver. A tornado hitting their home. Things like that.

You cannot put that into a story. While I may empathize with what you're saying and I may enjoy it, you cannot [i]scare[/i] me.

But what does any of this have to do with Paul Allen Panks? If you liked his stuff, read it and love it and remember him. If you didn't or have no idea who he was... Keep on keeping on. This seems like the kind of thing where you pour some whiskey out on the curb instead of picking through every minute detail of his work looking for a reason why. All suicides are the same. They're not happy. It DOESN'T MATTER WHY THEY AREN'T HAPPY after the fact. They're dead. They don't care if you know why they're dead. Because they're dead. They killed themselves because there was something they couldn't deal with. Figuring that out doesn't make them any less dead. Having attempted suicide (albeit it I was obviously as bad at that as I am with writing, especially when posting on forums) and having known people who have attempted to kill themselves and having known people who have actually succeeded... I have an opinion on this that I will stand by.

Point being, if you love his work then love it and remember it fondly. If you hated it, then hate it and remember it fondly. All human beings are worthy of that, whether they wrote IF or pumped your gas. He would appreciate it either way. One day when you're having some IF conference, his name will come up (and it won't) and you'll be like, "I remember that shit. He was awesome/completeshit."

Beyond that... Don't look too much into it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2607&start=0#p18068
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Starting a Scene upon Examining
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-14 22:38:35

I love flags. I wish they had a more... functional and direct use in Inform 7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2607&start=0#p18069
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Starting a Scene upon Examining
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-06-14 22:49:33

[quote="I4L"]I love flags. I wish they had a more... functional and direct use in Inform 7.[/quote]

What are you talking about? They've got as much or as little use in Inform 7 as you want. My programming is extraordinarily flaggy. Just program the way that suits you best. Unless you indulge in outrageous inefficency en route, all roads that lead to the desired outcomes are good roads.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2623&start=0#p18070
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: One Framework or Two?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-14 23:38:50

I'm working on a fairly large game that divides quite neatly into two parts. The two parts have the same characters, but not the same locations. (Well, four of the locations are the same, but now it's night.)

I'm wondering whether to implement the second half (which I haven't yet started, other than designing it) as a continuation of the first half, or whether to create an entirely new framework. This would involve, among other things, having two entirely different characters named Julia, two named Leo, and so on.

I'm using TADS 3, so creating new objects for the cast of characters in Part 2 is child's play -- I don't need to worry about Inform's issues with namespace clashes. What may prove to be less trivial is the question of tracking the characters' knowledge, possessions, and so forth. It would be pretty easy to introduce bugs by forgetting to set up the second cast so that it duplicates the relevant features of the first cast. Likewise the rooms. Since there are four rooms that exist in both parts, I would need to make sure that anything dropped by the player in a Part 1 room got transferred silently to the "identical" Part 2 room when Part 2 starts.

If I don't create an entirely new framework for Part 2, it seems to me I'll have a lot MORE work to do. Some of the characters (again, this is a T3 thing -- sorry) already have nine or ten ActorStates. If the same character has nine or ten more states in Part 2, the potential for the conversation system to get out of sync is huge.

Have other authors dealt with similar challenges? What did you do?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2608&start=0#p18071
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Main window color and text color...
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-06-15 02:57:56

Unless there have been changes in the latest versions of ZMPP, you can set the font and background color for the interpreter directly. The parameters are 

[code]      <param name="defaultbg" value="black" />
      <param name="defaultfg" value="white" />[/code]
These go inside the <applet></applet> tags.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2623&start=0#p18074
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: One Framework or Two?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-06-15 07:17:01

[quote="Jim Aikin"]What may prove to be less trivial is the question of tracking the characters' knowledge, possessions, and so forth. It would be pretty easy to introduce bugs by forgetting to set up the second cast so that it duplicates the relevant features of the first cast.[/quote]
As you might know Jim, I don't really know anything about Tads3 (or OOP for that matter), but you got me thinking. Since I sort of remembered that Tads has dynamic object creation, I wondered if it was possible to clone an object. It looks like it is (from <a class="postlink" href="http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/libref/object/TadsObject.html">http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/libref/ob ... bject.html</a>):
[quote]
createClone ( )	
Create a clone of this object. This creates an exact copy, with the same property values, as the original. This does not call any constructors; it merely instantiates an exact copy of the original.

Note that the clone is a "shallow" copy, which means that any objects it references are not themselves cloned. [/quote]
Now I don't know how this handles any methods associated with the object and I don't know what a constructor is, so this may be way off base. If this does what I think it does, instead of creating Julia #2 at the outset, you could wait until you need her and then clone her, insuring that at least the properties are duplicated with their current values. It looks like you'd still have to move the objects separately. 

I'm sure someone else will come up with something better, but I thought I'd throw that out there.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2623&start=0#p18075
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: One Framework or Two?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-06-15 07:36:30

I guess it depends on how much of the world's state would need to carry over from part 1 to part 2. If it's just a couple of object lying in a room, I see no disadvantages of implementing the game's parts separately. If you are using complex stuff like knowledge states for the actors which remain relevant in the second part, you might be better off reusing the actors.

Not a very helpful reply, perhaps, but this decision just depends very much on the details of your game. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2624&start=0#p18076
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6 storage exceeded?
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-06-15 07:41:15

Translating the Source - Inform 6 ran out of memory 
The application ran your source text through the Inform 7 compiler, as usual, and it found no problems translating the source as far as a sort of intermediate-level code - a program for Inform 6, which would ordinarily then be used to make the final working IF.

Unfortunately, the program must have been too demanding for Inform 6 to handle, because it reported that one of its memory settings had been broken. These are upper limits, usually on the number of things of a particular sort which can be created, or on the amount of memory available for a given purpose.

To get around this, look at the actual output produced by Inform 6 to see which memory setting was broken. For instance, suppose it said:


The memory setting MAX_PROP_TABLE_SIZE (which is 30000 at present) has been exceeded.
You then need to amend your Inform 7 source text to take account of this, by adding a sentence like the following:


Use MAX_PROP_TABLE_SIZE of 50000.
With sentences like this, you can make Inform 6 raise its limits until there's no longer any problem: see Chapter 2 of the documentation. 


Sorry for the inconvenience.[quote][/quote]

It's me again!
As you can see from the included error message, I have broken I6. If anybody out there feels they can interperate the message and point me to the solution, I will send them the applicable files.
It appears as though the process of generating code is treated as "a game" just as the compilation of the game. What broke the compiler was a region statement defining a 7x9 array of rooms. This is in addition to an initial program section of about 60 or so rooms.
And I ain't done yet!!! I have a lot more rooms to design.
Here is the complete regions statement:
[quote]LR is a region. Living Room of Friend's House, Bedroom of House, Bathroom of House, Closet off Bedroom, DEPARTURE ROOM, Mossy Stone Corridor, Mossy Stone Corridor Side Room,  Mossy Stone Corridor Laboratory, Slimy Wet Steps, Slimy Wet Steps Side Room are in LR.

HR is a region. Rough Timber Corridor, Escape Room, HELL, Giant Frying Pan, Hell's Slide, Purgatory  are in HR.

GP is a region. Gravel Path, R2875, R4516, R5282, R8913, R0148, R4395 are in GP

GP6130 is a region. R6130, AR6130, BR6130, CR6130, DR6130, ER6130, FR6130, GR6130, HR6130, IR6130, JR6130, KR6130, LR6130, MR6130, NR6130, OR6130, PR6130, Music Room are in GP6130

GP7536 is a region. R7536 and AR7536, BR7536, CR7536, DR7536, ER7536, FR7536, GR7536, HR7536, IR7536, JR7536,  KR7536, LR7536, MR7536, NR7536,OR7536,  P1R7536, P2R7536, P3R7536, SR7536, Salt Mine Office are in GP7536

MP is a region.  Muddy Path, R7611, R7031, R5077, R7460, R6777, R8522, R0254, R5348, Many Muddy Steps are in MP

UC is a region. A12875, C12875,  B22875, C22875, D22875, E22875, F22875, A32875, B32875, C32875, D32875, E32875, F32875, G32876, A42475, B42875, C42875, D42875, F42875, G42875, B52875, C52875, C42875, D42875, F42875, G42875, B52875, C52875, D52875, E52875, F52875, G52875, B62875, C62875, D62875, E62875, F62875, G62875, A72875, B72875, C72875, D72875, E72875, F72875, G72875, A82875, B82875, E82875, F82875, G82875, B92875, C92875, D92875, E92875, F92875  is in UC[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2623&start=0#p18079
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: One Framework or Two?
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-15 07:53:17

Is there a potential for the action to move back and forth between the two parts, or is the transition a one-shot where the player completes part 1 and then moves on to part 2 never to return?

I don't know anything about TADS, but I would think that if its the former, using the "two separate frameworks" approach has to get a lot more complicated, because you would need to transfer the state of each character (and room) to his/its other-framework counterpart not just once, but every time the player moves from one "world" to the other.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2624&start=0#p18080
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6 storage exceeded?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-06-15 08:03:23

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but did you do what the error message says? It gives quite explicit instructions on how to fix the situation and even points to where you can find more information (although for some reason it doesn't give the full chapter number - 2.14 is the relevant chapter).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2624&start=0#p18081
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6 storage exceeded?
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-15 08:09:53

I'm sure that somebody who knows what he is doing will give you a better answer, but when I run into this kind of error I hit the "back" button in the right-hand pane until I get to the error message produced by the second-stage compilation (I think it's one or two frames back from the "final" error message).  That will identify which particular "setting" (I'm probably using a technically inaccurate term here) is too low, and what the current value of that setting is.  I don't begin to understand what the various settings actually mean, but if the machine tells me that a particular one is too low I try setting it higher (by adding a line such as "Use [whatever the setting in question is] of [some number bigger than the current one]."  I just keep increasing the number in increments until it compiles without an error.  It's probably a dreadfully imprecise way of doing things, but it works for technical Neanderthals like me.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2624&start=0#p18082
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6 storage exceeded?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-15 08:21:25

In the Mac IDE at least, you can hit the "errors" tab on the right of the window (actually you're probably there already). Then there will be two tabs at the top of the window, "progress" and "problems." You'll be on the "problems" tab; click on the "progress" tab and that will should give you a message that tells you what constant was exceeded. 

(The "progress" tab of the "errors" tab is the actual output produced by Inform 6, which is what you're being told to look at when it says "look at the actual output produced by Inform 6 to see which memory setting was broken." Unfortunately, the error message is not helpful in telling you how to do it; I had to comb through the documentation a little to figure out how to do this. [UPDATE: As Juhana says, it's in 2.14.])

Once you've seen that, you can increase that constant using "Use MAX_PROP_TABLE_SIZE of 50000" or whatever; hopefully that will take care of your problem.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2624&start=0#p18083
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6 storage exceeded?
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-06-15 08:52:37

Thanks all. 
It would appear that even though the writers of I7 have given me all of the tools I need, I'm still unable to look past my problem and see the solution!
I changed the limit to 200000 and everything is now working fine. I guess I'll not have to go stand out in traffic again!
One would  think that after 50 years of fighting programming problems (created by me) that I would have accumulated enough know-how to handle things that are right in front of me. I’m going to go to the  gym and work this off. [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2608&start=10#p18084
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Main window color and text color...
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-15 09:20:49

[quote="anamri"]Well, I have been at it, trying to implement the color changes with the hacked extension, but it keeps telling me it compiled just fine, but that I6 is throwing some errors...

Could you help me out with some code to reverse out the colors of the main-window?[/quote]

It looks like Juhana has a solution that should work for you. Given that ZMPP may not support stylehints, this might be the way to go.

That said, the code I posted works well and shouldn't cause any errors. You can verify this by building it in a new project, without any of your game's code. So the I6 errors you're getting are generated by your game code--or your game code in interaction with Glulx Text Effects/Flexible Windows--and you'd need to solve them by tracking down the incompatibilities.

Here's one idea: Depending on what other extensions you have installed, you might need to remove the reference to "Include Glulx Text Effects - New" from your story file. Since it's already included in Flexible Windows, that inclusion is redundant. Inform can be a bit touchy about extension inclusions, though that touchiness usually results in I7 compiler errors rather than I6 ones.

Also, I've attached a modified version of Flexible Windows, which removes an issue that might have prevented the game from working in ZMPP (see <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2614">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2614</a>). This version refers to Glulx Text Effects - New, rather than Glulx Text Effects.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2623&start=0#p18085
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: One Framework or Two?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-15 09:26:22

To me, "part 1" and "part 2" doesn't sound any more different than "intro" and "midgame". That is, it has no special significance from a programming point of view. It's just a screen in-between. If you need actors to use new states, drop the old states and assign new ones (to the same actor objects.)  If you need to keep rooms around, keep them. You can assign different desc() methods to them in part 2. Etc, etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2623&start=0#p18087
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: One Framework or Two?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-15 10:05:21

[quote="RealNC"]To me, "part 1" and "part 2" doesn't sound any more different than "intro" and "midgame". That is, it has no special significance from a programming point of view. It's just a screen in-between. If you need actors to use new states, drop the old states and assign new ones (to the same actor objects.)  If you need to keep rooms around, keep them. You can assign different desc() methods to them in part 2. Etc, etc.[/quote]
I hadn't thought of moving the old ActorStates out and moving new ones in. That's a good suggestion, and may make it more practical. There will also be different AskTopics and so forth, which could be handled with AltTopics, but that could easily get messy.

I can see that this thread will turn into a T3 how-to if we go much further. Maybe that's the forum for it. But I'm still curious, as a general question, about the advantages and disadvantages of implementing what amounts to two separate games (and no, the player won't be moving back and forth between them) within a single master game file.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2608&start=10#p18088
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Main window color and text color...
User: anamri / DateTime: 2011-06-15 11:11:29

Ok, I have your extension running great - all of the text color is green on the VM... the background is still white though!

Juhana's suggested parameter names didn't work, they must have been changed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2556&start=10#p18089
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Framework Question
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-15 11:18:37

I don't know if I'm going insane or not, but I just changed the "subject-column" name back to "subject" and The Tribune's Report still works. It looks like merely specifying (object) for the subject column of Table of Null Response fixes everything. Can anyone else confirm this for me?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2609&start=0#p18090
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 Theme-park?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-15 11:36:57

If your question is more about what kind of player experience to create as opposed to how to implement a specific behavior in I7, you might want to post your question (in more detail) in the General Game Design forum.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2610&start=0#p18091
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform7: trying to go to one room but ending up in anoth
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-15 11:39:44

[quote="Trumgottist"]Edit: And please do attempt to write properly. It makes things easier for the rest of us, particularly those of us who are not native speakers of English. Your posts are harder to read than most.[/quote]
If you have difficulty writing English text for your game, I recommend finding a volunteer to edit it for you. That could potentially add a lot to your players' impressions of it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2608&start=10#p18092
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Main window color and text color...
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-15 12:39:15

Hm, I'm not sure what to say about the white background. You don't say what interpreter you're using, but I see a black background in the interpreters I've tested with (Zoom, Gargoyle on OS X). Maybe try other interpreters to see if they've implemented background colors in text windows?

Also, you are using Flexible Windows, right? That's what lets you set the window background. 

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2627&start=0#p18093
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: PLSG #7: Sturdlint (The Mempotnaclob)
User: Rotonoto / DateTime: 2011-06-15 12:43:33

I'm making the new installment of Painless Little Stupid Games available for betatesting. Any comments are appreciated.

You can get the z-code game from <a class="postlink" href="http://w3.cnm.edu/~mrblonde/Sturdlint">http://w3.cnm.edu/~mrblonde/Sturdlint</a> (The Mempotnaclob).z5, or wait till I put it on the archive.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2608&start=10#p18094
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Main window color and text color...
User: anamri / DateTime: 2011-06-15 12:50:51

I am using zmpp-gluxe (also called zmpp2).

I have finally found a way to change the background... the only problem is that when the window first loads it is just a highlighted effect on text, but after the next window loads, the whole main window background turns black.  I'm not sure how to change that, but what I put, that actually showed on the VM is:
[code]The main-window is a text-buffer g-window. The back-colour of the main-window is g-black.[/code]
It's some progress at least...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2608&start=10#p18095
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Main window color and text color...
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-06-15 13:05:21

Can I ask why you're using ZMPP and not Quixe or Parchment? Changing the colors in JavaScript interpreters would be trivial.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2608&start=10#p18096
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Main window color and text color...
User: anamri / DateTime: 2011-06-15 13:08:19

[quote="Juhana"]Can I ask why you're using ZMPP and not Quixe or Parchment? Changing the colors in JavaScript interpreters would be trivial.[/quote]
I am using graphics.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2627&start=0#p18097
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: PLSG #7: Sturdlint (The Mempotnaclob)
User: Rotonoto / DateTime: 2011-06-15 13:08:55

I forgot: comments to payyasi at hotmail dot com, symbols for words. Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2608&start=10#p18098
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Main window color and text color...
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-15 13:11:39

[quote="anamri"]I have finally found a way to change the background... the only problem is that when the window first loads it is just a highlighted effect on text, but after the next window loads, the whole main window background turns black.  I'm not sure how to change that, but what I put, that actually showed on the VM is:
[code]The main-window is a text-buffer g-window. The back-colour of the main-window is g-black.[/code][/quote]

I'm surprised that the I7 compiler lets you declare the main-window a second time: That declaration ("The main-window is a text-buffer g-window") is already present in Flexible Windows. I also don't understand know how it could have helped things to have two window objects with the same name. I would recommend that you delete the first part and just leave "The back-colour of the main-window is g-black".

If you clear the window once on your own at the outset, that should force the background color to show up in ZMPP, e.g.:

[code]When play begins: clear the main-window.[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2627&start=0#p18099
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: PLSG #7: Sturdlint (The Mempotnaclob)
User: Rotonoto / DateTime: 2011-06-15 13:39:16

Aargh. Try this:

w3.cnm.edu/~mrblonde/Sturdlint%20(The%20Mempotnaclob).z5

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2628&start=0#p18100
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Need immediate help: inform 7 - scene change is stuck
User: Kellychouchou / DateTime: 2011-06-15 14:13:16

In my game the scene change machinery is stuck, this does not come up as an error in the code but instead at a specific point in the game. i have a show to put up on friday and its vital i get it fixed does anyone have any ideas???

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2628&start=0#p18101
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need immediate help: inform 7 - scene change is stuck
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-06-15 14:28:24

[quote="Kellychouchou"]In my game the scene change machinery is stuck, this does not come up as an error in the code but instead at a specific point in the game.[/quote]
Please be more specific. By "stuck" do you mean the game hangs, is put into an endless loop, or something else? Does it show a runtime error and if so, what? If the code is too long to post, even an example of the output you're getting would help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2608&start=10#p18102
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Main window color and text color...
User: anamri / DateTime: 2011-06-15 14:35:53

I think you are right that some of my previous coding was interacting badly.  The help you have given me has been outstanding!
Finally, green text on a black background!   [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2629&start=0#p18103
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: Parsing Beyond ASK/TELL
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-15 14:44:38

Dear all,

the object focus of Inform starts to worry me a little. I'm now trying on simple conversations, and I'd need the parser to deal with some stuff beyond ask and tell. I know this question is very general and probably deals with a rather complicated topic, but -

How can I parse something like "npc, i can help"? 

I guess I could check for one word conversation, but how do I deal with several words that aren't in the dictionary of the game?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2608&start=10#p18104
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Main window color and text color...
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-15 15:04:49

Glad to hear you've got it working!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2629&start=0#p18105
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Parsing Beyond ASK/TELL
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-15 15:55:47

Read up on parse_name. This library method allows you to identify any set of words you like, in whatever order or orders you feel the player should use. You can create an invisible topic-type object and put it in scope in the grammar code for your own verb.

However, you DO need the command line to start with a verb. Unfortunately, in the example you gave, 'npc, i can help', Inform will parse 'i' as 'inventory', and that will probably happen before your custom verb gets a shot at it, unless you remove that matching token from the library's Inventory grammar and then create your own custom action that will re-route 'i' to the Inventory command if there are no other tokens in the input.

In this particular case, I think you could also use a before-parsing entry point of some sort to transmute that string into 'offer to help npc'. That would be easier to code, as the verb 'offer to help' should be a bit easier to set up.

My I6 is rusty, so my apologies for not remembering the name of the before-parsing entry point. But as mentioned in the DM4, Kathleen Fischer (wonder whatever happened to her...) once said, "parse_name is your friend." And indeed it is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1923&start=0#p18106
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Storybook
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-15 16:29:41

Just put a space after "Ann" in the find dialog.

(I know you were making a point, I'm just kidding.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=30#p18107
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-15 16:39:02

[quote="Genstein"]Thanks I4L, I do like this idea. One or two people have suggested something similar, and it's an issue I encounter when using Trizbort with large maps as well.

I've vaguely thought about this in the past, and could envisage floors or layers being separate tabs in the interface, each with its own rooms and connections, but with visible "stubs" allowing automatic switching between the two as you suggest.

I also still like the idea of permitting multiple regions on each layer, each as their own labelled area, possibly with its own background colour for clarity. (I'd like to permit rooms to be individually coloured as well, at some stage.) The main thing that puts me off this is how it would fit in with automapping, which uses a pretty primitive algorithm to lay out the map and would be difficult to imbue with intelligence. Mind you the same can be said for layers I imagine; in either case automapping would I suspect have to default to placing new rooms in the same region, and on the same layer as the previous room, which could be irritating since they'd have to be fixed up by hand. For games like Anchorhead this might work quite well; for some games - with many different ways of getting between "regions" - I imagine it could be rather more frustrating.

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll definitely think on them [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Well, I wasn't thinking in terms of automapping. I don't think it would be able to automatically differentiate between regions, since it's simply scraping text out of the log file and regions are typically indicated on-screen. But if I'm looking at my map, Anchorhead for example, I [i]assume[/i] that the mansion is a different region from the town. So I click on the "Scenic View" room and tell Trizbort that this is the entrance room to a new region. Maybe Trizbort could let me name it.

Trizbort then breaks that and the connecting rooms off to a new layer. Any time I hit that room, it automatically switches to the new layer or tab. I am, of course, welcome to click between the tabs, but unless it turn off automapping, if I move in the game, it snaps me back to the correct region.

I suppose there would be some complication where a region has multiple entrances, which isn't the case in Anchorhead. Maybe a more eloquent solution would be to select all of the rooms that you want to assign to a new region instead?

I don't know, just thinking out loud.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1923&start=0#p18108
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Storybook
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-06-15 17:08:19

Ah, but what about "Ann.", "Ann!", "Ann?" and all the symbols you could attach to it?

(I know you were just kidding. So am I. [emote];)[/emote] )

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=30#p18109
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-06-15 17:54:49

[quote="I4L"]Any time I hit that room, it automatically switches to the new layer or tab. I am, of course, welcome to click between the tabs, but unless it turn off automapping, if I move in the game, it snaps me back to the correct region.[/quote]Sounds familiar! [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2630&start=0#p18110
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Taking an item that is part of another
User: Karl / DateTime: 2011-06-15 19:10:52

Hi, I am new to Inform 7, and to creating IF games in general.  I am running into problems having an item be part of another item, but still be something that can be taken.  E.g. suppose I had a jar and a lid:

The jar is a thing in Basement.  The lid is part of the jar.

Making the lid part of the jar makes it not get listed separately in the room, which is what I want, but it's not takeable, being part of the jar.  Is there any way to override this

I tried something like this to work around it:

Instead of taking the lid:
   now the player carries the lid;
   say "You take the lid."

This works, but doesn't change the fact that the lid is still part of the jar, and can be taken again.

Thanks in advance for any help!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2628&start=0#p18111
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need immediate help: inform 7 - scene change is stuck
User: Karl / DateTime: 2011-06-15 19:17:31

[quote="Kellychouchou"]In my game the scene change machinery is stuck, this does not come up as an error in the code but instead at a specific point in the game. i have a show to put up on friday and its vital i get it fixed does anyone have any ideas???[/quote]

A total and complete stab in the dark from a complete newbie, for what it is worth: if by stuck you mean it hangs, I would think that something is causing an infinite loop.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2630&start=0#p18112
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Taking an item that is part of another
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-15 19:50:52

Try this:

[code]The lid is part of the jar.

Instead of taking the lid:
	if the lid is part of the jar:
		now the player carries the lid;
		say "You remove the lid from the jar.";
	otherwise:
		continue the action.

Instead of putting the lid on the jar:
	if the lid is not part of the jar:
		now the lid is part of the jar;
		say "You put the lid on the jar.";
	otherwise:
		continue the action.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2628&start=0#p18113
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need immediate help: inform 7 - scene change is stuck
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-15 20:14:35

There is a runtime error which is phrased "The scene change machinery is stuck". I assume this is what the original poster has run into. However, we can't diagnose the problem without knowing what you're doing.

It might be that you're doing something in a "when a scene begins/ends" rule that causes another scene, or the same scene, to fire again immediately.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2630&start=0#p18114
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Taking an item that is part of another
User: Karl / DateTime: 2011-06-15 20:47:26

Awesome - that was just what I needed.  Thank you!  I have a better idea of the structure now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1923&start=0#p18115
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Storybook
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-15 22:19:51

[quote="Peter Pears"]Ah, but what about "Ann.", "Ann!", "Ann?" and all the symbols you could attach to it?

(I know you were just kidding. So am I. [emote];)[/emote] )[/quote]

Didn't you know that all modern word processors support regex find/replace?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1923&start=0#p18116
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Storybook
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-06-16 05:53:54

Oh. I didn't, actually. Power for them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2631&start=0#p18117
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Passing a Value into a Rule
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-06-16 07:29:18

I'm convinced I'm missing something or not thinking of rules correctly. My question is basically this: how do I pass a value into a rule? I'm thinking of rules as functions and so I'm passing in a value and then the rule is going to operate on that value and spit something back out. I'm thinking in terms of "follow the rule 'whatever' with value x".

Before going down a bad path of frustration, can someone confirm if my thinking is correct here:

I have to create an action-based rulebook that produces a value.
Then I have to have "consider 'my rule' with 'my value'."
My action-based rulebook then has to return its own value based on processing the value that was passed in.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2631&start=0#p18118
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Passing a Value into a Rule
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-06-16 07:58:35

The I7 equivalent of functions are to-phrases and to decide-phrases (ch. 11 in the doc). To-phrases don't have a return value but to decide-phrases do. For example:

[code]The snack bar is a room. Alice is a woman in the snack bar. Bob is a man in the snack bar. An apple and a banana are in the snack bar.

To decide which thing is the preference of (eater - a person):
	if eater is Alice, decide on the apple;
	if eater is Bob, decide on the banana.
	
To have (eater - a person) choose (food - a thing):
	say "[The eater] chooses [the food].";
	now the eater carries the food.

When play begins:
	have Alice choose the preference of Alice;
	have Bob choose the preference of Bob.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2631&start=0#p18119
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Passing a Value into a Rule
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-06-16 08:22:09

I have a more blathery response about what rules are.

Rules do operate in response to some kind of value you supply to them (See 18.8 in the docs for elaboration) but they may do anything you ask them to. There's no law about a relationship between input and output values.  You refer to some kind of input that fires the rule, but you'll only get specific output that you ask for / program. That may be no output, or tons of output.

But at a broader level, every rule does have an internal result as far as Inform is concerned: success, failure or no outcome. This result will always be set after a rule has fired. There are default paths to each state, but you can also explicitly set the result of any action to any state. Inform might have considered that a rule failed, but you could say (not actual code) 'actually that rule succeeded' if it suited your purposes.

The success/failure states have real meaning for Inform in some cases (see the topic about 'How do I make a scene start?' for an example) but they won't't necessarily correspond to what you consider to be failures, successes or non-outcomes in terms of your game. This is an area where I'm personally not yet aware enough about what the states will do on Inform's terms, so I don't cleave to them too heavily.

The biggest real outcome of rules succeeding or failing is that at the moment one of these things happens, the rule stops firing. No further code in the rule is run.

This is where 'consider' and 'abide by' come in. If Inform is carrying out some code, and you ask it to do one of these things, you can get it to run through a rule like a subroutine, and have that rule's outcome determine the outcome of the whole action, which can cause the main action to be cut off early, etc.

In terms of - how do I pass a value to a rule? Well, as I say, it's not really an in+out setup. Rules may run at lots of different times - As a result of an action the player inititaes, as a result of being part of the huge machine of Standard Rules that are run through every turn. Or you may specifically call the rule from another action.

But per se, you don't have to insert a value into a rule. You don't even have to make a rulebook. Most rules you make will fall into already-existant rulebooks for actions. All you do generally is set some kind of condition before you go to the applicable rule. You might set a variable, or you might use Inform's English language techniques (you might set Paul's fatigue to 'extreme' before considering the 'hunger rule' - which you made.) In the end, rules are just blobs of code that are placed in order by rulebooks. And they always succeed, fail or produce no outcome, no matter what else you do in them. But I was significantly into my first Inform game before I even started to think about the repercussions of success/failure/no outcome, and that turned out not to be too big a deal.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2631&start=0#p18120
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Passing a Value into a Rule
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-06-16 08:32:34

Thanks for the comments.

So let's take this is a a real simple case. I wanted a rule that takes in a numeric value. The rule will do something with that value -- some calculation -- and then return another value. Input --> Action --> Output.

So if I pass in a number (from the command line), the rule will calculate MyPassedInValue + 10 / 2, and then return the result.

I realize this is not a game context action necessarily but I suppose I could think of it in terms of a rule that calculates damage points based on an action taken. I'm just trying to understand if I can treat a rule exactly like a function. I feel like I can but the natural language gloss is perhaps hampering me a bit and I'm trying to start with a really simple example: almost the equivalent of a calculator.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2164&start=0#p18121
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: @party interactive fiction competition
User: metoikos / DateTime: 2011-06-16 08:38:38

Hi folks! I've got one entry so far . . . please submit! The deadline for remotely submitted IF entries has been extended to [b]12:30 PM on Saturday, June 18[/b]. Email your entry to val dot grimm at gmail with your name or handle and information on the interpreter or other tool needed to run it. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2631&start=0#p18122
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Passing a Value into a Rule
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-16 09:18:25

One way to do that:

[code]Carry out calculating:
	let N be the number understood transformed;
	say "[N]."

To decide what number is (N - a number) transformed:
	decide on (N + 10) / 2.[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2629&start=0#p18123
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Parsing Beyond ASK/TELL
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-16 09:32:12

I think some authors duck out of this sort of situation by responding to unparsed Orders and Ask/Tell commands with a suggestion to use ask/tell instead. In this case, "tell npc about help" might be the best thing for the parser to understand, or "tell npc about the-subject-i-can-help-with" or even "offer help to npc." As long as your error messages point the player to the right syntax, I think you'll be ok.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2607&start=10#p18124
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Starting a Scene upon Examining
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-16 09:35:45

[quote="lribeiro"][code]A thing can be examined. A thing is usually not examined.

After examining something:
   now the noun is examined.[/code]

I find this bit of code to be very usefull, since it allows you to monitor if anything is or isn't examined.

You have to be carefull, though: if, at some point of the source, you add an 'After examining sock:' thing and forget to add the 'now the noun is examined', then it will override the above code and your sock won't be flagged as examined.[/quote]
You can avoid that problem by using a carry out rule instead of an After rule:
[code]Carry out examining something:
    now the noun is examined.[/code]
You still have to worry about Instead, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2472&start=0#p18125
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Portable
User: Nyx / DateTime: 2011-06-16 09:50:01

It has been some time since I postet here a portable inform 7 testversion.

Please post here all your feedback until sunday.
If there are no issues with this release I will finalize this version.

Thank you all for your support!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2607&start=10#p18126
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Starting a Scene upon Examining
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-06-16 09:51:05

I never thought of tweeking the carry out rule because I always avoid doing it to established actions, since I'm kind of afraid of messing something up that I'm not aware of.

But I've followed your cue and it works better. The 'insteads' are not a problem for me, since I almost only use them when the action is supposed to fail.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2624&start=0#p18127
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6 storage exceeded?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-16 09:52:30

There's always something new. I agree that programming is as much of a puzzle as playing a game sometimes - that's sort of the appeal, I think! [emote]:P[/emote]

If you want to keep memory sizes down, and you have a lot of nearly identical rooms, you might consider making some of those rooms virtual. There are a few tricks for that. The one that first comes to mind is Example #260: Dubai

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rex118.html#e118">http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rex118.html#e118</a>

A system for managing items left in a virtual room is found at the very end of the example, as an alternative.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2631&start=0#p18128
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Passing a Value into a Rule
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-06-16 10:07:09

Another way, if you need it to be a rule and not a phrase,[code]There is a room.

The calculating from rulebook is a number based rulebook producing a number.
Calculating from a number (called N) (this is the calculating rule):
	rule succeeds with result ( N + 10 ) / 2.

When play begins:
	showme the number produced by the calculating rule for 12.[/code]
Usually you would only use rules instead of phrases when you want to have a line of rules that can either settle on an outcome or fall back on those that remain:[code]There is a room.

The calculating from rulebook is a number based rulebook producing a number.
Calculating from a number (called N):
	if N is even and the player has been in the room for at least one turn, rule succeeds with result 193;
	make no decision.
Calculating from a number (called N):
	rule succeeds with result ( N + 10 ) / 2.

Every turn:
	showme the number produced by the calculating from rulebook for 11;
	showme the number produced by the calculating from rulebook for 12;
	showme the number produced by the calculating from rulebook for 13.

Test me with "z / z".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2607&start=10#p18129
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Starting a Scene upon Examining
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-16 10:13:54

[quote="lribeiro"]I never thought of tweeking the carry out rule because I always avoid doing it to established actions, since I'm kind of afraid of messing something up that I'm not aware of.[/quote]
Check rules can be tricky that way, but carry out rules are usually pretty straightfoward. The only thing you really need to worry about is order. Some actions are simple, but with going, for example, you'll be in a different room depending on when the carry out rule fires. In fact, order is really the only issue with check rules - what makes it tricky is that there are more of them and some of them stop the action or trigger other actions. But carry out rules should [b]never[/b] stop the action, and they probably shouldn't trigger any actions either.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2628&start=0#p18130
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need immediate help: inform 7 - scene change is stuck
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-16 10:18:53

I think this problem usually involves recurring scenes. If you have a recurring scene with a begin condition and an end condition, and both conditions are true at the same time, the scene will keep starting and stopping over and over again. I consider this a bug in I7, since a scene should never start or end more than once in a turn, but then again, it's probably a mistake to set up scene conditions that way in the first place.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2630&start=0#p18131
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Taking an item that is part of another
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-16 10:34:49

[quote="Jim Aikin"][code]The lid is part of the jar.

Instead of taking the lid:
	if the lid is part of the jar:
		now the player carries the lid;
		say "You remove the lid from the jar.";
	otherwise:
		continue the action.

Instead of putting the lid on the jar:
	if the lid is not part of the jar:
		now the lid is part of the jar;
		say "You put the lid on the jar.";
	otherwise:
		continue the action.[/code][/quote]
Here's another way to do it. You have to create a definition, but then you can use more specific and readable rule preambles, and you don't need "continue the action.":
[code]The lid is part of the jar.

Definition: a thing is attached rather than loose if it is part of something.

Instead of taking the attached lid:
	now the player carries the lid;
	say "You remove the lid from the jar.";


Instead of putting the loose lid on the jar:
	now the lid is part of the jar;
	say "You put the lid on the jar.";[/code]

I just noticed that both of these examples fail if you try to put the lid on the jar when it is already screwed on - the Instead rule does nothing, then a check rule causes you to take the lid successfully, then another check rule says "putting things on the jar would achieve nothing." To deal with that, you need to add another case.

For Jim's version, you could change a rule:
[code]Instead of putting the lid on the jar:
	if the lid is not part of the jar:
		now the lid is part of the jar;
		say "You put the lid on the jar.";
	otherwise:
		say "The lid is already screwed onto the jar."[/code]

For my version, you could add a rule:
[code]Instead of putting the attached lid on the jar:
	say "The lid is already screwed onto the jar."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2511&start=10#p18132
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: [New Game] Cryptozookeeper
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2011-06-16 11:35:02

Version 1.03 is up. Nikos found that the game could get into a state where only a subset of songs would be rotated through. If you already grabbed the 580MB archive, you just need the individual czk.hex file, as the graphics and sound blobs haven't changed. 

Download link at the Internet Archive: <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/Cryptozookeeper">http://www.archive.org/details/Cryptozookeeper</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2511&start=10#p18133
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: [New Game] Cryptozookeeper
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-06-16 11:46:31

Oh dear... do the savegames for the old version still work for this new version?

EDIT - No they don't. [emote]:P[/emote] What exactly am I missing out on by playing the original release?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2511&start=10#p18134
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: [New Game] Cryptozookeeper
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-16 12:11:10

[quote="Peter Pears"]Oh dear... do the savegames for the old version still work for this new version?

EDIT - No they don't. [emote]:P[/emote] What exactly am I missing out on by playing the original release?[/quote]
If you like hearing the same 4 songs over and over and over again, with no means of escaping repeat-hell, then you can stick to the original release  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

PS:
This is a good example of why one should play with command recording enabled (not transcript recording, but only command recording.) That way, you can "restore" your game without needing the save file. You just replay the recorded commands:

>RECORD
[choose a file to record to]

>PLAYBACK
[choose a file to play back from]

Going to the same game position after a game update, becomes possible that way (if of course the new version doesn't change something that would give different results for the recorded commands.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2632&start=0#p18135
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: [Solved] Cryptozookeeper: Getting the frog DNA
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-16 12:24:28

It seems that in order to get some frog DNA, one has to perform an exorcism with Lebbeus and Bleem. The whole sequence however is weird. It's like everyone's on LSD or something. How do I successfully complete the exorcism?

Although getting frog DNA seems optional and not required in order to complete the game, I'd still like to get it.

[spoiler]The only part I was able to figure out is to take the cross, and then DAMN the Nessie cryptid when it appears. But after that, no idea.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2511&start=10#p18136
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: [New Game] Cryptozookeeper
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-06-16 12:27:38

And if the game doesn't have random elements, which this one does. And if during my gameplay session I don't save/restore a LOT, which I did and often do.

At any rate, if I did that with every game that would mean I would have no faith in the author to have provided a bug-free experience. If I can't do that, I'll either be waiting eternally for the optimum game-fix or just wonder about whether *this* or *that* is a bug, a feature or just some crazy s**t the author cooked up. That would be beta-testing, and I swore off beta-testing because it's too much like work and not enough as fun as game-playing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2511&start=10#p18137
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: [New Game] Cryptozookeeper
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-16 12:38:43

Yeah, REPLAY just doesn't work out of the box. It helped here though. I had to manually intervene and edit the text file. But still faster than playing from the beginning; at worst, the replay file serves as a guide to play through in a few minutes.

I wonder why no one ever bothered writing extensions for different IF systems that implement a non-VM save/restore (like you get with non-IF games; imagine if you had to restart every time there was a patch to Oblivion or Grand Theft Auto...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2633&start=0#p18138
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Coding a sleep command in inform7: help needed urgently
User: Kellychouchou / DateTime: 2011-06-16 13:39:46

Within certain parts of my game the player needs to sleep in order to reach a dream like city. the first part of my code allows the player to do this once they have met the certain conditions (see code) but once they come out of this place, they can instantly go back in using the 'sleep' command (which i am trying to restrict to certain conditions). Here is a sample of my code: [code]
Instead of player sleeping:
		say "despite feeling tired you resolve to investigate other area's of the hospital, your mind unsatisfied with your results and physical evidence thus far...";
	if allowing-sleep is true and drug-vial-obtained is true:
		say "you lay down gently, your mind switches off as your body lays heavily. Falling steadily into unconsciousness, a mixture of bright and dull lights play out behind your eyes...your dream about to begin";
		move player to dreamscape;
	If dream-night is true and joseph-convinced is false:
		say "despite feeling tired you resolve to investigate other area's of the hospital, your mind unsatisfied with your results and physical evidence thus far...";
	if dream-night is false and joseph-convinced is true:
		say "despite feeling tired you resolve to investigate other area's of the hospital, your mind unsatisfied with your results and physical evidence thus far..";
	if dream-night is true and joseph-convinced is true:
		say "Gently falling in to a deep sleep you instantly feel the hallucinogen ignite in your belly, blood pumping around your body and heart faster than you've ever felt. Consciounsess quickly slipping from reality your eyelids close over as you brain begins to rest, your spirit transported to the mysterious saturated dreamscape...";
		move player to dreamscape;
		move Joseph to the graveyard west;
		move Boston to the bridge to the outskirts;
		now night-two is true.  
		[/code]

The player can enter the dreamscape whenever they want (after the first entry) i desperately need to stop them entering it on the second try without fullfilling the conditions. any help is welcome thankyou

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2633&start=0#p18139
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Coding a sleep command in inform7: help needed urgently
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-06-16 14:18:46

Is the problem that the allowing-sleep flag remains set?
Then reset it to false at some appropriate time.
[code]
[...]
	if allowing-sleep is true and drug-vial-obtained is true:
		say "you lay down gently, your mind switches off as your body lays heavily. Falling steadily into unconsciousness, a mixture of bright and dull lights play out behind your eyes...your dream about to begin";
		move player to dreamscape;
		now allowing-sleep is false;
[...]
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2633&start=0#p18140
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Coding a sleep command in inform7: help needed urgently
User: Kellychouchou / DateTime: 2011-06-16 14:37:21

I think you are correct. i implimented your idea and it appears to be working (we'll see heh) but thankyou sometimers the obvious things slip my mind when im this stressed so thanks a ton [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2630&start=0#p18141
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Taking an item that is part of another
User: Karl / DateTime: 2011-06-16 14:41:29

I had to change "when" to "if" in the definition above to get this to work, but other than that, it works fine.  Thanks again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2630&start=0#p18142
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Taking an item that is part of another
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-16 15:08:45

[quote="Karl"]I had to change "when" to "if" in the definition above to get this to work, but other than that, it works fine.  Thanks again.[/quote]
Sorry, typo. I will edit the original post.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2634&start=0#p18143
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: how to run IF in a Wordpress widget
User: jimmunroe / DateTime: 2011-06-16 16:19:00

I had this notion of taking advantage of the widening browser window (thanks, 16:9!) by embedding a text game in my sidebar.

After a bit of back and forth with Dannii (without whom I would have given up the notion) we got it working on my site:
<a class="postlink" href="http://nomediakings.org">http://nomediakings.org</a>
...scroll down a bit to see my game Roofed in the sidebar.

Let me know how it works for you!

For those looking to do it themselves, either to showcase their own games or games they like, here's how to add it to a Wordpress blog:

1. Go to <a class="postlink" href="http://iplayif.com/">http://iplayif.com/</a> and find a game there (say <a class="postlink" href="http://iplayif.com/?story=http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/Savoir-Faire.zblorb">http://iplayif.com/?story=http://mirror ... ire.zblorb</a>)
2. Go to the widget section of a wordpress install and add a text widget.
3. Drop this into the text widget:
<iframe src="http://iplayif.com/?story=http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/Savoir-Faire.zblorb;options=%7B%22width%22%3A44%7D" width="380" height="400" frameborder="0"></iframe>
4. Replace the story= url with your own.
5. If you want to change the width of the sidebar adjust the 44 near the end of the options= string (which changes how many characters wide it is). You will also need to adjust the width number as well (380 in the above example) so it fits.

Much thanks to Dannii and everyone who works on Parchment!

Jim Munroe

(Cross posted to rec.arts.int-fiction)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2511&start=10#p18144
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: [New Game] Cryptozookeeper
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2011-06-16 16:30:12

[quote="Peter Pears"]Oh dear... do the savegames for the old version still work for this new version?

EDIT - No they don't. [emote]:P[/emote] What exactly am I missing out on by playing the original release?[/quote]

Nikos explained it, but I'll go into more detail, perhaps some future IF developer can learn from my mistake here. 

So, there's 70 songs in the game. Most of them came from me listening to hours of Creatve Commons-licensed music with tags like "ambient" and "electronica" and "no vocals." (An aside: there was nothing more frustrating in developing this game than clicking on a song with the "ambient" tag and hearing vocals. I [i]also[/i] had some words when this happened.)

A couple songs were from the band Butterworth. Butterworth is made up of Gerrit Hamilton (who played Vest) and Andy Highsmith. The songs - "Puppy" and "Pursed Lips" had vocals, but if you listen to them, they quickly reveal themselves as the sort of songs where you're not really focusing on the vocals, as they tend to repeat a bit. 

Those two songs do crack me up, so I thought it would be good compromise if the game only ever played them [i]once[/i]. This was before Jon Blask encouraged me to make the >fastforward command. Anyway, so we're not here all day, I wanted, when "Puppy" and "Pursed Lips" came on twice, for the game to pick one of four other songs. The error I introduced is that once that condition came to be true, it would choose from one of those four songs for the rest of the game.

Since >fastforward was in there anyway, I just removed all the code to check for duplicates of the Butterworth songs, and we should be good to go for 1.03.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2511&start=10#p18145
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: [New Game] Cryptozookeeper
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2011-06-16 16:34:46

[quote]I wonder why no one ever bothered writing extensions for different IF systems that implement a non-VM save/restore (like you get with non-IF games; imagine if you had to restart every time there was a patch to Oblivion or Grand Theft Auto...)[/quote]

If I were ever to make a long game again, which I won't, ha ha, I would at least implement some sort of checkpoint system just for this. I get why Graham, Mike and Kent didn't put cross-patch saves in place, but it wouldn't be too much effort for me to dump what the player is carrying, and the states of various variables into a file, and then implement a new kind of restore that picks you up and populates the various variables for the game's state. I do a lot of checks on "is visited" in my games, so I'd have to find a way to dump that info for every room in the game, but it seems to not be too difficult if the game were large enough to make it worthwhile. Wish I had considered it in 2006. [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2634&start=0#p18146
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: how to run IF in a Wordpress widget
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2011-06-16 16:36:10

Ha, this is a great trick. Congrats, Jim! I'm gonna tell everyone I know.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2634&start=0#p18147
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: how to run IF in a Wordpress widget
User: Roody_Yogurt / DateTime: 2011-06-16 17:07:38

Looks good, Jim! Way to go, Parchment people!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2634&start=0#p18148
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: how to run IF in a Wordpress widget
User: joningold / DateTime: 2011-06-16 17:37:59

That's a great trick, but for me, WP just turned the iframe tag automatically into a normal link on hitting "save". I wonder if iframes are a premium feature of some kind?

Never mind; it's cute all the same.

jon

[quote="jimmunroe"]I had this notion of taking advantage of the widening browser window (thanks, 16:9!) by embedding a text game in my sidebar.

After a bit of back and forth with Dannii (without whom I would have given up the notion) we got it working on my site:
<a class="postlink" href="http://nomediakings.org">http://nomediakings.org</a>
...scroll down a bit to see my game Roofed in the sidebar.

Let me know how it works for you!

For those looking to do it themselves, either to showcase their own games or games they like, here's how to add it to a Wordpress blog:

1. Go to <a class="postlink" href="http://iplayif.com/">http://iplayif.com/</a> and find a game there (say <a class="postlink" href="http://iplayif.com/?story=http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/Savoir-Faire.zblorb">http://iplayif.com/?story=http://mirror ... ire.zblorb</a>)
2. Go to the widget section of a wordpress install and add a text widget.
3. Drop this into the text widget:
<iframe src="http://iplayif.com/?story=http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/Savoir-Faire.zblorb;options=%7B%22width%22%3A44%7D" width="380" height="400" frameborder="0"></iframe>
4. Replace the story= url with your own.
5. If you want to change the width of the sidebar adjust the 44 near the end of the options= string (which changes how many characters wide it is). You will also need to adjust the width number as well (380 in the above example) so it fits.

Much thanks to Dannii and everyone who works on Parchment!

Jim Munroe

(Cross posted to rec.arts.int-fiction)[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2634&start=0#p18149
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: how to run IF in a Wordpress widget
User: jimmunroe / DateTime: 2011-06-16 19:14:11

Weird, Jon... I'm running the latest wordpress (3.1.3) on my own server, are you doing it on wordpress.com?

This plugin may help either way:
<a class="postlink" href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/iframe-widget/">http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/iframe-widget/</a>

After you install it you have an Iframe-specific widget you can plug in the info above. Let me know if you run into more trouble...

If anyone ends up getting a widget going, please post a link here!

Jim

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2635&start=0#p18150
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7:  Familiarity and non-things
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-16 19:18:45

I'm working on a game which uses Eric Eve's Conversation Package (and its constituent extensions).  Epistomolgy (which is indirectly included as part of Conversation Package) keeps track of which things are "familiar" (either because the player has seen them or because the author has manually set them to "familiar").

The game will include a number of liquids; these will be implemented not as things in their own right, but rather as a kind of value which is associated with the container in which they reside.  (This idea, and some of the other aspects of liquid handling, are cribbed from Emily Short's Measured Liquids, although I'm not actually including the extension because in many respects it is far more sophisticated than I need).  The main reason I'm implementing liquids in this way is because I want to have two kinds of containers, one of which (what Measured Liquids calls a liquid source) never gets emptied.  Thus, to illustrate, I might have a small bottle with a liquid of water; a glass, with a liquid of the null liquid (whch will appear to the player as empty); and a huge cauldron (defined as a liquid source) whose liquid is soup.  If the player calls for an action (for example pouring) which transfers the water from the bottle to the glass, the liquid of the glass will be set to "water" and the liquid of the bottle will be set to the null liquid.  On the other hand, if the player does something to transfer soup from the cauldron to the glass, the liquid of the glass will be set to soup, and the liquid of the cauldron will still be soup.  This is reasonably straightforward to do by implementing liquids as a property of the container, but my sense is that it would be far more complicated -- if possible at all -- to do it with the liquids implemented as objects in their own right.  (I don't need to keep track of absolute or relative amounts; a given container will either appear to the player as full of a particular liquid or as empty).

All of this is, of course, behind the scenes.  From the player's perspective, liquids need to appear as objects.  Although I haven't yet worked out all the details, I think I can handle most of that with appropriate rules for printing names of the containers, "understand" statements, and rules for carrying out and reporting actions involving manipulation of liquids.

The problem that I'm running into right away, however, is that, as far as I can tell, Epistomology defines the concept of "familiar" only with respect to things -- which means that since liquids will not be things, I can't designate them as potential subjects for conversation.  (Actually, the problem may be deeper than just familiarity; I'm not sure if kinds of value (as opposed to things) can be subjects of conversation at all in the system I'm using).  I need to be able to have a player "ask the Chef about the soup," for example.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=30#p18151
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-16 19:33:12

[quote="Campbell"][quote="I4L"]Any time I hit that room, it automatically switches to the new layer or tab. I am, of course, welcome to click between the tabs, but unless it turn off automapping, if I move in the game, it snaps me back to the correct region.[/quote]Sounds familiar! [emote]:lol:[/emote][/quote]

Does it now...?

Another thing... Might want to list somewhere in the automapping section of the documentation interpreters that aren't compatible with live gameplay transcripts. Or maybe there's only one. I love Filfre, but it locks the transcript file so that Trizbort can't open it for reading. WinFrotz2000, on the other hand, does not. I haven't tried any others.

Maybe that was mentioned elsewhere already as well. I have HORRIBLE memory.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2635&start=0#p18152
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Familiarity and non-things
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-16 20:17:53

In obsessing about this some more, I may have come up with the germ of an idea.  Before spending a lot of time working out the details, I'd like to toss the idea out and see how more experienced I7 writers react to it (or, alternatively, if somebody can suggest a different -- and hopefully simpler -- approach).

Basically, the concept would be that for each non-null liquid I create as a kind of value, I would create a corresponding thing.  Thus, if I create vodka as a kind of value which could be designated as "the liquid" of a particular container, I would also create a thing called vodka-thing.  I might use a table to associate each liquid with its corresponding thing (the same table could also keep track of other attributes, such as appearance, taste and smell, for each liquid).  The liquid-things would remain forever off-stage, but their existence means that they could be designated as familiar and be subjects of conversation.

It could get a little complicated.  For example, if a player types "pour vodka into glass" I7 would have to understand "vodka" as referring to a container whose liquid is vodka (i.e., from the player's perspective, the bottle which currently contains the vodka).  On the other hand, if he types "Ask bartender about vodka" it would have to understand "vodka" as the off-stage (but nonetheless familiar) vodka-thing.

Is this idea totally off-the-wall?  

Thanks.



Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2635&start=0#p18156
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Familiarity and non-things
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-16 23:04:25

That idea is what I was going to suggest.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2629&start=0#p18157
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Parsing Beyond ASK/TELL
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-16 23:12:59

Hmhm. Started to read the DM4 about parse_name. Got a question on that.

DM4 says "Inform creates the dictionary of a story file by taking all the name words of objects, all the verbs and prepositions from grammar lines, and all the words used in constants like 'frog' written in the source code, and then sorting these into alphabetical order."
And it says "and the more words, the better the match is considered to be. Thus ``fried green tomato'' is a better match than ``fried tomato'' or ``green tomato'' but all three are considered to match. On the other hand, so is ``fried green'', and '`green green tomato green fried green'' is considered a very good match indeed.".

Now, could that mean that if I define a dummy object with name 'i' 'can' 'help', I'd have a good chance to have the parser find this object when going through "npc, i can help"? Is that an approach worth further thinking about?

EDIT: Skipped that, trying the lame substitute "offer help to npc" now. I personally think Informs string handling is not so good.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2636&start=0#p18158
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: inform 7: swiching the player
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-06-17 06:22:52

i need a code that lets me switch between the player and animals. i tried using the transfigeration machine code but i can't figure it out. i don't want to use a machine and i dont want the player to change randomly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2636&start=0#p18159
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: swiching the player
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-17 07:43:09

How do you want this to happen? It's pretty simple to switch the identity of the player; all you have to do is write "Now the player is...." Here's an example that lets the player do it with a simple command:

[code]Lab is a room. Robert is a man in Lab. Connor is an animal in Lab. The player is Robert. 
Becoming is an action applying to one thing. Understand "become [something]" as becoming.
Carry out becoming:
	if the noun is not a person:
		say "You can't become something inanimate.";
	otherwise if the noun is the player:
		say "You're already yourself.";
	otherwise:
		say "You become [the noun].";
		now the player is the noun;
		try looking.[/code]

One thing is animals are considered to a kind of person in I7.

I don't know what you mean by "the transfiguration machine code."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2636&start=0#p18160
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: swiching the player
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-06-17 07:43:59

The phrase you need is
[code]now the player is the hedgehog[/code]

See chapter 8.9 on "Moving the player".

If you want the player to change between characters at will, you have to define an action that lets him/her do that. Something like:
[code]Playing is an action out of world applying to one thing.
Understand "play [someone]" as playing.

Check playing:
	if the player is the noun:
		say "You already play the part of [the printed name of the noun].";
		stop the action.
		
Carry out playing:
	now the player is the noun;
	say "You now play the part of [the printed name of the noun]."
	[/code]

And if you want the player to be able to change back to his former self, you had better define that person just like any NPC at the beginning of the game  and tell Inform which of the characters in the game the player begins as. Like so:
[code]
The Lawn is a room.
Dr Doolittle is a man in the Lawn.
A hedgehog is an animal in the Lawn.
A fox is an animal in the Lawn.
A tree is in the Lawn.
The player is Dr Doolittle. 
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=40#p18161
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Genstein / DateTime: 2011-06-17 08:31:54

[quote="Campbell"][quote="I4L"]Any time I hit that room, it automatically switches to the new layer or tab. I am, of course, welcome to click between the tabs, but unless it turn off automapping, if I move in the game, it snaps me back to the correct region.[/quote]Sounds familiar! [emote]:lol:[/emote][/quote]
This does sound like a nice way to handle it. Ah, is there an ADRIFT feature like this? If so, cool  [emote]8-)[/emote] It occurs to me I've never played with ADRIFT, I may have to check it out.

[quote="I4L"]Another thing... Might want to list somewhere in the automapping section of the documentation interpreters that aren't compatible with live gameplay transcripts.[/quote]
A very good point. I'll add (Edit: have added) a section to the help for this and add Filfre to it. I tend only to use Windows Frotz and Gargoyle with Z machine games, and Glulxe or Git for Glulx games, all of which are very gentlemanly with their file locking. Nitfol works but there's a delay of a few turns between updates since it buffers the transcript quite generously. If anyone knows of other Windows interpreters which don't fly in this regard, do let me know and I'll add them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=40#p18162
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-06-17 08:51:40

[quote="Genstein"]A very good point. I'll add a section to the help for this and add Filfre to it. I tend only to use Windows Frotz and Gargoyle with Z machine games, and Glulxe or Git for Glulx games, all of which are very gentlemanly with their file locking. Nitfol works but there's a delay of a few turns between updates since it buffers the transcript quite generously. If anyone knows of other Windows interpreters which don't fly in this regard, do let me know and I'll add them.[/quote]

I recommend reporting this as a feature request with Filfre / Nitfol instead. The behavior sounds like the a result of not calling fflush (or library equivalent) to sync the changes to disk after writing to a file. Doing this incurs a modest performance penalty, but it should be straightforward to implement if the maintainers are so inclined.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2637&start=0#p18163
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: TADS compile error only happens in the Linux box
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2011-06-17 11:27:21

Does anyone working in Linux and Windows boxes have some tips for working with TADS in Linux?

A little background:
I'm currently in the process of transferring most of my WIPs (including the non-IF ones) into a Lubuntu 11.04 box to help me learn more about managing/supporting Linux machines.

I already have tadsc and frobtads set up. When I compile a sample source code file called "test.t" inside Lubuntu, I get the "TADS-334: invalid property value" error message. I have no problems compiling this file inside Windows.

Checking the file using the cat command, in Cream/gVim, and in Geany for any extra unnecessary characters produces nothing. The line it points to is just a list:
[code]
  locationList = [startroom secondroom]
;[/code]I'm guessing this has something to do with file encodings, since Cream shows the file is in UTF-8. Anything else I should look out for?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2629&start=0#p18164
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Parsing Beyond ASK/TELL
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-17 12:02:12

Anyone any idea how to make the dummy help object I stuffed into the player invisible?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2637&start=0#p18165
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS compile error only happens in the Linux box
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-17 12:03:08

Can you attach a minimal *.t file that reproduces the problem?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2631&start=0#p18167
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Passing a Value into a Rule
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-17 12:29:54

I often want to use a rulebook producing a value so I can put it into an extension where the behavior can be easily modified. But so far, I've chickened out on doing anything complicated this way - it doesn't seem like there's much of an Informish convention for it. Plus, I think there are some bugs involving rulebooks that take a number or a kind of value as an input.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2637&start=0#p18168
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS compile error only happens in the Linux box
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2011-06-17 12:36:55

[quote="RealNC"]Can you attach a minimal *.t file that reproduces the problem?[/quote]Thanks. I'll try to post that in a bit, but just to let you know, the Frobtads version of the T2 compiler in Windows works fine on the test.t file without modifying anything in the file.

[b]EDIT:[/b] Please see the attached file "test2.t" - it's the most minimal version I can reduce it to. Please pay no attention to most of the "story text" there - I whipped it up to test something I was working on before.  [emote]:oops:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2635&start=0#p18169
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Familiarity and non-things
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-17 12:49:49

I was trying to think of a clever way to automatically generate the things associated with each kind of value. But I couldn't come up with something that compiles. Is it possible to make something like this work?

[code]Include Epistemology by Eric Eve.

Liquid is a kind of value. Water, soup, and vodka are liquids.

Abstraction is a kind of subject.

Every liquid has an abstraction.

When play begins: showme the abstraction of water.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2635&start=0#p18170
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Familiarity and non-things
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-17 12:56:13

If you're not actually including Measured Liquids, but writing your own version, you might as well make liquids into full-fledged things (or subjects). There's no reason the contents property of a vessel has to be a kind of value.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2638&start=0#p18171
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: Yes or No
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-17 12:56:25

How do I catch "npc, yes"? I tried in in the Life routine, with Answer:, Tell: and Yes:, but all I receive is "Npc has better things to do.". "say yes to npc" works.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2638&start=0#p18172
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Yes or No
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-17 12:59:28

[quote="Grueslayer"]How do I catch "npc, yes"? I tried in in the Life routine, with Answer:, Tell: and Yes:, but all I receive is "Npc has better things to do.". "say yes to npc" works.[/quote]
If I remember correctly  "npc, command" is always parsed as Orders. So "npc, yes" is parsed as telling npc to say yes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2635&start=0#p18173
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Familiarity and non-things
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-17 13:03:23

The problem I have with implementing liquids as things is that it gives me headaches if I want to be able to pour soup from the cauldron into the bowl, with the result that [i]both[/i] the bowl and the cauldron then have soup in them.  I wouldn't know where to begin with this approach.  Any suggestions as to how to do that are welcome.

Thanks.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2638&start=0#p18174
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Yes or No
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-17 13:25:27

Got it. Didn't try Order:. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2639&start=0#p18175
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Game with sound/graphics
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-06-17 14:16:46

Can anyone point me towards a Blorb packaged game that contains lots of sound and graphics?  I've had a look on IFDB but I can't seem to search by that criteria (or even by size), and the only ones I've found so far just have the cover image.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2635&start=0#p18176
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Familiarity and non-things
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-17 14:54:10

No, no, what I meant is, you have a "contents" property of the vessel, and you set that to the liquid. The liquid is not actually present or in scope (unless you put it there). Just like if you were using a kind of value for the property.

Although you could probably use Conditional Backdrops to do it...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2635&start=0#p18177
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Familiarity and non-things
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-17 15:03:12

Thanks, Capkimee.  I had not realized that it was possible to designate a thing as a property of another thing in that way.  It sounds like that would make things easier in a number of respects.  

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2639&start=0#p18178
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Game with sound/graphics
User: lamont / DateTime: 2011-06-17 15:07:11

Maybe try [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=dkx1r6fivxc1j3u7]Ekphrasis[/url]?

For another example of sound, check out [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=jz2q7uk4gp0zx2ph]Oxygen[/url]; for graphics, see [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=mtn5ks3xgskeabxt]Being There[/url] or [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=lyblvftb8xtlo0a1]Everybody Dies[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2637&start=0#p18179
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS compile error only happens in the Linux box
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-17 15:13:53

Ah, you got hit by TADS2's inconsistent class name capitalization. It's not "fixedItem", it's "fixeditem". With a lowercase "i".

It's weird that it works in Windows though. Maybe case sensitivity is disabled there? To disable it, you can use the "-case" option of tadsc: "-case+" enables case sensitivity, "-case-" disables it.

Btw, what do you mean with "Frobtads version of the T2 compiler in Windows"? Did you build frobtads for Windows?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2632&start=0#p18180
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Cryptozookeeper: Getting the frog DNA
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-17 16:09:13

Never mind. Figured it out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2639&start=0#p18181
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Game with sound/graphics
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-06-17 16:17:56

Try this search: <a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=tag%3Agraphics+tag%3Asound+format%3Aglulx%2Fblorb&searchgo=Search+Games">http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=t ... arch+Games</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2639&start=0#p18182
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Game with sound/graphics
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-06-17 16:19:41

Carma is also a safe bet. So is City of Secrets (don't rememeber if that one has *sound*, though).

Also, most spanish glulxe games I've played are heavy on the multimedia. Throw a brick and you'll hit one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2639&start=0#p18183
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Game with sound/graphics
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-17 16:24:32

There's a reasonably long list here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/poll?id=fv1ko1r1cjeyflit">http://ifdb.tads.org/poll?id=fv1ko1r1cjeyflit</a>

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2639&start=0#p18184
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Game with sound/graphics
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-06-17 16:48:06

Fab, thanks. [emote]:-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2639&start=0#p18185
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Game with sound/graphics
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-17 17:01:32

You can also search by tags and IF system. For example, "tag:graphics system:inform". This is explained in the detailed search page:

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/search">http://ifdb.tads.org/search</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2635&start=0#p18186
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Familiarity and non-things
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-17 17:44:45

[quote]with the result that both the bowl and the cauldron then have soup in them[/quote]

If you go with capmikee's model, the parsing is then not too hard to set up. You ensure that the cauldron responds to "soup" and "cauldron of soup" when it contains soup. You also ensure that the printed name is "cauldron of soup".

If the player types "x soup", Inform's disambiguator will then be able to print "Which do you mean, the bowl of soup or the cauldron of soup?" without further effort. You have to test this sort of thing a lot, and there's usually some tuning, but you can make it work.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2635&start=0#p18187
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Familiarity and non-things
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-17 18:03:52

There used to be a Firesign Theater routine called "How Can You be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All?"  It sounds like the approach suggested by Capmikee effectively achieves just that -- the soup (or whatever) can be "really" off-stage ([i]i.e.[/i], not anywhere at all) and yet, from the player's perspective, it can be in two places at once (the bowl and the cauldron).  Thanks again to all -- I think I will try to use that approach.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2637&start=0#p18191
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS compile error only happens in the Linux box
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2011-06-17 23:46:20

[quote="RealNC"]Ah, you got hit by TADS2's inconsistent class name capitalization. It's not "fixedItem", it's "fixeditem". With a lowercase "i".

It's weird that it works in Windows though. Maybe case sensitivity is disabled there? To disable it, you can use the "-case" option of tadsc: "-case+" enables case sensitivity, "-case-" disables it.[/quote]Nope, sorry. Tried that before, did not work either. Here's what I'm getting:
[code]isxek@ubuntu:~/projs/dev/test$ tadsc -C+ -case- -i /usr/local/share/frobtads/tads2 test2.t
TADS Compiler v2.5.14  Copyright (c) 1993, 2007 Michael J. Roberts
TADS for POSIX/Unix/MS-Windows [POSIX_UNIX_MSWINDOWS] patchlevel 0.0
Nikos Chantziaras <realnc@gmail.com> maintains this port.
test2.t(41): error TADS-334: invalid property value[/code]
[quote="RealNC"]Btw, what do you mean with "Frobtads version of the T2 compiler in Windows"? Did you build frobtads for Windows?[/quote]Yes, along with the TADS 2 compiler. With the Windows build, it works fine.

Any ideas?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2637&start=0#p18192
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS compile error only happens in the Linux box
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-18 00:30:12

Weird. I'll have a look at it, but probably tomorrow. In the meantime, try and see if this works as a workaround:

[code]locationList = { return [startroom secondroom]; }[/code]

Edit:
Is your Linux box 64-bit, btw? Maybe you've hit a 64-bit bug (there were a few when I originally did the port.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2643&start=0#p18193
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: Multiobjects
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-18 02:15:19

I don't get it. I've done it before, copied it, and it doesn't work.

[code]
Constant MAX_FISH = 10;

Class Fishclass(MAX_FISH)
  with name 'fish' 'fishes//p',
  short_name 'fish',
  plural "fishes";

[ MyRoutine obj;
  obj=Fishclass.create();
  if(obj==nothing) "You reel in the string - no catch.";
  move obj to player;
  ];
[/code]

causes a nice "Call to non-routine" fatal error when trying to print obj. What have I done wrong again?!?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2637&start=0#p18194
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS compile error only happens in the Linux box
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2011-06-18 02:48:31

[quote="RealNC"]Weird. I'll have a look at it, but probably tomorrow. In the meantime, try and see if this works as a workaround:

[code]locationList = { return [startroom secondroom]; }[/code][/quote]I'll try that later.

[quote="RealNC"]Edit:
Is your Linux box 64-bit, btw? Maybe you've hit a 64-bit bug (there were a few when I originally did the port.)[/quote]Yes. But the Windows box was also 64-bit (Windows 7 x64).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2631&start=0#p18195
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Passing a Value into a Rule
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-06-18 04:40:21

[quote="capmikee"]- it doesn't seem like there's much of an Informish convention for it.[/quote]

At the risk of derailing my own thread, you bring up a really good point. What are the conventions of Inform? I do see many responses here that say this is the "Inform way" to do it and that's cool because I'm a Ruby programmer and as many know, there are most definitely aspects of the "Ruby way" of doing things.

But what are those things for Inform? Once in awhile I pick up what might be such in the Inform manual but they are so scattered it's hard to draw a cohesive picture.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2631&start=0#p18196
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Passing a Value into a Rule
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-06-18 04:49:15

I think to some extent that is still being discovered.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=40#p18197
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-06-18 05:55:37

Well, if you're compiling lists, the official Hugo interpreter for windows (as well as CAT, it seems) seem not to output the transcript to the text file either for several turns or for the whole game (I don't care about the distinction - if it doesn't output at once, it's not good for my purposes and I just write it off).

TADS 3 HTML, or whatever it's called... it didn't update the transcript for several turns. I e-mailed Mike Roberts with that suggestion, and he kindly sent me a version that seemed to be part of a pre-release, so I could see whether that was what I meant. It was, and I'm using that version, but I have no idea whether that's the version publicly available right now.

ADRIFT scripts ok, though it replaces the > symbol by Ø.

AGility the AGT Interpreter also waits several turns before updating, but I'm not sure that the format isn't automapping unfriendly - it certainly was in IFMapper because of all the extra lines it adds, as I recall. Here's a simple sample.

[rant]> look



Entrance
This is the entrance to the Richard Aloysius Thompson Honoris
Institute of Oncology, Molecular Gastro-Enterology, Genetic
Pathology, and a lot of other things strictly kept on paper.
Incidentally, it's also where you work. The main gate leads
north, and there is a sidewalk on either side of you.

> look



Entrance
This is the entrance to the Richard Aloysius Thompson Honoris
Institute of Oncology, Molecular Gastro-Enterology, Genetic
Pathology, and a lot of other things strictly kept on paper.
Incidentally, it's also where you work. The main gate leads
north, and there is a sidewalk on either side of you.[/rant]

ALAN is a naughty boy that doesn't seem to allow you to make transcripts.

Let's skip AppleII, Commodore and Spectrum as, to my knowledge, no interpreter provides the script funciont, though it'd be greatly appreciated. [emote];)[/emote]

Neither Level9 nor Level9.net add the transcript functionality to games that don't already have them.

The windows version of the Magnetic Scrolls Interpreter Magneticv2.3 also waits a few turns before dumping the text.

I believe that covers the majority. [emote]:)[/emote] Then of course there's the custom DOS games and windows games and browser games, all of which are entirely out of the scope of this little catalog.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2644&start=0#p18198
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7: flying and landing
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-06-18 09:06:52

i need a code that will allow the player to fly to rooms and land on objects. Also i want a code for the player to hover or glide. When the player is gliding i would like it to still say the room description but say from far up and will continue to do so until the player lands. so obviously i need a landing command to bring the player back down too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2631&start=0#p18199
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Passing a Value into a Rule
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-06-18 09:21:06

[quote="Dannii"]I think to some extent that is still being discovered.[/quote]

Fair enough. But for people to say something does or does not match Inform conventions (-- and I've seen that said quite a bit --) implies that such conventions do exist. Any language is developed with an eye towards encoding the expression of logic via certain mechanisms that promote stylistic design choices. I'm not even talking "Gang of Four" design patterns here necessarily but Inform's language design clearly places a heavy emphasis on rules and activities and various ways of tying things together. So there had to have been some operative principles in its design. Even if things are still being discovered (which makes sense in an evolving language), is there a referenceable place where those discoveries are being recorded even if they're only provisional?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2644&start=0#p18200
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: flying and landing
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-06-18 09:44:45

To actually put the player (say a bird) *on* another object, that other object must be of the kind enterable supporter. Just declare it to be that when you create it [code]The clothesline is an enterable supporter in the Backyard[/code] or whatever.

You can change the descriptions of rooms with conditions like this 
[code]
Piccadilly Circus is a room. "[if the player is airborn]Below you lots of your fellow-pigeons have gathered. Many of them sit resting on the stone chap up here atop the pillar as well[otherwise]The large square is full of pigeons fluttering everywhere around you. In the center a tall column with a statue high up on top of it looms over you[end if]."
[/code]
And for flying and landing you could try something like:
[code]
Birdie can be airborn.
Peter Pan can be airborn. 

Flying is an action applying to one direction.
Understand "fly [direction]" as flying.

Check flying:
	if the player is Birdie or the player is Peter Pan:
		say "You soar up into the air."
		continue the action;
	otherwise:
		say "Sure … and pigs can fly!";
		stop the action.

Carry out flying:
	now the player is airborn;
	try going the direction understood instead.


Landing on is an action applying to one thing.
Understand "land on [something]" as landing on.

Check landing on:
	if the player is not airborn:
		say "You're already safely on the ground.";
		stop the action.

Carry out landing on:
	if the noun is an enterable supporter:
		now the player is not airborn;
		move the player to the noun;
	otherwise:
		instead say "You flutter away from [the noun]. It doesn't afford landing."

Report landing on:
	say "You land on [the noun]."
[/code]

!!! Be warned that none of the above is tested, so it's bound to be buggy (interacting as it does with going and moving the player around). !!!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2643&start=0#p18201
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Multiobjects
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-18 10:36:32

short_name is a printable string, so it needs to be in double quotes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=40#p18202
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-06-18 10:49:29

[quote="Peter Pears"]
Let's skip AppleII, Commodore and Spectrum as, to my knowledge, no interpreter provides the script funciont, though it'd be greatly appreciated. [emote];)[/emote]
[/quote]

Just for completeness sake, [url=http://www.inform-fiction.org/zmachine/spectrum.html]ZXZVM[/url] (Z machine interpreter for Spectrum +3 models) transcripts to the printer as a default, and some Speccy emulators can receive printer output in a text file, which could be [i]theorically[/i] used for Trizbort automapping purposes.

Of course there are much more recommended ways to play and/or automap  Z machine IF works than using a Spectrum emulator  [emote]:)[/emote]  

--

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2637&start=0#p18203
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS compile error only happens in the Linux box
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-18 11:34:34

[quote="Isxek"][quote="RealNC"]Is your Linux box 64-bit, btw? Maybe you've hit a 64-bit bug (there were a few when I originally did the port.)[/quote]Yes. But the Windows box was also 64-bit (Windows 7 x64).[/quote]
That doesn't matter. FrobTADS was still compiled as a 32-bit application.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2643&start=0#p18204
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Multiobjects
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-18 12:05:08

...

Thanks!

So much to learn...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2635&start=10#p18205
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Familiarity and non-things
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-18 12:47:31

I hate to be a pest, and truly appreciate everybody's generous help, but almost right off the bat I'm running into a problem with implementing this.

[code]"Liquid Assets" by Me

Include Conversation Package by Eric Eve.

A liquid is a kind of thing.  The indefinite article of a liquid is "some".  Null liquid is a liquid.
A fluid container is a kind of container.
A fluid container has a liquid called fluid contents.  The fluid contents of a fluid container is usually null liquid.

After printing the name of a fluid container:
	stop.
	
Rule for printing room description details of a fluid container (called vessel):
	If vessel is dry:
		stop;
	If vessel is wet:
		Say " of [fluid contents of vessel]".
	
After printing the name a fluid container (called vessel) when taking inventory:
	If vessel is dry:
		stop;
	If vessel is wet:
		Say " of [fluid contents of vessel]".
	
	
	


After deciding the scope of the player:
	Repeat with Vessel running through the list of visible fluid containers:
		If the fluid contents of vessel is not null liquid:
			Place the fluid contents of vessel in scope.


Definition:  A fluid container is dry if its fluid contents is null liquid.
Definition: A fluid container is wet if it is not dry.
Definition: a fluid container is empty if it is dry and the number of things contained by it is 0.



Kitchen is a room.

Vodka is a liquid.  Vodka is familiar.  The description of vodka is "It is clear and colorless, to the eye indistinguishable from water."
The printed name of vodka is "clear colorless liquid".

A bowl is a fluid container in kitchen.  The fluid contents of the bowl is vodka.
A spoon is in kitchen.  A glass is a fluid container in kitchen.


[/code]

Everything worked fine (so far) until I added the "After deciding the scope" rule.  What I'm trying to do is to set it up so that the player will be able to examine a liquid, independent of the container in which it appears to reside.  Since the liquid is "really" offstage, I want to place it in scope manually to allow the player to examine it.  (Eventually I'll have to deal with interacting in ways that require it to be touchable as well as visible, but I'm taking this one step at a time).

It compiles OK, but as soon as I try to do anything I get a "too many activities" run-time error, followed immediately by about a gazillion "memory ran out" errors.  My guess is that the routine which determines visiblity (which is called by the second line of the rule) invokes a "deciding the scope" rule; that, in turn, causes my "after the deciding the scope" rule to come into play -- which in turn calls the visibility rule -- and so the logic winds up chasing its own tail.  What I don't know is how to avoid it.  I'm sure its something that's pretty basic.

Any assistance would be appreciated.

Thanks.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2635&start=10#p18206
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Familiarity and non-things
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-18 13:03:25

I don't know if this is the best way, but I put a flag in the "after deciding the scope" rule to check whether that rule is already running, and changed the header so it doesn't run when the flag is set:

[code]Fluid-checking is a truth-state that varies. Fluid-checking is usually false.
After deciding the scope of the player when fluid-checking is false:
	Now fluid-checking is true;
	Repeat with Vessel running through the list of visible fluid containers:
		If the fluid contents of vessel is not null liquid:
			Place the fluid contents of vessel in scope;
	Now fluid-checking is false.
[/code]

Seemed not to crash. Don't know if it introduces other bugs.

(For your amusement, here is the transcript of my attempt to test this:

[rant][quote]Liquid Assets
An Interactive Fiction by Me
Release 1 / Serial number 110618 / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N) SD

Kitchen
You can see a bowl of clear colorless liquid, a spoon and a glass here.

>x liquid
You can't see any such thing.

>x clear
You can't see any such thing.

>x water
You can't see any such thing.

>x vodka
It is clear and colorless, to the eye indistinguishable from water.

>pour vodka in glass
That's not a verb I recognise.

>put vodka in glass
That isn't available.

>take glass
Taken.

>take vodka
That isn't available.

>[/quote][/rant]

You know you aren't paying attention when you're having trouble with the nouns while you're looking at the source text.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2645&start=0#p18207
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7:  Creating Generic Items
User: tuatha / DateTime: 2011-06-18 13:09:42

You can create duplicate items at the start of the game by making a kind and then stating that multiple copies of the item are in a location.  From the manual:

[code]A shape is a kind of thing. A square is a kind of shape. A triangle is a kind of shape. 

The Geometry Lab is a room. In the Geometry Lab are three triangles and two squares. [/code]

I'm interested in creating items during gameplay.  For instance, by using a vending machine the player can get a soda.  If he used it 100 times, he'd get 100 identical sodas.  I've tried this using the following code:

[code]A can is a kind of thing.  A soda is a kind of can.

The vending machine is scenery in the cafeteria.  It is an open container.

instead of pushing the vending machine:
	now a soda is in the vending machine[/code]

This results in the error:

[quote]You wrote 'now a soda is in the vending machine'  : but this is not explicit enough, and should set out definite relationships between specific things, like 'now the cat is in the bag', not something more elusive like 'now the cat is carried by a woman.' (Which woman? That's the trouble.)[/quote]

I've seen this handled in other games, so I know it's possible.  What am I doing wrong?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2637&start=0#p18208
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS compile error only happens in the Linux box
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-18 13:23:03

It's a 64-bit issue after all. As a workaround, you should build it as a 32-bit app. You can do this by adding "-m32" to CFLAGS, CXXFLAGS and LDFLAGS. Like:

[code]./configure CFLAGS="-m32 -O2" CXXFLAGS="-m32 -O2 -fno-strict-aliasing" LDFLAGS="-m32"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2645&start=0#p18209
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Creating Generic Items
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-18 13:33:34

In ordinary Inform 7 you can't create objects during play. Jesse McGrew's extension Dynamic Objects allows you to do what you want, I think; I've never used it but you might want to look at it.

The more common solution is probably to create a bunch of objects offstage and them move them into play one by one as you need them. Example 363 from the manual, Pizza Prince, shows you how to do that. (You have to decide how many cans of soda to create at the beginning, and figure out something to do when the player has taken every single can of soda you created, but your players probably don't need 100 cans of soda anyway.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2645&start=0#p18210
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Creating Generic Items
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-18 13:35:50

I'm sure the experts will suggest a better way, but I ran into a similar issue not long ago, where I wanted one of two identical items to appear in the game only when the player did something to cause it to appear.  My initial attempt was to try to place an unidentified instance of the specified kind offstage ab initio.  That didn't work;  evidently Inform 7 let's you place specific items offstage, but won't let you do that with an unidentified instance of a kind.  What I wound up doing was creating both of the identical items in a particular on-stage location, and moving one of them off-stage in my "when play begins" rule.  Unfortunately, that is not likely to work as well where you want the player to be able to "create" an unlimited (or at least very large) number of the items.  I suppose you could create 1000 instances of the "soda" kind, place them in a room within the world, and, as part of the "when play begins" rule, keep moving a random soda offstage until there are no more sodas in the room, but it seems a little cumbersome.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2635&start=10#p18211
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Familiarity and non-things
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-18 13:36:00

There are a few ways to do this. If you don't need to do any telescopic interactions (such as examining liquids via video monitor), then you can probably get away with doing something like this in your scoping rule: "repeat with Vessel running through the fluid containers enclosed by the location".

Otherwise, you can just check the visibility of liquids at an appropriate point and cache it in a constant list for use during scoping:

[code]The currently visible liquids is a list of objects variable.
		
After reading a command:
	populate the visibility list;
	continue the action.
	
To populate the visibility list:
	now the currently visible liquids are {};
	repeat with vessel running through the list of visible fluid containers:
		add vessel to the currently visible liquids.

After deciding the scope of the player:
	Repeat with Vessel running through the currently visible liquids:
		If the fluid contents of vessel is not null liquid:
			Place the fluid contents of vessel in scope.[/code]

Edited to add: Caching visible liquids in a constant list might also improve performance if you are often needing to check visibility. As you've discovered, each use of the term "visible" causes Inform to retest visibility for all objects of the class you're interested in.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2645&start=0#p18212
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Creating Generic Items
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-06-18 13:53:55

[quote="Robert Rothman"]evidently Inform 7 let's you place specific items offstage, but won't let you do that with an unidentified instance of a kind.[/quote]
You probably just didn't hit the right phrasing. "There are 100 soda cans" creates the items off-stage.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2645&start=0#p18213
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Creating Generic Items
User: tuatha / DateTime: 2011-06-18 14:01:15

Dynamic Items works perfectly.  Now my players drink Dr. Pibb until they're sick.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2522&start=10#p18214
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: About previous knowledge assumption (and an equation)
User: Neurosion / DateTime: 2011-06-18 15:20:29

[quote="Peter Pears"]Heh, it would be interesting to be able to type in "12345/78" at the command prompt. Sure it could be done, in I7 at least.[/quote]
Actually, it was done, long ago, in Tads 2: +=3.

~ Neuro, still unconvinced.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2646&start=0#p18215
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7: Adding sounds
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-06-18 15:39:03

i have read a bit about adding sound to inform, but i still dont get how to do it. Is there anyone who can explain it to me in simple terms.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2635&start=10#p18216
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Familiarity and non-things
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-18 18:15:11

Thanks to all.  However, as I think about this some more, I realize that I may have a more fundamental problem.

Ultimately, for this to work, I'm going to need a series of "understand" statements which will allow I7 to understand a command which uses the noun "soup" (for example) to refer not only to the soup itself, but to any in-scope fluid container for which soup is the fluid contents.  The documentation gives some good examples for "understand" statements which allow things to be referred to by their properties.  The examples, however, seem to cover either/or properties and "kind of value" properties; I can't seem to figure out how to apply the concept where a property of a thing is itself another thing.  I've played around a little with trying to give the property a name (so that I can use a statement like "Understand the liquidity property as referring to a fluid container") but either that's not possible for this type of property or I just haven't managed to figure out the correct syntax.

The other approach I've thought about is trying to set up a relation between the various containers which might hold a liquid and the liquid itself.  That approach seems to make things, if anything, more complicated.

I'm beginning to wonder if I've bitten off more than I can chew (or, since we're in the liquid world, sipped more than I can swallow) but if anybody can put me on the right track I will be forever grateful.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2645&start=0#p18217
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Creating Generic Items
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-18 18:18:57

[quote="Juhana"][quote="Robert Rothman"]evidently Inform 7 let's you place specific items offstage, but won't let you do that with an unidentified instance of a kind.[/quote]
You probably just didn't hit the right phrasing. "There are 100 soda cans" creates the items off-stage.[/quote]

If I remember correctly, the problem was that Inform rejects "A soda can is off-stage" (or whatever) when "soda can" is a kind, because it looks like a generic statement about soda cans. But "One soda can is off-stage" creates a single soda can off-stage..

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2635&start=10#p18218
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Familiarity and non-things
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-18 18:30:19

Does this work?

[code]Filling relates a liquid (called filler) to a fluid container (called receptacle) when filler is the fluid contents of receptacle. The verb to be filled with implies the reversed filling relation.
Understand "[something related by reversed filling]" as a fluid container.
[/code]

Add this to your code (with one of the fixes for deciding the scope) and "take vodka" gets the bowl. Unfortunately, now "x vodka" yields the wrong result; "Does the player mean examining a liquid: it is very likely." seems to fix that in this case, but more bugs may be waiting. 

Anyway, I think the trick you're looking for is to define a relation that expresses a condition (as in 13.12) and then use that in your understand token.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2646&start=0#p18219
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: Adding sounds
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-06-18 19:02:43

First you need a sound file in the Ogg format (mp3 won't work). 

Then find (or create) the "Materials" folder for your game. 
Say your game is called "The Flying Hedgehog"; then there is, somewhere on your hard disk, a file called "The Flying Hedgehog.inform". 
Now, in that same place where you found "The Flying Hedgehog.inform", create a new folder called "The Flying Hedgehog Materials" (if there isn't one already). 

Open the Flying Hedgehog Materials folder, and inside it create a folder called simply "Sounds". 
Put the ogg-file inside that Sounds folder.

There you are.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=40#p18220
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-06-18 19:40:03

Well, yeah... but you'd be surprised at how many Spectrum games *aren't* ZMachine...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2635&start=10#p18221
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Familiarity and non-things
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-18 19:41:43

Thanks, Matt.  I had been struggling (without success) with trying to define this kind of relation manually, and couldn't figure out how to tie it in to the "fluid contents" property.

I need to do some experimentation to be sure that this works when more than one container holds the same kind of liquid (i.e., that it creates a "one relates to various" type relation when necessary), but it sounds like the right track.

I'm not troubled by the need to use a "does the player mean" statement so that "examine" points to the liquid, and not the container.  I had pretty much taken for granted that I will eventually need a series of such statements, which would be action-specific; the whole point is that for some actions I want to point to the container, others to the liquid, but initially I need the noun to be understood as both.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2645&start=0#p18222
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Creating Generic Items
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-18 19:52:19

I think "A soda can is off-stage" is exactly what I tried.  When that didn't work, the simple solution of changing "A" to "One" never even occurred to me.  Instead I took the complicated approach of putting two soda cans in an onstage location and moving one of them offstage when play begins.  Duh! [emote]:oops:[/emote]


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2645&start=0#p18223
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Creating Generic Items
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-18 21:34:03

You could also easily enough create a room called Soda-Can-Heaven and keep the unused items there, instead of "off-stage".

It's also worth noting that if you limit the player to five soda cans, it is almost certainly not going to degrade the play experience. Dynamic object creation is rarely needed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2645&start=0#p18224
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Creating Generic Items
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-06-18 22:50:31

Indeed, there are usually good in-game reasons to limit the player to, say, twenty soda cans.  Actual vending machines run out, and all terrestrial species that drink soda can't hold more than about six cans without a rucksack or other such containing device (and once they empty them and throw them away, you can recycle them back into the the vending machine).  Anyway, most players* probably won't stick around past the first couple of cans unless you've given them reason to believe they should.  (Yeah, I journeyed to the top of the FrobozzCo headquarters in Zork Zero.  What of it?)


*unlike the Cat: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPNGaBdHAak">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPNGaBdHAak</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=40#p18225
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-19 00:41:57

Nobody appears to be enthusiastic about these variations, so I'm sticking with my original proposal (plus the correction I added above).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2646&start=0#p18226
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: Adding sounds
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-06-19 06:44:02

This hedgehog is leading you in circles.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2647&start=0#p18227
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Does Anyone know any inform games that have sound?
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-06-19 10:43:00

I am thinking of adding sound to my inform game, but first i would like to try an inform game with sound too see if i like it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2647&start=0#p18228
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Does Anyone know any inform games that have sound?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-06-19 10:45:39

Could you not even read the first topic in THIS board???

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2639">viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2639</a>

(First excluding the sticky introduction topic.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2647&start=0#p18229
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Does Anyone know any inform games that have sound?
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-06-19 10:50:29

well that's imbaressing. i should have looked before i posted.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2648&start=0#p18230
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Can Gargoyle play Gblorb files?
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-06-19 10:54:02

thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2649&start=0#p18231
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Basic help with Inform 7 [new question]
User: Sketel / DateTime: 2011-06-19 11:04:18

Completely new to creating IF, so really sorry if these questions are painfully obvious. I will probably refer back to this thread when the included documentation fails me, or if I fail to understand the documentation.

Ok, some basic questions:

[list]I can describe a room and the things in it. However, when I run the story, it prints my description and then still proceeds to list every visible object and its properties after. How do I have it not list these objects, and rather have any change in the state of the objects (stuff being opened/closed/taken) be reflected by altering the description?

Eg.
[code]Kirsty's room is a room.  The table is in Kirsty's room. The table is a supporter. On the table is a handbag. The handbag is closed. The handbag is an openable container.  Kirsty's keys are inside the handbag. "[if open]There is an open handbag on the table, containing keys.[otherwise] There is a closed handbag on the table."[/code]

Just prints: Kirsty's room
You can see a table (on which is a handbag (closed)) here.

I just don't quite grasp the code yet, as you can see (I have VERY little experience in coding)

Not quite sure the exact syntax of creating rules. The manual has some examples, but I don't know the limits of what it can understand and the bug-reporter keeps mentioning incorrect use of punctuation which looks about right to me.[/list:u]

Probably to be updated soon with more questions. Thanks in advance for your help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2649&start=0#p18232
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basic help with Inform 7
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-19 12:33:44

If you want an object not to be mentioned in the room description, add the sentence "It is undescribed.".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2649&start=0#p18233
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basic help with Inform 7
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-19 12:43:32

Well, the manual says "undescribed" is a last resort; usually, if you don't want something to be mentioned after the room description, and it's not supposed to be takeable either (which is probably the case for your table), you declare it as scenery.

Here's the relevant paragraph from section 3.24 of the manual:

[quote="Writing with Inform"]There is also an either/or property called "described"/"undescribed", intended to be used only as a last resort, but which has the ability to hide something from room descriptions. This not really hiding: the idea is that "undescribed" should be used only for cases where some other text already reveals the item, or where its presence is implicit. Even then, it should only be used when the item is intended to be taken or moved by the player at some point - if the item isn't intended to move, it's much better to make it "scenery". (There's only one commonly-found example - the player's own body, the "yourself", is undescribed.)[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2649&start=0#p18234
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basic help with Inform 7
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-06-19 13:02:39

The rules that govern what is printed when you LOOK in a room (which you do automatically when you enter one) is actually pretty complex. Several different activities are involved. (Writing a paragraph about; Listing nondescript items of something; Printing the locale description of something; Choosing notable locale objects for something; Printing a locale paragraph about and Printing room description details of something: see the Activities chapter of the documentation.)

If you want Inform never to print that last list of things you can add 
[code]Rule for listing nondescript items: do nothing.[/code]

There are two other problems with the posted code. 

Firstly, Inform does not understand that the quoted text at the end of the posted code is meant as a room description. Instead it thinks that this piece of quoted text is the so-called "initial appearance" of Kirsty's keys (since it follows directly after the creation of the keys in the source text). Either write [code]The description of Kirsty's room is "[if the handbag is open]There is an open [handbag] on [the table], containing [keys].[otherwise] There is a closed [handbag] on [the table]."[/code] or put the quoted text immediately after the creation of the room.[code]Kirsty's room is a room. "[if the handbag is open]There is an open [handbag] on [the table], containing [keys].[otherwise] There is a closed [handbag] on [the table]."[/code]

Secondly, Inform does not understand that the "[if open]"-condition refers to the handbag. (I suppose it takes it to mean "if <the object of which this text is a property> is open".) Write [code]"[if the handbag is open]"[/code] instead.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2650&start=0#p18235
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: Invisible Object in Inventory
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-19 13:45:17

Sorry to bring this up again, but could anyone please help me with making an object in my inventory invisible?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2637&start=0#p18236
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS compile error only happens in the Linux box
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2011-06-19 13:46:59

I'm getting the following when I do that:[code]isxek@ubuntu:~/Downloads/frobtads-1.0$ ./configure CFLAGS="-m32 -O2" CXXFLAGS="-m32 -O2 -fno-strict-aliasing" LDFLAGS="-m32"
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
checking for a thread-safe mkdir -p... /bin/mkdir -p
checking for gawk... no
checking for mawk... mawk
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes
checking for g++... g++
checking whether the C++ compiler works... no
configure: error: in `/home/arnel/Downloads/frobtads-1.0':
configure: error: C++ compiler cannot create executables
See `config.log' for more details[/code]
Looking at the config log, I got a bunch of:[code]/usr/bin/ld: skipping incompatible /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.5.2/libstdc++.so when searching for -lstdc++
/usr/bin/ld: skipping incompatible /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.5.2/libstdc++.a when searching for -lstdc++
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lstdc++
/usr/bin/ld: skipping incompatible /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.5.2/../../../libm.so when searching for -lm
/usr/bin/ld: skipping incompatible /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.5.2/../../../libm.a when searching for -lm
/usr/bin/ld: skipping incompatible /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm.so when searching for -lm
<snip>[/code]I've attached the complete config.log file if you need to take a look, but it looks like my safest bet would be to set up an x86 Lubuntu Linux VM somewhere and compile both Frobtads and the T2 compiler there.

I'll post back if I get any errors. Thanks for the help. [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2651&start=0#p18237
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 - kinds of value in a to phrase
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-06-19 14:36:47

I have defined a kind of value known as "valuation", and I have stated that things have a valuation. This works fine, of course. But when I try to invoke this kind of value in a to-phrase, like this:

[code]To place (i - a number) of (worth - a valuation) things in (coffer - a thing):
	let n be the number of off-stage worth things;
	let m be i;
	if m is greater than n, now m is n;
	while m is greater than 0:
		let item be a random off-stage worth thing;
		move item to coffer;
		if generation info is true, say "* Putting [item] in [coffer].";
		decrease m by 1.[/code]

Inform throws errors for the second and sixth line, as it doesn't understand what an "off-stage worth thing" is. (Or what a "worth thing" is, for that matter; the problem does not lie in adding the off-stage property.) Why is it failing to understand me, and how do I get Inform to do what I want?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2637&start=10#p18238
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS compile error only happens in the Linux box
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-19 14:51:00

You're probably missing the 32-bit compatibility packages. There are packages like "ia32-libs" and "g++-multilib" that need to be installed for the -m32 option to work (name might depend on the Ubuntu version).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2637&start=10#p18239
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS compile error only happens in the Linux box [SOLVED
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2011-06-19 15:00:54

[quote="RealNC"]You're probably missing the 32-bit compatibility packages. There are packages like "ia32-libs" and "g++-multilib" that need to be installed for the -m32 option to work (name might depend on the Ubuntu version).[/quote]Yup, got some clues after googling around a bit. It's now compiling as it should. Appreciate the help! [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2651&start=0#p18240
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - kinds of value in a to phrase
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-19 15:16:30

Look at chapter 14.7. You have to define a verb for the property. (E.g., "...the number of off-stage things valuing worth".)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2652&start=0#p18241
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: An experimental precompute mode for Glulxe
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-19 15:55:44

In mud discussion today, we got to talking about games that do a lot of computation at startup time. (Reliques of Tolti-Aph is a familiar example.)

I7 has good facilities for positioning objects at compile time (e.g., declaring their positions directly in the source code). Similarly, it's good at setting properties, variables, and table contents at compile time. However, you sometimes need to run code for your startup state, and I7 doesn't support that at compile time. You have to write a "when play begins" rule. Sometimes that takes a long time to run.

(To be clear, it's no big deal to move a dozen objects around in a "when play begins" rule. That's cheap. But if you have to move *hundreds* of objects, or fill in a table with hundreds of entries, you might see a noticeable pause when the game starts up. This only gets worse in Quixe, of course.)

There are several possible solutions to this problem:

- Write a script that does the precomputation work in some other language and generates I7 code (or I6 code). Paste that into your project.
- Save your game after the first move. Distribute the save file. Hack the interpreter to load this save file when the game starts.
- Hack the interpreter to run one move, and then write out a new game file containing the new state.

I've whipped up a test of the third idea. That is, it's a Glulxe (interpreter) feature to run (just) the precomputation work, and then write out a new game file with all that work already ready in memory.

This is currently available on github, at <a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/erkyrath/glulxe/tree/precompute">https://github.com/erkyrath/glulxe/tree/precompute</a> -- this is a branch of my repository; I haven't decided whether to include it in my next release. You'll have to download my source and build it.

To use it, you'd write your game to check a global flag, do the precomputation work, and then *quit*. (An I6 example is pasted below.) Then you'd run it through the interpreter, once, in precompute mode:

[code]
glulxe --precompute newgame.ulx game.ulx
[/code]

The newgame.ulx file will run just like the original, except that it starts up with the precomputation work done. The flag you set tells your code to skip the precomputation work (and not quit), so everything continues from there.

Please note that this is an *experimental* facility. I have only tested it with the simplest I6 programs. If you try to work this into an I7 game, you will almost certainly generate unobvious bugs, because the I7 library code is not built for this kind of nonsense. (There is no correct place to integrate the precomputation step in the startup rules. Feel free to ask for details...)

If you use the --precompute option with an existing game, the new game file you generate will certainly be buggy. Play around at your own risk. :)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2652&start=0#p18242
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: An experimental precompute mode for Glulxe
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-19 15:56:22

The I6 sample:

[code]
Global precomputed = false;

Global glob = 5;

Object Kitchen;
Object lamp;

[ Main win;
    if (~~precomputed) {
        precomputed = true;
        glob++;
	move lamp to Kitchen;
        quit;
    }

    @setiosys 2 0; ! select Glk I/O system
    win = glk($0023, 0, 0, 0, 3, 0); ! glk_window_open
    glk($002F, win); ! glk_set_window

    print "Global variable is ", glob, "^";
    print "The lamp is in ", (name) parent(lamp), "^";
];
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2650&start=0#p18243
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Invisible Object in Inventory
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-19 16:03:50

Do you mean that it won't be listed after an 'i' or 'x me' command, or do you mean that it will be unreferrable-to? In the latter case, I'd say, put it somewhere else.

For the former case, I'd suggest looking at the discussion of the invent routine, on p. 197 of the DM4. I've never tried it, but that would be a starting point.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2653&start=0#p18244
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Switching Animate Property
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-19 16:15:12

Just to be on the safe side - If I want to turn an inanimate object into an animate one, am I right to assume that I need to remove the inanimate object from play and replace it with a new, animate one?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2573&start=0#p18245
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Fluids & Fluid Containers
User: zodraz / DateTime: 2011-06-19 16:20:55

OH MY GOD! Tads is complicated enough without wanting to invent any more of it.

However, I think the idea is great.  My immediate reaction is thinking about how this can be used to create a water room, so for example you have a situation where your plane crashes in the sea and you have to swim to a desert island, winning the game by surviving long enough to be rescued.

Or, diving from a boat into the ‘sea room’ to examine a sunken ship for treasure, giving ample opportunity for lots of puzzles on board, success being when you find and return the treasure to the surface ship.

From the various replies to this topic,  it sounds like the fluid concept could become complicated to say the least, but if it can work it can open another environment layer for adventures.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2649&start=0#p18246
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basic help with Inform 7
User: Sketel / DateTime: 2011-06-19 16:22:21

Thanks for the help so far guys.

Next question:

I have an object I want to only be picked up in a certain container.

So far, I have the rule [code]Instead of taking [an object], say "I'm not touching that with my hands!".[/code]

This works fine, but I can't work out how to transfer an object to its specified container without first been taken. (the container is in the possession of the player)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2651&start=0#p18247
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - kinds of value in a to phrase
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-06-19 16:53:23

Thanks, that works. [emote]:)[/emote]

I don't really understand why I would need to create a verb, though. Inform 7 understand "minor thing", "major thing", "epic thing" and so on perfectly (where "minor", "major" and "epic" are the valuations). So why doesn't it understand "worth thing" when "worth" is a variable holding the valuation "minor"? There's nothing in section 14.7 which seems relevant to this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2653&start=0#p18248
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Switching Animate Property
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-06-19 16:53:32

Not necessarily, I think.
I suppose you could define the I6 animate attribute in I7 and toggle it for a person at will:
[code]A person can be animate or inanimate. A person is usually animate.
The animate property translates into I6 as "animate".
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2652&start=0#p18249
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: An experimental precompute mode for Glulxe
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-19 17:02:45

Probably I don't understand the problem as I'm new to Inform, but my first thought was - back when I was programming for a MUD, when lots of calculations had to be done that the interpreter wouldn't be able to do in time, we used "Call Outs", equivalent to StartTimer under I6, and splitted the calculations.Like, do a part of the calculations every "second" - "turn" under Inform.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2652&start=0#p18250
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: An experimental precompute mode for Glulxe
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-19 17:11:31

This is for cases where you need to do a lot of computation *before the game starts*.

In some cases you might be able to get away with spreading the computation over the first few turns. That's a legitimate approach.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2651&start=0#p18251
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - kinds of value in a to phrase
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-19 17:13:19

I don't know.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2649&start=0#p18252
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basic help with Inform 7 [new question]
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-06-19 17:41:56

You can "move (thing) to (container)". 
See chapter 8.7, "Moving Things".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2654&start=0#p18253
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 with Patrollers extension v10 by Michael Callaghan
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-06-19 18:00:44

hey, when i set someone as "following", i get this run-time error:

*** Run-time problem P60: Attempt to set a variable to the wrong kind of object:
you wrote 'now the Way is the best route from the CurrentRoom to the location of
the player, using even locked doors', which sets the value to nothing - but that
doesn't have the kind 'direction'.

any ideas?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2649&start=0#p18254
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basic help with Inform 7 [new question]
User: Sketel / DateTime: 2011-06-19 18:01:08

[code]Instead of taking [object]: try moving [object] into a [container].[/code]

turns out 'this is not an action I recognise'
Am I phrasing this correctly?

Basically, I need something that says 'When the player tries to take [object] (or put [object] in [container]), if the player is carrying [container], move [object] to [container], otherwise say "arbitrary failure message"'

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2651&start=0#p18255
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - kinds of value in a to phrase
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-06-19 18:01:41

I can't test it right now, and I may be totally off the mark, but I would have expected 
[code]To place (i - a number) of (worth - an enumerated value) things in (coffer - a thing)[/code]
to work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2652&start=0#p18256
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: An experimental precompute mode for Glulxe
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-06-19 18:15:41

Looks cool. But if I understand it correctly, this would only be for deterministic calculations, right, not for random generation of content?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2649&start=0#p18257
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basic help with Inform 7 [new question]
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-19 18:15:50

"Move" isn't an action that the player can do, which is why "try moving" doesn't work -- it's a phrase that you can use in Inform 7 to, well, move the object to wherever you want. So something like this (untested):

[code]Instead of taking the slime:
   if the player carries the jar:
      say "You scoop the slime up with the jar.";
      move the slime to the jar;
   otherwise:
      say "You're not picking that up with your hands!"[/code]

"Now the slime is in the jar" should have the same effect (right?)

EDIT: Oh, and bracketed tokens only work inside quotation marks. Outisde quotations, any text that's in brackets is treated as a comment, which is to say ignored completely. Where you have "[object]" you will usually want to say "the noun" (the code I gave above should also work if you said "move the noun to the jar"); "move the noun to a container" wouldn't work, though, because I7 wouldn't know which container to move it to. If you want to let the player scoop the slime up with any container things will get a little more complicated, but from your post I figured you had one particular container in mind.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2649&start=0#p18258
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basic help with Inform 7 [new question]
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-06-19 18:21:33

Moving is not an action, but a part of the Inform 7 language. (So you cannot "try moving", because you can only "try" actions.) You will want some variant of this:

[code]Instead of taking the cigar:
	unless the player carries the plastic bag:
		say "Touching that would destroy the evidence!".

Instead of taking the cigar:
	if the cigar is in the plastic bag:
		say "It is already where you want it.".

Instead of taking the cigar:
	move cigar to plastic bag;
	say "You carefully put the cigar in the plastic bag." instead.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2654&start=0#p18259
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 with Patrollers extension v10 by Michael Callaghan
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-06-19 18:27:05

I didn't look at the extension, but apparently in your game there is no way from CurrentRoom to location of the player. So "best route from the CurrentRoom to the location of the player" evaluates to nothing, and you cannot set the "way" variable to nothing.

First possible solutions: make sure there always is a route between the location of any patroller and the location of the player.

Second (and better) possible solutions: find the line "now the Way is the best route from the CurrentRoom to the location of the player, using even locked doors'" and change it into
[code]if the best route from the CurrentRoom to the location of the player is a direction:
	now the Way is the best route from the CurrentRoom to the location of the player, using even locked doors;[/code]
In fact, if that line is in the extension, I think you should send this suggestion to Michael Callaghan. (His extension should check whether the declaration is allowed before doing it.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2649&start=0#p18260
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basic help with Inform 7 [new question]
User: Sketel / DateTime: 2011-06-19 18:28:20

That's great! Thanks! And the objects were mould and a bottle. I don't know why I shied from disclosing that info.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2654&start=0#p18261
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 with Patrollers extension v10 by Michael Callaghan
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-06-19 18:31:16

thanks a ton for the reply!  forgive me, i forgot to mention that i did search for that line of code, if its anywhere, its in the extension's code, but i cant seem to go in and change it, even though i know ive altered extensions before.  thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2649&start=10#p18262
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basic help with Inform 7 [new question]
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-19 19:09:22

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Moving is not an action, but a part of the Inform 7 language. (So you cannot "try moving", because you can only "try" actions.) You will want some variant of this:

[code]Instead of taking the cigar:
	unless the player carries the plastic bag:
		say "Touching that would destroy the evidence!".

Instead of taking the cigar:
	if the cigar is in the plastic bag:
		say "It is already where you want it.".

Instead of taking the cigar:
	move cigar to plastic bag;
	say "You carefully put the cigar in the plastic bag." instead.[/code][/quote]

Wait, can you do that in three separate "Instead" rules? Won't the first one fire and block the other two? (Nice catch on the last case, anyway.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2648&start=0#p18263
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can Gargoyle play Gblorb files?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-06-19 19:26:52

yes

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2652&start=0#p18264
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: An experimental precompute mode for Glulxe
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-19 20:36:05

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Looks cool. But if I understand it correctly, this would only be for deterministic calculations, right, not for random generation of content?[/quote]
For everything, since it runs the game proper and saves a new VM image.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2652&start=0#p18268
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: An experimental precompute mode for Glulxe
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-06-19 21:08:00

I think Victor is asking whether it would be useful for random content, and I think probably not. You could use it, but then everyone you distributed it to would have the same content, making it's randomness useless.

This is really a tool for filling in data structures that are easier to programatically fill than to fill by writing code in the first place.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2658&start=0#p18269
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Table of Flags...
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-19 22:06:11

Alright, so I toyed around with doing this as a truth state (boolean) check, which got me nowhere. Possibly because I don't know a friggin' thing about this mechanic. I obviously don't know a friggin' thing about table mechanics, either. I've been rapid fire searching games on IFDB with IF7 source code for references to tables and am either too impatient, near sighted or just plain ignorant to pick any out.

Basically, as the title indicates, I want a table of flags. Inform is having none of that. I'm not finding anything in the tables section of the documentation deal with if statements and table values. Nor am I finding anything workable in the "Inform Handbook", which assures me that I'm basically failing at this.

Take the following code, for example. I want to see if the water is on. So, I do this:

[code]Table of Flags
event				flag
"wateron"			0

Choose the row with an event of wateron in the Table of Flags.
If the flag entry is 0:
     Do this.[/code]

Now, I'll go ahead and say that this example is in a scene and happens instead of turning on the water. I'm not sure how much additional information I should provide, as I'm rather embarassed with my code at this point and it really seems as though this snippet is the root of this particular evil. Pride is an ugly thing and I'm brimming with it.

Anyway, Inform comes back with this error:

[quote]Problem. You wrote 'If the flag entry is 0'  : but this seems to say that a thing is a value, like saying 'the chair is 10'.[/quote]

And no, that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm not sure, Inform, why you would believe that.

I've been following along with examples in Mr. Aikin's book, but not exact examples, as his conditionals regarding table values are part of rule creation, which I don't think I'm trying to do. Though I might be...

In this particular example, I want to check whether the water is on or off. If it's on, tell the player it's on. If it's off, let the player turn it on. But Inform is having none of that.

I also tried some wordy example from the documentation about some value coinciding with something or other... Not only did that look completely wrong as soon as I started typing it, I couldn't even syntactically figure out how to make something that resembled a command out of it.

So... Ideas, questions or admonishments are welcome. Doesn't seem like this is a difficult or uncommon thing to do, so I'm sure I'm just doing it wrong.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2658&start=0#p18270
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table of Flags...
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-19 22:13:05

[quote="I4L"][code]Table of Flags
event				flag
"wateron"			0

Choose the row with an event of wateron in the Table of Flags.
If the flag entry is 0:
     Do this.[/code][/quote]

I don't know how direct a quote this is from your code, but does the "choose the row..." line in your code really end with a period? It should be a semicolon; "flag entry" won't make sense (I think) unless you've already chosen a row in a table during that rule, but the period ends the rule, so the line with "flag entry" isn't talking to the line where you choose the row.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2658&start=0#p18271
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table of Flags...
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-19 22:33:37

You're right, that doesn't make sense. I changed it to a period because Inform seems kind of flaky where semi-colons and periods are concerned. Even though I know that a period ends the rule and Inform knows that a period ends the rule, for some reason it doesn't always work out that way for me. Again, it's probably... just me.

I changed it to a period because of the following error, which may shed some light on the matter:

[code]
Problem. In the sentence 'Choose the row with an event of wateron in the Table of Flags'  , I was expecting to read a value, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'wateron'.

I was trying to match one of these phrases:

1. choose a/the/-- row with (an event - table column) of (wateron - value) in/from (table of flags - table name) 

2. choose a/the/-- row (with an event of wateron - number) in/from (table of flags - table name) 

This was what I found out:

an event = a texts valued table column

wateron = something unrecognised

Table of Flags = a table name

with an event of wateron = something unrecognised
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2658&start=0#p18272
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table of Flags...
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-19 22:35:11

Also if I remove the quotes around "wateron" in the table, as I've seen in several examples, Inform complains that it doesn't know what the heck I'm talking about.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2658&start=0#p18273
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table of Flags...
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-19 22:38:50

Let's do this. (pseudo-code)

[code]
Instead of turning on the water:
     Choose the row with an event of showeron in the Table of Flags;
     If the flag entry is 0:
          Say "You turn on the water."
          Now the flag entry is 1;
          Continue the action.
     If the flag entry is 1:
          Say "The water is already on."
[/code]

Inform hates that and whispers misogynistic things about my mother in my ear while I'm sleeping. It's caused untold stress during family holiday gatherings.

(That second if doesn't even have to be there, by the way. I added it for flair... I think. Inform never gets past the choosing of the row.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2658&start=0#p18274
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table of Flags...
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-19 22:52:25

Have you defined wateron, showeron, etc. as events? It seems to me that you need to do that somewhere. (Not sure what the best way to do that is -- something like "An event is a kind of value. The events are wateron, showeron, etc."?)

I could be off base about that, but the "some text I couldn't understand" error reads like what happens when Inform expects you to have defined "wateron" and you haven't.

...oh hey, if you've listed "wateron" inside quotes as your table, Inform probably is interpreting that column as having entries of the kind indexed text (or maybe just text). So maybe you need to say 

[code]an event of "wateron"[/code]

with the quotes, whenever you want to look it up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2658&start=0#p18275
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table of Flags...
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-19 22:55:29

Not sure... As far as I know, I have a table called Table of Flags. In that table, there are two columns. One is called "event" and the other is called "flag". I would expect that if I tell Inform to look at the "event" column for the one called "wateron" and then check the "flag" column for a 0 or a 1, it would respond appropriately...?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2658&start=0#p18276
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table of Flags...
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-06-19 23:01:18

I have a feeling you're where I was at a few months ago. While learning inform, I hit error after exasperating compilation error to do with punctuation. The periods, semicolons, the 'colon and indentation syntax' versus 'begin and end' syntax. The good news is, once this part clicks, it stops being a problem. Then it only becomes a syntax problem, rather than a boggling-me-every-time-it-happens problem.

Another trick is, even though inform gives long feedback on errors, you start to also recognise exactly what each error means without reading past the first line. Well, at least that eventually happened for me, so I wish it for you!

So I'm about to post a version of your demo that works, and I'll point out the errors I bumped into as I tweaked it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2658&start=0#p18277
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table of Flags...
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-19 23:05:18

Oh, and here's a new brand of loveliness. This is the thing about Inform that infuriates me more than anything else.

This code:

[quote]
		Instead of turning on the shower:
		Choose the row with an event of "wateron" in the Table of Flags.
		If the flag entry is 0:
		          Say "You turn on the water."
[/quote]

Generates this error:

[code]You wrote 'If the flag entry is 0'  : but the punctuation here ':' makes me think this should be a definition of a phrase and it doesn't begin as it should, with either 'To' [/code]

But this code:

[code]
		Instead of turning on the water:
			Choose the row with an event of "wateron" in the Table of Flags;
			If the flag entry is 0:
				Say "You turn on the water."
[/code]

Gives this error...

[code]The phrase or rule definition 'Instead of turning on the water' is written using the 'colon and indentation' syntax for its... [/code]

Then proceeds to complain about tabs.

I want inform to worry about my code, not my spacing. I think that's why I had changed it from a semi-colon to a period initially. Inform should care about structure, not white space. Changing the punctuation seems to make it forget about tabs and spaces. (Which seems hypocritical, in my opinion.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2658&start=0#p18278
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table of Flags...
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-06-19 23:36:35

Okay - there were a lot of small syntax problems in your demo. Once I fixed those, I hit a bunch of mechanical problems to do with Inform's stock ideas about turning things on.

In a sense, the way you're interacting with the objects in your code at the moment is that... water is a thing which can be turned on and off. But to Inform's eyes, that makes the water almost like a device with an on and off button. What's more likely to make sense is that there's a tap or shower, with a tap that you can turn to start the water. Since the tap/shower is the physical thing, my approach would be to install that, set up commands which toggle the water's status when the tap is turned, and then reroute 'turn water on' to those tap turning commands as a synonym.

But first,  I have fixed up the demo doing it your way (water is a device that can be turned on), just so you can see how I tweaked it.

This was your table:
[code]
Table of Flags
event            flag
"showeron"         0[/code]

It's fine.

Now your code:

[code]Instead of turning on the water:
     Choose the row with an event of showeron in the Table of Flags;
     If the flag entry is 0:
          Say "You turn on the water."
          Now the flag entry is 1;
          Continue the action.
     If the flag entry is 1:
          Say "The water is already on."[/code]

First problem - when you say 'row with an event of showeron'... because you have not put inverted commas around 'showeron', Inform is looking for a variable somewhere out there called showeron, which doesn't exist. What you're really trying to match is a piece of text which says "showeron". The inverted commas always tells inform something is text. So to fix this line...

	Choose the row with an event of "showeron" in the Table of Flags;

Next problem - immediately after "You turn on the water."  there needs to be a semicolon. 99% of the time, all lines that contain code have to end with a semicolon if the next line is more code (main exception - when the present line ended with a colon). Only when a section of code is completely finished and the next line is blank, that's when you use a period.

So this line becomes:

		Say "You turn on the water.";

Next prob: 'continue the action' is probably not what you want here. Overall in this demo, you're saying 'instead of doing what inform would normally do to turn on this water thing, do the code I wrote here.' But then at the end of it, when you say 'continue the action', you're saying to Inform, 'now stop doing it my way, and finish off the processing in your usual way' - which will result in Inform going to the report rulebooks and such.

You did want to stop doing it your way (to prevent the 'The water is already on.' message appearing as well), but you don't want Inform reporting on the action, because you just did that yourself. Using 'continue the action' here essentially makes Inform print both "You turn on the water", and then its own default message about turning stuff on.

So you want something that stops your action continuing and stops Inform doing any default stuff afterwards, either. That something is probably 'rule succeeds'. Alternatives are 'stop the action' and 'rule fails'. All 3 will cause the stop, but which one you pick determines the success status for this action. Just being logical, we did turn on the water, so 'rule succeeds' seems like the best bet.

And again - after 'continue the action', you used a period when a semicolon is needed, so we're replacing that line with 'rule succeeds;'

---
Those were the syntax problems. Having dealt with those, it turns out that Inform can't just turn anything on. In Inform's default setup, "turn on" leads to the action "switching on" (I found this by typing 'actions' and 'rules' to monitor what verbs were going where in the demo, then typing 'turn on water') Inform has a kind of thing which can be switched on, which is called a device. So if we said:

the water is a device in Bathroom

That would get us in the ballpark. But I was still having trouble intercepting the action, setting up the water, etc. (I'm inexperienced with devices.) Plus I didn't like the messages.

So I decided, 'okay, I'm going to take over the verb 'turn' so it does what I want.'

I zapped Inform's definition of 'turn', made a new action called 'turning on' that can apply to anything in my demo, and that solved the problem. This would not make much sense in the long run (being able to turn on anything, let alone water) but I did it for the sake of getting the demo running along the lines you originally stated.

Here's the final product, which works:

[code]"Water On"

Bathroom is a room.

water is a thing in Bathroom. "There's a shower here."

Table of Flags
event	flag
"showeron"	0

Understand the command "turn" as something new.
turning on is an action applying to one thing.
Understand "turn on [something]" as turning on.

Instead of turning on water:
	Choose the row with an event of "showeron" in the Table of Flags;
	If the flag entry is 0:
		Say "You turn on the water.";
		now the flag entry is 1;
		rule succeeds;
	If the flag entry is 1:
		Say "The water is already on."

test me with "turn on water / again".[/code]

Edit - note, I still had 'water is a device' when I first posted this. That is unnecessary. I changed it to 'water is a thing in bathroom'.

As you can see, the stuff after 'instead of turning water on' is barely different from what you originally typed - it's just those syntax issues that righted it. Two semicolons, a pair of inverted commas, and one line changed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2658&start=10#p18279
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table of Flags...
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-20 00:13:12

Phenomenal explanation sir. (Ma'am?) I'll see what I can do to plug this in tomorrow and report back the results. I obviously don't want to override the entire "turn" rule, so we'll see what happens.

Insofar as "continue the action" is concerned, I was copy/pasting that from existing examples without understanding what it meant or what it did.

I do appreciate all the time you spent typing all this out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2658&start=10#p18280
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table of Flags...
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-06-20 01:08:28

Cool. It is indeed sir [emote];)[/emote]

- Wade

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2659&start=0#p18281
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: A scope question
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-06-20 02:46:25

I've got code like this in my game:

[code]After deciding the scope of the player while location is Tower:
	place the contents of Below Tower in scope.[/code]

This works fine, so that if you're standing in the tower, you can see people who are below the tower.

There's one thing that I don't want to experience while I'm up in the tower, though, which is reports of the arrivals and departures of characters in 'Below Tower'.

I don't know how to phrase the 'place the contents' line to chop out actor movement reporting from below tower, though.

I could hack the 'Report an actor going (this is the describe room gone into rule):' rule, but I thought there might be a one line solution in the area of scope. Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2654&start=0#p18282
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 with Patrollers extension v10 by Michael Callaghan
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-06-20 02:56:55

What prevents you from going in an change it? You can open the extension in the Inform IDE (File > Open Extension) and then edit it. You can also open the file directly (with notepad in Windows, gedit in Linux, or, uh, I-don't-know in OS X). It should be in your Inform directory and then in Extension/Michael Callaghan.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2649&start=10#p18283
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basic help with Inform 7 [new question]
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-06-20 03:02:51

Matt, you are right, and I was not thinking. (This is one of the reasons I prefer Check, Carry out, Report to Before, Instead, After.) The right code would be this:

[code]Instead of taking the cigar when the player does not carry the plastic bag:
		say "Touching that would destroy the evidence!".

Instead of taking the cigar when the cigar is in the plastic bag:
		say "It is already where you want it.".

Instead of taking the cigar:
	move cigar to plastic bag;
	say "You carefully put the cigar in the plastic bag." instead.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2659&start=0#p18284
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A scope question
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-06-20 03:08:29

I don't think you can handle it with scope, because you want those NPC to be in scope, right? You just don't want to be notified of their arrivals. Something like:
[code]First report an actor going (this is the other describe room gone into rule):
   if location of the actor is not location of the player:
      do nothing instead.[/code]
(Which I did not test.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2649&start=10#p18285
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basic help with Inform 7 [new question]
User: Sketel / DateTime: 2011-06-20 05:14:30

Ok, so carrying on from my first question. I've used the 'rule for listing nondescript items: do nothing' command. However, what if I want things to be listed normally if something has moved?

So for instance: [code]Kirsty's room is a room. "In your room, there is a [table], on which is [a list of things on the table]. You can also see a wooden door to the east, leading to a corridor." The table is in Kirsty's room. The table is scenery. The table is a supporter. On the table is a handbag. The handbag is closed. The handbag is an openable container. Kirsty's keys are inside the handbag.[/code]

Gives 'In your room, there is a table, on which is a handbag. You can also see a wooden door to the east, leading to a corridor.'

What if I want the handbag to then be described by the engine if the player has moved the handbag to the floor? So, take handbag, drop handbag gives:

'In your room, there is a table, on which is nothing. You can also see a wooden door to the east, leading to a corridor.

You can see a handbag (closed) here.'

Sorry about the questions and the frightfully boring coding exercise describing my girlfriend's flat.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2649&start=10#p18287
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basic help with Inform 7 [new question]
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-20 07:20:45

Nothing wrong with coding up your (or your girlfriend's) apartment, so long as you don't release the game!

As Felix said, "Rule for listing nondescript items: do nothing." means that you will never print up the "You can see..." message describing things in the room. That's a pretty drastic step, which you probably don't want to do unless you've got some sort of blanket rule that lists everything in the room anyway. 

In this case, the room description has already told us about the table and everything on it, so we don't want that to appear after the room description text. The table is taken care of, because it's scenery, but we have to get rid of the "On the table..." text too. If you run the game in the IDE, type "rules," and then "look," you'll see that that text is produced by the "describe what's on scenery supporters in room descriptions rule." This is kind of annoying, because it means we have to go into the Standard Rules, find that rule, and replace it with a new rule of our own devising that doesn't print the contents of the table. (As [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/ex93.html]the manual[/url] says, this rule is somewhat controversial.)

So we add this giant wodge of code:

[code]For printing a locale paragraph about a thing (called the item)
	(this is the describe what's on scenery supporters in room descriptions except the table rule):
	if the item is not undescribed and the item is scenery and
		the item does not enclose the player and the item is not the table:
		set pronouns from the item;
		if a locale-supportable thing is on the item:
			repeat with possibility running through things on the item:
				now the possibility is marked for listing;
				if the possibility is mentioned:
					now the possibility is not marked for listing;
			increase the locale paragraph count by 1;
			say "On [the item] ";
			list the contents of the item, as a sentence, including contents,
				giving brief inventory information, tersely, not listing
				concealed items, prefacing with is/are, listing marked items only;
			say ".[paragraph break]";
	continue the activity.
	
The describe what's on scenery supporters in room descriptions except the table rule is listed instead of the describe what's on scenery supporters in room descriptions rule in the for printing a locale paragraph about rulebook.
[/code]

Which may seem intimidating, but all I did is go into the Standard Rules, copy out "the describe what's on scenery supporters in room descriptions rule," stick "and the item is not the table" in, give the rule a new name, and add the last sentence about how to put our rule in for the old rule. (Which took a little banging my head against the wall to figure out exactly what the name of the rulebook was.) 

[UPDATE: I forgot to say, take out "Rule for listing nondescript items: do nothing."]

If we wanted to do this with more than one supporter in the game, then the thing to do would be to give supporters a property that determined whether or not to list their contents after the room description, and test for that instead of writing "if the item is not the table." (In fact, I think it might be kind of nice if the standard rules had a hook for that instead of making us write a new one.) 

One more thing: If you pick up the handbag and look, you'll get "In your room is a table, on which is nothing." That's not appealing. We can take care of this by setting a condition on the description, so if nothing is on the table it doesn't print "on which is" at all:

[code]"In your room, there is a [table][if something is on the table], on which is [a list of things on the table][end if]. You can also see a wooden door to the east, leading to a corridor."[/code] 

(Another issue is that it says "is" even if there's more than one thing on the table, or one thing with a plural name like Kirsty's keys. That's something you can take care of with Emily Short's Plurality extension -- but you've got enough on your plate now!)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2649&start=10#p18288
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basic help with Inform 7 [new question]
User: Sketel / DateTime: 2011-06-20 07:44:56

Ok, trying to wrap my head around that!

And work out the correct indentations, since copypasting the code just replaces the indentations with spaces..

I will probably be reading this several times before I have any idea what it means.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2649&start=10#p18289
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basic help with Inform 7 [new question]
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-06-20 07:48:25

The easy solution: Download and install the [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Ron%20Newcomb/Mentioned%20In%20Room%20Description/index.html]Mentioned in Room Description[/url] extension and include it. It suppresses the extra paragraph automatically if the thing is already mentioned in the room description and shows it normally otherwise.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2565&start=10#p18290
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Reactions requested
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-06-20 08:00:42

Your betatesters will let you know about any commands they would want to have understood. Including "just the obvious ones" is wat everyone does anyway, because players have been trained to go for the obvious commands. The only problem is when the author's idea of what is obvious and the player's idea of what is obvious are different -- but that is what testers are for.

So I think there is no need to worry.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2631&start=10#p18291
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Passing a Value into a Rule
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-20 08:10:37

I think this is it. I think its easier for forum members to state their views on specific conventions than for the conventions to be categorized and organized at this point.

Have you seen Zarf's notes on rule-based programming? There's more there than last time I looked...

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/rule-language.html">http://eblong.com/zarf/rule-language.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2649&start=10#p18292
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basic help with Inform 7 [new question]
User: Sketel / DateTime: 2011-06-20 08:10:47

Juhana thank you that's great! Works just as I want [emote]:)[/emote]

Matt w, I will still be re-reading to understand better, as I can see that knowing the code well is important for other applications.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2649&start=10#p18293
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basic help with Inform 7 [new question]
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-06-20 08:16:46

[quote="Sketel"]And work out the correct indentations, since copypasting the code just replaces the indentations with spaces..[/quote]
You can work around this -- from another user:[quote="tove"]The problem with copying and pasting from the forum is that if you copy from a post, the tabs have all been converted to spaces, and Inform really requires them to be tabs.  One way to quickly work around that is to make as if to reply to the post containing the code (so, hit the "quote" button), then copy the code from within the reply-to text box, where the tabs will be magically restored to how the original poster typed them in.  Of course, if the original poster typed them in as spaces, you'll still need to convert them to tabs by hand.[/quote]
Also, remember to hit cancel after you're done cutting and pasting or you might send a blank post by mistake.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2635&start=10#p18294
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Familiarity and non-things
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-20 08:31:34

Also, make sure you catch attempts to touch a liquid so the player doesn't get a "you can't reach into nothing" error.

In my own work, I avoid this using one of two methods:

Make the liquid a conditional backdrop:

[code]Use conditional backdrops by Mike Ciul

Backdrop condition for a liquid (called stuff):
    If stuff is the fluid contents of a fluid vessel enclosed by the location, it is present.
[/code]

Make the examining verb work with things that aren't really there:
[code]Use Remembering by Aaron Reed

Instead of remembering a liquid:
    say "[description of the noun]"
[/code]

Neither of these is tested.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2659&start=0#p18295
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A scope question
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-06-20 09:06:44

Thanks Victor. That didn't quite work in my game, as I have a lot of funny report rules (it made some people's entries and exits invisible even in the player's room), but what you did show me was where I could conveniently put the code I will need to use to achieve what I want.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2658&start=10#p18296
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table of Flags...
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-20 09:15:10

Just FYI, you can make an object respond to the built-in switching verb by giving it the appropriate properties, e.g.:

[code]The water can be switched on or switched off.[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2660&start=0#p18297
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Macintosh I7: Rogue copy of Standard Rules
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-20 09:38:10

When I open the Standard Rules within the Mac IDE, I seem to be getting the Standard Rules from an old build. For instance, the "examine undescribed containers" rule is listed in this copy of the Standard Rules and the "examine containers" rule isn't. Inform is using the up-to-date Standard rules, as the "examine containers" rule is firing at the appropriate time; it's just that the wrong copy of the rules is opening in the IDE.

Anyone know how I can fix this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2653&start=0#p18298
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Switching Animate Property
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-06-20 09:43:14

It still might be easier to do the switch, though, especially if other things about that object are changing (presumably at least the description, and probably responses to many actions).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2635&start=10#p18299
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Familiarity and non-things
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-20 10:00:37

The route that I 've started to go down was that, except for "examine" (where I want the player to be able to examine a liquid and its container separately), I would set up rules for all other actions so that they work properly when the subject (or object, as the case may be) is the container rather than the liquid itself.  A "does the player mean" rule would instruct the parser to interpret the player's command as referring to the container.  (Incidentally, this turned out to be more difficult than expected; the standard "does the player mean" mechanism doesn't properly handle the case where there are available two containers with the same liquid.  I was able -- I think, subject to some further testing -- to make this work properly using Jon Ingold's Disambiguation Control).

However, you're right that "touch" may be a special case.  Like "examine," the player should ideally be able to touch either a liquid or its container, each as a separate item.  However, unlike "examine," it requires that the objects be reachable as well as visible. I need to think about this some more.  I may take decide to the lazy man's way out and allow only the container to be touched (i.e., treat touching the same way as other non-examining actions); while not really defensible from a "realism" perspective, handling it this way wouldn't really affect the game-play.

Thanks.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2660&start=0#p18300
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Macintosh I7: Rogue copy of Standard Rules
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-20 10:00:59

There is a probably a copy of the Standard Rules in your user extensions folder (as opposed to the built-in extensions folder). If there is a version of a built-in extension in the user folder, the latter overrides the former. Just delete the version in your user folder and you should be good.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2648&start=0#p18301
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can Gargoyle play Gblorb files?
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-06-20 10:30:43

how do you make it play the sounds?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2661&start=0#p18302
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Anyone  know a good website to download free ogg sounds?
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-06-20 10:53:16

i would like to be able to hear them play before i download them if possible.
thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2660&start=0#p18303
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Macintosh I7: Rogue copy of Standard Rules
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-20 11:15:26

Ah! Well, I couldn't find the old copy of the Standard Rules and still don't know where it is, but I finally managed to use "Show Package Contents" to find the new version of the Standard Rules (it's under Contents/Inform7/Extensions/Graham Nelson -- I hadn't found the Inform7 folder before because there is a remarkable amount of stuff to look through in the "contents" folder). Then opening that up from the Finder and installing it worked. 

Still not sure where the rogue version may be hiding, but I don't need to worry about it anymore.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2649&start=10#p18304
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basic help with Inform 7 [new question]
User: Sketel / DateTime: 2011-06-20 11:22:05

[code]Instead of putting something in container:[/code]

is not understood as an action. What does inform understand as the participle of the player action  'put X in Y'?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2648&start=0#p18305
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can Gargoyle play Gblorb files?
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-06-20 11:29:21

[quote="ilovemyhedgehog"]how do you make it play the sounds?[/quote]

You ask it nicely.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2649&start=10#p18306
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basic help with Inform 7 [new question]
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-20 11:35:20

I believe the technical name of the action is "inserting it into."  Thus, you would say "Instead of inserting something into a container . . ."

The "actions" tab under the Index pane gives a list of all actions and the commands that invoke them.  Thus, if you run into this type of situation, you could look up the "put" command and see that it refers to the "inserting it into" action.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2660&start=0#p18307
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Macintosh I7: Rogue copy of Standard Rules
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-20 11:41:40

I'm glad you figured something out. However, you've now replaced the old local copy with a new local copy, which means that you'll have to repeat this process the next time a new Inform is released. In other words, you're still working from a local copy of the Standard Rules rather than the built-in copy, and the next time Inform is updated, that local copy will override the built-in copy. Here's some info specific to OS X, which it sounds like you are using:

The built-in folder is the one you found after peeking into the app package's contents. What almost certainly happened when you clicked on "Install" after opening the Standard Rules from the built-in folder was that the extension was copied to your local extensions folder, overwriting the old version.

You can find the newly installed copy and just delete it by opening it from within the IDE, and then Command + clicking on the filename at the top of the document window. This will bring up a little pop-up list showing the directory path to the file; you can click on the parent folder to open it, then delete the file. Your local folder is probably located at <user>/Library/Inform/Extensions. When you find the folder, you might want to make an alias so it's only a single click away.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2602&start=0#p18308
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: This is a very nice place.
User: ultimate / DateTime: 2011-06-20 11:50:43

[quote]This is a very nice place.[/quote]

No, it isn't.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2660&start=0#p18309
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Macintosh I7: Rogue copy of Standard Rules
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-20 11:57:26

Thank you, that seems to have worked, and the folder was where you said.

If I'm not mistaken, the moral is not to install the Standard Rules, even though the IDE keeps bugging me to; that's what creates the extra copy that won't get updated. (Actually, there may have been a grayed-out copy of the Standard Rules that I could've opened to get the new version. Still, it seems unnecessarily confusing.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2661&start=0#p18310
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anyone  know a good website to download free ogg sounds?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-06-20 12:16:14

What kind of sounds are you looking for?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2649&start=20#p18311
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basic help with Inform 7 [new question]
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-06-20 12:27:02

[quote="Robert Rothman"]The "actions" tab under the Index pane gives a list of all actions and the commands that invoke them.  Thus, if you run into this type of situation, you could look up the "put" command and see that it refers to the "inserting it into" action.[/quote]
The other good trick is to type "actions on" in your game, and then type the command and see what action it triggers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2648&start=0#p18312
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can Gargoyle play Gblorb files?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-06-20 12:29:10

[quote="ilovemyhedgehog"]how do you make it play the sounds?[/quote]

A gblorb file is a game file. 
Gargoyle is an interpreter to play interactive fiction games.

To make Gargoyle play the sounds inside a gblorb game file, you'll have to play the game. 
If there are any sounds in the game, they will appear when the game tells them to.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2653&start=0#p18313
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Switching Animate Property
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-20 12:59:28

Yeah, I chose the switch. It works, that's what counts. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2649&start=20#p18314
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basic help with Inform 7 [new question]
User: Sketel / DateTime: 2011-06-20 13:05:39

Cool, thanks for the tips.

If there's anybody here who wouldn't mind basically being a mentor or whatever, available for answering these kinds of basic questions while I learn the ropes, I'd appreciate that. PM me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2653&start=0#p18315
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Switching Animate Property
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-20 13:14:33

Using the switch is the traditional method for bring an inanimate object to life, but you don't use it yourself.  You have to instruct Igor to "Throw the switch!"  (And watch out for those angry pitchfork-toting villagers.)

(Sorry, I couldn't resist.)


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2495&start=0#p18316
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Quest 5.0 Beta 1 is now available
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-06-20 13:15:38

Beta 2 is now available, featuring a redesigned Script Editor, support for displaying a picture above text, timers, per-turn scripts, random numbers and packaging a game (including all libraries and external sound/picture files) into one file.

You can download it now from: <a class="postlink" href="http://quest5.net/index.php?title=Downloads">http://quest5.net/index.php?title=Downloads</a>

And more details are on the blog: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.textadventures.co.uk/blog/2011/06/20/quest-5-0-beta-2-released/">http://www.textadventures.co.uk/blog/20 ... -released/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2660&start=0#p18317
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Macintosh I7: Rogue copy of Standard Rules
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-20 13:23:46

[quote="matt w"]If I'm not mistaken, the moral is not to install the Standard Rules, even though the IDE keeps bugging me to; that's what creates the extra copy that won't get updated.[/quote]
Yes, that reminder seems like a bug. I get it too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2650&start=0#p18318
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Invisible Object in Inventory
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-20 13:39:44

Hm. First, I want this object to be in the player because it's needed for conversation support. If I don't find a proper solution I'll put it in scope. Then, [b]invent [; rtrue;],[/b] works almost fine, with one flaw left: An empty line is printed. So, inventory looks like:

You are carrying:
  object 1

  object 3

Could probably also be worked around by constantly shuffling the inventory, but hey, there [i]must[/i] be a way to get this darn thing so uberinvisible it doesn't show up in the inventory at all, right?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2660&start=0#p18319
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Macintosh I7: Rogue copy of Standard Rules
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-20 13:47:29

I'm not sure it's a bug, per se--it's just poorly named. The message to "install" should be something like "This is a built-in extension and cannot be edited. To make changes to this extension, I will first need to make a local copy in your Extensions folder. Would you like me to do that now? You will be able to begin editing immediately. <Button>".

In the absence of such a message, though, it is confusing enough that having no message at all would be preferable.

I'm pretty sure that I've reported this at some point, but I don't know when or where...

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2660&start=0#p18320
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Macintosh I7: Rogue copy of Standard Rules
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-20 13:47:56

I've [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=675]submitted it[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2660&start=0#p18321
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Macintosh I7: Rogue copy of Standard Rules
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-06-20 14:11:13

In retrospect, I think I got snagged on this very issue as well.  Definitely counter-intuitive as named.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2660&start=0#p18322
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Macintosh I7: Rogue copy of Standard Rules
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-20 14:19:33

Here's [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=425]more[/url] discussion at the bug tracker -- it was a duplicate bug, apparently, but they seem to be looking at Erik's fix.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2650&start=0#p18323
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Invisible Object in Inventory
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-20 14:27:02

The easiest way to do this is to have the object *not* be in the inventory -- have it off-stage, but place it in scope all the time.

If that's not sufficient, you'll have to replace InvSub and invoke WriteListFrom() with custom arguments. The WORKFLAG_BIT argument and the workflag attribute allow you to control what gets listed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2650&start=0#p18324
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Invisible Object in Inventory
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-20 14:50:06

Erm... Scope it is, then. Thanks! [emote];-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2661&start=0#p18325
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anyone  know a good website to download free ogg sounds?
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2011-06-20 15:49:39

If you're looking for sound effects, take a look at the Freesound Project at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.freesound.org/">http://www.freesound.org/</a>  Their sounds are typically in .mp3 format, but you can convert them to ogg.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2648&start=0#p18326
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can Gargoyle play Gblorb files?
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-06-20 16:08:44

they arnt playing for me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2661&start=0#p18327
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anyone  know a good website to download free ogg sounds?
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-06-20 16:10:43

sound effects.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2648&start=0#p18328
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can Gargoyle play Gblorb files?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-06-20 16:16:20

Details?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1923&start=10#p18329
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Storybook
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-06-20 19:31:18

[quote="Jim Aikin"]My fear is that a tool like this could simply insert an extra layer of busywork between me and the story.[/quote]
Yes, sometimes using Storybook to outline my model world and interactions has proved to be just busywork.  For me, however, it is ultimately worth it.  Storybook just recently came to my rescue again.  I've been very stuck on the details of how a few puzzles are supposed to work, and the process of entering my objects into the database with notes on how they relate to interactions has helped me to finally settle on how to implement one scene/puzzle in the game.  I often feel like making notes is a waste of time, but whenever I try to forge ahead without them, I get lost and give up.  I'm not a real writer, however; I suspect many serious writers have a knack for being able to work with the material that they have.  However, in my opinion, planning an outline for an IF work is [i]much[/i] more difficult than planning a static story.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2658&start=10#p18330
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table of Flags...
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-20 19:38:51

You're right, of course, Mr. Temple. I would just like to get this whole table of flags thing down for things that aren't on or off.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2662&start=0#p18331
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: 'One of' by kind
User: HawkleyFox / DateTime: 2011-06-20 19:46:42

In an attempt to get around the no nested ifs limitation for text replacements, I tried to create a new "one of" construction that compares an object to a description of a kind.  If the object is of that kind, then the phrase is selected for display.  I got it to [i]kinda[/i] work, but it feels awfully hacky and has a number of problems.  Here is the code:

[code]To say one of for (X - an object) when kind (V - name of kind of value of kind K) -- beginning say_when_kind:
	(-
		{-allocate-storage:say_when_kind}I7_ST_say_when_kind-->{-counter:say_when_kind} = {X};
		if ( (((I7_ST_say_when_kind-->{-counter:say_when_kind}).KD_Count)*2) == (({-default-value-for:V}.KD_Count)*2) )
		{-open-brace}
	-).
To say when kind (V - name of kind of value of kind K) -- continuing say_when_kind:
	(-
		{-close-brace} 
		if ( (((I7_ST_say_when_kind-->{-counter:say_when_kind}).KD_Count)*2) == (({-default-value-for:V}.KD_Count)*2) )
		{-open-brace}
	 -).
To say end when kind -- ending say_when_kind:
	(-
		{-close-brace}  !  {-advance-counter:say_when_kind}
	 -).[/code]
It uses the old KD_Count method of comparing types by obtaining the default value of a kind and then comparing the KD_Count values for it.

The above will work for my purposes, but it has obvious problems (and probably a few I'm not aware of yet).  If you have a kind of animal called a cat and you're trying to compare it to the default value of animal, which may not be a kind of cat at all.  Could be a kind of dog!  The way it is now makes it impossible to reliably compare things by parent kinds.

There is also the possibility that a kind will have the default value of nothing, which usually occurs when the developer has not created an object of that kind in their story.  This is less of an issue, as if you have no animals in your story, why would you be creating a text replacement for the kind 'animal'...  But, it still should be possible to compare something to an animal even if your world is devoid of animals.

What I really wanted to do was use the "ofclass" operator to compare the two which will fix the previously mentioned problems, but I could not for the life of me get Inform 7 to expand a description of a kind with the resolved static kind (as in-  a description of an animal -> K12_animal) to perform the ofclass operation on.

I'm not familiar with Inform 6, nor am I much familiar with all the undocumented features of Inform 7 that would likely have the answer I'm looking for.  Does anybody have any suggestions on how to make this construction a bit more robust?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2511&start=10#p18332
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: [New Game] Cryptozookeeper
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-06-20 20:17:20

great name for the game!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2663&start=0#p18333
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: artwork needed
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-06-20 20:26:16

[b]HALP![/b]  my magnum-opus is nearing completion.  i want a cover made!  its a fantasy-mystery type thing, and its HUGE.  any help?  advice?  know where i can find a artist?  [emote]:?:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1923&start=10#p18334
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Storybook
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-06-20 20:51:44

[quote="Bainespal"] I suspect many serious writers have a knack for being able to work with the material that they have.[/quote]

Really?  I always thought that what distinguished the serious ones is that they're willing to do the extra organizational work to make a better end product.  But then again, I'm not a writer, either.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2648&start=0#p18335
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can Gargoyle play Gblorb files?
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-06-20 21:11:01

i plyed two games that said they had sounds and pictures and none of them played sound or had pictures.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1923&start=10#p18336
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Storybook
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-20 21:36:03

[quote="tove"][quote="Bainespal"] I suspect many serious writers have a knack for being able to work with the material that they have.[/quote]

Really?  I always thought that what distinguished the serious ones is that they're willing to do the extra organizational work to make a better end product.  But then again, I'm not a writer, either.[/quote]

The "serious ones" have people paid by their editors to do the "organizational work" for them.

It's different for each individual. Some people like to plan the story out. Some people like to let the story tell itself. Some people like to let the characters tell the story to them. Some people just crank out absolute garbage and watch the degenerates of the world eat that crap up like filet mignon without giving a damn if it's good.

Preferences.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2662&start=0#p18337
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 'One of' by kind
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-06-20 23:21:26

You could write[code]To say one of for (X - an object) when kind (D - a description of a value of kind K) -- beginning say_when_kind: (-
	{-allocate-storage:say_when_kind}
	I7_ST_say_when_kind-->0={X};
	if({D}({X})){-open-brace}
-).
To say when kind (D - a description of a value of kind K) -- continuing say_when_kind: (-
	{-close-brace}
	if({D}(I7_ST_say_when_kind-->0)){-open-brace}
-).
To say end when kind -- ending say_when_kind: (-
	{-close-brace}
-).[/code] and have Inform generate the ofclass tests in Prop_* routines.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2648&start=0#p18338
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can Gargoyle play Gblorb files?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-06-21 00:14:30

Part of learning how to use the forum to your best advantage is learning how to ask questions so that people want to help you and don't feel like they are wasting their time.  Ideally, you want to 1) convey that you've put thought into the question already (that is, you're not just being lazy -- it helps if you put the effort into using proper spelling and grammar on your posts, too) and 2) give us as much information as possible to work with.  It is very very rare that someone gives too much information when they ask a technical question on the forum.  Think about all the possible questions we could ask, and give us the answers before we have to ask them.  You'll miss a few, of course -- you'll get better with practice, but everyone forgets to supply some vital information sometimes.  The best part about thinking about all the possible questions we could ask is that, in asking the question to yourself, you might figure out your own answer.  

So for example, for this problem, here are some questions:
-What games have you tried playing?  Are you sure you're playing a version that has the sounds/pictures?  Are you sure you've gotten to a part of the game where a sound is supposed to play or a picture is supposed to show?  (If so, why are you sure?  Did the game say "(hopefully you saw an image there)," or did a walkthrough mention it, or what?)  A full answer to this question might look like this: [quote]I tried playing [the name of a game, by the author of that game], and the walkthrough says that when I ">examine painting," an image of the painting shows up.  The ">examine painting" command succeeded, but I did not see an image.[/quote]
-Are your speakers plugged in and/or functional?
-What version of Gargoyle are you using?  What operating system does your computer run?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2222&start=10#p18339
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Second Gender - The Extension
User: Moxie / DateTime: 2011-06-21 05:00:25

[quote="Felix"]
I've be working (on and off) on a Swedish translation of Inform 7 since last summer; it should be beta soonish. (A pretty futile enterprise I fear, considering that apparently there has only been eight full games written in or ported to the Swedish edition of Inform 6 since its publication 2003. However, it has been fun. And perhaps – just possibly - Inform 7 may appear less intimidating than Inform 6 to would-be Swedish authors.)[/quote]

This is excellent news (I echo Fredrik)! Count me in amongst possible testers. My main motivation for wanting a Swedish Inform is to write small IF games for my kids, really (otherwise, i'd be quite happy with the English one), which means that, on one hand, I won't be likely to stress-test the really big bits [emote]:-)[/emote] but on the other hand, whatever I come up with might be small enough to use as example code later on.

So, by all means, contact me if you need a tester.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2648&start=0#p18340
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can Gargoyle play Gblorb files?
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-06-21 07:12:07

The fact that spiny-lover always gets a serious answer is becoming fascinating :')

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2222&start=20#p18341
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Second Gender - The Extension
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-21 08:01:20

It is rare that these issues come up in English, where, with rare exceptions, nouns for inanimate objects take the neuter pronoun.  One exception which comes to mind is a ship, which properly takes the feminine pronoun.

Interestingly, people who ought to know better sometimes have trouble with the notion that a "thing" can be other than neuter.  A while back, the New York Times ran an article in which it (incorrectly) referred to a ship as "it."  I was so offended that I wrote to the editor, who informed me that the Times style manual requires the neuter pronoun in such a case.  What was interesting was his explanation for the reason behind their "rule": a ship is inanimate, he explained, and therefore [i]per se[/i] neuter.  The idea that an inanimate object could take other than a neuter pronoun, which is a common feature of many languages, was so foreign to a (presumably literate)  English-speaker that he could not accept it even in one of the rare cases where it is correct.



Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2664&start=0#p18342
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Author in Crisis mode  :P   (HELP!!!)
User: roundrat / DateTime: 2011-06-21 08:44:52

I was cleaning up my files this morning and I thought I had deleted an "extra" inform7.exe file, whereas it was the only copy I had, and of course I permanently deleted it.

Yes, I could normally just download the install package, but I'm behind the prison bars of my workplace computer; I can only install programs in pieces (i.e. copying and pasting post-installation files). If anyone feels rogue enough to e-mail me an executable (I think zipping is safe), you'd be halting the increasing insanities of a frantic IF writer!  [emote]:P[/emote]

Thanks all!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2663&start=0#p18343
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: artwork needed
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-06-21 08:56:33

Are you looking to hire someone?
Some game dev forums have places to advertise for paid work.  
Several acquaintances have gone looking for an artist whose style they like (somewhere like DeviantArt or Flickr) and then commissioned a piece directly.
If you have a local college/university/technical college, there's a good chance you can find someone there.
There's always Craigslist.

If you're looking for free art . . . that's a bit more complicated.  You may be able to find an image that suits; I've had very very good luck with artists letting me use their stuff in return for credit.  Or you might be able to make something yourself, possibly by repurposing open-source artwork.  (Different artists have different rules, but I've had good luck trawling Flickr's creative commons pages and then double-checking with photographers that it's okay to Photoshop their work.)  Probably the hardest thing is to find someone professional to do something custom for you for free.

Did you have something particular in mind for an image, or an example you want to emulate?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2664&start=0#p18344
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Author in Crisis mode  :P   (HELP!!!)
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-21 09:06:43

If the machine has 7-zip installed, you don't need to run the exe installer.  You can open it in 7-zip and extract inform7.exe.

In case you don't have 7-zip installed, here's the Inform.exe: <a class="postlink" href="http://foss.aegean.gr/~realnc/Inform7.exe.zip">http://foss.aegean.gr/~realnc/Inform7.exe.zip</a> Let me know when you get it so I can delete it again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2649&start=20#p18345
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basic help with Inform 7 [new question]
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-06-21 09:10:52

Actions is a kind of best friend to you, as you start debugging your source. Once you're comfortable with I7, your second best friend for debugging will be 'RULES'. It lists all the rules used and when they are being called. When your game gets bigger and bigger, it starts pouring ALOT of rules, though, so be warned.

Also: it's always better to search the forums and read the documentation before asking around, but if you did so, then don't be afraid to post your questions here, even if they feel basic. Truth is a) any question will always be basic to some; and b) if even hedgehog gets his "doubts" answered, then you most surely must not fear posting yours.

That way your doubts become available to others who are also starting to learn the language.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2664&start=0#p18346
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Author in Crisis mode  :P   (HELP!!!)
User: roundrat / DateTime: 2011-06-21 09:21:56

Thanks! I grabbed it and gave it a shot. I don't know what I did, but I wish I never messed with anything this morning. I think I got one of my ScaleGfx.dll files mixed up with one in the Glulxe or Frotz folders. It's trying to open, but I never get the intro screen or anything. I guess I'll have to continue writing in notepad++ and fix everything tonight.

Rats

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2664&start=0#p18347
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Author in Crisis mode  :P   (HELP!!!)
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-21 09:29:46

Well, here's the whole content of I7_6G60_Windows.exe zipped up [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

<a class="postlink" href="http://foss.aegean.gr/~realnc/I7_6G60_Windows.zip">http://foss.aegean.gr/~realnc/I7_6G60_Windows.zip</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2664&start=0#p18348
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Author in Crisis mode  :P   (HELP!!!)
User: roundrat / DateTime: 2011-06-21 10:10:40

Hallelujah!  [emote]:D[/emote]  Everything's working fine! Thank you so much. You saved my day from boredom  [emote]:!:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2664&start=0#p18349
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Author in Crisis mode  :P   (HELP!!!)
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-21 11:11:27

Where are you working, btw? From the sound of it, I might want to apply for a job there  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2648&start=10#p18350
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can Gargoyle play Gblorb files?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-06-21 11:48:00

I think it's a good thing that our community is not too quick to eviscerate someone who might actually just be very young or inexperienced.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2222&start=20#p18351
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Second Gender - The Extension
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-06-21 12:02:22

I doubt that this editor had literally no grasp of the common usage of the feminine for ships.  He just used a different style guide than you do.  In my mind, calling a ship "she" is something that boating professionals do, and it would be pretentious or inappropriate of me to do it.  Though in general I'm in favor of more gender-neutral pronoun usage, not less, so I am biased here.  And also I'm not a journalist, so my words are allowed a few eccentricities.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2663&start=0#p18352
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: artwork needed
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-06-21 12:19:02

If your question is, "Where can I find someone to pay to make me cover art?" then let's talk. [emote]:)[/emote]

Otherwise, as gravel said, there's a lot you can do with Creative Commons images, both on Flickr and Wikimedia Commons, and some Photoshop.  Emily Short has some tips: <a class="postlink" href="http://emshort.wordpress.com/how-to-play/writing-if/my-articles/feelies-maps-cover-art/">http://emshort.wordpress.com/how-to-pla ... cover-art/</a>

Failing that, if you're trying to get an artist to work for you for free, it seems to me that the best way to convince them to do so is to have a really awesome project, and make absolutely clear how awesome the project is.  Pretty much the only time I personally would be interested in doing free work for someone I don't know in real life is if I think I have a good chance of an exposure boost.  So that means either a well-known author, or a project that is clearly poised to be a hit.  Even so, you're still only going to get people like me, who may have some skill but are early enough in their careers that "potential exposure" is worth anything at all, and who are not necessarily going to put "I'm getting paid for this!" effort in.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2663&start=0#p18353
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: artwork needed
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-21 12:33:11

Or you can find someone who loves drawing and money isn't the only thing on his/her mind. In other words, pretty much what everyone in this forum is doing, except not IF, but drawing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2663&start=0#p18354
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: artwork needed
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-06-21 12:53:47

Even someone who loves drawing usually loves making drawings for their own project, and most artists would rather not be associated with a subpar game.  I personally cannot afford to spend much time on things that do not pay me, and artists who are making enough money that that's not a concern are generally too busy as well.  I don't think it's too unrealistic to say "maybe I'll do something for free if you convince me it's worth my time, but I have to warn you that paying projects take the front burner."

As you say, everyone on this forum loves making IF, but there tends to be resounding silence when anyone asks for a programmer or a writer, too.  Would it be fair to say that money is the only thing on the mind of someone who says "Yes, I'm a programmer, but I'd rather not code your game for you, since I barely know you.  That is, unless you want to pay me."?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2472&start=0#p18355
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Portable
User: Nyx / DateTime: 2011-06-21 12:55:06

Hi everyone!

There were no further suggestions.

[i]Outdated![/i]
[i]Therefore here is the version 1.0 which is basically the same as the testversion 2:[/i]
[i]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/29620803/Inform7Portable_1.0_English.paf.exe[/i]

Here you can get the md5-checksum:
[i]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/29620803/Inform7Portable_1.0_English.paf.md5[/i]

Please download the latest revision down this thread.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2663&start=0#p18356
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: artwork needed
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-06-21 12:58:50

[quote="RealNC"]Or you can find someone who loves drawing and money isn't the only thing on his/her mind. In other words, pretty much what everyone in this forum is doing, except not IF, but drawing.[/quote]

Even in this forum, people have tough luck getting others to code their game for them, though.  There's a world of difference between "I'm drawing this because I want to and feel inspired to" and "I'm doing this at someone else's behest."  Usually there needs to be a personal connection in there, either with the work or with the paycheck or a relationship with the writer, etc.

I like gardening, and money isn't the only thing on my mind, but I have no interest in pulling someone's weeds for free.  Art is work when it's for someone else - and often when it's just for your own benefit.  And it can be well worth paying for.  (But also, don't underestimate what you can do, or learn to do, on your own.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2648&start=10#p18357
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can Gargoyle play Gblorb files?
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-06-21 13:00:08

[quote]I think it's a good thing that our community is not too quick to eviscerate someone who might actually just be very young or inexperienced.[/quote]
Which I sincerely admire, I do, but - allegedly - hog here is twenty and studying to be a vet assistant, not fifteen and fighting his way out of high school, which, together with the questions he poses and literary pearls such as this one...
[quote]so reverse the nouns means to switch them? i was reading it re verse like a verse from a poem.**[/quote]
... renders the character as someone either too stupid to be writing IF (or anything else, actually), or someone just having a laugh. I'm betting for the later.

** I think is one of the best answers I ever saw in an Internet forum, I really do!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2663&start=0#p18358
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: artwork needed
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-06-21 13:04:42

well, one idea i was [i]hoping[/i] for is maybe to meet an artist who has a plethora of crap laying around that i could choose from and give due credit, of course.  i am friends with a guy who does artwork for Rockstar games and he is too busy to create something for me, but said i can choose anything he's already made, but unfortunately, nothing fits my needs in his collection.  just a thought.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2663&start=0#p18359
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: artwork needed
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-06-21 13:22:30

Hmm.  Did you have a style/subject in mind?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2663&start=0#p18360
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: artwork needed
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-06-21 13:25:07

yeah, its an alternate-world (fantasy) type thing, but more low-fantasy than high-fantasy, with an mystery arc, of course.  also, its freaking enormous.  i feel there is a lack of really long, immersive games at times, so i wanted to make something that someone can get into for a long while.  plus its just one of multiple, projected parts.  so yeah, anything really thats representative of the setting or a scene from within the work would work for me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2649&start=20#p18361
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basic help with Inform 7 [new question]
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-06-21 13:28:31

I do actually think it might be nice to have mentors, not necessarily for basic questions, but for encouragement, quick feedback, etc.  But, yeah, I like seeing questions on the board.  And it's clear from the thread that people catch each other's mistakes and have differing ideas of implementation, which is always pretty interesting.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1635&start=0#p18362
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for writers
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-06-21 13:28:34

i strongly suggest continuing to read the documentation of Inform 7.  its a great system made for writers who arent really programmers.  it took me a good while to get the "hang" of it, but once i did, i can code the hell outta my game with little or no referring to the documentation.  basically, it will "click" with u the more u work with it and really work on learning it.  dont sell yourself short, if i can do it, anyone can! lol

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2663&start=0#p18363
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: artwork needed
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-06-21 13:29:42

If you want to PM me the details, I'd be happy to help you dig around.  Can't promise it will help, but it couldn't hurt.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1635&start=0#p18364
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for writers
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-06-21 13:30:16

plus there are tons of help vids and pdf's out there for Inform 7.  just keep looking and getting into the community's websites and you will learn a lot.  as i've been working on my huge game, ive done nothing but study the IF world and learn from it.  so not just Inform 7, but also the opinions and advice of long-time community people.  but again, keep at Inform 7, i bet thats the one for u.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2647&start=0#p18365
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Does Anyone know any inform games that have sound?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-21 13:53:53

Your project seems very ambitious, Hedgehog.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2665&start=0#p18366
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Very quick table question [i7]
User: starwed / DateTime: 2011-06-21 14:47:08

Given a variable that is of type [i]table name[/i], is there an easy way to get the short name of the table?  That is, if the table name is "Table of Kings" (or maybe "Table 1 - Kings"), I want to be able to get the string "Kings" without messing around with special string operations.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2453&start=0#p18367
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction on Law & Order: Los Angeles
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-06-21 14:57:56

jeez, im so not surprised.  anything that parents can blame rather than themselves, they will....i remember the DnD-is-the-devil days all too well, lol. [emote]:shock:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2666&start=0#p18368
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Numbered Disambiguation Choices by Aaron Reed
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-06-21 14:59:19

[quote]The Reading Room is a room. "The Reading Room is not dark. As a mater of fact, the lights are always on in this room and it has been rumored that the room was once used by a now defunct religious sect that never turned the lights off. You can see several oak shelves and pamplets here".

The shelving is a supporter. The shelving is fixed in place. The shelving is in the Reading Room.

The First Pamphlet is a thing. The first pamphlet is in the Reading Room. The description of the first Pamphlet is "How to play an Inform game.[line break]As you have found out just by getting here, Inforcom games are all text games and are played by entering a few words or numbers in response to a question or a 'prompt'.[line break]You will find almost no graphics in this game but you will find long passages that require intense reasoning.".

The Second Pamphlet is a thing. The second pamphlet is in the Reading Room. The description of the Second Pamphlet is "A guide to entering directions.[line break]There are 12 possible directions that can be entered. Not every move you make can use all or even two or more of these directions (as a mater of fact, most of the moves are designed to limit the number of moves you can make).The moves are [line break]north or n[line break]south or s[line break]east or e[line break]west or w[line break]northeast or ne[line break]southeast or se[line break]northwest or nw[line break]southwest or sw[line break]up or u[line break]down or d[line break]in side or in[line break]out side or out[line break]Usually, to reverse your travel, all you have to do is type the opposite direction. However, you will find times when the opposite direction is some other direction entirely or no direction at all. It is possible for a player to head into a 'room' that can not be exited!.[line break]Good luck, sucker!".

The Third Pamphlet is a thing. The Third Pamphlet is in the Reading Room. The description of the Third Pamphlet is "What to expect.[line break]The game (How Did I Get Here?) is structured in several phases or steps. The first three steps start simple and then get progressively more difficult. From that point on, the going really gets tough![line break]There is NO help file. You are on own.[line break]This much we will say. At the completion or someplace during each adventure you will find a treasure. What you do with this treasure will, of course, determine the outcome of the game.".

The fourth pamphlet is a thing. The fourth Pamphlet is in the Reading Room. The description of the Fourth Pamphlet is "I know the wording was a bit difficult, but if you still can't understand it, maybe you should ask somebody that graduated fourth grade.".
	
understand "Pamphlet 1" as First Pamphlet.
understand "Pamphlet 2" as Second Pamphlet.
understand "Pamphlet 3" as Third Pamphlet.
understand "Pamphlet 4" as Fourth Pamphlet.[/quote]

This gives the following line:
ADVENTURE HERE>: x pamphlet
What do you want to examine: the [color=#FF0000]1) Third Pamphlet, the 2) First Pamphlet, the 3) Second Pamphlet[/color], or the 4) fourth pamphlet?

Note that the order of the selections is not correct. How can I fix this? or is it not my problem?

Greg

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=200#p18369
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-06-21 15:17:59

Dave:

You are not the only one “afflicted” with programming. I’m just a bit shy of 80 now (I woke up one morning and there I was) I started my programming career on machines that required a rotary switch and a bunch of micro-switches.

About all I can say about I7 is that it is a long way away from any other language I have ever used. And because of this I have really been struggling with it. However, the human brain is just another group of muscles and I have no intention of letting them get weaker as I get older. I spend 3 times a week at the local gym keeping myself in walking condition so there is no reason I shouldn’t spend at least (if not more) time keeping my brain in thinking condition!

I hope all of you out there are prepared to keep it up until they nail the cover on your final “box”. [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2665&start=0#p18370
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Very quick table question [i7]
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-21 15:18:12

I don't believe that Inform would have any reason to store the short name of the table, as it doesn't actually use even the long name internally. Getting the short name is easy, though. Here's how to do it if you name all your tables "Table of X":

[code]When play begins:
	say "Table: [Table of Kings shortened]."
	
To decide what indexed text is (tab - a table name) shortened:
	let T be an indexed text;
	let T be "[tab]";
	replace the text "Table of " in T with "";
	decide on T.[/code]

This should be pretty fast, but if you're going to be invoking this often (e.g. more than once per turn), you might want to store all of these texts in a table, since table lookup is faster than indexed text manipulation.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2311&start=0#p18371
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Recipes for Storytelling
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-06-21 15:53:37

that link doesnt seem to go to an active file on that page... [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=200#p18372
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-06-21 16:07:51

hi, im cory, im 38.  grew up playing IF via infocom and i always wanted to write my own, then about two years ago i stumbled upon the IF community online, thank god.  now i can finally do it now that ive learned Inform 7.  im an english/philosophy/film major and my writings never took off until i made them interactive.  working on a magnum opus right now because i think we need more really long works of IF in this community.  anyway, for anyone interested, here's my blog about IF:

[url]http://ezfreemann.livejournal.com/[/url]

ok, hit me up, im really friendly.  thanks, all!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2667&start=0#p18373
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Amendments to babel code
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-06-21 16:28:01

How does one go about making amendments to Babel?  Is it just a case of emailing them to Zarf?

I'm starting to test whether it can read ADRIFT Blorbs, and I'm getting a lot of "[i]Error: Did not recognize format of story file[/i]" type messages.  Looking at the source, blorb seems to be hard-wired for zcode, glulx, tads2 and tads3.  It's also not picking up the IFID from the TAF or Blorbs, so I guess I need to flesh out adrift.c.

But my main question is, is the source held in a central repository anywhere, so I can update 0.2b to 0.2c or whatever?

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2667&start=0#p18374
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Amendments to babel code
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-21 18:31:36

You mean the "Babel Software Suite" (<a class="postlink" href="http://babel.ifarchive.org/program.html">http://babel.ifarchive.org/program.html</a>)? I never had anything to do with that. I guess you want to talk to Ross (DorianX). 

If he doesn't have a repository somewhere, then yes, you can send me an updated version and I'll add it to the site.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2666&start=0#p18375
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Numbered Disambiguation Choices by Aaron Reed
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-21 18:51:06

I get the same output that you do. Interestingly, if you don't include the extension, the standard "which do you mean" output from Inform shows the pamphlets in the expected order. This is a strong hint that somehow the extension's code is juggling the items around in the process of listing them.

Beyond that ... dunno.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2666&start=0#p18376
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Numbered Disambiguation Choices by Aaron Reed
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-06-21 19:37:16

Until there's a fix, just say that your game is railing against the tyranny of numerical order. No privileged number ones for you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2311&start=0#p18377
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Recipes for Storytelling
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-21 19:51:24

[url=http://thelastreveal.blogspot.com/2010/02/lester-dents-master-plot-formula.html]Here's[/url] a link that's working right now.

(Looking forward to the OP's game. I have an idea for a Western-themed IF, and that outline is pretty inspiring.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2666&start=0#p18378
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Numbered Disambiguation Choices by Aaron Reed
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-21 20:18:01

It's actually internal Inform code doing this, though I don't have any real idea why. The line that causes it is this one, from Numbered Disambiguation Choices:

[color=#0000FF]Understand the disambiguation id property as describing a thing.[/color]

If you want to see that this is so, add the following to the posted example code, and don't include Numbered Disambiguation Choices:

[code]Every thing has a number called disambiguation id.  
Understand the disambiguation id property as describing a thing. [/code]

Somehow, this causes Inform to rearrange the internal order by which it iterates through these objects during parsing routines, at least in this particular case. It doesn't matter what the disambiguation id of the objects is--the simple existence of the understand line is enough to cause the change. I have no idea whether this should be considered a bug or not. Does Inform guarantee that objects will be printed in any certain order?

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2668&start=0#p18379
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Possible bug: enterable container part of supporter
User: beej175560 / DateTime: 2011-06-21 20:41:19

Place is a room. A stove is in Place. It is a supporter. An oven is part of stove. It is an open enterable container.

Place
You can see a stove here.

>go oven
You get into the oven.

>look
Place [b](on the stove)[/b]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2666&start=0#p18380
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Numbered Disambiguation Choices by Aaron Reed
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-21 20:53:49

I sort of think it might be possible to work around this by assigning things a numbered property and sorting the list of disambiguation choices in order of that property; but in order to do that we have to silence everything that gets printed while asking which do you mean, collect it into a list, sort that list, and [i]then[/i] print the names on the disambiguation list with their numbers. I've figured out how to suppress printing the names of the disambiguees, and I think I know at what step of the process you should sort and print the list; but that still leaves this abomination:

[code]Which do you mean, the , the , the  or the ?[/code] 

So I'd need to suppress the articles and the punctuation. My most optimistic idea is that it might be possible to do this with Custom Library Messages; anyone who knows how, halp!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2666&start=0#p18381
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Numbered Disambiguation Choices by Aaron Reed
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-21 21:37:15

I suspect that that would require hacking the library. But if you're just looking to do a proof of concept, you could use Text Capture to write the abomination to a buffer and then just throw it away. You can then rewrite the whole thing yourself at the appropriate time.

By the way, it isn't necessary to have a property to store the numerical ordering. You can use a decide phrase to grab the I6 object number, which will reflect the creation order:

[code]To decide which number is the object number of (O - an object): (- {O} -)[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2666&start=0#p18382
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Numbered Disambiguation Choices by Aaron Reed
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-21 21:40:47

[quote="ektemple"]I suspect that that would require hacking the library. But if you're just looking to do a proof of concept, you could use Text Capture to write the abomination to a buffer and then just throw it away. You can then rewrite the whole thing yourself at the appropriate time.[/quote]

Suddenly I feel motivated to start doing my actual work instead. (Seriously, thanks for the suggestion; I'll look into it sometime.)

[quote]By the way, it isn't necessary to have a property to store the numerical ordering. You can use a decide phrase to grab the I6 object number, which will reflect the creation order:

[code]To decide which number is the object number of (O - an object): (- {O} -)[/code]

--Erik[/quote]

Well, I figure it'd be nice to let the author set it instead of relying on source text ordering; they could even dynamically reset it, if they wanted to.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2663&start=10#p18383
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: artwork needed
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-21 21:44:32

Have you thought of putting together a couple of nice Tarot cards with an appropriate connection -- something like the Emperor, the Hierophant, and the Fool maybe? I've just been looking at your blog, and it seems like you're already linking them to your game; and it seems like you might be able to get some nice (and medieval) public-domain images that way.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2666&start=0#p18384
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Numbered Disambiguation Choices by Aaron Reed
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-06-21 21:54:13

Because of the code that Erik identified, Inform calls DECIMAL_TOKEN to check for a number that describes the pamphlet.  DECIMAL_TOKEN in turn calls ParseTokenStopped and therefore ParseToken in which the match list (currently being built) has to be saved and restored.  But the save and restore are in reversed order, so the match list is flipped before each new match is added.  Hence, you get the list built up as [ First ], then [ First, Second ], and [ Second, First, Third ], and finally [ Third, First, Second, Fourth ].  Whether that's a bug I don't know, but I would encourage you to report it.

In the meantime, you could workaround the problem by patching up ParseToken, or more hackily by adding another reversal with code like[code]Every thing has a number called hack.  The hack of a thing is always -1.  Understand the hack property as describing a thing.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2663&start=10#p18385
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: artwork needed
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-06-21 23:57:31

wow, matt, i really didnt think of that, and im [i]not[/i] being sarcastic.  its true, my blog has a bunch of tarot images, so why not incorporate that? lol.  but gravel, i will talk to u as well, because ideally i would love an image that (hopefully somewhat) represents a character, place, or scene from the work.  

thanks, guys, i love this forum! [emote]:P[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2669&start=0#p18386
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Supplying a missing noun problem
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-06-22 01:06:35

I can't work out why my 'supplying a missing noun rule' isn't working.
[code]
squishing is an action applying to one thing.

Understand "squish [something]" as squishing.

Rule for supplying a missing noun while squishing:
	now noun is the grass.[/code]

Now I just made it the grass here because that's a backdrop that's everywhere, but I've tried all kinds of objects in the game which should be available to the player, and in every case when I just type 'squish' (and when I trace the actions/rules), the game goes through the player's inventory one item at a time, rejecting most items because they're all ranked as 'unlikely' by me, then settles on the last inventory item, whose rank is the default 'possible'.

So in short, I have yet to supply a missing noun. The noun always ends up being one particular item in the player's inventory.

Why is this happening?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2669&start=0#p18387
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Supplying a missing noun problem
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-22 01:42:07

"Supplying a missing noun" is only invoked when the *understand declaration* is missing a noun. That is, if you said

[code]
Squishing is an action applying to one thing.
Understand "squish" as squishing.
Understand "squish [something]" as squishing.
[/code]

In this case, if the player types "squish", that matches the first grammar and triggers this activity. Without that grammar line, it's all handled by the "Does the player mean..." mechanism.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2668&start=0#p18388
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Possible bug: enterable container part of supporter
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-06-22 01:47:31

It could be by design (if you have a seat as part of a car, you'd want the room heading to show (in the car) even when you sit on the seat) but in this case it doesn't look right. You can report bugs at [url]http://inform7.com/mantis[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2667&start=0#p18389
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Amendments to babel code
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-06-22 02:29:20

Ok, thanks, will do.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2135&start=0#p18400
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: You know you've played too much IF when...
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-06-22 02:39:52

i know ive been playing/writing too much IF when i find myself walking around and "mapping" in my head, complete with descriptions....maybe its a good exercise, maybe im insane.  [emote]:shock:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2669&start=0#p18404
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Supplying a missing noun problem
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-06-22 02:43:50

Thanks. It looks like I still don't know all the vagaries of how to define commands. I just did some experiments now, variously making an action (zotting) apply to nothing and to one thing, and setting it up with grammar "zot" as zotting, "zot [something]" as zotting - one or the other or both - and mixed and matched all these combination to see how they responded. Each combination does something a bit different, so I guess there's a use for each way.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2670&start=0#p18405
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: new review of old game: Andrew Plotkin's SHADE
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-06-22 02:44:27

Hey, i wrote a review of Andrew Plotkin's [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Shade]SHADE[/url].  It's on my blog: [url]http://ezfreemann.livejournal.com/4840.html[/url].  enjoy!  [emote]:geek:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2670&start=0#p18406
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: new review of old game: Andrew Plotkin's SHADE
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-06-22 02:51:28

You should ask to have your blog put on Planet IF: <a class="postlink" href="http://planet-if.com/">http://planet-if.com/</a>
It's the best way to tell people of blog updates!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2670&start=0#p18407
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: new review of old game: Andrew Plotkin's SHADE
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-06-22 02:56:00

cool, thanks for the advice!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2669&start=0#p18409
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Supplying a missing noun problem
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-22 06:00:06

Even the examples in the documentation have gotten this wrong ("Four Cheeses" IIRC, which left out one of the "understand" lines but worked anyway for unrelated reasons), so I think it's officially a tricksy area.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2670&start=0#p18410
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: new review of old game: Andrew Plotkin's SHADE
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-22 06:08:33

About the question you had about the ending:

[spoiler]There is an ending other than being in the desert. From the walkthrough [url=http://webhome.idirect.com/~dswxyz/sol/shade.html]here[/url]:

"The figure is revealed, but is fragile. Almost anything you do to it will damage it, except just looking. Once it's dead, read the book and wait."[/spoiler]

(Sorry for posting this here -- I don't think I have any way of logging on to post a comment at LJ, except maybe hooking it into my Google account which I don't want to do.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2668&start=0#p18411
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Possible bug: enterable container part of supporter
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-22 06:47:50

Just curious:  Do you run into the same problem if you reverse the way it is implemented (i.e., you make the range an enterable container and make the stovetop a part of it and a supporter)?


Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2669&start=0#p18412
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Supplying a missing noun problem
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-22 06:52:34

I ran into the same problem (and posted an inquiry, which was promptly answered) about a week ago.  Now I don't feel so bad about missing the point in the documentation.

Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2668&start=0#p18413
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Possible bug: enterable container part of supporter
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-06-22 07:03:38

Yes, it fixes the output when entering the oven but the underlying problem persists (if you make the stove enterable and stand on it you're told that you're in the oven).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2135&start=0#p18414
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: You know you've played too much IF when...
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-22 07:36:31

In all seriousness, my warning sign is when I find myself dreaming about the game I'm currently playing.  In the dream-state, I find myself being both the character (actually walking around and exploring) and myself (typing in commands) and the two roles tend to get confused.

This first happened to me about 35 years ago when I first discovered Adventure.  I would play until the wee hours, then go to sleep and find myself in this very odd dream-state.  From time to time since then, this phenomenon has happened again --and when it does, I know I need to take a few days' break from the game.


Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2671&start=0#p18415
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: if x is in the invetory
User: nicky84 / DateTime: 2011-06-22 07:43:25

Hi,

I am new to this, so this is probably a very basic question. 
Essentially I need to stop the player going north unless he has a motivation to go that way.
 I know the below is wrong but if someone could educate me that would be swell!

Before going north in the entrance hall:
	if the train ticket is an inventory item:
	continue the action.
	otherwise:
	stop the action.

Thanks one and all! Hope everyone is having a down right spiffing day!
N

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2671&start=0#p18416
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: if x is in the invetory
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-06-22 07:55:38

You want 
[code]if the player carries the train ticket:[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2671&start=0#p18417
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: if x is in the invetory
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-22 07:56:40

I would try something like the following:

[code]
Instead of going north in the entrance hall when the player does not have the train ticket, say "The conductor won[apostrop[he]t let you on the platform without a ticket.".[/code]

The "instead of" language automatically stops the action if the condition (in this case, the player not having the ticket) is satisfied.  If the condition is [b]not[/b] satisfied (i.e., if the player has the ticket), the "instead of" rule never kicks in so you just go right to the normal action rules.

Robert Rothman

[Edited to add the word "not"]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2671&start=0#p18418
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: if x is in the invetory
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-06-22 07:58:22

First of all, don't just stop the action without saying why you're doing it to the player.

Every time something is in inventory, then it is carried by the PC, or the PC holds it, so you can refer to the situation by asking if it is carried or held.

[code]Instead of going north in the entrance hall when the player does not have the train ticket:
    say "If you go that way now, you'll fall and break your neck and your head will roll down the tracks and it will eventually be crushed by a train and you don't want that because IntroComp is comming soon."[/code]

You can create your own excuse, of course, but feel free to use that one.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2666&start=0#p18419
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Numbered Disambiguation Choices by Aaron Reed
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-06-22 08:02:45

M..... It looks like I'm doomed to spend my life trying to sort out things that don't matter. Just think, what if I get this order in order then add a few more pamphlets. After all, we zealots must just keep adding to the knowledge of you lesser beings! [emote]:lol:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2671&start=0#p18420
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: if x is in the invetory
User: nicky84 / DateTime: 2011-06-22 08:05:53

ahhh I see, just approaching it from the wrong way around. 

Hi lribeiro, had the excuse all sorted but thanks, yours is quite good! Might steal it for later!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2672&start=0#p18421
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Mini Ludum Dare this weekend
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-06-22 08:08:56

This weekend (June 24-6) there's a mini Ludum Dare jam for dialogue-centric games -- a bit like speedIF but with a different community. They explicitly mention that Inform 7, ChoiceScript, and Undum projects are welcome (and I imagine they'd be up for any other IF language as well). More here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2011/06/05/ready-for-the-june-minild/">http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2011/06/ ... ne-minild/</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2668&start=0#p18422
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Possible bug: enterable container part of supporter
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-06-22 08:20:32

A possible fix. It will print the part that holds the actor rather than the thing that the holder is part of (I hope).

[code]
Carry out looking (this is the new enhanced room description heading rule):
	say bold type; 
	if the visibility level count is 0: 
		begin the printing the name of a dark room activity; 
		if handling the printing the name of a dark room activity, 
			issue miscellaneous library message number 71; 
		end the printing the name of a dark room activity; 
	otherwise if the visibility ceiling is the location: 
		say "[visibility ceiling]"; 
	otherwise: 
		say "[The visibility ceiling]"; 
	say roman type; 
	let intermediate level be the visibility-holder of the actor; 
	repeat with intermediate level count running from 2 to the visibility level count: 
	[adding this extra conditional]
		if the holder of the actor is a part of the intermediate level,
			issue library message looking action number 8 for the holder of the actor;
		otherwise 
	[finished adding]
			issue library message looking action number 8 for the intermediate level; 
		let the intermediate level be the visibility-holder of the intermediate level; 
	say line break; 
	say run paragraph on with special look spacing. 

The new enhanced room description heading rule is listed instead of the room description heading rule in the carry out looking rulebook.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2579&start=0#p18423
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Best way to implement a background image?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-22 09:17:20

[quote="ektemple"]http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1623[/quote]
That is sloooooooooow! I got an "unresponsive script" message three times before the game loaded, and I got another one after making a move (clicking on glove compartment).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2623&start=0#p18424
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: One Framework or Two?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-22 09:29:42

My gut feeling is to use one framework and embrace the chaos. I'm guessing TADS lets you build your source code in separate files, so a clear system of file organization could potentially do as much as having separate frameworks. And test, test, test. Does TADS3 have an automated testing tool?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2570&start=20#p18425
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor: A new Linux/Mac OS X/Windows port of the Hugo eng
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-22 09:41:52

Version 0.7 is now available. Yes, this isn't beta anymore [emote]:D[/emote]

[list]
[*]Scrollback window support. In Hugor, the scrollback window will not block the engine, meaning you can keep playing the current game with the scrollback window open.[/*:m]
[*]When using the FMOD engine for sound (default on Mac OS X), music is now streamed from disk instead of mapping it into RAM. This decreases memory usage.[/*:m]
[*]When using the SDL engine for sound (default on Linux and Windows), MOD music (MOD/XM/etc) is played using modplug instead of mikmod. This increases sound quality and supported MOD features.[/*:m]
[*]The interpreter should now always restore its previous size correctly.[/*:m][/list:u]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2565&start=10#p18426
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Reactions requested
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-22 10:09:40

I try to follow Postel's Law: Be conservative in what you send, and liberal in what you accept. In other words, I'd include all the synonyms you can think of that won't make anything else more confusing. Of course WHEN you add them can make a big difference in your workload. If they're distracting you from developing something important that you don't want to lose track of, save them for later. They're not like description text that would be odious and difficult to come back to.

Eventually, after you've added all the synonyms you've thought of, you'll need to add all the ones your testers thought of. As most everyone else has mentioned, I think playtesting is the key.

By the way, I've been reading "Twisty Little Passages," and the introductory transcript is from "For a Change." I've never played it, but it has a guidebook that sounds a little like the manual you're describing. It's accessible right away, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2668&start=0#p18427
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Possible bug: enterable container part of supporter
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-22 10:18:26

The *simplest* fix is simply to not make the stove part of the oven. Have them be two separate objects in the same room, both scenery.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2674&start=0#p18428
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: Keeping track of repeated actions
User: beelsebu / DateTime: 2011-06-22 10:41:13

Hi!

I'm trying to make an extension that will handle repeated actions. 
I want it to trap the successful actions only, and having the option to bypass certain actions defined in an external routine. 

I'm thinking I've overcomplicated this... if anyone has any other suggestions I would be happy to hear it.


This is what I've gotten so far... but it doesn't stop correctly when there's a  failed action;


Please help!

[code]

! TODO : Make it so that it won't reset the repetition variable when a failed new command is parsed.

Global SUCCESSFUL_ACTION = false;

[DontResetRepetitionWhen;
		Examine,Look,Wait: 		rtrue;
		default:	rfalse;
	];

Object History
	with
		lastActor 0,
		lastAction 0,
		lastNoun	0,
		lastSecond 0,
		repetitions 0,
		found_in[;		rtrue;	],
		react_before[;
			if(self has general)
			{
				give self ~general;
				!print "^ The last command had a successful result.";	
				if (actor == self.lastActor 
					&& action == self.lastAction 
					&& noun == self.lastNoun 
					&& second == self.lastSecond)
					{
						self.repetitions++;
						!print " same command -- increase repetitions: ", self.repetitions, "^";
					}
				else
				{
					#IfDef DontResetRepetitionWhen;
						if(DontResetRepetitionWhen())
						{
							!print "not the same command, but an exception -- no reset.";
							rfalse;
						}
					#EndIf;
					give self switchable;
				}
			}
		],
		each_turn[;
			!print "history.each_turn()";
			
			if(SUCCESSFUL_ACTION)
			{
					if (actor == self.lastActor 
					&& action == self.lastAction 
					&& noun == self.lastNoun 
					&& second == self.lastSecond)
					{
						!print "same as before";
						give self general;
						rfalse;
					}
				
					!print "New successful command ";
					if(self has switchable)
					{
							give self ~switchable;
							self.repetitions = 0;
							!print " -- reset repetitions: ", self.repetitions, "^";
							rfalse;
					}	
					
					!print " -- working all the way!";
					give self general;
					self.lastActor = actor;
					self.lastAction = action;
					self.lastNoun = noun;
					self.lastSecond = second;
			}
			else
			{
				!print "New failed command ";
				give self ~general;
				rfalse;
			}
			SUCCESSFUL_ACTION = false;
		],
	has scenery;

[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2668&start=0#p18429
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Possible bug: enterable container part of supporter
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-22 10:54:54

In my business (I'm a tax lawyer by trade), one of the first principles which I learned (and which I try to teach to younger lawyers) is that solving a problem should only be done as a last resort; it is almost always better to structure things so as to avoid the problem in the first place.

Zarf, your suggestion is worthy of a tax lawyer!


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2675&start=0#p18430
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Need help
User: ptimony / DateTime: 2011-06-22 11:29:53

I'm trying to build my first IF, and I've gotten pretty far just following the manual. I'm stuck now.

I just knocked out my player, and I want to have him wake up strapped to an operating table. I've moved the player to the Lab, but I can't figure out how to tell the game that he is lying down on the operating table. 

Suggestions?

Peter

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2675&start=0#p18431
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need help
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-06-22 12:16:38

One thing to check out might be Emily Short's extension "Postures": <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/Emily%20Short/Postures/index.html">http://inform7.com/extensions/Emily%20S ... index.html</a>

For a more bare-bones solution, check out example 299 in the documentation, "Lies."

P.S.  I'm assuming you're using Inform 7, because a lot of new members of the forum are.  However, the appropriate place for Inform-specific questions is in the "Inform 6 and 7 Development" subforum.  If I guessed wrong and you're using TADS, there's a "TADS 2 and 3 Development" subforum as well.  It also helps the right people see your question if you put the version number in your post title, like "Inform 7: Lying down?" or just "I7: Lying down?"

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2675&start=0#p18432
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need help
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-06-22 12:59:11

You can usually fake it by just putting the player on the table (assuming I7: "now the player is on the operating table") and mentioning in the descriptions that they are lying down.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2675&start=0#p18433
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need help
User: ptimony / DateTime: 2011-06-22 13:26:37

Postures is a big help. Thank you. I also neglected to mention that the operating tale is in the lab, so I guess that was a rookie mistake. I can move on now! 

Peter

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2676&start=0#p18434
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: inform:7 making an animal come to you
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-06-22 13:46:04

i need an animal to come to me when i call it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2676&start=0#p18435
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform:7 making an animal come to you
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-22 14:56:55

Offer it food.

Oh, you mean in Inform 7? The pesky bit is that the animal may not be in the room with the player when the player enters 'call chihuahua'. You should start by looking at page 16.7 in the manual and Example 290, which appears on that page.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2676&start=0#p18436
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform:7 making an animal come to you
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-22 15:03:04

This is a little trickier than average -- you want to be able to call the animal even when it isn't there, but most actions only apply to things that are in the room with the player. Look at the section of the documentation Jim pointed you to, and [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=14112#p14112]the first part of this post[/url] of mine talks about how you can do that with an action applying to one "visible" thing and an [any thing] token. 

So something like this (untested, and you'd have to fix the tabs yourself):

[code]Calling is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "call [any thing]" as calling.
Instead of calling:
  say "[The noun] won't come when you call."
Instead of calling the hedgehog:
  say "The hedgehog comes happily trotting in.";
  move the hedgehog to the location.[/code]  

The second rule is more specific than the first, so (if I haven't messed up) it should get checked first. That means that when you call the hedgehog you get the results of that rule, and if you call anything else you get the result of the first rule.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2631&start=10#p18437
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Passing a Value into a Rule
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-06-22 15:23:57

[quote="capmikee"]I think this is it. I think its easier for forum members to state their views on specific conventions than for the conventions to be categorized and organized at this point.[/quote]

Well, in that case they're not conventions except in the individual sense. Which may be fine ... but it's a bit hard to search through these forums to get that kind of information unless you happen upon it. There's a difference between categorizing/organizing and just having a single point of (provisional) reference. (Maybe a Wiki format?) I'm not worried about the structural aspects of the knowledge now; rather just getting the knowledge itself.

The fact that Inform is evolving/growing is the best time to start gathering that kind of information because then the language designers stand a much better chance of coding the use of certain design patterns into the language. (As they [correctly] say, the best patterns are the ones that the language so thoroughly absorbs that they aren't something you necessarily apply, but rather just part of the normal operations.)

I'm not well-versed enough yet in Inform to lead this sort of effort but I'd be happy to contribute to discussions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2676&start=0#p18438
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform:7 making an animal come to you
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-22 15:58:02

Or, with a nod to the Three Stooges:

[code]
Calling is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "call [any thing]" as calling.  Understand "Hey [any thing]" as calling.
Understand "porcupine" as the hedgehog.
Instead of calling:
  say "[The noun] won't come when you call."
Instead of calling the hedgehog:
  say "'Hey, Porcupine! C[apostrophe]mere,' you call.[paragraph break]'I[apostrophe]ll come when I[apostrophe]m good and ready,' responds the hedgehog.[paragraph break]'Are ya ready?' you ask, theateningly.[paragraph break]'Yeah, I[apostrophe]m ready,' says the spiny creature.";
  move the hedgehog to the location.
[/code]

(Sorry, I never could resist a Stooge reference.)


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2631&start=10#p18439
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Passing a Value into a Rule
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-22 15:59:18

Rulebooks that return a value are pretty much brand-new to Inform. I don't think I've seen anyone use them except to illustrate the fact that they exist, and there are no examples in the manual that present them either. So it's not really a surprise that they don't feel Informy. Moreover, these new "functional programming" features will probably always be the province of extension authors and "expert" users, and so will likely remain in a kind of penumbral zone as far as most users are concerned.

To be honest I don't see what kicks are to be got by cataloging and organizing individuals' ideas on the conventions for using the language, but if there are folks out there for whom this would be a good time, more power to them!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2677&start=0#p18440
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Generating a Random Dungeon
User: LCamelot / DateTime: 2011-06-22 16:18:07

I want to make a dungeon that starts out as a bunch of unconnected rooms, but will piece them together randomly as the player explores.  "All Roads Lead to Mars" is almost helpful, except it allows the player to travel in any direction.  The first room should only have one exit, to the north, and the location the player arrives in after going north should be random.  How can I achieve this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2135&start=0#p18441
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: You know you've played too much IF when...
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-06-22 17:30:50

... you often pick up random items you find lying around because if they're there, they must have a purpose. 

... mazes bring you out in a rash.

... you manage to use the words "plugh" and "xyzzy" in every day conversation just to see what responses they get.

... anybody behaving out of character is breaking mimesis and must be reported to the moderators immediately.

... you find yourself locked up in a prison cell and believe the means to escaping are hidden somewhere in said cell.

... that isn't a tatty old piece of paper, it's a treasure map!

... you can't hack the Times crossword to find the answers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2135&start=0#p18442
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: You know you've played too much IF when...
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-06-22 18:04:47

lol, good stuff there!

yeah, ive had IF dreams too, hard to describe, but i know they were IF-inspired.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2679&start=0#p18443
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Making an object that picks up other objects
User: ptimony / DateTime: 2011-06-22 18:12:56

I'm stuck again. I need to make an object that picks up other objects. For example, I have something that is out of reach unless the player has a robotic arm that can extend far enough to reach it.

But, I can't figure it out. 

Peter

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2679&start=0#p18444
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making an object that picks up other objects
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-22 18:34:54

Do you want to have the player type "GET SCREWDRIVER WITH ARM" or just have "GET SCREWDRIVER" work if you have the arm? 

This is a pretty bare-bones way to do the second:

[code]
Check taking the screwdriver:
	unless the player carries the robotic arm:
		say "It's just out of reach. If only you had longer arms!";
		stop the action.[/code]

Things you would want to add to this:

[list]You should actually make sure this only happens when the screwdriver is wherever it starts out. It'd be very annoying if the player fished it out of the crevice, put it down, and then got this message. (Can be handled by adding a condition to this.)
You should probably create a message beyond the bland "Taken" when you take the screwdriver with the arm. (You can do this with a Report taking rule; add "rule succeeds" to the end if you don't want "Taken" to be printed.) Again, this should only happen when you're actually taking it with the arm.
You should implement "TAKE SCREWDRIVER WITH ARM" anyway, because it's kind of annoying to try to have that command fail when you're actually using the arm to take the screwdriver.
Other things I haven't thought of, surely.[/list:u]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2135&start=0#p18445
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: You know you've played too much IF when...
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-06-22 18:40:02

My IF-related dreams tend to be about writing IF.  I'll wake up going "oh that is the best puzzle idea ever; I must implement it right away!!... oh wait, actually that doesn't make any sense."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2135&start=0#p18446
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: You know you've played too much IF when...
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-22 18:53:03

David, you got it almost right.  The reason you pick up random items lying around is because, even if they don't have any other use, you will be able to drop them to map the maze that you know you will wander into at some point no matter how much antihistamine you have available.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2677&start=0#p18447
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Generating a Random Dungeon
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-22 18:55:55

I haven't tested this, but it's basically a rewrite of the relevant bit of "All Roads Lead to Mars" with a restriction that says you can only go north, and some stuff hard-coded to reflect that. (If you copy this, you have to turn the spaces into tabs properly.)

[code]Before going in Dungeon Entrance: 
    if the noun is not north:
        say "You can only go north." instead;
    otherwise:
        let further place be the room north from Dungeon Entrance; 
        if further place is a room:
               continue the action; 
         otherwise:
               let further place be a random unvisited room [or something like that; maybe you want to define a property that restricts which rooms can be north of Dungeon Entrance];
               change the north exit of Dungeon Entrance to further place;
               change the south exit of further place to Dungeon Entrance.[/code]

Of course that leaves the question of what you do in the second room, etc. What I'd do (and I'm kind of faking it here, there are people with lots more I7 experience here, some of whom have probably done basically this) would be to create a relation between rooms and directions that holds if a room has an exit in that direction. (Don't give each room a list of directions, because lists are huge memory hogs.) Then you can use the "All Roads Lead to Mars" code with an additional check to see if there's an exit in that direction, and as you're going along generate the exits for each new room you create and set the relation accordingly. Make sure you don't generate more exits than you have unvisited rooms.

In fact, if you've done all that, you probably don't need to write a special rule for Dungeon Entrance -- just start by setting Dungeon Entrance to relate only to north and the rest will take care of itself. 

That's what I'd try to do if I were doing this -- I haven't even typed the above code into the IDE, so I don't know if it works. One thing to make sure is that you can't set the north exit of Dungeon Entrance to itself; I think Dungeon Entrance should be flagged as visited whenever you're there, but if it isn't, that could produce a bug.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2135&start=0#p18448
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: You know you've played too much IF when...
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-22 18:57:28

I actually had a dream about writing IF (or maybe a graphical game -- it definitely had a roguelike interface at some point) where I realized what the plot twist had been after I woke up. That was weird.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2679&start=0#p18449
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making an object that picks up other objects
User: ptimony / DateTime: 2011-06-22 19:29:43

Yeah, I'd want to take the screwdriver with the arm, otherwise it is still outta reach. I'll try your suggestions, thanks!

Peter

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2677&start=0#p18450
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Generating a Random Dungeon
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-06-22 19:40:24

The extension Dynamic Rooms has an example very similar to what you're talking about, IIRC.  You certainly don't *need* Dynamic Rooms to make a random dungeon, but it would make it easier.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2679&start=0#p18451
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making an object that picks up other objects
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-22 19:42:06

[quote="ptimony"]Yeah, I'd want to take the screwdriver with the arm, otherwise it is still outta reach. I'll try your suggestions, thanks!

Peter[/quote]
 
OK, then I think the first thing you want to do is:

[code]Taking it with is an action applying to two things. Understand "take [something] with [something]" as taking it with. [And maybe you also have to include "get," "pick up," etc. in that understand line.][/code]

And then define rules for taking it with. It might also be polite to give a hint if the player carries the robotic arm and is trying to take something that needs it, since players might assume that "TAKE SCREWDRIVER" uses the arm by default once they have it. (This depends on your puzzle structure; there are some games where it's not obvious that the thing you have is something you can pick things up with.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2679&start=0#p18452
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making an object that picks up other objects
User: ptimony / DateTime: 2011-06-22 20:04:55

I made it work! WOO HOOOO! On to the next puzzle...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2648&start=10#p18453
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can Gargoyle play Gblorb files?
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-06-22 20:31:06

Haay jus caus im teribal at wurdin quesions doz knott meen im baad att mayking IF gaymes. Don't judge peoples games before you play them. I can make a great game (im making two).

Just so you know the top writing was a joke.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2648&start=10#p18454
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can Gargoyle play Gblorb files?
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-06-22 20:35:00

[quote="lribeiro"][quote]I think it's a good thing that our community is not too quick to eviscerate someone who might actually just be very young or inexperienced.[/quote]
Which I sincerely admire, I do, but - allegedly - hog here is twenty and studying to be a vet assistant, not fifteen and fighting her way out of high school, which, together with the questions she poses and literary pearls such as this one...
[quote]so reverse the nouns means to switch them? i was reading it re verse like a verse from a poem.**[/quote]
... renders the character as someone either too smart to be writing IF (or anything else, actually), or someone just having a laugh. I'm betting for the later.

** I think is one of the best answers I ever saw in an Internet forum, I really do![/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2677&start=0#p18455
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Generating a Random Dungeon
User: LCamelot / DateTime: 2011-06-22 20:46:39

Thanks Matt, your solution works perfectly.  Instead of using "random unvisited room," I created a kind of room for each floor of the dungeon, so that I can designate which rooms will be on which floor.  I just have to write the same kind of code for each unique room.  However, it gets more complicated if there is more than one exit to the room.  I don't think I can write:

[code]Before going in Room with Four Exits:
     if the noun is not north, south, east, or west:...[/code]

Is there any way I could achieve this with wording that Inform will actually understand?

Dynamic Rooms doesn't seem to do what I want, since I don't want just a bunch of generic rooms, but rather some actual rooms with descriptions and objects etc. to be placed randomly so that each time the game is played it will be a slightly different experience.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2677&start=0#p18456
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Generating a Random Dungeon
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-22 21:43:24

[quote="LCamelot"]Thanks Matt, your solution works perfectly.  Instead of using "random unvisited room," I created a kind of room for each floor of the dungeon, so that I can designate which rooms will be on which floor.  I just have to write the same kind of code for each unique room.  However, it gets more complicated if there is more than one exit to the room.  I don't think I can write:

[code]Before going in Room with Four Exits:
     if the noun is not north, south, east, or west:...[/code]

Is there any way I could achieve this with wording that Inform will actually understand?[/quote]

This one should be simple --  write out every alternative as a complete sentence:

[code]If the noun is not north and the noun is not south and the noun is not east and the noun is not west...[/code]

Or you could use an "Unless." Watch your ands and ors -- it's natural to write "or" in the code here, but that'll give you something that's always true. 

However: I don't know if you want to write a special rule for each room, and I also don't know exactly how flexible your room descriptions are. (For instance, if you've predefined a room with only north and south exits, what happens if the game tries to place it after going east from somewhere?) This is where I was thinking of using a relation. You write something like this:

[code]Leading relates various rooms to various directions. The verb to lead (he leads, they lead, he led, it is led, he is leading) implies the leading relation.[/code] 

And then you declare that every room leads in the directions where it has permissible exits. So far we'd have:

[code]The Dungeon Entrance leads north. The Room with Four Exits leads north, south, east, and west. [I'm not positive the second sentence will compile; you might have to declare each of those separately][/code]

Then you should be able to write something like:

[code]Before going:
    unless the location leads the noun:
        say "You can only go [list of directions led by the location]."; [again, not quite sure of the syntax there][/code]

and so on. You'd also either want to make sure that you either only add rooms on that already lead in the right direction (that is, if you're going north, make sure you pick a room that leads south) or change the newly added room so its leading relation and description reflect the new exit (so if you've just gone north, make sure the room gone into now leads south, and make the description of the exits variable so you know which way you've gone).

BTW, the maps this produces will be pretty non-Euclidean; if you go N/S/E/W from somewhere you won't get back where you started. That's probably fine, but if you want that not to happen you'd probably have to assign each room a coordinate and make sure that if you arrive back at an already visited coordinate, the room that's there is the one that's supposed to be there. That'd be a pain though (and you'd have to make sure that the exits line up). 

As ever, all code completely untested and all suggestions not thought through very well!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2677&start=0#p18457
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Generating a Random Dungeon
User: LCamelot / DateTime: 2011-06-22 22:03:13

Yeah, I thought of making a new relation, and it works beautifully.  Except I used the word "abscond" instead of "lead", but it's just a code detail.  I used the Mars example I mentioned earlier to make the rooms stay where they are once they are placed somewhere, so the map stays very Euclidean.  You just have to add the following onto the end of the "Before going..." rule for each room:

[code]let reverse be the opposite of the way;
let further place be a random unvisited room that absconds [or leads] reverse;
change the way exit of current place to further place;
change the reverse exit of further place to current place.[/code]

Then you can go back and forth reliably every time, until you hit Go! again and start a new game.

I also came across some run-time errors when it ran out of unvisited rooms.  This can be avoided by putting in four rooms, making them a kind of room called extra or something, that are dead ends and don't contain anything.  They'll jump around the map as they're needed, steering the player away from the edges of the map.

The only thing is that you can't drop anything in them, because they jump around.  I think I'll fix that by having whatever you drop there end up in the last room you were in (which is a fixed room), explaining it by having the dead end rooms be very tiny.

Anyway, I'm wondering if there is a way to make some rooms rarer than others.  So, when we have Inform look for a "random unvisited room", some rooms have a higher chance of being chosen than others.  Is there a way to do this?  And if you have to keep making untested and not well thought out suggestions, please do, because they've all worked so far!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2677&start=0#p18458
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Generating a Random Dungeon
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-22 22:57:35

[quote="LCamelot"]Yeah, I thought of making a new relation, and it works beautifully.  Except I used the word "abscond" instead of "lead", but it's just a code detail.  I used the Mars example I mentioned earlier to make the rooms stay where they are once they are placed somewhere, so the map stays very Euclidean.  You just have to add the following onto the end of the "Before going..." rule for each room:

[code]let reverse be the opposite of the way;
let further place be a random unvisited room that absconds [or leads] reverse;
change the way exit of current place to further place;
change the reverse exit of further place to current place.[/code]

Then you can go back and forth reliably every time, until you hit Go! again and start a new game.[/quote]

Right, that's good -- I mangled my example. What I meant was, if you go N-E-S-W, you won't get back to where you started. Which isn't necessarily a problem, since nothing says that every corridor is the same length.

[quote]I also came across some run-time errors when it ran out of unvisited rooms.  This can be avoided by putting in four rooms, making them a kind of room called extra or something, that are dead ends and don't contain anything.  They'll jump around the map as they're needed, steering the player away from the edges of the map.

The only thing is that you can't drop anything in them, because they jump around.  I think I'll fix that by having whatever you drop there end up in the last room you were in (which is a fixed room), explaining it by having the dead end rooms be very tiny.[/quote]

Another thing you could do is just forbid the player from going in a certain direction when you're out of unvisited rooms. Install a check as to whether there are any rooms available, and if not, when the player goes in a direction that the room absconds, say "The corridor dead-ends after a few feet and you retreat back to [the location]." or something like that. Preferably with some variations. It might be possible to keep track of which objects are supposed to be in the dead-end when it's north of room X and move them on- and off-stage accordingly, but that seems like it'd be annoying.

One thing that occurs to me is that you'll never get loops this way -- if a room has a south exit that you haven't taken, you'll never go north from another room and find yourself in that one. The dungeon will have a tree structure, which means a lot of dead ends. Maybe instead of checking for unvisited rooms you could check for rooms with an available south exit, whether it's because they haven't been added to the map yet or because they're on the map but the south exit is unexplored. This could lead to some serious non-Euclideanness, though (go east five times, go north three times, and the last time you go north you wind up back at your starting point because it had an unexplored south exit). 

[quote]Anyway, I'm wondering if there is a way to make some rooms rarer than others.  So, when we have Inform look for a "random unvisited room", some rooms have a higher chance of being chosen than others.  Is there a way to do this?  And if you have to keep making untested and not well thought out suggestions, please do, because they've all worked so far![/quote]

This doesn't seem as straightforward as you might like. Basically I think you have to define a table with the weight for each room and then write a couple of to-decide phrases that pick a room based on that weighted probability. Victor Gijsbers explains how to write those phrases [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=14969#p14969]here[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2674&start=0#p18459
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Keeping track of repeated actions
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-22 23:21:03

Don't you need to send a value to DontResetRepetitionsWhen()? Something (untested) like this:

[code][DontResetRepetitionsWhen r;
     switch (r) {
          Examine, Look, Wait: rtrue;
          default: rfalse;
     }
];[/code]

Maybe I'm not following the logic of what you're trying to do, but it looks to me as if your function is always going to return the same value ... it's never going to test anything.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2650&start=0#p18460
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Invisible Object in Inventory
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-22 23:31:49

Hm. Problem is that I use the object to parse "offer help to npc" with one specific npc. Now that I've moved the object from inventory to scope, if I offer help to anybody else, part of the reaction is "(taking the help_obj first)".

How could I handle that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2623&start=0#p18461
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: One Framework or Two?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-22 23:32:32

[quote="capmikee"]My gut feeling is to use one framework and embrace the chaos. I'm guessing TADS lets you build your source code in separate files, so a clear system of file organization could potentially do as much as having separate frameworks. And test, test, test. Does TADS3 have an automated testing tool?[/quote]
After a bit of refinement from Eric Eve (well, more than a bit, actually), we now have a working extension that allows the author to do I7-style test scripts. You can now enter test scripts into your code like this:

[code]Test 'shell' [ 's', 'e', 'ne', 'take shell', 'sw' ]
;[/code]

...with which you can type 'test shell' in the game and run that series of commands automatically. 

T3 has various other testing tools built in, including things like the ability to set breakpoints and watch expressions.

I think the central issue for me is that the NPCs can get themselves into so very many ActorStates. Almost every room an NPC is in demands a new ActorState, simply to use its specialDesc property (to print out the proper text when the player looks in that room). The potential to leave the NPC in the wrong ActorState is large. Plus, the way T3 works, conversation topics tend to want to be nested inside ActorStates. You don't have to do it this way, but if Howard knows about the golden wombat in 12 of his possible states, but not in another 12, I'll have to manually list the various states in Howard's AskTopic for the golden wombat. If I later add another ActorState for Howard, I then need to remember to edit his AskTopic and TellTopic entries (and there could be dozens of them) so that the conversations will read naturally.

Creating two objects, howardOne and howardTwo, which appear to the player to be the same character, might conceivably simplify that process and make it more reliable.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2680&start=0#p18462
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: General Question about Altered Room States
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-23 02:07:36

A question about technical design: I built a village, and now I need the whole village again, but at night. Without further thinking I'd copy the rooms and thus use new ones, in order to avoid having to switch each and every description by using a variable. The general descriptions wouldn't change, just details - colours, things you do or do not see in the distance, you know - a lot, in the end. And it's quite some rooms, practically the whole game world. Does I7 provide easy-to-use technical support for that, or, more general - how would you solve this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2680&start=0#p18463
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: General Question about Altered Room States
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-06-23 02:43:06

Generally it's much easier to change the descriptions than use separate rooms. I assume the rooms wouldn't be empty, so you'd have to move every item to their counterpart room at night. Also if you have rules concerning rooms you'd have to remember to take into account two rooms ("if the location is the daytime market square or the location is the nighttime market square: ...."). If you use the visited property, you'd have to toggle the counterpart room's property manually. Etc etc.

You can easily make a mechanism that automatically switches the descriptions between two alternatives, for example:

[code]A room has some text called nighttime description. The nighttime description of a room is usually "".
A room has some text called daytime description. The daytime description of a room is usually "".

The market square is a room. "The sun is shining."
The nighttime description of the market square is "It's very dark."

When play begins: [copy all room descriptions to the daytime description so they don't have to be copy-pasted by hand]
	repeat with X running through rooms:
		now the daytime description of X is the description of X.

When nighttime begins: [assuming "nighttime" is a scene]
	repeat with X running through rooms:
		if the nighttime description of X is not "":
			now the description of X is the nighttime description of X.
[+ same kind of rule for daytime][/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2681&start=0#p18464
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Some Newbie Questions
User: S_Holmes / DateTime: 2011-06-23 03:11:58

Hello,

I'm just getting into Inform 7, and I ran into a few problems.  Apologies if these are silly questions, but I've checked the manual to no avail.

#1 - I have the player locked in a room, with a normal locked door, and a boarded up window (that needs to be 'unlocked').  Now, I'd like to try and include some new commands so that the player doesn't have to use a crowbar to unlock a bunch of planks nailed to the window frame.  So I thought:

Understand "break [a locked door] with [something]" or "use [something] on [a locked door]" as unlocking

would work, but the program says no.  I even tried to simplify it to - Understand "break [something]" as unlocking - but no joy.  The error I usually get is

[quote]You wrote 'Understand "break [a locked door]" as unlocking'  : but 'understand ... as ...' should be followed by a meaning, which might be an action (e.g., 'understand "take [something]" as taking'), a thing ('understand "stove" as the oven') or more generally a value ('understand "huitante" as 80'), or a named token for use in further grammar ('understand "near [something]" as "[location phrase]"'). Also, the meaning needs to be precise, so 'understand "x" as a number' is not allowed - it does not say which number.[/quote]

Any help with my syntax or theory would be greatly appreciated.  I just know I'm missing something simple.

#2 - I'd like to change the description of an object in the game so that it's different after the player first looks at it.  For example, roaches scuttling away when a drawer is open for the first time.  I know for rooms I can use [if unvisited][end if], but something like [if not examined][end if] didn't work.

#3 - Is there a way to give two objects the same use?  Back to the crowbar example, I want the player to be able to use the crowbar to either pry off the planks over the window, or smash open the door.  The problem is that there's a key that also opens the door (and gives more points if used instead), but when I try to compile I get this:

[quote]Problem. You wrote 'The rusty crowbar unlocks the bedroom door'  , but in another sentence 'The steel key unlocks the bedroom door'  : but this looks like a contradiction, because the same property seems to be being set in each of these sentences, but with a different outcome.[/quote]

Anyway around this?

#4 - Last one, I promise (today).  It's similar to #1 (I get the same error message).  I have a closet (enterable container), and a closet door (a part of the closet, openable container, not enterable).  Now when the starting room comes up, it lists the closet (closed), but not the closet door because it hasn't been looked at yet.  So I figure the first command a player might use would be 'open closet', which they can't because I made it so that you have to open the door first.  My question is, is there a way to have Inform understand that I want open/close the closet to be the same as open/close the closet door?  I tried - Understand "open the closet" as opening the closet door - but that wasn't correct.

Again, any help would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks in advance!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2674&start=0#p18465
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Keeping track of repeated actions
User: beelsebu / DateTime: 2011-06-23 03:26:18

[code]
[DontResetRepetitionsWhen;
          Examine, Look, Wait: rtrue;
          default: rfalse;
];
[/code]

Even though this routine is the least of my worries it will test the current action. It's the same thing as seen in a before or after-routine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2674&start=0#p18466
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Keeping track of repeated actions
User: beelsebu / DateTime: 2011-06-23 03:36:51

Someone was kind enough to show me an alternative solution which just works flawless. So I'm not in need of any help on this matter anymore.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2681&start=0#p18467
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Some Newbie Questions
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-06-23 03:43:03

#1
"Unlocking" is really "unlocking it with". Since this action takes two nouns, Inform need some way to know where to put the noun and the second noun (the noun replaces "it" and the second noun is put last).

So
[code]Understand "break [a locked door] with [something]" as unlocking it with.[/code]
ought to work.

For the second command for that action you need to do it a little differently
[code]Understand "use [something] on [a locked door]" as unlocking it with (with nouns reversed).[/code]
The reason being that in the command the nouns are given in the reversed order compared with that of the action: "use CROWBAR on DOOR" as opposed to "unlock DOOR with CROWBAR".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2682&start=0#p18468
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Conditions
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-23 04:12:52

I want to parse an existing verb which applies to one object, but with two objects. I need to check two conditions simultanously. My non working code is

[code]
MySqueeze is an action applying to two things. Understand "squeeze [something] into [something]" as MySqueeze.
Check MySqueeze when noun is not the twig and noun is not the scale: instead say "That's not something you can squeeze something else into.".
Check MySqueeze when second noun is not the twig and second noun is not the scale: instead say "That's not something you can squeeze into something else.".
Check MySqueeze when noun is the same as the second noun: instead say "Nice try.".
[/code]

The second sentence is not understood. How would the correct syntax look like?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2683&start=0#p18469
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Overwriting the Top Line
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-23 04:30:32

I wish to overwrite the top line. Normally it displays the current location, score and number of turns - I want to display the current location and a text variable. Searched the documentation, didn't find anything. How do I achieve my goal?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2682&start=0#p18470
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Conditions
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-06-23 04:52:32

Assuming it's the last sentence that doesn't work, try:
[code]Check MySqueeze when noun is the second noun: instead say "Nice try."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2682&start=0#p18471
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Conditions
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-23 04:54:41

Thanks, would've gotten to that, but currently it's sentence 2+3 that's not working. [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2683&start=0#p18472
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Overwriting the Top Line
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-06-23 04:57:07

Check Chapter 8.3 of the documentation: "Changing the status line".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2683&start=0#p18473
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Overwriting the Top Line
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-23 04:57:37

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2682&start=0#p18474
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Conditions
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-06-23 05:00:57

Really? 
They worked for me.

Have you tried to tell Inform to "Understand the command "squeeze" as something new."?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2683&start=0#p18475
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Overwriting the Top Line
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-06-23 05:02:41

[quote="Grueslayer"]I wish to overwrite the top line. Normally it displays the current location, score and number of turns - I want to display the current location and a text variable. Searched the documentation, didn't find anything. How do I achieve my goal?[/quote]

That's what's known as the status line. You can manipulate it in various ways. Natively, you can change the text and basic composition (as per chapter 17.21, [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc302.html]Constructing the Status Line[/url]), like so:

[code]State is a kind of value. The states are Prologue, Plot Thickens, Showdown, and Epilogue. State of the game is a state that varies.

When play begins:
	now the left hand status line is "[italic type]Time: [time of day][roman type]"; 
	now the right hand status line is "[state of the game]".

The Wold is a room.[/code]

There are extensions that provide greater functionality, such as [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Erik%20Temple/Glulx%20Status%20Window%20Control/index.html]Glulx Status Window Control[/url], most of them Glulx-only.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2682&start=0#p18476
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Conditions
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-23 05:04:39

Nope. Just to be on the safe side: Would "Understand the command "squeeze" as something new." substitute or extend the external squeeze routine?

(In case this be hard to understand: I did a new "squeeze" verb but learned that a squeeze verb already exists. What I'm used to from I6 is to extend the original verb, rather than overwrite it. Thought it'd be the same under I7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2682&start=0#p18477
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Conditions
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-06-23 05:27:57

Understanding a command as something new will make that command not trigger the actions it formerly triggered – so in the source code it has to go *before* one defines any new actions to be triggered by that command or it will affect one's new definitions, too. (Sorry about that.)

Still, that may not be your problem at all.
What problem message do you get?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2135&start=0#p18478
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: You know you've played too much IF when...
User: markm / DateTime: 2011-06-23 05:44:44

... you chuckle knowingly at DavidW's list.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2681&start=0#p18479
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Some Newbie Questions
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-06-23 05:47:22

#2
One way:
[code]The description of the gizmo is "[if we have examined the item described]It looks vaguely familiar.[otherwise]You never saw this thing before in your life."[/code]
"Item described" can be used inside a text property (such as the "description" text property) to refer to the object that that property belongs to. (Here you could equally well write "[if we have examined the gizmo]".)

Another way:
[code]The description of the gizmo is "[one of]You never saw this thing before in your life[or]It looks vaguely familiar[stopping]."[/code]
The first alternative will be chosen the first time the description is printed, and the second alternative every time after that. (See Chapter 5. 7 "Text with random alternatives")

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2683&start=0#p18480
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Overwriting the Top Line
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-23 05:58:01

Works well, with one exception: My right hand status line text is longer than 14 chars. Is there any easy way to display that text right-aligned, or do I have to dig much deeper?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2682&start=0#p18481
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Conditions
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-06-23 06:01:22

I guess Inform doesn't like the format of your action name.
Does it accept this?
[code]
Squeezing it into is an action applying to two things. 
Understand "squeeze [something] into [something]" as squeezing it into.

Check squeezing it into when noun is not the twig and noun is not the scale: instead say "That's not something you can squeeze something else into."

Check squeezing it into when second noun is not the twig and second noun is not the scale: instead say "That's not something you can squeeze into something else."

Check squeezing it into when the noun is the second noun: instead say "Nice try."
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2681&start=0#p18482
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Some Newbie Questions
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-23 06:35:55

#3 "The key unlocks the door" is kind of a special case -- it sets the door's property "matching key," and a door can only have one matching key. So your code is throwing an error because I7 thinks (correctly) that you're trying to set the door's matching key property to two separate things.

[url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=6481#p6481]This code[/url] shows how you can have an extra matching key.

BUT in this case you don't want to have the crowbar just unlock the door -- for one thing, after you unlock it with the crowbar, you can't lock it again, certainly not with the crowbar. So you probably want to have your "Instead of unlocking the door with the crowbar" rule print something like "You smash the door open with the crowbar. It is now unlocked and will stay that way." And then declare "Now the door is unlocked. Now the door is open. Now the door is not lockable."or something like that (haven't checked the exact syntax). 

Another point -- if "Break door with crowbar" works, make sure you write a special error message for attacking the door, saying "You'll have to say what you want to break the door with" or something like that. Otherwise, since "break" is a synonym for "attack," the game will tell the player "violence isn't the answer to this one" -- which is misleading, when the answer is to "break" the door with a different syntax.

#4: Try "Instead of opening the closet: try opening the closet door."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2683&start=0#p18483
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Overwriting the Top Line
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-06-23 07:00:18

The built-in extension Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short should be able to help you out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2683&start=0#p18484
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Overwriting the Top Line
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-06-23 07:06:21

Felix has the right of it. You have to use the tabular format, which looks a bit bastardized, and you'll probably have to count the characters in order to force an adequate fit.


[code]Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short.

Table of Rightness
left 	central	right 
""	""		"[Player's surroundings]". 


Rule for constructing the status line:
     fill status bar with Table of Rightness;
     rule succeeds.


When play begins:
	now right alignment depth is number of characters in the printed name of the location;
	now the left hand status line is "".
    
The long-winded name is a room. The printed name is "An area with a deucedly long name".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2681&start=0#p18485
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Some Newbie Questions
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-23 07:16:07

With regard to #2, the way I sometimes do it is:

[code]
The description of the whoozeewhatchamacallit is "It is red, green and purple, with an orange whatchamawhoozit in the middle.".

After examining the whoozeewhatchamacallit the first time:
     Now the description of the whoozeewhatchamacallit is "It looks the same as it did the last time you looked at it.".

[/code]

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2623&start=0#p18486
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: One Framework or Two?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-23 09:09:32

Purely from a programming perspective, it sounds to me like you have too many variables to manage them with the single ActorState class that TADS3 gives you. Can ActorStates inherit from each other? Is multiple inheritance allowed?

From your description, it sounds like an actor can't have multiple states at one time, but if you create a new kind of thing that represents just one aspect of a person's condition (like what they are doing in each particular room), you might be able to take some of the burden off of the conversation-oriented state information. Independent variables shouldn't be modeled by a single object - that makes for messy code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2650&start=0#p18487
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Invisible Object in Inventory
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-23 13:23:48

That happens because the give/offer grammar is defined as

[code]
Verb 'give' 'feed' 'offer' 'pay'
    * held 'to' creature                        -> Give
    * creature held                             -> Give reverse
    * 'over' held 'to' creature                 -> Give;
[/code]

You could extend-replace those lines with

[code]
Verb 'give' 'feed' 'offer' 'pay'
    * noun 'to' creature                        -> Give
    * creature noun                             -> Give reverse
[/code]

(I dropped the third one because it's weird and British.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2682&start=0#p18488
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Conditions
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-23 13:26:10

[quote]In case this be hard to understand: I did a new "squeeze" verb but learned that a squeeze verb already exists. What I'm used to from I6 is to extend the original verb, rather than overwrite it. Thought it'd be the same under I7.[/quote]

"Understand ... as something new" is the I7 equivalent of I6's "Extend... replace..."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2649&start=20#p18489
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basic help with Inform 7 [new question]
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-06-23 13:26:20

[quote="gravel"]I do actually think it might be nice to have mentors, not necessarily for basic questions, but for encouragement, quick feedback, etc.  But, yeah, I like seeing questions on the board.  And it's clear from the thread that people catch each other's mistakes and have differing ideas of implementation, which is always pretty interesting.[/quote]

I use the forums as kind of a second manual. The official I7 manual is still good for reference, difficult to navigate as it may be, but it doesn’t always provide the full picture. Conversely, when an issue is raised on the forum, the discussion usually plays out in a way that lets me parse it mentally. So in a sense I suppose I use the manuals for different things: the [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/index.html]I7 manual[/url] as a dictionary, Aaron Reed's [url=http://inform7.textories.com/]Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7[/url] as self-help guide, Jim Aikin's [url=http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm]Inform 7 Handbook[/url] as a “don’t panic” comfort blanket/towel, the [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Inform_7_for_Programmers]I7 for Programmers[/url] as an explanation of the overarching principles, and the forums themselves whenever I need things explained.

Not the most straightforward approach, I admit, but one that seems to work for me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2684&start=0#p18490
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: invisible npc's
User: zodraz / DateTime: 2011-06-23 13:28:22

HELP!

I realise this may sound strange.

My game is in five parts, after each part the player gets a password for the next part.  I hit on the idea of using an npc, so the player can use ask and tell topics, which combined with the travel barrier makes the whole thing work.  I am using a graphic for the start of the level and what I wanted to do was make the npc part of the doorway (a head at the top); it’s a round doorway with an inscription round it which is a question, the answer being the password from the previous part.  From a visual point of view it looks better than having the npc figure standing beside the doorway.

My problem is that I can find no way of defining a npc without the npc being listed in the room description.  Is there a property on the Person object I can set to nil, or I am missing something?  I should say that the graphic as it stands is fine, I just wanted to make visually better.

Can anyone help?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2685&start=0#p18491
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Debugging DPMR [Answered]
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-23 13:32:06

Does the player mean... rules don't show up when rules is on.

They don't seem to show up when trace is on.

How can you tell when and if any DPMRs are applied?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2685&start=0#p18492
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Debugging DPMR
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-23 13:41:49

Another related debugging issue: One of the things that my command is matching has no reason I can find to match the words in the command. Is there some way to identify the line of code that matches a dictionary word to an object?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2685&start=0#p18493
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Debugging DPMR
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-06-23 13:52:21

[quote="capmikee"]Does the player mean... rules don't show up when rules is on.[/quote]
They seem to for me. This short test example:[code]Lab is a room. A red bat and a red ball are in the lab.

Does the player mean doing something with the red ball: it is very likely.[/code]
... yields this partial output with rules tracing on:[quote]>get red
[Rule "Does the player mean doing something with the red ball" applies.]
(the red ball)
[/quote] 
... and this when "rules all" is on:[quote]>get red
[Rule "Does the player mean doing something with the red ball" does not apply.]
[Rule "very unlikely to mean taking what's already carried rule" does not apply.]
[Rule "Does the player mean doing something with the red ball" applies.]
(the red ball)
[/quote]
Edited to add: Are you using any extensions or other code which could be interfering with rules tracing output?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2677&start=0#p18494
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Generating a Random Dungeon
User: LCamelot / DateTime: 2011-06-23 14:02:06

I came up with a way to not have to make a message for every single room.
[code]A dungeon is a kind of room.

Throughway relates various rooms to various directions.  The verb to abscond (it absconds, they abscond, it absconded, it is absconded, it is absconding) implies the throughway relation.

Occupancy relates various rooms to various directions.  The verb to occupy (it occupies, they occupy, it occupied, it is occupied, it is occupying) implies the occupancy relation.

Before an actor going a direction (called way) in a room (called current place):
	if current place does not abscond the way:
		say "You can't go that way." instead;
	otherwise:
		let further place be the room the way from current place;
		if further place is a room:
			continue the action;
		otherwise:
			let reverse be the opposite of the way;
			let further place be a random dungeon that absconds reverse;
			if further place occupies reverse:
				say "[one of]That way seems to lead to a dead end.[or]A cave-in has completely blocked this hallway.[purely at random]";
				now current place occupies the way;
				now current place does not abscond the way;
				stop the action;
			if further place is current place:
				say "[one of]That way seems to lead to a dead end.[or]A cave-in has completely blocked this hallway.[purely at random]";
				now current place occupies the way;
				now current place does not abscond the way;
				stop the action;
			now the current place occupies the way;
			now the further place occupies reverse;
			change the way exit of current place to further place;
			change the reverse exit of further place to current place.

Entrance is a dungeon.  "You can go north, south, east, and west."  It absconds north, south, east, and west.

Test Room is a dungeon.  "You can go north, south, east, or west."  It absconds north, south, east, and west.

etc.[/code]
With a bunch more dungeons added in, this successfully creates a random map from them.  It doesn't always use all the rooms available, which is how I want it for now.  With 15 rooms besides the entrance, it still seems rather linear, but maybe with more rooms that each have more exits it wouldn't seem that way.  Of course, they're still non-Euclidean, but I'll worry about that later if at all.

It chooses a random message when you find a dead end so that it doesn't seem artificial (I'll add more in when I think of them).

I think instead of trying to make rare rooms, I'll try to make rooms that require circumstances to be met before they can be entered.  Of course, rooms with less entrances will inherently be more rare than rooms with more entrances, so I can put more entrances on rooms I want the player to come across in almost every game and vice versa.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2685&start=0#p18495
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Debugging DPMR
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-23 14:21:17

Okay, I think I've figured out the second question. I have a situation like this:

[code]A fixture is a kind of thing. A drain is a kind of thing. A drain is a part of every fixture.

The Kitchen is a room.

The nook is a container in the Kitchen.

The steel sink is a fixture in the nook.

The player carries a glass.

Does the player mean inserting something into the sink: It is very likely.

test me with "put glass in steel"[/code]

When the most likely candidate (the sink) is in a container, the parser gets a little overexcited and looks for other matches. The word "steel" matches the full name of the drain, which is "the steel sink's drain." So I get a rather unexpected disambiguation question.

I still don't understand why the DPMR isn't working, though. Is this disambiguation question generated before the DPM rulebook ever runs?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2685&start=0#p18496
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Debugging DPMR
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-23 14:36:39

I didn't see your post before I wrote mine, Mike. It looks like the none of the DPMR are running at all. But I don't know why. Can anyone explain it?

I tried changing the rule to "Does the player mean doing something". That applies. But not "inserting something into something". "Rules all" confirms that the rulebook is running but the rule just doesn't apply. Is it just impossible to have a DPMR that depends on the second noun?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2685&start=0#p18497
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Debugging DPMR
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-06-23 14:41:26

I'm not sure I understand it, but the problem seems to lie in the second caveat expressed at the bottom of the page in ch. 16.19. "Does the player mean..." 

Edited to add the (hopefully) relevant quote for posterity:[quote="ch. 16.19"]As a caveat to the caveat, the "inserting it into", "removing it from" and "putting it on" actions have this slightly back to front. These are parsed using the (little-used) "[other things]" or "[things inside]" tokens, and the Inform parser tries to detect the second noun before the first one, since the identity of the first has to depend on the second. So for instance if the situation contains "an oak tree" and also "an oak chest", we could write: 

Does the player mean inserting into the oak chest: 
    it is very likely. 

which would successfully make PUT COIN IN OAK mean the chest, not the tree. (Note the way we write "inserting into" without saying anything about what's being inserted, not even that it's "something".) 
[/quote]
Note the change in both behavior and rules tracing when you remove the word "something" from your DTPM rule:[code]Does the player mean inserting into the sink: It is very likely.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=437&start=0#p18498
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 and Guncho: how do I tell Guncho that a PC can't see?
User: wolverine79936 / DateTime: 2011-06-23 14:43:01

Hi all, this is the only Guncho topic I've found so far and I noticed that the last post was rather old. Has Guncho died? Who do you contact about possibly picking up the project?

I only ask because for three days now I've been trying to get into their default realm and can't connect and their control panel doesn't work for the same length of time. Just keeps telling me there is a database error on the control panel and that the server doesn't exist when I try to telnet in. [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2685&start=0#p18499
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Debugging DPMR
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-23 14:46:13

That makes sense in a twisted sort of way. But I wouldn't have expected that syntax to even be legal.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2682&start=0#p18500
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Conditions
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-23 14:53:41

Puh... Works now. Thanks to all of you!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2686&start=0#p18501
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7 slow on Linux Ubuntu
User: Wassabi777 / DateTime: 2011-06-23 14:57:57

I have the newest type of Ubuntu installed on my computer (natty narwhal). Before this update I couldn't use inform 7, and I was losing it! Thank goodness it works now!

My present issue is with inform 7's test performance on my linux OS. Between turns in my games there is a long excruciating wait period (3-8 seconds). Is this a compiler issue or a linux issue, any ideas?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2685&start=0#p18502
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Debugging DPMR
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-23 15:06:01

My actual WIP had a rule phrased in the reverse (since only one DPMR can make a decision, I try to make them as specific as possible). Something like this:

[code]Does the player mean doing something other than examining or smelling with a drain: It is very unlikely.[/code]

Unfortunately, this rule doesn't apply either. I guess because the drain is the second noun, and "with" only implies the noun.

So I tried this:

[code]Does the player mean doing something other than examining or smelling when the current action involves a drain[/code]

But that doesn't compile - it seems "the current action involves" only allows a specific object, not a description of objects.

I guess I'll have to go back to defining an "involved" adjective...

[code]Definition: an object is involved if the current action involves it.

Does the player mean doing something other than examining or smelling when a drain is involved:
	It is very unlikely.[/code]
That seems to work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2680&start=0#p18503
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: General Question about Altered Room States
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-23 15:28:46

If all you're changing is minor details, I'd do it like this:

[code]Village Square is a room. "The buildings bordering this area are larger than in the rest of the village, and their windows [if daytime]shine in the noonday sun[otherwise]shimmer in the moonlight[end if]. Streets lead out to the east, north, and west. The doors of the Town Hall to the south [if the great doors are open]stand open[otherwise]are barred for the night[end if]."[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2680&start=0#p18504
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: General Question about Altered Room States
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-23 15:36:54

Here's a way to implement Juhana's solution that doesn't require any copying of text from one property to another. You could make the trigger a scene or whatever you like; in the example, I use a truth state variable, and repurpose the jumping action to allow you to change it during play:

[code]A room has a text called the daytime description. A room has a text called the nighttime description. 

The Kitchen is a room. The daytime description is "Day!". The nighttime description is "Night!".

The description of a room is "[current description of the item described]".

To decide what text is the current description of (R - a room):
	if daytime is true:
		decide on the daytime description of R;
	otherwise:
		decide on the nighttime description of R.
		
Daytime is a truth state variable.

Instead of jumping:
	if daytime is true:
		now daytime is false;
	otherwise:
		now daytime is true;
	say "Changed daytime to [daytime]."[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2681&start=0#p18505
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Some Newbie Questions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-23 15:45:10

[quote="matt w"]Another point -- if "Break door with crowbar" works, make sure you write a special error message for attacking the door, saying "You'll have to say what you want to break the door with" or something like that. Otherwise, since "break" is a synonym for "attack," the game will tell the player "violence isn't the answer to this one" -- which is misleading, when the answer is to "break" the door with a different syntax.[/quote]
Matt has a good point. There's a number of different ways a player might try, and you want to make sure to catch as many as you can.

My instinct would be to create an "attacking it with" action, and redirect unlocking it with to attacking it with. You can take advantage of the many synonyms for attack with just one line:

[code]Attacking it with is an action applying to one thing and one carried thing.

Understand "attack [something] with/using [something]" as attacking it with.[/code]

One more warning. Any time you write an "understand" line that takes a noun token other than [something], you run the risk that players will get the error "That noun did not make sense in this context" when they use the same grammar with a different object. Make sure you also add an Understand line that takes a more general token, even if it's an "...as a mistake" line.

Sometimes it's better to write the grammar more generally, and use "Does the player mean..." to rule out ambiguities later.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2686&start=0#p18506
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 slow on Linux Ubuntu
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-06-23 15:51:24

The first thing that jumps to mind is [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=678]bug 678[/url].  Does it speed up if you trim the skein?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2682&start=0#p18507
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Conditions
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-23 15:52:46

New problem, same subject, more or less.

Situation: "ram X into ground" shall work, "ram Y into ground" as well.

[code]
Ramming is an action applying to two things. Understand "ram [something] into [something]" as ramming.
Check ramming when noun is the Y and the second noun is the ground:
  (stuff).
Check ramming when noun is not the X: instead say "That cannot be rammed.".
Check ramming when the second noun is not the ground: instead say "That's not something you can ram the twig into.".
(more conditions, success).
[/code]

"ram X into ground" works as intended, "ram Y into ground" results in "That cannot be rammed.".

Why, oh why is that so?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2680&start=0#p18508
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: General Question about Altered Room States
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-23 15:57:04

That, Erik, is a very good idea. Might save a lot of work. Thanks everyone!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2686&start=0#p18509
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 slow on Linux Ubuntu
User: Wassabi777 / DateTime: 2011-06-23 16:13:36

Thanks, I may have to find a windows to do some of my play-testing, but atleast I can write!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2683&start=0#p18510
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Overwriting the Top Line
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-23 16:16:48

Whoah... Works! And I learned what a table is! [emote]:)[/emote]

Thanks all!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2682&start=10#p18511
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Conditions
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-06-23 17:22:37

I'm not sure. "When the noun is not X" can't reasonably be more specific than "when the noun is Y and the second noun is the ground".

But again perhaps Inform gets  confused because it expects an action applying to two things to have an "it" as placeholder for the noun.

With "ramming it into is an action applying to two things" you should be able to write rules like "instead of ramming the twig into the ground" etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2682&start=10#p18512
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Conditions
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-06-23 18:18:49

Note that multiple check rules can fire for the same action.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2684&start=0#p18513
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: invisible npc's
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-23 18:47:13

You may be looking for actorHereDesc. Try

actorHereDesc = nil

as an NPC property. Alternatively, if you're using ActorStates, set

specialDesc = ""

on the ActorState for that particular moment in the story.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2311&start=0#p18514
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Recipes for Storytelling
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-06-23 19:07:54

finally got around to checking it ert.  good read!  im glad my story follows a formula similar to that; i.e. keep the reader/player interested, up the stakes, pile on the grief (makes for a better pay-off)  sort of what Rowling did in HP book 6 when [spoiler]she kills off Dumbledore[/spoiler].  i bookmarked the page for easy reference!  [emote]:geek:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2687&start=0#p18515
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: is this Pottermore thing IF?
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-06-23 23:16:31

ive heard ppl refer to it as interactive fiction?  anyone know?  [emote]:?:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2688&start=0#p18516
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Returning to room temperature
User: ptimony / DateTime: 2011-06-23 23:58:55

I had this working for a while, even tested it. Then it stopped working and I don't know why. All of a sudden it's not specific enough. Anyway, here's my code: 

Heat is a kind of value. The heats are frosty, really cold, cold, chilly, cool, room temperature, luke-warm, warm, hot, sizzling, and roasting. Everything has a heat. The heat of a thing is usually room temperature. 

Every turn when the heat of something is greater than room temperature:
let the current heat be the heat of the item;
if the current heat is not room temperature, change the heat of the item to the heat before the current heat.

I've changed this so many times now, I can't remember what it looked like when it worked. Anyway, does anyone have a suggestion to make this work. 

Peter

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2688&start=0#p18517
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Returning to room temperature
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-24 00:14:50

[code]
Every turn when the heat of something is greater than room temperature:
  let the current heat be the heat of the item;
[/code]

The compiler can't connect "something" to "the item" in the way you want. There is no "the item".

You could say this:

[code]
Every turn when the heat of something (called item) is greater than room temperature:
  let the current heat be the heat of the item;
[/code]

...but I bet that's not what you want, because it will pick *one* object to be "the item" every turn.

Probably you want "repeat with item running through things whose heat is greater than room temperature". See 11.11.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2688&start=0#p18518
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Returning to room temperature
User: ptimony / DateTime: 2011-06-24 01:00:54

Thank you, but no matter how I rearrange it (and I've been at this for hours now) I still get this message:

 In the sentence 'Every turn when the heat of something (called item) is greater than room temperature'  , it looks as if you intend 'the heat of something (called item)' to be a property, but 'a thing' is not specific enough about who or what the owner is.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2688&start=0#p18519
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Returning to room temperature
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-24 01:21:38

Nope, you're right -- it doesn't seem to be possible to put together a condition with a comparison like that.

The easy way around this is to define an adjective:

[code]
Definition: A thing is over-temp if its heat is greater than room temperature.
[/code]

Now you can say "Every turn when something (called item) is over-temp:..." or "repeat with item running through over-temp things:..." or so on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2688&start=0#p18520
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Returning to room temperature
User: ptimony / DateTime: 2011-06-24 01:44:46

Thank you zarf. I feel myself getting less stoopid. Now my heat ray and freeze ray work like a charm.

HERE IS MY WORKING HEAT CODE!!!

[HEAT]

Heat is a kind of value. The heats are frosty, frigid, cold, chilly, cool, room temperature, luke-warm, warm, hot, sizzling, and roasting. Everything has a heat. The heat of a thing is usually room temperature. 

Definition: A thing is over-temp if its heat is greater than room temperature.
Definition: A thing is under-temp if its heat is less than room temperature.

Every turn: if something (called potato) is over-temp, change the heat of potato to the heat before the heat of the potato.

Every turn: if something (called potato) is under-temp, change the heat of potato to the heat after the heat of the potato.

Peter

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2677&start=0#p18521
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Generating a Random Dungeon
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-06-24 02:51:10

[quote="LCamelot"]Anyway, I'm wondering if there is a way to make some rooms rarer than others.  So, when we have Inform look for a "random unvisited room", some rooms have a higher chance of being chosen than others.  Is there a way to do this?  And if you have to keep making untested and not well thought out suggestions, please do, because they've all worked so far![/quote]
You can do this pretty easily. Define rooms as either common or rare. Then instead of saying "let X be a random room", you use something like "if a random chance of 1 in 10 succeeds: let X be a random rare unvisited room; otherwise: let X be a random common unvisited room." (With correct indentation, of course.) This way you can make sure that you get a rare room exactly 10% of the time -- or whatever other number you would prefer.

I'm working on a randomly generated dungeon game myself, and it's good to see more efforts in that direction. [emote]:)[/emote] (Though my dungeon is completely generated at the start of the game, so it's a bit different.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2686&start=0#p18522
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 slow on Linux Ubuntu
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-06-24 02:58:13

You can do play-testing, as long as you trim the skein every so often. (It doesn't grow big [italic type]that[roman type] fast.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2681&start=0#p18523
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Some Newbie Questions
User: S_Holmes / DateTime: 2011-06-24 03:25:00

Thank you all very much.  Those suggestions fixed all of my issues.  Now it's time to mess around some more and come up with new issues...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2650&start=0#p18524
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Invisible Object in Inventory
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-24 04:56:06

Thanks Zarf... Now that's something I should have thought of myself - Extending "Offer". Works like a charm!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2689&start=0#p18525
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7:  Procedural Rules
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-24 08:16:45

I have an offstage item that I want a player to be able to examine and touch, but not to do anything else with.  I've written a rule which places it in scope, which deals with examining.  I've now got to deal with allowing the item to be touched.

Example 350 suggests a way to accomplish this with a procedural rule which turns off the "can't reach inside rooms" rule, but only for purposes of a specified action.  (I haven't yet tried it, but the principle illustrated in that example seems like it should be applicable).  This seems like a simpler approach than trying to write a "regular" reachability rule which operates differently for different actions.

However, the current documentation indicates that procedural rules are being eliminated from Inform 7, and I'm a little nervous about relying on Code which may not work in later versions of Inform 7.   Does anybody have a sense of how risky it is, as of now, to use procedural rules?

Thanks.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2689&start=0#p18526
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Procedural Rules
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-24 08:37:50

Are you looking at an older version of the documentation? In my version, example 350 doesn't use a procedural rule, but rather this:

[code]A reaching inside rule while listening or sleeping or looking: 
    rule succeeds.[/code]

Which should solve your problem about writing a regular reaching rule that works differently for different actions. In this case it looks like you can even make it work for just your particular item:

[code]A reaching inside rule while touching the whatsit:
	rule succeeds.
[/code] 

Instead of just leaving the whatsit off-stage, I had to put it in a special room and place that room in scope while touching, instead of placing the whatsit directly in scope; I'm sure there's a good reason for this. (Maybe it's that, if the object itself is in scope, you're not reaching inside anything to touch it, but if it's in a room that's in scope, you are?) Make sure not to put anything else in that room or you can get a very silly message when trying to touch this, as in the little game I wrote to test it:

[code]Lab is a room. The player is in Lab.
Bong is a room. The whatsit is a thing in Bong. The whoosit is a thing in Bong.
After deciding the scope of the player while touching: 
	place Bong in scope. 
A reaching inside rule while touching the whatsit:
	rule succeeds.[/code]

[quote]Lab

>touch whatsit
You feel nothing unexpected.

>touch whoosit
You can't reach into Bong.

>[/quote]

...I suppose it would've been less silly if I'd chosen different names.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2677&start=0#p18527
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Generating a Random Dungeon
User: LCamelot / DateTime: 2011-06-24 09:09:11

Victor, thanks, I hadn't thought of that!  I love how the solutions to the most complex problems are usually the simplest.  [emote]:?[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2681&start=0#p18528
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Some Newbie Questions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-24 09:20:44

I forgot to mention, in relation to command grammars that require specific tokens:

Before you create a "use" command, consider whether you want to implement it for every object in the game. It is quite acceptable for authors to avoid "use," because it means a different thing for each object, and can set the player up for a letdown by giving the impression that the parser is more powerful than it really is.

You could argue either way about whether it prevents "guess-the-verb" puzzles or makes puzzles "too easy" (i.e. use means "do what the author intended" instead of something that the player thought of)... but you should have your arguments ready either way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2690&start=0#p18529
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: player.description ... ?
User: Flack / DateTime: 2011-06-24 09:39:51

Help. 

In my current game project, at the beginning of the game, I set a custom player.description. Later in the game, there are multiple items of clothing one can put on, none of which are exclusive -- say, a hat, a coat, and a pair of shoes. 

How do I update player.description to reflect what the player is currently wearing?

I can't simply update/overwrite the description each time the player puts on a piece of clothing because it would overwrite the description and not accurately reflect other things that are being worn. 

After checking the manual, I also can't seem to append/concatenate text. What I had in mind was a daemon that would append updates to the player's description. For example (pseudo code): "You look great! You are wearing" if (hat has worn) "a spiffy hat", if (gloves has worn) "some nice gloves" ... etc. I could easily do this with print statements, but not with the description.

The forum won't let me search for either "player" or "description" (too common) and I've kind of hit a wall here. Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2670&start=0#p18530
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: new review of old game: Andrew Plotkin's SHADE
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-06-24 10:02:02

Seeing this thread and reading about [i]Shade[/i] in several craft/theory articles reminded to finally sit down and play it, which I did yesterday.  The game was mysterious and thought-provoking, but I can't make much sense of it.  Maybe it's not supposed to make sense, but I think there are deliberate themes that I'm missing.

Because IF makes an internal appearance in the game, I'm thinking that maybe [i]Shade[/i] is a commentary on IF as an art form.  Poems that I've had to study in school (probably the same ones that everyone has studied) contain themes about poetry itself, or literature in general (or art, even more generally, perhaps).

(If you haven't reached the end of the game yet, when the game itself terminates, you may not want to reveal this spoiler)[spoiler]So, I suppose the little figure in the desert represents the player character of an IF game?  If that's the case, then the comment about IF is negative -- that IF is pointless.  But the IF metaphor probably refers to life as well.  We associate life with the text adventure on the computer, and ourselves with the figure representing a player character.[/spoiler]

This is just my best interpretation, based on the fact that [i]Shade[/i] is the kind of work that sends me hunting for meaning, even if it wasn't intended to mean very much.

One other thing.... (you can reveal this spoiler even if you haven't finished the whole game, as long as you've gotten about halfway through it or so)[spoiler]It's pretty clear the PC is one of the lost hikers, right?  So, he/she did go to the desert festival thing, and got lost, and then was hallucinating about his life and apartment?[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2689&start=0#p18531
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Procedural Rules
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-06-24 10:08:00

Procedural rules will be gone from Inform as of the next build; in exchange there will be more flexible ways to express when a rule does or does not apply. (See the Inform suggestion forum for some discussion threads about this.)

That said, this build is not yet on the verge of release, so you have some time before is becomes an issue.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2689&start=0#p18532
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Procedural Rules
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-24 10:11:26

Thanks.  I was actually looking at the documentation on the Inform 7 website (I'm not at home now, and don't have the IDE installed on the computer I'm usng).  I would have thought that it would be up-to-date, but it sounds like they may not have picked up all of the changes in the most recent release.

In any event, it sounds like a regular reachability rule limited to certain actions may be less difficult than I thought.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2670&start=0#p18533
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: new review of old game: Andrew Plotkin's SHADE
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-24 10:26:07

I've read that there's some evidence that the PC is a character from Adam Cadre's novel [i]Ready, Okay![/i] (also that she's female), but I haven't read the novel.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2689&start=0#p18534
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Procedural Rules
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-24 10:28:23

Hm. Looks like the text on that page is in line with the new documentation, but the example isn't. I'll file a report.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2670&start=0#p18535
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: new review of old game: Andrew Plotkin's SHADE
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-24 10:37:02

I played Shade about 9 years ago. In retrospect, this game feels like it was trying to cheat the IFComp. Pretty much what Lost did (the TV series). It gives the player extremely intriguing mysteries while she's waiting for a resolution with great anticipation. The player probably won't finish it in two hours, so a very high score is likely since the game just feels so great, full of mystery.

But when the player actually finishes it, just like in Lost, she gets a giant middle finger in return.

In other words, a stroke of genius by Andrew Plotkin  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2670&start=0#p18536
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: new review of old game: Andrew Plotkin's SHADE
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-06-24 10:49:39

mattw-  I have, and it's an intriguing interpretation.  Also, I both really enjoyed [i]Ready, Okay![/i] and am extremely hesitant to recommend it to anybody else without knowing their literary taste fairly well.  It made me laugh, made me cringe, made me laugh again, then broke my heart.  So if you're into that kind of thing, maybe you should try it?  Also if you have a healthy love/hate relationship with southern California.  (It reminded me a lot of a play that I've worked called [i]Be Aggressive[/i], and not just because of the title.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2690&start=0#p18537
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: player.description ... ?
User: cas / DateTime: 2011-06-24 11:01:04

[quote]
How do I update player.description to reflect what the player is currently wearing?
...
I could easily do this with print statements, but not with the description.
[/quote]
The description can be a routine:
[code]
[ PlayerDescription;
  ! Print out whatever you want the player to look like
];
[ Initialise;
  player.description = PlayerDescription;
  ! etc
];
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2690&start=0#p18538
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: player.description ... ?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-24 11:02:44

The description can be a method. It doesn't have to be text. Here's an actual description of an NPC from an unfinished game I'm intermittently working on:

[code]description [;
		print "Fawn's beauty is of an ethereal nature. At times her delicate features
			seem almost translucent. Her clothing is suitable for hiking";
		if ((dark_glasses in fawn) && (pink_scarf in fawn))
			print ", although the dark glasses and the pink scarf are more in the category
			of fashion accessories";
		if (nautilus in fawn) print ". She's holding the nautilus rather tightly in both hands";
		".";
	],[/code]
The final line, with the bare period, always runs. That's why there's no period after the first sentence. This is a pretty standard I6 technique. You may know it already.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2688&start=0#p18539
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Returning to room temperature
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-24 11:33:35

As I said earlier, if you have several hot objects, your code will only cool down one of them per turn.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2682&start=10#p18540
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Conditions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-24 11:45:31

I'm not clear what you're trying to achieve. Do you want the first check rule to make sure the action succeeds, or do you want the first rule to give a different reason for failure?

If your goal is the former, you're going to have to do some reconfiguring - as EmacsUser mentioned, check rules just keep on running until something stops the action. So a check rule should never stop the action unless [i]every[/i] case in which it applies should be denied.

If your goal is the latter, you might have to do some manual rule ordering. I don't think that's such a bad thing. You can do it by putting the "last" or "first" keyword at the beginning of the rule preamble, or you can name the rules and explicitly state their order. I use the Standard Rules as my guideline for the final approach.

To determine what order the rules are in now, you can either look at the Actions tab of the Index, or use "rules all" while playing. The "rules all" command lists even rules that do not apply.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2684&start=0#p18541
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: invisible npc's
User: zodraz / DateTime: 2011-06-24 13:37:53

Easy when you know how, isn’t it?  Thank you!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2573&start=0#p18542
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Fluids & Fluid Containers
User: zodraz / DateTime: 2011-06-24 13:45:22

I have another idea for a water room; splunking.  Situation for example, the player leaves the boat on the surface, swims down to the underwater cave system, finds the treasure which triggers a rock fall, so the player has to find another way out to the surface and the boat.

The method of the oil lamp and fuel level can be modified to an oxygen tank and the amount of air left, so if the player fails to find another way back, he runs out of air and drowns.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2688&start=0#p18543
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Returning to room temperature
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-24 13:49:12

Your code samples will be easier if you put them inside code tags. You can highlight the code and click the "code" button above the edit window, or you can just type [open bracket]code[close bracket] at the beginning and [open bracket][forward slash]code[close bracket] at the end.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2690&start=0#p18544
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: player.description ... ?
User: Flack / DateTime: 2011-06-24 13:50:18

Awesome, both you guys nailed it. I went with Cas' solution just because it fit the structure I already had in place. Thanks for the quick response and the good advice! I am learning something every day about Inform!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2573&start=0#p18545
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Fluids & Fluid Containers
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-24 13:56:20

zodraz, this isn't what is generally understood as a fluids management system. What you are talking about is not something that needs any form of special treatment.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2623&start=0#p18546
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: One Framework or Two?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-06-24 14:28:53

[quote="Jim Aikin"]I think the central issue for me is that the NPCs can get themselves into so very many ActorStates. Almost every room an NPC is in demands a new ActorState, simply to use its specialDesc property (to print out the proper text when the player looks in that room). The potential to leave the NPC in the wrong ActorState is large.[/quote]

You might consider handling the specialDesc at the Actor level rather delegating to ActorState. That could let you collapse the number of states to a more manageable level, if you have many more rooms than distinct ActorStates.

[rant][code]
stacks: Room 'STACKS'
	"You are surrounded by shelves of books. Stairs lead down. "
	down = storage
;

storage: Room 'STORAGE ROOM'
    "Old books are heaped in piles on the floor. Stairs lead up. "
	up = stacks
;

librarian: Person 'librarian' 'LIBRARIAN' @storage
    "She's a middle-aged librarian. "
    globalParamName = 'librarian'
    isHer = true
	specialDesc {
		local desc = roomDescTable.subset({lst: lst[1].getOutermostRoom == getOutermostRoom
												&& lst[2]()});
		if (desc && desc.length)
			mainReport(desc[1][3]);
		else
			curState.specialDesc;

	}
	specialDescBeforeContents = true
	roomDescTable = [
		[storage, {: true}, 'The librarian dusts off a book.'],
		[stacks, {: true}, 'You glimpse the librarian through the shelves.']
	]
;

+ librarianFollowing: AccompanyingState
	stateDesc = "She's standing beside you. "
	accompanyTravel(leadActor, conn) { return leadActor == gPlayerChar; }
	isInitState = true
;
[/code][/rant]

The heart of this is the roomDescTable, which is a list of lists. The first element is the room object; the second element is an anonymous function that evaluates a logical condition; and the third is the description to print when the actor is in that room and the condition is true.

My thought is that the condition could check whether a particular scene was active. You could also use it to shuffle between descriptions within the same room.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2352&start=10#p18547
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How many sounds can glulx play at once?
User: arlian34 / DateTime: 2011-06-24 15:16:18

Hi!

My name is Massimo Stella and I'm the author of the above mentioned extension Multiple Sounds!

Firstly, I would like to deeply apologize for the mystype of Mr. Blau's name, I'll upgrade the extension as soon as possible!

Secondly, it would be great if I could use Mr. Clarke's code for a newer version of Multiple Sounds, obviously with the proper credits.

In the meanwhile...we all are waiting for the IF7 version of Damusix so keep up the good work with it!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2672&start=0#p18548
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Mini Ludum Dare this weekend
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-24 19:02:56

The secret phrase you must work into your dialogue is "I think we can work something out."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2691&start=0#p18549
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Leaving an enterable scenery container...
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-24 19:07:37

So you have a box. This box is an enterable scenery container. You can climb inside of it. You can do so by typing "get in box" or "get in the box".

You cannot, however, leave the box by typing "get out of box" or "get out box". You have to type "exit" or "out" which is hardly natural.

I want to say I saw this referenced somewhere already, but I can't track it down again.

"Get" is obviously one of those commands that I don't want to override and screw up for the rest of the game. But it seems to me like "get out of the box" should do the same thing (in reverse) as "get in the box.

Thoughts?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2311&start=0#p18550
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Recipes for Storytelling
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-24 19:16:33

[quote="ezfreemann"]finally got around to checking it ert.  good read!  im glad my story follows a formula similar to that; i.e. keep the reader/player interested, up the stakes, pile on the grief (makes for a better pay-off)  sort of what Rowling did in HP book 6 when [spoiler]she kills off Dumbledore[/spoiler].  i bookmarked the page for easy reference!  [emote]:geek:[/emote][/quote]

She got a little carried away with the grief-dozer at the end there. However, I think it worked well when

[spoiler]Voldemort died with "mudane finality".[/spoiler]

Which of course they'll completely miss in the last movie, since the rest of them were utterly watered down and abbreviated.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2691&start=0#p18551
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Leaving an enterable scenery container...
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-24 20:19:19

Makes sense. The problem isn't actually with "get out" which (unadorned) redirects to "exit." The thing is that "exit," unlike "enter," doesn't apply to an object, since presumably there's only one thing you can exit at any given moment, the thing that you're in. 

We can take care of this by creating another action that applies to one thing and uses the "get out/exit" syntax, and then redirecting that to exiting, making sure that you're actually exiting something you're in. 

[code]Transitive-exiting is an action applying to one thing.
Understand "get out of [something]" or "get out [something]" or "exit [something]" as transitive-exiting. 

Check transitive-exiting:
	if the noun does not enclose the player:
		say "You're not in [the noun].";
		stop the action;
	otherwise if the player is not in the noun: [that is to say, the noun isn't the thing they're directly in; this handles situations where you're in one thing which in turn is in another, and you try to get out of the outer one]
		say "You're not in a position to get out of [the noun].";
		stop the action.

Carry out transitive-exiting:
	try exiting.
[/code]

This doesn't mess up "get," either. [If you're curious about my methods, the way I hit on this was to try "Understand 'get out of [something] as exiting" and have the compiler tell me "Exiting isn't an action applying to a thing, dummy." Not in quite so many words.]

In fact, you can even exploit the fact that "exit" can get redirected to "go out" when you aren't in anything and there's an outside exit, thus:

[code]
After deciding the scope of the player while transitive-exiting:
	place the location in scope.[/code] 

That allows you to type "get out of the kitchen," and if there's a room outside from the kitchen, exiting the kitchen will take you there.

There may be problems I haven't thought of, and this may be somewhat reinventing the wheel, but it should be a start.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2691&start=0#p18552
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Leaving an enterable scenery container...
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-24 22:50:46

I'm not sure if any of these things are in those player-convenience extensions Aaron's been working on, but here's my version, which is a little fancier:

[spoiler][code]Chapter - Exiting and Entering


Section - Transitive Exiting
	
Getting out of is an action applying to one thing. Understand "exit [something]" as getting out of.

Understand "out/off/down/up" as "[out]". Understand "of/from" as "[from]". Understand "[out]" and "[out] [from]" and "[from]" as "[out of]".

Understand "exit [out of] [something]" as getting out of. Understand "get [out of] [something]" as getting out of. Understand "go [out of] [something]" as getting out of.

Check getting out of when the noun does not enclose the player:
	say "You're not [if the noun is a supporter]on[otherwise]in[end if] [the noun] right now."

Check getting out of:
	Let the outer enclosure be the noun;
	while the outer enclosure encloses the player:
		let the inner enclosure be the holder of the player;
		If the inner enclosure is not the outer enclosure:
			say "(First exiting [the inner enclosure])[command clarification break]";
			silently try exiting;
		otherwise:
			try exiting;
		if the inner enclosure is the holder of the player:
			stop the action;
		

Section - Going Outside

Check going nowhere when the noun is outside:
	Try exiting instead.
	

Section - The Way Out

A room has an object called the way out.

Definition: A room is exitable if the way out of it is a direction.

Check exiting when the holder of the player is an exitable room:
	Try going the way out of the location instead.
	
Check exiting when the holder of the player is a not exitable room:
	If the number of viable directions is 1:
		let the way out be a random viable direction;
		say "(leaving to [the way out])[command clarification break]";
		try going the way out instead.
			

Section - The Way In

To decide whether (way - a direction) is a way in:
	Let destination be the room to the way;
	if destination is not a room, no;
	decide on whether or not the way out of destination is the way from destination.
		
To decide what object is the way in:
	Let the best choice be nothing;
	Repeat with way running through directions:
		if way is a way in:
			if the best choice is a direction, decide on nothing;
			otherwise now the best choice is way;
	decide on the best choice.
	
Check going nowhere when the noun is inside and the way in is a direction:
	Try going the way in instead.
 
Section - Intransitive Entering

for supplying a missing noun when entering (this is the enter the location rule):
	Now the noun is the location.
	
The enter the location rule is listed after the find what to enter rule in the for supplying a missing noun rulebook.

Check entering the location:
	Try going inside instead.
	
Check going nowhere when the noun is inside:
	say "There's no obvious way to go inside from here. [list the exits]" instead.
[/code][/spoiler]

This segment does not include a definition of "viable," but I'm not sure the definition I'm using in my WIP is correct in all cases, so I'd rather not include it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2692&start=0#p18553
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Problem with Patroller by Michael Callaghan
User: ptimony / DateTime: 2011-06-25 00:08:44

I'm trying to make a Patroller using this extension, and I set him to be Aimless (which means he wanders about at random), but I keep getting this error message.

*** Run-time problem P60: Attempt to set a variable to the wrong kind of object: you wrote 'now Way is the best route from the CurrentRoom to the NextRoom, using even locked doors', which sets the value to nothing - but that doesn't have the kind 'direction'.

Does anyone have any suggestions? 

Peter

BTW, I'm new at this. I've been working on my first game for about three days. You guys have been very helpful, so thank you.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2688&start=0#p18554
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Returning to room temperature
User: ptimony / DateTime: 2011-06-25 00:18:43

That's true zarf, but for the moment that's good enough for me. I need to keep going or I'll never finish this game. I'll go back and fix the heat thing later. Maybe after I've finished writing a whole game, I'll have a better grasp of this stuff.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2693&start=0#p18555
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: Looking out of a Vehicle
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-25 01:06:25

I have the player sit in a canoe. Problem is that then he can't examine stuff in the room the canoe is in. Is there an easy solution for this? Have I maybe just forgotten a property?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2693&start=0#p18556
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Looking out of a Vehicle
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-25 01:22:59

Is the canoe a container or supporter? If it's a container, is it transparent?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2693&start=0#p18557
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Looking out of a Vehicle
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-25 01:29:41

...

Works. Forgot the supporter property. Annoying, such a stupid mistake... Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2687&start=0#p18558
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: is this Pottermore thing IF?
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2011-06-25 02:12:13

I'm not sure myself  [emote]:?:[/emote] 
It's not very much that's revealed when you check the pottermore site. I read somewhere else that it should be something like a treassure hunt in the real world and that people could finds wands all over the US and UK, and perhaps also other countries... But this is only hear say...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2692&start=0#p18559
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with Patroller by Michael Callaghan
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-06-25 02:33:53

Is the patroller in a room with no exits?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2693&start=0#p18560
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Looking out of a Vehicle
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-25 02:49:35

Next problem in this context: I sit in my canoe and can examine all the stuff around. There's also an object which should be takeable but not show up in the room description. In fact it's five objects of the same class. 

Attempt 1: "concealed" property. Result: Not takeable.
Attempt 2: Overwritten "describe" with an empty string if object is right here. Problem: Five ugly empty lines in the room description. Any way to work around this? Like, a "cursor up" string in the "describe" string?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2573&start=0#p18561
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Fluids & Fluid Containers
User: zodraz / DateTime: 2011-06-25 02:57:11

sorry, barking up the wrong tree.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2692&start=0#p18562
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with Patroller by Michael Callaghan
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-06-25 03:39:21

Wow, Groundhog Day! I am trapped into reliving the same intfiction.org posts again and again...  [emote]:o[/emote]  [emote];)[/emote] 

Just joking, but coincidence has it that I answered this exact same question a couple of days ago: [url]http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2654[/url]. There is what I would consider a small bug in the Patroller extension, and I indicate in that topic how you can solve it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2682&start=10#p18563
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Conditions
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-25 04:48:04

Hm. Switched the order of some checks, replaced some full stops by semicolons, and now it works, although I don't exactly know why. Thanks for your help anyway!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2691&start=0#p18564
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Leaving an enterable scenery container...
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-06-25 05:16:39

[quote="matt w"]... the way I hit on this was to try "Understand 'get out of [something] as exiting" and have the compiler tell me "Exiting isn't an action applying to a thing, dummy." Not in quite so many words.[/quote]
Heh, I think that new users are confused by some of the error messages due to Graham's particular brand of British politeness. I often wish I could change this:
[quote]Problem. You wrote 'Instead of examing the glass', which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is 'examing the glass'. But that did not make sense as a description of an action. I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook.[/quote]
... to this:
[quote]Problem. You wrote 'Instead of examing the glass'. There is no 'examing' action. Check the actions index for the correct name or maybe just check your spelling, idiot.[/quote]
Edited to add: I am referring to myself as the idiot in the above, not any other users -- new or otherwise.  [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2694&start=0#p18565
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Needing help on a wait-through scene (and a few other stuff)
User: Roadcrosser / DateTime: 2011-06-25 05:25:32

So currently I have this in my source code.

[code]Aquarium Window is a room. "The giant window showcases an aquarium bigger than the window itself."[/code]

I have no idea how to make it say

[code]"A fish swims by"[/code]

on the next turn, changing the room description to

[code]"The giant window showcases an aquarium bigger than the window itself. Some fish are swimming by."[/code]

Then having the game talk about the fish (the same text) at every alternate turn until after several times it says

[code]The fish that swam by dropped a clam![/code]

which changes the room description to

[code]"The giant window showcases an aquarium bigger than the window itself. Some fish are swimming by. A clam also sits on a  rock"[/code]

While still talking about the fish and moving said clam into play. 2 turns later it would say

[code]"The clam opens to reveal a pearl! The pearl falls and hits the seabed while the clam is swept away by the current"[/code]

which moves the pearl into play while removing the clam. Which changes the description to

[code]"The giant window showcases an aquarium bigger than the window itself. Some fish are swimming by. A pearl is stuck on the seabed"[/code]

I know it sounds kinda complicated but i have no other way of explaining it. D: Also I'll focus on the "other stuff" when I get this solved.

(Mostly it's the problem of changing the room description and also using "say")

EDIT: I also forgot to mention that the player will remain stuck in this room until this scene ends though free to examine anything.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2352&start=10#p18566
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How many sounds can glulx play at once?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-06-25 05:33:27

Hi Massimo,

Thanks a lot for your extension. I'll try to send you what I've done soon. I've got it all working very well now.

I have a question about Multiple Sounds. Internally you use a volume level between 0 and 81920. Where did the 81920 come from? I understand that it's 5 x 16384, but I've found that there's no audible difference between 65536 (volume level 4) and 81920 (volume level 5, or maximum) - both seem to be equally maximum. I tested this on all Mac interpreters and on the PC ones as well, and found the same thing. So in my game I've changed the volume range to 0 to 65536 for this reason. But I have never seen any documentation about what the level means anyway. Nearly all my audio code is based on or developed from what other people have done in their extensions.

- Wade

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2691&start=0#p18567
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Leaving an enterable scenery container...
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-25 06:18:26

I do in fact think it would be very helpful if a message like that included something along the lines of "Sometimes this happens when 'examing' or 'glass' have not been defined, or when one of them has been misspelled."

UPDATE: For instance:

[quote]You wrote 'Last report switching off the buttion'  , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is 'switching off the buttion'.[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2695&start=0#p18568
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Both Poet and Auda, kiss Iris
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2011-06-25 08:13:44




What's a practical and effective way to implement virtually simultaneous action requests to multiple actors using Inform 7?  For example, suppose we want to allow the player all of the following ways of formulating a valid command:


[code]Whiz, Poet, and Iris, north. [= Actor called Whiz and actor called Poet and actor called Iris: each of you ought try going north]

All robots, dance. [= All actors of the kind understood as robot: each of you ought try dancing]

Both Sensa and Waldo, move Fred. [= Actor called Sensa and actor called Waldo: each of you ought try the action of pushing something (in this case, pushing Fred)][/code]

Presumably effecting such a command would involve breaking it down into separate requests for each actor to try the requested action.  A perusal of the Standard Rules reveals only that requesting a persuasion attempt is a function handed off to ominously-titled I6 thingies (to which latter I am allergic and have been cautioned by my doctor not to interact with in any way [emote]:?[/emote]  ).  

Any guidance is much appreciated.


If anyone would like a small sample game with which to ponder the question rather than forumulating their own example:


[code]
[Objective: a game where the player-character is inert, and interacts with the world solely through a band of variously sense-impaired avatars]

A robot is a kind of person.  Understand "robot" as a robot.  Understand "robots" as the plural of a robot.

Auda is a robot.
Iris is a robot.
Sensa is a robot.

Waldo is a robot.
Whiz is a robot.
Poet is a robot.

The present-robot is a person that varies.  The present-robot is usually Iris.

A persuasion rule: persuasion succeeds.

Before asking someone to try doing anything:
	change the present-robot to the person asked.

The report robot activity rule is listed before the check stage rule in the specific action-processing rules.

This is the report robot activity rule:
	now the player is the present-robot.

After deciding the scope of the player:
	repeat with avatar running through on-stage robots:
		place avatar in scope.

Unsuccessful attempt by an actor doing anything:
	try looking.


[may seem redundant given the "report robot activity rule," but is nonetheless necessary on several counts:]

Every turn:
	now the player is the present-robot.

When play begins:
	now the right hand status line is "[printed name of the player]".

The Command Center is a room.

Auda, Iris, Sensa, Waldo, Whiz, and Poet are in the command center.

The player is Iris.

A marble is in the command center.

A room called the Weather Monitors is west of the command center.

A room called the Transit Monitors is south of the command center.

A room called the Hydroponics Monitors is east of the command center.

[The avatar transference process is not quite seamless here; for one thing, some standard check action rules report failure with (for example) "You can't go that way" rather than "[Printed name of the player] can't go that way," and need to be individually reformulated.  Obviously, this example is only a very rudimentary implementation.]
[/code]


Thanks

Endosphere




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2696&start=0#p18569
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Puzzle Design
User: JDevlin / DateTime: 2011-06-25 08:42:33

Hey everyone!

I'm looking for some help coding/designing the final puzzle for my game. This is more a plea for brainstorming than a hard coding question.

In my hybrid IF/graphical game, you take the role of a reporter working your way through a murder. Basically, by the end of the game, the player will have accumulated heaps of information, some of it relevant, some of it not. If the player (not the PC) knows the significance of the info, they will be able to piece it together into a correct account of events, pinning down who did what, why, and how. I'm envisioning a puzzle in the form of the reporter PC's notes. I can do this visually, so hopefully that allows for some options that might not be possible in straight IF.

Basically, there are a couple of potential suspects and a couple of things the victim has been involved in that could motivate a murder. It's gonna be the peak of the game, so several elements and layers of complexity would be cool.

Some things that I was thinking were:

[spoiler]A simple series of more or less direct questions: Who was the murderer? Where did it happen? What was the weapon? This will accomplish what I want (testing the player's, not the PC's knowledge), but it feels really heavy-handed.

A wheel showing all the NPCs with the victim in the middle. The player would draw lines between the NPCs (both the suspects and the bystanders) to indicate their relationship: Alice hates Bob, Carol betrayed Alice. The problem is, I don't know how to guide the player unless I give a list of relationships (hate, betrayal, jealousy) that would feel ridiculously artificial. I could set it up so the player actually types in the relationship, but this also feels a little odd. 

Otherwise, I could do a timeline where the player puts events in the victim's life in order. When I think about the motive and what led up to the murder, it makes most sense to think of it sequentially. But when things actually happened isn't a puzzle, so the puzzle would be knowing what was significant. The problem here is how do I ask the player that? If I just put out a list, then the significance becomes obvious. If I ask the player to type it, the events are too complicated to spell out.

There's already a notes system in place that I quite like. The PC jots down relatively innocuous statements automatically as he/she discovers them, but it is up to the player to connect two separate pieces. 

For example, say there's a bunch of notes, in two different sections (one about the body and one about Adam), it'd look something like this:

A:

1) Fact: Zachary was murdered on Tuesday between 0200 and 0600
2) Fact: Body had rope marks on wrists
3) Fact: Zachary was shot with a .44

B:

1) Adam: "I haven't seen Zack since raquetball on Sunday"
2) Fact: Adam was seen at the Slee-Z motel Tuesday @ 2300, out at 0800 the next day
3) Fact: Adam worked at a bank
4) Adam: "I was visiting my mother Tuesday night"

So if you select 1A and 2B a conclusion pops up saying "Adam couldn't have been the murderer". If you select 2B and 4B you'd get something like "Adam was lying about where he was the night of the murder". If you select two unrelated ones (say 2B and 3B), no conclusion would appear.

I think maybe if I use this notes system it'd be fine to just put the important conclusions in a timeline: the player will have already made the inference.[/spoiler]

Anyway, what do you guys thing? Have you seen similar puzzles in other games? What works? What doesn't?

All the best,

Jason

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2694&start=0#p18570
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Needing help on a wait-through scene (and a few other st
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2011-06-25 08:52:04



	I don't have Inform 7 at my disposal right this moment, but I'll hazard some tentative help anyway.

A text token is a sort of generic wrapper for some words; a "To say" statement is one way to determine what's inside the wrapper.

For example:

[code]
The Aquarium is a room.  The description of the aquarium is "[aquarium-state]."

To say aquarium-state:
	if a clam is in the aquarium:
		say "The aquarium, whose sole inhabitant is a clam, seems fairly sedate";
	otherwise:
		say "The aquarium seems quite serene".[/code]

You've also said you want to have a small scene occurring while the player-character is in the aquarium.  There are numerous ways to implement the ideas you mentioned, but in fact an Inform "scene" will handle almost all of them fairly well.

For example, you could write something like:

[code]
Aquarium-visiting is a scene.  Aquarium-visiting begins when the location of the player is the aquarium for the first time.  Aquarium-visiting ends after going from the aquarium.


Every turn during aquarium-visiting:
	do this, do that, etc[/code]


Or you could write something like:

[code]
The Aquarium is a room.  The aquarium has a number called aquarium-status.  Aquarium-status is usually 0.  The description of the aquarium is usually "The giant window showcases an aquarium bigger than the window itself."

There is a clam. [note, we don't say where, which means it's off-stage]


After going to the aquarium for the first time:
	increment aquarium-status.

Aquarium-visiting is a scene.  Aquarium-visiting begins when the location of the player is the aquarium for the first time.  Aquarium-visiting ends after going from the aquarium.

Instead of going during aquarium-visiting:
	unless the [whatever has happened]:
		say "Nope, you can't leave yet.";
	otherwise:
		continue the action.

Every turn during aquarium-visiting:
	unless aquarium-status is 1:
		if aquarium-status is 2:
			say "A fish swims by.";
			now the description of the aquarium is "The giant window showcases an aquarium bigger than the window itself.  Some fish are swimming by.";
			increment aquarium-status;
		otherwise if aquarium-status is 3:
			say "The fish that swam by dropped a clam!";
			move the clam to the aquarium;
			now the description of the aquarium is "The giant window showcases an aquarium bigger than the window itself. Some fish are swimming by. A clam also sits on a  rock.";
[/code]

and so forth.

I'm reluctant to write any more, since as I said I don't have Inform to work with and check anything I'm telling you.  But generally speaking, some of these ideas (which are hardly the only ways to do what you'd like) should get you thinking about how to pull together all the things you mentioned.


Endosphere



-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2694&start=0#p18571
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Needing help on a wait-through scene (and a few other st
User: Roadcrosser / DateTime: 2011-06-25 10:08:22

I didn't really get the text just by reading it and I don't have time to check it right now. Thanks for now, when I check tomorrow. It should be noted that I used placeholders due to me not wanting to reveal what I was doing (I really have to stop that behavior). The player is automatically moved after the scene has ended, by the way.

About my other thing, a barrier that can be placed by doors that block things (or people, animals, stuff you hold) with certain characteristics (if you hold the item yourself will not be able to cross) and not others (like yourself).

Also something I did plan on doing though I am not sure if it even is gonna be in the game: A movable container operatable with buttons inside it. AKA vehicles.

EDIT: Another thing, the "Fish swimming by" part is recurring every 2 turns while the scene lasts.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2371&start=0#p18572
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Novella feelie
User: stadtgorilla / DateTime: 2011-06-25 10:33:48

A Mind Forever Voyaging also comes to mind. I'd definitely go for it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2695&start=0#p18573
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Both Poet and Auda, kiss Iris
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-25 11:12:29

The hardest part of this is parsing multiple actors at the beginning of the line ("X, Y, go north"). You'll have to do some tap-dancing there, and get the list recorded somewhere. You'll also have to record the same sort of list for a "tell X, Y to go north" if you want to support that.

Handling the simultaneous actions is merely a nuisance. At the beginning of the action, you check for a custom result -- that is, a situation where "X, Y, go north" has a joint result different from the separate actions. (An activity rulebook is good for this sort of decision tree.) If so, perform it and stop the action. If not, let it continue to performing separate actions.

You're going to have to muck around in I6 regardless, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2693&start=0#p18574
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Looking out of a Vehicle
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-25 11:15:30

Set the describe to 0 rather than "".

You can also use a conditional describe routine. Return false to list the object normally in the room, true to skip its description entirely, or print a string and return true.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2352&start=10#p18575
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How many sounds can glulx play at once?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-25 11:17:00

The volume level is defined in the Glk spec: 0 is silence, 65536 is full volume.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2694&start=0#p18576
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Needing help on a wait-through scene (and a few other st
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-25 11:40:00

[quote="Roadcrosser"]Also something I did plan on doing though I am not sure if it even is gonna be in the game: A movable container operatable with buttons inside it. AKA vehicles.[/quote]

Vehicles are a built-in kind; declare "The crab suit is a vehicle" and you'll have an enterable container that moves around with the player. This will respond automatically to navigation commands, which you may not want; one possible solution would be to disable the navigation commands until the player has figured out how to work the buttons. Another solution would be [i]not[/i] to make the suit a vehicle, but merely an enterable movable container (just declare "The crab suit is a container. It is enterable"), and move the player and the suit when the appropriate button is pressed -- but if you do that you'll have to make sure you don't accidentally move the player through any closed doors or something like that. (My guess is that it'd be simpler to make it a vehicle and intercept any navigation commands, because intercepting the navigation commands will be simpler than recreating the rules for going from scratch, but I haven't tried it.)

One thing about vehicles and movable containers: if you have rooms outside rooms, it may be tetchy for the player to go outside while in the vehicle. (I just tried this and had to type "go out" to drive the vehicle outside, because "out" had me exit the vehicle.) The solution may be not to use "out" as a direction if you're using vehicles, at least not in a room where you can be inside the vehicle.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2697&start=0#p18577
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: 17: You'll have to get out of [location] first.
User: LCamelot / DateTime: 2011-06-25 12:47:23

What happened to cause this message?  I didn't write it in the code, but I've never seen it before as a default message.

I would figure this out myself, but I seem to have forgotten how to get the step-by-step process (or whatever it is called) to show up.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2697&start=0#p18578
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 17: You'll have to get out of [location] first.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-25 12:53:38

It happens when the player tries to go somewhere while in a container, or perform some other action that requires not being in the container. I think.

What you want to do to turn on the step-by-step process is type "rules" (or "rules all") while the game is playing, and maybe also "actions."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2697&start=0#p18579
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 17: You'll have to get out of [location] first.
User: LCamelot / DateTime: 2011-06-25 13:00:38

Thank you!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2687&start=0#p18580
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: is this Pottermore thing IF?
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-06-25 13:21:58

I heard it was an MMO, but no one seems sure at this point:

[url]http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/06/16/rumor-is-pottermore-the-upcoming-harry-potter-mmo/[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2692&start=0#p18581
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with Patroller by Michael Callaghan
User: ptimony / DateTime: 2011-06-25 13:56:33

Victor, 

Thank you very much, sorry about the double post. Your fix seemed to do the trick. That particular run time error is gone. Now I get this one instead: 


*** Run-time problem P60: Attempt to set a variable to the wrong kind of object: you wrote 'now NextRoom is the Target', which sets the value to nothing - but that doesn't have the kind 'room'.

I tried to adapt your fix from the first error by saying, "if the Target is a room;" but that didn't work and I'm stuck again. 

I gotta fix this though.

Peter

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2692&start=0#p18582
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with Patroller by Michael Callaghan
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-06-25 14:05:17

[quote="ptimony"]*** Run-time problem P60: Attempt to set a variable to the wrong kind of object: you wrote 'now NextRoom is the Target', which sets the value to nothing - but that doesn't have the kind 'room'.

I tried to adapt your fix from the first error by saying, "if the Target is a room;" but that didn't work and I'm stuck again.[/quote]
Weird, I'd say at first sight that that should fix it. Perhaps it is easier to just circumvent these problems by making sure that all patrollers are always in rooms connected to the rest of the map? The reason that things are going wrong is that there sometimes is no way from the patroller's location to wherever it should go; and the extension has been written with the assumption that there is always such a way. If you make sure all patrollers in your game are placed in rooms that connect to all other rooms, the problems should disappear. Could you try that?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2692&start=0#p18583
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with Patroller by Michael Callaghan
User: ptimony / DateTime: 2011-06-25 14:18:59

My rooms are connected! 

Actually, it did fix the run time error, sorry. But now the patroller seems to only want to go north, always, even if nothing is north. When he's in the northernmost room, he just stays put, even if there are exits s, e or w.. At least when I was getting run time errors, the patroller was moving as he should.

I'm lost.  

Peter

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2692&start=0#p18584
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with Patroller by Michael Callaghan
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-06-25 14:54:50

Could you post the part of your code which defines this patroller?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2698&start=0#p18585
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: SAVE and RESTORE Commands
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-06-25 15:25:20

I have not been able to create a sequence in I7 that will implement the SAVE command. I find in reading most of the available texts that they all seem to gloss over the subject with some comment that is basically "If you don't know how it works you don't need to use it!".
I tried this question one time previously and the answer I got was similar to that and was from one of I7's progenitors, claiming that they use it and it works. [emote]:lol:[/emote] However than ain't helping [emote]:!:[/emote] 
Greg

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2698&start=0#p18586
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: SAVE and RESTORE Commands
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-25 15:36:20

Er, you are likely to get better responses if you actually explain what it is you're trying to do... 

Are you just trying to save the game? Saving is built into I7, so you just need to type SAVE (in the game) to save.

Are you trying to trigger a save from code other than the SAVE command? If so, check out the Standard Rules (File-->Open Extension-->Graham Nelson in the IDE), which offers these I7 names for constructs that are otherwise implemented in I6:

[code]Saving the game is an action out of world and applying to nothing.
The saving the game action translates into I6 as "Save".

The save the game rule is listed in the carry out saving the game rulebook.[/code]

Are you trying to reimplement the save functionality entirely? If so, the folks warning you off probably have the right idea, but you can dig into the I6 template code to see how the built-in functionality is implemented.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2698&start=0#p18587
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: SAVE and RESTORE Commands
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-06-25 15:39:39

Saving and restoring are interpreter features. You don't have to add them to the game separately.

What may throw you off is that saving is disabled in the Inform's IDE interpreter. If you release your game and try it with any interpreter outside the IDE you should have save/restore working normally.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2698&start=0#p18588
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: SAVE and RESTORE Commands
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-06-25 15:43:19

I remember you asking this before. As Juhana stated, save is [i]already implemented[/i] in I7. It is built - in. You don't have to do anything.

You can verify this by typing "save" at the command prompt in a game running in the IDE. You'll get this:[quote]>save
Save failed.
[/quote]
The reason save is disabled in the IDE is because the IDE is designed for creating a game and since saves are not compatible with different versions of the same game, implementing it here would be mostly useless. You can test save by using the "release" option to create a game file and then test save in the standalone interpreter of your choice.

If you want to alter the way save works, you'll need to be more specific. (Edit: Oops, Erik already said that too.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2692&start=0#p18589
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with Patroller by Michael Callaghan
User: Prolixic / DateTime: 2011-06-25 16:55:52

Another user e-mailed me about this issue a few days ago and a fix is in the works.  I should be in a position to mail it to the extension keepers in the next couple of days.

Michael

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2698&start=0#p18590
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: SAVE and RESTORE Commands
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-06-25 18:21:42

What they all said: saving and restoring is a standard feature that is put into your released game by default.

[quote="Juhana"]Saving and restoring are interpreter features. You don't have to add them to the game separately.[/quote]
But that's not true, is it? I certainly hope it's not true, because being able to disable or change the save-command in my game is essential to my current project. Are there any interpreters that allow out-of-game saving?

[quote="Skinny Mike"]The reason save is disabled in the IDE...[/quote]
This depends on the IDE, though. I believe saving does work in the Linux IDE (but I may be wrong and cannot test it right now).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2692&start=0#p18591
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with Patroller by Michael Callaghan
User: ptimony / DateTime: 2011-06-25 19:07:48

Thank you Micheal! (Callaghan, I presume?)

I will check back later for an update. In the meantime, I'll ignore the problem and keep building my game.

Peter

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2698&start=0#p18592
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: SAVE and RESTORE Commands
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-25 19:22:29

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="Juhana"]Saving and restoring are interpreter features. You don't have to add them to the game separately.[/quote]
But that's not true, is it? I certainly hope it's not true, because being able to disable or change the save-command in my game is essential to my current project. Are there any interpreters that allow out-of-game saving?[/quote]

It is true that the actual save is done by the interpreter/Glk library, but the Inform library provides an interface to that. I.e., it determines when the save will happen, the context (e.g., that the user will be prompted for a file, rather than the game creating one), and also monitors the interpreters response to provide feedback. That's probably all you would want to mess with in any case.

[quote="Skinny Mike"]The reason save is disabled in the IDE...[/quote]
This depends on the IDE, though. I believe saving does work in the Linux IDE (but I may be wrong and cannot test it right now).[/quote]

Yeah, save is legal in the Mac IDE too.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2698&start=0#p18593
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: SAVE and RESTORE Commands
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-25 20:56:32

[quote]Are there any interpreters that allow out-of-game saving?[/quote]

Windows Frotz does, right? There are menu options for save/restore? Or do they fake typing "SAVE" on the command line? (I know there are menu options for undo that work out-of-game.)

iPhone Frotz does an out-of-game save whenever you quit the app, of course.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2694&start=0#p18594
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Needing help on a wait-through scene (and a few other st
User: Roadcrosser / DateTime: 2011-06-25 21:38:23

Not that I wanted a crab suit (more like submersible giant robot) though wearable vehicle sounds interesting, is it possible to have rooms in containers? I know outright rooms aren't allowed but it could possibly be faked with adjacent containers. (the airlock and the control room cannot share the same space after all.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2352&start=20#p18595
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How many sounds can glulx play at once?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-06-25 21:43:02

Well no wonder 81920 didn't work [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2695&start=0#p18596
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Both Poet and Auda, kiss Iris
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-06-25 21:50:51

Is this some adult version of Suspended you're working up here?

"Both Poet and Auda, kiss Iris" (while such and such watches)

Except Iris is the only one who can see. Consarnit!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2698&start=0#p18597
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: SAVE and RESTORE Commands
User: cas / DateTime: 2011-06-25 21:57:36

[quote="zarf"][quote]Are there any interpreters that allow out-of-game saving?[/quote]

Windows Frotz does, right? There are menu options for save/restore? Or do they fake typing "SAVE" on the command line? (I know there are menu options for undo that work out-of-game.)
[/quote]
Windows Frotz fakes typing "SAVE".

I've just added out-of-game saving and restoring to Bocfel, but doing so has an inherent problem: When @restore is successful, the program counter is set to the branch/store part of the @save instruction that originally created the save (and then a branch or store occurs).  However, when doing an out-of-game save, the program counter is not at a @save, but rather at an @aread (or wherever you decide to hook in the saving); so a normal @restore of such a file would try to branch/store, which is of course problematic, because the program counter is at the beginning of @aread.

Thus the out-of-game save must be restored by the out-of-game restore, and not mixed with in-game stuff (and vice versa).  Such out-of-game saves should consequently be used only in the direst of circumstances.  I could have the restore functions detect what kind of save file it is and react accordingly so they could be mixed at will; but I'd rather not encourage such dastardly behavior, mainly because out-of-game saves are not Quetzal-compatible.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2694&start=0#p18598
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Needing help on a wait-through scene (and a few other st
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-25 22:06:45

Well, the code I posted -- wait, I didn't actually post any code, did I? Hold on.

This code:

[code]The crab suit is a vehicle in Reading Room. The button is a device in the crab suit. It is switched off.

Instead of pushing the button:
	if the button is switched on:
		try switching off the button;
	otherwise:
		try switching on the button.
Instead of switching on the crab suit: Try switching on the button. Instead of switching off the crab suit: Try switching off the button.
Rule for printing the name of the button while switching on or switching off: say "crab suit". [This means that it prints "switching on the crab suit" instead of "switching on the button." It may not be the best solution.]
Last report switching on the button: say "The crab suit powers up and clamps onto you."
Last report switching off the button: say "The crab suit powers off and relaxes around you."
Instead of going when the player is in the crab suit and the button is switched off: say "You'll have to switch on the crab suit or get out of it."
Instead of exiting when the player is in the crab suit and the button is switched on: say "You'll have to switch off the crab suit in order to get out of it."
[/code]

and similar code where you implement a vehicle doesn't actually make it wearable -- commands like "wear suit" won't work. (Clothing is another kind that can be implemented automatically, where you could write special rules to make sure you can't move while wearing it if you haven't switched it on, and maybe some other stuff, but that's not what you want to do anyway.) 

[This code probably has some issues, by the way. For instance, if you're in an enterable container, I think you can get out of it while the crab suit is switched off, because this code doesn't block exiting. I say "I think" because the code doesn't let me get into an enterable container without getting out of the suit anyway, at least not in the scenario I dropped it into.]

Anyway, if you want multiple rooms inside the vehicle you probably want to fake it the other way around -- instead of creating a vehicle, create a bunch of rooms for the inside of the giant robot, and then do something that makes sure that when you enter and exit the giant robot you wind up in the same place. There's some discussion of that [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=16185#p16185]here[/url]; note that though you have an enterable container, the player never winds up in it; when they enter the container they wind up in the appropriate room inside the TARDIS. (The comment above that one has a more complicated and probably less satisfactory way of doing the same thing.) Then you could use whatever code you want to allow the robot to move around when the player pushes the buttons; you'd just need to move the robot-container from one room to another.

One complication is that you probably want the player to be able to see outside the robot. In this case, to do that you'd probably have to put the room where the robot is in scope when the player is inside the robot (or in the observation room, or something). Some of the code in the example [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rex430.html]Dinner Is Served[/url] would probably be useful there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2694&start=0#p18599
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Needing help on a wait-through scene (and a few other st
User: Roadcrosser / DateTime: 2011-06-26 00:43:32

The only window I'd like would probably be in the control room. It is possible to have the control room be the only container, with the rest of the robot rooted at some place (though the air lock might need a bit of work).

[code]Instead of going down, move player to Torso Hub[/code]

and the code for the Torso Hub would be

[code]Instead of going up, move player to Control Room[/code]

Meaning the control room is the only container part.

[code]When up button is pushed, move Control Room to Coral Shores[/code]

Though the underwater rooms probably need fine-tuning (and prevent the player from trying to enter them.

Any ideas for the barrier thing?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2694&start=0#p18600
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Needing help on a wait-through scene (and a few other st
User: Roadcrosser / DateTime: 2011-06-26 01:42:21

I just tried Endosphere's last solution which I modified to what I was actually doing (a stasis pod malfunctioning and not giving air to the player) and one of the things I managed not to do was aliases to the objects and all the saying.

[code]
The ??? is a room. The description of the ??? is usually "You do not know where you are. You cannot focus your eyes to make out anything and to top it off, you cannot breathe."

Bedroom is a room

There is a red thing. It is scenery. "All you can make out is a red fuzzy circle."
There is a red release button. "This red button has the words release printed on it's side." It is scenery. The red release button can be pushed.

[These are aliases I'm gonna need help with]
Understand  "fuzzy" or "circle" as red thing
Understand "fuzzy" or "red" or "thing" or "circle" as button

Instead of examining yourself:
	say "Your eyes feel blur and you cannot breathe"

Instead of pushing button:
	say "You muster up some strength but even then you have no energy to lift your arms"

Malfunctioning Pod is a scene. Malfunctioning Pod begins when the location of the player is the ??? for the first time.
Instead of going during Malfunctioning Pod:
	say "You try to get up but you lack the energy to do so."

[Something isn't right here either]
During Malfunctioning Pod:
	wait one turn
		say "You still cannot breathe"
			say "You hear a robotic voice. ''It is O-eight-hundred hours''";
				wait one turn
					say "You still cannot breathe"
						say "You squint your eyes and you are able to make out something red"
							now the description of the ??? is "You do not know where you are. You cannot focus your eyes to make out anything and to top it off, you cannot breathe. You barely make out something red and fuzzy."
								move red thing to ???
									wait one turn
										say "You still cannot breathe"
											say "''It is O-eight-hundred hours''";
												wait three turns
													say "You forcibly squint your eyes further and the red thing turns out to be a button."
														now the description of the ??? is "You do not know where you are. You cannot focus your eyes to make out anything and to top it off, you cannot breathe. You see a red button in front of you."
															move red thing out of play
																move red release button to ???
																	wait one turn
																		say "''It is O-eight-hundred hours''"
																			wait one turn
																				say "The robotic voice says ''engaging emergency release''"
																					wait one turn
																						say "You feel yourself being pulled out and you breathe in some fresh air"
																							move player to the Bedroom.[/code]

[s]Yes, I notice some tabs are out of line, I'll leave them be. You can fix it if ya want.[/s]
EDIT: Fixed it

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2698&start=0#p18601
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: SAVE and RESTORE Commands
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-06-26 06:20:46

The buzzing of the hornets is more than I had hopped for [emote]:!:[/emote] But thanks all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2694&start=0#p18602
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Needing help on a wait-through scene (and a few other st
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-26 07:02:21

[quote="Roadcrosser"]Though the underwater rooms probably need fine-tuning (and prevent the player from trying to enter them.

Any ideas for the barrier thing?[/quote]

That should be simple. Something like this:

[code]A room can be underwater or aboveground. A room is usually aboveground. Instead of going to an underwater room: Say "You can't breathe underwater!"[/code]

If there are other breathing apparatuses that let you go into an underwater room by typing directional commands, then you have to make that "instead" slightly more complicated (for instance, if you make the submersible robot a vehicle); but if you can only go underwater by pressing buttons that should be fine.

[quote="Roadcrosser"]The only window I'd like would probably be in the control room. It is possible to have the control room be the only container, with the rest of the robot rooted at some place (though the air lock might need a bit of work).

[code]Instead of going down, move player to Torso Hub[/code]

and the code for the Torso Hub would be

[code]Instead of going up, move player to Control Room[/code]

Meaning the control room is the only container part.

[code]When up button is pushed, move Control Room to Coral Shores[/code][/quote]

Hm. So you'd implement the Control Room as an actual container, with descriptions of how to get to the other rooms, and then move the player to the other rooms by hand? That seems like it might be possible; the syntax you want would be something like this:

[code]Instead of going down when the player is in the Control Room: Move the player to the Torso Hub.[/code]

It might not work very well for the room descriptions when you're in the Control Room. The default description would look something like this (though I haven't tested to see exactly what):

[quote][b]Coral Reef[/b] (inside the Control Room)
The Coral Reef is a natural wonder of nature, full of fish and lots of other things that I don't feel like describing now. There is an open chest caught in the Coral.

You can also see a giant fish here.

In the chest you can see a golden necklace.

In the Control Room you can see a red button, a blue button, and a green button.[/quote] 

Which isn't very satisfactory; you need to replace the "In the Control Room" stuff with something that actually makes the Control Room seem like a room, and that describes how you can get to the other parts of the submarine. 

Whereas if you make the Control Room a room, and use a rule to describe whatever room you're in, you get something like:

[quote][b]Control Room[/b]

The control room of the submersible robot is bristling with panels and buttons. (However you want to describe them.) You can go up to get to the Torso Hub. [All that could be written by hand, and the you'd have the "You can also see" business for any objects lying on the floor of the room.]

Through the windows you see [whatever code you wrote to take care of the stuff in the outdoor location.][/quote]

There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches -- the first approach places the emphasis on the underwater location, not on the control room, which might well be better. But I think the first approach might also require a bit more customization; you'd want to turn (inside the Control Room) into (inside the giant robot), and you'd want a special rule for talking about the Control Room when you're inside it -- which might not be too hard, once you figure out the right activity to write a rule for. Also you'd want to make sure the player can't exit the Control Room and wind up in the water (the first rule I wrote won't work for that, since getting out of a container isn't going in a direction). But it might be made to work nicely.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2698&start=0#p18603
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: SAVE and RESTORE Commands
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-06-26 07:14:07

You were all right (correct) in your assessment of I7 and how the Save, etc commands work. My only question (a bit hypothetical) is why does no one explains that - or am I a bit thick in the head?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2352&start=20#p18604
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How many sounds can glulx play at once?
User: arlian34 / DateTime: 2011-06-26 08:25:03

You are absolutely right. 
I based that code on an example of a very old (and apparently wrong) Italian guide on glk.
Well, thanks for your testing then  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2694&start=0#p18605
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Needing help on a wait-through scene (and a few other st
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-26 08:43:48

Your "understand" statements look OK to me, except that you need periods at the end. Also "red thing" might not be an acceptable name, since "thing" is a kind of object in Inform (I'm not sure). Also, you don't need to define "red" here; it'll automatically be understood, since it's part of the objects name.

Scenes don't work the way you have it, though. What you want is a series of rules saying things like:

[code]Every turn when time since Malfunctioning Pod began is 2 minutes: say "You still cannot breathe."[/code]

or something like that -- I've never programmed scenes myself. "Wait one turn" doesn't work -- the closest that you could come is "try waiting," but what that would do is have the player wait (as if they had typed "WAIT"). You really need separate rules (or a table of events) to trigger the different things you want to happen during the scene.

Also, make sure that you have "Instead of examining yourself while Malfunctioning Pod is happening:" -- you don't want that rule to trigger when the scene isn't happening.

[quote="Roadcrosser"]I just tried Endosphere's last solution which I modified to what I was actually doing (a stasis pod malfunctioning and not giving air to the player) and one of the things I managed not to do was aliases to the objects and all the saying.

[code]
The ??? is a room. The description of the ??? is usually "You do not know where you are. You cannot focus your eyes to make out anything and to top it off, you cannot breathe."

Bedroom is a room

There is a red thing. It is scenery. "All you can make out is a red fuzzy circle."
There is a red release button. "This red button has the words release printed on it's side." It is scenery. The red release button can be pushed.

[These are aliases I'm gonna need help with]
Understand  "fuzzy" or "circle" as red thing
Understand "fuzzy" or "red" or "thing" or "circle" as button

Instead of examining yourself:
	say "Your eyes feel blur and you cannot breathe"

Instead of pushing button:
	say "You muster up some strength but even then you have no energy to lift your arms"

Malfunctioning Pod is a scene. Malfunctioning Pod begins when the location of the player is the ??? for the first time.
Instead of going during Malfunctioning Pod:
	say "You try to get up but you lack the energy to do so."

[Something isn't right here either]
During Malfunctioning Pod:
	wait one turn
		say "You still cannot breathe"
			say "You hear a robotic voice. ''It is O-eight-hundred hours''";
				wait one turn
					say "You still cannot breathe"
						say "You squint your eyes and you are able to make out something red"
							now the description of the ??? is "You do not know where you are. You cannot focus your eyes to make out anything and to top it off, you cannot breathe. You barely make out something red and fuzzy."
								move red thing to ???
									wait one turn
										say "You still cannot breathe"
											say "''It is O-eight-hundred hours''";
												wait three turns
													say "You forcibly squint your eyes further and the red thing turns out to be a button."
														now the description of the ??? is "You do not know where you are. You cannot focus your eyes to make out anything and to top it off, you cannot breathe. You see a red button in front of you."
															move red thing out of play
																move red release button to ???
																	wait one turn
																		say "''It is O-eight-hundred hours''"
																			wait one turn
																				say "The robotic voice says ''engaging emergency release''"
																					wait one turn
																						say "You feel yourself being pulled out and you breathe in some fresh air"
																							move player to the Bedroom.[/code]

[s]Yes, I notice some tabs are out of line, I'll leave them be. You can fix it if ya want.[/s]
EDIT: Fixed it[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2694&start=10#p18606
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Needing help on a wait-through scene (and a few other st
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-06-26 09:20:27

[quote="matt w"]You really need separate rules (or a table of events) to trigger the different things you want to happen during the scene[/quote]
Example 159 "Day One" in the Recipe Book shows how to do this with tables.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2694&start=10#p18608
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Needing help on a wait-through scene (and a few other st
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-26 10:32:06

[quote="Felix"][quote="matt w"]You really need separate rules (or a table of events) to trigger the different things you want to happen during the scene[/quote]
Example 159 "Day One" in the Recipe Book shows how to do this with tables.[/quote]

Though that example is just about printing different texts, not moving things in and out of play. Though you could use that approach anyway, moving things in and out of play using text substitutions and to-say phrases.

(And it looks like, as in that example, you want to disable every action except a few examines and maybe some other things during the scene. You don't want the player jumping on the spot, fruitlessly, or heaven forbid taking the button.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2698&start=10#p18609
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: SAVE and RESTORE Commands
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-26 10:38:36

[quote]Thus the out-of-game save must be restored by the out-of-game restore, and not mixed with in-game stuff (and vice versa). Such out-of-game saves should consequently be used only in the direst of circumstances. I could have the restore functions detect what kind of save file it is and react accordingly so they could be mixed at will; but I'd rather not encourage such dastardly behavior, mainly because out-of-game saves are not Quetzal-compatible.[/quote]

I bet it's worth adding a flag to the Quetzal standard to support this, since it is a meaningfully common case.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2700&start=0#p18610
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Little beginner help with counting!
User: PsychicParrot / DateTime: 2011-06-26 11:05:30

Hi!

I'm working on my first Inform project (the last time I did anything like this was building a text adventure game back in 1987!) and I'm having a few issues!..

First question: I'm trying to prevent my player from moving north based on a number and I'm really struggling to make the logic work right.

The code to prevent the player from moving from the training grounds looks like this:

[code]Instead of going north:
	if the location of the player is Training Grounds:
		if dialog of Captain Foley < 3:
			say "[Captain Foley] says 'Before starting the obstacle course, read each of those important signs.'";
		otherwise:
			move the player to Pathway.[/code]

The problem is that now I can't go north in ANY of the rooms with the logic set up like that ^. I tried adding an extra otherwise condition, but can't seem to get the syntax right.

I also tried re-arranging this so it looked like this:

[code]if the location of the player is Training Grounds:
	Instead of going north:
		if dialog of Captain Foley < 2:
			say "[Captain Foley] says 'Before starting the obstacle course, read each of these important signs.'";
		otherwise:
			move the player to Pathway.[/code]

... but the compiler really hates it like that and doesn't allow it.

2nd question: Is there a way to say 'go north' or 'move the player north' rather than having to specify which room to move it to?

Any help would be REALLY appreciated!

Thank you,
Jeff.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2700&start=0#p18611
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Little beginner help with counting!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-26 11:22:29

For your first question, the problem is that you have an "Instead of going north" rule, which fires whenever the player tries to go north; when the player isn't in Training Ground, the rule is still firing and keeping them from going north even though none of the rest of the stuff is happening. You could fix this by adding (at the end and with proper tabbing)

[code]otherwise:
   continue the action.[/code]

but the best way to do this is to change the heading of your rule so it only fires when you're in Training Grounds and going north:

[code]Instead of going north from Training Grounds:[/code]

(You might want to check out section 7.13 on the difference between going in and going from.)

Also, instead of manually moving the player to Pathway when dialog is at least 3, you could just write "continue the action" and the player will go north normally (assuming that there isn't anything preventing them). I guess that's the answer to your second question? In general, it depends on what you're trying to do. If you want to allow the player to go north when you're writing an Instead rule that would otherwise stop them, "continue the action" is the way to go; see section 7.3. 

If you're responding to a different command and you want to have the player go north as if they had typed "Go north," you want "Try going north," as in section 7.4. (For instance, if you want "go up" to take them north, you can say "Instead of going up in the Parade ground, try going north.) This will invoke all the usual constraints and rules on going north; if the dialog of Capt. Whosit is less than three, then the instead rule will stop the player from going north.

If you just want a general command that moves the player to the room north of the one they're in willy-nilly, then you can do something like "if there is a room mapped north of the location: move the player to a random room mapped north of the location" -- not sure of the exact syntax, but I don't think that's what you want anyway; it sounds like you want "continue the action."

Some people might argue that this should be written as a Check rule instead, but I don't know how necessary that would be.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2700&start=0#p18612
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Little beginner help with counting!
User: PsychicParrot / DateTime: 2011-06-26 11:34:11

You are a rock star! Thank you so much for the help [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2701&start=0#p18613
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7 coding simple
User: Wassabi777 / DateTime: 2011-06-26 12:32:16

I have a stadium "scene" in a game I'm working on and I can't remember any ways to do this efficiently. 

After the "disposal" of an enemy from battle, I want a new one to appear or walk over, several turns later.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2700&start=0#p18614
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Little beginner help with counting!
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-06-26 12:37:30

I find it easiest to just put all conditions into the rule header (unless they are very complex) so you don't have to think about "continue the action":

[code]Instead of going north from Training grounds when dialog of Captain Foley < 3:
    say "[Captain Foley] says 'Before starting the obstacle course, read each of these important signs.'"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2701&start=0#p18615
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 coding simple
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-06-26 12:37:49

One way to do this would to make your second enemy enter with a scene under the conditions that enemy1 is dead and that you are still in the stadium for X turns.

Example:
[code]
"StadiumTest" by Jizaboz

Football Stadium is a room.
Limbo is a room.

BadDudeDead is a truth state that varies. BadDudeDead is usually false.

BadDude2 is a man in Limbo.

Enter BadDude2 is a scene. Enter BadDude2 begins when the player is in the Football Stadium and BadDudeDead is true for 3 turns.

When Enter BadDude2 begins:
	move BadDude2 to Football Stadium;
[/code]

Note that I did not include your first enemy because I'm not sure what method you are using for calling him "dead". Just load a "Now BadDudeDead is true;" into wherever that occurs. You can plug in however many of turns you want. You'll probably want to try a couple of things until the timing feels right to you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2535&start=0#p18616
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with Quip-Based Conversations
User: Wassabi777 / DateTime: 2011-06-26 13:21:12

I don't understand your question completely, but I may have an answer... 

For scenes in the game there's two ways you can do this. Make different tables for different scenes or you can make a big table with different scenes contained in it for different topics. I haven't tested this code and I can't promise it'll work, but it'll give you idea for options. I used Complimentary Peanuts as a structure for these.

Way #1

Instead of speech when the noun is Jim:
    if scene is breakfast begin;
    repeat through Table of Jim's breakfast commentary: 
        if the topic understood includes topic entry: 
            say "[commentary entry][paragraph break]"; 
            rule succeeds; 
    say "'Hmmf,' says Jim.";
     otherwise;
      if scene is dinner begin;
 repeat through Table of Jim's dinner commentary: 
        if the topic understood includes topic entry: 
            say "[commentary entry][paragraph break]"; 
            rule succeeds; 
    say "'Hmmf,' says Jim.";
          end if.

Way #2

[I used text from merlin to put this together, sloppy, but it can work well if you clean it up just a little and reformat it into your quip-based communication. There are slightly better ways of implementing this stuff, but this works.]

Understand "remember [text]" as remembering.

Remembering is an action applying to one topic.

Carry out remembering:
	say "Nothing comes to mind.".

Breakfast is a scene. Breakfast begins when play begins. Dinner is a scene. Breakfast ends when Dinner begins. 

Instead of waiting:
	now the scene is dinner.

Instead of remembering a topic listed in the Table of Recollections:
	if the scene is breakfast begin;
	say "[breakfast entry][paragraph break]";
	end if;
	if the scene is dinner begin;
	say "[dinner entry][paragraph break]";
	end if.	

Table of Recollections
Topic	Breakfast	Dinner
"Orange"	"A good idea"	"Not particularly fond of those at this time"
"Steak"	"Ok with eggs"	"Perfect with A1"
"Cherry/cherries"	"Too sweet"	"Great on cheesecake!"

The Inadequate Shelter is a room. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For specific quips that change based on specific past/current events or conditions, code them individually.

Instead of talking to Jim about cherries:
          if the player carries a cherry begin;
          say "Jim replies, 'I am interested in your offer sir!'";
          otherwise;
          say "Jim says 'I really have a craving for those right now.'";
          end if.


I hope this helps.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2701&start=0#p18619
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 coding simple
User: Wassabi777 / DateTime: 2011-06-26 13:30:48

Actually, I want to this without scenes (I'm working on an RPG so this will be far too much clutter). 

I'm using this piece of code:

Definition: A person is alive if its health is 1 or more. Definition: A person is killed if its health is 0 or less.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2700&start=0#p18620
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Little beginner help with counting!
User: PsychicParrot / DateTime: 2011-06-26 13:49:21

Oh excellent! Thanks for the reply!

I didn't realize you could do things like this... I thought it'd all have to be lots of separate conditions.

I really wish I'd had this back in 1987 when I wrote my first adventure game! What an amazing system this is!

Thanks!  [emote]:D[/emote] 
Jeff.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2698&start=10#p18621
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: SAVE and RESTORE Commands
User: cas / DateTime: 2011-06-26 16:04:09

[quote="zarf"][quote]Thus the out-of-game save must be restored by the out-of-game restore, and not mixed with in-game stuff (and vice versa). Such out-of-game saves should consequently be used only in the direst of circumstances. I could have the restore functions detect what kind of save file it is and react accordingly so they could be mixed at will; but I'd rather not encourage such dastardly behavior, mainly because out-of-game saves are not Quetzal-compatible.[/quote]

I bet it's worth adding a flag to the Quetzal standard to support this, since it is a meaningfully common case.[/quote]

I think that's a good idea.  As far as I can tell, though, the save file will have to have a new FORM type, because any interpreters that don't understand out-of-game saves would not know how to check the new flag (or new chunk type) to see whether they can load the file.  A new FORM type will automatically cause these interpreters to fail to load the save file.

How I've approached it is as follows: Quetzal 1.4 is used in its entirety with two changes:
[list]
[*] The IFF format type is BFMS (modifies §2.1)[/*:m]
[*] The PC must be set to the first byte of an instruction (modifies §5.8)[/*:m][/list:u]

I've flagged my implementation as experimental, so I have no problems changing code to adapt to an actual standard, if one emerges.  I'd be happy to hear any other interpreter authors' thoughts on this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2698&start=10#p18622
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: SAVE and RESTORE Commands
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-26 19:22:12

[quote="wgm003"]You were all right (correct) in your assessment of I7 and how the Save, etc commands work. My only question (a bit hypothetical) is why does no one explains that - or am I a bit thick in the head?[/quote]

The point they were trying to make is that no one explains it because it doesn't need to be explained, except for those writing interpreters and development tools. This is something that is already provided for you. Unless you're trying to do something "out of the ordinary" with the SAVE functionality, there's no reason that you shouldn't take advantage of the fact that it's just there and it just works. (Usually.)

They digressed into a discussion that would be more appropriate over in the tools and addons forum. 

Geeks and their toys, eh? [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2701&start=0#p18623
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 coding simple
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-26 19:28:44

[quote="Wassabi777"]Actually, I want to this without scenes (I'm working on an RPG so this will be far too much clutter). 

I'm using this piece of code:

Definition: A person is alive if its health is 1 or more. Definition: A person is killed if its health is 0 or less.[/quote]

Aren't all text adventure games essentially RPGs?

It appears as though maybe we're misunderstanding your question. Jizaboz's suggestion will work just fine with what you're proposing. It wouldn't add any additional clutter. In fact, it's probably the cleanest way that I can think of for it to be done. This is presuming that there are no other conditionals that need to be checked. Are you alive? Is the other guy not so alive? Have you been in the arena for five turns? Bang, start the next scene and move in the next NPC.

Your question is "How do I introduce another NPC after the first one is dead?" Yet your response to the solution seems to indicate that you aren't explaining the entirety of your problem. What mechanic of your game is hindered by the inclusion of scenes?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2702&start=0#p18624
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Death of Schlig
User: ptimony / DateTime: 2011-06-27 01:30:35

I just finished my first ever game. It's a Sci-Fi Comedy called "Death of Schlig". I would love if someone were to play test it for me. 

But be gentle, it's my first time!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2702&start=0#p18625
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Death of Schlig
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2011-06-27 02:37:14

Hi Peter, I'd be happy to give it a go...
What platform are you using?
Cheers

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2703&start=0#p18626
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Comepetition question
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2011-06-27 02:41:18

Is it ok to enter more than one competition with the same game?
What I'm mean is that I'm entering a game for this years IF Comp but at the same time there's an Adrift End of the Year Comp. running, and I' would like to enter that too. The IF Comp 2011 deadline for entering will be passed before the Adrift Comp is taking place but the judging will still be running.
Thanks in advance for any replies.
Cheers

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2703&start=0#p18627
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Comepetition question
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-06-27 03:47:54

Reading [url=http://www.ifcomp.org/comp11/rules.html]the rules[/url], I would say that this is allowed by the IF Comp. If your publication in the IF Comp is earlier than your publication in the ADRIFT End of Year Competition, and if you refrain from publicly discussing your game, you're good.

I don't know whether it would be allowed by the ADRIFT EoYC?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2702&start=0#p18628
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Death of Schlig
User: ptimony / DateTime: 2011-06-27 06:37:10

I wrote it using inform 7. I could email the file, I guess. The extension is gblorb.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2702&start=0#p18629
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Death of Schlig
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2011-06-27 07:27:42

I've send you a PM

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2703&start=0#p18630
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Comepetition question
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2011-06-27 07:30:49

Oh that's not a problem.... 
First of all the rules at the Adrift End of the Year states that any game created or released during the calender year can be submitted...
Besides, I'm the organizer of the competiton, and I say it's ok   [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

I just wanted to make sure that I didn't collide with the rules of the IF Comp 2011

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2691&start=0#p18631
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Leaving an enterable scenery container...
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-27 09:09:59

[quote="matt w"]I do in fact think it would be very helpful if a message like that included something along the lines of "Sometimes this happens when 'examing' or 'glass' have not been defined, or when one of them has been misspelled."[/quote]
You'd think the compiler would be able to keep track of which one wasn't defined, though...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2688&start=0#p18632
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Returning to room temperature
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-27 09:21:06

[quote="ptimony"]That's true zarf, but for the moment that's good enough for me. I need to keep going or I'll never finish this game. I'll go back and fix the heat thing later. Maybe after I've finished writing a whole game, I'll have a better grasp of this stuff.[/quote]
Part of writing IF is deciding what things need to be specific and what things need to be general. If you were writing a "temperatures" extension, you'd definitely want to cover all cases, but maybe you only have one object in the game that changes temperature. If you do, you might actually want to be [i]more[/i] specific:

[code]Every turn when the temperature of the coffee mug is not room temperature:[/code]

Being specific can save yourself some work, make your game smaller and faster, and sometimes even improve the player's experience by directing attention to the more "interesting" features of the environment. So there's no need to be ashamed! Also, saving details for the testing phase is a totally reasonable approach. You might even end up duplicating your efforts if you try to work out all the possibilities too early and later additions add complications you hadn't anticipated.

Sometimes what I do is add a comment:

[code][TODO: Make sure this works if more than one object is not at room temperature][/code]

Quick and easy, and then you can forget about it for a while. Later, you can just search your code for "TODO."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2442&start=0#p18633
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Testers for The Z-Machine Matter
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2011-06-27 10:01:57

BTW, thanks to those who did request access to the Alpha version and provided feedback.  I'm putting the finishing touches on The Z-Machine Matter and will be submitting it to IntroComp later this week.  So even if you didn't sign up as a tester, I hope you'll try it out and let me know any feedback you have.

thanks
--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2696&start=0#p18634
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design
User: RandomExile / DateTime: 2011-06-27 10:52:16

(Maybe this should be in General Game Design?)

I think the nature of the final puzzle should be informed by the manner and format in which the data has been accumulated over the course of the game.  

To speak to your suggestion, since you've kept a virtual reporter's notebook for the player over the course of the game (27 June, 2011.  Alice barely polite, implicated Bob.) it would be perfectly natural to lay out those observations either as if they'd been cut-and-pasted into logical categories, or even (since you're using a Txt/Gfx hybrid) laying it out on a murder board with annotated links between places/events/people/times.

As for the endgame, some of this depends on what you intend to be the fun part for your players.  There are three steps involved in detective work: collecting, analyzing, and reaching a conclusion.  Analysis involves arranging the data into a usable format, and will probably be most enjoyed by casual gamers (if GUI'd well) and graphic adventure gamers if you try to implement it in the game itself. While I could be wrong, I think most people derive the greatest satisfaction from the third step (not that the rest isn't enjoyable as well).

[b]Emphasizing Step 1: Collecting the Data[/b]
While I might get myself in trouble, I'd say there are very few interesting [to me!!] examples of games which focus on collecting, although hidden object games like Big Finish Games' [i]3 Cards to Midnight/Dead Time[/i] epitomize this and sneak in a great deal of story.

[b]Emphasizing Step 2: Analyzing the Data[/b]
A common puzzle in graphic adventure games requires the player to reconstitute a message written on shredded or otherwise disassembled pieces, and is a spatial relations puzzle emphasizing the second step.  In the classic logic puzzle, the fundamental collection has been done (artificially haphazardly, of course) and the conclusion naturally presents itself once the data has been properly described.  In IF, Jon Ingold's [i]Make it Good[/i] is a fairly recent example of a game which stresses placing disparate information into a rational pattern.

[b]Emphasizing Step 3: Reaching a Conclusion[/b]
An [i]Encyclopedia Brown[/i] or [i]Five-Minute Mystery[/i] book does the first two steps for you, leaving the reader to determine the logical conclusion.

[b]Emphasizing Step 1 with a Smattering of 3, While Doing 2 for You Completely[/b]
In [i]Knights of the Old Republic[/i], several puzzles revolve around studying a crime scene and interviewing multiple suspects.  The questions you can ask and the statements you can make in deciding the case depend on the player's thoroughness in investigation.  At the end of the scene, you can choose from several different statements which may be correct according to the information you've acquired and a minor application of reasoning.  This emphasizes the first and third steps and does the fundamental analysis behind the scenes.

[b]All Three Steps[/b]
Emily Short's [i]Bronze[/i], on the other hand, requires you to perform all three steps in a casual, friendly way.  You need to visit numerous rooms in the castle, make particular observations, correlate Story This with Painting That and determine Infernal Something Else.  [i]Make it Good[/i] requires all three explicitly.

Depending on how IF-centric this work is, I'd try to minimize the amount of suggesting the game does at the end, leaving more of the solution to the player's own reasoning rather than it feel like clicking 1A and 2B give a positive result, 1A and 3B give a meaningless result, etc.  KOTOR's investigator-lite approached worked well in a quest-based action RPG, but you might be able to request more of your players in this regard.  It's hard to say without knowing more about what type of hybrid you're working on:  [i]Meanstreets[/i]?  [i]Gateway[/i]? [i]Starship Titanic[/i]?

I think you should figure out how you want to tell your story, and what parts of the investigative process make sense to be implemented given the medium and your goals for the player's involvement.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2703&start=0#p18635
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Comepetition question
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2011-06-27 11:44:11

You're free to do what you want with the game post-IF Comp. It only needs to be unreleased before the comp begins.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2696&start=0#p18636
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-27 12:20:04

Moderators, I wonder if this post would get more attention if it were moved out of the Inform coding forum and into the design section? The issues it raises aren't really platform-dependent.

Jason, maybe you could provide some more info on the nature of the knowledge you'd like the player to demonstrate her mastery of? Your first example implies that the questions are the classic, object-focused [i]Clue[/i] questions--who, where, with what weapon--but the later examples seem much more focused on abstractions like motive and relationships. So I'm not really sure what the parameters are. But I'll still try to comment on a few of your suggestions.

You mentioned bringing in the graphical notes-->inferences interface and using it in the final puzzle. I think that this might be awkward in a couple of different ways. First, the notes system strikes me as an optional aid to the player, one she can choose to use as she goes along or not. Unless it's renamed and brought more toward center stage throughout the game, I think that players who haven't made consistent use of the notes would find it annoying to suddenly have to do so to complete the final puzzle. Also, it seems as though quite a few of these could pile up, making it a lot to sort through if a player hasn't been keeping up with it all along. I'm also not sure that the timeline model is direct enough--it seems pretty abstracted from the questions of whodunit/how/why.

[quote="JDevlin"]A wheel showing all the NPCs with the victim in the middle. The player would draw lines between the NPCs (both the suspects and the bystanders) to indicate their relationship: Alice hates Bob, Carol betrayed Alice. The problem is, I don't know how to guide the player unless I give a list of relationships (hate, betrayal, jealousy) that would feel ridiculously artificial. I could set it up so the player actually types in the relationship, but this also feels a little odd.[/quote]

This also seems too abstract to me, at least if it is meant to be the final puzzle. Most of the connections drawn would be incidental to the killing, which would seem to make for a less than climactic moment. The drawing of a single line that reads "killed" between the murderer and victim might be fun, but how would the player know which relationships beyond that matter enough to be added? Also, again, these relationships seem very abstract compared to the questions of who/what/where/why/how...

[quote="JDevlin"]A simple series of more or less direct questions: Who was the murderer? Where did it happen? What was the weapon? This will accomplish what I want (testing the player's, not the PC's knowledge), but it feels really heavy-handed.[/quote]

Would these questions be more interesting if elicited during a dramatically structured scene? For example: The PC is a reporter and is probably doing some things that the cops wouldn't like as part of the investigation. Could some dramatic tension be got out of an interview with the detective in charge of the case that would allow the player to answer these questions, but also feel like she's in some kind of danger herself? 

Another idea might be to require the player to [b]do[/b] things, rather than [b]tell[/b] them, to demonstrate that they understand what happened. For example, the PC gets an anonymous tip that the murderer has another victim in his house [i]right now[/i], so we must race to the murderer's house to prevent a second killing! If we get to the mayor's house and there's no murder in progress, well, that means we dead wrong about the mayor. This method might be harder to structure plausibly, as the player has to be made well aware when her actions are meant to be assertions of fact, and when they are just actions. But handled with finesse, it might make for a reveal more like those in Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler than those in Agatha Christie.

--Erik

A side note: I ran across your post on TIGsource the other day, and noticed that the Mac package you're offering for testing includes Spatterlight. That's probably not a good idea--your testers may very well think the game is buggy when they try to play it: Spatterlight is very slow, especially with graphics, and it requires double mouse clicks instead of single ones to register mouse input. Gargoyle would be a better choice for Mac users, as it also supports sound and is much faster and up to date (though there is a killer bug in the current version that will screw up hyperlinked text.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2691&start=0#p18637
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Leaving an enterable scenery container...
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-27 12:22:31

The compiler isn't very good at understanding text that it has already failed to understand. :) It doesn't at this point know whether "examing", "the", or "glass" is the problem, or whether this is a correct action with a screwed-up verb or vice versa. 

(Remember that action names don't *have* to end in "ing" -- that's only a convention. For that matter it's perfectly legitimate to write "Examining the glass is an action applying to nothing." The compiler doesn't know that's not what you intended to do.)

It *could* go through and try to recognize individual words, but that has its own barrel of possible screwups, starting with recognizing "the", "on", or "in" inappropriately.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2703&start=0#p18638
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Comepetition question
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2011-06-27 12:38:46

[quote="Sargent"]You're free to do what you want with the game post-IF Comp. It only needs to be unreleased before the comp begins.[/quote]

Alright, thanks...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2701&start=0#p18639
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 coding simple
User: RandomExile / DateTime: 2011-06-27 13:19:58

[quote]Aren't all text adventure games essentially RPGs?[/quote]

Holy tangent grenade.  Only in a teensy, technical, highly limited, never-usable-in-practical-conversation way.  RPGs as commonly understood require progressive ability enhancement among many other systems.

On main topic:  I concur.  I would expect there must be some unstated requirement precluding the use of scenes, which otherwise would seem to me to be the tidiest way to handle a combat situation distinct from exploration, conversation, and other encounters typical to an RPG.  You'll probably have specific actions and behaviors which hold true in one set of circumstances but are inappropriate in another, and scenes would actually help make tracking that simpler.  OTOH, we're all speaking out of ignorance. =P

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2695&start=0#p18640
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Both Poet and Auda, kiss Iris
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2011-06-27 14:03:32




@ zarf

Thanks.  I suspected as much, but hoped otherwise.  In any case, I consider my question answered.

@severedhand

Nah, just a bid for attention to my posting through lurid labelling.  I haven't visited the forum here in quite some time, and am pleased to see that activity  has increased considerably since I last visited-- which also means the first page of recent only shows the last two or three days (as opposed to the last week or two).



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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2695&start=0#p18641
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Both Poet and Auda, kiss Iris
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-27 14:36:42

So I was thinking about whether this could be done with a two-part thing, where you create a special agent (here called "folks") that you can ask to do things, but when you say "folks, jump" the game asks you who you want to jump; you then enter some agents and they do what you asked. But I'm running into something weird at the very first step.

[code]A robot is a kind of person.  Understand "robot" as a robot.  Understand "robots" as the plural of a robot.

Auda is a robot.
Iris is a robot.
Sensa is a robot.

Waldo is a robot.
Whiz is a robot.
Poet is a robot.

Dummybackdrop is a backdrop. Dummybackdrop is everywhere. A robot called folks is part of dummybackdrop. 

A persuasion rule: persuasion succeeds.

Folks-action is a stored action that varies.
Instead of asking folks to try doing something:
	let boogle be the current action;
	say "[Folks-action]." [this is where I'll have something incredibly clever, I know not what, allowing you to input the list of commandees]

After deciding the scope of the player:
	repeat with avatar running through on-stage robots:
		place avatar in scope;
	place folks in scope.

Unsuccessful attempt by an actor doing anything:
	try looking.

Every turn: say "Current action: [the current action]."

When play begins:
	now the right hand status line is "[printed name of the player]".

The Command Center is a room.

Auda, Iris, Sensa, Waldo, Whiz, and Poet are in the command center.

The player is Iris.

A marble is in the command center.

A room called the Weather Monitors is west of the command center.

A room called the Transit Monitors is south of the command center.

A room called the Hydroponics Monitors is east of the command center.

Test me with "rules/actions/folks, kiss auda/folks, jump/auda, kiss folks".[/code]

As you can see, "auda, kiss folks" gets parsed as asking auda to try kissing folks, "folks, jump" gets parsed as asking folks to try jumping, but "folks, kiss auda" gets parsed as answering folks that kiss auda. Anyone know why?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2695&start=0#p18642
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Both Poet and Auda, kiss Iris
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-06-27 15:14:24

Interesting idea, Endosphere. I do think this might be easier as an i6 parser hack, but since my i6 is minimal, I wanted to try working it from as pure an I7 angle as possible. Unfortunately, I've run into a snag. When narrowed down, it appears to be a bug in the template code (i6), which I will post on a separate thread for confirmation later. Don't lose hope however; I'm convinced I have a workaround that will satisfy your original parameters. That is if someone doesn't beat me to the punch. (Keep working on your idea, Matt -- mine's totally different. Both will probably be useful to someone in their own way.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2695&start=0#p18643
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Both Poet and Auda, kiss Iris
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-06-27 16:58:23

[quote="matt w"]"folks, kiss auda" gets parsed as answering folks that kiss auda. Anyone know why?[/quote]
That suggests that the game doesn't understand the "kiss auda" instruction, or at least Inform converts "unrecognized conversation" to the answering someone that action (Parser Template §18).
I have no clue why that instruction would not be understood, though,

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2695&start=0#p18644
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Both Poet and Auda, kiss Iris
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-27 17:22:22

[quote="Felix"][quote="matt w"]"folks, kiss auda" gets parsed as answering folks that kiss auda. Anyone know why?[/quote]
That suggests that the game doesn't understand the "kiss auda" instruction, or at least Inform converts "unrecognized conversation" to the answering someone that action (Parser Template §18).
I have no clue why that instruction would not be understood, though,[/quote]

I'm going to guess that scope for actors that are parts of backdrops is all messed up. However, this does not work:

[code]A rule for reaching outside dummybackdrop: allow access.[/code]

UPDATE: Aha! It was simply that I needed to write a scope rule for folks:

[code]After deciding the scope of folks:
	repeat with avatar running through on-stage robots: [should probably be everything that the player can see, or that the robots can see]
		place avatar in scope.
[/code]

Now I need to figure out how to make sure everything else we want to be in scope is, extract the action we've asked folks to do, get some actors from the player, and have those actors do what we asked folks to do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2701&start=0#p18645
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 coding simple
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-06-27 19:00:11

[quote="Jizaboz"]Example:
[code]
"StadiumTest" by Jizaboz

Football Stadium is a room.
Limbo is a room.

BadDudeDead is a truth state that varies. BadDudeDead is usually false.

BadDude2 is a man in Limbo.

Enter BadDude2 is a scene. Enter BadDude2 begins when the player is in the Football Stadium and BadDudeDead is true for 3 turns.

When Enter BadDude2 begins:
	move BadDude2 to Football Stadium;
[/code][/quote]

If you really don't want to use scenes for whatever reason, I think you could do this just by using time.  Wherever your code is that checks whether BadDude1 is killed and disposes of him, add something like:
[code]
if BadDude1 is killed: [or however you're doing this part]
	a new challenger appears in 3 turns from now;

At the time when a new challenger appears:
	move BadDude2 to Football Stadium;[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2696&start=0#p18646
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-06-27 20:14:44

[quote="RandomExile"][b]Emphasizing Step 1: Collecting the Data[/b]
While I might get myself in trouble, I'd say there are very few interesting [to me!!] examples of games which focus on collecting, although hidden object games like Big Finish Productions' [i]3 Cards to Midnight/Dead Time[/i] epitomize this and sneak in a great deal of story.[/quote]
Nitpick: You mean Big Finish Games, not Big Finish Productions. (My initial reaction: "Wait, Big Finish makes games as well as audio drama? I have to check this out!" Slightly disappointed now...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2352&start=20#p18647
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How many sounds can glulx play at once?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-06-27 20:48:34

Hey arlian,

I sent you a PM with the code additions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2695&start=0#p18648
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Both Poet and Auda, kiss Iris
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-27 21:18:09

OK, if I can extract the action name, noun, and second noun from the current action, is there anyway I can reassemble that into an action that I can have actors try? Section 12.20 suggests that the only way to make a stored action is to type it in or to copy the current action, which could mean I can't do what I'd like to (which is store the action we asked folks to do, find out who's supposed to do it, and have those people try that stored action).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2695&start=0#p18649
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Both Poet and Auda, kiss Iris
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-27 22:10:40

[quote="matt w"]OK, if I can extract the action name, noun, and second noun from the current action, is there anyway I can reassemble that into an action that I can have actors try? Section 12.20 suggests that the only way to make a stored action is to type it in or to copy the current action, which could mean I can't do what I'd like to (which is store the action we asked folks to do, find out who's supposed to do it, and have those people try that stored action).[/quote]

Take a look at the Standard Rules, specifically the "convert to request" phrases, the most salient of which is:

[code]To convert to request of (X - object) to perform (AN - action name) with (Y - object) and (Z - object):
	(- TryAction(true, {X}, {AN}, {Y}, {Z}); rtrue; -).[/code]

It would probably work just fine to write your own version that didn't require a second noun (untested):

[code]To convert to request of (X - object) to perform (AN - action name) with (Y - object):
	(- TryAction(true, {X}, {AN}, {Y}); rtrue; -).[/code]

You might want to look at the TryAction and related routines in the I6 template file/Appendix B to see whether there are any refinements.

--Erik

EDIT: I went ahead and tested that second one; it seems to work just fine. Here's a sample game that effectively turns the PC into the player's voodoo doll for controlling the dog:

[code]Place is a room. There is a gun and a sponge in the place. The dog is a person in the place.

Instead of doing anything:
	let x be the action name part of the current action;
	let y be the noun part of the current action;
	convert to request of the dog to perform x with y.

To convert to request of (X - object) to perform (AN - action name) with (Y - object):
   (- TryAction(true, {X}, {AN}, {Y}); rtrue; -).

Persuasion rule: persuasion succeeds.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=50#p18650
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-27 22:39:51

I've updated the Glk header files to include the new sound API.

Because I don't support any sound code myself, I will leave this in draft form for longer than usual. Once some of you good people have implemented it, and turfed out any stupid mistakes in my header files or dispatch code, I'll formally release this as Glk spec 0.7.3. In the meantime, the code is in repository branches:

Glk spec document: see <a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/erkyrath/glk-dev/wiki/Glk-073-draft-spec-changes">https://github.com/erkyrath/glk-dev/wik ... ec-changes</a>

glk.h header: see <a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/erkyrath/cheapglk/tree/glk073">https://github.com/erkyrath/cheapglk/tree/glk073</a> (this is a CheapGlk library with the new sound functions defined as stubs, which either do nothing or generate warnings.)

gi_dispa.c, gi_dispa.h: also at <a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/erkyrath/cheapglk/tree/glk073">https://github.com/erkyrath/cheapglk/tree/glk073</a>

infglk.h header (for I6/I7 code): see <a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/erkyrath/glk-dev/tree/work/dispatch_dump">https://github.com/erkyrath/glk-dev/tre ... patch_dump</a>

By the way, the infglk.h header now defines "negative" I6 constants (for example keycode_Unknown) as large unsigned decimal numbers (4294967295). (In previous versions of infglk.h that constant showed up as -1.) This change was accidental -- my new computer has a 64-bit environment -- but I think it's more correct this way so I left it. The I6 compiler treats the values exactly the same, anyhow.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2704&start=0#p18651
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: [Z-machine] RFC: Out-of-game saves and Quetzal
User: cas / DateTime: 2011-06-27 22:43:52

The topic of out-of-game saves came up in another thread (“[url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2698]SAVE and RESTORE Commands[/url]”), and I posted a small piece about my experience implementing them.  It makes more sense to post this under its own topic, thus this post.  I'd like to hear what other Z-machine interpreter authors think.

I'm using “out-of-game save” to refer to a save state created solely by the interpreter, and not at the request of @save.  Such saves have the advantage of being usable at any point the interpreter wishes to make them available, not just when the game does.  However, simply using a normal Quetzal file is a bad idea, because the stored PC will have a different meaning: with @save, it points to a store/branch byte, but for an out-of-game save it should point to the first byte of an instruction—whichever instruction was active at the point of the out-of-game save.  In my case, this is @read.

The main problem is that there is no way to flag a Quetzal file as being “special” in a way that current interpreters will know not to load it.  New chunks would be ignored, as would a new flag.  Repeating myself from the above-mentioned thread:

How I've approached it is as follows: Quetzal 1.4 is used in its entirety with two changes:
[list]
[*] The IFF format type is BFMS (modifies §2.1)[/*:m]
[*] The PC must be set to the first byte of an instruction (modifies §5.8)[/*:m][/list:u]

These new files are not recognized by current interpreters, because they expect IFZS, not BFMS; this avoids any problem of mixing the two types together.  Another advantage is that this is blindingly easy to implement.  If an out-of-game restore has been requested, search for BFMS; otherwise, IFZS.  The rest of the code is the same, because the new file format is identical to Quetzal in almost all respects.  In addition, an interpreter can easily figure out what type of save a file contains, and restore accordingly, so an out-of-game restore can load an in-game @save, and vice versa.

If no other authors decide to implement out-of-game saves, this is moot.  But if anybody does, it would be useful to have them all be interoperable with each other.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2702&start=0#p18652
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Death of Schlig
User: ptimony / DateTime: 2011-06-28 00:11:13

My brother figured out how to make my game into a webpage, so if anyone wants to play test, pm me for the link.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2703&start=0#p18653
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Comepetition question
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-06-28 03:15:03

The only thing of slight concern would be:
[quote]Authors of a competition entry may not discuss any of the entries in a public Internet forum during the voting period, nor may they canvass fora for votes.[/quote]
since you are yourself organising a competition in which you enter your game. Presumably, part of your job as an organiser is to publicly announce which games (including your own!) are part of the competition, and encouraing people to play them.

Now I don't think that should be a problem, but it might be best to send an email to the IF Comp organisers beforehand.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2705&start=0#p18654
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Simple actions?
User: Aintelligence / DateTime: 2011-06-28 06:29:15

I'm very new to inform (yes another n00b) but i've run into what seems like a really simple problem.  However, I've tried many different ways to do the same thing and they all break down.

[b]In the defence section is a thing called a bench. The bench is fixed in place.  After sitting on bench: say "AH..."[/b]
is what i have written.

However, i keep getting this 
[i]You wrote 'After sitting on bench'  , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is 'sitting on bench'. But that did not make sense as a description of an action. I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook.[/i]

I've looked in many manuals and i think i'm doing the right thing. 

Any help
Thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2706&start=0#p18655
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Simple actions?
User: Aintelligence / DateTime: 2011-06-28 06:29:43

I'm very new to inform (yes another n00b) but i've run into what seems like a really simple problem.  However, I've tried many different ways to do the same thing and they all break down.

[b]In the defence section is a thing called a bench. The bench is fixed in place.  After sitting on bench: say "AH..."[/b]
is what i have written.

However, i keep getting this 
[i]You wrote 'After sitting on bench'  , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is 'sitting on bench'. But that did not make sense as a description of an action. I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook.[/i]

I've looked in many manuals and i think i'm doing the right thing. 

Any help
Thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2706&start=0#p18656
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple actions?
User: ChristianB / DateTime: 2011-06-28 07:33:42

When you take a look at the Actions index, you'll find:

[quote="Inform 7's Action Index"]"sit on/in/inside [something]" - Entering[/quote]

The command SIT ON BENCH triggers an action called "entering". So you might want to rephrase your after-rule:

Edit (see Skinny Mike's post):

[code]After entering the bench: say "AH..."[/code]

(Note that to really be able to enter the bench you must define the bench as an enterable supporter.)

-- Christian

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2706&start=0#p18657
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple actions?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-06-28 07:38:55

As ChristianB said, you can find out what commands lead to what actions by looking in the actions index (scroll down to the lower part of the page). You can also type "actions" at the command prompt in a game running in the IDE, which puts the game into a mode which will show you what action is being tried. Note that you have to successfully compile a game at least once for either of these to work. What I do is start every project with a single room only ("Lab is a room.") and hit "go" which compiles it and sets up the index.

Also, he meant:[code]After entering the bench: say "Ah...".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2695&start=10#p18658
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Both Poet and Auda, kiss Iris
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-28 07:43:41

Superb, Erik, thanks! It looks as though I can just use the unmodified convert to request -- if the action-name requires only one noun and the second noun is nothing (as it should be), then it seems to go through fine. And I want this to cover requests to put things on things, without having to worry about writing a bunch of special cases depending on how many nouns there are, so that's a relief.

Right now I can't figure out how to do anything with topics, so I'll just hope that no one wants to command a whole squadron to set their phasers to kill. 

...also I can't seem to make a lot of the report rules fire, at least not the way I'm doing it. Well, more delving is required.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2707&start=0#p18659
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Returning the Quantum Cat [INSTEAD]
User: gl00my / DateTime: 2011-06-28 07:50:34

[img]http://instead.syscall.ru/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/cat_en-300x225.jpg[/img]
Bigger screenshot: [url]http://instead.syscall.ru/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/cat_en.jpg[/url]

We are glad  to introduce a new INSTEAD game both in English and Russian! Here it is: Returning the Quantum Cat 1.4!

To play the game you need:

1. Download INSTEAD for your﻿ platform from: [url]http://code.google.com/p/instead/downloads/list[/url].

2. Download  Returning the Quantum Cat game in zip format from: [url]http://instead-games.googlecode.com/files/instead-cat_en-1.4.zip[/url].

3. Press F4 key in INSTEAD or ‘Select Game’ menu, then ‘…’ button  and choose zip-file with game to install.

4. Enjoy! Please, write any feedback to our English forum [url]http://instead.syscall.ru/forum/[/url]

Alternatively, you can download installer (all in one) for windows [url]http://instead-games.googlecode.com/files/instead-cat-1.4.exe[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2706&start=0#p18660
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple actions?
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-28 08:10:26

I think you also have to specify the bench as an enterable supporter in order to allow a player to enter (i.e., sit on) it.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=0#p18661
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really Am)
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-06-28 08:38:16

So every time I try to figure out "interactive fiction", I find that people often sell it by touting the interactivity. Okay, fair enough. If I just wanted to read a bunch of text, I'd probably pick up a book. If I just wanted a story that I could engage with visuals, I'd probably go to a movie. Those are the presumably less-interactive options.

So interactivity.

This past weekend I played the F.E.A.R games again. Very linear shooter, much like Half-Life 2. And, yet, while playing there are genuinely creepy moments and some outright jumps. There's an evolving story as you figure out what Armachem was up to, what Alma has to do with it all, and just whether or not Paxton Fettel (and Alma) are helping me or trying to kill me. I get a visual, auditory, and textual viewpoint of how an evil is spreading and what role I may have to play in that.

I also started playing Mass Effect 2. There I have an evolving story of a threat with a group called the Collectors (who may be working with aliens called the Reapers). I have to assemble a team to take on this threat, all the while not entirely trusting my employer or the people he has me working with (most of whom are mercenaries and thieves). While I don't trust my employer, he did raise me from the dead so I suppose I have to at least try to work with them. So good dialogue moments, good tension, and lots of building up of my motley crew, learning how to communicate with them so that they'll help me on what everyone already believes is a suicide mission.

Lots of interactivity, all of which encourages my participation in visual, audio, and reading aspects. And it's all continuous. Even if nothing immediate is happening on screen (talking to characters, bad guys shooting at me, etc), I can still interact with the world, run around, check out areas, etc. I can hear atmospheric sounds (some of which are really creepy in the F.E.A.R. games). But it's also constrained: there are limits to the interactivity so that the story does progress and at a fairly decent clip in both games mentioned above.

So then I play "interactive fiction". (A good comparison with F.E.A.R in some ways is "Slouching Towards Bedlam" or "Babel" -- both of which have you learning about events that have already taken place via tapes or memories. In F.E.A.R it's finding laptops and listening to phone messages.) Anyway: "interactive fiction". So I read some static text. Then I get a command prompt. I try to type a command. I get a new batch of static text. Maybe an NPC is encountered. I get a menu to list some text items to speak to them about. (Or I have to sit there trying "ASK CREEPY DUDE ABOUT {something} and hope that {something} works.) To get to a location I have to type a bunch of direction commands. Or maybe I can just say "GO TO {room}, which of course makes all the rooms just sort of blur by.

My point here is that it's all very mechanical. Text adventures can't help but expose their mechanics at each and every point. The same could be said of any game, of course, but those other games are busy engaging all of your senses in various ways and at various times. Text adventures are like reading a book where I have to turn the page after every paragraph (and where the pages are stapled together in some cases). I notice it most when I find a text adventure game that has what seems to be a really good story. I'm then frustrated that I can't just keep the story going because the game mechanics keep intruding. Again, wouldn't any game do that? Yes, but also again, those games are engaging my senses and thus are interactive at various levels without violating a convention. (I.e., I don't feel like I'm reading a book that just stopped on me until I do something or watching a movie that won't continue until I say the right thing.)

I don't see "interactive fiction" as being limited to text games so I still prefer "text adventures" because graphic games ARE fictional worlds that you interact with. "Text adventure" at least makes it clear that the emphasis is on text. And I actually see text games offering much more limited interactivity than other games. They do offer more interactivity than books and movies -- but so what? Unless the story is comparable to what I'd read in a book or see in a movie, I don't see the interactivity being all that much of a value add because it usually means I have to jump through numerous hoops -- all the while usually only having one sense engaged. Since it's purely textual, that means pacing and tension can be more difficult to sustain since you have no idea where the player will get stuck, so sometimes story suffers.

I'm not saying all this to bash text adventures. (I used to love text adventures back in the day. I remember playing Moonmist, Planetfall, Ballyhoo, etc.) But I'm really trying to understand the value add of the interactivity that text adventures bring over other formats since many of the most ardent supporters continually say that the interactivity is what sets text adventures apart.

Maybe a good question is the "elevator speech" you would use to convince someone to try text adventures. "You should totally try text adventures, because you ...."  <--- what?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=0#p18662
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-28 09:05:07

Can you answer the question of why I should play RPG games rather than first person shooters? It's the same kind of question, really.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2696&start=0#p18663
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design
User: RandomExile / DateTime: 2011-06-28 09:08:45

[quote="Emerald"]
Nitpick: You mean Big Finish Games, not Big Finish Productions. (My initial reaction: "Wait, Big Finish makes games as well as audio drama? I have to check this out!" Slightly disappointed now...)[/quote]

[fixed]

As someone who's still carrying a torch for Tex Murphy, I assure you your disappointment is no greater than my own.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=0#p18664
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-28 09:46:11

[quote="bukayeva"]The same could be said of any game, of course, but those other games are busy engaging all of your senses in various ways and at various times. Text adventures are like reading a book where I have to turn the page after every paragraph (and where the pages are stapled together in some cases). I notice it most when I find a text adventure game that has what seems to be a really good story. I'm then frustrated that I can't just keep the story going because the game mechanics keep intruding. Again, wouldn't any game do that? Yes, but also again, those games are engaging my senses and thus are interactive at various levels without violating a convention. (I.e., I don't feel like I'm reading a book that just stopped on me until I do something or watching a movie that won't continue until I say the right thing.)[/quote]

Well, this is part of the reason why [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1787]I think puzzles often are at war with stories[/url]; if your game gets the player stuck (let's say that a puzzle is something that's likely to get a player stuck for a little while) then it brings the story to a halt. But I'm not sure this is unique to text adventures; it's a question of how good you are at dealing with the mechanics. It disrupts my immersion in Cave Story's story just as much when I have to replay a boss fight for the twentieth time as it disrupts my immersion in Sparrow's Song when I can't get past the nymph.* And with IF, at least a well-designed hint system (or failing that a working walkthrough) will get you past the obstruction. In action games, if your reflexes aren't good enough you're SOL. 

Not that I'm saying that this is an answer to your question, just that other games can do very well at recreating the "watching a movie that stopped on me" feeling.

*Well, in Cave Story I get the hint of a bit of progress and in Sparrow's Song I don't. But Sparrow's Song may be out on the extreme of unclued puzzles.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=0#p18665
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-06-28 09:48:51

For me personally, I haven't player the Fear or Mass Effect games because the gameplay is too difficult for me. (I did try the ME2 demo, and got hopelessly killed quickly.) I do play and enjoy some graphical games, the turn-based nature of text adventures (to use your terminology) and usually slower pace is one of the things that appeal to me. (And should I get stuck - hints and walkthroughs can help.)

Another thing is the parser. I love the idea of the parser, not in a Sleep-is-death kind of way, but the way it exists in current IF systems.

When compared to most hobbyist-created graphical adventure games I like that most IF is less fuelled by nostalgia.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2709&start=0#p18666
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Hint for J.D. Berry's "Sparrow's Song"; please?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-28 09:54:05

I've played Sparrow's Song up to getting completely stuck on the nymph. From the SmoochieComp reviews, apparently the only way anyone got this puzzle was to e-mail the author. But I don't have his e-mail address. I think some of the SmoochieComp reviewers read this board, so if anyone remembers how to get past this puzzle, can you please tell me? Or if you know a way to decompile the file?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2696&start=0#p18667
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-06-28 10:09:39

Conversation with a character can be agood way to establish that the player understood all the details, because the NPC can ask questions that the player then has to answer with evidence. I recommend Chris Huang's Act of Murder, which uses that method (combined with a notebook of observed facts) to pretty good effect.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2710&start=0#p18668
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Hint for J.D. Berry's "Sparrow's Song"; please?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-28 10:44:43

I've played Sparrow's Song up to getting completely stuck on the nymph. From the SmoochieComp reviews, apparently the only way anyone got this puzzle was to e-mail the author. But I don't have his e-mail address. I think some of the SmoochieComp reviewers read this board, so if anyone remembers how to get past this puzzle, can you please tell me? Or if you know a way to decompile the file?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2711&start=0#p18669
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: additional screen messages outside of my says
User: nicky84 / DateTime: 2011-06-28 11:40:02

Hello - 

I've adapted this slightly from an earlier thread (thanks for the steal) regarding passwords and doors. Here I want the player to give the 'password' which is a persons name to a waiter so he can get a table. I am new to all of this so I might be going around the houses to get where I want. All constructive comments welcomed! Thanks 

[code]
The dining car is a room.

Understand "Here/Dining/Car/Food/Menu/Table" or "dining car" as "[Food]"

Instead of asking the waiter about "[Food]": 
  say "The waiter smiles at you broadly, 'Hello sir, do you have a reservation?"; 
  now the waiter is apprehensive.

Instead of saying yes in the presence of an apprehensive waiter:  
    	say "You smile broadly, 'I do, yes' you reply.";
	now the command prompt is "Wonderful, what name is the reservation under sir? >";
	now the waiter is calm;
	continue the action.
	
Instead of saying no in the presence of an apprehensive waiter:
	say "Ahhh well I don't have any tables available for you. So sorry";
	now the waiter is calm.
	
After reading a command when the command prompt is "Wonderful, what name is the reservation under sir? >":
	if the player's command matches "Biggins" or the player's command matches "biggins": 
		say "Yes sir, please come this way. I believe we have a booth for you.";
		move the player to the booth;
		now the command prompt is ">";
	otherwise:
		say "Oh no, I don't have anything under that name.";
		now the command prompt is ">";
		reject the player's command.

The booth is a room. The booth is north of the dining car.
[/code]

Now it works fine, and everything, however when the player responds to the waiter with yes/no i get an auto message (along with my actions and says) of

That was a rhetorical question. 

and when the person arrives in the booth in the above scenario I get a 
That's not a verb I recognize. 

any thoughts?

Thanks
xx

N

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2711&start=0#p18670
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: additional screen messages outside of my says
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-28 12:07:40

A good general strategy is to run your game, type "rules" and "actions," and then go through your commands. That'll show you which actions are being performed and which rules are firing, which might help you see where the extra rules are coming from.

Offhand, it looks to me as though "That was a rhetorical question" is a standard rule for saying no or saying yes, and that it's happening because your "instead of saying yes..." rule contains "continue the action." If you don't need anything more to happen than what's in your rule, you don't need to continue the action. 

Also, you don't reject the player's command when it matches "biggins," so I think the game is trying to process biggins as a regular command, which makes it a verb it doesn't recognize. Try adding "reject the player's command" to that part of the if-then as well. 

(You might also want to write a rule to block going north from the dining car.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2705&start=0#p18671
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple actions?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-06-28 12:24:35

There's a couple things here.  The major one is that "sitting on" is not the official name of the action you want - it's a synonym.  There's a couple actions where the synonyms may be more intuitive than the original name.  In order to check which actions have which synonyms, you can look in the Index, under Actions, and then search.  Under "sit on/in/inside [something]", you'll see a reference to entering, which is how you know that you'll need to refer to "entering the bench".

The minor thing you need to do is mark the bench as an enterable supporter - if it's not enterable, then the game will print a refusal.

[code]In the defence section is a thing called a bench. The bench is fixed in place.   The bench is an enterable supporter.

After entering the bench: say "AH..."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2711&start=0#p18672
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: additional screen messages outside of my says
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-06-28 12:26:52

You can also drop the apprehensiveness property and use the "if the player consents" method. It forces the player to say either yes or no which may or may not be what you want.

[code]Instead of asking the waiter about "[Food]":
	say "The waiter smiles at you broadly, 'Hello sir, do you have a reservation?";
	if the player consents:
		say "You smile broadly, 'I do, yes' you reply.";
		now the command prompt is "Wonderful, what name is the reservation under sir? >";
	otherwise:
		say "Ahhh well I don't have any tables available for you. So sorry".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=200#p18673
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Akis_M / DateTime: 2011-06-28 12:32:44

Hey, I'm Akis, 25 and studying Computer Engineering in Athens, Greece.

Even though I had the occasional encounter with IF, I've only recently gotten into it, as a result of some after hours discussion about game design possibilities text games can allow. That was of course shortly followed by the(usual?) realization "How could I even match such awesome writing" after going through a couple of games, but well, hopefully there is always space for improvement. [emote]:)[/emote]

For the time being, I'm just getting my feet wet with Inform 7, which comes with a small amount of frustration(but mostly panic) for the lack of all the lovely C/C++ syntax influence programmers tend to expect, and of course trying to catch up and play at least a couple of decades worth of text adventures. [emote]:oops:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=200#p18674
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-28 12:51:08

[quote="Akis_M"]For the time being, I'm just getting my feet wet with Inform 7, which comes with a small amount of frustration(but mostly panic) for the lack of all the lovely C/C++ syntax influence programmers tend to expect[/quote]
You know, TADS 3 was made exactly for people like you [emote];-)[/emote]

Edit:
Btw, I study IT engineering in Samos [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=0#p18675
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: Akis_M / DateTime: 2011-06-28 13:12:33

I'm fairly new to the genre, so I'm still getting my bearings straight, but be that as it may, the term interactivity springs two things in mind. The degree the player interacts with his environment, and the way he does so, which for text adventures is in a sense the parser. I'm guessing a common example is that text games are to books what graphical games are to movies, which may not be exactly the case, but has some truth in it.

Having said that, with my limited experience and historical knowledge of the genre, I can't see the value of a “more/less interactive” argument. Certainly, older text adventure games let you interact with the world in ways that were impossible for graphical games of that era, but nowadays things have changed a lot for graphical games, so that is not necessarily the case.

The way I see it, both text and graphical games have plenty to offer, and without delving any deeper, a couple of the best arguments I could offer someone to convince him to try text adventures have nothing to do with interactivity. One is the part your imagination plays and at the same time(even though at first glance it seems like the opposite) the way that you get a full sense of what the creator/writer wanted you to(for lack of a better description).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=0#p18676
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-06-28 17:27:39

[quote="RealNC"]Can you answer the question of why I should play RPG games rather than first person shooters? It's the same kind of question, really.[/quote]

True ... except that those are questions that get answered regularly by wide audiences that usually talk about the strategy aspects of one versus the immediacy of combat of the others. Both will often be talked about in terms of to what extent they are a bit of both. Mass Effect, for example, is a bit of both shooter and RPG. As is Fallout 3. Combined with story elements, discussions will usually center on how much or how little you want to micromanage aspects of a party, or how much you have to search for items versus just interacting with the world, or the nature of the weapons you can use, etc. People life Half-Life 2 not just because of the story but also because of certain elements, like the gravity gun, giving you a good way to puzzle out solutions to environmental problems. Call of Duty is a good example where people often tout the story but also the cool situational elements, combined with the squad-based mechanics that are getting much better. Even Hitman is like this, where people often bring up the stealth aspects combined with the need to figure out the layout of an environment, ambush your target, get out alive. Deus Ex was another game in that category, although that was much more shooter than not, but you could still choose a wide variety of ways to deal with situations, often having to avoid making sounds that tipped off the enemy you were around.

I never see text adventures discussed in this same context. Maybe they are. I just haven't seen it. I don't see the level of interactivity that I just described.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=0#p18677
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-06-28 17:31:38

[quote="matt w"]But I'm not sure this is unique to text adventures; it's a question of how good you are at dealing with the mechanics.[/quote]

Right, I agree. But in graphical games, you can cue the player in numerous ways. Have a sound near where they should go. (In F.E.A.R, if you get stuck in an area, the ghost of Alma will often appear quickly showing you where you probably want to look. Or lights will flicker indicating something you haven't looked at. Dead Space was also good at this. Even turn-based RPGs can still have elements going on around you to a certain extent.

The only mechanic that text adventures have is the command prompt: everything is static until the player does something. Not true in other games. Stuff can be going on around you that can observe, either with sound or sight. So, again, the very nature of text adventures limits the options for interactivity as I see it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=0#p18678
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-06-28 17:36:09

[quote="Trumgottist"]For me personally, I haven't player the Fear or Mass Effect games because the gameplay is too difficult for me. (I did try the ME2 demo, and got hopelessly killed quickly.) I do play and enjoy some graphical games, the turn-based nature of text adventures (to use your terminology) and usually slower pace is one of the things that appeal to me. (And should I get stuck - hints and walkthroughs can help.)[/quote]

This totally makes sense to me. I can easily see how text adventures would cater to a more sedate gaming experience.

[quote]When compared to most hobbyist-created graphical adventure games I like that most IF is less fuelled by nostalgia.[/quote]

Which is interesting because I find text adventure creation to be largely fueled by nostalgia, largely because if I load up a game today (created with the latest and greatest system), I can still see basically the same interface from twenty or more years ago. I still see people worrying about accomodating a z-machine. (I realize that not all of this is truly fueled by nostalgia but to an outsider it can definitely seem that way.) But I concede this is an area where I'm biased.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=0#p18679
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-06-28 17:41:12

[quote="Akis_M"]...a couple of the best arguments I could offer someone to convince him to try text adventures have nothing to do with interactivity. One is the part your imagination plays and at the same time(even though at first glance it seems like the opposite) the way that you get a full sense of what the creator/writer wanted you to(for lack of a better description).[/quote]

But books and movies require my imagination as well. Books are the closest parallel to text adventures I guess. So I don't see "using your imagination" as being all that much of an argument since just about anything can ask you to do that. The "get a full sense of what that creator/writer wanted you to" could apply to books, movies or graphical games. So, again, I'm not seeing an argument that's really unique or compelling to text adventures.

A poster above did mention the more sedate gaming experience, certainly one that doesn't require hand/eye coordination to any great degree and usually not too many aspects of timing related challenges. Those at least do suggest text adventures. Another, obviously, is the desire to read text. But, again, it's the interactivity people often tout: interacting with the world and thus the story. Those interactions tend to be puzzle-based. So I guess that starts to get at the elevator speech.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2711&start=0#p18680
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: additional screen messages outside of my says
User: nicky84 / DateTime: 2011-06-28 19:54:31

Thank you all that did it! Teamwork!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=0#p18681
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-06-28 20:08:48

[quote="bukayeva"]Even turn-based RPGs can still have elements going on around you to a certain extent.
The only mechanic that text adventures have is the command prompt: everything is static until the player does something. Not true in other games. Stuff can be going on around you that can observe, either with sound or sight.[/quote]

Having real-time stuff going on in turn based games is very uncanny valley to me, actually, kind of like when the newspaper comic "For Better or For Worse" starting adding blinking eyes to the characters in the online archives.  This is why I generally dislike sounds in IF, too.

Anyway, like mattw, I can't for the life of me make progress in real-time games.  The frustration I get from playing the same darn tutorial level repeatedly to try to get to the meat of a platformer or FPS makes those genres a lot [i]less[/i] interactive than IF for me, personally.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2712&start=0#p18682
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Linking to a sticky random string..... so to speak
User: nicky84 / DateTime: 2011-06-28 20:25:19

Hello again - 

Could somebody point me in the direction so I can learn how I link to a answer revealed elsewhere in the game.
ie the player discovers a list of names, and "one name sticks out. Mr Biggins" (or whatever) I've generated the code for that to happen all fine and dandy. But I want the name to change.

 is there a way to attribute the option chosen in any one particular game to be used later on.

-this links in with my previous posts about the player needing a name to get a table reservation, I now have the two bits just need to link it all together. 

Thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=200#p18683
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Akis_M / DateTime: 2011-06-28 20:37:44

[quote="RealNC"][quote="Akis_M"]For the time being, I'm just getting my feet wet with Inform 7, which comes with a small amount of frustration(but mostly panic) for the lack of all the lovely C/C++ syntax influence programmers tend to expect[/quote]
You know, TADS 3 was made exactly for people like you [emote];-)[/emote]

Edit:
Btw, I study IT engineering in Samos [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote][/quote]

I'll be certain to take a closer look at TADS 3 then, even though I have to admit that I do find Inform 7 to be... intriguing. [emote]:oops:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=10#p18684
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-28 20:38:00

[quote="tove"]Anyway, like mattw, I can't for the life of me make progress in real-time games.[/quote]

Hey! I am currently completely and absolutely stuck at the [i]end[/i] of Cave Story, thank you very much. (Intermediate ending.) Did get stuck for a long time at four other points, but eventually made it through:

[spoiler]Balfrog, Frenzied ******, Monster X, and the Core/Waterway -- that last one was very frustrating because I beat the first part the first time, which I think was supposed to be the hard one, and then kept getting destroyed in the second part, which I think is supposed to be a meditative interlude after something really draining, no pun intended. Part of what crossed me up might be that the control scheme changes for the boss battle.[/spoiler]

What kills is me is 3D stuff, at least Lugaru and most Unity-based jumping games. I can't deal with anything that makes me fight enemies with the keys while I'm fighting the camera with the mouse. I really thought Jonathan Blow whiffed on [url=http://granades.com/2011/02/17/what-these-adventure-games-need-is-a-jonathan-blow/#comment-323524]this point[/url]. 

Another issue is that real-time games demand all of my attention for a considerable length of time. With IF, I can listen to music while I'm playing, and even switch back and forth between that and other things at my leisure. If I'm playing say Aquaria (or even Don't Take It Personally or Your Life Flashes), I have to block out time to do just that. Of course here IF is no different from books.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2712&start=0#p18685
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Linking to a sticky random string..... so to speak
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-06-28 20:41:22

You can "link to" text with a "to say" phrase.  Here's an example using sticky random:
[code]
To say villain's name: say "[one of]Jim[or]Henry[or]Sally[sticky random]".

The description of the list of names is "One name stands out: [villain's name]."
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=200#p18686
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-06-28 20:44:08

im the opposite.  not a programmer in any way.  took me a solid year to figure out how to talk to Inform7 so it doesnt yell at me and call me names.  but, for a neophyte like myself, it was one of those things that suddenly [b]clicked[/b] for me.  now i code away without having to consult a book for every damn thing.  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=10#p18687
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-06-28 20:57:25

[quote="matt w"]Hey! I am currently completely and absolutely stuck at the [i]end[/i] of Cave Story, thank you very much. (Intermediate ending.)[/quote]

Oh, I should have said, "like matt w but even worse" then. [emote]:P[/emote]  I have a hard time even [i]watching[/i] 3D games.

Also, oh man I watched my boyfriend attempt that Cave Story ending at least ten times on two separate occasions before I wandered away.  He did defeat it after a few more attempts, and then went back in to try for the hard ending just a few days later.  He eventually gave up and watched a speed run video.  Good luck!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=10#p18688
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-28 21:28:10

Well, in a way there's a serious point -- if you just can't play a style of game, you won't get into it at all; like a novel written in a language you can't read. But even if you're moderately competent at the style, or with the basic mechanics, you can still get absolutely stuck. That's when it's like a novel where some of the pages are glued together.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2704&start=0#p18689
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: [Z-machine] RFC: Out-of-game saves and Quetzal
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-28 22:30:52

I was imagining a new flag chunk for the IFZS document type, rather than creating a new document type. But your point about backwards compatibility makes sense. 

I suggest one addition: the opcode in which the game was interrupted. You say it happens at @read, but it could occur at @read_char as well, and the interpreter might need to know which operation to restart. (Theoretically it could look at the PC, but redundant information is nicer than re-decoding the instruction.)

I expect to use this in Glulx as well. There, the game will always be interrupted in a @glk opcode, so this bit doesn't matter.

(Really, I suppose, a Z-code game could be interrupted at a @save or @restore opcode -- or @output_stream -- while the user was in the middle of selecting a file! But in those cases, it's probably better to save the state as it was at the most recent @read operation. Restoring to the middle of a file prompt would just be confusing.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2713&start=0#p18690
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Creating New Values - Need Some Help With the Setup
User: S_Holmes / DateTime: 2011-06-28 23:57:41

Hello,

I'd like to try and create a 'sound-level' system in my game that can trigger specific events (the alerting of guards, for example).  Some actions that the player will perform can increase or decrease the sound level.  For example:

[quote]After attacking the door with the crowbar:
           increase Sound Level by 8.[/quote]

My problem is getting it all set up.  I checked out section 4.5 (Kinds of Values), but I'm not 100% sure where to go after "Sound Level is a value."  Or, is that all there is to it, and I'm mistakenly thinking it's overly complicated?

Thanks in advance.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2714&start=0#p18691
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Gots to get my reach on
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-06-29 01:57:44

Hi gang,

My question today is... if you replace the 'can't reach inside rooms rule' with your own, do you have to basically write the rule from the ground up?

See, the 'can't reach inside rooms rule's specs aren't spelled out in the Standard Rules - it just translates directly into an I6 function.

I thought that if I replaced the rule, maybe I'd just be creating exceptions. That's to say, that it would work as usual, except now it would also pay attention to the code I added, which were some exceptions for actions and rooms where things can be done from afar-er.

But what happened was - I replaced the rule with my own blob of code, and then some things in my game started to fail the basic accessibility test. Like clothes people were wearing, and parts of people... I couldn't interact with these anymore in game.

How can I rewrite this rule safely? Or should I be doing something like making a new rule and listing it right before it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2713&start=0#p18692
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating New Values - Need Some Help With the Setup
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-06-29 02:05:17

Hi Holmes.

You need to tell the game what kind of value it is.

So in your case you'd say:

[code]Sound Level is a number variable.[/code]

You could also have said 'a text variable', or another kind, but obviously you want number.

Having done that, you're pretty much good to go. When you create a variable, it starts out blank/empty, or in the case of a number, at zero, unless you say otherwise.

Note that where you say 'increase Sound Level by 8' - whenever you're stating a bit of code that will change something during the running of the game, you need to begin it with 'now'.

So the line would be:

[code]now increase Sound Level by 8.[/code]

The now is really referring to 'at the moment this line of code is run, do such and such.'

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2713&start=0#p18693
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating New Values - Need Some Help With the Setup
User: S_Holmes / DateTime: 2011-06-29 02:12:11

Wow, so it really was that simple.  Thanks, severedhand.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2713&start=0#p18694
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating New Values - Need Some Help With the Setup
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-06-29 02:29:09

A small correction: the "now" phrase's syntax is actually "now ... is ...". "Increase X by Y" is a fixed phrase so "now" is not allowed there. Either "increase Sound Level by 8" or "now Sound Level is Sound Level + 8".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2713&start=0#p18695
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating New Values - Need Some Help With the Setup
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-06-29 03:00:52

Oh yeah, you're right.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=10#p18696
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-06-29 03:55:16

Now I don't want to stand for any side, but RPGs and FPSs are being so recurrently mentioned that I think It's worth to state just one historical fact: IF's battle to stay in the video-game market was fought, and lost, more than 20 years ago. If it survives today is, among many other reasons, 'cause its current audience is not exclusively searching for [i]that [/i]video-gaming experience. That doesn´t mean IF shouldn't be considered a ludical, enjoyable affair. In fact, when someone at job has some spare time and asks for something [i]fun [/i]to do, I usually mention Violet or Lost Pig provided the person is fluent in written English, no matter wether she is aware of IF at all or not. Unexpectedly my suggest has worked succesfully at least a couple of times!
I could dig deeper into that, but I've been acting as an IF author recently so my point of view is clearly biased and I don't want to distort this thread.
Just remember all of you, to make your focus clearer, that, interactivity or not, it's not about video-games anymore.  [emote]:)[/emote] 

--

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=10#p18697
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-29 04:42:42

[quote="bukayeva"][quote="RealNC"]Can you answer the question of why I should play RPG games rather than first person shooters? It's the same kind of question, really.[/quote]

True ... except that those are questions that get answered regularly by wide audiences that usually talk about the strategy aspects of one versus the immediacy of combat of the others. Both will often be talked about in terms of to what extent they are a bit of both. Mass Effect, for example, is a bit of both shooter and RPG. As is Fallout 3. Combined with story elements, discussions will usually center on how much or how little you want to micromanage aspects of a party, or how much you have to search for items versus just interacting with the world, or the nature of the weapons you can use, etc.
[...]
I never see text adventures discussed in this same context. Maybe they are. I just haven't seen it. I don't see the level of interactivity that I just described.[/quote]
Well, I don't see adventure games in general discussed in this context. Why should anyone play Syberia, Monkey Island or The Longest Journey instead of Half Life? Because of the differences in the way you handle your weapons, battle tactics and armor?

Answer that question first. Then you can go on and ask the question of why someone should play Lost Pig instead of Monkey Island. And why "instead"? Can't someone play both?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2712&start=0#p18698
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Linking to a sticky random string..... so to speak
User: nicky84 / DateTime: 2011-06-29 05:23:46

ahhh splendid! Thats interesting. Thanks.

Ahhh gawsh everyone on here is so helpful! I was wondering if people would get all snippy but they have been so super nice. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2712&start=0#p18699
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Linking to a sticky random string..... so to speak
User: nicky84 / DateTime: 2011-06-29 05:59:17

Hmmmm  - almost got it. 

However I don't think it's understanding the token when I compile.

Problem. I was unable to understand what you meant by the grammar token 'pax' in the sentence 'if the player's command matches "[pax]" begin'

[code]
To say pax name: say "[one of]Mr Biggins[or]Mr Trampton[or]Mr Smith[sticky random]".

Instead of examining the document, say "One name stands out: [pax name].".

After reading a command when the command prompt is "Wonderful, what name is the reservation under sir? >":
	if the player's command matches "[pax]": 
		say "Yes sir, please come this way. I believe we have a booth for you.";
		move the player to the booth;
		now the command prompt is ">";
		reject the player's command;
	otherwise:
		say "Oh no, I don't have anything under that name.";
		now the command prompt is ">";
		reject the player's command.

[/code]

This is all the code that relates to this bit, but i've chopped a bit out relating to the '...after reading a command when the commnd prompt is..." as that is just going to be be too much for the post. 

I'm thinking that maybe I need to select the pax name when play beings or something...

Thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=10#p18700
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-29 06:21:13

[quote="bukayeva"][quote="matt w"]But I'm not sure this is unique to text adventures; it's a question of how good you are at dealing with the mechanics.[/quote]

Right, I agree. But in graphical games, you can cue the player in numerous ways. Have a sound near where they should go.[/quote]

I missed this before, but this is not my point. In real-time games, you can know exactly what to do and still be stuck, because you can't do it, because you're not good at dealing with the mechanics. That doesn't (usually?) come up in text games, where there isn't a separation between the mechanics and knowing what to do. (Well, sometimes you know what to do and can't guess the verb

The question of getting stuck with the mechanics seems to me separate from the question of having ambient happenings versus pausing for the command prompt. When I'm in the groove in IF, the command prompt doesn't register much more than I consciously register turning pages in an absorbing book.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=10#p18701
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-06-29 06:54:48

[quote="RealNC"]Well, I don't see adventure games in general discussed in this context. Why should anyone play Syberia, Monkey Island or The Longest Journey instead of Half Life?[/quote]

These discussions happen all the time on gaming forums. For Monkey Island, the focus is usually on the fact that you can't really die and the humor elements (such as the insulting contests). The graphical ways that Guybrush Threepwood acts during certain scenes, especially when trying something dangerous are often brought up. The Longest Journey (and Dreamfall) are usually because of the visuals that are combined with the story, as well as how it's also somewhat difficult to get stuck. Dreamfall over Longest Journey usually has to do with the fact that you can roam more freely and the addition of combat (but that isn't too hard). Syberia is usually talked about in the context of its visuals and the relatively unique setting and puzzles that use the setting as triggers. So there are very clear reasons given to tell someone what game they might prefer based on their preferences (or at least try if they don't know their preferences yet).

[quote]Can't someone play both?[/quote]

Sure they can. But people often make choices at least for a time. And for the vast majority of gamers, text adventures are the last choice. I realize that's not the case with this crowd but that stands to reason since I'm posting on a forum for people who like to play text adventures.

I'm actually more surprised that people who are clearly passionate about text adventures can't actually come up with a simple, concise statement of why someone should give it a try.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=10#p18702
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-06-29 07:02:13

[quote="matt w"]The question of getting stuck with the mechanics seems to me separate from the question of having ambient happenings versus pausing for the command prompt.[/quote]

To game designers it's not necessarily separate. Take Mass Effect. If you don't do certain actions -- like if you just stand there -- the game will prompt you about moves you might take. It doesn't have to wait for a command. It notices that I might be stuck. (If I turn off tutorial mode, that doesn't happen, of course.) It's not even "getting stuck" with mechanics. It's about the mechanics not having a flow. I already mentioned how F.E.A.R does this. Granted, though, much of this has to do with how the game author utilizies the mechanics in order to provide an experience. It just seems that in text adventures the game author has very few chances to modify the mechanics or allow for a variety of interactivity options (which, again, is what text adventures are often touted for: their interactivity).

[quote]When I'm in the groove in IF, the command prompt doesn't register much more than I consciously register turning pages in an absorbing book.[/quote]

Except perhaps where there's inconsistent or absent cluing and you have to type in ranges of commands to see what works. Or perhaps navigating all over the place, seeing what you might have missed. And then making sure to reread the static text in case the author sometimes changes the room description. (It'd be like each page of a book recapping the setting for a scene just in case you forgot from page to page.)

But you definitely sound like you have value adds that you see in text adventures. So what would your hypothetical elevator speech be? I'm genuinely curious. "Hey, if you're looking for a neat gaming experience, try text adventures because ...." <-- what?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=10#p18703
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-06-29 07:09:48

[quote="rockersuke"]Now I don't want to stand for any side, but RPGs and FPSs are being so recurrently mentioned that I think It's worth to state just one historical fact: IF's battle to stay in the video-game market was fought, and lost, more than 20 years ago. If it survives today is, among many other reasons, 'cause its current audience is not exclusively searching for [i]that [/i]video-gaming experience.[/quote]

So what are they searching for? What makes text adventures that unique "other" gaming experience. Clearly the fact that it's all text based is a driver of the unique gaming experience. Lack of graphics (often) and lack of sound (often). Lack of the need for manual dexterity or hand/eye coordination. Lack of concern for timed solutions (usually but not always). Emphasis on using imagination similar to how you would do so with a book: i.e., you have to picture scenes and characters in your mind rather than having them visually in front of you.

I guess I feel like I'm answering my own question but it also seems like (a) most people who want the imagination route could get that through a book so (b) it's the act of controlling the player character that makes the difference. You can do that in just about every game, of course, which then seems to come back to *how* you can control the protagonist that would make the difference; i.e., the level of interactivity afforded by the agency you allow the player. And, again, I don't see where text adventures provide more of that. Others have said "maybe it's not more or less" but, as you said, the battle was lost for text adventures -- at least in a mainstream format -- many years ago. So perhaps for many people it does come down to "more or less" and the notion that text adventures are too much like a book but with extra "complications" and not enough like other game formats, so people by and large (a) choose a book or (b) choose other game formats.

[quote]Just remember all of you, to make your focus clearer, that, interactivity or not, it's not about video-games anymore.[/quote]

What is it about then? I don't know what you mean here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2694&start=10#p18704
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Needing help on a wait-through scene (and a few other st
User: Roadcrosser / DateTime: 2011-06-29 07:43:57

I'm giving up on the character actually doing stuff and I'm gonna just get the player to see what happens without doing anything. Right now the problem is beginning the scene...

[code]When play begins:
[Whole buncha stuff here that actually works as planned, not needing me to bringing it up]
	begin Prologue[/code]

Prologue is already defined as a scene and I'm pretty sure that's not the code. I would've done a
[code]Prologue starts when...[/code]

but there is no point in time to define that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2694&start=10#p18705
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Needing help on a wait-through scene (and a few other st
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-06-29 07:59:27

So you want to start the scene right when the game starts? You can piggyback on the "Entire Game" scene that starts when the game starts and lasts for the duration of the game.

[code]Prologue begins when the entire game begins.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2694&start=10#p18706
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Needing help on a wait-through scene (and a few other st
User: Roadcrosser / DateTime: 2011-06-29 08:05:37

Nope, I did mention I added stuff in between. What I probably did fail to mention was that there was some player interaction there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2694&start=10#p18707
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Needing help on a wait-through scene (and a few other st
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-06-29 08:14:23

Ok, then you just have to figure out what is the change in the world state that would trigger the scene and use that. The common trigger is a change in the player's or some other object's location, or a change in some object's property.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=10#p18708
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-06-29 08:33:19

[quote="bukayeva"][quote="RealNC"]Well, I don't see adventure games in general discussed in this context. Why should anyone play Syberia, Monkey Island or The Longest Journey instead of Half Life?[/quote]
These discussions happen all the time on gaming forums. For Monkey Island, the focus is usually on the fact that you can't really die and the humor elements (such as the insulting contests). The graphical ways that Guybrush Threepwood acts during certain scenes, especially when trying something dangerous are often brought up. The Longest Journey (and Dreamfall) are usually because of the visuals that are combined with the story, as well as how it's also somewhat difficult to get stuck. Dreamfall over Longest Journey usually has to do with the fact that you can roam more freely and the addition of combat (but that isn't too hard). Syberia is usually talked about in the context of its visuals and the relatively unique setting and puzzles that use the setting as triggers. So there are very clear reasons given to tell someone what game they might prefer based on their preferences (or at least try if they don't know their preferences yet).[/quote]
The same holds true for an IF game. There's setting, humor, not getting stuck, visuals, sound... Of course, the number of truly polished text adventures (with graphics and sound and whatnot) is extremely limited these days. I myself don't like 100% text IF that much. They simply seem to be lacking something vital. It's bearable with short games. But for a longer work of IF without any graphics and sound, nah. It gets quite boring after a while.

[quote]I'm actually more surprised that people who are clearly passionate about text adventures can't actually come up with a simple, concise statement of why someone should give it a try.[/quote]
Here goes: "Because you might like it."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2715&start=0#p18709
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Different Error Messages with Is A Kind Of Construct
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-06-29 08:35:49

So let's say I have this simple source:

[code]
A location is a kind of room.

There is a location called the Drawbridge.
[/code]

That gets me this error:

[quote]'There is a location called the Drawbridge'  : but I can only make 'a something called whatever' when the something is a kind I know, possibly qualified with adjectives[/quote]

When I change the code to be this:

[code]
A location is a kind of room.

The Drawbridge is a location.
[/code]

I get this error:

[quote]You wrote 'The Drawbridge is a location'  : but this seems to say that a thing is a value, like saying 'the chair is 10'.[/quote]

Neither message tells me why this isn't working and I'm not sure why I'm getting different error messages anyway.

If I try this:

[code]
An outdoor location is a kind of room.

The Drawbridge is an outdoor location.
[/code]

that works.

So it seems like "location" is an internal word that Inform 7 uses perhaps. I look up that phrase in the documentation and eventually find that may be the case. [b]But I wanted to make sure that this is why I was not only getting an error, but getting two different errors based on a slight difference in the assertion of the room.[/b]

I'm wondering if it would be possible for Inform to just tell me that I'm using a reserved word. In this case, when I used "outdoor location" it was fine but that means Inform could probably (maybe?) have flagged the fact that I was using "location" which is a reserved word. The only thing that made me question this was the fact of two different error messages for what seems to be the same issue. As an Inform developer, this would worry me. I would expect the assertion

[code]A location is a kind of room.[/code]

to generate a compiler error, if I'm understanding why Inform won't let me use the previous source text.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2715&start=0#p18710
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Different Error Messages with Is A Kind Of Construct
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-29 08:44:02

This is a namespace issue. The "location" is a global variable that holds the name of the room where the player is, so it can't be used to name a new kind of room.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=20#p18711
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-06-29 08:50:22

[quote="RealNC"]The same holds true for an IF game. There's setting, humor, not getting stuck, visuals, sound...[/quote]

There's [i]textual[/i] setting. You have to make it clear what you are promoting to people. Text adventures may imply that but then the setting really demands good writing skills to make it feel like an actual setting, rather than just a bunch of text. So "play this game because the settings are described really well, and the writing is quite atmospheric" would be something enticing. "There's a setting." would probably not.

Humor is a good one.

"Not getting stuck" totally depends, of course. I've seen many people get stuck on text adventures because they missed reading one bit of text that they didn't know had changed (since it only changed after one event and it wasn't clear what had changed). I've seen people get "stuck" in the sense of having to sit and examine everything in their inventory to remember what the bit of text was about it and then try "use {thing} with {thing}" or lots navigating to read a bunch of text to see if they missed an exit or something.

Visuals, sounds ... I'm not sure. I don't see much effort on authors to really utilize all senses when authoring text games. There are some exceptions, granted. And if people want visuals and sounds, going to a text-based game is often not going to be what they think of, any more than they would go to a book when they really wanted a movie.

[quote]Here goes: "Because you might like it."[/quote]

And how has that worked for text adventures lately? [emote]:)[/emote] Seriously: people have lots of ways to spend their time and they [i]may[/i] like lots of things. That argument can apply to [i]anything[/i]. Try skiing. You may like it. Try basketball. You may like it. Try World of Warcraft. You may like it. But when there are lots of choices, making options compelling may require slightly more thought. Again, you may not need this since you're already interested in text games. If this is the best people can do, I can see why text games have never really taken off again even though, in many ways, I can see lots of potential for text-based game worlds.

Going back to what I said before: "setting really demands good writing skills to make it feel like an actual setting, rather than just a bunch of text." I think that's one value add that text games could potentially bring as a value add: good writing. (Some people tout Mass Effect's story and thus writing as really good. I actually don't think it's all that great, to be honest. I mean, it's okay -- but it's a story that's been done to death. It's the combination of other gaming elements that makes it workable.) But let's face it, beyond a pure puzzle-fest, a text-based game pretty much has to have solid writing because it lives and dies by the text that it presents. If that text is boring, confusing, etc., then people won't be able to tell if they like the experience of text games because they'll equate the experience with bad or shallow writing.

I guess I'm probably asking two questions in this thread as I think on it. One is "How would you present a compelling case for text adventures?" and "Why is the level of interactivity often touted as the key determinant of text adventures when it seems there is less interactivity than other game formats?"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=20#p18712
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-06-29 08:55:23

I came across the TextFyre site. I had heard about "TextFyre" before but didn't know if it was a library for text games or what. Anyway, I see on that site the value add seems to be:

[quote]"Textfyre creates Interactive Fiction, also known as text adventures. Our games require you to read and respond by typing in natural language commands. We use the greatest graphics in the universe...your imagination."[/quote]

That seems like a really, really shallow way to promote text games. It would certainly work for someone already involved in text games. I'm curious: how many people who frequent these forums have purchased the games mentioned on that site?

I also found Malinche Entertainment. At least their blurb is more interesting:

[quote]"Combine the thrill of reading fiction books with the unexpected twists and turns found in digital entertainment and you get an exciting fusion called interactive fiction."[/quote]

That, at least, makes me curious. The site also says:

[quote]"Are you in search of a fresh work of fiction to captivate you? Or perhaps a new form of stimulation for your mind and your imagination? Maybe you are an adventurer thirsting for new worlds to explore. Relax. Because you have found what you seek.

That's because interactive fiction delivers an unexpected experience for anyone who enjoys compelling fiction books. Interactive fiction breaks through the boundaries of the eBook by immersing you, the reader, in the story. In every Malinche work of interactive fiction you don't just read a fiction book, you become a part of it through your direct participation in how the story unfolds - and how it ends."[/quote]

This is clearly catering to readers but at the very least, it's not bad. This to me would have been a good elevator speech.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2715&start=0#p18713
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Different Error Messages with Is A Kind Of Construct
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-06-29 08:58:55

[quote="ektemple"]This is a namespace issue. The "location" is a global variable that holds the name of the room where the player is, so it can't be used to name a new kind of room.[/quote]

That sounds like a great exception message that Inform could generate to let you know exactly that. [emote]:)[/emote] I concede this might also be in the manual in a place that I missed it and upon looking at some examples I do see that "location" is used. As a developer, I'd still be worried about two different error messages if only because it makes how the system is doing things a bit more opaque.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2715&start=0#p18714
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Different Error Messages with Is A Kind Of Construct
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-29 09:22:18

Inform should never allow the sentence "A location is a kind of room" at all, and should probably trigger a message that indicates that Inform already has a definition of "location" and that this incompatible.

However, I don't think there's an issue with the use of two different messages. These result from two slightly different interpretations of your code, and that's really unavoidable. Both of them *are* telling you what's wrong, and relatively clearly: they both imply that Inform is not reading "location" as a kind, and one of them specifically says that Inform is reading "location" as a thing. These messages could definitely be clearer, though, or at least have more expository text tacked on, but I think they're doing their jobs. A quick search of the docs using the IDE would have led you straight to the library's use of "location"--it's probably used at least a hundred times in the text and sample code; there's also the somewhat out of date syntax summary, which is a handy reference for this kind of thing.

You should post this as an error-message issue at the [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/]bug-tracking site[/url].

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2715&start=0#p18715
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Different Error Messages with Is A Kind Of Construct
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-06-29 10:00:10

[quote="ektemple"]However, I don't think there's an issue with the use of two different messages. These result from two slightly different interpretations of your code, ...[/quote]

But my code is saying the same thing in both cases isn't it? That should imply a single interpretation. Clearly not.

[quote]and that's really unavoidable. Both of them *are* telling you what's wrong, and relatively clearly: they both imply ...[/quote]

Error messages shouldn't be "relatively" clear nor should they imply. They should assert. The one messages says "'There is a location called the Drawbridge' : but I can only make 'a something called whatever' when the something is a kind I know, possibly qualified with adjectives"

As far as I could tell from my source, 'location' was a kind it knew since I defined it before the assertion.

The other message is "You wrote 'The Drawbridge is a location' : but this seems to say that a thing is a value, like saying 'the chair is 10'."

It says it "seems to say" this but not necessarily that this was the case. Once you know about location and value, of course, then it's clear. But, on the other hand, once you know it, you probably wouldn't make that mistake in the first place. You also said "one of them specifically says that Inform is reading 'location' as a thing" but based on the above error, I actually thought Inform was telling me location was a value, not a thing. So this is much clearer to you than me in that case.

[quote]A quick search of the docs using the IDE would have led you straight to the library's use of "location"--it's probably used at least a hundred times in the text and sample code[/quote]

Agreed. And that's what I ultimately did. But again it just seemed odd to me how Inform was acting. As far as writing a bug, I'd hate to write a bug if Inform is "telling [me] what's wrong, and relatively clearly." [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2714&start=0#p18716
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Gots to get my reach on
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-06-29 10:30:40

Since the reaching inside rules are a rulebook with an outcome, you can create an earlier rule and "rule succeeds with result allow access" or "...deny access".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2712&start=0#p18717
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Linking to a sticky random string..... so to speak
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-29 10:53:28

I think the problem is that tove's solution gives you a text substitution, which is fine if you just need to keep printing it out (or understanding it even), but matching a bit of the player's command requires a snippet or text or indexed text (I have trouble keeping them straight). Setting the string when play begins is probably a good way to do it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=20#p18718
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-29 10:57:47

[quote="bukayeva"][quote="matt w"]The question of getting stuck with the mechanics seems to me separate from the question of having ambient happenings versus pausing for the command prompt.[/quote]

To game designers it's not necessarily separate. Take Mass Effect. If you don't do certain actions -- like if you just stand there -- the game will prompt you about moves you might take.[/quote]

But that's not what I think of as being stuck because I haven't mastered the mechanics in these games -- I'm thinking of getting killed over and over again on the same screen, and I bet those games don't prompt me there. (Well, they might have some kind of adaptive difficulty.) This can work for 

[quote][quote]When I'm in the groove in IF, the command prompt doesn't register much more than I consciously register turning pages in an absorbing book.[/quote]

Except perhaps where there's inconsistent or absent cluing and you have to type in ranges of commands to see what works. Or perhaps navigating all over the place, seeing what you might have missed. And then making sure to reread the static text in case the author sometimes changes the room description. (It'd be like each page of a book recapping the setting for a scene just in case you forgot from page to page.)[/quote]

Yeah, what I mean by being "in the groove" is that those things aren't happening. Navigating all over the place looking for something I've missed is one of the most immersion-breaking IF experiences for me. (But it's by no means unique to IF; it seems like it's most of the game in Aquaria, and even Redder, for instance. And don't get me started on graphic adventures.) Non-IF games even have the equivalent of the repeated static text, with the cutscene that plays every time just before the boss fight you can't beat. Though walking through an already-explored area that has nice scenery is definitely better than navigating through an already-explored area that's described with nice graphics.

As for my elevator speech -- I guess it's something like "Games that you read"? "If podcasts make you say 'Please write down what you're saying so I don't have to listen to your stupid voices, then you might like IF"?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2715&start=0#p18719
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Different Error Messages with Is A Kind Of Construct
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-29 11:26:56

[quote="bukayeva"]As far as writing a bug, I'd hate to write a bug if Inform is "telling [me] what's wrong, and relatively clearly." [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

People who are willing to spill the verbiage about minor issues on this forum but aren't willing to file bug reports get on my nerves--especially when they refer to themselves as developers who are "worried" about the software. This post is probably touchier than it ought to be, especially since I didn't bother to read your initial post all the way through, but just to be clear:

My post confirmed two problems you mentioned, both of which I would think you'd have agreed with:

1) Inform should not allow the name of an already existing global variable to be used as a kind.
2) The two messages that you did receive, while they are appropriate to the context, could be worded much more clearly (I said, "These messages could definitely be clearer, though, or at least have more expository text tacked on... You should post this as an error-message issue at the bug-tracking site").

While I disagreed with your contention that Inform should have given you the same message for both of the constructs you presented, I certainly did not argue that the messages you received were well worded--just that they were not spurious.

Now, I didn't read your original post all the way through, so I missed that you had actually worked out what the error was before posting, and that your question really was limited to why there are two messages for what you consider to be a single assertion. So I should have just given you this explanation to begin with:

In the case of "There is a location called the Drawbridge", the grammar forces Inform to read the assertion as an attempt to define a new object of a given kind, but it's fails because it can't read "location" as a kind because the global variable is taking precedence. In the other case, "The Drawbridge is a location", you are using a much more generic form; there is no clear indication in the grammar of the assertion that "location" is intended to be a kind. It's just as likely, for example, that you are trying to store the Drawbridge in the location variable. So, Inform reads this an illegal attempt to set a thing to an undetermined value. (This is the message that I think is the most unclear, just because Inform doesn't say *which* is the "thing" and which is the undetermined "value"; it would also be nice if it spelled out the kinds of situations in which the error might arise, as the more recently added messages tend to do.)

Again, these are issues that could easily be fixed. You indicate that you're not inclined to file reports for them, and I guess that's your business, but please don't pretend that it's because I talked you out of it...

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=20#p18720
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-06-29 11:42:35

[quote="matt w"]But that's not what I think of as being stuck because I haven't mastered the mechanics in these games -- I'm thinking of getting killed over and over again on the same screen, and I bet those games don't prompt me there. (Well, they might have some kind of adaptive difficulty.)[/quote]

Exactly that. They may have adaptive difficulty or they may have messages (or dialogue) that help you along only if you clearly keep having issues or keep having the same sort of issue. Eventually there may be a bypass mechanism. It can also help if you see what is killing you, as opposed to typing a command and getting killed. If you see what killed you, you can work to avoid it. Crouch behind those barrels. Don't rush into the room. Use the environment as protection. Go into cloak mode -- but make sure I dont' rustle the bushes or bump into someone. (I'm thinking Crysis with that last example.)

I realize typing a command like "REMOVE PILLAR" can make it very clear what killed you if a rockfall happens. But the thing to do then is to not remove the pillar. If you determine you need to remove it, then you have to find what to replace the pillar with or something. But it's a limited form of interactivity. It's highly unlikely that in a text game you will be able to use your enviornment to the extent that you at least could in other games. (Granted, not all games do this.) But Dead Space, Splinter Cell, Alpha Protocol, and others do encourage more interactivity by figuring out how to use environmental cues to solve problems in different ways. (Again, Half-Life 2's gravity is a good -- but oft-stated -- example.)

[quote]Yeah, what I mean by being "in the groove" is that those things aren't happening. Navigating all over the place looking for something I've missed is one of the most immersion-breaking IF experiences for me. (But it's by no means unique to IF; it seems like it's most of the game in Aquaria, and even Redder, for instance. And don't get me started on graphic adventures.)[/quote]

I agree with all of this. As you say, none of these potential pitfalls is unique to text adventures. But that just shows text adventures can suffer the same problems as other games. It doesn't say how the interactivity of text adventures in particular is a determining factor that makes these challenges more surmountable necessarily or make a game more entertaining.

[quote]Non-IF games even have the equivalent of the repeated static text, with the cutscene that plays every time just before the boss fight you can't beat.[/quote]

Very true. But text games repeat their text pretty much all the time. And I don't know if the author sometimes changes the text of the rooms based on events or if new objects have appeared. So I have to read it all the time or at least until I get a feel for what the author does -- and then hope they're consistent. Most graphical games that do have cut scenes also allow you to skip through with a key press or mouse button push. A boss fight -- yeah. That you're often stuck doing again. But that challenge is also part of why people go to games where they fight bosses. If you're playing a game that has boss battles, you presumably know that going in (or pretty quickly determine that you don't like those kinds of games).

[quote]As for my elevator speech -- I guess it's something like "Games that you read"?[/quote]

To which someone who knows games might say, "Oh, you mean like the codex stuff in Mass Effect? Or the newspaper entries in Deus Ex? Oh, you mean like those old King's Quest and Space Quest games?" My point there being it's more accurate to say "Games where reading is the primary interactive element. You have to read the text to see how your actions have changed the story world." That's a qualitiative difference between the reading in text games and the reading in most other game formats.

[quote]"If podcasts make you say 'Please write down what you're saying so I don't have to listen to your stupid voices, then you might like IF"?[/quote]

So is that you don't like to hear voice dialogue or that you simply prefer text to read? There are many games without voice dialogue or where you can turn voices off and those aren't text games. I'm not being purposely obtuse here. I'm just showing how it seems people can't really define the value add very well.

I think the Malinche site that I quoted earlier definitely seems to capture what might appeal to someone who is looking more for a reading experience than a gaming experience that utilizes multiple modes of interaction. I'm not sure that same set of statements would appeal to your average gamer, though, but maybe it would. I don't know what the TextFyre and Malinche's businesses do in terms of sales.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=20#p18721
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-29 12:33:14

[quote="bukayeva"][quote="matt w"]But that's not what I think of as being stuck because I haven't mastered the mechanics in these games -- I'm thinking of getting killed over and over again on the same screen, and I bet those games don't prompt me there. (Well, they might have some kind of adaptive difficulty.)[/quote]

Exactly that. They may have adaptive difficulty or they may have messages (or dialogue) that help you along only if you clearly keep having issues or keep having the same sort of issue. Eventually there may be a bypass mechanism.[/quote]

Some games have that. Some IF games have something similar. But how do these messages help you when your problem is that you can't make a certain jump? "It looks like you suck at jumps. Try sucking less!" (And bypass mechanisms are problematic -- I read somewhere, I thought at baf's The Stack but I can't find it, that when a part of the game is so onerous that you find yourself needing build in a mechanism to skip it, you might want to rethink some of your design decisions. Maybe it's nice for noobs, like me, but still.) 

[quote]It can also help if you see what is killing you, as opposed to typing a command and getting killed. If you see what killed you, you can work to avoid it. Crouch behind those barrels. Don't rush into the room. Use the environment as protection. Go into cloak mode -- but make sure I dont' rustle the bushes or bump into someone. (I'm thinking Crysis with that last example.)

I realize typing a command like "REMOVE PILLAR" can make it very clear what killed you if a rockfall happens. But the thing to do then is to not remove the pillar. If you determine you need to remove it, then you have to find what to replace the pillar with or something.[/quote]

Yes, when you fail at doing something it's nice to get feedback that indicates what you can do. Good IF does this. But you're just talking about strategy and puzzles in action games, which I imagine tend to be easier than they are in IF, and which in any case are irrelevant to the point that I'm making: these aren't the core mechanism of these games (are they?), and if you know exactly what to do but you're not good enough at the core mechanism to do it, then all the messages and dialogue and being able to see what is killing you before you hit the button and cloak mode in the world won't do a damn thing to help you. It's not that I can't see that the Frenzied Doctor is ripping me a new one, it's that I can't stop him from doing it. This is not an an obscure point. 

[quote]But it's a limited form of interactivity. It's highly unlikely that in a text game you will be able to use your enviornment to the extent that you at least could in other games. (Granted, not all games do this.) But Dead Space, Splinter Cell, Alpha Protocol, and others do encourage more interactivity by figuring out how to use environmental cues to solve problems in different ways. (Again, Half-Life 2's gravity is a good -- but oft-stated -- example.)[/quote]

So I don't play AAA games and I haven't played any of these, but this seems roughly like complaining that all these games have less interactivity than the Sims because they don't let you build a house or set your characters' goals. Or that they have less interactivity than Galatea because all you can do is move through the environment, jump, shoot, and pick dialogue choices (or whatever); you can't converse on a wide range of topics just by typing a keyword. They're different kinds of ranges of interactivity, aren't they?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2716&start=0#p18722
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Ending scenes with speech
User: Andsowejump / DateTime: 2011-06-29 13:44:58

I'm writing a sort of cave crawl adventure that is heavily dependant on speech and player interaction.  Although I am fairly well into it, I have reached a fallback, so any help is appreciated.  [emote]:shock:[/emote] 

What I am trying to do is to have a scene which is mainly player dialogue with somebody else.  The trouble is, I'm not quite sure how to end a scene when a person in the game says a specific phrase.

Merci

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2695&start=10#p18723
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Both Poet and Auda, kiss Iris
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-29 13:45:24

As an alternative to folks, you might consider requiring the player to do some scheduling:

[quote]
> program mode
Commands to robots will now be added to their programs instead of being carried out immediately.

> auda, kiss iris
The command "kiss iris" has been added to Auda's program.

> poet, kiss iris
The command "kiss iris" has been added to Poet's program.

> run programs
Auda and Poet kiss Iris simultaneously.

All programs have now been cleared.
[/quote]

I think that could be done without delving into I6, although you might end up using lists and stored actions, and that could get ugly too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2716&start=0#p18724
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Ending scenes with speech
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-06-29 13:56:16

There's probably a ton of ways to do this. What I'm about to tell you is what I do regularly, and it is not tested. I stick all sorts of tags at everything, PC included. Like so:

[code]A person can be solved or unsolved. A person is usually unsolved.

Final dialog is a scene. Final dialog begins when (whatever).

Final dialog ends when Doe is solved.

Instead of asking Doe about final subject:
     say "'This is the last time I'm telling you to shave your beard. Do it or I'll get a divorce.'";
     now Doe is solved.[/code]

If you want the ending trigger to be present in multiple subjects:

[code]Instead of asking Doe about an ending subject:
    say "'And take a shower every now and then! Chirst!'[solve doe]"

Instead of asking Doe about another ending subject:
     say "'And those teeth, dear lord, those molars!!!'[solve doe]"

To say solve doe:
     now doe is solved.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2716&start=0#p18725
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Ending scenes with speech
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-29 13:57:39

What sort of conversation system are you using?

Remember that say phrases can do anything, not just printing text.

[code]The Stage is a room.

The curtain is in stage. The curtain can be open or closed. "The curtain is [if open]open[otherwise]closed[end if]." The curtain is open.

Bob is a man in The Stage.

Instead of asking Bob about something:
	say "'Ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies. I'm afraid it's [curtains] for you, my friend.'"
	
To say curtains:
	say "curtains";
	now the curtain is closed;

Epilogue is a scene. Epilogue begins when the curtain is closed.

When Epilogue begins:
	remove Bob from play.
	
Test me with "ask Bob about the script/l"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2717&start=0#p18726
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Appending text to a room description
User: kanato / DateTime: 2011-06-29 13:59:05

I want to append some dynamic text to room descriptions. For example, to include a description of the weather.

[code]
Weather-value is a kind of value. The weather-values are be clear, cloudy, light-rain, medium-rain, heavy-rain.

The weather is a weather-value that varies. The weather is medium-rain.

A region can be indoors or outdoors.

Definition: a room is outdoors if it is in an outdoors region.

 [This doesn't work:]
Rule for printing the description of an outdoors room (called the item):
	say "[description of the item][weather-description][paragraph break]".

[ This has a paragraph break before the weather description, which I want to get rid of: ]
Before printing the locale description of an outdoors room:
	say "[weather-description][paragraph break]"	

To say weather-description:
	if the weather is light-rain:
		choose a random row in table of light rain;
		say "[Text entry]";
	if the weather is medium-rain:
		choose a random row in table of medium rain;
		say "[Text entry]";
	if the weather is heavy-rain:
		choose a random row in table of heavy rain;
		say "[Text entry]".
			[/code]

The "before printing the local description" part works, but it includes a paragraph break after the room description and before the weather description, which I'd like to get rid of.

The "rule for print the description..." part doesn't work at all.  I was trying to follow 17.20 in the manual but it doesn't seem to work. I want to get rid of the paragraph break between the room description and the weather description but I don't know how to do it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2718&start=0#p18727
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Hiding objects to random locations?
User: pashaimeru / DateTime: 2011-06-29 14:02:02

Heya.

I want to put a kind of a treasure hunt in my game. Nothing too annoying, just a simple task really. But the idea sorta gets ruined if the player knows the location of each object he must find in every playthrough after the first.

So, what I want is that there would be three identical items hidden around a house and its yard, in three random locations: they could be inside a closet, or under the said closet, or on a bed, or in a leaf pile in the yard, etc. They'd be hidden when a scene begins.

How would I go about doing this in the simplest manner?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2695&start=10#p18728
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Both Poet and Auda, kiss Iris
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2011-06-29 14:08:14



@matt w, Felix

Regarding "answering it that," the the stipulation of that action is "answer [someone] that [some text]."  As no thing in your game-world was understood as [i]a thing called[/i] "kiss auda," the parser presumed you were answering someone about a topic/text rather than referring to a "tangible" thing or requesting an action.


@matt w

Regarding your minor trouble with constructing a "rule for reaching," as far as I know rules for reaching inside/outside only affect reaching inside/outside rooms, containers, and supporters (as you likely realized by your switch to a rule regarding scope).  Regarding the latter notion of scope, it's a good idea (though not shown in my original example) to add in this case:

[code]     place [whatever] in scope, but not its contents.[/code]

Adding an actor as part of a backdrop is a good, solid idea, and the sort of thinking that ought always be encouraged.  

The drawback of such an approach, however, is that the solution is fairly complex "[this is where I'll have something incredibly clever, I know not what, allowing you to input the list of commandees]."  The question, then, would be whether having a generic "interpreter" actor as you've proposed would be more or less complex than the parsing/activities approach suggested by zarf (which was also my own approach, though I didn't mention it initially to avoid prejudicing the discussion as it only fits the "effective" but not the "practical" part of my criteria).

Yet another approach that hasn't been mentioned yet might be to have only one "robot-actor" rather than six; this single actor would have six lists of possessions, six variables for stored locations, six nicknames referenced in reading a command, etc.  I've often found that whether "something exists" in the game world is irrelevant; all that matters is whether it seamlessly [i]seems[/i] to exist for the player.

As you've seen, part of the trouble, as ektemple elaborated, is of course that "the current action" will always be "the action of requesting (someone)to try (something)" rather than "try (something)" in the sort of scenario I've outlined.  Ektemple's addition on this point is quite interesting and relevant, though the I6 factor has clearly come into play with his approach.

In any case, your contribution is a valuable one, and I'm interested in hearing anything else you come up with using the approach you've so far examined.


@Skinny Mike

I'd definitely be quite interested in hearing anything you've come up with on the subject, as your contribution to difficult questions I've posed in the past has always been both relevant and effective.



*******


My own tinkering and experimentation showed that the very simplest sort of the the three commands I proposed initially is "all robots, (try something)."  Writing a brief replacement and redirect action to implement this action's result with an activity to repeat through all qualifying robots is quick and easy, particularly if we make a note to the player to omit phrasing his command to all robots with a comma (otherwise, a smidge of parsing is necessary).

For example:

[code]Multireporting is an action applying to nothing.  Understand "all robots report" as multireporting.

Report multireporting:
	repeat with avatar running through on-stage robots:
		say "FC Interrupt-- [avatar];
		try avatar looking.[/code]

The "Both (actor1) and (actor2), (try something)" could be fairly simple as well, if we invoke observance of hallowed Infocom tradition as an excuse for laziness/lack of rigour.  In [i]Suspended[/i], this request doesn't actually require two distinct actors; it's perfectly understood and carried out to say "Both Poet and Poet, move Fred," for example.  This means, with a bit of work, we can modify the exising actions to accept the new form of input merely by notionally adding "Understand [someone] and [someone] north" as dualgoingnorth.

The very most troublesome is the remaining case (the first I originally mentioned), wherein we'd like to issue commands in the form "Iris, Auda, and Whiz, go to Sub Supply Room."  Very notionally, the original approach seemed to be:

After reading a command:
[Parse for signs of a phrase including instructions to multiple actors; pull out the text corresponding to the name of each actor, and store it in a list; assign the object of the requested action as a variable]
[Call an activity to repeat through the afore-mentioned list, trying the object of the action request with each actor on the list].

These sorts of things give me headaches; since I only fool around with Inform to entertain myself rather than output releasable games, though I know [i]how[/i] to do such things I'd much rather allow my wandering attention to move on to some other subject.


@matt w

You mentioned some trouble writing report rules in the general framework of the example you constructed; depending upon how far you've gone, one thing about the original example I proposed was that it interferes quite messily with the turn sequence rules; after posting I later refined it considerably, but to give an idea of the jury-rigging still involved in my own efforts I'll just note that most of the actions in that environment now end explicitly in "rule fails"-- surely an ominous development, although it is fairly entertaining regardless to see the original game recreated (if only in a rudimentary manner until I add all the things, resolve this "robot-command" problem satisfactorily, and determine some method of scoring the "death toll" on the planet above).  Depending on how closely you've used some of the conventions I originally posted, the turn sequence may be a problem in your own example as well.


@capmikee

I just noticed your post as I was making my own.  Scheduling would indeed be yet another general approach to the matter; its merit is that it avoids any recourse to I6, which is important to me because I don't understand I6.  The downside is that such an approach might interfere with the pacing of the game, turning it into something with more of a "strategic" focus than a "tactical" focus.  On your other note, in general I don't find either lists or stored actions to ever be much difficulty; it's building my own parser that I haven't the resolve to effect. [emote]:)[/emote] 


Thanks again to all who responded.

Endosphere



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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2718&start=0#p18729
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hiding objects to random locations?
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2011-06-29 14:28:26



One of the best things about Inform is that there are usually three, or four, or ten different ways of accomplishing something.  If you're just starting out, you might try looking at some of the extensions available at the Inform 7 website; I think there are already rules/extensions for hiding things under things, etc, that might save you some work if they fit your game concept.


Very broadly speaking, you might try something along these lines:

[code]
The Yard is a room.

A bush is a supporter in the yard.

The Driveway is east of the yard.

A barrel is a container in the driveway.

A thing can be an objective-spot.  A thing is usually not an objective-spot.  The bush and the barrel are objective-spots.

A prize is a kind of thing.

A prize called a piece of candy is in the driveway.
A prize called a yellow ribbon is in the drivawy.
[/code]

I'm reluctant to post the most important part of this example, where you randomly distribute each prize to an objective-spot using a "When play begins" rule, because I don't have Inform 7 with me right now to check the correct syntax.  Nonetheless, perhaps this advice will help you, or others will give some better ideas.



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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2717&start=0#p18730
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Appending text to a room description
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2011-06-29 14:34:59



One interesting thing about backdrop items is that they are usually scenery, but don't have to be.  Instead of fiddling around with the room description details (always a headache), why not just say:

The weather is a backdrop.  The weather is not scenery.  The inital appearance of the weather is "[weather-descriptor]".  The weather is everywhere.  [or: The weather is in every outdoor room.]



Endosphere


edit:  oops, suggested "description" rather than "initial appearance."



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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2717&start=0#p18731
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Appending text to a room description
User: kanato / DateTime: 2011-06-29 14:40:23

Well that doesn't really work, because the description is still printed with a paragraph break after the room description.  ALso, inform seems to complain about statements like "The weather is in every outdoor room."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2717&start=0#p18732
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Appending text to a room description
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2011-06-29 14:45:51



Sorry, I misread you intention there.  What you instead may want to do is make a text token for the description of each room, and append the weather description after that.

For example:

A room has some text called the roomstate.  The roomstate of a room is usually "".

OR:

To say roomstate of (x - a room):
      if x is the vale:
          say "Whatever."

The description of a room is usually "[roomstate][weather-description]"

The Vale is a room.



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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=20#p18733
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: RandomExile / DateTime: 2011-06-29 15:20:10

In bukayeva's FPS:IF parable, much of it sounds like a really easy position to argue from either perspective:

[quote="not really bukayeva"]Anyway, "FPS."  So I get a static corridor.  Then I have a mouse cursor.  I click somewhere.  I get a new static corridor.  Maybe an NPC is encountered.  I get a menu to list some graphic items to hit it with.  (Or I have to sit there trying random attack patterns and weapons and hope that {something} works.)  To get to a location I have to click a bunch of times.  Or maybe I can "run" which of course makes all the corridors just sort of blur by.

[quote="actual bukayeva"]My point here is that it's all very mechanical.[/quote][/quote]  
=)

Even RPGs completely break down to performing clicks to generate a change in state, which can be resolved by another click, leading to another change in state.  Sometimes, you've clicked as much as possible in an area and if you just sit there . . .  nothing happens, literally forever (or until the power company shuts off your electricity or your computer dies).

What an RPG or graphic adventure requires from you with a mouse click, the text adventure requires with a typed command.

As for parser errors, or being "stuck" from a lack of ability to effectively communicate with the program, I can't imagine anyone would single out text adventures, which (in my experience) have never  crashed in the middle of a level or a save/restore.  I've never found my avatar inextricably spliced between two planes and had to restart in a text adventure.  I've never found myself unable to shoot a target in a text adventure because the displayed pixels were calculated out of synch with the underlying engine's 3D map, nor found that my sound card was incompatible with my text adventure's prose.

Unique to every genre and medium are the problems thereof.  "Triple-A" text adventures are as bug-free in their own ways as AAA games of any stripe.

Virtually all text adventures are turn-based, text parser-driven, text-output games.  It's a matter of which senses need to be engaged to successfully tell the story, and what the player's genre expectations and entertainment threshold are.

Which senses need to be engaged?  It's often said that the more senses, the richer the experience, although no one is upset that John William Waterhouse failed to incorporate Smell-O-Vision into [i]Ophelia[/i] [url]http://www.artmagick.com/pictures/picture.aspx?id=7255&name=ophelia[/url].  At present,  there is no expectation that a work of art will employ every sense both literally and figuratively.

Most novels explicitly engage all five senses through the written word, as do many of the best text adventures.  Just as I appreciate paintings without the rustle of wind playing through my headphones, I enjoyed [i]Ender's Game[/i] just fine without having to hoist a promotional poster above the book as I read for lack of visual stimulation.  

Interactive fiction is a visual, symbolic medium which conveys an experience to the reader, founded on the author's input, and allowing the reader a degree of control over the revelation of the conveyed experience.

I like that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2716&start=0#p18734
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Ending scenes with speech
User: Andsowejump / DateTime: 2011-06-29 15:35:14

Aha! This is really helpful, thanks.  One last thing on the general subject.

I've played a game called an act of murder, which has a 'notepad' of clues you can get from talking to people (well and physical evidence).  I think i know how to get inform to mentally know what the player has learned through conversation, but would it be possible for the program to take what the player already knows and therefore spit out a different ending phrase?

In other words, could I make many different conversations variables and depending on the conversations the player has had, the ending of the phrase would be different.  

Sorry if this is really confusing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2717&start=0#p18735
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Appending text to a room description
User: kanato / DateTime: 2011-06-29 16:03:06

Does that mean I can't use a syntax like 
[code]
West Field is a room. "You are in the west end of a large, grassy field. You see a dilapidated shack." 
[/code]
to define a room and its description? I'd really like to keep that, after all I'm only going to write the weather code once but I will be writing a lot of room descriptions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2719&start=0#p18736
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Looking for beta testers for a GUI gamebook creator
User: adventurechris / DateTime: 2011-06-29 16:06:33

Hello all,

I recently started putting together a prototype for an interactive story creator. Basically, the goal is to make something that makes it very easy for anyone to put together a simple gamebook or branching story, just by writing, without any coding involved.

I've crunched out a demo but could use some feedback, particularly from people who are interested in making story-games but haven't spent a lot of time working in existing environments. If you're interested in testing it out please let me know by reply, PM, or at chris [at] adventurecow.com.

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2717&start=0#p18737
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Appending text to a room description
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-06-29 16:20:50

This seems to do what you want, though you'll have to expand the weather-description code:

[code]The Lab is a room.  "Here you are in the IF Lab."

To say weather-description:
	say "It's raining."
	
This is the with-weather rule:
	let R be the location of the player;
	say "[description of R] [weather-description]".
	
The with-weather rule is listed instead of the room description body text rule in the carry out looking rulebook.[/code]
I figured it out by switching on rules in the game to see what rule was running just before the room description was printed. Then I looked up the room description body text rule in the Standard Rules. This procedure doesn't always work, but in this case it did.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2716&start=0#p18738
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Ending scenes with speech
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-29 16:23:46

You can make variables, and you can make properties of objects. In my WIP I do it this way:

[code]A thing can be discussed.[/code]

And in the code for giving an NPC's response to 'the second noun':
[code]    Now the second noun is discussed.[/code]
Again, how you manage this will depend on your conversation system.

If you want to record things in a notebook, you might do it like this:
[code]A thing can be noted. A thing has a text called the note.

To say note [item - a thing]:
    unless the note of item is empty: [this skips items that have no note text]
        say "You write a note about [the item]: '[note of item]'";
        now item is noted.

To say notebook contents:
    Repeat with item running through noted things:
        say "[The item]: [note of item][paragraph break]"[/code]

And now you can test whether items are noted:
[code]Instead of asking Bob about "play":
    say "'It was a resounding success[if the script is noted], even though there was no script[end if]!"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2712&start=0#p18739
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Linking to a sticky random string..... so to speak
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-06-29 16:43:50

Oh, yeah, that's what I get for dashing off an answer without fully understanding your question.  Text substitutions, including "to say" phrases, are great for output text; not so much for input.  I also have trouble keeping the various text options in Inform straight, but I [i]think[/i] you could do it with a table.  So, say you have a table with roles (murderer, herring, accomplice, innocent) down one column, and you fill in the other column with characters' names at the beginning of play.  Then you should be able to match by row later on.  This is all entirely untested, though, so sorry if it's a dead end.

One other hitch I foresee you running into is that players may type periods into your characters' names ("Mr. Smith") and Inform might assume they are issuing two separate commands.  So you'll want to remove those periods before checking for a match (I think there's an extension?), or perhaps phrase the question as just "Last name?" or something like that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2718&start=0#p18740
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hiding objects to random locations?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-06-29 16:55:33

You might check out "Hatless" in the documentation for an example of how to randomly distribute items at the beginning of play.  Basically, you want to define some containers (that is, places the treasures could be) and some treasures, then go through the treasures and put each one in a random container that does not already have a treasure in it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2709&start=0#p18741
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Hint for J.D. Berry's "Sparrow's Song"; please?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-29 16:56:03

[quote]Thanks to help from another SmoochieComp judge, I learned that there is, in fact, a way to get past the nymph. However, it involves performing an action several times, despite feedback that tells you that it isn't an action that's going to work. The author uses this device several times in the story. One could argue that deliberately giving the player feedback that says "That won't work" only to have it eventually work, if repeated enough, has been established as a valid device -- Zarf used it, once, successfully -- so it's fair game. I would argue that, well, this author goes too far overboard in being dissuasive, or is too subtle in his clues that it will ultimately work. It's as if the author has all sorts of material in his head, all sorts of extra ideas and meanings, and shows only scraps of it that don't add up to anything for the player.[/quote]

I won't link it, since it's full of spoilers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=20#p18742
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-06-29 17:05:31

[quote="RandomExile"]What an RPG or graphic adventure requires from you with a mouse click, the text adventure requires with a typed command.[/quote]

So if the qualitative aspects are the same, why have text-based games not been able to compete in the industry in any meaningful way? Why are not more game authors flocking to this way of writing games? Why are more gamers not interested in these games? My point was that, yes, all games have mechanics. We all know that. It's the nature of the mechanics that ultimately matters to audiences.

Text games often tout their interactivity as being a key driver of what makes them a different experience. Yet, as you've just said, it's basically the same thing really. I'm saying that's not the case -- at least to audiences that left text adventures behind and those that continue to ignore them.

[quote]As for parser errors, or being "stuck" from a lack of ability to effectively communicate with the program, I can't imagine anyone would single out text adventures, which (in my experience) have never  crashed in the middle of a level or a save/restore.  I've never found my avatar inextricably spliced between two planes and had to restart in a text adventure.  I've never found myself unable to shoot a target in a text adventure because the displayed pixels were calculated out of synch with the underlying engine's 3D map, nor found that my sound card was incompatible with my text adventure's prose.[/quote]

Great points. I'm surprised it took someone this long to bring them up. But, yes, that is one value add of text games: they are not resource intensive and thus can be played on very minimal systems.

[quote]At present,  there is no expectation that a work of art will employ every sense both literally and figuratively.[/quote]

Among gamers, however, there is an expectation that games will engage them with different levels of interactive elements: which is why sound cards and video cards are such an important component of systems and why high-end gaming rigs are the norm. Gamers do have many expectations. Not of "every sense" -- which I don't think I said -- but certainly of multiple senses when interactivity with an environment is touted.

[quote]I enjoyed [i]Ender's Game[/i] just fine without having to hoist a promotional poster above the book as I read for lack of visual stimulation.[/quote]

But you can get visual stimulation by how the author evokes imagery in your mind. That's what you can get from books. Presumably from a good game author, you can get the same from a text adventure. But you can get the same from any game if the game author(s) are good. It seems like it's how you can interact that sets the games apart. (Again: I'm going on what I constantly hear -- that the interactive elements of text adventures are what set them apart from other games.)

[quote]Interactive fiction is a visual, symbolic medium which conveys an experience to the reader, founded on the author's input, and allowing the reader a degree of control over the revelation of the conveyed experience.[/quote]

Which -- if I replace "reader" with "player" -- I could say about any game format, not just text adventures. (Again, to me "interactive fiction" is any type of experience that is fictional and interactive. That means most games fall into that category. It's ridiculous to me that people would somehow only equate this with text games.) The specific focus on "reader" along with "degree of control" does seem to suggest that these are the compelling arguments: someone who likes to read stories but would like more control over the lead character in the story. The mechanic they then have to accept is the parser.

What I was trying to find out is what is the appeal of text adventures that sets them apart from other games, making them a viable other choice. Since you can get control of the lead character in any game, the emphasis goes back to the reading experience, if everyone agrees that the mechanics of an RPG (or other game) are ultimately reducible to what you would do at a command prompt. In that case, the reading experience demands that you have good authors that can deliver.

Yet there's no getting around the fact that text adventures lost out in a big way to just about every other gaming format, even though people's desire to read during that same period of time certainly didn't diminish.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=20#p18743
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-29 17:31:41

This is a very "religious" conversation. It appears to be going nowhere very fast.

bukayeva, you don't want to be convinced. I'm not sure why you even brought this up. This seems to be the most intellectual trolling I've witnessed in a considerable amount of time. Why start a conversation on an IF-based forum about why IF can't satisfy your gaming needs or why it can't compete commercially with more graphically immersive games.

IF was born at a time when "gaming" was an almost non-existent pastime. At the time, it was considered very interactive. It was also commercially successful in its hey day. Its games didn't make millions of dollars for the developers, but that was a different time and a different culture. Kids were not yet melding with their couches and IF provided a very entertaining distraction from playing in the dirt. (And with the dirt. (Guilty.))

The term "interactive fiction" is a holdover from that time. Basically homage to a medium that has a cult following but is no longer the mainstream commercial endeavor it once was. It's already been said that IF fought the war and lost it.

People write IF because [i]they like to write IF.[/i] People play IF because [i]they like to play IF[/i]. It doesn't matter if you call it a "text adventure" or "interactive fiction". The games don't cost millions of dollars to make. They don't cost $60 a piece. It doesn't take a team of seventy people to make one. They're made, even the bad ones, because someone has a love for making them. They're played, especially the bad ones, because someone has a love for playing them.

This is an apples and oranges conversation. Very few "companies" and very few websites try to "sell" anyone on IF. It's a small community, comparatively. We brag about it because we love it. Because it holds fond memories for us. Because it fascinated us when we were young. We don't care if you love it. If you'd rather be "fragging" or "headshotting", then be my guest.

I also love your "fancy pants" video games. I thought Mass Effect was one of the most boring games I've ever played. The characters were hollow. that whole planet scanning thing was absolutely ridiculous, nothing more than a time waster. F.E.A.R. also wasn't as deep as it's fanbase wants you to believe.

Books, video games and movies have a tendency to force feed everything to you. No matter how "sandbox" a video game appears to be, there's a great deal of lineararity to it. ("Is that a word?" "It just came outta my mouth..."). Most of them, anyway. Very few of them vary much in the rewards they offer. Games like Silent Hill (a franchise of which I am an enormous fan, no matter how bad they jack it up) do reward you differently for how you act in the game. Do I murder my own mother who is in unbearable pain or let her be torn in half by this hellish machine? That decision affects the outcome of the game.

If you think FFVII (American version) was the greatest FF game? I hope you die a flaming fiery death. Hated X because "I just don't get it and it's not VII"? Die a flaming fiery death.

Point being is that we all have our preferences. We have our skillsets. We have our upbringings. We have different environments.

You won't see the next Cadre game on the cover of Game Informer. You will see the next ungodly bastardization once proud comic book franchise.

And we're perfectly okay with that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2709&start=0#p18744
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Hint for J.D. Berry's "Sparrow's Song"; please?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-29 18:27:31

Yeah, that's one of the reviews I've read, but it doesn't actually help me figure out what the action I need to repeat is. Also, there are three items you could have at that point, and I don't know which one the reviewers actually have.

I guess at some point I can try to dig up an e-mail for Berry (I doubt the ancient earthlink one still works), or start e-mailing the judges, but if someone can help me out without my having to bug people that'd be great.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2714&start=0#p18745
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Gots to get my reach on
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-06-29 19:01:11

Thanks zarf.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2695&start=10#p18746
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Both Poet and Auda, kiss Iris
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-29 20:17:07

[quote="Endosphere"]@matt w

You mentioned some trouble writing report rules in the general framework of the example you constructed; depending upon how far you've gone, one thing about the original example I proposed was that it interferes quite messily with the turn sequence rules; after posting I later refined it considerably, but to give an idea of the jury-rigging still involved in my own efforts I'll just note that most of the actions in that environment now end explicitly in "rule fails"-- surely an ominous development, although it is fairly entertaining regardless to see the original game recreated (if only in a rudimentary manner until I add all the things, resolve this "robot-command" problem satisfactorily, and determine some method of scoring the "death toll" on the planet above).  Depending on how closely you've used some of the conventions I originally posted, the turn sequence may be a problem in your own example as well.[/quote]

Actually, I'm pretty sure because (in my test code, before trying to add the multi-agent capability) I was converting the requests to folks to requests to Iris, and Iris was the PC. When i convert the requests to Auda instead, the reporting seems to work. Durrrr. [EDIT: For what it's worth, I'd commented out the parts of your code that messed with the turn sequence.]

Anyway, I don't have time to do a lot on this now, but I hope to get back to it -- it seems like a neat programming puzzle at least. Maybe some day we'll be able to implement that one command from "Bowl Drop Toy Sleep Play," whose transcript I unfortunately can't find anymore, not even through the Internet Archive.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2712&start=0#p18747
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Linking to a sticky random string..... so to speak
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-06-29 20:25:38

What you're probably thinking of is a global variable, which you can use to store pretty much any value. To create one, you just say something like:

[color=#0000FF]The chosen name is a text variable. The chosen name is "Biggins".[/color]

I take it, though, that you don't want to assign the name to the variable at startup, and instead are going to assign it randomly or have the player key it in. The latter requires more work, so I've presented a quick example here:

[code]The registry is a list of texts that varies. The registry is {"Hartford", "Biggins", "Branscomb"}.

The chosen name is a text variable.

Restaurant is a room.

After looking in Restaurant:
	say "There is a list of names here: ";
	repeat with item running through the registry:
		if item is not entry 1 of the registry, say ", ";
		say "Mr [item]";
	say "."
	
Choosing a name is an action applying to one topic. Understand "I am Mr [text]" or "I am [text]" as choosing a name.

Carry out choosing a name:
	let T be an indexed text;
	let T be "[topic understood]";
	let T1 be an indexed text;
	repeat with count running from 1 to the number of entries in the registry:
		let T1 be "[entry (count) of registry]";
		if T matches the text T1, case insensitively:
			say "Greetings, Mr [T1].";
			now the chosen name is entry (count) of the registry.
			
Every turn when the chosen name is not "":
	say "After a few moments, a large burly man walks in and says, 'I am Mr [the chosen name]! Who is that impostor?";
	end the story saying "You have been discovered!"

Test me with "I am Mr Biggins".[/code]

This doesn't deal with the case of a "Mr" having a period after it, but you can use a regular expression to delete it (in an "after reading a command" rule) if it's actually going to be a component of your game.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2712&start=0#p18748
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Linking to a sticky random string..... so to speak
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-29 20:46:01

[quote="ektemple"]This doesn't deal with the case of a "Mr" having a period after it, but you can use a regular expression to delete it (in an "after reading a command" rule) if it's actually going to be a component of your game.

--Erik[/quote]

You can also use Emily Short's extension "Punctuation Removal"; its documentation tells you how to easily strip the periods from things like "Mr. Biggins" in commands. 

But as I understood your other thread, you want to assign the text at random and have the player discover it somewhere and use it somewhere else -- to do that you can just have a table with the possible answers (or a list, but tables use less memory), choose something randomly from it when play begins, and store it in your global variable.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=20#p18749
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-06-30 01:42:07

For me, the charm of text adventures comes from the writing. The best part of IF is playing stories that come from a single passionate author.

I cannot abide bad writing in novels or short stories. As a consequence it's always a challenge to find new reading material that suits my mood and my tastes. With IF I don't really have that problem. There is something about the format that helps to transmit the author's vision even if the writing has some rough spots, or the puzzle mechanics present a barrier. I almost always feel like I'm playing the game the author meant to write, even if it's not a great game.

When playing commercial games - or even indie games meant to be commercially successful - I feel instead like I'm playing the work of a committee, designed first and foremost to keep me happy about spending my $50 or even $5 on that title. That's great too; I like to spend money and feel good about it afterwards. But there's no dialogue between me and the author; there's no personal connection. It's mass entertainment rather than intimate conversation.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2720&start=0#p18750
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: SF Bay IF Meetup Saturday at 1PM
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-06-30 01:53:44

A number of IntroComp games will be available on Saturday; let's try some of those, in addition to talking about what we're playing and what we're working on.

For more details, see the full listing:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.meetup.com/sf-bay-area-interactive-fiction/events/23570201/">http://www.meetup.com/sf-bay-area-inter ... /23570201/</a>

When: Saturday, July 2, 2011 1:00 PM

Where: Au Coquelet, 
2000 University Ave 
Berkeley, CA 94701 
510 845-0433

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2721&start=0#p18751
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Level9.NET author info
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2011-06-30 03:48:00

Does anyone know how to contact Andreas Scherrer, the author of Level 9.NET? I'd like to report some issues with the L9 terp with Win7 x64.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2716&start=0#p18752
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Ending scenes with speech
User: Andsowejump / DateTime: 2011-06-30 05:46:39

brilliant! big help thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2721&start=0#p18753
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Level9.NET author info
User: scan / DateTime: 2011-06-30 06:36:17

Hi Isxek, I'm here.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2721&start=0#p18754
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Level9.NET crashes on Win7 x64
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2011-06-30 07:05:57

[quote="scan"]Hi Isxek, I'm here.  [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]That was fast. [emote]:D[/emote]

I wanted to report that the Level9.NET terp was crashing on Win7 x64. Both versions (0.9.4 and 0.9.5) are unable to run after double-clicking their executable files. I initially thought it had something to do with .NET Framework v4.0, but the terp still crashes even after I uninstalled .NET v4.0.

Does it have something to do with being a 32-bit software in an x64 OS? Anything else I should look into?

Thanks in advance.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2712&start=0#p18755
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Linking to a sticky random string..... so to speak
User: nicky84 / DateTime: 2011-06-30 09:15:43

Hi all,

thanks, fascinating! I let you know how I get on. I'm sure I'll be back with something else soon.

N

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2695&start=10#p18756
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Both Poet and Auda, kiss Iris
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-30 10:11:14

[quote="Endosphere"]in general I don't find either lists or stored actions to ever be much difficulty; it's building my own parser that I haven't the resolve to effect.[/quote]
I really don't like the way the parser handles commas, and I want to make it possible to parse them in I7. You've given me more motivation, and some ideas, for my big hypothetical parser rewrite extension. Which is good, because I'm going to need a lot before I get started on it....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2721&start=0#p18757
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Level9.NET author info
User: scan / DateTime: 2011-06-30 10:48:29

Thank you for the bug report.

The .NET framework shouldn't be the problem here, as the program only uses .NET 2.0 functionality. According to Microsoft, .NET 2.0 is part of .NET 3.0 or higher.

The .NET stuff runs in a virtual machine so there shouldn't be differences between 64-bit or 32-bit platforms. But level9.dll that holds the interpreter core is a native 32-bit DLL and I guess the problems are lying there.

Right now, I don't have a 64-bit Windows 7 with the necessary development tools at hand. I'll take a look at the issue as soon as I have one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2722&start=0#p18758
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Why doesn't "[thing]" parse as a topic?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-30 11:12:35

It seems to me that Conversation Framework, and indeed many conversation extensions and their related complexities, have all arisen from this one deficiency. I can't understand why a thing can't be used as a token in a topic.

Here's an example:

[code]    	
The Stage is a room.

Bob is a man in The Stage.

The script is a thing.

Instead of asking Bob about "[script]":
	say "'There is no script.'"
	
Test me with "ask Bob about script"
[/code]

In fact, if I change the token from [script] to [something], I get a compiler error:

[quote]Problem. You wrote 'Instead of asking Bob about "[something]"'  : but the '[text]' token is not allowed with 'matches' or in table columns, as it is just too complicated to sort out: a '[text]' is supposed to extract a snippet from the player's command, but here we already have a snippet, and don't want to snip it further.
 See the manual: 16.1 > Understand[/quote]

This seems to be the actual problem, but the wording of the error doesn't seem like much of a justification to me, since other tokens [i]can[/i] be used to match topics. Of course section 16.1 has absolutely nothing to say about this situation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2717&start=0#p18759
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Appending text to a room description
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-30 13:02:30

Is this the sort of thing that Room Description Control can help with?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2722&start=0#p18760
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why doesn't "[thing]" parse as a topic?
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-30 13:46:33

Perhaps I'm missing something, but why do you need to use a text token in this case?  I had thought that Conversation Framework allows a thing to be a topic of conversation in its own right (as long as it is "familiar" to the player).  Thus, having declared the script to be a thing, and assuming it is familiar (either because the player has previously seen it or because it has been specifically declared to be familiar), you should be able to say
[code]Instead of asking Bob about the script:
   say "'There is no script.'"
[/code]

I know that this works with some of the extensions that build on Conversation Farmework; does it not work with the basic extension?  Or am I misunderstanding what you want to do?

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2723&start=0#p18761
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Saying hello
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-30 14:37:49

I'm starting on learning how to do conversation. While ASKing and TELLing NPCs something seems to work for me, I searched for quite a while and found nothing about how to actually parse "npc, hello". Sorry for asking such a simple question, but how's that done?

[code]After saying hello to NPC: say "Hello back".[/code]

results in

You wrote 'After saying "hello" to NPC'  , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is 'saying hello to NPC'. But that did not make sense as a description of an action. I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2722&start=0#p18762
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why doesn't "[thing]" parse as a topic?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-06-30 14:44:51

I was trying to get at why there is a need for Conversation Framework in the first place.

Conversation Framework adds its own complications in that it creates separate actions that apply to things instead of topics.

[code]Instead of asking Bob about "script":[/code]

vs.

[code]Instead of quizzing Bob about the script:[/code]

And then there's:

[code]Instead of telling Bob about "script":[/code]

vs.

[code]Instead of informing Bob about the script:[/code]

It quickly gets very complicated so that it's hard to tell if a conversation is going on because of the many different conversation actions. Conversation Responses attempts to gather them together into various kinds-of-action and to-decide-whether phrases, but it's still a nasty tangle.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2723&start=0#p18763
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Saying hello
User: Aintelligence / DateTime: 2011-06-30 14:50:35

I keep getting this error message as well.  I've tried many different types of conversation types, but this message keeps coming up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2723&start=0#p18764
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Saying hello
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-06-30 14:52:38

Yet again, ACTIONS to the rescue!

[quote]>actions
Actions listing on.

>npc, hello
[answering NPC that "hello"]
There is no reply.
[answering NPC that "hello" - succeeded]

>[/quote]
The action's name is therefore "answering it that".

[code]Instead of answering NPC that "hello":
	say "Hello back."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2723&start=0#p18765
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Saying hello
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-30 15:00:47

*sigh* My non-working code is from the printed manual I'm using (page 275)... But now it works, thanks! Now onwards to more complicated stuff...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2723&start=0#p18766
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Saying hello
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-06-30 15:20:23

[quote="Grueslayer"]My non-working code is from the printed manual I'm using (page 275)...[/quote]
You mean [i]Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7[/i]? The chapter on conversation relies on [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Aaron%20Reed/Conversation%20Framework%20for%20Sand-dancer/Conversation%20Framework%20for%20Sand-dancer.i7x]an extension[/url] that defines the "saying hello to" action.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2723&start=0#p18767
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Saying hello
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-06-30 15:41:29

Indeed! Gonna look into that, thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2724&start=0#p18768
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7:  "Use Serial Comma" option
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-30 15:51:41

Important news! [emote];)[/emote] 

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/06/30/501364/main20075815.shtml?tag=cbsnewsSectionContent.3">http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/06/ ... nContent.3</a>


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2724&start=0#p18769
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  "Use Serial Comma" option
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-06-30 17:20:08

I would cover you with spit from a thousand kisses* for this "Finally!" moment you just gave me!

You know, upon discovering IF I started to pay a bit more attention to English syntax. Up until then, my "ands" when ending a listing were always comma orphans. In Portuguese, the comma before the conjunction "and" is only used in very specific cases, and never in a listing, so I took a while to get used to this. I admit I didn't went out of my way to study the rules (I just absorbed the patterns I got from the books I read), so the reason for this Oxford comma was beyond me.

Up until today.

[size=85]* No, actually I wouldn't.[/size]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2725&start=0#p18770
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I think I want to do too much at once...(I7 coding problems)
User: anamri / DateTime: 2011-06-30 17:21:47

I am having trouble with what I want to do in I7.  Here is what I want to happen - there are 4 trophies and 4 pedestals.  There are certain actions that need to take place in order for you to be able to place a trophy on a pedestal. (Like a player must look inside the briefcase and read the papers, before they can place a trophy on pedestal #2.

I have tried a LOT of different things I have found by searching this site, the manual, and googling.  Here is my latest try for code dealing with this issue (i just gave one of the trophy's code for an example):

[code]
val1 is a number variable.  val1 is 0.
val2 is a number variable.  val2 is 0.
val3 is a number variable.  val3 is 0.
val4 is a number variable.  val4 is 0.

Before examining the papers:
	increase val1 by 1;
	continue the action.
Before searching the briefcase:
	increase val1 by 1;
	continue the action.

Instead of putting [Delaney's trophy] on [1st place pedestal]:
	if val1 is 0:
		say "You do not have enough information to make this decision.";
		stop the action instead;
	if val1 is 1:
		say "You have an idea who's trophy goes here, but you are not sure.";
		stop the action instead;
	if val1 is 2:
		say "You are almost sure, but you still need more information.";
		stop the action instead;
	if val1 is 3:
		say "You still need a bit more information.";
		stop the action instead;
	if val1 is 4:
		say "You place the trophy on the pillar.";
		continue the action.
[/code]
I'm sure you can see the problem I run into - it runs that way for ALL "putting on", not just for the 1st pedestal.  If I take away the brackets, the code throws errors.  How do I state what I want to do?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2725&start=0#p18771
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I think I want to do too much at once...(I7 coding probl
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-06-30 17:30:12

Under what name did you create the first pedestal in I7? If you use that name, without the brackets, I see no reason why it shouldn't work.

Something like:

[code]
The first pedestal is a supporter in the trophy room.

Delaney's trophy is in the trophy room.

Instead of putting delaney's trophy on the first pedestal:
(...)[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2725&start=0#p18772
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I think I want to do too much at once...(I7 coding probl
User: anamri / DateTime: 2011-06-30 17:44:42

seeing your response with "first" made me try something - I had the name as "1st place pedestal".  I'm sure you all already know, but I had no idea you couldn't use numbers in names.  Sorry, for wasting your time and thank you so much for the help!  I changed the name and it seems to work fine now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2717&start=0#p18773
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Appending text to a room description
User: kanato / DateTime: 2011-06-30 17:50:11

I don't know, what is that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2704&start=0#p18774
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: [Z-machine] RFC: Out-of-game saves and Quetzal
User: cas / DateTime: 2011-06-30 17:54:19

[quote="zarf"]
I suggest one addition: the opcode in which the game was interrupted. You say it happens at @read, but it could occur at @read_char as well, and the interpreter might need to know which operation to restart. (Theoretically it could look at the PC, but redundant information is nicer than re-decoding the instruction.)
[/quote]Well, @read is just where I do it; the idea was just that PC needed to be set to the first byte of an instruction, regardless of what that instruction happened to be.  But...
[quote]
(Really, I suppose, a Z-code game could be interrupted at a @save or @restore opcode -- or @output_stream -- while the user was in the middle of selecting a file! But in those cases, it's probably better to save the state as it was at the most recent @read operation. Restoring to the middle of a file prompt would just be confusing.)[/quote]I agree: it makes sense to strongly hint (at least) that an interpreter should place PC at a “suitable” location, which is probably @read or @read_char.  If that's the case, restoring can just begin execution at PC, exactly the way it does with Quetzal, apart from the branching/storing.  You can use the same restore code for both types (I do).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2725&start=0#p18775
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I think I want to do too much at once...(I7 coding probl
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-30 17:58:25

A separate point, but by incrementing Val1, etc. in a [i]before[/i] rule (which kicks in before any check rules, etc.), I think you basically give credit to the player for doing the various things even if something else blocks his ability actually to do the thing that gives him the information.  Thus, for example, if the briefcase happens to be in the possession of an NPC and the player tries to search it, I think (I could be wrong on this) the standard rules would prevent the player from successfully searching it; however, by the time that rule kicks in you would have already given the player credit for the knowledge by bumping up Val1.

Also, it looks like your code would allow the player to repeat any one action and get credit for it each time (i.e., he could search the briefcase 4 times and then be able to place the trophy on the pedestal without ever having done the other things you want him to do to get info).

Just pointing this out -- that may be what you want or you may have addressed these issues in a portion of the code that is not reproduced here.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2725&start=0#p18776
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I think I want to do too much at once...(I7 coding probl
User: anamri / DateTime: 2011-06-30 18:09:40

Thanks for your insight!  I had thought of the infinite increase of val1 by reading the papers as many times as you wish, and since I got the other problem worked out I changed it to this(creating another number variable called "papercount"):
[code]Before examining the papers:
	if papercount is 0:
		increase val1 by 1;
		increase papercount by 1;
		continue the action;
	otherwise if papercount is 1:
		continue the action.[/code]
I had not thought of something preventing the searching of the suitcase however... I will change it to after.  Thank you again!

Actually I'm still having a bit of trouble, because I do not want the player to be able to set anything else on the pedestals, except trophies... I tried doing this with (a ugly looking bit of code):
[code]Instead of putting something other than Delaney's trophy or Agatha's trophy or Dr John's trophy or Nancy's trophy on the first place pedestal:
	say "You need to save room on the pedestal for the correct trophy.";
	stop the action.[/code]
I7 doesn't understand this though, and I think maybe I need to make trophy a kind? - and disallow that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2726&start=0#p18777
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Rule for deciding whether an actor can touch something?
User: kanato / DateTime: 2011-06-30 18:09:56

I want to have a rule in my game for a dog to give it a special rule to determine whether it can touch something or not. For example, in one room I have a piece of beef jerky (edible) on a supporter (the kitchen counter top). The dog should be able to see it but not take it. If the dog is on the same supporter as the food then it can touch it, otherwise it can't. This way I can have a condition like
[code]
if the dog can see something edible (called the food) but the dog can't touch the food:
    say "The dog looks at [the food] wistfully."
[/code]

But I can't figure out the right way to write a rule. I already have a rule like 
[code]if the dog carries something edible (called the food):
	try the dog eating the food;
else if the dog can see something edible (called the food):
	if the dog can touch the food:
		try the dog taking the food;[/code]

Which works great, except the dog will take any food in the same room as it. So it will take food of a kitchen counter for instance when it shouldn't. The condition I want is for the dog to only be able to touch something if it is on the same supporter as the dog is on, like if there is food on a bed the dog will first jump onto a bed (supporters can be comfortable in my game, and dogs will only jump onto comfortable supporters. That works fine.)

I've tried things like: 
[code]
To decide if (a dog - canine) can reach (a toy - thing):
	decide no;
To decide if (a dog - canine) can touch (a toy - thing):
	decide no;
[/code]
But neither of these get invoked at all, ever.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2725&start=0#p18778
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I think I want to do too much at once...(I7 coding probl
User: kanato / DateTime: 2011-06-30 18:13:20

Just a little comment, but I think something this would be easiest the problem of multiple examinations of the papers, and also if the player was prevented from examining the papers (like if he was in a dark room) then it wouldn't be counted.

[code]After examining the papers for the first time:
   increase val1 by 1;
   continue the action.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2725&start=0#p18779
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I think I want to do too much at once...(I7 coding probl
User: anamri / DateTime: 2011-06-30 18:20:16

Ummm... YES, much easier!  Thank you!  [emote]:D[/emote]

(I bet you all just sigh and shake your head at us beginners)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2725&start=0#p18780
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I think I want to do too much at once...(I7 coding probl
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-30 18:35:23

In this line with the brackets:

[code]Instead of putting [Delaney's trophy] on [1st place pedestal]:[/code]

the parts in square brackets are being commented out. Square brackets in quotation marks are text substitutions. but everywhere else they're comments, which the source code doesn't read! So Inform is reading that line as:

[code]Instead of putting [...] on [...][/code]

or just "Instead of putting on," and every single "putting on" action is getting blocked.

So, that's what's going on in that case.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2726&start=0#p18781
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rule for deciding whether an actor can touch something?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-06-30 18:48:10

Check out section 12.18 of the manual on rules for reaching inside and reaching outside. My guess is you want something like this:

[code]A rule for reaching inside a supporter:
   if the person reaching is the dog and the supporter in question does not enclose the dog:
      deny access.[/code]

Not sure about the exact syntax, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2725&start=0#p18782
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I think I want to do too much at once...(I7 coding probl
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-06-30 19:06:00

[quote]Actually I'm still having a bit of trouble, because I do not want the player to be able to set anything else on the pedestals, except trophies... [/quote]

It sounds like there are two separate issues embodied in this.  If the player tries to put something other than a trophy on a pedestal, you porbably want to tell him right away that the pedestals are for trophies.  On the other hand, if he tries to put the [i]wrong[/i] trophy on a pedestal, you probably want to block it, but you don't want to tell him that it's the wrong one unless he has gathered the necessary knowledge.

I think both of these can be facilitated by creating a trophy "kind," and declaring each of the four trophies to be a trophy.  Then, the first case could be handled by a separate "instead" rule which kicks in only when a player tries to put something other than a trophy on a given pedestal.  The second case could be handled within the existing "instead" rule, modified so that it applies when a player tries to put any trophy on Pedestal 1.  When you get to the end of that rules (i.e., the  part which kicks in where Val1 is 4), you add an additional test to see if the trophy is the right one, and either allow it or block (with an appropriate message) depending on the outcome of that test.

Of course, this still requires separate rules for each pedestal.  My guess is that you might be able to figure out a way to do it all within a single rule, possibly using a table to keep track of which is the correct trophy for each pedestal and which counter variable keeps track of the player's state of knowledge applicable to each pedestal.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2726&start=0#p18783
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rule for deciding whether an actor can touch something?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-30 20:34:12

There's also the Far Away extension by Jon Ingold.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2724&start=0#p18784
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  "Use Serial Comma" option
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-30 21:16:42

I personally hate, loathe and despise the Oxford Comma. I refuse to use it. I refuse to acknowledge its existence. Maybe it's the way I speak or write. To me, the comma indicates a very brief pause. "Hate[pause]loathe[pause]and despise" doesn't sound like natural language to me.

Use it, of course, if there's no conjunction to tie the remaining word or clause to the rest of the sentence. But if the conjunction is there, why does the Oxford Comma need to be? What exactly is its purpose? What role does it serve? It's redundant, ridiculous and unnecessary.

The "ambiguity" created by its omission seems contrived by the grammatical structure of the rest of the sentence, proper or no. On Wikipedia, and in the article posted by Mr. Rothman, the classic line is quoted:

"To my parents, Ayn Rand and God".

I personally have zero difficulty understand that her parents are obviously not Ayn Rand and God. (Or were they...?) This, to me, appears to be allowing the grammatical structure to override the context of the statement, which I believe is insulting to the intelligence of the reader. I believe that this quote is used solely as a weapon to encourage the use of the Oxford Comma.

The second example:

"Among those interviewed were his two ex-wives, Kris Kristofferson and Robert Duvall."

Again... I know that Robert Duvall cannot be a wife because he is not a woman. At best, he's a life partner. But the context of the sentence indicates that he's NOT a life partner. At least not to whoever the interview was about. As for Kris, well, that name is a little trickier to pin down.

The final example:

"My usual breakfast is coffee, bacon and eggs and toast."

This is inflicted ambiguity, born entirely out of the habit of pairing bacon with eggs. This is a cultural habit, not a grammatical one and thus a poor example. Instead, the statement should read:

"My usual breakfast is coffee, bacon, eggs and toast."

BAM. No more ambiguity. "Bacon and eggs" is no longer a single item, which it shouldn't be to begin with, thus eliminating the need for both the extra conjunction and the Oxford Comma.

To me, the em dash would remove much of this ambiguity. I believe we should lobby for it's increased application.

"To my parents -- Ayn Rand and God." (Now we know she was a nut.)

"Among those interviewed were his two ex-wives -- Kris Kristofferson and Robert Duvall." (Guess Robert is a common girl's name where they're from.)

It, of course, has no place in the third example, because that one is human idiocy.

I'm not a "Grammar Nazi". I know what I like.

And I don't like the Oxford Comma.

[Edit: Typo correction.]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2715&start=0#p18785
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Different Error Messages with Is A Kind Of Construct
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-30 23:37:39

[quote="ektemple"][quote="bukayeva"]As far as writing a bug, I'd hate to write a bug if Inform is "telling [me] what's wrong, and relatively clearly." [emote]:)[/emote][/quote][/quote]

I believe that the point he's trying to make is that he doesn't want to file a bug report if the compiler is clearly telling him what the problem is, yet he isn't understanding what the compiler is telling him. You reinforced his point that there is an issue with the verbiage of errors. It's also been discussed (repeatedly, if I recall) on the forums before. The problem with Inform compiler errors is that they try to be adaptive to multiple situations while simultaneously applying to the single situation that you're receiving the error about while also trying to be human readable.

Thus, to draw on my own experience:

[code]Parse error: syntax error, unexpected $end in Z:\...\index.php on line 275[/code]

Inform delivers the same message in something along the following format:

[code]Pardon me, sir, but I encountered a bit of text somewhere around the general vicinity of The Bathroom where I believe you sincerely intended to intimate the closure of an assertion. While you told me, "If one is taking a dump and is out of toilet paper", I expected to see "The grass is blue on the left side of the bubble gum tree". That's like saying "a grasshopper is a soda can" which of course doesn't make any damn sense."[/code]

I love Inform 7. But the error messages have been rubbing the cat the wrong way for a lot of people for a long time, from what I can tell. Everyone doesn't have Dr. Temple glasses and can see through all the verbiage of these error message.

In my PHP example above, the error SHOULD read:

[quote]You're missing a closing bracket for your function on line 75.[/quote]

That closing bracket generates the "unexpected end" at the bottom of the file. But since you don't know where you left it out, you're searching through (sometimes) pages and pages of code trying to find the missing bracket. While Inform will at least point you in the right general vicinity, the error messages are unforgivable. I don't need a polite explanation of "maybe this is what I meant" over a friendly game of checkers. I need to know exactly what my error is, what line it's on and why it's a problem. (No Oxford Comma here, thank you.)

I realize that the NATURE of Inform 7 may make this approach both contradictory and cumbersome.

I'm just saying, we don't all understand the error messages that we're being given, because they don't look like error messages. They look like someone trying to console us over the death of a beloved pet. I think bukayeva was saying the same thing. "Just because *I* don't get it doesn't mean it's a bug. You obviously understand it, so it's probably working as designed and I still have a little more to learn."

[Edited to remove some condescension that I sincerely didn't intend to be there.]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2715&start=0#p18786
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Different Error Messages with Is A Kind Of Construct
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-06-30 23:46:18

And yes I know that my PHP example isn't a direct analogy. But it was the quickest error I could generate with the least helpful error response.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2724&start=0#p18787
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  "Use Serial Comma" option
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-07-01 00:36:16

Language is Open Source. You can modify it the way you like, but it's your own responsibility to keep it compatible with other versions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2724&start=0#p18788
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  "Use Serial Comma" option
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-01 06:00:58

[quote="Grueslayer"]Language is Open Source. You can modify it the way you like, but it's your own responsibility to keep it compatible with other versions.[/quote]

Very nice. The problem is that no one really understands the source code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2727&start=0#p18789
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Cards on the table
User: Aintelligence / DateTime: 2011-07-01 06:26:43

I was kind of wondering what the general use of tables were in inform and whether of not they are the best way for player conversation.
Also, I haven't yet found a way to create a table in inform.

Cheers

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2724&start=0#p18790
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  "Use Serial Comma" option
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-01 07:21:47

Well, having (unintentionally) breached the worm tin, I might as well go on record as saying that my own preference is [i]not[/i] to use the serial comma, save in those rare circumstances in which it truly does avoid a possible misunderstanding.  At the same time, I am not offended if I read a piece of writing by an author who prefers to use it.  (I am not quite so tolerant when it comes to some other grammar/usage issues -- woe unto anyone who dares even to think of splitting an infinitive in my presence! [emote]:evil:[/emote] )

Like I4L, I am something of a fan of the em-dash.  This one kind of hits home; not long ago, I received an editor's markup of an article I wrote for a professional journal, only to discover that the editor had used a very heavy hand in changing em-dashes to commas.  I let it stand in those cases where it really didn't matter (albeit with a general complaint about editors substituting their own personal preferences for those of the author) but made them restore the em-dashes in a number of places where the substitution either altered the meaning or just interfered with the flow of prose.


Robert Rothman
(Self-Proclaimed Chief of the Language Police)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2727&start=0#p18791
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Cards on the table
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-01 07:56:32

I tend to use tables quite a bit, although not for conversation (at least not directly; I use Eric Eve's Conversation extensions, and I have no idea whether tables might be used as part of the inner workings of those extensions).

One situation where I find tables very handy is where I want some random "business" as background color during each turn when the player is in a given room or some other set of conditions is satisfied.  This could be handled by something like:

[code]Every turn when the location is This Must Be The Place:
     Say "[one of] A [or] B [or] C [or] D [at random]". [/code]

However, I prefer to do it by placing the text of each of A, B, C, etc. in a single-column table.  I then set up the "every turn when the location is This Must Be The Place" rule so that it chooses a random row from the table and says whatever is the entry in that row (I don't recall the precise syntax offhand, but it's pretty simple).  The reason I like this approach better than using the "[one of] . . . [at random]" formulation is that I can see at a glance what A, B C, etc. are, and its easy to change them or to add new items to the list of possibilities without mucking around with other code.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2724&start=0#p18792
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  "Use Serial Comma" option
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-01 08:02:24

[quote="Robert Rothman"] (I am not quite so tolerant when it comes to some other grammar/usage issues -- woe unto anyone who dares even to think of splitting an infinitive in my presence! [emote]:evil:[/emote] )[/quote]

OH NO YOU DIN'T

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=20#p18793
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-07-01 08:09:36

I have two points to make, one about levels of interactivity and the other about the command prompt:

First, the interactivity of a text adventure is on a different level than the interactivity of a first-person shooter.  The FPS really is more interactive for the specific actions that it simulates, such as walking and shooting.  In an FPS, you can choose to walk specifically between [i]this[/i] rock formation and [i]that[/i] tree, and you can stop at any point between them.  Modelling distances and outdoor locations is an admittedly difficult in IF.  However, I would like to see an FPS interactively implement a scene in which the PC gets dressed after waking up in the morning and then goes to his kitchen to fix himself some coffee and oatmeal for breakfast.  Although such a scene might be boring, it would perfectly natural to implement in a text adventure using the normal method of controlling text adventures.

Also, the command prompt is probably more important to text adventures than the text descriptions itself.  The prompt asks the question "What do you want to do next?", and even though you can't do anything you want, the ideal that adventure games strive for is that anyone really trying to play the game should be able to understand what can be done in the context of the simulated world.  If you listen to the game, chances are that it will listen to you.  Andrew Plotkin makes a good case for this in his essay "Characterizing, if Not Defining, Interactive Fiction," which begins on page 59 of the [i]IF Theory Reader[/i].

When the command prompt is combined with the turn-based format of most text adventures, the effect is to put great emphasis on the actions of the PC as choices of the protagonist of the story.  Now, I want to make it clear that I agree that the turn-based format is significantly less immersive than a real-time simulation, because the whole universe doesn't hang on our every whim, every moment.  However, in any story, whether or not the fate of the world is literally at stake, the fate of the story usually does hang on the every whim of the protagonist.  The protagonist's choices build the plot (or in most novels, the choices of a few important POV characters).  Therefore, in allowing the player to control the protagonist, it is an appropriate storytelling technique to freeze the simulated universe until the player decides what the protagonist is going to do next.

I also want to emphasize that the command prompt can be implemented in a real-time environment, and has been in the case of MUDs and related forms.  I think that the turns-based format is the more natural one for single-player IF because of the emphasis it places on story, but I also love the immersion of real-time in the text gaming experience.  The most immersive text-gaming experiences that I have ever had did not occur while playing "text adventures," but in an RPI (roleplay intensive) MUD.  The experience of having your PC stand in one room while watching characters controlled by other human players interact with each other and the simulated world, moving and dropping objects, giving things to each other, perhaps fighting each other, all acting according to the imaginary story world -- while the command prompt remains open the whole time for you to interact with anyone or anything you see in whatever way you can imagine your character behaving -- [i]that[/i] is an immersive experience indeed!  I see IF and MUDs as two sides of the text adventure, and I love them both in different ways.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2715&start=0#p18794
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Different Error Messages with Is A Kind Of Construct
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-01 09:10:46

While I regret pretty much everything I've done in this thread, I don't really buy your interpretation; bukayeva understood the messages well enough to diagnose the issue, and he also sketched what he thought was wrong with each of the individual messages (I agree with assessment). So I don't think that he was saying what you attribute to him. 

But maybe he was. A bit of context is missing that would help clarify why I recommended--and still recommend--reporting issues of error message quality on the bug tracker. The Inform developers take error messages very seriously as a feature of the language. That's why they are more useful and better targeted than the PHP message you mentioned (please don't even mention Javascript!). As part of that dedication to error messages, there is a category specifically for reporting unclear or unhelpful messages. (Actually, I'm pretty sure that there used to be more than one place to report problems with built-in error messages, but one of the categories I remember doesn't seem to be available any longer.) Anyway, here's a recent report from me:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=685">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=685</a>

That report is pretty much the same kind of issue--a message that is deployed at the right time and for the right reason, but isn't as helpful as it could be--taken to a ridiculous extreme (click through and you'll see what I mean).

So, the next time you're reading an error message and wish you had your Dr. Temple glasses (!--I wonder what the condescending stuff you took out looked like!  [emote]:)[/emote] ), please consider filing a report.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=30#p18795
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-01 09:32:10

[quote="Bainespal"]I have two points to make, one about levels of interactivity and the other about the command prompt:

First, the interactivity of a text adventure is on a different level than the interactivity of a first-person shooter.  The FPS really is more interactive for the specific actions that it simulates, such as walking and shooting.  In an FPS, you can choose to walk specifically between [i]this[/i] rock formation and [i]that[/i] tree, and you can stop at any point between them.  Modelling distances and outdoor locations is an admittedly difficult in IF.  However, I would like to see an FPS interactively implement a scene in which the PC gets dressed after waking up in the morning and then goes to his kitchen to fix himself some coffee and oatmeal for breakfast.  Although such a scene might be boring, it would perfectly natural to implement in a text adventure using the normal method of controlling text adventures.[/quote]

This is an excellent point (and Rover's Day Out implements pretty much exactly that scene, and makes it awesome). Check out the video Zack Urlocker posted [url=http://www.z-machine-matter.com/2011/02/game-theory.html]here[/url] about storytelling in videogames. While they talk about storytelling scenes from a bunch of videogames are playing in the background, and most of them are about shooting stuff. There are a couple about hitting stuff with axes, a couple point-and-clickers which is a genre whose interactivity is at least as limited as IF, a couple platformers; Heavy Rain is the one that stands out as looking like it actually has a story. So that might be my elevator speech -- "These are games that aren't about shooting stuff." 

As for why more gamers aren't interested in it -- well, I'm no historian or marketing expert, but we could start by asking why movies sell better than novels. Also we could think about how gamers are basically defined by their interest in videogames with graphics (I don't believe that anyone was a self-defined gamer when text adventures were the dominant video game, or if they were it referred to tabletop RPGs), so of course they're going to be more interested in those. 

Another point, though, is that I get the impression that the business model of early commercial text adventures was built around making the game frustrating. First, there weren't that many games available, so they wanted to stretch out playing time by making the game hard, and second, they made a lot of money selling hint books I believe. (And as Jimmy Maher points out [url=http://www.filfre.net/2011/06/dog-star-adventure/]here[/url], in the pre-commercial days authors might expect you to source-dive.) Which means a lot of people have the impression that text adventures are still all about fiendishly difficult guess-the-verb puzzles. See [url=http://playthisthing.com/hitchhikers-guide-galaxy-remake]here[/url] where the reviewer (on a site that Emily Short posts on) says "Text adventures are designed to be difficult and puzzling because, gameplay-wise, that's all they've got," and one of the commenters complains about being unable to use "open door" to open a door in a text game. People are less likely to flock to a genre of game when they think that's how it works, or to spend the effort that it takes to become competent with the mechanics; any more than they'd learn how to master jumping mechanics if they thought every platformer was I Wanna Be The Guy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2717&start=0#p18796
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Appending text to a room description
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-01 09:36:18

It's an extension by Emily Short. I've never looked at it before, so I skimmed through the documentation just now. My guess is that it will not do what you want, but you might want to look it over anyway. Maybe the source will give you some ideas.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2715&start=0#p18797
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Different Error Messages with Is A Kind Of Construct
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-01 09:43:32

[quote="ektemple"]As part of that dedication to error messages, there is a category specifically for reporting unclear or unhelpful messages. (Actually, I'm pretty sure that there used to be more than one place to report problems with built-in error messages, but one of the categories I remember doesn't seem to be available any longer.)[/quote]

Are you thinking of "Core Inform --> (cosmetic) error message is badly worded"? That's still there -- I actually looked it up when I was preparing a response to this post, which basically was going to say the same thing you did. One thing that confused me about the bugtracker for a while is that you get a whole different menu of possible bugs if you use the drop-down menu for "Project" in the upper-right, in addition to the drop-down menu for "category." I misfiled at least one report for this reason, and also wound up e-mailing Emily about one of the examples because I didn't realize that I could select the examples in "Project" (well, "documentation, examples, and web site" or some such). 

In any case, "Location is a kind of room" is definitely a bug -- the compiler is accepting invalid code, as you'll never be able to use "location" as a kind -- and should be reported, even if one is reluctant to report the compiler messages for fear of being told that it's a PEBKAC (though in that case one should not be such a shrinking violet, anyway).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2724&start=0#p18798
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  "Use Serial Comma" option
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-07-01 09:50:12

[quote="I4L"]I personally have zero difficulty understand that her parents are obviously not Ayn Rand and God.[/quote]
Neither would I. But in fact it requires an extra mental step for us to determine the intended meaning of the sentence. Part of the purpose of standard English orthography is to make the meaning clear, and the need for clarity dictates that ambiguities should be resolved when it is practical to do so. The addition of an innocent little comma is surely not too labor-intensive for you to have any rational grounds for rejecting it.

The same reasoning applies to the dangling participle. Consider:

[quote]After knocking on the door, the butler admitted me.[/quote]

We can all see that it was the narrator who knocked on the door, not the butler. Nonetheless, the rule for this type of usage does not admit of any exceptions: The noun or pronoun that most closely follows the introductory participial phrase MUST be the subject of the action set forth in the participle. Any good editor would correct this sentence to:

[quote]After knocking on the door, I was admitted by the butler.[/quote]

Of course, there are also editors who have been taught that Passive Verbs Are Bad. They might even turn the correct sentence into the incorrect one. Such people are idiots.

Returning to the serial comma, here's a line from a poem by Robert Frost:

[quote]The woods are lovely, dark and deep....[/quote]

Now, Frost was an educated man, and certainly used the serial comma. So what's going on here? If an editor who DOES use the serial comma "corrects" the poem, it changes Frost's meaning. Frost meant "dark and deep" to be an appositive phrase elucidating "lovely". That is, the woods are lovely in that they are dark and deep. He did not intend "lovely, dark, and deep" to be set side by side as three independent adjectives describing the woods.

Thus it is simply not possible to understand Frost's poem in the absence of a clear tradition of the use of the serial comma. The reader's ability to decipher ambiguous sentences never gets a shot at this one -- we NEED the serial comma as a normal usage so that its absence can be used to mean something entirely different.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2724&start=0#p18799
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  "Use Serial Comma" option
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-07-01 09:58:58

[quote="Robert Rothman"]Like I4L, I am something of a fan of the em-dash.  This one kind of hits home; not long ago, I received an editor's markup of an article I wrote for a professional journal, only to discover that the editor had used a very heavy hand in changing em-dashes to commas.  I let it stand in those cases where it really didn't matter (albeit with a general complaint about editors substituting their own personal preferences for those of the author) but made them restore the em-dashes in a number of places where the substitution either altered the meaning or just interfered with the flow of prose.[/quote]
That would drive me crazy too. I use em-dashes carefully, but without prejudice. My personal rule of thumb is only to allow one pair, in cases where they are paired, per paragraph, or one single em-dash per paragraph where they are not paired -- and there's a reason for that. The em-dash is a big, obvious punctuation mark -- bigger and more obvious than the period or the comma -- so if you use more than one -- as here -- the logical structure of the paragraph is less apparent to the eye.

I once worked for a magazine editor who was of the opinion that people don't talk in parentheses. If you were writing up an interview (which we did a lot), he wouldn't let you use parentheses within quotes. Everybody has their little twitches.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2715&start=10#p18800
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Different Error Messages with Is A Kind Of Construct
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-01 10:02:52

[quote="matt w"][quote="ektemple"]I'm pretty sure that there used to be more than one place to report problems with built-in error messages, but one of the categories I remember doesn't seem to be available any longer.[/quote]

Are you thinking of "Core Inform --> (cosmetic) error message is badly worded"?[/quote]

Thanks, that very well might be what I was thinking of. Either way, the discussion in another report in the section I pointed to seems to indicate that the Documentation section is the more appropriate place, rather than using the Core Inform "error message is badly worded" flag; that discussion is [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=214]here[/url].

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2727&start=0#p18801
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Cards on the table
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-07-01 10:03:51

The extension Adaptive Hints by Eric Eve makes good use of tables. I used it in "A Flustered Duck," and I highly recommend it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2724&start=0#p18802
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  "Use Serial Comma" option
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-01 10:21:11

[quote]I personally have zero difficulty understand that her parents are obviously not Ayne [sic] Rand and God.[/quote]
I can think of a couple of politicians who apparently claim such descent.

[quote]I know that Robert Duvall cannot be a wife because he is not a woman.[/quote]
This may depend on what state you're in (or what state Mr. Duvall is in).

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2715&start=10#p18803
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Different Error Messages with Is A Kind Of Construct
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-01 10:31:22

[quote="ektemple"][quote="matt w"][quote="ektemple"]I'm pretty sure that there used to be more than one place to report problems with built-in error messages, but one of the categories I remember doesn't seem to be available any longer.[/quote]

Are you thinking of "Core Inform --> (cosmetic) error message is badly worded"?[/quote]

Thanks, that very well might be what I was thinking of. Either way, the discussion in another report in the section I pointed to seems to indicate that the Documentation section is the more appropriate place, rather than using the Core Inform "error message is badly worded" flag; that discussion is [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=214]here[/url].

--Erik[/quote]

Hmmmm, it seems to me that that discussion actually indicates that it filing it against the Documentation is better than filing it against the front-end applications, but leaves it open as to whether other error messages should be filed against Core Inform.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2727&start=0#p18804
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Cards on the table
User: Aintelligence / DateTime: 2011-07-01 10:32:28

Ok I begin to see.  I always thought that they were just for conversations.  

I am having a bit of difficulty actually making a legitimate table.  I can't seem to get columns or rows.  Is there some sort of 'table tutorial'?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2715&start=10#p18805
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Different Error Messages with Is A Kind Of Construct
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-01 10:37:23

That's also a valid interpretation. I guess that it probably doesn't matter too much--Graham's response to the discussion was simply "Fixed"!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2727&start=0#p18806
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Cards on the table
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-01 10:38:10

I use them to declare bunches of objects of a single kind (like the jersey example in the documentation).  It's not something that's used in every game, but it's easy for me to look in the tables and see what my current list of weapons or trees or whatever looks like.  They're not so useful once they get broad; too many columns and it can be hard to read in Inform, but it's easy to cut and paste to Excel and back.  If you're manipulating numbers at all, I also find the Excel export useful.

As for a tutorial . . . hmm.  I think the table documentation in the manual (chapter 15, IIRC) is pretty good.  I use it a *lot* because some of the syntax is pretty particular.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2724&start=10#p18807
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  "Use Serial Comma" option
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-01 10:38:34

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Consider:

[quote]After knocking on the door, the butler admitted me.[/quote]

We can all see that it was the narrator who knocked on the door, not the butler. Nonetheless, the rule for this type of usage does not admit of any exceptions: The noun or pronoun that most closely follows the introductory participial phrase MUST be the subject of the action set forth in the participle. Any good editor would correct this sentence to:

[quote]After knocking on the door, I was admitted by the butler.[/quote]

Of course, there are also editors who have been taught that Passive Verbs Are Bad. They might even turn the correct sentence into the incorrect one. Such people are idiots.[/quote]

I'd go for "After I knocked on the door, the butler admitted me." Or "I knocked on the door and the butler admitted me." Or "I kicked the door open and shouted 'Heeeeere's Johnny!'" You can't really lay down a hard and fast rule.

[quote]Returning to the serial comma, here's a line from a poem by Robert Frost:

[quote]The woods are lovely, dark and deep....[/quote]

Now, Frost was an educated man, and certainly used the serial comma. So what's going on here? If an editor who DOES use the serial comma "corrects" the poem, it changes Frost's meaning. Frost meant "dark and deep" to be an appositive phrase elucidating "lovely". That is, the woods are lovely in that they are dark and deep. He did not intend "lovely, dark, and deep" to be set side by side as three independent adjectives describing the woods.[/quote]

Ah, I'd never realized that before -- I'd always assumed that it was because there isn't a pause in [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGoZNjNgcP0]the melody[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=30#p18808
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-07-01 10:46:34

[quote="matt w"] "These are games that aren't about shooting stuff."[/quote]

[Some context: I'm working on a group studio project about border towns, and I've been especially fascinated by [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baarle-Hertog]Baarle-Hertog/Nassau[/url] and China Miéville's [i]The City and the City[/i]]

As an exercise to help me work towards my goal of designing a meaningful physical/virtual experience about border towns, I've been working on a little "translation" of the world of [i]The City and the City[/i] into interactive form.  [Spoilers for that book.] [spoiler]I started with [url=http://instamatique.com/games/cities/]a top-down RPG-type simulation of the terrain[/url], but an important politically-loaded action in the book is so-called Breach, when someone interacts with the other side, even through something as seemingly minor as looking across the border.  Glances just don't translate well to the RPG setting, so I've been thinking about things that do.  And shooting is pretty much the only one, so I've been planning on making enemies on both sides of the border, with penalties for shooting the cross-border enemies (since you're not supposed to even acknowledge their existence).  I'll probably still implement this, since really it's just a warm-up exercise, but it certainly lacks subtlety.  But in IF, glances are one of the basic stuffs of interaction; it seems to me that over half the commands I type into most IF games are "examine."  So this is exactly a situation in which the one standard verb of most realtime games is not the one I want, and the subtlety that is IF interactions is perfect.  (Though perhaps for this particular exercise, the convoluted map calls for something Glimmr-based, not solely text.)[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2722&start=0#p18809
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why doesn't "[thing]" parse as a topic?
User: Genstein / DateTime: 2011-07-01 11:00:16

It does in fact parse as a topic, but in doing so the value of the global variable "the noun" is altered to match the object referred to in the topic, which has unfortunate side effects for rulebook processing.

There's a [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2280]discussion[/url] about it on this forum, which lead to [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=642]an issue being raised[/url] which at time of writing is Confirmed but not fixed. (I'm not sure whether "Confirmed" means "this happens" or "this happens and is a bug.")

I've also raised a [url=http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/1673835-thoroughly-document-topics-or-make-them-far-more-]UserVoice suggestion[/url] in this area. Feel free to vote for it, or not, as you see fit [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2724&start=10#p18810
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  "Use Serial Comma" option
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-07-01 11:17:39

Oh boy are we airing our grammar peeves?  Sweet!

I love the Oxford comma.  Love, love, and love.  It appeals to my visual aesthetic.  So I'll always use it in my own writing, but I don't particularly care whether or not anyone else does.

I do not care at all about split infinitives, except when someone changes the meaning of their sentence because they're fetishistically [url=http://arnoldzwicky.wordpress.com/2009/06/13/postings-on-split-infinitives/]avoiding[/url] split infinitives.  English is not actually [url=http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=639]Latin[/url], you know. 

Honestly the only major grammar peeve I have is the supposedly gender-neutral use of male pronouns.  [url=http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005423.html]Singular[/url] [url=http://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/singular-they-and-the-many-reasons-why-its-correct/]'they'[/url] [url=http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005176.html]all[/url] the [url=http://thelousylinguist.blogspot.com/2008/10/singular-they-is-old-logical-and.html]way[/url], cats and kittens.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2570&start=20#p18811
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor: A new Linux/Mac OS X/Windows port of the Hugo eng
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-01 11:21:54

Version 0.8 is out:

[list]
[*]For game authors: You can now rename the interpreter to match the basename of your *.hex file, in which case it will load and run it without prompting the user for a game file. For example, if your game's filename is "BestGameEver.hex", you can rename the Linux Hugor executable to "BestGameEver" and the Windows one to "BestGameEver.exe". This is not supported yet for Mac OS X.

[/*:m]
[*]The command editor now supports word-based editing (move to next/previous word, delete to start/end of word). The keyboard shortcuts are system specific (like CTRL+Backspace on Linux and Windows, Option+Backspace on Macs).

[/*:m]
[*]If "Soft Text Scrolling" is still too fast on your system, you can now apply some Extra Butter(TM) (in the configuration dialog.)

[/*:m]
[*]On MS Windows, text should no longer get cut at the right edge of the window.

[/*:m]
[*]A crash has been fixed that occurred on some systems (on some Linux systems it would crash with a "glibc detected" error message.)

[/*:m]
[*]The interpreter now remembers its maximized window state between sessions.

[/*:m]
[*]Added proper application icons for Mac and Windows. (Linux: We don't need no stinkin' icons!)[/*:m][/list:u]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2727&start=0#p18812
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Cards on the table
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-01 11:26:26

[quote="Aintelligence"]Ok I begin to see.  I always thought that they were just for conversations.  

I am having a bit of difficulty actually making a legitimate table.  I can't seem to get columns or rows.  Is there some sort of 'table tutorial'?[/quote]

If your only problem is physically making columns and rows, just put a tab stop between each column and hit return for each new row. It may come out looking kind of funny but it should work, if you get the tab stops right. (As gravel said, it looks funny enough that you may want to do most of the work somewhere else.)

Sorry if this isn't your question/isn't helpful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2570&start=20#p18813
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor: A new Linux/Mac OS X/Windows port of the Hugo eng
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2011-07-01 11:37:36

[quote]For game authors: You can now rename the interpreter to match the basename of your *.hex file, in which case it will load and run it without prompting the user for a game file. For example, if your game's filename is "BestGameEver.hex", you can rename the Linux Hugor executable to "BestGameEver" and the Windows one to "BestGameEver.exe".[/quote]

This is the best thing ever. 


[quote]The command editor now supports word-based editing (move to next/previous word, delete to start/end of word). The keyboard shortcuts are system specific (like CTRL+Backspace on Linux and Windows, Option+Backspace on Macs).[/quote]

This is also the best thing ever. 


[quote]If "Soft Text Scrolling" is still too fast on your system, you can now apply some Extra Butter(TM) (in the configuration dialog.)[/quote]

Ha ha ha! Well, I can't wait to check this out. 


[quote]On MS Windows, text should no longer get cut at the right edge of the window.[/quote]

[i]Aces![/i]


[quote]A crash has been fixed that occurred on some systems (on some Linux systems it would crash with a "glibc detected" error message.)[/quote]

I don't want to seem politically disillusioned, but I'm pretty much willing to vote for Hugor in the next Presidential election at this point. Thanks, Nikos.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=30#p18814
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-01 11:42:19

[quote="tove"][quote="matt w"] "These are games that aren't about shooting stuff."[/quote]

[Some context: I'm working on a group studio project about border towns, and I've been especially fascinated by [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baarle-Hertog]Baarle-Hertog/Nassau[/url] and China Miéville's [i]The City and the City[/i]]

As an exercise to help me work towards my goal of designing a meaningful physical/virtual experience about border towns, I've been working on a little "translation" of the world of [i]The City and the City[/i] into interactive form.[/quote]

Wow, that was something like the first thing I thought of when reading that book. And it definitely seems like something that would work a lot better in IF (with graphics, perhaps) than graphically.

[spoiler]For instance, the big climactic puzzle could come after the player had navigated the map enough to know what was grosstopically where, where they had to actually Breach out and interact with something in the grosstopical location -- which didn't appear in the room description. 

It'd be hard to convey what needed to be done, but maybe you could do that by having the player bump into things that were in the virtual room but not in the room they were seeing. There was some game where you had to figure out what was going on by running into things you couldn't see, until eventually you found your way to your goal (which was in sight at the beginning!) but wouldn't see it and had to know that it was there. I forget the game's name.[/spoiler]

(On the non-IF front, check out [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derby_Line,_Vermont]Derby Line[/url].)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=30#p18815
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-01 11:51:21

[quote="tove"]As an exercise to help me work towards my goal of designing a meaningful physical/virtual experience about border towns, I've been working on a little "translation" of the world of [i]The City and the City[/i] into interactive form....Glances just don't translate well to the RPG setting, so I've been thinking about things that do.[/quote]

Sounds like a fun project. I'm not familiar with [i]The City and the City[/i] and so I don't know how spoilery reading my suggestion would be, but I've spoilered this idea just in case:

[spoiler]One thing that most top-down RPGs implement is facing, where each character can face in at least the four cardinal directions. Often this is just an aesthetic overlay, without many gameplay ramifications, but there are exceptions: backstabbing a character that's facing away from you for more damage, for example. Could you use the facing mechanic to penalize the player in some way when her avatar is both in the same row or column as a character across the border and is facing toward the character? This would mean, essentially, that the player could not approach the border in a given file if there is a cross-border character in that tile. You could probably even use this mechanism to structure little puzzles, though it would mainly function to dramatize the awareness-without-acknowledgment dynamic that you describe.[/spoiler]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2715&start=10#p18816
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Different Error Messages with Is A Kind Of Construct
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-07-01 11:52:06

[quote="ektemple"]While I regret pretty much everything I've done in this thread, I don't really buy your interpretation; bukayeva understood the messages well enough to diagnose the issue, and he also sketched what he thought was wrong with each of the individual messages (I agree with assessment). So I don't think that he was saying what you attribute to him.[/quote]

I'm not saying he was or he wasn't. I'm saying that's what it seemed like to me, as I've had that exact internal dialog over error messages countless times.

[quote="ektemple"] (please don't even mention Javascript!).[/quote]

Wouldn't dream of it. I put JS right up there with the Oxford Comma.

[quote="ektemple"]So, the next time you're reading an error message and wish you had your Dr. Temple glasses (!--I wonder what the condescending stuff you took out looked like!  [emote]:)[/emote] [/quote]

Hah. The "condescending" stuff wasn't intended to be, but in reading my post again after I submitted it, I decided that it could certainly be interpreted that way. This statement wasn't intended to be condescending either, but complimentary. I struggle with almost every single error message that Inform jabs into my eye socket. Most of the time I can't figure them out at all and just hack at the source until it doesn't give me error messages anymore. (Which generally means it isn't doing what I had originally wanted it to, either.) Whereas you, and several others on this forum, seem to glance over at the error, nod your head sagely to an old friend and set about making amends.

That's all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2570&start=20#p18817
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor: A new Linux/Mac OS X/Windows port of the Hugo eng
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-01 12:19:03

[quote="Ice Cream Jonsey"]I don't want to seem politically disillusioned, but I'm pretty much willing to vote for Hugor in the next Presidential election at this point.[/quote]
They didn't make any exceptions for Schwarzenegger, so I guess they won't for Hugor either [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2570&start=20#p18818
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor: A new Linux/Mac OS X/Windows port of the Hugo eng
User: Roody_Yogurt / DateTime: 2011-07-01 12:26:50

That is some great news. I am especially psyched about the interpreter-renaming feature; that'll help a lot when sharing future IF works with family members and friends who are not interpreter-savvy. Thanks, again!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=30#p18819
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-07-01 12:27:49

[quote="matt w"]I forget the game's name.[/quote]

Yeah, sounds familiar.... [emote]:P[/emote]

[quote](On the non-IF front, check out [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derby_Line,_Vermont]Derby Line[/url].)[/quote]

Stanstead/Derby Line is[/are?] awesome, and it's one of the favorite examples of the organizers: <a class="postlink" href="http://dividedcities.com/post/3845046477/the-line-painted-on-the-floor-inside-the-library">http://dividedcities.com/post/384504647 ... he-library</a>  
I love that opera house.  They're hoping to pull through funding so that we get to visit (fingers crossed!) but in the meantime we are visiting Niagara Falls.

------------------

ektemple:
I did think briefly about facing, but it seems like it would be darn near impossible to play with a map of any complexity.  But it is also true that I tend to make really easy games rather than hard ones.
[spoiler]Although I'm not trying for a strict translation, one of the major themes in the book is the characters' ability to "unsee" the other city -- that is, they may be physically looking right at it, but they don't react and try to erase what they saw from their memory.  There are interesting descriptions of how this works with, say, fast moving vehicles (since some of the car-accessible roads are shared between the cities), loud noises, and smells.  (I do actually recommend the book quite highly for its world-building. [emote]:)[/emote]) So I guess it's that spirit of willful ignorance that I'm interested in -- which I think could actually be really effective on an IF-trained audience, since we're all really used to reflexively examining everything.[/spoiler]
I think you're quite right that there's potential for some really interesting puzzles in deliberate facing directions.  For example: [url=http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2009/07/column_homer_in_silicon_cavana.php]Don't Look Back[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2724&start=10#p18820
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  "Use Serial Comma" option
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-01 13:31:46

I humbly apologize to all for having started this mess.

By way of explanation (although not excuse), I would say that my original intention was not to start a pissing match about what is or is not correct; I simply thought it was mildly amusing to see an article about a point of usage on which Inform 7 specifically gives the author a choice, and wanted to share it with the group.  (Incidentally, until I read the article I was totally unaware that the serial comma was in any way associated with Oxford University.)

Of course, notwithstanding my original innocent intention, I confess to having perpetuated the pissing match with my unnecessary, gratuitous and uncalled-for crack about those illiterate, ignorant and obstinate fools, morons and cretins who insist on splitting their infinitives.

Oh, damn!  Now I've gone and done it again by opening the door to a debate over whether the use of a serial comma in a list of adjectives raises any different issues than its use in a list of nouns.   Maybe I should just keep my foot in my mouth where it will keep any more words from coming out! [emote]:oops:[/emote] 


Robert Rothman
(Who, despite this embarrassing episode, will not resign from my post as Self-Proclaimed Chief of the Language Police)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2570&start=20#p18821
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor: A new Linux/Mac OS X/Windows port of the Hugo eng
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-01 14:27:55

In order to avoid "version hell" for people linking to the downloads, "unversioned" download links are now provided (first post was updated.) Using the provided download links will result in always downloading the latest available version. More importantly, you don't have to keep track of new Hugor versions and you will avoid dead links. So please use those when linking to a download.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2728&start=0#p18822
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: Container Description
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-07-01 14:57:02

I'm using
[code]if(child(self)) L__M(##Search, 7, container);[/code]
within the description of a container to show its contents. How do I display the content of a supporter, or how do I get the above code to display "On the container is" instead of "In the container is"?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2650&start=0#p18823
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Invisible Object in Inventory
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-07-01 15:18:32

'nother problem in that context: A dummy object in a container. Needs to be there ([b]in[/b] there) for technical reasons. Doesn't cause a problem except for when using the INV command. Setting the short_name to "" results in "a " being listed. I can't believe there's no solution how to hide an object within a container (while others are visible). How do I do it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2729&start=0#p18824
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Newbie rulebook question
User: daijobu / DateTime: 2011-07-01 15:21:33

Newbie here.  Helping dd with a simple game she is designing.  

The player is collecting ingredients from the pantry and putting them on the counter in the next room, the Kitchen.  I want to avoid this sort of message:

[size=85]>e

Pantry
Inside the walk-in pantry are numerous dry goods labeled and stacked on shelves.

You can see a bag of flour, a container of baking soda, and a box of sugar here.


>take sugar
you can put the box of sugar on the counter if it's heavy.


>put sugar on counter
You can't see any such thing.
[/size]

I tried using this, but I still get the error message:  

Instead of putting anything on counter when player is in Pantry:
	now player is in Kitchen;
	now noun is on counter;
	now player is in Pantry.

Thank you!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2650&start=0#p18825
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Invisible Object in Inventory
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-01 15:45:48

You could move it out before the inventory command and then move it back.

Or, use the "invent" property. Once again, you'll have to use WriteListFrom and the workflag bit to write out the contents list while customizing what appears on it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2729&start=0#p18826
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie rulebook question
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-07-01 16:06:01

So just to make sure: the walk-in pantry is implemented as a room connected to the kitchen, and you want the game to assume the player wants to go back into the kitchen when they try to set something on the counter (since the counter is actually in the kitchen).

I believe you want to handle this as a two-parter.  First, you need to put the counter "in scope" from the pantry, which means that you can see it from there (otherwise, Inform assumes rooms are basically opaque boxes, which is why you're getting the "can't see any such thing" message). You can learn about scope in chapter 17.27, and here's the gist of what you'll want to do:[code]After deciding the scope of the player when the player is in the Pantry:
[tab]place the counter in scope.[/code]

Second, you want to tell the game to let the player try going back to the kitchen before dropping something on the counter.  It's nicest to do this with a "try [action]" phrase, because if the player can't go back to the kitchen for some other reason (pantry monsters have glued her feet to the floor, maybe?), your rule won't artificially override that.  So you can do that like this:[code]Before putting anything on the counter when player is in Pantry:
[tab]try going to the Kitchen;
[tab]continue the action.[/code]You may also be interested in "try silently," in chapter 7.4.


If I've misread the situation and the intent is that there's a counter that's reachable from the pantry (as in, it's within arm's reach), you should check out chapter 12.16, on reaching inside and reaching outside rules.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2729&start=0#p18827
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie rulebook question
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-07-01 16:26:59

Okay. First off, when it comes to writing in Inform 7, indentation matters. If you want to post your source code and want to preserve the tab spaces, use [b]code[/b] tags, like this:
[code][code]The Office is a room.[/code][/code]

Next, your question doesn't seem to have much to do with rulebooks. I can't tell what you've written in the code so far, but I can guess. Did you remember to define the counter as a supporter? And is the counter in the same room?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2731&start=0#p18828
Forum: Competitions / Subject: IntroComp Entries Available, Voting Open
User: Jacqueline / DateTime: 2011-07-01 17:11:22

Hooray, IntroComp 2011 is now underway!

Thirteen entries, voting open through July 17th. 

[b]Head to [url]http://www.allthingsjacq.com/introcomp/[/url] to get the comp zip and vote.[/b]

A reminder of some rules: Authors may not vote.  Beta testers are allowed to vote, but only on games they did not test.  Everyone else in the entire world may vote on as many or as few entries as they like, on the usual 1-10 scale (10 being the best). However, they are asked to judge games with one thought in mind, and one alone: "How much do I want to play more of this entry?"

Reviews may be posted during the voting period, but authors must refrain from discussing any entries in a public Internet forum during the voting period and may not canvass for votes. Once the competition has begun, authors should refrain from posting their thoughts on any entry until the deadline for voting has passed.  (Though it is fine if authors make a blog post that is very general and basically says, "Hey, IntroComp is underway, go to <a class="postlink" href="http://www.allthingsjacq.com/introcomp/">http://www.allthingsjacq.com/introcomp/</a> to get the entries and vote.")

Good luck to all the authors!
- Jacqueline

PS - If any IntroComp-related issues arise, please send a note to <a href="mailto:jacqueline.a.lott@gmail.com">jacqueline.a.lott@gmail.com</a> -- though it should be noted that I am going camping.  I will be back later in the weekend, so please do not fret if I don't respond to an e-mail immediately.   [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2731&start=0#p18829
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IntroComp Entries Available, Voting Open
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-07-01 17:27:35

Yay, look at all those entries!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2729&start=0#p18830
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie rulebook question
User: daijobu / DateTime: 2011-07-01 17:47:54

Bingo.  I just finished Aaron Reed's book and he also describes scope on p.329-330, but there's so much Inform stuff to absorb.  

Eleas:  Sorry, the tab's disappeared when I copy/pasted into the editor.  I'll mark them in next time.

Thanks for your quick reply!  

[quote="tove"]So just to make sure: the walk-in pantry is implemented as a room connected to the kitchen, and you want the game to assume the player wants to go back into the kitchen when they try to set something on the counter (since the counter is actually in the kitchen).

I believe you want to handle this as a two-parter.  First, you need to put the counter "in scope" from the pantry, which means that you can see it from there (otherwise, Inform assumes rooms are basically opaque boxes, which is why you're getting the "can't see any such thing" message). 
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2729&start=0#p18831
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie rulebook question
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-07-01 18:32:06

[quote="daijobu"]there's so much Inform stuff to absorb.[/quote]

Oh, absolutely.  The only way a lot of us know the answers to intermediate-level questions like these is that we've been there before ourselves. (I myself wrote a game that was a total nightmare when it came to getting scope issues right...)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2724&start=10#p18832
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  "Use Serial Comma" option
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-07-01 18:45:17

I much prefer the serial comma, but my personal bugaboo is parentheses.  I abuse them.  I stick entire sentences inside them, like a post-it note stuck on a paragraph.  If I've had too much caffeine they'll turn into em-dashes, and then I know I need to go lie down awhile.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2731&start=0#p18833
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IntroComp Entries Available, Voting Open
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-07-01 20:05:40

Note that the two "Choice of" entries in the zip file may not work properly if you just open them up.

The best way to play those games is online:

Choice of Zombies: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.choiceofgames.com/zombies/">http://www.choiceofgames.com/zombies/</a>
Choice of the Petal Throne: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.choiceofgames.com/user-contributed/petal-throne/">http://www.choiceofgames.com/user-contr ... al-throne/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2732&start=0#p18834
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: How do you build TADS3 compiler in linux
User: linux_if_user / DateTime: 2011-07-02 05:26:48

Hi, I downloaded the TADS3 compiler from [url]http://www.tads.org/frobtads.htm[/url] (both the full download and the TADS3 compiler). The default configure script only seems to compile the interpreter, but I also need the compiler. There seems to be no configure option to include the compiler (such as configure --with-compiler) but the makefile looks like it has lines to build the compiler which are commented out. Without further documentation i am a bit stuck -- can anyone help? Thanks

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2729&start=0#p18835
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie rulebook question
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-07-02 05:27:46

[quote="daijobu"]Eleas:  Sorry, the tab's disappeared when I copy/pasted into the editor.  I'll mark them in next time.[/quote]
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply you made a mistake. By enclosing your code in the [code] tags, you can show the code on the forum and it will look exactly like it did when you wrote it. Otherwise, the forum won't show the tabs.

So in short, easiest way to show your own code on the forum is to highlight it in the Inform 7 editor, paste it into your post, and enclose it in [code] tags.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2694&start=10#p18836
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Needing help on a wait-through scene (and a few other st
User: Roadcrosser / DateTime: 2011-07-02 06:48:36

I did give him something near the end of that sequence though he would use it often and sometimes some players actually drop it (because they want to). I should prolly just give him a box of beans that won't be able to be seen by the player.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2732&start=0#p18837
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How do you build TADS3 compiler in linux
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-02 07:14:43

The file doc/COMPILERS has the info you need. In short, you just unpack the compiler tarball inside the frobtads top-level directory.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2733&start=0#p18838
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Looking for VVIP Tester
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-07-02 07:47:03

Well, it's not VIP, it's WIP - Work In Progress. But at least I caught your attention.

I'm working on a little game (under Inform 6). Maybe 25% done so far. Will take me aeons to complete it, but it would be a rush of motivation to see someone rushing through the stub it is, reminding me of describing unnecessary scenery objects along the way and laughing at my feeble writing afterwards. So far it features 32 mostly undescribed rooms, 13 autistic NPCs and a handfull of guess-the-word puzzles.

Would one hard-wearing person be so kind as to waste 15 minutes of his/her/its valuable spare time by rushing through my game shell and passing me the transcript afterwards? It's my first attempt at IF, so don't expect much, and so won't I, just a short transcript showing someone actually visited "my" rooms. 

Would mean much to me. One victim is really enough, I'd hunt for more in half a year when the game is theoretically solvable (or a whole year, if the summer weather keeps being that good) (and I’m programming on weekends only anyway).

Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2724&start=10#p18839
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  "Use Serial Comma" option
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-07-02 07:55:19

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]I much prefer the serial comma, but my personal bugaboo is parentheses.  I abuse them.  I stick entire sentences inside them, like a post-it note stuck on a paragraph.  If I've had too much caffeine they'll turn into em-dashes, and then I know I need to go lie down awhile.[/quote]

In the year I spent studying in Germany, a both difficult and frustrating time, the teachers, who were not the most straightforward among educators, unwittingly taught me to hate relative clauses and complex-compound sentences. With a [i]passion[/i].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2694&start=10#p18840
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Needing help on a wait-through scene (and a few other st
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-02 09:33:45

You can prevent the PC from dropping things.  I don't have access to Inform, but:

[code]Instead of dropping the Vital Plot Element:
	say "You don't want to leave behind [the noun]!" instead.[/code]

Much, much easier than coding an invisible thing (which is likely to be uncovered by some players anyway, since it's hard to really hide stuff).

You can do this with every object (instead of dropping something) or one specific object (instead of dropping the camera) or a certain kind of object (A thing is either essential or nonessential.  A thing is usually nonessential.  The Vital Plot Element, the camera, and the purple buffalo are essential.  Instead of dropping something essential . . .)

I'd test those if I were able, but I can't, so the syntax may be slightly off.

But it doesn't *have* to be a held item or location that triggers a scene.  Scenes can start in a specified number of turns, or in response to a player action, or almost anything you can think of.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2724&start=10#p18841
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  "Use Serial Comma" option
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-07-02 09:37:05

[quote="Jim Aikin"]
[quote]The woods are lovely, dark and deep....[/quote]
[...]
Frost meant "dark and deep" to be an appositive phrase elucidating "lovely". That is, the woods are lovely in that they are dark and deep. He did not intend "lovely, dark, and deep" to be set side by side as three independent adjectives describing the woods.

Thus it is simply not possible to understand Frost's poem in the absence of a clear tradition of the use of the serial comma. The reader's ability to decipher ambiguous sentences never gets a shot at this one -- we NEED the serial comma as a normal usage so that its absence can be used to mean something entirely different.[/quote]

I'm quite convinced this is perfectly possible

In Swedish orthography, the serial comma is just plain wrong. Also, it is one aspect of writing where anglicist influences seems to have had no effect on Swedish usage or "abusage" whatsoever; you just don't see Swedish people use a serial comma when writing Swedish, regardless of how well or bad they conform to other conventions of written Swedish. 

And I (being Swedish and not having heard of the serial comma till my late twenties) still have no problem understanding the semantic distinction between the appositive use of "dark and deep" that Frost uses and the cor-ordinated series of adjectives "lovely, dark, and deep". Moreover, I must have read hundreds of similar appositive phrases in Swedish, and I'm pretty sure I interpreted the vast majority of them (correctly) as appositive.

I guess that if you're brought up in a linguistic community where there is no tradition at all to use  the serial comma, what you develop is not an inability to resolve the ambiguities of sentences like "Skogen är skön, mörk och djup …" (meaning either "The woods are lovely, dark and deep" or "The woods are lovely, dark, and deep"), but a readiness to resolve it with recourse to contextual clues other than punctuation. 

Further, I suspect that this ability is present with people whose native language is English, as well. Frost's poem can't very well be impossible to understand to native English speakers if read aloud (in which case you can't see either the commas or the absence of them). And appositive phrases, even in such potentially ambiguous contexts as in Frost's poem, surely, must be an older feature of English than any consistent punctuation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2731&start=0#p18842
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IntroComp Entries Available, Voting Open
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-07-02 10:15:40

Finally [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2732&start=0#p18843
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How do you build TADS3 compiler in linux
User: linux_if_user / DateTime: 2011-07-02 10:22:10

Many thanks -- I thought the compiler files were already in the main source tarball which is clearly not the case. your suggestion worked fine

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2724&start=10#p18844
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  "Use Serial Comma" option
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-07-02 10:57:42

[quote="Felix"]I'm quite convinced this is perfectly possible

In Swedish […][/quote]
On the other hand, I don't think I'd get this forest right on a first reading without stumbling. To make the sentence clear, I'd like other punctuation (as mentioned earlier): "Skogen är skön - mörk och djup". (Or maybe "Skogen är skön: mörk och djup."?) Then I'd be able to sight-read it without hesitation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2570&start=30#p18845
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor: A new Linux/Mac OS X/Windows port of the Hugo eng
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-02 11:05:36

I uploaded a repackaged "hugor-0.8-linux.tar.bz2". The only change is that the interpreter is now a single executable: there are no DLLs included anymore (they have been linked directly into the executable file.) This makes it possible to treat it just like the Windows *.exe and Mac app bundle; simply copy the executable wherever you want and it will run from there just fine.

If you're not interested in this, you don't need to re-download.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2733&start=0#p18846
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Looking for VVIP Tester
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-07-02 11:27:19

Victim found, thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2724&start=10#p18847
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  "Use Serial Comma" option
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-07-02 11:31:20

[quote="Felix"]Frost's poem can't very well be impossible to understand to native English speakers if read aloud (in which case you can't see either the commas or the absence of them). And appositive phrases, even in such potentially ambiguous contexts as in Frost's poem, surely, must be an older feature of English than any consistent punctuation.[/quote]
All very true. But: A writer, and most especially a poet, needs to make use of language (written language, in this case) in the most precise manner that is available. We dare not promote a situation in which the careful writer has [i]fewer [/i]tools.

To take an even better example from poetry, e. e. cummings wrote, for the most part, without capital letters. This was a conscious orthographic decision. You can argue, if you like, that cummings's poems would be just as comprehensible if they were "corrected" by a copyeditor so that standard capitalization was employed. But something would be lost -- something important!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2724&start=10#p18848
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  "Use Serial Comma" option
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-07-02 12:35:56

[quote="Robert Rothman"]I humbly apologize to all for having started this mess.[/quote]

Are you kidding? This is one of the most interesting discussions presently active. It even made me go back to humbly study (hey, I even learned this is a split!) my own language's quirks. I now have a Portuguese grammar in my desk because of you :')

(Edit: You also made me finally understand the darn [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_i1xk07o4g]Vampire Weekend[/url] song)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2721&start=0#p18849
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Level9.NET author info
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2011-07-02 13:04:19

Just confirmed it's a 32-bit vs 64-bit issue. I tried it in my 32-bit Win7 machine at work, and it opens up quickly.

But I guess you knew that already [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2727&start=0#p18850
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Cards on the table
User: Aintelligence / DateTime: 2011-07-02 13:42:50

That was very helpful.

There is only one thing I don't know/ am confused about.
I copied a little bit out of the recipe book (don't worry no plagiarism) just to see a basic conversation using it, but I can't even get the tables to work. 
 
[code]A person has a table name called conversation. 
Instead of asking someone about [phrase entry]:
	let the source be the conversation of the noun;
	if topic understood is a topic listed in source:
		if there is a turn stamp entry:
			say "[the noun] told you [summary entry].";
		otherwise:
			now turn stamp entry is the turn count;
			say "[reply entry][paragraph break]";
	otherwise:
		say "[the noun] looks at you in confusion."
		
The conversation of Linda Harris is table of Linda's babel.

table of Linda's babel
phrase	reply	summary	turn stamp
"murder/crime/death"	"I really don't want to think about that right now."	"She didn't want to talk about it."	a number
"Innocent/innocence/plead"	"I swear! I didn't do it! The evedence must have been planted."	"She did not kill John."	--
"John/death of John/murder of John"	"I really don't know.  He was my friend, he was all of our friends."	"She could hardly say."	--
"friends/friend"	"My friends?  They were all there when it happened."	"Her friends were there at the murder scene"	--

[/code]

I don't get any error messages when I start the program, but when I say key phrases, (like murder or John), it will only say "Linda looks at you in confusion."

No clue what the problem is, but the program seems not to recognize the table.

(the table kind of got messed up, but it is using proper syntax.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2727&start=0#p18851
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Cards on the table
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-07-02 14:45:18

I'm seeing a couple of problems here. There may be an Inform bug lurking somewhere in the underbrush, but I can make it run by: (1) changing [phrase entry] to [topic entry] in line 2; (2) changing the name of the first column in the table from phrase to topic.

At this point, all of the topics work except the third one. The problem here seems to be that Inform is not going to let you put spaces into the topic column options. It will be okay with "John" but not with "John/murder of John".

The other thing is, topic texts must match exactly. So 'ask linda about murder' will match the first line, but 'ask linda about the murder' will not match. This is why using Eric Eve's conversation package extensions is a much better idea. When you do that, you can define the murder as a topic _object_, with synonyms "crime" and "death", and Inform will be able to figure out that 'the murder', 'the crime', and so forth refer to that same object.

Also, look at your capitalization. Your summary texts should not begin with a capital, as they're run into the middle of a sentence.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2734&start=0#p18852
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Problem with hyperlinks in a Flexible Windows subwindow
User: DMacasaurus / DateTime: 2011-07-02 15:07:04

Greetings,
This is my first post and it's a problem that is driving me nuts, so thanks in advance if anyone can help.
I have created a project with two side windows using Glimmer, one for graphics and one for text
I can implement hyperlinks using Emily's Basic Hyperlinks in the [u]main window[/u] just fine (I have just been using the link to execute "go north" for test purposes.)
I can create a hyperlink in the [u]subwindow[/u]. When I click on the subwindow hyperlink, however, nothing happens.The text is hyperlinked but executes nothing. It looks like a window focus issue, that clicking on the link in the sub-window shifts focus and so Inform doesn't execute the go north command.
Anyone know what my problem is and is there any i7 source code examples of hyperlinked text in a subwindow that I could be referred to?
Thanks

Update:
If it helps, even when I use Emily's Basic Hyperlinks in the main window, clicking on the hyperlink execute "go north" but the game does not return to the command prompt (">") until  I type in a new command. So it seems I must be ignorant on some basic point of window control/focus with hyperlink commands

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2735&start=0#p18853
Forum: Competitions / Subject: IntroComp 2011 - Updated Zip File
User: Jacqueline / DateTime: 2011-07-02 15:35:20

A new zip file is available at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.allthingsjacq.com/IntroComp11/">http://www.allthingsjacq.com/IntroComp11/</a>

The changes in the updated zip pertain to Choice Of games, because the link that I included to launch them offline will not work universally (this was my fault, not the authors, for including this link).  You can either download the new zip to play them offline (best done in Firefox) or, to play online in other browsers, the links for all the Choice of entries to the competition are as follows:

Exile: 
<a class="postlink" href="http://exile.unimatrix42.com/mygame">http://exile.unimatrix42.com/mygame</a>

Gargoyle: 
<a class="postlink" href="http://gargoyle.unimatrix42.com/mygame/">http://gargoyle.unimatrix42.com/mygame/</a>

Of Pots and Mushrooms: 
<a class="postlink" href="http://risingdecline.webs.com/Samurai/mygame/index.html">http://risingdecline.webs.com/Samurai/mygame/index.html</a>

Choice of the Petal Throne:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.choiceofgames.com/user-contributed/petal-throne/">http://www.choiceofgames.com/user-contr ... al-throne/</a>

Choice of Zombies:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.choiceofgames.com/zombies/">http://www.choiceofgames.com/zombies/</a>

Thanks, any my apologies to the authors that we didn't catch this before the zip file went public.

Best,
- Jacqueline

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2731&start=0#p18854
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IntroComp Entries Available, Voting Open
User: Jacqueline / DateTime: 2011-07-02 15:40:19

[quote="dfabulich"]Note that the two "Choice of" entries in the zip file may not work properly if you just open them up.

The best way to play those games is online:

Choice of Zombies: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.choiceofgames.com/zombies/">http://www.choiceofgames.com/zombies/</a>
Choice of the Petal Throne: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.choiceofgames.com/user-contributed/petal-throne/">http://www.choiceofgames.com/user-contr ... al-throne/</a>[/quote]Thanks, Dan.  I didn't realize there was a difference between browsers, so I tested the links I'd included, they worked, and while one author caught the error I didn't really get the nature of why there was an error and made a different error before releasing the zip.  That last sentence may or may not make any sense!  But the short version is that I've uploaded a new zip file that addresses these issues, as well as posted live links to all the Choice Of stuff in a new post to this forum (see [url]http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2735[/url]).

I'd just like to point out that this was my error, not one on the part of any authors or Choice Script.

- Jacqueline

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2736&start=0#p18855
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Variable Exits
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-07-02 16:12:09

I would like to have a room (an elevator) have one exit direction (out) lead to variable rooms. In I6 I'd know what to do, but how do I achieve this in I7?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2721&start=0#p18856
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Level9.NET author info
User: JohnElliott / DateTime: 2011-07-02 18:17:49

I had a similar problem once, the other way round (32-bit native process calling .NET DLL). The solution was to mark the DLL as 'x86' rather than 'any processor' in the project settings. The same may apply here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2727&start=0#p18857
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Cards on the table
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-02 18:28:43

In this line:

[code]Instead of asking someone about [phrase entry]:[/code]

[phrase entry] isn't doing anything -- when you use square brackets outside of quotes, Inform treats the text inside as a comment, which is to say it ignores it completely. In this case it might work out OK, but the standard form is "Instead of asking someone about something."

I think the reason changing the first line of the table from "phrase" to "topic" works is that you're checking it with "if topic understood is a topic listed in source." Here "topic understood" is just the text entered as part of the command -- see section 16.5 about "the topic understood." So you're taking that text, and you're checking to see if it's a topic listed in source (which is a conversation table) -- which will only work if one of the columns of the table is actually named "topic." I guess naming the column "topic" is necessary, because that's a special case; see section 15.13.

Anyway, the bracketed text outside of quotes is definitely one of the things that's confusing you here; it's kind of a coincidence that it compiled at all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2736&start=0#p18858
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Variable Exits
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-02 18:33:04

The first two examples in [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rex391.html#e391]section 8.2 of the Recipe Book[/url] might be useful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2737&start=0#p18859
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: throwing it into
User: kanato / DateTime: 2011-07-02 20:42:11

What's the simplest way to implement the command "throw jar into pit"? Of course there is already a command "throw it at" in the standard rules, and it'd be fine to just do that. But if I use 
[code]Understand "throw [something] into [something]" as throwing it at.[/code]

that doesn't seem to work. Instead what I get is this:

[code]
>throw jar into pit
That can't contain things.

>throw jar at pit
You toss the ceramic jar into the pit. You wait a while, but you never hear it hit the bottom. Well, hopefully you didn't need the ceramic jar for anything.
[/code]

I assume that I'm getting the "can't contain things" message because the pit is not a container (and it can't be because it's a backdrop). But I want to be able to get the second message for the first command. Any suggestions?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2734&start=0#p18860
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with hyperlinks in a Flexible Windows subwindow
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-07-02 20:55:00

I think what you need is in Section 2.5 of the Flexible Windows documentation:[quote="Jon Ingold"]Opening a new window is an activity that gets called for the pending window. This activity is the "constructing something" activity, and it's used to set background colours, neatly arranged unpositioned new windows, and apply the minimum width rules. New rules can be written before and after this activity. These rules may refer to "the pending g-window"; note that before, this window will not yet be in existence on the screen but its properties can be changed, and after it should be present on the screen.

Should you want to make changes to the styles for the windows, this is also the place to do it (see the Glk spec for more information on this). During the before phase, set the stylehint you want. During the after phase, remove it again, so that it doesn't affect other newly created windows. (See background colour rules for an example of this).

For example: windows containing hyperlinks need to be "hyperlink-activated" before each click. To do this, use the following phrases:[code]After constructing the conversation-window:
	expect links in conversation-window.
To expect links in (g - a g-window):
	(- glk_request_hyperlink_event({g}.ref_number); -).[/code]
After constructing is a good entry point for this, as it's after the window has appeared but before anything's been drawn inside it.

Then after a link has been handled, you'll need to call this phrase again to reset hyperlink-watching.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2737&start=0#p18861
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: throwing it into
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-07-02 21:06:03

The ``throw ... into ...'' syntax is already claimed by the standard rules (see the index).  Your code should work if you reset the meaning of throw and then bring back any meanings you want to keep.  For example,[code]Understand the command "throw" as something new.
Understand "throw [things preferably held]" as dropping.
Understand "throw [something] into [something]" as throwing it at.
Understand "throw [other things] on/onto [something]" as putting it on.
Understand "throw [something preferably held] at/against [something]" as throwing it at.[/code]
[i]Edit: on the other hand, it might be good to leave ``throw ... into ...'' as meaning inserting it into, and redirect that action:[/i][code]Instead of inserting something into the pit:
	try throwing the noun at the pit.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2737&start=0#p18862
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: throwing it into
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-02 21:16:26

[EmacsUser has basically already said all this, but here goes anyway...]

Because of this line from the standard rules:

[code]Understand the commands "throw" and "discard" as "drop".[/code]

any command with the verb "throw" gets mapped into the same command with "drop" substituted in. This means, I think, that "unnderstand" lines involving "throw" won't do anything unless you include

[code]Understand the command "throw" as something new.[/code]

which you may not want to do (though I absolutely hate the default mapping of "throw" onto "drop"; no one has ever typed "throw lamp" when they want to put the lamp down). 

In this case, as you can see by turning on "actions" checking and typing THROW JAR INTO PIT, the action is "inserting the jar into the pit." So you can just write

[code]Instead of inserting the jar into the pit:[/code] 

This will also catch DROP JAR INTO PIT, which may be good, and PUT JAR IN PIT, which may not be. If you want to separate those commands, I think you have to do the "something new" command and then reconstruct the grammar you want for every command involving "throw." Maybe you could do something like this if you want to forbid PUT JAR INTO PIT:

[code]Understand "put [jar] in/into [pit]" as a mistake ("The pit is too far away; you'll have to throw it.").[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2736&start=0#p18863
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Variable Exits
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-07-02 22:31:26

"mapped XXX of" - cool, that should do the trick, thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2734&start=0#p18864
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with hyperlinks in a Flexible Windows subwindow
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-03 00:39:16

Actually, Flexible Windows now does all of that management for you automatically, as long as you [i]don't[/i] include Basic Hyperlinks in your project. (You don't need Basic Hyperlinks, because FW provides the same hyperlink functionality for all windows, including the status window and any new windows you might create.) See section 6.2 (I believe) of the FW docs for more info.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2739&start=0#p18866
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: images...
User: anamri / DateTime: 2011-07-03 01:35:37

*edited title name as I accidently put the wrong extension up ( i previously tried that extension, sorry)

So I have been reading every post on the I7 forums that has the word image in it to try and get a handle on this, but I am just not getting something.  Here is the code pertaining to images:

[code]
Include the Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short.
Include the Glulx Entry Points by Emily Short.
Include the Glimmr Canvas-Based Drawing by Erik Temple.

Figure of intro is the file "intro.jpg".
Figure of greetingtalk is the file "greetingTalk.jpg".
Figure of greetingwave is the file "greetingWave.jpg".

The graphics-window is a graphics g-window spawned by the main-window. The position is g-placeabove.  The measurement is 200.  The back-colour is g-dark-grey.

The graphics-canvas is a g-canvas.    The associated canvas of the graphics-window is the graphics-canvas.

The current image is a figure-name that varies.  The current image is Figure of greetingwave.

To depict (f - a figure-name):
     change the current image to f.

Carry out looking:
	depict figure of intro;
	continue the action.
	
When play begins:
     open up the graphics-window;
     depict Figure of greetingwave;
     say, "Welcome..."
     wait for any key;
     clear the screen;
     depict Figure of greetingtalk;
     say, "Blah, blah, blah!"
     wait for any key;
     clear the screen;
     continue the action.[/code]
No picture displays at all.  I can get a picture to display by putting in:
[code]The background image is Figure of greetingwave.[/code]
But it will not change the image.
So I tried changing:

[code]To depict (f - a figure-name):
     change the current image to f.[/code]
to:
[code]To depict (f - a figure-name):
     change the background image to f.[/code]
(since it seemed to at least understand and carry out the background image...)
That gives me a P31 error and still doesn't change the image.

If anyone could please help me out with this, I would be eternally grateful!

I know I am doing something wrong but I don't know what.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=30#p18867
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: stadtgorilla / DateTime: 2011-07-03 04:27:49

twisty for android seemed very nice, but it crashed all the time. hunky punk has a nice interface, looks good and works very well. best part is that it remebers where you left off so you don't need to save when you get out of the subway. with twisty, if you ran a couple of apps after it, all was lost. now we just need some sort of automap [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2721&start=0#p18868
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Level9.NET author info
User: scan / DateTime: 2011-07-03 05:10:27

[quote="JohnElliott"]I had a similar problem once, the other way round (32-bit native process calling .NET DLL). The solution was to mark the DLL as 'x86' rather than 'any processor' in the project settings. The same may apply here.[/quote]
Many thanks for your help. David Kinder also pointed me to this.
I've now built a test version with the target platform set to "x86" but I still have no 64-bit Windows 7 at hand. Is anybody able and willing to do a test? [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2734&start=0#p18869
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with hyperlinks in a Flexible Windows subwindow
User: DMacasaurus / DateTime: 2011-07-03 05:47:26

This brings me to a second problem I held off on.
I have been using short's hyperlinks despite reading the Flexible Windows documentation because of an error that is produced every time I try to use Flexible Windows. 
Tagging the hyperlink in the text is causing this error and this is stymieing me since it is listed in the documentation this way. Here's a stripped version of the code -- this is the whole program for test purposes.

[code]Include Flexible Windows by Jon Ingold.

The subtext-window is a text-buffer g-window spawned by the main-window.
The measurement of the subtext-window is 40.
 The position of the subtext-window is g-placeright.

When play begins:
	open up the subtext-window;

When play begins:
	move focus to subtext-window, clearing the window;
	say "[set link 1]go north[end link];"
	return to main screen;
	
Start is a room.  "This is a cool starting room with a [set link 2]Hyperlink[end link]."
Finish is north of start.[/code]

This produces the error message:
Problem. In the line '"This is a cool starting room with a [set link 2]Hyperlink[end link]."'  , I was expecting that 'set link 2' would be something to 'say', but it didn't look like any form of 'say' that I know. So I tried to read 'set link 2' as a value of some kind (because it's legal to say values), but couldn't make sense of it that way either. 

BTW - I added the second link just to see if writing the first one in a When play begins rule was the problem. Both produce the error message

Thanks again -- this error seems to go directly against the extension doc syntax in 6.2 so I'm stumped.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2734&start=0#p18870
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with hyperlinks in a Flexible Windows subwindow
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-03 06:27:51

Sorry about that. This is an issue with the v11 Flexible Hyperlinks docs--the syntax is simply  "link 1" rather than"set link 1" as in Basic Hyperlinks. A simple global search-and-replace for [b]set link[/b]/[b]link[/b] will fix it. Version 12 of FW (on the extensions site) fixes this documentation error.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2734&start=0#p18871
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with hyperlinks in a Flexible Windows subwindow
User: DMacasaurus / DateTime: 2011-07-03 06:37:49

AWESOME! Documentation errors happen, I'm just ecstatic that it works -- compiles fine, now I can use subwindow hyperlinks -- my command prompt shows up again, everything. Thanks Erik.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2739&start=0#p18872
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: images...
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-07-03 07:11:28

It doesn't display then on the IDE or on the build? Or both?

I've found sometimes my IDE won't show me the pictures, but if I release the story, the pictures are there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2721&start=0#p18873
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Level9.NET author info
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2011-07-03 07:15:08

I can do that later, when I get back home. Just let me know what I need to check.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2716&start=0#p18874
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Ending scenes with speech
User: Andsowejump / DateTime: 2011-07-03 07:39:04

Actually, I've switched over to the Eric eve mainframe thingy, but right of the bat, the program has a problem with [any known thing]
it says "I was unable to understand what you meant by the grammar token 'any known thing' in the sentence 'Understand "tell [someone] about [any known thing]" as informing it about'"

I've used [any known thing] before, so why won't it work?

[code]Requesting it for is an action applying to two visible things.
Imploring it for is an action applying to one visible thing and one topic.

Understand the command "ask" as something new.

Understand "ask [someone] about [text]" as asking it about.

Understand "ask [someone] for [any known thing]" as requesting it for.
Understand "ask [someone] for [text]" as imploring it for.

Quizzing it about is an action applying to two visible things.

Understand "ask [someone] about [any known thing]" as quizzing it about.

Informing it about is an action applying to two visible things.

Understand "tell [someone] about [any known thing]" as informing it about.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2716&start=0#p18875
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Ending scenes with speech
User: Aintelligence / DateTime: 2011-07-03 11:13:20

It is likely that you either haven't installed the extension or it somehow failed installation.

Check again to see if the add-on is actually integrated.

Hope this helps.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2739&start=0#p18876
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: images...
User: anamri / DateTime: 2011-07-03 11:35:07

[quote="lribeiro"]It doesn't display then on the IDE or on the build? Or both?

I've found sometimes my IDE won't show me the pictures, but if I release the story, the pictures are there.[/quote]
Well I just tested out your theory, but it doesn't work either way.  

Drat, I used Graphical Window Sprites with my last project and got that working fine (in the build also)... I thought handling one image at a time would be a much easier task, but I guess not.

Please, if anyone could help me out, I just don't get what I am doing wrong.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=30#p18877
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-07-03 11:44:42

[quote="I4L"]bukayeva, you don't want to be convinced. I'm not sure why you even brought this up. This seems to be the most intellectual trolling I've witnessed in a considerable amount of time.[/quote]
I think this is a little unfair. Nobody has actually answered her question yet. I could probably come up with an (obviously, opinionated) argument why you should appreciate silent movies and why I'm glad that people are still making them, so I think it's interesting there's very few testimonials in this thread. "I love IF because..."

For my part, I think text is a brilliant way to present events and allow you to inhabit a setting. It also offers an unparalleled route into a character's head: if the game has an "I" the author can infuse every part of the story with their personality. And I think that when presenting text to a player, it feels right and natural for the player to respond by typing text of their own.

What I'm less convinced about is that a traditional text adventure with its find-object-use-verb-with-object puzzles is the right way to leverage any of that. Or even that the whispered promises of the parser at all outweigh its obvious pitfalls. For all that text-only games may have a hoary old legacy, I still think we've seen precious few of them with consistent gameplay mechanics.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2716&start=0#p18878
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Ending scenes with speech
User: anamri / DateTime: 2011-07-03 12:04:25

[quote="Andsowejump"]

[code]...

Understand "tell [someone] about [any known thing]" as informing it about.[/code][/quote]
I am a beginner, so forgive me if I am way off base, but  shouldn't it be:
[code]Understand "tell [someone] about [any known thing]" as informing somebody about.[/code]
or
[code]Understand "tell [someone] about [any known thing]" as informing somebody about it.[/code]
?

I was just looking over this:

[url]http://inform7.com/extensions/Aaron%20Reed/Conversation%20Framework%20for%20Sand-dancer/source.txt[/url]

and came across something similar.(is this one of the extensions you have in use?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2716&start=0#p18879
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Ending scenes with speech
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-03 12:19:30

[quote="anamri"][quote="Andsowejump"]

[code]...

Understand "tell [someone] about [any known thing]" as informing it about.[/code][/quote]
I am a beginner, so forgive me if I am way off base, but  shouldn't it be:
[code]Understand "tell [someone] about [any known thing]" as informing somebody about.[/code]
or
[code]Understand "tell [someone] about [any known thing]" as informing somebody about it.[/code]
?[/quote]

No, "it" is used in action names that involve two nouns to tell you where the first noun goes, whether or not the first noun is a person or a thing. So if your action is informing [noun] about [second noun], its name is "informing it about."

This is pretty well buried in the documentation; it seems to be introduced in section 12.7, which says, in an aside about the action name "scraping it with":

[quote="Writing with Inform"] Note the use of "it" to indicate that the name of an object should go here.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2716&start=10#p18880
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Ending scenes with speech
User: anamri / DateTime: 2011-07-03 12:28:02

Ok, sorry, it just seems weird to me that "it" is an item you are informing an it (person) about.  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

Again, sorry for derailing things.  I hope you get a solution.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2739&start=0#p18881
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: images...
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-03 12:44:36

There are a couple of problems here:

1) You don't have any code to actually display the current image--all your "depict" phrase does is change the [i]current image[/i] variable to a new figure name.
2) The reason you get the P31 error is that Glimmr Canvas-Based Drawing is designed to use multiple windows, so when you assign a background image to a canvas, you need to do specify which one. In other words, when you write "The background image is Figure of greetingwave," Inform interprets that as "The background image [of nothing] is...", and you get a runtime error. To get this to work, you need to say [b]The background image of the graphics-canvas is Figure of greetingwave[/b]. You'll also need to redraw the window using "follow the window-drawing rules for the graphics-window" at an appropriate point in your code.

However, if all you want to do is show a single image, Glimmr Canvas-Based Drawing is really overkill (it's a souped-up version of Graphical Window Sprites). You might want to use Simple Graphical Window instead, which has simple built-in drawing rules. I believe that Jon Ingold has made that extension compatible with Flexible Windows, despite the differences in approach between the two extensions. Of course, if you're going to do other things in other graphics windows, the Glimmr extension might be more appropriate.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2739&start=0#p18882
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: images...
User: anamri / DateTime: 2011-07-03 12:55:35

[quote="ektemple"]There are a couple of problems here:

1) You don't have any code to actually display the current image--all your "depict" phrase does is change the [i]current image[/i] variable to a new figure name.
2) The reason you get the P31 error is that Glimmr Canvas-Based Drawing is designed to use multiple windows, so when you assign a background image to a canvas, you need to do specify which one. In other words, when you write "The background image is Figure of greetingwave," Inform interprets that as "The background image [of nothing] is...", and you get a runtime error. To get this to work, you need to say [b]The background image of the graphics-canvas is Figure of greetingwave[/b]. You'll also need to redraw the window using "follow the window-drawing rules for the graphics-window" at an appropriate point in your code.

However, if all you want to do is show a single image, Glimmr Canvas-Based Drawing is really overkill (it's a souped-up version of Graphical Window Sprites). You might want to use Simple Graphical Window instead, which has simple built-in drawing rules. I believe that Jon Ingold has made that extension compatible with Flexible Windows, despite the differences in approach between the two extensions. Of course, if you're going to do other things in other graphics windows, the Glimmr extension might be more appropriate.

--Erik[/quote]
Well, I want to use more than one image, just one at a time though.  I just want to be able to change the image for certain events.

Thank you so much, Erik!  I had tried both of those phrases, just not in combination with eachother.  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 
The new working code is:
[code]
Include the Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short.
Include the Glulx Entry Points by Emily Short.
Include the Glimmr Canvas-Based Drawing by Erik Temple.

Figure of intro is the file "intro.jpg".
Figure of greetingtalk is the file "greetingTalk.jpg".
Figure of greetingwave is the file "greetingWave.jpg".

The graphics-window is a graphics g-window spawned by the main-window. The position is g-placeabove.  The measurement is 200.  The back-colour is g-dark-grey.

The graphics-canvas is a g-canvas.  The associated canvas of the graphics-window is the graphics-canvas.  The background image of the graphics-canvas is Figure of greetingwave.

To depict (f - a figure-name):
     change the background image of the graphics-canvas to f;
     follow the window-drawing rules for the graphics-window.

Carry out looking:
	depict figure of intro;
	continue the action.
	
When play begins:
     open up the graphics-window;
     depict Figure of greetingwave;
     say "blah, blah, blah...";
     wait for any key;
     clear the screen;
     depict Figure of intro;
     continue the action.[/code]
THANK YOU AGAIN!!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2739&start=0#p18883
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: images...
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-03 13:48:32

[quote="anamri"]
Well, I want to use more than one image, just one at a time though.  I just want to be able to change the image for certain events.

[/quote]
That's what I meant... Anyway, glad you got it working!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=30#p18884
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-07-03 15:31:33

[quote="I4L"]bukayeva, you don't want to be convinced.[/quote]

I'm convinced by arguments I find good. I'm seeking that. I'm not saying everyone should agree with me, one way or the other. I'm just stating my viewpoint and asking for others. Lighten up.

[quote]I'm not sure why you even brought this up. This seems to be the most intellectual trolling I've witnessed in a considerable amount of time. Why start a conversation on an IF-based forum about why IF can't satisfy your gaming needs or why it can't compete commercially with more graphically immersive games.[/quote]

I'm trying to understand what does appeal about text adventures to various people here. If you don't like that or find it to be "trolling" then don't participate. Oh, and lighten up.

[quote]IF was born at a time when "gaming" was an almost non-existent pastime. At the time, it was considered very interactive. It was also commercially successful in its hey day.[/quote]

Before cinema, books were really popular. When cinema came out there was a fear that books might be replaced. That didn't happen. When graphical games started to do what text adventures couldn't do, I remember people saying text adventures were going to get replaced. That did (sort of) happen.

I'm curious why. Why didn't gamers who like to read -- and there are many -- keep text adventures as a viable medium, even as book readers kept books viable during the onslaught of cinema? I'm curious about that. You're apparently not. That's fine. I'm curious about the cultural context in which text adventures grew up and then stalled. That context is also part of this community.

Anyway, you're reply is clearly one of the "defensive" ones that I've noted some people take when discussing text adventures. I was quite happy that people didn't degenerate to this -- until your post. So thanks for that.

P.S. Seriously. Lighten up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=30#p18885
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-07-03 15:36:21

[quote="bcressey"]For me, the charm of text adventures comes from the writing. The best part of IF is playing stories that come from a single passionate author.

I cannot abide bad writing in novels or short stories. As a consequence it's always a challenge to find new reading material that suits my mood and my tastes. With IF I don't really have that problem. There is something about the format that helps to transmit the author's vision even if the writing has some rough spots, or the puzzle mechanics present a barrier. I almost always feel like I'm playing the game the author meant to write, even if it's not a great game.[/quote]

That's a really interesting point. I wonder if others share that. I can totally understand where you're coming from even though I can't relate it to text games. I'm into screenwriting and I have a similar experience with low-budget films in many cases: I can tolerate many such films -- when many of my colleagues can't -- because I can see what the director was going for. I can appreciate what was trying to be done, regardless of some of the acting or the bad locations or whatnot.

[quote]But there's no dialogue between me and the author; there's no personal connection. It's mass entertainment rather than intimate conversation.[/quote]

That's another interesting point. There's a certain personal touch -- an authorial viewpoint -- that you get from text adventures that you may not get from bigger budget games. I can relate that to the modding community. While mods tend to have more than one author/creator, I do find them to be a bit more --- personal, I guess --- than the original game that the mod was based on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=30#p18886
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-07-03 15:47:02

[quote="Bainespal"]However, I would like to see an FPS interactively implement a scene in which the PC gets dressed after waking up in the morning and then goes to his kitchen to fix himself some coffee and oatmeal for breakfast.  Although such a scene might be boring, it would perfectly natural to implement in a text adventure using the normal method of controlling text adventures.[/quote]

That's like asking a film to do the interiority of a novel. Could it be done? Yeah. Lots of voiceovers, perhaps, or cloudy film to indicate what's happening is in the person's mind. Whether it's a good idea or not -- yeah, different question. However, The Longest Journey did do some of what you suggest. April Ryan does have to wake up, get dressed, walk downstairs, she can sit with her friend, etc. Dreamfall did the same thing. Wake up. Watch TV. Get dressed. Drink coffee with dad in the kitchen. Those aren't FPS games, but rather graphical adventures. So it has been done.

[quote]When the command prompt is combined with the turn-based format of most text adventures, the effect is to put great emphasis on the actions of the PC as choices of the protagonist of the story.[/quote]

Yes, but the trick is that they aren't always "meaningful choices" as fiction would present. They are meaningful to completing the game, granted. Graphical games suffer from this, too. My point here is that this exists regardless of turn-based. Games like Dragon Age or Alpha Protocol will have make you lots of decisions similar to how you would in real life: during the heat of action. Far Cry 2 and Mass Effect try to present dialogues that have significant impact. The difference in Far Cry is that in some cases you are limited; you can't just sit and wait to make a choice -- you must make one quick. That's not the case in Mass Effect. I like the Far Cry approach because it forces you assess and react, again as you might in real life.

I think that's part of it: the choice has to be something that matters even though you won't know the effects and you don't have all day to make a decision. Human pathos is partly having to make decisions upon unformed decisions or not having all the facts or all the time in the world. I would actually think text adventures could model that really well.

[quote]Therefore, in allowing the player to control the protagonist, it is an appropriate storytelling technique to freeze the simulated universe until the player decides what the protagonist is going to do next.[/quote]

Current game design suggests the exact opposite. The world should not freeze. It's the same logic by which so-called "personality tests" are better taken quickly. The better quizzes only give you twenty seconds or so to make a decision. That's an important point of being human. Call of Duty uses this "quick decision" focus to really good effect. Real time elements are a part of fiction: even in reading, while we as reader can pause the book, the protagonist -- once we start reading again -- must make decisions quickly. In movies, the same. Games that replicate that tend to be reacted to favorably by people. (A notable example is Mass Effect with its paragon/renegade system that isn't based on time. It gets around that by not always making it clear what are the "notable decision points.")

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=30#p18887
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-03 16:01:41

Everything you've written so far though, assumes that "current game design" is good design. Current game design is focused on maximizing sales for the primary target group, which is 16 year old teenagers craving for fast action, blood and sex in video games.

You can't really throw "current game design" into the mix when talking about IF.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=40#p18888
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-07-03 18:03:29

[quote="bukayeva"]Real time elements are a part of fiction: even in reading, while we as reader can pause the book, the protagonist -- once we start reading again -- must make decisions quickly. In movies, the same. Games that replicate that tend to be reacted to favorably by people. (A notable example is Mass Effect with its paragon/renegade system that isn't based on time. It gets around that by not always making it clear what are the "notable decision points.")[/quote]

I'm not sure Mass Effect and Dragon Age are such good examples of games where you have to make decisions quickly, given that at any time, you can freeze the world to look around, target enemies, issue commands to party members, look through your inventory, etc. If you don't do it that way, it becomes virtually unplayable, as your party members die within seconds of the start of combat. All the recent BioWare games are like this. Your choices are to play them as essentially turn-based games (except you decide when the "turns" happen and the AI fills in the gaps between them) or to crank down the difficulty such that you can just button-mash your way through them and not worry about actually making any important decisions.

Far Cry 2 is a bit more interesting as an example, but I'm not sure how relevant it is considering that what it tries to do is so completely different from what IF generally tries to do. Far Cry 2 does a pretty good job of modeling a realistic world, but the only things you can do in the game are basically running around and shooting guys. IF tends to model worlds in very abstract ways, but simulate a much wider variety of things that can happen in them.

Going back to the original question, that's what interesting to me about IF as a gaming medium. In a modern 3D game, every additional element that you want to add requires a huge investment of resources. For every object or location, you've got to have a 3D model, textures, lighting, etc.; for every character you've got to have those things plus a voice actor, a set of animations, etc.  Say you want the player to go to another planet; somebody has to design and model and paint that planet and populate it with architecture, people, and whatever else.  If you want the player to be able to ride a motorcycle, you have to set up a new control scheme, animations, maybe a whole physics model. In IF, if you want the player to visit another planet, all you have to do is write a description of that planet; if you want the player to ride a motorcycle, you can just say he's on a motorcycle. (This is a little bit of an oversimplification; obviously you still need to come up with interactions to make those situations interesting, but the amount of actual assets that need to be created is drastically reduced.)  In a big-budget 3D game, it takes such a commitment of time and resources every time you add a new system that those games tend to end up being the player doing essentially the same things with slightly different window-dressing over and over again.

(There's also the simple issue of controls -- in the example mentioned before of an FPS implementing a scene of going downstairs and making breakfast, how does the player know how to open a cabinet, pick up a bowl, tear open the cereal packet, use a spoon, etc.? It's not practical to assign a button/keypress to every possible action, so those would all probably end up being context-sensitive, which tends to feel like you're not making any decisions, but just pressing buttons to advance through a scripted sequence.)

And, of course, there are some things you can do with text that just wouldn't make any sense in any other medium. Games like Nord and Bert, Ad Verbum, or Earl Grey are good examples of this.

I also like that IF is narrated because it allows for deeper characterization. Everything you're experiencing in the game is coming through the filter of a narrator or the player character him/herself, so there's room to convey a lot of information through the way you tell the player about what's happening. In graphical games the presentation is usually pretty objective and you can take it for granted that what you're seeing on screen is an accurate representation of what's happening. IF allows for an unreliable narrator or lets the author more easily pick and choose what the player gets to know about and what's important to take notice of.

Not every IF game takes advantages of all those things, of course, but they can if they want to, and that's the appeal of text adventures to me. But if you don't like them, I don't think anyone else's reasons for liking them are going to change your mind.

[quote="RealNC"]Everything you've written so far though, assumes that "current game design" is good design. Current game design is focused on maximizing sales for the primary target group, which is 16 year old teenagers craving for fast action, blood and sex in video games.[/quote]

I do think that's is a little unfair. The independent game scene is thriving right now, moreso than in the past couple of decades at least. There are many, many well-received games out there that don't fit that description at all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=40#p18889
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-03 18:27:34

[quote="bukayeva"]However, The Longest Journey did do some of what you suggest. April Ryan does have to wake up, get dressed, walk downstairs, she can sit with her friend, etc. Dreamfall did the same thing. Wake up. Watch TV. Get dressed. Drink coffee with dad in the kitchen. Those aren't FPS games, but rather graphical adventures. So it has been done.[/quote]

And as graphical adventures, they don't have the sort of interactivity you've been talking about, do they? When you say:

[quote="bukayeva"]But it's a limited form of interactivity. It's highly unlikely that in a text game you will be able to use your enviornment to the extent that you at least could in other games. (Granted, not all games do this.) But Dead Space, Splinter Cell, Alpha Protocol, and others do encourage more interactivity by figuring out how to use environmental cues to solve problems in different ways. (Again, Half-Life 2's gravity is a good -- but oft-stated -- example.)[/quote]

you're talking about interacting with the environment in ways that (I'm pretty sure) you can't in point-and-clicks. I mean, "graphical adventures" are so-called because they ultimately derive from Colossal Cave Adventure. And as RealNC (I think) pointed out, graphical adventure fans and text adventure fans talk about basically the same things when they talk about why they like certain games rather than other games. (Well, graphical adventure fans are more likely to talk about the quality of the art and text adventure fans are more likely to talk about the quality of the writing.)

And I do find many graphical adventures appealing for the same reason that I find many text adventures appealing -- that they're not just about blowing things up -- but text is more flexible, or at least flexible in different ways. The narrative frame of [i]Spider and Web[/i], the free-flowing conversation of [i]Galatea[/i], the games with the commentary and interface in the opening of [i]Rover's Day Out[/i]; none of those are things that would translate well into point-and-clicks, I think.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=40#p18890
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-07-03 19:13:14

I like IF because your possible interactions are unknown, to a greater level than any other game genre I know. When you know IF's conventions, and are playing an IF work whose craft approaches perfection, the illusion of being able to enter any input feels very solid.

There are therefore two big problems IF faces: helping people become familiar with our conventions, and filtering out all the works whose crafting sucks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=40#p18891
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-03 20:06:42

Hmm. I think I have an answer to the original question of why one should play IF. Look at all modern high-profile games. Next, look at past high-profile games. One has to notice that (non-adventure) games in the past were just gameplay without much story. Doom, Quake, Super Mario, Lemmings, you name it. Slowly but surely, story was put into almost every game, to the point of FPS games like Half-Life and Doom3/Quake4 having story/plot as a vital element. Heck, even motor-racing games today have story.

So, why should one play IF? Because you're not just playing a game with a story. You are playing the story itself [emote];)[/emote] Once the story becomes its own entity, it gets separated from the limitations of the game's mechanics. It has not limits to the choices it can offer. In an FPS, the story can offer choices involving shooting things. In IF, you can shoot things, talk to people, blow up the universe, become God, unite quantum mechanics with general relativity, or whatever else anybody anywhere can imagine. If that isn't powerful, then what is?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2740&start=0#p18892
Forum: Competitions / Subject: IntroComp 2011 - Note regarding Stalling for Time
User: Jacqueline / DateTime: 2011-07-03 20:15:15

At the request of the author, I'm updating people interested in IntroComp to let them know that [i]Stalling for Time[/i] includes a bug wherein the only exit from a particular room does not work.  

The entry can still be completed according to the  walkthrough, however, so please use the walkthrough to get a good taste of what the full work will be like upon completion (the walkthrough is accessible through the >HINT or >HELP menu in the game).  

Because the competition is currently underway, an updated intro file will not be released until after voting has concluded on July 17th.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2729&start=0#p18893
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie rulebook question
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-03 23:43:35

This is the second time recently that a question has reminded me of Shade. I think the last one was about hiding objects in random places. The source code for Shade is available, but it's in I6 so it's probably not that useful. But in this case, just playing the game can give you a nice idea of the way "fake" rooms are handled. My guess is that the closest I7 equivalent would be to make all the connected rooms into enterable containers. But it could also be done with a "position in the room" variable or scene.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2741&start=0#p18894
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Scenes and Repeated Actions
User: SimonChris / DateTime: 2011-07-04 03:53:47

In my current game i have NPC's who can say several different things in each scene. I first attempt to implement it like this:

[code]
Instead of talking to Bob for the first time during Scene 1, say "'Hello,' says Bob"

Instead of talking to Bob for the second time during Scene 1, say "'Hello again,' says Bob"

Instead of talking to Bob for the first time during Scene 2, say "'I loved you in Scene 1,' says Bob"[/code]

Unfortunately, this doesn't work because the repetition counter doesn't seem to take scenes into consideration. If i talk to Bob during scene 1, then the last rule will never fire in Scene 2, since i have already talked to Bob once. The scene condition differs from every other condition in this regard. If, for example, i write:

[code]
Instead of talking to Bob while wearing the hat for the first time, say "'Nice hat', says Bob"[/code]

Then i can talk to Bob as many times as i want to without the hat, and the rule will still fire the first time i talk to him with it. Is there any way to somehow reset the counter during scenes?

Another thing:

I get tired of writing "...during scene X" after almost every single rule, so i have tried to somehow group rules for a scene into a rulebook like this:
[code]
Instead of talking to Bob during Scene 1:
   Follow the scene 1 conversation rules.

The Scene 1 conversation rules is a rulebook.

A scene 1 conversation rule:
    If the current action is talking to Bob for the first time:
       say "'Hello,' says Bob".[/code]

This also doesn't work, since "for the first time" doesn't seem to be a part of the current action. Without it, it works fine, but i need Bob to be able to say several different things in each scene. The stuff he says in Scene 2 should be completely independent of what he said in Scene 1. I could implement my own counter, but i also need to be able to take conditions like "...when wearing the hat" into consideration, which seems really hard to do manually - i would need seperate counters for each set of conditions.

This seems like it should be a pretty basic thing to do. Am i missing something?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2742&start=0#p18895
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Moral on Games
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-07-04 08:08:30

[url=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_308/8908-Ethics-Without-a-Net]An interesting take[/url] on the moral of games, and how making players go through moral choices may not mean they had an ethics-related thought process. Most of the time is all about strategy and/or curiosity about [i]what happens if[/i]. The games addressed are mostly action shooters, mentioning one graphic interactive fiction called [url=http://www.heavyrainps3.com]Heavy Rain[/url] (which I didn't know, and which you should check out), but all of the points being made can be glued to the text IF genre without an issue.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2741&start=0#p18896
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scenes and Repeated Actions
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-04 08:51:15

I guess there are a few mechanisms you want to employ, and there are lots of different ways to deal with them.

First, the simplest form of talk counter is to use a [one of]...[stopping] sequence.

For instance:

[code]instead of talking to bob:
	say "[one of]'Hi,' says Bob.[or]'Hi again,' says Bob.[or]'Hi for the third time,' says Bob.[or]'I'm not stalking you, I swear it,' says Bob.[stopping]";[/code]

This line alone gives you those four responses in turn, and repeats on the last one (for eternity). You can see this is much more wieldy than writing all those 'instead of talking… for the third time' lines.

See 5.7 in the docs for other neat variations on [one of].

So I use this method whenever appropriate, because it's simplest.

But, like in your own 'talking to Bob for the third time' lines, the [one of] method doesn't have a counter you can interfere with. You'd need a real counter (or counters) for that. But you may not need a numeric counter if we just group your dialogue differently. I'm gonna post a demo which does this. It combines:

- Using [one of]...[stopping] phrases,
- Keeping an eye on which scene we're in,
- Having Bob remark on your hat the first time he sees you wearing it in each scene. To do this, I attached a number to the hat - basically a flag. When Bob comments on the hat, the number becomes 1, and he won't comment unless the number's 0. When act two begins, I reset the number to 0 so that he can comment again.

I hope the demo can show you an approach to grouping and ordering dialogue (and other factors which may interrupt - EG whether you're wearing a hat or not) so it's easy to manage, and maybe how to use a numeric flag on the side. But I haven't really gone into using a numeric flag to organise the dialogue itself, just because it wasn't necessary for this demo.

Copy/paste it into Inform, run it, then type 'test me' at the prompt.

[code]"Two acts with Bob"

There is a room called The Office.
Bob is a man in The Office.

player wears a hat.

hat has a number called dug_it.

talking to is an action applying to one thing.
Understand "talk [person]", "talk to [person]" as talking to.

Carry out talking to Bob:
	if act one is happening:
		if player wears hat and dug_it of hat is 0:
			say "Bob says 'Nice hat!'";
			now dug_it of hat is 1;
			rule succeeds;
		say "[one of]'Hi,' says Bob.[or]'Hi again,' says Bob.[or]'Hi for the third time,' says Bob.[or]'I'm not stalking you, I swear it,' says Bob.[stopping]";
		rule succeeds;
	if act two is happening:
		if player wears hat and dug_it of hat is 0:
			say "Bob says 'I wish to remark again that you are wearing a nice hat.'";
			now dug_it of hat is 1;
			rule succeeds;
		say "[one of]'You rocked in scene one,' says Bob.[or]'Did I tell you how good you were in scene one,' says Bob.[or]'I have a habit of repeating myself,' says Bob.[stopping]".

act one is a scene. act one begins when play begins. act one ends when the time since act one began is 9 minutes.

When act one begins:
	say "*** ACT ONE BEGINS NOW ***[line break]".

When act one ends:
	say "*** ACT ONE IS OVER ***[line break]".
	
act two is a scene. act two begins when act one ends.

When act two begins:
	say "*** TIME PASSES - ACT TWO BEGINS! ACT TWO WILL GO ON FOREVER. ***[line break]";
	now dug_it of hat is 0.

When act two ends:
	say "*** ACT TWO IS OVER ***[line break]".

test me with "i / drop hat / talk to bob / g / wear hat / talk to bob / g / g / g / remove hat / talk to bob / wear hat / talk to bob / g / g /g".[/code]

Btw, to preserve the formatting of the code, click 'quote' on this post, and copy the code out of the window which appears, rather than trying to copy it directly off this forum post.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2729&start=0#p18897
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbie rulebook question
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-07-04 15:05:36

[quote="capmikee"]This is the second time recently that a question has reminded me of Shade. I think the last one was about hiding objects in random places. The source code for Shade is available, but it's in I6 so it's probably not that useful. But in this case, just playing the game can give you a nice idea of the way "fake" rooms are handled. My guess is that the closest I7 equivalent would be to make all the connected rooms into enterable containers. But it could also be done with a "position in the room" variable or scene.[/quote]

I think the easiest way would be to build on the [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rex325.html]Rock Garden[/url] example. You may need to change the way it reports inter-room movement and print the room name differently, but the core of what you need is already there. Of course, it would depend; if you want to make certain rooms invisible but possible to reach, then you should probably modify the "After looking when the location is an inter-visible room:" rule.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2570&start=30#p18898
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor: A new Linux/Mac OS X/Windows port of the Hugo eng
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-04 15:40:52

The version for Mac OS X was bumped to 0.8.1. This fixes an annoying text rendering bug where text positioning would be off by a few (or not so few) pixels. Also, the spacing between lines was sometimes too small, resulting in letters like "g" and "y" having their lower part cut off by the line below. Text rendering on the Mac should now be 100% correct.

(For the curious, the cause of this issue is that Core Text, the text rendering framework in Cocoa, uses floating point font metrics while the Hugo engine expects integer values. The resulting rounding errors would give wrong font metrics/coordinates.)

Updating is recommended for Mac users. Other platforms are not affected at all by this, so there's no 0.8.1 version for anything else than Mac OS X.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2743&start=0#p18899
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Opening text files
User: nuku_v / DateTime: 2011-07-04 16:34:16

I though I followed the instructions, but it continues to say the file does not exist.

I placed it in materials, without an extension, and with .glkdata, in both cases, I get a runtime error saying the file does not exist.

Help please, thank you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2737&start=0#p18900
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: throwing it into
User: kanato / DateTime: 2011-07-04 17:18:08

Ok thanks guys this is very helpful. I went with the simple "Instead of inserting the jar into the pit" rule.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2743&start=0#p18901
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Opening text files
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-04 17:25:56

Could you post the relevant part of your code, and the exact name of the file and directory where you put it?

(Also, if you are using Windows: make sure that "hide known file extensions" or whatever they call it is off. Your file might have an extension without you seeing it.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2743&start=0#p18902
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Opening text files
User: nuku_v / DateTime: 2011-07-04 17:29:30

The file of flexiblestory is called "flexible1".

Elsewhere:

	read file of flexiblestory into table of story reading;

Extensions are visible, for sure. I've tried flexible1, flexible1.txt, flexible1.glkdata, this is in the materials folder.

Do 'file' require another folder? I don't know, the docs don't say. It's very specific for figures and sounds.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2744&start=0#p18903
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Stop the action!
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-04 17:32:04

Perhaps I am being thick, but I [i]still[/i] don't understand a simple phrase like "stop the action". Suppose I have this rule:
[code]Carry out taking the apple:
	say "Nope.";
	stop the action.[/code]
The result is:
[quote]Nope.

Taken.[/quote]
Why oh why does stop the action not, well, stop the action? How does one stop the carry out rulebook from proceeding? (Hint: "instead" equals "stop the action" and doesn't work, and neither does "rule fails".)

Sure, I can get around this by making it a "Last check" rule instead -- but why is there a difference between the check rules and the carry out rules anyway? They're both just, you know, rulebooks?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2745&start=0#p18904
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: want a free printed copy of the TADS2 manual?
User: bookguy / DateTime: 2011-07-04 18:13:58

I realize that the TADS 2 Author’s Manual is available online, but would anyone be interested in the original print version?  

It's Revision 2.0 (from November 1992), spiral bound, 239 pages.   Covers show some wear, but pages are clean.  

Willing to ship for free via media mail within the U.S.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2746&start=0#p18905
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Help for a non native English speaker!
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-07-04 19:10:42

Hi there!

Remember those Dennis Wheatley mystery novels mentioned in [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2501]this thread[/url]?. The [url=http://www.z-machine-matter.com/2011/05/dennis-wheatley-gone-wild.html]same ones Zack Urlocker is giving away[/url] both as comp prizes and for testers of his Z-Machine Matter. I need a helping hand with one of them!

I recently got a copy of the 1979 facsimile edition of Murder Off Miami from ebay. Not the true 30's original, but quite beautiful anyway. I pretend to go through it this summer while I simultaneously play the IF adaptation Delta 4 guys made in 1987 just for the sake of comparing the experience and have some fun with it. My trouble is: not beeing used to read hand-written english some of the notes in the book are close to unintelligible to me  [emote]:oops:[/emote] , specially the deceased Bolitho Blane's ones!

Pics:

<a class="postlink" href="http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/3521/pepo01.jpg">http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/3521/pepo01.jpg</a>

<a class="postlink" href="http://img841.imageshack.us/img841/3376/pepo02.jpg">http://img841.imageshack.us/img841/3376/pepo02.jpg</a>


I will probably find transcripts of them in the computer game which I could easily understand, but untill that happens I just can get a few isolated words from the messages. Now, if someone here could make some quick transcripts of them... I don't need a translation, it's just that I can't read Bolitho Blane's hand-written English!

I can only offer my eternal gratitude in exchange (and if that's not enough, the vague and unlikely promise that if I keep on writting IF works after my Indigo Speed-comp entry some day I will name a NPC after whoever helps  [emote]:P[/emote] )

Thanks!

--

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2743&start=0#p18906
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Opening text files
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-07-04 20:07:14

The interpreter gets to choose where to look for a file, so it will depend how you are running your story.  Most interpreters will look in the user's home directory or maybe the My Documents folder on Windows, but there are other possibilities: the Mac IDE, for instance, looks in the folder containing the current project's .inform file.  You can find out what folder and file extension to use by creating a small project:[code]There is a room.
The file for testing is called "MyFile".
When play begins:
	write "" to the file for testing.[/code]
running it, and then search your computer for MyFile.

[i]Edit: forgot that I7 names for files need to begin with the word ``file.''[/i]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2743&start=0#p18907
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Opening text files
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-04 20:10:46

Did you make the text file yourself? The problem is that the 'read file... into table' command, which in your case is:

[code]read file of flexiblestory into table of story reading;[/code]

does not work for user created files. That command is only for reading data from a file which was created by your game itself.

I had a glance at the docs and it looks like Inform can write to text files, but its only way of reading them is to dump the whole file to the screen with this command:

[code]say "[text of external file]"[/code]

So you could put your text file data into a table in Inform, then write a file from the table using Inform's commands which can then be read back in your game another time, but I don't think you can use your own text file for random access reading and writing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2744&start=0#p18908
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stop the action!
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-07-04 20:16:11

The difference is in the stage rules—one uses consider and the other uses abide:
[code]A specific action-processing rule (this is the check stage rule):
	anonymously abide by the specific check rulebook.

A specific action-processing rule (this is the carry out stage rule):
	consider the specific carry out rulebook.[/code]And as WI 18.13 points out,[quote][code]	consider (rule)[/code]This phrase applies the given rule, but throws away the result: indeed, it makes no difference whether the rule succeeds, fails or has no outcome.[/quote]
So if you want the carry out rules to be able to abort actions midway, you'll have to replace the stage rule.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2746&start=0#p18909
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Help for a non native English speaker!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-04 20:31:21

Wow, I can barely read them myself. This is what I can come up with:

[quote]Dear Studart [can't tell what this name is, that's a guess],
You know how worried I've been all through the trip over. Day after day I've been watching Argus [I really can't read the next word -- is that clear from context] go down as the bears [could also be brain or even drain, but I think it's "bears" meaning pessimistic stock investors; "go down" probably refers to the stock price] slammed into them. I had hoped to pull my companies through but things have gone too far for Rocksavage to give me a decent deal, so I am past caring what happens to them now.
This frankly [?] was a forlorn hope and I never wanted to join it. There's a tough crowd behind Rocksavage, and I wouldn't put it past them to do me in ["do in" = kill] while I'm on this yacht. That would send the Argus shares down to zero without any further argument. Anyhow, I'm not going to wait and chance it. The struggle has proved too much for me. I have always loathed publicity and rather than face the nightmare of a bankruptcy examination I'm getting out.
Bolitho Blane

5th March, 1936

My dear Bishop
I have only just learned that you are to make one of the party which Carlton Rocksavage is assembling on his yacht for a little holiday among the islands. It is, of course, many years since we met but I shall look forward so much to renewing my acquaintance with you.
You will, of course, recall those wonderfully interesting conversations which we held when we were together for a little time during the war. We established then a wonderful and, I feel, never to be forgotten friendship.
I have an idea that some very strange and unusual things are going to take place on Rocksavage's yacht once we put out to sea and, however strange those occurrences may be, I feel sure that you will bear in mind what very good friends we are. I value your friendship more than I can say and from your past confessions of esteem it makes me happy to think that you value mine equally highly
Yours very sincerely,
Bolitho Blane [/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2743&start=0#p18910
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Opening text files
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-07-04 20:43:26

[quote="severedhand"]I don't think you can use your own text file for random access reading and writing.[/quote]Don't forget that when you store a text containing a substitution (like "[text of external file]") as indexed text, the substitution gets expanded.  In this way you can read a plain text file into indexed text, and you can also write indexed text back, again by way of a substitution.  But you're right that the posted code won't work unless the file adheres to Inform's format for saved tables.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2743&start=0#p18911
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Opening text files
User: nuku_v / DateTime: 2011-07-04 21:29:30

It's searching now. This is windows 7, Inform 7, if that helps at all. Thanks for your input one and all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2743&start=0#p18912
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Opening text files
User: nuku_v / DateTime: 2011-07-04 21:46:25

Got it. It put it... on my desktop? Wow.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2743&start=0#p18913
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Opening text files
User: nuku_v / DateTime: 2011-07-04 21:51:20

Confound it! It didn't include the file in the gblorb? It produces a runtime error when run out of quixe.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2532&start=0#p18914
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: are there any hugo help sites?
User: Gerynar / DateTime: 2011-07-04 22:08:12

A little self promotion:

[url]http://hugo.gerynarsabode.org[/url]

also, the hugo book pdf (available at the hugo site [url]http://generalcoffee.com/hugo/gethugo.html#developer[/url]

and Jolt Country: [url]http://www.joltcountry.com/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=8[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2743&start=0#p18915
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Opening text files
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-07-04 22:21:38

Right.  Inform knows that the file will be looked for in another location like the Desktop or a folder owned by the browser, not the blorb, so it doesn't package it.  Maybe we can be more helpful if you tell us what your high-level goal is?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2743&start=10#p18916
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Opening text files
User: nuku_v / DateTime: 2011-07-04 22:30:46

Well, the blorb is posted on a web site, and quixe is used to play it, via inform's built in 'release with interperter' function.

I want it to be able to play this rather long winded text file when someone looks at a book.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2743&start=10#p18917
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Opening text files
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-07-04 23:30:20

In that case it's probably easiest just to break the text file up into Inform say phrases (the conversion could be automated, but if it's that long I pity your readers).  I'm not seeing any good way for a story to pull a text chunk out of its blorb, given that the Glk documentation on the blorb layer doesn't mention a suitable usage value:[quote][code]giblorb_err_t giblorb_load_resource(giblorb_map_t *map, glui32 method, giblorb_result_t *res, glui32 usage, glui32 resnum);[/code]This loads a resource, given its usage and resource number. Currently, the three usage values are giblorb_ID_Pict (images), giblorb_ID_Snd (sounds), and giblorb_ID_Exec (executable program). See the Blorb specification for more information about the types of data that can be stored for these usages.[/quote]
But someone else might have a better suggestion.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2743&start=10#p18918
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Opening text files
User: nuku_v / DateTime: 2011-07-04 23:50:58

This makes me sad...

Thanks for the help though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2744&start=0#p18919
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stop the action!
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-05 00:14:11

The high-level principle is simply the discussion in chapter 12.21:

[quote]Carry out rules must not block the action - it is too late for that - and should not say anything - that hasn't happened yet. [...] Adding a carry out rule to an existing action can make it do something extra.[/quote]

That's why the implementation uses "consider" in the way that it does.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=40#p18921
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-07-05 01:51:44

[quote="bukayeva"]My point here is that it's all very mechanical. Text adventures can't help but expose their mechanics at each and every point. The same could be said of any game, of course, but those other games are busy engaging all of your senses in various ways and at various times. Text adventures are like reading a book where I have to turn the page after every paragraph (and where the pages are stapled together in some cases). I notice it most when I find a text adventure game that has what seems to be a really good story. I'm then frustrated that I can't just keep the story going because the game mechanics keep intruding.[/quote]

I notice that the ASK/ABOUT interface was mentioned rather prominently in your accompanying litany of onerous text adventure mechanics. IMO, aside from being forced to make maps, which is properly out of fashion, I think ASK/ABOUT is the worst interface convention to have become standard in IF. Story games tend to have a lot of ASKing ABOUT these days, and an exploding set of dialogue tree choices that will absorb all of your time using characters as if they are dictionaries, which is not really a very interactive-feeling experience, and typically completely kills any momentum in the plot.

But make no mistake: the ASK/ABOUT interface is not necessary to the IF form; it was extremely uncommon in the original popular, commercial run of text adventures (having been wisely confined back then mostly to the mystery games like Deadline). It has developed merely by convention and there are other ways to solve the problem that it solves that are much less tedious to play through but require you to be more creative about how you work conversation and personality into the story.

In fact, the best non-player characters in IF who achieve 'personality' most elegantly are consistently those that you can't ASK anything useful ABOUT. Classic example: Floyd the robot from Planetfall. Modern example: the pig from Lost Pig. With these examples in play and highly acclaimed, I don't really totally get why people keep choosing to go the ASK/ABOUT route. Possibly because it's standardised and the tools are there (it's easier to program an ASK/TELL interface than it is to actually play through most of them). Whereas, to go the other way takes more of a dual exertion of creativity of both the mechanical and literary kinds (as opposed to the literary-only exertion of writing reams of ASK/ABOUTs to fill in your backstory).

Besides that partial agreement about the negatives of the current crop of text-games IF, I would only like to point out that almost every modern game exposes it's 'mechanic' and whether you find it 'mechanical' depends entirely on your point of view. You personally have been unable to internalise the command parser interface and take it 'as read' or 'in stride' so it feels 'exposed'. I don't have that problem: the command parser interface is in my blood, so it does not feel mechanical to me at all. On the other hand clicking those 'action wheels' that come up in graphic games, including the Mass Effects, feels more mechanical than a command parser *to me* because concepts and abstract things are being given physical-looking iconic representations on the screen (i.e. 'talking', 'fighting' etc.) which makes the options feel very mechanically exposed and therefore clearly more limited *to me*. It's not that I don't like the action wheels; it's just that I am very aware of them as an exposed mechanic and wish the interface could be less in-my-face with its annoyingly fisher-price-like love of pearly-looking buttons as if making a button look cool has anything to do with a story.

Also, since I'm a programmer I can kind of 'see behind' the interface and easily detect how little actual interactivity is going on, i.e. how narrow my story options really are compared to how wide the program wants me to believe they are. I played Mass Effect #1 and I can tell you that it does not rate very highly on this 'how truly interactive is the interactivity' front. I've heard ME2 is better, but I doubt it's THAT much better that I am suddenly not going to be able to perceive that I basically have no meaningful choices besides superficial 'space dungeon crawl' choices (the order in which I kill baddies) for the vast majority of the game, even though I am listening through tons of pages of dialogue trees. (You see, graphical games have their own problem with ASK ABOUT-style conversations, they are always packing players with long dialogue trees that don't lead anywhere with any narrative juice and just bog down the storyline. How mechanical is a dialogue tree as a way of telling a conversation story? Think about it. You have internalised it but it's actually quite awkward. The problem doesn't stem from graphics or text. The problem stems from the relationship between character and complexity, and how the problem gets solved often from the wrong perspective -- from the perspective of information delivery and systems architecture, rather than from the perspective of storytelling include suspense, pacing, satisfaction, etc.)

Your mileage obviously varies but many of the things you criticise are just as bad or worse in modern 'story-based' games; you just have not yet removed the modern veil of blind spots from your eyes, but you will soon enough, the more you think about these issues from a design perspective. 8)

Paul.

P.S. I don't think you're trolling.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1965&start=10#p18922
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Curveship released
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-07-05 02:17:40

[quote="bukayeva"]What I don't get is why this Curveship approach will be more effective tool for creating those "educational and expressive systems." I'm hoping it's capable of being explained without having to read a dissertation on the subject. [emote]:)[/emote] A lot of work and thought clearly went into this so I'm just curious what potential interactive fiction authors see in this system. Specifically, I'd be curious why this system couldn't have been done as some sort of MegaExtension to, say, Inform 7 or TADS 3 particularly since I can see the basis of this stuff in both authorhing systems.[/quote]
Probably to achieve a better use of resources more targeted toward the goal. In fact, that's almost always the reason for new programming languages. Since a good programming language will be Turing-complete, there will be nothing it can't do, given enough code (i.e. loading a 'MegaExtension' on Inform 7, which I try to avoid because of: yup, use of resources). Therefore the only reason to switch programming languages *ever* is to avail yourself of another programming language that organises its resources more efficiently for your goal.

Stating that what can be done in one language can also be done in another language, is a tautology. It is always going to be true as long as you are comparing two Turing-complete languages. Therefore, it doesn't tell you anything meaningful about whether a language is better than or necessary compared to another.

That being said, I don't actually know enough about Curveship yet to know whether it actually does marshal its resources in a preferable way to i7. I'm just saying that the fact that you could achieve the same thing with Inform doesn't tell you anything except that Inform 7 is Turing-complete.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2743&start=10#p18923
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Opening text files
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-07-05 02:44:11

AFAIK, Quixe cannot create or access text files in the file system. Instead it manages its own files with local storage.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2743&start=10#p18924
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Opening text files
User: nuku_v / DateTime: 2011-07-05 02:46:48

Say, a related question, is there any way for players to perserve their saves between versions with quixe?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=50#p18925
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-07-05 02:47:43

[quote="bukayeva"]Do these slowdowns happen with Glulx?[/quote]
Yes, very much so. In fact, z-code games are typically much faster than Glulx on the same hardware. Probably this is mostly because with the more limited resource set, they just can't get as computationally complex. But when you are experimenting with running your game in a browser, for example, you become aware of how much more taxing Glulx is on the CPU.

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2747&start=0#p18926
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Infocom Spells
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-07-05 03:34:26

Dear all,

is there a list anywhere which depicts all spells from Infocom's magic system and their descriptions? Only link I found is <a class="postlink" href="http://quendor.robinlionheart.com/spells">http://quendor.robinlionheart.com/spells</a> and that seems to be dead.

Thanks and kind regards,

Grue

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2744&start=0#p18927
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stop the action!
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-05 04:24:06

I started out by writing a long post about considering and abiding by -- and then I suddenly realised that, yes, I [b]am[/b] being thick. My rule [i]does[/i] end the Carry out rules, but the "Taken." is printed by a Report rule. [emote]:oops:[/emote] How embarrassing.

I would still like to discuss the advice quoted by Andrew, because it leaves me unsure how to handle a common situation.
[quote]Carry out rules must not block the action - it is too late for that - and should not say anything - that hasn't happened yet. [...] Adding a carry out rule to an existing action can make it do something extra.[/quote]
Apparently, it would be a best practice to use carry out rules only to add something to an existing action. Suppose I want to (a) replace the standard behaviour of an existing action in situation X, but also want (b) all the normal check rules to run and Inform to increase its count of how many times we have done this action. What kind if rule should I write?
[list][*]Not a Before rule, obviously.[/*:m]
[*]Not an Instead rule, because I want all the normal check rules to apply.[/*:m]
[*]Not a Check rule, because I'm not checking whether it's possible.[/*:m]
[*]Not a Carry out rule, according to the manual, and also because it won't stop any of the standard report rules from firing.[/*:m]
[*]Not an After rule because I don't want the normal action to take place.[/*:m]
[*]Not a Report rule, because that is only for printing text, and it's too late to block the normal action.[/*:m][/list:u]
I suppose you could write a First carry out rule and a First report rule, both of them blocking the rest of their specific rulebooks from running -- but that is not very elegant, is it? How do you guys handle this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2744&start=0#p18928
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stop the action!
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-07-05 05:07:26

I suppose you could redirect the action to a custom rulebook.

[code]
Carry out original verbing when conditions X are true:
	abide by the alternative verbing rules.

Alternative verbing is a rulebook.
Alternative verbing: do this and that; rule succeeds.
[/code]

That would still count as a successful act of original verbing, I think.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2744&start=0#p18929
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stop the action!
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-07-05 05:24:22

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Apparently, it would be a best practice to use carry out rules only to add something to an existing action. Suppose I want to (a) replace the standard behaviour of an existing action in situation X, but also want (b) all the normal check rules to run and Inform to increase its count of how many times we have done this action. What kind if rule should I write?
[/quote]

As an I7 newbie myself I might be totally missing your point, but I think instead rules do exactly what you want. I've just downloaded at job Nyx's portable I7 from [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2472&hilit=portable+inform+7]this thread[/url] and tried just this:

[code]
Location_01 is a room. South is Location_02.

An apple is a thing in Location_01.

Instead of taking the apple for the first time: say "Nope".
Instead of taking the apple for the second time: say "Nope, I won't take the apple for the second time.".
Instead of taking the apple for the third time: say "Nope, I won't take the apple for the third time.".
Instead of taking the apple: say "Oh, please...".[/code]

You can check that instead rules get the count properly and check that the apple is present (try getting it in the other room). Or perhaps you mean some other thing I didn't understand.

--

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2746&start=0#p18930
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Help for a non native English speaker!
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-07-05 05:43:08

Thanks a lot!! Your guess is right, It's all about a list with stock references (including some Argus-something, I'm at job right now and can´t see it, company) his assistant, Mr Stodart, had handed him just a bit earlier.  Hey, this has saved me a lot of guess work to get things into making more sense! (though I'm still far from making a solid theory of who the murderer is  [emote]:lol:[/emote] )

Thanks again (and now there will be a matt-character in my next IF work... whenever that happens!  [emote]:D[/emote] )

--

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2716&start=10#p18931
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Ending scenes with speech
User: Andsowejump / DateTime: 2011-07-05 06:04:07

The 'mod' is actually installed, and should work fine, but the [any known thing is still being called out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2744&start=0#p18932
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stop the action!
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-05 06:12:51

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]
Apparently, it would be a best practice to use carry out rules only to add something to an existing action. Suppose I want to (a) replace the standard behaviour of an existing action in situation X, but also want (b) all the normal check rules to run and Inform to increase its count of how many times we have done this action. What kind if rule should I write?[/quote]

Hm, well I view having the action do something which is a variation on the norm, based on situation, as 'adding something' - you're adding a possible outcome. So part of me says, if you want all the checks to run, do this at the 'carry out' stage. Though that goes against my instinct, which is to do anything checky at the check stage.

Overall, though, I admit the Inform programming style I'm developing is very non best practice, because it seems to make life easier for me.

It's extraordinarily rare I would do something at the 'report' stage other than report on an action, because that's too anti-intuitive, but whether I actually execute an action at the check stage or at the carry out stage is something that just arises intuitively based on the programming of the action. Some of my actions are check heavy, others are carry out heavy. I often find it painful or against my intuition (or organisationally annoying) to divorce the moment of deciding what to do with the execution of the response, which Inform often encourages at multiple levels. I would say most often, I'm assessing stuff at the check stage, and both executing and reporting on it there as well. I actually write almost no report rules, except for character movement.

I don't think I ever (well, maybe once!) use mechanisms which are based on responding to the success or failure of actions as decided by inform. I know if the action succeeded or failed in terms of game meaning - the game's already acted accordingly. Using 'instead' to instantly branch off to execute my desired action at the moment it's relevant is way too handy and attractive to me to worry about the fact that behind the scenes, inform says 'that action failed' when I do use 'instead'. But what inform thinks of that status is irrelevant in real terms unless I ask it what it thinks.

With my approach, inform can't necessarily keep accurately track of how many times the player has performed actions. This doesn't worry me, because in cases where I don't care - I don't care, and don't ask. In cases where I do care, I don't use the 'for the third time' type phrases to try to count the times executed. I throw a numeric flag on the action and just have one line of code which increments the flag whenever the action is carried out. This is quite foolproof - I don't need to worry about whether inform considered that the action failed or succeeded or was indecisive - when you tell a flag to increment, it increments.

So this may sound like a trainwreck approach to some of you, but I've got 10s of thousands of words of code of a game-in-progress that's working great. Inform 7 is ultimately another programming language that you can use how you see fit to achieve your aims. I wouldn't discourage anyone from trying to follow best advised practise from the outset, especially if new to programming in general, as it will help you sort your thoughts. But as I've found out (and with other programming background) if it makes you more productive to do things in non-standard ways or suits your style, I wouldn't worry about wiggling things between check and carry out stages. I've wiggled way more than that!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2716&start=10#p18933
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Ending scenes with speech
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-07-05 06:26:08

[quote="Andsowejump"]The 'mod' is actually installed, and should work fine, but the [any known thing is still being called out.[/quote]
Just checking: You are including the extension correctly to your project with the line "Include Conversation Framework by Eric Eve" and not copy-pasting the extension's code? Have you made any manual changes to the extension?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2744&start=0#p18934
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stop the action!
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-05 06:51:04

[quote="rockersuke"]You can check that instead rules get the count properly and check that the apple is present (try getting it in the other room). Or perhaps you mean some other thing I didn't understand.[/quote]
Good to know that they do increase the count (one thing less to worry about), but they are certainly not considering the check rules. You say that Inform checks whether the apple is present, but that is actually not done with a check rule: the action will only apply to a visible thing because of how the action and the grammar were defined. The actual check rules (such as the rule that stops you from taking something you already have) are not considered, as you can check by running your example with the apple already carried by the player. The order of the rulebooks is the following:
[quote]Before
Instead
Check
Carry out
After
Report[/quote]
so you can see that Check rules can never fire before Instead rules.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2744&start=0#p18935
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stop the action!
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-05 07:02:36

[quote="severedhand"]So this may sound like a trainwreck approach to some of you, but I've got 10s of thousands of words of code of a game-in-progress that's working great. Inform 7 is ultimately another programming language that you can use how you see fit to achieve your aims. I wouldn't discourage anyone from trying to follow best advised practise from the outset, especially if new to programming in general, as it will help you sort your thoughts. But as I've found out (and with other programming background) if it makes you more productive to do things in non-standard ways or suits your style, I wouldn't worry about wiggling things between check and carry out stages. I've wiggled way more than that![/quote]
I don't really worry about it, but I'm curious about the design philosophy here. Also, wiggling is okay, but only if I know what the consequences are. Until recently, for instance, I wrote "Instead of examining X:" all the time, instead of the cleaner "The description of X is". Doesn't make a difference, right? Well, it starts making a difference once you begin adding new behaviour to the examining action, which is what I recently did.

Going through my code and changing those instead rules into declarations about the description of objects wasn't a big deal, of course, but it definitely taught me that using Instead rules can cause bugs. This may not be a significant problem for games that consist mostly of special case code, but I'm writing a pretty large game full of general systems that interact with each other, and which should always allow new systems to be added in easily. In such a game, using the wrong kind of rule can trip you up. So that's why I have become more cautious and more curious about best practice. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2744&start=0#p18936
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stop the action!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-05 07:10:52

This may be hacky and may not work, but how about setting a flag in the Carry Out rules that you check with the first After rule?
Like this:

[code]Interrupting is a truth-state that varies. Interrupting is usually false.
After doing something while interrupting is true (this is the interrupt rule):
	stop the action.
The interrupt rule is listed first in the after rulebook.
Carry out taking the flour:
	if the toque is worn:
		say "Your toque wobbles so much that you can't pick the flour up.";
		now interrupting is true;
		stop the action.
	
Every turn: 
	now interrupting is false.[/code]

This has worked in the one case in which I tested it. [EDIT: Obviously if you have a rulebook that runs between Carry Out and After it won't work.]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2746&start=0#p18937
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Help for a non native English speaker!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-05 07:21:44

Excellent, glad I could help.

If you want a more specific name, my last name is Weiner.  [emote]:D[/emote]  (I probably shouldn't mention that in fantasy settings I go by Slandor the Besmirchinator.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2744&start=10#p18938
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stop the action!
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-05 07:30:42

[quote="matt w"]This may be hacky and may not work, but how about setting a flag in the Carry Out rules that you check with the first After rule?[/quote]
Hm, interesting. It could be made less hacky by defining a general "interrupt the action" or "really stop the action" phrase, and running the appropriate rule between all of the 6 stages of action processing. Something to think about.

[quote="matt w"][EDIT: Obviously if you have a rulebook that runs between Carry Out and After it won't work.][/quote]
Heh. That sounds like the kind of advice which anyone who needs it, should not need -- if you understand what I mean.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2743&start=10#p18939
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Opening text files
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-07-05 07:53:02

What do you mean by between versions?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2744&start=10#p18940
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stop the action!
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-05 07:55:56

If I were going to go that route, I'd probably use action variables.

But what I commonly do is create a new action and redirect to it with a check rule. If you want all the regular check rules to apply, then you make it a last check rule. That's pretty much how "removing it from" is handled in the Standard Rules, for example.

Check rules are nicely set up to handle this sort of thing:

[code]Last check taking the apple:
     instead try picking the apple[/code]

If I remember correctly, this will count as a successful action if picking the apple succeeded.

You can even mix in some rules from the original action:

[code]Carry out picking something:
    if the noun is not part of the apple tree:
        follow the carry out taking rules;
    otherwise:
        ....[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2741&start=0#p18941
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scenes and Repeated Actions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-05 08:21:23

I like to make kinds of scenes. Well, I always forget that you can't make kinds of scenes, but you can fake it with adjectives. I'd probably do something like this:

[code]talking to is an action applying to one thing.
Understand "talk [person]", "talk to [person]" as talking to.

A scene can be conversational.
A person has a number called the talk count.

When a conversational scene begins:
	Repeat with speaker running through people:
		Now the talk count of speaker is 0.
		
Carry out talking to someone:
	increment the talk count of the noun.[/code]

Also, don't forget that you can do anything in a say phrase:

[code]Instead of talking to Bob when Act One is happening:
    say "[one of]'Hello, how do you do?' says Bob[or]'Lovely weather, isn't it?' Bob remarks[or]'Did you see what Sheila was wearing today?' Bob says, and then seeing that his comment was inappropriate considering your relationship with Sheila, blushes and ducks out of the room[exit Bob].[stopping]"

To say exit (item - a thing):
    remove item from play;[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=20#p18942
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-05 08:35:32

New question: what does "good, if not great" mean? When a review tells you that a book is "good, if not great", do they mean:
[list][*]The book is good, but it is not great.[/*:m]
[*]The book is certainly good, and perhaps it is even great.[/*:m]
[*]The book is certainly good, and it is probably also great.[/*:m]
[*]The book is not just good, it's great![/*:m][/list:u]
This is unclear to me, and it might even be unclear to a lot of the people who I have seen using the phrase. But what does it sound like to a native speaker?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=20#p18943
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-05 08:40:32

I think most English speakers would probably use the expression to mean your second alternative: Certainly good, perhaps great.  Perhaps it implies a little more than that (something between the second and third alternatives?).  The idiom is not very precise, but I think it would be in that range.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=20#p18944
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-07-05 09:00:26

The first usage could also be intended, if the prevailing consensus is that the book is great and the reviewer means to knock it down a few pegs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=20#p18945
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-05 09:05:40

I never know which of the first three is intended unless the context makes it obvious.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2747&start=0#p18946
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Infocom Spells
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-05 09:56:29

That link is working for me right now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2743&start=10#p18947
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Opening text files
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-05 10:11:51

No, Inform's VM model only allows save files to work with the exact same game file that created them. Quixe can't change that fact.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2741&start=0#p18948
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scenes and Repeated Actions
User: SimonChris / DateTime: 2011-07-05 10:20:44

Thanks for the help both of you, but it turns out all i needed was to write "Instead of talking to Bob when Scene 2 is happening for the first time" and not "Instead of talking to Bob for the first time during Scene 2". The former version only counts the number of times i have spoken to Bob inside Scene 2, while the latter counts the total number of times and then only applies the rule during Scene 2. That subtle difference took me a while to figure out.

I will definitely keep the Doing Things in a Say Phrase trick in mind for later, though. I had no idea you could do that!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2747&start=0#p18949
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Infocom Spells
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-07-05 10:24:51

Hm, will try again at home with a different browser. Thanks for the feedback. Here at work, it won't work (IE8).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2743&start=10#p18950
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Opening text files
User: nuku_v / DateTime: 2011-07-05 10:34:30

Life is full of dissapointments, but you guys were great, thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2670&start=0#p18951
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: new review of old game: Andrew Plotkin's SHADE
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-05 12:02:54

[quote="Bainespal"]Because IF makes an internal appearance in the game, I'm thinking that maybe [i]Shade[/i] is a commentary on IF as an art form.  Poems that I've had to study in school (probably the same ones that everyone has studied) contain themes about poetry itself, or literature in general (or art, even more generally, perhaps).

(If you haven't reached the end of the game yet, when the game itself terminates, you may not want to reveal this spoiler)[spoiler]So, I suppose the little figure in the desert represents the player character of an IF game?  If that's the case, then the comment about IF is negative -- that IF is pointless.  But the IF metaphor probably refers to life as well.  We associate life with the text adventure on the computer, and ourselves with the figure representing a player character.[/spoiler][/quote]
Maybe I'm just simpleminded, but I always thought the game-within-the-game was just a metaphor for what's happening in the story, not the other way around. Using the context of IF to explore a theme, rather than making IF the theme itself.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2727&start=0#p18952
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Cards on the table
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-07-05 12:08:36

[quote="Aintelligence"]I copied a little bit out of the recipe book (don't worry no plagiarism)[/quote]

I'm pretty sure it's considered totally okay to copy straight from the recipe book --  that's what it's for.  (Of course, you should change the output text to better match your own story, but that's for aesthetic reasons.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2748&start=0#p18953
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Implementing a dog
User: kanato / DateTime: 2011-07-05 13:29:03

I have several questions that are all related to implementing a dog in my game.

First question. This is maybe more general. I have
[code]A canine has a thing called item of interest. [/code]
which is used to keep track of something the dog is interested in interacting with. But there are times when I want to clear it, like:

[code]
After a canine (called the dog) taking something:
	now the item of interest of the dog is nothing;
	continue the action.
[/code]

But I get "*** Run-time problem P60: Attempt to set a variable to the wrong kind of object: you wrote 'now the item of interest of the dog is nothing', which sets the value to nothing - but that doesn't have the kind 'thing'."

How do I clear a variable like that?

Second question. Making special persuasion rules. A dog can only carry one item at a time. So I want a command like "Dog, drop it" to work. However Inform makes strange inferences about what it refers to, and I can't figure out how to change that. For the record, a command like "Dog, drop stick" works fine. Also, is there an 

Third question. Again with inferences. If I type something like "Dog, sit" it will sometimes say 
[code]>Dog, sit
(on the dog)
The dog is unable to do that.[/code]
A message like there is nothing to sit on or asking what the player wants the dog to sit on would be appropriate. But I don't understand why it would assume I'm asking the dog to sit on itself. I think it will do this if the dog is the only thing in the room but it's still strange.

Fourth question. I understand that procedural rules are deprecated. Is there a simple way to do this that doesn't use procedural rules?
[code]
A procedural rule while taking a small canine:
	ignore the can't take other people rule.
	[/code]
Also, are there things I should take into consideration about carrying a person, or issues that I should be aware of?

Fifth question. What's the best way to change text like "The small brown dog arrives from the inside."? I'd like it to say something more like "The small brown dog arrives from inside the shack." or "The small brown dog comes out of the shack." But I want different messages depending on the area "arrives from inside the shack", "arrives from inside the mausoleum", etc.

Sixth question. Is there a way to set a rule that occurs after a successful persuasion? Basically what I want is for the dog to skip its next action after being persuaded to do something but I need to set a variable after persuasion and the action succeeds. I tried stuff like
[code]After a persuasion with a canine (called the dog) is successful:[/code]
but that didn't work, or I didn't hit on the right phrasing.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2748&start=0#p18954
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Implementing a dog
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-05 13:59:05

With regard to your third question, I think the problem is that "sit on [something]" invokes the "enter" action (i.e., when you sit on a chair you are entering it).  That's the only action which is triggered by "sit," so when you don't specify something to sit on, the machine tries to find a noun and for some reason chooses the dog itself (which it then recognizes as impossible).  Have you tried creating a "sit" action which applies to nothing (i.e., which is triggered by the command "sit" without expecting a noun)?


Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2748&start=0#p18955
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Implementing a dog
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-05 14:03:25

[quote="kanato"]I have
[code]A canine has a thing called item of interest. [/code]
which is used to keep track of something the dog is interested in interacting with. But there are times when I want to clear it, like:

[code]
After a canine (called the dog) taking something:
	now the item of interest of the dog is nothing;
	continue the action.
[/code]

How do I clear a variable like that?[/quote]

The reason you get that run-time error is that the "nothing" pseudo-object is not a thing; it is an object. Arguably, Inform should allow you to assign nothing to a thing, just as it allows you to test whether a thing property/variable contains "nothing". In other words, it's arguable that this is a bug. In any case, I generally just use an object in these cases rather than a thing, e.g.: "A canine has an object called the item of interest". 

But you could also assign the thing using a decide phrase that typecasts to I6 when defining the phrase, like so:

[code]To decide which thing is no-thing:
	(- 0 -)[/code]

You would assign the property using "now the item of interest of the dog is no-thing", and you could test using either nothing or no-thing, e.g. "if the item of interest of the dog is no-thing..."

Another option would be to set the item of interest to the dog itself--or some other neutral object--in lieu of assigning it to nothing, e.g.:

[code]
A canine has a thing called the item of interest.

The puppy is a canine. The item of interest of the puppy is the puppy.

After a canine (called the dog) taking something:
	now the item of interest of the dog is the dog;
	continue the action.
[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2744&start=10#p18956
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stop the action!
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-07-05 14:47:29

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]
Good to know that they do increase the count (one thing less to worry about), but they are certainly not considering the check rules. You say that Inform checks whether the apple is present, but that is actually not done with a check rule: the action will only apply to a visible thing because of how the action and the grammar were defined. The actual check rules (such as the rule that stops you from taking something you already have) are not considered, as you can check by running your example with the apple already carried by the player.[/quote]

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]it definitely taught me that using Instead rules can cause bugs[/quote]

Ouch! That's not only right but has cuased a bit of a panic here  [emote]:lol:[/emote]  My first I7 attempt was made for a speed-comp and used instead rules for almost everything as they were the first rules I understood how to work with. In fact I resolved their very first mess just a few days ago. Some vital events in my work were triggered when "instead of examining" certain objects "for the first time"... I wasn't aware that the player could try to examine the object while she is in the dark, which would increase the counting but cause the event never to happen at all 'cause when the object is succesfully examined under the light it could be the second or third time, but never the "first time" again! Luckyly there were nice workarounds for all cases (and I've triple-checked now that none of the remaining instead cases require taking objects the player could be already carrying!  [emote]:D[/emote] )

Anyway, if I haven´t misunderstood you (again  [emote]:)[/emote]  ) "Last check" is your friend now. It increases the count, run through the check rules and allow you to do whatever you want at that stage, including stopping the action. Sticking to our "taking the apple" example, now I tried this:

[code]
Location_01 is a room. South is Location_02.

An apple is a thing carried by the player.

Last Check taking the apple: say "Nope."; stop the action.
Instead of taking the apple for the third time: say "Yeah, the counting seems to be doing fine!"[/code]

I've added an instead rule to state when a certain counting has been reached so we can experiment when It's increasing and when not. Now the checks rules have effect (they'll correctly warn you if you try to get the apple while carrying it) and the action is stopped in any other case. You can do what you want here. Diverting to another action, as Capmikee has exposed, adds tons of versatility. Anyway, I'm still learning most of these things on the fly, so I could be totally wrong!

--

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2748&start=0#p18957
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Implementing a dog
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-07-05 15:13:12

[quote="kanato"]Fourth question. I understand that procedural rules are deprecated. Is there a simple way to do this that doesn't use procedural rules?[/quote]
Dunno about simple, but here's one way (and it's a nifty trick in general when you want a standard library rule to apply only some of the time):

[code]
The can't take other people rule is not listed in any rulebook.

Check taking a person when the noun is not a small canine:
	abide by the can't take other people rule.
	[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=40#p18958
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2011-07-05 17:02:32

Hi Guys,

I've had to put the project on hold while I sort out some problems at work.

I know which I'd much rather be spending my time on.  I'll get back to this soon as I can.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2749&start=0#p18959
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7:  Problem with Understanding
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-05 20:16:10

[code]"Street Crossing" by Me

This Side is a Room.  That Side is south of This side.

Understand the command "cross street" as something new.  Understand the command "cross the street" as something new.
Understand "cross street" as going south when the location is This Side.
Understand "cross street" as going north when the location is That Side.[/code]

This does not compile -- evidently, it is not understanding the "understand" statements.  Section 16.17 of the Documentation indicates that it is possible to restrict an "understand" statement to a particular location.

Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2749&start=0#p18960
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Problem with Understanding
User: kanato / DateTime: 2011-07-05 20:30:57

I don't think you can do it that way. I would try something like

[code]Crossing the street is an action applying to nothing.
Understand "cross street" or "cross the street" as crossing the street.

Instead of crossing the street, say "But you don't see a street!"

Instead of crossing the street when the location is this side, try going south.
Instead of crossing the street when the location is that side, try going north.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2749&start=0#p18961
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Problem with Understanding
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-05 20:33:03

I think kanato is right; the problem is with "going north" -- you have to have a plain action name, not an action plus a noun. (Take out the "when" clause and it still fails to compile.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2749&start=0#p18962
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Problem with Understanding
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-05 20:51:28

Thanks. 


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=20#p18963
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-07-05 21:19:04

Logically the construction 'A if not B', applied as it usually is to situation where B includes A. (e.g. you can't be 'great' without also being 'good'), means deductively that what is being described is definitely A and possibly B.

Traditionally, it is also used in this way. (Not that there is any necessary connection between logical and grammatical traditions - they just happen to coincide in this case.)

People who use 'if not' to mean anything except as above, are in my opinion, not using it in the traditional sense are instead inventing a usage of their own. Which happens.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=50#p18964
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: kanato / DateTime: 2011-07-05 21:40:08

I had my girlfriend play give my game a play test this weekend. It was only her second time every playing a text adventure, so when I found this extension I thought I just had to run her input through it to see what came up. Overall, I like the way it operates, although I have a few things crop up that I think could really be improved. What is the reason for having to use glulx? I don't know much about the different interpreters, but what I get from the docs is that glulx is less portable. So what is really gained by switching interpreters?

Ok, on to more specific concerns:
[code]>walk to mirror
[Most IF separates space into a series of locations, each containing a set of objects. If you can see an object, you can usually interact with it without worrying about positioning. Try a command like EXAMINE SECRET DOOR for a closer look, LOOK to get a new description of this location, or a compass direction like (for example) NORTH or N to move to a different location.][/code]
I like the spirit of this message, but I have a few complaints. First of all, since the idea of this extension is to improve the experience of people who are not experienced text adventurers, you should do away with the acronym IF. I can just imagine her asking me, "what is with this sentence? why is the word 'if' in a weird place and capitalized?" The abbreviation just seems unnecessary. But it doesn't matter too much because of my second complaint...

My second complaint is that I don't like the wishy-washy sense of the first sentence. The player doesn't care how "most IF" operates, the player cares how *this* game operates. I would say make this sentence more concrete and give the author some documentation on how to override/change the text if need be. Or just drop the first sentence and start with "If you can see an object..." Shortening this message to just the details that are needed to correct this command would be a good thing, I think. Actually it might be good to match the object so that you could start off by saying "Since you can see the mirror, ..." but maybe that is too specific.

Third, her command referred to the mirror, so I think the suggested command should be EXAMINE MIRROR (it's an object in this room). Choosing a random item makes sense if she isn't referring to a proper item, like if the command is "walk to corner" (which she did a few times).

Fourth, there are no exits from this room, at least not at this point. So to give a suggestion of a compass direction seems wholly inappropriate here. That phrase should be suppressed if a valid exit isn't found. ("But it *told* me to try going north. Why didn't it work?")

[code]>atari, come
[In some stories, you can type CHARACTER, COMMAND to give someone else an order; but I couldn't understand what you said in that context.][/code]
This is another message where I don't like the "in some stories" part as referring to an unnecessarily vague classification of games, rather than referring to the behavior of this specific game. I think this message should be more direct and just say something like [You can try typing CHARACTER, COMMAND to give someone else an order (although they may not be inclined to obey you!). But in this case I couldn't understand what you said in that context.]

[code]>go up the ladder
[I only understood the first part of that-- trying anyway.]
>GO UP[/code]
This works without any problem message without the extension. Maybe there is something I could add to my code to get rid of the extra text but it seems like this extension shouldn't make me have to do that, if possible.

[code]>take journal
[Which do you mean, 1) journal page 3, 2) journal page 4 or 3) journal page 5?]
[/code]
This behavior is different. Inform for some reason simply chooses journal page 3. I'm not sure why it's different, but there are some random events that were different in this playthrough and I suppose that is because the extension randomizes some of its text. I think in the playthrough without the extension it worked out so that journal page 5 was on a supporter, journal page 4 was held by another actor and journal page 3 was "just" in the room, which may be why Inform chose it.

[code]>atari, sit
[What do you want the small brown dog to sit?][/code]
Grammar problems there. I assume it's a generic message for "enter" since sit maps to enter and you've substituted the verb actually used. But something needs to be fixed here. 

[code]>atari, sit
[nothing has better things to do.]

>atari, sit on the sarcophagus
[The large stone sarcophagus has better things to do.]

[/code]
This was after I defined "Sitting is an action applying to nothing. Understand 'sit' as sitting." These two should say "Atari has better things to do", which they do without the extension.

[code](with the player experience upgrade extension)
>atari, crawl
You speak.

>atari, sit on the floor
You speak.

(without the extension)
>atari, crawl
There is no reply.

>atari, sit on the floor
There is no reply.[/code]
The response with the extension makes no sense, and is worse than the standard response. Crawl is not a defined verb in this game. And floor is not a noun in the game.

[code]>ladder
[Most IF separates space into a series of locations, each containing a set of objects. If you can see an object, you can usually interact with it without worrying about positioning. Try a command like EXAMINE PIECE OF BEEF JERKY for a closer look, LOOK to get a new description of this location, or a compass direction like (for example) DOWN or D to move to a different location.]
>EXAMINE LADDERIt's a sturdy wooden ladder, poking through a hole in the floor.
[/code]
Again, since the command inferred is examine ladder it'd be good if that was the suggestion in the hint. But I'm using this example because there is a problem with carriage returns there. Also, maybe a bit of a technicality, but "down" is not a compass direction (unless the player has a spherical compass...)

[code]>floor
[Look for specific nouns or directions in the description you see after typing LOOK; avoid general concepts like the floor and ceiling, or relative directions like left and right.][/code]
This message is a little bit confusing, and I think could use some clarification. For example:
[You should avoid using general concepts like the floor and ceiling, or relative directions like left and right. Try typing LOOK and then using specific nouns or directions you see in the description with a verb, for example EXAMINE something.]

[code]>look at beach
Beach (north end)
You are at the north end of a nice beach. To the west, a vast ocean stretches out before you. The stream from the forest empties into the ocean just north of you. The beach extends to the south. A rather fine rain is falling.

>walk on beach
[That's not something you can see now, or I misunderstood you.][/code]

I like how look at beach will look in the room. I'm not sure how walk on beach should be handled, although having "look at beach" work fine but then to get "(the beach) is not something you can see now" seems a bit inconsistent.

[code]>put everything on floor
[You will need to be more specific. Try typing LOOK to get a description of your surroundings.]
[/code]
This hint could be more specific, like "I'm not sure exactly what you mean. You might try a command like DROP EVERYTHING instead."

[code]>open doogie bag
>OPEN DOOR BAG
[I didn't understand that. Try rephrasing your command another way.][/code]
The attempted correction is nice, but the doggie bag is an item that is actually present, and is a better match than "door bag" which isn't an item at all. Although I see what happened, the first word was matched to door, and there is a door present. But doggie is still a better match to doogie than door. (Incidentally, "open doggy bag" was correctly matched to doggie bag, which made me very happy [emote]:)[/emote] )

[code]>throw stick into pit
[That's not something you can see now, or I misunderstood you.][/code]
This message should be more specific, because the pit is visible but the stick isn't, but my initial thought when I saw this message was that it didn't see the pit. So something like "Either you don't see any stick right now, or I misunderstood you" might be better.

[code]>jump into pit
[That's not something you can enter.][/code]
The extension has somehow overriden my "instead of jumping into the pit" rule. Making the pit enterable is not an option, because it's a backdrop, and besides jumping into it ends the game in death so making it enterable would not be useful.

...

Well that's all for now. For the most part I like the results, and I will have my g/f test it again later with this extension enabled to see how it works for her.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2749&start=0#p18965
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Problem with Understanding
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-07-06 00:12:06

In general, I would recommend against creating new actions that include the intended noun. If the street is a scenery object (which it should be, so that it can be examined, if nothing else), then it would be better to create a new crossing action, which you would rule out in a check rule as a general thing. By default, Inform thinks "cross" is a synonym for "enter," which is fairly bizarre. So you might try something along these lines:

[code]The sidewalk is a room. "The street runs east and west here. You're on the north side."

The southern promenade is south of the sidewalk. "The street runs east and west here. You're on the south side."

The street is a backdrop. It is in the sidewalk and the southern promenade. "It's not too busy. You could probably cross safely."

Understand the command "cross" as something new.

Crossing is an action applying to one thing and requiring light. Understand "cross [something]" and "traverse [something]" as crossing.

Check crossing:
	say "That's not something you can cross."
	
Instead of crossing the street:
	if the location is the sidewalk:
		try going south;
	otherwise:
		try going north.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2750&start=0#p18966
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Problem with Simple Chat and Glimmr Combined?
User: DMacasaurus / DateTime: 2011-07-06 05:59:15

This one may be tricky (or it may be boiled down to another one of my typing errors)
I have a Glimmr/Flexible windows setup for my game that is working fine.
I decided to go with the Simple Chat extension for handling conversations and included the extension.
So here are the three includes

[code]Include Glimmr Drawing Commands by Erik Temple.
Include Glimmr Canvas-Based Drawing by Erik Temple.
Include Simple Chat by Mark Tilford.[/code]

still compiles fine.

Then I wrote the Understand statement to set up Talking to as an action. 
[code]Understand "talk to  [someone]" as talking to.  Talking to is an action applying to one thing.[/code]

These two statements (well technically the second I guess -- the first sentence alone just brings up the error that you have to define the action) cause the compile to fail and an error to pop up in the glimmer extension

Here's the error message

[code]In Part - Debugging, Chapter - Debugging output window, Section - Logging to the transcript in the extension Glimmr Drawing Commands by Erik Temple:

Problem. You wrote 'After constructing the console output window when the Glimmr console transcript logging option is active'  , but 'Glimmr console transcript logging option' has the wrong kind of value: a use option rather than a chat node.

I was trying to match this phrase:

(glimmr console transcript logging option - chat node) is active 

This was what I found out:

Glimmr console transcript logging option = a use option



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem. You wrote 'After constructing the console output window when the Glimmr console transcript logging option is active'  , but 'Glimmr console transcript logging option' has the wrong kind of value: a use option rather than a chat node.

I was trying to match this phrase:

(glimmr console transcript logging option - chat node) is active 

[/code]

Here's the line in Glimmr drawing commands that is red-highlighted by the debugger
[code]After constructing the console output window when the Glimmr console transcript logging option is active:[/code]

This is beyond me. Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Jeremiah McCall

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2721&start=0#p18967
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Level9.NET author info
User: scan / DateTime: 2011-07-06 06:17:15

[quote="Isxek"]I can do that later, when I get back home. Just let me know what I need to check.[/quote]
Have you checked your private messages in this forum?  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2750&start=0#p18968
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with Simple Chat and Glimmr Combined?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-06 06:28:33

It looks to me as though Simple Chat is trying to take over the word "active," which is now reserved for use options (something that extensions use). That would make the extensions currently incompatible, in a way that's not your fault. 

Try making a spare copy of Simple Chat, opening one copy, search-and-replacing "active" with some other word (like chat-active?), and then including that version -- see if that solves your problem. (I could be off-base here, too.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2750&start=0#p18969
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with Simple Chat and Glimmr Combined?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-06 06:35:32

Matt W beat me to the punch. That is indeed what is happening: you need to change Simple Chat to make it compatible with the current Inform 7 builds. (I still very much dislike the fact that Inform 7 suddenly made the word "active" reserved.)

I believe I am sort of in charge of maintaining Simple Chat, and will try to get out a new version this week. Very probably, I will change "active" into "sc-active" (with "sc" standing for "simple chat"), so if you make the same change to your current copy you should be good to go.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2748&start=0#p18970
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Implementing a dog
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-07-06 06:56:02

[quote="kanato"]Sixth question. Is there a way to set a rule that occurs after a successful persuasion? Basically what I want is for the dog to skip its next action after being persuaded to do something but I need to set a variable after persuasion and the action succeeds. I tried stuff likeCode:After a persuasion with a canine (called the dog) is successful:but that didn't work, or I didn't hit on the right phrasing.[/quote]

You can do things like
[code]
Persuasion rule for asking a canine to try doing something:
	now stop drooling is true;
	persuasion suceeds.
[/code]

But of course that only tells you that the persuasion was successful; it doesn't check that the action the dog tries succeeded.

Something like this might be what you're after:
[code]
After a canine doing something:
	now stop drooling is true.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2750&start=0#p18971
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with Simple Chat and Glimmr Combined?
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-07-06 07:21:10

I ran into this problem a few weeks ago and after some googling I found [url=https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rec.arts.int-fiction/Ev1DaQVN9M8/UcrOCSuZn80J]this response[/url] from Mark Tilford himself, with an updated version of the extension. I'm not sure why it never got updated in the extensions repository, but it worked for me without having to change my existing code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2751&start=0#p18972
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Testing Games with Random Elements
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-06 07:23:34

I have never before had much call to use the skein for testing, but I am currently working on a fairly sizeable game which is somewhat linear, so that a fair amount of playing needs to be done before one reaches the point in the game which is controlled by the code I am now writing.  It would facilitate testing immensely if I could quickly play past the earlier stages of the game, so that I could test the new material.  It sounds like this is the type of thing that the skein should be useful for.

The difficulty is that the earlier portion of the game (i.e., that part I want to play past without manually typing in every command) has some random elements.  Specifically, there is an event which may or may not occur; if it does occur, there is some random variability in [i]when[/i] it occurs.  Depending on whether it happens, and, if so, when, the sequence of commands that the player needs to type will differ significantly.  However, eventually, the divergent play paths once again converge.  The portion of the game that I am currently writing (and for which I would like to facilitate testing) is past the "re-convergence" point.

Other than using the skein to play to the first "break-point" and then playing manually after that, can anybody suggest an approach to testing which would allow me easily to play to the point I want to test, in effect bypassing the earlier divergent paths which would depend on the random factors?

Thanks.



Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2751&start=0#p18973
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Testing Games with Random Elements
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-06 07:32:23

See section 8.18 of the documentation for a couple of ways you could do this -- you could write a line to seed the RNG while testing, or use an option in the Settings panel to fix the RNG while you're playing in the IDE.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2751&start=0#p18974
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Testing Games with Random Elements
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-06 07:46:49

Thanks.  That sounds like exactly what I need.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2751&start=0#p18975
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Testing Games with Random Elements
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-06 07:54:44

Another angle is to program cheat(s) into the game.

If there are lines which randomly decide when these major random events happen, and what is their nature, add a line of code right after each decision is made which directly sets the outcome to your desired result, thus overriding the random decision.

To remove a cheat, you can just [comment it out by sticking braces around it like this.] And in a comment with each cheat, put the word 'cheatz' (or something else completely distinctive.) When you want to toggle cheats on or off, you can search for the word 'cheatz' in your source to jump to them, then can bracket or unbracket them.

This approach is a little manual labory, but ultimately it can be necessary for certain tests, especially to test each of a set of possible circumstances in turn.

Also, you can add cheats that you can access from in-game. Just program cheat commands into a section with a heading like:

Book - My Cheats - Not For Release

This will compile in the IDE, but not in releases.

Finally, don't forget that you can set random outcomes to go the same way every time (based on one compilation of the game - if you recompile, you get a new set of outcomes which doesn't change until you compile again, etc.) by ticking that checkbox in the 'settings' panel of Inform.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1965&start=10#p18976
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Curveship released
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-07-06 07:57:39

This is, I think, partly the problem with text adventure development. Explanations are not given in terms of the authors and reasons they would care.

Most authors (I would guess) are not going to care about Turing-completeness nor should they.

They are going to care about practical things. What can this system allow me to do (in practical terms!) that will allow me to tell a better story? That will allow me to craft a better gaming experience?

I, as a game author, just spent a lot of time looking at Inform 7 and TADS 3 and learning them.

Why should I now invest time in Curveship, particularly when I look at the output or Curveship (which looks really ugly) and when I look at the programming language of Curveship (which means I now have to learn Python and then, possibly, any specifics that Curveship takes with Python)? What does Curveship get me as an author that will allow me to provide a more fulfilling experience to the audience I want to reach?

I didn't find this information in the dissertation or any of the various papers on the main site as well. Which is why I'm curious what relevance Curveship has to text adventure authors? That's probably the only way that Curveship is going to be tried out so that it can improve. But if most authors don't see any value add (beyond some nebulous "use of resources") then Curveship is probably going to languish.

But, then again, let's test that out. The first post was Februrary of 2011. A relatively short amount of time ago. But in that time, have authors been enticed enough to try it out? To see how it all works? Any experiential feedback? (After all, I presume that's why the original poster wanted everyone to know about it, so they'd try it out and give feedback.)

I don't have any such feedback because I haven't tried it out ... and that's because I can't quite understand why I would want to, given the output I've seen and the input I've seen.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=40#p18977
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-07-06 08:01:42

[quote="RealNC"]Everything you've written so far though, assumes that "current game design" is good design. Current game design is focused on maximizing sales for the primary target group, which is 16 year old teenagers craving for fast action, blood and sex in video games.[/quote]

Good design is what gamers respond to. I don't assume "current game design" is somehow good design except insofar as people I would want to reach also seem to think it's good enough design.

I agree that the game industry is targeted around the maximization of profit but that also leads to games that have some modicum of story. (Witness the lack of fanfare over the arrival of "Duke Nukem: Forever" with its paltry story and really out-of-date characterizations.) Games that are selling are also those that -- at least in many cases -- do provide compelling gameplay, a compelling story, or both.

Your characterization of "16 year old teenagers" is a typical mischaracterization particularly since even a little research would show the vast majority of the gaming audience is not 16 year old teenagers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2752&start=0#p18978
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Tables and Kinds
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-06 08:19:57

Here is an example game:
[code]"Test" by Victor Gijsbers

Church is a room. A fruit is a kind of thing. An apple is a kind of fruit. In church is one apple.

Table of Fruit Prices
fruit		price
apple		5

Instead of examining a fruit:
	let m be 0;
	repeat through the Table of Fruit Prices:
		if the noun is a fruit entry:
			now m is the price entry;
	say "That costs [m] dollars. You must be in Manhattan.".[/code]
The intent of the code is probably obvious: I want to have a table with kinds and numbers, and I want to be able to look up, for any object, what number belongs to its kinds. (In this example game, this could also be done with "A fruit has a number called the price. The price of an apple is usually 5.". But since I want to set the prices at random at the beginning of the game, this is not a possibility for me.)

This code compiles but doesn't work, and I'm thinking that the underlying problem is probably that I do not know a way to refer to the kind of something. Is there a way to check whether X is a thing of kind Y? Or does anyone know another way to get the effect I intend?

However, the reason Inform 7 gives me when the game throws an error (after "examine apple") is the mysterious:
[quote]*** Run-time problem P23: Attempt to look up a non-existent entry at column 1, row 1 of the table 'Table of Fruit Prices'.[/quote]
Mysterious because I don't see how the entry at (1,1) could be non-existent. I am repeating through a table which has no blank entries, so there should never be a non-existent entry. Is my table being emptied for some reason, or is this a bug in Inform?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=40#p18979
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-07-06 08:24:21

[quote="shammack"]I'm not sure Mass Effect and Dragon Age are such good examples of games where you have to make decisions quickly, given that at any time, you can freeze the world to look around, target enemies, issue commands to party members, look through your inventory, etc. If you don't do it that way, it becomes virtually unplayable, as your party members die within seconds of the start of combat.[/quote]

I've played both games and I don't tend to pause the games for combat and I don't "die within seconds." Nor do many gamers, by all accounts. Where the story-element pauses come in -- and which is much more relevant -- is the dialogue options. You're not forced to make a decision quickly about what to say. And I do think that's a detriment because it doesn't allow you to react as you would *most likely react* as that type of persona. You can sit there and hem and haw over what dialogue choice you should take and what the likely ramifications of that are.

[quote]IF tends to model worlds in very abstract ways, but simulate a much wider variety of things that can happen in them.[/quote]

Agreed. Except in many cases all that modeling or simulation is not really relevant to progressing the story or the game. A lot of it is just for atmosphere. I'm not discounting atmosphere but my point here is that all that ability to model a world to a certain level of conciseness does not necessarily lead to a better experience. It can, but it doesn't have to. A lot of times when I'm forced to do something that doesn't really propel the story, I'm turned off. (Since I brought up Mass Effect games, I'll say a big turn off for me was the roving around in the Mako. This was great modeling, I guess. Great simulation of driving around a really big world. But it was boring. And tedious. And they -- correctly -- dropped it all in the second game.)

[quote]In a big-budget 3D game, it takes such a commitment of time and resources every time you add a new system that those games tend to end up being the player doing essentially the same things with slightly different window-dressing over and over again.[/quote]

But sometimes the "big-budget" aspects make up for the window-dressing. After all, people do respond to those types of gaming experiences. Can the same be said for text adventures? Maybe so. I'm not saying text games are not capable of this, but the gaming audience has, by and large, decided one way rather than the other. (One of the biggest complaints about Mass Effect, for example, was the amount of text that needed to be read.)

I don't know that saying text adventures are so much simpler to produce is really a compelling argument if only because it says nothing to quality. In fact, given that text adventures are so much simpler to produce, I would expect really high quality in the aspects that it provides: the mechanics, the parser, and, above all, the story (i.e., the level of writing that I have to read since it's all pretty much text based).

[quote]And, of course, there are some things you can do with text that just wouldn't make any sense in any other medium. Games like Nord and Bert, Ad Verbum, or Earl Grey are good examples of this.[/quote]

I can't speak to the latter two -- I will look them up -- but I can speak to "Nord and Bert." There are graphical games, including many for kids, that do use various forms of word play as part of the gaming. Many LeapFrog games do this. The graphical nature of the games does not mean they can't use textual words in some cases. On the other hand, I do agree that something like "Nord and Bert" could be a great way to get kids to look at situations that force them to consider words and how they are used. But many gamers are not going to be interested in that.

[quote]I also like that IF is narrated because it allows for deeper characterization. Everything you're experiencing in the game is coming through the filter of a narrator or the player character him/herself, ....[/quote]

Which works well if you have a good writer. Which goes back to what I said way before. It seems text adventures really shine when you have a good author writing the text, one who is skilled in the ability to tell a good story, who knows how to do good characterization, etc.

[quote]In graphical games the presentation is usually pretty objective and you can take it for granted that what you're seeing on screen is an accurate representation of what's happening.[/quote]

Good argument. But see the F.E.A.R games which constantly play on what's really there and what's not. Hallways expand all the sudden and then you're somewhere else. Someone you were talking to dissolves in front of you. The thing you were shooting at turns out to be ten feet closer to you than expected: literally in one second.

[quote]IF allows for an unreliable narrator or lets the author more easily pick and choose what the player gets to know about and what's important to take notice of.[/quote]

I do agree this is an area that graphical games could explore more. Alpha Protocol does a fairly good job of this, in terms of not really knowing what's going on. Good argument, though. Again this really puts the emphasis on the authoring skills.

It still really comes down to this for me: why does text adventure development seem to attract many non-authors? Witness many posts in the forum for Inform 7 for example, where the posters apparently don't believe in full sentences, periods, or the need to capitalize. Witness those who can't even ask a question in a way that allows people to reliably answer it. These are the writers that Inform 7 at least is attracting. I'm not saying that's the case across the board. But text adventures seem to have this appeal that "Hey, I can't program. I can't do graphics. I don't know if I want to write a book and I don't even know if I can. I sure as hell I know I can't do graphics or sound all that well. But you know what? I bet I can write a text adventure?"

That's really part of what prompted me to start this discussion. It just seems like text adventures seem to attract people who feel they "can't do other things but here's finally something they can do" and then text adventures, at least in my mind, start to become the lowest common denominator of a storytelling or gaming experience.

I can see the points you and others have made. So, again, I guess I'm wondering. Why isn't the text adventure attracing more game authors, particularly those who have studied game design? Why isn't the text adventure arena attracing more authors? I mentioned those companies Malinche and TextFyre. I don't know if there's an attempt to attract known names in the gaming or novel arenas. If not, why not? Couldn't such people help make text adventures even more exciting? Propel the medium in new ways? Or is that not a desire? But if that's not a desire, why come out with such an extensive and impressive system like Inform 7? Why have such impressive languages like TADS 3? Why have new versions of ADRIFT and Quest? Clearly people take this stuff seriously but given the current audience, it's hard to see why (at least for me).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=60#p18980
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-06 09:00:57

[quote="kanato"]I had my girlfriend play give my game a play test this weekend. It was only her second time every playing a text adventure, so when I found this extension I thought I just had to run her input through it to see what came up. Overall, I like the way it operates, although I have a few things crop up that I think could really be improved. [/quote]

This was really interesting to read. Some of your ideas might be really hard to implement, but I like your perspective on what the new player's experience ought to be like.

[quote]What is the reason for having to use glulx? I don't know much about the different interpreters, but what I get from the docs is that glulx is less portable. So what is really gained by switching interpreters?[/quote]

I think Aaron's main reason for choosing glulx is memory. These extensions take up a really big amount of memory, and they don't add anything at all to the game world, so the idea is to leave the author with enough room to still make an interesting game. The z-machine has absolute memory limits - once you go past z8 format, you're plumb out of space.

[quote]Ok, on to more specific concerns:
[code]>walk to mirror[/code]
First of all, since the idea of this extension is to improve the experience of people who are not experienced text adventurers, you should do away with the acronym IF. I can just imagine her asking me, "what is with this sentence? why is the word 'if' in a weird place and capitalized?" The abbreviation just seems unnecessary. But it doesn't matter too much because of my second complaint...[/quote]

A few times you mentioned messages that are too general for your taste. I think the idea of spelling out "interactive fiction" is a good one, but to avoid talking about how "most" interactive fictions behave, it's necessary for the author of each work to write something more specific. Off the top of my head, I can't remember how easy it is to change Aaron's messages, but it might not be too hard. So if I were to make a suggestion to Aaron based on your comments, I would request making the messages easier to customize (perhaps all that's needed is documentation) rather than actually changing their text.

[quote]Third, her command referred to the mirror, so I think the suggested command should be EXAMINE MIRROR (it's an object in this room). Choosing a random item makes sense if she isn't referring to a proper item, like if the command is "walk to corner" (which she did a few times).[/quote]
This is one of the points where it would be really great if the parser could handle it, but I'm not sure if it can. The problem is that the parser doesn't know what objects have been mentioned unless a significant portion of the command was already parsed successfully. You can see how this leads to a catch-22.

[quote]Fourth, there are no exits from this room, at least not at this point. So to give a suggestion of a compass direction seems wholly inappropriate here. That phrase should be suppressed if a valid exit isn't found. ("But it *told* me to try going north. Why didn't it work?")[/quote]
I bet that one is fixable.

[i](...Skipping what looks like bug reports, which I'm not qualified to handle at this point...)[/i]

[quote]
[code]>atari, come
[In some stories, you can type CHARACTER, COMMAND to give someone else an order; but I couldn't understand what you said in that context.][/code]

[code](with the player experience upgrade extension)
>atari, crawl
You speak.

>atari, sit on the floor
You speak.

(without the extension)
>atari, crawl
There is no reply.

>atari, sit on the floor
There is no reply.[/code]
The response with the extension makes no sense, and is worse than the standard response. Crawl is not a defined verb in this game. And floor is not a noun in the game.[/quote]

I'm not exactly sure what's going on here, but there are two different ways to parse "NPC, text." One is as a command, but the other is parsed as answering it that (i.e. "NPC, unrecognized text" parses as "say unrecognized text to NPC") Probably the word 'come' was recognized as a word, but not as a valid command.

Anyway, once you get to "answering it that," the parser is assuming that you want the PC to speak the words you typed - which is not all that unreasonable even in the case of giving a command. In this particular case I agree with you that "there is no reply" makes more sense as a response, but if I remember the earlier discussions correctly, Aaron was trying to make a distinction between actions that the PC refuses or fails to take, and actions that the PC takes with no result in the game world. "There is no reply" is a bit vague on the matter of what the PC actually did. Unfortunately, "You speak" isn't very helpful either. Do you have any other suggestions?

I have a suggestion for your particular case, though. It sounds like you never intend to handle the "answering it that" action at all, so you might as well just tell the player something like "The statement that you intended to make to Atari was not recognized. Either it wasn't a command that I can understand, or it was some other sort of conversation, which is not necessary in this game."

[quote][code]>floor
[Look for specific nouns or directions in the description you see after typing LOOK; avoid general concepts like the floor and ceiling, or relative directions like left and right.][/code]
This message is a little bit confusing, and I think could use some clarification. For example:
[You should avoid using general concepts like the floor and ceiling, or relative directions like left and right. Try typing LOOK and then using specific nouns or directions you see in the description with a verb, for example EXAMINE something.][/quote]
I never liked that message either. Your suggestion seems better to me.

[quote]>walk on beach
[That's not something you can see now, or I misunderstood you.][/code]

I like how look at beach will look in the room. I'm not sure how walk on beach should be handled, although having "look at beach" work fine but then to get "(the beach) is not something you can see now" seems a bit inconsistent.[/quote]
That's a tricky one, but I agree with what you said elsewhere, that the message should tell you what exactly isn't available. I think there is a response along the lines of 'I don't know the word "foo,"' but it seems silly not to have the same thing for nouns that were recognized but are out of scope. Unfortunately, here again we run into some parser quirks. You might have a look at my "Lost Items" extension, though, which attempts to provide that kind of information. I have a feeling that "Lost Items" might not work for rooms, though. Hmm....

[quote][code]>put everything on floor
[You will need to be more specific. Try typing LOOK to get a description of your surroundings.]
[/code]
This hint could be more specific, like "I'm not sure exactly what you mean. You might try a command like DROP EVERYTHING instead."[/quote]
I'm not sure what situation this message was written for, but I bet it wasn't this one. It's possible this is a replacement for the horrible "That noun did not make sense in this context" error. Or not. Once again, you might have to delve into the inner workings of the parser to extract the necessary information. It's possible you could write a Smarter Parser rule to handle this specific command, but I don't know how general you could make it.

[quote][code]>open doogie bag
>OPEN DOOR BAG
[I didn't understand that. Try rephrasing your command another way.][/code]
The attempted correction is nice, but the doggie bag is an item that is actually present, and is a better match than "door bag" which isn't an item at all. Although I see what happened, the first word was matched to door, and there is a door present. But doggie is still a better match to doogie than door. (Incidentally, "open doggy bag" was correctly matched to doggie bag, which made me very happy [emote]:)[/emote] )[/quote]
I think this is just one of the inevitable evils of spell checking. Maybe one day some heroic person will write a spellcheck extension that can do disambiguation:

[code]>OPEN DOOR BAG
Which do you mean, the door or the doggie bag?[/code]

[quote][code]>throw stick into pit
[That's not something you can see now, or I misunderstood you.][/code]
This message should be more specific, because the pit is visible but the stick isn't, but my initial thought when I saw this message was that it didn't see the pit. So something like "Either you don't see any stick right now, or I misunderstood you" might be better.

[code]>jump into pit
[That's not something you can enter.][/code]
The extension has somehow overriden my "instead of jumping into the pit" rule. Making the pit enterable is not an option, because it's a backdrop, and besides jumping into it ends the game in death so making it enterable would not be useful.
[/quote]

You can fix the second part yourself. You don't need to make the pit enterable, you just need to write an "instead of entering the pit" rule.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=40#p18981
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-06 09:32:26

[quote="bukayeva"]Good design is what gamers respond to.[/quote]

You have to be careful that you don't wind up concluding that Dan Brown is a good writer, here. (Leaving aside the question of who "gamers" are and whether they're the people IF authors should be trying to cater to.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1965&start=10#p18982
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Curveship released
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-06 11:09:41

From what I have seen of it, and from what I know of Nick Montfort's literary interests, I believe that Curveship is primarily aimed at fictions that explore style variations. Think of Raymond Queneau's [i]Exercices de style[/i] as the paradigmatic example of this in static fiction.

If you want to write such interactive fiction, you will want to use a language that has stylistic elements among its primitives. Inform 7, for instance, ask you to conceptualise your game in terms of objects, actions, activities, and rules; but it has no primitives related to style. Curveship does.

If my impression of Curveship is right, it means to stimulate people to write a kind of IF that has not been written before; and a kind of IF that is probably not going to be mainstream, even within the world of interactive fiction. (In the same way that Queneau is hardly meainstream, even in the world of high literature.) It is a niche product for people who want to write avant garde games that revolve around stylistic variations.

(If my impression is wrong, Nick should come here and tell us. [emote];)[/emote] )

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2748&start=0#p18983
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Implementing a dog
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-07-06 11:14:54

Not too clever, come to think of it, since it sets the variable whether or not the dog acted because the player told him to or not; also it does not make any distinction between different canine animals.

This may work.
[code]
Drooliness is a kind of value. The droolinesses are droolless, droolish and droolful. 
A canine has a drooliness. The drooliness of a canine is droolless.

A persuasion rule for asking a canine (called doggy) to try doing something: 
	now the drooliness of the doggy is droolish;
	rule succeeds.

After someone doing something when the person asked is canine:
	if the drooliness of the person asked is droolish:
		now the drooliness of the person asked is droolful.

[1: stopping droolful dogs from doing things "spontaneously".]
Instead of someone trying doing something when the actor is canine and the drooliness of the actor is droolful:
	now the drooliness of the actor is droolless;
	say "[The actor] prefers to just sit there drooling."

[2: stopping droolful dogs from doing things when ordered.]
Instead of asking someone to try doing something when the person asked is canine and the drooliness of the person asked is droolful:
	now the drooliness of the person asked is droolless;
	say "[The person asked] prefers to just sit there drooling."
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2752&start=0#p18984
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tables and Kinds
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-06 11:26:47

I found a workaround. I don't think it's too arduous. Basically, you give each type of fruit an id number, and refer to them that way in a price list.

[code]"Test" by Victor Gijsbers

Church is a room. A fruit is a kind of thing. An apple is a kind of fruit. A banana is a kind of fruit. In church is one apple and three bananas.

A fruit has a number called id.
id of apple is 1.
id of banana is 2.

Table of Prices
produce	numero	price
apple	1	10
banana	2	20

Instead of examining a fruit:
	choose a row with numero of id of noun in Table of Prices;
	say "That costs [price entry] dollars. You must be in Manhattan."

test me with "x apple / x banana". [/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2752&start=0#p18985
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tables and Kinds
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-06 11:36:24

The first thing I tried to do with your original code was convert the fruit's name into text, then match it against a table of text items. But this never worked. It drove me mad trying to work out why not and I gave up!

Look at these 2 examples. In the first one, I store the apple's name as text in textmatch. I then add a letter 'g' to the front of the text (to prove Inform still isn't being thrown in any way by the fact we're talking about something which is a kind we have defined...) and try to match it to the word 'gapple' in the table. It doesn't match, so it doesn't say "That costs mucho dolllars."

In the 2nd example, I simply set textmatch to "gapple" when it goes to look for a match. It succeeds.

In both cases, I print the contenst of 'textmatch' with hyphens around it to show there are no weird gaps or trailing or leading characters at either end of the word that could screw up the match. So I cannot work out why my example 1 doesn't work.

Example 1:

[code]"Test" by Victor Gijsbers

Church is a room. A fruit is a kind of thing. An apple is a kind of fruit. In church is one apple. torch is in church.

textmatch is a text variable.

Table of Prices
texty	price
"gapple"	5
"Sam"	10
"gtorch"	7

Before examining:
	now textmatch is "g[printed name of noun]";
	say "--[textmatch]--";
	if textmatch is a texty listed in Table of Prices:
		say "That costs mucho dollars. You must be in Manhattan."[/code]

Example 2:

[code]"Test" by Victor Gijsbers

Church is a room. A fruit is a kind of thing. An apple is a kind of fruit. In church is one apple. torch is in church.

textmatch is a text variable.

Table of Prices
texty	price
"gapple"	5
"Sam"	10
"gtorch"	7

Before examining:
	now textmatch is "g[printed name of noun]";
	now textmatch is "gapple";
	say "--[textmatch]--";
	if textmatch is a texty listed in Table of Prices:
		say "That costs mucho dollars. You must be in Manhattan."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2752&start=0#p18986
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tables and Kinds
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-06 11:41:43

This is a bug, and I'm sure it's because "apple" is a kind name as well as an object name. If you replace "apple" with "thing" or "person" in the table, you get the same result -- it compiles, but the entry is blank.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2752&start=0#p18987
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tables and Kinds
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-06 11:59:14

Filed: <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=690">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=690</a>

You can work around this by filling in the table entry at runtime, being careful to refer to the correct apple.

[code]

One apple is in the Kitchen.

A iigs is an apple.

Table of Fruit Prices
fruit	price
--	1
iigs	2

When play begins:
	let T be a random apple in the Kitchen;
	now the fruit in row 1 of the Table of Fruit Prices is T.

Instead of jumping:
	repeat through the Table of Fruit Prices:
		let F be the fruit entry;
		let G be the price entry;
		say "### [F] [G].";
[/code]

Note that I had to select the apple by description. If I write "now the fruit in row 1 of the Table of Fruit Prices is the apple", I7 thinks I'm talking about the kind again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1965&start=10#p18988
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Curveship released
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-06 12:22:54

I agree with Victor. Besides the Queneau-like stuff, [url=http://curveship.com/writing.html]the ability to vary viewpoint and sentence structure on the fly[/url] seems like the sort of thing that would be very interesting in stories/games where you could switch between characters at will, and also for some aspects of procedural text generation.

Why haven't you seen any posts from me about Curveship, when it seems suitable to my interests? Well, I don't know Python, don't have time to learn new systems right now, and think that what I really need to do if I'm going to do any IF is to work on getting some decent prose written. I suspect that Nick will probably be the main person exploring Curveship and its possibilities for a little while, and that seems fine to me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=60#p18989
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: kanato / DateTime: 2011-07-06 13:28:06

[quote="capmikee"]A few times you mentioned messages that are too general for your taste. I think the idea of spelling out "interactive fiction" is a good one, but to avoid talking about how "most" interactive fictions behave, it's necessary for the author of each work to write something more specific. Off the top of my head, I can't remember how easy it is to change Aaron's messages, but it might not be too hard. So if I were to make a suggestion to Aaron based on your comments, I would request making the messages easier to customize (perhaps all that's needed is documentation) rather than actually changing their text.[/quote]

Well, I think that's a good thing. In this particular example, the sentence "Most IF separates space into a series of locations, each containing a set of objects" is basically saying "This message might be wrong, but probably isn't." Well if the message isn't wrong, you don't need the first sentence, you can just go right into talking about how objects can be interacted with directly. If the message is wrong, the whole thing is useless and should be replaced by the author anyway. When it comes to developing a platform like this, I'm a big fan of going with sensible defaults that the end-developer can easily override. The sensible default in this case is to just state how most IF behaves, without putting in the unnecessary caveat that "Most IF behaves in this way." This is basically a help system for new users, but e.g. you don't go into the help in Diablo II and see something like "Most action RPG games have a quantity called health that goes down when monsters hit you." You just see "This is your health." Or you don't see in the help for Microsoft Word "This is how most word processors behave." You just see things specific to Word.

[quote="capmikee"]
[quote]Third, her command referred to the mirror, so I think the suggested command should be EXAMINE MIRROR (it's an object in this room). Choosing a random item makes sense if she isn't referring to a proper item, like if the command is "walk to corner" (which she did a few times).[/quote]
This is one of the points where it would be really great if the parser could handle it, but I'm not sure if it can. The problem is that the parser doesn't know what objects have been mentioned unless a significant portion of the command was already parsed successfully. You can see how this leads to a catch-22.[/quote]

I do. Although I can certainly think of ways to handle this, if "go/walk to [something]" was understood as an action, which seems to be the case because I can write "walk to basement" to move into another room. So if the noun is an object in the location, the message could be made more specific. But that altogether depends on exactly how this stuff is actually handled, so I can understand if it is difficult.

[quote="capmikee"]
Anyway, once you get to "answering it that," the parser is assuming that you want the PC to speak the words you typed - which is not all that unreasonable even in the case of giving a command. In this particular case I agree with you that "there is no reply" makes more sense as a response, but if I remember the earlier discussions correctly, Aaron was trying to make a distinction between actions that the PC refuses or fails to take, and actions that the PC takes with no result in the game world. "There is no reply" is a bit vague on the matter of what the PC actually did. Unfortunately, "You speak" isn't very helpful either. Do you have any other suggestions?

I have a suggestion for your particular case, though. It sounds like you never intend to handle the "answering it that" action at all, so you might as well just tell the player something like "The statement that you intended to make to Atari was not recognized. Either it wasn't a command that I can understand, or it was some other sort of conversation, which is not necessary in this game."
[/quote]

Well I'm not sure about other suggestions, since I am just getting familiar with how to implement people in Inform at the moment. But "there is no reply" at least indicates a (non-)response from the IF world. I will probably handle "answering it that" at some point (my game is still a work in progress) although probably not for interactions with Atari, the dog.

[quote="capmikee"]
[quote][code]>floor
[Look for specific nouns or directions in the description you see after typing LOOK; avoid general concepts like the floor and ceiling, or relative directions like left and right.][/code]
This message is a little bit confusing, and I think could use some clarification. For example:
[You should avoid using general concepts like the floor and ceiling, or relative directions like left and right. Try typing LOOK and then using specific nouns or directions you see in the description with a verb, for example EXAMINE something.][/quote]
I never liked that message either. Your suggestion seems better to me.[/quote]
Yeah I think the message should have more of a "procedural" flavor to it, giving the player a series of instructions in order "type LOOK" then "EXAMINE a noun that you see" or something like that.

Oh I also just came across this:
[code]>look
Basement
You are in the basement of the shack. Shelves line the east and north walls, but they are mostly empty. A beautiful mirror stands against the south wall. A ladder pokes through the ceiling in the corner of the room.

On the shelves are a wand of weather-changing, journal page 3, journal page 4, journal page 5, a brass lantern and journal page 2.

>read page 2
[Which do you mean, 1) journal page 4 or 2) journal page 2?]
[/code]
This happens sometimes, and I'm not sure exactly the conditions for causing it, because sometimes it will simply correctly take page 2 and read it, other times it will ask this message. It should be clear because page 2 was specified. 

Also, the numbered list might be a bit confusing when the item names contain numbers, like in this example:
[code]>read page
[Which do you mean, 1) journal page 4, 2) journal page 2, 3) journal page 5 or 4) journal page 3?]
[/code]
It's a bit confusing because if I answer "4", will I get the 4th item in the list or journal page 4? Maybe it's better to just leave the numbers off. (I mean, *I* know what happens, because I've tried it. But it might be confusing to a new user, and in some circumstances it might be important that the player is clear on exactly what their response will end up doing.)

Another grammar issue:
[code]>drop dog
[You haven't got she.][/code]

This issue comes up because I've rewritten the can't take other people rule so that one can pick up small dogs. Obviously, "she" should be "her".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2753&start=0#p18990
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6 -- announcing Triform 1.0
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-07-06 13:57:29

Several years ago I began working on an alternative Inform 6 library to add features I wanted. Perhaps nobody here remembers, but back in 2005 and 2006 I uploaded a couple of buggy beta versions to the IF Archive and got some positive feedback. Well, after all that time and many life changes, I've finally uploaded a version 1.0 with a few, minor known bugs. Anybody still using Inform 6 may be interested in it, since it adds a number of features (although converting standard code to Triform code may be time-consuming).

The major new features are:

- Objects can be both containers and supporters, with no add_to_scope trickery, and may also have items behind and beneath them. The player can refer to objects by their locations, such as THE WALLET ON THE TABLE or THE MONEY IN THE WALLET ON THE TABLE.

- NPCs can be easily coded to take any action in the game world that the player can, and will trigger the same world rules in action routines. In general, the library is no longer PC-centric.

- New middle and react_middle action routines, for interfering in an action after it has been determined to be possible but before it is carried out.

- New final and react_final action routines, for after an action has been carried out and its action message printed.

- Easy methods for altering standard game text, such as changing "in the shark tank" to "trapped in Blofeld's shark tank" or changing "providing light" to "glowing eerily".

- All implicit actions will be carried out, so that if the player types TAKE THE MONEY the library will first open the box the wallet is in, then take the wallet, then open the wallet.

- It is much easier to set up negatively-scored tasks, rooms, and objects, and tasks that can be partially scored.

- Many new verbs and actions.

- Many library messages have been altered to fit into more contexts, with inspiration from Aaron Reed's Neutral Library Messages extension for I7.

- Optional systems for adjectives, questions such as WHO IS ROBERT, correcting spelling errors in the player's input, complex clothing, complex lock-and-key relationships, games in the past tense, weight, and gradual light changes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2750&start=0#p18991
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with Simple Chat and Glimmr Combined?
User: DMacasaurus / DateTime: 2011-07-06 14:02:01

Thanks all for the assistance!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2748&start=0#p18992
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Implementing a dog
User: kanato / DateTime: 2011-07-06 14:37:45

[quote="Robert Rothman"]With regard to your third question, I think the problem is that "sit on [something]" invokes the "enter" action (i.e., when you sit on a chair you are entering it).  That's the only action which is triggered by "sit," so when you don't specify something to sit on, the machine tries to find a noun and for some reason chooses the dog itself (which it then recognizes as impossible).  Have you tried creating a "sit" action which applies to nothing (i.e., which is triggered by the command "sit" without expecting a noun)?[/quote]

Ah yes, this should have been the obvious solution. Thanks.

[quote="ektemple"]
You would assign the property using "now the item of interest of the dog is no-thing", and you could test using either nothing or no-thing, e.g. "if the item of interest of the dog is no-thing..."[/quote]

I went with this route, since I have several conditions of the form "if the dog can see the item of interest of the dog" which I've noticed an actor can generally see itself.

[quote="Juhana"]
[code]
The can't take other people rule is not listed in any rulebook.

Check taking a person when the noun is not a small canine:
	abide by the can't take other people rule.
	[/code][/quote]
Oh yeah that's nearly perfect.
I went with this approach: 
[code]Check taking a person when the noun is not a small canine or the actor is a canine (this is the can't take other people except small canines rule):
	abide by the can't take other people rule.
The can't take other people except small canines rule is listed instead of the can't take other people rule in the check taking rulebook.
[/code]
because otherwise the can't take other people except small canines rule would be listed before the can't take yourself rule which resulted in a weird message if you tried "take self"

[quote="Felix"]Not too clever, come to think of it, since it sets the variable whether or not the dog acted because the player told him to or not; also it does not make any distinction between different canine animals.

This may work.
[code]
Drooliness is a kind of value. The droolinesses are droolless, droolish and droolful. 
A canine has a drooliness. The drooliness of a canine is droolless. ...
[/code][/quote]

Yes this seems to work reasonably well. I think it will take a lot of testing.

Thanks guys!

Does anyone have any thoughts on questions two or five?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2753&start=0#p18993
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6 -- announcing Triform 1.0
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-07-06 14:43:49

That's a great specification list. Don't know when I'll have time to take a look at it, but thanks for the hard work!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2748&start=0#p18994
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Implementing a dog
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-07-06 15:26:47

[quote="kanato"]Second question. Making special persuasion rules. A dog can only carry one item at a time. So I want a command like "Dog, drop it" to work. However Inform makes strange inferences about what it refers to, and I can't figure out how to change that. For the record, a command like "Dog, drop stick" works fine. [/quote]
You can manually "set pronouns from" an object (or set of objects), so that "it" will refer to that thing if it is neuter (or to the last neuter thing in the list). (See Chapter 16.18)

For example:
[code]A persuasion rule for asking a canine (called doggy) to try dropping something:
	repeat with item running through things held by doggy: 
		set pronouns from the item.[/code]

Or possibly you might prefer: 
[code]Before asking someone to try dropping something when the person asked is canine:
	repeat with item running through things held by the person asked: 
		set pronouns from the item.[/code]
That will depend on how such rules interact with other rules you have for canine behaviour. 
I'm sure it needs a lot of testing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2748&start=0#p18995
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Implementing a dog
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-07-06 15:36:38

[quote="kanato"]Fifth question. What's the best way to change text like "The small brown dog arrives from the inside."? [/quote]
That's a library message for the going action.
Try the extension Default Messages by Ron Newcomb.
(There are lots of library messages for the going action. A look at them in the I6 Templates suggest that the one you quote is number 13 or 19.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=50#p18996
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: ptomato / DateTime: 2011-07-06 15:54:22

I'm taking some steps towards implementing this - first up are the pause and unpause functions. Does the spec say anything about pausing or unpausing a channel that's not playing a sound at all? Should this be illegal? If you create a channel, then pause it, then play a sound on it, should the sound not start until you unpause the channel?

Philip Chimento

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2753&start=0#p18997
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6 -- announcing Triform 1.0
User: ikram / DateTime: 2011-07-06 16:02:46

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the link is: [url]http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/infocom/compilers/inform6/library/contributions/Triform.zip[/url]

Thanks for releasing Triform!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=40#p18998
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-07-06 17:11:47

[quote="bukayeva"]I can see the points you and others have made. So, again, I guess I'm wondering. Why isn't the text adventure attracing more game authors, particularly those who have studied game design? Why isn't the text adventure arena attracing more authors? I mentioned those companies Malinche and TextFyre. I don't know if there's an attempt to attract known names in the gaming or novel arenas. If not, why not? Couldn't such people help make text adventures even more exciting? Propel the medium in new ways? Or is that not a desire? But if that's not a desire, why come out with such an extensive and impressive system like Inform 7? Why have such impressive languages like TADS 3? Why have new versions of ADRIFT and Quest? Clearly people take this stuff seriously but given the current audience, it's hard to see why (at least for me).[/quote]

My guess would be because there's no money in it. People write and play IF for the love of the medium. There are quirky things you can do in IF that you can't do in graphical games (SUTWIN and Violet) and which wouldn't make sense in a graphical medium, but are great fun as IF.

I'm sure there are people who have studied game design and who write IF. I don't know enough about game design to know whether the same people who write the stories and the scripts are the same people who implement them into the environment.

As an experiment, I sat all three of my kids down in front of IF. Gave them the basic run-down of how to play (as they yawned and squinted at the screen) and looked for their reaction. They range in age from 10-13. After they'd had all they could stand, the oldest went back to playing Prototype, the middle child went back to Facebook and the youngest went back to his DS. But they all love to read. But when they're reading, they don't want to be challenged by their book. They just want it fed to them. When they're playing video games, they want to be as visually immersed as possible.

Lack of multiplayer could have something to do with it also. Not being able to frag or pwn ones friends, or scream obscenities into a headset like Sam Kinison on a bender, could be a turn-off. Not that I don't frequently scream at my computer in just such a fashion.

I think it's just a different crowd and different demographic. IF isn't a mainstream medium. I don't think it's trying to be. If there's a company out there advertising something like "Come try our newest Interactive Fiction for a gaming experience like you've never had before", I think it's only because that's better marketing hype than "Come try our newest Interactive Fiction if you're over 30, are a nostalgia buff or of a peculiar, singular temperament." (Not saying everyone who plays IF meets any of those criteria.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=40#p18999
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: Janka / DateTime: 2011-07-06 17:19:25

[quote="bukayeva"]
It still really comes down to this for me: why does text adventure development seem to attract many non-authors? Witness many posts in the forum for Inform 7 for example, where the posters apparently don't believe in full sentences, periods, or the need to capitalize. Witness those who can't even ask a question in a way that allows people to reliably answer it. These are the writers that Inform 7 at least is attracting. I'm not saying that's the case across the board.
But text adventures seem to have this appeal that "Hey, I can't program. I can't do graphics. I don't know if I want to write a book and I don't even know if I can. I sure as hell I know I can't do graphics or sound all that well. But you know what? I bet I can write a text adventure?"
[/quote]
To do an adventure in Inform7 and similar IF programming systems, you both have to know how to program *and in the same moment* write a story. Anyone who doesn't care will soon be pulled to the abyss of ugly code and mysterious errors in game logic. Inform7 is far away from a situation where anyone could point'n'click together an adventure game like an MS access database query. Maybe we are lucky in that.

But in general, where's your point? There are still far more far worse games made by "professionals" out there. Some have near unuseable controls, some a far to steep learning curve, some lack game logic if their gameplay idea makes sense at all. You can be sure those games have excellent graphics and sound and even better artwork on the packaging, if that's not enough then sex will sell and so on. People just *have* to buy it, the graphic and sound designers were expensive. Marketing will condition you the way you want to buy it.

So the crap is everywhere. Why should IF be a crap-free zone? Even if there have to be 100 IF pieces where only one of them is excellent, you are neither required to buy all the crap nor to play it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=60#p19000
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-07-06 18:12:06

Thanks very much for posting this. It is always great to get more data. [emote]:)[/emote] I've tweaked a few of the component extensions of Player Experience Upgrade and will upload them shortly, although the main extension itself will probably not be updated until after the next I7 release. Specifically, here are some completed fixes:

-- the "unnecessary movement" rule text in Smarter Parser (for commands like >WALK TO MIRROR) has been cleaned up as per your suggestions (interactive fiction instead of IF, shortened for clarity, don't mention directions if no exits from the room). Since the parser did not parse the command, you actually can't tell if MIRROR refers to a visible object, but I added some regular expression hacking to make the "get object example" routine see if a word in the player's command matches a word in the name of a visible object, and if so select it as the best example.

-- In Extended Grammar, added "put x on ground" and variants as a new grammar line for drop. (References to ground/floor/ceiling etc that don't match a grammar line are caught by Smarter Parser's "generic surroundings" rule, which has also had its text clarified as suggested.)

-- A lot of the other points raised seem easy to fix, but are actually quite difficult due to the way Inform's parsing works. It's often quite difficult to find out exactly why or where a command failed. Specifically, for instance, in the >THROW X AT Y case where Y is no longer visible, there's not an easy way to tell whether it was X or Y that caused the command to fail to parse. (Although you can distinguish between it failing because Y was a known versus unknown word, and other variations-- see the "can't see any such thing" section of the Neutral Library Messages documentation.) So some of the suggestions here are unfortunately things I've thought of before and tried but failed to address.

Some other general points:

Why Glulx: as was mentioned, many of these features are not possible with the archaic limited memory footprint of z-code (handfuls of kilobytes).

Changing messages: the component extensions are all designed for any text to be easily replaced by authors. This is explained in the documentation, although it could perhaps be a little clearer. (I'm holding off on reworking or rewriting any of this, though, since the way Inform handles default messages is soon to change for the better.)

On the frustratingly generic nature of some messages: the damnable thing about default messages is that they exist because a game's author has not written something more specific, and there's nothing I or anyone can do about that. Many of the suggestions given would make the message better in this particular case, but more misleading in other cases-- for instance, removing the "in some games" clause in the message about orders might imply that this works in every game, when in fact in the vast majority of modern IF this command syntax is not used. (But if it IS used, telling the player to avoid it could be equally misleading.)

The biggest catch-22 with default messages is that the extension can't know if a command failed because a feature wasn't supported, or if it failed because the player didn't use the right syntax. Claiming the wrong thing in either case can be disastrous, so we have to be extremely careful with wording.

On Poor Man's Mistype: It's a terribly simple spell-checking algorithm, unfortunately, and I still really hope someone writes a better one someday.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=50#p19001
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-06 18:23:14

[quote] Does the spec say anything about pausing or unpausing a channel that's not playing a sound at all?[/quote]

That's legal.

[quote]If you create a channel, then pause it, then play a sound on it, should the sound not start until you unpause the channel?[/quote]

Yes. I meant to imply that when I said "New sounds started in a paused channel are paused immediately."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=50#p19002
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-06 18:35:20

[quote="Janka"]But in general, where's your point?[/quote]
I'm still trying to figure that out. "Why play IF". Well, why play *any* kind of game?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=50#p19003
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-07-06 18:55:56

[quote="bukayeva"]I've played both games and I don't tend to pause the games for combat and I don't "die within seconds." Nor do many gamers, by all accounts.[/quote]

This is a complete tangent, but if you can get through that awful Benezia fight in real-time, then my hat is off to you. It's possible I just suck at games, but for me, pausing all the time is the only way to make it any fun at all.

[quote]I don't know that saying text adventures are so much simpler to produce is really a compelling argument if only because it says nothing to quality. In fact, given that text adventures are so much simpler to produce, I would expect really high quality in the aspects that it provides: the mechanics, the parser, and, above all, the story (i.e., the level of writing that I have to read since it's all pretty much text based).[/quote]

Simpler to produce doesn't mean it's any easier to make it good. You still have to have talent; it's just a lower initial barrier of entry. Since you don't need an art or sound department or any tools beyond the compiler, it's easy for some guy to see a text adventure and think "I could do that." With Inform 7, it's not difficult to write something that at least compiles and runs and resembles a game, whereas with a lot of other types of development, Joe Shmoe is likely to give up before ever getting to that point. (As has been pointed out, though, that crummy, amateurish games are certainly not exclusive to text adventures; just take a look at 90% of the iPhone or XBLIG marketplace for proof of that.)

At the same time, more experienced designers who would be great at making text adventures are probably pursuing making graphical games instead, since that's the more glamorous and lucrative thing to do. No matter how well written a text adventure is, it's never going to attract attention the way a pretty screenshot will. If you want your game to be played by as many people as possible (which presumably most authors do), it really doesn't make a lot of sense to make it a text adventure unless you have a mechanic or story that won't work in any other medium, or you just like text adventures. I think plenty of people in this thread have given good reasons for that to be a valid opinion, even if other types of games are occasionally capable of doing similar things.

I'm under 30 and don't have any real nostalgia for text adventures (I played one or two as a child but was never super into them); I grew up playing consoles and that's still how I do the majority of my gaming. But they interest me now because I think they have a lot of potential for experiences and subject matter that other types of games either can't or just generally aren't interested in providing.

I also agree that it doesn't seem like this discussion is going anywhere.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2754&start=0#p19004
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Why don't more games have devious serial killer plots?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-06 19:19:54

This isn't actually a specifically IF question, and it's kind of cynical. But I was just reading about Heavy Rain, where I understand that the main protagonist has to survive a bunch of challenges set by a serial killer who wants to test his blah blah blah because of blah blah blah traumatic childhood event. 

And I wondered: Why don't more games -- not specifically IF games -- use this kind of frame? The device of a sadistic serial killer who sets traps for his victims because he likes to see them squirm/meet challenges/prove their worth/make tough decisions/test his killbots is pretty common in movies (and somewhat in literature), and it seems like it provides a great answer to the eternal question in games, "Why am I surrounded by all these deathtraps?" It even provides a justification for multiple deaths -- new life = new victim. 

But I don't know that many games actually use this frame. I can think of two games that use something similar: Mighty Jill Off (a platformer) has the PC going through absurd trials to please her dominatrix, and I Expect You To Die (an entry from the Jayisgames IF comp) is about a Bondian Big Bad who sets up wacky deathtraps. Still, it seems like an underused frame, given how well it would serve gameplay.

Thoughts? Am I missing some obvious games?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2755&start=0#p19005
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: A random thing with two conditions?
User: kanato / DateTime: 2011-07-06 19:30:10

How can I do a condition like this?
[code]let human be a random person that is not the dog that can be seen by the dog;[/code]

From what I can tell, Inform is interpreting this as "let human be a random person that is not (the dog that can be seen by the dog)" so it is selecting a random person that isn't the dog. But I want a random person that the dog can see, but I don't want to select the dog. 

Another example
[code] let toy be a random dog toy which can be seen by the dog which cannot be touched by the dog;[/code]

Since the dog can touch itself, there is no toy ever that can be seen by the dog who can't touch itself.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2754&start=0#p19006
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why don't more games have devious serial killer plots?
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-07-06 19:37:25

Portal?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2754&start=0#p19007
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why don't more games have devious serial killer plots?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-06 19:45:08

Ooh, good one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2755&start=0#p19008
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A random thing with two conditions?
User: mucat / DateTime: 2011-07-06 19:52:40

I usually do something like:
[code]
definition: a person is nondog is he is not the dog.

let human be a random nondog person who can be seen by the dog;
[/code]

It's kinda clunky, but when you write conditions with multiple clauses, it's a crapshoot whether they'll be interpreted correctly.  The worst cases are the subtle ones, where the game seems to run fine but is doing some minor wrong thing that's easy to miss...  

You'll stay saner if you avoid multiple clauses altogether.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2752&start=0#p19009
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tables and Kinds
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-06 20:14:55

[quote="zarf"]You can work around this by filling in the table entry at runtime, being careful to refer to the correct apple.[/quote]

Ah, that's neat. I'm gonna add that to my text file of neat stuff.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=50#p19010
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: Sig / DateTime: 2011-07-06 21:05:14

I can't fathom trying to play Mass Effect without pausing, at least to give orders to your companions.

I enjoyed the first game immensely (though I haven't played the second), but the conversations did turn into a Choose Your Own Conversation sort of deal and that could be somewhat tedious.  Adding graphics and decent voice acting didn't make it inherently any more entertaining, less artificial, or more interactive than a well-implemented ask/about.

I'm hitting the 1/3 century mark this month.  I never played text adventures prior to October 2010, but they account for a good bit of my meager personal hobby time now, between actually playing them, reading about them, and trying to learn to implement them.  If they remain a niche market, I can live with that; the appeal is not universal.  If they magically explode into popularity again someday, I can be elitist and go around telling people how much cooler they were before they went mainstream.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2371&start=0#p19011
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Novella feelie
User: Sig / DateTime: 2011-07-06 21:12:01

Not a novel, but I remember the early Lucasarts graphical adventure Loom came with an audio cassette, on which was recorded a 10-minute (or so) audio drama setting up the back story for the game.  I only listened to it the one time, I think (I was perhaps 12 or 13 at the time), and was not terribly impressed, but it did strike me as an idea with a lot of potential.  On the IF front, I liked that last year's People's Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure Game (Taylor Vaughan) had a "soundtrack" of sorts that you could download separately for background music.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2670&start=0#p19012
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: new review of old game: Andrew Plotkin's SHADE
User: Sig / DateTime: 2011-07-06 22:18:55

Huh.  I should play it again.  I was mostly just freaked out by all of the sand.

(It was the first game that I finished and [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=hsfc7fnl40k4a30q&review=11755&pgForComment=626]reviewed[/url].)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=60#p19013
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-07-06 22:26:53

[quote]>atari, sit on the sarcophagus
[The large stone sarcophagus has better things to do.][/quote]

I wonder if the final version of Custom Library Messages was used?  The previous version had a few bugs in it of this nature.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2754&start=0#p19014
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why don't more games have devious serial killer plots?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-06 23:14:13

Portal was my first thought, too.  I can think of a few flash games that follow this format (not the names, of course, because I suck at names).  I think part of it might be the *end* - somehow, for the story to be satisfying, there has to be a bit where the serial killer is caught/revealed/punished, and that can be a little difficult to match up with a gameplay that tends to be more reactive.  You've got to go from reactive victim to understanding, making the villain vulnerable, and providing the PC the skills to exploit that vulnerability.  The shift in tone is difficult to pull off in movies, too - which is why there's often the hard-boiled detective character whose storyline runs parallel to the main protagonist victim.    

That's all speculation, though - I do think the end is the weak part of almost all the serial-killer games I've played, but I'm not sure if that's why or not.  

Now I *really* want to play a sort of rotating-character slasher game, similar to Scream.  I think that would be hugely engaging.  Having a roster of characters to play, and dying as most of them, and knowing at some point you've played as the killer . . . that would be fun.  I'm not sure how you'd design it so that the appropriate characters died (and it was clear they were meant to die) while the others didn't, but I'm sure there are Ways.

If you broaden things a little from serial-killer motivations to general you-are-gaming-because-someone-is-making-you motivations, there's more.  (Exhibit A: escape games.  Why do you keep visiting your friend if he locks you in his restaurant/space ship/apartment/train station every time?)  

It does seem like a genre that's ripe for exploration though.  And I'm surprised there's no Saw-type opportunity to build your own death trap.  It's popular to drown your sims - why wouldn't it be popular to set up a horrific gauntlet of traps and see who makes it through?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2754&start=0#p19015
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why don't more games have devious serial killer plots?
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-07-06 23:19:33

There are the Laura Bow games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2754&start=0#p19016
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why don't more games have devious serial killer plots?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-07-06 23:22:37

[quote="gravel"]It does seem like a genre that's ripe for exploration though.  And I'm surprised there's no Saw-type opportunity to build your own death trap.  It's popular to drown your sims - why wouldn't it be popular to set up a horrific gauntlet of traps and see who makes it through?[/quote]

That last is the essential mechanic behind [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=j1qv39w1ucnlhnms]Lock & Key[/url]. I wouldn't mind playing more games in this vein, but I can understand why authors might not welcome the comparison.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2754&start=0#p19017
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why don't more games have devious serial killer plots?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-07 03:06:27

[quote="matt w"]And I wondered: Why don't more games -- not specifically IF games -- use this kind of frame? The device of a sadistic serial killer who sets traps for his victims because he likes to see them squirm/meet challenges/prove their worth/make tough decisions/test his killbots is pretty common in movies (and somewhat in literature), and it seems like it provides a great answer to the eternal question in games, "Why am I surrounded by all these deathtraps?"[/quote]
Unlikely as it may sounds, that is a pretty accurate description of the central "story" of [url=http://grubbygames.com/pfmm/]Professor Fizzwizzle and the Molten Mystery[/url]. One suspects that it has been used by more puzzle games, but that's not the genre I have most knowledge of.

[quote="gravel"]Now I *really* want to play a sort of rotating-character slasher game, similar to Scream.  I think that would be hugely engaging.  Having a roster of characters to play, and dying as most of them, and knowing at some point you've played as the killer . . . that would be fun.  I'm not sure how you'd design it so that the appropriate characters died (and it was clear they were meant to die) while the others didn't, but I'm sure there are Ways.[/quote]
The 2005 IF Comp game [i]Snatches[/i] has something like this set-up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2755&start=0#p19018
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A random thing with two conditions?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-07-07 04:12:35

[quote="mucat"]You'll stay saner if you avoid multiple clauses altogether.[/quote]
I agree and it's not a very impressive situation for a programming language, to be honest. Allowing parentheses would solve the whole shebang with usefulness to spare, but parentheses apparently aren't elegant enough for a 'natural language' so therefore they are disqualified as a good solution, and so therefore there will be no good solution — or some similarly self-defeatingly form of theoretical fastidiousness. Programming language politics can attain comical heights of self-parody at times.

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2754&start=0#p19019
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why don't more games have devious serial killer plots?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-07-07 04:28:10

[quote="matt w"]Why don't more games -- not specifically IF games -- use this kind of frame? The device of a sadistic serial killer who sets traps for his victims because he likes to see them squirm/meet challenges/prove their worth/make tough decisions/test his killbots is pretty common in movies (and somewhat in literature), and it seems like it provides a great answer to the eternal question in games, "Why am I surrounded by all these deathtraps?"[/quote]
It would play as a solution for the 'why all the deathtraps' conundrum, but not a [i]good[/i] solution for it, because good solutions are plausible, and the plot you have described is entirely implausible, however common in the movies.

So, yeah, it is odd why more games don't use it, but I wouldn't go so far as to say I wish they did. Really, this sort of plot makes very little sense and only works to the extent that you can substitute 'serial killer' for 'insane person who can do things of great personal pointlessness that we don't want to have to explain'. This plot element is useful for IF as an inevitable side effect of the fact that it's useful for [i]any[/i] storytelling that tends toward nonexistent character motivations (as puzzle games and two-dimensional crime thrillers, do). Being 'useful' to the writer, though, doesn't make it any more believable for the reader, unfortunately.

Not my favourite type of villain, personally. Obviously. 8)

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2755&start=0#p19020
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A random thing with two conditions?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-07-07 05:40:33

Parentheses [i]are[/i] allowed, although to be fair, I don't think it's documented anywhere except when used with equations. This works:[code]Lab is room. The dog is an animal in lab.
Sam, Joe, and Bob are men in the lab.
Al, Frank, and Tom are men.

Every turn:
	let human be a random (person that is not the dog) that can be seen by the dog;
	say "[human].".
	
Test me with "z/z/z/z/z".
[/code]
Edited to add: Having said that, I still generally go with a definition (as mucat suggested) since I know I'll probably be using it more than once. It saves typing in the long run.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2754&start=0#p19021
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why don't more games have devious serial killer plots?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-07 06:30:36

Oh, I agree Paul. Think of [i]Speed[/i]; the only reason for the villain to design the bomb that way was to provide the pretext for some action sequences. That's why my question was somewhat cynical. Though maybe games could get away with this as a self-conscious homage to that kind of movie (as "I Expect You To Die" does -- its implementation is rickety but at the level of plot it's quite charming). 

Thanks for all the comments. (gravel: I'd say most escape games are plotless, and also deathproof so they don't fit this genre, though there's one [url=http://jayisgames.com/archives/2007/04/o_cofre_the_safe.php]rather horrifying[/url] series that does. Also, for design-your-own-deathtrap games, maybe Dwarf Fortress?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2721&start=0#p19022
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Level9.NET author info
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2011-07-07 08:14:41

[quote="scan"][quote="Isxek"]I can do that later, when I get back home. Just let me know what I need to check.[/quote]
Have you checked your private messages in this forum?  [emote];)[/emote][/quote]
Just now [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2754&start=0#p19023
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why don't more games have devious serial killer plots?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-07 08:59:51

[quote="matt w"]Also, for design-your-own-deathtrap games, maybe Dwarf Fortress?[/quote]
Dungeon Keeper. The [i]Citadel[/i] mode of The Wheel of Time. Dozens of RPGs with a trap-skill or trap spells.

And Lemmings, of course, even though it may not have been the intended play style.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2754&start=10#p19024
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why don't more games have devious serial killer plots?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-07 09:04:03

[quote="Laroquod"][quote="matt w"]Why don't more games -- not specifically IF games -- use this kind of frame? The device of a sadistic serial killer who sets traps for his victims because he likes to see them squirm/meet challenges/prove their worth/make tough decisions/test his killbots is pretty common in movies (and somewhat in literature), and it seems like it provides a great answer to the eternal question in games, "Why am I surrounded by all these deathtraps?"[/quote]
It would play as a solution for the 'why all the deathtraps' conundrum, but not a [i]good[/i] solution for it, because good solutions are plausible, and the plot you have described is entirely implausible, however common in the movies.

So, yeah, it is odd why more games don't use it, but I wouldn't go so far as to say I wish they did. Really, this sort of plot makes very little sense and only works to the extent that you can substitute 'serial killer' for 'insane person who can do things of great personal pointlessness that we don't want to have to explain'. This plot element is useful for IF as an inevitable side effect of the fact that it's useful for [i]any[/i] storytelling that tends toward nonexistent character motivations (as puzzle games and two-dimensional crime thrillers, do). Being 'useful' to the writer, though, doesn't make it any more believable for the reader, unfortunately.

Not my favourite type of villain, personally. Obviously. 8)

Paul.[/quote]

It works for me about as well as "the prophecy says you must gather the eight shards of Ooga-booga!" or "your village has burned to the ground, and only you, a twelve-year-old with a stick, can overturn the evil king who did it!"  Which is to say, it's a pretext, and I can tolerate it as long on the grounds of suspension of belief, as long as there's not too many other demands on that suspension.  (Saw: yes, Saw IV: no)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2756&start=0#p19025
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: More hyperlink help
User: DMacasaurus / DateTime: 2011-07-07 09:06:42

Greetings all,
The latest hyperlink question. I am changing directions a bit and stripping ou graphics for now in my project but I will still have a right hand window with some text hyperlinks to execute commands. The direction command hyperlinks work fine. I have also written code to set the player's attitude and that executes through its hyperlinks fine. All of these commands are executed from the table suggested in Flexible Windows.

[code]
Table of Glulx Hyperlink Replacement Commands (continued)
link ID	replacement 
1		"hostile" 
2		"neutral"
3		"pleasant"
4		"nw"
5		"n"
6		"ne"
7		"w"
8		"e"
9		"sw"
10		"s"
11		"se"
[/code]

The code to execute the first three commands (attitude changers) is this (it works too)
[code]Understand "set attitude [approach]" or "set [approach]" or "[approach]" as setting attitude. Setting attitude is an action applying to one approach.

Carry out setting attitude:
	now the attitude of the player is the approach understood.
Report setting attitude: 
    say "Now your attitude to others is [attitude of the player]." [/code]

Now I'd like to implement a go to room directly function (to cut down on repetitive typing) and execute it with a hyperlink in the side window.

I have two separate problems.
1. When I try to add the command in my "Table of Glulx Hyperlink Replacement Commands (continued)"

[code]
Table of Glulx Hyperlink Replacement Commands (continued)
link ID	replacement 
12		"go to Your Farm"
[/code]

and have the following carry out code
[code]Understand "go to [any room]" as moving to. Moving to is an action applying to one thing.

Carry out moving to:
	say "you have traveled to [noun]";
	move the player to the noun;[/code]

It compiles but the game gives this response when the hyperlink is clicked

> go to Your Farm
that noun did not make sense in this context.

2. Okay so though I'd rather use the table for simplicity's sake, in step two I tried to write out the hyperlink rule. So I deleted the line from the table of Glulx commands and went with this new code
[code] Hyperlink processing rule when the current hyperlink ID is 12:
	try moving to Your Farm;
[/code]

the carry out code remained the same.
OKAY now it does execute and put the player back at the room Your Farm. But now the command prompt and cursor disappear from the main window.

I tried adding this line
[quote]move focus to main-window;[/quote]

Tried, instead to add this line
[quote]return to main screen[/quote]

No avail. So Ideally I'd like the table version in #1 to work but I'd settle for writing out the rules for these hyperlinks individually if I can get the loss of focus on the main window fixed.

Thanks as always -- as you probably know I am new to your community and I have been pretty overwhelmed at the quick and outstanding solutions.
Best
Jeremiah McCall

BTW - just in case my sincere thanks for help aren't enough, this is part of project I am working on with a center at Ohio State University to finally get into leveraging Interactive Fiction tools for historical simulation/education purposes. My name is Jeremiah McCall and I do a fair amount of work on simulation games in high school history (my book Gaming the Past just came out this May). So, for what it's worth, all your help is, I hope, going to a good purpose.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=20#p19026
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-07 09:09:31

I'd say it's context dependent, but usually one of the first two alternatives, with odds varying depending on the words used.  

"Steinbeck is a great, if not the greatest, writer" implies the possibility of greatest; "Paul is a decent, if not outstanding, dancer" would favor the A-but-not-B option.

I usually mean "good-but-not-great" when I use it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2754&start=10#p19027
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why don't more games have devious serial killer plots?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-07 09:47:06

[quote="gravel"]It works for me about as well as "the prophecy says you must gather the eight shards of Ooga-booga!" or "your village has burned to the ground, and only you, a twelve-year-old with a stick, can overturn the evil king who did it!"  Which is to say, it's a pretext, and I can tolerate it as long on the grounds of suspension of belief, as long as there's not too many other demands on that suspension.  (Saw: yes, Saw IV: no)[/quote]

Well, that's another cynical aspect of the thought, which is that for a lot of games it seems as though one of the more ridiculous devices in movies would be a step forward in terms of plot. (Though I think the trap-devising serial killer may just be a genre convention, and excusable as such.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2757&start=0#p19028
Forum: Competitions / Subject: IntroComp 2011 reviews
User: Mr. Patient / DateTime: 2011-07-07 09:47:07

Seasons

Note: minor spoilers follow.

"Seasons" isn't really an introduction to a larger game; it's more like an unfinished version of that larger game, a snapshot of the source code on the author's hard drive with a final reply grafted on.  As such, it doesn't do what successful IntroComp entries do: advertise, whet the appetite, give a sense of what the full game will look like.

It's hard to say exactly what's going on in the game.  You play a software engineer who wakes up in an adjective-soaked magic-realist landscape.  You meet a couple of NPCs, find a few objects, and are given a small fetch-quest that, near as I can tell, you can't complete.  From reading the help text and talking to the NPCs, it seems that your goal is to "complete" four seasons, but it's not at all clear what that means or how one is to go about it.  There are "sun crosses," which presumably indicate areas of importance, but which are not actually implemented, and can't be interacted with.  After much wandering through lavishly-described but essentially empty rooms, you may eventually be told that You Have Won, having achieved nothing and learned almost nothing about the world you're exploring.

I think a more successful design for IntroComp would have limited the player to a small section of the world with a clearly defined quest.  The player could have completed one season, perhaps, or at least made headway towards that goal.  As it is, I played the game for more than an hour, but still have no idea what I would be doing in the finished game, should it ever appear.

The bigger issue, though, is that the game is extremely buggy, to the point of unplayability.  Minor bugs in an IntroComp game are expected, but it should at least be tested for showstoppers, and this game wasn't.  For example, upon taking a lantern, the game prints debug messages *every single turn* thereafter:

z:496613 (the) z:the Cherry Orchard z has light: 1
z ofclass Room:1
z ofclass Orchard:1
[** Programming error: (object number 41) is not of class <illegal object number 1> to apply.ofclass. for **]

z ofclass Outdoors:0

Trying to pick up a pine needle generates the following reply: "You don't see any reason to ferry around the 494245 ."  Trying to fill a canteen at the Lakefront nearly crashes the interpreter with hundreds of error messages.  There is a thirst daemon in the game which triggers at very short intervals, until at some point, you're told "something changes, and you no longer feel thirsty."  This message is printed every turn thereafter.  I am not sure what triggers it, but once it happens, it opens up a vast continent of previously unavailable rooms.  Some of these rooms are almost completely unimplemented, with no descriptions, or descriptions like "The" (literally, just that).  The effect is like sneaking past a sign reading "Please excuse our mess while we're under construction," and wandering through miles of exposed wiring, PVC pipe and sheet rock.

There's some potential here, and I'd encourage the author to get some testers post-haste, but right now Seasons offers very little to make a player want to come back.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2755&start=0#p19029
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A random thing with two conditions?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-07-07 10:18:16

[quote="Laroquod"]I agree and it's not a very impressive situation for a programming language, to be honest. Allowing parentheses would solve the whole shebang with usefulness to spare, but parentheses apparently aren't elegant enough for a 'natural language' so therefore they are disqualified as a good solution, and so therefore there will be no good solution — or some similarly self-defeatingly form of theoretical fastidiousness.[/quote]
+1.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2755&start=0#p19030
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A random thing with two conditions?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-07 10:24:22

[quote="Jim Aikin"][quote="Laroquod"]I agree and it's not a very impressive situation for a programming language, to be honest. Allowing parentheses would solve the whole shebang with usefulness to spare, but parentheses apparently aren't elegant enough for a 'natural language' so therefore they are disqualified as a good solution, and so therefore there will be no good solution — or some similarly self-defeatingly form of theoretical fastidiousness.[/quote]
+1.[/quote]

Jim, why are you +1ing this comment when it's already been corrected?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2707&start=0#p19031
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Returning the Quantum Cat [INSTEAD]
User: gl00my / DateTime: 2011-07-07 10:52:32

Now, you can try game online here: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.kongregate.com/games/zaynyatyi/the-returning-of-the-quantum-cat">http://www.kongregate.com/games/zaynyat ... uantum-cat</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2122&start=60#p19032
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two new extensions for player happiness
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-07-07 11:38:25

Ron: yeah, the current P.E.U. (man, maybe I should have thought more about the acronym before naming it?) is based on an older version of CLM. I fixed this specific bug now, but when I do the next major revision I'll probably do a more thorough comparison looking for other changes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2756&start=0#p19033
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More hyperlink help
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-07 12:02:27

Your root difficulty actually has nothing to do with hyperlinks. Instead, the issue is the name of the room "Your Farm": the player won't be able to successfully [i]type[/i] "GO TO YOUR FARM" any more than she can click on a hyperlink that issues that command. This is arguably a bug, though of course the player would probably prefer to type "MY FARM" in any case.

Anyway, if you change the command in the table to "GO TO FARM", it should work just fine.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2755&start=0#p19034
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A random thing with two conditions?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-07-07 12:55:47

[quote="matt w"]Jim, why are you +1ing this comment when it's already been corrected?[/quote]
I don't know what you mean by "it's already been corrected."

I'm operating on the assumption that "+1" is shorthand for, "Me too -- I agree." If I'm under a misapprehension, I do hope someone will clear it up for me.

I expressed agreement because my overall impression of Inform 7 is that its programming syntax is a deeply entrenched mess. As I lurk on this forum, I often find myself rolling my eyes and making guttural noises when I see some of the confusion people stumble into, and some of the exotic syntax that is recommended for fixing the code.

I don't often comment on same. In this case I thought I would do so, since someone else expressed sentiments similar to mine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2756&start=0#p19035
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More hyperlink help
User: DMacasaurus / DateTime: 2011-07-07 13:01:14

Much obliged as always, Erik. It's funny; I was thinking today after I sent the post that "Your Farm" was both a horrible name and an not the best pronoun for the game character -- but I didn't (and probably should have) realized it upset Inform too. Everything is working; thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2755&start=0#p19036
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A random thing with two conditions?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-07 13:16:25

[quote="Jim Aikin"][quote="matt w"]Jim, why are you +1ing this comment when it's already been corrected?[/quote]
I don't know what you mean by "it's already been corrected."[/quote]

It means, Paul said that you can't use parentheses to fix the OP's problem, but you can, as skinnymike pointed out below his comment and above yours.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=50#p19037
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-07-07 15:31:51

[quote="bukayeva"]It still really comes down to this for me: why does text adventure development seem to attract many non-authors? Witness many posts in the forum for Inform 7 for example, where the posters apparently don't believe in full sentences, periods, or the need to capitalize. Witness those who can't even ask a question in a way that allows people to reliably answer it. These are the writers that Inform 7 at least is attracting. I'm not saying that's the case across the board. But text adventures seem to have this appeal that "Hey, I can't program. I can't do graphics. I don't know if I want to write a book and I don't even know if I can. I sure as hell I know I can't do graphics or sound all that well. But you know what? I bet I can write a text adventure?"[/quote]

Make a system so easy to use that an idiot can use it, an idiot will. Sad, but true.

One of the reasons ADRIFT has got so much stick over the years is because it's so easy to use, almost anyone can use it. It lulls you into falsely believing that just because it's easy to write a game, it's easy to write a good game. No, it isn't. It's hard to write a good good in any system period. It's just that the easier to use the system is to get to grips with, the more likely it is to attract the sort of people who don't have either the will or the skill to learn a more difficult system.

It's interesting to see that kind of thing beginning to filter into Inform 7 now there's another system out there that can be mastered (to a degree) by someone who couldn't program his way out of a virtual paper bag.


As for the appeal of text adventures for me:

As a player, I just find them interesting. I played no end of them as a kid and grew up lamenting the fact that the bottom had dropped out of the market. Imagine my delight upon discovering a whole thriving text adventure community on the internet, albeit the commercial side still seems to be largely kaput.

As a writer, they appeal to me because they're something I can do myself. In theory, I could write the best damn IF game ever written all on my lonesome; I certainly couldn't do that if I was to write a FPS or an MMO or what have you. I'd have to work as part of a team and the writing process would be more akin to a job than a hobby. IF can be written by anyone. That's the appeal for me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2753&start=0#p19038
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6 -- announcing Triform 1.0
User: beelsebu / DateTime: 2011-07-07 16:24:57

It seems very elegant and I would gladly use it. One problem though is that I want to use the swedish version, and I don't know how to convert the translation to suit your library. Will this be a difficult task?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=50#p19039
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: ptomato / DateTime: 2011-07-07 17:03:15

[quote][quote]If you create a channel, then pause it, then play a sound on it, should the sound not start until you unpause the channel?[/quote]
Yes. I meant to imply that when I said "New sounds started in a paused channel are paused immediately."[/quote]
Sorry, missed that. Another question: in glk_schannel_play_multi(), the spec says that "The notify argument applies to all the sounds." Does that mean that if you play eight sounds at once with a nonzero notify argument, you get eight notifications, each with the value of the notify argument, as each sound finishes? Or you get one notification as soon as all eight have finished?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2758&start=0#p19040
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I7] Multiple Language Framework -- a good idea?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-07 17:14:59

There are many extensions for Inform 7 which contain only a very small amount of player-visible text. For example, Emily Short's [i]Basic Screen Effects[/i] contains the single line "Please press SPACE to continue."; the total prose in Jon Ingold's [i]Title Page[/i] is "Display help menu / Start the story - from the beginning / - from a saved position / Quit"; and Mark Tilford's [i]Simple Chat[/i] has only "(or 0 to say nothing)".

Translating such an extension to another language is little work, and several of these translations can be [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/translations/]found on the Inform 7 website[/url]. The translators have had to choose between two different possibilities:

[list][*] Making a new extension that is a copy of the extension to be translated, with the text changed. (Example: [i]Effetti Visivi di Base[/i])[/*:m]
[*] "Include"-ing the extension to be translated, and using "in place of" headings to replace those parts of the original that contain prose. (Example: [i]German Basic Screen Effects[/i])[/*:m][/list:u]

Neither of these possibilities is ideal. The former option evidently leads to maintenance hell, as an extension with N translations needs to be updated by N translators every time a bug is fixed -- even when the prose in the extension is not changed at all. The latter option may seem better, but in order to ensure compatibility between the translating extension and the original extension, the translating extension should ask for a specific version of the original extension ("Include version X of ..."). This also leads to a minor maintenance hell, since a new version of the original extension requires an (albeit trivial) update of all the translating extensions.

With this rationale in mind, I tried to think of a more elegant solution, and I came up with the following extension:
[code]Multiple Language Framework by Victor Gijsbers begins here.

MLF-language is a kind of value. The MLF-languages are English, English US, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian and Dutch.

Game language is an MLF-language that varies. [Defaults to English.]

Multiple Language Framework ends here.[/code]
To use, the end user includes this extension and defines the language of his game with something like:
[code]Game language is French.[/code]
Obviously, this extension does nothing by itself, but it does allow other extensions to non-invasively incorporate translations of themselves. Here is an example of an extension that would support multiple languages:
[code]MLF Test by Victor Gijsbers begins here.

Section - Code

Instead of singing:
	say "[Happy song]".

Section - Standard text (for use without Multiple Language Framework by Victor Gijsbers)

To say happy song:
	say "You sing a happy song.".

Section - MLF text (for use with Multiple Language Framework by Victor Gijsbers)

To say happy song:
	if the game language is:
		-- English:
			say "You sing a happy song.";
		-- English US:
			say "You sing a happy song.";
		-- French:
			say "Tu chantes une chanson heureuse.";
		-- German:
			say "Du singst ein heiteres Lied.";
		-- Dutch:
			say "Je zingt een vrolijk lied.".

When play begins (this is the MLF Test language check rule):
	unless game language is English or game language is English US or game language is French or game language is German or game language is Dutch:
		say "The language you have chosen is [bold type]not supported[roman type] by the MLF Test extension. You can disable this warning with the line: 'The MLF Test language check rule is not listed in any rulebook.'".

MLF Test ends here.[/code]
As you can see, if [i]Multiple Language Framework[/i] is not included by the game, it is just a normal extension. So there are no extra dependencies, and people who are not interested in other languages will notice no change. But if [i]Multiple Language Framework[/i] is included by the game, the translations kick in. (Both the main "to say" rule and the "when play begins rule" -- which is non-essential but nice to include -- follow a standard format, and can be easily copy-pasted from example code that would be in the [i]Multiple Language Framework[/i] documentation.)

An extension using MLF can be easily updated by the original author, without needing any further work by the translators. (Unless the prose of the extension changes, of course, but in that case you will always need further work by the translators.) There do not need to be multiple versions, and there can be no compatibility issues. Even adding further languages to the MLF extension would create no problems. So to me this seems to be a fairly elegant solution to the problem of translating minimal-prose-extensions without increasing the difficulty of supporting those extensions.

What do you think?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2755&start=0#p19041
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A random thing with two conditions?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-07-07 17:16:08

[quote="matt w"][quote="Jim Aikin"][quote="matt w"]Jim, why are you +1ing this comment when it's already been corrected?[/quote]
I don't know what you mean by "it's already been corrected."[/quote]

It means, Paul said that you can't use parentheses to fix the OP's problem, but you can, as skinnymike pointed out below his comment and above yours.[/quote]
The Internet doesn't always operate in what you and I would call real time. Mike's message is stamped 5 hours before mine, but I don't remember seeing it when I replied. Possibly I just missed it.

In any case, as Mike also pointed out, the use of parentheses seems to be undocumented. This fact, far from detracting from my general point, lends weight to it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2759&start=0#p19042
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Placing a new rule between two existing rules
User: mucat / DateTime: 2011-07-07 17:16:37

Suppose you're writing a new rule (Rule Z) that needs to fall between two existing rules (Rule A and Rule B) in a rulebook.

Is there any easy way to say so?

If you just say
[code]
Rule Z is listed after Rule A in the foo rulebook.
Rule Z is listed before Rule B in the foo rulebook.
[/code]then the second statement supersedes the first; your new rule will definitely be sorted before Rule B, but may not lie after Rule A.

Of course, you could always just figure out where Inform would sort the new rule with no guidance (either by reasoning out from the rule sorting laws, or by just compiling and checking the Rules Index.)  
There are three possibilities:
[b]
Rule Z is normally sorted before Rule A:[/b] Say "Rule Z is listed after Rule A", and let Inform take it from there.
[b]Rule Z is normally sorted between Rule A and Rule B:[/b]  Great; just leave it alone.
[b]Rule Z is normally sorted after rule B:[/b] Say "Rule Z is listed before Rule B", and let Inform take it from there.

But that seems like poor practice.  Changes that you later make in seemingly unrelated parts of this rulebook might mess up the position of Rule Z.  Any better alternative that I'm missing?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2759&start=0#p19043
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Placing a new rule between two existing rules
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-07 17:24:58

[quote="mucat"]Any better alternative that I'm missing?[/quote]
I'm afraid not, and it can be a pain.

Of course, a better alternative wouldn't be that easy to devise. The syntax that Inform allows you has the advantage that you cannot end up with a set of incompatible requirements yourself. Were you allowed to say "Rule A comes exactly before rule B", for instance, this would be contradicted by "Rule C comes exactly after rule A", and there would be no way for Inform to do both, nor could it just ignore the earlier rule (because then it wouldn't have any way to place rule A).

I must add, though, that this problem comes up only rarely. Most of the time, you can get what you want by just using "First X rule", "X rule" and "Last X rule". The only time I have ever needed to pay attention to how the rules were sorted was when I was messing with the turn sequence rules and needed some stuff to happen between reading a command and parsing the command. So though you may need it for what you are doing right now, I doubt that you will need it often.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=50#p19044
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-07 17:50:40

Eight separate notifications.

(I will add comments about these matters to the next draft -- thanks for asking the questions.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2759&start=0#p19045
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Placing a new rule between two existing rules
User: mucat / DateTime: 2011-07-07 18:03:13

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Of course, a better alternative wouldn't be that easy to devise. The syntax that Inform allows you has the advantage that you cannot end up with a set of incompatible requirements yourself. Were you allowed to say "Rule A comes exactly before rule B", for instance, this would be contradicted by "Rule C comes exactly after rule A", and there would be no way for Inform to do both, nor could it just ignore the earlier rule (because then it wouldn't have any way to place rule A).[/quote]
What if we tried something like this: You can declare a rule to come "immediately after" or "immediately before" another rule, and it will be placed there for now, but can still be superseded by declarations later in the source code.

How that would work in practice:
You need Rule Z to occur after Rule A and before Rule B.
So you say[code]Rule Z is listed immediately after Rule A in the foo rulebook.[/code]
Later, you have another rule, Rule Y, which also has to come between A and B.  So you say [code]Rule Y is listed immediately after Rule A in the foo rulebook.[/code]
Now, Rule Z is no longer directly after rule A; the sequence has become A, Y, Z, B.
But you still have what you needed; Z and Y both happen after A and before B.  If the order of Y and Z matters, of course, you could instead specify that Y is listed immediately before or after Z.

[quote]I must add, though, that this problem comes up only rarely. Most of the time, you can get what you want by just using "First X rule", "X rule" and "Last X rule". The only time I have ever needed to pay attention to how the rules were sorted was when I was messing with the turn sequence rules and needed some stuff to happen between reading a command and parsing the command. So though you may need it for what you are doing right now, I doubt that you will need it often.[/quote]
I actually run across the issue fairly often, specifically in the context of rulebooks that govern character behavior.  

For example, a generic Dog Behavior rulebook might contain the Dog Chooses Intended Direction rule, followed later by the Dog Takes Intended Action rule.

If I want to later add a Some Dogs Bark at Closed Doors rule, then it has to happen after the Intended Direction Rule -- the dog won't bark unless it knows it wants to go through that door -- but before the Take Action Rule, since the action it takes will depend on how people reacted to the incessant barking.

It's not a huge problem.  The new rule is usually more specific than the existing ones: [code]the Dog Chooses Intended Direction Rule is a Dog Behavior rule for a dog (called canine).
the Dog Takes Action Rule is a Dog Behavior rule for a dog (called canine).
the Dogs Sometimes Bark At Closed Doors Rule is a Dog Behavior rule for a rude dog (called pest).[/code]
So it's enough to say that[code]The Dogs Sometimes Bark At Closed Doors Rule is listed after the Dog Chooses Intended Direction Rule in the Dog Behavior rulebook.[/code]since it would otherwise be listed before both of 'em.  

But I always feel like I'm guilty of sloppy programming when I do this...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2755&start=0#p19046
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A random thing with two conditions?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-07 18:15:38

[quote="Jim Aikin"]
The Internet doesn't always operate in what you and I would call real time. Mike's message is stamped 5 hours before mine, but I don't remember seeing it when I replied. Possibly I just missed it.[/quote]

Well, that's fine. Sorry for being slightly hostile about it.

[quote]In any case, as Mike also pointed out, the use of parentheses seems to be undocumented. This fact, far from detracting from my general point, lends weight to it.[/quote]

I don't think it does; I thought you were making a point about I7's syntax, but the real problem here is with its documentation, which just about everyone agrees is at least flawed. (Though sometimes people seem to say it's next to useless, and I don't agree with that. After a little while with your handbook I started learning I7 by working through the documentation, and that has let me bootstrap my way up to a point where I can at least answer people's questions sometimes.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2755&start=10#p19047
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A random thing with two conditions?
User: kanato / DateTime: 2011-07-07 18:35:37

So a definition doesn't really work for me, because I need it to be contextual. So I was trying to use a decide rule, like so:

[code]To decide if a (foobar - thing) is out-of-reach of a (dog - canine):
	if the dog can see foobar:
		if the dog can touch foobar, no;
		yes;
	no.
[/code]

But I can't get the let statement to work:

[code]		let toy-alt be a random out-of-reach dog toy of the dog;
		let toy-alt be a random toy which is out-of-reach of the dog;[/code]

^ Neither of those work. (Part of the problem is the dog is a temporary variable holding the canine which is currently acting)
This approach seems like it would be most convenient but I am not sure how to make the let statement work correctly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2753&start=0#p19048
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6 -- announcing Triform 1.0
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-07-07 18:41:42

[quote="beelsebu"]It seems very elegant and I would gladly use it. One problem though is that I want to use the swedish version, and I don't know how to convert the translation to suit your library. Will this be a difficult task?[/quote]

I don't think it should be any more difficult than translating the standard library, but there will be much more text to translate. PM me and we can work on it.


Also, to Jim and ikram, thanks for the kind words.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2755&start=10#p19049
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A random thing with two conditions?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-07 18:59:13

[quote="kanato"]So a definition doesn't really work for me, because I need it to be contextual. So I was trying to use a decide rule, like so:

[code]To decide if a (foobar - thing) is out-of-reach of a (dog - canine):
	if the dog can see foobar:
		if the dog can touch foobar, no;
		yes;
	no.
[/code]

But I can't get the let statement to work:

[code]		let toy-alt be a random out-of-reach dog toy of the dog;
		let toy-alt be a random toy which is out-of-reach of the dog;[/code]

^ Neither of those work. (Part of the problem is the dog is a temporary variable holding the canine which is currently acting)
This approach seems like it would be most convenient but I am not sure how to make the let statement work correctly.[/quote]

So this is a little baroque and probably supports Jim's point about the syntax, but I think you might need to define a relation and an assertion verb, and use those in your let statement. Here you can define a relation that expresses a condition as in 13.12; you could actually build this on top of your definition, thus:

[code]Frustration relates a thing (called X) to a dog (called Y) when X is out-of-reach of Y. The verb to frustrate (he frustrates, they frustrate, it is frustrated, he is frustrating) implies the frustration relation.
...Let toy-alt be a random dog toy that frustrates the dog;[/code]

I haven't tested this, though, so the syntax might be off. Also I'm not sure why your second one doesn't work -- it isn't because you have "toy" instead of "dog toy," is it?

You might also be able to define frustration directly:

[code]Frustration relates a thing (called X) to a dog (called Y) when Y can see X and Y cannot touch X.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2755&start=10#p19050
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A random thing with two conditions?
User: mucat / DateTime: 2011-07-07 19:10:06

Here's another alternative (focusing on the fact that, as kanato pointed out, temporary variables aren't quite as versatile as global variables.  Also, karato, your attempted solutions were kind of blurring the distinction between phrases and definitions, which are not the same thing...)

[code]
globaldog is a dog that varies.
definition: a toy (called t) is tantalizing if globaldog can see t and globaldog cannot touch t.

...

now globaldog is rover;
let t be a random tantalizing toy;
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2758&start=0#p19051
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Multiple Language Framework -- a good idea?
User: Janka / DateTime: 2011-07-07 19:29:15

The most obvious problem is that extensions will have to contain translations for all languages which makes them much bigger than required. To support .z5 and other size-limited platforms, we'll end up with at least two variants of all the libraries, one english-only and one babel (which is .z5-incapable). In a usual application we would split the library into logic and translations and compile in only the translations needed for *one* language, but as the goal is to produce natural language I don't think this is feasible.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2758&start=0#p19052
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Multiple Language Framework -- a good idea?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-07 22:03:58

Thanks for this post, Victor. I like the concept of making it easy to localize extensions. However, I also think of this as a subset of a larger problem, which is the problem of making [i]any[/i] text printed by an extension easily changeable. Currently, most extensions do nothing to make strings easy to alter, so that the best option for an author is simply to edit the extension.

Given this, I'd prefer a best-practices solution over the meta-extension solution you're proposing. For example, if extension authors adopted the practice of corralling all strings into a single table, in its own source code section, we would then have a robust solution to both problems:

[code]To say message number (N - a number):
	if there is a string of N in the Table of Test Strings:
		say "[message entry]".

Section - English Localization

Table of Test Strings
string	message
10	"You sing a happy song."
20	"You sing a sad song."[/code]

Given this, an author can amend the table to change just one thing (or the whole table):

[code]Table of Test Strings (amended)
string	message
20	"You sing a lacrimose song."[/code]

Or, for translating or changing the whole table:

[code]Section - French Localization (replaces Section - English Localization in Test Extension by Erik Temple)

Table of Test Strings
string	message
10	"Tu chantes une chanson joyeuse."
20	"Tu chantes une chanson triste."[/code]

This solution avoids the memory issues that Janka mentions, and also makes it far easier for someone to supply a Swedish translation if all I (as the extension author) have supplied is English and Spanish. An extension author could provide multiple localizations by making pasteable table code available in a special "localizations" section of the extension documentation, e.g.:

[quote="French Localization"]

Paste the following text into your source code if you wish to use French as your language of choice

[code]Section - French Localization (replaces Section - English Localization in Test Extension by Erik Temple)

Table of Test Strings
string	message
10	"Tu chantes une chanson joyeuse."
20	"Tu chantes une chanson triste."[/code][/quote]

Alternatively, localization tables could be provided in the source code of the extension, but included automatically only when the larger Inform translation extension is also included, e.g.:

[code]Section - French Localization (for use with French by Eric Forgeot)

Table of Test Strings (amended)
string	message
10	"Tu chantes une chanson joyeuse."
20	"Tu chantes une chanson triste."[/code]

Anyway, those are my [i]dos centavos[/i]. Aaron Reed suggested in another thread that the next build of Inform will feature the long-awaited new approach to library messages. Depending on how this is structured, it might provide another avenue for this kind of thing.... 

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2758&start=0#p19053
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Multiple Language Framework -- a good idea?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-08 02:47:03

[quote="Janka"]The most obvious problem is that extensions will have to contain translations for all languages which makes them much bigger than required. To support .z5 and other size-limited platforms, we'll end up with at least two variants of all the libraries, one english-only and one babel (which is .z5-incapable). In a usual application we would split the library into logic and translations and compile in only the translations needed for *one* language, but as the goal is to produce natural language I don't think this is feasible.[/quote]
This would not be the case for English-language games, since sections headed "for use with Multiple Language Framework" don't get compiled if you don't include the MLF extension. Non-English games would become bigger, but only very modestly so: the extension would add just a few lines of code. So I don't think this is a big problem.

(Also, why would anyone want to use .z5 anymore? .z8 is strictly better, and by now glulx has enough interpreters that even working with .z8 seems rather strange. I'm all for declaring the z-code format to be a legacy standard, and not worrying about supporting it for new games. But that is a completely different discussion, and one I'm pretty sure I've already had on this forum. [emote]:)[/emote] )

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2758&start=0#p19054
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Multiple Language Framework -- a good idea?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-08 03:03:30

[quote="ektemple"]Anyway, those are my [i]dos centavos[/i].[/quote]
And they are good [i]twee centen[/i]. I can see the advantages, but there is also the disadvantage that including extensions is more work for non-English authors. They not only have to include the extension, but they also have to copy-paste the translation code and add it to their game. The advantage of my proposal would be that adding the two lines "Include Multiple Language Framework by Victor Gijsbers. Game language is French." is [i]all[/i] the code you have to add to your game, even if you use 50 extensions. But, as I said, I can see the advantages of your proposal as well, as it would be a more robust system for general prose changes.

Perhaps this suggestions of yours combines the advantages:
[code]Section - French Localization (for use with French by Eric Forgeot)

Table of Test Strings (amended)
string   message
10   "Tu chantes une chanson joyeuse."
20   "Tu chantes une chanson triste."[/code]
I should have thought about the fact that a game in language X will always already contain the language-X-extension, and that we can test for that. I mean, it will, right? You wouldn't include French or German and not want all of your game to be in French / German.

So that means that my toy extension about singing could be written like this:
[code]MLF Test by Victor Gijsbers begins here.

Section - Code

Instead of singing:
   say "[Happy song]".

Section - Standard text

To say happy song:
   say "You sing a happy song.".

Section - French text (for use with French by Eric Forgeot)

To say happy song:
         say "Tu chantes une chanson heureuse.".

Section - German text (for use with German by Team GerX)

To say happy song:
         say "Du singst ein heiteres Lied.";

Section - Dutch text (for use with Nonexistent Dutch by Victor Gijsbers)

To say happy song:
         say "Je zingt een vrolijk lied.".

MLF Test ends here.[/code]
(Does a later declaration of "to say happy song" overwrite an earlier declaration? I don't have Inform 7 ready to test this at the moment.)

This would not increase the size of compiled games. The only disadvantage I can think of is that there is no easy way to tell the game's author if his chosen language is not available, but that is not too important. Is there any reason we are not doing this already?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2759&start=0#p19055
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Placing a new rule between two existing rules
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-07-08 05:07:34

It's possible to rearrange the order of rules in an existing rulebook using "last" and "first".

E.g. the carry out looking rules normally run in this order:
[list]
(1) The room description heading rule
(2) The room description body text rule
(3) The room description paragraphs about objects rule
(4) The check new arrival rule
[/list:u]

You can move the room description body text rule last and stick a new rule in between the the room description heading rule and the room description paragraphs about objects rule like so:
[code]
This is the Marseillaise rule:
	say "'Allons, enfants de la patrie, le jour de gloire est arrivé!'".
	
The so tired rule is listed last in the carry out looking rulebook.

The room description paragraphs about objects rule is listed last in the carry out looking rulebook.

The check new arrival rule is listed last in the carry out looking rulebook.

The room description body text rule is listed last in the carry out looking rulebook.
[/code]
Now the carry out looking rules end up ordered thus:
[list]
(1) The room description heading rule
(2) The Marseillaise rule
(3) The room description paragraphs about objects rule
(4) The check new arrival rule
(5) The room description body text rule
[/list:u]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2758&start=0#p19056
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Multiple Language Framework -- a good idea?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-07-08 06:23:48

I'd like to see a [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_gettext]gettext[/url]-style solution. With gettext you usually print strings wrapped in a function that handles the translating:

[code]__( "Click here to log in" );[/code]
The translation library looks for a match in the translation files and prints the localized version of the message if it finds one. The benefit is that you don't have to create the English translation files separately. If the user's language is English, the program prints the message as it is.

In Inform this could work something like this:

[code]Instead of singing:
    print "You sing a happy song."

Instead of pushing:
    print { "%s doesn't move at all.", "[The noun]" }.

Table of translations
"You sing a happy song."    "Laulat iloisen laulun."
"%s doesn't move at all."    "%s ei liikahdakaan."

To print (msg - text):
    [say the translation from the table of translations]

To print (msg-list - a list of text):
    [pick the right translation from the table matching the first item in the list, replace %s's with the following items]
[/code]
This is not a perfect solution but the good part is that you don't have to add translations to the extension itself and it doesn't add (much) more work for the extension author to provide translatability. I think it's important that translations can be provided outside the extension itself so that the extension author doesn't have to support translations in addition to the extension functionality.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2760&start=0#p19057
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7:  Dead NPCs
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-08 07:07:02

I'm just curious how people implement NPCs who die during the game.

Two basic approaches come to mind:

     1.  Assign an alive-or-dead property to the NPC, and customize the response to each action involving the NPC so that it varies, as appropriate, depending on how that property is currently set; [i]or[/i]

     2.  At the moment of death, move Joe (the NPC) offstage and place a thing called Joe's Corpse in whatever location Joe formerly occupied.

My gut reaction is that the second approach seems preferable.  However, one issue I see with this approach is that it would be necessary to take everything that Joe carried or wore [i]ante-mortem[/i] and make it a part of Joe's Corpse at the moment of substitution.  This, in turn, would require some customization of default messages so that the carried/worn items do not appear to the player to be "parts" (even though that is how they would have to be implemented).  For example, if Joe had been wearing a green shirt before his untimely demise, an examination of Joe's Corpse should tell the player that "The corpse is wearing a green shirt with a bullet hole in it." as opposed to "A green shirt with a bullet hole in it is part of Joe's Corpse.". 

Thanks.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2759&start=0#p19058
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Placing a new rule between two existing rules
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-08 07:14:08

The idea of arranging a number of things into a desired order by repeatedly moving a selected thing to the first or last position almost seems like it might be the kind of puzzle one might build into a game for the player to solve. [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2760&start=0#p19059
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Dead NPCs
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-07-08 08:19:37

The difference between a corpse and a living NPC is usually such that it's easier to make the corpse a separate object. You will probably want to change all descriptions and most of the responses anyway. Otherwise when writing rules you'll always have to remember to specify that you mean only the alive state of NPC and it's very easy to miss something. (I do admit it's always amusing when a corpse suddenly responds to something like nothing had happened.)

[quote]However, one issue I see with this approach is that it would be necessary to take everything that Joe carried or wore ante-mortem and make it a part of Joe's Corpse at the moment of substitution.[/quote]
You could make the corpse a person and change the standard responses to something more suitable, which is probably something you'd have to do anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2760&start=0#p19060
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Dead NPCs
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-08 08:48:43

[quote="Robert Rothman"]Two basic approaches come to mind:
     1.  Assign an alive-or-dead property to the NPC, and customize the response to each action involving the NPC so that it varies, as appropriate, depending on how that property is currently set; [i]or[/i]
     2.  At the moment of death, move Joe (the NPC) offstage and place a thing called Joe's Corpse in whatever location Joe formerly occupied.[/quote]
I've done both. The latter is probably better if you have lots of other interactions with NPCs (all of which you have to remember to block for dead persons), while the former might be better if you have many NPCs that can get killed (in which case it would be tedious to make separate corpse objects for each) and do not have much interactions with them.

Another possibility, which I used in [i]Fate[/i], is to give every person a part called the body ("A body is a kind of thing. A body is part of every person. The description of a body is "[if the body is part of something]A normal, human body.[otherwise]The body lies in a pool of blood.[end if]""). When they were killed I moved that part to the location. This allows you to have a body as an inanimate thing, while you still don't have to declare a corpse by hand for every NPC.

[quote]My gut reaction is that the second approach seems preferable.  However, one issue I see with this approach is that it would be necessary to take everything that Joe carried or wore [i]ante-mortem[/i] and make it a part of Joe's Corpse at the moment of substitution.  This, in turn, would require some customization of default messages so that the carried/worn items do not appear to the player to be "parts" (even though that is how they would have to be implemented).[/quote]
I may be wrong, but I'm under the impression that it is English idiom to say "on the body", as in "On the body you find four cigarettes.". This means you could just make the corpse a supporter.

If you are going to use dead bodies, I have some code you might find useful. I'll put it behind spoiler tags. It's only applicable to your scenario 1, though.
[spoiler]Code for allowing people to pick items up from a dead person, if you decide to keep the person and give the person a property "killed" (from Inform ATTACK):
[code]The can't take people's possessions rule is not listed in any rulebook.

Check an actor taking (this is the can't take living people's possessions rule):
	let the local ceiling be the common ancestor of the actor with the noun;
	let H be the not-counting-parts holder of the noun;
	while H is not nothing and H is not the local ceiling:
		if H is an alive person, stop the action with library message taking action
			number 6 for H;
		let H be the not-counting-parts holder of H.[/code]

Code for printing the name of a dead person (from Inform ATTACK):
[code]Before printing the name of a killed person (called body) (this is the improper print dead property rule):
	if body is improper-named:
		say "dead [run paragraph on]".

After printing the name of a killed person (called body) (this is the proper print dead property rule):
	if body is proper-named:
		say "'s [if body is plural-named]bodies[otherwise]body[end if]".[/code]

Code for showing the possessions of a dead person (from Inform ATTACK):
[code]After examining a killed person (this is the give list of possession on dead person rule):
	if the number of things carried by the noun is at least one:
		say "On the [if the noun is plural-named]bodies[otherwise]body[end if] of [the noun] you also see [list of things carried by the noun with indefinite articles].".[/code][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2758&start=0#p19061
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Multiple Language Framework -- a good idea?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-07-08 09:51:05

There is active work happening right now that should address many of these issues for future Inform builds -- easier ways to replace default text in the library and in extensions, and some consideration for multiple languages. (Sorry to be so vague, but some elements are unfinished, so I don't want to trail features in a misleading way.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2758&start=0#p19062
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Multiple Language Framework -- a good idea?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-08 12:51:57

Do you have an estimate on when this new feature will arrive? (If it's a week, I'll wait with publishing my extension. If it's a month, I'll publish my extension and wait with the internationalisation until the feature arrives. If it's a year, I'll add internationalisation in one of the ways discussed in this topic for now, and change it when the new feature arrives.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2752&start=0#p19063
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tables and Kinds
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-08 13:10:27

Thanks for the help, guys.

[quote="zarf"]You can work around this by filling in the table entry at runtime, being careful to refer to the correct apple.[/quote]
Right, but I [i]want[/i] Inform to put kinds in that table, not individual objects (but I don't think this is possible). I don't want to set the price of an apple, but the prices for all apples; and I want to set it randomly at the start of the game; and I don't want to go through all the kinds of fruit by hand. It's that triple set of conditions that I'm having trouble satisfying. If I didn't want to do it randomly, I could use "The price of an apple is always 5.". If I didn't mind adding all the kinds of fruit by hand, I could write a loop and test for each kind of fruit individually ("repeat with item running through fruit; if item is an apple: now the price of item is randomly-determined-number-1; if item is a banana: ...").

Maybe I can work something out with printed names, as severhand suggested... I'll let you know. Or maybe I just need to rethink the design from the ground up.

(If you wonder what I need these three conditions for: not the toy example of fruit prices, but roguelike item identification. So on the one hand I have things like "scroll of teleportation", "scroll of ghoulification", on the other hand I have things like "scroll labelled MORT EILYSH", "scroll labelled NAAR OD ERAE". These kinds need to be paired randomly at the beginning of the game, and reading an instance of a kind of unidentified scrolls then needs to result in it being switched for whatever kind of identified scroll it was paired with. Having separate objects for the identified and the unidentified scrolls seemed like a good idea at the time, because it meant I wouldn't have to worry about the "scroll labelled MORT EILYSH" listening to "drop scroll of teleportation".

I would love to be able to repeat through kinds, as in "repeat with X running through kinds of scroll: repeat with Y running through things of kind X: ...".)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=50#p19064
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: ptomato / DateTime: 2011-07-08 13:31:45

Ok, as long as I'm picking apart the draft spec, here's one more:

In glk_schannel_play_multi(), does the library need to retain or copy the arrays? Is it legal for a Glk program to do this:
[code]
{
    schanid_t channels[2] = { some_channel, some_other_channel };
    glui32 sounds[2] = { 4, 5 };
    glk_schannel_play_multi(channels, 2, sounds, 2, 0);
}
[/code]
and have the arrays go out of scope at the end of the block, even though the sounds haven't finished playing yet?

I think my implementation doesn't need to access the arrays after starting the sound, so I should be fine if they stay in scope only during the call to glk_schannel_play_multi(). In other words, I don't have a problem. Perhaps other implementations might need to work differently?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2752&start=0#p19065
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tables and Kinds
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-08 13:39:03

Severedhand, I think your problem with printed names is caused by the bug, reported by zarf in december: [url]http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=459[/url].

You can circumvent it by explicitly declaring a printed name:
[code]"Test" by Victor Gijsbers

Test chamber is a room.

An apple is a thing in test chamber. The printed name of the apple is "apple".

Check taking:
	if printed name of the noun is "apple":
		say "That certainly is an apple.".
		[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2758&start=0#p19067
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Multiple Language Framework -- a good idea?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-08 14:34:18

I see at least two big problems with the manual gettext substitution method:

1) It requires the use of indexed text, which means that about 100kb worth of code would be compiled into the game whether the author wants it or not. This is bad for folks writing with z-code, and there are also authors who don't want to use indexed text at all (on principle).
2) As Felix mentioned, it is not nearly as easy to work with as Inform's native system for text substitutions.

The main reason for doing things the gettext seems to be the ease of allowing the table lookup code to replace one string with another, instead of replacing a token* with a string. I don't think that the ease of doing this outweighs these two problems.

*These "tokens" are numbers in the examples I pitched above, but they could also be KOVs. You could define the values using the table, so there would be no need to declare them ahead of time, e.g.:

[code]Message name is a kind of value. The message names are defined by the Table of Messages.

Table of Messages
message name	msg
happy song	"Sing a happy song."
sad song	"Sing a sad song."

To say msg (T - a message name):
	if T is a message name listed in the Table of Messages:
		say msg entry.[/code]

...and of course, none of this stops you from using "to say" phrases in addition.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2758&start=0#p19068
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Multiple Language Framework -- a good idea?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-07-08 18:03:08

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Do you have an estimate on when this new feature will arrive? (If it's a week, I'll wait with publishing my extension. If it's a month, I'll publish my extension and wait with the internationalisation until the feature arrives. If it's a year, I'll add internationalisation in one of the ways discussed in this topic for now, and change it when the new feature arrives.)[/quote]

I would guess it's on the order of month(s), not a year, but I'll pass on to Graham that you're interested in this; he may be able to provide more details.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2752&start=0#p19069
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tables and Kinds
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-08 19:05:02

Is it possible to hack this using the printed plural name property? I was trying to think of something that exposes the most specific kind of an item, and I can't find any way of doing it directly (maybe someone knows this, I think it may be in the forum somewhere), but "printed plural name" seems like it does, as long as you don't do other stuff to mess with the printed plural name -- or don't do it until you've done your startup stuff. So here's a fruit code:

[code]Fruit is a kind of thing. apple is a kind of fruit. pear is a kind of fruit. A fruit is usually edible. A fruit has a number called a price. The price of a fruit is usually 0. 

Grocery is a room. There are three apples in grocery. There are two pears in grocery.


Instead of examining a fruit:
	say "This [noun] costs [price of the noun] dollars."

Duplication relates a thing (called X) to a thing (called Y) when the printed plural name of X is the printed plural name of Y. The verb to duplicate (he duplicates, it is duplicated, they duplicate, it is duplicating) implies the duplication relation.
Definition: A fruit is price-set if its price is not 0.

To decide whether (X - a fruit) is price-kind-set:
	repeat with item running through fruits that duplicate X:
		if the price of item is not 0, decide yes;
	decide no.

When play begins:
	repeat with item running through fruits:
		if item is price-kind-set:
			let old item be a random price-set fruit that duplicates item;
			now the price of item is the price of old item;
		otherwise:
			now the price of item is a random number from 2 to 5.	[/code]

This seems to be working right now. I'm pretty groggy, so it's probably very inelegant if it's not bugfree. (Highlights of my attempts to get this to compile: thinking there was something going on with the syntax "a random price-set fruit that duplicates item" when I had omitted "let" from the beginning of the line; trying to use A as a variable; writing "plural name" property and thinking that there was some deep magic in trying to access that property, instead of realizing that I'd got the name wrong; and sundry other stupid bugs.)

UPDATE: In fact, my grogginess led me to complicate that unnecessarily -- you don't need the business about "price-kind-set." This seems to work:

[code]Duplication relates a thing (called X) to a thing (called Y) when the printed plural name of X is the printed plural name of Y. The verb to duplicate (he duplicates, it is duplicated, they duplicate, it is duplicating) implies the duplication relation.
Definition: A fruit is price-set if its price is not 0.

When play begins:
	repeat with item running through fruits:
		if item duplicates a price-set fruit:
			let old item be a random price-set fruit that duplicates item;
			now the price of item is the price of old item;
		otherwise:
			now the price of item is a random number from 2 to 5.[/code]

I had thought that "price-set fruit that duplicates item" was making the compiler burp, when it was the missing "let" at the beginning of the line; by the time I'd fixed that I'd created a lot of extra complication.  [emote]:oops:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2757&start=0#p19070
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IntroComp 2011 reviews
User: Mr. Patient / DateTime: 2011-07-08 19:46:00

Parthenon

I wonder if this game is a put-on.

In Parthenon, you play a tourist visiting the edifice in question, accompanied by your spouse.  The introduction is quite small: you explore a few rooms, pick up a couple of items, and then the game takes a sudden turn before ending.

There are many misspelled words and unimplemented nouns, and there's an unresponsive NPC (the spouse) with gender confusion issues (the parser recognizes only "him," but the endgame seems to refer to "her").  These are common enough issues.  What makes this game memorable is its gleeful disregard for its subject.  I have never been to Greece, and I am no classicist.  I do have Wikipedia and Google Maps.  Based on these resources, I would suspect -- someone please correct me if I'm wrong -- that the Parthenon did not have priests' quarters.  I would guess that it did not have stables.  And I am pretty sure the north end of the temple is not perched atop a rocky cliff overlooking the Mediterranean, where one can hear waves crashing.  Despite this apparent indifference to the real-world Parthenon, the author took the trouble to look up what I assume is the Greek word for taxi, and printed it in the proper characters.  It makes me wonder what's really going on here.

Unlike most of the games in IntroComp this year, this game does feature a puzzle of sorts, although it is not obvious that it is even there.  When you solve it, things change rather dramatically, but perhaps not for the better.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2754&start=10#p19071
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why don't more games have devious serial killer plots?
User: Neurosion / DateTime: 2011-07-08 20:53:07

At the risk of being a self-publicizing whore: <a class="postlink" href="http://tinyurl.com/se7en-if">http://tinyurl.com/se7en-if</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2759&start=0#p19072
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Placing a new rule between two existing rules
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-09 02:10:25

... Have you seen 'Sorting out sorting?'

[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvTW7341kpA[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2759&start=0#p19073
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Placing a new rule between two existing rules
User: WovenTales / DateTime: 2011-07-09 03:03:29

You might be able to say
[code]Rule Z is listed after Rule A in the foo rulebook.
Rule B is listed after Rule Z in the foo rulebook.[/code]You still have to make sure that Rule B is not breaking anything by being moved (or, if Rule A is the more mobile, switch the order and write two "listed [i]before[/i]" instructions), but that would place rule Z between Rule A and Rule B. This does seem like something that Inform should be able to implement, but it would require keeping track of the relative positions of at least every manually placed rule, and I can see that getting complicated, though not impossible.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2752&start=0#p19074
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tables and Kinds
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-09 03:49:20

Matt, that's pretty neat. I hacked something ugly together, but your idea of using a relation may make it a lot neater. (Though only kind-variables would make it truly neat.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2761&start=0#p19075
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: The 'Spock dilemma'  (aka emotions)
User: Aintelligence / DateTime: 2011-07-09 07:26:04

I have been working on a system to make NPC's have 'real emotion', (farther down the line these emotions will determine actions of NPC's) but recently all my attempts have come up with a block.


I have the emotions frame such as this.

[code]A person can be neutral, satisfied, disappointed, elated, or enraged.  A person is usually neutral.[/code]

What I'm trying to do here is assign values to the emotions so that enraged=5, disappointed=4, neutral=3, satisfied= 2 and elated=1.
Then I'm trying to look for a way where certain actions will change the values, and therefore change the emotion.

EX.
If the player maybe takes the doughnut, add two points to Billy's emotions.  Now Billy's emotions would be 4.
or
If the player asks George about Monopoly,  subtract 4 emotion points, so the emotion would be 1 (elated)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2761&start=0#p19076
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The 'Spock dilemma'  (aka emotions)
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-09 07:31:57

Perhaps it would be easiest to just have:
[code]A person has a number called the emotion. The emotion of a person is usually 3.[/code]
If you want to, you can then set up definitions like this:
[code]Definition: a person is elated if its emotion is 1.[/code]
And you may want to set up phrases for increasing and decreasing the emotions, so you don't have to worry about them dropping below 1 or above 5:
[code]To improve the mood of (guy - a person) by (n - a number):
	now the emotion of guy is the emotion of guy minus n;
	if n is less than 1:
		now n is 1.[/code]
Is this what you are looking for?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2761&start=0#p19077
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The 'Spock dilemma'  (aka emotions)
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-09 07:56:35

Why do you need numbers?  I believe Inform 7 allows you to define emotion as a "kind of value," of which the possible states are defined not as numbers, but as text, and to use statements like "now the emotion is the next emotion" (I'm not sure about the precise syntax), thus avoiding the need to translate the qualitative emotional states to and from numerical terms.

I think the real complication comes not from making the process numerical, but from identifying all of the possible things that should change a person's emotional state, and how various things vary depending on what that state is.

I used a vastly simplified version of this system in a scene in which the player is in his boss's office getting briefed on a mission.  I set up the boss so that he has a (qualitatively defined) mood; each time the player does something to annoy the boss (such as trying to leave the room during the briefing), the boss's mood gets one notch worse, triggering the boss saying something to warn the player that he (the boss) is getting more and more pissed off.  If the player ignores the warnings and keeps annoying the boss anyway, eventually the mood reaches a point where more catastrophic consequences ensue.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2761&start=0#p19078
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The 'Spock dilemma'  (aka emotions)
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-09 10:33:36

[quote="Robert Rothman"]Why do you need numbers?  I believe Inform 7 allows you to define emotion as a "kind of value," of which the possible states are defined not as numbers, but as text, and to use statements like "now the emotion is the next emotion" (I'm not sure about the precise syntax), thus avoiding the need to translate the qualitative emotional states to and from numerical terms.[/quote]
Not a great idea, because the "after" relation between values is circular. If you run the following program:
[code]"Test" by Victor Gijsbers

Test chamber is a room.

Emotion is a kind of value. The emotions are enraged, angry, moderate, pleased and happy.

The player has an emotion. The emotion of the player is enraged.

Every turn:
	say "You are feeling [emotion of the player].";
	now the emotion of the player is the emotion after the emotion of the player.[/code]
you will find that the player progresses from happy to enraged.

Of course, you can use checks to make sure that doesn't happen -- but why would this be better than representing the emotional state as a number? Numbers are versatile and easy to use, and you can set up phrases to translate them into the prose you would like to see in the game, if that is necessary.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=50#p19079
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-09 10:57:59

The caller may free or change the array contents immediately after the call. So the library needs to copy them if it wants to refer to the values later.

(This is generally true of Glk array and pointer arguments. The only exceptions are cases where the library will be returning data in the array later, e.g., open_memory_stream.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2761&start=0#p19080
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The 'Spock dilemma'  (aka emotions)
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-09 11:22:58

Don't you effectively have that issue anyway?  Since the number of emotional states that you actually allow is (presumably) finite, don't you have to build in a check to see when you've reached "the end of the line" even if you're representing the states with numbers?  I suppose with numbers, you could allow a character to get more and more angry [i]ad infinitum[/i] rather than hitting a maximum-anger state (with the result that you'd need that many additional "positive-emotion" points before you started turning around and hit the state that is one notch less angry than "maximum pissed-offedness"), but I'd think that most of the time you'd want a finite number of states.

Ultimately, I'm not sure it makes a lot of difference whether you use numbers or text; I was just wondering whether the original poster had a particular reason for the numerical approach.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2761&start=0#p19081
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The 'Spock dilemma'  (aka emotions)
User: Aintelligence / DateTime: 2011-07-09 11:30:26

[quote]Code:
To improve the mood of (guy - a person) by (n - a number):
   now the emotion of guy is the emotion of guy minus n;
   if n is less than 1:
      now n is 1.

Is this what you are looking for?[/quote]

Actually that's perfect!

[i]One quick thing:[/i]
1. Would I just state in code that "If player [does action]:
               now the emotion of George increases by 2.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2752&start=10#p19082
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tables and Kinds
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-07-09 12:52:45

I think you can do what you want with a little I6:[spoiler][code]Chapter "Object Types" (for Glulx only)
[Glulx only because the code uses @linearsearch and depends on the instruction layout of Prop_* routines.]

Include (-
	! This is the hackiest bit.
	[ convertPropRoutineToClass routine result;
		@linearsearch OC__Cl 4 routine 1 (-1) 0 0 result;
		return (result+5)-->0;
	];
-) after "Definitions.i6t".

An object type is a kind of value.
To decide what object type is the (K - a description of a value of kind K) type: (- convertPropRoutineToClass({K}) -).
To decide what object type is the type of (O - an object): (- ({O}.2) -).
To repeat with (I - a nonexisting object type variable) running through object types begin -- end: (- for({I}=K0_kind-->6:{I}:{I}={I}-->6) -).
To decide whether (O - an object) is of type (T - an object type): (- ({O} ofclass {T}) -).
To decide whether (O - an object) is of type (K - a description of a value of kind K):
	decide on whether or not O is of type the K type.
To say (T - an object type): (- print (I7_Kind_Name){T}; -).

Chapter "Demo"

There is a room.
When play begins:
	say "Thing: [the thing type].";
	say "Player: [the type of the player].";
	showme whether or not the player is of type thing;
	showme whether or not the player is of type person;
	showme whether or not the player is of type device;
	repeat with type running through object types:
		say "A type: [the type]."
[/code][/spoiler]
Understand, of course, that this is just a hack.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2762&start=0#p19083
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: ConsultTopic expression mismatch
User: zodraz / DateTime: 2011-07-09 13:02:41

HELP!

I have two topics (out of 181) labelled ‘cabinet’ and ‘cabinet secretary’ but the expression is only matched on the first word no matter which order the topics are placed.  Is this a limitation of consultTopic ie consult x about y where y in this case is a single word?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2763&start=0#p19084
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Non-obvious nested containers
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-07-09 13:18:08

I'm having issues dealing with containers.
Here is what I have:

In an apartment building lobby there is a bank of mailboxes, one for each of 8 apartments.
I have it set up where there is a fixed in place container in the room acting as the bank of mailboxes, and there are 8 containers within the mailbox bank.
Initially, I had this:[code]You can see a front door and a row of mailboxes (in which are mailbox #1 (closed), mailbox #2 (closed), mailbox #3 (closed), mailbox #4 (closed), mailbox #5 (closed), mailbox #6 (closed), mailbox #7 (closed), and mailbox #8 (closed)) here.[/code]So I put in the "omit contents in listing" and now I have this:[code]You can see a front door and a row of mailboxes here.[/code]This is fine.
My issue comes in when the player starts working with the mailboxes.
What I'd ultimately like to happen is this:[code]You can see a front door and a row of mailboxes here. Mailbox #6 is open and there is a letter inside.[/code]But this is proving more difficult that I thought. I can get it to say these things by using the "After printing the locale description of..." rule, but that puts a paragraph break in, so it looks like this:[code]You can see a front door and a row of mailboxes here.

Mailbox #6 is open and there is a letter inside.[/code]Which is not the effect I'm going for. If I use the "After printing the name of the mailbox bank" I get this:[code]You can see a front door and a row of mailboxes, mailbox #6 is open and there is a letter inside here.[/code]Which is even worse.

My question is: how do I tack stuff onto the item listing without having that paragraph break? What's the rule I need to invoke here?
Thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2762&start=0#p19085
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: ConsultTopic expression mismatch
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-09 14:14:17

ConsultTopic is a TopicMatchTopic, so a phrase can contain an arbitrary amount of words (or even a regular expression that matches patterns.) It would probably help if you posted the affected ConsultTopic objects.

Here, this works just fine:

[code]+ Consultable {
    'book' 'book'
    "It's a book. "
}

++ ConsultTopic {
    topicResponse = "Matched. ";
    matchPattern = 'foo bar';
}[/code]

>consult book about foo
You can't seem to find that in the book.

>consult book about foo bar
Matched.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2761&start=0#p19086
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The 'Spock dilemma'  (aka emotions)
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-09 14:23:21

[quote="Robert Rothman"]Ultimately, I'm not sure it makes a lot of difference whether you use numbers or text; I was just wondering whether the original poster had a particular reason for the numerical approach.[/quote]Okay, fair enough. I often like the versatility of numbers. When it makes sense to have the values ordered, using numbers is almost never a bad idea.

[quote="Aintelligence"][i]One quick thing:[/i]
1. Would I just state in code that "If player [does action]:
               now the emotion of George increases by 2.[/quote]
Kinda. That if-statement won't compile; you probably want to write a carry out rule, or an instead rule, or sneak the statement about emotions into whatever other code you have that actually carries out the command of the player. And you don't just want to add 2 to an emotion, because that might take it over 5, so you need to check for that. (I would write a companion for that "improve the mood" code I gave you, so you only have to do this in one place.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2763&start=0#p19087
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Non-obvious nested containers
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-09 14:30:50

Perhaps one of the extensions [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/commands/#Looking]here[/url] could help you? Rrom Description Control seems promising. (But I haven't used it myself.) Otherwise, it seems as if you would need to replace one of the standard rules.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2611&start=0#p19088
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Multiple Choice
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-07-09 14:52:12

Puh. I really hope someone is able to help me with this. While I can ask my question, I don't seem to be able to parse the answer.
[code]
Dialogue_1 is a scene. Dialogue_1 begins when the twig flag is 1.
When Dialogue_1 begins (this is the set dialogue rule):
	now the dialogue flag is 1;
	now dummy is 3;
	now the closed menu prompt is "(1-3) >>> ";
	now current question is "";
	now current question menu is {"[italic type]'Choice 1'[roman type]", "[italic type]'Choice 2'[roman type]", "[italic type]'Choice 3'[roman type]"};
	ask a closed question, in menu mode.

A number question rule (this is the dialogue rule):
	say "[the number understood]"; [debug]
	if the number understood is less than 1:
		retry;
	if the number understood is greater than dummy:
		retry;
	if the dialogue flag is 1 and the number understood is 2:
		say "TEST";
		show_dialogue_1;
	exit.[/code]

I got no clue bout the rule feature so far, that's probably my mistake. The "rule" isn't called when I enter any answer. Can anyone help me with this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2764&start=0#p19089
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Swedish -- Inform 7 translation
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-07-09 15:26:57

The Swedish translation of Inform 7 for builds 6E59–6G60 is finished, at last. I submitted it (or tried to submit it) to the extension site a couple of days ago; for now, it can be downloaded from here: <a class="postlink" href="http://wikisend.com/download/527870/">http://wikisend.com/download/527870/</a>.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2763&start=0#p19090
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Non-obvious nested containers
User: mucat / DateTime: 2011-07-09 15:32:59

One thing that might help is using the "printing a locale paragraph about" activity for the bank of mailboxes.  Something like this:

[code]for printing a locale paragraph about a row of mailboxes:
	say "You can see a row of mailboxes here.[no line break]";
	now the row of mailboxes is mentioned;
	repeat with candidate running through mailboxes in row of mailboxes:
		if candidate is open:
			say " [Candidate] is open[if candidate contains something], and contains [a list of things in candidate][end if].[no line break]";
	say paragraph break;
[/code]

Trouble is, this gives the row of mailboxes a paragraph to itself; the front door and other visible objects will be listed in a separate paragraph.  If you specifically want the door listed on the same line, you could kludge it in easily enough:

[code]for printing a locale paragraph about a row of mailboxes:
	say "You can see a front door and a row of mailboxes here.[no line break]";
	now the row of mailboxes is mentioned;
	now the front door is mentioned;
	repeat with candidate running through mailboxes in row of mailboxes:
		if candidate is open:
			say " [Candidate] is open[if candidate contains something], and contains [a list of things in candidate][end if].[no line break]";
	say paragraph break;
[/code]

but other random objects you drop will still be listed in another paragraph.  That might not be a problem.  Since the door and mailboxes are part of the room, setting them apart from the more transient contents may not seem too jarring.

I can't think of any entirely perfect way to do what you want, though, without rewriting some library rules from scratch.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2764&start=0#p19091
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Swedish -- Inform 7 translation
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-09 15:38:06

Congratulations! Good to see more translations coming.

How much work was it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2759&start=0#p19092
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Placing a new rule between two existing rules
User: mucat / DateTime: 2011-07-09 15:52:25

Thanks, everyone; those are all good thoughts.
[quote="WovenTales"]You still have to make sure that Rule B is not breaking anything by being moved[/quote]
That's the part that has me nervous, though.  What I was looking for is a way to take a rulebook that might already have a dozen or more rules whose exact sequence matters, and slip a new rule into a specific place in the sequence without otherwise disturbing the existing ones...and without laying inadvertent traps for anyone who later wants to make yet more changes to the book.

I think what I'll go with is the questionable kludge I mentioned before: compile the code once with no instructions on where the rule should lie, check the index to see where it landed (or just reason out where it would land from the specificity laws that Inform uses), and then issue either a "listed after" if it sorted too early, or "listed before" if it sorted too late.  Along with comment lines specifying where it needs to be, in case later changes to other parts of the rulebook cause this rule to sort into the wrong place again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2611&start=0#p19093
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Multiple Choice
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-07-09 15:54:48

You're asking a question in menu mode", so I guess you need a menu question rule (you've got a number question one).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2764&start=0#p19094
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Swedish -- Inform 7 translation
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-07-09 16:23:40

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Congratulations![/quote]
Thanks!
[quote]How much work was it?[/quote]
Quite a bit. 

Fortunately, there is as little of grammatical cases in Swedish as in English. I'm afraid even to think how much work must have gone into the German translation!

The hard part was prompted by the really weird way of handling grammatical "definiteness" in Swedish. 
Nouns do not take the definite article, instead they inflect to show "definite species" -- as do adjectives and some participles. 
However, a complete noun phrase should nevertheless have a definite article, if it begins with a word that is not a noun or a pronoun (as when it begins with an adjective, a participle or an ordinal number). 
So, e.g., "the android" ("androiden") must not take a definite article in Swedish, whereas "the paranoid android" ("den paraonoida androiden") must.

Also there are four genders in Swedish, whereas Inform assumes there will be at most three.

Those two features necessitated quite a lot of I6 tinkering -- and the definition of about a hundred I7 textsubstitutions to represent different ways of inflecting nouns, adjectives, and participles. (Not to worry, their use should be intuitive and obvious to Swedish speakers.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2764&start=0#p19095
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Swedish -- Inform 7 translation
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-09 16:44:53

Wow, sounds like you did a great job. [emote]:)[/emote] (I'm kind of hoping that if I decide to make a Dutch translation, I can just use the German translation and kick out the cases and the umlauts...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2762&start=0#p19096
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: ConsultTopic expression mismatch
User: zodraz / DateTime: 2011-07-09 16:56:39

explain please why the first two match correctly but the last two only match on 'cabinet'

[code]+++ ConsultTopic
    {
        topicResponse = "Cabinet Secretary - The senior civil servant of the UK.  The permanent non-political head of the Cabinet Office. ";
        matchPattern = 'cabinet secretary';
    }

+++ ConsultTopic
    {
        topicResponse = "Cabinet - The Prime Minister and her senior ministers of the crown, i.e.  the committee that runs the UK. ";
        matchPattern = 'cabinet';
    }

+++ ConsultTopic 'cabinet secretary'
	"Cabinet Secretary - The senior civil servant of the UK.  The permanent non-political head of the Cabinet Office. "
;

+++ ConsultTopic 'cabinet'
	"Cabinet - The Prime Minister and her senior ministers of the crown, i.e.  the committee that runs the UK. "
;
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2761&start=0#p19097
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The 'Spock dilemma'  (aka emotions)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-09 17:15:29

[quote="Aintelligence"]What I'm trying to do here is assign values to the emotions so that enraged=5, disappointed=4, neutral=3, satisfied= 2 and elated=1.
Then I'm trying to look for a way where certain actions will change the values, and therefore change the emotion.

EX.
If the player maybe takes the doughnut, add two points to Billy's emotions.  Now Billy's emotions would be 4.
or
If the player asks George about Monopoly,  subtract 4 emotion points, so the emotion would be 1 (elated)[/quote]

Actually, any ladder of values such as the one you're referring to is internally stored as a series of numbers beginning with 1. In other words, if you define your emotions like so:

[code]An emotion is a kind of value. The emotions are elated, satisfied, neutral, disappointed, and enraged.[/code]

...then as far as the Inform 6 template code is concerned, you have defined an emotion as a value ranging from 1 (elated) to 5 (enraged). We can take advantage of that to write phrases that will allow us to manipulate the emotions (sorry) in either their numeric or their word form. The key concept here is "typecasting", that is, finding out what number goes with a given word value, or vice versa. This is pretty simple:

To decide what number is (E - emotion) as a number: (- {E} -)
To decide which emotion is (N - number) as an emotion: (- {N} -)

Using these two phrases, you can essentially grab the emotion as a number ("let N be the state of the player as a number"), add 2 to it ("let N be N + 2"), and then find the emotion that is paired with that result ("now the state of the player is N as an emotion"). Pretty simple, and I think resulting in pretty much exactly what you were looking for. This approach also lets you continue to use named concepts (elated, disappointed) rather than numbers, which has obvious advantages for source code readability.

Here's a bit of code that uses Inform's newer "functional programming" capabilities to provide phrases that will work for any enumerated value. If you've also defined a brightness KOV, for example, you can modify it with the same phrase you use to modify emotions, like so:

[quote]now the state of the player is the state of the player improved by 2.
now the brightness of the location is the brightness of the location diminished by 1.[/quote]

Here's the code:

[code]An emotion is a kind of value. The emotions are enraged, disappointed, neutral, satisfied, and elated.

A person has an emotion called state. The state of a person is usually neutral. 

To decide what number is (N - value) as a number:
	(- {N} -).
	
To decide which K is (N - number) as (type - name of kind of value K):
	(- {N} -).
	
To decide which K is (V - value of kind K) improved by (N - a number):
	let X be V as a number;
	increase X by N;
	if X is greater than the last value of K as a number:[i.e., if the result is invalid]
		decide on the last value of K;
	otherwise:
		decide on X as a K.
		
To decide which K is (V - value of kind K) diminished by (N - a number):
	let X be V as a number;
	decrease X by N;
	if X is less than 1:[i.e., if the result is invalid]
		decide on the first value of K;
	otherwise:
		decide on X as a K.
	
To improve the emotional state of (O - an object) by (N - a number):
	now the state of O is the state of O improved by N.
	
To diminish the emotional state of (O - an object) by (N - a number):
	now the state of O is the state of O diminished by N.
	
[Brief Example:]
There is a room.
	
When play begins:
	improve the emotional state of the player by 2;
	say "[state of the player]."[/code]

You'll see that I've also included short forms that work only on the emotions (e.g., "diminish the emotional state of the player by 2").

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2765&start=0#p19098
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Finer control of pronouns
User: mucat / DateTime: 2011-07-09 17:15:56

This might be a clueless question; it seems like the kind of thing that would have been addressed in an extension or in the language documentation, but I can't seem to find it.

I'm wondering if there's any way to override Inform's default choices of which objects "trigger" which pronouns.

For example, a player might naturally refer to a mean junkyard dog as either "him" or as "it".  As far as I can find, though, the dog can be implemented in inform either as male -- in which case, the parser will connect "he" and "him" to the dog, but not "it" -- or as neuter, in which case the parser understands "it" but not "him".

You could also have an NPC whose gender is ambiguous, either as a storytelling choice (such as Black, from the classic game Jigsaw), because of in-world uncertainty (what kind of blatant stereotyping was I guilty of in the last paragraph, assuming that mean dog must be male?) or simply because the character's role is very brief.  ("A smiling clerk takes your ticket and hands you a receipt."  The player could type "thank him" or "thank her"...and if the clerk is just on stage for that one brief interaction, there's no point in having the parser quibble.)

The issue even comes up with inanimate objects (for which Inform will only agree to accept "it".)  But a statue, a painting, or (perhaps especially) a holographic image, ought to accept either "it" or as the gender of the person it depicts.  In an old-fashioned sea yarn, the player really ought to be able to call a ship "her".  (Or maybe not just an old-fashioned one.  If a major theme of a game is deciding whether Alice, your spacecraft's intelligent computer, should be treated as a person or as a thing, then you don't want the parser to take sides on the issue!)

Emily Short's "Plurality" extension addresses the related issue of singular/plural ambiguity.  (So using her extension, "a set of chess pieces" could be made ambiguously plural, and respond either to "it" or to "them".)  Looking at her code, she uses imbedded Inform 6 code to make it work.  Does anyone know if there's an extension, or a non-extension option I'm overlooking, for making gender pronouns more flexible?

If not, I might go ahead and write one, giving full credit to Ms. Short since I would be essentially cribbing her code from Plurality and using it in a slightly different context.  But I wanted to check first if I would be reinventing the wheel.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2765&start=0#p19099
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Finer control of pronouns
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-07-09 17:39:37

I'm not sure if this is quite what you're looking for, but you may want to read this thread: 
<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2222">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2222</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2762&start=0#p19100
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: ConsultTopic expression mismatch
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-09 17:56:54

Looks like an issue with the templates. I'm not sure what's happening. It's probably worth reporting at <a class="postlink" href="http://bugdb.tads.org">http://bugdb.tads.org</a>.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2754&start=10#p19101
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why don't more games have devious serial killer plots?
User: Janka / DateTime: 2011-07-09 17:57:54

Neurosion: I'd say, it's very hard to immerse into a game where the protagonist is a serial killer. At least if the player is not a serial killer. He wouldn't know what to do next, unless the game controls the player, e.g. by limiting his options or by spoon-feeding the characters "thoughts" to the player. Both options are a big annoyance.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2754&start=10#p19102
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why don't more games have devious serial killer plots?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-09 18:24:38

Yeah, my first reaction to that proposed game was "I would quit it before the first command." Too icky, and I actually liked Seven as a movie (though developments since then may have lowered my tolerance for torturey plots). The works that manage to transcend the absurdity of this plot device silly might be Seven and the various "People forced to fight to the death on TV in a future dystopia" books and movies (though see [url=http://samandfuzzy.com/1437]this comic[/url] and the first question below).

Anyway, that's not really what I'm thinking of -- I'm thinking of playing the victim forced to deal with the deathtraps, not playing the murderer. Lots of games cast you as serial killers of some sort.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2754&start=10#p19103
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why don't more games have devious serial killer plots?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-09 18:24:56

[quote="Janka"]Neurosion: I'd say, it's very hard to immerse into a game where the protagonist is a serial killer.[/quote]
[i]Assassin's Creed[/i] and [i]Grand Theft Auto[/i] seem to be selling just fine, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2754&start=10#p19104
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why don't more games have devious serial killer plots?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-07-09 18:35:20

[quote="matt w"]Oh, I agree Paul. Think of [i]Speed[/i]; the only reason for the villain to design the bomb that way was to provide the pretext for some action sequences. That's why my question was somewhat cynical. Though maybe games could get away with this as a self-conscious homage to that kind of movie (as "I Expect You To Die" does -- its implementation is rickety but at the level of plot it's quite charming).[/quote]
Heh, yeah, that was a pretty preposterous concept for a movie. The advantage of a concept like that though is that I only have to get over the suspension of disbelief once. If I can see my way past the fantastical premise, and take it 'as read', I can enjoy the rest of the movie (well at least until the bus starts jumping gaps, Evil Knievel style; they should've just packed it in at that point).

Whereas, with serial killer movies, the killer usually constructs more and more elaborate killing scenarios every time and I have leap a little higher every time -- anyway, they just don't work much for me. Silence of the Lambs was good but if you think about Silence of the Lambs it is completely unlike most serial killer movies. None of the actual deaths that happen in the movie are serial killings. (Well beyond the first that starts the investigation.) They are all escape attempts by Hannibal Lecter, and then there is one victim that the actual hunted serial killer just threatens to kill for the whole movie. The movie has its own interesting structure, it's not just: improbable gruesome death #1; even more improbable death #2; escalating death #3 -- catch him before he commits another awesome death! -- #4, #5, ad nauseum etc....

[quote="gravel"][quote="Laroquod"]Not my favourite type of villain, personally. Obviously. 8)[/quote]

It works for me about as well as "the prophecy says you must gather the eight shards of Ooga-booga!" or "your village has burned to the ground, and only you, a twelve-year-old with a stick, can overturn the evil king who did it!"  Which is to say, it's a pretext, and I can tolerate it as long on the grounds of suspension of belief, as long as there's not too many other demands on that suspension.  (Saw: yes, Saw IV: no)[/quote]
Well, the prophecy thing is better than the serial killer as long as you buy the one-time special plausibility offer of... the prophecy itself. The 12-year-old saving the world thing, yeah... typically much worse than the serial killer thing, but mostly because with some exceptions it's for obvious reasons a 'juvenile' genre that dispenses with plausibility, etc.

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2754&start=10#p19105
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why don't more games have devious serial killer plots?
User: Janka / DateTime: 2011-07-09 18:59:34

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="Janka"]Neurosion: I'd say, it's very hard to immerse into a game where the protagonist is a serial killer.[/quote]
[i]Assassin's Creed[/i] and [i]Grand Theft Auto[/i] seem to be selling just fine, though.[/quote]
Ok, you caught me by words. I wrote "serial killer", but meant "pathologic serial murderer". Like the plot Neurosion had described in his blogpost.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2754&start=10#p19106
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why don't more games have devious serial killer plots?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-09 19:09:56

[quote="Laroquod"][quote="gravel"]
It works for me about as well as "the prophecy says you must gather the eight shards of Ooga-booga!" or "your village has burned to the ground, and only you, a twelve-year-old with a stick, can overturn the evil king who did it!"  Which is to say, it's a pretext, and I can tolerate it as long on the grounds of suspension of belief, as long as there's not too many other demands on that suspension.  (Saw: yes, Saw IV: no)[/quote]
Well, the prophecy thing is better than the serial killer as long as you buy the one-time special plausibility offer of... the prophecy itself. The 12-year-old saving the world thing, yeah... typically much worse than the serial killer thing, but mostly because with some exceptions it's for obvious reasons a 'juvenile' genre that dispenses with plausibility, etc.

P.[/quote]

It's not the prophecy that gets me so much as the eight shards. I can't keep from noticing that ever since I read about [url=http://news.ansible.co.uk/plotdev.html]plot coupons[/url]. Off-topic warning about that article:

[rant]"It's only in the last few decades that serious fiction has begun to make serious reference to its own fictitiousness" is one of the stupidest things ever written in a smart article. You should be banned from opining about the history of fiction if you haven't at least opened [i]Tristram Shandy[/i].[/rant]

Not that that "collect this set of magic items" can't work as a plot -- Harry Potter does a fine job of this, I think, partly because it takes a long time to get around to revealing that that's what's happening, and partly because there's some motivation for there to be a bunch of plot coupons.

[spoiler]I'm thinking of the Horcruxes rather than the Hallows, and given their purpose it's clearly in Voldemort's interest to make a bunch of them.[/spoiler]

But it seems like an easy and lazy hook for a game (one plot coupon per level!) unless it's justified very well. Not that I haven't enjoyed some games that do this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2754&start=10#p19107
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why don't more games have devious serial killer plots?
User: Sig / DateTime: 2011-07-09 19:14:19

(In fairness, [i]Assassin's Creed[/i] penalizes you significantly for killing bystanders.  Not doing so is one of the core tenets of the eponymous creed.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2757&start=0#p19108
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IntroComp 2011 reviews
User: Mr. Patient / DateTime: 2011-07-09 21:00:13

Speculative Fiction

This is a really effective IntroComp entry.  It's polished, limited in scope, has a clear hook, and gives a good indication of what gameplay would be like in the finished version.  And it's a lot of fun.

It appears at first glance to be an escape-the-room game, but subverts this expectation immediately.  You play a wizard whose body is locked in a tower.  Your mind, however, is in the body of your raven familiar, who acts as a narrator and follows your instructions.  Your goal is to collect cash, and lots of it, to avoid execution for thievery. 

What stands out here is the writing -- clever, witty, and engaging, right from the first sentence.  Most of the writing effort has been put into characterizing W.D., the raven whose body you're sharing.  His perspective is endlessly entertaining:

> x sandie
Sandie is a short, round woman. To a first approximation, she’s a sphere.
To a second approximation, she’s a sphere with hands. She’s got a 
greasy apron on and she smells fantastic. I love her and her meaty ways. 
She only loves me when I have money.

I'd have no problems nominating W.D. for an XYZZY as Best NPC (or perhaps PC), just for this introduction.  

The game is well-coded, with no bugs that I could detect.  There's one puzzle in the intro, and it's on the easy side, but satisfying.

Overall, it's a very fine effort.  I'd like to urge the authors to finish the game, and also to please list the exits in all the rooms.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2760&start=0#p19109
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Dead NPCs
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2011-07-09 21:34:47

In The Z-Machine Matter, I have used the latter approach (a separate Corpse object) but there's still work to be done either way.  And I probably there are still some bugs I need to fix.  (At one point if you talked to the corpse it shrugged.  Rigor mortis, no doubt.)   The game is available at IntroComp among many other fine games if you are curious.

Perhaps there are some dead bodies in the other games, also. 
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.allthingsjacq.com/introcomp/">http://www.allthingsjacq.com/introcomp/</a>

 Always interesting to see how different people implement things.
--Zack

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2766&start=0#p19110
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Looking to team up on a fantasy game
User: Sark / DateTime: 2011-07-09 22:51:56

I've got the very early beginnings of a fantasy game, but I'm no game designer, and while I'm a pretty good writer in terms of actual prose, my plotting is pretty weak.  I was wondering if anyone would like to team up to work on a fantasy game.  I've got a couple plot elements, but I'd be willing to start completely over if people want to start from scratch as a team.
[b]
What I Can Do for a Team[/b]

[list][*]Research: I'm very good at this, and if I don't know how to find something, I probably know someone who does.[/*:m]
[*]Prose:  I'm a good writer when it comes down to actually crafting sentences and paragraphs.[/*:m]
[*]Editing:  I think about grammar and the clearest way to say things far too often.[/*:m]
[*]Brainstorming: I can come up with dozens of possible directions to take with a character, setting, theme, etc.[/*:m]
[*]Basic Programming:  I can put together the basic framework of rooms and objects and apply descriptions, leaving more advanced programers more time for the complicated work.[/*:m][/list:u]

[b]What I'm Looking for in Team Members[/b]

[list][*]Collaborative Attitude:  Though we may need to elect a team leader eventually*, I'm hoping to form a team dedicated to creating a great piece of IF, not just to pushing their own ideas.[/*:m]
[*]Skill: I'm going to ask that people interested in writing post a couple paragraphs of their work, a sample plot idea, or both.  If you're not comfortable posting, you can PM me instead. Try not to give away all of a plot idea, in case we end up using it.[/*:m]
[*]Creativity[/*:m][/list:u]

Please post if you're interested or have any questions or ideas.

*crosses fingers and waits*

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2754&start=20#p19111
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why don't more games have devious serial killer plots?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-07-09 22:57:32

[quote="matt w"]It's not the prophecy that gets me so much as the eight shards. I can't keep from noticing that ever since I read about [url=http://news.ansible.co.uk/plotdev.html]plot coupons[/url]. Off-topic warning about that article:

[rant]"It's only in the last few decades that serious fiction has begun to make serious reference to its own fictitiousness" is one of the stupidest things ever written in a smart article. You should be banned from opining about the history of fiction if you haven't at least opened [i]Tristram Shandy[/i].[/rant][/quote]
Thanks for the link. (I don't know Potter though -- sorry. Not that its structure is surprising at all.)

I agree with the complaints about plot coupons insofar as they need to be better disguised to avoid exposing the gears too obviously that turn the plot (if, unlike in Tristram Shandy, that is your goal -- and interesting that you should mention it as I just saw the Steve Coogan movie based on the book: brilliant adaptation, that). I don't actually think 'plot coupons' can be avoided entirely in IF unless there aren't any win conditions. The whole enterprise is about collecting changes in bits of text until win or ending conditions have been met. The less it feels like what it is, though, generally, the better the magic. Exceptions include games that don't take themselves very seriously: the cost of baring the mechanics is much less, then. And it can be grist for the humour mill.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=200#p19112
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Sark / DateTime: 2011-07-09 23:00:32

Hi all, I'm Sark, aka Sarah.  I've been playing IF on and off for about five years, and while I freely admit to not being very good at it, I'm fascinated by the medium.  I'd love to try collaborating on a game, so if anyone's interested in starting a project together PM me or post on the thread I've started in "Looking for Collaborators."  I'm very flexible and 

On a less advertisement-like note, I'd say my favorite piece of IF is [s]Emily Short[/s] Suzanne Britton's "Worlds Apart," due to the vivid world it creates and the quality of the storytelling.  Outside of the IF genre I love just about everything Bioware has made, for much the same reasons.  I'm an English major and general purpose nerd.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=200#p19113
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-10 00:27:34

[quote="Sark"]On a less advertisement-like note, I'd say my favorite piece of IF is Emily Short's "Worlds Apart," due to the vivid world it creates and the quality of the storytelling.[/quote]
Last time I looked, Worlds Apart was [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=1aliwzro4e48mdlt]written by Suzanne Britton[/url], not Emily Short [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=200#p19114
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Sark / DateTime: 2011-07-10 00:58:39

D'oh!  Fail.  That's what I get for counting on my memory.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2767&start=0#p19115
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Creating multiple versions of a character.
User: Sark / DateTime: 2011-07-10 01:15:21

How would one go about implementing multiple forms of one characters, say in the case of a werewolf?  Each form would have different characteristics, such as carrying capacity, and some different gameplay options (character can break more things as a wolf than as a human).  I'm looking to implement this for both the viewpoint character and NPCs.  Any suggestions? (I'm using Inform 7)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2768&start=0#p19116
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Printing the name of the character
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-07-10 01:25:36

I've got a shapeshifter and I want to list the forms she can shift into.  They're all a type, so it's as simple as "Available forms: [list of forms]." (with an "after" rule for the current form), like so:

[quote]Available forms: cat, dog (current form), horse.[/quote]

Except that of course the current form prints as "yourself."  How do I make printing the name of the player actually print the name of the player in this case?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2769&start=0#p19117
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Conversation Topics
User: rotter / DateTime: 2011-07-10 03:46:17

One of my testers suggested that I include a "possible conversation topic" command in my latest creation.  I have done this once before but normally put any such clues in the hints.  What is the general view on this?  Good idea or not?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2770&start=0#p19118
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Spaghetti Code
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-07-10 03:47:00

Hi all,

I've put together some sick spaghetti code:
[code]
At the time when the autokommt timer clucks:
	say "[if MFZ flag is 1]Far to the southeast you see a car approaching.[end if][if MFZ flag is 2]The car approaches quickly. It's a blue VW Passat Kombi.[end if][if MFZ flag is 3]The Passat stops right beside you! The driver waves you to hop in. Hooray, a free ride![end if]";
	if MFZ flag is 3, now the VW Passat is in At the Bus Stop;
	now MFZ flag is MFZ flag plus 1;
	if MFZ flag is 2, the autokommt timer clucks in two turns from now;
	if MFZ flag is 3, the autokommt timer clucks in two turns from now.
[/code]

While it works as intended, I'm lacking understanding for some concepts that would have helped me. Could you perhaps advise me how I should have written this?
1.) As for the "say" command, how could I avoid this if-then-if-then code? I don't want to cycle the text as I want to play with the flag later on - I'm rather looking for the equivalent to "switch" from Inform 6.
2.) When I wrote "if MFZ flag is smaller than 4" I got a compiler error message. Why is that so?

Thanks and kind regards,

Grue

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2771&start=0#p19119
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Ending the story
User: rotter / DateTime: 2011-07-10 03:55:30

Hi, after a bit of advice as I'm stuck in my new game.

My story can be ended at a number of points and locations in the game.  I've handled the end story as a scene, which contains the end story command and loads of variable text.  This is built of different elements based on the position the player got in the story and key things they have done.  It works fine apart from a small niggle.

The player carries out an activity that ends the story. I'm using a variable to indicate whether the scene begins or ends.  The scene begins okay but the problem is that the player is allowed to complete the turn before the story ends.  How do I get around this?  Or, a better way to do it?

Thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2754&start=20#p19120
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why don't more games have devious serial killer plots?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-10 04:05:12

Off-topic answers to off-topic rant:
[quote="matt w"][rant]"It's only in the last few decades that serious fiction has begun to make serious reference to its own fictitiousness" is one of the stupidest things ever written in a smart article. You should be banned from opining about the history of fiction if you haven't at least opened [i]Tristram Shandy[/i].[/rant][/quote]
[rant]And what about the [i]True Story[/i] of Lucian? From the opening paragraph:
[quote]Now I am myself vain enough to cherish the hope of bequeathing something to posterity; I see no reason for resigning my right to that inventive freedom which others enjoy; and, as I have no truth to put on record, having lived a very humdrum life, I fall back on falsehood--but falsehood of a more consistent variety; for I now make the only true statement you are to expect--that I am a liar. This confession is, I consider, a full defence against all imputations. My subject is, then, what I have neither seen, experienced, nor been told, what neither exists nor could conceivably do so. I humbly solicit my readers' incredulity.[/quote]
Among my favourite lines are these, describing a conversation between Lucian and Homer, whom he has met on the Isle of the Blessed:
[quote]I asked [Homer] what was the precise significance of the use of the word [i]wrath[/i] in the opening sentence of the [i]Iliad[/i]. "No significance whatsoever," he answered. "It was the first word that came into my head."[/quote]
Writers were already making fun of literary critics in the second century!

By the way, I've never openend [i]Tristram Shandy[/i]. (I'm wondering whether your statement about it might not be a little anglo-centric?)[/rant]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2767&start=0#p19121
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating multiple versions of a character.
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-10 04:10:06

It is probably easiest to make different objects, and substitute them for each other when the change takes place.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2611&start=0#p19122
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Multiple Choice
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-07-10 04:13:11

Works! Thanks!!

(won't be long til my next question on this topic I guess [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2770&start=0#p19123
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Spaghetti Code
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-07-10 04:19:09

[quote="Grueslayer"]1.) As for the "say" command, how could I avoid this if-then-if-then code? I don't want to cycle the text as I want to play with the flag later on - I'm rather looking for the equivalent to "switch" from Inform 6.[/quote]
See chapter 11.8. in the manual. 

[quote]2.) When I wrote "if MFZ flag is smaller than 4" I got a compiler error message. Why is that so?[/quote]
The phrase you're looking for is "if MFZ flag is less than 4".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2767&start=0#p19124
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating multiple versions of a character.
User: Sark / DateTime: 2011-07-10 04:43:59

But then what do I do with the original characters?  Wouldn't they still be standing around?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2767&start=0#p19125
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating multiple versions of a character.
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-10 04:55:04

You would do something like this:
[code]To turn Bernie into a werewolf:
	move werewolf to the location of Bernie;
	remove Bernie from play.

To turn werewolf into Bernie:
	move Bernie to the location of werewolf;
	remove werewolf from play.[/code]
If your NPCs can carry things, or can enter containers, you may need to add some additional stuff, but this is the basic idea.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2769&start=0#p19126
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Conversation Topics
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-10 05:48:38

I vote yes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2769&start=0#p19127
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Conversation Topics
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-10 05:52:34

It depends on the game, of course, but in general I would also vote "yes". Few things are more irritating than an ask/tell interface and no idea what you ought to talk about. (Or even if you have some idea, you'll often have to try out dozens of topics.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2768&start=0#p19128
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Printing the name of the character
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-07-10 06:17:25

Try "[printed name of Whatever]."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2768&start=0#p19129
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Printing the name of the character
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-10 08:46:41

Here is some code that does what you want:
[code]"Test" by Victor Gijsbers

Test chamber is a room.

Form is a kind of person.
The cat is a form.
The dog is a form.
The horse is a form.

Cat is in Test chamber.

When play begins:
	change player to cat;
	remove yourself from play.


Every turn:
	let K be a list of indexed texts;
	let x be an indexed text;
	repeat with i running through forms:
		now x is printed name of i;
		if player is i:
			now x is "[x] (current form)";
		add x to K;
	say "These are the forms: [K].".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2769&start=0#p19130
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Conversation Topics
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-10 09:20:28

You wanna avoid this happening:

> ask npc about conversation topics

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2769&start=0#p19131
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Conversation Topics
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-10 09:26:44

In my less goofy reply - I guess this is the trouble with ask/tell, and potentially the trouble with giving what you might call hints in that area.

If you give players the topics, it can feel like choose your own adventure but with more typing required.

If you don't give them the topics (and the topics aren't well clued - this is the important part), it can be like a guess-the-verb problem, but  a worse one than usual.

If testers are telling you they want this feature, presumably they're not lying. But could their wants be solved with better clueing about the topics from you in the game prose? Or are they the kind of folks who would want this feature regardless? Those might be more important questions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2772&start=0#p19132
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Keyboard Assocation
User: tuatha / DateTime: 2011-07-10 10:27:44

I'm using Emily Short's "Menus" and "Basic Screen Effects."  The player can navigate the menus by using keystrokes.  For instance, pushing ENTER causes the selected item to activate, while pushing the UP arrow changes which item is selected.  She's already mapped several keys with functions:

78	move down rule
110	move down rule
80	move up rule
112	move up rule
81	quit rule
113	quit rule
13	select rule
32	select rule
130	move down rule
129	move up rule
27	quit rule

I'd like to add the ESC key to this list as a quit rule.  I can't figure out what number ESC is associated with, though.  Does anyone know how to figure this out?

What I've found so far:  these numbers are relayed through "Basic Screen Effects" to use the function "GetKey()".  I cannot find any other reference to "GetKey()," though.  Not in the documentation nor in the standard rules.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2771&start=0#p19133
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Ending the story
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-10 10:28:10

[url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2121&hilit=+turn+sequence]This topic might help.[/url] "Follow the shutdown rulebook" may be what you're looking for.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2772&start=0#p19134
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keyboard Assocation
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-10 10:34:49

I would guess it to be 27 (using the [url=http://www.asciitable.com/]ASCII table[/url]), but a quit-rule with 27 is already listed. That isn't working?

(You almost certainly want to test this with a released version of your game, because the IDE might be capturing some keys.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2754&start=20#p19135
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why don't more games have devious serial killer plots?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-10 10:46:59

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Off-topic answers to off-topic rant:
[quote="matt w"][rant]"It's only in the last few decades that serious fiction has begun to make serious reference to its own fictitiousness" is one of the stupidest things ever written in a smart article. You should be banned from opining about the history of fiction if you haven't at least opened [i]Tristram Shandy[/i].[/rant][/quote]
[rant]And what about the [i]True Story[/i] of Lucian? From the opening paragraph:
[quote]Now I am myself vain enough to cherish the hope of bequeathing something to posterity; I see no reason for resigning my right to that inventive freedom which others enjoy; and, as I have no truth to put on record, having lived a very humdrum life, I fall back on falsehood--but falsehood of a more consistent variety; for I now make the only true statement you are to expect--that I am a liar. This confession is, I consider, a full defence against all imputations. My subject is, then, what I have neither seen, experienced, nor been told, what neither exists nor could conceivably do so. I humbly solicit my readers' incredulity.[/quote]
Among my favourite lines are these, describing a conversation between Lucian and Homer, whom he has met on the Isle of the Blessed:
[quote]I asked [Homer] what was the precise significance of the use of the word [i]wrath[/i] in the opening sentence of the [i]Iliad[/i]. "No significance whatsoever," he answered. "It was the first word that came into my head."[/quote]
Writers were already making fun of literary critics in the second century!

By the way, I've never openend [i]Tristram Shandy[/i]. (I'm wondering whether your statement about it might not be a little anglo-centric?)[/rant][/quote]

Ha, you have me there, as I'm not at all familiar with Lucian and am surely being a bit anglo-centric. I should amend my statement to "People should be forbidden from making sweeping statements about the history of fiction that are falsified by the merest glance at [i]Tristram Shandy[/i]." (Which I've never actually finished.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2772&start=0#p19136
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keyboard Assocation
User: tuatha / DateTime: 2011-07-10 10:48:55

Just tried it on a released version, and still no luck.  That's strange, though.  The other keys are matched up with the ASCII table, so why wouldn't it recognize ESC?  I've tried using my ESC key with other programs, it works fine with them.  Maybe another extension is interfering?  I'll look into it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=200#p19137
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-07-10 10:51:36

To be fair, Emily Short's games are [i]also[/i] characterized by vivid worlds and quality storytelling.  (You should definitely check some of her games out if you haven't already.)

Anyway, hi Sark!  Welcome to the forum.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2767&start=0#p19138
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating multiple versions of a character.
User: tuatha / DateTime: 2011-07-10 10:56:55

I ran into a similar issue with my game.  I ended up using the extensions "Dynamic Objects" by Jesse McGrew.  With it, you can create multiple instances of any type of object, including NPCs.  If you want to create a potentially unlimited pack of werewolves, this is one way of handling it.  When you're done with them, though, be sure to delete the werewolves.  Otherwise, they could keep multiplying.  I'm not sure if that will eventually lead to game crashes or sluggish performance, but to be on the safe side, have some clause in there to delete the werewolves once you're done with them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2772&start=0#p19139
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keyboard Assocation
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-10 10:57:27

You want -8 if you're compiling to Glulx; for z-code use 27. To find the value of any key, you can do something like this:

[code]Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short.

When play begins:
	say "Press a key.";
	let N be the chosen letter;
	say "You pressed: [N]."[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2770&start=0#p19140
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Spaghetti Code
User: mucat / DateTime: 2011-07-10 11:00:37

Your code is not horribly tangled as it is, but one way to make it cleaner (and to eliminate the MFZ Flag global variable altogether) would be to break it into three separate timed events:

[code]
at the time when Passat enters view:
	say "Far to the southeast you see a car approaching.";
	Passat approaches stop in two turns from now;

at the time when Passat approaches stop:
	say "The car approaches quickly. It's a blue VW Passat Kombi.";
	Passat reaches stop in two turns from now;

at the time when Passat reaches stop:
	say "The Passat stops right beside you! The driver waves you to hop in. Hooray, a free ride![end if]";
	now the VW Passat is in At the Bus Stop;
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2772&start=0#p19141
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keyboard Assocation
User: tuatha / DateTime: 2011-07-10 11:38:20

-8 Does the trick!  Thanks for the help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2772&start=0#p19142
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keyboard Assocation
User: tuatha / DateTime: 2011-07-10 11:41:17

On a similar note, I want to have a menu pop up every time the player presses ESC.  Is there a way to do this in inform?  Specifically, is there a way to recognize when the player pushes ESC?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2767&start=0#p19143
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating multiple versions of a character.
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-07-10 11:53:02

[quote="tuatha"]When you're done with them, though, be sure to delete the werewolves.  Otherwise, they could keep multiplying.[/quote]

I think this is solid life advice in general.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2768&start=0#p19144
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Printing the name of the character
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-07-10 12:01:31

I'd like to just write an Instead rule that replaces "name of the player" with "printed name of the player" in this context:

[code]Instead of printing the name of the player while listing forms, say " ([printed name of the player])".[/code]

This works if I make it an After or Before rule, but it gives an error as an Instead rule.  Why?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2773&start=0#p19145
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Max and Min
User: tuatha / DateTime: 2011-07-10 12:01:33

Is there a Max and Min function in Inform?  Let's say I have three variables:  A, B, and C.  How would I find the largest?  The smallest?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2773&start=0#p19146
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Max and Min
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-10 12:15:49

I use these:

[code]To decide which number is the greater/max of/-- (X - a number) or (Y - a number):
	if Y > X, decide on Y;
	decide on X.

To decide which number is the lesser/min of/-- (X - a number) or (Y - a number):
	if Y < X, decide on Y;
	decide on X.

To decide what number is ABS/absolute value/-- of/-- (N - a number):
	if N < 0, decide on 0 - N;
	decide on N.[/code]

You can use like so:

[code]let N be max (X or Y);
let N be the lesser of X or Y;
let N be the absolute value of Y;[/code]

...etc.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2774&start=0#p19147
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: PLSG #8: The Last Dark Day
User: Rotonoto / DateTime: 2011-07-10 12:21:14

Betatesting and other comments appreciated: write me at (symbols for words) payyasi at hotmail dot com. The newest game in my Painless Little Stupid Games series is hard to describe without revealing too much, except that it's very nearly puzzleless, extremely short, and explains itself in less than 20 turns. Painless, little, and stupid, as usual. Download it here: <a class="postlink" href="http://w3.cnm.edu/~mrblonde/The%20Last%20Dark%20Day.z5">http://w3.cnm.edu/~mrblonde/The%20Last%20Dark%20Day.z5</a> or wait till it's on the Archive.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2767&start=0#p19148
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating multiple versions of a character.
User: Sark / DateTime: 2011-07-10 12:27:27

Thanks for all your help, guys.  And yeah, werewolves multiplying is generally bad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1635&start=0#p19149
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for writers
User: Sark / DateTime: 2011-07-10 12:29:12

So you're looking for coders, not writers in the sense of creating descriptions and plot?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2775&start=0#p19150
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: What do you look for in non-IF games?
User: Sark / DateTime: 2011-07-10 12:31:38

If you play games other than IF, what do you look for?

For me it's all about storytelling, and multiple endings are a big plus, as is good voice acting it there is any.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2773&start=0#p19151
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Max and Min
User: tuatha / DateTime: 2011-07-10 12:35:16

This is a great start, but would it work with more than two variables?  How would I get the Max of an indefinite set of numbers?  Perhaps I could iterate through the list of variables, testing to see which of a pair is larger.  The larger value stays, while the smaller one is discarded.  This is iterated until there's only one value left.  I'm having trouble figuring out how to implement this, but I'll keep thinking.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2773&start=0#p19152
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Max and Min
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-07-10 12:57:33

You can iterate through a list like this:

[code]Every turn:
	say the max of {4, 6, 10, 25, 8}.
	
To decide which number is the max of (L - a list of numbers):
	let maximum be entry 1 of L;
	repeat with X running through L:
		if X is greater than maximum, now maximum is X;
	decide on maximum.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2773&start=0#p19153
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Max and Min
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-10 13:34:23

Juhana beat me to it, but since my solution is slightly different:

[code]To decide which number is the greater/max of/-- (L - a list of numbers):
	sort L in reverse order;
	decide on entry 1 of L.
	
To decide which number is the lesser/min of/-- (L - a list of numbers):
	sort L;
	decide on entry 1 of L.

When play begins:
	let N be max {12, 21, 88, 7};
	say "[N]."
[/code]

The main annoyance with using lists is that you have to put digits--not variables--into the list. That is, "{score, max_score}" is not legal. Instead, you have to build the list first, e.g. "let L be a list of numbers; add score to L; add max_score to L; let N be max L."

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2762&start=0#p19154
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: ConsultTopic expression mismatch
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-07-10 13:47:36

You need to adjust the matchScore of your topics. Since "consult book about cabinet" can match both, it will always match the topic it finds first (for some arbitrary, VM dependent value of first.)

It's possible that the default order is based on source code order, and using templates arranges things differently at compile time - that would be the issue that NC mentioned. But I wouldn't call that a bug; it's just undefined behavior to be avoided.

I've tested the following code and it seems to work.

[code]
+ Consultable 'grimoire' 'GRIMOIRE'
	"It's bound in what appears to be human skin. "
;

++ ConsultTopic +80 'death'
	"You peruse the pages of the ancient grimoire. If the hour of your death was prophesied, it is not recorded here. "
;

++ ConsultTopic +100 'death spell'
	"After hours of sanity-blasting study, you master the awful syllables of the DEATH spell! "
;
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2769&start=0#p19155
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Conversation Topics
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2011-07-10 13:50:18

I vote no.
Not that I don't agree that it will probably be a big help. But if you're in a situation you don't ask the person in front of you: "What topics can I ask you about?"
The idea of IF is the player figuring out what to do or ask and if he fails, well, that's bad luck. That being said I would of course run a conversation where the NPC (or whatever) lead the player towards the topics.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2768&start=0#p19156
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Printing the name of the character
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-07-10 13:53:19

"Printing the name of something" is an activity, not an action so there aren't any "instead" rules governing it. Activities only have "Before," "For" and "After" rules (see ch. 17.3). You need a "For" rule followed by a colon:[code]For printing the name of the player while listing forms: say " ([printed name of the player])".[/code]See 17.10.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2773&start=0#p19157
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Max and Min
User: tuatha / DateTime: 2011-07-10 13:55:18

These are both far more elegant that what I had envisioned.  Thank you both!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2762&start=0#p19158
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: ConsultTopic expression mismatch
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-10 13:56:49

[quote="bcressey"]You need to adjust the matchScore of your topics. Since "consult book about cabinet" can match both, it will always match the topic it finds first (for some arbitrary, VM dependent value of first.)[/quote]
That doesn't explain why "death spell" won't be matched at all. There's no other topic that could match it, so a score should not be needed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2773&start=0#p19159
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Max and Min
User: tuatha / DateTime: 2011-07-10 14:12:53

On closer examination, it turns out these won't work--at least for what I'm trying to accomplish.  They can find the max number, which is great, but my goal is actually to find out which variable is the largest.  For instance, of A, B, and C, which contains the biggest number?

If it's not possible to this, I've found a work-around, but it's not very elegant.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2775&start=0#p19160
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What do you look for in non-IF games?
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-07-10 14:23:24

For me it's the corpses of other players.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2773&start=0#p19161
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Max and Min
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-10 14:24:49

I explained how you'd have to do that:

[quote="ektemple"]The main annoyance with using lists is that you have to put digits--not variables--into the list. That is, "{score, max_score}" is not legal. Instead, you have to build the list first, e.g. "let L be a list of numbers; add score to L; add max_score to L; let N be max L."[/quote]

Rather than use a list, you could also just extend the original two-term phrases to use three terms, e.g.:

[code]To decide which number is the greater/max of/-- (X - a number) or (Y - a number) or (Z - a number):
	let N be X;
	if Y > X, let N be Y;
  	if N > Z, decide on N;
	decide on Z.[/code]

This will allow you to use variables for any or all of the terms.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2773&start=0#p19162
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Max and Min
User: tuatha / DateTime: 2011-07-10 14:32:56

Sorry, either I'm missing your point, or I'm not explaining my own very well.  So I'm not looking for the largest number, but rather the largest variable.  Let say that the variables were cat, dog, and lizard.  I want to know, is cat the largest?  Dog?  Lizard?  Perhaps I could extend the current code by adding:

[code]if cat is N:
  <response>;
else if dog is N:
  <response>;
otherwise:
  <response>;[/code]

This isn't very elegant, but it looks like it will work.  Have a better idea?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2769&start=0#p19163
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Conversation Topics
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-10 14:51:10

[quote="Finn Rosenløv"]I vote no.
Not that I don't agree that it will probably be a big help. But if you're in a situation you don't ask the person in front of you: "What topics can I ask you about?"
The idea of IF is the player figuring out what to do or ask and if he fails, well, that's bad luck.[/quote]

No, if he fails because he's trying "Ask George about photograph" and the game wants him to "Ask George about snapshot," that's bad game design. And, as a designer, you won't be able to catch all the reasonable synonyms.

I'd think of the TOPICS command as a sort of hint system, but one that comes up so often that it's worth providing a special situational shortcut for. Topics are more like verbs than nouns, since they don't correspond to objects, so a conversation with a topic system is like a puzzle where you have to use a different custom verb for every interaction. You can and should make it so that most people will guess the topics, but you also can and should make it so that people who can't guess the topics can easily figure out what their alternatives are.* And in this case, since it's very easy to tell what people want a hint about -- the topics they can ask the current NPC about -- it's a good idea to allow them to access it with one command rather than making them go through a whole menu. 

In fact, I'd say that with maybe a very few exceptions -- Aisle? -- having a puzzle based around guessing a topic is always a bad idea. The number of topics you might ask a person about is almost infinite, so for the puzzle to be fair you basically have to give the answer away, and then it isn't a puzzle anymore. (Maybe you could have one NPC tell you that it would be in the PC's interest to ask another NPC about a certain topic? Not sure. If anyone thinks they've got an answer, that's great.) If your testers are telling you you need a TOPICS command, you do.

This is part of a general feeling I have, that the hint system (or at the least the walkthrough) is an essential part of the game's functionality. In IF players can get absolutely brick-walled by a puzzle when they can't guess a verb, an action, or God forbid a topic. It's part of the author's responsibility to make sure that they can still get something out of the game, preferably without having to go online for hint requests.

*I've been thinking of a game design where you would have a surprising conversation choice that opens up a different plot branch, and where I wouldn't want to disclose the topic because it involves the player making a moral choice that I'd want them to envision themselves, instead of having the game inform them that this choice is available. But if i did this, I'd warn the player up front that they could sometimes explore topics that weren't in the topic list, and I might include "(and one or more hidden topics)" in the topic list whenever one was available.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2773&start=0#p19164
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Max and Min
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-10 14:54:31

I think I get what you're looking for now, but I admit I'm a bit thrown by your use of cat and dog as variable names--wouldn't you implement cats and dogs as objects (persons), not variables? Anyway, assuming that we are talking about number variables here, then yes, the way to find out which variable contains the number returned from a max/min routine would be to compare back to the inputs, as you suggested. However, if what you're trying to do is print a different message depending on whether a given variable is greater than a set of others, wouldn't it make more sense to just compare them directly, rather than use a min/max function? Something like this:

[code]If cat is greater than or equal to dog and cat is greater than or equal to lizard:
      say "Cat is top dog.";
if dog is greater than or equal to cat and dog is greater than or equal to lizard:
      say "Dog is out front.";
if lizard is greater than or equal to cat and lizard is greater than or equal to dog:
      say "Lizard is the leader."[/code]

Or am I still missing something?

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2773&start=10#p19165
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Max and Min
User: tuatha / DateTime: 2011-07-10 15:04:16

You got it this time!

As for why I'm not just comparing the variables directly, it's because I'm actually working with sets with 4 to 12 variables.  Typing out 12 greater-than statements per line is a bit much.

Oh, and don't worry, I'm not actually comparing cats and dogs.  This is part of a decision making process during NPC conversation.  Depending on the mood set by prior conversation choices, the NPC will respond in various ways.  The real variables are things like trust, boredom, servility, and familiarity.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2773&start=10#p19166
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Max and Min
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-10 16:37:20

Hm, that sounds like a lot to try to juggle with simple variables. You might want to consider simplifying your scheme for your own sanity's sake...

But in the event that you don't want to simplify the scheme, you might take advantage of object properties to manage things a little more sanely. For example, you could store your values as number properties inside objects representing your 12 traits; you could then write "max" and "min" routines that compare the values of the properties, but return the corresponding object name rather than the number. Here's a bit of code that illustrates how this might work (note that this also allows you to divide your traits into subgroups for easier comparison:

[code]There is a room.

A trait is a kind of thing. A trait has a number called the quantity. The quantity of a trait is usually 3.

Interest is a kind of trait.

The engagement is a kind of interest. Engagement is a part of every person. The quantity of engagement is usually 2.
The boredom is a kind of interest. Boredom is a part of every person. The quantity of boredom is usually 4.

To decide what thing is predominant of/-- (L - a list of things):
	sort L in reverse quantity order;
	decide on entry 1 of L.

When play begins:
	let quality be the predominant of the list of interests that are part of the player;
	say "Your most salient interest is [quality] ([quantity of quality]).";
	let N be the quantified engagement of the player;
	say "Your engagement is [N]."
	
To decide which number is the quantified (V - name of kind of value K) of (P - a person):
	let X be a random K that is part of P;
	decide on the quantity of X.[/code] 

There are other ways to approach this kind of thing, of course. Other folks might chime in with totally different solutions.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2762&start=0#p19167
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: ConsultTopic expression mismatch
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-07-10 17:03:32

I can't recreate the case where the full phrase ('cabinet secretary' or 'death spell') is not matched at all, only the case where it matches the less specific topic.

'secretary' or 'spell' alone won't match; you'd need to modify the match pattern to allow that.

[code]
+++ ConsultTopic 'secretary|cabinet secretary'
   "Cabinet Secretary - The senior civil servant of the UK.  The permanent non-political head of the Cabinet Office. "
;
[/code]

RE: your consult topic example, you're correct that it matches 'foo bar' and not 'foo'. However, it will also match anything that includes 'foo bar':

[quote]
> consult book about foo bar
Matched.

> consult book about foo bar baz
Matched.
[/quote]

So if you had a 'foo bar baz' topic, the same issue would appear, with the same solution - specifying a match score to define the correct behavior.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=50#p19168
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-07-10 18:42:27

[quote="RealNC"][quote="Janka"]But in general, where's your point?[/quote]
I'm still trying to figure that out. "Why play IF". Well, why play *any* kind of game?[/quote]

For a long, long time I played nothing but graphical adventures. They gave me what I wanted - a good story, good puzzles, good characters (apart from the games with bad stories/puzzles/characters, of course), not to mention a very pleasing feeling of immersion in the story. Text adventures I fiddled with, but kept going back to graphical adventures because they were what I wanted to experience. Occasionaly I'd play a good RPG or cave crawl just for the heck of it.

The first non-adventure game I really REALLY played (with the exception of all the platformers of my youth such as Sonic, Mario, and the odd-genre game here and there, all casual stuff) was System Shock. It was then that I belatedly realized that different genres can still convey exactly the sort of thing I want to experience - wrapped up in a new package.

Today I'm as likely to appreciate Syberia as Deus Ex, and my games-to-play list includes stuff like Rayman, Silent Hill, replaying all my Gabriel Knight games, and of course my huge collection of IF. If I feel like a multimedia story, I'll boot up a graphical adventure, like when I recently finished Back to the Future. If I feel like shooting and jumping I'll boot up maybe Tomb Raider or Soul Reaver, or American McGee's Alice 2. 

All these games stimulate visual and auditory senses in a very immediate way, using them to achieve their goal. But for the times when I want all those things with a different kind of stimulation - in a sense, for the times when I'd rather read a good book than watch a good film - I play IF.

This thread has covered some very interesting points, but ultimately the answer to the original question is as subjective as ever.

Incidently - I've bought both Textfyre games and intend to keep buying them. And try playing Howard Sherman's games from the archive before investing into Malinche.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2754&start=20#p19169
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why don't more games have devious serial killer plots?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-07-10 19:14:50

While not being in thrall to a serial killer the way that you'll find in Heavy Rain and Andy Phillip's Enemies (surprised no one brought it up), I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream kinda sorta qualifies.

And if it doesn't, what the heck. Still a great game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2776&start=0#p19170
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Opinions on this story structure?
User: Sark / DateTime: 2011-07-10 19:56:16

I'm not very good at plotting, but I think I've got the rough structure of my first piece of IF (as well as the characters and setting, but that's not what this post is about).  I was hoping to get some critiques.  Anyone up for it?  Also, if anyone is interested in collaborating on this piece, let me know. 

[b]Act One: Initial Exploration[/b]

At the start of play, the player has three interesting leads to explore.  They can do so, discovering backstory along the way, or they can just wait.  Regardless, after a certain number of turns, the act automatically ends when the player character and all NPCs are mysteriously turned into animals.

During this act, the player can find out about a deceased character that the player character of whom the player character has many good memories.

[b]Act Two:Player as an Animal[/b]

The player is unable to communicate with the animal NPCs, who seem not to have retained their minds.  The room descriptions change to accommodate the player's new perspective.  Objects that the player must actively search for as a human (for example, by looking under a bed) are now visible by default.  Completing the main puzzle of this segment returns the player to human form.


[b]Act Three: The Meat of the Puzzles[/b]

Each NPC can now be returned to human form by solving a specific puzzle.  Once a certain number of these puzzles are solved, this next act begins.

During this act, the player can uncover less pleasant information about the remembered character.

[b]Act Four: Red Herring[/b]

This act begins with  a randomly selected rescued NPC telling the player character a secret which seems to point to the cause of recent events being related to one of the three leads from Act One.  All of these leads are about events outside the area to which the player has until now been confined.  The outside area now becomes accessible.  There, the can investigate any one of the three original leads, not just the one mentioned by the random NPC.  Once the player reaches a point at which it seems their avenue of inquiry has provided a definitive explanation and a solution for the current problem, the player character automatically returns to the original area of play.
[b]
Act Five: The Twist[/b]

The player character finds all but one of the NPCs dead, and the ghost of the remembered character preparing to kill the remaining NPC.  A conversation between the player and the ghost determines whether the NPC lives or dies.

[b]Epilogue[/b]

Depending on which character the ghost left for last and whether they lived or died, the epilogue has several variations.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2769&start=0#p19171
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Conversation Topics
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-10 21:36:44

[quote="matt w"]This is part of a general feeling I have, that the hint system (or at the least the walkthrough) is an essential part of the game's functionality. In IF players can get absolutely brick-walled by a puzzle when they can't guess a verb, an action, or God forbid a topic. It's part of the author's responsibility to make sure that they can still get something out of the game, preferably without having to go online for hint requests.[/quote]

I wouldn't want people to regard a walkthrough as an essential part of functionality in a game made now. I think including some form of walkthrough is a design choice for the author in relation to each game they make, not a responsibility (maybe unless you sold the game - in which case it'd be so well designed that they won't need the walkthrough much or at all?). If the default position is that there's always a walkthrough, that doesn't encourage strenuous testing and thought about the game.

If a game is crazy hard so most people need the walkthrough every 5 seconds, you're barely play the game, and that's saying something about the game design, which could have been dealt with before release... Unless the whole thing was designed to operate in that impossible way, in which case the walkthrough is now part of the design.

A badly conceived walkthrough (especially just a list of commands) can trash a game experience quicker than it fixes your stumbling block.

It's probably more realist to want everyone to ship a walkthrough, but I'd rather authors decide what they want to do and then stand or fall by their choices.

* What I'd enjoy is a box on the game cover with a tick, saying 'a group of humans was able to complete this game without any hints at all from the author'. It doesn't matter how big the group was, so long as they did it only with bouncing amongst other people whenever they got stuck. That to me would be a big endorsement of a well designed game... So long as it didn't take them years or something.

In my personal biases, I have a feeling that if your playtesters (collectively) can't clear your game without any help from you, you've failed to demonstrate something about your game. Except in a purposely crazy difficult game. But maybe even then, too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2777&start=0#p19172
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Google+ Invites
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-07-11 00:17:18

Invites are currently open. Not sure if they're public yet or how long they'll be open. If you'd like an invite, please PM me your email address. (Is this kind of thing allowed? I'unno.)

I'm not trolling for friends or trying to increase the number of people in my "Circles". I really have no need for you to be there if I don't know you.

However, I hate Facebook with some degree of passion. I'd like to see Google+ succeed. As Zuckerberg pointed out, if Google is going to succeed, they need a user base. 

I'm hoping that Google never releases a developer API. I really don't want to see another social networking platform dominated by Farmville and horoscopes. So far, it's looking pretty good. If you don't know anything about it, it integrates into the rest of Google's "services". Fantastic collaboration tool.

Anyway, if you want an invite, let me know. I'll send them for as long as Google will let me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2778&start=0#p19173
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Applying either/or properties once a condition is met.
User: Sark / DateTime: 2011-07-11 00:19:59

If I want a box to be openable only once a certain scene has begun, what should I do?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2776&start=0#p19174
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Opinions on this story structure?
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-07-11 00:36:12

What I personally noticed while reading was a slight focus on technical stuff - as if you had programming language mechanics in mind while writing that. 

[quote="Sark"]after a certain number of turns
The room descriptions change
are now visible by default
by solving a specific puzzle
a randomly selected rescued NPC
to which the player has until now been confined.
the epilogue has several variations.
[/quote]

I'm not in the position to say this is wrong, but I myself wouldn't do it. I just write down my plot and the puzzles and only later make up my mind how to realize it technically. In my opinion this results in a more interesting plot, but that's just my opinion.

But the general idea looks promising to me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2777&start=0#p19175
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Google+ Invites
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-07-11 00:53:51

Overe here, an author wrote an article for the the biggest online news magazine, depicting that G+ looks "grown up" compared to FB, and that FB is for showing who you are, while G+ is for showing what you like. 

I personally believe that a) a social network is what its users make out of it and that b) most people populating a social network are, when seen as a group, non compos mentis, and I my personal forecast from this is that G+ will see Farmville and horoscopes after a short while and simply become FB2.

Funny, in my reply to that article I named Farmville and horoscopes as examples as well. Must be the two most annoying things about FB (apart from old friends marking me in old binge drinking photos they upload for the unintended pleasure of my workmates).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2778&start=0#p19176
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Applying either/or properties once a condition is met.
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-07-11 02:54:17

[quote="Sark"]If I want a box to be openable only once a certain scene has begun, what should I do?[/quote]

I think this should do it:

[code]The Living Room is a room.

The box is a container. It is in the living room. It is closed and not openable.

Gift-giving is a scene. Gift-giving begins when the player is in the living room for the third turn.
When gift-giving begins: now the box is openable.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2775&start=0#p19177
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What do you look for in non-IF games?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-11 03:17:14

The "gg" after I have overrun their base with an early zealot rush!

This question is a little broad -- since the games I play range from [i]Starcraft 2[/i] to [i]The Witcher 2[/i] and from [i]Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup[/i] to [i]Team Fortress 2[/i], you can imagine that I look for many different things. (Of those four, [i]The Witcher 2[/i] is for Sark and [i]Team Fortress 2[/i] is for Grueslayer. [emote]:)[/emote])

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2778&start=0#p19178
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Applying either/or properties once a condition is met.
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-07-11 03:21:46

On reflection, it might be more elegant to create a new phrase.

[code]The Living Room is a room. The funny box is a container. It is in the living room. It is closed and not openable.
To pop the funny box: now the box is openable.

Gift-giving is a scene. Gift-giving begins when the player is in the living room for the third turn.
When gift-giving begins: pop the funny box.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2773&start=10#p19179
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Max and Min
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-11 03:27:25

Erik's solution is beautiful.

Depending on what else you want to to with this, another option would be to have a table which you fill with (column 1) the emotions, and (column 2) the associated numbers. You can then sort the table by the number, and check out which emotion corresponds to that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2779&start=0#p19180
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: A new way to create CYOA and export them to various formats
User: farvardin / DateTime: 2011-07-11 06:35:59

I'm developping a system for creating documentations in LaTeX (can be exported to PDF) and HTML.

It's using a very conveniant lightweight language markup called [url=http://www.txt2tags.org]txt2tags[/url].

It's very easy to use:

for example a chapter will be like this:

[code]== 45 ==[/code]

Write your description below, and then, to create a choice, write this:

[code]- Description of the choice, and a number at the end: 21[/code]

That's all.

I've adapted it so we can create CYOA games (with hypertext), and export them to several formats :
- PDF (so you can print / publish them)
- HTML, for web browsers. It can also use the RAMUS alternative rendering, see:  <a class="postlink" href="http://felix.plesoianu.ro/index.php/page:Software:Ramus">http://felix.plesoianu.ro/index.php/page:Software:Ramus</a>
- EPUB, for ebook readers
- HYENA and RENPY, specialised in CYOA and visual novels (the first one is used in project AON, the Lone Wolf CYOA)
- And now it can create Inform7 code, with the help of the extension Adventure Book by Edward Griffiths

A sample game (used in the Indigo Speedif contest):
<a class="postlink" href="http://ifiction.free.fr/parchment/parchment.html?story=http://ifiction.free.fr/jeux/the_blue_death.z5">http://ifiction.free.fr/parchment/parch ... e_death.z5</a>

The Ramus HTML export to compare:
<a class="postlink" href="http://anamnese.online.fr/site2/textallion/showcase/the_blue_death/the_blue_death_ramus.html">http://anamnese.online.fr/site2/textall ... ramus.html</a>

(the other ones are there: <a class="postlink" href="http://anamnese.online.fr/site2/textallion/showcase/the_blue_death/">http://anamnese.online.fr/site2/textall ... lue_death/</a>)

The presentation on ifwiki: <a class="postlink" href="http://ifwiki.org/index.php/Textallion">http://ifwiki.org/index.php/Textallion</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2779&start=0#p19181
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: A new way to create CYOA and export them to various form
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-11 07:02:33

Looking good, but wouldn't it make more sense to have the author input labels rather than numbers, and generate the numbers from the labels automatically? (In the way that LaTeX handles all its references.) I.e., something like:
[code]== airfield ==
- You buy the 20$ ticket for the local airline with the drunk pilot. [plane crash]
- You buy the 120$ ticket for the international airline. [safe landing]

== plane crash ==
 ...

== safe landing ==
...[/code]
I have never written CYOA, but keeping track of those numbers would seem rather irritating to me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2760&start=0#p19182
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Dead NPCs
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-11 07:34:21

Thanks to all.  Yesterday, I wrote the code for killing off the NPC in question.  I wound up implementing the dearly departed as a separate corpse object.  I placed the stuff he was carrying (only one item, actually) in the room where he died (on the theory that he would likely have dropped it).  I transferred his clothing to become parts of the corpse (the exception being his hat, on the theory that it probably would have been destroyed when his head was blown off).  I mention the clothing in the description of the corpse, but otherwise block any attempt to take it with a wisecrack about stripping dead bodies of their clothing.  That way, the player never gets a "the jacket seems to be a part of Fred's corpse" message.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2779&start=0#p19183
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: A new way to create CYOA and export them to various form
User: farvardin / DateTime: 2011-07-11 07:39:08

Yes it's possible. Yet, at the moment, if you do this, you'll have problem to export into some of the output formats, so you have to use numbers because it's easier to track down numbers instead of letters, which can be either words or sentences. For example in the txt2tags syntax, [plane crash] would display "plane", and link to "crash", while [plane crash #planecrash] would be better (and link to the #planecrash anchor, which can be reached by creating a ==Plane crash==[planecrash] heading).

Traditionally, CYOA where written using numbers as chapters, but if several people request it, I'll try to make it more friendly for using keywords instead, even if it's still possible at the moment (but you'll be stuck to HTML).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2780&start=0#p19184
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7:  Matches and ignition
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-11 07:47:41

I wonder if anybody has any ideas for how to deal with the following:

I have a limited number of objects which the player can light (in the sense of ignite).  I also have a box of matches.  I don't want to implement each match (for all practical purposes, the box contains an unlimited supply) and have no need to keep track of unused, lit or burnt-out matches.  I also don't want to make players go through the motion of lighting a match first every time they want to light something.  Ideally, I would just have a check which allows the player to light an ignitable object if he is in possession of the box of matches, and blocks it if he is not.

However, once the box of matches is introduced into the game, I have to assume that players will try to "light match," so I need to provide a sensible response to such an attempt.  Any thoughts for how to do this without implementing a match separately from the box?  (A response which says "Just tell me what you want to light" doesn't seem to do the trick; from the player's perspective, he wants to light the [i]match[/i],  which is why he typed that command.)

Thanks.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2777&start=0#p19185
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Google+ Invites
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-07-11 08:19:46

Indeed. The last thing I want to see is Google trying to replace Facebook. Facebook is, as far as I'm concerned, one of the biggest wastes of time and space on the internet. While it's original intentions may have been something similar to what Google is attempting now, it has degenerated into a tangled mass of infuriation. I sincerely hope that Google sticks to their guns and attempts to make G+ something different. Google already owns "the internet". Given current and possible integrations into everything from Google Docs to Latitude to Google search itself, the possibilities to make the service a true social networking and collaboration tool are astounding.

I spend more time deleting and blocking things from my "Wall" than I spend doing anything else on Facebook. Google doesn't need this kind of thing unless they want to be the Facebook2. I'm hoping they think more of their service than they do about just pulling in as many users as they can.

And I do have to occasionally "untag" myself in a picture, following that with a less than pleasant reprimand to the uploader.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2780&start=0#p19186
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Matches and ignition
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-07-11 08:42:14

I don't know if you've already found this, but from what I can tell [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/ex95.html]Example 407: The Cow Exonerated[/url] seems to meet your requirements.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2780&start=0#p19187
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Matches and ignition
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-11 08:54:15

It looks like that example does implement individual matches. I was hoping to avoid that, if possible.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2780&start=0#p19188
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Matches and ignition
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-11 09:01:56

One thing you could do is have "match" (and "matches") understood as the matchbox and block burning the matchbox with a helpful message ("No need to light a match on its own. When you want to light something, just type LIGHT LAMP when you've got the matches.") If you do this, you should also probably write a new rule to block taking the matches to hold them (so players who try to GET MATCH when holding the box get a similarly helpful message instead of "You already have that"). 

You might want to try to catch whether the player said "match" or "matchbox" so you can give the appropriate message. Here's something similar I did, coincidentally with a bag of tobacco (which could be understood using "bag" or "tobacco"):

[code]Bag-talking is a truth state that varies. Bag-talking is usually false.
After reading a command: 
	if the player's command includes "bag":
		now bag-talking is true;
	otherwise:
		now bag-talking is false.

Instead of searching the bag:
	say "The bag contains some aromatic tobacco."


Instead of taking the tobacco when the player has the tobacco and bag-talking is false:
	say "No need to take the tobacco until you want to roll a cigarette. Say ROLL CIGARETTE to do that."[/code]

So when you're holding the bag, TAKE TOBACCO responds as though you tried to take the tobacco from the bag, and TAKE BAG responds as though you tried to take the bag again.

UPDATE: Looking back at the code that comes from, Jim Aikin had the wise suggestion that you could just use a lighter, and then you don't have to worry about players trying to mess around with individual matches.

Also, if you do this you should implement LIGHT LAMP WITH MATCH etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2780&start=0#p19189
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Matches and ignition
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-07-11 09:13:49

[quote="Robert Rothman"]It looks like that example does implement individual matches. I was hoping to avoid that, if possible.[/quote]

Ah, my bad. I assumed you just didn't want to deal with the hassle of conceptualizing the code, not that their presence would be negative. Matt's idea is probably closer to what you'd want, in this case.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2778&start=0#p19190
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Applying either/or properties once a condition is met.
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-11 09:42:18

Or:

Check opening the box when scene foo has not begun:
  Instead say "Nope."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2778&start=0#p19191
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Applying either/or properties once a condition is met.
User: Sark / DateTime: 2011-07-11 10:09:03

Thanks for your help, guys.  Sorry to ask about such basic stuff, but I've never done anything like this before.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2772&start=0#p19192
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keyboard Assocation
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-11 10:21:31

It's possible, but complicated. Basically, you'd need to reimplement the basic input model (type a string and then register it using the return key) using the single-keypress model (each key registers as it's pressed). Jon Ingold's [url=http://threeedgedsword.wordpress.com/2011/05/20/interactive-parsing-v4/]Interactive Parsing[/url] does this. Currently it looks like the ESC registers as a space, but you ought to be able to change that. I'm not sure that it would be worth it if you didn't want Interactive Parsing's other features, though.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2780&start=0#p19193
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Matches and ignition
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-11 10:23:08

Thanks.  I'll probably go with something like Matt's suggestion.  It has the narrator stepping "out of character" a bit more than I'd like, but on balance it's probably the way to go.  Given the fact that the matches are not really important to the plot (other than as a gating mechanism to preclude the player from going around lighting things until he has been in the room where the matches are found), they're just not worth spending a huge amount of coding time on.

I had thought about using a lighter, but it doesn't fit into the setting quite as well.  A box of kitchen matches seems like something that would reasonably be kept in stock in the storeroom of a food service establishment; a lighter would probably only be found there if somebody happened to drop his lighter accidentally.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2780&start=0#p19194
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Matches and ignition
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-11 10:33:58

Well, you don't have to use the style of message that Matt suggested if you don't want to. Message like these would have the same effect, without the narrator directly telling you "there's no point to that now":
[quote]
>X MATCHBOOK
The matchbox has a neat Chinese dragon printed on the top. There are as many matches inside as you could ever want to burn.

>LIGHT MATCH
You light a match and watch it burn out.

>X MATCH
The matchbox has a neat Chinese dragon printed on the top. There are as many matches inside as you could ever want to burn.[/quote]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2776&start=0#p19195
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Opinions on this story structure?
User: Sark / DateTime: 2011-07-11 10:42:21

I do actually have a story, but while I've written a few of those in my time, I've never written a game before.  I'm more worried about the game-specific aspects of the writing process, at least for now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2745&start=0#p19196
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: want a free printed copy of the TADS2 manual?
User: mike111 / DateTime: 2011-07-11 11:06:09

what is TADS [emote]:?:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2778&start=0#p19197
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Applying either/or properties once a condition is met.
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-07-11 11:08:07

That's normal, and I for one don't mind. In fact, I've found that it pays off to refresh my basics every once in a while.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2766&start=0#p19198
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking to team up on a fantasy game
User: mike111 / DateTime: 2011-07-11 11:10:10

I could help in any way needed. I would be good at more complicated coding and mechanics. I apologize. I cant help in terms of a plot line, but when one is established, I would be happy to help in any way possible.I am also currently working on an I.F. simulation of Walt Disney World. If you would like my help, all I would need is instructions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2766&start=0#p19199
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking to team up on a fantasy game
User: Sark / DateTime: 2011-07-11 11:13:32

Thanks, Mike!  I'm really glad you're interested.  I've posted a general structure in the General Game Design area for critique. so please take a look at that and I'll PM you what I've got for a plot so far.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2776&start=0#p19200
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Opinions on this story structure?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-07-11 11:23:50

I'd say that, to the level of detail you've given us, this sounds like a fine, if very ambitious, project.  (Though the act structure may help you there, since you can perhaps focus on "just" Act I for a while and perhaps re-evaluate the ambitiousness of the rest of it as you go.)

The trick, of course, is going to be in the details.  I suspect you're on top of the characterization and setting, so let's talk about puzzles a bit.  One thing that jumped out at me was the bit where you mentioned some puzzles, and perhaps not having to solve all of them to move on in the story.  That latter bit is good since, especially in your first game, puzzles can be kind of hit-or-miss in terms of player enjoyment, but I'd also suggest that you work out well in advance (at, say, this stage) what kinds of puzzles you're looking at doing.  The kinds of puzzles you include will have a big impact on the player experience, and, if done right, can reinforce your narrative themes.  These days there's a greater emphasis on procedural puzzles, in which you code up a system (say, a magic system or a machine that your characters encounter), and draw puzzles out of that.  Em Short has a few words to say about that [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/current-playing-infidel/#more-1520]here[/url], and her own [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=p0cizeb3kiwzlm2p]Savoir-Faire[/url] is a wonderful example of a game that implements a full thematic system in its puzzles.

So in your case, presumably what you'd want to do is figure out what turns characters into animals and vice versa, and figure out [i]logical[/i] ways to meter out their progress back towards humanity.  So for example, instead of having some Towers of Hanoi stupidity to solve every time you want to transform someone (can you tell I'm still mad at Zork Zero?), maybe after the first human gets retransmogrified, the machine blows a fuse and you have to jam something suitably conductive into its place -- but to be a fair and interesting puzzle, anything conductive ought to work here, not just the actual fuse that you have to rifle through every drawer in the room to find.

Of course, in the IF community, we also have various expectations about fairness and unfairness of puzzles and what sorts of things are "totally trite and done to death," as any genre has.  One way to get a grasp on this is to read a bunch of reviews of past games, preferably from within the last couple of years, such as last year's Competition: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/16th_Annual_Interactive_Fiction_Competition">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/16th_An ... ompetition</a>

Specific to your story, you may also find it useful to look into [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/poll?id=8vgm7vu8b2viaxno]past games that used animals in the PC role[/url], and read about the various successes and failures of those.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2776&start=0#p19201
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Opinions on this story structure?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-11 11:33:54

I don't think you need to worry about not including IF-specific conventions in your outline. You're writing IF, after all...

This is an ambitious structural outline and sounds like it could make for an interesting game. Here are a few comments to think about:

In the first act, please be sure to make those leads clear to the player as early as possible, and in a way that they know what to do to begin to investigate each of them. I usually give new games only a few turns to hook me, so make sure that as a player I can see what I need to do and have some idea that the stakes are worth it...  Also, I would reconsider whether you really want to let the player simply wait or fumble through the first act--if you're picking up on the leads in Act 4, it would presumably be better if the player has some familiarity with them from Act 1. Moreover, it might be good to give the player some sense of having accomplished something, of moving the story forward based on his/her own actions.

It looks like the twist is intended to cause us to undertake a major revision of our idea of the "remembered character", with a little help from the tidbits we've picked up in Act 4. So the stakes there are both a random NPC's life, [i]and[/i] our reaction to the true nature of the remembered. Your description of Act 3 reads as if we don't have to rescue all NPCs--is there any guarantee that we will have spent some time with the randomly chosen NPC to this point? I wonder whether there is a good reason for the introduction of the random element here? As an author, could you guarantee the player more emotional involvement in the death of the NPC if you removed the randomness and ensured that this was an NPC we had spent time with?

Finally, you might consider whether the presence of three leads, and the freedom to follow up on one (and only one) in each of Acts 1 & 4, might make for too diffuse a storyline. Will we have enough information to care about the remembered character, especially in the case where the player fails to successfully follow up on any one of the leads before the great transformation?

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2776&start=0#p19202
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Opinions on this story structure?
User: mike111 / DateTime: 2011-07-11 11:36:04

Im afraid that all I can help with is the puzzles. I am not very good at story development, but I can help wherever I am needed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2754&start=20#p19203
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why don't more games have devious serial killer plots?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-11 11:47:56

[quote="matt w"]But it seems like an easy and lazy hook for a game (one plot coupon per level!) unless it's justified very well. Not that I haven't enjoyed some games that do this.[/quote]

Oh, absolutely.  I have all kinds of fun with plot coupon games.  (I actually think your linked article is kind of mean about "exploitation fiction" : it takes a lot of work to write good bad fiction.  I didn't finish it because I waded chest-deep into the pretention and then couldn't feel my legs anymore.)

[quote="Laroquod"]
Well, the prophecy thing is better than the serial killer as long as you buy the one-time special plausibility offer of... the prophecy itself. The 12-year-old saving the world thing, yeah... typically much worse than the serial killer thing, but mostly because with some exceptions it's for obvious reasons a 'juvenile' genre that dispenses with plausibility, etc.[/quote]

It's actually worse for me, because you have the more-or-less inevitable "but the prophecy meant something *more* than was initially implied!" bits.  So in Act III, we'll discover that the dragon that will eat the children of man isn't actually a dragon, it's the hero's creme brulee torch, and the children of man aren't actually kids but a library (ideas being the things left behind by people when they die).  Blah blah blah it's so dumb to believe or pay attention to prophecy.  Until next book!  I [b]hate [/b]this.  

It's also less "let's kick this story off" than "let's explain why the protagonists have to do dumb shit and angst about their impending deaths which totally aren't going to happen".  At least the serial murder thing has some energy to it, making it easier to suspend my disbelief.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2758&start=10#p19204
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Multiple Language Framework -- a good idea?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-11 11:52:37

I've never been quite comfortable with gettext, and I think it's a very un-Informish way of doing things. I might be willing to live with something like that under the hood without the printf-style formatting. From looking at NI translations of I7 source, I think that might not be so far-fetched...

[code]Table of Translations
source	target
"[The noun] doesn't move at all."	"[The noun] überhaupt nicht sich bewegt."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2780&start=0#p19205
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Matches and ignition
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-11 11:52:58

If there's a gas stove and/or candles in the restaurant (?), there's almost certainly one of those long click lighters.  (Of course, if you like matches, go with matches, but if you're looking for an excuse to use a lighter, most food service places don't have the time to fuss with matches or their quick burn-out.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2772&start=0#p19206
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keyboard Assocation
User: tuatha / DateTime: 2011-07-11 12:02:12

Interactive Parsing looks promising.  I've installed and fiddled with the code, but unfortunately, the relevant bits are written in Inform 6 and not Inform 7.  Specifically:

                             [code]  ! escape key
					keycode_Escape:
						if (cursor_position > 0)
						{
							InsertCharacterAt(' ', a_buffer, cursor_position);
							!a_buffer->(WORDSIZE + type_position) = ' ';
							ResetRunningChecks();
							BlankSuggestion();
							cursor_position++;
						}[/code]

I tried following this with the following statement:

[code]otherwise, carry out the summing main menu activity[/code]

Unfortunately, this gets an error.  Is there an easy translation of this into Inform 6?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2773&start=10#p19207
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Max and Min
User: tuatha / DateTime: 2011-07-11 12:10:57

There are definitely too many variables.  I've been working on this segment of NPC code for about two weeks, and it's finally coming to a close.  Hopefully I'll be done before the weekend.  Anyway, I now see cleaner ways to handle it, but I'm so deep in that it doesn't make sense to rewrite.  I'll keep your suggestion in mind for my next game, though.  It would have made coding this one go by a lot faster.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2769&start=0#p19208
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Conversation Topics
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-11 12:20:24

You've got to find some way to clue players in if you're using a topic-based system of conversation.  Especially if you don't have an insanely large system in place or the conversation is non-optional.

I'm showing my own social anxiety issues, but I often do think about what topics I can discuss at any given time, even in casual social settings.  And if game-me is conducting an investigation, say, I'll certainly have a list of topics at hand.  I think of TOPICS as "think, in-character, about what I might want to say next", which pretty much everyone does in conversation, especially conversations where only about 1% of your carefully selected options are going to yield any sort of progress.  

If you're not going to have TOPICS, you need to have something else.  Your play testers are struggling: what are they struggling with?  Is it a lack of implemented topics, or are they unclear what the goal is with the conversation they're having?  What are they missing?  

Most importantly: how are you going to help players who don't hit an essential topic or are missing the topics you've implemented?  

Re: walkthroughs - I prefer a robust hint system or at least a written out walkthrough (sentences rather than a list of commands).  I think it's a necessary part of functionality; one you hope won't be needed much, but one that will dramatically improve the play experience for a significant cohort of your players.  That's based on a vague goal of having lots of different people play and complete the game as far as they want to; other writers have other goals, of course.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2759&start=0#p19209
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Placing a new rule between two existing rules
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-11 12:31:26

[quote="severedhand"]... Have you seen 'Sorting out sorting?'

[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvTW7341kpA[/url][/quote]
That was awesome! I am so addicted to watching sorts.

<a class="postlink" href="http://flowingdata.com/2011/04/14/sorting-algorithms-demonstrated-with-hungarian-folk-dance/">http://flowingdata.com/2011/04/14/sorti ... olk-dance/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2776&start=0#p19210
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Opinions on this story structure?
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-11 12:38:19

[quote]Once the player reaches a point at which it seems their avenue of inquiry has provided a definitive explanation and a solution for the current problem, the player character automatically returns to the original area of play.
[/quote]

It sounds to me like one of the keys to making this work is to pick the right "trigger" for Act 5.  It sounds like you have a pretty complicated backstory, which, if I understand correctly, is given to the player in bits and pieces, depending on what the player does.  Furthermore, if I understand correctly, the trigger for Act 5 is not some specific action that the player does, but rather is based on his having obtained a certain aggregate mix of background information.

This implies that, as author, you have to make a judgment call about which combination (or combinations) of the bits and pieces of information the player will need to have discovered in order that he can reasonably be expected to have figured enough out.  I think a lot of play-testing, by persons who otherwise do not know the story, is crucial here.

The idea of everybody turning into animals is an interesting "hook."  Good luck -- I'd like to play the game when its done.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2779&start=0#p19211
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: A new way to create CYOA and export them to various form
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-07-11 12:43:55

This looks pretty awesome. It'd be cool to see an exporter to ChoiceScript and Undum.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.choiceofgames.com/blog/choicescript-intro/">http://www.choiceofgames.com/blog/choicescript-intro/</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://undum.com/">http://undum.com/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2772&start=0#p19212
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keyboard Assocation
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-07-11 13:06:33

[quote="tuatha"]I tried following this with the following statement:[code]otherwise, carry out the summing main menu activity[/code]
Unfortunately, this gets an error.  Is there an easy translation of this into Inform 6?[/quote]
[code]else CarryOutActivity((+ the summing main menu activity +));[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2632&start=0#p19213
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: [Solved] Cryptozookeeper: Getting the frog DNA
User: Flack / DateTime: 2011-07-11 13:10:09

Did you really figure that puzzle out on your own? I am amazed. I "figured it out" after badgering the author through e-mail. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2770&start=0#p19214
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Spaghetti Code
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-11 13:22:56

Or you could do something like this:

[code]Bus Stop is a room.

VW Passat Combi is an enterable container. Passat has a number called distance. The distance of Passat is 100.

When play begins: now the distance of Passat is 5.

Definition: Passat is approaching if the distance of Passat is greater than 0 and the distance of Passat is less than 6.

Every turn when Passat is approaching:
	decrement the distance of Passat;
	If the distance of Passat is:
		-- 4:
			say "Far to the southeast you see a car approaching.";
		-- 2:
			say "The car approaches quickly. It's a blue VW Passat Kombi.";
		-- 0:
			say "The Passat stops right beside you! The driver waves you to hop in. Hooray, a free ride!";
			now Passat is in the location;[/code]
There's no advantage to that if you just want to print out some messages, but if you wanted to put the car in scope while it's approaching, for example, this might help.

[code]After deciding the scope of the player when Passat is approaching:
	if examining, place Passat in scope.
	
Instead of examining the approaching Passat:
	say "The approaching car is about [distance of Passat in words] kilometers away."
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2762&start=0#p19215
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: ConsultTopic expression mismatch
User: zodraz / DateTime: 2011-07-11 13:30:26

many thanks bcressey for fixing the problem!

[code]+ cencomComputer : Heavy, Consultable 'cencom computer' 'cencom'
    desc()
    {
        cls();
        "<center><img src='computer.png'></center>";
    }
;

++ ConsultTopic +100 'cabinet secretary'
    "Cabinet Secretary - The senior civil servant of the UK.  The permanent non-political head of the Cabinet Office. "
;

++ ConsultTopic +50 'cabinet'
    "Cabinet - The Prime Minister and her senior ministers of the crown, i.e.  the committee that runs the UK. "
;

++ ConsultTopic +75 'cabinet office'
    "Cabinet Office - Government department responsible for working directly for the Cabinet. "
;[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2767&start=0#p19216
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating multiple versions of a character.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-11 13:30:41

I think the answer depends a lot on how complex the objects are. If the person is carrying a lot of things or they have a lot of relations or Understand rules connected to them, it may be better to keep the object and use a state property to make the change. The disadvantage of that is you have to check the state variable every time you do something that would work differently depending on the state. But the advantage is you don't have to redirect all the relations you've already set up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2760&start=0#p19217
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Dead NPCs
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-11 13:39:35

I think it depends on the context. In my WIP there's going to be a little bit of combat, so I have three states for people: alert, comatose, and dead. The standard rules that prevent interfering in people's personal space are all modified to be aware of the different states.

It's also a game with zombies, so dead is a bit of a fuzzy concept. I've been debating whether to add a fourth "reanimated" state.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2772&start=0#p19218
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keyboard Assocation
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-11 13:46:16

I think you'll probably have to do more than just fire the menu activation rules. You'll also need to suspend or cancel the main game input, as well as restart it when you're done with the menu. Depending on how the extension's code is set up, this may be easy or it may be hard, and you may or may not have to write in I6 as well as I7.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2763&start=0#p19219
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Non-obvious nested containers
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-07-11 13:48:53

[quote="mucat"]One thing that might help is using the "printing a locale paragraph about" activity for the bank of mailboxes.

...

I can't think of any entirely perfect way to do what you want, though, without rewriting some library rules from scratch.[/quote]Actually, that worked perfectly [emote]:)[/emote] Thank you.
What I've got now is this:[code]For printing a locale paragraph about the ApartmentMailboxBank:
	say "You can see a front door and a row of mailboxes here[no line break]";
	now the ApartmentMailboxBank is mentioned;
	now the FrontDoorOfApartment is mentioned;
	if the Apartment6Mailbox is unlocked and the Apartment6Mailbox is closed:
		say ". Mailbox #6 is unlocked[no line break]";
	if the Apartment6Mailbox is open:
		say ". Mailbox #6 is open[no line break]";
		if the Apartment6Mailbox contains something:
			say ", and contains [a list of things in the Apartment6Mailbox][no line break]";
	say ".[paragraph break]";[/code]I didn't need anything fancy for dealing with each individual mailbox, since the only mailbox ever used is #6, the rest are basically scenery.

Thank you again!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2775&start=0#p19220
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What do you look for in non-IF games?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-11 14:52:27

I play a lot of non-IF, but I look for a single-player experience that will be fun.  Which covers a lot of ground, from Dwarf Fortress to Amorphous+ to The Witcher and back.  I try for ones that aren't too technically demanding or are rewarding enough that they're worth it in other ways.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2775&start=0#p19221
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What do you look for in non-IF games?
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-07-11 15:17:37

I look for systems that interact with each other in interesting ways, and worlds with a lot of places to explore and things to find. I like games that give you a lot of choices as to what to do and how to approach the challenges.

I generally couldn't care less about story. If it's there and it's good, then that's great, but that's not something I expect (or particularly want) from games at this point.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=210#p19222
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-11 15:55:57

Ok, I'll try to introduce myself without giving out too much information.

I used to do IF when I found the Internet Fiction Archives in 1992.
People were talking about TADS (which I thought was a retro Frogger) all the time, so I just had to play it.

My first game was something called Arrival: Land Of Stereotypes or something like that (which looked better on HTML Tads).
My second game was a detective story set at 2121 Baker street, you guessed it, Sherlock Homes (mid 90s).
I started getting into AIF with Star Trek parodies like A Night With Deeana Troy (witch later split first and last name for two different games) and A Night With Captain Janeway (Captain dropped).

After I got HTML TADS, I went to the The Brass Lantern again, which directed me the Tads home (tads.org).
It was there I got my first taste of picture Tads in The Cristal Skull (which should be renamed 12-21-2012).

For a while I was at the Yahoo Groups for AIF, but I still liked my IF.
Now I don't go there anymore.
I consider myself a noobie (nooby? noob? whatever,) because I really haven't played for many years.

It's now 2011, and HTML Tads has gotten to 3.0.18.1.
Are there any new games out there that can take advantage of the new features (if there are any)?

On this computer I've just downloaded filfre 1.0, so I would be interested in those formats as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2776&start=0#p19223
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Opinions on this story structure?
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-11 16:07:59

[quote="Sark"]I'm not very good at plotting, but I think I've got the rough structure of my first piece of IF (as well as the characters and setting, but that's not what this post is about).  I was hoping to get some critiques.  Anyone up for it?  Also, if anyone is interested in collaborating on this piece, let me know. 

[b]Act One: Initial Exploration[/b]

At the start of play, the player has three interesting leads to explore.  They can do so, discovering backstory along the way, or they can just wait.  Regardless, after a certain number of turns, the act automatically ends when the player character and all NPCs are mysteriously turned into animals.

During this act, the player can find out about a deceased character that the player character of whom the player character has many good memories.

[b]Act Two:Player as an Animal[/b]

The player is unable to communicate with the animal NPCs, who seem not to have retained their minds.  The room descriptions change to accommodate the player's new perspective.  Objects that the player must actively search for as a human (for example, by looking under a bed) are now visible by default.  Completing the main puzzle of this segment returns the player to human form.


[b]Act Three: The Meat of the Puzzles[/b]

Each NPC can now be returned to human form by solving a specific puzzle.  Once a certain number of these puzzles are solved, this next act begins.

During this act, the player can uncover less pleasant information about the remembered character.

[b]Act Four: Red Herring[/b]

This act begins with  a randomly selected rescued NPC telling the player character a secret which seems to point to the cause of recent events being related to one of the three leads from Act One.  All of these leads are about events outside the area to which the player has until now been confined.  The outside area now becomes accessible.  There, the can investigate any one of the three original leads, not just the one mentioned by the random NPC.  Once the player reaches a point at which it seems their avenue of inquiry has provided a definitive explanation and a solution for the current problem, the player character automatically returns to the original area of play.
[b]
Act Five: The Twist[/b]

The player character finds all but one of the NPCs dead, and the ghost of the remembered character preparing to kill the remaining NPC.  A conversation between the player and the ghost determines whether the NPC lives or dies.

[b]Epilogue[/b]

Depending on which character the ghost left for last and whether they lived or died, the epilogue has several variations.[/quote]
I've always wanted to make an IF (LMS The Video Game), but I don't know a thing about programming.
Actually I don't know much about computers in general let alone making a game.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2632&start=0#p19224
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: [Solved] Cryptozookeeper: Getting the frog DNA
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-11 16:20:55

I didn't figure out the puzzle, just the command. I typed a LOT of random verbs, and hit the one that worked [emote]:P[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2745&start=0#p19225
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: want a free printed copy of the TADS2 manual?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-11 16:23:33

[quote="mike111"]what is TADS [emote]:?:[/emote][/quote]
Only the most powerful IF authoring system on the planet. Nothing to see here, move along.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2772&start=10#p19226
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Keyboard Assocation
User: tuatha / DateTime: 2011-07-11 16:45:28

Thanks for the suggestion, Emacs, but for some reason it's giving a buggy response.  The main menu doesn't come up, but instead I get some nonsense text about a door.  My feeling is that it's not worth the effort.  The player can still type "Menu" or I can even insert a hyperlink to bring up the menu screen.  There are definitely options.  Thanks, anyway!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2769&start=0#p19227
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Conversation Topics
User: rotter / DateTime: 2011-07-11 16:46:48

Thanks for the advice people.  The trouble is I'm not really sure.  My game has a hint system, which eventually will give away the answer basically.  The particular point in the game was odd as well.  An office, with a desk.  On the desk a framed photograph of a woman.  One NPC in the room.  So I would ask the NPC about the desk, photograph, woman, wife, girlfriend, mother etc.  Could also break the photograph to see if it generated a response.  But, that is a different line of discussion!

If I did include a TOPIC command it would be experience based - only listing the topics you should know about at that point in the game.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2779&start=0#p19228
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: A new way to create CYOA and export them to various form
User: Janka / DateTime: 2011-07-11 16:49:48

[quote="farvardin"]Traditionally, CYOA where written using numbers as chapters, but if several people request it, I'll try to make it more friendly for using keywords instead, even if it's still possible at the moment (but you'll be stuck to HTML).[/quote]
I got the impression Victor just meant your preprocessor should track the symbolic names and replace them by random node numbers automatically.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2781&start=0#p19229
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Off the top of my head
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-11 16:56:49

Multiple doors categorized by color, number, letter, or a combination.
Pickup unobtainable even with path present, unless barrier is closely examined.
Path or paths not present until map is read.
Item traded with NPC for next clue and points unless kept in inventory for multiple clues and points (path on map highlighted).
Path forks off in three for live or die situation.
Must go back to checkpoint to buy tools to help you on your way or object for NPC who refuses to help you.
Boss and before boss confrontations.

Inspired by Labyrinth: The Game.

Is this doable by someone or will you tell me to make it myself?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2745&start=0#p19230
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: want a free printed copy of the TADS2 manual?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-07-11 17:10:15

[quote="RealNC"][quote="mike111"]what is TADS [emote]:?:[/emote][/quote]
Only the most powerful IF authoring system on the planet. Nothing to see here, move along.[/quote]
Yup. TADS 3, that is. TADS 2 was certainly capable, but it was pretty much in the same class as Inform 6 and Hugo.

TADS 3 is unjustly neglected. In spite of Eric's marvelous work writing massive tutorials, it still intimidates newcomers. And its code is not THAT much harder to read or write than I7 code, so it's hard for me to understand why.

Well, there's the Mac IDE, I suppose. That's not irrelevant.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2499&start=10#p19231
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: following npc's
User: zodraz / DateTime: 2011-07-11 17:20:44

I modified your example so the npc follows two routes, one for each agenda.

[code]#charset "us-ascii"
#include <adv3.h>
#include <en_us.h>

versionInfo: GameID
    IFID = '64633ec6-ae02-509a-26a4-b76b69540da8'
    name = 'Your New Game Title'
    byline = 'by Your Name'
    htmlByline = 'by <a href="mailto:your-email@host.com">
                  Your Name</a>'
    version = '1'
    authorEmail = 'Your Name <your-email@host.com>'
    desc = 'Put a brief "blurb" about your game here.'
    htmlDesc = 'Put a brief "blurb" about your game here.'
;

gameMain: GameMainDef
    initialPlayerChar = me
;

houseBarrier : TravelBarrier
   canTravelerPass(traveler) {return housePass.isIn(traveler); }
   explainTravelBarrier(traveler) { "You can't go into other peoples houses. "; }
;

roomZero: Room 'room zero'
    east = roomOne
;

roomOne : Room 'room one'
    east = roomTwo
;

+ peters : Person 'sir richard peters' 'peters'
    isHim = true
    isProperName = true
    wander1 = true
    wander2 = nil
;
++ housePass : Component
;

// first peters route from edenbridge to mod, modify rooms as required
// second peters will be the same but a different route to clanricade gardens
++ petersWanderAgenda1: AgendaItem
    isReady = peters.wander1
    initiallyActive = true
    wanderDirection = 1
    petersRoute1 = 1
    routeList = [roomOne, roomTwo, roomThree, roomFour, roomFive, roomSix, roomSeven]
    invokeItem()
    {
        local idx = routeList.indexOf(peters.getOutermostRoom);
        if (idx == 1) wanderDirection = 1;
        else if (idx == 7) wanderDirection = -1;
        idx = idx + wanderDirection;
        local dest = routeList[idx];
        peters.scriptedTravelTo(dest);
        petersRoute1 ++;
        if(petersRoute1 == 13)
        {
            petersRoute1 = 1;
            peters.wander1 = nil;
            peters.wander2 = true;
        }
    }
;

++ petersWanderAgenda2: AgendaItem
    isReady = peters.wander2
    initiallyActive = true
    wanderDirection = 1
    petersRoute2 = 1
    routeList = [roomOne, roomTwo, roomThree, roomFour, roomFive, roomSix, roomSeven, roomEight, roomNine, roomTen]
    invokeItem()
    {
        if(peters.isIn(roomOne)) newsPaper.moveInto(peters);
        local idx = routeList.indexOf(peters.getOutermostRoom);
        if (idx == 1) wanderDirection = 1;
        else if (idx == 10) wanderDirection = -1;
        idx = idx + wanderDirection;
        local dest = routeList[idx];
        peters.scriptedTravelTo(dest);
        petersRoute2 ++;
        if(petersRoute2 == 19)
        {
            petersRoute2 = 1;
            peters.wander1 = true;
            peters.wander2 = nil;
        }
    }
;

roomTwo : Room 'room two'
    west = roomOne
    east = roomThree
;

roomThree : Room 'room three'
    east = roomFour
    west = roomTwo
;

roomFour : Room 'room four'
    west : OneWayRoomConnector { -> roomThree travelBarrier = houseBarrier } 
    east = roomFive
;

+ me : Actor
;

roomFive : Room 'room five'
    west = roomFour
    east = roomSix
;

roomSix : Room 'room six'
    east = roomSeven
    west = roomFive
;

roomSeven : Room 'room seven'
    west = roomSix
    east = roomEight
;

roomEight : Room 'room eight'
    west = roomSeven
    east = roomNine
;

roomNine : Room 'room nin'
    east = roomTen
    west = roomEight
;

roomTen : Room 'room ten'
    west = roomNine
;

[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2776&start=0#p19232
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Opinions on this story structure?
User: Sark / DateTime: 2011-07-11 17:49:09

[quote="IF noob"]I've always wanted to make an IF (LMS The Video Game), but I don't know a thing about programming.
Actually I don't know much about computers in general let alone making a game.[/quote]

I didn't know anything about making games either until about a week ago.  Inform 7 is really easy to learn.  but what's LMS?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2758&start=10#p19233
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Multiple Language Framework -- a good idea?
User: Janka / DateTime: 2011-07-11 17:55:06

As I've noted before, a simple table-driven approach (either Inform7 tables or gettext) would not be sufficient to generate natural language. Which is still the goal, I think. Take Plurality by Emily Short as an example: it has some code to produce the correct possessive for an English noun. But in English, that's simple. In contrary for German, it's required to know the declension of the noun to do that. And as there is no rule for that, the extension either has to use a German dictionary (impractical) or let the game author hint it. So Plurality even has to get an interface change to be able to produce natural German sentences.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2781&start=0#p19234
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Off the top of my head
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-07-11 18:04:04

Are you asking if these things have already been done?  The items on your list are pretty vague, but most of them seem familiar, some to the point of being considered trite.  Categorized doors are done in many old-school or old-school-style text games (most tastefully in [i]Savoir-Faire[/i], in my opinion).  Requiring players to carefully examine barriers, and to go back to checkpoints to buy things or bribe NPCs are staples of some genres of adventure games (and some platformers!).

Or are you asking if they are implementable? If that's the question, sure, none of those things would be particularly tricky to do in either Inform or TADS, some of them might even be possible in Undum or ChoiceScript.  If you have questions on implementation details after reading the documentation for the language of your choice, you should ask them in the language-specific forums here.

Or are you asking someone else to do them for you?  In that case, you should probably present a solid argument as to why anybody should.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2769&start=10#p19235
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Conversation Topics
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-11 18:16:35

[quote="rotter"]The particular point in the game was odd as well.  An office, with a desk.  On the desk a framed photograph of a woman.  One NPC in the room.  So I would ask the NPC about the desk, photograph, woman, wife, girlfriend, mother etc.[/quote]

Well, in a way this illustrates my complaint -- the number of things you can ask about is so open-ended that it might be hard to hit on (one of the) correct topic(s).

Maybe in this case you could have the NPC start talking when he notices the PC examining the picture?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2758&start=10#p19236
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Multiple Language Framework -- a good idea?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-11 19:02:49

[quote="Janka"]As I've noted before, a simple table-driven approach (either Inform7 tables or gettext) would not be sufficient to generate natural language (which is still the goal, I think). Take Plurality by Emily Short as an example: it has some code to produce the correct possessive for an English noun. But in English, that's simple. In contrary for German, it's required to know the declension of the noun to do that. And as there is no rule for that, the extension either has to use a German dictionary (impractical) or let the game author hint it. So Plurality even has to get an interface change to be able to produce natural German sentences.[/quote]
Hm, I think you may be misunderstanding the purpose of Victor's proposal. The idea is that the basic translation of Inform to the new language, including the kinds of library code needed to support gender, case, plurality, etc. are largely or completely taken care of already. Victor's proposing a way to make it easier for the author of any old extension to provide the text of the extension in multiple languages (my and Juhana's variations are intended to make it easy for end users to translate an extension after the fact as well). These translations would be able to make use of any tokens and text substitutions made available by the main translation library.

[quote="capmikee"]I've never been quite comfortable with gettext, and I think it's a very un-Informish way of doing things. I might be willing to live with something like that under the hood without the printf-style formatting. From looking at NI translations of I7 source, I think that might not be so far-fetched...

[code]Table of Translations
source	target
"[The noun] doesn't move at all."	"[The noun] überhaupt nicht sich bewegt."[/code][/quote]

Mike, I'm not sure exactly what you mean, but it's not possible to do what you seem to be suggesting by that table--Inform can't directly match a text that includes substitutions. That's because, when the text includes substitutions, it compiles to a function rather than just a numeric identifier. You [i]can[/i] do it with indexed text,  though, but I don't think it's desirable to force all strings in an extension to be indexed text just so that you can write, e.g. 'print "[The noun] doesn't move at all."' rather than 'print the noun doesn't move message'. The gettext-inspired solution that Juhana suggested allows for strings to be stored as text, but every string would have to be typecast to indexed text before printing to check for and carry out any simple gettext-style substitution. That may or may not be acceptable to potential users.

Anyway, here's a quick illustration of the untenability of direct text matching:

[code]There is a room. 

Bob is a man. The player is Bob.

Table of Translations
original	translation
"[printed name of the player] exists."	"Existe [printed name of the player]."

When play begins:
	print "There is a [printed name of the player]."
	
To print (msg - text):
	if msg is an original listed in the Table of Translations:
		say translation entry;
	otherwise:
		say "Could not match string."[/code]

The text will not be matched. Move to indexed text, though, and it will (you'll need to type at least the first column as indexed text as well as the input to the "print..." phrase).

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2782&start=0#p19237
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Which authoring system to use for a graphical adventure?
User: Pelican / DateTime: 2011-07-11 19:36:50

I'd like to add graphics to my text adventure.  I wonder, what is a good system that allows me to easily add graphics?  I've tried to find details from the Inform 7 Web site, but can't see where this is mentioned and what graphics features are present.

I'd prefer:
[list]
[*]Pictures of the landscape are displayed when you are in a certain location.[/*:m]
[*]Pictures of items are displayed when you type 'look at X'.[/*:m]
[*]I don't want pictures to be cut in half, e.g. when I type a lot of commands, don't want the picture to scroll up so that it is partially covered, the picture area should be undisturbed by the text.[/*:m]
[*]I don't like overly complicated interpreter interfaces that include lots of extra visual elements, like compasses, maps, etc.[/*:m][/list:u]

I'm concerned text and graphics are a bad match, and might even threaten the player's feeling that they are in the story.  Do you know of any games where graphics are used quite successfully in combination with a text parser?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2769&start=10#p19238
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Conversation Topics
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2011-07-11 19:38:26

I had a similar dilemma in my game.  I implemented a very basic ASK / TELL ABOUT dialogue system.  And from my testers I was able to see lots of different things they tried.  So I fleshed out a lot of synonyms and various other phrases to be handled either with synonyms or occasionally with an UNDERSTAND AS A MISTAKE command.  Nonetheless, some testers still felt they had to guess the topic.  And as much as I might think things will flow in a certain fashion with the player picking up on phrases leading to deeper exploration of new topics, it doesn't always unfold that way for the player.  So I did end up implementing a TOPICS command in addition to the full online hints.  (I also implemented a more limited HINT that just tells you something about the current location.)  While a perfect game might not require it, I felt that it's up to the player to decide if he or she wants to use the TOPICS command and I'd rather they not feel totally stuck. 

I don't know how other people implemented TOPICS but mine is quite simple.  I look to see what NPC is in the room and if there's just one, I list some topics.  (If there are none or more than one, I am a bit more generic in the topics suggested.)  If there are some items that have been discovered, I add a few of those.  (And some topics like "whereabouts" or "alibi" are also applicable to other NPCs.)  So while it's not a completely static list of topics, it's also not a full blown dynamic system.  Basically it was less than an hour's worth of coding for the 5 NPCs and other cases.  

I wrote a bit about the use of TOPICS and keyword interface here:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com/2011/05/keyword-interface.html">http://www.z-machine-matter.com/2011/05 ... rface.html</a>
--Zack

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2775&start=0#p19239
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What do you look for in non-IF games?
User: Kytaari / DateTime: 2011-07-11 19:42:28

I agree almost entirely with Shammock: I'm really into exploration and adventure in the games I play. I believe IF and MUDs provide the best experience for this facet of gameplay, but it takes more concentration; hence why I usually spend more time playing "eye-candy" games instead. 

I play a lot of RPGs (both Western and Japanese), and I occasionally play graphic adventures, too. Sometimes I play something like a platformer or an FPS (If I have one), but very rarely. When I do play any of these games, it's all about immersion with me, and I enjoy hoping around from place to place in a rather mindless fashion. 

Oh yes, I occasionally enjoy strategy game that has either exploration or setting as a major component: something like CIV IV, Master of Orion, and Balor of the Evil Eye. 

And as Shammock has previously stated: story, I don't expect anything great from video games (at this point). I think that may eventually change, but I'd only be letting my hopes down if I picked up video games expecting a great story; I might as well enjoy them for the virtues that they deliver well for now, and for me that's adventure and exploration.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2782&start=0#p19240
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which authoring system to use for a graphical adventure?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-11 20:02:56

Most systems allow you to define areas/windows on the screen that will display graphics. Inform, TADS, Hugo and Adrift support this. Others probably too.

[quote="Pelican"]I'm concerned text and graphics are a bad match, and might even threaten the player's feeling that they are in the story.  Do you know of any games where graphics are used quite successfully in combination with a text parser?[/quote]
No, they aren't a bad match by themselves. Like everything else, it depends on your design.

Commercial games that did it (and did so extremely well, IMO) include [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=3q9hg2onqjftx5vi]Eric the Unready[/url], [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=oh79xwaslykbphw6]Gateway[/url] and [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=1t5qw2alatghgpv2]Gateway 2[/url]. They were very customizable, allowing the player to disable stuff like the compass rose, map, verb lists, and all that stuff.

A TADS game that implements it in a somewhat similar manner is [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=c8qs0xgkkfp5u6u4]Macrocosm[/url]. Another approach is [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=p9ci8ridqcdcpw5b]Six Stories[/url]. Six Stories, however, uses an approach you said won't suit you (graphics scroll off to the top as you play.)

Games written in Hugo that do the same include [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=uaxh30z0kh7n8nt3]Necrotic Drift[/url], [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=6xbqnmlxvkju2n04]Cryptozookeeper[/url] and [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=v0a4wtgwepxumryc]Future Boy[/url].

Games like that tend to be in the top-part of my favorite games list. Except for Macrocosm, which is an example of what I wrote earlier; text and graphics are a bad match only if the game design itself isn't really that great. If it's done right, graphics (and music/sound) can add immensely to the game. They don't threaten the player's feeling that they are in the story. In fact, they can enhance it. Try Cryptozookeeper and Six Stories, for example. Immersion is great, especially in games that allow you to actually see the NPCs you meet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2783&start=0#p19241
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Mobile App Pricing for IF...?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-07-11 20:39:30

I was curious as to whether anyone had considered this? Guess I'll make a poll about it. We see apps for platforms like Android and iPhone all the time, many of which are absolute crap. Some of them are free, some of them cost as little as $0.99. We've discussed off and on that IF isn't a mainstream gaming market. However, some developers devote a LOT of time and effort into creating IF for the rest of us to enjoy.

TextFyre games go from between $10 and $20, but their games are either stand-alone intepreters or existing interpreters wrapped in a graphical interface. They should get more for what they're selling.

So the question... Would you pay $0.99 for an to support the author's efforts?

(Updated to allow an author standpoint and allow two votes so people could vote from an author standpoint and player standpoint. If you're going to select two options, please select one of each.)

(Updated again after some consideration.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2782&start=0#p19242
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which authoring system to use for a graphical adventure?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-11 21:45:36

It sounds like you just want a simple solution for showing one graphic at a time. Using Inform, Emily Short's Simple Graphical Window extension will make that very easy (along with the Location Images extension, if you want to use that). If you want multiple images onscreen at once, you can check out my system, Glimmr (see my signature for link).

As RealNC's post implies, TADS can also do what you're looking for, though I don't know any of the details.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2776&start=0#p19243
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Opinions on this story structure?
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-11 21:45:53

[quote="Sark"][quote="IF noob"]I've always wanted to make an IF (LMS The Video Game), but I don't know a thing about programming.
Actually I don't know much about computers in general let alone making a game.[/quote]

I didn't know anything about making games either until about a week ago.  Inform 7 is really easy to learn.  but what's LMS?[/quote]
[quote]Start of a transcript of


LMS THE VIDEO GAME - IF
Action Interactive Fiction by John Goettle
Release 3 / Serial number 080404 / Inform 7 build 5J39 (I6/v6.31 lib 6/11N) 
Identification number: //71912022-132B-495F-92D9-BD6C3DFDE00E//
Interpreter version 1.0.0 / VM 3.1.2 / Library serial number 060709
Standard Rules version 1/061217 by Graham Nelson
Rideable Vehicles version 2 by Graham Nelson[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2599&start=0#p19244
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glimmr Canvas Animation extension (testing)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-11 21:55:02

A quick update for folks who have downloaded this extension-in-progress: I've just updated it to include extensive debugging messages (include "Use animation debugging" in your source text to enable).* I've also tightened up the syntax of phrases to allow fewer variations, which results in a massive improvement in the compile times. There's still no documentation, though.

Link is the same: [url=http://goo.gl/zNcKF]Glimmr Canvas Animation[/url]

--Erik


* Unfortunately, a mysterious problem with Gargoyle (Mac OS X, possibly other platforms as well) disallows all but the first debugging message per turn; all subsequent messages--of which there are many, since each frame of an animation results in one line printed per tick of the timer--simply fail to print. I'm not sure what could cause this. If you have any ideas, please post! (Works fine on all of the other interpreters.) EDIT: Oops, this is not a bug--Gargoyle is doing what it's supposed to do. It's technically illegal to print to a window if it's waiting for input. Include the Glimmr Debugging Console extension to divert the debugging output to a separate window when using Gargoyle or other interpreters that enforce this Glk specification.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2781&start=0#p19245
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Off the top of my head
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-11 22:23:19

[quote="tove"]Are you asking if these things have already been done?  The items on your list are pretty vague, but most of them seem familiar, some to the point of being considered trite.  Categorized doors are done in many old-school or old-school-style text games (most tastefully in [i]Savoir-Faire[/i], in my opinion).  Requiring players to carefully examine barriers, and to go back to checkpoints to buy things or bribe NPCs are staples of some genres of adventure games (and some platformers!).

Or are you asking if they are implementable? If that's the question, sure, none of those things would be particularly tricky to do in either Inform or TADS, some of them might even be possible in Undum or ChoiceScript.  If you have questions on implementation details after reading the documentation for the language of your choice, you should ask them in the language-specific forums here.

Or are you asking someone else to do them for you?  In that case, you should probably present a solid argument as to why anybody should.[/quote]
I forgot ride-able vehicles.

After the movie Labyrinth came out, I played the game and I wanted to make something like that ever since.
Yes I know those things exist already (The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland and The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy) but where do you think I got the idea?

This would not be a Donkey Kong type game, but more like Dragon's Lair meets Space Invaders, with a little Tekken thrown in.

Avoid death by hiding in obstacles, fight and pick up objects to make you stronger, faster, or all around more powerful, mix and match power clothes for immediate help or wear them individually for step by step help.

God mode for experts.

Yes, I know it sounds lame, but it's my first idea in IF.
They are always shot down, like when I was on a Super Mario board which come to think of it would work well as part of an IF.

As to why someone should make this for me, all I can say is I want to contribute something, and since I have no programming experience (nor intention on uploading anything) I would love to give you ideas and maybe build a story around the narrative someone supplies.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2781&start=0#p19246
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Off the top of my head
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-11 22:48:26

I'm a little confused.  Are you looking for a programmer/writer to make this game for you, or are you testing the waters to see what it would take to make it yourself, or looking to collaborate with someone more experienced?

The forums are really good for easing into game development, especially since you seem to have a concrete idea.  Answers to questions are extremely prompt, and folks will often help with example code and explanation.  There's also been several recent-ish calls for collaborations.

If that doesn't appeal to you at all, then you'll need to convince someone that your idea is more compelling than theirs (or pay them).  If that's what you're looking for, I'd suggest writing out a pitch.  I've never played Labyrinth - what is it?  What was compelling?  Why do you think it would be good IF?  What's your vision for the game?  (What does "Path forks off in three for live or die situation." mean?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2783&start=0#p19247
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Mobile App Pricing for IF...?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-11 22:58:16

It radically depends on the game and the author.  (And, uh, the fact that I don't have a mobile app listed; I'm going to pretend that it's downloadable to my PC.)

Mostly, I hate to say it, but no.  There's a lot of good free IF out there, and someone would have to be pretty awesome for me to shell out, even a measly dollar.  And it would have to be something remarkable if I hadn't played other works by the same author.  I'd probably kick in more than that to, say, kickstart a project that sounded awesome, and a little more if it was going to be open-source.  My brain is wired strangely with regard to money.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2784&start=0#p19248
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Testers needed for FrobTADS Mac installer
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-11 23:00:25

In order to spare Mac users from having to install Xcode and compile FrobTADS themselves, I created an installer for it. I know it works on OS X 10.6 (since that's what I use here), but I'd like to get some feedback on whether it works on older versions.

It is [i]supposed[/i] to run on OS X 10.3 (Panther, at least 10.3.9) and upwards, PowerPC and Intel.

Download link:

<a class="postlink" href="http://foss.aegean.gr/~realnc/FrobTADS-1.0.dmg">http://foss.aegean.gr/~realnc/FrobTADS-1.0.dmg</a>

If anyone has access to an OS X 10.3, 10.4 or 10.5 installation, I would appreciate it if you could install it and report here whether it works or not. Testing it is a matter of opening a terminal, putting a TADS game in your home directory (T2 or T3), and typing the following command: "frob thegame".  For example, to run "worlds.gam", you type "frob worlds".

There is no uninstaller, but if you wish to remove FrobTADS afterwards, you simply delete the files "frob", "t3make" and "tadsc" in /usr/local/bin, and then delete the /usr/local/share/frobtads directory.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2783&start=0#p19250
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Mobile App Pricing for IF...?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-11 23:15:23

Me, I would pay the price of an actual indy game title if the game can compete with the quality of commercial titles released at the end of the text adventure era. Meaning good plot, graphics and music. If it's anything like Gateway or Spellcasting, then it got my money for sure.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2781&start=0#p19251
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Off the top of my head
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-11 23:26:06

[quote="gravel"]I'm a little confused.  Are you looking for a programmer/writer to make this game for you, or are you testing the waters to see what it would take to make it yourself, or looking to collaborate with someone more experienced?

The forums are really good for easing into game development, especially since you seem to have a concrete idea.  Answers to questions are extremely prompt, and folks will often help with example code and explanation.  There's also been several recent-ish calls for collaborations.

If that doesn't appeal to you at all, then you'll need to convince someone that your idea is more compelling than theirs (or pay them).  If that's what you're looking for, I'd suggest writing out a pitch.  I've never played Labyrinth - what is it?  What was compelling?  Why do you think it would be good IF?  What's your vision for the game?  (What does "Path forks off in three for live or die situation." mean?)[/quote]
I just finished writing this a few minutes ago, got a snack, and you already answered me!
That [b]was[/b] fast.

If you haven't seen the movie, it's about this babysitter and wannabe actress, who's parents are always neglecting her and talking down to her as if the 18 year old was a child.
They leave for the night as a quite getaway from their crying 6 month old (animatronic in some scenes).

Meanwhile the goblins of the girl's play has come to life (after a bump on the head) and has kidnapped her little brother.
The king goblin (David Boey) lives in a castle in the center of the labyrinth (original plot of Alice's Adventures Underground).

She has to get to the castle before the clock strikes 13 (Boey's clock adds an extra hour).
Along the way she meets some weird and wonderful characters (by Sid and Marty Kroft and Henson Productions).

Castle interior replicates paintings of Escher and Dali.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2781&start=0#p19252
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Off the top of my head
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-11 23:31:38

I'm asking for collaboration on the game.
I'll supply ideas for a story, another supplies the narrative, another supplies the programming.
With all that I'm sure I could build a story around it.

When I say forks off, I mean instead of one path that splits into three, there are three separate paths, like the prongs of a pitchfork/trident.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2781&start=0#p19253
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Off the top of my head
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-11 23:35:57

I've seen the movie, although the synopsis was a good memory jog.  I think I misunderstood your original post, as it sounded like you were inspired by a game rather than the movie.

So, what makes you think IF, rather than, say, platformer?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2781&start=0#p19254
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Off the top of my head
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-12 00:04:56

If you've played the game as well, it's more like IF with a few pictures here and there.
This is what I find more interesting than other games.
Around the same time (a few months apart) a new game came out with animated pics (The Rocky Horror Picture Show).
I liked it more because of the animation (80s graphics in the 90s), but it didn't have the replayability as Labyrinth had.
Ghost Busters (old version) was a little better, but it got monotonous fast.

Get call, hear story, siren goes off, look at map, drive to location, find ghost, trap ghost, etc., similar to "Where In The World Is Carmen SanDiego?".

All in all, IF is much better.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2783&start=0#p19255
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Mobile App Pricing for IF...?
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-07-12 00:13:36

IMO, this is the wrong way to do market research for games, especially IF, which is dominated by a few professional-quality hobbyist authors giving their work away for free.

Instead, write some games yourself and charge for them. In the worst case, you'll make nothing, which puts you no worse off than you'd be if you gave the game away for free. Writing IF is fun and rewarding, so you've got nothing to lose.

Sadly, what you'll find is that it's nearly impossible to make a living wage writing parser-driven text adventures. We can only speculate why that is, but it's clearly bad for IF quality.

I'd add that the community is for the most part uninterested in commercial offerings, typically banning them from IF competitions, unlike most indie game competitions which invite commercial and non-commercial works equally. (But, as a second-rate commercial IF developer, maybe I'm a bit biased!)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2783&start=0#p19256
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Mobile App Pricing for IF...?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-07-12 00:26:43

Point being, would you pay ninety-nine cents for a work of IF? Whether you were downloading it to your PC or not. I'm saying I've paid that much for some absolutely crappy, pointless apps. My fault, yes, I know. But I mean, we pay $20 for a novel. $6-9 in paperback. Would you be willing to shell out a buck for IF, even if it's crap?

In response to the post made while I was writing this response...

This isn't market research. I'm not looking to make money. I haven't written a complete piece of IF yet. I don't care about competitions. Competitions seem like the best way to generate crap IF (I'd like to say that I don't believe in crap, IF. I think it's all great. No, I'm not just being biased and sappy.) And in a lot of the competitions, there is some kind of monetary or physical reward, yes? (Copies of games, gift cards, whatever.) People write this competition stuff for the reward, being it monetary or just the publicity. Otherwise no one would write a game in two hours than can be finished in five minutes. With rare exception, that's a gimmick, not a story.

I'm also not talking about making a living on it, though I didn't see anyone criticize Zarf for it. I guess it's just because he's Zarf? And I disagree that IF is dominated by a few high profile individuals. Their stuff might get the most attention, because they are who they are. Someone is going to play Plotkin or Short before they play I4L, that's for damn sure. 

I'm simply talking about giving a little back for what I get. Not making a market. Not starting a company. Not being a publisher or a reseller. I'm talking about if YOU wanted to write a game and get a little something back for your time, is a dollar too much to pay for it? This is a curiosity post, not a research post.

People will pay a dollar or two just to have the home screens on their phone look like something from Twilight. Even if the IF community is small and mostly self-fueled, I don't think it's unreasonable that I'd drop a dollar every few days or so to play some IF. Maybe it would even lend some credibility to it. If I put a TV out on the curb with a sign that says "FREE", that crap will sit there for two weeks and no one will look twice at it, because they think it's broken. If I put a sign on it that says, "It's yours for $20", it'll be gone in a day, because someone will think it's a cheap TV.

Maybe that's just my neighborhood.

Like I said, this isn't market research. This is curiousity. I'm hoping it will generate enough conversation to maybe possibly generate some kind of reward for IF authors. If I sell two copies of a game for $0.99, that's a Mt. Dew that I had to pay for when I was giving away my stuff for free.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2783&start=0#p19257
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Mobile App Pricing for IF...?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-07-12 00:32:43

On the other hand, if I put a TV on the curb with a sign that says "FREE", it's probably because it IS broken. Not a perfect analogy, but hopefully you get the idea. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2505&start=10#p19258
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Laziness is setting in
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-12 00:40:57

[quote="Robert Rothman"]Not a question, just a bit of a lament:

I've created a bunch of interesting objects, and written the code so they behave the way they're supposed to when the player does the "right" thing with them (that is, when he uses them in the way which will move the story forward and eventually lead to a "winning" ending).  Now the time has come to deal with all the [i]other[/i] things the player might try with each object.  And since each object can be in a number of different states (each representing a particular permutation of all of the various things that can change about the object throughout the course of a game) the possibilities add up.

No big deal -- the number of permutations is not at the totally unmanageable level, and coding the necessary responses is pretty straightforward.  The problem is, I'm starting to get lazy.  I'm starting to think of reasons to prevent a particular object from getting into a particular state, just so I don't have to deal with writing responses for every action for that object in that state.

I know it's a mistake.  I know the game will suffer for it.  I know what I [i]should[/i] do.   But I can't seem to get up the energy to do it.

The other approach would be to move on to something else for now (like working out plotting problems or creating additional interesting objects) and try to convince myself that I'll come back later to fill in all the missing responses.  The problem is, I'm not quite gullible enough to buy that (if any of you believe it, I've got a bridge going to Brooklyn that you might be interested in).

Ah, well.   [emote]:([/emote]


Robert Rothman[/quote]
I don't know if you've seen it, but there's a library or extension that lets the player do whatever he or she wants without consequence.
The trouble is the player (me) will stop regarding the story as real life, and treat the IF as if it were AIF.

For instance I could be outside in a crowd with a What do you want to do? prompt.
Here I could say stuff like [i][b]strip[/b][/i] or [i][b]undress[/b] name[/i] and nothing would happen to me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2781&start=0#p19259
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Off the top of my head
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-07-12 00:48:38

I'm going to go ahead and say this. Not because I want to dissuade you from making this game, I'd LOVE to see it, but just as a general warning...

This is one of my favorite movies of all time. It's a cult classic. Just like Rocky Horror. If you're going to make it, you need to keep it true to the original without remaking the original. It's a high profile movie. People who play it and who are familiar with the original will crucify you.

Well, maybe not all of them. But I'm sure you'd catch some flak.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2781&start=0#p19260
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Off the top of my head
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-07-12 00:49:37

Which reminds me... I'd LOVE to see a remake of Legend.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2781&start=10#p19261
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Off the top of my head
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-07-12 00:59:54

Since the whole point of [i]Labyrinth[/i] was David Bowie (and, to some extent, the Muppets--generally, the visuals and atmosphere), I doubt it's possible to capture that in a game.  This coming from someone who's currently working on a game based on a painter, so take that with a grain of salt.

Anyway it would have to be an ersatz-Labyrinth game, not an actual-Labyrinth game, because of copyright issues.

All that said, you could probably convince me to collaborate with you, unless you want to angle for someone more experienced.

Dance the magic dance, dance the magic dance...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2783&start=0#p19262
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Mobile App Pricing for IF...?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-07-12 00:59:57

Well, it seems that when I updated the poll, phpBB jacked up the responses by moving them to the one I added. I'm sorry about that. I changed it so you could vote more than once, if you care to.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2782&start=0#p19263
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which authoring system to use for a graphical adventure?
User: Pelican / DateTime: 2011-07-12 01:05:04

I wonder, how does one deal with such problems as, there are items in a room, and the user takes them?  Should I exclude those from the graphic?  Or is there a system for displaying and overplayed image?  Such a system would probably be complicated than I desire, I just am confused about how to deal with the vast number of potential different states of each room (e.g. if you drop everything, should these things appear in the picture).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=0#p19264
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Copyright
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-07-12 01:10:01

Anyone want to talk about copyright law as it applies specifically to interactive fiction?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2460&start=20#p19265
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: New here, trying to get started on my first IF
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-12 01:11:10

[quote="Cyris"]I have recently discovered Inform 7 and am quite enthralled at its premise, to say the least. As interested in adventure games as I am, however, I am not sure how I would go about making one.

I came up with a story for my IF (I can post a summary here if requested) and thought of all the characters and locations involved, but I'm not sure how the puzzles will be implemented, or even some of the basic functions.

For example, my story takes place in a city, and the player has to drive around by car to go from location to location, with more places being unlocked as the story progresses. However, I ran into a number of problems with this. How do I keep the player from hitting the road without his car? It would also be silly for the player to still be in his car while indoors, so how do I prevent him from going to certain places while in his car? How do I allow the player to visit all the relevant locations from his car and only from his car? How do I prevent the player from going to locations he has not unlocked and break the script?

And what's the best way for me to handle scenes changing over the course of the story? The first puzzle in my game has the player going to the police to inform them of a crime scene he has just discovered. When he goes back to the scene later, the police will be all over the place, conducting their investigation. How am I going to make everything in the scene operate differently when the police are there?

And that's just the problems that are readily apparent at this point. I'll probably run into many more as I progress in this project.[/quote]
OMG you've just described the problems I've been having with someone's game.
It's a gain and loose points game (pickups).

Right away you see a motorcycle.
Get on the motorcycle for 50 points and go north.
You can't go in any other direction than north.
Now you have a choice of east or west.
After a series of directions, after either choice, I got stuck.
To the west was a car I could switch to, but I couldn't move.
To the east was a hill leading to a track, but I could not go on.

I found out when I was riding the motorcycle, it told me I was walking with it.
This means I could take it indoors, but not on the second floor.

I probably got an older version of it, but I think like you he just got lazy and finished it too early (his spelling wasn't great either).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2781&start=10#p19266
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Off the top of my head
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-12 01:30:26

[quote="I4L"]I'm going to go ahead and say this. Not because I want to dissuade you from making this game, I'd LOVE to see it, but just as a general warning...

This is one of my favorite movies of all time. It's a cult classic. Just like Rocky Horror. If you're going to make it, you need to keep it true to the original without remaking the original. It's a high profile movie. People who play it and who are familiar with the original will crucify you.

Well, maybe not all of them. But I'm sure you'd catch some flak.[/quote]
Labyrinth is already made.
It was originally an Apple II demo illustrating what a laboratory mouse has to go through.
The game was called MAZE (a TRON Lightcycle like game in 3D).
Old style keystrokes really helped the game in slow mode, but was a pain in fast mode (literally, your wrist would get cramps and fingers sore).

Interesting fact, this is where the name of the mouse came from, not because the wire looks like a tail.
Ok, it is that to some degree, but it could just have easily been called a rat.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2781&start=10#p19267
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Off the top of my head
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-12 01:42:59

[quote="katz"]Since the whole point of [i]Labyrinth[/i] was David Bowie (and, to some extent, the Muppets--generally, the visuals and atmosphere), I doubt it's possible to capture that in a game.  This coming from someone who's currently working on a game based on a painter, so take that with a grain of salt.

Anyway it would have to be an ersatz-Labyrinth game, not an actual-Labyrinth game, because of copyright issues.

All that said, you could probably convince me to collaborate with you, unless you want to angle for someone more experienced.

Dance the magic dance, dance the magic dance...[/quote]
That would be great!  [emote]:D[/emote] 
I really hope you do because I just want to be able to say "I thought of that," but because of one thing or another, I never get around to it.

I recently had an idea originally meant for the next Tomb Raider game, and that is hidden power clothes that don't show up in your inventory until you pass the next level (changing room includes removable bra and panties for [i][b]more realism[/b][/i]), this makes room for all the other stuff you need and what's there by default.

Hey maybe Sark would like to get in on this.
I really can't do everything I promised real well, so I can pass the baton to him/her in some areas.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2760&start=0#p19268
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Dead NPCs
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-12 01:47:26

hi, in my WIP, i do have skirmishes and a good handful of dead NPCs.  i created dead NPC objects, but its a huge set of code im hammering out for it and as yet, ive not even alpha-tested it.  im concerned when i read above about the corpse reacting to things.  does this happen if the corpse is an object, not a "person"?  should i be worried? (btw, newbie here)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2663&start=10#p19269
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: artwork needed
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-07-12 01:49:08

I've done free commissions for people in the past, so if my stuff looks interesting to you, I could probably do something.

You can look at my deviantart: [url]http://jewelleddragon13.deviantart.com/[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2787&start=0#p19270
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7- moving the player
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-12 01:53:14

hi, i know this sounds like an easy problem, but im still having a major issue with it.  im simply trying to have the PC and a following NPC enter a location, then a cut-scene of sorts occurs with a paused screen, then after space-bar is hit, i want to move both the PC and NPC to a whole new location (not connected at all to the old location).  but its totally not working.  what happens is the new location's description occurs with a prompt, but then instantly, the OLD location's description is printed with a prompt and thats where the game is; in the old room.  what the heck am i doing wrong?  i could show u the source code, but it really is just as simple as it should be.  could it be something wrong with the new location?  any initial thoughts or should i definitely show u the source?  thanks to anyone with any advice on this! (newbie here)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2663&start=10#p19271
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: artwork needed
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-12 01:56:02

wow, man, i really like the art!  plus u have a lot in the fantasy-genre.  so yeah, we should talk!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=0#p19272
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-12 01:59:49

There is no copyright law that applies specifically to interactive fiction. Unless you can imagine the congress introducing one, lol [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2782&start=0#p19273
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which authoring system to use for a graphical adventure?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-12 02:05:14

[quote="Pelican"]I wonder, how does one deal with such problems as, there are items in a room, and the user takes them?  Should I exclude those from the graphic?  Or is there a system for displaying and overplayed image?  Such a system would probably be complicated than I desire, I just am confused about how to deal with the vast number of potential different states of each room (e.g. if you drop everything, should these things appear in the picture).[/quote]
That's usually not done in graphical IF. At least not for smaller objects that aren't represented in the image. The point of the graphics is not to represent the location in any detailed depth. It's mostly to set the overall mood. The depth comes from the text describing the location.

You might want to play some of the games I mentioned in my previous post. I think this should be necessary research for you, finding out what's been done and how.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2766&start=0#p19274
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking to team up on a fantasy game
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-12 02:46:30

I'll join.
I could be a Co-brainstormer if that's alright with you.
I am familiar with Tads 3 (playing not programming) and could give you some good ideas for it inspired from what other people have done (<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2781">viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2781</a>).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=0#p19275
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-12 02:58:28

Do you mean stuff like the concept of airbending?

There are a couple of topics on here where people have kicked around that kind of copyright issue re: IF. In fact there could be more but I just remembered these ones.

This one mentions Dr Who (making a Dr Who IF game, and what the ramifications of that would be)

[url]http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&p=15501&hilit=copyright#p15501[/url]

This topic is more specifically about the whole notion of basing a game on something pre-existing:

[url]http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1061&hilit=copyright[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2752&start=10#p19276
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tables and Kinds
User: Zed / DateTime: 2011-07-12 03:00:27

I took a shot at an implementation of nethack magic items. It involved a level of dynamism that I don't think played to Inform's strengths.

[spoiler][code]
"rogue" by "Zed Lopez".

Include Dynamic Objects by Jesse McGrew.

A thing can be either actual or prototypical. A thing is usually actual.

After cloning a new object from a thing:
  now new object is actual.

A magic-effect-value is a kind of value. Some magic-effect-values are defined by the Table of Magic Effects.

Table of Magic Effects
magic-effect-value
scroll-teleportation
scroll-identify
scroll-confuse-monster
scroll-punishment
scroll-amnesia
wand-wishing
wand-striking
no-effect

Having-knowledge-of relates one person to various magic-effect-values. The verb to have-knowledge-of (it has-knowledge-of, they have-knowledge-of, it had-knowledge-of, it was-known, it is having-knowledge-of) implies the having-knowledge-of relation.

A magic-item is a kind of thing. A magic-item is usually prototypical. A magic-item has a magic-effect-value called magic-effect. A magic-item has a truth state called true-name. A magic-item is usually improper-named.

Having-magic-effect relates a magic-item (called item) to a magic-effect-value (called effect) when effect is the magic-effect of item. The verb to have-magic-effect (it has-magic-effect, they have-magic-effect, it had-magic-effect, it was magic-effect-had-by, it is having-magic-effect) implies the having-magic-effect relation.

Definition: a magic-item (called item) is plain rather than obfuscated if the true-name of item is true.

A scroll is a kind of magic-item. Some scrolls are defined by the Table of Magic Scrolls.

Table of Magic Scrolls
scroll	magic-effect	true-name
scroll of teleportation	scroll-teleportation	true
scroll of identify	scroll-identify	true
scroll of confuse monster	scroll-confuse-monster	true
scroll of punishment	scroll-punishment	true
scroll of amnesia	scroll-amnesia	true
scroll of DAUM SKNAHT	no-effect	false
scroll of FOO	no-effect	false
scroll of PLUGH	no-effect	false
scroll of XYZZY	no-effect	false
scroll of BTON	no-effect	false

Reading is an action applying to one thing.
Understand the command "read" as something new.
Understand "read [something]" as reading.
Check reading something when noun is not a scroll:
  say "You can't read that" instead.

To magic-effect-identify (effect - a magic-effect-value):  
  let realitem be a random prototypical plain magic-item which has-magic-effect effect;
  now player has-knowledge-of effect;
  repeat with item running through every actual on-stage obfuscated magic-item which has-magic-effect effect begin;
    let itemholder be holder of item;
    let newobject be a new object cloned from realitem;
    remove item from play;
    now newobject is in itemholder;
  end repeat;

To magic-effect-amnesia:
  repeat with effect running through magic-effect-values begin;
    if player has-knowledge-of effect begin;
      let obfuscateditem be a random prototypical obfuscated magic-item which has-magic-effect effect;
      now player does not have-knowledge-of effect;
      repeat with item running through every actual plain on-stage magic-item which has-magic-effect effect begin;
        let itemholder be holder of item;
        let newobject be a new object cloned from obfuscateditem;
        remove item from play;
        now newobject is in itemholder;
      end repeat;
    end if;
  end repeat;

Carry out reading something (called thescroll):
	Let effect be magic-effect of thescroll;
	Remove thescroll from play;
	if player does not have-knowledge-of effect:
		magic-effect-identify effect;
	if magic-effect of thescroll is:
		-- scroll-teleportation: say "There's nowhere to teleport to. ";
		-- scroll-confuse-monster: say "There are no monsters to confuse. ";
		-- scroll-punishment: say "You are being punished. ";
		-- scroll-identify:
			repeat with eachitem running through visible obfuscated magic-items:
				let effect be the magic-effect of eachitem;
				magic-effect-identify effect;
			say "You feel knowledgeable. ";
		-- scroll-amnesia:
			magic-effect-amnesia;
			say "Thinking of Maud, you forget all else.".

Report reading something:
  say "The scroll crumbles to dust."


When play begins:
  Let l be a list of magic-effect-values;
  repeat with eachscroll running through every plain scroll begin;
    add magic-effect of eachscroll to l;
  end repeat;
  sort l in random order;
  let i be 1;
  repeat with eachscroll running through every obfuscated scroll begin;
       now magic-effect of eachscroll is entry i of l;
       increase i by 1;
  end repeat;
  repeat with item running through prototypical obfuscated magic-items begin;
    Let newitem be a new object cloned from item;
    now newitem is in the Dungeons of Doom;
  end repeat;
  magic-effect-identify scroll-identify;

The Dungeons of Doom is a room. 
[/code][/spoiler]

Here's a transcript.

[spoiler]Dungeons of Doom
You can see scroll of identify, scroll of BTON, scroll of PLUGH, scroll of FOO 
and scroll of DAUM SKNAHT here.

> get all
scroll of identify: Taken.
scroll of BTON: Taken.
scroll of PLUGH: Taken.
scroll of FOO: Taken.
scroll of DAUM SKNAHT: Taken.

> drop teleportation
You can’t see any such thing.

> read identify
You feel knowledgeable. 
The scroll crumbles to dust.

> i
You are carrying:
  scroll of confuse monster
  scroll of amnesia
  scroll of punishment
  scroll of teleportation

> l
Dungeons of Doom

> drop foo
You can’t see any such thing.

> read amnesia
Thinking of Maud, you forget all else.

The scroll crumbles to dust.

> l
Dungeons of Doom

 i
You are carrying:
  scroll of FOO
  scroll of BTON
  scroll of DAUM SKNAHT

> drop foo
Dropped.

>[/spoiler]

I implemented the scroll of identify as something like a super-blessed Nethack scroll, identifying everything in the location, and amnesia as forgetting all the identifications (though I don't recall that you ever really forget identifications in Nethack, or, I presume, Rogue.)

There are still difficulties to surmount -- the wand of wishing would need to admit even unidentified things to scope.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2663&start=10#p19277
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: artwork needed
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-12 03:00:30

[quote="RealNC"]Or you can find someone who loves drawing and money isn't the only thing on his/her mind. In other words, pretty much what everyone in this forum is doing, except not IF, but drawing.[/quote]
That's exactly what I was thinking.
I know of a good artist if ezfreemann makes an AIF.

I have spotted a few things weird with those pics (erotic art), but what's unnatural about them could be called style instead of bad art.
Even paintings of melting clocks were called bad art once.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2663&start=10#p19278
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: artwork needed
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-12 03:04:59

[quote="katz"]I've done free commissions for people in the past, so if my stuff looks interesting to you, I could probably do something.

You can look at my deviantart: [url]http://jewelleddragon13.deviantart.com/[/url][/quote]
Hey, you're pretty good!  [emote]:)[/emote] 
We could also use your talent after you do ezfreemann's IF.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1635&start=0#p19279
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for writers
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-12 03:12:29

[quote="Sark"]So you're looking for coders, not writers in the sense of creating descriptions and plot?[/quote]
Maybe we should all get together on this as one big project, that is if everyone has time off from his or her own game.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2422&start=0#p19280
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: I have a great idea...
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-12 03:23:35

[quote="Minkovsky"]I was thinking once about a game based on jumping between worlds, to create some kind of a multi-world puzzle. I also wanted to incorporate elements of video into the game. I think that I may have a solution for that one, namely using python scripts and any video module to play video files (to keep everything cross-platform). Now, for the game itself:

The story will be about an AFGNCAAP who has a strange condition: they can remember their every dream completely, and discovers that the world isn't quite what it seems like.

The main gimmick of the game would be jumping from conversation-oriented main world to puzzle-oriented dreams. During the awake world scenes, the player would collect clues that will be relevant to solving the dream puzzle, and if solving the dream puzzle will be impossible, then instant groundhog day reset ensues (thus the player would have to repeat the clue search).

The game should utilise every tool of timekeeping from Inform7's arsenal, that means scenes, timed missions and other stuff. After each successful dream sequence, a new detail from the awake world would be unmasked, until the player has enough evidence to discover the truth, thus ending the game in a sequel hook.

As for actually doing it, there are still some things to do.

[b]1: Name the thing[/b] - yeah, I still don't have the name for it.
[b]2: Build a detailed story[/b]
...

So, what do you think?[/quote]
Sounds good.
Would the manipulation of dreams effect reality like in that movie (can't think of the name), or the Freddy Kreuger series?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2788&start=0#p19291
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 6 and 7 vs Tads 2 and 3
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-12 03:48:44

What is the best format for our yet to be made game?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2788&start=0#p19292
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6 and 7 vs Tads 2 and 3
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-12 03:50:41

wachoo talkin bout, willis?  [emote]:?:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2783&start=0#p19293
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Mobile App Pricing for IF...?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-07-12 04:01:24

[quote]People write this competition stuff for the reward, being it monetary or just the publicity. Otherwise no one would write a game in two hours than can be finished in five minutes. With rare exception, that's a gimmick, not a story.[/quote]

If you're referring to Speed-IF, I think you're misunderstanding the appeal -- which I think for most people isn't prizes (there are none) or feedback (usually minimal) but getting something, anything, finished and out in the world. This is hardly an exclusive-to-IF phenomenon; there are gazillions of game jams, nanowrimos, prompt-of-the-day blogs, and other contexts for writing something quickly, to try out a concept or just get past some creative blockage. 

To the larger question: the main thing that keeps me from charging for any of my parser-based IF is that it would turn my enjoyable hobby of writing games into a badly-paid, stressful job of doing marketing and customer support for my releases.

In the broader sense, of course, I am paid to write interactive stories, and some of it is text-based and not a million miles from IF, and I enjoy that -- but other people handle the marketing end and the emails about why it won't install on a first-generation iPhone (or whatever).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=0#p19294
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-12 04:15:22

I remember the early games (specifically Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy) having a big copyright battle.

The family of Lewis Carrol still owned the rights to the name and the contents of the book, and they didn't consent to it being used as a game, nor did they get any residuals from it.

The maker of Hitchhiker's Guide was lucky since that green circle sticking it's tongue out was used all the time anyway, but the words [i]"[b][color=#FF0000]DON'T PANIC![/color][/b]" in large friendly letters[/i] was debated on.
It turns out you can't copyright real words so he was free to use it.
The type of lettering was also debated on, but doesn't Microsoft have Goth in Wordpad anyway.
Even before Microsoft, Mary Shelly used it for Frankenstein.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2760&start=0#p19295
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Dead NPCs
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-12 04:24:29

If the corpse is a non-person thing (notice that every person is a thing, and every thing an object, in Inform 7), you won't have any problems. You might want to write some custom responses, of course: the player probably shoulnd't be allowed to take a corpse, and certainly shouldn't be allowed to take two. But the corpse won't behave like a living person.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2789&start=0#p19296
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: omg how cool would this be for writing IF?
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-12 04:25:19

[url]https://www.dragonoffer.com/[/url]

this isnt spam, i saw the commercial for this and the first thing i thought of is whether or not this would work for writing IF....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2787&start=0#p19297
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7- moving the player
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-12 04:25:41

I think you should show us the relevant part of your source code anyway, because I'm pretty mystified.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2788&start=0#p19298
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6 and 7 vs Tads 2 and 3
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-12 04:31:16

How should we know? What about actually [i]telling[/i] us something about your game and your programming background, [i]showing[/i] that you have already looked at these different languages and formed some idea about them, and so on?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2789&start=0#p19299
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: omg how cool would this be for writing IF?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-12 04:34:14

I'd say it is more useful for writing prose than for writing code. When you write code, you need a lot of non-standard typography (semi-colons and colons and brackets at the exact right points, tabs in Inform 7), and you can often speed up your development a lot by copy-pasting stuff. A speech-to-text converter is probably not too good at the former, and unable to do the latter.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2648&start=10#p19300
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can Gargoyle play Gblorb files?
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-12 04:41:43

[quote="ilovemyhedgehog"]i plyed two games that said they had sounds and pictures and none of them played sound or had pictures.[/quote]
Real answer: I had a little trouble with that too at first, but then I read the online help on the Gargoyle site and game documentation.
The interpreter can be customized to look like other interpreters and play with other formats.
For instance if you want to play a game in Tads, set it to Tads mode and it will play.
Tads 2 does not have pictures or sounds.
If you are using zblorb and don't get sound or pictures, you probably have it in Tads mode.
I suggest going to <a class="postlink" href="http://ccxvii.net/gargoyle/">http://ccxvii.net/gargoyle/</a> and read the Help, FAQ, and readme.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379&start=30#p19301
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How about left/right/up/down as compass directions?
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-12 05:01:28

Have any of you guys tried this?
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXinfocomXinterpretersXfilfre.html">http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-arc ... ilfre.html</a>

I think the positioning is a little inconvenient but it has just what you are talking about.
Click on compass includes normal wording plus up and down.
Click on helper words include left and right.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2782&start=0#p19302
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which authoring system to use for a graphical adventure?
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-12 05:04:33

[quote="Pelican"]I'd like to add graphics to my text adventure.  I wonder, what is a good system that allows me to easily add graphics?  I've tried to find details from the Inform 7 Web site, but can't see where this is mentioned and what graphics features are present.

I'd prefer:
[list]
[*]Pictures of the landscape are displayed when you are in a certain location.[/*:m]
[*]Pictures of items are displayed when you type 'look at X'.[/*:m]
[*]I don't want pictures to be cut in half, e.g. when I type a lot of commands, don't want the picture to scroll up so that it is partially covered, the picture area should be undisturbed by the text.[/*:m]
[*]I don't like overly complicated interpreter interfaces that include lots of extra visual elements, like compasses, maps, etc.[/*:m][/list:u]

I'm concerned text and graphics are a bad match, and might even threaten the player's feeling that they are in the story.  Do you know of any games where graphics are used quite successfully in combination with a text parser?[/quote]
Definitely go with Tads 3 (3.0.18.1 to be exact).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2789&start=0#p19303
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: omg how cool would this be for writing IF?
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-12 05:06:10

true, i agree it would most likely not work for coding, but u could jam out your prose in Word and copy it over perhaps?  also, in the extended commercial i saw for this software, you [b]can[/b] cut and paste and bold and italicize, etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=0#p19304
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-07-12 05:32:26

[quote="IF noob"]I remember the early games (specifically [...] and The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy) having a big copyright battle.[/quote]

I think I'm missing something. Hitchhiker's Guide was made in collaboration with Douglas Adams himself... and still it had copyright issues?  [emote]:?[/emote] 

--

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=0#p19305
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-12 05:44:02

[quote="rockersuke"][quote="IF noob"]I remember the early games (specifically [...] and The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy) having a big copyright battle.[/quote]

I think I'm missing something. Hitchhiker's Guide was made in collaboration with Douglas Adams himself... and still it had copyright issues?  [emote]:?[/emote] 

--[/quote]
When going commercial, the author almost never owns his own work. The publisher does. So Douglas Adams probably did not own Hitchhiker's Guide.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=0#p19306
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-12 05:53:36

IF Noob has got a touch of the ILoveHedgehogs about 'em.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2788&start=0#p19307
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6 and 7 vs Tads 2 and 3
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-12 06:10:58

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]How should we know? What about actually [i]telling[/i] us something about your game and your programming background, [i]showing[/i] that you have already looked at these different languages and formed some idea about them, and so on?[/quote]
I'm not sure about the rest of the team (may not be fully committed to this project), but some of them (myself included) don't know anything about programming.
I've looked at other threads, and the consensus is that Inform 7 is super easy, but I've been playing in Tads 3, and I think it looks better.

So what do I go with, ease of use, or better graphics/photos?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2790&start=0#p19308
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Easiest authoring system to translate to other languages?
User: Pelican / DateTime: 2011-07-12 06:21:30

I'd like to write some text adventures in Chinese, but I can't find a complete system that has a parser for Chinese games.  Rather than starting from scratch with my own engine (which seems to require more coding work than translating work), is there any established IF authoring system that is quite easy to translate, for instance, offering some file which I can edit?

Note: I simply want to be able to create games where the language of play is Chinese, I don't want to translate the language of the code of the authoring language itself into Chinese.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=0#p19309
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-12 06:33:51

[quote="RealNC"][quote="rockersuke"][quote="IF noob"]I remember the early games (specifically [...] and The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy) having a big copyright battle.[/quote]

I think I'm missing something. Hitchhiker's Guide was made in collaboration with Douglas Adams himself... and still it had copyright issues?  [emote]:?[/emote] 

--[/quote]
When going commercial, the author almost never owns his own work. The publisher does. So Douglas Adams probably did not own Hitchhiker's Guide.[/quote]
That's true, but what I was referring to was the other version.
The first version was called a text adventure, but in various spots there was animation, made for the Apple IIe and Macintosh.
The second version was mostly animation that was called a video game, made for the Macintosh and Mac Jr., and at the same time the IF came out (like a movie's Director's Cut).

Both the second (improved) version and the text IF were not consented by Adams.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2790&start=0#p19310
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Easiest authoring system to translate to other languages
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-12 06:45:34

Have you tried Quest?
It may have some translations you could use, including Manderin Chinese.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2789&start=0#p19311
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: omg how cool would this be for writing IF?
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-07-12 06:55:18

If you actually like to write, not cool at all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2790&start=0#p19312
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Easiest authoring system to translate to other languages
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-07-12 07:07:25

There's no Chinese translation of Quest yet, but it should be possible to create one for Quest 5.0.

It would be a matter of translating English.aslx:

<a class="postlink" href="http://quest.codeplex.com/SourceControl/changeset/view/8945#34545">http://quest.codeplex.com/SourceControl ... 8945#34545</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2788&start=0#p19313
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6 and 7 vs Tads 2 and 3
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-07-12 07:27:24

[quote="IF noob"]So what do I go with, ease of use, or better graphics/photos?[/quote]

I can't really see how "looks" enter into it, given that graphics is something you'd ideally create yourself as an author, and so is system-independent. Ease of use is also a complex issue; I can definitely see TADS3 as being easier to code for anyone familiar with coding in the past, whereas I7 is a lot more quirky (in some ways more useful, in others less so).

It depends very much on factors that have not been mentioned yet in this thread, such as how the game is to be played and what approach the writers have chosen to take.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2783&start=0#p19314
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Mobile App Pricing for IF...?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-12 07:33:37

[quote="dfabulich"]I'd add that the community is for the most part uninterested in commercial offerings, typically banning them from IF competitions, unlike most indie game competitions which invite commercial and non-commercial works equally. (But, as a second-rate commercial IF developer, maybe I'm a bit biased!)[/quote]

Well, it seems to me that this is the only way to handle things when the competition is judged by the community of players and anyone can judge. It'd hardly be reasonable to charge the judges for your entry. Also, I'm not sure exactly which contests you mean (partly, I'm sure, because I'm not at all plugged in to any other gaming scene); IGF seems to have an enormous amount of money behind it, and things like the TIGSource contest and Ludum Dare don't let you charge for your entries, I don't think. 

Though I'm biased myself, as I don't buy games with very rare exceptions and generally wouldn't pay for IF; I'd pay about a dollar a game for some of the Infocom classics, and maybe for a new game if I could be really confident that it was worth it for me.* As to the original question, I don't even have a kindle or smartphone; Dan (dfabulich) releases games that can be played freely on the web and downloaded for about a buck on the Kindle, so he might be able to speak more to the different markets.

*Which would mean Good Old Games would make me happy, except that they don't support Macs -- understandable, it's not like there's cross-platform support for Infocom file formats -- and anyway have only released a package consisting mostly of Zzzzzork games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2422&start=0#p19315
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: I have a great idea...
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-12 07:35:50

Pardon my ignorance, but what's an AFGNCAAP?  It sounds like one of those fleecy-looking hats that President Karzai always wears.



Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2782&start=0#p19316
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which authoring system to use for a graphical adventure?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-12 07:40:47

For some Inform games with graphics, used in very different ways, you can check out [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?history&id=lyblvftb8xtlo0a1]Everybody Dies[/url], [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=c0cr82yogsdnfi4n]The Blind House[/url], and [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=opz1y9r0yk3lmx5l]Bonehead[/url], which is probably the closest to what you're looking for. (I'm a little surprised that there's no IFDB tag for games with graphics.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2790&start=0#p19317
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Easiest authoring system to translate to other languages
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-12 07:41:29

[quote="Alex"]There's no Chinese translation of Quest yet, but it should be possible to create one for Quest 5.0.

It would be a matter of translating English.aslx:

<a class="postlink" href="http://quest.codeplex.com/SourceControl/changeset/view/8945#34545">http://quest.codeplex.com/SourceControl ... 8945#34545</a>[/quote]
I was referring to Quest Creator 4.3.
[url=http://www.datawaregames.com/html/rev_qc.htm][b]Quest Creator Reviews[/b][/url]
It's a game (T for teen) that behaves like a game creator.
The game has magical settings in the middle ages.
You can make your own species like WoW, or build your own quests like Fairy Tales II/III.
It's free to download if you intend to pay for it ($15).

It can also make characters in 3D like South Park's "The End Of The World, of Warcraft".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2782&start=0#p19318
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which authoring system to use for a graphical adventure?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-12 07:49:37

Inform7 has several extensions that can do what you want.  (It's the only one I've used, so I don't know about the others.)  I wouldn't try for full-on graphics to simulate what's on screen: it's not expected or necessarily helpful, and pragmatically, the more elements you add to your graphics, the more complicated it gets and the more that can go wrong.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2422&start=0#p19319
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: I have a great idea...
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-12 07:52:46

[quote="Robert Rothman"]Pardon my ignorance, but what's an AFGNCAAP?  It sounds like one of those fleecy-looking hats that President Karzai always wears.

Robert Rothman[/quote]

Hee!  "Ageless, faceless, gender-neutral, culturally ambiguous adventure person."  You see them in, say, Zork, where you're not really playing a character, unless it's in your own head.  You know nothing about the protagonist, and any clues about their identity are usually accidental.

[url]http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AFGNCAAP[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2783&start=0#p19320
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Mobile App Pricing for IF...?
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-07-12 07:56:14

I would have no problem dropping a few dollars in an author's PayPal donation box if I like their work (I wish this were easier to do), but I think asking people to pay up-front for IF is a tough sell when there's so much available for free and it's so hard to tell what you're going to be getting.

What I might be more likely to pay for would be some sort of "IF of the week club"-like thing where someone with good taste does the work of sifting through all the games out there and delivers one to me every week, and maybe there's an accompanying forum for discussing that week's game, interviews with authors, and stuff like that. I have no idea how viable that would be, but it's something that I would like to exist and would be willing to throw a couple bucks a month toward. (Part of what I like about observing the competitions is the way the community focuses on a few specific games for a little while.)

[quote]People write this competition stuff for the reward, being it monetary or just the publicity. Otherwise no one would write a game in two hours than can be finished in five minutes. With rare exception, that's a gimmick, not a story.[/quote]

I recently participated in IntroComp, and the prize had nothing to do with it; it was because I'd wanted to make a game for a long time but usually ran out of steam before finishing it. Since IntroComp only required writing an intro (at least initially), I thought I could at least manage that much. That turned out to be correct, and I was able to use my entry to try out various ideas and see what worked and what didn't, without having to worry about hanging a whole game on them. But I'm fairly certain that without the pressure of the competition deadline I would never have released anything.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2752&start=10#p19321
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tables and Kinds
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-12 08:00:14

[quote="Zed"]though I don't recall that you ever really forget identifications in Nethack[/quote]

Oh, you do. Never read an unidentified 200zm scroll (unless you're going to die the next turn and your only hope of escape is lucking onto a taming scroll, in which case, don't find yourself in that position).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2783&start=10#p19322
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Mobile App Pricing for IF...?
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-07-12 08:03:18

I think that much more interesting than charging for hobby made IF, is charging for hobby made extras, relating to an IF.

Let me use Aotearoa as an example: if Matt created and released a book (or a pamphlet, or...) with the history of the island, maps, illustrations of the landscape, a list of the species found there, etc, I think it would certainly be greeted with good eyes, would certainly sell a few copies, and wouldn't be regarded as "selling IF, when there are so many good and free IF titles out there".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2422&start=0#p19323
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: I have a great idea...
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-12 08:04:33

Ah!  I might have used the term Featureless Undefined Character (Kinda), but I suppose some people might be offended at the acronym.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2790&start=0#p19324
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Easiest authoring system to translate to other languages
User: Pelican / DateTime: 2011-07-12 08:06:06

[quote="Alex"]There's no Chinese translation of Quest yet, but it should be possible to create one for Quest 5.0.

It would be a matter of translating English.aslx:

<a class="postlink" href="http://quest.codeplex.com/SourceControl/changeset/view/8945#34545">http://quest.codeplex.com/SourceControl ... 8945#34545</a>[/quote]That seems quite easy for me to translate, the problem is, I don't use Windows, so if I translate it, will I be able to use that for other systems?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2783&start=10#p19325
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Mobile App Pricing for IF...?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-12 08:10:40

[quote="I4L"]Like I said, this isn't market research. This is curiousity. I'm hoping it will generate enough conversation to maybe possibly generate some kind of reward for IF authors. If I sell two copies of a game for $0.99, that's a Mt. Dew that I had to pay for when I was giving away my stuff for free.[/quote]

I don't think it's totally unreasonable to charge for your work, but that's not exactly what was asked.  I, personally, have loads of crappy free entertainment at my fingertips, and quite a lot of good, excellent, or pretty awesome free entertainment at my fingertips.  (Some of it is dependent on an internet connection and access to a computer, but some of it isn't.)

That means that even paying a buck for something means it has to beat out other sources of entertainment.  It is difficult for me to get to the point of pulling out my credit card when I've got so many other options.  There's a word for this in economics.  Opportunity cost?  I don't think that's quite it.  Anyway, it has to do with *me*, not the author, at least when I'm playing.  

On the other hand, your point is true for everything.  If we paid to use this forum, the mod/host could do a few more things.  He or she does work; isn't it worth a buck a month?  Google gets hundreds of hits from me a month.  I find it immensely useful.  I would throw a temper tantrum if I was asked to cough up.  

What about a donation system?  Paying a buck for something that already *has* beaten out other sources of entertainment in a surprising way is something I do from time to time.  It also feels more like chipping in for the author's beer than buying something, and has fewer attendant expectations.  I think I've donated about $40 to Dwarf Fortress by now.  If I'd paid $40 up front for what's up now, I would be pretty bitter.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2789&start=0#p19326
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: omg how cool would this be for writing IF?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-12 08:14:35

I think I use a different part of my brain to speak than to write.  (And I'm not sure I buy the accuracy thing - I've used a lot of voice technologies and they tend to be okay-ish at best.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2790&start=0#p19327
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Easiest authoring system to translate to other languages
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-07-12 08:16:59

The Editor is Windows-only, but you can play games on any system with a web browser (using the "Play online" link at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.textadventures.co.uk">www.textadventures.co.uk</a>)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=0#p19328
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-12 08:19:14

[quote="IF noob"]

Both the second (improved) version and the text IF were not consented by Adams.[/quote]

Ref?

[quote="severedhand"]IF Noob has got a touch of the ILoveHedgehogs about 'em.[/quote]

You think so, too, huh?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1635&start=0#p19329
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for writers
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-07-12 08:45:07

[quote="imipak"]The problem I'm having is that the authoring kit for the BBC micro was nice and easy for a lot of things (it was GUI-based, you set flags, you test flags and that's about it), but this was also a major limitation. It's very hard to write complex games that way. On the other hand, systems like Gluxle and Inform 7 are not turning out to be that intuitive to me, the standards expected in IF have gone up heavily since the late 80s and early 90s, and I simply don't have the skills yet to bring what I'm imagining to life the way I'd like on modern engines.[/quote]

I'd be happy to provide advice on Inform 7, should you wish it. PM me and we'll talk.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2648&start=10#p19330
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can Gargoyle play Gblorb files?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-07-12 09:04:15

Does Gargoyle really have online documentation somewhere? It's news to me; even the wiki is slanted toward developers rather than end users.

It ships with sound and graphics enabled, for several IF formats. There's no such thing as TADS mode; multimedia TADS is not supported, and text mode is used for all TADS games. Graphics and sound are also not supported for Z-Machine games.

If you're only having fun at the expense of the original poster, I'd prefer you didn't spread misleading facts about my project to do it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2788&start=0#p19331
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6 and 7 vs Tads 2 and 3
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-12 09:08:55

[quote="IF noob"][quote="VictorGijsbers"]How should we know? What about actually [i]telling[/i] us something about your game and your programming background, [i]showing[/i] that you have already looked at these different languages and formed some idea about them, and so on?[/quote]
I'm not sure about the rest of the team (may not be fully committed to this project), but some of them (myself included) don't know anything about programming.
I've looked at other threads, and the consensus is that Inform 7 is super easy, but I've been playing in Tads 3, and I think it looks better.

So what do I go with, ease of use, or better graphics/photos?[/quote]

Given that you seem reluctant to do any coding, what about leaving it up to the coders to decide?  Didn't you sign up as a co-brainstormer?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2760&start=0#p19332
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Dead NPCs
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-07-12 10:07:25

[quote="ezfreemann"]im concerned when i read above about the corpse reacting to things.  does this happen if the corpse is an object, not a "person"?  should i be worried?[/quote]
If you are referring to my post, what I meant was that if you use the same object as the NPC and the corpse you can easily forget to make the difference between dead and alive NPCs. For example:

[code]A person can be alive or dead. Bob is alive.

Instead of attacking alive Bob:
    say "Bob is dead!";
    now Bob is dead.

Instead of touching Bob: [<-- oops, forgot to specify that Bob must be alive]
    say "'Hey, don't touch me!' Bob says."[/code]
Now if you touch Bob's corpse you suddenly see a dead man talking.

If you use different objects for the NPC and for the corpse, it's virtually impossible to make this kind of mistake.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2791&start=0#p19333
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Glimmr Canvas-Based Drawing:  No Image
User: tuatha / DateTime: 2011-07-12 10:07:40

I've downloaded and, I believe, successfully integrated Glimmr Canvas-Based Drawing.  However, no images appear during gameplay.  Instead, I get a black background.  I've been tinkering with this for about two hours, and still no success.  As it stands, here's my code:

[code]The portrait-window is a graphics g-window.  The main-window spawns the portrait-window.  The position of the portrait-window is g-placeright.  The scale method of the portrait-window is g-fixed-size.  The measurement of the portrait-window is 300.

The portrait-canvas is a g-canvas.  The associated canvas of the portrait-window is the portrait-canvas.  The canvas-width of the portrait-canvas is 300.  The canvas-height of the portrait-canvas is 600.

A portrait-sprite is a kind of a sprite.  The associated canvas of a portrait-sprite is the portrait-canvas.  The display-layer of a portrait-sprite is 2.  The display status of a portrait-sprite is g-active.  A portrait-sprite has a number called the associated portrait.  The origin of a portrait-sprite is { 150, 300 }.

Some portrait-sprites are defined by the Table of Portrait Elements.

Figure of Mary is the file "Mary.png".

Table of Portrait Elements
image-ID	associated portrait	sprite
Figure of Mary	20	Mary[/code]

Any idea what I'm doing wrong?  I've troubleshot in the IDE, Gargoyle, and Glulxe.

Additionally, when I get past the intro (just as the command prompt appears), I get an error.  This is the only code I've added since successfully running the game.  The error reads:

[**Programming error:  tried to read outside memory usage -> **]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2784&start=0#p19334
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Testers needed for FrobTADS Mac installer
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-12 10:15:16

Working for me in 10.5.8. Filenames with spaces in them (like "Rogue of the multiverse.t3") won't open, but that may be a limitation of the system.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=0#p19335
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-07-12 10:16:43

[quote="IF noob"]The family of Lewis Carrol still owned the rights to the name and the contents of the book, and they didn't consent to it being used as a game, nor did they get any residuals from it.[/quote]
I find this very hard to believe. [i]Alice[/i]'s copyright has expired more than 100 years ago. If Carroll's estate had quarrels with the game, it would've had to been on some other grounds than copyright issues.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2782&start=0#p19336
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Which authoring system to use for a graphical adventure?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-07-12 10:23:50

[quote="matt w"](I'm a little surprised that there's no IFDB tag for games with graphics.)[/quote]
There is (<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchbar=tag%3Agraphics">http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchbar=tag%3Agraphics</a>), you just happened to pick the games that aren't tagged yet :)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=10#p19337
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-12 10:24:47

[quote]When going commercial, the author almost never owns his own work. The publisher does. So Douglas Adams probably did not own Hitchhiker's Guide.[/quote]

No, that is rarely true. Reference books might be written for hire, and then the company retains the copyright. But for fiction, the author practically always keeps ownership. If you're publishing a novel and the publisher asks to buy your copyrights, run away fast.

Douglas Adams retained the copyrights of the HHGG books until his death, and then passed them on to his heirs.

The HHGG *game* says "Copyright 1984 by Infocom" -- but by 1996, Activision had stopped distributing it (it wasn't in the Masterpieces collection) and then it appeared on the Douglas Adams web site. So it looks like there was some reversion clause in their agreement, where Adams (and later his estate) got all the rights after ten-ish years.

(And _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_ has been public domain since 1907, so I don't know what you're talking about there either.)

[quote]The second version was mostly animation that was called a video game, made for the Macintosh and Mac Jr., and at the same time the IF came out (like a movie's Director's Cut).[/quote]

You're going to have to cite some references for that. We've never heard of anything like it, not until the BBC graphical update in I think 2008. (Also, there was no Mac model called the "Mac Jr.")

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2788&start=0#p19338
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6 and 7 vs Tads 2 and 3
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-07-12 10:30:12

Since no one else has mentioned it, Eric Eve has written a thorough comparison of I7 and T3, which is available here:

[url]http://brasslantern.org/writers/iftheory/tads3andi7.html[/url]

The one thing that article doesn't address is that currently it's possible for your players to play an Inform game (either I6 or I7) in a web browser, without downloading an interpreter. T3 has, at present, no such functionality.

It also depends on what type of computer your folks are using. I7's development program is cross-platform, but T3 Workbench is Windows-only. (It will run under a Windows emulator on OS X with about 99% functionality intact, but there's a problem with a dialog box.)

Which coding style you prefer is a very subjective issue. Personally, I find T3 code just as easy to read as I7 code, if not easier. But that's just me.

By all means, read Eric's article.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2781&start=10#p19339
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Off the top of my head
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-12 10:30:52

There was an (authorized) computer game based on the Labyrinth movie. See <a class="postlink" href="http://www.mobygames.com/game/labyrinth">http://www.mobygames.com/game/labyrinth</a> .

I played some of it. It even had a sort-of kind-of text-parser interface. But I never finished it, and I'm pretty sure that was because it wasn't very well-designed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2791&start=0#p19340
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glimmr Canvas-Based Drawing:  No Image
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-12 10:51:18

There seem to be two little problems here that have dovetailed in a perfect-storm kind of way. First, Inform assumes that the first column in your table is the name of the sprite--since yours starts with the image-ID (figure name), Inform assumed that the figure name was actually the name of the sprite. And because it assumed that the image-ID column was the name of the sprite, it didn't assign the image-ID property at all.

Normally, Inform would have choked on the attempt to call the sprite Figure of Mary, since Figure of Mary has been already been defined as a figure. However, the placement of the Figure of Mary is the file... declaration between the definition of the sprite subkind and the table defining the instances of that kind seems to have put it into a kind of no-man's land, where the normal checks weren't made. The upshot is that you have [i]both[/i] a figure named Figure of Mary and a sprite. This is [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=696]a bug[/url], but it also illustrates the general principle that defining figures should occur before any code that has anything to do with images.

Here's a working version of the code, with the only modifications being to the table and the placement of the figure name declaration:

[code]Include Glimmr Canvas-Based Drawing by Erik Temple.

[Use Glimmr debugging.]

Figure of Mary is the file "Mary.png".

The portrait-window is a graphics g-window.  The main-window spawns the portrait-window.  The position of the portrait-window is g-placeright.  The scale method of the portrait-window is g-fixed-size.  The measurement of the portrait-window is 300.

The portrait-canvas is a g-canvas.  The associated canvas of the portrait-window is the portrait-canvas.  The canvas-width of the portrait-canvas is 300.  The canvas-height of the portrait-canvas is 600.

A portrait-sprite is a kind of a sprite.  The associated canvas of a portrait-sprite is the portrait-canvas.  The display-layer of a portrait-sprite is 2.  The display status of a portrait-sprite is g-active.  A portrait-sprite has a number called the associated portrait.  The origin of a portrait-sprite is { 150, 300 }.

Some portrait-sprites are defined by the Table of Portrait Elements.

Table of Portrait Elements
portrait-sprite	image-ID	associated portrait
Mary	Figure of Mary	20

When play begins:
	open up the portrait-window.
	
There is a room.[/code]


Incidentally, there a couple of tools you could use to deduce what was happening here. The World tab in the Index shows all sprite (and windows and canvases), and shows Figure of Mary to be the sprite name. Including the "Use Glimmr debugging" line will produced a verbose debugging log that show you that the game is attempting to draw a sprite called "Figure of Mary" rather than "Mary," as well as the fact that the image-ID for that sprite is undefined.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2784&start=0#p19341
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Testers needed for FrobTADS Mac installer
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-12 11:29:27

[quote="matt w"]Working for me in 10.5.8. Filenames with spaces in them (like "Rogue of the multiverse.t3") won't open, but that may be a limitation of the system.[/quote]
Thanks for confirming for OS X 10.5! Btw, filenames are handled by the shell (which is GNU Bash, in the case of Mac OS X). When they have spaces, they must be quoted (e.g. "name with spaces") or escaped (name\ with\ spaces). The TAB completion support is your friend; type:

  frob "Rogue of

and then press TAB. It will automatically deduct the rest of the filename. If more than one solution is possible, pressing TAB twice will print the possible continuations.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2648&start=10#p19342
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can Gargoyle play Gblorb files?
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-12 11:36:45

[quote="bcressey"]Does Gargoyle really have online documentation somewhere? It's news to me; even the wiki is slanted toward developers rather than end users.

It ships with sound and graphics enabled, for several IF formats. There's no such thing as TADS mode; multimedia TADS is not supported, and text mode is used for all TADS games. Graphics and sound are also not supported for Z-Machine games.

If you're only having fun at the expense of the original poster, I'd prefer you didn't spread misleading facts about my project to do it.[/quote]
Screenshots of several modes.
<a class="postlink" href="http://ccxvii.net/gargoyle/screenshots.html">http://ccxvii.net/gargoyle/screenshots.html</a>

As you can see, it supports graphics and text in some modes, and only text in others, and yes there were other pages from 1981 to 1997, but they were taken down to make way for links to the expanding Brass Lantern, Intfiction Database, and the brand new Inform 7 site.

No, I was not making fun of him.
If I was, I wouldn't write the first line.

I already said it doesn't support Tads 3, only Tads 2.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2791&start=0#p19343
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glimmr Canvas-Based Drawing:  No Image
User: tuatha / DateTime: 2011-07-12 11:39:03

That solved it!  Thanks again, Erik.

My game is still crashing after the intro, though.  By selectively removing snippets of the code, I've isolated the problem to:

[code]The portrait-canvas is a g-canvas.  The associated canvas of the portrait-window is the portrait-canvas.  The canvas-width of the portrait-canvas is 300.  The canvas-height of the portrait-canvas is 600.[/code]

When this line is present, the game crashes.  When I remove it, it runs fine.  (I also remove the following lines on portrait-sprites.  If I only remove the lines on portrait-sprites, the game still crashes.)  I think the g-canvas line itself isn't the problem, though.  I've more-or-less copied and pasted this from the documentation.  Can you think of what it could be interacting with to cause the run-time error?

For reference, I have several other text-buffer windows open.  In addition, I'm running this with your Text Window Input-Output Control.  The main output window is the main screen, and the main input window is a text-buffer beneath the main screen.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2781&start=10#p19344
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Off the top of my head
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-12 11:44:03

[quote="zarf"]There was an (authorized) computer game based on the Labyrinth movie. See <a class="postlink" href="http://www.mobygames.com/game/labyrinth">http://www.mobygames.com/game/labyrinth</a> .

I played some of it. It even had a sort-of kind-of text-parser interface. But I never finished it, and I'm pretty sure that was because it wasn't very well-designed.[/quote]
Haven't you been listening (I mean reading)?
I have that one and it's features are what I'm basing our (possibly team) game on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2791&start=0#p19345
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glimmr Canvas-Based Drawing:  No Image
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-12 11:48:00

I don't really have a clue, unfortunately. There's nothing about the code you isolated that would lead to that error (at least, not that I can think of). I haven't really tested Glimmr with the Input-Output Control extension, but it's hard to see how there would be an error there either. Maybe you could post your full code; or rather, the full text of the smallest source code file you can make that exhibits this error? You can attach .txt files to forum posts, which might be the best way to go.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2781&start=10#p19346
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Off the top of my head
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-12 11:53:29

Sorry. I'm afraid your request wasn't very clear.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2648&start=10#p19347
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can Gargoyle play Gblorb files?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-07-12 12:18:44

Noob, you do realise that you're arguing with Ben Cressey, the current maintainer of Gargoyle, right? I'm sure he knows a lot more about the program than either you or me, and when he says that there's no such thing as a TADS mode, you can be sure that's the way it is. (What you're seeing on that page you linked is simply screenshots of different games, not different modes.) You're also wrong when you say that it doesn't support TADS 3.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2663&start=10#p19348
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: artwork needed
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-07-12 12:19:20

I'll make a new thread for it, if this is actually a Thing Of Interest.

ezfreemann, want to send me some details?  A copy of the game would be helpful (bonus: I can playtest it).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2474&start=0#p19349
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Hello People, My intro and a question about Agility
User: LexTaylor.AAA / DateTime: 2011-07-12 12:28:42

Thanks for the info on Gargoyle, I didn't know about that interpreter... anyhow, I think that you didn't get my point. I know that sounds far-fetched but the thing I'm looking for is a soft that could port the MAGx code to z-machine/inform (so i can host my game on the web). I should stop dreaming, because I think hardly a soft like that exists. I'm guessing the only way to convert it to inform is re-writing the 11000 of code in Inform from the ground up  [emote]:roll:[/emote]  [emote]:roll:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2791&start=0#p19350
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glimmr Canvas-Based Drawing:  No Image
User: tuatha / DateTime: 2011-07-12 12:40:19

While trying to create a compact example, I stumbled across the real problem.  When play begins, the game creates seventeen generic NPCs using Jesse McGrew's Dynamic Objects, each with randomly selected traits such as "interest in science," "interest in sports," "humor," etc.  This includes two NPCs with the personality profile of a librarian.

For some reason, creating two semi-identical NPCs at the start of the game was causing it to crash, though only if I'd already created the portrait-canvas.  (Though, curiously, the canvas wasn't yet linked to any of the NPCs.  I had yet to assign them portraits.)  By removing one of the librarians, the game ran fine.  After that, I could procedurally generate as many librarians as I wanted.

I'm not sure why this error was happening, but it seems fairly benign.  The seventeen generic NPCs I created at the start of the game are purely for testing purposes, so as long as this error is isolated to when the game begins, I should be fine.  I'll keep you posted about further developments, though hopefully there won't be any.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=10#p19351
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-07-12 12:42:09

No, I wasn't specifically thinking of airbending.

Has anyone gotten permission to use non-public domain images (or other materials) in your work?  How'd that go for you?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2787&start=0#p19352
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7- moving the player
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-12 12:47:06

hi.  ok, here's the code:

[code]carry out going to Old Room for the first time: say "blah blah blah";
      pause the game;
      clear the screen;
            say "blah blah blah";
            pause the game;
            move player to New Room;
            move NPC to New Room.[/code]

it seems simple enough to me, and i cant figure out anything in the New Room's code that could be interfering.  HALP!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2648&start=10#p19353
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can Gargoyle play Gblorb files?
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-12 12:49:40

I wonder why it came like that when I downloaded it.  [emote]:roll:[/emote] 
Isn't it possibles that he forgot exactly how he coded it in 1994?
He didn't even remember there were other pages to his site!

bcressey, there are games you can play on it.
Just because the default screen is for developers doesn't mean the entire use for it is.
By the way, my main format is either Tads 2 or Tads 3 (HTML Tads Playkit).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2787&start=0#p19354
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7- moving the player
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-12 12:58:44

Have you tried turning on the Rules testing command to see if you can track down what rule is being triggered to move the characters back to Old Room?


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2787&start=0#p19355
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7- moving the player
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-12 13:01:27

hey, thanks.  again, newbie here, so i appreciate the advice.  i will try that out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=10#p19356
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-12 13:06:57

[quote="katz"]No, I wasn't specifically thinking of airbending.

Has anyone gotten permission to use non-public domain images (or other materials) in your work?  How'd that go for you?[/quote]

Surprisingly easy, actually.  I've got permission for book excerpts, image manipulation, and raw images.  I generally write a paragraph about the work, what I'm doing, why the resource would be helpful, and what the game will be used for.  I ask for their permission under a couple different levels - as a prototyping tool (for my eyes only), as a pre-release resource, and as a full-release resource.  I usually mention that it's non-commercial and probably open-source, and tell them how I usually credit people.  (Resource: Name and email, or link to website.)

I've had one person tell me that they didn't want their work to be used if I ever decided to take any money, and maybe 25-35% of the people never respond.  Everyone else usually gives full permission, although sometimes the crediting requests are too much for me.  ("In order to use my squeaky door noise, you must put my name on the splash screen!")  

I tend to approach amateurs, albeit talented ones, which helps, but occasionally I've taken a chance on professionals, and had several positive responses.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2787&start=0#p19357
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7- moving the player
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-07-12 13:07:05

The problem is that you're using a carry out rule and it doesn't stop the game from running the standard carry out rules, including the ones that print the room description. You can fix this by changing it to an Instead rule. (In general, you want to use a carry out rule when you want something to happen [i]in addition[/i] to what would normally happen. When you want to prevent the normal action completely and have the game do something else, use an instead rule.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2787&start=0#p19358
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7- moving the player
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-12 13:13:39

hey thanks.  there was a reason i was using Carry Out, but currently i cant remember what that reason was.  some previous bug i encountered.  but yeah, i will def play around with an Instead rule and see what i can do.   [emote]:geek:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2791&start=0#p19359
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glimmr Canvas-Based Drawing:  No Image
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-12 13:20:23

I think other folks have also reported trouble creating dynamic objects when play begins. I suspect that this has nothing whatsoever to do with the canvas or the portraits; probably any object declaration could have created the issue.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=10#p19360
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-07-12 13:21:51

Neat, I would have thought it would be problematic putting copyrighted material into a freeware game instead of another copyrighted work.

I thought excerpts were fair game, but I just looked it up and damn, they're only fair game in reviews or scholarly works.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2787&start=0#p19361
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7- moving the player
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-07-12 13:22:08

The report going rules run after the carry out going rules, so what happens is that the player and NPC are moved to New Room and the report rules for going to Old Room run, describing the Old Room (since that's were you were going).

Make that offending carry out going rule an after going rule; after rules stop an action, so the report rules will not get a chance to run.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=10#p19362
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-12 13:22:36

[quote="Juhana"][quote="IF noob"]The family of Lewis Carrol still owned the rights to the name and the contents of the book, and they didn't consent to it being used as a game, nor did they get any residuals from it.[/quote]
I find this very hard to believe. [i]Alice[/i]'s copyright has expired more than 100 years ago. If Carroll's estate had quarrels with the game, it would've had to been on some other grounds than copyright issues.[/quote]
Alice Liddle (and family) actually had the copyright when he died, not his family (dead already).

Douglas Adams passed his books down to his sons who on their mother's advice (rather than a lawyer's) had to settle.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2787&start=0#p19363
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7- moving the player
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-12 13:25:52

awesome, that makes perfect sense, too.  god, i love this forum, u guys rawk!   [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2792&start=0#p19364
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Steps to install an I7 extension?
User: maabaum / DateTime: 2011-07-12 13:30:46

Preapologia: This is probably Documented Somewhere, but I haven't found it, and it seemed easier to ask here than to sort through the source code.

What: What are the steps taken by Inform7 to install a new extension to the user's extensions collection? Obviously the i7x file gets copied into a subdirectory based on the x-author's name, but apparently html documentation is generated in some fashion and ... anything else?

Why: I'm working with Linux ports of the I7 IDE, and in the hoary tradition of unix utilities, it occasionally would be useful to have an external tool that simply installs one or more desired, or even lusted after, extensions and nothing else.

tia,
maabaum

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=10#p19365
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-12 13:32:37

[quote="katz"]Neat, I would have thought it would be problematic putting copyrighted material into a freeware game instead of another copyrighted work.

I thought excerpts were fair game, but I just looked it up and damn, they're only fair game in reviews or scholarly works.[/quote]

Well, just because it's commercial doesn't mean it's not copyrighted.  EA Games couldn't just pick up my work, slap their name on it, and sell it without my permission.  And even if I revoke copyright on my bits, that doesn't carry over to anyone else's work - if you really liked the brush I used to make grass, you'd still need permission from the artist to use it.  (Theoretically.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=10#p19366
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-12 13:41:39

[quote="zarf"][quote]The second version was mostly animation that was called a video game, made for the Macintosh and Mac Jr., and at the same time the IF came out (like a movie's Director's Cut).[/quote]

You're going to have to cite some references for that. We've never heard of anything like it, not until the BBC graphical update in I think 2008. (Also, there was no Mac model called the "Mac Jr.")[/quote]
I've got 3 words for you:
"WE SHALL PREVAIL!"
The 1984/Olympics commercial was the opener for the Mac Jr., although it was supposed to be for Lisa.
Lisa still had "Bugs in the software."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2792&start=0#p19367
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Steps to install an I7 extension?
User: tuatha / DateTime: 2011-07-12 13:52:09

I'm not sure about the Linux version, but in Windows, click "File" and then "Install Extension."  Choose the i7x file you want to install.  After that, you have to put a line of code at the top of your program, such as:

[code]Include Flexible Windows by Jon Ingold.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=10#p19368
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2011-07-12 13:58:12

[quote]Douglas Adams passed his books down to his sons who on their mother's advice (rather than a lawyer's) had to settle.[/quote]

Oh cool. I had a big fight with some Wikipedia administrators about this. I'd like to give them a Barnstar... [i]right between the eyes.[/i] I am glad to see there's someone else who knew the real story, and you were right to post it here, IF Noob. 

The mother had her two eldest sons fight it out at a refurbished Wienerschnitzel, since they knew no self-respecting lawyer would set foot in there. If I remember correctly, Joshua ended up with the rights to Dirk Gently and Zaphod, but DNA Jr got pretty much everybody else. Everyone was humilated by the time it was over, and we should all think less of them for engaging in such petty quarrels.

The character Wonko the Sane was strangely unaccounted for in the settlement, but some people say he types stupid nonsense into text game forums to this very day.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=10#p19369
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-12 14:17:37

"Please don't hate me because I'm beautiful."

I was responding to another post here.
[b]He[/b] was the one who got off the subject.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=10#p19370
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-12 14:22:09

[quote]The 1984/Olympics commercial was the opener for the Mac Jr.[/quote]

No it wasn't.

[quote]Alice Liddle (and family) actually had the copyright when he died, not his family (dead already).[/quote]

Irrelevant. The copyright expired in 1907 (UK law, and I believe US law also). Anybody has been legally able to make a game based on _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_ since then.

[quote]Douglas Adams passed his books down to his sons who on their mother's advice (rather than a lawyer's) had to settle.[/quote]

Settle what? You haven't pointed at a report of a lawsuit.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=20#p19371
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-12 14:22:34

i guess its hard to do a "poor-man's-copyright" for IF, huh?  for those who never heard of that, its where u mail the work to yourself but never open it.  since it passes through a federal administration (post office) who stamps the date on it, then [i]supposedly[/i] it holds up in court if presented as evidence.  might just be urban legend and/or rumor.  i guess e-mailing your source code to yourself doesnt count, huh?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=20#p19372
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-07-12 14:33:20

[quote="ezfreemann"]might just be urban legend and/or rumor.[/quote]

[url=http://www.snopes.com/legal/postmark.asp]Yup.[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=20#p19373
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-12 14:36:23

lol thanks!  (snopes is useful, but i find their homophobia distasteful)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2781&start=10#p19374
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Off the top of my head
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-12 14:46:20

[quote="zarf"]Sorry. I'm afraid your request wasn't very clear.[/quote]
Actually I'm the one who should be sorry for snapping at you.
Biting the hand that feeds me so to speak.

Snark is interested in doing a team project with a fantasy game.
I said I would join if I didn't have to program, and you said you might too, maybe.
I'm trying to convince kat to do some art for us when she's free.
Some others have signed up too.
I hope you join us.
We've got a programmer and a writer on the staff.
Snark and I can be brainstormers (Snark can double as something else).
What's your talent?
We need some NPC interaction and narration as well as navigation and instructions.

Oh wait, that was katz.
I think you said you would do it in Snark's thread.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2781&start=10#p19375
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Off the top of my head
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-07-12 15:10:07

It was ezfreeman (he's got a game that's almost complete), but yes, I'd be happy to do some art when you've got the game more completed.

EDIT: I meant ezfreeman's thread is where I offered to do artwork.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2792&start=0#p19376
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Steps to install an I7 extension?
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-07-12 15:26:21

[quote="maabaum"]What: What are the steps taken by Inform7 to install a new extension to the user's extensions collection? Obviously the i7x file gets copied into a subdirectory based on the x-author's name, but apparently html documentation is generated in some fashion and ... anything else?[/quote]The HTML documentation is generated for all extensions by the front-end running the "ni" compiler with a special "-census" flag. This happens when an extension is installed and also when the front-end is started up, in case the user manually copied any extensions. That's all there is to the process [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2474&start=0#p19377
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Hello People, My intro and a question about Agility
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-12 15:44:22

[quote="LexTaylor.AAA"]Thanks for the info on Gargoyle, I didn't know about that interpreter... anyhow, I think that you didn't get my point. I know that sounds far-fetched but the thing I'm looking for is a soft that could port the MAGx code to z-machine/inform (so i can host my game on the web). I should stop dreaming, because I think hardly a soft like that exists.[/quote]
Yeah, I don't think such software exists. (Actually, I don't even know if converters exist for, say, C to Python. Writing such software would be a technical nightmare.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2788&start=0#p19378
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6 and 7 vs Tads 2 and 3
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-12 15:44:59

It will probably be Inform 7 since that's the easiest to program, and yes, I should leave it up to the team to decide.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2783&start=10#p19379
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Competitions and Commercial Games
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-07-12 15:45:57

[quote="matt w"]Well, it seems to me that this is the only way to handle things when the competition is judged by the community of players and anyone can judge. It'd hardly be reasonable to charge the judges for your entry. Also, I'm not sure exactly which contests you mean (partly, I'm sure, because I'm not at all plugged in to any other gaming scene); IGF seems to have an enormous amount of money behind it, and things like the TIGSource contest and Ludum Dare don't let you charge for your entries, I don't think. [/quote]

I had the rules of IFComp especially in mind. "No shareware, donorware, commercial products, etc. may be entered." Textfyre need not apply, even if they're willing to allow judges to play for free. (And what is "etc." exactly? Are ad-supported products allowed?)

But it's not just that; it's also the rule that the game must be unreleased at the opening of voting, which I assume is there for the same reason that the anti-canvassing rule is in place: to ensure that the grand prize goes to the best game, not to the best marketing. That rule makes perfect sense. But when we release a game, we have to do some marketing for the game, or nobody buys it.

The best form of marketing for indie games is to build pre-release buzz around a product: blog posts about the development process, teaser trailers, preview articles in the press, etc. All of this is forbidden by the IFComp rules.

(Also, we develop games at our own schedule; holding games back to release them in a competition doesn't make sense for anyone trying to run a business.)

IGF has a pre-selected panel of judges, so they don't have rules like these. Games released at any time in the competition year are eligible. Commercial games with excellent marketing are perfectly welcome; indeed, all of the winners have been almost exclusively commercial games.

I don't want to sound like I'm whining about the IFComp rules; I think they make sense for a hobbyist competition. Maybe the IF community needs a separate competition for commercial IF, with a panel of judges. (But what would be the point? Who would enter it? Maybe people would get involved if the prize were big enough. But where would the money come from?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2752&start=10#p19380
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tables and Kinds
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-12 15:50:21

Zed, that is fantastic. I had my identification working, but I was using some of the ugliest code known to man (or any other species). I am certainly going to replace it with an adaptation of your code.

[Edit: sorry, I read "zarf" instead of "zed".]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2783&start=10#p19381
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Mobile App Pricing for IF...?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-12 16:13:50

The XYZZY Awards fulfil many of the needs that the IFComp doesn't. This is not an accident.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2788&start=0#p19382
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6 and 7 vs Tads 2 and 3
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-07-12 16:18:37

[quote="IF noob"]It will probably be Inform 7 since that's the easiest to program, and yes, I should leave it up to the team to decide.[/quote]
I'm not at all convinced that I7 is "the easiest to program." It's easier for non-programmers to get started, that much is clear. Whether it's actually easier to write and debug a fully fleshed-out game in I7 than in T3 ... that's not something I would regard as definitively proven, and I've written complete games in both languages.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2781&start=10#p19383
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Off the top of my head
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-12 16:26:11

[quote="katz"]It was ezfreeman (he's got a game that's almost complete), but yes, I'd be happy to do some art when you've got the game more completed.[/quote]
Actually it was Sark, in 2 threads.
I also PMed him, but I didn't get a reply.
I was in ezfreeman's thread too complimenting your work.

I thought we had more on the team.
So far we have:
Sark - ?
mike111 - puzzles
IF noob - Co-brainstormer
katz - artwork
I don't know if we'll put any music in it.
Is anyone interested?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2788&start=0#p19384
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6 and 7 vs Tads 2 and 3
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-12 16:31:18

[quote="Jim Aikin"][quote="IF noob"]It will probably be Inform 7 since that's the easiest to program, and yes, I should leave it up to the team to decide.[/quote]
I'm not at all convinced that I7 is "the easiest to program." It's easier for non-programmers to get started, that much is clear. Whether it's actually easier to write and debug a fully fleshed-out game in I7 than in T3 ... that's not something I would regard as definitively proven, and I've written complete games in both languages.

--JA[/quote]

Yeah . . . ease of programming varies radically depending.  I'd say the learning curve is less steep, but much longer in I7; I still don't fully grok certain features.  I do think that it's got a bonus in that it may be easier for non-programming team members to "read" - even if you're not following the code completely, it's initially easier to follow the stream of logic, which probably has some advantages.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2783&start=10#p19385
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Mobile App Pricing for IF...?
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-07-12 16:33:05

[quote="I4L"]Like I said, this isn't market research. This is curiousity. I'm hoping it will generate enough conversation to maybe possibly generate some kind of reward for IF authors. If I sell two copies of a game for $0.99, that's a Mt. Dew that I had to pay for when I was giving away my stuff for free.[/quote]

IMO, the best hope for paying people to write IF is to build a 501(c)(3) literary non-profit around interactive fiction. The non-profit would handle one-off donations but would make most of its money from subscription memberships.

The non-profit would do two activities:

1) act as a publisher for IF
a) pay advances and royalties to authors who submit grant proposals (and finished games)
b) package and distribute IF on all major platforms, charging what the market will bear (especially including pay-what-you-want sales)
c) marketing and customer support

2) organize a pay-to-enter competition with a panel of judges and a meaningfully large cash prize (e.g. $1000 and up)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2783&start=10#p19386
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Mobile App Pricing for IF...?
User: Janka / DateTime: 2011-07-12 16:40:49

I think the time where you can make serious money from text adventures is long ago. The number of people interested in is just too low, maybe 100,000 people on the net. How many people expect you to pay 99ct for playing a small IF piece? I think 1000 would be much. So you could make $990 from it. How long could you work for $990? Would the IF piece be worth 99ct? Plus, would it be worth $990 to even think about how to chase illegal copies of the game? Why bother?

Then I think about zarf and his effort to make a living from IF. Have it worked out yet? If yes, how do you have managed it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2752&start=10#p19387
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tables and Kinds
User: Zed / DateTime: 2011-07-12 16:52:23

Being mistaken for zarf on intfiction.org is probably the best thing that'll happen all day.  [emote]:D[/emote] 

I don't have much faith that the implementation above wouldn't have its memory usage spiral out of control if you're creating bunches of items. An obvious small optimization occurred to me -- before cloning a new object, check to see if there's an appropriate existing one lying around off-stage and recycle it.

And if you add properties to the items, for instance, adding blessed/cursed/neutral or letting the player name them, you'd have to transfer all the traits appropriately when you exchange plain for obfuscated or vice versa.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2783&start=10#p19388
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Mobile App Pricing for IF...?
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-07-12 17:08:57

[quote="zarf"]The XYZZY Awards fulfil many of the needs that the IFComp doesn't. This is not an accident.[/quote]

I find the XYZZY Awards a bit of a conundrum; it's a wider competition, but most years the winner of IFComp wins XYZZY, too. Maybe a panel of judges would help? (Do the XYZZY Awards even have prizes?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2792&start=0#p19389
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Steps to install an I7 extension?
User: maabaum / DateTime: 2011-07-12 17:12:21

[quote="DavidK"]The HTML documentation is generated for all extensions by the front-end running the "ni" compiler with a special "-census" flag. This happens when an extension is installed and also when the front-end is started up, in case the user manually copied any extensions. That's all there is to the process [emote];)[/emote][/quote]

True story?! Damn. Are ni and it's arguments sort of , like, how-you-say-that, "documented" anywhere? It seems not to respond to the usual -h or --help flags?

maab

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2752&start=10#p19390
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tables and Kinds
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-12 17:23:02

[quote="Zed"]And if you add properties to the items, for instance, adding blessed/cursed/neutral or letting the player name them, you'd have to transfer all the traits appropriately when you exchange plain for obfuscated or vice versa.[/quote]
Hm, you just uncovered a huge bug in my game (both with my previous code, and with your code that I have been adapting). You can stop a scroll from burning by identifying it. Heh.

I think the only interesting property that a scroll can have right now is that it can be burning, but I have think about this more carefully. Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2151&start=0#p19391
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Standing testers
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-12 17:54:08

[quote="George"]I suppose you could do it all with a mailing list, but it doesn't seem like a testing club would need a mailing list really; it seems like a testing club is a group with a little more motivation and long term obligation to accept games to test than the people already signed up to IFGT.[/quote]
George, I'm not a play testing kind of guy, but I would love it if you could come on our team.
We have to set the whole thing in motion first.
Will you be committed to doing this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2752&start=10#p19392
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tables and Kinds
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-12 18:23:16

[quote="Zed"]Being mistaken for zarf on intfiction.org is probably the best thing that'll happen all day.  [emote]:D[/emote] 

I don't have much faith that the implementation above wouldn't have its memory usage spiral out of control if you're creating bunches of items. An obvious small optimization occurred to me -- before cloning a new object, check to see if there's an appropriate existing one lying around off-stage and recycle it.

And if you add properties to the items, for instance, adding blessed/cursed/neutral or letting the player name them, you'd have to transfer all the traits appropriately when you exchange plain for obfuscated or vice versa.[/quote]

I have some clunky code that needs looking at, but right now, before cloning, I have a look at a separate room called Limbo to see if there's an item of the appropriate type there.  If so, it picks it up, wipes it clean of various properties and relations, pretends like it's a new item, and voila.  Limbo is better than off-stage, since it absolutely ensures I can't pick a prototype, or mess with something that's off-stage for other reasons but might make a return, and provides me with easy testing feedback as to the numbers of "extra" items lying around at any given time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2793&start=0#p19393
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Disambiguation chooses weird objects(?)
User: savaric / DateTime: 2011-07-12 18:36:11

Hi,
I'm new to Inform 7 but have been experimenting quite a bit in the last few days and have made some progress.

However, I've run up against an annoying problem which feels like it should be fairly simple to solve, but I have not managed so far...

[code]Lab is a room.
In lab is a container called mug.
A pool is fixed in place in the lab.
The floor is fixed in place in the lab.

The player carries a plate. The plate is a supporter.

Filling it from is an action applying to two things. Understand "fill [something] from [something]" as filling it from.

Does the player mean filling the plate from the pool:it is very unlikely.
Does the player mean filling the noun from the noun:it is very unlikely.

Does the player mean filling the mug from the pool:it is very likely.
[/code]

This produces the following result:

[quote]>fill
What do you want to fill the plate from?
[/quote]

I would have thought the "Does the player mean" rules would have made the parser prefer the mug before the plate, but it seems the fact that player is carrying only one thing (the plate) overrides all attempts to get it to choose something else.
Carrying more than one object gives "What do you want to fill?" instead, which is what I would want in the first case also.
Defaulting to an object just because it is the one and only object the player carries seems a bit weird when there are other candidate objects in the room (maybe it's a bug?)

As a workaround I tried this:
[code]
Liquid source is a kind of thing. The pool is a liquid source.
Filling it from is an action applying to two things. Understand "fill [container] from [liquid source]" as filling it from.
[/code]

This produces:
[quote]>fill
(mug from the pool)
[/quote]

Which is all well and good, but apparently that affects how the player's command is parsed, so now this happens instead:
[code]>fill plate from pool
You can't see any such thing.
[/code]
...which isn't true since both plate and  pool are visible...and since it seems to happen during parsing it can't be affected by any Before or Check rules, if I understand things correctly.

Any ideas or pointers? I've been through the manual and searched the web, but all I can find is that disambiguation is pretty tricky territory...

Thanks,
Savaric

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2794&start=0#p19394
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Lucy in disguise with pie men
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-12 18:52:10

Lucy 6
Costumed at fair
Watching a pie eating contest

What do you think of this as a start?
I thought she could loose her parents getting caught up in eating pies herself.

Ok, I admit it, I just wanted to take off on the Beatles song.
What do you think of it for a start.
I was thinking it could be similar to Alice in Wonderland.

[b]Edit:[/b] This title is copyrighted.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2793&start=0#p19395
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation chooses weird objects(?)
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-12 19:12:37

"Does the player mean" statements deal with situations where the player types something which the parser might otherwise interpret as having more than one possible meaning.  For a situation where the player does [i]not[/i] type a word and you want the parser to infer it, I think you want to use rules for supplying a missing nouun or (in this case) a missing second noun.  I think these are covered in the documentation under activities.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2794&start=0#p19396
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Lucy in disguise with pie men
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-12 19:13:54

one day, you and i are going to sit down and you're going to explain to me exactly how your mind works.  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2783&start=10#p19397
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Mobile App Pricing for IF...?
User: George / DateTime: 2011-07-12 19:29:18

This whole thread strikes me as a little bit bizarre. 

The best way to figure out what the pricing for IF might be is to sell some IF. Luckily you don't have to go in blind on this. Textfyre, Tin Man Games, Choice of Games, and a few solo IFers all have thrown their hat in the ring and you can learn from their examples. You could learn a thing or two from Echo Bazaar and Varytale as well.

A non-profit foundation could be useful, but IMO it would best coexist along a thriving commercial niche market, otherwise you're kind of back to where you started.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2795&start=0#p19398
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Team Project!
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-12 20:03:58

Sark has thought of a neat idea I would love to be a part of!
It's a team project we can all get behind.
I know I haven't been here very long, heck I just registered yesterday, but I still think this would be a good idea.
I haven't gotten any real confirmation that this project will even start, but I'm hopeful.

You want to know exact details do you?
I know it sounds like a cop out, but it really is up to you.
I can't do anything without knowing at least the basics of what you're doing.
All I know is it's a fantasy game.

So here's Sark's thread:
[quote]I have plotted out a number of Interactive Fiction games, where some of the early work was done using the adventure-writing toolkit from Micro User (a BBC computer magazine). In other words, games I've been working on for a while. A loooong while. All the work in the past decade or so has been entirely on paper. At present, I simply don't have the experience to re-implement the games using the current generation of authoring systems, though with practice that will obviously change. In the meantime, I'd love it if people could help me with getting one of the games implemented (doesn't matter which one) to help me get a better feel for what can (and cannot) be done.[/quote]
Here's another one:

[size=150]Opinions on this story structure?[/size]
[quote]I'm not very good at plotting, but I think I've got the rough structure of my first piece of IF (as well as the characters and setting, but that's not what this post is about). I was hoping to get some critiques. Anyone up for it? Also, if anyone is interested in collaborating on this piece, let me know.

[b]Act One: Initial Exploration[/b]

At the start of play, the player has three interesting leads to explore. They can do so, discovering backstory along the way, or they can just wait. Regardless, after a certain number of turns, the act automatically ends when the player character and all NPCs are mysteriously turned into animals.

During this act, the player can find out about a deceased character that the player character of whom the player character has many good memories.

[b]Act Two:Player as an Animal[/b]

The player is unable to communicate with the animal NPCs, who seem not to have retained their minds. The room descriptions change to accommodate the player's new perspective. Objects that the player must actively search for as a human (for example, by looking under a bed) are now visible by default. Completing the main puzzle of this segment returns the player to human form.


[b]Act Three: The Meat of the Puzzles[/b]

Each NPC can now be returned to human form by solving a specific puzzle. Once a certain number of these puzzles are solved, this next act begins.

During this act, the player can uncover less pleasant information about the remembered character.

[b]Act Four: Red Herring[/b]

This act begins with a randomly selected rescued NPC telling the player character a secret which seems to point to the cause of recent events being related to one of the three leads from Act One. All of these leads are about events outside the area to which the player has until now been confined. The outside area now becomes accessible. There, the can investigate any one of the three original leads, not just the one mentioned by the random NPC. Once the player reaches a point at which it seems their avenue of inquiry has provided a definitive explanation and a solution for the current problem, the player character automatically returns to the original area of play.

[b]Act Five: The Twist[/b]

The player character finds all but one of the NPCs dead, and the ghost of the remembered character preparing to kill the remaining NPC. A conversation between the player and the ghost determines whether the NPC lives or dies.

[b]Epilogue[/b]

Depending on which character the ghost left for last and whether they lived or died, the epilogue has several variations.[/quote]

I'll come up with props and sets if someone can come up with narration and later NPC interaction.

Right now I'm thinking old school.
The kind of things everybody hates or is tired of (key opens door, pull switch, run back, find secret, etc.)
Help me develop better stuff for you.

PS: I really liked Final Fantasy XII for the PS2.

Staff

Sark - brainstormer/writer
mike111 - puzzles
IF noob - Co-brainstormer
katz - artwork

PM me if you want to join and I'll edit this post accordingly.
Please don't reply to this thread directly.

Sark, mike111, katz, and anyone else who wants to join, we have permission to take off on another IF using little details here and there.
We would have to follow the same storyline to some degree, but there will be maps you can get that unlock scenes he hasn't thought of, and that's where our team can really shine.

The game is part IF and part AIF, so tell me now if you want out.
The sexual parts are already written and are optional for the player.
For instance, to advance the game, you must enter the AIF area and unlock a locked door, but the player won't have to go in or  have to have sex with the NPC.

You (writers and programmers) will however have to get her topless.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2361&start=10#p19399
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Getting started with Undum?
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2011-07-12 20:07:50

I have a blog hosted at WordPress.com right now. I've been thinking of giving Undum a spin. WordPress.com doesn't allow me to upload custom JavaScript files, or to embed JavaScript in my pages. So my question is, where would be the best place to host my Undum projects, given that that's pretty much the only reason I want webhosting for now?

P.S. The only reason I mention my WordPress.com blog is that I might want to migrate the blog if I set up a web site elsewhere.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2795&start=0#p19400
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Team Project!
User: Sark / DateTime: 2011-07-12 20:50:33

IF noob, I think this section of the forum is for complete or ready for testing games, not new projects.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2796&start=0#p19401
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Interacting with the real world
User: KernelCornV8 / DateTime: 2011-07-12 21:39:14

Old, gray, wizened programmer here, last seen in the IF world attempting to hack the FORTRAN source to Zork on a Burroughs B6810 to make it multiuser (yep, handful of 9600 baud terminals, acoustic coupler modems too expensive so you hoof it to the lab late at night).  I stumbled across Inform7 looking for a fun way to introduce programming to my daughters and the beast has been awakened.

Are there extensions to some of these IF engines that allow for RPC calls to external systems?  My professional life revolves around building automation and control systems (heating, air conditioning, lighting, metering, monitoring, etc) so having the engine reach out to gather information from the real world and change things would be very interesting.

[code]
You are standing beside air conditioning unit one.  The outside air damper is closed, the steam valve and cooling values are closed, the fan is off.

>  open damper
The damper is now open.

> open the steam value to 10 percent
The steam valve remains closed, perhaps it is stuck.

> turn on fan
The fan is driven by a variable speed motor, you have say how fast.

> turn on fan 50 percent
The fan is now running. The discharge air temperature is 73 degrees.
[/code]
It would be important for the engine to respond to external events as well, so when the discharge temperature rises above 75 degrees and an alarm condition is triggered, the system generates some text.  Even something simple, kinda cool to "walk around" in my house, see if somebody left the bathroom fan on upstairs, and turn it off.


KC

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2793&start=0#p19402
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation chooses weird objects(?)
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-12 21:45:03

This is a very tricky case for lots of reasons. Here's the first thing I see:

At a glance, you've given the action the name 'filling it from'.

When you say:

  'Does the player mean filling the plate from the pool:'

The catch here is, Inform can't actually extrapolate from the name of your action to work out other grammar. That's to say, a 'does the player mean' line is going to have to quote the exact name of the action for it to be understood. Since the object to be filled is the first [something], to check if the player was trying to fill the pool when the action name is 'filling it from' you'd say:

   Does the player mean filling it from pool.

which is obviously darn confusing to the eye, given the pool is the thing they're trying to fill, not the object they're trying to fill it with. But that's just a consequence of the name of the action being 'filling it from'.

So I think that all of your 'does the player' mean lines are not doing what you think they're doing atm.

My next problem is a personal one - I don't know myself how to write a 'Does the player mean' line which involves two objects [emote]:)[/emote] (EG pool and the plate). So, uh, I'll wait for someone who knows more to chip in.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2796&start=0#p19403
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Interacting with the real world
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-12 21:46:22

TADS 2 had a way to call native functions in a bundled DLL, but it was so universally ignored that I think TADS 3 dropped it. (Not sure of that, though.)

The easiest path (today) is probably to hack one of the Javascript interpreters to add extra Javascript functions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2796&start=0#p19408
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Interacting with the real world
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-12 21:58:01

This example from the Inform 7 manual might interest you:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/learn/man/ex330.html#e330">http://inform7.com/learn/man/ex330.html#e330</a>

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2793&start=0#p19409
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation chooses weird objects(?)
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-12 22:01:00

[quote]The catch here is, Inform can't actually extrapolate from the name of your action to work out other grammar.[/quote]

No, Inform handles that fine. All three rules wind up in the "does the player mean..." rulebook. You can see this in the Index, Rules tab.

Unfortunately, I think this is a case where Inform's prejudice towards held objects overrides the rulebook.

[quote]For a situation where the player does not type a word and you want the parser to infer it, I think you want to use rules for supplying a missing noun or (in this case) a missing second noun.[/quote]

No. Those activities would apply if you added the lines

[code]
Understand "fill" as filling it from.
[or]
Understand "fill [something]" as filling it from.
[/code]

...that is, if the Understand line has fewer arguments than the action. That's not the case here.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2793&start=0#p19411
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation chooses weird objects(?)
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-12 22:21:05

Bleh. So ignore most of what I said, original poster.

To zarf, where does Inform get the grammar from? Does it just try adding 'ing' to 'fill(add ing here) [something] from [something]'? Or what? It seems like kinda smart behaviour in an area where there could be all kinds of grammar.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2793&start=0#p19412
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation chooses weird objects(?)
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-12 22:36:35

The action name is "filling it from", with two arguments. The compiler knows that "it" is a special word, so it recognizes "filling __ from __" as the actual action template. That allows you to write "Check filling X from Y", or "Does the player mean filling X from Y", and so on.

Understand lines are not involved in this process.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2783&start=10#p19413
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Mobile App Pricing for IF...?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-07-12 23:15:07

My point was not to cast stones at competitions or try find a way to make IF profitable again. I'm not trying to make money on IF. Heck, I haven't even finished one. Probably won't. I'm not suggesting that everyone should suddenly start paying for IF. I'm not suggesting that we create some kind of platform to sell it or take donations for it.

Most people use Google every day. But Google doens't have to charge you, they make money in other ways. There are forums that require you to buy a membership. Yes, the basic idea could apply to anything.

Again, this is a hypothetical simply for my own curiosity. If, for example, IF were offered on the Android Marketplace or Apple Store... Would you drop a dollar on it? Yes a lot of people write IF because they love to write IF. Because they enjoy people playing their stuff. A lot of people do it as a hobby. Obviously no one expects to make a living on it. But even if you were to make five bucks on a game you wrote because five people wanted to give you a little something for your time.

That's all I'm asking. I'm not trying to start a revolution. I'm not trying to make waves. It's just a question.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2793&start=0#p19414
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation chooses weird objects(?)
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-12 23:30:53

Thanks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=20#p19415
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-07-13 00:11:47

[quote="ezfreemann"]i guess its hard to do a "poor-man's-copyright" for IF, huh?  for those who never heard of that, its where u mail the work to yourself but never open it.  since it passes through a federal administration (post office) who stamps the date on it, then [i]supposedly[/i] it holds up in court if presented as evidence.  might just be urban legend and/or rumor.  i guess e-mailing your source code to yourself doesnt count, huh?[/quote]

Too easy to steam open an envelope. Or any number of other things. While [i]technically[/i] as soon as you think something into existence you own the copyright on it, you still have to prove that you own that copyright. The only way to really do this is to get an actual copyright on it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2781&start=10#p19416
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Off the top of my head
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-07-13 00:42:41

[quote="IF noob"]I also PMed him, but I didn't get a reply.[/quote]

Sark is a woman.

So... Yes, going back and re-reading this entire thread again, I was (and still am, honestly) confused.

So you want to toss out an idea (ie "It's 3024 and apples have taken over the world... Go with it!"), have someone write it for you, have someone else do artwork and someone else do the programming. It's a idea based on a game that was based on a movie but has no foundation in either of those because a modern fighting game and an old arcade/Atari game are somehow thrown into the mix, but this somehow ties the logic together. And it began with a list of random game mechanics.

I'm still confused.

[quote="IF noob"]Labyrinth is already made.
It was originally an Apple II demo illustrating what a laboratory mouse has to go through.
The game was called MAZE (a TRON Lightcycle like game in 3D).
Old style keystrokes really helped the game in slow mode, but was a pain in fast mode (literally, your wrist would get cramps and fingers sore).
[/quote]

No, this would not be "Labyrinth" realized as a video game. First of all, it has nothing even remotely resembling anything from the movie and secondly if it's the game I'm thinking of, it was released a few years before the movie. If not the game I'm thinking of, it still doesn't have anything to do with the movie.

There are apparently people who know where all of this is going. I'm not one of them. I am, however, looking forward to the realization of whatever this concept of a game or games comes to be.

Best of luck!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2648&start=10#p19417
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can Gargoyle play Gblorb files?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-13 00:45:27

You should trust what Ben said. TADS 2 and TADS 3 both support graphics/sound. It's just that Gargoyle, due to it using the Glk versions of TADS2/3, does not support graphics in TADS.

You can read more about HTML TADS vs Plain TADS here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://tads.org/html_vs_text.htm">http://tads.org/html_vs_text.htm</a>

And this does have nothing to do with TADS 2 vs TADS 3. Both can be either multimedia/html, or plain text.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2460&start=20#p19418
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: New here, trying to get started on my first IF
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-07-13 00:50:56

[quote="Cyris"]
And what's the best way for me to handle scenes changing over the course of the story? The first puzzle in my game has the player going to the police to inform them of a crime scene he has just discovered. When he goes back to the scene later, the police will be all over the place, conducting their investigation. How am I going to make everything in the scene operate differently when the police are there?[/quote]

I'd also like to ask if maybe this is a misunderstanding of the scene mechanic? Try not to think of a scene as a place or as something like a "set". A scene is more like a series of events that takes place based on certain factors. So initially, you may have a scene called "Before the Murder" and then a scene "After the Murder". But the player won't be "going back" to the scene in the sense of being the scene of a crime or anything like that. They would complete the "Before the Murder" scene (or not) and then later come back to the same location (or not) for a different scene called "After the Murder".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2798&start=0#p19422
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Problem going from Z-Code to Glulx in Inform V7
User: Punk0 / DateTime: 2011-07-13 01:48:47

I just hit the wall on size in my Z-Code project in Inform V7, so I switched to Glulx.  When I compiled, I received a number of errors because I used colored text in certain situations.  I did some searching and found that Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short isn't supported by Glulx.  She instead wrote Glulx Text Effects, but I can't figure out how to use it.  First, is it a separate download, or do I just do an "include" line at the beginning?  Second, I noticed that color values were numbers.  Do you just put the numbers in brackets instead of [green letters]?  It looked like maybe you have to define what you are doing with the text before you can even use any effects.  Could someone translate the following into Glulx for me as an example?  Looking at examples has been my best teacher so far.

say, "[green letters]testing[default letters]."

I've been working on my first adventure on and off for over 5 years now.  I guess I should have started on something a little less ambitious for my first time, but it's been a labor of love.  I'm around 3/4 done, so I can't cut enough to make it fit into Z-Code.  I'm sure I'm not very efficient when it comes to using Inform either, but I can't go back when I can finally start to see the light at the end.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Duane C

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2781&start=20#p19423
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Off the top of my head
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-13 01:56:56

[quote="I4L"][quote="IF noob"]I also PMed him, but I didn't get a reply.[/quote]

Sark is a woman.

So... Yes, going back and re-reading this entire thread again, I was (and still am, honestly) confused.

So you want to toss out an idea (ie "It's 3024 and apples have taken over the world... Go with it!"), have someone write it for you, have someone else do artwork and someone else do the programming. It's a idea based on a game that was based on a movie but has no foundation in either of those because a modern fighting game and an old arcade/Atari game are somehow thrown into the mix, but this somehow ties the logic together. And it began with a list of random game mechanics.

I'm still confused.

[quote="IF noob"]Labyrinth is already made.
It was originally an Apple II demo illustrating what a laboratory mouse has to go through.
The game was called MAZE (a TRON Lightcycle like game in 3D).
Old style keystrokes really helped the game in slow mode, but was a pain in fast mode (literally, your wrist would get cramps and fingers sore).
[/quote]

No, this would not be "Labyrinth" realized as a video game. First of all, it has nothing even remotely resembling anything from the movie and secondly if it's the game I'm thinking of, it was released a few years before the movie. If not the game I'm thinking of, it still doesn't have anything to do with the movie.

There are apparently people who know where all of this is going. I'm not one of them. I am, however, looking forward to the realization of whatever this concept of a game or games comes to be.

Best of luck![/quote]
First of all, it would not be Labyrinth (or Final Fantasy for that matter).
Labyrinth was based on the movie of the same name.
It was a title meant for the failed Apple 2c (then it went exclusively to the Apple IIGS) released in the mid 90s.
Maze or MAZE was made in the 80s just for Apple 2, demonstrating the differences between that and it's predecessor, The Apple Computer.
It became known as Worm (pre-TRON) and Maze went to the Apple IIe in 3D.

Maze was dropped for other projects and demos (Arkanoid, Pong, Catch, and 20 questions).

Someone took Maze and revamped it a little.
The basic moves for a labyrinth were there, but new stuff was added, including NPCs, checkpoints, pickups, and runarounds (keep going to checkpoints or start for objects to win the game).
Although it was frustrating and tedious, I liked the runarounds and wished I could make some.

By the way, your sarcastic remark sounds like the cult classic film Attack of The Killer Tomatoes (radioactive giant tomatoes taking over humanity).

Sorry Sark for gender mistake.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2648&start=20#p19424
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can Gargoyle play Gblorb files?
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-13 02:26:01

[quote="RealNC"]You should trust what Ben said. TADS 2 and TADS 3 both support graphics/sound. It's just that Gargoyle, due to it using the Glk versions of TADS2/3, does not support graphics in TADS.

You can read more about HTML TADS vs Plain TADS here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://tads.org/html_vs_text.htm">http://tads.org/html_vs_text.htm</a>

And this does have nothing to do with TADS 2 vs TADS 3. Both can be either multimedia/html, or plain text.[/quote]
I know all that.
Tads 3 is HTML (multimedia)
Tads 2 is what  he calls "plain tads" which does not have the same interface.
Tads 1 worked on a Z-Machine like Windows Frotz.
Tads 2 managed to be integrated with Tads 3 in the HTML interpreter, but take away the HTML code, and no pictures can be seen.

I should say no conventional pictures.
Remember when you were an adolescent and thought making the word 130013 (BOOB) was hilarious?
That's the kind of picture Tads 2 has.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2648&start=20#p19425
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can Gargoyle play Gblorb files?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-07-13 03:18:23

You should stop for a while and actually read what people are telling you. (Hint: Your previous post is completely made up of false statements.) Or are you simply spreading misinformation for the fun of it, in which case, please stop it. It's not fun.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2648&start=20#p19426
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can Gargoyle play Gblorb files?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-13 03:24:25

[quote="IF noob"][quote="RealNC"]You should trust what Ben said. TADS 2 and TADS 3 both support graphics/sound. It's just that Gargoyle, due to it using the Glk versions of TADS2/3, does not support graphics in TADS.

You can read more about HTML TADS vs Plain TADS here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://tads.org/html_vs_text.htm">http://tads.org/html_vs_text.htm</a>

And this does have nothing to do with TADS 2 vs TADS 3. Both can be either multimedia/html, or plain text.[/quote]
I know all that.
Tads 3 is HTML (multimedia)
Tads 2 is what  he calls "plain tads" which does not have the same interface.
[/quote]
The problem is that you think "you know all that", but you really don't. Tads 3 and Tads 2 both can be multimedia, and both can be text-only. Whether an interpreter supports HTML TADS or not has nothing to do with Tads 2 vs Tads 3. HTML TADS is not tied to Tads 3.

For example, here is a Tads 2 game with graphics:

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=u0e6pwz03097ijx6">http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=u0e6pwz03097ijx6</a>

To see the graphics, you need an interpreter for Tads 2 games that supports HTML TADS.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2799&start=0#p19427
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Filfre 1.0
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-13 03:37:50

<a class="postlink" href="http://maher.filfre.net/filfre/">http://maher.filfre.net/filfre/</a> (files only download includes .exe)
This glulx/zblorb interpreter should have some debuggers on the job.
What do you think needs improvement?
Now supporting Inform formats (z#).

This question is asked at the Interactive Fiction Database, but I wanted to repeat it here.

Clickable buttons on a frame for NPC interaction (regards NPC name as helper word).
The dropdown lists are inconveniently positioned.
Inventory best in scrollbar list (for mouse wheel) as well as L for list and space to continue list (history with full size scrollbar).
Mouse rollover in popup for reading maps (collapsed in normal view).
Multiple tabs for game save slots with set or reset skill level if available.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2648&start=20#p19428
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can Gargoyle play Gblorb files?
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-13 03:47:00

[quote="RealNC"]To see the graphics, you need an interpreter for Tads 2 games that supports HTML TADS.[/quote]
That's what I said to begin with!

Can we just drop it now?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2648&start=20#p19429
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can Gargoyle play Gblorb files?
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-13 03:53:22

[quote="ilovemyhedgehog"]thanks.[/quote]
For Gblorb you should get Filfre.
<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2799">viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2799</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2648&start=20#p19430
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can Gargoyle play Gblorb files?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-07-13 04:03:39

[quote="IF noob"][quote="RealNC"]To see the graphics, you need an interpreter for Tads 2 games that supports HTML TADS.[/quote]
That's what I said to begin with![/quote]

No, it isn't. You said:

[quote="IF noob"]
Tads 3 is HTML (multimedia)
Tads 2 is what  he calls "plain tads" which does not have the same interface.
Tads 1 worked on a Z-Machine like Windows Frotz.
Tads 2 managed to be integrated with Tads 3 in the HTML interpreter, but take away the HTML code, and no pictures can be seen.

I should say no conventional pictures.
Remember when you were an adolescent and thought making the word 130013 (BOOB) was hilarious?
That's the kind of picture Tads 2 has.[/quote]

A game made in [url=http://www.tads.org/tads3.htm]Tads 3[/url] can be HTML or plain.
A game made in [url=http://www.tads.org/tads2.htm]Tads 2[/url] can also be either HTML or plain.
Tads 1 was not based on the z-machine. (I've never actually seen a TADS 1 game, so I could be wrong here, but someone else will correct me if I am.)
Tads 2 is not limited to ASCII pictures, [url=http://www.tads.org/t2doc/doc/tads-11.html]it can display both jpeg and png images[/url].

If you want to disagree further, please reference sources that support your claims or I will simply conclude that you're trolling. (I do already suspect that, but I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2800&start=0#p19431
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: All of my ideas are taken
User: Pelican / DateTime: 2011-07-13 04:09:18

I sat down with my notebook and came up with 3 games.  I thought up 3 stories, each with (what I thought were) unique puzzles.  On coming with a name for them, I checked the Interactive Fiction Database (to make sure I wasn't using a name already taken) and I stumbled across 3 games, each much like what I had envisioned (although better than my own) with fairly similar puzzles.  How do I make a game if all of my ideas are already used?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2648&start=20#p19432
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can Gargoyle play Gblorb files?
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-13 04:13:33

"Tads 2 managed to be integrated with Tads 3 in the HTML interpreter, but take away the HTML code, and no pictures can be seen."
That's what I said.

Anyway I'd like to stop all this bickering before it becomes a flame fest (see TOS).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2793&start=0#p19433
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation chooses weird objects(?)
User: savaric / DateTime: 2011-07-13 04:20:04

Thanks for the replies.

As Zarf says, the "Does the player mean" rules do have some effect but they are not enough to make the parser guess the mug on the floor over a single carried object.

I found the way to write rules for substituting missing nouns (Section 17.30 in the manual, thanks for pointing the way Robert):
[code]Filling it from is an action applying to two things. 
Understand "fill [something] from [something]" as filling it from.
Understand "fill [something]"  as filling it from.
Understand "fill" as filling it from.

Rule for supplying a missing noun when filling:
	now the noun is mug;

Rule for supplying a missing second noun when filling something from:
	now the second noun is pool;
	
Carry out filling something from something:
	say "Filling [the noun] from [the second noun]";[/code]

This produces the following:
[quote]>fill
Filling mug from the pool
>fill mug
Filling mug from the pool
>fill plate
Filling the plate from the pool
[/quote]

So that works if we want to force the use of certain objects if the nouns are missing...

BUT what I'm still wondering is this:

If you are carrying only one thing, the default behavior of the parser seems to be to guess that this object is the missing noun.
If you hold more than one object it will ask "What do you want to fill?".

Ideally I would want to tell the parser something like:
"For the fill from it command, if there are nouns missing, do not guess, always ask.", or perhaps
[code]Rule for supplying a missing noun when filling:
	ask the player for a noun;   <---- Is there something I can put here that will have that effect?
[/code]

But I have yet to find a way to intercept, modify or trigger the "What do you want to..." question. Is that possible?

I know you can do some intercepting of the "which do you mean" question by "Before asking which do you mean:", but I have not found anything like this for "What do you want to...".

/Savaric

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2648&start=20#p19434
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can Gargoyle play Gblorb files?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-07-13 04:26:47

Sorry, but it really doesn't seem like you understand.

TADS 2 and 3 are two different VMs, similar to the difference between Z-Machine and Glulx. The difference between the VMs does not concern UI stuff, but stuff like the memory model, how calculations are performed, and the object system.

Both VMs have a simple text UI system.

HTML TADS is an optional UI system which can be used by both the TADS 2 and 3 VMs, and is similar to how Glk can be used by both Glulx and JACL.

Gargoyle is a Glk interpreter, and includes a system which can converts TADS' simple text UI into Glk. It doesn't support HTML TADS because Glk doesn't have the capacity to do so. Once Zarf's CSS/HTML Glk proposal is finalised then perhaps it might be possible to convert from HTML TADS to Glk.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2801&start=0#p19435
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Where to get GNOME Inform 7 pre-built for Debian 6?
User: Pelican / DateTime: 2011-07-13 04:30:37

On the Inform Web site, I can only find GNOME Inform 7 built for the old version of Debian.  Is there a repository or someone managing a package that works well with Debian 6?  I found, the only way to install the package from the Inform Web site, is to download and install several older libraries using dpkg, which likely created problems elsewhere in my system.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2792&start=0#p19436
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Steps to install an I7 extension?
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-07-13 04:40:01

[quote="maabaum"]Are ni and it's arguments sort of , like, how-you-say-that, "documented" anywhere? It seems not to respond to the usual -h or --help flags?[/quote]No, it's not documented anywhere, other than the source code of the front-ends.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2648&start=20#p19437
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can Gargoyle play Gblorb files?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-13 04:41:49

Also, HTML Tads existed even before Tads 3 was even in development yet. It wasn't Tads 3 that introduced multimedia. It's actually vice versa; when Tads 3 appeared, it used (and still does) the already existing multimedia framework that Tads 2 uses. And that's because that multimedia framework is not tied to the Tads VM. It only concerns the interpreter's ability to handle the HTML code printed by the game and it doesn't matter whether that game is Tads 2 or 3.

You could even make a Z-Code or Glulx game print HTML code. Because that's exactly what happens here; a Tads game prints HTML code just like it prints all other text. It's just that the interpreter can intercept and parse that HTML code.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=20#p19438
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-13 05:48:34

[quote="zarf"][quote]The 1984/Olympics commercial was the opener for the Mac Jr.[/quote]

No it wasn't.

[quote]Alice Liddle (and family) actually had the copyright when he died, not his family (dead already).[/quote]

Irrelevant. The copyright expired in 1907 (UK law, and I believe US law also). Anybody has been legally able to make a game based on _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_ since then.

[quote]Douglas Adams passed his books down to his sons who on their mother's advice (rather than a lawyer's) had to settle.[/quote]

Settle what? You haven't pointed at a report of a lawsuit.[/quote]
For the Mac Jr, I cite "Wizards, Pirates, and Thieves", the TV movie about the 3 men who started it all.
The wizard - Wozniak, the pirate - Bill Gates, and the thief - Steve Jobs, and if you say that's just a TV movie, it was also a book written by Jobs himself.
Soon after Lisa came out, she wasn't feeling very well, so they got her cousin Mac Jr. and was introduced with a bang!

Alice Liddle had the rights to the books which was given to her grand daughter, then to her grand daughter, etc.
Liddle's only living relative had the rights to the books throughout the 80s and 90s.
A perfect example of this is a lawsuit against the maker of American McEe's: Alice.

"Douglas Adams passed his books down to his sons" with the agreement his wife would take care of any future books and series (see Thanks For All The Fish final edition).
[size=85]Published 1994 - on shelves in 95.[/size]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=20#p19439
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-13 05:57:58

[quote="zarf"][quote]When going commercial, the author almost never owns his own work. The publisher does. So Douglas Adams probably did not own Hitchhiker's Guide.[/quote]No, that is rarely true. Reference books might be written for hire, and then the company retains the copyright. But for fiction, the author practically always keeps ownership. If you're publishing a novel and the publisher asks to buy your copyrights, run away fast.[/quote]
Yeah, I had all those copyright notices in mind that appear in technical books. They also seem to appear in fiction books (in the usual form "(C) year, Publisher, all rights reserved"), but I guess you're more informed on the matter.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2783&start=10#p19440
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Mobile App Pricing for IF...?
User: Greeny / DateTime: 2011-07-13 06:22:06

I would be happy to pay 99c for a decent IF game.
The game would not have to be huge, I would settle for a few hours quality entertainment for 99c. 
I would be much more likely to buy if a free 'taster' version was supplied, which is common with other apps. (Assuming the game was good of course.)

I would have quite happily paid 99c for a small minority of the free IF games i've played. Perhaps 1 in 20.
The work,craft & love that has been put into some of the free IF out there is, frankly, astonishing.

I would be NOT be happy to pay [i][b]any[/b][/i] amount for a poor IF game. The objection would be on principle, not the amount spent.

Cheers
Greeny
(1st post btw, been playing IF, on & off, for many years.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2460&start=20#p19441
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: New here, trying to get started on my first IF
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-13 06:23:46

A scene is really just a flag that turns itself on or off at certain times. You can have things happen when a scene begins or ends, and you can check if a scene is currently happening. That's about it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2800&start=0#p19442
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: All of my ideas are taken
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-13 06:25:40

How did Worm turn into TRON?
There was more in it.
TRON had Lightcycles, a catch or die game, chess, and the MCP boss.
Worm only had an avoid your tail game.

Just put more stuff in it and name it something else.
The only hitch is you must have consent anyway, like Arkanoid to Break Out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=20#p19443
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-07-13 06:50:01

[quote="IF noob"]a bunch of nonsense[/quote]
This was mildly funny at first, but it's really starting to wear thin.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2781&start=20#p19444
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Off the top of my head
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-13 07:08:13

Are you casting asparagus on [i]Attack of the Killer Tomatoes[/i]? [emote]:shock:[/emote]   It's my second-favorite "so bad it's good" film (right after [i]Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things[/i]).


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2648&start=20#p19445
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can Gargoyle play Gblorb files?
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-13 07:17:04

I thought HTML Tads and Tads 3 were one in the same.
Anyway you are all saying what I stated originally stated, Gargoyle doesn't support multimedia.
What I said was it plays Tads without multimedia.

Do me a favor and download a game call Arrival.
It's in HTML Tads, but you'll be able to play it without pictures in Gargoyle as I often did.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2758&start=10#p19446
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Multiple Language Framework -- a good idea?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-13 07:18:07

[quote="ektemple"][code]There is a room. 

Bob is a man. The player is Bob.

Table of Translations
original	translation
"[printed name of the player] exists."	"Existe [printed name of the player]."

When play begins:
	print "There is a [printed name of the player]."
	
To print (msg - text):
	if msg is an original listed in the Table of Translations:
		say translation entry;
	otherwise:
		say "Could not match string."[/code]

The text will not be matched. Move to indexed text, though, and it will (you'll need to type at least the first column as indexed text as well as the input to the "print..." phrase).
[/quote]
That's too bad. I was assuming that every identical text would map to the same function, and thus be possible to test for equality. I don't think it's a great loss, though - as I said, I'm not really fond of gettext.

I look forward to seeing the new system for library messages. Hopefully it will make all of this moot.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=20#p19447
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-13 07:27:23

RealNC:  I think the point was not that only "reference" type works are subject to copyright, but that, in practice, there tends to be a difference in who [i]owns[/i] the copyright.  Often, a publisher will hire an author to prepare a reference or technical work, and part of the deal is that the publisher owns the rights to the works.  Fiction is more often written "on spec" and if and when the author finds a publisher the deal is more likely to be that the author retains copyright ownership.  Either way, unless somebody really screws up, there will be a copyright notcie attached to the work.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2800&start=0#p19448
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: All of my ideas are taken
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-13 08:30:34

[quote="IF noob"]Just put more stuff in it and name it something else.
The only hitch is you must have consent anyway, like Arkanoid to Break Out.[/quote]

That's true under a specific subset of circumstances that doesn't seem like it fits here.  

[quote="Pelican"]I sat down with my notebook and came up with 3 games.  I thought up 3 stories, each with (what I thought were) unique puzzles.  On coming with a name for them, I checked the Interactive Fiction Database (to make sure I wasn't using a name already taken) and I stumbled across 3 games, each much like what I had envisioned (although better than my own) with fairly similar puzzles.  How do I make a game if all of my ideas are already used?[/quote]

There's nothing wrong with rehashing a plot or puzzle.  Depending on the similarities, implementation and style might be enough to set you apart.  I'd make the game you feel passionate about.  I'm not so big on puzzles, so you might want to take this with a grain of salt, but there tend to be certain classic puzzle types.  They get dressed up in different clothing, but a truly unique puzzle is pretty rare.  It's certainly not necessary for a subset of your potential players.  

On the other hand, if you really feel driven to write something unique, then you'll need to come up with more ideas, spin the old ones in a new way, or combine/strip down ideas until you've got something.  That process is different for different people, and that's not one of my skills.  Look into brainstorming techniques, or bounce ideas off a friend, or use Seventh Generation's random plot generator or whatever helps get you into a creative mood, and see what emerges.  (I use Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldman to practice getting my brain moving and passing that internal editor.  In itself, it doesn't help with plot, but it helps me get into the creative space and just *get started*.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2793&start=0#p19449
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation chooses weird objects(?)
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-13 08:40:14

I'm not sure if this will help, but there is a extension called "Disambiguation Control" (I think it's by Jon Ingold -- apologies to the author if I'm wrong on that) which you might want to look into to see if it allows you to force the machine to ask rather than trying to guess.
 

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2790&start=0#p19450
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Easiest authoring system to translate to other languages
User: Pelican / DateTime: 2011-07-13 09:08:16

Isn't their any easy way to translate a parser for Tads 2 or 3 or Inform 6 or 7 or Alan or Hugo or another system that uses a programming language?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2789&start=0#p19451
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: omg how cool would this be for writing IF?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-13 09:14:02

I can speak for Dragon (MacSpeech Dictate was the same technology on the Mac, but it became Dragon as well last year) as I've used it extensively for several years, including in writing IF. I bought it as I have chronic RSI and I needed to reduce my hand workload. These days I don't bother typing any prose beyond a certain length, I just dictate it. I also use it to play most IF games, rather than by typing.

Regarding accuracy, it's extremely accurate. Some people have had bad experiences with speech-to-text only 5-10 years ago, but the technology is already infinitely better than that.

In terms of writing IF - I tend to dicate a file full of prose, then copy paste it into the programming. I still do most of the coding by typing. As Victor guessed, it's hard to deliver all the wiggly marks and weird formatting of programming by voice. You can actually do it better in Inform than in most settings, as it resembles spoken English. But lots of the software's accuracy comes from a technical probability-based analysis of English sentences. Since coding doesn't fall into those probabilities, it doesn't work as well.

I played nearly all the IFComp 2010 entries by voice. I even programmed some of Leadlight in an Apple II emulator by voice when I had really bad RSI.

I didn't like the idea of writing by speaking aloud at first, but I got used to it quickly. It's just another mode of doing the same thing I've always been doing.

My only caution against Dragon is if you're using a Mac. The current Mac version is ultra buggy. I mean to the point of unuseability, with lots of users complaining about it. The last tight version for the Mac was when it was still being sold as MacSpeech Dicate. On a PC atm, there are no such problems.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2800&start=0#p19452
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: All of my ideas are taken
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-13 09:14:36

Just about all stories have certain plot elements in common with something that has been written before.  The question of whether a particular piece is, in some sense, "too derivative" of something else is a question that has made many intellectual property lawyers rich.

Legalities aside, however, and viewed from the perspective of whether I personally would feel comfortable putting my name on something (thereby claiming it as my own work), I can say just about definitively that if I had deliberately used the approach of starting with somebody else's work, changing some words and maybe adding some things, I would [i]not[/i] want to claim it as my own.

The tougher cases are where you write something that does not explicitly start as a modification of somebody else's work, but you later realize that it has a lot of common elements, some of which may have -- and probably did -- unconsciously influence you.  Ultimately, this is a judgment call that every author has to make for himself.

I seem to recall a short story by (I believe) Orson Scott Card, about a society in which individuals who show a talent for a particular creative medium are forcibly isolated from any other work in that medium, so as to avoid any possibility of unintentional influence and thereby ensure originality.  I was once told (although I have no direct knowledge of this) that, ironically, some time the story was published, the author realized that the basic plot had been used by somebody else, in a work that he had read and (at least consciously) forgotten about.  In other words, it turned out that the story was the story of the story!


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2790&start=0#p19453
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Easiest authoring system to translate to other languages
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-13 09:21:05

[quote="Pelican"]Isn't their any easy way to translate a parser for Tads 2 or 3 or Inform 6 or 7 or Alan or Hugo or another system that uses a programming language?[/quote]
Inform and Tads support parser translation. In the case of Tads 3, the language dependent parts of the parser are split in their own directory (lib/adv3/en_us/). To translate it, you copy the "en_us" directory (which stands for "United States English") to a new directory and then edit that copy. It's not an "easy" task though; it (obviously) assumes you know quite well how Tads 3 works.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2787&start=0#p19454
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7- moving the player
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-13 09:23:59

If you want your rule to fire only when going to Old Room was successful, you can use an After rule rather than an Instead rule.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2789&start=0#p19455
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: omg how cool would this be for writing IF?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-13 09:27:12

Hmm, interesting.  Maybe I'll look into it, then.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2787&start=10#p19456
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7- moving the player
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-13 09:28:13

thanks, yes, i took Felix's advice about that and it seems to be working fine now, allowing me to continue my work on the [b]numerous[/b] other bugs i have to sort out, lol.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=20#p19457
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-07-13 09:32:31

Even if the original author maintains ownership of their copyrights, my impression is that there are few publishers which are willing to make non-exclusive distribution deals. Signing over distribution rights exclusively to one publisher almost amounts to the same as selling copyright (aside from leaving you with the option to make adaption rights in other media etc.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2788&start=10#p19458
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6 and 7 vs Tads 2 and 3
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-13 09:33:40

I think the learning curve has a funny shape. I would say you'll need to become a programmer if you're not one already, no matter what language you end up using.

My impression is that TADS is straightforward for occasional or old-school programmers - it's a sort of "middle of the road" challenge to learn. I7, on the other hand, seems to be appropriate for two totally different groups: total newbies and super-geeks who are interested in computer science, linguistics or AI. If you're comfortable with procedural or object-oriented programming but you're not into learning new languages, TADS is probably an easier option. If you've never learned any programming language before, or you're into learning totally new programming paradigms, I7 might be a more comfortable choice.

I6 is also procedural/object oriented, but I think it's lower-level than TADS. TADS has a lot of built-in libraries to handle common situations, and I6 is more bare-bones.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2788&start=10#p19459
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6 and 7 vs Tads 2 and 3
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-13 09:46:05

[quote]If you've never learned any programming language before, or you're into learning totally new programming paradigms, I7 might be a more comfortable choice.
[/quote]

I fall squarely in this category, and agree wholeheartedly.  Prior to working with Inform 7, the extent of my programming experience was a "Bytes for Troglodytes" course about 35 years ago in college, in whch we learned how to say "Hello, world" in WATFIV.

Whether I might have been able to learn something like TADS or Inform 6 if I had tried is almost irrelevant; as one who does not tend to "think like a programmer," I would never have even dreamed of trying to write my own IF until I learned about Inform 7.  There is certainly a learning curve; you need to learn the precise syntaxes that the system will accept, and get a general sense for how things are processed at runtime.  Nonetheless, for somebody with my background and the kind of mind that works the way mine does, it is a system that I felt (and feel) comfortable learning.  On the other hand, the kind of gobbledygook that is meat and drink to "real" programmers basically scares the hell out of me.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2792&start=0#p19460
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Steps to install an I7 extension?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-13 09:49:02

Documentation is also regenerated sometimes at compile time, for example if you edit an extension that's already installed and then recompile a game that uses it. But there are some fussy elements to this process (for example, if the documentation is currently open in the documentation tab, it won't reload). I still can't always predict when it will update.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2788&start=10#p19461
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6 and 7 vs Tads 2 and 3
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-13 09:58:37

[quote="Robert Rothman"][quote]On the other hand, the kind of gobbledygook that is meat and drink to "real" programmers basically scares the hell out of me.[/quote][/quote]
That's the irony. I encounter plenty of what I'd consider gobbledygook in I7, and I would certainly consider it a suitable meal for "real" programmers. But I think perhaps you're referring to odd punctuation and cryptic keywords, which I7 certainly has a lot less of.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2793&start=0#p19462
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation chooses weird objects(?)
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-13 10:04:15

There are large parts of the parser that are not accessible to I7. Before the "Does the player mean" rulebook can run, I6 eliminates lots of options from the disambiguation, with no way to alter the process in I7. It's a long-term goal of mine to expose more of the process to I7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=20#p19463
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-13 10:08:29

[quote]They also seem to appear in fiction books (in the usual form "(C) year, Publisher, all rights reserved")[/quote]

For fiction these nearly always say "Copyright (C) YEAR by AUTHOR" and then "Published by PUBLISHER".

(Sometimes the author designates another entity. For example, Terry Pratchett books say "Copyright (C) YEAR by Terry and Lyn Pratchett." His wife is not a co-author, but he's assigned the copyright to both of them for legal reasons -- I suppose it simplifies inheritance. (Yes, he was doing this before he became ill.) Or for another example, this copy of _Tongues of Serpents_ I have handy says "Copyright 2010 by Temeraire LLC". The author is Naomi Novik. Temeraire LLC isn't the publisher; it's a small company that Novik has set up, again for legal reasons, or maybe tax reasons.)

[quote]Even if the original author maintains ownership of their copyrights, my impression is that there are few publishers which are willing to make non-exclusive distribution deals. Signing over distribution rights exclusively to one publisher almost amounts to the same as selling copyright (aside from leaving you with the option to make adaption rights in other media etc.)[/quote]

Well, yes and no.

Publishers sometimes want worldwide distribution deals, but then sometimes they just want to say "We'll publish your book in the US, you'll have to find other publishers for other regions of the world." It varies a lot.

Also, publishing contracts (for fiction) have various expiration clauses. For example, if the publisher stops printing a book, the contract will typically expire N months later, leaving the author free to seek a new publisher. That absolutely wouldn't be the case if the author sold the copyright.

It's all messy, and both sides are pushing in any given contract to get more rights and fewer obligations. This is why authors hire agents to do the negotiating.

As for IF Noob: Everything you are saying is either wrong or irrelevant to your earlier wrong statements.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2788&start=10#p19464
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6 and 7 vs Tads 2 and 3
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-13 10:14:09

You can certainly cook some food even if you're not a chef. And you don't need a chef's professional tools to do that. But if you learn how to use those tools, then what will happen is that cooking without them will annoy the freakin' hell out of you [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=40#p19465
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2011-07-13 10:20:28

Any updates? [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2789&start=0#p19466
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: omg how cool would this be for writing IF?
User: Sig / DateTime: 2011-07-13 10:51:12

Back in the dark ages (2001) when I was doing corporate network and desktop support, I had a coworker who used Dragon (many many versions ago) to document his trouble tickets.  The results were hilariously bad, such that you had to read it out loud to help you guess what he was trying to write, but he was determined to make it work.  Actually, listening to him curse at it and then have to remove those words was even funnier.  Glad to hear that it has improved drastically, but the memory will always make me smile.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2788&start=10#p19467
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6 and 7 vs Tads 2 and 3
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-13 11:01:05

I certainly feel like what I do in Inform is "real" programming.  Brackets do not make you a programmer.

I'm just beginning to poke at C#, and what I miss is the sense that I know what the heck the implementors were thinking.  With all of Inform's quirks and weirdnesses, I at least have some idea what the features were aiming at, which often helps with syntax and what not.  The natural language really helps this.  C# is not natural language, and it's not targeted at anything in particular, which means a lot of rote memorization and/or consultation.  Which will reduce itself eventually, but it's tiresome.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=40#p19468
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: Jacqueline / DateTime: 2011-07-13 11:03:56

[quote="Isxek"]Any updates? [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
Yes!  Yes, there is!  The update is that I suck because I really need to post the combined file and stuff and I haven't even after all this time because of IntroComp and getting a new job and moving and this lame idea that I might try to integrate updates into my file from the ClubFloyd session we had.  FWIW, this *is* looming over my head, and I *haven't* forgotten about it and *will* upload stuff.  When I'm at the right computer and not fried and all of that.  ClubFloyd transcripts are similarly backed up.  Mea culpa. 

Not the update you were looking forward to, I realize.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2788&start=10#p19469
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6 and 7 vs Tads 2 and 3
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-13 11:09:42

[quote="gravel"]C# is not natural language, and it's not targeted at anything in particular, which means a lot of rote memorization and/or consultation.  Which will reduce itself eventually, but it's tiresome.[/quote]

I've been trying to get my head around appropriate use of underscore characters in Python. I think it must be the same kind of thing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2793&start=10#p19470
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation chooses weird objects(?)
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-13 11:16:56

[quote="capmikee"]There are large parts of the parser that are not accessible to I7. Before the "Does the player mean" rulebook can run, I6 eliminates lots of options from the disambiguation, with no way to alter the process in I7. It's a long-term goal of mine to expose more of the process to I7.[/quote]

Yes, please.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2793&start=10#p19471
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation chooses weird objects(?)
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-13 11:22:45

[emote]:lol:[/emote] 

I'm not making any promises, and my intent should not be construed as an excuse for someone else not to do it...  [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=40#p19472
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-13 11:33:58

[quote="Jacqueline"][quote="Isxek"]Any updates? [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
Yes!  Yes, there is!  The update is that I suck because I really need to post the combined file and stuff and I haven't even after all this time because of IntroComp and getting a new job and moving and this lame idea that I might try to integrate updates into my file from the ClubFloyd session we had.  FWIW, this *is* looming over my head, and I *haven't* forgotten about it and *will* upload stuff.  When I'm at the right computer and not fried and all of that.  ClubFloyd transcripts are similarly backed up.  Mea culpa. 

Not the update you were looking forward to, I realize.[/quote]

Yay!  I've missed the Club Floyd transcripts.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2793&start=10#p19473
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation chooses weird objects(?)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-13 11:41:04

[quote="capmikee"]:lol: 

I'm not making any promises, and my intent should not be construed as an excuse for someone else not to do it...  [emote]:P[/emote][/quote]

DO IT

DO IT

DO IT

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2793&start=10#p19474
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation chooses weird objects(?)
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-13 12:24:51

[emote]:lol:[/emote]  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

Hey! I'm only about half finished with my WIP after almost a year, and I have a job too!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2788&start=10#p19475
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6 and 7 vs Tads 2 and 3
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-13 12:34:49

[quote="gravel"]I certainly feel like what I do in Inform is "real" programming.  Brackets do not make you a programmer.[/quote]
Of course not. But as a tool, they're very powerful. And the best part is that you don't need to even read them; they're just symbols.

For me, using I7 instead of I6/Tads/etc is like trying to explain a drawing to someone instead of just drawing it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2788&start=10#p19476
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6 and 7 vs Tads 2 and 3
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-13 12:52:42

[quote="RealNC"]For me, using I7 instead of I6/Tads/etc is like trying to explain a drawing to someone instead of just drawing it.[/quote]
This reminds me of the Max vs. Supercollider debate. Some things are easier to explain with a drawing, but some things make more sense when read out loud.

It also reminds me of something Temple Grandin said about ways of thinking. She said there was a big difference between people who think in pictures, words, or patterns. I think my brain works in patterns, but I like the words-based approach of I7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2798&start=0#p19477
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem going from Z-Code to Glulx in Inform V7
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-13 13:26:59

Glulx text effects comes with several colors, or "glulx color values", defined, but not green, so the first thing to do is make an amendment to the table that declares colors.  The glulx color value is traditionally g-whatever color name, and the assigned number is the decimal value of the hexidecimal color you want.  (I just look up the hex value for the color I like in GIMP or on the web, and then use a web page that converts hex to dec.)

You can redefine any of the styles listed in the Table of User Styles, or there's a couple of "free" user styles.  I used one of these and filled out a row in the User Style table for it.  

Roman type always gets you back to "normal".    

[code]Include Glulx Text Effects by Emily Short.

Table of Common Color Values (continued)
glulx color value	assigned number
g-green	4557568
 
Table of User Styles (continued)
style name	justification	obliquity	indentation	first-line indentation	boldness	fixed width	relative size	glulx color 
special-style-1	left-justified	no-obliquity	0	0	bold-weight	proportional-font	0	g-green 

When play begins:
	say "The moon is made of [first custom style]cheese[roman type]!";

The Moon is a room.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2798&start=0#p19478
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem going from Z-Code to Glulx in Inform V7
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-13 13:34:46

[quote="gravel"]The glulx color value is traditionally g-whatever color name, and the assigned number is the decimal value of the hexidecimal color you want.  (I just look up the hex value for the color I like in GIMP or on the web, and then use a web page that converts hex to dec.)[/quote]

I made a tool in I7 that lets you enter RGB or hex and get the decimal value. The main purpose was as a technical demo, but it's still my tool of choice if I have to convert more than 1 or 2 colors. It's the "Color Picker" gblorb in this archive:

<a class="postlink" href="http://code.google.com/p/glimmr-i7x/downloads/detail?name=Glimmr%20Form%20Fields%20r1.zip">http://code.google.com/p/glimmr-i7x/dow ... s%20r1.zip</a>

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2803&start=0#p19479
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Giving objects while using conversation package by Eric Eve
User: kanato / DateTime: 2011-07-13 14:42:00

I had some code for giving objects to people, etc. and it worked fine. Then I wanted to add conversation using conversation package and I noticed the code for giving objects broke. Here is some sample code:

[code]Include Conversation Package by Eric Eve.

The block giving rule is not listed in the check giving it to rules. 

Dining room is a room.

A dog is a kind of animal.
Fido is a dog in Dining room. "You see your dog, Fido, here."

The player carries the beef jerky. The jerky is edible.

Every turn (this is the dogs eat food rule):
	if Fido carries something edible:
		try Fido eating a random edible thing carried by Fido.[/code]

And playthrough:
[code]Welcome
An Interactive Fiction
Release 1 / Serial number 110713 / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N) SD

Dining room
You see your dog, Fido, here.

>rules
Rules tracing now switched on. Type "rules off" to switch it off again, or "rules all" to include even rules which do not apply.

>actions
Actions listing on.

>give jerky to fido
[giving the beef jerky to Fido]
[Rule "giving needs an interlocutor rule" applies.]
[(1) saying hello to Fido]
[Rule "note current interlocutor when greeted rule" applies.]
[Rule "standard report greeting rule" applies.]
[(1) saying hello to Fido - succeeded]

[Rule "note giving rule" applies.]
[Rule "can't give what you haven't got rule" applies.]
[Rule "can't give to yourself rule" applies.]
[Rule "can't give to a non-person rule" applies.]
[Rule "can't give clothes being worn rule" applies.]
[Rule "open node response rule" applies.]
[Rule "standard response rule" applies.]
[Rule "default giving rule" applies.]
[Rule "try default give-show response rule" applies.]
[Rule "try default response rule" applies.]
Fido does not respond.
[giving the beef jerky to Fido - succeeded]

>[/code]

The same code without the include conversation package works fine - Fido accepts the jerky. There doesn't need to be any more detailed response than "You give the beef jerky to Fido." which is what is given when conversation package is not included. 

I want the conversation package for conversations with other characters (which will include giving items to them at certain points). How do I fix this? Also, why does it say [giving the beef jerky to Fido - succeeded] when it failed? I still have the jerky after issuing the command.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=50#p19480
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-07-13 14:57:08

[quote="Janka"]To do an adventure in Inform7 and similar IF programming systems, you both have to know how to program *and in the same moment* write a story.[/quote]

You don't have to know how to write a story in the sense of being a good storyteller. I've played many text adventures where the story was pretty lame. IFDB reviews indicate many such games. You do have to know how to program to an extent, I agree. But just the act of writing a text adventure does not make you a writer or even a good storyteller. It just makes you someone who can put words together in the context of a game.

The same argument applies to other games, I'll grant. Just writing a graphical games doesn't mean you write a good one or one with a good story. So this to me is a bit of a null point. I do agree that since text adventures are all about the text reading experience, it would really help if you were a good writer and could do things that good writers do. But I don't see anything in text adventures that necessarily demands this. There's a certain level of skill to write graphical games. There's a certain level of skill to adding effective audio to games. You have to have those skills before you even come in otherwise you can't get started. With text adventures there's no bare minimum of skill you necessarily need. Which could be an argument in its favor from an authoring perspective. But somehow it doesn't feel like a good argument.

[quote]But in general, where's your point? There are still far more far worse games made by "professionals" out there.[/quote]

That's true. And the competition of other games usually sinks those sub-standard games fairly quickly. And even if it doesn't, at least those games [i]are[/i] getting played by a wide audience and game designers and makers are learning what does and doesn't work by constant refinement based on seeing what does and doesn't work. I don't think that's quite the same for text adventures. Even with the understanding that it's a more limited audience, I don't really see the impetus for text adventures to improve all that much beyond what they are.

[quote]Why should IF be a crap-free zone?[/quote]

Never said it should.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=50#p19481
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-07-13 15:06:03

[quote="RealNC"]"Why play IF". Well, why play *any* kind of game?[/quote]

Many gamers answer this all the time. For the type of experience they get while playing games with certain elements.

Through this thread, I've heard a few of the elements that people who like text adventures consider important. It's just very defocused and it's like pulling teeth to get it. (Ask a similar question to mine in other game forums and you rarely have trouble getting to an elevator speech really quick.)

So I was really trying to understand what kind of experience players of text adventures are getting that they clearly find satisfying that the vast majority of gamers out there aren't seeing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=50#p19482
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-07-13 15:09:54

[quote="shammack"]At the same time, more experienced designers who would be great at making text adventures are probably pursuing making graphical games instead, since that's the more glamorous and lucrative thing to do.[/quote]

People keep couching it in the terms of "more glamorous" or "more lucrative." But a lot of people are doing it largely for the fact that such games are what people respond to. And authors (whether of books, films, or games) tend to go where the audiences are, regardless of possibly glamorous or lucrative aspects. If you go to the former (where the audience is), the latter two tend to follow to some extent.

[quote]I also agree that it doesn't seem like this discussion is going anywhere.[/quote]

For me, it was useful. It showed me how people think. I don't see how any discussion like that can be considered going nowhere. It's part of how a community is introspective about its passion.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2804&start=0#p19483
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Including supporters/containers on the status line?
User: savaric / DateTime: 2011-07-13 16:28:05

The manual seems to say that the following should produce for instance "Lab (in the box)" in the status line, but it doesn't seem to work.

[quote="Manual, 8.3"]This text substitution produces a succinct description of where the player is, be this in darkness, in a lighted room or inside an opaque container such as a large packing case. Example: 


now the left hand status line is "You: [the player's surroundings]"; [/quote]

I dug around for a bit and came up with this idea:
[code]When play begins, now the left hand status line is "[the player's surroundings][if the player is in a container] (in [the holder of the player])[else if the player is on a supporter] (on [the holder of the player])[end if]"; 
[/code]

This works for one level of container/supporter, but put a box on a stool and get in the box, and the status line will say:
Lab (in the box)

while the room description will say

Lab (in the box)(on the stool)

I would have thought that "player's surroundings" would mean the same as the room description....am I missing something obvious here?

/Savaric

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2805&start=0#p19484
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Automated Drawers by Emily Short
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-07-13 16:51:27

Does anyone have much experience working with this extension?
I'm attempting to make it so that an object is in a drawer, but no matter how I phrase it I can't seem to make inform understand what I mean.
I'm not having any other problem with containers that are parts of things and placing objects inside them.
For some reason, I can't do it with drawers.[code]The desk is a fixed in place supporter in the apartment. Three vertical drawers are part of the desk. The description of the desk is "It is a very nice desk, and it is very well used."[/code]I've tried all of the following permutations, plus some I can't remember right now:[code]clutter is a thing. Drawer one of the desk contains clutter.

clutter is a thing. The top drawer of the desk contains clutter.

clutter is a thing. The first drawer of the desk contains clutter.[/code]No matter how I write it, the top drawer of the desk is always empty.
What is the proper inform grammar for getting this to work?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=50#p19485
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: Janka / DateTime: 2011-07-13 16:51:47

[quote="bukayeva"]There's a certain level of skill to write graphical games. There's a certain level of skill to adding effective audio to games. You have to have those skills before you even come in otherwise you can't get started. With text adventures there's no bare minimum of skill you necessarily need.
[/quote]
Following your argument, I cannot make a graphical game featuring ? and ! as the protagonists and # as the walls of a maze, with audio effects from Ctrl+G. That's a pity, because I've done it ~27 years ago. I haven't needed serious skills in graphic nor sound to do it, just an idea what the story of ? and ! should be and some programming skills to implement it. Still it was clearly a graphical game with sound effects. Plus, the game wasn't crap but actually fun for a while.

EDIT: Reading your latest argument again, I too agree this discussion is going nowhere. And you don't get "how people think". This is because you circle around the abstraction needed to understand how games work and why without ever getting nearer to it. What is "how people think" here. Anyway, it's no fun to argue with you, so I just leave this game and don't care that it's over. There is not even a highscore list for it. LAME! [emote]:x[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=30#p19486
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: Greeny / DateTime: 2011-07-13 17:07:47

Zarf is correct. The copyright for Alice's adventures in wonderland expired in 1907.
42 years after it's first publication under the 1842 copyright act.

The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy is still in copyright, and will be until 2071, under the 1988 copyright act & amendments.
I'm not sure who owns it, but it's definitely not Douglas Adams' sons, as he does not have any!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2806&start=0#p19487
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: off topic- anyone want to buy my MST3k collection?
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-13 17:13:08

I'm selling my MST3k collection! I have 155+ episodes (that's like 85% or so of ALL the episodes they made), all on VHS. Qualities vary, of course, some are the official Rhino series (so that quality is perfect), AND I also have the entire KTMA series! That's when they were on public access, before they had the official series on Comedy Central. I also have MST3k The Movie. So if you're a hardcore MST3k fan, and you always wanted a huge collection of their episodes, then you're gonna wanna talk to me soon!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2805&start=0#p19488
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Automated Drawers by Emily Short
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-07-13 17:27:34

Interesting. Looks like a bug to me. Whatever drawer you pick when referencing the drawer, the contents still end up in the drawer with the highest index number (the lowest drawer in this instance) part of the same item.

Another odd thing: using Showme, I looked at the three vertical drawers I created to try to spot differences in things like drawer numbers. I found that the drawers are numbered 1 (top), 2 (middle) and 4 (bottom), which may relate to the bug. In point of fact the assertion "three vertical drawers are part of the desk" creates four drawers.

EDIT: Curiouser and curiouser. Adding an item inside a drawer before the game begins is what triggers the bug. The item is not placed in an existing drawer but a new one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=50#p19489
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-07-13 17:41:06

[quote="David Whyld"]IF can be written by anyone. That's the appeal for me.[/quote]

As I think on it, I guess this sums it up for me and why I'm "suspicious" of text adventures. Not everyone can be a novelist. Not everyone can be a filmmaker. Not everyone can be a graphical game designer. But [i]anyone[/i] can write text adventures! It just feels like text adventures are described as a "Can't do anything else? Then do a text adventure!" I'd rather someone say "It's NOT just anyone who can write a text adventure. It takes skill as a writer and as a game designer."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=60#p19490
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-07-13 17:46:44

[quote="Janka"]EDIT: Reading your latest argument again, I too agree this discussion is going nowhere.[/quote]

Hey Janka -- here's a thought. If you think that --- why are you participating in the discussion?! Color me confused. Do you normally participate in things you find to be going nowhere? (That might explain the interest in text adventures, perhaps.)

In any event, I do notice text adventure folks get the most defensive when you question why people are interested in the medium. You don't see this in other game forums. Curious. But it would probably .... go nowhere .... to discuss it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2805&start=0#p19491
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Automated Drawers by Emily Short
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-07-13 18:08:40

My conclusion: I'm unsure of what's happening, and this should probably be reported. In the meantime, if you still need to work on the project, I cobbled together a stopgap [s]solution[/s]method. It's ugly, hackish, and mostly untested, but you should be able to use it for the moment:

[code]To decide which drawer is the real (placing - a drawer position) drawer of (holder - an object):
	repeat with tray running through drawers part of holder:
		if the drawer position of the tray is the placing, decide on the tray.[/code]

...and usage is as follows:

[code]When play begins:
	now the clutter is in the real top drawer of the desk.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=60#p19492
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-07-13 18:08:48

[quote="bukayeva"]As I think on it, I guess this sums it up for me and why I'm "suspicious" of text adventures. Not everyone can be a novelist. Not everyone can be a filmmaker. Not everyone can be a graphical game designer. But [i]anyone[/i] can write text adventures! It just feels like text adventures are described as a "Can't do anything else? Then do a text adventure!" I'd rather someone say "It's NOT just anyone who can write a text adventure. It takes skill as a writer and as a game designer."[/quote]
Everyone CAN be a novelist, as long as they have basic literacy and access to writing utensils. Everyone can be a filmmaker if they have access to a camera. It doesn't mean that what they produce will be any good, but given the tools and the time, anyone can make [i]something[/i]. Text adventures are no different.

[quote]Hey Janka -- here's a thought. If you think that --- why are you participating in the discussion?! Color me confused. Do you normally participate in things you find to be going nowhere? (That might explain the interest in text adventures, perhaps.)[/quote]

I think a better question is why you continue to draw it out. We get it, you don't like text adventures. That's fine. You claim that you want to know why other people do like them, but you argue with every reason that anyone gives you. It's obvious you don't want to be convinced. I don't know why you're devoting so much energy to something you have such disdain for.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=50#p19493
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: ptomato / DateTime: 2011-07-13 18:18:31

Er, one last question, hopefully:

If glk_schannel_set_volume_ext() is called with a non-zero duration while no sound is playing on the channel, is it OK for the library to do either of these two things?

1. Ignore the duration argument and change the volume instantaneously.

2. Start the volume change as soon as the next sound starts playing, so that the volume reaches its final value "duration" milliseconds after the sound started playing.

Technical explanation: apparently GStreamer doesn't make it easy to dynamically change properties on a pipeline (i.e. sound channel) that's not playing. This also makes it difficult to meet the spec's stipulation that pausing a channel does not pause a volume change in progress on that channel. The alternative is to have another timer for the volume running at the same time - seems wasteful not to piggyback on GStreamer's internal timer, but perhaps I should go for that approach. (Anyone interested in the code, it's at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.chimara-if.org/trac/browser/libchimara/schannel.c">http://www.chimara-if.org/trac/browser/ ... schannel.c</a> in the new-sound-api branch.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2804&start=0#p19494
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Including supporters/containers on the status line?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-13 18:41:10

It isn't actually supposed to say "Lab (in the box)"; the idea is that if you are inside a closed opaque box in the lab, and you have light, the status line will read "The box" rather than "Lab."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2800&start=0#p19495
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: All of my ideas are taken
User: Pelican / DateTime: 2011-07-13 18:44:58

My ideas are not derivative of the interactive fiction I later found.  In my case, I'm quite certain I'm not being influenced by the other works.  First, I'm not "well read" in interactive fiction, I've played very few games, most of them quite old.  I've been well isolated from the games.  Second, my memory isn't so bad that I'd forget where I've read something or where I've learned something.  I'm very sure this is a matter of coincidence that my ideas are almost the same.

The thing that is derivative is the game engine, but that is simply the method of delivery.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=60#p19496
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-13 18:54:24

[quote="bukayeva"](Ask a similar question to mine in other game forums and you rarely have trouble getting to an elevator speech really quick.)[/quote]

These threads sound interesting. Can you link to some of them?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2800&start=0#p19497
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: All of my ideas are taken
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-13 19:00:43

So it sounds like you should have no problem; the ideas are your own, and if they coincidentally bear some resemblances to work that others have done, that's almost inevitably the case no matter what you do.  I wouldn't view as the ideas having been "taken," so much as that some ideas that you have found useful were also useful to others.   I think if you're looking for complete "originality," in the sense of nothing like it has ever been done before, only a very few people in the world are able to achieve that in any medium, and we tend to reserve the word "genius" for those few people.  Good luck.



Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2798&start=0#p19498
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem going from Z-Code to Glulx in Inform V7
User: Punk0 / DateTime: 2011-07-13 19:21:27

@gravel.  Thanks for the help.  It took a while, but I got it.  And thanks especially for taking the time to write out the example.  [default letters] doesn't seem to work in glulx either and it gave me errors after I got the colors straightened out.  I used [roman type] in most cases, but a few had [default letters] instead.  I must have seen it used in an example or something.

@ektemple.  I'm keeping the color picker in case I have a need for it down the line, but I only needed 2 colors, so I just used the basic examples they had.  Thanks.

Pleasantly surprised that I was able to get help here much faster than I had expected,
Duane C

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2805&start=0#p19499
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Automated Drawers by Emily Short
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-07-13 19:36:14

The reason for this is that the names "top drawer," etc., don't refer to single objects in the game world; a drawer is assigned the identity of "top" depending on what other drawers are part of the same object. That means that, yes, it's necessary to populate them at runtime rather than at the beginning of the game.

I had vaguely thought I discussed this in the docs, but possibly not -- I don't have time to have a look now, but will do so for a future release.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2804&start=0#p19500
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Including supporters/containers on the status line?
User: savaric / DateTime: 2011-07-13 19:38:57

[quote="matt w"]It isn't actually supposed to say "Lab (in the box)"; the idea is that if you are inside a closed opaque box in the lab, and you have light, the status line will read "The box" rather than "Lab."[/quote]

Ah, I see...thanks.

/S

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2798&start=0#p19501
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem going from Z-Code to Glulx in Inform V7
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-13 19:39:32

[quote="Punk0"]
Pleasantly surprised that I was able to get help here much faster than I had expected,
Duane C[/quote]

I rarely get the chance to write out a reply/example code - usually by the time I see a post, someone (or multiple someones) have beat me to it.  

There's a couple extensions with a longer list of colors, and I've got a horrendous list tucked away somewhere with hundreds of colors already in table format, so let me know if/when you need it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2781&start=20#p19502
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Off the top of my head
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-07-13 19:58:40

[quote="Robert Rothman"]Are you casting asparagus on [i]Attack of the Killer Tomatoes[/i]? [emote]:shock:[/emote]   It's my second-favorite "so bad it's good" film (right after [i]Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things[/i]).


Robert Rothman[/quote]

[i]Loved[/i] that movie when I was a kid. How about [i]Killer Clowns from Outer Space[/i]? That's some high quality film making right there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=60#p19503
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-13 20:21:32

[url=http://maga-dogg.livejournal.com/448632.html?thread=1515896#t1515896]This comment[/url] from maga nicely expresses what I think IF's potential is. Especially point 2:

[quote]But mainstream videogames are mostly stupid, genre-bound, patronising and offensive. I can put up with Captain Musclebuns Frags a Gook or Entrepreneur Faery's Dream Wedding Makeover, on occasion, but I don't want to live there. IF is, or can be, more often than anything else I know of, gaming for people who like literature. It's mostly written by adults for their peers, so there's an expectation of respect for the audience.[/quote]

Now, I don't play mainstream games, so I can't speak to maga's statements about them first-hand. But the ones that aren't time management/hidden object games* do seem mostly to be about shooting stuff when they aren't about whacking stuff with swords or casting spells on stuff. Indie games can be nice but they still seem to basically fall be about those, or to be puzzles of some sort (sometimes puzzles about how to effectively whack stuff with swords -- I like those), or to be platformers which may or may not deliver some deeper meaning through some kind of pretty abstract symbolism; which is really the only option, because a story that was actually about someone running around and jumping on stuff would be pretty silly.

Obviously there's crap IF, and IF that doesn't respect its audience, and genre IF, but IF at least has the potential (sometimes realized) to be about things that don't get addressed in most games.

*Which probably don't count as games gamers play; they're [url=http://playthisthing.com/space-game]marketed toward middle-aged women[/url], so even thinking about them probably gives you girl cooties. There's like one game writer I've read who takes time management games seriously; her descriptions don't make them sound appealing to me, but at least they aren't about shooting stuff.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2807&start=0#p19504
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: SPECTRUM questions
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-13 20:48:06

hi, i looked around in this topic for my answer and didnt find it, so i apologize if this has been covered.  im interested in playing some IF that needs the Spectrum interpreter.  i couldnt figure out where to find this emulator/interpreter.  i do remember i had gotten a hold of it last year, but then had problems running games on it.  any advice to these issues?  thanks, all!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2808&start=0#p19505
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Not having much luck getting started
User: Pelican / DateTime: 2011-07-13 21:45:48

Okay, I'm just getting started with TADS 3.

I followed these instructions:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/gsg/creatingyourfirsttads3project.htm">http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/gsg/creat ... roject.htm</a>

First, I made the "mygame.t" file, copying all the content there.

Then, I make the "mygame.t3m" file, copying all the content there.

Then, I make the "obj" directory.

Then, I ran:

t3make -d -f mygame

That complains the I need to set the language.

So I ran:

t3make -D LANGUAGE=en_us -d -f mygame

That complains:

mygame.t(21): error: too many '+' signs in object definition - location not defined

I copied the source code exactly as specified, why does it seem to have an error in the source code?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2777&start=0#p19507
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Google+ Invites
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-07-13 22:19:52

No, spambot, this was MY post.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2809&start=0#p19508
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: How to use foreign letters?
User: Pelican / DateTime: 2011-07-13 22:30:29

I found the source of Cloak of Darkness and tried to edit that to get some idea of how to compile and write a game.

I tried changing the top line to read:

#charset "utf-8"

Then changed some room descriptions to include some foreign characters.

But when I compile and ran the game again, all of the foreign characters read as ???.  I even tried running in Gargoyle, which advertises itself as supporting UTF-8, yet I only see ???.   I don't see how my terminal can be at fault, as the terminal can understand these characters perfectly fine.

What do I need to do to get this to work?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=60#p19509
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-07-13 22:55:04

[quote="shammack"]I think a better question is why you continue to draw it out. We get it, you don't like text adventures. That's fine. You claim that you want to know why other people do like them, but you argue with every reason that anyone gives you. It's obvious you don't want to be convinced. I don't know why you're devoting so much energy to something you have such disdain for.[/quote]

Did I say this? I think I did. I believe I called it "intelligent trolling". Not that I haven't done the very same, without so much the intelligent part.

[quote="matt w"]These threads sound interesting. Can you link to some of them?[/quote]

Every single genre, every popular game, has some of this. I'm not sure from whence the comment is born regarding IF being elitist in defending its medium. I can't pick up a copy of Game Informer without seeing pages of reviews burying games of ever flavor that are horrible and an equal number of comments glorifying those things which make it great regardless. For an extreme and common example, jump on the World of Warcraft forums. You can't say "Hi, my name is Jack." without someone screaming at you that Jack is a rogue's name and rogues are OP in PvP and Blizzard has done crap since patch 32.3.221 when they released the "Tinkerdust: Another Pointless Expansion Where We Didn't Change Anything That Won't Piss Everyone Off" expansion.

Game doesn't have multiplayer? Crucified...

[quote="bukayeva"]Do you normally participate in things you find to be going nowhere? (That might explain the interest in text adventures, perhaps.)[/quote]

I think this was an unnecessary jab.

This conversation [i]is[/i] going nowhere. It never got anywhere. Asking someone who loves IF why they write IF and why it's a better medium is like asking a chef why s/he cooks Italian food over French. If s/he was a really great chef, s/he would be able to cook both, right? There are some chefs out there (very few) who can do both, who can do amazing things in either style. But a lot of them don't, because they prefer not to or because they have a better feel for one style over another. Or because their customers prefer one style over another. 

It doesn't really matter because they're cooking what they love for the people who love it, not for the people who don't.

I enjoy foie gras. I don't give a damn if you do or not. When I cook, I prefer French, Southern American or Indian influences. Not because I can't cook something else. I'm handy with Italian, German, Mexican, Spanish and Asian. I just happen to PREFER French, Southern American and Indian, because that's what I personally like. If you don't... Don't eat it. I don't need to convert you. I don't care if you like it. I don't care if you don't understand why I like it. I don't care you if you don't understand or agree that I'm a liberal. I don't care if you don't understand or agree that I believe in Jesus. (Though my writing my indicate otherwise.) I don't care if you don't understand or agree that I prefer the color red.

I got through English classes in school writing, because my teachers recognized that I knew the grammar and was bored to the point that I was going to fail the classes. So I wrote stories. A lot of them. That's what I was graded on. That grasp has since faded under the influences of lethargy and alcohol. But I know that if I really wanted to write a novel, I could. Hell, if Terry Pratchett can get published, any of my pre-teen children can. But if I'm going to write, I [i]prefer[/i] the IF medium. I believe it gives a stronger sense of immersion.

People who make fancy graphical games do so because they love fancy graphical games. The only people who give a damn about the story are the people paid to write the story, and in a lot of cases even their hands are tied by what can be graphically achieved. Most game companies care about the bottom dollar, with the exception of a few gems. If they didn't, there would never be a video game based on a movie. They know that their game is going to be a flash in the pan and forgotten, in many cases. They will give the lip service because they have to. "We love the classic love story between our steroid fueled opossum and the coffee mug. We think it's a wonderful combination of writing and graphical advancement."

BS. It's flashy. Things blow up. People eat it up.

Point being, people do what they love for reasons that are personal to them. Not for reasons that they have to explain to the rest of the world. And no medium, craft, theology, political bent or love for French/Southern American/Indian cuisine is immune.

I also understand and acknowledge the irony of the fact that I wrote this long post about something I don't care about. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2775&start=0#p19510
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What do you look for in non-IF games?
User: Sig / DateTime: 2011-07-13 23:04:57

I want story and compelling characters.

Except for Minecraft.  The main thing I want from Minecraft is diamond ore.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2809&start=0#p19511
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How to use foreign letters?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-07-13 23:28:41

Gargoyle supports Unicode for Glulx and Z-Machine in the current release. The forthcoming version will add Unicode support for TADS.

In terms of how to use extended characters, it's not enough to put the charset directive at the top (though you must do that as well). You actually have to save the file encoded as UTF-8. The details on how to do this vary by text editor.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=60#p19512
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: Sig / DateTime: 2011-07-13 23:36:13

[quote="bukayeva"]As I think on it, I guess this sums it up for me and why I'm "suspicious" of text adventures. Not everyone can be a novelist. Not everyone can be a filmmaker. Not everyone can be a graphical game designer. But [i]anyone[/i] can write text adventures![/quote]
Huh?  That seems somewhat elitist--"It can't be that great because anyone can do it."  

It's also a strange assertion to make.  The bar to do [i]any[/i] of those things is lower right now than it has ever been in history.  Using cheap (or even free) tools, one can write (and publish/print) a novel, make (publish/distribute) a movie, and program (publish/distribute) a graphical game.  And those same people can write (publish/distribute) a text adventure.

Some of these endeavors tend to require a great deal of investment if you want to have a big, commercially successful product, but even there you have exceptions.  Many people prefer independent films, self-published niche market novels, and indie games.

Interesting to me, there are no massive commercial production tools required to write really top notch IF; you can use the same free tools that the terrible writers are using.  The entry cost is very low, but that doesn't mean that the resulting work has little value.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2808&start=0#p19513
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Not having much luck getting started
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-07-13 23:38:51

Hmm, that's unfortunate. The example is missing the adv3 include at the top.

[code]
#include <en_us.h>
#include <adv3.h>

gameMain: GameMainDef
  initialPlayerChar = me
;

versionInfo: GameID
  name = 'My First Game'
  byline = 'by Bob Author'
  authorEmail = 'Bob Author <bob@myisp.com>'
  desc = 'This is an example of how to start a new game project. '
  version = '1'
  IFID = 'b8563851-6257-77c3-04ee-278ceaeb48ac'
;

firstRoom: Room 'Starting Room'
  "This is the boring starting room."
;

+me: Actor
;
[/code]

I've reported this as a bug.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2809&start=0#p19514
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How to use foreign letters?
User: Pelican / DateTime: 2011-07-13 23:40:15

[quote="bcressey"]Gargoyle supports Unicode for Glulx and Z-Machine in the current release. The forthcoming version will add Unicode support for TADS.

In terms of how to use extended characters, it's not enough to put the charset directive at the top (though you must do that as well). You actually have to save the file encoded as UTF-8. The details on how to do this vary by text editor.[/quote]The files are saved as UTF-8, my system seems to do that by default.  How about using the standard TADS interpreter?  Does that not support UTF-8?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2809&start=0#p19515
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How to use foreign letters?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-07-14 00:04:06

QTads and the HTML TADS player both support UTF-8, so whichever one you are using ought to work.

Check the interpreter's font setting and make sure it's using a Unicode font that includes those glyphs. If it doesn't, you will see the missing character symbol even if the glyph is coming through correctly.

You can also try [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2759298/gargoyle-2011.1-windows_r557.exe]this build of Gargoyle[/url] if you're in the mood for a bit of beta testing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2769&start=10#p19516
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Conversation Topics
User: Sig / DateTime: 2011-07-14 00:05:37

I just played Maher's [i]King of Shreds and Patches[/i], and made full use of the topics command.  I hate the idea of forgetting to ask about one key topic that would have opened things up (and having to traverse the map again to get it, assuming that was even possible).  Too, there were enough characters and plot threads that remembering who was doing what and knew about what was a non-trivial task.

Really, the biggest thing for me was that I wanted to know The Next Thing.  The story sucked me in, and I wanted it to progress without delay and not TOO much fumbling.

In less complicated games, I think you could get away without an explicit topics command, but the player needs to be cued very well on what lines of inquiry might be productive.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2800&start=0#p19517
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: All of my ideas are taken
User: Zed / DateTime: 2011-07-14 01:12:17

Even if the concepts of the puzzles are analogous to ones that have been seen before, you could make them feel fresh with your choices in setting, description, tone, narrative voice, and your context. Are your puzzles in the service of a story that's a screwball comedy? An action story? A mystery revealing long-buried family secrets?

Every year we see movies with familiar characters and familiar plots, and some of those are still excellent because they do such a good job with the characters and plots. Novelty isn't the only virtue.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2809&start=0#p19518
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How to use foreign letters?
User: Pelican / DateTime: 2011-07-14 01:13:18

[quote="bcressey"]QTads and the HTML TADS player both support UTF-8, so whichever one you are using ought to work.

Check the interpreter's font setting and make sure it's using a Unicode font that includes those glyphs. If it doesn't, you will see the missing character symbol even if the glyph is coming through correctly.

You can also try [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2759298/gargoyle-2011.1-windows_r557.exe]this build of Gargoyle[/url] if you're in the mood for a bit of beta testing.[/quote]Okay, I tried QTads on another computer, and the characters appear fine, so I guess it is t3run that doesn't support Unicode.  I'm quite confused why my console and terminal can use Unicode, but t3run doesn't.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2800&start=0#p19519
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: All of my ideas are taken
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-14 01:30:26

im sure not all your "ideas" are taken, and what i mean by that is that you must have a setting and/or characters in your head that must truly be your own.  hoping that they arent stereotypes, that is.  my WIP is fantasy, yes, and some puzzles are actual homages to older works of IF's puzzles, but the story, the setting, and the characters are, im fairly confident, unique.  just be confident in your story and characters, and allow them to marinate in your head for awhile.  look at all of them from different angles, as well, not just thru your eyes, but try to look at your story elements from other perspectives.  its the gift of the human brain, after all.   [emote]:ugeek:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2808&start=0#p19520
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Not having much luck getting started
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-14 01:41:23

(For the actual problem, bcressey's answer should help you.)

[quote="Pelican"]
Then, I ran:

t3make -d -f mygame

That complains the I need to set the language.

So I ran:

t3make -D LANGUAGE=en_us -d -f mygame
[/quote]
You can put "-D LANGUAGE=en_us" in your makefile so that you don't need to specify it every time. Also, you can name your makefile "Makefile.t3m" instead of "mygame.t3m", so that you only need to type "t3make" or "t3make -d" (for a debug build) without needing the "-f mygame" option. It's way quicker to build your game that way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2777&start=0#p19521
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Google+ Invites
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-14 02:48:19

[quote="I4L"]However, I hate Facebook with some degree of passion. I'd like to see Google+ succeed. As Zuckerberg pointed out, if Google is going to succeed, they need a user base. 

I'm hoping that Google never releases a developer API. I really don't want to see another social networking platform dominated by Farmville and horoscopes. So far, it's looking pretty good. If you don't know anything about it, it integrates into the rest of Google's "services". Fantastic collaboration tool.

Anyway, if you want an invite, let me know. I'll send them for as long as Google will let me.[/quote]
Google has already succeeded, with more aps and services (including Youtube) coming out all the time.
What's an API?
Google is the browser you should hate (See new sig).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1893&start=20#p19522
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: CYOA "The Adventures of Phoebe McGee"
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-14 03:34:49

[quote="casmith"]One of the great liabilities of creating at chooseyourstory.com is in the editing after creating.[/quote]
I wasn't following the discussion, but I would like to know who created this site, because I was looking through CYOA sites a few years ago, and most of them are affiliated with the "Choose Your Own Adventure Books" Website (network of sites dedicated to the classic book series).

Another series of books (floppy rather than hard cover) took off from that idea, called "Choose Your Own Path".
This one is in multiple choice format, rather than a linear loop.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2807&start=0#p19523
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: SPECTRUM questions
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-07-14 05:13:00

There's a few in <a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifarchive.org">www.ifarchive.org</a>, but the one I use is Spectaculator. It's not free, unfortunately, but in my Windows system it's the very best I've found to suit my needs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2810&start=0#p19524
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: How to add graphics and split the screen?
User: Pelican / DateTime: 2011-07-14 05:24:12

I'd like to add graphics to my game.  How can I set it up so the bottom 1/4 contains text, the top 3/4 contains a large picture of each location?  I spend a long time looking through all the different TADS books and can't find any mention of adding graphics.  Where is some instructions about how to do this?

I have TADS 3.0.8-1.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2810&start=0#p19525
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How to add graphics and split the screen?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-14 06:04:49

You do that using the banner API provided by the adv3 library. The banner API is implemented in the file "lib/adv3/banner.t", along with comments on how it is used. Once you create the banners you want, you can then output text and graphics in them.

Btw, your TADS version seems heavily outdated. 3.0.8 is *really* old. You should install this:

<a class="postlink" href="http://tads.org/frobtads.htm">http://tads.org/frobtads.htm</a>

Which will give you TADS 3.0.18.1. Right now, you are using the old "legacy" Unix port, which is dead.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2806&start=0#p19526
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: off topic- anyone want to buy my MST3k collection?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-07-14 06:09:55

If you happen to have the first four KTMA episodes it is your duty - your DUTY, citizen! - to upload them for all the net to see and download.

Just kidding. But by the way, DO you have the first four KTMA episodes?

EDIT - Incidently, Gomez Adams had two watches, and he seemed to always know the time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=40#p19527
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-07-14 07:13:42

It's still got all the original bugs and all, but mine is now on IFDB:

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=vva8s4r00b3zli59">http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=vva8s4r00b3zli59</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2793&start=10#p19528
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation chooses weird objects(?)
User: joningold / DateTime: 2011-07-14 07:20:35

These problems are exactly what Disambiguation Control was engineered to resolve - things like the parser's tendency to choose carried objects over non-carried ones, for some verbs; and the way that a "Does the player mean doing something with the polish" will, while allowing >TAKE POLISH not to pick up the Polish gentleman, also cause >TAKE to default to the polish, every time, including when you're holding it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2793&start=10#p19529
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation chooses weird objects(?)
User: savaric / DateTime: 2011-07-14 07:25:31

[quote="joningold"]These problems are exactly what Disambiguation Control was engineered to resolve - things like the parser's tendency to choose carried objects over non-carried ones, for some verbs; and the way that a "Does the player mean doing something with the polish" will, while allowing >TAKE POLISH not to pick up the Polish gentleman, also cause >TAKE to default to the polish, every time, including when you're holding it.[/quote]

Sounds interesting, I'll look into that, thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2805&start=0#p19530
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Automated Drawers by Emily Short
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-14 07:30:39

I think I must have misunderstood what this extension  is for.  Based on the name, I assumed it was something that would only be useful for those who write "adult" IF  (and that if you don't select the "use American dialect" option it might be called something like "mechanised knickers"). [emote]:shock:[/emote] 

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2781&start=20#p19531
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Off the top of my head
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-14 07:33:45

I never did get to see [i]Killer Clowns From Outer Space[/i], but it certainly sounds like it has possibilities.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2781&start=20#p19532
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Off the top of my head
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-14 07:42:02

You can't possibly appreciate the meaning of "worst ever" until you've seen "The Giant Claw":

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfwYcbcVo-w">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfwYcbcVo-w</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2775&start=0#p19533
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What do you look for in non-IF games?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-07-14 07:47:18

It depends on the kind of game:

Strategy games: A slow pace (preferably turn-based). Peaceful routes to victory. A large range of difficulty settings (so I can cakewalk to victory if I want to, or immediately get crushed beneath Ghandi's iron heel). Lots and lots and lots of different options and strategies available. The ability to generate a random map and jump straight into a single player game, with no need to mess about with campaigns or other people.

Story-heavy games: Decent story, characters, writing and voice acting. Gameplay that isn't focused on killing stuff. (I'll tolerate some killing, but I've never warmed to FPSs/brawlers/etc.) Low difficulty (because I suck). Shorter rather longer. (See the parenthetical about how I suck. If the Internet says a game lasts about N hours, I will take about N x 3 hours to finish it.)

Twitchy arcade-style games: Extreme difficulty. (I play this kind of game casually; I want to start a game, die almost immediately and go back to what I was doing before.) Simple, intuitive controls. Graphics that are clean and functional rather than spectacular. A fun, fast-paced soundtrack. Detailed, complicated high score lists. No "story" getting in the way of the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=40#p19534
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2011-07-14 07:47:21

[quote="Jacqueline"]Not the update you were looking forward to, I realize.[/quote]That's okay. I just thought you might have posted it somewhere already and I missed it. [emote]:)[/emote] Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2792&start=0#p19535
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Steps to install an I7 extension?
User: maabaum / DateTime: 2011-07-14 07:54:21

[quote="DavidK"][quote="maabaum"]Are ni and it's arguments sort of , like, how-you-say-that, "documented" anywhere? It seems not to respond to the usual -h or --help flags?[/quote]No, it's not documented anywhere, other than the source code of the front-ends.[/quote]

This is the sort of thing we should put LulzSec on, instead of fiddling lists of hashed military passwords that no one cares about anyway.[emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2806&start=0#p19536
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: off topic- anyone want to buy my MST3k collection?
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-14 09:40:43

i will double-check, but im also certain i have ALL the KTMA episodes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2648&start=30#p19537
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can Gargoyle play Gblorb files?
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-07-14 11:08:29

[color=#FF00BF]So you all know i am a her not a him. I am not upset, it's just that everyone is calling me a he.[/color]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2811&start=0#p19538
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: inform 7: whats wrong with my code?
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-07-14 11:20:29

Instead of eating the cheese, say "You manage to swallow the cheese, but you can't quite keep it down once it gets there. You vomit."; remove the cheese from play.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2811&start=0#p19539
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: whats wrong with my code?
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-07-14 11:27:05

[quote="corrected version"]Instead of eating the cheese: say "You manage to swallow the cheese, but you can't quite keep it down once it gets there. You vomit."; remove the cheese from play.[/quote]

(You should use a colon instead of a comma after rule declarations, unless you have only one phrase to run.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2811&start=0#p19540
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: whats wrong with my code?
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-07-14 11:31:05

Wow after all the things i have coded, im surprised i didn't know that! thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2803&start=0#p19541
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Giving objects while using conversation package by Eric
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2011-07-14 11:53:19

Conversation Responses, which Conversation Package, assumes that GIVE and SHOW will be handled in an analogous fashion to ASK and TELL, which means that you need to write a response rule for what you want to happen when the player tries to give something to Fido, for example:

[code]
Response of Fido when given something:
	move the noun to Fido;
	say "Fido eagerly grabs [the noun] from your hand."
[/code]

Or, since Conversation Package also includes Conversational Defaults, you could write:

[code]
Default Give Response of Fido:
	move the noun to Fido;
	say "Fido eagerly grabs [the noun] from your hand."
[/code]

-- Eric

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2812&start=0#p19542
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: inform 7: book problem
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-07-14 11:54:18

[code]After looking in the book for "cats": say "Do you mean the play or the animal? Im going to assume you mean the animal. cats are small soft furry creatures" 


After looking in the book for "horses": say "horses are wonderful four legged creatures."[/code]

This does'nt work why not?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2807&start=0#p19543
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: SPECTRUM questions
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-07-14 11:55:44

Any Speccy emulator will play most, if not all, Spectrum IF titles with no problem. Perhaps you can get confused chosing the right Spectrum model to select for playing some specific game or how to load it if you're not used to play with the real machine. If that's the case just tell us here what issues you're having. If nothing else works you can go to the page of any text adventure game at the World Of Spectrum archive. They have their own category starting from [url=http://www.worldofspectrum.org/textadv/index.html]here[/url]. Each entry has links to play the game on-line using a java emulator just on the fly, so you won't have to configure any emulator at all.

--

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2813&start=0#p19544
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7 skipping ahed in the game
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-07-14 11:57:43

When making a game in inform 7 is there a way to start playing the game where ever you want or do you alway have to start at the first room?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2807&start=0#p19545
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: SPECTRUM questions
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-14 11:58:44

awesome, thank you!  [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2812&start=0#p19546
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: book problem
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-14 11:59:13

If you're trying to create a book in which the player can look up various topics, I think the way to do it is to set up a table of topics and responses, and use the "consult" command to look up the various topics and refer to the table.  I seem to recall that Jim Aikin's book has a good discussion, with examples, of how to do this.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2808&start=0#p19547
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Not having much luck getting started
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2011-07-14 12:10:33

[quote="bcressey"]Hmm, that's unfortunate. The example is missing the adv3 include at the top.
[/quote]

That [i]is[/i] unfortunate; thanks for catching it. In my current documentation set the omission appears only in the HTML version of the Getting Started Guide, not the PDF version. I'll send a corrected version of the relevant HTML page to Mike Roberts straight away.

-- Eric

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2813&start=0#p19548
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 skipping ahed in the game
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-14 12:10:33

If what you're asking is whether the author can specify that play begins somewhere other than the first room that is defined in the code, I think there is a way to do it.  The starting location defaults to the first room to be defined, but I think this can be overridden (I don't recall what the language is to do that).

If you're asking whether the player can decide to start at a location other than what the author has designated as the starting location, I don't think that is possible.  If it were, it would allow players to get around all the carefully crafted rules that make up your story world.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2814&start=0#p19549
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: Commands for NPCs
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-07-14 12:16:59

This is probably awfully simple, but I didn't find it in the DM4: How can I get an NPC to execute a command? Like, when <<examine obj>> will have the player do it, how can I apply this to an NPC?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2815&start=0#p19550
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Creating a token that works like a thing
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-14 12:23:47

Once again I've run into the annoyance that a bracketed description of objects can't be used in a token.

That in itself isn't such a problem in this case, as the token will never be encountered as an actual object. But unfortunately, the rules for parsing actual things are more flexible than the rules for parsing tokens:
[code]Chapel is a room.

Praying is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "pray [any thing]" as praying.

Report praying: say "You say [the noun]."

Understand "blessed", "virgin", "mary", "lady", "our lady" as "[BVM]".

the Hail Mary prayer is a thing. Understand "to [BVM]" as Hail Mary.

test me with "pray hail mary/pray to our lady/pray to blessed virgin mary"[/code]
The last test command stops parsing at the word "blessed," and then tells me "I only understood you as far as wanting to pray the Hail Mary prayer."

Is there some way to avoid manually writing out every single possible combination of words in the token as separate Understand lines?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2810&start=0#p19551
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How to add graphics and split the screen?
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2011-07-14 12:25:19

[quote="RealNC"]You do that using the banner API provided by the adv3 library. The banner API is implemented in the file "lib/adv3/banner.t", along with comments on how it is used. Once you create the banners you want, you can then output text and graphics in them.
[/quote]

That's perfectly correct, but using the raw banner API can be quite tricky. You might have to look at at the article on [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/techman/t3banner.htm]Using the Banner API[/url] in the [i]TADS 3 Technical Manual[/i], and perhaps take advantage of the customBanner.t extension that comes with more recent versions of TADS 3.

-- Eric

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2813&start=0#p19552
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 skipping ahed in the game
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-07-14 12:28:32

yes i mean the author.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2813&start=0#p19553
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 skipping ahed in the game
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-14 12:34:38

Just put the player in a different room.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2813&start=0#p19554
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 skipping ahed in the game
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-07-14 12:49:19

Like, "The player is in The Other Room" at the beginning, as you would write "now the player is in The Other Room" somewhere in the middle of the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2813&start=0#p19555
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 skipping ahed in the game
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-14 12:50:22

There are some handy debugging commands that you can use when the game has been compiled for testing (which is the default in the IDE). They don't seem to be documented, but if you go to the Commands A-Z section of the Actions Index and search for "testing command," you'll find them.

Try these out:

gonear [something or someplace]
pronouns
purloin [something]
random
relations
rules
scenes
scope
showme [something]
showverb
trace
tree
abstract [something] to [something or someplace]
actions
actor is [any person]

"gonear" is the one you want here, but some of the others can also be very useful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2815&start=0#p19556
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating a token that works like a thing
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-14 13:06:48

[quote="capmikee"]Once again I've run into the annoyance that a bracketed description of objects can't be used in a token.

That in itself isn't such a problem in this case, as the token will never be encountered as an actual object. But unfortunately, the rules for parsing actual things are more flexible than the rules for parsing tokens:
[code]Chapel is a room.

Praying is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "pray [any thing]" as praying.

Report praying: say "You say [the noun]."

Understand "blessed", "virgin", "mary", "lady", "our lady" as "[BVM]".

the Hail Mary prayer is a thing. Understand "to [BVM]" as Hail Mary.

test me with "pray hail mary/pray to our lady/pray to blessed virgin mary"[/code]
The last test command stops parsing at the word "blessed," and then tells me "I only understood you as far as wanting to pray the Hail Mary prayer."

Is there some way to avoid manually writing out every single possible combination of words in the token as separate Understand lines?[/quote]

Could the problem be that the last command isn't actually "Pray to [BVM]" but "Pray to [BVM] [BVM]"? When I add 

[code]Understand "to [BVM] [BVM]" as Hail Mary.[/code]

it behaves as desired, but obviously you'd need to add a few more similar lines to catch all the cases. 

Anyway, I know that if you have a bunch of words all of which are understood as a noun (like "take hat hat brown stetson hat stetson brown") then the parser is supposed to understand them as the noun, but I'm not sure that it's even desirable to have similar behavior for tokens. 

If I were very worried about this and didn't like my previous hack, I'd probably write an understand line for "pray to [something]", maybe even define the BVM as a separate object, and redirect praying to our lady to saying the Hail Mary. I guess this would reject "pray hail mary to our blessed virgin lady," but that doesn't seem too bad. (May depend on what you're actually trying to do, if this isn't it.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2814&start=0#p19557
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Commands for NPCs
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-14 13:07:06

The I6 library doesn't support NPC actions, really. "Robot, examine lamp" invokes the robot's orders or life routine, not the library examine action.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2814&start=0#p19558
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Commands for NPCs
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-07-14 13:18:55

Hrmpf. And the Life;[ routine can't be called from outside with parameters? *sigh*

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2815&start=0#p19559
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating a token that works like a thing
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-14 13:34:31

I think I might add a "praying to" verb, but there's also a "pray for mercy" syntax, so it gets complicated.

I think you're right that tokens should be stricter than nouns in most cases, but it would be nice if there were a way to disable that. More and more I want to see a "no memory" noun matching token. Sort of the equivalent of (?: ... ) in Perl regexps.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2815&start=0#p19560
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating a token that works like a thing
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-14 13:52:25

Actually, a repetition operator would probably work even better in this case:

[code]Understand "to [BVM]+" as Hail Mary.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2815&start=0#p19561
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating a token that works like a thing
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-14 13:58:55

Sadly, but unsuprsingly, this:

[code]Understand "[BVM] [BVM]" as "[BVM]".[/code]

doesn't compile.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=60#p19562
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-07-14 15:12:38

[quote="bukayeva"][quote="David Whyld"]IF can be written by anyone. That's the appeal for me.[/quote]

As I think on it, I guess this sums it up for me and why I'm "suspicious" of text adventures. Not everyone can be a novelist. Not everyone can be a filmmaker. Not everyone can be a graphical game designer. But [i]anyone[/i] can write text adventures! It just feels like text adventures are described as a "Can't do anything else? Then do a text adventure!" I'd rather someone say "It's NOT just anyone who can write a text adventure. It takes skill as a writer and as a game designer."[/quote]

I meant in the sense that it's [i]possible[/i] for anyone to write IF. It's not possible for anyone to write a FPS or an MMO, at least not on their own and not without having considerably financial backing. Not everyone can be a film director on their own - they need actors and set designers and story writers and people to promote the film and cinemas willing to show it. Not everyone can be a novellist - sure, anyone can write one but they still need publishers to get them into print* and bookshops to stock them. But yes, [i]anyone[/i] can write IF. It might not be good IF, but the barriers holding you back in other fields don't apply as strongly in the IF world.


Although if eBook readers take off in the way I hope they do, even that might be something that Joe Ordinary can do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=60#p19563
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-07-14 15:19:25

I also suspect that the vast majority of IF authors also write non-IF fiction or do non-IF programming/game design, and that a large portion do both.  I do both, for instance (and illustration, to boot).

I think vanishingly few people have written IF without skills in any related field.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=60#p19564
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-07-14 15:32:47

[quote="David Whyld"]It's not possible for anyone to write a FPS or an MMO, at least not on their own and not without having considerably financial backing.[/quote]
For an MMO that might be true, but in the case of an FPS, that's no longer the case now that engines such as Unity are available.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=60#p19565
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-07-14 15:52:32

[quote="Trumgottist"][quote="David Whyld"]It's not possible for anyone to write a FPS or an MMO, at least not on their own and not without having considerably financial backing.[/quote]
For an MMO that might be true, but in the case of an FPS, that's no longer the case now that engines such as Unity are available.[/quote]

I've never heard of Unity and don't play FPS, but I'm kind of doubtful that something like, say, Call of Duty 4 could be written by a single person. The best IF game in the world could be written by a person on their own; the best FPS couldn't.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2805&start=0#p19566
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Automated Drawers by Emily Short
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-07-14 16:09:19

[quote="emshort"]The reason for this is that the names "top drawer," etc., don't refer to single objects in the game world; a drawer is assigned the identity of "top" depending on what other drawers are part of the same object. That means that, yes, it's necessary to populate them at runtime rather than at the beginning of the game.

I had vaguely thought I discussed this in the docs, but possibly not -- I don't have time to have a look now, but will do so for a future release.[/quote]I managed to get it working using Eleas' method of deciding the real drawer.[quote="Eleas"]It's ugly, hackish, and mostly untested, but you should be able to use it for the moment:[code]To decide which drawer is the real (placing - a drawer position) drawer of (holder - an object):
	repeat with tray running through drawers part of holder:
		if the drawer position of the tray is the placing, decide on the tray.[/code]...and usage is as follows:[code]When play begins:
	now the clutter is in the real top drawer of the desk.[/code][/quote]I didn't think that pre-populating drawers would be so messy!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2648&start=30#p19567
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can Gargoyle play Gblorb files?
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-14 16:21:50

[quote="ilovemyhedgehog"][color=#FF00BF]So you all know i am a her not a him. I am not upset, it's just that everyone is calling me a he.[/color][/quote]
 [emote]:idea:[/emote] Maybe if the admin put a gender space in the user control panel, we wouldn't get confused.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2816&start=0#p19568
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Starting Scenes
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-07-14 16:24:04

Is it perhaps possible that a scene can only be started once? I have a flag which switches between status 0 and 1, and whenever it's 1 I want a scene to start. But it only starts at the first time the flag becomes 1. Some bug in my code or feature?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=70#p19569
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-14 16:24:38

[quote="David Whyld"]

I've never heard of Unity and don't play FPS, but I'm kind of doubtful that something like, say, Call of Duty 4 could be written by a single person. The best IF game in the world could be written by a person on their own; the best FPS couldn't.[/quote]

I suppose it depends on what you mean by "better".  I'd have to borrow models and textures and animations, but there are resources for that, just as I've borrowed artistic resources for my IF WIP.  I'd need some advise on pathing and AI probably, just like I need advice on some game design issues in IF.  I'd probably crib from someone else - just like I crib from IF extension authors.  My particle effects probably wouldn't be as awesome - explosions would be cruder, or I'd have to get them sourced.  But the meat of the game?  Plot, level design, scripting, physics collisions, force applications from explosions?  All that I can do on my own (or get the engine to do for me - same diff, right?).  I'd need external beta testers for sure, but that's not different than IF either.  I'd need voice actors, if I designed a plot that included voice actors, but that seems like a different category than a co-worker.  

I could certainly make a better game than, say, Descent.  

It would take me a long time to make a commercial length game.  But I've seen what people can do with Unity, and you're dismissing it too readily.  Of course, if you mean that I should build the engine from the ground up . . . that's different.  (But plenty of commercial team games don't build their own engines either.)

I don't necessarily think it's *ideal* to do your own FPS, but then I don't necessarily think it's ideal to write your own large IF*.  But possible?  Heck, yeah.  

* Not strictly true.  I'm thinking of my WIP.  Other people don't talk enough about their design process for me to have any clue what would be helpful for them.  But I can imagine even the most literary works finding a researcher, or a widget programmer, or a scenery writer useful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2816&start=0#p19570
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Starting Scenes
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-14 16:25:17

Did you define it as a recurring scene?

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2816&start=0#p19571
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Starting Scenes
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-14 16:25:55

When you declared the scene, did you "Eating Ice Cream is a recurring scene." ?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2814&start=0#p19572
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Commands for NPCs
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-14 16:38:01

Oh, sure it can. It's just a property. Set the actor, action, noun, and second variables, and then do RunLife(actor, ##Order).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2805&start=0#p19573
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Automated Drawers by Emily Short
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-14 16:42:07

It will be a lot easier if you define the drawers one at a time, instead of making them anonymous.

[code]
The desk is a fixed in place supporter in the apartment. 
A vertical drawer called the top drawer is part of the desk.
A vertical drawer called the middle drawer is part of the desk.
A vertical drawer called the bottom drawer is part of the desk.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2781&start=20#p19574
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Off the top of my head
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-14 16:45:09

[quote="I4L"][quote="IF noob"]I also PMed him, but I didn't get a reply.[/quote]

Sark is a woman.

So... Yes, going back and re-reading this entire thread again, I was (and still am, honestly) confused.

So you want to toss out an idea (ie "It's 3024 and apples have taken over the world... Go with it!"), have someone write it for you, have someone else do artwork and someone else do the programming. It's a idea based on a game that was based on a movie but has no foundation in either of those because a modern fighting game and an old arcade/Atari game are somehow thrown into the mix, but this somehow ties the logic together. And it began with a list of random game mechanics.

I'm still confused.

[quote="IF noob"]Labyrinth is already made.
It was originally an Apple II demo illustrating what a laboratory mouse has to go through.
The game was called MAZE (a TRON Lightcycle like game in 3D).
Old style keystrokes really helped the game in slow mode, but was a pain in fast mode (literally, your wrist would get cramps and fingers sore).
[/quote]

No, this would not be "Labyrinth" realized as a video game. First of all, it has nothing even remotely resembling anything from the movie and secondly if it's the game I'm thinking of, it was released a few years before the movie. If not the game I'm thinking of, it still doesn't have anything to do with the movie.

There are apparently people who know where all of this is going. I'm not one of them. I am, however, looking forward to the realization of whatever this concept of a game or games comes to be.

Best of luck![/quote]
I am tired of arguing, but just so you know, I have no idea what this game will be like (if it ever gets made).
I was talking about some of the elements I personally thought should go in it.
I don't know what the group will decide.

The way I'm going about it is not to give them a rough sketch and tell them to do it for me.
I will contribute!

If you read my bookmarked post, I said I would supply props and sets appropriate to what's already written.
Although someone else would write it (a field I'm not good at anyway), I could give them ideas of where to take the story and how the NPCs should behave (the definition of brainstorming).

If you feel you must reply to this, please don't make it into a flame or argument.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2816&start=0#p19575
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Starting Scenes
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-07-14 16:46:56

Ah-ha... Gonna try!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=50#p19576
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-14 17:12:52

[quote]If glk_schannel_set_volume_ext() is called with a non-zero duration while no sound is playing on the channel, is it OK for the library to do either of these two things?[/quote]

I'm going to say "no" -- the volume change should be completely independent of what sounds are going on (or not). Sorry if this makes more work.

I think I was taking for granted that there would be a separate timer running for volume changes (or else code piggybacked on a fill-a-sound-buffer timer that was already in place). I'll stick to that idea.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2817&start=0#p19577
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Stumper bug in Numbered Disambiguation Choices
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-07-14 17:24:49

Hi all,

I recently received a bug report for my Numbered Disambiguation Choices extension that is driving my crazy. Here is the test case:

[code]Include Numbered Disambiguation Choices by Aaron Reed.

The Ballroom is a room. In the ballroom is a person called the butler.

The player is carrying a red ball. The player is carrying a yellow ball.
[/code]

If you type "show ball to butler," then press 1 (to indicate the red ball) things behave as expected; however, if you choose 2 (or any higher number, if you add more objects) you instead get the perplexing message "You can only do that to something animate."

The extension works by understanding a numeric property as the item: during disambiguation, that property gets filled with a sequential set of numbers. So the command that actually gets parsed is "show 1 ball to butler" versus "show 2 ball to butler". My guess is Inform is perhaps confusing this with something like "show both balls to butler," but I don't know why a) things work normally in every other case ("examine 2 ball" works fine), or b) You don't then get the message "You can't use multiple objects with that verb."

Leads: the ANIMA_PE parser error (Misc #37) only seems to be used in Parse Token Letter D (on p.123 of the Appendix-B document). I can't work out exactly what's going on here, but it seems to be checking whether the thing the player's talking about is referring to a creature... are numbers other than "1" being misinterpreted in the case of a grammar line with a second noun?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2814&start=0#p19579
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Commands for NPCs
User: beelsebu / DateTime: 2011-07-14 18:28:02

Am I doing something wrong when I can get the following code to work then?

Code:
[code]
Object Messenger "windows messenger"
   with
   	name 'messenger',
		before[;
			Attack:
				switch(actor) {
					attacker:	
						"~don't kill the messenger!~";
					default:
						"hey hey hey!";
				}		
				
   ];
   
Object attacker "the attacker"
	with
		name 'attacker',
   orders[;
         Open: "~I don't like to open ", (the) noun, ". ";
   	 default:
   	 	<<(action) noun second>>;
   ],
  has animate;

[/code]

Then invoke with either:

> Attacker, kill messenger
 "don't kill the messenger!"

or:

> Kill messenger
 "hey hey hey!"

The attacker will obey any command but open. But then of course, the library messages are written for the player only so you'll still get "you can't do x..." sometimes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2818&start=0#p19580
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I7] Turning a blank command into an action
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-14 18:33:47

I want to turn a blank command into a going action. (The player can type "go to X", which move him one room towards X. Pressing enter should take another step towards X.)

Easy! You just steal some code from Aaron's Smarter Parser extension:

[code]Rule for printing a parser error when the latest parser error is the I beg your pardon error (this is the do something useful with blank lines rule):
	say "(going towards [location-to-go])[line break]";
	try going to location-to-go;[/code]

Except that a parser error loops you back to the parse command rule immediately, skipping the every turn rulebook and all other rules in the turn sequence rules. It is absolutely essential for my game that this does not happen. Is there a way to turn the blank command into a normal action running through the normal turn sequence rules?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2814&start=0#p19581
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Commands for NPCs
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-07-14 18:39:07

That will cause a lot of unexpected results because the verb routines are set up for the player, not any other actor.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2817&start=0#p19582
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Stumper bug in Numbered Disambiguation Choices
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-14 18:40:20

[quote="aaronius"]Are numbers other than "1" being misinterpreted in the case of a grammar line with a second noun?[/quote]

That appears to be the case. I tried the same example after changing the disambiguation numbers to (n * 100). The first choice (number 100) then gives the same response as the second choice (200).

I have no idea what that portends, though...

--Erik

EDIT: I also tried making the disambiguation ID an indexed text representing a number ("1") instead of a number (1). It failed in exactly the same way. This probably just means that the distinction between indexed text and number doesn't matter by the time it's been tokenized...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2648&start=30#p19583
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can Gargoyle play Gblorb files?
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-14 20:19:18

[quote="ilovemyhedgehog"]thanks.[/quote]

Quick explanation:
From [url]https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Maverick_Meerkat#Ubuntu_10.10_.28Maverick_Meerkat.29[/url]

[quote]Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat)
Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat)

The naming of Ubuntu 10.10 was announced by Mark Shuttleworth on 2 April 2010, along with the release's goals of improving the netbook experience and a server focus on hybrid cloud computing. Ubuntu 10.10 was released on 10 October 2010 (10.10.10) at around 10:10 UTC.[96][97][98][99][100] This is a departure from the traditional schedule of releasing at the end of October to get "the perfect 10",[101] and a playful reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, since, in binary, 101010 is equal to the number 42, the "Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything" within the series.[102] It is Canonical's 13th release of Ubuntu. New features included the new Unity interface for the Netbook Edition, a new default photo manager, Shotwell, replacing F-Spot, the ability to purchase applications in the Software Center, and an official Ubuntu font used by default.[103] Maverick Meerkat 10.10 will be supported until April 2012.[/quote]

Answer to question:
[url]https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/maverick/+package/gargoyle-free[/url] (does play Tads, does not play HTML Tads).

I have no idea why your sound and pictures won't work.
Maybe you installed the wrong version of Gargoyle.
There is a big difference between the 1988 version and the 1989 version.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2818&start=0#p19584
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Turning a blank command into an action
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-14 21:08:59

I have one that I got off this board. Actually, I thought you wrote the code [emote]:P[/emote] . Maybe I was mistaken?

In any case, I have a block of I6 code and a few lines of I7 code - which I got off some nice person - will allow you to reroute a blank hit of the enter key to a particular command of your own.

The person who provided the code made that command 'look.' For me, I made it 'again', because I like hitting return to repeat my last command.

Here are the bits:

[code]Include (- [ Keyboard  a_buffer a_table  nw i w w2 x1 x2;
	sline1 = score; sline2 = turns;

	while (true) {
		! Save the start of the buffer, in case "oops" needs to restore it
		for (i=0 : i<64 : i++) oops_workspace->i = a_buffer->i;
	
		! In case of an array entry corruption that shouldn't happen, but would be
		! disastrous if it did:
		#Ifdef TARGET_ZCODE;
		a_buffer->0 = INPUT_BUFFER_LEN;
		a_table->0 = 15;  ! Allow to split input into this many words
		#Endif; ! TARGET_
	
		! Print the prompt, and read in the words and dictionary addresses
		PrintPrompt();
		DrawStatusLine();
		KeyboardPrimitive(a_buffer, a_table);
	
		! Set nw to the number of words
		#Ifdef TARGET_ZCODE; nw = a_table->1; #Ifnot; nw = a_table-->0; #Endif;
	
		! If the line was blank, get a fresh line
		!if (nw == 0) {
		!	@push etype; etype = BLANKLINE_PE;
		!	players_command = 100;
		!	BeginActivity(PRINTING_A_PARSER_ERROR_ACT);
		!	if (ForActivity(PRINTING_A_PARSER_ERROR_ACT) == false) L__M(##Miscellany,10);
		!	EndActivity(PRINTING_A_PARSER_ERROR_ACT);
		!	@pull etype;
		!	continue;
		!}
	
		! Unless the opening word was OOPS, return
		! Conveniently, a_table-->1 is the first word on both the Z-machine and Glulx
	
		w = a_table-->1;
		if (w == OOPS1__WD or OOPS2__WD or OOPS3__WD) {
			if (oops_from == 0) { L__M(##Miscellany, 14); continue; }
			if (nw == 1) { L__M(##Miscellany, 15); continue; }
			if (nw > 2) { L__M(##Miscellany, 16); continue; }
		
			! So now we know: there was a previous mistake, and the player has
			! attempted to correct a single word of it.
		
			for (i=0 : i<INPUT_BUFFER_LEN : i++) buffer2->i = a_buffer->i;
			#Ifdef TARGET_ZCODE;
			x1 = a_table->9;  ! Start of word following "oops"
			x2 = a_table->8;  ! Length of word following "oops"
			#Ifnot; ! TARGET_GLULX
			x1 = a_table-->6; ! Start of word following "oops"
			x2 = a_table-->5; ! Length of word following "oops"
			#Endif; ! TARGET_
		
			! Repair the buffer to the text that was in it before the "oops"
			! was typed:
			for (i=0 : i<64 : i++) a_buffer->i = oops_workspace->i;
			VM_Tokenise(a_buffer,a_table);
		
			! Work out the position in the buffer of the word to be corrected:
			#Ifdef TARGET_ZCODE;
			w = a_table->(4*oops_from + 1); ! Start of word to go
			w2 = a_table->(4*oops_from);    ! Length of word to go
			#Ifnot; ! TARGET_GLULX
			w = a_table-->(3*oops_from);      ! Start of word to go
			w2 = a_table-->(3*oops_from - 1); ! Length of word to go
			#Endif; ! TARGET_
		
			! Write spaces over the word to be corrected:
			for (i=0 : i<w2 : i++) a_buffer->(i+w) = ' ';
		
			if (w2 < x2) {
				! If the replacement is longer than the original, move up...
				for (i=INPUT_BUFFER_LEN-1 : i>=w+x2 : i-- )
					a_buffer->i = a_buffer->(i-x2+w2);

				! ...increasing buffer size accordingly.
				#Ifdef TARGET_ZCODE;
				a_buffer->1 = (a_buffer->1) + (x2-w2);
				#Ifnot; ! TARGET_GLULX
				a_buffer-->0 = (a_buffer-->0) + (x2-w2);
				#Endif; ! TARGET_
			}
		
			! Write the correction in:
			for (i=0 : i<x2 : i++) a_buffer->(i+w) = buffer2->(i+x1);
		
			VM_Tokenise(a_buffer, a_table);
			#Ifdef TARGET_ZCODE; nw = a_table->1; #Ifnot; nw = a_table-->0; #Endif;
		
			return nw;
		}

		! Undo handling
	
		if ((w == UNDO1__WD or UNDO2__WD or UNDO3__WD) && (nw==1)) {
			Perform_Undo();
			continue;
		}
		i = VM_Save_Undo();
		#ifdef PREVENT_UNDO; undo_flag = 0; #endif;
		#ifndef PREVENT_UNDO; undo_flag = 2; #endif;
		if (i == -1) undo_flag = 0;
		if (i == 0) undo_flag = 1;
		if (i == 2) {
			VM_RestoreWindowColours();
			VM_Style(SUBHEADER_VMSTY);
			SL_Location(); print "^";
			! print (name) location, "^";
			VM_Style(NORMAL_VMSTY);
			L__M(##Miscellany, 13);
			continue;
		}
		return nw;
	}
]; -) instead of "Reading the Command" in "Parser.i6t".[/code]

Now the I7 bit.

[code]After reading a command (this is the blank line = again rule):
	let T be indexed text;
	now T is the player's command;
	if T is "", change the text of the player's command to "again".[/code]

So just replace 'again' with the command you want to have activate, and that's it. There's nothing you need to change in the i6 part.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2814&start=0#p19585
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Commands for NPCs
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-14 22:10:39

Right. The <<(action) noun second>> statement is still a legal statement, but there's nothing in the library action routines that pays attention to the actor variable (as far as I know). So "attacker, take lamp" will wind up with the player carrying the lamp, and fail if the lamp isn't in the same room as the player, etc.

(I haven't tested any of this; I'm just looking at the library code.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2819&start=0#p19586
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Get Lamp extended interviews on the Internet Archive
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-15 00:27:56

hey all, just makin sure y'all know this, sorry if u already do, but they are really good and they have my fav IF author [b]Michael Gentry[/b]'s interview which, unfortunately, didn't quite make it in the documentary.

[url]http://www.archive.org/details/getlamp-interviews[/url]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2819&start=0#p19587
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Get Lamp extended interviews on the Internet Archive
User: George / DateTime: 2011-07-15 00:32:38

awesome!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2810&start=0#p19588
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How to add graphics and split the screen?
User: Pelican / DateTime: 2011-07-15 02:59:36

Okay, thanks very much.  I think I've got the latest version of all of the software now.  Do you know any sample game (with source) that I ought to take a look at so I can see an example of how it is done?  The games I've found that use graphics seem to put them directly alongside the text.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2817&start=0#p19589
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Stumper bug in Numbered Disambiguation Choices
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-07-15 04:25:05

For what it's worth:
I ran the example through an earlier build of Inform (5Z71) (commenting out the extension's chapter on parser errors) and came up with this:
[quote]
>show ball to butler
Which do you mean, the 1) red ball or the 2) yellow ball?

>1
The butler is unimpressed.

>show ball to butler
Which do you mean, the 1) red ball or the 2) yellow ball?

>2
The butler is unimpressed.

>show both balls to butler
You can't use multiple objects with that verb.

>show 2 balls to butler
You can only do that to something animate.

>show 2 ball to butler
The butler is unimpressed.
[/quote]

It perhaps suggests that the current build of Inform doesn't discriminate between "2 ball" and "2 balls" in a way that it used to.

Below are the trace records for SHOW 2 BALL TO BUTLER and SHOW 2 BALLS TO BUTLER in 5Z71:

[rant]>trace 4
[Parser tracing set to level 4.]

>show 2 ball to butler
[ "show" show / "2" ? / "ball" ball / "to" to / "butler" butler ]
[Parsing for the verb 'show' (2 lines)]

[line 0 * creature held -> Show reverse]
 [line 0 token 1 word 2 : creature]
  [Object list from word 2]
  [Calling NounDomain on location and actor]
   [NounDomain called at word 2
   seeking definite object
Two-pass parse_name called
  [Read number as 2]
  [Read number as 2]
Pass 1: 0 Pass 2: 0
Two-pass parse_name called
  [Read number as 2]
  [Read number as 2]
Pass 1: 0 Pass 2: 0
Two-pass parse_name called
  [Read number as 2]
  [Read number as 2]
Pass 1: 0 Pass 2: 0
Two-pass parse_name called
  [Read number as 2]
  [Read number as 2]
Pass 1: 1 Pass 2: 2
   [ND made 1 matches]
  [ND returned the yellow ball]
  [token resulted in failure with error type 4]

[line 1 * held 'to' creature -> Show]
 [line 1 token 1 word 2 : held]
  [Object list from word 2]
   [NounDomain called at word 2
   seeking definite object
Two-pass parse_name called
  [Read number as 2]
  [Read number as 2]
Pass 1: 0 Pass 2: 0
Two-pass parse_name called
  [Read number as 2]
  [Read number as 2]
Pass 1: 1 Pass 2: 2
Two-pass parse_name called
  [Read number as 2]
  [Read number as 2]
Pass 1: 0 Pass 2: 0
Two-pass parse_name called
  [Read number as 2]
  [Read number as 2]
Pass 1: 0 Pass 2: 0
Two-pass parse_name called
  [Read number as 2]
  [Read number as 2]
Pass 1: 1 Pass 2: 2
Two-pass parse_name called
  [Read number as 2]
  [Read number as 2]
Pass 1: 0 Pass 2: 0
   [ND made 1 matches]
  [token resulted in success]
 [line 1 token 2 word 4 : 'to']
  [token resulted in success]
 [line 1 token 3 word 5 : creature]
  [Object list from word 5]
  [Calling NounDomain on location and actor]
   [NounDomain called at word 5
   seeking definite object
Two-pass parse_name called
Pass 1: 0 Pass 2: 0
Two-pass parse_name called
Pass 1: 1 Pass 2: 1
Two-pass parse_name called
Pass 1: 0 Pass 2: 0
Two-pass parse_name called
Pass 1: 0 Pass 2: 0
   [ND made 1 matches]
  [ND returned the butler]
  [token resulted in success]
 [line 1 token 4 word 6 : END]
[Line successfully parsed]

The butler is unimpressed.

>show 2 balls to butler
[ "show" show / "2" ? / "balls" ? / "to" to / "butler" butler ]
[Parsing for the verb 'show' (2 lines)]

[line 0 * creature held -> Show reverse]
 [line 0 token 1 word 2 : creature]
  [Object list from word 2]
  [Calling NounDomain on location and actor]
   [NounDomain called at word 2
   seeking definite object
Two-pass parse_name called
  [Read number as 2]
  [Read number as 2]
Pass 1: 0 Pass 2: 0
Two-pass parse_name called
  [Read number as 2]
  [Read number as 2]
Pass 1: 0 Pass 2: 0
Two-pass parse_name called
  [Read number as 2]
  [Read number as 2]
Pass 1: 0 Pass 2: 0
Two-pass parse_name called
  [Read number as 2]
  [Read number as 2]
Pass 1: 1 Pass 2: 1
   [ND made 1 matches]
  [ND returned the yellow ball]
  [token resulted in failure with error type 4]

[line 1 * held 'to' creature -> Show]
 [line 1 token 1 word 2 : held]
  [Object list from word 2]
   [NounDomain called at word 2
   seeking definite object
Two-pass parse_name called
  [Read number as 2]
  [Read number as 2]
Pass 1: 0 Pass 2: 0
Two-pass parse_name called
  [Read number as 2]
  [Read number as 2]
Pass 1: 1 Pass 2: 1
Two-pass parse_name called
  [Read number as 2]
  [Read number as 2]
Pass 1: 0 Pass 2: 0
Two-pass parse_name called
  [Read number as 2]
  [Read number as 2]
Pass 1: 0 Pass 2: 0
Two-pass parse_name called
  [Read number as 2]
  [Read number as 2]
Pass 1: 1 Pass 2: 1
Two-pass parse_name called
  [Read number as 2]
  [Read number as 2]
Pass 1: 0 Pass 2: 0
   [ND made 1 matches]
  [token resulted in success]
 [line 1 token 2 word 3 : 'to']
  [token resulted in failure with error type 3]
You can only do that to something animate.[/rant]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2810&start=0#p19590
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How to add graphics and split the screen?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-15 05:02:37

[quote="Pelican"]Do you know any sample game (with source) that I ought to take a look at so I can see an example of how it is done?[/quote]
I just created a sample demo. I'm attaching it to this post. The source code should be easy to follow. It also shows how to embed media resources into the final game (at the bottom of Makefile.t3m) so that you can distribute only a .t3 file that will contain all the media inside.

The archive also contains an already compiled .t3 game.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2813&start=0#p19591
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 skipping ahed in the game
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-07-15 06:20:39

You can create testing commands that automatically give a sequence of commands to the interpreter. I don't have Inform here to check, but search the documentation for "test me with". 

You can also replay commands from the skein. Check the Skein tab or search the docs for "skein".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2817&start=0#p19592
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Stumper bug in Numbered Disambiguation Choices
User: SimonChris / DateTime: 2011-07-15 07:42:32

Hi Aaron

I am the guy who wrote the bug report. It definitely seems to be a general problem when having two nouns. The same error occurs when trying to put a ball into a container, and selecting the second option, although the error message in this case is simply "I didn't understand that number.".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2818&start=0#p19593
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Turning a blank command into an action
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-07-15 07:45:06

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Is there a way to turn the blank command into a normal action running through the normal turn sequence rules?[/quote]
Thank you for asking this question, so I didn't have to. After spending some time implementing this behaviour in TADS 3, this was something I expected to be trivial in I7.

[quote="severedhand"](A solution.)[/quote]
Nice to see that intuitive natural language at work...  [emote]:shock:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2810&start=0#p19594
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How to add graphics and split the screen?
User: Pelican / DateTime: 2011-07-15 07:52:13

[quote="RealNC"][quote="Pelican"]Do you know any sample game (with source) that I ought to take a look at so I can see an example of how it is done?[/quote]
I just created a sample demo. I'm attaching it to this post. The source code should be easy to follow. It also shows how to embed media resources into the final game (at the bottom of Makefile.t3m) so that you can distribute only a .t3 file that will contain all the media inside.

The archive also contains an already compiled .t3 game.[/quote]Wow, great.  This community is so helpful.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2817&start=0#p19595
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Stumper bug in Numbered Disambiguation Choices
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-07-15 07:59:03

When I tried it earlier to day (I can't check that now) I think I saw that SHOW 2 BALL TO BUTLER would yield an error message, whereas SHOW BALL 2 TO BUTLER worked as intended.
If that is so, I suppose a possible solution might be to hack NounDomain to have it insert the disambiguation id number after (the first word of) the object's name rather than before it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2769&start=10#p19596
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Conversation Topics
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-07-15 08:25:44

I just had an idea... what about bringing up a few topic suggestions when the player asks about a non-implemented topic and gets the default reply?  The advantage to this might be that it could, if the author wanted, be done without non-mimetic (I think that's the right term, outside of the storyworld) messages.  In a few situations, perhaps the NPC could reasonably tell the PC what topics are open for conversation; more likely, the PC would refuse to talk about the non-implemented topic and tell the player some things that he or she thinks are more useful topics.  Of course, a "TOPICS" command could also be in-character, but this might feel less like "cheating" or using a hint system.

So, it would look something like this:

>ASK MAN ABOUT BANANA
You don't want to waste the Captain's time in idle chat. You have a specific mission to accomplish, after all. You realize that captain might know something about the tidal [b]anomaly[/b] or the pirate [b]raid[/b] if you ask him, and you think it might be worthwhile to tell him about your discovery of the secret [b]map[/b].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2818&start=0#p19597
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Turning a blank command into an action
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-15 09:01:41

Does Smarter Parser deal with the issue Victor identified? That is, does it find a way to initiate the substitute command in the normal turn sequence, rather than within the parser error sequence? If not, this would also qualify as a bug in Smarter Parser.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2764&start=0#p19598
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Swedish -- Inform 7 translation
User: norpan / DateTime: 2011-07-15 09:31:37

I just read through it and I am impressed! Just what I needed to make a Swedish text game for my 9 year old nephew [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2764&start=0#p19599
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Swedish -- Inform 7 translation
User: norpan / DateTime: 2011-07-15 09:46:58

Read through the documentation and found a place where it said "proper name" but probably should be "printed name".

Apart from that I didn't notice anything funny at all, but I'll get back to you. Thanks again for a great extension!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2769&start=10#p19600
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Conversation Topics
User: Sig / DateTime: 2011-07-15 10:55:12

[quote="Bainespal"]
So, it would look something like this:

>ASK MAN ABOUT BANANA
You don't want to waste the Captain's time in idle chat. You have a specific mission to accomplish, after all. You realize that captain might know something about the tidal [b]anomaly[/b] or the pirate [b]raid[/b] if you ask him, and you think it might be worthwhile to tell him about your discovery of the secret [b]map[/b].[/quote]
I like this.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2820&start=0#p19601
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Computers by Emily Short - strange behavior
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-07-15 11:13:30

I'm using Emily Short's fantastic extension "Computers", many thanks to her for writing such a monumentally useful extension. However, I'm noticing some strange behavior.

I have a computer named computer, and a search engine named chrome running on the computer with a no-records response set up.

Check the transcript below:
[code]>look up sandwiches in chrome
[I didn't recognize all of the words in that command.]

>search for sandwiches
[That isn't available.]

>look up sandwiches on computer
You attempt to look it up, but it appears that the computer is disconnected from the internet.

>look up sandwiches on chrome
You attempt to look it up, but it appears that the computer is disconnected from the internet.

>search for sandwiches
You attempt to look it up, but it appears that the computer is disconnected from the internet.[/code]I've tried to put in a "Does the player mean text-searching some text in chrome: it is very likely." line, but that does nothing to help.
Apparently inform doesn't know I'm talking about the search engine program until I remind it that the search engine is running on the computer?
This is strange and inconvenient behavior from an otherwise fantastic extension. Has anyone else run into this?
As a side note, I've included the "quittable program" modifier from the "operations" example in Emily's extension documentation. Might this be interfering?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2820&start=0#p19602
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Computers by Emily Short - strange behavior
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-07-15 11:39:19

You ask it to look up sandwiches [b]in[/b] chrome the first time, and [b]on[/b] chrome the second.  Is that part of the problem?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2820&start=0#p19603
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Computers by Emily Short - strange behavior
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-15 11:55:54

It shouldn't be, I don't think; the extension contains this line:

[code]Understand "look up [text] on/in [something]" as consulting it about (with nouns reversed).
[/code]

Joel, I think it might help if you posted a little more of your code, in case this isn't a bug someone's already discovered.

UPDATE: Have you tried turning off Aaron Reed's extension, which I think you're using? Perhaps the issue is with the interaction between those.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2820&start=0#p19604
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Computers by Emily Short - strange behavior
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-07-15 12:20:05

Overly simplified story:[code]"Test" by Joel Webster

Include Plurality by Emily Short.
Include Player Experience Upgrade by Aaron Reed.	
Include Menus by Emily Short.
Include Basic Help Menu by Emily Short.
Include Locksmith by Emily Short.
Include Modern Conveniences by Emily Short.
Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short.
Include Automated Drawers by Emily Short.
Include Computers by Emily Short.

The apartment is a room.

The desk is a supporter in the apartment.

The PC is a desktop computer on the desk.
The PC runs a search engine called chrome. The software priority of chrome is 5. The description of chrome is "Google Chrome internet browser".
The no-records response of chrome is "Nope".[/code]This story functions exactly as expected, with "look up <x> in chrome" functioning perfectly.

However, the following story does not:[code]"Test 2" by Joel Webster

Include Plurality by Emily Short.
Include Player Experience Upgrade by Aaron Reed.	
Include Menus by Emily Short.
Include Basic Help Menu by Emily Short.
Include Locksmith by Emily Short.
Include Modern Conveniences by Emily Short.
Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short.
Include Automated Drawers by Emily Short.
Include Computers by Emily Short.

The apartment is a room.

The desk is a supporter in the apartment.

The PC is a desktop computer on the desk.
The PC runs a multiple-choice program called desktop. The options table of desktop is the Table of GUI Options. The software priority of desktop is 1.
The PC runs a search engine called chrome. The software priority of chrome is 5. The description of chrome is "Google Chrome internet browser".
The no-records response of chrome is "Nope".

Table of GUI Options
topic	title	effect
"internet/browser/chrome"	"Chrome"	open-chrome rule

This is the open-chrome rule:
	repeat with item running through software run by the PC:
		now the software priority of item is 5;
	now the software priority of chrome is 1;
	say "You open the internet browser.";
	try examining chrome.

Software can be quittable. A software is usually not quittable. Chrome is quittable.

A first input handling rule for quittable software (called chosen software):
	let N be indexed text;
	let N be the topic understood;
	if N is "quit":
		reset to operating system;
		say "You return to the desktop.";
		try examining desktop;
		rule succeeds.
        
To reset to operating system:
	repeat with item running through software run by the PC:
		now the software priority of item is 5;
	now the software priority of desktop is 1;
            
After examining a quittable software (called chosen software):
	say "You can also select QUIT to return to the desktop." [/code]
This code reliably duplicates the behavior I noted earlier.
I'm beginning to think that making software quittable is what is causing the strange behavior.
I'll try playing around with that rule to see if I can get it to behave.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2371&start=10#p19605
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Novella feelie
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-15 12:26:45

I'm working on a soundtrack for my WIP, but it's basically just a YouTube playlist. Although there will be a couple tracks I did myself, none of it (so far) is actually written for the game.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2820&start=0#p19606
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Computers by Emily Short - strange behavior
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-15 12:32:17

This is a real stab in the dark, but could it be that in the second example chrome isn't running at the beginning (its software priority starts out as 5), and when you try "look up sandwiches on computer" that runs the open-chrome rule and it is running? And maybe before then "chrome" gives you a scope problem? What happens if you switch the initial priority of the operating system and chrome?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2817&start=0#p19607
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Stumper bug in Numbered Disambiguation Choices
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-07-15 12:58:39

Hmm.  When this code runs (from the end of Parse Token Letter D) with a command in the form ``show [number] [thing] to [person]'':[code]    ! The following moves the word marker to just past the named object...
    wn = oops_from + match_length;[/code]oops_from is set to 3, because [thing] is the word to replace if the player types oops.  But match_length is 2, because the custom parse_name backtracked one word to match the numeric property.  That means that the parser looks for the preposition ``to'' one word too late.  (Try the command ``show [number] [thing] to to [person],'' for instance.)  Because the preposition doesn't match,[code]Understand "show [something preferably held] to [someone]" as showing it to.[/code] is rejected outright, and the error for the partially successful[code]Understand "show [someone] [something preferably held]" as showing it to (with nouns reversed).[/code]is shown instead.  It's definitely an Inform bug (now filed [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=700]here[/url]), and Felix's suggestion is probably a good option in the meantime.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2820&start=0#p19608
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Computers by Emily Short - strange behavior
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-07-15 13:10:26

[quote="matt w"]This is a real stab in the dark, but could it be that in the second example chrome isn't running at the beginning (its software priority starts out as 5), and when you try "look up sandwiches on computer" that runs the open-chrome rule and it is running? And maybe before then "chrome" gives you a scope problem? What happens if you switch the initial priority of the operating system and chrome?[/quote][b]YOU'RE RIGHT.[/b]
What in the world? It looks like running the open-chrome rule doesn't actually open chrome.

So what I need to figure out now is how to make it so that when I select chrome from the multiple-options program "desktop" it will truly put the desktop in the background and put chrome in the foreground. I thought that the open-chrome rule took care of that, but I see that it actually doesn't.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2821&start=0#p19609
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Choicescript - What the Hell?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-15 13:23:44

I just have to get this out of my system. A trollish way is as good as any other. So here goes...

I went on and tried some IntroComp Choicescript "games". I was clicking the initial question dialogs away, eagerly awaiting to get to the actual game. After about a minute, I realized that [i]this is the game![/i]. Seriously, wtf? How on earth did this get classified as "Interactive Fiction" and allowed into IntroComp?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2821&start=0#p19610
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Choicescript - What the Hell?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-15 13:50:16

The author decides what to call it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2821&start=0#p19611
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Choicescript - What the Hell?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-15 13:53:20

[quote="zarf"]The author decides what to call it.[/quote]
OK. Self-proclaimed Interactive Fiction it is then.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2818&start=0#p19612
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Turning a blank command into an action
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-15 13:55:57

[quote="severedhand"]I have one that I got off this board. Actually, I thought you wrote the code [emote]:P[/emote] . Maybe I was mistaken?[/quote]
Wow, in that case I am both smart and forgetful. [emote]:P[/emote] Well, whatever its source, thanks for posting the code!

[quote="Pacian"]Nice to see that intuitive natural language at work...  [emote]:shock:[/emote][/quote]
Welcome to the world of Inform 6 inclusions! To be fair, though, you don't need them often, and only for weird stuff like messing with the parser. (That bunch of code you see is just one of the parser routines copied out verbatim with one small change applied.)

[quote="ektemple"]Does Smarter Parser deal with the issue Victor identified? That is, does it find a way to initiate the substitute command in the normal turn sequence, rather than within the parser error sequence? If not, this would also qualify as a bug in Smarter Parser.[/quote]
No, I think this is a bug in Smarter Parser. I'll look it up and mail Aaron, unless he sees this topic first.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2821&start=0#p19613
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Choicescript - What the Hell?
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-07-15 13:58:35

I didn't author any games for IntroComp, but I agree with the authors that these games are interactive fiction. [emote]:-)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2820&start=0#p19614
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Computers by Emily Short - strange behavior
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-15 14:01:35

Are you sure the open-chrome rule has run by this point, though?  I thought that your first command might not even find "chrome," because the program isn't running, and then the third command caused the "open chrome" rule to run so subsequent references to "chrome" were understood. Maybe "look up" activates the search engine even if it's not the active program, as long as the command is understood? I'm just guessing, though.

You should definitely turn on rules tracing in your test case if you haven't (apologies if you have).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2821&start=0#p19615
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Choicescript - What the Hell?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-15 14:07:32

If you're wondering where the action is, some ChoiceScript games start with a fairly leisurely character creation and some (like Choice of Zombies) put you into the action quicker. 

If you're saying "but it's just multiple choices," well, yeah.

If you're asking why games like this should count as IF:

[quote="Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investiations § 69"]How should we explain to someone what a game is?  
I imagine that we should describe games to him, and we might add: "This and similar things are called 'games' ". And do we know any more about it ourselves? Is it only other people whom we cannot tell exactly what a game is? 	
--But this is not ignorance. We do not know the boundaries because none have been drawn. To repeat, we can draw a boundary -- for a special purpose. Does it take that to make the concept usable? Not at all!  (Except for that special purpose.)[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2821&start=0#p19616
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Choicescript - What the Hell?
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-15 14:14:51

technically, the only [i]truly[/i] interactive thing i know of is a pacemaker.  but, using the definition of interactive that most IFers use, i would, grudgingly, have to consider CYOA/ multiple choice as IF because its a) fiction and b) interactive.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2821&start=0#p19617
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Choicescript - What the Hell?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-15 14:21:17

[quote="ezfreemann"]i would, grudgingly, have to consider CYOA/ multiple choice as IF because its a) fiction and b) interactive.[/quote]
Well, so is reading the New York Times online. It's fiction and it's interactive (you can click around, scroll, etc.) But you don't see it entered into IF competitions.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2821&start=0#p19618
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Choicescript - What the Hell?
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-15 14:23:40

hmmm.  u got me with your legal mumbo-jumbo.  BUT, you dont actually interact with the CREATION of the news.  just the reading of it.  so i would have to disagree.  in IF and CYOA, you help shape and run the narrative.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2821&start=0#p19619
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Choicescript - What the Hell?
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-15 14:24:30

kudos on calling the news "fiction", tho. lol  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2818&start=0#p19620
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Turning a blank command into an action
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-07-15 14:30:42

It's not a bug, so much as that there are lots of extensions that interfere with the Keyboard routine, and I'm very hesitant to replace it in an extension I hope to be as compatible as possible.

I should perhaps be much clearer in the Smarter Parser documentation that the non-intrusive method used will bypass the normal turn sequence.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2821&start=0#p19621
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Choicescript - What the Hell?
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-07-15 14:31:38

I think that they qualify as IF just fine. It's just that personally I would rather play a good parser game. I find when loading one of these Choicescript games that I'm usually just kind of breezing through the choices while just "skimming" instead of actually "reading", unless I see some text that really catches my eye. In other words, I guess I have a hard time putting a lot of thought into Choicescript games, due to the medium.  A major issue too is if the author has bothered to right distinctively different consquences for the questions.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2820&start=0#p19622
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Computers by Emily Short - strange behavior
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-07-15 14:42:17

[quote="matt w"]turn on rules tracing[/quote]I never knew I could.
Now when I trace the rules I see that the "pick a choice" rule fires, which is defined in the source as follows:[code]An input handling rule for a multiple-choice program (called chosen software) (this is the pick a choice rule):
	if the topic understood is a topic listed in the options table of the chosen software:
		follow the effect entry;
		rule succeeds;
	otherwise:
		say "[out of bounds response of the chosen software][paragraph break]";
		rule fails.[/code]But the "effect entry" (which is the open-chrome rule) is not listed in the rule trace. Also, when looking it up in chrome, I get a whole slew of unrelated rules being triggered compared to when I look it up in the computer. Also, I never see the open-chrome rule triggering, even when the search succeeds.
Curiouser and curiouser.

Partial transcript:
[code]>click chrome
[Rule "guess a selection device while selecting rule" applies.]
[Rule "find correct selection device software rule" applies.]
[Rule "default mousing rule" applies.]
[Rule "pick a choice rule" applies.]

>look up sandwiches in chrome
[Rule "stripping punctuation rule" applies.]
[Rule "standardize apostrophes rule" applies.]
[Rule "standardize can verbs rule" applies.]
[Rule "signs of confusion rule" applies.]
[Rule "stripping niceties rule" applies.]
[Rule "scandalous standardize swears rule" applies.]
[Rule "stripping interjections rule" applies.]
[Rule "signs of frustration rule" applies.]
[Rule "standardize be verbs rule" applies.]
[Rule "asking where am i rule" applies.]
[Rule "stripping adverbs rule" applies.]
[Rule "unnecessary movement rule" applies.]
[Rule "stripping vague words rule" applies.]
[Rule "stripping pointless words rule" applies.]
[Rule "stripping failed with rule" applies.]
[Rule "no gerunds rule" applies.]
[Rule "generic surroundings rule" applies.]
[Rule "stripping body parts rule" applies.]
[Rule "usually no clothing rule" applies.]
[Rule "stripping possessives rule" applies.]
[Rule "stripping unnecessary addendum rule" applies.]
[Rule "too many words rule" applies.]
[Rule "fix the command rule" applies.]
[Rule "Remembering replace did not make sense in that context rule" applies.]
[I didn't recognise all of the words in that command.]

>look up sandwiches in pc
[Rule "consult only software rule" applies.]
[Rule "list search hits rule" applies.]
No records found.

>[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2818&start=0#p19623
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Turning a blank command into an action
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-15 14:45:47

Hm. In the sense that it may very well lead to buggy behavior in any game that uses every turn rules (i.e., most games), I think that it is best to consider it a bug. Just check out this thread, with folks trying to figure out how to deal with the issues raised:

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2220">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2220</a>

(Until Victor saves the day with the hack above, that is.)

The issue you bring up with Keyboard() replacement is a real one, though. Maybe it's worth asking Graham to make the error check for blank lines (the part that's commented out in Victor's hack) subject to a use option, e.g. "Use blank line input" would prevent the error, allowing for blank lines to be handled by "after reading a command". Alternatively (and far less ideally!), we could try to corral everyone who's written a Keyboard()-replacing extension to coordinate the same...

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2822&start=0#p19624
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: "The ocean" in Inform 7
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-07-15 14:49:04

I have an object that I want to call "the ocean" in my code in Inform 7. Whenever I run my game it represents it as "an ocean". How can I fix this?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2822&start=0#p19625
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "The ocean" in Inform 7
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-15 14:54:08

what did u first call it in your source code?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2371&start=10#p19626
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Novella feelie
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-15 15:09:28

dammit!  im doing something similar!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2371&start=10#p19627
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Novella feelie
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-15 15:12:06

I don't think it's a bad thing. Wasn't there a big drive for IF cover art a few years back? I think soundtracks are just the next inevitable thing.

Although there are enough musicians in IF that the possibility for original music is quite distinct.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2371&start=10#p19628
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Novella feelie
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-15 15:15:21

true dat y0.  mine's original stuff.  not by me, but by a friend.  can mp3's be released with a game?  havent released on yet.  i dont wanna imbed the songs in the work, i feel IF should be soundless, and the player can choose to have sound/music if desired.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2371&start=10#p19629
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Novella feelie
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-15 15:19:54

The newest revision of the Glk spec includes the ability to pause and restart sound channels. I plan to release a skinnable music player for I7 Glulx that will allow you to include your soundtrack in the game file itself, but with a little player that the user can control.

(This is primarily intended for desktop delivery--you can already include a soundtrack alongside the web interpreter version of your game via standard web technologies.)

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2371&start=10#p19630
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Novella feelie
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-15 15:22:15

very nice!  [emote]:P[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2822&start=0#p19631
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "The ocean" in Inform 7
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-07-15 15:24:17

[code]The ocean is an element in the imagination. The description is "Omitted stuff here." Understand "sea", "bay", "water" and "waves" as the ocean.[/code]

"element" is a kind of thing, imagination is a hidden room.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2822&start=0#p19632
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "The ocean" in Inform 7
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-15 15:27:12

hmm, i wonder if it has to do with your element thingy.  im gonna have to say, let's wait for the experts to touch this one.  sorry, newbie here, just wanted to ask how it was originally stated because thats where i thought the game decides the article.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2822&start=0#p19633
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "The ocean" in Inform 7
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-15 15:28:37

See 3.18 in the documentation.  I think the phrasing you're looking for is:

[code]The indefinite article of the ocean is "the".[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2822&start=0#p19634
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "The ocean" in Inform 7
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-07-15 15:30:49

Thanks so much. I wonder why I couldn't find that with Google.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2822&start=0#p19635
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "The ocean" in Inform 7
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-15 15:31:04

yeah, what he said!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2822&start=0#p19636
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "The ocean" in Inform 7
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-15 15:33:52

[quote="duodave"]Thanks so much. I wonder why I couldn't find that with Google.[/quote]

Google's not that great for Inform help, unfortunately.  The forums are your best bet.  It's especially true with stuff like articles, since you can't very well search the documentation for "the"!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2820&start=0#p19637
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Computers by Emily Short - strange behavior
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-07-15 15:52:52

Brief solution: change your open-chrome rule to 

[code]This is the open-chrome rule:
	repeat with item running through software run by the PC:
		now the software priority of item is 5;
	now the software priority of chrome is 1;
	let launched program be the controlling program of the PC;
	say "You open the internet browser.";
	try examining chrome.[/code]

Long explanation (only necessary if you're interested): behind the scenes, the extension is moving the currently-active software in and out of play in order to allow the player to interact with only the software that is supposed to be active (and hide everything else to prevent examining it, disambiguating to it, etc). And it's intended to be doing this in a way that is transparent to the author and completely driven by the priority business, so the author doesn't have to worry about moving objects himself and so that multiple software priorities can stack -- e.g. there's a password program layered over a UI layered over multiple openable sub-programs. So what it does is to perform a check every time it's asked what the "controlling program" of the machine is, make sure that the top-priority software is being shown, and move that software into the screen object if it isn't already there.

Currently, it performs that check right at the beginning of an action that is supposed to interact with the computer, such as typing or clicking something. That way, if anything happened during the previous turn to change software priority, it will update that information and respond by directing the player's input to the right target. 

Most of the time that works fine -- for commands like TYPE SANDWICHES, which doesn't mention chrome as part of the command. The problem is that if you type LOOK UP FOOBAR IN CHROME, the parser needs to know that chrome is now the dominant program and part of the screen *before* it parses that instruction -- to put chrome in scope -- and so it doesn't get as far as firing the check that would move chrome. Doh.

In retrospect, this was not an ideal design, especially given that the author is having to invoke a bunch of other code to activate a given bit of software.

Summary: totally my fault. Thanks for bringing it up. I'll revise this and upload a new version that won't catch people out this way. In the meantime, the hack I recommended should fix its behavior in the short term.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2823&start=0#p19638
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Find out the exact word used?
User: savaric / DateTime: 2011-07-15 15:56:45

In I7, is there a way to test which actual word was used to refer to an object?

I'm thinking of something like this, where "gold" and "egg" refer to the same object but I want to treat the first time the player uses "gold" in a special way.

Silly example, but something like this:
[Understand "gold" as egg when gold has been smelled, or something like that would solve the part where gold is not understood until a certain point...]

[quote]You have an egg.

>x egg
It's a white egg.

>x gold
You can't see any such thing.

>smell
You smell gold! [From here the parser should understand "gold"]

>x egg
It's a white egg.

>x gold [first time we refer to gold, I want the player to not yet know where it is...but now he finds out...the problem is, how do I know the player used "gold" here and not "egg"?]
You know there must be gold here somewhere...hey! The egg is gold painted white!

[And from here it means the same]
>x egg
It's a gold egg painted white.

>x gold
It's a gold egg painted white.

[/quote]

So I'm looking for something like
Before doing something to the gold:
    if word used was "gold":
        ...

I suppose it could be solved by using a second gold object and placing it in scope...is that the way to do it perhaps?

/Savaric

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2823&start=0#p19639
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Find out the exact word used?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-15 15:59:49

You can add conditions to the understand rules, so I believe if you set a property for the egg (ie "The egg is known or unknown.")  And then "Understand "gold" as the egg when the egg is known.", you should be okay.  (Untested - the syntax may be off.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2823&start=0#p19640
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Find out the exact word used?
User: savaric / DateTime: 2011-07-15 16:06:47

[quote="gravel"]You can add conditions to the understand rules, so I believe if you set a property for the egg (ie "The egg is known or unknown.")  And then "Understand "gold" as the egg when the egg is known.", you should be okay.  (Untested - the syntax may be off.)[/quote]

Yes, that solves it as far as controlling when "gold" is understood as referring to the egg, but I don't want the player to find out that the egg is made of gold by examining "egg", he must use the actual word "gold" to find that out...

But it may not be possible as long as "gold" and "egg" refer to the same object, that's why I'm thinking I may need a second, off-stage gold object, but it seems a bit inelegant [emote]:P[/emote]

/S

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2823&start=0#p19641
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Find out the exact word used?
User: savaric / DateTime: 2011-07-15 16:18:05

This pretty much works...but it needs a second object.
But perhaps that's ok [emote]:)[/emote]

[code]The gold is a thing. The gold can be smelled.
The player carries an egg. The egg can be discovered.
Understand "gold" as egg when egg is discovered.

After deciding the scope of the player:
	If gold is smelled and egg is not discovered, place gold in scope.

Instead of smelling:
	say "You smell gold!";
	now gold is smelled;

Before of doing something to the gold:
	say "You know there is gold here somwehere...hey! The egg is made of gold!";
	now egg is discovered;
	now printed name of egg is "golden egg";
	now the noun is the egg;[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2823&start=0#p19642
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Find out the exact word used?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-15 16:18:22

Ah, sorry, I misunderstood.  Would adding a check that looks at the player's command help winnow it down?

[code]After doing anything with the egg:
	if the player's command includes "gold": [insert necessary code here][/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2823&start=0#p19643
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Find out the exact word used?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-15 16:20:49

Hmm, after looking at your example, I have a new vision of what you're doing.  Must be Friday!

What's wrong with using a second object, anyway?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2823&start=0#p19644
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Find out the exact word used?
User: savaric / DateTime: 2011-07-15 16:22:13

[quote="gravel"]Ah, sorry, I misunderstood.  Would adding a check that looks at the player's command help winnow it down?

[code]After doing anything with the egg:
	if the player's command includes "gold": [insert necessary code here][/code][/quote]

Ah, that seems like it could be what I was looking for. Thanks!

/S

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2823&start=0#p19645
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Find out the exact word used?
User: savaric / DateTime: 2011-07-15 16:23:26

[quote="gravel"]
What's wrong with using a second object, anyway?[/quote]

Nothing really, but I'm a programmer at heart and creating two objects where one will serve goes against my instincts [emote]:P[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2822&start=0#p19646
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "The ocean" in Inform 7
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-07-15 16:24:57

Or alternatively:
[code]An element called the ocean is in the imagination.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2823&start=0#p19647
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Find out the exact word used?
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-15 16:31:06

Not long ago, an idea that I was tossing around in the "ideas I might want to use someday" part of my brain was that of an NPC who could be addressed (or referred to) with two different names, one quite respectful, the other less so.  Depending on which one you used, his attitude towards the player (and hence his responses to diffreent things then player might do) would differ.  It occurred to me that this could only be done if you could have two synonyms which are understood as referring to the same thing, but where the machine keeps track of which one you use.  I didn't know if it was possible to do that -- but it sounds like its basically the same thing that you're trying to do.


Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2820&start=0#p19648
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Computers by Emily Short - strange behavior
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-07-15 16:38:04

[quote="emshort"]the hack I recommended should fix its behavior in the short term.[/quote]It sure does, thank you so much!
I guess I'm giving your extensions a run for their money  [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2823&start=0#p19649
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Find out the exact word used?
User: savaric / DateTime: 2011-07-15 16:50:57

Yes, sounds pretty much like the same kind of problem.

And with the method gravel suggested, you should be able to do something like this:

[code]Sir Reginald is a person in the Lab.
Understand "dude" as reginald;

Instead of answering reginald that:
	if player's command includes "sir reginald":
		say "'A very good day to you, sir!'";
	else:
		say "'Harumph! Impudent whippersnapper!'";


[/code]

[quote]
>dude, hi
"Harumph! Impudent whippersnapper!"

>reginald, hi
"Harumph! Impudent whippersnapper!"

>sir reginald, hi
"A very good day to you, sir!"

[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2824&start=0#p19650
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Need some fresh eyes
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-15 16:54:53

I've got an alpha set-up for one of my WIP's canvases set up.  Before I do a great deal of sprite combination and compression, I'd like to get some feedback.  Unfortunately, I can't get a video that's both small and detailed enough to be helpful.  

However!  I do have a slideshow!  A slideshow you can *download*.  50 fine representative slices in 30 mb! 

"Pretty sweet," I hear you saying.  "Where do I sign up?"

If you have a quickish internet connection, an ability to unrar stuff, and a few minutes/hours/days to devote to my cause, I'd really appreciate some gentle constructive criticism.  You can PM me, or reach me at the email listed in the description.

[url]
<a class="postlink" href="https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B4Rt05rkkUivMDM4ZDAyM2QtMGM5MC00N2JkLTkyNDAtNzJlODJkYmFhMGE1&sort=name&layout=list&num=50">https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B4Rt05 ... ist&num=50</a>[/url]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2769&start=10#p19651
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Conversation Topics
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-07-15 17:27:28

I love it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2821&start=10#p19652
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Choicescript - What the Hell?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-07-15 17:30:18

Well, it's CYOA, isn't it? CYOA has been - grugingly, I sometimes think - classified as a form of IF. It's simply that the way you interact with the game is by choosing from a set of fixed options instead of giving you a freeform parser.

And the only one I've played so far is Exile, and I have to say it was some of the finest use of CYOA I've seen (I also enjoyed the Undum Stiffy Makane game) in giving useful, meaningful choices to the player and going on believably.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2823&start=10#p19653
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Find out the exact word used?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-07-15 19:11:17

Robert Rothman:  this was used for a slightly subtle effect in (first spoiler is the name of the game and the second is what the effect was) [spoiler][i]Ad Verbum[/i][/spoiler] where [spoiler]the directions listed in the room descriptions were abbreviated if the player used abbreviations for them: if the player issues direction commands like "> go e" or "> e" the room descriptions say things like "To the e you see [whatever]."[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2824&start=0#p19654
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Need some fresh eyes
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-07-15 19:15:22

I'd like to help, but I'm getting this error message: "The archive 'FTA Season alpha' could not be expanded, the file 'ftaseasonscheck765.png' it contains seems to be broken."  I seem to have gotten 27 images correctly unRARed before it hit that one.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2821&start=10#p19655
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Choicescript - What the Hell?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-07-15 19:36:25

It is hard to deny that any interactive fiction story should be allowed to be called "interactive fiction", whatever genre it is. But the standard name for parser based literature is also "interactive fiction" - it's a subset of the first use of the term. As long as everyone recognises the legitimacy of both we shouldn't have any issues, they're not hard to distinguish.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2825&start=0#p19656
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: CYOA - CYOP (Choose Your Own Path)
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-15 19:37:02

Does anyone know where I can get an interpreter just for this?
Remember I'm a novice and don't know about templates, modules, libraries, or extensions.

If I unzip the program with an extra library (including AIF libraries) would the game use it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2826&start=0#p19657
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: inform 7: a desk with something on it
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-07-15 19:37:56

[code]A desk is here. the desk is a supporter. a page is scenery on the desk. a paperweight is scenery on the page.[/code]
[code]The description of the page is "A piece of paper with writing on it."
The description of the paperweight is "A small red rock with a flat bottom."
Instead of examining the desk: say "The desk is made of solid metal and has [a list of things on desk]." [/code]

How can i make whats on the desk not show up with the desk under the room description but only show up when he desk is examined.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2813&start=0#p19658
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 skipping ahed in the game
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-07-15 19:39:15

Oh that works. awsome!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2827&start=0#p19659
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: inform 7: smashing glass
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-07-15 19:47:04

[code]The description of the glass wall is "A large wall made of glass, you dont want to say what you see on the other side."
The description of clear glass is "A transparent materal."

Instead of smashing the glass wall with the paperweight: say "You hit the glass wall hard with the paperweight and the window shatters leaving an open space where there once was glass."; now the glass wall is open.; remove clear glass from play. 

smashing is an action applying to one thing.
Understand "smash [something]" as smashing.

Report smashing:
say "crash!"
[/code]
[code]clear glass is part of the glass wall. the glass wall is a closed scenery door. the glass wall is east of Dim Lit room. the glass wall is west of the wall of horrors.[/code]
whats wrong with my code?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2824&start=0#p19660
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Need some fresh eyes
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-15 19:47:08

[quote="tove"]I'd like to help, but I'm getting this error message: "The archive 'FTA Season alpha' could not be expanded, the file 'ftaseasonscheck765.png' it contains seems to be broken."  I seem to have gotten 27 images correctly unRARed before it hit that one.[/quote]

Thanks for the heads up.  Let me take a look and see if I can beat it into submission.

Edit: It's working and unraring okay for me.  I'm guessing you tried redownloading?  I could email them to you, if you want to PM me, or I could post them individually (but that means you'd need to download them individually, which is a pain in the neck).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2827&start=0#p19661
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: smashing glass
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-15 19:51:38

You can't specify "with nothing", at least not without some extra work.  

You'll need to make a new action, smashing glass, that directs to an error message.  (That way is much more flexible than the "Understand X as a mistake" formulation.)  Or, it's very very likely that you want smash to be equivalent to attack, in which case you want to use an instead rule for attacking, and add "smash" as a synonym for attack.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2824&start=0#p19662
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Need some fresh eyes
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-07-15 20:01:13

Oh hm, re-downloading did the trick.  It was also way faster the second time, so maybe there was a hiccup in the download the first time.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2824&start=0#p19663
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Need some fresh eyes
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-15 20:02:12

Awesome.  Thanks for taking a look.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2824&start=0#p19665
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Need some fresh eyes
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-15 21:29:04

Wow. There is so much effort in this... It looks really good. My wife, an art director, also took a look; she agrees.

The lightning is beautiful.

For most of your specific questions, I say--it's just fine! The main outstanding problem that I see is the bluff/crag, in a couple of senses:

[list=1][*] In cloudy-but-not-rainy scenes such as 600, the crag should probably gray a bit along with the sky, as it does for example in 630. It could probably also change hues a bit more than it does now in response to other seasonal changes (the only seasonal change I see is currently is that the stone become bluer when the snow is on the ground). However, this is not crucial and I wouldn't advise you to spend a lot of time on it.[/*:m]
[*] The crag is a bit monotonic in its whiteness (I seem to recall you commenting about this on the blog awhile back). My wife suggests that applying a gradient of color to it, lightening somewhat from bottom to top, would mitigate this and give a more realistic appearance. Maybe you could have a couple of semi-transparent gradient overlays for different lighting conditions? (Don't know what makes sense given the existing setup.)[/*:m][/list:o]

I think you're just about there. Now you just need to get started on the animations (kidding, kidding)!

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2790&start=0#p19666
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Easiest authoring system to translate to other languages
User: Pelican / DateTime: 2011-07-15 22:07:12

[quote="RealNC"][quote="Pelican"]Isn't their any easy way to translate a parser for Tads 2 or 3 or Inform 6 or 7 or Alan or Hugo or another system that uses a programming language?[/quote]
Inform and Tads support parser translation. In the case of Tads 3, the language dependent parts of the parser are split in their own directory (lib/adv3/en_us/). To translate it, you copy the "en_us" directory (which stands for "United States English") to a new directory and then edit that copy. It's not an "easy" task though; it (obviously) assumes you know quite well how Tads 3 works.[/quote]Okay, I guess I'll work on translating TADS 3.  It doesn't appear as if Inform 7 supports CJK text very well, but maybe I'm wrong.  I can't enter every word as a string of numbers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2823&start=10#p19667
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Find out the exact word used?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-15 22:45:12

Hm, I thought you were going to say (first spoiler the name of the game, second spoiler a little about it)

[spoiler]<i>The Warbler's Nest</i>[/spoiler]

where

[spoiler]how you refer to the baby is very important[/spoiler]

though I don't remember exactly how it was implemented.

Savaric: you probably want "sir" instead of "sir reginald," don't you? "sir, hello" seems as though it should be acceptable. Of course this allows for "sir dude."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2823&start=10#p19668
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Find out the exact word used?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-07-15 22:48:12

[quote="matt w"]Of course this allows for "sir dude."[/quote]

Which would totally be appropriate for [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evander_Berry_Wall]certain characters[/url]. [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2821&start=10#p19669
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Choicescript - What the Hell?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-15 22:51:52

[quote]It is hard to deny that any interactive fiction story should be allowed to be called "interactive fiction", whatever genre it is.[/quote]

This is true. But it is also hard to deny that practically every commercial videogame on the front shelf at Gamestop is interactive and has a story. So this use of the term is hard to distinguish from "videogame".

[quote]But the standard name for parser based literature is also "interactive fiction" - it's a subset of the first use of the term.[/quote]

I add a third use, actually, in my IF theory articles. I think that text-parser adventure games and first-person adventure games have a specific form of interactivity which -- well, I won't say that CYOA and third-person adventure games *lack*, but they are not tuned for it and those audiences do not necessarily perceive it as a strength.

(To forestall the next question: yes, someone could come along with a first-person shooter and enter into next year's IFComp as "interactive fiction." And then we'd have to deal with that hypothetical situation.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2790&start=0#p19670
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Easiest authoring system to translate to other languages
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-15 23:00:32

The I7 editor supports entering non-English characters directly. They will come out in the game as entered.

(Although you may have to mess with your editor font. In the Mac IDE, the default font doesn't have CJK characters -- I had to switch it to see what I was typing.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2826&start=0#p19671
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: a desk with something on it
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-15 23:10:09

I'm guessing what you want is a way to do this without making the page and paperweight scenery. This is in sections 17.10 and 17.15 of the documentation (kind of unfortunately spread between those two sections):

[code]Rule for printing room description details of the desk: omit contents in listing.[/code]

UPDATE: By the way, since the page is a supporter and supporters are by default fixed in place, your code will make it impossible to pick up the page. I suspect you don't want that, and you can fix it by adding this:

[code]The page is portable.[/code]

But then you can pick the page up even when the paperweight on it (the paperweight will stay on it, like a tray); that's not good either, so you want to add something like this:

[code]
Check taking the page:
	if a thing is on the page:
		say "You can't take the page while [a random thing on the page] is on it." instead.
[/code]

...or something like that. (Code not guaranteed bug-free.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2823&start=10#p19672
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Find out the exact word used?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-15 23:12:31

I don't think Cunctator will mind if I post a bit of code from Gigantomania:

[spoiler][code]Understand "comrade" as a person.
[...]
Before talking to or examining an other proper-named person during Proletariat:
	if the player's command does not include "comrade":
		say "Don't you mean [italic type]Comrade[roman type] [printed name of the noun]?" instead
		
Before printing the name of someone proper-named during Proletariat:
	say "Comrade "
[/code][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2824&start=0#p19673
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Need some fresh eyes
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-15 23:13:12

[quote="ektemple"]
I think you're just about there. Now you just need to get started on the animations (kidding, kidding)!

--Erik[/quote]

Ahahaha.  Ha.  Ha.  

Yeah, the crag needs something; I'll look at that gradient.  I think it should be possible to fit a filter over it, too - I've got a couple of different opacities floating around, and there's "space" there where it wouldn't make anything else look too weird.  It would darken the sky, but if that's too much, I can always lighten the respective cloud/sky layer to keep the levels similar.

Thanks for the feedback!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2823&start=10#p19674
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Find out the exact word used?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-15 23:14:29

Capmikee, that was one of my favorite bits of the comp.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2827&start=0#p19675
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: smashing glass
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-15 23:28:46

Sounds like a clear case of "attacking it with" to me.

Something like this might work (adapted from my own WIP):
[code]Understand the commands "crack" and "break" and "smash" as something new.
Understand "break [something]" as attacking.
Understand the commands "split" and "crack" and "kick" and "smash" and "bash" and "pry" as "break".

attacking it with is an action applying to one thing and one carried thing.
Understand "attack [something] with/using [something preferably held]" as attacking it with.
Understand "break open [something] with/using [something preferably held]" as attacking it with.
Understand "break [something] open with/using [something preferably held]" as attacking it with.

Check attacking something with something:
    say "Generic denial for attacking [the noun] with [the second noun].";
    stop the action;

Check attacking the glass when the paperweight is carried:
    instead try attacking the glass with the paperweight.

Instead of attacking the glass with the paperweight:
    [etc][/code]

The "something new" declaration might not be necessary for you - I just did it so nonsensical commands like "kill window open with paperweight" wouldn't match accidentally.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2821&start=10#p19676
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Choicescript - What the Hell?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-15 23:29:18

[quote="zarf"]I add a third use, actually, in my IF theory articles. I think that text-parser adventure games and first-person adventure games have a specific form of interactivity which -- well, I won't say that CYOA and third-person adventure games *lack*, but they are not tuned for it and those audiences do not necessarily perceive it as a strength.[/quote]

Hm, I just read the article quickly, but why not third-person adventure games?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2508&start=0#p19677
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Short, kid-friendly IF
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-15 23:56:38

It's been a while, so I can't remember if it's PG or PG13, but when her kid is a little older, I suggest [url=http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/arrival.zip][b]Arrival, or Attack of the B-Movie Cliches[/b][/url] for HTML Tads.

[url=http://ifarchive.wurb.com/if-archive/programming/tads2/executables/htads_playkit_2513.exe][b]htads_playkit_2513.exe[/b][/url] (v3.0.18.1)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2823&start=10#p19678
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Find out the exact word used?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-16 00:09:18

I can't take credit for the idea, but thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2822&start=0#p19679
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "The ocean" in Inform 7
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2011-07-16 00:13:07

[quote="gravel"][quote="duodave"]Thanks so much. I wonder why I couldn't find that with Google.[/quote]

Google's not that great for Inform help, unfortunately.  The forums are your best bet.  It's especially true with stuff like articles, since you can't very well search the documentation for "the"![/quote]

Actually, you can, if you include the quotes [emote]:-)[/emote] I noticed some time ago that, at least in the Windows IDE, searching the documentation for a quoted phrase doesn't work as (I) expected, but in this case it's actually helpful.

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2818&start=0#p19680
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Turning a blank command into an action
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-07-16 00:14:53

A [url=http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/2041681-remove-hard-coded-processing-of-blank-lines-from-t]less-eloquent-than-I'd-hoped-for feature request[/url] has been created.

Meanwhile, if we can believe Google's index of inform7.com, the only extensions that appear to replace Keyboard right now are:

Undo Output Control by Erik Temple
German by Team GerX

I'm a little skeptical of this conclusion, but perhaps it's true. If so, then perhaps y'all have convinced me: I'll look into making Victor's Keyboard replacement hack the default for dealing with blank lines in Smarter Parser, perhaps with a use option for the current non-intrusive time-no-passy LOOK version.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2769&start=10#p19681
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Conversation Topics
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-16 00:41:41

I liked the topic menu in Pytho's Mask, but in general I prefer not to have topics suggested outright. I found the menu system in Photopia to be a bit annoying.

Two games that made good use of ask/tell without topic suggestions were Lydia's Heart and Worlds Apart. In both, the conversations were either optional (providing hints but not directly advancing the plot) or relatively easy (there was no complicated branching path of conversation that needed to be traversed).

Conversational puzzles tend to bug me in IF. In real life, I rarely achieve any difficult goals by choosing exactly the right thing to say at the right time to the right person. When a real conversation happens, everybody usually gets to say everything they need to, but the information can be ordered in lots of different ways. For that reason, I'm against the kind of complex AI-based state machines that are used in some conversation-heavy multiple-endings IF works (although I do have great respect for Emily Short...)

I've seen some works where there are 2 or three suggested topics of conversation at any time, which seems like reasonable range of choices. In my WIP, I have exactly one "suggested topic" at a time, but it's presented something like this:

[quote]> think

You're thinking [i]"how does that frobnitz board fit in there?"[/i]

> talk to Floyd

You speak your mind to Floyd about how frobnitz boards fit.

"Floyd knows all about frobnitz boards! They have nifty folding mechanisms that let them fit just about anywhere!"

You think to yourself, [i]"Can Floyd get one of those for me?"[/i][/quote]

We'll see how it works when I try it on actual testers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2828&start=0#p19682
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Real differences between Z-Machine and Glulx?
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-07-16 00:52:02

OK I know I am new to this forum, but how do I choose whether to make my game for a Z-Machine or Glulx?

I would really like to take advantage of web interpreters like Parchment, and I know that's available for both. But does either format have advantages over the other?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2828&start=0#p19683
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Real differences between Z-Machine and Glulx?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-16 01:15:28

The most important difference is that the Z-machine is limited to 64k of memory, and Glulx is not. I7 can run through that much memory quickly, depending on what features and extensions you use.

Other differences have to do with how sound, graphics, and fonts work. But you'll run into the memory thing first.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2829&start=0#p19684
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Listing contents of empty things
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-07-16 03:01:13

This should be terribly simple, but I can't find it in the documentation:

How do I change the listing-contents activity for a (particular) empty object so it prints something other than "empty"?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2823&start=10#p19685
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Find out the exact word used?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-07-16 03:01:31

[quote="savaric"]I don't want the player to find out that the egg is made of gold by examining "egg", he must use the actual word "gold" to find that out...[/quote]
I don't know how you've planned the puzzle, but you need to be [i]extremely[/i] careful to hint this correctly and not to frustrate players if this is a mandatory thing and not an... um... easter egg. Many if not most players (or, at least I) don't give such a strong connection between the parser and the game world itself, just like the compass directions are just a convenient abstraction for navigating the map and the player character doesn't actually think in compass directions. If the game understands the player when they use EGG to refer to the object but expects the player to use some other wording to solve the puzzle, most people won't make the connection without help. Anyway, playtesting should reveal flaws in the design if any.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2827&start=0#p19686
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: smashing glass
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-07-16 03:19:57

ilovemyhedgehog, please don't correct the code in your post when you've received the answer. It makes the thread useless for people who might have the same problem later and gravel's reply reads like gibberish now that you've removed everything he refers to.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2830&start=0#p19687
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Art by Katz
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-07-16 03:32:04

This is a standing offer for anyone who would like me to illustrate their game.  Check out my Deviantart: [url]http://jewelleddragon13.deviantart.com/gallery/[/url] and, less relevantly, my webcomic: [url]http://warhamsters.thecomicseries.com/[/url]

Specific rules, mainly of the common-sense variety, follow.

[rant]I [i]usually[/i] accept all takers, but I reserve the right to accept or reject games based on my workload, preferences, or personal whims.  However, once I accept your game, I promise to complete the art in a timely manner.

This is free; in addition to their in-game use, you're free to use the images on your website, blog, or wherever you like (and even modify them) as long as it's for noncommercial purposes and my name (Colleen Boye) remains attached as the creator.  Conversely, I may use the images on my Deviantart, blog, etc, but will keep your name and the name of your game attached.

I can do cover art, feelies, and/or embedded images.  Make sure to specify which you want, since they will be different resolutions.  I'm happy to do multiple images within reason (illustrating every room in your game is too many); .

Please only request art for more-or-less complete games; it doesn't have to be release-ready (or even fully playable), but no "I've got this cool idea..."  I don't want to spend a bunch of time on art for a game that may never be completed.  Consider requesting art at about the time you send the game to beta testers; with any luck, it'll be done by the time you're ready to release it.  (I'll also do new covers for already-released games if you like.)

Send me either the game file and walkthrough or a transcript so I can get a feel for the game.  If you know specifically what you want, go ahead and describe it, but I'd prefer not to work from [i]just[/i] a description, since the more I know about your game, the more harmonious the art will be.[/rant]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2823&start=10#p19688
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Find out the exact word used?
User: savaric / DateTime: 2011-07-16 03:50:23

[quote="Juhana"]
I don't know how you've planned the puzzle, but you need to be [i]extremely[/i] careful to hint this correctly and not to frustrate players if this is a mandatory thing and not an... um... easter egg.[/quote]

That is a good point. What I am after is not so much a puzzle as a gradual revealing of information...
An ordinary object becomes special only after the player makes ANY sort of reference to the special object (and the name of the special object will be mentioned to the player before I expect him to use it....this is me trying to be as helpful as possible in order to NOT frustrate the player...but as you say, maybe its too "non-standard" to work. Well, well see. Maybe I need to throw in more hints if it's too obtuse....)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2828&start=0#p19689
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Real differences between Z-Machine and Glulx?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-16 04:04:57

You can choose between Glulx or z-code by clicking on the Settings-tab of the Inform 7 IDE. (This may look a little different depending on whether you are using Linux, Windows or OS X.) I assume you are using Inform 7?

You could just start out writing a z-code game, and switch to Glulx if you run out of memory. How fast this happens mostly depends on the extensions you use.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2829&start=0#p19690
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Listing contents of empty things
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-07-16 04:25:52

I assume you mean when the game prints "(empty)" after an open container in the room description, which isn't governed by the listing contents of activity, but rather the "Printing room description details of something" activity (see ch 17.15). Try this:[code]Lab is a room.
The box is a container  in the lab. It is open, openable, and opaque.
The ball is in the box.

Rule for printing room description details of the box:
	unless the box contains something:
		say " (with nothing inside it)" instead;
	otherwise:
		continue the activity.
		
test me with "get ball / l ".[/code]
If you want to change how this parenthetical info is printed in inventory lists, see example 177 "Equipment List."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2821&start=10#p19691
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Choicescript - What the Hell?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-07-16 05:02:08

Someone DID enter a graphical adventure into a comp, as I recall. It's in IFDB. Point and click. And since it is, in a sense, interactive fiction, it was allowed and it's still there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2825&start=0#p19692
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: CYOA - CYOP (Choose Your One Path)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-07-16 05:06:27

I'll assume when you say "interpreter" you do mean "interpreter for playing the games" and not "program for creating CYOA", though the answer is pretty much the same anyway:

There isn't a universal interpreter, just like there isn't a universal IF interpreter. There isn't even a gargoyle-style bundle of interpreters. Any IF language out there - Inform, Tads, Hugo, Alan, ADRIFT, whatnot - can theoretically produce a CYOA game playable on the machine's interpreter. Then you can have web-based CYOAs like ChoiceScript and Undum, and "Instead" is a russian program that can churn out some pretty cool stuff. There's also something called the "Game Book Player", and another called "Millestorie", but I don't think many people use them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2830&start=0#p19693
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Art by Katz
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-16 06:17:43

katz, u rock.  i know i havent replied to u yet, but i will be talkin to u soon!  [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2818&start=0#p19694
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Turning a blank command into an action
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-16 06:17:51

[quote="aaronius"]If we can believe Google's index of inform7.com, the only extensions that appear to replace Keyboard right now are:

Undo Output Control by Erik Temple
German by Team GerX

I'm a little skeptical of this conclusion, but perhaps it's true.[/quote]

Huh, my feeling was also that there more of these; if that's all there is--great! Anyway, I'll be happy to patch UOC to make it work with Smarter Parser. If you package all of the related code in its own section, it would be a simple thing for me to duplicate the hack in UOC.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2829&start=0#p19695
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Listing contents of empty things
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-16 06:24:31

This thread, especially the longish post on page 2, explains in detail the interrelationship between the listing the contents and printing the name of activities:

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1643">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1643</a>

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2769&start=10#p19696
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Conversation Topics
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-16 07:00:21

i like the use of the [b]think[/b] action to give a bit of a nudge.  i was doing that in a WIP ive since back-burner'd.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2831&start=0#p19697
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: TADS 3 for GNOME or GTK2
User: Pelican / DateTime: 2011-07-16 07:19:15

Are there any TADS 3 interpreters for GNOME or based on GTK2?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2828&start=0#p19698
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Real differences between Z-Machine and Glulx?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-16 07:35:02

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]You could just start out writing a z-code game, and switch to Glulx if you run out of memory. How fast this happens mostly depends on the extensions you use.[/quote]

Or if you include 51 lists in your game. As I learned the hard way, lots of lists will run through the z-code memory limits right quick.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2831&start=0#p19699
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: TADS 3 for GNOME or GTK2
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-16 07:35:17

[quote="Pelican"]Are there any TADS 3 interpreters for GNOME or based on GTK2?[/quote]
Nope. But QTads supports GNOME (by looking and behaving like a Gtk application) if you have a recent enough Qt library installed (4.5 and newer).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2827&start=0#p19700
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: smashing glass
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-16 08:08:25

[quote="Juhana"]ilovemyhedgehog, please don't correct the code in your post when you've received the answer. It makes the thread useless for people who might have the same problem later and gravel's reply reads like gibberish now that you've removed everything he refers to.[/quote]
Aha! I was confused about what gravel was talking about. Yes, there's no reason to correct the code you're asking about - it's helpful for people to see what mistakes others have made alongside the solutions. Now if you were offering someone a solution and someone found an error in it, you might do something like this:

[code]Instead of opening a drawer when [the drawer][edit: corrected to]the noun[/edit] is open:[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2769&start=10#p19701
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Conversation Topics
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-16 08:12:31

I'm not planning to document "think" explicitly, since the game will always tell you when a new thought pops into your head. But I thought it might be a friendly use for an otherwise problematic verb.

The obvious risk of what I'm doing is that conversations might seem completely railroaded. But I'm attempting to keep them short, and not put any significant puzzles in them. Although the player will always be able to bring up a different subject, the main choice presented will be whether to speak or not.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2824&start=0#p19702
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Need some fresh eyes
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-07-16 08:18:54

I took a look as well -- the clouds look fantastic, and I really love the touches like the V of birds flying overhead in the fall. I think I agree with Erik that the crag needs a little more work to fit in with the rest, but overall I think these do a great job of communicating a particular season and weather.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2822&start=10#p19703
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "The ocean" in Inform 7
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-16 10:11:23

[quote="jacksonmead"][quote="gravel"][quote="duodave"]Thanks so much. I wonder why I couldn't find that with Google.[/quote]

Google's not that great for Inform help, unfortunately.  The forums are your best bet.  It's especially true with stuff like articles, since you can't very well search the documentation for "the"![/quote]

Actually, you can, if you include the quotes [emote]:-)[/emote] I noticed some time ago that, at least in the Windows IDE, searching the documentation for a quoted phrase doesn't work as (I) expected, but in this case it's actually helpful.

-Kevin[/quote]

On the Mac IDE at least, I think searching without quotes behaves as you expect searching with quotes to work, and searching with quotes (as you discovered) actually looks for quotes. If you want to find a bunch of non-consecutive words... I guess you have to try Googing the on-line documentation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2824&start=0#p19704
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Need some fresh eyes
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-16 10:15:26

I "animated" moving through the sequence, and I think some of the trees were jumping a few pixels horizontally.

(Arboreal drift, a real problem in the river valleys of Rathillien...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2825&start=0#p19705
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: CYOA - CYOP (Choose Your One Path)
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2011-07-16 12:00:26

Jon Ingold had written a Windows application called [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Adventure_Book]"Adventure Book"[/url] a number of years back which produced CYOAs in the Z-machine format. It's no longer posted on Jon's current homepage, but I could probably dig up a copy somewhere if you're interested.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2831&start=0#p19706
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: TADS 3 for GNOME or GTK2
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-07-16 12:51:34

Gargoyle uses Gtk2 under Linux, but it does not support any of the multimedia features.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2831&start=0#p19707
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: TADS 3 for GNOME or GTK2
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-16 12:58:49

[quote="bcressey"]Gargoyle uses Gtk2 under Linux, but it does not support any of the multimedia features.[/quote]
I had the impression Gargoyle uses SDL for display.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2783&start=20#p19708
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Mobile App Pricing for IF...?
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2011-07-16 13:44:58

I think it's both nice that there's a lot of free IF out there but also sad that there isn't a commercial market in the last 20+ years, so there's been notably less emphasis on packaging and feelies, which I think can really add a lot to a game.  While it's possible that competitions lead to crap (or rather, low barriers to entry do), there are also surely some good games that come out of these events.  As a newbie author, I've entered a game into IntroComp which I don't believe is crap (opinions vary!) but it certainly needs refinement and feedback to help me progress.  I don't want or need to make money off my efforts though.  I am happy for anyone to play it once it's complete.  But I would love it if there was a way to get my game onto other platforms like the Kindle.

I might consider paying for IF games if they were truly outstanding quality (and again, that's a subjective viewpoint).  More to the point though, I would absolutely encourage those authors or developers who are doing things to help advance the state-of-the-art.  For example, I've bought multiple copies of Aaron Reed's Inform7 book, donated to Zarf's kickfire project, and donated prizes (mostly Dennis Wheatley Crime Dossiers) to IF comps as a way of giving back.  (If someone wanted to Kickstart a project to develop a Glulx interpreter for Kindle, or a definitive reference manual for Inform I'll donate in a flash.)

As a very minor point, some people might find the choices in your poll confusing having both author and player perspectives.  I know that's by design, but I consider myself to be both, so I'm not quite sure what the best way to answer is.
--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">http://www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2828&start=0#p19709
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Real differences between Z-Machine and Glulx?
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2011-07-16 13:55:42

I started out targeting Z-code but eventually blew the limits with a lot of text and extensions.  The only drawback I can see is that there aren't quite as many interpreters for Glulx yet.  But the situation is moving in the right direction and there are good interpreters for Mac, Windows, Linux.  Also Frotz for iPhone/iPad now supports Glulx and that overcomes a significant limitation previously for Glulx games.  I am sure there are some other differences, but for the most part, Glulx just seems like the right way forward.  

--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">http://www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2830&start=0#p19710
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Art by Katz
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-16 14:07:13

Yes, we could use your art.
We may be doing two projects.
The first is practically done for us except for a few little touches here and there, provided the author it lets us do it.
The second one would be all us.

I like your kiddie style with the hamsters.
The first game could have your dragon style.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2824&start=0#p19711
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Need some fresh eyes
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-16 14:36:50

[quote="zarf"]I "animated" moving through the sequence, and I think some of the trees were jumping a few pixels horizontally.

(Arboreal drift, a real problem in the river valleys of Rathillien...)[/quote]

Yeah, they are.  It's much harder to tell when they have leaves, but I didn't quite get all my layers properly aligned.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2831&start=0#p19712
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: TADS 3 for GNOME or GTK2
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-07-16 14:41:31

Just for audio. Fonts and images are composited to an internal bitmap buffer. Display is handled by drawing the final bitmap to the screen.

That part could be done with SDL but it only amounts to a few lines of code per OS target.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=50#p19713
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: ptomato / DateTime: 2011-07-16 14:51:11

[quote="zarf"][quote]If glk_schannel_set_volume_ext() is called with a non-zero duration while no sound is playing on the channel, is it OK for the library to do either of these two things?[/quote]

I'm going to say "no" -- the volume change should be completely independent of what sounds are going on (or not). Sorry if this makes more work.

I think I was taking for granted that there would be a separate timer running for volume changes (or else code piggybacked on a fill-a-sound-buffer timer that was already in place). I'll stick to that idea.[/quote]
Well, not much more work - it was fairly easy to do. One last question, more out of curiosity than confusion since I've finished implementing the draft spec now and not encountered any more issues.

The smallest possible nonzero volume change duration is 1 millisecond. Is the library required to provide that level of accuracy? Say I wanted to run my volume change timer at 10 ms for some reason, would the spec allow me to round off the durations to the nearest 10 ms?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2825&start=0#p19714
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: CYOA - CYOP (Choose Your One Path)
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-16 15:16:36

[quote="Isxek"]Jon Ingold had written a Windows application called [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Adventure_Book]"Adventure Book"[/url] a number of years back which produced CYOAs in the Z-machine format. It's no longer posted on Jon's current homepage, but I could probably dig up a copy somewhere if you're interested.[/quote]
[url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Edward%20Griffiths/Adventure%20Book/index.html][b][size=130]Adventure_Book:[/size] version 1/110101 by Edward Griffiths[/b][/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2832&start=0#p19715
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Which do you mean, your nose or Pinocchio's nose?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-07-16 16:16:59

I got a stumping bug report for the Swedish I7 translation.
I'm sure it's old news to other I7 translators.
[code]
The workshop is a room.
Pinocchio is a person in the workshop.
A nose is a kind of thing.
A nose is part of every person.
[/code]
gives
[quote]>X NOSE
Which do you mean, your nose or Pinocchio's nose?[/quote]
Where the expected answers are "MY" or "PINOCCHIO'S"
And in Swedish we get:
[quote]>X NÄSA
Menar du your näsa eller Pinocchio's näsa?[/quote]
Where the expected answers of course are the same English words as above.

I can't find any piece of code that seems responsible for the insertion of "your" and "Pinocchio's", however. So, I'm not sure under what circumstances they appear or how to replace them.

Is there *any* good and general way to change those pieces of text? (You could do it with a for printing the name of a thing while asking which do you mean, but I'm not sure whether that would be general enough.)
And the answers expected? Do end users have to fix it piecemeal with understand statements or something?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2834&start=0#p19717
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Single quotes in regex
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-07-16 16:36:16

Another thing that stumped me while trying to correct the nose bug described in a previous thread:
How are literal apostrophes/single quotation marks represented in I7 regular expressions? 
I didn't get "\'" to work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2834&start=0#p19718
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Single quotes in regex
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-07-16 17:37:30

[quote="Felix"]Another thing that stumped me while trying to correct the nose bug described in a previous thread:
How are literal apostrophes/single quotation marks represented in I7 regular expressions? 
I didn't get "\'" to work.[/quote]

I may be way off base here, which I will then blame on being tired, but this does seem to work.

[code]The Home is a room.

After reading a command:
	say the player's command;
	if the player's command exactly matches the regular expression "[']", say "[line break]True."[/code]

Weird, yes?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2834&start=0#p19719
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Single quotes in regex
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-07-16 17:44:40

Oh ....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2824&start=10#p19720
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Need some fresh eyes
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-16 18:11:20

Whoa.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2832&start=0#p19721
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Which do you mean, your nose or Pinocchio's nose?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-16 18:16:53

The objects in question are actually named "your nose" and "Pinocchio's nose," as you can see with the showme command. This happens whenever you declare "An X is part of every Y" or something like that, I think. Not sure exactly what generates it or how Inform converts "x my nose" into examining the "your nose" object (though I suspect it's the same way it converts "x me" into examining the "yourself" object).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2806&start=0#p19722
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: off topic- anyone want to buy my MST3k collection?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-07-16 19:05:05

[quote]The first three KTMA episodes are considered to be the "missing MST3K episodes". No fan copy is known to exist.[10] (Jim Mallon had once mentioned that Best Brains' master copies are stored in a vault.)[11] The long lost episodes are K01 ("Invaders from the Deep"), K02 ("Revenge of the Mysterons from Mars"), and K03 ("Star Force: Fugitive Alien II"), with K03 being redone in season 3. "Episode" K00, "The Green Slime", is often counted among those missing shows, but is actually only a never-broadcast, half-hour sample from the film used to sell the MST3K concept to KTMA.[10][/quote]

Man... if you have those episodes, do you have any idea how much they'd be worth to a MST3K collector?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2806&start=0#p19723
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: off topic- anyone want to buy my MST3k collection?
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-16 19:07:54

thats why ive posted this on a buncha forums where i believe they may be of some interest, lol.  im willing to sell piece-meal.

my brother was an insane collector of everything including mst3k episodes.  then he gets bored and wants to make room for more crap to collect, so he passed the collection onto me, and i nursed it and added to it.  the ktma's were in his original collection which he got from some dood in canada of all places.

ive had it for years, but right now, i need its worth more than i need the collection.  plus ive seen each episode so many times, ive memorized them.  [emote]:ugeek:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2806&start=0#p19724
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: off topic- anyone want to buy my MST3k collection?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-07-16 19:11:44

I hope whoever ends up owning it streams it onto the net pronto.  [emote]:roll:[/emote]  [emote]:roll:[/emote]  [emote]:roll:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2806&start=0#p19725
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: off topic- anyone want to buy my MST3k collection?
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-16 19:14:53

true, they are a collectors item, but also true= they suck.  i know im getting boo'd right now, but even the cast says they suck.  they were just cutting their teeth and didnt script anything.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2806&start=0#p19726
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: off topic- anyone want to buy my MST3k collection?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-07-16 19:49:48

To a collector it still has great value. [emote];)[/emote] I'm watching all the Chaplin films right now, and while it's true that there's a lot of stuff that just isn't worth seeing today, it's important to watch how he gradually built up his character - the very first Tramp has a much more aggressive feel than the latest tenderness-inspiring little fellow.

Similarly, I'm sure that those episodes just aren't much fun. There were others in that season that weren't. But it's important to see how they evolved past that.

...well, I think it's important anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2806&start=0#p19727
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: off topic- anyone want to buy my MST3k collection?
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-16 19:54:04

oh i def agree.  im just saying, for entertainment value, meh, but yeah for nostalgia and history, def!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2827&start=0#p19728
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: smashing glass
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-07-16 19:57:39

ok sorry

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2783&start=20#p19729
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Mobile App Pricing for IF...?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-07-16 19:59:26

[quote="ZUrlocker"]As a very minor point, some people might find the choices in your poll confusing having both author and player perspectives.  I know that's by design, but I consider myself to be both, so I'm not quite sure what the best way to answer is.[/quote]
You're allowed to select two choices - one from the author section and one from the player section.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2830&start=0#p19730
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Art by Katz
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-16 21:00:08

yeah, btw, forgot to mention, i love the displacer beast!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2825&start=0#p19731
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: CYOA - CYOP (Choose Your One Path)
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2011-07-16 23:59:10

[quote="IF noob"][quote="Isxek"]Jon Ingold had written a Windows application called [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Adventure_Book]"Adventure Book"[/url] a number of years back which produced CYOAs in the Z-machine format. It's no longer posted on Jon's current homepage, but I could probably dig up a copy somewhere if you're interested.[/quote]
[url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Edward%20Griffiths/Adventure%20Book/index.html][b][size=130]Adventure_Book:[/size] version 1/110101 by Edward Griffiths[/b][/url][/quote]Right. For [i]Inform 7[/i] users.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2821&start=10#p19732
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Choicescript - What the Hell?
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-07-17 00:14:40

[quote="Peter Pears"]And the only one I've played so far is Exile, and I have to say it was some of the finest use of CYOA I've seen (I also enjoyed the Undum Stiffy Makane game) in giving useful, meaningful choices to the player and going on believably.[/quote]

If you enjoyed any of the ChoiceScript games submitted to IntroComp, I'd invite you to try some of the other finished games in ChoiceScript, available at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.choiceofgames.com/">http://www.choiceofgames.com/</a> (Disclaimer: I'm a member of the Choice of Games partnership.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2825&start=0#p19733
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: CYOA - CYOP (Choose Your One Path)
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-07-17 00:48:22

IMO, generating games in the Z-code format is not particularly useful for multiple-choice/CYOA games. The natural way to play these games is by clicking on the options (or tapping on a touchscreen) which is easy on the web but mostly unsupported in Z-code interpreters.

I have an unofficial tool to build a command-line version of ChoiceScript games, where the text is printed to stdout and decisions are accepted via stdin. ("A monster appears! A) Fight, B) Magic, C) Summon, D) Run").

I used it to generate a version of "Choice of Broadsides" that could be played in ClubFloyd on ifMUD. If people are interested, I could try to package it up into something other people could use.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2831&start=0#p19734
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: TADS 3 for GNOME or GTK2
User: Pelican / DateTime: 2011-07-17 01:11:46

Unfortunately, Gargoyle doesn't seem to receive text input in the same manner other programs to, I couldn't type in anything using my IME, also it currently doesn't appear to support uft-8, so my foreign-language game files appear as a lot of ????.  I'll stick with qtads.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2835&start=0#p19735
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Getting the name of the verb in an action? [i7]
User: starwed / DateTime: 2011-07-17 02:19:30

After a player's action I can check what nouns they referred to with "[the noun]" and "[the second noun]".  Is there a similar way to refer to the verb used?   Things like "[the current action]" include verbs and nouns both, so that doesn't help.

Specifically I want to be able to do something like

[code]Before someone does something:
    if the verb is not listed in AllowedVerbs:
        say "[The verb]" is not allowed;
        stop the action.[/code]

I've tried naming the action, with syntax like "Before someone does something (called the verb)", but that doesn't seem to be possible.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2830&start=0#p19736
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Art by Katz
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-07-17 02:28:10

You played D&D, so of course you recognize it.  He's the "shopkeeper," but he can never find anything.  I also sketched his cave of way too much stuff:

<a class="postlink" href="http://jewelleddragon13.deviantart.com/gallery/?catpath=scraps&offset=24#/d2qi7uq">http://jewelleddragon13.deviantart.com/ ... 4#/d2qi7uq</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2836&start=0#p19737
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Amy R. Briggs
User: Andrew Owen / DateTime: 2011-07-17 02:58:32

Is anyone still in touch with Amy? I'd like her blessing for a project I'm working on. I'd actually rather have someone she knows already approach her.

Regards

-Andrew

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2835&start=0#p19738
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting the name of the verb in an action? [i7]
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-07-17 03:20:14

Try "the action name part of the current action".

[code]Before doing anything:
	say "[The action name part of the current action] is not allowed.";
	stop the action.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2835&start=0#p19739
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting the name of the verb in an action? [i7]
User: starwed / DateTime: 2011-07-17 03:43:19

Thanks, that totally works!

Now, err...  how could I have figured that out myself?  I read a lot of documentation examples, but never came across any such thing.  And then I tried browsing (somewhat randomly) through the index, but again no luck. 

I always feel lost when I want to figure out some technical issue like this.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2837&start=0#p19740
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Paging Erik Temple re: Undo Output Control
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-17 03:53:45

Hey Erik,

I just added this extension to my game. I have yet to set up any options or rules at all related to the extension, I've just added it, so by default all undoability should be on and operating as normal, I think.

Undo still works when I type it in the game, but if I try to undo from the end of game menu (IE by following the immediately undo rule), that doesn't work now. It just loops back to the end of game menu. Is this a bug, or could there be some extension conflict or something going on? I'm not using any other undo extensions, I have no undo-related code of my own, and I'm not using any of the built-in undo prevention.

Thanks.

- Wade

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1068&start=20#p19741
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3 in a Browser
User: tomasb / DateTime: 2011-07-17 03:59:28

Just for the record, it is somewhat possible to run TADS3 games in a browser in a client-server architecture. Solution which I'm running (only for testing purposes of my translation project) is composed of GlkOte, which is a javascript terminal for IF programmed to send input text with AJAX call to PHP script on Linux server, which in turn executes frobtads interpreter runing in plain mode. Script pipes batch of commands to load a game, execute one user command and saves the game again. Output of interpeter is parsed and returned to GlkOte.

As you can see, it is really not meant as a long term solution, because it is a dirty bag of hacks with several principial limitations. For example there is no support for menus, for single character input (just a complete line), no possibility for interactive games and so on.

There is another complication - because whenever game asks disambig questions, this state and ability to answer such question is not remembered in saved game. I was able to overcome this problem only by modification of adv3 to include special marks in output text for the frontend indicating, that it should repeat previous command. This means, that you must be able to recompile game for webplay.

So to sum up, the only positive of this solution is, that it is really easy to make. If someone is interested in more details, just drop me a line.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1068&start=20#p19742
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3 in a Browser
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-17 04:10:58

[quote="tomasb"]Just for the record, it is somewhat possible to run TADS3 games in a browser in a client-server architecture.[/quote]
Support has been already implemented for the next version, but it has not been officially released yet.

See the following thread, starting at this post: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=16417#p16417">viewtopic.php?p=16417#p16417</a>

You can try to get it running right now with the Git sources of FrobTADS (instructions on how to compile your game and how to run 'frob' are in the thread), but PHP-wise, you'd be on your own. When it is officially released, the plan is to have ready-made PHP scripts that will handle everything (most importantly multiple connections).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2835&start=0#p19743
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting the name of the verb in an action? [i7]
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-07-17 04:14:20

I first heard of it here on the forum (by Matt W?). And I think he (or someone else in that thread) mentioned something about its not being documented.

You can also find "the noun part", "the second noun part", and "the actor part" of any stored action (the "current action" is a stored action).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2838&start=0#p19744
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: "rule succeeds" in check stops the whole action
User: norpan / DateTime: 2011-07-17 04:15:13

I was reading the documentation (18.10)

[quote]rule succeeds

This causes the current rule to end immediately, with its outcome considered to be a success. That means the rulebook being worked through will also end, and also be a success. [/quote]

So I thought I could make a bypass, for instance if I want to make it possible to always take a certain object, regardless of where it is:

[quote]
x is a room.
o is in x.

check taking o: rule succeeds;
[/quote]

However, it seems that "rule succeeds" not only stops the check rulebook, but it stops the whole action! I would have thought that only "rule fails" would do that.

Does anybody know why the behavior is like that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2822&start=10#p19745
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "The ocean" in Inform 7
User: savaric / DateTime: 2011-07-17 04:50:18

I have a google shortcut i use, where I put 

site:intfiction.org

as the first search criteria...then you have the power of google but only results from intfiction.org, including the forums.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2838&start=0#p19746
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "rule succeeds" in check stops the whole action
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-17 04:55:22

The part where it says 'the rulebook being worked through will also end' - in your example, that rulebook is actually the check taking rulebook. You're not up to the part where the player acquires the object yet.

The theoretical arrangement is that the check rulebook tests if an action is possible, then further down the line, the carry out rulebook will carry out the action if it wasn't redirected or closed off at the check stage. Issuing a 'Rule succeeds' (and rule fails, too) ends the whole cascade through the rulebook sequence immediately, and actually performs no other action like you might think it might. The difference between success and failure with those two commands is simply how Inform records the result of the action.

So that's to answer your question about 'rule succeeds', but the issue of setting things up so a person can grab a particular object wherever it is in the game actually requires you to fiddle with 'scope' (search for that word in the docs). Possibly someone else will come along and give an example in this topic.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2838&start=0#p19747
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "rule succeeds" in check stops the whole action
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-17 05:57:48

[quote="norpan"]However, it seems that "rule succeeds" not only stops the check rulebook, but it stops the whole action! I would have thought that only "rule fails" would do that.

Does anybody know why the behavior is like that?[/quote]
The game "abides by" the check rulebook. This means that the action ends when the check rules either succeed or fail, and goes on if they do not produce an outcome.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2835&start=0#p19748
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting the name of the verb in an action? [i7]
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-17 06:27:00

This is actually documented in a fairly straightforward way in section 12.20 of the documentation -- as long as you know to look at that section. Which I guess I would've done by searching the documentation for "current action." Searching through the documentation can be a pain (it bugs me that it slowly constructs the list of hits backwards, working through all the examples before it gets to the main text that I'm actually looking for), but I often have reasonably decent luck finding what I'm looking for -- though it can take a few tries to construct the right query.

(I wonder if you're thinking of [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=18649#p18649]this[/url] -- "convert to request" doesn't seem to be documented, and is one of those bits of I6 voodoo anyway. In related news, I haven't worked on this for a while because I'm not sure how to extract "kissing iris" from "asking folks to try kissing Iris.")

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2830&start=0#p19749
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Art by Katz
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-17 06:34:44

omg thats really funny.  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2835&start=0#p19750
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting the name of the verb in an action? [i7]
User: starwed / DateTime: 2011-07-17 07:01:08

There's an apparent inconsistency of language, in this case, that made it especially hard to search for.

An action name is something like "the taking action."  This implies that the verb (taking) is considered an action.

But if I take a rock, then the [the current action] is "taking the rock".  So here action refers to the complete phrase, including verb and noun.  It was this that made me think that what I was looking for must use some word [i]other[/i] than action.

Eh, anyway, thanks for the help!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2837&start=0#p19751
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Paging Erik Temple re: Undo Output Control
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-17 07:31:00

This is a bug in UOC--thanks for bringing it to my attention! Undo Output Control's basic method for allowing you to prevent UNDO is to first check the "before undoing an action" rules; if those fail, the author has disallowed UNDO. I overzealously required a check of this rulebook in the end-of-game undo rule, which is unfortunate because Inform blocks consultation of that rulebook after the game has finished, returning a failure result and thereby preventing undo from happening.

To fix this, open up your copy of Undo Output Control, then scroll down to and delete the section "End of Game Undo" (it contains one I6 inclusion). Or you can just download the new version attached to this post (see below).

This means that the only way to control UNDO at the end of the game is by controlling the presentation of the option to the player. This is the best option anyway--it would be a bit silly to say "You can UNDO the game" and then respond with "Undo is disallowed". Here's how to do that if you need to:

[code]When play begins:
	choose row with a final response rule of immediately undo rule in the Table of Final Question Options; 
	delete the final question wording entry.[/code]

You can do this conditionally as well, if needed. Just put the two lines of codes in a different rule, and make sure that rule files before the command to end the game.

I've submitted a new version (version 3) of UOC to the extensions library. I've also attached it to this post (change the extension to i7x after downloading).

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2837&start=0#p19752
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Paging Erik Temple re: Undo Output Control
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-17 08:00:54

Thanks for the explanation and the quick fix.

Edit: ... Though ironically, what you just told me about the way Inform ignores those rules if the game has ended means I can't actually use the extension for what I wanted to use it for [emote]:)[/emote] But this already led to me working out the solution, as well.

The goal was that if the game ended in certain circumstances, if you then undo'd from the game over menu, certain text from the last turn would be reprinted before you were given the prompt again. I was going to use a 'before undoing' rule for this, but Inform won't heed those after a game over. But I realised I can just store the text during the previous turn, and have it printed as a part of the library message that is printed after a successful undo. I tested this and, to my pleasedness, it works.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2821&start=10#p19753
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Choicescript - What the Hell?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-07-17 08:04:16

Thanks, but I've checked it out before and I don't like playing IF unless it's offline. I like knowing it's there and it'll always be there on my hard drive even if the original online page disappears. 

Now, if you were to provide a way to download those games and play them offline like I played exile, I'd bookmark that site like I do IFDB and ADRIFT and whatnot and check every day for new games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2835&start=0#p19754
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting the name of the verb in an action? [i7]
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-17 08:06:50

Ha, yeah, didn't mean to suggest that you had done anything wrong. I think that the uselessness of the I7 documentation is much exaggerated in some quarters, but it definitely isn't always easy to find what you want unless you already know what you're looking for. (In which I7 is not absolutely unique; I can tell you sometime about my efforts to find out how to rotate an Excel spreadsheet 90%, or an even more fun part of the documentation.)

Anyway, "the current action" is of the kind "stored action," which includes the actor and the nouns like "player taking the bun," whereas an "action name" is just the generic action that rulebooks operate on, like "the taking action."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2839&start=0#p19755
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: I have some ideas, need input
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-17 10:04:08

Sark, you're supposed to help me on these matters.
I'm trying to recruit people from "another board" as well.

To be honest, some of it is already done, we're just taking off on another person's work, and yes, I got permission.
I have to play it all the way through, but we could do a new chapter as well, expanding his world to a much larger one.

The player can play it as an IF, but it's really AIF, the good news is sex isn't required to advance the story.
The bad news is we can't use my favorite AIF character.

(link deleted for TOS violation, with good intentions)

I thought up some extra rooms to unlock (with new maps), extra props (must be found in order), and more vehicles (points for solving puzzles, not finding objects).
Sex is restricted to AIF lots, however in our game, sexual themes (such as public nudity) may be accessed on IF lots depending on which NPC does the action you want (new props include mind control device).
All children in game are young adults (18 - 20 something) to avoid sexual themes with teens, pre-teens, toddlers, infants, or newborns.

Original game called "The Backlot" (without the quotes of course).
Don't download unless you are 18 or over.
If you are offended by sex, sexual themes, or just obscene language, don't play this game.

[b]Note:[/b] [i]You[/i] may not [u]STRIP[/u] just anywhere.

Team, we can't charge for the game and we must give credit to the original author.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2840&start=0#p19756
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Regions
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-07-17 10:04:33

Here is a new one – at least for me.

I have a game that has several regions. In order for the player to successfully complete his/her play, they must find one item in each region and give it to the “Tax Collector”. It appears to me that in order for this to happen, I must have a Tax Collector in each region. This means I have to create a separate TC in each region as it appears I can not move one TC across region boundaries. Is this correct or am I confused again?

Can I create global characters that will span region bouneries?

Greg

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2840&start=0#p19757
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Regions
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-17 10:09:16

Sure.  I'm a little confused by what you're envisioning, but it's possible to move any character to any room with a "now X is in Y".  

It's also possible to create a region that encloses other regions: The House Region can be in a Neighborhood Region, along with the Neighbor's House, the Park, and the Grocery.

What have you been trying that's giving you trouble?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1068&start=20#p19758
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3 in a Browser
User: tomasb / DateTime: 2011-07-17 10:11:51

Ah, it is finally approaching. Sorry, I've missed that thread. Thank you for info, I've tested it and it looks promising.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2841&start=0#p19759
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: GlkTerm and type styles
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-07-17 10:19:37

While testing my game on Glulxe with GlkTerm, I'm encountering an odd effect involving italic type.

Text that looks like this in Gargoyle:
[quote]> x newspaper
This newspaper looks as though it’s hot off the presses. The dateline reads Saturday, March 10, 1928. Plastered across the front page is a photograph 
of a stunningly beautiful woman under the headline “VIVACIOUS VIXEN VANISHES!” The accompanying article has been rendered illegible by 
garbage, but you can just about make out a caption underneath the photograph.

[[i]You have acquired the memory of the newspaper dateline.[/i]][/quote]
comes out like this:
[quote]>x newspaperYou have acquired the memory of the newspaper dateline.
This newspaper looks as though it's hot off the presses. The dateline reads
Saturday, March 10, 1928. Plastered across the front page is a photograph of a
stunningly beautiful woman under the headline "VIVACIOUS VIXEN VANISHES!" The
accompanying article has been rendered illegible by garbage, but you can just
about make out a caption underneath the photograph.

[u][][/u][/quote]

This is the offending code:
[code]say "[italic type][bracket][item][close bracket][roman type][paragraph break]";[/code]

Again, it looks fine in Gargoyle's version of Glulxe.  I tried consulting the Glk specification, but it's a little over my head... it sounds like rather than the italic type thing that's built into Inform 7, I should be using Glk's text styles, but I'm not really clear on how to do that. What do I need to be doing in order to get that text to display in the right position?

Thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2495&start=0#p19760
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Quest 5.0 Beta 1 is now available
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-07-17 10:49:26

Beta 3 is now available from: <a class="postlink" href="http://quest5.net/wiki/Downloads">http://quest5.net/wiki/Downloads</a>

There is a first draft of the tutorial now available at: <a class="postlink" href="http://quest5.net/wiki/Tutorial">http://quest5.net/wiki/Tutorial</a>

And more info on the blog here: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.textadventures.co.uk/blog/2011/07/17/quest-5-0-beta-3-and-tutorial-available/">http://www.textadventures.co.uk/blog/20 ... available/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2840&start=0#p19761
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Regions
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-07-17 11:33:51

I didn't know about the Now X is in Y construct. I'll give it a try.  Thanks, Greg.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2803&start=0#p19762
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Giving objects while using conversation package by Eric 
User: kanato / DateTime: 2011-07-17 11:55:53

Well, that's simple and easy, thanks!

One more question. Is there any way to tell if the action has been done within the response? I mean, I know I can do stuff like [code]
Response of the wizard when asked about tyrant king for the first time:[/code] but is it possible to do something like this?
[code]
Response of the wizard when asked about tyrant king:
	say "[if this is the first time we have asked this] *or* [if the number of times we have asked the wizard about the tyrant king is greater than two]
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2840&start=0#p19763
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Regions
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-17 12:01:42

Oh, that's very important. Check out 8.11 of the documentation, and chapter 8 in general. (As section 8.7 says, "Move X to Y" should also work in this case.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2371&start=10#p19764
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Novella feelie
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-07-17 13:17:49

I like this "multimedia as a feelie" approach. Music and/or images and/or movies are right there if player feels like enjoying them but are not intrusive into the game experience itself and don't pretend to be neither essential nor a requirement for inmmersion. Nice!

--

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2842&start=0#p19765
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7: changing the name of an object
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-07-17 13:34:41

[code]Dim Lit room is a room. "[if unvisited] This room is the most disturbing thing you have ever seen in your life. The thing that disturbs you is behind a glass wall.[otherwise] The room still disturbs you but the shock has worn off. The entire room is made of metal. The thing that disturbs you is behind a glass wall."

A desk is here. the desk is a supporter. a page is a portable supporter on the desk. a paperweight is on the page. clear glass is part of the glass wall. the glass wall is a closed scenery door. the glass wall is east of Dim Lit room. the glass wall is west of the wall of horrors.

Instead of opening the glass wall, say "You can't open the glass wall."
The description of the paperweight is "A small red rock with a flat bottom."
Rule for printing room description details of the desk: omit contents in listing.
The description of the glass wall is "A large wall made of glass, you dont want to say what you see on the other side."

Instead of examining the page for the first time:
     Say "The title of the page is Experiment data.";
     Now the printed name of the page is "Experiment Data page.";
     Now the description of the page is "which page?";
     The Experiment Data page is the page.


Check taking the page:
   If a thing is on the page, say "You can't take the page while [a random thing on the page] is on it." instead.[/code]
Whats wrong with my code? Im trying to change the pages name to Experiment Data and make the page be Experiment Data when the player has examined it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2842&start=0#p19766
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: changing the mane of an object
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-17 13:42:09

When you post these questions, it's helpful to print what error or output you're getting.  

In this case, when I copy your code, I get an error message that looks pretty applicable:

[quote]You wrote 'The Experiment Data page is the page'  : but this is a phrase which I don't recognise, possibly because it is one you meant to define but never got round to, or because the wording is wrong (see the Phrasebook section of the Index to check). Alternatively, it may be that the text immediately previous to this was a definition whose ending, normally a full stop, is missing?
[/quote]

What purpose is "The Experiment Data page is the page." supposed to serve?  It's not going to do anything but throw an error now, because there *is* no experiment data page; all you've declared is the existence of a page.  

When I take it out, the code appears to work as normal, although you might want to double check capitalization and punctuation:

[quote]Dim Lit room
 This room is the most disturbing thing you have ever seen in your life. The thing that disturbs you is behind a glass wall.

You can see a desk here.

>x page
The title of the page is Experiment data.

>l
Dim Lit room
 The room still disturbs you but the shock has worn off. The entire room is made of metal. The thing that disturbs you is behind a glass wall.

You can see a desk here.

>x page
which page?

On the Experiment Data page. is a paperweight.

[/quote]

Edit:  Actually, even if there was an experiment data page, that phrase wouldn't work, because they're both objects.  You couldn't declare one the other any more than it would make sense to say "Now the horse is the car."  (And that would be the correct syntax within an if statement.)  If page was a variable it would make sense, but it doesn't look like you need a variable there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2821&start=10#p19767
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Choicescript - What the Hell?
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-07-17 13:48:29

I've always been rather influenced by Emily Short's classic article "What is Interactive Fiction" (or perhaps by the not so reliable memory I got of it, as It's been eons since I last read it) in the sense that It's interface what makes parser based IF qualify as IF "as we know it". Other than that, I like to side with the open minded bunch, so I see nothing wrong with CYOA works entering IF comps. 

In fact, I openly disliked CYOA games untill recently. Most of my CYOA experience before had been teenage fantasy books in which I wasn't so much interested. This recent trend of choice based games has given us a wider scenario with more ambituous potential to be achieved, so, as far as I'm concerned, It's a wellcome trend!  [emote]8-)[/emote] 

--

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2841&start=0#p19768
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: GlkTerm and type styles
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-17 14:09:03

The released version of GlkTerm has a massive bug in it when printing single characters. (Yeah, you'd think I'd have noticed that a decade ago, wouldn't you?) Use the version in source control at <a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/erkyrath/glkterm">https://github.com/erkyrath/glkterm</a> .

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2842&start=0#p19769
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: changing the name of an object
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-07-17 14:21:02

[quote="ilovemyhedgehog"]
Instead of examining the page for the first time:
     Say "The title of the page is Experiment data.";
     Now the printed name of the page is "Experiment Data page.";
     Now the description of the page is "which page?";
     The Experiment Data page is the page.[/quote]
I guess you want the player to be able to refer to the page as "experiment data page" once (s)he has examined it, but not before that.
You can do that with an understand statement:
[code]
Understand "experiment" and "data" as the page when we have examined the page.
[/code]
I think there is a problem in this particular case, since an instead rule stops the action in failure, and Inform may therefore think we have not examined the page. So, I suggest you rather do something like this:
[code]
The description of the page is "The title of the page is Experiment Data."

Before examining the page for the first time:
	now the printed name of the page is "Experiment Data page".

After examining the page for the first time:
	now the description of the page is "Which page?"[I am not at all sure that this after rule is what you really want!!!]

Understand "experiment" and "data" as the page when we have examined the page.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2821&start=10#p19770
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Choicescript - What the Hell?
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-07-17 14:58:04

[quote="Peter Pears"]Thanks, but I've checked it out before and I don't like playing IF unless it's offline. I like knowing it's there and it'll always be there on my hard drive even if the original online page disappears. 

Now, if you were to provide a way to download those games and play them offline like I played exile, I'd bookmark that site like I do IFDB and ADRIFT and whatnot and check every day for new games.[/quote]

An offline version of our games is certainly on our list; in the meantime, you might enjoy the iPhone, Android or Kindle versions, all of which are downloadable.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2838&start=0#p19771
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "rule succeeds" in check stops the whole action
User: norpan / DateTime: 2011-07-17 15:22:17

I noticed that it was abide there. I changed the rule to consider, and tried to read the result, but it seems that the standard rules do "stop the action" instead of "rule fails".

This makes a difference, even though the documentation says that stop the action is equivalent to rule fails.

[code]
x is a room.
o1 is in x.
o2 is in x.
o3 is in x.
o4 is in x.

check taking o1: stop the action;
check taking o2: rule fails;
check taking o3: rule succeeds;

The modified check stage rule is listed instead of the check stage rule in the specific action-processing rules.
A specific action-processing rule (this is the modified check stage rule):
	consider the specific check rulebook;
	if the rule succeeded, instead say "succeeds[line break]";
	if the rule failed, instead say "failed[line break]";
	instead say "no decision[line break]";
[/code]

and the result
[code]
>take all
o1: no decision
o2: failed
o3: succeeds
o4: no decision
[/code]

So this means I can't modify just check stage rule. I'm not going to investigate this further, but it's interesting to learn the inner workings of Inform7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2821&start=10#p19772
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Choicescript - What the Hell?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-07-17 16:21:14

Certainly, were I to acquire any of those gadgets first.  [emote]:roll:[/emote]  All I can play on the go are J2ME apps, like ZaxMidlet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2843&start=0#p19773
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 Glulx: Roguelike-style save & restore
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-17 16:37:07

Hi all,

I've put together a little extension that implements automated save and restore a la roguelike games. The main features are:

[list=1]
[*]Game saves automatically and silently every turn, just before reading in a command. There is no need for the player to issue any command to save.[/*:m]
[*]If the game finds an existing save file at startup, it automatically loads it.[/*:m]
[*]The standard SAVE and RESTORE commands are blocked to avoid confusion.[/*:m]
[*]The standard save and restore code is not, however, altered; if you want to use both roguelike mode and standard mode in your game, you can--just not at the same time. Use "Roguelike mode is false" to start the game with roguelike mode off, and "now roguelike mode is true/false" to change it over the course of the game.[/*:m][/list:o]

There is no documentation. All that's required to use the extension is to include it. If you want to alter behavior or default messages, though, you'll need to read the code. You'll also need to read the code if you want to understand how it works! [emote];)[/emote] 

The extension works only with Glulx. It doesn't seem to work with Quixe, and I'm not sure what it would take to get it working. (In fact, I'm not even sure how to properly test whether it's working.)

I am not going to release this extension to the extensions library, as I already have a lot of extensions out there and I don't want to have to support it--I see it more as a quick Sunday afternoon itch that I needed to scratch. If anyone wants to write some documentation, fix problems, modify as desired, etc. for submission to the library, you have my blessing. Feel free to give yourself authorship; if you want to credit my contribution, you can use the standard method for providing additional credit (see 25.4 in the manual).

The extension is attached to this post. You'll need to change the extension from .txt to .i7x after downloading.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2842&start=0#p19776
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: changing the name of an object
User: mucat / DateTime: 2011-07-17 18:09:42

Felix hit it exactly.

Here's a second option, though, which might come in handy if you plan to have [i]lots[/i] of papers or other objects whose names change as the player learns more about them:

[code]A paper is a kind of supporter.  A paper is always portable.
A paper has some indexed text called Title1.  
A paper has some indexed text called Title2.  [This allows two-word titles.  It should be obvious how to expand it to allow longer ones...]

before printing the name of a paper (called p):
	if Title1 of p is not empty, say "[Title1 of p] ";
	if Title2 of p is not empty, say "[Title2 of p] ";
	
understand the Title1 property as describing a paper;
understand the Title2 property as describing a paper;    [This lets the player refer to the paper by name, even if the title changes during play.]


a page is a paper on the desk.

instead of examining the page for the first time:
	say "It's titled [']Experimental Data['].";
	now title1 of page is "Experimental";
	now title2 of page is "Data";
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2846&start=0#p19777
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: relations with three or more possible states
User: mucat / DateTime: 2011-07-17 18:27:40

Is it possible -- in the core inform language or by an existing extension -- to have a relation that is multivalued rather than just on/off?  For example, a person could like something, dislike it, or (the default) be indifferent to it.

I know it's possible to set this up using two relations:
[code]
Liking relates various people to various people.
The verb to like (he likes, they like, he liked, it is liked, he is liking) implies the liking relation.

Disliking relates various people to various people.
The verb to dislike (he dislikes, they dislike, he disliked, it is disliked, he is disliking) implies the disliking relation.
[/code]
But this makes it possible for someone to both like and dislike something at the same time, and requires the coder to always remember to change both relations at once:
[code]
now Spot likes the red chew toy;
now Spot does not dislike the red chew toy;   [unfortunately not redundant...]
[/code]

Any known way to make this into a single three-state relation rather than a pair of two-state ones?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2846&start=0#p19778
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: relations with three or more possible states
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-07-17 19:52:20

There's [url=http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/751264-world-model-three-way-relations?ref=title]some mention[/url] of this on the uservoice page. The capability that you describe isn't supported at present, and I can't really envision any way to do something like that within I7 right now, other than in a very limited (and likely to be manually operated) sense.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2846&start=0#p19779
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: relations with three or more possible states
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-17 20:02:29

One possible hack might be to define a relation "really likes" as X really likes Y if X likes Y and X does not dislike Y. Then <X dislikes Y, X really likes Y, X neither likes nor dislikes Y> would be exhaustive. But you'd still have to change both relations manually when you wanted to make sure that X really liked Y (probably by writing a phrase for that), and you'd have to make sure you always checked "really likes" instead of "likes," so it might not be that much less inconvenient.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2846&start=0#p19780
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: relations with three or more possible states
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-17 20:23:35

I think your basic approach will work relatively well if you just add some phrases to allow you to set the three states with one line of code each, along with a to-decide phrase to let you test the indifference pseudo-relation with a single line (obviously, you can already test liking and disliking with a single line). Here's some code:

[code]Liking relates various people to various people. The verb to like (he likes, they like, he liked, it is liked, he is liking) implies the liking relation.

Disliking relates various people to various people. The verb to dislike (he dislikes, they dislike, he disliked, it is disliked, he is disliking) implies the disliking relation.

To cause (S - object) to like (O - object):
	now S likes O;
	now S does not dislike O.
	
To cause (S - object) to be indifferent to (O - object):
	now S does not like O;
	now S does not dislike O.
	
To cause (S - object) to dislike (O - object):
	now S does not like O;
	now S dislikes O.
	
To decide if (A - a person) is indifferent to (B - a person):
	if A likes B, decide no;
	if A dislikes B, decide no;
	decide yes.
	

Test is a room.

Spot is a person in Test.
Larry is a person in Test.

When play begins:
	cause Spot to like Larry;
	if Spot likes Larry, say "Spot makes goo-goo eyes at Larry.";
	if Larry is indifferent to Spot, say "Larry ignores Spot."
[/code]

Things will be more complicated if you try to do more than three possibilities, of course, but that's to be expected.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2846&start=0#p19781
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: relations with three or more possible states
User: mucat / DateTime: 2011-07-17 21:44:55

Thanks for the rapid response, Elias, Matt, and Ektemple.  I had a feeling there was no direct way to do this, but I wanted to be sure I wasn't missing something.

I like the pseudo-relation suggestion.  About the only thing it sacrifices is the ability to say things like "Whiskers likes every catnip toy" -- you'd have to loop over catnip toys, calling the "Cause to like" phrase on each -- but it's still much better than manipulating both of the underlying relations by hand.

In fact, it now occurs to me that with a set of [i]N[/i] hidden underlying relations and some convenient phrases, you could have a pseudo-relation with 2^[i]N[/i] distinct values.  For example, the phrases

[code]
to decide which number is the opinion of (p - a person) toward (t - a thing):
...

to set the opinion of (p - a person) toward (t - a thing) to (n - a number):
...

to alter the opinion of (p - a person) toward (t - a thing) by (n - a number):
...
[/code]
could implement numerical opinions ranging from 0 to 255...when what is really going on behind the scenes is that eight hidden relations are carrying the eight bits of the number.  After writing the three "interface" phrases, the programmer would never again have to think about those eight underlying relations...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2839&start=0#p19782
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: I have some ideas, need input
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-07-17 22:32:09

What exactly are you asking for input about?

You've linked to another website that (I think) isn't yours and contains a lot of games.  What exactly is your game based off of?  What are your ideas?

Edit: Ah.  Much clearer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2839&start=0#p19783
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: I have some ideas, need input
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-17 23:01:15

[quote="katz"]What exactly are you asking for input about?

You've linked to another website that (I think) isn't yours and contains a lot of games.  What exactly is your game based off of?  What are your ideas?[/quote]
Just edited.

His games are on the games page (archived just before Geocities took it down).
Click on [b]Games Page[/b] on his news page.

[spoiler][url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=34][b][Tads] The Backlot[/b][/url][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2839&start=0#p19784
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: I have some ideas, need input
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-07-18 00:18:08

[quote="IF noob"](link deleted for TOS violation, with good intentions)[/quote]

It seems like you deleted the link for your own reasons, without any prompting from a moderator or admin. That's cool but casting yourself as the victim of censorship is not.

[quote]All children in game are young adults (18 - 20 something) to avoid sexual themes with teens, pre-teens, toddlers, infants, or newborns.[/quote]

This may be the least reassuring, most disturbing disclaimer I have ever read.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2843&start=0#p19785
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 Glulx: Roguelike-style save & restore
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-18 00:24:36

External-file stuff *should* work in Quixe, if you have a reasonably modern browser. However, I haven't tried this code yet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=60#p19786
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-18 00:27:13

Yes, you can round off if the needs of your implementation call for it. I can't very well *require* perfect accuracy; slow and overloaded computers do exist...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2839&start=0#p19787
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: I have some ideas, need input
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-18 00:42:32

[quote="bcressey"][quote="IF noob"](link deleted for TOS violation, with good intentions)[/quote]

It seems like you deleted the link for your own reasons, without any prompting from a moderator or admin. That's cool but casting yourself as the victim of censorship is not.

[quote]All children in game are young adults (18 - 20 something) to avoid sexual themes with teens, pre-teens, toddlers, infants, or newborns.[/quote]

This may be the least reassuring, most disturbing disclaimer I have ever read.[/quote]
1: It wasn't meant as a sympathy ploy or whatever you're thinking (I would have nothing to gain anyway).

2: The child disclaimer was more for the "behind the scenes" people than the players, however they would also benefit from this notice.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2843&start=0#p19788
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 Glulx: Roguelike-style save & restore
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-07-18 01:10:48

I can see how implementing this extension could be annoying to the player. If I saved before entering a room, then did three or four wrong things, then wanted to restore the saved game before I did those things, I would be annoyed if the wrong actions had overwritten my saved game.

On the other hand I know some game authors don't really care for that behavior for players, and would like the behavior you've produced in an extension.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2846&start=0#p19789
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: relations with three or more possible states
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-07-18 01:14:45

Yeah, I think the best way would be to define a variable, then put a value into it, then use some sort of if-then/switch statement as your control. 

"like" could be the name of the variable, then how much it's liked could be numeric, I suppose.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2847&start=0#p19790
Forum: Competitions / Subject: IfComp 2011??
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-07-18 01:35:53

Has there been any discussion of the IFComp 2011 yet? I notice on the official web page, there have not been any prizes donated yet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2846&start=0#p19791
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: relations with three or more possible states
User: kanato / DateTime: 2011-07-18 01:44:05

Yeah I'd like a feature like this, although with just numeric values. Then I could do things like "Bob owes George 20 dollars. Hamilton owes the player 50 dollars. The player owes Don Corleon 1000 dollars."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2843&start=0#p19792
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 Glulx: Roguelike-style save & restore
User: starwed / DateTime: 2011-07-18 02:11:10

[quote]I can see how implementing this extension could be annoying to the player. If I saved before entering a room, then did three or four wrong things, then wanted to restore the saved game before I did those things, I would be annoyed if the wrong actions had overwritten my saved game.[/quote]
I'm guessing you've never played a roguelike such as nethack?  Because that is exactly the point of this extension!  [emote]:)[/emote]  You can never save your position in order to experiment in such games -- the only type of saving is that which occurs on exit.

And of course, this extension says it disables user-invoked saving, to avoid the sorts of problems you mention above.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2800&start=0#p19793
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: All of my ideas are taken
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-18 05:10:44

[quote="Zed"]Even if the concepts of the puzzles are analogous to ones that have been seen before, you could make them feel fresh with your choices in setting, description, tone, narrative voice, and your context. Are your puzzles in the service of a story that's a screwball comedy? An action story? A mystery revealing long-buried family secrets?[/quote]
That sounds like what I'm doing, only it's an exact replica (with permission) with completely new characters and added puzzles.

[quote]Every year we see movies with familiar characters and familiar plots, and some of those are still excellent because they do such a good job with the characters and plots. Novelty isn't the only virtue.[/quote]
The most famous being hell, heaven, afterlife, limbo, and even possession stories such as "Zap" with Dudley Moor and the more modern "The Witches Of Eastwick" with Jack Nicholson.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2371&start=10#p19794
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Novella feelie
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-18 05:23:12

[quote="Felix"]I’m all for feelies.
Apart from downright spoilers, it should be the odd case when any feelie would ruin a game. 
(Such as, perhaps, if the novella happens to be much better than the game [emote];)[/emote] … which would be all the more reason not to withhold us the novella, right?)[/quote]
I've seen that word all over.
What the heck is a feelie?

Is it like a "solve" when the player gets too frustrated, or a "reveal" when the player is stuck on a puzzle?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2843&start=0#p19795
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 Glulx: Roguelike-style save & restore
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-18 05:34:57

Hm, interesting; quite a different approach than the one I use in my [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Victor%20Gijsbers/Permadeath/index.html]Permadeath[/url] extension. I think Permadeath is somewhat closer to how roguelikes generally work: e.g., if I understand it correctly your game only allows the player to have one active game at a time, whereas the roguelikes I played allow you to have as many as you wish.

However, your extension actually seems more useful for the project I'm currently working on, so I'm certainly going to take a closer look. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2843&start=0#p19796
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 Glulx: Roguelike-style save & restore
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-18 05:49:34

It seems like the way that SLASH'EM worked on crash-override.net -- you log in with a profile that has one game active at any given time, and it does constantly back up your game so you can restore if your connection drops or something.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2843&start=0#p19797
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 Glulx: Roguelike-style save & restore
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-18 05:50:38

Erik, if you use the extension as written, I think you should devise a way to communicate to the player that they must restart in order to "commit suicide". In general, roguelikes implement save ("save the game and exit") and quit ("kill the character and exit"); your extension effectively has quit ("save the game and exit") and restart ("kill the character and start a new game"). Players who don't realise this may get stuck in a game they don't want to play any more. [emote]:)[/emote]

But I'm definitely going to steal... uh... adapt some of your code for [i]Kerkerkruip[/i]. Part of the challenge there is to win several games in a row, which get more difficult as your winning streak becomes longer; and that means that having exactly one save game policed by the game itself is precisely what I want.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2371&start=10#p19798
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Novella feelie
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-07-18 06:12:19

[quote="IF noob"]
What the heck is a feelie?[/quote]
Out-of-game extras, such as a printed (or PDF) map, a physical letter or something else that's meant to complement the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2843&start=0#p19799
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 Glulx: Roguelike-style save & restore
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-18 06:33:54

Unless I am completely mistaken, the extension contains a huge bug. There is no mechanism that removes the previous saved game, so you can [i]never[/i] start a new game. You will [i]always[/i] go back to the last turn of the previous game.

This is bad both because it means players cannot be killed (you can always "undo" by "restore"ing), and because it means that you can never start a new game (both "restart" and "quit + start" function effectively as "do nothing" if the game has not ended, and as "undo" if the game has ended).

This could best be solved by deleting the saved game on "restart" and on printing the player's obituary. But I don't know how to deleted a file, and based on the low-level I6 code of the extension, I'm not so sure I'd like to try and find out. Anyone who knows how to do this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2848&start=0#p19800
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Soundnotify - yay or nay?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-18 06:34:39

Does 'soundnotify' in glulx work? Or is it dodgy?

Basically I'd like to know if a sound has stopped playing without using a glulx timer to measure its duration. I think I decided a few months ago that there wasn't any way to do this - but right now I'm thinking 'gosh, it would help if there was', so I'm asking here to doublecheck.

Also, if soundnotify does work, what's a sample of I7 code showing how to use it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2371&start=10#p19801
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Novella feelie
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-18 07:13:17

<a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feelie">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feelie</a>

Infocom was the company that came up with the name and the idea for "feelies," I think. Here's the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for example:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.infocom-if.org/games/hhgttg/hhgttg.html">http://www.infocom-if.org/games/hhgttg/hhgttg.html</a>

In case the caption is too small to read:
[quote]Tossed with acrobatic precision into this HITCHHIKER'S package: You HITCHHIKER'S disk, Don't Panic! button, authentic fluff, Megadodo Publications sales brochure for the latest model of [i]Hitchhiker's Guide[/i], official destruct orders, peril-sensitive sunglasses, microscopic space fleet and no tea.[/quote]

Pocket fluff was a major plot element in the game, and I always thought it was really funny that they provided some in the package.

Another Infocom Game, Leather Goddesses of Phobos, included a scratch n' sniff card, which the game would instruct you to sample at appropriate times. Many Infocom games had critical pieces of information in the feelies as a means of copy protection.

An article about the origin of Infocom's feelies:

<a class="postlink" href="http://web.mit.edu/6.933/www/Fall2000/infocom/marketing.html">http://web.mit.edu/6.933/www/Fall2000/i ... eting.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2371&start=20#p19802
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Novella feelie
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-18 07:16:42

[quote="capmikee"]An article about the origin of Infocom's feelies:

<a class="postlink" href="http://web.mit.edu/6.933/www/Fall2000/infocom/marketing.html">http://web.mit.edu/6.933/www/Fall2000/i ... eting.html</a>[/quote]
Hey! I just noticed something really funny.

The Discover article tacked on to the end of that page was written by Gary Taubes. I assume there is only one science journalist named Gary Taubes. He also wrote this book, which I own:

<a class="postlink" href="http://books.google.com/books?id=Xdm40JUD9HwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=good+calories+bad+calories&hl=en&src=bmrr&ei=GSQkTv2mO8nLgQecyMC-Cw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false">http://books.google.com/books?id=Xdm40J ... &q&f=false</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2849&start=0#p19803
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Custom "physical" relations
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-18 07:45:04

If I understand correctly, when I use one of Inform 7's built-in relations involving physical juxtaposition of objects (containment, support, etc.), the effect is to treat one object as a "branch" of the other on the "tree" which represents how Inform handles objects.  Thus, if the bed is a supporter and a blanket is on the bed, the blanket is now a sub-branch of the bed branch, which in turn branches from the bedroom branch of the world tree.

Suppose I create a new relation to reflect one object being under another.  I can create the relation, as well as a "putting it under" action, and can code the consequences of the dust bunny being under the bed (in terms of how it responds to various commands).  However, if I understand correctly, the dust bunny would [i]not[/i] be conceptualized as a sub-branch of the bed branch; rather, as far as Inform is concerned, the dust bunny would only be in the bedroom (and even that would only be the case if I manually specify that it is, either as an assertion statement in the initial state of the world or as part of the "putting it under" action).

My question is two-fold:  First, does any of this really matter?  In other words, are there any real consequences to the dust-bunny being a sub-branch of the "bed" branch, as opposed to just being in the bedroom?  Second, if it does matter, is there a way to make custom relations such as this behave like the built-in relations?

Or I am totally misunderstanding what is going on here?

Thanks.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2849&start=0#p19804
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Custom "physical" relations
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-18 08:01:54

I have never actually tried to do something with this, so my understanding may be [i]completely wrong[/i]. But this is my guess:

[quote="Robert Rothman"]My question is two-fold:  First, does any of this really matter?  In other words, are there any real consequences to the dust-bunny being a sub-branch of the "bed" branch, as opposed to just being in the bedroom?  Second, if it does matter, is there a way to make custom relations such as this behave like the built-in relations?[/quote]
I don't think there is a "tree" in Inform somewhere. These are the built in relations (manual 13.18):
[quote]to be - equality relation 
to have - possession relation 
to contain - containment relation 
to support - support relation 
to carry - carrying relation 
to wear - wearing relation 
to be part of - (reversed) incorporation relation 
to be adjacent to - adjacency relation [/quote]
and I suspect that verbs like "encloses" and "is in" are defined in terms of these relations. (E.g., A is in B if B either has, contains, supports, carries, wears of incorporates B.) In order to add a relation that behaves the same way as the built in relations, you'll have to find the definitions of "is in" and "encloses" (and perhaps others) in the Standard Rules, and replace them with definitions that involve your new relation.

Edit: there are consequences of putting the dust bunny in the bedroom rather than under the bed in a more robust sense, but only if you are ever testing whether the dust bunny is enclosed by (or in) the bed, or ask for the "holder of the dust bunny". If you don't make those kinds of test, there is no consequence and you don't need to fiddle with the standard rules.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2832&start=0#p19805
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Which do you mean, your nose or Pinocchio's nose?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-18 08:18:44

I think that naming comes from low-level I6 code for naming things. Hopefully it will be fixed in a later Swedish version, but for now you'll have to explicitly change it:

(apologies for using Google Translate)
[code]For printing the name of a näsa:
	if the holder of the item described is yourself:
		say "din näsa";
	otherwise:
		say "[the holder of the item described]s näsa";[/code]

You'd also have to write some Understand rules, and I think that might be beyond my ability with zero knowledge of the Swedish language and the Swedish extension...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2832&start=0#p19806
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Which do you mean, your nose or Pinocchio's nose?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-07-18 08:49:05

I even suspect that this naming is done on the NI-level. Is that possible? At least, I can't find anything in the I6 Templates that seems to explain it. And apparently there is currently no translation that addresses the issue successfully. It may all change with future builds of Inform, though.

In the apparent absence of a good solution, I suppose I shall settle for a general one: if there are any parts with offending (English) names in the game, I'll give them an extra text property (in Swedish) to match against input. 
(Hopefully the "my"->"your" conversion runs through the ordinary channels as Matt surmised.)

(By the way: Google Translator got it right this time.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2849&start=0#p19807
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Custom "physical" relations
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-18 08:50:42

Well, I think the issue is that (for instance) if your code for killing an NPC involves moving everything that the NPC carries to the holder of the NPC, then whenever you kill an NPC under the bed, their possessions will wind up on the floor unless you write a special case for that. And I think you do have to write a special case for that; my approach would be write a phrase along the lines of "To move X to the real-holder of Y" that checks if Y is under anything, moves X to Y's holder, and puts X under anything that Y is under. 

Also there will be various reaching, accessibility, and possibly visibility rules that you can get to work for containers and supporters that you'd probably have to hand-code for undersides. Depending on what you want to do, maybe one approach would be to make the underside of the bed a container (with appropriate redirects so that putting something under the bed meant putting it in the container, getting under the bed meant entering the container, etc.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2839&start=0#p19808
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: I have some ideas, need input
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-18 09:33:09

Have you thought out the implications of mind control + implementation of sex?

I am seriously squicked by rape included as an "extra feature".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=30#p19809
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-18 09:59:34

[quote="Greeny"]Zarf is correct. The copyright for Alice's adventures in wonderland expired in 1907.
42 years after it's first publication under the 1842 copyright act.

The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy is still in copyright, and will be until 2071, under the 1988 copyright act & amendments.
I'm not sure who owns it, but it's definitely not Douglas Adams' sons, as he does not have any![/quote]
[url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068190/][b]Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1972)[/b][/url] (convert full Youtube movie before it's taken down).
The one in 1985 had a much younger Alice (American version of book), but the 72 one was the best I've seen so far.

Incidentally, Dodgson's original manuscripts were made into one big book called Alice's Adventures Underground.
His publisher cut out whole pages because he was paying (ink, paper, and electricity were rare items to get on a small budget) per word.
He even changed the title, naming it after his startup company (Wonderland Publishing), under the name Lewis Carol, he persuaded the publisher to go with Alice's Adventures In Wonderland which would split the book in two ("Through The Looking Glass").
He got tired of fighting when it was changed again to "Alice In Wonderland" (may have tipped him over the edge from pedophile to stalker).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2843&start=0#p19810
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 Glulx: Roguelike-style save & restore
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-18 10:21:55

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]If I understand it correctly your game only allows the player to have one active game at a time, whereas the roguelikes I played allow you to have as many as you wish.[/quote]

Really? My experience is pretty much limited to the classics, but all of the roguelikes I've spent any amount of time with have used the one-game-at-a-time model. Maybe it's just the philosophy taken up in the Mac and/or iOS ports, but I've never seen any interface for keeping multiple games going at once. (My points of reference are Rogue, Nethack, Slash'Em, POWDER, and 100 Rogues.) Or maybe they do allow for multiple saved games and I'm just missing something in the interface...

Thanks for pointing out the missing restart feature. I knew I had to be missing something!  (I wouldn't call it a bug, though--just an unimplemented feature.  [emote];)[/emote] ) The I6 for deleting a file is actually pretty simple, once you've had a look at the general parameters for handling files in FileIO.i6t. Here's the code to add saved game file deletion (won't work for any other type of file!). You would also need to add the instruction to delete at the appropriate point in the restart code, as well as after quitting. The former, at least, will require a bit of I6.

[code]To delete (filename - external file):
	(- FileIO_DeleteSavedGame({filename}); -).

Include (-
[ FileIO_DeleteSavedGame extf struc fref res;
	if ((extf < 1) || (extf > NO_EXTERNAL_FILES))
		return FileIO_Error(extf, "tried to access a non-file");
	struc = TableOfExternalFiles-->extf;
	fref = glk_fileref_create_by_name(fileusage_SavedGame + fileusage_BinaryMode, Glulx_ChangeAnyToCString(struc-->AUXF_FILENAME), 0);
	if (fref == 0) rfalse;
	if (glk_fileref_does_file_exist(fref)) {
		res = glk_fileref_delete_file(fref);
		if (res ~= 0)
			CarryOutActivity( (+ failing to delete a saved game +) ); 
	}
	glk_fileref_destroy(fref);
];
-).[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2843&start=0#p19811
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 Glulx: Roguelike-style save & restore
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-18 10:26:50

[quote="zarf"]External-file stuff *should* work in Quixe, if you have a reasonably modern browser. However, I haven't tried this code yet.[/quote]

I'm just testing with a local file. I make a couple of moves, then close the browser window, then reopen the game in Quixe (using link from the IDE release page). But Quixe doesn't load the saved state. There aren't any error messages--it appears that the interpreter just doesn't detect the existing savegame file on startup.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2843&start=10#p19812
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 Glulx: Roguelike-style save & restore
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-18 10:38:40

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Erik, if you use the extension as written, I think you should devise a way to communicate to the player that they must restart in order to "commit suicide".[/quote]

I don't actually plan to use this particular roguelike save code at all. The idea really was to get the direct interface to the saved game files going: existence check, write, read, and now delete. Eventually, I'd like to have a full replacement for the command line save/restore interface, which I've always thought of as pretty annoying--not to mention way out of line with prevailing practice in other game genres. The saved game file command interface that this minimal roguelike implementation builds on (i.e., those four I6 routines) essentially lets you provide any game-controlled save interface that you like, e.g. the 3-slot system used in so many casual Flash games. The roguelike layer is just a simple frame to test them with, and is really only two rules on its own.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2838&start=0#p19813
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "rule succeeds" in check stops the whole action
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-18 10:55:06

I hear that the next version of Inform will allow modification of existing rule conditions:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/837651-syntax-a-way-to-change-the-condition-of-an-exist?ref=title">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... ?ref=title</a>

Until then, you have to replace the rule that's stopping your action, or use an Instead rule to manage the whole process.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2848&start=0#p19814
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Soundnotify - yay or nay?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-18 11:01:29

I'm sure that sound notifications will work better than using the timer. I don't think I've seen any I7 implementation of sound notifications, though. You could try contacting Eliuk Blau, the author of the still-unreleased DaMusix, which I believe implements notifications. The other option would be to try building it yourself, maybe by studying the I6 code for playing sounds in the Inform template code and existing extensions, alongside resources like [url=http://www.iffydoemain.org/glkdunces/summary.txt]Marnie Parker's infglk summary[url]. Also check out Emily Short's Glulx Entry Points.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2843&start=10#p19815
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 Glulx: Roguelike-style save & restore
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-18 11:06:03

[quote]I'm just testing with a local file. I make a couple of moves, then close the browser window, then reopen the game in Quixe (using link from the IDE release page). But Quixe doesn't load the saved state. [/quote]

What browser? It sort of matters. :)

Also, testing Quixe on your local hard drive (file: URL) may differ in behavior from Quixe installed on a server (http: URL). The local storage system for Javascript isolates server domains from each other, rather like cookies.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2843&start=10#p19816
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 Glulx: Roguelike-style save & restore
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-18 11:09:40

[quote="ektemple"]Really? My experience is pretty much limited to the classics, but all of the roguelikes I've spent any amount of time with have used the one-game-at-a-time model. Maybe it's just the philosophy taken up in the Mac and/or iOS ports, but I've never seen any interface for keeping multiple games going at once. (My points of reference are Rogue, Nethack, Slash'Em, POWDER, and 100 Rogues.) Or maybe they do allow for multiple saved games and I'm just missing something in the interface...[/quote]
Hm, I seem to recall that I could do this in Nethack... but I may be wrong. I know you can have multiple games going at once in Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.

[quote]Thanks for pointing out the missing restart feature. I knew I had to be missing something!  (I wouldn't call it a bug, though--just an unimplemented feature.  [emote];)[/emote] )[/quote]
You call the ability to ever play more than one game a missing feature? [emote]:P[/emote]

Anyway, thanks for the code! You definitely posted all this at exactly the right time for me. (Also, I would be willing to wrap this up in an official extension and maintain it. Just let me know.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=30#p19817
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-18 11:10:35

All of your history is still wrong.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2839&start=0#p19818
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: I have some ideas, need input
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-18 11:22:27

[quote="gravel"]Have you thought out the implications of mind control + implementation of sex?

I am seriously squicked by rape included as an "extra feature".[/quote]
The game is AIF (adult interactive fiction).
I hand picked mind control just for that fact (the sexual programming is in it already, called chick.t).
Non consent stories (starts out as rape but in mid action is consented to) is what most adult STORY TELLERS go for.
Violent rape is only a fetish for the player who wants to get right in the action.
This was the intent of the programmer of that library, but we don't have to do anything with it.

I personally have a perverted side too, even though I don't consider myself a pervert.
I like, actually love the control aspect of this fetish, but detest violence with a passion and rape even moreso.
This means we'd be working with softcore, mild to strong sexual innuendo, sexually teasing to build sexual tension, voyeurism, exhibitionism, seduction, etc. (seduction is attempted when mind control device is being recharged).

Each NPC (not the same characters) has it's own personality which may not be compatible with normal hypnotism unless something in her nature is implanted (this usually involves a shower or pretend bath and the feeling that nobody else is around).

The original game was built with Tads 2.
The chick.t library (uses obscenities) can also be used with HTML Tads.
Although I thought we'd be working with Inform, Tads would be the better choice for sex scenes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2843&start=10#p19819
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 Glulx: Roguelike-style save & restore
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-07-18 11:25:58

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Hm, I seem to recall that I could do this in Nethack... but I may be wrong. I know you can have multiple games going at once in Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.[/quote]

In Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, you can have multiple saves in order to have different characters, but each character only has the one save. I think most of the others are just one save file per user (though depending on the port, it may be possible to fake being a different user in order to get DCSS-like behavior -- I think you could do this in the Windows port of Nethack by just entering a different name).

Anyway, this extension sounds interesting. I haven't had a chance to look at it yet, but would it be possible to adapt it to save automatically at specific points? That is, what I'd like to do is define checkpoints throughout the game where it will quietly save for you. I don't want to save every turn, just every time important progress is made so the player doesn't have to worry about losing that progress if he screws up (thus allowing the author to be crueler to the player).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1919&start=20#p19820
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Brainstorm: Survival Stuff
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-18 12:00:24

[quote="gravel"]Background: I'm writing a survival/farming sim, and want to make sure I have as many bases covered as possible.  The PC gets to choose equipment before setting off, and I'm sure I'm missing some things, both items and general strategies.

If you were going to be stranded for a long period of time on an island (or an abandoned planet, or whatever your preferred setting is), what would you want to take with you?  In one scenario, you can only have what you can personally carry.  In another, you've got whatever you want, within a reasonable budget (ie no helicoptors). 

What general strategies might you base your equipment choices around?  

Things you know about your environment ahead of time: it's temperate, with plenty of trees; it gets cold in the winter and hot in the summer, and it's currently early to mid spring.  

Many thanks.[/quote]
I'm sorry to tell you this, but a similar idea has been taken already.
It's a shareware platformer (30 some dollars) called "Sandbox Of God".
You are god, creating Earth, man, and intelligent rabbits, and you must get the order of things and interaction correct to score big and reach certain goals.

For instance do you answer someone's prayer for food, supplying him with fish falling from the skies, or let man figure out how to fish on his own?

I got it when it was still freeware.

The Sims: Castaways also has a similar (if not the same) theme.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1919&start=20#p19821
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Brainstorm: Survival Stuff
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-18 12:11:04

If I were going to be stranded for a long time on an island, I'd probably want to have some good companions with me.  Perhaps a professor; a movie star; maybe a millionaire . . . and his wife.  (Of course, you might want to be cautious about inadvertantly violating somebody's intellectual property rights, just on the off chance that somebody has used that idea before.)


Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2840&start=0#p19822
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Regions
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-18 12:17:10

Like God, the tax collector is omnipresent.


Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2843&start=10#p19823
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 Glulx: Roguelike-style save & restore
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-18 12:19:16

[quote="zarf"][What browser? It sort of matters. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Actually, I don't think it matters in this case--Firefox 5 and the latest Chrome on Mac OS X (at least I hope it doesn't matter!)  [emote];)[/emote] 

[quote="zarf"]
Also, testing Quixe on your local hard drive (file: URL) may differ in behavior from Quixe installed on a server (http: URL). The local storage system for Javascript isolates server domains from each other, rather like cookies.[/quote]

I wondered if running Quixe from a file on my hard drive might make a difference. I will try to remember to test from an http URL tonight.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1919&start=20#p19824
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Brainstorm: Survival Stuff
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-18 12:20:03

[quote="Robert Rothman"]If I were going to be stranded for a long time on an island, I'd probably want to have some good companions with me.  Perhaps a professor; a movie star; maybe a millionaire . . . and his wife.  (Of course, you might want to be cautious about inadvertantly violating somebody's intellectual property rights, just on the off chance that somebody has used that idea before.)


Robert Rothman[/quote]

Ha!  I think I'd ditch the movie star for a robot that senses danger, but maybe that's the wrong approach.

[quote="IF noob"]I'm sorry to tell you this, but a similar idea has been taken already.[/quote]

Thanks for the mention of Sandbox of God, although it looks to be a god-game, and not particularly similar.  (If you have details that aren't in the first couple reviews, please let me know.)  There's plenty of movies/books/stories with a similar premise.  (I hesitate to say "story", because that implies more plotting than is present.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1919&start=30#p19825
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Brainstorm: Survival Stuff
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-18 12:21:36

[quote]Ha! I think I'd ditch the movie star for a robot that senses danger, but maybe that's the wrong approach.

[/quote]

Right approach, maybe, but wrong show, Will Robinson.


Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=30#p19826
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-18 12:23:57

[quote="zarf"]All of your history is still wrong.[/quote]
Prove it.
He was a sketch artist, amateur photographer, and painter of nude family portraits (including naked little children and siblings).
This is coming from a man with a very religious background.

By the time he wrote Alice's Adventure's, he was fantasizing about Alice Liddle in an infatuation manner.
He spent most of his time with her and infatuation fantasies quickly turned to lover fantasies.
There are many resources you can look up where he confesses his love (and I don't use the term loosely) to Liddle.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2843&start=10#p19827
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 Glulx: Roguelike-style save & restore
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-18 12:27:02

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote]Thanks for pointing out the missing restart feature. I knew I had to be missing something!  (I wouldn't call it a bug, though--just an unimplemented feature.  [emote];)[/emote] )[/quote]
You call the ability to ever play more than one game a missing feature? [emote]:P[/emote][/quote]

Well, you [i]can[/i] play more than one game. You just can't delete the saved file from within the game. You have to delete it from the game's folder instead. But I agree it's one heck of a missing feature...

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Also, I would be willing to wrap this up in an official extension and maintain it. Just let me know.[/quote]
Please, run with it! I'm happy too that it will help with Kerkerkruip. (Tangential question--in English, "dungeon" comes from the political side, once having meant "castle" or "the lord's tower/keep". Is the Dutch word for dungeon really related to churches [[i]kerk[/i]]?)

[quote="shammack"]Would it be possible to adapt it to save automatically at specific points? That is, what I'd like to do is define checkpoints throughout the game where it will quietly save for you. I don't want to save every turn, just every time important progress is made so the player doesn't have to worry about losing that progress if he screws up (thus allowing the author to be crueler to the player).[/quote]
Sure! Just jettison the rule that saves every turn and insert the save-game instruction wherever you need it in your code.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1919&start=30#p19828
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Brainstorm: Survival Stuff
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-18 12:30:13

[quote="Robert Rothman"][quote]Ha! I think I'd ditch the movie star for a robot that senses danger, but maybe that's the wrong approach.

[/quote]

Right approach, maybe, but wrong show, Will Robinson.


Robert Rothman[/quote]

Still a more interesting character than the movie star.  :p

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2847&start=0#p19829
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IfComp 2011??
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-07-18 12:30:36

Well, the form for entering a game (after logging in and signing up to be an author) appears to be up.  That's good news, I think.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2843&start=10#p19830
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 Glulx: Roguelike-style save & restore
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-18 12:36:16

[quote="ektemple"](Tangential question--in English, "dungeon" comes from the political side, once having meant "castle" or "the lord's tower/keep". Is the Dutch word for dungeon really related to churches [[i]kerk[/i]]?)[/quote]
No, "kerker" comes from the Latin "carcer", which means "prison". This is also the root of the English "to incarcerate". On the other hand, "kerk" (like "church" and "Kirch", I assume) comes from the Greek "kuriakon" which means "(house) of the Lord".

The Dutch also has "donjon", which still means "keep" -- this is not a commonly used word, as you can imagine.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2847&start=0#p19831
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IfComp 2011??
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-07-18 12:43:40

While we're on the subject (and it saves me creating a separate thread), is discussion now allowed of the games by IFComp authors? I seem to remember reading a thread on RAIF/RGIF a few years ago that hinted it was, but I'm not 100% sure.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2843&start=10#p19832
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 Glulx: Roguelike-style save & restore
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-18 12:43:44

Interesting.  I'm not surprised to learn of the similar terms, given that English and Dutch both derive primarily from Old Low German.  However, I would have guessed that "donjon" (later, dungeon) would have come to English from French (possibly reflecting the fact that, following the conquest, the Norman occupiers tended to be the lords) and would therefore not have expected to find a cognate term in Dutch.  (Must be from all that contact with the Francophones in Belgium. [emote]:)[/emote]


Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2839&start=0#p19833
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: I have some ideas, need input
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-18 12:45:30

[quote="IF noob"]Non consent stories (starts out as rape but in mid action is consented to) is what most adult STORY TELLERS go for.[/quote]

I haven't played any AIF, but it's certainly not true in the wider sense of erotica/porn.  (And even if it weren't, "everyone else implements rape" is not really a response.)  

I'm glad you're aware of some of the implications involved. 

I have so, so many problems with this concept that I don't know where to begin.  I guess I'm not going to go into it farther unless you're interested.  Please, though, put a warning on the game so players know what they're getting into.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2843&start=10#p19834
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 Glulx: Roguelike-style save & restore
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-18 12:46:14

[quote="shammack"][quote="VictorGijsbers"]Hm, I seem to recall that I could do this in Nethack... but I may be wrong. I know you can have multiple games going at once in Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.[/quote]

In Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, you can have multiple saves in order to have different characters, but each character only has the one save. I think most of the others are just one save file per user (though depending on the port, it may be possible to fake being a different user in order to get DCSS-like behavior -- I think you could do this in the Windows port of Nethack by just entering a different name).[/quote]

On my Mac port of nethack, you can have multiple simultaneous games going by using different names for your characters. (Looks like the saved games I have lying around are Montana the archeologist, Percy the knight, and Name the valkyrie -- I don't always remember to type something in when I restart.) On the SLASH'EM server I've played on, I only have one saved game for my profile (I might be able to get simultaneous games going on the two different versions that server hosts), and I don't choose my characters name; it's always my username. Other nethack servers seem to me to work the same way. 

I think the deal is that a lot of these games started out played on shared servers with terminal interfaces, so they just mapped one game to one account, and then for locally hosted versions they just mimicked this by basically treating different names for characters like different usernames. Basically what Scott just said. (Though I don't know if the internal workings of this save system are anything like the server copy with multiple usernames, or whether it just kind of looks like that.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1919&start=30#p19835
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Brainstorm: Survival Stuff
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-18 12:52:01

[quote="gravel"][quote="Robert Rothman"]If I were going to be stranded for a long time on an island, I'd probably want to have some good companions with me.  Perhaps a professor; a movie star; maybe a millionaire . . . and his wife.  (Of course, you might want to be cautious about inadvertantly violating somebody's intellectual property rights, just on the off chance that somebody has used that idea before.)


Robert Rothman[/quote]

Ha!  I think I'd ditch the movie star for a robot that senses danger, but maybe that's the wrong approach.

[quote="IF noob"]I'm sorry to tell you this, but a similar idea has been taken already.[/quote]

Thanks for the mention of Sandbox of God, although it looks to be a god-game, and not particularly similar.  (If you have details that aren't in the first couple reviews, please let me know.)  There's plenty of movies/books/stories with a similar premise.  (I hesitate to say "story", because that implies more plotting than is present.)[/quote]
You can laugh now, but EA has had some lawsuits in the past (Jack Thompson's nudity suit and Lifecycle Vs Sims 2), and right now they're about ready to strike back (EA games Vs Lindin Lab).

Castaways has the exact (and I mean exact) same scenario as you.
They credited Gilligan's Island for the inspiration, but you didn't even know about it.

Usually it's a time traveling scenario, thanks to "The Time Machine".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=30#p19836
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-18 12:52:40

I now believe you are trolling. Here, and in the "need input" thread. You've changed grounds too many times for it to be accidental.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2847&start=0#p19837
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IfComp 2011??
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-07-18 12:52:54

This board hosts a dedicated authors-only forum during the IF Comp. Authors can discuss the games with other authors, but it's not public. As far as I know, the ban on public discussion still applies.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=30#p19838
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-07-18 13:08:11

Seriously, guys, this thread is about copyright.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2847&start=0#p19839
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IfComp 2011??
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-07-18 13:14:12

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1919&start=30#p19840
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Brainstorm: Survival Stuff
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-18 13:14:48

[quote="IF noob"][quote="gravel"][quote="Robert Rothman"]If I were going to be stranded for a long time on an island, I'd probably want to have some good companions with me.  Perhaps a professor; a movie star; maybe a millionaire . . . and his wife.  (Of course, you might want to be cautious about inadvertantly violating somebody's intellectual property rights, just on the off chance that somebody has used that idea before.)


Robert Rothman[/quote]

Ha!  I think I'd ditch the movie star for a robot that senses danger, but maybe that's the wrong approach.

[quote="IF noob"]I'm sorry to tell you this, but a similar idea has been taken already.[/quote]

Thanks for the mention of Sandbox of God, although it looks to be a god-game, and not particularly similar.  (If you have details that aren't in the first couple reviews, please let me know.)  There's plenty of movies/books/stories with a similar premise.  (I hesitate to say "story", because that implies more plotting than is present.)[/quote]
You can laugh now, but EA has had some lawsuits in the past (Jack Thompson's nudity suit and Lifecycle Vs Sims 2), and right now they're about ready to strike back (EA games Vs Lindin Lab).

Castaways has the exact (and I mean exact) same scenario as you.
They credited Gilligan's Island for the inspiration, but you didn't even know about it.

Usually it's a time traveling scenario, thanks to "The Time Machine".[/quote]

With all due respect, you don't know what you're talking about.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2783&start=20#p19841
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Mobile App Pricing for IF...?
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-07-18 13:22:51

Yes, I can imagine myself paying $0.99 every once in a while for an IF game.

Slightly longer answer:
I don't have a smartphone/tablet/ereader, so I'm only familiar with the world of apps through the Kindle and Nook ebooks that I've sometimes bought and read on my laptop.  I think ebooks in general are way overpriced, but sometimes I browse through the science fiction and fantasy selection, seriously considering the titles that are offered for under five bucks or so.  I wish more ebooks were offered for $0.99, or even less.  I like the idea of walking over to the bank and throwing my spare change onto my debit card so I can buy a novel to read on my computer, and I would do the same for an IF game.

I can imagine the IFDB listing commercial games alongside free ones, charging you the $0.99 to add a title to your commercial library attached to your profile, which would then allow you to download the game (or play it online if available) as much as you want.  I would support something like this.

However, I don't want our free community to go anywhere, either.  If 99-cent games were widely adopted, I'd at least want the annual Comp and our other competitions to stay open and bar the commercial games from being entered.  Also, I think there will always be a place for light-hearted, unpolished, perhaps buggy games.  I think the IF community takes such games too seriously as it is; maybe if a good portion of the more polished games were commercial, people wouldn't get so mad about the casual, buggy ones.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=30#p19842
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-18 13:51:37

[quote="katz"]Seriously, guys, this thread is about copyright.[/quote]
I'm not the one who changed the subject, it was the person who first started arguing with me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2841&start=0#p19843
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: GlkTerm and type styles
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-07-18 13:58:49

Hmm, I rebuilt with that version and got the same results.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2850&start=0#p19844
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Announce: "Choice of Intrigues" / "Affairs of the Court"
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-07-18 14:15:06

Have you ever wished to be the heroine of a romance novel? Think you could have run Anne Boleyn’s life better than she did? Want to walk a mile in Princess Kate’s gorgeous shoes? Now you can. Choice of Games, a quirky independent games company, has released their newest interactive novel, "Choice of Intrigues"--giving you the chance to star in your very own royal romance.

"Choice of Intrigues" is a sequel to last year’s popular "Choice of Romance," and is available as an In-App Purchase on iPhones, iPads, and Android devices. Choice of Games is also releasing "Choice of Romance" and "Choice of Intrigues" as an omnibus edition on Amazon Kindle, entitled "Affairs of the Court."

<a class="postlink" href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/choice-of-romance/id386916020">http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/choice-o ... d386916020</a>
<a class="postlink" href="https://market.android.com/details?id=com.choiceofgames.choiceofromance">https://market.android.com/details?id=c ... eofromance</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.amazon.com/Affairs-of-the-Court/dp/B005727M3E">http://www.amazon.com/Affairs-of-the-Co ... B005727M3E</a>

The games are also available to play on the web at: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.choiceofgames.com/romance/">http://www.choiceofgames.com/romance/</a>

Play as a young noble who comes to court looking for love... and catches the monarch’s eye. Plunge into court politics and change the course of history, or pursue a love affair that rocks the kingdom to its foundations. Match wits with the schemers of the court, or play your suitors off each other. Seek wealth and power, or seek true love.

"Choice of Romance" has been critically acclaimed, with AppSafari calling it "a wonderfully fascinating and addictive experience that will leave you playing it over and over again as you attempt to discover each new ending" and Jezebel approving the "sexually liberated update" to the choose-your-own-adventure style of storytelling. "Choice of Intrigues" and the combined Kindle game "Affairs of the Court" continue the story begun in "Choice of Romance" while exploring the political machinations within the royal court.

"In these games, you control the story," said Dan Fabulich, co-founder of Choice of Games. "You can choose to play as male or female, gay or straight. You can choose to pursue the King or the Queen of Iberia. Or you can reject the monarch entirely and marry someone else. Or focus on political intrigue rather than intrigues of the heart. Every ending is a direct consequence of your choices, and every ending is meaningful."

"Affairs of the Court" is Choice of Games’ fourth release for Kindle, following the successful launch of "Choice of the Dragon," "Choice of Broadsides," and "Choice of the Vampire" in 2010. "Choice of Intrigues" is Choice of Games’ first sequel available through In-App Purchases.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2851&start=0#p19845
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: 50% Off Kindle Interactive Fiction
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-07-18 14:17:12

Amazon is running a sale on its interactive fiction titles for Kindle, ending July 24th. You can get all of their interactive fiction games, including Fighting Fantasy, Inheritance, and Choice of Games, for 50% off.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=pe_128790_20465320_pe_btn/?ie=UTF8&rh=i:aps,k:B004EP3040|B004EUOFGC|B004JWHW92|B004S7A1AU|B005727M3E|B005727M3E|B004QV9XPW|B0054TZOX0|B004FRH3PO|B005B1EA04|B005C6AYVW|B00515LD0K|B005C6BKD8&page=1">http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=pe_ ... KD8&page=1</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=30#p19846
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-18 14:25:37

Please stop talking.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2850&start=0#p19847
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Announce: "Choice of Intrigues" / "Affairs of the Court"
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-18 14:35:38

Does the sequel follow directly on from Choice of Romance on the website? I don't see a link for Choice of Intrigues on the main games page.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2841&start=0#p19848
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: GlkTerm and type styles
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-18 14:44:20

Try downloading it again and recompiling (again). I forgot to push the changes up to the repository.

Sorry about that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2803&start=0#p19849
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Giving objects while using conversation package by Eric
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-18 15:14:42

[quote="kanato"]Well, that's simple and easy, thanks!

One more question. Is there any way to tell if the action has been done within the response? I mean, I know I can do stuff like [code]
Response of the wizard when asked about tyrant king for the first time:[/code] but is it possible to do something like this?
[code]
Response of the wizard when asked about tyrant king:
	say "[if this is the first time we have asked this] *or* [if the number of times we have asked the wizard about the tyrant king is greater than two]
[/code][/quote]
Is there any reason you can't use this method?
[code]Response of the wizard when asked about tyrant king:
	say "[one of]Oh, you don't know about the tyrant king? Well let me tell you. [or][or]Didn't I already tell you about him? [stopping]The tyrant king rules over the western kingdom..."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2846&start=0#p19850
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: relations with three or more possible states
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-18 15:34:29

I had need of something like that when I was writing Multitudes. I ended up using a table read by To Decide phrases and conditional relations and set by To increase/decrease etc. phrases.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2839&start=0#p19851
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: I have some ideas, need input
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-18 15:44:25

[quote="gravel"][quote="IF noob"]Non consent stories (starts out as rape but in mid action is consented to) is what most adult STORY TELLERS go for.[/quote]

I haven't played any AIF, but it's certainly not true in the wider sense of erotica/porn.  (And even if it weren't, "everyone else implements rape" is not really a response.)  

I'm glad you're aware of some of the implications involved. 

I have so, so many problems with this concept that I don't know where to begin.  I guess I'm not going to go into it farther unless you're interested.  Please, though, put a warning on the game so players know what they're getting into.[/quote]
I say "adult" and your mind immediately goes to rape?

I've spent some time with the porn/erotica community and rape is not in the majority of the stories (actually incest is, but we don't need to get into that either).

In fact it can be a "behind closed doors" type thing often seen in PG13 movies.
Like I said, the sex programming is already done and you don't even have to go though it to advance the story.

It's an part IF and part AIF story, so just program the IF building interior and the AIF building exterior.

Actually inside the AIF buildings, it will be completely empty until you take someone there, in which case details don't have to be revealed.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2839&start=0#p19852
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: I have some ideas, need input
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-18 16:01:18

[quote="IF noob"]Non consent stories (starts out as rape but in mid action is consented to) is what most adult STORY TELLERS go for.[/quote]

[quote="IF noob"]I've spent some time with the porn/erotica community and rape is not in the majority of the stories [/quote]

???

[quote="IF noob"]
I say "adult" and your mind immediately goes to rape?[/quote]

Actually, it was more the bit about making NPC's have sex without their consent.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2596&start=0#p19853
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Site with game ratings?
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-18 16:35:15

[quote="Karl"]I was wondering if there's a site with IF games that have user ratings and comments as well?  I am looking for games that users consider to be the best.

Failing that, I would love recommendations!  I am familiar with how to play, but haven't played any in a long time, and none that were produced in "modern times".   [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
This is a game that I recommend (relevant to project)
AIF (rated X)
"The Backlot" (click [b]Games[/b] on author's news page).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2849&start=0#p19854
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Custom "physical" relations
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-07-18 16:59:44

Robert,
[quote="Robert Rothman"]If I understand correctly, when I use one of Inform 7's built-in relations involving physical juxtaposition of objects (containment, support, etc.), the effect is to treat one object as a "branch" of the other on the "tree" which represents how Inform handles objects.[/quote]
Although the I7 docs don't describe the various enclosure relations this way, the underlying i6 code does use what is referred to in the DM4 as the "object tree" to track enclosure relations. (Although I don't think "branches" is used in its terminology, but rather "parent, child, and sibling.") In fact, from an i6 standpoint, this tree describes [i]all[/i] standard forms of containment (other than incorporation) using attributes to specify which type. For example, in i6 when a person is the parent of something, that thing is automatically "carried" unless it has a clothing and a worn attribute that are both true -- in which case the thing is being "worn." (The I7 concept of incorporation is handled by a separate "component parts tree" which is unrelated to the object tree; it is essentially an old i6 scoping hack which has been added to the core I7 syntax and functionality.)

[quote="Robert Rothman"]First, does any of this really matter?[/quote]
Short Answer: Yes, but admitting it is the first step.

Long Answer: What I mean is that it [i]does[/i] matter, but it's not a big deal for a specific game. A general implementation like an extension, however, will require understanding and testing of weird edge cases. Containment is a fundamental part of the Inform world model; in addition to the scope issues that Matt W. mentioned, the position of objects in the object tree affects other things at the template (i6) level, such as light - transmission, output from the list writer, and in some cases even disambiguation.
[quote="Robert Rothman"]Second, if it does matter, is there a way to make custom relations such as this behave like the built-in relations?[/quote]
I don't think you can modify or piggyback on the existing forms of enclosure using purely I7 syntax. (I can't find the quote in the manual so this might not be true anymore.) You can hack containment with pretty simple i6 inclusions if necessary. 

Final Relevant Answer: If you're just interested in modelling an underneath relation, check out [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Eric%20Eve/Underside/index.html]Eric Eve's "Underside" extension[/url] which uses I7 - containment to simulate this. I think it would be easier to modify this extension for a specific use than to build an alternate implementation from the ground up. If you're interested in a different type of containment, post the details or PM me. I have a working general implementation of "indirect holders" (tweezers, butterfly nets, etc.) which was inspired by Jim Aikin's "holder" extension for i6. It needs an update for the current build as well as documentation. (Like Matt, I'm also still working on Endosphere's multiple persuasion problem. I'll probably just post what I have soon since this type-safety thing is killing me.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2851&start=0#p19855
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: 50% Off Kindle Interactive Fiction
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-07-18 17:13:39

The link doesn't take me to any IF titles for the Kindle that I can see - is Christopher Paolini's [i]Inheritance[/i] IF? I always thought it was just a novel. And I can't see any Fighting Fantasy titles that are for the Kindle either, just the paperback versions (which I already have).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=30#p19856
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-07-18 17:15:58

If you click the Profile link below someone's post, you are taken to a details page for that user. Clicking the "Add foe" link beneath the username will hide that user's posts.

To review your list of foes, you can click the User Control Panel link in the upper right of the forum interface. Then select the "Friends & Foes" option from the left side menu, and choose "Manage foes".

Hope this helps!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2851&start=0#p19857
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: 50% Off Kindle Interactive Fiction
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-07-18 17:17:49

Not sure if this applies but "Active Content" for the Kindle is not available outside the US.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=30#p19858
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: Greeny / DateTime: 2011-07-18 17:27:45

[quote="IF nob"][b]Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1972)[/b] (convert full Youtube movie before it's taken down).
The one in 1985 had a much younger Alice (American version of book), but the 72 one was the best I've seen so far.
(rest of random sensless drivel. Snipped)
[/quote]Wtf does that have to do with the copyright of the original work? This thread is about copyright, not film reviews ffs!
Your reply doesn't even attempt to make a point.
Just because someone made a movie of it in 1972 they cannot stop you from using anything in the original Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
They own the copyright to THAT MOVIE ONLY (Not that it bothers you any!). You are completely free to write an IF work called "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"  and include as much 
as you like of the original work AS IT IS OUT OF COPYRIGHT. The makers of the 1972 movie, or any other that is based on the original, cannot make ANY claim against you if you only use stuff from the original work.

[quote="IF nob"]I'm not the one who changed the subject, it was the person who first started arguing with me.[/quote]It is not possible that anyone is arguing with you, that would imply a rational exchange of ideas!
.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2839&start=10#p19859
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: I have some ideas, need input
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-18 17:43:58

[quote="gravel"][quote="IF noob"]Non consent stories (starts out as rape but in mid action is consented to) is what most adult STORY TELLERS go for.[/quote]

[quote="IF noob"]I've spent some time with the porn/erotica community and rape is not in the majority of the stories [/quote]

???

[quote="IF noob"]
I say "adult" and your mind immediately goes to rape?[/quote]

Actually, it was more the bit about making NPC's have sex without their consent.[/quote]
1: Rape isn't in the majority of the erotica community.
In pornographic fiction, non con is in a separate category than rape, in reality it is rape (unless you mean stuff like casual non consented genital touching or something).

2: I said each NPC has her own personality which may be immune to hypnotic suggestion of things not normally done.
If it is attempted to bypass this, anything but sex may be done to her if it's in her nature.

I'm sure you've noticed I only said she or her.
That's because the person who programed this library liked girl/girl scenes, unless it's with the player.
There are men in the game too.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2839&start=10#p19860
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: I have some ideas, need input
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-18 17:59:29

So there's sexual assault against women, but only if it's in their nature (or if they've taken a shower recently)?  Well, then, I guess that's totally okay.  Nothing *at all* problematic there.  

Perhaps I wasn't clear that my concern was not with the level of explicitness (hardcore vs. softcore), but with including issues of consent without at least a warning, and at least avoiding repeating some of the worst stereotypes about rape (that victims secretly like it, that there's something about a victim that makes hir responsible).  It trivializes rape, and you're doing so as a tacked-on feature: it wasn't necessary for the original plot or story, it's just a nice bonus.  

That's the base issue for me whether or not the rape happens behind closed doors.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2849&start=0#p19861
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Custom "physical" relations
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-18 18:25:55

Thanks.  Ultimately, I have to give some thought to how far I want to go with this.  I will look into the Underside extension, although at first glance it seems like it may be a bit of overkill for my purposes.  Basically, I have one puzzle which will require the player to put something under something else; once I build the concept of "under" into the game, however, I feel like I should at least deal with the possibility that a player may try to put other things underneath something.  The easy way would be just to block any attempt to put anything under something else, except in the one case where it is required.  The hard way would be fully to implement the concept and to allow a player to put anything under anything else (at least in those cases where it is a physically reasonable thing to do).  I suspect I may take something of a middle ground.


Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2843&start=10#p19862
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 Glulx: Roguelike-style save & restore
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-18 18:36:37

[quote="zarf"][quote]I'm just testing with a local file. I make a couple of moves, then close the browser window, then reopen the game in Quixe (using link from the IDE release page). But Quixe doesn't load the saved state. [/quote]

What browser? It sort of matters. [emote]:)[/emote]

Also, testing Quixe on your local hard drive (file: URL) may differ in behavior from Quixe installed on a server (http: URL). The local storage system for Javascript isolates server domains from each other, rather like cookies.[/quote]

OK, I was able to test from a server (i.e., over the web as opposed to locally), with the same results. On the plus side, I was able to use Firebug to see that the saved game data is being loaded into LocalStorage each turn, and it shows up in the DOM again when the page is reloaded. It seems that what is happening, then, is that the restore code is not actually restoring that data (a message should be printed on successful restore).

Here's the link to the test:

<a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Test/play.html">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Test/play.html</a>

I usually go north a couple of times and then reload the page.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2839&start=10#p19863
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: I have some ideas, need input
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-18 18:38:33

You know this is just a game don't you?
It was never meant to be taken seriously.

The author of the original game knew this even before he put in his sex commands.
If you have a problem with this, don't let the door hit you on the way out!  [emote]:x[/emote]

Women's Libbers.  [emote]:roll:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2852&start=0#p19864
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Scene linking and conditions
User: Flourish / DateTime: 2011-07-18 18:44:36

Here's the code:

[code]
When Scene 1 ends:
	if the finale flag is true:
		if the relationship flag is true:
			Scene 2 begins;
		otherwise:
			Scene 3 begins;
	otherwise:
		if the relationship flag is true:
			Scene 4 begins;
		otherwise:
			Scene 5 begins.[/code]

(Names of scenes have been changed to protect the innocent.)

The scenes themselves have already been defined elsewhere, and yet the error text returns:

[i]You wrote 'Scene 2 begins' but this is a phrase which I don't recognise, possibly because it is one you meant to define but never got round to, or because the wording is wrong (see the Phrasebook section of the Index to check). Alternatively, it may be that the text immediately previous to this was a definition whose ending, normally a full stop, is missing?[/i]

For context, this bit is at the end of my game. The two flags (relationship and finale) are truth states tracking two attitudes the player has towards different things. The four scenes are the four endgame scenes, which diverge based on the player's attitudes.

Any thoughts on how to fix this and accomplish my goals here?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2852&start=0#p19865
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scene linking and conditions
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-18 18:49:24

You can't explicitly begin a scene that way, for reasons I don't fully understand.  Scene beginning/ending conditions are declared separately, ie. "Scene 2 begins when the whatchamacallit is on the whatsit.  Scene 2 ends when the yoink is carried by the player."

The easiest replacement is probably for you to set a couple truth states or numbers that you can manipulate when it's time to start or end a scene, ie "2_toggle is a number that varies.  Scene 2 begins when 2_toggle is 1.  Scene 2 ends when 2_toggle is 0."  Then, in place of "Scene 2 begins", you'd just toggle the appropriate variable, with a "now 2_toggle is 1" or whatever, and Bob's your uncle.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2839&start=10#p19866
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: I have some ideas, need input
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-18 18:59:48

[quote="IF noob"]
If you have a problem with this, don't let the door hit you on the way out!  [emote]:x[/emote]
[/quote]

Who was it that asked for feedback in the first place?  

[quote="IF noob"]You know this is just a game don't you?
It was never meant to be taken seriously.[/quote]

Ah, yes, "you're interrogating from the wrong perspective."
Ooh, I've almost got bingo on my Internet Troll Tropes card.

Now maybe you'll call me a feminist as though it was a bad thing.

[quote="IF noob"]Women's Libbers. [emote]:roll:[/emote][/quote]

Eh, close enough.  

Bingo!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2839&start=10#p19867
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: I have some ideas, need input
User: Greeny / DateTime: 2011-07-18 19:02:05

I notice IF noob is asking in this & other threads for people to work with him.
This is a public forum open to people of all ages. 
I hope anyone considering working with this guy, carefully reads his posts before thinking [b]VERY[/b] carefully about giving him their contact details.

The fact he is arguing against those who challenge his posts, shows it's not a case of mis-communication, 
He actually thinks this stuff is cool !!!!!!!!!!!

[rant=WARNING: CONTAINS ADULT THEMES & LANGUAGE][quote="IF noob"]All children in game are young adults (18 - 20 something) to avoid sexual themes with teens, pre-teens, toddlers, infants, or newborns.[/quote]Do you want to work with, and give your details to, someone who thinks it is neccessary to tell you to avoid sexual themes with (among others) toddlers, infants & newborns !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[quote="IF noob"]Violent rape is only a fetish for the player who wants to get right in the action.[/quote] !!!!!!!!

[quote="IF noob"]You know this is just a game don't you?[/quote]Yes & Nazism is just an ideology. Dickhead.

[quote="IF noob"]Women's Libbers. [emote]:roll:[/emote][/quote]Anyone think this misogynistic twat has got a single worthwhile thing to say... Anyone?[/rant]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2839&start=10#p19868
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: I have some ideas, need input
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-18 19:14:10

[rant][b]FUCK YOU!![/b]  [emote]:evil:[/emote][/rant]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2839&start=10#p19869
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: I have some ideas, need input
User: Greeny / DateTime: 2011-07-18 19:16:48

Bingo!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2840&start=0#p19870
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Regions
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-07-18 19:16:49

Actually, my problem was quite a bit simpler than I had imagined it: All I had to do was move the tax collector off-stage then back on when I need it again. [emote]:roll:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2852&start=0#p19871
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scene linking and conditions
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-18 19:31:49

I've never written anything with scenes (hell, I've never written anything with rooms), but isn't this a job for multiple endings for scenes, as in section 10.8? If your ending conditions for scene 1 are relatively compact (say "we have kissed Clark") then you could have something like:

[code]Scene 1 ends casually when we have kissed Clark and the relationship flag is true and the finale flag is false.
Scene 1 ends smoochily when we have kissed Clark and the relationship flag is true and the finale flag is true.
Scene 1 ends sadly when we have kissed Clark and the relationship flag is false and the finale flag is true.
Scene 1 ends inconclusively when we have kissed Clark and the relationship flag is false and the finale flag is false.
Scene 2 begins when Scene 1 ends casually.
Scene 3 begins when Scene 1 ends smoochily.
Scene 4 begins when Scene 1 ends sadly.
Scene 5 begins when Scene 1 ends inconclusively.[/code]

Not tested even for compiling, or for whether I lined up your conditions with the scene numbers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2839&start=10#p19872
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: I have some ideas, need input
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-07-18 19:42:56

I hate to do this but we're only on page two and we've already seen Nazis, accusations of trolling, unnecessary profanity and the omission of a serial comma.

Let's try to resume civil discussion in a new thread.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2848&start=0#p19873
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Soundnotify - yay or nay?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-18 19:43:29

Thanks. I've already visited most of these ports of call.

I don't think I'm ready for more of that build it yourself agony [emote];)[/emote] I did that to work out how to create new channels. Since I don't even know the format of Inform 6 except in a monkey-see-monkey-do way, it took days for me to work out 8 lines of code that would compile. And every time I tried to get help, google took me back to that glk for dunces page. Argh!

Glulx Entry Points reminds you that 'Currently Inform is not designed to support sound output properly across all systems.'

Some notes on DaMusix says that soundnotify doesn't work correctly in some interpreters.

I think the last port of call will be to approach Eliuk.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2852&start=0#p19874
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scene linking and conditions
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-07-18 19:47:52

Well, if you need every scene to have a starter-button, would this work?

[code]A scene can be active or dormant. A scene is usually dormant.
To launch (play - a scene): if the play is dormant, now the play is active.

Home is a room. The Black Swan is a scene. The Black Swan begins when the Black Swan is active.

Instead of jumping: launch the Black Swan.[/code]

The only real niggle is that you need to define each scene as beginning when [name of scene] is active (and you have to use the above syntax, too -- it apparently doesn't work if you substitute "it").

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2852&start=0#p19875
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scene linking and conditions
User: Flourish / DateTime: 2011-07-18 20:49:04

Gravel, it is not true that you can't begin a scene that way -- at least, if it's all one sentence. In fact, in the i7 manual it is explicitly stated that you can begin a scene saying "When Scene 1 ends, Scene 2 begins." That said, it's quite possible that the problem I'm having is the conditionals, in which case there must be some workaround... I can't be the only person who's had this problem.

Matt W, that was a very early thought I had. The main reason it doesn't work appears to be that you cannot have multiple variables affecting how the scenes end. That seems really silly to me, but it also appears to be true (and folks on the ifMud agree, which makes me think it's not just some alternate problem). That's not to say that the ultimate solution might not involve multiple scene endings, it's just that I can't see how right now and I don't think it's something that can be solved with easy reference to the i7 manual. (I don't [i]think[/i].)

Eleas, the issue is that I specifically don't need each scene to have a starter-button. There should be [i]one[/i] starter button - which I have already taken care of (Scene 1 ends based on that starter button). At that point, all the various numerical values that the player has generated, indicating their attitudes about different topics, should be tallied and the output results in them going to one of four possible following scenes. Does that makes sense?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2852&start=0#p19876
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scene linking and conditions
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-18 21:07:11

Right, sorry, I should have been more specific.  You can't directly start a scene within conditionals, and you can't create new rules to start a scene in the middle of the game - as I understand it, the conditions are set out ahead of time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2852&start=0#p19877
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scene linking and conditions
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-18 21:08:19

[quote="Flourish"]Gravel, it is not true that you can't begin a scene that way -- at least, if it's all one sentence. In fact, in the i7 manual it is explicitly stated that you can begin a scene saying "When Scene 1 ends, Scene 2 begins." That said, it's quite possible that the problem I'm having is the conditionals, in which case there must be some workaround... I can't be the only person who's had this problem.[/quote]

Hrm. If that works (as opposed to "Scene 2 begins when scene 1 ends") it seems like it must be a special case to me. The docs at 10.2 say that "Scene 1 begins..." can be followed by any condition, which will be something like "we have kissed Clark" or "Dirk is in Professor Regius's study" or "The player holds the rubber chicken." (I think.) But it can't be done as a standalone phrase, as in "After taking the rubber chicken: Now scene 1 begins," the way you could say "After taking the rubber chicken: Now the player is embarrassed." See section 10.9:

[quote]There is no phrase with the power to say "make Act II begin right now",[/quote]

[quote]Matt W, that was a very early thought I had. The main reason it doesn't work appears to be that you cannot have multiple variables affecting how the scenes end. That seems really silly to me, but it also appears to be true (and folks on the ifMud agree, which makes me think it's not just some alternate problem).[/quote]

Oh, phoo. Well, if that's the problem then I'd try some kind of decide phrase, along the lines of:

[code]To decide whether romance triumphs:
   if the relationship flag is true and the finale flag is true, yes;
   no.[/code]

And then you can say "Scene 1 ends smoochily when we have kissed Clark and romance triumphs. Scene 2 begins when Scene 1 ends smoochily." etc. (Sorry for the examples, though I do feel they are faithful to the spirit of 10.8 of the documentation.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=40#p19878
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: Kate McKee / DateTime: 2011-07-18 21:21:02

[quote="zarf"](Sometimes the author designates another entity. For example, Terry Pratchett books say "Copyright (C) YEAR by Terry and Lyn Pratchett." His wife is not a co-author, but he's assigned the copyright to both of them for legal reasons -- I suppose it simplifies inheritance.[/quote]

And likely extends the term of copyright.   If his wife outlives him by five or ten years, the seventy years starts ticking at her death, not his.

[quote="dannii"]Even if the original author maintains ownership of their copyrights, my impression is that there are few publishers which are willing to make non-exclusive distribution deals. Signing over distribution rights exclusively to one publisher almost amounts to the same as selling copyright (aside from leaving you with the option to make adaption rights in other media etc.)[/quote]

Certainly in the US and UK, “copyright” is primarily an economic issue, and naïve authors can sign away most, if not all, of the economic interest in their work to the Col. Tom Parkers of media.  Other countries that have an “author’s rights” tradition (Germany, Spain, Latin America) are much more author-friendly, certainly as far as legal protection against plagiarism and misattribution; it’s nearly impossible to reassign copyright to a corporation.   IIRC, it’s also harder to enforce “all-current-and-future-media” contracts in author’s rights countries, and “killed” manuscripts can be revived by the author and reshopped to other distributors.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2848&start=0#p19879
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Soundnotify - yay or nay?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-18 21:21:39

Hm, maybe support for sound notification [i]is[/i] a bit hinky. It turns out to be incredibly easy to set up a notification, but the only interpreter I could find that actually fires notifications is Windows Git (probably Windows Glulxe also works). Gargoyle and Spatterlight on OS X both fail to send a notification, as does Gargoyle on Windows--all of these return positive for the sound notification gestalt, so there is definitely some kind of failure here. (Filfre crashes with an "OLE error", presumably on attempting to play the ogg, so I'm not sure whether it would send the notification or not). 

Anyway, here's some code for playing a sound with notification:

[code]To play (SFX - sound name) with notification:
	(- PlaySoundN(ResourceIDsOfSounds-->{SFX}); -).
	
Include (-

	[ PlaySoundN resource_ID ;
		if (resource_ID == 0) return;
		if (glk_gestalt(gestalt_Sound, 0)) {
			glk_schannel_play_ext(
				gg_foregroundchan, ! channel
				resource_ID, ! resource number of sound
				1, ! number of repetitions
				1 ! whether to send notification (0 = no)
				);
		}
		else {
			print "[Sound effect number ", resource_ID, " here.]^";
		}
	];
-).

A glulx sound notification rule:
	say "A sound just completed."[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2848&start=0#p19880
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Soundnotify - yay or nay?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-18 21:27:23

Thanks a ton for that code. Hm, looks like there's definite hurdles in this area for the time being.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2848&start=0#p19881
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Soundnotify - yay or nay?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-18 21:42:02

I should add that the code I posted requires Glulx Entry Points, which provides the glulx sound notification rules.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2848&start=0#p19882
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Soundnotify - yay or nay?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-07-18 21:59:03

Can you post a compiled game to the garglk issue tracker? I'd like to investigate.

Sound notifications ought to work. The only wrinkle is that they are "polled" events so they take a back seat to most other events, though you should still get them eventually.

Are you canceling the line input request in the main window prior to printing your notification text? Otherwise it will be silently suppressed.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2848&start=0#p19883
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Soundnotify - yay or nay?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-18 22:14:27

[quote="bcressey"]Are you canceling the line input request in the main window prior to printing your notification text? Otherwise it will be silently suppressed.[/quote]

Jeez, why can't I get that through my thick skull? I was indeed failing to cancel line input, yet again. In other words, sound notifications [i]do work[/i] in Gargoyle--just remember not to use them to print text to the main window without canceling line input!

Thanks Ben!

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2852&start=0#p19884
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scene linking and conditions
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-07-19 03:19:59

[quote="Flourish"]The main reason it doesn't work appears to be that you cannot have multiple variables affecting how the scenes end. That seems really silly to me, but it also appears to be true (and folks on the ifMud agree, which makes me think it's not just some alternate problem).[/quote]
It's true that you can't tack more conditions to the "scene X begins when scene Y ends" phrase, but you [i]can[/i] everywhere else and you can go around even that special case. The easiest but a rather wordy solution is to use "scene X begins when scene Y has ended and the time since scene Y ended is 0 minutes" that is functionally the same but allows for more conditions:
 
[code]Scene X begins when scene Y has ended and the time since scene Y ended is 0 minutes and the player is carrying the duck.[/code]
Another way is to use named endings:

[code]
Scene Y ends duckily when we have examined the duck and the player carries the duck.
Scene Y ends duckless when we have examined the duck and the player is not carrying the duck.

Scene X begins when scene Y ends duckily.[/code]
I haven't tested Matt W's solution, but there doesn't seem to be any reason it wouldn't work: he doesn't use any conditions in the "x begins when y ends" phrases.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2853&start=0#p19885
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Complicity: Building Interactive Narratives
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-07-19 04:00:28

London, August 24: Alexis Kennedy (of Echo Bazaar and Varytale) and I are running a day-long seminar on writing interactive stories. We’ll be looking at concepts like complicity, exploration, and exposition in an interactive context; structures for choice-based narrative; types of choices and varieties of player roles; types of feedback for the player; ways of pacing interactive narrative; etc.

These are all things that we’ve written or talked about before, separately and together, but this will present them in a more unified format and with space for back-and-forth discussion. While it's not an IF-specific seminar, a lot of the things we'll be talking about are applicable to IF, and we will touch a bit on writing prose for interactive contexts.

This session is primarily designed for a pro or semi-pro audience (it's on a weekday, and not free), but if anyone here is interested, you're more than welcome. More details can be found [url=http://complicity.eventbrite.com/]here[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2854&start=0#p19886
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Does 'get' have any kind of privileged powers?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-19 04:36:23

I'm having a bunch of headaches trying to define versions of 'get' as movement commands. I know standard rules have a bunch built in, but they were going to the wrong places for my game, so I'm trying to reroute things.

I had phrases like 'Understand "climb on/over [something]", "get on/over [something]" as objectclimbing.'

This works for the climb version, but not for the get version. IE Climb on (blah) works, get on (blah) tries to actually pick up (blah).

So I tried to rebuild 'get' from scratch -

IE - 'Understand the command 'get' as something new'

Then I rebuilt the parts I wanted from the standard library.

But I continue to get behaviour I can't work out. My 'get down' and 'get off' intercepts work, but my 'get on' and 'get up' intercepts don't. The game tries to get objects called 'on' and 'up'. I can't learn anything by rule or action tracing - nothing comes up before the action is denied.

I just wondered if 'get' has any kind of privileged behaviour internally that I can't reach. Or if it doesn't, how can I completely zap all grammar related to 'get' that may be sneaking around? 'Something new' doesn't seem to be cutting it.

I considered that the weirdness may come from an extension (I'm using plenty by now), but I can't think of any obvious culprit, and that will be a headache I'll only negotiate once I've tried asking this question here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=40#p19887
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-07-19 04:49:21

For what it's worth:

In the European Union today, the fact that copyright for ”Alice in Wonderland” expired in 1907 under the UK copyright act of 1842 is strictly of no legal importance. What matters legally for copyright issues there now is the EU 1993 Copyright Duration Directive, its national implementations, and the 2006 Copyright Term Directive, which builds on these. 

Accordingly, author's copyright in EU countries has a life+70 years duration, and it is applied retrospectively; so, copyright is restored to any previously public domain works, if the author died less than 70 years ago. (First publishers of previously unpublished public domain works are accorded 25 years' copyright from publication.)

Not that it matters to the Alice books, since Caroll died 1898, and the copyright of his works in the EU thus retrospectively expired(!) in 1968 – except for "The Wasp in a Wig Episode" of "Through the Looking-Glass" which was first published in 1977, and the copyright of which for EU purposes thus expired 2002 (that it was first published in the US is of no consequence).

("Alice's Adventures under Ground", i.e. the original manuscript version given to Alice Liddell was published in facsimile as early as 1866.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2855&start=0#p19888
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Will I have to do this myself?
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-19 04:57:00

Isn't anyone gonna help me?

Here's what I'm thinking of so far:
[b](don't read unless you are on my team and committed on helping out)[/b]
[spoiler]Letter to original author:
How does this sound for our game?

[b]Extra Rooms[/b]

1: Behind crowded parking lot (IF Mall entrance)
2: Behind Susan's garage and under basement (extends to IF Mall)
3: Under IF Mall food court (tunnel entrance from Crosswalk water fountain)
4: AIF 5 and AIF 6 lots (entrance from tunnel maze)
5: AIF 4 and AIF 3 lots (entrance from tunnel maze)
6: Casting Office basement (utility closet entrance locked until all maps are found)
7: Second floor "Museum of Inform" to "Museum of Tads" walkway (walkway leads to IF Mall)

[b]Missing Maps[/b]

Map 1 - BMW windshield wiper flyer (promotion for mall)
Map 2 - On other side of ad in AIF dressing room (in warehouse)
Map 3 - On other side of unsigned contract in AIF dressing room (in warehouse)
Map 4 - Hidden in tree knot at Susan's place
Map 5 - Taped to Susan's toilet, on other side of OUT OF ORDER sign
Map 6 - Under printer paper by Zerox machine (must copy contract multiple times first)
Map 7 - On reverse side of "Director Only Parking" sign where BMW is (at empty parking lot)

Maps numbered for convenience but don't need to be obtained in order.
Must get object clues in order (some clues with numbered maps).

1: Key for AIF theater hanging on tree branch in empty parking lot
2: Spycam pendent hanging on Susan's shower rod (in our version you can take her clothes laying on the floor, strip in any part of the house, museum, and mall, open her shower door, and get in with Susan.)
3: Robe in Susan's master bedroom (lying on bed)
4: Power Ring hanging on branch of Susan's tree (all children in game are young adults)
5: Toolbox on shelf of Susan's garage (for boarded up AIF set)
6: Webcam attachment on catwalk of AIF warehouse (for mind control/spycam pendent)
7: Grappling hook/gun in IF Mall food court (for high or far objects)

You don't have to get the maps right away.
Hint for IF Mall food court at start (translucent sea shells by brook).

IF Mall and food court will be in construction during map quest with mapped sections completed.
Name "Soap On A Rope" (for spycam reference) copyrighted.

[b]Story[/b]

After you left you realized you didn't get to say goodbye to everybody.
While playing with a pocket sized glow in the dark superball you just bought, you examine it closer and see it's glowing much brighter now, like the orbs that you had in the IF/AIF world.

You consult the tome about it.
"Consult tome about pocket sized orb."

You can consult the tome on many subjects to help you on the way.
If there's a word in that explanation you don't understand, then type "look up" (word).
Notice you didn't have to type "tome".
The magic tome will assume that you're looking up the word in it.

The tome goes on to say: "It's part of a lost pendent that was broken up ages ago because of it's great power which corrupted anyone who dare posses it."
It continues: "After it's used 3 times it's life is depleted, and must be recharged by the ring of power."

"Consult tome about ring of power."
"A mystical ring that powers a magic pendent.
The ones who forged this  ring kept loosing it in underground tunnels, but found hanging it in various places would help them remember where it was, only they forgot where the last place they hung it was."

"Look up various."
"Many categories, times, or places."

A box seemed to just appear out of nowhere when you tripped over a big book in the library.
After opening the box, you see some bubble wrap packing you used to play with as a kid.
Looking around nervously you quickly stuff a sheet in your pocket for popping on your way home.
You then see a small scroll (it wasn't really small but what you saw of it appeared that way).
Hoping it would bring you back to the world you just left, you open the scroll and read the words aloud.

Another Backlot (original concept by A. Bomire).

Sex and sexual themes used with the chick.t library by NewKid with Suzanne Skinner's chatter.t library included.

Original game setting programmed with Tads 2 (ported to HTML Tads).

While you're on the quest to find all the pieces of this device, and the maps for each location, you discover time is not only passing in this world, but time also goes by faster here.
When you get to the IF world, it isn't populated by the "actors" anymore, and there seems to be a change in the layout.

The owners of the IF Museum really let things go because they haven't had a tour group in years!
The AIFs want to build more lots and want the IFs to move the museum because of new AIF property.
After a long dragged out battle, it was agreed that the AIFs can have the two ends in one story, if  the IFs can have the center in two stories.
This was a problem for the AIFs since they had no entrance to the building (which was the idea).
AIFs can now mix with IFs from some long tunnels in the basement headed towards a construction site  that will eventually become a 2 story mall foodcourt (mall entrance in back of parking lot near Studio 14, extending to back of garage).

The construction of this mall relies on finding hidden maps.
Since the mall attracts so many visitors, populating this world depends on you.

Sex is optional like before, but points are now given when you can access certain objects.
For instance a toolbox is on Susan's shelf in her garage, but you need the step ladder to reach the shelf, so you have to run back to the utility closet from another location, and open the door to get the step ladder.
This is why I said the new objects must be found in order.

The new AIF Lots are AIF Lot 6: Combined with IF Museum
AIF Lot 5: North of IF Museum
AIF Lot 4: North/East of AIF Lot 5
AIF Lot 3: East of AIF Lot 4
Fence (with "[b]KEEP OUT[/b]" sign) between lots 3 and 2

Apparently they also had a dispute over land.
A lot is 3 spaces long in your game, but the AIFs wanted to expand that in mine.
Now there are 3 buildings to explore (on lots 1 and 2) instead of just 2.
AIF Lot 1 is also gated from the IFs, with a sign saying "[b]MUST BE 18 OR OLDER TO ENTER[/b]".
Of course this doesn't matter since all children in this world are 18 or older.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2853&start=0#p19889
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Complicity: Building Interactive Narratives
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-19 05:45:42

Looks very interesting, but I'm not professional enough to cough up that kind of money. Have a great time, though, and don't forget to enjoy London. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2843&start=20#p19890
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 Glulx: Roguelike-style save & restore
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-19 05:48:21

[quote="ektemple"]Here's the link to the test:

<a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Test/play.html">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Test/play.html</a>[/quote]
Not working here either, using Firefox and Chromium under Ubuntu.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2854&start=0#p19891
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Does 'get' have any kind of privileged powers?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-19 05:55:02

Update -

My variations on 'get' were listed all through the source. I found that when I gathered them all in one place and put them after the understanding 'get' as something new bit, it started to understand all the ones that had been giving trouble. I'm not entirely sure why, but it's not impossible I accidentally fixed some hard to spot collisions or something.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2855&start=0#p19892
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Will I have to do this myself?
User: Greeny / DateTime: 2011-07-19 06:30:21

I would strongly recommend reading the following (now locked) thread before deciding to join IF noob's 'team'.
[url]http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&p=19872[/url]

I would like to apologise to IF noob, (and all other members) for me becoming so irate that I resorted to a couple of insults towards IF noob in that thread.
Everything else I said, I stand by 100%.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=40#p19893
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: Greeny / DateTime: 2011-07-19 06:40:37

Thanks Felix, that's interesting and good to know. I certainly didn't realise that.
As you say though it has no effect on Caroll's work. The fact remains, it has been out of copyright since 1907.
.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2855&start=0#p19894
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Will I have to do this myself?
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-19 06:48:04

[quote="IF noob"]Isn't anyone gonna help me?

Here's what I'm thinking of so far:
[b](don't read unless you are on my team and committed on helping out- rated X)[/b]
[spoiler]Letter to original author:
How does this sound for our game?

[b]Extra Rooms[/b]

1: Behind crowded parking lot (IF Mall entrance)
2: Behind Susan's garage and under basement (extends to IF Mall)
3: Under IF Mall food court (tunnel entrance from Crosswalk water fountain)
4: AIF 5 and AIF 6 lots (entrance from tunnel maze)
5: AIF 4 and AIF 3 lots (entrance from tunnel maze)
6: Casting Office basement (utility closet entrance locked until all maps are found)
7: Second floor "Museum of Inform" to "Museum of Tads" walkway (walkway leads to IF Mall)

[b]Missing Maps[/b]

Map 1 - BMW windshield wiper flyer (promotion for mall)
Map 2 - On other side of ad in AIF dressing room (in warehouse)
Map 3 - On other side of unsigned contract in AIF dressing room (in warehouse)
Map 4 - Hidden in tree knot at Susan's place
Map 5 - Taped to Susan's toilet, on other side of OUT OF ORDER sign
Map 6 - Under printer paper by Zerox machine (must copy contract multiple times first)
Map 7 - On reverse side of "Director Only Parking" sign where BMW is (at empty parking lot)

Maps numbered for convenience but don't need to be obtained in order.
Must get object clues in order (some clues with numbered maps).

1: Key for AIF theater hanging on tree branch in empty parking lot
2: Spycam pendent hanging on Susan's shower rod (in our version you can take her clothes laying on the floor, strip in any part of the house, museum, and mall, open her shower door, and get in with Susan.)
3: Robe in Susan's master bedroom (lying on bed)
4: Power Ring hanging on branch of Susan's tree (all children in game are young adults)
5: Toolbox on shelf of Susan's garage (for boarded up AIF set)
6: Webcam attachment on catwalk of AIF warehouse (for mind control/spycam pendent)
7: Grappling hook/gun in IF Mall food court (for high or far objects)

You don't have to get the maps right away.
Hint for IF Mall food court at start (translucent sea shells by brook).

IF Mall and food court will be in construction during map quest with mapped sections completed.
Name "Soap On A Rope" (for spycam reference) copyrighted.

[b]Story[/b]

After you left you realized you didn't get to say goodbye to everybody.
While playing with a pocket sized glow in the dark superball you just bought, you examine it closer and see it's glowing much brighter now, like the orbs that you had in the IF/AIF world.

You consult the tome about it.
"Consult tome about pocket sized orb."

You can consult the tome on many subjects to help you on the way.
If there's a word in that explanation you don't understand, then type "look up" (word).
Notice you didn't have to type "tome".
The magic tome will assume that you're looking up the word in it.

The tome goes on to say: "It's part of a lost pendent that was broken up ages ago because of it's great power which corrupted anyone who dare posses it."
It continues: "After it's used 3 times it's life is depleted, and must be recharged by the ring of power."

"Consult tome about ring of power."
"A mystical ring that powers a magic pendent.
The ones who forged this  ring kept loosing it in underground tunnels, but found hanging it in various places would help them remember where it was, only they forgot where the last place they hung it was."

"Look up various."
"Many categories, times, or places."

A box seemed to just appear out of nowhere when you tripped over a big book in the library.
After opening the box, you see some bubble wrap packing you used to play with as a kid.
Looking around nervously you quickly stuff a sheet in your pocket for popping on your way home.
You then see a small scroll (it wasn't really small but what you saw of it appeared that way).
Hoping it would bring you back to the world you just left, you open the scroll and read the words aloud.

Another Backlot (original concept by A. Bomire).

Sex and sexual themes used with the chick.t library by NewKid with Suzanne Skinner's chatter.t library included.

Original game setting programmed with Tads 2 (ported to HTML Tads).

While you're on the quest to find all the pieces of this device, and the maps for each location, you discover time is not only passing in this world, but time also goes by faster here.
When you get to the IF world, it isn't populated by the "actors" anymore, and there seems to be a change in the layout.

The owners of the IF Museum really let things go because they haven't had a tour group in years!
The AIFs want to build more lots and want the IFs to move the museum because of new AIF property.
After a long dragged out battle, it was agreed that the AIFs can have the two ends in one story, if  the IFs can have the center in two stories.
This was a problem for the AIFs since they had no entrance to the building (which was the idea).
AIFs can now mix with IFs from some long tunnels in the basement headed towards a construction site  that will eventually become a 2 story mall foodcourt (mall entrance in back of parking lot near Studio 14, extending to back of garage).

The construction of this mall relies on finding hidden maps.
Since the mall attracts so many visitors, populating this world depends on you.

Sex is optional like before, but points are now given when you can access certain objects.
For instance a toolbox is on Susan's shelf in her garage, but you need the step ladder to reach the shelf, so you have to run back to the utility closet from another location, and open the door to get the step ladder.
This is why I said the new objects must be found in order.

The new AIF Lots are AIF Lot 6: Combined with IF Museum
AIF Lot 5: North of IF Museum
AIF Lot 4: North/East of AIF Lot 5
AIF Lot 3: East of AIF Lot 4
Fence (with "[b]KEEP OUT[/b]" sign) between lots 3 and 2

Apparently they also had a dispute over land.
A lot is 3 spaces long in your game, but the AIFs wanted to expand that in mine.
Now there are 3 buildings to explore (on lots 1 and 2) instead of just 2.
AIF Lot 1 is also gated from the IFs, with a sign saying "[b]MUST BE 18 OR OLDER TO ENTER[/b]".
Of course this doesn't matter since all children in this world are 18 or older.[/spoiler][/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2855&start=0#p19895
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Will I have to do this myself?
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-19 06:50:24

I didn't program the sex library, but I knew it was AIF when I got into it, just as I've been saying all along here.
Does the IF player or novice IF writer really not know the term?

By the way the game this is from [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=34]"[b]The Backlot[/b]"[/url] has been reviewed on the site as an adult game, you should have known what to expect.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2854&start=0#p19896
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Does 'get' have any kind of privileged powers?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-07-19 07:20:25

The "understand as something new" line erases all grammar definitions listed before that line, even the ones you've made yourself. If you had your "get" grammar definitions all over the source, you might have had some them before the "understand as something new" line which would explain why they didn't take effect.

One way to diagnose grammar definition problems is to go to the Actions tab in the index and look up all commands starting with "get". If the command is defined in your own code or in an extension, you see an orange arrow icon next to the command that takes you to the extension or the location in code where that grammar line is defined. (This might not have helped in this case because removed grammar doesn't show in the list, but if the problem is a collision with an extension this is one way to find out.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2838&start=0#p19897
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "rule succeeds" in check stops the whole action
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-19 07:35:35

[quote]So that's to answer your question about 'rule succeeds', but the issue of setting things up so a person can grab a particular object wherever it is in the game actually requires you to fiddle with 'scope' (search for that word in the docs). [/quote]

I thought that more than scope is involved; you also need to deal with reachability.

I had thought that "scope" affects what you can see (which in turn affects what the parser will consider to be a possible object for your command when it tries to figure out what you want to do).  Once it does so, for most actions (including taking) the object also has to be reachable, which is controlled by another set of rules.  Thus, even if you place an object in another room "in scope" you still can't take it unless you also create a specific "reaching" rule which overrides the general rule that you can't reach into another room.  Am I misunderstanding the way the process works?


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2838&start=0#p19898
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "rule succeeds" in check stops the whole action
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-07-19 07:47:15

[quote="Robert Rothman"]I had thought that "scope" affects what you can see (which in turn affects what the parser will consider to be a possible object for your command when it tries to figure out what you want to do).  Once it does so, for most actions (including taking) the object also has to be reachable, which is controlled by another set of rules.  Thus, even if you place an object in another room "in scope" you still can't take it unless you also create a specific "reaching" rule which overrides the general rule that you can't reach into another room.  Am I misunderstanding the way the process works?[/quote]
No. You are correct. (Although I would clarify the use of the word "see" above by adding that objects manually placed in scope are "visible" to the parser, but not visible in the sense that they automatically show up in room descriptions, etc.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2852&start=0#p19899
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scene linking and conditions
User: Flourish / DateTime: 2011-07-19 08:31:12

Just quickly wanted to say thanks Juhana and Matt - I feel like I know why it was failing now and also like I have a few directions to go. Later today I'll try and implement it and see if it works! But since I can now see several ways that [i]should[/i] work, I don't think it'll be a problem.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2855&start=0#p19900
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Will I have to do this myself?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-07-19 09:12:56

There isn't any restriction on discussing AIF games or recruiting would-be AIF designers, but all the same these forums don't see many posts about "adult" games.

You may have better luck finding collaborators on a dedicated AIF board. I assume such things exist, though I'm not sure where to point you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2853&start=0#p19901
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Complicity: Building Interactive Narratives
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-07-19 09:13:27

[quote="emshort"]London, August 24:[/quote]

I'll be celebrating my birthday just one time-zone away that day!  [emote]:D[/emote]  Don't forget to tell us about what professional interactive story-tellers are eager to learn and disscuss!

--

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2855&start=0#p19902
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Will I have to do this myself?
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-07-19 09:22:19

[quote="bcressey"]I assume such things exist, though I'm not sure where to point you.[/quote]

Indeed!  [emote]:)[/emote]  -> [url=http://www.aifgames.com/]AIF site[/url]

--

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2803&start=0#p19903
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Giving objects while using conversation package by Eric 
User: kanato / DateTime: 2011-07-19 10:02:12

Oh yeah that could work. For some reason I think I had in mind doing stuff like

[code]Response of the wizard when asked about tyrant king:
    if this is the first time we have asked this:
        do something;
        say something;
    otherwise if this is the second time we have asked this:
        do something else;
        etc.[/code]

but at the moment I can't think of what. Anyway, that could be done by using To Say phrases along with the [one of][stopping] construct.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2854&start=0#p19904
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Does 'get' have any kind of privileged powers?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-19 10:02:30

Right, thanks for the info.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2828&start=0#p19905
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Real differences between Z-Machine and Glulx?
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-07-19 10:16:16

Is it also a difference that there currently is not a Glulx interpreter available for the kindle? Does anyone know what version of the z-machine the kindle is supporting?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2828&start=0#p19906
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Real differences between Z-Machine and Glulx?
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-07-19 11:24:08

There is no Z-machine that runs natively on the Kindle that I'm aware of. <a class="postlink" href="http://www.portablequest.com/">http://www.portablequest.com/</a> is accessible via the Kindle's browser.

To my knowledge, Inheritance <a class="postlink" href="http://www.amazon.com/Inheritance/dp/B0054TZOX0">http://www.amazon.com/Inheritance/dp/B0054TZOX0</a> is the closest thing to a traditional text adventure you can buy on the Kindle Store, and it uses a multiple-choice verb system instead of a full-blown parser.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=40#p19907
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-19 11:36:20

[quote]And likely extends the term of copyright. If his wife outlives him by five or ten years, the seventy years starts ticking at her death, not his[/quote]

I believe that's not the case. Assigning a copyright after you write a book does not change the copyright term. It would be different if Lyn Pratchett was actually a co-creator, or if the partnership had legally hired Terry Pratchett to write the book. But the copyright page doesn't make either of those claims.

However, this is now outside the domain I'm confident about.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2857&start=0#p19908
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: food for thought
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-19 12:20:38

[url]http://www.remindblog.com/2011/07/13/email-answers-how-to-overcome-the-perfectionist-attitude/[/url]

nice, short blog article about overcoming your struggle to complete a "magnum opus"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2843&start=20#p19909
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 Glulx: Roguelike-style save & restore
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-19 12:22:33

Found the bug. You defined a phrase "To decide whether ... exists as a saved game", but you forgot to call it. You're calling the standard "whether ... exists" phrase. :)

(Explanation for onlookers: the standard phrase checks whether "savegame.data" exists, rather than "savegame.save". Quixe doesn't use filename suffixes exactly, but it has an equivalent mechanism. However, it looks like the IDE doesn't distinguish files using suffixes at all -- which is legitimate -- so it winds up finding the save file accidentally.)

I also noticed that you forgot to invoke the "automatically saving the game" activity.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2843&start=20#p19910
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 Glulx: Roguelike-style save & restore
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-19 13:33:57

[quote="zarf"]Found the bug. You defined a phrase "To decide whether ... exists as a saved game", but you forgot to call it. You're calling the standard "whether ... exists" phrase. [emote]:)[/emote]

(Explanation for onlookers: the standard phrase checks whether "savegame.data" exists, rather than "savegame.save". Quixe doesn't use filename suffixes exactly, but it has an equivalent mechanism. However, it looks like the IDE doesn't distinguish files using suffixes at all -- which is legitimate -- so it winds up finding the save file accidentally.)

I also noticed that you forgot to invoke the "automatically saving the game" activity.[/quote]

100% correct on both counts! Gargoyle also does not use file extensions, which is probably why the code worked there too. I need to work on reminding myself that some interpreters are more permissive than others. Once I see that code works in two interpreters, my blinders seem to come down and I assume that the code is not the problem--even when I ought to know from experience that this is not necessarily the case. Probably I should be doubly wary with Sunday-afternoon side-project code...

I've updated the attachment to the original post to include these fixes, as well as the code for deleting savegame files.

Re Quixe: At least on Firefox 5 (OS X), automatic restore works only with games that are played over the internet, not with games where you play from your local hard drive (that is, where the URL begins with [b]file://[/b]). I've updated the [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Test/play.html]Quixe test file[/url] to use the new code.

Thanks for the help, Zarf!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2858&start=0#p19911
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Copyright: two questions
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-19 13:40:48

So, let's talk about copyright as it pertains to interactive fiction. I have two things I've been wondering about, one specific and one general, but other people should feel free to talk about other things that are related to IF and copyright, though please refrain from spreading misinformation.

Question one: Suppose there's a scene at a concert, where the music is so loud that the characters can't actually make out the lyrics. The scene contains a distorted rendering of the lyrics, misquoted but recognizable. Something like:

[quote]Purple haze, orange migraine
Lazy things don't peel the rain
Axe and tummy, I don't know why
Excuse me, while I kiss this guy[/quote]

Would that be problematic? Would it qualify as a parody? What about misquotation of a poem rather than a song?

Question two: What's the status of using characters or settings from a copyrighted work in something that doesn't directly quote it and isn't directly derivative? Direct use of language obviously raises copyright concerns, and so do derivative works such as direct adaptations and perhaps sequels. But is the appearance of a character or setting enough to make it a derivative work? Suppose I have an otherwise original game where the player is occasionally struck by a stray roll that flies out of an open window in the nearby Drones Club; does that make the work derivative of P.G. Wodehouse? I'd think not; but where does the line fall?

Unfortunately, I suspect the answer to all these questions is "The holders of any copyrights you may be interested in can tie you up in court longer than you can afford, but if they don't notice or don't care it's OK. But [url=http://boingboing.net/2010/01/11/tintin-copyrights-go.html]watch your back[/url]."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2849&start=0#p19912
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Custom "physical" relations
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-19 14:20:00

[quote="Skinny Mike"]If you're interested in a different type of containment, post the details or PM me. I have a working general implementation of "indirect holders" (tweezers, butterfly nets, etc.) which was inspired by Jim Aikin's "holder" extension for i6. It needs an update for the current build as well as documentation.[/quote]
I was working on an extension for modeling ropes and gave up. Can you do ropes with your indirect holders?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2854&start=0#p19913
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Does 'get' have any kind of privileged powers?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-19 14:29:22

It's a tricky syntax. I filed a bug report a few weeks back:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=656">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=656</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2858&start=0#p19914
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright: two questions
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-19 14:57:23

I don't know the answer to either of your questions, although my sense is that, in both cases, there is not likely to be a hard and fast answer and a lot depends on the precise details.

Having said that, I will say that I personally have a situation somewhat analogous to your second question.  The first game I wrote when I discovered Inform 7 (primarily as a learning exercise) was based on certain characters from the popular culture of a few decades ago.  Although the plot (such as it is) is my own, the game is laden with allusions to those characters and the way they behave, and the characters themselves made appearances.

As it turns out, the rights to those characters are claimed (and, to a certain extent, probably actually owned) by a notoriously litigious bunch.  In order to avoid the aggravation and expense of a possible lawsuit, I have chosen to use the piece only for my own amusement and that of a few close friends, and not to make it publicly available.

Of course, this is probably a less attractive case (from my perspective) than one in which you might have a passing allusion to P.G. Wodehouse; in my case, the whole point of the game is to bring the player into the world of the characters.  It sounds like your example may be a much more attractive case for arguing that there is no infringement.

Might I have made the game more widely available if the rights claimants/owners had a reputation for being less troublesome?  Possibly, but this is not a legal distinction so much as a practical assessment of the risk.



Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2858&start=0#p19915
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright: two questions
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-19 15:21:41

Neither of my cases are actual -- I do have an idea that's somewhat like the "Purple Haze" example, though maybe less silly, but I don't have anything in particular going on with other people's characters. The Drones Club was meant as an extreme case. I was partly thinking about Foxaroo's TARDIS project -- would the inclusion of the TARDIS alone make it a derivative project? Seemed like his case might be over the line, but I do wonder where the line is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2858&start=0#p19916
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright: two questions
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-07-19 15:32:03

[quote="matt w"]Question one: Suppose there's a scene at a concert, where the music is so loud that the characters can't actually make out the lyrics. The scene contains a distorted rendering of the lyrics, misquoted but recognizable. Something like:

[quote]Purple haze, orange migraine
Lazy things don't peel the rain
Axe and tummy, I don't know why
Excuse me, while I kiss this guy[/quote]

Would that be problematic? Would it qualify as a parody? What about misquotation of a poem rather than a song?[/quote]

Obviously I'm not a lawyer, but I'm fairly sure a case like that would be fine. For one thing, quoting is fair use; if you're only reproducing a part of the lyrics, you're already sort of safe, and if you're also changing them you're even safer. Plus, it's in an entirely different medium, and presumably you're not making any money from it. Of course, in reality anybody can sue you for whatever they want regardless of how valid it is, just to waste your time and money, but personally I wouldn't lose any sleep over this one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2858&start=0#p19917
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright: two questions
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-19 15:35:16

I looked around the net for reliable resources on this stuff. I couldn't find anything definitive about your specific questions.

The reference I see on copyrighting characters are all about degrees: for example, whether the mentioned character is developed enough to constitute a significant part of the work, or if it's just scenery. (Google "Judge Hand specificity test".) I'd guess that Bertie Wooster is a copyrightable character but the Drones Club... well, Wodehouse used it a lot, so maybe it is too. (But note that the earliest Jeeves stories appeared before 1923, and therefore are now public domain.)

The TARDIS is almost certainly distinctive enough to be copyrighted. Like most fan fiction, a game that uses the TARDIS is squarely in the domain of "technically illegal but almost certainly ignored."

Also note that my guess is worth nothing. You might be better off asking this on a professional writer's forum -- I would point at absolutewrite.net.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2858&start=0#p19918
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright: two questions
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-19 16:50:29

[quote]Also note that my guess is worth nothing. You might be better off asking this on a professional writer's forum -- I would point at absolutewrite.net.
[/quote]

At the risk of making a suggestion which may not be all that practical, I would venture a guess that anything you hear on a writers' forum is also not likely to be too reliable.  The only one who can really give an answer on this would be a lawyer with IP experience -- and I suspect that even such a person could probably not give you an answer that's very definitive, although it would be less likely to be incorrect than anything the rest of us might say.  Sorry, but I think this is probably one of those areas where a little bit of knowledge could be a very dangerous thing.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2850&start=0#p19919
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Announce: "Choice of Intrigues" / "Affairs of the Court"
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-07-19 18:23:53

I know I've covered this ground on another thread, but since this is a thread specific for these new games, I'll point out just as I pointed out for a couple of Undum games that I'll be patiently waiting for an offline version. [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2858&start=0#p19920
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright: two questions
User: Greeny / DateTime: 2011-07-19 19:00:51

I can't offer advice on your questions directly as i'm nowhere near fit to do so.  [emote]:shock:[/emote] 

But a path which does not often seem to be taken, is asking the copyright holder for permission. The worst they can say is no.
Most larger companies are well geared up for such requests. 
If you give them a concise description, make it clear it is not for profit, and that it is not damaging their IP, then you may be pleasantly surprised.
And sleep soundly. 
.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2855&start=0#p19921
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Will I have to do this myself?
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-19 19:20:29

[quote="rockersuke"][quote="bcressey"]I assume such things exist, though I'm not sure where to point you.[/quote]
ess
Indeed!  [emote]:)[/emote]  -> [url=http://www.aifgames.com/]AIF site[/url]

--[/quote]
I'll look at that, but in the meantime:

Greeny, I want you to know sex and sexual themes are just small parts of this.
Remember when people thought there was a nude code for Lara Croft in the Playstation's Tomb Raider?
It's sort of like that.
It would be more exploration and treasure hunt than anything else.

The crux of this game is an empty magical world you must re-populate by finding all maps, getting all objects, and accessing all hidden or locked areas.

For instance finding a key that fits in an AIF set will reveal it's just a small storage room that has a bunch of keys hanging on hooks.
You better find the right keys fast because time is ticking away.

At any moment you can stop the clock temporarily once you build a certain object, but this must only be activated three times and then runs out of energy, so it's magic should be used wisely, such as used on a secretory in an office building who won't let you through her boss's door.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2858&start=0#p19922
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright: two questions
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-07-19 19:28:15

If I release (and I pretend to) a post comp version of my Indigo speed-comp entry we would have a lot of material to discuss about, as just everything in it is on the thin border line and ocassionally openly crosses it:

-It's a remake of a commercial game. An old and obscure one, but commercial, so copyrighted. Incidentally the original author seems to be unknown (at least there apparently are no credits anywhere I searched) but I should ask Jimmy Maher, my guess is that if someone has a clue It would be him!

-The original game is a very simple text adventure written for a 4 kb machine, so It hardly has a handful of ultra-brief location descriptions a some elemental puzzles. My remake is sort of a dramatization over that scenario and puzzles.

-If that wasn't enough, I added a couple of NPC and named everyone after some very recognisable TV characters. The point is, they just have their names. They don't pretend to resemble them any more than that... but... the relationship among them happens to have a more than vague similarity with the TV play...

Now, this is something like the Z-Machine Matter situation. Characters were named after some well known real people. They didn't pretend to be them, or relate to them, or parody them, or reference them, but it was something easy to misunderstand which was, in fact, easily misunderstood by more than one reviewer. If I ever make another IF work It will have a NPC named after matt w (in reference to his help in [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2746]this thread[/url]), but this hipotetical character will not pretend to be neither him not like him. It would be just a name... but yeah, it's always a thin line... 

At least, my Indigo entry has not a TARDIS  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

--

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2858&start=0#p19923
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright: two questions
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-19 19:35:59

Misquotating a poem or a song is certainly fine. In fact, [i]quoting[/i] a poem or a song is fine -- the details depend on the country in which you reside, of course, but something like a maximum of 40 lines or 25% percent of the poem (whichever is less) would be fairly standard.

You might want to check out the limitations Wikiquote has [url=http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Limits_on_quotations]set[/url] for itself. I assume they had an IP lawyer look at that list.

Characters and settings fall under intellectual property law (rather than pure copyright law). This is far more risky territory. Were I you, I wouldn't use any characters or settings directly lifted from works published after 1900. (By the way: this kind of intellectual property is [i]total crap[/i] and should be abolished today rather than tomorrow. Reusing characters, settings and stories is part of essence of art -- I call in Ariosto, Cervantes and Shakespeare as witnesses.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2858&start=0#p19924
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright: two questions
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-19 19:40:36

[quote="rockersuke"]It's a remake of a commercial game. An old and obscure one, but commercial, so copyrighted.[/quote]
Just to make sure that this is clear: whether the game is commercial or not has nothing to do with whether it is copyrighted. If I release a game for free, that does [i]not[/i] mean that I waive my copyright or intellectual property rights, and it does [i]not[/i] mean that you are allowed to make derivative works. Depending on the license used, it may not even mean that you are allowed to redistribute the game.

This is why it is important for people who [i]do[/i] want their game to be free in both senses of the word ("free as in freedom" as well as "free as in free beer") to choose a license that ensures that this actually happens.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2858&start=10#p19925
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright: two questions
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-19 19:41:51

Thanks for the answers, all. Robert, I think you're right that if I'm really worried I need to ask a lawyer -- I do have an uncle with relevant expertise, I think, but as I said this is all very hypothetical.

zarf, thanks for that info; I looked a bit about the specificity test and it seems very confusing. No surprise.

shammack, I don't think quoting is a clear-cut case; I'm pretty sure I've seen books with copyright acknowledgments for a few lines of a poem. I'm going to guess that I'm probably ok mangling quotes, though, which is what's most likely to happen.

Greeny, that's not a bad idea and is definitely the most legal approach -- I'd just be afraid of being told "no" (or "Yes, for an exorbitant fee"). The first line of defense may be that the copyright holders will never hear of you. Depends on the stakes, I guess.

--I forgot to mention one feature of the loud concert scene, which is that the player would be encouraged to type in whole sentences for conversation, which would be mined for keywords. The NPCs can only hear every other word you can say, so it's totally mimetic for them to respond to "I don't want to hear about Sally!" by telling you about Sally.

[UPDATE: Victor, thanks for the additional info about quoting. And I agree about the intellectual property law. I mean, you can't put [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois_%28album%29]Superman[/url] in your picture without permission from DC? Such bullshit. I guess we should be happy they didn't suppress the relevant song, which mentions "The Man of Metropolis."]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2855&start=0#p19926
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Will I have to do this myself?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-19 19:46:31

I am under the impression that finding collaborators in IF is almost impossible if you have not published at least one average-to-good game yourself. People generally want to see proof that you have the skill and commitment needed to make a good game before they decide to work with you.

In fact, I'm not even sure it would be easy to find IF collaborators once you have proven yourself: it tends to be a community of people who like working alone. In last year's IF Comp, I believe only 2 out of 26 games were written by more than one person. So if you don't get any reactions, that doesn't mean people hate you or your game idea. It just means that it's hard to find people who (a) want to write IF, and (b) don't have a game idea of their own that they would rather work on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2858&start=10#p19927
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright: two questions
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-19 22:13:09

[quote]Characters and settings fall under intellectual property law (rather than pure copyright law).[/quote]

Mm, "intellectual property law" is just a blanket term for copyright law, trademark law, patent law, and a few others. Characters and settings are definitely under copyright law. (The character's name and/or likeness might be trademarked too.)

[quote]In fact, quoting a poem or a song is fine -- the details depend on the country in which you reside, of course, but something like a maximum of 40 lines or 25% percent of the poem (whichever is less) would be fairly standard.[/quote]

Quoting lyrics is not that easy (in the US, certainly), and published books are careful to get permission.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1754&start=0#p19928
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Dialog editors
User: George / DateTime: 2011-07-19 22:18:51

Just wanted to add another editor WIP I came across:

<a class="postlink" href="http://superfriendshipclub.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=143#p1553">http://superfriendshipclub.com/forum/vi ... =143#p1553</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1754&start=0#p19929
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Dialog editors
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-19 22:39:02

hey, forgive the question if its stupid, but i was checkin out the links above, and just wondering how one would utilize these things in Inform7?  do u put em in like extensions?  sorry, newbie here.  [emote]:?:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2855&start=0#p19930
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Will I have to do this myself?
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-19 22:50:50

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]I am under the impression that finding collaborators in IF is almost impossible if you have not published at least one average-to-good game yourself. People generally want to see proof that you have the skill and commitment needed to make a good game before they decide to work with you.

In fact, I'm not even sure it would be easy to find IF collaborators once you have proven yourself: it tends to be a community of people who like working alone. In last year's IF Comp, I believe only 2 out of 26 games were written by more than one person. So if you don't get any reactions, that doesn't mean people hate you or your game idea. It just means that it's hard to find people who (a) want to write IF, and (b) don't have a game idea of their own that they would rather work on.[/quote]
That sounds to me like a portfolio.
I can't get a job without references, and I can't get references without a job.  [emote]:cry:[/emote] 

How can I get recommendations for IF and a half premade AIF?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2858&start=10#p19931
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright: two questions
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-07-19 22:55:48

I looked it up in the other thread and quoting is only fair use if it's for criticism, analysis, etc.  So putting a quote from a book in a review of that book would be fair use--putting the same quote at the beginning of a novel would not.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2855&start=0#p19932
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Will I have to do this myself?
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-07-19 22:59:08

^^That sounds like something that ought to change.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2855&start=10#p19933
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Will I have to do this myself?
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-19 23:21:09

Re-reading the locked thread Greeny pointed out, I was wondering if Rockstar (got sued for hooker abuse in GTA San Andreas) would like to give me some recommendations.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2858&start=10#p19934
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright: two questions
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-19 23:38:00

[quote]Purple haze, orange migraine
Lazy things don't peel the rain
Axe and tummy, I don't know why
[b]Excuse me, while I kiss this guy[/b][/quote]
I don't know about everything else, but yes the last line is copyrighted (in a book of misheard lyrics).
It's sort of like:
[quote]No-one knows what it's like, to be the Batman.[/quote]
Or
[quote]All we are saying is pee in your pants.[/quote]
Or
[quote]Cherub in blue jeans.[/quote]
Or
[quote]Lucy in disguise with pie men.[/quote]
(forgot where I heard that when I posted it)
Or my favorite:
[quote]You need Kool-Aid.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2859&start=0#p19935
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: The perfect crime is a "thought crime".
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-20 01:11:06

"What would happen if...?
"Can I get away with it?"
"What's in it for me?"

Looking over the recent controversy over violent sexual behavior in videogames, the ESRB, and false reporting (Fox News), now I know why Greeny was so angry about the game I wanted people to work on with me, but as said in previous articles: "There is not one shred of evidence or study done that concludes violent sexual behavior (or rape) can come from playing violent videogames."

You might as well say if you stay at Disneyland for a year, interacting with the "Where's Nemo?" exhibit, you will start acting like a fish.

Your thoughts?

Looks like we have another Jack Thompson on our hands.
[url=http://www.computerandvideogames.com/288541/news/games-cause-rape-increase-psychologist-speaks-her-mind-again/][b][i]'Games cause rape increase'[/i] psychologist speaks her mind again[/b][/url]
I'd like to point out, the studies she "conveniently" filed away and lost were not conclusive.
These studies had mostly Japanese games in mind, including an American game called RapeLay.
[url=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/107764-Games-Cause-Rape-Psychiatrist-Defends-Her-Position][b][i]"Games Cause Rape"[/i] Psychiatrist Defends Her Position[/b][/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1754&start=0#p19936
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Dialog editors
User: George / DateTime: 2011-07-20 01:32:18

No, these tools aren't intended for a particular IF system such as I7. However you potentially could take their output and put it into a format that an I7 extension could use.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2858&start=10#p19937
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright: two questions
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-07-20 02:24:22

You forgot "There's a bathroom on the right."

However, I doubt any of those are actually copyrighted since they all predate any compendium of them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2860&start=0#p19938
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Bilingual game
User: Pelican / DateTime: 2011-07-20 02:28:55

I'd like to make my game available in 2 languages.  I'll be making my own replacement for everything in en_us.  I wonder, have any other TADS 3 games been made this way?  Is it easy to bundle the 2 languages into 1 file, so that the users choose which language to use before beginning the game?  Or should I compile 2 separate games?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2861&start=0#p19939
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Popularity of IF over the years
User: Pelican / DateTime: 2011-07-20 02:33:04

Is IF playing and authoring currently increasing or decreasing in popularity?  Is there anyone who has been maintaining some manner of statistics to see the number of people downloading games over the years or the number of games created per year?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2862&start=0#p19940
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Creating image maps in HTML TADS?
User: Pelican / DateTime: 2011-07-20 02:39:21

Can HTML TADS support image maps?  (i.e. you click on a certain area of the map to go to another place)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2863&start=0#p19941
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Are look at, examine, and search the same?
User: Pelican / DateTime: 2011-07-20 03:17:19

When building a game, should these verbs be linked together so they always share the same meaning?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2861&start=0#p19942
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Popularity of IF over the years
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-20 03:26:14

Interesting question.
When I left the AIF community I was thinking the same thing.

I think videogames (both PC and console) have made text adventures take a back seat to newer games with very realistic animation.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2862&start=0#p19943
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Creating image maps in HTML TADS?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-20 04:40:00

Yes, using HTML image maps. There are deviations between standard HTML and TADS HTML, described here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/htmltads/deviate.htm#deviations">http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/htmltads/ ... deviations</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2863&start=0#p19944
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Are look at, examine, and search the same?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-20 04:49:17

It's up to you, I guess. If you're asking for opinions, LOOK AT and EXAMINE are almost always the same. SEARCH is usually not the same.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2863&start=0#p19945
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Are look at, examine, and search the same?
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-20 05:00:28

[quote="Pelican"]When building a game, should these verbs be linked together so they always share the same meaning?[/quote]
I personally think they all should have differnt meanings, just as they do in real life.

Look gives you a general description.
Look at give you more details.
Examine is similar to look at, only it gives you a more defined description.

Look
There is a vase here.
Look at vase
The vase has a pattern of red wavy lines.
You see a piece of it is missing.
Examine vase
The wavy lines go all around the vase.

Search is something completely different.

Look
There is a vase here.
Look at vase
The vase has a pattern of red wavy lines.
You see a piece of it is missing.
Search for missing piece
While looking for the missing piece, you find a clue for your next destination.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2858&start=10#p19946
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright: two questions
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-07-20 05:01:22

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]
Just to make sure that this is clear: [...] [/quote]

Sorry, you're right. In an attempt to cut it short I expressed it in the totally wrong way. The game I was talking about was "commercial [i]and[/i] copyrighted", not "commercial, [i]so[/i] copyrighted". It is a 1979 work and my mind was in "1979 mode"   [emote]:)[/emote]  when it was usually took for granted that computing stuff was either free to hack with through college networks (as in hacker culture tradition) or a fully closed commercial product.

It was an adventure for the TRS-80, that's why I thought of asking Maher about the anonymous author (he's been researching the TRS-80 late 70's scene lately in his blog), as even if I'm making a blatant copyright breach I would like to cite the author if possible at all.

--

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2863&start=0#p19947
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Are look at, examine, and search the same?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-20 05:45:53

[quote="Pelican"]When building a game, should these verbs be linked together so they always share the same meaning?[/quote]
In Inform, "look at" and "examine" trigger the examining action, while "search" triggers the searching action.

It would be fine to make a game in which "search" just maps onto examining, though. It becomes less and less standard to force players to search for things.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2863&start=0#p19948
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Are look at, examine, and search the same?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-20 07:56:48

The default behavior of searching and examining is closely related, too; by default you can't search anything but containers and supporters, and searching them by default lists their contents, as does examining them. (Compare the examine supporters rule, the examine containers rule, the standard search containers rule, the standard search supporters rule, and the can't search unless container or supporter rule.) There are some minor variations -- I just noticed that my rule for printing the room description details of the desk fired when searching it but not when examining it -- but nothing too major, I think. The big difference comes when you write custom rules for some of the actions, like this:

[code]Barn is a room. "A barn with a large messy haystack in the corner." A haystack is scenery in the barn. The description of the haystack is "Large and messy." The needle is a thing.
Instead of searching the haystack:
   say "After much digging, you find the needle!";
   move the needle to the player.
When play begins: say "Now where could that needle be?"[/code]

But as Victor said, redirecting "search" to "examine" in all cases would be fine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2860&start=0#p19949
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Bilingual game
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-20 08:14:17

I don't think there is support for this. The sources in adv3/en_us are modifying adv3 classes. You see code like:

[code]modify Thing
    // ...
    isPlural = nil[/code]
This suggests that you can compile exactly one parser into a game.

Edit:
On the other hand, another parser could use different property identifiers. But it gets hairy, so I guess the simplest solution is to build the game twice.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2864&start=0#p19950
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Can brand items appear in my game?
User: Pelican / DateTime: 2011-07-20 08:14:23

What if my character could visit a KFC and or buy Nike shoes?  Would that present any legal problems?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2863&start=0#p19951
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Are look at, examine, and search the same?
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-20 08:16:16

I once used a concept that is essentially Matt W's example.  The game contained some shelves, which, at first glance, held only a bunch of non-descript stuff.  Examining them didn't tell you anything  additional, but if you searched them it made a specific object appear.  One play-testing comment that I got was that this made the item too easy to miss, because "search," as distinct from "examine," is not likely to be something that players try as a matter of course.

In the early days, my recollection is that "searching" was something that you might not try on every object, but if you ran into a roadblock and started going back to see what you might have missed, searching was one of the things that you would definitely try.  (I have a very vague recollection that one of the early locations in Adventure -- or maybe it was Zork? -- required you to search a bunch of leaves in order to find something under them; examining the leaves did not do the trick.)  These days, I guess that approach is somewhat out of fashion, but personally I don't have trouble with the idea that a player might find himself stuck and have to go back over territory already covered, including searching, in an effort to find something that might not have been discovered the first time (although it could have been discovered if the player had thought of it).  In fairness to the play-tester who gave me the comment, the particular item in my game was not one whose absence would cause the kind of roadblock that might cause the player to start searching things, even under the "old" approach.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2864&start=0#p19952
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Can brand items appear in my game?
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-20 08:26:36

It's not my area of the law, so I can't offer more than an uneducated guess, but as a practical matter even if you are technically violating somebody's trademark rights, why would they object to what is, in effect, free advertising?  On the other hand, if the chicken is poisoned or the shoes turn the wearer into a cripple, you might have a different situation.

In the game I'm curently working on, one of the objects is a glass of Coca-Cola.  Technically, I probably should have included a "registered trademark" symbol, but I didn't do so (just as I omitted it in the preceding sentence), mainly because I was too lazy to figure out how to get Inform 7 to print a non-keyboard symbol.

The usual caution:  If you need an answer you can take to the bank, you have to ask a lawyer who knows about the area.


Robert Rothman

[Edit:  In the unlikley event Coca-Cola were to sue me, I suppose my first response would be to apologize profusely and promise to change the beverage to Pepsi.]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2864&start=0#p19953
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Can brand items appear in my game?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-20 08:36:26

I believe that is fair use in the US, and it can add some nice specificity to the play world.  (But!  Not a lawyer!)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2863&start=0#p19954
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Are look at, examine, and search the same?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-20 08:39:56

I'd expect a heavy clue from the examine that search would be necessary, and that usually means that some further examination should serve the same purpose.  That is, if I look at the shelves, and only see random clutter, I'm not going to look further.  I only remember SEARCH exists if the game elbows me pretty hard.  In general, I expect a second examination (clued by the first or some other part of the game) to turn up necessary clues.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2863&start=0#p19955
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Are look at, examine, and search the same?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-20 08:46:09

I've been stymied in a couple of games because I forgot that "search" was a standard verb. And I've breezed through similar puzzles in other games because I remembered it was.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2863&start=0#p19956
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Are look at, examine, and search the same?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-07-20 08:46:53

I considered remapping SEARCH to EXAMINE in my WIP, but since searching is an important action in my game, it didn't quite feel right. I ended up compromising: the PC will automatically search a hiding spot after examining it, as long as she's close enough to touch it. I wasn't worried about players not realising they had to search things, since the scenario makes that pretty clear. I just felt that wandering about typing EXAMINE X. SEARCH X. over and over again was unnecessarily grindy. And in terms of character motivations, it hardly made sense for the PC to run about looking at things without searching them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2865&start=0#p19957
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: How do you manually fire an action requiring 2 bits of data?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-20 08:51:10

Dear peeps,

I've got this action set up:

[code]turning something in a direction is an action applying to one thing and one topic.
Understand "turn [something] [text]" as turning something in a direction.[/code]

You can see this action requires 2 bits of data.

An action like 'taking' only requires 1 bit of data, so from within Inform, I can redirect another action to it with something like this:

[code]instead try taking noun;[/code]

How could I redirect an action to my 'turning something in a direction' action above?

I was not surprised that when I tried this higgledypiggledy--

[code]instead try turning something in a direction roundabout topic understood;[/code]

where 'roundabout' was the intended (something) and the topic understood was the intended (text), that it did not work.

I am redirecting from an action which requires only one thing, a text - IE the player will have supplied a topic, but no noun. So I'm supplying the noun (the roundabout) but I wanna grab the player's topic, then feed it into the 'turning something in a direction' action.

What's a syntax or method for this kind of thing?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2864&start=0#p19958
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Can brand items appear in my game?
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-20 08:51:35

[quote][Edit: In the unlikley event Coca-Cola were to sue me, I suppose my first response would be to apologize profusely and promise to change the beverage to Pepsi.][/quote] ROFL  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 
Product Placement is pretty serious even if the brand name is in a relatively unknown text adventure (which would be more serious with pictures).

I'm not studying law either, but I remember there was a case in Second Life where a player made an avatar of a cartoon character with a personality that matched the show.

Because this isn't a restricted environment, he could do anything with the character, until he was sued of course.

Just for the record, Coca~cola was sued once too when they started out, by using the image of Santa Clause (holding a bottle of soda) without permission.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2866&start=0#p19959
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Tunnel vision
User: Pelican / DateTime: 2011-07-20 08:57:00

Many times when I play IF and am going through room descriptions, I feel like my character walking around while peering through a long paper tube.  At first, I sort of know where I'm at, but if I want to really see what is in front of me, I'm must do a lot of extra looking at everything.  I'm always wondering, why didn't I see that that item was like that, I should have noticed that immediately when I entered the room.  Has anyone else had this feeling?  Does this appear in games with highly detailed environments?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2864&start=0#p19960
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Can brand items appear in my game?
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-20 08:58:56

[quote="gravel"]I believe that is fair use in the US, and it can add some nice specificity to the play world.  (But!  Not a lawyer!)[/quote]
There are a couple of lawyers on Youtube who could explain fair use better (they said not to act solely on the explanation and contact your own lawyer if you have any legal questions).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2864&start=0#p19961
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Can brand items appear in my game?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-20 09:03:37

Trademarks can be used by anyone. You don't even have to mention that they're trademarks (the usual "Foo is a trademark of Bar" stuff some people write.)

What you can't do, is name your game "Coca Cola".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2865&start=0#p19962
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do you manually fire an action requiring 2 bits of d
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-20 09:07:14

I recently dealt with what may be a similar situation.  The game includes a firearm, which can be used in one of two ways.  One way is a "shooting" action, which requires one object (the shootee).  The other way is first to use an "aiming" action, which takes one object (the target), and then to use a "triggerpulling" action which takes no objects.  The triggerpulling action redirects to "shooting," using the noun previously designated as the target (in the aiming action) as the object of "shooting."  I don't seem to recall any real problems in getting this to work, although I don't know if redirecting from a single-noun action to a double-noun action is different in this regard than redirecting from a no-noun action to a single-noun action.

I'm at work now and don't have access to the code, but I'll try to post it when I get home this evening.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2865&start=0#p19963
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do you manually fire an action requiring 2 bits of d
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-07-20 09:16:51

You need to include the word "it" in any action's name that takes two nouns (or a noun + topic). "It" is replaced by the first noun when needed.

[code]Turning it in a direction is an action applying to one thing and one topic.
Understand "turn [something] [text]" as turning it in a direction.

Instead of turning the foo in a direction:
    try turning the bar in a direction topic understood.
[/code]
(Personally I'd name the action something that reads better in rules, but that's just personal preference.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1754&start=0#p19964
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Dialog editors
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-20 09:36:34

kk thnx!  [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2865&start=0#p19965
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do you manually fire an action requiring 2 bits of d
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-20 09:39:05

Thanks both. Yes, the 'it' method was what I needed to shunt my idea from a one topic action to a one noun + one topic action.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2865&start=0#p19966
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do you manually fire an action requiring 2 bits of d
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-20 09:40:08

[quote="Juhana"]
(Personally I'd name the action something that reads better in rules, but that's just personal preference.)[/quote]
Me too. Maybe just "turning it in" or perhaps "turning it in the direction of"

I don't like using topics, though - their parsing is so different from everything else, and they're especially tricky when redirecting actions as you are. I'd probably use a kind of value in a case like this:

[code]Roof is a room.

There is a weather vane in roof. The weather vane has a direction called the orientation.

Rotation is a kind of value. The rotations are left and right. Understand "counterclockwise" as left. Understand "clockwise" as right.

Turning it towards is an action applying to one thing and one rotation.

Understand "turn [something] to [rotation]" as turning it towards.
Understand "turn [something] [rotation]" as turning it towards.

Understand "turn [something] [text]" as a mistake ("You can only turn something to the left or to the right.")

Check turning something towards a rotation:
	say "It's stuck.";
	stop the action.
	
test me with "turn weather vane to north/turn weather vane to left/turn weather vane clockwise"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2863&start=0#p19967
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Are look at, examine, and search the same?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-20 09:52:40

I believe that in Inform and many other systems, "look in" and "look through" also parse as the searching action. So "look through window" will trigger a searching action, for example, while "examine window" might be more likely to describe the window itself. That's the only place where I think the searching action still makes sense.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2866&start=0#p19968
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Tunnel vision
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-20 09:52:49

A few thoughts:

     1.  To me, part of the fun of playing IF is exploration, and the whole point of exploration is that you don't just walk into a room and you're told everything about what's there.  You see the big picture; based on that, you decide to look more carefully at certain aspects of it.  That gives you some additional information, which in turn might trigger yet a closer look at a smaller piece of the overall picture.  I don't view that as a bad thing.  Quite the contrary, its part of what makes it fun.

     2.  Because of the nature of this exploration process, part of learning to play IF is to develop the habit of reading in a different way than one might read a novel.  You have to read carefully, of course, but you also have to be sensitive to clues to where further examination might be warranted.  Again, to me this is part of the fun.

     3.  Implicit in all of this, of course, is that the author has a reponsibility to write something which works well given the nature of the process.  Ideally, each level of description should give the reader some hint as to what, if anything, warrants taking the exploratory process to the next level, but should do so without making it so obvious that exploration becomes a purely mechanical process.  This is difficult to do well, and obviously games vary widely in how well they pull it off.

     4.  To a certain exent, at least, I think this process is consistent with the "real world."  In any given situation, there is a huge amount of raw information available to your senses.  However, the brain cannot process all of it without some focus.  Thus, in the real world, as in an IF game, you might walk into a room, in which a lot of detail is there to be seen by your eyes.  However, all of that detail will not really be apparent at first glance.  Instead, some features of the room might strike you as interesting, whereupon you focus your attention on those aspects.  In doing so, you "see" things that you did not really "see" before, even though the information, in the form of light reflecting from the objects, was there to be seen.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2863&start=10#p19969
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Are look at, examine, and search the same?
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-20 10:12:50

[quote]I believe that in Inform and many other systems, "look in" and "look through" also parse as the searching action.[/quote]

I have a game in which there is a microscope, which the player might reasonably want to "look through."  Not wanting to go to the trouble of creating a separate "looking through" action and redefining the "look through" command, and thinking that it would pretty unusual for a player actually to try to "search" the microscope, I triggered the "You see an amoeba" response to "searching" the microscope.  If anybody actually tries to search it (instead of using the looking through" command) that reponse will seem pretty strange.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2828&start=0#p19970
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Real differences between Z-Machine and Glulx?
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-07-20 10:37:01

So Amazon is selling games that run in a browser? I didn't think the Kindle had a browser. Does anyone here actually develop for the kindle and can talk about how its games are written?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2867&start=0#p19971
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: inform 7: reading an object
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-07-20 11:02:51

[code]The Human is wearing a
silver chain. a ID tag is part of the silver chain. ID tag Writing is part of the ID tag.[/code]

What is a better way to make the id tag readable?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2867&start=0#p19972
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: reading an object
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-20 11:07:20

I'm not sure, but I think the "read" command may trigger the examining action.  I often include signs, the text of which is simply embodied as the description.  When the player types "read sign," I'm pretty sure it gives him the description, just as "examine sign" would do.

If you want text on an object to be seen only by the "read" command (and not by "examine") you may need to do some further tweaking.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2867&start=0#p19973
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: reading an object
User: Zed / DateTime: 2011-07-20 11:13:59

Yup, this is sufficient if you want to leave read as a synonym for examine, per the standard rules.

[code]
The player is wearing a silver chain. A ID tag is part of the silver chain. The description of the ID Tag is "The tag says 'GI Joe'."
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2868&start=0#p19974
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: inform 7: feed bowl problem
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-07-20 11:18:21

[code] a water bowl is a fixed in place container in the cage. a feed bowl is a fixed in place container in the cage. the water bowl contains H2O. bread is here.[/code]
[code]Instead of putting bread in the feed bowl: say "The food bowl looks pretty dirty. Would you eat out of that? I doubt it, so don't make the goose eat out of it."[/code]

why does'nt this work?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2867&start=0#p19975
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: reading an object
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-07-20 11:25:06

I want the text on an object to be seen only by the read command, not by examine.
I tried taking the ID tag writing out and replacing it with[code]Instead of reading the ID tag: say "[if in Skylight room] Modified Human male, Talent: Body Switcher #01[otherwise] It's too dark to read the writing here."[/code] 

but it won't accept that

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2863&start=10#p19976
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Are look at, examine, and search the same?
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-20 11:26:48

im just a tad annoyed that there is no "look [i]out[/i]", which is weird when u make a window and a player wants to "look out window", instead they have to "look through" window.  idk.  maybe its an eastern-shore thing.  and please, correct me if im mistaken.   [emote]:geek:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2863&start=10#p19977
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Are look at, examine, and search the same?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-20 11:50:49

[quote="ezfreemann"]im just a tad annoyed that there is no "look [i]out[/i]"[/quote]There is. At least by default in Tads. And I imagine it's trivial to map it in Inform too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2861&start=0#p19978
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Popularity of IF over the years
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-20 11:57:16

The IFArchive logs are hard to make sense of, because overall Internet traffic always increases -- robots and spiders tend to swamp players.

The closest thing we have to real statistics are the number of voters in the IFComp. That peaked around 2000, dropped somewhat, and now bounces up and down with no obvious trend. However, the past few years have seen a lot of IF-playing in other venues (the IF JIGComp, Gamasutra features, real-life IF play sessions in Boston) that are not attached to our part of the IF community and probably don't get into IFComp voting. So it's anybody's guess, really.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2867&start=0#p19979
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: reading an object
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-07-20 12:02:52

[quote="ilovemyhedgehog"]I want the text on an object to be seen only by the read command, not by examine.
I tried taking the ID tag writing out and replacing it with[code]Instead of reading the ID tag: say "[if in Skylight room] Modified Human male, Talent: Body Switcher #01[otherwise] It's too dark to read the writing here."[/code] 

but it won't accept that[/quote]


You're not too far off. Also, I like that you're now using code tags. It makes things clearer.

As noted above, I7 folds reading into the examining action. This makes sense for some games (maybe a lot of games), but in other games, it could be worthwhile to split reading and examining. I for one often like it if "examine book" tells me the title of the book while "read book" gives me a summary of the contents, but I may be heading off-tangent here so I'll skip it.

Anyway. The first thing you want to do is split the "read" action (you 'understand the command as something new' because you want to use it in a new action). Then, you create the new reading action (I added 'requiring light' because reading is hard when you're in a pitch-black room, unless it's in braille). Then you add the new Understand phrase, which tells Inform what "read book" actually is supposed to mean.

We still need to make the action do something. All we have right now is an empty command. Therefore, we make it possible for something to be readable or not readable, and for convenience's sake we create a kind of thing (a 'written thing') which is assumed to have text. Each written thing is given the [i]writing[/i] property, which is text.

The check rules are there to ensure you don't read something that isn't readable; it stops the attempt and issues a warning message. The report rule outputs the contents of the [i]writing[/i] property.

The fun part is that now, you can add the "Instead..." rule you mentioned earlier, and it should work without a hitch. That's because Inform now understands what "reading" means.


[code]Understand the command "read" as something new.
Reading is an action applying to one thing requiring light.
Understand "read [something]" as reading.

A thing can be readable. A thing is usually not readable. 
A written thing is a kind of thing. A written thing is usually readable. 
A written thing has some text called writing. The writing of a written thing is usually "Nothing unusual is written here."


Check reading when the noun is not readable: say "That's not something that can be read." instead.
Report reading: say the writing of the noun.

The Skylight Room is a room.
The Skylight Room is west of the Morgue.

The ID tag is a written thing in the Morgue. The writing of the id tag is "[if in skylight room]'Modified Human Male. Talent: Body Switcher #01.'[otherwise]It's too dark to read the writing here.[end if]"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2861&start=0#p19980
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Popularity of IF over the years
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-20 12:03:38

My guess is that there have to be a certain number of people like me out there:  that is, old-timers who have spent most of the past two decades lamenting the demise of Infocom, and then have been pleasantly surprised to learn about the "new" IF being written.  In addition, the availability of Inform 7 opens the door for people like myself to try our hands at writing our own.  My guess would be that the effect would be an increase in the amount that gets written and played, as compared to five or ten years ago.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2868&start=0#p19981
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: feed bowl problem
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-07-20 12:10:47

[quote="ilovemyhedgehog"][code] a water bowl is a fixed in place container in the cage. a feed bowl is a fixed in place container in the cage. the water bowl contains H2O. bread is here.[/code]
[code]Instead of putting bread in the feed bowl: say "The food bowl looks pretty dirty. Would you eat out of that? I doubt it, so don't make the goose eat out of it."[/code]

why does'nt this work?[/quote]
This is a slightly annoying thing I7 has going for itself. In play, you can type "put x into y" and the parser will understand, but that's not the real name of the action. To find the real name, you could use the Index, but I think it's much easier to start your game (without that code), use the "actions" command, and try putting something into something else. The text "inserting the (something) into (something)" will appear. This is the name of the actual action.

[code]The pet shop is a room.
The cage is a container in the pet shop. The water bowl is a fixed in place container in the cage. a feed bowl is a fixed in place container in the cage. the water bowl contains H2O. bread is in the pet shop.
Instead of inserting bread into the feed bowl: say "The food bowl looks pretty dirty. Would you eat out of that? I doubt it, so don't make the goose eat out of it."[/code]

As for why it is this way, well, the real action only has one name. "put [other thing] into [thing]" is simply a synonym for inserting it into.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2861&start=0#p19982
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Popularity of IF over the years
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-07-20 12:23:52

[quote="Robert Rothman"]My guess is that there have to be a certain number of people like me out there:  that is, old-timers who have spent most of the past two decades lamenting the demise of Infocom, and then have been pleasantly surprised to learn about the "new" IF being written.  In addition, the availability of Inform 7 opens the door for people like myself to try our hands at writing our own.  My guess would be that the effect would be an increase in the amount that gets written and played, as compared to five or ten years ago.[/quote]

I'm not sure if I'm an anomaly, but I'm among those who aren't old-timerish enough to properly appreciate Zork and Planetfall (both of which I've played, albeit briefly). There may be much about IF's basic conventions that remains the same, but still, it's the advances and the maturation of the medium that drew me in.

Without Inform 7 (or TADS 3), I doubt I'd felt ready to get on the train. Nowadays, given the appearance of browser-based gaming, the use of Inform 7 in classrooms, the release of Aaron Reed's book etc, it would surprise me to not see a rising interest.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2868&start=0#p19983
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: feed bowl problem
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-20 12:25:58

Off topic, but goose-related.

[rant]Please don't feed the goose.

In parts of the east coast of the US, Canada geese have become a major nuisance.  What was originally a wild and migratory population has gotten out of control, largely as a result of well-intentioned people feeding them over the past few decades.  With a ready food supply and few natural predators, the population has gotten out of control, and the birds are no longer migratory.  And where there are geese, there is goose guano -- [i]lots and lots[/i] of goose guano.

So please don't feed the goose.

Robert Rothman (who spent part of last weekend trying to clean a lot of goose dung off my mother's driveway)[/rant]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2858&start=10#p19984
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright: two questions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-20 12:26:10

[quote="zarf"][quote]Quoting lyrics is not that easy (in the US, certainly), and published books are careful to get permission.[/quote][/quote]
Do you have any resources for determining whether lyrics can be quoted?

What's the worst that can happen if you are considered to be in violation but you're not receiving any income? Cease and desist orders? Fines? Jail time?

The problem with asking for permission is that it puts you on the radar. If you're denied, it seems much more likely that you would suffer consequences for a violation. What are the chances that a copyright holder would know or care about a work of IF otherwise? As the popularity of the quoted artist increases, I'd expect the difference to get bigger.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2868&start=0#p19985
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: feed bowl problem
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-20 12:48:51

[quote="Robert Rothman"]So please don't feed the goose.[/quote]
Please do eat the goose! Goose is so damn tasty.

I heard last year that animal rights activists were up in arms because New York City was culling geese. The great thing about these programs (Philadelphia has a deer culling program) is that the meat is invariably donated to soup kitchens. Yum!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2861&start=0#p19986
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Popularity of IF over the years
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-07-20 13:35:25

A while back someone made real statistics of games released by year but I don't remember where I saw it and can't find it right now. You can see how many games were released each year by searching IFDB with <a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=published%3A2010">http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=published%3A2010</a> (or at least the number of games listed in IFDB - it should cover almost all English games but the non-English games are mostly not listed there). The number of new releases has been steadily at around 100-150 releases per year for a couple of years.

2010: 153
2009: 107
2008: 155
2007: 127
2006: 141
2005: 149
2004: 183
2003: 219
2002: 213
2001: 226
2000: 188

2011 is 53 so far but there will be a spike when the IFcomp games are released.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2858&start=10#p19987
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright: two questions
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-07-20 13:36:38

[quote="capmikee"]Do you have any resources for determining whether lyrics can be quoted?[/quote]

[url=http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html]This is a pretty good summary from the copyright office[/url]. Again, it seems to me that if you're only quoting a small portion, changing the lyrics, and doing it as only a small part of a game that you're not profiting from, you're probably OK.

[quote]What's the worst that can happen if you are considered to be in violation but you're not receiving any income? Cease and desist orders? Fines? Jail time?[/quote]

I don't know what's the worst that can happen, but the most likely thing to happen (if anything) would be a cease and desist order, since you can send those without paying any legal fees or anything. If you receive one and ignore it, they might attempt to sue you. Criminal charges strike me as extremely unlikely, if possible at all (my understanding is that criminal copyright infringement has to happen on a commercial scale -- but again, not a lawyer).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2864&start=0#p19988
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Can brand items appear in my game?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-07-20 13:56:22

I assume the very existence of "Coke is it!" and the lack of lawsuits surrounding it means that, at the very least, you can get away with it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2858&start=10#p19989
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright: two questions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-20 14:12:29

Thanks for the summary. I've always been a little fuzzy on what constitutes fair use. It sounds like if your game doesn't parody, comment upon, teach, study, or report something about the song, it doesn't constitute fair use. I think the altered lyrics would constitute parody in this particular case, though.

I've read a lot about fair use in the context of mashups by parodists like Negativland and the Evolution Control Committee. I think it's easy to forget that these artists, while they play a lot of legal and social games, are protected by fair use because what they're doing is clearly parody. While their activist rhetoric sometimes advocates abolishing copyright restrictions beyond an excessively narrow definition of fair use, their actions can't be considered "civil disobedience" if you accept their status as parodists.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2869&start=0#p19990
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: INFORM 6: Having trouble with getting reactions to verbs
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-07-20 14:48:13

Okay, I'm not here to bore you with a description of the game I'm working on or any other irrelevent stuff. Here's the situation:

I've got a couch, right? A particularly squeaky one, that squeaks whenever you sit down on it or stand up from it. Therefore, I put in an "after" routine to illustrate this squeakitude to the player. Sitting down on the couch (entering it) produces the desired message ("the couch makes a squeak as you sit down", basically). However, when I tell it to do pretty much the same thing with getting off the couch (or exiting it), I run into an annoying snag: when the player types "stand", "stand up", "out", "exit", "get off", or "get up", the game simply says the default "You get off the couch." Only when he/she types "exit couch" is the desired response ("the couch squeaks as you get up") printed.

So, yeah, what do I do? Normally I'd let this slide, but I intend to add several different puzzle-important phrases related to entering/exiting the couch, and the standard "you get off the couch" just won't do.

Here's the code, if anyone would be so kind as to point out my (likely very glaring) mistake:

[code]
Object  couch_breakroom "couch" breakroom
  with  name 'couch' 'sofa',
	initial
	  "The break room's new couch sits, squat and utilitarian, against the wall.",
	description 
	  "This particular couch isn't really anything special, and in truth, has a long way to go before it can live up to the legacy of the break room's
	  previous couch. It's way too squeaky, constantly moaning and groaning whenever anyone sits on it.",
	after [;
	  Enter:
	    print
	    "The couch makes a nauseating, high-pitched groan as you sit down.^";
	    return true;
	  Exit,GetOff:
	    print
	    "The couch makes a disquieting groan as you stand up from it.^";
	    return true;
	],
  has   static supporter transparent enterable;
[/code]

Massive, massive props to any and everyone who helps me out here; this is my first true Inform 6 game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2864&start=0#p19991
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Can brand items appear in my game?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-20 14:52:54

I feel obligated to link to this:

[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4Ng2P3zxfM]POM Wonderful Presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold[/url]

A few years back I'd read an article about an author who placed products in a novel he wrote. I think he published an amusing series of letters between himself and the companies he was "promoting" (without their consent, if I remember correctly). But while trying to find the article on Google, I discovered that product placement in novels is all over the place now!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2869&start=0#p19992
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: INFORM 6: Having trouble with getting reactions to verbs
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-07-20 15:30:30

Using "react_after" instead of "after" is likely to help. I copied your object code and it worked.

--

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2870&start=0#p19993
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Menus by Emily Short
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-07-20 15:38:13

I'm having some issues using Emily Short's "Menus" extension. Let me explain.

In my game there is a car, and there are four possible destinations the car can drive to. When the player enters the car, I have a menu appear asking which of the four destinations they would like to drive to.
When they select the entry, I have a rule fire which moves the car and player to the desired location. That part works just fine. The part I can't figure out is: how do I then close the menu and return to gameplay?
I know it's going to be a simple "quit the menu;" answer, I just can't find it anywhere in the documentation/source code.
Right now the player has to manually quit the menu to see that anything has happened.

On a side note, how do I change the title from "Instructions" to "Destination?" on the menu screen?
I'm also using the Basic Help Menu extension.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2869&start=0#p19994
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: INFORM 6: Having trouble with getting reactions to verbs
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-07-20 15:43:26

react_after will be called whenever the player successfully exits any container/supporter, so you will have to put a check such as if (noun == self).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2870&start=0#p19995
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Menus by Emily Short
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-20 16:57:44

I don't know anything about programming, but I can give you some hints on commands.

Get out of car
You must first park your car.
Park car
Which car do yo want to park, the red car or the yellow car?
Park yellow car
The yellow car is now parked.

The menu should turn off at this point.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2870&start=0#p19996
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Menus by Emily Short
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2011-07-20 17:06:55




	The best way to get the hang of the "Menus" extension is to open the extension itself and skim through the code; the first few times I tried to make frequent use of "Menus" this exercise helped me quickly understand how it all works.

	I don't have either Inform 7 or the "Menus" extension to look at right now (since the extension comes with Inform, apparently one can't also view/download its text at the I7 website).  Normally I'd be more reluctant to answer your question without being able to check the particulars of syntax and so forth, but I was idly browsing the forum for a bit and noticed your question had received no response during the time of my visit; in other words, you'll have to carefully double-check my advice.


In response to your trouble with exiting the "menu screen," the directive you'll want to include in your rules is something quite like:

[color=#BF0080]decrease the depth of the current-menu by 1[/color]

For the particular phrasing, you may want to open the extension (and its companion, "Basic Screen Effects") to have a look.

One further thing to keep in mind about using the "Menus" extension is that by default (in other words, unless you write some rules to the contrary), a player can exit any menu screen by pressing the "Q" key.  This could be a problem if the proper functioning of your game depends on you (as author) controlling the Menu screen (to see that such-and-such is carried out, etc).  The best thing to do might be to intercede by unlisting the rule in the extension that governs navigating the menu depth and replacing this with your own version; unfortunately I can't recall the name of the particular rule from memory, but as I mentioned if you look through the extension's code you should see it without much searching.

Changing the name of the menu, or other text that appears above the options while the menu is displayed, is actually just a matter of changing the status line.  Somewhere in "Menus" there are two rules that refer to something quite like "Deep Menu Status" and "Shallow Menu Status."  You ought instead write your own rules for displaying the status bar (easiest if you use the "Basic Screen Effects" extension in conjunction with "Menus"), which will supercede these "Deep/Shallow Status" thingies.  In the same way, you could also override the status line info while making use of the default menus from the "Basic Help Menu" extension.


I would suggest overall you consider a very simple "driving" scene as a way to automate the machinery of constructing, displaying, effecting, and clearing your menus.  Notionally, this might look like:

[code]
Using-carstuff is a truth state that varies.  Using-carstuff is usually false.

Carstuff is a recurring scene.  Carstuff begins when using-carstuff is true.  Carstuff ends when using-carstuff is false.

When carstuff begins:
	[initialize and display the menu]

Every turn during carstuff:
[construct the status line per your own table rather than the Deep/Shallow tables]
[carry out the displaying activity with the current menu-- in other words, if the player pressed "Q" to quit your menu, you disregard this and bring the menu right back up again]

When carstuff ends:
	[get rid of the menu, i.e. "decrease the menu depth"]
[/code]

Sorry I can't be more forthcoming with particulars, but as I said I don't have Inform with me at the moment to check on details.  If I haven't answered your questions, or if you have more questions, I'm sure others will be glad to fill in some of the details.




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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2870&start=0#p19997
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Menus by Emily Short
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-07-20 17:22:31

[quote="Joel Webster"]I'm having some issues using Emily Short's "Menus" extension. Let me explain.

In my game there is a car, and there are four possible destinations the car can drive to. When the player enters the car, I have a menu appear asking which of the four destinations they would like to drive to.
When they select the entry, I have a rule fire which moves the car and player to the desired location. That part works just fine. The part I can't figure out is: how do I then close the menu and return to gameplay?
I know it's going to be a simple "quit the menu;" answer, I just can't find it anywhere in the documentation/source code.
Right now the player has to manually quit the menu to see that anything has happened.

On a side note, how do I change the title from "Instructions" to "Destination?" on the menu screen?
I'm also using the Basic Help Menu extension.[/quote]

This is not really the question you're asking, but: I would strongly advise against this use of Menus. It's not what the extension was intended for -- namely to provide some out-of-game data and allow the player to browse through it at his leisure -- and therefore it's not really designed to be easy to close the menu out without the player's involvement. But more than that, in my opinion this will provide a bad player experience: it will remove the scrollback so that the player can't see what has just been happening before driving the car (which people tend to dislike, especially if it happens frequently or unpredictably) and it forces an unnecessary break in the command-line rhythm of a game.

If what you want is to offer the player a set of enumerated choices without disrupting the whole screen display pattern, there are other ways to do that that don't feel quite so jumpy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2869&start=0#p19998
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: INFORM 6: Having trouble with getting reactions to verbs
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-07-20 17:27:26

It worked! Thanks, guys!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2858&start=10#p19999
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright: two questions
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-20 17:44:18

More on fair use: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/fair-use-rule-copyright-material-30100.html">http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/ ... 30100.html</a>

There are no hard-and-fast rules, unfortunately.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2863&start=10#p20000
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Are look at, examine, and search the same?
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-20 18:45:14

yeah, its not automatically there in inform7, but youre right, its just a line or two of code to throw it in.  but im lazy.  i want everything done for me!!! [b] AND ON A SILVER PLATTER, DAMMIT![/b]

thank u.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2871&start=0#p20001
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7: How to setup 'Entering Secret Codes'
User: atari_man / DateTime: 2011-07-20 19:19:51

Hi there, I want to add an access panel to an IF game I am creating.
What I am trying to do is have the user type a secret code into an access panel and if the code is correct then the panel will open a gate and let the user pass.
Can somebody tell me how to code this ? I cannot find an example anywhere.
Thanks in advance.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2859&start=0#p20002
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The perfect crime is a "thought crime".
User: ferams / DateTime: 2011-07-20 19:47:08

I do not think there would be much influence coming from violent games if you have a real grasp of reality and a game.  If you have been pushed by games, I would think that you have that thought to begin with, and you were just presented a situation in which you can pull it off as you have seen in a video game.  

I mean, the thing that game was even developed was to give the feeling of having to do something you can never do in real life. If you went for it, then you probably have some loose screws.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2853&start=0#p20003
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Complicity: Building Interactive Narratives
User: ferams / DateTime: 2011-07-20 19:51:38

I was taking a short course on interactive story telling a couple of months back. And the instructor kept pushing questions like, why is there a detach with the author and the player that they can work as one.  For one, it would be difficult to comprehend how the player could be the author or developer at the same time. Then you would not have a game to begin with. 

He gave an example how 2 people the author and a player can work together and write their own story. But my idea is, there would still be the original one who set what things you are to do. Is the idea sound?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2851&start=0#p20004
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: 50% Off Kindle Interactive Fiction
User: ferams / DateTime: 2011-07-20 20:01:37

Yes, active content for the kindle is really not available for purchase outside the US.  I am not sure though if the same applies if you are in the territory of UK and Japan. I have not tried any interactive content before but I have heard mixed reviews about it.  I think I might take a chance here now that they are on sale. I have always relied on online sources to get content, that's why.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2864&start=0#p20005
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Can brand items appear in my game?
User: ferams / DateTime: 2011-07-20 20:05:25

I try to stay away from things like this and just present a blurry image that would not automatically give away the brand but something that resembles it.  I am also no lawyer, but I think it would be fine if you use the brand as long as you do not benefit any from using their brand as it would just appear on your stories.

I don't think authors who take mention of products in their novel would go out and ask for permission and leave things hanging.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2858&start=20#p20006
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright: two questions
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-07-20 20:06:22

Copyright and Trademarks are two very different things. Copyright is granted to original works of specific types, or compilations. So like, recipes for example, are not covered by copyright, but cookbooks are. Titles are also not covered by copyright, so you might find ten completely different songs called "Love Story".

Trademarks, however, must be registered. TARDIS, for example, is probably covered by a trademark.

Now as pertaining to the example of the badly remembered song lyrics, things that are substantially modified are considered fair use under copyright law, so that excerpt is probably safe. In addition, copyright law provides a great deal of leeway to use in the form of parody, and it's quite obvious that the lyrics transformed here qualify as parody.

If you explicitly used word for word lyrics, it would probably be ideal to credit the songwriter or whoever owns the copyright to that song.

If someone was to use copyrighted or trademarked content in a game, it probably would be relatively safe as long as the game was not entered in a competition or used to make money, unless the author had the express permission of the copyright owner. Of course in the example of fan fiction (of which there are also many examples of fan interactive fiction) the author simply has to hope they won't be pursued by lawyers.

This leads us to software copyrights. Technically, any game we write contains code copyright to the author of the game system. If we include any extensions, we're including code copyright by the extension authors. It's assumed, I suppose, that extension authors aren't interested in pursuing the authors of games who use them. 

Now, there are games where people have added grey area content to their games, such as say, "public domain" clip art images or media files. I must confess that I myself once included a MIDI file of unknown origin in a game for a sound effect. It could be argued that this grey area is covered by the "transformative use" portion of copyright law.  

Transformative use is best argued in the form of parody, but can also be covered by criticism or analyzing. Now, if a text adventure was considered a parody of real life, you could probably throw any copyrighted material in it you want as long as you were satirizing the original content. You'd be surprised how far that law goes in sheltering the author of the infringing work if it's a parody.

But you would have to be substantially transforming the original work, I suppose. If the original was song lyrics and you transformed them while making it funny, you can count on copyright law protecting you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2871&start=0#p20007
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: How to setup 'Entering Secret Codes'
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-07-20 20:14:04

Check out [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2578&p=17796]this thread[/url] -- specifically Felix's post four down from the top.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2864&start=0#p20008
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Can brand items appear in my game?
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-07-20 20:18:23

I think it's funnier when products are made up. 

As for real products, I remember Kleenex went into a tizzy a few years ago because they were afraid their brand name was being diluted because people would refer to "kleenex" when they meant another brand (like their competitor, Puffs).

The same thing happened to Jacuzzi. Jacuzzi is actually a brand name of whirlpool spas, and they are very careful to point that out. If you say "Let's go get in the jacuzzi" and you actually have another brand of hot tub, that's incorrect. That's the sort of confusion companies want to prevent with brand dilution.  

So instead of having them buy Nike shoes, maybe they could buy Nikedas shoes, or instead of KFC it could be CFC (which could be infinitely funnier, considering what CFC really stands for). Or maybe they could be another badly named store, like Dehli Burgers (funny, of course, because the cow is sacred in India).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2864&start=10#p20009
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Can brand items appear in my game?
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-20 20:27:58

[quote]So instead of having them buy Nike shoes, maybe they could buy Nikedas shoes, or instead of KFC it could be CFC (which could be infinitely funnier, considering what CFC really stands for).[/quote]
In my trade, CFC stands for "controlled foreign corporation," but I assume you're referring to some other use of the term.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2858&start=20#p20010
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright: two questions
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-20 20:32:52

[quote]It's assumed, I suppose, that extension authors aren't interested in pursuing the authors of games who use them. 

[/quote]

In the case of extensions which are posted on the Inform 7 site, I believe that the authors specifically license use by anybody, provided attribution is made.  The authors retain the copyrights. 

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2864&start=10#p20011
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Can brand items appear in my game?
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-07-20 20:35:12

[quote="Robert Rothman"][quote]So instead of having them buy Nike shoes, maybe they could buy Nikedas shoes, or instead of KFC it could be CFC (which could be infinitely funnier, considering what CFC really stands for).[/quote]
In my trade, CFC stands for "controlled foreign corporation," but I assume you're referring to some other use of the term.


Robert Rothman[/quote]

chloroflourocarbon, a coolant and propellant used in air conditionrs and hair sprays, long blamed for ozone depletion.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2872&start=0#p20012
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: off topic
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-20 20:44:59

[b]DOIN DA BUTT![/b]  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2870&start=0#p20013
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Menus by Emily Short
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-07-20 20:45:33

Yeah, the menu thing is kind of jarring and would probably ruin the game's flow. Think simpler; try simply asking the player which destination they want? I think 9:05 did something similar but it's been ages since I've played that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2858&start=20#p20014
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright: two questions
User: Kate McKee / DateTime: 2011-07-20 20:55:24

There are two related questions:

1) Does the (mis-)quotation of a song constitute a technical copyright infringement?  (Meaning, am I violating the letter of a law, even if no one ever found out, or even if someone found out but no action was taken?)
2) Does the (mis-)quotation of a song constitute, to its copyright holders, perception of an actionable copyright infringement?  (Meaning, will someone institute and pursue litigation against me, whether or not they have a good case?)

For the first, we can probably all agree that context is everything, and that "parody" (which might be neither satirical nor humorous) is protective.  Trouble is, any law that uses a standard like "total concept and feel" is necessarily going to be subjective.

For the second, someone might seek legal action against you for a perceived infringement, regardless of whether you've done anything wrong.  Even if you've followed the letter of the law, a copyright holder with a personality disorder and too much time on his hands might Google his song lyrics, trolling for a fight.  The outcome probably depends as much on the copyright holder's circumstances, and yours, as it does on the degree of technical copyright infringement.  From a purely practical standpoint, lawyers usually prefer cases with a good chance of yielding substantial economic damages for their clients.  If you are perceived as having made money off the perceived infringement, or having deep pockets in general, or have a wide repertoire of other intellectual property, you'd more likely be a target.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2786&start=40#p20015
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright
User: Kate McKee / DateTime: 2011-07-20 21:08:43

[quote="zarf"][quote]And likely extends the term of copyright. If his wife outlives him by five or ten years, the seventy years starts ticking at her death, not his[/quote]

I believe that's not the case. Assigning a copyright after you write a book does not change the copyright term. It would be different if Lyn Pratchett was actually a co-creator, or if the partnership had legally hired Terry Pratchett to write the book. But the copyright page doesn't make either of those claims.

However, this is now outside the domain I'm confident about.[/quote]

You know, I think you're right after all, and I erroneously conflated multiple concepts.  Or multiple couples ("David Eddings" later becoming "David and Leigh Eddings," perhaps?)   

I don't know which is more embarrassing, that, or confusing Sendaria with Ankh-Morpork.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2865&start=0#p20016
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do you manually fire an action requiring 2 bits of d
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-20 21:20:11

[quote="capmikee"]I don't like using topics, though - their parsing is so different from everything else, and they're especially tricky when redirecting actions as you are. I'd probably use a kind of value in a case like this:[/quote]

That was a pretty cool demo, capmikee. Almost cool enough to get me to rewrite this chunk of the game your way for the sake of learning a new way to do stuff (I have yet to create my own value). Though of course I've got it all working my way now, so I'm reticent to redo a thing that works.

Also, your value way removes a degree of error checking. There's a hitch with doing it with topics like I have been - the topic understood could be any number of words.

EG - Say there's a wheel in the game, but the wheel's not in the current room and someone types 'turn wheel left'. Wheel doesn't snag a noun, so 'turn (thing) (topic)' doesn't go off. Instead the whole action falls through to 'turn (topic)' (which was designed to catch plain old 'turn left'), and the topic is now 'wheel left'. At this point Inform tries to match 'wheel left' to a direction, fails, and says 'that isn't a direction you can turn' - which is not a graceful response to what was entered (even if what was entered was kinda dumb.)

To eliminate that, I had to throw in a check to make sure there was only 1 word in the topic the player entered before it gave the above error message.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2865&start=0#p20017
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do you manually fire an action requiring 2 bits of d
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-20 21:22:42

It sounds like it may no longer be relevant, but here is the code I referred to earlier.  Actually, my memory was a bit faulty in couple of respects:  First, the shooting action in fact involved two nouns (albeit one that could be supplied if omitted by the player).  Second, I did not create a separate "triggerpulling action; instead, I used the existing "pulling" action. Thus, the redirection (like yours) was from a one-noun action (pulling [the trigger]) to a two-noun action (shooting it with).

[code]Shooting it with is an action applying to one visible thing and one thing.
Understand "shoot [anything] with [something]" as shooting it with.  Understand  "shoot [something] at [anything]" as shooting it with (with nouns reversed).  Understand "shoot [something]" as shooting it with.

Rule for supplying a missing second noun while shooting:
	If the player has the gun:
		Now the second noun is the gun;
	Otherwise:
		Say "You have nothing to shoot with." instead.
		
Check shooting it with:
	If the second noun is not the gun:
		say "You can[apostrophe]t shoot with that!" instead;
	If the player does not have the gun :
		say "You can[apostrophe]t shoot with a gun that you aren[apostrophe]t carrying." instead.
	
Carry out shooting:
	Say "BANG!  You shoot [the noun]".
	
The target is an object which varies.  The target is nothing.
Aiming it at is an action applying to one thing and one visible thing.
Understand "aim [something] at [a visible thing]" as aiming it at.
Rule for supplying a missing noun while aiming:
	If the player has the gun:
		Now the noun is the gun;
	Otherwise:
		Say "What do you want to aim at [the second noun]?" instead.
		
Check aiming:
	If the player does not have the noun:
		Say "You don[apostrophe]t have [the noun]." instead;
	If the second noun is not visible:
		Say "You can[apostrophe]t aim at something you can[apostrophe]see." instead;
	If the noun is not the gun, say "You can[apostrophe]t aim [the noun]." instead.
	
Carry out aiming:
	Now the target is the second noun;
	Say "You point the gun at [the second noun].".
	
Before doing anything other than aiming or pulling the trigger or shooting when the target is not nothing:
	Now the target is nothing;
	Say "(Lowering the gun first)".
	
Instead of pulling the trigger:
	If the player does not have the gun:
		Say "You do not have any object with a trigger to pull";
		Stop the action;
	If the target is nothing:
		Say "It would be dangerous to pull the trigger on a firearm which is not aimed at anything.";
		Stop the action;
	Try shooting the target with the gun.
Every turn when the target is not nothing:
	If the target is not visible:
		Now the target is nothing.

[/code]

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2864&start=10#p20018
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Can brand items appear in my game?
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-20 21:43:54

I probably should have known that.  I think my car has one of the last air-conditioning units made that uses that stuff as a refrigerant.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2870&start=0#p20019
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Menus by Emily Short
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-07-20 22:25:38

As I was reading through other posts on related topics, I found that many people suggested using something like one of the conversation-modifying extensions and using conversation nodes to accomplish this.
I'll have to look into using something like that.

Emily, your comments on scrollback are a very good point.
Thanks everyone for your advice, this is what makes writing IF so rewarding - the community support is fantastic.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2865&start=0#p20020
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do you manually fire an action requiring 2 bits of d
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-21 00:27:00

[quote="Robert Rothman"]It sounds like it may no longer be relevant, but here is the code I referred to earlier.[/quote]

Thanks. I see you also used the 'it' schtick to do your thing.

Out of curiosity, is there any difference between [anything] and [something]? I see you used both. When I search the docs for '[anything]' I get no hits.

Second curiosity, is there any particular reason you're using [apostrophe] for the apostrophes in your say phrases other than personal preference?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2858&start=20#p20021
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright: two questions
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-21 00:56:01

When I contacted the author of a game (freeware) I wanted to make a spin off from (not a sequel), I got conflicting messages that using his characters, sets, props, and maps would be considered a copyright violation, then he goes on to say he doesn't mind if I make a similar game using the contents of his game.

What does that mean?

By the way, I took out the appearance of the characters and only made reference to them, but I'm still not sure about the sets and props.
Can you copyright a utility closet and a copy machine?

PS: Out of poor spelling he avoided a potential lawsuit, by making Xerox Zerox.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2870&start=0#p20022
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Menus by Emily Short
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-21 02:03:37

Joel, I wrote a very short and easy to use bit of code that creates in-game menus (of up to 9 options) which can be responded to with one keypress. I wrote it because I found most of the question/conversation extensions that are out there already are more powerful and/or more confusing to use than what I needed. So it sounds like it might interest you. I was thinking of releasing it as an extension myself.

Read my 1st post on the following topic page. It has the code and an explanation of how to use it:

[url]http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2575&hilit=chuffed[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2865&start=0#p20023
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do you manually fire an action requiring 2 bits of d
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-07-21 02:13:44

"Anything" and "something" are synonymous to Inform, but "something" and "any thing" (in two words) are not.

The [something] and [anything] tokens in a command line correspond to an "applying to one thing" in an action definition.
The [any] token ([any thing], [any person], [any door], etc.) in the command line corresponds to an "applying to one visible thing" in an action definition. 

And defining an action as applying to a visible thing means that the action will work at a distance, as it were, i.e. that the action can successfully take nouns or second nouns that are NOT visible or otherwise in scope. (But I guess you knew that...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2865&start=0#p20024
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do you manually fire an action requiring 2 bits of d
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-21 06:58:17

[quote]Out of curiosity, is there any difference between [anything] and [something]? I see you used both. When I search the docs for '[anything]' I get no hits.

Second curiosity, is there any particular reason you're using [apostrophe] for the apostrophes in your say phrases other than personal preference?
[/quote]

On the first point, I think I may have been under the mistaken impression that I needed to use the "anything" formulation in order to allow aiming or shooting where the target is visible but not necessarily reachable. 

On the second point, I thought that using the [apostrophe] formulation was necessary in order to avoid Inform 7 reading an actual apostrophe character as a single quote (which it then transforms into a double quote).  Is that not correct?


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2865&start=10#p20025
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do you manually fire an action requiring 2 bits of d
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-07-21 08:48:30

[quote="Robert Rothman"][quote] 
On the second point, I thought that using the [apostrophe] formulation was necessary in order to avoid Inform 7 reading an actual apostrophe character as a single quote (which it then transforms into a double quote).  Is that not correct?
[/quote][/quote]

Not quite. Inform will transform ' into " if it appears at the beginning or end of a word, but not if it appears in the middle of a word. So we can write

[code]say "Mrs. Jones says, 'What's that?'";[/code]

and it will be printed as

Mrs. Jones says, "What's that?"

The only case where you need to be specific, therefore, is where you do have a ' at a word boundary but it's still a legitimate apostrophe, as in

[code]say "Mrs. Jones['] garden is very handsome.";[/code]

And even there, as you see, you don't have to write [apostrophe] unless you really like that better than ['].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2865&start=10#p20026
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do you manually fire an action requiring 2 bits of d
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-21 08:51:55

Thanks.  I'll be able to save myself a bunch of unnecessary typing going forward, if I can just break the habit of using the long formulation.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2865&start=10#p20027
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do you manually fire an action requiring 2 bits of d
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-21 09:03:29

[quote="severedhand"]EG - Say there's a wheel in the game, but the wheel's not in the current room and someone types 'turn wheel left'. Wheel doesn't snag a noun, so 'turn (thing) (topic)' doesn't go off. Instead the whole action falls through to 'turn (topic)' (which was designed to catch plain old 'turn left'), and the topic is now 'wheel left'. At this point Inform tries to match 'wheel left' to a direction, fails, and says 'that isn't a direction you can turn' - which is not a graceful response to what was entered (even if what was entered was kinda dumb.)

To eliminate that, I had to throw in a check to make sure there was only 1 word in the topic the player entered before it gave the above error message.[/quote]
I'm not sure my solution would do any better. The problem is that when you have a grammar that works on unseen things (like kind of value), you get the "that noun did not make sense in that context" error instead of the "you can't see any such thing error." I try to create a fallback grammar for cases like that, which is why I added the "Understand 'turn [something] [text]' as a mistake" grammar... but that might possibly give you equally inappropriate failure messages.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2865&start=10#p20028
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do you manually fire an action requiring 2 bits of d
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-07-21 09:14:12

[quote="severedhand"]EG - Say there's a wheel in the game, but the wheel's not in the current room and someone types 'turn wheel left'. Wheel doesn't snag a noun, so 'turn (thing) (topic)' doesn't go off. Instead the whole action falls through to 'turn (topic)' (which was designed to catch plain old 'turn left'), and the topic is now 'wheel left'. At this point Inform tries to match 'wheel left' to a direction, fails, and says 'that isn't a direction you can turn' - which is not a graceful response to what was entered (even if what was entered was kinda dumb.)[/quote]
If there are only two allowed directions, I'd make two separate actions that have the directions hardcoded and avoid the whole topic issue altogether:

[code]Turning it right is an action applying to one thing.
Understand "turn [something] right/clockwise" as turning it right.

Turning it left is an action applying to one thing.
Understand "turn [something] left/counterclockwise" as turning it left.
[/code]
You can use the "turn (thing) (topic)" to catch all other cases.

[code]
Understand "turn [something] [text]" as a mistake ("You can turn things only left or right.")[/code]
If you want to save some typing you can group the both actions into one so you can write rules like "Carry out directional turning when the noun is the wheel: ..."

[code]
Turning something left is directional turning.
Turning something right is directional turning.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2865&start=10#p20029
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do you manually fire an action requiring 2 bits of d
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-21 09:30:41

[quote="Juhana"]If there are only two allowed directions, I'd make two separate actions that have the directions hardcoded and avoid the whole topic issue altogether:[/quote]

That looks pretty smart. Though after analysing it a bit, I realised it would probably use up more grammar tokens for the command 'turn' than I have left (even when replacing current grammar, and then after adding back in my desired variations). Which is unlikely to be most people's problem, but it's my problem [emote]:)[/emote]

Today, Inform told me I had already used too many alternative phrasings on the 'turn' command, and wouldn't compile. So I already had to ditch some of the deeper error-catching in that area and simplify. I can now see that an advantage of putting all your alternatives in a table is that it only takes up one grammar slot to match all alternatives (turn thing [text]), no matter how many words are in each alternative.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2859&start=0#p20030
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The perfect crime is a "thought crime".
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-21 09:39:15

[quote]These studies had mostly Japanese games in mind, including an American game called RapeLay.[/quote]
Sorry RapeLay is Japanese, by Illusion (makers of Sexy Beach 1, 2, and 3).

I'll give you a better response when I can think clearly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2858&start=20#p20031
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright: two questions
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-21 10:11:59

The headline for this article caught my eye; evidently, somebody is suing somebody else for hiring an advertising model who happens to bear a physical resemblance to the plaintiff.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/07/21/earlyshow/leisure/celebspot/main20081354.shtml?tag=exclsv">http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/07/ ... tag=exclsv</a>

So you're all on notice: If anybody uses a character who is a fat guy with a goatee, I'm gonna sue your ass! [emote]:lol:[/emote] 


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2371&start=20#p20032
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Novella feelie
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-07-21 10:37:06

World of Warcraft has a series of related novels, and the game series Myst/Riven also had a few novels. While I haven't read the WoW books (my nephew has them, maybe I will read them), the Riven books weren't spoilers at all. However, they weren't included with the game. 

I think feelies are awesome. I wish there was a way to offer them, maybe through Etsy or Printfection. Wouldn't a t-shirt with your game name be awesome?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2873&start=0#p20033
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Scene-based IF
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-07-21 10:47:31

I once attempted to write an IF game based on a shakespeare play, but was really stuck on how to move the player to the correct areas and trigger the appropriate scenes in the proper order. I eventually gave up, being out of ideas.

How could this be done, short of actually presenting a play on a stage?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2873&start=0#p20034
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Scene-based IF
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-07-21 11:00:50

Graham Nelson did that with [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=rvttymjuxw86pjap]The Tempest[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2864&start=10#p20035
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Can brand items appear in my game?
User: Sig / DateTime: 2011-07-21 12:48:35

A story about the desperately optimistic exploits of a wannabe burger entrepreneur in India practically writes itself.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2870&start=0#p20036
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Menus by Emily Short
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-21 12:51:25

Isn't this the sort of thing that the Questions extension was written for?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2864&start=10#p20037
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Can brand items appear in my game?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-21 12:54:55

[quote="Sig"]A story about the desperately optimistic exploits of a wannabe burger entrepreneur in India practically writes itself.[/quote]
Yeah!

And then there's...
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.mcdonaldsindia.com/menu.html">http://www.mcdonaldsindia.com/menu.html</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2874&start=0#p20038
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: MultiLoc not working
User: zodraz / DateTime: 2011-07-21 13:13:53

HELP!

I have a bruise on my forehead from causing serious damage to my keyboard.

3 rooms, A, B, C, A and C are two ends of room B which is a chasm/gap, defining B as a MultiLoc room is fine but trying to create a way to cross from A to C ie: a bridge, is proving difficult.

The conditions should be that if the pc goes south from room A he steps into the chasm, same with room C, the pc must first stand on the bridge and then go south/north, then get off the bridge in the other room.

The code below works after a fashion but is hardly ideal.

[code]northEdge : Room 'north edge of chasm'
    desc()
    {
        //cls();
        //"<center><img src='chasm1.png'></center>";
    }
    south = deepChasm
;

+ me: Actor
;

southEdge : Room 'south edge of chasm'
    desc()
    {
        //cls();
        //"<center><img src='chasm3.png'></center>";
    }
    north = deepChasm
;

MultiLoc, Enterable -> deepChasm 'rope bridge' 'rope bridge'
    desc()
    {
        //cls();
        //"<center><img src='chasm4.png'></center>";
    }
    locationList = [northEdge, southEdge]
;

deepChasm : FloorlessRoom 'deep chasm'
    desc()
    {
        //cls();
        //"<center><img src='chasm2.png'></center>";
        if(me.isIn(deepChasm)) me.moveIntoForTravel(dummyBridge);
    }
    north = northEdge
    south = southEdge
;

+ dummyBridge : Platform 'rope bridge' 'bridge'
;[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2849&start=0#p20039
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Custom "physical" relations
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-07-21 13:27:39

[quote="capmikee"][quote="Skinny Mike"]I have a working general implementation of "indirect holders" (tweezers, butterfly nets, etc.) which was inspired by Jim Aikin's "holder" extension for i6.[/quote]
I was working on an extension for modeling ropes and gave up. Can you do ropes with your indirect holders?[/quote]
Mike,

My first reaction to this was, "Hm, I never considered that -- but no, I don't think so." After scanning some of your rope - related posts though, now I'm thinking some of the ideas used in my extension might be adaptable to your scenario. It seems like you started out with incorporation as the principle (assertable) relation working in tandem with a subsidiary conditional relation, but that you abandoned this approach in favor of a new "connection" relation. I also started modeling indirect holders using incorporation, only to give up for the reasons alluded to in my post upthread. I started again by mildly hacking containment at the i6 level (using the "container" attribute) and virtually all of my problems disappeared automagically.

Leaving aside other issues (divisibility, multi - room connectivity, etc.) which I'm assuming we're not really discussing here, I think "indirect holders" could be used to model some aspects of ropes -- if not the ropes themselves, then perhaps their ends or knots. At the very least, you might get some ideas from the way I had to deal with certain edge cases. I'll try to get a version with some coherent documentation up on another thread in a few days.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2849&start=0#p20040
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Custom "physical" relations
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-21 13:43:56

I thought the connection relation worked reasonably, but I got stuck on two things:

1. Making sure actions take rope-connections into account. This can mean doing a pathfinding search along rope connections to find out whether items can be dragged along with a rope or whether objects are held in place via a rope. I was also uncertain whether to allow tying a rope to another rope, and whether that meant using up an end of each rope, or just of one of them.

2. Making the grammar friendly. I probably overdid it, but I was trying to get the "tie" and "untie" verbs to work regardless of noun order, create automatic dropping and removing actions that deal with ropes reasonably based on preference properties, and even implement some form of "tie X to Y" when neither X nor Y is a rope, but a rope is available. Oh yeah, and I also tried to set up custom reporting so that some ropes are described as "tied" and others might be described as "chained" or "stuck", etc.

Most games only have one rope. For an extension, though, I wanted to allow multiple ropes, and therein lies a world of hurt.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2870&start=0#p20041
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Menus by Emily Short
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-07-21 14:29:38

[quote="severedhand"]I wrote a very short and easy to use bit of code that creates in-game menus (of up to 9 options) which can be responded to with one keypress.
[url]http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2575&hilit=chuffed[/url][/quote]This is perfect - it's exactly what I need.
Thank you severedhand!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2875&start=0#p20042
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 : Problem of association
User: ciseur68 / DateTime: 2011-07-21 14:38:28

Hello everybody,
I have a little problem. This is my code :
[code]Wroom is a thing. Understand "salle d[']eau" as wroom.[/code]The problem is that an error caused by the "[']". If I delete the [ ], the error disapears but when the player write salle d'eau, it doesn't work. Does someone have an idea for me ?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2875&start=0#p20043
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 : Problem of association
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-07-21 14:41:17

Works fine with me without the brackets.

[code]There is a room. Wroom is here. Understand "salle d'eau" as wroom.

Test me with "x salle d'eau".[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2135&start=10#p20044
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: You know you've played too much IF when...
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-07-21 14:41:51

...every time you look at the clock and it says x:54 you mentally add "to Asgard".

I do.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2870&start=0#p20045
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Menus by Emily Short
User: Endosphere / DateTime: 2011-07-21 15:49:16

I've found that "Menus" alone can provide a very versatile and robust technique for all sorts of interactivity, even if such wasn't emshort's purpose when she wrote the extension.  "Menus" can also, under some circumstances, facilitate a fast-paced and quite entertaining offering of play.

Joel Webster sounds satisfied with the replies he's received, which is groovy since that's our objective here.  Nonetheless, as I felt my response yesterday was far too short on particulars since I had no reference materials handy, I dug out an Inform story file I wrote some time ago that demonstrates how, using only "Menus," to resolve each and every issue Joel initially raised in his questions.  If the discussion here is already resolved to the OP's satisfaction then consider the posting of (a surfeit of) code below as a mere appendix, germane because it directly addresses several points on how to use and modify the "Menus" extension.

Certainly, as emshort and others mentioned, one drawback of using "Menus" is that some interpreters may clear their text-record buffer each time the screen is cleared (which occurs every turn a menu is displayed using "Menus"), leading to player frustration.  For example, when using Gargoyle one loses the continuous stream of text availabe by pressing "page-up" after a menu is displayed.  However, not all interpreters suffer such difficulties; I (exclusively) prefer Windows Frotz and Windows Glulxe for playing any game written with Inform 6 or Inform 7, and the "scrollback" function of these two interpreters is unaffected by screen-clearings. I think the point then would be that this is something an author ought keep in mind while preparing a game for distribution to others, and might perhaps lead an author to either release a game along with an amenable interpreter or plainly recommend one program over another to potential players.

Though far more lengthy than the usual example in a forum discussion, the code below had the virtue of being already written; copy/pasting is far easier than writing something novel.  Among other things, it shows how to carefully construct/display/dispense with menus as well as how to construct various status bars for use with menus, when to use subtleties like "rule succeeds" and "current menu is," and also moves both the player and other characters about according to rules effected with menu-usage.  In other words, this example seemed to me so relevant to everything that Joel mentioned in his first post that I thought it a shame to let it gather dust on my hard drive rather than record it here.  The example also makes a more complex use of I7's Scene machinery than we often see publicly posted; since questions about scene-usage come up from time to time, perhaps what follows can serve as a reference on that count as well.

(As the example is quite lengthy at ~1800 words, I've tucked it into a a spoiler tag:)

[spoiler][code]
[Preface:

What follows is only the barest outline of but one aspect of a simple rpg-style game featuring heavily randomized combat, which uses a menu-driven interactive system for resolving encounters.  Among other things, the example below lacks any implementation at all of one of the more fundamental ideas which led me to write this code in the first place: namely, instead of having numerous actors clogging up the off-stage area (and hence our memory allocation), I wanted to use but a single placeholder or generic enemy; at the start of each encounter, this generic enemy ("Met") would then be temporarily redefined (printed name, character statistics, etc) by reference to a grand Table of Monsters where such data would be stored for all the various types of opponents one might encounter. 

I ought add that the broader notion of such a menu-driven system is hardly novel, as I've seen other IF games that use something similar as their basis of interaction-- though as far as I know none use Inform 7's Scene machinery as a fundamental game mechanic.

Also note that, due to forum typography restrictions, copying/pasting the code below into an Inform story file may be rather tedious as all tab stops in both rules and tables will be converted to spaces; these spaces will have to be deleted and replaced with tabs one by one.]



Volume 0 - Preliminary Notions

Include Menus by Emily Short.

[The following modification of "Menus" is required to counter the player quitting our menu system (by pressing "Q") during encounters, leaving the game in a very wretched state indeed]

The basic menu contents rule is not listed in any rulebook.

Rule for displaying (this is the alternate menu contents rule):
	now the current menu selection is 1;
	show alt-menu contents.
		
To show alt-menu contents:
	increase the menu depth by 1;
	let temporary depth be the menu depth;
	let temporary menu be the current menu;
	let temporary title be the current menu title;
	let __x be 0;
	let __index be 0;
	while __index is not 1:
		now the current menu is the temporary menu; 
		let __n be 0;
		repeat through current menu:
			increase __n by 1;
			if title entry is current menu title, now current menu selection is __n;
		now the current menu title is the temporary title; 
		reprint current menu;
		let __x be the chosen letter;
		if __x is a number listed in the Table of Menu Commands:
			unless encounter is happening:
				consider the effect entry; 
				if temporary depth > menu depth:
					now __index is 1;
			otherwise:
				if __x is -8 or __x is 81 or __x is 113 or __x is 27:
					if temporary depth > menu depth:
						now __index is 1;
				otherwise:
					consider the effect entry;
					if temporary depth > menu depth:
						now __index is 1.


[Some other initialization stuff]

The return-spot is a room that varies.  The return-spot is usually starthere.

The current-foe is a person that varies.  The current-foe is usually Avatar.


Volume P - People

[In a more fully-developed example, these "character statistics" would likely be uniquely assigned by table entries or else derived by formula from "basic attributes" like strength, dexterity, etc]

A person has a number called hit-points.  The hit-points of a person are usually 25.

A person has a number called damage.  The damage of a person is usually 5.

A person has a number called hit-chance.  The hit-chance of a person is usually 67.


Volume S - Scenes


Part 1 - Random Encounters


Chapter 1 - Begin the Random Encounter

Section 1 - Definition of the Encounter Scene

Start-encounter is a truth state that varies.  Start-encounter is usually false.
Encounter-resolved is a truth state that varies.  Encounter-resolved is usually false.

Encounter is a recurring scene.  Encounter begins when start-encounter is true.  Encounter ends when encounter-resolved is true.

Section 2 - Starting the Encounter Scene

[In a more fully-developed example, "When encounter begins" is the point where we would refer to an enemies table and turn generic "Met" into Hilgar the Orc, Olaf the Cyborg Terminator, etc]

When encounter begins:
	now return-spot is the location of the player;
	now start-encounter is false;
	move met to the arena;
	now the hit-points of Met is 25;
	now met is alive;
	move the player to the arena;
	now resolve-initial-interaction is false.

[temp]
When encounter begins:
	now the current-foe is Met.

Section 3 - Concluding the Encounter Scene

When encounter ends:
	move the player to return-spot;
	remove met from play;
	now encounter-resolved is false.

[temp]
When encounter ends:
	now the current-foe is Avatar.


Chapter 2 - Initial Phase of the Encounter

Section 1 - Defining the Initial Phase

Resolve-initial-interaction is a truth state that varies.  Resolve-initial-interaction is usually true.

Initial-reaction is a recurring scene.  Initial-reaction begins when resolve-initial-interaction is false.  Initial-reaction ends when resolve-initial-interaction is true.

Section 2 - Refining the Initial Phase

Initial-reaction has a text called initial-outcome.  The initial-outcome of initial-reaction is usually "".

[I ardently wished to use a KOV here with adverbial iterations, but apparently while a KOV can be specified as applying to ALL scenes, individual scenes may not have their own discrete value assignments; hence the confusing number-system.]

Initial-reaction has a number called initial-reaction-endstate.  The initial-reaction-endstate of initial-reaction is usually 0.  [1=fight, 2=chat, 3=flee, 4=bribe]

Initial-reaction ends angrily when the initial-reaction-endstate of initial-reaction is 1.
Initial-reaction ends chattily when the initial-reaction-endstate of initial-reaction is 2.
Initial-reaction ends furtively when the initial-reaction-endstate of initial-reaction is 3.
Initial-reaction ends expensively when the initial-reaction-endstate of initial-reaction is 4.

Rule for constructing the status line while initial-reaction is happening:
	fill status bar with Table of Initial-Phase Status;
	rule succeeds.

Table of Initial-Phase Status
left	central	right
""	"Shall you:"	""
""	""	""
" Up/Down arrow = Navigate"	""	"ENTER = Select" 


Section 3 - Commencing the Initial Phase

When initial-reaction begins:
	determine outcome of initial-reaction.

To determine outcome of initial-reaction:
	now the current menu is the Table of Encounter-Starting Options;
	carry out the displaying activity.

Table of Encounter-Starting Options
title	subtable	description	toggle
"Fight"	--	--	InitiateCombat rule
"Chat"	--	--	InitiateEncounterChat rule
"Flee"	--	--	InitiateFleeing rule
"Bribe"	--	--	InitiateOffering rule

Section 4 - Concluding the Initial Phase

When initial-reaction ends angrily:
	say "[initial-outcome of initial-reaction]";
	say paragraph break;
	now resolve-initial-interaction is true;
	now the initial-outcome of initial-reaction is "";
	now the initial-reaction-endstate of initial-reaction is 0;
	now in-combat is true.

[The next several rules would of course change into intermediate steps rather than conclusions if we implemented a more substantial consequence of choosing them]

When initial-reaction ends chattily:
	say "[initial-outcome of initial-reaction]";
	say paragraph break;
	now resolve-initial-interaction is true;
	now the initial-outcome of initial-reaction is "";
	now the initial-reaction-endstate of initial-reaction is 0;
	now encounter-resolved is true.

When initial-reaction ends furtively:
	say "[initial-outcome of initial-reaction]";
	say paragraph break;
	now resolve-initial-interaction is true;
	now the initial-outcome of initial-reaction is "";
	now the initial-reaction-endstate of initial-reaction is 0;
	now encounter-resolved is true.

When initial-reaction ends expensively:
	say "[initial-outcome of initial-reaction]";
	say paragraph break;
	now resolve-initial-interaction is true;
	now the initial-outcome of initial-reaction is "";
	now the initial-reaction-endstate of initial-reaction is 0;
	now encounter-resolved is true.

Section 5 - Combat may be an outcome of the Initial Phase

This is the InitiateCombat rule:
	decrease the menu depth by 1;
	now the initial-outcome of initial-reaction is "There shall be blood!  You decide to fight [printed name of the current-foe].";
	now the initial-reaction-endstate of initial-reaction is 1;
	rule succeeds.

Section 6 - Talking may be an outcome of the Initial Phase

This is the InitiateEncounterChat rule:
	decrease the menu depth by 1;
	now the initial-outcome of initial-reaction is "Feeling rather sociable, you decide to chat up [printed name of the current-foe].";
	now the initial-reaction-endstate of initial-reaction is 2;
	rule succeeds.

Section 7 - Evasion may be an outcome of the Initial Phase

This is the InitiateFleeing rule:
	decrease the menu depth by 1;
	now the initial-outcome of initial-reaction is "Feeling apprehensive, you attempt to evade the attention of [printed name of the current-foe].";
	now the initial-reaction-endstate of initial-reaction is 3;
	rule succeeds.

Section 8 - Bribery may be an outcome of the Initial Phase

This is the InitiateOffering rule:
	decrease the menu depth by 1;
	now the initial-outcome of initial-reaction is "You hope that [printed name of current-foe] may be satisfied with a bribe and allow you to be on about your business.";
	now the initial-reaction-endstate of initial-reaction is 4;
	rule succeeds.


Chapter 3 - Combat Phase of the Encounter

Section 1 - Defining the Scene of Combat

In-combat is a truth state that varies.  In-combat is usually false.

Combat is a recurring scene.  Combat begins when in-combat is true.  Combat ends when in-combat is false.


Section 2 - Effecting Combat


When combat begins:
	initialize fighting.

To initialize fighting:
	now the current menu is the Table of Tactical Options;
	carry out the displaying activity;
	clear the screen.

Every turn during combat:
	initialize fighting.

[temp]
When combat ends:
	now encounter-resolved is true.

Rule for constructing the status line while combat is happening:
	fill status bar with Table of Combat Menu Status;
	rule succeeds.

Table of Combat Menu Status
left	central	right
""	"Fight it out!"	""
" Your HP: [hit-points of player]"	""	"[printed name of the current-foe][']s HP: [hit-points of current-foe] "
""	""	""
" Up/Down arrow = Navigate"	""	"ENTER = Select" 


Table of Tactical Options
title	subtable	description	toggle
"Attack"	--	--	ResolveAttacks rule
"Use Item"	--	--	ItemUseInCombat rule
"Flee"	--	--	FleeCombat rule
"Surrender"	--	--	HopeForMercy rule


Section 3 - Resolving Combat


This is the ResolveAttacks rule:
	say paragraph break;
	say "Fisticuffs ensue!";
	let firststrike be a random number between 1 and 2;
	let pcstrike be a random number between 1 and 100;
	let metstrike be a random number between 1 and 100;
	if firststrike is 1:
		say "You obtain the initiative!";
		if the hit-chance of the player is greater than pcstrike or the hit-chance of the player is pcstrike:
			say "You hit [printed name of the current-foe] for [damage of the player]!";
			decrease the hit-points of Met by damage of the player;
			update salubrity for met;
			if met is dead:
				say "You mercilessly slay [printed name of the current-foe]!";
				now in-combat is false;
				wait for any key;
				decrease the menu depth by 1;
				rule fails;
		if the hit-chance of the player is less than pcstrike:
			say "You swing at [printed name of the current-foe], but he dodges your blow.";
		if the hit-chance of met is greater than metstrike or the hit-chance of met is metstrike:
			say "[Printed name of the current-foe] hits you for [damage of met]!";
			decrease the hit-points of the player by damage of met;
			update salubrity for the player;
			if the player is dead:
				decrease the menu depth by 1;
				rule fails;
		if the hit-chance of met is less than metstrike:
			say "[Printed name of the current-foe] swings at you, but he misses.";
	if firststrike is 2:
		say "[Printed name of the current-foe] obtains the initiative!";
		if the hit-chance of met is greater than metstrike or the hit-chance of met is metstrike:
			say "[Printed name of the current-foe] hits you for [damage of met]!";
			decrease the hit-points of the player by damage of met;
			update salubrity for the player;
			if the player is dead:
				decrease the menu depth by 1;
				rule fails;
		if the hit-chance of met is less than metstrike:
			say "[Printed name of the current-foe] swings at you, but he misses.";
		if the hit-chance of the player is greater than pcstrike or the hit-chance of the player is pcstrike:
			say "You hit [printed name of the current-foe] for [damage of the player]!";
			decrease the hit-points of Met by damage of the player;
			update salubrity for met;
			if met is dead:
				say "You mercilessly slay [printed name of the current-foe]!";
				now in-combat is false;
				wait for any key;
				decrease the menu depth by 1;
				rule fails;
		if the hit-chance of the player is less than pcstrike:
			say "You swing at [printed name of the current-foe], but he dodges your blow.";
	wait for any key;
	rule succeeds.


A person can be dead or alive.  [In a more well-developed example, this would have non-trivial consequences]


To update salubrity for (theyem - a person):
	if the hit-points of theyem is less than 1:
		now theyem is dead;
		if theyem is the player:
			end the story saying "[printed name of current-foe] mercilessly slays you."


Chapter 4 - Rainy Day Notions

[in a more well-developed and interesting example, the following options would of course lead to something much more substantial than a mere line of printed text:]

This is the ItemUseInCombat rule:
	say paragraph break;
	say "Whereby we rummage through our loot for something useful in the present circumstance.";
	wait for any key;
	rule succeeds.

This is the FleeCombat rule:
	say paragraph break;
	say "Whereby we attempt to escape under fire from the enemy.";
	wait for any key;
	rule succeeds.

This is the HopeForMercy rule:
	say paragraph break;
	say "Perhaps the enemy will take pity on our ineptitude.";
	wait for any key;
	rule succeeds.


Volume W - World

The Starthere is a room.  "Go west for encounter testing.".

A person called Avatar is in starthere.  The player is Avatar.

The Conduit is west of starthere.  The description of the conduit is "We ought not reach this enigmatic place.".

Instead of going west from starthere:
	if a random chance of 1 in 2 succeeds:
		now start-encounter is true;
	otherwise:
		say "You explore a bit, but don't find anything interesting."

The Arena is a room.

There is a person called Met.
[/code][/spoiler]

I hope anyone trying to use "Menus" in the future will find the above example answers far more questions than it poses.


Endosphere

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2864&start=10#p20046
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Can brand items appear in my game?
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-21 15:51:35

usually a Cease & Desist occurs before a lawsuit.  im not a lawyer, but i play one on tv.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2872&start=0#p20047
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: off topic
User: daviddorkface / DateTime: 2011-07-21 15:53:50

BALL SACK!  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2873&start=0#p20048
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Scene-based IF
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-07-21 17:30:14

I'm probably biased, but I think that idea would be much easier to implement in a multiple-choice format like Undum or ChoiceScript.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2876&start=0#p20049
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Thumbnail of Cover Art
User: ptimony / DateTime: 2011-07-21 18:05:06

I can't seem to get the thumbnail version of my cover art working. 

The cover art itself works fine, but instead of the thumbnail version, it keeps displaying that standard image that inform7 uses.

I've got the main file at 960x960, named Cover.jpg.
I've got the thumbnail at 120x120, named Small Cover.jpg.

So, can someone please tell me exactly how to do this? Am I supposed to write, "release with thumbnail image" or something?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2877&start=0#p20050
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Newbi Question
User: daviddorkface / DateTime: 2011-07-21 18:55:26

Hi, I'm very new.  I checked all the documentation I have and I still have a problem.  Please don't laugh at this question.  

How do I make a char or sofa a player can sit on.  I made a supporter called the sofa, but in testing it, it tells me I can't sit on that!

Again, I'm very new.

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2877&start=0#p20051
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbi Question
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-07-21 18:56:15

I assume you're using Inform 7. Have you made the supporter enterable?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2876&start=0#p20052
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Thumbnail of Cover Art
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-21 19:33:21

I'm not sure what you mean when you say 'works fine'.

Have you checked everything in chapter 23.8 of the docs? That gives the step by step instructions on what command to include in your source to attach the cover art and where to put the cover art files.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2135&start=10#p20053
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: You know you've played too much IF when...
User: Kate McKee / DateTime: 2011-07-21 20:02:16

...you are surprised to find your handbag is not capacious enough to carry a shiny black cube, a delicate teacup, a half-full vial of blue ink, and a length of rope

...you wish finding stuff in your workspace was as easy as >X DESK

...you wish >DRIVE TO WORK were implemented

...you've ever regarded yourself in the mirror and thought, "As good-looking as ever"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2877&start=0#p20054
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Newbi Question
User: daviddorkface / DateTime: 2011-07-21 20:22:11

Thanks!  That should do the trick!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2878&start=0#p20056
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Taking - what's going on?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-21 22:38:04

Okay, I just went around typing 'get' in my game to see what would happen. Some of its choices are weird, or at least I haven't worked out all their logic.

If there are non-scenery objects present, it tries to pick those up. If there aren't, but there are people in the room, it may or may not try to pick up another person. Does it only try this if there is only one other person present? IE Not more than one?

Then, in some cases it will try to pick up scenery, but in others it won't. I have a thing called superscenery, which I defined like this:

[code]superscenery is a kind of thing. superscenery is scenery. superscenery can be spoken of or not spoken of. superscenery is usually not spoken of.[/code]

I've noticed it will never try to pick up a superscenery.

As for plain old scenery, in one room it tries to grab the scenery, in another it tries to grab a part of the scenery.

I traced the rules that are going ogg and there's no illumination there. What's the heirarchy?

Also - can I control this with 'supply a missing noun'? My attempts thus far haven't worked. I know it ain't working as is because this:

[code]Rule for supplying a missing noun while taking:
	now noun is player.[/code]

compiles but has no effect.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2879&start=0#p20057
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Menu-Based Conversation
User: LCamelot / DateTime: 2011-07-21 23:28:01

The documentation of Inform 7 mentions menu-based conversation, but explicitly says that it does not provide any examples of how to create it because it's too long and there are extensions anyway.  However, none of the extensions I can find seem to create menu-based conversation in a direct way.  What extension would be best for this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2879&start=0#p20058
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Menu-Based Conversation
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-22 02:17:31

Mark Tilford's [i]Simple Chat[/i]. You'll need to use the updated version linked to [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2750]here[/url].

[size=85](I know I claim in that topic that I'll get out a new version within a week -- didn't manage to make that, as my other project took more time than I anticipated. I'll do it when I get back from my holidays.)[/size]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2876&start=0#p20059
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Thumbnail of Cover Art
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-22 02:19:40

How are you checking whether it works? I believe the small cover art is only used by a handful of external programs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2878&start=0#p20060
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Taking - what's going on?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-07-22 02:30:09

[quote="severedhand"]can I control this with 'supply a missing noun'?[/quote]
I think that activity only takes place if you define a command with too few arguments for the action it triggers -- if e.g. you have a line like «Understand "take" as taking», besides (or instead of) «Understand "take [something]" as taking».

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2828&start=0#p20061
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Real differences between Z-Machine and Glulx?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-07-22 02:42:30

Parchment works on the Kindle 3+. It could have bugs though, so if you find any, please report them at the Parchment bug tracker.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2874&start=0#p20062
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: MultiLoc not working
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-22 05:28:43

What do you need dummyBridge for?

Edit:
You probably can do this with MultiFaceted:

[code]northOfChasm: Room {
    'North of Chasm'
}

roomB: MultiFaceted {
    locationList = [northOfChasm, southOfChasm];
    instanceObject: Platform {
        'rope bridge' 'rope bridge'
        north = northOfChasm;
        south = southOfChasm;
    }
}

southOfChasm: Room {
    'South of Chasm'
}[/code]
See adv3/objects.t for more information.

Of course, in your game, it would be a good idea to define verb handlers so that the player can "cross the bridge", "enter the bridge" and "climb the bridge".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2878&start=0#p20063
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Taking - what's going on?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-22 06:04:18

I have a feeling Zarf told me that before, but it hasn't sunk in. Plus, you'll try anything when the program's not doing what you want.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2873&start=0#p20064
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Scene-based IF
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-22 08:42:53

I can only speak to Inform 7, which has a construct called "scenes" that allow for checking and restricting information in a fairly straightforward manner.

I think it would depend on the play.  In some cases, it might make sense to break things down literally: Act I would be a scene in Inform, possible with Act I Scene I.

Sometimes room divisions can work: if you only visit the witches once, you don't need changing constructs.  Spatially organized plays make spatially organized games easy; you just need to set cut points so the player can't wander backwards through the action.

Some plays might be best organized by relationships: kissing produces one response if Romeo loves Juliet, another if he loves Rosalind.

Some plays might be best organized by character knowledge, which is a little tricky, but there's some extensions to help out; it may be easier to track whether Hamlet knows that his father is dead than wall things off by relationship or rooms or even time.

It really depends on the structure of the story, and how closely you need to cleave to the linear progression of events, and what sorts of agency you want to give to the player.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2880&start=0#p20065
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Rules tracing
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-07-22 09:06:54

When I turn on rules tracing, I used to get a helpful listing of which rules were firing for any given action. This was very helpful. Now when I turn on rules tracing (using the "rules" command) I get something like this:[code][Rule "(rule at address 174641)" applies.]
[Rule "(rule at address 177026)" applies.]
[Rule "(rule at address 179582)" applies.]
[Rule "(rule at address 181004)" applies.]
[Rule "(rule at address 181714)" applies.]
[Rule "(rule at address 182231)" applies.]
[Rule "(rule at address 183851)" applies.]
[Rule "(rule at address 184380)" applies.]
[Rule "(rule at address 185090)" applies.]
[Rule "(rule at address 187225)" applies.]
[Rule "(rule at address 188674)" applies.]
[Rule "(rule at address 191049)" applies.]
[Rule "(rule at address 191760)" applies.]
[Rule "(rule at address 192237)" applies.]
[Rule "(rule at address 192987)" applies.]
[Rule "(rule at address 193472)" applies.]
[Rule "(rule at address 194407)" applies.]
[Rule "(rule at address 194884)" applies.]
[Rule "(rule at address 197728)" applies.]
[Rule "(rule at address 198206)" applies.]
[Rule "(rule at address 203011)" applies.][/code]What happened to my handy-dandy list of rule names? Is there a chart somewhere that decodes this list of addresses into actual rules so that I can decipher them?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2880&start=0#p20066
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rules tracing
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-07-22 09:40:48

Did you add "Use memory economy" to your code? IIRC, one of the ways that option saves on memory is by stripping out the names of rules (which have a tendency to be verbose). If you are using memory economy, why? Is there some reason you don't want to move up to Glulx?

As far as some way of determining which rules go with what addresses, I don't know of one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2873&start=0#p20067
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Scene-based IF
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-07-22 09:57:41

Interesting ideas. Maybe when I complete my WIP I will revisit the idea.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2828&start=0#p20068
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Real differences between Z-Machine and Glulx?
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-07-22 10:05:15

[quote="Dannii"]Parchment works on the Kindle 3+. It could have bugs though, so if you find any, please report them at the Parchment bug tracker.[/quote]

Does this include the branch that runs Glulx games?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2880&start=0#p20069
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rules tracing
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-07-22 10:16:52

[quote="Skinny Mike"]Did you add "Use memory economy" to your code?[/quote]Yes, that was it. I knew it was something simple. Thank you [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2828&start=10#p20070
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Real differences between Z-Machine and Glulx?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-07-22 11:24:08

The Kindle 3 has a Webkit browser so everything should work as well as in any other Webkit browser.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2881&start=0#p20071
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: inform 7:why wont this reading option work?
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-07-22 11:49:14

[code]Understand the command "read" as something new.
Reading is an action applying to one thing.
Understand "read [something]" as reading.

A thing can be readable. A thing is usually not readable. 

Check reading when the noun is not readable: say "That's not something that can be read." instead.[/code]
[code]A desk is here. the desk is a supporter. glass pieces are here. glass pieces are scenery. a page is a portable supporter on the desk. a paperweight is on the page. the glass wall is a closed scenery door.  the glass wall is a breakable wall. the glass wall is east 
of Dim Lit Room. the glass wall is west of the Room of Horrors.[/code]

[code]Rule for printing room description details of the desk: omit contents in listing.[/code]
[code]The description of the page is "The title of the page is Experiment Data."

Before examining the page for the first time:
   now the printed name of the page is "Experiment Data page".

After examining the page for the first time:
   now the description of the page is "A small piece of white paper."

Understand "experiment" and "data" as the page when we have examined the page.

Check taking the page:
   If a thing is on the page, say "You can't take the page while [a random thing on the page] is on it." instead.[/code]

[code]Instead of reading the page: say "[if player is goose]It[for the first time]says experiment #1.[otherwise if player is human and not in Skylight Room] say it's too dark to read that here."[/code]

The last code in the list above is the code that won't work. so you know what im trying to do is to make it so only the goose can read it in any room and if the player is human the page can only be read in Skylight Room.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2872&start=0#p20072
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: off topic
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-07-22 11:58:39

[quote="ezfreemann"][b]DOIN DA BUTT![/b]  [emote]:lol:[/emote][/quote]

HaHaHaHa!!! I drive my girlfriend insane saying singing that stupid song at random.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2135&start=10#p20073
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: You know you've played too much IF when...
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-07-22 12:02:01

Had a dream last night that there was a status bar super-imposed into my vision while interacting with another person. 

(Current project I'm working on uses meters)

 [emote]:oops:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2881&start=0#p20074
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7:why wont this reading option work?
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-07-22 12:04:19

Hmm well one thing I see is that since you only have 2 "if" conditions in that last chunk of code, when all you need is to use [otherwise].

There's no reason to specify "if player is human and not in Skylight Room"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2881&start=0#p20075
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7:why wont this reading option work?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-07-22 13:10:05

The token "for the first time" is not known to Inform 7. That, at least, wouldn't compile until you defined the term.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2874&start=0#p20076
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: MultiLoc not working
User: zodraz / DateTime: 2011-07-22 13:41:51

I get a runtime error - invalid type for intrinsic function argument

[color=#FF0000]deepChasm.addInstance(northEdge)+ 20[/color]
{anonfn:2fdc}(northEdge)+ 19
<System>
deepChasm.initializeLocation()+ 23
{anonfn:2fde}(deepChasm)+ 18
forEachInstance(MultiInstance, obj#2fde (AnonFuncPtr))+ 1c
adv3LibPreinit.execute()+ 92
adv3LibPreinit._execute()+ 54
{anonfn:1151}(adv3LibPreinit)+ 18
forEachInstance(PreinitObject, obj#1151 (AnonFuncPtr))+ 1c
PreinitObject.classExec()+ 55
_preinit()+ 2a
initAfterLoad()+ 25
_mainCommon(['tin_dbg.t3'], nil)+ 10
_main['tin_dbg.t3']

[code]northEdge : Room 'north edge of chasm'
    desc()
    {
        cls();
        "<center><img src='chasm1.png'></center>";
    }
    south = deepChasm
;

+ me: Actor
;

southEdge : Room 'south edge of chasm'
    desc()
    {
        cls();
        "<center><img src='chasm3.png'></center>";
    }
    north = deepChasm
;

deepChasm : MultiFaceted
    desc()
    {
        cls();
        "<center><img src='chasm2.png'></center>";
    }
    locationList = [northEdge, southEdge];
    ropeBridge : Platform
    {
        'rope bridge' 'rope bridge'
        north = northEdge;
        south = southEdge;
    }
;[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2874&start=0#p20077
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: MultiLoc not working
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-22 13:47:55

That is not the code I posted. MultiFaceted doesn't need a desc property. All of that goes into the instanceObject, which you removed. It is a property containing the object that will appear in-game. desc and everything else, including verb handlers, goes into that.

You should really read the documentation in adv3/objects.t.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2874&start=0#p20078
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: MultiLoc not working
User: tomasb / DateTime: 2011-07-22 14:26:41

It would be:

[code]
deepChasm : MultiFaceted
    desc()
    {
        cls();
        "<center><img src='chasm2.png'></center>";
    }                                                                                                                         
    locationList = [northEdge, southEdge]
    instanceObject: Platform
    {
        'rope bridge' 'rope bridge'
        north = northEdge;
        south = southEdge;
    }
;
[/code]

This would produce transcript as follows:

[code]
  North edge of chasm

You see a rope bridge here.

>stand on bridge
Okay, you're now standing on the rope bridge.

>s
South edge of chasm

You see a rope bridge here.

>
[/code]

I'm not sure, if this is the intention - you couldn't go south until standing on the bridge explicitly. I would probably do something like that (no MultiLoc/MultiFaceted and it's only one end and center of the bridge, other end would be similar.):

[code]
northEdge: Room 'north edge of chasm'
    "You are standing on the north edge of the chasm"
    south = northBridgeCon
;

+ me: Actor
;

+ northBridgeEnd: Platform 'north bridge end' 'north bridge end'
;

++ northBridgeCon: Passage -> deepChasmBridgeCon
    connectorStagingLocation = northBridgeEnd
;

deepChasm: FloorlessRoom 'deep chasm'
    "You are on the bridge over the deep chasm."
    north = deepChasmBridgeCon
;

+deepChasmBridge: Platform 'rope bridge' 'rope bridge'
    out = nil
    exitDestination = nil
;

++ deepChasmBridgeCon: Passage -> northBridgeCon
;
[/code]

[code]
  North edge of chasm
You are standing on the north edge of the chasm

You see a north bridge end here.

>s
(first standing on the north bridge end)

Deep chasm (standing on the rope bridge)
You are on the bridge over the deep chasm.

You see a rope bridge here.

>n
North edge of chasm (standing on the north bridge end)
You are standing on the north edge of the chasm

You see a north bridge end here.

>out
(off of the north bridge end)
Okay, you're no longer on the north bridge end.

>
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2874&start=0#p20079
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: MultiLoc not working
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-22 14:36:37

I thought what you wanted is that the player should not be able to go south unless standing on the bridge first.

If not, you don't need any of that stuff; you're over-thinking the problem. Simply use a normal room like for everything else.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2881&start=0#p20080
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7:why wont this reading option work?
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-07-22 14:44:21

[quote="Eleas"]The token "for the first time" is not known to Inform 7. That, at least, wouldn't compile until you defined the term.[/quote]

Yeah, good eye. I missed that one. Try "for 1 turn" instead.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2858&start=20#p20081
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright: two questions
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-22 15:54:17

[quote="Robert Rothman"]The headline for this article caught my eye; evidently, somebody is suing somebody else for hiring an advertising model who happens to bear a physical resemblance to the plaintiff.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/07/21/earlyshow/leisure/celebspot/main20081354.shtml?tag=exclsv">http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/07/ ... tag=exclsv</a>

So you're all on notice: If anybody uses a character who is a fat guy with a goatee, I'm gonna sue your ass! [emote]:lol:[/emote] 


Robert Rothman[/quote]
In the Super C-U-T-E commercial she really looks like her!
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqIP6xVB6U8">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqIP6xVB6U8</a>
Hanna Montana should be the one singing it.

Kim Kardashian wishes she could look like her!
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nTuHFMZsrs">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nTuHFMZsrs</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2881&start=0#p20082
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7:why wont this reading option work?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-07-22 16:01:38

[quote="ilovemyhedgehog"][code]Instead of reading the page: say "[if player is goose]It[for the first time]says experiment #1.[otherwise if player is human and not in Skylight Room] say it's too dark to read that here."[/code][/quote]

Often rules can be easier to read, if you lift some of the conditions out of the say phrase into the rule preamble.
Instead of writing:
[code]Instead of reading the page: 
	say "[if player is goose]It says experiment #1.[otherwise if player is human and not in Skylight Room] say it's too dark to read that here."[/code]
you can write:
[code]Instead of examining the page when the player is goose:
	say "It says: 'Experiment #1'."

Instead of examining the page when the player is human and the player is not in Skylight:
	say "It's too dark to read that here."
[/code]
In this case, it doesn't matter much; but sometimes, when you need to test a lot of conditions for your rules, this trick can make things a lot easier.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2881&start=0#p20083
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7:why wont this reading option work?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-07-22 16:03:10

[quote="Jizaboz"][quote="Eleas"]The token "for the first time" is not known to Inform 7. That, at least, wouldn't compile until you defined the term.[/quote]

Yeah, good eye. I missed that one. Try "for 1 turn" instead.[/quote]


I don't think that would compile either. 

[code]Instead of reading the page: say "[if player is goose]It[for the first time]says experiment #1.[otherwise if player is human and not in Skylight Room] say it's too dark to read that here."[/code]

"If the player is goose" is a statement that can be evaluated as true or false. On its own, "For the first time" is neither a "to say" token or a statement to be evaluated, and that's how it's going to be read. Also, it's a toss-up as to how I7 would interpret the next phrase, "if player is (human-and-not-in-Skylight-Room)" (is this a name of the value, is it an object, is it a condition?).

I've not bothered trying out the example since several vital details were omitted, but I'd definitely expect to have to write "if player is human and the location is not the Skylight Room".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2882&start=0#p20084
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Tables and Topic Listed
User: rotter / DateTime: 2011-07-22 16:49:11

Hi 

I'm having problems with tables and matching to the topic entry.  Could someone tell me what is wrong with the follow please?  I can't spot what is wrong, it fails on the topic listed.

[code]Understand "textadding [text] in [something]" as textadding it in.  textadding it in is an action applying to one topic and one visible thing.

carry out textadding:
	if the topic understood is a topic listed in the conversation of the second noun
	begin; 
		choose a blank row in conversation of the second noun;  now topic entry is topic listed; 

	end if;

The conversation of John Peters is the Table of John Peters Conversations. 

Table of John Peters Conversations
topic
"test"
"one"
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2884&start=0#p20086
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: "All I need right now is the da-da-da-da dance floor."
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-22 19:24:41

First I wanna say Melissa Molinaro is more of a Jennifer Lopez lookalike than Kim Kardashian, and sexier than Kim too.
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nTuHFMZsrs">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nTuHFMZsrs</a>

Someone give her a Tweet for me:

I think this whole thing is stupid!
It's like when Spike Lee tried to sue Viacom for using his name in SpikeTV.
What's next Paris Hilton suing a lady on the beach for saying "That's hot (sand)."?
To be honest, I did think it was Kim when the commercial first aired, but it looked more like something Kyle Kardashian would do more than Kim.

I haven't seen it on Youtube or in any article, but I'm sure I've seen Brooke Hogan doing your "Dance Floor" video.
From your exact movements right down to the computer words intro.

Anyway, I wanted you to know she does have a point, and has worked hard for her products (perfume, makeup, dresses).

If she wanted to sue you (and she has a right to do so) it should be for the many other things you've done, most notably "How I Met Your Mother" and "The Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search For The Next Pussy Cat Doll".

I'm not assuming you misrepresented yourself as Kim, but you didn't say you weren't her, which will be problematic for all those producers who are dragged into the lawsuit.

Don't assume I'm on her side, I'm taking both arguments into account.
Even though it sounds silly (you can't help how you look), if it goes to court, Kim has a stronger case because she created the products and you were just in the commercial, also the misuse of a SAG card does have a precedence (Julie Brown Vs. Julie Brown).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2878&start=0#p20087
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Taking - what's going on?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-22 22:27:16

Ok, so it looks like a way to disable Inform's AI about what it should try taking if the player doesn't type a noun is to redefine your game's taking verbs so they're more elemental.

IE - 'get' as taking, instead of 'get [things]' as taking... etc.

If you can then run your game, type 'take' on its own and receive the response 'You must supply a noun', it shows you're in a position to start using 'supplying a missing noun while taking' tricks to guide the action depending on location, context etc.

Inform makes decent guesses half the time when it uses the built-in routines, but it also makes some not so cool (and some dumb) guesses at other times, at least in my game, so I think it's another area where I need write my own routine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2885&start=0#p20088
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Reminder: IntroComp Awards Ceremony - Saturday at 2p Eastern
User: Jacqueline / DateTime: 2011-07-23 01:39:03

Sorry, folks - I posted this to Planet IF and the ifMUD, but completely forgot about here.  Bad comp organizer!  No cookie!

Anyway, to the announcement: we (well, I) shall announce the winners of this year's IntroComp during a live ceremony on Saturday, July 23rd, at 2PM Eastern in the Auditorium on the ifMUD.  

Afterwards we shall ajourn to the Toyshop to play as many of the top three entries as are playable on Floyd as part of a special ClubFloyd.  Hope to see you there!

- Jacqueline

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2740&start=0#p20089
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IntroComp 2011 - Note regarding Stalling for Time
User: Jacqueline / DateTime: 2011-07-23 01:41:13

I still need to move an updated zip to the Archive, but in the meantime, I have uploaded an updated release of Stalling for Time to the temp directory at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.allthingsjacq.com/IntroComp11/">http://www.allthingsjacq.com/IntroComp11/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2882&start=0#p20090
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tables and Topic Listed
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-07-23 02:05:11

I'm not sure what you're trying to do. It looks like you're making an action that can add rows to the table, but the carry out rule reads like you're adding new rows only if they already exist (?). What's the goal of "now topic entry is topic listed"?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2882&start=0#p20091
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tables and Topic Listed
User: rotter / DateTime: 2011-07-23 05:56:23

[quote="Juhana"]I'm not sure what you're trying to do. It looks like you're making an action that can add rows to the table, but the carry out rule reads like you're adding new rows only if they already exist (?). What's the goal of "now topic entry is topic listed"?[/quote]

Hi, sorry reading back my request was a bit light on information.  Yes, I'm trying to create a routine with adds rows to various tables if the text is not in the table.  I then want to create a routine to remove text if it is in the table.  Looks like I pasted the wrong line in my original request. So, this is what I've coded which doesn't work.

[code]Understand "textadding [text] in [something]" as textadding it in.  textadding it in is an action applying to one topic and one visible thing.

carry out textadding:
   if there is no topic corresponding to a topic of topic understood in the conversation of the second noun
   begin; 
      choose a blank row in conversation of the second noun;  now topic understood is topic listed; 
   end if;

The conversation of John Peters is the Table of John Peters Conversations. 

Table of John Peters Conversations
topic
"test"
"one"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2886&start=0#p20092
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Random Move
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-07-23 06:07:45

Under Inform 7, is there an easy way to have NPCs chose a random exit? I did it as spaghetti code under Inform 6 and probably could do the same under I7 as well, but yet I hope there's an easy solution to that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2882&start=0#p20093
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tables and Topic Listed
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-07-23 06:13:16

Ok, well "topic listed" can't be used alone and it'd point to an existing topic anyway when you want to use the new topic, which is stored in "topic understood". Try this:

[code]Carry out textadding:
   if the topic understood is not a topic listed in the conversation of the second noun
   begin; 
      choose a blank row in conversation of the second noun;  
      now topic entry is "[topic understood]"; 
   end if;

Table of John Peters Conversations
topic
"test"
"one"
with 10 blank rows [ <-- note that you have to reserve room for the new topics]
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2886&start=0#p20094
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Random Move
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-07-23 06:14:18

See chapter 7.13 in the recipe book, especially example 77.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2886&start=0#p20095
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Random Move
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-07-23 06:19:19

Easy indeed. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2887&start=0#p20096
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Multiple Scene Calling
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-07-23 07:36:24

I'm trying to set up a scene which makes an NPC lead as fast as the player can follow. Maybe a bad idea, but I'm trying to call a scene multiple times, and it doesn't work.

[code]
kenneth_action is a scene. kenneth_action begins when flag_kenneth is 1. kenneth_action ends when flag_kenneth is 0.
When kenneth_action begins:
	now flag_kenneth is 0;
	if stage_kenneth is 1:
		say "Kenneth signifies you to follow him.";
		say "Kenneth heads off to the south, through the revolting exit door.";
		now kenneth is in Vor dem Hotel;
		now stage_kenneth is 2;
	if stage_kenneth is 0:
		say "'Oh sure, everything is prepared. Follow me.'";
		say "Kenneth heads off to the west.";
		now Kenneth is in Lobby_West;
		now stage_kenneth is 1.
[/code]

I'm setting the flags upon the player entering the room (with "carry out going to"). Move 1 works fine, but that sucker Kenneth refuses to move on to the third room. I set flag_kenneth to 1, but the scene isn't called. What am I doing wrong this time again?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2885&start=0#p20097
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Reminder: IntroComp Awards Ceremony - Saturday at 2p Eas
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-07-23 07:42:15

Sadly* I won't be able to attend the event, but I want to say well done and congratulations to everyone involved anyway. (Both participants and organiser!)

--

[size=90]* Well, I'm not [i]that[/i] sad about it, since the reason for it is that I'll be playing a concert tonight. (It'll be really great, so if anyone is near Jönköping, you should head to Immanuelskyrkan there by 19.00 and you'll get to hear a wind band, a brass band and Owen Farr as guest soloist. Owen is a world class horn player from Wales. Playing with him this week has been great.)[/size]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2887&start=0#p20098
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Multiple Scene Calling
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-07-23 07:50:54

Well scenes aren't really my thing so I can't comment on the rest of your code, but I do know that if you want to use a scene more than once you need to define it as a "recurring scene" (see ch.10.7. Multiple beginnings and repeats).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2887&start=0#p20099
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Multiple Scene Calling
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-07-23 08:07:20

That already did the trick. Thanks!!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2888&start=0#p20100
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Possible I7 error in complex directions.
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-07-23 08:12:59

Now, I know that somebody will find fault in my not providing all the code surrounding this problem, but let's try it this way first:

In the following code segment:

[quote]Section 3 - C52875 - Little Boy's Relief

C52875 is a room with printed name "Little Boy's Relief". "Probably get its name from the frequent use by small children who had one too many colas for lunch. This place really smells bad.".
C52875 is south of C42875.
C52875 is northeast of B62875.
C52875 is northwest of D62875.
[i]Instead of going southeast from C52875:
	say "Ouch, Ouch, as you bump your head on a low hanging stalagtite.".[/i]Instead of going nowhere from C52875:
	say "Ouch, as you bump your head on a low hanging stalagtite.".[/quote]

If I remove the line with the text Ouch, Ouch, control should be transfered to the southeast which sould be an adjoining room (D62875) but it is, if effect, transfured to:

[quote]Section 4 - Giant Frying Pan

The Giant Frying Pan is a room .  "Well, JERK, you finally did it! No tomorrow for you, only an endless time in a VERY HOT GIANT FRYING PAN! But not to worry, it's coated with a non-stick spray.".

Giant Frying Pan is dark.
	
instead of going southeast:
	[i]say "[first custom style]Zowe *** [one of]SIZZLE[or]FRY[or]POACH[or]TOAST[or]ROAST[or]BROIL[or]SIMMER[at random] ... Oh HELL, It is even hotter here than up in [one of]the Devil's waiting room![or]Pergutory[or]Sunday's Hell Fire and Brimstone sermons[at random] --- Give up sucker![roman type]";[/i]	end the game in death.
	
Instead of going nowhere from Giant Frying Pan:
	say "[first custom style]Wozie *** [one of]SIZZLE[or]FRY[or]POACH[or]TOAST[or]ROAST[or]BROIL[or]SIMMER[at random] ... Oh HELL, It is even hotter here than up in [one of]the Devil's waiting room![or]Pergutory[or]Sunday's Hell Fire and Brimstone sermons[at random][roman type]"[/quote]

which is a bit peculiar because they are in different regions (HRoom for the FryingpPan and UCaverns for the source of the action).

I can correct this problem by adding the italicised line but it seems to pop up in several other places.

Any thoughts will be appreciated.

Greg

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2853&start=0#p20101
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Complicity: Building Interactive Narratives
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-07-23 08:15:49

[quote="ferams"]He gave an example how 2 people the author and a player can work together and write their own story. But my idea is, there would still be the original one who set what things you are to do. Is the idea sound?[/quote]

I agree with you that in any kind of computer-mediated interactive story, the person who creates the piece has a kind of control over the possibilities and outcomes that the player doesn't. A common naive criticism of interactive stories is that if the player has control over what is happening, the piece can't be a work of art because the role of the artist and the artist's ability to express something has been removed. (Roger Ebert has made this argument several times.) In practice, though, the choices that are available within a work are there only because the work's creator put them there; it's not the case that the player can do whatever he wants. In a first-person shooter, I can't give a poetry performance to the other soldiers. In Fable 3, I can't hire a bunch of economic experts and establish a technocratic monarchy that solves that country's social problems without punitive taxation. 

Even in games with a high degree of simulation or a rich field of moral choice, there are always many more things outside the range of the simulation than inside. 

However -- and this is where we get back to the relevance of what your instructor was saying -- it is also not really possible, in my opinion, to have a compelling interactive story unless the player also wants something from it. Maybe the player wants to see the protagonist win, maybe he wants to set up a romance between a couple of characters, maybe he wants to create an avatar that represents an aspect of himself that doesn't get much real-life attention, maybe he wants to make the little Sims people fall sick and die because he built them a house with no toilets and no kitchen. But he has to want *something*.

So a great deal of the meaning of an interactive work comes out of the tension between what the player wants and what the author allows. Say the player wants a victory; the author makes it hard to achieve; the result is a story about a determined struggle, which is expressed both through the dialogue and aesthetics of the game and through the gameplay experience of working through the levels.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2888&start=0#p20102
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Possible I7 error in complex directions.
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-07-23 08:45:54

I'm not really sure what the question is, but when you write a rule like "Instead of going southeast: ..."  it applies at any time the player tries to go southeast, unless some more specific rule applies. So normally when you try to go southeast from room C52875 the "Instead of going southeast from C52875: ..." rule applies, but if you remove that rule the more general "Instead of going southeast" rule applies. The rules aren't automatically tied to the rooms that are defined near them.

Does this answer your question?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2888&start=0#p20103
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Possible I7 error in complex directions.
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-07-23 08:59:32

[quote="wgm003"]Now, I know that somebody will find fault in my not providing all the code surrounding this problem...[/quote]
Actually, I was just going to point out that you posted this in the wrong sub - forum.  [emote];)[/emote]  As far as the code, what you posted is both compilable (well, once I took out the reference to custom styles) and sufficiently illustrates the problem, so kudos there. 

(Juhana beat me to it but...) The issue is in Section 4 - Giant Frying Pan, and I can see why it pops up quite often -- you forgot to put a condition on the instead rule which ends the game. It will fire any time the player tries to go southeast from anywhere (as long as another rule hasn't intervened first). Try changing it to:[code]Instead of going southeast in Giant Frying Pan:
	say "Blah, blah..."; end the game in death.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2853&start=0#p20104
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Complicity: Building Interactive Narratives
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-23 10:08:02

[quote] A common naive criticism of interactive stories is that if the player has control over what is happening, the piece can't be a work of art because the role of the artist and the artist's ability to express something has been removed.[/quote]

That's sort of like saying that a piece of sculpture cannot be art because the viewer can choose to look at it from different angles and may see something different depending on his choice.  I would argue quite the contrary position:  That the viewer/player's ability to affect what he gets out of the work (by making his own choices) can, if carefully handled by the artist, add yet another layer of artistry.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2849&start=0#p20105
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Custom "physical" relations
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-23 10:16:43

I've decided to create a separate "underness" relation rather than implementing the concept by defining the underside of appropriate objects as a container.  Almost immediately, I ran into an odd compilation error.

[code]Underness relates various things to one thing.  The verb to be under implies the underness relation.[/code]

The first sentence compiles just fine.  When I add the second sentence, however, I get an error message which suggests that something is conflicting with the "looking under" action which is (minimally) defined in the standard rules.  Specifically, I get the following:

[quote]In Part SR4 - Actions, Section SR4/4 - Standard actions concerning the actor's vision in the extension Standard Rules by Graham Nelson:

Problem. You wrote 'The specification of the looking under action is "The standard Inform world model do [...] he silver key; say ...' and so on."'  : but this tries to set specification text for a particular value, rather than a kind of value. 'Specification' is a special property used only to annotate the Index, and it makes no sense to set this property for anything other than a kind of value, a kind of object or an action to have specification text.
 
[/quote]

Any suggestions on how to fix?  I'm scared to death of making any changes to the standard rules themselves, so if possible I'd like to find a fix that doesn't require doing so.

Thanks.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2849&start=0#p20106
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Custom "physical" relations
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-07-23 10:34:19

It's probably easiest just to change the verb to avoid the conflict:[code]Underness relates various things to one thing.  The verb to be underneath implies the underness relation.[/code]
There are already some bugs filed about this kind of misunderstanding by the compiler, and, depending on how they are resolved, you might not have this problem in the next build.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2878&start=0#p20107
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Taking - what's going on?
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-07-23 10:55:53

You know, I typed "get" by itself in my game but it didn't have the same effect. Has anyone else reproduced this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2853&start=0#p20108
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Complicity: Building Interactive Narratives
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-07-23 11:05:23

[quote]That's sort of like saying that a piece of sculpture cannot be art because the viewer can choose to look at it from different angles and may see something different depending on his choice.[/quote]

Slightly off-topic, but I was in St. Paul's Cathedral last year, and they had a couple of works of art there. One of them was a sculpture, I don't remember who the artist was, but the whole point of the scultpure was that it could be seen from each of the four sides, and in every side you could see a different stage of pregnancy in a woman, ending at the front with - quite appropriately for the cathedral - the Madonna.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2864&start=10#p20109
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Can brand items appear in my game?
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-07-23 11:33:41

Yes you can. I did it with Building (one of the calendars is a Despair, Inc. calendar). I included the usual legal caveats in the about section, just to be safe, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2869&start=0#p20110
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: INFORM 6: Having trouble with getting reactions to verbs
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-07-23 11:37:18

A harder way is to separate "stand" from "exit", and then recode "stand" to do whatever you want on a class basis. If you do this, you can also forbid the room description from displaying when the character gets up. (The latter has always annoyed the poop out of me.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1965&start=10#p20111
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Curveship released
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-07-23 11:52:24

[quote="bukayeva"]This is, I think, partly the problem with text adventure development. Explanations are not given in terms of the authors and reasons they would care.

Most authors (I would guess) are not going to care about Turing-completeness nor should they.

They are going to care about practical things. What can this system allow me to do (in practical terms!) that will allow me to tell a better story? That will allow me to craft a better gaming experience?

I, as a game author, just spent a lot of time looking at Inform 7 and TADS 3 and learning them.

Why should I now invest time in Curveship, particularly when I look at the output or Curveship (which looks really ugly) and when I look at the programming language of Curveship (which means I now have to learn Python and then, possibly, any specifics that Curveship takes with Python)? What does Curveship get me as an author that will allow me to provide a more fulfilling experience to the audience I want to reach?

I didn't find this information in the dissertation or any of the various papers on the main site as well. Which is why I'm curious what relevance Curveship has to text adventure authors? That's probably the only way that Curveship is going to be tried out so that it can improve. But if most authors don't see any value add (beyond some nebulous "use of resources") then Curveship is probably going to languish.

But, then again, let's test that out. The first post was Februrary of 2011. A relatively short amount of time ago. But in that time, have authors been enticed enough to try it out? To see how it all works? Any experiential feedback? (After all, I presume that's why the original poster wanted everyone to know about it, so they'd try it out and give feedback.)

I don't have any such feedback because I haven't tried it out ... and that's because I can't quite understand why I would want to, given the output I've seen and the input I've seen.[/quote]

Curveship is interesting, but it's just not ready for use by IF developers (and the website pretty much admits it). I think the programmer was trying to draw in anyone who had a high degree of interest in the academic theories and Python, not so much saying "Hey, it's here for everyone to use." But your point about no-one really using it and yet defending it like it's the invention of bread is spot on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2570&start=30#p20112
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor: A new Linux/Mac OS X/Windows port of the Hugo eng
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-07-23 12:05:42

This is fantastic. Thanks for making this! Now I can get the whole Hugo experience on my Mac (always something of a hit-and-miss affair in the past).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2878&start=0#p20113
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Taking - what's going on?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-23 12:36:48

Which same effect? With the standard grammar, "get" by itself will pick an object or disambiguate. 

I usually find it sufficient to control the disambiguation with "does the player mean…" rules. But severedhand's approach, adding "Understand 'get' as taking", will give you more control.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2874&start=0#p20114
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: MultiLoc not working
User: zodraz / DateTime: 2011-07-23 13:06:27

Thank you tomasb, you pointed me in the right direction.  The code now works as it should.

[code]northEdge : Room 'north edge of chasm'
    desc()
    {
        cls();
        "<center><img src='chasm1.png'></center>";
    }
    south = deepChasm
;

+ me: Actor
;

southEdge : Room 'south edge of chasm'
    desc()
    {
        cls();
        "<center><img src='chasm3.png'></center>";
    }
    north = deepChasm
;

deepChasm : Room 'deep chasm' 'deep chasm'
    desc()
    {
        cls();
        "<center><img src='chasm2.png'></center>
        \bYou take a short step forward and proceed to plummet several thousand feet downward into the depths of the chasm. ";
        finishGameMsg(ftDeath,' ');
    }
;

middleChasm : MultiFaceted
    locationList = [northEdge, southEdge]
    instanceObject: Platform
    {
        'rope bridge' 'rope bridge'
        desc()
        {
            cls();
            "<center><img src='chasm4.png'></center>";
        } 
        north = northEdge;
        south = southEdge;
        east = deepChasm;
        west = deepChasm;
    }
;

+ dummyChasm : Fixture 'deep chasm' 'chasm'
    desc()
    {
        cls();
        "<center><img src='chasm2.png'></center>";
    }
;[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2849&start=10#p20115
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Custom "physical" relations
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-23 13:33:57

[quote]It's probably easiest just to change the verb to avoid the conflict[/quote]

Thanks.  Your solution is like the answer to a really good IF puzzle:  I never even thought of it, but with hindsight it seems obvious.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2890&start=0#p20116
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: INFORM 6: Fancy inventory
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-07-23 14:18:03

So I've been fiddling around with inventory code and can't seem to get this all figured out. I want to have my inventory be the Cadre-esque "sentence" carried/worn style ("You are carrying W, X and Y. You are wearing Z."), but have positively no clue how to even get started. Do I [i]replace InventorySub[/i], and what else do I have to do?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2890&start=0#p20117
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: INFORM 6: Fancy inventory
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-07-23 14:21:30

This is covered in Example 66 in the Designer's Manual.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2890&start=0#p20118
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: INFORM 6: Fancy inventory
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-07-23 15:20:49

Oy vey, you're right.  [emote]:oops:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2891&start=0#p20119
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: New Verb, Parsing Text instead of an Object
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-07-23 17:21:03

I want to parse "remember <name>", with <name> not being an object - same as "enter <top secret code>", but the two threads on this subject I found dealt with different requirements.

[code]
Table of phone index
name				memorized	remember
"Terrence"			0			"A"
"Weihnachtsmann"	0			"B"

Remembering is an action applying to one topic. Understand "remember [text]" as remembering.
Instead of remembering a topic listed in Table of phone index:
	say "[remember entry]";
Check remembering:
	say "You don't remember that name.".
[/code]

Prolly contains a shitload of mistakes, but I'm new to tables AND parsing text instead of objects. What do I have to change in order to print "A" when entering "remember terrence"?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2892&start=0#p20120
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Changing an object's state with a newly created verb
User: Enosh / DateTime: 2011-07-23 18:54:42

Hello. I'm a bit of a noob when it comes to Inform and I'm slowly learning.

Right now I'm trying to create an object with two states and I want to be able to change those states with a new command.

Here is what I have so far:
[code]Flattening on is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "squash" or "break down" or "flatten" as flattening on.

A box is a kind of supporter. A box is either fixed in place or portable. A box is usually fixed in place. A box is either assembled or flattened. A box is usually assembled.[/code]

And here is my attempt to alter the state:
[code]Check flattening on the cardboard box:
	if the cardboard box is flattened:
		say "It doesn't get any flatter than this.";
		stop the action;
	if the cardboard box is assembled:
		now the cardboard box is flattened;
		say "Your [noun] is nice and flat";
		continue the action.[/code]

I don't get any compiling errors, but when I try to flatten a box I get this:
[quote]>flatten the cardboard
I only understood you as far as wanting to flatten.[/quote]

This must be possible because I figured out how to change the fixed in place and portable state. I just can't figure out how to make it work. Thanks in advance!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2892&start=0#p20121
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing an object's state with a newly created verb
User: Enosh / DateTime: 2011-07-23 18:55:39

I should also note that I did identify the cardboard as a kind of box.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2892&start=0#p20122
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing an object's state with a newly created verb
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-23 20:13:11

I think you need to tell the parser to expect a noun in the command, something like:

[code]Understand "flatten [something]" as flattening on.[/code]

As an aside, you may want to consider putting the code which actually carries out the flattening (the seconfd part of your "check" rule) in a "carry out" rule rather than a check rule.



Robert Rothman

[Edited to add erroneously omitted brackets]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2891&start=0#p20123
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: New Verb, Parsing Text instead of an Object
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-24 00:38:09

The thing here is that matching text in a table requres use of the phrase 'The Topic Understood' to refer to the text the player types.

Topics also parse differently from other table contents, and require that the column containing the text to match is actually called 'topic'.

Here's your example done topic-wise. I only just worked this stuff out myself a few days ago, so someone else might know of a way to do this without repeating through the table, but this works and does show a few of the relevant phrases.

[code]there is a room called Hi.

Table of phone index
topic	memorized	remember
"Terrence"	0	"A"
"Weihnachtsmann"	0	"B"

Remembering is an action applying to one topic. Understand "remember [text]" as remembering.

Check remembering:
	If topic understood is not a topic listed in Table of phone index, say "You don't remember that name."

Carry out remembering:
	repeat through table of phone index:
		if topic understood includes topic entry, say remember entry.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2892&start=0#p20124
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing an object's state with a newly created verb
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-07-24 02:06:04

Robert pointed out the error. And he's right that it's not a good idea to put code that alters the state of the model world in a Check rule.

I would add that an action with a preposition in its name, such as flattening on, is the kind of action that I would normally use when there are two objects -- when the player is expected to enter 'flatten shirt on ironing board'. Actually, in that case, the action would be called flattening it on. Tacking on a preposition is appropriate when the natural English verb would have one -- for instance, the action of looking out (to implement the command 'look out the window'). When there's only one object to be included in the action, and no preposition ('flatten the box'), I would tend to call the action flattening, not flattening on.

I'm not sure there's a technical reason why calling it flattening on is bad, but it's error-prone. For instance, you might later want to write an After rule, which would naturally read like this:

After flattening the big wooden box:
     say "It's still kind of lumpy."

This would fail to work, because Inform would expect "After flattening on the big wooden box...."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2881&start=0#p20125
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7:why wont this reading option work?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-07-24 02:20:09

Both "if the player is in the Skylight Room" and "if the location is the Skylight Room" are legal, but they don't mean quite the same, and mostly what one wants is "if the location is ...". 
"If the player is in the Skylight Room" means "if the player is on the floor of the Skylight Room, but not in or on something else".
"If the location of the player is the Skylight Room" means "if the player is somewhere inside the Skylight Room, even in or on something else".

So if you write a rule like 
[code]Instead of examining the page when the player is human:
	if the location of the player is not the Skylight Room, say "It's too dark to read that here.";
	otherwise continue the action.[/code]
The page can be read, when you stand in the Skylight Room, but if you sit down in an armchair in the Skylight Room, it will suddenly be too dark to read, since you're no longer directly "in" the living room but in the sofa.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2893&start=0#p20126
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re-Triggering a Scene within Questions Extension
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-07-24 06:32:47

I'm using Questions by Michael Callaghan to create conversation in menu style. The conversation takes part in a scene which is triggered by a variable. The first topic choice works fine, but at the end I need the scene to be triggered again to restart the menu display. What did I do wrong?

[code]Dialogue_tree is a recurring scene. Dialogue_tree begins when the tree trigger is 1.
When dialogue_tree begins (this is the set dialogue rule):
	now dummy is 0;
	now the dialogue partner is the old tree;
	now the tree trigger is 0;
	let the conversation tree be a list of texts;
	repeat with i running from 1 to the number of rows in the Table of tree conversation:
		if asked in row i of the Table of tree conversation is 0:	
			add choice in row i of the Table of tree conversation to the conversation tree;
			now dummy is dummy plus 1;
	now the closed menu prompt is "(1-[dummy]) >>>";
	now current question is "";
	now current question menu is the conversation tree;
	ask a closed question, in menu mode.
	
A menu question rule (this is the dialogue rule):
	if the number understood is less than 1:
		retry;
	if the number understood is greater than dummy:
		retry;
	if the dialogue partner is the old tree:
		now dummy is the number understood;
		now asked in row dummy of the Table of tree conversation is 1;
		say "[answer in row dummy of the Table of tree conversation]";
		now the tree trigger is 1;
	exit.[/code]

The next to last line should trigger the scene, but doesn't.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2891&start=0#p20127
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: New Verb, Parsing Text instead of an Object
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-07-24 06:52:27

Cool, works! Thanks!!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2894&start=0#p20128
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Recommendation for Interpreter?
User: Jeff Zeitlin / DateTime: 2011-07-24 07:44:08

I have a large batch of games in .z* format, and am looking for an interpreter to actually play them. Can anyone point me to some sort of comparison of features, or some reviews, or even just discuss here why I should choose one interpreter over another?

The target environment is Windows 7 Ultimate x64. I don't require that the interpreter be a 64-bit program.

(These games were being played on my now-retired Clié, where I was using CliFrotz.)
(Also, is anyone aware of an interpreter that can be installed and used on an unrooted NookColor?)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2894&start=0#p20129
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Recommendation for Interpreter?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-24 08:35:19

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Category:Interpreter">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Category:Interpreter</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Interpreter">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Interpreter</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2888&start=0#p20130
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Possible I7 error in complex directions.
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-07-24 08:42:23

instead of going southeast[i] in giant frying pan[/i]:

After reading your answers and tearing my code apart, I finally realized that what was missing was the segment [i]in giant frying pan[/i].

I guess I keep forgetting one very critical fact about writing in Inform. The operative term here is [b]writing[/b], not [b]programming[/b]. As you well know, a missing term or misspelled word in a compiler such as Basic or FORTRAN can lead to an error message. In Inform it will either be ignored, misdirected or worse, assumed to be a new command of some form. 

Chalk it up to another lesson noted on the freeform blackboard. I am learning to like Stewed Crow.

Greg [emote]:twisted:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2895&start=0#p20131
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Bizarre every turn bug
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-24 09:45:08

There's a moment in my game where if you make one choice, everything keeps working. If you make the other choice, a bunch of every turn rules  ceases to operate from that point on.

The every turn rules that fail are all unnamed, without rule names or extra qualification. They just say 'Every turn: (do stuff)'

I noticed that if I added a qualification, the rules kept operating after the problem spot. IE - If I change it from 'every turn:' to 'every turn when player is a heroine:' (which is always true in my game), it keeps working.

Any ideas of what could be going wrong? You'd think this would be easy to nail down, given that I can look at the code right before the branch which leads to the problem, but the code there seems to be completely unremarkable.

It asks a question using this thing:

[code]To decide what text is the yesno_answer:
	let the answer be "MAYBE";
	let  the exitvalue be 0;
	while the exitvalue is 0:
		let keypress be the key_pressed;
		if keypress is 89 or keypress is 121:
			let the answer be "YES";
			let the exitvalue be 1;
		otherwise if keypress is 78 or keypress is 110:
			let the answer be "NO";
			let the exitvalue be 1;
	decide on the answer.

To decide what text is the yesno_answer_with_question (question - some text):
	say "[question][line break]";
	decide on the yesno_answer.[/code]

Then it goes:
[code]	if answer is "NO":
		let way be the best route from location to Home;
		say "[line break]He waves and walks away to the [way].";
		now dont_report_this_turn is 1;
		now Don is returning; [a possible state for the character]
		try Don going way;
		rule succeeds;
	if answer is "YES":
		say "[line break]'Sure,' you say.[line break]".[/code]

If you chose yes, the game keeps working. If you chose no, 'every turn:' rules cease to operate. I haven't seen this anywhere else in the game, or at other times you answer yes/no questions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2895&start=0#p20132
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Bizarre every turn bug
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-24 10:28:30

Hm, looks like it might be some complex interaction with Eric Eve's Variable Time Control, or something I'm doing with it.

I noticed that after the problem spot, there was one character whose every turn rule was always the last to fire (of the every turn rules that survived.) I deactivated the circumstances leading to that rule going off, and that unlocked the game.

Then I put the circumstances back on, disabled the core rule of Real Time Control, and that also unlocked the game.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2895&start=0#p20133
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Bizarre every turn bug
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-24 11:09:55

This is a combination of two things:

- putting in the condition changes the order of the "every turn" rulebook. (Check it in the index.)

- "rule succeeds" and "stop" both stop the rulebook, not just the rule. I know, I get confused too. Use "continue the action" or "make no decision" to exit the rule but continue the rulebook.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1965&start=10#p20134
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Curveship released
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-07-24 11:11:39

[quote="Poster"]Curveship is interesting, but it's just not ready for use by IF developers (and the website pretty much admits it). I think the programmer was trying to draw in anyone who had a high degree of interest in the academic theories and Python, not so much saying "Hey, it's here for everyone to use." But your point about no-one really using it and yet defending it like it's the invention of bread is spot on.[/quote]
Conversely, why [i]wouldn't[/i] I defend something that people are judging without trying to write a game with it? Maybe boosting it without having done so is a bit questionable, but dissing it on the same basis is far worse.

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2888&start=0#p20135
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Possible I7 error in complex directions.
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-24 11:13:16

Well, what you ran into is not a distinctive feature of I7. "Instead of ACTION: ..." is a valid syntax that you will frequently use.  "Instead of ACTION CONDITION:..." is another. Use the wrong one, you get the wrong result.

This has parallels in most programming languages. (E.g. Perl: "die" vs "die if $_".)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=70#p20136
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-07-24 11:18:31

Cripes. I changed my mind. This thread was a total troll because the original poster never had any intention of trying to understand anything, and I got suckered and helped legitimise it — sorry everyone.

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2895&start=0#p20137
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Bizarre every turn bug
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-07-24 11:36:40

Thanks again. Argh, I've lost track of how many times I've tripped on that. But when it happens in your every turn rules, it seems the effect is pretty spectacular.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2892&start=0#p20138
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing an object's state with a newly created verb
User: Enosh / DateTime: 2011-07-24 12:00:33

Thanks for the speedy replies! I had not found the carry out rule yet. I can now flatten my box by doing this:

[code]Flattening is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "squash [something]" or "break down [something]" or "flatten [something]" as flattening.

Carry out flattening:
	if the noun is flattened:
		say "It doesn't get any flatter than this." instead;
	if the noun is assembled:
		now the noun is flattened;
		say "Your [noun] is nice and flat".[/code]

However, it outputs both responses to the flattening like this:
[quote]>flatten box
Your cardboard box is nice and flat
It doesn't get any flatter than this.[/quote]

Also, I agree about using a preposition for flattening. When I can't get something to work but I did get something similar to work (in this case breakdance on) I try to make the codes look as similar as possible in an attempt to fix the problem. I don't know why I keep trying it, it rarely works.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2892&start=0#p20139
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing an object's state with a newly created verb
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-07-24 12:05:47

[quote="Enosh"]However, it outputs both responses to the flattening[/quote]
Did you by any chance forget to erase the check rule?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2892&start=0#p20140
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing an object's state with a newly created verb
User: Enosh / DateTime: 2011-07-24 12:10:27

Haha, I did! Thanks. I left a check in the room away from my rules section. Now it works perfectly.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2896&start=0#p20141
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Problems with CocoaGlk on Lion?
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-07-24 12:29:23

Ever since I upgraded to OS X 10.7, whenever I load a gblorb, Gargoyle shows the first screen of text and then locks up and won't accept any input, and Zoom just shows the cover art and then brings up a message log containing this:
[quote]Zoom CocoaGlk Plugin
Will read data from: /Users/shammack/Documents/Interactive Fiction/Inform/The Blind House/The Blind House.gblorb
Launching client: glulxe-client
Glk client has started
Glk client has terminated
Client crashed with code 11[/quote]
Using git vs. glulxe doesn't seem to make any difference, though my GlkTerm build of glulxe still works.

I don't know how to dig deeper than that, but a google search did lead me to [url=http://code.google.com/p/cocoaglk/issues/detail?id=1]this bug report which looks likely to be related[/url].

Anyone know what's going on, or alternately, anyone running it on Lion with no problems?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2897&start=0#p20142
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Trouble with vehicles and ignition switches
User: Enosh / DateTime: 2011-07-24 12:30:12

I'm probably trying to be too complicated for my first attempt at using Inform, but I found the ability to use cars and ignition switches in those cars so I implemented it in my game. I copied the code from the No Relation example but my car won't start and subsequently won't go anywhere.

Here's what I've entered to define the device etc:
[code]A road is a kind of room. Definition: a room is offroad if it is not a road. Instead of going by a vehicle (called the auto) to somewhere offroad: 
    say "You can't drive [the auto] off-road." 

An auto is a kind of vehicle. The ignition is a device. The ignition is part of an auto. Instead of going by auto when the ignition is switched off: say "I gotta start the thing first." Instead of switching on an auto, try silently switching on the ignition. Instead of switching off an auto, try silently switching off the ignition.  Understand "start [something]" or "turn on [something]" as switching on. [/code]

And here is how I have implemented it on my road:
[code]The Edsel is an auto in Seventh Street. The description is "It's too bad these never caught on. They were good looking cars."
 
 Understand "car" or "jalopy" or "rust bucket" as Edsel.

Instead of going anywhere but south from Seventh Street when the player is not in a vehicle: say "I'm not walking home in this monsoon. My sweet ride better start tonight." Instead of going west by the Edsel, say "Reverse gear hasn't worked since I tried to teach that brunette how to speed shift. Luckily home is straight ahead."

After exiting from the Edsel: say "Your poor car gives one last backfire before settling down to sleep."[/code]

I have a number of problems here and maybe they are too many for one topic.

The main issue is the ignition. I get no errors from the compiler but when I try to start the car I get this:

[quote]You can see an Edsel (empty) here.

>enter car
You get into the Edsel.

>start car
That isn't available.

>start Edsel
That isn't available.

>switch on ignition
You can't see any such thing.
[/quote]

The second problem is I can go where ever I want when not in the car despite the "anywhere but south" rule.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2898&start=0#p20143
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Newbie from Saskatchewan
User: PhotoJim / DateTime: 2011-07-24 12:40:06

Hi all,

I'm 44, from Regina, Saskatchewan and just signed up yesterday.

I dabbled with IF on the Commodore 64 in the mid-1980s but never really got into it as much as I could have.  However, despite not playing IF much I managed to find out about the Lost Treasures of Infocom when it came out for the Amiga (and I bought it).  Later I got Lost Treasures II and Masterpieces, and as I discovered there was an IF community online I dabbled in the newsgroups and downloaded a bunch of the newer games that the community had been producing.

I've played about six or seven of the Infocom games (I feel like I want to work my way through them all before playing the modern stuff).  Time availability interferes with the mission but it's still in progress.  [emote]:)[/emote]

One day I'd like to write my own IF work but we'll see how that goes.  I'll have to find out if I have the skill to do that.

Professionally I work in the insurance industry and, part-time, am an undergraduate course lecturer at the local university's business school.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2896&start=0#p20144
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Problems with CocoaGlk on Lion?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-24 14:02:41

I see the same thing on Lion in the Inform IDE (which uses CocoaGlk.) Probably the same bug report you found, yes.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2897&start=0#p20145
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with vehicles and ignition switches
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-07-24 14:08:43

The lines
[quote]An auto is a kind of vehicle. The ignition is a device. The ignition is part of an auto.[/quote]
creates a single device object called "ignition" together (I guess) with the auto it's part of and places it off-stage.
To make ignitions parts of autos in general you have to make them a kind of device that belongs to all autos.
[code]
An auto is a kind of vehicle. 
An ignition is a kind of device. An ignition is part of every auto. 

Instead of going by auto when the ignition is switched off: say "I gotta start the thing first." 
Instead of switching on an auto when an ignition (called starter) is part of the noun, try switching on starter. 
Instead of switching off an auto when an ignition (called starter) is part of the noun, try switching off the starter. 

Understand "start [something]" or "turn on [something]" as switching on.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2896&start=0#p20146
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Problems with CocoaGlk on Lion?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-07-24 14:38:13

Can you see if the Gargoyle input issues go away in [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2759298/gargoyle-2011.1-mac_r557.dmg]this build[/url]?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2899&start=0#p20147
Forum: Competitions / Subject: IntroComp 2011 - Winners Announced!
User: Jacqueline / DateTime: 2011-07-24 16:16:09

Howdy, everyone.

I'm still working to update the site to reflect this, but in case you missed the ceremony yesterday, here are the results:

[b]First place: [i]Choice of Zombies[/i], by Heather Albano[/b]
If Heather finishes her game by July 23rd, 2012, I'll send her $100 *and* she'll get this spanky bonus prize, donated to the competition by Zack Urlocker (thanks, Zack!): [url]http://www.z-machine-matter.com/2010/10/dennis-wheatley-1936.html[/url]

[b]Second place: [i]Speculative Fiction[/i], by Diane Christoforo and Thomas Mack[/b]
If Diane and Thomas finish their game by July 23rd, 2012, they'll get $60.

[b]Third place: [i]Choice of the Petal Throne[/i], by Danielle Goudeau[/b] 
If Danielle finishes her game by July 23rd, 2012, she'll get $40.

There were also ten honorable mentions, listed below in no particular order.  
The first of these games to be completed by July 23, 2012 will get $25:

[i]Parthenon[/i], by Charles Wickersham
[i]Bender[/i], by Katz
[i]The Z-Machine Matter[/i], by Zack Urlocker
[i]Exile[/i], by Simon
[i]Stalling for Time[/i], by Dominic Delabruere
[i]Seasons[/i], by Poster (MT)
[i]Gargoyle[/i], by Simon
[i]The Despondency Index[/i], by Ed Blair
[i]Of Pots and Mushrooms[/i], by Devi and Maya
[i]Chunky Blues[/i], by Scott Hammack and Jessamin Yu

I was asked today if I plan to release more than the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place ranking order, and that's a good question that I'll be adding to the comp's FAQ.  The answer is no.  I haven't been releasing ranks beyond the top three (at least in recent years, can't recall how I used to do it; I think at one point I released more, but never the entire grouping unless it was a comp with only three entries or some such, as we had three years ago).  The reasoning here is that it's a comp to encourage people to write, provide them with feedback, and give everyone an incentive to improve upon the initial work and finish their project, regardless of where they ranked.

Thanks again, everyone, for another successful IntroComp.  I really appreciate the time all the authors, testers, and players dedicated to the effort!

- Jacqueline

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2896&start=0#p20148
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Problems with CocoaGlk on Lion?
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-07-24 17:05:49

[quote="bcressey"]Can you see if the Gargoyle input issues go away in [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2759298/gargoyle-2011.1-mac_r557.dmg]this build[/url]?[/quote]
Yep, that seems to do the trick.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2900&start=0#p20149
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 6: "initial" being ignored
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-07-24 17:27:25

I have a TV's power plug's "initial" routine set to change, depending on whether or not it's plugged in to the wall socket:

[code]
	initial [;
	  print "The television's power cord ";
	    if (self has plugged_in)
	      print
	      "is plugged into the wall outlet.^";
	    else print
	      "is laying on the floor.^";
	],
[/code]

I assumed this wouldn't cause any trouble, and indeed, upon entering the room, the room description shows it as "The television's power cord is laying on the floor." However, should the player pick the cord up, the game ignores this "initial" description from then on: dropping it back down, as well as plugging the cord into the wall socket, produce the quite undescriptive "You can also see a power cord here."

I've tried a couple of workarounds (such as causing the act itself of plugging/unplugging the cord to change the "initial" description), and yet nothing seems to take.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2900&start=0#p20150
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: "initial" being ignored
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-07-24 17:47:27

Initial is only called so long as the object hasn't been moved by the player. If you change that to a describe routine it will probably work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2900&start=0#p20151
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: "initial" being ignored
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-07-24 17:52:19

Thanks! Making it a "describe" routine works, but there's one little problem with it; after being dropped and/or plugged into the wall, its room description lists it before the television and other objects whenever the player looks. Is there some way to move it down to the bottom of the list?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2899&start=0#p20152
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IntroComp 2011 - Winners Announced!
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-07-24 17:52:22

Congratulations to the winners!

[quote="Jacqueline"]The reasoning here is that it's a comp to encourage people to write, provide them with feedback, and give everyone an incentive to improve upon the initial work and finish their project, regardless of where they ranked.[/quote]

Just for the record, from my perspective as an honorable mention, I don't think this has the intended effect. The initial burst of attention the games got when they were announced is in all likelihood the most they will ever get; even if I finish my game now, I can't enter it into any other reputable competitions that I know of, so the number of people who will ever actually play the finished version is probably quite low (especially since most of the people who might will have already played the intro, so it won't even have the curiosity factor going for it). From my point of view, it seems I'd be better off cutting my losses and starting on a different game. (This is not intended as a bitter rant; I'm just speaking pragmatically. Have any IntroComp entries that didn't place ever been finished?)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2899&start=0#p20153
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IntroComp 2011 - Winners Announced!
User: Jacqueline / DateTime: 2011-07-24 18:29:16

[quote="shammack"]Have any IntroComp entries that didn't place ever been finished?)[/quote]Very few games have been completed overall, so I don't think the sample size is worthy of analysis, however... one game that didn't place was actually complete before the comp even happened, there are a couple that were completed but not during the post-comp one year time frame, and one game has claimed a cash reward. 
 
I'm open to reconsidering this MO, but I'm curious: how would knowing you came in fourth, seventh, or thirteenth in a field of thirteen help spur you to finish?  A lot of the scores were actually pretty tight, so the relative ratings wouldn't help a whole lot, really.  I think that as an author you can gauge from the reviews you've read whether or not you want to bring the intro you've worked on to fruition or not.  (Also, NB: Not being a frequent visitor to the forum, I don't know from your handle which entry was yours or how your game was received; I could probably figure it out, but have chosen not to just for neutrality in this paragraph.)  

And for what it's worth, I have not abandoned my IntroComp entry from nine years ago.  I know I sound like [i]Duke Nukem Forever[/i] when I say that, but it's true.  And I'm not still working on it now and then because of what people said, but rather because of what that story means to me.  I learned a lot from reviews, and that feedback has played into other (of the more serious) IF that I've done, as well as made me realize what I want [i]Waterhouse[/i] to eventually be.  There've been a few IF games that have taken a decade or more to come to fruition, and some of those were worth the wait, and hopefully [i]Waterhouse[/i] will eventually fit into that category.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2896&start=0#p20154
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Problems with CocoaGlk on Lion?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-07-24 18:43:55

Excellent!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2898&start=0#p20155
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Newbie from Saskatchewan
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-07-24 18:57:26

Welcome to the Interactive Fiction Community Forum.  [emote]:)[/emote] 

[quote]I've played about six or seven of the Infocom games (I feel like I want to work my way through them all before playing the modern stuff).[/quote]
Yeah, I know how that goes.  I have two of the Activision genre collections, and I'm pretty sure I've started all of the games on them at least once, but I've only finished two of them.  I [i]like[/i] most of those titles and want to beat them, but there just so hard and time consuming, and I also want to stay caught up with the games that internet community is releasing!

Well, I'm glad you found us.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2829&start=0#p20156
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Listing contents of empty things
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-07-24 19:34:49

Right, but all this only applies when the item is in the location.  It'll still display (empty) in inventory.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=210#p20157
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-07-24 20:29:27

Wow, it's kind of rude of me to have made a few posts without having introduced myself. Time to rectify that.

I'm James. Been a fan of IF ever since my cousin introduced me to the genre around 2000 or so. Every few years I try to start up an IF project but I suffer from chronic "starts up a project of some sort and never finishes it" syndrome. I've recently begun coding a new game in Inform 6 that's a sort of messy mashup of previous ideas (all of them highly cliched, though); time will tell if it gets finished, but I have a good feeling about this one. I've also been quite a fan of other, more "big-budget" video games - multiplayer shooters, as well as just about anything by Valve software - up until somewhat recently; my new laptop's pitiful processor bars me from playing all but the most lightweight games.

I'm also a music producer/nerd, currently working on an experimental hip-hop album with a friend of mine (as well as a solo instrumental album). If you're a fan of underground rap, keep your eyes peeled!  [emote]8-)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2829&start=0#p20158
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Listing contents of empty things
User: Zed / DateTime: 2011-07-24 21:03:02

See here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc291.html">http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc291.html</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2829&start=0#p20159
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Listing contents of empty things
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-07-24 21:24:24

So you're suggesting I situationally rename the object from "object" to "object (text I want)" and omit contents?

There's no way to directly change the "(empty)" part?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2829&start=0#p20160
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Listing contents of empty things
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-24 21:25:46

[quote="katz"]Right, but all this only applies when the item is in the location.  It'll still display (empty) in inventory.[/quote]

That may seem like a different problem from the one discussed in that thread, but it's actually exactly the same issue. We tend to assume that the "listing contents" activity controls the printing of the contents of a container, but in the case of inventory, it's the [i]listing contents of the player[/i] activity that's controlling things. As with the examples in the thread I linked to, the activity you really need to intervene in is the "printing the name of" activity. To intervene [i]only[/i] in the case of the inventory, you could use this (following on Mike's example):

[code]After printing the name of the box while listing contents of the player:
	unless the box contains something:
		say " (with nothing inside it)";
		omit contents in listing;
	otherwise:
		continue the activity.[/code]

To intervene in every case, use the same code but with the more general preamble: "After printing the name of the box".

Incidentally, the linked thread also includes some code for diagnosing this kind of issue. If you include this code in your game:

[code]Before listing contents of an object (called X):
   say "-->[italic type](listing contents of [_name_ X])[roman type] ";
   continue the activity.

After listing contents of an object:
   say "<--";
   continue the activity. 

To say _name_ (O - an object): [prints the name of the object w/o using the printing the name of activity, which would create an infinite recursion]
   (- print (string) {O}.short_name; -)[/code]

...then it will tell you straight out that the inventory listing is incorporated under "listing contents of the player". (Again, though, you only need to know that if you want different behavior in different contexts. If you want the contents to be printed in exactly the same way everywhere, you can use just a single "printing the name of" rule, as mentioned above or in the manual page that Zed links to.)

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2901&start=0#p20161
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Randomly-generated graffiti
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-07-24 21:46:37

As a bit of flavor, there are spots in the game I'm authoring where one can read some graffiti etched into the surface of the wall; every time the player looks at it, it randomly draws from a pool of phrases. I'm not terribly imaginative, so I was wondering if I could get some suggestions for phrases here? Anything short, funny, and if possible, memorable, will do perfectly.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2899&start=0#p20162
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IntroComp 2011 - Winners Announced!
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2011-07-24 22:03:13

As an author I would certainly like to know how my game got scored.  Since there were quite a few ChoiceScript games, I'd be curious to know how I did in the category of more traditional parser-based IF.  I don't think everyone who votes writes a review, so the numeric feedback is appreciated.  (And I'd be fine with receiving that information privately.)  
--Zack

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2901&start=0#p20163
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Randomly-generated graffiti
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-07-24 22:08:58

[quote="Glorb"]As a bit of flavor, there are spots in the game I'm authoring where one can read some graffiti etched into the surface of the wall; every time the player looks at it, it randomly draws from a pool of phrases. I'm not terribly imaginative, so I was wondering if I could get some suggestions for phrases here? Anything short, funny, and if possible, memorable, will do perfectly.[/quote]
"Kilroy was here"
"If you can read this, you're too close"
"Wash me"
"Romanes eunt domus"

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2899&start=0#p20164
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IntroComp 2011 - Winners Announced!
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-07-24 22:25:02

I wasn't necessarily suggesting changing the policy, but...
[quote="ZUrlocker"]Since there were quite a few ChoiceScript games, I'd be curious to know how I did in the category of more traditional parser-based IF.[/quote]
I suppose this is what I'm really interested in knowing. Not to take anything away from ChoiceScript games, but I think they're different enough from parser-based games that the comparison is not very useful.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2901&start=0#p20165
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Randomly-generated graffiti
User: George / DateTime: 2011-07-24 23:53:12

Capitalism Is Dead
Frodo Lives
This is not graffiti

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2902&start=0#p20166
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: best most simplest way to report NPC leaving room please...
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-25 01:19:10

can anyone help me, for [b]I7[/b], with a simple code that will [b]report the NPC exiting[/b] the room and what direction (s)he went?  for some reason, in the [b]Patrollers [/b]extension, its not being reported.  plz HALP!!!

k thnx

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2901&start=0#p20167
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Randomly-generated graffiti
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-07-25 02:32:02

"Clapton is God"

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2901&start=0#p20168
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Randomly-generated graffiti
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-25 04:03:22

"eat my dump" (actually seen in child's handwriting on the side of a church)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2903&start=0#p20169
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: remember that show Small Wonder?
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-25 05:37:29

wtf was up with that?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2904&start=0#p20170
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Unstickying a sticky-random text
User: Tahnan / DateTime: 2011-07-25 05:41:50

Hi there!  I decided maybe it was time to finish that game I started in 2005 (oops), and now I'm facing the added difficulty of learning Inform 7.  (The unpleasant alternative: relearning Inform 6.)  I've been getting by on a combination of hammering on the documentation and pestering experienced IF writers over instant message, but I thought I'd try asking for help in a way that's less frustrating to myself (in the former case) and my friends (in the latter).

So I'm trying to understand randomness, and sticky-randomness in particular.  As best I understand it, "[at random]" is great for things that should change every time they're invoked, and "[sticky random]" for things that shouldn't ever change.  But what if you want things to stay constant until told otherwise?  For instance, suppose I want a newspaper headline that doesn't change throughout the day, insofar as newspapers are static items in the real world, but which does change from day to day, insofar as new newspapers get delivered each morning:
[code]"Newspaper Headlines"

Your House is a room. The description is "This is a boring little house. Someone has brought in the newspaper already; its headline is '[headline]'."

Instead of sleeping:
	say "You go to sleep. In the morning, a new newspaper has arrived.";
	redeliver;
	move player to the house.

The headline is a text that varies.

To redeliver:
	now the headline is "[one of]Land War in Asia[or]Pope Admits Fallibility; Experts Consider It An Error[or]Newspapers Collapse; More Tomorrow[at random]".

When play begins:
	redeliver.
	
Test me with "sleep / look / sleep / look / sleep / look / sleep"
[/code]
The sad result of this story is that every time you look at the room, the room description calls [headline], and headline is "one of these three things at random", so every time you look at the room you get a headline at random.  I thought "sticky random" would fix this, but replacing "[at random]" with "[sticky random]" means that the headline [i]never[/i] changes, not even when "redeliver" is called.

Is there some way to assign text at random to "headlne", and have it stay that way, but still be changed later?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2904&start=0#p20171
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unstickying a sticky-random text
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-07-25 06:39:52

I don't think you can do that with the standard text substitutions. I'd use a list, something like this:

[code]
Your House is a room. The description is "This is a boring little house. Someone has brought in the newspaper already; its headline is '[entry 1 of headlines]'."

The headlines is a list of text that varies. The headlines is {"Land War in Asia", "Pope Admits Fallibility; Experts Consider It An Error", "Newspapers Collapse; More Tomorrow" }.

When play begins:
	sort headlines in random order.

To redeliver:
	rotate headlines.[/code]
"rotate headlines" moves entry 2 to entry 1, entry 3 to entry 2 and so on so that entry 1 is always a new entry and if you run out it starts from the beginning.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2902&start=0#p20172
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: best most simplest way to report NPC leaving room please
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-07-25 08:51:11

Check out the examples in Chapter 7: Other Characters - 7.13. Traveling Characters in the Inform Recipe Book.

Or, you can use something like I used in [i]Hallow Eve[/i]:

[code]At 6:46 PM:
	move Fred Murks to Rocky Trail;
	move Brenda Bender to Rocky Trail;
	If the player is in Rocky Trail, say "Fred and Brenda arrive from the west.";
	If the player is in WoodTrail2, say "Fred and Brenda walk to the east.";
	now FredBusy is true;[/code]

..though I'm certain I over-used it. I've got a few timing issues to work out before the final release.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2829&start=0#p20173
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Listing contents of empty things
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-25 08:52:55

[quote="katz"]So you're suggesting I situationally rename the object from "object" to "object (text I want)" and omit contents?

There's no way to directly change the "(empty)" part?[/quote]

"Omit contents in listing" really just means: Don't invoke the I6-level list-writer when listing the contents of this item. There is no I7 interface to the list-writer; you either allow it to do its thing or you don't. Since it is the list-writer that produces the "(empty)" text, the only I7-level way to change the "(empty)" text is to intervene via "the printing the name of" activity.

It sounds as though you want to change "empty" generally, for all text in the game. To do that, you could include a rule like this:

[code]After printing the name of a container (called the receptacle):
	unless the receptacle contains something:
		say " (containing nothing)";
		omit contents in listing;
	otherwise:
 		continue the action.[/code]

That should act on any container in any context.

(I agree with you that the manual could do a better job in discussing everything just about everything pertaining to listing contents.)

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2882&start=0#p20174
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tables and Topic Listed
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-25 08:54:15

Does that work? I didn't think you could add a snippet to a table entry.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2891&start=0#p20175
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: New Verb, Parsing Text instead of an Object
User: Aendvari / DateTime: 2011-07-25 09:40:06

I was able to get it to work by changing the 'name' column to 'topic':

[code]
Table of phone index
topic				memorized	remember
"Terrence"			0			"A"
"Weihnachtsmann"	0			"B"

Remembering is an action applying to one topic. Understand "remember [text]" as remembering.
Instead of remembering a topic listed in Table of phone index:
	say "[remember entry]";
Check remembering:
	say "You don't remember that name.".
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2904&start=0#p20176
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unstickying a sticky-random text
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-07-25 09:51:14

Juhana's way is more elegant anyway, but just out of curiosity I changed headline into an "indexed text that varies" and that made Tahnan code work as expected (though I'm not sure why!).

--

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2892&start=0#p20177
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing an object's state with a newly created verb
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-25 10:11:23

[quote="Enosh"]Also, I agree about using a preposition for flattening. When I can't get something to work but I did get something similar to work (in this case breakdance on) I try to make the codes look as similar as possible in an attempt to fix the problem. I don't know why I keep trying it, it rarely works.[/quote]

The Pragmatic Programmers call that "programming by coincidence."
<a class="postlink" href="http://pragprog.com/the-pragmatic-programmer/extracts/coincidence">http://pragprog.com/the-pragmatic-progr ... oincidence</a>

I do a lot of I7 programming this way....  [emote]:P[/emote] 

By the way, I am totally into seeing a game with cardboard boxes for breakdancing...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2897&start=0#p20178
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with vehicles and ignition switches
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-25 10:16:02

But if there's only one car, you can save a lot of trouble by not creating an auto kind at all:

[code]
Edsel is a vehicle. The ignition is a device. The ignition is part of Edsel. 
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2764&start=0#p20179
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Swedish -- Inform 7 translation
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-07-25 10:21:13

I've fixed a number of bugs in the Swedish translation of Inform 7 -- including the tricky one about names of things of a kind of which every thing of some other kind has one instance as a part (parse that!) as well as a couple of more embarrassing ones. And it now also features a handy utility function courtesy of Eleas.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2905&start=0#p20180
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Indiana Jones puzzle
User: Icefall / DateTime: 2011-07-25 10:27:20

In some month's I haven't opened inform at all, and now when I try to remember what I did in the start of the year, I found this topic.

[url]http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2141[/url]

I tried to execute the example, but I got an error:

[i]
This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6G60) on its most recent run through:


Problem. The phrase or rule definition 'Instead of taking the sphere'   is written using the 'colon and indentation' syntax for its 'if's, 'repeat's and 'while's, where blocks of phrases grouped together are indented one tab step inward from the 'if ...:' or similar phrase to which they belong. But the tabs here seem to be misaligned, and I can't determine the structure. The first phrase going awry in the definition seems to be 'if the sphere is not on the pedestal'  , in case that helps. 

This sometimes happens even when the code looks about right, to the eye, if rows of spaces have been used to indent phrases instead of tabs.[/i]

If I remember correctly, I have had this kind of errors when I try to copy/paste codes from the forum. How these can be fixed?

Thanks in advance.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2904&start=0#p20181
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unstickying a sticky-random text
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-25 10:27:52

Lists and indexed texts require use of the memory heap. You'll probably use less memory with a table of texts or a kind-of-value:

[code]"Newspaper Headlines"

Your House is a room. The description is "This is a boring little house. Someone has brought in the newspaper already; its headline is '[news of the day].'"

Instead of sleeping:
   say "You go to sleep. In the morning, a new newspaper has arrived.";
   follow the redelivery rule;
   move player to the house.

Table of News
Headline
"Land War in Asia"
"Pope Admits Fallibility; Experts Consider It An Error"
"Newspapers Collapse; More Tomorrow"

The news of the day is a text that varies.

When play begins (this is the redelivery rule):
	choose a random row in Table of News;
	now the news of the day is the headline entry.
   
Test me with "sleep / look / sleep / look / sleep / look / sleep"[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2905&start=0#p20182
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indiana Jones puzzle
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-25 10:29:13

Change the strings of spaces on the indented lines to tab characters.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2904&start=0#p20183
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unstickying a sticky-random text
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-07-25 10:31:36

[quote="capmikee"]Lists and indexed texts require use of the memory heap. You'll probably use less memory with a table of texts or a kind-of-value[/quote]
Sure, but unless you have several hundred headlines the practical difference it makes is zero.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2905&start=0#p20184
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indiana Jones puzzle
User: Icefall / DateTime: 2011-07-25 10:35:02

I deleted the spaces and there aren't spaces at the end of the lines:

"Indiana Jones puzzle" by jan kupila

The Test Lab is a room.

The pedestal is in the Lab. A golden sphere is on the pedestal. The player carries meat. The indefinite article of the meat is "some".

Instead of taking the sphere:
if the sphere is not on the pedestal:
continue the action;
otherwise if the meat is on the pedestal:
continue the action;
end the story saying "Knives shoot out of the wall and slice you apart!"

Same error. What did I wrong?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2904&start=0#p20185
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unstickying a sticky-random text
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-25 10:56:03

[quote="rockersuke"]Juhana's way is more elegant anyway, but just out of curiosity I changed headline into an "indexed text that varies" and that made Tahnan code work as expected (though I'm not sure why!).[/quote]
A text with substitutions is actually a function. An indexed text is a string of characters. So if the headline is an indexed text, whenever you say "now the headline is "[one of]...", you execute the function and store its result in a string. If the headline were a text and not an indexed text, that statement would just make the headline variable point to the function that prints "[one of]...", which would run again every time it was printed.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2904&start=0#p20186
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unstickying a sticky-random text
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-25 10:58:19

[quote="Juhana"][quote="capmikee"]Lists and indexed texts require use of the memory heap. You'll probably use less memory with a table of texts or a kind-of-value[/quote]
Sure, but unless you have several hundred headlines the practical difference it makes is zero.[/quote]
If I remember other people's reports of memory usage, even a list of a couple dozen entries takes up quite a bit more memory than a table. But perhaps I'm wrong.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2905&start=0#p20187
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indiana Jones puzzle
User: Icefall / DateTime: 2011-07-25 10:59:36

Would it help if I take empty page and hand-write the text again?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2905&start=0#p20188
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indiana Jones puzzle
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-25 11:04:10

When posting your own code:

If you put code tags around your code, it will be possible to see the tabs more clearly in your post.


When using code from someone else's post:

If you click the "quote" button and copy the code from the edit window, you will be able to preserve the original text with its tabs intact.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2905&start=0#p20189
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indiana Jones puzzle
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-25 11:06:52

[quote="Icefall"][code]"Indiana Jones puzzle" by jan kupila

The Test Lab is a room.

The pedestal is in the Lab. A golden sphere is on the pedestal. The player carries meat. The indefinite article of the meat is "some".

Instead of taking the sphere:
if the sphere is not on the pedestal:
continue the action;
otherwise if the meat is on the pedestal:
continue the action;
end the story saying "Knives shoot out of the wall and slice you apart!"[/code][/quote]

This appears to have no tabs at all. The tabs are needed to make the code work. There should be one tab before the lines "if the sphere...", "otherwise if the meat...", and "end the story...". There should be two tabs before both lines that say "continue the action."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2904&start=0#p20190
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unstickying a sticky-random text
User: Tahnan / DateTime: 2011-07-25 11:08:05

[quote="rockersuke"]Juhana's way is more elegant anyway, but just out of curiosity I changed headline into an "indexed text that varies" and that made Tahnan code work as expected (though I'm not sure why!).[/quote]Oh, weird!  (It didn't help that I hadn't made it to "Indexed Text" in the documentation--I didn't even know it was there.)  That's extremely useful to know.  I'm assuming that an indexed text has to be stored as a string of letters and not just a reference to the "..." stuff, which is why it has the effect of freezing it in place.

I'll certainly consider the other ways of doing this. As it happens, the text I'm working with is slightly more complex than just "Sentence[or]Sentence[or]Sentence"; translating it into the headline analogy, it's closer to....

[code]   now the headline is "[one of]Bachmann[or]Romney[or]Pawlenty[or]Gingrich[at random] Visits [one of]Iowa[or]New Hampshire[or]South Carolina[at random]".[/code]

It looks like it ought to be possible to simulate this with lists by setting up a list called "politicians" and a list called "states", and then writing

[code]To redeliver:
	sort politicians in random order;
	sort states in random order;
	now the headline is "[entry 1 of politicians] Visits [entry 1 of states]".[/code]

(Unless there's a way to get "random entry of politicians" that I was missing.)  Of course, this has the same problem that the original code did, which is to say that subsequent sorting of the politicians or the states changes the headline, unless the headline is specified to be an [b]indexed[/b] list.  I'm assuming that tables could be made to work in much the same way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2905&start=0#p20191
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indiana Jones puzzle
User: Icefall / DateTime: 2011-07-25 11:09:48

Thanks, I'll add the tabs.

edit: Now it works. Thanks again!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2764&start=0#p20192
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Swedish -- Inform 7 translation
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-07-25 11:12:31

[quote="Felix"]I've fixed a number of bugs in the Swedish translation of Inform 7 -- including the tricky one about names of things of a kind of which every thing of some other kind has one instance as a part (parse that!) as well as a couple of more embarrassing ones. And it now also features a handy utility function courtesy of Eleas.[/quote]

Nice. Okay, the utility function bears mention. The function is called thus: [code]>objekt[/code] or [code]>förslag[/code]

Alternatively, you could use the command plus the name of an object in the game, like so: [code]objekt <föremål>[/code].

The routine will then ask you to define the name of the object in definite form, then asks for the indefinite form. It will then provide its best guess on how the printed name statement should read. [code]>objekt
Skriv namnet i bestämd form ("den röda lyktan").

>det ilskna lejonet
Skriv nu dess obestämda form ("en röd lykta").

>ilsket lejon
Förslag: The printed name of <objektet> is "[det ]ilsk[et-na] lejon[et]".

>[/code]

It's not very efficient at the moment, and bugs are to be expected, which is why it should be considered a guess rather than certainty.

(Usage of the "förslag" command should probably be added to documentation, although I'm still not very happy with the name of the command itself. Suggestions, anyone?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2901&start=0#p20193
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Randomly-generated graffiti
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-07-25 11:59:13

"For a good time call Susie"
"Vote Nixon/Mondale"
"The truth is out there"
random names like "Ramone", "Leonard", "Francis", "Alonzo"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2901&start=0#p20194
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Randomly-generated graffiti
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-25 12:00:22

Seems like it depends a lot on the atmosphere of your game.

Here's some actual tags I've seen around Philadelphia:

VATOE
DARTH VATOE
MALIC
el toro
gusher
4 EVER BONER
FREE DA HOOD
bloopa
MORG
mecro

Many of the above have illustrations that generally go with them - Malic has an aggravated-looking bald guy, El Toro has a cartoon bull, bloopa has a balloon-shaped guy with buck teeth, and MORG has a cracked toilet.

Here's a few of them:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/malic_maa-lick/308115013/in/photostream/">http://www.flickr.com/photos/malic_maa- ... otostream/</a>

And some Banksy (it's not likely that Banksy will sue you for stealing his work!):

If graffiti changed anything, it would be illegal
If at first you don't succeed - call an airstrike
"One original thought is worth a thousand mindless quotings" - Diogenes
This'll look nice when it's framed
You concrete me
I remember when all this was trees
Forgive us our trespassing
EAT THE RICH* - *with our new 2 for 1 offer including choice of wine

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2764&start=0#p20195
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Swedish -- Inform 7 translation
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-07-25 12:29:26

[quote="Eleas"]Usage of the "förslag" command should probably be added to documentation[/quote]
It is (though I missed out on the "Förslag <object>" syntax). 
And, to be sure, this function handles all manners of weird inflections, like "[det ]lud[et-na] blodrö[tt-da] monst[er-ret]".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2902&start=0#p20196
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: best most simplest way to report NPC leaving room please
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-25 12:58:00

thnx dr. jiz!!!!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2901&start=0#p20197
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Randomly-generated graffiti
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-07-25 13:04:13

^Nice!  Is it mostly stickers in your area?

IIRC, there was a tagger around here called Leche who drew milk cartons; sometimes he'd sign them "soy leche".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=210#p20198
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-07-25 13:05:09

People who start up project and frequently don't finish them are running experiments with themselves. Finishing is important, and you have to figure out what's stopping you and work such that you can step around that block, but that's just a logistical problem: you still are in a way better spot than someone who never gathers the motivation to start anything at all. 8)

And welcome.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2901&start=0#p20199
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Randomly-generated graffiti
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-25 13:12:43

There's a lot of stickers and wheatpaste, especially on the street but there's also some spraypainting and stencils. The spraypainting is more around the train lines. We've got a lot of Toynbee tiles too. There's also a bit of knit-bombing. 

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ishknits.com/rocky-statue-yarn-bomb-philadelphia/">http://www.ishknits.com/rocky-statue-ya ... ladelphia/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2899&start=0#p20200
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IntroComp 2011 - Winners Announced!
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-07-25 13:15:10

Having a *competition* for unfinished games encourages the winners to finish, but discourages everyone else. Placing last in IntroComp is a pretty big discouragement. Grouping all non-winning games into an Honorable category with a prize for finishing is a pretty good way to compensate for that discouragement.

So the question is: why show only the first three? Why not show only the winner? Or show the first five? Or the first thirteen? I think the goal is to reveal ranks up until the point where revealing the ranks is discouraging.

IMO, that means revealing the ranks of approximately the top half (or top third?) of the contestants. Once you're in the bottom half, it's not more encouraging to be the top of the bottom half than it is the middle of the bottom half.

While I don't agree that the ChoiceScript entries should be graded separately, they considerably increased the number of contestants. Revealing the top three games out of eight parser games is about right; revealing the top three out of thirteen is too few.

For thirteen games, I'd suggest revealing the top five.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2764&start=0#p20201
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Swedish -- Inform 7 translation
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-07-25 13:42:35

[quote="Felix"][quote="Eleas"]Usage of the "förslag" command should probably be added to documentation[/quote]
It is (though I missed out on the "Förslag <object>" syntax). 
And, to be sure, this function handles all manners of weird inflections, like "[det ]lud[et-na] blodrö[tt-da] monst[er-ret]".[/quote]

Oh.  [emote]:oops:[/emote] I looked through the documentation a few times but failed to spot it. Must have been in a rush or something.

So far, bug is that it gives erroneous output of [code]"[]"[/code] in certain circumstances (when the input phrases bear no similarity to each other).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2901&start=0#p20202
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Randomly-generated graffiti
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-25 13:48:21

lol @ vote mondale!  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2903&start=0#p20203
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: remember that show Small Wonder?
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-07-25 14:20:39

According to Wikipedia: [quote]Small Wonder is an American science fiction sitcom that aired in first-run syndication from September 7, 1985 to May 20, 1989. The show chronicles the family of a robotics engineer who, after he secretly creates a robot modeled after a real human girl, tries to pass it off as their daughter.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2901&start=10#p20204
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Randomly-generated graffiti
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-07-25 14:50:58

[quote="capmikee"]Seems like it depends a lot on the atmosphere of your game.

Here's some actual tags I've seen around Philadelphia:

VATOE
DARTH VATOE
MALIC
el toro
gusher
4 EVER BONER
FREE DA HOOD
bloopa
MORG
mecro
[/quote]

Dude, I've seen the El Toro and Darth Vatoe tags before when I've visited my family in Philly. I've only ever seen a couple Toynbee tiles, though those are pretty awesome (and vaguely creepy). Anyway, some of these are definitely making their way into the game, thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2899&start=0#p20205
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IntroComp 2011 - Winners Announced!
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-07-25 15:55:30

[quote="dfabulich"]Placing last in IntroComp is a pretty big discouragement. Grouping all non-winning games into an Honorable category with a prize for finishing is a pretty good way to compensate for that discouragement.[/quote]
To my eyes there's no practical difference between getting honorable mention and placing last, in terms of discouragement. If every game that doesn't place is classified as "honorable," the "honor" is meaningless. And the prize just goes to whoever finishes first, regardless of quality. I don't want to rush my game out the door just to get $25, so I have no expectation of finishing first. Thus, the prize isn't a motivating factor, so the only reason to finish it would be because I wanted to see it complete.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2899&start=0#p20206
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IntroComp 2011 - Winners Announced!
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-07-25 16:29:12

Congrats to the winner! That Wheatley 30's original is itself worth finishing the job. I've got the 70's facsimile reprint, and it's a real beauty!

Even if I've not been involved in the comp at all (haven't even found the time to play any of the entries, shame on me!  [emote]:oops:[/emote] ) just reading the sheer amount of reviews out there has given me some insight of what makes the audience blink (for good or bad) which will be of use if I (hopefully!) keep on writting IF stuff. So thanks to everyone, authors for authoring, reviewers for reviewing, and Jacqs for organizing!  [emote]:)[/emote] 

--

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=30#p20207
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-07-25 17:03:09

Damn! I wish I had been a regular here when this thread was hot! Having had some experiences writting IF for 80's computers this is the stuff I'm interested in!

I bumped into Visionary when looking for info about another IF creating tool[url=http://hol.abime.net/1587]also called Visionary[/url], an early 90's system for the Commodore Amiga, that's a pic of the copy from my little collection of IF related things.


[center][url=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/194/dscn1399.jpg/][img]http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/3781/dscn1399.th.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/195/dscn1410.jpg/][img]http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/2461/dscn1410.th.jpg[/img][/url][/center]


I tried running therealeasterbunny's Visionary, but my Windows 7 is anything but cooperative. Can anyone confirm if it is safe to install visual basic 6 runtime in Win7 and if that would make this Visionary work?

On other subject, I think working for "old school" environments doesn´t mean you're unavoidably restricted to terse prosed puzzle based text games. My favourite examples are Colin Woodcock's [url=http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0017301&loadpics=3]Floarea Soarelu[/url]i and Lee Tonks' [url=http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0018544&loadpics=3]On Reflection[/url], both for ZX Spectrum computers, which I highly recommend to Speccy users (wether for real or through emulation)!

--

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2901&start=10#p20208
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Randomly-generated graffiti
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-07-25 19:34:36

No one has mentioned "Andre the Giant has a posse" yet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2904&start=0#p20209
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unstickying a sticky-random text
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-25 19:37:24

In situations like this, I've gotten into the habit of using a table, similar to Capmikee's suggestion.  I don't know enough about the technical aspects of memory usage, but the table approach is very convenient; all of the possibilities are laid out together, and separate from the rest of the code, so I can see at a glance what's there, and its easy to add or change entries.

    Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2899&start=0#p20210
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IntroComp 2011 - Winners Announced!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-25 20:29:48

shammack, I would play your game if you finished it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2904&start=0#p20211
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unstickying a sticky-random text
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-25 20:37:25

[quote="capmikee"][quote="Juhana"][quote="capmikee"]Lists and indexed texts require use of the memory heap. You'll probably use less memory with a table of texts or a kind-of-value[/quote]
Sure, but unless you have several hundred headlines the practical difference it makes is zero.[/quote]
If I remember other people's reports of memory usage, even a list of a couple dozen entries takes up quite a bit more memory than a table. But perhaps I'm wrong.[/quote]

You might be thinking of my case, where I exceeded z-machine limits with a few dozen lists (of three to eight entries) rather than a list with a few dozen entries. As it was explained to me, lots of lists eat lots of memory because the game reserves a bunch of room for each one to expand, even when the lists are in fact completely static.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2899&start=0#p20212
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IntroComp 2011 - Winners Announced!
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-07-25 20:50:41

I'd say the disincentive is that the whole thing is framed in terms of "do you want to keep playing this game?", which casts the losing games as "the sucky games that no one wants to play."  Not much of an encouragement to keep working on it.

This has more to do with ratings than rankings; if (as is theoretically, if not practically, possible) all the games had gotten an 8 or above, that would be something the authors would want to know, since all the games, if completed, might get a good reception.  OTOH, if (as seems infinitely more probable) all the games got a 4 or below, that's not very helpful to anyone.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2904&start=10#p20213
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unstickying a sticky-random text
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-25 20:58:27

With Z-code, I think that just including even one list (or worse, indexed text) in your game will cause the code library for managing that data type to be compiled into the file. I think the indexed text library by itself is about 100K, which is a pretty big hit for that limited format.

If you're compiling to Glulx, there is almost certainly no reason that you need to give these memory questions any thought at all.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2899&start=10#p20214
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IntroComp 2011 - Winners Announced!
User: Jacqueline / DateTime: 2011-07-25 21:40:26

Hi, folks.  

I'm going to stand by my decision and intent here.  

In the past, when there was no monetary incentive, I announced a certain percentage of the total field of entries (as Dan suggests above).  Since introducing the first, second, third, and honorable mention -- a move I made hoping that money might give people added incentive -- I have gone to just announcing the places for which I award cash prizes.    

The rules have been such for a few years now, sometimes with a small field, sometimes a larger one, and this is the first time that this has come up.  This is the way the rules stood at the start of this year's competition, and I'm disinclined to alter things now, after the close of the competition.  It is, however, something to which I will give some thought prior to next year's competition... but for this year I plan to leave things as they currently stand.

I hope that your personal investment in your story, the thing that first spurred you to write the introduction you wrote in the first place, will be enough to encourage you to finish it, and that the reviews you received will be helpful in improving the final result.

Thank you again to everyone who entered.

- Jacqueline

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2901&start=10#p20215
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Randomly-generated graffiti
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-07-25 21:47:10

[quote="katz"]No one has mentioned "Andre the Giant has a posse" yet.[/quote]

Or, even better (sorry, I'm not really a Shepard Fairey fan), "Mr. Brainwash."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2901&start=10#p20216
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Randomly-generated graffiti
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-25 23:52:09

"Neck Face"
"I don't want the world, I just want your half"

Consult your IP lawyer, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2903&start=0#p20217
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: remember that show Small Wonder?
User: Sig / DateTime: 2011-07-26 01:07:01

This thread prompted a visit to imdb.com and wikipedia, because I do remember that show.

An hour later, I was somehow reading episode summaries of [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventures_of_Teddy_Ruxpin]The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin[/url].  This is why I don't go to imdb.com and wikipedia.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2903&start=0#p20218
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: remember that show Small Wonder?
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-07-26 01:09:34

sig, ditto, lol.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2259&start=10#p20219
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Creating RIA Interpreter for TADS 3
User: ferams / DateTime: 2011-07-26 01:38:54

[quote="RealNC"]To run it, use "frob -i plain -N 44 sample.t3". You don't need to specify the hostname, unless it doesn't detect it on its own. It will then print an address on stdout. Simply open that in a browser.[/quote]

When I tried it, it didn't detect my [url=http://www.ixwebhosting.com/]wehost[/url], I had to specify it and then it finally worked. Took me a while before I figured this [emote]:)[/emote] But now everything is running smoothly and I don't have any problems.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2906&start=0#p20220
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: problem (while the player is in...)
User: xochie / DateTime: 2011-07-26 02:08:47

So when I try to put this in Inform 7:
[code]
While the player is in Picton Street:
	if a random chance of 1 in 3 succeeds, say "A leaf flutters past.";
	otherwise, do nothing.
[/code]
it produces the error:
[quote]
You wrote 'While the player is in Picton Street'  : but the punctuation here ':' makes me think this should be a definition of a phrase and it doesn't begin as it should, with either 'To' (e.g. 'To flood the riverplain:'), 'Definition:', a name for a rule (e.g. 'This is the devilishly cunning rule:'), 'At' plus a time (e.g. 'At 11:12 PM:' or 'At the time when the clock chimes') or the name of a rulebook, possibly followed by some description of the action or value to apply to (e.g. 'Instead of taking something:' or 'Every turn:').[/quote]
How would I make this work? Is it because the use of 'while' here  is incorrect?

Thanks in advance. <33

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2906&start=0#p20221
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: problem (while the player is in...)
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-07-26 05:44:14

While-clauses do not themselves constitute rules, only conditions on rules, so you need another rule to tack the while-clause onto, such as an every turn rule:
[code]Every turn while the player is in Picton Street:
   if a random chance of 1 in 3 succeeds, say "A leaf flutters past.";
   otherwise, do nothing. [/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2906&start=0#p20222
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: problem (while the player is in...)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-26 06:32:56

Another point worth mentioning is that "the player is in Picton Street" is true only when Picton Street is the (direct) holder of the player -- when the player is in Picton Street but not on any enterable supporters or in any enterable containers. So if you have a bench in Picton Street that the player can sit on, your rule won't fire while the player is sitting on the bench. The way to make sure that the rule fires even when the player is sitting on a bench or something is this:

[code]Every turn while the location is Picton Street:[/code]

"The location" is always the location of the player, which is the room the PC is in. (You can also say "the location of the player" where it makes things clearer.) -- You might not need this now, but it can help you avoid some headscratching bugs later.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2901&start=10#p20223
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Randomly-generated graffiti
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-26 06:50:18

Oh, and of course:

"Candle Jack was h

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2906&start=0#p20224
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: problem (while the player is in...)
User: xochie / DateTime: 2011-07-26 07:14:14

Thank you very much, that helps a lot. [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2908&start=0#p20225
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Custom phrase needed
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-07-26 09:10:47

First a disclaimer: I'm feeling a bit poorly at the moment, so I can only hope this post will be coherent. That said, on to my question.

I'm currently trying to channel categories of actions during specific scenes. During those scenes I want to restrict the player from acting on nonessential things and people.

For instance, we might have a duel between two naval officers, deadly swordsmen both. Now, during this duel, a wavering attention should be discouraged, but even the smallest detail of the enemy could be vital. In other words, I want to block off most actions having to do with the surrounding environment, while keeping the player and the enemy [i]and anything they enclose[/i] remain valid options.

In other words, I'd love for a general definition similar to "if x encloses y", but one that also applies if x [i]is[/i] y, so that one could write
[code]If the noun pertains to Sir John[/code]
and have it evaluate as true for Sir John, Sir John's pitiless blue eyes, and Sir John's deadly gleaming sword of stabby-stabby-kill.

Now. What's the best, most general way of doing this? I can see how you do it through "to decide whether..." statements, but those tend to become pretty specific in their wording, which I'd prefer to avoid if possible.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2908&start=0#p20226
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Custom phrase needed
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-26 09:18:13

Here's how to do this with the basic parameters you mentioned and using a decide phrase:

[code]To decide if (X - an object) pertains to (Y - an object):
	if Y is X, decide yes;
	if Y is part of X, decide yes;
	if Y encloses X, decide yes;
	decide no.[/code]

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by decide phrases being overly specific in their phrasing. This one doesn't mention any specific objects at all and can also be used with any game object (including rooms), so hopefully it fits the bill!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2908&start=0#p20227
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Custom phrase needed
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-07-26 09:51:38

Yeah, that would do it. I wrote some similar code, although yours was better thought-out.

I suppose my confusion stems from the fact that phrases like "enclosed by" is a lot more flexible than the result of the "to decide if..." phrase. I mean, if you were to write [code]say the list of things enclosed by Sir John[/code] this would work, but [code]say the list of things pertaining to Sir John[/code] wouldn't work at all because the expression "pertaining" isn't semantically recognized.
By the way, any reason we don't write
[code]To decide if (X - an object) pertains to (Y - an object):
   if Y is X, decide yes;
   if Y is enclosed by X, decide yes;
   if Y encloses X, decide yes;
   decide no.[/code]
? As far as I know incorporation is enclosure, or was there something about your logic that I overlooked?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2908&start=0#p20228
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Custom phrase needed
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-26 10:10:10

[quote="Eleas"]I suppose my confusion stems from the fact that phrases like "enclosed by" is a lot more flexible than the result of the "to decide if..." phrase. I mean, if you were to write [code]say the list of things enclosed by Sir John[/code] this would work, but [code]say the list of things pertaining to Sir John[/code] wouldn't work at all because the expression "pertaining" isn't semantically recognized.[/quote]

Ah, I see. If you want that capability, you can use a relation instead:

[code]Pertainment relates an object (called X) to an object (called Y) when X is Y or X encloses Y or Y encloses X. The verb to pertain to (he pertains to, they pertain to, he pertained to, he pertains to) implies the pertainment relation.

When play begins: say the list of things that pertain to the player.[/code]

See 13.12 in the manual for more on this type of relation.

[quote="Eleas"]By the way, any reason we don't write

[code]To decide if (X - an object) pertains to (Y - an object):
   if Y is X, decide yes;
   if Y is enclosed by X, decide yes;
   if Y encloses X, decide yes;
   decide no.[/code]
? As far as I know incorporation is enclosure, or was there something about your logic that I overlooked?[/quote]

No, that's better, and of course you can add other relationships as you need them.


EDIT: By the way, if you use the relation, you might want to consider whether you need it to apply to objects other than things (such as rooms). Setting up a relation such as this one between objects is more expensive than doing so between things.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2906&start=0#p20229
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: problem (while the player is in...)
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-07-26 11:14:02

If I wanted a similar effect in a game, how could I accomplish this if I wanted it region based, say in the region called "outdoors".

Also, if I had several random effects, could i do this with a switch? 

I'm thinking like:

[code]While the location is in the Outdoor Region:
    if N is a random number from 1 to 20:
             1: say "Random text.";
             2: say "Other random text.";
             3: say "Different random text.";
             otherwise: do nothing.[/code]

Would that work?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2908&start=0#p20230
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Custom phrase needed
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-26 11:21:50

[quote="ektemple"]EDIT: By the way, if you use the relation, you might want to consider whether you need it to apply to objects other than things (such as rooms). Setting up a relation such as this one between objects is more expensive than doing so between things.[/quote]
Is it? I thought conditional relations weren't expensive at all. Perhaps they take extra time, though. In that case, you can make it even faster by defining it as a relation between things and people.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2908&start=0#p20231
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Custom phrase needed
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-26 11:30:33

[quote="capmikee"][quote="ektemple"]EDIT: By the way, if you use the relation, you might want to consider whether you need it to apply to objects other than things (such as rooms). Setting up a relation such as this one between objects is more expensive than doing so between things.[/quote]
Is it? I thought conditional relations weren't expensive at all. Perhaps they take extra time, though. In that case, you can make it even faster by defining it as a relation between things and people.[/quote]

Hm, could be--I'd assumed that they function as do other relations. But it would make sense too if they were really just more flexible conditions, and thus evaluated only when needed. In that case, using objects wouldn't be more expensive except, as you say, in terms of speed--Inform would need to iterate over all objects in the game rather than just things or people. The speed probably isn't too much too worry about unless you have tons of objects, though. Testing this kind of thing in Quixe or Parchment is a good way to see whether the speed hit is significant.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2906&start=0#p20232
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: problem (while the player is in...)
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-26 11:30:54

Almost. This would work:

[code]The Outdoor Region is a region.
	
The Street is in the Outdoor Region.
		
Every turn when the location is in the Outdoor Region:
	let N be a random number from 1 to 20;
	if N is:
		-- 1: say "Random text.";
		-- 2: say "Other random text.";
		-- 3: say "Different random text.";
		
test me with "z/z/z/z/z/z/z/z/z/z/z/z/z/z/z/z/z/z/z/z"[/code]

although this might be a more Informish way:

[code]Every turn when the location is in the Outdoor Region and a random chance of 1 in 7 succeeds:
	say "[one of]Random text.[or]Other random text.[or]Different random text.[at random]";[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2901&start=10#p20233
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Randomly-generated graffiti
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-07-26 11:33:15

"Ken Sent Me"? [emote]:oops:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2906&start=0#p20234
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: problem (while the player is in...)
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-07-26 11:33:44

You know I am all for putting things in a string like that if they are short, like two or three statements, but I think the structured statements are easier to read when there's several possibilities. Thanks for the tip.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2909&start=0#p20235
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Setting values from other values
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-07-26 14:01:34

Inform 7 returns an error forbidding you to set one value equal to another (ie, "the ID number of the key is the ID number of the door").  Any way to work around this?  Specifically, I want some clear bottles to have a color that's the same as the color of the contents.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2909&start=0#p20236
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Setting values from other values
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-26 14:35:30

There's a couple ways to do this.  One is to not assign an official color to the bottle at all, and just have it "borrow" the color of its contents.  (That's what I did in the example below.)  Alternately, you could have a color for the bottle, and have the game check when it "says" the color of something to make sure that it's got it right.

I find the first more intuitive and easier to remember.

Here's an example that just has transparent bottles borrow colors from their contents, but only if the contents are of a special kind (cola).

[code]Color is a kind of value.  Normal colored, clear, red, blue, green, purple, and yellow are colors.

The Factory is a room.  
A bottle is a transparent container in the factory.  Some sparkling cola is a kind of thing.  The indefinite article of a sparkling cola is usually "some".  There is some sparkling cola in the bottle.  Sparkling cola has a color called hue.  

The description of a sparkling cola is usually "Sparkling and [hue of item described]!"


Before printing the name of a bottle:
	say "[color of the item described] ";

When play begins:
	repeat with N running through the list of sparkling colas:
		now the hue of N is a random color;		

To decide what color is the color of (target - a container):
	if the target is transparent and the target encloses a sparkling cola:
		decide on the hue of a random sparkling cola enclosed by the target;
	otherwise if the target is transparent:
		decide on clear;
	otherwise:
		decide on normal colored;[/code]

If it's a special, one-time occasion, you can always force the value change within a rule, ie "Instead of rubbing the marker on the paper: now the color of the paper is the color of the marker."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2909&start=0#p20237
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Setting values from other values
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-26 14:43:19

You mean you want the color of the bottle to *always* be the color of the contents?

If you've already set up color to be a property of the bottles, the best approach is probably to adjust the bottle color after every action that changes the contents. (E.g, "now the color of B is the color of the contents of B.") Properties can't be based on logic; they can only be set with "now".

If the contents of the bottles never change, you could do this once when play begins and then leave it alone for the rest of the game.

You might be able to get what you want using a relation, instead of a property. See chapter 13.12.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2882&start=0#p20238
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tables and Topic Listed
User: rotter / DateTime: 2011-07-26 16:59:35

I haven't managed to get it working yet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2909&start=0#p20239
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Setting values from other values
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-07-26 17:11:06

I'm making the contents a substance rather than an actual thing.  Why doesn't gravel's decide statement work in that context?

[code]Color is a kind of value.  Normal colored, clear, brown, and purple are colors.

A thing has a color.

Contents is a kind of value.  Contents are defined by the Table of Cola.

Table of Cola
Contents	Color
cola	brown
grape	purple
lemon-lime	clear

The Factory is a room. 
A bottle is a kind of container.  It is transparent and openable.  A bottle has a contents.

Rule for printing room description details of a bottle: stop.

In the Factory is a grape bottle.

Before printing the name of a bottle:
   say "[color of the item described] ".  

To decide what color is the color of (target - a container):
	decide on the color of the contents of the target.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2909&start=0#p20240
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Setting values from other values
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-07-26 17:29:06

[quote="katz"]I'm making the contents a substance rather than an actual thing.  Why doesn't gravel's decide statement work in that context?[/quote]
This screwed with me too. The problem is that the item described doesn't have a color, the [i]contents of the item described[/i] does. Try this:
[code]Before printing the name of a bottle:
	say "[color of the contents of the item described] ".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2909&start=0#p20241
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Setting values from other values
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-07-26 17:43:05

Right, but the whole question is how to set the color to be the color of the contents and why this statement doesn't work:

[code]
To decide what color is the color of (target - a container):
   decide on the color of the contents of the target.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2909&start=0#p20242
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Setting values from other values
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-07-26 17:49:57

Sorry, I missed this last part of your code:
[quote="katz"][code]To decide what color is the color of (target - a container):
	decide on the color of the contents of the target.[/code][/quote]
This is a more subtle error. You've created a definition of color as a kind of value which is a property of certain contents (another KOV), and then a new definition based on a calculated value using the above code. Mixing setable properties and calculated values causes a namespace clash. You could try this:
[code]To decide what color is the hue of (target - a container):
	decide on the color of the contents of the target.
	
Before printing the name of a bottle:
	say "[hue of the item described] ".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2896&start=0#p20243
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Problems with CocoaGlk on Lion?
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-07-26 18:17:10

So, er, any idea how to deal with this issue for the Inform IDE? It's making glulx game development kind of difficult.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2871&start=0#p20244
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: How to setup 'Entering Secret Codes'
User: atari_man / DateTime: 2011-07-26 19:24:37

Thanks, that worked great.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2578&start=10#p20245
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I just want to create a door with a password (ANSWERED!)
User: atari_man / DateTime: 2011-07-26 19:26:32

Hi Felix.

How easy would it be to add a 'timer' to your example.

What I am trying to do is something similar to the above but have it time limited to a few moves as in turning off a burglar alarm when entering a house. If you do not enter the correct 'code' in say 10 moves then the police arrive and it's game over.

Any tips appreciated.

Cheers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2821&start=20#p20246
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Choicescript - What the Hell? (in which I equivocate)
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-07-26 22:25:24

In the specific context of Introcomp, Jacq's position on this has always been the names-are-descriptions, broad-tent one: if it's interactive, and it's fiction, then it's IF. (This position has not been very hard-tested, admittedly. I'm sure non-fiction parser-IF would get in, and I doubt that[i] Canabalt[/i] would. And these positions are inevitably influenced by the fact that in our corner of the world, IF is a prestige term, and Jacq really likes [i]The Mystery of Chimney Rock[/i], much as zarf really likes [i]Myst[/i].)

In the past, the way the comp has dealt with this has been to let everything in and let the voters sort 'em out; this has been simplified because in the past the non-parser-IF entries have typically not been very good, so the less theory-minded players have been mostly in agreement with the grognards. This is plainly not the case this Introcomp.

I think that parser-IF and CYOA have a close and special relation (primarily text-based; structure driven by narrative) that's roughly as strong as the one zarf advocates between parser-IF and first-person adventure. That said, there is a pretty obvious difference in how they are created, played and judged, and they tend towards different kinds of narrative and content. Obviously it's legitimate for people to enjoy one and not the other. If the major comps and the XYZZYs were routinely swamped by CYOA entries, then there'd be a reasonable case for some comps to go parser-only or have separate categories; but Introcomp is not really that kind of scale. I think that, right now, we've got a lot to gain from watching other kinds of narrative game. And this is easier to do when we invite more people in, even if it's only to feast upon their delicious brains.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2882&start=0#p20247
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Tables and Topic Listed
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-07-26 22:51:05

Um, yeah, that won't work.  If you want to add what the unknown stuff the player typed to a table, you'll need to use an "indexed text" column.  Search the documentation for indexed text and there will be examples of how to capture the player's typing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2908&start=0#p20248
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Custom phrase needed
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-07-26 23:14:01

The calculated relation isn't expensive at all -- it's just a plain function like the decide-if function shown up-thread, only its syntax is that of relations.   Asking if  "steely eyes pertain to John" is quick as the decide-if.   But "the list of things pertaining to John" is, of course, a single loop. 

It's the *storage* relations that one might be careful of defining on the root Object, but even then, if it's Glulx it's likely not a problem anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2903&start=0#p20249
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: remember that show Small Wonder?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-07-26 23:18:58

I did remember it, just from the title.  Thanks for the blast from the past.

But if you really wanna go WTF, try exploring 80's cartoons.  Wow.

(In other news:  I had a crush on the girl in "The Wizard".)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2896&start=0#p20250
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Problems with CocoaGlk on Lion?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-26 23:19:08

Ben, does "that build" contain a bug fix at the CocoaGlk level, or was it recompiled in some useful way, or what?

I filed bug <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=711">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=711</a> on the I7 bug tracker.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2896&start=0#p20251
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Problems with CocoaGlk on Lion?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-07-27 00:05:17

It doesn't have anything useful for CocoaGlk. It's a build that fixes all the weird stuff I had going on with NSThread sleep, on the way to supporting the new volume change API.

It looks like [url=http://code.google.com/p/cocoaglk/source/detail?r=63]this fix[/url] will solve the underlying issue in CocoaGlk; just a matter of waiting until a new build is released.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1965&start=20#p20252
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Curveship released
User: Pelican / DateTime: 2011-07-27 04:20:29

[quote="ektemple"]Nick's dissertation is the best vehicle for understanding where Curveship is coming from and what it's trying to do:

<a class="postlink" href="http://nickm.com/if/Generating_Narrative_Variation_in_Interactive_Fiction.pdf">http://nickm.com/if/Generating_Narrativ ... iction.pdf</a>

--Erik[/quote]This paper is quite interesting.  Just curious, what journals typically publish IF-related papers?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2578&start=10#p20253
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I just want to create a door with a password (ANSWERED!)
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-27 07:20:48

I think it's as simple as this:

[code]Every turn when the alarm has been switched on for at least 10 minutes and the location is in the Expensive Mansion:
    say "The police arrive.";
    end the story saying "You go to jail.";[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2910&start=0#p20254
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Creating by Aaron A. Reed, Sand-Dancer, Smelling problem.
User: Terhial / DateTime: 2011-07-27 07:34:12

Creating by Aaron A. Reed, Sand-Dancer, Smelling problem.

I'm going through the book "Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7" and have hit a small snag with this bit of code:

[i]The smell of gasoline is fixed in place in Control Center. "[if player holds scent]You can clearly smell gasoline coming from under that [sheet of corrugated metal][otherwise]You catch a faint whiff of gasoline coming from somewhere[end if]." 

Understand "faint/whiff" as smell of gasoline. Understand "gas" as smell of gasoline when gas can is not visible.

Instead of doing anything to smell of gasoline, say "[if player holds scent]It's coming from beneath that [sheet of corrugated metal][else]You can't tell where the smell is coming from[end if]."

Instead of smelling Control Center, try smelling smell of gasoline.[/i]

Yet in the game:

[b]The Control Center[/b]
But hey, on one pile here's a perfectly good can opener.

You catch a faint whiff of gasoline coming from somewhere.

>smell
You smell nothing unexpected.


First I found the source code from his website and copied over that code to easily eliminate any transcription errors I might have made and that didn't work. I have tried making it "the Control Center" which I don't think is functionally different and I've tried  "Instead of smelling when in Control Center, try smelling smell of gasoline." as well as a "the" variant of that that line.  I just can't seem to figure out what I'm doing wrong.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2910&start=0#p20255
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating by Aaron A. Reed, Sand-Dancer, Smelling problem
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-27 07:40:17

I'm not sure what's going on. I don't have the book, but I tried fleshing your code out just enough to compile and run, and it seems to work.

[code]Control Center is a room. There is a sheet of corrugated metal in Control Center.

There is a gas can. Scent is a thing.

The smell of gasoline is fixed in place in Control Center. "[if player holds scent]You can clearly smell gasoline coming from under that [sheet of corrugated metal][otherwise]You catch a faint whiff of gasoline coming from somewhere[end if]."

Understand "faint/whiff" as smell of gasoline. Understand "gas" as smell of gasoline when gas can is not visible.

Instead of doing anything to smell of gasoline, say "[if player holds scent]It's coming from beneath that [sheet of corrugated metal][else]You can't tell where the smell is coming from[end if]."

Instead of smelling Control Center, try smelling smell of gasoline.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2899&start=10#p20256
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IntroComp 2011 - Winners Announced!
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2011-07-27 08:43:50

[quote="katz"]I'd say the disincentive is that the whole thing is framed in terms of "do you want to keep playing this game?", which casts the losing games as "the sucky games that no one wants to play."  Not much of an encouragement to keep working on it.[/quote]

I still want to play a full version of P. F. Sheckarski's Storm Cellar.  *wistful*

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2903&start=0#p20257
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: remember that show Small Wonder?
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-07-27 08:56:11

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]
But if you really wanna go WTF, try exploring 80's cartoons.  Wow.
[/quote]

Heh, I was watching the 1st episode of She-Ra on Netflix with my girlfriend last night. There were two or three moments in that cartoon that had us both going "WTF?!". 

Small Wonder I just barely remember. "Pinwheel" and other stuff on Nickelodeon when it first started was really out there too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2903&start=0#p20258
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: remember that show Small Wonder?
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-27 09:42:07

[quote]The show chronicles the family of a robotics engineer who, after he secretly creates a robot modeled after a real human girl, tries to pass it off as their daughter.
[/quote]

What a dumb premise!  The next thing you know, somebody's going to make a TV show about a guy who takes in a martian who lands on his lawn, and tries to pass the alien off as his uncle.  Or maybe a guy whose mother gets reincarnated as an automobile. Or possibly an extraordinarily verbal equine!

No wonder I stopped watching regular broadcast TV somewhere around the late 1960's -- the ideas just get dumber and dumber.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=210#p20259
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-07-27 10:00:55

I need a smiley with wrinkles! My first programs were entered into a computer via toggle switches and push buttons. Fortunately I have been able to keep up with most of the technology. I made the decision that I would concentrate on my specialty (utilities) and my son could do the internet sites. That has worked out quite well. Anyway, punch card machines have never been mysterious - at least to me. I still remember when a machine with 4k of storage was so better than the "old" 1k machines. Now I'm setting in front of a machine with a total of about 2.2Tb. Who would have thunk it? [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2911&start=0#p20260
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Nonexistent comp
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-07-27 10:14:47

This is to unofficially unannounce the absense of the nonexistent comp. The winner will be the first person who fails to announce their nonparticipation. Games submitted must be unwinnable, as they must not exist. If you submit a game to the nonexistent comp you've already lost. There will be no prizes or recognition of winners, because this comp doesn't exist.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=210#p20261
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-27 10:26:07

[quote]My first programs were entered into a computer via toggle switches and push buttons.[/quote]

Wgm003, it sounds like you are even more of an old-timer than I am.  My first exposure to computers was a "bits for nit-wits" college course in which we learned how to say "hello, world" in WATFIV.

I think there are not too many of us are still around to whom the phrase "Do not fold, spindle or mutilate" means anything.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2911&start=0#p20262
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Nonexistent comp
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-27 10:29:34

Drop no tea.  (Or maybe I should say "don't drop no tea.")

In any event, the whole thing sounds rather negative, wouldn't you say?

By the way, I might be unentering the non-comp with my non-game, [i]This Game Unintentionally Left Blank[/i].



Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2899&start=10#p20263
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IntroComp 2011 - Winners Announced!
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-07-27 10:53:04

[quote="cvaneseltine"]I still want to play a full version of P. F. Sheckarski's Storm Cellar.  *wistful*[/quote]

Seconded.

[quote="Jacqueline"]I hope that your personal investment in your story, the thing that first spurred you to write the introduction you wrote in the first place, will be enough to encourage you to finish it, and that the reviews you received will be helpful in improving the final result.[/quote]

I suspect I may be taking the wrong approach to this competition, but what spurred me to write my introduction was that I had an idea for a mechanic that I thought might be fun but wasn't sure if there would be enough interest to justify writing a whole game around it, so I thought that an intro would be a good way to test the waters. Based on reviews, I thought the experiment went pretty well, but the competition results seem to contradict that, and I'm not sure there's enough of a consensus to justify the amount of work it will take to finish the game. At any rate, investment in the story has never been a motivating factor.

But yeah, I never intended to change your mind about revealing the results; just thought the feedback might be useful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2899&start=10#p20264
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IntroComp 2011 - Winners Announced!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-27 12:19:23

[quote="shammack"]
I suspect I may be taking the wrong approach to this competition, but what spurred me to write my introduction was that I had an idea for a mechanic that I thought might be fun but wasn't sure if there would be enough interest to justify writing a whole game around it, so I thought that an intro would be a good way to test the waters. Based on reviews, I thought the experiment went pretty well, but the competition results seem to contradict that, and I'm not sure there's enough of a consensus to justify the amount of work it will take to finish the game.[/quote]

I think you should trust the reviews here. I didn't play enough entries to vote, but speaking for myself, the mechanic really interested me, and the problems I had were with the implementation; mostly not the implementation of the mechanic but the "Do this to get past this obstacle" part of the game. 

[spoiler]Once the intended solution had been spoiled for me, I realized that it was fairly clued, but it was still pretty confusing, perhaps partly because in the intro there are a lot of things like the cat and the fire door that don't have any obvious utility. Still, given that a couple of us reported taking until 4 a.m., when a bug solved the puzzle, maybe that should be dialed back.[/spoiler]

So I'd say, spend more time on the mechanism, and pare back the lock-and-key puzzles.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2899&start=10#p20265
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IntroComp 2011 - Winners Announced!
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-07-27 13:59:19

[quote="shammack"]
I suspect I may be taking the wrong approach to this competition, but what spurred me to write my introduction was that I had an idea for a mechanic that I thought might be fun but wasn't sure if there would be enough interest to justify writing a whole game around it, so I thought that an intro would be a good way to test the waters. Based on reviews, I thought the experiment went pretty well, but the competition results seem to contradict that, and I'm not sure there's enough of a consensus to justify the amount of work it will take to finish the game. At any rate, investment in the story has never been a motivating factor.[/quote]

The thing that worth bearing in mind about Introcomp, and a lot of people miss: you're not just pitching an idea, you're pitching the execution of that idea. (It is not hard to think of ideas for great games. It's very hard to make them.)

If the main thing you want to get out of a comp is a high placing, the safest bet is conservative design: established techniques, familiar genre, diligent implementation, conventional gameplay, no objectionable themes or avant-garde experiments. This is one set of values that the IF community has, but it's not the only one; and it can still be valuable to enter comps even if your work doesn't fit that pattern. (More reviews, and it's pretty good advertising of the 'here I am and this is the kind of game I'm likely to make' variety. A reasonably interesting game entered into a comp will boost the attention paid to your later releases, in a comp or out of it.)

Too, voting results are a pretty haphazard representation of consensus, and should not, I think, be considered particularly more accurate than a survey of reviews. This is particularly true of a thing like Introcomp where the number of voters is relatively small. It's not hard to tell, from the reviews, that there's interest in [i]Chunky Blues[/i]; that that interest is not unqualified; and that claiming that you 'lost' because you didn't place in the top three is not realistic.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2858&start=20#p20266
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright: two questions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-27 15:01:41

I could have sworn that somebody posted a link (or maybe mentioned a book) about how to obtain permission to quote lyrics. Is my mind playing tricks on me? I can't find that now.

I've decided that I'll feel better about myself if I ask for permission, and find some other solution if I don't get it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2899&start=10#p20267
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IntroComp 2011 - Winners Announced!
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-07-27 15:06:29

Always value reviews more than scores. (Regardless if the score is something that sticks to the review or someones vote in a competition.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2899&start=10#p20268
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IntroComp 2011 - Winners Announced!
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-07-27 16:04:42

[quote="shammack"]
I suspect I may be taking the wrong approach to this competition, but what spurred me to write my introduction was that I had an idea for a mechanic that I thought might be fun but wasn't sure if there would be enough interest to justify writing a whole game around it, so I thought that an intro would be a good way to test the waters. Based on reviews, I thought the experiment went pretty well, but the competition results seem to contradict that[/quote]

The experiment [i]did[/i] go pretty well. The reviews indicate clearly that there is a real interest in the mechanic, even if people had mixed experiences with the game as a whole. The placement result tells you nothing except that three other games inspired more confidence in their current state.

If you are feeling a little winded on this particular project, you could write a new game based on that mechanic, with a new story that you care about more -- and the results [i]would[/i] be fresh and different enough to enter in another comp, if that was what you wanted -- or just to release on its own. Everyone who liked the mechanic and wanted to see it again wins, and you might pick up some people who were not hooked by your first story/execution.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2899&start=10#p20269
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IntroComp 2011 - Winners Announced!
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-27 17:00:04

All I have to say about the comp results is that I find it disappointing that a web form (as opposed to a game) can place first.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2853&start=0#p20270
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Complicity: Building Interactive Narratives
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-07-27 18:19:08

Does it come with free lunch?  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2911&start=0#p20271
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Nonexistent comp
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-07-27 18:22:25

.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2912&start=0#p20272
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 6: super-detailed player description
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-07-27 20:47:11

Okay, I'm trying to figure out a way to set it up so that, when the player examines themselves, they get a big ol' infodump explaining their health, how tired they are, and their inventory. Ummm...how do I do that? I don't want to mess with the 'examine' command itself, since I know there's a more elegant solution. I realize this is pretty much Inform Coding 101, but I'm still pretty confused here. Some help, please?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2901&start=10#p20273
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Randomly-generated graffiti
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-07-27 20:53:27

These are good, guys! Thanks for the suggestions!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2912&start=0#p20275
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: super-detailed player description
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-27 21:22:31

Assuming you've set up the necessary variables to keep track of things like health and fatigue as text variables, why not just use an "instead" rule to redirect examining the player to a "say" statement that embodies the appropriate information.  Something like:

[code]Instead of examining the player:
     Say "You are feeling [health of the player] and [fatigue of the player].[paragraph break]You are carrying [list of things carried by the player][paragraph break]Oh, and by the way, you're still as good-looking as ever.".
     
[/code]

Robert Rothman

Edit : Sorry, I hadn't noticed that you were talking about Inform 6.  My bad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2913&start=0#p20276
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Money in a game
User: Pelican / DateTime: 2011-07-27 21:47:16

I'd like to give my character some cash and coins, which they can use to buy things.  That seems like a basic thing a character should be able to do, but could potentially become unnecessarily complicated.

[code]> look at money

You have 3 dollars and 50 cents.

> give cashier 3 quarters

You only have 2 quarters.

> give cashier 2.43 dollars

The cashier hands you 2 cents as change.[/code]

That seems too complicated.  Is there an established method of doing this that is part of TADS 3?  Or is there some way to simplify this so the people playing still feel they're using money to buy things?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2912&start=0#p20277
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: super-detailed player description
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-07-27 22:18:22

You can make an object's description a routine, as in[code][ Initialise;
	! ...
	player.description=LengthyPlayerDescription;
];[/code] and then write whatever you wish in that routine:[code][ LengthyPlayerDescription health fatigue;
	health=10;
	fatigue=4;
	print "You health is ",health,", your fatigue is ",fatigue,", and your inventory?  "; <<Inv>>;
];[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2910&start=0#p20278
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating by Aaron A. Reed, Sand-Dancer, Smelling problem
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-07-27 22:46:12

Using the source text from Aaron's site, I also cannot reproduce the bug.  You might try the commands "actions" and "rules on" (or possibly "rules all") before smelling, to see what turns up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2912&start=0#p20279
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: super-detailed player description
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-07-28 00:46:31

Any description can be a routine -- it doesn't have to be just text, and you don't need to do anything in Initialise. I'm a little worried about EmacsUser's code, in fact, because that sets up health as a local constant. In Initialise, you can call ChangePlayer:
[code]
ChangePlayer(dave);[/code]

This sets up the dave object as the player. So then:

[code]Object dave "Dave"
with name 'dave' 'me',
health 2,
fatigue 0,
description [;
     print "Your health is ";
     if (self.health > 5) print "excellent";
     else if (self.health > 1) print "okay";
     else print "a cause for concern";
     ".";
],
[/code]
...and so forth. My I6 is rusty, so this may be defective, but it may suggest a useful approach.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2912&start=0#p20280
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: super-detailed player description
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-07-28 00:49:44

[quote="EmacsUser"]You can make an object's description a routine, as in[code][ Initialise;
	! ...
	player.description=LengthyPlayerDescription;
];[/code] and then write whatever you wish in that routine:[code][ LengthyPlayerDescription health fatigue;
	health=10;
	fatigue=4;
	print "You health is ",health,", your fatigue is ",fatigue,", and your inventory?  "; <<Inv>>;
];[/code][/quote]

Ah, that's it. I'd forgotten descriptions could = other routines and tried various other, more complicated was of calling up the routine. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2912&start=0#p20281
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: super-detailed player description
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-07-28 00:52:24

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Any description can be a routine -- it doesn't have to be just text, and you don't need to do anything in Initialise. I'm a little worried about EmacsUser's code, in fact, because that sets up health as a local constant. In Initialise, you can call ChangePlayer:
[code]
ChangePlayer(dave);[/code]

This sets up the dave object as the player. So then:

[code]Object dave "Dave"
with name 'dave' 'me',
health 2,
fatigue 0,
description [;
     print "Your health is ";
     if (self.health > 5) print "excellent";
     else if (self.health > 1) print "okay";
     else print "a cause for concern";
     ".";
],
[/code]
...and so forth. My I6 is rusty, so this may be defective, but it may suggest a useful approach.[/quote]

Oh, I'd forgotten about ChangePlayer! Well, in my version I have PlayerFatigue and PlayerHealth as global variables, so Emac's code applies better to what I already have set up, but this is a great alternate setup (unless mine has other, more stealthy problems associated with it).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2899&start=10#p20282
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IntroComp 2011 - Winners Announced!
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-07-28 01:07:02

[quote="RealNC"]All I have to say about the comp results is that I find it disappointing that a web form (as opposed to a game) can place first.[/quote] You have to write a pretty good web form to win a game competition! [emote]:-)[/emote]

I'm reminded of this excellent tweet by Juhana Leinonen: "CYOA in the same comp with parser IF feels like bringing an orange to the Fruit of the Year fair judged by the We Love Apples association." <a class="postlink" href="http://twitter.com/JuhanaIF/status/87281006075330560">http://twitter.com/JuhanaIF/status/87281006075330560</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=210#p20283
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-28 03:41:22

[quote="Robert Rothman"][quote]My first programs were entered into a computer via toggle switches and push buttons.[/quote]

Wgm003, it sounds like you are even more of an old-timer than I am.  My first exposure to computers was a "bits for nit-wits" college course in which we learned how to say "hello, world" in WATFIV.

I think there are not too many of us are still around to whom the phrase "Do not fold, spindle or mutilate" means anything.


Robert Rothman[/quote]
I have one of those!
I didn't think anybody would remember those square flat floppy disks (where we get the name "[b]floppy[/b] disk").
I always hated that grinding sound the drive made.

PS: QUERTY  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2908&start=0#p20284
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Custom phrase needed
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-07-28 04:14:10

Very useful discussion, and a big thank-you to all (three) participants. As for glulx, I love that it exists, but I generally start out striving for code that would work on the z-machine.

(This isn't because I necessarily want my game to be z8. Part of it may well be snobbery, but I [i]have[/i] noticed that if I start out writing code in glulx, the result is often wasteful and, worse, incoherent. To me, the benefit of the z-machine restriction is that it counters the impulse to simply brute-force a solution.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2910&start=0#p20285
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating by Aaron A. Reed, Sand-Dancer, Smelling problem
User: Terhial / DateTime: 2011-07-28 05:11:32

Thank you. I need to use that a bit more habitually.

Problem: I was abstracting myself to the room in question and smelling. Actions revealed that I was still smelling the room the room I had been abstracted from. It appears the smell command does not properly read your location after an abstraction move. Same with listen.

This strikes me as a problem with the abstraction command.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2495&start=0#p20286
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Quest 5.0 Beta 1 is now available
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-07-28 05:18:01

So very nearly finished now - Beta 4 has been released: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.textadventures.co.uk/blog/2011/07/28/quest-5-0-beta-4-released-approaching-the-final-release/">http://www.textadventures.co.uk/blog/20 ... l-release/</a>

You can download it here: <a class="postlink" href="http://quest5.net/downloads/quest500beta4.exe">http://quest5.net/downloads/quest500beta4.exe</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2910&start=0#p20287
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating by Aaron A. Reed, Sand-Dancer, Smelling problem
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-28 05:26:19

Indeed; to quote [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=16969#p16969]zarf[/url]

[quote="zarf"]"Abstract" is a leftover from the I6 debugging system. It does not play well with I7 constructs like part-of.

It's also just flat-out buggy if you abstract the player around. Always has been. I'm sure that's the biggest reason it's not documented.[/quote]

As Juhana says after that post, the debugging command for moving the player is "gonear."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2914&start=0#p20288
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: What Do You Think of This Strategy?
User: Kytaari / DateTime: 2011-07-28 06:32:51

I'm asking this because I would really like some feedback from people who I think share my interests, and this is the closest group I've got. I've been considering the idea of writing novel length IF, but my family and friends have been pushing me into writing novels, as well. I used to think that perhaps I should tell separate stories when writing in the mediums of novels and IF, but now I'm beginning to seriously consider the idea of telling the same stories in both mediums.

Although the solutions to many of the puzzles might be contained in my literary works, I am thinking that the joy of exploration that the medium of IF can provide might be enough to satisfy someone who both reads my novels and plays my games. I believe that IF is a great medium for adventure, whereas writing in a medium like novels might be a little more efficient for conveying more relevant narrative ideas.

I'm sorry if this post comes across as too sudden, or anything like that. It's just that I'm starting to get the courage to ask for feedback, whereas before I was a little more hesitant. I could explain how I intend to write long works of IF if you need me to, but I don't have all of the details filled in just yet. I would just like to know for now what you guys think of this idea. Do you suppose this seems viable, or not?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2914&start=0#p20289
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What Do You Think of This Strategy?
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-28 06:53:50

Well, it worked OK for Douglas Adams.

Seriously, the idea of having a work of IF which is [i]based on[/i] a "traditional" novel has been done before, and can work.  However, I think that you need to construct the IF in such a way that it is not just a retelling of the same story.  What made [i]Hitchhiker's Guide[/i] (the game) work even (or especially) for those who had read [i]Hitchhiker's Guide[/i] (the novel) was that a lot of the material felt familiar, yet you still had to figure out the puzzles independently.  I don't think the concept would work if playing the IF amounts to no more than reconstructing the steps of the protagonist in the novel.

One issue to which I don't know the answer is whether your ability to find a publisher willing to take your novel (which, unlike IF, remains largely the domain of commercial publishing houses) might be affected by having a "parallel" non-commercial IF out there.  Obviously, this was not an issue for [i]Hitchhiker's Guide[/i], which was a commercial success as a novel long before the game was conceived of.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2910&start=0#p20290
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating by Aaron A. Reed, Sand-Dancer, Smelling problem
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-28 06:55:50

I've run into similar problems when "looking" after using "abstract" to move to a location.  It would seem that the "abstracting" process affects one's senses in strange ways.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2899&start=10#p20291
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IntroComp 2011 - Winners Announced!
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-07-28 06:56:55

[quote="RealNC"]All I have to say about the comp results is that I find it disappointing that a web form (as opposed to a game) can place first.[/quote]
That's a little harsh. Any game basically reduces to a flowchart if you break it down far enough; ChoiceScript just starts out a few steps closer to that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2914&start=0#p20292
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What Do You Think of This Strategy?
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-07-28 07:22:42

I hear that it can be quite difficult to adapt a novel to an IF game, because IF has trouble with linear narrative sequences.  However, I think your idea to write IF alongside the novel could be very effective.  My advice is to set the IF game in the same fictional world, probably even at the same time that the plot of the novel unfolds, but not to make the protagonist of the novel the player character of the IF game.  The PC could hear about the adventures of the novel's protagonist, or even meet the protagonist at some point.  The main benefit is that the players of the IF game would be able to explore more of your world than was explainable within the narrative arc of the novel, helping to make the world seem more real in their conception of the story.  This way, the game would not necessarily spoil the novel, and the two works would serve to heighten interest in each other, because they would be different but related stories set in the same world/timeline.

I would love to play an IF game set in the same world as a novel, by the author of that novel (especially if it's high fantasy or space opera, because worldbuilding is very important in those two genres).  Since I love IF and speculative worlds, I'm sure I would buy your book eventually (again, especially if it happens to be high fantasy, which is my favorite genre).  It would be awesome if you could get a publisher to make the game available with the novel!  But even if you had to simply put the game up for free on the IF archive/IFDB after the novel was published, that would still be cool.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=210#p20293
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-28 07:45:29

[quote]I have one of those!
I didn't think anybody would remember those square flat floppy disks (where we get the name "floppy disk").
[/quote]

My inclination is not to respond to this kind of nonsense, but for the benefit of anybody who might be misled:  "Do not fold, spindle or mutilate" has nothing to do with floppy disks.  The phrase was often printed on punchcards, particularly during the period when a lot of companies (e.g., the telephone company, of which there was only one at the time) would include a punchcard with their bill; you would send the card back with your payment, which (theoretically) was supposed to ensure that your payment got credited to the proper account.  What this meant was that punchcards wound up in the hands of lots of people who had never seen them before.  Based (I assume) on some actual experiences, it was decided to warn people that these new-fangled cardboard bills with holes in them had be handled somewhat more delicately than the regular paper bills that they were accustomed to.  Folding would, presumably, interfere with the ability to run the card through the reading machinery.  Spindling -- which I believe refers to impaling it on a spike (like Rod Steiger's hand in [i]The Pawnbroker[/i]) -- would, I imagine, totally screw things up by allowing light to pass through the wrong places in the card.  As for mutilating, I shudder even to think about what that might have done to the processing equipment of the day.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2853&start=0#p20294
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Complicity: Building Interactive Narratives
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-07-28 08:02:10

[quote="Campbell"]Does it come with free lunch?  [emote];)[/emote][/quote]

It includes lunch. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2908&start=0#p20295
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Custom phrase needed
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-28 08:18:07

I'm still writing my WIP as if I had z-machine constraints, even though it's too big for z8 already. I have a vague idea that I'll trim it down later (after all, if Curses fits in z5, my tiny little thing OUGHT to fit!), but even if I don't, I like having clean code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2914&start=0#p20296
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What Do You Think of This Strategy?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-07-28 08:29:45

I wonder about the time commitment involved.  A novel is a serious investment of time and energy; a novel-length IF is even more so.  You might talk to published IF authors about how much work it is to produce, test, polish and launch even a shortish, comp-length game.  I, personally, would likely burn out before completing either.  (And if you didn't, how long would it take you?)  I don't mean this to necessarily discourage, but I think you need to be passionately on board with both, and have confidence in your staying power.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=210#p20297
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-28 08:48:09

Don't assume you know everything before you've experienced it.
The phrase was also used among computer geeks when that kind of disk was misused or abused.

The disk was just a piece of plastic between to carbon sheets with what looked like modern videotape ribbon around the center ring.
The sheets were glued together to keep the plastic in place, but the environment the user was in would often melt the glue causing the plastic ring to be off center.
This would cause a grinding sound in the drive as the off center ring spun.
It would be fine this way for a week or 2, but then you start noticing a jagged edge on the ribbon (sometimes on both sides) that got more pronounced as you ran the disk.

Sometimes the weather was so harsh, the disks became brittle.
The user had to be careful not to break it.
Other times the disk might be shipped folded or creased, which would make your game stop working (or not work at all).

When the user got so enraged he would take it out out the disk, he would rip apart the carbon sheets (you'd be surprised how easy that is to do).

The Apple Computer, Apple II, Apple IIe, and Macintosh paved the way for more "modern" disks (the little ones that would get stuck in your drive) and most likely the computer's CD drive itself!

PS: QWERTY are the keys that had the most problems on the typewriter and early computer keyboards.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2915&start=0#p20298
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Displaying jpg files (or any others)
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-07-28 09:05:12

[quote]Say "[Story Description][paragraph break]";	
	display the figure of Where Sign centered;[/quote]

Where Sign is defined as "Figure of Where Sign is the file "yourehere.png".

works without hesitation, but that is the only place I can display a picture. Is this the way I7 works or have I screwed up again?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2914&start=0#p20299
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What Do You Think of This Strategy?
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-07-28 09:15:55

I'm with Bainespal. I would advise against telling the [i]same[/i] story in a novel and in IF, because what's compelling in a linear story is not necessarily so in an interactive one (and vice versa). But a game set in the same world as the novel, with some overlap, but following different characters and/or situations, could be great (sort of like the [i]Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead[/i] to the novel's [i]Hamlet[/i]).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=210#p20300
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-07-28 09:59:16

[quote="IF noob"]Don't assume you know everything before you've experienced it.[/quote]
I agree completely.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=210#p20301
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-28 10:44:00

[quote="Robert Rothman"]The phrase was often printed on punchcards, particularly during the period when a lot of companies (e.g., the telephone company, of which there was only one at the time) would include a punchcard with their bill; you would send the card back with your payment, which (theoretically) was supposed to ensure that your payment got credited to the proper account.  What this meant was that punchcards wound up in the hands of lots of people who had never seen them before.  Based (I assume) on some actual experiences, it was decided to warn people that these new-fangled cardboard bills with holes in them had be handled somewhat more delicately than the regular paper bills that they were accustomed to.  Folding would, presumably, interfere with the ability to run the card through the reading machinery.  Spindling -- which I believe refers to impaling it on a spike (like Rod Steiger's hand in [i]The Pawnbroker[/i]) -- would, I imagine, totally screw things up by allowing light to pass through the wrong places in the card.  As for mutilating, I shudder even to think about what that might have done to the processing equipment of the day.


Robert Rothman[/quote]
Punchcards were originally inspired by player piano, pipe organ, and calliope spools.
Spindling refers to tangling the spool's paper in on itself like a big spinning wheel (word comes from spin and thimble).
Folding the paper would also have an affect on playing the instrument.
Tearing would often be a problem to the most careful players and sometimes the paper ended up shredding itself.

As for the phone company, they had little to do with it.
The phrase was either started in or more popular in times of war, when the USO and medical facilities had a time clock to manage their working hours.
Most of these jobs had a time share program which would keep the employees up late.
You tend to have more accidence when groggy, punching holes too close together to another hole, or letting the machine chew on you chads (those little pieces of paper).

By the way, Ma Bell (the name before AT&T) was not the only phone company.
General Electric (originally using the telegraph) was actually the first phone company.
Ma Bell was a more popular company due to it's large "switchboard" (wiki it) that gave another use for the 0 on the phone dial.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=220#p20302
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-28 11:10:19

I can think of no more eloquent way to put it than to borrow the words of Zarf, he of much wisdom, who said:

[quote] Everything you are saying is either wrong or irrelevant to your earlier wrong statements.

[/quote]


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2912&start=0#p20303
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: super-detailed player description
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-07-28 11:10:28

[quote="Jim Aikin"]I'm a little worried about EmacsUser's code, in fact, because that sets up health as a local constant.[/quote]Right, those lines were meant to be stand-ins for health and fatigue computations.  Since I didn't know how Glorb's code was organized, I probably should have made that clearer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=220#p20304
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-28 11:36:35

[quote="Robert Rothman"]I can think of no more eloquent way to put it than to borrow the words of Zarf, he of much wisdom, who said:

[quote] Everything you are saying is either wrong or irrelevant to your earlier wrong statements.

[/quote]


Robert Rothman[/quote]
Hey, I got an idea!  [emote]:idea:[/emote] 
Why don't you look it up?  [emote]:roll:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2914&start=0#p20305
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What Do You Think of This Strategy?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-07-28 11:40:36

Part of what works with [i]Hitchhiker's Guide[/i] is that there was already no exact canon, with differences between the radio show, books, and TV series ([url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#Stage_shows]and apparently a stage show?[/url]) before the game even existed.  It is more a mythology than a precise story, really, so there was some free reign for the game to play with.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=220#p20306
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-28 12:13:14

If you're going to insist on making up a pack of nonsense, you might at least consider trying to add some humor or otherwise to add a touch of style.  For example, you might have tried something like the following:

[quote]The phrase "do not fold, spindle or mutilate" originated in the early days of computer disks, when rural users sometimes ran into trouble after the disks had been damaged by barnyard animals.  For example, "folding" referred to the damage that might occur if a disk fell into a pen in which was enclosed a flock (or "fold") of sheep.  This damage could seriously affect performance; more than one user became grue fodder after being unable to see because the wool had been pulled over his eyes.

"Spindling" referred to the damage suffered by a disk when it was gored by the horn of a bull.  Most research indicates that the term was originally "Spaindle," derived from the fact that it was virtuallly identical to the [i]cornada[/i] wound often suffered by Spanish [i]toreros[/i] (those who are well-versed in the art of the bull).

The female of the bovine species, on the other hand, could cause a disk to be moo-tilated (which eventually became corrupted to "mutilated").

Eventually, manufacturers began including the warning "Do not fold, spindle or mutilate" to alert rural users to the importance of keeping their disks away from the animals.[/quote]

If you were to do something like that, at least your nonsense would have some entertainment value.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=220#p20307
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-28 13:28:35

<a class="postlink" href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/History_of_computers">https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... _computers</a>

[quote]In the late 1880s, the American Herman Hollerith invented data storage on a medium that could then be read by a machine. Prior uses of machine readable media had been for control (automatons such as piano rolls or looms), not data. "After some initial trials with paper tape, he settled on punched cards..."[24] Hollerith came to use punched cards after observing how railroad conductors encoded personal characteristics of each passenger with punches on their tickets. To process these punched cards he invented the tabulator, and the key punch machine. These three inventions were the foundation of the modern information processing industry. His machines used mechanical relays (and solenoids) to increment mechanical counters. Hollerith's method was used in the 1890 United States Census and the completed results were "... finished months ahead of schedule and far under budget".[25] Indeed years faster than the prior census had required. Hollerith's company eventually became the core of IBM. IBM developed punch card technology into a powerful tool for business data-processing and produced an extensive line of unit record equipment. By 1950, the IBM card had become ubiquitous in industry and government. The warning printed on most cards intended for circulation as documents (checks, for example), "Do not fold, spindle or mutilate," became a catch phrase for the post-World War II era.[26][/quote]
You're right about the spike though, I'll give you that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2913&start=0#p20308
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Money in a game
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-07-28 13:32:55

[url=http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/gsg/handlingcashtransactions.htm]Getting Started in TADS 3[/url] has a section on money.

I would follow that example and limit the currency options to bills, gold coins, or some other indivisible unit. You sacrifice some realism, but it's easier to make change and describe the transaction in a readable way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=220#p20309
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-07-28 13:34:46

I had to smile. People on forums of, say, news sites tend to mistake politics for football and curse'n'insult everyone with the "wrong" political attitude, regardless of what they actually said. Got used to that, seems like the anonymity of the internet turns people into troglodytes on crack. But bitching about a data carrier of the 70es and 80es really takes this to a new level. [emote];-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2916&start=0#p20310
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: Tables
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-07-28 13:45:52

I'm about to implement a puzzle featuring a number of trees of different height growing fruit of different size and colour. The player has the same biological knowledge as me (i.e. can hardly distinguish an apple from a banana) and has to combine two or three clues to pick the correct fruit. I even know (or rather guess) how I'd do this under I7, but here it's I6. I'm hardcoding it now with three arrays and no random spread, not too difficult, but for education purposes I'd be really curious to know how this could be done in an elegant way, like, spreading the attributes randomly across the trees. Any hints?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2858&start=20#p20311
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright: two questions
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-07-28 14:19:35

Here's an interesting article about software copyrights and who owns what. Basically, the developer licenses development tools, so the creator of the development tool has no real claim over the software produced with that system.

[url]http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/software-application-development-agreements-copyright-29584.html[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2914&start=0#p20312
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What Do You Think of This Strategy?
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-07-28 14:28:59

I think the attraction to adapting an existing novel is the idea of the player being in the fictional world of the novel's structure. Like, the Harry Potter games are a good example of this. But while those games allow you to adventure within the Harry Potter world, the plot is not identical to the books and doesn't try to be.

What you could do is create a new plot within the novel's fictional structure, within that novel's "world" with new or the same characters.

I wouldn't try to recreate a certain plot unless it was a well known plot (treasure island, hamlet, romeo & juliet, frankenstein).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2899&start=20#p20313
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IntroComp 2011 - Winners Announced!
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-07-28 15:00:09

[quote="shammack"][quote="RealNC"]All I have to say about the comp results is that I find it disappointing that a web form (as opposed to a game) can place first.[/quote]
That's a little harsh. Any game basically reduces to a flowchart if you break it down far enough; ChoiceScript just starts out a few steps closer to that.[/quote]
"A few"?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2858&start=20#p20314
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright: two questions
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-28 15:23:34

Note that that article is written from the point of view of a contractor -- it's about the sort of contract you'd write to do development work for hire. The concerns there don't apply to software you write for yourself on your own time. (Nor to software you write as a regular full-time employee -- that's covered by your employment agreement.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2899&start=20#p20315
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IntroComp 2011 - Winners Announced!
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-28 15:26:50

Look, if you want to dig into the differences between the interactivity of CYOA games and parser games, start from the interactivity. Don't start by saying "It's not a game!" with no details -- that's just posturing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2892&start=0#p20316
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing an object's state with a newly created verb
User: Enosh / DateTime: 2011-07-28 15:28:44

capmikee that is a very good article. Thanks for sharing. I'm definitely an inefficient programmer.

As far as the break dancing goes, it's actually a very small and silly part of the game. Though I might expand on it now that I put all this work into it. :^)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2899&start=20#p20317
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IntroComp 2011 - Winners Announced!
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-07-28 15:41:25

I haven't followed this. From my amateurish point of view CYOA "games" are pretty low on the evolution ladder, but after all it's the judges that ranked them. If they judged CYOA "games" to be competitive, this doesn't have to be approved, but to be accepted. 'Nuff said.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2899&start=20#p20318
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IntroComp 2011 - Winners Announced!
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-07-28 16:26:23

[quote="Grueslayer"]If they judged CYOA "games" to be competitive[/quote]

Sounds to me like they* even judged them worthy of dropping the scare quotes.

*I am so bad at getting my act together and submitting votes...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2917&start=0#p20319
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Plugs and Sockets by Sean Turner
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-07-28 16:29:10

Has anyone gotten this extension to work correctly?
I've emailed the author of the extension filing a bug report, but I thought I could also get your opinions on this.

I get this compiler error when I try to use the extension:[code]Problem. You wrote 'It is always male': but the property male for the PS-plug is not allowed to exist, because you haven't said it is. What properties something can have depends on what kind of thing it is: see the Index for details.
See the manual: 3.7 > Properties depend on kind[/code]This problem highlights the line:[code]A PS-plug is a kind of PS-connector. It is always male.[/code]I'm running inform 7 build 6G60.
I get the error even when I run the included example story "Home Theater".
What should I do to fix this so that I can use this extension?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2917&start=0#p20320
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Plugs and Sockets by Sean Turner
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-07-29 01:22:52

This seems to be the result of a namespace clash. I got the same error message, so I opened the extension and did a Replace All, replacing "male" with "mascul". (This produces, of course, "femascul", which is rather silly. For testing purposes only.)

It now compiles, and the test script in the sample game seems to work. Whether my replacement of text has other side effects, I don't know.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2918&start=0#p20321
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Need beta testers for "plague"
User: lglasser / DateTime: 2011-07-29 03:52:08

I've got a short game I've been working on called "plague" that I intend to release for the competition coming up. It's about the 10th Biblical Plague of Egypt, where you are the Angel of Death. I'd love to have testers, especially to make sure that the details of the small actions fit (>sing, for example, does not have you warble out a jaunty tune.) I'd also love for someone who knows their history to play it through.

I've got a longer game planned, but of course the easy one got finished first. Funny how that works, eh?

Anyway, it really is just a short little bit of Z-code, let me know if you're interested!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2917&start=0#p20322
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Plugs and Sockets by Sean Turner
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-29 06:29:28

There's one point (at least?) where the extension prints the gender of the noun (in the "instead of examining a PS-connector" rule). So you'd also want to modify it to print out "male" and "female" instead of "mascul" and "femascul," but that should be simple. (Also if you want to get something less silly than "femascul," you can search-and-replace on "female" first.)

If the extension contains "understand the gender property as referring to a PS-connector" or something like that, you probably have to do a little more fancy footwork.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2917&start=0#p20323
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Plugs and Sockets by Sean Turner
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-07-29 08:19:23

I followed your advice and I replaced male with outy and female with inny.
I also did a quick workaround when it prints the gender.
It works now, thank you for your help.
I hope the author of the extension can get this fixed shortly, it's a very useful extension.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2914&start=0#p20324
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What Do You Think of This Strategy?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-07-29 10:31:57

[quote="Bainespal"]My advice is to set the IF game in the same fictional world, probably even at the same time that the plot of the novel unfolds, but not to make the protagonist of the novel the player character of the IF game.  The PC could hear about the adventures of the novel's protagonist, or even meet the protagonist at some point.[/quote]
Or you could write the same characters, but at different times. I think Suzanne Britton intended to do that with Worlds Apart, an IF that was supposed to have a novel sequel. I think she burned out before she wrote the novel, though, which might serve as a warning...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2918&start=0#p20325
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Need beta testers for "plague"
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2011-07-29 10:41:44

BTW, do you know about <a href="http://inform7.com/extensions/Juhana%20Leinonen/Object%20Response%20Tests/index.html">Object Response Tests</a>? Not a substitute for getting some good beta testers, but it might help a bit to check for weird responses.

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2914&start=0#p20326
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What Do You Think of This Strategy?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-07-29 11:13:54

Having written both IF and novels, I can offer 2 cents' worth of thoughts.

Others have already noted that the linear flow of plot in a novel is difficult and unsatisfying if you try to haul it into a game without making major changes.

With one fantasy novel (unpublished, and there may be reasons for that), I deliberately left a small hole in the story that, if it had been published, I intended to fill with a game. The hole involved a fellow who was a thief accomplishing some rather tricky stuff in a large castle infested with magic and odd artifacts. In the book, he just emerges from the castle the next morning with the object that he was sent for. The possibilities seemed pretty interesting to me at the time.

If you're young and ambitious, I would say, forget IF and try writing novels! There's money in it. Because there's money, however, there is also an enormous amount of competition -- and publishers tend to have rather narrow ideas of what they're willing to put on their lists. For that reason, writing IF can be much more satisfying. With IF, you're pretty much guaranteed to reach a small but enthusiastic audience, and you're free to use your own imagination without worrying about what a publisher may or may not be willing to risk.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2915&start=0#p20327
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Displaying jpg files (or any others)
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-07-29 12:06:46

If you want to get fancy with where on the screen you want images to display, I highly recommend checking out Erik Temple's Glimmr extension [url]http://glimmr.wordpress.com/[/url] . Take note of the 'scenic window' code. 

Here's a thread here that I started as I was learning some basics with Glimmr:
[url]http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2427[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2858&start=20#p20328
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Copyright: two questions
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-07-29 12:15:36

[quote="Robert Rothman"]The headline for this article caught my eye; evidently, somebody is suing somebody else for hiring an advertising model who happens to bear a physical resemblance to the plaintiff.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/07/21/earlyshow/leisure/celebspot/main20081354.shtml?tag=exclsv">http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/07/ ... tag=exclsv</a>
[/quote]

Thank you sir, for linking me to the stupidest thing I've read all week.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2918&start=0#p20329
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Need beta testers for "plague"
User: lglasser / DateTime: 2011-07-29 12:21:51

I did not, thanks! Just installed and checked it out - I realized I needed a custom response to "squeeze" otherwise it assumed I had hands. Thanks for the resource, I really appreciate it. Still new to all the nuances of IF.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2918&start=0#p20330
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Need beta testers for "plague"
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-29 12:56:01

This sounds like a game that I might want to play eventually, but for moment I'll pass over it.

(By the way, I agree that the angel of death should definitely be a crooner, not a warbler.)


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2914&start=0#p20331
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What Do You Think of This Strategy?
User: Kytaari / DateTime: 2011-07-29 12:57:45

Thank you so much everyone for your great advice! [emote]:D[/emote]

I believe I have a very much clearer idea of what I should do now [emote]:)[/emote] I'll just stick to one series in that huge world I have for my novels (and since it's a fantasy series, I'll make it as long as I can). Maybe the publisher won't allow me as much freedom as I would get writing IF games, but that's OK; I'll write IF stories in my same setting, and at different times in it, to kind of let the players explore the world [emote]:)[/emote] I think I'll just make some of my ideas into IF (when I believe I have the experience; like write now I have a nine-volume idea, but I'll hold that off for some considerable time), and focus on writing smaller IF in my spare time when I'm not writing my high science-fantasy series. 

I really liked all this advice, and thank you so much! I've always felt kind of a connection with this community, because I've noticed that many of the people on this forum have similar interests and tastes as me and stuff like that. There will eventually reach a point in my high fantasy series where my main protagonists will get to travel through space, and since they'll have all these spacy abilities (not god-like, as in invincible, but more like 'I can go where I want to now,) maybe I could find ways to make them jump through time-gates and stuff like that, occasionally? 

There are different eras in my world, and I intend on setting my novel series in the "main era", or the most "normal" era. I don't want to make my protagonists too powerful, but I would like them to have a lot of space, so there can be a lot of adventure-lust! I'm holding off on all the more crazy stuff until later in the series, though; and since fantasy writers are usually coped up into the same series by their publishers (from what I hear, at least), I believe keeping a really long series with the same main cast might be a good idea. I would still like to write those really huge IF projects that I've always dreamt about, but I'll practice writing shorter stories in this medium first. 

I'll be sure to post here if I need any more advice (about both IF and my novels, if that's OK with you guys).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2919&start=0#p20332
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Have the ingredients for a puzzle, but can't settle on one.
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-07-29 14:06:00

So I've been kind of fiddling with this idea for a puzzle for a while. Basically, it would involve taking a "do not eat other peoples' food" from one fridge, and moving it to another....but what purpose would it serve? Here's a couple of ideas:

An NPC who has an important item would walk by the fridge occasionally and check it for food; putting the sign in the fridge, along with some rotten food (or food laced with sedatives, or poison, or something along those lines), would cause the NPC to sneakily grab the food, eat it, and then fall unconscious/die, allowing the player to take the item.
PROBLEM: Well, for one, it requires a few strange leaps of logic, and overall it kind of feels like a ripoff of the coffee/pills puzzle from [i]Little Blue Men[/i].

Or, the player needs to store some food in the fridge for later use (say, due to a limited inventory or something), but needs to prevent the NPC from [i]stealing[/i] the player's food once it's in there, by placing the sign in there as well.
PROBLEM: There's no reason for the player not to put the food anywhere else in the game. It's not like the NPC is some kind of ultra-determined food-thief who will try to snatch up the player's food as soon as it leaves his/her inventory.

So, what do you guys think? Is this simply a lost cause, and I should look for other puzzle ideas? Or is this a salvageable idea?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2919&start=0#p20333
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Have the ingredients for a puzzle, but can't settle on o
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-29 14:39:20

[quote]PROBLEM: There's no reason for the player not to put the food anywhere else in the game.[/quote]

If your concern is simply to come up with a plausible reason why the player should have to put the food in the refrigerator (thereby raising the further problem of how to keep it out of the hands of the victuals-thief), doesn't making the food highly perishable give you enough of a reason?  ([i]I.e.[/i], you could keep it in you desk, or your pocket, but then the ice cream would melt or the fresh fish would spoil.  Thus, only the refrigerator keeps the food in edible condition.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2893&start=0#p20334
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Re-Triggering a Scene within Questions Extension
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-07-29 16:02:18

May I bring this to your attention again? I got half the weekend for myself and thus time to program, but I don't get any further with this problem still on the agenda. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2893&start=0#p20335
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Re-Triggering a Scene within Questions Extension
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-07-29 17:11:12

This is purely a guess, but the problem might be that you can't start or end scenes while you're inside menu conversation because the normal turn sequence rules aren't being run. (It wouldn't make sense to have, for example, every turn rules print messages while a menu conversation is going on.)

My advice is to not use a scene in this case; it seems like a simple "to" phrase would be much more appropriate anyway ("To set dialogue: ..." and instead of setting the flag: "Set dialogue;")

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2911&start=0#p20336
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Nonexistent comp
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-07-29 18:39:04

I'm very interested by this idea. Are we allowed to discuss the games that don't exist or would that be in breach of the rules (which also don't exist)? I also want to know when the results won't be announced.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2914&start=10#p20337
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What Do You Think of This Strategy?
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-07-29 18:49:43

[quote="Kytaari"]I really liked all this advice, and thank you so much! I've always felt kind of a connection with this community, because I've noticed that many of the people on this forum have similar interests and tastes as me and stuff like that.[/quote]
I'm glad to see someone else on this forum interested in the theories and peculiarities behind the high fantasy and space opera genres of fiction.  IF has plenty of space opera and lots of generic fantasy that probably doesn't have enough of a coherent mythology to be called "high fantasy," but I feel that these genres are often not taken seriously enough in many of those games.  Anyways, I'm glad you like this little community.  I've always liked it, even when I was shy teenager quietly lurking and observing.

[quote="Kytaari"]There will eventually reach a point in my high fantasy series where my main protagonists will get to travel through space, and since they'll have all these spacy abilities (not god-like, as in invincible, but more like 'I can go where I want to now,) maybe I could find ways to make them jump through time-gates and stuff like that, occasionally?[/quote]
I've thought about what a combination of high fantasy and space opera would be like (though I'm not entirely sure that [i]Star Wars[/i] doesn't already fit the bill). However, I've yet to see space travel explained in terms of magic. It could be really good, especially if it has a strong mythology to support it (as in, the magic and/or scientific "spacy" abilities used to be used by great beings in times long past...).

[quote="Kytaari"]I'm holding off on all the more crazy stuff until later in the series, though; and since fantasy writers are usually coped up into the same series by their publishers (from what I hear, at least), I believe keeping a really long series with the same main cast might be a good idea.[/quote]
Hmm... I just finished reading the thirteenth book of [i]The Wheel of Time[/i] a few weeks ago; I think that qualifies as a series that fits your goals of length with strong central characters. The length and the character drama are both good and bad.  Many people have complained about how the later [i]WoT[/i] books drag on.  Yet, the sense of affinity fans develop with the characters is strong, and it will be sad to have the epic journey end with the next book.

[quote="Kytaari"]I would still like to write those really huge IF projects that I've always dreamt about, but I'll practice writing shorter stories in this medium first.[/quote]
That sounds like a wise plan.

[quote="Kytaari"]I'll be sure to post here if I need any more advice (about both IF and my novels, if that's OK with you guys).[/quote]
This is the place for IF advice, not only about the technical aspects but also (I think [i]especially[/i]) how to tell your story in our interactive medium.  As for the novels, I can't speak for the whole forum, but I wouldn't mind hearing about them from time to time (maybe on the General and Off-Topic Talk board).  I think there are a good number of good writers on this forum, and as I said above, I'm often interested in discussing the genre.

Do you have a blog about your writing, or anything like that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2899&start=20#p20338
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IntroComp 2011 - Winners Announced!
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2011-07-29 20:51:30

[quote="dfabulich"]I'm reminded of this excellent tweet by Juhana Leinonen: "CYOA in the same comp with parser IF feels like bringing an orange to the Fruit of the Year fair judged by the We Love Apples association." <a class="postlink" href="http://twitter.com/JuhanaIF/status/87281006075330560">http://twitter.com/JuhanaIF/status/87281006075330560</a>[/quote]

I'm inclined to agree with the sentiment here, except inasmuch as the ChoiceScript community was perfectly welcome to vote on the competition. So it's really more like "hosted by a member of the We Love Apples Association."

As the author of a parser-based entry, I have to say that I got what I wanted from IntroComp -- all the feedback wanted, in reviews. And I really enjoyed the top three entries. And I enjoyed other entries enough that I thought they should have been in the top three.

I had a feeling this sort of discussion about the convergence of the IF and ChoiceScript communities might occur. I wondered which side I would take. And then I remembered I didn't have to take one at all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2911&start=0#p20339
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Nonexistent comp
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-07-29 21:05:48

[quote="David Whyld"]I'm very interested by this idea. Are we allowed to discuss the games that don't exist or would that be in breach of the rules (which also don't exist)? I also want to know when the results won't be announced.[/quote]


No.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2920&start=0#p20340
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: turns from now/at the time when
User: jkfriday / DateTime: 2011-07-29 22:03:37

Hi guys, I'm brand new to this Inform 7 business and writing my first little adventure, but have come up against a brick wall. I'm having problems with the following bit of code:

[code]After entering the cheese: 
	say "You climb aboard the repellent, buoyant cheese. Others notice this and begin swimming towards you, crying out for mercy. Some grab at cheeses of their own, but they are insufficiently plump or fall apart like wet cake. One man manages to board a huge brie but then quickly sinks into it, suffocating fragrantly.";
	if bo's'n is not visible begin; 
		move bo's'n to the location of the player;
		say "[line break]One man, the bo's'n, appears from somewhere and grabs on to your cheese. He is a large and burly man and his weight would be disastrous for the stability of the cheese. Already it bobbles precariously, threatening to flip over and send you plummeting back into the murky, unforgiving depths. His one good remaining eye boggles at you shinily. This bo's'n'll be the end of you if you don't do something about him tres quickly.";
		the bo's'n hijacks cheese in three turns from now;
	at the time when the bo's'n hijacks cheese;
		say "[line break]The bo's'n snarls and grabs you by the hair, pulling you forward and off the cheese. You beat and claw at his massive thick arm but it is useless. He tosses you far away into the water.";
	end if.
	instead of exiting [cheese], say "You're on the cheese now. No sense getting off. Seacheese!";[/code]

Debug tells me the following:

"Problem. In the sentence 'the bo's'n hijacks cheese in three turns from now'  , I was expecting to read a rule, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'bo's'n hijacks cheese'.

I was trying to match one of these phrases:

1. (bo's'n hijacks cheese - rule) in (three - number) turn/turns from now 

2. (bo's'n hijacks cheese - rule) in (three turns - time) from now 

This was what I found out:

bo's'n hijacks cheese = something unrecognised

three turns = something unrecognised"

So obviously I'm doing something really obviously wrong, but I'm having a hard time figuring it out. I've trawled around a little bit but am not having much luck Any advice would be appreciated!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2920&start=0#p20341
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: turns from now/at the time when
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-07-29 22:42:32

It looks like you have some organizational problems. See if it works better like this:
[code]After entering the cheese:
	say "You climb aboard the repellent, buoyant cheese. Others notice this and begin swimming towards you, crying out for mercy. Some grab at cheeses of their own, but they are insufficiently plump or fall apart like wet cake. One man manages to board a huge brie but then quickly sinks into it, suffocating fragrantly.";
	if bo's'n is not visible:
		move bo's'n to the location of the player;
		say "[line break]One man, the bo's'n, appears from somewhere and grabs on to your cheese. He is a large and burly man and his weight would be disastrous for the stability of the cheese. Already it bobbles precariously, threatening to flip over and send you plummeting back into the murky, unforgiving depths. His one good remaining eye boggles at you shinily. This bo's'n'll be the end of you if you don't do something about him tres quickly.";
		the bo's'n hijacks cheese in three turns from now.

At the time when the bo's'n hijacks cheese:
   say "[line break]The bo's'n snarls and grabs you by the hair, pulling you forward and off the cheese. You beat and claw at his massive thick arm but it is useless. He tosses you far away into the water.";

Instead of exiting when the player is in the cheese, say "You're on the cheese now. No sense getting off. Seacheese!";[/code]

I'm not sure if the "At the time when" rule would be able to fire from inside the if statement. You also had a semicolon after the "at the time when" when it needed to be a colon or a begin.

I also changed "exiting the cheese" to "exiting when the player is in the cheese" because the "exit" action doesn't take an object (assuming you haven't replaced it with your own version or anything), so that was giving me an error. You might want to check for getting off the cheese also.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2894&start=0#p20342
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Recommendation for Interpreter?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-07-29 23:49:39

Also running the same environment, I've found that WinFrotz seems to work best. Though I prefer the look and glulx support of filfre, it doesn't support live automapping.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=220#p20343
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Sig / DateTime: 2011-07-30 00:09:39

The biggest problem with the ignore filter (or whatever it is called in phpBB) is that curiosity compels me to see what people are responding to, and I end up loading each post one by one.

Back on topic, just for the novelty value:  I grew up with [i]Pirates![/i] and [i]M.U.L.E.[/i] and [i]Pool of Radiance[/i] on the Commodore 64, completely missing the commercial era of interactive fiction.  I came across Jimmy Maher's [url=http://maher.filfre.net/if-book/]Let's Tell a Story Together[/url] in October 2010 while rocking my newborn to sleep in an easy chair.  I was utterly fascinated by the story, and that led me to some of the more abstract articles and essays about theory and design and then to Inform 7, and eventually here.  At some point several days later, it occurred to me to actually download and try one ([i]The Elysium Enigma[/i], I think).

I bought Aaron Reed's book on the theory that an investment of my funding would compel me to invest more of my time and actually produce something.  Theories are fun.

I'm 33.  I'm married (11 yrs) with two children (3 1/2 and 10 months).  I'm on active duty with the Army National Guard.  I like to tie decorative knots.  I speak Russian like a drunk 6-year-old, but I read and listen to it pretty well.  I used to fix computers and networks for a living.  I like Toyotas from the late 80s.  I like Star Wars from the early 80s.  I still own a 28.8 kbps modem (just in case).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2920&start=0#p20344
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: turns from now/at the time when
User: jkfriday / DateTime: 2011-07-30 00:34:07

That worked perfectly shammack, thank you very much! You're right, I was all over the place and nesting too much stuff in too much other stuff. Your solution is much cleaner. Thank you again [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2519&start=10#p20345
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: IF and Linux
User: Sig / DateTime: 2011-07-30 00:50:54

[quote="Sig"]I will have to mess with this again, too.  It's the only thing that I wasn't immediately able to get up and running with Linux Mint Debian Edition when I switched from Ubuntu 10.04.[/quote]
The .deb package for [url=http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnome-inform7/files/gnome-inform7/6G60/]6G60[/url] dated 17 July 2011 worked just swimmingly for my Linux Mint Debian Edition.  Now if the Army would stop using proprietary formats for digitally signing documents, I could get rid of my Windows partition on this machine...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2894&start=0#p20347
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Recommendation for Interpreter?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-30 03:55:53

I prefer gargoyle, because it looks so good typographically.

<a class="postlink" href="https://code.google.com/p/garglk/downloads/detail?name=gargoyle-2010.1-windows.exe&can=2&q=">https://code.google.com/p/garglk/downlo ... e&can=2&q=</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2921&start=0#p20348
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Enterable without using enter?
User: jkfriday / DateTime: 2011-07-30 04:41:44

I want to make a container enterable, but I don't want the player to be able to type "enter [container]". I want them to have to type "climb [container]" or "board [container]". What do?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2921&start=0#p20349
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Enterable without using enter?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-07-30 05:11:59

That sounds like a bad idea. ENTER is such a standard verb that if it's not allowed many players would just assume that the thing can't be entered or that there's a bug in the game. What would you gain from disallowing that command?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2921&start=0#p20350
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Enterable without using enter?
User: jkfriday / DateTime: 2011-07-30 05:57:26

Ideally I wanted to prevent people from just going "enter [object]" because the object is a solid mass that cannot be "entered", it can only be climbed upon. I wanted to make it a very insignificant world puzzle, essentially. I've tried using one of the Al Golden extensions but that caused too many problems.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2921&start=0#p20351
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Enterable without using enter?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-07-30 06:09:07

Are you sure you don't want a supporter rather than a container? It sounds like the player will wind up on top of the solid thing rather than in it. Even there, Juhana has a point; lots of people get onto chairs and the like by typing "enter chair," so disallowing enter might confuse them. I do sometimes try climbing things like trees when "enter" doesn't work, but if the puzzle is supposed to be insignificant there's not much point in confusing the player here.

Another point: "get on cheese" maps to "enter cheese," I think. If you just disallow entering, you'll block "get on cheese," and that will really confuse your players. (Also, unless you've set things up very well, I don't think anyone is going to try "board cheese"; that seems very guess-the-verby.)

If you really want to disallow "enter," maybe you could try something like this:

[code]Instead of entering the cheese when the player's command includes "enter": say "The cheese is solid. You might be able to climb it, but you can't enter it."
Instead of climbing the cheese: try entering the cheese.
Understand the command "board" as "climb."[/code]

Totally untested, and I'm not sure the syntax works; also I can't remember whether "climb" is a built-in verb/action.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2921&start=0#p20352
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Enterable without using enter?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-07-30 06:34:56

If the thing is clearly something that can't be entered, why would players then even try to enter it? ;)

I would still allow ENTER but with a clarification of what the command was translated to:

[code]Before entering the cheese when the player's command includes "enter": 
    say "(by climbing the cheese)[command clarification break]".
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2921&start=0#p20353
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Enterable without using enter?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-07-30 06:58:47

I'm with Matt that -- if this is the cheese thing from the other thread -- you want an enterable supporter rather than a container. The upshot is that with a supporter you don't have to worry about text like "You can see a cheese (empty) here."

My normal policy is to refrain from giving design advice and just answer the technical part of the question, but in this case I have to agree with the other guys; player want more synonyms, not fewer. A few years back a game had a torch with a bracket that was implemented as a supporter rather than a container, so you had to "put torch [i]on[/i] bracket." "Put torch [i]in[/i] bracket" resulted in the standard "That can't contain things" message -- a fact that more than a few reviewers pointed out with almost gleeful disdain.

As far as your actual question, the easiest way is probably:
[code]Understand "enter [cheese]" as a mistake ("You can't enter the cheese, but it looks like you can 'climb' or 'board' it.").[/code]
Once again, please don't do this. If your players are like me, an example of a likely transcript would be:
[quote]>enter cheese
You can't enter the cheese, but it looks like you can "climb" or "board" it.

>quit
Are you sure you want to quit? y
[/quote]
 [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2921&start=0#p20354
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Enterable without using enter?
User: jkfriday / DateTime: 2011-07-30 07:16:33

Hmmm, I guess you are all correct that it would be a poor design decision. Guess I'll give it a miss this time around, but thanks for the detailed answers anyway!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2922&start=0#p20355
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Flexible Windows by Jon Ingold
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-07-30 09:02:01

The extension Flexible Windows by Jon Ingold gives me the following error:

[quote]In Chapter 5 - Writing to different windows, Section - Background colours in the extension Flexible Windows by Jon Ingold:

Problem. In the sentence 'The back-colour of a g-window is usually g-placenullcol'  , it looks as if you intend 'The back-colour of a g-window is usually g-placenullcol' to be asserting something, but that tries to set the value of the 'back-colour' property to an object - which must be wrong because this property has to be a glulx color value.[/quote]

I can only assume there is some kind of error in the extension. What I don't understand is why. [emote]:oops:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2922&start=0#p20356
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Flexible Windows by Jon Ingold
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-30 09:50:07

No, there's no error in the extension. My guess is that you are trying to include Flexible Windows alongside an extension that already includes it. Try commenting out the line "Include Flexible Windows by Jon Ingold" in your game to see if that helps. Another possibility is that you are including Glulx Text Effects somewhere in your game file, which is not necessary since FW already includes [i]that[/i]. (Inform is not really as good as it might initially seem to be at dealing with multiple extensions.)

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2825&start=0#p20357
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: CYOA - CYOP (Choose Your Own Path)
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-07-30 12:55:36

In case anybody's still looking at this, I meant "Own" not "One".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2922&start=0#p20358
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Flexible Windows by Jon Ingold
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-07-30 13:32:56

Erik -There must be something wrong in my code. I pulled the three offending lines into a standalone and they work fine. I guess I will have to take the existing code apart a line at a time. Right back to the old methods I have used for 50 years. Greg

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2923&start=0#p20359
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I7 extension] Simple Chat version 4 - beta
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-30 13:35:22

Back in November, Mark Tilford asked me to take over maintaining the Simple Chat extension. Since then I more or less forgot that the extension had become incompatible with current Inform 7 releases, and I failed to do any maintaining. Until today! I took Mark's [url=http://pastebin.com/4ycjZJ52]Version 3[/url] (which was compatible with the newer Inform 7 releases, but was never released to the Inform 7 website), and added some changes of my own.The result is [url=http://lilith.cc/~victor/temp/Simple%20Chat.i7x]Version 4 beta[/url].

Note that code written for Version 2 is not necessarily compatible with Version 3, and code written for Version 3 is not necessarily compatible with Version 4. Unless you have been messing with the inner working of the extension, however, the changes you need to make are probably quite trivial. Most importantly, version 3 changed "active" to "sc-active"; version 4 changed activatedness from a relation to a value of chat nodes and added "sc-inactive", "sc-once" and "sc-shown-once"; and version 4 got rid of the use options handling whether or not the player can escape from the conversation by typing "0". (Earlier incarnations had both use options and phrases to handle this, which interacted in a complicated way. We now only have phrases by which the author can turn the showing of "0" on and off. For most games, a single "When play begins: ..." line will be enough.)

Change log for version 4:
- Code cleanup.
- Use options were removed. (They led to a confusing double functionality.)
- Implemented activatedness as a property of chat nodes, rather than as a relation between chat nodes and property values. Added sc-inactive, sc-once and sc-shown-once for easier control of when chat nodes are shown.
- Added a 'parser message' to the routine which asks for a number: some players did not see that the command prompt had changed, or did not understand what it meant.
- Rewritten the documentation.
- Reworked and replaced the example games.
- Increased the maximum number of nodes in a single menu from 9 to 20.
- A number of changes to the internal workings of the extension.
- Easier internationalisation.

The sc-once and sc-shown-once values now make it easier to write chat nodes that can be chosen only once, or that will be a possible choice only once, without having to deactivate them by hand.

If you are happily using version 3 or a hacked version 2, and are unwilling to change to a potentially incompatible newer version, I would suggest that you do implement the 'parser message'. (You need to copy the I6-inclusion of Version 4 and replace the I6-inclusion of your own version with it.) I know of at least one IF Comp 2010 judge who thought the game had crashed when it stopped accepting normal input, and showing a helpful error message in such circumstances seems like a good idea.

I'll upload the extension to the Inform 7 website in a few days (at which point it will not longer be beta), but anyone willing to check it out in the meantime is very welcome to do so.

I also would be delighted to know whether I was right in translating "or 0 to say nothing" to "oder 0 um nichts zu sagen" and "ou 0 pour ne rien dire".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2922&start=0#p20360
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Flexible Windows by Jon Ingold
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-30 13:37:18

[quote="ektemple"](Inform is not really as good as it might initially seem to be at dealing with multiple extensions.)[/quote]
I though it just ignored multiple inclusions of the same extension?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2922&start=0#p20361
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Flexible Windows by Jon Ingold
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-07-30 13:52:10

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]I though it just ignored multiple inclusions of the same extension?[/quote]
It does, but it might still include the extension in the wrong place. See [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=666]bug #666[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2924&start=0#p20362
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7:  Printing a locale para
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-30 14:13:29

[code]"Locale Para Demo" by Me

This Place is a room.  That Place is north of this place.

Joe is a man.  Joe is in That Place.

Rule for printing a locale paragraph about Joe:
	Say "Joe is here, busily twiddling his thumbs." instead.
[/code]

This produces:

[quote]Locale Para Demo
An Interactive Fiction by Me
Release 1 / Serial number 110730 / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N) SD

This Place

>n

That Place
Joe is here, busily twiddling his thumbs.
You can see Joe here.

>[/quote]

What I want to do is to replace the standard "You can see Joe here" with the custom message, not to have both show up.  I know this must be pretty basic, but I'm not getting it.  What am I missing?

Thanks.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2924&start=0#p20363
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Printing a locale para
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-30 14:24:49

Section 17.26 of the manual:
[quote]If all that's required is to supply an interesting paragraph of room description about something then it's always better to use the "printing a paragraph about" activity, not this one. This activity should only be used when the mechanism itself needs to be adjusted.[/quote]
I think the code you need is just:
[code]Rule for printing a paragraph about Joe:
   say "Joe is here, busily twiddling his thumbs.".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2924&start=0#p20364
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Printing a locale para
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-07-30 14:26:31

What you want to do, I think, is use the initial appearance property instead:

[code]Joe is a man.  "Joe is here, busily twiddling his thumbs." Joe is in That Place.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2922&start=0#p20365
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Flexible Windows by Jon Ingold
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-07-30 14:33:47

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]I though it just ignored multiple inclusions of the same extension?[/quote]

Sort of. But Inform isn't very smart about it. If both "include" instructions are in your game file, then one will simply be ignored, as you would expect. If one of the instructions is in an extension, though, things can go haywire. For example, Glulx Text Effects is a dependency of Flexible Windows, and Flexible Windows includes a table continuation from GTE. If you do this:

[code]Include Flexible Windows by Jon Ingold.
Include Glulx Text Effects by Emily Short.[/code]

...then Inform will ignore the include instruction for Glulx Text Effects that's contained in Flexible Windows in favor of the instruction in the story file, thus breaking the source-order-dependent parts of FW.

[spoiler][quote="Inform compiler"]You wrote 'Table of Common Color Values (continued) glulx color value assigned number g-placenullcol 0 g-darkgreen 25600 g-green 32768 g-lime 65280 g-midnightblue 1644912 g-steelblue 4620980 g-terracotta 11674146 g-navy 128 g-mediumblue 205 g-blue 255 g-indigo 4915330 g-cornflowerblue 6591981 g-mediumslateblue 8087790 g-maroon 8388608 g-red 16711680 g-deeppink 16716947 g-brown 9127187 g-darkviolet 9699539 g-khaki 12433259 g-silver 12632256 g-crimson 14423100 g-orangered 16729344 g-gold 16766720 g-darkorange 16747520 g-lavender 16773365 g-yellow 16776960 g-pink 16761035'  : but this does not seem to be a continuation or amendment, since the name/number do not match any previously defined table. (Perhaps you've put the continuation or amendment before the original?)[/quote][/spoiler]

There are also bugs to do with ordering that I've never figured out well enough to file a report. For example, my Glulx Input Loops extensions includes Flexible Windows in its very first line. But odd bugs (not compile errors!) can occur in the functionality if you don't *also* include FW just before Glulx Input Loops[i] in the game file[/i], e.g.:

[code]Include Flexible Windows by Jon Ingold.
Include Glulx Input Loops by Erik Temple.

---Glulx Input Loops----
Include Flexible Windows.[/code]

That one just mystifies me...

All of this gets hairy enough that most of my extensions now include a section explaining how to include them relative to other extensions.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2924&start=0#p20366
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Printing a locale para
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-07-30 14:38:31

Thanks.  I wound up using the "writing a paragraph about" approach, which does the trick.  The example I gave was somewhat oversimplified.  In the actual situation, the custom description only is supposed to occur under specified conditions, which do [i]not[/i] include the first time the player encounters "Joe," so I wasn't sure how the "initial appearance" approach would work.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2923&start=0#p20367
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7 extension] Simple Chat version 4 - beta
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-07-30 14:41:25

After an entry of 0, an empty line would be nice. Here's the output from the first example:

[quote]>talk to Larry
Larry looks up as you approach him.

1) "How's tricks?" 
2) "Good bye." 
(or 0 to say nothing)>> 0
>[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2924&start=0#p20368
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Printing a locale para
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-07-30 16:44:31

The initial appearance property applies up until the player first picks up or carries the object. (For an NPC, that typically doesn't happen, of course.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2925&start=0#p20369
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I7 extension] Inform ATTACK
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-31 06:16:01

I am happy to announce Version 3 of Inform ATTACK. As always, the latest version can be found [url=http://lilith.cc/~victor/temp/ATTACK-latest.zip]here[/url]; if you specifically want version 3, click [url=http://lilith.cc/~victor/temp/ATTACK-version-3.zip]here[/url].

Code written for version 2 will generally be compatible with version 3, though you should check out the changelog below to see if any of the changes might interfere with your existing code. Updating to version 3 is recommended because it brings a more robust handling of readying and natural weapons. Version 3 also adds the "weapon damage bonus" property, which can be used to increase or decrease the damage dealt by weapons in a more flexible way than was previously possible with only the "damage die" property. (The base damage dealt by a weapon is now a random number between 1 and [i]damage die[/i], plus the [i]weapon damage bonus[/i].)

Full changelog:

[list][*] Added "wield [weapon]" and "use [weapon]"' as synonyms for readying.[/*:m]
[*] Readying now applies to a visible rather than a touchable thing.[/*:m]
[*] A new check readying rule, the [i]cannot ready what is already readied rule[/i], rejects the readying action when applied to a readied weapon. This failed action takes no time.[/*:m]
[*] The [i]standard report readying rule[/i] now handles second person singular and any person plural correctly, and has a slightly improved message.[/*:m]
[*] The parser now considers it unlikely that the player wants to ready a natural weapon.[/*:m]
[*] The [i]ready natural weapons if no other weapon readied rule[/i] has been removed in favour of a more robust system of readying natural weapons.[/*:m]
[*] There is a new phrase "ready natural weapons", which readies the natural weapons of any alive person in the location who has no other readied weapon. This is run every combat round (by the [i]govern combat first part rule[/i]).[/*:m]
[*] When play begins, the [i]ready weapons for everyone rule[/i] is run, readying a weapon for every person in the game -- carried non-natural weapons if possible, otherwise natural weapons.[/*:m]
[*] The standard AI will no longer sometimes choose to ready an already readied weapon. (The weight entry has been decreased from -100 to -1000.)[/*:m]
[*] When striking a blow, the game now abides by (rather than considering) the [i]immediate results of hitting rules[/i]. This gives the author more control -- for instance, the author can now stop the blow if the immediate result of hitting someone is death.[/*:m]
[*] The phrase "You were killed by [i]X[/i]." will no longer be printed as (for example) "You were killed by the dead troll." if the troll also died during the attack. ATTACK will now always print "You were killed by the troll.".[/*:m]
[*] If the damage die of a weapon is less than 1, it will no longer be rolled by the [i]standard damage roll rule[/i]; its result will be considered 0. (Negative dice make little sense.)[/*:m]
[*] All weapons now have a number that varies called the "weapon damage bonus", which is usually 0, but can be both positive and negative. The [i]standard damage roll rule[/i] adds this number to the damage roll. The damage dealt by a weapon before modifiers is therefore [i]1d(damage die) + (weapon damage bonus)[/i].[/*:m][/list:u]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2925&start=0#p20370
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7 extension] Inform ATTACK
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-07-31 11:56:41

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]If the damage die of a weapon is less than 1, it will no longer be rolled by the [i]standard damage roll rule[/i]; its result will be considered 0. (Negative dice make little sense.)[/quote]
I've never written a game that uses this type of system. I'm sure it's very cool. I would suggest, however, that if the player has picked up a sword that, unbeknownst to her, has been enchanted by the evil sorcerer, the sword might have an effect opposite to that which is intended -- namely, attacking your enemy with it might actually make the enemy stronger and healthier with every blow. If I understand the intent of die-rolling correctly, in that scenario negative dice would make very good sense.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2925&start=0#p20371
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7 extension] Inform ATTACK
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-31 13:08:02

[quote="Jim Aikin"]I've never written a game that uses this type of system. I'm sure it's very cool. I would suggest, however, that if the player has picked up a sword that, unbeknownst to her, has been enchanted by the evil sorcerer, the sword might have an effect opposite to that which is intended -- namely, attacking your enemy with it might actually make the enemy stronger and healthier with every blow. If I understand the intent of die-rolling correctly, in that scenario negative dice would make very good sense.[/quote]
It would be easy to make such a sword in ATTACK, but you wouldn't want to use negative damage to do so. In fact, ATTACK ignores negative damage altogether: if I deal 1 damage to you, but your armour decreases the damage dealt by 2, you should not get -1 damage (i.e., 1 health). A total damage of -1 should just be treated as a total damage of 0. (And indeed, this cursed sword should be hampered, not helped, by armour worn by the enemy, right? If the enemy wears armour, he gets less health from my attack. Implementing the sword as an object which deals negative damage would have the exact opposite consequence.)

[size=85]In case anyone using ATTACK is wondering: to make such a cursed sword, I would use a "last calculate the damage rule" to save the total damage in some global variable and then reduce the damage done to 0; and then use an "aftereffects rule" to grant the saved total damage as health to the defender. This is assuming you want all normal damage modifiers to apply. I you do not, use an "immediate results of hitting rule" instead.[/size]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2923&start=0#p20372
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7 extension] Simple Chat version 4 - beta
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-07-31 14:11:12

Sounds like a good idea; I'll do so.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2926&start=0#p20373
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Pocket issues [now with even more issues]
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-07-31 16:26:00

So I have a uniform that the player wears, which has a pocket, which has a pair of glasses in it. Should the player attempt to take the pocket, a standard "that seems to be part of the uniform" is printed, which is fine. But should the player attempt to take the glasses, the same message is printed. Am I missing something here? The DM4 doesn't mention anything about such an issue.

By the way, I'm writing in Inform 6.

EDIT: New problem - The glasses now cause the game to crash - see below.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2926&start=0#p20374
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why can't the player take something out of a pocket?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-07-31 20:28:32

The solution is a teensy bit tricky, but not hard to implement. Don't make the pocket part of the uniform. Instead, use add_to_scope in the uniform object to add the pocket to scope, and then have the pocket itself reject (in a before routine) any attempt to detach it from the uniform.

Here's an example. Note that I've used ChangePlayer(bob) in Initialise in order to have a real player object in my code. (I've also defined a Room class.)
[code]
Room    study "Your study"
  with  description "There is a doorway to the east of this austere room.",
        e_to hallway;
		
Object	bob "you" study
	with name 'bob' 'me',
		description "You're lookin' good."
;

Object uniform "uniform" bob
	with
	name 'uniform',
	description "Your uniform is freshly pressed.",
	add_to_scope pocket,
	has transparent clothing
;

Object pocket "pocket"
	with
	name 'pocket',
	description "Handy, isn't it?",
	before [;
		Take: "That seems to be part of the uniform.";
		],
	has container open
;

Object glasses "glasses" pocket
	with
	name 'glasses',
	description "Spectacular.",
	has clothing
;[/code]

This is just for testing purposes. It's defective in many ways, such as reporting "a glasses" and "an uniform" in the output. But hopefully it will get you pointed in the right direction.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2926&start=0#p20375
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why can't the player take something out of a pocket?
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-07-31 21:10:22

Dude, you're a [i]lifesaver[/i]. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2926&start=0#p20376
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why can't the player take something out of a pocket?
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-07-31 21:52:34

Ooh, okay, ran into another bug. Maybe it's not related entirely to this, but I feel it is.

Whenever the game has to list the glasses as the contents of something (i.e, looking in the pocket, taking inventory with the glasses in the player's hand, etc.), the interpreter crashes, with the message "Call to non-routine".

Umm, any solutions for this? No clue what's causing it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2926&start=0#p20377
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pocket issues [now with even more issues]
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-07-31 23:29:35

You'll need to post your code for the glasses. When I run my test game, it works fine:

[quote]>look in pocket
In the pocket are some glasses.

>take glasses
Taken.

>i
You are carrying:
  some glasses
  a uniform
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2926&start=0#p20378
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pocket issues [now with even more issues]
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-07-31 23:52:08

[code]
Object  player_uniform "janitor's uniform"
  with  name 'my' 'mine' 'uniform' 'jumpsuit' 'gray' 'grey',
	article "your",
	description
	"Your trusty janitor's uniform. It's a dull slate-gray jumpsuit that zips up in the front, with a front pocket and two back pockets, and a 
	nametag sewn onto the left breast.",
	before [;
	  Disrobe:
	    "Company policy says you can't take off your uniform until your shift's over. Common sense says you shouldn't take off your uniform
	    in a concrete building with faulty heating in the middle of winter.";
	],
	add_to_scope front_pocket player_nametag,
   has  clothing;

Class   UniComp		! Uniform Component
  with  before [;
	  Take, Remove: print "Bad idea. You rip it off the uniform, you buy it (the uniform, not just "; print (the) self; print ").^"; return true;
	];

UniComp player_nametag "nametag"
  with  name 'my' 'mine' 'name' 'tag' 'nametag' 'vinyl',
	article "your",
	description
	"It's a little vinyl nametag sewn onto your uniform, reading ~PARK~.",
   has  ;

UniComp front_pocket "front pocket"
  with  name 'front' 'pocket',
	capacity 1,
   has  container open transparent;

Object  reading_glasses "pair of reading glasses" front_pocket
  with  name 'my' 'black' 'reading' 'glasses' 'specs',
	article 'your',
	description
	"It's the same trusty pair of black reading glasses you've had for quite some time now.",
   has  clothing pluralname;
[/code]

The problem is the same whether or not I use ChangePlayer. At first I thought that something related to scope was conflicting with my personalized InvSub replacement, but that turned out not to be the case either.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2926&start=0#p20379
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pocket issues [now with even more issues]
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-08-01 02:08:56

A simple error, but not easy to catch: In the reading_glasses object, you defined:
[code]article 'your',[/code]
when you wanted:
[code]article "your",[/code]
When I fixed that, the inventory and look-in code ran as expected.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2927&start=0#p20380
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: ADRIFT 5.0.19
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-08-01 07:24:01

ADRIFT 5 release 19 is now available to download from the ADRIFT [url=http://www.adrift.co/cgi/adrift.cgi?page=download]website[/url].

This is the first release with no registration restrictions (since v3.9 anyway), and has support for Blorbs.  For full details, please see [url=http://forum.adrift.co/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7377]here[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2928&start=0#p20381
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: question about Graham Nelson's Player's Bill of Rights
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-08-01 08:29:12

ok, so i like to read as much as i can about IF (and being unemployed really gives me the time to do so), and all nite tonite i've been reading [b]Jimmy Maher's Let's Tell A Story Together[/b].
(first, as a english major, i need to say that it is horribly in need of a editor, and yes, i know i barely capitalize and generally abuse grammar, but english majors are allowed to do that  [emote];)[/emote]  )
so anyway, i had always heard of [b]Graham Nelson's Player's Bill of Rights[/b] but never really got around to reading it.  i guess i just assumed to know what kind of shit it involves.  so anyway, in Maher's well-researched, but despicably written essay, he quotes the entire bill of rights.

so my question is, what the hell does #5 mean?  it states:
[b]Not To Have The Game Closed Off Without Warning[/b]

and i've been up for 27 hours now, so maybe im not thinking too clearly, but can anyone explain what this particular line means??

thanks,
drive safely,
cory

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2928&start=0#p20382
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: question about Graham Nelson's Player's Bill of Rights
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-08-01 08:42:18

It means you shouldn't be able to get the game into an unwinnable condition without realizing that you might be doing so. 

For instance: suppose in the first room of the game is a cottage with a light switch in it. If you leave the cottage and go adventuring without turning the light switch on, nothing obviously bad happens at once... but three hundred turns later you're stumbling back through the dark woods and you can only make it back to the cottage and win if you turned the light switch on all that time ago. If not, you have to restart and replay all that intervening stuff in order to finish.

This is equivalent to what the zarfian cruelty scale calls a "cruel" rating: it's possible to do something that shuts off progress in the game and there is no indication of the fact at the time. These days this is typically regarded as poor design, so it's not that common, but it used to happen all the time in older games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2928&start=0#p20383
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: question about Graham Nelson's Player's Bill of Rights
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-08-01 08:43:59

I'm neither an English major nor a native English speaker, but my guess is that he means the player has the right to be aware if (and when) the game has come to an unsolvable point, and ideally she should have been somehow warned before reaching that point.

(but Emily has explained it alot better while I was typing  [emote]:D[/emote] )

--

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2928&start=0#p20384
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: question about Graham Nelson's Player's Bill of Rights
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-08-01 08:45:47

awesome, thanks, em!
i knew that that was poor design, i just didnt know that that sentence was referring to such.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2928&start=0#p20385
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: question about Graham Nelson's Player's Bill of Rights
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-01 11:14:01

[quote="ezfreemann"](first, as a english major, i need to say that it is horribly in need of a editor, and yes, i know i barely capitalize and generally abuse grammar, but english majors are allowed to do that  [emote];)[/emote]  )[/quote]
Jimmy is an English major too, so I think he ought to be allowed to get with it as well. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2928&start=0#p20386
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: question about Graham Nelson's Player's Bill of Rights
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-08-01 11:23:54

dammit, victor, once again you got me with your legal mumbo-jumbo!

ok, fair enough, but seriously, if you're gonna release a huge, well-researched dissertation like that, cmon get a proof-reader!!

my eyes hurt from rolling so much while reading it.

and then there's the whole "she" thing.  now, yes, it's old-school to always refer to "the player" as a "he", and some authors will mix it up a bit by alternating the he/she usage, but in 99% of his examples, he referred to the PC as "she".

now, im NOT a misogynist by any means, but since our language lacks a genderless word for that situation, it is customary and traditional to use "he", with allowances to alternate to "she" once in awhile out of political-correct fairness, but im sorry, reading that EVERY single PC in EVERY single work of IF as a "she" just got plain weird.

and the typos were uncountable.

again, we're all human, im no perfect guy, and my style of purposeful abuse of the language is apparent, but i wouldnt release a large dissertation like that in the state it was in, especially since its been out for, what, 6 years?  and never edited?

on a positive note, i had a great time reading it, i stayed up all nite to do so, and his research was thorough and well-documented.  it was definitely a treat to read and my nit-pickings are just that.

 [emote]8-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2926&start=0#p20387
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pocket issues [now with even more issues]
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-08-01 12:30:19

Ah, thank you! I was completely stumped by why that particular object was causing trouble but nothing else was. Jeez, I need to stop coding so early in the morning or something. Anyway, thanks for catching that for me, Jim.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2928&start=0#p20388
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: question about Graham Nelson's Player's Bill of Rights
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-08-01 14:30:09

Ah yes, my old friend, "customary and traditional."  Like "traditional marriage"!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2928&start=0#p20389
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: question about Graham Nelson's Player's Bill of Rights
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-08-01 14:32:42

no, never mentioned marriage, talkin language here, lol.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2928&start=0#p20390
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: question about Graham Nelson's Player's Bill of Rights
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-08-01 14:36:23

and if youre trying to make a point as if im too conservative in my thinking, u may want to check out my blog wherein youll find im gay and engaged.  i was discussing how authors write in english thru the ages, and my views on marriage arent quite "traditional" (especially since im 20 years older than my fiance' lol)   [emote]:lol:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2928&start=0#p20391
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: question about Graham Nelson's Player's Bill of Rights
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-08-01 14:47:07

Yep, I've read your blog.  My point was that tradition is not, in and of itself, a good reason for anything.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2928&start=10#p20392
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: question about Graham Nelson's Player's Bill of Rights
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-08-01 14:51:58

yeah, i agree with u, if tradition gets stale.  but being an avid and voracious reader, to see the use of "she" in 99% of the examples was obviously disconcerting in the fact of how unusual it was.  so yeah, we NEED certain traditions (like spelling "ask" and not "aks" despite how some ppl might pronounce it)

and, again, of course, i am guilty of breaking tradition by being too lazy to hit the SHIFT key when typing, so as i said, im not perfect in this regard.  i was just speaking about how authors usually write in english.

 [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2928&start=10#p20393
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: question about Graham Nelson's Player's Bill of Rights
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-08-01 14:54:12

AND actually, having traditions is not only necessary but useful for authors who want to stand out by breaking the tradition.

see [b]House Of Leaves[/b] for a great example of that!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2929&start=0#p20394
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I7] Determining if a room is lit up or not without player
User: savaric / DateTime: 2011-08-01 15:58:56

This should be simple, at least if feels like it should be, but all attempts so far have failed me.

Is there a way to determine if a room has light or not, when the player is not in it?

To clarify, this is what I understand about darkness so far:

- For a dark room "room is dark" is always true even if player is in it carrying a light source.

- "If player is in darkness" can be used to determine if player can see, whatever the source of light is, taking into account light sources within closed/transparent containers etc.

- "If Spooky Room is in darkness", however does not seem to work that way. 

But that is the sort of thing I would like to test for: Is room x lit by any means or not, regardless of weather player is in it or not.

I could probably solve it in some more convoluted way by checking if my light sources are in the room or not and so on, but since the "in darkness" rule already seems to do some complex checking of light sources in containers and whatnot I thought I could tap into that somehow...but no go so far.

A simple example where this would be useful is:
"On the hill you see a dark, creepy hut." 
vs
"On the hill you see a little hut, its windows ablaze with cheery light." if there is any sort of viable light source in the hut.


Regards
Savaric

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2330&start=10#p20395
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF and IP
User: Genstein / DateTime: 2011-08-01 16:29:23

One last (hah) update on this topic for the terminally interested: as intimated by my previous post, in the end we couldn't come to a mutually satisfying agreement so we parted ways amicably. On the doubleplus good side, I now have a more relaxing but cheerfully paid job without any such stringent (although in that case entirely commercially sound) restrictions.

The only minus side is that I've been slacking more outside work since - probably due to lowered stress levels as contractual issues always bug me - and thus failing to produce much code in my free time, which is if not ironic then at least amusing. Still, the principle's the thing, wherein I'll catch the conscience of the, er, other thing. You know. That one.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2930&start=0#p20396
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Removing the Headings
User: Skunks / DateTime: 2011-08-01 16:46:21

Looking for a way to remove the Heading that pops up after the player types anything in.  For example if I type 

[color=#FF0040]The Car is a room[/color]

everytime the player does anything in that room the heading "The Car" appears no matter what.  I would like to keep the headings for organizational purposes just for myself as the author, but would like to remove them from view from the player.

Also looking for a way to change the font in the game window

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2930&start=0#p20397
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Removing the Headings
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-08-01 17:20:04

I'm not exactly certain what you're trying to do or what development system you're trying to do it in. Is this Inform 7? If so, those aren't headings, those are room names, which are displayed so the player knows where they are. If you don't want them displayed for whatever reason, you'd use:

[code]The car is a room. The printed name of the car is "".[/code]

Headings are different than rooms. I do hide the room name in a single room in one of my current works in progress. But I do it for only that room and for a reason. I'm not sure how well players would take to never being told where they are, especially if they're using automapping. Not saying you shouldn't do it. Just from what I've seen on the forums and newsgroups, people don't enjoy having the traditional elements of the games taken away from them, even for design reasons or if it makes sense to do so.

Also, what kind of font changes are you trying to make? Are you trying to change the typeface or are you trying to change italics/bold/color/et cetera?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2929&start=0#p20398
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Determining if a room is lit up or not without play
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-01 17:47:03

The full lighting calculations are run only for the current location every turn.

To get at this directly, you could try:

[code]
To decide if (T - object) offers light: (- OffersLight({T}) -).
[/code]

However, I haven't given that more than a cursory test. It might not work in all circumstances.

You could also take a simpler approach: "if a lit thing is in the Hut..." That won't do all the container work, but maybe you don't need it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2930&start=0#p20399
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Removing the Headings
User: Skunks / DateTime: 2011-08-01 18:00:55

Awesome!  That's exactly what I'm looking for.  Ideally I'd like the room name to appear only when they enter the room but that's just my personal aesthetic preference and I appreciate your advice to leave it be.  Changing the typeface in the game window is also just for aesthetic purposes, for myself

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2929&start=0#p20400
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Determining if a room is lit up or not without play
User: savaric / DateTime: 2011-08-01 18:11:45

Thanks, you're probably right that I don't need the container work in practice. It's good to know I'm not missing something blatantly obvious though.

I was also considering some variant where you sneakily move the player to the room in question, test for "in darkness" and then move him back to where he was again. Not sure if that would work though, it depends on when the light calculation is actually made I suppose.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2928&start=10#p20401
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: question about Graham Nelson's Player's Bill of Rights
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-01 18:38:28

[quote="ezfreemann"]and then there's the whole "she" thing.  now, yes, it's old-school to always refer to "the player" as a "he", and some authors will mix it up a bit by alternating the he/she usage, but in 99% of his examples, he referred to the PC as "she".

now, im NOT a misogynist by any means, but since our language lacks a genderless word for that situation, it is customary and traditional to use "he", with allowances to alternate to "she" once in awhile out of political-correct fairness, but im sorry, reading that EVERY single PC in EVERY single work of IF as a "she" just got plain weird.[/quote]

Well, think of it this way. What would be fair would be to use "she" and "he" equally often. If everyone who cared about this issue used "she" every time they remembered, then "she" would be used -- what? five percent of the time? one percent?

So it makes sense to use "she" all the time, if you care.

(As for tradition: what tove said. It may take you aback a little to see "she" used generically, but if that makes readers think about gender issues at all it's a good thing. Maybe it gets weird for women to see the player always referred to as "he.")

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2931&start=0#p20402
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7:  List Problem
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-01 18:41:52

I've got a room in my game which the player can only enter once.  What this means is that if he happens to drop a critical object (there's no reason to do so but the player is not blocked from doing so) and fails to pick it up before leaving, he can get the game into an unwinnable state.  I'm OK with allowing the possibility, but if it happens I want to warn the player as soon as he leaves the room that he may have screwed up.  Thus, I need to flag situations where the player brought something into the room with him and does not have it when he leaves.

My thinking is to generate a list of items enclosed (to pick up indirectly held items) by the player when he enters, and a similar list when he leaves.  Then, I would run through the list of things on the "entry" list and check each item to see if it is also on the "exit" list.  If anything is missing, I would set a flag which I then use to generate the "You left something behind" message.

[code]"Forget Me Not" by Me

ThisRoom is a room.  ThatRoom is north of Thisroom.

A gizmo is in Thisroom.  A gadget is in Thisrroom.  A whoozeewhatzit is in Thisroom.

Forgotten is a truth state that varies.

After going to Thatroom:
	Now Inlist is the list of things enclosed by the player.
	
After going in Thatroom:
	Now Outlist is the list of things enclosed by the player;
	Now Forgotten is false;
	Repeat with item running through Inlist:
		If item is not listed in Outlist:
			Now Forgotten is true;
	If forgotten is true:
		Say "As you leave, you get the nagging feeling that you might have left something behind.".[/code]
doesn't compile.  The error messages suggest that the statements creating the two lists are not doing what I expect them to do.  I don't have much experience with lists.  Any suggestions?

Thanks.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2928&start=10#p20403
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: question about Graham Nelson's Player's Bill of Rights
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-08-01 18:45:21

hi matt, yes, agreed, i feel for women who have to put up with this old-school tradition, but, im sorry, thats just the way it really is.  a reader should not be "put-off" by such an unusual thing as the constant referring of a generic person as "she".  again, its simply because the general NORM in the english language is to use "he" because we lack a genderless pronoun.  its just the formula we use.

and again, i think its awesome to mix it up.  i read my old DnD manuals while on the shitter and they ALWAYS mixed the pronouns up, basically tit-for-tat.  it made clear, concise, fair usage in all their examples.

to only use "he" is the norm and acceptable.

to mix it up is acceptable.

but, im sorry, its just weird to ONLY use "she".  its just not done.  and again, this has nothing to do with anyone's damn genitals.  im simply talking language and how we've been taught to read it for many generations.

a reader should be able to focus on the point of the writing and not be distracted by such unorthodox usages.  (and numerous typos, again)

sorry this turned into this discussion, people.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2930&start=0#p20404
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Removing the Headings
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-01 18:47:35

Are you talking about "The Car" appearing at the very top of the window? That's called the status line; section 17.21 discusses how to change it, and there's an extension or two dealing with it (if you want to remove it completely, there's at least one extension called Status Line Removal or whatnot).

I wasn't quite sure, because "The Car" shouldn't appear after absolutely everything; if you have code like this (untested):

[code]The Garage is a room. "A garage with a car in it." The Car is inside from The Garage. "You're sitting in a car. It doesn't seem to have an ignition though."[/code]

then "The Car" shouldn't appear after everything you do in that room, only after you enter it or look or some such. So:

[quote][b]The Garage[/b]
A garage with a car in it.

>in

[b]The Car[/b]
You're sitting in a car. It doesn't seem to have an ignition though.

>sing
Your singing is abominable.

>x me 
As good-looking as ever.

>look

[b]The Car[/b]
You're sitting in a car. It doesn't seem to have an ignition though.[/quote]

Apologies if this isn't what you're talking about. And I4L is right -- if you never want to let the player see the room name, just set the printed names to "".

(By the way, my code is horrible. Implementing the car as a separate room yields atrocities like:

[quote][b]The Garage[/b]
A garage with a car in it.

>x car
You can't see any such thing.

>quit[/quote]

In this case, you'd want to make the car an enterable container.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2930&start=0#p20405
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Removing the Headings
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-01 18:48:32

If you want to have room headings appear when the player walks into a room, but not when they type LOOK, this is how you do it:
[quote]The modified room description heading rule is listed instead of the room description heading rule in the carry out looking rules.

This is the modified room description heading rule:
if the room-describing action is the going action, consider the room description heading rule.[/quote]
This will mean that the very first room description, on the first turn, will not have a heading, because that description is generated by this rule:
[quote]This is the initial room description rule: try looking.[/quote]
You'll have to replace that rule if you want it to behave differently.

(edit: okay, looking back I'm really not sure if that's what you meant, but I'm not quite sure what you [i]did[/i] mean.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2931&start=0#p20406
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  List Problem
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-08-01 19:29:17

There were a couple of things wrong with your code. First, you need to create the lists as global objects. When they're local to the rules, they won't persist between turns. Second, the "after going in thatroom" rule runs when you enter the room (because it's the going action, and you're now in thatroom).

This seems to work:

[code]ThisRoom is a room.  ThatRoom is north of Thisroom.

A peach is in Thisroom.  A pear is in Thisroom.  A banana  is in Thisroom.

Forgotten is a truth state that varies. Forgotten is false.

Inlist is a list of things that varies. Outlist is a list of things that varies.

Instead of going to Thatroom:
	Now Inlist is the list of things enclosed by the player;
	continue the action.
   
After going south from Thatroom:
	Now Outlist is the list of things enclosed by the player;
	Now Forgotten is false;
	Repeat with item running through Inlist:
		If item is not listed in Outlist:
			Now Forgotten is true;
	If forgotten is true:
		say "As you leave, you get the nagging feeling that you might have left something behind.";
	otherwise:
		continue the action.

Test me with "take all / n / drop peach / s".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2933&start=0#p20407
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [i7] Objects in containers
User: dormammu / DateTime: 2011-08-01 19:31:31

I'm new to Inform (sort of. I messed with a version of Inform way back circa 1997, but never did much with it.) and am having a bit of a problem. I'm designing a room with a pile of dirty clothes in it. I want the player to have to search through the pile a bit (really just use "look in pile") to find an item inside it. I can get this to work fine, but there's a problem: typing "take all" pulls the item out of the pile, even if you've never looked in it. Based on the Inform documentation, it seemed like defining the pile as opaque should prevent take all from taking something out of a container you haven't looked in, but it doesn't. Either I misread the documentation or am doing something wrong. I suppose I could make it a closed container, but typing "open pile of dirty clothes" seems nonsensical to me. I also thought about making it so the item doesn't exist (ie, it's off stage) until the pile of clothes is looked in, but Inform returns plenty of errors when I try to do that.

I've spent the past half hour or so googling this and haven't come up with much of anything. I figure this has to have been covered before, but I just can't seem to find it mentioned anywhere. Any advice?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2928&start=10#p20408
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: question about Graham Nelson's Player's Bill of Rights
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-01 19:32:55

[quote="ezfreemann"]but, im sorry, its just weird to ONLY use "she".  its just not done.[/quote]

Yes it is. I mean, Jimmy Maher does it, I do it, other people do it, ergo it's done.

I agree that we've gotten way off topic, so I'll make this my last post.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2931&start=0#p20409
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  List Problem
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-01 19:43:22

Another thing to note is that lists are memory-hoggy -- I think someone posted that if you include a single list, then I7 compiles in all the code for handling lists into your program.

It seems to me that you could do this without lists, by using a property. This isn't tested even for compilation, but it might work

[code]A thing can be held-on-entering. A thing is usually not held-on-entering.

After going to ThisRoom:
   repeat with item running through things enclosed by the player:
       now item is held-on-entering.

After going [? not sure if this will capture any direction] from ThisRoom:
   if any held-on-entering thing is not enclosed by the player:
      say "You have the feeling that you might have forgotten something. Sure you want to leave?";
      if the player consents: [not positive this will work as intended]
         now every held-on-entering thing is not held-on-entering; [? maybe you need a repeat loop here; actually if the player can only enter once, you don't need to reset held-on-entering in this way as it'll never be checked again]
         continue the action;
      otherwise:
          say "OK, you're still here."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2933&start=0#p20410
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] Objects in containers
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-08-01 19:47:05

Two different ways to approach this:
1) You could not move the item to the pile until the player searches the pile. ("After searching the pile: now the item is in the pile.")
2) You could use a "Rule for deciding whether all includes" -- check chapter 17.34 in the documentation.

Oh, I just re-read your post and see that you're trying the first thing I mentioned.  If you post the relevant code and error messages, we can try to figure out where you're going awry.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2931&start=0#p20411
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  List Problem
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-08-01 20:21:13

[quote="matt w"]Another thing to note is that lists are memory-hoggy -- I think someone posted that if you include a single list, then I7 compiles in all the code for handling lists into your program.[/quote]

That was me: The cost seems to be about 48 kilobytes (file size)*, which can make a real difference if you're compiling to the Z-machine, but is utterly inconsequential if you're compiling to Glulx. If your game is Glulx and you find lists convenient for a given purpose, there's no reason not to use them.

--Erik

*That is, including just one list variable in your game will increase the file size by about 48K thanks to the code needed to support list functionality.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2928&start=10#p20412
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: question about Graham Nelson's Player's Bill of Rights
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-08-01 20:56:47

ok, what about this?  u ever see the box cover of Planetfall or Infidel?  they are DUDES on the cover, and, in the case of Infidel, the PC is specifically male, yet that dissertation STILL refers to the PC as SHE.  ok?  its not ok.  its not the norm.  

sure you and all those other clowns may do it, but lots of ppl smoke crack too.  its not the correct thing to do.

trust me, i know our language and its usage pretty frickin well.

my last post as well.

thanks for the lively discussion all!

 [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2931&start=0#p20413
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  List Problem
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-01 21:03:47

Thanks.

So far, this game has fit into z8, but I have no problem going to Glulx if I exceed z8's limits.  I'll try the list approach and see what happens.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=70#p20418
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2011-08-01 22:36:10

[quote="gravel"]I'd have to borrow models and textures and animations, but there are resources for that, just as I've borrowed artistic resources for my IF WIP.[/quote]

But how much are you willing and able to pay? I've found that it's a lot harder than one might think to find art on the Internet that's unambiguously reusable and royalty free, especially if there's a specific something you want depicted -- clothing of a particular style or era, for instance. And if you do find it, there's the matter of reconciling the diverse styles and moods of the work. As I high school student I used to try writing things in Ren'Py, but my biggest problem was always finding images that really fit what I was saying. I have no drawing skill whatsoever, so I made do with what I could get. I wound up illustrating one project using a NASA image, an old photograph of the interior of a Japanese passenger train, a filtered webcam picture of my own hand, GIMP-made renderings of simple, abstract shapes, and, for the characters, those male-and-female icons that appear on signs for public toilets. In my head, of course, there was all this unrefined, hand-sketched nonsense with evocative textures and dramatic facial expressions, but there was no way I was going to find all [i]that[/i] ready-made, or raise the money to commission illustrations. And the story was one of those little high school experiments, probably not worth someone else's hard effort. But I think, for this reason, IF [i]is[/i] more accessible to the independent game maker with a story in mind.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2933&start=0#p20419
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] Objects in containers
User: dormammu / DateTime: 2011-08-01 22:59:31

[quote="tove"] If you post the relevant code and error messages, we can try to figure out where you're going awry.[/quote]

Thanks. I got an extension (Underside by Eric Eve) and noticed the documentation mentioning an example like this, which is what gave me the idea. Anyway, here's the code (minus description text):

A pile of dirty clothes is in the Main Bedroom. A pile of dirty clothes is scenery. A Pile of Dirty clothes is a container. Instead of taking a pile of dirty clothes: say "There's no way you can carry this much at once, this pile is giant. Maybe you could take just an item or two?"
     A pair of pants is a thing. Understand "pants" or "trousers" or "jeans" as a pair of pants. A pair of pants are wearable.
    Before looking in the pile of dirty clothes when the pair of pants is off-stage: move the pair of pants into the pile of dirty clothes.

The error I get is: "You wrote 'move the pair of pants into the pile of dirty clothes'  : but this is a phrase which I don't recognise, possibly because it is one you meant to define but never got round to, or because the wording is wrong (see the Phrasebook section of the Index to check). Alternatively, it may be that the text immediately previous to this was a definition whose ending, normally a full stop, is missing?"

It seems I'm just phrasing the the last part wrong. I looked through the Phrasebook as the error message suggested, but I haven't really been able to find anything relevant.

Thanks for helping!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2937&start=0#p20420
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Writing a paragraph with a list
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2011-08-01 23:03:07

[code]A seat is a kind of supporter.
For writing a paragraph about an occupied common seat (called the throne):
	If the throne supports exactly one thing:
		Say "On [a throne] is [the random thing on the throne].";
	Otherwise:
		Say "On [a throne] are [list of things on the throne with definite articles]."[/code]
Those adjectives in the For... about construction are, I think, irrelevant to the issue, but I'll include them anyway:[code]Definition: A supporter is occupied rather than unoccupied if there is something on it.  A seat can be unique or common.[/code]Apparently Inform doesn't like the "list of things" construction, but I can't figure out why.  It gives this:[code]You wrote 'Say "On [a throne] are [list of things on the throne with
    definite articles]."' (source text, line 295): but descriptions used as
    values are not allowed to contain references to temporary variables defined
    by 'let' or by loops, because they may very well not exist any more when
    the description needs to be used, in another time and another place.[/code]
I vaguely understand that the list construction involves a description, but I don't see why I'm not allowed to do this.  What's this "other time and place" Inform is talking about?

I'm doing this because I want "common" seats to mostly be described with indefinite articles; I've been using the property to indicate whether or not the seat in question was constructed via duplicates, or is a unique object.

I tried to simplify this with Plurality and [is-are], but Inform didn't like it (but unlike this issue, I know how to work around that!)

Any help would be greatly appreciated [emote]:)[/emote]

Edit: fix adjectives.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2933&start=0#p20421
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] Objects in containers
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-01 23:03:26

"move the pair of pants into the pile of dirty clothes" should be "now the pair of pants is in the pile of dirty clothes".

This isn't called out in the phrasebook because it's just "now ... is ...", which is used for all sorts of relation-setting in I7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2933&start=0#p20422
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] Objects in containers
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-08-01 23:12:23

There's another issue here, and it's subtle. Because you've declared the pile of dirty clothes as scenery (presumably because they're mentioned in the room description), the response to 'take all' is "There are none at all available." This happens because Inform never tries to take scenery ... but it reads very badly here.

I'm not sure how to fix this. I tried this:
[code]Rule for deciding whether all includes the pile of dirty clothes: it does.[/code]
That didn't help. It ought to, I think.

Also, the way you have it set up, the pair of pants is moved into the pile only by searching the pile of clothes. The result (if the pile of clothes has no description, which in your code it doesn't), is this: 'x clothes' ... "The pile of clothes is empty." Yet searching it reveals the pair of pants. Maybe you want examining the pile also to reveal the pants? If so:

[code]Before examining or searching the pile of clothes:
	if the pair of pants is off-stage:
		now the pair of pants is in the pile of dirty clothes.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2929&start=0#p20423
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Determining if a room is lit up or not without play
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2011-08-01 23:19:33

Example 81 describes how to do this.  Unfortunately, if you have a backdrop that provides light, you need to handle it specially; other than that it works flawlessly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2933&start=0#p20424
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] Objects in containers
User: dormammu / DateTime: 2011-08-02 00:29:55

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Also, the way you have it set up, the pair of pants is moved into the pile only by searching the pile of clothes. The result (if the pile of clothes has no description, which in your code it doesn't), is this: 'x clothes' ... "The pile of clothes is empty." Yet searching it reveals the pair of pants. Maybe you want examining the pile also to reveal the pants?[/quote]

Actually, there is some description text in the original code. I took it out in my last post because I (mistakenly?) thought it wouldn't be relevant to my problem. But I'll see if the code you gave me fixes the problem. Hopefully it will. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2933&start=0#p20425
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] Objects in containers
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-08-02 00:39:53

It might be worth pointing out, so you don't think your mind is just making things up, that "move [i]the player[/i] to whateverroom" [i]is[/i] valid syntax (and is in fact the recommended way of teleporting the player), so that is probably why you tried that phrasing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2937&start=0#p20426
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Writing a paragraph with a list
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-08-02 01:02:16

This is an example of a not-very-helpful error message. There are two different types of lists in I7: lists generated by descriptions and the "list of..." kind of value. The "with definite articles" syntax is defined for the latter. For the former, just use "[i]a[/i] list of... " or "[i]the[/i] list of... " The good news is in this case you don't have to worry about "is / are" either (see ch. 5.5). Try this:[code]For writing a paragraph about an occupied common seat (called the throne):
	say "On [a throne] [is-are the list of things on the throne].".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2902&start=0#p20427
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: best most simplest way to report NPC leaving room please
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2011-08-02 01:03:51

I don't understand why you wouldn't just have the NPC [b]actually try going[/b]:
[code]The bar is a room.  The street is south of the bar.  Fred is a man in the bar.
Every turn:
	If Fred is in the bar, try Fred going south; [syntax is weird, basically Fred will try to go south when this command is executed]
	Otherwise try Fred going north.[/code]
This will report Fred arriving and leaving because the Standard Rules handle this automatically.  If you must move Fred from one location to another instantly with Now..., then you should report it yourself:[code]Teleport pad 1 is a room.  Fred is a man in teleport pad 1.
Teleport pad 2 is a room.
Every turn:
	If Fred is in Teleport pad 1:
		If the player can see Fred, say "Fred disappears.";
		Now Fred is in Teleport pad 2;
		If the player can see Fred, say "Fred appears.";
	Otherwise:
		If the player can see Fred, say "Fred disappears.";
		Now Fred is in Teleport pad 1;
		If the player can see Fred, say "Fred appears."
The street is south of Teleport pad 1 and north of Teleport pad 2.[/code]
I've tested both of these and they work fine.

The main problem with the first approach, however, is that the rule is only executed once per turn, which could be annoying if you want an NPC to travel a long distance.  I'd do something like this:
[code]Point A is a room.  The street is south of point A.  The road is south of the street.  Point B is south of the road.
Fred is a man in point A.
Fred's journey is a scene.
Every turn during Fred's journey:
	Let thataway be the best route from the location of Fred to Point B;
	If the player cannot see Fred and the player is not enclosed by Point B, now Fred is in point B;
	Otherwise try Fred going thataway.
Fred's journey ends when Fred is in Point B.
Fred's journey begins when the turn count is 2.
Test me with "z / z / showme fred / z / showme fred".
Test more with "abstract me to point B / z / z / z / z". [abstract basically means "move the noun to the inside of the second noun, and don't do any realism checks."  It's a testing command.]
Test follow with "z / z / s / s / s".[/code]
This assumes that Fred begins in point A and that there's a route from point A to point B (if there isn't Fred will get "stuck").  If the player is in Fred's path, however, they may notice that Fred teleported past them, even if they cannot see him.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2902&start=0#p20428
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: best most simplest way to report NPC leaving room please
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-08-02 01:39:15

that code wouldnt work with the extension im using.  thats why.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2929&start=0#p20429
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Determining if a room is lit up or not without play
User: savaric / DateTime: 2011-08-02 01:47:27

[quote="NYKevin"]Example 81 describes how to do this.  Unfortunately, if you have a backdrop that provides light, you need to handle it specially; other than that it works flawlessly.[/quote]

Interesting, thanks for pointing that out. I had managed to miss that despite looking for examples on light and darkness.

And if we combine that example with my idea of moving the player...I think we solve the backdrop problem also, like so
(testing "in darkness" didn't seem to work, but "can see a lit thing" does.):

[code]Definition: a room (called the target room) is lit up: 
	if the target room is lighted: 
		yes; 
	let l be location;
	move the player to the target room, without printing a room description; 
	if the player can see a lit thing: 
		move player to l, without printing a room description;
		yes;
	move player to l, without printing a room description; 
	no;
[/code]

(I just did a quick test, and it seems to work as expected.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2938&start=0#p20430
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Numbered buttons in Inform 6?
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-08-02 03:22:48

Obviously, Inform 6 gets upset if you attempt to give something a parser name that's a single letter or number. So, how does one get around this, so that the player can type "push 1", "push button 2", etc., and get the desired result? I tried finding the relevent information in the Design Manual, but couldn't seem to apply it to my code (although, to be truthful, I have positively no idea how to even go about this anyway).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2933&start=0#p20431
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] Objects in containers
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-02 06:15:06

[quote="dormammu"][quote="Jim Aikin"]Also, the way you have it set up, the pair of pants is moved into the pile only by searching the pile of clothes. The result (if the pile of clothes has no description, which in your code it doesn't), is this: 'x clothes' ... "The pile of clothes is empty." Yet searching it reveals the pair of pants. Maybe you want examining the pile also to reveal the pants?[/quote]

Actually, there is some description text in the original code. I took it out in my last post because I (mistakenly?) thought it wouldn't be relevant to my problem. But I'll see if the code you gave me fixes the problem. Hopefully it will. Thanks![/quote]

As a design suggestion, you might want to make examining the pile reveal the pants anyway, or at least give the player a strong hint that they haven't searched through the pile and might want to. There's some discussion of searching and examining [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=19951#p19951]here[/url]; several people said "search" essentially creates a guess-the-verb problem for them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=70#p20432
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-02 06:53:16

It's true that if you have a very unusual and particular vision for your artwork and are unwilling to compromise, things are going to be significantly more difficult.  Want a 90,000 vertice model of Van Eyck's Arnolfini Wedding hat?  Want a hand-drawn graphical novel but can't draw yourself?  Yeah, you're . . . going to have some problems.  

But then, in my vision, all my prose is sharp and witty and spare.  So we've all got problems matching up to the vision of games in our heads.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=70#p20433
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: corax / DateTime: 2011-08-02 07:22:37

Why Text Games? 
   They don't require super-power expensive machinery or the fast reflexes of a hyped up teenage male. They do require an understanding of life and of language. Two very different markets: the one is young and spendthrift and so 'good' for business; the other refuses to overspend on entertainment, 'not good' for business. That is why Computer Game Companies aim at the young by using lots of 'bling'.
   I'm a pensioner that runs and plays table top RPGs and most of my companions are in their early twenties. One of the major problems I have is their lack of vocabulary, there are others. The problem has got worse over the decades.
   I read books, wouldn't have a kindle as a gift, and still listen to the radio. Reason - [color=#0040FF]the colour's better and so are the characters[/color].

That's my answer, but unfortunately it requires a different set of skills to those that the target audience of the Gaming Companies. So, very few commercial games. Ain't life tough!  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2933&start=0#p20434
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] Objects in containers
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-02 07:57:34

On the topic of get all...

If something is both scenery and something I tried to make sure would be interacted with  by a 'get all' with the line:

[code]Rule for deciding whether all includes puddle mud: it does.[/code]

Does the fact puddle mud is scenery override this rule? Atm in my game it does - trying to 'get all' doesn't interact with puddle mud.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2933&start=0#p20435
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] Objects in containers
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-02 08:07:01

The rule that excludes scenery in the Standard Rules is:

[code]Rule for deciding whether all includes scenery while taking (this is the
	exclude scenery from take all rule): rule fails.[/code]
The "while taking" part makes it more specific than your rule, so it get precedence. You can make your rule more specific by adding the "while taking" part as well:

[code]Rule for deciding whether all includes puddle mud while taking: it does.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2933&start=10#p20436
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] Objects in containers
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-02 08:21:24

Ah, thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2938&start=0#p20437
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Numbered buttons in Inform 6?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-08-02 10:35:22

Page 225 of the DM4 discusses the number token. In order to see how to use that functionality, you need to have studied the preceding pages on the grammar lines of verbs. In extreme cases, as noted on p. 226, the ParseNumber entry point can be pressed into service, but entry points are finicky and not often needed.

You'll need to add new grammar lines to the 'push' 'press' verb, in which you call your own action. This is done with the Extend keyword, as shown on p. 219. You might call your action PushButton, for instance. You would then write code to handle PushButton.

There are, of course, two distinct cases to be considered. The player may type 'push 3' or 'push button 3'. Each of these requires its own grammar line. In the first case, maybe you need a PushButtonVagueSub. (It's been years since I did this level of I6 coding ... details are hazy.) This would then evaluate whether the player is in a room where there are buttons, and call a new action on the button object if so, and issue an error message otherwise.

You'll learn a lot about I6 coding by going through this exercise. If you can't get it working, feel free to post sections of your code that aren't working, and someone here will try to help.

You might also look on the Archive to see if there's an extension that handles this type of functionality. Someone may have written one. I6 extensions are not to be found on the I7 Extensions web page -- you have to dig around in the Archive to find them. For reasons buried in the sands of time, the Inform stuff is in the Infocom directory. Here are the extensions: [url]http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXinfocomXcompilersXinform6XlibraryXcontributions.html[/url].

Also ... to learn whether your custom verb is using the right grammar lines, you can use the 'trace' debugging word. Type 'trace 3' in your game and you'll see a list of one or more attempts by the parser to match verb grammar. Chapter 7 of the DM4 discusses trace, I believe. Extremely useful stuff in that chapter.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2938&start=0#p20438
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Numbered buttons in Inform 6?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-08-02 10:39:12

Aren't most of the I6 extensions also posted [url=http://www.inform-fiction.org/extensions/index.html]here[/url]?

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2937&start=0#p20439
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Writing a paragraph with a list
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2011-08-02 12:23:42

Okay, I've done that, but the "describe what's on scenery supporters rule" is beating me to the punch and I'm not sure why.  I tried making the rule about the occupant instead but that didn't do anything either.

I tried with "rules all" but my rule didn't even come up in the listing.

My guess is that the "don't mention scenery in room descriptions rule" is getting in the way when the rule is about the seat, and the occupant isn't being selected as "notable" in the first place since (s)he's not actually in the location itself.

I was able to get it working by changing the rule to a "printing a locale paragraph about" rule so that the whole description process is bypassed, but this seems like overkill.  I did want to avoid procedural rules since they're deprecated.  Thanks for your help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2938&start=0#p20440
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Numbered buttons in Inform 6?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-08-02 13:00:25

[quote="ektemple"]Aren't most of the I6 extensions also posted [url=http://www.inform-fiction.org/extensions/index.html]here[/url]?[/quote]
Not the newer ones, no. I submitted one to the archive last year, and it's not on inform-fiction.org. I don't think it's the only omission, but I haven't done a tabulation. I don't think the inform-fiction page is being maintained.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=70#p20441
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: Greeny / DateTime: 2011-08-02 13:04:12

[quote="corax"]snip.. I read books, wouldn't have a kindle as a gift snip..[/quote]
I read books too, and i love my Kindle.
To me the value of a book is in it's content, not the physical pages of paper.
And you can play IF on them!  [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2938&start=0#p20442
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Numbered buttons in Inform 6?
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-08-02 13:53:31

The problem with having an extension to just "push" is that I also want the buttons to exist as actual objects within the world, so that "take button 1", "smell button 7", "examine button" ("What do you mean, the button marked 0, the button marked 1, etc., etc.), "pull 4", and so on, would all produce results, even if it's just a simple "You can't do that". Surely there's a way to simply get the parser to accept numbers as dictionary words, right?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2939&start=0#p20443
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Handling run-time errors
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-08-02 14:37:18

Is there a way in inform to properly handle run-time errors?

I'm using Emily Short's approaches, and my world map is divided into several non-contiguous areas (home, work, store) that the player is magically transported between when "drive"ing a car.

When the player then tries to GO TO KITCHEN when at the store, I get[code]*** Run-time problem P60: Attempt to set a variable to the wrong kind of object: you wrote 'now approach-heading is the best route from the location to the noun through visited rooms, using doors', which sets the value to nothing - but that doesn't have the kind 'direction'.

You can't think how to get there from here.
[/code]I like the "You can't think how to get there from here." but is there a way I can make it not show the run time error?

In other words, how do I handle errors gracefully? Having the parser spit out run-time errors during play is not a good way to keep players happy, you know?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2938&start=0#p20444
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Numbered buttons in Inform 6?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-08-02 14:44:22

[quote="Glorb"]The problem with having an extension to just "push" is that I also want the buttons to exist as actual objects within the world, so that "take button 1", "smell button 7", "examine button" ("What do you mean, the button marked 0, the button marked 1, etc., etc.), "pull 4", and so on, would all produce results, even if it's just a simple "You can't do that". Surely there's a way to simply get the parser to accept numbers as dictionary words, right?[/quote]
You may be complicating the problem unnecessarily. It should be perfectly feasible for the buttons to exist as actual objects. (In fact, I'm sure it is, but I no longer have the source code for "Not Just an Ordinary Ballerina," so I can't give you a working example.) All you need is two new grammar lines -- something like this (untested, and almost certainly flawed):
[code]
Extend 'push' 'press'
* number               -> PushButtonVague
* noun number        -> Pushbutton
;[/code]

My vague impression is that the parser doesn't like one-character names of any sort. If you want to do it that way, I suggest you explore the wonders of parse_name. To quote Kathleen Fischer, "parse_name is your friend." (Whatever happened to Kathleen, I wonder.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2939&start=0#p20445
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Handling run-time errors
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-08-02 14:53:23

The problem is that your code is not taking into account the case in which there is no best route from the location to the noun [etc] -- in other words, "the best route" is "nothing," but "nothing" is not a direction.  So slap a conditional in front of it: [pseudocode][i]if[/i] such a route exists, now approach-heading is it.  Otherwise, do something else (say the "You can't get there from here").[/pseudocode]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2939&start=0#p20446
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Handling run-time errors
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-02 14:58:14

Are you using version 3 of Approaches? It sounds to me as though you've hit a bug that she corrected in Version 4, as she discusses [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2011/03/27/minor-extension-updates-approaches-measured-liquid/]here[/url]. Version 4 looks to be up on the site now.

For the record, what you would need to do if you wanted to fix it yourself would probably be to change the extension code to use a local variable and so you can test to see if the route is a direction before you set approach-heading, as in ex. 230, "The Unexamined Life" (or just search the documentation for "if the way is a direction").

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2939&start=0#p20447
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Handling run-time errors
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-08-02 15:20:36

[quote="tove"]The problem is that your code is not taking into account the case in which there is no best route from the location to the noun [etc] -- in other words, "the best route" is "nothing," but "nothing" is not a direction.  So slap a conditional in front of it: [pseudocode][i]if[/i] such a route exists, now approach-heading is it.  Otherwise, do something else (say the "You can't get there from here").[/pseudocode][/quote]I'm working on doing just that, but so far my efforts have been fruitless.
[quote="matt w"]Are you using version 3 of Approaches? It sounds to me as though you've hit a bug that she corrected in Version 4, as she discusses [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2011/03/27/minor-extension-updates-approaches-measured-liquid/]here[/url]. Version 4 looks to be up on the site now.[/quote]In fact I am using version 4.

I'll post my results if anything happens. So far I haven't made any progress.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2939&start=0#p20448
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Handling run-time errors
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-02 15:34:33

Hm. I just created a little project with two disconnected rooms, and Approaches version 4 gave the proper result. Can you whittle your code to the smallest thing that produces the bug and post it? Had you changed Approaches at all before you got this error? Are you absolutely sure the game is grabbing the right version (sorry for asking this, but I got a lot of weird results because the wrong version of the Standard Rules kept opening)?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2939&start=0#p20449
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Handling run-time errors
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-08-02 15:38:21

I figured out why my modifications aren't working:
I have approaches installed, but in this story, I'm using Aaron Reed's Player Experience Upgrade, which includes ver. 3 of Approaches.
Now that I've made my adjustments in the proper extension, it's working. Here is how I modified it:[code]An approach-finding rule (this is the approach-heading selection rule):
	let possible-direction be the best route from the location to the noun through visited rooms, using doors;
	if possible-direction is a direction:
		now approach-heading is possible-direction;
	otherwise:
		let possible-direction be the best route from the location to the noun through visited rooms, using even locked doors;
		if possible-direction is a direction:
			now approach-heading is possible-direction;
		otherwise:
			say "You can't think how to get there from here.";
			rule fails; [/code]You're right, version 4 fixes this. Too bad I wasn't *actually* using version 4. Herp derp.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2938&start=0#p20450
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Numbered buttons in Inform 6?
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-08-02 15:38:45

Ah, I wasn't sure how to use parse_name, but there's actually nothing to it at all. And as far as "examine button 1", "push button marked 1", etc. it works. But how come when the player says "<verb> 1", the game assumes that the player means anything [i]but[/i] the button? For example:

[quote]
> press button 2

Boop.

> press button 1

Beep.

> press 1
(The microwave)

That's fixed in place.
[/quote]

The parser does this irrelevent of any buttons or parse_names. Is this just some strange quirk of Inform that I should learn to live with, or can it be circumvented? (Also, it only does this with the number 1; other numbers seem to work fine.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=70#p20451
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-08-02 15:59:29

[quote="corax"]Why Text Games? 
   They don't require super-power expensive machinery or the fast reflexes of a hyped up teenage male. They do require an understanding of life and of language. Two very different markets: the one is young and spendthrift and so 'good' for business; the other refuses to overspend on entertainment, 'not good' for business. That is why Computer Game Companies aim at the young by using lots of 'bling'.
   I'm a pensioner that runs and plays table top RPGs and most of my companions are in their early twenties. One of the major problems I have is their lack of vocabulary, there are others. The problem has got worse over the decades.
   I read books, wouldn't have a kindle as a gift, and still listen to the radio. Reason - [color=#0040FF]the colour's better and so are the characters[/color].

That's my answer, but unfortunately it requires a different set of skills to those that the target audience of the Gaming Companies. So, very few commercial games. Ain't life tough!  [emote];)[/emote][/quote]

I don't see what age really has to do with the appeal. I'm a huge multiplayer FPS and action-game fan, and fit squarely in that target audience and its stereotypes (late-teens, male, etc. etc.). On the other hand, I can't tolerate any adventure games [i]but[/i] IF/text adventures. Maybe it's just the "cozy" kind of feel that it evokes (my family owned a hilariously out-of-date computer running DOS/Windows 95 up until about 2009, leaving me with few gaming options aside from our Playstation), but I think in general it's entirely up to individual tastes. I mean, I stopped listening to radio ever since I really got into underground music, but I can't ever see myself reading books on anything but regular old paper.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=70#p20452
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-08-02 16:00:49

I have a Kindle myself and after 5 minutes of using it, I found it was perfectly natural to read on. I can adjust the font size, type and spacing - something I never could do with a normal book. In fact, the more I use my Kindle, the more I find reading a normal book a chore. Just the other day, I was flicking through a book in a bookshop and noticing how bad the typeface was. Small, not particularly easy on the eyes. Quite an eyesore in fact. Being able to change things like that and read the book the way you want to is worth the price of a Kindle in my opinion.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2940&start=0#p20453
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: "Afterward" is a sweet handle, I agree
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-02 16:59:36

Hey, I'm Ryan! I just registered this afternoon.

Maybe I'm supposed to introduce myself in the designated introduction thread, but they seem kind of busy up there.

Here are some things about me:

- I am a graduate student in linguistics.
- I play the ukulele; it is a noble instrument, mellifluous of voice.
- [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/showuser?id=sewum1c69z4rchuz]This is my IFDB profile[/url], ooh la la.

The incredible story of how I got started writing in Inform is as follows: After an inexcusably lengthy period of not having played any IF at all, I realized I didn't even have an interpreter for my new MacBook. Trying to remember the name of the application I had used on my other computer, I googled "Inform" and ended up downloading that instead of Zoom. I opened up Inform and was pretty confused for a while as it couldn't be used to open any .z5 files.

I am excited to start bugging you guys with questions!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2942&start=0#p20455
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Copyright woes
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2011-08-02 17:43:56

I originally posted this in the general game design forum, but I thought this one was more appropriate, so I moved it.

I wanted to use a certain two-line poem as the epigraph to my IF WIP. (Well, three lines, if you include the title.) But I didn't write the poem. So I contacted the publisher, a large New York company. The results were... disappointing. I'd like to share the whole correspondence with you and find out if this is typical, if I can do anything better in the future, etc. Names, contact information, and the title of the poem have all been censored. Of course, everything is in reverse chronological order.

[quote]Sent: 	Tuesday, August 02, 2011 4:37 PM
To: 	Dominic Delabruere

Dear Dominic,

We've reviewed your request regarding the use of the poem "-- ------ --------" by ------- ----- as an epigraph to a textual video game.  We cannot grant permission for your request because your proposal is not consistent with the original intention of the poem.  But we do appreciate and thank you for your interest in our books.

Best,
----


---- ---
Subsidiary Rights Assistant
-------- ------- --------
Trade & Reference Publishers
Tel ------------
Fax ------------

-----Original Message-----
From: Dominic Delabruere [mailto:-----------@---.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2011 1:30 PM
To: ---, ----
Subject: RE:

---- ---:

Thank you for the reminder. My mailing address is as follows:

Dominic Delabruere
-- ------- ------
-------, -- -----

Sincerely,
Dominic Delabruere

________________________________________
From: Lou, Sara [----.---@------.com]
Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2011 11:23 AM
To: Dominic Delabruere
Subject: RE:

Dear Dominic,

We received your request below regarding the poem "-- ------ --------" by ------- -----.  Would you please provide us with a mailing address so that we may process your request?

Best,
----


---- ---
Subsidiary Rights Assistant
-------- ------- --------
Trade & Reference Publishers
Tel ------------
Fax ------------


-----Original Message-----
From: Dominic Delabruere [mailto:-----------@---.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, June 28, 2011 1:01 PM
To: Trade Permissions
Subject:

To whom it may concern:

I am writing to request permission to use ------- -----'s poem "-- ------ -------- --," which appears in --- ----- -----'- ---, first published by -------- ----- ---------- in 1990. Specifically, I wish to use the poem as an epigraph to a textual video game distributed via the World Wide Web. The poem would appear unedited and in its entirety. The epigraph would be fully credited, and the game distributed publicly and without charge. I am developing the game as an independent hobbyist.

Best regards,
Dominic Delabruere[/quote]

Note that, although I was asked for my physical address, I received no physical correspondence.

The "first published by" thing came up because the original publisher had become an imprint of the company I contacted in the intervening years.

So, advice/analysis anyone? Thanks in advance.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2942&start=0#p20456
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Copyright woes
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-08-02 17:56:40

I would contact the author as the rights may have reverted back in the interim, or be non-exclusive to that publisher.

If the author says no, I would drop it. Quoting any copyrighted work in its entirety is problematic.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2940&start=0#p20457
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "Afterward" is a sweet handle, I agree
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-02 17:56:45

[quote="Afterward"]- I play the ukulele; it is a noble instrument, mellifluous of voice.[/quote]
Noble indeed, but not quite as noble as the kazoo!

Anyway, welcome to the forum.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2940&start=0#p20458
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "Afterward" is a sweet handle, I agree
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-08-02 18:29:49

Looks like you're off to a good start, Afterward!  Welcome.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2942&start=0#p20459
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Copyright woes
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-02 19:16:13

The "not consistent with the original intention of the poem" makes me wonder.  Aside from the question of how a poem (which is not only inanimate and, presumably, insentient, but intangible) can be said to have an intention, I wonder if this might be a knee-jerk reaction by somebody who does not understand the nature of the work in which you wish to quote the poem.  Consider the following possible train of thought by a self-important flunky:  "We're a high-brow publishing house.  We publish poetry.  We don't publish things for the great unwashed.  Video games are things played by unwashed teenagers who don't know how to read and instead pretend to shoot at each other.  We would [i]never[/i] be associated with any such stuff.  HMMPH!"

Unfortunately, if that is what is going on, I don't know that there's much to do about it.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2942&start=0#p20460
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Copyright woes
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-02 19:46:54

One possibility would be (perhaps next time) to try saying that it will be used as the epigraph for a piece of interactive fiction, or hypertext literature, or what not.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2938&start=0#p20461
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Numbered buttons in Inform 6?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-08-02 20:48:33

Without seeing your code, it's difficult to say what the problem is, but if 1 is the only number producing that error, it's almost certainly a bug in your code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2911&start=0#p20462
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Nonexistent comp
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-08-02 21:42:10

To whom should I not submit my non-entry?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2938&start=0#p20463
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Numbered buttons in Inform 6?
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-08-02 21:50:08

It's (probably) not my code. As a little test, I compiled the Captain Fate source I had lying around, and typing "look at 1" causes you to look at the first object in a certain location. I disabled the beta-testing perameters at the beginning of the source, but it still does that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2943&start=0#p20464
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Drop [n] objects questions
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-02 22:24:21

I've imp'd a bunch of leaves that are working well. A player can drop 1 leaf at a time from an infinite amount, or drop them all. I'm just trying to lock out the area inbetween - attempts to 'drop 3 leaves', for instance.

Edit - I forgot to point out, there really is only 1 'leaves' object, and 1 'leaf' object which is a part of it. But I am uninterested in counting individual leaves and I keep no track of them. You've got the leaves object or you've got nothing.

There's a few issues. I'm not actually sure what the parser is doing in the following cases:

If you type 'drop 2 leaves' (note that leaves is definitely the name of the object player is holding), it says 'Only 1 of those are available.'

If you type 'drop two leaves', it says 'You can't use multiple objects with that verb.'

The first case seems to make sense, but seems to be entirely non-interceptible (I tried grabbing it at the library message stage and making an exception when the noun is leaves, but there is no noun. I can't even store the noun with a 'before dropping' rule to make that work.)

In the second case - uh, I just don't understand the second case.

Any advice?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2938&start=0#p20466
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Numbered buttons in Inform 6?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-08-02 23:06:25

On mulling it over, it occurs to me that you should be able to use the BeforeParsing entry point to change '1' to 'one', '2' to 'two', and so forth. In the DM4, the answer to Exercise 81 is the only place where this entry point is illustrated, and it isn't really explained at all.

Edit: I couldn't make that work, but I think I've found the solution. You can't put single-character words in the name property array. For instance, if the player has to take the A train, you can't create the train

with name 'a' 'train',

However, you can put two slashes after a single character, and then the character will go into the dictionary. This code seems to work without further futzing:

[code]Object button_1 "button 1"
	with
	name 'button' 'red' 'one' '1//',
	description "It's a bright red button."
;

Object button_2 "button 2"
	with
	name 'button' 'green' 'two' '2//',
	description "It's a bright green button."
;

Object button_3 "button 3"
	with
	name 'button' 'blue' 'three' '3//',
	description "It's a bright blue button."
;[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2911&start=0#p20468
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Nonexistent comp
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-03 00:28:58

I am ashamed to see that this once-reputable competition has become a farce. I hereby withdraw my entry.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2944&start=0#p20469
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: On Red Herrings and design...
User: dormammu / DateTime: 2011-08-03 02:13:47

I know excessive red herrings are frowned upon in IF. However, having finally gotten serious about getting an IF finished, I find myself starting to ponder various things. (It'd be my first IF since the 80s. As a kid, I used to use GAGS and later AGT to write games. I remember thinking no IF authoring system would ever be more flexible than AGT. How wrong I was...)

Right now, I'm in the final stages of a test IF (basically a short adventure in my house) that should never, ever been seen by the public for any reason. Once I finish this up, I go on to the real thing, the one I intend to release eventually.

One thing I was considering reusing from the test game is a sort of red herring, but I'm not sure if this is considered good design. Here's basically how it goes:

Player finds a toilet. 'x toilet' ... The description ends with "There's a sign on this toilet that reads 'Do not look in this toilet. It will only end in annoyance.'" What's in the toilet? A red herring item. It looks like something you need to solve a puzzle, but won't work. The game basically told you it was a red herring, but I'm wondering if someone could conceivably think the warning is the red herring, not the item.

The more I think about it, the more I think it's a bad idea. But I thought I'd get an opinion on it. I keep thinking back to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where the game kept insisting there was nothing in a specific room, but eventually would admit it had lied and there was something in the room. This is sort of the same thing, except the narrative wasn't lying this time. Keep in mind, I don't intend for this game to be particularly serious.

Any thoughts?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2943&start=0#p20470
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Drop [n] objects questions
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-03 02:44:38

I kinda solved the 1st case now. I made a new action "drop [number] [leafmissile]". This lets me check the number understood to see how many leaves a person tried to drop. Though amounts of 0 and 1 still slip through - they must get processed before it gets to this stage. Either 0 or 1 will drop the whole object, which isn't ideal in my case where 'drop 1 leaves' results in all leaves being dropped.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2944&start=0#p20471
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On Red Herrings and design...
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-03 03:51:55

I don't really buy the rules about what should or shouldn't be in a game per se. I think what's important is that the author's design choices are consistent across their game in some way, and that the game communicates its overall sensibility well enough to the player that the player's likely to know what to expect when the game does certain things, or to simply to be not outraged if the game pulled a swifty on them.

As you say, the atmosphere of Hitchhikers is ridden with enough illogic that players may groan at some of its tricks, but at  least they're on the same wavelength and may expect they're being tricked, or find it amusing. If they find they're not on that wavelength, they probably already gave up on the game. But no-one can say the game outraged them by suddenly screwing them over somehow. It was messing with them all the way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2944&start=0#p20472
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On Red Herrings and design...
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-03 06:04:45

I would not be inherently troubled by what you  describe.  You are warning the player (and even if you didn't, arguably the mere fact that something is found in a toilet might be fair warning that it is likely to be no more than a load of crap).

The warning brings it within the category of what is probably the most famous red herring in literature (the fate of the fourth Indian in Agatha Christie's [i]And Then There Were None[/i]) (using modern nomenclature for the novel and the rhyme).  If its good enough for her, it should be good enough for anybody.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2944&start=0#p20473
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On Red Herrings and design...
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-08-03 06:45:34

Personally I'd be disinclined to do this, not so much because of the red herring itself, but because I'm suspicious of anything that requires a fourth-wall-breaking nudge-wink to the player to make it fair. You're kicking the player out of immersion and drawing her attention to the fact that it's all a game.

There are some exceptions -- I didn't mind this kind of element in the recently released "[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=dqqpdmlkuw8o9e05]You've Got A Stew Going[/url]" because the game was consistent throughout about its tone and its habit of talking to the player directly. So it's not a hard rule, but still.

That said, the best way to work out whether a puzzle is unfair is through play-testing. See what the betas think.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2896&start=0#p20474
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Problems with CocoaGlk on Lion?
User: Graham Nelson / DateTime: 2011-08-03 07:00:04

Thanks entirely to Andrew Hunter's labours, we now have Inform 7 running successfully on Mac OS 10.7, that is, Lion. As far as I'm aware, there are two issues at present:

(a) Apple chose to hide the "Library" subfolder of each user's home folder in 10.7. It continues to exist, but is now invisible. In all previous versions of OS X, it was best practice for applications to place user-configurable settings inside this folder, and that's where Inform stores user-installed extensions, and so on. (In ~/Library/Inform.) Apple apparently believes that users should no longer deal with applications in this low-level way, which is a problem for many high-end apps as they stand - BBEdit, Photoshop, and many others. It isn't yet clear what we should do instead; we may one day have to rethink this when and if we adopt Lion's sandboxing - as would be necessary if Apple forces all developers onto the App Store, something we are currently opting out of, but which may be a good idea in any case. But that's a longer-term issue. For now, we're simply telling people how to access Library despite its invisibility.

If you want to get access to this folder, you now have to use the Finder menu option

Go > Go to folder...

and type "~/Library"; alternatively, there's a command-line command which will hack the Finder to restore the Library folder to visibility. 

(b) For projects with the Glulx virtual machine setting, games would hang rather than play after a successful translation of the source text. This may be due to a bug in Lion's implementation of NSPortCoding (I'm writing this as though I understood what that meant) - in any case, Andrew has reimplemented this part of the interface to avoid the problem, and we now have a fixed build, which I have uploaded here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/download/">http://inform7.com/download/</a>

This is still billed as 6G60 because the core of Inform - the compiler, the templates, and so on - remains unchanged. It's the cleanest replacement I can make it, and people with ongoing Glulx projects should in principle be able just to replace Inform.app and carry on. Do please let us know if that turns out not to be the case.

(Work is indeed ongoing on a major new release of Inform, but this isn't it.)

  Graham

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2944&start=0#p20475
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On Red Herrings and design...
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-03 08:36:37

People are going to differ wildly in how they perceive a gag like this, no matter how it's done, because it's a joke that depends not just on how you've established the tone of the game up to that point but on the player's relationship with the medium in general.
 
One thing to keep in mind, though, is the difference between the [i]narrator[/i] breaking the fourth wall and the [i]world[/i] breaking the fourth wall. If I came across a note like that on a toilet in an IF, I might think "Oh, this is the game's author messing with me" or I might think "Who put this note here? Which of the NPCs I've met so far would do something so silly?" or I might get hung up trying to decide whether this is a message from within the game world or not. 

On the other hand, if the end of the description just says something to the effect of "Don't look in this toilet" (although the specific wording matters a lot, I think) then I know that this is coming from the same guy who's been telling me "You did this yesterday," "After several seconds' effort you do that," and "You can't do that"—at which point it's a matter of whether I trust that guy to tell me "You shouldn't do that".

The two methods are also different in tone; to me the former seems a lot more... I don't know if "slapstick" is the right word. It's this level of "ha ha, this note is actually the author talking to you!" on top of everything else.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2933&start=10#p20476
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] Objects in containers
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-03 08:44:15

[quote="dormammu"][code]Before looking in the pile of dirty clothes when the pair of pants is off-stage: move the pair of pants into the pile of dirty clothes.[/code][/quote]
I think you mean "searching the pile of dirty clothes"...? Unless your game defines a "looking in" action that is distinct from searching.

If you put your code samples in [code] tags, they'll be easier to read.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2937&start=0#p20477
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Writing a paragraph with a list
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-03 08:53:28

This works for me:

[code]Auditorium is a room.

There is a scenery supporter called a seat in Auditorium.

The player carries a ticket.

Definition: A supporter is occupied if it supports something.

For writing a paragraph about an occupied supporter:
	say "On [the item described] [is-are a list of things on the item described].";
		
Test me with "put ticket on seat/l"[/code]

Can you post a complete example that doesn't work?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2896&start=0#p20478
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Problems with CocoaGlk on Lion?
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-08-03 09:08:29

Excellent. Thanks!

Incidentally, the command to permanently restore ~/Library's visibility is:
[code]chflags nohidden ~/Library[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2944&start=0#p20479
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On Red Herrings and design...
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-03 09:29:38

[quote="Afterward"]I don't know if "slapstick" is the right word.[/quote]
I think the term you're looking for is "toilet humour".  [emote];)[/emote] 

(Sorry to derail the thread, but I just could not resist making that joke. It was what we call in Dutch, using a football metaphor, a "shot before an open goal".)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2944&start=0#p20480
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On Red Herrings and design...
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-08-03 09:48:25

Maybe it's just me, but whenever a game tells me not to do something, I interpret it as a clear signal that I should do it, if only to find out what happens.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2944&start=0#p20481
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On Red Herrings and design...
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-08-03 09:57:34

Most game reviewers (or judges if you enter it in a comp) frown on breaking the fourth wall. But a sign that says "There's nothing interesting here" or "Don't bother examining this item" is not, in my opinion, a red herring. It's just laziness where the author chose not to complete a scenery item.

A red herring would be an actual, described item that might be operable or transportable, yet would have no real function in the game. Like, if there was a hard limit on the number of objects a character could carry, and there was an extra useless object, carrying that useless object around in the game might result in an unwinnable situation if the player needed a different combination of objects.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2942&start=0#p20482
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Copyright woes
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-08-03 10:01:04

I think you're probably out of luck here, but:

[rant]How do they know it's not consistent? You said nothing about the content of the game. Do they think that having the poem quoted in a text adventure will somehow cause them to lose sales? That people will think, "I was going to buy this book of poetry, but two lines from it are quoted in this free game, so I no longer need to!"? If anything, the more likely outcome is "Hmm, I liked that poem in the epigraph; maybe I should seek out more works by that author." If I were the poet in question, I wouldn't be too happy about my publisher actively working to prevent me from getting free publicity.[/rant]

By the way, why redact the names of the publisher, poet, and poem? Even if they won't let you quote it, you can certainly say, "I wanted to use such-and-such as an epigraph, but so-and-so won't let me; sorry!"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2942&start=0#p20483
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Copyright woes
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2011-08-03 10:16:37

Hmmm...
At least you got an answer.
I tried to get permission to use a theme song from an old movie (60's) for my game and never heard a word back. Tried to write them a few times and then gave up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2911&start=0#p20484
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Nonexistent comp
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2011-08-03 10:22:08

[quote="Afterward"]I am ashamed to see that this once-reputable competition has become a farce. I hereby withdraw my entry.[/quote]

But if you withdraw your entry, it must mean that you have once entered the non-existant comp. Which again means that you have disqualified yourself.  [emote]:roll:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2708&start=70#p20485
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really
User: Greeny / DateTime: 2011-08-03 10:25:37

[quote="David Whyld"]I have a Kindle myself and after 5 minutes of using it, I found it was perfectly natural to read on.[/quote]
Fully agree, my number one concern with the kindle was eye strain, but in fact it is much easier on my eyes than a book.
Change is inevitable, i'm sure Caxton caused a bit of a stir with people lamenting the loss of handwritten texts, but it's not really a concern now.
Also, E-readers in general  may be a factor in IF popularity over the next few years

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2944&start=0#p20486
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On Red Herrings and design...
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-03 10:33:25

My basic reaction is: what precisely are you trying to accomplish with this? Breaking the fourth wall and potentially misleading the player are both quite expensive: what are you getting in return?

If the answer is just 'amusing myself at the player's expense', I wouldn't put that in the plus column. As other people have said, if it contributes to the game's tone or broader themes, go for it.

[quote="severedhand"]I don't really buy the rules about what should or shouldn't be in a game per se.[/quote]
For any rule about IF design -- indeed, for any principle of any art -- the caveat "unless you are doing something rather unusual, and have the ability to make it work" should be taken as read. This does not mean that the rule isn't useful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2937&start=0#p20487
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Writing a paragraph with a list
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-03 11:30:48

I think that only seems to work, since [quote="capmikee"]say "On [THE item described] [is-are a list of things on the item described]."[/quote] would give the same result as the describe what's on scenery supporters in room descriptions rule (NYKevin rather wants something like [code]For writing a paragraph about an occupied supporter: say "On [AN item described] [is-are a list of things on the item described]."[/code])

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2937&start=0#p20488
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Writing a paragraph with a list
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-03 11:57:30

[quote="Felix"]I think that only seems to work, since [quote="capmikee"]say "On [THE item described] [is-are a list of things on the item described]."[/quote] would give the same result as the describe what's on scenery supporters in room descriptions rule (NYKevin rather wants something like [code]For writing a paragraph about an occupied supporter: say "On [AN item described] [is-are a list of things on the item described]."[/code])[/quote]

Whoops! Maybe it would be better to replace the "describe what's on scenery supporters in room descriptions rule" with something that covers this particular case - it seems to target this situation pretty well. But here's a hack:

[code]Auditorium is a room.

A seat is a kind of supporter. It is usually enterable. It is usually scenery.

There is one seat in Auditorium.

The player carries a ticket.

Definition: A supporter is occupied if it supports something.

For writing a paragraph about an occupied supporter:
	say "On [an item described] [is-are a list of things on the item described], and this is your very own rule for saying so.";
	
After choosing notable locale objects:
	Repeat with item running through seats enclosed by the location:
		if item is occupied:
			now item is not scenery;
		otherwise:
			now item is scenery;
			
Test me with "put ticket on seat/l"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2937&start=0#p20489
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Writing a paragraph with a list
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-03 12:03:47

(Update: Misinformation hidden under the rant tag.)

[rant]After banging my head on this for a while, I realized (or think I realized) this: if something's scenery, then it's not supposed to be mentioned in the "You can also see..." part of the room description. But that's exactly where the writing a paragraph rules fire. So even if you get around the describe what's on scenery supporters in room descriptions rule, your writing a paragraph rule isn't going to fire when the seat is scenery.

So my advice is to make the seat fixed in place but not scenery. That should prevent the describe what's on scenery supporters in room descriptions rule from firing (obviously), and your writing a paragraph rule should still fire.

It'll also mean that the seat will show up even when nothing is on it. If you don't want that to happen, then I think you should go for the "printing a locale paragraph about" approach.

[UPDATE: Or you could switch it from being scenery to not being scenery the way capmikee does. But that reeeaallly seems like overkill.][/rant]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2944&start=0#p20490
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On Red Herrings and design...
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-03 12:59:36

I think maybe I'm not as literary as other folks around here. You mention that you've been into IF for a long time. Along with all the Hitchhiker's references, I'm guessing you're Meretzky-style old-school. If that's the tone of your game, I think a note like that would be fine. As a player, I wouldn't it interpret it as an unequivocal sign either way. I would absolutely look in the toilet, and I'd probably end up carrying what I found in there all over the map, but I don't think I'd begrudge the author if it turned out to be useless. Especially if it turned out to be useless in a funny way - for example, if you got some really funny (but absolutely clear) denial messages in a handful of situations where you might expect it to be useful.

One thing I might recommend, though, is to make sure that the player remembers where they got the item and associates it with the warning note. A calculator found in the toilet might not qualify (unless it was wet and broken), but a cardboard tube or a rusty penny might.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2945&start=0#p20492
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: advice requested re: possible deal-of-sorts
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-08-03 13:05:16

hey all, just wanted to ask advice from the community, especially the ones that have been in the scene a long while, or anyone who may have thoughts on this.

so im in the [i]initial talking[/i] stage of working with a publishing company to adapt from- or cowrite with- one of their authors with the idea that it might drive up the sales of her books that already exist (and those to follow)

(for the curious, the genre is a fantasy-themed blend of angels, vampires, and erotica.  there is thought that her fan-base would be very open-minded to IF)

so here's my question.  hypothetically speaking, if there were a way to quantify any increase in sales due to my contribution, wouldnt i be eligble for a slice of that pie?  

i ask because as i said, its just talk right now with the hopes that some kinda deal works out of it.  but im not business-savvy, and as u know, ive only been involved in the IF community for maybe 2 years so far, so maybe someone out there has had a similar opportunity or even just good advice on what u would do if u were in these talks.

just trying a make whatever kinda buck i can with my talents, but i promise the community that if something should happen, i will [b]not[/b] [i][b]MALINCHE[/b][/i] this thing.   [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2944&start=10#p20493
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On Red Herrings and design...
User: dormammu / DateTime: 2011-08-03 13:09:31

[quote="maga"]My basic reaction is: what precisely are you trying to accomplish with this? Breaking the fourth wall and potentially misleading the player are both quite expensive: what are you getting in return?[/quote]

Well, that's the thing. Originally it was just supposed to be a one off joke where the toilet was filthy, hadn't been cleaned in months. It's like someone put the warning there because they were too lazy to clean it. It really had no significance for anything. But then I started thinking that really wasn't very funny and didn't have much of a point. What if, instead, I put an item in there that looks important but isn't? The general consensus here seems to be it's difficult to handle correctly, so maybe I should avoid it. In retrospect, that still has no point other than to tick off the player.

But the more I think about it, the more I dislike the whole idea.

But, to everyone, thanks for the replies. I'm going to have to stew over this for a while and see if it really seems meaningful to the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2937&start=0#p20494
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Writing a paragraph with a list
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-03 13:22:45

The writing a paragraph about activity is triggered by a for printing a locale paragraph about rule (the very aptly named "offer items to writing a paragraph about rule"), and the printing a locale paragraph activity is triggered not by the you-can-also-see rule but by another for printing the locale description rule (viz. the interesting locale paragraphs rule).

I suppose you really have to deal with this on the printing a locale paragraph level, but that doesn't mean you need to bypass anything. 

The offer items to writing a paragraph about rule excludes only things that are mentioned, so I tried this and think it worked:
[code]
For printing a locale paragraph about a thing (called the item) (this is the unmention mentioned scenery seats rule):
	if the item is a mentioned seat and the item is scenery:
		now the item is not mentioned; 
	abide by the offer items to writing a paragraph about rule.
		
The unmention mentioned scenery seats rule is listed instead of the offer items to writing a paragraph about rule in the for printing a locale paragraph about rulebook.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2938&start=10#p20495
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Numbered buttons in Inform 6?
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-08-03 13:26:04

Ah! Perfect! Thank you, I wasn't even aware what the //'s did whenever I looked over other games' source code. The strange ">press 1 (the microwave)" issue persists, but is not as much of an issue now since the player can just "press button 1" instead. A little [i]mimesis[/i]-breaking, but no biggie.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2946&start=0#p20496
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: coding help.
User: mike111 / DateTime: 2011-08-03 13:29:51

Im developing a game where after acquiring 6 different items, the game ends. how do I code this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2944&start=10#p20497
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On Red Herrings and design...
User: dormammu / DateTime: 2011-08-03 13:56:01

[quote="capmikee"]You mention that you've been into IF for a long time. Along with all the Hitchhiker's references, I'm guessing you're Meretzky-style old-school.[/quote]

Indeed, it is. In the 80s, I really only played Infocom IF. The humorous ones were the ones I mostly played. But I remember playing stuff like HHGTG and Bureaucracy with the most fondness. (As an aside, I don't remember Infidel fondly. That game drove me to rage. I never did finish it.) However, it's important to note I was also a Sierra junkie. The early games had a parser and were actually fairly similar to IF in a lot of ways. This also has a huge influence on me designing IF. Not the graphical bits, but rather the humor of the games. (And how sometimes they had completely random items around. Stuff that only existed to make you laugh.)  I think my Toilet idea came more from playing Space Quest and Leisure Suit Larry as a kid than any Infocom game. Though, to be honest, I suspect either SQ or LSL would have made the item you pulled out of a toilet have a point.

But anyway, I'm getting a bit rambly now. The point is: I agree that if the tone of the game supports it (and it's not in an otherwise serious game), it could work. However, even taking that into consideration, I kind of feel like it may be a bad idea to do that in a production game. But, as I said earlier in the thread, I'll have to think about it for a while.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2946&start=0#p20498
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: coding help.
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-03 14:08:05

Which bit do you need help with, and what do you have so far?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2946&start=0#p20499
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: coding help.
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-08-03 14:22:55

Any six items, or six specific items? And are you using Inform 7 or Inform 6?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2944&start=10#p20500
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On Red Herrings and design...
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-03 14:27:10

[quote="duodave"]Most game reviewers (or judges if you enter it in a comp) frown on breaking the fourth wall.[/quote]
Obviously players are free to have whatever preferences they want, but I think it's a shame that authors in this particular medium have to assume that breaking the fourth wall will get that reaction. People in other media have all the fun:

[list][*]Grover tries to brick up the page so you can't turn it and get any closer to the end of the book[/*:m]
[*]George Harrison warns you "you may think the chords are going wrong" (but they're not; he just wrote it like that)[/*:m]
[*]Italo Calvino starts out [i]If on a winter's night a traveler[/i] by telling you how you felt when you heard he had published it[/*:m]
[*]Cassius says "How many ages hence shall this our lofty scene be acted over in states unborn and accents yet unknown!" (I'm not savvy enough to know if that one's meant to come off as a joke or not)[/*:m][/list:u]

It has to be consistent with the tone of the work, sure. It can be grating and even embarrassing when it's done poorly. And it shouldn't be overused. But these things are true of every other rhetorical device.

I don't think IF has a special case for the sanctity of its fourth wall for any reasons other than convention. Interactive media are the ones that have to explain what the audience is supposed to do, after all, and IF in particular is constantly addressing the player. There are even default messages like "I only understood you as far as..." in which the parser acts like it's a person, which sometimes (especially in the case of "That's not a verb I recognize") prompt the player to type in "shut up". I noticed that "Slouching Toward Bedlam" carefully avoids the first person and uses the second person as little as possible, which contributes to the tone and theme in a big way, but [i]the effort to avoid breaking the fourth wall actually took me out of the story[/i] as I stopped to wonder why "I" wasn't allowed. Certain breaks in mimesis are inherent to the IF experience.

I, too, am also rambly. dormammu, I have something to say to you: I am very disappointed that a game taking place in your house included a toilet that hadn't been cleaned in months. You should take some time out of your day to clean your toilet. What if you had a [i]special guest[/i] over?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2937&start=0#p20501
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Writing a paragraph with a list
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-03 14:29:19

Ah, thanks. I hadn't got nearly deep enough into the locale description rules to understand what was going on. Just to get me clear on what's going on here, what is the rule that makes the scenery supporters mentioned?

Here's something I tried that I think worked -- instead of adjusting the "mentioned" property, I just copied out the relevant part of the "offer items to writing a paragraph about" rule and made it apply to occupied seats, whether or not they're mentioned. I'm still not entirely clear why the "describe what's on scenery supporters..." rule isn't firing for the seat, though; rules tracing lists it as applying.

[code]A seat is a kind of supporter. A seat is scenery.

Definition: A supporter is occupied if something is on it.

Rule for writing a paragraph about an occupied seat (called the throne) (this is the writing about a seat rule):
	say "On [a throne] [is-are a list of things on the throne]."

For printing a locale paragraph about an occupied seat (called the item) (this is the offer seats to writing a paragraph about rule):
	if a paragraph break is pending, say "[conditional paragraph break]";
	carry out the writing a paragraph about activity with the item;
	if a paragraph break is pending:
		increase the locale paragraph count by 1;
		now the item is mentioned;
		say "[command clarification break]";
	continue the activity.

Station is a room. "A station filled with benches and a table." The bench is a seat in Station. Understand "benches" as the bench. The table is a scenery supporter in Station. The stand is a supporter in Station. The player carries a ticket. The player carries a wallet. The player carries an ID.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2944&start=10#p20502
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On Red Herrings and design...
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-03 14:34:10

I'm with capmikee -- I'm not particularly old-school, but if the intended use of the item is fairly obvious and if the message that I got when I tried to use it is funny and if that makes it clear that it was a red herring (something like "The window slams shut on the cardboard tube, crumpling it like, well, wet cardboard. What did you expect from something you found in the toilet?" -- but funny) and if I didn't wind up wasting lots of time doing this (e.g., trucking the toilet item across five locations to try to solve the problem), then I think I'd find this an amusing joke that the game had played on me. But run it by your testers.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2937&start=0#p20503
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Writing a paragraph with a list
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-03 14:39:04

[quote="matt w"]what is the rule that makes the scenery supporters mentioned?[/quote]
I guess it's the don’t mention scenery in room descriptions rule. It sets the locale priority of scenery to 0, and this automatically makes that scenery mentioned.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2944&start=10#p20504
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On Red Herrings and design...
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-03 14:48:58

[quote="duodave"]Most game reviewers (or judges if you enter it in a comp) frown on breaking the fourth wall.[/quote]

I'm not sure this is true -- Rover's Day Out won the comp before last, and it was full of knowing winks at the fourth wall if not outright breakages. I can't find my favorite right now (the explanation of why forks and plates aren't implemented), but there's this:

[quote]Janet: Cognitive constraints are implemented - the willing suspension of disbelief is a programmatic imperative.
David: I love it when you use big words![/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2937&start=10#p20505
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Writing a paragraph with a list
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-03 14:51:29

[quote="Felix"]It sets the locale priority of scenery to 0, and this automatically makes that scenery mentioned.[/quote]

Thanks -- "locale priority of 0 = mentioned" was what I was missing. And I see that that's in "To set the/-- locale priority of (O - an object) to (N - a number):"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2944&start=10#p20506
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On Red Herrings and design...
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-03 14:56:00

[quote="duodave"]Most game reviewers (or judges if you enter it in a comp) frown on breaking the fourth wall.[/quote]
This is only partly true: most reviewers frown on it if it's done [i]badly[/i], and it's very hard to do right. The most common problem I've encountered is that breaking the fourth wall involves insulting the player and then the problem isn't in the fourth wall.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2946&start=0#p20507
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: coding help.
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-03 14:58:34

Also: does the player need to be *holding* all 6 items, or merely have picked them up at some point?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2937&start=10#p20508
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Writing a paragraph with a list
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-03 15:04:24

[quote="matt w"]I'm still not entirely clear why the "describe what's on scenery supporters..." rule isn't firing for the seat, though; rules tracing lists it as applying.[/quote]
The describe what's on scenery supporters rule runs, but it does nothing; because all things on the supporter have already had their names printed by the writing about a seat rule, and printing a thing's name also makes it mentioned, and mentioned things are not "locale-supported"; and the describe what's on scenery supporters rule only does something, if there is a locale-supportable thing on the supporter.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2944&start=10#p20509
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On Red Herrings and design...
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-03 15:11:17

[quote="Juhana"][quote="duodave"]Most game reviewers (or judges if you enter it in a comp) frown on breaking the fourth wall.[/quote]
This is only partly true: most reviewers frown on it if it's done [i]badly[/i], and it's very hard to do right. The most common problem I've encountered is that breaking the fourth wall involves insulting the player and then the problem isn't in the fourth wall.[/quote]

Right. The most common way to break the fourth wall is to say 'yeah, this game element sucks, but whadja gonna do?' Unless you're writing something where the metafictional is a key theme*, it's rarely a good idea to do anything that says 'see what I did there?'

* that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2944&start=10#p20510
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On Red Herrings and design...
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-08-03 15:20:13

And of course, "the reviewers won't like it" is not necessarily a reason not to do any particular thing.  However, a lot of the reviewers in this community [i]are[/i] thoughtful critics with opinions worth listening to.

I wholeheartedly agree with the advice from earlier in this thread about thinking critically about what your game stands to gain from a arguably experience-ruining move.  This can be extended, though: think critically about what the game gains from any design choice, not just the potentially-unpopular ones.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2945&start=0#p20511
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: advice requested re: possible deal-of-sorts
User: Greeny / DateTime: 2011-08-03 15:22:00

Sounds really promising and exciting, but tread carefully.

I think it would be very difficult to quantify any increase in sales due to your contribution.
If you aren't sure, just ask them what they have in mind. Don't expect much, in fact, expect very little.
I would strongly recommend you get paid (however small) in some form or other for any work you do though. Either a negotiated rate, lump sum, percentage of sales, or a combination.
Think carefully before working for nothing. Producing free IF to the community is great, but it's totally unreasonable for a commercial company to ask you to do so.
You may be offered a paltry sum, only you can decide if it's worth it for you. Bear in mind if the project is successful you will have the chance of a much better deal on any follow ups.
With that in mind, try not to make any commitments on future projects, just the one in hand.
    
Unfortunately I have a negative experience to share, although it's not really related. I'm not implying, in any way, that you will have the same, but forewarned is forearmed.
Many moons ago i self published some utilty software (for the Acorn Archimedes! That's how long ago! [emote];)[/emote] )
I had moderate success, but was approached by a software publisher who wanted to take it over & offered me a "publishing deal".
I thought it could be my big break, but to cut to the chase, the deal stank! To high heaven!   
The contract offered was somewhat skewed in their favour. For a miniscule percentage of sales i had to:
[list]
Work unpaid on the software (at their premises) whenever they stipulated & for a duration of their choosing. Unpaid!
Take their supplied sales figures, which would be used to calculate my cut, on trust with no onus of proof on their part. 
[/list:u]
I'm sure there was more as i was only on page 2 of 6, but I stopped reading.
Now this company was obviously dodgy, and i'm not suggesting the company you mention is in any way the same.
However the experience taught me a few lessons.

[list]
Always get a contract. More importantly know [b][i]exactly[/i][/b] what's in it. Have a clear understanding of what is expected from both partys
Make sure any payments promised to you are clearly defined in the contract.
Always have a definate 'out' or time period. Never have open ended commitments you cannot get out of.
Sign nothing without professional legal advice.
[/list:u]

Good Luck.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2945&start=0#p20512
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: advice requested re: possible deal-of-sorts
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-03 15:22:53

If your agreement with the publishing company says you get a share, then you do. If it doesn't, then you don't.

If you are not business-savvy, you should talk to someone who is. (This web forum doesn't count. :)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2945&start=0#p20513
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: advice requested re: possible deal-of-sorts
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-08-03 15:27:22

yes, thanks a ton for the advice, and what i was saying is that its just talk right now, and im savvy enough to know to read and understand contracts and to know what it states is what i get.  i was wondering what u guys thought of this.

of course i would have a contract, and yeah, im not working for free.

one idea i had is if a person wanted to buy her book because he/she wants the free (to customer) IF download with their purchase.  they can put in a code that lets us know that it was the IF that drove the sale.  again, just a thought, and yeah, i would def get 2nd opinions on any paperwork before i sign.

but thats if it gets past just talkin about it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2911&start=0#p20514
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Nonexistent comp
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-08-03 17:20:37

As I didn't enter a game, do I win by default? If so, what form will my nonexistent prize take? Something purple please.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2944&start=10#p20515
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On Red Herrings and design...
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-03 17:21:02

[quote="matt w"]I'm not sure this is true -- Rover's Day Out won the comp before last, and it was full of knowing winks at the fourth wall if not outright breakages.[/quote]
If I recall correctly, [i]Deadline Enchanter[/i] was also reviewed quite favourably by many reviewers. And then there are the weird wordplay games that don't even have a fourth wall to break.

[quote="maga"]Unless you're writing something where the metafictional is a key theme*, it's rarely a good idea to do anything that says 'see what I did there?'[/quote]
I don't know -- in these postmodern times, is breaking the fourth wall really such a big deal that it needs to have a clear pay-off?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2944&start=10#p20516
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On Red Herrings and design...
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-03 18:02:55

[quote]If I recall correctly, Deadline Enchanter was also reviewed quite favourably by many reviewers. [/quote]

Yeah, the beauty of DE is that it breaks the fourth wall from the very beginning... until you realise that it wasn't a wall, just a little division, and the real fourth wall is still very much intact.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2937&start=10#p20517
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Writing a paragraph with a list
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-03 18:14:46

[quote="Felix"][quote="matt w"]I'm still not entirely clear why the "describe what's on scenery supporters..." rule isn't firing for the seat, though; rules tracing lists it as applying.[/quote]
The describe what's on scenery supporters rule runs, but it does nothing; because all things on the supporter have already had their names printed by the writing about a seat rule, and printing a thing's name also makes it mentioned, and mentioned things are not "locale-supported"; and the describe what's on scenery supporters rule only does something, if there is a locale-supportable thing on the supporter.[/quote]

I'd thought that might be it, but the describe what's on... rule seems to be running before the writing about a seat rule. The output with rules tracing on looks like this (in part):

[code][Rule "offer items to writing a paragraph about rule" applies.]
[Rule "use initial appearance in room descriptions rule" applies.]
[Rule "describe what's on scenery supporters in room descriptions rule" applies.]
[Rule "offer seats to writing a paragraph about rule" applies.]
[Rule "writing about a seat rule" applies.]
On a bench is a wallet.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2944&start=20#p20518
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On Red Herrings and design...
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-03 18:42:54

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]
[quote="maga"]Unless you're writing something where the metafictional is a key theme*, it's rarely a good idea to do anything that says 'see what I did there?'[/quote]
I don't know -- in these postmodern times, is breaking the fourth wall really such a big deal that it needs to have a clear pay-off?[/quote]

I don't think it's a qualitatively big deal -- but it's a question on the scale of, I dunno, "should I add another character?" or "should I have this scene here?" If the scene or the character aren't contributing anything, they probably shouldn't be there.

(Yes, there are lightweight kinds of fourth-wall violation that are easily glossed-over, or even expected. But just because it's a semi-permeable membrane doesn't mean that breaking it isn't significant.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2911&start=0#p20519
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Nonexistent comp
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-03 18:51:14

[quote="David Whyld"]As I didn't enter a game, do I win by default? If so, what form will my nonexistent prize take? Something purple please.[/quote]

No, you didn't win; you merely didn't not win, which is far more important.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2944&start=20#p20520
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On Red Herrings and design...
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-03 18:52:34

[quote="maga"]I don't think it's a qualitatively big deal -- but it's a question on the scale of, I dunno, "should I add another character?" or "should I have this scene here?" If the scene or the character aren't contributing anything, they probably shouldn't be there.[/quote]
Sure, but there is a large gap between "not contributing anything" and "being a key theme". Some things you should only include if they contribute a key theme. First example that comes to my mind: photographs of the victims of the Norway shootings. (I can think of no reason to include those unless the shootings are somehow a key theme of your work.) But I doubt that breaking the fourth wall is one of these things.

[quote](Yes, there are lightweight kinds of fourth-wall violation that are easily glossed-over, or even expected. But just because it's a semi-permeable membrane doesn't mean that breaking it isn't significant.)[/quote]
Yes... but surely I could also say that because it's a semi-permeable membrane, raising the fourth wall is not insignificant? There is an assumption at work here that having a fourth wall is somehow the "natural" state of things, and it takes conscious effort to break it. But there are many media and genres where the fourth wall is not standard (including puppet shows and Athenian comedy). I wouldn't mind IF moving in that direction, or perhaps better, moving towards an agnostic stance where we have no preconceptions about the existence or non-existence of the fourth wall.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2911&start=10#p20521
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Nonexistent comp
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-03 18:54:25

[quote="maga"]No, you didn't win; you merely didn't not win, which is far more important.[/quote]
Is there some kind of reverse Anselm's ontological argument we could construct about the non-existent comp?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2944&start=20#p20522
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On Red Herrings and design...
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-08-03 18:55:14

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="maga"]Unless you're writing something where the metafictional is a key theme*, it's rarely a good idea to do anything that says 'see what I did there?'[/quote]
I don't know -- in these postmodern times, is breaking the fourth wall really such a big deal that it needs to have a clear pay-off?[/quote]

No, but being annoying is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2943&start=0#p20523
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Drop [n] objects questions
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-08-03 19:21:15

It seems that there are two issues.  First, the I6 for understanding "drop" as the dropping action is being listed before the analog I6 for the custom action.  Consequently, the parser attempts to read ``drop [number] leaves'' as dropping instances of the leaves object first, and only goes on to consider matching the number with a number token if that doesn't work out.  A workaround is to take charge of the I6 yourself, though I suspect that there's some better option that I'm not thinking of.  Second, the default LanguageNumbers array doesn't have any entry for `zero,' so you must give it a meaning yourself.  For example,[code]Section "Setup"

[Ask Inform not to generate I6 grammar lines for "drop."]
Understand the command "drop" as something new.

[Give our verb a predictable I6 name.]
The scattering action translates into I6 as "Scatter".

[Supply the grammar ourselves, putting the DECIMAL_TOKEN pattern before the multiheld pattern.]
Include (-
Verb 'drop'
    * DECIMAL_TOKEN held  -> Scatter
    * multiheld  -> Drop
    * held 'at' / 'against' noun  -> ThrowAt
    * multiexcept 'in' / 'into' / 'down' noun  -> Insert
    * multiexcept 'on' / 'onto' noun  -> PutOn
;
-).

[The parser doesn't know the word "zero" out-of-the-box.]
Understand "zero" as zero.

Section "Demonstration"

There is a room.
The player carries some leaves.
Understand "leaf" as the leaves.

Scattering is an action applying to one number and one carried thing.
Report scattering:
	say "You let [the number understood in words] of [the second noun] go."

Test me with "drop leaves / take leaves / drop zero leaves / drop one leaf / drop two leaves".[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2944&start=20#p20524
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On Red Herrings and design...
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-03 19:30:16

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="maga"]I don't think it's a qualitatively big deal -- but it's a question on the scale of, I dunno, "should I add another character?" or "should I have this scene here?" If the scene or the character aren't contributing anything, they probably shouldn't be there.[/quote]
Sure, but there is a large gap between "not contributing anything" and "being a key theme". Some things you should only include if they contribute a key theme. First example that comes to my mind: photographs of the victims of the Norway shootings. (I can think of no reason to include those unless the shootings are somehow a key theme of your work.) But I doubt that breaking the fourth wall is one of these things.[/quote]

Thinking about it -- and I probably didn't articulate this very clearly -- by saying 'see-what-I-did-there' I was talking about the specific kind of fourth-wall-breaking that is, stylistically, of a piece with writing like "the glittering, happy crowds form a stark contrast to the desolation in your heart." If the player doesn't see the contrast, telling them it's a contrast isn't going to help much; if they saw it, then it's annoyingly redundant. It's this sort of thing that show-don't-tell is meant to prevent, and it's equally true of self-explanation on a bigger scale -- interpretation is much better if the reader does it for themselves, unless the interpretation is complicated enough that they can't be expected to do it automatically.

There might be some gap between 'stuff it's better to let the player figure out' and 'so much interpretation needed that interpretation becomes a major theme', but I don't think that, in practice, it's going to be a very big one.
[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="maga"](Yes, there are lightweight kinds of fourth-wall violation that are easily glossed-over, or even expected. But just because it's a semi-permeable membrane doesn't mean that breaking it isn't significant.)[/quote]
Yes... but surely I could also say that because it's a semi-permeable membrane, raising the fourth wall is not insignificant? There is an assumption at work here that having a fourth wall is somehow the "natural" state of things, and it takes conscious effort to break it. But there are many media and genres where the fourth wall is not standard (including puppet shows and Athenian comedy). I wouldn't mind IF moving in that direction, or perhaps better, moving towards an agnostic stance where we have no preconceptions about the existence or non-existence of the fourth wall.[/quote]
Hm. I suspect that there's an inherently greater flexibility about the fourth wall in media where the artist can adapt to audience participation on the fly -- which is true of RPGs, too, but not of IF. I'm trying to imagine what IF that moved in this direction would look like, but mostly I'm blanking on tedious AFGNCAAP protagonists and weak jokes about the limitations of the system. This is a prejudice, certainly; what do you think the alternatives might look like?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2911&start=10#p20525
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Nonexistent comp
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-03 19:46:10

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="maga"]No, you didn't win; you merely didn't not win, which is far more important.[/quote]
Is there some kind of reverse Anselm's ontological argument we could construct about the non-existent comp?[/quote]

It's been a while since I was allowed near a negated existential quantifier, but I'm pretty sure it means that God won the comp with an average score of 1.0, [i]and[/i] got the Golden Banana.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2944&start=20#p20526
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On Red Herrings and design...
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-03 19:49:10

[quote="maga"]Hm. I suspect that there's an inherently greater flexibility about the fourth wall in media where the artist can adapt to audience participation on the fly -- which is true of RPGs, too, but not of IF. I'm trying to imagine what IF that moved in this direction would look like, but mostly I'm blanking on tedious AFGNCAAP protagonists and weak jokes about the limitations of the system. This is a prejudice, certainly; what do you think the alternatives might look like?[/quote]
Good question. Perhaps I'm using a slightly wider interpretation of fourth-wall-breaking: not just direct addresses to the audience, but anything that makes it harder to think of the words on your screen as describing a coherent fictional world, i.e., anything that draws attention to the [i]fictionality[/i] of the world. ([i]Metafictionality[/i] is of course only a subset of this.) In this sense, something as simple as a recognisable literary allusion breaks the fourth wall. I consider your own [i]The Cavity of Time[/i] (with its conscious allusions to Apuleius, Angela Carter, Richardson, Nick Montfort and [i]Choice of Broadsides[/i], among others) to be a huge fourth-wall breaker.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2944&start=20#p20527
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On Red Herrings and design...
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-03 19:50:02

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]But there are many media and genres where the fourth wall is not standard (including puppet shows and Athenian comedy). I wouldn't mind IF moving in that direction, or perhaps better, moving towards an agnostic stance where we have no preconceptions about the existence or non-existence of the fourth wall.[/quote]
I'd say IF is already at a place where the fourth wall is not standard: The default state of the narrator is to address the player directly; it's understood that a well-read player should metagame and assume that this or that set of objects, just because it's implemented in detail, must constitute a puzzle.

What I want to say is: "In spite of this, critics want to preserve what's left of the wall, because historically the device has been used in silly ways and there's a stigma associated with it and they're concerned about the literary legitimacy of IF." But I can't say that, because while I guess I must have gotten that impression [i]somewhere[/i], nobody in this thread is backing it up.

So instead I'll say: While there's a difference between "You can't go there" and "You shouldn't open that toilet", I think it's a difference in degree, not in kind. [size=85](Technically it's a difference in modality.)[/size]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2944&start=20#p20528
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On Red Herrings and design...
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-03 20:05:43

[quote="Afterward"]I'd say IF is already at a place where the fourth wall is not standard: The default state of the narrator is to address the player directly; it's understood that a well-read player should metagame and assume that this or that set of objects, just because it's implemented in detail, must constitute a puzzle.[/quote]
I wouldn't call that breaking the fourth wall, exactly. Genre conventions generally serve to reinforce, rather than break down, the fourth wall; they make us suspend our disbelief and silence our critical questions. We don't ask how it is possible for Sherlock Holmes to be always smarter than Scotland Yard; we just 'metaread' and assume that this is the case. Furthermore, the default state of the narrator is not to address the player, but to address the implied reader; and the implied reader is very often identified with the protagonist and what I [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=e45ifr7k7vvuqqh5]have called[/url] the commander and the experiential focus. So I would say that most IF has tried to keep the fourth wall in place as firmly as possible.

[quote]What I want to say is: "In spite of this, critics want to preserve what's left of the wall, because historically the device has been used in silly ways and there's a stigma associated with it and they're concerned about the literary legitimacy of IF." But I can't say that, because while I guess I must have gotten that impression [i]somewhere[/i], nobody in this thread is backing it up.[/quote]
There is certainly some truth in your impression. (As a philosopher, that expression makes me cringe, but I'm too tired to revise it. It's rather late here in western Europe.)

[quote][size=85](Technically it's a difference in modality.)[/size][/quote]
I teach a course together with a linguist, so you don't scare me. [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2943&start=0#p20529
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Drop [n] objects questions
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-03 21:13:16

Thanks Emacs.

I was reticent to get into I6ing this issue, but what I learned from your example was that you can define grammar as certain numbers. From that I found a decent fix on top of my 'drop [number] [leafmissile]' schtick. I defined zero and 0 as -1. This steers all attempts to do something with 0 of anything into 'doesn't make sense' territory across the game.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2944&start=20#p20531
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On Red Herrings and design...
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-04 00:18:43

[quote="Afterward"]I'd say IF is already at a place where the fourth wall is not standard: The default state of the narrator is to address the player directly; it's understood that a well-read player should metagame and assume that this or that set of objects, just because it's implemented in detail, must constitute a puzzle.[/quote]
Yeah, what Victor said; this is a convention that silently dodges the fourth wall, rather than breaking it. Nobody worries, in conventional novels, that a first-person narrator is able to remember the precise details of a conversation that happened many years ago. Nobody worries that stage actors spend a disproportionate amount of their time facing in a particular direction. (In fact, when a work builds up realism beyond what's normally expected -- as happens very starkly in [i]Make It Good[/i] -- it can draw one's attention to the fourth wall a lot more strongly.)

[quote="Afterward"]What I want to say is: "In spite of this, critics want to preserve what's left of the wall, because historically the device has been used in silly ways and there's a stigma associated with it and they're concerned about the literary legitimacy of IF." But I can't say that, because while I guess I must have gotten that impression [i]somewhere[/i], nobody in this thread is backing it up.[/quote]
Technically, the Consensus View (which has never been quite attained the status of orthodoxy, but remains a good point of reference for best practice) is the mimesis-plant position, which presents the fourth wall as an organic sort of thing, maintained by an agreement between author and player, rather than a rigid and brittle slab.

[quote="Victor Gijsbers"]Good question. Perhaps I'm using a slightly wider interpretation of fourth-wall-breaking: not just direct addresses to the audience, but anything that makes it harder to think of the words on your screen as describing a coherent fictional world, i.e., anything that draws attention to the fictionality of the world. (Metafictionality is of course only a subset of this.)[/quote]

I think there's a pretty substantial difference between 'making it harder to think of the words on your screen as describing a coherent fictional world' and 'drawing attention to the fictionality of the world'; the former but not the latter is true of Kafka, say.

[quote="Victor Gijsbers"]In this sense, something as simple as a recognisable literary allusion breaks the fourth wall. I consider your own The Cavity of Time (with its conscious allusions to Apuleius, Angela Carter, Richardson, Nick Montfort and Choice of Broadsides, among others) to be a huge fourth-wall breaker.[/quote]
Yeah, but fourth-wall-breaking [i]is[/i] of a central theme of Cavity: specific allusions aside, the protagonist is perfectly aware that he's a fictional character, and insofar as it's about anything it's about the narrative strangeness of CYOA.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2896&start=10#p20532
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Problems with CocoaGlk on Lion?
User: Ramoth / DateTime: 2011-08-04 01:27:44

Inform is now working again.  Excellent job, thanks!  Is there/will there be a similar solution for Zoom?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2948&start=0#p20533
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I7] Actions changing based on player location.
User: dormammu / DateTime: 2011-08-04 02:10:01

I really didn't want to have to post here again so soon, but I've run into a problem. I'm finishing up my test project to try to get used to Inform 7 and I ran into a problem. Tonight I decided to test out custom actions. I decided to implement the mostly pointless action Dancing. It looks like this:

[code]Dancing is an action applying to nothing.
Understand "dance" as dancing

Carry out dancing:
	say "You start dancing wildly, despite the lack of music. You're not very good."[/code]

That works fine, just as intended. Type dance, you dance wildly and not very well. But, I thought, what if a room has music? (Or, in the case of my production game when I start it, what if I want an action to work differently in a specific room?) I decided one of my test rooms would have music, thus dance should work differently there. This is where I have problems. It looks as such:

[code]The Main Bedroom is a room. "You are in your bedroom. It's a rather messy place, really. There's a pile of dirty clothes attempting to gain sentience in the corner. There's also an ancient looking stereo in the corner. West leads to a hall."
Instead of dancing if the location is the main bedroom:
	say "You turn on the stereo and start headbanging to the music. Unfortunately, the stereo somehow got set to the soft rock station. You find yourself headbanging to Phil Collins."
[/code]

The problem is with the "Instead of Dancing" line. The (relevant) part of the error I get is: " the punctuation here ':' makes me think this should be a definition of a phrase and it doesn't begin as it should, with either 'To' (e.g. 'To flood the riverplain:'), 'Definition:', a name for a rule (e.g. 'This is the devilishly cunning rule:'), 'At' plus a time (e.g. 'At 11:12 PM:' or 'At the time when the clock chimes') or the name of a rulebook, possibly followed by some description of the action or value to apply to (e.g. 'Instead of taking something:' or 'Every turn:')."

It works (sort of) if I truncate the first line to "Instead of dancing:" ... but then the Dance command doesn't work at all anywhere else. (Presumably because the player isn't in the main bedroom there's nothing to do.) What I have above seems like it should work. I spent a solid hour researching, looking through documentation, etc. This looks like it should work, and it doesn't. I have a good bit of programming experience and always thought I could program in any language as long as I had a reference. Well, I have a reference and I can't make something incredibly simple work. It gets annoying.

Anyway, what's wrong here? Any ideas?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2948&start=0#p20534
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Actions changing based on player location.
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-04 02:23:12

Book of Graham, 7:11. The phrase you want is "Instead of dancing in the main bedroom."

(The reason why it's not phrased the other way is because 'the location' is the location of the [i]player[/i], and thus would be inappropriate if an NPC was the one dancing.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2948&start=0#p20535
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Actions changing based on player location.
User: dormammu / DateTime: 2011-08-04 02:44:46

[quote="maga"](The reason why it's not phrased the other way is because 'the location' is the location of the [i]player[/i], and thus would be inappropriate if an NPC was the one dancing.)[/quote]

Oh really? Hmmm. I actually searched out an "Inform 7 syntax guide" and it seemed to indicate the wrong thing, then, saying I should use "if the location is (room)"

Well, thanks. I'll get this figured out eventually, I hope.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2948&start=0#p20536
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Actions changing based on player location.
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-04 03:16:02

[quote="dormammu"]I actually searched out an "Inform 7 syntax guide" and it seemed to indicate the wrong thing, then, saying I should use "if the location is (room)"[/quote]
The syntax guide is not wrong: "if the location is (room)" is a-ok if you're checking the location of the player, but you can't tack an if-phrase as is on a rule. You must use "when" or "while" instead. So both of the following are correct:

[code]Instead of dancing when the location is the main bedroom:
    say "Dancing!"

Instead of dancing:
    if the location is the main bedroom:
        say "Dancing!";
    otherwise:
        say "Not dancing!"[/code]
What maga was saying is that if you want to be as general as possible and allow dancing as an action even for NPCs you shouldn't use phrases that restrict the rules only to the player character, but in this case the wording of the message looks like it'd be ok to have the rule apply to the player only.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2937&start=10#p20537
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Writing a paragraph with a list
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-04 03:31:37

[quote="matt w"]but the describe what's on... rule seems to be running before the writing about a seat rule. [/quote]
True, but the for printing a locale paragraph rulebook (to which the describe what's on scenery supporters in room descriptions rule belongs) runs once for about every object in the room (once for every notable-object in the Table of Locale Priorities), and the first time it runs for "yourself" (who is "undescribed" and therefore unmentioned).
I confirmed that with this extra rule:[code]First for printing a locale paragraph about a thing (called item):
	say "[paragraph break](Now printing a locale paragraph about [the item])[paragraph break]";
	continue the action.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2949&start=0#p20538
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Article hiccup
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-04 05:14:13

I'm trying to solve a noun & article problem.

Say I've got a kid called John. Until you know his name through conversation, I make his printed name 'the big boy.'

How can I manage indefinite articles and capitalisation with this arrangement?

For instance - If I've got code which says '[The noun] can't hear you from over there.' -- if you don't know the kid yet, it says 'the big boy can't hear you from over there.' (sic)

I guess because I'm not using an indefinite article with the character, the 'the' needs to be attached, but this also messes up capitalisation. Yet there is no circumstance where I don't want the words 'big boy' to be preceded by 'the'. It's just that I want the 'the' to be uppercase when it starts sentences.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2949&start=0#p20539
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Article hiccup
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-04 05:43:22

I assume you're just using "the big boy" as the printed name? It works if you use "the" as the indefinite article instead:

[code]There is a room. John is here. John is a man. John is improper-named. The printed name of John is "big boy". The indefinite article of John is "the".  Understand "big" and "boy" as John.

Instead of answering John that:
	say "[The noun] can't hear you from over there."
	
Instead of waiting:
	say "You remember that the boy is called John.";
	now John is proper-named;
	now the printed name of John is "John".
	
Test me with "l/boy, hello/z/l/boy, hello"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2950&start=0#p20540
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7: Asking a question
User: RedTulip / DateTime: 2011-08-04 05:58:01

Is there a way to ask questions in Inform 7? Similar to the...

[code]say "You really want the blue uniform?";
if the player consents:
    say "Good choice.";
    wait for any key;
otherwise:
    say "Choose a different uniform, then.";[/code]

'if the player consents' kind of question, but I don't want the answer ONLY to be yes or no. It would even be better if they are able to choose from a list of options.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2949&start=0#p20542
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Article hiccup
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-04 06:29:32

Ahhh, what I didn't know about was being able to say a thing is proper-named vs improper-named. Thanks again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2950&start=0#p20543
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: Asking a question
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-04 06:53:54

Try the extension Questions by Michael Callaghan.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2937&start=10#p20544
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Writing a paragraph with a list
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-04 06:56:34

Thanks. Makes me think that it might be nice to enable some sort of trace that tracked the activities that were being carried out, or which named the objects that were arguments to the rules that were being applied. (If that's not possible already.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2948&start=0#p20545
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Actions changing based on player location.
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-04 07:48:07

Yeah, I should know better than to try and explain I7 behaviour last thing before I go to bed. Least of all to myself.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2950&start=0#p20546
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: Asking a question
User: RedTulip / DateTime: 2011-08-04 07:48:43

I don't really get that extension... Is there another way?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2950&start=0#p20547
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: Asking a question
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-04 08:48:02

I'll repeat what I posted on the newsgroup:

[quote]If you want a list of options, allow me to tout Mark Tilford's Simple Chat extension, of which I recently released a new version. The link is currently here:

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2923">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2923</a>

but will soon move to the Inform 7 website.

Simple Chat allows you to show a list of numbered options, from which the player than can or must choose one to proceed.

Another possibility is Questions by Michael Callaghan:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/Michael%20Callaghan/Questions/index.html">http://inform7.com/extensions/Michael%2 ... index.html</a>

I believe it allows you to do basically the same thing. (I would choose Questions if you are using different types of questions in your game and Simple Chat if you are using menu-based conversation. If you're not doing either, both would be a good choice.)

Regards,
Victor [/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2951&start=0#p20548
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Parchment-transcript hosting
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-04 09:05:51

I'm getting ready for alpha testing of my WIP and I thought it would be nice to use Parchment-transcript to collect transcripts. But I see that it needs a server running MySql, which I do not have. Is there any shared location where Parchment-transcripts could be collected, or is anyone interested in setting one up? I think it would be an awesome service for the community if anyone were willing and able to maintain it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2946&start=0#p20549
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: coding help.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-04 09:12:47

Without knowing anything else, I think I can at least say you'll need an Every Turn rule:

[code]Every turn when at least six treasures are carried:
    say "At last you possess [the list of carried treasures]!";
    end the story finally saying "You can retire now";[/code]

If you need that to happen right away before any other turn sequence rules or triggered actions, you can have it run "after doing anything" or maybe just "after taking." You can also give it a name and invoke it in multiple places:

[code]Every turn (this is the check for victory rule):
    if at least six treasures are carried:
        end the story finally saying "You have won".

After taking something:
    abide by the check for victory rule;
    continue the action.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2943&start=0#p20550
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Drop [n] objects questions
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-04 09:22:58

Still on the topic of dropping stuff.... is there any way to completely annihilate 'drop all'? And once I've gone that far, I'll probably want to slay 'get all' as well. You know, so there's some message of my own design that appears if you try either.

I thought I had cleverly bopped my second least favourite library message on the head ('There are none at all available!'... a response to 'get all' when nothing can be got) by overwriting it with Default Messages, but then I discovered the message also appears in response to 'drop all' in similar circumstances.

Then I realised I can't find all the paths that lead to this message appearing in the standard rules, because I can't actually find one path (I searched for '44', the number of the library message), so I assume it's in the i6 someplace - and so in turn I can't really write a default response to cover all eventualities, 'cos I don't know what those eventualities are.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2937&start=10#p20551
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Writing a paragraph with a list
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-04 09:29:05

So why are the "don't mention..." rules in the "printing a locale paragraph about" rulebook and not in the "after choosing notable locale objects" rulebook (or even incorporated into the "for choosing notable locale objects" rule)? That seems overly complicated.

And why isn't there a "don't mention the player" rule, eliminating the need to have an "undescribed" property at all?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2952&start=0#p20552
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: When is a cutscene OK?
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-08-04 09:39:41

I've been writing out few scenes that comprise a significant puzzle in the late midgame of my WIP, and it seems that I can't avoid a cutscene here and there.  Well, I'm not sure if "cutscene" is the right word, because the the actions that are narrated without the player getting a chance to intervene are pretty small and not significant to the story in and of themselves.  However, I really can't come up with a way to put control into the hands of the player.  The result is a paragraph after the few commands in this sequence describing a bunch of little actions taken by the player to arrive at what I hope is the obvious goal of the PC for this scene.

In another part, near the end of the game, I have a more significant cutscene.  This one is a different problem altogether; the main reason for it being a cutscene is that I can't think of anything for the player to do during that narrative other than waiting. I think it would be worse form to make the player type "WAIT" a few times to get through a scene than to just narrate it.

Any thoughts on this? [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2948&start=0#p20553
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Actions changing based on player location.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-04 09:43:22

[quote="dormammu"][code]Dancing is an action applying to nothing.
Understand "dance" as dancing

Carry out dancing:
	say "You start dancing wildly, despite the lack of music. You're not very good."

The Main Bedroom is a room. "You are in your bedroom. It's a rather messy place, really. There's a pile of dirty clothes attempting to gain sentience in the corner. There's also an ancient looking stereo in the corner. West leads to a hall."

Instead of dancing if the location is the main bedroom:
	say "You turn on the stereo and start headbanging to the music. Unfortunately, the stereo somehow got set to the soft rock station. You find yourself headbanging to Phil Collins."
[/code]
[/quote]

I'd like to point out that a carry out rule should never say anything. A check rule should say something if it's refusing an action or redirecting it to another action, and a report rule should describe what happens at the carry out stage, but the carry out rulebook itself should be silent. Your refusal would work perfectly well as a check rule:

[code]Check dancing:
	say "You start dancing wildly, despite the lack of music. You're not very good.";
	stop the action;[/code]

Of course if you want the action to count as a success, you can make it a report rule.

Regarding the "in [room]" syntax - I've had problems when combining that with other "when" conditions. For example, this will not compile:
[code]Party is a scene.

Instead of dancing during Party in The Main Bedroom:
	say "You really start to get your groove on. You're not sure why everyone is giving you such funny looks."[/code]

But if you really need your action to work for NPCs, you can also say "when the location of the actor is [room]."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2952&start=0#p20554
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When is a cutscene OK?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-04 10:01:49

Doesn't sound like that big of a problem --  but really, I think you should just go with it and see what your testers think. It's easy to overthink these issues. Just do what seems okay to you, and get the feedback you need in the beta stage.

As a general rule of thumb, I would say that there is nothing wrong with having a small number of longer cut scenes in your game. "Info dumps" are generally disliked because they take you out of the rhythm of play; but it's fine to break that rhythm now and then. Being allowed to sit back and just read about something that happens can be a good reward for a player who has been spending thought and effort to get to that stage of the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2495&start=0#p20555
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Quest 5.0 - Release Candidate 1 is now available
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-08-04 10:08:23

Release Candidate 1 is now available - this will be the "gold" release unless more bugs are found.

I still need to update the documentation, so the final release will be available towards the end of August.

Blog post: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.textadventures.co.uk/blog/2011/08/04/quest-5-0-release-candidate-1/">http://www.textadventures.co.uk/blog/20 ... ndidate-1/</a>

You can now download Quest 5.0 from the main Quest downloads page: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.textadventures.co.uk/quest/download/">http://www.textadventures.co.uk/quest/download/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2952&start=0#p20556
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When is a cutscene OK?
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-08-04 10:17:56

I think it's fine to just describe a series of events if the player character wouldn't have control over them anyway, or if they're just menial steps that it wouldn't be any fun for the player to have to do one by one. What I would be wary of is putting things in a "cutscene" that would make the player think, "wait, that's not what I would do in that situation" or "why am I not in control of this?"

As for the second question... if you have a long scene, I do think it's better to break it up over multiple turns rather than one big block of text. Even if the player can't do anything that will meaningfully affect what happens, I would still recommend at least allowing him to examine things while it's going on, just to increase the illusion of actually being present and not just watching a scripted event. If the player just types "wait," he has only his own unimaginativeness to blame if it feels tedious.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2943&start=0#p20557
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Drop [n] objects questions
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-04 10:24:49

Throw away the "take" grammar, and rebuild it using "Understand [something] as taking" rather than [things]. Then any attempt to take multiple objects will hit the "you can't use multiple objects" error.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2943&start=0#p20558
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Drop [n] objects questions
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-04 10:34:43

Thanks, bearer of good news!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2945&start=0#p20559
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: advice requested re: possible deal-of-sorts
User: Greeny / DateTime: 2011-08-04 10:38:50

[quote="zarf"]If your agreement with the publishing company says you get a share, then you do. If it doesn't, then you don't.[/quote]In his OP he already implied he doesn't have an agreement and is asking for advice on formulating one.

[quote="zarf"]If you are not business-savvy, you should talk to someone who is. (This web forum doesn't count. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]Of course any advice given here is to be treated with healthy skepticism, but it [i]could[/i] count.
The advice to talk to someone who is business savvy [i]as well[/i], is good advice.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2952&start=0#p20560
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When is a cutscene OK?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-04 11:02:27

[quote="Bainespal"]The result is a paragraph after the few commands in this sequence describing a bunch of little actions taken by the player to arrive at what I hope is the obvious goal of the PC for this scene.[/quote]
This is generally fine, as long as you avoid putting the most fun or important stuff in cutscenes. This can be thought of as an extended version of player-friendly implicit actions (as when OPEN DOOR deals automatically with locks that you have a key to).
[quote="Bainespal"]In another part, near the end of the game, I have a more significant cutscene. This one is a different problem altogether; the main reason for it being a cutscene is that I can't think of anything for the player to do during that narrative other than waiting. I think it would be worse form to make the player type "WAIT" a few times to get through a scene than to just narrate it.[/quote]
As a rule of thumb, assume that the player will have forgotten everything that happens in a cutscene by the time they get to the end of the game. (They might remember it that long, but then again they might forget it by the time it scrolls off the screen.) If there's anything that's really crucial to the experience of the game, it's better to make it interactive. If the cutscene you're talking about is just a necessary segue to get the plot to the next stage, you're fine: edit to deliver the necessary information as efficiently as possible, and move on to the next stage of the story. If you're envisioning it as one of the most important parts of your story, then you may have a problem. This is largely a matter of focus: if you're writing a game about martial arts, don't make the fights cutscenes -- unless what you're [i]really[/i] interested in is the relationships between the martial artists, in which case you could make the fights cutscenes and load all the interactivity into conversations.

The framing of a cutscene is important, too; if a cutscene is a memory or a Meanwhile or viewed through a telescope, the player will have less expectation of being allowed to interfere. If a cutscene takes the protagonist over and makes them actively affect proceedings, your justifications need to be a bit stronger. Similarly, the kind of agency that the player has been led to expect is important: is this a story about the protagonist being trapped by their world ([i]Rameses[/i]) or about having great power over it ([i]Gilded[/i])? How fine-grained is that control? (If you've just spent a hundred turns fiddling with an intricate lock, it's going to be a bit jarring if this is followed by a cutscene where you punch the bad guy, propose marriage and move to Manitoba. But then again, there can be good reasons to jar the player.)

And the last factor, the big one, is how much you trust your writing abilities. If you're confident that you can write well enough to keep your audience riveted for two or three paragraphs, then you obviously have a bit more slack to play with.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2948&start=0#p20561
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Actions changing based on player location.
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-04 11:19:41

[quote="capmikee"]

I'd like to point out that a carry out rule should never say anything. A check rule should say something if it's refusing an action or redirecting it to another action, and a report rule should describe what happens at the carry out stage, but the carry out rulebook itself should be silent.[/quote]

To be fair, even Standard Rules ignores this for certain actions, like looking and examining. (Anybody know what the reason is for that?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2948&start=0#p20562
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Actions changing based on player location.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-04 11:48:31

[quote="capmikee"]
Regarding the "in [room]" syntax - I've had problems when combining that with other "when" conditions. For example, this will not compile:
[code]Party is a scene.

Instead of dancing during Party in The Main Bedroom:
	say "You really start to get your groove on. You're not sure why everyone is giving you such funny looks."[/code]

But if you really need your action to work for NPCs, you can also say "when the location of the actor is [room]."[/quote]

I think you've just switched the order of the clauses; "Instead of singing in Station during Party:" compiles. (I haven't defined dancing or The Main Bedroom in my dummy project.)

(We talked about this [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2486&p=17097#p17097]once before[/url]; I still can't figure out where "in Station" is supposed to fit in the Backus-Naur form.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2943&start=0#p20563
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Drop [n] objects questions
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-08-04 11:53:01

And, conveniently for you, if you forbid multiple objects with Zarf's suggestion, the I6 ordering problem will go away.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2948&start=0#p20564
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Actions changing based on player location.
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-04 11:53:39

[quote="maga"]To be fair, even Standard Rules ignores this for certain actions, like looking and examining. (Anybody know what the reason is for that?)[/quote]
I don't know if this is the real reason, but it kinda makes sense that the goal of those actions is seeing the description of a room or an object, so the description is printed in the carry out rules. (c.f. with the taking action the goal is to put something in the player's inventory, which is done in the carry out rules and report rules confirm that the action has been successful; report rules aren't needed for looking and examining to confirm that the description was printed.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2937&start=10#p20565
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Writing a paragraph with a list
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2011-08-04 12:14:22

[quote="capmikee"]So why are the "don't mention..." rules in the "printing a locale paragraph about" rulebook and not in the "after choosing notable locale objects" rulebook (or even incorporated into the "for choosing notable locale objects" rule)? That seems overly complicated.
[/quote]
I think the idea is that since the printing a locale paragraph about activity is going to be complicated one way or the other, you might as well put all the complication in one activity, especially since For... rules have default success.

[quote]
And why isn't there a "don't mention the player" rule, eliminating the need to have an "undescribed" property at all?[/quote]
Because this way you can use the "undescribed" property in the story, for example if you have a not-really-there object that needs to be in-scope but can't be referred to... or something.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2948&start=0#p20566
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Actions changing based on player location.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-04 12:28:01

[quote="Juhana"][quote="maga"]To be fair, even Standard Rules ignores this for certain actions, like looking and examining. (Anybody know what the reason is for that?)[/quote]
I don't know if this is the real reason, but it kinda makes sense that the goal of those actions is seeing the description of a room or an object, so the description is printed in the carry out rules. (c.f. with the taking action the goal is to put something in the player's inventory, which is done in the carry out rules and report rules confirm that the action has been successful; report rules aren't needed for looking and examining to confirm that the description was printed.)[/quote]
That's always been my impression too. I'm not sure if it really makes sense. A couple of times I've written "after looking" rules that print something after the room description, and then got confused when an "after taking" (or whatever) rule suppresses the normal "Taken" message. This can be even more complicated with actions like going, which trigger a look (but in what phase? I can't remember).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2937&start=10#p20567
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Writing a paragraph with a list
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-04 12:33:58

[quote="NYKevin"]I think the idea is that since the printing a locale paragraph about activity is going to be complicated one way or the other, you might as well put all the complication in one activity, especially since For... rules have default success.[/quote]
I hope there's a better reason.

[quote][quote]And why isn't there a "don't mention the player" rule, eliminating the need to have an "undescribed" property at all?[/quote]
Because this way you can use the "undescribed" property in the story, for example if you have a not-really-there object that needs to be in-scope but can't be referred to... or something.[/quote]
Yes, let's provide already-confused authors with more opportunities to write garbled spaghetti code that doesn't play nice with the Standard Library!

Seriously, the choosing notable locale objects activity is your friend. I'd like to see it get more attention both in the Standard Rules and in the documentation. It can do everything "undescribed" can do, in a more consistent way, and it can also give the author control over the ordering of paragraphs, and even provide views of distant objects. Its syntax and behavior are easy to understand, clear, and predictable, which is not something I can say for printing a locale paragraph.

Choosing notable locale objects fits my idea of how Inform does things: Set parameters, check restrictions, change the world model, report the changes. That's how actions work generally, and I think it applies well to activities and descriptions too. In another language, I might build a string piece by piece before deciding whether or not to print it. Inform doesn't do that because texts are routines or compressed text, which can be used without dynamic memory. So to "say" something complicated, you first need to have all the parameters set. I have vague ambitions of using Ron Newcomb's "Unsuccessful Attempt by the Player" extension to make this process even more explicit and consistent... but I'm waiting to see how library messages are handled in the next release of Inform first.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2945&start=0#p20568
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: advice requested re: possible deal-of-sorts
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-08-04 12:58:54

it was all good advice.  idk, just wanted to make sure zarf knew im not an idiot, but yeah i take things wrong at times.  look, ive had severe insomnia all week, forgive me.

anyway, thanks all for the advice, will keep u updated if anything should happen with this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2948&start=10#p20569
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Actions changing based on player location.
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-04 13:02:21

[quote="matt w"]I still can't figure out where "in Station" is supposed to fit in the Backus-Naur form.[/quote]

It is part of the <action pattern> nonterminal in the "Backus-Naur form for rules" example of the Recipe Book (Example 383).

I think this illustrates the correct order for adding conditions to an action in a rule preamble:
[code]Instead of exiting from the oven in the Kitchen in the presence of Jamie Oliver while we have not examined the recipe during Lunch Time:[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2948&start=10#p20570
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Actions changing based on player location.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-04 13:08:44

[quote="capmikee"]This can be even more complicated with actions like going, which trigger a look (but in what phase? I can't remember).[/quote]

It looks to me that it's not exactly a looking action; it's the "describe room gone into rule," a report an actor going which (for the player) issues the phrase "produce a room description with going spacing conventions," which in turn invokes the following bit of I6:

[code](- LookAfterGoing(); -)[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2953&start=0#p20571
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: a web app
User: koo5 / DateTime: 2011-08-04 13:38:33

for your mild entertainment, a first web app on the net running on inform7, its a guest book. Uses appengine for openid, and python to talk to the outside world, but the guts are inform7.
[url]http://el-melon.appspot.com/[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2945&start=0#p20572
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: advice requested re: possible deal-of-sorts
User: Greeny / DateTime: 2011-08-04 13:50:43

Nothing to forgive, was just clarifying. [emote]:)[/emote] 

Best of luck with it. Hopefully it will be a real door opener.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2954&start=0#p20573
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Extension of off topic subject in copyright thread
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-08-04 14:31:22

[url=http://www.glennsguides.com/][b]Glenn's Guides : Download & Play Classic Games[/b][/url]
From the makers of SimAnt and Sim City (startup company before EA merger)
[url=http://www.glennsguides.com/2009/12/alice-in-wonderland-game-free-download.html][b]Alice In Wonderland[/b][/url]

What I really liked (and what I wish more text adventure designers would do) is he asked players to contact him with what they would like to see in the game.

You know that hall of doors she fell into?
All but one couldn't be unlocked, and I always wondered what was behind the locked doors, so I was one of the people who wrote to him (still a kid) and asked him to take some liberties with the story, including a save point at the caterpillar's mushroom.

I've also been watching Alice In Wonderland videos on youtube (including the 1982 stage production - 4 part video ripped from old TV).

[b]Note:[/b] I didn't get the emulator, but I remember the 1981/82 game.

[b]Edit:[/b] Small mistake in locked doors example. (fixed)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2952&start=0#p20574
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When is a cutscene OK?
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-08-04 14:41:49

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Doesn't sound like that big of a problem --  but really, I think you should just go with it and see what your testers think. It's easy to overthink these issues. Just do what seems okay to you, and get the feedback you need in the beta stage.[/quote]
You're right -- it's not really a problem, definitely not at the stage of implementation.  As I was thinking through the difficulties I was having drafting these two scenes (in pre-written transcripts), I started wondering about how the cutscene might legitimately be used in IF.

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]As a general rule of thumb, I would say that there is nothing wrong with having a small number of longer cut scenes in your game. "Info dumps" are generally disliked because they take you out of the rhythm of play; but it's fine to break that rhythm now and then.[/quote]
That's good to hear.  So, I conclude that the level of agency that the player is given can vary, but even if several broad actions are assumed from one command, it's not really a cutscene (or if it is, it's an acceptable one) unless an unreasonable amount of text is given in an infodump.  Unless, of course, that infodump isn't actually unreasonable given the situation and pacing.  [emote];)[/emote] 

[quote="shammack"]As for the second question... if you have a long scene, I do think it's better to break it up over multiple turns rather than one big block of text. Even if the player can't do anything that will meaningfully affect what happens, I would still recommend at least allowing him to examine things while it's going on, just to increase the illusion of actually being present and not just watching a scripted event.[/quote]
I think I agree with that, but I would want the scene to at least give the player meaningful things to examine or otherwise explore, things that perhaps won't be available at all after the scene.  Sometimes, I think it might even be a good idea for scripted scenes to slow down so the player can examine a few things.  Ideally, I would like to imagine what a real person would be doing in such a situation, even if only thinking or taping his or her foot, and somehow give the player the opportunity to interact in that way, but that's much too hard and hypothetical.

[quote="maga"]This is generally fine, as long as you avoid putting the most fun or important stuff in cutscenes. This can be thought of as an extended version of player-friendly implicit actions (as when OPEN DOOR deals automatically with locks that you have a key to).[/quote]
I never thought about it that way before. What I wrote is a similar affect to that of implicit actions, but the reason for the implicit actions in my case is that I can't be sure that players who enter those commands intend to move the PC toward the goal, or whether they're just trying the commands to see what is possible in the current location.

[quote="maga"]If the cutscene you're talking about is just a necessary segue to get the plot to the next stage, you're fine: edit to deliver the necessary information as efficiently as possible, and move on to the next stage of the story. If you're envisioning it as one of the most important parts of your story, then you may have a problem. This is largely a matter of focus: if you're writing a game about martial arts, don't make the fights cutscenes -- unless what you're really interested in is the relationships between the martial artists, in which case you could make the fights cutscenes and load all the interactivity into conversations.[/quote]
That sounds like good advice, and I'll have to think it over carefully.  However, isn't the opening text displayed at the very beginning of the game and the closing text when an ending is reached a kind of a cutscene that [i]is[/i] very important to the story, at least in many cases?

[quote="maga"]Similarly, the kind of agency that the player has been led to expect is important: is this a story about the protagonist being trapped by their world (Rameses) or about having great power over it (Gilded)?[/quote]
I never thought to consider that before! Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2948&start=10#p20575
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Actions changing based on player location.
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2011-08-04 15:06:14

[quote="matt w"][quote="capmikee"]This can be even more complicated with actions like going, which trigger a look (but in what phase? I can't remember).[/quote]

It looks to me that it's not exactly a looking action; it's the "describe room gone into rule," a report an actor going which (for the player) issues the phrase "produce a room description with going spacing conventions," which in turn invokes the following bit of I6:

[code](- LookAfterGoing(); -)[/code][/quote]

I just checked, "actions" does not show a looking action after going, but the relevant rules are firing anyway.  I guess it's an I6 thing.  I'm pretty sure the documentation says the Before, Instead, and After rules are not consulted for looking after going.

I would guess that LookAfterGoing() translates roughly as this:
[code]Abide by the check looking rules;
Consider the carry out looking rules;
Abide by the report looking rules.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2952&start=0#p20576
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When is a cutscene OK?
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2011-08-04 15:26:39

[quote="Bainespal"]
That sounds like good advice, and I'll have to think it over carefully.  However, isn't the opening text displayed at the very beginning of the game and the closing text when an ending is reached a kind of a cutscene that [i]is[/i] very important to the story, at least in many cases?[/quote]
When the opening text prints, the player most likely has no idea what the IF is even about; it doesn't feel like a loss of control since they never had control over the PC in the first place.  By the time the closing text prints, hopefully the central conflict has been resolved, and if it's well written, the player will be satisfied with what (s)he has accomplished already.

I think of it as a matter of player satisfaction.  The player likes to have a lot of autonomy, so you should try to avoid controlling them too much.  On the other hand, the player also does not want to be bored with doing menial or trivial things over and over, so we automate some of it.  Once the conflict has been resolved, the player is less motivated and has less of a desire for autonomy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2952&start=0#p20577
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When is a cutscene OK?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-04 15:45:19

[quote="Bainespal"]
That sounds like good advice, and I'll have to think it over carefully.  However, isn't the opening text displayed at the very beginning of the game and the closing text when an ending is reached a kind of a cutscene that [i]is[/i] very important to the story, at least in many cases?[/quote]
Well, a lot of the same considerations apply -- you shouldn't put things in the opening or closing text that would be better as interaction, for instance. And, like cutscenes, you should keep introductory and closing text as compact as possible. And you shouldn't introduce a lot of information in an intro and rely on the player retaining it all.
But because they're not interruptions, some considerations don't apply. And because of their special position they're likely to have a much bigger influence on player experience than other non-interactive sections.
[quote="NYKevin"]Once the conflict has been resolved, the player is less motivated and has less of a desire for autonomy.[/quote]
This is interesting -- I have a guilty love of long, drawn-out, [i]World According To Garp[/i]-style epilogues, but they're rarely attempted in IF. The main example I can think of, in [i]Gun Mute[/i], is probably the least satisfactory part of a hugely satisfying game, but I think that's largely down to special features of the game -- Mute's interactions become even more limited when shooting isn't a useful way of dealing with his environment.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2942&start=0#p20578
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Copyright woes
User: lunasspecto / DateTime: 2011-08-04 17:56:01

[quote="bcressey"]I would contact the author...[/quote]
Thanks. I think I will, if I can find his contact information anywhere. I think he or his publisher has gone to some length to shield him from correspondence, as he's one of the most popular American poets of today. And no, I won't quote without permission.

[quote="Robert Rothman"]"Video games are things played by unwashed teenagers who don't know how to read and instead pretend to shoot at each other."[/quote]
I imagined that going through their heads too. Incidentally, I'm an unwashed teenager, but the rest doesn't apply to me. Actually, I'm technically not a teenager anymore either, but only by several months.

[quote="matt w"]One possibility would be (perhaps next time) to try saying that it will be used as the epigraph for a piece of interactive fiction, or hypertext literature, or what not.[/quote]
I would normally call it interactive fiction, but I used [i]textual video game[/i] because I didn't want to alienate the folks in the rights office by referring directly to a medium and community they probably hadn't heard of. [i]Electronic literature[/i] might have been a good compromise.

[quote="shammack"]How do they know it's not consistent? You said nothing about the content of the game.[/quote]
[i]Tell[/i] me about it!  [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote="shammack"]By the way, why redact the names of the publisher, poet, and poem?[/quote]
It wasn't really a [i]private[/i] conversation, but I didn't think publisher expected it to be public either, so redaction felt like the ethical thing to do.

[quote="Finn Rosenløv"]At least you got an answer.[/quote]
Yeah, I didn't really even expect to get one. I firmly believe that there should be some sort of compulsory copyright release system for this sort of thing, whereby anyone willing to pay a certain government-established rate to the copyright holder. If there actually is such a system, and I've failed to notice it, I hope someone will educate me!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2944&start=20#p20579
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On Red Herrings and design...
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-04 19:17:08

I'd never heard of the mimesis-plant position, so I googled it and [url=http://www.joltcountry.com/trottingkrips/sam.html]this[/url] was all I got. Is there some historian here who can better explain its provenance?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2943&start=0#p20580
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Drop [n] objects questions
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-04 20:37:09

Yeah. I just wish I hadn't been so foolish as to encounter these problems in the wrong order [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2955&start=0#p20581
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: T3 Travel actions
User: Mikawa / DateTime: 2011-08-05 01:34:27

Hi all,

I looked over the "connectors" example from Eric Eve and want to modify the "ride" command, so that the player can type:

>ride east
and remap it to the standard travel action, but allow the command only when the player is on the bicycle.

In the example the code is:
[code]
DefineTAction(Ride)
;

VerbRule(Ride)
    ('ride' | 'mount') singleDobj
    :  RideAction
    verbPhrase = 'ride/riding (what)'
;

DefineTAction(RideDir)
;

VerbRule(RideDir)
    'ride' singleDobj ('to' ('the'|) |) singleDir
    : RideDirAction
    verbPhrase = 'ride/riding (what) (where)'
;

modify Thing
    dobjFor(Ride)
    {
        preCond = [touchObj]
        verify() { illogical(cannotRideMsg); }
    }
    dobjFor(RideDir)
    {
        preCond = [touchObj]
        verify() { illogical(cannotRideMsg); }
    }
    
    cannotRideMsg = '{That dobj/he} {is} not something you can ride. '
;
[/code]

I didn't yet find anything in the manuals how to deal with a new travel action.
Has somebody any clue, please?

Best regards
-- MI

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2956&start=0#p20582
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: the giza pyramids weren't built by the ancient egyptians
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-08-05 03:14:58

ever wonder why the ancient egyptians, who were infamous for covering every square inch of stone with hieroglyphs detailing the minutiae of their lives from weddings to ass-wipes, never actually etched a single hieroglyph in or on the pyramids at giza?

and, despite the numerous glyphs all over detailing the minutest detail of life, not a single set of glyphs speak about the creation of the pyramids?  historians and egyptologists are [i]assuming [/i]they built it as pharaoh tombs.

ok, so if they are pharaoh tombs, u dont think a single pharaoh thought of, idk, etching a glyph about it on or in the tomb itself?

also, we had to blast and dig our way [i]into [/i]the pyramids just to find zero mummies inside, yet we insist they were taken by tomb-robbers.

i guess tomb-robbers who could walk thru walls?

people are teaching this crap to your kids.  please tell your kids to constantly seek every source of info they can on the topics they are interested in before they believe anything they hear!

but, of course, as we all know, if its on the internet, its true.  no one lies on the net!

drive safely.

 [emote]:ugeek:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2956&start=0#p20583
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: the giza pyramids weren't built by the ancient egyptians
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-08-05 03:19:06

oh, and a photo of the side of the sphinx was taken to numerous geologists who were asked to identify the type of erosion they were seeing in the pic.

100% of them said it was "obviously water erosion".

then they were shown the larger photo that shows it being on the sphinx.  they were stunned stupid.

for the sphinx to be covered in water erosion, it would have to predate what historians tell us by over 10000 years, when that part of the sahara had rainfall

see how small the head of the sphinx is?  its because it was a lion's head, and a pharaoh had it recarved.

there is so much out there and we really dont know anything.

just submitting all this for conversation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2956&start=0#p20584
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: the giza pyramids weren't built by the ancient egyptians
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-05 06:30:31

Oh no, you have been reading that Erich van Däniken crap? To take just one thing that is plain false:

[quote="ezfreemann"]oh, and a photo of the side of the sphinx was taken to numerous geologists who were asked to identify the type of erosion they were seeing in the pic. 100% of them said it was "obviously water erosion".[/quote]
Even [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Sphinx_of_Giza#Water_erosion_debate]Wikipedia will teach you[/url] that the erosion of the Sphinx is a highly controversial issue, both regarding its causes and (among those who support the water erosion hypothesis) regarding the climate of ancient Egypt. The outcome of this debate could change the dating of the sphinx from anywhere to as old as the great pyramids (the majority opinion among Egyptologists) to the beginning of the Old Kingdom -- either way, there is little doubt that it was built by Egyptians.

To come back to the point of plain falsity, it is not true that 100% of scientists believe that the Sphinx has been eroded by water. Furthermore, such a story about a photograph taken to "numerous geologists", who were then "stunned stupid", has all the marks of myth. Who took the photographs to which scientists, when? We get no details that would allow us to check the story because it never happened; it never happened, because this is not how science works. This is the kind of rhetorical story though up by crackpots who need to believe that there is some mythic "scientific consensus" out there which is protected by scientists not "looking at the evidence" until some clever freethinker "tricks" them into it. It makes me mad to see such nonsense spread, because it turns our legitimate wonder, doubt and curiosity into some kind of anti-intellectual conspiracy theory. Blegh.

Here is a fun fact, which I only recently realised: the Sahara became a desert only between 4000 and 6000 years ago (we are not sure). Before that, it was a savannah -- not lushly forested or anything, but still the kind of place where lots of animals could live, men could hunt, and so on. The earliest Egyptian dynasty is from a little before 5000 years ago: they or their not that distant ancestors have actually [i]experienced this[/i]. Have experience the greatest part of north Africa turning into a a desert. (And it is still going on: the north African coastal region was an important grain-growing centre for the Romans. Hard to believe now.)

Anyway, if you are interested in ancient Egypt -- and I encourage anyone to be interested in ancient Egypt, it is fascinating -- get a good book about ancient Egypt instead of reading the pseudo-science stuff. You will learn lots of things that you don't know, you will learn that there are many other things nobody yet knows (because all scientific books I have ever seen are very upfront about acknowledging this, and reading science is the best way to realise how little we know), and you will satisfy your curiosity by the kind of knowledge that only excites further curiosity. That is a lot more fun than getting a false feeling of I-am-smarter-than-those-scientists by reading nonsensical arguments about the Egyptians covering every inch they built with inscriptions (wrong; no one is going to inscribe the outside of buildings, and certainly not buildings meant to stand among sand storms for millennia), or about it being so surprising that they didn't paint the building of the pyramids (which, given that most of their paintings are meant to depict the afterworld, is the most unsurprising thing ever).

That was a bit of a rant, but none of it was meant aggressively, of course. I just... yeah, it really boils down to what I said. I hate how these people turn what is good (curiosity, the desire to know and understand) into what is bad (a false feeling of superiority and an antagonism towards even honest science, and most science is honest science) while that same good can lead people to wonderful discoveries.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2956&start=0#p20585
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: the giza pyramids weren't built by the ancient egyptians
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-05 06:36:33

Bravo.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2957&start=0#p20586
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: differing descriptions
User: Aintelligence / DateTime: 2011-08-05 07:06:30

Ok, I know this is a stupid question.

In my game, there is a driver's license in which the description changes with each examination.  And after the 7th examination, the description will remain the same.
[code]Your driver's licence is a thing. The first time your driver's lisence is examined: say "I nice picture of you right on the front.  It's fairly hazy though, you have quite a headache.".  The second time your driver's licence is examined, say "What?  That's not your face... ".
[/code]

Any help would be marvelous.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2957&start=0#p20587
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: differing descriptions
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-05 07:12:53

Either 'The description if the driver's license is "[one of]Desc 1[or]Desc 2[or]...[stopping]"' (chapter 5.7 in the manual) or 'Instead of examining the driver's license for the first time: "..."' and then 'for the second time', 'for the third time' and so on (chapter 9.14).

[quote="Aintelligence"]Ok, I know this is a stupid question.
[/quote]
Not at all.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2956&start=0#p20588
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: the giza pyramids weren't built by the ancient egyptians
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-08-05 07:35:00

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]It makes me mad to see such nonsense spread, because it turns our legitimate wonder, doubt and curiosity into some kind of anti-intellectual conspiracy theory.[/quote]
[i]Whose[/i] legitimate wonder, doubt, and curiosity?  Is it legitimate to doubt the scientific community (or other intellectuals)?  Is it legitimate to wonder whether the truth of a matter might be much deeper than the limited scientific understanding?  Is it legitimate to harbor curiosity that cannot be satisfied by the explanations that are taught and offered to the public by the experts?

I have to confess to some very strong anti-intellectual prejudices, taught both by my upbringing and by holding a minority viewpoint that few people in mainstream academic communities take seriously.  Even though my prejudices make it difficult for me to discuss this in a fair and level-headed manner, I do admit that science is a good discipline, and that it requires a lot more knowledge and study to be a serious scientist than I will ever posses.  I suppose that the notion of an [i]organized[/i] intellectual conspiracy against other ideas really is absurd, at least on a large scale.

However, I don't believe that those in the intellectual communities are the only ones with legitimate opinions.  I don't think that either general public consensus or the best opinions of experts are necessarily good indicators of the truth of any theory or teaching.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2956&start=0#p20589
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: the giza pyramids weren't built by the ancient egyptians
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-05 07:54:15

Ditto to Victor. And while I don't claim to know anything specific about the pyramids or ancient Egypt -- thanks for the information, Victor! -- it might be worth noting that a [url=http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028144.500-first-images-from-great-pyramids-chamber-of-secrets.html]pyramid-crawling robot[/url] very recently took pictures of what seem to be hieroglyphics in one of the chambers in the pyramid.

Pyramid-crawling robots photographing ancient hieroglyphic graffiti! Isn't that cool enough?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2956&start=0#p20590
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: the giza pyramids weren't built by the ancient egyptians
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-08-05 08:15:23

[quote="Bainespal"][quote="VictorGijsbers"]It makes me mad to see such nonsense spread, because it turns our legitimate wonder, doubt and curiosity into some kind of anti-intellectual conspiracy theory.[/quote]
[i]Whose[/i] legitimate wonder, doubt, and curiosity?  Is it legitimate to doubt the scientific community (or other intellectuals)?  Is it legitimate to wonder whether the truth of a matter might be much deeper than the limited scientific understanding?  Is it legitimate to harbor curiosity that cannot be satisfied by the explanations that are taught and offered to the public by the experts?[/quote]

All of that is legitimate and often praiseworthy when it comes to specific facts or theories. What's not so praiseworthy is a blanket tendency to distrust scientists merely for doing their jobs (i.e. gathering and disseminating facts, theory and knowledge).

Someone who has studied a subject professionally [i]should be expected[/i] to know more about it than a layperson. We may question the conclusions, but a theory should be countered with another theory, preferably a simpler one (in the terms of Occam, [i]not[/i] more simple-[i]minded[/i]) which fits the facts better. This is generally anathema to conspiracy theorists and fringe scientists alike.

A scientific theory is an explanation, a model. Ideally it's an accurate one, but it's certainly not supposed to be foolproof. It's not enough, therefore, to poke holes in the theory in an attempt to discredit it: one must advance a theory that does a better job than the previous one. It must still adhere to the data.

Does scientific consensus today contain a lot of holes, even errors? Of course it does. Does that mean anything goes, that any explanation is equally valid? I don't see how that follows. As Asimov once famously said, "when people thought the world was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the world was round, they were also wrong. But if you think the idea of the earth being round is just as wrong as the idea of it being flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."


Like Viktor, I hope I'm not coming across as strident or aggressive. I'm not being very coherent right now, and can only hope the gist of what I wanted to say comes across.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2956&start=0#p20591
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: the giza pyramids weren't built by the ancient egyptians
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-05 08:16:17

Yeah, the idea of 100% of geologists agreeing 100% on anything is sort of hilarious in itself.  (And the great reveal thing does indeed reek of urban legend.)  I can't speak to the evidence or lack thereof of the Giza pyramids, as it's not really my area of interest, but the idea that scientists sit around all day congratulating themselves on the status quo indicates a severe underestimation of the intellectual curiosity and diversity of ideas out there, and a severe overestimation of scientists' congeniality.  The scientific community tends to have squabbles and competitions and rivalries just like any other profession.  There would be no way to set up a global conspiracy.  I'd be stunned if you could get a single university department to agree and execute a conspiracy.  Even a conspiracy that would take a week.

Bainespal, I'm a little confused by your assertion that the theories of the people that know the most about something are no more likely to be true than the theories of people who haven't studied it.  Am I misunderstanding what you're saying, or could you clarify?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2956&start=0#p20592
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: the giza pyramids weren't built by the ancient egyptians
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-05 08:26:10

Everybody knows that the pyramids were one of the major public works projects of Pharoah Ramses Flathead, of the Ninety-Seventh Dynasty.  What is less well-known is that deep in one of the side-chambers of the Great Pyramid, archaeologists have recently discovered a battery-vending machine.  An intensive search is underway to try to find a one-Gizamid coin; if such a coin can be found, the intention is to use it to purchase a battery, in order to see whether the battery is still functional after forty-seven thousand, nine hundred fifty-two years.

As for hieroglyphics, at least one chamber is covered with symbols depicting a grue eating a man (although its difficult to make out because its pretty dark).  Another chamber shows an adventurer slaying a dragon with his bare hands.

Although unconfirmed, there have been reports of a pirate wandering around the interior since ancient times.

(And all of this makes as much sense as little green men from Mars building the damn things!)


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2956&start=0#p20593
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: the giza pyramids weren't built by the ancient egyptians
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-05 08:46:19

The pyramids were built by the fish-people living in Atlantis. They were filled with water and served as aquariums that were used as hotels when the Atlantian fish-people went to Egypt on vacation.

What's worse, I can actually come up with "evidence" for the above that is consistent and makes sense.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2956&start=10#p20594
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: the giza pyramids weren't built by the ancient egyptians
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-05 09:11:15

[quote="Bainespal"]Is it legitimate to doubt the scientific community (or other intellectuals)?  Is it legitimate to wonder whether the truth of a matter might be much deeper than the limited scientific understanding?  Is it legitimate to harbor curiosity that cannot be satisfied by the explanations that are taught and offered to the public by the experts?[/quote]
Oh yes, it is. Scientists (and other intellectuals) certainly don't regard each other as infallible in any way. Good scientists (and other intellectuals) don't regard themselves as infallible either.  

What can legitimately make people mad is the dismissal of scientifically collected and tested evidence in favour of haphazard data arbitrarily presented as conclusive falsification of whole branches of science on purportedly scientific grounds. That is when someone comes along, presents some data, and says: “These pieces of evidence that I lay before you and that you, professional scientists, consciously choose to ignore – these pieces of evidence scientifically and conclusively prove that you are mere humbugs.” It's not hard to see how maddening that must be.

Scientific methods was and is developed precisely to guard against misinterpretations of data, hasty jumps to conclusions, prejudices, subjective influences, and anything else that would detract from an objective interpretation of data. This doesn't mean that scientists always get things right (and I guess they're generally well aware of that); it doesn't even mean that the best opinions of experts are NECESSARILY good indicators of the truth of any theory or teaching; but it might be hoped that it is ACTUALLY a good indicator of the truth of theories that fall squarely inside their area of expertise. 

It does happen, though, and ever too often, that scientists venture out of their areas of expertise into philosophy (I guess science often raises philosophical problems) and claim that quantum physics or behavioral science or whatever has solved the philosophical problems of free will or of the nature of mind or of rational thinking or of intentionality or of metaphysics or of some part of ethics even. They seldom have. Science of course provides data that philosophers have to take into account, but that's another matter. Science only ever solves philosophical problems by coming up with new scientific methods for studying previously philosophical questions. 

And presumably it happens that scientists venture into other non-scientific areas, too (theology or whatever, where they are no more experts than I). And I suppose that in these areas, too, the proper response is not that of trying to disprove scientific theories either scientifically, theologically, or philosophically, but of pointing out where they leave scientific theory and enter theology or philosophy or whatever.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2958&start=0#p20595
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Checking for actions deeper in the stack
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-05 11:52:50

I'm sure this problem has been discussed before, and I was probably even involved, but I can't remember how to deal with it. Consider:

[code]
Porch is a room. "This porch is screened in to keep bugs out. The screen door opens on the back yard to the south."

A croquet ball is in Porch.

The screen door is a door. It is south of Porch and north of Back Yard. "The screen door opens on [if the location is Porch]the back yard to the south[otherwise]the porch to the north[end if]. It is currently [if open]open[otherwise]closed[end if]."

The screen door has an object called the prop.

Instead of opening the screen door:
	now the screen door is open;
	if not letting go:
		say "As soon as you let go of the screen door, it starts to close, so you stand in the way to stop it.";
		now the prop of the screen door is yourself;
	
Going is letting go.
Taking is letting go.
Opening a container is letting go.

After letting go when the prop of the screen door is yourself:
	say "You let go of the screen door, and it begins to close.";
	now the prop of the screen door is nothing;
	continue the action.
	
Every turn when the screen door is open and the prop of the screen door is nothing:
	say "The screen door slams with a loud bang.";
	now the screen door is closed.
	
Test me with "open door/l/get ball/l/s"[/code]

The issue is with the line "if letting go." This is never true, because whenever it is tested, the action is opening the screen door. I can't seem to figure out how to test for the "letting go" kind of action while processing an opening action. I need to do this so I can check whether the going and opening actions are happening in the same turn or not. Any ideas?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2944&start=20#p20596
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On Red Herrings and design...
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2011-08-05 12:49:03

Let me unpack that some. Back in the 90s, a guy named Roger Giner-Sorolla posted an essay called "Crimes Against Mimesis". It's in the IF Theory Book, or you can read it at <a class="postlink" href="http://web.archive.org/web/20050619081931/http://www.geocities.com/aetus_kane/writing/cam.html">http://web.archive.org/web/200506190819 ... g/cam.html</a>

I believe Neil Guy then made some comment about thinking mimesis sounded like a kind of plant. Adam Thornton, being Adam Thornton, took those two things and created the game "Sins Against Mimesis" in which you must commit the seven deadly sins with a mimesis plant.

So with that background: "mimesis-plant position" is hewing to the idea of mimesis in interactive fiction as laid out by Roger Giner-Sorolla.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2959&start=0#p20597
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: SF Bay IF Meetup tomorrow at 1PM
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-08-05 12:49:20

WHEN: Saturday, August 6, 2011 1:00 PM
WHERE: Au Coquelet, 2000 University Ave Berkeley, CA 94701

<a class="postlink" href="http://meetu.ps/3d4k7">http://meetu.ps/3d4k7</a>

We'll bring a few games, and we can talk about we're working on and what we're playing. (A few of us will be at PAX in Seattle this year. What's going down?)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2956&start=10#p20598
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: the giza pyramids weren't built by the ancient egyptians
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-08-05 13:25:38

[quote="Eleas"]All of that is legitimate and often praiseworthy when it comes to specific facts or theories. What's not so praiseworthy is a blanket tendency to distrust scientists merely for doing their jobs (i.e. gathering and disseminating facts, theory and knowledge).[/quote]
Yes, I know that, even if I sometimes struggle with accepting it.  Ultimately, scientists and scholars have much more accurate information and knowledge than I will ever have.  I don't have the skill and knowledge to create some of the unquestioned theories that I would prefer to be less unquestioned.

[quote="Eleas"]We may question the conclusions, but a theory should be countered with another theory, preferably a simpler one (in the terms of Occam, [i]not[/i] more simple-[i]minded[/i]) which fits the facts better. This is generally anathema to conspiracy theorists and fringe scientists alike.[/quote]
When another theory [i]is[/i] offered, it shouldn't be condemned out of hand, even if the people who offered the theory didn't have the professional scientific background of those who framed the accepted theory.  There are serious scholars who will probably never be considered anything other than "fringe scientists", but if their ideas do the facts (to some degree, as nothing would ever fit all the facts perfectly), they should be given place.  Really, there shouldn't be any "fringe scientists"; the division should only be between real scientists who use the scientific method and those who are just sensationalists.

[quote="Eleas"]Does scientific consensus today contain a lot of holes, even errors? Of course it does. Does that mean anything goes, that any explanation is equally valid? I don't see how that follows. As Asimov once famously said, "when people thought the world was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the world was round, they were also wrong. But if you think the idea of the earth being round is just as wrong as the idea of it being flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."[/quote]
That sounds like a wise and balanced thought to me.  However, it would be good to remember that the scientific consensus once held that the earth was flat.

[quote="Eleas"]Like Viktor, I hope I'm not coming across as strident or aggressive. I'm not being very coherent right now, and can only hope the gist of what I wanted to say comes across.[/quote]
Same with me.  [emote]:)[/emote]  But neither of you came across that way.

[quote="gravel"]Bainespal, I'm a little confused by your assertion that the theories of the people that know the most about something are no more likely to be true than the theories of people who haven't studied it. Am I misunderstanding what you're saying, or could you clarify?[/quote]
Honestly, I'm a little confused too....

I certainly can't assert that.  Professional scientists and other scholars have much more knowledge, and their theories are probably very good [i]as models[/i].  That doesn't mean that they know the best way to interpret their knowledge.

[quote="Felix"]What can legitimately make people mad is the dismissal of scientifically collected and tested evidence in favour of haphazard data arbitrarily presented as conclusive falsification of whole branches of science on purportedly scientific grounds. That is when someone comes along, presents some data, and says: “These pieces of evidence that I lay before you and that you, professional scientists, consciously choose to ignore – these pieces of evidence scientifically and conclusively prove that you are mere humbugs.” It's not hard to see how maddening that must be.[/quote]
That's very understandable.

[quote="Felix"]It does happen, though, and ever too often, that scientists venture out of their areas of expertise into philosophy (I guess science often raises philosophical problems) and claim that quantum physics or behavioral science or whatever has solved the philosophical problems of free will or of the nature of mind or of rational thinking or of intentionality or of metaphysics or of some part of ethics even. They seldom have. Science of course provides data that philosophers have to take into account, but that's another matter. Science only ever solves philosophical problems by coming up with new scientific methods for studying previously philosophical questions.

And presumably it happens that scientists venture into other non-scientific areas, too (theology or whatever, where they are no more experts than I). And I suppose that in these areas, too, the proper response is not that of trying to disprove scientific theories either scientifically, theologically, or philosophically, but of pointing out where they leave scientific theory and enter theology or philosophy or whatever.[/quote]
Great insight!  That's sort of where I was having trouble going with my thoughts.  Scholars shouldn't be able to lay down a dogma based on their interpretation of facts.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2944&start=30#p20599
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On Red Herrings and design...
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-05 13:43:26

Oh hey thank you very much!

There's a lot here... and all in light blue Times New Roman on a dark blue background. 1998.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2956&start=10#p20600
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: the giza pyramids weren't built by the ancient egyptians
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-05 13:50:09

This topic has a lot of really well-reasoned and insightful discussion going on [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgKCas5xJ34&feature=player_detailpage#t=138s]so I'm having trouble trying to work in this URL in naturally.[/url]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2958&start=0#p20601
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Checking for actions deeper in the stack
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-05 13:58:18

I just tried setting a flag:

[code]Porch is a room. "This porch is screened in to keep bugs out. The screen door opens on the back yard to the south."

A croquet ball is in Porch.

The screen door is a door. It is south of Porch and north of Back Yard. "The screen door opens on [if the location is Porch]the back yard to the south[otherwise]the porch to the north[end if]. It is currently [if open]open[otherwise]closed[end if]."

The screen door has an object called the prop.

Instead of opening the screen door:
	now the screen door is open;
	if not letting go and implicitly letting go is false:
		say "As soon as you let go of the screen door, it starts to close, so you stand in the way to stop it.";
		now the prop of the screen door is yourself;
	
Going is letting go.
Taking is letting go.
Opening a container is letting go.

After letting go when the prop of the screen door is yourself:
	say "You let go of the screen door, and it begins to close.";
	now the prop of the screen door is nothing;
	continue the action.
	
Every turn when the screen door is open and the prop of the screen door is nothing:
	say "The screen door slams with a loud bang.";
	now the screen door is closed.
	
Test me with "open door/l/get ball/l/s"

Implicitly letting go is a truth-state that varies. Implicitly letting go is usually false.
Every turn: Now implicitly letting go is false.
Check an actor going (this is the set implicitly letting go rule):
	now implicitly letting go is true.
	
The set implicitly letting go rule is listed before the can't go through closed doors rule in the check going rulebook.[/code]

Only tested this on the test me script, and it won't catch any other implicit open, but it does seem to work on the test script (if I understand the problem correctly).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2956&start=10#p20602
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: the giza pyramids weren't built by the ancient egyptians
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-08-05 14:23:34

[quote="Bainespal"]Yes, I know that, even if I sometimes struggle with accepting it.  Ultimately, scientists and scholars have much more accurate information and knowledge than I will ever have.  I don't have the skill and knowledge to create some of the unquestioned theories that I would prefer to be less unquestioned.[/quote]
Fair enough. I think, though, that fewer theories than you might think are actually "unquestioned" among scientists. Note that I'm interpreting your use of "theory" to mean a theory in the scientific sense ("this is an explanatory model that can be falsified thus"), not the everyday term that basically means "this is my take on it." Stop me if my assumption is incorrect.

[quote="Bainespal"][quote="Eleas"]We may question the conclusions, but a theory should be countered with another theory, preferably a simpler one (in the terms of Occam, [i]not[/i] more simple-[i]minded[/i]) which fits the facts better. This is generally anathema to conspiracy theorists and fringe scientists alike.[/quote]
When another theory [i]is[/i] offered, it shouldn't be condemned out of hand, even if the people who offered the theory didn't have the professional scientific background of those who framed the accepted theory. There are serious scholars who will probably never be considered anything other than "fringe scientists", but if their ideas do the facts (to some degree, as nothing would ever fit all the facts perfectly), they should be given place.  Really, there shouldn't be any "fringe scientists"; the division should only be between real scientists who use the scientific method and those who are just sensationalists.[/quote]
That seems reasonable, and is in fact what has happened in any number of breakthroughs throughout history. I'd hesitate to present the dichotomy between scientific method contra sensationalists. Many would believe they adhere to the scientific method yet do not (a phenomenon by no means restricted to non-scientists!). Others would believe the scientific method has "holes" to it, that intuition or divine guidance or a thousand other things is to be preferred.

Above all else, however, a scientist [i]or[/i] a dabbler must always be ready and willing to examine his or her assumptions. That's an ideal, of course, and scientists can be hidebound or reactionary just as anyone else. However, the important thing is that there has to be a common format to the proposed ideas. Every author of an idea must be prepared for the possibility of being wrong. Every idea that is advanced [i]must[/i] be falsifiable. One example of this is Charles Darwin saying, "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, [i]my theory would absolutely break down[/i]." He was prepared and indeed willing to face refutation. 

[quote="bainespal"][quote="Eleas"]Does scientific consensus today contain a lot of holes, even errors? Of course it does. Does that mean anything goes, that any explanation is equally valid? I don't see how that follows. As Asimov once famously said, "when people thought the world was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the world was round, they were also wrong. But if you think the idea of the earth being round is just as wrong as the idea of it being flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."[/quote]
That sounds like a wise and balanced thought to me.  However, it would be good to remember that the scientific consensus once held that the earth was flat.[/quote]
It did? I can name no society off-hand with a formal evidence-based tradition of science that held this belief. But yeah, the essence of your statement remains. The thing is, that only means that the prevailing theory is inaccurate. Once its axioms are established, a spherical earth is a simpler, infinitely more accurate model, and is fairly easily verified even with stone-age technology. 


[quote]That's sort of where I was having trouble going with my thoughts.  Scholars shouldn't be able to lay down a dogma based on their interpretation of facts.[/quote]
And it does happen. Arguably, the true utility of the scientific method is that it offers (some amount of) self-correction, and new ways of accomplishing old things.

Take one of my favorite stories, that of [b]Fermat's Last Theorem[/b]. It's become a bit of a legend and deserves to be taken with a grain of salt as I'm not even remotely qualified to comment on the actual mathematics involved, but I know the reader's digest version. [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Fermat]Pierre Fermat[/url], a great mathematician, was a bit of an odd duck. He was active in the 17th century and was by accounts more fascinated by mathematics itself than an audience.  

[quote="Pierre Fermat"]It is impossible to separate a cube into two cubes, or a fourth power into two fourth powers, or in general, any power higher than the second, into two like powers. I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain.[/quote]

This quote was found in the margin of a copy of the 1670 edition of Diophantus' Arithmetica. Fermat never published the proof [i]itself,[/i] and it baffled mathematicians for 300 years (imagine if you found an old document written by an authority you trust saying "I've discovered an infallible way to predict which stocks will rise. All you have to do is" with the rest of the paper having been torn off). As trolls go, it was fairly effective. People tried and tried and tried and there was, I imagine, no small amount of cursing in between attempts.

[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wiles]Andrew Wiles[/url], a UK mathematician, finally solved it and published the proof in 1995. This proof, however, employed what could fairly be described as cutting-edge mathematics. There was no way Fermat could have arrived at the proof by that same route, because the tools to do so didn't exist in the 17th century.

So did Fermat find a simpler way to arrive at the same conclusion? Could he have imagined seeing something which later turned out to be correct? There's no way to prove conclusively. All I know is that it makes for a damn good story.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2958&start=0#p20603
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Checking for actions deeper in the stack
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-05 15:05:30

I think you could do that more generally with a "before letting go" rule. It seems silly to set a variable, but maybe it's the only way.

I think I'd also reset the variable with an "after reading a command" rule, just in case something weird happens to the turn sequence.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2960&start=0#p20604
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Reading
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-05 15:06:35

What the...

[code]
The newspaper is in Das Auto. The initial appearance of the newspaper is "A newspaper is on the front passenger seat.". The description of the newspaper is "Today's issue of the Port Hope Guardian. It's a boring local rag, but the cover story is about the ongoing elections - might be worth reading.". Understand "cover story" as the newspaper. Understand "story" as the newspaper.
Instead of reading the newspaper:
	say "TEST".
[/code]

Why again does this result in "You wrote 'Instead of reading the newspaper'  , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is 'reading the newspaper'. But that did not make sense as a description of an action. I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook."?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2960&start=0#p20605
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Reading
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-05 15:15:28

There is no built-in reading action. "read [something]" parses as examining, and "read about [text] in [something]" parses as consulting it about (with nouns reversed).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2960&start=0#p20606
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Reading
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-05 15:29:50

Oh. Okay, thanks, that's an easy workaround then.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2956&start=10#p20607
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: the giza pyramids weren't built by the ancient egyptians
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-05 15:45:02

[quote]The pyramids were built by the fish-people living in Atlantis. [/quote]
This theory, which has been totally discredited, is the result of a series of errors on the part of Professor Clyde Hickelbomper of the University of New South Wales.

Being from the Southern Hemisphere, Prof. Hickelbomper initially became somewhat confused as to which end is up, and mistranslated "flathead" as "flatfuss."  This is turn somehow became transformed into "flatfish," or, in some translations, "flounder."


Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2961&start=0#p20608
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Timers
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-05 16:04:42

If a timer is clucking, is there a way to determine the current status? I have an elevator which takes some time to reach its destination, and I'd like to display the current floor. Could do this manually, but I assume there's a way to read the current timer status.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2961&start=0#p20609
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Timers
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-08-05 16:08:51

Are you asking about a real-time event (Glulx only), or about a turn counter?

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2955&start=0#p20610
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3 Travel actions
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-08-05 16:16:30

I wasn't sure which of Eric's examples you meant, so I adapted the code for PushTravel actions to accomplish what felt like the desired behavior: riding a bicycle somewhere should result in both the player and the bicycle ending up in the destination, much like pushing an object there would.

[code]
DefineTAction(Ride);
DefineTAction(RideDir);
DefineIAction(RideVague);

VerbRule(Ride)
	('ride' | 'mount') singleDobj
	:  RideAction
	verbPhrase = 'ride/riding (what)'
;

VerbRule(RideDir)
	  'ride' singleDobj ('to' ('the'|) |) singleDir
	| 'ride' singleDir  ('on' ('the'|) |) singleDobj
    : RideDirAction
    verbPhrase = ('ride/riding (what) ' + dirMatch.dir.name)
;

VerbRule(RideVague)
	'ride' singleDir
	:  RideVagueAction
	verbPhrase = ('ride/riding ' + dirMatch.dir.name)
;

/*
	 RideTravel is not matched by any grammar rules.
	 RideDir and RideVague remap here to carry out travel.
*/

DefineAction(RideTravel, PushTravelAction)
	performTravel()
	{
		local conn;
		conn = gActor.location.getTravelConnector(getDirection(), gActor);
		nestedAction(TravelVia, conn);
	}
	setDirection(dir) { _dir = dir; }
	getDirection() { return _dir; }
	_dir = nil
;

modify RideDirAction
	execAction()
	{
		// store direction for later use
		RideTravelAction.setDirection(gAction.dirMatch.dir);
		inherited();
	}
;

modify RideVagueAction
	execAction()
	{
		// store direction for later use
		RideTravelAction.setDirection(gAction.dirMatch.dir);

		// player did not specify what to ride; pick something
		local _ride = new Vector(5);
		forEachInstance(Rideable, {obj: gActor.getOutermostRoom() == obj.getOutermostRoom()
										? _ride.append(obj)
										: nil});
		_ride = _ride.sort(true, {a, b: a.rideScore - b.rideScore});

		if (!_ride.length())
			reportFailure(&nothingToRideMsg);
		else
			replaceAction(RideTravel, _ride[1]);
	}

;

modify Thing
	dobjFor(Ride)
	{
		preCond = [touchObj]
		action() { reportFailure(&cannotRideMsg); }
	}

	dobjFor(RideDir)
	{
		preCond = [touchObj]
		action() { reportFailure(&cannotRideMsg); }
	}

;

class Rideable: TravelPushable
	cannotTakeMsg = &cannotTakeRideableMsg
	cannotMoveMsg = &cannotMoveRideableMsg
	cannotPutMsg = &cannotPutRideableMsg

	// show object in the room contents
	isListed = true

	// preference score used when player does not specify what to ride
	rideScore = 100

	dobjFor(Ride)
	{
		action()
		{
			mainReport(&okayRideLocalMsg, self);
		}
	}

	dobjFor(RideDir)
	{
		action()
		{
			replaceAction(RideTravel, gDobj);
		}
	}

	describeMovePushable(traveler, connector)
	{
		if (gActor.isPlayerChar)
			mainReport(&okayRideTravelMsg, self);
	}

	pushTravelerClass = RideTraveler
;

class RideTraveler: PushTraveler
	travelerTravelWithin(actor, dest)
	{
		reportFailure(&cannotRideObjectNestedMsg, obj_);
		exit;
	}
;

class RideTravelBarrier: PushTravelBarrier
    explainTravelBarrier(traveler)
    {
        reportFailure(&cannotRideObjectThatWayMsg, traveler.obj_);
    }
;

modify playerActionMessages
	okayRideLocalMsg(obj)
	{
		return '<.p>{You/he} ride around the area on ' + obj.theNameObj + '. ';
	}

	okayRideTravelMsg(obj)
	{
		return '<.p>{You/he} ride ' + obj.theNameObj + ' into the area. ';
	}

	nothingToRideMsg = 'There is nothing here to ride. '

	cannotRideMsg = '{That dobj/he} {is} not something you can ride. '

	cannotTakeRideableMsg = '{You/he} {can\'t} take {that/him dobj}, but
		{it actor/he} might {be|have been} able to ride it somewhere. '

	cannotMoveRideableMsg = 'It wouldn&rsquo;t {|have} accomplish{|ed}
		anything to move {the dobj/him} around aimlessly, but {it actor/he}
		might {be|have been} able to ride {it dobj/him} in a specific
		direction. '

	cannotPutRideableMsg = '{You/he} {can\'t} put {that/him dobj} anywhere,
		but {it actor/he} might {be|have been} able to ride it somewhere. '

	cannotRideObjectThatWayMsg(obj)
	{
		gMessageParams(obj);
		return '{You/he} {can\'t} go that way riding {the obj/him}. ';
	}

	cannotRideObjectNestedMsg(obj)
	{
		gMessageParams(obj);
		return '{You/he} {can\'t} ride {the obj/him} there. ';
	}
;

tricycle: Rideable 'tricycle' 'TRICYCLE' @storage
	"You had {a dobj/him} just like it as a kid. "
;
[/code]


This is slightly non-responsive since your specific question isn't addressed - how to stop the player from traveling in a direction unless they are on the bicycle. To do that you can set a global variable in the performTravel() method of the RideTravel action defined above, then test for that in canActorTravel() method of the room connector in question.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2961&start=0#p20611
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Timers
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-05 16:16:40

Sorry - turn counter ("the timer clucks in X turns from now").

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2956&start=10#p20612
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: the giza pyramids weren't built by the ancient egyptians
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-08-05 21:00:14

[quote="Eleas"]Note that I'm interpreting your use of "theory" to mean a theory in the scientific sense ("this is an explanatory model that can be falsified thus"), not the everyday term that basically means "this is my take on it." Stop me if my assumption is incorrect.[/quote]
I've been vacillating between talking about academia in general and science in particular, so I guess I mean both.  I suppose we've been using science as the most straightforward representative of all the intellectual disciplines.  My complaint about intellectual dogma applies to other disciplines besides science, but scientific theories come to mind most readily (though I can think of a few issues in theology as well -- I don't even know enough about the formal discipline of philosophy to know what the issues are).

[quote="Eleas"]That seems reasonable, and is in fact what has happened in any number of breakthroughs throughout history. I'd hesitate to present the dichotomy between scientific method contra sensationalists. Many would believe they adhere to the scientific method yet do not (a phenomenon by no means restricted to non-scientists!). Others would believe the scientific method has "holes" to it, that intuition or divine guidance or a thousand other things is to be preferred.[/quote]
Ah... I was simply trying to say that the division should be between honest scientists who sincerely investigate and carefully frame their theories by no other criteria than what they think is objectively true and those people who want to get famous or start a flame war or defend preconceived notions, etc.  I don't know whether or not the scientific method is [i]perfect[/i] when it comes to science, but I'm sure that it's not adequate for everything.

[quote="Eleas"]One example of this is Charles Darwin saying, "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, [i]my theory would absolutely break down[/i]." He was prepared and indeed willing to face refutation.[/quote]
From everything I've heard of Charles Darwin, he sounds like a truly honest scholar, not deserving of the demonizing that some dissenters have tainted him with, and I've never heard of anyone rejecting the fundamental idea of natural selection, even if some prefer to use different semantics.  However, the theories that his work helped to start don't deserve a special unquestionable status, either.  I've read books by "fringe" scientists who are ready and eager to present specific evidence against the notion that any given complex organ really could [i]not[/i] have been formed by those numerous, successive, slight modifications.

[quote="Eleas"]It did? I can name no society off-hand with a formal evidence-based tradition of science that held this belief. But yeah, the essence of your statement remains. The thing is, that only means that the prevailing theory is inaccurate. Once its axioms are established, a spherical earth is a simpler, infinitely more accurate model, and is fairly easily verified even with stone-age technology. [/quote]
Yeah, you called me on that one... I was just repeating what everyone says in an argument now and then about people once believing the earth was flat.  Maybe that's a little ironic.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2956&start=10#p20613
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: the giza pyramids weren't built by the ancient egyptians
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-05 22:28:56

[quote="Bainespal"]I've read books by "fringe" scientists who are ready and eager to present specific evidence against the notion that any given complex organ really could not have been formed by those numerous, successive, slight modifications.[/quote]

Evolution theory is quite diverse at this point, and there's thriving scientific theories.  I think it's accurate to say that very, very few scientists doubt evolution, but some other methods besides small modifications are well discussed.  One theory is that relatively small changes in the genome result in fairly large modifications in the phenotype.  (And this is an argument made by Gould, who's not really a "fringe" scientist.)  There are a number of other complications; evolutionary research is alive and well, and there are lots of varying arguments.

So without knowing specifically what you're thinking of, things have gotten quite a bit more complex since Darwin's death.  But if you're referring to, say, young earth theory, you'll find a vanishing small amount of scientific support because objective evidence just really, really does not point that way.  (But you will find plenty of evolutionary theorists willing to discuss that evidence, and why they think the evidence is inadequate to support, and contradictory to, young earth theory.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2956&start=10#p20614
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: the giza pyramids weren't built by the ancient egyptians
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-08-05 23:03:29

Not that I am one, but Intelligent Design is distinct from Creationism, and there are many non-religious (or at least non-Christian) IDers.

They do have one thing going for them... the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Metabolism_790px_partly_labeled.png]metabolic cycle[/url] sure is complex! Now whether it's irreducibly complex is a hard question to answer...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2677&start=10#p20615
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Generating a Random Dungeon
User: LCamelot / DateTime: 2011-08-05 23:07:04

I hope this isn't thread necromancy, but I've been reworking how the code works and I've run into a strange problem of "secret doors".  When I try this code:

[code]Section - Directions

A direction can be standard.  North is standard.  South is standard.  East is standard.  West is standard.

Occupancy relates various rooms to various directions.  The verb to occupy (it occupies, they occupy, it occupied, it is occupied, it is occupying) implies the occupancy relation.

Section - Dungeons

A dungeon is a kind of room.

After looking:
	if the location occupies a direction:
		say "You can go [list of directions occupied by the location]."

When play begins:
	repeat with C running through dungeons:
		construct C.

To construct (X - a dungeon):
	let N be the level of X;
	repeat with A running through standard directions:
		let B be the opposite of A;
		if a random chance of 1 in 4 succeeds:
			let L be a list of rooms;
			repeat with D running through dungeons:
				unless D occupies B:
					if D is not X:
						add D to L;
			unless L is empty:
				sort L in random order;
				let R be entry 1 of L;
				change the A exit of X to R;
				change the B exit of R to X;
				now X occupies A;
				now R occupies B;
				truncate L to 0 entries.[/code]

...then add in a bunch of dungeons for testing, it constructs the entire map when play begins, so it's less linear.  However, every so often, something like this will happen:

[b]Rock Room[/b]
You can go south and east.

>Go east.

[b]Stone Room[/b]
You can go west.

>Go west.

[b]Strange Room[/b]

I thought the "unless D occupies B" line should stop this from happening?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2962&start=0#p20616
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Exiting "repeat through table"
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-08-06 00:49:15

How do I exit a "repeat through table" statement?  I want to check each line until I find the one that matches and then stop.  (It has to stop because it prints an error if it gets to the end of the table without finding a match.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2962&start=0#p20617
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Exiting "repeat through table"
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-08-06 00:54:02

You can use "break" to leave the current loop.  Check out Chapter 11.12.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2956&start=10#p20618
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: the giza pyramids weren't built by the ancient egyptians
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-06 01:46:20

[quote="Robert Rothman"][quote]The pyramids were built by the fish-people living in Atlantis. [/quote]
This theory, which has been totally discredited, is the result of a series of errors on the part of Professor Clyde Hickelbomper of the University of New South Wales.[/quote]
What? There's really such a theory? OMG, lol! I only made that up as a joke and honestly never heard about anyone suggesting something like this for real [emote]:lol:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2963&start=0#p20619
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I7] An action not quite working correctly.
User: dormammu / DateTime: 2011-08-06 02:37:58

I feel like I'm about to be run off the forum, asking all these silly questions, but I have another.

Finally starting what will hopefully be the first IF I actually release. I need to create a command that lets a player crouch, then another to stand up. I got it to work. Sort of. Almost. But there's a few strange things happening, so I need a bit of help.

Here's the code I have so far:

[code]A person is either crouching or standing. A person is usually standing.
Understand "crouch [something]" as crouching.
Understand "stand [something]" as standing.
Crouching is an action applying to one thing.
Standing is an action applying to one thing.

Check an actor crouching:
	if the actor is standing:
		Now the actor is crouching;
		say "You are crouching.";
		stop the action;
	if the actor is crouching:
		Now the actor is standing;
		say "You are standing.";
		stop the action;

WhatAmI is an action applying to nothing.
Understand "stance" as WhatAmI.

Carry out WhatAmI:
	say "You are now[if the player is crouching] crouching.[end if][if the player is standing] standing."
[/code]

This works well and I can confirm it's working with the stance command.

One thing that's slightly annoying is you need to type "crouch self" to make it work. This makes total sense to me based on how the code is written. But is there any way to modify it so as to be able to leave the 'self' at the end off? I tried grabbing it before it processed (with "before crouching") and add on a 'self' if it was missing, but I couldn't get it to compile that way. Using "Crouching is an action applying to the player." produces a compiler error. I think there's something I don't understand here.

It is now 3:30am and I need sleep. So, I'll check back tomorrow morning. Thanks, everyone, for any help.

(Edited: I had two problems and noticed what was wrong as soon as I posted and fixed one of them. Edited to remove stupidity. It IS 3:30am, in my defense.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2956&start=10#p20620
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: the giza pyramids weren't built by the ancient egyptians
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-08-06 04:19:41

[quote="RealNC"]What? There's really such a theory? OMG, lol! I only made that up as a joke and honestly never heard about anyone suggesting something like this for real [emote]:lol:[/emote][/quote]
If you re-read Robert's post, I think you'll find that he continued the joke.  [emote];)[/emote]

That's a nice thing about this forum, that posts like yours and Robert's can co-exist with posts like Victor's in a thread like this one. (I particularly like to thank Victor and others involved in that topic for the tone and content of it.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2944&start=30#p20621
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On Red Herrings and design...
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-08-06 04:28:14

Here's the [url=http://www.lulu.com/product/file-download/if-theory-reader/15325305]IF Theory book[/url] that Sargent mentioned, if you want the article in a format that's easier on the eyes. (And there's more in it worth reading as well.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2963&start=0#p20622
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] An action not quite working correctly.
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-08-06 05:01:14

A couple of things jumped out at me when reading this code. Firstly, you have properties with names identical to the action they're tracking. I'd do that only if everything else worked perfectly, and even then I'd hesitate.

Secondly, an action without a supplemental verb (such as "look" or "jump") should be defined as "applying to nothing."

Thirdly, the Check rules are primarily intended to stop nonsensical things from happening and to redirect an action into something more useful. They're not meant to carry out the actual work of the action (that's what the Carry Out rules are for), nor to print the result (which is the job of the Report rules).

Given that, here's how I'd do it.

[code]A person is either crouched or upright. A person is usually upright.

Standing is an action applying to nothing.
Crouching is an action applying to nothing.


Understand  the command "stand" as something new.
Understand "stand" as standing.
Understand "crouch" as crouching.


Check standing when the actor is upright: say "You're already standing." instead.
Check crouching when the actor is crouched: say "You're already crouched." instead.

Carry out standing: now the actor is upright.
Carry out crouching: now the actor is crouched.

Report standing: say "You get back to your feet."
Report crouching: say "You hunker down."


The Sorcerer's Abode is a room. Tim is a man in the Sorcerer's Abode. [Or so some call him.] The player is Tim.
The description of Tim is "You're [if upright]standing[otherwise]crouching[end if]."

Test me with "stand/crouch/x me/stand/x me".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2914&start=10#p20623
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What Do You Think of This Strategy?
User: Kytaari / DateTime: 2011-08-06 06:45:11

I'm very sorry for the long delay! Like I've said in my last post, I'll take all this advice. I still don't know how long my novel series is going to be, but I know I should concentrate more on being a novelist right now, rather than learning to how to write IF. And as I've mentioned in my previous post, when I do right IF for the first time, it will be in short-stories set in the same setting.

Here's a link to my blog:[url]http://kytaari.blogspot.com/[/url] but I must warn you, it's kind of...foolish, in my opinion; I have a lot of weird thoughts from time-to-time, and I can be very sentimental when I write in it. I used to write in private journals, but I've decided to move my journalistic tendencies onto the net, that wayI might get some feedback (although I'm still afraid to check comments fairly frequently!) I've thought about moving to wordpress, but Blogger seems fine to me for now. 

Most of the posts in my blog are very terrible, and the reason for this is I still haven't assumed the practice of editing my work. I'm editing my work in this post, though; it's just that I usually like to avoid the process because I don't like how it feels to be reading what I wrote. Or maybe I just don't like seeing my mistakes? I don't think I'm experienced enough to tell, just yet. I think I may get used to this procedure with some more practice, though--or at least I hope this to be the case! Editing is the phase of the writing process that, right now, I have the least experience with; and I must apologize in advance for the punctuation on my blog for being very unorganized and terrible, due to my current lack of visible style. I'll find my footing in one place or another, it's just that right now I'm not sure if I'm more a Dickens or a Hemingway  [emote]:lol:[/emote] I guess I'll know by trusting my own instinct, and editing some more with practice.

Again, I apologize profusely for this long delay. I don't mean to snub people, it's just that I don't always have the courage to face social situations (I'll try be more responsive with this next post). I think I'm getting better at this, though! Or at least I hope I am, anyway [emote]:?[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2677&start=10#p20624
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Generating a Random Dungeon
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-06 07:38:40

I've tried this with some say phrases added to narrate how it constructs the dungeon, and it looks like what happened is that it added no exits to First Room, added Sixth Room as a north exit to Third Room, and then added First Room as a south exit to Sixth room.

It looks to me that the problem is that when you're constructing X, you don't check to see whether X already occupies the direction. So in the example above, the Sixth Room already occupied south, because it had been added as the north exit to Third Room. If I'm correct, you need to add "if X does not occupy A:" to the beginning of your repeat through standard directions loop. (I commented out the line about the level of the room, since that's not implemented in your code fragment.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2677&start=10#p20625
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Generating a Random Dungeon
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-06 08:43:06

In addition to what Matt said, your code allows all kinds of weird geometries, where you go up three times and arrive back at the room you began in. Maybe that is what you want -- this was very common in old school IF. If you would prefer your dungeon to be laid out along a normal (x,y)-grid, though, you'll have to do some additional work.

I'll paste some of the code of my Kerkerkruip Dungeon Generation below: it creates a dungeon on an (x,y,z)-grid. It is long, has few comments, and probably does a lot of stuff you're not interested in doing (such a supporting complex rules that decide which rooms can be placed where, and checking whether the generated map is "fair" for dungeon crawlers) -- but then again, posting it can't hurt. (In other words: feel no obligation to read through it! But if you do read through and see stuff you'd like to use, feel free to do so. The end of the code especially should have some routines that can be reused if you plan on using a grid-like system.)

[spoiler][code]Book - Creating the Map

Part - Preliminaries  

Section - Directions

A direction is either cardinal or not cardinal. A direction is usually not cardinal. North is cardinal. South is cardinal. East is cardinal. West is cardinal. Up is cardinal. Down is cardinal.

Section - Coordinates

A room has a number called the x-coordinate. [north]
A room has a number called the y-coordinate. [east]
A room has a number called the z-coordinate. [up]

Section - Placed and unplaced

A room is either placed or not placed. A room is usually not placed.

Section - Global variables

Considered room is a room that varies. [The room to be placed.]
Original room is a room that varies. [The room from which it is placed.]

Considered-x is a number that varies. [Coordinates of the new location.]
Considered-y is a number that varies.
Considered-z is a number that varies.

Current room score is a number that varies. [Used to check likelihood of placement.]

Additional considered room is a room that varies. [For use with additional placement rules. Please do not take them a step further.]
Additional original room is a room that varies.



Part - Main Routines

Chapter - Resetting and Creating the Map

Section - Resetting the map

The resetting the map rules are a rulebook.

First resetting the map rule (this is the destroy all connections rule):
	repeat with place running through rooms:
		now place is not placed;
		repeat with way running through cardinal directions:
			change the way exit of place to nothing;
		now the x-coordinate of place is 100;
		now the y-coordinate of place is 100;
		now the z-coordinate of place is 100.

Resetting the map rule (this is the we start with entrance Hall rule):
	now the x-coordinate of Entrance Hall is 0;
	now the y-coordinate of Entrance Hall is 0;
	now the z-coordinate of Entrance Hall is 0;
	now Entrance Hall is placed.

Section - Creating the map and collapsing passages

The creating the map rules are a rulebook.

Creating the map rule (this is the locate and connect all rooms rule):
	while less than twelve rooms are placed or less than eight habitable rooms are placed:
		let place be a random placed room;
		let way be a random cardinal direction;
		let x be the x way of place;
		let y be the y way of place;
		let z be the z way of place;
		if the space at x by y by z is free:
			let chosen room be a suitable room from place at x by y by z;
			place chosen room from place at x by y by z.

Collapse relates rooms to each other. The verb to collapse (he collapses, they collapse, he collapsed, it is collapsed, he is collapsing) implies the collapse relation.
			
Last creating the map (this is the possibly adding some further connections rule):
	repeat with place running through placed connectable rooms:
		repeat with further place running through placed connectable rooms:
			let way be the direction from place to further place;
			if way is not northwest:
				if further place is not the room way of place:
					if a random chance of 1 in 4 succeeds or place is connection-inviting or further place is connection-inviting: [gives a roughly 1 in 2 chance of connections being made]
						if generation info is true, say "* Adding connection between [place] and [further place].[line break][run paragraph on]";
						change the way exit of place to further place;
						let reverse be the opposite of way;
						change the reverse exit of further place to place;
						if a random chance of 1 in 4 succeeds:
							now place collapses further place.

Resetting the map rule (this is the reset collapse rule):
	repeat with place running through rooms:
		while at least one room collapses place:
			let place2 be a random room that collapses place;
			now place2 does not collapse place.

						
Chapter - Approving the map

[This routine checks whether the beginning of the map isn't too narrow: we want to branch out quickly so the player has choices.]

To decide which number is the distance of (place - a room):
	decide on the number of moves from place to Entrance Hall.

Distance-1 and distance-2 are numbers that vary.
	
To approve the map:
	now distance-1 is 0;
	now distance-2 is 0;
	repeat with place running through placed rooms:
		if distance of place is 1, increase distance-1 by 1;
		if distance of place is 2, increase distance-2 by 1;
	if distance-1 plus distance-2 is greater than 4:
		now map approved is true;
	otherwise:
		if generation info is true, say "Map rejected. Regenerating.".
								
						


Section - Additional placement rules
	
The additional placement rules are a rulebook.	
	
									
			
Chapter - Choosing the right room

Section - Building a list of suitable rooms

Table of Suitable Rooms
Candidate		Room Score
a room			a number
with 200 blank rows

To fill the Table of Suitable Rooms:
	blank out the whole of the Table of Suitable Rooms;
	repeat with place running through placeable not placed rooms:
[		say place, " ";]
		now considered room is place;
		consider the placement possible rules;
		if rule succeeded:
			[say "! ";]
			choose a blank row in the Table of Suitable Rooms;
			now the Candidate entry is place;
			now the Room Score entry is 0.

The placement possible rules are a rulebook.

Placement possible rule (this is the do not use rooms that are too difficult rule):
	if the difficulty level of considered room is greater than difficulty:
		rule fails.

Last placement possible rule:
	rule succeeds.


Section - Scoring the suitable rooms

To score the suitable rooms:
	repeat through the Table of Suitable Rooms:
		now considered room is the Candidate entry;
		now current room score is 0;
		consider the placement scoring rules;
		now the Room Score entry is current room score.

The placement scoring rules are a rulebook.


Section - Choosing a suitable room

To decide which room is a suitable room from (place - a room) at (x - a number) by (y - a number) by (z - a number):
	now original room is place;
	now considered-x is x;
	now considered-y is y;
	now considered-z is z;
	fill the Table of Suitable Rooms;
	score the suitable rooms;
	sort Table of Suitable rooms in random order;
	sort Table of Suitable rooms in reverse Room Score order;
[	repeat through Table of Suitable Rooms:
		say "[Candidate entry] at [Room score entry] points.";]
	let max be the number of filled rows in Table of Suitable Rooms;
	if max is 0:
		decide on Entrance Hall;
	otherwise:
		let pos1 be a random number between 1 and max;
		let pos2 be a random number between 1 and max;
		let pos3 be a random number between 1 and max;
		if pos2 is less than pos1, now pos1 is pos2;
		if pos3 is less than pos1, now pos1 is pos3;
[		say "[pos1] of [max]";]
		choose row pos1 in the Table of Suitable rooms;
		decide on Candidate entry.

Part - Additional Routines

Chapter - Placing rooms

Section - Placing a room at a specific location
			
To place (new place - a room) from (original place - a room) at (x - a number) by (y - a number) by (z - a number):			
	unless new place is Entrance Hall: [which would mean failure]
		now x-coordinate of new place is x;
		now y-coordinate of new place is y;
		now z-coordinate of new place is z;
		let way be the direction from original place to new place;
		change the way exit of original place to new place;
		let reverse be the opposite of way;
		change the reverse exit of new place to original place;
		now new place is placed;
		if generation info is true, say "* [Way] of [original place] ([x-coordinate of original place], [y-coordinate of original place], [z-coordinate of original place]) is [new place] ([x], [y], [z]).[line break][run paragraph on]";
		now additional considered room is new place;
		now additional original room is original place;
		consider the additional placement rules.

Section - Placing a room next to another room			

To place (a - a room) next to (b - a room):
	unless the number of rooms surrounding considered-x by considered-y by considered-z is the number of cardinal directions:
		while a is not placed:			
			let way be a random cardinal direction;
			let x be the x way of b;
			let y be the y way of b;
			let z be the z way of b;
			if the space at x by y by z is free:
				now x-coordinate of a is x;
				now y-coordinate of a is y;
				now z-coordinate of a is z;
				change the way exit of b to a;
				let reverse be the opposite of way;
				change the reverse exit of a to b;
				now a is placed;
				if generation info is true, say "* Placed [a] [way] of [b].[line break][run paragraph on]".
			
Chapter - Other routines

Section - Absolute distance

[This routine stolen from Fixed Point Maths version 5 by Michael Callaghan.]
To decide which number is the absolute value of (N - a number):
	if N is less than 0:
		let N be 0 minus N;
	decide on N.

To decide which number is the absolute distance between (a - a room) and (b - a room):
	let count be 0;
	let temp be x-coordinate of a minus x-coordinate of b;
	increase count by the absolute value of temp;
	let temp be y-coordinate of a minus y-coordinate of b;
	increase count by the absolute value of temp;
	let temp be z-coordinate of a minus z-coordinate of b;
	increase count by the absolute value of temp;
	decide on count.
	
Section - Direction between rooms	
	
To decide which direction is the direction from (a - a room) to (b - a room):
	if absolute distance between a and b is not 1:
		decide on northwest; [Capture this as a failure!]
	otherwise:
		if x-coordinate of a minus x-coordinate of b is -1:
			decide on north;
		if x-coordinate of a minus x-coordinate of b is 1:
			decide on south;
		if y-coordinate of a minus y-coordinate of b is -1:
			decide on east;
		if y-coordinate of a minus y-coordinate of b is 1:
			decide on west;
		if z-coordinate of a minus z-coordinate of b is -1:
			decide on up;
		if z-coordinate of a minus z-coordinate of b is 1:
			decide on down.

Section - Number of surrounding rooms
			
To decide which number is the number of rooms surrounding (a - a number) by (b - a number) by (c - a number):
	let count-1 be 0;
	repeat with place running through placed rooms:
		let count-2 be 0;
		let temp be x-coordinate of place minus a;
		increase count-2 by the absolute value of temp;
		let temp be y-coordinate of place minus b;
		increase count-2 by the absolute value of temp;
		let temp be z-coordinate of place minus c;
		increase count-2 by the absolute value of temp;
		if count-2 is 1:
			increase count-1 by 1;
	decide on count-1.

Section - Whether a location is free

To decide whether the space at (a - a number) by (b - a number) by (c - a number) is free:
	repeat with checked place running through placed rooms:
		if x-coordinate of checked place is a:
			 if y-coordinate of checked place is b:
				if z-coordinate of checked place is c:
					decide no;
	decide yes.

Section - What is the room at a location

To decide what room is the room at (a - a number) by (b - a number) by (c - a number):
	repeat with checked place running through placed rooms:
		if x-coordinate of checked place is a:
			 if y-coordinate of checked place is b:
				if z-coordinate of checked place is c:
					decide on checked place.


Section - The x, y and z way

To decide what number is the x (way - a direction) of (place - a room):
	if way is north:
		decide on x-coordinate of place + 1;
	if way is south:
		decide on x-coordinate of place - 1;
	otherwise:
		decide on x-coordinate of place.

To decide what number is the y (way - a direction) of (place - a room):
	if way is east:
		decide on y-coordinate of place + 1;
	if way is west:
		decide on y-coordinate of place - 1;
	otherwise:
		decide on y-coordinate of place.
		
To decide what number is the z (way - a direction) of (place - a room):
	if way is up:
		decide on z-coordinate of place + 1;
	if way is down:
		decide on z-coordinate of place - 1;
	otherwise:
		decide on z-coordinate of place.[/code][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2963&start=0#p20626
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] An action not quite working correctly.
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-08-06 10:20:10

[quote="dormammu"]I feel like I'm about to be run off the forum, asking all these silly questions, but I have another.[/quote]

You're posting full code and a description of what's going wrong, you're mentioning things you tried, and you're doing it in complete sentences.  For bonus credit, you're not insulting anybody or starting pointless arguments.  Your status here is A-OK. [emote]:)[/emote]  

I like to think that the way the developer part of the forum works is that we all answer questions just up to our own abilities.  People like me answer the basic syntax-error stuff, people with a bit more experience answer about the intricacies of things like tables and indexed text, and then if there's a really esoteric question, an Inform maintainer like emshort or zarf steps in.  Without the "silly" questions, the question-economy collapses!

Anyway, I frequently learn things by reading the answers to people's questions even when they thought they were silly, and it's not like the forums here are that high-volume.  So, no worries.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2677&start=10#p20627
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Generating a Random Dungeon
User: LCamelot / DateTime: 2011-08-06 10:20:24

Thanks, Matt.  I thought to ward against choosing one where the other room occupies the direction, but not the room it's actually trying to find a connection for.

Yes, I've been trying to figure out how to make coordinates so the map makes sense, but every attempt at creating an original code has failed.  This will definitely be helpful, thank you!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2963&start=0#p20628
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] An action not quite working correctly.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-06 10:22:29

[quote="tove"]I like to think that the way the developer part of the forum works is that we all answer questions just up to our own abilities.[/quote]

I for one answer questions beyond my abilities. But yeah, insofar as I know anything about coding in I7 it comes from reading answers on these forums and trying to work out answers to questions people ask on these forums. (And working through the examples in the documentation.) Questions are awesome.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2944&start=30#p20629
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On Red Herrings and design...
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-08-06 10:28:49

Sadly, the phrase "18th century crinolines," which stood out to me in my reading of the blue-on-blue version last night, remains unchecked.  [/costume geek]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2956&start=20#p20630
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: the giza pyramids weren't built by the ancient egyptians
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-08-06 10:42:13

[quote="gravel"]I think it's accurate to say that very, very few scientists doubt evolution, but some other methods besides small modifications are well discussed.[/quote]
Even though I don't know much about the evolutionary theories, I've heard of Gould and of the differing ideas of evolutionists.  I've heard about Neo-Darwinian insistance upon a combination of natural selection and mutations, and I've heard of other evolutionists who believe that natural selection really had little or nothing to do with evolution.  There's room for those theories within the dogma of evolution.

But neither academic consensus nor public consensus causes something to be true.  There may be some kinds of truth that can really be defined in some ways by consensus -- government, for instance, because government is nothing more than people and is wholly made by people.  But scientific truth is not like that at all (nor, I contend, are philosophical or religious truth).  We did not create ourselves or the universe, and we don't know how the universe works.  Just because everyone agrees about something doesn't make it true; it just makes it a widespread belief.  As has been said in this thread, there are holes in every theory.  There always will be as long as humans are fallible and limited, which will be forever.  Therefore, there should always be room to disagree with scientists, even on such widely believed theories as evolution.

[quote="gravel"]But if you're referring to, say, young earth theory, you'll find a vanishing small amount of scientific support because objective evidence just really, really does not point that way.  (But you will find plenty of evolutionary theorists willing to discuss that evidence, and why they think the evidence is inadequate to support, and contradictory to, young earth theory.)[/quote]
I'm sure many evolutionary scientists are willing to discuss the young earth theory, but I doubt many of them are willing to consider it (or even intelligent design in general) as another possible model.  I could be wrong about that, of course, I haven't been in on any closed intellectual circles, but I know that creationism, young earth theory, and intelligent design have all been scorned and ridiculed by members of the scientific community at times.  Also, I don't believe that objective evidence really points one way or the other as much as scientists think it does.  Most of the objective evidence was discovered by scientists who believe in evolution, since they are the vast majority.  Naturally, they interpret the evidence according to the system that they already believe in.  All sides find ways to explain away evidences that initially are difficult to correlate with their theories.

Anyways.... sorry for bringing the discussion to this.  I generally don't like arguing.  I posted on this thread initially because I had emotional reaction to the issue of intellectualism, and I hope I didn't offend Mr. Gijsbers too much.  However, if anyone does want to discuss evolution versus creationism/intelligent design, or anything else raised in this thread, I'm willing to do so.  I have read a few creationist books, as well as some Christian apologetics.

[i][size=85]Edited to soften a couple things after better judgement, and to respond to this:[/size][/i]
[quote="Dannii"]They do have one thing going for them... the metabolic cycle sure is complex! Now whether it's irreducibly complex is a hard question to answer...[/quote]
Thank you.  That's all I ask -- that in the specific case of science, viewpoints like creationism be acknowledged as valid, that the people who hold such views do have some good reasons to believe what they believe, even if most people will always disagree.  As always, the same goes for other fields as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2963&start=0#p20631
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] An action not quite working correctly.
User: dormammu / DateTime: 2011-08-06 10:52:28

[quote="Eleas"]an action without a supplemental verb (such as "look" or "jump") should be defined as "applying to nothing."[/quote]

That's what I tried at first, but it wouldn't work that way. Not sure what I was doing wrong. I added the "applying to one thing" pretty much out of frustration and, to my surprise, it started working. I figured it was probably wrong, but I was just happy it started working.

[quote="Eleas"]The Check rules are primarily intended to stop nonsensical things from happening and to redirect an action into something more useful. They're not meant to carry out the actual work of the action (that's what the Carry Out rules are for)[/quote]

Maybe I misread, but in a previous thread I made about actions from a few days ago, someone told me the Carry Out should always be blank and seemed to suggest I should be using Check instead of Carry out. I'll have to go back and re-read. Might be a mistake on my part, or a special case that I mistook as general advice or something.

Anyway, thanks for the fixed up code!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2964&start=0#p20632
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: 1st post
User: Nicôle / DateTime: 2011-08-06 11:03:05

Hi.  New.  First post.   [emote]:shock:[/emote] 


Hoping for some nice people I can get help from later when I think of a question.
But its Saturday and you can't expect me to concentrate on a Saturday.   [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2963&start=0#p20633
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] An action not quite working correctly.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-06 11:03:16

[quote="dormammu"]Maybe I misread, but in a previous thread I made about actions from a few days ago, someone told me the Carry Out should always be blank and seemed to suggest I should be using Check instead of Carry out.[/quote]

I think the suggestion was that they should never [i]print[/i] anything; in this case, the actual change in the world model happens in the Carry Out phase, but the text gets printed in the Report phase.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2964&start=0#p20634
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: 1st post
User: Nicôle / DateTime: 2011-08-06 11:04:52

OMG 

I meant to put this in the Introducing ourselves thread!   [emote]:oops:[/emote] 
Now I'm out there all by myself.   [emote]:shock:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2964&start=0#p20635
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: 1st post
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-08-06 12:13:46

[quote="Nicôle"]OMG 

I meant to put this in the Introducing ourselves thread!   [emote]:oops:[/emote] 
Now I'm out there all by myself.   [emote]:shock:[/emote][/quote]
Don't worry, other people have posted their own introduction threads as well.  It seems like that thread is dying, killed by all the conversations that derailed it.

So, welcome to the forum!  It's one of the coolest places on the web.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2963&start=0#p20636
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] An action not quite working correctly.
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-06 12:51:50

[quote="dormammu"]That's what I tried at first, but it wouldn't work that way. Not sure what I was doing wrong.[/quote]

Probably you didn't have the line [code]Understand "stand" as something new.[/code]

You need that since the Standard Rules already understand "stand" or "stand up" as exiting and "stand on [something]" as entering. 

When you tell Inform to understand "stand" as something new, it forgets these earlier definitions, and you are suddenly free to have it understand "stand" as standing. (Note that it will now have forgotten the commands "stand up" and "stand on [something]" as well as mere "stand"; but if you want them you can simply add them anew. Only make sure you do so AFTER the line about understanding "stand" as something new, or that line will eat the preceding understand statements about "stand" in your source text as well as those in the Standard Rules.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2899&start=20#p20637
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IntroComp 2011 - Winners Announced!
User: Simski / DateTime: 2011-08-06 13:06:09

Concerning the decision of not releasing the scores for the games: I agree that it could be discouraging if your game placed last, or in the last third, but then again, I submitted my games mainly to see how well they would fare in competition with other games.
The reviews were a fantastic source of information and I'd like to thank all reviewers, but I would still have liked to see a score, if only to compare my two entries.
One possibility, if not optimal, could be telling the authors about the scores of their games (and only theirs) privately.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2956&start=20#p20638
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: the giza pyramids weren't built by the ancient egyptians
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-08-06 15:00:20

[quote="Eleas"]Ah... I was simply trying to say that the division should be between honest scientists who sincerely investigate and carefully frame their theories by no other criteria than what they think is objectively true and those people who want to get famous or start a flame war or defend preconceived notions, etc.  I don't know whether or not the scientific method is [i]perfect[/i] when it comes to science, but I'm sure that it's not adequate for everything.[/quote]
It's vital for carrying out science, or has been thus far. It is less useful when it comes to baking cakes, welding metal, et al. [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote="Bainespal"][quote="Eleas"]One example of this is Charles Darwin saying, "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, [i]my theory would absolutely break down[/i]." He was prepared and indeed willing to face refutation.[/quote]
From everything I've heard of Charles Darwin, he sounds like a truly honest scholar, not deserving of the demonizing that some dissenters have tainted him with, and I've never heard of anyone rejecting the fundamental idea of natural selection, even if some prefer to use different semantics.  However, the theories that his work helped to start don't deserve a special unquestionable status, either.  I've read books by "fringe" scientists who are ready and eager to present specific evidence against the notion that any given complex organ really could [i]not[/i] have been formed by those numerous, successive, slight modifications.[/quote]
I understand. My point is that Darwin's phrase makes a good example of how scientists ought to act. He didn't say "this is the only way you could falsify my theory," but pointed out one possible direction you could build on the research. This is also how it's done at the University. Often, you can deliver an assignment that concludes, "the study I made [according to these premises] failed to prove the premises. This may be due to methodology [x and y], assuming I haven't made an error somewhere," and still get a passing grade, assuming you did a good job in other respects. The end result is that the paper will ideally have useful implications down the road. It may not be a [i]breakthrough[/i], but it's not worthless. 

[quote="Bainespal"]Yeah, you called me on that one... I was just repeating what everyone says in an argument now and then about people once believing the earth was flat.  Maybe that's a little ironic.  [emote];)[/emote][/quote]
Meh, it happens. If it helps, I too believed it for the longest time. [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote="Bainespal"]I'm sure many evolutionary scientists are willing to discuss the young earth theory, but I doubt many of them are willing to consider it (or even intelligent design in general) as another possible model. I could be wrong about that, of course, I haven't been in on any closed intellectual circles, but I know that creationism, young earth theory, and intelligent design have all been scorned and ridiculed by members of the scientific community at times.[/quote]
I'm not a scientist, but I have debated this subject on a number of times and am reasonably familiar with it. My chief problem with this is that if we want to define intelligent design as a scientific model, it must first [url=http://atheism.about.com/od/philosophyofscience/tp/CriteriaScientificTheory.htm]satisfy the basic criteria of being a scientific model[/url].

Intelligent Design, throughout all the permutations I've seen it presented, does not satisfy these requirements. Since it depends on labeling as "irreducibly complex" anything that cannot at that specific moment be back-tracked, it is not a falsifiable theory. It has no stated mechanism and can thus not produce defining characteristics in its output. It does not suggest any paradigm or problem solving method for further work. It is not parsimonious, nor testable.

I would bring up the Wedge document, but I'm loath to do so. That has to do with politics linking ID to Young Earth-Creationism, which I'd say is a separate issue.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2677&start=10#p20639
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Generating a Random Dungeon
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-08-06 15:22:29

If you wanted the player to go to a maze-like area but wanted it random, you could define say, half a dozen mazes, assign specific rooms in each one to be in a "random region", then have the player go to a random room in the random region. Then, not only would the player be sent to a random room, because the maze would be different they would be unable to exactly reproduce the game play.

Not sure if that would just piss players off, but it would add to replay value.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2965&start=0#p20640
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: inform7: why won't my fogged unfogged work?
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-08-06 16:03:17

[code]a container can be fogged or unfogged.
a container is usually unfogged.[/code]

[code]Glass pieces are here. metal shelves are supporters in room of horrors. foggy container is a fogged container on metal shelves. a huge glass container is a container in room of horrors. dead horse is an animal in huge glass container. a wooden crate is here. wooden crate is a container. dead things are scenery in The Room of Horrors.
Understand "shelf" as shelves.

The description of foggy container is "[if fogged]You can't see anything in the container its too fogged up.[otherwise if unfogged] you see something in there but what it is you dont know."

wiping is an action applying to two things.
understand "wipe [something] "or "rub [something]" as wiping.
Check wiping:
If the noun is the player, say "I don't need to be wiped." instead;
If the noun is the glass wall, say "[if glass wall is closed] glass wall looks much cleaner now.[otherwise if glass wall is open] You can't wipe what is not there."instead.
carry out wiping:
say "the [noun] is clean now."

Rule for printing room description details of the metal shelves: omit contents in listing.

Instead of touching metal shelves, say "As cold as ice."
Instead of eating dead things, say "Yuck! Why would you want to do that?"
Instead of touching dead things, say "Please respect the dead!"


crying is an action applying to nothing.
understand "cry" and "sob" and "weep" as crying.
Check crying:
If the player is in Room of Horrors, say "Tears run down your face as you mourn for the ones who died."instead.
carry out crying:
say "[if player is human]You cry loudly Wahhhh, Why so sad?[otherwise if player is goose] You put your head under your wing and cry."

honking is an action applying to nothing.
Understand "honk" as honking.
Carry out honking:
say "[if player is goose]You let out a loud honk.[otherwise if player is human] You have no reason to honk."

Instead of searching metal shelves, say "There are many glass containers on the metal shelves but the only one that interests you is a foggy container."

Instead of examining metal shelves, say "There are many glass containers on the metal shelves but the only one that interests you is a foggy container."

Instead of wiping foggy container: say "You wipe the fog off the outside of the container.";now container is unfogged[/code]
Whenever i try to wipe the foggy container it says you achieve nothing by this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2965&start=0#p20641
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform7: why won't my fogged unfogged work?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-06 16:26:07

"wipe" is already built-in; it maps to "rub." (You can find this by looking at "commands A-Z" in the actions tab of the index, or by typing "actions" when you're running the game to see what action it's trying to take when you type "wipe foggy container.") You have to eliminate the existing grammar for "wipe" before you redefine it. This is pretty simple; add the line

[code]Understand the command "wipe" as something new.[/code]

before you define wiping. See section 16.3 of the documentation on overriding existing commands. And since you want to understand "rub" as wiping too, you'll also have to add Understand the command "rub" as something new.

...except in this case, what you might want to do is take over the existing rubbing action, since it's already defined for you, and change all your "Instead of wiping" rules to "Instead of rubbing" rules. If you do that, you'll want to take out the "block rubbing" rule, which is what's producing the message "You achieve nothing by this," thus:

[code]The block rubbing rule is not listed in the check rubbing rulebook.[/code]

And if you want an action that applies to two things, you should use a different sort of action name, like this:

[code]Rubbing it with is an action applying to two things. Understand "wipe/rub [something] with [something] as rubbing it with.[/code] 

The "it" tells you where the first noun goes when you talk about doing things, so you can write rules like this:

[code]Instead of rubbing the player with the cloth, say "You're not sweaty."[/code]

In your code I didn't see any provision for dealing with the second noun, so I wasn't quite sure what you wanted to do there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2956&start=20#p20642
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: the giza pyramids weren't built by the ancient egyptians
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-08-06 16:33:05

good god, i had no idea the convo i was gonna start with all that! lol  i love this stuff.

but yes, i want to make something clear, i am well aware my initial posts were steeped in hearsay and lacked any documentation where i was grabbin all that.  just saying, im well aware of your critiques to my initial post, it was done to stir-the-stew a bit and get ppl talking about a subject in which im interested.

so now that i have your attention.  here is where i grabbed the info from the initial post.  i wont say much about who this guy is, please look it up since i can tell you are just the sort of intelligent-minded people who would do such a thing before believing what this guy is saying.

its a 45-freaking-part video of an all day seminar, so take it a chunk at a time, have an open mind, and as always, ignore the you-tubers' comments as they are as sharp as barnyard animals, imho.

anyway, just have an open mind, and please try to watch the whole thing before reserving judgement.

thanks all, i love you guys!!!

[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPgII_4ciFU&list=FLWIXopgAJX6I&index=1[/url]

btw, the spinx-geologist study?  in the particular study i am referring to, yes 100% of the geologists asked answered as such.

and victor, no, its not daanikan, although his stuff does entertain me!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2965&start=0#p20643
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform7: why won't my fogged unfogged work?
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-08-06 16:33:47

thanks all i needed to do is use the understand as something new.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2956&start=20#p20645
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: the giza pyramids weren't built by the ancient egyptians
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-08-06 16:39:11

fringe- and pseudo-science are deep wells from which to draw for your IF needs....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2956&start=20#p20646
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: the giza pyramids weren't built by the ancient egyptians
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-08-06 17:18:13

[quote="Eleas"][quote="Eleas"]It is less useful when it comes to baking cakes[/quote][/quote]

[url=http://www.amazon.com/New-Best-Recipe-All-New/dp/0936184744]My favorite cookbook[/url], referred to my my flatmate and I simply as "the Book*", is equal parts science and opinion.  The opinions establish the goals, and the science is how they obtain them: "The perfect [whatever food item] is [list of qualities].  To make it, we tested [a bunch of variables]...."  Of course, experiment-driven research is very different from trying to understand existing evidence.

*as in, "The Book says..."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2944&start=30#p20647
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On Red Herrings and design...
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-06 17:21:24

Thanks Trumgottist!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2967&start=0#p20648
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Problems including the Glimmr Canvas Editor in a new project
User: ElliotM / DateTime: 2011-08-06 17:50:08

Does any here know how to fix this error? I'm trying to test the Glimmr canvas editor. I believe I have all of the required extensions.

[quote]This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6G60) on its most recent run through:

Problem. You wrote 'A dynamic-rectangle is usually parental'  : but the property dynamic-sprite condition for the dynamic-rectangle is not allowed to exist, because you haven't said it is. What properties something can have depends on what kind of thing it is: see the Index for details.

 See the manual: 3.7 > Properties depend on kind
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Problem. You wrote 'A dynamic-box is usually parental'  : but the property dynamic-sprite condition for the dynamic-box is not allowed to exist.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Problem. You wrote 'A dynamic-stroked-rectangle is usually parental'  : but the property dynamic-sprite condition for the dynamic-stroked-rectangle is not allowed to exist.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Problem. You wrote 'A dynamic-line is usually parental'  : but the property dynamic-sprite condition for the dynamic-line is not allowed to exist.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Problem. You wrote 'A dynamic-bitmap-string is usually parental'  : but the property dynamic-sprite condition for the dynamic-bitmap-string is not allowed to exist.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Problem. You wrote 'A dynamic-image-string is usually parental'  : but the property dynamic-sprite condition for the dynamic-image-string is not allowed to exist.
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2963&start=0#p20649
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] An action not quite working correctly.
User: dormammu / DateTime: 2011-08-06 18:27:54

I have another question related to crouching. Rather than start a new topic, I figured I'd add it here. This is more of a "I can't find the syntax I need" problem than me not knowing what to do.

I added two lines to determine if it's possible to crouch behind something and hide. It looks like this:

[code]An object is either hideable or nothideable.  An object is usually nothideable.
A person is either hidden or visible. A person is usually visible.[/code]

It sounds awful ("nothideable"?), but I couldn't think of anything better.

I'm trying to figure out the correct syntax to carry out something like this:

[code]Carry out crouching:
    if the room the actor is in contains a hideable object:
       say "You are now hiding behind [object]."
       now the actor is hidden.
    otherwise
       now the actor is crouched.
[/code]

Standing would just be modified to remove hidden, and I'm pretty sure I can handle that on my own. My problem is, I cannot find any way to scan the current room for objects with the hideable flag.  I suppose I could write a "instead of crouching:" for every room with a hideable object, but that seems like a terrible option. Also, I'm making an assumption if you're hidden, you're crouched which is why I didn't explicitly set that in the first If clause.

I was also thinking I could just make a separate "hide" command where you have to specify what object you want to hide behind (thus making scanning the room irrelevant) but I think I'd prefer it to be automatic for my game. I think it'd be better to not have to guess. eg, to not have to have this happen in a game:

Someone is coming! You need to hide!
> hide behind desk
You can't hide unless you're crouching.
> crouch
You are now crouching.
> hide behind desk
You can't hide there.
> hide behind box
You can't hide there.
> quit
Are you sure? Y

So, is there a way to scan a room? I've spent some time searching both the documentation and a syntax guide I found online and haven't come up with anything.

Thanks again!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2963&start=0#p20650
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] An action not quite working correctly.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-06 18:53:32

I think instead of "the room the actor is in" you want "the location of the actor"; one thing to note is that if you are on a supporter or in a container, you are not considered to be "in" the room. And your rule is written only to cover the player crouching -- you don't want the message "You are now hiding behind" to appear when someone else hides. Assuming no one else will crouch, that's fine, but then you don't need to mention the actor at all; "the location" is the room that encloses the player. 

Also, the containment relation only applies to, well, containers. See 13.3. Rooms don't contain anything. So you don't want "contains." What you actually want is "encloses." Both "the location" and "encloses" are documented in 3.25.

So you can start:

[code]If the location encloses a hideable object:[/code]

But your [object] token isn't going to work. You want it to back-refer to the hideable object, but Inform don't do that -- and in fact there's no guarantee that there's only one hideable object anyway! So for that part you need something like this:

[code]Carry out crouching:
    if the location encloses a hideable object:
       say "You are now hiding behind [a random hideable object enclosed by the location].";
       now the actor is hidden;
    otherwise:
       now the actor is crouched.[/code]

Inform often forces you to say "A random blah blah blah" when, like the Highlander, there can only be one; you'll see formulas like "A random person incorporating the nose" when no nose is part of more than one person. Because Inform doesn't know that about noses. But in this case it's not just Inform's quirkery.

By the way, you didn't seem to be modeling which object the player was crouching behind. I'm assuming you don't need to model that, and that e.g. hideable objects can't be destroyed and every hideable object is fixed in place (it would be embarrassing to have the player hide behind something she was carrying). There's also some possible combination about enterable supporters and containers; if the player can crouch behind the desk while standing on the bed, that's bad. You could check on that by adding something that checks if the player is not in the location and moves her to the location (remember, if she's on a supporter, she's not in the location). But that's another complication. You might want to test what I wrote and see if it compiles -- I'm not sure I didn't overlook something. (NB I also cleaned up the punctuation at the end of the lines.)

UPDATE: Also, Inform 7 already uses "visible" to mean something; I'm not sure if it'd lead to trouble, but you might want to change that to e.g. "exposed."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2967&start=0#p20651
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problems including the Glimmr Canvas Editor in a new pro
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-08-06 18:57:30

The error you got suggests that you are trying to include other Glimmr extensions from your project; as the docs for the Canvas Editor explain, Inform doesn't deal well with that. All of the extensions you need are included automatically when you include the Canvas Editor, so there's no need to include other extensions in any case, so that the only source code you [i]need[/i] to compile the Canvas Editor is

[code]Include Glimmr Canvas Editor by Erik Temple.[/code]

You'd probably also want to follow that with the figure declarations that you'll be using in your game as well, though, e.g. 

[code]Figure of Annex is the file "Annex.png".
Figure of Chamber is the file "Chamber.png".
Figure of Cross is the file "Cross.png".
Figure of Entry is the file "Entry.png".[/code]

If you're still having trouble, please post back here with the full source for your editor project.

--Erik


If you're still having trouble, please post the complete source of the editor project that you're trying to compile

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2967&start=0#p20652
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problems including the Glimmr Canvas Editor in a new pro
User: ElliotM / DateTime: 2011-08-06 19:24:44

The thing was, though, that I could get that error even if that include line was the only line in the entire project. 

However, I have somehow managed to fix this by uninstalling all of the plugins, downloading r.3.3, and only grabbing the plugins that generated errors if they were missing. I had installed a bunch of plugins at once yesterday when I reinstalled the Inform 7 IDE, and I suspect one of the extensions I had might not have been up-to-date, perhaps from r.3.2 or from the Inform site. If I ever figure out which one it was I'll let you know. Thanks for your help and the work you put into Glimmr and Inform 7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2967&start=0#p20653
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problems including the Glimmr Canvas Editor in a new pro
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-08-06 19:49:39

Whew--I'm very glad you figured it out, because that situation would probably not have occurred to me!

Cheers,
Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2964&start=0#p20654
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: 1st post
User: Nicôle / DateTime: 2011-08-06 19:57:51

Okay.  That's good.  Thanks.  You know the feeling when you walk into a room with lots of strangers and you knock something off a table and everybody stops talking to look at you?  Yeah, was feeling sumthin like that...   [emote]:oops:[/emote] 

Thank you! [emote]:)[/emote]  [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2968&start=0#p20655
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: seeing another room...  I'm stumped!
User: Nicôle / DateTime: 2011-08-06 20:08:38

This looks like the right place for this problem.

 [emote]:arrow:[/emote] I have a telescope that's supposed to show a room down below, but I never get past errors or it just doesn't show anything.  I'm probably just exhausted and 2 steps away from figuring it out.  I tried to use the scope rules in Manual 17.27, but I'm stuck.  Honestly, I'm not even sure if that's the best way to do what I want.  There might be a better way than what I'm trying, so I'd love to hear about it.  Thank you so-o-o much!  XOXO

My whole program is pasted here with my problem and questions included as comments.  I tried to make it as easy for people to help me as I could.  I hope this works.  [emote]:shock:[/emote] 

[spoiler]"problem 01, seeing another room" by Nicole

section - about

[This little adventure will (eventually) star a timid and self-important kitty cat that won't come out to eat unless conditions are perfect.  I want you to be able to watch what the cat does through a telescope in the window.   Every time you look, she will give you a clue about what needs to be done before she will finally eat her dinner.

I tried to use the scope rules in Manual 17.27, but I'm stuck.  I'm not even sure if that's the best way to do what I want.

How do I see what's happening in the Courtyard through the telescope?]

test me with "x telescope/peek through telescope/x bag/get Kitty Kibbles/d,d/put food in dish/l/call cat/u/u/peek through telescope";
test s with "u,u/examine telescope/look through telescope/peek through telescope";
test t with "u,u/d/d/climb lovely oak tree/climb cat's favorite oak tree/enter cat's favorite oak tree"

section - once upon a time

Top Floor Apartment is a room.  "A not-so-fancy apartment with a black and white chessboard floor.  A window faces north.   To the south is a winding staircase, leading down."

In Top Floor Apartment is a bag of Kitty Kibbles.  A description of bag of Kitty Kibbles is "Kitty Kibbles, favorite of cats everywhere."  In it is cat food.  A description of cat food is "Shaped like little fish, birds, and mice.  But made out of a mass produced, factory-processed corn product." [Learn how to make unlimited supply of cat food] 

[Question: How do I make it so you can only pick up the bag and not the cat food while its in the bag?]

section - THIS IS WHERE I NEED HELP

A telescope is a thing.  "A brass telescope is pointing down through the window."  It is fixed in place.  Understand "scope/lens/brass" as telescope.  

Instead of examining telescope:
	say "A lovingly cared-for antique telescope made of brass.  [line break](HINT type: 'peek through telescope').  [paragraph break]I DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO 'LOOK THROUGH TELESCOPE'" [...includes a message to my helpful testers.]

Peeking is an action applying to one visible thing.  Understand "peek through [something]" as peeking.  

Instead of peeking something that is not a telescope: 
	say "Get real..."

Instead of peeking telescope: 
	say "You peek thru the telescope and see the courtyard down below...";
	[This is a message to my helpful testers, to be removed when the problem is fixed:]
		say "[line break]I WANT YOU TO SEE THE COURTYARD AS IT CURRENTLY IS HERE... ";
[ *** Here is the part that doesn't work as expected...]
	After deciding the scope of the player:
		place the Courtyard in scope; 

section - everything else
	
In Top Floor Apartment is a telescope.  

Winding Staircase is a room.  "A winding staircase, painted white, runs from the ground floor all the way up to the top of the building.  Your apartment is on the top floor.  A courtyard is on the ground floor, on the north side of the building."  In it are some stairs.  Some stairs are scenery.  A description of some stairs is "The stairs are made of wood.  The bannister is painted white."  Understand "stair/step/steps/rail/bannister" as stairs.  

Every turn when in Winding Staircase, say "You like the way your footsteps echo on the stairs."

[I love this paragraph for some reason...]
Winding Staircase is south from the Top Floor Apartment.  The Top Floor Apartment is up from the Winding Staircase.  The Winding Staircase is up from the Courtyard.  The Courtyard is north from the Winding Staircase.

Instead of examining down when player is in Winding Staircase: say "You see all the way down to the ground floor.  High up places make you feel kind of dizzy."
Instead of examining up when player is in Winding Staircase: say "You see past all floors to very top.  Why isn't there an elevator in here?"

Courtyard is a room.  A description of Courtyard is "A courtyard below a very tall red brick building.  Through the entryway, to the south is a winding staircase, leading up. [paragraph break]There are two very large and beautiful oak trees here, spreading their arms to heaven."

A lovely oak tree is a thing.  It is scenery.  Instead of entering lovely oak tree: say "Ouch!  The bark is too rough for climbing!"

The cat's favorite oak tree is a thing.  It is an enterable container and scenery.  After entering favorite oak tree: say "You climb the familiar branches until you reach your familiar branch."  Instead of going down when player is in cat's favorite oak tree: try exiting.

Every turn when in the cat's favorite oak tree, say "The wind caresses your skin as you sway with the branches."

[How do I make it so that Inform 7 assumes the player is going to climb the cat's favorite oak tree?  It keeps asking me "which tree do you mean? and then it doesn't work anyway..."]
Instead of climbing [something] tree:
	try entering tree.  [ *** THIS ISN"T WORKING!]

In Courtyard is a lovely oak tree. [squirrel's tree]
In Courtyard is the cat's favorite oak tree.
In Courtyard is a dish.  It is fixed in place and a container.

[Learn how to differ between the two trees with just one word.  It gets tedious typing lovely, cat's, or favorite.  ]

Calling is an action applying to one thing.  Understand "call [something]" as calling.  Instead of calling cat: say "'Here, kitty kitty kitty!'" 

[Conditions before cat will eat: food in dish, squirrel busy in tree, garnish in dish, player must call kitty kitty, player up in apartment, opera music playing, etc.]

section - next work

[Learn how to make a cat and a squirrel that interacts with the player and things the player leaves lying around.][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2956&start=20#p20656
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: the giza pyramids weren't built by the ancient egyptians
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-08-06 22:03:08

ezfreemann, next time you're posting ideas that aren't your own, you must reference where they come from, at the time you post, and not later. That's plagiarism you've just committed.

Also, capital letters. Use them. Please.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2957&start=0#p20657
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: differing descriptions
User: Nicôle / DateTime: 2011-08-06 22:25:05

[quote="Juhana"]Either 'The description if the driver's license is "[one of]Desc 1[or]Desc 2[or]...[stopping]"' (chapter 5.7 in the manual) or 'Instead of examining the driver's license for the first time: "..."' and then 'for the second time', 'for the third time' and so on (chapter 9.14).[/quote]

Changing descriptions!?!  Oooh I like!  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2963&start=0#p20658
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] An action not quite working correctly.
User: dormammu / DateTime: 2011-08-06 22:27:20

[quote="matt w"] You might want to test what I wrote and see if it compiles -- I'm not sure I didn't overlook something.[/quote]

Yes, it worked fine. Thanks!

I did have to modify some of my code a bit (specifically the Check crouching: and Check upright: since the commands do more than set crouching and upright now.) but it was all fine. I did it with no problems at all on my own. (For once. hah.)

But thanks again for helping.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2969&start=0#p20659
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: u know all that dancing at the beginning of the cosby show?
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-08-06 23:42:48

wtf is up with that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2970&start=0#p20661
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I want something to become rotten after X turns
User: jkfriday / DateTime: 2011-08-07 02:43:16

So...I'm going to have a few things floating about that can become "rotten". Things are usually not rotten. But I'm having a problem:

[code]A thing can be rotten. A thing is usually not rotten.

At the time when a thing is rotten:
	now a giant fly is in the thing's location.
	
In five turns from now;
	now the corpse is rotten.[/code]

Inform get hung up on the last bit (turns from now) no matter how I phrase it. I'm obviously doing something wrong and silly, but any hints as to what? The corpse is a fixed in place thing that exists and can be interacted with, so there's no problem with Inform not knowing about the corpse, but no matter what I try to tell it it refuses to accept something "becoming" rotten. Clues?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2893&start=0#p20662
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Re-Triggering a Scene within Questions Extension
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-07 02:47:09

Hm. Doesn't work either.

[code]
To begin the tree dialogue (this is the set dialogue rule):
	now dummy is 0;
	now the dialogue partner is the old tree;
	now the tree trigger is 0;
	let the conversation tree be a list of texts;
	repeat with i running from 1 to the number of rows in the Table of tree conversation:
		if asked in row i of the Table of tree conversation is 0:	
			add choice in row i of the Table of tree conversation to the conversation tree;
			now dummy is dummy plus 1;
	now the closed menu prompt is "(1-[dummy]) >>>";
	now current question is "";
	now current question menu is the conversation tree;
	ask a closed question, in menu mode.
	
A menu question rule (this is the dialogue rule):
	if the number understood is less than 1:
		retry;
	if the number understood is greater than dummy:
		retry;
	if the dialogue partner is the old tree:
		now dummy is the number understood;
		now asked in row dummy of the Table of tree conversation is 1;
		say "[answer in row dummy of the Table of tree conversation]";
		now the tree trigger is 1;
		begin the tree dialogue;
	exit.[/code]

The problem is that during the second run the new answer list is printed, but "ask a closed question, in menu mode" is not executed. Maybe because when "begin the tree dialogue" is called the game is still in menu mode. Any ideas?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2970&start=0#p20663
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I want something to become rotten after X turns
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-07 02:53:08

[code]
the rotting timer clucks in five turns from now;

(...)

At the time when the rotting timer clucks:
    now the corpse is rotten; [unnecessary unless you need the rotten flag later on]
    now a giant fly is in the thing's location.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2970&start=0#p20664
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I want something to become rotten after X turns
User: jkfriday / DateTime: 2011-08-07 02:56:15

Thank you very much. I'll give it a crack!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2968&start=0#p20665
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: seeing another room...  I'm stumped!
User: i-k / DateTime: 2011-08-07 03:31:45

You need to tell Inform to print the description of the Courtyard, so the code is:

Instead of peeking telescope: 
 say "You peek thru the telescope and see the courtyard down below...[line break][description of Courtyard]";

The deciding the scope activity does not control this. It's only needed here for the player to examine the objects in the Courtyard (being able to see distant objects).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2970&start=0#p20666
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I want something to become rotten after X turns
User: jkfriday / DateTime: 2011-08-07 03:41:24

Waahhh, it keeps giving me grief.

[code]The bloated corpse rots in five turns from now; 
	At the time when the bloated corpse rots:
		now the bloated corpse is a rotten thing;
		now a giant fly is in the location.[/code]

It reports: "Problem. You wrote 'The bloated corpse rots in five turns from now'  : but I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with, so I am ignoring this sentence altogether."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2970&start=0#p20667
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I want something to become rotten after X turns
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-08-07 04:04:56

Ah, there are a few problems here. The most salient is probably that you're trying to stick a rule inside a phrase, which doesn't work. "The bloated corpse rots in five turns from now" is a phrase indicating a specific moment, and code outside rules does not have a defined sequence. This is a problem with indentation.

[code]When play begins: the bloated corpse rots in five turns from now.

At the time when the bloated corpse rots:
	now the bloated corpse is rotten;
	now a giant fly is in the location.[/code]

Both of these are now rules.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2957&start=0#p20668
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: differing descriptions
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-08-07 04:08:48

Btw, consistency in spelling is important here. The original post specifies one "your driver's licence" and one "your driver's [b]lisence[/b]". That will generate an error message that'll probably cause you to look in the wrong place for a solution, and in other situations could even have silently created a duplicate object, which you definitely do not want. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2963&start=10#p20669
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] An action not quite working correctly.
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-07 04:33:54

[quote="dormammu"]
[code]An object is either hideable or nothideable.  An object is usually nothideable.[/code]

It sounds awful ("nothideable"?), but I couldn't think of anything better.[/quote]
You don't necessarily have to define the opposite of an adjective. The opposite can then be referred to as "not (adjective)". It's also better to refer to game world objects as "things" instead of "objects" unless you have a reason to use the object class (all things are objects, but not all objects are things).

[code]A thing can be hideable. A thing is usually not hideable.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2963&start=10#p20670
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] An action not quite working correctly.
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-07 04:44:23

[quote="matt w"][code]Carry out crouching:
    if the location encloses a hideable object:
       say "You are now hiding behind [a random hideable object enclosed by the location].";[/code][/quote]
Another way to do this is to name the object:

[code]Carry out crouching:
    if the location encloses a hideable object (called the hideout):
		say "You are now hiding behind [the hideout].";[/code]
It doesn't really matter in this case but if there are more than one hideable objects in the location the conditional might pick a different object than the say phrase. In a more complex rule that might cause problems.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2964&start=0#p20671
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: 1st post
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-08-07 05:01:43

*Looks at the new stranger.*



 [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2964&start=0#p20672
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: 1st post
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-08-07 05:18:03

Howdy, Stranger. [emote]:)[/emote] *tips hat*

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2968&start=0#p20673
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: seeing another room...  I'm stumped!
User: Nicôle / DateTime: 2011-08-07 05:54:56

[quote="i-k"]You need to tell Inform to print the description of the Courtyard, so the code is:

Instead of peeking telescope: 
 say "You peek thru the telescope and see the courtyard down below...[line break][description of Courtyard]";[/quote]TY, i-k.

Here is what prints now: [spoiler]>peek through telescope
You peek thru the telescope and see the courtyard down below...
A courtyard below a very tall red brick building.  Through the entryway, to the south is a winding staircase, leading up. 

There are two very large and beautiful oak trees here, spreading their arms to heaven.[/spoiler]Okay.  This does work as you said.  Now I have two problems.  

  1) It doesn't print the things in the room (dish, cat food) that print when I am in that room .

  2) My description of the room (the Courtyard) includes things that are visible from the room that shouldn't be visible thru the telescope (red brick building, entryway).  Since its not a magic telescope, how can I make a special description of the far away room that includes the things that are in it (cat, dish, squirrel) but not things that would be impossible to see (red building, a window with a telescope in it) from the player's point of view?  [b]Is there a way to have more than one room description[/b], so I can decide which one to use when I need it?

TIA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2969&start=0#p20674
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: u know all that dancing at the beginning of the cosby sh
User: Nicôle / DateTime: 2011-08-07 06:22:26

It's to make you feel happy.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2971&start=0#p20675
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: I have a blog. Yippe-kayay.
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-07 06:23:13

Just wanted to let y'all know I've started a blog. I'm not going to advertise it anywhere else, because I don't really frequent all those many places in the net. It's a repository for thoughts and rants about me, about music, and very much about games. It's just a place for me to say all those things that don't really have a place in a forum or a review in IFDB. In short, it's a blog.

<a class="postlink" href="http://petersoutlet.blogspot.com/">http://petersoutlet.blogspot.com/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2969&start=0#p20676
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: u know all that dancing at the beginning of the cosby sh
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-08-07 06:24:33

oooooohhhhh!

thanks!

 [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2971&start=0#p20677
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I have a blog. Yippe-kayay.
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-07 06:30:41

Me too, me too! [url]http://www.ozelotkacke.de[/url]. Entirely in German. Not a bit about Interactive Fiction. Enjoy!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2970&start=0#p20678
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I want something to become rotten after X turns
User: jkfriday / DateTime: 2011-08-07 06:36:06

That worked great, thank you.

[code]When play begins: the bloated corpse rots in five turns from now.

At the time when the bloated corpse rots:
   now the bloated corpse is rotten;
   move giant fly to Bloated Bo's'n Beach;
   if bloated corpse is visible, say "A giant fly buzzes down and lands on the bosun."[/code]

I'm having a little trouble getting Inform to be happy with more than one giant fly (in an inaccessible room called Swarm) but I'll keep chipping away at that. Thanks very much again!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2899&start=20#p20679
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IntroComp 2011 - Winners Announced!
User: Nicôle / DateTime: 2011-08-07 06:36:56

*Googles CYOA*

Oh.  (I'm such a newb.)  [emote]:|[/emote]

*Resumes reading thread*

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2957&start=0#p20680
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: differing descriptions
User: Aintelligence / DateTime: 2011-08-07 06:37:33

This works great! thanks!  
Now what should I do if I need different descriptions with an action?
I tried:
[code]If the player unlocks the room door with the hotel card one time, say "You swipe the card through the slot.  The light turns red.".[/code]

but the error says as follows:

[rant]You wrote 'If the player unlocks the room door with the hotel card one time, say "You swipe the card through the slot. The light turns red."'  : but this description of a relationship makes no sense to me, and should be something like 'X is in Y' (or 'on' or 'part of Y'); or else 'X is here' or 'X is east of Y'.[/rant]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2968&start=0#p20681
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: seeing another room...  I'm stumped!
User: Aintelligence / DateTime: 2011-08-07 06:42:13

Could you possibly make two rooms, one which you cannot enter and one (the real courtyard), varying the descriptions that way?

You could very likely write a set of variables which the clone room will mimic changes of the real room.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2971&start=0#p20682
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I have a blog. Yippe-kayay.
User: Nicôle / DateTime: 2011-08-07 06:46:07

[quote="Peter Pears"]Just wanted to let y'all know I've started a blog...[/quote]See, Dad?  Peter started a blog and already he has a ton of stuff to look at. ROFL   [emote]:lol:[/emote] Maybe you should stick some videos on yours at least?  *snicker* [emote]8-)[/emote] 

WTG Peter [emote]:!:[/emote]  [emote]8-)[/emote]  [emote]:ugeek:[/emote] 

And Dad, if more time passes, I might hafta link to it so everyone can see your, um, "blog".  ROFL  *wipes tears from eyes*   [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2970&start=0#p20683
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I want something to become rotten after X turns
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-08-07 07:43:18

[quote="jkfriday"]That worked great, thank you.

[code]When play begins: the bloated corpse rots in five turns from now.

At the time when the bloated corpse rots:
   now the bloated corpse is rotten;
   move giant fly to Bloated Bo's'n Beach;
   if bloated corpse is visible, say "A giant fly buzzes down and lands on the bosun."[/code]

I'm having a little trouble getting Inform to be happy with more than one giant fly (in an inaccessible room called Swarm) but I'll keep chipping away at that. Thanks very much again![/quote]

Not a problem. [emote]:)[/emote]

In regards to several flies, what you want is a [b]kind[/b] called "giant fly." However, every [i]instance[/i] of said fly has to be declared ahead of time, and references to "the giant fly" won't work because Inform won't know which specific giant fly you mean. 

One solution is to declare a number of generic giant flies (see the [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc67.html]Duplicates[/url] entry in the Inform manual), and then refer to "a random giant fly" with the appropriate qualifier. Demonstration follows:

[code]The swarm is a container.

A giant fly is a kind of animal. The plural of a giant fly is giant flies. Ten giant flies are in the swarm.
A thing can be rotten. A thing is usually not rotten.


When play begins: the bloated corpse rots in five turns from now.

At the time when the bloated corpse rots:
	now the bloated corpse is rotten;
	now a random off-stage giant fly is in the location.


The Jungle is a room.
The bloated corpse is a thing. It is in the jungle.[/code]

Note here that because we define the swarm as a container and assign it no location, it's automatically created off-stage.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2957&start=0#p20684
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: differing descriptions
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-08-07 07:59:44

In Inform 7, phrases (like "if", "while", and so on) must be inside rules. Thus, you can't just go "if this is true, do that", because Inform has no reference as to when this situation will occur.

If you just want a message to be different the first time you use the card on the room door, you have to add your own report rule for the [i]unlocking it with[/i] action.

[code]Report an actor unlocking room door with for the first time: 
	say "You swipe the card through the slot. The light turns red." instead.[/code]

Or you could make it more general:

[code]Report an actor unlocking room door with: 
	say "[one of]You swipe the card through the slot. The light turns red[or]Once again you swipe the card through the slot and open the door[or]Again, you open the door[stopping]." instead.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2972&start=0#p20685
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: goal, low budget props that work as expected
User: Jeff / DateTime: 2011-08-07 08:02:07

I attempted to solve a problem using 'Understand ... as a mistake', however I7 seems to regard some of the input as erm, 'global' and other input it seems to regard as 'local' to the prop (a sink).  I guess I expected 'Understand ... as a mistake' to restrict itself to the room the sink is in.  I tried to add conditions to 'Understand ... as a mistake', but the IDE gave errors.  I may have backed myself into a corner here.  

If you can understand what I was trying to do, I'd appreciate a few words of explanation of why my idea didn't work, and being shown a better method.  Thanks in advance.

[code]"low budget props that work as expected" by Jeff

[I want props (e.g. a sink) to work as a player expects, but I don't want to get involved in a ton of code to do so.  My problem is, how to make something like a sink work (anticipating many ways a player might try it) with as little code as possible (i.e. as few new rules as possible). 

I thought perhaps the 'Understand ... as a mistake' structure would be ideal for this.  Problem is, some phrases seem to work everywhere, even when no sink is present, while others work as expected.  Do 'test me' from both rooms and note the difference.
]

test me with "x sink/use sink/get water/drink water/wash hands/drink/wash";

section - low budget props that work as expected

A sink is a kind of container.  It is usually fixed in place.   A description of sink is "A chipped and stained basin with no pipes to take away the water.  [line break]The water simply drains onto the floor and runs into a grille at your feet."

[some code that anticipates many things a player might try to do...] [... but it doesn't work as expected...]
Understand "drink" or "wash" or "use [sink]" or "wash hands" or "drink water" or "get water" as a mistake ("The water is clean and cool, [line break]but the pressure is so high it splashes on your pants.").

section - center stage

Workshop is a room.  In it is an engine.  It is fixed in place.  A description of Workshop is "To the south is a washroom." 

Instead of examining engine: say "A lawn mower engine.  The whatsit has come loose from the whoosit.  [line break]Oops, now your hands are dirty.  Better go wash them."

South of Workshop is Washroom.  In it is a sink.  A description of Washroom is "To the north is a workshop." [/code]In case it wasn't obvious, 'low budget' here means with as little overhead (work, memory) as possible.  Thanks in advance.

Oh, and to reiterate: Do 'test me' from both rooms and note the difference.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2957&start=0#p20686
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: differing descriptions
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-07 08:04:49

[quote="Aintelligence"]
Now what should I do if I need different descriptions with an action?
I tried:
[code]If the player unlocks the room door with the hotel card one time, say "You swipe the card through the slot.  The light turns red.".[/code][/quote]
As you found out, that's not valid syntax. You can use the "for the first time" technique just like with examining above:

[code]After unlocking the room door with the hotel card for the first time: say "You swipe the card through the slot.  The light turns red."[/code]

Just a friendly suggestion: It looks like you're guessing syntax since that wording and the one used in the original post are nowhere near any existing phrasing. Guessing very rarely works unless you're trying to modify some phrase that already works (and rarely even then). If you can't find something that does exactly what you need in the manual or the recipe book, a better technique is to find something that does [i]almost[/i] what you need and start from there. Even then guessing rarely works but at least you have something to start from. In this case you could start with changing the description for all occasions ("After unlocking the room door with the hotel card: ..."), make sure it works, and then either derive the "for the first time" rule or find the solution some other route.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2972&start=0#p20687
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: goal, low budget props that work as expected
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-07 08:53:54

I hear ya. I think your dream of low overhead detail-filling is the dream of man and flightless bird alike.

You also already identified what's going wrong. The 'mistake' mechanism is global, and I don't think it can be made otherwise.

For instance if you try to add a condition to a mistake line:

[code]Understand "drink" or "wash" or "use [sink]" or "wash hands" or "drink water" or "get water" as a mistake when player is in location of sink[/code]

it doesn't compile.

So yeah, I think you need to make some actions. I made a demo where I created just two actions which round up all the things you wanted, as an example. I made two because one is the vague version (where the player doesn't mention the sink) and the other is the sinky version (where they do). These two actions still shove away most irrelevant attempts, because one is only active when the sink is in the room, and the other demands that the noun be the sink.

This looks neat in the short term, but as soon as your game starts getting any legs, you may find it's actually easier to just attend to the prop via more traditional (IE less herdy) means.

To try my demo, cut out your middle section and replace it with the below one. Then do your double 'test me ' schtick again.

Btw I notice you have just 1 post to your credit, so you may need to learn the trick of cutting+pasting inform code. If you copy it direct from this post, the formatting will go screwy. What you do is just click 'quote' on my post, then copy the code from the editable window that appears. That will preserve the formatting.

[code]section - low budget props that work as expected

A sink is a kind of container.  It is usually fixed in place.   A description of sink is "A chipped and stained basin with no pipes to take away the water.  [line break]The water simply drains onto the floor and runs into a grille at your feet."

[some code that anticipates many things a player might try to do...] [... but it doesn't work as expected...]
vague waterfooling is an action applying to nothing.

Understand "drink" or "wash" or "wash hands" or "drink water" or "get water" as vague waterfooling when sink is in location.

sinky waterfooling is an action applying to one thing.

Understand "use [sink]", "drink [sink]" or "wash hands [sink]" or "drink water [sink]" or "get water [sink]" as sinky waterfooling.

Carry out vague waterfooling: say the splashy message.

Carry out sinky waterfooling: say the splashy message.

To say the splashy message:
	say "The water is clean and cool, but the pressure is so high it splashes on your pants."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2972&start=0#p20688
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: goal, low budget props that work as expected
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-07 09:09:17

PS - When you say memory, do you mean as in KB useage of your game?

There are other folks here who'd know infinitely more about which techniques use more/less memory than others, but it's worth checking you're not trying to cut memory use for no reason. I guess a possible reason is you're trying to fit a game onto a handheld device. Or you're trying to fit the game into the Z-machine format as an exercise of self restrcition. But per se, there is no reason at all to watch your memory useage. The glulx format can handle games bigger than any that have been made to date.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2968&start=0#p20689
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: seeing another room...  I'm stumped!
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-08-07 09:15:41

[quote="Nicôle"]Now I have two problems.  

  1) It doesn't print the things in the room (dish, cat food) that print when I am in that room .

  2) My description of the room (the Courtyard) includes things that are visible from the room that shouldn't be visible thru the telescope (red brick building, entryway).  Since its not a magic telescope, how can I make a special description of the far away room that includes the things that are in it (cat, dish, squirrel) but not things that would be impossible to see (red building, a window with a telescope in it) from the player's point of view?  [b]Is there a way to have more than one room description[/b], so I can decide which one to use when I need it?[/quote]

It sounds like the telescope is trained on just one other room. If that's correct, you can just do these things manually in the telescoping rule:

[code]Instead of peeking through the telescope:
	say "Looking through the telescope, you can see a courtyard in the shadow of what is probably a building. In the courtyard, you see [a list of things in Courtyard]."[/code]

The "list of things in the Courtyard" token prints the names of the things in the remote room dynamically--whatever's there when the player looks through will be printed. You can also be more explicit about what to list; for example, if you use an adjective to define small and large categories for things, then you could write "[list of large things in the Courtyard]" to leave out ants and dragonflies while still listing cats and squirrels.

If you prefer to add a separate description to the room (useful if your telescope can be used to look at several different rooms), you can do that by adding a new property to the room kind:

[code]A room has some text called the telescopic description. The telescopic description of the courtyard is "a courtyard in the shadow of what is probably a building. In the courtyard, you see [a list of things in Courtyard]."

Instead of peeking through the telescope:
	say "Looking through the telescope, you can see [telescopic description of the noun]."[/code]

--Erik

EDITED to fix the construction of the rule that uses the telescopic description.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2972&start=0#p20690
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: goal, low budget props that work as expected
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-08-07 09:21:53

[quote="severedhand"]The 'mistake' mechanism is global, and I don't think it can be made otherwise.

For instance if you try to add a condition to a mistake line:

[code]Understand "drink" or "wash" or "use [sink]" or "wash hands" or "drink water" or "get water" as a mistake when player is in location of sink[/code]

it doesn't compile.
[/quote]

You can add any valid condition to mistake grammar. However, "in location of [something]" is not valid. Try 


[code]Understand "drink" or "wash" or "use [sink]" or "wash hands" or "drink water" or "get water" as a mistake ("The water is clean and cool, [line break]but the pressure is so high it splashes on your pants.") when the player can touch the sink.[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2968&start=0#p20691
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: seeing another room...  I'm stumped!
User: i-k / DateTime: 2011-08-07 09:29:45

Here's another way you can have two (or more) room descriptions:

[code]
Courtyard is a room. A description of Courtyard is "[if the location is Courtyard]A courtyard below a very tall red brick building. Through the entryway, to the south is a winding staircase, leading up. [paragraph break]There are two very large and beautiful oak trees here, spreading their arms to heaven.[otherwise]HERE YOU WRITE WHAT THE COURTYARD LOOKS LIKE WHEN VIEWED THROUGH THE TELESCOPE. MAYBE ADD [a list of important things in Courtyard] OR SOMETHING SIMILAR."
[/code]

And also, I forgot to mention this earlier about the deciding the scope activity:

The code should be something like this:

[code]
After deciding the scope of the player:
	if the location is Top Floor Apartment and the telescope is tried, place the Courtyard in scope;
[/code]

If you just say that Courtyard is in scope, it will be in scope all the time everywhere. That's why you need to specify a bit.

The “telescope is tried” -part is for determining whether the player has discovered the abilities of the telescope and thus knows that she can see all the way to the Courtyard.

So, add something like this:

[code]
The telescope can be tried or untried. The telescope is untried.

After peeking the telescope for the first time:
	now the telescope is tried;
	continue the action;
[/code]

Note: you must then use a carry out -rule for the peeking, not an instead-rule:

[code]
Carry out peeking telescope: 
	say "You peek thru the telescope and see the courtyard down below...[line break][description of Courtyard].";
[/code]

(After-rules don't work with instead.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2968&start=0#p20692
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: seeing another room...  I'm stumped!
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-07 09:40:12

Yet another solution might be to actually move the player to the courtyard but prevent him from doing anything to the things there but examining them as long as he is watching them from the telescope.
[code]
The Top Floor is a room.
A telescope is a thing in the Top Floor.

The Courtyard is a room. "[if the player is telescoping]In the courtyard below there is[otherwise]Below a very tall red brick building there is a courtyard with[end if] one not too huge tree and a few people." 
A tree is an open transparent container in the Courtyard. "Up in the courtyard tree you see Kalle." The description of the tree is "This should be the perfect tree for climbing." 
Kalle is a man in the tree. The description of Kalle is "He is dreaming of Emma". 
Emma is a woman in the Courtyard. The description of Emma is "Emma is only a dream." 
Grandpa is a man in the Courtyard. The initial appearance of Grandpa is "Below the tree sits Grandpa reading the news". 
Grandpa carries the news. The description of the news is "The paper says 'Activision releases Zork to public domain'." 

Peeking through is an action applying to one thing.
Understand "peek through [something]" as peeking through.

Yourself can be telescoping. Yourself is not telescoping.
	
Carry out peeking through the telescope:
	now the player is telescoping;
	say "You peek thru the telescope and see the courtyard down below...";
	move the player to the Courtyard.
	
After printing the name of the courtyard while the player is telescoping: say " (through the telescope)".
	
Before doing anything other than examining something enclosed by the Courtyard or looking when the player is telescoping:
	move the player to Top Floor;
	now the player is not telescoping;
	say "(in the Top Floor Apartment)".
[/code]

(Or if it is for some reason inconvenient to have the player in the courtyard, you could move him there and back to the Top Floor while adding the courtyard to scope:)
[code]
Carry out peeking through the telescope:
	now the player is telescoping;
	say "You peek thru the telescope and see the courtyard down below...[line break]";
	move the player to the Courtyard;
	move the player to the Top Floor, without printing a room description.

After deciding the scope of the player while the player is telescoping:
	place the Courtyard in scope.
	
Before doing anything other than examining something enclosed by the Courtyard when the player is telescoping:
	now the player is not telescoping;
	say "(in the Top Floor Apartment)".
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2972&start=0#p20693
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: goal, low budget props that work as expected
User: Jeff / DateTime: 2011-08-07 10:16:02

Ah, excellent.  My understanding of I7 is growing slowly but surely.  I have these dead-ends in my wetware sometimes where I notice (in retrospect) that I'm unable to take a pattern from one context and apply it to another.  This was one such occasion.  Thank you.[quote="severedhand"]...other folks here who'd know infinitely more about which techniques use more/less memory than others, but it's worth checking you're not trying to cut memory use for no reason...[/quote]Noted.  Thanks for the feedback.

[quote="ektemple"]...You can add any valid condition to mistake grammar...[/quote]Thanks, ektemple.  You've also expanded my horizons.

I am thus enriched, cautioned, challenged.  Thank you both.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2971&start=0#p20694
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I have a blog. Yippe-kayay.
User: Jeff / DateTime: 2011-08-07 10:31:06

[quote="Nicôle"][quote="Peter Pears"]Just wanted to let y'all know I've started a blog...[/quote]See, Dad?  Peter started a blog and already he has a ton of stuff to look at. ROFL   [emote]:lol:[/emote] Maybe you should stick some videos on yours at least?  *snicker* [emote]8-)[/emote] [/quote]Aw, gee...  Thanks, hun.[quote="Nicôle"]And Dad, if more time passes, I might hafta link to it so everyone can see your, um, "blog".  ROFL  *wipes tears from eyes*   [emote];)[/emote][/quote]
Hey I appreciate the encouragement.  I would love to spend more time on my projects, and it's nice to know you agree.  So, to free up some time, does this mean you'll help out around the house more?  SNAP!   [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2972&start=0#p20695
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: goal, low budget props that work as expected
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-07 10:36:34

I generally say it is bad practice to use conditional verb grammar like this. If you want "wash" to give the player a guidance message, it should give that message anywhere in the game. To get a physical-action reply ("...the water splashes on your pants") in one location but "I don't recognize that verb" in another location is particularly bad; at *best* the latter will train your players to never run into the former message.

Defining "get water" as a mistake is another, well, mistake. It fails to cover "get the water" or "get clean cool water" or any other synonyms you or the player might think of.

The best way to catch player actions is to define actions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2957&start=0#p20696
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: differing descriptions
User: Aintelligence / DateTime: 2011-08-07 11:26:53

Oh wow  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

I am so sorry about the dreadful state of the syntax.  Ok.  Deep breath.  It's the morning.

Sorry I meant to use 'instead' but I wrote it totally wrong without checking.

But btw thanks alot for the help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2973&start=0#p20697
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Line Breaks, Line Breaks, Line Breaks
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-08-07 12:19:56

If there is one thing I do not get in Inform 7 right now, it is line breaks. Here is how I am working at the moment:

1. Write text.
2. Run it.
3. Note where line breaks appear.
4. Add [line break] or [no line break] as appropriate.

Take the following example:

[code]The garage is a room.

The block is in the garage. The block can be this way or that way. The block is that way.

Carry out pushing the block:
	say "First sentence.[if the block is that way] Second, conditional sentence.[end if]";
	rule succeeds.[/code]
This produces the following output:
[quote]>push block
First sentence.
 Second, conditional sentence.

Nothing obvious happens.[/quote]
Okay, noobishness, I don't know why that "Nothing obvious happens." is there, because I thought "rule succeeds" should stop that, but let's ignore that. I have two questions about this code:

1. How do I fix this? I have tried any combination of spacing, moving full stops, swearing - and I can't make the text output look right for both conditions. To clarify, I want the first and second sentences [i]on the same line[/i].

2. Why in the name of sweet flying kittens would I possibly [i]want[/i] output like that? What is the utility of this feature? Why does Inform want to insert newlines all over the place - not even paragraph breaks, but newlines!

On a related note, why does the IDE indent text within indented blocks of code? It may make it look legible in the editor, but the text then line breaks and indents all oddly in the game.

In short, why does Inform want so much to make me look bad?  I understand that some people will need fine control over line breaks and spacing. That's fine, give them the option. But why on Earth can't I7 just, by default, assume that I want block paragraph spacing, between paragraphs that I [i]have specifically requested[/i], and no crazy indentation. 

Or, in other words, why can't it just be like TADS 3, where I never had to worry about any of this stuff, where you get paragraphs and newlines when you ask for them, where everything is single spaced by default, where even if your conditional text mistakenly spews out multiple new paragraph tags you still only get one. You know, an intuitive environment for outputting computer-generated text, where rather than getting a headache over complex logic puzzles (how do I make sure this sentence ends in a full stop? if this condition is false will that space trigger a newline? if the middle clause isn't displayed, will I have too many spaces?), I can just bloody [i]write[/i].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2973&start=0#p20698
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Line Breaks, Line Breaks, Line Breaks
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-08-07 12:54:36

Having de-stressed a bit, I came up with:

[code]Carry out pushing the block:
	say "First sentence. [if the block is that way]Second, conditional sentence.[otherwise][line break][end if]";
	rule succeeds.[/code]
I still challenge anyone to tell me that this is intuitive.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2427&start=10#p20699
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Glimmr sizing and alignment standards?
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-08-07 13:08:26

OK, so this question isn't exactly about sizing and alignment but it does still deal with Glimmr in general.

I seems like by default, the "out" exit isn't listed when the player is inside of a vehicle. Also, "in" is not displayed when the player is outside of a vehicle. I suspect that somewhere in this chunk of code I could possibly work that out:
[code]Carry out looking (this is the compass rose updating rule):
	repeat with heading running through directions:
		let place be the room heading from the location;
		if place is a room and place is compass-ready:
			if place is unvisited:
				now the image-ID of the dir-sprite of the heading is the unvisited image of the dir-sprite of the heading;
			otherwise:
				now the image-ID of the dir-sprite of the heading is the visited image of the dir-sprite of the heading;
			activate the dir-sprite of the heading;
		otherwise:
			deactivate the dir-sprite of the heading;
	follow the window-drawing rules for the graphics-window.[/code]

I just have nothing but guesses as to what I should add or change for checking exits when the player is in the vehicle. This doesn't necessarily have to apply to every vehicle, but I need it to apply to one for puzzle purposes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=0#p20700
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Screw IFComp
User: ultimate / DateTime: 2011-08-07 13:27:57

I bet this year is going to be like every year. Authors just upload some shit for fun, not even thinking about winning. And IFComp reviewers go all serious and bitch about everything, just to have something to write on their blogs. BAH!

Bunch of haters.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2975&start=0#p20701
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: "Invisiclues" effect in a PDF file
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-07 13:28:43

Instead of incorporating a built-in hint system into my game, I'm preparing a separate cheatbook as an electronic feelie.  I'm doing the layout work in InDesign and then exporting to a PDF file.

What I'd like to do is simulate the effect of the old Invisiclues system, so that each hint is invisible (i.e., white-on-white text) until the reader drags the mouse over it, whereupon it shows up.  Getting white-on-white text is easy; what's hanging me up is how to set it so that highlighting the text (by dragging the mouse) makes it visible.  What seems to be happening is that when you drag the mouse over the white-on-white text, it turns to some other color, but the text and background remain the same (so its still invisible).  I'm sure there must be a simple way to do this, but my InDesign experience has been limited to straightforward typesetting.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.



Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2976&start=0#p20702
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Indexed text, and progressive slowdown during play
User: mucat / DateTime: 2011-08-07 13:46:25

I love indexed text.  It's a great tool for adding little bits of random interactive detail to the game world.  But I'm beginning to understand why some people go out of their way to avoid it.

The game I'm currently writing runs painfully slow, so I decided to run some tests to quantify how long different operations take.  For indexed text, I found that it's not only slow -- which I expected -- but that it gets progressively slower as the game runs, even if the total amount of indexed text currently in memory remains small.

Specifically, the loop:
[code]
Instead of pushing the green button:         [For testing, not part of the actual game.]
	let t be some indexed text;
	repeat with n running from 1 to 10000:
		now t is "abcd";
[/code]
takes 4 seconds to run the first time the player hits the green button.  Hit it again, and the loop takes 10 seconds.  Then 26 seconds, then 50, then 79 and then 105 seconds.

(By contrast, if you remove the word "indexed" and run the loop with a regular text variable, it takes half a second, and remains the same no matter how many times in succession you run it.)

This is all on Glulx with standard memory settings.  Note that the loop isn't filling up more and more memory with indexed text; it's overwriting the same four-character string into the same variable over and over.

Is there an existing guide out there to Inform's memory management in general, or to indexed text management specifically?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2975&start=0#p20703
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "Invisiclues" effect in a PDF file
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-08-07 13:50:33

I could be mistaken, but I believe that's simply how PDFs work. (Or to be more exact, how Adobe Reader work.) Maybe a html file would be better suited for what you want to do?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2427&start=10#p20704
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Glimmr sizing and alignment standards?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-08-07 14:19:58

Actually, this doesn't really have anything to do with Glimmr. Vehicles are containers, not rooms, so they don't have any directional connection at all, including "in" and "out"; in other words, they are totally independent of the compass. The [i]exiting[/i] action does get remapped from the [i]going[/i] action when the player is in a container. However, "in" does not similarly map to the action of [i]entering[/i] a container, because that would override any use of the true "inside" compass direction.

And that's what you'll need to do to get this working: redirect "go inside" to "enter". One way:

[code]Check an actor going inside:
	if the SPORTS CAR is in the location and the actor is not in the SPORTS CAR:
		try the actor entering the SPORTS CAR instead.[/code]

Note that this will make it impossible to use inside as a direction from any location where the vehicle is, since that will remap to entering the vehicle. Be sure that your vehicle can't enter any rooms where there is an "inside" map connection.

You'll also need to modify the compass code that you identified, to hard-code a check for whether the player is inside/outside the vehicle:

[code]Carry out looking (this is the new compass rose updating rule):
	repeat with heading running through directions:
		let place be the room heading from the location;
		if place is a room and place is compass-ready:
			if place is unvisited:
				now the image-ID of the dir-sprite of the heading is the unvisited image of the dir-sprite of the heading;
			otherwise:
				now the image-ID of the dir-sprite of the heading is the visited image of the dir-sprite of the heading;
			activate the dir-sprite of the heading;
		otherwise:
			deactivate the dir-sprite of the heading;
	if the player can touch the SPORTS CAR:
		let heading be outside;
		if the player is not in the SPORTS CAR:
			let heading be inside;
		now the image-ID of the dir-sprite of the heading is the unvisited image of the dir-sprite of the heading; 
	follow the window-drawing rules for the graphics-window.

The new compass rose updating rule is listed instead of the compass rose updating rule in the carry out looking rules.[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2975&start=0#p20705
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "Invisiclues" effect in a PDF file
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-07 14:33:58

I'm using a Word file for the same purpose. Can be pimped with tables and pictures, doesn't look much worse than .pdf.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2427&start=10#p20706
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Glimmr sizing and alignment standards?
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-08-07 14:47:53

[quote="ektemple"]Actually, this doesn't really have anything to do with Glimmr. [/quote]

I was afraid of that.  [emote]:oops:[/emote] 

[quote="ektemple"]
Note that this will make it impossible to use inside as a direction from any location where the vehicle is, since that will remap to entering the vehicle. Be sure that your vehicle can't enter any rooms where there is an "inside" map connection.
[/quote]

Yup, for this case I do not have to worry about that at all. Thanks again Erik.

EDIT: Haven't got this to work yet. At first I tried to just add the sports car checks (not noticing the declaration of a new rule) and nothing happened differently. Then I added that declaration, and compile fails on  In 'The new compass rose updating rule is listed instead of the compass rose updating rule in the carry out looking rules'  , you gave 'the compass rose updating rule' where a rule was required.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2973&start=0#p20707
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Line Breaks, Line Breaks, Line Breaks
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-08-07 14:50:10

Ah man, that sort of thing drives me INSANE.. especially when working with a project that takes a long time to compile just to see if you got the break right.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2975&start=0#p20708
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "Invisiclues" effect in a PDF file
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-07 15:07:18

Grueslayer, were you able to achieve the effect of invisible type which becomes visible when highlighted in Word? Thanks.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2975&start=0#p20709
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "Invisiclues" effect in a PDF file
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-08-07 15:08:31

[quote="Grueslayer"]doesn't look much worse than .pdf.[/quote]

Ouch.  In my experience, Word files are the worst of the various worlds about this, because they give the illusion of layout/aesthetic control to the author, but are actually almost totally non-portable.  Word files render in subtly-to-not-so-subtly different ways depending on the version of Word, much less the version of other non-Word programs that people might use to open your document.

I'd second the HTML suggestion.  Or, if you want to get fancy, Juhana's website has a Javascript hint system you can copy from: <a class="postlink" href="http://nitku.net/if/clues.html">http://nitku.net/if/clues.html</a>  There might even be a good way to make that sort of thing screenreader-friendly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2973&start=0#p20710
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Line Breaks, Line Breaks, Line Breaks
User: mucat / DateTime: 2011-08-07 15:32:16

This drives me nuts too.  My code always ends up with a crazy mishmash of simple punctuated texts, [line break], [no line break], [run paragraph on], and [command clarification break] (this last one in contexts that have nothing to do with clarifying commands; it just seems like the only way to get the spacing I want sometimes.)  

One thing that I picked up from Section 5.8 of the docs that helped a little is the fact that Inform adds an automatic paragraph break between two texts that are printed by different rules, but not if they are simply printed by different phrases.  But I still don't understand the line break system fully, and like you, I end up doing a lot by trial and error.

Since this is something I've been meaning to figure out anyway, I'll run some sample code and try out all the permutations of different break types and where they appear (internal to a line of text, at the end of a line of text, as the last text produced by a phrase, as the last text produced by a rule, etc...)  I'll see if I can boil the whole thing down to a logical set of rules, and let you know if I have any luck.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2975&start=0#p20711
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "Invisiclues" effect in a PDF file
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-07 15:55:11

Unfortunately, HTML is far beyond my technical skills, and my knowledge of Java is limited to being able to brew a damn good cup of coffee.

I was hoping to be able to achieve the effect I wanted using tools with which I have some basic familiarity.  If I can't do that, I may just make it fully visible, on the theory that if you're using the cheatbook you've already voluntarily ventured into spoiler country anyway.  I suppose one could always print it out and use a blank piece of paper to cover the page and expose one line at a time -- low-tech, but it does the job.

I'm a little surprised that pdf files do not support some control over the way highlighted text looks on screen.  Although originally designed for print work, the more recent versions of the system do cover other electronic-only features (such as internal links) and overall its a sufficiently powerful system that I would expect someting like this to be available.


Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2973&start=0#p20712
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Line Breaks, Line Breaks, Line Breaks
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-07 16:01:33

For this case, I always do:

[code]
Carry out pushing the block:
    instead say "First sentence[if the block is that way]. Second, conditional sentence[end if].";
[/code]

This provides the correct result with the minimum of cruft.

The crucial observation is that I7 goes newline-happy if a period is immediately followed by an open-square-bracket. In your second example below, you got a space in between the period and the bracket, which is why it started behaving the way you wanted.

[quote]
On a related note, why does the IDE indent text within indented blocks of code? It may make it look legible in the editor, but the text then line breaks and indents all oddly in the game.
[/quote]

The IDE expects you to only hit Enter inside a quoted string if really want a line break there. (If you do this -- and don't add any *extra* indentation -- the string will print with no unexpected indentation.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2963&start=10#p20713
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] An action not quite working correctly.
User: Jeff Zeitlin / DateTime: 2011-08-07 16:02:13

[quote="dormammu"]I added two lines to determine if it's possible to crouch behind something and hide. It looks like this:

[code]An object is either hideable or nothideable.  An object is usually nothideable.
A person is either hidden or visible. A person is usually visible.[/code]

It sounds awful ("nothideable"?), but I couldn't think of anything better.[/quote]

I'd be inclined to write these as 

[code]A thing can be concealing. A thing is usually not concealing.
A person is either concealed or exposed. A person is usually exposed.[/code]

assuming that you want to have an explicit opposite for 'concealed'.  If you don't care, I'd go with 

[code]A person can be concealed. A person is usually not concealed.[/code].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2973&start=0#p20714
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Line Breaks, Line Breaks, Line Breaks
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-07 16:17:17

Forgot to add the other part of the answer: a "carry out" rule can't abort the action. That's why you get the "nothing obvious happens" message; it always moves on to the report phase. Either place your customized print message *in* the report phase, or divert everything in an instead rule.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2972&start=0#p20715
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: goal, low budget props that work as expected
User: Jeff / DateTime: 2011-08-07 16:18:22

[quote="zarf"]I generally say it is bad practice to use conditional verb grammar like this. If you want "wash" to give the player a guidance message, it should give that message anywhere in the game. To get a physical-action reply ("...the water splashes on your pants") in one location but "I don't recognize that verb" in another location is particularly bad; at *best* the latter will train your players to never run into the former message.

Defining "get water" as a mistake is another, well, mistake. It fails to cover "get the water" or "get clean cool water" or any other synonyms you or the player might think of.

The best way to catch player actions is to define actions.[/quote]Ah, thanks for making that point, zarf.  In this case, I simply brainstormed a few verbs I thought a player might use for the purpose of asking the question.  But I could easily forget that later when I implement it in a story.  Player guidance simply hadn't even entered my mind yet.  Thank you for your feedback on this point.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2973&start=0#p20716
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Line Breaks, Line Breaks, Line Breaks
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-07 16:18:30

The line break rules are specified pretty clearly:
[quote="Graham 5:8"]Inform controls the flow of text being said so that it will read, to the player, in a natural way. There are two principles: 

(a) pieces of text ending with full stop, exclamation or question marks will be followed by line breaks (or "new lines", as some computer programming languages would call them); and 

(b) pieces of text produced by different rules in Inform will be separated by paragraph breaks. 

The effect is that authors can forget about paragraph spacing most of the time...[/quote]
I agree that it can be awfully freakin' persnickety, and I suspect that at least some of the reason for it is that Inform has always been this way and longtime users are used to it. It'd be helpful, at least, if (a) explicitly stated that a space after a full stop doesn't count.

That said, I think getting rid of (b) would cause far more work than it would remove; making it behave differently is fairly rare and can easily be dealt with by using [run paragraph on]. It does seem as if (a) could be handled better -- line breaks are really kind of crap in most cases -- but I'm sure that this discussion has happened a half-dozen times already.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2961&start=0#p20717
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Timers
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-07 16:23:15

Any idea, anyone?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2975&start=0#p20718
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "Invisiclues" effect in a PDF file
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-07 16:25:42

[quote="Robert Rothman"]Unfortunately, HTML is far beyond my technical skills, and my knowledge of Java is limited to being able to brew a damn good cup of coffee.[/quote]
The minimum HTML necessary to do this could be picked up in approximately ten minutes by a gibbon (I say, as someone whose coding skills are decidedly gibbon-like). If you can handle BBcode, you can manage this. (You might make a web developer or two cry, but what the hell.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2952&start=0#p20719
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When is a cutscene OK?
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-08-07 16:40:25

It doesn't sound like there is a problem at all. Sometimes control is wrested from the player for the sake of the story (though of course, tread lightly here because the chance of annoying a player is high); it's usually better to have a textdump than just spooling out stuff through responses to "wait."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=0#p20720
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-08-07 16:48:48

[quote="ultimate"]I bet this year is going to be like every year. Authors just upload some shit for fun, not even thinking about winning. And IFComp reviewers go all serious and bitch about everything, just to have something to write on their blogs. BAH!

Bunch of haters.[/quote]

So what is your solution to this problem?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2975&start=0#p20721
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "Invisiclues" effect in a PDF file
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-07 16:49:51

I think the hints for Savoir-Faire were in just that style; you could probably steal that HTML source and only violate one or two patents.

And oh hey speaking of which, here is that thing I just mentioned. <a class="postlink" href="http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/savoirhints.htm">http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/savoirhints.htm</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=0#p20722
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-07 16:59:48

Sounds like maybe this year the [i]authors[/i] should be serious, and the [i]reviewers[/i] should just have fun and not even think about winning.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2975&start=0#p20723
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "Invisiclues" effect in a PDF file
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-07 17:13:33

[quote]The minimum HTML necessary to do this could be picked up in approximately ten minutes by a gibbon [/quote]

Hmm, that's a bit of a problem.  My own sophistication is this area doesn't even rise to the level of a gorilla, much less a gibbon.

Yes, the effect I'm after is exactly like the Savoir Faire hints.

(Sorry, got to go get a banana now).




Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2973&start=0#p20724
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Line Breaks, Line Breaks, Line Breaks
User: mucat / DateTime: 2011-08-07 17:34:14

So here's what I just found after some experimentation.  This is just the results of some quick test code, and I could easily be missing something.  Take everything that follows with a grain of salt:


There are six distinct ways to end a text block.  From least likely to produce line feeds to most likely, they are:
[code][run paragraph on]
[run paragraph on with special look spacing]
[no line break]
[command clarification break]
[line break]
[paragraph break]
[/code]
If you don't use any of these instructions explicitly, then ending a text block with a period, exclamation mark, or question mark is equivalent to typing [b][line break][/b].  Ending a text block with any other character (including a space after a punctuation mark) is the equivalent to typing [b][no line break][/b].

Also note that the end of a text block can be either a close-quotes, or any bracketed instruction.  Hence, [code]"Some text.[if x is 5]  Some other text.[end if]"[/code]is two text blocks, not one.  (As the original poster discovered.)


The exact behavior of each of these block endings is:
[code]                         If not the last text       If it is the last text
Instruction:             produced by current rule:  produced by current rule:
------------             -------------------------  ----------------------
[run paragraph on]       No line feed               No line feed
                                                    (next command prompt may
                                                     appear on the same line.)

[run paragraph on        No line Feed               No line feed
 with special                                        (single line feed before 
 look spacing]                                       a command prompt.)

[no line break]          No line feed               Single line feed
(or block ends without
punctuation)

[command                 Single line feed           Single line feed
 clarification break]

[line break]             Single line feed	        Double line feed
(or block ends with
period, exclamation, etc.)

[paragraph break]        Double line feed           Triple line feed
[/code]
Oddly, there's no command for "print a double line feed, regardless of whether the current rule produces more text".  For this, you need to use two [b][command clarification break][/b] commands in a row (or a [b][line break][/b] followed by a [b][command clarification break][/b]).

Finally, I could find no difference between the behavior of a [b][conditional paragraph break][/b] and a regular [b][paragraph break][/b].  (I was hoping the conditional version gave the missing "double line feed no matter what" behavior.)  In all likelihood, there [i]is[/i] a difference, just not one I was able to find.


[quote="maga"]That said, I think getting rid of (b) would cause far more work than it would remove; making it behave differently is fairly rare and can easily be dealt with by using [run paragraph on]. It does seem as if (a) could be handled better -- line breaks are really kind of crap in most cases -- but I'm sure that this discussion has happened a half-dozen times already.[/quote]
I'm not arguing for getting rid of the present system, just for documenting it better (and maybe reworking a few of its quirkier aspects...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2975&start=0#p20725
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "Invisiclues" effect in a PDF file
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-07 17:56:05

[quote="Afterward"]I think the hints for Savoir-Faire were in just that style; you could probably steal that HTML source and only violate one or two patents.

And oh hey speaking of which, here is that thing I just mentioned. <a class="postlink" href="http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/savoirhints.htm">http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/savoirhints.htm</a>[/quote]

Is that all? Dragging the cursor over text to make it visible? If I may mention Word again...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2975&start=10#p20726
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "Invisiclues" effect in a PDF file
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-08-07 18:00:10

I seriously bet that if you can handle Inform, you can handle HTML.  CSS can be a giant timesink and n-dimensional puzzle, and I wouldn't recommend you get into anything involving tables, but if you just want to change some font attributes (such as color!), it's really not too bad.  Especially compared to Word.

Here's what I suggest you try: 
-Save the Savoir Faire hints as HTML: while on that webpage in your browser, go File>Save.  
-Open in in a text-only editor.  If you've got a Mac, you can use TextEdit, but you'll have to go TextEdit>Preferences>Open&Save>"Ignore Rich Text Commands in HTML files" before opening it.  I believe the equivalent on Windows is called Notepad or Textpad, but someone else should correct me if I'm wrong.
-At the same time, also open the document in a browser window.
-Try replacing some of the text between sets of angled brackets and see what happens: Change some text in the editing program, save the document, then hit Refresh in your browser to see what changed.  If you don't fiddle with anything inside a < and a >, you should be fine.  In the case of the Savoir Faire page, you should see some definite patterns that should help you copy and paste entire sections of the page to make your hint lists longer or shorter as necessary.

As you might guess by its similarity to the BBCode for this forum, you start an attribute-change with something like <this> and end it with the same thing but with a slash: </this>

In the specific case of Emily's markup for those hints, the important ones for you are:
<b> means "bold"
<h> and <h2> and <p> are for headings and paragraphs.  Different browsers have different ideas about how to format a heading (and you can override that with some CSS), but in general, an h2 section will be bigger and bolder than a paragraph, and an h will be bigger yet.
<font> is how you change elements of the font without using a pre-defined style.  Its use is a bit deprecated for big fancy-pants webpages with CSS (since the idea there is that [i]everything[/i] is a pre-defined style), but if you just want to change the color in some plain vanilla HTML like this, it's the way to go.  As you can see, <font color="WHITE"> is the magic here.  You can also use hex color values; google around for more information.
Two of those tags don't need to be closed, because they just mean "insert an element here":
<hr> means "horizontal rule" and it's the line across the page that distinguishes between different parts of the page.
<br> means line break, just like in Inform.

And the less important ones for you (as in, you don't really need to use them as well) are:
<ul> and <li> are for making formatted lists, with the little indent and the bullets.  ul begins an "unordered list" (as in, the items in it have bullets instead of numbers or letters) and <li> denotes each "list item".  You do need to close the <ul> tag (at the end of the list), but do not need to close the li tags.
<a> tags are about making and using anchors, which means links to things within the page or on external pages.  Emily's using them to create links within her document to later parts of the document, as a user interface convenience.

Just as an aside, using Juhana's page as a template would be very much a similar experience; the difference is that the Javascript is defining another legitimate attribute for you to call on.  It's just like using an Inform extension: you just include it at the top of the page, then use its magic words instead of the built-in HTML ones.

I hope that's useful and doesn't sound too scary!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2975&start=10#p20727
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "Invisiclues" effect in a PDF file
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-07 18:21:01

Thanks.  I'll try to get up the courage to give it a try.

One question (and the very fact that I'm asking this probably highlights just how unsophisticated I am in these matters):  I do not have a website; if I wind up releasing the game (and accompaniments such as the cheatbook) I would just post the files on the IF Archive.  My question is, can an HTML-coded page work as a stand-alone (i.e., can one read it independently of a web site)?  This is probably a stupid question, but I really am that clueless about these things.


Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2975&start=10#p20728
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "Invisiclues" effect in a PDF file
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-07 18:31:55

Yes, HTML files can be saved like normal files and opened in a browser even if it's offline.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2977&start=0#p20729
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: imform 7: looking up command not working
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-08-07 18:34:38

[code]the metal door is a closed scenery door. metal door is east of Skylight Room. the metal door is west of Dim Lit Room. ceiling is scenery in Skylight Room. a crack is part of the ceiling. light is part of the crack. Skid mark is scenery in Skylight room. [/code]

[code]The description of the light is "A crack in the ceiling that light is shining through."
The description of the crack is "Light shines through a small crack in the ceiling."
The description of the ceiling is "It's made of rock and has a crack in it."
Instead of looking up, say "[if player is not in Skylight Room]There is nothing up there but a rocky roof.[otherwise if player is in Skylight Room] It's made of rock and has a crack in it."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2975&start=10#p20730
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "Invisiclues" effect in a PDF file
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-08-07 18:58:29

Yep, browsers can just as easily display local (that is, on the computer of the person looking at them) files as those on the internet.  This is the way you'll be looking at the file in between edits.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2961&start=0#p20731
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Timers
User: mucat / DateTime: 2011-08-07 19:02:59

As far as I know, you can't read a timer directly.  Inform understands references to the time since some past event or scene transition, but not the time until a future event.

You'll probably have to introduce a new variable or state by hand...and as long as you're doing this, you might take the opportunity to replace the timer altogether, instead of having two parallel schemes for keeping track of the elevator's progress.  Something like:

[code]
every turn when the elevator is ascending:
   increase the floor of the elevator by one;
   if the floor of the elevator is the target floor of the elevator:
      say "Ding!  You feel light for a moment as the elevator comes to a stop.";
      now the elevator is not ascending;
      [Do stuff here to open the door and link it to correct room];

The description of the indicator lights is "The light for floor [floor of the elevator] shines dully."
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2977&start=0#p20732
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: imform 7: looking up command not working
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-08-07 19:15:32

That's because "looking up" is not a defined action in the Standard Rules (though "look up" in the sense of "look up 'zebras' on wikipedia" is, as the "consulting it about" action).  If I recall correctly, there's some weirdness around modifying looking up, so you could just use this quick cheat method, which is what I used in [i]Byzantine Perspective[/i] and it didn't seem to annoy any players:
[code]Understand "look down" as a mistake ("[the description of the floor]").
Understand "look up" as a mistake ("[the description of the ceiling]").[/code]

To make that work properly, you'll need a "ceiling" backdrop with the appropriate descriptions for each location:
[code]The ceiling is a backdrop. "[if the player is in Skylight Room]It's made of rock and has a crack in it.[else if the player is in an Outside room]The sky is blue with small wispy clouds.[else]It's a plain white-painted ceiling.[end if]". The ceiling is everywhere.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2976&start=0#p20733
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indexed text, and progressive slowdown during play
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-07 20:34:10

Are you doing your testing in the Inform editor? IE in test mode?

Because of the extra degrees of internal testing that go on there, the game will run slower than it would in 'real life' (wags fingers) - IE out in an interpreter.

Still, I'm surprised to hear something would take longer each time you do it, in any venue.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2972&start=0#p20734
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: goal, low budget props that work as expected
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-07 20:36:18

[quote="ektemple"]
You can add any valid condition to mistake grammar. However, "in location of [something]" is not valid.[/quote]

Oh geez, I knew that was sloppy when I typed it, but I didn't fix it. But the main thing I learned was you have to add your condition for the mistake after the bracketed section and not before.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2972&start=0#p20735
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: goal, low budget props that work as expected
User: koo5 / DateTime: 2011-08-07 20:51:43

you can put [text] between get and water.
you can also change the default mistake message in Language.i6t... [emote]:twisted:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2976&start=0#p20736
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indexed text, and progressive slowdown during play
User: koo5 / DateTime: 2011-08-07 21:03:03

good catch, release mode is much faster
...still...anyone up to helping me add 'compile to c' flag to the i6 compiler? im scared to wander there alone..

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2973&start=0#p20737
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Line Breaks, Line Breaks, Line Breaks
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-07 22:35:10

Thanks very much -- that's very useful.

[quote="mucat"]Finally, I could find no difference between the behavior of a [b][conditional paragraph break][/b] and a regular [b][paragraph break][/b].  (I was hoping the conditional version gave the missing "double line feed no matter what" behavior.)  In all likelihood, there [i]is[/i] a difference, just not one I was able to find.[/quote]

Example 113, "Don Pedro's Revenge," demonstrates the difference -- it uses a conditional paragraph break after reading a command, which prints one blank line after the command. If you substitute a paragraph break or line break, it prints two blank lines instead of one. 

Why this happens, I cannot tell you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2971&start=0#p20738
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I have a blog. Yippe-kayay.
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-08-07 23:37:22

hey all, get your blogs on [url]http://www.planet-if.com[/url]

its a lot of fun and is a quick, easy way to follow and get-to-know your fellow bloggers!

 [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2976&start=0#p20739
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indexed text, and progressive slowdown during play
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-07 23:56:17

I see this slowdown in the Mac IDE, but not in Quixe, nor in Glulxe when compiled with cheapglk or glkterm. (I tested both the original Mac 6G60 release and the recent Lion fix, although this Mac does not have Lion on it. Same results.)

Are you also using a Mac? If so, this strongly implies a memory leak in the CocoaGlk library.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2961&start=0#p20740
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Timers
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-08-08 02:02:03

The extension [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Ron%20Newcomb/Phrases%20for%20Adaptive%20Pacing/index.html]Phrases for Adaptive Pacing[/url] has all sorts of things for timers and related constructs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2961&start=0#p20741
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Timers
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-08 02:17:34

It sounds like a scene would be more suitable here. ("If the time since elevator ascension began is 3 minutes...")

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2970&start=0#p20742
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I want something to become rotten after X turns
User: jkfriday / DateTime: 2011-08-08 02:23:33

A container, of course! Thank you sir!

Edit: container spat out a run-time error during a playthrough so I just said "there are ten giant flies" and that seems to have done the trick for now, thanks for putting me on the right path though!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=0#p20743
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: kevinb / DateTime: 2011-08-08 03:18:37

Hi folks

I've had a passing interest in IF since the Zork days, but only recently had time to think about getting more involved myself. But I've been doing some Googling, and what I see baffles me a bit. So I was wondering if anybody has any views on any of the following (all of which might, I guess, but old chestnuts, for which I apologise):

1. is IF as a genre still alive? Google searches for anything to do with IF bring up the same small number of names. The impression I get is of a niche interest valiantly propped up by a small bad of heroes. And even then most stuff on the Web seems to be dated 2007 or earlier. Am I missing something? Is there a large number of IF authors and players keeping their heads down?

2. Is there much interest in things like graphics and sound? It seems to me that most people writing IF are not using these things very much. But I can't figure out if that's because they don't want to (for artistic or philosophical reasons), or because the technical challenges are too great.

3. Is Z-code as a platform alive or dead? There seems to be a fair amount of Z5 and Z8 games, but is there more interest these days in glulx (or something else)? While I understand that theoretical advantages of glulx of Z-code, it's not at all clear to me that glulx is superior to Z-code in day-to-day terms. Is there something that, as an author, I can do with glulx that I can't do with Z-code?

4. While I understand the historical reason for virtual-machine systems like Z-code, I find it hard to understand why modern development doesn't focus on up-to-date VM-based systems like Java, if wide platform support is required. I'm guessing (and it is only a guess) that translating a language like Inform into Java source code, or even direct to Java byte-code, is probably not as difficult as putting a man on the moon. 

As I said, I'm sorry if these questions are old chestnuts. Any comments welcome.

Best wishes
Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=0#p20744
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-08-08 03:26:00

So glad this isn't just my perception.

Of course caustic critics are everywhere, in every medium, but at least the rest of the internet has the sense to ignore the trolls.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2977&start=0#p20745
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: imform 7: looking up command not working
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-08 03:42:34

Current builds of Inform understand the command "look [something]" as examining, so the command LOOK UP triggers the action "examining up" (i.e. the direction up). 

I suppose you could redirect that action to the ceiling (that would catch the commands EXAMINE UP and X UP as well, if any player would get the idea to try those).
[code]Instead of examining up in the Skylight Room: try examining the ceiling.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=0#p20746
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-08 04:14:13

[quote="kevinb"]3. Is Z-code as a platform alive or dead? There seems to be a fair amount of Z5 and Z8 games, but is there more interest these days in glulx (or something else)? While I understand that theoretical advantages of glulx of Z-code, it's not at all clear to me that glulx is superior to Z-code in day-to-day terms. Is there something that, as an author, I can do with glulx that I can't do with Z-code?[/quote]
The main difference is that the Z-machine is very limited in memory and file size. Many modern games just don't fit in Z-machine anymore. Glulx practically removes those limitations and adds multimedia support that isn't available for Z5 or Z8.

[quote]4. While I understand the historical reason for virtual-machine systems like Z-code, I find it hard to understand why modern development doesn't focus on up-to-date VM-based systems like Java, if wide platform support is required. I'm guessing (and it is only a guess) that translating a language like Inform into Java source code, or even direct to Java byte-code, is probably not as difficult as putting a man on the moon. [/quote]
Ah, the good old "we can put a man on the moon, why can't we do something completely unrelated" argument. I'm sure if we had a budget of 25 billion dollars and the resources of a nation behind us it [i]wouldn't[/i] be as difficult but alas, hobbyists working on their free time with zero budget won't accomplish quite as much as the Apollo program.

What would be the benefits of compiling to Java compared to compiling to Glulx? What problems would it solve? Being more up-to-date than something else isn't really a benefit by itself unless it brings along some actual improvements.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=0#p20747
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: kevinb / DateTime: 2011-08-08 04:59:11

[quote="Juhana"]
The main difference is that the Z-machine is very limited in memory and file size. Many modern games just don't fit in Z-machine anymore. Glulx practically removes those limitations and adds multimedia support that isn't available for Z5 or Z8.
[/quote]

I'm certainly not arguing for keeping old, dead formats alive, but it seems to me that there are some fairly substantial games out there in Z5 and Z8 format. Do we have a clear idea of the pragmatic limitations, that is, in terms of pages or hours of play? My recollection is that some of the old Infocom games kept us busy for a long time back in the dinosaur days. 

As for multimedia, it seems to me that it is still possible to write games in Z6 format that support graphics and sound -- those tools haven't disappeared. If I want to write something that, say, allows the user to navigate by clicking on a map, I know how to implement that in Z6 in a way that is playable on available interpreters like Windows Frotz. I presume that I can implement something equivalent using glulx -- but I don't have the first clue how. Are there interpreters available with broad platform support that can play glulx with sound, graphics, and mouse input? I presume the answer must be 'yes', but I'm darned if I can find out how to do this.

I could be missing something (not exactly unheard of) but there doesn't seem to me to be anything in the glulx design that makes it intrinsically superior for multimedia that z-code is/way. We're still talking about '@draw_picture' and the like, aren't we?

[quote]What would be the benefits of compiling to Java compared to compiling to Glulx? What problems would it solve? Being more up-to-date than something else isn't really a benefit by itself unless it brings along some actual improvements.[/quote]

Well, that's my concern about glulx [emote];)[/emote]

As for Java -- partly it's a philosophical thing. It strikes me as a little odd that the IF world is pleased that there's now a VM that supports 32-bit operands, when there have real heavyweight VMs like Java around for a decade. But pragmatically Java offers

1. Complete 32-bit support, and even 64-bit if you need it
2. Wide platform support, with almost complete platform-agnosticism
3. Object-orientation right at the byte-code level 
4. A modern graphical UI, with more-or-less identical functionality on all platforms
5. Mature and feature-rich tools
6. A well-defined resource-packaging format ('jar' files)

and, perhaps most importantly:

7. A huge community of skilled developers

My gut feeling is that writing a program that would convert Inform-6 into compilable Java would be a job of nowhere near man-on-the-moon proportions. Of course you'd need to put a user interface around it and provide a library of code to do the actual grunt-work of moving data around, not to mention parsing input, etc.

If we did all that, then I'm thinking we'd probably have most of what was needed to implement IF directly in Java, perhaps with some supporting tools to assist with thinks that are not easy to express directly in a programming language. 

I'm just thinking out loud, of course -- I don't really have the faintest idea of the amount of programmer hours required. But, then, I look at the amount of work that has gone into Info, Tads, Gargoyle, Blorb, etc., etc., and it seems clear to me that there are talented people who are willing to spend time on this stuff. I just wonder if the direction things have gone is a profitable one in the long term.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2973&start=0#p20748
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Line Breaks, Line Breaks, Line Breaks
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-08-08 05:39:08

Thank you all for your input and forbearance.

[quote="zarf"]For this case, I always do:

[code]
Carry out pushing the block:
    instead say "First sentence[if the block is that way]. Second, conditional sentence[end if].";
[/code][/quote]
But trying to get sentences in that form gives me a massive headache. And what if one of them ended in a question mark?

Look, my point isn't that there is a bug, or that Inform 7 isn't consistent, it's just that [i]I don't want to have to think about any of this[/i]. 

In an environment supposedly aimed at writers, I don't want to have to bend my writing around programming conventions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2979&start=0#p20749
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Brand new shiny actions
User: Aintelligence / DateTime: 2011-08-08 05:51:18

Well I've come across a problem with new actions which I simply cannot solve dealing with new actions.
The problem I'm having is that I'm trying to implement a swipe command.  The program compiles nicely, but when I actually type in the action it either comes up blank or says "a second noun must be supplied".

[code]Understand "swipe [something] through [something]" as swiping.  Swiping is an action applying to two visible things.
Check swiping:
	if the noun is not a hotel card, say "you need a hotel key.";
	if second noun is not a card slot, say "How do you propose to go about that?".
Instead of swiping the hotel card through the card slot one time, say "You swipe the card through the slot.  The light turns red.".
Instead of swiping the hotel card through the card slot two times, say "Annoyed, you swipe the card again.  No avail.".
Instead of swiping the hotel card through the card slot three times:
	say "Bloody card!  You snap it in two and throw it into the shadows.";
	remove hotel card from play.[/code] 

This method, the syntax will work for  "swipe card through wallet" or "swipe wallet through slot" and will give the appropriate reply,  but swipe hotel card through slot comes up with a blank.


I should probably say that I tried the 'loner' action 'swipe card' but it also failed.

[code]Understand "swipe [something]" as swiping.  Swiping is an action applying to two visible things.
Check swiping:
	if the noun is not a hotel card, say "you need a hotel key.";
	if second noun is not a card slot, say "How do you propose to go about that?".
Instead of swiping the hotel card one time, say "You swipe the card through the slot.  The light turns red.".
Instead of swiping the hotel card two times, say "Annoyed, you swipe the card again.  No avail.".
Instead of swiping the hotel card three times:
	say "Bloody card!  You snap it in two and throw it into the shadows.";
	remove hotel card from play.[/code]

It compiled, but when I entered "swipe hotel card"  it replied "you must supply a second noun."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2971&start=0#p20750
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I have a blog. Yippe-kayay.
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-08 06:40:33

Well, I was counting on doing that... when I actually got some IF in my blog. As it is, it's just a blog.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2971&start=0#p20751
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I have a blog. Yippe-kayay.
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-08-08 06:46:49

just copy and paste some articles from wikipedia and a recipe or two to round it out and [b]VIOLA[/b], youre done!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2979&start=0#p20752
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Brand new shiny actions
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-08 06:47:23

Inform gets confused because you have given the action the name "swiping" and then write rules using the syntax "swiping <> through <>". Try this:
[code]
Understand "swipe [something] through [something]" as swiping it through.  [The "it" here is a place holder for the noun; the second noun should come after the through]
Swiping it through is an action applying to two things. [Actions should only apply to "visible" things if the actor should be able to perform the action on things that are not in scope!]
Check swiping it through:
   if the noun is not a hotel card, say "you need a hotel key.";
   if second noun is not a card slot, say "How do you propose to go about that?".
Instead of swiping the hotel card through the card slot for one turn, say "You swipe the card through the slot.  The light turns red.".
Instead of swiping the hotel card through the card slot for two turns, say "Annoyed, you swipe the card again.  No avail.".
Instead of swiping the hotel card through the card slot for three turns:
   say "Bloody card!  You snap it in two and throw it into the shadows.";
   remove hotel card from play.
[Using "for <> turns" rather than "<> times" resets the counter as soon as the player does something other than swiping the card; i.e. he/she then has to try swiping the card three times IN A ROW to get in rage; with "<> times" he/she will be furious the third time whatever happens in between those times.]
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2979&start=0#p20753
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Brand new shiny actions
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-08 06:50:36

There's a couple of hiccups in your code, one that's preventing it working. That thing is that actions involving 'two things' should be named '(verbing) it (adverb or whatever).'

Once I renamed your action 'swiping it through', all the code works.

When you check stuff using 'X it X' constructions, the first noun appears in place of 'it', and your second noun or other thing appears after the second X, if that makes sense. Thus yours becomes 'Swipe (card) through (slot)'.

The second thing to note, that isn't affecting your demo, is that you're probably better off with a 'touchable thing' rather than a 'visible' one in this demo. If, for instance, you were so insane as to construct a glass wall in front of the card reader, in the same room as the card reader, and the player was behind the glass, 'visible' will still let the player swipe the card through the glass.

12.17. in the docs (Visible vs touchable vs carried) try to explain the difference, but I don't think they do a very good job. There's a good part about it in Aaron Read's book. But I couldn't find it right now [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2971&start=0#p20754
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I have a blog. Yippe-kayay.
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-08 06:51:09

Not [i]quite[/i] the way I want to go about it, but thanks for the suffestion.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2971&start=0#p20755
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I have a blog. Yippe-kayay.
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-08-08 07:03:17

each entry of [i]my [/i]blog is directly scanned from a biography of ross perot and the earlier posts are just transcripts of the oliver north hearing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=0#p20756
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-08-08 07:15:32

Even the mean IF reviews can be good, and here I'm especially thinking of <a class="postlink" href="http://meanifreviews.blogspot.com/">http://meanifreviews.blogspot.com/</a> "A blog dedicated to bringing you the most mean-spirited reviews of Interactive Fiction games, to once and for all show that ANYONE can make an IF game."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=0#p20757
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-08 07:23:51

Head to this page at ifwiki.org for a list of games released in 2010 and their formats:

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifwiki.org/index.php/Games_Released_in_2010">http://ifwiki.org/index.php/Games_Released_in_2010</a>

Also do a search for 2010 at ifdb:

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/">http://ifdb.tads.org/</a>.

The next IFComp is less than 2 months away now, at which point you'll see a sudden appearance of a bunch of games (20+ ?) which will be state of the art. At least technically speaking [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=0#p20758
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: kevinb / DateTime: 2011-08-08 07:46:25

[quote="severedhand"]Head to this page at ifwiki.org for a list of games released in 2010 and their formats:

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifwiki.org/index.php/Games_Released_in_2010">http://ifwiki.org/index.php/Games_Released_in_2010</a>

[/quote]

Yes -- that's sort of my point. I haven't done a complete count, but it seems to me that there are at least as many entries in Z-code format as all the others put together. 

I have a nagging suspicion that the authoring of feature-rich, modern-looking IF games _could_ be made technically much simpler. But I suppose that the relatively small number of people interested in creating this sort of content have already invested substantial amounts of time in learning whatever system they use.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2979&start=0#p20759
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Brand new shiny actions
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-08 08:05:33

[quote="severedhand"]you're probably better off with a 'touchable thing' rather than a 'visible' one in this demo. If, for instance, you were so insane as to construct a glass wall in front of the card reader, in the same room as the card reader, and the player was behind the glass, 'visible' will still let the player swipe the card through the glass.[/quote]
An action applying to visible things can act on things not in scope, however, you ALSO need to define a grammar line such as 
[code]Understand "swipe [any thing] through [any thing]" as swiping it through[/code]
(with "any thing" as two words, rather than "something" or "anything" as a single word) to actually let the player perform such action on things that are not in scope.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=0#p20760
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-08-08 08:06:03

[quote="kevinb"]1. is IF as a genre still alive?[/quote]

That question is debatable. Perhaps that itself answers your question.

[quote]2. Is there much interest in things like graphics and sound? It seems to me that most people writing IF are not using these things very much. But I can't figure out if that's because they don't want to (for artistic or philosophical reasons), or because the technical challenges are too great.[/quote]

I don't think it's technical challenges, exactly, as much as economic reasons. Most IF is written by a single author and distributed for free. (Typically submitted for a competition.) The author does all the writing and programming. Authors who are good at writing and programming rarely have the ability to also design high-quality graphics and sound, and can't really afford to hire someone to do those things.

[quote]4. While I understand the historical reason for virtual-machine systems like Z-code, I find it hard to understand why modern development doesn't focus on up-to-date VM-based systems like Java, if wide platform support is required. I'm guessing (and it is only a guess) that translating a language like Inform into Java source code, or even direct to Java byte-code, is probably not as difficult as putting a man on the moon.[/quote]

There's a chicken/egg problem here. Most games are not distributed as Inform source code; they're distributed as compiled Z-code/Glulxe.

So if you sit down and write a Java-based interactive fiction platform like <a class="postlink" href="http://zmpp.sourceforge.net/">http://zmpp.sourceforge.net/</a> the primary feature is that it should run lots of games already published; what you get is a Glulxe VM written in Java, not an Inform VM written in Java.

If people distributed Inform source more often, maybe it would be better/easier to compile the source without Glulxe, but that's not the world we live in. (And anyway, compiling Inform 7 is pretty challenging. For simplicity, cross-compiling Glulxe as an intermediate language works well.)

Also, Java isn't as popular as it used to be on the client side. (It's a particularly bad fit on iOS.) Instead, we're seeing more infrastructure focus on deploying IF games to web browsers, where there's no interpreter to install. <a class="postlink" href="http://code.google.com/p/parchment/">http://code.google.com/p/parchment/</a>

Minified JS source is the bytecode of the web. <a class="postlink" href="http://www.hanselman.com/blog/JavaScriptIsAssemblyLanguageForTheWebPart2MadnessOrJustInsanity.aspx">http://www.hanselman.com/blog/JavaScrip ... anity.aspx</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=0#p20761
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-08 08:26:48

[quote]I have a nagging suspicion that the authoring of feature-rich, modern-looking IF games _could_ be made technically much simpler. But I suppose that the relatively small number of people interested in creating this sort of content have already invested substantial amounts of time in learning whatever system they use.[/quote]

Eh, I don't think this is really the reason. Inform 7 has only existed a few years. Arguably it makes the basic tools easier to use than ever. To do really basic stuff is probably easier in Inform 7 than even in all the other languages which are considered more newbie-friendly. But the upper limits of Inform 7 are as at least as sophisticated as TADs etc.

When you see all those Z-code games in that list - even if I write something in Inform 7, if it's small enough, it still comes out as a Z-code file. If it grows sufficiently big or complex, or I add graphics or sound or things like that, then it becomes Glulx (automatically). As an author and someone who's only touched Inform at all as of last year, I have no emotional investment in z-code, or necessarily much interest in the file format per se, only that whatever language I use can do what I want.

I think it's more like what dfab said - graphics and sounds are time-intensive and take special skills to add. And in the end, there's also that line of 'when is this still a text adventure?' People who like parser based stuff, very broadly speaking, probably aren't pining to see lots of graphics added.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=0#p20762
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-08 08:36:08

[quote="kevinb"]I'm certainly not arguing for keeping old, dead formats alive[/quote]
It is a bit confusing that you say graphical IF should be written using a legacy, almost forgotten Z6 format instead of newer and more popular Glulx, but at the same time argue that Glulx should be dropped in favor of Java because it's newer and more popular...

[quote]My recollection is that some of the old Infocom games kept us busy for a long time back in the dinosaur days.[/quote]
Even Infocom had to drop a lot of content because of the limitations of Z-machine, starting all the way back from Zork that had to be split into three games. Also, the length of the game is not directly related to memory usage or file sizes.

[quote]As for multimedia, it seems to me that it is still possible to write games in Z6 format that support graphics and sound -- those tools haven't disappeared. If I want to write something that, say, allows the user to navigate by clicking on a map, I know how to implement that in Z6 in a way that is playable on available interpreters like Windows Frotz.[/quote]
Sure, you're free to use the old tools. The thing is that most of the [i]new[/i] tools are developed for Glulx only, most notably Glimmr. The old tools aren't obsolete, but I don't think anyone is actually making anything new with them.

[quote]I could be missing something (not exactly unheard of) but there doesn't seem to me to be anything in the glulx design that makes it intrinsically superior for multimedia that z-code is/way. We're still talking about '@draw_picture' and the like, aren't we?[/quote]
Again, there are size/memory limitations that prevent using Z6 in larger projects. And that most of the tools are being developed for Glulx only.

[quote]My gut feeling is that writing a program that would convert Inform-6 into compilable Java would be a job of nowhere near man-on-the-moon proportions. Of course you'd need to put a user interface around it and provide a library of code to do the actual grunt-work of moving data around, not to mention parsing input, etc.[/quote]
Right: I'm still not seeing any concrete benefits (as in "you can't do X now, but with this you could do X!"), but what you describe would definitely not be an improvement for many people. The benefit of the interpreted formats is that you can use your favorite interpreter with the look and feel that you like without having to fiddle with settings every time you play a new game. If bringing Java into the picture would provide [i]user interface improvements[/i] over the existing interpreters, it'd be much easier to just make a new interpreter with Java that runs the existing story files. Unless having the story file as native Java bytecode instead of some other format would actually have any benefit over simply making a new interpreter, I don't see the point in switching.

[quote] I don't really have the faintest idea of the amount of programmer hours required.[/quote]
A lot.

[quote]I have a nagging suspicion that the authoring of feature-rich, modern-looking IF games _could_ be made technically much simpler.[/quote]
Well, you said yourself that you have no experience in using any of the modern tools or what techniques they use. This is quite a bold assumption to make from that background.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=0#p20763
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: kevinb / DateTime: 2011-08-08 08:38:50

[quote="dfabulich"]
There's a chicken/egg problem here. Most games are not distributed as Inform source code; they're distributed as compiled Z-code/Glulxe.

So if you sit down and write a Java-based interactive fiction platform like <a class="postlink" href="http://zmpp.sourceforge.net/">http://zmpp.sourceforge.net/</a> the primary feature is that it should run lots of games already published; what you get is a Glulxe VM written in Java, not an Inform VM written in Java.
[/quote]

It seems to me that the problem with ZMPP (and with glulx to some extent) is that it does exactly what it says on the box -- it preserves. It does nothing to move things on, nor does it provide an easy moving-on path for people who want to take it. These VMs -- glulx and Z -- are tied to a procedural, console-based mode of programming that doesn't sit very well with modern operating environments. Most people who write code these days that has a strong element of user interaction think of a user interface being object-oriented and event-driven. The Z-machine idea of treating mouse clicks as a kind of keystroke, just so the program can work like a 1980's VT220 app, can hardly fail to raise a 'huh?' reaction in anybody under 40. 

It's not clear to me that a primary feature of a new IF system is that it should run lots of existing stuff -- there's already plenty of software out there that can run Z-code and glulx. It seems to me that a more important feature is that it should allow modern-looking, cross-platform games to be created with a minimum of authorial pain. Of course, I appreciate that it would take a lot to get people to drop Inform and move to something completely different.

[quote]
Also, Java isn't as popular as it used to be on the client side. (It's a particularly bad fit on iOS.) Instead, we're seeing more infrastructure focus on deploying IF games to web browsers, where there's no interpreter to install. <a class="postlink" href="http://code.google.com/p/parchment/">http://code.google.com/p/parchment/</a>
[/quote]

I'm not sure that the popularity of Java is much of an issue. The Java-based system I envisage would (hopefully) require relatively little Java knowledge, and none at all of the Java UI model. Rather, I think the important point is that pretty much every desktop computer on earth has a Java VM installed, or is capable of having one installed. I'm aware of the iOS issue, and Android presents similar challenges (perhaps for different reasons). The problems with Android could, I think, be overcome with nothing more than tiresome code-grinding. I'm not sure about Apple, though. 

In addition to the other advantages of Java I mentioned above, I might add:

8. Built-in serialization support, so saving and restoring game state could be trivial (and platform-neutral)
9. Widely-available IDEs
10. The ability to extend as much or as little of the built-in world model, user interface, etc., as you like via the inheritance mechanism without touching any underlying libraries (because Java uses run-time linkage throughout)

I guess my fundamental concern is that there are relatively few people working on VMs for IF and, however heroic and talented they are, they're trying to do more-or-less single-handed what the vast resources of Sun Microsystems did over ten years.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2914&start=10#p20764
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What Do You Think of This Strategy?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-08 08:56:50

A little bit offtopic, but I just checked out what Neal Stephenson is up to these days, and I found out he's working on a multimedia project called "The Mongoliad." Wikipedia describes it as an "interactive fiction" although that may be an error. On the other hand, the site says the project will eventually include games and what sounds like fan content. It's based on a lot of research into European martial arts, so I'm hoping to see some text-based IF with a very detailed combat system. Anybody looking for a project?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=0#p20765
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-08-08 09:05:58

Maybe you could point more specifically to things you find missing in current games instead of focusing on their technical innards? Most people (or me, at least*) don't care that much about if a game is running on Java, TADS, Glulx, Glulx-in-Javascript or whatever. So to me a statement like "things would be so much better and more modern if they were running in Java" is pointless. What is it that you want to see?

* That statement is not entirely true, since I happen to be very interested in the technical side of things. (I've done quite a bit of hobbyist programming and am considering doing a game with Unity.) But for the purposes of a discussion like this, it can be considered 100% true. I consider any other approach to be approaching things backwards. The right tool for the right job.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2962&start=0#p20766
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Exiting "repeat through table"
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-08 09:17:27

If you want to exit from a rulebook completely, can do "rule succeeds," "rule fails," or "make no decision." - or any of the specific rulebook results. You can also exit from a phrase with "stop." And of course a to decide phrase can be exited with "decide on ..."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2976&start=0#p20767
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indexed text, and progressive slowdown during play
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-08 09:24:00

I like the idea of output filtering, which would require indexed text, but you can do quite a lot with say phrases. I was playing with this the other day:

[code]Report praying:
	Carry out the speaking out loud activity with the noun;
	unless able to speak clearly:
		say "Or at least that's how it goes in your head. The actual sound you make is more like [italic type]'[random sputter].'[roman type][paragraph break]"
		
To say random sputter:
	say "[one of]F[or]P[or]Aa[or]G[at random]";
	Repeat with i running from 1 to 8:
		if a random chance of one in 3 succeeds:
			say " [one of]frm[or]th[or]cl[or]fu[or]bl[or]g[or]h[or]a[or]u[or]n[at random]";
		say "[one of]l[or]k[or]r[or]vf[or]a[or]gh[or]th[or]yr[or]rh[or]t[or]bl[or]ghh[or]h[or]u[or]uh[or]n[at random]"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2973&start=10#p20768
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Line Breaks, Line Breaks, Line Breaks
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-08 09:48:56

[quote]But trying to get sentences in that form gives me a massive headache. And what if one of them ended in a question mark?[/quote]

If there's a question mark, you have to go back to one of the cruftier solutions.

[quote]Look, my point isn't that there is a bug, or that Inform 7 isn't consistent, it's just that I don't want to have to think about any of this.[/quote]

I want many things out of life. :/

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=10#p20769
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: kevinb / DateTime: 2011-08-08 11:05:11

[quote="Trumgottist"]Maybe you could point more specifically to things you find missing in current games instead of focusing on their technical innards? Most people (or me, at least*) don't care that much about if a game is running on Java, TADS, Glulx, Glulx-in-Javascript or whatever. So to me a statement like "things would be so much better and more modern if they were running in Java" is pointless. What is it that you want to see?
[/quote]

Well, I guess I should try to separate my actual pragmatic issues from my philosophical ramblings...

Pragmatically, glulx does not seem to provide a way to provide the sort of graphical and user interface features that I believe would enhance an IF game/story. There doesn't seem to be a way, for example, to provide for out-of-story actions (save, restore, open a file, undo last move, change screen colour, whatever) other than by typing commands at a prompt. There doesn't seem to be a way to provide a drop-down menu so that the user can select "Go to->Local->Prancing Pony' rather than typing 'n, n, n, sw, se, n, s...'. This is perhaps less of a big deal in IF than in any other genre of gaming, because you're exercising the keyboard all the time anyway. But I do wonder whether providing more familiar UI elements would increase the appeal of IF among people who grew up after the invention of the mouse [emote]:)[/emote]

To be fair, at least some of this comes down to interpreter implementation, rather than VM architecture. I'm not sure that all of it does, however.

The philosophical ramblings really come down to whether the kind of VM that currently does duty for IF is really a sound long-term proposition. I think that people who work in this genre have come to cut their coat to fit their cloth -- that is, people see the way IF should work as fitting the kind of technical resources that have historically been available. 

For example, I played a game recently that was entirely text-based, but had a sort of compass-rose thingie in the status bar. My first though was to click on that as an alternative to typing, but it didn't do anything. Now, if I could navigate by clicking the compass rose in Zork nearly twenty years ago, why is it that such a facility is not generally available these days? Is it because people prefer to type? Or because it's technically a drag to implement in a satisfactory way? Or because that's just not the way IF authors think?

As computer programmers go, I'm an oldie. My colleagues mock me because I find it more efficient to type 'ls' than to pop up some garish window full of icons. So I'm certainly not suggesting change for the sake of change. I just wonder -- and it's nothing more than my musings -- whether the shape of modern IF stories owes more to 20-year-old technical exigencies than it does to conscious choice. Declaring a bit of an interest here, I worked on and around the JVM, for Sun Microsystems, until recently. The JVM always struck me as a fantastic, ready-made target platform for IF languages, and it's always surprised my that nobody took advantage of that. 

I don't know -- maybe it's just me. Looked at from outside, the world of contemporary IF development looks a bit like it's stuck in the '80s. Perhaps it looks completely different from inside? Or perhaps it doesn't matter?

As you say, "the right tool for the right job". But (pardon the cliché) if your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=10#p20770
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-08-08 11:11:14

[quote="dfabulich"]Authors who are good at writing and programming rarely have the ability to also design high-quality graphics and sound, and can't really afford to hire someone to do those things.[/quote]

Hm, to be egocentric here for a bit, I'd argue that I have no problem designing quality graphics -- arguably, I am better at creating graphics than writing evocative prose -- or obtaining sounds (freesound.org is great for fx, and I have several musician friends, including my significant other, who are very indulgent when I ask for game-appropriate tunes), and the reason I don't put them in my IF games is that, as a designer with a rather minimalist mentality, I don't think I need them to make the point I'm trying to make.  If the game I want to make needs to be strongly visual, I'm probably not going to make it as an IF game.

I'm not saying there aren't games in which the images act as part of a unified whole ([url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=lyblvftb8xtlo0a1]Everybody Dies[/url] and [url=http://gravelgamedesign.blogspot.com/]gravel's WIP[/url] come to mind), but their inclusion is a conscious design decision, and it wouldn't be the right decision for every game.  And I think [i]that's[/i] why we see so few illustrated IF games, not just the logistical issues.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=0#p20771
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-08-08 11:11:16

You define that as "good"?  You must have a very low threshold.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2973&start=10#p20772
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Line Breaks, Line Breaks, Line Breaks
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-08 11:25:38

It seems like the reason it's so complicated is so that you don't have to think about it in the majority of cases. Just like Microsoft, this strategy can backfire by making things even more complicated when "Do what I mean" doesn't.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2975&start=10#p20773
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "Invisiclues" effect in a PDF file
User: Greeny / DateTime: 2011-08-08 11:27:13

Here's a simple HTML file (heavily 'borrowed' from Emily Short's Savoir Faire hints) that might help get you started.
It adds boxes around the invisiclues to help see where to Click 'n' drag.

You can just alter the text & cut & paste lines to add new hints.

It won't let me upload an HTML file, so here it is as code.
Just Select & copy it into a text editor & save as an .htm file eg   GameHints.htm.
A good editor like the great (&free) Notepad++  that has synatx colouring etc. makes things a lot easier.

Cheers
Greeny

[code]

<html>
<title>My Game Hints</title>  
<body bgcolor = WHITE font color = BLACK>

<h1>My Game Hints</h1>  </h1> tags enclose a large heading -->
<p>Here are the hints to my game</p>     </p> tags enclose a paragraph, -->
<p>The hints are invisible(White text on a white background). Click & drag the mouse to select and reveal each hint.</p>



<UL>
<LI><a href = "#Hints1">Hints 1 Text</a>   specifies a link to a corresponding  <a name = "Hint1"> Tag  later in the document    -->
<LI><a href = "#Hints2">Hints 2 Text</a>
<LI><a href = "#Hints3">Hints 3 Text</a>
</UL>


<hr> 
<h2><a name = "Hints1">This is Hint 1</a></h2>   </h2> tags enclose a secondary heading  -->
<p><b>Heres a useful hint</b></p>    </p>  tags enclose a paragraph , The <b></b>  make any text they enclose bold  -->
<div style="border:1px solid black;">   
<p><font color = WHITE>Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line</font></p>   </font> Tags specify the font they enclose  -->
<p><font color = WHITE>And to think, all that time it was your cup that was poisoned</font></p> 
</div>

<p><b>Here's another useful hint</b></p>
<div style="border:1px solid black;">
<p><font color = WHITE>Because iocane comes from Australia</font></p>
</div>




<hr> 
<h2><a name = "Hints2">This is Hint 2</a></h2>   
<p><b>Heres a useful hint 2</b></p>   
<div style="border:1px solid black;">
<p><font color = WHITE>He's only MOSTLY dead</font></p>  
</div>

<p><b>Here's another useful hint 2</b></p>
<div style="border:1px solid black;">
<p><font color = WHITE>The flame spurt - no problem. There's a popping sound preceding each; we can avoid that.</font></p> 
<p><font color = WHITE>The lightning sand, which you were clever enough to discover what that looks like, so in the future we can avoid that too. </font></p> 
<p><font color = WHITE>The rodents of uynusual size? I don't think they exist</font></p> 
</div>




<hr> 
<h2><a name = "Hints3">This is Hint 3</a></h2>   
<p><b>Heres a useful hint 3</b></p>   
<div style="border:1px solid black;">
<p><font color = WHITE>Useful Hint Goes Here</font></p>  
</div>

<p><b>Here's another useful hint 3</b></p>
<div style="border:1px solid black;">
<p><font color = WHITE>Another useful Hint Goes Here</font></p> 
<p><font color = WHITE>Another useful Hint Goes Here</font></p> 
<p><font color = WHITE>Another useful Hint Goes Here</font></p> 
<p><font color = WHITE>Another useful Hint Goes Here</font></p> 
</div>



</body>
</html>
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=10#p20774
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: kevinb / DateTime: 2011-08-08 11:37:53

[quote="tove"] If the game I want to make needs to be strongly visual, I'm probably not going to make it as an IF game.
[/quote]

Speaking (again) as something of an outsider, there does seem to be a bit of fuzziness about whether IF is aiming at literature or gaming. I'm not sure, but I don't think that the people who wrote Zork, et al., thought they were producing anything other than games. Some modern work seems to be squarely in the same tradition, while some seems to be aiming at something more cerebral. 

I suspect that the more modern user interface whose lack I am bemoaning might be more of an issue for people who see themselves working more in the Zork tradition, as it were. Many of these games feature map-based exploration, for example. So would it (perhaps) not be better if the player could see a map displayed graphically rather having to remember it, or draw one on paper? And if it would be better (and I accept that many people might not agree), would it not be better if the interpreter/VM/compiler produced it automatically, rather than leaving it as an authorial task?

Again, just musing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2975&start=10#p20775
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "Invisiclues" effect in a PDF file
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-08-08 11:38:33

[quote="Robert Rothman"]I'm a little surprised that pdf files do not support some control over the way highlighted text looks on screen.  Although originally designed for print work, the more recent versions of the system do cover other electronic-only features (such as internal links) and overall its a sufficiently powerful system that I would expect someting like this to be available.[/quote]
I'm assuming that by "the system" you mean Adobe InDesign, right?  I had a computer graphics/design course last semester, and we barely scratched the surface of InDesign near the end of the semester in order to use it to make our portfolios (the class was mainly about using Photoshop and Illustrator).  Anyways, my limited impression of InDesign is that it is indeed designed almost exclusively for print.  I think Adobe has other software for advanced PDF creation (Acrobat).

You don't need to know anything about HTML in order to make an HTML document for your invisiclues hint page if you use HTML-editing software.  If you have the full Adobe suite (and not just InDesign) you probably also have DreamWeaver.  But you can even use Microsoft Word to make an HTML document!  You can simply set your text and background colors in Word, and then save the file as a web document instead of the default .doc/.docx format.  And if you don't have Microsoft Word, you can do it with OpenOffice (or the knock-off LibreOffice), which is free.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=0#p20776
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-08 11:40:33

[quote="ultimate"]uthors just upload some shit for fun, not even thinking about winning. And IFComp reviewers go all serious and bitch about everything, just to have something to write on their blogs. [/quote]

Those bastards!  Having fun making games and having fun writing about them!

. . . wait, actually that seems fine.  I mean, as a player I would like to campaign for more player friendliness, so that playing the games is more fun, but that's going to be a goal no matter how good the average game is.  I don't know that cutthroat desire to win IFComp is that healthy or even desirable.  I don't mind if people have it, but I don't really care if every author is instilled with the desire to win.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=10#p20777
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-08-08 11:50:35

[quote="kevinb"]It's not clear to me that a primary feature of a new IF system is that it should run lots of existing stuff -- there's already plenty of software out there that can run Z-code and glulx. It seems to me that a more important feature is that it should allow modern-looking, cross-platform games to be created with a minimum of authorial pain. Of course, I appreciate that it would take a lot to get people to drop Inform and move to something completely different.[/quote]

If your goal is "modern-looking, cross-platform games to be created with a minimum of authorial pain," I'd say you've got that today with the Inform IDE + Parchment.

If you write a game in the Inform IDE, it outputs Parchment, which you can upload to your favorite website and just distribute the URL. Want to change the UI? Tweak the CSS in Firebug or Chrome Dev Tools. (It's MUCH easier than Java's AWT/Swing.)

Today's Inform authors don't have to know anything about Glulx's oddities. More generally, Inform happens to output Z-code and Glulx (mostly for historical reasons) but authors don't have to drop Inform to switch off of Glulx.

If you're bored, you could take the ZMPP code and add an Inform compiler; there would be no Z-code/Glulx left. But this would not reduce the pain for authors or players.

[quote]pretty much every desktop computer on earth has a Java VM installed[/quote]

This is no longer true, if it ever was. OSX Lion ships without a JVM installed. Most Windows boxes have an old JVM installed somewhere, but fewer and fewer do. And the JVM has never been widely deployed on Linux.

JavaScript is the only pre-installed cross-platform GUI technology now, for better or worse.

[quote]In addition to the other advantages of Java I mentioned above, I might add:[/quote]

JavaScript has these benefits, too, and it works cross-platform, including iOS, today.

[quote]I guess my fundamental concern is that there are relatively few people working on VMs for IF and, however heroic and talented they are, they're trying to do more-or-less single-handed what the vast resources of Sun Microsystems did over ten years.[/quote]

Don't worry. ZMPP and Parchment are written on top of high quality VM implementations. (JavaScript VMs are pretty advanced too, these days!) Parchment in particular generates JS code that the browser can compile/optimize on the back end.

Don't get me wrong; there are bugs. ZMPP and Parchment could be even faster and more beautiful (more like Undum). Some games don't even work in ZMPP/Parchment. But the bugs get fixed and things get better.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2975&start=10#p20779
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "Invisiclues" effect in a PDF file
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-08 12:03:33

Thanks.

I see the tags which set the type color to white (which I can also do quite easily in a pdf file), but I don't see (or am not recognizing) any code which instructs it to show up as visible when highlighted.  Is that just the way browsers automatically work (unlike Acrobat Reader)?  In other words, is the issue not really whether the formatting is coded in HTML or in PostScript, but rather in whether the file is ultimately being read in a broswer or in Acrobat?

I think I can probably manage to get the effect we're talking about by following these examples, but it would be a fair amount of work and ultimately the formatting and overall layout would wind up looking far less professional than I can achieve easily with InDesign and pdf output.  (I'm assuming that achieving the level of mastery of HTML that would be necessary to approximate the pro-looking formatting would require a level of commitment that's beyond what I'm prepared to devote to it.)  I think I need to give some serious thought to which is more important to me.  I may decide to go with a cool-looking printable booklet, and just give up on the invisibility idea.  In terms of spoiler potential, its still no worse than a plain walk-through.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2981&start=0#p20780
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: An odd error message
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-08-08 12:06:53

I wanted to try my hand at simple -- or so I thought -- pathing. I've managed a roughly similar effect before, but this time, something unexpected occurred.

[code]Pursuit relates one person to a person. The verb to follow (he follows, they follow, it is following) implies the pursuit relation.

After player going when a person (called companion) follows the player and the companion is in the room gone from:
	let previous be an object;
	let previous be the room gone from;
	try the companion going best route from previous to the location.

Pursuing is an action applying to one thing. Understand "follow [someone]" as pursuing.

Check actor pursuing when the noun is the actor: stop the action.
Check player pursuing when the noun is the player: say "You can't follow yourself." instead.
Check pursuing when the player is following the noun: say "You're already following [the noun]." instead.

Carry out actor pursuing: now the actor follows the noun.

Report pursuing: say "You decide to follow [the noun] for a bit."


The wabe is a room.[/code]

The code results in the following error message:

[quote]In 'try the companion going best route from previous to the location'  , I tried to read a description of an action - a complicated one involving optional clauses; but 'previous' wasn't something I recognised.[/quote]

As far as I can tell, it's not a matter of accidentally using reserved keywords. Is there an obvious error I've made and overlooked, or is this a bug?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2981&start=0#p20781
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: An odd error message
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-08 12:13:35

I'm not sure exactly why the compiler barfs, but this does compile:

[code]After player going when a person (called companion) follows the player and the companion is in the room gone from:
	let previous be an object;
	let previous be the room gone from;
	let way be the best route from previous to the location;
	try the companion going way.[/code]

UPDATE: Well, it looks to me that you're running into the action variables for going. From the standard rules:

[code]The going action has a room called the room gone from (matched as "from").
The going action has an object called the room gone to (matched as "to").[/code]

So the compiler may be trying to process it as "try the companion going best route [a direction] from previous [the room gone from] to the location [the room gone to]"; which is not what you want, though I'm not at all sure why it's zeroing in on "previous" as the problem. Though "previous" isn't type-guaranteed to be a room, so that might be an issue.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=10#p20782
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-08 12:14:38

[quote="kevinb"]Speaking (again) as something of an outsider, there does seem to be a bit of fuzziness about whether IF is aiming at literature or gaming. I'm not sure, but I don't think that the people who wrote Zork, et al., thought they were producing anything other than games. Some modern work seems to be squarely in the same tradition, while some seems to be aiming at something more cerebral. [/quote]
I think the point of IF is that gaming and literature don't have to be mutually exclusive or in conflict: you say fuzziness, we say synergy. (But yes, there is a spectrum of opinion about the best balance.)

Infocom in its day spent a great deal of effort in promoting IF as a literary form: they generally preferred 'interactive fiction' over 'text adventures' for precisely this reason.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=10#p20783
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-08 12:17:52

[quote="kevinb"]
For example, I played a game recently that was entirely text-based, but had a sort of compass-rose thingie in the status bar. My first though was to click on that as an alternative to typing, but it didn't do anything. Now, if I could navigate by clicking the compass rose in Zork nearly twenty years ago, why is it that such a facility is not generally available these days? Is it because people prefer to type? Or because it's technically a drag to implement in a satisfactory way? Or because that's just not the way IF authors think?
[/quote]

There's extensions (and a tutorial!) that make it relatively straight-forward to implement a compass rose, save/quit/restart/restore buttons, etc.  I am not sure about drop-down boxes, but hyperlinks are an option, so I could probably put in something similar.

As a player, it is 2-3 times as fast and less irritating to type "save" than it is to move my mouse to click the button.  It's one thing if you've got a game with one keyboard hand and one mouse hand, and another if 95%+ of the game is played by keyboard.  

As an author, introduction of graphical elements means you've got to spend a significant amount of time considering the GUI.  I added graphical elements to my WIP, and while I like the results, it required much, much more work than I expected, largely because I'm not very familiar with the extensions and requirements and I was making it up on the fly.  I've seen some tremendously promising graphical work being done, though, and lots of people stepped up to make sure I could do what I needed.  It's also a little dodgy because you have to learn what each interpreter will do with your code, and sometimes the results are unexpected.  

But I have not, as yet, played many games where the graphics felt like a vital part of the game and if they were gone, I'd miss them beyond the "oh, pretty".  And I haven't played any IF where the sound really worked for me.  

So some of it is, I think, very sensible design decisions - why would a game designer add something that would take a significant amount of work and experimentation but not add dramatically to the game?  Something most players don't expect and won't miss?

I am getting the impression, though, that there's growing interest in feelies and add-ons, at least among a certain cohort of IF writers, and that includes using the interfaces in different ways.  And the tools are more and more accessible; for example, there are now opportunities to add animation to the graphics capabilities.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2975&start=10#p20784
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "Invisiclues" effect in a PDF file
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-08 12:18:02

The fact that you can see the text when it's highlighted is part of it's being displayed in a browser, yeah. It's pretty weird, actually, that pdfs don't work the same way.

One thing that I guess hasn't been brought up yet is a "click to reveal spoiler"-style method for clues, which again would have to be in HTML and not a pdf, and might not look as nice as you'd want it to anyway, and now that I'm looking at examples for how to code them they look really scary. I'm sorry I brought it up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2983&start=0#p20786
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: inform 7: how to do disambiguation
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-08-08 12:23:03

please help me understand

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=10#p20787
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: kevinb / DateTime: 2011-08-08 12:28:55

[quote="dfabulich"]
[quote]pretty much every desktop computer on earth has a Java VM installed[/quote]

This is no longer true, if it ever was. OSX Lion ships without a JVM installed. Most Windows boxes have an old JVM installed somewhere, but fewer and fewer do. And the JVM has never been widely deployed on Linux.

JavaScript is the only pre-installed cross-platform GUI technology now, for better or worse.
[/quote]

I can see how this could end up as one of those my-programming-language-is-better than yours discussions [emote];)[/emote] My personal background makes me prefer working in Java to JavaScript, in the same way I prefer a nice bottle of wine to beating my face against a brick wall. But I appreciate that opinions differ and, while I could raise what at least I believe to be knock-down arguments to support my position, I don't suppose anybody else will be convinced (or, as has been pointed out) care much. And, in any case, I make my living writing Java code, so I'm hardly disinterested. I've never encountered a computer without a modern JVM installed, but I'm told that such oddities do exist [emote]:)[/emote]

My point is that there are modern VMs. If there is a _choice_ of modern VMs, then I think that strengthens my original argument rather than weakening it.

Taking ZMPP and removing the intermediate Z byte-code step would, as you say, benefit nobody very much. You'd _still_ be working with something designed primarily for the console. I'm wondering whether we can (or should) severe that connection to the 80s altogether. And, if so, what the technologically least painful way to do this might be.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=10#p20788
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-08-08 12:31:12

[quote="kevinb"]Pragmatically, glulx does not seem to provide a way to provide the sort of graphical and user interface features that I believe would enhance an IF game/story. There doesn't seem to be a way, for example, to provide for out-of-story actions (save, restore, open a file, undo last move, change screen colour, whatever) other than by typing commands at a prompt.[/quote]

I believe Zoom provides all of these options in its GUI.


[quote="kevinb"]There doesn't seem to be a way to provide a drop-down menu so that the user can select "Go to->Local->Prancing Pony' rather than typing 'n, n, n, sw, se, n, s...'.[/quote]

You're right that custom menus are not possible with the current incarnation of Glk. I am not sure you've really thought through the UI implications of this, however. 

Suppose you are playing an IF game in a browser like Chrome - what would it mean to add a "Go to" menu with these choices? Assuming it were even possible, how would you justify usurping the normal application behavior?

There are many devices capable of playing IF that have nothing like the standard desktop notion of multiple windows with independent menus.

That said, some location-rich IF games (like [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=3a4kqs374jqu2li6]Nightfall[/url]) have implemented a >GO TO command to ease the  cognitive burden of travel. 


[quote="kevinb"]Declaring a bit of an interest here, I worked on and around the JVM, for Sun Microsystems, until recently. The JVM always struck me as a fantastic, ready-made target platform for IF languages, and it's always surprised my that nobody took advantage of that. [/quote]

From the [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/techman/t3spec/goals.htm]T3 Virtual Machine Design Goals[/url]:

[quote="MJR"]
The Java VM lacks several key features that are essential for a text adventure application: undo, save and restore, and run-time typing (of values of primitive types) are the most problematic omissions. In addition, the Java object model is significantly different from the TADS object model, and is not as well-suited for interactive fiction applications; while the TADS object model could be emulated in JVM code, it would be considerably less efficient than implementing the TADS object model in native code within the VM.
[/quote]

Note that the above was written in 2006 and may not be as relevant to more recent incarnations of the JVM.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2983&start=0#p20789
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: how to do disambiguation
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-08 12:36:25

It would help tremendously if you described what it is that you don't understand and what you're trying to do. I assume you've read the relevant chapter in the manual (17.29.)?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2914&start=10#p20790
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What Do You Think of This Strategy?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-08 12:37:05

The Mongoliad looked to me to be a collaborative serial novel -- more MS Paint Adventures than Anchorhead, if you will, though that's not quite it either. And I'm sure there are other parts. If someone wanted to pitch a Mongoliad-related IF to Stephenson and Bear, maybe they'd listen. It seems to be pay-subscription.

I read [url=http://mongoliad.com/contents/52#P3]one episode[/url]; the [url=http://mongoliad.com/contents/52/discussion#discussion]commenters[/url] on it seemed to be missing a big and obvious upcoming twist concerning 

[spoiler]Zug, the masked naginata fighter[/spoiler]

because no one realized that

[spoiler]the naginata was traditionally a weapon [i]used by women[/i]. (Note: for the purposes of this plot twist, this need not be an actual tradition.)[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2975&start=10#p20791
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "Invisiclues" effect in a PDF file
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2011-08-08 12:39:10

I know you didn't ask for alternate methods of providing hints/clues, but I felt I should point out how <em>Leadlight</em> dealt with this. You can see the plain-text version here: [url]http://leadlightgame.com/hsheet/hsheet.html[/url]. It doesn't rely on any special behavior of various programs, and I found it pretty neat. (Note: I'm not an old-school person, so I don't know if this method was used in some old games or if Wade invented it for this game.)

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2914&start=10#p20792
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What Do You Think of This Strategy?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-08 12:41:09

[quote="matt w"]The Mongoliad looked to me to be a collaborative serial novel -- more MS Paint Adventures than Anchorhead, if you will, though that's not quite it either. And I'm sure there are other parts. If someone wanted to pitch a Mongoliad-related IF to Stephenson and Bear, maybe they'd listen. It seems to be pay-subscription.

I read [url=http://mongoliad.com/contents/52#P3]one episode[/url]; the [url=http://mongoliad.com/contents/52/discussion#discussion]commenters[/url] on it seemed to be missing a big and obvious upcoming twist concerning 

[spoiler]Zug, the masked naginata fighter[/spoiler]

because no one realized that

[spoiler]the naginata was traditionally a weapon [i]used by women[/i]. (Note: for the purposes of this plot twist, this need not be an actual tradition.)[/spoiler][/quote]

HA!  Yeah, I read that and then the discussion, and thought it was like reading [spoiler]someone try to puzzle out how the son could be operated on by his parent, given that his dad was also hospitalized.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2984&start=0#p20793
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Time Flies
User: Andsowejump / DateTime: 2011-08-08 12:47:24

I'm wondering how to make certain staged things to go on during a scene.  I've read the chapter on scenes several times, but it doesn't give me an idea of how to, for example, five minutes after the scene starts to close a door or say "you hear a creak down the hall.
Do I have to make all separate scenes and run them all together?  That would be really tedious.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2975&start=10#p20794
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "Invisiclues" effect in a PDF file
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-08-08 12:49:52

[quote="Afterward"]One thing that I guess hasn't been brought up yet is a "click to reveal spoiler"-style method for clues, which again would have to be in HTML and not a pdf, and might not look as nice as you'd want it to anyway, and now that I'm looking at examples for how to code them they look really scary.[/quote]

This is what [url=http://nitku.net/if/clues.html]Juhana's template for JavaScript-y hints pages[/url] (which I linked to earlier in the thread as well) does, and if you just grab his JS and look at his example, you'll find that he's done the scary work for you.

I suspect that if you wanted to do something fancy, [url=http://api.jquery.com/]jQuery[/url] would be not-too-bad, but that is definitely not what I am suggesting to Robert.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2975&start=20#p20795
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "Invisiclues" effect in a PDF file
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-08 12:54:28

Kevin:

     That's an interesting system, and one that I haven't seen before.  I suppose the advantage (in addition to minimizing spoilers) is that it makes the player do a certain amount of work to get a hint, which discourages doing so lightly.

     Of course, it also requires a lot of work on the part of the author.  In my case, I anticipate having a few dozen different help topics, some of which have as many as 10 separate hints.  The idea of having to set up a numerical cipher for each word is pretty scary.  On the other hand, the game is basically a spy story parody -- so the idea of having to use the equivalent of a "secret decoder ring" to decode the top-secret information could be done in such a way that it plays into the story.  I probably will be too lazy to use this approach, but its worth thinking about.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2985&start=0#p20796
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: inform 7:not listing contents of room when blocking take all
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-08-08 12:56:09

[code]Glass pieces are here. metal shelves are supporters in room of horrors. foggy container is a fogged container on metal shelves. a huge glass container is a container in room of horrors. dead horse is an animal in huge glass container. a wooden crate is here. wooden crate is a container. dead things are scenery in The Room of Horrors.[/code]

[code]Instead of taking everything in Room of Horrors: say "Pick something and take it."[/code]

when i try to take all in the room of horrors it still lists the contents of the room that you can take how do i fix this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=10#p20797
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: kevinb / DateTime: 2011-08-08 13:02:24

[quote="gravel"]
As a player, it is 2-3 times as fast and less irritating to type "save" than it is to move my mouse to click the button.  It's one thing if you've got a game with one keyboard hand and one mouse hand, and another if 95%+ of the game is played by keyboard.  
[/quote]

Yes, indeed. This is exactly the same argument I use when my younger colleagues (which, these days, is all my colleagues) ask why I prefer to work with command-line tools. It's much faster, I say, to type 'DEBUG=1 make' than to spend time hunting through a bunch of menus and dialog boxes to find where the IDE developer hid the option to enable debug builds.

But, but, but...

It's a lot quicker to hunt through a bunch of menus, etc., etc., than to figure out that 'DEBUG=1 make' is the right thing to type when you're staring at a blank screen and have no idea what to do next. 

The 'it's quicker to type...' argument really only works when your audience is computer programmers or dedicated enthusiasts. But if the target audience for IF is, indeed, computer programmers and dedicated enthusiasts, I guess that's not a deal-breaker.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2984&start=0#p20798
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Time Flies
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-08-08 13:03:10

[quote="Andsowejump"]for example, five minutes after the scene starts to close a door or say "you hear a creak down the hall.
Do I have to make all separate scenes and run them all together?  That would be really tedious.[/quote]

If I understand what you are saying correctly, then yes. It does need to be a separate scene (or perhaps in your case a simple "say" will suffice)[i] if[/i] You want something to happen 5 minutes (which is equal to 5 turns unless specified otherwise) [i]after[/i] the original scene.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2983&start=0#p20799
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: how to do disambiguation
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-08-08 13:06:45

Yes, explain more what you are actually trying to do or understand.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=10#p20800
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-08 13:10:38

Yeah, that was just "me as player", and not "me as game designer".  I agree that there should be options.  Or at least I'm open to argument.  I'm trying to figure out now if there should be buttons in my WIP for that sort of meta stuff.  If I could come up with a look that isn't unrelentingly 1994, I'd be more tempted.  

(Can you go file -> save in interpreters?  I've never tried.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2985&start=0#p20801
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7:not listing contents of room when blocking take
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-08-08 13:11:47

Have a look at [b]17.34. Deciding whether all includes[/b] In the documentation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=0#p20802
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-08-08 13:16:49

[quote="katz"]You define that as "good"?  You must have a very low threshold.[/quote]

Haters gotta hate! [emote];-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2914&start=10#p20803
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What Do You Think of This Strategy?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-08 13:21:11

They seem to have figured it out. I read this first because it came up before the regular chapters, and the discussion mentions two possibilities:

<a class="postlink" href="http://mongoliad.com/contents/37">http://mongoliad.com/contents/37</a>

[spoiler][quote]jwesley 3 points 11 months ago [-]

Is it obvious to anybody else that Zug is a woman? Recovering quickly from the ball-shot, smooth chin glimpsed underneath helmet. It's not a boy or a eunuch, predictably enough. Overall, it's good stuff.
permalink  report
 
 
macoracle 2 points 11 months ago [-]

There is another explanation that nobody has mentioned. The lack of sensitivity to a ball-shot can be explained if Zug is a Samurai. The Samurai were said to have practiced the art of retracting their balls via the cremaster reflex (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cremaster_reflex) to make them less susceptible to this form of attack.

As for the lack of facial hair, if Zug is Japanese, well...
permalink  report
 
 
jwesley 3 points 11 months ago [-]

Excellent point, mac. That would explain the bow before combat, the design of the armor and helmet ... so, is it obvious to anybody else that Zug is a samurai? [emote]:)[/emote]
permalink  report  reply
 
 
OneUniverse 2 points 10 months ago [-]

Also, the weapon and combat style used, plus the stature of the combatant, suggest Japanese (Nipon) origin.[/quote][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2984&start=0#p20804
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Time Flies
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-08 13:21:34

Does it need to be a special scene?  You can make things happen when scenes begin or end, and I believe those things include instructions involving timers.  

There's at least three ways to think of these; I'm sort of thinking hard-coded stuff that happens regardless of what the player does, results based on triggers of various kinds, and results based on actions or items the player interacts with.  

[code]Factory is a room.
Test is a scene.  Test begins when play begins.
A person is either content or not content.

	
When Test begins:
	the timer dings in one turn from now;
	
At the time when the timer dings:
	say "1!";	
	
Every turn when the time since Test began is 2 minutes:
	say "2!";
	
Every turn when Test is happening and the player is content:
	say "3!";
	
After waiting:
	if we have waited 4 times: 
		now the player is content;
	continue the action.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2973&start=10#p20805
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Line Breaks, Line Breaks, Line Breaks
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-08-08 13:26:12

The reason it's more complicated than TADS 3 is because T3 adds the abstraction layer of the transcript, where output can be tweaked and fixed up before being printed to the screen.

There are default rules in the adv3 library that weed out superfluous line breaks and paragraph tags, as well as removing or replacing HTML tags based on the capabilities of the interpreter at runtime.

To the best of my knowledge, Inform does not distinguish between queuing up output for eventual display and the actual VM level print operations. (Output may be buffered at the interpreter / library level but that is not guaranteed, and comes too late to assist the author in any case.)

You would need something like Eric Eve's [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Eric%20Eve/Text%20Capture/source.html]Text Capture[/url] extension to make this work in Inform, running at a global level and with no length restrictions on captured output. Performance concerns and the lack of Z-Machine compatibility probably preclude this from becoming a standard feature.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=20#p20806
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: kevinb / DateTime: 2011-08-08 13:26:43

[quote="bcressey"]

Suppose you are playing an IF game in a browser like Chrome - what would it mean to add a "Go to" menu with these choices? Assuming it were even possible, how would you justify usurping the normal application behavior?

There are many devices capable of playing IF that have nothing like the standard desktop notion of multiple windows with independent menus.
[/quote]

Clearly this wouldn't be useful behaviour in all games. But, again, I think that part of the problem here is that, in the IF world, 'normal application behaviour' remains grounded in a 1980s programming model. 

From an OO perspective (for example), it seems to me that the concept

player.go_to (drugstore)  

(or wherever) is always semantically meaningful, so long as movement of any kind is a valid concept in the game. Of course, it may be impossible to make this movement, and there may be side-effects of making it even if it is possible. But it seems to me that it should be possible to conceive of such an action, at least. But if your programming model is such that, at some particular point in time the only valid user interactions amount to 'yes' or 'no', and you enter the equivalent of 'go to drugstore', then I can see how there comes to be a problem.

As for Windows and menus and whatnot: I can see the benefits of operating within the lowest-common-denominator of user interface features. But I can see the costs, as well. Whether the benefits outweigh the costs, I don't know.

[quote][quote="MJR"]
The Java VM lacks several key features that are essential for a text adventure application: undo, save and restore, and run-time typing (of values of primitive types) are the most problematic omissions. In addition, the Java object model is significantly different from the TADS object model, and is not as well-suited for interactive fiction applications; while the TADS object model could be emulated in JVM code, it would be considerably less efficient than implementing the TADS object model in native code within the VM.
[/quote]

Note that the above was written in 2006 and may not be as relevant to more recent incarnations of the JVM.[/quote]

I'm pretty sure a lot of that was wrong in 2006, and I'm certain that most of it is wrong now. It's always been possible to save a game state (or any kind of state) in Java by serializing an object tree to file, and it's always been possible to implement an undo, of any depth, by doing this for every turn. Even in 2006 I doubt this would have created much of a memory or storage burden.

Java doesn't have run-time typing of primitive types, because primitive types are type-immutable. This is feature, not a failure. But it is possible, and was possible in 2006, to wrap up primitive types inside objects which are type-able at run-time, and the machinery for doing this was partly automated. Now it's fully automated -- which I disapprove of, but that's a different matter. 

I presume by the different object model what they means is that Java lacks built-in operators to express concepts like 'an instance of X is included in an instance of Y'. I've used TADS a bit, and it's OO model is, indeed, well suited for modelling simple relationships between real-world objects and doing the right thing when these objects are operated upon. 

But, honestly, these things are not hard to implement in Java. Or, indeed, in any reasonably competent OO language.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2975&start=20#p20807
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "Invisiclues" effect in a PDF file
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2011-08-08 13:28:50

[quote="Robert Rothman"]Kevin:
Of course, it also requires a lot of work on the part of the author.  In my case, I anticipate having a few dozen different help topics, some of which have as many as 10 separate hints.  The idea of having to set up a numerical cipher for each word is pretty scary.  On the other hand, the game is basically a spy story parody -- so the idea of having to use the equivalent of a "secret decoder ring" to decode the top-secret information could be done in such a way that it plays into the story.  I probably will be too lazy to use this approach, but its worth thinking about.
[/quote]

You could also do actual secret decoder ring [emote]:-)[/emote] 

You might be able to find someone who likes this kind of activity to collaborate with you on coming up with something similar to Leadlight's system or some other low-tech-but-spy-feeling kind of hint system. Another fairly easy thing you could do is just encode the clues in [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROT13]ROT13[/url] (see [url]http://www.rot13.com/[/url] for a simple interface for doing the encyphering/decyphering).

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=20#p20808
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-08-08 13:29:33

[quote="bcressey"]From the [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/techman/t3spec/goals.htm]T3 Virtual Machine Design Goals[/url]:

[quote="MJR"]
The Java VM lacks several key features that are essential for a text adventure application: undo, save and restore, and run-time typing (of values of primitive types) are the most problematic omissions. In addition, the Java object model is significantly different from the TADS object model, and is not as well-suited for interactive fiction applications; while the TADS object model could be emulated in JVM code, it would be considerably less efficient than implementing the TADS object model in native code within the VM.
[/quote]

Note that the above was written in 2006 and may not be as relevant to more recent incarnations of the JVM.[/quote]

I doubt that MJR was right about the JVM even in 2006, and probably underestimated the performance benefits of Java's JIT hotspot optimizations (like just about everybody did for most of the last decade). Nobody's object model is exactly like anybody else's object model, but lord knows TADS' object model is nothing like C's "object model."

*shrug* It's water under the bridge now that we have reasonably high performance Java interpreters.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=20#p20809
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-08-08 13:40:35

[quote="kevinb"][quote="bcressey"]

Suppose you are playing an IF game in a browser like Chrome - what would it mean to add a "Go to" menu with these choices? Assuming it were even possible, how would you justify usurping the normal application behavior?

There are many devices capable of playing IF that have nothing like the standard desktop notion of multiple windows with independent menus.
[/quote]

Clearly this wouldn't be useful behaviour in all games. But, again, I think that part of the problem here is that, in the IF world, 'normal application behaviour' remains grounded in a 1980s programming model.[/quote]

I don't think you answered this question, which is pretty important. 

The browser isn't the "lowest common denominator;" it's the primary way newbies start playing IF these days. (Because the alternative is telling them to download an interpreter and a gblorb file.)

How would you implement custom menus in a browser?

FWIW, IMO the right way is to ditch the parser and run the entire game with menus. But my views are heretical. [emote]:-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2973&start=10#p20810
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Line Breaks, Line Breaks, Line Breaks
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-08-08 13:45:00

[quote="bcressey"]You would need something like Eric Eve's [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Eric%20Eve/Text%20Capture/source.html]Text Capture[/url] extension to make this work in Inform, running at a global level and with no length restrictions on captured output. Performance concerns and the lack of Z-Machine compatibility probably preclude this from becoming a standard feature.[/quote]

Oh, it's z-machine compatible if your game is otherwise very tiny [emote]:)[/emote], but those performance concerns are nothing to sneeze at.  I refer you to my short game, "Sugar" (Parchment and download links [url=http://instamatique.com/games/text.html]here[/url]), which is pretty much unplayable through Parchment.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=20#p20811
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: kevinb / DateTime: 2011-08-08 13:48:48

[quote="gravel"]Yeah, that was just "me as player", and not "me as game designer".  I agree that there should be options.  Or at least I'm open to argument.  I'm trying to figure out now if there should be buttons in my WIP for that sort of meta stuff.  If I could come up with a look that isn't unrelentingly 1994, I'd be more tempted.  [/quote]

That's exactly my point. It seems to me that the only elegant way to handle menus, buttons, etc., is to have them implemented as native elements of whatever user interface model you're working with. That is, native Windows menu elements in MS Windows, native GTK widgets (most likely) in Linux. And so on. It's like trying to implement drop-down menu bars in JavaScript within a Web browser -- you can do it, but nobody's going to be fooled, and users are still going to wonder why they're looking at a window with two menus, in contravention of most modern UI practice.

Such an approach -- the use of native interface elements -- is really only practicable if your VM and your underlying programming model has support for it built right in. Or so it seems to me, anyhow. 

[quote]
(Can you go file -> save in interpreters?  I've never tried.)[/quote]

Don't know -- they don't usually even have menus :/ Not in the Linux world, anyway. I'd bet I could implement an out-of-game File|Save operation in a Z-code interpreter -- there's not a huge amount to save. I seem to recall that Frotz had a hot-key for it, but I could never remember what it was. The point is, the missing functionality is (I think) in the UI, not in the VM. I presume that glulx works the same way as Z in this respect. Whether this is the case for other VMs, I really don't have a clue. 

My point is that providing File|Save (or Edit|Undo, or Font|Select typeface..) or whatever, is really (I think) a matter of interpreter design. I would guess that an interpreter author could, if he or she so wished, provide most of these meta-actions without tinkering with the VM internals at all.

It would even be possible for the interpreter to provide a clickable, dockable compass-rose navigator independent of the VM or the game simply by translating clicks on that UI element into keyboard input. I mean, most (English-language) games that understand movement at all understand 'north', 'up', 'in', 'out', etc, no? But what an interpreter writer _couldn't_ do (I think) is link the display of a compass rose to the directions that are actually legitimate at some point in the game. That would require decoding the game state in a way that I'm sure Z (and guess glulx) would not provide hooks into.

This is just one example where I believe the game authors _might_ benefit from a completely different way of thinking about the user interface. Of course, it won't always be necessary or even helpful.

Just my $0.02, of course.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=20#p20812
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-08-08 13:56:20

[quote="kevinb"]I'm pretty sure a lot of that was wrong in 2006, and I'm certain that most of it is wrong now. It's always been possible to save a game state (or any kind of state) in Java by serializing an object tree to file, and it's always been possible to implement an undo, of any depth, by doing this for every turn. Even in 2006 I doubt this would have created much of a memory or storage burden.[/quote]

MJR is talking about the state of the JVM rather than game state; are there any Java implementations that let you snapshot the entire JVM and switch between states with save / restore / undo?

The TADS 3 compiler works in a series of passes, the penultimate of which involves actually starting up the game and running a lot of potentially slow pre-initialization code. The state of the VM is then saved to the game file, so that what players ultimately run picks up from that point.

Whether the compiler "should" work that way is obviously going to depend on your perspective. In the world of IF virtual machines, it's a logical choice because all the VMs offer the ability to save state. But if your goal is to write an IF language that runs on the JVM, you would probably not make the same choice since it would mean forking and maintaining a Java runtime that offered that capability.

In MJR's defense I would argue that the JVM has never been all that appealing as a target for desktop applications, and it looks like it may be DOA on newer mobile devices (my beloved Kindle notwithstanding). The T3 virtual machine is at least theoretically portable to those architectures; there are significant financial and legal barriers to doing the same with the JVM.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=20#p20813
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: kevinb / DateTime: 2011-08-08 14:01:53

[quote="dfabulich"]
I don't think you answered this question, which is pretty important. 

The browser isn't the "lowest common denominator;" it's the primary way newbies start playing IF these days. (Because the alternative is telling them to download an interpreter and a gblorb file.)

How would you implement custom menus in a browser?
[/quote]

Um... I'm probably missing the point, but it's not difficult to implement menus in JavaScript. What is difficult is integrating them with the browser's native menu. If you don't mind having two menus in view -- one for the browser and one for the game -- I don't think there is any particular problem. But perhaps I misunderstood the question?

In my view, it would be handy to be able to specify broadly what menu actions you require (which might vary as play progresses) and have the interpreter take care of doing what it can to make them look nice. On a browser-based interpreter, that might mean building a specific menu within the Web page somewhere, and in a native-code interpreter it might mean popping the menu elements into the native menu.


[quote]
FWIW, IMO the right way is to ditch the parser and run the entire game with menus. But my views are heretical. [emote]:-)[/emote][/quote]

I suppose you run up against a thin-end-of-the-wedge argument here. If you're prepared to control the game by using menus, the logical next step is to steer the player character around with a mouse, and before long you've got Quake. [emote];)[/emote]

But I have to confess that, with many of the IF games I've played, the ability to enter natural language adds little to what could be achieved by having menus like 'Look at->Hedgehog' or 'Hit->Monster->with->Banana' or whatever. I'd bet that if windowing systems had been more prevalent in the Infocom days, the idea of controlling a role-playing game by parsing text would simply never have occurred to anybody.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2973&start=10#p20814
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Line Breaks, Line Breaks, Line Breaks
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-08 14:08:59

The particular annoyance with the current line-break system is that the printing mechanism can keep track of *one* pending line break. That is, if you do

[code]
  say "Hello.";
[/code]

...then the system will print one line break, and then set a flag indicating that a second may be coming. (It depends on various factors, such whether the next print statement occurs in the same rule, or whether it starts with a special paragraph substitution.)

I wish it would instead print *no* line breaks, and set a flag indicating that *one or two* may be coming. That would be more flexible, obviously; an upcoming substitution could continue on the same line. (Which is not currently possible.) This would not require any additional I/O buffering; only an adjustment of how I7 generates I6 code.

However, I understand that the print mechanism is *already* a mare's nest, and any adjustment would probably break plenty of existing (working) code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=20#p20815
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: kevinb / DateTime: 2011-08-08 14:24:56

[quote="bcressey"]
MJR is talking about the state of the JVM rather than game state; are there any Java implementations that let you snapshot the entire JVM and switch between states with save / restore / undo?
[/quote]

I doubt there are any -- I certainly don't know of any. But if your game world is implemented as a nested tree of object instances -- and I imagine that many would, in practice -- then getting the state of the entire game world as a flat block of memory reduces to a couple of lines of Java, which is (I think) as near as makes no practical difference. For there it's only a couple more lines to write it to disk, or buffer it in memory for an undo operation. I confess I've never tried this for an IF game -- I'm more familiar with these techniques for passing JVM object trees over a network -- but the serialization technology is entirely commonplace.

[quote]The TADS 3 compiler works in a series of passes, the penultimate of which involves actually starting up the game and running a lot of potentially slow pre-initialization code. The state of the VM is then saved to the game file, so that what players ultimately run picks up from that point.
[/quote]

I remember the days when we used to start a slow program up and let it initialize, then force a core dump to disk. That way you could start _any_ program in the time it took to read the core back into memory. Ah... those were the days.

It hardly seems to be necessary any more -- computers are just too fast. Whether what TADS3 does is replicable in a JVM, I don't know. There _is_ more to the state of a JVM than the state of the objects in the heap, but often there isn't much more. I'm not sure what benefit one would get from this sort of thing.

[quote]In MJR's defense I would argue that the JVM has never been all that appealing as a target for desktop applications, and it looks like it may be DOA on newer mobile devices (my beloved Kindle notwithstanding). The T3 virtual machine is at least theoretically portable to those architectures; there are significant financial and legal barriers to doing the same with the JVM.[/quote]

I'd love to discuss the financial and legal implications of porting Java to other devices, but unfortunately I have this employment contract... [emote];)[/emote]

Legal issues aside, I think that most of the purely technical issues that made Java unappealing for the deskop have long been overtaken by events. Compared to the time it takes to play an IF game, the JVM is quick to start. Compared to the amount of memory that most desktop computers have, its memory usage is slim. Sure, it's slow and fat compared to C, and hugely slow and fat compared to a Z-machine. But, as you say, the real pragmatic limitations are now legal ones :/

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2427&start=10#p20816
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Glimmr sizing and alignment standards?
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-08-08 15:02:03

Sorry to keep this dragging along, but I'm still fairly confused. As noted above, I couldn't get the code to compile right. But I don't think that matters a lot when I don't even completely understand what's going on. 

[quote="ektemple"] The [i]exiting[/i] action does get remapped from the [i]going[/i] action when the player is in a container.[/quote]

Are you saying here that 'out' should actually already be appearing as a direction to move on the compass? The only way I've ever made it appear is to create an actual room that's 'out' from another room. I can't get it to do it with a vehicle or an "enterable container".

On "In": I forgot that the command used by default is actually 'enter'. For what I'm trying to do right now, I don't need 'in' at all to apply to vehicles.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2975&start=20#p20817
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "Invisiclues" effect in a PDF file
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-08 15:10:51

Actually, something like that kind of low-tech substituion cypher has its appeal; it reduces the likelihood of inadvertant spoilers while not being quite as labor-intensive to produce as a word-based code, and also requires some work on the part of the player if he's going to be too lazy to solve the puzzles on his own. [emote]:)[/emote]   The "secret decoder ring" could be provided in the form of a "secret decoder chart" in the booklet itself.

Then again, I might just use a "high-security information concealment device" -- the last (blank) page of the booklet, which the player is instructed to remove and use to cover each page in turn, sliding it down the page so as to reveal the secret information one hint at a time.  That's almost goofy enough to fit in with the spirit of the game.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2973&start=10#p20818
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Line Breaks, Line Breaks, Line Breaks
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-08-08 15:28:15

[quote="zarf"][quote]On a related note, why does the IDE indent text within indented blocks of code? It may make it look legible in the editor, but the text then line breaks and indents all oddly in the game.[/quote]The IDE expects you to only hit Enter inside a quoted string if really want a line break there. (If you do this -- and don't add any *extra* indentation -- the string will print with no unexpected indentation.)[/quote]
Had to get home from work to prove to myself that I didn't dream this. I am using the Windows IDE. (Line breaks in quoted text are ignored, paragraph breaks - double line breaks - produce the weird indentation. Unless you use the explicit tags [line break], [paragraph break])

[quote="zarf"]I want many things out of life. :/[/quote]
Then we are practically life aim twins.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2427&start=10#p20819
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Glimmr sizing and alignment standards?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-08-08 15:37:56

[quote="Jizaboz"]Sorry to keep this dragging along, but I'm still fairly confused. As noted above, I couldn't get the code to compile right. But I don't think that matters a lot when I don't even completely understand what's going on.[/quote]

You can just change the original code directly; you don't have to replace the rule as I suggested.

[quote="Jizaboz"][quote="ektemple"] The [i]exiting[/i] action does get remapped from the [i]going[/i] action when the player is in a container.[/quote]

Are you saying here that 'out' should actually already be appearing as a direction to move on the compass? The only way I've ever made it appear is to create an actual room that's 'out' from another room. I can't get it to do it with a vehicle or an "enterable container".[/quote]

Yeah, that sentence wasn't as clear as it could have been. What I was getting at is that the typed command "out" is redirected when the player is in a container, to the exiting action. (If the player were not in a container, it would be interpreted as the going action.) There is no map connection The reverse does not happen with "in".

[quote="Jizaboz"]On "In": I forgot that the command used by default is actually 'enter'. For what I'm trying to do right now, I don't need 'in' at all to apply to vehicles.[/quote]

In that case, you can reduce the code I added to the compass rose updating rule to just this:

[code]
	if the player is in the SPORTS CAR:
		now the image-ID of the dir-sprite of outside is the visited image of the dir-sprite of outside;[/code]

Obviously, you can use either the visited or unvisited image, as it suits you.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2984&start=0#p20820
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Time Flies
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-08 15:46:51

I've heard of fruit flies, bluebottle flies, black flies, and dry flies, but I've never heard of time flies.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2984&start=0#p20821
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Time Flies
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-08 15:55:04

From what I understand, they're like an arrow.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=0#p20822
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-08 16:02:29

Now that I've thought about it more, I think it's a really good idea for all the authors entering the comp to try not to win, because I end up entering it'd be more author-friendly if I didn't have much competition.

dfabulich, I think that (if you are a fan of webcomics anyway) you would very much enjoy the critical analyses of the world's best webcomic reviewer, Sonty Mick.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2914&start=10#p20823
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What Do You Think of This Strategy?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-08 16:27:57

That exchange was what I was thinking of -- poor jwesley figures it out, and then someone else takes it way off into the absurd.

[spoiler]I mean, if you're going to get deep enough into cod-Japanese whatever to cite the samurai's amazing power of ball-retracting, you could actually look naginata up in Wikipedia and find out that in Japan it's traditionally associated with women. (Which may be anachronistic by about 300 years, but that's closer to reality than the cremaster reflex, I warrant.) (And yes, everything I know about this I learned in nethack or Wikipedia -- well, that, and having seen about fifty other things where the mysterious masked opponent turns out to be a women, and it turns into a duel to the sloppy makeouts.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2427&start=10#p20824
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Glimmr sizing and alignment standards?
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-08-08 17:24:00

I've spent an hour and a half trying to get this to work.. and it just won't. I've changed nothing in the compass code except for the following after "deactivate the dir-sprite of the heading;":

[code]Carry out looking (this is the compass rose updating rule):
	repeat with heading running through directions:
		let place be the room heading from the location;
		if place is a room and place is compass-ready:
			if place is unvisited:
				now the image-ID of the dir-sprite of the heading is the unvisited image of the dir-sprite of the heading;
			otherwise:
				now the image-ID of the dir-sprite of the heading is the visited image of the dir-sprite of the heading;
			activate the dir-sprite of the heading;
		otherwise:
			deactivate the dir-sprite of the heading;
		if the player is in the sports car:
			now the image-ID of the dir-sprite of outside is the unvisited image of the dir-sprite of outside;
	follow the window-drawing rules for the graphics-window.[/code]

Should this code not work? If it should, perhaps you could confirm in an example project if/when you have time.

I changed the code around to put the sports car before this. I tried other various things such as plugging in 'now the heading is..' just playing around to see if it would work. I just can't get it.  [emote]:|[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2427&start=10#p20825
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Glimmr sizing and alignment standards?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-08-08 18:02:32

Check the code I originally posted. The stuff about the car is not part of the loop. It has to come after the loop, so that it can overwrite what the loop decides on for the outside connection.

[code]Carry out looking (this is the compass rose updating rule):
	repeat with heading running through directions:
		let place be the room heading from the location;
		if place is a room and place is compass-ready:
			if place is unvisited:
				now the image-ID of the dir-sprite of the heading is the unvisited image of the dir-sprite of the heading;
			otherwise:
				now the image-ID of the dir-sprite of the heading is the visited image of the dir-sprite of the heading;
			activate the dir-sprite of the heading;
		otherwise:
			deactivate the dir-sprite of the heading;
	if the player is in the sports car:
		now the image-ID of the dir-sprite of outside is the unvisited image of the dir-sprite of outside;
	follow the window-drawing rules for the graphics-window.[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2973&start=10#p20826
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Line Breaks, Line Breaks, Line Breaks
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-08 18:56:09

[quote]Had to get home from work to prove to myself that I didn't dream this.[/quote]

You're right, and my answer (about hitting return inside a quoted string) was wrong. This is both more complicated and buggier than I understood.

The case I was thinking of is this:

[code]
When play begins:
	say "Alpha.
	
Beta.";
[/code]

If you do this, you'll get a paragraph break (two line breaks) between "Alpha" and "Beta", with no indentation. This is probably what you want. However, it's not what the IDE editor naturally does -- it autoindents when you hit Enter, so you wind up with this:

[code]
When play begins:
	say "Alpha.
	
	Beta.";
[/code]

This was your original complaint, and I misunderstood it. Sorry about that. I was thinking only about the behavior of the compiler, not of the editor. If you go back and delete the indentation before "Beta", you get back to the correct case.

The other reason I was confused was that I had never noticed the behavior of the compiler with a *single* line break. As you note, it collapses the line break *and* any associated indentation into a single space character. That's these cases:

[code]
When play begins:
	say "Alpha.
	One.";
	say "Alpha.
Two.";
[/code]

I don't know why it converts the line break to a space -- I'd expect it to keep it. But given that it does, it certainly makes sense to drop the indentation, and it should be doing that for the double-line-break case too.

(In fact there's still something hinky going on under the covers. In these latter cases, the I7 compiler is generating I6 string constants which contain literal tab and newline characters -- though not both at the same time, which is even hinkier. These characters then get ironed out into spaces by the *I6* compiler. The result is valid, but the I7 compiler really should be handling it all and not passing the buck.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2427&start=10#p20827
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Glimmr sizing and alignment standards?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-08-08 19:00:09

Oops--the code is missing a command to activate the sprite:

[code]Carry out looking (this is the compass rose updating rule):
	repeat with heading running through directions:
		let place be the room heading from the location;
		if place is a room and place is compass-ready:
			if place is unvisited:
				now the image-ID of the dir-sprite of the heading is the unvisited image of the dir-sprite of the heading;
			otherwise:
				now the image-ID of the dir-sprite of the heading is the visited image of the dir-sprite of the heading;
			activate the dir-sprite of the heading;
		otherwise:
			deactivate the dir-sprite of the heading;
	if the player is in the sports car:
		now the image-ID of the dir-sprite of outside is the unvisited image of the dir-sprite of outside;
		activate the dir-sprite of outside;
	follow the window-drawing rules for the graphics-window.[/code]

That should do it.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2973&start=10#p20828
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Line Breaks, Line Breaks, Line Breaks
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-08 20:11:44

I filed <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=715">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=715</a> , which repeats this analysis in tedious detail.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2951&start=0#p20830
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parchment-transcript hosting
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-08-08 21:12:16

PM

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2986&start=0#p20831
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: How to make it differentiate similar actions.
User: HulkHandsome / DateTime: 2011-08-09 00:11:18

Hello again,

I've found myself in a pickle! I have the following two actions:

2Drawing is an action applying to one topic and one thing.
Understand "draw [text] on [something]" as 2Drawing.
Instead of 2Drawing, end the game saying "Blah blah".

1Drawing is an action applying to one topic.
Understand "draw [text]" as 1Drawing.
Instead of 1Drawing, end the game saying "Blah blah".

Problem is, it can't tell the difference between these. For example, I say "draw pants on cat", when a cat cannot be seen. It should say "You can see no such thing", following the rules of the first action. Instead, it interprets it all as text, and I get the 1Drawing end game result. So, the problem is that it lets the player draw on things that do not exist.

Is there a way around this/better way of doing this in general?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2986&start=0#p20832
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: How to make it differentiate similar actions.
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-09 03:29:12

I'm not sure if there's a way around it using only action definitions. I expect someone who knows more than I will immediately come and say there is shortly after this post of mine, but I can have my fun before that happens [emote];)[/emote]

Here's a system I worked out for differentiating various kinds of drawing.

The main thing it adds to yours to catch out attempts to draw (words) on (something not present) is by checking if the player typed the word 'on' somewhere in their command. If they did, we could then use text matching to isolate the useful bit of what they typed (the description of the artwork, presumably) from the non-useful bit (the thing they named that isn't present.) I haven't implemented that yet, just the framework to catch it.

Try this demo and say 'test me'. I gave the player a notepad so they can draw stuff without naming a surface. Also I added a command to try to 'draw on' something, but without saying what to draw.

[code]There is a room called Studio.

the cat is an animal in Studio.

player holds a notepad.

the wall is a fixed in place thing in the studio.

Drawing it on is an action applying to one topic and one thing.
Understand "draw [text] on [something]" as Drawing it on.

Carry out Drawing it on:
	say "You draw [topic understood] on [the second noun]."

Vague drawing is an action applying to one topic.
Understand "draw [text]" as Vague drawing.

Drawing on something is an action applying to one thing.
Understand "draw on [something]" as drawing on something.

Carry out Drawing on something:
	say "You draw on [the noun]."
	
Carry out Vague drawing:
	if player's command includes "on":
		say "If you read this message, the player tried to draw on something that ain't here, so now we need to write some code to deal with that.";
	otherwise:
		say "You draw [topic understood] in your notepad."
		
Test me with "draw a face on cat / draw face on wall / draw face on cupboard / draw a big face / draw on the wall / draw on the cupboard".[/code]

Edit PS - Also, at this most basic level of checking for the presence of 'on', the wrong thing will happen if you type something like 'draw a man on a skateboard on the wall.' Technically that should work because the wall is real, but the two 'on's will trip it. So if you want that kind of thing, you'd have to get into more sophisticated text matching.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2986&start=0#p20833
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: How to make it differentiate similar actions.
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-09 03:45:59

You could make the action apply to anything, even if it's not in the same location.

[code]Drawing room is a room. The pet room is north of drawing room. The cat is in the pet room. 

Drawing it on is an action applying to one topic and one visible thing.

Understand "draw [text] on [any thing]" as drawing it on.
Understand "draw [text]" as drawing it on.

[note that you don't need a separate action for the case where the noun is omitted.]
Rule for supplying a missing second noun while drawing on:
	say "You draw [topic understood] in the air.";
	stop the action.
	
Check drawing on when the player can not see the second noun:
	say "[The second noun] is not here." instead.
	
Report drawing on:
	say "You draw [topic understood] on [the second noun]."
	
Test me with "draw pants/draw pants on cat/n/draw pants on cat".[/code]
You'd probably need to tweak this so that the action doesn't react to things the player hasn't seen yet. Eric Eve's Epistemology extension helps with this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2975&start=20#p20834
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "Invisiclues" effect in a PDF file
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-08-09 04:26:02

[quote="Robert Rothman"]That's an interesting system, and one that I haven't seen before.  I suppose the advantage (in addition to minimizing spoilers) is that it makes the player do a certain amount of work to get a hint, which discourages doing so lightly.[/quote]

In Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom, I opted for the "CryptoClues" approach for exactly that reason. Originally I was going to do in-game hints of the usual "Solid Gold" variety (and the Glulx version does have that), but decided that a simple cypher would add a nice little gentle, physical step that would keep things easy and move the hints to the PDF where they wouldn't suck up game-file space ... The CryptoClues aren't a real cryptogram; just a simple one-letter-off cypher that can easily be "decoded" without referring to anything. This keeps it super-easy but with just a touch of effort involved (and of course, I double-spaced the type to make it easy to doodle the solution right on the printout).

(and the labor on my part was almost nil, because while the text looks "enciphered" in the PDF, it really isn't at all ... [low chuckle]) ...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2986&start=0#p20835
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: How to make it differentiate similar actions.
User: HulkHandsome / DateTime: 2011-08-09 05:30:53

Thanks guys! I went with the first option, it seems to work fine for my purposes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2987&start=0#p20836
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Secret Doors by Andrew Owen
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-08-09 06:46:45

I am now having a problem that does not appear to be directly related to the Extension Secret Doors, however that's where I am:

[quote]Section 9 - Hidden Door from G5 to G4

The Indian Passage Door is a secret door.
The Indian Passage Door is north of G52875 and south of G42875.

The Lever is a kind of secret switch. The Lever can be switched on or switched off, it is switched off. 

The Old Cavern walls are scenery. "Sharp cliffs surround you and stalactites drip from the ceiling, giving the cavern a surrealistic feeling."; The cavern walls are in g52875..

Instead of searching or examining the Old Cavern Walls:
	now the Lever is revealed;
	say "In a gap between two rocks you discover a lever.".
	
Instead of pulling the lever which is revealed for the first time:
	now the passage door is revealed;
	now the passage door is open;
	say "As you pull the lever, a secret door opens, revealing a secret passage!"[/quote]

This is what I7 is telling me:
[quote]In Part 5 - Underground Caverns, Chapter 5, Section 9 - Hidden Door from G5 to G4:

Problem. You wrote 'now the Lever is revealed'  : but this is not explicit enough, and should set out definite relationships between specific things, like 'now the cat is in the bag', not something more elusive like 'now the cat is carried by a woman.' (Which woman? That's the trouble.)

 See the manual: 8.11 > Now...[/quote]

As far as I can tell, by reading the documentation (and looking inside the Extension) I am not doing anything wrong -- but apparently, I7 thinks I am!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2988&start=0#p20837
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Possible to change end game message?
User: HulkHandsome / DateTime: 2011-08-09 07:10:52

Just a quick one,

I'm wondering if it's possible to change the end game message. To be specific, this one:

"Would you like to RESTART, RESTORE a saved game or QUIT?"

All I want to do is add "UNDO" on that list to make the game more accessible to those who aren't as familiar with IF as some of us. Is this possible?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2989&start=0#p20838
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I want to kill a player if they try to eat a backdrop...
User: jkfriday / DateTime: 2011-08-09 07:11:02

...but the backdrop cannot be taken. I have a custom message for them trying to take it, and this is overriden if they try to eat it ((first taking the sand) "That's hardly portable.") Will this need to be a special rule?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2989&start=0#p20839
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I want to kill a player if they try to eat a backdrop...
User: HulkHandsome / DateTime: 2011-08-09 07:16:43

I did something similar (allowing the player to eat a room) and just did a rather elaborate workaround. I think it would work for you too, especially if it just kills the player which eliminates dealing with any aftermath in the gameplay.

Actually, this simpler solution could work:

before eating backdrop: say "You're dead!"; end the game; stop the action.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2989&start=0#p20840
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I want to kill a player if they try to eat a backdrop...
User: jkfriday / DateTime: 2011-08-09 07:20:42

That worked like magic, thank you! First time using "before", it didn't even enter my mind [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2988&start=0#p20841
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Possible to change end game message?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-09 07:25:43

I believe that UNDO is already one of the default options, so you don't have to do anything at all. But to learn more about changing the end game message, see examples 370 and 371 in section 17.36 of the documentation.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2988&start=0#p20842
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Possible to change end game message?
User: HulkHandsome / DateTime: 2011-08-09 07:29:03

Oh, I'm aware it's already in there, it's just that some of the people who have tested my game didn't know an UNDO command existed so I wanted to point it out when they died. Saves them a lot of bother, and I don't want to make my game a "save/reload/save/reload" experience.

I'll check those bits of the documentation!

EDIT: Oh I see, turns out I just need to update my inform...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2914&start=10#p20843
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What Do You Think of This Strategy?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-09 07:44:42

My reactions were:

1. They were joking

[spoiler]2. They suspected the authors were trying to pull a double-fakeout, where you think the secret is that it's a woman, but actually, it's not. Which I think would be kind of clever... especially if it ended up in a makeout anyway.

More likely, I think that Zug is Cnan in disguise. But I haven't read everything yet, so maybe that won't fit later.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2987&start=0#p20844
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Secret Doors by Andrew Owen
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-08-09 07:47:56

This is a common mistake and although the error message is pretty explicit about what you did wrong, it's one of those things you can stare at and still miss. Your problem is here:
[quote="wgm003"]The Lever is [b]a kind[/b] of secret switch.[/quote]
You've created a [i]kind[/i] of secret switch (called a lever), but not an actual lever [i]object[/i]. If you only need one lever, change it to:[code]The Lever is a secret switch in G52875.[/code]If you have a bunch of levers:[code]A lever is a kind of secret switch. The brown lever is a lever in G52875.[/code]Either way, you need to actually place the lever in whatever room it's supposed to be, which it looks like you also forgot to do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2988&start=0#p20845
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Possible to change end game message?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-09 07:50:46

Hm, the message I get is "Would you like to RESTART, RESTORE a saved game, QUIT or UNDO the last command?" If you'd like to draw even more attention to the UNDO option, maybe you can do this?

[code]After printing the player's obituary: say "If the ending wasn't satisfactory, you can UNDO your last turn and try something else. This game should never put you in a pickle that you can't get out of by undoing one command." [/code]

(You'd have to do some work to get the line spacing to come out right; it might depend on whether you have a score in the game.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2988&start=0#p20846
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Possible to change end game message?
User: HulkHandsome / DateTime: 2011-08-09 07:55:06

After reading the documentation you sent me, it turns out I'm just using an older version of Inform 7 that doesn't do this automatically! So thanks for bringing that to my attention... hopefully the rest of the game still works in the new version!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2951&start=0#p20847
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parchment-transcript hosting
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-09 08:07:21

For anyone else who needed more background, I'm referring to Juhana's tool, located here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://code.google.com/p/parchment-transcript/">http://code.google.com/p/parchment-transcript/</a>

I'd love to see big sites like ifdb implementing something like this, so authors of just about any game can look at transcripts of people playing their games, if they wish to have that set up. Maybe not ifdb, though, because it's more useful before release than after.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2973&start=10#p20848
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Line Breaks, Line Breaks, Line Breaks
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-09 08:14:02

[quote="zarf"][code]
When play begins:
	say "Alpha.
	One.";
	say "Alpha.
Two.";
[/code][/quote]
I've gotten into the habit of doing things this way:

[code]When play begins:
	say "The comma
[line break]belongs in this haiku, or
[line break]it doesn't."

When play begins:
	say "There's a paragraph about one thing.
[paragraph break]And there's a paragraph about something else."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=0#p20849
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-09 08:30:45

[quote="ultimate"]I bet this year is going to be like every year. Authors just upload some shit for fun, not even thinking about winning. And IFComp reviewers go all serious and bitch about everything, just to have something to write on their blogs. BAH![/quote]
I suppose this is satirical? If not: if you don't want your game to be subjected to serious criticism, [i]do not enter a competition[/i].

(That being said, there are of course limits to what constitutes serious criticism. Poster recently linked on his blog to a review that stated "author, go kill yourself". That is obviously unacceptable, and not the kind of treatment you sign up for or should have to endure when you enter a competition.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2973&start=10#p20850
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Line Breaks, Line Breaks, Line Breaks
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-09 09:45:32

I just don't use literal line breaks inside strings at all, which is why I wasn't up to speed on how the compiler treats them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2989&start=0#p20851
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I want to kill a player if they try to eat a backdrop...
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-09 09:46:29

Alternatively you could lace the backdrops with delicious poison, for a much slower and more romantic death.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2990&start=0#p20852
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Fleshed out character vs. AFGNCAAP
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-09 11:24:26

How do you decide who the main character is?  How fleshed out do you try to go - do you provide a full background?  Motivations?  Intimate thought processes?  What's your thought process like when you create your IF protagonist(s)?

Do you find one or the other easier to deal with as a player or writer?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2989&start=0#p20853
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I want to kill a player if they try to eat a backdrop...
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-09 11:25:46

It might be better kept secret that you want to kill players. Otherwise, they might not play your games.  [emote]:twisted:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2984&start=0#p20854
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Time Flies
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-09 11:27:11

So they don't like bananas?

Maybe they're like button flies.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2987&start=0#p20855
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Secret Doors by Andrew Owen
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-09 11:31:38

In other threads I've learned that "[b]a[/b] lever is in G52875" is not sufficient to create an instance of the lever kind, but "[b]one[/b] lever is in G52875" will work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2984&start=0#p20856
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Time Flies
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-09 11:56:29

Having done a bit more research, I have learned that time flies, like many flying insects, prefer to live near bodies of water.  However, rather than choosing rivers or lakes, these particular bugs make their habitat in bodies of water bounded on two sides by land masses, and opening into the ocean on the other two sides.  Hence, it is said that "Time flies like a narrows."

Edit:  Incidentally, near one such body of water, there is an entire industry devoted to catching the time flies, from which the local inhabitants are able to derive a pigment used for coloring cloth.  That body of water is known as the Dyer's Straits.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2990&start=0#p20857
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Fleshed out character vs. AFGNCAAP
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-09 12:00:27

I think the term "AFGNCAAP" is unnecessarily cumbersome.  In light of this, and recognizing that in any event there is a certain vagueness about exactly what defines (or doesn't define) this type of character, I propose that we instead adopt the term "Featureless Undeveloped Character (Kinda)."  This makes for a much shorter and more elegant acronym.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2991&start=0#p20858
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Combat-related extensions?
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-08-09 12:11:39

As a little coding exercise, I've begun writing up a cheesy, old-school, Zork/Colossal Cave-esque kind of thing, based around gathering up treasures, buying/selling equipment, and fighting generic D&D-ish baddies (trolls, kobolds, etc.). Which brings me to my request: Could someone point me towards a combat-related extension for Inform 6? Or, if such a thing doesn't exist, maybe something else (documentation,  a source code, or something) related to hack-and-slashery? Anything will do, really, I'm just looking for a way to get started when it comes to wielding things, sharp weapons vs. bludgeons, hit points, and whatnot. Any help at all with this would be thoroughly appreciated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2990&start=0#p20859
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Fleshed out character vs. AFGNCAAP
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-09 12:16:20

As a player, I generally prefer fleshed-out, strongly-characterised protagonists to AFGNCAAP, but it really depends on the nature of the work and the sort of audience you have in mind. Strong protagonists generally correspond to better writing: they give you more to work with, and they help provide motivation and direction for the player. (If you know that the PC is a scumbag, you're more likely to try scumbaggy actions.) The major risk with a strongly-defined PC is that the player will react badly to them: a lot of people strongly dislike playing unpleasant characters, and a significant proportion dislike any characterisation of the PC whatsoever. But a lot of players will roll their eyes at AFGNCAAPs, or at least take them as strong indicators of weak writing and half-assed implementation.

If you don't intentionally characterise a protagonist, they may become characterised unintentionally -- which often means that they'll come across to the player in ways you didn't intend, and which may conflict with other things you're trying to do. Even if you think you're doing an AFGNCAAP, it's worth thinking about what effects the rest of your game might have on implied character.

It's considerably harder to do strong PC characterisation in sandboxy or self-definition-type games (Choice Of Games, Blue Lacuna).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2991&start=0#p20860
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat-related extensions?
User: ElliotM / DateTime: 2011-08-09 12:19:12

Most extensions are listed on inform7.com, so I would bookmark that site.

One for combat and another for magic: <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/game/">http://inform7.com/extensions/game/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2991&start=0#p20861
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat-related extensions?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-09 12:25:36

Victor has an ATTACK extension that isn't on the main website.  I think the current version is 3.  

[url]http://gamingphilosopher.blogspot.com/2011/07/inform-attack-version-3-released.html[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2984&start=0#p20862
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Time Flies
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-09 12:28:58

I think that the "narrows" theory has largely been disproven; the narrows are correlated with a higher rate of recreation than lakes or streams alone, and time flies flock to the pheromones released by the skin during pleasurable activities, or as Dr. Risenbach, MD PhD Entomology put it, "Time flies when you're having fun".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2984&start=0#p20863
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Time Flies
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-09 12:53:14

One of the legends of the time flies tells of a time fly named Anne who befriended a gnome, also named Anne, who lived near the narrows. The legend tells that they were exploring near the narrows once when the gnome slipped near the bank and was hanging precipitously. Even a gnome is too heavy for a time fly to lift, but the time fly cleverly looped a dandelion rope to a heavy rock and dragged it to where her gnome friend could grab it and pull herself up, or as the legend records: Time Anne tied weights for Gnome Anne.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2984&start=0#p20864
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Time Flies
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-09 13:02:40

Yes, its true that time flies can be loyal friends.  However, they can also be quite nasty to those with whom they are not on friendly terms.

For example, the Greek hero Achilles, when he was young, once swatted away a time fly when he was playing near the narrows.  The insect took its revenge by biting the young Achilles neer the back of his foot, causing an injury which would plague him until the end of his life.  Thus, we are told that "time wounds all heels."


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2964&start=0#p20865
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: 1st post
User: Nicôle / DateTime: 2011-08-09 13:21:50

[quote="Trumgottist"]*Looks at the new stranger.*[/quote] *Puts on a brave face.*  [emote];)[/emote] [quote="Eleas"]Howdy, Stranger. [emote]:)[/emote] *tips hat*[/quote] Yay!   [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2969&start=0#p20866
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: u know all that dancing at the beginning of the cosby sh
User: Nicôle / DateTime: 2011-08-09 13:23:51

[quote="ezfreemann"]oooooohhhhh!

thanks!

 [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote][/quote]Your welcome!  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2984&start=10#p20867
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Time Flies
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-09 13:30:13

[quote="matt w"]Time Anne tied weights for Gnome Anne.[/quote]
And this, of course, was shortened to the term "gnomon."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2991&start=0#p20868
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat-related extensions?
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-08-09 13:33:16

Inform 7's all well and good, but I asked for extensions for 6. Do these only exist for Inform 7?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2992&start=0#p20869
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Adjacent Rooms
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-09 13:33:32

Despite having read the documentation about adjacent rooms, I still don't get how to solve my simple problem: I have two adjacent rooms, and I want to show persons present in room 2 in the description of room 1. And vice versa. And the same fro room X and Y. So what I'd need is a simple way to display people in certain rooms, which exceeds my current abilities to deal with room description. Is there a way to insert a function call within a room description passing the target room as a parameter and returning nothing or a string like "person A" or "person A and person B", or how should I solve this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2968&start=0#p20870
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: seeing another room...  I'm stumped!
User: Nicôle / DateTime: 2011-08-09 13:34:24

[emote]:o[/emote] Whoa, that's a lot of ways to look into another room!   [emote]:shock:[/emote] 

I'm going to try everything you guys shared, I hope I have enough summer left!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2992&start=0#p20871
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Adjacent Rooms
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-08-09 13:40:10

I may have misunderstood your question, and I didn't test this, but it seems to me that something like "the list of people in the parlor" should work: "[if a person is in the parlor]From here, you can see [the list of people in the parlor].[end if]"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2991&start=0#p20872
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat-related extensions?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-09 13:40:57

ATTACK only exists in Inform 7. I don't know if there are any Inform 6 extensions with this goal, but if there are, you should be able to find them in the [url=http://www.inform-fiction.org/extensions/complete.html]complete list of Inform 6 extensions[/url]. (A quick search for "combat", "attack", "dungeon" and "RPG" didn't give any hits, though.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2992&start=0#p20873
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Adjacent Rooms
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-09 13:47:22

You know what I love about this community? I posted my problem, just checked if there's any news on [url=http://meanifreviews.blogspot.com/]Mean IF Reviews[/url], came back and found exactly what I needed. I'm loving it! Thanks a lot!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2969&start=0#p20874
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: u know all that dancing at the beginning of the cosby sh
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-09 13:47:44

You mean this?
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UExkqbziE90">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UExkqbziE90</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2427&start=10#p20875
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Glimmr sizing and alignment standards?
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-08-09 13:48:53

[quote="ektemple"]Check the code I originally posted. The stuff about the car is not part of the loop. It has to come after the loop, so that it can overwrite what the loop decides on for the outside connection.
[/quote]

I did have it the right way in one of my attempts, but not in the code I posted. Sorry about that.

[quote="ektemple"]Oops--the code is missing a command to activate the sprite:
[/quote]

Ah-ha! That explains it. Good news, it compiles! Bad news... it still does not display "out" as a direction when inside of the sports car. I have no idea why.. I used the quote button here on the boards to grab your last code and post it into my project to prevent spacing errors or typos. My object is named exactly how yours is.. "sports car". It just refuses to display the direction. 

Any ideas? I'm sorry to keep pressing on with this small detail or feature, but it's fairly important to a scene/puzzle in my game.

EDIT: A friend of mine I was talking about this with suggested a work-around of just creating a "temp room" in place of the car (since at this point the car is immobile). I'm thinking with enough tinkering I could make something like that work if all else fails.. but getting the direction sprites to appear at will would be the most satisfying.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2993&start=0#p20876
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: a question about motivation
User: Nicôle / DateTime: 2011-08-09 13:55:56

Okay, I'm new to this so don't make fun of me.  :p  

What do you do after you spent hours working on a story one day and then the weekend comes along or something fun like that and when you try to start again on your story you just don't feel like working on it anymore?  I don't mean I ran out of ideas, or writers block, but I mean I just look at what I did and I'm all like, hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm........... lots of black on white blurring to grey.....and then the TV starts to get interesting even though its only the History channel [emote]:o[/emote] or I'm like texting my friends to come get me and lets go do something.   [emote]8-)[/emote] 

I thought this would be so easy, but sometimes I feel like I'm at school and my Dad gets all excited and gives me Inform 7 homework...  Geeez!   [emote]:shock:[/emote]  

I was so into it last week and I didn't do anything this weekend and my story seems boring now and I haven't really started writing it yet.   Prolly why I'm writing this huh.  Maybe I'll delete it now....   Hmmmmmmm........  Nah.   [emote];)[/emote] 

Seriously though.  What do you do for motivation?  Please tell me somethign helpful!!!  Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2992&start=0#p20877
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Adjacent Rooms
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-09 13:57:16

Are you looking for something like this?

[code]The Living Room is a room.  The Front Yard is a room.  "Roses bloom in neat rows along the path up to the house."
The Bathroom is east from the Living Room.

Bob is a person.  Pete is a person.


Viewability relates one room to another (called the adjacent place).  

The verb to be viewable from implies the viewability relation.

Definition: a room is viewable if it is viewable from a room.

The Living Room is viewable from The Front Yard.
The description of the Living Room is usually "Your living room."

The front windows are scenery in the Living Room.  The front windows are plural-named.  The description of the front windows is usually "Through the windows, you can see the garden.  [Description of the Front Yard]  [Important events in the adjacent place of the Living Room].".

After looking in a viewable room:
	say "[important events in the adjacent place of the location]."
	
To say important events in (target - a room):
	let N be the printed name of the target in lower case;
	if there is a person in target:
		say "[A random person in target] is walking in the [N]";
	otherwise:
		say "All seems quiet in the [N]";
		
Every turn:
	if a random chance of 1 in 2 succeeds:
		now Bob is in the Front Yard;
	if a random chance of 1 in 2 succeeds:
		now Pete is in the Front Yard;
		
Test me with "l / x windows / l / x windows / l";[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2994&start=0#p20878
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: no emoticon for 'sticking out tongue'
User: Nicôle / DateTime: 2011-08-09 13:58:10

Okay I just noticed theres no tongue sticking out icon. :p  Somebodys gotta fix that right away cuz it restricts my range of expression!  Trade the light bulb or one of the evil guys, we don't need two of them.  :p :p :p :p :p :p :p :p :p 

[emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2991&start=0#p20879
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat-related extensions?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-09 13:59:12

Gak.  Sorry about that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2893&start=0#p20880
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Re-Triggering a Scene within Questions Extension
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-09 14:03:43

I know this is not a very common problem, but does anyone either have a clue about this, or does anyone know a different solution to using multiple choice communication trees within Inform 7?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2969&start=0#p20881
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: u know all that dancing at the beginning of the cosby sh
User: Nicôle / DateTime: 2011-08-09 14:03:45

[quote="RealNC"]You mean this?
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UExkqbziE90">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UExkqbziE90</a>[/quote]OMG!!!!!!!  [emote]:shock:[/emote] 

That is so-o-o funny!   [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

But for real, don't do that any more, cuz I'm like, so in YouTube recovery!   [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2993&start=0#p20882
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: a question about motivation
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-09 14:08:31

[quote="Nicôle"]and my story seems boring now and I haven't really started writing it yet[/quote]
Well, it's better to work out that your story's boring early on, rather than after you've put a ton of work into it. The first things that people write in IF do tend to come out pretty boring: we call those My Apartment games, because often the first thing people implement is their boring apartment or dorm-room. Lots of people have done this, so you shouldn't worry too much about it; you can always start again on a project that interests you more.

If you think that there really is some good stuff in your project and you're just tired, there are various things you can do.  You can take a break from the project; when you come back to it you'll be better able to judge whether it's worth keeping up with. If it's in a reasonably playable state, you can send it out for alpha-testing and get second opinions about what needs to be done, although it doesn't sound as if you're at that stage yet. You can steal the parts of the game that you like and put them in a new piece.

Or, if you're pretty sure that you've got something worth working on and you're just demotivated, you can tough it out and grind through it. (This is a lot easier to do if you have a good idea of how much work remains on a project.) Sometimes this is necessary; sometimes it's a total waste of time. Writing IF [i]is[/i] pretty hard; you need to develop a lot of different skills. But it can be really rewarding.

The other thing that's good for motivation, I find, is to play (or think about, or write about) some good IF.

(Also, grain of salt; I'm the last person qualified to give advice about motivation. I've abandoned countless projects, and only finished small ones.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2993&start=0#p20883
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: a question about motivation
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-09 14:13:26

Well, I personally do the worst thing one can do when it comes to efficiency: I'm working on six games simultanously. Used to be three, but I had these good ideas for decent plots and wrote done some summaries on paper and it it turned out one could indeed make a game out of it and I started to program just one single room and now... I'm always working on whichever game I want to work on most, which makes working on it seem less like work. Makes it unlikely I'll ever finish one, but I'm doing it coz I enjoy making up stories and putting them into code, not coz I desperately need to enter a competition over the next few weeks.

Further more, finding someone to give my game stubs a look motivates me further. People actually running through my creations. 

And when the sun is shining, I'm going to beach clubs with my friends. It's raining so often here I still find enough time for programming [emote];-)[/emote] Especially since I rate programming (or writing on a plot, which is part of it) to have a higher entertainment value than watching TV. So if I'm alone at home instead of partying with friends, I'm programming.

That's just me, of course.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2893&start=0#p20884
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Re-Triggering a Scene within Questions Extension
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-08-09 14:14:07

You should try contacting the author of the extension directly. 

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2992&start=0#p20885
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Adjacent Rooms
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-09 14:19:17

Wow. That's the elegant solution. I'll try it, for I have quite some rooms where I want to apply this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2993&start=0#p20886
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: a question about motivation
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-09 14:24:18

I think some people try to do a certain amount of work each day, even if that means forcing themselves to do so.  For me, that doesn't work too well.  If I reach a point where I just don't have the drive to continue, I'll take a break for a few days or maybe a week.  Then, I'll try to come to the work with a clearer head and, hopefully, will be able to make more progress than if I'd tried to force it.  Bottom line is you've got to find the approach that works for you.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2993&start=0#p20887
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: a question about motivation
User: Nicôle / DateTime: 2011-08-09 14:28:38

Wow guys, I'm so flattered that you wrote so much good advice, I didn't think anyone would take me seriously.  You make me want to do well.  [emote]:)[/emote] 

[quote="Grueslayer"]Further more, finding someone to give my game stubs a look motivates me further. [/quote] (whats game stubs?  I googled it and only got confused...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2994&start=0#p20888
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: no emoticon for 'sticking out tongue'
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-08-09 14:30:28

It's to prevent you from falling down and biting it off.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2911&start=10#p20889
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Nonexistent comp
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-08-09 14:32:37

[quote="duodave"][quote="David Whyld"]I'm very interested by this idea. Are we allowed to discuss the games that don't exist or would that be in breach of the rules (which also don't exist)? I also want to know when the results won't be announced.[/quote]


No.[/quote]

This is still hilarious to me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2994&start=0#p20890
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: no emoticon for 'sticking out tongue'
User: Nicôle / DateTime: 2011-08-09 14:33:56

[quote="Jizaboz"]It's to prevent you from falling down and biting it off.[/quote]Whatever! :p

Edit:  how else am I supposed to make sure ppl know I'm bein snarky!?   Maybe a comment? [Note: In the previous statement, this poster was being snarky.]



See?  Much better to just do a :p

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2993&start=0#p20891
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: a question about motivation
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-09 14:37:36

Games with four rooms, no described items and one autistic NPC which are supposed to be extended into masterpieces of interactive fiction over the next five years.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2427&start=20#p20892
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Glimmr sizing and alignment standards?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-08-09 14:40:22

Are you typing "LOOK" after getting into the car when you're testing this? Remember that the compass only updates during the looking action, and that entering a vehicle does [b]not[/b] auto-trigger the looking action.

If that's the problem you're seeing, you'll want to either trigger the looking action or the compass updating rule when the player enters a vehicle. Which you choose depends on the textual effect you're going for.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2993&start=0#p20893
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: a question about motivation
User: Nicôle / DateTime: 2011-08-09 14:41:34

[quote="Grueslayer"]Games with four rooms, no described items and one autistic NPC which are supposed to be extended into masterpieces of interactive fiction over the next five years.[/quote]lol  Got it.  [emote]:)[/emote]  

I have exactly one game stub then.  No, two, if you count the homework Dad made me do.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2857&start=0#p20894
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: food for thought
User: Nicôle / DateTime: 2011-08-09 14:48:38

I have a great solution for overcoming perfectionism.  I'll share it with everybody when I'm done working on it. 





hee hee!  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2427&start=20#p20895
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Glimmr sizing and alignment standards?
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-08-09 15:13:33

Oh yeah, I assumed that it wouldn't "refresh" until I looked. I've been doing that on every test. It just refuses to display.

This is a real head-scratcher. I figured it would be an easy feature  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2427&start=20#p20896
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Glimmr sizing and alignment standards?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-08-09 15:19:14

It works fine for me. Here's the full code:

[spoiler][code]Include Glimmr Canvas-Based Drawing by Erik Temple.
Include Glimmr Graphic Hyperlinks by Erik Temple.

Figure of North is the file "North.png". Figure of Northwest is the file "Northwest.png". Figure of West is the file "West.png". Figure of South is the file "South.png". Figure of Southwest is the file "Southwest.png". Figure of Southeast is the file "Southeast.png". Figure of East is the file "East.png". Figure of Northeast is the file "Northeast.png". Figure of Up is the file "Up.png". Figure of Down is the file "Down.png". Figure of Inside is the file "Inside.png". Figure of Outside is the file "Outside.png". Figure of North Unvisited is the file "North Unvisited.png". Figure of Northwest Unvisited is the file "Northwest Unvisited.png". Figure of West Unvisited is the file "West Unvisited.png". Figure of South Unvisited is the file "South Unvisited.png". Figure of Southwest Unvisited is the file "Southwest Unvisited.png". Figure of Southeast Unvisited is the file "Southeast Unvisited.png". Figure of East Unvisited is the file "East Unvisited.png". Figure of Northeast Unvisited is the file "Northeast Unvisited.png". Figure of Up Unvisited is the file "Up Unvisited.png". Figure of Down Unvisited is the file "Down Unvisited.png". Figure of Inside Unvisited is the file "Inside Unvisited.png". Figure of Outside Unvisited is the file "Outside Unvisited.png". Figure of Compass Rose is the file "Compass.png".


Table of Common Color Values (continued)
glulx color value	assigned number
g-SubtleBlue	13755114
g-Creme	16249576


The inventory-window is a text-buffer g-window spawned by the main-window. The measurement of the inventory-window is 40. The back-colour is g-Creme.

The graphics-window is a graphics g-window spawned by the inventory-window. The position is g-placeabove. The measurement is 60. The graphics-window is g-graphlinked.

The graphics-canvas is a g-canvas. 
The associated canvas of the graphics-window is the graphics-canvas.
The associated canvas of a g-element is usually the graphics-canvas.

The back-colour of the graphics-window is g-SubtleBlue. The background image of the graphics-canvas is the Figure of Compass Rose.


Window-drawing rule for the inventory-window (this is the construct inventory rule):
	move focus to inventory-window, clearing the window;
	try taking inventory;
	return to main screen.
	
Every turn when the inventory-window is g-present: follow the window-drawing rules for the inventory-window.



A direction-sprite is a kind of sprite. 

A direction-sprite has a figure name called the visited image. A direction-sprite has a figure name called the unvisited image.

The graphlink status of a direction-sprite is g-active.

Some direction-sprites are defined by the Table of Direction Sprites.

Table of Direction Sprites
direction-sprite	visited image	unvisited image	origin	linked replacement-command
north-sprite	Figure of North	Figure of North Unvisited	{448, 103}	"go north"
northeast-sprite	Figure of Northeast	Figure of Northeast Unvisited	{688, 193}	"go northeast"
northwest-sprite	Figure of Northwest	Figure of Northwest Unvisited	{146, 196}	"go northwest"
south-sprite	Figure of South	Figure of South Unvisited	{466, 836}	"go south"
southeast-sprite	Figure of Southeast	Figure of Southeast Unvisited	{702, 723}	"go southeast"
southwest-sprite	Figure of Southwest	Figure of Southwest Unvisited	{150, 719}	"go southwest"
east-sprite	Figure of East	Figure of East Unvisited	{827, 465}	"go east"
west-sprite	Figure of West	Figure of West Unvisited	{76, 469}	"go west"
up-sprite	Figure of Up	Figure of Up Unvisited	{472, 1052}	"go up"
down-sprite	Figure of Down	Figure of Down Unvisited	{456, 1221}	"go down"
in-sprite	Figure of Inside	Figure of Inside Unvisited	{388, 1126}	"go inside"
out-sprite	Figure of Outside	Figure of Outside Unvisited	{558, 1138}	"go outside"


A direction has a direction-sprite called the dir-sprite.

When play begins:
	link sprites with directions;
	if glulx graphics is supported:
		open up the graphics-window.

To link sprites with directions:
	let count be 1;
	repeat with heading running through directions:
		choose row (count) in the Table of Direction Sprites;
		now the dir-sprite of the heading is the direction-sprite entry;
		now the image-ID of the direction-sprite entry is the visited image entry;
		increment count.


Carry out looking (this is the compass rose updating rule):
	repeat with heading running through directions:
		let place be the room heading from the location;
		if place is a room and place is compass-ready:
			if place is unvisited:
				now the image-ID of the dir-sprite of the heading is the unvisited image of the dir-sprite of the heading;
			otherwise:
				now the image-ID of the dir-sprite of the heading is the visited image of the dir-sprite of the heading;
			activate the dir-sprite of the heading;
		otherwise:
			deactivate the dir-sprite of the heading;
	if the player is in the sports car:
		now the image-ID of the dir-sprite of outside is the visited image of the dir-sprite of the outside;
		activate the dir-sprite of outside;
	follow the window-drawing rules for the graphics-window.
	
Definition: A room is compass-ready:
	if it is lit, yes;
	if in darkness, no;
	[otherwise] yes.

The Garage is a room. The sports car is a vehicle in the garage.

The Kitchen is east of the garage. Outdoors is south of the garage.[/code][/spoiler]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2994&start=0#p20897
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: no emoticon for 'sticking out tongue'
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-09 15:36:02

I am [i]not a fan[/i] of these graphical smilies so I am fine with expressing my extended tongue in text—as well as

my tears of joy: :')

my 'so angry my mouth is a zero' face: >:0

my 'nihongo no konnichi wa' face: ^o^

my drooling over the latest celebrity gossip: :O~~~

my disappointment upon discovering my mustache does not suit my nose as well as I hoped: :^{(

my horrifying vampire form: >:[color=#BF0000]F[/color]

et cetera.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2993&start=0#p20898
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: a question about motivation
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-08-09 15:38:40

One of the main things I do to help me finish projects is to do really small projects.  I know that sounds practically tautological, but, seriously, having some "so easy you can finish it in under a day" projects is good for the soul, and will help motivate you to work on the harder and longer-term projects in turn.  

The problem, of course, is that projects always [i]seem[/i] really easy when you're coming up with them and you see all the pieces fitting together in your mind all perfectly.  So an important skill to develop is to recognize what kinds of things are actually quick yet satisfying.  Personally, I keep a text file of silly one-off ideas, that might not be enough to actually write a game around, but could be fun to try to implement.  You might also find inspiration in past [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Speed-IF]Speed-IF[/url] prompts.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2990&start=0#p20899
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Fleshed out character vs. AFGNCAAP
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-08-09 15:55:42

[quote="gravel"]How do you decide who the main character is?[/quote]

I let the game decide for me, basically.

[quote]How fleshed out do you try to go - do you provide a full background?  Motivations?  Intimate thought processes?  What's your thought process like when you create your IF protagonist(s)?[/quote]

Whatever I think the specific game needs.

[quote]Do you find one or the other easier to deal with as a player or writer?[/quote]

I think they're equally easy/difficult.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2993&start=0#p20900
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: a question about motivation
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-08-09 15:56:59

[quote="Nicôle"]Seriously though.  What do you do for motivation?  Please tell me somethign helpful!!!  Thanks.[/quote]

Honestly, I'm motivated most often by games written by others that didn't quite live up to their potential. I become filled with a need to show them how it could have been done [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2952&start=0#p20901
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When is a cutscene OK?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-08-09 16:05:00

Others have touched on versions of these points already, but basically I think a cutscene is just fine provided it either (A) is clearly setting up something fun for the player to sink his teeth into immediately after or (B) feels like a reward of some kind (happy ending, milestone, etc). If it manages (A) and (B) at the same time, so much the better.

And of course, no amount of well-designed functionality can excuse a cutscene from being bland or bloated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2987&start=0#p20902
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Secret Doors by Andrew Owen
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-08-09 16:10:30

The rumbling you hear in the background is me pulling in the last pit I just dug. I think I7 is out to get me. Every time I think I have a slim understanding of the language, another factor jumps up and bites me on the ass! At least now, I think I am beginning to dispel my feelings of paranoia and have started realizing that the language is so complex that it seems to be able to handle most any thought process and when an error does occur it is probably my sending it down the wrong synapse!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2987&start=0#p20903
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Secret Doors by Andrew Owen
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-09 16:15:19

As a rule, I find unnamed instances of a kind of thing to be one of the most confusing aspects of Inform 7.  There are times when they are unavoidable, but I try to use uniquely identified things whenever possible (even if that unique identification is entirely behind the scenes).

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2994&start=0#p20904
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: no emoticon for 'sticking out tongue'
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-08-09 16:31:48

Why not pop on over to the ADRIFT forum ([url]http://forum.adrift.co[/url]). We like smileys there. :-p

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2990&start=0#p20905
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Fleshed out character vs. AFGNCAAP
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-08-09 17:01:08

I just go with the idea as it came to me. Sometimes the idea is a strongly-defined character and the plot arises from that. Sometimes you have the plot first and the character falls out of that. However, I always try to make the protagonist distinctive; that cuts a nice line between the rigors of being strongly-defined and the abyss of the generic character. More detailed characters are harder to write (but they always help you rule out certain verbs, so they're worth it), but playing one is a mixed bag. Sometimes it sucks; sometimes it's great. It all depends on whether I can stand the character.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2994&start=0#p20906
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: no emoticon for 'sticking out tongue'
User: Nicôle / DateTime: 2011-08-09 17:08:37

[quote="Afterward"]my disappointment upon discovering my mustache does not suit my nose as well as I hoped: :^{( [/quote] aww, that's so sad...  

lol


[quote="Campbell"]Why not pop on over to the ADRIFT forum (<a class="postlink" href="http://forum.adrift.co">http://forum.adrift.co</a>). We like smileys there. :-p [/quote] You guys are icon crazy over there!  [emote]:lol:[/emote]   I never heard of adrift before this, so I was overwhelmed  [emote]:shock:[/emote] and came back home.   [emote]8-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2993&start=0#p20907
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: a question about motivation
User: Nicôle / DateTime: 2011-08-09 17:17:31

[quote="tove"]One of the main things I do to help me finish projects is to do really small projects.[/quote]  That sounds more like whats possible for me at this point.  I'll read up on Speed-IF.  
Of course, everything is a big project to me right now.  [quote="Ghalev"]Honestly, I'm motivated most often by games written by others that didn't quite live up to their potential. I become filled with a need to show them how it could have been done[/quote]That's interesting.  So far I've played some good ones.  I'm in one where I'm a baby boy on the floor and I'm trying to get my favorite toy.  I'm totally stuck, but it's still really fun!  (Oh, it's called Childs Play by Graham Nelson maybe you could google it.) [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2427&start=20#p20908
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Glimmr sizing and alignment standards?
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-08-09 17:23:59

[quote="ektemple"]It works fine for me.
[/quote]

...and the head scratching continues.

I didn't actually try the code you posted above. But thanks for posting it, it helped me confirm and will serve as a good reference to forum users who tinker with your compass. Instead, I took the same project that I was working with earlier in my free time at work (the version that had the last bit of code with the sprite included) and saved in my Dropbox, and loaded it onto my gaming machine at home. My work machine runs Inform7 for Gnome. My gaming machine runs Inform7 for Windows. Guess what? [b]It works[/b]! Woo-hoo! 

In conclusion, I think there was a combination of two things going on here: me still understanding code itself and the fact that I suspect some glitch with the Inform7 for Gnome game pane for now. I never did get a chance to try a story-file released version from work. I will try to confirm the bug soon. 

I apologize again for this dragging along for such a long time and thank you for all your help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2993&start=10#p20909
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: a question about motivation
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-09 17:24:26

[quote]I'm in one where I'm a baby boy on the floor and I'm trying to get my favorite toy.[/quote]
I haven't played the game, but I would guess that ultimately there is a way to get your favorite toy.  That is one of the respects in which IF is better than real life.  There are others (such as the fact that real life doesn't have an "undo" command).  Not to mention the fact that in IF, if you do manage to get yourself into an unwinnable situation, you can always restart.  Alas.

RobertRothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2952&start=0#p20910
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When is a cutscene OK?
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-08-09 18:01:07

Thanks, again, for all the replies.

I think the main goal is to make something happen in response to a logical command at any cost, and a small cutscene might be a good idea if the alternative is a sequence of commands with which the player will have to play "guess the verb", or which might be too repetitive.  If you have to take some control away from the player to make something happen the right way, the important thing is that the players logical commands advance the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2993&start=10#p20911
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: a question about motivation
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-09 18:23:42

[quote="Nicôle"]That's interesting.  So far I've played some good ones.  I'm in one where I'm a baby boy on the floor and I'm trying to get my favorite toy.  I'm totally stuck, but it's still really fun!  (Oh, it's called Childs Play by Graham Nelson maybe you could google it.) [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
Child's Play is by Stephen Granade, not Graham Nelson.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2995&start=0#p20912
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: are Mad-Libs a subgenre of IF?
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-08-09 20:16:23

[emote]:?:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=20#p20913
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-08-09 20:29:07

Has anyone here tried ZPlet? It seems to pertain to this discussion. [url]http://sourceforge.net/projects/zplet/[/url]

As for Java, it was designed from the start to be incapable of saving files locally, for security reasons. I don't know how this was overcome, because I know I've seen java programs that could do that. As far as interface goes, java never had the best font usage.

Now, considering that the z-machine is in itself a virtual machine, if we had a java implementation like zplet, wouldn't that be redundant, since it would be a virtual machine inside a virtual machine?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2995&start=0#p20914
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: are Mad-Libs a subgenre of IF?
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-09 20:54:41

No, it's the other way around.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2427&start=20#p20915
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Glimmr sizing and alignment standards?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-08-09 20:58:04

Hm, a bug in the Gnome IDE terp. So was it the case that the entire compass wasn't working? I understood you to be saying that the compass worked fine but that this specific thing we were doing wasn't working...

Anyway, I'm glad you got it sorted--and uncovered what sounds like an important bug in the process!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2975&start=20#p20916
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "Invisiclues" effect in a PDF file
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-09 21:00:59

[quote="jacksonmead"]I know you didn't ask for alternate methods of providing hints/clues, but I felt I should point out how <em>Leadlight</em> dealt with this. You can see the plain-text version here: [url]http://leadlightgame.com/hsheet/hsheet.html[/url]. It doesn't rely on any special behavior of various programs, and I found it pretty neat. (Note: I'm not an old-school person, so I don't know if this method was used in some old games or if Wade invented it for this game.)

-Kevin[/quote]

Wade here. I believe the creator of that style of hint sheet was Scott Adams. My first encounter with it was in a copy of Australian Apple Review when I was a kid in the 80s, where they included a sheet like that pertaining to Voodoo Castle. Later (muuuuch later!... like 25+ years) I found that Adams had sheets like that for all his games.

Here's the set of them at IF Archive:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/scott-adams/hints/AdamsHints.tar.Z">http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/sco ... ints.tar.Z</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2996&start=0#p20917
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Player name and Understanding
User: zeronur / DateTime: 2011-08-09 21:50:15

I'm new to making IF and Inform 7 is pretty neat but I've come up against a wall that I can't figure out. Using the example in the documentation, I've got it setup so that it changes the command prompt to ask for the player to enter a name and when they do it assigns the first word to [player's firstname] and the whole name to [player's fullname] as indexed text.

The problem I'm coming across is I want Inform to understand that when the player puts in a command that includes either of those values to know that it is referring to the player themselves. I've tried something like:

[code]Understand "[player's firstname]" and "[player's fullname]" as the "[player]"[/code]

but I just get errors about it not understanding the phrase. I was hoping it'd work like the examples in the documentation and yet it doesn't. I've searched around online but can't seem to find an answer to it (if there is one). Any help would be appreciated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2951&start=0#p20918
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parchment-transcript hosting
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-08-09 22:04:32

When I get the time I'd like to incorporate it into Parchment itself.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2996&start=0#p20919
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Player name and Understanding
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-09 22:41:26

Check out example 408, "Fido." If you've got the part that assigns the names working to your satisfaction, the code in there (specifically the business around "Understand the nickname property as describing the dog.") looks like it should do what you want.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2991&start=0#p20920
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat-related extensions?
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-08-09 22:46:10

Nah, it's fine. I should really try 7 out anyway, haha.

Aaaanyway, so should I just kind of forge my own path here? I mean, it probably shouldn't be that hard (just lots of tedious slogging through lots of ifs and elses and variables), right?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=20#p20921
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-08-09 22:52:59

A few comments:

Glulx is event-driven (when used with Glk at least).

If having two sets of menus would be confusing in a web browser it wouldn't be hard to go to fullscreen (F11). In a year or two we can probably force the browser to go to full screen via Web GL. The bigger question is why would you want that? Most people don't seem to want lots of menus. Otherwise they'd use the menu-driven IF systems.

AFAIK having clickable compass roses etc is possible with hyperlinks in Glk. Possibly this just needs a bit more extension code before it starts taking over the world.

My biggest criticism of Glulx is its dependance on numbers. If I had a time machine, I'd go back and try to convince zarf to use strings as identifiers rather than numbers. For now I'll just have to figure out a way to use string identifiers in the extensions I'm planning for Glulx.

One last issue that hasn't been mentioned is sandboxing: the three most popular IF VMs are all sandboxed. Using standard VMs would make it harder to write secure interpreters, instead games would be individually transmitted. This is similar to the situation with Parchment currently: anyone can use a custom version of Parchment that lets them do anything in javascript that they like, but those storyfiles won't run on the official Parchment, and never will. Eventually I may include a JS sandboxer in Parchment so that JS files could be included in Blorbs, but that's a while off.

Lastly, running a VM inside another VM is actually a very good strategy, and that's exactly what all the JS terps do. It's a good strategy because the browser makers all have a lot more resources to devote to making their VMs super fast than any of us do. I expect that one day we will have a Javascript Glulx implementation that will be faster than Glulxe.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2990&start=0#p20922
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Fleshed out character vs. AFGNCAAP
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-09 22:55:18

I object to your phrasing, Poster! I object to a phrase, anyway. Specifically: the "abyss of the generic character"? Amnesiacs and their amnesia might be played out in IF, but there are situations where a genderless historyless characterless protagonist isn't a problem. I am thinking about [i]Myst[/i] here, but this is true of lots of other games where the environment or other characters are the real stars.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2991&start=0#p20923
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat-related extensions?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-08-09 23:32:18

Well, it still might be worthwhile to read [url=http://gamingphilosopher.blogspot.com/search?q=%22inform+attack%22]Victor's posts about ATTACK[/url], just to get an idea about the kinds of design decisions he built into it and get you started thinking about your own system.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=20#p20924
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-10 01:29:23

Mouse-driven IF is not a new idea. Legend Interactive's games in the early 90s had a bunch of windows in the UI with clickable lists of verbs, items, and inventory as well as a compass rose and illustrations. Nowadays Quest ([url]http://www.textadventures.co.uk/quest/[/url]) comes with these kind of features out of the box. Although mouse controls have been available, I have a gut feeling that most players still prefer to use the text prompt instead. People who want to play games that are mostly or only text don't mind typing either. If typing is not your thing you'll probably want to play a graphical game anyway. (Comparison to a command line shell is apt in that regard: People who are willing to use the shell are ok with typing in the commands. If you don't like to use the shell it wouldn't make any difference if the shell commands could be entered by clicking on them in a menu.)

I think the biggest problem with using both mouse and a text prompt is that it brings more instead of less complexity. Having a clickable compass rose doesn't do much to help new players to play the game when they [i]still[/i] have to use the text prompt to interact with the game (in most games you need to do more than just move between the rooms). And since you have to learn the commands to play the game anyway, it's much faster and easier to type N<enter> than to move your hand from the keyboard to the mouse, move the pointer on top of the compass rose, click, and move back to the keyboard. Picking the commands from menus or lists is cumbersome and limits both the author's and the player's freedom.

This is not to say that mouse interaction would be useless in IF. I think there just hasn't been enough experimentation so we just haven't found a good way to integrate mouse controls with the parser. Also, touch screen devices like smartphones and tablets have changed the game in this regard as well. What doesn't work with a mouse might feel very natural with touch controls and vice versa.

I've often wondered how a system like in the early LucasArts games would work: you'd have a small fixed list of verbs and you could first click on a verb, then click on a word in the story text. The available nouns might be highlighted in the text. (If someone knows of a game that does something like this, I'd be interested to know. Many games have a huge list of verbs or a context-sensitive verb list; this would have somewhere around 6-12 fixed verbs.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=30#p20925
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: kevinb / DateTime: 2011-08-10 01:49:51

[quote="duodave"]Has anyone here tried ZPlet? It seems to pertain to this discussion. [url]http://sourceforge.net/projects/zplet/[/url]

As for Java, it was designed from the start to be incapable of saving files locally, for security reasons. I don't know how this was overcome, because I know I've seen java programs that could do that. As far as interface goes, java never had the best font usage.
[/quote]

I don't think I'm suggesting running a Java-based IF interpreter via the Web. At least, not embedded in a Web browser as an applet. I suppose the ability to do this would potentially be an advantage, but I'm really thinking more of a desktop application, run the same way I'd run, say. Gargoyle. Such an application would have no difficulty in managing local files. An application of this sort could be delivered from a Web page using the Java Web Start mechanism, or just delivered as a file with the usual instructions "download and double click". Both mechanisms would require the end user have a Java JVM installed, or be prepared to install one. It's not a no-installation option like something based on JavaScript could be, but it's no more an end-user burden then installing any other desktop-based IF interpreter would be.

To be honest, it hadn't occurred to me before this discussion that the need to install desktop software (or mobile software, or whatever) would be off-putting to users. As others have said, a no-installation requirement pretty much limits development to JavaScript, or to something backed up by an application running on a web server. Parchment gives an idea what can be done with JavaScript in this area but, being tied to Z-code, it's still based on a 1980s user interface model (for better or worse).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=30#p20926
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: kevinb / DateTime: 2011-08-10 02:24:54

[quote="Juhana"]Picking the commands from menus or lists is cumbersome and limits both the author's and the player's freedom.
[/quote]

I think that's right -- I don't think there's necessarily any advantage to being able to click menus to do 'Ask->Fred->About pony' rather than simply typing 'Ask Fred about pony'. There may even be a disadvantage. Except in systems that don't have a keyboard, or where keyboard-style entry in inconvenient. Um... which increasingly means just about all commonplace computing devices [emote];)[/emote]

Is it possible to envisage IF that uses no keyboard entry at all, and still falls into the category of things that IF enthusiasts are prepared to regard as IF? 

But that, I think,is a different matter. I'm really thinking of ways a more modern user interface could support text-based entry, rather than replacing it. A good example, I think, is that map-based navigation that many of the old Infocom games had -- both the genuinely graphical in <i>Zork Zero</i>, and the text-based in <i>Beyond Zork</i>. It surprises me how difficult this seems to be t implement with the systems that are currently available (unless I'm missing something, which would hardly be unusual). This existence of features like this in the old games like this did not mean that they weren't primarily text-based, and you could play the games without using them. 

I'm speculating here, but I wonder if people who play and write IF a lot develop cognitive skills that render these graphical aids unnecessary? Personally, I find it difficult to read a textual description of an inter-connected set of locations, and build a mental model of how to get from one place to another. Mind you, I have this problem in real life as well. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2991&start=0#p20927
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat-related extensions?
User: ElliotM / DateTime: 2011-08-10 03:18:35

[quote="Glorb"]Inform 7's all well and good, but I asked for extensions for 6. Do these only exist for Inform 7?[/quote]

My bad, I kinda glazed over the 6 because of all the threads I had just been reading on 7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=30#p20928
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-08-10 03:20:17

[quote]Parchment gives an idea what can be done with JavaScript in this area but, being tied to Z-code, it's still based on a 1980s user interface model (for better or worse).[/quote]

Except that Parchment also supports Glulx. And in the future it will support Vorple too (or something like it.)

Also are you aware of Glimmr or some of the automapping systems?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2952&start=10#p20929
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When is a cutscene OK?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-08-10 03:44:57

[quote="Bainespal"]If you have to take some control away from the player to make something happen the right way, the important thing is that the players logical commands advance the game.[/quote]

And I think it helps to discard any thought of "taking control away," anyway, because a well-done cutscene doesn't really take, it only gives. When a cutscene is appropriate, the player won't feel robbed of anything.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=30#p20930
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: kevinb / DateTime: 2011-08-10 05:08:21

[quote="Dannii"][quote]Parchment gives an idea what can be done with JavaScript in this area but, being tied to Z-code, it's still based on a 1980s user interface model (for better or worse).[/quote]

Except that Parchment also supports Glulx. And in the future it will support Vorple too (or something like it.)
[/quote]

But glulx also follows an 1980s model of user interaction. There is (so far as I know) no way to make glulx create or use any of the native user interface elements that most modern graphical environments provide. Case in point -- many glulx games provide help menus and such-like, where the menus are actually drawn on screen in text, like a 1980s console applications. But most modern computer operating environments _have_ menu support. Why should a game engine have to draw them on screen and end up with the look-and-feel of a Commodore 64, when everything that's needed to make a nice job of this kind of thing is built right into the OS? There's no way using glulx (so far as I know) to pop up a dialog box with a couple of text entry fields in it. I don't believe it's straightforward to draw any graphics on screen other than what are provided as image files. 

The great thing about glulx/Glk is that it can be implemented on just about anything with a CPU and a screen. But that generality is achieved at the expense of ignoring everything that's happened to user interface design since the early 80s. To assume that there is a more sophisticated user interface available does, of course, limit the system to environments where that is the case. I can see how many people involved in IF might think that the costs outweigh the benefits.


[quote]Also are you aware of Glimmr or some of the automapping systems?[/quote]

I'm aware that they exist. Coming at this from the outside, and as a programmer, my initial impression is that I could implement something myself in Java, or even C, more efficiently than I could learn to use any of that stuff. I'm not knocking it -- the point is that I _know_ Java and C already. 

I can throw together the user interface I (think I) need in Java or C in about ten minutes. What I can't do in ten minutes is implement all of the actual IF stuff -- I can't code a world model or a natural language parser in a lunchbreak. What would suit my purposes would be a stable, well-documented, Java class library for doing that stuff. I guess such a thing doesn't exist, and I guess that if I developed it myself nobody but me would be interested.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=30#p20931
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-10 05:22:19

[quote="kevinb"]I guess such a thing doesn't exist, and I guess that if I developed it myself nobody but me would be interested.[/quote]
If it turns out to be much better than what we have now, I'm sure people would become interested. I say go for it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=30#p20932
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-08-10 06:04:52

[quote]There is (so far as I know) no way to make glulx create or use any of the native user interface elements that most modern graphical environments provide.[/quote]Is there any desire for this? Native UIs aren't exactly known for their good typography...

It would actually be very easy to add in an API to customise the terp's menus. As Juhana said, go ahead. But don't be upset if no one wants it... maybe wait until someone else has expressed interest?

However I wonder if all UIs are rather antithetical to IF in general.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=30#p20933
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-08-10 06:21:37

I know Quest has already been mentioned, but I thought I'd point out that the Javascript in the UI is completely customisable per game.

The "out of the box" implementation uses this to implement hyperlinked object names showing drop-down menus, but you don't have to enable this.

I have created a demo here: <a class="postlink" href="http://play2.textadventures.co.uk/v5/Play.aspx?file=twohalves/twohalves.quest&style=fluid">http://play2.textadventures.co.uk/v5/Pl ... tyle=fluid</a>

This shows another use of the HTML/JS interface - this time it implements [i]two[/i] input boxes, one for each character in the game. It also has custom output, as the response must be written to the correct half of the screen.

This two-way interaction between the game and the HTML/JS means you could create any type of UI you wanted. I've not really had time to fully explore the possibilities of this yet, or to make any of this look particularly stylish, but I think all the fundamentals are in place to create something interesting.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2989&start=0#p20934
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I want to kill a player if they try to eat a backdrop...
User: jkfriday / DateTime: 2011-08-10 06:24:24

Good point, but it's pretty easy to avoid dying in this particular game: I just want to kill them as a sort of smack on the bum for doing something profoundly silly and annoying [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2989&start=0#p20935
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I want to kill a player if they try to eat a backdrop...
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-10 06:44:39

[quote]I just want to kill them as a sort of smack on the bum for doing something profoundly silly and annoying [/quote]
Reminds me of a game I wrote in which there is a bucket lying around.  Just in case some smart-ass player tries to kick the bucket -- he kicks the bucket!

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2989&start=0#p20936
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I want to kill a player if they try to eat a backdrop...
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-10 07:24:48

[quote="jkfriday"]Good point, but it's pretty easy to avoid dying in this particular game: I just want to kill them as a sort of smack on the bum for doing something profoundly silly and annoying [emote]:P[/emote][/quote]
Sorry for my obscure joke - of course you are killing player characters, not players...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2951&start=0#p20937
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parchment-transcript hosting
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-10 07:25:17

That's great news! I look forward to it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2997&start=0#p20938
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I need help...
User: I7Ultimite / DateTime: 2011-08-10 07:41:03

I was trying to make a complicated horror project and immedietly encountered a problem;
I put in [code]Top Floor of Mansion is a room. There is a button 1 here. There is a button 2 here. There is a button 3 here.[/code]
and thought it would work. It did, but this is what it says when i test it:[code]Top Floor of Mansion

>push button
You can't see any such thing.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2997&start=0#p20939
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I need help...
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-08-10 08:04:19

For some reason, the buttons are created off-stage, despite the "here" assertions. Easiest fix is to be more specific.

[code]Top Floor of the Mansion is a room.

button one, button two and button three are in the Top Floor of the Mansion.[/code]

Were I you, I'd make buttons a specific kind. That would allow you much better control than merely creating them as regular things.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2997&start=0#p20940
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I need help...
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-10 08:15:42

Numbers can also get tricky in object names, IIRC.  Could there be a red button, a blue button, and a green button, or something?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2989&start=0#p20941
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I want to kill a player if they try to eat a backdrop...
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-10 08:18:14

I laughed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=30#p20942
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-10 08:21:38

[quote="kevinb"]There's no way using glulx (so far as I know) to pop up a dialog box with a couple of text entry fields in it.[/quote]

Check out [url=http://glimmr.wordpress.com/2010/12/12/new-releases-glimmr-form-fields-and-glulx-input-loops/]Glimmr Form Fields[/url] -- I don't think the example Erik provided is a pop-up dialog box, but I think it wouldn't be too hard to adapt it once you know how to do things with multiple windows. (Which I don't.) Though as Erik says, the problem is coming up with a context in which this is actually useful. 

Anyway, though I really don't follow a lot of this discussion, I agree with others that this is very worth pursuing. A new idea can take off in the IF community -- look at how quickly Parchment has spread.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2997&start=0#p20943
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I need help...
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-10 08:24:53

[quote="Eleas"]For some reason, the buttons are created off-stage, despite the "here" assertions.[/quote]

The syntax for that is "Button 1 is here." The original code creates off-stage objects called "button 1 here," "button 2 here," and "button 3 here" -- "here" is parsed as part of the object name. I usually find it less confusing to write out the name of the room anyway (as you did).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=30#p20944
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: kevinb / DateTime: 2011-08-10 08:36:37

[quote="Dannii"]
However I wonder if all UIs are rather antithetical to IF in general.[/quote]

I guess they're antithetical to the way IF tends to be currently understood.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2990&start=0#p20945
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Fleshed out character vs. AFGNCAAP
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-10 09:39:26

I separate the issue into categories: The PC's perception, the PC's abilities, and the PC's motivations. If there are significant NPCs, I might also consider how they react to the PC's personality. I think giving strong characteristics to everything but motivation is a pure win for the player. The problem comes in when the PC's motivations don't match those of the player. But smart use of game mechanics can usually bring these in line if there's not too big a gap.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2998&start=0#p20946
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7: having something off stage at the start of play
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-08-10 09:42:47

[code]Dim Lit Room is a room. "[if unvisited] This room is the most disturbing thing you have ever seen in your life. The thing that disturbs you is behind a glass wall.[otherwise if glass wall is closed] The room still disturbs you but the shock has worn off. The entire room is made of metal. The thing that disturbs you is behind a glass wall.[otherwise if glass wall is open]The room still disgusts you a bit, the entire room is made out of metal. To the east is an open place where the glass wall used to be."[/code]

[code]A desk is here. the desk is a supporter. glass pieces are off-stage. a page is a portable supporter on the desk. a paperweight is on the page. the glass wall is a closed scenery door.  the glass wall is a breakable wall. the glass wall is east of Dim Lit Room. the glass wall is west of the Room of Horrors.
Understand "paper" as page.[/code]

is there a way to start the game with somthing off stage?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2998&start=0#p20947
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: having something back stage at the start ofpla
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-10 09:56:58

All you have to do is avoid specifying where the object is, and it will start the game off-stage. "There is" is a useful phrase in this case:

[code]There are glass pieces.[/code]

Buy you can also do:
[code]Glass pieces are a thing.[/code]

Curious that you can say this:
[code]When play begins:
     now glass pieces are off-stage.[/code]
...but you can't declare them off-stage as an initial state. But it's not really a problem in this case.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1060&start=0#p20948
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: 9 Phoenix conversions
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-08-10 10:07:12

New builds of the previously released games (that is, Acheton, Avon, BrandX, Crobe, Fyleet, Hamil, Murdac, Sangraal and Spycatcher) have been uploaded to the IF-Archive. These new versions fix a number of minor bugs in the conversions.

Also uploaded are two Phoenix games that have not been seen in Z-code form before: Parc (by John Rennie, 1983) and Xeno (by Jonathan Mestel, 1989).

All the Z-code versions are here: [url]http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXphoenixXgamesXzcode.html[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2989&start=0#p20949
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I want to kill a player if they try to eat a backdrop...
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-10 10:11:29

[quote]Sorry for my obscure joke - of course you are killing player characters, not players[/quote]

You mean that I shouldn't have used the special function which shorts the high-voltage power supply to the keyboard?  Uh-oh, I think I may be in trouble now. [emote]:oops:[/emote] 

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2990&start=0#p20950
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Fleshed out character vs. AFGNCAAP
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2011-08-10 10:16:00

Some past experience here:

When writing One Eye Open last summer, Colin and I very deliberately removed as much characterization from our PC as we could.  We minimized references to the PC's background, removed all gender references, and never gave the PC a name.

In retrospect, I think this was a mistake.  Some reviewers overtly expressed their preference for a stronger PC in the context of the game, and their objections made sense to me.  We hoped that a faceless PC would help draw people into the PC's position, but because of the nature of the game, there were some facts about the PC's background and experience that reduced our ability for the PC to be truly faceless.  (Also, though we worked to remove gender references as much as we could, the PC was gendered in our conversations, and I think that came through involuntarily.)

My PC in my current WIP is still nameless, but much more strongly characterized, and I'm interested to see whether reactions are favorable.  (Of course, the game is also wildly different, so who knows....)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=30#p20951
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-10 10:21:42

Just invent and program your new system and then bring it back to this forum, post-haste!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2989&start=10#p20952
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I want to kill a player if they try to eat a backdrop...
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-10 10:22:33

[quote="Robert Rothman"][quote]Sorry for my obscure joke - of course you are killing player characters, not players[/quote]

You mean that I shouldn't have used the special function which shorts the high-voltage power supply to the keyboard?  Uh-oh, I think I may be in trouble now. [emote]:oops:[/emote] 

Robert Rothman[/quote]
I swear there used to be a warning in xconfig files that improper settings could cause the monitor to explode. Neal Stephenson commented on it with a character called the "Digi-bomber" in Cryptonomicon, and I've heard similar stories have been used elsewhere. But folks on Snopes say it's very unlikely:

<a class="postlink" href="http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=38;t=000761;p=1">http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ulti ... 000761;p=1</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=40#p20953
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2011-08-10 10:23:48

[quote="Juhana"]Although mouse controls have been available, I have a gut feeling that most players still prefer to use the text prompt instead. People who want to play games that are mostly or only text don't mind typing either. If typing is not your thing you'll probably want to play a graphical game anyway.[/quote]

In 2003 or so, Simutronics Games (a creator of text-based multiplayer games*) decided to make their flagship game GemStone IV more newbie-friendly by building a mouse-compatible front end called StormFront.  There was a working compass rose for movement, and all objects (and players) gained hyperlinks with contextual drop-down menus.  Until you wanted to say something to another player, you could play the entire game with the mouse.

It was a massive effort, and exceedingly helpful to current players in some ways.  However, to the best of my knowledge, it did not significantly improve the game's appeal to new players.


[size=85]* Or MUDs, if you prefer that terminology.[/size]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2999&start=0#p20954
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: inform 7: moving glass between two rooms
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-08-10 10:33:11

[code]Dim Lit Room is a room. "[if unvisited] This room is the most disturbing thing you have ever seen in your life. The thing that disturbs you is behind a glass wall.[otherwise if glass wall is closed] The room still disturbs you but the shock has worn off. The entire room is made of metal. The thing that disturbs you is behind a glass wall.[otherwise if glass wall is open]The room still disgusts you a bit, the entire room is made out of metal. To the east is an open place where the glass wall used to be."
A desk is here. the desk is a supporter. glass pieces are a thing. a page is a portable supporter on the desk. a paperweight is on the page. the glass wall is a closed scenery door.  the glass wall is a breakable wall. the glass wall is east of Dim Lit Room. the glass wall is west of the Room of Horrors.[/code]

[code]Instead of attacking the glass wall with the paperweight: say "[if glass wall is unbroken]You throw the paperweight with all your might at the glass wall. The glass wall shatters into tiny pieces of glass."; move glass pieces to Dim Lit Room; now glass wall is open.; now the paperweight is in The Room of Horrors.; now glass wall is broken.

Instead of throwing something at the glass wall: say "[if glass wall is unbroken]You throw the paperweight with all your might at the glass wall. The glass shatters into tiny pieces of glass."; move glass pieces to Dim Lit Room.;now glass wall is open.; now the paperweight is in The Room of Horrors.; now glass wall is broken. [/code]

[code]The description of the glass pieces is "[if glass wall is broken]Small shards of glass on the floor."[/code]

[code]Instead of going east to The Room of Horrors when glass wall is broken: say "You carefully try to avoid stepping on the pieces of glass on the floor, you walk into the room you are going to call the room of horrors."; move player to Room of Horrors.;now glass pieces are in Room of Horrors.

Instead of going east to The Room of Horrors when glass wall is unbroken: say "You can't walk through walls."[/code]

[codeThe Room of Horrors is a room. "[if unvisited] Here it is, the room that has disturbed you so much. You have avoided describing it until now, but I guess now you have to. You can go back to the west to Dim Lit Room.[otherwise]The walls of this room are made of steel. There is row upon row of glass containers containing bodies of dead things, that you really don't want to look at. You can go back to the west to Dim Lit Room."
 
 metal shelves are supporters in room of horrors. foggy container is a fogged container on metal shelves. a huge glass container is a container in room of horrors. the dead horse is an animal in huge glass container. a wooden crate is here. wooden crate is a container. dead things are scenery in The Room of Horrors.][/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=40#p20955
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-08-10 10:34:14

[quote="Juhana"]I've often wondered how a system like in the early LucasArts games would work: you'd have a small fixed list of verbs and you could first click on a verb, then click on a word in the story text. The available nouns might be highlighted in the text. (If someone knows of a game that does something like this, I'd be interested to know. Many games have a huge list of verbs or a context-sensitive verb list; this would have somewhere around 6-12 fixed verbs.)[/quote]

Inheritance for Kindle does it this way, except it's driven with menus. There's a menu of verbs. Pick a verb, then pick a noun from the following menu. <a class="postlink" href="http://www.amazon.com/Inheritance/dp/B0054TZOX0">http://www.amazon.com/Inheritance/dp/B0054TZOX0</a>

Though IMO it would be much more natural to do it in the reverse direction: click on an object in the text, which reveals a menu of the stuff you can do with that object.

Techniques like this make "guess the verb" puzzles impossible-ish, which, for all their warts, have the virtue of giving players the feeling that they invented the solution to the puzzle all by themselves.

So you could supplement the menu system with a mini-parser. Click on the noun, which presents a list of obvious verbs, and an "Other" option where you'd get to type in your own verb. (The only game I can think of that did something like this is Leisure Suit Larry 7, a graphical adventure where you'd click on objects and see a text menu of verbs.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=40#p20956
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-08-10 10:41:17

[quote="severedhand"]Just invent and program your new system and then bring it back to this forum, post-haste![/quote]

A related but less ambitious idea would be to post a simple prototype to show how cool your ideas are.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=40#p20957
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-08-10 10:44:16

[quote="kevinb"]To be honest, it hadn't occurred to me before this discussion that the need to install desktop software (or mobile software, or whatever) would be off-putting to users. As others have said, a no-installation requirement pretty much limits development to JavaScript, or to something backed up by an application running on a web server. Parchment gives an idea what can be done with JavaScript in this area but, being tied to Z-code, it's still based on a 1980s user interface model (for better or worse).[/quote]

I was assuming you'd use Java Web Start, which also provides a no-installation experience, assuming you have a JVM. But, yeah, JavaScript is the VM. If you like Java that much, you could do it in the Google Web Toolkit, which translates Java to highly optimized JavaScript. [emote]:-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2999&start=0#p20958
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: moving glass between two rooms
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-10 11:10:49

Are you having a problem with this code?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=40#p20959
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-10 11:12:43

Quest has recently moved to menus, I think; RAGS has always worked this way. And menu-controlled graphic adventures have been around since at least the days of HyperCard. Maybe it's because the platforms and games I've seen rendered in this way have all been very crude, but I really dislike the idea of IF moving in that direction. IF is for people who like text. Interacting with text, using text, is not an experience that can be replicated by menus, even if you functionally replicate every possible parser command. (And, in practice, authors never do. The high bar that the parser sets for authors has a lot to do with the high quality of IF in general, I suspect.)

A combination of parser input and menus is the worst possible approach (at least, for actual gameplay), I think; switching between the two is awkward, annoying and leads to one or the other predominating.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=40#p20960
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-08-10 11:23:19

Quest hasn't "moved to" menus - you can still type, so it's actually what you describe as the "worst possible approach"!

However, pretty much every other application on a computer is usable with a combination of keyboard and mouse.

I agree that it would be annoying to be forced to switch though - a game that is poorly written may make you use the menus for clues to the verbs you can use, which would otherwise be impossible to divine from the text; then later on it may not have the required verb in the menu. But poorly written games will still suck no matter what UI they're using.

A well-written game could/should be equally playable using the player's preference of either hyperlinks/menus or keyboard commands. Or it could disable one or the other - if you want to create a Quest game without hyperlinks, you can turn those off. Or, if you poke around you'll find there's a script command that lets you turn off the input box if you're that way inclined, then you could have a hyperlinks-only game. Or you could even turn both off and provide your own input method (as in the twohalves demo I linked to earlier).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2999&start=0#p20961
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: moving glass between two rooms
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-08-10 11:31:57

Ok im good now i just figured it out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=40#p20962
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-08-10 11:46:06

[quote="kevinb"]I think that's right -- I don't think there's necessarily any advantage to being able to click menus to do 'Ask->Fred->About pony' rather than simply typing 'Ask Fred about pony'. There may even be a disadvantage. Except in systems that don't have a keyboard, or where keyboard-style entry in inconvenient. Um... which increasingly means just about all commonplace computing devices [emote];)[/emote]

Is it possible to envisage IF that uses no keyboard entry at all, and still falls into the category of things that IF enthusiasts are prepared to regard as IF?[/quote]

That's a good point and a good question. There is a real need to come up with a satisfying UI model for IF suited to a post-keyboard world (to borrow one of zarf's phrases).

Dan mentioned [i]Inheritance[/i] for the Kindle which is a promising first step, if a bit awkward. I haven't played the released game but I was a beta tester, and for the most part it felt just like a "real" IF game.

Erik Temple's [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/InputExperiment1/Release/index.html]Under Doom[/url] has a similar interface. I like it a lot; I need to make something similar for TADS.

Both let you input a complete command in just one or two keystrokes. Neither one gets rid of the keyboard dependency entirely; I'd be interested in seeing a game that felt like IF but used only mouse or tactile input. I am skeptical that such a thing is possible without resorting to menus or lists of verbs, but I would love to be wrong.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=40#p20963
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-08-10 11:55:27

[quote="kevinb"]I can throw together the user interface I (think I) need in Java or C in about ten minutes. What I can't do in ten minutes is implement all of the actual IF stuff -- I can't code a world model or a natural language parser in a lunchbreak. What would suit my purposes would be a stable, well-documented, Java class library for doing that stuff. I guess such a thing doesn't exist, and I guess that if I developed it myself nobody but me would be interested.[/quote]

You might be interested in [url=http://fyrevm.sourceforge.net/]FyreVM[/url] and its Channel I/O model. In broad terms, it defines a list of output channels that interpreters might implement, and specifies a format for sending data to those channels. Then the interpreter can render that data in whatever way is most suited to the device or platform on which it runs.

I think you would find an audience for an implementation of the Glulx VM (e.g. [url=https://github.com/weiju/zmpp2]ZMPP2[/url]) that used Channel I/O instead of Glk. David Cornelson may even have something like that already. I believe he's talked about making the Textfyre titles available for Kindle, which would imply Java + Channel I/O.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3000&start=0#p20964
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: inform 7:why won't my calling action work
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-08-10 13:25:37

[code]Calling is an action applying to one thing.

Understand "call [anything]" as calling.
Check calling:
If the noun is the goose: say "[if the player is the goose]you can't call yourself."instead;
If the noun is the goose: say "[if the player is human]the goose comes happily waddling in."; move the goose to the location.;instead;
If the noun is human: say "[when the player is human]your already here."instead;
If the noun is human: "[if the player is the goose] say You hiss and shriek so your human will come. Human comes running into the room clearly concerned for your well being."; move the human to the location.;instead;
If the noun is star: say "[if star is in light blue liquid]The horse's body twitches."instead.
Report calling: 
say "The [noun] does'nt come when you call."

Instead of calling the goose when the goose is in the cage: say "Even if the goose wanted to come to you, it is in a cage and can't get out."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3000&start=0#p20965
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7:why won't my calling action work
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-10 13:47:55

Are you trying to call something which is in a different room than the player?  If so, I think you need to place it in scope; otherwise, the parse doesn't recognize it.  Also, I think you need to define the action so that it applies to a visible thing, rather than a thing; otherwise, it would require that the object of the action be not only visible but reachable.

Robert Rothman

Edit:  One other point: you may want to change the parts of your code which actually move things (i.e., where the calling is successful and the goose, or whatever, is moved to the location) so that they operate as part of a carry out rule rather than a check rule.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2997&start=0#p20966
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I need help...
User: I7Ultimite / DateTime: 2011-08-10 14:26:32

[code]Top Floor of Mansion is a room. 

The green button, The yellow button and the red button are in the Top Floor of the Mansion.[/code]
I put that in and it still says:

[code]Top Floor of Mansion

>examine button
You can't see any such thing.

>examine green button
You can't see any such thing.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2997&start=0#p20967
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I need help...
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-10 14:31:55

"Top Floor of Mansion" and "Top Floor of [b]the[/b] Mansion" are considered two different things. ("the" doesn't usually make a difference, but only when it's at the start of a name.) You're creating an off-stage container called "top floor of the mansion" where the buttons are.

If you open the World tab in the index, you can see the rooms and things created in the game world. You can check for duplicates and misspellings there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2997&start=0#p20968
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I need help...
User: I7Ultimite / DateTime: 2011-08-10 14:35:25

Darn my correct grammer.

now to make an action involving the buttons...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2997&start=0#p20969
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I need help...
User: I7Ultimite / DateTime: 2011-08-10 14:39:18

Danget one of my three seconds after a problem, problem. I put:
[code]Instead of pressing red button, say "A giant mutant ant eats you." End the game in failure.[/code]
It didn't work so i tried:
[code]Instead of pressing red button, say "A giant mutant ant eats you."

End the game in failure.[/code]

1st and 2nd error message:
 [code]You wrote 'End the game in failure' : but I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with, so I am ignoring this sentence altogether.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=40#p20970
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-08-10 14:43:51

I've been reading this thread with a mixture of bemusement and puzzlement. Let me see if I get this straight.

I've seen adventure games that were 100% mouse driven, like MYST, Riven, and that weird werewolf game from the 1990s. 

Then there were the games that were text, but had some graphic elements, I think Beyond Zork had that, and there was something that I think was called Adventure Game Toolkit from ages ago. 

But then there's products like Quest and ADRIFT, that have a certain amount of fill in the blank using popups and menus and so on. 

But the original debate - wait for it - is that we're using technology from the 1980s to make our games? Well, so what? Arent we using PCs derived from the x86 chipset? Wasn't ethernet invented in the 1970s? We just celebrated the 20th anniversary of the first web page, should we throw out the web because it was invented in 1991?

Text adventures are about the imagination. They are about verbosity, not interfaces. I would rather play a text-only game written by a pulitzer-prize winning author than a point-and click that had pretty graphics.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2997&start=0#p20971
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I need help...
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-08-10 15:02:37

[quote="I7Ultimite"] [code]You wrote 'End the game in failure' : but I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with, so I am ignoring this sentence altogether.[/code][/quote]

This is a bit counter-intuitive, but it works like this: some rulebooks (Before, Instead and After) allow a comma between the preamble and the body of the rule, [i]but only if the rule consists of one statement[/i]. In other cases you use the semicolon to separate the statements, like so:

[code]Instead of pressing the red button:
	say "A giant mutant ant eats you.";
	end the game in failure.[/code]

Generally, rulebooks are written on that form, i.e. either 

[code][preamble]: [single statement].[/code]
or
[code][preamble]:
	[statement one];
	[statement two];
	[..];
	[statement n].[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2997&start=0#p20972
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I need help...
User: I7Ultimite / DateTime: 2011-08-10 15:08:38

That's not my problem. My problem is that its not recognizing "end the game in failure"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2997&start=10#p20973
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I need help...
User: I7Ultimite / DateTime: 2011-08-10 15:11:51

never mind i figured it out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2997&start=10#p20974
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I need help...
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-08-10 15:13:58

[quote="I7Ultimite"]That's not my problem. My problem is that its not recognizing "end the game in failure"[/quote]

Yes, because you wrote

[code]Instead of pressing red button, say "A giant mutant ant eats you." End the game in failure.[/code]

These are two instructions, yet between the preamble and the rules body you have a comma, so Inform thinks the rules body consists of one statement (and [i]say "A giant mutant ant eats you." End the game in failure.[/i] makes two statements). Furthermore, you do not separate these two statements with a semi-colon, therefore only the first statement is parsed as part of the Instead rule, and the second is read by Inform as being outside that rule.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3000&start=0#p20975
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7:why won't my calling action work
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-10 15:16:25

To make actions apply to things that are not normally in scope you both have to 
1) define the action as applying to a "visible" thing (which oddly enough means that the action applies even to things that are NOT visible ...)
and
2) define the commands for the action using the understand token "[any thing]" as TWO words ("[anything]" as a single word will NOT do).
Thus:

[code]Calling is an action applying to one visible thing.

Understand "call [any thing]" as calling.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2997&start=10#p20976
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I need help...
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-10 15:16:29

Besides what Eleas said, "End the game in failure" isn't recognized, I don't think. You probably want "End the game in death." This phrasing is now deprecated (meaning it still works but it probably won't in future builds); see section 9.4 which explains your options. If you want a new-fangled way of ending the game in death, it's

[code]end the story saying "You have died"[/code]

or whatever other text you want there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2997&start=10#p20977
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I need help...
User: I7Ultimite / DateTime: 2011-08-10 15:19:16

thank you Matt.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2997&start=10#p20978
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I need help...
User: I7Ultimite / DateTime: 2011-08-10 15:25:03

danget now its not recognizing pressing the red button and when i start it it doesnt carry out the rule. Any suggestions?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2997&start=10#p20979
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I need help...
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-08-10 15:26:46

I totally forgot about it being deprecated. Given that and me looking at "button 1 is here" without seeing the problem, I've overlooked things twice in this thread, gah. Time for me to finally get my arse in gear and write an IF, or I'll keep making sloppy mistakes.  [emote]:oops:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2984&start=10#p20980
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Time Flies
User: Aintelligence / DateTime: 2011-08-10 15:31:15

[quote]time wounds all heels[/quote]

True.  However after the massacre of countless time flies in the slaughter of Athens.  Sparta eventually regretted their decision to kill the vermin. (Time flies of course help the production of grapes for wine, hence "time is ripe", and without them great wines cannot be produced, and the Spartans had poor grape seasons.) Eventually they knew they had to make up for lost time.

Sorry guys.  Couldn't resist.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2997&start=10#p20981
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I need help...
User: I7Ultimite / DateTime: 2011-08-10 15:31:17

*is really confused*

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2951&start=0#p20982
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parchment-transcript hosting
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-10 15:36:32

Hmm... Dannii, I'm looking forward to it even more now that I've noticed Parchment-transcript doesn't work for Glulx. Are there any alternatives, or do I need to trim another 37K off my WIP so I can test it this way?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2997&start=10#p20983
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I need help...
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-08-10 15:41:00

[quote="I7Ultimite"]*is really confused*[/quote]

Have you defined the "pressing" action? Otherwise, I think the "pushing" action could do the trick.

[code]Home is a room. The red button is fixed in place in Home.

Instead of pushing the red button:
   say "A giant mutant ant eats you.";
   end the game saying "You die horribly."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2997&start=10#p20984
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I need help...
User: I7Ultimite / DateTime: 2011-08-10 15:45:53

Thank you! it finally worked! Now i'm gonna make a shortcut menu to make pushing and pressing the same thing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2997&start=10#p20985
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I need help...
User: I7Ultimite / DateTime: 2011-08-10 15:53:04

is there a way to remove the undo option?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2997&start=20#p20986
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I need help...
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-08-10 16:08:12

[quote="I7Ultimite"]Thank you! it finally worked! Now i'm gonna make a shortcut menu to make pushing and pressing the same thing.[/quote]

Great! As for understanding "press" and "push" the same thing, you don't need to do so (not in I7 version 6G60, at any rate), because it's already understood as the same thing. It's just that there's no "pressing" [i]action[/i] -- the command "press" simply redirects to the "pushing" action.


[quote="I7Ultimite"]is there a way to remove the undo option?[/quote]

Yep. According to the [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc22.html]I7 Manual[/url], it's "Use undo prevention."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2997&start=20#p20987
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I need help...
User: I7Ultimite / DateTime: 2011-08-10 16:14:52

do i put it as part of a command? or just anywhere?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2997&start=20#p20988
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I need help...
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-10 16:20:24

It won't work as part of a command.
Just put it in your source. 

(I'd put all use options right after any extension inclusions, but I don't think it really matters.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2997&start=20#p20989
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I need help...
User: I7Ultimite / DateTime: 2011-08-10 16:22:13

thank you it worked!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2997&start=20#p20990
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I need help...
User: I7Ultimite / DateTime: 2011-08-10 16:23:59

How do i make it so if i press the green button it makes me able to go north?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2997&start=20#p20991
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I need help...
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-10 16:57:34

I'd say that depends on why the player can't go north before he/she presses the button.(Is there no exit? is there a locked door? is there a giant crab barring the way on? etc.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2951&start=0#p20992
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parchment-transcript hosting
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-08-10 18:59:35

I thought it did support Glulx... better ask Juhana about that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=40#p20993
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-08-10 19:07:02

I'm not sure whether I believe in the so called "post-keyboard world", but there are definitely some things we could try to make it a little easier for mobile terps, like double clicking on a word to add it to the input. For keyword games that would be especially useful!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=50#p20994
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-10 19:13:53

[quote="Dannii"]I'm not sure whether I believe in the so called "post-keyboard world", but there are definitely some things we could try to make it a little easier for mobile terps, like double clicking on a word to add it to the input. For keyword games that would be especially useful![/quote]
Adrift does this (with a single click, I think), and also has a (somewhat limited) autocomplete. I find that it's more useful in Adrift than elsewhere, because Adrift authors don't tend to be very good at including noun synonyms, and have a habit of implementing entire phrases as unique commands. And Adrift is (or was; I don't know if this is true of version 5) persnickety about adjectives.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=50#p20995
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-08-10 19:24:56

[quote="maga"]Adrift does this (with a single click, I think), and also has a (somewhat limited) autocomplete. I find that it's more useful in Adrift than elsewhere, because Adrift authors don't tend to be very good at including noun synonyms, and have a habit of implementing entire phrases as unique commands. And Adrift is (or was; I don't know if this is true of version 5) persnickety about adjectives.[/quote]

It's true Adrift does that, but it's unfair to color authors in that light. Any game author can have flaws, no matter the development environment. As far as autocomplete and other stuff goes, I tend to disable those features in the Adrift games I've written.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3001&start=0#p20996
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: First Post - Intro
User: Shoal / DateTime: 2011-08-10 19:59:40

Hi all, first post! (I was going to post this in the Introductions sticky thread, but someone here said that thread was dying...)

My name is Robert (or Shoal, whichever you prefer), I'm 29, from the United States south of Boston, MA, and grew up playing all those great graphical adventure games by Sierra On-Line and LucasArts, plus a few others.

I must confess to you that I've never really been into text adventures, mostly because I've never really been into reading. But in the last few years--lo and behold--I have become a reader and actually (gasp!) enjoy the activity. In the old days I used to want to claw my eyes out rather than read, but nevertheless libraries were always my favorite places in the world. They were so quiet, peaceful and... full of books. I used to sit down in them and just bask in the words all around me. But would I read? Oh no, never. I hated reading.

Now look at me! I enjoy it! Old me would hate new me if old me were still around. But he's not (I think he's dead).

So recently I got it into my head to take a shot at writing some interactive fiction. I've played through a couple over the years and actually enjoyed them despite the general hatred of reading I had during that time. Then why did I bother even playing them, you ask? Because both featured graphical backdrops and music, and one was a sequel to Chrono Trigger (an old favorite game of mine). The name of that one was "Radical Dreamers", and I thought it was thoroughly fantastic because it was unlike anything I had ever played and fun at the same time. I don't remember the name of the other one but it was an oldie for the PC. It was science fiction and based on a novel.

I studied Inform for a while, got the gist of it, downloaded the Zoom interpreter for my Mac and did some basic research on other languages and interpreters available. But what I didn't check out--until just today--was the community, and I stand surprised! Why? Because... there's actually a community.

Seriously, that surprised me... and then rather intimidated me. I didn't realize so many people were making interactive fiction and that so many titles were available! All I wanted was to find a place where I could upload a text adventure so maybe three or four people other than myself might actually play it...

So here you all are. It's good to be among you, and I hope I can produce something you all find enjoyable. [emote]:)[/emote]

(I should add that I'm in the planning stages for the IF I'm writing. It's very slow going, and probably a far larger project than a beginner like me should have set out to accomplish, but oh well. It's just for fun anyway. If I have to put that aside and try something smaller, I will.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3001&start=0#p20997
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: First Post - Intro
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2011-08-10 20:45:57

Welcome to the community [emote]:-)[/emote]  And if you're hankering for some local community, check out [url]http://pr-if.org/[/url] (next meeting is on Tuesday).

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=50#p20998
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: WaterMonkey / DateTime: 2011-08-10 21:57:17

[quote="Dannii"]I'm not sure whether I believe in the so called "post-keyboard world", but there are definitely some things we could try to make it a little easier for mobile terps, like double clicking on a word to add it to the input. For keyword games that would be especially useful![/quote]

Frotz for the iPhone has this, which is a HUGE help, especially when dealing with crazy words like "gnusto". 

(Also, I hadn't meant for this to be my first post, but I'll get a proper introductory post up later.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2999&start=0#p20999
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: moving glass between two rooms
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-10 22:09:08

This game sounds scary.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3000&start=0#p21000
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7:why won't my calling action work
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-10 22:13:17

Is condition 1) up there, with "visible" seemingly meaning "visible or invisible", a bug? Or does it make sense in some obscure way?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3002&start=0#p21001
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Associating things with other things
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-10 22:37:21

I've been thinking about and around this problem for a while and I haven't gotten anywhere. I feel like someone here might get a kick out of solving it, though, so here. Let this be a juicy steak for your Inform7 teeth to sink into.

It's pretty easy to explain what the idea is though (so maybe this will be too easy?): For the sake of new players who don't know well enough to stay away from phrasal verbs, I'd like to create a "SIT AT" verb, (as in, if this is a Thanksgiving story, "sit at kid table" or "sit at grown-up table"). The actual interaction, of course, is going to be between the player and a specific chair ("folding chair" or "antique chair"). So somewhere in the source there has to be something that says this chair is associated with this table, and sitting at a given table should be carried out by sitting on the associated chair.

I thought the best way to do this would be with a table. So I made that table, and then I looked at it a while, and then I got rid of it because I had no idea where to go from there. But you guys are smart, right? This will be a piece of cake. I mean, a juicy steak. It can be whatever you want.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3002&start=0#p21002
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Associating things with other things
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-10 23:11:21

Look at Chapter 13 on relations.  You can create a relation (for example, the "surrounding" relation) between each table and one or more chairs; then use an "instead" rule to redirect an attempt to sit at the table to sitting on a random chair which bears the specified relation to that table.  I'm not sure whether you also will need to create a "sitting at" action, or whether the existing "sitting" action is triggered by a "sit at" command (which you then redirect).

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2999&start=0#p21003
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: moving glass between two rooms
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-10 23:19:36

I'm sure the first thing somebody will try to do when they get into the Room of Horrors is to beat the dead horse, just to see what kind of clever response you have prepared.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2911&start=10#p21004
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Nonexistent comp
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-08-10 23:33:30

The absence of valid entries in the non-existent comp has caused the cancellation of the comp and the posthumous elimination of all invalid entries that never occurred. I apologize for any inconvenience this hasn't caused for any non-authors who didn't plan on failing to enter.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3003&start=0#p21005
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Table bug, or something known?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-10 23:34:55

I've noticed a couple of times while making my game that sometimes looking things up in lists seems to fail. Then I'd stuff around with the list or change something, then it would work. I kept assuming I'd typo'd or formatted wrong, etc.

Today it happened again - I had an action meant to give a particular message if the noun it's acting upon on is listed in the Table of Unbudgeables, but it was failing to match some objects while succeeding with others.

While playing around, I took one of the objects that wasn't being matched, cut it from position 9 in the list and pasted it at the top. Then I recompiled and the whole list worked. I didn't change anything else.

The item name is ladder1. I have a few object names with numerals grafted on like that. Is this likely to cause buginess? I just wondered if it might be the source of my table problem. Or if I'm just not supposed to do that in the first place. Or if I have discovered a bug, 'cos I guarantee I changed nothing but the position of the item in the list.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3002&start=0#p21006
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Associating things with other things
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-08-11 00:15:50

delicious steak cake

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3002&start=0#p21007
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Associating things with other things
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-11 00:37:16

Thank you Robert! I guess if my brain had thought of the word "relationship" instead of "association" then I'd have had it no problem.

No thank you, tove. No thank you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2951&start=0#p21008
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parchment-transcript hosting
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-11 00:42:38

The public version supports only Z-code at the moment, but I've already added the Glulx support. It's having problems saving one-character input and it's making too many individual calls per turn to the server at the moment, so I haven't made it public yet before those are fixed. If neither of those are a problem for you I can upload the current version. Saving the story text and normal line input works ok.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3000&start=0#p21009
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7:why won't my calling action work
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-11 00:52:04

[quote="Afterward"]Is condition 1) up there, with "visible" seemingly meaning "visible or invisible", a bug? Or does it make sense in some obscure way?[/quote]
"Visible" means "in scope". It's the opposite of "touchable" which requires that the player can touch the object for the action to work. It makes more sense when the scope is limited to the current room where it means what it says, but if you widen the scope to every object in the game its meaning becomes a bit less intuitive.

There's a suggestion that the wording should be changed: <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/751924-syntax-change-the-misleading-visible-in-appli">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... e-in-appli</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=50#p21010
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: kevinb / DateTime: 2011-08-11 02:12:36

[quote="duodave"]
But the original debate - wait for it - is that we're using technology from the 1980s to make our games? Well, so what? Arent we using PCs derived from the x86 chipset? Wasn't ethernet invented in the 1970s? We just celebrated the 20th anniversary of the first web page, should we throw out the web because it was invented in 1991?
[/quote]

Well, I suspect that the internal architecture of modern PCs would largely be recognizable by Von Neumann and Turing. Or even Babbage, of you want to go that far. But computing doesn't work like it did in the 40s, and the Web isn't like it was in the 90s.Things move on. You don't have to throw away the old stuff on a whim, but that doesn't mean you can't benefit from the new. Ethernet may have been invented in the 70s, but do you remember that inch-thick yellow cable you had to screw a spike into to make a connection? We don't have to do that any more.

Looking at it from outside, my bafflement about the IF world is not that would be recognizable to a person working in desktop computing in the 1980s, or that it's derived from 1980s technology, but that it is the _same_ as it was in the 1980s. A lot of what has happened in the desktop computing world since then is, I think, frivolous and trivial. But not everything, surely?

It annoys me that I can't find out how to change the typeface size in Gargoyle, or if it's even possible to. I presume there is some configuration file or something that will allow that. Or maybe it's easier than that? Who knows? I don't know of any other software that I routinely use that doesn't expose basic user configuration stuff in an accessible way. 

I presume that's by design, because that kind of thing isn't hard to implement. 

[quote]Text adventures are about the imagination. They are about verbosity, not interfaces. I would rather play a text-only game written by a pulitzer-prize winning author than a point-and click that had pretty graphics.[/quote]

Well, so would I. But, realistically, does the genre attract many Pulitzer-prize winning authors?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=10#p21011
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-08-11 02:13:30

You [i]say[/i] "obviously unacceptable," but right now there's nothing discouraging that kind of behavior, not even social pressure.  Anyone who posts a game publicly, in a competition or not, is currently signing up for that kind of treatment.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2952&start=10#p21012
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When is a cutscene OK?
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-08-11 02:24:29

I've got a story with a number of flashbacks.  Is clearing the screen before and after (on a keystroke) or putting it in italics (or both) sensible to differentiate it from the game proper?

And how many cutscenes is too many?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2952&start=10#p21013
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When is a cutscene OK?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-11 04:23:43

Some players get pissy about screen clearing because they lose their past actions, which they could otherwise scroll back over. You could get a similar effect to a screen clear by just linebreaking a bunch, to put a visually obvious gap of white between the pre-flashback, in the flashback and then back-to-the-present moments, without destroying the scrollback.

Italics sounds good, but you might not need those either. Just try it and see how it looks and feels. After all, if the flashbacks are long, italics might start to grate, too. But we can't spend our lives living in grate fear.

Hahahaha!...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3001&start=0#p21015
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: First Post - Intro
User: Shoal / DateTime: 2011-08-11 04:40:57

Yeah, I wish I could go to the next Boston group meeting, but it's just not possible for many reasons. It would really have to be on Saturday for me to be able to go. [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=50#p21016
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-11 05:58:42

It did once (Thomas Disch, Douglas Adams, Robert Pinsky, Mike Berlyn). Maybe we should ask ourselves what is there about IF that used to interest these writers and no longer does. Maybe the genre has become too fixed in a format writers don't like, maybe they've realized how much more complex it is to write IF than a novel, maybe it's just that the "fad" for text games was high enough back then to attract those authors, just as the fad for graphic adventures was enough to, say, bring Hollywood voice actors to King's Quest VI and Gabriel Knight 1.

However we do it, we'd better be ready to have a programmer ready to accompany whatever author becomes interested in the genre, and willing to either a) explain patiently why it's necessary to write such a huge amount of text a given player may never see, or b) bite the bullet, write it yourself and hope the isn't much of a clash.

Then again... we're talking about drawing people who are not drawn to IF. People who ARE drawn to IF play the games, read the articles, know about Crimes against Mimesis and The Craft of Adventure and the Player's Bill of Rights, and have *experienced* what makes good and bad works of IF. It is possible that instead of going "I would like it so much if So-and-so would write IF!" we should be going "Wow, we have such great writers already!". Because they do know what they're doing.

Though I'll grant you, to occasionally have someone else come in and shake things up a bit has proven to be a good gamble. All the authors I mentioned in the first line of this post made history - Amnesia, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy/Bureaucracy, Mindwheel, and well, we all know Berlyn...

EDIT - I only now noticed that as I thought up authors, I started losing sight of the "pulitzer-prize winning" bit, but my point still stands.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3002&start=0#p21017
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Associating things with other things
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-11 06:30:42

You're still going to need to make a table  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

(Avoiding confusion is more important than not explaining the joke: Because the player is sitting at a table. So you need to implement a table object.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3002&start=0#p21018
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Associating things with other things
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-11 07:56:41

[quote="matt w"]
Avoiding confusion is more important than not explaining the joke
[/quote]

Now THAT's a philosopher talking!  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3002&start=0#p21019
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Associating things with other things
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-11 08:03:16

I suppose you could always use a Table of Tables to keep track of which chairs are associated with which tables listed in the table of tables.  On the other hand, while that idea might not be very practical, it might be an effective means of illustrating the point through a story, which would be the Fable of the Table of Tables.  Alternatively, if you want to prevent a player from moving a chair too far from its designated table, you could attach the two with a cable of the table (but only if you're able).

Maybe we should just table the whole idea for now.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2911&start=10#p21020
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Nonexistent comp
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-11 08:20:06

Since my non-entry has now been eliminated, that must mean I didn't not win -- so I won, right?  Please let me know when to expect my non-prize, and when we'll be ready to sign the contract for commercial publishing of my non-game.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3003&start=0#p21021
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table bug, or something known?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-11 08:40:02

Can you post your tables? There are some bugs or mystifications involving the way Inform tries to assign kinds to columns (like [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=444]444[/url] and [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=448]448[/url]; maybe you're running across a similar issue, where a different type is inferred depending on what the first entry is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2427&start=20#p21022
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Glimmr sizing and alignment standards?
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-08-11 09:36:17

Upon further inspection this morning at work, I see that it was a matter of the monitor I have to use here being so crappy that I didn't see the small sprite  [emote]:roll:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3003&start=0#p21023
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table bug, or something known?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-11 09:43:20

I did see a decent number of table weirdness bugs listed. Thanks for pointing out those 2 in particular. It's unhelpful of me not to be helpful when requesting help, but I don't want to dump my tables here for now since it would be like an inventory dump of my IFComp game [emote];)[/emote]

After I got the table that prompted me to write this topic to work (by moving a different entry to the top) I went around and checked that all my 'listed in table' incidences were working in full, and they seem to be.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3004&start=0#p21024
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Compiler crash with continued table
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-11 10:38:28

Is this a known bug?

[code]Test is a room.

Table of Thoughts
item (object)	thought (text)

Table of Thoughts (continued)
item	thought
yourself	"I'm feeling very frustrated by a bug right now."[/code]

I assume the first section of the Table of Thoughts is improperly formatted, but rather than giving me a Problem message, the compiler simply crashes:

I get an alert:

[quote][b]The application ni quit unexpectedly.[/b]

Mac OS X and other applications are not affected.

Click Relaunch to launch the application again. Click Report to see more details or send a report to Apple.

[Ignore] [Report] [Relaunch][/quote]

Report details:
[rant]Model: MacBookPro5,5, BootROM MBP55.00AC.B03, 2 processors, Intel Core 2 Duo, 2.26 GHz, 2 GB
Graphics: kHW_NVidiaGeForce9400MItem, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, sppci_pci_device, 256 MB
Memory Module: global_name
AirPort: spairport_wireless_card_type_airport_extreme (0x14E4, 0x8D), Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (5.10.91.22)
Bluetooth: Version 2.1.9f10, 2 service, 0 devices, 1 incoming serial ports
Network Service: AirPort, AirPort, en1
Serial ATA Device: Hitachi HTS545016B9SA02, 149.05 GB
Serial ATA Device: MATSHITADVD-R   UJ-868
USB Device: Built-in iSight, (null) mA
USB Device: Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad, (null) mA
USB Device: IR Receiver, (null) mA
USB Device: Internal Memory Card Reader, (null) mA
USB Device: BRCM2046 Hub, (null) mA
USB Device: Bluetooth USB Host Controller, (null) mA[/rant]

And the Progress window says:
[quote]Launching: ni "-rules" "/Applications/Inform.app/Contents/Resources/Inform7/Extensions" "-package" "/Users/mike/i/tests/tmp.inform" "-extension=z5"
Inform 7 build 6G60 has started.
I've now read your source text, which is 27 words long.
++ 0% (Lexical analysis)
++ 5% (Semantic analysis)
I've also read Standard Rules by Graham Nelson, which is 39455 words long.

Compiler finished with code 10[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=50#p21025
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-11 10:54:20

[quote]It annoys me that I can't find out how to change the typeface size in Gargoyle, or if it's even possible to.[/quote]

This is a design choice by the creator of Gargoyle, not a convention of modern IF. I use Zoom, which has font and size preferences.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3004&start=0#p21026
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compiler crash with continued table
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-11 11:06:30

I don't see it in the bug tracker.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2911&start=10#p21027
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Nonexistent comp
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-08-11 11:08:40

No, if you read my message carefully you'll realize that the non-entries will only be eliminated after the authors have died.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3004&start=0#p21028
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compiler crash with continued table
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-11 11:26:35

Okey dokey then:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=716">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=716</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3003&start=0#p21029
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table bug, or something known?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-11 11:34:35

The safest workaround seems to be specifying the type of each column with the column:

[code]Test is a room.

Jerusalem is a thing.

Table of Ages
item (object)	comment (text)	age (number)
yourself	"As lovely as ever."	64
Jerusalem	"Seen its share of troubles."	6000

When play begins: If Jerusalem is an item listed in Table of Ages, say "Jerusalem is perhaps [age entry] years old."[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2951&start=0#p21030
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parchment-transcript hosting
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-11 11:41:15

I'm not using single-character input, and slow would be better than nothing at all. I tried getting my WIP down to z8 size but I'm still 6K over. So yes please, I'd love to try the latest version.

Does anybody have tips on locating the sources of bloat in an I7 project?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2952&start=10#p21031
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When is a cutscene OK?
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-11 12:21:10

[i]Bronze[/i] has a ton of flashbacks, but they're never very long, so they can go in the normal flow of the story. It helps a lot that they're presented as things the protagonist is remembering, as opposed to just appearing to the player out of nowhere.

If a flashback is longer, or less connected to the current action, then it makes more sense to clear the screen. You can mitigate the reaction severedhand refers to if the screen-clearing occurs at some transition in play, where the stuff after the flashback is new and doesn't require me to remember what happened before the screen cleared.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3005&start=0#p21032
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Older Parchment randomly reloads page in latest Safari?
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-08-11 13:07:22

Has anyone else seen this problem? In the latest version of Mac Safari (5.1), the version of Parchment that's included with the current Inform 7 build will randomly cause the page to do a hard refresh just after submitting a command. This is not predictable/deterministic, and seems to happen maybe 1 out of every 10 commands. I've also seen it happen right when Parchment first loads up; so the page will reload multiple times in quick succession before crashing Safari.

I thought this was a problem just with a particular complex Javascript/Parchment setup I have for a WIP, but I just saw it happen on a student project using only very simple I7 code and a non-customized "release along with an interpreter" setup.

I've looked through the Git commits for the past year and didn't see anything on a casual inspection that looked related to this. If anyone working more closely with Parchment knows anything more, I'd love to hear details.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=10#p21033
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-08-11 13:34:22

[quote="katz"]You [i]say[/i] "obviously unacceptable," but right now there's nothing discouraging that kind of behavior, not even social pressure.[/quote]
I think suggesting that someone kill themselves is generally frowned upon in polite society.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3006&start=0#p21034
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Which do you mean? Question
User: rotter / DateTime: 2011-08-11 13:39:42

In one of my games everyone is wearing a brown coat.  How do I handle the following problem?

[quote]
You can see John, Bill and Ted.

>x brown coat
Which do you mean, the brown coat, the brown coat or the brown coat?
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3006&start=0#p21035
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Which do you mean? Question
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-11 14:11:21

Is there any reason why the coats have to be indistinguishable from one another?  If not, probably the easiest way to deal with this is simply to give each coat a unique name (e.g., John is wearing the brown tweed coat, Bill is wearing the brown leather coat, and Ted is wearing the brown wool coat).

If you do need them to be indistinguishable, then I think there are ways to use "understand" statements so that items can be understood by their relationships (so that a coat could be identified by the person who is wearing it at the time), but I'll leave it to somebody who knows this area better to point you towards the proper sytax for doing that.


Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=10#p21036
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-11 14:20:30

[quote]I think suggesting that someone kill themselves is generally frowned upon in polite society.[/quote]
True. if a polite person would like to see something done, he does it himself.  Asking somebody else to act in order to bring about one's desired outcome would be rude. [emote]:?[/emote] 


Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3006&start=0#p21037
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Which do you mean? Question
User: rotter / DateTime: 2011-08-11 14:21:07

[quote="Robert Rothman"]Is there any reason why the coats have to be indistinguishable from one another?  If not, probably the easiest way to deal with this is simply to give each coat a unique name (e.g., John is wearing the brown tweed coat, Bill is wearing the brown leather coat, and Ted is wearing the brown wool coat).[/quote]

If possible I would like them to be indistinguishable from one another.  I normally use the trick of making like things slightly different -  like notebook, notepad, pad, booklet etc.  But, I thought this time I would see if a proper solution existed.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2984&start=10#p21038
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Time Flies
User: Andsowejump / DateTime: 2011-08-11 15:01:39

can I possibly bring this back to your attention?

The problem I'm having here is that I've put in"

[code]Every turn when the time since Scream4 began is 5 minutes:
	say "The wind screams past your ears as you run away from the shadowy figure.".[/code]

But the in-game error message says


"Most problems are detected when Inform translates the source text, but this is one of the exceptions, a "run-time problem" which emerges only during play.


Suppose there is a scene called Second Stage. Asking for the time when Second Stage began or the time since Second Stage began only makes sense if Second Stage has happened (or is happening now). This problem turns up if you ask such questions about a scene which hasn't happened. It's easy to test for this: for instance, if Second Stage has happened and the time since Second Stage began is more than five minutes..."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3006&start=0#p21039
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Which do you mean? Question
User: Aintelligence / DateTime: 2011-08-11 15:12:57

Could you not just add onto the beginning of each object:

ei. 
[code]John's brown coat is a thing.
Bill's brown coat is a thing.
Your brown coat is a thing.
etc.[/code]

alternatively chapter 3.18 may provide a way.
[code]In the Belfry is a man called the vicar. The indefinite article of the vicar is "your local".[/code]

You may possibly be able to add an indefinite article to the coats  aka  "your", "Bill's" and "John's".
Not sure if that works for objects.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=10#p21040
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-11 15:22:22

Well, in past centuries certain societies expected people to commit suicide in case of misbehaviour or lack of success in certain fields. I haven't heard though that this applies for creators of bad IF.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2984&start=10#p21041
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Time Flies
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-11 15:39:26

[quote="Andsowejump"][code]Every turn when the time since Scream4 began is 5 minutes:
	say "The wind screams past your ears as you run away from the shadowy figure.".[/code][/quote]
It would be nice if Inform would assume that the scene you're referring to has already started when you enter a condition like that, but it doesn't. This will work:

[code]Every turn when the time since Scream4 began is 5 minutes during Scream4:
	say "The wind screams past your ears as you run away from the shadowy figure."[/code]

Note that the "during" has to come at the end of the preamble. Don't ask me why - it never made any sense to me. You can say "and scream4 is happening" if you prefer.

I don't know off the top of my head if there is a phrase to check whether a scene has started at least once, regardless of whether it is still happening.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2911&start=10#p21042
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Nonexistent comp
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-11 15:44:12

I was hoping that at least Nobody would win the comp [emote]:-([/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3006&start=0#p21043
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Which do you mean? Question
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-08-11 15:50:52

Check out Chapter 17.29, especially the noses part of the "Walls and Noses" example, and possibly also Chapter 4.14 (the "The Night Before" example; disambiguation in the Inform documentation is very nose-centric).  Failing that, you might look into [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Jon%20Ingold/Disambiguation%20Control/index.html]Jon Ingold's Disambiguation Control[/url] extension.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=10#p21044
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-08-11 15:56:36

Are you saying that people who write bad IF should commit suicide? That's a little harsh, don't you think?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2495&start=0#p21045
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Quest 5.0 - Release Candidate 1 is now available
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-08-11 15:59:32

Alex, I was just looking at RC2 and it's significantly improved from one of the betas I looked at a couple months ago. Good work. It's much more stable. 

Also, I'm glad to see there's more robust documentation now. As someone who hasn't really worked with previous versions of Quest, it's always good to have documentation.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3006&start=0#p21046
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Which do you mean? Question
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-11 16:00:23

It's possible to have things be named according to relations. It's tricky to do this sort of thing, though - you might be better off giving each coat a name like "John's brown coat." Inform does that for you when you create anonymous incorporated objects, but it doesn't seem to do it for anonymous worn objects.

I think in this case you would have to create a kind-of-value called "possessive adjective" or somesuch, and assign one to each person. Then you can understand a person's possessive adjective as referring to something related by enclosure. And you can tack the adjective onto the printing the name activity or the indefinite article property of the coat. Be careful, though - Inform 7 doesn't give you any hooks into the definite article (which is frustrating because Inform 6 does). So you might have to make the coats proper-named and then fake the article, or perform some other similar form of hack.

This sort of thing ought to go into an extension. Does one exist already?

[simul-post: oh yes, Walls and Noses. Good advice.]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3006&start=0#p21047
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Which do you mean? Question
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-11 16:06:42

Beware, though - as I mentioned before, wearing doesn't have the same name-generating effects as incorporation, so Walls and Noses won't work by itself. To see what I mean, compile this source and then look at the World Index:

[code]Test is a room.

A brown coat is a kind of thing. It is usually wearable. A nose is a kind of thing.

Every person wears a brown coat. A nose is part of every person.

 John, Bill and Ted are men in Test.
[/code]

You'll see this:
[code]Test - room where play begins  
  John - man 
    part  John's nose - nose 
    worn  brown coat - brown coat 
  Bill - man 
    part  Bill's nose - nose 
    worn  brown coat - brown coat 
  Ted - man 
    part  Ted's nose - nose 
    worn  brown coat - brown coat
  yourself - person
    part  your nose - nose 
    worn  brown coat - brown coat 
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3006&start=0#p21048
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Which do you mean? Question
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-11 16:09:17

Making the possessive part of the name of each object (e.g., John's brown coat) won't accomplish awhat you need if what you really need is that the objects themselves be identical.  For example, if there is any chance that the characters could switch coats, this approach could result in John wearing the thing that is named "Bills' brown coat"  (since "Bill's" is part of the object's name rather than something which changes with the wearer).  On the other hand, if you don't really need indistinguishability but you just want them to look the same to the player (except for an unchangeable characteristic such as who the owner is), then this idea should work.

Multiple indistinguishable objects are, to me, one of the most confusing aspects of Inform 7.

Robert Rothmsn

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2984&start=10#p21049
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Time Flies
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-11 16:13:59

One other thought would be set a variable to the current time as part of the "when scene begins" code.  Then, you test the time against that variable, rather than directly against the time when the scene began.


Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3007&start=0#p21050
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Quest 5: How do you make an enterable surface/supporter
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-08-11 16:37:17

In Quest 5 RC2, how do you make an object an enterable supporter, such as a chair or bed? I don't see that functionality. I can put things on a bed, but I cant sit on it or lie on it.

Also, I don't get how I can manipulate the room description to appear before the object description. It seems non-standard to have the visible objects appearing first.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2993&start=10#p21051
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: a question about motivation
User: Nicôle / DateTime: 2011-08-11 17:22:33

[quote="maga"]Child's Play is by Stephen Granade, not Graham Nelson.[/quote]Oops!  [emote]:oops:[/emote] 

I opened the game to see how I made the mistake:  The first line of credits says:[quote="CREDITS screen of Child's Play"]Child's Play was made using Inform 7, it is by Graham Nelson and it is so easy that even a baby can make a game with it.[/quote]  I was in such a hurry to get the information that I skimmed that line and then went back to fill it in.  And I thought I was being so mature to give the authors name when I suggested it.   [emote]:oops:[/emote]  This time I couldn't find his name either until I went to the screen called TINY PRINT, where it has his name by the copyright thingy.  Oh well.  Lesson learned.  Move on.  Nothing to see here folks. [emote];)[/emote]  [emote]:oops:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3006&start=0#p21052
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Which do you mean? Question
User: rotter / DateTime: 2011-08-11 17:23:35

Thanks for all the advice everyone.  I think I can make the "John's brown coat" technique work in the game.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2971&start=0#p21053
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I have a blog. Yippe-kayay.
User: Nicôle / DateTime: 2011-08-11 17:24:28

Dad, here's an idea: [quote="ezfreemann"]just copy and paste some articles from wikipedia and a recipe or two to round it out and [b]VIOLA[/b], youre done![/quote] Yay!  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2989&start=10#p21054
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I want to kill a player if they try to eat a backdrop...
User: Nicôle / DateTime: 2011-08-11 17:33:01

[quote="gravel"]I laughed.[/quote] I laughed too!  lol   [emote]:lol:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=10#p21055
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-11 18:01:51

Me? I'm just commenting, not suggesting. The only IF author I want to see dead is Jeff O'Neill for costing me about 50% of my brain cells and three smashed keyboards in total when I tried to solve Nord & Bert with my limited school English way back when.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2993&start=10#p21056
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: a question about motivation
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-11 18:22:05

Not a big deal -- easy mistake to make. No praise; no blame.

If you want to check the publication details of a game and you can't find them on the first screen, it's often easiest to look it up on [url]http://www.ifdb.org[/url] or [url]http://www.ifwiki.org/[/url] instead.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3005&start=0#p21057
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Older Parchment randomly reloads page in latest Safari?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-11 18:33:02

I just saw some complaints about this in other web apps. (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) It may be something general to Safari 5.1 and the way it caches web pages.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=50#p21058
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: Greeny / DateTime: 2011-08-11 18:38:27

[quote="Peter Pears"]
EDIT - I only now noticed that as I thought up authors, I started losing sight of the "pulitzer-prize winning" bit, but my point still stands.[/quote]

If Douglas Adams didn't win a Pulitzer Prize, then he bloomin' well should 'ave! [emote]:-)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3005&start=0#p21059
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Older Parchment randomly reloads page in latest Safari?
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-08-11 18:44:31

Ah, interesting. Possibly [url=http://redrata.com/2011/07/safari-woff-select-field-crash/]this[/url].

Sounds like a patch is on its way, but in the meantime, I can perhaps feel more justified excluding Safari from the list of compatible browsers.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3001&start=0#p21060
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: First Post - Intro
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-08-11 19:07:46

[quote="Shoal"]Hi all, first post! (I was going to post this in the Introductions sticky thread, but someone here said that thread was dying...)[/quote]
Awe... now I feel bad.  I'd hate to be responsible for killing a tradition.  I kind of liked that sticky.  Oops.  [emote]:oops:[/emote] 

But hello, Robert!  [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=10#p21061
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-11 19:08:01

[quote="katz"]You [i]say[/i] "obviously unacceptable," but right now there's nothing discouraging that kind of behavior, not even social pressure.  Anyone who posts a game publicly, in a competition or not, is currently signing up for that kind of treatment.[/quote]
It would be hard to apply active social pressure here, and I'm not certain it would be productive. After all, what do you do? Post criticism of the comment of the blog of the guy who wrote it -- a blog he himself moderates (if it accepts comments at all)? Doesn't sound like a great idea. Post about it on your own blog? Generally, I wouldn't do that, because it would just bring attention (and higher ranks in Google) to a blog I would probably like to languish in obscurity. And even then the guy would probably just laugh at it.

The problem with social pressure is that it can only be applied in a community where people already care about each others' opinions; this means that outsiders are generally immune to it. If random guy X writes a blog post that I think is unacceptable and I tell him so, the impact is probably 0. If (to take a random name) Sam Kabo Ashwell writes a blog post that I think is unacceptable and I tell him so, that might have an effect: we've seen each other around in the community for a pretty long time now, I've met him -- his opinion means something to me, and I guess my opinion would mean something to him. You need that meaning before you can have social pressure.

So, yes, you are signing up for any kind of treatment when you post a game publicly, because there are always ways in which random guy X can post whatever he wants about you and nobody can do anything about it. But no, you are not signing up for it in the sense that you can [i]expect[/i] it or ought to expect it. You ought to expect critical judgements, but you ought not to expect death threats, gross profanity, and so on. (Speaking of profanity: another instance of how difficult this kind of thing is. What is unacceptable cursing for random guy Y is usual boys-at-the-bar talk for random guy Z. Lack of shared social context makes the internet an easy place to misunderstand each other, an easy place to meet assholes, and an easy place to perceive nice people as assholes because you misinterpret their meanings or intentions.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=50#p21062
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-11 19:59:49

[quote="zarf"][quote]It annoys me that I can't find out how to change the typeface size in Gargoyle, or if it's even possible to.[/quote]

This is a design choice by the creator of Gargoyle, not a convention of modern IF. I use Zoom, which has font and size preferences.[/quote]

You can do all that stuff in Mac Gargoyle anyway, though the prefs haven't been properly menu-ised. I thought Gargoyle was the same across platforms?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2989&start=10#p21063
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I want to kill a player if they try to eat a backdrop...
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-08-11 20:24:16

I often want to kill players who do stupid things with obviously non-interactive scenery.  This actually makes me want to play your game (carefully).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=10#p21064
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-08-11 20:39:46

People could stop linking to them, in the first place.

Am I really the only person who finds Mean IF Reviews to be unacceptable?  Seriously, no one else finds anything objectionable about having a stated purpose of being mean to other people?  Everyone else thinks that whining about everything, descriptors like "faggotry" and "narcissistic jerk-off", and giving them all ratings of less than zero constitute constructive criticism?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=10#p21065
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-11 20:46:31

Isn't Mean IF Reviews a joke? It reads like the guy is joking. It's jokes, right?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3005&start=0#p21066
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Older Parchment randomly reloads page in latest Safari?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-11 20:53:43

Yeah, good catch on that bug report. It does look like that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=10#p21067
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: Mr. Patient / DateTime: 2011-08-11 21:17:38

I don't find the Mean IF Reviews especially funny, and I too could live without the "faggotry" (and the complaining about perfectly ordinary words like "despondency").   Now, Pissy Little Sausages: that's quality snark, and usually constructive, too.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3005&start=0#p21068
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Older Parchment randomly reloads page in latest Safari?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-08-11 21:24:00

That bug isn't relevant, Parchment doesn't use @font-face.

[quote]In the latest version of Mac Safari (5.1), the version of Parchment that's included with the current Inform 7 build will randomly cause the page to do a hard refresh just after submitting a command.[/quote]
Does it happen with iplayif.com, or with the latest inform7 files from Github? I suspect the problem is that it's not stopping the <input> from submitting the <form> it is in, which was fixed in <a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/curiousdannii/parchment/commit/347371f">https://github.com/curiousdannii/parchm ... it/347371f</a>

[quote]I've also seen it happen right when Parchment first loads up; so the page will reload multiple times in quick succession before crashing Safari.[/quote]This seems like something else entirely. I've never seen this happen and have no idea why it would.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3005&start=0#p21069
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Older Parchment randomly reloads page in latest Safari?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-11 21:33:57

If you look at the apple support thread which is linked from that bug report, you'll see several duplicate bugs about Safari crashing on input fields. They don't all involve @font-face.

I tested it myself, quickly, on my own web site (on a game with no @font-face). I got a Safari process crash after several moves.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=20#p21070
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-11 21:39:21

[quote="katz"]Am I really the only person who finds Mean IF Reviews to be unacceptable?  Seriously, no one else finds anything objectionable about having a stated purpose of being mean to other people?  Everyone else thinks that whining about everything, descriptors like "faggotry" and "narcissistic jerk-off", and giving them all ratings of less than zero constitute constructive criticism?[/quote]

No, you aren't -- it's terrible on many levels.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3005&start=0#p21071
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Older Parchment randomly reloads page in latest Safari?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-08-11 21:44:50

Hmm okay then. That Safari bug might explain the crashes, but I'm still pretty sure that I fixed the reloading bug in April.

Just for reference the latest Inform 7 package can be downloaded from <a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/curiousdannii/parchment/archives/inform7">https://github.com/curiousdannii/parchm ... es/inform7</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3005&start=0#p21072
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Older Parchment randomly reloads page in latest Safari?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-11 22:27:28

When the Safari web-rendering process crashes, Safari tries to recover by reloading the page. That's the symptom.

I think you can see the (segfault) crash log if you turn on the "Develop" preference in the "advanced" tab of Safari preferences. Or maybe that's because I tweaked the OSX crash-reporter preferences. I saw it, anyway.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=50#p21073
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-08-11 22:42:10

[quote="severedhand"]You can do all that stuff in Mac Gargoyle anyway, though the prefs haven't been properly menu-ised. I thought Gargoyle was the same across platforms?[/quote]

Right, the settings are buried in garglk.ini. A file of that name will get sourced from a number of locations, starting in the game folder and working up through the $HOME directory and on to the packaged configuration file.

Menu-driven settings were high on my TODO list back when I had more time to devote to the project. Less so now that I am behind a Glk iteration and several interpreter updates.

Anyhow, it does a disservice to the community to mistake Gargoyle's unfriendly UI for a shared design ethos. Or an individual one, for that matter - the other IF player from that developer (Spatterlight) has a much more conventional UI.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=20#p21074
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-11 23:04:55

They're not classy and they're not funny, but they're not really reviews either. The Mean IF Reviewer is just aping MST3K, and then forgetting that that's what he was supposed to be doing, and then just goofing off and ranting. I wouldn't say it's contributing anything to society, but the blog isn't the problem with IF criticism any more than Crow T. Robot is the problem with film theory.

There are some [i]actual[/i] IF reviewers, though, who seem more focused on wowing us with their prose and acid wit than communicating useful information to the reader, and their scores get counted in competitions. I don't want to name any names, because this is a public forum and I don't know who is whom and I don't have the URL on me at the moment.

(Hey Mr. Patient. I checked out Pissy Little Sausages. It's got too much cussing for my taste but that's just me. I guess I thought I'd let you know that I looked at it though. Thanks.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=20#p21075
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-11 23:45:00

Enh. I don't think there's a problem with reviewers -- there are reviewers who err on the side of cruelty, sure, but there's no shortage of reviewers wearing rose-tinted glasses you could weld with, and there are reviewers who go above and beyond to be diplomatic and constructive, even to things that don't really merit it. This is what spectra look like. You're not obliged to read reviewers; I personally haven't bothered to look at Mean IF Reviews (because what would be the point?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=20#p21076
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-08-11 23:56:15

I agree that there's not much value in Mean IF Reviews and it's kind of sad that it exists. I think Pissy Little Sausages strikes a more pro-author note even if her criticisms might sting all the more for being hilarious. I want to like her site less than I do, but Jenni's an excellent writer which makes that position difficult.

IMO the community does a good job of writing high quality reviews of good games and there are plenty of jerks that enjoy roasting the truly terrible ones. What's not clear to me is that there's any point in flaming a half-finished game or its author; clearly the creator doesn't care, so why go to the trouble?

But there's a relatively broad swathe of mediocre games by promising and talented authors that don't really get the kudos they deserve. I mean, it takes a fairly serious commitment just to turn out an IF title that is playable with some fun bits sprinkled among the rough patches. A good chunk of IF Comp titles fall into this category: the ones that place from 5-15 in a given year. Many of my favorite IF memories came from this group, and it's no coincidence that my IFComp scores diverge wildly from the final results if you exclude the top three.

I figure that anyone who spends the time to make an IF game could have finished an indie platformer or roguelike in one-tenth the time and seen more players and more positive feedback for their trouble. Those genres are flourishing despite a similar lack of commercial prospects. It doesn't feel like IF is doing quite so well. In terms of support for the programming and design aspects we are arguably up there with anyone, but it seems like that support evaporates once the game is released. You can ask as many newbie programmer questions as you like through the process, but woe betide the poor fool who releases a game with portable scenery and dares to read the reviews.

I don't know what the answer is but maybe it involves fewer comps and more jams, where the point is just to create something cool for a community that likes to play IF.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=20#p21077
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-12 00:09:52

How would jams differ from SpeedIF, exactly?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=20#p21078
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-12 00:11:15

[quote="maga"]there are reviewers who err on the side of cruelty, sure, but there's no shortage of reviewers wearing rose-tinted glasses you could weld with, and there are reviewers who go above and beyond to be diplomatic and constructive, even to things that don't really merit it. This is what spectra look like.[/quote]
This is probably accurate and I probably haven't read enough of the relevant material. I don't understand "welding with rose-tinted glasses" though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=20#p21079
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-12 00:14:51

Oh now I get it!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=0#p21080
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: letters from lorthayn blog
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-08-12 00:34:29

new entry.

[url]http://ezfreemann.livejournal.com/[/url]

ive been kicked off Planet IF, i guess.  so i guess i wanted to tell ppl of the new entry.

no reply to my email about what i did wrong so i can remedy it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=20#p21081
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-08-12 00:45:45

[quote="maga"]How would jams differ from SpeedIF, exactly?[/quote]

That's a good question. My perception is that the people who create SpeedIF are nearly all people who frequent IFMud, with the result that the events have tended to feel rather elitist and exclusive. Anyone can play them but if you weren't on IFMud you aren't in on the joke (whatever the joke might be).

The exception to that is the recent SpeedIF Jacket 4 event - probably because it was announced here and promoted here, and had games written by people I know from the forums. I really liked that format and I would love to see more events like it.

Would it be as successful without as many A-list IF authors participating? Hard to say. But I guess SpeedIF and IF jams are probably the same thing once you get past the social anxiety component.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=20#p21082
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-12 01:26:03

[quote="bcressey"][quote="maga"]How would jams differ from SpeedIF, exactly?[/quote]
That's a good question. My perception is that the people who create SpeedIF are nearly all people who frequent IFMud, with the result that the events have tended to feel rather elitist and exclusive. Anyone can play them but if you weren't on IFMud you aren't in on the joke (whatever the joke might be).[/quote]
That wasn't ever the intention, really; the issue was more that we never really thought that SpeedIF was a big enough deal to be worth promoting all that hard. (And with a few exceptions, there's not really a joke to be in on: SpeedIFs are incomprehensible to [i]everyone[/i]. But they do lose something if you weren't part of the event, I agree.)

[quote="bcressey"]The exception to that is the recent SpeedIF Jacket 4 event - probably because it was announced here and promoted here, and had games written by people I know from the forums. I really liked that format and I would love to see more events like it.[/quote]
Yeah, it was really nice to see games from people outside the MUD-regular crowd; any Speeds I run in future I'll definitely cross-promote, and I'll encourage other folks to do the same. I totally agree that SpeedIF and similar things have a valuable function when it comes to producing workable games in a low-pressure context that still get a little bit of attention; but I think the functional overlap between them and comps is fairly small, even with two- or three-week Speeds.

There's been some talk lately about how we could really use a better mentoring and/or collaboration system than is in place at the moment, as a way of building support for promising-but-flawed authors in the aftermath of comps; it's kind of hard to envisage a model that isn't trivial, isn't patronising but isn't I-have-this-cool-idea,-do-all-the-work-for-me-please. We have a really good grasp of how betatesting works, and when people take advantage of that system it can do a huge lot of good; but betatesting has its limits.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=20#p21083
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-08-12 02:02:32

First of all, it restores my my hope in the universe that other people don't like Mean IF Reviews either.  But dfabulich linked to it and called it good; the [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/IntroComp_2011]IFWiki 2011 page[/url] links to it [i]by name[/i] so it looks like a real review.  Why, if everyone agrees they're not a real thing?

[quote]But there's a relatively broad swathe of mediocre games by promising and talented authors that don't really get the kudos they deserve. I mean, it takes a fairly serious commitment just to turn out an IF title that is playable with some fun bits sprinkled among the rough patches. A good chunk of IF Comp titles fall into this category: the ones that place from 5-15 in a given year. Many of my favorite IF memories came from this group, and it's no coincidence that my IFComp scores diverge wildly from the final results if you exclude the top three.

I figure that anyone who spends the time to make an IF game could have finished an indie platformer or roguelike in one-tenth the time and seen more players and more positive feedback for their trouble. Those genres are flourishing despite a similar lack of commercial prospects. It doesn't feel like IF is doing quite so well. In terms of support for the programming and design aspects we are arguably up there with anyone, but it seems like that support evaporates once the game is released. You can ask as many newbie programmer questions as you like through the process, but woe betide the poor fool who releases a game with portable scenery and dares to read the reviews.[/quote]

This is similar to my experience; when I've judged the TVTropes Writing Contests, we've gotten as many as 30 people signing up and fewer than 10 final entries, so it's not really exaggerating to say that everyone who submits a story is a winner because they're ahead of two-thirds of the entrants.  And, as I tell the first-time writers and high schoolers, there's implicit respect in having a contest with no categories based on age or experience and thereby saying that even beginners have the right to be treated on a level with experts.

Nevertheless, there's extremely little incentive to complete [i]anything[/i] that's likely to garner nothing but scorn, and any movement that heaps criticism, solicited or unsolicited, on newbies is going to stay very small indeed.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=30#p21084
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-12 02:09:30

[quote="maga"]There's been some talk lately about how we could really use a better mentoring and/or collaboration system than is in place at the moment, as a way of building support for promising-but-flawed authors in the aftermath of comps; it's kind of hard to envisage a model that isn't trivial, isn't patronising but isn't I-have-this-cool-idea,-do-all-the-work-for-me-please. We have a really good grasp of how betatesting works, and when people take advantage of that system it can do a huge lot of good; but betatesting has its limits.[/quote]
I've been meaning to revise the [url=http://if.game-testing.org]betatesting site[/url] at some point, maybe it would be a good idea to add code review as one option alongside gametesting and proofreading?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=30#p21085
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-12 02:14:47

[quote="katz"]First of all, it restores my my hope in the universe that other people don't like Mean IF Reviews either.  But dfabulich linked to it and called it good; the [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/IntroComp_2011]IFWiki 2011 page[/url] links to it [i]by name[/i] so it looks like a real review.  Why, if everyone agrees they're not a real thing?
[/quote]
They might not be good reviews, but I don't think anyone argues that they aren't actually reviews. I think IFWiki takes a neutral role of just cataloguing information just like they list even games that are obvious jokes, trolls or attack pieces.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=30#p21086
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-08-12 02:17:44

[code]code review[/code]

Yes, please.

I have some other suggestions.

For contests, first, anonymity.  Obviously wouldn't work for XYZZY, but all other contests ought to be anonymized.  One hopes favoritism isn't an issue, but there's no reason to solicit it.

Second, why does every contest need to have open judging?  Why not have contests judged by a small number of experts with a history of providing fair, helpful reviews?

I also had a terribly good idea about IFDB.  On DeviantArt, your gallery is split into two sections, the main gallery and the scrapbook.  The former is for finished artwork; the latter is for sketches, unfinished pieces, and whatever else.  It doesn't show up on your homepage or in news feeds.

How about something equivalent in IFDB?  Have a section where you can post games that you want to make publicly available for whatever reason, but don't want to be evaluated as completed, serious works.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=30#p21087
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-08-12 03:52:32

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]
It would be hard to apply active social pressure here, and I'm not certain it would be productive. After all, what do you do? Post criticism of the comment of the blog of the guy who wrote it -- a blog he himself moderates (if it accepts comments at all)? Doesn't sound like a great idea. Post about it on your own blog? Generally, I wouldn't do that, because it would just bring attention (and higher ranks in Google) to a blog I would probably like to languish in obscurity. And even then the guy would probably just laugh at it.[/quote]

Belatedly, Victor has described my own feeling about this. I was disgusted by the "author, kill yourself" line (and the concept of Mean IF Reviews doesn't appeal to me much either), but I don't feel there's much to be gained by providing free advertising on my blog by complaining about this behavior. It's more likely to gain readership for these people than to pressure them to stop -- if anything, the traffic bump might feel like an incentive to keep going. This shouldn't be read as tacit approval, but more as weary acknowledgement that calling out trolls on the internet rarely produces a desirable result.

So I think the best bet for cultivating a warmer community spirit is to provide more of the positive content. I'm all for looking for ways to provide more support to authors, as well as alternate ways of showcasing games. (There used to be, 10-ish years ago, more of a niche for contests/anthologies with pre-named judges: the IF Art Show ran that way, as did a few minicomps. That could happen again, if someone wanted it to.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3009&start=0#p21088
Forum: Competitions / Subject: CompCompComp
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-12 04:30:42

You will see this as a completely superfluous contribution, but please allow me to mention that I don't want to bother you with yet another redundant and unrealistic concept - I just had an idea, want to write it down, and that's it.

Authors apply for a yet another competition. A "jury", a committee, some guys construct random tasks from a list: A setting, a goal, maybe a character description. Example:
[spoiler]Setting: 
--- Mayan village, 500 B.C.
--- fictitious, stereotype small town in the Bible Belt
--- ruins of NYC, 2100 A.D.
--- a planet where gravitation is so heavy that people and buldings are small and sturdy, 3rd dimension doesn't play a role
--- a medieval castle with a ghost
Goal:
To
--- find and defeat
--- escape from
--- make love to
--- re-establish
the
--- mayor
--- secret sorority
--- manic antagonist
--- entire neighbourhood
The player is
--- old and ill
--- having a sidekick with Tourette syndrom
--- sitting in a laboratory and controlling a robot
--- ugly as hell[/spoiler]
Individual tasks provided by a computer program, re-drawing possible in special cases (although "You're sitting in a laboratory and control a robot which is in a Mayan village and needs to make love to the entire neighbourhood." still sounds feasible... somehow). Authors have one week/two weeks/... time to come up with a (small) game that matches their individual task. Votes provided by the jury/registered voters/the plebs, in kind prizes handed over, yet another competition over and soon forgotten.

If there weren't already gazillions of competitions (one per existing author I tend to think), I could think of this as a funny, yet half-baked idea.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=50#p21089
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: kevinb / DateTime: 2011-08-12 04:48:14

[quote="bcressey"]
Anyhow, it does a disservice to the community to mistake Gargoyle's unfriendly UI for a shared design ethos. Or an individual one, for that matter - the other IF player from that developer (Spatterlight) has a much more conventional UI.[/quote]

No, fair enough. But I hope it's understandable, in light of comments on this thread alone, how a person might come to such a misapprehension.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=30#p21090
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-12 06:42:28

Just for the record, this topic is the first time I have ever heard of Mean IF Reviews. It -- well, let's just say that I don't see any reason to ever write something that is "mean-spirited". Even a good rant is good precisely because it is [i]not[/i] mean-spirited.

Also for the record: we have been bashing the person who wrote "author, go kill yourself" quite heavily. That may well be deserved. But perhaps this person says "go kill yourself" to his/her friends all day, as a piece of criticism that has lost its original meaning; in which case the blogger's fault is not thinking about different social contexts, rather than being an ass. We don't know, and my purpose in picking that example was not to eternally condemn this particular blogger to the fiery pits.

I know that [i]I[/i] have written reviews which I was ashamed of later; [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=bbfzoshu3r746fvg]Attack of the Mutaydid Meat Monsters[/url] comes to mind. What's there is the revised version; the original was much worse. I wrote it late at night, and felt terrible about it the next day. Luckily, Duncan is a really great guy who didn't hold it against me.

[quote="emshort"]So I think the best bet for cultivating a warmer community spirit is to provide more of the positive content. I'm all for looking for ways to provide more support to authors, as well as alternate ways of showcasing games. (There used to be, 10-ish years ago, more of a niche for contests/anthologies with pre-named judges: the IF Art Show ran that way, as did a few minicomps. That could happen again, if someone wanted it to.)[/quote]
Sounds good, though perhaps it should be in a thread not called "Screw IFComp"?  [emote]:P[/emote] 

One has to find a way to make a difference between authors who want constructive criticism, and authors who are just fooling around. We know from experience that there are always some people around who intentionally release bad stuff just for the fun of having other people be irritated by it; and it can sometimes be hard to distinguish serious-but-not-yet-very-good authors from these "jokers". (One of the very first IF reviews I ever wrote was of Paul Panks's [i]Ninja[/i]. Had I known Panks, that review would not have been as harsh and indignant as it in fact was.) Nobody, after all, wants to be wasting time on the jokers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=30#p21091
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-12 06:46:26

[quote="katz"][code]code review[/code]

Yes, please.

I have some other suggestion.

For contests, first, anonymity.  Obviously wouldn't work for XYZZY, but all other contests ought to be anonymized.  One hopes favoritism isn't an issue, but there's no reason to solicit it.

Second, why does every contest need to have open judging?  Why not have contests judged by a small number of experts with a history of providing fair, helpful reviews?[/quote]

I don't think this will really solve the problem -- it's not the scores that are an issue, it's the reviews. And you can't (and shouldn't) stop people from posting reviews.

[quote]I also had a terribly good idea about IFDB.  On DeviantArt, your gallery is split into two sections, the main gallery and the scrapbook.  The former is for finished artwork; the latter is for sketches, unfinished pieces, and whatever else.  It doesn't show up on your homepage or in news feeds.

How about something equivalent in IFDB?  Have a section where you can post games that you want to make publicly available for whatever reason, but don't want to be evaluated as completed, serious works.[/quote]

This I very much like. And I think it can be applied to contests too. One nice feature of the JayIsGame IF comp was that it allowed rolling updates, so bugs weren't baked in for the duration of the contest; if someone hit a bug the author could fix it. I think this improved the experience both for the (often very new) authors and for the players, who didn't have to deal with the bugs. -- And it's not just the new authors; I ran across a bug in [i]Hoosegow[/i].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=30#p21092
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-08-12 07:11:13

[quote="bcressey"]I figure that anyone who spends the time to make an IF game could have finished an indie platformer or roguelike in one-tenth the time and seen more players and more positive feedback for their trouble.[/quote]
If that's true, you can expect a platformer from me by Christmas. (Seriously. But I doubt the 1/10 bit, and more realistically expect it to take just as long.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=30#p21093
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: Mr. Patient / DateTime: 2011-08-12 08:29:20

[quote="bcressey"]I agree that there's not much value in Mean IF Reviews and it's kind of sad that it exists. I think Pissy Little Sausages strikes a more pro-author note even if her criticisms might sting all the more for being hilarious. I want to like her site less than I do, but Jenni's an excellent writer which makes that position difficult.[/quote]

I think for something like Mean IF Reviews to work, the reviewer needs to be at least as sharp and clever as the material he's attempting to skewer.  He isn't.  Jenni is.  She also skewers with what appears to me to be affection.  I'd be honored to be reviewed by her, even if I came out looking very much the worse for wear.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=30#p21094
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-12 08:36:41

[quote="Trumgottist"][quote="bcressey"]I figure that anyone who spends the time to make an IF game could have finished an indie platformer or roguelike in one-tenth the time and seen more players and more positive feedback for their trouble.[/quote]
If that's true, you can expect a platformer from me by Christmas. (Seriously. But I doubt the 1/10 bit, and more realistically expect it to take just as long.)[/quote]
Hey, we could have a SpeedPlatformer event. Write a game in 12 minutes!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=0#p21095
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-12 09:08:29

[quote="ezfreemann"]ive been kicked off Planet IF, i guess.  so i guess i wanted to tell ppl of the new entry.

no reply to my email about what i did wrong so i can remedy it.[/quote]
Weird? Let us know what's happening.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=30#p21096
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-12 09:08:52

[quote="Juhana"][quote="maga"]There's been some talk lately about how we could really use a better mentoring and/or collaboration system than is in place at the moment, as a way of building support for promising-but-flawed authors in the aftermath of comps; it's kind of hard to envisage a model that isn't trivial, isn't patronising but isn't I-have-this-cool-idea,-do-all-the-work-for-me-please. We have a really good grasp of how betatesting works, and when people take advantage of that system it can do a huge lot of good; but betatesting has its limits.[/quote]
I've been meaning to revise the [url=http://if.game-testing.org]betatesting site[/url] at some point, maybe it would be a good idea to add code review as one option alongside gametesting and proofreading?[/quote]
Code review's good; it'd be nice if there was a specific check-my-English option for non-fluent second-language authors; and I think it'd be good if there were options for writing help that were stronger than proofreading.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3009&start=0#p21097
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: CompCompComp
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-12 09:34:16

I wouldn't mind a short competition with some structure.  Sometimes it would be nice to take a couple weeks off the ole WIP and do something different.  
I wonder if the community could support a frequent-ish comp.  I wonder if such a set-up might be more conducive to ADRIFT authors and games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=60#p21098
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: Greeny / DateTime: 2011-08-12 10:44:56

I realise not everyone is keen on web based IF, but I believe it has a big role to play in IF's future popularity.

Obviously, it is already emerging with likes of Parchment, Zifmia, GlkOte etc. 
Hopefully it will improve improve & flourish, opening up IF to a much wider potential audience.
It's much easier to fire up a browser & click a link than download & install the correct interpreter, and
that alone could make a huge difference to the number of people playing IF.

From an author's perspective, I believe it opens up many new possibilities.
For example, easy transcript collection & analysis for game/parser improvement.
Multiplayer IF would become a much easier proposition.
Joining/merging games could be possible, opening up new collaborative avenues.
I know I'm getting a bit "out there", but who knows?

On an even more esoteric note, there would no longer be a need for a virtual machine, as the game engine would reside on a server of choice.
A new IF game engine, if such a thing was ever to be written, would not have to worry about such things.
.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3006&start=0#p21099
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Which do you mean? Question
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-12 11:05:35

So I have some code that works for some parts of this, but it also has some weirdnesses. If the NPCs aren't exchanging brown coats then just calling everything "Bill's brown coat" etc. should work fine.

Here's the bit that works, though perhaps a bit too broadly:

[code]Section 2 - Of Enclosures

After reading a command:
        let X be indexed text;
        let X be the player's command;
        replace the text "'s" in X with " [']s";
        change the text of the player's command to X.

Understand "[something related by reversed enclosure] 's" as a thing.
Understand "my" as a thing when the player wears the item described.

Section 3 - Disambiguation

For printing the name of a brown coat (called trench) while asking which do you mean:
	if a person encloses trench:
		say "[random person enclosing trench]'s brown coat";
	otherwise:
		say "the brown coat".  [/code]

Section 2 is what lets the game understand "Bill's brown coat" as a brown coat that Bill wears (or carries, or whatever). First it takes "x bill's brown coat" and turns it into "x bill 's brown coat" so the apostrophe-s can be understood as a separate word. Then it takes "bill 's" as referring to something that bill encloses -- so if there are a bunch of brown coats, but Bill only encloses one, then "bill's brown coat" will wind up referring to Bill's. (If Bill is wearing one and carrying another, there's a problem.)

This would produce problems if one person could pick up another, but that's not that common -- if you have portable persons, don't use this code. (There's some discussion of related code [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1192]here[/url]; the initially posted version of the code has at least one bad error where I wrote "the noun" instead of "the item described," and there's a whole lot of talking past each other when something refused to compile because of an extraneous line break that worked its way into the copy-paste.)

Section 3 is what actually answers your original question -- it ensures that when disambiguating, it asks "Which do you mean, Bill's brown coat, Bob's brown coat, or Mike's brown coat?" This wouldn't be useful without section 2, because section 2 is what lets the game understand the answer. 

OK, that's the part that works, at least kind of. Here's some bizarritudes.

1. In the code I have to test this, I created the brown coats thus:

[code]a brown coat is a kind of thing.
a brown coat is always wearable.
A brown coat is usually improper-named.
The printed name of a brown coat is usually "the brown coat".
Starter is a room.

Bob and Mike and Bill are men in Starter.

Brown coat 1 is a brown coat. Bob wears brown coat 1. Brown coat 2 is a brown coat. Mike wears brown coat 2. Brown coat 3 is a brown coat. Bill wears brown coat 3.[/code]

Why did I create the brown coats by hand? Because when I do this instead:

[code]Bob wears a brown coat. Mike wears a brown coat. Bill wears a brown coat.[/code]

the game doesn't even try to disambiguate them. All references to "brown coat" automatically go to Bob's brown coat. Same if I just start with the coats on the floor, by saying "Three brown coats are in Starter." This seems bad.

2. I'd have liked to write this:

[code]
Understand "[something related by reversed wearing] 's" as a thing.[/code]

but when I did, any reference to a brown coat caused the game to hang. I don't know why.

3. There may be some hinkiness about the articles that apply to the brown coat once we define its name by hand. I think I fixed this in my code fragment (in some stuff I didn't post), but be aware that issues might arise.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3006&start=10#p21100
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Which do you mean? Question
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-12 12:55:07

Matt W's post rings a bell -- I once wrote a game in which the lucky player found himself in a harem full of lovely ladies, each wearing a veil.  I remember struggling over the use of indexed text to remove the apostrophes so that the player could specify whether he wanted to lift the blonde's veil,the redhead's veil or the brunette's veil.  (Nothing off-color happened when you did; you either got kissed or got slapped, depending on which girl you chose).  I think you have to go through the indexed text thing whether you use the approach of understanding things by their relations or you use the approach of making the possessive part of the thing's name; I think the problem is that the parser generally does not understand an apostrophe as part of a word.  I was surprised that the Punctuation Removal extension did not provide a more automated means of stripping out the apostrophes, as it does for other types of punctuation marks.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=60#p21101
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-12 13:12:55

I've always thought that one approach which might make IF more accessible to beginners would be a stand-alone executable file which includes both the interpreter and the story file.  Currently, if I want to introduce a beginner to IF through one of my creations, I have to send him the blorb file, toegther with a page of instructions as to where to get and download an interpreter and how to install it and then use it to run the story.  It would be a lot easier if I could just send a single file (preferably with a built-in installer) so that he could just run the file to install a single application, which he could then just run to play the game directly.  Is such a thing possible under the current state of technology?  Is there any sense that there might be developments in that direction?  I understand it could raise compatibility issues, but for most beginners this might be less of an issue than having to deal with separate interpreter and story files, avilable through different sources.

Thanks.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3006&start=10#p21102
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Which do you mean? Question
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-12 14:00:59

As it was explained to me when someone told me how to do this, the problem isn't so much that Inform doesn't recognize the apostrophe as part of the word, it's that it doesn't recognize the relation between "Bill" and "Bill's," or "Bill" and "Bills" for that matter; you have to break the apostrophe-s into a separate word so it can be parsed separately. (Though if you auto-generate noses through "A nose is part of every person," the noses will come out named "Bill's nose" etc., so that'll be taken care of automatically.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=60#p21103
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-08-12 14:10:11

[quote="Robert Rothman"]  It would be a lot easier if I could just send a single file (preferably with a built-in installer) so that he could just run the file to install a single application, which he could then just run to play the game directly.  Is such a thing possible under the current state of technology?  Is there any sense that there might be developments in that direction? [/quote]

Currently WinGit and WinGlulxe (and perhaps some other Z/Glulx interpreters) support some form of automatic running. I copypaste from WinGlulxe help file:

[quote="WinGlulxe help file"]
Automatic Running
When it comes time to distribute your game, you can package up the interpreter with your game into an archive or installer. But if you want the user to be able to start your game just by clicking on an icon, you can rename Glulxe.exe to the same as the name as your game's Glulx file (apart from the .exe file extension). When the interpreter starts up it first looks for a Blorb file with the same name as the executable, and if one is found, loads and runs it straight away. So, if your game file is Foo.blb and the renamed interpreter executable is Foo.exe, all the user needs to do to run your game is double click on Foo.exe.[/quote] 

For other interpreters which lack this ability you can always write a short launching script.

--

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=60#p21104
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-12 14:25:14

Thanks.  I'm still confused as to how to provide such a packaged file to sombody else in a way which would allow them to install and run it.  Any time I've tried to send somebody an executable file as an e-mail attachment, when it gets to the recipient they cannot actually run or install it; it retains the .exe extension, but somehow it isn't actually recognized as an executable file.  Thus, I've had to direct people to a website from which they can download and install the interpreter, and then I send them the blorb file separately.

I'm sure this is pretty basic stuff, but my sophistication in these matters is basically nil.

Thanks.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=60#p21105
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-12 15:33:18

[quote="Robert Rothman"]It would be a lot easier if I could just send a single file (preferably with a built-in installer) so that he could just run the file to install a single application, which he could then just run to play the game directly[/quote]

For an Inform 7 game, you could always choose to ”release along with an interpreter”, packaging the game as a playable web page which you could send to your players to open and play directly (and locally) in their browsers. It may not be very elegant, but they wouldn't have to install a thing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=60#p21106
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-12 15:41:11

Thanks.  It never occurred to me that the "release along with an interpreter" option would allow stand-alone use.  I always assumed that that would work only to allow playing through the web.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=60#p21107
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-08-12 15:46:06

[quote="Robert Rothman"]Any time I've tried to send somebody an executable file as an e-mail attachment, when it gets to the recipient they cannot actually run or install it; it retains the .exe extension, but somehow it isn't actually recognized as an executable file.[/quote]

It's been a while since I did this last time, but IIRC I just had to include in a zip (or whatever archive format best suits):

-The adventure file
-The conveniently renamed wingit or winglulxe .exe file
-any dll file (in fact just any other file) which was in the .exe folder.

...and then just tell my target audience to decompress it all in one carpet, click on the exe file, and enjoy!

Alternatively, instead of archiving it all in a .zip file, you can package everything with any of the freely available windows installer-creation tools out there (I'm quite happily assuming both you and your players are using windows!) so they could just install and run in the standard Windows tradition. I've never done that, but know of authors who did it succesfully.

--

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=60#p21108
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-12 16:26:29

Thanks.  It would be convenient indeed if Inform 7 had a built-in mechanism for generating such a package -- similar to the "release along with an interpreter" option, but which generates such a zipped package rather than a web page.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3009&start=0#p21109
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: CompCompComp
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-12 16:47:52

Assuming this is apropos of  the other thread:

1) For mini-minicomp/speedIF things, I tend to prefer premises that [i]can[/i] make for wacky games, but don't oblige you to do so. The premise as stated here would, unless you got lucky, tend to make non-wackiness difficult. (That said, I've been doing speedIF for... wow, ten years yesterday. So while I may feel that mandatory-wackiness is played out, others might not be so jaded.)

2) A lot of the value of speedIF-like wackiness is that there [i]isn't[/i] any voting or judging; there's no expectation of producing anything good, but it's nice if you manage to do so. Adding votes automatically makes things a quality contest -- which is fine if you've had time to do your best on a project, but not very fair for something you've knocked off in a hurry.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3009&start=0#p21110
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: CompCompComp
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-12 18:02:47

Good points; I guess I would be slightly less inclined to participate if there were voting.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2605&start=10#p21111
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Memorialising Paul Allen Panks
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-12 19:53:42

Sorry to drudge up this thread from beyond the...

...er... no, sorry, slip of the tongue, that would really have been bad taste...

...anyway, I'm still playing through my entire IF collection in alphabetical order (mock me not. I'm already up to F, which means I've recently played Fine-Tuned and Firebird, and I'm in a pretty good mood), and came up against "firefly.rar". Which was "Ghost of the Fireflies", apparently Panks' last game.

Because the game seemed to be very, very ambitious, and at first glance seemed better than the usual Panks game, I looked up some reviews, looking for some feedback on the game. The universal response ("It's way better than his previous games, but it's still a Panks game") pretty much dissuaded me from booting the game up again.

But in a Merk's review (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/fireflies.shtml">http://www.sidneymerk.com/comp07/fireflies.shtml</a>), I read that... well, the reviewer looked at the source code to see the ending (as it is, apparently, technically unwinnable, another Panksian touch), and he saw this:

[quote]The ending is equally strange. I couldn’t get to it the intended way (is the game truly unwinnable?) so I looked in the source code afterwards. At the risk of spoiling the conclusion to a story somebody out there may wish to play, it involves an NPC called Dunric who commits seppuku (a specific suicide of Japanese origin) with a knife. What precedes it is the PC’s apology for the suffering Dunric has endured, and Dunric’s calm answer that “the competition” will never change him. This is surely just a figurative flight of fancy for the author (I sincerely hope that it is), but if there is any correlation between Dunric the NPC and Dunric the author, it’s a chilling way to end a story -- any story.[/quote]

I find this creepy, chilling and disturbing. Although I don't think anyone could really commit suicide over IF, and if they did it wouldn't be two years after the release of their last game... well, Panks did, from what I hear, seem to have mental instabilities, and he pretty much depicted his suicide in his last game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3010&start=0#p21112
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Run-time problem P22
User: jkfriday / DateTime: 2011-08-12 20:30:57

Hey, surprise surprise, it's me again!

[code]Every turn when a giant fly is in the location:
	if a random chance of 1 in 3 succeeds, choose a random row in the Table of Giant Fly Activity;
	say "[comment entry]".
	
Table of Giant Fly Activity
comment
"The giant fly makes enormous buzzing noises"
"The giant fly buzzes enormously"
"The enormous fly makes a giant buzz"[/code]

This works once. "z"-ing a second time in the location where the giant fly is gives me "*** Run-time problem P22: Attempt to look up a non-existent row in the table '** No such table **'". To nobody's amazement, this scares and confuses me. What am I doing wrong? (The comments are just placeholders for the moment, and I haven't been having any issues with random tables anywhere else)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3010&start=0#p21113
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Run-time problem P22
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-08-12 20:42:41

The problem is that the structure of your every turn rule requires the [b]say "[comment entry]"[/b] line to fire every turn, regardless of whether a row was chosen (which happens only 1 in 3 times). The run-time error occurs when you hit that line without having chosen a row. You need to put the table code together in a block, like this:

[code]Every turn when a giant fly is in the location:
	if a random chance of 1 in 3 succeeds:
		choose a random row in the Table of Giant Fly Activity;
		say "[comment entry]".[/code]

Now a row will always have been chosen before you try to use row data.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3010&start=0#p21114
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Run-time problem P22
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-08-12 20:52:21

Although it doesn't look like it, I'd say this is a colon and indentation error. The instruction to pick a row on a one-in-three random chance is one statement; the instruction to always print the desired row is another, separate statement. This means that there's a 2/3 likelihood of no row being specified as you ask for it to be printed, causing Inform to go "huh?"

[code]Every turn when a giant fly is in the location:
	if a random chance of 1 in 3 succeeds:
		choose a random row in the Table of Giant Fly Activity;
		say "[comment entry]".[/code]

This should fix the issue.


EDIT: And of course Erik beat me to it with a more succinct answer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3011&start=0#p21115
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: (Inform 6) parse_name hates my guts
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-08-12 22:02:33

How exactly do I get parse_name to do what I want it to do? I have a can of soda (well, a class of soda cans, but that shouldn't really matter). A can of soda can exist in three states: closed, open (but not drunk), or open (and empty). So far, no problems, and short_name happily obliges when I tell it to report on the can's state. But how exactly do I make it so that the player can refer to a can as "can of coca-cola" or "coke can" all day long, but only "empty can" or "empty can of coca-cola" when it's empty?

I think DM4 covers this, but only very briefly, and, well, sort of confusingly, so some help would be mighty neighborly of ya.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3012&start=0#p21116
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Word list
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-08-12 22:40:44

I would like to have a canvas on which the player can paint things.  One, of course, is the "correct" option and has a triggered event, but rather than a simple denial, I'd prefer to permit the player to paint in other objects if they choose.

That part isn't terribly tricky since the things in the painting are non-interactive, but the catch is that, while abstract art allows for portrayals of a lot of words, I still don't want players to be able to put in silly gibberish.  It's a long shot, but is there any way I can access a word list without actually composing one myself?  For instance, Inform "knows" a lot of plurals, so it must have a list of words and their plurals somewhere; could I check the input against that list?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3010&start=0#p21117
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Run-time problem P22
User: jkfriday / DateTime: 2011-08-12 23:09:14

Once again the expertise of this most excellent of forums has rescued me. Thank you very much.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3012&start=0#p21118
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Word list
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-13 00:28:01

No, that list exists only in the compiler. (And I believe it's a list of patterns and exceptions, rather than a list of every pluralizable word in English.)

The game file only has access to words used in the game itself -- that is, words used in object names and "Understand" declarations.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3011&start=0#p21119
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: (Inform 6) parse_name hates my guts
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-13 00:29:02

I wrote up this page, many years ago: <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/inftricks/tip_parsename.html">http://eblong.com/zarf/inftricks/tip_parsename.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=60#p21120
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-08-13 02:12:22

ADRIFT 5 also has an export to EXE option for Windows users.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=40#p21121
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-08-13 04:25:29

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Also for the record: we have been bashing the person who wrote "author, go kill yourself" quite heavily.[/quote]

FWIW, it's not that I wanted to pile on; I brought it up because I did go through the thought cycle you describe when I saw that specific review ("man, that seems mean. Hm, do I comment on this? Post something on my own blog? Probably not useful.")

[quote="maga"]Code review's good; it'd be nice if there was a specific check-my-English option for non-fluent second-language authors; and I think it'd be good if there were options for writing help that were stronger than proofreading.[/quote]

This would certainly be nice. Revising not-quite-fluent English is seriously hard work, though. We [i]are[/i] in need of better editorial services in the IF world, but my impression is that what's lacking right now is incentive for people to take on these difficult and generally unrewarded, glory-free tasks. 

Otherwise, I'm not quite sure what to suggest about the complaint that novices get help right up to the moment when they release their games. I get what people are saying, but I don't think it would be helpful (to authors in general, to the community's connection with the wider world) if we made reviews less critical across the board; we do still need thoughtful critique of the top-end work, and we still need ways to signal to people on the periphery of the community, "this is one of our best works -- you should definitely try it out." 

So perhaps we need to add a mechanism for cheerleading/grading on effort/acknowledging novice contributions that doesn't go through the same channels?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=40#p21122
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-13 05:33:43

I remember someone saying a long time ago that the reason why ADRIFT games are generally of lesser quality than games made with other systems is not because ADRIFT as a system would somehow inherently cause this but because the culture within ADRIFTers rewards for just [i]finishing[/i] a game, not for making quality games. When you get the same cheers and pats on the back for just about anything you produce there's not much incentive to put in extra effort and really try the best you can.  (I don't know how accurately this describes the ADRIFT community, but I find it an interesting theory.)

It seems like there's a delicate balance to be struck: sugarcoating and avoiding any negative criticism leads to stagnation and even more crappy games, while overly harsh criticism discourages experimentation and drives away authors and newcomers who get bashed for their well meaning efforts. 

On the other hand people write reviews as they like and there's not much to be done about it, so all this speculation is rather academical. Not even the Cabal can dictate what kind of reviews people write and publish.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2893&start=0#p21123
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Re-Triggering a Scene within Questions Extension
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-13 06:15:59

Mail is out. Hope he answers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3012&start=0#p21124
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Word list
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2011-08-13 07:13:19

I have absolutely no idea how efficient this would be, but you could possibly try including a prebuilt word list in your game. [url]http://wordlist.sourceforge.net/[/url] looks like an interesting place to start. You could maybe take the Part of Speech database, extract all the nouns, and write a little script to generate code that makes a table out of this. And if that's still too large, you could go do some hand-trimming of the list. It would be a decent amount of work but certainly better than trying to start from scratch.

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3013&start=0#p21125
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Non Transparent Container
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-13 08:07:00

Beginner stuff, but I didn't find anything neither here nor in the docs, probably due to incompetent searching:

How do I prevent a container from showing its contents again? I'm dealing with the contents in the description, so I want to avoid "In the container is an item.".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3006&start=10#p21126
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Which do you mean? Question
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-13 08:12:30

[quote="matt w"]Why did I create the brown coats by hand? Because when I do this instead:

[code]Bob wears a brown coat. Mike wears a brown coat. Bill wears a brown coat.[/code]

the game doesn't even try to disambiguate them. All references to "brown coat" automatically go to Bob's brown coat. Same if I just start with the coats on the floor, by saying "Three brown coats are in Starter." This seems bad.[/quote]
What if you did this?
[code]Bob wears a brown coat called Bob's brown coat. Mike wears a brown coat called Mike's brown coat. Bill wears a brown coat called Bill's brown coat.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=0#p21127
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-08-13 10:56:36

i finally got a reply to my email inquiring why i was kicked off Plant IF without a single warning:

Hi ez.

It was a combination of the repeated profanity with the lack of valuable contribution.

I've usually got no problem with mildly offensive language, but it has to be in the context of a well-written post with good style that's either amusing or otherwise contributes something useful to the community. And I hate to say it, but your poor grammar doesn't help. It seems a lot of your posts are just kind of "chatty" and would be better off in the forums.

no signature.  no warning.  lack of valuable contribution?  does this chris armstrong make that decision on his own?

sorry my blog wasnt boring enough for him.  i guess in every internet community, one has to conform to someone's arbitrary standards.

in the end, because of christopher armstrong's lack of a good reason why he removed me, without warning, i have to assume he is homophobic and my post made him uncomfortable.

w/e

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=0#p21128
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: gufnork / DateTime: 2011-08-13 11:02:05

[quote="ezfreemann"]i finally got a reply to my email inquiring why i was kicked off Plant IF without a single warning:

Hi ez.

It was a combination of the repeated profanity with the lack of valuable contribution.

I've usually got no problem with mildly offensive language, but it has to be in the context of a well-written post with good style that's either amusing or otherwise contributes something useful to the community. And I hate to say it, but your poor grammar doesn't help. It seems a lot of your posts are just kind of "chatty" and would be better off in the forums.

w/e[/quote]

Wow, thats a bit much. I can understand why you're none to pleased. The lack of any warning is just plain rude in itself.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=0#p21129
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-08-13 11:07:16

thanks.  heres my reply to his email.

"yeah i didnt know there were rules i had to follow to conform to whatever standards youve made up.

people commented on my contributions and it got discussions going regarding IF.

but anyway, thanks for taking away something i was excited about.  im used to it.

sorry my blog wasnt boring enough for whatever standards you invented and failed to inform me about."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3011&start=0#p21130
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: (Inform 6) parse_name hates my guts
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-08-13 11:09:15

Holy crap, Zarf helped me out. Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3006&start=10#p21131
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Which do you mean? Question
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-13 11:21:20

[quote="capmikee"][quote="matt w"]Why did I create the brown coats by hand? Because when I do this instead:

[code]Bob wears a brown coat. Mike wears a brown coat. Bill wears a brown coat.[/code]

the game doesn't even try to disambiguate them. All references to "brown coat" automatically go to Bob's brown coat. Same if I just start with the coats on the floor, by saying "Three brown coats are in Starter." This seems bad.[/quote]
What if you did this?
[code]Bob wears a brown coat called Bob's brown coat. Mike wears a brown coat called Mike's brown coat. Bill wears a brown coat called Bill's brown coat.[/code][/quote]

That's fine, and I think it's the solution that the original poster is going to adopt, but I'm still curious why the other solution results in no disambiguation whatsoever. (It may be some kind of failsafe to prevent disambiguation loops when you have a bunch of identical items in the same location.)

Note also that the behavior isn't identical -- in the code I posted, whatever coat Mike is wearing (or carrying) will be called "Mike's brown coat"; in this version the coat Mike starts with is always called Mike's brown coat. Which is probably better (and won't be an issue if people don't switch coats) but I do want to know if my way can be made to work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=0#p21132
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-13 11:54:31

Oh, a veritable abuse of power. Who is he to choose what gets written in the blogs he links to in his page and his collection? After all, "Planet IF" is a community effort, with a panel of people to decide these very issues. How dare he. Your reply is spot on the money, addresses all the real issues at play here, but I don't think it's enough. You should sue.

Or at least grow up some.

BTW, I do happen to agree than a warning or an e-mail saying you'd been taken off would have been the appropriate thing to do.

Oh, and just for future reference, insulting people willy-nilly (and with such terms as "homophobic", no less, in a topic entirely unrelated to homosexuality) does nothing to help people take you seriously.

Finally, let me echo a sentiment of his which you appear to have skimmed over but, if you would take to heart, would do us all a world of good:

<quote>And I hate to say it, but your poor grammar doesn't help. </quote>

Caps and apostrophes would help, y'know.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=0#p21133
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-13 12:10:01

First: responding in a petulant way, as if this decision was made with the sole intention of hurting your feelings, does not help your case. Nor does shifting the subject from the reasons [i]why[/i] you were removed to the way that it was handled. Chris Armstrong didn't sign on to be a community moderator; he maintains a blog aggregation page. Making sure your feelings aren't hurt is not his job.

Secondly, even though Planet-IF doesn't have an explicit set of standards, from reading it it should be fairly easy to understand the kind of content that it's meant to collect. If you don't want to provide that kind of content, fine: there are other places on the web to talk about IF. If being on Planet-IF is really important to you, then you need to consider the style and content of what you're posting. For what it's worth, it does seem as if you have some substantive posts and ideas for more, but the chattery, low-content stuff drowns it out, and that has clearly been annoying a lot of people. Those people have reasons. It's probably a good idea to think about what those reasons are.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3013&start=0#p21134
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Non Transparent Container
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-08-13 12:20:11

[quote="Grueslayer"]Beginner stuff, but I didn't find anything neither here nor in the docs, probably due to incompetent searching:

How do I prevent a container from showing its contents again? I'm dealing with the contents in the description, so I want to avoid "In the container is an item.".[/quote]

[code]After printing the name of a container: omit contents in listing.[/code]

It's actually documented in [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc296.html]Writing with Inform[/url], but I must have read it through three times without seeing it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3009&start=0#p21135
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: CompCompComp
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-08-13 12:21:47

I might like to participate in something like this.  It would give something specific to work on, and I could probably reach into my bag of stashed-away ideas and fit them into the framework of the "tasks" that I would be given.  I think it would be fun, but I can't do it right now.  For one thing, I still have an ever-narrowing possibility of finishing my current WIP for this year's Comp. 

[quote="maga"]1) For mini-minicomp/speedIF things, I tend to prefer premises that [i]can[/i] make for wacky games, but don't oblige you to do so. The premise as stated here would, unless you got lucky, tend to make non-wackiness difficult. (That said, I've been doing speedIF for... wow, ten years yesterday. So while I may feel that mandatory-wackiness is played out, others might not be so jaded.)[/quote]
But I very much agree with this.  I would be hesitant to participate in a contest that mandates (either directly or indirectly) that all the entries must be wacky at some level.  I normally end up embarrassing myself badly whenever I try to be funny.

Also, I really don't care at all whether the games would be voted on or not.  It wouldn't affect my decision to participate, or not to.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=0#p21136
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-13 12:30:22

You might want to tag your blog posts with a special tag if they're to be picked up by Planet IF. I think that's possible. Propagating everything you post is just spam, especially your one-liners. If people wanted to read all this, they would have subscribed directly to your blog.

So you might want to ask Christopher about the possibility of only propagating specially tagged posts.

PS:
And please, pay some attention to English grammar [emote]:-P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3013&start=0#p21137
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Non Transparent Container
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-13 12:55:32

Thanks for that (notes taken), but I made a mistake when describing my problem: I want the contents to be hidden when examining an object, not when listing it. Like,

> examine object
The object looks objective.
Inside the object is a content. <<< Go away stupid sentence!

Sorry for the misunderstanding.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3014&start=0#p21138
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Recognizing an Item on a Supporter in the Location
User: tuatha / DateTime: 2011-08-13 13:29:56

So I want to test if an item is in the current locations.  Generally, this works with a snippet of code like:

[code]if scissors are in the locations:
   do something;[/code]

However, if the scissors are on a supporter or in a container, this doesn't work--even if said supporter or container is in the current location.  Is there a more general phrase that I could use that looks on supporters and inside containers?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3014&start=0#p21139
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Recognizing an Item on a Supporter in the Location
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-08-13 13:31:02

[code]if the location encloses scissors[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3013&start=0#p21140
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Non Transparent Container
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-08-13 13:36:50

Using the RULES testing command, you can often see which default rules are resulting in the printing of certain text:

[code]>rules
Rules tracing now switched on. Type "rules off" to switch it off again, or "rules all" to include even rules which do not apply.

>x object
[examining the object]
[Rule "standard examining rule" applies.]
The object looks objtastic.

[Rule "examine directions rule" applies.]
[Rule "examine containers rule" applies.]
In the object is a content.
[/code]

Then, you can try just delisting that rule to see if that gets the effect you want (which in this case it does):

[code]The examine containers rule is not listed in any rulebook.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=40#p21141
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-08-13 13:41:43

[quote="Juhana"]Not even the Cabal can dictate what kind of reviews people write and publish.[/quote]

Really? That seems like an oversight. Remind me to bring that up at our next meeting.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3013&start=0#p21142
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Non Transparent Container
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-08-13 13:46:20

[quote="Grueslayer"]Thanks for that (notes taken), but I made a mistake when describing my problem: I want the contents to be hidden when examining an object, not when listing it. Like,

> examine object
The object looks objective.
Inside the object is a content. <<< Go away stupid sentence!

Sorry for the misunderstanding.[/quote]

Well, [b]aaronius[/b] already answered this, but if you want to keep the rule intact (for use in certain cases, perhaps) I'd say the simplest thing to do is to override the examine containers rule.

[code]Carry out examining when the noun is a container:
	abide by the standard examining rule for the noun;
	rule succeeds.[/code]

Rule succeeds ends the sequence after we've used the standard examining for the container in question. This may be too all-inclusive; it's possible the rule should only be counted successful if the item was in fact successfully examined. If so,
[code]Carry out examining when the noun is a container:
	abide by the standard examining rule for the noun;
	if examine text printed is true, rule succeeds.[/code]
should do it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3013&start=0#p21144
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Non Transparent Container
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-08-13 13:52:24

Addendum: this looks really stupid, so I'll explain. The rule I wrote is completely redundant by itself, and you'd be better off disabling the examining containers rule as Aaron showed. However, if you want to keep the examining containers rule for certain containers, you could create a rule similar to the one I showed for the given objects.

[code]Carry out examining when the noun is a large container:
	abide by the standard examining rule for the noun;
	if examine text printed is true, rule succeeds.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3015&start=0#p21145
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: IF in the classroom... recommendations?
User: Jeff Zeitlin / DateTime: 2011-08-13 14:00:49

After playing Carl Muckenhoupt's [i]The Gostak[/i], I got involved in a discussion in IRC about language, meaning, context, and the relationships between them.  That it was after playing [i]The Gostak[/i] was, honestly, no accident; I'm almost Douglas-Hofstadter-esque when it comes to thinking about thought and about my own thought processes.

One of the people in the discussion piled Linguistics higher and deeper, and now teaches various courses in it.  However, she's not experienced with IF.  I'd like to point her to a very basic game, one in which she can focus on the process of playing IF, not on the game itself and its goals.  Ideally, this would be a game that she could then use to familiarize students with IF in some of her classes, and then send them to [i]The Gostak[/i] specifically for getting the students to think about some of the relationships I mentioned above.

Can anyone point me to a game that would fit the need?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3014&start=0#p21146
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Recognizing an Item on a Supporter in the Location
User: tuatha / DateTime: 2011-08-13 14:03:01

Thanks for the prompt reply!  Works like a charm.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3013&start=0#p21147
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Non Transparent Container
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-13 14:06:23

Thanks, you two! I "personalized" it, and it works. Will have to look up the mechanics behind it, though.

[code]Carry out examining the fixture:
	abide by the standard examining rule for the noun;
	rule succeeds.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=40#p21148
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-08-13 14:18:22

[quote="Mr. Patient"]I don't find the Mean IF Reviews especially funny, and I too could live without the "faggotry" (and the complaining about perfectly ordinary words like "despondency").   Now, Pissy Little Sausages: that's quality snark, and usually constructive, too.[/quote]

Yeah, I also find Pissy Little Sausages to be the most amusing out of the two.

[quote="emshort"]
Otherwise, I'm not quite sure what to suggest about the complaint that novices get help right up to the moment when they release their games. I get what people are saying, but I don't think it would be helpful (to authors in general, to the community's connection with the wider world) if we made reviews less critical across the board; we do still need thoughtful critique of the top-end work, and we still need ways to signal to people on the periphery of the community, "this is one of our best works -- you should definitely try it out." 

So perhaps we need to add a mechanism for cheerleading/grading on effort/acknowledging novice contributions that doesn't go through the same channels?[/quote]

I agree with this. My Hallow Eve game got some very bad things pointed out by the reviewers. From the beginning with it, I had a "It is what it is" attitude about it. I didn't expect my first IF release to be a masterpiece, and also figured that the story itself wouldn't be enjoyed by the masses. As long as some people really enjoyed what I've done, it makes the harsh criticism easy to handle. The surprise of how many bugs or lack of features the game contained though was motivation for me to make things right, not give up entirely.

Without any criticism, I would probably continue to make "hard old-school IF" because I wouldn't fully understand what not to do for my next game. Learning is a big part of the process, and you can't learn without criticism. My Ju-Jitsu professor used to tell our class "Pain is the best lesson"; you can't properly execute techniques without knowing what it feels like to be on the losing side. 

With this said, I think that a "cheerleading mechanism for novices" would be a good idea. Others may not get the few people like I did that actually really appreciate elements of the game to sort of pep them along. I think most of us would agree that we have plenty of channels for discovering what's wrong with a newbie's game, but perhaps not enough for telling them what is right.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3015&start=0#p21149
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF in the classroom... recommendations?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-13 14:18:28

The most obvious choice would probably be Lost Pig; it's a well-loved and very orthodox game, fun and light, extremely robustly coded, mildly puzzly but not difficult, and incapable of giving offence.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3013&start=0#p21150
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Non Transparent Container
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-13 14:30:32

Just for my own edification: Can you do this by interrupting the Carry out examining rulebook?

[code]Carry out examining (this is the don't print the contents of the fixture rule):
    if the noun is the fixture, rule succeeds.

The don't print the contents of the fixture is listed before the examine containers rule in the carry out examining rulebook.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=0#p21151
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: gufnork / DateTime: 2011-08-13 17:22:59

Still, it would be nice if there had been some warning before simply cutting him off like that. I understand the view that planet-if is his baby and he can do as he thinks best regarding his own site, but the fact remains that an email costs nothing and would probably have gone a long way to staunching any potential adverse reaction, such as we're seeing here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=40#p21152
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: gufnork / DateTime: 2011-08-13 18:00:18

[quote="Jizaboz"]
With this said, I think that a "cheerleading mechanism for novices" would be a good idea. Others may not get the few people like I did that actually really appreciate elements of the game to sort of pep them along. I think most of us would agree that we have plenty of channels for discovering what's wrong with a newbie's game, but perhaps not enough for telling them what is right.[/quote]

I agree. I've been one of those people that is only too keen to point out the faults in a game, but I really like the idea of a "cheerleading mechanism for novices". I really do think it's something that's sorely missing at the moment.

I like this idea. I may even run with it in this years IFcomp, thereby changing track entirely with regards my usual reviews.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3006&start=10#p21153
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Which do you mean? Question
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-13 18:17:15

[quote="matt w"]That's fine, and I think it's the solution that the original poster is going to adopt, but I'm still curious why the other solution results in no disambiguation whatsoever. (It may be some kind of failsafe to prevent disambiguation loops when you have a bunch of identical items in the same location.)[/quote]
If I remember correctly, the parser refuses to disambiguate between anonymous objects with identical names. But I could be wrong.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=40#p21154
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-08-13 18:27:37

[quote="Juhana"]I remember someone saying a long time ago that the reason why ADRIFT games are generally of lesser quality than games made with other systems is not because ADRIFT as a system would somehow inherently cause this but because the culture within ADRIFTers rewards for just [i]finishing[/i] a game, not for making quality games. When you get the same cheers and pats on the back for just about anything you produce there's not much incentive to put in extra effort and really try the best you can.  (I don't know how accurately this describes the ADRIFT community, but I find it an interesting theory.)[/quote]How would you propose solving this problem?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=40#p21155
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-13 18:35:32

Possibly by more honest reviews, if there is such an amount of inordinate back-tapping.

Also, I've read somewhere recently that the ADRIFT community seems to be a community of AUTHORS rather than PLAYERS. *If* that's true, then it's a big problem right there, especially if they don't play games other than ADRIFT games.

I suppose the best solution would be for ADRIFT to be regarded/criticised/praised on the same level as TADS and Inform and so on. That way, it would all contribute towards IF in general, and not just "IF the ADRIFT way", just as there was a lot of "IF the Quest way" in the past I'm hoping to see changed.

As we all know, the ADRIFT community's view of the rest of the IF community has a lot to do with the rest of the IF community automatically shrugging or shirking away from ADRIFT, because it's had some well-known parser issues (which I've seen ADRIFTers even refuse to acknowledge, hardly a helpful stance). I sincerely hope/believe that ADRIFT 5 will correct/has corrected those issues, and the stigma will fall from ADRIFT; the communities will become closer; and the overall quality of IF, regardless of design system, will rise.

"I have a dream", and so on and so forth.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=0#p21156
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: ezfreemann / DateTime: 2011-08-13 19:24:39

i purposefully dont use caps or apostrophes.  its not cuz im an idiot.

if i was "clearly annoying" ppl or whatever was said, it would be nice if ppl started up a dialog with me about it.

in the end, ive stopped caring, it just proves to me that conformity is what ppl want in their little online communities.

all i was told was that planet IF was for blogs about IF.  thats what my blog was about.  sorry if it wasnt "the same" as everyone elses.

excuse me for being different.

and im done, fuck you all.  post what u want, im no longer interested in any of this shit.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=40#p21157
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-13 19:56:59

[quote="gufnork"][quote="Jizaboz"]
With this said, I think that a "cheerleading mechanism for novices" would be a good idea. Others may not get the few people like I did that actually really appreciate elements of the game to sort of pep them along. I think most of us would agree that we have plenty of channels for discovering what's wrong with a newbie's game, but perhaps not enough for telling them what is right.[/quote]

I agree. I've been one of those people that is only too keen to point out the faults in a game, but I really like the idea of a "cheerleading mechanism for novices". I really do think it's something that's sorely missing at the moment.

I like this idea. I may even run with it in this years IFcomp, thereby changing track entirely with regards my usual reviews.[/quote]

I already boosted this once on the thread, but I really think the JayIsGames competition did a great job with this. The specific format was that each game had a page with a "play now!" link (every game was playable through Parchment) and a walkthrough, and there was a comment thread below it. As problems/bugs were pointed out, the authors could upload new versions and bugfixes. This meant, I think, that comments tended to be more "This could be fixed" than "This sucks" (also hint requests). 

Also, the obligatory walkthrough helped, I think. One thing that can be incredibly frustrating about IF -- and frustration leads to nasty reviews -- is that if usually you hit a puzzle you can't solve, you're just stuck. There's nothing more for you to do. You can't practice the way you can practice levels in, say, a platformer (most of the time). Including a working walkthrough at least lets the player play through, and most walkthroughs will let you scan until you get to the solution of the puzzle from hell. 

So, what I'd suggest is running a comp or just a game board, maybe geared to newish or less polished authors, where there was a running comment thread attached to the game, where authors were allowed to do rolling updates, and where there was an explanation that problems would be fixed to encourage constructive criticism. And maybe this forum would be a good place to do it -- it has comment threads (and spoiler tags), and I suspect people who register for this forum will be less likely to be mean to each other in general.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=40#p21158
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: George / DateTime: 2011-08-13 20:02:47

As you say it doesn't have to be a comp necessarily. I'd like to see more works-in-progress posted to the forum.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3016&start=0#p21159
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: "reversed wearing" crashes the game
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-13 20:07:16

Given the following code:

[code]Understand "[something related by reversed wearing]" as a thing.

Starter is a room.

Bob is a man in Starter. Bob wears a brown coat.[/code]

"x brown coat" causes the game to hang -- seemingly it enters an infinite loop.

When I change "reversed wearing" to "reversed enclosure" this doesn't happen. 

Anyone know what's happening?

(The full version of this code is meant to do something useful -- it uses some indexed text to understand "Bill's coat" as the coat Bill is wearing -- but this minimal version is enough to cause the hangup.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=40#p21160
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-08-13 20:34:48

I don't think the Mean IF Reviews guy is actually a terrible person. I left a comment on his review of my game saying "Sorry it wasn't your cup of tea!" and he responded almost apologetically, saying "Keep in mind that nothing has been my cup of tea since I started reviewing. In fact, I don't even consider the ChoiceScript entries to be even tea, or fit for human consumption." I get the impression that actual critical analysis is secondary to just having a vehicle for his snarkiness. I don't find that particularly clever or useful, but that's the schtick, so those reviews should probably not be taken very seriously.

(It does annoy me that that review is drastically lowering the game's average rating on ifdb, though.  [emote]:x[/emote] )

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=10#p21161
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: daviddorkface / DateTime: 2011-08-13 20:39:50

You can't blame Cory for thinking the maneuver was homophobic since, hmmm, isn't it a coincidence that he was censored and removed immediately after a post in which he mentions his sexuality?  With no warnings whatsoever that people were hating on his posts?

And who cares about the capitals and apostrophes?  You can't read his content through his style of writing?  He specifically wrote like that to stand out in the blog feed.

His was a fun blog, and this community has proved to be nothing different than the elitist losers on World of Warcraft. 

Use whatever you want as an excuse, it looks like homophobic censorship by uncomfortable people to me.

I'm out of this shit-hole of a community as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=50#p21162
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-08-13 20:56:46

[quote="matt w"]So, what I'd suggest is running a comp or just a game board, maybe geared to newish or less polished authors, where there was a running comment thread attached to the game, where authors were allowed to do rolling updates, and where there was an explanation that problems would be fixed to encourage constructive criticism. And maybe this forum would be a good place to do it -- it has comment threads (and spoiler tags), and I suspect people who register for this forum will be less likely to be mean to each other in general.[/quote]

Rather than just using this board, I think it would be great to have a special-purpose demoing site. I've suggested in the past an "IF Manifestos" site, where authors could post short gamelets that illustrate a point, try out a new UI idea, field-test a writing style--whatever. The same model would work really nicely for the kind of authors' salon you're talking about here, where finished games (or betas) could be put up for iterative development and discussion. To quickly spell out where I'm coming from:

The games would be served out by Parchment, Quixe, or any other cleanly embeddable client-side terp, and a comments section below would allow posters to submit comments without leaving the page (that is, webapp-style--you can submit a comment without interrupting your play). Multiple comments submissions during the same session would be wrapped up in a single "essay". An alternate view might allow you to see those comments alongside the transcript produced; i.e. a running annotation of game play.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=10#p21163
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-13 21:09:29

[quote]i purposefully dont use caps or apostrophes. its not cuz im an idiot.[/quote]

Oh, so it's either because you want your text to be hard to read or you're trying to stand out in some strange way. Either way, you should understand that it never endeared you to anyone. If you write illiterately, people will assume you're illiterate.

[quote]if i was "clearly annoying" ppl or whatever was said, it would be nice if ppl started up a dialog with me about it.[/quote]

Well, apparently someone did. And you overreacted so much that my impulse was to reply with full-force sarcasm. It wasn't very nice of me, and I apologise for doing it that way. So we both overracted.

[quote]in the end, ive stopped caring, it just proves to me that conformity is what ppl want in their little online communities.[/quote]

I do believe you're a rebel without a cause.

[quote]and im done, fuck you all. post what u want, im no longer interested in any of this shit.[/quote]

This is exactly the kind of thing I mean about overreacting. I'm just a regular user, and I don't come to this forum to watch posts about "wtf is up with the dance at bing crosby", but I can deal with that. But overreacting so much to criticism, and to start insulting left and right, and throwing a tantrum?

I'll be the first to welcome you with open arms when you change your attitude, and until then I'll be glad to hold the door open for you to leave.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3006&start=10#p21164
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Which do you mean? Question
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-14 00:08:20

That's about right. The parser has a notion of indistinguishable objects, so that (e.g.) if you see six identical coins and you type "take coin", it just picks one.

I don't remember exactly under what conditions objects are indistinguishable -- I tend not to use anonymous *or* identical objects in my games -- but this sounds like that case.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=10#p21165
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: i-k / DateTime: 2011-08-14 03:40:26

I stopped reading Letters From Lorthayn after a couple of posts, since the style was just too tiring for me. I know I'm not the best person to talk about English literary style, since I'm not a native speaker -- yet I'm quite sure I wasn't the only one who felt this way.

The thing is, though, that I assumed that ezfreemann was a new not just to IF-blogging but to the IF-community in general, and so he would, after spending some more time surrounded by this discourse, modify his style to better suite the community. I never assumed the man was somehow less intelligent, I just thought he wasn't familiar with the fairly strict norms that differ from those of "ordinary" discussion in the web. That's why I was being patient about these hard-to-read posts cluttering the Planet-IF feed.

The question here is, of course, whether the norms are too strict. I personally don't think they are. Interactive fiction is characteristically a very literary pass-time, so I think people do want to keep the community that way, too. A subject that divides opinions, I'm sure.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3017&start=0#p21166
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: Parsing Objects of the Same Name
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-14 05:46:44

Sorry to bother you already, I know this has been dealt with before, but my search in the forum didn't reveal anything.

I have these 10 trees, and need the player to address them. Currently I gave them names such as 'first', 'second' etc., but I assume the player would want to type something like 'tree 1', 'tree 2' etc., maybe even '1. tree' etc. I have noe clue how to achieve this as it probably goes down pretty deep into the parser mechanics. Any hints on what to do?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=0#p21167
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Grotesque 0.9.3: IF library manager
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-14 06:32:58

Hi everyone,
I'm happy to formally announce the Grotesque project, which is an interactive fiction library manager, primarily for Linux. [b]*UPDATE*[/b]: you can now download a Windows version of it!

Some of you may already be familiar with the project. Indeed, it's been around for a couple years, but its last release in 2009 was version 0.2.1 and didn't have many features. With the permission of the original author, I resumed development this summer and I have since implemented many of the features that I think it was lacking, enough for me to decide to bump the version number up to 0.9.

[img]http://oi56.tinypic.com/2qst5b9.jpg[/img]

Grotesque 0.9 features:
[list][*] Full Treaty of Babel bibliography support[/*:m]
[*] Fetch bibliographical information from IFDB[/*:m]
[*] Fetch and display cover art from IFDB[/*:m]
[*] Fetch and display (average) star ratings from IFDB (which can be
overridden with your own rating)[/*:m]
[*] Quickly filter your library by author, genre, group, year published,
forgiveness and minimum rating. Search the library by title (click in
the library and start typing)[/*:m]
[*] Edit story entries[/*:m]
[*] Show/hide the bibliographic columns of your choosing[/*:m]
[*] Mark stories as new/played[/*:m]
[*] Improved story description layout[/*:m]
[*] Faster loading time for large libraries[/*:m]
[*] Recursively import a directory tree[/*:m][/list:u]

With an eye to the future, there are two flavors available, one built for GTK2 and one for GTK3. If you aren't sure which to download, get the GTK2 version. Currently, I think only users of up-to-date Fedora, Arch, and OpenSUSE, for example, will have GTK3. Ubuntu will have it in the 11.10 release this October.

[url=http://grotesque.sourceforge.net]Homepage[/url]

Downloads ([b]current version: 0.9.3[/b])
<a class="postlink" href="http://grotesque.sourceforge.net/download.html">http://grotesque.sourceforge.net/download.html</a>

[u]Arch Linux AUR[/u]
GTK2: <a class="postlink" href="https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=28915">https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=28915</a>
GTK3: <a class="postlink" href="https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=51572">https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=51572</a>

[u]Gentoo[/u]
[quote="RealNC"]It's ready and Gentoo (and other Portage-based distros, like Sabayon or Calculate) users can now install it from the [url=http://repo.or.cz/w/gentoo-interactive-fiction.git]interactive-fiction overlay[/url]. The full package name is "games-util/grotesque". If you don't yet have that overlay added in your system, add it with:
[code]layman -a interactive-fiction[/code]
After that, simply install Grotesque as you do any other package:
[code]emerge grotesque[/code]
At the moment, only the Gtk 2 version is provided.[/quote]

[u]Debian/Ubuntu[/u]
*need packaging volunteers*

[u]RPM[/u]
*need packaging volunteers*

So, give it a try and let me know what you think! Thanks!!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3006&start=10#p21168
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Which do you mean? Question
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-14 06:48:45

That seems like an excellent decision. And I guess it settles rotter's original question; s/he doesn't want to make the brown coats indistinguishable, because then they'll never get disambiguated, no matter how many tricks we try.

(If anyone has an idea about the problem I had with the reversed wearing relation crashing the game in run-time, I made a new topic [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3016]here[/url].)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=0#p21169
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9: IF library manager for Linux
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-14 06:58:53

Between

[quote](but it's written in Python, so it may work on Windows or Mac, provided you have GTK installed...I've just never tested it!)[/quote]

and, from the GTK page,

[quote]The packages here are for people who develop software that uses GTK+. This page is not intended directly for end-users. It is expected that people who build installers for GTK+ applications for Windows bundle GTK+ with them.[/quote]

it seems I will not be trying this any time soon, since I'm pretty much the end user of all end users, didn't even know there was such a thing as GTK, neither the official page nor this software's developer offer the necessary material for me to try it out (much like the creator of IFMapper always cheerfully assumed with every new release that everyone would know how to install/update his RubyGemsOrWhatever application), and despite me having been waiting for something like this for a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time.

Guess I'll just have to wait longer, but hey, good work - it looks great, and is just the sort of thing I'd use a lot, if I didn't have Windows.

By the way, I suppose there's an easy way to add games to your library that are not compliant with Treaty of Babel? And that I can, say, add "tzx" games and open them with the interpreter of my choice, or at least with the program that is defined in my system to run "tzx" games? You don't mention this in your blurb, and if it's currently not supported, I would suggest you think it over. [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3019&start=0#p21170
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: What are the Z-Machine limits for I7 games?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-14 07:01:18

I thought my game was pretty small, but it's only minimally fleshed out and it already doesn't fit into z8. Even after trimming out all the friendly grammar and most scenery items, component parts, and nonessential properties, it's still 6K over the limit. Is I7 a glulx-only language for all but the most minimal implementations, or am I just writing sloppy memory-hogging code?

I remember being impressed by the tremendous size of Curses, and that fit into z5. Perhaps grammar has become more advanced and memory-intensive since then, but it just seems weird for a game with 130 objects to be too big for z8.

I have a pretty large number of rules, and of course lots of text. Is there any sort of guideline for figuring out where the memory goes? Is there a runtime memory-mapping tool? I thought I heard about one but I can't remember where. At some point I thought I saw an error message promising to give a memory map, but there was none.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=10#p21171
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-14 07:02:29

I've got to say, I'm troubled that a blog was removed without checking in with the author, and with reference to guidelines that don't appear to be linked from the page, or mentioned.  That seems like heavier modding than I expected from the aggregate feed.

Whether or not individuals find ez's lack of capitalization and nontraditional grammar pleasing, or even readable, doesn't seem to be the real point.  I didn't realize that there was a "chattiness" quotient, and I'm gobsmacked to learn that profanity is a monitored thing.  

I don't think all of these are inappropriate guidelines, but they're somewhat arbitrary, and removal without prior notification or notice upon removal seems extremely harsh for rules that writers don't know about.  

That said, ez:
[quote="ezfreemann"]
if i was "clearly annoying" ppl or whatever was said, it would be nice if ppl started up a dialog with me about it.
[/quote]

I cannot imagine why people might feel a little hesitant about doing that, given what's currently on your blog.

[quote]if u r going to comment with any negative shit toward me, do me a favor and shove it up your ass instead.

if u STILL comment anything negative toward me, i will hunt you down and murder you slowly in front of your family.[/quote]

Death threats: seriously not cool.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=0#p21172
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9: IF library manager for Linux
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-14 07:06:57

I'll see what I can do about packaging it for Windows. I have packaged Python/GTK applications in the past for Windows, but it's been a while. I'll give it a try today!!

Currently, you can add interpreters for any kind of game you can imagine. However, at the moment, if the program cannot extract *any* information from the file, it will give up. It already allows manual entry of game information on games in which no bibliographic information could be extracted, though. I could easily change it so that even if it failed to read the file, you can still manually enter the info. It should be pretty straight-forward to implement. Thanks for the idea!
Do you have any example files that aren't ToB-compatible that I can test with?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=0#p21173
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9: IF library manager for Linux
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-14 07:12:00

I would suspect most Spectrum games would fit the bill, you can download them in all format from <a class="postlink" href="http://www.worldofspectrum.org/textadv/index.html">http://www.worldofspectrum.org/textadv/index.html</a>. You can also check out DOS-based games, or Commodore, or amiga, or Apple II. Amiga and Apple II particularly I don't see being ToB compliant.

Incidently, I took a stab at trying to download Python and GTK. My diagnosis: I really, really suck at it. [emote];)[/emote]

EDIT - Incidently, I shouldn't fail to emphasise how pretty it looks, despite its name. [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=10#p21174
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-14 07:12:52

I have no problem with the Letters from Lorthayn blog, and I enjoyed [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2872&p=20012&hilit=doin+da+butt#p20012]this topic[/url] which had the right title certainly. The affected text-speak annoys me but I can deal. (However, as some folks pointed out to someone else I think, there are non-native speakers reading this forum and text-speak makes it harder for them. I can read some French but I can't read [url=http://french.about.com/library/writing/bl-texting.htm]this[/url].) 

...I had more here, but gravel said it better than I before I posted, so I'll just +1 to that. And add -- when you posted your "Goodbye Cruel World" post about how the IF community is conformist etc. etc., you'd had a conflict on this issue with four people (two of whom had only offered constructive criticism or complained about your grammar). Why generalize about the whole community from that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=50#p21175
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-14 07:17:10

[quote="Campbell"][quote="Juhana"]When you get the same cheers and pats on the back for just about anything you produce there's not much incentive to put in extra effort and really try the best you can.  (I don't know how accurately this describes the ADRIFT community, but I find it an interesting theory.)[/quote]
How would you propose solving this problem?[/quote]
It seems to me that in the non-ADRIFT community the general consensus is that ADRIFT is an inferior system and ADRIFT games are generally of low quality (whether actually true or not) and in the ADRIFT community the general consensus is that in comps voters give lower scores to ADRIFT games just because they're made with ADRIFT (whether actually true or not). So they rather have their own forums and own comps free of such prejudice and since there's little overlap the standard of what is a good game gets set to different levels.

The best solution would be if an ADRIFT game would win the IFComp (easier said than done, right?) That would set the standards higher, reduce the stigma, and encourage ADRIFT authors to participate more in the open for all comps.

Here's a more radical although perhaps implausible suggestion: Bring the communities together by merging the ADRIFT forum with the intfiction.org forum.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3019&start=0#p21176
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What are the Z-Machine limits for I7 games?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-14 07:18:23

I may have mentioned that my 2359-word source text with 1 room and 9 things blew out the z-machine limits. Apparently including 61 lists will do that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=0#p21177
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9: IF library manager for Linux
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-14 07:20:10

Ok yeah I have some DOS .exe games that I can try working with.

Sad note: it will be ugly as sin on Windows. [emote]:([/emote]  (at least the last time I used a GTK program in in Windows, it was bad.....btw GTK is the toolkit that I used for the interface, so that which defines the buttons, list views, drop-down menus, etc).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3019&start=0#p21178
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What are the Z-Machine limits for I7 games?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-14 07:42:40

One thing I was wondering about was creating kinds vs. creating properties. If you have a property that can only belong to a small set of objects, it seems to make sense to create a kind. But if I'm not mistaken, I7 creates a kind-index property for every kind, and if a kind inherits from other kinds, it has a kind-index property for every single kind that it inherits from.

So if you have this:

[code]A subject is a kind of thing. A subject has an object called the concern.[/code]

You've created two properties: The subject-index property and the concern property.

On the other hand, this:

[code]A subject is a kind of thing. A prayer is a kind of subject. A prayer has an object called the concern.[/code]

...looks like you're being more focused, but if you don't have a lot of subjects, it might not help: In fact, you've created three properties, the subject-index, the prayer-index, and the concern.

Does that make a difference? When does it make sense to give properties to a few extra things instead of creating a new kind?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=0#p21179
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9: IF library manager for Linux
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-14 07:43:50

Well, that's a pity, but if it works at all I can cheerfully live with it. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3012&start=0#p21180
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Word list
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-14 07:58:27

You could do that, but you might want to think a little about resource management before you do:

How much will such a thing improve the player experience?
How much does it have to do with the actual game, in terms of setting the scene or advancing the story?
How much programming work will it require?
Will it slow down the runtime noticeably or make the game too large for some platforms?
Is there a cheap hack I could do instead that would cover a majority of use cases?
Is it worth it?

If it's just a matter of painting objects that appear in the game, but adding plural forms to them, you could probably do it with indexed text. Or even manually add plural forms for those objects:

[code]Test is a room.

A pluralization is a kind of value. Items is a pluralization. Every thing has a pluralization called the plural form. Understand the plural form property as describing a thing. Understand "things" as items.

There is an animal called a mouse in Test. Mice is a pluralization. The plural form of mouse is mice.

test me with "x mice"[/code]

Another option is to have the game be up-front about what it does and doesn't understand. Sometimes this is more satisfying to the player than making them guess whether the game really understood their command or is just pretending to be clever. Let me see if I can find the code to do that (pinched from Ron Newcomb and Aaron Reed):

[code]Include Default Messages by Ron Newcomb.

To decide which snippet is the misunderstood word: (- (((wn - 1) * 100) + 1) -) .
To decide what number is position of non-dictionary word: (- (FindUnknownWordToken(2)) -).

Include (-
[ FindUnknownWordToken wordnum 
w twn numwds;
#ifdef TARGET_GLULX;
numwds = parse-->0;
#ifnot;
numwds = parse->1;
#endif; ! TARGET_GLULX;
! Throw out invalid word numbers
if (wordnum <= 0 || wordnum > numwds) rfalse;
twn=wn; ! save the value of wn so it can be restored
wn=wordnum;
while (1)
{ w=NextWordStopped();
if (w == -1) { wn=twn; rfalse; }
if (w == 0 && TryNumber(wn-1) == -1000) 
{ wordnum=wn-1;
wn=twn;
return wordnum; 
}
}
];
-)

Table of custom library messages (continued)
library-action	library-message-id	library-message-text
--	30	"[if position of non-dictionary word is 0]That's not something you can see right now.[otherwise]The word '[the misunderstood word]' was not understood."

Test is a room.

There is a mouse.
Test me with "x mouse/x foo"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2993&start=10#p21181
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: a question about motivation
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2011-08-14 08:00:48

One of the things I do is to give myself a deadline.  It could be a comp or it could be a personal deadline of some kind.  Once I've got it, then I figure out why I want playtests by, and then I litter my Google calendar with reminders to make sure I hit the deadlines.

Another thing that worked really well for motivation was to have a coauthor.  On One Eye Open, Colin Sandel and I kept each other motivated until the very end.  (We were exhausted wrecks at that point, but still.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3013&start=0#p21182
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Non Transparent Container
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-14 08:23:05

I'd probably use an Instead rule instead:

[code]Instead of examining the fixture:
    follow the standard examining rule for the fixture.[/code]

You know you can also suppress contents listing by making the container closed, right? You can even make it not openable if you want.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=0#p21183
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9: IF library manager for Linux
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-14 08:51:43

Unfortunately, to build it for Windows, it looks like I will actually need Windows.

Nonetheless, it looks like it will be pretty straight-forward to do using [url=http://www.phttp://www.py2exe.org/]py2exe[/url]. If anyone out there is running Windows, has Python installed, and would like to help, please contact me! I don't think a lot of Python knowledge on your part will even be necessary; I still have config files from an old project I did this with, so we can probably mostly copy those.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2993&start=10#p21184
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: a question about motivation
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-14 08:59:44

Well, I haven't written any IF myself yet, but when it comes to my other hobbies like music or programming, the same problem arises and sometimes you just have to force yourself to sit down and start working on it. After about 5 or 10 minutes you'll find that you're getting into it and the creative forces start flowing again. It's always just that initial hump that can sometimes be difficult to get over.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=0#p21185
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9: IF library manager for Linux
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-14 09:05:05

If all that's required is an installation of Python 2.5 and py2exe, and if the process is that automated... well, I'll give it a go and let you know if I actually manage anything. [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3020&start=0#p21186
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: John Clemens
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-08-14 09:07:08

Does anyone out there know who/where John Clemens is? I have run across his name a few times within the Inform 7 documentation but his name does not show up in the extensions lists. Jim Aikin and Aaron Reed both mention him in relation to an extension but nothing shows up in any search (at least not searches I have done.)
Greg

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3022&start=0#p21188
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: John Clemens
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-08-14 09:13:23

Does anyone out there know who/where John Clemens is? I have run across his name a few times within the Inform 7 documentation but his name does not show up in the extensions lists. Jim Aikin and Aaron Reed both mention him in relation to an extension but nothing shows up in any search (at least not searches I have done.)
Greg

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3019&start=0#p21189
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What are the Z-Machine limits for I7 games?
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-14 09:19:06

Compiling source code can be more or less memory saving, depending on the compiler. 

Complex code structures can be broken down to spaghetti code. IF-THEN going through hardcoded variables consumes far less memory than tables and lists.

Just my guess.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3019&start=0#p21190
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What are the Z-Machine limits for I7 games?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-14 09:26:56

I trimmed a bit more and got it to fit. But it's not finished, so I don't know how long that will last. Also, I haven't really tested the trimmed version.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3020&start=0#p21191
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: John Clemens
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-14 09:30:19

He's got an IF web page at [url]http://www.math.psu.edu/clemens/IF/[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3022&start=0#p21192
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: John Clemens
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-14 09:37:32

He's got an IF web page at [url]http://www.math.psu.edu/clemens/IF/[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3020&start=0#p21193
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: John Clemens
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-08-14 09:44:33

I found the extension and installed it, Unfortunately. it does not compile. Seems to not understand one of the commands.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=10#p21194
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-08-14 10:01:25

I'll just say that I didn't appreciate when the one time I tried to comment on the blog, my comment was never approved.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3020&start=0#p21195
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: John Clemens
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-08-14 10:40:51

I get a compilation error indicating that the compiler fails to understand the text "[The actor]". What's odd is that if I use the identical text in my own code, the compiler has no problem with it.

It appears that the text "[The actor]" is no longer understood by the compiler when used in an activity rulebook. This fails to compile:
[code]Reporting skipping rope is an activity.

Last for reporting skipping rope rule when taking: say "[The actor] skips rope."[/code]
I would speculate that this change completely breaks the extension. A simple edit probably won't fix it. However, wiser heads than mine may be able to suggest a workaround.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3017&start=0#p21196
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Parsing Objects of the Same Name
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-08-14 10:50:57

Try this:

[code]with name 'first' 'tree' 'one' '1//',[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=10#p21197
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-14 11:00:02

Quite an ironic spin on this whole thing, that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3023&start=0#p21198
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 - Printing the reference_ID of an included BLORB Figure
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2011-08-14 11:16:40

I need the reference_ID of each image I include as a Figure in Inform 7.

I'm assuming there is a way to wrap an I6 function with I7 for this, but am not sure how to do it.

This is for Zifmia. When an author uploads their BLORB file, the Zifmia server will unpack all the parts and store them in their proper places. The ULX file will be added to the database as a game and the image and sound files will be copied to an HTML sub-folder for relative reference by the game play web page.

The author would include their spot art as Figures and then reference them in text with some markup such as [show Figure 1 on the left].

So the entire code might look like this:

The Figure of the Barren Valley is the file "barrenvalley.png".

The Barren Valley is a room. "[Show Figure of the Barren Valley on the left]You are in a barren valley, dust packed hillocks pock either side with a muddy trail leading north."

This would be printed as markup that Zifmia will translate to HTML.

So the actual output will be:

[image 3 png left 'Barren Valley']You are in a barren valley, dust packed hillocks pock either side with a muddy trail leading north.

And Zifmia will look for the [image tag and translate it so the text becomes:

<div class="paragraph"><img src="images/AAAAAAC/3.png">[emote]Barren Valley" class="spotLeft"/>You are in a barren valley, dust packed hillocks pock either side with a muddy trail leading north.</div>

The author can place spot art on the left side of a paragraph (wrapped), right side of a paragraph (wrapped), left of the main column but aligned with the top of the paragrah, right of themain column but aligned with the top of the paragraph, or as a modal popup CSS window. These translate roughly as:

[show the figure of the barren valley embedded on the left]
[show the figure of the barren valley embedded on the right]
[show the figure of the barren valley separate on the left]
[show the figure of the barren valley separate on the right]
[show the figure of the barren valley popup]

Sounds will be handled differently since they're not localized to any particular piece of text.

If someone could help with the reference_ID printing and the show printing action, I would appreciate it.

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=220#p21199
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-14 11:19:36

Oops...I didn't see this intro sticky and I egotistically made my own thread. I've deleted that and copied the text here....

Hi everyone. I figured I should introduce myself. I've been a periodic fan of interactive fiction. When I was a kid, I wasted countless hours on Zork I-III on my family's IBM PC Jr. before eventually getting seduced by the graphics of games we could run on our lightning fast 75Mhz Pentium computer.
In high school, I rediscovered IF and the burgeoning indie scene, with the IFComp etc., and all those incredible games around the turn of the century (Photopia, Aisle, Galatea, and so on). 4 years in a computer science program made me slowly loathe sitting in front of computers, and I more or less stopped playing computer games or video games. A few years later now, I've picked up programming as a hobby again and, after seeing Get Lamp, realized that I need to get back into IF.

It's great to see that the community remains thriving and that the medium is continually evolving. While I, of course, have grand intentions of writing my own story some day, I have not yet tried. However, in the meantime, as my IF collection quickly burgeoned thanks to the IFDB and such resources, I decided I needed a good program to organize them. I found one and eventually started hacking on it, so I have given my first contribution of hopefully many to the community (which has its [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018]own thread[/url], so I won't go into it here).

So, glad to be here, looking forward to the discussions, and so on. Cheers [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3023&start=0#p21200
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Printing the reference_ID of an included BLORB Figu
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-08-14 11:25:55

The Blorb ID of a figure is contained in the ResourceIDsOfFigures table. You can get at it like this (slightly simplified from the Standard Rules):

[code]To display (F - figure name): (- DisplayFigure(ResourceIDsOfFigures-->{F}); -)[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3023&start=0#p21201
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Printing the reference_ID of an included BLORB Figu
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2011-08-14 11:50:49

[quote="ektemple"]The Blorb ID of a figure is contained in the ResourceIDsOfFigures table. You can get at it like this (slightly simplified from the Standard Rules):

[code]To display (F - figure name): (- DisplayFigure(ResourceIDsOfFigures-->{F}); -)[/code]

--Erik[/quote]

Okay - so I have:

To display (F - figure name): (- DisplayFigure(ResourceIDsOfFigures-->{F}); -)

To embed left (F - figure name):
	say "[bracket]image ";
	display "[name of F]";
	say " embed left[bracket]".

But this isn't working. How do I call the display phrase within my embed phrase?

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3023&start=0#p21202
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Printing the reference_ID of an included BLORB Figu
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-08-14 12:00:59

Sorry, I didn't realize that you also weren't sure how to print the result. Here's one way:

[code]When play begins:
	Show Figure of Forked Road on the left.

To decide what number is reference of (F - figure name): (- ResourceIDsOfFigures-->{F} -).

To show (F - a figure name) on the left:
	say "[bracket]image [reference of F] embed left[close bracket]".[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=0#p21203
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9: IF library manager for Linux
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-14 12:05:31

Ok, I can successfully build a Windows EXE, however it runs into problems with importing.

Good news: I'm 99% sure I know what the problem is (windows + gdk threading don't play nicely together, if anyone's curious)
Bad news: it requires some major restructuring to implement
More good news: I think I need to implement this restructuring to fix some problems that people are experiencing in Linux too (it's partly related to, for example, the Loading Library dialog at the beginning not going away, which is because of a problem with threading).

I'll report back here when I get it working. Let's hope for it in Grotesque 0.9.1, which I hope to complete in the coming week or so, if all goes well. [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=0#p21204
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9: IF library manager for Linux
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-08-14 12:10:51

jakobcreutzfeldt, I can surely say I would kiss you right now if you were on the same room as I am.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3023&start=0#p21205
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Printing the reference_ID of an included BLORB Figu
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2011-08-14 12:18:01

[quote="ektemple"]Sorry, I didn't realize that you also weren't sure how to print the result. Here's one way:

[code]When play begins:
	Show Figure of Forked Road on the left.

To decide what number is reference of (F - figure name): (- ResourceIDsOfFigures-->{F} -).

To show (F - a figure name) on the left:
	say "[bracket]image [reference of F] embed left[close bracket]".[/code]

--Erik[/quote]

Yeah - still a newbie in many ways.

Here are the additional lines for the zifmia extension...

To decide what number is reference of (F - figure name): (- ResourceIDsOfFigures-->{F} -).
To say embed (F - a figure name) on the left: say "[bracket]embed left [reference of F] '[F]'[close bracket]".
To say embed (F - a figure name) on the right: say "[bracket]embed right [reference of F] '[F]'[close bracket]".
To say place (F - a figure name) on the left: say "[bracket]place left [reference of F] '[F]'[close bracket]".
To say place (F - a figure name) on the left: say "[bracket]place right [reference of F] '[F]'[close bracket]".
To say popup (F - a figure name): say "[bracket]popup [reference of F] '[F]'[close bracket]".

...which allows:

Figure 1 is the file "cloak-small.png". 

Foyer of the Opera House is a room.  "[embed Figure 1 on the left]You are standing in a spacious hall, splendidly decorated in red and gold, with glittering chandeliers overhead. The entrance from the street is to the north, and there are doorways south and west."

..and prints...

[embed left 3 "Figure 1"]You are standing in a spacious hall, splendidly decorated in red and gold, with glittering chandeliers overhead. The entrance from the street is to the north, and there are doorways south and west.

..which will translate to...

<div class="paragraph"><img src="images/{game id}/3.png">[emote]Figure 1" class="embedLeft"/>You are standing in a spacious hall, splendidly decorated in red and gold, with glittering chandeliers overhead. The entrance from the street is to the north, and there are doorways south and west.</div>

I'm sure someone might ask why I don't do the HTML conversion within I7 and we have to remember, the output of I7 shouldn't know anything about implementation. It will tell us we should display an image, that it should be embedded with the text, and on the left...but it doesn't know how we intend to do that. It does not care. If were implementing the client in iOS, we could handle this entirely differently than a browser, but we would have all the information we need to display the image.

Thanks a bunch,

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=10#p21206
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9: IF library manager for Linux
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-14 12:23:47

[emote]:lol:[/emote] 

Glad you like it. [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=10#p21207
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9: IF library manager for Linux
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-14 12:25:10

Known bug (mentioned in an earlier post): if one of the loading dialogs (library loading, importing stories, or removing stories) finishes but doesn't go away, just hit the Escape key. I'm trying to fix this. It seems to mostly happen with small libraries, so take that as a message to download more!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3023&start=0#p21208
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Printing the reference_ID of an included BLORB Figu
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2011-08-14 12:28:22

[quote]..and prints...

[embed left 3 "Figure 1"]You are standing in a spacious hall, splendidly decorated in red and gold, with glittering chandeliers overhead. The entrance from the street is to the north, and there are doorways south and west.[/quote]

..although now that I think about it, I should probably use JSON...

{"reference:",3,"placement:","left","embed:","true","alternateText:","Figure 1"}

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3024&start=0#p21209
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Multi-part series
User: corax / DateTime: 2011-08-14 12:31:05

Hi, I'm a newbe to IF, but not to RPG. 
My main problem is that I'm trying to turn an old campaign into an IF game; the file size has exploded! Can someone point me to any documentation that will help me split it so that characters (NPC, as well as players) can move to and fro between parts, complete with goods and 'memories'.
 A secondary problem is that the time-line runs to months and years, whereas the documentation I've seen never seems to extend beyond 24 hours.

Thanks for any help at all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3024&start=0#p21210
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Multi-part series
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-14 13:21:00

You can check out chapter 22.10-22.14 of the documentation for writing and reading data to and from external files.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3024&start=0#p21211
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Multi-part series
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-08-14 13:21:25

File size is a problem only if you're trying to compile to the z-machine. If you go to the Settings panel and compile to Glulx, there is no realistic limit on file size.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3020&start=0#p21212
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: John Clemens
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-08-14 13:35:59

THat's what I suspect. It looks like trying to patch will probably not work. Let me see if I can get a message to Clemens.

Greg

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3017&start=0#p21213
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Parsing Objects of the Same Name
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-14 13:43:12

Hallelujah, thanks!!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=10#p21214
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9: IF library manager for Linux
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-14 13:58:57

[quote="jakobcreutzfeldt"]Known bug (mentioned in an earlier post): if one of the loading dialogs (library loading, importing stories, or removing stories) finishes but doesn't go away, just hit the Escape key. I'm trying to fix this. It seems to mostly happen with small libraries, so take that as a message to download more![/quote]

I'm happy to say that this is already fixed. Since it's such a pain in the ass bug, I'm going to release this bugfix as 0.9.1 before I work on anything else. I know it's weird because I just released 0.9 last night but I'd like to get this fix out the door as quickly as possible.

And, Windows users, you'll be happy to know that I'm 99% sure that the solution to this bug also eliminated the problems with running Grotesque in Windows.

I'll try to have it packaged and online tonight.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3024&start=0#p21215
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Multi-part series
User: corax / DateTime: 2011-08-14 14:08:03

Thanks Felix that looks like what I was needing; couldn't see for looking. Don't need it just yet, but I needed to know that it was there for when...

Jim. I know there's no problem with file size, it's already sitting at 70 MB in the project folder and that's less than 1/3rd of the basic rooms. One problem is the compile time; around 40 minutes at the moment and I like to test things a lot. Another is dreaming up enough unique names. Also I have an aversion to ginormous files! [emote]:-)[/emote]

Now all I've got to do is split things up. Probably do it on a locale/travel distance basis; the files will still be big due to common items, but they should be relatively few (I hope!) otherwise it'll be back to the drawing board.

Thanks again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3024&start=0#p21216
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Multi-part series
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-14 14:22:18

[quote="corax"]One problem is the compile time; around 40 minutes at the moment[/quote]Ugh!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3020&start=0#p21217
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: John Clemens
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-08-14 14:40:15

I did the obvious and tried the *** example in the documentation -- The same error comes up.

Greg

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3019&start=0#p21218
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What are the Z-Machine limits for I7 games?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-14 14:44:53

Okay, fine. Here's a very off-the-cuff Python script which tries to give you some memory usage analysis:

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/ftp/idebugmap.py">http://eblong.com/zarf/ftp/idebugmap.py</a>

This parses the "gameinfo.dbg" debug file generated during an Inform compile. It can also compare two different gameinfo.dbg files, which is the real value. Compile your I7 game, copy the gameinfo.dbg file somewhere, chop out or add a feature, compile again, and run the script to compare the memory usage. You can get a list of every array that's been added, removed, grown, or shrunk -- hopefully that's enough to let you locate important changes.

(If you have an I7 project called "Foo.inform", you can find this file after a build in the location "Foo.inform/Build/gameinfo.dbg". You may want to turn off the "Clean build files before closing" preference, so that this file sticks around after you quit I7. If you're using I6, include the "-k" switch when you compile.)

Read the comments at the top of the file for full documentation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=10#p21219
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9: IF library manager for Linux
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-14 15:34:23

I am aghast at the speed and the determination with which you tracked these issues down, especially since yuo just meant for this to be for Linux. Bravo.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=10#p21220
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-14 15:35:48

[quote="matt w"](However, as some folks pointed out to someone else I think, there are non-native speakers reading this forum and text-speak makes it harder for them. I can read some French but I can't read [url=http://french.about.com/library/writing/bl-texting.htm]this[/url].) 
[/quote]

It's true for me, and I'm a native speaker!  (Er, English native speaker, not French.)  I assume people who deliberately use text speak have weighed the pros and cons of this, although they may not realize how much extra effort I need to devote to decoding text that isn't punctuated, capitalized, or formatted in ways that I expect.  But that's true for some of the more technical and/or academic posts as well, and nontraditional formatting isn't entirely foreign to the literary world.

(But I should probably add flashcards on "text speak" for the foreign language I'm studying to the pile.  Fantastic.  More stuff to learn.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=59&start=10#p21221
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works In Progress
User: The_Doctor / DateTime: 2011-08-14 15:46:29

My girlfriend and I are working on our first IF entitled 'The Long Road'.  [emote]8-)[/emote] 

We're about 5% done.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3024&start=0#p21222
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Multi-part series
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-14 15:55:35

Holy cow.  That is a long time.  Has the compile time been scaling up gradually, or did something change recently?

I'm guessing you're using Inform 7?  There's an example model of dates in the extension Weather; it basically uses independent numbers for day, month, year and a table to store some information on day and month length (and month names).  I'm not sure if the extension is small enough, but the basic principle could be helpful.  Basically, the day number is increased by one every time the time is 12:01 AM; month is increased (and day reset to 1) every time the days reach the number of days in the month.

It's easy to change the date manually ("now the Month is 4"), although if you set up scenes based on time, you'll want to make sure they fire *throughout* the entire time they run - so that rather than starting Scene A oat 3:53 AM on August 2nd, 2066 and ending at 3:53 AM on August 12th, 2070, you make the start conditions so that it starts every time it's between those dates.  It will make testing SO much easier.  I learned the hard way - you don't have to!

I suspect someone has a "date" value system squirreled away somewhere, and it should be relatively easy to make one, basically condensing the above into a single value, so that's an option if that would be helpful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=10#p21223
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-08-14 16:36:28

[quote="daviddorkface"]isn't it a coincidence that he was censored and removed immediately after a post in which he mentions his sexuality?[/quote]

Didn't seem to have been a problem the first couple of times (he mentioned his fiancé at least as far back as [url=http://ezfreemann.livejournal.com/6336.html]June[/url]), so, yes, yes it is a coincidence.

[quote]With no warnings whatsoever[/quote]

I got the impression he did [url=http://ezfreemann.livejournal.com/12664.html]receive some correspondence[/url] about the rape comic he posted, at least.

[quote="gravel"]I didn't realize that there was a "chattiness" quotient, and I'm gobsmacked to learn that profanity is a monitored thing. [/quote] 

Oh, I sort of assumed those were euphemisms for "extremely off-topic."  This is the sort of thing that might honestly be resolved by only scraping a certain tag of EZ's livejournal for the feed.

[quote]Death threats: seriously not cool.[/quote]

Very true, and they are also not terribly conducive to starting a dialogue.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=10#p21224
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9: IF library manager for Linux
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-14 17:20:30

Ladies and gentlemen, version 0.9.1:
<a class="postlink" href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/grotesque/files/grotesque/0.9.1/">https://sourceforge.net/projects/grotes ... que/0.9.1/</a>

Now in *three* flavors: Linux GTK2, Linux GTK3, and Windows!


Ok, I was wrong about what was causing the Windows problem (or maybe there were two problems and I fixed them both) but I got it all worked out. I *think* that you should just be able to download the zip and run grotesque.exe. If something went wrong in the packaging and you can't run it, please let me know and I'll fix it ASAP. Turns out it's a national holiday here in Spain tomorrow, so I guess I won't be going to work and I'll have time for hacking.

Some other notes on the release:
[list][*] I disabled importing .blb files because there's a bug in it that causes the program to hang. My next big mission is better handling of failed imports.[/*:m]
[*] I fixed the pesky progress dialog bug, as noted[/*:m][/list:u]
That's it actually. It's a minor update  but it's an important one for overall usability.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=10#p21225
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9: IF library manager for Linux
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-14 17:21:25

[quote="Peter Pears"]I am aghast at the speed and the determination with which you tracked these issues down, especially since yuo just meant for this to be for Linux. Bravo.[/quote]

I would be embarassed to describe the last two weeks of my life to you.  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 
Two words: hacking holiday

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2993&start=10#p21226
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: a question about motivation
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-14 17:21:45

[quote="jakobcreutzfeldt"]It's always just that initial hump that can sometimes be difficult to get over.[/quote]
Yes, the initial hump. Though I have found that for me at least IF has far less of an initial hump than writing non-interactive fiction, because it is so easy to get started with programming. "Let me just fix that one little bug" is all you need to think, you do it, have a feeling of success, and before you know it you have spent hours more on your project. Somehow, "Let me just write one good sentence for this novel" doesn't motivate in the same way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3025&start=0#p21227
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Problem with Inventory Listing
User: gerko511 / DateTime: 2011-08-14 17:22:09

Hi, I'm new to I7 and am getting stuck with the inventory listing command. 

This is the simple code:
[code]Library is a room. The description is "You are in a library".
A book is here. The inventory listing of the book is "an old book".[/code]

When running this, it produces the following error:
[code]This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6G60) on its most recent run through:
Problem. You wrote 'The inventory listing of the book is "an old book"'  : but this seems to say that a thing is a value, like saying 'the chair is 10'.
[/code]

The code seems to be correct according to documentation and all other games downloaded that use the inventory listing code, will produce the same error when running. Reinstalling I7 did not fix the problem. I hope that anyone knows what's going wrong here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=50#p21228
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-08-14 17:41:29

[quote="Juhana"]It seems to me that in the non-ADRIFT community the general consensus is that ADRIFT is an inferior system [/quote]I think that's certainly true of v3.9/v4, hence the 6 years work making v5. I would love to hear what the non-ADRIFT community thinks of the new version.

[quote]So they rather have their own forums and own comps free of such prejudice and since there's little overlap the standard of what is a good game gets set to different levels.[/quote]Well that's a really good point. I thinks it's fair to retain some ADRIFT-only comps, but it would be good to see more 'drifters join in the wider community. I'll do my best to encourage that.

[quote]Here's a more radical although perhaps implausible suggestion: Bring the communities together by merging the ADRIFT forum with the intfiction.org forum.[/quote]Nice idea. Difficult in practice tho as the ADRIFT forum drives the whole website. But it is a big problem; users here for the most part talk about Inform and to a lesser degree TADS with a smattering of the other systems, which I believe gives the impression for new users that these are the only systems in mainstream use today. Perhaps the mods here could add links to the other main forums (ADRIFT, Quest etc) in the 'Other Development Systems' forum header?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3025&start=0#p21229
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with Inventory Listing
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-14 17:44:21

What documentation are you looking at? The "inventory listing" property was dropped from the standard library in release 5T18.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3025&start=0#p21230
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with Inventory Listing
User: gerko511 / DateTime: 2011-08-14 17:59:54

Ok, thanks. I wasn't aware of that. I was reading several documentation from the internet but they seem to be obsolete.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=10#p21231
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.1: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-14 19:03:45

Superb work. [emote]:)[/emote] Now, just to recap, here are my current issues:

 - I can't add formats and interpreters, since when I try to click "OK" or "CANCEL" it gives the same null result (I really mean "null" - nothing happens at all when I click those buttons). On a related note, a "Browse" button would be useful here.

 - Hey, while writing this post I managed to make it so the app doesn't start anymore, don't ask me why...

...the only thing I think I did out of the ordinary was accidently trying to open it while it was already open. Now everytime I try to open it says:

---------------------------
Errors occurred
---------------------------
See the logfile 'C:\Interactive Fiction\Tools and Interpreters\grotesque-0.9.1-win\grotesque.exe.log' for details
---------------------------
OK   
---------------------------


And the logfile:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "grotesque", line 3, in <module>
  File "grotesque\main.pyc", line 776, in main
    
  File "grotesque\main.pyc", line 80, in __init__
    
  File "grotesque\main.pyc", line 245, in load_library
    
EOFError

And I get this even if I delete all the files and unzip them back. That's pretty weird.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=10#p21232
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-14 19:04:49

Curiously, the rape comic didn't bother me all that much. I mean, it *was* Stiffy Makane...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=20#p21233
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-14 19:09:14

[quote="tove"]I got the impression he did [url=http://ezfreemann.livejournal.com/12664.html]receive some correspondence[/url] about the rape comic he posted, at least.[/quote]

Oh god, somehow I'd forgotten about this. That was not cool at all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3025&start=0#p21234
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with Inventory Listing
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-08-14 21:07:15

The correct way to do this in I7 is (see 17.10):

[code]
Rule for printing the name of the book while taking inventory: say "old book". 
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3026&start=0#p21235
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: "Nothing Obvious Happens"
User: happy2pester / DateTime: 2011-08-14 21:29:03

Hi there, I'm new to IF development. I'm currently experimenting with inform 7, and when i use a lever that's in my game, i get the text that's supposed to happen, and then the message "Nothing obvious happens"

My code is the following: 
[code]Section 1 "Starboard Airlock"

The Outer Bulkhead is a door. It is north of the Starboard Airlock. It is lockable and locked.
The Starboard Airlock is a room. It is north of the Airlock bulkhead.
The Airlock bulkhead is a door. It is north of the Airlock Access. It is south of the Starboard Airlock. It is lockable and unlocked.
The Airlock Access is a room. It is west of the Starboard Corridor. It is east of the Starboard ladder.

The Inner lever is part of the Airlock bulkhead. 

The Outer lever is part of the outer bulkhead.

carry out pulling Inner lever:
	if the Outer Bulkhead is closed:
		now the Outer Bulkhead is locked;
		now the Airlock bulkhead is unlocked;
		say "A green light flashes as a pleasant tone sounds, indicating that the inner bulkhead is unlocked.";
		rule succeeds;
	otherwise:
		say "A red light flashes, indicating that the Outer Bulkhead is still open.";
		
carry out pulling Outer lever:
	if the Airlock bulkhead is closed:
		say "Awww Yeah";[/code]

When i run that, and try to pull both levers, i get the following.

[code]Starboard Airlock
You can see an Airlock bulkhead and an Outer Bulkhead here.

>close airlock bulkhead
You close the Airlock bulkhead.

>pull inner lever
A green light flashes as a pleasant tone sounds, indicating that the inner bulkhead is unlocked.

Nothing obvious happens.

>pull outer lever
Awww Yeah
Nothing obvious happens.

>[/code]

Can anyone tell me how to get rid of the Nothing Obvious Happens messages in this case? Thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3026&start=0#p21236
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Nothing Obvious Happens"
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-14 21:45:16

What's happening: normally,[i] carry out pulling[/i] does nothing. The "Nothing obvious happens" message is printed by [i]report pulling[/i], which you haven't tampered with, so it happens as normal after carry out.

For something as straightforward as this, you'd usually want to use [i]Instead of pulling...[/i] rather than fiddling around with check/carry out/report: this happens instead of the normal sequence. If you want to do something more complicated, the usual rule is to put all the things that print text in [i]report[/i], and all the things that change the world in [i]carry out[/i]. You can sometimes get away with putting everything in [i]carry out[/i] and blocking [i]report[/i], but it might cause bugs if you do certain fancy things later on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2901&start=10#p21237
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Randomly-generated graffiti
User: happy2pester / DateTime: 2011-08-14 21:48:48

How about "There are eels in my hovercraft" or "Lorem Ipsum"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3026&start=0#p21238
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Nothing Obvious Happens"
User: happy2pester / DateTime: 2011-08-14 21:50:19

why thank you Maga, that works perfectly for what i wanted

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3025&start=0#p21239
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with Inventory Listing
User: gerko511 / DateTime: 2011-08-15 02:10:42

Thank you very much.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=10#p21240
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.1: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-08-15 02:18:02

[quote="Peter Pears"]
And I get this even if I delete all the files and unzip them back. That's pretty weird.[/quote]
Have you tried restarting the computer?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=20#p21241
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-15 02:49:23

The comic was funny. I'm not sure where the "offensive" part is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=10#p21242
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.1: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-15 04:00:18

Peter,
It looks like your library file got corrupted. Go to C:\Users\[your username]\.grotesque and delete the file called local_library.dat. Unfortunately, this can happen if the program crashes while updating the library. I'll build in an automatic backup/recovery system, because it's happened to me too. In the meantime, you might want to manually back it up just in case. I simply copy it to a new file called local_library.bak and if this happens, I delete the .dat file and rename the .bak to .dat (and create a new backup copy of it).


[quote]- I can't add formats and interpreters, since when I try to click "OK" or "CANCEL" it gives the same null result (I really mean "null" - nothing happens at all when I click those buttons). On a related note, a "Browse" button would be useful here.[/quote]

I'm not sure what you mean here. You're trying to add a format/interpreter but then it crashes when you try to import a story file? That's almost certainly because I haven't yet implemented the ability to import non-ToB games (see my previous notes). That's my goal for today(ish) and should be in 0.9.2. For now, please stick to .z*, .gblorb, .gam (this might be iffy), .taf, .zblorb, and .ulx. 

Sorry it's causing you so many problems!!! I hope to have it all worked out by 1.0, but your actually helping me quite a bit by suffering through the bugs. [emote]:P[/emote]  Thanks!!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=10#p21243
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.1: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-15 04:14:52

And now it looks like a simple typo in the GTK2/Windows version is causing problems with editing files.  [emote]:oops:[/emote] 

If you are running the linux gtk2 version, this is a bit amateurish, but I suggest that you fix it yourself. It's really easy. In the GTK2 version open src/grotesque/main.py. Go to line 464, which has  items[23].set_text(""). Just change the 23 to a 25. I've already pushed the fix to my code but I haven't released a package with it yet. Windows users, you'll have to wait until a bit later today when I release 0.9.2 (yes, it's coming that soon).

I'm really sorry about these bugs. Never try to maintain two different parallel codebases. It makes you sloppy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2993&start=10#p21244
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: a question about motivation
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-08-15 04:19:45

This is a little weirder in IF than in linear fiction, but when I was writing a lot of stories, I would prime the pump each day by rereading what I'd written the day before. This still sometimes works for IF -- play through yesterday's work, then go on from there, either revising the last bit or writing the next bit.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3027&start=0#p21245
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Don't hate me for this
User: Aintelligence / DateTime: 2011-08-15 05:33:33

OK.  I was wondering the other day when surfing the web, how mazes would be achieved during gameplay.  I did a little bit of searching, but I couldn't come up with anything definite which would work.

Don't worry, before you spam this page with mazes hatemail, I hate mazes as much as you likely do.  I'm just looking for a practical method, not game implementation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3027&start=0#p21246
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Don't hate me for this
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-15 06:28:24

What kind of approach are you looking for? The simplest way is probably to code in a bunch of rooms by hand -- if you want the classic "twisty little passages" maze I think you'd have to make their printed names identical. This would be annoying to code, but it seems only fair that a maze should annoy the programmer as well. 

The TWIFComp entry [url=http://dhakajack.templaro.com/node/75]SWEDUN[/url] has one of the most elegantly programmed mazes I've seen -- a seven-room maze programmed in 140 characters -- though it's in I6 and I don't understand it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=20#p21247
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.1: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-08-15 06:32:45

Thanks for this! It looks really nice.

I'm having a problem, though. When I try to import my IF folder, Grotesque gets stuck importing Risorgimento Represso (it's a .ulx, so it should be okay). The program doesn't freeze or crash; I can cancel the import, no problems. It just doesn't get anywhere. I left it running while I ate dinner and when I got back it was still wrestling with the same file.

This happens using both 0.9 and 0.9.1. Ubuntu 11.04, GTK 2.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=20#p21248
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.1: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-15 06:33:32

Ah, thanks, that solved it. Hmmm, wonder if you could make it customizable, choosing where to put those Grotesque files that by default go into c:\user\[username]\grotesque. Low priority, of course, but it would be nice.

Now, before I was so rudely interrupted by that crash, I was just re-listing all the issues. [emote]:)[/emote]

 - I seem to always get that crash (the one that forces me to delete the library file) when I add a game and then quit. I boot up grotesque - I add "A Bear's Night Out" - I quit - next time I try to open grotesque, I get the error. So that I can't seem to add any games at all.

 - Feature request: double-click on a game to start it.

 - The only way I can add interrepters is when Grotesque runs for the first time. After that, when I go to the "interpreters and formats" window, all I can do is EDIT an existing entry. If I "ADD" one, then nothing happens - I do get another window with "Format:" and "Interpreter:" and fields to fill in, but clicking either OK or CANCEL in this window makes nothing happen. Now, since I discovered grotesque.cfg, and since I can edit it to add my own interpreters and formats, it's not THAT big a deal, but it IS an issue. And it would be helpful if every such entry had a "browse" button to easily find the interpreter of our choice.

 - Suggestion: the ability to assign more than one interpreter for a format. I know it sounds silly, but it's not... there are currently 3 versions of ADRIFT, and until Adrift 5 supports them all I use 3.90 for 3.90 games and 4.x for 4.x games. Then for glulx, there's WinGit and WinGlulxe, and although the vast majority of games works with WinGit, a lot of Spanish games choke on it.

 - Fix importing .blbs and .ulxs, and add the ability of importing non-ToB games, but this you know...

 - It seems that Grotesque knows a lot under its hood. It knows that z1-z8 and zblorb are ZCode games, and that t3 and gam are TADS files... but if Grotesque has to do all that alone, it'll choke when Spectrum and Apple II games start coming in. For Spectrum alone you can have lots of formats. I would suggest you allow the user to specificy *file extensions* rather than format-names, so I could link .tzx, .tap and .sna to my Spectrum emulator. Either that or just allow Windows (or the OS of choice) to open that file with the program it's already set to use.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=60#p21249
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: kevinb / DateTime: 2011-08-15 06:35:53

On Windows, it's pretty easy to use something like SetupFactory to create a self-executing installer containing all the stuff you need. But if 'all the stuff you need' includes an interpreter, you need to ensure that (a) you actually have legal rights to redistribute it in that form, and (b) you can find a way to package it such that, when unpacked, it doesn't clash with another installation of the same interpreter. I'm not sure which of these I find most troublesome.

To add to the complication, the way you'd have to do this would be different for every platform you want to support. There's also the issue of inelegance -- it seems to me very wasteful to distribute several megabytes -- perhaps many megabytes -- of interpreter for each game, when the game might only take 100 kB. But that's not a showstopper on modern desktop computers, I guess.

I imagine that anything that is to be truly cross-platform would, realistically, involve the download and installation of some platform-specific part. Unless the whole thing runs out of a Web browser.

My concern about all this is that installing an interpreter, or whatever other run-time bits you need, really _should_ be a one-click operation, shouldn't it? Despite my earlier bitchy comments about Gargolye, I can get it on my Linux system by typing 'yum install gargoyle'. I presume there's a simple way to get the same thing on Windows. Installing WindowsFrotz on my windows box was no more difficult than clicking 'OK' a few times.

We were talking earlier about attention span -- how a person with the mindset to play IF games is the kind of person who is able to concentrate for long-ish periods of time. But if a person can't concentrate long enough to install an interpreter -- presuming this is made as easy as it reasonably can be -- then is he or she going to have the attention span even to make the effort worthwhile?

Just wondering...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=70#p21250
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-15 06:52:47

I'm not sure its only a question of attention span.  It may be, a least in part, that somebody who's never tried IF and isn't sure they'd like it may not want to bother taking the time to download and install an interpreter, separately copy the story file to their hard disk, and then run it.  Sure, it's not really much to do, but it looks like multiple steps for somebody who hasn't yet been inspired to develop an interest.  On the other hand, the easier you can make it for them -- or maybe just the easier you can make it for them to [i]perceive[/i] the process -- the more likely they'll give it a shot.  And once they've done that, there's always the chance they'll be hooked.  If they don't try it just because a couple of steps seems like too much trouble, then you never have the chance of getting there.

This is (I think) at least part of the idea behind internet play; my point is just that the same idea should be equally applicable to non-web play.  The easier you make it for somebody to see what the whole thing is about, the greater the chance that some of them will try it and like it.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=20#p21251
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.1: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-15 06:54:46

[quote="Peter Pears"]Ah, thanks, that solved it. Hmmm, wonder if you could make it customizable, choosing where to put those Grotesque files that by default go into c:\user\[username]\grotesque. Low priority, of course, but it would be nice.[/quote]

That should be easy enough to implement, but it'll probably come after 0.9.2. Right now I'm focusing on file types.

[quote] - I seem to always get that crash (the one that forces me to delete the library file) when I add a game and then quit. I boot up grotesque - I add "A Bear's Night Out" - I quit - next time I try to open grotesque, I get the error. So that I can't seem to add any games at all.[/quote]

Hmm....this is strange. I've implemented a built in backup/restore facility which works well. I'll test a lot more on my Windows machinge.

[quote] - Feature request: double-click on a game to start it.[/quote]

This should already be implemented. Maybe it's not working in Windows. I'll test it.

[quote] - The only way I can add interrepters is when Grotesque runs for the first time. After that, when I go to the "interpreters and formats" window, all I can do is EDIT an existing entry. If I "ADD" one, then nothing happens - I do get another window with "Format:" and "Interpreter:" and fields to fill in, but clicking either OK or CANCEL in this window makes nothing happen. Now, since I discovered grotesque.cfg, and since I can edit it to add my own interpreters and formats, it's not THAT big a deal, but it IS an issue. [/quote]

I caught this bug to. It's already been fixed for 0.9.2.

[quote]And it would be helpful if every such entry had a "browse" button to easily find the interpreter of our choice.[/quote]

That's a good idea. I'll implement that for 0.9.2.

[quote] - Suggestion: the ability to assign more than one interpreter for a format. I know it sounds silly, but it's not... there are currently 3 versions of ADRIFT, and until Adrift 5 supports them all I use 3.90 for 3.90 games and 4.x for 4.x games. Then for glulx, there's WinGit and WinGlulxe, and although the vast majority of games works with WinGit, a lot of Spanish games choke on it.[/quote]

You'll be able to do this using the info in the next point, below.

[quote] - Fix importing .blbs and .ulxs, and add the ability of importing non-ToB games, but this you know...[/quote]

I've made it so you can import non-ToB games. This will be in 0.9.2. If it's non-ToB, metadata extraction will immediately fail and you will be dropped into an edit dialog. The edit dialog now allows you to specify the format. So, for example, I imported an old Zork .exe, which failed as non-ToB. I set the format to exe (it can be whatever you want...dos, exe, whatever). Then in the preferences, I added an interpreter for format exe and specified dosbox as the launcher. And voila, it worked. [emote]:)[/emote] So, for different types of adrift, you can manually come up with different format types and launchers for each one....unless they have different extensions, in which case......

[quote] - It seems that Grotesque knows a lot under its hood. It knows that z1-z8 and zblorb are ZCode games, and that t3 and gam are TADS files... but if Grotesque has to do all that alone, it'll choke when Spectrum and Apple II games start coming in. For Spectrum alone you can have lots of formats. I would suggest you allow the user to specificy *file extensions* rather than format-names, so I could link .tzx, .tap and .sna to my Spectrum emulator. Either that or just allow Windows (or the OS of choice) to open that file with the program it's already set to use.[/quote]

You read my mind [emote];)[/emote]. This is what I'm in the middle of implementing now. This will also make adding stories easier: when you import via the '+' button, the filetypes that it shows are hard-coded into the program. But say I want it to also show the .exe games. When I add the dosbox/exe launcher, it should also start showing  .exe files in that import dialog. Also, if I choose to import recursively (the 'folder' button), I'd like it to also start importing .exes. 

Anyway, you would specify a format, 'spectrum', specify the extensions in this format: 'tzx,tap,sna' (don't worry, I'll make it so it cleans it up if  you use spaces or otherwise don't follow the format exactly), and then specify the launcher as your Spectrum emulator. BUT, this will only work if your emulator allows you to launch files from a command line like: spectrum.exe game.tzx. If it only allows you to open games from a menu once the emulator is running, there's simply no way it will work with Grotesque.

One thing that I haven't worked out yet is how to handle games that don't need a launcher. If you're in Windows, a .exe file doesn't need a launcher. Windows can launch it natively. I could make it so that if you leave it blank, Grotesque tries to launch it as a native executable, but that might not be an obvious solution. I could put a little hint on there maybe.

Anyway, since 0.9.1 introduced its own bugs, I'm going to work on making sure 0.9.2 is released today,  focusing on import problems. I may not have .ulx or .blb import working yet, but it should fail more gracefully (ie not crash the program) when you try to import them.
Thanks for the continued feedback and patience with this beta software!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2993&start=10#p21252
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: a question about motivation
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-15 06:58:48

[quote]This is a little weirder in IF than in linear fiction,[/quote]

In some ways, this may be even more useful for IF than for traditional writing.  Playing through yesterday's work in IF allows you not only to get back into the swing of the story, but also to discover technical problems that you may have missed.  Some days you might feel like spending time on fixing the technical glitches; other days, you might feel more creative and want to move ahead with the story line.  Either one is progress.


Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=20#p21253
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.1: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-15 07:01:04

[quote="Emerald"]Thanks for this! It looks really nice.

I'm having a problem, though. When I try to import my IF folder, Grotesque gets stuck importing Risorgimento Represso (it's a .ulx, so it should be okay). The program doesn't freeze or crash; I can cancel the import, no problems. It just doesn't get anywhere. I left it running while I ate dinner and when I got back it was still wrestling with the same file.

This happens using both 0.9 and 0.9.1. Ubuntu 11.04, GTK 2.[/quote]

I can replicate this. There's an underlying bug in the .ulx metadata extraction which I haven't worked out yet. I inherited this project from someone else, who is no longer actively contributing, and his code was not documented at all, so I have to not only figure out how .ulx (and .blb) binary files are formatted but then I also have to figure out his code and how he's trying to read them! So, .ulx and .blb importing might not be fixed for a little while.

In the meantime, for 0.9.2 which should be released today, the program will no longer hang when you try to import such files. It will fail gracefully and allow you to manually enter the story's info (just find its IFID on IFDB, enter it and hit the search button and let IFDB fill in the rest). 

Thanks for letting me know!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2993&start=10#p21254
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: a question about motivation
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-15 07:03:12

Another tip is to divide and conquer. Some days you might be more in the mood for programming, some days you might be more in the mood for editing your text, some days might be better for just sitting with a pencil and paper and jotting notes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=20#p21255
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.1: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-08-15 07:06:43

[quote="jakobcreutzfeldt"]So, for different types of adrift, you can manually come up with different format types and launchers for each one....unless they have different extensions, in which case......[/quote]ADRIFT 5 still outputs story files as *.taf, but can also output *.blorb.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=20#p21256
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.1: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-15 07:09:47

...which I think is just begging to be confusing, it's bad enough that some .blb files are games and some are just a collection of multimedia files... couldn't you have ADRIFT output to, say, .tblorb instead?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3028&start=0#p21257
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: treating two objects as one - sometimes
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-08-15 07:14:32

I have a location which contains two path objects, leading in different directions. Fictionally, they are a single object, and I want them to be treated as a single object for most commands. However, for travel commands such as FOLLOW and TAKE, they need to be treated as a separate objects, since they lead to different destinations. So, for instance, X PATH should simply give the description of either path, without disambiguation, but FOLLOW PATH should ask which path the player means.

I tried giving them an isEquivalent method which returns nil if the current action is a travel-type action, and true otherwise. But even though the method appears to be returning the correct result, the game is now treating them as equivalent for all actions. Can anyone tell me what is wrong with my code, or suggest a better alternative approach?

[code]/* Make the two middle parts of the path equivalent. */
class PathMiddle: Fixture
    /* 
     *   treat the middle two paths as equivalent unless trying to travel by 
     *   one of them
     */
    isEquivalent()
    {
        if (gActionIn(Enter, Follow, GoThrough, Take, LookThrough, TravelVia))
        {
            return nil;
        }
        return true;
    }
;

/* 
 *   By default, equivalence checks the name of the items as well as 
 *   isEquivalent. For the middle paths, skip that bit.
 */
modify basicDistinguisher
    canDistinguish(a, b)
    {
        if (a.ofKind(PathMiddle) && b.ofKind(PathMiddle))
        {
            return !(a.isEquivalent && b.isEquivalent);
        }
        
        return inherited(a, b);
    }
;

+ gardenPathN: PathMiddle
    'north n path (to) (the) n/north/path'
    'path to the north'
;


+ gardenPathS: PathMiddle
    'south s path (to) (the) south/s/path'
    'path to the south'
;[/code]
(In my actual code, PathMiddle is a subclass of PathPassage, which handles all the travel-related code, but I've made it a fixture here to make the code easier to run on its own.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3027&start=0#p21258
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Don't hate me for this
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-15 07:16:30

At the risk of having a bunch of angry villagers head in my direction with pitchforks and torches, I would mention that I have used a fake maze -- an area that is designed to make the player's heart sink when he wanders in and gets the impression that he has entered a maze, when in fact there is no such thing.  Specifically, I have a single room named something like "endless desert."  There are only two real exits from the room; one leads back to where the player entered, the other to a place he needs to get to.  Every other direction from the desert leads right back to the same desert room.

I added a couple of other features to enhance the illusion:  First, I block any attempt to drop objects (explaining that the shifting sands would likely cover any dropped objects and they would be lost forever).  This precludes the player from trying to map the "maze" by dropping things, which would immediately expose the illusion.  Second, on every turn in the desert there is a chance that a randomly chosen mirage might appear (so that there is some variability in the description).  To be fair (although some might argue that the whole idea is unfair), when the player first enters the desert I give him a warning that in desert conditions sometimes the light plays tricks with one's eyes.

Ultimately, once you find the direction which takes you out, the whole thing becomes trivial.  However, if you start off in the wrong direction, you could wind up wandering around for a while before you realize what's going on.

(In my own defense, I will state that I did [i]not[/i] do anything like having a built-in mechanism which causes the player to die of thirst if he wanders too long and doesn't have an adequate supply of water; basically, the desert can be very annoying but it's not lethal.)


Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=20#p21259
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.1: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-08-15 07:22:59

[quote="jakobcreutzfeldt"][quote="Emerald"]Thanks for this! It looks really nice.

I'm having a problem, though. When I try to import my IF folder, Grotesque gets stuck importing Risorgimento Represso (it's a .ulx, so it should be okay). The program doesn't freeze or crash; I can cancel the import, no problems. It just doesn't get anywhere. I left it running while I ate dinner and when I got back it was still wrestling with the same file.

This happens using both 0.9 and 0.9.1. Ubuntu 11.04, GTK 2.[/quote]

I can replicate this. There's an underlying bug in the .ulx metadata extraction which I haven't worked out yet. I inherited this project from someone else, who is no longer actively contributing, and his code was not documented at all, so I have to not only figure out how .ulx (and .blb) binary files are formatted but then I also have to figure out his code and how he's trying to read them! So, .ulx and .blb importing might not be fixed for a little while.

In the meantime, for 0.9.2 which should be released today, the program will no longer hang when you try to import such files. It will fail gracefully and allow you to manually enter the story's info (just find its IFID on IFDB, enter it and hit the search button and let IFDB fill in the rest). 

Thanks for letting me know![/quote]
Great! Thanks for all your work on Grotesque!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=20#p21260
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.1: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-15 07:37:50

[quote="Campbell"][quote="jakobcreutzfeldt"]So, for different types of adrift, you can manually come up with different format types and launchers for each one....unless they have different extensions, in which case......[/quote]ADRIFT 5 still outputs story files as *.taf, but can also output *.blorb.[/quote]

Hmm...that complicates matters. Can you point me to an example on IFDB? What I want to know is if it is saved as a .blorb, does IFDB still mark its format as adrift?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=20#p21261
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.1: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-08-15 07:46:38

I don't think IFDB recognises it as the Babel software is out of date.  I've sent an email to IFDB support about this.  You can see an example [url=http://www.adrift.co/cgi/adrift.cgi?page=adventure&advid=1242]here[/url].  As for the blorb extension, I would have been happy with .ablorb, but Zarf wasn't keen on that as there are other systems beginning with a, and .adriftblorb just seems too long an extension.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3019&start=0#p21262
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What are the Z-Machine limits for I7 games?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-15 07:47:24

Thanks! That looks useful.

[code]   (bytes) (code section)
       192 abbreviations table
       272 actions table
      7878 adjectives table
     30738 array space
      1642 class numbers
    349232 code area
     10938 common properties
         0 dictionary
       480 global variables
      2583 grammar table
         8 header extension
      5101 individual properties
      2478 object tree
         2 parsing routines
       126 property defaults
       ??? strings area
[/code]
That's what I was afraid of - too many rules and phrases. But why is the strings area unspecified? And the dictionary empty?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3027&start=0#p21263
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Don't hate me for this
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-15 08:08:12

[quote="matt w"]What kind of approach are you looking for? The simplest way is probably to code in a bunch of rooms by hand -- if you want the classic "twisty little passages" maze I think you'd have to make their printed names identical. This would be annoying to code, but it seems only fair that a maze should annoy the programmer as well. 
[/quote]

If you're using I7, you can have something like: 

A maze room is a kind of room.  The printed name of a maze room is usually "Twisty Passages".  The description of a maze room is usually "Twisty passages, all alike, no doubt put here by an evil sadist."  

But like Matt said, the approach depends a lot on what you want the maze to look like and do.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=20#p21264
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.1: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-15 08:09:41

I suppose in terms of Grotesque it's not really that big a problem, for the end-user - if I can set some games as "GitGlulx" and others as "Glulx", surely I can set some games as "Blorb" and "AdriftBlorb".

But it does bother me that I might have to change file associations - which program am I going to want to open blorb files? If I could at least rename "blorb" to "adriftblorb" myself and know that despite the different extension ADRIFT was going to recognise it as an ADRIFT game... but I tried that in TAF, I tried making .t39 and .t4x extensions, and ADRIFT wouldn't open the files saying they weren't TAF...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3028&start=0#p21265
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: treating two objects as one - sometimes
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-08-15 08:10:03

I wrestle for days with this problem, then finally swallow my pride and ask for help - and, of course, within quarter of an hour of posting I realise what I was doing wrong.

Earlier, I approached the problem by adding a third object to represent the path as a whole, but I couldn't quite get that to work the way I wanted it to. I was using verify to make it more likely than the other paths, and that borked a whole lot of other library stuff that was handled in the verify phase.

It turns out I had the right idea back then, but the wrong implementation. Instead of fiddling around with verify, I only had to increase the vocabLikelihood of the path-as-a-whole object. Behold!

[code]+ gardenPathAmbig: PathPassage, AskConnector
    'path'
    'path'
    
    /* ask about the other two ends of the path */
    travelAction = FollowAction
    travelObjs = [gardenPathS, gardenPathNE]
    
    askDisambig(targetActor, promptTxt, curMatchList, 
                fullMatchList, requiredNum, askingAgain, dist)
    {
        "The path leads in two directions from here. Which way do
        you want to go, north to the cubby house or southwest to
        the front garden? ";
    }
    
    /* 
     *   more likely than the other two paths, if the player doesn't mention 
     *   a specific path
     */
    vocabLikelihood = 50
;[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=30#p21266
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.1: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-15 08:11:24

[quote="Campbell"]I don't think IFDB recognises it as the Babel software is out of date.  I've sent an email to IFDB support about this.  You can see an example [url=http://www.adrift.co/cgi/adrift.cgi?page=adventure&advid=1242]here[/url].  As for the blorb extension, I would have been happy with .ablorb, but Zarf wasn't keen on that as there are other systems beginning with a, and .adriftblorb just seems too long an extension.[/quote]

Ok thanks. I just tested it and the Grotesque software recognizes it as an Adrift file. 

Now, back to the original concern. Grotesque chooses which interpreter to use based off of which format the story is in, not based off its extension. If someone would prefer to use a different interpreter for each version of Adrift, for example, it still is no problem to create three formats, say, adrift3, adrift4, and adrift5, assign whatever extensions they want to them and their respective interpreters. Then, when stories are imported, they would have to manually change the story format to use whichever interpreter they prefer. There's really no way for me to automate this.

If the user imports a file that can't have its Treaty of Babel info read, and it has an extension which is shared by multiple formats, then it will just have to default to "Unknown" for its format.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3027&start=0#p21267
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Don't hate me for this
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-08-15 08:12:27

[quote="gravel"]
If you're using I7, you can have something like: 

A maze room is a kind of room.  The printed name of a maze room is usually "Twisty Passages".  The description of a maze room is usually "Twisty passages, all alike, no doubt put here by an evil sadist."  

But like Matt said, the approach depends a lot on what you want the maze to look like and do.[/quote]

That's what I would suggest too. I used a scheme like this for a small "maze" in a forest.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=30#p21268
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.1: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-15 08:12:46

[quote="Peter Pears"]I suppose in terms of Grotesque it's not really that big a problem, for the end-user - if I can set some games as "GitGlulx" and others as "Glulx", surely I can set some games as "Blorb" and "AdriftBlorb".

But it does bother me that I might have to change file associations - which program am I going to want to open blorb files? If I could at least rename "blorb" to "adriftblorb" myself and know that despite the different extension ADRIFT was going to recognise it as an ADRIFT game... but I tried that in TAF, I tried making .t39 and .t4x extensions, and ADRIFT wouldn't open the files saying they weren't TAF...[/quote]

The way Grotesque is set up, you shouldn't have to change the extensions. You can just work with the formats, which are only stored in Grotesque's library and do not affect your files.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=70#p21269
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: kevinb / DateTime: 2011-08-15 08:14:22

[quote="Robert Rothman"]
This is (I think) at least part of the idea behind internet play; my point is just that the same idea should be equally applicable to non-web play.  The easier you make it for somebody to see what the whole thing is about, the greater the chance that some of them will try it and like it.
[/quote]

I understand your point and, to some extent I agree. The issue, for me at least, is one of costs and benefits. There are certain costs associated with developing something that is installation-free. Some of those costs are in the production of the thing itself, and are moderately easy to assess in terms of time and effort. But some costs are less tangible like, for example, the potential limitation of user interface features. Whether the costs outweigh the benefits, I'm unsure.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=30#p21270
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.1: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-08-15 08:23:38

You could always do what Microsoft do when opening a *.sln file.  It opens with "Microsoft Visual Studio Version Selector" which analyzes the file, then sends to the relevant executable.  In the case of a Blorb it should be easy enough to analyze it to grab the Executable format, then process as appropriate.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=30#p21271
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.1: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-15 08:26:17

To jakobcreutzfeldt: Yeah, I know, I was just thinking aloud about my file associations regardless of Grotesque.

Incidently, as long as I'm here, I had a thought... it would be aces if you could allow ".lnk" files (shortcuts) to be added to the list and executed normally. You see, my new Windows doesn't seem to run any DOS-based IF by itself, so I use Dosbox and D-Fend to create shortcuts I can just double-click to play. If I can't put those shortcuts in Grotesque, I can't really add DOS-games to the library.

By the way, you said:

[quote]this will only work if your emulator allows you to launch files from a command line like: spectrum.exe game.tzx[/quote]

What if the emulator works more like:

"C:\Interactive Fiction\Tools and Interpreters\AppleWin\Applewin.exe",1

That extra "1" in there. I know very little about these things, but some of my programs don't load properly on double-clicking the file unless there's that "1" or maybe "%1" after the filename, as a parametre. Would this be an inconvenience?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=30#p21272
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.1: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-15 08:33:23

[quote="Campbell"]You could always do what Microsoft do when opening a *.sln file.  It opens with "Microsoft Visual Studio Version Selector" which analyzes the file, then sends to the relevant executable.  In the case of a Blorb it should be easy enough to analyze it to grab the Executable format, then process as appropriate.[/quote]

This is more or less what's happening. If you open a .blorb file, it checks the format and opens the appropriate interpreter. Since I've (just now) determined that it's correctly extracting the format to be Adrift or Glulx or whatever from .blorb files (to continue the example), it will always choose the interpreter that you set for those formats.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=30#p21273
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.1: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-08-15 08:40:41

Cool.  [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=30#p21274
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.1: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-15 08:42:00

[quote="Peter Pears"]Incidently, as long as I'm here, I had a thought... it would be aces if you could allow ".lnk" files (shortcuts) to be added to the list and executed normally. You see, my new Windows doesn't seem to run any DOS-based IF by itself, so I use Dosbox and D-Fend to create shortcuts I can just double-click to play. If I can't put those shortcuts in Grotesque, I can't really add DOS-games to the library.[/quote]

I'm not sure how trivial this is; I'll have to look. But in the case of Dosbox, you can just set the interpreter as dosbox (or the full path to the dosbox executable) and then import the .exe games as normal. When Grotesque launches them, it will correctly handle sending the game to Dosbox. This, at least, is working fine on my system. I'd love for you to try it on 0.9.2  to let me know how it works. The shortcuts shouldn't be necessary...

[quote]By the way, you said:

[quote]this will only work if your emulator allows you to launch files from a command line like: spectrum.exe game.tzx[/quote]

What if the emulator works more like:

"C:\Interactive Fiction\Tools and Interpreters\AppleWin\Applewin.exe",1

That extra "1" in there. I know very little about these things, but some of my programs don't load properly on double-clicking the file unless there's that "1" or maybe "%1" after the filename, as a parametre. Would this be an inconvenience?[/quote]

I haven't used AppleWin before. How do you typically use it? Do you start the application and then from within the application, select and open a game to run? If this is the only way to do things, there's no way for Grotesque to launch AppleWin and tell it which game to run. If you're comfortable with a DOS-like interface, you can launch the Windows command prompt (in the start menu, type cmd.exe in the search box), navigate to C:\Interactive Fiction\Tools and Interpreters\AppleWin\  and then type Applewin.exe followed by a path to a game for which you would normally require this emulator, and hit enter to try to launch it. If that works, then yes, you can use it in Grotesque by setting the interpreter as that full path (no 1 or %1 needed). 

After I finish 0.9.2, we can give it a try.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=30#p21275
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.1: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-15 08:48:15

Re applewin: ah, too bad, it just loads up the program. See, that's one of the reasons I would sometimes prefer to let Windows handle that sort of thing... would it be too much of a hassle to make it toggleable, or something? Or do "Unknown" file-types default to allowing the OS to do whatever it thinks best? Because in that case I might just leave these files as "Unknown" and be the happier for it. [emote]:)[/emote]

Re DOSBOX: I can do it like that, I suppose... I just like the D-Fend way of doing things... but if Grotesque were to just assume it as "Unknown" and allow the OS to run it normally, then it would work well enough, I suppose...

I hope I'm not being too much of a pain - you're doing a wonderful job. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=30#p21276
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.1: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-15 09:27:45

[quote="Peter Pears"]Re applewin: ah, too bad, it just loads up the program. See, that's one of the reasons I would sometimes prefer to let Windows handle that sort of thing... would it be too much of a hassle to make it toggleable, or something? Or do "Unknown" file-types default to allowing the OS to do whatever it thinks best? Because in that case I might just leave these files as "Unknown" and be the happier for it. [emote]:)[/emote]

Re DOSBOX: I can do it like that, I suppose... I just like the D-Fend way of doing things... but if Grotesque were to just assume it as "Unknown" and allow the OS to run it normally, then it would work well enough, I suppose...

I hope I'm not being too much of a pain - you're doing a wonderful job. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

You're not being a pain, you're helping me make Grotesque the best program possible! Ok, ok, the best program with some bugs here and there, but good nonetheless. [emote]:P[/emote]

Re: AppleWin, that's a shame. But...When we get 0.9.2 up and running (I think I've finished the GTK3 one, then I have to port to GTK2, then I have to build the Windows version), we'll try it anyway following what I've done for getting Dosbox to work:

So the best practice now would be to first set up your interpreters, and then import your library. So, in addition to the default formats supported by Grotesque, I added a format called "dos" (no quotes). In the interpreter, I set it as "dosbox" (which my system knows means the application; I could have also provided the full path). For extensions, I put "exe,bat", since DOS games are usually either executables or batch files. 

Next, I imported a folder which contains the original Zork. When importing a folder or individual files, Grotesque now knows to also look for *.exe and *.bat files. It found two .exes, in the Zork folder but it couldn't extract ToB info from them so it drops me into edit mode. The first .exe was some other utility and not a game, so I hit 'Cancel', which skips it. For the actual zork.exe, Grotesque saw the .exe extension and, since no other formats use .exe, it figured  that it must be a "dos" format game. If you click the big play button in the edit dialog, it launches Dosbox and Zork starts up right away. I went on IFDB, found the IFID for Zork and entered it in the field, hit the search button and the rest of the metadata was automagically filled. 

So now, all .exe files are automatically recognized as Dosbox games. If it were a blorb and Grotesque can't extract the metadata, though, the format would be unknown, because it can't figure it out just from the extension.

Incidentally, I realized that ever since the original 0.2.1 code that I inherited, TADS3 games were being ignored (it wasn't looking for the .t3 extension)! So that's fixed too!

I think with this version, it will be much more stable and I can focus on smoothing out whatever rough edges and filling whatever holes remain.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2951&start=0#p21277
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parchment-transcript hosting
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-15 09:33:58

I've now uploaded a version that supports Glulx, with the caveats mentioned above. Extra requests to the server should not have any effect on the game's speed on the player's side and unless you have hundreds of players playing at the same time it shouldn't be a problem on the server side either. Download here: <a class="postlink" href="http://code.google.com/p/parchment-transcript/">http://code.google.com/p/parchment-transcript/</a>

If you need help installing or encounter any bugs, let me know!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3027&start=0#p21278
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Don't hate me for this
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-08-15 10:15:41

[quote="Aintelligence"]OK.  I was wondering the other day when surfing the web, how mazes would be achieved during gameplay.  I did a little bit of searching, but I couldn't come up with anything definite which would work.[/quote]

I'm not sure what you mean by "achieved," but if you're talking about actually computing the maze, there are some [url=http://www.astrolog.org/labyrnth/algrithm.htm]algorithms[/url] you may find useful. The actual details of the implementation would vary, of course.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=70#p21279
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-15 10:22:15

The sensible way to handle this is for the interpreter to have a "self-bundle" mode, which can be set up by the author by inserting a game file. That way the player gets the same user interface he would get anyway -- because it's the same interpreter -- but it downloads as a single Mac or Windows application.

I wish desktop interpreters would do this, but it does not seem to have caught on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=30#p21280
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.1: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-15 10:27:19

It seem an ideal way of going about it. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3019&start=0#p21281
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What are the Z-Machine limits for I7 games?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-15 10:27:46

See the comments at the top of the script.

[quote]too many rules and phrases[/quote]

That's not clear from the stats you posted. 

When you say "6k over the limit", are you talking about RAM (the Z-machine's 64k limit) or static memory (512k)? If it's the latter, then text or code must be the problem -- you don't need an analyzer to tell you that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3028&start=0#p21282
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: treating two objects as one - sometimes
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-08-15 11:06:48

Nice - I did not know about the vocabLikelihood property. Very handy!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=50#p21283
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2011-08-15 11:12:05

Well.. I've just checked the IF Comp 2011 web site and it looks very "dead" No donors, no nothing...
Is this normal? I mean, there's only two short months to the dead line.
Anyway.. I'm planning on submitting a game... and yes, I'm a serious writer  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=20#p21284
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-15 12:01:57

[quote="RealNC"]The comic was funny. I'm not sure where the "offensive" part is.[/quote]

I don't understand how you can think both those things. Surely the "humor" of the strip was based entirely on how offensive it was.

I suppose I could try to explain why a comic whose punchline is "HA HA RAPE" is offensive, but if you can't figure it out yourself why should I bother?

(For the record, [url=http://pics.livejournal.com/ezfreemann/pic/0000t0fq/]here's the comic[/url]. I don't think I'm mischaracterizing it.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=50#p21285
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-15 12:10:52

It's more or less normal. The site usually starts looking busy after Labor Day.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=20#p21286
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-15 12:25:38

It's just as offensive as it was in Stiffy Makane... the text is verbatim from the game, and the images are completely non-explicit.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=20#p21287
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-15 12:27:29

[quote="matt w"][quote="RealNC"]The comic was funny. I'm not sure where the "offensive" part is.[/quote]

I don't understand how you can think both those things. Surely the "humor" of the strip was based entirely on how offensive it was.

I suppose I could try to explain why a comic whose punchline is "HA HA RAPE" is offensive, but if you can't figure it out yourself why should I bother?

(For the record, [url=http://pics.livejournal.com/ezfreemann/pic/0000t0fq/]here's the comic[/url]. I don't think I'm mischaracterizing it.)[/quote]

Not just "HA HA RAPE" but "HA HA GAY RAPE".

But ez did at least promise not to do it again, which is a lot more graceful than how many bloggers handle similar issues.  *cough*pennyarcade*cough*

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=20#p21288
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-15 12:54:53

[quote="Peter Pears"]It's just as offensive as it was in Stiffy Makane... the text is verbatim from the game, and the images are completely non-explicit.[/quote]
Actually, the comic came first; Thornton ganked Space Moose from a Canadian student comic by Adam Thrasher.

The relevant difference is that in The Undiscovered Country, the objectionable content cannot be seen without going through this:
[quote="One of the Bruces"]This game contains sexual themes, nudity, violence, and extremely explicit depiction of sexual acts in textual, graphical, and auditory forms.

In short, it is a work of pornography.

First, I must ask you if you are of legal age to view and hear such materials in the location in which you are playing this game, and further that viewing and/or listening to such materials is legal in your location.

Do both these conditions hold true? [b]yes[/b]

In addition to that, this game is offensive and puerile. It is specifically denigratory to women, homosexuals,Star Trek fans, moose, and quite a number of denizens of rec.[arts|games].int-fiction.

In short, if you have sensibilities at all, whether finer or not, this game will almost certainly offend them and you.

Do you think you're going to be offended?  [b]no[/b]

Look, this is your last chance. If you play the game, and it offends you, I don't want you whining about it.

[b]I am aware that this game contains adult content and offensive material. I hereby vow and aver that I am of legal age to possess, view, and listen to this material and that such possession, viewing, and listening is legal in the locality where I am playing the game. I hereby hold the author blameless for any trauma or damages that may result.
[/b]
Do you agree?[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3019&start=0#p21289
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What are the Z-Machine limits for I7 games?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-15 13:06:44

[quote="zarf"]See the comments at the top of the script.

[quote]too many rules and phrases[/quote]

That's not clear from the stats you posted. 

When you say "6k over the limit", are you talking about RAM (the Z-machine's 64k limit) or static memory (512k)? If it's the latter, then text or code must be the problem -- you don't need an analyzer to tell you that.[/quote]
Static memory - I get the "Packaging Up for Release - Ran out of Space" error, with the message in the Progress saying "The story file exceeds version-8 limit (512K) by X bytes."

Sorry for being lazy - I've read the docstring now. The analyzer is measuring static memory usage, right?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3027&start=0#p21290
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Don't hate me for this
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-15 13:08:46

The source code for Hunter, In Darkness includes a maze created using a homebrew pseudorandom number generator.

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/if.html#huntdark">http://eblong.com/zarf/if.html#huntdark</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=70#p21291
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-15 13:11:32

[quote="zarf"]I wish desktop interpreters would do this, but it does not seem to have caught on.[/quote]
Didn't MaxZip do that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=70#p21292
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: WaterMonkey / DateTime: 2011-08-15 13:16:22

[quote="Robert Rothman"]I'm not sure its only a question of attention span.  It may be, a least in part, that somebody who's never tried IF and isn't sure they'd like it may not want to bother taking the time to download and install an interpreter, separately copy the story file to their hard disk, and then run it.  Sure, it's not really much to do, but it looks like multiple steps for somebody who hasn't yet been inspired to develop an interest.  On the other hand, the easier you can make it for them -- or maybe just the easier you can make it for them to [i]perceive[/i] the process -- the more likely they'll give it a shot.  And once they've done that, there's always the chance they'll be hooked.  If they don't try it just because a couple of steps seems like too much trouble, then you never have the chance of getting there.

This is (I think) at least part of the idea behind internet play; my point is just that the same idea should be equally applicable to non-web play.  The easier you make it for somebody to see what the whole thing is about, the greater the chance that some of them will try it and like it.


Robert Rothman[/quote]

I'll have to testify to this: I first got started playing IF through Jayisgames's web-based games (Varicella, Violet, and I think 9:05, in roughly that order). After that, I got interested in Alabaster and downloaded that (for some reason, I feel like the interpreter and game were bundled together, because I don't remember installing a Glulxe interpreter afterwards).

The thing is, the web-based stuff got me interested without having to put anything on my computer. (That's not something hard for me, but I'm very careful of what I install locally). After I'd played the online stuff, I got interested in IF somewhat - but not enough to navigate the multitude of interpreters and formats. I don't think I would have actually tried to install Alabaster if it didn't come in a nice single package.

After Alabaster, I was hooked enough to pay more attention; the IFDB "Play Now!" button was helpful while I assembled a suite of interpreters. Once I had all the interpreters installed, playing a game from IFDB took all of two clicks using Chrome (one to start the download; another to open the file).

That makes me wonder - could we maybe make a "Beginner's Pack" bundle of an interpreter(s) for all major formats (Z-machine, Glulx, TADS, ADRIFT, Hugo, Alan) and beginner-friendly games (Violet, Lost Pig, 9:05, etc.) That could act as a bridge of sorts from the web-based interpreters to the full wealth of games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=20#p21293
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-15 13:29:28

Aaaaah. Ok.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=40#p21294
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.1: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-15 14:12:51

After a national holiday well spent, I present to you version 0.9.2!
<a class="postlink" href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/grotesque/files/grotesque/0.9.2/">https://sourceforge.net/projects/grotes ... que/0.9.2/</a>

[u]0.9.2 Release Notes [/u]
[list]
[*] The program will no longer crash upon failing to extract metadata from a file[/*:m]
[*] Fixed a bug which prevented editing stories in GTK2/Windows [/*:m]
[*] Added support for associating file types (extensions) with story formats[/*:m]
[*] Added the ability to manually specify the story format in the edit dialog[/*:m]
[*] Fixed the bug which prevented TADS3 games from being noticed during import [/*:m]
[*] Made file availability during import depend on the file type extensions set by the user (ie whether Grotesque tries to import a file during recursive import or whether a file is visible during individual import) [/*:m]
[*] Added automated library backup/recovery [/*:m]
[*] Fixed a bug which prevented adding an interpreter [/*:m]
[*] Added a button for finding an interpreter via a file dialog when adding/editing interpreters.[/*:m]
[*] The Windows version should actually be able to save/load the library now. If you used 0.9.1 and 0.9.2 says that your library is corrupted, don't try to recover it. It'll fail. I'm sorry to say that Windows users will have to re-import their library[/*:m][/list:u]

I'm pretty sure that this one is a lot more stable and solid than 0.9.1, but as always, your thoughts, bugs, ideas, etc are all welcome!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=20#p21295
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-08-15 14:15:24

[quote="gravel"]But ez did at least promise not to do it again, which is a lot more graceful than how many bloggers handle similar issues.  *cough*pennyarcade*cough*[/quote]

Indeed! That, coupled with my new knowledge that apparently the comic wasn't as off-topic as I thought, is why I've no interest in continuing to wale on that particular transgression.

[quote="maga"]
Actually, the comic came first; Thornton ganked Space Moose from a Canadian student comic by Adam Thrasher.

The relevant difference is that in The Undiscovered Country, the objectionable content cannot be seen without going through this[/quote]

See, I had no idea it was related to IF [i]at all[/i], since, well, I have some sensibilities and also a short attention span for longer IF, so I'd never played [i]The Undiscovered Country[/i].  From my perspective, having the comic show up in my usually-IF-related feed was [i]just[/i] an off-topic-seeming slap to the face.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=50#p21296
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-08-15 14:25:19

For those who, like me, are unfamiliar with American holidays, that means the first monday of September. (I looked it up.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=40#p21297
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-15 14:29:59

Tutorial: How to add support for a new story format

Out-of-the-box, Grotesque supports zcode, TADS2, TADS3, ADRIFT, and Glulx stories. Of course, there are many more formats out there than just these. Fortunately, it's easy to add support for other formats in Grotesque. In this tutorial, we'll add support for old DOS games using DOSBox to launch them.

1) First, we need to let Grotesque know about the DOS format. Click the Preferences button and switch to the Interpreters tab. Click the Add button. In the dialog that pops up, we have three fields to fill out. The first one is the format, which we will use to identify games. Type in "dos" (without the quotes). In the next field, we enter the extensions of files of this game format. Most DOS games have either .exe or .bat as their extension. Enter "exe,bat" (again without the quotes). But, don't worry. If you put spaces in there, or you include the leading ".", Grotesque will clean it up and put it in the format that it wants. Finally, we need to specfy DOSBox as our interpreter. We can click the Open button to try to find it on our filesystem, but say we know that it exists at "/usr/bin/dosbox", so we can just type it in directly. Click "OK" to finish and close the Preferences dialog

2) Let's say you store all of your DOS games in one folder. We'll import it by clicking the button with the folder on it, finding the folder and clicking OK. Since we told Grotesque that we expect some of our games to have .exe or .bat as their extension, it will now grab those files when it imports. However, it won't be able to extract any bibliographic information from them, so you will have to manually edit them. 

3) The edit window will show the executable's name and will show that it's in the "dos" format. If you're not sure which game it is from the executable name, click the Play button on the edit dialog to launch the game and figure out what it is. Then, it's easiest to go to <a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org">http://ifdb.tads.org</a> and search for that game. Copy the IFID listed in the game information if it has one and paste it into the appropriate field on the edit dialog. Click the Search button and the rest of the fields will be filled in (and, if there is cover art on IFDB, it will be downloaded as well). If there's no IFID, sadly you'll have to fill it in manually. Click OK when you're finished. If there are more games to edit, you will move on to the next one, otherwise you're finished and you can play them now! Since .exe files are common and not all of them are IF games, if Grotesque tries to import some non-IF one, just hit cancel on the edit dialog and it'll skip it.

Please note that this will only work if your interpreter can launch a game from the command line. If you can only open games from within the interpreter's own graphical user interface, Grotesque won't be able to work with it.

If you need help with anything, let me know!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3019&start=0#p21298
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What are the Z-Machine limits for I7 games?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-15 14:30:25

It's really just parsing as much data as I can parse out of the I6 debug output. I had it focus on array usage because that's the biggest component of the 64k limit, and that's what most people hit first. So this script is not as useful to you as I'd hoped.

I could update it to list every I6 function and how large it is (as compiled code). It would be a big list, though, and most of the function names wouldn't be enlightening. (R_800, R_801, R_802...)

Are you using bulky extensions?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=40#p21299
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-15 14:45:36

Looking seriously good, but I'm sorry to say that Adrift is one of those cases where all Grotesque can do is launch the app... but hey, I thought of something: wouldn't it make sense for Grotesque to try to run a game with the interpreter the user defines... but if the user defined no interpreter at all then use the usual OS file association?

By the way, in windows double-clicking on a game still doesn't launch it.

And hey... great work. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=40#p21300
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-15 14:53:31

[quote="Peter Pears"]Looking seriously good, but I'm sorry to say that Adrift is one of those cases where all Grotesque can do is launch the app... but hey, I thought of something: wouldn't it make sense for Grotesque to try to run a game with the interpreter the user defines... but if the user defined no interpreter at all then use the usual OS file association?

By the way, in windows double-clicking on a game still doesn't launch it.

And hey... great work. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Damnation, I forgot to test the double-clicking.

Ok, I'm also having errors running adrift games. I'll look into that.

As for using the OS defaults, I'm afraid that's non-trivial to implement. [emote]:([/emote] If I do it, that'll come at a much later time.

These problems aside, I hope that you can at least use it for most cases!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=20#p21301
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2011-08-15 14:54:18

[quote]i purposefully dont use caps or apostrophes. its not cuz im an idiot.

if i was "clearly annoying" ppl or whatever was said, it would be nice if ppl started up a dialog with me about it.

in the end, ive stopped caring, it just proves to me that conformity is what ppl want in their little online communities.

all i was told was that planet IF was for blogs about IF. thats what my blog was about. sorry if it wasnt "the same" as everyone elses.

excuse me for being different.
[/quote]

[quote]And who cares about the capitals and apostrophes? You can't read his content through his style of writing? He specifically wrote like that to stand out in the blog feed.[/quote]


You two are not the new punk rock. Here's the dialog you seem to want: writing like you're the concussed AI of a meandering garbage skiff makes you and your buddy unreadable, not people pushing the envelope. I'm all for telling a community filled with stuffed shirts how awful they are, but white-knighting the lack of capitalization isn't the way to go about it, f. u. cummings. 

I feel guilty if I tag more than one post a week for Planet-IF. I have two forums that sometimes have threads on text games, but I don't get them listed on Planet IF, because that's not what it is for. Go make a forum and the people who like your stuff will be there. You can even use back-end regex to ensure that nobody uses punctuation, capital letters and paragraph breaks. Remember that the littlun's name is Percival when the adults come to rescue all of you from the island. 

Furthermore, since we're all thinking it anyway, here's general advice to anyone in earshot: nobody wants to see posts on Planet IF that aren't about IF, that go into spasms of inexplicable rage or posts that otherwise fail to advance the hobby or make it more fun. It is very easy to set things up so that Planet IF only shows stuff you specifically tag. It being curated by radix is a good thing, because it stops it from becoming as awful as r*if became at the end.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=40#p21302
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-15 14:57:01

Scratch that. I can run *.taf ADRIFT games with no problem. If I try to run a *.blorb one, it fails, but it's not Grotesque that's failing, it's Gargoyle.

Can you send me a link to an ADRIFT game that's failing for you?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=40#p21303
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-15 15:03:09

Oh, I just tested with Adrift 5 (which I haven't used and don't plan on using until it allows me to customize fonts and colours and until it plays 3.90 games), and with Adrift 5 it does work.

Pity to hear the OS default thing is not trivial... it would have allowed for every instance where for some reason or other something didn't quite go as well as planned.

EDIT - Hey, I found a way to use D-Fend with Grotesque. [emote];)[/emote] Things look a log uglier in D-Fend, but I can now load it from Grotesque, so it's perfectly ok.

BTW, I thought up two suggestions for the future.

1 - the OS thing. It's always good to have, even if it's a lowlowlow priority. And that's it, I won't ever pester you with it again. [emote]:)[/emote]

2 - an option to open the folder of the game. I know it sounds unnecessary, but many games have feelies, manuals, graphics, critical for play. If we could open the folder where the game is located, if we have all our feelies there, we can easily access them.

And that's it from me. I'm now off to happily export my IF library to a front-end I've been dreaming of for years.

 [emote]:D[/emote]

EDIT 2 - The only problem I foresee is when I want to play Windows games. Naturally, there's no emulator for those... I mean, I CAN create an "interpreter" entry for every Windows-only game... like an interpreter called "Adventures in Egypt", linking to the game, then create the entry for "Adventures in Egypt" and put - you guessed it - "Adventures in Egypt" as the format. THAT works. It's ugly and hacky but it works. [emote];)[/emote] I might well do that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=20#p21304
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-08-15 15:15:29

[quote="Ice Cream Jonsey"]it stops it from becoming as awful as r*if became at the end.[/quote]
Is r*if gone now? (I haven't used Usenet for quite a while now.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=40#p21305
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-15 15:17:59

[quote="Peter Pears"]Oh, I just tested with Adrift 5 (which I haven't used and don't plan on using until it allows me to customize fonts and colours and until it plays 3.90 games), and with Adrift 5 it does work.[/quote]

*phew* 

[quote]EDIT - Hey, I found a way to use D-Fend with Grotesque. [emote];)[/emote] Things look a log uglier in D-Fend, but I can now load it from Grotesque, so it's perfectly ok.[/quote]

Cool! Technically, it's so flexible now that you can use it with just about anything...got a bunch of old non-IF games? You can now organize them with Grotesque (not that I can support such deviant behavior, of course)

[quote]1 - the OS thing. It's always good to have, even if it's a lowlowlow priority. And that's it, I won't ever pester you with it again. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Don't worry, I'll keep it in mind. If someone else has already written a library in Python which implements similar behavior, I can just use that rather than re-inventing the wheel. So, I'll look into it!

[quote]2 - an option to open the folder of the game. I know it sounds unnecessary, but many games have feelies, manuals, graphics, critical for play. If we could open the folder where the game is located, if we have all our feelies there, we can easily access them.[/quote]

Ah good idea! I've thought of that too. I've been trying to think of the best way to do it though. Right now I like how Grotesque has a fairly minimal interface with few buttons and no menus. I've planned to include in each game's description some hyperlinks to the game's presence on the web (IFDB site, etc). I think I can also include a Open Game Folder hyperlink that doesn't link to the web but opens a folder instead. I need to experiment though. This will be in by 1.0 for sure!

[quote]And that's it from me. I'm now off to happily export my IF library to a front-end I've been dreaming of for years.

 [emote]:D[/emote][/quote]

Glad to hear that you like it! As you use it more if you think of other ideas that could improve it, just let me know.
I hope your library isn't so big it's going to launch a denial-of-service attack on the IFDB site [emote]:D[/emote]
(seriously...we should all probably do it a bit at a time, just out of politeness [emote]:P[/emote])

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=40#p21306
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-08-15 15:23:44

[quote="Peter Pears"]Pity to hear the OS default thing is not trivial...[/quote]
I don't know Python, but if you can call the Windows API from it (is that possible?), it is trivial to do in Windows: Simply call ShellExecute on the filename. Sorry if that's completely irrelevant (I mainly use C, C++ or ObjectC).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=50#p21307
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-15 15:25:30

There are still a few of us who make a point of wearing red on May Day, but Trumgottist is correct that in the standard US calendar Labor Day is the first Monday in September.  In the past couple of decades, it has lost much of its significance as a day of honoring those who work for a living, and now survives more as a symbol of the unofficial end of the summer season.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3029&start=0#p21308
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: how to implement a portable supporter?
User: Jeff / DateTime: 2011-08-15 15:28:45

What I am trying to understand is a method for getting around the "can't put something on something being carried rule" for at least a certain kind or kinds of thing.  Here is an 'oversimplified' example of the problem I'd like to solve: [code]"experimenting with a carried supporter" by Jeff

section - set up 

A table is a thing.  A table is a supporter.
A cheque is a thing.  
A platter is a thing.  A platter is a portable supporter.  

section - the world

Cafe is a room. In Cafe is a table. On table is a cheque and a platter.
On the platter are two mints.

A bow tie is worn by the player.

Test me with "get platter/put cheque on platter/l/i";[/code]When this example is run, it throws the default 'You lack the dexterity.' message.  If you can understand what I'm trying to accomplish, would you share your wisdom with this eager student on how to make a portable supporter work?  Thanks in advance.

[i]Incidentally, I have read this topic: "The can't put onto something being carried rule"[url]http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2107&hilit=portable+supporter[/url] and I would prefer, if possible, to avoid duplicating much of the discussion going on there.  [emote]:geek:[/emote]  Thanks for cooperating with me on that.[/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=40#p21309
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-15 15:37:04

Turns out that the functionality is [url=http://docs.python.org/library/os.html#os.startfile]built-in[/url] for Windows. There's a 3rd party [url=http://pypi.python.org/pypi/desktop]library[/url] that implements it for Gnome & KDE, and its license allows me to bundle it with Grotesque!

Ok, so how about this:
In the settings dialog, on the Interpreters tab, at the top there's a checkbox that says something like "Use Operating System Defaults". If that's checked, the interpreters list and the add/edit/remove buttons are all inactive (greyed out). Launching any game will use this method to let the OS figure it out. It's up to the user to make sure the OS has programs associated with all the filetypes. If the checkbox is unmarked, the user can specify interpreters as he/she wishes.

Alternative, less obvious method:
The user simply leaves the interpreter field blank for any story format that he/she wants the OS to handle. This way, a mixed strategy can be used, with some formats having their interpreters specified and others under OS control.

Which do you prefer?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=40#p21310
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-15 15:40:07

Honestly? Both. [emote]:)[/emote] Have the checkbox and, if the checkbox is unchecked and the interpreter field is empty, launch the OS default.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=50#p21311
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-15 15:44:52

Got it! I think I can get that in by 1.0 then.

Ok, tomorrow I'm going back to reality (work) after two weeks of hanging out at home so development will slow a little bit comparatively. It'll give everyone time to use the program a bit and find some rough edges.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=50#p21312
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-08-15 15:45:37

The second method won't be unobvious if you add a small note next to the interpreter field, saying that it can be left blank to try and open the file directly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=50#p21313
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-08-15 16:00:38

Looking good!  [emote];)[/emote] 

[quote="Peter Pears"]Oh, I just tested with Adrift 5 (which I haven't used and don't plan on using until it allows me to customize fonts and colours and until it plays 3.90 games)[/quote]5.0.20 already allows customised fonts and colours, I'll get working on the 3.90 support...  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=50#p21314
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-15 16:03:24

An IF frontend...

Ability to load with my OS defaults...

ADRIFT 5 supporting customization and 3.90...

...is it christmas? Am I dreaming?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3029&start=0#p21315
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: how to implement a portable supporter?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-15 16:13:24

You can unlist any (named) rule that you want to:
[code]The can’t put onto something being carried rule is not listed in the check putting it on rulebook.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=30#p21316
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: vivdunstan / DateTime: 2011-08-15 16:30:04

[quote="Trumgottist"]Is r*if gone now? (I haven't used Usenet for quite a while now.)[/quote]

No it's still there (both arts and games groups). Not many posts, and a lot of spam posts. But still there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3029&start=0#p21317
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: how to implement a portable supporter?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-15 16:33:02

And if you want a certain check rule not to apply only under certain circumstances, you can replace it with a new rule that still refers to the original one except under those circumstances:

[code]The table is a supporter.
The cheque is a thing.  
A tray is a kind of supporter. A tray is always portable.
The platter is a tray. 

Cafe is a room. In Cafe is a table. On table is a cheque and a platter.
On the platter are two mints.


This is the new can’t put onto something being carried rule:
	if the second noun is a tray, continue the action;
	otherwise abide by the can’t put onto something being carried rule.

The new can’t put onto something being carried rule is listed instead of the can’t put onto something being carried rule in the check putting it on rulebook.


Test me with "get platter / get cheque / put cheque on platter / l / i";[/code]

(Unlisting or replacing a rule doesn't make it disappear; it only moves it outside the existing flowchart.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=50#p21318
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-08-15 16:41:52

[quote]I remember someone saying a long time ago that... the culture within ADRIFTers rewards for just finishing a game[/quote]
I don't wish to pull this thread too far off-topic (perhaps a new thread might be called for?), but I do recall expressing a similar, if not actually identical, sentiment to Juhana at PAX East-- perhaps this means I am the mysterious "someone!"  Part of the same problem, too, has to do with what Mr. Pears has pointed out: by many accounts, the majority of 'DRIFTers seem to classify themselves as authors *rather* than players, a position that has never made sense to me.  This has meant games released on the ADRIFT site can expect to be played by at most about 4 people, plus or minus 3, usually without any feedback.  Some of the more prodigious ADRIFT comps sometimes do better (e.g., Ectocomp or OddComp).  Perhaps this is part of why I still feel like I'm in IF Outreach Mode.

As for what the ADRIFT community can do to change that-- I don't know, but I can say what I've done to try changing it.  By getting on Planet IF and posting more frequently on IFDB, I hope to allow ADRIFT to reach a wider audience than it might otherwise confined to its own site.  By reviewing games on the ADRIFT site, I hope to encourage others to play and review (it's curious to note that some reviews do get written on the ADRIFT Forum, where they tend to remain invisible to the IF Community at large).  I hope to post more ADRIFT reviews on IFDB, as well, to help cull the good from the bad, but my opinions can only do so much.  I admit I've frequented intfiction.org less than I probably should... personally, I think my involvement with the community would be made a lot easier if the ADRIFT Forum were to merge with it.  The more voices, the better.  Social connections are overall the most important part of the equation, and that's the one thing that ADRIFT cuts itself off from when it operates solely as a gated community.

Probably one of the biggest obstacles to this sort of outreach (once games do get outside of the ADRIFT bubble) is, yes, that perception that ADRIFT in general isn't worth a player's time.  I recall a Russian IFComp reviewer expressing this sentiment in 2009 when he referred to ADRIFT as something like "squalor" and "a pancake" (if Google Translate is to be believed).  While it is certainly true that some games come out that *are* filthy pancakes, it's an obvious overgeneralization to apply it to the whole development environment, one that prevents people from trying out some experiences they might actually enjoy.  In particular, I admit I felt hurt when one prominent reviewer seemed not to touch my 2009 IFComp entries (or at least review them) because of their platform.  It was really too bad because I was very much looking forward to that person's erudite opinions.  Water under the bridge, now, I suppose.

At any rate, the ADRIFT canon is actually quite sizeable; I think players are bound to find something in there that they might enjoy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=30#p21319
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-15 16:41:55

[quote="matt w"][quote="RealNC"]The comic was funny. I'm not sure where the "offensive" part is.[/quote]
I don't understand how you can think both those things. Surely the "humor" of the strip was based entirely on how offensive it was.

I suppose I could try to explain why a comic whose punchline is "HA HA RAPE" is offensive, but if you can't figure it out yourself why should I bother?[/quote]
Offensive to whom? I was never raped in my life, nor anyone I know, so it's not possible this can offend me in any way. Who is supposed to be offended here exactly? Rape victims? Homosexuals? If that's the case, then I suppose jokes involving the word "walk" are offensive to everyone who's in a wheelchair. The joke has the same comic value of a lolcat picture depicting a bird being stalked by a cat and with the phrase "rape is imminent" written on top. It is funny, and it's not offensive. Unless you're a rape victim and that word brings up bad memories or whatever. But in the end, that's a problem [i]you[/i] have to deal with, not me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=50#p21320
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-15 16:53:00

[i]Pancakes?[/i]  I don't get it.  Is this a Russian idiom that just doesn't work in literal translation (perhaps suggesting that a (physical) book is so devoid of intellectual content that you might as well derive some value out of it by eating it, presumably after first adding some sour cream and caviar)?


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=30#p21321
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-08-15 17:05:44

[quote="RealNC"]The joke has the same comic value of a lolcat picture depicting a bird being stalked by a cat and with the phrase "rape is imminent" written on top.[/quote]
This, I can agree with.

[quote="RealNC"] It is funny, and it's not offensive.[/quote]
But not here. I don't see what's funny - it's probably some cultural difference. (Just as I have trouble understanding the world that prompted [url=http://www.heybabygame.com/info.php]this game[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=30#p21322
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-15 17:19:40

[quote="RealNC"]
Offensive to whom? I was never raped in my life, nor anyone I know, so it's not possible this can offend me in any way.[/quote]
Don't have the time or energy to educate you here, and it's pretty plain that you're not going to be receptive to it, so I'll just state that you're wrong, it's unacceptable, and if you don't understand why then it's very much your problem.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=50#p21323
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-08-15 17:54:09

bowsmand, your Comp09 games were the first ADRIFT games I'd played, and I think they were worthy ambassadors.  But, yeah, I don't tend to play games unless they show up with recommendations on Planet IF or this forum (or highly-starred on IFDB), and not a lot of ADRIFT games are doing that.  (Though if you started a thread in Game Discussion with some ADRIFT favorites, that would catch my attention, at least, and probably others'...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=60#p21324
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-08-15 18:02:20

I don't know about other people, but personally, I've tended not to review new ADRIFT games for the last few years because doing so was a frustrating experience for everyone involved. (Of course, this disclaimer is kind of ironically timed since I recently posted a review of an ADRIFT game to IFDB. But it's a revision of a review I wrote long ago, which I added only because I had fairly warm opinions of the piece and I noticed that game was entirely unreviewed on IFDB.) 

Anyway, two main reasons here:

For one, the runners available for the Mac have at times been different from the official ADRIFT runner, which can mean that I have a buggy experience without even knowing that it wasn't the author's fault. 

For another, ADRIFT authors were angry when I complained about parsing issues. The ones I heard from thought I should be addressing only the things that the author brought to the game, not the demerits of the system. Unfortunately, even with works that showed a lot of polish, I often found that the parser actively misled me about how to play, and significantly damaged my enjoyment of the experience. It didn't seem feasible to leave that information out of a review.

So eventually I concluded that I'm not equipped to review ADRIFT games in the way that the ADRIFT community thinks is helpful or fair; and that by using ADRIFT, the author might well be [i]actively signaling[/i] that he or she had different standards and intentions for the work than the ones I was looking for.

I'm hoping the advent of ADRIFT 5 will address some of the technical issues here. But the culture issue you mention is also important and also cuts both ways; the internal culture of the ADRIFT forum, and the fact that ADRIFT authors said they found my reviews unfair, have affected my behavior. They may have affected other people's in the same way. I don't [i]want[/i] to be that jerk that comes along and says "you people who were just having fun over here? I have graded your fun on my special scale and determined that you suck." It's unkind, for one thing, and for another thing I have better things to do with my time. I don't write detailed critical reviews of Speed-IF either, as a rule, or projects by high school students who never saw an IF game before their teacher made them write one. It's not that I think those games shouldn't exist or I look down on the authors of them or I don't respect their value to the community; it's just that they belong to categories and social situations that suggest that they should be held to different standards. And my observation has been that the ADRIFT authors have often made a similar claim on behalf of their own output.

Now, if we had better ways for authors to signal at what level they wanted their feedback, then some of these guessing games might be unnecessary. Though human nature is such that people are not always great at estimating the level of their own work and so someone will almost certainly be hurt anyway. I dunno. It's complicated, is what.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=30#p21325
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-15 18:19:53

Unacceptable? Millions of people are disagreeing with you, seeing for example how Jim Jeffries acts are getting such good ratings. To quote one of his jokes: "My girlfriend comes home and I'm raping her mother [...] because I'm a mysterious guy." And the whole joke[1] (which is too long to quote entirely here) was extremely funny.

So no, it's not generally "unacceptable". It's appreciated by a hell of a lot of people. You just happen to belong to a group of people that don't like it.


[1] <a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-RJeqyh-vI">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-RJeqyh-vI</a> (4:14)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=30#p21326
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-15 18:36:09

[quote="tove"]See, I had no idea it was related to IF [i]at all[/i], since, well, I have some sensibilities and also a short attention span for longer IF, so I'd never played [i]The Undiscovered Country[/i].[/quote]

Ditto. I don't have much time for stuff like Space Moose, whose shtick seems to be "Ha ha look how offensive I can be and if you're offended you're a prude," and it looks like Stiffy Makane belongs in the same barrel, which is a pity. But, disclaimer notwithstanding, ezfreeman probably doesn't deserve any flack for it if Thornton doesn't.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=50#p21327
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-15 18:44:59

Grotesque is able to handle everything I throw at it and more. It's a wonder. [emote]:)[/emote] Just one tiny tiny little thing... every time I open it it defaults to "show the games in the order I've added them". I'd much rather have it default to the last thing I set it to, which is usually alphabetically.

Incidently, I do hope that when the new version comes out I won't lose any of my settings.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=70#p21328
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-08-15 18:56:53

I had a thought to contribute about attention span, but got distracted and can't remember what I was going to say. No matter, it couldn't have been that important. Ooooh! Shiny!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=60#p21329
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-08-15 19:06:07

[quote="emshort"]Now, if we had better ways for authors to signal at what level they wanted their feedback, then some of these guessing games might be unnecessary. Though human nature is such that people are not always great at estimating the level of their own work and so someone will almost certainly be hurt anyway. I dunno. It's complicated, is what.[/quote]

At times, the truth hurts, emshort. As far as any author goes, I think any input is helpful. As a game author, although some input might be stinging, I would never dissuade a reviewer from providing input. Any author who does so is doing him/herself a disservice.

As far as the actual environment goes, it's true that on a parser level there's not a lot the author can do in ADRIFT. I think, perhaps, that because ADRIFT authors can generate a game relatively quickly and easily, some of their games don't receive rigorous testing that you might see in some games.

Other times authors will stick to say, a default method (like a certain conversation method provided in say, ADRIFT) and not consider trying another method. 

Besides, em, by not reviewing ADRIFT games for the pure reason they are written in that environment you are excluding the possibility of playing a game that might contain cheese.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=60#p21330
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-08-15 19:18:56

[quote="Campbell"] Perhaps the mods here could add links to the other main forums (ADRIFT, Quest etc) in the 'Other Development Systems' forum header?[/quote]

Good luck getting people to look at it. I posted a Quest question in there almost a week ago and it still hasn't been replied to. I ended up duplicating it to the Quest 5 forum, but still.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=30#p21331
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-08-15 19:48:25

[quote="Ice Cream Jonsey"]Furthermore, since we're all thinking it anyway, here's general advice to anyone in earshot: nobody wants to see posts on Planet IF that aren't about IF, that go into spasms of inexplicable rage or posts that otherwise fail to advance the hobby or make it more fun. It is very easy to set things up so that Planet IF only shows stuff you specifically tag. It being curated by radix is a good thing, because it stops it from becoming as awful as r*if became at the end.[/quote]

And for those who think that Planet IF still shows too much that isn't IF, there is also the [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1417]IF Dwarf Planet[/url]. Actually, I'd be interested in getting some help curating it, so if anyone is interested, please let me know.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=30#p21335
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-15 20:46:16

[rant][quote="RealNC"]Offensive to whom? I was never raped in my life, nor anyone I know, so it's not possible this can offend me in any way.[/quote]
a) Somehow I manage to care about people who have had horrible things happen to them, even if they haven't actually happened to me.  Sometimes I do this before breakfast.  

b) Even if you can only scrape up empathy for rape victims you know personally, I guarantee that you know people who have been raped (and almost as certainly people who have raped).  

I won't derail further, but I beg you to go learn about this stuff.  It's 2011, and you have the internet.[/rant]

[quote="Dannii"]
And for those who think that Planet IF still shows too much that isn't IF, there is also the [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1417]IF Dwarf Planet[/url]. Actually, I'd be interested in getting some help curating it, so if anyone is interested, please let me know.[/quote]

I guess I'm a little fuzzy on what's "real IF posting".  Ez's posts, on the whole, seem to be, for lack of a better word, chatty, but that's style: the content generally seems to be: WIP, games played recently, a comic related to IF, an apology for a comic related to IF, mentions of IF elsewhere, reviews of IF and other games, fiction related to the WIP, links to forum posts here that he thought were entertaining, the occasional shout-out to other IF bloggers, joke IF transcripts, an I7 extension recommendation . . .

I mean, I've only skimmed, but the blog theme does seem to be pretty IF-intensive.  Maybe "not enough IF" is being used as code for something and I'm too dense to get it; in which case, someone PM me, please.  (Are the other posters using Planet IF to pass spy messages?  Coordinate runs across the US/Canadian border for Prozac?  Is there money in it?  Inquiring, impoverished minds want to know.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=30#p21336
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-08-15 21:33:35

[quote="RealNC"]Unacceptable? Millions of people are disagreeing with you, seeing for example how Jim Jeffries acts are getting such good ratings. To quote one of his jokes: "My girlfriend comes home and I'm raping her mother [...] because I'm a mysterious guy." And the whole joke[1] (which is too long to quote entirely here) was extremely funny.[/quote]This is disingenuous, of course. The whole point -- and I use the word loosely here -- of that comic was that rape [i]was[/i] the joke, while stand-up uses it as a [i]setup[/i]. Of course, when simply saying the word causes tittering among the audience, that may be a moot point. 

It's about privilege, of course. Rape is, in fact, only a joke in itself to people who don't need to fear it and/or have not experienced it. They can afford to be smarmy about it because it's not as it affects or bothers them. In that, it's not substantially different from, say, a couple of men at a bar in the 1960's joking about "stringin' up the niggers", OMG so edgy and [i]transgressive[/i] and say, why isn't that dour black-skinned fellow over there taking the joke? He's standing there [i]quietly judging them[/i]. For shame. I mean, everybody [i]else[/i] is laughing... well, everybody of [i]consequence[/i]. Why make a big deal out of it etc etc ad nauseam. 

[quote]So no, it's not generally "unacceptable". It's appreciated by a hell of a lot of people. You just happen to belong to a group of people that don't like it.[/quote]
Well, it's that, or it could be he possesses empathy[1]. Whether or not an act is acceptable is not determined by popularity. I hear genocide has been pretty popular throughout history, too, and yet survivors don't seem so sanguine about the matter.

Maybe they just can't take the joke either.


[1] [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy[/url]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3016&start=0#p21337
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "reversed wearing" crashes the game
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-15 21:37:57

No one's told me I've been doing something wrong, and I can't see why this should be a problem for "wearing" but not for "enclosure" or "carrying" or a bunch of other things, so I've [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=719]filed a bug report[/url]. 

The "understand" statement alone will produce the bug; you don't need Bob or the brown coat. Any two-word command (with a valid first word) will cause the hang; "north" gets the appropriate error message but "go north" hangs (and "go fdfd" does too).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=30#p21338
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-16 00:38:29

Comedy can never be 100% qualified, and every single joke in the world could offend somehow in some context, some subjects infinitely more easily to broad sections of people than others (like this comic.) That is why I don't accept the stance that a piece of comedy/joke can ever be deemed inherently unnacceptable, as has happened in this topic. No matter what subject, you will find a venue where it's been turned into comedy. Genocide's been a big part of Mel Brooks repartee. I forget who said 'comedy equals tragedy plus time', but I know he said 'Comedy is when I cut my finger. Tragedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.' *** Edit - Doh, he said TRAGEDY is when I cut my finger, COMEDY is when you fall into an open sewer and die! ***

I don't like people using 'rape' casually or in conversation (EG in sport (they're raping us)), but I still can't say 'this comic is unnacceptable, end of story, you know why.' Only that it's likely to offend a zillion people for touching the subject it does, and I do know why.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=50#p21339
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-16 03:00:18

[quote="Peter Pears"]Grotesque is able to handle everything I throw at it and more. It's a wonder. [emote]:)[/emote] Just one tiny tiny little thing... every time I open it it defaults to "show the games in the order I've added them". I'd much rather have it default to the last thing I set it to, which is usually alphabetically.

Incidently, I do hope that when the new version comes out I won't lose any of my settings.[/quote]

Glad to hear it's working, especially the Windows one!
I've been wanting to implement saving the sort order for a while now, as well as saving the order of the columns themselves (you can rearrange them). I haven't found a very good way to implement it (until just now an idea hit me, at least for the sorting...column order remains elusive). I'll keep trying...

Don't worry, the settings file is not going to change at all, and if I do change things  so drastically, I'll be sure to include functionality to migrate your settings.


I'm thinking about an "Advanced Search" function. Would that be useful? Right now you can only filter/sort/search by one column at a time. Would you want to be able to, say, search for all Zorkian games from 1992 which have coverart?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=40#p21340
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-16 03:07:23

[quote="Eleas"]Well, it's that, or it could be he possesses empathy. Whether or not an act is acceptable is not determined by popularity. I hear genocide has been pretty popular throughout history, too, and yet survivors don't seem so sanguine about the matter.

Maybe they just can't take the joke either.[/quote]
In that argument, you're taking the actual act of a crime and equalize it with the act of talking about the crime, with no actual intent or performing it. You just can't be serious here. And why did you use genocide to begin with? Rape has also been "popular" throughout history. I guess you didn't because then the basic flaw of your argument would have shown immediately.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=40#p21341
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-16 03:17:35

[quote="gravel"][quote="RealNC"]Offensive to whom? I was never raped in my life, nor anyone I know, so it's not possible this can offend me in any way.[/quote]
a) Somehow I manage to care about people who have had horrible things happen to them, even if they haven't actually happened to me.[/quote]
Same here. Why do you assume that I'm different? Why do you assume that I don't care about rape victims just because the word "rape" in a joke doesn't offend me?

[quote]b) Even if you can only scrape up empathy for rape victims you know personally[/quote]
I can empathize for everyone. However, being actually offended on behalf of complete strangers, that is not one of my skills. But empathy, yes. That pretty much works with everyone.

[quote]I guarantee that you know people who have been raped (and almost as certainly people who have raped).[/quote]
You're not in any position to make such guarantees.

[quote]I won't derail further, but I beg you to go learn about this stuff.  It's 2011, and you have the internet.[/quote]
"This stuff" meaning what? Why a few people want to spoil the fun of others because they lack a sense of humor or because they project their personal experiences to the world and assume everyone else must be thinking the same was as they do?

Or do you mean rape? In that case, have you ever heard the phrase "dude, it was just a joke."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=50#p21342
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-16 03:44:40

It would be an interesting search, and I'm all for as much functionality as possible, but I think the "basic" search is already great. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=60#p21343
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-08-16 04:14:45

[quote="duodave"]As far as any author goes, I think any input is helpful.[/quote]

There are at least three ways input can be unhelpful to the author, and probably more.

1: the author is not interested in critical feedback at all. She made something she thought was fun and would be happy to hear from others who also thought it was fun, but nitpicking is about as welcome as having a dinner guest subsequently review the cooking on his blog.

2: the input is over the author's head. It may be talking about issues well beyond the author's current skill level, or it may not make sense at all. Someone who is still struggling with basic mechanics is less likely to understand or be able to act on feedback about style and theme.

3: the input is addressing a problem that, from the author's point of view, is not a problem, and may even be a selling point. Fixing the supposed problem would require a change in authorial vision.

The author in case (1) is probably never going to change skill levels and standards; the author in case (2) might grow into it; the author in (3) might be quite skilled, even visionary, but just have a different concept than the player is comfortable with.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=50#p21344
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-16 05:46:23

I'm trying to package this for Gentoo Linux. Now I've already did so, but when running it, I get:

[code]Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/grotesque", line 2, in <module>
    from grotesque import main
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/grotesque/main.py", line 34, in <module>
    from library import Library
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/grotesque/library.py", line 32, in <module>
    from filterstore import FilterStore
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/grotesque/filterstore.py", line 23, in <module>
    from collections import Counter
ImportError: cannot import name Counter[/code]

This is with Python 2.6.7 and PyGTK 2.24.0.

In case it matters, here's the full build output:

[spoiler][code]>>> Emerging (1 of 1) games-util/grotesque-0.9.2 from Local
 * grotesque-0.9.2-gtk2.tar.gz RMD160 SHA1 SHA256 size ;-) ...                                                                           [ ok ]
>>> Unpacking source...
>>> Unpacking grotesque-0.9.2-gtk2.tar.gz to /var/tmp/portage/games-util/grotesque-0.9.2/work
>>> Source unpacked in /var/tmp/portage/games-util/grotesque-0.9.2/work
>>> Preparing source in /var/tmp/portage/games-util/grotesque-0.9.2/work/grotesque-0.9.2 ...
>>> Source prepared.
>>> Configuring source in /var/tmp/portage/games-util/grotesque-0.9.2/work/grotesque-0.9.2 ...
>>> Source configured.
>>> Compiling source in /var/tmp/portage/games-util/grotesque-0.9.2/work/grotesque-0.9.2 ...
python2.6 setup.py build
running build
running build_py
creating build
creating build/lib
creating build/lib/grotesque
copying src/grotesque/library.py -> build/lib/grotesque
copying src/grotesque/settings.py -> build/lib/grotesque
copying src/grotesque/storyremovethread.py -> build/lib/grotesque
copying src/grotesque/main.py -> build/lib/grotesque
copying src/grotesque/infopaned.py -> build/lib/grotesque
copying src/grotesque/settingsdialog.py -> build/lib/grotesque
copying src/grotesque/settingsassistant.py -> build/lib/grotesque
copying src/grotesque/libraryview.py -> build/lib/grotesque
copying src/grotesque/filterstore.py -> build/lib/grotesque
copying src/grotesque/__init__.py -> build/lib/grotesque
copying src/grotesque/librarypaned.py -> build/lib/grotesque
copying src/grotesque/libraryfilterview.py -> build/lib/grotesque
copying src/grotesque/infoview.py -> build/lib/grotesque
copying src/grotesque/progressdialog.py -> build/lib/grotesque
copying src/grotesque/libraryloadthread.py -> build/lib/grotesque
copying src/grotesque/updatexmllibrary.py -> build/lib/grotesque
copying src/grotesque/storyimportthread.py -> build/lib/grotesque
creating build/lib/treatyofbabel
copying src/treatyofbabel/tads.py -> build/lib/treatyofbabel
copying src/treatyofbabel/babel.py -> build/lib/treatyofbabel
copying src/treatyofbabel/blorb.py -> build/lib/treatyofbabel
copying src/treatyofbabel/ifformaterror.py -> build/lib/treatyofbabel
copying src/treatyofbabel/zcode.py -> build/lib/treatyofbabel
copying src/treatyofbabel/ifdb.py -> build/lib/treatyofbabel
copying src/treatyofbabel/__init__.py -> build/lib/treatyofbabel
copying src/treatyofbabel/ifiction.py -> build/lib/treatyofbabel
copying src/treatyofbabel/storydata.py -> build/lib/treatyofbabel
copying src/treatyofbabel/glulx.py -> build/lib/treatyofbabel
copying src/treatyofbabel/adrift.py -> build/lib/treatyofbabel
creating build/lib/thirdparty
copying src/thirdparty/which.py -> build/lib/thirdparty
copying src/thirdparty/__init__.py -> build/lib/thirdparty
creating build/lib/grotesque/data
copying src/grotesque/data/stars_0-5.png -> build/lib/grotesque/data
copying src/grotesque/data/star_empty.png -> build/lib/grotesque/data
copying src/grotesque/data/stars_2-5.png -> build/lib/grotesque/data
copying src/grotesque/data/stars_0.png -> build/lib/grotesque/data
copying src/grotesque/data/stars_1.png -> build/lib/grotesque/data
copying src/grotesque/data/star_half.png -> build/lib/grotesque/data
copying src/grotesque/data/stars_1-5.png -> build/lib/grotesque/data
copying src/grotesque/data/stars_3.png -> build/lib/grotesque/data
copying src/grotesque/data/stars_4.png -> build/lib/grotesque/data
copying src/grotesque/data/stars_2.png -> build/lib/grotesque/data
copying src/grotesque/data/stars_5.png -> build/lib/grotesque/data
copying src/grotesque/data/stars_4-5.png -> build/lib/grotesque/data
copying src/grotesque/data/star.png -> build/lib/grotesque/data
copying src/grotesque/data/grotesque_icon.png -> build/lib/grotesque/data
copying src/grotesque/data/stars_3-5.png -> build/lib/grotesque/data
warning: build_py: byte-compiling is disabled, skipping.
running build_scripts
creating build/scripts-2.6
copying and adjusting grotesque -> build/scripts-2.6
changing mode of build/scripts-2.6/grotesque from 644 to 755
>>> Source compiled.[/code][/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=40#p21345
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-08-16 05:53:12

[quote="RealNC"]In that argument, you're taking the actual act of a crime and equalize it with the act of talking about the crime, with no actual intent or performing it.[/quote]A strawman. As should be perfectly obvious from the context, I'm not equating dialogue to action; I'm talking about the act itself being presented as inherently funny. 

[quote]You just can't be serious here. And why did you use genocide to begin with? Rape has also been "popular" throughout history.[/quote]Because you seem to find rape an amusing notion, thus necessitating an analogy to other topics you might find equally funny.

[quote]"This stuff" meaning what? Why a few people want to spoil the fun of others because they lack a sense of humor or because they project their personal experiences to the world and assume everyone else must be thinking the same was as they do?[/quote]That's right. Where do they come off not serving as fodder for your amusement? I mean, you're obviously the real victim here.

[quote]Or do you mean rape? In that case, have you ever heard the phrase "dude, it was just a joke."[/quote]I'm sorry, were you under the impression that you repeating the most common defense of bigots everywhere would make it original?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=60#p21346
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-16 06:12:42

[quote="bowsmand"][quote]I remember someone saying a long time ago that... the culture within ADRIFTers rewards for just finishing a game[/quote]
I don't wish to pull this thread too far off-topic (perhaps a new thread might be called for?), but I do recall expressing a similar, if not actually identical, sentiment to Juhana at PAX East-- perhaps this means I am the mysterious "someone!" [/quote]
Ah, indeed! And it wasn't even that long time ago!

[quote="duodave"]As far as any author goes, I think any input is helpful.[/quote]
Two reviews of my first game stood out as particularly unhelpful: the other reviewer hated everything about it, and the other loved it without reservations. Neither of them had any real value as feedback: they were so emotionally charged that it was impossible know if the things they mentioned were [i]actually[/i] bad or good or were they filtering their view through the rage/love they felt for the game.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=40#p21347
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-16 06:20:18

[quote="Eleas"][quote="RealNC"]In that argument, you're taking the actual act of a crime and equalize it with the act of talking about the crime, with no actual intent or performing it.[/quote]A strawman. As should be perfectly obvious from the context, I'm not equating dialogue to action; I'm talking about the act itself being presented as inherently funny. [/quote]
Which is not the case. Rape was not presented as being inherently funny (because obviously, it's not funny.) Just like dying is not inherently funny. But there are jokes about dying. And, guess what, many of them are funny. Just the same, even though rape is not inherently funny, a talking male moose suggesting to rape a male human is humorous.

Just like I sometimes say to my friends "I just got raped" after being fragged 5 times in a row in a game of Counter-Strike, or "it's rape time" when aiming that AWP at someone's virtual head.

This whole thing makes me think that you seem disconnected from the way people talk, behave and joke in various situations.

[quote][quote]You just can't be serious here. And why did you use genocide to begin with? Rape has also been "popular" throughout history.[/quote]Because you seem to find rape an amusing notion, thus necessitating an analogy to other topics you might find equally funny.[/quote]
No. I definitely don't think rape is amusing. There was no indication anywhere that I would find rape amusing. Where'd you get that from?

[quote][quote]"This stuff" meaning what? Why a few people want to spoil the fun of others because they lack a sense of humor or because they project their personal experiences to the world and assume everyone else must be thinking the same was as they do?[/quote]That's right. Where do they come off not serving as fodder for your amusement? I mean, you're obviously the real victim here.[/quote]
Your argument assumes that the joke is making fun of rape victims. Again, where'd you get that from?

[quote][quote]Or do you mean rape? In that case, have you ever heard the phrase "dude, it was just a joke."[/quote]I'm sorry, were you under the impression that you repeating the most common defense of bigots everywhere would make it original?[/quote]
Were you under the impression that lacking a certain type of sense of humor would somehow enable you to better grasp the meaning of jokes and make suggestions about what should be acceptable and what not? I certainly don't think so.

You're really getting raped in this argument.  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3016&start=0#p21348
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "reversed wearing" crashes the game
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-16 07:04:29

Sorry if this is off-topic, but 
[rant]the reference to "reversed wearing" called to mind a line in one of the early Woody Allen movies (it might have been Bananas) in which the dictator imposes a rule that all persons must change their underwear every day.  He then decrees that underwear must be worn on the outside of one's regular clothing, to facilitate chcking for compliance with the new rule.[/rant]

Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=50#p21349
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-16 07:18:51

[quote="RealNC"]I'm trying to package this for Gentoo Linux. Now I've already did so, but when running it, I get:

[code]Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/grotesque", line 2, in <module>
    from grotesque import main
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/grotesque/main.py", line 34, in <module>
    from library import Library
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/grotesque/library.py", line 32, in <module>
    from filterstore import FilterStore
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/grotesque/filterstore.py", line 23, in <module>
    from collections import Counter
ImportError: cannot import name Counter[/code]

This is with Python 2.6.7 and PyGTK 2.24.0.

In case it matters, here's the full build output:

[/quote]

Ah, thanks for letting me know! I use a built-in Python module that I guess wasn't introduced until version 2.7. Fortunately, it's quite easy for me to work around this. Unfortunately, I can't work on it at the moment and it will have to wait until the next release.

I guess I need to bump up the Python version requirement.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=40#p21350
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-08-16 07:21:06

[quote="RealNC"]Which is not the case. Rape was not presented as being inherently funny (because obviously, it's not funny.)[/quote]Wrong. The comic that sparked it had rape as a punchline. In other words, there [i]was[/i] no real joke other than the shock value of saying "[url=http://www.fugitivus.net/2009/06/24/a-woman-walks-into-a-rape-uh-bar/]rape rape rape.[/url]"

[quote]Just like dying is not inherently funny. But there are jokes about dying. And, guess what, many of them are funny. Just the same, even though rape is not inherently funny, a talking male moose suggesting to rape a male human is humorous.[/quote]I love the utter certainty you convey here. It's as if, having just measured the objective constant of Teh Funneh, you're now gearing up to take on all those detractors who never believed in your genius. Science cannot be denied!

[quote]Just like I sometimes say to my friends "I just got raped" after being killed 5 times in a row in a game of Counter-Strike, or "it's rape time" when aiming that AWP at someone's virtual head.[/quote]Indeed. It's funny because... you're using the word "rape", and nothing more. Just like I said.

[quote]This whole thing makes me think that you seem disconnected from the way people talk, behave and joke in various situations.[/quote]If by "people" you actually mean "assholes," then yes, I suppose there is a disconnect. Such people generally assume they define the world. You're not exactly helping your case by presenting your particular social circle as the One True Model of Human Interaction, you know.

[quote][quote]Because you seem to find rape an amusing notion, thus necessitating an analogy to other topics you might find equally funny.[/quote]No. I definitely don't think rape is amusing. There was no indication anywhere that I would find rape amusing. Where'd you get that from?[/quote]Your posts, in which you petulantly defend your right to joke about rape without censure, comment or complaint.

[quote]Your argument assumes that the joke is making fun of rape victims. Again, where'd you get that from?[/quote]My argument requires only that it makes fun of the act of rape, which is the case. Like it or not, rape victims are linked to the act of rape. It's pretty much unavoidable.

[quote][quote]I'm sorry, were you under the impression that you repeating the most common defense of bigots everywhere would make it original?[/quote]Were you under the impression that lacking a certain type of sense of humor would somehow enable you to better grasp the meaning of jokes and make suggestions about what should be acceptable and what no? I certainly don't think so.[/quote]A simple "yes" would have sufficed.

[quote]You're really getting raped in this argument.  [emote]:lol:[/emote][/quote]Oh, adorable.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=50#p21351
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-16 07:23:13

[quote="jakobcreutzfeldt"][quote="RealNC"]I'm trying to package this for Gentoo Linux. Now I've already did so, but when running it, I get:

[code]Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/grotesque", line 2, in <module>
    from grotesque import main
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/grotesque/main.py", line 34, in <module>
    from library import Library
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/grotesque/library.py", line 32, in <module>
    from filterstore import FilterStore
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/grotesque/filterstore.py", line 23, in <module>
    from collections import Counter
ImportError: cannot import name Counter[/code]

This is with Python 2.6.7 and PyGTK 2.24.0.

In case it matters, here's the full build output:

[/quote]

Ah, thanks for letting me know! I use a built-in Python module that I guess wasn't introduced until version 2.7. Fortunately, it's quite easy for me to work around this. Unfortunately, I can't work on it at the moment and it will have to wait until the next release.

I guess I need to bump up the Python version requirement.[/quote]
Ah, OK. That's easy to fix on my part too. I can simply bump the version req of the Python dependency in the Gentoo ebuild script which will make sure the user installing it will have Python 2.7 installed. (2.7 is in Gentoo for a long time now, it's just that I didn't allow the update yet on my system and was actively blocking it; the vast majority of other Gentoo users already have the updated 2.7 Python.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=40#p21352
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-16 07:44:18

[quote="Eleas"][quote="RealNC"]Which is not the case. Rape was not presented as being inherently funny (because obviously, it's not funny.)[/quote]Wrong. The comic that sparked it had rape as a punchline. In other words, there [i]was[/i] no real joke other than the shock value of saying "[url=http://www.fugitivus.net/2009/06/24/a-woman-walks-into-a-rape-uh-bar/]rape rape rape.[/url]"[/quote]
That is not how I perceived the joke. It was funny to me because a moose was saying it. Trying to imagine a moose attempting to rape a human was funny. If someone gets offended because of a joke about a moose raping a human, then I can only laugh about how anyone could take that so seriously as to end up being offended by it.

[quote][quote]Just like dying is not inherently funny. But there are jokes about dying. And, guess what, many of them are funny. Just the same, even though rape is not inherently funny, a talking male moose suggesting to rape a male human is humorous.[/quote]I love the utter certainty you convey here. It's as if, having just measured the objective constant of Teh Funneh, you're now gearing up to take on all those detractors who never believed in your genius. Science cannot be denied![/quote]
You ran out of ideas and resorted to this?

[quote][quote]Just like I sometimes say to my friends "I just got raped" after being killed 5 times in a row in a game of Counter-Strike, or "it's rape time" when aiming that AWP at someone's virtual head.[/quote]Indeed. It's funny because... you're using the word "rape", and nothing more. Just like I said.[/quote]
What's there more to say? Rape is rape. It only has one literal meaning. Just like losing or winning points in a game does not constitute real rape, so does a moose threatening to rape a human not mean rape. Because a moose is obviously not able to do that. And that's the source of "Teh Funneh" to me.

Perhaps our interpretation of that comic is vastly different.

[quote][quote]This whole thing makes me think that you seem disconnected from the way people talk, behave and joke in various situations.[/quote]If by "people" you actually mean "assholes," then yes, I suppose there is a disconnect. Such people generally assume they define the world. You're not exactly helping your case by presenting your particular social circle as the One True Model of Human Interaction, you know.[/quote]
The discussion ends here then. I won't resort to calling you an "asshole" or any other name, like you just did, directly calling me and my friends "assholes" because we don't happen to agree with your fake, pretentious morality.

If you're thinking of yourself as some kind of moral authority, get off your high horse.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=60#p21353
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-08-16 07:51:22

0.9.2 is looking really nice! Some further observations, for when you get another two free weeks of coding time:

Although the import process now recognises TADS 3 games, it's still having trouble extracting metadata from many of them. For instance, David Fletcher's SpeedIF [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=8kekvt062lefgl2]Light of My Stomach[/url] failed to import. It didn't even manage to extract the IFID, instead generating a default "TADS3-[etc]" IFID. Actually, TADS 2 games also seem to suffer from this problem. Grotesque failed to extract the IFID from [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=pthqyajy75yym4yi]Slap That Fish[/url] as well, instead generating a default, incorrect IFID for it. And even in the cases where a game has no IFID embedded in it, the IFID generation doesn't seem to be producing the correct IFID - at least, they never match the ones listed on IFDB.

The alphabetisation of the Author panel isn't very sophisticated. It puts all the names starting with uppercase letters first, then the lowercased names, and then poor Øyvind Thorsby all alone at the bottom.

When the import progress dialog resizes itself to fit an extra long file name, the dialog ends up longer than progress bar (see attached screenshot). It's only temporary; when the import moves on to a different game, it resizes the progress bar and moves the cancel button to fit the window. But it looks strange while in the mean time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=60#p21354
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-16 07:56:01

[quote="RealNC"]
Ah, OK. That's easy to fix on my part too. I can simply bump the version req of the Python dependency in the Gentoo ebuild script which will make sure the user installing it will have Python 2.7 installed. (2.7 is in Gentoo for a long time now, it's just that I didn't allow the update yet on my system and was actively blocking it; the vast majority of other Gentoo users already have the updated 2.7 Python.)[/quote]

Ok! Thanks for packaging it for Gentoo!! When it's online, I can put a link to it in the original post of this thread.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3008&start=40#p21355
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: letters from lorthayn blog
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-08-16 07:59:53

[quote="RealNC"]You ran out of ideas and resorted to this?[/quote]The observation that you consider yourself self-evidently the norm? It seemed apropos.

[quote="RealNC"]What's there more to say? Rape is rape. It only has one literal meaning. Just like losing or winning points in a game does not constitute real rape, so does a moose threatening to rape a human not mean rape. Because a moose is obviously not able to do that. And that's the source of "Teh Funneh" to me.[/quote]What more is there to say? Well, nothing that hasn't already been said in this thread and in [url=http://www.fugitivus.net/2009/06/24/a-woman-walks-into-a-rape-uh-bar/]links that you didn't read[/url].

[quote="RealNC"]Perhaps our interpretation of that comic is vastly different.[/quote]It's possible.

[quote="RealNC"]The discussion ends here then. I won't resort to calling you an "asshole" or any other name, like you just did, directly calling me and my friends "assholes" because we don't happen to agree with your fake, pretentious morality.[/quote]I think this is the part where I get to tell you to "lighten up" and quit "spoil[ing] the fun of others because [you] lack a sense of humor or because [you] project [your] personal experiences to the world and assume everyone else must be thinking the same was(sic!) as [you] do". Anything else would just be pretentious.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=60#p21356
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-16 08:07:27

Btw, I noticed you saying that you're waiting for FTP access to the SF web space. FTP doesn't work anymore with SF. You need to login through SFTP (meaning through SSH). The URL is of the form:

<a class="postlink" href="sftp://username,projectname@web.sourceforge.net">sftp://username,projectname@web.sourceforge.net</a>

And of course you need an SFTP-capable client.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=60#p21357
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-16 08:14:33

[quote="Emerald"]0.9.2 is looking really nice! Some further observations, for when you get another two free weeks of coding time:

Although the import process now recognises TADS 3 games, it's still having trouble extracting metadata from many of them. For instance, David Fletcher's SpeedIF [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=8kekvt062lefgl2]Light of My Stomach[/url] failed to import. It didn't even manage to extract the IFID, instead generating a default "TADS3-[etc]" IFID. Actually, TADS 2 games also seem to suffer from this problem. Grotesque failed to extract the IFID from [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=pthqyajy75yym4yi]Slap That Fish[/url] as well, instead generating a default, incorrect IFID for it. And even in the cases where a game has no IFID embedded in it, the IFID generation doesn't seem to be producing the correct IFID - at least, they never match the ones listed on IFDB.

The alphabetisation of the Author panel isn't very sophisticated. It puts all the names starting with uppercase letters first, then the lowercased names, and then poor Øyvind Thorsby all alone at the bottom.

When the import progress dialog resizes itself to fit an extra long file name, the dialog ends up longer than progress bar (see attached screenshot). It's only temporary; when the import moves on to a different game, it resizes the progress bar and moves the cancel button to fit the window. But it looks strange while in the mean time.[/quote]

Thanks for the feedback! Tackling the metadata extraction is my next big task. I really haven't touched that code at all since inheriting the project. From what I recall in having glanced through the (undocumented) code, I think it is, indeed, generating IFIDs for TADS games rather than extracting them. I'll profess *complete* ignorance on this subject. I have a lot of learning to do before I can get this part working nicely. Until then, I apologize that a lot of manual entry will be needed, but at least it's not outright failing with a crash/hang anymore. [emote]:P[/emote]

Alphabetisation: Thus far I have used the built-in GTK sorting and I've also noticed the problem. I'm looking into Python implementations of the Unicode Collation Algorithm, which would solve this. As far as the capitalization, I had initially considered automatically capitalizing author names but in the end I made a conscious decision to leave that to the user to do. Nonetheless, capitalization should not affect sorting.

Thanks for letting me know about the progress dialog resizing itself. That's an easy fix.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=60#p21358
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-16 08:15:26

[quote="RealNC"]Btw, I noticed you saying that you're waiting for FTP access to the SF web space. FTP doesn't work anymore with SF. You need to login through SFTP (meaning through SSH). The URL is of the form:

<a class="postlink" href="sftp://username,projectname@web.sourceforge.net">sftp://username,projectname@web.sourceforge.net</a>

And of course you need an SFTP-capable client.[/quote]

I've logged in just fine, the problem is that I apparently don't have permisisons to view the files yet, because they're not in my projectweb space.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=60#p21359
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-16 08:20:07

[quote="jakobcreutzfeldt"]I've logged in just fine, the problem is that I apparently don't have permisisons to view the files yet, because they're not in my projectweb space.[/quote]
Just in case, the web space was moved to:

/home/project-web/grotesque/htdocs/

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=60#p21360
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-16 09:02:50

OK, I updated my installation to Python 2.7 and it now works OK. Will finish up the Gentoo ebuild soon and make it available on the interactive-fiction overlay.

One request: can you add QTads (executable "qtads") as a possible choice for TADS (2 and 3) games and Hugor (executable "hugor") for Hugo games? (Hugo game extension is ".hex".) Not just a shameless plug, but these two support the full feature set of Tads and Hugo games (formatting, graphics, sound) and are not just text-only [emote]:P[/emote]

Also, I noticed that the application uses ~/.grotesque as its default configuration file dir. It should preferably be using the ~/.config/ directory, or the directory contained in the $XDG_CONFIG_HOME env var. The standard can be found here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html">http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedi ... atest.html</a>

Applications following accepted standards make life easier for all Linux users [emote]:-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=60#p21361
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-16 09:14:47

[quote="RealNC"][quote="jakobcreutzfeldt"]I've logged in just fine, the problem is that I apparently don't have permisisons to view the files yet, because they're not in my projectweb space.[/quote]
Just in case, the web space was moved to:

/home/project-web/grotesque/htdocs/[/quote]

Yep, that's where I'm checking. My project-web folder is empty. I contacted the original author of Grotesque but I haven't heard anything back. I'll probably contact Sourceforge myself soon.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=60#p21362
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-16 09:18:07

[quote="RealNC"]OK, I updated my installation to Python 2.7 and it now works OK. Will finish up the Gentoo ebuild soon and make it available on the interactive-fiction overlay.[/quote]

Sounds good! My Arch Linux links are getting lonely on the front page.

[quote]One request: can you add QTads (executable "qtads") as a possible choice for TADS (2 and 3) games and Hugor (executable "hugor") for Hugo games? (Hugo game extension is ".hex".) Not just a shameless plug, but these two support the full feature set of Tads and Hugo games (formatting, graphics, sound) and are not just text-only [emote]:P[/emote][/quote]

Sure, that's no problem to add! 

[quote]Also, I noticed that the application uses ~/.grotesque as its default configuration file dir. It should preferably be using the ~/.config/ directory, or the directory contained in the $XDG_CONFIG_HOME env var. The standard can be found here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html">http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedi ... atest.html</a>

Applications following accepted standards make life easier for all Linux users [emote]:-)[/emote][/quote]

That is an excellent suggestion. I'll implement that for the next version. 
In the config folder there's a subfolder for storing the cover art. Do you think that should go in ~/.local/share?
And then I need to figure out what's best for Windows....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=60#p21363
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-16 09:36:23

[quote="jakobcreutzfeldt"]In the config folder there's a subfolder for storing the cover art. Do you think that should go in ~/.local/share?[/quote]
Yes, it's user data so it goes to $XDG_DATA_HOME/grotesque/, and if that var is either empty or not defined, then to the hard-coded fallback "~/.local/share/grotesque/".

[quote]And then I need to figure out what's best for Windows....[/quote]
Windows has env vars too for this:

<a class="postlink" href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/626796/how-do-i-find-the-windows-common-application-data-folder-using-python">http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6267 ... ing-python</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=70#p21364
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-08-16 10:56:53

Yes, placing it in a subdirectory to AppData sounds right, if my memory serves me right on Microsoft's guidelines. I think that's a good place for those other config files and things, too, rather than directly in the home dir.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=60#p21365
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-08-16 11:02:13

[quote="duodave"][quote="Campbell"] Perhaps the mods here could add links to the other main forums (ADRIFT, Quest etc) in the 'Other Development Systems' forum header?[/quote]

Good luck getting people to look at it. I posted a Quest question in there almost a week ago and it still hasn't been replied to. I ended up duplicating it to the Quest 5 forum, but still.[/quote]

As long as Quest and ADRIFT are tucked away under "Other Development Systems" there's probably not much motivation for users of these systems to come here, when they each have active forums of their own. So links to the other forums would actually be more helpful since questions are unlikely to be answered here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3030&start=0#p21366
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7:  More trouble with multiple indistinguishable objects
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-16 11:02:39

One of the things about Inform 7 that I always find confusing is multiple indistinguishable objects (which have to implemented as kinds, rather than as specific things).  I'm trying to achieve the following effect:

A room will contain three supporters (a serving platter, Fred's plate and your plate).  Initially, two sandwiches will be on the serving platter.  I need them to be totally indistinguishable at this stage.  At a certain point, the butler (an NPC) enters the room and redistributes the food so that one sandwich is on Fred's plate and one sandwich is on your plate.  Thereafter, I need any attempt by the player to interact with a sandwich to be interpreted as referring to the sandwich that is on your plate.  The documentation has some examples on understanding things by their relations, but they don't seem to be directly applicable.  What I want is that if the player types "get sandwich" (after the redistribution has occurred) the game will understand that to mean the sandwich which is on your plate.  (Similarly, I will have Fred, an NPC, interacting with the sandwich on his plate, but I can code that manually).

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=70#p21367
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-16 11:03:33

It's ready and Gentoo (and other Portage-based distros, like Sabayon or Calculate) users can now install it from the [url=http://repo.or.cz/w/gentoo-interactive-fiction.git]interactive-fiction overlay[/url]. The full package name is "games-util/grotesque". If you don't yet have that overlay added in your system, add it with:

layman -a interactive-fiction

After that, simply install Grotesque as you do any other package:

emerge grotesque

At the moment, only the Gtk 2 version is provided.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3030&start=0#p21368
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  More trouble with multiple indistinguishable object
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-16 11:15:21

The easiest way to do this is to have two sandwiches implemented as anonymous instances of a kind and two named objects as the player's and the NPC's sandwiches. Start with the anonymous sandwiches on the platter. When the butler comes in remove them from play and put the "real" sandwiches on the correct plates.

Also, if you don't let the player interact with the sandwiches individually before the butler scene (the player isn't allowed to take one and carry it around etc) you could just implement them as a single object that responds to "sandwich", "sandwiches", "two sandwiches" and so on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=70#p21369
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-16 11:24:21

Thanks, I added it to the front page!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=70#p21370
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-16 11:28:56

I've found a bug. If I define my own custom format (Hugo games, hex extension) in the settings and then I add a directory (full of games, various formats, zcode, tads, hugo), nothing happens except a message that the hugo games were not recognized. But the other game formats aren't recognized either.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=70#p21371
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-16 12:02:29

[quote="RealNC"]I've found a bug. If I define my own custom format (Hugo games, hex extension) in the settings and then I add a directory (full of games, various formats, zcode, tads, hugo), nothing happens except a message that the hugo games were not recognized. But the other game formats aren't recognized either.[/quote]

Hm. If you look in your ~/.grotesque/grotesque.cfg file, are all the formats listed with all of their extensions?

You say that both hugo games and the other games were not recognized, but based on how you said it, I interpret it to mean that importing the hugo games failed, while it simply skipped over the other formats. Is that correct?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3016&start=0#p21372
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "reversed wearing" crashes the game
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-16 12:35:57

By me, [i]Bananas[/i] is never off-topic.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=70#p21373
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-16 12:45:50

Everyone, in order to make sure that I don't miss suggestions and bug reports here on the forum, I kindly ask that you also consider adding them to the issue tracker on Sourceforge:
<a class="postlink" href="https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=232625">https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=232625</a>

You have to log in to add an issue, but Sourceforge supports OpenID, so you can log in with your Google, Yahoo, etc accounts.

I've already gone through this thread and made bug reports and feature requests for everything that's been mentioned so far.

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3030&start=0#p21374
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  More trouble with multiple indistinguishable object
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-16 12:46:29

Thanks.  I hadn;t thought about that idea, but it turns out that the approach of using a single object prior to the butlerian redistribution may actually have another advantage.  I actually simplified the facts somewhat; there will in fact be (changing the names to protect the innocent) not just two sandwiches on the platter, but also two hamburgers and two hot dogs.  During the pre-redistribution period, there will be a limited number of ways in which the player can interact with the food, but anything he does during that period will apply to all the items (i.e., if he tries to do something to a hamburger, it will redirect to doing it to both burgers, both hot dogs and both sandwiches).  Implementing them all as a single thing avoids the need to redirect; it just requires "understand" statements so that the single thing responds to any of the various ways a player might respond to it.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3031&start=0#p21375
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: One train thought
User: Aintelligence / DateTime: 2011-08-16 12:48:57

I am wondering if there is a way in a scene where only 2 actions are possible, and otherwise, nothing will happen.
I was specifically looking for eating and drinking but blocking and killing is an option too.  If you try any other action it does not work.

Also 2. In some games (I can't really think of any offhand right now;  maybe all roads but I'm not sure) the game locks you so that whatever you type in it will always say one thing like "eat food" even if you were trying to put something else.
Actually now that I think of it,  I think that was used in pytho's mask at the end. Any thoughts on how this works?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=60#p21376
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-08-16 12:55:28

I think one of the big problems with the ADRIFT scene is that we get so few games written these days that when people manage to finish one, everyone falls over themselves to say nice things about it irrespective of what it’s actually like. I've played ADRIFT games that are bugged to high heaven but later read reviews of them which only have positive things to say. People are so desperate not to discourage potential game writers that they're quite prepared to sing the praises of a game which they know isn't up to scratch.

Unfortunately, this doesn't tend to help ADRIFT as a whole. The system has a bad reputation, some of which is justly earned, some of it not. If it’s ever to be seen as a decent system in its own right, and not just the sort of system you use if you can’t figure out how TADS or Inform, we need to start writing honest reviews of the games. We need to play the games and give our genuine honest opinion of them. Forget they're ADRIFT games. Forget you might discourage people by writing a negative review of their game*. Just say exactly what you think of the game. If it’s bad, say so. Dishonest reviews heaping praise on bad games only hurt the ADRIFT community in the long run.

* In all honesty, if you're the sort of person who goes off in a huff simply because someone says they don't like your game, you're not going to last very long in the IF world anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3032&start=0#p21377
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 6: Help with NPC scope and such
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-08-16 13:00:16

So I'm wondering how to go about solving this problem. My intention for this scene is to have an NPC who is in one room, yet is visible from the room connected to it. He can talk to the player while the player is in either room, but the player can't do anything but listen to/examine the guy unless the two are in the same room. Should the player attempt to walk beyond these two rooms, the NPC will force them to stay until he's finished talking.

However, I'm pretty flabbergasted here. Like, do I use PlaceInScope(dude_who_talks_a_lot)? If so, is there a way to reliably place him in/out of scope upon entering/exiting the appropriate room?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3031&start=0#p21378
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: One train thought
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-08-16 13:11:08

[quote="Aintelligence"]I am wondering if there is a way in a scene where only 2 actions are possible, and otherwise, nothing will happen.
I was specifically looking for eating and drinking but blocking and killing is an option too.  If you try any other action it does not work.[/quote]

Sure. The example "Dearth and the Maiden" shows how to do this with kinds of activities being blocked in a certain location; you'd just replace "in the Inn" from that example with "during the Banquet" (or whatever your scene is called).

[quote]Also 2. In some games (I can't really think of any offhand right now;  maybe all roads but I'm not sure) the game locks you so that whatever you type in it will always say one thing like "eat food" even if you were trying to put something else.
Actually now that I think of it,  I think that was used in pytho's mask at the end. Any thoughts on how this works?[/quote]

The Basic Screen Effects extension has an example of how to do exactly this. (I recommend using it sparingly, though. But it's there if you want it.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=60#p21379
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-08-16 13:13:08

Re the parser issue: I can understand to some degree ADRIFT users being tired of flaws with the parser being constantly used as a means to beat down their games. It’s an issue that was a hot topic when I first stumbled across ADRIFT a decade ago and it’s still an issue now. It’s an issue that has been debated to death and is particularly frustrating because at the heart of things, it’s something pretty much out of the control of the author. Sure, you can attempt to override some of those flaws but it's unlikely you'd catch them all. It’s also something that I, who grew up playing games with two word parsers that would tell you YOU CAN’T DO THAT to every response you typed which wasn't recognised, have never really seen as that big a deal. Sure, it can be frustrating when you enter a command and the response you receive is unhelpful, but it’s seldom a game breaker. It’s just one of those things you learn to put up with. Saying that, I understand that when you're used to the better standard of parser in other systems it can be a chore dealing with ADRIFT’s buggy one, but is the parser really so bad as to make an otherwise great game a dire one? 

It’s also disappointing when people decide not to review future games written with a certain system because authors have reacted negatively to reviews in the past. (Was I one of them? If I was, apologies. We all like to think we take criticism well, but most of the time we don’t. We say “tell me what you really think” when we mean “tell me what you really think – so long as you liked my game”.) For what it's worth, I once got an e-mail from an Inform writer criticising a review I wrote of his game, claiming that I missed the entire point of it and that I should never play another of his games again. It certainly didn't dissuade me from reviewing Inform games again (though if said author ever releases another game, I won’t be playing or reviewing it) as his opinion was just that. *His* opinion. It wasn't one necessarily shared by any other Inform users, just as I'm sure the opinions of certain ADRIFT users aren't shared by the whole. I'd also go as far as to say that it's pretty unfair to swear off doing reviews of games written with a certain system because a minority of users of that system reacted negatively in the past. Whenever the debate was on the ADRIFT forums, I'm sure the majority of people currently writing games with ADRIFT weren't around back then anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3031&start=0#p21380
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: One train thought
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-08-16 13:16:39

For your first question, example 96, "Zodiac," or 109, "Dearth and the Maiden," may be useful to you.

As for the second, there's definitely an example of just that, along with a disclaimer about how you probably shouldn't do it, somewhere in the documentation, but I honestly just spent ten minutes of my precious behind-schedule time to try to find it and turned up nothing, so I'm going to admit defeat.  If it helps anybody else find it, the example is about being on a stage and being forced to "> sing" if I recall correctly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3019&start=10#p21381
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What are the Z-Machine limits for I7 games?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-16 13:34:57

Based on a script consisting of "Include X/Test is a room," the largest extension I'm using is Conversation Responses by Eric Eve, which results in a total size of 207360 bytes (as opposed to 19200 for "Test is a room"). 

To test how Conversation Responses scales, I tried a baseline of "There are 20 rooms. There are 100 things." (204800 bytes) and then added the inclusion: 219648 bytes. So at the approximate size of my game, the extension adds about 14K. Doesn't seem like that much to worry about.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3032&start=0#p21382
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Help with NPC scope and such
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-16 13:46:54

Being a bad and unexperienced programmer, I would do it in a pretty unelegant way. First, since I gut no clue how to deal with connecting rooms, I'd place a scenery (yet animate) object in room 1 which is an optical copy of the NPC in room 2. Then, I'd give the NPC a daemon routine and nudge him so that he starts doing stuff although the player is not in the same room. In this daemon routine I'd reroute the output to room 1 in case the player is there. That should already do the trick. I know it'd be horrible spaghetti code, but it would work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3033&start=0#p21383
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: "wait for any key" in Glulx
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-08-16 13:51:06

How do you wait for a keystroke in Glulx, like you can with Basic Screen Effects?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3031&start=0#p21384
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: One train thought
User: Aintelligence / DateTime: 2011-08-16 13:56:31

This is great thank you muchly.

To elaborate on the first point a bit, what I'm trying to do is when an action is inputed, To have the text randomly generated "[one of] blablabla [or] blablabla [or]blablabla [at random]"  but depending on which one it chooses (1st, 2nd, or 3rd) it will begin a completely dependent scene.  I don't really think that it's possible, but if so, is there any example I can look at?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3034&start=0#p21385
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Unlocking
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-16 14:21:52

Grr... Probably most simple, but I don't get it. I have an "entry gate" and a "gate key", and I'd like to keep those names, if only to understand some mechanics.

>unlock gate
(the gate key with the gate key)
That doesn't seem to be something you can unlock.

>unlock entry gate
(with the gate key)
That doesn't seem to fit the lock.

1.) How do I sort or prioritize items so that the first assumption ("unlock gate key") is replaced by a better one ("unlock entry gate")?

2.) How do I overwrite the system report ("doesn't seem to fit") with something different ("Although... doesn't match... perhaps...")?

Thanks already!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3031&start=0#p21386
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: One train thought
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-16 14:47:31

Here's a possible solution:
[code]Train is a room.

Rejection-reason is a kind of value. The rejection-reasons are unrejected, thrown-off, arrested, and robbed.
The reason for rejection is a rejection-reason that varies.

On-Rails is a scene. On-Rails begins when play begins. On-Rails ends when the reason for rejection is not unrejected.

Instead of doing anything other than looking or examining during On-Rails:
	say "[one of][thrown off][or][arrested][or][robbed][at random]"
	
To say thrown off:
	say "You are thrown off the train for your inappropriate behavior.";
	now the reason for rejection is thrown-off.

To say arrested:
	say "You are arrested for your inappropriate behavior.";
	now the reason for rejection is arrested.
	
To say robbed:
	say "While you engage in inappropriate behavior, you are robbed.";
	now the reason for rejection is robbed.
	
Lost is a scene. Lost begins when the reason for rejection is thrown-off.

Jailed is a scene. Jailed begins when the reason for rejection is arrested.

Broke is a scene. Broke begins when the reason for rejection is robbed.

test me with "scenes/l/x me/s"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3034&start=0#p21387
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Unlocking
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-16 14:54:15

Have you looked at the Locksmith extension? That might help with some of your issues.

As for disambiguation, that's just a matter of hard work. It'll always be hard to disambiguate - to the extent where I might even leave the word "gate" out of the actual object name:

[code]The gate-key unlocks the gate. The printed name of the gate-key is "gate key". Understand "key" as the gate-key.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3035&start=0#p21388
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Heal Butcher, agency, and the reader experience
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-08-16 14:57:33

Thought I'd go ahead and bring up some ADRIFT games I played recently, both by an author named Heal Butcher, and see if anyone can provide thoughts on two particular design-based themes in this author's work.  The games involved are 1) [url=http://www.adrift.co/cgi/adrift.cgi?page=adventure&advid=610]The Wheels Must Turn[/url] and 2) [url=http://www.adrift.co/cgi/adrift.cgi?page=adventure&advid=682]Silk Noil[/url].  Both were written in 2001.

From what I can tell, the two salient features of each happen to be their peculiar diction and (throughout in Wheels, from the ending in Silk) lack of player agency.  Personally, I did feel some satisfaction in reading through each, as they demonstrate unique world-building and drip with atmosphere & tone-- perhaps this author intended to use lack of agency to reinforce the themes in their fiction?  In light of these works-- and any others which might usefully come to the discussion-- I wonder if it is the opinion of the forum that this justifies their presentation in the form of *interactive* fiction or, indeed, whether such justification need be sought at all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3034&start=0#p21389
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Unlocking
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-16 14:59:09

You might want to check out Jon Ingold's Disambiguation Control extension.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3034&start=0#p21390
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Unlocking
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-08-16 15:02:15

A quick way to keep the parser from trying to unlock something with itself if other interpretations are available:

[code]Does the player mean unlocking the noun with the noun: it is very unlikely.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3034&start=0#p21391
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Unlocking
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-16 15:08:40

Thanks for the answers. I'll be needing enough extensions later on, so I'll try the latter one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3034&start=0#p21392
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Unlocking
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-16 15:37:14

[quote="katz"]A quick way to keep the parser from trying to unlock something with itself if other interpretations are available:

[code]Does the player mean unlocking the noun with the noun: it is very unlikely.[/code][/quote]
In this particular case it might be good to be more specific:

[code]Does the player mean unlocking the gate with the key: it is very likely[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3036&start=0#p21393
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: I guess it's not technically "beta testing"
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-16 15:53:50

How do folks around here feel about beta testing works in progress? Is that something you'd like to do or is it frowned upon?

EDIT: final sentence above ends with preposition, should read "...or something upon which it is frowned". that is all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3019&start=10#p21394
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What are the Z-Machine limits for I7 games?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-08-16 15:55:57

Out of curiosity, why do you want to fit the game in z8?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3036&start=0#p21395
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: I guess it's not technically "beta testing"
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-08-16 16:05:59

First, check out the link in the sticky post at the top of this subforum.

If you want someone here to beta for you, I'd recommend that you post something about your game (such as approximate genre, length, and level of difficulty), what kind of testing you're looking for (bug catching, grammar check, narrative feedback, all of the above?), and on what kind of schedule (notably, are you looking to enter this year's Comp?).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3036&start=0#p21396
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: I guess it's not technically "beta testing"
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-08-16 16:07:51

It's something I certainly recommend. Getting one or a few people to do early beta testing, "alpha-testing" or "design checking" or whatever you want to call it can be extremely helpful. (I speak from experience.)

And about the thing about ending on a preposition. “This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put.” (See [url=http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001702.html]The Language Log[/url] for further reading on that.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3036&start=0#p21397
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: I guess it's not technically "beta testing"
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-08-16 16:08:27

Oh and I should actually read what you wrote. [emote]:P[/emote]

As for works-in-progress, there are definitely people who will do that, and it's a good sign that you want it.  Testing WIPs is great for feedback about pacing and narrative, though probably less helpful for squashing bugs.  Just make sure you're clear with your testers about which parts are in-progress.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3019&start=10#p21398
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What are the Z-Machine limits for I7 games?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-16 16:15:22

My immediate reason was because Juhana hadn't yet released [s]her[/s] Parchment-Transcript tool for glulx. Now that [s]she[/s]'s done that, it's not so pressing, but I'd also like it for portability and a sense that I'm doing my job as a programmer. I think I will probably abandon it, at least for now, but I might still try to release a pared-down z8 version along with the glulx version.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3036&start=0#p21399
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: I guess it's not technically "beta testing"
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-08-16 16:16:43

Indeed, as Tove says, you'll want another group of beta testers to come in later to catch bugs and such things. The first testers will be either worn out or (like you) too close to the game for that. (Not to mention that different testers find different kinds of things.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3034&start=0#p21400
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Unlocking
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2011-08-16 16:17:10

[quote="capmikee"][quote="katz"]A quick way to keep the parser from trying to unlock something with itself if other interpretations are available:

[code]Does the player mean unlocking the noun with the noun: it is very unlikely.[/code][/quote]
In this particular case it might be good to be more specific:

[code]Does the player mean unlocking the gate with the key: it is very likely[/code][/quote]

Will this actually produce any different results? Or is it just better from a standpoint of source-code readability?

And shouldn't something like the former be a part of the Standard Rules? Or is that too specific?

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3034&start=0#p21401
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Unlocking
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-16 16:21:56

The first one doesn't distinguish between unlocking the gate with the key and unlocking the key with the gate.

I'd probably add an additional rule as well (or instead) for trying to unlock other things with the key:

[code]Does the player mean unlocking something with the key: It is very likely.[/code]

I would hope that the Locksmith extension would handle things like this - I think that's the reason it's included in the I7 distribution.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2796&start=0#p21402
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Interacting with the real world
User: koo5 / DateTime: 2011-08-16 16:22:32

[url]http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/7e96eb2bd2ece6a6#[/url]
ohaithere. me be exploring that. python script piping to i7 while checking its stdin for additional commands, and i7 writing to file works nicely. It gets more troubled with timers, cheapglk doesnt have a timer and glkterm does but it seems it doesnt want to allow you to print anything inside a timer event even with the hacks findable around the net....

Anyway let me know how it goes, we can meet in irc or something [emote]:?[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3036&start=0#p21403
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: I guess it's not technically "beta testing"
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-16 16:31:43

Cool! I think I need to get a bit more content into this piece before I start asking around, but it'll be sooner rather than later.

Re: Language Log, I love analyses like those! (But I haven't read nearly enough Language Log.) The only good reason to cite prescriptivist rules truly is for the purpose of making up increasingly goofy sentences.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3032&start=0#p21404
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Help with NPC scope and such
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-08-16 17:45:59

I think PlaceInScope is your best option. See section 32 of the Designer's Manual as well as the solution to Exercise 100.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3037&start=0#p21405
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Multiple Traveling Characters Problem
User: cooper / DateTime: 2011-08-16 18:12:26

I have an animal who should move room to room randomly each turn and a person who should move along a set path and then stop when the path is complete. For an unknown reason, the animal won't begin moving room to room until the person has completed it's path. Can anyone tell me why it won't work? Here is the relevant portion of my code.

[code]The Dungeon is below the Throne Room. "You are in the dark dungeon under the castle. Above you is the throne room." The mouse is an animal in the Dungeon.

Every turn: 
	if the mouse is in a room (called the current space): 
		let next space be a random room which is adjacent to the current space; 
		if the mouse is visible, say "You see a mouse scurry into the [the next space]."; 
		move the mouse to next space; 
		if the mouse is visible, say "A mouse scurries in from the [the current space]."

The Bedroom is west of the Throne Room. "You are in the bedroom. east of you is the throne room." The maid is a woman in the Bedroom.

Table of the maid's Movement
	destination 
	Throne Room 
	Kitchen 
	Throne Room
	Tower
	Throne Room
	Bedroom 
	
Every turn when the maid is active: 
	repeat through the Table of the maid's Movement: 
		let last space be the location of the maid; 
		if the maid can be seen by the player, say "The maid leaves to clean the [the destination entry]."; 
		move the maid to destination entry; 
		if the maid can be seen by the player, say "The maid arrives from [the last space]."; 
		blank out the whole row; 
		rule succeeds.[/code]

I also have a number of "every turn" conditions, although they don't seem to effect my problem. The only thing I can think of is that there might be limit on the number of traveling characters in the same room at one time. Is there? I would really appreciate any help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=60#p21406
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: Kate McKee / DateTime: 2011-08-16 18:22:40

[quote="Juhana"]Two reviews of my first game stood out as particularly unhelpful: the other reviewer hated everything about it, and the other loved it without reservations. Neither of them had any real value as feedback: they were so emotionally charged that it was impossible know if the things they mentioned were [i]actually[/i] bad or good or were they filtering their view through the rage/love they felt for the game.[/quote]

Good point.  The Internet "Everyone's a Reviewer" Culture exists primarily to steer fellow consumers away from, or toward, a product they liked particularly, [b]*not*[/b] to give producers feedback on their service, product, or process.   Sites like Angie's List, Yelp, yp.com, RateMyProfessors, etc. advertise themselves as, e.g. "built for college students, by college students."  Nothing about "We want to give small businesses honest feedback about their performance," or "We want the English department to review its course offerings so that next year's students will have a better experience."  (If review sites genuinely wanted to participate in a quality improvement process, they wouldn't allow untracked, anonymous reviews, and they'd permit refereed responses from the business or individual being rated.) 

You were, quite reasonably, hoping to review people's responses to your game, to see what you did well and what you might improve upon.   But that may not have even been the reviewers' intent.  Quite possibly, they wanted other people to play your game, to see if someone else's experience reproduced the same violent emotional reaction.  It wasn't about connecting with you, the author, at all, and certainly not about providing honest feedback.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=60#p21407
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-08-16 18:41:47

Another type of unhelpful review comes to mind: "I played five moves, got bored, and quit."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3038&start=0#p21408
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: I might be a father....
User: The_Doctor / DateTime: 2011-08-16 18:58:32

My girl just told me she's pregnant...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3037&start=0#p21409
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Multiple Traveling Characters Problem
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-08-16 18:59:31

The problem, I think, is that the code for moving the maid has to end with "rule succeeds" (in order to prevent her from going everywhere in a single turn). This shuts off the "every turn" mechanism. And a rule written as "Every turn when the maid is active" is more specific than "Every turn" rules, so it will run first.

This seems to work:

[code]Every turn: 
	if the mouse is in a room (called the current space): 
		let next space be a random room which is adjacent to the current space; 
		if the mouse is visible, say "You see a mouse scurry into the [the next space]."; 
		move the mouse to next space; 
		if the mouse is visible, say "A mouse scurries in from the [the current space]."
		
Every turn:
	if the maid is active:
		repeat through the Table of the maid's Movement: 
			let last space be the location of the maid; 
			if the maid can be seen by the player, say "The maid leaves to clean the [the destination entry]."; 
			move the maid to destination entry; 
			if the maid can be seen by the player, say "The maid arrives from [the last space]."; 
			blank out the whole row;
			rule succeeds.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3031&start=0#p21410
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: One train thought
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-16 19:11:23

[quote="emshort"][quote]Also 2. In some games (I can't really think of any offhand right now;  maybe all roads but I'm not sure) the game locks you so that whatever you type in it will always say one thing like "eat food" even if you were trying to put something else.
Actually now that I think of it,  I think that was used in pytho's mask at the end. Any thoughts on how this works?[/quote]

The Basic Screen Effects extension has an example of how to do exactly this. (I recommend using it sparingly, though. But it's there if you want it.)[/quote]

Is there a way to guarantee that the output comes out in exactly the same format as commands the player types herself? The example in Basic Screen Effects prints the fake command in bold, but I don't think every interpreter echoes the player's commands in bold. 

(I just tried the move in Pick Up the Phone Booth and Aisle that yields this effect, in Parchment:

[spoiler]undo[/spoiler]

and the fake command appeared in small caps, even though ordinary commands show up in ordinary lowercase roman. That's the sort of thing I'd prefer to avoid, though obviously it works fine in PUTPBAA.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3019&start=10#p21411
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What are the Z-Machine limits for I7 games?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-16 19:13:03

Just a note, Juhana is a he.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3037&start=0#p21412
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Multiple Traveling Characters Problem
User: cooper / DateTime: 2011-08-16 19:13:23

Thank you so much! That works perfectly!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3037&start=0#p21413
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Multiple Traveling Characters Problem
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-16 19:23:25

I haven't tested this, but if you want to interrupt the "repeat through the table of the maid's movement" loop without using "rule succeeds" (which as Jim points out is the source of the bug), you should be able to use "break" instead. See section 11.12 of the documentation.

[EDIT: I had written something inaccurate here about Jim's code -- it looks like it should work as you have it, but you might want to make sure it's not messing with any other Every Turn rules.]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=70#p21414
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-16 19:47:56

[quote="katz"]Another type of unhelpful review comes to mind: "I played five moves, got bored, and quit."[/quote]
It's not exactly a detailed insight, no, but that kind of review [i]does[/i] contain some useful information: it tells authors that the things the player disliked were in the initial screen and first five moves of their game. Not all of a game's qualities will be evident by that time, but some very important ones will be; the author probably doesn't have to worry about the big involved mid-game puzzle or the PC's character arc, for instance, but it might well have been the prose style, or the premise and its delivery, or the pacing. Starting a game at the right point is a tricky and important thing, and a datapoint suggesting that you didn't get it right is not irrelevant, even if the reviewer would have done better to unpack the reasons [i]why[/i] they were so bored.

(In fact, this is one of the kinds of review that's [i]more[/i] useful to the author than it is to other players. Which is still not much, but it's [i]something[/i].)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3036&start=0#p21415
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: I guess it's not technically "beta testing"
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-16 20:00:55

Yeah, it's a good idea. It does require rather different kinds of feedback, though, and it's not something that happens quite as much; we have a nice established format for how to betatest, but alphatesting is vaguer. It'd be a really good idea to provide specific guidance for your alpha tester(s) on what sort of things you're particularly concerned with. Betatesting can be nerve-wracking -- if you haven't worked with someone before it can be difficult to work out the sort of things they're concerned with improving, and what will just annoy them -- and alpha-testing can be considerably more so. The more you put your testers at ease, the better.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3019&start=10#p21416
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What are the Z-Machine limits for I7 games?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-16 20:46:34

Now how did I miss that?  [emote]:oops:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3032&start=0#p21417
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Help with NPC scope and such
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-08-16 21:14:40

I can't seem to get PlaceInScope to do what I want it to. In this case, I have it set up so that the main room (which has the NPC, Leon, in it) is connected to the second room, which has this bit:

each_turn [;
  if (leon.arrived == true) PlaceInScope(leon);
],

and then have it so that his before and life routines intercepts any verbs besides Examine and Listen. But when the player walks into the connected room, they still hear him blah-blahing (because the daemon causes that to happen anyway), but if they try to "x leon", the game says he can't be seen. So, what's the deal? Should I use a different method?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3037&start=0#p21418
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Multiple Traveling Characters Problem
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-08-17 00:39:46

Yeah, it will indeed break other every turn rules, if they're placed in the source after the one with "rule succeeds." I just tested it.

Looks like "rule succeeds" is a no-no in every turn rules. In this case, because you're in a repeat through loop, as Matt points out, the solution is to use "break":

[code]Every turn:
	if the maid is active:
		repeat through the Table of the maid's Movement: 
			let last space be the location of the maid; 
			if the maid can be seen by the player, say "The maid leaves to clean the [the destination entry]."; 
			move the maid to destination entry; 
			if the maid can be seen by the player, say "The maid arrives from [the last space]."; 
			blank out the whole row;
			break.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3037&start=0#p21419
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Multiple Traveling Characters Problem
User: cooper / DateTime: 2011-08-17 01:06:14

The "break" serves it's function very well in my code. The "rule succeeds" didn't effect any of my other every turn rules, though now it makes a lot more sense. Thank you for your help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=59&start=10#p21422
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works In Progress
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2011-08-17 03:09:55

[quote="The_Doctor"]My girlfriend and I are working on our first IF entitled 'The Long Road'.  [emote]8-)[/emote] 

We're about 5% done.[/quote]

Having read your other post "I might be a father" I just can't help but wondering how you work on that game  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3033&start=0#p21423
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "wait for any key" in Glulx
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-17 03:11:49

Isn't it the same? I think the part where the extension says 'these things don't work under glulx' only refers to the text colour changing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3034&start=0#p21424
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Unlocking
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-17 04:14:35

For the second issue:
[quote="Grueslayer"]2.) How do I overwrite the system report ("doesn't seem to fit") with something different ("Although... doesn't match... perhaps...")?[/quote]

An instead rule should do it. I think the required conditions for when it should fire would be as follows:
[code]Instead of unlocking something with something when 
	the noun does not provide a matching key or 
	the matching key of the noun is not the second noun, 
		say "Although... doesn't match... perhaps...".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=70#p21425
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-08-17 04:47:44

[quote="David Whyld"]It’s also something that I, who grew up playing games with two word parsers that would tell you YOU CAN’T DO THAT to every response you typed which wasn't recognised, have never really seen as that big a deal. Sure, it can be frustrating when you enter a command and the response you receive is unhelpful, but it’s seldom a game breaker. It’s just one of those things you learn to put up with... is the parser really so bad as to make an otherwise great game a dire one? [/quote]

Nothing that extreme, but it can make me think my puzzle solution is wrong or a certain object isn't implemented when it actually is; even several years later, I can think of multiple cases where the parser threw me so badly* that I went to the walkthrough, disengaging in frustration from a game whose design and rhythm I was otherwise enjoying. It's hard to leave something that fundamental out of a review, but I do understand why authors find it tiresome to have the parser harped on -- and even those who don't react with anger do express (as you just have) the idea that "it's one of those things you learn to put up with." That being so, maybe I should let someone better equipped to appreciate these games on their own terms be the one to review them?

* If you're curious, the biggest culprits are (1) failing to understand a name for an object in such a way that I think that object isn't implemented at all; and (2) telling me that "Nothing happens" when actually the game didn't understand my phrasing of a correct solution.

[quote="David Whyld"]I'd also go as far as to say that it's pretty unfair to swear off doing reviews of games written with a certain system because a minority of users of that system reacted negatively in the past.[/quote]

No swearing, just a bunch of individual cases where I felt the likely benefits of reviewing an ADRIFT game (helpfulness to the author, interest value to other players, etc.) didn't outweigh the likely costs (annoyance to ADRIFT fans, likelihood of focusing on things the author didn't care about, lost time for other stuff I had going on).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3039&start=0#p21426
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Punctuation Removal - Beginner Qsn
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-17 05:27:17

Except for the Standard Rules (which are indeed included by default in any I7 project), the built-in extensions are only built-in in the sense that they ship with the Inform IDE application;  they come pre-installed with Inform. 

To actually use them, however, authors still have to include them manually, just as with any other extension the author has installed himself/herself.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3039&start=0#p21427
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Punctuation Removal - Beginner Qsn
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-17 05:38:09

By the way ... is Punctuation Removal really z-machine only? I'm pretty sure it used to work with glulx.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3039&start=0#p21428
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Punctuation Removal - Beginner Qsn
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-17 05:44:21

It's a spam account, the message is copied from a thread almost 5 years old: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=189">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=189</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3039&start=0#p21429
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Punctuation Removal - Beginner Qsn
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-17 05:50:14

Ah, so it is I who was "confoosed"  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3032&start=0#p21430
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Help with NPC scope and such
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-08-17 06:06:35

I did it slightly differently. I have an add_to_scope <npc> in each room that the NPC can be seen from. Then I block player actions except for examine (which varies depending on whether the NPC is in the same room as the player) in the NPC itself.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=70#p21431
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-08-17 06:10:14

[quote="emshort"]If you're curious, the biggest culprits are (1) failing to understand a name for an object in such a way that I think that object isn't implemented at all; and (2) telling me that "Nothing happens" when actually the game didn't understand my phrasing of a correct solution.[/quote]Both of these problems should be resolved in v5.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=70#p21432
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-08-17 06:32:51

[quote="Campbell"][quote="emshort"]If you're curious, the biggest culprits are (1) failing to understand a name for an object in such a way that I think that object isn't implemented at all; and (2) telling me that "Nothing happens" when actually the game didn't understand my phrasing of a correct solution.[/quote]Both of these problems should be resolved in v5.[/quote]


Yay! [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3040&start=0#p21433
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: I desperately need this sweater
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-17 06:44:48

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=At-dM_2kEQI">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=At-dM_2kEQI</a>

Gavin's Zork Warrior sweater would finally win me the respect and praise of my peers that I so yearn for. Please help my dream of owning it come true.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3033&start=0#p21434
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "wait for any key" in Glulx
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-17 07:12:40

[quote] I think the part where the extension says 'these things don't work under glulx' only refers to the text colour changing.
[/quote]
I haven't tried it, but that's certainly what the documentation indicates.  I hope it is correct -- I am currently working on a game where I use Basic Screen Effects for the "Pause the Game" feature (which waits for a keypress and then clears the screen) and I expect that before I am done I will exceed z-machine limits and have to switch to glulx.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1107&start=0#p21435
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Three Extensions for TADS 3 released
User: frumple314 / DateTime: 2011-08-17 07:13:46

Are those extensions still available?  The links seem to be broken (or at least FileDen is  trying to get me to pay to download the files :/ ).

Jeff

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3033&start=0#p21436
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "wait for any key" in Glulx
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-08-17 07:30:37

[quote="severedhand"]Isn't it the same? [/quote]

Yes, it is. 2 of my projects in glulx use 'wait for any key' from basic screen effects.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3037&start=0#p21437
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Multiple Traveling Characters Problem
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-17 08:32:33

"make no decision" is the standard way to exit a rule without stopping the rulebook - it will work just like "break" in this case, but might be easier to read for some I7 authors.

I could have sworn there was a way to choose the first nonblank row in a table, obviating the need for a loop - but I can't find it in the documentation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3039&start=0#p21438
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Punctuation Removal - Beginner Qsn
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-17 08:39:28

Ha!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2511&start=20#p21439
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: [New Game] Cryptozookeeper
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2011-08-17 09:16:52

Just a quick announcement: I am selling a two-disc set of the game, with a few extras, over on my website. More details [url=http://www.cryptozookeeper.com]there[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3032&start=0#p21440
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Help with NPC scope and such
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-17 09:34:29

Look at the exercises in chapter 32. PlaceInScope() can only be called from the InScope() top-level function, or from add_to_scope property functions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=70#p21441
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-17 11:49:19

[quote="jakobcreutzfeldt"][quote="RealNC"]I've found a bug. If I define my own custom format (Hugo games, hex extension) in the settings and then I add a directory (full of games, various formats, zcode, tads, hugo), nothing happens except a message that the hugo games were not recognized. But the other game formats aren't recognized either.[/quote]Hm. If you look in your ~/.grotesque/grotesque.cfg file, are all the formats listed with all of their extensions?[/quote]Yes.

[quote]You say that both hugo games and the other games were not recognized, but based on how you said it, I interpret it to mean that importing the hugo games failed, while it simply skipped over the other formats. Is that correct?[/quote]Yep.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=70#p21442
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-08-17 13:34:19

[quote]It's not exactly a detailed insight, no, but that kind of review does contain some useful information: it tells authors that the things the player disliked were in the initial screen and first five moves of their game. Not all of a game's qualities will be evident by that time, but some very important ones will be; the author probably doesn't have to worry about the big involved mid-game puzzle or the PC's character arc, for instance, but it might well have been the prose style, or the premise and its delivery, or the pacing. Starting a game at the right point is a tricky and important thing, and a datapoint suggesting that you didn't get it right is not irrelevant, even if the reviewer would have done better to unpack the reasons why they were so bored.
[/quote]

True, but that's making lemonade out of lemons; you're left guessing whether your game was legitimately boring or whether the reviewer just has ADD.  And you could have extrapolated as much if you'd gotten no response at all.  The reviewer has still contributed essentially nothing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3041&start=0#p21443
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Using Basic Real Time
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-08-17 13:34:21

I recently installed Sarah Morayati's Basic Real Time extension for a Glulx project, but when I try to test it I get the following error:
[quote]In Section 4 - Inform 7 Syntax in the extension Basic Real Time by Sarah Morayati:

Problem. You wrote 'At the time when the action fires'  : but this sets up a timed event which is never used, since you never use any of the phrases which could cause it. (A timed event is just a name, and it needs other instructions elsewhere before it can have any effect.)
[/quote]
What should I do?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=70#p21444
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-17 13:43:28

Hm ok. I'll look into it!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3042&start=0#p21445
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: Receive: for Rooms
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-17 14:27:30

Hi all,

I'd like to catch when an object is put in a room. For a container I'd do that with Receive:. Now I don't have a container as the target object, but a room. What I'm gonna do now is an each_turn routine that checks for the presence of the object in question. But isn't there something like a Receive: for rooms?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2974&start=70#p21446
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Screw IFComp
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-08-17 14:50:43

[quote="katz"] True, but that's making lemonade out of lemons; you're left guessing whether your game was legitimately boring or whether the reviewer just has ADD.  And you could have extrapolated as much if you'd gotten no response at all.  The reviewer has still contributed essentially nothing.[/quote]

Well, maybe. If you hear nothing at all, you don't know whether 

1) no one played it (so you really should have advertised more/better or maybe you picked a premise no one cared for)
2) someone started it but hated it (so the opening could be stronger)
3) someone got almost to the end but got stuck (so there was a mid to late game design flaw)
4) someone played it but didn't feel like writing anything up (so... well, nothing much you can do about that, but it would be nice to know)

There are some games that I've felt pretty bad about because they were large releases that I felt deserved some kind of feedback and attention (Macrocosm comes to mind -- <a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=c8qs0xgkkfp5u6u4">http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=c8qs0xgkkfp5u6u4</a> ), but I couldn't get into the game far enough to write a serious review. 

(That said, of course it's much more useful if the reviewer is able to say *why* they didn't feel like playing more than a few turns.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=70#p21447
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-17 15:04:27

To the Windows users who have successfully run Grotesque, what version of Windows are you running? 

It seems that having packaged it in Windows 7 is causing problems for users of Windows XP. This may be a tall order, but if anyone has Windows XP and is willing to help me package it, the help would be greatly appreciated. In order to do it, you would need [url=http://www.python.org]Python 2.7[/url], [url=http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/binaries/win32/pygtk/2.24/]PyGTK[/url] and [url=http://sourceforge.net/projects/py2exe/files/]py2exe[/url] installed.

It probably won't be difficult to do, since I already have the packaging script ready, but nonetheless, problems may arise...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3032&start=0#p21448
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Help with NPC scope and such
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-08-17 15:16:17

[quote="zarf"]Look at the exercises in chapter 32. PlaceInScope() can only be called from the InScope() top-level function, or from add_to_scope property functions.[/quote]

It doesn't really give any help on this specific situation that I can tell. There's clearly several things that I'm missing but I don't have the foggiest idea what they are because I'm terrible at piecing together solutions like this. Is there a tutorial on this kind of thing I can look up, or maybe the source code of a game with a similar situation? Because I've gone over 32 several times and still can't get this to work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3041&start=0#p21449
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using Basic Real Time
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-08-17 15:26:19

Put a line like this in your code:

[code]This is the fake action rule:
	the action fires in four turns from now.[/code]

This rule will never run, but it signals to the Inform compiler that "the action fires" exists as a timed event. Basic Real Time declares this timed event too, but it does so only in an I6 code inclusion; the last version of I7 became more strict, requiring timed events to be declared in I7 level code--which is why this doesn't work.

Sarah Morayati was working on a major revision of Basic Real Time a few months ago, but I don't know what's happened to that.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3043&start=0#p21450
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Don't Screw IFComp
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2011-08-17 15:41:09

How, you ask? By donating prizes! The page at <a class="postlink" href="http://ifcomp.org/comp11/donate.html">http://ifcomp.org/comp11/donate.html</a> has information on how to donate prizes to the competition.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3042&start=0#p21451
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Receive: for Rooms
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-08-17 15:48:28

How about react_after for the room? That may just be an after routine ... not sure.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=70#p21452
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: WaterMonkey / DateTime: 2011-08-17 15:55:59

What about Windows Vista? I think I've got some sort of Python running around somewhere (I played with it a bit several years ago).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=80#p21453
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-17 15:57:53

[quote]To the Windows users who have successfully run Grotesque, what version of Windows are you running? [/quote]

Windows 7 Ultimate 64x. I hope it's not an issue with 32x with 64x...

Watermonkey: I think in these situations Vista = 7, what he probably needs is either someone with XP or someone with Windows 7 who can run XPMode.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3041&start=0#p21454
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using Basic Real Time
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-08-17 16:03:32

Great!  Works just fine now, thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=80#p21455
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-08-17 16:32:06

I've just finished importing my collection, and I've noticed one thing: Grotesque fetches cover art from IFDB, but some titles have a cover in the blorb file, but which is not in IFDB (like recent entries from competitions).

Is it planned to use the embeded cover art? There is no Linux program that does so.

(but let me be perfectly clear that I'm in my knees for what you've done so far)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=80#p21456
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-17 16:33:53

[quote="WaterMonkey"]What about Windows Vista? I think I've got some sort of Python running around somewhere (I played with it a bit several years ago).[/quote]

Hmm I think like Peter said, Vista == Win7. Are you able to run Grotesque out-of-the-box?


[quote="Peter Pears"][quote]To the Windows users who have successfully run Grotesque, what version of Windows are you running? [/quote]

Windows 7 Ultimate 64x. I hope it's not an issue with 32x with 64x...

Watermonkey: I think in these situations Vista = 7, what he probably needs is either someone with XP or someone with Windows 7 who can run XPMode.[/quote]

I built it in 64 bit but I don't think that's the problem. When I run the packaging script, it fetches most of the important .dll files, like the GTK libraries, but at the end it lists some Windows ones that it didn't include. I'm 99% sure it's one of these that is the problem. Anyway, they're all in the system32 folder, so they're 32-bit libraries.

Here's the list, for reference:
advapi32.dll
comctl32.dll
comdlg32.dll
gdi32.dll
imm32.dll
kernel32.dll
kernelbase.dll
msvcrt.dll
ntdll.dll
ole32.dll
shell32.dll
shlwapi.dll
user32.dll
winspool.drv
WS2_32.dll

kernelbase.dll is the likely culprit, it seems.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=80#p21457
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-17 16:36:27

[quote="lribeiro"]I've just finished importing my collection, and I've noticed one thing: Grotesque fetches cover art from IFDB, but some titles have a cover in the blorb file, but which is not in IFDB (like recent entries from competitions).

Is it planned to use the embeded cover art? There is no Linux program that does so.

(but let me be perfectly clear that I'm in my knees for what you've done so far)[/quote]

Yes, it's planned. I've already implemented some stuff under-the-hood to accomodate it but I need to get blorb metadata extraction working well first. I'll also support coverart files stored in the same folder as the game file, in case it's not embedded but was distributed with the game in a zip file.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3042&start=0#p21458
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Receive: for Rooms
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-17 16:39:47

There is no single point to catch this, unfortunately.

Do you want to trigger when the player walks in carrying the object, or when the player drops the object?

In the former case, watch Go actions. In the latter, you'll need to watch Drop, plus Receive for any containers and supporters in the room.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=80#p21459
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: WaterMonkey / DateTime: 2011-08-17 16:55:01

[quote="jakobcreutzfeldt"][quote="WaterMonkey"]What about Windows Vista? I think I've got some sort of Python running around somewhere (I played with it a bit several years ago).[/quote]

Hmm I think like Peter said, Vista == Win7. Are you able to run Grotesque out-of-the-box?
[/quote]

Nope. [emote]:([/emote]

I unzipped the package and ran grotesque.exe. It crashed and referred me to a log file:
[rant]Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "grotesque", line 3, in <module>
  File "grotesque\main.pyc", line 31, in <module>
    
  File "gtk\__init__.pyc", line 40, in <module>
    
  File "gtk\_gtk.pyc", line 12, in <module>
    
  File "gtk\_gtk.pyc", line 10, in __load
    
ImportError: DLL load failed: The specified procedure could not be found.[/rant]

I'm running Windows Vista 32-bit. I'll see if I can find what version of Python I have, as some of the Python files are identified as such by Vista.

Edit: I have Python 2.5.2, release date Feb 21 2008. I also seem to have a GUI for Python named IDLE, but it also won't run (it thinks maybe my firewall is interfering).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=80#p21460
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-17 17:04:56

Ok that's the same problem someone else raised with Windows XP.

hmmmmmmmmmm

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=80#p21461
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: WaterMonkey / DateTime: 2011-08-17 17:14:32

Since I see a whole swarm of "Compiled Python Files", would clicking on one of those do anything useful?

(Apologies for the stupid-ish question; I never really figured out Python. I actually found myself typing "l" in the command-line to try to figure out the documentation command.  [emote]:oops:[/emote] )

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=80#p21462
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-17 17:22:25

Ok, I've confirmed that even after completely removing the GTK libraries from the Win7 computer, I can still run Grotesque. So I think it's pretty clearly related to the Windows version that it was built under. I'll do some research to see if anyone else has encountered this when packaging Python programs for Windows.....tomorrow though. It's bedtime for me.

@ WaterMonkey, unfortunately Python 2.5 won't run it. The way I did it, though, grotesque.exe has Python 2.7 built into it (which is why it's so big compared to the Linux one). So, technically, you shouldn't have to touch any of the Python files or have Python installed on your computer to run it (fyi .pyc files are compiled python files, meaning they've already been translated from human-readable Python code to machine-readable code...you shouldn't have to worry about any of those). 

Thanks for your patience with me, everyone. We'll get this working for sure...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3044&start=0#p21463
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Too sexy for this Comp
User: ultimate / DateTime: 2011-08-17 17:55:24

I would submit it, but my adventure is just too sexy for this comp.  [emote]:twisted:[/emote]

[rant][img]http://www.all4phones.de/attachments/21776d1242561684-suche-sexy-anime-themes-anime-girl-theme-a4p-.jpg[/img]
[img]http://static.desktopnexus.com/thumbnails/737267-bigthumbnail.jpg[/img]
[img]http://cdn.imgfave.com/image_cache/1238017546425444.jpeg[/img]
[img]http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/sexy-gamer-girls-1.jpg[/img]
[img]http://neighbr.net/images/toosexy.jpg[/img][/rant]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3044&start=0#p21464
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Too sexy for this Comp
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-17 18:14:01

If you want to talk about interactive fiction, this is the forum where you ought to be. If you want to post nonsense topics that have nothing to do with interactive fiction, this if the forum where you ought not to be.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3045&start=0#p21465
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Using Gargoyle to Play Level 9 Adventures
User: kheptril / DateTime: 2011-08-17 18:20:00

Hi All,

I'm a bit of a newbie here, so apologies if this question has been answered before...

I'm a fan of the Gargoyle interpreter and want to use it to play the Level 9 games. Gargoyle has a .L9 extension to load and play these games, but I have no idea where to find any .L9 game files...

Baf's Guide has a Level 9 section, with game files in .Z80 and .SNA format but Gargoyle cannot understand these files.

Does anyone know how to get Gargoyle to play the Level 9 files on Baf's, or where to get .L9 files?

Thanks
Will

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3044&start=0#p21466
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Too sexy for this Comp
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-17 18:42:18

Reading through the 3 posts this user has made so far... and despite the fact that an obvious trollish flame generated interesting arguments... I think we're dealing with a troll.

Just so we're clear on this, you know. So everyone can safely ignore the guy until he gets tired and goes away.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3045&start=0#p21467
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Using Gargoyle to Play Level 9 Adventures
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-08-17 19:10:15

Gargoyle should register itself as a file handler for .SNA under Windows and Mac OS X. It will also load the file if you change the extension to .L9.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3037&start=0#p21468
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Multiple Traveling Characters Problem
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-17 21:15:48

While looking into this, I (re)discovered that cooper's original code comes straight from ex. 263 in the documentation. The examples ought to be adaptable (that is, if you drop the code into a larger project they shouldn't break the every turn rules, even if that doesn't actually bug the example itself), so I [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=721]filed a bug report[/url]. 

Anyway, since the documentation does it that way, I'm a little pessimistic about there being a better way to choose the first non-blank row. You can ask for the number of filled rows in a table, but "choose a filled row" doesn't seem to compile.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3042&start=0#p21469
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Receive: for Rooms
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-18 00:25:29

Watching Drop works fine for my purposes, but in order to learn something I wanted to know how to catch e.g. a container in the room being destroyed (with the object inside, then moved into the room), an NPC losing the object, the object being created by a machine etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3045&start=0#p21470
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Using Gargoyle to Play Level 9 Adventures
User: kheptril / DateTime: 2011-08-18 02:10:34

Brilliant! That works perfectly, thanks very much!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3044&start=0#p21471
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Too sexy for this Comp
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-18 05:07:15

[quote="Peter Pears"]Just so we're clear on this, you know. So everyone can safely ignore the guy until he gets tired and goes away.[/quote]
I thought we had a forum so people could get banned before they got tired.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3044&start=0#p21472
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Too sexy for this Comp
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-08-18 05:25:29

Perhaps it needs a couple more moderators?  Looks like there are only 2 that frequent here often.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3044&start=0#p21473
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Too sexy for this Comp
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-18 06:15:10

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="Peter Pears"]Just so we're clear on this, you know. So everyone can safely ignore the guy until he gets tired and goes away.[/quote]
I thought we had a forum so people could get banned before they got tired.[/quote]

True. Sorry, I spent most of my forum days in the AGS forum where never habing banned anyone was a point of honour - trolls were treated with amusement, were ridiculed, and were then ignored.

I guess this community has a slightly different history and doesn't need this forum to become another R*IF.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3046&start=0#p21474
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Logistics for a cross-release save
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-18 11:09:33

I'm wondering what it would take to put together a way to port old save games into new release versions of my WIP.  Of course, I expect the first release to be totally perfect and bug-free, but on the off-chance that it's not, it would be nice to be able to patch it without making everyone restart.

The obvious thing would be to make a text file and manually insert lines of code for each variable in the "write to text file".  But problem A: I'm working with Dynamic Objects, so importing a save would require object creation, and I'm not quite sure how that would work, and B: I'm not aware of anyone having done this before, and I'm bound to miss things that I'm supposed to initialize.

Has anyone done an extension like this for I7, or have shortcuts to suggest?  There's got to be an alternative to manually writing thousands of lines of code to write thousands of number and text variables into a text file, right?  

Thoughts?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3044&start=0#p21475
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Too sexy for this Comp
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-08-18 11:32:30

There are no established duties for moderators beyond cleaning up the spam accounts and moving off-topic threads. Banning trolls, obvious or otherwise, is not something I am willing to do in the absence of a defined policy. Otherwise it becomes too personal.

That said, I have been sorely tempted the last few months to wield the ban hammer, never more so than when I saw this thread yesterday.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3044&start=0#p21476
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Too sexy for this Comp
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-18 11:56:44

I think Ben is right to err on the side of freedom here. Merk seems to sometimes do some moderation, but it seems to me that the trolliest types have generally got bored/annoyed and gone away without being banned. Though in this case it might be reasonable to rant-tag the pictures.

The "foe" button is really useful here -- click on the "profile" button below someone's post, then click on "foe" and confirm. Then the person's posts won't display for you unless you want them to.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=59&start=10#p21477
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Works In Progress
User: The_Doctor / DateTime: 2011-08-18 12:16:09

[emote]:lol:[/emote] 

Her and I work on alot together  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]  [emote];)[/emote] 

I just hope it wont turn out to be an ADVENT clone...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3046&start=0#p21478
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Logistics for a cross-release save
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-08-18 12:16:29

Does it need to work for everyone, or is this for personal use?  It sounds like you basically want to have an external Skein. Zoom has a "Save Skein" functionality, which sort of sounds promising.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3047&start=0#p21479
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Display [...] centered [SOLVED]
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-08-18 12:52:37

I'm using the [i]Glulx Image Centering by Emily Short[/i] extension, but the following code won't show me a centered image using Gargoyle.

[code]After examining the papers:
     display figure of coil centered.[/code]

Gargoyle is the only terp I have installed, so I can't check it on others. Is this a Gargoyle or a code issue?

Techs: I'm (still) using release 6E72.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=220#p21480
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: The_Doctor / DateTime: 2011-08-18 12:52:55

Hello all,

My friends (including my wonderful girl) call me the Doctor. I've been playing IF for 10 years and recently I decided to write my own.

It's gonna be awhile before its polished and finished but thats where I am on it  [emote]8-)[/emote]

 

Thanks for you time.

The Doctor

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3044&start=0#p21481
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Too sexy for this Comp
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-08-18 12:57:34

This is neither cool or amusing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3048&start=0#p21482
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Moving the player
User: happy2pester / DateTime: 2011-08-18 13:04:12

Hi there, just wanting a little help with something. I'm trying to make a ruleset that will move a player one room in a particular direction.  What i don't want to do is have to script a set of destinations for each room. Any advice?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3044&start=0#p21483
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Too sexy for this Comp
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-08-18 13:26:08

The rant tag idea seems to fall on the right side of the line, so I've edited the original post. I like that the moderation note is visible.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3048&start=0#p21484
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving the player
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-18 13:44:00

I think you need to be a little clearer about what you mean here; my guess is that you could accomplish this with some variation on 'try going north', but I'm not sure what precisely you're trying to do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3046&start=0#p21485
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Logistics for a cross-release save
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-08-18 13:47:39

You might consider something like the Dwarf Fortress model: break save compatibility with each release, but offer new features to compensate players for the inconvenience.

I imagine it's a better use of your design time to add new crops or animals, rather than implementing some elaborate method of tracking state with external files.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3044&start=10#p21486
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Too sexy for this Comp
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-08-18 13:47:40

Apropos banning, does this forum support secret bans (aka hellban)? <a class="postlink" href="http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/06/suspension-ban-or-hellban.html">http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/0 ... llban.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3046&start=0#p21487
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Logistics for a cross-release save
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-18 13:51:10

I was hoping for everyone.  There's quite a bit of randomization, as well, which makes skeins a bit difficult to control - and it's no small advantage to be able to "tweak" the import file as needed, but primarily it's for general use between release versions.

It's definitely not something I'm committed to, but since each save is gone forever, and it's intended to be a fairly time consuming game, if there's an easy-ish way to set up save porting, it would be kind.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3048&start=0#p21488
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving the player
User: happy2pester / DateTime: 2011-08-18 14:01:16

Sorry. I had another look at my post and i can see that what i typed was almost completley retarded... Whoops.

I'm trying to adapt the nautical direction rules from example 40. Basically, I'm trying to remove the limitations on only using nautical directions in nautical areas, yet prevent the player from using nautical directions in ground based areas. 

What i want it do do instead of the default "Before going a nautical direction when the location is not nautical, say "Nautical directions can only be used on board ship." " is, if the player trys to go fore in a land based area:


[code]Before going a nautical direction when the location is not nautical:
	say "Nautical directions can only be used on board ship.";
	if the nautical direction is fore:
		say "Did you mean North";
		if the player consents:
			(Move the player north)[/code]

etc.

Once again, i really don't know how you were supposed to get what i wanted from my previous post.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3044&start=10#p21489
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Too sexy for this Comp
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-08-18 14:08:34

I don't think those tools exist for phpBB.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2605&start=10#p21490
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Memorialising Paul Allen Panks
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-08-18 14:39:07

If Michael Gentry ever poisoned one of his coworkers I think that Little Blue Men would be exhibit A.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3049&start=0#p21491
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: The floor sweeper dude from The Lurking Horror
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-08-18 14:55:08

Why exactly does he try to murder you for cutting the cord to a machine he doesn't even own? I never ever understood that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3047&start=0#p21492
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Display [...] centered
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-08-18 15:02:42

It's a Gargoyle issue. The Glk implementation doesn't support the alignment style hints.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3048&start=0#p21493
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving the player
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-18 15:25:58

The last line should tell the player to try going:
[code]
Before going a nautical direction when the location is not nautical:
	say "Nautical directions can only be used on board ship.";
	if the nautical direction is fore:
		say "Did you mean North?[paragraph break]>";
		if the player consents:
			try going north instead.
[/code]

Or you could try something like this (with or without the "does the player mean"-rules):
[code]
Understand "fore" as north when the location is earthbound.
[Does the player mean going north when the location is earthbound: it is likely.]
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3049&start=0#p21494
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The floor sweeper dude from The Lurking Horror
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-18 15:26:25

[spoiler]You're a minimum wage employee, forced to work night shift during a blizzard.  You've already worked overtime, just getting the outdoor walks salted and clear.  If you can just get the floors polished, you might be able to take off, get home before the roads get too bad, and maybe get some sleep before plowing out the sidewalks for everyone tomorrow.  (And then you really need to do something about the rats in the steam tunnel.)

Then this asshole comes along.  A great big entitled jerk who has probably never worked in hir life, who probably lives on campus and has never given you a second thought, throwing empty Chinese food containers all over the place and breaking into dangerous parts of the building, leaving manhole covers open and pulling at exposed wiring.  And this jerk breaks the emergency glass and chops the cord on your waxer in half.  Which means not only a requisition to the parts department, but also a trip back to Facilities Management, to try to find equipment, which you'll have to haul through the steam tunnels (with the rats) in the middle of the night.  Forget going home; you'll be pulling a triple shift now, just because some jerk wasn't happy with your presence.  No one ever notices the clean floors or the swept sidewalks; the only time anyone ever notices you is to complain about the noise (in an empty building, at midnight), or to fuck with you.  Well, this one isn't going to fuck with you ever again.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3049&start=0#p21495
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The floor sweeper dude from The Lurking Horror
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-18 15:49:35

Could you guys please be a bit more spoiler-careful?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3049&start=0#p21496
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The floor sweeper dude from The Lurking Horror
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-18 16:00:28

Nah, I think the title already implies that the thread will inevitably contain spoilers. That said, adding "[spoilers]" to the title wouldn't hurt.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3049&start=0#p21497
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The floor sweeper dude from The Lurking Horror
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-18 16:22:35

Well then I won't spoiler this!

[i]Okay I guess I will![/i]

[spoiler]Isn't he the guy who turns into a cloud of bugs or something after you kill him? He's not a real janitor/person. He prevents you from proceeding down the hall because he's in the thrall of the Department of Alchemy and its associated lurking horrors, and he tries to kill you when you cut the cord on his machine because that's what bug-swarm-monsters wearing the skin of janitors [i]do.[/i][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3049&start=0#p21498
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The floor sweeper dude from The Lurking Horror
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-18 16:25:36

Oh for heaven's sake!!! Thanks a bunch! I only read the first line and it was enough of a bloody giveaway! I asked politely! A warning on the threads' tile - SPOILERS - would have beenq uite sufficient!

Juhana - No, it doesn't. Or rather, the question doesn't. The answer does a bit. And "Afterward" is just taking the piss and spoiling things on purpose. Anyway, I'm out of here before I'm spoiled any further.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3048&start=0#p21499
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving the player
User: happy2pester / DateTime: 2011-08-18 16:28:24

OKay, thanks guys

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3049&start=0#p21500
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The floor sweeper dude from The Lurking Horror
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-18 16:41:37

Jeez, sorry man! But I mean

- If the first sentence (I assume you meant in the first post of the thread) was "enough" then why did you scroll down?
- Isn't there any statute of limitations on this kind of thing?
- Why do you gotta put my username in scare quotes?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3047&start=0#p21501
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Display [...] centered [SOLVED]
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-08-18 16:46:12

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3042&start=0#p21502
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Receive: for Rooms
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-08-18 16:47:10

If you just need to test whether the item is on the floor of the room, maybe something like this will work in the room's code:

each_turn [; if (item in self) { ... } ],

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3049&start=0#p21503
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The floor sweeper dude from The Lurking Horror
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-08-18 17:01:48

I don't think it's reasonable to ask people to beware of spoilers in a General / Off Topic thread. I've moved this to the Game Discussion board.

Please use spoiler tags in the future.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3047&start=0#p21504
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Display [...] centered [SOLVED]
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-08-18 17:04:01

Not sure you should be thanking me, but you're welcome  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3046&start=0#p21505
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Logistics for a cross-release save
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-18 17:44:10

[quote="gravel"]I was hoping for everyone.  There's quite a bit of randomization, as well, which makes skeins a bit difficult to control - and it's no small advantage to be able to "tweak" the import file as needed, but primarily it's for general use between release versions.

It's definitely not something I'm committed to, but since each save is gone forever, and it's intended to be a fairly time consuming game, if there's an easy-ish way to set up save porting, it would be kind.[/quote]
I don't believe there is an easy way.

If the game has several independent chuncks, you could make an external file that remembers which chunks have already been visited, and allow players to skip to any previously visited chunk immediately.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3047&start=0#p21506
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Display [...] centered [SOLVED]
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-08-18 17:57:40

Well, I thank the messenger even when insulting the message. Sometimes, at least :)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3047&start=0#p21507
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Display [...] centered [SOLVED]
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-18 18:47:12

[quote="lribeiro"]Well, I thank the messenger even when insulting the message. Sometimes, at least [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
[size=85]Yes, but I think Ben is the current gargoyle maintainer...  [emote];)[/emote] [/size]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3046&start=0#p21508
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Logistics for a cross-release save
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-08-18 19:49:28

I was advocating this feature a number of years ago. It's standard in many types of software -- word processors and so on.

My impression (being no more than a ham-fisted amateur programmer) is that there are no technical problems standing in the way. There are, however, at least two roadblocks. First, the developers of the authoring system would have to spend time working out the optimum way to do it, and that's not necessarily the best use of their time. Second, as each game is unique, each author who wanted to use the system would still have to work out how exactly to deal with incompatibilities between versions, which could be either trivial or complex.

Let's suppose, for instance, that in your new version you've added an object in one of the rooms. Depending on how the authoring system produces a compiled game file, this change could cause the compiled game to renumber the object list, which could have disastrous consequences! In your saved game, maybe you picked up and were carrying the amethyst crystal, and when you load the game into the new version you might find that you're carrying the stagecoach.

That said, I believe Inform lets the author create a system for saving and loading text files. If you parcel out every detail of what the player may or may not have done and save it in a text file, you could also write a routine that would load the text file and make whatever decisions you felt were appropriate in the case of conflicts between what the text file says and what is possible in the new version.

But do you really want to go to all that trouble?

A better alternative is to save and load play transcripts. The player who switches on 'script' (or its equivalent) before starting the first play session should be able to replay the transcript later in a new version -- provided the author hasn't done anything like add a lock to a door, which would break the transcript.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3046&start=0#p21509
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Logistics for a cross-release save
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-18 20:22:18

When I run across this issue, I intend to use the extension Totally Awesome Cross-Version Save Compatibility by Gravel. 

...so for most games, I think Jim's "save and load the transcript" would be a great idea. But even if you preserve the random seed, I'd guess that wouldn't work very well for your game; tweak the probabilities and one thing may come out different, which sends the whole game gradually off the rails, until the player may as well just do a hard reset and see if they can play over again as their own ancestors. So you're probably back into saving a bunch of state variables by hand in an external file and programming a way to load them all. 

If I were you I would probably just break compatibility and adopt a Release Updates Only When Awesome policy, though if I were you I probably wouldn't have started programming the game, because I'm lazy. So don't take my advice.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3046&start=0#p21510
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Logistics for a cross-release save
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-18 21:32:09

[quote="matt w"]When I run across this issue, I intend to use the extension Totally Awesome Cross-Version Save Compatibility by Gravel. 
[/quote]

Yeah, I'll . . . get working on that.  Oh, look, spreadsheets of fish masses.  Man, if only I didn't have that awesome opportunity waiting for me, I'm sure I would be all over that.  Sad.

[quote="Jim Aikin"]If you parcel out every detail of what the player may or may not have done and save it in a text file, you could also write a routine that would load the text file and make whatever decisions you felt were appropriate in the case of conflicts between what the text file says and what is possible in the new version.
[/quote]

Yeah, that's kind of what I anticipated, but it's good to have confirmation.  I'm not that motivated, I don't think.  I mean, part of the reason I'm using Inform is that I think writing save routines is dull and finicky.  

Victor, there's nothing quite like that, but it might be possible to expose some of the game states more directly to the player control.  Something to think about, and far less intensive than a perfect save port.  

[quote="bcressey"]I imagine it's a better use of your design time to add new crops or animals, rather than implementing some elaborate method of tracking state with external files.[/quote]

Also more fun.  So really, no contest.

Thanks for weighing in, everybody.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3046&start=0#p21511
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Logistics for a cross-release save
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-18 21:45:17

[quote]My impression (being no more than a ham-fisted amateur programmer) is that there are no technical problems standing in the way. There are, however, at least two roadblocks.[/quote]

The roadblocks you describe are what we programmers call "serious technical problems".

Saving the transcript is the least dangerous way to approach this problem. I would still, in general, expect the result to be buggy and unreliable -- unless you limit yourself solely to output changes. (Fixing typos in strings.) That makes it safe, obviously.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3046&start=0#p21512
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Logistics for a cross-release save
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-08-18 22:47:42

[quote="zarf"][quote]My impression (being no more than a ham-fisted amateur programmer) is that there are no technical problems standing in the way. There are, however, at least two roadblocks.[/quote]

The roadblocks you describe are what we programmers call "serious technical problems".[/quote]
I'm sure it could get amazingly snarly. All I really meant was, it's all 1's and 0's. In theory, therefore, anything is technically possible.

Looking at the roadblocks from a slightly higher angle, what I'm seeing is (a) implementing such a system in such a manner that it worked properly would require an enormous number of hours of labor; and (b) figuring out the optimum design for such a system would be a very non-trivial challenge because, for one thing, those who might want to use it would be unlikely to agree about what was needed and how it ought to work.

For instance, if the new version of a game changes the name of an object and also gives it a new property (a very normal type of revision), is it still the same object with respect to a saved game, or is it a different object? If it's the same object, how does the author tell the compiler that? The compiler has no memory of previous versions unless the development system is altered in a fairly fundamental way (such as by allowing the author to give each object a unique ID -- and now it's up to the author to prevent the system from breaking).

The more I think about it, the more difficulties I can see. Transcripts of commands are really the only way to go ... and of course those won't work either in a game that includes randomness, or in which significant changes are made in any of a dozen areas.

Let's suppose, for instance, that in the old version, the command 'poke balloon with needle' didn't work. The response was "I don't know the word 'poke'." But in the new version, 'poke' has been implemented, so that command pops the balloon, releasing the poison gas which kills the evil llama....

Must stop. Brain is saying, "Ack."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3046&start=10#p21513
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Logistics for a cross-release save
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-18 23:56:10

I wrote: "Saving the transcript is the least dangerous way to approach this problem."

On second thought, here's a safe way to approach the problem: put in safe checkpoints. Say your game is divided into chapters. You record a "version-portable save file" which really just says "the player has reached chapter 4". Then, in the game, you have code that reads this and sets up everything at the beginning of chapter 4. (And ditto for every chapter.)

This is simplistic -- you're not even trying to record everything the player did to get there. But it's testable and it won't break.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3051&start=0#p21514
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Glulx: The [roman type] tag
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-08-19 00:35:04

Glulx allows for complicated text formatting, but the [roman type] tag wipes out the whole thing.  How would you insert an italicized word into a piece of formatted text and then cancel only the italics?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3052&start=0#p21515
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: Ordering NPCs
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-19 02:14:42

Dear all,

could someone please explain to me how Order: works? Never used it before and now noticed the documentation gives me hints but I always fail. What I do is
Order:
    if(action==##Follow) "TEST";
and I define me a [ FollowSub; dummy routine. But "NPC, follow me" is not recognized. What am I supposed to do? "NPC, follow me" is what I need to parse, and if I learn how Order: generally works, all the better.

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3051&start=0#p21516
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx: The [roman type] tag
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-19 03:31:21

If it's possible for you to do something like "[bold][b]text[/b][italic][b][i]italics bold text[/i][/b][roman type][bold type][b]text[/b]", then it might be the best way.

If, on the other hand, the formatting of that particular text is not fixed, then short of tracking it with a variable and having more than one block of text ready to show depending on the value of the variable I have no idea and forward you to the next poster who will surely have a good idea.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3047&start=0#p21517
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Display [...] centered [SOLVED]
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-08-19 04:52:38

I know, and I hesitated between "Hey, what are you waiting for, you [multitude of curses right here]?" and "Thanks for the info! Now I know I don't need to find out what's wrong with the code!"

Being in a good mood, the later won ;)
[size=85]
Ok, the truth is I like Gargoyle a lot, and so I refrained from going further than bringing the issue up. I know the thing will get done when it has a chance.[/size]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3046&start=10#p21518
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Logistics for a cross-release save
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-08-19 06:25:30

I believe this is something that should be implemented in IF languages, not tacked on as an extension or hacked together for an individual project. In fact, I think it should be made a priority.

In the past, when IF almost always played on the desktop, it wasn't such a big deal that save files weren't compatible with new versions. It was your choice whether or not to upgrade to the new version of the game. But if you're playing online through Parchment or some other web interpreter, that choice is no longer in your hands. If the author updates the game, your save is broken. And if you're not already familiar with the way IF systems work, you may not even understand why the game is suddenly broken.

On the subject of replaying the transcript - didn't Quest 4 do that? I remember a bit of a fuss during one IFComp because restoring a Quest game that had been entered was just [i]so slow[/i].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3053&start=0#p21519
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Grouping similar objects in inventory listing
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-08-19 09:15:55

In my WIP, the player will eventually accumulate several notes. The player's inventory becomes quite extensive, and searching through your inventory to find which papers you have and which you don't becomes tedious. I would like to make it so that all of these are grouped together in the inventory.

I know that this could easily be done similar to the keyring from Locksmith. However, I do not want to have a notebook or folder-type container.

I simply want to list them in a group instead of in whatever order inform decides on to print the inventory.
Is this possible, or would it be simpler to just include a folder/notebook object to contain them?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3053&start=0#p21520
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Grouping similar objects in inventory listing
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-19 09:25:21

Section [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc294.html]17.13 of the manual[/url] looks like it might be helpful. [UPDATE: 17.14, too.]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3053&start=0#p21521
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Grouping similar objects in inventory listing
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-19 09:26:40

Have you tried the list_together property? It's explained in §27 and should help you in so far as all similar objects are listed together.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3053&start=0#p21522
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Grouping similar objects in inventory listing
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-19 09:44:14

[quote="Joel Webster"]However, I do not want to have a notebook or folder-type container.[/quote]
"Notebook" and "folder" are just names. If you make a container called "notes" it doesn't matter if it's implemented the same way as a physical object. You could even make it privately-named to make sure the player can't refer to it directly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3052&start=0#p21523
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Ordering NPCs
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-08-19 09:45:37

Order works pretty much like before. To make sure I was doing it right, I first created the new verb:

[code]Verb 'follow'
	* noun	-> Follow
;

[FollowSub;
	print "But ";
	print (the) noun;
	print_ret " isn't moving.";
];[/code]
I then gave my NPC a simple response to it:
[code]Object	Bob "Bob" study
	with
	name 'bob' 'man',
	description "He's rather chubby, and his shirt tail isn't tucked in.",
	following 0,
	orders [;
		Jump: "~Okay, watch me -- here I go!~ Bob takes a standing leap.";
		Follow: if (noun == player) {
			self.following = 1;
			"~Sure thing. Where are we going?~";
			}
			else "~I'm not sure how to do that,~ Bob admits.";
	]
	has proper animate
;[/code]
In a real game, you would need to test whether Bob.following is true when the player character is in the process of moving. Does that make sense?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3052&start=0#p21524
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Ordering NPCs
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-19 09:51:39

It does, it does - i didn't create a verb. Hope that helps already.

In fact I don't even want the NPC to follow the player, I just want to parse the order.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3053&start=0#p21525
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Grouping similar objects in inventory listing
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-08-19 10:05:40

[quote="matt w"]Section [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc294.html]17.13 of the manual[/url] looks like it might be helpful. [UPDATE: 17.14, too.][/quote]
Wow, I read right through that section and I didn't realize I could apply it to inventory.
Herp derp.
Thank you [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3046&start=10#p21526
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Logistics for a cross-release save
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-19 10:12:19

[quote]I believe this is something that should be implemented in IF languages[/quote]

Let me be clear, because I been pussyfooting around this in previous posts:

Solving this at the system level, so that it works without any effort from the author, is impossible. We're not avoiding the problem because we're lazy or our priorities are elsewhere; we are avoiding the problem because we can't solve it.

All the solutions proposed so far require the author to think carefully about each change made in an upgrade, and possibly write some code to manage "repairs" to an old save state. That is a tricky task for an experienced programmer. It is not practical to require I7 users to do that work, because most of them won't bother and most of the ones who do will not do it very well. I am serious: *I* would not use such a system for my own IF -- not even transcript-reloading. Too much work, too much danger of bugs slipping through *anyway*.

The "simplistic" solution I just posted is the best compromise I can come up with. It's usable, in the sense that an IF author can get it right in a reasonable amount of time and testing. I don't believe many games will adopt it, however.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3046&start=10#p21527
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Logistics for a cross-release save
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-19 10:24:53

Hm. Let me come at this another way: The problem per se is not "save files can't be loaded in new release", but rather "a new release comes out and the save files stop working." 

It would be easy enough for the new release to *include the old release*. (Just pack both game files into the same Blorb package.)

Then, when you type "restore", you see all your save files -- but some of them have asterisks. A footnote says "This save file is for release 1 of the game. If you load it, you may see bugs that have been fixed in release 2." When you pick a save file, the interpreter picks the matching game file and loads you in.

When you type "restart", the interpreter would of course jump to the current game file.

Implementing this is quite easy for the I7 language (add a "release along with previous game 'foo'" statement and some blorb-hacking). It's pretty simple for an interpreter to support it. It's opt-in for the author, but the only effort is retaining your old game releases and remembering to import them. It makes the Blorb file bigger with every release, of course, but storage space is our cheapest resource these days.

From the player's point of view it's a half-assed solution, but it's better than what we have now.

What do people think?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3046&start=10#p21528
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Logistics for a cross-release save
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-19 10:35:17

If people are to implement such a thing for their games, I guess the authoring system should at least provide streamable objects that can save and load their states, regardless of their bytecode representation.

The game programmer can take it from there and resolve conflicts. Whether he/she can do that correctly is anyone's guess. Surely, not offering such features because of a "our users are too inexperienced" assumption sounds more like an excuse (there are some very talented people out there.) Better just say "it's too much work to bother with this right now."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3046&start=10#p21529
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Logistics for a cross-release save
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-19 10:45:43

[quote="zarf"]All the solutions proposed so far require the author to think carefully about each change made in an upgrade, and possibly write some code to manage "repairs" to an old save state.[/quote]
Just as an additional clarification: This is not unique to IF. All games that allow saving at arbitrary times have to struggle with these exact same problems.

Undum's compromise solution is to replay the transcript, but only if the version number hasn't changed. This way the author can make minor changes that don't break the saves, but if it's necessary to change the story structure the author can increment the version and force readers to restart the game.

I agree that this is a lot bigger problem now than in the past. When games are hosted online by the authors, they can update the games and thus break the saves without the player's consent. It must be frustrating that you can't fix a single typo without wiping out everyone's save games. If you offer the game as a download the player can decide whether they want to update or not.

On the other hand I agree with zarf in that transcript-replay-saves would probably bring a lot of extra headache to the authors which would be yet another unnecessary burden in already time-consuming development process, plus it would be extremely easy to make a single mistake that would break the whole system anyway. But it would be nice at least have an option available to go through that road if this is something you care about. So I don't really know what kind of resources if any should be directed at adding the feature even as an external structure.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3053&start=0#p21530
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Grouping similar objects in inventory listing
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-08-19 11:17:39

So I tried the advice in section 17.13 and 17.14, but it didn't produce the results I expected.
What this did was group them together as a single object in inventory, like so:[code]You are carrying:
  a dead parrot
  five notes (receipt, sheet of paper, post-it, letter to M and letter to D)
  a can of spam[/code]And that's not what I want.

So I made my own object, but I used Juhana's advice to make it privately-named.
It's a supporter that the player invisibly and unobtrusively acquires whenever they carry more than one note object, and that disappears when only one is carried. Perhaps this will be useful to someone else?[code]Note is a kind of thing.

NotesFolder is a supporter. It is off-stage. NotesFolder is privately-named and portable. The printed name of the NotesFolder is "the following notes:"

After the player taking a note:
	if the player does not carry the NotesFolder:
		let NoteSum be 0;
		repeat with target running through things carried by the player:
			if target is a note:
				increment NoteSum;
		if NoteSum is 2:
			now the player carries the NotesFolder;
			repeat with target running through things carried by the player:
				if target is a note:
					now the target is on the NotesFolder;
			now the noun is on the NotesFolder;
	otherwise:
		now the noun is on the NotesFolder;
	continue the action;

Before dropping a note:
	if the noun is on the NotesFolder:
		now the player carries the noun;
	continue the action;

After the player dropping a note:
	if the player carries the NotesFolder:
		let NoteSum be 0;
		repeat with target running through things on the NotesFolder:
			increment NoteSum;
		if NoteSum is 1:
			repeat with target running through things on the NotesFolder:
				now the player carries the target;
			now the NotesFolder is off-stage;
	continue the action;
[/code]When I use it, I get the following, nicely formatted listing:[code]You are carrying:
  a dead parrot
  the following notes:
    receipt
    sheet of paper
    post-it
    letter to M
    letter to D
  a can of spam[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3053&start=0#p21531
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Grouping similar objects in inventory listing
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-19 11:40:30

Yeah, the folder method looks like it does more of what you want there.

Is there any general method for reordering things in your inventory listing?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3053&start=0#p21532
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Grouping similar objects in inventory listing
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2011-08-19 11:40:56

For something similar, check out the [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/ex121.html#e121]AARP-Gnosis[/url] example in the Recipe Book. It doesn't do exactly what you want, it highlights a different way to dynamically group things together.

Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3054&start=0#p21533
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Searching an old game author
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-08-19 12:01:19

Hiya all!

This is a question I was thinking of sending privately to Jimmy Maher, as it didn't exactly fit as a comment on any of his blog posts. There is a slim chance he knows something about it, anyway, as he has been researching the late 70's TRS-80 scene at his [url=http://www.filfre.net/]Digital Antiquarian[/url]. I also don't want to abuse his personnal mail, so I'll expose it here (perhaps any of you could also give some clue!) and send him a quick note linking this thread.

OK, so I'm mantaining a little personnal collection of IF related stuff with items I can get from ebay at a [i]fair/reasonable/as low as possible[/i] cost. Last year I hunted a couple of text adventures from the TRS-80 years called "Haunted House" and "Pyramid 2000"

[center][url=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/638/dscn3495.jpg/][img]http://img638.imageshack.us/img638/4150/dscn3495.th.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/638/dscn3468.jpg/][img]http://img638.imageshack.us/img638/3281/dscn3468.th.jpg[/img][/url][/center]

Not long after that I tried to enter a fast game creation competition held at an Amiga forum. The premise was to make a remake of any existing work. I played with the idea of making a "Haunted House" remake, adding some multimedia stuff and some kind of story over the minimalistic plot of the original (oh, you just entered this haunted house, now find your way out!) which was after all meant to work on a 4 Kb machine.

Lack of time and ideas made me go with just a plain port of the original (as I could figure out from the [url=http://www.figmentfly.com/hauntedhouse/hauntedhouse.html]walkthrough at figmentfly.com[/url]) with aditional graphics, sound, and an automap feature. It was a [i]de facto[/i] breach of every conceivable copyright, but that was OK with the comp rules. If anyone feel curious and knows her way with an Amiga emulator the result is hanging around [url=http://www.rockersuke.com/if/hauntedhouse/hauntedhouse.html]here[/url] and I made a making-of youtube [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHXT5eMM6nc]there[/url].

Now skip some time into the future and you find the Indigo Speed-comp. Thanks to Jacqueline announcing it at a spanish IF forum I decide to enter with my very first attempt at I7... which happens to be the bit I had left unresolved in my first Haunted House Remix, some excuse for a plot!

It will have a post-comp release soon, and it will still probably be breaching many copyright stuff, but this time I would like to, at least, cite the original author.

Problem is, this original author is nowhere to be credited in the original game. Nice...! Only a copyright to a company called "Device Oriented Games" is stated.

I hoped it could be this [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=bqrlh3gwl344xwfw]Barry Gaskin[/url]s cited at IFDB. According to [url=http://www.wurb.com/if/game/299]Baf's Guide[/url] both the platform and the description of the game given in the review quite fitted to it... but taking a look into the BASIC files it happened to be another completely different Haunted House. You see, haunted houses were a popular IF subject in the early days!  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

Its reference number is 26-1910, which follows Pyramid 2000 26-1909 and the TRS-80 commercial release of ELIZA (26-1908). It was released most probably at 1979.

Looking into another direction I followed the [url=http://www.figmentfly.com/pyramid2000/pyramid.html]Pyramid 2000 links[/url] at Figmentfly.com. They offered a lot of useful info and insight of this "Device Oriented Games" works, which included a handful of text adventures and a frequently repeated name: [i]Robert Arnstein[/i]. While this Arnstein is explicitly mentioned as the author of many of them, I haven't, after exhaustive googling, found any reliable source (in fact, no source at all) that connects him to Haunted House.

I bet it's him, but can't be sure!

Now, if anyone out there has any clue (any magazine review, whatever)... well, at the worst case, I could always cite him as the "most likely author"  [emote]:)[/emote] 

--

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3046&start=10#p21534
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Logistics for a cross-release save
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-19 13:12:19

[quote]Surely, not offering such features because of a "our users are too inexperienced" assumption sounds more like an excuse[/quote]

Note that I include myself in that category of "not experienced enough to use such a system reliably". I think I would need a professional QA department behind me.

[quote]Better just say "it's too much work to bother with this right now."[/quote]

It's too much work to bother with the very slim and hard-to-use benefits that such a system would offer.

My second proposal (multiple game files) *is* something that I think has enough benefits to be worth the effort.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3046&start=10#p21535
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Logistics for a cross-release save
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-19 13:25:05

Multiple game files make no sense to me, because the people with an old save file don't want the new version but need the old one which they already have, while people playing the game for the first time don't need the old version.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3055&start=0#p21536
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: IF Archive outage this afternoon
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-19 13:28:02

I am told that the IF Archive may be offline for some of this afternoon, due to emergency power-line repairs on CMU campus.

(Yes, it's on a UPS. Is every router and network switch between the Archive box and the outside world on a UPS? Probably. Will every one of them work for the expected one hour of downtime? Maybe. Will the downtime be longer than expected? Who knows.)

If you have urgent need of Archive services, please look at the mirror URLs listed at <a class="postlink" href="http://ifarchive.org/">http://ifarchive.org/</a> and bookmark a couple.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3046&start=10#p21537
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Logistics for a cross-release save
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-19 13:30:00

[quote="RealNC"]Multiple game files make no sense to me, because the people with an old save file don't want the new version but need the old one which they already have, while people playing the game for the first time don't need the old version.[/quote]
It makes sense when the author pushes the update (online interpreters) or when the player doesn't know that updating the game breaks the saves, which is contrary to how almost all other software works.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=220#p21538
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: dott.Piergiorgio / DateTime: 2011-08-19 14:18:11

and I'm back there ! because of the previous post, I specify that I'm the Dottore (doctor) from Italy, whose in the end, I resigned to accept the shifting to this forum [emote]:roll:[/emote] 

to introduce myself or not to introduce, because I'm known by the former denizens or r*if ?

Anyway, I'm 41, from Italy (of course) and more oriented to old school in development (preferring mature dev systems) albeit I appreciate the unique advantages of I7 IDE  [emote]:lol:[/emote] but suffering of "WIPite" and never finding my WIP worth of release (what WIP ? well, because of this, I never talk about my WIPs)

Hope is enough, and

Vest regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3056&start=0#p21539
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7:  Omitting Room Name From Description
User: tuatha / DateTime: 2011-08-19 14:27:20

When the player enters a room, Inform automatically prints the name of the room in bold, followed by a line break and then the room description.  I want to remove the bold room name and line break.  I assumed the default rules for printing the room name and description would be in the "Activities" chapter of the documentation, but I can't find any reference to them there.  Does anyone know how to overwrite these rules?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2944&start=30#p21540
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On Red Herrings and design...
User: dott.Piergiorgio / DateTime: 2011-08-19 14:37:14

well, if the unhappy example by the OP is to be taken, I highly suspect that the most obvious thing found in a toliet is hardly considered for taking, save an CSI setting, in which can be an good red herring (cfr. the case of miss Knox)

Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3056&start=0#p21541
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Omitting Room Name From Description
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-19 14:39:13

If you want to override a default behaviour, it's usually a good idea to crack open the Standard Rules and see what's causing it. In this case, you know that this behaviour is usually caused by entering a room or looking, so open up the Standard Rules, search for one of those actions, and see which rules it calls.

Here's the answer, though:
[quote]The room description heading rule is not listed in the carry out looking rules.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3056&start=0#p21542
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Omitting Room Name From Description
User: tuatha / DateTime: 2011-08-19 14:54:23

Thanks for the help!  I'll give that a shot next time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3046&start=10#p21543
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Logistics for a cross-release save
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-19 15:05:16

It also makes sense for iOS -- which is where I came up with this notion in the first place. If I release a game file update, everybody will install it without thinking. So it makes sense to keep the old game file around, so the user's old save files will continue to be usable.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3056&start=0#p21544
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Omitting Room Name From Description
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-19 15:23:51

[quote="maga"]If you want to override a default behaviour, it's usually a good idea to crack open the Standard Rules and see what's causing it. In this case, you know that this behaviour is usually caused by entering a room or looking, so open up the Standard Rules, search for one of those actions, and see which rules it calls.[/quote]

What I usually do is to start running the game and type "rules." That'll show which rules are running in the game -- in this case, just before the room name appears, you see:
[quote]
[Rule "room description heading rule" applies.][/quote]

Then you can easily find it in the Standard Rules.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3046&start=20#p21545
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Logistics for a cross-release save
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-08-19 16:27:48

Couldn't the save-game format be put into an actual format like XML or JSON?   XML tags named after the variables, etc. that it holds values for would provide some protection even when the coder adds or removes variables in new releases, and the typo-fixing re-release would be perfectly fine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3046&start=20#p21546
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Logistics for a cross-release save
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-08-19 20:41:44

[quote="zarf"]Solving this at the system level, so that it works without any effort from the author, is impossible. We're not avoiding the problem because we're lazy or our priorities are elsewhere; we are avoiding the problem because we can't solve it.

All the solutions proposed so far require the author to think carefully about each change made in an upgrade, and possibly write some code to manage "repairs" to an old save state. That is a tricky task for an experienced programmer. It is not practical to require I7 users to do that work, because most of them won't bother and most of the ones who do will not do it very well. I am serious: *I* would not use such a system for my own IF -- not even transcript-reloading. Too much work, too much danger of bugs slipping through *anyway*.

The "simplistic" solution I just posted is the best compromise I can come up with. It's usable, in the sense that an IF author can get it right in a reasonable amount of time and testing. I don't believe many games will adopt it, however.[/quote]
I understand that any system is going to require the author to do some hard work. I just feel that having the infrastructure built into the IF system, rather than tacked on as an afterthought, is most likely to produce an efficient, easy to use system.

On the other hand, though, efficiency is probably mostly going to depend on saving the absolute minimum of information necessary, and that's something only the author can know. I guess it's probably best at this point for authors and extension programmers to work on the problem. If we find that we need extra support from the language/VM, then we can put in a specific feature request.

(Off topic for this part of the forum, but on reflection I think it shouldn't be too hard to build a simple cross-release compatible save system in TADS 3. Include reflect.t so you have access to the source code names of objects and properties even after the game is compiled. Create a list of object properties that need to be saved and restored. Offer hooks where the author can manipulate the data before it's saved and after it's restored, so s/he can manually deal with any problematic incompatibilities. Knowing which of the library objects' properties need to be saved would be tricky just because of the size of the library, though. Darn, I've got myself interested in the problem now. Putting it on my post-Comp to-do list.)

In any case, your suggestion of bundling the old game file sounds like a good compromise - it's easy for authors to opt into, and it gives the player a clear choice.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3052&start=0#p21547
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Ordering NPCs
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-19 21:01:18

Works indeed, thaaanks! [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3049&start=0#p21548
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The floor sweeper dude from The Lurking Horror
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-08-19 22:30:25

I don't seem to remember him turning into a

[spoiler]swarm of bugs[/spoiler],

I only thought he slipped around and fell after the specific method used to dispatch him. Although I really like gravel's explanation.

In fact, a Floor Sweeper Dude spinoff game would be  [emote]8-)[/emote] awesome [emote]8-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3049&start=0#p21549
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The floor sweeper dude from The Lurking Horror
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-19 23:47:24

That would be a pretty crazy thing for me to have imagined so I looked up a transcript. The spoiler contains some straight-up quoting from the game...

[spoiler]The transcript is [url=http://pr-if.org/event/play-lurkinghorror/transcript-the-lurking-horror/]here[/url] and the relevant portion is:

[b]>x waxer[/b]
[i]It’s a large floor waxer, big enough to ride in. It actually looks sort of like a small bulldozer. The severed remnant of the power cord graces one end.
The maintenance man continues slipping, falling, standing, and so on. He reminds you of a badly made windup toy.[/i]
[b]>get in waxer[/b]
[i]You are now in the floor waxer.
The maintenance man appears to shorten and almost dissolve. There is a great commotion, as though he is undergoing a convulsion of some sort, and then he appears to explode into a crowd of small squealing creatures. These, seeing you, scuttle off in the opposite direction and disappear.[/i]

So, not necessarily insects. It's a little odd to me that nobody else remembers this, since for me it's one of the more salient elements of the game, along with that tedious microwave sequence.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=80#p21550
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-20 05:30:55

Sorry but I can't log bugs without registering in Sourceforge and I have no reason to register...

This may or may not be connected to the issues that other people are having, but I've noticed - about three or four days ago, just haven't said it yet because I'm a bad and lazy person - that if a game file has extensions all in caps, Grotesque will not automatically recognize it when "importing entire directory", and if selected individuall that file with be imported as type "Unknown". 

So, for instance, "BVENT.d64" (for Panks' B-Venture) will be allright, but not "BVENT.D64".

Another thing, so many games in IFDB have no IFID. But they all have TUID. What if we could use Grotesque to look up a game via its TUID *as well as* its IFID? Or hey, drop IFDB altogether, since its only benefit is to browse IFDB for entries, and since not every entry has an IFID...

And regarding that (low-priority) idea of having the option to open the folder of the game, I noticed how D-Fender does it, and if you could do it it would be super (and if you can't it's quite allright). D-Fender opens a separate pane with lots of tabs, for Screenshots, Sound captures, Video captures, et all, and Data folder. In this case only the data folder would be relevant - it shows the folder set as the "data" folder for the selected game, in an Explorer sort of way.

If it's too hard/impossible to implement then never mind, but I thought I might as well mention it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3054&start=0#p21551
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Searching an old game author
User: JimmyMaher / DateTime: 2011-08-20 06:32:23

I know of these programs -- particularly Haunted House -- but not much more. Both were published by Radio Shack itself, and thus stayed somewhat removed from the normal organs of early TRS-80 software distribution: The Software Exchange, etc. As the box and manual attest, Radio Shack was not terribly interested in crediting the people who wrote its software. This disrespect coupled with an underwhelming royalty was a major reason that most independent developers shied away from going this route for publication, despite the incredible exposure you could get from having your program in Radio Shack stores all over the country.

Haunted House at least was unusual in that it ran in only 4 K of memory and worked even on machines still equipped with Level 1 BASIC. Even the Scott Adams games were advanced in comparison. To compensate, it shipped in two parts. At a certain point, you would be prompted to flip the tape and in effect load in a whole second adventure to finish the game.

Sorry I don't know more...

Jimmy

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3054&start=0#p21552
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Searching an old game author
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-08-20 07:14:54

[quote="JimmyMaher"]
Sorry I don't know more...[/quote]

Thanks anyway!  [emote]:)[/emote]  I guess I'll cite the company "Device Oriented Games" and tell about Arnstein as the "most probable suspect" in the accompanying docs.

--

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3046&start=20#p21553
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Logistics for a cross-release save
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-20 08:34:42

Yeah, I like the idea of bundling old versions, too, except it doesn't exactly encourage rapid iteration.  Even with small games, that's likely to get too bulky.  (Also, as a player, I don't want to download 30 versions of a game when one will do.)  It's probably good for small games with significant releases, though.  I love the idea that it would be easy to tell which version of a game your save belonged to; is that information readily accessible to players currently?

I think a modified checkpoint system is workable for my game - it wouldn't be perfect, but it would get players 80% of the way there (with way less than 20% of effort on my part).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3046&start=20#p21554
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Logistics for a cross-release save
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-20 09:48:09

Save files contain a simple fingerprint that identifies a particular game file. (The details are in the Quetzal spec (5.4) and the Glulx spec (1.8.4).)

An interpreter can look at a save file, and then look through a batch of game files, and find the game file that matches.

If the interpreter *doesn't* have access to the matching game file, the problem is harder. There's no IFID, so the interpreter can't just go download the right game. It can find the release number and serial number, which are probably sufficient to display a message to the player. ("Please go find release 6, serial 12346")

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3057&start=0#p21555
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Zoom z6 problem on OSX (snow leopard)
User: rickreynolds / DateTime: 2011-08-20 09:55:56

(also posted to r.g.if)

I'm still on snow leopard, but having a problem with Infocom z6 games in Zoom 1.1.4.1.  When I run Zork Zero or Shogun, the text doesn't scroll once the window has filled with text.  I haven't tried Arthur far enough to know if it is also showing problems - it's interface is decently different.

I've tried both a .zblorb file that I created via a howto, as well as the .z6 game with the .blb file available in the IF archive.  In all cases, the game seems to start correctly, showing the graphics, etc., but after the 3rd or 4th command the game is unplayable as the text disappears at the bottom of the window and the window doesn't scroll upward.

Assuming this isn't a known issue, I'd guess I have some kind of bad config in place (font settings, maybe?).  Here is what I've set my fonts to, all at 16pt:

Proportional font: Lucida Console
Fixed-pitch font: Courier
"Symbolic" font: Symbol

Any ideas on what to try?  I've read the troubleshooting tips in the manual, but the only tips for display related issues for z6 are about using fixed-width fonts.  I'm already doing that.

As another something to try, is there a .plist I can delete or some other way to revert Zoom to a default config?

Thanks,
Rick

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3055&start=0#p21556
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Archive outage this afternoon
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-08-20 10:17:32

Also, some of them may be under water, from the pictures I've seen...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=80#p21557
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-20 10:29:18

[quote="Peter Pears"]Sorry but I can't log bugs without registering in Sourceforge and I have no reason to register...[/quote]
That phrase was kinda funny :-/ It states the reason right there: logging bugs...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=90#p21558
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-20 11:09:00

I guess it was. I'll rephrase a bit - I don't want to register on yet another site, especially such a site as SourceForge which houses all sorts of different projects, when all I want to do is comment on another couple of things. If this thread didn't exist, I wouldn't bother at all - someone was bound to pick up on the CAPS thing, and I could live without my other two suggestions - wasn't worth the hassle of registering somewhere else. I'm tired of that. Looks like everything wants you to be registered. One day I'll need to be registered to use a search engine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3058&start=0#p21559
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Question on glk_stream_open_memory
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-08-20 12:01:45

In the Glk Specification, Section 5.6.2:[quote]You can open a stream which reads from or writes into a space in memory.[code]strid_t glk_stream_open_memory(char *buf, glui32 buflen, glui32 fmode, glui32 rock);[/code]...
If buf is NULL, or for that matter if buflen is zero, then everything written to the stream is thrown away. This may be useful if you are interested in the character count.
...
[/quote]However,[code]glk_stream_open_memory(0,0,filemode_Write,0);[/code]provokes the error[quote]Zero passed invalidly to Glk function.[/quote]whereas[code]glk_stream_open_memory(1,0,filemode_Write,0);[/code]does not.  Is this a spec violation, or am I misreading things?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=90#p21560
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-20 12:58:47

[quote="Peter Pears"]Sorry but I can't log bugs without registering in Sourceforge and I have no reason to register...

This may or may not be connected to the issues that other people are having, but I've noticed - about three or four days ago, just haven't said it yet because I'm a bad and lazy person - that if a game file has extensions all in caps, Grotesque will not automatically recognize it when "importing entire directory", and if selected individuall that file with be imported as type "Unknown". 

So, for instance, "BVENT.d64" (for Panks' B-Venture) will be allright, but not "BVENT.D64".

Another thing, so many games in IFDB have no IFID. But they all have TUID. What if we could use Grotesque to look up a game via its TUID *as well as* its IFID? Or hey, drop IFDB altogether, since its only benefit is to browse IFDB for entries, and since not every entry has an IFID...

And regarding that (low-priority) idea of having the option to open the folder of the game, I noticed how D-Fender does it, and if you could do it it would be super (and if you can't it's quite allright). D-Fender opens a separate pane with lots of tabs, for Screenshots, Sound captures, Video captures, et all, and Data folder. In this case only the data folder would be relevant - it shows the folder set as the "data" folder for the selected game, in an Explorer sort of way.

If it's too hard/impossible to implement then never mind, but I thought I might as well mention it.[/quote]

Duly noted. I'll try to fix that for the next release but right now I'm working to make the underlying treaty of babel code to be much  more robust (and to expand it to include all the formats that the ToB software handles, like Adam and Magic Scrolls).

For the data folder, at least for now, I have to see what easy options are available to me that are  cross-platform before I decide which way to do it. It may be easiest to just have it pop up a new Explorer/Nautilus/Whatever window showing the folder's contents. Otherwise, I'll be forced to do it kind of how you describe D-Fender to do it. I hadn't thought of doing it that way, and it might be easier to do in the end. Thanks for the suggestion!

Now, back to the Treaty of Babel. [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=90#p21561
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-20 13:06:15

Oh and re the TUID, yes I've thought of that but I haven't checked if I can search the IFDB by it the way I can with the IFID (I'm pretty sure I'll be able to). It's on my to-do list!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3046&start=20#p21562
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Logistics for a cross-release save
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-08-20 14:18:35

This has been on my want list for YEARS, mostly because it's an unofficial industry standard when it comes to other types of games. 

I think Emerald's idea is the schiznit. That sounds achievable. Too bad it's in TADS, not I6, though. Gravel's checkpoint system also sounds workable. 

If we can decompile games, I'm not sure why that couldn't be done to get at the variables / data types. Heck, I'd be open to something like: "You must declare your variables/objects/etc in this space or in this manner so that the language can get at them later." 

If anyone needs someone to beta-test their stuff, I'm open. I could probably help out some with the coding if you wanted to split it up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3058&start=0#p21563
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Question on glk_stream_open_memory
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-20 14:35:59

glk_stream_open_memory(1,0,filemode_Write,0) should be legal. Ditto for glk_stream_open_memory(arr,0,filemode_Write,0) where arr is a valid array address.

glk_stream_open_memory(1,1,filemode_Write,0) is probably legal in itself, but as soon as you write to the stream you may get a segfault, because address 1 is who-knows-where.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3058&start=0#p21564
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Question on glk_stream_open_memory
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-08-20 15:27:48

Right, but what about the case where buf is NULL?  Section 5.6.2 seems to suggest that that should be equivalent to buflen=0.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3058&start=0#p21565
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Question on glk_stream_open_memory
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-20 15:47:16

Oh, yes. Sorry -- I thought I'd answered that. That's legal too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3058&start=0#p21566
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Question on glk_stream_open_memory
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-08-20 16:37:26

Thanks.  I'll file a bug report then.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2781&start=20#p21567
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Off the top of my head
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-08-20 21:32:09

I apologize, I wasn't trying to be argumentative. I wasn't trying to be entirely complimentary, either, just to be fair. Just trying to understand a little about this specific process.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3059&start=0#p21568
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: ADRIFT 5.0.20
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-08-21 03:29:07

Now out. This has a host of new features such as suspending text that fully fills the screen, customisable colours in Runner and v3.90 support. For full details see the [url=http://forum.adrift.co/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7428]ADRIFT Forum[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3046&start=20#p21569
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Logistics for a cross-release save
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-21 08:07:09

[quote="Juhana"][quote="zarf"]On the other hand I agree with zarf in that transcript-replay-saves would probably bring a lot of extra headache to the authors which would be yet another unnecessary burden in already time-consuming development process, plus it would be extremely easy to make a single mistake that would break the whole system anyway. But it would be nice at least have an option available to go through that road if this is something you care about. So I don't really know what kind of resources if any should be directed at adding the feature even as an external structure.[/quote][/quote]
Not that it makes any less work for the author, but I've seen games where checkpoints give you a password, sort of like a cheat code. Once you have the code, you can skip right to that point in the game. The player has to remember the code, but they don't have to have a save file available when they restore.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3060&start=0#p21570
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: IF cover = Square ?
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-08-21 10:46:40

Just wondering: is there a reason, other than a traditional one, for the general use of square covers (CD like) and not rectangular ones (DVD and book like)?

Inform7 documentation recommends it, and I imagine it being practical when printing CD sleeves, but when distributing, the DVD format is much more common, and for personal purposes, well, does anyone still burns one CD per IF game?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3060&start=0#p21571
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF cover = Square ?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-21 11:04:59

Not sure I get the CD vs DVD thing. They're both exactly the same size...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3061&start=0#p21572
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: A New Homage To Zork (As If We Needed One)
User: Rotonoto / DateTime: 2011-08-21 11:23:07

Painless Little Stupid Games #9 is now available for betatesting. "Zork LXIX:  The Great Underground Hot Dog"--well, the title speaks for itself.  Play the game on your interpreter from <a class="postlink" href="http://w3.cnm.edu/~mrblonde/Zork%20LXIX.z5">http://w3.cnm.edu/~mrblonde/Zork%20LXIX.z5</a> or on Parchment at <a class="postlink" href="http://w3.cnm.edu/~mrblonde/plsg.htm">http://w3.cnm.edu/~mrblonde/plsg.htm</a>.

Please let me know of any bugs at:

payyasi at hotmail dot com (symbols for words).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3062&start=0#p21573
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Actions applied to Off-stage Objects
User: HawkleyFox / DateTime: 2011-08-21 11:40:30

I've been fighting with the parser here for a few hours now; decided it was time to seek the advice of another.

I have an action purposed for testing that is designed to act on off-stage objects which themselves are just data containers that describe something the player can interact with via a complicated system.  It seems that the parser is having a rough time figuring out what I am talking about.

Here is the distilled code:
[code]An event driven scene is a kind of object.
It has an object called data store.  Data store of it is usually nothing.

Battle Test is an event driven scene.
Data store of it is usually Battle Test Data.
Battle Test Data is an object.

Event triggering is an action applying to one visible thing, out of world.  Understand "trigger [any event driven scene]" as event triggering.

Carry out event triggering:
	say "[Noun] was triggered."

Testing Place is a room.  "This is where testing occurs."[/code]
The result of typing "trigger battle test" is "That noun did not make sense in this context."  At first I thought the 'Battle Test Data' object was confusing the parser, but I get the same result when I comment out any mention of that object.

It just seems the parser is refusing to understand 'Battle Test' as being something usable in this action.  I've looked around for remedies on scope and they are represented in the action (the use of 'visible' and 'any'), but no luck.  I've also tried making the action apply to 'one visible value' and 'one visible object' and while they compiled (which I did not expect to happen), they failed to make a difference.

I have found I can make it work if I make event driven scenes a [b]kind of thing[/b], but since they are not purposed for direct player character interaction and include properties I have no use for, it seems more appropriate to use [b]kind of object[/b].

There doesn't seem to be any reason I can see as to why this should not work as written.  Does anybody have any ideas?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3060&start=0#p21574
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF cover = Square ?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-21 11:40:34

Since a relatively low proportion of IF works are likely to be published in hard-copy, it doesn't make much sense to think of cover art in those terms. The most common use of cover art (apart from in the game itself) is going to be in a browser, either as an icon in a list (as with IFDB) or as an image accompanying a review or similar. Squares are a good shape for both of those; I was illustrating a [url=http://diden.net/~maga/ifrecs.html]recommended IF list[/url] well before cover art became common, and square graphics were the most natural choice.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3060&start=0#p21575
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF cover = Square ?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-21 11:41:50

It's nice if they're all the same aspect ratio -- makes it easier to lay out libraries and interface screens.

I think Graham picked square back when we were talking about how to embed cover art in blorb files. Square was as good as anything else.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3060&start=0#p21576
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF cover = Square ?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-08-21 11:53:56

[quote="RealNC"]Not sure I get the CD vs DVD thing. They're both exactly the same size...[/quote]
DVDs are usually packaged in larger boxes than CDs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3060&start=0#p21577
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF cover = Square ?
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-08-21 11:54:54

[quote="lribeiro"]Just wondering: is there a reason, other than a traditional one, for the general use of square covers (CD like) and not rectangular ones (DVD and book like)?

Inform7 documentation recommends it, and I imagine it being practical when printing CD sleeves, but when distributing, the DVD format is much more common, and for personal purposes, well, does anyone still burns one CD per IF game?[/quote]

I7 docs recommends a square format following [url=http://babel.ifarchive.org/]Treaty of Babel[/url] guidelines. There goes a copypaste:

[spoiler]2.1.2. Requirements and guidelines for cover art

A design system is not required to provide cover art for newly
published works. However, if it does choose to do so, then that
art must conform to the following requirements:

- Cover art must be a single square or rectangular JPEG or PNG
image to be used as visual identification of the work, like a CD
sleeve or a book jacket image. A PNG should not contain transparent
pixels.

- Each side of the image is required to have a minimum length of
120 pixels. The aspect ratio of the image is required to be between
1:2 and 2:1 inclusive (i.e., it can be twice as tall as it is wide,
or vice versa, but not more than that).

In addition, IF authors should be asked (in the documentation for the
design system) to follow the following guidelines:

- Cover art for new works of IF should be square. (While non-square cover
art is legal, this is provided mainly to enable scanned box covers to
serve as cover art for 1980s commercial IF story files.)

- The ideal dimensions for new cover art are 960 by 960.

- Neither height nor width should exceed 1200 pixels.

- Cover art should be designed in the expectation that it will often
be seen in a thumbnail form where the longer of the two sides is
reduced to 120 pixels. (Thus a square image will be 120 by 120, which
is about 3cm square on most screens.)

- Cover art should not actually invite prosecution for obscenity.
Those writing erotica should provide reasonably coy covers, as might
be acceptable to ordinary bookshops. The IF-Archive and other sites
are entitled to refuse to archive any items which do not follow this
guideline.

(Present builds of Inform 7 enforce the maximum-of-1200-pixels
guideline as an absolute rule, but that is Inform's choice, and not
a requirement of the treaty.)[/spoiler]

My guess is, if I understood it right, that the reason is certainly traditional, and it pretends to cover 80's commercial IF works. On second thought, only Infocom works were mainly square during their "greybox" years. Last Infocom releases didn't have a fixed box size, and their early games followed no standard at all. In fact, most european IF games used to have a rectangular cover during the 80's (Magnetic Scrolls, Level 9, the spanish Aventuras AD, just to name a few...)

Anyway, rectangular is legal within certain limits. I'm using square for my WIP and added a size chunk of black to make it look more "rectangular" as in an ordinary book. Unexpectedly I liked [url=http://www.rockersuke.com/if/hauntedhousei7/Cover.jpg]the result[/url], so it stays square!  [emote]:D[/emote] 

--

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3062&start=0#p21578
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Actions applied to Off-stage Objects
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-21 12:04:53

The parser can deal with kinds of things, and it deals (somewhat differently) with kinds of values, but objects which are neither seem to confuse it. The solution to your problem is Stop Doing That. :)

It might make sense for the parser to handle non-things the same way it handles kinds-of-value -- as opaque values which are not involved in scope or the world model. However, it doesn't. Kinds-of-object are really only useful for code that you write yourself. (For example, if you had a *phrase* "To trigger event (E - event driven scene): ..." that would be fine. But throwing them into the parser, no.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3060&start=0#p21579
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF cover = Square ?
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-08-21 12:07:06

[quote]Since a relatively low proportion of IF works are likely to be published in hard-copy, it doesn't make much sense to think of cover art in those terms.[/quote]

That's actually the reason I thought of asking: since I don't imagine much IF getting distributed or burned to CD, why the square? Many icons are rectangular, most software is "rectangular capable", and most games/books/movies/software have rectangular covers. Music albums are a sort of exception, but there's an historical reason to it, and so I thought there could be a reason why IF covers are ruled by square shapes.

[quote]
I think Graham picked square back when we were talking about how to embed cover art in blorb files. Square was as good as anything else.[/quote]

Is there still a technical difficulty with different aspect ratios, or did it just stick?

I'm asking because I was playing around with some ideas for a cover and the one I liked the most was rectangular, but I like the idea that a given genre shares these kind of things, and I was wondering if I would break something if sticking with the rectangular version.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2519&start=10#p21580
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: IF and Linux
User: The_Doctor / DateTime: 2011-08-21 12:13:13

Has anyone tried installing Inform 7 on Slackware 13.37 ?

I tried but got too many compiling errors...so I guess im stuck with I6 for now

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3038&start=0#p21581
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I might be a father....
User: The_Doctor / DateTime: 2011-08-21 12:14:40

False alarm i guess...she went to the doc and found out she cant have kids...[emote]:([/emote] at all...she's pretty broken up about it...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3060&start=0#p21582
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF cover = Square ?
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-08-21 12:15:56

The Babel spec doesn't say they have to be square. It supports rectangles up to 1x2 or 2x1 if I recall.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3061&start=0#p21583
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: A New Homage To Zork (As If We Needed One)
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-21 12:39:31

I tried to link to the Parchment version; after clicking on the name of the game from the list, I got a screen that said "Parchment
is an interpreter for Interactive Fiction, and now plays both Z-Machine and Glulx stories! Find out more."  It never opened the game itself.  Am I doing something really dumb?

Thanks.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3061&start=0#p21584
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: A New Homage To Zork (As If We Needed One)
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-08-21 12:44:09

[quote="Robert Rothman"]I tried to link to the Parchment version; after clicking on the name of the game from the list, I got a screen that said "Parchment
is an interpreter for Interactive Fiction, and now plays both Z-Machine and Glulx stories! Find out more."  It never opened the game itself.  Am I doing something really dumb?[/quote]

It works OK with me! Just a few seconds after that screen you mention Parchment loads the game and I can play with no problem (Firefox 3.6.3 under Windows 7)

--

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3062&start=0#p21585
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Actions applied to Off-stage Objects
User: HawkleyFox / DateTime: 2011-08-21 12:45:53

Then I kind of wonder why the index reports that my "event driven scene" object is something that is possible to "understand" when it is actually impossible to do so.

That is, there is a green check mark for the 'under' column for this kind of object in the kinds index.  A note at the bottom basically says what I am attempting to do is possible if that tick exists.

But, it is okay, if confusing.  I have been using other methods to carry out my tests.  Thank you very much for considering my issue.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3061&start=0#p21586
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: A New Homage To Zork (As If We Needed One)
User: Rotonoto / DateTime: 2011-08-21 13:07:29

I've had trouble with it under Internet Explorer, but not Firefox, Chrome or Safari. Sorry if you can't access the Parchment version. It's not a big download!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3063&start=0#p21587
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Translation
User: karahana / DateTime: 2011-08-21 14:38:54

Hi, I just recently discovered inform 7 and I like the way it works. I know translation is possible but could someone please show me the right direction. There doesn't seem to be any mention of it in the documentation and I can't just figure it out by checking out some of the translations. Thanks! [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3038&start=0#p21588
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: I might be a father....
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-08-21 15:15:19

I'm sorry.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3043&start=0#p21589
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Don't Screw IFComp
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-08-21 15:30:27

In the past, I remember seeing a lot of books, movies, technological thingies, a few cash donations... are there any suggestions on what makes a good prize to donate?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3060&start=0#p21590
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF cover = Square ?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-21 15:40:38

[quote="Trumgottist"][quote="RealNC"]Not sure I get the CD vs DVD thing. They're both exactly the same size...[/quote]
DVDs are usually packaged in larger boxes than CDs.[/quote]
Games? Usually not. I think you mean movies vs audio CDs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3064&start=0#p21591
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: [Hint request] Worlds Apart -- healing the pakal
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-08-21 16:04:35

I've been playing this game for a while, and I've come to an optional puzzle, which I would like to do for the sake of completeness.  The hint system tells me both that this puzzle is indeed optional and that I'll need to solve it during the current game state, before continuing with the main plot (which I haven't discovered how to do yet, either), if I'm going to solve it at all.

Here's my scenario:
[spoiler]The pakal creature is apparently sick from eating poisonous berries.  According to the information in the notebook, I should be able to heal it with the kalla leaves that I have already found in the forest.  Guided by the entry on "kalla" in the notebook, I've already crushed, boiled, and strained the leaves to produce mush.  However, the pakal won't eat the mush, and I can't try to do much else with it because the game prevents it from being taken out of the strainer.[/spoiler]

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3043&start=0#p21592
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Don't Screw IFComp
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-08-21 16:08:45

Is it allowed to both donate a prize and enter the competition?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3063&start=0#p21593
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Translation
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-21 16:17:33

Do you plan to translate Inform 7 into some new language? Which one?

Translation is mentioned in Chapter 25.26 of the documentation, but there is certainly no detailed info on how to proceed.

Generally speaking, you have to write an extension that replaces all English text that Inform standardly prints and whatever else needs replacing to account for the specific quirks of your target language (genders, inflections, cases etc.). 

Much of this is written in Inform 6, and if your target language is sufficiently unlike English, you will have to figure out what work is done by the relevant parts of the Inform 6 templates that Inform 7 constantly uses under the hood (if you're really lucky, you will only need to tinker with the Language Template, which is not too hard -- otherwise you may find yourself in the situation of the German translators, who have had to rewrite very substantial parts of the I6 machinery).

However, coming builds of Inform will apparently handle translation rather differently from now. So, the present translations are today in some respects unreliable guides on how to go about an Inform translation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3063&start=0#p21594
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Translation
User: karahana / DateTime: 2011-08-21 16:34:20

Thanks for the quick reply. I'd like to translate it into croatian. But I have a feeling it could get very complicated. I'll look into it and see if I'm up to it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3064&start=0#p21595
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: [Hint request] Worlds Apart -- healing the pakal
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-21 16:42:46

I haven't played this game (which sounds awesome) but my instincts say [spoiler]Maybe if you eat some of the mush in the presence of the pakal, it'll know that it's safe?[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3064&start=0#p21596
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: [Hint request] Worlds Apart -- healing the pakal
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-08-21 16:47:44

Hmm... that's a pretty good idea.

[spoiler]I tried eating the mush, but not in the presence of the pakal.  At least I don't think I did.[/spoiler]

I'll be sure to try that later.  You're a good adventure gamer.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3043&start=0#p21597
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Don't Screw IFComp
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-21 16:54:47

Sure, why not?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3061&start=0#p21598
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: A New Homage To Zork (As If We Needed One)
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-21 16:55:15

[quote="Robert Rothman"]I tried to link to the Parchment version; after clicking on the name of the game from the list, I got a screen that said "Parchment
is an interpreter for Interactive Fiction, and now plays both Z-Machine and Glulx stories! Find out more."  It never opened the game itself.  Am I doing something really dumb?

Thanks.


Robert Rothman[/quote]

I've had this problem before and assumed it was a browser thing, but if you've used Parchment before on [whatever browser] then I guess it must be something more mysterious...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3063&start=0#p21599
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Translation
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-21 17:09:43

Croatian seems to be rich in grammatical cases. That does complicate things. Still, as the German translation proves, it can be done. I can't tell if handling seven grammatical cases will be very much harder than handling four, but perhaps it isn't.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3060&start=0#p21600
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF cover = Square ?
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-21 17:20:44

If you're supposed to stick it in a DVD player, a Blu-Ray player, or a gaming console of the latest generation, it's one of those bigger cases...

If you're supposed to stick it in a CD player or a personal computer, it goes in a jewel case. (I think Dreamcast and earlier PlayStation games came in jewel cases too.) Although this isn't necessarily the case (HAR-DEE-HAR) for computer games anymore I guess.

Then again, I haven't bought a dang commercial computer game from a store, in disc format, in a long time. I suppose the trend now is to dispense with the plastic case and put the discs in the little envelopes—inside of a rectangular box that is probably the same size as a DVD case. (I still associate computer games with the jewel case size anyway, because of games like the Myst sequels that came in those huge awkward multi-disc cases that broke incredibly easily.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3062&start=0#p21601
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Actions applied to Off-stage Objects
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-21 18:04:25

[quote]Then I kind of wonder why the index reports that my "event driven scene" object is something that is possible to "understand" when it is actually impossible to do so.[/quote]

I'd call that a bug. Or a tree for the forest: the parser can *understand* the object but the action-handling machinery cannot handle it.

EDIT-ADD: Obviously (see following comments) I was wrong; the parser does *not* understand the object, because it is privately-named by default.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3060&start=10#p21602
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF cover = Square ?
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2011-08-21 18:22:32

For the coming Zifmia based Textfyre website, I had planned to recommend 200x300 pixel poster dimensioned art work.

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3063&start=0#p21603
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Translation
User: karahana / DateTime: 2011-08-21 18:24:59

We'll see. It's looks kinda scary atm.  [emote]:|[/emote]  [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3065&start=0#p21604
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Help with Amnesia!
User: alina / DateTime: 2011-08-21 18:37:14

Hello, I recently discovered the IF world and I'm liking it!
At the moment I'm playing Amnesia (1986) and i'm stuck because the character's energy keeps droping all the time.
Of course I comand him to eat and sleep (enough), but his energy level doesn't last very long as much as for me to play 5 or 6 commands and then he falls unconscious again.
Do you have any advice for me?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3064&start=0#p21605
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: [Hint request] Worlds Apart -- healing the pakal
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-21 19:36:36

You don't use herbal decoctions in real life, I'm guessing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3064&start=0#p21606
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: [Hint request] Worlds Apart -- healing the pakal
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-21 19:51:02

Now is that helpful?

[spoiler]I suspect what maga is trying to say is that you're not supposed to give it the mush, you're supposed to give it the water you strained through the mush. Or something like that. I don't drink tea myself.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3064&start=0#p21607
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: [Hint request] Worlds Apart -- healing the pakal
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-08-21 20:09:51

[quote="Afterward"]I haven't played this game (which sounds awesome) but my instincts say [spoiler]Maybe if you eat some of the mush in the presence of the pakal, it'll know that it's safe?[/spoiler][/quote]
Ah, well.  It didn't work.  It was a good thought, though.

[quote="matt w"][spoiler]I suspect what maga is trying to say is that you're not supposed to give it the mush, you're supposed to give it the water you strained through the mush. Or something like that. I don't drink tea myself.[/spoiler][/quote]
Hmm... I don't know how to do that, given what I've seen of the mechanics of the puzzle. [spoiler]I might as well try again and see if I can capture the water somehow.  The supply of kalla leaves seems to be unlimited, and the only way to get the mush out of the strainer removes the mush object from play, allowing the puzzle to be done over from scratch without restoring.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3064&start=0#p21608
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: [Hint request] Worlds Apart -- healing the pakal
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-21 21:01:02

Well, I haven't actually played the game -- my suggestion was a guess based on maga's comment. As I said, I don't use herbal decoctions either.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3063&start=0#p21611
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Translation
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-22 04:27:24

If you are serious about translating I7, I would wait until the next release. There are some big changes coming concerning how Inform 7 handles translations, so most work done on the current version would turn out to be wasted. (You could contact Graham Nelson if you wanted to know more, and to let him know of your intentions.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3063&start=0#p21612
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Translation
User: karahana / DateTime: 2011-08-22 04:55:54

I'll talk to some people to see if they'll work on it with me. I run a hacklab in Zagreb and I think we could adopt the i7 translation as a group project. Hope the others agree, they aren't really into IF - maybe if I get them to play nethack...  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3044&start=10#p21613
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Too sexy for this Comp
User: ultimate / DateTime: 2011-08-22 06:16:18

[quote]Potentially offensive images[/quote]

I'm glad you liked them. lulz

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3068&start=0#p21614
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Never Comp
User: ultimate / DateTime: 2011-08-22 06:46:09

After proving my point that you can't do pr0n in Interactive Fiction, because it's "potentially offensive", I share a list of things you should NEVER EVER submit to a Comp either:

1. Games who try to make a parody of Paul Panks
2. Labyrinths from which there is no escape from
3. Night Vision Goggles which do not work
4. Hookers who give hints
5. Instant deaths
6. Ninjas
7. Adventures which include all of the above in one game (see 1-7)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3068&start=0#p21615
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Never Comp
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-08-22 08:07:27

Although this fluffy frosting, or fluffy icing, is a little more time-consuming than my other recipes, the end result is well worth the effort.

1 cup sugar
1/3 cup water
2 egg whites

1. Combine sugar and water in a small saucepan and stir over medium heat until sugar is dissolved.

2. Increase heat and boil rapidly, without stirring, uncovered for 3 to 5 minutes. You can test by dropping 1 teaspoon of syrup into cold water - it should form a ball or soft sticky toffee when rolled between your fingers. The syrup should not change colour. If it has changed colour it has been cooked for too long and you will need to start again.

3. While syrup is boiling, beat egg whites in small bowl of electric mixer until stiff.

4. When syrup is ready, allow bubbles to subside, pour in a very thin stream on to the egg whites while they are beating on medium speed.

5. Continue slowly adding and beating until all syrup is used.

6. Continue to beat until frosting will stand in stiff peaks.

7. Tint by beating colour through in mixer or with a wooden spoon. Frosting can also be flavoured with half a teaspoon of any essence.

Frosting should be applied to the cake on the day frosting is made as the frosting will still be soft with a marshmallow consistency.

The cupcake frosting can become slightly crisp and lose some of its glossy appearance the following day.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3068&start=0#p21616
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Never Comp
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-22 08:10:22

Basically, an Italian meringue -- but I'm missing the relevance.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3068&start=0#p21617
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Never Comp
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-22 09:29:10

What downward cooking operation does it engage in when coming to the same thing?
[spoiler]It boils down.[/spoiler]
When?
[spoiler]In the end.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3064&start=0#p21618
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: [Hint request] Worlds Apart -- healing the pakal
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-22 09:31:41

[quote="matt w"]Now is that helpful?[/quote]
Some people, when they say they want a hint, mean that they want a vague pointer that's only marginally less obscure than the puzzle itself. Some people mean that they want the next step in the walkthrough. I usually try to err on the vague side, on the grounds that it can be corrected.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3068&start=0#p21619
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Never Comp
User: George / DateTime: 2011-08-22 10:06:01

[quote="Robert Rothman"]Basically, an Italian meringue -- but I'm missing the relevance.
[/quote]

[quote]In paleoforum times, a popular defense against marauding trolls was the 'pie defense'; to respond to a troll with a relatively nonsensical reply, often involving pie, its appreciation, and the making thereof. Cultural varieagation often resulted in variations on this technique; see [i]Evidence for Non-Pie Based Troll Defense[/i], S. Meretzyky and D. Adams, 1985. [/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3065&start=0#p21620
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Help with Amnesia!
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-22 10:28:25

I'm afraid you've probably run up against the most difficult puzzle in the game - trying to stay alive in this simulated Manhattan while investigating the plot.

I have no idea how to help you, as I ran into the same barrier. I would welcome some way of cheating my way through the simulationism, by either keeping my energy permanently at max, keeping it from ever going to zero, or slowing down the rate at which it decreases.

And if you do find a workable strategy, do let us know. [emote];)[/emote]

Incidently, I suppose it's possible that the frantic rate at which energy drops is to ensure the player spends that part of the game getting money and surviving, and that it slows down later. I wouldn't know, but it's possible, and only experimentation will tell.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3068&start=0#p21621
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Never Comp
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-22 10:43:21

That meringue sounds a little too involved for me.  Easier and more forgiving:

Peach Crumble

Grease a pan with butter.  Add 8-10 sliced fresh peaches.  Sprinkle cinnamon over every layer.  Add a handful of brown sugar over the top if the peaches are not perfectly ripe.

Mix 1/2 to 1 cup quick cook rolled oats and/or whole wheat flour, about 1/4 cup brown sugar, a sprinkle of salt, and 2-3 tablespoons butter.  Mix with hands.  You're looking for a slightly crumblier than cookie dough consistency, but it's hard to go wrong.  Put on top of peaches.  

Bake peach crumble in 350*F oven for 30-60 minutes.  (I like mine at 75 minutes - everything is redolent with cinnamon and the peaches have that roasted thing happening, but you'll have more liquid than you normally would.)  

If you're feeling extra indulgent, consume with dulce de leche ice cream from Haagen Daez.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3063&start=0#p21622
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Translation
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-08-22 11:08:44

What's a hacklab?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3061&start=0#p21623
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: A New Homage To Zork (As If We Needed One)
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-08-22 11:16:30

I see the message a fraction of a second while the game is loading, but then the game replaces it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3063&start=0#p21624
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Translation
User: karahana / DateTime: 2011-08-22 11:28:15

A hacklab, media lab or hackerspace is basically an open space for compter enthuiasts. <a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackerspace">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackerspace</a> 

There are tons of hacklabs all over the world and all of them do different things. We at hacklab01 collect old PCs and give them away to people who ask (you wouldn't believe how hard it can be to give something away), and promote the use of open source (as opposed to propietary) software - mainly Linux as opposed to Windows. We have free open-source related workshops and help people do the transition from Windows to Linux (if they want). Also a couple of advanced geeky Linux workshops like PAM or setting up a (secure) server enviroment. We alo do a lot of sitting around and drinking beer / coffee / playing games / talking about possible future projects (like this one). [emote]:)[/emote] We also offer free internet access (cybercaffe style) on recycled PCs. We're situated in Zagreb's AKC Medika. <a class="postlink" href="http://pierottijeva11.org/info/english">http://pierottijeva11.org/info/english</a>

Anyway check it out if you like. <a class="postlink" href="http://hacklab01.org">http://hacklab01.org</a> Croatian only - english version is in the works.

Edit: sorry for the OT - the man asked. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2519&start=10#p21625
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: IF and Linux
User: karahana / DateTime: 2011-08-22 11:36:55

What about a [i]native[/i] CLI interpreter. Gargoyle and zoom are both cool but both require an X session to be active. I'd like to be able to play my games from anywhere by simply SSHing to my box.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2519&start=10#p21626
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: IF and Linux
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-22 11:46:23

[quote="karahana"]What about a [i]native[/i] CLI interpreter. Gargoyle and zoom are both cool but both require an X session to be active. I'd like to be able to play my games from anywhere by simply SSHing to my box.[/quote]
There's many of them. Either designed for terminals (Frotz, Fizmo, FrobTADS) or running through GlkTerm (Git, Glulxe).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2519&start=10#p21627
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: IF and Linux
User: karahana / DateTime: 2011-08-22 11:52:04

I haven't yet found one that runs zblorb files. But hey, I'm pretty much a n00b in IF. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3069&start=0#p21628
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: inform 7: riding a horse
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-08-22 11:54:16

I included rideable vehicles. I can mount my horse but i cant ride it somewhere.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3069&start=0#p21629
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: riding a horse
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-22 12:36:22

Can you post short example code that demonstrates the problem?  My crude test case doesn't have that problem, so in all likelihood, there's something going on in your code.

[code]Include Rideable Vehicles by Graham Nelson.

The horse is a rideable animal.  The horse is in the Moat.

The Moat is a room.  The Moat is north of The Lake.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3069&start=0#p21630
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: riding a horse
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-08-22 12:46:40

[code]Include Rideable Vehicles by Graham Nelson.
 Star is a female Rideable animal. a dead horse is a female animal in the huge glass container.[/code]
[code]Understand "pony"and "quarterhorse" as the dead horse.  

Before examining the dead horse for the first time:
  now Star is in huge glass container.; now dead horse is off-stage.

After examining the dead horse for the first time: 
   now the description of the dead horse is "A brown quarterhorse with a white star on its forehead."
[/code]

i can mount star but when i try to ride her somewhere it says i only understood you as far as wanting to ride Star, and if i mount her then just write go a direction she doesnt come with me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3069&start=0#p21631
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: riding a horse
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-22 12:59:58

Is the huge glass container an enterable container? From a little experimenting, it seems as though you can't ride animals into enterable containers, at least not by default, and if you type "exit" when you're on a rideable animal inside a container then you'll get off the animal instead of out of the container. Perhaps you're getting off the horse before you exit the container, and that's why the horse isn't coming with you? On my little test (pasted below) I could get out of the stall and into the next room by typing "w," but I couldn't get back into the stall with the horse.

[code]Include Rideable Vehicles by Graham Nelson.

The stable is a room. The stall is an enterable container in the stable.

The horse is a rideable animal. The horse is in the stall.

The yard is west of the stable.

test me with "ride horse/ exit/exit/w/e/ride horse/w/e/enter stall".
	[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3069&start=0#p21632
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: riding a horse
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-08-22 13:03:56

[quote="matt w"]Is the huge glass container an enterable container? From a little experimenting, it seems as though you can't ride animals into enterable containers, at least not by default, and if you type "exit" when you're on a rideable animal inside a container then you'll get off the animal instead of out of the container. Perhaps you're getting off the horse before you exit the container, and that's why the horse isn't coming with you? On my little test (pasted below) I could get out of the stall and into the next room by typing "w," but I couldn't get back into the stall with the horse.

[code]Include Rideable Vehicles by Graham Nelson.

The stable is a room. The stall is an enterable container in the stable.

The horse is a rideable animal. The horse is in the stall.

The yard is west of the stable.

test me with "ride horse/ exit/exit/w/e/ride horse/w/e/enter stall".
	[/code][/quote]

You cant ride star when its in the container, thats the way i want it. But when Star is out of the container you still can ride her anywhere. (star and dead horse are two differnt horses, dead horse gets replaced by Star)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3070&start=0#p21633
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Linking back and forth between Twine and Inform 7
User: anonymaus / DateTime: 2011-08-22 13:41:35

Dear Friends,

I am in need of some assistance.  For my current project, I am attempting to create a narrative in which the interactor navigates through the story starting with the hyperlink functionality of Twine, and linking from there, also play in Inform.  Thus, as the story progresses, the interactor switches back and forth between the two programs. 

Initially, the plan was for Twine part of the game be playable in HTML, so linking to a released Inform project is simple enough...I believe.  The real tricky part is linking to websites from Inform.

Please, if anybody may be of assistance, I ask for aid.


Cordially,

a. maus

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3069&start=0#p21634
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: riding a horse
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-22 13:48:56

You'll need to post a little more of your code, then. Can you trim it down to a complete bit that gives you the problem?

Also, are you sure that Star isn't coming with you? When you go in a direction while mounted on an animal, it won't print a special message for the animal going with you; you can tell you're still on Star because the new room name that prints above the room description will say "Veterinarian's Quarters (on Star)" or something like that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3068&start=0#p21635
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Never Comp
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-22 13:54:57

[quote]In paleoforum times, a popular defense against marauding trolls was the 'pie defense'[/quote]

Ah, I was not aware of this.  I'm a firm believer in the utility of pie-tossing.  However, as a traditionalist I usually go for the simple shaving cream variety.  If it was good enough for the Three Stooges and Soupy Sales, it's good enough for me!

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3069&start=0#p21636
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: riding a horse
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-08-22 13:58:48

It doesnt say on (star) can i just post all of it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3069&start=0#p21637
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: riding a horse
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-08-22 14:02:24

[quote="ilovemyhedgehog"]It doesnt say on (star) can i just post all of it?[/quote]
[code]the pale blue liquid is in huge glass container. a dead horse is a female animal in the huge glass container.
Star is a female rideable animal. [/code]

[code]Understand "pony"and "quarterhorse" as the dead horse.  

Before examining the dead horse for the first time:
  now Star is in huge glass container.; now dead horse is off-stage.

After examining the dead horse for the first time: 
   now the description of the dead horse is "A brown quarterhorse with a white star on its forehead."


The description of the dead horse is "A brown quarterhorse with a white star on its forehead. You name the horse Star."

The description of the huge glass container is "A massive glass container filled with pale blue liquid, with a dead horse floating in it."
Understand "horse" and "pony" and "quarterhorse" and "mount" as Star. [/code]

[code]Understand "horse" and "pony" and "quarterhorse" and "mount" as Star. petting is an action applying to one thing.
Understand "pet [something]" as petting.

Report petting the goose when the goose is in the cage:
say "The goose would probably not like that!"
Report petting the goose when the goose is not in the cage:
say "The goose looks at you with love in her eyes."

Report petting Star when Star is in huge glass container:
say "You start petting Star and the unthinkable happens! Star starts swimming in the tank! Star is alive!"; Move Star to Room of Horrors. 
Report petting Star when Star is not in the huge glass container:
say "Star whinneys with delight when you pet her."

The description of Star is "[if the player is human]A beautiful chestnut quarter horse with a white star on her forehead.[otherwise if the player is Star]You are a Beautiful chestnut quarter horse![otherwise if the player is goose] A horible ugly longfaced creature!" [/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3069&start=0#p21638
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: riding a horse
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-22 14:27:40

That still doesn't seem to be causing a problem for me. I had to add a little stuff to the beginning of your code to make it a complete compilable game (needed to define Room of Horrors, and the cage and the goose, and the property human, and put another room in to ride away from). But when I did that, there was no problem riding Star.

Here's what I had (the whole code):

[spoiler][code]Include Rideable Vehicles by Graham Nelson. 

Room of Horrors is a room. The huge glass container is a container in Room of Horrors.
Room of Non-Horrors is west of Room of Horrors. The cage is in Room of Non-Horrors. The goose is an animal in the cage.
A woman called Hedwig is in Room of Horrors. The player is Hedwig.
Definition: a person is human if it is not an animal.

the pale blue liquid is in huge glass container. a dead horse is a female animal in the huge glass container.
Star is a female rideable animal. 

Understand "pony"and "quarterhorse" as the dead horse. 

Before examining the dead horse for the first time:
	 now Star is in huge glass container;  now dead horse is off-stage.

After examining the dead horse for the first time:
	now the description of the dead horse is "A brown quarterhorse with a white star on its forehead."

The description of the dead horse is "A brown quarterhorse with a white star on its forehead. You name the horse Star."

The description of the huge glass container is "A massive glass container filled with pale blue liquid, with a dead horse floating in it."
Understand "horse" and "pony" and "quarterhorse" and "mount" as Star. 

Understand "horse" and "pony" and "quarterhorse" and "mount" as Star. petting is an action applying to one thing.
Understand "pet [something]" as petting.

Report petting the goose when the goose is in the cage:
	say "The goose would probably not like that!"
Report petting the goose when the goose is not in the cage:
	say "The goose looks at you with love in her eyes."

Report petting Star when Star is in huge glass container:
	say "You start petting Star and the unthinkable happens! Star starts swimming in the tank! Star is alive!"; Move Star to Room of Horrors.
Report petting Star when Star is not in the huge glass container:
	say "Star whinneys with delight when you pet her."

The description of Star is "[if the player is human]A beautiful chestnut quarter horse with a white star on her forehead.[otherwise if the player is Star]You are a Beautiful chestnut quarter horse![otherwise if the player is goose] A horible ugly longfaced creature!" [/code][/spoiler]

If you type "x horse/pet star/ride star/w" then you should get "Room of Non-Horrors (on Star)" to start the room description.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3069&start=0#p21639
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: riding a horse
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-08-22 14:37:36

[code]Instead of going west to Dim Lit Room when glass wall is broken: say "You carefully try to avoid stepping on the pieces of glass on the floor."; move player to Dim Lit Room.;now glass pieces are in Dim Lit Room.
[/code]

Maybie this code is the problem. this is the room west of room of Horrors.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3069&start=10#p21640
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: riding a horse
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-08-22 14:41:21

[quote="ilovemyhedgehog"][code]Instead of going west to Dim Lit Room when glass wall is broken: say "You carefully try to avoid stepping on the pieces of glass on the floor."; move player to Dim Lit Room.;now glass pieces are in Dim Lit Room.
[/code]

Maybie this code is the problem. this is the room west of room of Horrors.[/quote]

I just copied what i had and put it on a new game without this code and it worked, then i did it with and it didnt. must be this code. any idea how to fix this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3069&start=10#p21641
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: riding a horse
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-08-22 14:44:15

Try making it a [b]before[/b] rule rather than an [b]instead[/b]. Using "instead" bypasses the usual movement rules.

[code]Before going west to Dim Lit Room when glass wall is broken: 
say "You carefully try to avoid stepping on the pieces of glass on the floor.";
now glass pieces are in Dim Lit Room.[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3069&start=10#p21642
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: riding a horse
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-08-22 14:48:32

[quote="ektemple"]Try making it a [b]before[/b] rule rather than an [b]instead[/b]. Using "instead" bypasses the usual movement rules.

[code]Before going west to Dim Lit Room when glass wall is broken: 
say "You carefully try to avoid stepping on the pieces of glass on the floor.";
now glass pieces are in Dim Lit Room.[/code]

--Erik[/quote]
I just did this just before you posted and it worked!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3063&start=0#p21643
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Translation
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-08-22 14:54:36

[quote="karahana"]Edit: sorry for the OT - the man asked. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
So I did (I hope nobody minded the OT). Thanks for the answer. Interesting.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2519&start=10#p21644
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: IF and Linux
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-22 14:55:30

nfrotz is a terminal-window interpreter that handles zblorb.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3035&start=0#p21645
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Heal Butcher, agency, and the reader experience
User: Lumin / DateTime: 2011-08-22 15:27:32

[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=0stz0hr7a98bp9mp]Rameses[/url] is the first similar game that comes to mind (similar in the lack of control you have over the player character...I don't think I've ever played anything with a similar tone and writing style to HealButcher's work) and might be a game the average IFer is more familiar with for the purpose of this discussion.

...I also distinctly remember playing a game once where the main character was a vase, I can't remember the title but I'm almost certain I didn't hallucinate the whole thing. Maybe somebody can help me out here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3068&start=0#p21646
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Never Comp
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-22 15:27:40

[quote]Peach Crumble

[/quote]

My own take on this one would be to scrap the oats in favor of some ground almonds or cashews.  I like to grind about one-half of the nuts to a fine powder, with the remainder a little coarser.  I'd also up the butter content.  Finally, with a very juicy fruit such as peaches, I might add just a touch of cornstarch to thicken it up a little (although not enough to produce the kind of overly thick, gloppy concoction found in commercial pies).

Actually, with peaches in season right now, I guess I should prepare one of these.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3068&start=0#p21647
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Never Comp
User: Lumin / DateTime: 2011-08-22 15:33:15

I was just fixing to write a long post about a game design question I had but screw it now, off to the store for peaches.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=90#p21648
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-22 15:34:22

Can anyone point me in the direction of some TADS stories that have a cover embedded in them? I don't seem to have any in my collection and I'm not sure how I'd specifically search for such a thing.

Just to keep everyone updated, I spent the whole weekend coding. Using a fairly robust set of test cases, I can verify that my code exactly replicates the output of the official Treaty of Babel software for adrift, agt, alan, blorbed anything, DOS executables, glulx, hugo, level 9, magnetic scrolls, tads and zcode. That means no more funky, mis-generated IFIDs, more autodetection of a larger part of your library, etc. I'm putting the finishing touches on that now by adding coverart extraction for blorbs and tads games. The next release will mostly consist of this and some bugs related to import and not much cosmetic. Hopefully it'll come some time this week...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3035&start=0#p21649
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Heal Butcher, agency, and the reader experience
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-22 15:35:31

[quote]I also distinctively remember playing a game once where the main character was a vase[/quote]

Somehow, I get the following picture:

[quote]
>Put roses in me
  You insert the bouquet of long-stemmed roses into your orifice, and almost immediately succumb to your internal injuries.  Perhaps you should have trimmed the thorns first.

   *****You Have Died*****
[/quote]

 [emote]:cry:[/emote] 
Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3064&start=0#p21650
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: [Hint request] Worlds Apart -- healing the pakal
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-08-22 15:37:47

[quote="maga"]Some people, when they say they want a hint, mean that they want a vague pointer that's only marginally less obscure than the puzzle itself. Some people mean that they want the next step in the walkthrough. I usually try to err on the vague side, on the grounds that it can be corrected.[/quote]
Searching the web for "herbal decotion", along with Matt's suggestion, turned out to be all the help I needed.  Thanks, everyone. [emote]:)[/emote]

And if you haven't played [i]World's Apart[/i] and you're wondering if you should give it a try, it's a good bet that you probably should!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3035&start=0#p21651
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Heal Butcher, agency, and the reader experience
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-22 15:38:33

[quote="Lumin"]...I also distinctively remember playing a game once where the main character was a vase, I can't remember the title but I'm almost certain I didn't hallucinate the whole thing. Maybe somebody can help me out here.[/quote]

[url=http://mbays.freeshell.org/constraints-en.html]Constraints by Martin Bays.[/url] I enjoyed it a lot more than Rameses, though I played Rameses early on in my IF experience so maybe I wasn't prepared for the joke. [EDIT: OK, "joke" is not quite the right word. I should check out Mr. Butcher's works.]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=90#p21652
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-22 15:43:25

[quote="jakobcreutzfeldt"]Can anyone point me in the direction of some TADS stories that have a cover embedded in them? I don't seem to have any in my collection and I'm not sure how I'd specifically search for such a thing.[/quote]
[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=sicva377zqygxcq2]Return to Ditch Day[/url], [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=x8toy0ku3y2af6se]Dead Like Ants[/url] and [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=c8qs0xgkkfp5u6u4]Macrocosm[/url] come to mind. To see if a TADS game has cover art, you can open it in [url=http://qtads.sourceforge.net/downloads.shtml]QTads[/url] (at least v2.1.1) and select "Game->View Metadata". It will also show you other metadata entries, not just cover art.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=90#p21653
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-22 15:59:36

Cool, thanks for the links. I don't have QTads but I do have Babel, for CLI goodness [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3068&start=0#p21654
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Never Comp
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-22 16:00:45

[quote="Robert Rothman"][quote]Peach Crumble

[/quote]

My own take on this one would be to scrap the oats in favor of some ground almonds or cashews.  I like to grind about one-half of the nuts to a fine powder, with the remainder a little coarser.  I'd also up the butter content.  Finally, with a very juicy fruit such as peaches, I might add just a touch of cornstarch to thicken it up a little (although not enough to produce the kind of overly thick, gloppy concoction found in commercial pies).

Actually, with peaches in season right now, I guess I should prepare one of these.


Robert Rothman[/quote]

Ooh, that does sound promising.  And more butter is always a good thing.  I like my crumble juicy, because then the ice cream melts into the warm juice and it's double plus good.  Or if you leave it overnight in the fridge, it's a more traditional consistency.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=90#p21655
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-22 16:06:50

I don't know if all TADS games conform to Babel though. TADS has its own metadata standard and not all of it maps to Babel.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=90#p21656
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-22 16:15:37

Babel is able to read tads metadata well, from what I can tell. It's the ifiction specification with which tads is certainly....eh, not incompatible....supercompatible? Anyway, the Babel source code has functions for extracting tads coverart but according to that program, the games you listed don't have coverart (well, still waiting for Macrocosm to download; it's either slow or huge). If this is a problem that is inherent to Babel, I don't forsee myself including tads coverart extraction, at least not now. The Babel sourcecode gives me ample insight into how to unpack these binary files, but if I have to figure out how to extract the cover art myself, it will take a lot more research and time to implement...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=90#p21657
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-22 16:29:42

Nevermind, it found coverart in Macrocosm. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2519&start=10#p21658
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: IF and Linux
User: karahana / DateTime: 2011-08-22 16:34:32

Allright! [emote]:)[/emote] Tnx! [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3069&start=10#p21659
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7: riding a horse
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-22 17:27:46

[quote] Perhaps you're getting off the horse before you exit the container[/quote]

Is that sort of like putting the cart before the horse?

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3070&start=0#p21660
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Linking back and forth between Twine and Inform 7
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-08-22 17:34:08

The poster is a student of mine--- I think the biggest technical issue here is how to make a Parchment-targeted Inform 7 project display a hyperlink to an external webpage. If you include actual HTML I believe the engine will convert it to &lt; etc. symbols. Anyone know if there is a way around this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=90#p21661
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-08-22 17:49:59

I've exposed the Babel record in v5 TAFs in the latest version as raw text. I'll update the Babel code to extract if I get time, but it should be pretty self explanatory.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3070&start=0#p21662
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Linking back and forth between Twine and Inform 7
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-08-22 17:59:52

[quote="aaronius"]The poster is a student of mine--- I think the biggest technical issue here is how to make a Parchment-targeted Inform 7 project display a hyperlink to an external webpage. If you include actual HTML I believe the engine will convert it to &lt; etc. symbols. Anyone know if there is a way around this?[/quote]

Could you surgically insert a little javascript to change the symbols back into entities before "printing" them?

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3035&start=0#p21663
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Heal Butcher, agency, and the reader experience
User: Lumin / DateTime: 2011-08-22 20:01:18

That was it, thanks Matt! I played again, and it was just as infuriating as I remembered. [emote]:)[/emote]

Heal Butcher's stuff is definitely...unique, I do recommend you check them out if you've got a few minutes. It's a shame he seems to have pretty much disappeared after writing a couple of games, I would've have liked to see what his work eventually evolved into. It's kind of sad Silk Noil and As the Wheels Turn are both so tiny, though I imagine the writing style would have been really difficult to keep consistent in a full-sized game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3035&start=0#p21664
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Heal Butcher, agency, and the reader experience
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-08-22 20:35:38

[quote="Lumin"]It's kind of sad Silk Noil and As the Wheels Turn are both so tiny, though I imagine the writing style would have been really difficult to keep consistent in a full-sized game.[/quote]
Although in general I wanted more, I think their being quick reads is a strength in both pieces.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3071&start=0#p21665
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: When "you" is not YOU
User: Lumin / DateTime: 2011-08-22 21:37:23

I have this dilemma when designing games. 

All of my current (and probably future) WIPs are set in detailed fictional worlds. The characters were not existing in a void until the player dropped in for a visit; they all have their own backgrounds and lives and way of seeing the world. 

Personally, I don't have any real problems with slipping into a well-defined character's head and roleplaying a bit, even if they're written with a strong personality that is most definitely not mine. But a lot of players do seem to find it off-putting. 

When a character referred to "you" does things you wouldn't do, or in a way you wouldn't do them, or has an opinion or feeling that doesn't match yours, does it take you out of the game? And what is the alternative? A silent, personality-less cipher? The more emphasis you have on plot and characters the harder that is to pull off. Amnesia? A good chunk of the plot's focus would then have to be on how and why they wound up in that condition, instead of the story you wanted to tell. 

In the CYOA I'm working on I get around this by switching to a third person point of view and just straight up telling the player that while they get to influence the character's life, she's her own individual and not meant to represent the person reading the story. But I think this works primarily because the way that particular adventure is set up is closer to reading and influencing a novel than playing a game.

But I personally have never been able to stand POV switching in IF. I know first person's been done, but I can't think of any example where third has been effective. It's just too distancing and distracting. And so I'm right back where I started: Distancing the player from the character is bad, but involving them too closely with the character's thoughts and feelings can backfire. Yet soulless husks with no previous life or personality is bad too, for obvious reasons.                

What would be the ideal middle ground here?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3071&start=0#p21666
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When "you" is not YOU
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-22 23:04:11

[quote]When a character referred to "you" does things you wouldn't do, or in a way you wouldn't do them, or has an opinion or feeling that doesn't match yours, does it take you out of the game?[/quote]

No. Not me.

This is a matter of what the audience is used to. (I learned that recently when I found people who were thrown out of books by *first-person* narration. When a character referred to as "I" did things that I wouldn't do... same complaint, opposite side.)

The IF audience -- at least, the one we've got now -- is used to second-person narration. How distracting other people find it is hard for me to judge, because I've been used to this for *a long time now*, but I don't believe it's a major contributing factor in how most newcomers react to IF.

Similarly, Charles Stross has written two second-person SF novels recently. The "you" narration is distinctive, but I haven't found reviewers saying they're repulsed by it. As a writing technique it's not noticeably different from first-person; you can do the same things with it. It's just a different style.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3071&start=0#p21667
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When "you" is not YOU
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-22 23:08:46

Games that put you in control of someone use second-person anyway. People are used to it, so that should be the safest bet for any kind of computer game that puts you in control of someone (be it an FPS, RPG or adventure game.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3071&start=0#p21668
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When "you" is not YOU
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-22 23:15:26

[i]whoops, I wrote too much and took too much time to write it~~~[/i]

Players of IF have to learn to roll with the punches when it comes to well-realized protagonists. Video games often involve directing their protagonists to do things that the player wouldn't do, even if the player were in the same situation as the protagonist. The fact that the player identifies with the written pronoun "you" instead of a picture of Samus Aran doesn't make IF an exception.

I think the issue is analogous to some extent with the issue some people have with less-than-perfect characters in prose fiction. You've heard of situations where someone reads a novel about a man who, although apparently a sympathetic character, nonetheless cheats on his wife and is a big old racist, and the reader assumes that the author cheats on his wife and is a big old racist, or at least that the author thinks these things aren't problematic. When this becomes an issue, the the cure isn't for authors to dumb down their work, but for readers to think more critically about what they're reading.

Maybe learning something shocking! about a protagonist will take some people "out of the game" (people who seem to want it both ways: They want to be immersed in the world of the game, but they don't want the game to define them in a way they don't like), but what's more distracting and detracts more from the experience is a game that goes out of its way to mitigate the issue. (In this wide world of ours there are probably good reasons to write IF in first and third person, but "so as not to offend the reader's delicate sensibilities" is not one of them.)

I think that's a problem you'll have if you include that disclaimer in your CYOA: While I don't know the minds of your target audience, I think if I read something like that, I'm afraid I'd feel like the author was talking down to me, like they had to explain to me how a computer game works.

[quote="zarf"](I learned that recently when I found people who were thrown out of books by *first-person* narration. When a character referred to as "I" did things that I wouldn't do... same complaint, opposite side.)[/quote]

This is crazy and hilarious! Do these people ever just drop books after the first sentence because their name isn't "Ishmael"?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2821&start=20#p21669
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Choicescript - What the Hell?
User: Lumin / DateTime: 2011-08-22 23:43:37

Awesome forum, thanks for logging me out in the middle of my essay-length post! Sure, I'd love to write it again!  [emote]:evil:[/emote] 

Sigh.

So anyway...

Sorry for necroing the thread, but I was just browsing around, and I had no idea there was this kind of hate for CYOAs out there. Granted, I haven't played any of the contest entries in question, and I've only messed around with a couple of the Choice Of games in the past, but the genre is kind of a passion of mind.

First, I don't get how anyone can say it doesn't count as interactive fiction. It's fiction...that you effect the outcome of...by interacting with it, and depending on the style the author's going for--interactive novel, RPG, or exploration and puzzle solving--it can track inventory and a host of other variables, include a combat and skill system, etc. It can be just as complex as traditional IF, just in a different way. (Though then again there are CYOAs that do a decent job imitating IF, and IF written in the style of CYOAs, so the water is significantly muddied here) 

There are exceptions, but IF tends to focus more on micro actions (you want to leave the room = x desk, open drawer, get key, unlock door with key, out) while CYOAs--especially the interactive novel sort that I'm most familiar with--often take a broader approach (the family inn is failing = sell it now and get out VS visit a shady loan shark VS set up gambling tables and hire hookers...and these are not just cosmetic choices, each one leads to a completely different play experience.)       

A hallmark of good IF is creating the [i]illusion[/i] of freedom, but most puzzles only have one solution, and games with true multiple paths are rare. Just straight up showing the options that are available may take away from the 'game' elements of hunting for them, but where CYOAs shine is in offering meaningful choices with real consequences. 

In a CYOA, whether you made the right choice or the wrong one, the story keeps moving. The puzzles aren't about figuring out the specific command that will allow the plot to progress, they're about manipulating the plot itself. A rash action in the character's youth may come back to haunt them thirty years later, a nation might fall into decline or enter a golden age because of the person they helped put into power, there may be people they never meet and entire storypaths you'll have to save for subsequent playthroughs because you decided they were going to follow a guide through the mountains instead of traveling by ship...and of course there can be entire stories hidden within [i]those[/i] stories too. 

So I guess what I'm saying is that while I can understand if CYOAs are a thing some people just personally can't get into or aren't interested in, it might be better to be a little more informed about what they're about and what they can do before dismissing the entire medium out of hand.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2821&start=20#p21670
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Choicescript - What the Hell?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-22 23:58:09

If there's no parser, it can't be IF. Damn the day when Infocom decided to stop calling them "text adventures" and came up with "interactive fiction".

You can't just take the words "interactive" and "fiction" and apply them everywhere. There are terms in this life that refer to very specific things. To keep it somewhat related, you can't call Dungeons and Dragons an "adventure game" just because there's artwork with graphics in the books and you're having an adventure while playing. No. Whether you like it or not, "adventure game" refers to a certain type of game. In the same manner, you can't just come up with something that is "interactive" and "fiction" and call it Interactive Fiction.

Please! "Choose Your Own Adventure" is a perfectly fine term. Why on earth would you want to confuse the genre in the first place? With that logic, we can also describe Zork as a CYOA work. Because it's an adventure and you're making choices. But it *isn't* what people expect a CYOA game to be.

So don't do it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3072&start=0#p21671
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Removing a Default Message?
User: QueenoftheCapes / DateTime: 2011-08-23 00:00:04

Specifically, the "so-and-so comes with you" from an accompanying NPC.  I've been searching through the code, trying to figure out what property or method I need to tweak, but it's like looking for a flea in a bowl of rice.  [emote]:roll:[/emote] 

Basically, I want to replace "X comes with you" with my own message.  I tried adapting the beforetravel method:

[code]
+hansFollow: AccompanyingState
    isInitState = true
    beforeTravel(traveler, connector)
    {
        "Hans <<rand('comes along with', 'follows', 'stays by')>> you, 
        <<rand(nil, 'tightly')>>
        <<rand('clinging to', 'holding on to' )>> your apron. ";
        inherited(traveler, connector);
    }
;
[/code]

and all it really did was [i]add[/i] my lines to the default message. 

[quote]
Hans is standing here. 

>s

(first opening the back door)
Hans follows you, tightly holding on to your apron. [b]Hans comes with you. [/b]
[/quote]

/sigh.  Can anyone help me out, here?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3071&start=0#p21672
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When "you" is not YOU
User: Lumin / DateTime: 2011-08-23 00:21:10

Okay, so it seems getting into the character's head is not in itself a problem for most people familiar with IF...though I'm sure a lot depends on how the relevant information about who "you" are is fed to the player. (I can remember playing a couple of games where what the character [i]refused[/i] to do developed them just as much as their actual actions.) 

I'm suspecting then that at least one complaint I got about one of my games might have had more to do with the fact that I just love my cut scenes, but that's a whole nother topic...  

[quote="Afterward"]
I think that's a problem you'll have if you include that disclaimer in your CYOA: While I don't know the minds of your target audience, I think if I read something like that, I'm afraid I'd feel like the author was talking down to me, like they had to explain to me how a computer game works.
[/quote]

I get your point, but the disclaimer is part of a general introduction and necessary for other reasons too--CYOAs with heavier emphasis on game elements are more common and usually better received there and my intention is just to let readers know up front what they can expect--and while I'll try to avoid giving it a 'talking down' tone, the fact is no matter what you do any major release is going to draw attention from some pretty [i]special[/i] people--the site's community has a pretty wide range as far as age and writing experience goes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2821&start=20#p21673
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Choicescript - What the Hell?
User: Lumin / DateTime: 2011-08-23 00:35:02

I agree that in most situations the terms ought to be kept separate to avoid confusion, but at their core they're very similar things that attract a very similar audience. And depending on how the author chooses to frame and present their game they can be almost interchangeable. (there are 50 games with CYOA tags on the IFDB, and I've played a couple of CYOAs in browsers where you move from location to location, collecting items to solve puzzles)  

Just out of curiosity, would you say a game like [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=fcas37p9u01i2sij]One Week[/url] (written in TADS) shouldn't be allowed to enter IF competitions?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3072&start=0#p21674
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Removing a Default Message?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-08-23 00:36:18

Untested, but looking at AccompanyingState in the Library Reference Manual, its superclass tree includes TravelMessageHandler, from which it inherits a variety of methods, including sayArriving and sayDeparting. Most likely you want to override some of those.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2821&start=20#p21675
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Choicescript - What the Hell?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-23 00:45:17

[quote="Lumin"]I agree that in most situations the terms ought to be kept separate to avoid confusion, but at their core they're very similar things that attract a very similar audience. And depending on how the author chooses to frame and present their game they can be almost interchangeable.[/quote]Then come up with term that encompasses both IF as well as CYOA as its sub genres. For CYOA to be almost interchangeable with IF, it would need a parser. Of course if a CYOA work has a parser, then it would qualify as IF.

[quote="Lumin"]Just out of curiosity, would you say a game like [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=fcas37p9u01i2sij]One Week[/url] (written in TADS) shouldn't be allowed to enter IF competitions?[/quote]If it was up to me, no. The language used to write something is an implementation detail. It could just as well have been written in C or whatever.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=100#p21676
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-23 02:55:52

[quote="Campbell"]I've exposed the Babel record in v5 TAFs in the latest version as raw text. I'll update the Babel code to extract if I get time, but it should be pretty self explanatory.[/quote]

Awesome! Even if you can just point me in the direction of some documentation (or just describe it to me) on where in the file I can find the data, and maybe what kind of checks I can do to verify the file (ie the claim_story_file functions in Babel), I can just write it myself. Thanks!!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3070&start=0#p21677
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Linking back and forth between Twine and Inform 7
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-23 03:47:03

I'm working on a more robust solution, but in the meanwile I hacked together a little script that turns {http://example.com Link name} into a hypertext link.

Edit the main HTML file (if you use the release with an interpreter option it's play.html, otherwise index.html). Add the following script somewhere appropriate, just before the </body> tag at the end is a good place:

[code]<script>
$( document ).bind( 'TextOutput', function( data ) {
    $( '#content' ).html( $( '#content' ).html().replace( /{(.*?)([\< ].*?)}/g, '<a href="$1" target="_blank">$2</a>' ) );
} ); 
</script>[/code]
This will open the links in a new window. If you want to open the links in the same window just remove the [b]target="_blank"[/b] part from the above.

You must also remove the word [b]defer[/b] from the script tags that load the libraries at the start of the file:

[code]
  <script src="interpreter/jquery.min.js"></script>
  <script src="interpreter/parchment.min.js"></script>[/code]
(these say lib/ instead of interpreter/ if you use the stand-alone Parchment installation.)

This works only in the latest version of Parchment. If you're using the one built into Inform, you have to update the Parchment library files and the jQuery library. Download these files: [url=https://raw.github.com/juhana/parchment/master/lib/parchment.min.js]parchment.min.js[/url], [url=https://raw.github.com/juhana/parchment/master/lib/zmachine.min.js]zmachine.min.js[/url] and [url=https://raw.github.com/juhana/parchment/master/lib/jquery.min.js]jquery.min.js[/url] and replace the old ones in the interpreter directory.

Now you can add hyperlinks in Inform like this:

[code]Test is a room. "Visit {http://intfiction.org/forum Intfiction.org forums} and {http://ifdb.tads.org IFDB}!"[/code]

Remember that this is just a very quick and dirty hack and it's not supposed to be a general solution. Also, because it runs the whole story text through the regex every time it might slow down the interpreter if the transcript is very long, but I suspect it would become a problem only after an hour of play or so. I haven't tested this with Internet Explorer but I don't see a reason why it wouldn't work (although you never know).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3071&start=0#p21678
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When "you" is not YOU
User: i-k / DateTime: 2011-08-23 04:32:34

Ah, convention...
[quote="zarf"]The IF audience -- at least, the one we've got now -- is used to second-person narration. How distracting other people find it is hard for me to judge, because I've been used to this for *a long time now*, but I don't believe it's a major contributing factor in how most newcomers react to IF.[/quote]
… it's everywhere! In a narrative, when we are told that “Gertrude got out of bed and made herself a cup of coffee for breakfast. In the afternoon she ate half a cucumber sandwich.”, we don't start wondering what happened to those hours between the coffee and the sandwich – of course we don't. But that's actually a convention, too, this excepting and understanding ellipses, though we usually don't pay attention to it. In real life, blacking out for the entire morning would be cause for alarm, but in a story it's a given if nothing interesting happens.

Many people accustomed to the so called realistic tradition in literature feel the first person narrator is pretentious, ranting and just way too artsy. (It's worth noting that the modern day realism in literature does actually enclose the “I”, too. But, back in the day, it didn't.) This, I think, happens in IF, too, just the other way around: anything that's not second person can be seen off-putting. That is, if you oppose all things artsy.

My own wording here reminds me:

I just wrote “if [i]you[/i] oppose” – an English language way to use the second person in a passive function. (In sentences such as: “In order to get in, [i]you[/i] need to buy a ticket.” It's possible that native English speakers don't see this a passive voice, but from an outsider point of view it functions as one.)

This “you-passive” caused debate here in Finland some years ago. Finnish doesn't (originally) have this grammatical device, but it made its way to our speech as a loan from English. As always in these kind of cases, this got people opposing “the wrong way of speaking”. The usual sarcastic response to someone using the “you” as a passive was to say something like “Well, it is not [i]I[/i] whose doing that.” It was almost like people were offended by this form of speech: like it was too presumptuous, trying to tell the other person what she was like.

However, I don't remember the last time someone complained about this. People have gotten used to it. The you-passive is still not an official form in the Finnish, and is frowned upon in literary style, but in spoken tongue it's pretty common. I remember when I played my first IF – it took some time to get used to the second person narrative. But not that long: by the end of that one single game I was used to it.

[quote="Lumin"]In the CYOA I'm working on I get around this by switching to a third person point of view and just straight up telling the player that while they get to influence the character's life, she's her own individual and not meant to represent the person reading the story.[/quote]
I don't know what your CYOA is about, but if you word the disclaimer something like “character is her own individual and not meant to represent the person reading the story”, my first reaction is that this story must be something really gory or morally dubious – something requiring parental guidance (which is perfectly fine, of course, if it is that kind of story).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3071&start=0#p21679
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When "you" is not YOU
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-23 06:07:07

[quote="Lumin"]Personally, I don't have any real problems with slipping into a well-defined character's head and roleplaying a bit, even if they're written with a strong personality that is most definitely not mine. But a lot of players do seem to find it off-putting.[/quote]
I don't think this is true any more. Games with strongly characterised protagonists tend to get better reviews than games with vague protagonists. The last IF Comp had us playing a psychotic and potentially homicidal woman and Joseph Stalin, among others, neither of whom was especially like the average player. (Or, one hopes, like any player.) I would go as far as to say that players now [i]expect[/i] to find a well-realised protagonist with whom they might not always agree.

There are limits; I wouldn't start a game by saying "You are Josef Mengele. This is another great day for your experiments.", and then expect the player to go along with that. But that is just common sense.

[quote="zarf"]I learned that recently when I found people who were thrown out of books by *first-person* narration.[/quote]
I am struck speechless. (Though fortunately I can still type.) That has been a standard literary device in fiction from, oh I don't know, certainly from the 2nd century AD, but probably earlier, and still used extensively today.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3071&start=0#p21680
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When "you" is not YOU
User: i-k / DateTime: 2011-08-23 06:18:51

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]I would go as far as to say that players now [i]expect[/i] to find a well-realised protagonist with whom they might not always agree.[/quote]
This is true. One might even say that emphasis in IF is shifting from the environment to character. Exploration is still a vital part of IF, but perhaps it's nowadays expected to reflect the inner life or whatnot of the PC.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3071&start=0#p21681
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When "you" is not YOU
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-23 08:53:39

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]
There are limits; I wouldn't start a game by saying "You are Josef Mengele. This is another great day for your experiments.", and then expect the player to go along with that. But that is just common sense.[/quote]

Your mistake was to not capitalise the 'are'. You can push important words into people's brains with this method.

Example: 'You ARE Josef Mengele!'

That will make people go, 'Whoa dude, in this game I AM Josef Mengele.'

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3061&start=0#p21682
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: A New Homage To Zork (As If We Needed One)
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-08-23 09:23:27

I played the game today.
Sending a transcript and thoughts via email soon.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3071&start=0#p21683
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When "you" is not YOU
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-23 10:02:24

[quote]This is crazy and hilarious! Do these people ever just drop books after the first sentence because their name isn't "Ishmael"?[/quote]

Google <"first person" romance reviews>. I guess I don't see people being *repulsed*, but there are many people saying that first-person is unconventional in romance novels. A lot of them aren't keen on it, or think it's worth noting in case *other* people aren't keen on it.

As I said, it's an audience expectation thing. In SF and fantasy, first-person is absolutely standard and nobody bothers to point it out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3071&start=10#p21684
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When "you" is not YOU
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-08-23 10:32:59

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]I would go as far as to say that players now [i]expect[/i] to find a well-realised protagonist with whom they might not always agree.[/quote]
I wonder how strong this expectation is, whether players might even be confused by a deliberate use of a vague second-person narrator for whatever artistic effect the author was aiming for.  I agree that the general expectation is for the second-person voice to reflect a well-defined player character, which doesn't necessarily represent the human player at the keyboard.  I also think this should probably be the norm for most storytelling, including IF, but IF is in a unique position to circumvent this expectation.  I think the idea that modern, story-driven IF games have well-defined protagonists is over-exaggerated, even though it may be somewhat true.  Even a (mostly) puzzle-less game like [i]Photopia[/i] seems to circumvent a sense of a well-developed protagonist by jumping between many episodes and PCs.  It's been a long time since I played [i]Photopia[/i], but I don't think I felt much sense of a protagonist character.


[quote="VictorGijsbers"]That has been a standard literary device in fiction from, oh I don't know, certainly from the 2nd century AD, but probably earlier, and still used extensively today.[/quote]
Fascinating!  Many of the ancient Jewish Psalms have first person narration, as well, so that's even earlier.  In fact, other Psalms are in second-person!  At least, the English translations use our second-person; I have no idea if the effect of the Hebrew texts was the same as English second-person (or first-person).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3046&start=20#p21685
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Logistics for a cross-release save
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-08-23 10:46:11

[quote="Emerald"]
(Off topic for this part of the forum, but on reflection I think it shouldn't be too hard to build a simple cross-release compatible save system in TADS 3. Include reflect.t so you have access to the source code names of objects and properties even after the game is compiled. Create a list of object properties that need to be saved and restored. Offer hooks where the author can manipulate the data before it's saved and after it's restored, so s/he can manually deal with any problematic incompatibilities. Knowing which of the library objects' properties need to be saved would be tricky just because of the size of the library, though. Darn, I've got myself interested in the problem now. Putting it on my post-Comp to-do list.)
[/quote]

It's an interesting problem. For TADS, at least at the source code level you can distinguish between writes to locals (which generally do not affect state) and writes to properties (which generally do.) I can imagine a compiler that wrapped any writes to properties with a serializing function that would hash the most recent value. Then you could write that hash table to disk on save and read it back in during restore.

There are problems with this for non-integer assignments. For example, when you write a new string to a property, you are really updating that property with a pointer to an address in memory (somewhere in the VM string pool). Those addresses are probably quite dependent on source code order; I doubt the compiler makes any effort to give the same string the same address during a subsequent compilation. So even in the case where you changed just a few lines of logic in a function, your strings could end up stored at different addresses. Restoring a game from an earlier version might work fine, but it might also scramble descriptions or crash the VM.

The same issue holds for object assignments. Reflection helps here somewhat, since you could serialize the source code name instead of the object address, but it would break if you rename the object at the source code level. This might be OK if the library throws an exception (serialized object not found) - the author can add error handling in the restore code to swap in a different object and resume the restore. However you would need a Q/A pass on each release, testing with a variety of saved games, to feel confident that you had found those issues.

I don't know how it would work with anonymous function assignments, or dynamically compiled code. Anonymous functions are actually objects, so it might wind up as a special case of the above, except with more wrinkles. BigNumbers could probably be turned into strings. Lists and vectors could (and usually would) contain object or string references, and would need special handling. More special cases, more wrinkles.

As an author I wouldn't use the system without the sort of automated library / compiler support I've described. As a programmer I'm not persuaded that the problem is tractable. But I'm certainly happy to talk about it.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3071&start=10#p21686
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When "you" is not YOU
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-23 10:54:40

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]I am struck speechless. (Though fortunately I can still type.) That has been a standard literary device in fiction from, oh I don't know, certainly from the 2nd century AD, but probably earlier, and still used extensively today.[/quote]
There are plenty of standard literary devices that are hated by a small but significant proportion of readers. (I know someone who considers it extraordinarily obnoxious for a novel to switch the action back and forth between several distantly-related plotlines.) Likewise, there [i]are[/i] some IF players whose very favourite thing about IF is imagining that the player character is literally them, and hate it when that illusion is shattered by even very light characterisation. I've no idea how many; I think a quite small proportion, and smaller than it used to be. But the thing about writing is that you cannot and should not expect to please everybody.
[quote="Lumin"]Distancing the player from the character is bad, but involving them too closely with the character's thoughts and feelings can backfire.[/quote]
[i]Anything[/i] you do as an author can backfire. This is particularly true when you frame the question in broad theoretical terms rather than the specific details of a particular work. I strongly prefer PCs that are heavily characterised, but this doesn't mean that I think that heavy characterisation is the best approach for every game; if you're worrying about this, it's more useful to think about the specific things that a player might dislike about your character, and whether they've been adequately addressed. Get a few good alpha-testers.

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]There are limits; I wouldn't start a game by saying "You are Josef Mengele. This is another great day for your experiments.", and then expect the player to go along with that. But that is just common sense.[/quote]
Though to be honest, if a pseudonymous game did that then you'd be my first suspect.

[quote="Afterward"]You've heard of situations where someone reads a novel about a man who, although apparently a sympathetic character, nonetheless cheats on his wife and is a big old racist, and the reader assumes that the author cheats on his wife and is a big old racist, or at least that the author thinks these things aren't problematic. When this becomes an issue, the the cure isn't for authors to dumb down their work, but for readers to think more critically about what they're reading.[/quote]
I will cheerfully sign on to this, but caution that 'thinking more critically' is a process that may legitimately encompass hurling the book against the wall with a lusty cry of "up yours, Card!"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2821&start=20#p21687
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Choicescript - What the Hell?
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-08-23 11:19:22

[quote="RealNC"]Please! "Choose Your Own Adventure" is a perfectly fine term.[/quote]

"Choose Your Own Adventure" is a trademark of Chooseco, the company that publishes the "Choose Your Own Adventure" brand of books and software.

I think there's a fair argument that their mark may be genericized at this point (since everybody uses it to describe just any product in that style) but let no one suggest that "CYOA" is a perfectly fine term.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2821&start=20#p21688
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Choicescript - What the Hell?
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-08-23 11:23:54

[quote="RealNC"]Whether you like it or not, "adventure game" refers to a certain type of game. In the same manner, you can't just come up with something that is "interactive" and "fiction" and call it Interactive Fiction.[/quote]

In your view, is there anything that's interactive fiction but isn't a text adventure?

As I see it, adventure games have puzzles and some space for exploration. Text adventures are a subset of that, in that they restrict themselves to just text. You can't give me a text adventure without puzzles, or a text adventure without exploration, but you can write interactive fiction without puzzles or exploration.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2781&start=20#p21689
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Off the top of my head
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-08-23 11:30:01

[quote="I4L"]I apologize, I wasn't trying to be argumentative. I wasn't trying to be entirely complimentary, either, just to be fair. Just trying to understand a little about this specific process.[/quote]
The whole thing's a bust now.
Nobody else will join in the project and the ones that have either can't contribute because of other things, or won't contribute because of content.
I said it would be a mix of IF and AIF, and you people seem kinda squeamish about that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3071&start=10#p21690
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When "you" is not YOU
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-23 11:40:54

Don't worry, man. Nobody here is saying that Card isn't a big old racist.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3072&start=0#p21691
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Removing a Default Message?
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2011-08-23 11:44:50

Trying to figure things out from the library code isn't always the best idea. In this case I'd suggest consulting the [i]TADS 3 Technical Manual[/i], specifically the section on Accompanying Travel in the article on [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/techman/t3actor.htm]Creating Dynamic Characters[/url], which I think covers what you want to do here. The example there includes the following sample code:

[code]
 blurgEscortState: AccompanyingState, HermitActorState
    specialDesc = "The Blurg guard is keeping his hyperlaser
      trained on you. "
    stateDesc = "He has his hyperlaser pointed straight at you. "

    accompanyTravel(leadActor, conn) { return leadActor == gPlayerChar; }
    getAccompanyingTravelState(leadActor, conn)
      { return new BlurgEscortTravelState(location, leadActor, self); }
    
    noReponse = "Silence, feeble human! "
  ;

class BlurgEscortTravelState: AccompanyingInTravelState
     sayDeparting(conn) { "The Blurg guard prods you onward. "; }
     specialDesc = "<q>Keep moving, human scum!</q> the 
       Blurg guard growls. "
   ;
[/code]

But you'll need to consult the article for an explanation of that code if it's not clear how to adapt it for your own use. The key step is to define a custom AccompanyingInTravelState on which you can define your own accompanying messages, and then to link it to the NPC's AccompanyingState as in the above sample code. 

There's a further example, with a brief explanation, in the section on AccompanyingInTravelState in the [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/tourguide/index.html]TADS 3 Tour Guide[/url]. That example may be of interest in illustrating one way to have a randomly varying accompanying message.

-- Eric

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=0#p21692
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Profanity
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-23 12:17:06

I'm trying to decide whether to include profanity in my WIP. My preference is to use the Big Curse Words two or three times in the whole game, warning the player at the beginning, but not providing any PG-rated mode. My rationale is that the game contains enough violence and gore that curse words alone aren't going to turn anyone away. Am I wrong?

I had second thoughts when I read this, but it also inspired some third thoughts:

<a class="postlink" href="http://blog.bookviewcafe.com/2011/03/09/would-you-please-fucking-stop/">http://blog.bookviewcafe.com/2011/03/09 ... king-stop/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3058&start=0#p21693
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Question on glk_stream_open_memory
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-08-23 12:19:50

I don't think this is a problem with the Inform 7 IDEs' Glk libraries. The error message "Zero passed invalidly to Glk function." comes from the routines in the interpreters to decode the arguments to a Glk call (glkop.c in both Glulxe and Git - they're using the same code), which suggests to me a problem in the Glulxe interpreter somewhere.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=0#p21694
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-23 12:31:07

I don't know.  I do know people who are extremely bothered by bad language, and they are people who are not particularly unusual in their other beliefs - they're not religious fundamentalists, they don't pretend to be coyly innocent.  I think that's reason enough to include a warning, but not necessarily exclude the words themselves.

What purpose do the words serve in game?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=0#p21695
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-23 12:33:33

[quote="capmikee"]My rationale is that the game contains enough violence and gore that curse words alone aren't going to turn anyone away. Am I wrong?[/quote]
You're technically wrong, but this may not really matter; there will be a handful of people who will strongly object, but it's impossible to please everybody. Most IF players will accept that a game written for adults is likely to include some adult language.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=0#p21696
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-23 12:38:50

[quote="gravel"]I don't know.  I do know people who are extremely bothered by bad language, and they are people who are not particularly unusual in their other beliefs - they're not religious fundamentalists, they don't pretend to be coyly innocent.  I think that's reason enough to include a warning, but not necessarily exclude the words themselves.

What purpose do the words serve in game?[/quote]
I think they fit the voices of the characters. They're all in dialogue. The characters are all deeply damaged (this is the zombie apocalypse!) and I think cursing is a natural, maybe even necessary, expression of that.  There was one point where I wanted the narrative to express the PC's thoughts with "mother___er," but I replaced it with "sonofabitch" because I didn't feel like I could get away with it.

The funny thing is, I don't think I've [i]ever[/i] seen an R-rated curse word in an IF. As a writer, it seems reasonable to use them in certain cases, and yet there seems to be something stopping IF writers from doing it. I want to make sure I understand what that is.

Come to think of it, though, I have seen some curse words - in Gigantomania, which I worked on but didn't write!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=0#p21697
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-23 12:44:42

[quote="maga"]You're technically wrong, but this may not really matter; there will be a handful of people who will strongly object, but it's impossible to please everybody. Most IF players will accept that a game written for adults is likely to include some adult language.[/quote]
True enough. I think my rationale is that I wouldn't want my kids to play this game until they're adults because of the violence, so the cursing is no big deal on top of that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=0#p21698
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-23 12:55:35

[quote="capmikee"]The funny thing is, I don't think I've [i]ever[/i] seen an R-rated curse word in an IF. As a writer, it seems reasonable to use them in certain cases, and yet there seems to be something stopping IF writers from doing it. I want to make sure I understand what that is.[/quote]
You may just have played the wrong games. Play some Robb Sherwin, Adam Thornton, Stephen Bond...

The assumption in IF is that you're writing as an adult rather than an adolescent, and that it's not a good idea to throw around swearwords for no particular reason. A lot of games don't involve swearing just because it's not appropriate to setting, character or narrative voice. (Swearing's less likely to show up in SF/F, for instance, because vernacular speech is strongly tied to specific times and cultures.) And there are a substantial number of games that are intended to be appropriate for all ages.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=0#p21699
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-23 13:08:24

I am currently working on a piece where part of the humor lies in the fact that it is loaded with slightly off-color acronyms.  (There is otherwise nothing the slightest bit "adult" about the piece.) I take it as a given that there are probably some people out there who would not appreciate this.  That's fine; anybody who would be offended by that probably would not enjoy my humor very much anyway, and like anything else, people have different tastes.  I have no problem if somebody doesn't like my work (whether its because they are offended by a particular word or for any other reason).  I don't think its possible to write something that everybody would like; probably the only way to do that would be to produce something totally devoid of meaningful content.

There are, unfortunately, some people out there who go beyond not liking something, to the point where they would censor other people's work because they find some of the words offensive.  Often, such people would also censor anything which they believe to be inconsistent with their religious or political views.  While I'm fine with some people not liking what I write, I have a serious problem with censorship.

As for warnings, if I'm in a bookstore (and I'm not talking about the children's section), I don't expect every book which includes a word of four letters to carry a big red warning sticker.  The only respect in which arguably IF might be different is that there is (I believe) no designated "children's section."  If I ultimately decide to make my piece public, I'm not sure whether I would add some kind of warning, but I certainly wouldn't blow it out of proportion.  My gut reaction is that, unless a piece is billed, or somehow gives the impression, that it is intended for seven year-olds, an author should not feel a compulsion either to make it suitable for seven year-olds or to warn people that it isn't.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3058&start=0#p21700
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Question on glk_stream_open_memory
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-23 13:11:08

Goddammit. I grepped my Glk library source for that message but forgot to look in glkop.c.

Sure enough, I have the "+" notation on glk_stream_open_memory, which means that the dispatch library will reject NULL. I apologize. I will fix that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=0#p21701
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-23 13:17:07

[quote="gravel"]I don't know.  I do know people who are extremely bothered by bad language[/quote]
I say fuck 'em.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=0#p21702
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: Rotonoto / DateTime: 2011-08-23 13:24:07

My game RANS has a "Strong Profanity" tag on IFDB. It's deserved, but I don't think there's any [i]necessary[/i] reason for it, other than that this is how the player-character thinks. When I chose that character (an adult but a rather immature one) to write about, I also chose his likeliest vocabulary.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=0#p21703
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-23 13:39:38

[quote="capmikee"]I think they fit the voices of the characters. They're all in dialogue. The characters are all deeply damaged (this is the zombie apocalypse!) and I think cursing is a natural, maybe even necessary, expression of that.  There was one point where I wanted the narrative to express the PC's thoughts with "mother___er," but I replaced it with "sonofabitch" because I didn't feel like I could get away with it.[/quote]
Seems like the situation calls more for a [rant]"fuck"[/rant] than a "bother". I don't think I would have even considered the necessity of warning players that some of the characters in the game use words that may be taboo to them -- it just seems such a non-issue ... Perhaps I'm just being insensitive; perhaps it's generally much less of an issue in Sweden than in the US.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=10#p21704
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-23 14:58:52

When I wrote _So Far_, I put a "Damn" in the second paragraph. I wanted to convey that this was a serious adult work, and that I would not be pulling punches, linguistically or emotionally. I also wanted anybody who was upset by foul language to quit right away.

I was young and innocent in those days. By damn.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3058&start=0#p21705
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Question on glk_stream_open_memory
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-23 15:01:02

There's a further bug in glkop.c for this case (null-optional array parameters). I will have to do more testing to determine if it's easy to fix, or if ten years of code depend on the legacy behavior. :(

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=10#p21706
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-23 15:01:21

[quote="Felix"][quote="capmikee"]"mother___er," but I replaced it with "sonofabitch" because I didn't feel like I could get away with it.[/quote]
Seems like the situation calls more for a [rant]"fuck"[/rant] than a "bother". I don't think I would have even considered the necessity of warning players that some of the characters in the game use words that may be taboo to them -- it just seems such a non-issue ... Perhaps I'm just being insensitive; perhaps it's generally much less of an issue in Sweden than in the US.[/quote]
Well, I might change my mind, but it was partly the context. It's a scene with mixed emotions - someone is trying to be encouraging, but the PC is too miserable to appreciate it.

Plus, that word is even stronger than the 4-letter version in English.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=10#p21707
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-23 15:04:50

[quote="zarf"]When I wrote _So Far_, I put a "Damn" in the second paragraph. I wanted to convey that this was a serious adult work, and that I would not be pulling punches, linguistically or emotionally. I also wanted anybody who was upset by foul language to quit right away.

I was young and innocent in those days. By damn.[/quote]
That's a good idea, though. I was partly concerned that the opening would give a false sense of tameness... maybe I'll spice it up.  [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3071&start=10#p21708
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When "you" is not YOU
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-23 15:09:47

[quote="Bainespal"]Even a (mostly) puzzle-less game like [i]Photopia[/i] seems to circumvent a sense of a well-developed protagonist by jumping between many episodes and PCs.  It's been a long time since I played [i]Photopia[/i], but I don't think I felt much sense of a protagonist character.[/quote]
Well, I don't know much about literature, but it seems like having a first person narrator who is [i]not[/i] the protagonist is quite common. Dr. Watson is a popular example. That's my impression of what's going on in Photopia.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3071&start=10#p21709
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When "you" is not YOU
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-23 15:12:01

[quote="i-k"]I just wrote “if [i]you[/i] oppose” – an English language way to use the second person in a passive function. (In sentences such as: “In order to get in, [i]you[/i] need to buy a ticket.” It's possible that native English speakers don't see this a passive voice, but from an outsider point of view it functions as one.)

This “you-passive” caused debate here in Finland some years ago. Finnish doesn't (originally) have this grammatical device, but it made its way to our speech as a loan from English. As always in these kind of cases, this got people opposing “the wrong way of speaking”. The usual sarcastic response to someone using the “you” as a passive was to say something like “Well, it is not [i]I[/i] whose doing that.” It was almost like people were offended by this form of speech: like it was too presumptuous, trying to tell the other person what she was like.[/quote]
Does Finnish have a pronoun like "man" in German or "on" in French? They translate to "one" in English and they're used in many cases where English would use "you."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3071&start=10#p21710
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When "you" is not YOU
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-08-23 15:23:46

[quote="Lumin"]When a character referred to "you" does things you wouldn't do, or in a way you wouldn't do them, or has an opinion or feeling that doesn't match yours, does it take you out of the game?[/quote]

I guess I'm a rarity, but this does slightly bother me. I'm okay with role-playing a character with an established personality and backstory, but once the game starts, I want to be in control of the character. For example, it's always annoyed me in more recent Zelda games when I open a chest full of rupees and the message says "You found fifty rupees! You're pretty happy!" or something like that. In fact I'm usually not happy because I was hoping it would be something better than rupees, so being told that I'm happy irritates me.

[quote]And what is the alternative? A silent, personality-less cipher?[/quote]

This is generally my preference, not because I want the character to literally be [i]me[/i], but because I want to play the character as I choose, and every time the game tells me what I do or how I react, the balance shifts slightly away from "interactive" toward merely "fiction." But I think I like plot in games a lot less than most of the people here.

My preferred approach is to describe things in the game relatively objectively or give the narrator a distinctive personality, but leave interpretation up to the player. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a game that I think does this quite well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3071&start=10#p21711
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When "you" is not YOU
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-23 15:33:19

(Nitpicking: In Link's Awakening you were told "You found 300 rupees! You're ecstatic!" and that was in 1993.)

(Edit: Self-nitpicking: Okay you can go ahead and say "You should have been ecstatic, it's three hundred rupees!" but I was [i]not[/i] ecstatic because I had 999 rupees already so 300 just [i]ceased to exist.[/i])

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3071&start=10#p21712
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When "you" is not YOU
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-23 15:35:22

[quote="shammack"]For example, it's always annoyed me in more recent Zelda games when I open a chest full of rupees and the message says "You found fifty rupees! You're pretty happy!"[/quote]

That's just a simple violation of "show, don't tell." Well, also a bad misjudgment of the character, I bet. I can imagine situations where the PC has emotions that the player doesn't, and they're expressed in a way that isn't annoying. But this obviously isn't one of them. A better example might be a PC with a different gender preference from the player - if the game indicated that the PC was attracted to a particular NPC, I think most players would go along with that, as long as it was well-written enough to show what the PC "sees in him/her."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3071&start=10#p21713
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When "you" is not YOU
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-08-23 15:35:43

[quote="Afterward"](Nitpicking: In Link's Awakening you were told "You found 300 rupees! You're ecstatic!" and that was in 1993.)[/quote]
Yes, exactly! Darn newfangled contraptions!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3071&start=10#p21714
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When "you" is not YOU
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-23 15:40:02

[quote="shammack"]My preferred approach is to describe things in the game relatively objectively or give the narrator a distinctive personality, but leave interpretation up to the player. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a game that I think does this quite well.[/quote]
I think Hitchhiker's is a similar case to the first-person narrator who is not the protagonist. Arthur Dent never really does anything in the books - things just happen to him. He's a focal point for the story, but he doesn't make the story. You could probably argue that Ford is the protagonist of the first book. In the game, you play a much more active role, but perhaps that's possible because of Arthur's passive role in the books. In the segments where you play other characters, there's always just one way to succeed - perhaps demonstrating that a more proactive PC offers less choice to the player.

Hmmm... taking this one step farther....
<a class="postlink" href="http://globalcomment.com/2011/in-praise-of-hermione-granger-series/">http://globalcomment.com/2011/in-praise ... er-series/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=10#p21715
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-23 16:58:27

[quote]When I wrote _So Far_, I put a "Damn" in the second paragraph. I wanted to convey that this was a serious adult work, and that I would not be pulling punches, linguistically or emotionally. I also wanted anybody who was upset by foul language to quit right away.

I was young and innocent in those days. [/quote]

In my current work in progress, the first four-letter acronym appears before the banner.  Being neither young nor innocent, I guess it probably conveys that this is a puerile piece of low comedy which will have you laughing in the aisles, unless you're a tight-ass with no sense of humor, in which case you probably won't like it and should quit before you involuntarily find yourself laughing anyway.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3074&start=0#p21716
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: A rule order question
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-08-23 17:18:10

How do I explicitly list a rule as being the last thing executed in the turn?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3074&start=0#p21717
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A rule order question
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-23 18:02:22

Make it a "last turn sequence rule".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3075&start=0#p21718
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I7] Plurals for kinds
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-23 19:14:19

Consider the following test game:
[code]"Apples" by Victor Gijsbers

Orchard is a room. The player is in orchard.

An apple is a kind of thing.
Understand "apple" as an apple.

A Granny Smith is a kind of apple.
A Elstar is a kind of apple.

In Orchard is an Elstar. In Orchard is a Granny Smith.

Test me with "take apples".[/code]
I would like "take apples" to get the character to pick up all apples, but that doesn't work. Is there a way to make this happen?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3075&start=0#p21719
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Plurals for kinds
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-23 19:29:12

This (somewhat oddly) seems to work:

[code]Understand "apples" as the plural of an apple.[/code]

(I was thinking of sending you an e-mail about this very thing.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3072&start=0#p21720
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Removing a Default Message?
User: QueenoftheCapes / DateTime: 2011-08-23 21:10:25

Thanks, Eric; it works now. [emote]:D[/emote]   (And Jim, thanks to you too for trying). [emote]:)[/emote]

I'm a bit mystified by the setup, though;  I mean, it switches from AccompanyingState to an AccompanyingInTravelState and then back again for one turn?  Why is this tag-teaming necessary?  I'd thought that the AccompanyingState was the one-stop-shop for all my tag-along NPC needs. o_O

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3071&start=20#p21721
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When "you" is not YOU
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-23 21:39:30

I want to ask shammack some questions about Zelda because I love talking about Zelda. Don't worry, the questions kind of have to do with whatever we're supposed to be talking about.

Hey shammack:

- Does it also bother you when (I think this usually happens at like the first act break in a Zelda game) there's a cutscene where the bad guy shows up, and Link (at this point woefully outmatched) tries to attack him, only to be tossed aside like a doll? I'm assuming that you wouldn't decide to attack the bad guy at this point if you were in control.

- When you open a new file, do you name the guy in green "Link" or do you put in your own name (or whatever else)? The way I always do it is, the first time I play a Zelda game, I go by Ryan. Sometimes, though, late in the game someone will refer to the protagonist as "Ryan" and I'll be thrown off for a second, because I've been thinking of the guy as Link. So the next time I name him Link.

- In the same vein, did you ever name the protagonist "Zelda"? Because that's what I did the first time I played Link's Awakening. Because I thought that was the guy's name. Because it's the legend of [i]Zelda![/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3071&start=20#p21722
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When "you" is not YOU
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-08-23 22:33:41

I name the protagonist "I say" so that all the dialogue sounds totally posh.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3076&start=0#p21723
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: Generating a random-ish number
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-08-23 22:46:23

So, as part of one of the puzzles in my game, there is a to-do list for the player, comprised of assorted chores and such. On every playthrough, one of the tasks is randomly chosen from a hat, based on the global variable RandomizedTask, where in the value represents the assigned task. So how do I get Inform to generate a random number, between 0 and, say, 6? Or is there a more efficient/more reliable way of doing this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3076&start=0#p21724
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Generating a random-ish number
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-23 22:52:37

That would be the random() function. Chapter 1.14. 

(The index, it is useful.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3077&start=0#p21725
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Something-ing it at response problem
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-24 03:13:05

I've got this action:

[code]Understand "throw [something preferably held] at/against [something]", "throw [something preferably held] [something]" as chucking it at.
[/code]

I noticed that in circumstances that cause Inform to print a clarifying phrase in brackets after what the player typed and before the response, the phrase for this action is graceless.

For instance, if I type "throw paper plane john", it says

(the paper plane John)

when I'd hoped it'd say

(the paper plane at John)

How can I wrangle it so this happens? Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3071&start=20#p21726
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When "you" is not YOU
User: i-k / DateTime: 2011-08-24 03:35:20

[quote="capmikee"]Does Finnish have a pronoun like "man" in German or "on" in French? They translate to "one" in English and they're used in many cases where English would use "you."[/quote]
Finnish doesn't have a "special" passive pronoun, but we do have what I believe is called the zero-person form that functions as a passive: a third person singular verb without an explicit mention of the pronoun, and then the literal translation to English would be for ex. "When he/she/it is hungry, he/she/it wants to eat." - the better translations being "When hungry, one wants to eat.". That's probably the closest Finnish comes to Germanic or Romance languages in this respect. The zero-person can be used only in certain kinds of sentences, so it's not useful as an all-around replacement for the passive voice. Usually you have to say "the letter is opened" or "the man was killed".

[quote="capmikee"][quote="shammack"]For example, it's always annoyed me in more recent Zelda games when I open a chest full of rupees and the message says "You found fifty rupees! You're pretty happy!"[/quote]

That's just a simple violation of "show, don't tell."[/quote]

Perhaps those "saying too much" -moments are awkward because they break the illusion. The player wants to play the role of the player character, but is here reminded of the fact that she is merely a geek with a keyboard. (To put it harshly.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3075&start=0#p21727
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Plurals for kinds
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-24 03:55:51

[quote="matt w"](I was thinking of sending you an e-mail about this very thing.)[/quote]
Did it have to do with scrolls rather than apples? [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3062&start=0#p21728
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Actions applied to Off-stage Objects
User: HawkleyFox / DateTime: 2011-08-24 04:00:21

Actually, I have discovered it to be no bug at all.  It is just not enabled by default for objects.  The way to fix the issue is to ensure that your kind of object is publically-named.

To amend my old code:
[code]An event driven scene is a kind of object.
An event driven scene can be privately-named or publically-named.  It is usually publically-named.
It has an object called data store.  Data store of it is usually nothing.[/code]
This will now enable it to be referred to properly by the player via an understand statement.  It is a little obscure; I accidentally came across it while fumbling through the documentation and a quick test showed it to be the solution to my problem above.

So, if you ever need to create your own kinds of objects and let the player refer to them, this is the way to go.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3062&start=0#p21729
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Actions applied to Off-stage Objects
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-24 06:18:45

Interesting. 

Is there a reason the Standard Rules don't allow objects to be privately-/publically-named, while it does allow them to be plural-/singular-named  and proper-/improper-named?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3075&start=0#p21730
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Plurals for kinds
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-24 06:30:40

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="matt w"](I was thinking of sending you an e-mail about this very thing.)[/quote]
Did it have to do with scrolls rather than apples? [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Ding ding ding! Winner!

Testing this understand as a plural business a bit, it's actually reasonably flexible; you can write

[code]Understand "handled apples" as the plural of an apple when the item described is handled.[/code]

and then writing "Take handled apples" will take only the handled apples. (You wouldn't want to do that particular thing, obviously.) And it's fairly well documented in 16.8; all we're doing is taking the "plurals for single things" mentioned at the end and assigning it to a bunch of single things at once.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3062&start=0#p21731
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Actions applied to Off-stage Objects
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-24 06:35:06

Wow, this is the first time I've seen that you actually have to declare something as "publically-named." Which makes it even more important that I7 allow you to spell "publicly" right!  [emote]:twisted:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3077&start=0#p21732
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Something-ing it at response problem
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-24 06:39:57

Looks like 17.28 should be useful. How about this (untested)?

[code]Rule for clarifying the parser's choice of something while throwing: say "([the noun] at [the second noun])"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3071&start=20#p21733
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: When "you" is not YOU
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-08-24 07:57:12

[quote="Afterward"]- Does it also bother you when (I think this usually happens at like the first act break in a Zelda game) there's a cutscene where the bad guy shows up, and Link (at this point woefully outmatched) tries to attack him, only to be tossed aside like a doll? I'm assuming that you wouldn't decide to attack the bad guy at this point if you were in control.[/quote]
That slightly annoys me in principle, but it's not a big deal since the end result (Link not attacking him, or at least not having any effect) is the same -- i.e., after the animation has finished, the state of the game world hasn't changed because of something I didn't decide to do. I'm willing to make [i]some[/i] concessions on this if the non-interactive cutscene (a) is cool enough, and/or (b) involves some kind of action that is completely different from the mechanics of the game; I just think that ideally it should be kept to a minimum.

[quote]- When you open a new file, do you name the guy in green "Link" or do you put in your own name (or whatever else)? The way I always do it is, the first time I play a Zelda game, I go by Ryan. Sometimes, though, late in the game someone will refer to the protagonist as "Ryan" and I'll be thrown off for a second, because I've been thinking of the guy as Link. So the next time I name him Link.[/quote]
I have a couple of standard names that I use for any game that lets you name things. Usually male characters are Crouton or Hoagie, females are Formica, dogs are Dogmeat, and places/kingdoms/estates/whatever are Chunky. I never use default names unless I'm feeling incredibly lazy, and I only use my own name if I don't expect the character to be referred to by that name.

[quote]- In the same vein, did you ever name the protagonist "Zelda"? Because that's what I did the first time I played Link's Awakening. Because I thought that was the guy's name. Because it's the legend of [i]Zelda![/i][/quote]
I've only done this when it's for a specific purpose: in Zelda 1 to get the second quest, or in Link's Awakening to get the alternate file selection screen music.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=10#p21734
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-24 08:13:07

I would just act like a ratings system. The goal of film and game certificates is to briefly and dispassionately describe the nature of content in a thing that may offend some people, or may not be suitable for people of certain ages. Without going crazy with it, I think just acting like a certification and saying in one sentence 'This game contains strong language' or whatever when you boot the game is a helpful and genuine act, without being overkill or alarmist. Psychologically I don't think it's a stretch to say it's an act that can even get people onside. They see it and can say  'Oh, the author has been considerate enough to think about this issue.'

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=10#p21735
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-24 08:24:25

When I published [i]The Baron[/i], I put just such a notice in the readme file:
[quote]"The Baron" is about a tragic and possibly shocking theme. Therefore, it is not appropriate reading for children; I advice an age limit of at least fifteen years. In addition, anyone who does not want to be confronted with fictional misery would do better to avoid this story.[/quote]
I now believe that people don't generally read readme files, so you might want to put such a notice at the beginning of the game instead. Or you can just make it quite clear what kind of game people are dealing with in the first few sentences.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3077&start=0#p21736
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Something-ing it at response problem
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-24 08:25:25

Hm. It doesn't like that. It acts like 'chucking it at' is not an action.

"You wrote 'Rule for clarifying the parser's choice of something when chucking it at'  : but I don't understand the 'when/while' clause, which should name activities or conditions."

I was fiddling and tried 'when chucking something at', which compiled. I thought 'Aha!'. But actually that made no change to what the parser was doing at the trouble moments.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=10#p21737
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-24 08:34:39

[quote="severedhand"]I would just act like a ratings system. The goal of film and game certificates is to briefly and dispassionately describe the nature of content in a thing that may offend some people, or may not be suitable for people of certain ages. Without going crazy with it, I think just acting like a certification and saying in one sentence 'This game contains strong language' or whatever when you boot the game is a helpful and genuine act, without being overkill or alarmist. Psychologically I don't think it's a stretch to say it's an act that can even get people onside. They see it and can say  'Oh, the author has been considerate enough to think about this issue.'[/quote]

This.  It is one indication that the author cares and pays attention to detail, which is likely to pay off elsewhere in the game, so it helps with the whole trust issue.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3074&start=0#p21738
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A rule order question
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-24 09:24:02

Sometimes it makes more sense to have it be the [i]first[/i] thing, which in most cases is the same. You can do that with an "after reading a command" rule.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=10#p21739
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-24 09:38:26

The problem I have with a ratings system is that it is very easy for it to become, in practical terms, a censorship system.  The rating system used for motion pictures (at least in the US -- I'm not sure whether other countries use the same system) is a perfect example.  The original "X" rating was ultimately dropped, because it implied that a film was pornographic and effectively resulted in the film being eschewed (in practice, banned) by mainstream theaters.  Before it was dropped, a number of legitimate films (the most notable being the Oscar-winning Midnight Cowboy) were re-edited for the sole purpose of avoiding the kiss of death rating.  When X was changed to NC-17, the theory was that it would avoid the implication that a film is pornographic; what it has [i]not[/i] avoided is that the rating still effectively bans a film from many legitimate movie houses, which means that filmmakers are often forced to tailor their work to avoid the rating.  Even the threat of an R rating is enough to get many filmmakers to change a film from what they would prefer to produce.  When the ratings drive the content of the work, instead of the other way around, the system has effectively turned into censorship.

We don't have (at least so far) any kind of ratings system for books, beyond the fact that books which are intended solely for children (and whose emotional and intellectual content is that of a seven year-old) are marketed as such.  If you buy a mainstream book, you might find a four-letter word or two in it; if that offends, you, you are free to stop reading it.  Although there are book-burners out there who have tried to rewrite everything, from Shakespeare to the Bible, to conform to their own moral code, they haven't (fortunately) been successful in requiring all books to be rated with something akin to the motion picture system.  Why should IF be different?


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3077&start=0#p21740
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Something-ing it at response problem
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-24 10:01:12

Example case, because it took me a little work to construct this:

[code]

The Kitchen is a room. 

Chucking it at is an action applying to two things.
Report chucking:
	say "Chucking [noun] at [second noun]."

The paper cutter is in the Kitchen.
The player carries the paper plane.
John is a person in the Kitchen.

Understand the command "throw" as something new.
Understand "throw [something preferably held] at/against [something]" as chucking it at.
Understand "throw [something preferably held] [something]" as chucking it at.

Test me with "throw paper John".
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3077&start=0#p21741
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Something-ing it at response problem
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-24 10:07:59

It looks like the "clarifying" activity is simply ignored when the command being printed has two nouns. This is annoying.

You could hack up the I6 PrintInferredCommand() routine to cover your case, or to invoke a new activity that covers it.

I'm also curious what commands this is intended to cover, since "throw plane John" isn't something IF players would naturally type. Would that be "throw John the plane"? Or is this a "throw plane north" situation?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3062&start=0#p21742
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Actions applied to Off-stage Objects
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-24 10:10:37

I'm pretty sure it's just an oversight that resulted from nobody testing running objects through the parser machinery.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=10#p21743
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-08-24 10:16:43

[quote="Robert Rothman"]We don't have (at least so far) any kind of ratings system for books, beyond the fact that books which are intended solely for children (and whose emotional and intellectual content is that of a seven year-old) are marketed as such.  If you buy a mainstream book, you might find a four-letter word or two in it; if that offends, you, you are free to stop reading it.  Although there are book-burners out there who have tried to rewrite everything, from Shakespeare to the Bible, to conform to their own moral code, they haven't (fortunately) been successful in requiring all books to be rated with something akin to the motion picture system.  Why should IF be different?[/quote]
I agree with this completely. I don't know how books have managed to avoid the sad fate of a rating system, but thank goodness for that. IF is currently not in danger of any government censorship as far as I know, so I don't believe there's any need to impose voluntary censorship on it.

Besides, I think it's important to risk being offended now and then; otherwise you will never learn anything.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=10#p21744
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-08-24 10:24:36

Yeah, I don't really see the need in warning myself unless perhaps it could easily be viewed by many others as extremely filthy or too non-PC. Profanity can be a mixed bag I think. On one hand, it certainly can add "realism" in an "Oh $#!&" situation such as your "Zombie Apocalypse". On the other hand, some players will find that profanity adds a layer of crudeness while removing a layer of classiness or sophistication. 

In my own first horror IF, my characters were "typical dumb young people" you may find in a [i]Friday the 13th[/i] movie. They all used a fair amount of profanity and none of them talked as if they were English majors. If was fun to do at the time, but now I'm a bit relieved that I have no need to force a theme of general stupidity and crudeness via my NPC dialogue in my new WIP.

I really enjoy Robb Sherwin's games, but I've seen people call them basically "horrible" because of the strong language and "bad jokes". Everyone's sense of humor is different. While I enjoy Sherwin's stuff and the Spellcasting series by Steve Meretzky.. I tried playing that Mentula Macanus: Apocolocyntosis game and found it "horrible". Like others have said, you can't win everyone over.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3077&start=0#p21745
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Something-ing it at response problem
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-24 10:41:30

Thanks for confirming this, zarf; this was confusing me. 

It also seems as though sometimes I7 is winkling the syntax for this out of "understand" phrases. If I delete the line without prepositions and reorder the ones with "at" and "against," I can get it to respond  to "throw" with "(the paper plane at the paper plane)" or "(the paper plane against the paper plane)" depending on the order. But if the line without prepositions is in there, it always seems to respond to "throw" with "the paper plane the paper plane."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=20#p21746
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-24 12:03:29

I'm very much in favour of content warnings, but I don't think that a handful of F-bombs in a written-for-adults work are sufficient reason to require one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3076&start=0#p21747
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Generating a random-ish number
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-08-24 12:38:16

Right, but would it be something along the lines of random(1, 2, 3, 4)? I'm not able to check the ID4 or test it out right now.

Actually, that's probably it...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3076&start=0#p21748
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Generating a random-ish number
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-24 12:42:57

[quote="Glorb"]I'm not able to check the ID4 or test it out right now.[/quote]
It is online, actually: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.inform-fiction.org/manual/html/s1.html#s1_14">http://www.inform-fiction.org/manual/html/s1.html#s1_14</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3049&start=10#p21749
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The floor sweeper dude from The Lurking Horror
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-08-24 12:44:15

Holy shit, I never came across that! Weird. So does that imply that

[spoiler]whoever defeats the floor waxer dude and enters his machine becomes the new floor waxer dude?[/spoiler]

If so, then....that's still pretty weird.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3076&start=0#p21750
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Generating a random-ish number
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-08-24 12:46:37

Oh, right.  [emote]:oops:[/emote] I assumed that it was only in PDF format...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3077&start=0#p21751
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Something-ing it at response problem
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-24 13:07:41

[quote]It also seems as though sometimes I7 is winkling the syntax for this out of "understand" phrases.[/quote]

It always works that way. However, the precedence order is the internal order of the grammar table, which is not the same as your Understand declarations.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=20#p21752
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-08-24 13:09:16

As with Felix, this fear of profanity isn't an issue in Portugal, so it always strikes me as a bit silly.

I wonder if the literary world were to gain something if every time a book had 'fuck' in it, a "Parental Guidance" (or similar) sticker were to be on the cover. There are even some books with strong profanity in the title, and they're not, by any standard, garbage or rude fiction. Of the top of my head: O Amor É Fodido (Love is Fucked Up) by Miguel Esteves Cardoso, and Memorias de Mis Putas Tristes (Memories of My Melancholy Whores) by Gabriel Garcia Marques (I don't think 'whore' has the same strength in English as 'puta' has in both Spanish and Portuguese - 'puta' is one of the strongest curse words in these languages). These are two strong pieces of literature by too strong writers (one of them a Nobelium), both about love, sex, humanity, fear, aging, and relationships.

Also, it actually bothers me that this is an issue within a game that will feature strong gore and violence. There isn't a problem in depicting a zombie riping someone's head, but there is a problem if the victim cries 'fuck' at the first bite?

Finally, I don't bite the 'Is there a point for the word to show up in the game, or is it just gratuitous?' argument. Yes, there is a point: the same point as all the other words the author chose to build his phrase. Sometimes it won't fit a given phrase or a given mood? No it wont, but that's pretty much the same with 'happiness' or 'cheese' - sometimes phrases are just not well built, and that's just not fuck-related.

People use these words in their lives, so it is only natural that something that addresses those lives sometimes features those words.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3058&start=0#p21753
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Question on glk_stream_open_memory
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-24 13:14:56

Okay. The change to gi_dispa.c is checked in (see my cheapglk repository). The bug fix to glkop.c is also (glulxe repository). I've imported the changes into my other libraries (glkterm and quixe).

Anybody who supports a C-based Glk library or Glulx interpreter should pick up these changes. (Both sides have to be fixed, unfortunately. The library fix uncovered the old interpreter-side bug.)

I added a unit test for this to my memstreamtest.ulx text -- see <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/</a> . In that test, type "null grape" and "uninull grape", and similarly for the the other objects. Those commands should print the length of the description string (in characters) for the noun object. In unfixed interpreters, you'll see some kind of error.

Since it may take a while for interpreters to absorb these bug fixes, I'll remind you that

glk_stream_open_memory(array,0,filemode_Write,0);

...is a way to accomplish the same thing, without tripping over the bug. ("The same thing" meaning "measure the length of printed text without printing it to either the screen or memory".)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=20#p21754
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-24 13:27:44

[quote]As with Felix, this fear of profanity isn't an issue in Portugal, so it always strikes me as a bit silly.[/quote]

To this day, many aspects of American culture lie under a shadow cast by the fact that the very first European colonization on these shores was by the Puritans, who came here for the express purpose of founding a society in which they were "free" to abolish freedom.  The prohibition of the 1920s, the various modern prohibitions (marijuana, tobacco and -- if the prohibitionists get their way --meat) and censorship of all forms of art, which has traditionally been more widespread here than in many parts of the world, are all aspects of this.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3049&start=10#p21755
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The floor sweeper dude from The Lurking Horror
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-24 14:14:34

Oh no, not at all.
[spoiler]The text about the floor waxer dude's "demise" appears after he's been slipping on the wax for a set number of turns; it has nothing to do with the player entering the floor-waxing machine. I don't know why this person bothered to do that anyway, except to test whether it was possible. Obviously you can't actually drive the waxer anywhere after you chop the power cord with an axe.

But if you never came across this, does that mean there's another solution for getting past him? If there were another way to get him to leave the waxer, then you could make him slip on the wax and explode, and conceivably get in the waxer and drive it up and down the Infinite Corridor. But Infocom games don't have a reputation for including multiple solutions, do they.

OF COURSE, your theory may be correct in that the PC, after defeating the Horror and turning in his term paper, nonetheless is compelled to apply for a job on campus in Maintenance, becoming the new floor waxer dude and continuing to aid the Department of Alchemy in their sinister machinations. So Part 1 of the Floor Sweeper Spinoff will take place before the events of The Lurking Horror, and you'll play as the original floor-sweeping monster. Then in Part 2 you'll play as the diminishingly sane GUE student, post-Lurking Horror. The game is a prequel/sequel in this way.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=20#p21756
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-24 14:17:05

[quote="Robert Rothman"][The prohibition of the 1920s, the various modern prohibitions (marijuana, tobacco and -- if the prohibitionists get their way --meat) and censorship of all forms of art, which has traditionally been more widespread here than in many parts of the world, are all aspects of this.[/quote]
Preach it, brother.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=20#p21757
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-24 14:26:53

[quote="Robert Rothman"]The prohibition of the 1920s, the various modern prohibitions (marijuana, tobacco and -- if the prohibitionists get their way --meat)[/quote]

Oh, for fuck's sake. These are three completely different things. Marijuana is illegal, tobacco is legal but in some jurisdictions can't be smoked in places where it causes a health hazard for third parties, and meat isn't illegal in a single goddamn jurisdiction. 

Leandro is of course right about the attitude toward swearing and violence -- I believe The King's Speech received an R rating for a single utterance of the word "fuck," whereas the Dark Knight was full of violence and torture and was PG-13. The disparity in attitudes toward sex and violence is the same way (I read an essay somewhere about how US televisions, showing the Godfather, didn't cut a second of the incredibly bloody killing of 

[spoiler]Sonny[/spoiler]

but censored the brief nudity in 

[spoiler]Michael's[/spoiler]

wedding scene, and on European TV it's the other way around.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=20#p21758
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-24 14:32:19

My wife tells a story about her friend's mom. She was at her house, watching the movie "Body Parts" on TV. It's a horror flick about a guy who gets a hand-transplant from a dead serial killer and the killer's soul takes him over. Pretty nasty stuff. But there was a brief moment of respite, where the hero and his girl share a moment of intimacy. If I'm not mistaken, they're completely clothed, just kissing. My wife remembers thinking what a relief it was from all the disturbing violence. But the mom interrupted the scene, saying "How can you kids watch this trash?" and changed the channel.  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=20#p21759
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-24 14:35:02

[quote="matt w"]Oh, for fuck's sake. These are three completely different things. Marijuana is illegal, tobacco is legal but in some jurisdictions can't be smoked in places where it causes a health hazard for third parties, and meat isn't illegal in a single goddamn jurisdiction.[/quote]
They won't get their way, of course. But I know for a fact that there are people who wish that slaughtering an animal would be classified as an act of murder. And I absolutely agree that this kind of attitude could only have become a cultural factor in America, and the people promoting it are a kind of modern Puritan.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=20#p21760
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-24 14:54:59

[quote="capmikee"]I believe The King's Speech received an R rating for a single utterance of the word "fuck,"[/quote]
He does let out quite a string of profanities ([url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJvGE7Vvd4M[/url]) but you're right in that if they had replaced that scene with him beating someone to death the movie would've gotten a lower rating.

I saw King's Speech on a plane (on an American airline) and they had censored that scene by removing all the swear words. Not bleeping them or even muting the sound completely, just removing the individual words. It was quite surreal when you could still hear his footsteps as he walks across the room, mouth moving but no words coming out. (Fits the movie's theme, in a way.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=20#p21761
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-24 14:56:14

[quote="lribeiro"]I wonder if the literary world were to gain something if every time a book had 'fuck' in it, a "Parental Guidance" (or similar) sticker were to be on the cover.[/quote]
I've decided not to distract the player with a warning in the banner, but there will be one in the 'about' message.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=20#p21762
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-24 15:00:21

[quote="Juhana"]I saw King's Speech on a plane (on an American airline) and they had censored that scene by removing all the swear words. Not bleeping them or even muting the sound completely, just removing the individual words. It was quite surreal when you could still hear his footsteps as he walks across the room, mouth moving but no words coming out. (Fits the movie's theme, in a way.)[/quote]
They've been doing that with songs on the radio. I first heard it with Nine Inch Nails' "closer," but more recently they've been doing it with Mumford & Sons' "Little Lion Man." They leave in just enough of the word that you can't quite tell it's been removed - it's kind of a weird experience.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaQCfp-aWCg">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaQCfp-aWCg</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=30#p21763
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-08-24 15:04:49

[quote="maga"]I'm very much in favour of content warnings, but I don't think that a handful of F-bombs in a written-for-adults work are sufficient reason to require one.[/quote]

Throw my vote in with this point of view.  If some aspect of the content is likely to negatively influence someone's experience of the story, by all means let them know in advance (especially if it is likely to put a serious damper on their day), though I doubt that casual profanity is going to be that for most people. 

[quote="capmikee"]But I know for a fact that there are people who wish that slaughtering an animal would be classified as an act of murder. And I absolutely agree that this kind of attitude could only have become a cultural factor in America, and the people promoting it are a kind of modern Puritan.[/quote]

Vegetarianism is a culturally American phenomenon?  I tend to associate it [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_vegetarianism]with non-Western religions[/url], and the kinds of hippies and yuppies that have pretty much none of the "puritan"-associated restrictions against intoxicants or sex (not that "Puritan" meant what most people think it means, either).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=30#p21764
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-24 15:13:59

[quote="tove"]Vegetarianism is a culturally American phenomenon?  I tend to associate it [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_vegetarianism]with non-Western religions[/url], and the kinds of hippies and yuppies that have pretty much none of the "puritan"-associated restrictions against intoxicants or sex (not that "Puritan" meant what most people think it means, either).[/quote]
No, not vegetarianism. Of course there are strong Buddhist and Hindu traditions of that. But religious vegetarians, to my knowledge, don't believe in judging other people based on what they eat, or attempting to control what they eat.

The American phenomenon is a form of militant vegan activism. Thanks to PETA and its allies, telling other people what to eat has become almost mainstream. Tracing the story back further we can see the influence of Sylvester Graham and John Harvey Kellogg, who are quite solidly grounded in American Puritanism.

That's an interesting point about hippies. Michael Pollan talks about how hippies influenced American ideas about food. They were some of the first to oppose industrialized food and support the organic movement. They acquired some of their ideas about food from Eastern religions, and you're right - in most ways they were very un-Puritan. But as the "whole foods" movement has grown and splintered, I think the ideas of vegetarianism and veganism have been divorced from the hippie ethic and become quite mainstream. Heck, even Bill Clinton is doing it now... and he never inhaled!

In a feeble attempt to return to the main topic, I'll note that both Graham and Kellogg were vocal opponents of masturbation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=30#p21765
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-24 15:26:25

[quote="capmikee"]this kind of attitude could only have become a cultural factor in America[/quote]

My distinct impression is that a very substantial majority of Swedish citizens would think it out of the question to legalize marijuana; smoking is not allowed on working premises, sites, or in offices (though the acceptance for this is lower -- and did not exist at all twenty years ago); and I know several people who finds raising animals for slaughter immoral (at least under any conditions that would make it economically worthwhile) -- though this last is certainly explained by the disproportionate amount of philosophers among my acquaintances.

Still, I would be surprised to meet the kind of vehement responses to swearing in Sweden that I sometimes see on English speaking internet fora etc. 

By the way -- the phenomenology of the reaction interests me. Personally, I often find inordinate swearing somewhat aesthetically displeasing (and swearing in order to offend just for the fun of offending ethically doubtful); but the vehement reactions of people that really take offense by profanity seems to be something else entirely. My best hypothesis is that it's not a matter of principled moral indignation but of feeling painfully *insulted* by it. Can it be?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=30#p21766
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-08-24 15:28:52

[quote="capmikee"]They leave in just enough of the word that you can't quite tell it's been removed - it's kind of a weird experience.[/quote]
This is the most ridiculous thing to me. Anyone over the age of three knows what the missing word was, so what's the point?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=30#p21767
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-24 15:34:50

Okay, this is getting weirder and weirder. As an example of how the vegan movement mirrors the temperance movement, I googled "lips that touch meat." The first result I got was an article written by a guy I know from work!

<a class="postlink" href="http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004771.html">http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/language ... 04771.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=30#p21768
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-08-24 16:06:03

Oh I'm such a Language Log fan!

Total conversation derail: as a [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supertaster]supertaster[/url], I do actually refuse to kiss anyone who's been drinking (just until the taste fades, of course).  But it's certainly not a morality thing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=30#p21769
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-24 16:15:19

I'll go with the derail: I once got sick after kissing my wife - it turned out she had eaten dairy! I'm not allergic, but I'm very, very sensitive.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=30#p21770
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-08-24 16:17:39

First I dont favor profanity for shock value, like swearing for the sake of swearing. But if you are depicting characters and you want to set a certain mood that is set by a character who swears habitually, I would say that you shouldn't let ideas get in the way of expressing your story.

That said, I'd like to point out that in science fiction, sometimes they throw in made up words to take the place of swear words. That can be fun. 

But if, for example, I was depicting a game sort of like the tv show Mad Men, which features advertising executives with questionable values in the 1960s, that might be an ideal venue to throw in the occasional f or w word.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=30#p21771
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-08-24 16:28:24

[quote="Felix"]By the way -- the phenomenology of the reaction interests me.[/quote]

Reading this thread, I've been thinking about how I react to these words. I don't use swear words myself (well, if you count the word "shit", sure, but I don't use it as a swear word, and I never use "stronger" language when I speak Swedish), and most people around me rarely use them. The words have simply never been a part of my vocabulary. When I hurt my toes I scream very loudly, but without words.

When I think of those words, I get an emotional reaction. I think of situations like the time I was threatened by a drug addict when I was working in a store. It's words from a different culture - a different world. I suppose that's what scares people the most.

Then there are of course the rational arguments against swearing - just think about what the words mean. In Swedish, most of these words have religious origins, and I have no interest in calling for the devil.

I also note that I don't get an emotional reaction when I watch an American movie. I'm so used to hearing people saying fuck this and fuck that in movies that I barely notice it. (I don't even mind Gordon Ramsey!) That's probably another reason why people are protesting against it. The more a word is used, the more accepted and normal it becomes, so I can see why someone who don't want it to be normal or accepted would object.

That was a lot of words… do I have a point? I don't really know, I just found it interesting to think about. Do I have an opinion? Not really. I certainly can live without these words, and I believe that most uses in media would have been better without. Obvious counterexample being The King's Speech, of course, and I agree that the American ratings systems seem strange to an outsider. I fear my thought won't get clearer than this, so it's time to press the "Submit" button.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3058&start=0#p21772
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Question on glk_stream_open_memory
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-08-24 17:13:35

Thanks for fixing this, zarf.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=30#p21773
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-24 17:21:47

[quote]Vegetarianism is a culturally American phenomenon? I tend to associate it with non-Western religions, and the kinds of hippies and yuppies that have pretty much none of the "puritan"-associated restrictions against intoxicants or sex [/quote]

My point was that the Puritan tradition is consistent with the mindset that it is appropriate to ban things which other people might find pleasurable because the one seeking to do the banning determines them to be morally offensive (or, more often, that the one seeking to do the banning finds them to be morally offensive precisely because other people might find them pleasurable).  That is the case regardless of whether the specific banned behavior was banned by the actual Puritans.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3070&start=0#p21774
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Linking back and forth between Twine and Inform 7
User: anonymaus / DateTime: 2011-08-24 17:30:53

Juhana,

Thanks a lot.  It works, but there's definitely some copying and pasting that needs to be done beforehand, since we needed to keep a copy of the modified files so it wouldn't get overridden by recompiling. 


Cordially,


a. maus

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=40#p21775
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-24 17:37:04

[quote="lribeiro"]I wonder if the literary world were to gain something if every time a book had 'fuck' in it, a "Parental Guidance" (or similar) sticker were to be on the cover.[/quote]
I have to think of the hilarious passages in [i]For Whom the Bell Tolls[/i] where Hemingway has replaced the Spanish "me cago en la leche" with the English "I obscenity in the milk.". Nothing could be more satisfying than crying out: "I obscenity in the milk!"

[quote="matt w"](I read an essay somewhere about how US televisions, showing the Godfather, didn't cut a second of the incredibly bloody killing of 

[spoiler]Sonny[/spoiler]

but censored the brief nudity in 

[spoiler]Michael's[/spoiler]

wedding scene, and on European TV it's the other way around.)[/quote]
I once read an interesting article (but I don't know where) which claimed that American movies use violence as a symbol of sex, whereas European movies use sex as a symbol of violence. Too black and white, obviously, but there is some truth in it.

[quote="Robert Rothman"]My point was that the Puritan tradition is consistent with the mindset that it is appropriate to ban things which other people might find pleasurable because the one seeking to do the banning determines them to be morally offensive (or, more often, that the one seeking to do the banning finds them to be morally offensive precisely because other people might find them pleasurable)[/quote]
You do not seriously believe that people who think it is immoral to eat meat believe this [i]because[/i] eating meat gives pleasure? On the contrary, they believe this because they believe it causes [i]suffering[/i].

Also, the mindset you seem to deprecate here is a mindset which I hope [i]everyone[/i] has. I am certain there are people who find slavery, murder, and rape pleasurable, but because we consider them morally offensive, we ban them. Which is great.

Your apparent attempt to defeat the meat-abolitionist by ridiculing him as a sour, grumpy guy who just doesn't want other people to have fun is rather wrong-headed. There is a substantive moral disagreement here, and it deserves a serious debate, not a cheap attempt to avoid debate by ridiculing the opponent.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=40#p21776
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-24 18:37:31

[quote="capmikee"][quote="Juhana"]I saw King's Speech on a plane (on an American airline) and they had censored that scene by removing all the swear words. Not bleeping them or even muting the sound completely, just removing the individual words. It was quite surreal when you could still hear his footsteps as he walks across the room, mouth moving but no words coming out. (Fits the movie's theme, in a way.)[/quote]
They've been doing that with songs on the radio. I first heard it with Nine Inch Nails' "closer," but more recently they've been doing it with Mumford & Sons' "Little Lion Man." They leave in just enough of the word that you can't quite tell it's been removed - it's kind of a weird experience.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaQCfp-aWCg">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaQCfp-aWCg</a>[/quote]

They've done some pretty creative things this way -- my wife was talking about hearing Lil Jon's "Get Low" on the radio, and I was like, "How can they possibly put that on the radio? If you bleep everything they won't play on the radio there won't be anything left." [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSh_Oc78A4o]Here's[/url] the original and [url=http://www.mtv.com/videos/lil-jon/22060/get-low.jhtml#artist=961130]here's[/url] the version without about half the words replaced. (Both versions of the video are, well, probably about as sexist as you expect them to be.) 

And after Adult Swim took over Super Deluxe they had censored versions of the Professor Brothers. [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RuxFELxTks]The Professor Brothers![/url] It'd be more faithful to rewrite the scripts so they don't use the letter "e." (Say, have you noticed that the big swear words don't have "e" in them? Hm.)

I watch my mouth a lot now because my two-year-old is [url=http://somethingpositive.net/sp07132011.shtml]practically a mynah bird[/url] (link contains swearing and suboptimal childrearing) and I don't want him going around cursing. Today I was reading to my wife from a letter PG Wodehouse wrote about GB Shaw, and I substituted "silly donkey" for "silly ass" as a precaution. My kid proceeded to say "silly donkey" about ten times in a row. I had that sublime pleasure -- German surely has a word for it -- that you get when you bring an umbrella with you and it actually rains.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3078&start=0#p21777
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Locating and deleting the preferences file on I7 for Windows
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2011-08-24 18:49:59

Does anyone know where the preferences file is saved on I7 for Windows?  I accidentally changed to an unsupported font (immediately crashing the application) and now my I7 application crashes even after being uninstalled and reinstalled into a different directory.  I've already filed a bug report (<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=733">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=733</a>), but I'm trying to get up and running again rapidly because I'm working on an IFComp entry.

Thank you in advance for any help you can give.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=40#p21778
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-24 18:51:21

[quote]I am certain there are people who find slavery, murder, and rape pleasurable, but because we consider them morally offensive, we ban them. Which is great.

Your apparent attempt to defeat the meat-abolitionist by ridiculing him as a sour, grumpy guy who just doesn't want other people to have fun is rather wrong-headed. There is a substantive moral disagreement here, and it deserves a serious debate, not a cheap attempt to avoid debate by ridiculing the opponent.[/quote]


Sorry, but when I am placed in the same category as slavers, murderers and rapists because I enjoy eating meat, I have trouble calling that serious debate.

The difference, of course, is fundamental:  Slavers, murderers and rapists who ply their foul trades victimize other people.  (For that matter, so do a lot of activities which we tolerate without question; somebody who interferes with my ability to breathe by wearing heavy perfume or applying fingernail lacquer in a sealed train or bus can do so without hindrance, yet would undoubtedly be the very first to demand that I be burned at the stake were I to attempt to relax with a few puffs on a tobacco pipe.)  My consumption of a thick steak, blood rare, esconced in sauce Bearnaise, accompanied by fried potatoes and creamed spinach and washed down with a nice glass of beer or wine, harms no one, save the damage to the sensibilities of those who find it intolerable that somebody should enjoy something that they have decreed to be immoral.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=40#p21779
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-24 19:37:06

[quote="Robert Rothman"]The difference, of course, is fundamental:  Slavers, murderers and rapists who ply their foul trades victimize other people.  (For that matter, so do a lot of activities which we tolerate without question; somebody who interferes with my ability to breathe by wearing heavy perfume or applying fingernail lacquer in a sealed train or bus can do so without hindrance, yet would undoubtedly be the very first to demand that I be burned at the stake were I to attempt to relax with a few puffs on a tobacco pipe.)  My consumption of a thick steak, blood rare, esconced in sauce Bearnaise, accompanied by fried potatoes and creamed spinach and washed down with a nice glass of beer or wine, harms no one, save the damage to the sensibilities of those who find it intolerable that somebody should enjoy something that they have decreed to be immoral.[/quote]
I'm not going to say that your conclusion's wrong, here, but your line of argument [i]is[/i] pretty flimsy. It appears to be "I really enjoy steak a lot. I don't think I'm causing any harm. Therefore, anybody who disapproves of my eating steak cannot possibly think that I am causing harm, therefore their only possible motivation is that they hate it when people enjoy anything, and therefore I am excused from considering any actual arguments to the contrary that they might present."

If you're more interested in your steak than in arguments, fine. Enjoy your steak. I'm not sure how begging the question contributes to the experience, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=40#p21780
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-24 19:45:11

[quote]If you're more interested in your steak than in arguments, fine. Enjoy your steak.[/quote]

I think the world would be a far better place if we all ate more and argued less.  So let's eat (whatever you choose) and not argue.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=40#p21782
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-08-24 19:54:56

[quote="capmikee"]I'm trying to decide whether to include profanity in my WIP. My preference is to use the Big Curse Words two or three times in the whole game, warning the player at the beginning, but not providing any PG-rated mode. My rationale is that the game contains enough violence and gore that curse words alone aren't going to turn anyone away. Am I wrong?

I had second thoughts when I read this, but it also inspired some third thoughts:

<a class="postlink" href="http://blog.bookviewcafe.com/2011/03/09/would-you-please-fucking-stop/">http://blog.bookviewcafe.com/2011/03/09 ... king-stop/</a>[/quote]
Heh heh. That is awesome. Ursula K. LeGuin FTMFW!!

FWIW, what I'm working on now will contain plenty of explicit curses. I don't wanna do it just to do it, but nor do I want to stop myself. It's not really about whether it's justified. I don't have to justify any other word. Why these? It should just be taken as read that my intention (fallible as it may be) is to choose the appropriate words. Assume good faith. In other words, I don't think I should have to think about it. But UKL has a point — perhaps a bit more creativity would be in order.

PLQ.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3077&start=0#p21783
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Something-ing it at response problem
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-24 20:02:26

Thanks for looking into this everyone.

Re: what it's intended to cover. My game's being playtested at the moment, and 2 of the first 3 testers tried to throw a pie by typing 'throw pie (person)', and left out the 'at'. I noticed this in their transcripts, and that the game wasn't understanding them. So that's when I added 'throw (object) (person)' as another grammar construct the game should understand, and when I tested that is when I noted that it was giving the plain 'ol (-person-object-) response.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=40#p21784
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-24 20:12:53

[quote="Laroquod"]It's not really about whether it's justified. I don't have to justify any other word. Why these? It should just be taken as read that my intention (fallible as it may be) is to choose the appropriate words.[/quote]
Aaah, but if you're a writer, you have to justify [i]every[/i] word.

Okay, okay, maybe not 'the'. Uunless you put it in the wrong place. But if you're publishing a finished piece of writing, your choice of words is legitimate grounds for criticism. This is particularly true for words that stick out: if you name a character [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/XYZZY_Awards_%28Best_Individual_NPC%29]Yehoweh Porn[/url], you should probably expect that your readers are going to notice and that some of them are going to have Opinions.

In general, your intention as a writer is not as important as what you actually [i]did[/i]. My intention as a teenage poet was to construct timeless works that would rival T.S. Eliot at his best, which was really just a matter of apppropriate word choice, y'know?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3070&start=0#p21785
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Linking back and forth between Twine and Inform 7
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-08-24 20:41:36

You might also consider some of these solutions mentioned in these threads if you were not already aware of them.

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1518">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1518</a>

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1623">viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1623</a>

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2821&start=20#p21786
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Choicescript - What the Hell?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-08-24 20:59:52

As with most things, language is what its users make of it. This is so generally acknowledged that even dictionaries don't really pretend to prescribe the correct spellings of things anymore; they now frame their mission as describing the most regularised forms in common usage.

Viewed that way, the classification of CYOA as 'interactive fiction' is a [i]fait accompli[/i]. There is a sizeable and growing community of practitioners and sites calling it that. They have a case, and whether or not you agree with it, there's not much you can do, because one particular implementation at the confluence of 'interactivity' and 'fiction' does not really carry any power to lock down that rather obvious combination of words and bar any other implementation from using it.

PLQ.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3049&start=10#p21788
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The floor sweeper dude from The Lurking Horror
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-08-24 21:32:44

Personally, I'd love to see a game where a villainous team consisting of Floor McSweeper, a Grue, the Thief, and Primo Varicella all team up to take down IF's greatest heroes (the Adventurer, Arthur Dent, Floyd, Captain Fate, maybe the phone booth).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2911&start=10#p21789
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Nonexistent comp
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-08-24 21:35:35

"We'll all become unpeople. undoing unthings untogether!" quoth the Third Doctor.

PLQ.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3043&start=0#p21790
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Don't Screw IFComp
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-08-24 21:39:34

Is it weird if I got the most excited about the Five Hours of Copyediting? I can't spell/grammar/consistancy-check to save my life; whoever wins this that prize this year better be pretty damn grateful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=40#p21791
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-08-24 21:43:34

[quote="maga"]Okay, okay, maybe not 'the'. Unless you put it in the wrong place. But if you're publishing a finished piece of writing, your choice of words is legitimate grounds for criticism.[/quote]

Criticism is one thing. Asking a writer to justify his grounds in order to render the wording legitimate is something else. A lot of writers prefer to let their work speak for itself and never answer any criticism, and never attempt to explain themselves. Does this make their choices automatically illegitimate?

Of course, good writing involves difficult choices, but for me whether or not it is 'profane' is almost never among the relevant criteria. I'm certainly not interested in justifying my epithets on a case-by-case basis (nor anything else on that basis). That doesn't mean my choices are careless. But I write it as a fiction rather than as an essay [i]for a reason[/i]. 8)

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3049&start=10#p21792
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The floor sweeper dude from The Lurking Horror
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-24 22:13:54

[quote="Glorb"]Personally, I'd love to see a game where a villainous team consisting of Floor McSweeper, a Grue, the Thief, and Primo Varicella all team up to take down IF's greatest heroes (the Adventurer, Arthur Dent, Floyd, Captain Fate, maybe the phone booth).[/quote]

That's a great idea, but the phone booth is fighting on the wrong side. 

Actually I'd like to see them all team up against the hollow voice. Plugh this!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3043&start=0#p21793
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Don't Screw IFComp
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-08-24 22:25:20

Oh, the copyediting makes me happy, because I've been considering donating a similar prize (probably something like "will make cover art or a basic feelie for you") and it's nice that there's precedent.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=40#p21794
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-24 22:28:21

[quote="Laroquod"]Criticism is one thing. Asking a writer to justify his grounds in order to render the wording legitimate is something else. A lot of writers prefer to let their work speak for itself and never answer any criticism, and never attempt to explain themselves. Does this make their choices automatically illegitimate?[/quote]
Sure! In my attempt to make a funny I probably wasn't being very clear there. When I say 'justify', I don't mean that you literally have to stand up and answer questions on everything you do. That'd be a ridiculously strong demand. What is true, though, is that you're going to have to justify yourself [i]through the work.[/i] The work has to give its audience reasons for why it does the things it does -- they don't have to be carefully-articulated, exhaustive, explicit reasons, but the audience still has to get them at some level.

To say the same thing in another way: if you're going back over a draft, and you see something you did and you can't think of a good reason that you did it, or any good reason to keep it, that's a pretty clear sign that you need to take it out. And the level of scrutiny needs to be a bit higher for some things than for others. This is not a particularly high standard for justification.

(Note that I'm not a cryptoantiprofanitarian, here. Most of the things I write, I swear like a shipload of chav pirates being boarded by the Marines' special hip-hop taskforce. I'm just saying, if I thought it didn't matter I wouldn't be wasting space and energy on it.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3049&start=10#p21795
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The floor sweeper dude from The Lurking Horror
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-24 23:27:53

[quote]Personally, I'd love to see a game where a villainous team consisting of Floor McSweeper, a Grue, the Thief, and Primo Varicella all team up to take down IF's greatest heroes (the Adventurer, Arthur Dent, Floyd, Captain Fate, maybe the phone booth).

[/quote]

Gotta add the pirate to the "villain" team, who's in it to avenge his buddy the dragon who some SOB took out barehanded (and in the dragon's own home, no less!)


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3080&start=0#p21796
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Checking for Player in ConversationState?
User: QueenoftheCapes / DateTime: 2011-08-25 00:13:30

Quick question: is there a (hopefully simple) way to check if the [i]Player Character[/i] is engaged in a conversation?

I know NPCs themselves have test-for-able InConversationStates and whatnot, but suppose you wanted to flag something based on whether the player was currently talking to somebody, *anybody*?  Is there a method/property that handles this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3062&start=0#p21797
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Actions applied to Off-stage Objects
User: HawkleyFox / DateTime: 2011-08-25 00:42:34

Understanding data objects has a great deal of potential, especially in regards to dispensers and dynamic objects.  Combine this ability with the power to understand things by their relations, and you can make a generic object into a very specific object.

Take a look at this rather large and thorough example in the spoiler if you're interested in the technique:
[spoiler][code][The generic book object.  It will be used as an indistinguishable object.]
A book is a kind of thing.
The description of it is usually "[Base Description of Book]".

To say Base Description of Book:
	if the item described is about nothing or the bookshelf contains the item described:
		say "It looks to be a hard-bound book.  You can't see the cover and the spine is all worn out.[no line break]";
	otherwise:
		say "[the description of the data source of the item described]";

[Rules for printing are required to achieve the effect of the books being specific objects in the world.]
Rule for printing the name of a book (called the book described):
	if the book described is about nothing:
		say "book";
	otherwise:
		say "[data source of the book described]".

Rule for printing a number of books (called a book listed) not contained in a bookshelf:
	let R be list of subject matter that is the subject of books contained in the object that contains the item described;
	let quantity text be "pile";
	if listing group size is 2:
		now quantity text is "couple";
	otherwise if listing group size is 3:
		now quantity text is "few";
	if number of entries in R is greater than 0:
		say "a [quantity text] of books, including copies of [R]";
	otherwise:
		say "a [quantity text] of books".

Rule for printing a number of books when taking inventory:
	let R be list of subject matter that is the subject of books carried by the player;
	repeat with current subject running through R:
		now current subject is marked for listing;
	let L be the list of books carried by the player;
	let started be false;
	repeat with current book running through L:
		if the data source of the current book is marked for listing:
			if started is true:
				say "[line break]  ";
			now started is true;
			if the current book is a copy of a book carried by the player:
				say "[the number of books that are a copy of the current book carried by the player plus 1 in words] copies of ";
			say "[the current book]";
			now the data source of the current book is unmarked for listing;

[Used to tell if the player holds more than one copy of a book.]
Duplication relates a book (called X) to a book (called Y) when X is not Y and the data source of X is the data source of Y.  The verb to be a copy of implies the duplication relation.

[This is our data container for the specifics of a book.]
A subject matter is a kind of object.
A subject matter can be privately-named or publically-named.  It is usually publically-named.
A subject matter can be marked for listing or unmarked for listing.  It is usually marked for listing.
It has a text called description.  Description is usually "It is a pretty uninteresting book about a topic you care little about."
It has a text called author.  Author is usually "John Q. Public".
It has a text called first chapter.  First chapter is usually "Forward".

[Here we give the ability to assign a subject to a book, turning the indistiguishible book into a specific book.]
Written substance relates one subject matter (called the data source) to various books.
The verb to be the subject of implies the written substance relation.
The verb to be about implies the reversed written substance relation.
Understand "[something related by reversed written substance]" as a book.
Understand "book inside/in [something related by reversed containment]" as a book.

The Course of Time is a subject matter.  "An in-depth analysis of supposed alterations to the time line, some triggered by the gods and other by the will of man.  The accounts in this book are largely discredited as evidence of temporal incursions are hard to come by."
The author of it is "Mirnar Ninyo".
The first chapter is "The Incident at South Harbor".

Beginner's Alchemy is a subject matter.  "An easy to follow and illustrated guide to medicinal flora and fauna.  Includes a number of helpful recipes that are an absolute necessity to merchants, adventurers, and caravan guards alike."
The author of it is "Daner Trarneis Lainamair".
The first chapter is "Introduction to Technique".

The Bowels of Nehrimdine is a subject matter.  "A story that claims to be fact about a cave system underneath the tower of Nehrimdine.  Many references about the location of the tower seem inaccurate, however facts tend to be obscured by time, turning to legend.  Perhaps showing the book to some knowledgeable people will reveal more."
The author of it is "an unknown entity".
The first chapter is "Baladium's Drive".

[An action to be applied to our books, accessing the special data afforded it by the subject matter assigned to it.]
Studying is an action applying to one thing.  Understand "study [something]" as studying.
Instead of studying something that is not a book:
	try examining the noun.

Report studying a book (called the book described):
	if the data source of the book described is nothing:
		say "You'll have to pick up the book to get more information out of it.";
	otherwise:
		say "[the book described] is by [the author of the data source of the book described].  Opening it up, you find the first chapter is called '[the first chapter of the data source of the book described]'.";
	rule succeeds.

Testing Place is a room.  "This is where testing occurs."

A bookshelf is a container in the Testing Place.  It is fixed in place.  It contains 10 books.
[A couple of generic objects that were used to troubleshoot inventory listings.]
A rock is in the Testing Place.
A stick is in the Testing Place.

[Here we make a generic book a specific book by giving it a random subject when taken.]
After taking a book (called the book described) about nothing:
	let new subject be a random subject matter;
	now the book described is about the new subject;
	now the book described is proper-named;
	say "The book is revealed to be '[new subject]'.".

Test me with "look / take book / inventory / take 3 books / inventory / drop book / look / drop all books / look / take all books / study Bowels / study Beginner's Alchemy".[/code][/spoiler]
It even allows you to refer to the generic book object by it's title, as if it had been statically created, which is pretty slick.  Only problem is that if you place more than one book into the room, they become indistinguishable, but that can eventually be worked out with a bit of beating it to death.

I just didn't feel like spending any more time on it.  [emote]:P[/emote]

[b]Edit:[/b]  My project required me to solve the issue of dropped books being indistinguishable.  I did a quick copy/paste and updated the code here and there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3043&start=0#p21798
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Don't Screw IFComp
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-08-25 03:24:33

[quote="tove"]Oh, the copyediting makes me happy, because I've been considering donating a similar prize (probably something like "will make cover art or a basic feelie for you") and it's nice that there's precedent.[/quote]

Ooh! I've been thinking for years it would be great if there were a prize like this. But I don't feel sufficiently art-skilled to do it myself. So I would be psyched to see this offered.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=70#p21799
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: Al-Khwarizmi / DateTime: 2011-08-25 04:08:17

Hi all,

I found this thread a bit late, but I think you might be interested in knowing that there [i]is[/i] a cutting-edge, full-featured IF authoring and playing system written in Java. It's called the Aetheria Game Engine, it has hit version 1.0 this year after about ten years of alpha and beta development, and there are around ten games for it, and several more in development.

So why haven't you heard about it until now (probably)? Because at the moment it's geared towards creating games in Spanish. But the good news is that multilanguage support is coming, as I'll detail below.

Here is a list of features (not exhaustive, it's just the features that come to my head):

- Graphical IDE letting you create the static information about the world in graphs and forms rather than code, see screenshot: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.caad.es/aetheria/doc/lib/exe/fetch.php?cache=&media=puck_vampiro.png">http://www.caad.es/aetheria/doc/lib/exe ... ampiro.png</a>
- Advanced behaviour is added using the BeanShell scripting language (just like a dynamic version of Java)
- BeanShell gives you full access to the Java API, so you can use as many Java classes in the standard API (or in files that you provide) as you like. Want to use libsvm to train some classifiers? You can do it. Want to make your game connect to times.com so that the character gets actual news from today in his newspaper? You can do it (now go and do that inside a Z-machine if you can [emote]:P[/emote])
- True multiplayer support (no hacks like "there is only one player but we switch it from creature to creature" or things like that). You can use to create multiplayer IF or even potentially MUDs
- Can server games via telnet and IRC apart from dedicated client
- Real-time support. Every game can be switched between "synchronous" (~turn-based, but there are not really turns, it's a simulation with time units) and "asynchronous" (real-time)
- Sound support: MIDI, MOD, MP3, OGG, AIFF, WAV, SPX
- Raster graphics support: PNG, JPG, GIF, BMP, animated GIF
- Vector graphics support: SVG
- Other presentation features: support for frames, changing margins, changing typography, using custom TTF fonts that you include with the game, colour styles, full screen mode
- Support for playing online in a web browser via Java applet. This includes the full multimedia support, but does have some restrictions concerning saving/restoring games (problems related to signing and certificates). I'm working on a cookie-based system that saves/loads games online without needing a certificate and it already kind of works but needs more polish
- Built-in CRPG features (combat, weapons, armor, skills, training, etc.) because the system was built with that in mind, although it of course can be used for pure IF by ignoring all that
- It's free software (everything is under a BSD license)

If any of you can read/write Spanish, you can try a good game with multimedia content here: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.caad.es/jenesis/online/15_meses_online.html">http://www.caad.es/jenesis/online/15_meses_online.html</a> - note, however, that it has ogg music that has to be downloaded to your machine and this means that load times can inevitably get slow if the connection is not optimal. You can download the system to play offline or try the developer's kit here: <a class="postlink" href="http://code.google.com/p/aetheria/">http://code.google.com/p/aetheria/</a>

Now, about the multi-language support. The system was initially designed for Spanish, but during the last few months I have been making it language-agnostic. Right now, the code does no longer assume Spanish and it should be possible to create games in English, but I need this:

- An English version of the file containing default messages (stuff of the form "you take $1 from $2", etc.)
- A list of English verbs that could be used in games

With this, it would already be possible for someone speaking Spanish and English to create games in English... and I say "speaking Spanish and English" because the developer documentation is in Spanish: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.caad.es/aetheria/doc/doku.php">http://www.caad.es/aetheria/doc/doku.php</a> - so to make the system accessible for English-speaking developers at large, it would need to be translated as well.

So if anyone would like to see this system working in English, I would need some help, since I don't have the time to translate this stuff -especially the documentation- into English (maybe not even the skills to do it well, as I'm not a native speaker). If anyone is interested in helping with this, please contact me. And remember that you would be contributing to a free software project, everything (including the language files and the documentation) is under free licenses.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=40#p21800
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-08-25 04:21:19

To be honest, the concept of "bleeping out" or silencing curse words is profoundly disturbing to me. Not just because I find it juvenile (if you wanted to express a word that you expect would be understood as such, why not, you know, [i]do[/i] it?), but because it smacks of mysticism. We break up the word and create all these disconnects because we don't want to summon the demon symbolized by the word.

Or perhaps it's a feeling of hypocrisy it evokes in me. "Hey, I want my stuff to be cool and edgy... but not [i]too[/i] cool and edgy, and certainly not enough to make anyone [i]complain[/i]." It's a fig leaf, one that tries to obfuscate the issue by removing the noise but keeping the sentiment. To be frank, I have a hard time seeing why it even works. It'd certainly offend me far more to be called a m----------r than any actual curse I could name. R---t, g--s?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=50#p21801
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-25 04:27:33

[quote="Robert Rothman"]My consumption of a thick steak, blood rare, esconced in sauce Bearnaise, accompanied by fried potatoes and creamed spinach and washed down with a nice glass of beer or wine, [i]harms no one[/i], save the damage to the sensibilities of those who find it intolerable that somebody should enjoy something that they have decreed to be immoral.[/quote]
(My italics.) If you know of a way to produce a thick steak without harming anyone, please tell the world! Look, it is one thing if you believe that the harm you do to the cow by killing her is less than the good you do to yourself by eating her. (That, after all, is the moral issue here.) But how could you possibly claim that you are harming no one?

Please note that I'm not trying to get you into a discussion, or trying to convince you that you are being immoral, or anything like that. I'm only trying to get you to acknowledge that there actually [i]is[/i] a moral issue here, and not just a bunch of fun-hating grouches trying to spoil the party for other people. (Because that was the original assertion that got my blood boiling.)

Which is rather off-topic anyway, so maybe we should let the issue rest.

About beeping out songs, let's not skip an opportunity to link to <a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXFz7vqbk1o">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXFz7vqbk1o</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3077&start=0#p21802
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Something-ing it at response problem
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-25 04:44:47

Regarding an i6 hack... does a kind soul who knows i6 feel like writing one for me?

I don't know i6 and I'm not schooled in other languages with similar syntax to i6 or anything. Even if I begin to learn something about it, now isn't the time, as I'm preparing a game for ifcomp.

What would this hack be? In a sense, I'm not entirely sure. When Zarf said that the 'rule for clarifying...' doesn't get a look in if the action uses two nouns, what do we instead call the moment when the game prints '(something at something)'?

Anyway, I guess what I'd like is - if the game prints a bracketed clarification, and it's doing it for an action making use of two nouns, I'd like it to print the preposition(s) in between that the player typed. I assume it can get these from what the player typed? By definition, if we made it to this point where we're printing clarification, the command must have been valid, therefore, whatever was typed between noun one and noun two must be valid, and the game could just blindly reprint it without even knowing what it 'was'.

If that's too difficult, I'd be okay for bracketed clarifications to just be silenced in the case of actions involving two nouns. I only have a few such commands in my game, and there probably wouldn't be much trouble losing clarifications in those cases.

Either way, many thanks if someone takes this on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=50#p21803
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-25 06:28:47

Ah, the beauty of the human being. It invented "morals" and "ethics", and then it invented "gods", and somehow it wound up using these three little wonderful things to make life really, really hard and unpleasant.

The other day, I saw a dog who thought nothing of licking his genitals in a public place. Such alien creatures to our moral high grounds. I wonder if when they bark continuously they're really swearing full throtlle, and we just can't tell.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3078&start=0#p21804
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Locating and deleting the preferences file on I7 for Win
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2011-08-25 07:33:21

DavidK responded to my bug report and walked me through using regedit to delete the necessary key.

David, if you see this - a thousand thank yous!  (It seemed declasse to say so in my bug response, but... HUGELY grateful.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=50#p21805
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-25 07:53:03

[quote]About beeping out songs, let's not skip an opportunity to link to <a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXFz7vqbk1o">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXFz7vqbk1o</a>

[/quote]

Well, if we can't agree on matters of gastronomy, we can at least agree that the Pythons were very funny.  Perhaps comedy is the key to world peace -- we wouldn't have time to make war if we were all too busy laughing. [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

For the record, although I believe meat and Monty Python are two of the greatest inventions in the history of the world, I have no interest whatsoever in eating Spam (although the stuff does make an appearance in my current IF work in progress, The Spy Who Ate Lunch (seriously)).


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3062&start=0#p21806
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Actions applied to Off-stage Objects
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-25 07:53:56

[quote="HawkleyFox"]Take a look at this rather large and thorough example in the spoiler if you're interested in the technique:

...

It even allows you to refer to the generic book object by it's title, as if it had been statically created, which is pretty slick.  Only problem is that if you place more than one book into the room, they become indistinguishable, but that can eventually be worked out with a bit of beating it to death.

I just didn't feel like spending any more time on it.  [emote]:P[/emote]

[b]Edit:[/b]  My project required me to solve the issue of dropped books being indistinguishable.  I did a quick copy/paste and updated the code here and there.[/quote]
Is there any reason a subject matter couldn't be a kind of value?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3077&start=0#p21807
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Something-ing it at response problem
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-25 08:00:51

[quote="severedhand"]Re: what it's intended to cover. My game's being playtested at the moment, and 2 of the first 3 testers tried to throw a pie by typing 'throw pie (person)', and left out the 'at'. I noticed this in their transcripts, and that the game wasn't understanding them. So that's when I added 'throw (object) (person)' as another grammar construct the game should understand, and when I tested that is when I noted that it was giving the plain 'ol (-person-object-) response.[/quote]
It seems like the right response to code something to support what your playtesters are trying, but I wonder if it would be safer to use an:

[code]understand 'throw [something] [something]' as a mistake ("You need to use a preposition.")[/code]
It seems a little unfair, but the grammar is somewhat vague, and I generally like to reject a command if I'm not sure it was understood. Here's an example of why I don't like this grammar:

[code]Soylent Green is an edible thing. Soylent Yellow is an edible thing. Green Guy is a man. Red Guy is a man.

test me with "throw soylent green guy"[/code]

Or even worse (this is a bit contrived, but something like this [i]could[/i] happen:
[code]A small round stone is a thing. A stone statue is a thing.

Test me with "throw stone statue"[/code]

Alternatively, you could try this (not tested) hack:

[code]Shorthand-throwing it at is an action applying to two things. Understand "throw [something] [something]" as shorthand-throwing it at.

Check shorthand-throwing it at:
    say "(throwing [the noun] at [the second noun])[command clarification break]";
    instead try throwing the noun at the second noun.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3043&start=0#p21808
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Don't Screw IFComp
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-25 08:01:58

[quote]Oh, the copyediting makes me happy, because I've been considering donating a similar prize (probably something like "will make cover art or a basic feelie for you") and it's nice that there's precedent.
[/quote]

Preparation of cover art as a prize sounds like a wonderful idea.  I suspect a lot of people, like myself, are frustrated by not having the graphic arts skills to do this kind of work ourselves and would very much appreciate having somebody to work with who does have those skills.  It's almost enough to make me consider entering the comp.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=50#p21809
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-25 09:32:19

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Please note that I'm not trying to get you into a discussion, or trying to convince you that you are being immoral, or anything like that. I'm only trying to get you to acknowledge that there actually [i]is[/i] a moral issue here, and not just a bunch of fun-hating grouches trying to spoil the party for other people. (Because that was the original assertion that got my blood boiling.)

Which is rather off-topic anyway, so maybe we should let the issue rest.[/quote]
Hey, it was fun! I absolutely agree that there is a moral issue, but I don't think that means there isn't a faction of fun-hating grouches in the debate. I encourage all hungry philosophers to check out this blog I just discovered. Here's an interview with a really smart, interesting vegan:

<a class="postlink" href="http://letthemeatmeat.com/post/7958063624/interview-with-a-vegan-adam-weitz">http://letthemeatmeat.com/post/79580636 ... adam-weitz</a>

The blog's author is an ex-vegan philosopher who has a lot of vegan philosopher friends and interviewees. Lots of really interesting dialogue.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3077&start=10#p21810
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Something-ing it at response problem
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-25 09:36:46

Hehe, I had already tried diverting via another command. It doesn't work since the second command still prints its own stuff in brackets.

This particular game already supports (and encourages) so much prepositionless stuff, I think people would be annoyed if they were suddenly told they needed to add one to make a command work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3077&start=10#p21811
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Something-ing it at response problem
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-25 10:04:06

[quote="severedhand"]Hehe, I had already tried diverting via another command. It doesn't work since the second command still prints its own stuff in brackets.[/quote]
At least it wouldn't mess up the message when the player does use a preposition.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3077&start=10#p21812
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Something-ing it at response problem
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-25 10:12:25

But my message is okay if the player does use a preposition. Maybe you're referring to the code demo Zarf set up? I didn't run it myself.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3062&start=10#p21813
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Actions applied to Off-stage Objects
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-25 10:20:45

Or a thing? Things work perfectly well for this sort of, er, thing. The point is not that your technique is bad, it's that you're using a base class which isn't well supported for user-level user. The "thing" kind is.

Things cost more space than objects, but the margin is like 32 bytes per thing, so not a huge deal until you have dozens of them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3077&start=10#p21814
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Something-ing it at response problem
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-25 10:24:46

I must have misunderstood.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3043&start=0#p21815
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Don't Screw IFComp
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-08-25 10:45:08

Right on, then.  I've emailed Stephen with that offer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3077&start=10#p21816
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Something-ing it at response problem
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-25 11:54:35

I fear this is hideously "ad hack". It checks not for the chucking action but for the use of the command "throw". It might work though, at least until someone who really knows I6 codes a good solution.

[code]
Include (- 
[ PrintInferredCommand from singleton_noun;
	singleton_noun = FALSE;
	if ((from ~= 0) && (from == pcount-1) &&
		(pattern-->from > 1) && (pattern-->from < REPARSE_CODE))
			singleton_noun = TRUE;
	if (singleton_noun) {
		BeginActivity(CLARIFYING_PARSERS_CHOICE_ACT, pattern-->from);
		if (ForActivity(CLARIFYING_PARSERS_CHOICE_ACT, pattern-->from) == 0) {
			print "("; PrintCommand(from); print ")^";
		}
		EndActivity(CLARIFYING_PARSERS_CHOICE_ACT, pattern-->from);
	} 
	else {
		print "("; PrintCommand(from); print ")^";
	}
];

[ PrintCommand from i k spacing_flag objs; !#Added objs
    if (from == 0) {
        i = verb_word;
        if (LanguageVerb(i) == 0)
            if (PrintVerb(i) == 0) print (address) i; 
        from++; spacing_flag = true;
    }
    for (k=from : k<pcount : k++) {
        i = pattern-->k;
        if (i == PATTERN_NULL) continue;
        if (spacing_flag) print (char) ' ';
        if (i == 0) { print (string) THOSET__TX; jump TokenPrinted; }
        if (i == 1) { print (string) THAT__TX;   jump TokenPrinted; }
        if (i >= REPARSE_CODE) { !#Added brace 
            print (address) VM_NumberToDictionaryAddress(i-REPARSE_CODE);
            objs = 0; } !#Added line
        else
            if (i ofclass K3_direction)
                print (LanguageDirection) i; ! the direction name as adverb
            else 
                { if (verb_word == 'throw' && (objs == 1))  print "at "; !#Added line
                print (the) i; 
                objs++; } !#Added line
      .TokenPrinted;
        spacing_flag = true;
    }
];
-) instead of "Print Command" in "Parser.i6t".
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3080&start=0#p21817
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Checking for Player in ConversationState?
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2011-08-25 11:56:42

I haven't double checked this, but it looks to me like you should be able to check gPlayerChar.conversed this turn to test whether the player character is currently engaged in a conversation and gPlayerChar.lastInterlocutor to test who the Player Character is conversing with. The comments in the library code suggest that this mechanism is symmetrical, i.e. that the appropriate properties are set on both parties to a conversation.

-- Eric

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3049&start=10#p21818
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The floor sweeper dude from The Lurking Horror
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-08-25 12:26:51

[quote="matt w"]
That's a great idea, but the phone booth is fighting on the wrong side. 

Actually I'd like to see them all team up against the hollow voice. Plugh this![/quote]

Well, I was referring in this case more to the PUTPBAA incarnation, which is generally more apathetic to the player rather than mildly antagonistic.

Also, is it weird if I always assumed that the hollow voice sounded like Mr. T?

[quote="Robert Rothman"]
Gotta add the pirate to the "villain" team, who's in it to avenge his buddy the dragon who some SOB took out barehanded (and in the dragon's own home, no less!)


Robert Rothman[/quote]

Yes! I think the Adventurer would have to be the final boss, since he can so easily dispatch an opponent. (Maybe you'd have to, like, distract him with treasure, or maybe an irrisistable rug, and then push the phone booth on top of him.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3065&start=0#p21819
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Help with Amnesia!
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-08-25 12:39:54

I didn't know this game could be won. I assumed that the designers just hated IF players really bad.

That being said, I can imagine that it'd be extremely satisfying to beat.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3081&start=0#p21820
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Glulx: game window size
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-08-25 13:40:05

In Glulx, is there a way to make the game window a static size and keep the player from resizing it, or is that entirely governed by the interpreter?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3043&start=0#p21821
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Don't Screw IFComp
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2011-08-25 13:52:05

I'm back and working through IFComp emails, so if you've emailed me a prize, you should hear from me later today.

It is entirely kosher to both enter the competition and offer a prize.

Also, duncan, I think the best prizes (beyond cash money) are related to IF. I'm pleased people are excited about the copyediting prize!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3081&start=0#p21822
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx: game window size
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-25 13:57:49

Not to my knowledge.  I think some (all?) interpreters also style "suggestion" files - basically text files where you can specify a starting aspect ratio, but I haven't done it myself so I'm not sure of the details.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3062&start=10#p21823
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Actions applied to Off-stage Objects
User: HawkleyFox / DateTime: 2011-08-25 14:22:42

True enough, you can use any kind of value, and a thing is just a kind of object.  In an earlier and less elegant version, I was using tables spread across the whole of my source text to specify the data.  That really wasn't a lot of fun.

Indeed, the object kind is not purposed for user-level interaction, which is specifically why I decided to used it!  The data is meant to be interacted with only through a proxy object; in my example, the 'book' kind.  Using a kind of object in this manner also acts as a means to compartmentalize functionality and implies to anyone reading the source text that these objects are meant for a special purpose.  Using a kind of thing instead could blur the lines and can make it harder to read and maintain the code later on.

The way I had my example setup, the data source provides the specific data and the generalized thing it describes will define the ways the player can interact with the data, sort of analogous to a Model-View-Controller programming pattern.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3065&start=0#p21824
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Help with Amnesia!
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-25 14:30:21

Appropriately enough for Amnesia, I don't remember any details, but I played it when it first came out and I'm pretty sure that I was able to finish it -- so, if memory serves (as far as it goes), the game can be completed.

Sorry I can't help at all when it comes to how.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3062&start=10#p21825
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Actions applied to Off-stage Objects
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-25 14:42:44

If it works for you, that's great, but to me it sounds like a colossal paradigm mix-up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=50#p21826
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-08-25 16:08:22

[quote="maga"]In my attempt to make a funny I probably wasn't being very clear there. When I say 'justify', I don't mean that you literally have to stand up and answer questions on everything you do. That'd be a ridiculously strong demand. What is true, though, is that you're going to have to justify yourself [i]through the work.[/i] The work has to give its audience reasons for why it does the things it does -- they don't have to be carefully-articulated, exhaustive, explicit reasons, but the audience still has to get them at some level.

To say the same thing in another way: if you're going back over a draft, and you see something you did and you can't think of a good reason that you did it, or any good reason to keep it, that's a pretty clear sign that you need to take it out. And the level of scrutiny needs to be a bit higher for some things than for others. This is not a particularly high standard for justification.

(Note that I'm not a cryptoantiprofanitarian, here. Most of the things I write, I swear like a shipload of chav pirates being boarded by the Marines' special hip-hop taskforce. I'm just saying, if I thought it didn't matter I wouldn't be wasting space and energy on it.)[/quote]
I see where you're coming from. I don't really disagree with any of that, except that for me the question of whether a word is profane or not, is not one of the things I consider requiring of any special justification. They are equivalent to me. There is zero weight accorded to whether anyone else might be offended, if I am writing an adult work. It sounds like that is not unlike the approach you actually take, so we must have just been talking past each other for a bit there. 8)

BTW for an alternate perspective to Le Guin's (one more in accord with my tastes, although Le Guin's essay is still kinda priceless) here's Stephen Fry cursing on video and loving it…

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_osQvkeNRM">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_osQvkeNRM</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=50#p21827
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-08-25 16:26:25

[quote="Eleas"]To be honest, the concept of "bleeping out" or silencing curse words is profoundly disturbing to me. Not just because I find it juvenile (if you wanted to express a word that you expect would be understood as such, why not, you know, [i]do[/i] it?), but because it smacks of mysticism. We break up the word and create all these disconnects because we don't want to summon the demon symbolized by the word.

Or perhaps it's a feeling of hypocrisy it evokes in me. "Hey, I want my stuff to be cool and edgy... but not [i]too[/i] cool and edgy, and certainly not enough to make anyone [i]complain[/i]." It's a fig leaf, one that tries to obfuscate the issue by removing the noise but keeping the sentiment. To be frank, I have a hard time seeing why it even works. It'd certainly offend me far more to be called a m----------r than any actual curse I could name. R---t, g--s?[/quote]
Bleeping words out is really an interesting example. They almost always supply enough letters or enough context to know what the cursewords are, don't they? And everybody knows the standard cursewords, don't they? So it's all just a big fiction: Stephen Fry nailed it.

PLQ.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=50#p21828
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-25 16:35:21

[quote="matt w"] I had that sublime pleasure -- German surely has a word for it -- that you get when you bring an umbrella with you and it actually rains.[/quote]

You're thinking of the 
aus-dem-Regen-in-die-Traufe-aber-mit-einem-Parapluie-zuhanden-gekommenheit
in Sein und Zeit §69 b) perhaps?

Me, I prefer the French expression "déjà plu".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=50#p21829
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-08-25 16:47:15

Oh, if only one [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-Wd-Q3F8KMl]could count all the bleeps that maketh murder[/url] :')

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3062&start=10#p21830
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Actions applied to Off-stage Objects
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-25 16:49:25

[quote]Using a kind of thing instead could blur the lines and can make it harder to read and maintain the code later on.[/quote]

Well, you've already encountered the maintenance problems associated with objects, so you'll have to decide which you want. :)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2781&start=20#p21831
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Off the top of my head
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-08-25 17:03:16

Doesn't have to be a bust; you can still do it yourself.  I personally take it as a given that everyone is going to drop out of a group project.  Besides, I'll still do pictures for you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3080&start=0#p21832
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Checking for Player in ConversationState?
User: QueenoftheCapes / DateTime: 2011-08-25 18:44:37

Thanks, Eric. [emote]:D[/emote]  I was able to use them to make a quick custom method that does what exactly what I need. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3082&start=0#p21833
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: inform 7 Glulx problem
User: Rednave21 / DateTime: 2011-08-25 18:51:05

Hello,

I am working with Inform7 for a class project. I was trying to use the extensions Auto-Map by Mark Tilford, Inform ATTACK by Victor Gijsbers, and Conversation Framework by Eric Eve. The game works under Z-code 8 but crashes after a few rooms. I tried switching it to Glulx but when I compile the game window just shows the Cocoa GLK logo and nothing else. I am on a MacBook Pro with OS X Lion.

Any help would be appreciated.

EDIT: I should also point out that running the game with Glulx settings under Spatterlight and it works no problem.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3083&start=0#p21834
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: IF story idea
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-08-25 19:17:46

I have an idea and I am not sure if it should be a written story or an IF. It could go either way.

What if a computer programmer was sick, like with cancer, and wanted to make an IF about himself for his kids to get advice and so on after he dies.

I'm thinking, if this was IF, it could have cut scenes where the programmer is at the doctors office or writing the game, etc, then bits where the player is actually playing the "game". 

What do you think, IF or story?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3077&start=10#p21835
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Something-ing it at response problem
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-25 19:37:19

Thanks very much for that Felix, I will try it out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3083&start=0#p21836
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF story idea
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-25 19:40:24

Likely to work better as IF, I suspect. Straight prose about IF is likely to be kind of like novels about music, or movies about mathematics: the thing you most want to show your audience is not very well-suited to the medium. (Okay, IF and straight prose are a lot more mutually intelligible than the examples above. But you see my point.)

(If I was doing this, I'd want to eliminate as much of the frame-story as possible, and let the details emerge from the game-in-the-game. But I'm not, so I should shut my yap.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=50#p21837
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-25 22:04:34

Back at Robert's comment about ratings systems turning into censorship - it mostly remains that filmmakers end up censoring themselves for commercial purposes. Horror film fans know the phenomenon of the PG-13 horror film, where they know the thing is gonna be tame because the producers make sure they put in insufficient gore or whatever to warrant an R rating, so they could get more money out of a younger audience. But that's their choice in a big commercial industry. I don't think films with extreme content have trouble actually getting screened per se these days.

From an Aussie perspective, I think America has too few ratings gradings, and I look to that as the problem rather than the concept of a ratings system itself. The jump from USA PG-13 to R is too great. Here we have no shortage of gradient. G, PG, M, MA15+, R. Of course, our problem of late is that the same ratings are applied to videogames, except they did not permit the R (18+ only) rating to cross to gaming, because of the dumb assumption only kids play games. The result being we occasionally are famous for banning games that would have got an R, because legally they can't have one, and editing games so that they squeeze into MA15. But also - a lot of folks suspect (including me) that some games that would warrant an R if it existed are being squeezed into MA15 unedited, meaning they're really being silently endorsed for an audience younger than was intended. But fortunately the introduction of R for games is in parliament here atm, so this situation should soon be rectified.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3084&start=0#p21838
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Polite forgiveness
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-08-25 23:26:38

In a game with polite forgiveness, if you do something that makes the game unwinnable, should the game immediately end (even if the action didn't cause you to die or anything)?  Or is it enough to simply state clearly that you've done something that makes the game unwinnable and let the player choose to restart?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3084&start=0#p21839
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Polite forgiveness
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-25 23:48:42

Or how about idea C: I would probably just block the action. Depending on the action etc., your blocking message may not even need to explicitly address the issue of the game ending. Depending on where you've erected your fourth walls, this could be a great thing.

Really easy example: Dropping some crucial item off a cliff. The best solve to me is to stop that happening with a 'you might /you'll probably need that' message.

From your question, my guess is you're already working with a situation where it somehow won't make sense to block the action. If it's some life or death duel and you do the wrong thing, my style would be kill the person and offer undo. Edit - though you already suggested it doesn't involve death.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3062&start=10#p21840
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Actions applied to Off-stage Objects
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-08-26 00:45:52

I'm too late to this thread to be useful, but: 

[quote="zarf"]I'm pretty sure it's just an oversight that resulted from nobody testing running objects through the parser machinery.[/quote]

I actually bumped into the same problem ages ago and reported it as (eventually) a documentation bug: <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=357">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=357</a>  

I'm glad the note in the docs was subsequently found to be useful!   [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3082&start=0#p21841
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7 Glulx problem
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-08-26 00:58:28

I'm surprised it compiles at all into the tiny Z8 machine, but I think there have been issues with Inform on Lion?  I don't remember if this was what it was, though.  (I'm *still* running Tiger.  On PPC.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3085&start=0#p21842
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Dealing with empty topic understood
User: Zeborah / DateTime: 2011-08-26 01:12:42

I've got lots of talking in my IF, and it's easy for the player to accidentally hit the enter key too early. The problem is this means there's no topic understood, and the parser throws a wobbly and says "*** run-time problem p39: attempt to say a snippet value which is currently invalid: words 3 to 2."  Which I have absolute sympathy with, but I have no idea how to fix it.

[code]The Stage is a room. Jeff is a man in the Stage.

Instead of answering someone that something:
	say "'[topic understood in sentence case],' you say."
	
Test me with "jeff, hello/jeff,"[/code]
I tried "Instead of answering someone that nothing", and I tried "if topic understood is not blank/empty/invalid/"", but none of my attempts are any more valid than the topic understood.  Help?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3082&start=0#p21843
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7 Glulx problem
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-26 01:37:16

The Lion problem is discussed here, with a link to a fixed version: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2896&p=20474#p20474">viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2896&p=20474#p20474</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3084&start=0#p21844
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Polite forgiveness
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-26 01:43:28

In the original concept of a "polite" game, the game makes it completely clear that the player has made a mistake. "You have died" is of course one way to do that. I didn't distinguish that case specifically, though.

In modern game convention, the very fact that the game continues *may* be taken as a promise that the game is still winnable. Or not. Depends on the audience and the game's presentation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3085&start=0#p21845
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dealing with empty topic understood
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-26 02:31:12

You can catch that empty snippet like this:
[code]
The Stage is a room. Jeff is a man in the Stage. The hurdy gurdy man is a man in the Stage.

Instead of answering someone that something:
	unless the remainder after dividing the number understood by 100 is 0:
		say "'[topic understood in sentence case],' you say.";
	otherwise:
		say "But you didn't say anything to [the noun]."
   
Test me with "jeff, do me a favour / jeff, / hurdy gurdy man, hi / hurdy gurdy, "

[/code]

Inform internally represents snippets by numbers where the hundreds tell Inform with which word in the player's command the snippet starts and the units telling it how many words long the snippet is. 

So, in "Jeff, hello", the entire player's command is the snippet represented by 103 (meaning the snippet begins with the first word and is 3 words long (the comma counts as one word)); 202 would be the snippet ", hello"; and the topic understood will in this case be represented by the number 301 ("hello" being the third word in the command and only 1 word long). 

In the defective command "Jeff, " the topic understood is represented by the number 300 -- meaning it begins with the third word, which doesn't exist and therefore is 0 words long. In general we want to catch snippets that are 0 words long wherever they (fail to) start in the player's command; so we check for snippets represented as even hundreds.

You can't use "topic understood" in the condition, since Inform 7 itself does not recognize that as a number variable; however, "number understood" and "topic understood" are actually two different names for the same Inform 6 variable, the one where the snippet/number is stored, so we can use "number understood" instead.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3082&start=0#p21846
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7 Glulx problem
User: Rednave21 / DateTime: 2011-08-26 02:39:58

Thanks! But now I am having a problem in that Inform attack stopped working.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3083&start=0#p21847
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF story idea
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-26 04:21:59

It reminds me very much of the play "An Imaginary Life" by Peter Parnell.

[spoiler]A playwright had cancer and used it as inspiration to write a play in which he didn't. The reader/viewer is treated to real life and imaginary life in alternating sequences that confuse and amuse.[/spoiler]

Your idea sounds like a very good idea that, in these lines, should belong to IF.

Also, for inspiration at some levels I reccommend Deadline Enchanter. For concept, not for story, naturally.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=50#p21848
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-26 04:57:21

[quote="Trumgottist"]
When I think of those words, I get an emotional reaction. I think of situations like the time I was threatened by a drug addict when I was working in a store. It's words from a different culture - a different world. I suppose that's what scares people the most.[/quote]
That makes sense, even without the drug addict. People tend to curse when they are aggressive or threatening -- I guess that's one of the primary uses of curses. So curses may not unreasonably be expected to be felt as aggressions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3085&start=0#p21849
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dealing with empty topic understood
User: Zeborah / DateTime: 2011-08-26 05:01:23

Awesome, thank you!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=100#p21850
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-26 05:06:10

A (very low priority) feature suggestion would be to select a cover image from the hard drive, regardless of there being any cover image on IFDB. I'm thinking mainly of Spectrum games here, where I can get a cover for most of them but most of them aren't in IFDB.

And a bug. Editing games AFTER I import their info from IFDB (via the magnifying glass) is a pain. The game's name often doesn't refresh if I happen to change it (for instance, to add "Enchanter 2:" just before Sorcerer). By way of editing genres, I now have two genres, "Back to Life series" and "back to life", and the game "Back to Life... Unfortunately!" (the game whose genre I edited to remove the "series") doesn't appear in any of them (i.e., when I select "genre" and "back to life" or "Back to Life series" I don't see the game there). This only seems to happen after importing the IFDB information. It's not a biggie in that I work around it by simply closing the left-hand pane, but it is a bug.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=100#p21851
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-26 05:34:32

[quote="Peter Pears"]A (very low priority) feature suggestion would be to select a cover image from the hard drive, regardless of there being any cover image on IFDB. I'm thinking mainly of Spectrum games here, where I can get a cover for most of them but most of them aren't in IFDB.[/quote]
The solution is to upload the covers to IFDB. You'll do a service to the community at the same time!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=100#p21852
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-26 05:40:12

[quote="Juhana"]The solution is to upload the covers to IFDB. You'll do a service to the community at the same time![/quote]
They are probably still under copyright.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=100#p21853
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-26 05:49:05

I'd have to upload covers, create entries, et al. [emote];)[/emote] That'll be for later.

I'm labouring under a grandiose secret project, you see.

First step: cathegorize all adventures in my hard drive, playing them alphabetically in the meantime.

This is just for me to get my bearings.

Second step: Revisit them all, alphabetically and independently of system, thanks to Grotesque, and check IFDB for entries and reviews. Create entries where there aren't, and review games that need revieweing.

Very, very, very long-term project. In the meantime I'd like not to mix steps and just keep on cathegorizing my hard drive neatly. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=100#p21854
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-26 06:10:10

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]They are probably still under copyright.[/quote]
I'm not a lawyer but I believe low resolution cover art falls under [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use]fair use[/url] in this context. IFDB even has an option to tag the image as such.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3082&start=0#p21855
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7 Glulx problem
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-08-26 08:14:07

What exactly do you mean by "stopped working"? If you mean that it doesn't even seem to be present, make sure the extensions are installed correctly in their respective folders and that you are including them at the top of your source in the right order. Some extensions have to be listed before or after others for procedural reasons.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3083&start=0#p21856
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF story idea
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-26 08:46:44

If a computer programmer was very sick, I would say, "God bless you and good luck with your treatment! Our thoughts and prayers are with you." Or if he or she didn't believe in God or prayers, I'd say "Be at peace. We'll send some good vibes your way."

Sounds like a great project. Good luck with it! Reminds me of Cameron Duncan:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCgVf4-1k6w">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCgVf4-1k6w</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3077&start=10#p21857
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Something-ing it at response problem
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-26 09:19:58

That code works, if anyone else wants to benefit from Felix's mad skilz.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=60#p21858
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-08-26 09:37:05

[quote="severedhand"]Back at Robert's comment about ratings systems turning into censorship - it mostly remains that filmmakers end up censoring themselves for commercial purposes. Horror film fans know the phenomenon of the PG-13 horror film, where they know the thing is gonna be tame because the producers make sure they put in insufficient gore or whatever to warrant an R rating, so they could get more money out of a younger audience. But that's their choice in a big commercial industry. I don't think films with extreme content have trouble actually getting screened per se these days.[/quote]
Not if they're R-rated, maybe, but there absolutely are many U.S. theaters that refuse to screen any films with ratings beyond that (or no rating). This makes it effectively impossible for those films to recoup their costs.  You can see the same thing in games with ESRB ratings -- if you get a rating higher than M, most retailers won't stock your game and it's effectively doomed, so you have no choice but to cut content until you get it down to M. (This is not speculation; there are hundreds of documented cases of filmmakers saying "we cut such-and-such to get an R rating" -- this is why we have "unrated edition" DVDs, although ironically that's now become more of a marketing gimmick.) You can call that censoring yourself for commercial purposes if you want, but the person producing the content is not the one making the decisions about what will be commercially viable; the MPAA or ESRB makes that judgment and the producers have no choice but to comply if they want anyone to be able to see the film or play the game. That's censorship in my book.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=60#p21859
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-26 10:20:14

[quote]Not if they're R-rated, maybe, but there absolutely are many U.S. theaters that refuse to screen any films with ratings beyond that (or no rating). [/quote]

I surmise from Severedhand's post that the Australian "R" may correspond more closely to the MPAA "NC-17" (formerly "X") -- nobody below a certain age permitted at all --than to the MPAA "R" (which allows children if accompanied by an adult).  Is that correct?


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=60#p21860
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-26 10:29:08

Yeah, that's right. An R in Australia means only people aged 18+ are admitted.

The step below that is MA15+, which behaves like the American R, except the age involved is 15, not 17.

So those two ratings are the ones with enforceable degrees. Below that it's all recommendation. M is recommended 15+, then there's PG and G.

I remember the excitement here when Total Recall first came out. It was actually released in two versions, an R and an M, both playing in cinemas at the same time. So that was an early sign of the American style ratings-gambling for audience that has since become more prevalent.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=100#p21861
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-26 11:16:53

[quote="Peter Pears"]A (very low priority) feature suggestion would be to select a cover image from the hard drive, regardless of there being any cover image on IFDB. I'm thinking mainly of Spectrum games here, where I can get a cover for most of them but most of them aren't in IFDB.[/quote]

This has more or less been implemented, I'm just working out a bug or two now. Assuming that you have each game in its own folder, all you have to do is save the image as cover.jpg or cover.png and it will be displayed. This will be in the next release.

[quote]And a bug. Editing games AFTER I import their info from IFDB (via the magnifying glass) is a pain. The game's name often doesn't refresh if I happen to change it (for instance, to add "Enchanter 2:" just before Sorcerer). By way of editing genres, I now have two genres, "Back to Life series" and "back to life", and the game "Back to Life... Unfortunately!" (the game whose genre I edited to remove the "series") doesn't appear in any of them (i.e., when I select "genre" and "back to life" or "Back to Life series" I don't see the game there). This only seems to happen after importing the IFDB information. It's not a biggie in that I work around it by simply closing the left-hand pane, but it is a bug.[/quote]

I've fixed a couple bugs in the filter list...I wonder if these are related? 
Regarding the title, I can't replicate this. If I search via the magnifying glass and then I edit the title, things are saved just fine. Hopefully this means that I fixed the bug. Otherwise, I'm hoping it's not a Windows thing. I can replicate the genre thing. I'll fix that before the next release. Thanks  for letting me know!

I'm more or less done with the release, short of a couple small bug fixes I hope to do tonight, then I need to port it to gtk2, fix whatever bugs I introduce by doing that, and then build the Windows version. So....hopefully this weekend?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=100#p21862
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-26 11:20:45

What a happy weekend I shall have. [emote]:)[/emote]

BTW, the bug regarding editing happened AFTER importing via magnifying glass and AFTER clicking ok - it happened when I went back to the entry to edit it. If it's already solved so much the better. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=100#p21863
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-26 11:28:02

Wow, what a dumb (but major) bug that genre (and author, coincidentally) editing problem was.  [emote]:oops:[/emote] 
It's been fixed.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=100#p21864
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-26 11:33:28

[quote="Peter Pears"]What a happy weekend I shall have. [emote]:)[/emote]

BTW, the bug regarding editing happened AFTER importing via magnifying glass and AFTER clicking ok - it happened when I went back to the entry to edit it. If it's already solved so much the better. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
Ah ok, it happened to me now. Trying to figure out what is happening, because it's updating in the information view below...

I'm curious to hear how this major project is using Grotesque [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3086&start=0#p21865
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Ready Player One (lazy book review)
User: Neurosion / DateTime: 2011-08-26 11:50:23

For raw entertainment value, I wanted to recommend Ernest Cline's [u]Ready Player One[/u].  The book is chock full of juicy geek references for my generation +/- 1.  As a bonus, I can mention that our hobby is well-represented.

[spoiler]In fact, most anyone here should be able to solve one of the book's major puzzle points in as much time as it takes to read the clue.[/spoiler]
I will admit right off that the book is not particularly well written.  Several basic rules of good writing are ignored, continuity errors abound and there are several moments where the book was clearly breaking its own rules.  Ordinarily that sort of thing would be enough to drop the book, but it ended up being such a quick read and the geek culture references were so compelling that I stopped caring.  More than once it occurred to me that this book would have made a fun text adventure back in the day.

If you've got ten bucks and a couple of afternoons to spare, give it a try.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3083&start=0#p21866
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF story idea
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-08-26 11:51:17

I've seen shows about sick people who made videos for their children. I just thought... well, what if it was a programmer? If it was me, would I want static videos, or would I want to write something that really represented me?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3083&start=0#p21867
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF story idea
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-26 11:56:14

You'd be in good company - you might know that Will Crowther wrote the original Adventure for his kids, who became the world's first players of interactive fiction!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2781&start=20#p21870
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Off the top of my head
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-08-26 12:26:05

[quote="katz"]I personally take it as a given that everyone is going to drop out of a group project.[/quote]

Me too. Even in a team of 5-10 people that you know closely or personally, this often occurs. Must be the pay rate  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3082&start=0#p21872
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7 Glulx problem
User: Rednave21 / DateTime: 2011-08-26 12:53:35

I have uninstalled and reinstalled it. I have rearranged the include statements. When I removed it I get compile errors (Naturally). Nothing worked

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=110#p21873
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-26 13:11:53

Oh, dear. I can't add format ".z80" to Grotesque...

...because it truncates ".z80" to ".z8".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=60#p21874
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: Tale / DateTime: 2011-08-26 13:26:36

Here are my two cents re: profanity in IF.

You want to write a story. You know what you need to have in the story. If people curse strongly, they do. If people get murdered in the most vicious way impossible, they do. If you let what others might think about your work influence it, you're doing it wrong.

The range of topics in IF is as wide (maybe wider) as that of static fiction. 
You will never be able to translate the idea in your head to the screen 1:1. But don't start by hindering yourself.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3088&start=0#p21875
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Flexible Windows
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-08-26 13:29:20

Flexible Windows seems to be the only currently-supported way to display multiple windows, but the only example it has involving graphics just has a pile of I6 code, mostly relating to image scaling.  What's the easiest way to display a static image?

I'm displaying an image with a caption underneath.  For anyone who cares, my window code is:

[code]The graphics-window is a graphics g-window.  The main-window spawns the graphics-window.  The position of the graphics-window is g-placeright.  The scale method of the graphics-window is g-fixed-size.  The measurement of the graphics-window is 600.

The byline-window is a text-grid g-window.  The graphics-window spawns the byline-window.  The position of the byline-window is g-placebelow.  The scale method of the byline-window is g-proportional.  The measurement of the byline-window is 25.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3082&start=0#p21876
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: inform 7 Glulx problem
User: Rednave21 / DateTime: 2011-08-26 13:39:51

I fixed my issue, I was changing who the player was and inform attack did not like that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=60#p21877
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-26 13:44:52

[quote="Taleslinger"]If you let what others might think about your work influence it, you're doing it wrong.[/quote]
If this is actually what you think about your work, then there is no reason to publish. All art is a form of communication, and if you want to write anything good then it's necessary to consider your audience.

It's not necessary (or desirable, or even possible) to consider [i]all[/i] your potential audience, or to cater fully to everybody you consider. (At a minimum, you can just cater to a hypothetical audience of people exactly like yourself.) And I don't consider "people who are grievously offended by swearwords that don't specially target anyone" as a category that deserves special consideration. But don't overstate your case: the literal meaning of what you're saying is that the only people who are doing it [i]right[/i] don't edit, don't betatest, don't read reviews, and don't ever do anything that involves wondering "how could I do this better?"

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3089&start=0#p21878
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Allow unregistered users to search
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-08-26 13:54:48

Someone on raif pointed out that unregistered users are not able to search this forum. I'm not sure if that's by design or a configuration issue. Google indexes the forum pretty thoroughly so I expect it's more of an oversight in the Search settings.

[quote]
GUEST SEARCH FLOOD INTERVAL: This is the number of seconds between searches that guest users must wait. This value is shared for all guest users, if one guest searches, the others will have to wait until this interval passes. All positive integers are valid values. If you want to disable checking for search intervals for guests, set this value to "0".
[/quote]

My guess is this is set to zero and should be something else (like 5) to open it up for guests.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=60#p21879
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-08-26 13:55:32

(While I was writing my reply, Sam posted his. I'm going ahead posting what I wrote anyway, even though he said it better.)

[quote="Taleslinger"]You want to write a story. You know what you need to have in the story. If people curse strongly, they do. If people get murdered in the most vicious way impossible, they do. If you let what others might think about your work influence it, you're doing it wrong.[/quote]
Without advocating censorship or anything, I want to point out that this view (expressed by several people now) strikes me as too simplistic.

You want to write a story? Doesn't that involve telling the story to someone else? A good storyteller is aware of the audience and how they will react to the story. If profanity (or anything, really, but since that's the subject of the thread…) gets between the story and its audience, the storyteller may not be doing his job. 

Please note that I wrote "may" there. Every person in the audience is different, and I'm not saying that you should write for the lowest common denominator or never offend anyone. But to me it doesn't make any sense to not consider the people who are going to receive the story.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3089&start=0#p21880
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Allow unregistered users to search
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-26 14:22:02

phpBB's search is practically useless anyway, so I'd just direct people to use Google (adding site:intfiction.org searches only this site) or install a custom Google search widget.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3089&start=0#p21881
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Allow unregistered users to search
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-26 14:41:00

I disagree on the uselessness of the search; I use it pretty often. For instance, if I search for "noses" through the site widget, it returns the 16 posts that contain "noses," with the author and thread for each one. Google gives you the thread but not the author, and gives you a misleading number of results (it says "about 98" but only displays 14). If allowing guests to search every second or so doesn't cause a big slowdown, and I can't imagine we have that much volume, I think it'd be a good idea to let them search.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3090&start=0#p21882
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: StackExchange Interactive Fiction Q&A site proposal
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-08-26 15:17:35

It looks like this hasn't been mentioned on here yet, but a proposal has been added to StackExchange for an IF Q&A site:

<a class="postlink" href="http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/34895/interactive-fiction?referrer=ACgCED8VQdGavxMkQVQ6gg2">http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposa ... xMkQVQ6gg2</a>

I think this would be a great idea myself, so please sign up if you agree!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=60#p21883
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: Tale / DateTime: 2011-08-26 15:46:43

Maga, I agree that what I said was a bit simplistic. I guess what I am trying to say is, "If your work needs swearwords, don't censor them because you think people might be offended by the use of swearwords". (Don't you dare imply I'm against betatesting, by the way....)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3090&start=0#p21884
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: StackExchange Interactive Fiction Q&A site proposal
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-26 16:05:11

Why is it a better idea than using this web forum?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=110#p21885
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-26 16:06:43

Ah, good catch! I just fixed it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3089&start=0#p21886
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Allow unregistered users to search
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-08-26 16:13:50

I also find the search very useful. Google can't restrict to a particular date range, or search content excluding the topic for example.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3090&start=0#p21887
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: StackExchange Interactive Fiction Q&A site proposal
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-08-26 16:25:58

They're two different things really.

Forums are great for discussing things, but a Q&A site works much better for specific answers to specific questions. The StackExchange system of reputation and voting makes it much more useful than wading through pages and pages of discussion in a forum.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3091&start=0#p21888
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Podcasts
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-08-26 17:04:50

Just curious: are there any good IF-related podcasts? The only things I was able to find hadn't been updated in years and/or only had one episode available. I'd love to see (hear) something along the lines of [url=http://gamedesignadvance.com/?page_id=1616]Another Castle[/url] but specific to IF, or perhaps an audio supplement to SPAG.

If such a thing doesn't already exist, would there be sufficient interest to justify its creation?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3088&start=0#p21889
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Flexible Windows
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-08-26 17:26:33

Glimmr Simple Graphics Window--which really just defines a Flexible Windows graphics window--includes an example that shows how to code a display rule in I7. Otherwise, your non-I6 options are to use one of the prefab display rules from Emily's Simple Graphics Window (one window only), or to use Glimmr Canvas-Based Drawing. The latter is intended for more complicated displays than yours, though, so I'd head there only if you don't like the other options.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3090&start=0#p21890
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: StackExchange Interactive Fiction Q&A site proposal
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-08-26 17:47:13

My first impression of the link you gave is a riot of links and colors and icons. The page is so visually chaotic that I have a difficult time deciphering the individual posts, let alone finding the ones I need.

I have ADHD, however, so take it for what it's worth.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3091&start=0#p21891
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Podcasts
User: Silas Greenback / DateTime: 2011-08-26 18:41:16

[quote="shammack"]...perhaps an audio supplement to SPAG.

If such a thing doesn't already exist, would there be sufficient interest to justify its creation?[/quote]

That's an outstanding idea. You can bet I'd listen.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3092&start=0#p21892
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Looking for testers for The Underland!
User: ilovemyhedgehog / DateTime: 2011-08-26 18:59:57

It is a scifi game. I wont tell you much more because im hopeing to enter it in the IF comp.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3091&start=0#p21893
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Podcasts
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-26 19:17:49

Jacqueline Lott and I have discussed doing one a few times. I've resisted thus far because she has a trained radio voice and I have an unprepossessing mumble and a tendency to break off halfway through sentences in order to rethink them. Also when we're talking naturally we interrupt each other a lot. And organising the things is a non-trivial job.

So, like most projects that I would like to see done but am unlikely to do, I am all in favour of someone else doing them better.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3051&start=0#p21894
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx: The [roman type] tag
User: Zeborah / DateTime: 2011-08-26 20:40:44

I like the idea of a variable. And I'm reminded of an example in the recipe book for making html-style font coding.  Have just thrown together an example (only bold and italics here but I think it's obvious how it could be extended) :

[code]
The Stage is a room. "[b]Bold and [i]italic[/i] and still bold[/b].[paragraph break][i]Italics and [b]bold[/b] and still italics[/i]."

Bold_on is a truth state that varies.
Italic_on is a truth state that varies.

To say b:
	now Bold_on is true;
	say bold type.
	
To say i:
	now Italic_on is true;
	say italic type.
	
To say /b:
	now Bold_on is false;
	say roman type;
	if Italic_on is true, say italic type.
	
To say /i:
	now Italic_on is false;
	say roman type;
	if Bold_on is true, say bold type.
[/code]

Also see ex443 Chanel Version 1 in the manual -- I don't follow the syntax there but it does address an issue I haven't considered re paragraph breaking/running on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3088&start=0#p21895
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Flexible Windows
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-08-26 22:41:09

OK, but that example is essentially identical to the other one except that the scaling calculations are done in I7 instead of I6.  I don't know I6; I don't know how to modify this so that it just displays the image at its native resolution without scaling it, and consequently so the DrawImageScaled function only takes the figure name and the window as variables:

[code]    Include (-

    [DrawImageScaled ID win x y image_x image_y ;
        if (win.ref_number) {
            glk_image_draw_scaled(win.ref_number, ResourceIDsOfFigures-->ID, x, y, image_x, image_y);
        }
    ];

    -).[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3090&start=0#p21896
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: StackExchange Interactive Fiction Q&A site proposal
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-27 03:13:54

The above link is just for the planning the eventual site, it doesn't reflect the final layout. If the proposal is accepted it'll first look like [url=http://literature.stackexchange.com/]this[/url] before it gets its own theme like any of [url=http://stackexchange.com/sites]these sites[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=60#p21897
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-27 04:12:45

[quote="Felix"]You're thinking of the aus-dem-Regen-in-die-Traufe-aber-mit-einem-Parapluie-zuhanden-gekommenheit in Sein und Zeit §69 b) perhaps?

Me, I prefer the French expression "déjà plu".[/quote]
 [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3088&start=0#p21898
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Flexible Windows
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-08-27 09:40:46

[quote="katz"]OK, but that example is essentially identical to the other one except that the scaling calculations are done in I7 instead of I6.  I don't know I6; I don't know how to modify this so that it just displays the image at its native resolution without scaling it[/quote]

The example exposes all the functions that are used at the I7 level. There is no need to write any I6. If you want to display the image w/o scaling, just give the original dimensions of the image in the "display image" phrase.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3083&start=0#p21899
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF story idea
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-08-27 12:21:46

OK this brings up a question. Should the game be completely fiction, or should it be about myself (except the dying part, I don't have cancer). I don't know, seems awful personal and potentially identity-theftish.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3083&start=0#p21900
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF story idea
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-27 12:32:35

[quote="duodave"]except the dying part, I don't have cancer[/quote]
I suppose this was the elephant in the room. Glad you're not sick, man. Before you clarified that, this looked like a very sad and depressing thread.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3083&start=0#p21901
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF story idea
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-08-27 13:57:08

LOL. Reminds me of an Ann Rice press conference where she actually announced she is not a vampire, she's a writer of fiction.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3083&start=0#p21902
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF story idea
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-27 18:22:31

Wow, I hadn't read that subtext *at all*. I hope I'm just distracted and absent minded, the alternative is a level of unsensitivity I'm not comfortable with.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3083&start=10#p21903
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF story idea
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-27 19:29:20

[quote="duodave"]OK this brings up a question. Should the game be completely fiction, or should it be about myself (except the dying part, I don't have cancer). I don't know, seems awful personal and potentially identity-theftish.[/quote]
Unless you are planning to put in your social security number, I would't worry about identity theft. How autobiographical you should go -- that is a good question. In static fiction, autobiography is very popular; in IF, not so much, but that might be a reason to try it out. Whether you feel comfortable with it is something you'll have to work out for yourself. (And of course, no reader will ever know which parts of the game are fiction and which are autobiographical, so that may make it less threatening.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3083&start=10#p21904
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF story idea
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-08-27 19:43:53

Also not sure how you can steal [i]your own[/i] identity.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3083&start=10#p21905
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF story idea
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-27 19:49:53

[quote="katz"]Also not sure how you can steal [i]your own[/i] identity.[/quote]
Uhm, I think he means that writing an autobiographical story might make it easier for other people to steal his identity. (Though "the man who stole his own identity" would be a terrific premisse for a story inspired by Borges or Calvino.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3083&start=10#p21906
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF story idea
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-08-27 20:15:00

I think I'll make it semi-autobiographical but with the names changed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3083&start=10#p21907
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF story idea
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-27 20:38:57

I don't know if this is what duodave meant, but if you write something fairly autobiographical you might worry about stealing the identities of those around you. (Alice Munro has at least two great stories about this, "Family Furnishings" and "Material." You should really be reading some Alice Munro stories instead of doing whatever it is you're doing, which, I happen to know, is reading this post.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3093&start=0#p21908
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Making a one shot key in Inform 7
User: Whimsical_R / DateTime: 2011-08-27 21:26:42

I want to make a key that breaks after being used.  I really thought I was getting a handle on Inform 7, but I must not be grasping it right, because I keep getting coding errors.

Instead of unlocking the heavy door:
   remove the bobby pin from play;
   the heavy door is now unlocked;
   say "The bobby pin snaps in two with an audible click, and sadly you discard the broken pieces.  The pin did not give its life in vain, however, as the door is now unlocked.".

I don't understand why that won't work.  Can someone help?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3093&start=0#p21909
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making a one shot key in Inform 7
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-27 21:45:29

It looks like you should change the first line to "Instead of unlocking the heavy door with the bobby pin:" and the third line to "Now the heavy door is unlocked;". 

On the first one, after a little fiddling, it may be the case that when an action takes two nouns, the rule header either has to specify no nouns or both of them -- so "Instead of unlocking" compiles, and "Instead of unlocking the heavy door with the bobby pin" compiles, but "Instead of unlocking the heavy door" doesn't. (I've tested this on one other action.) If you wanted the effect of "Instead of unlocking the heavy door" you could write "Instead of unlocking the heavy door with something:".

(But you don't want that effect! If you wrote "Instead of unlocking the heavy door with something," then the player could unlock it with any old thing and get your message about the bobby pin. So in this case it's lucky that it didn't compile, because it would've introduced a bug in your game if it did.)

On the second one, you have to put "now" at the beginning of a line like that -- Inform 7 looks like English, but this is one of (many) cases where something that's grammatical in English isn't in Inform.

By the way, it's easier to deal with your code if you put it in code tags (use the button above the window where you type your post); that will preserve your indentation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3093&start=0#p21910
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making a one shot key in Inform 7
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-08-27 21:47:41

The first thing to ask is whether you've formatted it correctly.  Unfortunately, Inform does care about whitespace sometimes, and this is one of those times.  Make sure you've got one tab at the beginning of each of the lines after the first one.  (And in the future, if you're trying to show us your formatted code, you can use the "code" tag, which won't swallow the tabs quite as thoroughly.)

The second thing is that I believe your second line should be "now the heavy door is unlocked" (with the "now" at the beginning).

[Oh I got scooped by mattw, but my point about whitespace still stands.]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3093&start=0#p21911
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making a one shot key in Inform 7
User: Whimsical_R / DateTime: 2011-08-27 22:02:05

Thanks! Worked like a charm!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3088&start=0#p21912
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Flexible Windows
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-08-28 01:40:21

No, "display Figure Test in the graphics-window at 1 by 1 with dimensions 300 by 300" is unrecognized.  (A simple "display Figure Test" just puts in in the main window, obviously.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3094&start=0#p21913
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Generalising rules for printing
User: Zeborah / DateTime: 2011-08-28 04:33:50

This example from the Inform7 documentation lets you change how "Cleopatra's nose" is printed, but is there any way to generalise it?  Eg say there was a kind "bodypart" so I wanted a rule for printing the name of any bodypart no matter how many kinds of bodyparts are created.

[code]Rule for printing the name of a nose (called target) while asking which do you mean : 
    if everything matched is a nose: 
        if the target is part of a person (called owner): 
            if the owner is the player, say "your own"; 
            otherwise say "[the owner][apostrophe]s"; 
    otherwise: 
        make no decision.[/code]

What I'm [i]actually[/i] wanting is to create a rule such that any Y that is part of X is just printed as "Y" instead of "X's Y" (so that I can make it say "Cleopatra's nose" or "her nose" as context requires, because I want obsessive amounts of control over my diction).  So I want something that amounts to "Rule for printing the name of something which is part of something else: say '[whatever the kind is]'." but am getting the feeling my best bet is "Rule for printing the name of something (called it): if it is a nose, say "nose"; otherwise if it is a mouth, say "mouth", etc etc".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3095&start=0#p21914
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: looking for testers for It (IFComp entry)
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-08-28 04:37:00

"It" is a small slice of life work about a group of children playing a variant of Hide and Seek. It isn't aimed at a child audience, though. It's short, but has a large number of endings and features several independently active NPCs. I plan to enter it in this year's IFComp.

I developed "It" in TADS 3. It uses some HTML TADS features, but none of them should be necessary to play the game.

If you're interested in testing "It", please PM me your email address, or send an email to <a href="mailto:emily.boegheim@gmail.com">emily.boegheim@gmail.com</a>.

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3088&start=0#p21915
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Flexible Windows
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-08-28 06:36:27

Are you starting with the code from the example in Glimmr Simple Graphics Window? As I said, that code exposes all of the functions you are likely to need to write a graphics drawing rule purely in I7. Here are the main functions and wrappers defined there:
[code]To display (ID - a figure name) in (win - a g-window) at (x1 - a number) by/x (y1 - a number) with size/dimensions (width - a number) by/x (height - a number):
        (- DrawImageScaled({ID}, {win}, {x1}, {y1}, {width}, {height}); -)
    

    Include (-

    [DrawImageScaled ID win x y image_x image_y ;
        if (win.ref_number) {
            glk_image_draw_scaled(win.ref_number, ResourceIDsOfFigures-->ID, x, y, image_x, image_y);
        }
    ]; 

    -).

    To decide which number is the greater/max of/-- (X - a number) or (Y - a number):
        if Y > X, decide on Y;
        decide on X.
    
    To decide what number is the image-width of (img - a figure name):
        (- FindImageWidth({img}) -)
    
    To decide what number is the image-height of (img - a figure name):
        (- FindImageHeight({img}) -)
    

    Include (-

    [ FindImageWidth img result img_width;
        result = glk_image_get_info(ResourceIDsOfFigures-->img, gg_arguments, gg_arguments+WORDSIZE);
     img_width = gg_arguments-->0;
        return img_width;
    ];

    [ FindImageHeight img result img_height;
        result = glk_image_get_info(ResourceIDsOfFigures-->img, gg_arguments, gg_arguments+WORDSIZE);
     img_height = gg_arguments-->1;
        return img_height;
    ];

    -)
[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3096&start=0#p21916
Forum: Competitions / Subject: IF Comp: Can you be both author and beta tester?
User: savaric / DateTime: 2011-08-28 10:42:49

I know there is a rule against voting on a game you've beta tested, but is there any rules against
beta testing other comp games if you are entering one of your own?

I've not seen any rules against it, but maybe I've missed something.

I can think of several arguments against testing other games if you're an author, for instance:
- Unfair look at the competition, potential of stealing ideas, or potential for being unfairly accused of stealing ideas if you have similar ideas by chance...
- If you have time to spare before comp deadline you should probably be spending it on making YOUR game better, not helping others
- ...and conversely you may not be committed to do your best at testing if you try to get your own game ready at the same time...

...etc.

All good points why not to do it I guess, but is there an actual rule against it?
(In fact before I posted this, I had half thought I would beta test some other game (and I am entering one of my own), but I kind of convinced myself not to do it, by coming up with these points...)

/S

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3096&start=0#p21917
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IF Comp: Can you be both author and beta tester?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-08-28 11:04:40

The development timeline for IF games is long enough that I doubt you could integrate any "stolen" ideas in a competitive way over the next four weeks.

Your other two points are good ones, but if you disclose the conflict to the author and you are OK with the lost development time on your side, I don't see a problem.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3096&start=0#p21918
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IF Comp: Can you be both author and beta tester?
User: savaric / DateTime: 2011-08-28 11:09:02

[quote="bcressey"]The development timeline for IF games is long enough that I doubt you could integrate any "stolen" ideas in a competitive way over the next four weeks.[/quote]

That's true. And besides, the IF community doesn't strike me as one were stealing ideas would be very common either...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3094&start=0#p21919
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Generalising rules for printing
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-28 11:11:26

I don't think you can get the effect of [whatever the kind is] at all, unfortunately -- when I wanted [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=19069#p19069]something to test whether two things were of the same base kind[/url], I hacked it using the "printed plural name" property, and no one said "Hey dummy! Use this instead." Which I think means there isn't anything obvious to use. And "printed plural name" won't work for you, since you don't want the plural. (And of course if anyone does use this hack, they need to make sure not to change anything's printed plural name in a way that messes things up.) 

What I would probably try is something like this:

[code]Definition: A thing is subordinate if it is part of a person.

A thing has some text called the sub-text. The sub-text of a thing is usually "".
Definition: A thing is sub-textual if its subtext is not "".

Rule for printing the name of a subordinate sub-textual thing (called target): say the sub-text of the target. [or whatever conditions you want.]

The sub-text of a nose is usually "nose". [etc. for the different kinds of bodypart][/code]

I'm not entirely sure this compiles, though. And it makes you define sub-texts for everything you want to do this for, instead of doing it in one fell swoop; but it seems nicer to me than the big conditional.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3090&start=0#p21920
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: StackExchange Interactive Fiction Q&A site proposal
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-28 12:16:36

As a regular user of stackoverflow.com, the one for general programming, I can say that it's a very handy resource to have. For good, objective questions, it beats a forum by its structure alone. In a forum, a good answer could come halfway through the thread, on page 3, and then be drowned out by further discussion, whereas in a stackexchange site, the best answer rises to the top. That makes it much easier to refer askers of repeat questions to the best solution previously  described. Of course it's possible on a forum but I think it's much more reasonable on a SE.

That said, the IF scene is, indeed, small and specific compared to a lot of the scenes represented by SE sites. Whereas a person looking for help with, say, a bioinformatics programming question might be overwhelmed by possible forums, blogs, articles, etc., I think an IF coder would very quickly end up at this site and find that it's the go-to place to talk about such things. Thus, the SE would be redundant or it could split people's attentions. 

I think I'd vote in favor of it but I'm not actively involved in IF coding right now so my opinion's a weak one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=110#p21921
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.2: IF library manager for Linux (and Windo
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-28 12:21:48

I just uploaded 0.9.3! For sheer lines of code, this was a big one. Sorry it took me so long. This release is mostly about improving story import. I did not squash all of the bugs that have been reported due to time restrictions, but I tried to get all the showstoppers. Windows double-click, proper author sorting, and other UI tweaks will have to wait for the next version (which, due to an impending international move, might have to wait a couple of weeks).

Since this release makes some changes to the library, you might want to back up your library first. I put in some checks to update the library safely, and everything went without a hitch for me in both Linux and Windows, but since this is still beta software, well, I'd rather that you have to stick with the past version while I fix some catastrophic bug than to have you lose your library and have to reimport it again. (Like I said, I'm pretty  damn confident it won't  be a problem, but better safe than sorry). Also, just so you know, the update can take a few minutes for a large library.

ATTN: LINUX USERS: please read the special note at the bottom. Sorry for the inconvenience.

0.9.3 Release Notes
-------------------
* Fixed IFID extraction/computation in TADS and ZCODE games
* Fixed IFID extraction/computation and metadata extraction from blorbed files
* Added IFID computation for AGT, Alan, DOS executable, Hugo, Level 9 and
  Magnetic Scrolls story formats
* Added coverart extraction for TADS and blorbed story formats
* Added support for local coverart (cover art stored in the same folder as
  the story file, which must have the word "cover" somewhere in its name and
  be a JPEG or PNG image)
* Added a field for story TUID and the ability to search the IFDB by TUID
  in the edit dialog
* Removed Python 2.7 dependencies (2.6 is now the required version)
* Fixed bug in improper clearing of filter values when removing stories from
  the library
* Fixed wonky progress dialog behavior when handling large file names
* Fixed a bug in which editing a story's genre or authors resulted in spurious
  filter values
* Fixed a bug in which edits made via searching IFDB didn't appear in the 
  library list.
* Fixed a bug in zeroes being ommited from custom format file extensions.
* Fixed the install location of the README and COPYING documents on Linux
* Changed the default location of the configuration files in Linux to be in
  $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/grotesque, which defaults to /home/<user>/.config/grotesque
  if the environment variable is not set, and the data files to
  $XDG_DATA_HOME/grotesque, or /home/<user>/.local/share/grotesque
  
!!NOTE!! 
Linux users, pay attention to that last one. You must manually move
~/.grotesque/grotesque.cfg to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/grotesque and you must move
local_library.dat and the covers folder to $XDG_DATA_HOME.
I could have done this automatically but I do not like the idea of moving
files around in your home directory without you knowing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3096&start=0#p21922
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IF Comp: Can you be both author and beta tester?
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-08-28 13:00:37

I've tested a few games now, and in my experience the length of time required to test a game -- or even go through one single "round" of testing -- varies [i]greatly[/i].  For some smaller competition entries, it may not be an unreasonably huge time commitment to rigorously play the game and offer a transcript, maybe even more than once.

Anyways, I already did a little testing on a game that I believe is going to be entered into the comp.  I've also been hoping to finish my own game in time to enter, although I feel the chances that I will succeed are relatively small.  I'm thinking about offering to test a game again, if I can figure out how to make it fit in with my responsibilities.  So, I obviously hope there is no rule against testing an entry and submitting one in the same competition.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3094&start=0#p21923
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Generalising rules for printing
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-28 13:13:23

[quote="matt w"]
What I would probably try is something like this:

[code]Definition: A thing is subordinate if it is part of a person.

A thing has some text called the sub-text. The sub-text of a thing is usually "".
Definition: A thing is sub-textual if its subtext is not "".

Rule for printing the name of a subordinate sub-textual thing (called target): say the sub-text of the target. [or whatever conditions you want.]

The sub-text of a nose is usually "nose". [etc. for the different kinds of bodypart][/code]
[/quote]
Why not just use the printed name property?
[code]
A nose is part of every person. The printed name of a nose is usually "nose".
A mouth is part of every person. The printed name of a mouth is usually "mouth".
etc.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3096&start=0#p21924
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IF Comp: Can you be both author and beta tester?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-28 13:13:55

There is absolutely nothing wrong with testing a game and entering a game in the competition yourself. Testing a game also doesn't need to be a huge time commitment: you can often help out an author by playing through her/his game once, and that may take you no more than an hour. (Of course, as an author you are always happy with people willing to go beyond this, but that doesn't mean that testers going through the game once are useless.)

From what I've seen, the competition isn't all that competitive: people rarely think of it in terms of winning or losing. It's more a big community event in which everyone is happy if there are a lot of good games. (Of course winning is fun, but I don't think anyone has ever thought: "If only those other three guys hadn't entered a game, I would have won. Damn them.") Testing other people's games fits well with that spirit of cooperation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3096&start=0#p21925
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IF Comp: Can you be both author and beta tester?
User: savaric / DateTime: 2011-08-28 13:22:01

I see now that my second point can be read a little like "I'm not helping the others! They might beat me if I do!", but I didn't mean it quite like that. More that if you split your attention you won't do as good a job as either author or tester as you could do if you focus on one thing.

But as has been pointed out, it doesn't have to be that way either.

I agree that it's great with a competition that isn't all that competitive.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3094&start=0#p21926
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Generalising rules for printing
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-28 13:50:21

Um, yeah, that's a good idea. I was thinking more of the OP's original question about 

[quote]"Rule for printing the name of something which is part of something else: say '[whatever the kind is]'."[/quote]

but of course if she just wants to use this on noses, etc. which are always part of something else, then you can just set the printed name property and not bother with anything else.  

My code might or might not still be useful in some circumstances, but it doesn't seem to be necessary here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3094&start=0#p21927
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Generalising rules for printing
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-28 14:12:32

You're right, of course. Seems I understood the issue slightly differently from you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3097&start=0#p21928
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Random off-topic observations
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-28 14:19:58

Because this if the off-topic forum, I assume an off-topic thread is not off-limits. And since I really wanted to share that spam message I just received with someone, I'm going to start such a thread. Which I have hereby done.

I have been getting a lot of spam lately. Job offers, penis enlargement, the usual stuff. But this is hands down my favourite:
[quote]This is the last diet you will ever need![/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3097&start=0#p21929
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Random off-topic observations
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-28 16:25:26

Sinister implications!  [emote]:shock:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3096&start=0#p21930
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IF Comp: Can you be both author and beta tester?
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2011-08-28 17:55:48

Also note that it's not generally the case that someone has a limited number of slots for testers, where if you don't do quite as good a job, they are somehow hurt by it. It can be hard enough to get any feedback at all on a game; getting someone to spend 10 minutes on your game and give you some feedback is still more useful than getting zero feedback from the people who don't spend any time testing.

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3094&start=0#p21931
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Generalising rules for printing
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-28 18:19:29

Well, I think your understanding was the correct one. 

I think in some older builds of Inform (around 5Z71), if you wrote "Every person incorporates a nose" rather than "A nose is part of every person" then the autogenerated noses would be named "nose" instead of "Cleopatra's nose" or whatever. (This came up in [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/b4483f171dd92857/2f6486b0af4eaee5]my first RAIF post[/url].) But that seems to have been changed in the latest builds, which is a good thing I think even if it makes things more difficult in this case.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3096&start=0#p21932
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IF Comp: Can you be both author and beta tester?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-08-28 18:24:36

Just another vote for "no, that's fine". I've swapped testing with my competitors a few times in past comps, and it's always been a happy experience.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=60#p21933
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-08-28 19:04:32

[quote="maga"][quote="Taleslinger"]If you let what others might think about your work influence it, you're doing it wrong.[/quote]
If this is actually what you think about your work, then there is no reason to publish. All art is a form of communication, and if you want to write anything good then it's necessary to consider your audience.

It's not necessary (or desirable, or even possible) to consider [i]all[/i] your potential audience, or to cater fully to everybody you consider. (At a minimum, you can just cater to a hypothetical audience of people exactly like yourself.) And I don't consider "people who are grievously offended by swearwords that don't specially target anyone" as a category that deserves special consideration. But don't overstate your case: the literal meaning of what you're saying is that the only people who are doing it [i]right[/i] don't edit, don't betatest, don't read reviews, and don't ever do anything that involves wondering "how could I do this better?"[/quote]
I'd like to point out here that Taleslinger said not to let what others [i]might[/i] think influence your work, whereas you maga are talking about being open to what others [i]do[/i] think about your work. Two different things. Most of the profanity censoring that goes on is self-censoring. When it comes to *self*-censoring, I think Taleslinger's original statement is entirely correct.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3083&start=10#p21934
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF story idea
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-08-28 19:07:29

[quote="duodave"]I have an idea and I am not sure if it should be a written story or an IF. It could go either way.

What if a computer programmer was sick, like with cancer, and wanted to make an IF about himself for his kids to get advice and so on after he dies.

I'm thinking, if this was IF, it could have cut scenes where the programmer is at the doctors office or writing the game, etc, then bits where the player is actually playing the "game". 

What do you think, IF or story?[/quote]
Those cut scenes at the doctor's office sound like they would be pretty powerful and groundbreaking if done interactively -- are you sure they need to be cut scenes for your idea to work? Why not make both the framing story and the story within interactive? There is no need to abandon the IF toolbox just because you want a framing story. When a prose novelist writes a framing story, it's still just prose. When a filmmaker creates a framing story, it's still film. Anyway, just something to consider.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3098&start=0#p21935
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Room description display problem
User: lux / DateTime: 2011-08-28 20:16:18

My rooms won't display name and description during gameplay if I attach any adjectives to them, in any format. What's up with that?

(There were problems with using the "[direction] from [room] is a room called x" format, too; it seems like the universe don't want me to simplify none.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3098&start=0#p21936
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room description display problem
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-28 21:04:18

Your question is a tad unspecific. Could you post examples?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3098&start=0#p21937
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room description display problem
User: lux / DateTime: 2011-08-28 21:13:11

As far as I can tell that's what's happening. I have the values defined at the beginning, but it just weirds up.

i.e., if I write "Foyer is a pleasant room", bam, name and description gone. If I wrote "Foyer is a room. Foyer is pleasant", bam, gone. "Foyer is a room. The atmosphere of Foyer is pleasant", gone.

//edit: further experimentation suggests that it's not the adjective itself that's the problem, it's the value-changing rule I wrote; it blanks stuff for one turn after it takes effect, for some reason. I found a workaround, but theoretically am still puzzled.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3094&start=0#p21938
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Generalising rules for printing
User: Zeborah / DateTime: 2011-08-29 00:55:54

Yeah, I can do:

[code]Rule for printing the name of a nose: say "nose".
Rule for printing the name of a mouth: say "mouth".[/code]

etc, it just means every time I add a new kind I've got to add a new rule; it'd be nice to have something that'd work for everything.

I had the brilliant idea in the shower today of using a "To say" thing with regular expressions to strip out the "X's ", but then as soon as I sat down to code it I remembered you can't use let phrases in a to say, so so much for that idea.

...On further reflection, I've come up with:

[code]A thing has some indexed text called a printname. The printname of a thing is usually "".
When play begins:
	repeat with it running through things:
		change the printname of it to "[it]";
		if it is part of the player:
			replace the regular expression "your (.*)" in printname of it with "\1";
		otherwise if it is part of something:
			replace the regular expression ".*<^a-zA-Z >s (.*)" in printname of it with "\1".[/code]

and then I can use printname instead of the ordinary printed name.  Generally I don't like creating new variables where an old one will do, but the printed name won't work here and probably it's best not to mess with it anyway. [emote]:-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=110#p21940
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.3: IF library manager
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-29 05:01:55

When trying to run it:

[code]Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/games/bin/grotesque", line 55, in <module>
    main()
  File "/usr/games/bin/grotesque", line 37, in main
    settings = Settings()
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/grotesque/settings.py", line 60, in __init__
    self.configdir = os.path.join(home_configdir, 'grotesque')
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/posixpath.py", line 68, in join
    elif path == '' or path.endswith('/'):
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'endswith'[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=110#p21941
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.3: IF library manager
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-29 07:05:31

Oops. Can you redownload it try it now? It should be fixed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=0#p21942
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Top 100
User: Aintelligence / DateTime: 2011-08-29 08:20:53

Well, I was browsing the interactive fiction database the other day, and suddenly a neat thought occurred to me.  
Interactive fiction should really have a "Top 100" chart somewhere on the internet, in which IF players could vote every year for their favorite games.  I'm not really sure if such an animal already exists, but I would love some feedback on the idea.

Cheers

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=0#p21943
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-29 09:03:11

I think it would be interesting. Have people send in their 10 favourite games, add the numbers, generate a top 100. If nothing else, it would give us some data on how the tastes of the community change over time; and it would also serve as a list of recommendations. I'd participate.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=0#p21944
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-29 09:13:28

There's the (long-defunct) [url=http://carouselchain.com/if/statistics.php]IF Ratings[/url] scoreboard, which stopped being updated with new games some time before IFDB was rolled out. It was a worthwhile experiment, I think, but I hugely prefer IFDB's system of emphasizing reviews and using scores only in a handwavy sense; apart from anything else, the relatively low number of users meant that it was highly vulnerable to tactical voting.

I'm mixed on the idea; I certainly wouldn't want to see it presented as an authoritative IF Canon, and I doubt that it would promote discussion more in-depth than "No way is [i]The Wall[/i] better than [i]Straight Outta Compton[/i]", "I have read a lot of these" or "top-100 lists suck". But it could be interesting as a random-sample kind of thing, and statistics are fun.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3094&start=0#p21945
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Generalising rules for printing
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-29 09:49:41

Thing that's really useful that I forgot to mention: instead of "[apostrophe]" you can write "[']".

That looks like it works. (I thought it might fail on "John Brown's nose" but it doesn't.) As I understand it, indexed text can create a lot of overhead -- someone better informed can tell you how much -- but if that's not a concern good for you, and maybe the indexed text allows you more control over your diction in the way you want.

(Strictly speaking you don't need to write a rule for every new kind -- Felix's suggestion doesn't involve new rules. But it's just as much typing, I guess.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3098&start=0#p21946
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room description display problem
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-29 11:10:32

I'd be curious to see your code. Can you post a short example that duplicates the problem?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=110#p21947
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.3: IF library manager
User: Silas Greenback / DateTime: 2011-08-29 11:29:59

Jakob, 

Will be looking forward to the PKBUILD in the Arch AUR. It was impressive how soon you had 0.9.2 up there.

Thanks for all the hard work!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=110#p21948
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.3: IF library manager
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-29 11:46:31

Sorry, I had some problems with making the PKGBUILD last night. I'll try again tonight!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3094&start=0#p21949
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Generalising rules for printing
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-29 11:51:50

John D. Clemens has this phrase on [url=http://www.math.psu.edu/clemens/IF/I7tricks.html]his webpage with Inform 7 tricks[/url]:
[quote][code]To say kind name of (x - thing): (- print (I7_Kind_Name) {x}.&i7_kind-->0; -).[/code]
Usage:
say "[The noun] has kind [kind name of noun]."
[/quote]
I couldn't get it to compile though. (The compiler protested that there was no such constant as i7_kind.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3094&start=0#p21950
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Generalising rules for printing
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-29 12:11:33

Undocumented I6 features are subject to change, obviously. It looks like the current equivalent is

To say kind name of (x - thing): (- print (I7_Kind_Name) KindHierarchy-->(({x}.KD_Count)*2); -).

But I haven't tested that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=0#p21951
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-29 12:53:36

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]I think it would be interesting. Have people send in their 10 favourite games, add the numbers, generate a top 100.[/quote]
That'd be a better method than what I was assuming (a comp-like system of rating everything you've played 1-10) but I'm not sure that it would produce a list 100 games long. Maybe there'd be a long tail of single-vote games, but my guess is that the meaningful portion of the list would comprise [i]Adventure[/i], ten to fifteen Infocom games, and 30-40 modern ones.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=0#p21952
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-08-29 14:19:23

Such a list could have some good uses.  It would keep some attention on good games from past years, instead of the community only paying attention new releases.  The IFDB is already helping to keep older games relevant, but a regularly updated list of either highest-rated or most-played games could do more.  It would help newcomers to the IF community as well.  I guess it would be the equivalent of the New York Times bestseller list, or something.

The only problem I can think of is that the Top 100 List [i]could[/i] become a sort of a canon in some players' minds.  Granted, games that remain on the list for long periods probably deserve to be considered part of the community's canon, but this might make other deserving but relatively unknown games fall further into obscurity.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=0#p21953
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-29 14:50:56

[quote]Interactive fiction should really have a "Top 100" chart somewhere on the internet[/quote]

Just one? We should have three of them!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3098&start=0#p21954
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room description display problem
User: lux / DateTime: 2011-08-29 15:15:06

Sure. Could be something that changed since I last used Inform, but... this used to work fine, if my old project files are any indication.

[code]Stress is a kind of value. The stresses are calm and stressed.
A person has stress. A person is usually calm.
After going to Orchestra, change the stress of the player to stressed.

Hall is a room. "The hallway." The player is in Hall.
Orchestra is a room. It is north from Hall. "The symphonic orchestra is practicing here."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=0#p21955
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-29 16:16:03

What's wrong about a canon? For people who're not so much into the scene but want to [b]play[/b] something it'd be a great help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3098&start=0#p21956
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room description display problem
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-29 16:22:08

[quote="lux"]
[code]
After going to Orchestra, change the stress of the player to stressed.
[/code][/quote]

After rules stop the action, which means the report going rule that describes the room gone into never gets a chance to run. You can override that behaviour of after rules with a "continue the action":
[code]
After going to Orchestra: 
	change the stress of the player to stressed;
	continue the action.
[/code]

(Also, by the way "change the stress of the player to stressed" will apparently not be legal in future builds of Inform. See Writing with Inform 8.1.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=0#p21957
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-29 16:41:37

[quote="maga"]...but my guess is that the meaningful portion of the list would comprise [i]Adventure[/i], ten to fifteen Infocom games, and 30-40 modern ones.[/quote]
Maybe it would, yes. I'm not married to the number 100. [emote]:)[/emote] It would depend on the number of participants, of course.

[quote="Bainespal"]The only problem I can think of is that the Top 100 List [i]could[/i] become a sort of a canon in some players' minds.  Granted, games that remain on the list for long periods probably deserve to be considered part of the community's canon, but this might make other deserving but relatively unknown games fall further into obscurity.[/quote]
I'm not very worried about that. Rarely do people consult a 'canon' and conclude that they should [i]not[/i] be playing a game / reading a book / listening to an album / watching a movie because it is not in the canon.

In fact, assuming that people post their own top-10 (or top-whatever, I'm just making up some numbers here, of course) list in a publicly accessible place, I think it would lead to more rather than less chance of old games being rediscovered: even if only one persons puts a game in his list, that might make you want to check it out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=110#p21958
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.3: IF library manager
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-29 16:58:19

You may now Syu your yaourt [emote];)[/emote]
(or do it the old-fashioned way, if you prefer)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3083&start=10#p21959
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF story idea
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-08-29 17:37:08

I wouldn't do it. I don't think the children would be very impressed with such a crude simulation of your life; to make it truly real, you'd have to spend all your life programming the parser. If you did that, then it might be a better game than the life you lived, which would be ironic.

But seriously, it's a pretty vain thing to do as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3076&start=0#p21960
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Generating a random-ish number
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-08-29 17:50:58

The real problem is the random(x) command in I6 isn't truly random. I've always thought that if I6 had some way of getting the current time, that the modulo of the current second would be pretty darn random for all intents and purposes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3042&start=0#p21961
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Receive: for Rooms
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-08-29 17:54:51

[quote="Egon"]If you just need to test whether the item is on the floor of the room, maybe something like this will work in the room's code:

each_turn [; if (item in self) { ... } ],[/quote]

^^^^ That will work, but it is computationally expensive if you are watching multiple rooms. For just one room, though, it's fine. 

Another way to do it is to set up a daemon and check to see if anything has been dropped in any particular room. You could have characteristics of each object that would indicate if they were dropped or non-dropped. This would allow you to check multiple objects over multiple rooms. That's more work, but it's not as computationally expensive (one daemon vs. multiple each_turns). 

Many ways to skin a cat and all that, you know.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3076&start=0#p21962
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Generating a random-ish number
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-29 19:00:08

[quote]The real problem is the random(x) command in I6 isn't truly random.[/quote]

In most interpreters it is tied either to the random() function in libc, or to a hand-coded pseudo-random number generator. Either is sufficient for IF purposes, and the distinction between their behavior and "truly random" is definitely not the problem that the original poster had.

But feel free to explain what you mean.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3098&start=0#p21963
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room description display problem
User: lux / DateTime: 2011-08-29 19:30:56

Oh, I see. Thank you!

Where can I read that? I googled the title, but nothing came up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3083&start=10#p21964
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF story idea
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-08-29 19:33:14

[quote="Poster"]I wouldn't do it. I don't think the children would be very impressed with such a crude simulation of your life; to make it truly real, you'd have to spend all your life programming the parser. If you did that, then it might be a better game than the life you lived, which would be ironic.

But seriously, it's a pretty vain thing to do as well.[/quote]

Vain, eh? I don't know about that. 

Look at it from the other direction. I don't know you, but let's say you had a loved one die when you were young, or maybe even before you were born. If you had the opportunity to say, read a book or even letters written by that person, wouldn't you treasure that experience?

There's many people that do in fact make video messages to their kids or grandkids for whatever reason. Are you saying that's vain?

As for the parser, certainly it wouldn't have to be a comprehensive game. A few scenes would set the mood and idea. I'm thinking sort of along the lines of the way "A Christmas Carol" flows. 

I think perhaps you read too much into the idea.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3098&start=0#p21965
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room description display problem
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-29 20:21:22

"Writing with Inform" is the built-in documentation. If you don't have the Inform application fired up, it's also online [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/index.html]here[/url], though in one or two places the online version is out-of-date (at least, I've found one outdated version of an example). [That does show up on searches for "writing with inform."]

(updated: the link used to go to a different page called "Writing with Inform," not the manual)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=0#p21966
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Carrying Stuff
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-29 20:21:43

I am working on a game in which the player will need to carry around a fair number of items.  Overall weight and bulk are within the reasonable carrying capacity of an adult human; it's just that the number of individual things is such that carrying them uncontained would require either the skills of a juggler or more than the usual complement of hands (particularly when some of those hands will also be needed for doing things).

I most emphatically do [i]not[/i] want to make it a game about inventory management.  (As a player, the only thing I dislike more than mapping is juggling inventory.)  I could, of course, give the player a suitcase or duffle bag, and in Inform 7 I could designate it as the player's holdall so that putting stuff in and taking stuff out of it happens automatically as needed.  However, this has always struck me as a little contrived.  My inclination is that if I'm going to go that far, why not just allow the player to carry the stuff barehanded; it's unrealistic, but in a way that's not really important to the game, and the player's holdall idea is also unrealistic in its own way.

How offended are people at the idea of departing from "realism" by allowing the player to carry perhaps a dozen items without a carrying container of some sort?

Thanks.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=0#p21967
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-29 20:43:32

I am not offended in the least tiny little bit. I wouldn't notice it, any more than I notice it when the main character in a novel seems to go an entire day without using the bathroom.. When a game forces me to goof around with item handling for no reason other than some misguided sense of realism, I do notice it, and it annoys me -- even if it's just supplying messages about putting stuff in my holdall.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=0#p21968
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-08-29 20:49:43

Seconding matt w. If you don't want inventory management to be a part of the game, just let the player carry everything barehanded and don't give it a second thought.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=0#p21969
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-29 21:08:09

Ditto; realism is not some inherent good.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=110#p21970
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.3: IF library manager
User: Silas Greenback / DateTime: 2011-08-29 21:25:29

[quote="jakobcreutzfeldt"]You may now Syu your yaourt [emote];)[/emote]
(or do it the old-fashioned way, if you prefer)[/quote]

Worked like a charm. The first vote in the gtk3 version is from yours truly.  [emote]:D[/emote] 

Thanks again, I love this project!

Edit: I had a few games that would hang on import and sequestered them in a seperate directory. I tested these out first and they worked fine this time. This improvement alone took care of my only gripe.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3098&start=0#p21971
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room description display problem
User: lux / DateTime: 2011-08-29 22:32:06

Oh, pff, misparsed that. Section Eight Subsection One, not Inform version 8.1. Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3098&start=0#p21972
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room description display problem
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-29 23:14:59

Ha! Yeah, if you do turn up Inform 8.1, let me know.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=0#p21973
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-30 01:05:52

Okay here is my top ten!

1. Afflicted by Doug Egan!

2. can't think of any others that aren't super obvious.

3. should have started out with number ten and then counted down to number one.

4. although in that case my number ten spot would be Afflicted by Doug Egan

5. and it can't be both ten and one at the same time can it? that would be stupid.

6. it's important that I figure out ten different games that are impressive enough to show I have great taste but obscure enough to make me look really well-read.

6. also it'd probably be pretty classy of me to put an IF adaptation of some classic literature on here.

7. if I put in Moby Dick, would people think I was talking about an IF? 

8. Moby Dick is too obvious. that's the kind of thing you put in your ok-cupid profile to look smart if you're too dumb to think of anything else.

9. speaking of which, I can't think of anything else.

10. Afflicted, by Doug Egan

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=0#p21974
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-08-30 01:22:42

A magic bag is just as unrealistic as a person's carrying huge piles of stuff around in their bare hands, and either way it's the kind of thing I'd only give any thought if the rest of the game's presentation were extremely realistic or serious.

I'd prefer whichever option made it easier to see what I was carrying.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=110#p21975
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.3: IF library manager
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-30 02:12:52

[quote="jakobcreutzfeldt"]Oops. Can you redownload it try it now? It should be fixed.[/quote]I downloaded again just now (grotesque-0.9.3-gtk2.tar.gz). The problem still exists.

The MD5 of the file I get served by sourceforge is: a2c3b6b1920b173a4aabf824e6abca67

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=120#p21976
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.3: IF library manager
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-30 03:07:26

[quote="RealNC"][quote="jakobcreutzfeldt"]Oops. Can you redownload it try it now? It should be fixed.[/quote]I downloaded again just now (grotesque-0.9.3-gtk2.tar.gz). The problem still exists.

The MD5 of the file I get served by sourceforge is: a2c3b6b1920b173a4aabf824e6abca67[/quote]

I'm really sorry about this problem. I think I got it this time:
<a class="postlink" href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/grotesque/files/grotesque/0.9.3/grotesque-0.9.3-gtk2.tar.gz/download">http://sourceforge.net/projects/grotesq ... z/download</a>
Thanks for your patience with me. 
FWIW, I currently have a question in the top 10 unanswered questions on Stack Overflow directly related to best practices for testing software like this, since I keep getting caught by these problems.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=120#p21977
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.3: IF library manager
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-30 03:11:43

[quote="Silas Greenback"][quote="jakobcreutzfeldt"]You may now Syu your yaourt [emote];)[/emote]
(or do it the old-fashioned way, if you prefer)[/quote]

Worked like a charm. The first vote in the gtk3 version is from yours truly.  [emote]:D[/emote] 

Thanks again, I love this project!

Edit: I had a few games that would hang on import and sequestered them in a seperate directory. I tested these out first and they worked fine this time. This improvement alone took care of my only gripe.[/quote]

Music to my ears! Glad you like it. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3104&start=0#p21978
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Squaring results
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-08-30 03:21:56

Units have been defined as in Metric Units; to square an area, I have:

[code]To decide what area is the square of (N - a length):
	decide on N * N.[/code]

This returns a fascinating array of results; I'm quite curious as to why:
1 m --> 1 sq m
2 m --> -2 sq m
3 m --> 2 sq m
4 m --> 2 sq m
5 m --> -1 sq m

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=0#p21979
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: i-k / DateTime: 2011-08-30 03:26:07

[quote="Bainespal"]The only problem I can think of is that the Top 100 List [i]could[/i] become a sort of a canon in some players' minds.  Granted, games that remain on the list for long periods probably deserve to be considered part of the community's canon, but this might make other deserving but relatively unknown games fall further into obscurity.[/quote]
[quote="maga"]I'm mixed on the idea; I certainly wouldn't want to see it presented as an authoritative IF Canon, and I doubt that it would promote discussion more in-depth than "No way is [i]The Wall[/i] better than [i]Straight Outta Compton[/i]", "I have read a lot of these" or "top-100 lists suck".[/quote]
I think there could be more potential to this: You know that great feeling when you discover a  book, a film or an album that you think is just magnificent but that isn't a best-seller or a box office hit, and you think to yourself "whoa, people really should know about this, I need to tell someone". The feeling is even more extraordinary than the one you get from liking a "canon" work.

[quote="Grueslayer"]What's wrong about a canon? For people who're not so much into the scene but want to [b]play[/b] something it'd be a great help.[/quote]
Indeed, in any field of art, I think, the newcomers first turn to the canon to learn the basics and then, when you become "a serious dilettante", you start to broaden your horizons - which adds to the odd pleasure of expertise. Knowing the out-of-canon part of the art is actually something that is revered in most (if not all?) communities around art.

So, all this is why I think a top 100 (or top whatever) list would do us good. But only if there's enough interest, only if it's a real community effort.

Ok, my thoughts came out somewhat blurry (yet, in my mind, all was so very clear...), but surely someone recognizes that tickling feeling when discovering a work  that seems "undiscovered", or the pleasure of knowing just way too much about a subject, right? They both require the canon to be there so that things can be outside of it and become discovered (and then maybe later canonized).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3104&start=0#p21980
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Squaring results
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-30 05:42:41

I cannot reproduce your results. This code:
[code]Include Metric Units by Graham Nelson.

Tiananmen Square is a room.

To decide what area is the square of (N - a length):
	decide on N * N.
	
Squaring is an action applying to one length. Understand "square [length]" as squaring.

Carry out squaring:
	say "That would be [square of length understood]."
	
Test me with "square 1m / square 2m / square 3m / square 4m / square 5m"[/code]
Leads to the expected results (1, 4, 9, 16, 25).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=120#p21981
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.3: IF library manager
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-30 05:49:22

[quote="jakobcreutzfeldt"]I think I got it this time:
<a class="postlink" href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/grotesque/files/grotesque/0.9.3/grotesque-0.9.3-gtk2.tar.gz/download">http://sourceforge.net/projects/grotesq ... z/download</a>
[/quote]
[code]Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/games/bin/grotesque", line 55, in <module>
    main()
  File "/usr/games/bin/grotesque", line 40, in main
    setup_assistant = SettingsAssistant(settings, None, Gtk.main_quit)
NameError: global name 'Gtk' is not defined[/code]

 [emote]:P[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=120#p21982
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.3: IF library manager
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-30 06:06:26

[quote="RealNC"][quote="jakobcreutzfeldt"]I think I got it this time:
<a class="postlink" href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/grotesque/files/grotesque/0.9.3/grotesque-0.9.3-gtk2.tar.gz/download">http://sourceforge.net/projects/grotesq ... z/download</a>
[/quote]
[code]Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/games/bin/grotesque", line 55, in <module>
    main()
  File "/usr/games/bin/grotesque", line 40, in main
    setup_assistant = SettingsAssistant(settings, None, Gtk.main_quit)
NameError: global name 'Gtk' is not defined[/code]

 [emote]:P[/emote][/quote]

CRAP!
*le sigh*
Ok, fixed that too, as well as a couple more that I found. I'm pretty damn sure/hopeful that it will work now.

BTW, this means that you've either deleted your config file or you haven't moved it to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME. Likewise you need to move your library (local_library.dat) and the covers directory previously in ~/.grotesque to $XDG_DATA_HOME (see the note at the bottom of the release notes I posted).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=10#p21983
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: Aintelligence / DateTime: 2011-08-30 06:25:46

[quote="zarf"][quote]Interactive fiction should really have a "Top 100" chart somewhere on the internet[/quote]

Just one? We should have three of them![/quote]


HMM... An interesting idea.
However what would these lists entail?  Would it be highest rated, most played, hottest (new)?

I'm not quite sure all three lists would be relevant,  because what if a top 100 list gets the same results as the most played and highest rated lists.  I'm not really sure t3 lists would work on this level.

Of course two lists may possibly have a chance between the top 100 of all time and the best new.  Hmm...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=10#p21984
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: Aintelligence / DateTime: 2011-08-30 06:39:20

[quote="i-k"]
I think there could be more potential to this: You know that great feeling when you discover a  book, a film or an album that you think is just magnificent but that isn't a best-seller or a box office hit, and you think to yourself "whoa, people really should know about this, I need to tell someone". The feeling is even more extraordinary than the one you get from liking a "canon" work.

[quote="Grueslayer"]What's wrong about a canon? For people who're not so much into the scene but want to [b]play[/b] something it'd be a great help.[/quote]
Indeed, in any field of art, I think, the newcomers first turn to the canon to learn the basics and then, when you become "a serious dilettante", you start to broaden your horizons - which adds to the odd pleasure of expertise. Knowing the out-of-canon part of the art is actually something that is revered in most (if not all?) communities around art.

So, all this is why I think a top 100 (or top whatever) list would do us good. But only if there's enough interest, only if it's a real community effort.
[/quote]

I agree.  What would be the point of a top 100 list if it was made up of 5 different people with several accounts?  The point of it would have to be soley based on the community effort and would not work otherwise.

I personally am not worried about canonization myself.  After all, how I begun Interactive fiction was through the more well known games like Photopia, and eventually I became interested in obscure games nobody has seen in twenty years.   What I am however worried is that the list will be stagnant and unmoving much like the list that Mega found.  In essence I'm worried over the restrictions of long-term democracy,  because after a bit, the top 100 list is going to have enough votes for each game, that no new gems will enter the list.  Essentially damming it up.

Not quite sure how to safeguard against this,  because it could get fairly serious.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=10#p21985
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-30 06:50:32

So, shall we do it? Right now might be a good time: people don't have the IF Comp too freshly in their mind, they haven't been thinking about the XYZZY awards -- a nice moment to reflect on earlier works. Proposed announcement that may serve as a basis for discussion:
[quote][b]Interactive Fiction Top 50[/b]

To stimulate reflection on the IF corpus that has been built up over the years, and to get an overview of what the community believes, right now, to be the greatest works in that corpus, we would like to put together a Top 50 of best IF games. (Or a top 100, or a top 20, depending on the number of participants and the distribution of the votes.) To make this work, we need your help. Please send us a list of between 1 and 20 interactive fiction games that you consider to be the best games ever made. The list can be posted at [LINK TO TOPIC ON THIS FORUM] or mailed to [EMAIL OF ORGANISER]. Here are the rules:

[list][*]You can list between 1 and 20 games.[/*:m]
[*]The order in which you list the games is not important. The total number of points a work receives is the total number of votes it gets.[/*:m]
[*]You can list each work only once.[/*:m]
[*]You can list your own works.[/*:m]
[*]It's up to you to decide whether a work counts as interactive fiction. As a rough rule of thumb, anything that is or should be listed on the [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/]IFDB[/url] is suitable.[/*:m]
[*]We are asking you to identify the best interactive fiction, not the most influential, most important, most innovative or most accessible interactive fiction. (But of course, if you believe that influence, importance, innovation or accessibility are important parts of being good, that is fine.)[/*:m]
[*]The deadline for entering your list is [b][DATE][/b].[/*:m][/list:u]

Although you don't need to do this to participate, the whole exercise will of course be more fun for everyone if you post the rationale behind your choices in some public place.[/quote]
Shoot away at it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3105&start=0#p21986
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Hidden room (names)
User: Aintelligence / DateTime: 2011-08-30 06:52:08

In a mini game I have been working on in my spare time,  the action takes place in one very long corridor, going from north to south.  However, my problem here is that I ran out of room names in my first room, and have since been calling the rooms long corridor 2, long corridor 3, long corridor 4, long corridor 5...

Not only is that monotonous, but it gives the game a cheap feeling, like I've just slapped something together.
Surely there must be some way to have rooms with the same name, even if it means 'tricking' inform by calling the room something else, but displaying it as long corridor.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=10#p21987
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-30 06:53:17

[quote="Aintelligence"]Not quite sure how to safeguard against this,  because it could get fairly serious.[/quote]
You just run an event once a year (or once every two or three years, or whenever someone feels like it), completely fresh. That's the way all those yearly "best song ever" -tops on the radio work. (I don't know if those are an international phenomenon, but in the Netherlands it appears as if every radio stations asks its listeners to vote for the best song ever come December, and then they make a top out of it to play as the new year approaches. They just start from scratch every year, and it's interesting to see artists' fame rise and fall over the years.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3105&start=0#p21988
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hidden room (names)
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-30 06:59:56

You can just use the 'printed name' property:
[code]The printed name of long corridor 2 is "Long corridor".[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=0#p21989
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-30 07:06:41

[quote="Robert Rothman"]How offended are people at the idea of departing from "realism" by allowing the player to carry perhaps a dozen items without a carrying container of some sort?[/quote]
People won't even notice, because this has been a common practice for many years.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3098&start=10#p21990
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room description display problem
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-30 07:07:40

[quote="matt w"]Ha! Yeah, if you do turn up Inform 8.1, let me know.[/quote]
Nobody could help you with your coding problems, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=0#p21991
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-30 07:39:05

Thanks to all.  As a player, I agree that I would be more bothered by the inconvenience of dealing with inventory issues than I am by any lack of realism engendered by not having to worry about it.  I just wanted to be sure that there was no consensus to the contrary.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3105&start=0#p21992
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hidden room (names)
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-30 07:47:25

Unless you want to give the player a sense of confusion as to where he is in the corridor at any given time (which you might want to do), you might want to distinguish the rooms in some way (in the description, if nothing else).  Otherwise, you have the equivalent of twisty (well, not so twisty, maybe) little passages, all alike.


Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3105&start=0#p21993
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hidden room (names)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-30 07:58:02

You can also use a kind of room, so you don't have to keep typing "The printed name of Long Corridor n is 'Long Corridor'." Illustrated in unnecessary detail with a full game:

[code]"Annoytron Defeated"  by Matt Weiner

A long room is a kind of room. The printed name of a long room is usually "Long Corridor". The description of a long room is usually "A long east-west corridor." Long corridor 1 is a long room. Long corridor 2 is a long room. It is west of long corridor 1. Long corridor 3 is a long room. It is west of long corridor 2. Long corridor 3 is a long room. It is west of long corridor 2. Long corridor 4 is a long room. It is west of long corridor 3.

East End is a room. It is east of long corridor 1. "The very east end of a long east-west corridor. It ends in a blank wall." A brass key is in East End. The player is in East End.
West End is a room. It is west of long corridor 4. "The west end of the corridor ends in a wooden door." 
Freedom is a room.
The wooden door is a door. It is scenery. It is west of West End and east of Freedom. The wooden door is closed and locked. The brass key unlocks the wooden door.
After going to Freedom:
	say "You escape the corridor to a lovely annoyance-free world!";
	end the story finally saying "You have won".

Understand "about" or "credits" or "help" as a mistake ("Apologies to Ben Parrish. Or maybe he should apologize to me.").[/code]

[Robert posted while I was testing this -- as the name of this game suggests, he has a point. If you just want to have the player walk down a corridor for several steps for pacing purposes, that's fine, though some people might assume they were in an infinite loop and give up.]

[UPDATE: Made the wooden door scenery.]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3104&start=0#p21994
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Squaring results
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-30 08:16:01

Obviously, you are located at one of the few places in the universe where two-dimensional space is warped through the third dimension and the laws of geometry break down. [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3083&start=10#p21995
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF story idea
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-30 08:22:38

If it were me, the idea of writing a story (IF or otherwise) which is based generally on my own life but in which the protagonist is dying of cancer sort of gives me the creeps.  Maybe I'm just superstitious  -- it's like giving fate the raspberry.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=0#p21996
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-30 09:10:32

The way I rationalize this is that the PC has lots of pockets, or maybe an unmentioned carryall. Even a holdall can sometimes prove to be an obstacle. For example, dropping something contained by the holdall produces the message "You haven't got that." So yeah, go ahead and let the PC carry unlimited stuff. I promise you, no one will complain!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3105&start=0#p21997
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hidden room (names)
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-30 09:16:59

[quote="Robert Rothman"]Otherwise, you have the equivalent of twisty (well, not so twisty, maybe) little passages, all alike.[/quote]
"You are in a corridor of straight little passages, all alike."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=10#p21998
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-30 10:02:38

What's the minimum threshold for to qualify for the list? Two votes? I know that this is difficult to assess without having a decent estimate of how many voters you'd get, but it seems you'd need something to stop the bottom of the list getting spammed with joke submissions. (It'd be easier if you could decide this [i]after[/i] you received all the votes, but people will want to know.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3083&start=10#p21999
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF story idea
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-08-30 10:05:56

Don't listen to the naysayers, Dave. It isn't vain. It isn't creepy. I think it's interesting and creative and has the potential for saying something deeper about the human spirit than 99% of the games I've played.

What if someone had told Dostoyeski before he wrote Notes from Underground, 'That's creepy and vain.' Should he have listened?

Sometimes I find the IF community to be oddly cloistered in their view of art. This is the 21st Century: everything is possible. We don't need to be so conservative and we don't need to take our literary criticism cues from Aristotle.

PLQ.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=120#p22000
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.3: IF library manager
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-30 10:47:41

[quote="jakobcreutzfeldt"]BTW, this means that you've either deleted your config file or you haven't moved it to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME. Likewise you need to move your library (local_library.dat) and the covers directory previously in ~/.grotesque to $XDG_DATA_HOME (see the note at the bottom of the release notes I posted).[/quote]
I'm simply creating the Gentoo build script so I can't assume that the end user has any previous config files around.

Btw, I'm not sure how Arch build scripts work, but the Gentoo ones contain checksums of the downloaded tarball. So changing an already released version is generally a bad idea because if the checksum fails, the package can't be installed by anyone [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

Edit:
It works OK now. It also suggests "hugor" now for Hugo games. "qtads" is still missing though for T2 and T3.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=120#p22001
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.3: IF library manager
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-08-30 10:52:27

[quote="RealNC"][quote="jakobcreutzfeldt"]BTW, this means that you've either deleted your config file or you haven't moved it to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME. Likewise you need to move your library (local_library.dat) and the covers directory previously in ~/.grotesque to $XDG_DATA_HOME (see the note at the bottom of the release notes I posted).[/quote]
I'm simply creating the Gentoo build script so I can't assume that the end user has any previous config files around.[/quote]

Ahh that makes sense!

[quote]Btw, I'm not sure how Arch build scripts work, but the Gentoo ones contain checksums of the downloaded tarball. So changing an already released version is generally a bad idea because if the checksum fails, the package can't be installed by anyone [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote][/quote]

I'm updating the md5 sum each time and bumping the release number in the PKGBUILD but you're right that this can cause problems. From now on, I'll upload separate releases, keeping the old versions up (I mean 0.9.3, 0.9.3-1, 0.9.3-2, etc). Sorry if this has caused any inconvenience for you. Needless to say, this is my first time distributing software like this, so it has been a learning process for me. I appreciate your input...I'll get it right eventually. [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3083&start=20#p22002
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF story idea
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-30 11:07:50

[quote]Don't listen to the naysayers, Dave.[/quote]

Just to clarify, in my earlier post I had no intention of suggesting that Duodave's idea is a bad one or that he shouldn't do it.  I was simply observing that, and explaining why, I, personally, would not feel comfortable writing such a thing.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3104&start=0#p22003
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Squaring results
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-30 11:24:50

I suspect you're defining such a large scale of units that the numbers overflow. You'd need to show the unit definitions for any more accurate debugging, preferably a minimum complete test case that shows the behavior.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2951&start=10#p22004
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parchment-transcript hosting
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-30 11:35:36

It's working great on Mac and Windows XP, but it doesn't seem to do anything on Windows 7/IE8 - it just displays a static page linking to Parchment. Is there an easy fix?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3106&start=0#p22005
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Referring to the player in the third person
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-30 11:48:51

Most of the time, I don't worry about things like whether "you" means the player or the PC, or who "I" is when the parser gives a message. But suddenly it started looking strange to me. What if the game referred to the player in the third person?

[quote]>
The player seems to have hit "Return" without typing a command. The player must enter a command for you such as LOOK, EXAMINE FROG or GO WEST.

>LOOK
You are at a small waterhole on a wide expanse of prairie. A frog is hopping around in a puddle here.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3107&start=0#p22006
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: A brand new system - Quest 5.0 - out now!
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-08-30 11:55:17

I posted on here back in October 2010 that I was [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1553]working on a complete rewrite of Quest[/url].

Well, since I posted that, I left my job to finish working on it. Five months later, [url=http://www.textadventures.co.uk/blog/2011/08/30/quest-5-0-is-out-now/]Quest 5.0 is now ready[/url].

It is free and open source, and you can download it from <a class="postlink" href="http://www.textadventures.co.uk/quest/download/">http://www.textadventures.co.uk/quest/download/</a>

I'd love to get your feedback!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3107&start=0#p22007
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: A brand new system - Quest 5.0 - out now!
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-30 12:08:34

Excellent news.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3106&start=0#p22008
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Referring to the player in the third person
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-30 12:10:14

That's creepy. I like it.

(I mean, I don't think that it should be the default for IF games, but a game could make good use of that for POV wackiness.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2951&start=10#p22009
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parchment-transcript hosting
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-30 12:12:55

This seems to be a bug in Parchment (or in IE8), even the vanilla version at <a class="postlink" href="http://iplayif.com/">http://iplayif.com/</a> acts the same. Removing the words "defer" from the script tags in index.html seems to fix it. You can also download the fixed file from [url=http://transcripts.game-testing.org/test/index.html]here[/url] (right click -> save as) and replace the old index.html with it. 

I'll report the bug.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3106&start=0#p22010
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Referring to the player in the third person
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-30 12:13:09

I will refrain from the obligatory Silence of the Lambs reference.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2259&start=10#p22011
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Creating RIA Interpreter for TADS 3
User: phil932 / DateTime: 2011-08-30 12:39:53

Does the version in git allow any form of multiplayer facilities for TADS3?
Or is it more to allow multiple players each in their own independent instance of a game?

TIA,

Phil.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=10#p22012
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-30 12:45:52

If I imagine a website where I can see this "canon" I would hope to find adjustable filters for "X minimum votes", "newer than XXXX", "commercial/non commercial/both", authoring (and thus playing) system, topic and whoknowswhat. With useful presettings for newbies.

And I could imagine the voting to be open-ended as long as the voter is identifiable so that it's always up-to-date. But a new voting process once a year would do the same trick.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2259&start=20#p22013
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Creating RIA Interpreter for TADS 3
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-08-30 12:51:30

The latter; it's not multiplayer in the usual sense.

I believe it would be possible to put together a library that used the VM server functions to host a multiplayer-aware game. Doing that with adv3 would take a lot of effort.

I'm not sure what the plans are for the minimalist TADS 3 library, code-named "quicksilver". If it ever sees a release, I plan to tackle a multiplayer version.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3106&start=0#p22014
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Referring to the player in the third person
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-30 12:54:17

I'm probably just old-fashioned, but I think the "conventional" approach of addressing both the player and the player character as "you" is not [i]just[/i] convention -- it became the convention because it is, in some sense, natural.

I think back to 1977 or so, when I sat down for the very first time to try Adventure.  It was, of course, long before anybody thought about coming up with a theory to characterize what we were doing, drawing distinctions between the player (the guy sitting at the terminal and typing) and the player character (the guy "inside" the game who wanders around and throws daggers at dwarves).  It was also, of course, before the time when there was a convention as to how these things worked ; if anything, this was the game that established what the convention was to become.  Yet, somehow, whether the game said "Congratulations!  You have just vanquished a dragon with your bare hands!" (where "you" refers to the player character) or "You must be more specific" (addressing the player) or "You can't go that way" (which arguably refers to either), we understood what was going on.  For me, and I suspect most people, all it took was a few turns to get the hang of what the machine's responses meant.  The reason, I think, is that while the distinction between the player and the player character is a useful one (particularly from the author's perspective), it is not essential that the player think about that distinction in order to play the game.  Using "you" in both senses allows the player to have fun without forcing him to appreciate and think about the distinction.

Once you depart from that approach, you make it more difficult for the player, by forcing him to think about what "I" or "you" means; the meaning is not self-evident.  I suspect it is certainly possible to learn to play a game using such an approach, but I think there would be a lot more learning involved.  The issue is whether that additional learning really buys anything in terms of the play experience.  I'm not sure I see that it does.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=10#p22015
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-30 13:10:53

[quote="maga"]What's the minimum threshold for to qualify for the list? Two votes? I know that this is difficult to assess without having a decent estimate of how many voters you'd get, but it seems you'd need something to stop the bottom of the list getting spammed with joke submissions. (It'd be easier if you could decide this [i]after[/i] you received all the votes, but people will want to know.)[/quote]
The best things would be to just disclose the voting totals. The organiser can then make a top X as he/she sees fit, but anyone who disagrees can make their own list.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3108&start=0#p22016
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Conversation help
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-08-30 13:26:07

OK I am having trouble with a simple conversation table and I need advice. Here's some of my code:

[code]The tacklebox is scenery in the dock. The description is "[The dock-man]'s fishing tackle seems to consist of a couple of rods, reels, and a well-used tackle box." Understand "tackle", "rod", "pole", "reel" and "box" as the tacklebox.

After asking dock-man about a topic listed in the table of dock-man talk, say response entry.

Table of dock-man talk
topic		response
"fishing"	"'I like fishing,' [the dock-man] says. 'It relaxes me.'[paragraph break]"
"water"		"'Isn't the lake pretty?'[paragraph break]"
"tackle"	"'I've had this gear for years.'[paragraph break]"
[/code]

I have two questions. First, if I ask the dock-man about the tackle, I get "there is no reply". Second, I want to be able to have multiple topic items result in the same response, like if "box" or "tackle" or "rod" are queried. How can I do that? I already tried "tacke[or]box" and "tackle" "box" but neither worked. I hate to make things redundant, I may have a lot of conversation in this game.

Are tables too simple for this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2259&start=20#p22017
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Creating RIA Interpreter for TADS 3
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-08-30 13:30:51

The language gives you server and client sockets, so you can implement multiplayer servers. The game world would then be hosted by the game running as a server, while players connect as clients.

You could write the clients in some other language if you wish, doesn't have to be in TADS.

Edit: Of course doing this requires programming; adv3 doesn't come with out-of-the-box support for it  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3108&start=0#p22018
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Conversation help
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-30 13:38:20

Just guessing, but could part of the problem be that you used an "after" rule rather than an "instead" rule?  "After" only kicks in (as I understand  it) after the succesful execution of a "carry out" rule.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3106&start=0#p22019
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Referring to the player in the third person
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-08-30 13:51:37

[quote="capmikee"]I will refrain from the obligatory Silence of the Lambs reference.[/quote]

"The player undoes that action, or it gets the unwinnable ending again"?

I like it, but then I don't particularly love the default player/character conflation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3108&start=0#p22020
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Conversation help
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-08-30 13:52:33

OK this is getting weird. If I change the tacklebox from "scenery" to a "backdrop" it no longer conflicts, which is weird. Other than the fact that a backdrop can exist in more than one room, what's the difference between a scenery and a backdrop? I find this odd because a backdrop IS a scenery.

Using "Instead of" instead of "after" had no discernable difference in behavior.

Anyway, I still don't know how to introduce "understand" behavior to the conversation table.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3108&start=0#p22021
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Conversation help
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-08-30 14:31:13

[quote="duodave"]
I have two questions. First, if I ask the dock-man about the tackle, I get "there is no reply". Second, I want to be able to have multiple topic items result in the same response, like if "box" or "tackle" or "rod" are queried. How can I do that? I already tried "tacke[or]box" and "tackle" "box" but neither worked. I hate to make things redundant, I may have a lot of conversation in this game.

Are tables too simple for this?[/quote]


Here is a table-less scheme I used in Hallow Eve, just in case you decide to take a different approach.

[code]Understand "fred" or "fred murks" or "murks" as "[Fred topic]".

Report asking Steve Dirks about "[Fred topic]": 
	say "Steve says 'Fred is a trip, dude. Do you remember that time he tripped Mrs. Bowman in the 4th grade with marbles in the gym? Ha!'" instead.
[/code]

You can use this method to generate many topics with many "understands". 

"Scenery" and "back drop" are not the same thing in Inform7. Think of say the sky as a "backdrop" that can span many rooms, while a boulder laying around outside is "scenery" in a room. For more information see sections 3.8 and 3.9 in the Writing with Inform documentation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3106&start=0#p22022
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Referring to the player in the third person
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-30 14:31:15

[quote="Robert Rothman"]Once you depart from that approach, you make it more difficult for the player, by forcing him to think about what "I" or "you" means; the meaning is not self-evident.[/quote]
But as was discussed in the other "you" thread, the PC in Adventure had no personality to speak of - it was a blank for the player to fit into. In a game where the PC is developed enough to have different reactions and preferences to the player, it might make more sense to distinguish between them.

This reminds me of a book I read about comic books. Some comic books like Tintin and Cerebus have excruciating detail in the background, but the main characters are only minimally illustrated. The point was that when the main character lacks detail, it's easier for the reader to imagine themselves in that place.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=10#p22023
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-08-30 14:53:09

Why don't we just drive this automatically from IFDB? We could auto-create a top X table based off all ratings given to games within a set time period. That way it should always reflect recent trends, but not have to be maintained manually which will inevitably result in stagnation. I do something similar on the ADRIFT site with the mini table.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3106&start=0#p22024
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Referring to the player in the third person
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-30 15:03:24

[quote]But as was discussed in the other "you" thread, the PC in Adventure had no personality to speak of - it was a blank for the player to fit into. In a game where the PC is developed enough to have different reactions and preferences to the player, it might make more sense to distinguish between them.

[/quote]

Ultimately, I suppose it comes down to one's personal view of what IF is about.  To me (and, again, I acknowledge that I'm somewhat old-fashioned in this regard), a lot of the fun I get out of it as a player derives from the role-playing component.  In a game where the player character is a Featureless Undefined Character (Kinda), identifying with the character is almost automatic.  In the case of a character with more definition, either I can or cannot identify with the character enough for the role-playing aspect to work.  If I can do so, then the use of "you" in both senses continues to make sense; if I cannot identify with the character enough to imagine myself as the character, then I probably wouldn't enjoy the game very much.

On the other hand, I can understand that role-playing aspect -- which for me, entails a certain identification with the character -- may not be important to some people.  If you take that out of the picture, then the idea of using different pronouns makes more sense.  Put another way, the kind of game for which splitting the "yous" is likely to work best is probably not the kind of game which I would be likely to enjoy anyway -- but that's a matter of personal preference.

 Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=10#p22025
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-30 15:17:34

[quote="Campbell"]Why don't we just drive this automatically from IFDB?[/quote]

IFDB lists a gazillion of games with five stars. A higher, probably much higher score maximum would be more meaningful. And five IFDB stars can mean just two votes from the author and his hunchbacked mom.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3109&start=0#p22026
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: "Nothing is carried" - always false?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-30 15:20:18

This has me puzzled:

[code]Test is a room.

When play begins:
	Showme the list of carried things;
	Showme whether or not nothing is held by the player;
	Showme whether or not nothing is carried.[/code]

The list of carried things is empty. "nothing is held by the player" is true. But "nothing is carried" is false. Why?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3104&start=0#p22027
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Squaring results
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-08-30 15:24:44

I've got it--it only happens in Z-code.  Observe.

[code]Length is a kind of value.

1m (in metric units, in m) or 1 m (in metric units, in m) or 1 meter (in meters, singular) or 1 metre
(in metres, singular) or 2 meters (in meters, plural) or 2 metres (in
metres, plural) specifies a length.

1cm (in metric units, in cm) or 1 cm (in metric units, in cm) or 1 centimeter (in centimeters,
singular) or 1 centimetre (in centimetres, singular) or 2 centimeters
(in centimeters, plural) or 2 centimetres (in centimetres, plural)
specifies a length scaled down by 100.

1km (in metric units, in km) or 1 km (in metric units, in km) or 1 kilometer (in kilometers, singular)
or 1 kilometre (in kilometres, singular) or 2 kilometers (in
kilometers, plural) or 2 kilometres (in kilometres, plural) specifies
a length scaled up by 1000.

Area is a kind of value.  1 sq m (in metric units, in sq m) or 1 square meter (in square meters,
singular) or 2 square meters (in square meters, plural) or 1 square metre
(in square metres, singular) or 2 square metres (in square metres, plural)
specifies an area.

Length times length specifies an area.

To decide what area is the square of (N - a length):
	decide on N * N.

When play begins: say "The square of 1m is [square of 1m].  The square of 2m is [square of 2m].  The square of 3m is [square of 3m].  The square of 4m is [square of 4m].  The square of 5m is [square of 5m]."

The geometry lab is a room.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3104&start=0#p22028
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Squaring results
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-30 15:36:36

Indeed, z-code behaves differently from glulx. That shouldn't happen.

If you remove the lines defining cm and km, the code works as it should. But those lines shouldn't mess anything up. Things are going weirdly wrong: I believe the game thinks that 1 m is 0.1 km, for instance.

I would report this whole example as a bug.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3108&start=0#p22029
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Conversation help
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-30 15:40:22

[quote="duodave"]I want to be able to have multiple topic items result in the same response, like if "box" or "tackle" or "rod" are queried. How can I do that? [/quote]
Thus:
[code]
Table of dock-man talk
topic	response
"fishing"	"'I like fishing,' [the dock-man] says. 'It relaxes me.'[paragraph break]"
"water"	"'Isn't the lake pretty?'[paragraph break]"
"tackle/rod/pole/reel/box"	"'I've had this gear for years.'[paragraph break]"
[/code]
(It's mentioned in the documentation ch. 15.13.)

Actually, the only rule that the Standard Rules define for the asking it about action is a report rule, so it wouldn't get in the way of the after rule.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2259&start=20#p22030
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Creating RIA Interpreter for TADS 3
User: tomasb / DateTime: 2011-08-30 15:59:16

Apart from multiple players each in their own independent instance of a game current prerelease is also capable of hosting one game for cooperative playing by multiple players together. Although there is no interface for it yet, you can make a request to "/webui/guestConnect" and receive an url for guest to join. (Of course, this is not a real "multiplayer".)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=10#p22031
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-30 16:10:43

IFDB has a very good search function and you can pull data using just about any combination you can think of.

Assuming a 5.0 average means the result isn't reliable, here's a [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/search?sortby=ratu&newSortBy.x=0&newSortBy.y=0&searchfor=-rating%3A5]list of best games, excluding those with exactly 5.0 average[/url] (although I have serious doubts whether a Sokoban clone is the best IF of all time. [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/search?sortby=ratu&newSortBy.x=0&newSortBy.y=0&searchfor=-rating%3A5+%23ratings%3A5%2B]This search[/url] includes only those with at least 5 ratings.) Here's a [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/search?sortby=rcu&newSortBy.x=0&newSortBy.y=0&searchfor=&browse=1]list of games ordered by number of ratings[/url] which should be an indication of popularity, and [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/search?sortby=ratu&newSortBy.x=0&newSortBy.y=0&searchfor=%23ratings%3A50%2B]games with at least 50 ratings ordered by rating[/url]. Want to filter out commercial or unavailable games? [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/search?sortby=ratu&newSortBy.x=0&newSortBy.y=0&searchfor=-rating%3A5+%23ratings%3A5%2B+downloadable%3Ayes]Best rated[/url], [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/search?sortby=rcu&newSortBy.x=0&newSortBy.y=0&searchfor=downloadable%3Ayes]most rated[/url]. [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/search?sortby=ratu&newSortBy.x=0&newSortBy.y=0&searchfor=-rating%3A5+%23ratings%3A5%2B+published%3A2000-]Best games of this century[/url]. [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/search?sortby=rsdd&newSortBy.x=0&newSortBy.y=0&searchfor=%23ratings%3A10%2B+ratingdev%3A0-+rating%3A4-]Unanimously loved games[/url] (lowest standard deviation). [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/search?sortby=rsdu&newSortBy.x=0&newSortBy.y=0&searchfor=%23ratings%3A10%2B+ratingdev%3A0-]Most controversial games[/url] (highest standard deviation). [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/search?sortby=rcu&newSortBy.x=0&newSortBy.y=0&searchfor=rating%3A-2.5]Popular bad games[/url]. [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/search?sortby=rsdd&newSortBy.x=0&newSortBy.y=0&searchfor=%23ratings%3A10%2B+ratingdev%3A0-]Universally hated games[/url] (looks like the #1 in this list did live up to its name after all!)

I can see that there would be some benefits to creating a new list, one being that you can't get the current trends from IFDB as you can vote for each game only once and not yearly as has been suggested, but I'd rather encourage people to rate games on IFDB to improve the information that already exists.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3104&start=0#p22032
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Squaring results
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-30 16:23:42

I don't think it's a bug. The Z-machine just doesn't have the capacity to handle large numbers and when you use a scale from 1cm to 1km you need numbers that go from 0 to 100,000 and that's too much for Z-machine. That's why the Metric Units extension is Glulx-only.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3106&start=0#p22033
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Referring to the player in the third person
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-30 16:37:35

From a historical standpoint, PC as "you" was not universal in early text adventures; as [url=http://www.filfre.net/2011/06/adventureland-part-1/]Jimmy Maher points out[/url], Scott Adams' Adventureland (the first home computer text adventure?) had a first-person protagonist and even played with the player/PC dichotomy:

[quote]I'm your puppet. Give me English commands that consist of a noun and a verb. [/quote]

The end of [url=http://www.filfre.net/2011/07/the-count/]The Count[/url] played around with the dichotomy a little more:

[quote]The townspeople come and carry me off cheering! (Don't worry, I tell them I tell it all to you!!!!)[/quote]

And as you can tell by counting the exclamation points, Adams doesn't appear to have been the artsiest IF author.

That doesn't prove that the second person isn't more natural; maybe that's why it came to dominate IF. (But maybe not; maybe that was just how the most successful IFs happened to be programmed and written.

All that said, capmikee's proposal does strike me as unsettling; that's not to say it's bad, but it definitely comes off as stylized to me. (Somehow it reminds me of the parts of Metal Gear Solid, which I've only watched on video, where one of the bosses analyzes the PC's character in terms of your save files.) To me it'd be more natural to refer to the PC in third person and the player in second, like this:

[quote]>
You seem to have hit "Return" without typing a command. You must enter a command for Taylor such as LOOK, EXAMINE FROG or GO WEST.

>LOOK
Taylor is at a small waterhole on a wide expanse of prairie. A frog is hopping around in a puddle here.[/quote]

Or first person for the PC, for that matter. If a sort of naturalism is what you're striving for; it doesn't have to be.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3106&start=0#p22034
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Referring to the player in the third person
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-30 16:43:10

[quote="Robert Rothman"]
Ultimately, I suppose it comes down to one's personal view of what IF is about.  To me (and, again, I acknowledge that I'm somewhat old-fashioned in this regard), a lot of the fun I get out of it as a player derives from the role-playing component.  In a game where the player character is a Featureless Undefined Character (Kinda), identifying with the character is almost automatic.  In the case of a character with more definition, either I can or cannot identify with the character enough for the role-playing aspect to work.  If I can do so, then the use of "you" in both senses continues to make sense; if I cannot identify with the character enough to imagine myself as the character, then I probably wouldn't enjoy the game very much.

On the other hand, I can understand that role-playing aspect -- which for me, entails a certain identification with the character -- may not be important to some people.[/quote]
Yeah, I'm in a very different boat: I don't think of 'role-playing' and 'strong identification with the PC' as being the same thing. I don't think of AFGNCAAP games as involving very much role-playing, because role-playing involves acting out a character. If there's not much character, there's not much acting: if the PC is just me plus a keyring and backpack, I'm not really role-playing. Imagining that the protagonist is me is not the same thing as imagining that I am the protagonist.

(This is different, of course, in RPG-like games where the AFGNCAAP is just the starting-point for a character that becomes player-defined. But it's very rare for an IF game to do this to any great degree.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=20#p22035
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-30 16:50:37

[quote="Juhana"]I can see that there would be some benefits to creating a new list, one being that you can't get the current trends from IFDB as you can vote for each game only once and not yearly as has been suggested, but I'd rather encourage people to rate games on IFDB to improve the information that already exists.[/quote]
Great links. I see these two things as complementing each other rather than being in competition with each other, though. I rate a lot of games on IFDB (I am the number 5 reviewer, I believe); but rarely do I sit down and ask myself which games are my favourite IF games of all time. I'd love to do that, and I'd also love to see what other people would come up with.

([i]Blue Lacuna[/i]. [i]Make it Good[/i]. Oh wait, we haven't started yet?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3106&start=0#p22036
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Referring to the player in the third person
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-30 16:57:57

I would venture that what is creepy and unsettling about the original example is that the narrator is addressing the character rather than the player. Cutting the link between the player and the character isn't necessarily unsettling, but if the narrator is not talking to me, the player, [i]then how can I possibly know what is going on[/i]? I am immediately turned into some weird ghostly presence who is spying on the PC and the narrator. Brr. (Like Andrew said: it is creepy. I like it.) This should only be done in very special games.

[quote="maga"](This is different, of course, in RPG-like games where the AFGNCAAP is just the starting-point for a character that becomes player-defined. But it's very rare for an IF game to do this to any great degree.)[/quote]
(Although even there, I'd choose starting out with a well-defined PC every day. The Nameless One from [i]Planescape: Torment[/i] and Gerald from [i]The Withcer (2)[/i] are the only RPG PCs I can really remember, because all the other ones were just "that transmuter with which I generally chose the lawful good option".)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=20#p22037
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: Jeff Zeitlin / DateTime: 2011-08-30 17:29:38

Rather than a single "Top 100" list, I think it might be better to have several shorter lists - perhaps one "overall favorites" and several others by genre.

I don't see an [i]Ad Verbum[/i] or [i]The Gostak[/i] being able to rise on an overall list to the level of an [i]ADVENT[/i] or [i]Zork[/i], but for the kind of person that likes the sort of puzzles that those games - and/or [i]Nord and Bert Couldn't Make Heads or Tails Of It[/i] - offer, a list headed by those three games might well be of more interest, and get the person to explore the other offerings from such a list, than a list populated by [i]Zork[/i], [i]Planetfall[/i], [i]Deadline[/i], [i]Kook University[/i], [i]Sand-Dancer[/i], and so on.

Granted, IF isn't books, but [i]The New York Times[/i] broke up their best-seller lists by genre a long time ago for good reason; I'm suggesting that we apply the same logic to IF.

(As a side note, can anyone think of a workable way to get IF more into the public eye? Doing so might increase the interest in the form, and start a "renaissance" of sorts. I can't see more interest as a bad thing.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=20#p22038
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-30 17:36:24

[quote="Jeff Zeitlin"]Rather than a single "Top 100" list, I think it might be better to have several shorter lists - perhaps one "overall favorites" and several others by genre.[/quote]
If we get 100 participants, that might be feasible. [emote];)[/emote] But isn't this territory well-covered by the polls and recommended lists of IFDB?

[quote](As a side note, can anyone think of a workable way to get IF more into the public eye? Doing so might increase the interest in the form, and start a "renaissance" of sorts. I can't see more interest as a bad thing.)[/quote]
(Don't start talking about the most-discussed topic in IF as a side note, please! [emote]:D[/emote] )

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=20#p22039
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-30 17:47:33

One of the most obvious things to come out of this discussion is that you're likely to get very different lists depending on how votes are solicited, how they're structured (numerical score vs. unordered best-of list) and how the results are displayed. Victor's approach is likely to throw up quite different things from Juhana's IFDB-ganking or the IF-Ratings-but-more-so thing that Grueslayer wants. (Apart from anything else, a vote-by-mail list is going to pick out a different set of people than a site with account creation and continuous open voting.)

So, the more the merrier, particularly if it's treated as an experiment. (One of the reasons I like Victor's approach is that it's pretty low-investment for the organiser in terms of skills and time. Anybody with a few spare hours can organise it; and if it's tried and not judged useful enough to be worth repeating, or to overlap existing resources to the point of redundancy, then no great loss.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3109&start=0#p22040
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Nothing is carried" - always false?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-30 17:47:47

Because the compiler is interpreting "nothing" as an object reference (the null reference) in that case, rather than "there is no object X such that..."

You can write "if no thing is carried..." and it'll be interpreted the way you expect.

You can reasonably report this as a bug, although it might be difficult to fix without breaking some other (more reasonable) interpretation of "nothing".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3106&start=10#p22041
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Referring to the player in the third person
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-30 17:50:49

Perhaps my choice of the term "role-playing" was a poor one.  I did not mean the term in the somewhat narrow sense that it has come to mean in the context of "role-playing games."  My point was simply that, for me to enjoy an IF game, I need to be able to imagine myself in the shoes of the player character (however loosely- or well-defined that character is).  The more precisely defined a character is, the greater the chance that I will not be able to do so, but for any given character, either I identify with it enough to do so, or I don't.  If I do, then "you" makes sense both for me (Rob Rothman, the guy typing commands) and me (the imaginary "me" wearing the character's shoes).  If I don't, I probably won't play the game so it doesn't matter.

This is, I think, a fundamental difference between IF and conventional fiction.  I can enjoy, and appreciate, a novel in which the protagonist is someone I could never imagine being.  On the other hand, when part of the experience is telling the protagonist what to do, that necessarily entails a greater identification with the protagonist.  An example (and I suppose this comes to mind because I was reading one of these books not long ago):  Lawrence Block's Scudder series, in which the protagonist is an alcoholic who always manages to solve the mystery in between Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.  I enjoy the books; the stories are good, the characters interesting, and the writing well executed.  On the other hand, if somebody were to write an IF in which a major element of the player character's identity is defined by the need to get to an alcoholics Anonymous meeting every few hours, as a backdrop to the main plot, I'm not at all sure I'd find it my cup of tea (or even my glass of Lagavullin); I think I'd have trouble identifying with the character enough to work for IF.  On the other hand, I have no trouble with a Sherlock Holmes-based IF, even though I do not inject (or otherwise use) cocaine.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3109&start=0#p22042
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Nothing is carried" - always false?
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-30 17:54:10

[quote]You can write "if no thing is carried..." and it'll be interpreted the way you expect.

[/quote]

As in "Drop no tea"?


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=20#p22043
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-30 17:55:07

[quote="maga"]So, the more the merrier, particularly if it's treated as an experiment. (One of the reasons I like Victor's approach is that it's pretty low-investment for the organiser in terms of skills and time. Anybody with a few spare hours can organise it; and if it's tried and not judged useful enough to be worth repeating, or to overlap existing resources to the point of redundancy, then no great loss.)[/quote]
If no one feels that I am mowing the grass away before their feet*, I'll organise this.

* A Dutch proverb, the meaning of which I hope is clear.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=20#p22044
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-30 18:29:52

[quote="Jeff Zeitlin"]Rather than a single "Top 100" list, I think it might be better to have several shorter lists - perhaps one "overall favorites" and several others by genre...

...Granted, IF isn't books, but [i]The New York Times[/i] broke up their best-seller lists by genre a long time ago for good reason; I'm suggesting that we apply the same logic to IF.[/quote]
1) That would overlap very heavily with IFDB.

2) There isn't really enough IF to make this kind of splitting feasible. There are probably more books published every year than all the IF that has been written, ever. I could list all the Gostak-Ad Verbum-type games without taking off my boots.

3) The NYT is able to make divisions because different genres of book really [i]are[/i] distributed and read in very different ways: romance novels are not written, marketed or consumed like literary fiction, and neither are self-help books. The only strong, pre-existing division by genre in IF is porn vs. not-porn; the other divisions are by platform and language rather than content. (Yes, we grump about puzzle-heavy vs. puzzleless and strong-characterisation vs. AFGNCAAP a lot, but there isn't a Puzzleless-IF Community or anything.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=20#p22045
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-30 18:38:10

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]I'll organise this.[/quote]

All hail!

Please just let there be enough time to organize a maximum of effect on public, id est ideas on how to promote the stuff so that it's not a thing within this limited scene, but rather something the targeted audience has indeed a chance to stumble across.
Like, if it'd be a site on its own it'd be easier to draw the attention of non-IF game sites than if it was just something within this forum, with some 15 votes for or against a top X list, stuff like that, ya know.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=20#p22046
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-30 18:48:36

[quote="Grueslayer"][quote="VictorGijsbers"]Please just let there be enough time to organize a maximum of effect on public, id est ideas on how to promote the stuff so that it's not a thing within this limited scene, but rather something the targeted audience has indeed a chance to stumble across.
Like, if it'd be a site on its own it'd be easier to draw the attention of non-IF game sites than if it was just something within this forum, with some 15 votes for or against a top X list, stuff like that, ya know.[/quote][/quote]
Well, the voting should probably be done by the scene, because who else has a top 10 of IF works? So I'm thinking of posting it on the forum, on my blog (which is indexed on Platen IF) and on the newsgroup. That should reach basically everyone who is active in IF.

The [i]results[/i] are the thing that is (if enough people participate) interesting to the public at large. If someone wants to create a site for them, that would be great, but let's wait till we see whether the results are worth making a site for. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3108&start=0#p22047
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Conversation help
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-08-30 18:48:44

Hey I tracked it down. The extension "conversation framework" version 9 by Eric Eve was causing the conflict with tables and "understand". Haven't a clue why.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=20#p22048
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-30 18:51:08

[quote="maga"]2) There isn't really enough IF to make this kind of splitting feasible. There are probably more books published every year than all the IF that has been written, ever. I could list all the Gostak-Ad Verbum-type games without taking off my boots.[/quote]
Make that "every week" and it might still be true.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3106&start=10#p22049
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Referring to the player in the third person
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-08-31 01:54:32

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]I would venture that what is creepy and unsettling about the original example is that the narrator is addressing the character rather than the player. […] if the narrator is not talking to me, the player, then how can I possibly know what is going on? I am immediately turned into some weird ghostly presence who is spying on the PC and the narrator.[/quote]
True. But there's also the weird pragmatics and epistemological/ontological implications of a sentence like [quote]>
The player seems to have hit "Return" without typing a command. The player must enter a command for you such as LOOK, EXAMINE FROG or GO WEST.[/quote] directed to the PC. 
Pragmatics: Why would the narrator tell the PC what commands the player should type? One answer is of course that the narrator addresses the PC only in a formal sense—the narrator knows that the player is eavesdropping and the information is meant for the latter—, but another, creepier, answer would be that the narrator explains to the PC why he/she was unable to act that turn.
Epistemology/ontology: The sentence presupposes that the PC *knows* that he/she *is* a PC under the control of a player; it is as if the player directed not a puppet without a mind of its own, but only forced an intellectually and emotionally independent PC to act according to the player's will . 

In some situations this convention would get even weirder: [quote]>quit
Is the player sure s/he wants to quit?[/quote] 
Here he narrator wouldn't even be addressing the PC, but perhaps musing aloud about whether to take the player's command at face value or not!

Yes, I like it, too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=20#p22050
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-08-31 03:23:27

The other thing IFDB could probably offer is a top X table of recent downloads. In some ways this is more akin to charts as it shows what people are playing right now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=30#p22051
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-08-31 04:09:58

Better yet if it could be integrated to the "Play Online" button. I suspect a significant number of people aren't downloading as much as playing it on Parchment (where applicable, naturally). *Those* are the games people are "playing now".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3110&start=0#p22052
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Errors with using the 'colon and indentation' syntax
User: alecnotalex / DateTime: 2011-08-31 08:50:06

So I've been working on some combat in a game I'm making. Here is the source in question:
A person has a number called maximum hit points. A person has a number called current hit points. A person has a number called max damage.
The maximum hit points of the player is 45. The maximum hit points of the Boy is 25.
The current hit points of the player is 35. The current hit points of the Boy is 25.
The max damage of the player is 10. The max damage of the Boy is 8.
[code]
Instead of attacking someone: 
	let the damage be a random number between 2 and the max damage of the player; 
	say "You attack [the noun], causing [damage] points of damage!"; 
	decrease the current hit points of the noun by the damage; 
	if the current hit points of the noun is less than 0: 
		say "[line break][The noun] dies, and falls to the ground!"; 
		remove the noun from play; 
		stop the action;
[/code]
So, for that chunk of code that should be like the new default for attacking someone. If I add a new person, I can choose their max damage, maximum hit points, and current hit points. So If I were to compile this (Of course, with more code) and I were to attack someone they just get attacked and don't back. And it works, so that's good. But, there is more. The person "the boy" is a person who fights back. So here's the code for him:
[code]
The Bedroom Two is north of the Upstairs Hallway. "This is a bedroom. The exit is to the south. The room smells terrible, and I would recommend leaving immediately." The Boy is a man in Bedroom Two. "A tall scary looking boy looks down on you."
Every turn:
	if the location of the boy is the location of the player:
		After attacking someone:
			let the enemy damage be a random number between 2 and the max damage of the noun; 
			say "[line break]The boy attacks you, causing [enemy damage] points of damage!"; 
			decrease the current hit points of the player by the enemy damage; 
			if the current hit points of the player is less than 0:  
				say "Their final blow knocks you back and you fall to the ground.";
				end the game in death.
[/code]
And adding this (Of course, with many other rooms and stuff.) creates this problem:

Problem. The phrase or rule definition 'Instead of attacking someone'   is written using the 'colon and indentation' syntax for its 'if's, 'repeat's and 'while's, where blocks of phrases grouped together are indented one tab step inward from the 'if ...:' or similar phrase to which they belong. But the tabs here seem to be misaligned, and I can't determine the structure. The first phrase going awry in the definition seems to be 'let the damage be a random number between 2 and the max damage of the player'  , in case that helps. 

 This sometimes happens even when the code looks about right, to the eye, if rows of spaces have been used to indent phrases instead of tabs.
Can somebody try to tell me what I'm doing wrong?
I am using inform 7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3110&start=0#p22053
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Errors with using the 'colon and indentation' syntax
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-31 08:51:45

[spoiler]Could you perhaps edit your post and re-paste the code, but between code-tags? That way, we will be able to actually [i]see[/i] the indentation, and it will make your post much more readable. [emote]:)[/emote][/spoiler]
Thanks!

(Somewhat related: if you are doing a lot of combat, take a look at my Inform ATTACK extension. The latest release, complete with manual, can be found [url=http://lilith.cc/%7Evictor/temp/ATTACK-latest.zip]here[/url]. I would recommend taking a look at the example in Chapter 3 first, so you can see whether it would be useful to you.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3110&start=0#p22054
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Errors with using the 'colon and indentation' syntax
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-31 08:56:15

[code]Every turn:
   if the location of the boy is the location of the player:
      After attacking someone:[/code]
This is what is going wrong. You cannot put rules inside rules. Either something is an "every turn" rule, which happens every turn. Or it is an "After attacking" rule, which happens after attacking. But you cannot have a piece of code that is an "after attacking" rule inside an "every turn" rule -- for in which rulebook should it be place?

You probably just want
[code]After attacking the boy:[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3110&start=0#p22055
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Errors with using the 'colon and indentation' syntax
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-31 08:59:28

[quote="alecnotalex"]This sometimes happens even when the code looks about right, to the eye, if rows of spaces have been used to indent phrases instead of tabs.[/quote]
That's the problem: You should use tabs to indent when using the 'colon and indentation' syntax. Spaces aren't allowed.

The reason why it looks like it'd work with spaces is that you're not actually using the colon and indentation syntax if you have only one level of indentation. That is,

[code]Every turn:
    do something;
    do something else.
[/code]
is just a normal code block where whitespace doesn't matter. Equally legal would be

[code]Every turn: do something;
                do something else.
[/code]
As soon as you add a new level (if, repeat, while...) you have to either use tabs to indent or use the begin...end syntax.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3110&start=0#p22056
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: 
User: alecnotalex / DateTime: 2011-08-31 09:00:19

Thank you so much for the help! It works great now!  [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3110&start=0#p22057
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Errors with using the 'colon and indentation' syntax
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-08-31 09:03:54

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]You cannot put rules inside rules.[/quote]
There's a bug that allows nested rules: <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=417">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=417</a> The compiler parses the syntax but the result is not what the author wants.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3111&start=0#p22058
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Serial comma ish
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-31 09:25:39

I wanna have the serial comma off 99% of the time, but during one action, I want it on... then turn it off again after that action. But it doesn't seem to be a thing you can turn on or off. Any info on how to do this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3104&start=0#p22059
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Squaring results
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-31 09:31:31

I noticed that when I was working on the Multitudes extension:

[quote]Note for old-schoolers: Though it may be tempting to set maximum multiplicity to 69,105, that number is outside the range of numbers in the Z-machine, and it will wrap around to 3569.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3111&start=0#p22060
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Serial comma ish
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-31 09:33:39

I suppose you could write a custom activity rule that applies just for purposes of the one situation, but it seems like it would be an awful lot of work.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3111&start=0#p22061
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Serial comma ish
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-31 09:49:00

I expect that's the only way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3111&start=0#p22062
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Serial comma ish
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-31 09:59:26

Really? Yeesh!

Probably an easier way is to hack the name of the thing that's causing me to want to do this, for the duration of the action in question.

I temporarily have one character stand in for two. IE John's name appears to be 'John and the dog.' In a list without a serial comma, this can result in lines like 'Down there you see John and the dog and Janette, dressed as a clown.' (When Janette's description is 'Janette, dressed as a clown') which looked weird to me whenever I encountered it. Though staring at it a bunch now, it's bothering me less than ever. Maybe the prospect of annoying work is making me think that. Or maybe it really isn't worth mucking with at all. But I can say - it bugged me every time I saw it over months of testing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3111&start=0#p22063
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Serial comma ish
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-31 10:16:45

I agree it does look kind of strange -- but then again, "'Down there you see John and the dog, and Janette, dressed as a clown" also looks a bit odd.  What about making the printed names "John (and the dog)" and "Janette (dressed as a clown)" respectively, thereby avoiding comma issues altogether?


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3112&start=0#p22064
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: A journal
User: Valje / DateTime: 2011-08-31 10:41:02

What would be the easiest way to make a journal for the player?

Like, after the player types "journal", for example, all the important events that the player has faced so far would be listed to them.

Currently I am struggling with the order of the events: it would be nice to arrange the journal entries from oldest event to the most recent one. Currently I have managed only to print them in the order I put them in the code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3112&start=0#p22065
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: A journal
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-31 10:47:21

I would make an empty table, and add descriptions of experienced events to this table during the game. They will the automatically be in the order in which they were experienced, and you can print them out by repeating through the table.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3111&start=0#p22066
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Serial comma ish
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-31 10:50:08

[quote="Robert Rothman"]I agree it does look kind of strange -- but then again, "'Down there you see John and the dog, and Janette, dressed as a clown" also looks a bit odd.  What about making the printed names "John (and the dog)" and "Janette (dressed as a clown)" respectively, thereby avoiding comma issues altogether?


Robert Rothman[/quote]

This is pretty much a no-parentheses game. I'll just have to agonise over my solution myself [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2259&start=20#p22067
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Creating RIA Interpreter for TADS 3
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-08-31 10:53:36

[quote="RealNC"]OK, if you pull from Git again, t3make should now work correctly.[/quote]

Sorry if I'm being obtuse or not looking in the right place, but what Git repo are you all pulling from?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3112&start=0#p22068
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: A journal
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-31 10:53:56

You didn't specify which system you're using, but in I7 my first thought would be to use a table with columns for (1) the potential significant events, (2) a flag indicating whether the player has achieved the event, and (3) a "time-stamp," representing the turn number on which it was achieved.  When a given event occurs, the column 2 entry for event would be changed to true, and the column 3 entry would be changed to the turn number.  When you need to print the events, reorder the table to put the column 3 entries in numerical order, and use the reordered table as the basis for the printed output.  I haven't tried it, but I would think the concept should be usable.  I assume other systems would have a counterpart to this approach.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2259&start=20#p22069
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Creating RIA Interpreter for TADS 3
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-08-31 10:56:38

The [url=http://www.assembla.com/code/frobtads/git/nodes/master]frobtads repository[/url] on assembla.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3111&start=0#p22070
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Serial comma ish
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-08-31 11:13:59

You might be able to do some activity-hacking on this order:

[code]For printing the name of John while some-manner-of-listing:
     if John-is-listed-last, say "John, and the dog";
     otherwise say "John, the dog"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3113&start=0#p22071
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Participate in the Interactive Fiction Top 50!
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-31 12:30:41

[b]Interactive Fiction Top 50[/b]

Based on a discussion on the [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102]interactive fiction forum[/url], I am organising a interactive fiction top 50 (or a top 100, or a top 20, depending on the number of participants and the distribution of the votes). You send in a list of your favourite IF games, I add those lists together and publish a "best of" list.

The aim is not to decide what the best IF ever is by majority vote -- that would be foolish. Rather, the aims of the top 50 are:

[list][*]To create a good opportunity for people to think about the best games they have played, and discuss their ideas on this topic with others.[/*:m]
[*]To allow people to be inspired by what they see on other people's lists.[/*:m]
[*]To create a useful list of great games at which you can point newcomers to the IF scene.[/*:m]
[*]If it is successful and we do this every few years: to create a way to track how the taste of the community evolves.[/*:m][/list:u]

To make this work, we need your help. Please send us a list of between 1 and 20 interactive fiction games that you consider to be the best IF games ever made (or at least the best that you have played). The list can be posted at [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3113]the IF forum[/url] or mailed to <a href="mailto:myfirstname@lilith.cc">myfirstname@lilith.cc</a>, where you replace "myfirstname" with my first name. Which is Victor. You can also email me if you want me to post your list on the forum (in case you don't have/want an account). Here are the rules:

[list][*]You can list between 1 and 20 games.[/*:m]
[*]The order in which you list the games is not important. The total number of points a work receives is the total number of votes it gets.[/*:m]
[*]You can list each work only once.[/*:m]
[*]You can list multiple works by one author.[/*:m]
[*]You can list your own works.[/*:m]
[*]It's up to you to decide whether a work counts as interactive fiction. As a rough rule of thumb, anything that is or should be listed on the [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/]IFDB[/url] is suitable. (Response to question: commercial games, including the Infocom titles, are fine.)[/*:m]
[*]We are asking you to identify the best interactive fiction, not the most influential, most important, most innovative or most accessible interactive fiction. (But of course, if you believe that influence, importance, innovation or accessibility are important parts of being good, that is fine.)[/*:m]
[*]The deadline for entering your list is [b]30 September 2011[/b].[/*:m]
[*]The organiser is allowed to participate. (It's good to be making the rules.)[/*:m][/list:u]

You don't need to do anything except send in a list. However, the whole thing will be a lot more fun if you also post the rationale behind your choices in some public place.

I hope to see many of you participate!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=30#p22072
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: Aintelligence / DateTime: 2011-08-31 12:33:39

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]

The [i]results[/i] are the thing that is (if enough people participate) interesting to the public at large. If someone wants to create a site for them, that would be great, but let's wait till we see whether the results are worth making a site for. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Heck!  I'd be more than happy to host a site for the results.  I'll Work on it so I can put it up before 'elections'.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=30#p22073
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: Aintelligence / DateTime: 2011-08-31 13:20:51

So I guess the only thing is to set a tentative closing date, and to advertise?

Though I guess the form needs to go through some revisions

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3110&start=0#p22074
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Errors with using the 'colon and indentation' syntax
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-08-31 13:29:15

I would go with the "every turn" rule over the "after attacking" rule; if the boy is truly aggressive, he ought to attack you whether you just attacked him or not.

Even better, set a flag after the player attacks the boy for the first time so that the boy will subsequently attack every turn, even if the player stops attacking.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=30#p22075
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-31 13:56:46

[quote="Aintelligence"]So I guess the only thing is to set a tentative closing date, and to advertise?

Though I guess the form needs to go through some revisions[/quote]
I already made a topic, because nobody seemed to mind and I wanted to (a) have a full month and (b) stop before IF Comp starts. If you want any revisions, please discuss them here, and I'll be happy to make changes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2896&start=10#p22076
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Problems with CocoaGlk on Lion?
User: Bicarbonate of Soda / DateTime: 2011-08-31 14:03:49

[quote="Ramoth"]Is there/will there be a similar solution for Zoom?[/quote]

At the risk of sounding impatient — although I really understand that Zoom is a community service provided in someone’s off-time — any word on a Zoom fix? There aren’t a whole lot of full-featured Glulx players on OS X. (Although the Gargoyle snapshot provided above does seem to work.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3104&start=0#p22077
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Squaring results
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-08-31 14:52:08

Juhana is correct.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3104&start=0#p22078
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Squaring results
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-31 15:10:33

[quote="Juhana"]I don't think it's a bug. The Z-machine just doesn't have the capacity to handle large numbers and when you use a scale from 1cm to 1km you need numbers that go from 0 to 100,000 and that's too much for Z-machine.[/quote]
I don't see why you would need numbers that go from 0 to 100,000? Is there a reason Inform couldn't store a length as X kilometre + Y metre + Z centimetre? And isn't is strange that Inform (rather untransparantly) decides to use the smallest unit defined as the unit of length, even though we have defined something else as the unit of length?

I can see why this technical solution was chosen, so I can see where arguments that it is not strange would be coming from. But I don't think authors can be expected to understand what is going on when you define new measures. If Inform sees it cannot handle these measures, perhaps it should generate a warning at compile time? That would be a lot friendlier than the current behaviour, which amounts to: (a) Inform decides, on its own, how to map the measure on integers; (b) if this leads to overflows, it never tells you about it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2896&start=10#p22079
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Problems with CocoaGlk on Lion?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-08-31 15:13:37

[quote="Graham Nelson"]Thanks entirely to Andrew Hunter's labours, we now have Inform 7 running successfully on Mac OS 10.7, that is, Lion.  <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/download/">http://inform7.com/download/</a>  This is still billed as 6G60[/quote]

Should I try this re-release to ensure it still works on a PPC Tiger installation?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3083&start=20#p22080
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF story idea
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-08-31 15:50:13

[quote="Robert Rothman"][quote]Don't listen to the naysayers, Dave[/quote]

Just to clarify, in my earlier post I had no intention of suggesting that Duodave's idea is a bad one or that he shouldn't do it.  I was simply observing that, and explaining why, I, personally, would not feel comfortable writing such a thing.[/quote]
Understood. Sorry to have implied otherwise.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=30#p22081
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-08-31 16:00:11

I've done a bb post at ifMUD, just to cover a few more of the bases.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=30#p22083
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-31 16:09:08

Great. I'll take care of Planet IF and the newsgroup.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3104&start=10#p22084
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Squaring results
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-31 16:21:22

I like the idea of a warning. I7 doesn't have compile-time warnings, though. Run-time warnings on arithmetic operations would be nice, but inefficient. Maybe in debug mode only?

You can reasonably call a compile-time *error* in this case, where the largest unit of length is more than 32767 times the smallest unit. Not all cases are as simple, however. If you had lengths scaled from meters to kilometers (factor of 1000), and also areas, then Z-code couldn't handle a square kilometer -- but you don't want to call that a compile-time error, because a game might very well just need kilometers (of length) and square meters (of area).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3104&start=10#p22085
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Squaring results
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-08-31 16:22:59

I agree with Victor that the approach of basing all unit calculations on the smallest unit is sufficiently counter-intuitive that there should be some kind of warning.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3113&start=0#p22086
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Participate in the Interactive Fiction Top 50!
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-31 16:32:19

From this point onwards, people will be posting lists. If you want to think about your choices without being influenced, do not read on. If you don't, do read on.


..



..




..



..




..



..




End of "spoiler" space.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3113&start=0#p22087
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Participate in the Interactive Fiction Top 50!
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-08-31 17:22:47

One thing that I quickly realised as I read through the IF Competition results and XYZZY Award Nominee lists, is how [i]embarrassingly[/i] many of the most famous and beloved works of IF I have never played. [i]I-0[/i]? Nope. [i]So Far[/i]? Not really. [i]Varicella[/i]? I never got very far. [i]For a Change[/i]? Idem ditto. [i]Worlds Apart[/i], [i]Shrapnel[/i], [i]Being Andrew Plotkin[/i], [i]Little Blue Men[/i], [i]Fallacy of Dawn[/i] and its sequels, [i]Kaged[/i]? Never even touched them. I haven't played [i]Child's Play[/i] and I still haven't played [i]The Shadow in the Cathedral[/i], of which I am especially ashamed. And even games I have played, I often only half-remember. [i]Blue Chairs[/i]... hm... vague recollections... wasn't there a guy called Dante? How well do I remember whether [i]Anchorhead[/i] was really good?

So obviously, the list I'm going to present now is grossly inadequate! But who cares, that will be the case for most of us, I suspect. So here goes, in order of year of publication. I decided to limit myself to 10 games, because that was an amount that forced me to make some hard decisions (which is good).

[list][*] [b]Anchorhead[/b], Michael Gentry (1998). The puzzles, especially in the later part of the game, are too tough and unforgiving for me; I did not play [i]Anchorhead[/i] without a walkthrough, and when I revisit it in the future I'm sure I will need to consult it again. This makes the game less appealing to me. But the atmosphere and the storytelling are so [i]right[/i] that one perseveres. I choose my words carefully: I don't care about the [i]story[/i] (which is just some Lovecraft crap), but I care about the [i]storytelling[/i]: the vague hints that gradually turn into certainties; the slowly rising danger; the very effective use of the main NPC; the way in which a tight story unfolds across a large map without the player being railroaded or led by the nose; all of that is expertly done. At moments [i]Anchorhead[/i] may be tough going, but it is a classic of storytelling in IF -- and that is a good reason to keep it in the canon, at least for now.[/*:m]
[*] [b]Spider and Web[/b], Andrew Plotkin (1998). I have hesitated whether to choose [i]Shade[/i] or [i]Spider and Web[/i], from among Plotkin's games. [i]Shade[/i], with its slow revelation from the mundane to the horrific, is a beautiful piece of work. But in the end I chose [i]Spider and Web[/i], because it has the most brilliant puzzle in interactive fiction; and a huge part of its brilliance is the way in which the puzzle doesn't just exploit the details of Plotkin's fictional world, but the details of the medium itself. While the presentation and the difficulty of the game may feel pretty old school by now, everyone should play [i]Spider and Web[/i]. Not because it is historically important, but because the central idea is very, very good.[/*:m]
[*] [b]Photopia[/b], Adam Cadre (1998). I have written extensively on [i]Photopia[/i] [url=http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/backissues/spag53.html#Photopia]elsewhere[/url]. If the game's claim to fame had been "wow, it makes deep points about free will", or if it had been "it is so emotional, with that protagonist we really care for", then it would not be on this list. But [i]Photopia[/i]'s real claim to a place in the canon lies in its symbolic exploration of the theme of influence. I do not believe this exploration is particularly deep compared to what happens in good static literature; but it is deeper than almost anything that has been done in our medium. For now, then, [i]Photopia[/i] belongs on this list.[/*:m]
[*] [b]Savoir-Faire[/b], Emily Short (2002). I do not like difficult puzzle games (of the IF variety). Yet, somehow, [i]Savoir-Faire[/i] managed to draw me in several times. I still haven't progressed very far, but I have progressed far enough to feel a real sense of accomplishment. What is it that makes [i]Savoir-Faire[/i] such a good puzzle game? It is not, I submit, the simulationist systems which Emily was very interested in around this time (an interest which I think she has mostly lost). Rather, it is a combination of good puzzles (difficult, but fair; not dependent on weird intuitive leaps; reusing established ideas) with a coherent setting (none of that [i]Curses[/i] nonsense here) and a sense that you can't really put the game into an unwinnable state (I'm sure you can, but it's not a constant threat). This is perhaps the only hard puzzle games that I intend to return to until I have solved it, and of which I will never check out the hints or the walkthrough.[/*:m]
[*] [b]City of Secrets[/b], Emily Short (2003). I have complained, in my analysis of [i][url=http://sparkynet.com/spag/backissues/spag52.html#metamorphoses]Metamorphoses[/url][/i], that in many of Emily Short's works, "we are doomed to remain strangers, always at a distance, always looking through the veil that separates us from these perfect, self-enclosed wholes". There is something of this in [i]City of Secrets[/i], but much less than in many of Emily's other games. In fact, the bodily weaknesses of the protagonist comes into play very quickly, and the neo-Platonic tendencies of [i]Metamorphoses[/i] are disturbed by some good physical illness. Anyway, I digress. What makes [i]City of Secrets[/i] a great work is the depths of its world building and the openness of the interaction. You are given a detailed and interesting environment, and can try to do many things in it. This does lead to some confusion now and then, and I would in fact be surprised if Emily herself could play through the game now, after eight years, without getting stuck. But there is so much ambition here, and so much of it succeeds, that we would do well to make the effort and enjoy this game.[/*:m]
[*] [b]Blue Lacuna[/b], Aaron Reed (2008). For me, the easiest choice to make: [i]Blue Lacuna[/i] is the best piece of interactive fiction written to date. It has vast world, a vast story, an extremely complicated NPC, a narrative that really changes depending on what you do, great accessibility features, a "story mode" for people like me, exploration of theme, and prose that is mostly quite good. Are there no weaknesses? Of course there are weaknesses, how could there not be -- and to my mind, the greatest weakness is the choice to create a story out of weird SF, weird fantasy, and the atmosphere (and puzzles) of [i]Myst[/i]. These ingredients don't mix all that well, and the time and effort spent on their respective development stands in the way of a true exploration of the work's main theme, which is the tension between love and individuality. But it is a great game nonetheless; an amazing leap beyond Aaron's already very fine earlier games ([i]Whom the telling changed[/i], [i]Gourmet[/i]).[/*:m]
[*] [b]Make it Good[/b], Jon Ingold (2009). If [i]Savoir-Faire[/i] is the best string-of-puzzles game, [i]Make it Good[/i] is the best one-huge-puzzle game. It is difficult, but you should persevere, for the rewards are immense. They are the rewards of detective literature, not the rewards of high literature: the game doesn't teach us anything about the human condition. But it surprises, it delights, and it makes us feel very, very smart after we have solved the case. Where [i]Blue Lacuna[/i] tries to combine theme, exploration and puzzles, and probably doesn't quite succeed in any of these aspects because of that, [i]Make it Good[/i] knows that it wants to be a puzzle. And as a puzzle, I know of no piece of IF that is a greater success than Jon Ingold's game.[/*:m]
[*] [b]The King of Shreds and Patches[/b], Jimmy Maher (2009). If you want story, if you want flow, if you want to move through a game and be entertained, then [i][url=http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/backissues/spag56.html#king]The King of Shreds and Patches[/url][/i] is the game you should play. Its story falls firmly within genre conventions (Lovecraft again), and its puzzles are quite conventional. The setting, Shakespearean England, is the game's most distinctive feature. But what really matters is that all aspects of the game have been polished to a degree that has no precedent. [i]The King of Shreds and Patches[/i] is our page turner, and one of the most fun games I know.[/*:m]
[*] [b]Alabaster[/b], Emily Short and others (2009). A third game by Emily Short? What am I, some kind of fanboy? As a feeble defence, I will say that [i]Alabaster[/i] made the list only at the last moment, when I decided to substitute it for [i]Slouching towards Bedlam[/i]. But let us cast all defences to the wind: [i]Alabaster[/i] is a very good game. Not only does it manage to create an interesting, believable and complex conversation, but it also manages to turn this conversation into a very weird combination of free-choice-gameplay and puzzle. There are no goals you have to achieve in order to win, and you can decide to try and achieve any of a lot of endings. But there is more: there is a lot of understanding of what is really going on that only repeated and puzzle-minded play will uncover; and it is only with the help of that understanding that one can make informed decisions about which endings are desirable. What are we to make of such a goal-less puzzle game? I do not know; but I do know that [i]Alabaster[/i] is fascinating and a lot of fun to boot. (And in this later work, the neo-Platonic ascetic that I was so suspicious of in Short's earlier games has vanished completely.)[/*:m]
[*] [b]Mentula Macanus: Apocolocyntosis[/b], Adam Thornton (2011). The most controversial choice on my list, no doubt, since [i]Mentula Macanus[/i] was both loved and loathed when it came out. There are those who see it as a work of cynical shallowness. There are those who believe the final scenes are disgusting depictions of rape. And then there are those who experienced Thornton's game as a celebration of playfulness, and as an incredibly irreverent love letter to literature both static and interactive. It is not even satire, for there is nothing in its universe that it does not good-naturedly accept. Stiffy Makane enjoys everything and everyone, and we can enjoy the world with him. (This, by the way, is why it would not be in the spirit of the work to interpret those final scenes as rape.) And man, did I love that golden bough joke.[/*:m][/list:u]

This, then, is my top 10. Worthy games are probably missing. But no non-worthy game is in it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3104&start=10#p22088
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Squaring results
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-31 17:40:24

[quote="zarf"]I7 doesn't have compile-time warnings, though.[/quote]

This is off-topic, I suppose, but why not? It seems like there are some common things that are probably but not necessarily errors (e.g., "the [kind]," when the programmer usually means "the noun" or "the item described") that it might be a good idea to issue a warning for them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3111&start=0#p22089
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Serial comma ish
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-31 20:52:03

Thanks for the idea. Yeah I was looking at hacking their group name, but changing the order is probably a better idea.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3091&start=0#p22091
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Podcasts
User: Kate McKee / DateTime: 2011-08-31 21:33:11

I think a Jacq and Sam IF podcast would be awesome.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3104&start=10#p22092
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Squaring results
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-31 21:51:02

That's a poor example -- "the KIND" really should be an error. (There's a feature request in on it.)

I found the no-warnings thing strange on the face of it. But then I realized I didn't miss them. In practice, there are two ways of dealing with warnings -- you eradicate all of them, or you ignore all of them. (If you want to pay attention to only some of them, tough luck. In the long run, ignoring some errors means you're training yourself to ignore all of them. This is true of experienced programmers as well as newcomers.)

So it's not so weird. Any "This looks wrong, but maybe you meant to do it" warning is better served by a "do it the right way" error. A "That might break under some circumstances" warning (such as this units case) will only annoy the people who are handling the circumstances correctly.

I find warnings useful only in the short term -- I might ignore certain things for a few compiles while I attend to other things. This is a weak argument for them, especially in a system meant to be used by people who didn't grow up with C and lint.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3104&start=10#p22093
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Squaring results
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-08-31 21:52:01

Oh, I forgot the case of deprecation warnings. (Which I7 does do.) Special case, obviously, where the language is changing out from under the source code, and an error is lurking in the future.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3116&start=0#p22094
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: Forcing inventory order
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-08-31 22:08:39

Is there a way to make certain objects always appear before others in the player's inventory, regardless of the order in which they're moved to the player? I ask because when the player checks their inventory after obtaining a toolbelt with which to hold assorted things, they get this:

[quote]You're carrying two cleaning tools (a green-handled broom and a mop). In addition, you're wearing your tool belt, inside which are a fresh D-size battery and two cleaning tools (a bottle of industrial sanitizer and a bottle of glass cleaner) and your janitor's uniform.[/quote]

Just a nitpick, but the syntax makes it look (to some) like the janitor's uniform is inside the tool belt, while of course it's not. I experimented around with the various "_BIT"s for listing nouns, but none of them give the effect I'm looking for. I want the player's uniform to come first before all other worn objects, so it looks more like:

[quote]You're carrying two cleaning tools (a green-handled broom and a mop). In addition, you're wearing your janitor's uniform and your tool belt, inside which are a fresh D-size battery and two cleaning tools (a bottle of industrial sanitizer and a bottle of glass cleaner).[/quote]

How can this be achieved?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3104&start=10#p22095
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Squaring results
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-08-31 22:17:23

[quote="zarf"]That's a poor example -- "the KIND" really should be an error. (There's a feature request in on it.)[/quote]

I was aware of the feature request, and my first thought when I saw it was "Why not issue a warning?" Figuring that it behaves as documented, and if anyone is using it as documented then disallowing it would break their code gratuitously. But maybe no one actually uses as documented. On warnings in general, you're a lot more expert than I am.

Maybe it should be deprecated? That'd give people notice to change their source code if they're using it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3097&start=0#p22096
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Random off-topic observations
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-08-31 22:21:39

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote]This is the last diet you will ever need![/quote][/quote]
"lady fingers they taste just like lady fingers"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3111&start=0#p22097
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Serial comma ish
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-08-31 22:29:50

Right, so my fix was this - I stopped turning John's description into 'john and the dog' and used the dog itself (previously I stopped animals being mentioned in the list). When I create the list of people to be mentioned, if john and the dog are in it, I pull them out and put them last, though keeping them together. This way they always get a comma before them, but never between them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3104&start=10#p22098
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Squaring results
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-08-31 22:49:44

[quote="zarf"]I found the no-warnings thing strange on the face of it. But then I realized I didn't miss them. In practice, there are two ways of dealing with warnings -- you eradicate all of them, or you ignore all of them. (If you want to pay attention to only some of them, tough luck. In the long run, ignoring some errors means you're training yourself to ignore all of them. This is true of experienced programmers as well as newcomers.)

So it's not so weird. Any "This looks wrong, but maybe you meant to do it" warning is better served by a "do it the right way" error. A "That might break under some circumstances" warning (such as this units case) will only annoy the people who are handling the circumstances correctly.

I find warnings useful only in the short term -- I might ignore certain things for a few compiles while I attend to other things. This is a weak argument for them, especially in a system meant to be used by people who didn't grow up with C and lint.[/quote]

I agree totally, especially how non-strange it became.  Still, I wouldn't mind a [i]Use grammar nazi[/i] option or something similar to the deprecation one.  I'd rather NOT have extra errors/warnings when I'm coding a first draft, for example. (The standard set's annoying enough, ha-ha.)
 
I'd also like to define new Problem messages when someone accidentally misuses an extension I wrote. I think this is already on the suggestions forum.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3116&start=0#p22099
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Forcing inventory order
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-08-31 23:07:02

I'm not sure, but did you try moving objects around? I think I've read this affects the order in which they are displayed. So, I would try to either move the uniform to void and back to player, or do so with everything but the uniform, and see if it has any effects.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3104&start=10#p22100
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Squaring results
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-01 00:05:40

[quote]Figuring that it behaves as documented, and if anyone is using it as documented then disallowing it would break their code gratuitously. But maybe no one actually uses as documented.[/quote]

Where in the documentation are you looking?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=30#p22101
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-09-01 00:31:10

Just wanted to mention that I find the format in which Victor posted his favourites exactly represents what I was hoping for. And I hope many people will follow by posting their favs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3117&start=0#p22102
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Geometry
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-09-01 01:40:09

I'll probably have a number of questions, but my first is how to do calculations with units and Fixed-Point Maths.  For instance, to find the slope of a line between two points:

[code]To decide what real number is the slope of the line between/from (A - a thing) and/to (B - a thing):
	decide on (y-coord of A - y-coord of B) / (x-coord of A - x-coord of B).[/code]

Where x-coord and y-coord are lengths (I'm using Metric Units, naturally).  But this returns a number instead of a real number, so you get an error.  You can't use the Fixed-Point Maths calculations (real subtract, real divided by) because those can't apparently handle units.  And you can't just get the answer as an integer and convert it to a real number, because it's very likely a small fraction.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=30#p22103
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-01 04:22:27

Grueslayer: I'm glad to hear that.

For anyone who has been bookmarking this post: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3113">viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3113</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3104&start=10#p22104
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Squaring results
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-01 06:08:25

Gug, maybe it isn't. I always thought that it said somewhere in the documentation that "a" and "the" were ignored (except in text substitutions, initial definitions of objects, "two of the devices," and a couple other situations). But perhaps that's just Inform folklore. Searching the documentation for "'the'" doesn't turn it up (and I'm not about to search it for "the"). 

All right then, it's an error (and should definitely be documented).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3059&start=0#p22105
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 5.0.20
User: RedTulip / DateTime: 2011-09-01 08:19:29

That's great! I'm gonna try it out. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3007&start=0#p22106
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Quest 5: How do you make an enterable surface/supporter
User: RedTulip / DateTime: 2011-09-01 08:19:55

You could make it a object/room, maybe?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3107&start=0#p22107
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: A brand new system - Quest 5.0 - out now!
User: RedTulip / DateTime: 2011-09-01 08:20:31

Awesome! Gonna try it out. [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3117&start=0#p22108
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Geometry
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-09-01 08:27:18

Looking at the documentation, I can't tell right off if there's a way to convert numbers to real numbers.  If there is, can you:
- divide each length by the same base length (1 inch, 1 foot, 1 meter, whatever) to derive a number
- convert each number to a real number
- carry out the division from there

If not, you can create numbers from text, so I'd try:
- divide each length by base length to get a number
- put each number into text (this is the part I haven't done before, so I'm not entirely sure of the logistics)
- convert the text to real numbers
- carry out the division from there

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3059&start=0#p22109
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 5.0.20
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-09-01 08:38:56

This probably isn't the place but I couldn't easily find a place to report bugs... Adrift 5 chokes on "A Date with Death". It says the font Arial Narrow doesn't support style "regular", and as a result the only text that ever gets displayed is the title.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3111&start=0#p22110
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Serial comma ish
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-01 08:40:18

Isn't there a "group together in listing" option? Or does that only work for things of the same kind?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3117&start=0#p22111
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Geometry
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-09-01 08:46:27

[quote="gravel"]Looking at the documentation, I can't tell right off if there's a way to convert numbers to real numbers.  If there is, can you:
- divide each length by the same base length (1 inch, 1 foot, 1 meter, whatever) to derive a number
- convert each number to a real number
- carry out the division from there[/quote]

This method will work. Numbers can be converted to real numbers by using "X as a real number", e.g.:

[code]decide on ((A_y as a real number) real minus (B_y as a real number) ) real divided by ((A_x as a real number) real minus (B_x as a real number))[/code]

(Actually, the correct locution might be "X as a fixed point number"--I don't recall.)

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3007&start=0#p22112
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Quest 5: How do you make an enterable surface/supporter
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-09-01 09:08:16

This was answered over in the Quest forum: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.axeuk.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2601">http://www.axeuk.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2601</a>

Basically, objects and rooms are the same thing, so you can simply move the player on to an object. If that object is a surface, it will implicitly be "transparent", meaning the player can "see out" from the object - everything in the containing room will be in the visible scope, but not the reachable scope.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3111&start=10#p22113
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Serial comma ish
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-09-01 09:28:43

I don't see one in skim-reading, or by searching for 'group together' in docs.l

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3111&start=10#p22114
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Serial comma ish
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-01 09:55:53

Chapter 17.13, 17.14

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3111&start=10#p22116
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Serial comma ish
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-09-01 10:21:26

I'm not sure of the compatibility of that approach?

I generate a list by going through the people and creatures in the target room one at a time and assessing whether I want them to appear in this special view. Then I perform a bunch of actions on each item in the list, including making a special view description.

Ultimately, if I want these guys to stick together at such a moment, and be listed last, I'm going to have to manually add them to the end of the list. And when I do that, I get to group them anyway by saying 'add { John, dog } at entry P in F'. (where P is a number and F is the list)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3111&start=10#p22117
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Serial comma ish
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-01 11:29:19

I think you're right. As far as I can tell the grouping together activity only runs from within the standard listing contents activity; that would mean that if you're defining a custom list none of these activities will be relevant to you (at least not by default).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3113&start=0#p22118
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Participate in the Interactive Fiction Top 50!
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-09-01 13:10:35

My top... 8.

I have other fave IF games - oodles of them in fact - but the names of most of them seem to escape me at the moment. But anyway:

1. The Hobbit – Melbourne House (Spectrum)
My all time favourite IF game from back in the days when they were called text adventures on account of being adventures with text in them. Wonderfully inventive game that was a pain to solve due to a maze (how could a maze feature in my favourite ever game, you might ask? Well, I don't understand it either), randomised combat (ditto) and some remarkably tough puzzles. Bags of fun to play even after you knew how to finish it. And how many of today’s parsers could handle the things that The Hobbit could?

2. Sherlock – Melbourne House (Spectrum)
Another fave from the glory days of IF/text adventures. (No, I'm not just wallowing in nostalgia here. I do like some modern games, too.) Fiendishly difficult, set in real time (kind of, a five minutes per turn sort of thing) and a great game to spend several months trying to figure out just whodunit. Most times when I loaded this (yes, you had to load games back then, no double-clicking icons back in the 80’s), I didn't even try and solve it, just wandered around trailing suspects and poking my nose in where it shouldn't have been poked. And getting shot by Basil. A lot.

3. The Big Sleaze – Fergus McNeill (Spectrum)
Another from the 80’s. Yes, yes, I know. But this is damn good. Damn funny, too. I never did manage to finish it at the time, but years later I Googled the solution on the internet (shame on me), went back and solved it. Still worth playing after all these years, and far less of a hassle than it was in the day due to not needing to load the various parts of the game.

4. The PK Girl – Hanadorobou
For me, the best ADRIFT game ever written. Back when everyone looked down their nose at ADRIFT and wrote it off as the system you used if you weren’t clever enough to use TADS or Inform (no, I mean 2002. Not last week), this shook things up. A lot. What? An ADRIFT game that was well written? Not bugged to high heaven? Not written by someone in a spare five minutes during their dinner break? And the author even knew how to spell? This, for ADRIFT, was the turning point. Of course, it has its detractors (even amongst the ADRIFT community), but it came a well deserved 6th place in the IFComp that year which is certainly something considering most people back then wouldn't touch ADRIFT with the world’s longest bargepole.

5. Unravelling God – Toddwat
And the second best ADRIFT game ever written. Ironically it came out at the same time as the best ever game and was entered in the same IFComp. What are the odds, eh? I played this one first actually, and sat there thinking "about time someone entered a really good ADRIFT game in the IFComp" instead of the previous ADRIFT entries which, while they may not have been total stinkers, certainly weren't setting the IF world alight. Shame the author never wrote anything else (hint, hint).

6. City of Secrets – Emily Short
I'd heard good things about this game and was relieved to find that it lived up to the hype. Very professional looking interface (seriously, why aren't more IF games written this way? A neat interface won't turn a bad game into a good one, but it certainly helps a good game appear even better). I spent quite a while just wandering around and acting the part of the tourist before tackling the slight problem of actually finishing it. A modern classic.

7. Luminous Horizon – Paul O'Brian 
I'm a sucker for super hero games and this is without a doubt the best one I've ever played. Miles better than Future Boy. This is an amazing game in which you can switch characters at will, and  which character you're playing really affects how the game pans out, as well as having descriptions appear different depending on who you happen to be at the time. Won the IFComp as well so clearly I'm not the only one who loved it to bits.

8. Varicella – Adam Cadre
I never liked Photopia at all. I played it after hearing what an honest to God masterpiece it was, finished it a while later and thought: is that it? The best IF game ever written? Hmmm... But then I played this little gem by Adam Cadre and realised that when people were singing the praises of Photopia, they'd clearly got it mixed up with Varicella. Obvious when you think about it. The one weak point was the game’s best ending, which seemed more like a bad ending from what I could tell, but up to that point it was sublime.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=220#p22119
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: LuteinHawthorne / DateTime: 2011-09-01 15:55:44

Hello everyone,

I'm relatively young, and have been writing simple parsers and adventure games since I started out with an Adventure Games in BASIC book in my early teens.  This year I've decided to move out of silently lurking in the darkness and enter IFComp 2011.

Though I haven't finished many games, I enjoyed Zork and ADVENT quite a lot during my youth, and went on to have a lot of fun playing more recent games which have been released in the last thirty years.

It's very nice to meet everyone here, and I am glad to finally be brave enough (and be wearing enough light-absorbing objects) to join such a creative community.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3116&start=0#p22120
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Forcing inventory order
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-09-01 16:16:36

I tried that first, but it just results in the same outcome since the routines all happen at the same time and not in any particular order.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3118&start=0#p22121
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: A mysterious phone call
User: ultimate / DateTime: 2011-09-01 16:33:55

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-urGC9ygwA">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-urGC9ygwA</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=0#p22122
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-09-01 17:29:06

[quote="capmikee"]The way I rationalize this is that the PC has lots of pockets, or maybe an unmentioned carryall. Even a holdall can sometimes prove to be an obstacle. For example, dropping something contained by the holdall produces the message "You haven't got that." So yeah, go ahead and let the PC carry unlimited stuff. I promise you, no one will complain![/quote]

I'd complain, just for the sake of pointing out that it is unrealistic. If I'm carrying around 20 different things, it just makes me not take the game very seriously. Will most people care? No. However, you won't be able to escape the fact that this will scream "This is a game! This is a game!" every time somebody picks something up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3116&start=0#p22123
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Forcing inventory order
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-09-01 17:37:02

You can specify the order of items in an inventory listing by giving every object a list_together.

[from the DM4, pg 213]

Constant KEY_GROUP = 1;
...
Object -> -> brass_key "small brass key"
with ...
list_together KEY_GROUP;

If there's only one object in a group, that's fine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=0#p22124
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-09-01 17:37:11

If you can build in just a very little bit of humour - a reference to Simon the Sorcerer will do the trick ("You sack the ladder and stuff it into your pockets - StS style.").

[emote];-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3105&start=0#p22125
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hidden room (names)
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-09-01 17:41:20

[quote="Aintelligence"]In a mini game I have been working on in my spare time,  the action takes place in one very long corridor, going from north to south.  However, my problem here is that I ran out of room names in my first room, and have since been calling the rooms long corridor 2, long corridor 3, long corridor 4, long corridor 5...

Not only is that monotonous, but it gives the game a cheap feeling, like I've just slapped something together.
Surely there must be some way to have rooms with the same name, even if it means 'tricking' inform by calling the room something else, but displaying it as long corridor.[/quote]

It all depends on how important those similarly-named rooms are. If they have stuff in them, then it's better to distinguish them somehow. If they serve no purpose but to take up space, you're better off capturing player movement down the long hall with something like, "You proceed to the end of the hall, catch your breath and look around." What I'm getting at is that the players aren't going to like going n, n, n, repeatedly through nondescript rooms, so spare them from that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=10#p22126
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-09-01 21:16:54

[quote="Poster"]I'd complain, just for the sake of pointing out that it is unrealistic. If I'm carrying around 20 different things, it just makes me not take the game very seriously. Will most people care? No. However, you won't be able to escape the fact that this will scream "This is a game! This is a game!" every time somebody picks something up.[/quote]
If you're making the game less fun just for the sake of making it more realistic, I don't think that's ever a good trade-off. I know some authors want their games to be regarded as serious business, but is an inventory limit really where you want to direct your focus? Is anyone going to go "oh, good, I'm glad I couldn't pick up this thing that I need; that would have been unrealistic"? If the limit shows up during gameplay at all, it will only be when it's stopping them from doing what they're trying to do in the game and creating a pointless obstacle to enjoyment. It can only make the experience worse.

If (as an author) for some reason you really do care that it's not realistic for the player to be carrying around a ridiculous number of objects, a better solution might be just to avoid letting them pick up things they won't need in the first place.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3113&start=0#p22127
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Participate in the Interactive Fiction Top 50!
User: Bicarbonate of Soda / DateTime: 2011-09-01 22:11:56

A difficult set of choices, I suppose, and I can’t claim my list of bests to be anything but idiosyncratic. Without any deep rationale here’s five.

Blue Chairs (Chris Klimas, 2004): A game about dreaming. And one rather deeply sad, at least by my interpretation. It goes a little off-puttingly goofy around the two-thirds point, as I recall, but the surreality of the events described supports the theme rather expertly (for the most part). One of my favorites.

The Primrose Path (Nolan Bonvouloir, 2006): Novel premise, clever writing, and some really neat mechanics makes this game stick out for me.

Chancellor (Kevin Venzke, 2005): I seem to recall some grumbling at the fake-out prologue, but the later scenes of wandering through an empty college dormitory seemed genuinely, evocatively creepy to me. It may’ve helped that I worked in very old dorm when this was released (managing a computer lab — ah, those were the days), and I could certainly imagine that place being frightening in the right circumstances.

Shade (Andrew Plotkin, 2000): Another contender for overall favorite work. (It occurs to me that I must have some predisposition toward the dreamlike. Take from that what you may.) An ingenious set of events — each on its own merely surreal — conspire to make the ultimate reveal that much more powerful. Plotkin’s a genuinely pretty good writer and the puzzles here are mercifully approachable. In my mind Shade is his best work.

Vespers (Jason Devlin, 2005): There’s a snobbish part of me that looks down on this game; the writing and especially dialogue just don’t fit the setting very well. But you know what? It’s a great piece of work nonetheless, tense, creepy, and haunting. I enjoyed this very much.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=10#p22128
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-09-01 22:58:12

All kinds of stuff are going to scream "This is a game!".  Because most IF are games.  Just the fact that the protagonist is succeeding at a difficult task, like saving the world or driving a giant robot or traveling in time is pretty much a giant fictional signpost.  My life consists of a near-endless cycle of working, sleeping, eating, and internet time, punctuated by book reading or program writing.  There's a reason that extreme realism doesn't particularly appeal to me.  (I like my life fine, but feel no particular urge to replicate it in my free time.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3116&start=0#p22129
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Forcing inventory order
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-09-01 23:02:57

That didn't do it, either. I want the player's uniform to always come before the other clothing items, and giving it its own group didn't do that. Is there a way to have Inform do reverse inventory order, where the most order of items goes from least- to most-recently-picked-up, instead of vice versa like usual? My game has the InvSub replaced with the Lurking Horror-style two-sentence inventory, if this helps.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3119&start=0#p22130
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Hypertext adventure?
User: henrygale / DateTime: 2011-09-02 02:16:33

I really suck at programming and don't really have the time to learn a language either, so I mostly gave up on trying to write an IF. However, I was playing Starborn the other day and was delighted by the simple system that kept you in line with the story, but dumped all the parser stuff in favor of capitalized keywords that act as your commands. I realize gameplay-wise it's maybe not as fun, but for starters I'd like to experiment with that kind of a game. At most, I'd like to keep a couple of basic verbs like examine and take, but I'm more inclined towards the keyword based gameplay. 
How is this done? Starborn is written in Inform7; is there a more suited language for this type of game? And is it more trouble than it's worth from the programming point of view?

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3119&start=0#p22131
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Hypertext adventure?
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-09-02 03:34:15

My system, Quest 5.0, supports hyperlinks - each object has an associated list of "display verbs", so you click the object and then see a list of things you can do with it. See <a class="postlink" href="http://www.textadventures.co.uk/blog/2011/07/11/eliminating-guess-the-verb/">http://www.textadventures.co.uk/blog/20 ... -the-verb/</a>

You can download Quest from <a class="postlink" href="http://www.textadventures.co.uk/quest/">http://www.textadventures.co.uk/quest/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3120&start=0#p22132
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Comprehensive lists
User: A0d_nl / DateTime: 2011-09-02 04:33:28

being not new to IF but very fresh on Inform as such I do have a few issues.
I started out on Inform 6 a few weeks ago and being a programmer it is very doable for me. however, lacking the awesome Windows front-end (using text-editors and compiling seperately etc) it is extremely time-consuming.
Starting with Inform 7 is easy. But after that it gets very hard. For one; the documentation just doesn't do it for me. It is a very good read, I admit, but I miss a comprehensive overview of the in-built stuff in Inform.
Having taken the approach to use natural language is great. This will lure people without a programming background (ie.creative writers) into making IF.
Nonetheless understanding natural language Inform 7 is quite picky about syntax.
What I am looking for and am not able to find are lists with the built-in rulebooks, phrases, object conditions, adjectives and verbs etc. etc. with some sort of description on how they should be syntaxed and in what order they should be used.
The documentation itself says about the rulebooks: "When we open the casing and look inside the machinery of Inform, what we see are rules and rulebooks. We seldom need to know how this machinery works,"
Well I beg to differ because I compare rulebooks to libs in programming and every lib (so probably rulebooks) have syntax, starting conditions, resources needed etc.
I am sure it's hidden in the built-in documentation somewhere but I couldn't find it. (admitting I haven't ploughed through the complete docs yet)
And I'm also very aware that Inform 7 encourages and has much features to make your own rules and things but I am sure that the tons of stuff already in there makes me very capable of getting it to do what I want.
I don't want to clog up the forum but here is a little example from my Inform 6 code:

[code]Class	Appliance
	with before [;
		Take,Pull,Push,PushDir:                [this is a problem for me. multiple conditions within a rule]
			"It doesn't budge.";
		],
	has scenery;

Room bedroom "bedroom"
	with name 'window',
		description
			"Your scarcely furnished bedroom is lit by the bleuish streetlights seeping through the half-shut window blinds. ^Left is some more light coming through the staircase down to the hall. ^The bathroom on your right is dark so you prefer to look that way.",
		before [;
			Go:                     [same here multiple conditions within a rule]
			if (player in bed) <<Exit bed>>;
			if (player notin bed && noun == w_obj || noun == left_obj) <<enter bed>>;
		],
		e_to bathroom;


appliance bed "bed" bedroom
	with name 'bed' 'covers' 'sheets',            [simple but extremely efficient help to playability]
		description
			"This is one of your true friends. Your own warm and comfortable bed.",
		after [;        [here the text overrides the standard report text automatically in Inform 6. is quite some work in Inform 7, understand]
		  exit:                                  
			"The bed creaks a little as you step out of it on the right, 'your' side.";
		  enter:
			"You slide under the covers and wrap your legs in them. Carefully not to wake up Terry.";
		],
	has enterable container open transparent;[/code]
(note: I put some remarks in the code at the places where it hurts in Inform 7)
For a programmer like me this is no rocketscience but in Inform 7 I only managed to get only half of this done.
Now if I had some lists describing what Inform 7 really needs then I could puzzle it together.
(on the other hand; in  that piece of code is most of what is unclear for now. so if someone could give me a few tips that also would be helpful   [emote]:)[/emote]  )
If you read my post so far I am already grateful.
Meanwhile I am typing away on a storyline. [emote]:)[/emote]
Anton

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3120&start=0#p22133
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Comprehensive lists
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-02 05:04:02

There are link to useful resources on the Inform site at [url]http://inform7.com/learn/[/url]: a very handy Inform 7 Cheat Sheet, a flow chart for all the built-in rulebooks of Inform 7, and a syntax document (for the language up to build 5Z71).

For the fine details you'll have to search the Standard Rules and the I6 Templates, which you will find here: [url]http://inform7.com/sources/webs/[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3120&start=0#p22134
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Comprehensive lists
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-09-02 05:35:23

Everytime someone says "I'm a programmer and therefore find Inform 7's documentation to be unsuitable" I link them to Ron Newcomb's tutorial.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Inform_7_for_Programmers">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Inform_ ... rogrammers</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3120&start=0#p22135
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Comprehensive lists
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-09-02 05:58:47

Both The Cheat Sheet and Ron Newcomp's "Inform 7 for programmers" (in the same page Felix has linked or [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Inform_7_for_Programmers]here[/url] -ah, I see Peter has linked it too!- ) are probably made for you.

I've been in your shoes not long ago: having a programming background and being fluent with I6, then stepping into I7 for the first time and feeling like landing on a totally alien landscape, searching desperately for a reference guide where I could find how to do the things I was used to the way I was used to...

That way might work for you. In fact, I hope it will. But in my case it would have been the long painful way of getting into the new stuff. I was trying to enter a speed-comp, the [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Indigo_New_Language_Speed-IF]Indigo[/url] speed-comp which was about authors using a creation tool for the first time, and I learnt the hard way that trying to adapt the new language to my old habits wouldn't work at all: the sooner I would forget my old ways the quickest I could give the critical first step to have it finished in time.

This, of course, is just my case. Other minds could work in a different way. I sent Jacqueline a short text talking precisely about it all for a hipotetical SPAG article in which Indigo participants would expose our experiences managing a new language (but I know she's been quite busy in real-life so that might never happen!)  [emote]:)[/emote] 

Good luck with your transition! It's not as hard as it seems the first time, you'll see!  [emote]:)[/emote] 

--

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=10#p22136
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-09-02 07:10:20

[quote]My life consists of a near-endless cycle of working, sleeping, eating, and internet time, punctuated by book reading or program writing. There's a reason that extreme realism doesn't particularly appeal to me.[/quote]

Agreed.  If I were to write a game (if I dare use the term) in which one gets to play a fat middle-aged tax lawyer, it would undoubtedly be very realistic.  It would also be very boring (whether or not I give the player a briefcase in which to carry about a gazillion pieces of meaningless paper).

(Just thinking aloud, as I begin yet another day of shuffling paper as a fat middle-aged tax lawyer).


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3120&start=0#p22137
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Comprehensive lists
User: A0d_nl / DateTime: 2011-09-02 07:44:11

I did read the 'inform for programmers' and I found the 'learn' tab on the site all quite useful to begin with inform. But when you need a bit more complexity I found myself trying to invent stuff and getting an error message. And then after a lot of searching through the docs I found out there was something already in Inform 7 that could do the job and I was meddling with  it.
The 'Inform for programmers' does a great job in, for example, describing the hierarchy of classes (kinds) but, ofcourse, can't do that for everything.
What I'm saying is that it is very hard to distill all that info from the body-text in the manuals I've seen. And concerning the cheat-sheet. It is great in describing seperate parts of Inform 7 but being very picky on order and punctuation sometimes it is hard to combine these things when you don't have an overview of these rules. Having to find that all out with trial and error doesn't really speed up the process.
Another example (not code this time): Inform 7 knows what dark and light is; it knows heavy and blue and red etc. is  but does it know what a clothed or nude adjective is? Or when it knows what a car is does it know what a fence is?
Is is there one of those manuals, that I might have missed, that describe all of these things or, for that matter, rulebooks in order instead of strewn about in the text.
Forgive me if I sound bitchy (has to do with being Dutch) but that would make my IF life so much easier.
And what I said earlier: If  someone comes up with an elegant solution to the problems noted in my code example I would be already helped a lot. (If I have to move it to a new topic in the development section, please tell me so)
Anton

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=10#p22138
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-09-02 07:56:26

[quote="Poster"][quote="capmikee"]The way I rationalize this is that the PC has lots of pockets, or maybe an unmentioned carryall. Even a holdall can sometimes prove to be an obstacle. For example, dropping something contained by the holdall produces the message "You haven't got that." So yeah, go ahead and let the PC carry unlimited stuff. I promise you, no one will complain![/quote]

I'd complain, just for the sake of pointing out that it is unrealistic. If I'm carrying around 20 different things, it just makes me not take the game very seriously. Will most people care? No. However, you won't be able to escape the fact that this will scream "This is a game! This is a game!" every time somebody picks something up.[/quote]

Entering commands via the keyboard screams "this is a game! This is a game!" in a much more intrusive way. Would you also complain about that, just for the sake of it being unrealistic?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3113&start=0#p22139
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Participate in the Interactive Fiction Top 50!
User: JimmyMaher / DateTime: 2011-09-02 08:10:42

Here's a very subjective list, which would no doubt look different tomorrow, accompanied by fragments rather than full-fledged justifications.

Enchanter -- The early Infocom aesthetic at its height. Just a beautifully crafted adventure game, pitched at just the right level of difficulty.

Trinity -- Still my all-time favorite work of IF, and one of the few with something to say about the times in which it was created. Today, when its historical moment has passed, it still stands as a perfect evocation of the days of the Evil Empire and The Day After. Beautiful writing, chilling imagery, yet still with intriguing puzzles. This one does well just about everything IF as a form does well.

Nord and Bert Couldn't Make Head or Tail of It -- Perhaps the most daring and unusual game Infocom ever released, this set of interconnected wordplay-based vignettes always makes me smile -- both for the fun it has with language and for the sheer chutzpah of the whole thing. (But if you don't have English as a mother tongue, stay far, far away)

Guild of Thieves -- I've always had a huge soft spot for this sprawling old-school treasure hunt. It does nothing particularly innovative, but it does everything so well, then lathers on some great dry humor and a bunch of pretty pictures.

Timequest -- Legend's finest hour, this game sends you skipping around the world and through the centuries, solving a web of cleverly interconnected puzzles. Beautifully illustrated to boot.

t-zero -- This game spoiled me for all future surrealistic games. Its world is hauntingly beautiful -- rivaled in that respect only by the alternate dimension in Trinity -- and slowly figuring out how everything works and why you're there is the most sublime of pleasures. Also the best home-brewed parser I've ever seen.

Cosmoserve -- A perfect evocation of the online world of the early 1990s, just before the World Wide Web changed everything. Should be required reading for cultural history classes of the near future.

Jigsaw -- Curses is the more historically important of Graham Nelson's two sprawling puzzlefests, but for playing I'll take Jigsaw every time. When you aren't wrestling with its puzzles, you'll be surfing Wikipedia to learn more about the historical vignettes through which you travel. The reason I read Proust, and that's enough of a recommendation right there.

Spider and Web -- Still Plotkin's finest hour, the best example of his genius for communicating story through gameplay, and for crafting puzzles that feel like artistic statements.

Aisle -- While I accept them as a necessary phase in IF's evolution, I'm not generally a big fan of the "gimmick" games that cluttered the late 1990s and early 2000s. This gimmick, however, really works. A heartbreaking portrait of loneliness.

Anchorhead -- Still perhaps the most fully realized setting ever for an IF game. If it's showing its age in a tendency to sometimes leave the player (and the plot) stuck in neutral, it's nevertheless still a compelling experience, the most genuinely creepy game I've ever played.

Heroine's Mantle -- I just loved working my way through these action sequences one step at a time. Some of the pleasures of the platformer here -- figuring out the right steps for success and executing them with perfect timing. And who wouldn't like to be a superhero?

Slouching Towards Bedlam -- Still perhaps the most fully realized attempt to give the player complete control of the story. Almost anything you might reasonably do is present and accounted for.

Sunset over Savannah -- Another wonderful example of setting in IF. But this time it is a beautiful place that we visit, and it is described with a wistful sadness that almost makes me choke up to think about it. 

Blue Lacuna -- It sometimes strains a bit too hard to demonstrate its literary bona fides for my taste, but this game is nevertheless an awe-inspiring creation. Simply the largest and most ambitious work of IF ever -- and its towering ambitions are largely realized.

Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom -- Demonstrates that everything you thought you knew about IF design was wrong, not least that randomized combat can actually be pretty damn fun.

Aotearoa -- I still can never remember how to spell it, but this game takes all the lessons of 30+ years of IF, adds a shean of beginner accessibility, and sends it off powered by the irresistible optimism of young-adult adventure novels. Plus, you get to name your pet monkey. How cool is that?

The Chinese Room -- A great demonstration of the still underused educational potential of IF, this game makes you really engage with the philosophical ideas it conveys.

The Elysium Enigma -- My favorite Eric Eve game, demonstrating everything he does so well: interesting setting, interesting plot, interesting puzzles. If nothing (except perhaps his still unparalleled use of the TADS 3 conversation system) stands out as amazing, the combined effect of the whole does.

Delightful Wallpaper -- A minimalist Plotkin masterpiece  that seems to guide you in the right direction by a sort of mental osmosis. At the end you're left blinking and confused, as if you've just awoken from a dream, wondering how you figured out what to do and feeling like a bad ass for having done so.

And an honorable mention:

The Mulldoon Legacy -- My apologies to Jon for not picking one his more "literary" works, but this monster just kept me tantalized, engaged, and entertained for so long that I couldn't bear to leave it off the list.

[Changed Timezone to Timequest. Timezone, like most of Roberta Williams's work, is of course a monument to everything you shouldn't do as a game designer.]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3120&start=0#p22140
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Comprehensive lists
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-02 08:21:57

[quote="A0d_nl"]Another example (not code this time): Inform 7 knows what dark and light is; it knows heavy and blue and red etc. is  but does it know what a clothed or nude adjective is? Or when it knows what a car is does it know what a fence is?Is is there one of those manuals, that I might have missed, that describe all of these things or, for that matter, rulebooks in order instead of strewn about in the text.[/quote]
Well, you can extract all of this information from the Standard Rules (and the Chart of Rules). But I'd say you need to read Standard Rules through, from beginning to end, once, before you would know where to look in it to find what you're looking for. (On the other hand that document is not a really a pain to read.) The Standard Rules are as much documentation as source code (I guess that's part of literate programming paradigm to which Inform 7 adheres).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3120&start=0#p22141
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Comprehensive lists
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-09-02 08:27:20

I can't help with the manuals - a lot of learning I7 for me has to do with immersion and absorbtion.  Sorry.

However, the forum is a good place for specific questions, even those that seem basic.  (They may or may not actually be basic!)  You can use the Inform 6 and 7 section for asking questions on how to do something.  Lots of people are not fluent in both I6 and I7, so you might get a quicker response if you state the specific problem you're having, what your current solution is, a compilable example, what error you're getting, or whatever would be helpful.  (A transcript of what you'd like to see happen can be helpful, too.)  Not that all that's necessary on each post, but whatever is necessary to give people a place to start.

So if you're looking for a way to code:

[quote]>take bed

It doesn't budge.

>pull bed

It doesn't budge

[etc.][/quote]

You can try:

[code]"Test" by Gravel

The Bedroom is a room.
The bed is a supporter in the Bedroom.

Instead of taking, pushing, pulling the bed:
	say "It doesn't budge." instead.
	
test me with "take bed / pull bed / push bed".	[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3120&start=0#p22142
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Comprehensive lists
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-02 08:29:50

Also, chapter 1.4 of the built-in Recipe Book summarizes some I7 syntax.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3120&start=0#p22143
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Comprehensive lists
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-02 08:37:15

Hi Anton, another resource that might help -- though you might find it frustrating -- is the index. The Rules, Actions, and Scenes tabs each contain a description of rulebooks. In the rules tab, you can click on the plus sign to the left of the rulebook name it'll show you the rules that are currently in that rulebook. In the actions tab, if you click on the magnifying glass after the action's name, it'll list the rules that are in the check, carry out, and report rulebooks for that action. In the Scenes tab, I guess you also want to click on the magnifying glass if you actually have any scenes in your project. 

The documentation might also have some more useful information for you -- section 18.1 actually does have a list of all the rulebooks, and section 18.6 has the syntax for new rule headings. The [url=http://inform7.com/learn/documents/Rules%20Chart.pdf]Inform Rules Chart[/url] (pdf) would probably also be useful; it shows you what order the rulebooks are actually processed in. (Best viewed on a monitor that's a lot bigger than my laptop screen; it's huge.) 

[UPDATE: Felix also mentioned reading through the standard rules; I recommend looking at [url=http://inform7.com/sources/src/stdrules/Woven/index.html]Appendix A[/url], which is an annotated version. But I do find the prospect of reading through them all a little intimidating myself.]

I don't really speak I6, but guessing at what you're trying to do, most of the specific things don't seem too bad. For the multiple conditions with a rule, you can just use "or" [and as gravel points out, you don't even need that]:

[code]An appliance is a kind of thing. An appliance is usually scenery. Instead of taking or pushing or pulling an appliance, say "It doesn't budge." Instead of pushing an appliance to, say "It doesn't budge."[/code]

Or, as you can see there, you can split it up into separate rules. We can't put "pushing an appliance to" in with the rest, because the syntax is slightly different, but we can break it out into its own rule. And if we wanted, we could break everything into its own rule:

[code]Instead of taking an appliance, say "It doesn't budge." Instead of pushing an appliance, say "It doesn't budge." [etc.][/code]

but that would be tedious.

The "with name" business is very straightfoward:

[code]Understand "bed" and "covers" and "sheets" as the bed.[/code]

The "understand" as machinery can get very powerful if you start adding conditions and text substitutions and relations and the like, but a case like this is simple.

One of your rules for reporting entering and exiting the bed is pretty straightforward, the other a bit less so. Here's the first:

[code]Report entering the bed: 
	say "You slide under the covers and wrap your legs in them. Careful not to wake up Terry.";
	rule succeeds.[/code]

What "rule succeeds" means is that, when this rule runs, the "report entering" rulebook stops. (See section 18.10 of the rulebook.) So the standard reporting rule doesn't run. This rule runs before the standard report entering rule because it's more specific; it's about entering the bed rather than entering just anything. 

Here's the second:

[code]Report exiting when the container exited from is the bed: 
	say "The bed creaks a little as you step out of it on the right, 'your' side.";
	rule succeeds.[/code]

The tricky thing is that you can't write "Report exiting the bed" because "exiting" isn't an action that applies to a thing; it just means exiting whatever the player is in. But you can't write "Report exiting when the player is in the bed" because, by the time the report rule runs, the player isn't in the bed anymore. What I did was to look up "exiting" in the Index (under the "Actions" tab) and see, when I clicked on the magnifying glass, that it had a "named value" called the "container exited from." That's what I needed to use here -- whenever you exit, "container exited from" stores, well, the container you exited from, which is exactly what we need here.

The other multiple conditions within the rule is also pretty straightforward the way you have it now; you can do it with an "if/otherwise if" structure:

[code]Before going in East End:
	if the player is in the bed:
		try exiting; [again, you don't actually need "exiting the bed," since the action "exiting" exits whatever the player's in]
	otherwise if the noun is the bed and the player is not in the bed: [this was something where I wasn't quite sure what the I6 meant, so this is a guess at what you're trying to do]
		try entering the bed.[/code]

However, this is a case where it would really be much better to use two rules instead of one. And one of the things about the rulebook structure is that you can in fact break down your rules into as many different ones as you need; you don't need one big Before rule for the whole object or room. (Actually I don't even know whether you can do something similar in I6.) So I would write:

[code]Before going when the player is in the bed: try exiting.
Instead of going the bed: try entering the bed.[/code]

You don't need to refer to the room here, because you want this to apply whenever the player tries to enter or exit the bed, no matter where it is; of course in this case the bed will never leave the bedroom. I also left out the "if the player is not already in the bed" condition, because the Standard Rules already generate a useful failure message for entering the bed when you're in it ("But you're already in the bed.") Also note the difference between "Before" and "Instead"; the first rule is "Before" because we want to exit the bed and then continue with the going action the player tried. The second is "Instead" because once the player has entered the bed we don't want to try anything else. "Before" rules by default continue the action after they're done, "Instead" rules by default stop it, so that's what we want.

Now the second rule probably doesn't do what you want. I'd guess that you want to catch "GO TO BED" rather than "GO BED," but "GO TO BED" isn't recognized as default. We can catch this thus:

[code]Understand "go to [something]" as going.[/code]

Now "go to bed" will be processed as going bed, and that will be redirected to entering the bed, which is what we want. ("GO TO EAST" will also be processed as going east, which seems fine.) 

Now, an annoyance: You can't have overlapping kinds in I7. That means that you can't make the bed both an appliance and a container, unless you define appliance as a kind of container, which you probably don't want to. One way you can get around this is by defining an adjective, "appliancey," and using your "It doesn't budge" message when you try to shove around an appliancey thing:

[code]A thing can be appliancey. Instead of taking or pushing or pulling an appliancey thing, say "It doesn't budge." Instead of pushing an appliancey thing to, say "It doesn't budge."

The bed is an enterable open transparent appliancey container.[/code]

This can lead to other problems -- for instance, I don't think there's a way to make all appliancey things scenery, so you have to add that by hand -- but I think it can be made to work.

Hope this helps! I'm by no means an I7 expert, but it looked like at least some of your problems were relatively straightforward in I7, as long as you know what to do. You might want to find someone who understands "rule succeeds" a bit better than me, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3119&start=0#p22144
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Hypertext adventure?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-09-02 08:47:25

I'm glad you liked the story. (I'm the author.) The source code is online at <a class="postlink" href="http://code.google.com/p/starborn/source/browse/trunk/story.ni">http://code.google.com/p/starborn/sourc ... k/story.ni</a> so you can take a look and see if coding something like that in Inform would be manageable.

The actual world building starts from line 439. If you use the preceding code for the keyword mechanics (which is totally ok) making the gameplay itself should be relatively easy, but you'd still have to study Inform to some depth to know what to do. (It'd be even easier if the keyword parser would be available as an extension, which I planned to make, but other projects took priority and I wasn't sure how much demand there would be.) The keyword mechanics are built for this story's requirements only so I can't promise they'd work without modifications for any type of game.

If you're interested in "pure" hypertext fiction without a text parser I can recommend [url=http://undum.com]Undum[/url] although authoring with Undum is basically JavaScript programming. I haven't tried Quest myself but what I've heard it seems like it'd be a good choice: there's a parser but you could use hyperlinks as well and there's a visual editor you can use to build the story without writing code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3113&start=0#p22145
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Participate in the Interactive Fiction Top 50!
User: Mr. Patient / DateTime: 2011-09-02 09:08:30

Here are the nine games I feel mostly strongly about.  It's a pretty conventional list, I think.  Looking over it, I wonder: did the medium peak in 1998?

Anchorhead - This out-Lovecrafts Lovecraft by a wide margin.  The only horror game I've played which I found genuinely scary.  The extended endgame is pulse-pounding.

Losing Your Grip - Powerful imagery, terrific puzzles.  I came to this one via the spoof in Coke Is It!.

Planetfall - The first game I ever completed without hints, and the first game to provoke an emotional reaction from me.  I was moved to submit a drawing of Floyd to the NZT for their cartoon contest (I didn't win).

Rameses - Simultaneously one of the best and most perverse uses of the medium.

Savoir-Faire - The best pure-puzzle game ever made.

Spider and Web - Pretty much what Victor said.  It always amazes me when I read bad reviews of this game.  It is the most brilliantly-constructed game I have ever played, with the single best puzzle in all of IF.

Starcross - My favorite of Infocom's library, and the game most likely to not show up on anyone else's list.  The robot mouse puzzle is one of my all-time favorites.  Played it alongside my young daughter a few years ago, and she was motivated to draw a picture of rat-ants.

Sunset Over Savannah - A perfectly-made puzzle piece with terrific writing and imagery.  I don't think this one gets enough attention.

Varicella - Brutal, delicious and immensely satisfying when you finally come up with the right sequence.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3121&start=0#p22146
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [Inform 7] Basic question: order of execution for actions.
User: Sslaxx / DateTime: 2011-09-02 09:48:12

What I mean by this is, in what order do the "Instead of", "Carry out", "Before", "After" etc. bits of running an action get executed by Inform 7? Pretty sure this is both fairly straightforward (a linear progression?) and in the manual, but I can't figure it out.

Any help?

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3121&start=0#p22147
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Inform 7] Basic question: order of execution for action
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-09-02 09:53:50

See 12.2 in the documentation.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3121&start=0#p22148
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Inform 7] Basic question: order of execution for action
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-02 09:59:24

1) Before
2) Instead
3) Check
4) Carry out
5) After
6) Report

Instead rules by default stops the action in failure;
after rules by default stops the action in success: 
so, writing an instead or after rule (unless it explicitly tells the game to "continue the action") means that any later rulebooks (or later rules in the same rulebook) will not be considered.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3119&start=0#p22149
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Hypertext adventure?
User: henrygale / DateTime: 2011-09-02 10:01:23

Thanks for the replies and congrats for the good game. The source code for the game will be very useful, I'll check it out in detail. Right now I'm reading up on some Quest tutorials and I have to say I'm pretty impressed, it's all very intuitive and the interface really helps.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3116&start=0#p22150
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Forcing inventory order
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-09-02 10:03:34

I think a solution can be worked out using WORKFLAG_BIT. First print the uniform's name. Then give all of the player's possession except the uniform the workflag attribute, and make a list of those possessions using WORKFLAG_BIT.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3121&start=0#p22151
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Inform 7] Basic question: order of execution for action
User: Sslaxx / DateTime: 2011-09-02 10:05:06

Thanks for that. Looks like I was looking in the wrong place, then.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3121&start=0#p22152
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Inform 7] Basic question: order of execution for action
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-09-02 11:10:55

If you're interested in the really detailed answer as well, the [url=http://inform7.com/learn/documents/Rules%20Chart.pdf]Chart of Rules[/url] elaborates on the process.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3120&start=0#p22153
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Comprehensive lists
User: A0d_nl / DateTime: 2011-09-02 14:05:05

Whoohoo! All hail the forum! \o/
Now that is information I can work with. I knew it was around somewhere.
And matt w thanks for the complete solutions especially the 'is an appliancey(!) thing' one. It made me laugh.
What I did in the i6 code concerning the if player goes west and is not in bed thing had to do with that in the beginning of the program I defined respectively left and right as west and east. And it looked more obvious story-wise that when you step out on the right side of your bed going left gets you under the covers again. Also considering there is no exit left out of the room. Only down and right (east) But I didn't copy that part of code so you couldn't have known.
A part of the problem is that I learned from the beginning to cram as much as possible between two brackets to be efficient. But here you have to break it all down into seperate rules and put them in order. (which to me seems it extremely and illogically convolutes your code but, then again, can look vewwy pwwetty.)
I will take all this info in. And as soon as I have a 'real' problem I'll put it in the other section.
Thanks a lot guys,
Anton

Update especially for matt w:
Here is how I solved the whole bed thing:
[code]your bed and a nightstand is fixed in place in the bedroom.
your bed is an open enterable container.
player is in bed.
instead of going when in bed:
	try exiting.
instead of going down when in bed:
	say "You're already lying down quite comfortably.".
instead of going left when location is bedroom and player is not in bed:
	try entering.
Report entering the bed: 
	say "You slide under the covers and wrap your legs in them. Careful not to wake up Terry.";
	rule succeeds.
Report exiting when the container exited from is the bed: 
	say "The bed creaks a little as you step out of it on the right, 'your' side.";
	rule succeeds.
Before pushing, pulling or taking something that is fixed in place:
	instead say "It won't budge.".[/code]
(I admit that the last rule is just vanity to suppress the dry 'it is fixed in place' message [emote]:)[/emote]
Though elegant to read, it is twice as long as my i6 code (minus the room descriptions) which, ofcourse, is completely against the programming doctrine that has been slapped into my head since 1986. 
Thanks again and consider this problem solved.
Anton

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3083&start=20#p22154
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF story idea
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-09-02 14:07:54

I decided that it isn't really going to be about me per se, but I am drawing on experiences I had as a child to depict some of the places I'm describing. I had hoped to enter in the ifcomp this year, but I doubt I'll have something ready by the deadline.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=10#p22155
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-09-02 14:33:22

I once wrote a game in which I sort of made fun of the fact that in IF you can often carry anything the author lets you. For example, there was a six-foot ladder in the game, but the game took place at a house party. If you carried the six foot ladder around the house, the guests grew increasingly suspicious of you, but you could carry it outside around the house without issue.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3112&start=0#p22156
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: A journal
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-09-02 14:37:13

There's an I7 extension that does this.

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/Jim%20Aikin/Notepad/index.html">http://inform7.com/extensions/Jim%20Aik ... index.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3068&start=10#p22157
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Never Comp
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-09-02 14:45:10

Maybe someone should write a game that breaks every rule in the "Players Bill of Rights". It could be a pr0n, too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3104&start=10#p22158
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Squaring results
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-09-02 14:51:00

You know, I posed a question once before about the differences between the z-machine and glulx. 

Why now, does I7 have the z-machine as the default compiler? Why aren't all new games set to glulx by default? If the z-machine can't handle large numbers such as for metric conversions, maybe it's a bit outdated for modern IF. Offering the z-machine at all may be just perpetuating a system with issues.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3120&start=10#p22159
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Comprehensive lists
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-02 15:16:44

Good news 1:
[quote="matt w"][code]Report entering the bed:    say "You slide under the covers and wrap your legs in them. Careful not to wake up Terry.";   rule succeeds.[/code]What "rule succeeds" means is that, when this rule runs, the "report entering" rulebook stops. (See section 18.10 of the rulebook.) So the standard reporting rule doesn't run. This rule runs before the standard report entering rule because it's more specific; it's about entering the bed rather than entering just anything.[/quote]
Make that [code]After entering the bed: say "You slide under the covers and wrap your legs in them. Careful not to wake up Terry."[/code]
After rules run before any report rules, and they automatically stop the action.

Good news 2:
[quote="matt w"]The tricky thing is that you can't write "Report exiting the bed" because "exiting" isn't an action that applies to a thing; it just means exiting whatever the player is in. But you can't write "Report exiting when the player is in the bed" because, by the time the report rule runs, the player isn't in the bed anymore. What I did was to look up "exiting" in the Index (under the "Actions" tab) and see, when I clicked on the magnifying glass, that it had a "named value" called the "container exited from." That's what I needed to use here -- whenever you exit, "container exited from" stores, well, the container you exited from, which is exactly what we need here.[/quote]
Using the Index is good advice! As it happens, Inform (nowadays) lets authors write thing like [code]After exiting from the bed[/code] in their rules – though it won't let players write commands like "EXIT FROM BED"!

Good news 3:
[quote="matt w"]I don't think there's a way to make all appliancey things scenery[/quote]
Yes, there actually is: [code]An appliancey thing is usually scenery.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3105&start=0#p22160
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hidden room (names)
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-09-02 15:17:36

[quote="Poster"]It all depends on how important those similarly-named rooms are. If they have stuff in them, then it's better to distinguish them somehow. If they serve no purpose but to take up space, you're better off capturing player movement down the long hall with something like, "You proceed to the end of the hall, catch your breath and look around." What I'm getting at is that the players aren't going to like going n, n, n, repeatedly through nondescript rooms, so spare them from that.[/quote]

Also, if you say, were doing some sort of maze, a player could drop items in certain rooms to keep track of them - thus the rooms would no longer be identical.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3090&start=0#p22161
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: StackExchange Interactive Fiction Q&A site proposal
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-09-02 15:45:31

I regularly use the site at Lockergnome.net, and it's a pretty handy Q&A site. If an IF Q&A site was developed, I would support it as I could.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3123&start=0#p22162
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Seeking alpha testers for Taco Fiction
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-09-02 15:45:57

Taco Fiction is a game about crime. It is currently incomplete. Alpha testers will have the unique opportunity to play the first part of the game and not find out how it ends until it's actually released. For you, the alpha tester, the suspense will be delicious.

I am planning on entering this in the IFComp, [i]if I can finish it in time![/i] But I have faith in myself. If you're interested in helping me out, you can PM me your email address or you can reach me on Gmail, where my address is "andrew.irony". Thank you for your time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=230#p22163
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-09-02 16:04:09

My name is David Good. I am 44 years old and I live in California with my wife and dog. 

Growing up I fancied myself becoming a famous writer, as I liked to write short stories. But it never happened. I became a web developer and computer support specialist instead. 

Stephen King wrote in his "On Writing" memoir that once on a long drive, his wife Tabitha was reading one of his manuscripts. He kept glancing over at her to see her reaction to certain things, and she finally, annoyed, said "Stop being so goddamn needy!"

I write interactive fiction because I am goddamn needy.

My first released games were written in ADRIFT, but I am currently working in Inform 7. It may be more complex but I like that it's more flexible than form-based systems.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2975&start=20#p22164
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "Invisiclues" effect in a PDF file
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-09-02 16:18:37

If you're obsessed with Word, you could create it in Word and then do a save-as to make it HTML. It might have a little more code than necessary, but it wouldn't be awful.

Barring that, I'm sure there's a gibbon or two on the forum that might volunteer to format an HTML document for you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2995&start=0#p22165
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: are Mad-Libs a subgenre of IF?
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-09-02 16:32:14

According to Wikipedia (if it's on Wikipedia, it must be true), Mad Libs were invented in 1953 by Leonard Stern and Roger Price, who published the first book of them in 1958.

In 1953 the first computer to use transistors had just been invented. The UNIVAC I had just been ordered by GE, for their payroll operations. FORTRAN, the first high-level computer language, would not be invented for another year. Magnetic core memory was just invented. The number of computers in the entire world did not number more than 100. 

I don't think there was much of a market for computer games in 1953. The first recorded interactive fiction was not released until 1975.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3065&start=0#p22166
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Help with Amnesia!
User: kakarot / DateTime: 2011-09-02 17:11:07

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.gamesover.com/walkthroughs/Amnesia.txt">http://www.gamesover.com/walkthroughs/Amnesia.txt</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3124&start=0#p22167
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Using Inform 7 on Microsoft's XNA framework (a rant)
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-09-02 17:28:46

Man, that would be nice.  I don't mean to knock C# or C++, but with all the values that run from 0 to 1 in the framework, I'm really tired of typing things like 0.3f all the time and really wish I could just define a unit as in Inform 7 and just say the more natural 30% instead.  

And C# on XNA has these things called "delegates" which are like type-safe function pointers, except they're actually a list of same.  And the event publish/subscribe model of the architecture uses delegates by adding "game components" to an Update and/or Draw delegates, which just makes me go, "oh, so each of these is just an empty rulebook then?  Well why didn't you say so?"  

And then when I go back and look at code I wrote months ago, well, don't even get me started on readability.  Especially Inform versus the C family.  Linear algebra is annoying enough but if I could just define a few to-phrases, just a few of them, please!   

I don't mean to knock the XNA framework.  For creating games it's fairly sane and well-named.  I just wish I could use Visual Inform 7 on top of it.  It would be so much more fun.. and clear.  Oh the clarity I could have.  Surely a port would be less trouble?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3113&start=0#p22168
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Participate in the Interactive Fiction Top 50!
User: kakarot / DateTime: 2011-09-02 17:42:25

ALL ALONE
THE BARON
BEYOND
BLISS 
ECDYSIS 
FAILSAFE
RENDITION
SHRAPNEL
STRANGE GEOMETRIES
VESPERS

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3125&start=0#p22169
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Interpreters and cover art
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-09-02 18:07:03

Inform 7 discourages, but allows, the use of cover art that isn't square.  Are there interpreters (for Glulx, specifically) that will distort or otherwise improperly display non-square cover art?  Glulxe displays it correctly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3120&start=10#p22170
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Comprehensive lists
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-02 18:23:36

Thanks for the good news, Felix! And for correcting my misapprehensions. I see from section 26.2 that "exiting from" was introduced in 6E59, which is actually after I started learning the system, so I don't feel so bad. And now that you pointed out I found this line in the standard rules:

[code]The exiting action has an object called the container exited from (matched as "from").[/code]

I was afraid that "an appliance thing is usually scenery" would lead to loops, but actually if you create loops:

[code]A thing can be non-Jourdain-front or Jourdain-front. A thing can be Jourdain-back or non-Jourdain-back. A Jourdain-front thing is usually non-Jourdain-back. A Jourdain-back thing is usually Jourdain-front. A non-Jourdain-front thing is usually Jourdain-back. A non-Jourdain-back thing is usually non-Jourdain-front.[/code]

It seems to handle them sensibly if not predictably.

(Anton, I don't know if I'd advise doing the "left means back in the bed when you've just got out of it" thing. Unless you have a lot of sophisticated stuff going on with moving around rooms with relative directions, it seems like it might be pretty annoying to deal with.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3104&start=20#p22171
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Squaring results
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-09-02 19:08:16

IIUC, Z-machine is still a lot more portable.  But I7 sets games to [i]Z-code version 5[/i] by default.  When was the last time anyone wrote a Z5 game?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=10#p22172
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-09-02 19:17:24

Despite all the good reasons for not imposing an inventory limit, I'm still not fully persuaded.  I used to play roleplaying-intensive MUDs where you would be ignored by the other players or even banned by the administrators if you made your player-character "take advantage" of the code by doing unrealistic things that the code nevertheless allowed for.  All players were supposed to be in-character at all times, and using the code to do unrealistic things was considered detrimental to the immersion of the players' shared experience.  Just saying this so you know where I've come from.  [emote];)[/emote] 

Sometimes, when I play IF, I close all the doors behind the PC and try only to carry things that I believe the PC has a good reason to be carrying around.  Sometimes when I play like that I become frustrated because the author did not expect the players to restrict the PC's actions based on any theory of being "in-character."  When a game with a strongly characterized PC and a strong storyline is not designed to allow for a player [i]not[/i] to carry around a lot of objects at one time, I do think that breaks mimesis in a sense.  It's probably not very important in games that make no attempt at a very serious or immersive plot, especially if the PC/protagonist/ is left uncharacterized.

However, saying this makes me a hypocrite because I usually don't bother anymore.  I could perhaps accept an argument that the decision not to carry an "unrealistic" number of objects (or do other "unrealistic" things) should be something that the player should be able to choose for himself, and should not be imposed by the author.  However, I think most IF simply isn't designed to be played the way I described, which I think is unfortunate in the case of story-driven IF.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=10#p22173
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-02 20:21:36

The thing is, if you're dealing with a bunch of things in real life, you will naturally pick them up and put them down as you need them. You will not spend a lot of time thinking, "I have to put down the wrench in order to pick up the screwdriver, now I have the screwdriver and I need to pick up the screws, oops! hands full, now I need to put down something else." You'll just do it. (Unless you're, say, climbing a ladder and you have to be very conscious about how you can get everything you need to the top of the ladder.) So an IF that makes you spend a lot of time consciously juggling with picking stuff and putting stuff down is a lot [i]more[/i] mimesis-breaking than one that lets you keep everything to hand. 

I think you'll find that IF actually tends to move away from inventory limits as it becomes more story-driven. And I don't think that's a coincidence (although maybe it's partly a coincidence, as both can be part of a move away from D&D). Spending every other turn dropping this and getting that because you're trying to optimize the objects you need in order to cross the chasm before your lamp burns out is fine if you're focused on a puzzle. It's likely to break the flow of any story you have going. People don't spend a lot of time juggling objects in read-only fiction either. 

For an example of what I'm talking about, play Common Ground, which consciously manipulates this:

[spoiler]Playing as the mother, you have to try a couple of times to close the car door, because that's an awkward thing that is actually hard to do when you're carrying a lot of groceries. It would break the feel of the story to have the mother pick up a lot of stuff here, because this moment is about how heavily burdened she is. But once you unlock the side door, you don't have to type a command to go through it, because it's the sort of thing the PC would do automatically.[/spoiler]

Having to fumble around like this is only mimetic because the character herself is fumbling. If your story isn't about an overburdened person trying to balance too much stuff, making the player juggle inventory breaks immersion. (And I sometimes close doors behind me too.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3124&start=0#p22174
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using Inform 7 on Microsoft's XNA framework (a rant)
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-09-02 20:24:37

I'll have to agree, a VS interface for Inform 7 might be interesting. I could see making an application in Visual Studio and coding stuff within it in natural language.

At the very least it would be fun to write a game that had its own self contained interpreter.

As for XNA, I'll have to agree it would offer a new market to be able to make xbox 360 games in Inform.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=10#p22175
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-09-02 21:06:56

[quote="matt w"]The thing is, if you're dealing with a bunch of things in real life, you will naturally pick them up and put them down as you need them. You will not spend a lot of time thinking, "I have to put down the wrench in order to pick up the screwdriver, now I have the screwdriver and I need to pick up the screws, oops! hands full, now I need to put down something else." You'll just do it. (Unless you're, say, climbing a ladder and you have to be very conscious about how you can get everything you need to the top of the ladder.) So an IF that makes you spend a lot of time consciously juggling with picking stuff and putting stuff down is a lot [i]more[/i] mimesis-breaking than one that lets you keep everything to hand. [/quote]
I suppose you could have the PC automatically put things down before picking something else up, and then have anything the PC has handled be permanently in scope, with a message indicating that s/he goes to fetch a thing before using it. You'd probably get ridiculous auto-generated messages like "You run back to the garage where you left the whatsit, put the whosit, the whensit and the whysit on the workbench, pick up the whatsit, and return to the living room", though. "You try to return to the garage where you left the whatsit, but you can't get further than the giant stream of lava running through your kitchen." "You run back to the garage where you left the whatsit, but the side door is locked. You run back to the hallway where you left the side door key, put the whosit on the hall table, pick up the side door key, and return to the kitchen. You unlock the side door, open it, run back to the garage where you left the whatsit, pick up the whatsit, and return to the living room."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=10#p22176
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-09-02 21:11:53

[quote="Emerald"]"You try to return to the garage where you left the whatsit, but you can't get further than the giant stream of lava running through your kitchen."[/quote]
"You run back to the garage where you left the whatsit. You fall into the giant stream of lava running through your kitchen.

*** You have died ***"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3113&start=0#p22177
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Participate in the Interactive Fiction Top 50!
User: lamont / DateTime: 2011-09-02 21:49:27

[b]All Things Devours[/b]. If the novel is the ideal vessel for conveying consciousness, interactive fiction (as a kind of game) is the ideal way to convey certain kinds of experience. [i]All Things[/i] lets you experience what it's like to defy the laws of physics. And in a fantastic puzzle, it gives you the opportunity to master them.

[b]Rameses[/b]. Whose protagonist embodies the form's limitations. The story could have been told in other media, and has been. But nowhere else can you feel it so keenly. [i]Rameses[/i] deserves some kind of lifetime achievement award for "Best Use of Medium" -- and consideration for best writing.

[b]Nightfall[/b]. Not that love is blind; just that it's pitch dark, and you can't see a thing.

[b]Babel[/b]. Expertly paced sci-fi thriller whose scenery is charged with implications. Your extrasensory awareness lets you reconstruct the story a step a time -- and in a game about forbidden knowledge, your moves are no less dangerous for being retraced.

[b]Deadline Enchanter[/b]. Torschlusspanik in the Z-Machine. Reads like a personal ad from another dimension; plays like a guided tour through the prison of self-consciousness.

[b]Everybody Dies[/b]. Its dead-on depiction of real life is bracing; its transition to the afterlife is greatly eased by the illustrations.

[b]The Act of Misdirection[/b]. This short supernatural tale thrusts you into the limelight, lets you find your legs, and then saws you in half.

[b]Distress[/b]. Another tightly controlled sci-fi hellscape. Can things possibly get any worse? Well, yes, and the longer you play, the grimmer it gets. You'll die repeatedly but, if you persevere, you'll see your previous attempts fade into the background in a surprising and satisfying way.

[b]Photopia[/b]. Inspiring still.

[b]Delightful Wallpaper[/b]. The opening puzzle is so beguiling that it's worth working out for its own sake. But when you realize -- somewhere in the second act -- why you're here and what you're doing, the mansion takes on a whole new significance. ([i]Dual Transform[/i] steers a similar idea in a slightly different direction, but, to me, [i]Delightful Wallpaper[/i] is the way to go.)

Hopefully the next time we do this I'll have filled in some of my blind spots and will have no problem coming up with twenty. Already I'm inspired to take a look at everyone's picks. I had plenty of games I felt I needed to get to; now I've got several I can't wait to check out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2135&start=10#p22178
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: You know you've played too much IF when...
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-09-02 22:07:52

Good grief: You know you've played too much NetHack when you're playing an IF and you try to pick stuff up with the comma key.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3116&start=0#p22179
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Forcing inventory order
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-09-02 22:44:35

Ooh, that might do it! I'm honestly too beat to try it out right now, but I'll test it tomorrow. Thanks in advance.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3126&start=0#p22180
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 6: Variable title
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-09-02 22:58:35

So I'm fooling around with a game concept where a ton of the content is randomly generated at the start. This includes the name of the town in which it takes place, which I've written a super-basic routine to generate (basically, it picks some numbers out of a hat, and then prints chunks of predefined text that correspond to those numbers, resulting in wonderfully made-up-on-the-spot sounding names). So my question is, how do I change the title to reflect this?

What I'm going for is something along the lines of "MedievalQuest*: The Adventures of [X] of [Y]", where X is the player's name (which I'll get around to figuring out how to do later, hopefully on my own) and Y is the name of the town.
(*or whatever)

I want to do this without replacing the Banner() routine, since that would be kind of messy and involve copy-pasting everything that's not related to the title, and also wouldn't affect other times when the game's name is printed (such as the brief, superbrief, and verbose commands). Is this feasible, or am I in way over my head here?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=230#p22181
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-09-02 23:08:58

[quote="Grueslayer"]troglodytes on crack[/quote]

God, I should start a band with that name.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=10#p22182
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-09-02 23:19:30

Depends on the genre and level of game-ness you're going for. Like, if I look up at the status line and see "Score: 0", then I won't mind a bit being able to carry 10 featureless white cubes, 6 keys, and a cured ham. However, the inverse bugs me a lot, which is when designers assume "realistic" means that you can carry 6 cured hams, but as soon as you try to pick up that feather off the mantlepiece, you get "You're carrying far too much already  [emote]:lol:[/emote] deal widdit".

There's two ways to impose limits in somewhat realistic ways. You could have your PC lack the kleptomania so commonly found in adventure game protagonists ("You see absolutely no reason to pick up Jed's truck keys."). You could also have a simulationist approach and assign each object a weight value, meaning that the player can hold, say, 10 keys at once before having to drop something, but only 1 cured ham and 1 key. I tend to find things like this a little intrusive sometimes, although I'm sure it can be worked in well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3127&start=0#p22183
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Dead Horses, and the beating thereof
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-09-02 23:33:30

Are there any genres in IF that are universally or near-universally considered to be "dead horses"?

I ask because I've begun work on a game that's essentially a straight-up "lazy medieval" fantasy, and makes no illusions about it. It's not a treasure-hunt/cave-crawl, but more of a vaguely Varicella-ish optimization game built around using magic and assorted weapons and laying traps to defend a castle from bad dudes.

Anyway, the reason I ask is because I occasionally find it hard to muster up the willpower to give certain works (be they movies, games, books, whatever) a chance, because they're a "dead horse" to me, and I know others feel the same way. I, for one, tend to groan whenever an IF game has the PC waking up from a dream, or begins in their house, and I haven't played a sci-fi IF game since Planetfall (although those are both my own lame prejudices). Are there any pitfalls I should avoid in order to give a good first impression? Or should I try a different setting out, period?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3126&start=0#p22184
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Variable title
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-03 00:27:14

You've named the four places where the story title is printed. So that's how hard it would be to replace them. Messy, but simple.

You could also do this by setting the Story constant to a string containing string substitution variables: "The Adventures of @00 of @01". See the last part of chapter 1.11 of the I6 manual. However, using variable text for those (like a player's name) is going to be a big fat nuisance -- I think you have to compress the string at runtime. Stick with the simple way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3125&start=0#p22185
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Interpreters and cover art
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-09-03 02:02:36

The recommendation to use square cover art is so that lists of games with cover art will look nice. (That's reason enough for me.) I don't think there are any technical problems with non-square art, and if some interpreter has trouble with it, that's a bug.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=20#p22186
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-09-03 02:14:14

But isn't it more annoying having to run across the map six times to fetch the hams one by one? The way I see it, the main problem with your example is one of puzzle design. If you don't want the player to run around with six hams, design the game so there's no need for it. (Add a puzzle for getting access to a small forklift to transport the hams.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=20#p22187
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-09-03 02:32:52

Thinking some more, I realised this has mostly to to with the presentation (text) and method of interaction (the parser).

In a graphical point and click game, one way to handle large objects is to show the thing being carried and remove all actions except moving and putting the thing down. Nobody will have a problem with that.

But if you try the same in text, your only way of limiting the available actions is with an error message. (Or changing the interface completely, but that's far from uncontroversial too. Just look at any discussion on conversation menus.) An error message can never be immersive, so you have to design the thing differently.

("Can never be" is a bold claim - feel free to prove me wrong. Come to think about it, I think I enjoyed a game a bit that was in the comp a few years ago where you were a vase, and thus couldn't do anything. But as a general rule, I believe it to be true.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3105&start=0#p22188
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hidden room (names)
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-03 03:47:58

[quote="duodave"]Also, if you say, were doing some sort of maze, a player could drop items in certain rooms to keep track of them - thus the rooms would no longer be identical.[/quote]
Unfortunately, that is the most hackneyed of all IF-puzzles. I would not use it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3121&start=0#p22189
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Inform 7] Basic question: order of execution for action
User: Sslaxx / DateTime: 2011-09-03 04:22:18

[quote="tove"]If you're interested in the really detailed answer as well, the [url=http://inform7.com/learn/documents/Rules%20Chart.pdf]Chart of Rules[/url] elaborates on the process.[/quote]
That I am! Thanks for the link!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3128&start=0#p22190
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I7] Objects having a property value referring to another.
User: Sslaxx / DateTime: 2011-09-03 05:07:51

I suspect this is answered in the manual, but I'm finding my ability to search the documentation and/or know where to look in it annoyingly lacking. So here we go again.

What I want to know is if I can have every character having a value that varies that can refer to any other object. Say every character has an ObjectIKnowOf property, and that property holds a reference to any other object in the game (and can be changed at any point in the game).

I've been trying various approaches without success. So is this possible in Inform 7, possible in Inform 7 but requiring access to the Inform 6 internals, or just not possible at all?

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=20#p22191
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-03 06:19:27

[quote="Trumgottist"]But if you try the same in text, your only way of limiting the available actions is with an error message. (Or changing the interface completely, but that's far from uncontroversial too. Just look at any discussion on conversation menus.) An error message can never be immersive, so you have to design the thing differently.

("Can never be" is a bold claim - feel free to prove me wrong. Come to think about it, I think I enjoyed a game a bit that was in the comp a few years ago where you were a vase, and thus couldn't do anything. But as a general rule, I believe it to be true.)[/quote]

Error messages can be immersive, the first time you see them. Maybe the second. That's why it's important to rewrite them; in Broken Legs, when you try to take something that isn't there, and Lottie complains about how the school doesn't [i]even[/i] have that, it's great and gives you insight into her character. But the fourth or fifth time it happens, it's just the that thing isn't there error message. (I assume; I was too intimidated to play long enough to get it that many times. I need to go back to it now that we know there won't be a post-comp release.) 

By the way, if a point-and-click designer made it so that when you pick up a large object everything else in your inventory returns to the main screen, and you have to go around and pick it up again, I think players of the game would find him and do actual harm.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3128&start=0#p22192
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Objects having a property value referring to anothe
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-03 06:50:04

Does something like this work?

[code]A person has a thing called ObjectIKnowOf.[/code]

This doesn't seem to be highlighted very much in the documentation -- I searched for "has a thing" and it appears in the comments to example 51 and in section 4.17, which is a review section for the chapter on Kinds.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3128&start=0#p22193
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Objects having a property value referring to anothe
User: Sslaxx / DateTime: 2011-09-03 07:22:17

[quote="matt w"]Does something like this work?

[code]A person has a thing called ObjectIKnowOf.[/code]

This doesn't seem to be highlighted very much in the documentation -- I searched for "has a thing" and it appears in the comments to example 51 and in section 4.17, which is a review section for the chapter on Kinds.[/quote]
So it's not just me, then? Looking at it now, it's pretty obvious, but I couldn't get it.

Thanks! That seems to do the trick. Interestingly, for the player and any NPC, doing it that way gives them the yourself object for the property's value (although that isn't a hard fix).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3127&start=0#p22194
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Dead Horses, and the beating thereof
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-09-03 08:54:51

If you have an idea, I say do it. If you haven't played a lot of IF, there's probably not much danger of copying an idea. Perhaps you'll have a new twist on a "dead horse" as you call it. Like, instead of a haunted house, maybe your idea is a haunted pirate ship. Or instead of a straight sci fi space ship, maybe your idea involves rescuing 18th century humans from a space ship that abducted them. 

Go with your idea. Don't let people dictate it's form just because it's been done.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3126&start=0#p22195
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Variable title
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-09-03 09:01:21

In chapter 5.7 of the inform manual, you can see how to manipulate text randomly. There is even a "sticky" function so if a room description is x the first time its seen, the next time the player sees it it says the same thing, but the next time the game is plays it may be different. Here's how it goes:

"The newspaper headline is: [one of]War Casualties[or]Terrorists[or]Banks[sticky random] [one of]Continue To Expand[or]Lose Out[sticky random]."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3126&start=0#p22196
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Variable title
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-09-03 09:02:19

Oh sorry I didn't notice this was an inform 6 question. Ignore me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3126&start=0#p22197
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Variable title
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-09-03 10:05:32

[quote="zarf"]You've named the four places where the story title is printed. So that's how hard it would be to replace them. Messy, but simple.

You could also do this by setting the Story constant to a string containing string substitution variables: "The Adventures of @00 of @01". See the last part of chapter 1.11 of the I6 manual. However, using variable text for those (like a player's name) is going to be a big fat nuisance -- I think you have to compress the string at runtime. Stick with the simple way.[/quote]

Ah, okay. So exactly which part of the library is it that holds the Banner() routine, so I know which parts to yank over to my version (namely, the headline, the release and serial numbers, and whatnot)?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=20#p22198
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-09-03 10:12:28

Oh, error messages can be immersive, as long as it's in character for the protagonist, and draws from a pool of random responses each time so it doesn't get (too) repetitive. Either that, or have every little thing have a unique error message. In "Varicella", for example, the game tells you at least 900 times that you can't do/take/attack/kiss/eat something because it's "unseemly". Instead of being annoying, it slowly becomes hilarious, since it reveals to the player just how many things Varicella finds "unseemly".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3127&start=0#p22199
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Dead Horses, and the beating thereof
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-09-03 10:30:51

As a rule of thumb, there is no dead horse that cannot be resurrected by sufficiently strong execution. [i]Violet[/i] is at heart a frustration comedy in an office: a genre that in a weaker implementation would have induced eyerolling and theatrical groans from a substantial proportion of players. I loathe wacky wizards with all my heart, but it's still possible that someone might write a wacky-wizard game that I'd love.

It helps if the game is interested in something other than its genre. If your goal is just "write a lazy medieval fantasy game", you're probably in trouble. If your goal is "use the familiar lazy-medieval fantasy setting while really thinking about [income disparity in single-resource economies|the importance of treating people you dislike with respect|the problem of akrasia|the pleasure of craft]", you stand a much better chance.

That said, the main contenders for dead-horse status in IF are Zorkian fantasy, lazy-medieval D&D-derived fantasy, My Boring Apartment (with fully-implemented fridge and toilet), Dilbert-ish office comedy (coffee, sysadmins), Trek-derived SF and Crazy Uncle's House (scattered diary pages). But bear in mind that genres can be dead on arrival: a game can be tediously genre-reliant even if that genre has never been done in IF before.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3128&start=0#p22200
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Objects having a property value referring to anothe
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-03 10:33:27

We remind the listening audience that I've put together an unofficial manual index page at <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/i7index/">http://eblong.com/zarf/i7index/</a> , where you would find this under "properties".

[quote]Interestingly, for the player and any NPC, doing it that way gives them the yourself object for the property's value (although that isn't a hard fix).[/quote]

"Yourself" is the default thing object. (Defaults for every kind are listed in the index tab under Kinds. It's typically the first instance defined of that kind.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3129&start=0#p22201
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Scope bug?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-09-03 10:37:06

If something's in scope, it's 'visible', right?

I found a circumstance that hangs a game.

In this demo, you can stand upstairs on the balcony and examine the cat. An 'understand as...when visible' phrase lets you call the cat 'animal' if it's visible, but if you use 'animal' when the cat's not in the room, the game freezes.

Doing the 'test me' is kind of pointless as it just stops immediately without showing you the commands.

Go down, then 'examine animal', then up, then 'examine cat', then 'examine animal' - then it stops.

[code]
There is a room called balcony. downstairs is down from balcony.

the cat is an animal in downstairs.

Understand "animal" as cat when cat is visible.

After deciding the scope of the player when location is balcony:
	place cat in scope.
	
Test me with "d / u / x cat / x animal".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3129&start=0#p22202
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scope bug?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-09-03 11:02:19

The game goes into an infinite loop, placing the cat in scope again and again. I don't know exactly how the parsing mechanism works, but it's probably tightly coupled with the scope checking mechanism so things like this can confuse it.

Saying "Understand ... as X when X is visible" is redundant anyway, because understand phrases apply only to things in scope. I can't think of a situation where you'd need to "limit" the understand phrase to only visible things.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3129&start=0#p22203
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scope bug?
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-09-03 12:56:20

I think scope is designed for placing a room in scope, the objects in that room. When I was using scope in a game, I could not place an object in scope unless it was in a room. I had to create a hidden room I called "imagination" then placed that room in scope.

If that's not correct it may be true that scope is buggy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3127&start=0#p22204
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Dead Horses, and the beating thereof
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-09-03 13:01:27

[quote="Glorb"]Are there any genres in IF that are universally or near-universally considered to be "dead horses"?[/quote]
Genres can't be dead horses, but plot devices can. And one in particular comes to mind: the protagonist has amnesia. If I see another one of those, then it better be a perfectly well executed game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3113&start=0#p22205
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Participate in the Interactive Fiction Top 50!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-03 13:17:31

If you're looking for the modern canon, I think it's the games with [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=%23ratings%3A50%2B&sortby=ratu&pg=1]over 50 reviews on IFDB[/url], no matter how they're rated. (And as you'll see, three of my top whatever are in the bottom five of these games.) And I haven't played a lot of it. Anchorhead? Just finished the first day. Infocom? Before my time. Varicella? The whole concept frightens me, because I'm terrible at puzzles. So, herewith, some favorite games of someone who should really be playing games instead of talking about them, listed in the order I type them in.

[b]Photopia.[/b] No comment necessary.

[b]Galatea.[/b] Ditto. 

[b]Spider and Web.[/b] This gets in practically for the framing device alone; it was one of the first games I played and way past my capacity, so I spent a lot of time just typing in the walkthrough. But still, it was amazing. And I did do some puzzle solving; in fact I almost got that one puzzle, except at the crucial moment
[spoiler]I forgot what meant "on" and what meant "off."[/spoiler]
Anyway, if not for these three I probably wouldn't be playing IF.

[b]Best of Three.[/b] In some ways the most satisfying game I've played; I went through, did what seemed natural, and what happened felt just right. Grant's tea order is my favorite writing in IF, and when I went to look it up just now some of the parts leading up to it may have been even better. And why shouldn't IF take on the subject matter of mainstream realistic fiction? Answer: More of it should, if it can.

[b]Shrapnel.[/b] Real horror comes from what you do yourself, or what you have done. Another Cadre railroad game, much darker and nastier than Photopia, and effective with it. (Yeah, I like games that are about story, and also games I can finish. No apologies for that.)

[b]The Firebird.[/b] This isn't perfect; it has a couple bugs (one of which seemed to cancel out one of the more annoying aspects of the otter puzzle, though that sequence was the time I hit the walkthrough anyway). But it's magical and funny and the puzzles are actually fun, and it does a good job of giving you multiple ways through the more open parts at the beginning. Also, it was a long game I could finish, and the hint it gives you for the maze is a hoot. 

[b]Blue Chairs.[/b] Art-damaged and I like it. Unapologetic about its fictional nature, about not giving you all the keys to its meaning, and about including details that point to something beyond the world of its story. We need more like this, too, so long as it's good. (Chris Klimas has gone on to make flash games at [url=http://twofoldsecret.com/games/]Twofold Secret[/url], which are highly recommended if you suck less at them than I do.)

[b]The Act of Misdirection.[/b] Beats out "All Roads" for the linear game "what happened?" slot, partly because I have a little more intimation that what happened makes sense (even if we Cannot Comprehend Its True Form), mostly because the first scene is So Awesome. And the rest really is chilling. (No, I didn't get the good ending.) 

[b]Rover's Day Out.[/b] Another one that makes it on the strength of the first part. What can I say, I love winks to the fourth wall, at least when they're done this well.

[b]The Baron.[/b] Utterly powerful and compelling. It actually makes you think about free will and desire, and makes you feel the weight of your choices.


[b]A New Life.[/b] This game has basically no business on this list. It's impossibly difficult; I haven't finished it yet, even though I've looked at the hints and a walkthrough and figured out a bunch of stuff for myself that wasn't in either of them. And the reason I didn't finish was because of what appeared to be a game-breaking bug:

[spoiler]I visited the dragon too soon, was told to go away and come back later, but when I came back it had disappeared.[/spoiler]

And the hints -- the hints seem like they're some kind of performance art. At least two of them point you to puzzles that I'm pretty sure are unsolvable. 

[spoiler]If anyone found a musical instrument, let me know.[/spoiler]

Not to mention that you're forced to stay in the gameplay area by the immutable force of the parser telling you you haven't reached the ending yet. So why do I like it so much? Because it does such an amazing job of world-building. The connections you can draw between different parts of the game, even when they don't help you solve any puzzles, give you a sense of a wider universe beyond these few objects that you can manipulate. Especially when they don't help you solve any puzzles, in fact; it's an escape from the airless IF world where everything has been placed there for you to use. Even the unsolvable puzzles in the hints create that impression. Plus, when I did figure something out, I felt smart.

OK, that's a top... eleven. Not a very good number, but I reserve the right to remember something obvious that I forgot later. 

Honorable mention: Pick Up the Phone Booth and Aisle. Come on, it's awesome.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3129&start=0#p22206
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scope bug?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-09-03 13:37:43

[quote="duodave"]I think scope is designed for placing a room in scope, the objects in that room. When I was using scope in a game, I could not place an object in scope unless it was in a room. I had to create a hidden room I called "imagination" then placed that room in scope.[/quote]
That doesn't sound right: if you change severedhand's code so that the cat is initially out of play it works fine. Do you have an example that would demonstrate this behavior?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3129&start=0#p22207
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scope bug?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-03 13:38:16

[quote]I think scope is designed for placing a room in scope, the objects in that room. When I was using scope in a game, I could not place an object in scope unless it was in a room.[/quote]

No, that's not true. You can place any object in scope, including off-stage objects.

[code]
The Kitchen is a room. 

The cat is a thing.

After deciding the scope of the player:
	place cat in scope.

[...]
>x cat
You see nothing special about the cat.
[/code]

But this is tangential to the original question.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3129&start=0#p22208
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scope bug?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-03 13:46:55

I *think* the infinite loop is a bug. You're doing a scope search ("the cat is visible") inside a parsing routine, which is called from inside another scope search (the parser looking for objects to match "x animal"). I expect that to be inefficient, but not to hang.

However, as Juhana said, there's no reason to use the "cat is visible" test there, so just delete it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3127&start=0#p22209
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Dead Horses, and the beating thereof
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-09-03 13:48:23

[quote="duodave"]a haunted pirate ship [...] rescuing 18th century humans from a space ship that abducted them[/quote]

[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curse_of_the_Black_Spot]That was my least favorite episode so far this season, but I did think Lily Cole was well cast[/url]. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3113&start=10#p22210
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Participate in the Interactive Fiction Top 50!
User: Aintelligence / DateTime: 2011-09-03 14:51:13

Well, even if this list is poor, i'm a relative newbie to IF and so the number of games I've played is not wide, so I will no doubt be tweaking my choices a little bit over the next month.

Photopia -1
Heartwarming.  The game makes you care.

Blue lacona -2
Such an emotional work on so many levels.  I don't think the ambition has ever been equaled on such a scale.

Make it good -3
My personal favorite IF game ever.  Yeah I know that's saying something, but I'm quite a mystery buff.  Best detective IF ever, and heck, the puzzles are not straggling either.

Spider and web-4
John le carre style narrative, brilliant ideas.

Babel -5
I know a Lot of people think babel is overrated, but after playing it, I think it's overrated to call babel overrated.

All things devours -6
The only hard puzzle game I have solved without a walkthrough.  But besides my personal situation, the writing is really stylistic, and the concept is explored in such a new awing way.

Anchorhead -7
Well, I'll admit that I don't like the game that much, ( mainly because I suck at puzzles) but this isn't a list of my personal favorites.  I found the difficulty of the puzzles detracted from the atmosphere a little bit, but all things considered, the writing is superb.  I've never been in such suspense before, and the world was crafted with such a lifelike feel.

The blind house -8
Disturbing, but so unique in the games I've played

Legion -9
Hmmm... Maybe the most controversial game on my list.  I thought though that the plot was so well explored, and really never tried before.

Worlds apart -10
Although not quite up there with Photopia and blue lacona on an emotional scale, it delivers high on the scale.



In my opinion the best Infocom games:
Trinity

A mind forever voyaging



Well, let's have a look at some of the ones I did not pick:
Varicella-  this is a game I loathe more than any other game I have played.  I played it a million times before I used a walkthrough, and the fact of the matter is, I found the puzzles pointless and 'guess the author' style.

Shade-  Gosh you don't know how much I wanted to put this on the list.  One of my favorites but it doesn't quite add up in the 'best' category.

Blue chairs-  Uh... I didn't get this game until somebody told me it was an allegory to dante's divine comedy.  Then I looked for similarities and it made even less sense.

I'm sure I've missed the most obvious choices, but hey.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=20#p22211
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-09-03 14:59:20

[quote="matt w"]I think you'll find that IF actually tends to move away from inventory limits as it becomes more story-driven. And I don't think that's a coincidence (although maybe it's partly a coincidence, as both can be part of a move away from D&D).[/quote]
I guess that's the difference -- MUDs became more story-based (in the form of roleplaying, which often includes flexible plotlines controlled by players and/or administrators) without really getting too far away from the fundamental D&D-like rules that text adventures began with.  In fact, RPI MUDs have much stricter simulationist code and worldbuilding than more conventional MUDs that don't require being in-character.

I think there's sometimes a disconnect in story-driven IF between immersive [i]characterization[/i] of the protagonist and immersive simulation of the model world.  If the work of IF is the kind that filters all descriptions through the distinctive personality of the protagonist, then I think it is a little inconsistent for the player character not to complain about carrying miscellaneous objects without a specific purpose -- unless that PC really is either a kleptomaniac or a Standard Adventurer.

But I'm sure some of the most story-immersive IF games are sensitive to simulation through their error messages, as has been pointed out.  Also, I don't think all IF should necessarily be this immersive.  I think there may also be a place for heavily simulation-immersive games that are not extremely story-immersive, as well, but I think I might be the only person who would like them.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3113&start=10#p22212
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Participate in the Interactive Fiction Top 50!
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-09-03 15:11:26

[list][*][i]All Hope Abandon[/i] by Eric Eve
This is probably my favorite IF game ever.  The integration of setting and theme in this game is very evocative, and several moments in the game really inspired me.[/*:m]
[*][i]A Mind Forever Voyaging[/i] by Steve Meretzky
One of only two Infocom games that I've won, and playing this game was a satisfying experience.  It's very well paced.[/*:m]
[*][i]August[/i] by Matt Fendahleen
Perhaps the least ambitious great game ever, but I feel that it's still a great game.  I love the classic high fantasy style.  It pulls off being both a serious fantasy and a romance, two genres that I think are rarely portrayed convincingly in IF.[/*:m]
[*][i]The Bible Retold: Following a Star[/i] by Justin Morgan
One of the best-spirited comedies in IF, with great NPCs and historical interest.  It's the kind of comedy that doesn't devalue its own characters or story just to be funny.  Also a very well-designed game.[/*:m]
[*][i]Blighted Isle[/i] by Eric Eve
A great combination of a traditional map with many puzzles but great story and characterization.  This game has the most fun and interactive NPCs I have ever seen.  Well, with the possible exception of...[/*:m]
[*][i]Blue Lacuna[/i] by Aaron Reed
The main NPC wasn't even my favorite part, even though he is awesome.  This is probably the only IF I've ever played that I could imagine written as a prose, printed novel.[/*:m]
[*][i]Distress[/i] by Mike Snyder
The game has some cool meta techniques that I liked, with an exciting setting that seemed fuller than the short game actually was.[/*:m]
[*][i]Floatpoint[/i] by Emily Short
One of the most professional of the many science fiction games, in my opinion.  One of the most interesting games I've ever played.[/*:m]
[*][i]The King of Shreds and Patches[/i] by Jimmy Maher
I never finished this game, because I found myself in an unwinnable state in the endgame and didn't have the motivation to replay.  That frustration aside, the portrayal of historical London is awesome... and the characters you meet... and the things the you can do....[/*:m]
[*][i]Hoist Sail for the Heliopause and Home[/i] by Andrew Plotkin
I like the austere mystery.[/*:m]
[*][i]On Optimism[/i] by Tim Lane
This competition entry is my favorite relatively unknown game.  I've always thought that the reviewers have missing a theme that seemed pretty plain to me when I first played, and I've wonder ever since if that theme was really there.[/*:m]
[*][i]Spider and Web[/i] by Andrew Plotkin
I still remember the thrills.[/*:m]
[*][i]So Far[/i] by Andrew Plotkin
This game captivated by young imagination and showed me the emotional potential of IF.[/*:m]
[*][i]Theatre[/i] by Brendon Wyber
A well-designed puzzlefest.  My favorite of the horror genre.  It's takes itself just seriously enough.  This was the very first game that I ever began to play, although I completed [i]Wearing the Claw[/i] first.[/*:m]
[*][i]Whom the Telling Changed[/i] by Aaron Reed
My favorite Spring Thing game.  I really like the mystery of the pseudo-prehistoric.[/*:m]
[*][i]Wearing the Claw[/i] Paul O'Brian
A delightful, humble fantasy.  All in all, this is probably my favorite IF story, and it's a very fun playing experience as well.  The very first IF game I ever finished, when I was either 11 or 12 years old.[/*:m][/list:u]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=20#p22213
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: A0d_nl / DateTime: 2011-09-03 15:20:55

Reminds me of the lucasarts 'Zak mcKracken and the alien mindbenders' in which you also carry a s@*tload of items. Heck they even made a pun on it in the cover art of the box. (on it the player is pictured with almost all of the items you need either stuffed in his pockets or stacked in his arms)
imo. Having something like a bag to put stuff in with a limited capacity makes it all realistic. Will maybe add a little strategy as well. (i have seen people wondering about the world collecting all the items and a lot of money first and then flying through all the puzzles and challenges) And you could make the bag just a bit too big to be true to avoid serious inventory management.
But then again... Everybody is, at least I am, used to it. Only when it takes on absurd proportions. (like an inflatable rubber boat AND an oxygen tank for example) I think I would notice. But 43 notes, 87 coins and 32 keys. Well... I could stuff that away in real life too. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3127&start=0#p22214
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Dead Horses, and the beating thereof
User: A0d_nl / DateTime: 2011-09-03 15:27:01

Every genre is fine with me. As long as you're having fun doing it.
But If I have to start beating dead horses I'm out. No matter how good your game is. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3129&start=0#p22215
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scope bug?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-09-03 19:34:22

I gave this example because actually editing out the part of my game that causes this was too hard. But I have a reason to use this construction.

Say there are cats and dogs running all over the place. They've all got names. Then you climb to a vantage point, a room which places  animals from all over the game in scope.

I had code saying 'understand 'animal' as jonesy (a cat) when jonesy is in location' - so that 'animal' would only act on jonesy if jonesy was present. I need this because I've got actions that work on people that are out of scope as well, and I was trying to eradicate disambiguation. Typing '(out-of-scopecommand animal)' would otherwise bring up disambiguation of all animals in the game. 

If I'm at my vantage point where I can see tons of animals, all the cats or dogs are in scope, but none are in the room, so 'x animal' says 'you can't see any such thing.' That's why I tried adding the 'visible'.

After all that mucking around, I'm still stuck with my initial problem --- I want to allow some commands to refer to out of scope creatures, but not if you haven't met those creatures yet. Otherwise you can type (outofscopecommand cat) and get a free list of all cats in the game as it says 'do you mean jonesy or tommy or?...'. This is bloody hard to eradicate, because inform does this before it looks at any code of mine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3129&start=0#p22216
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scope bug?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-03 19:49:46

[quote="severedhand"]After all that mucking around, I'm still stuck with my initial problem --- I want to allow some commands to refer to out of scope creatures, but not if you haven't met those creatures yet. Otherwise you can type (outofscopecommand cat) and get a free list of all cats in the game as it says 'do you mean jonesy or tommy or?...'. This is bloody hard to eradicate, because inform does this before it looks at any code of mine.[/quote]

How about this?

[code]A cat is a kind of animal. A cat can be met or unmet. A cat is usually unmet. A cat is usually proper-named. Understand "cat" as a cat when the item described is met. 
When play begins: now all visible cats are met.
Every turn: now all visible cats are met.
Calling is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "call [any cat]" as calling.
Report calling: say "[Noun] is a cat and ignores you."[/code]

[UPDATE: Added the "when play begins" rule, so that cats visible when play begins will be met for the first turn (and thereafter, even if you move away on the first turn).]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3127&start=0#p22217
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Dead Horses, and the beating thereof
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-09-03 22:45:50

[quote="tove"][quote="duodave"]a haunted pirate ship [...] rescuing 18th century humans from a space ship that abducted them[/quote]

[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curse_of_the_Black_Spot]That was my least favorite episode so far this season, but I did think Lily Cole was well cast[/url]. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Oh come on. Pirates in space! What can be better? And Rory dies yet again! How many times has he died now?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3129&start=0#p22218
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scope bug?
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-09-03 22:49:18

[quote="Juhana"][quote="duodave"]I think scope is designed for placing a room in scope, the objects in that room. When I was using scope in a game, I could not place an object in scope unless it was in a room. I had to create a hidden room I called "imagination" then placed that room in scope.[/quote]
That doesn't sound right: if you change severedhand's code so that the cat is initially out of play it works fine. Do you have an example that would demonstrate this behavior?[/quote]

No, I don't have a sample of the game that didn't work, when it didn't work I completely changed it so it functioned a different way. So the code that didn't work no longer exists.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3126&start=0#p22219
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Variable title
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-09-03 23:31:31

Never mind, found it. So yeah, I've gotten this to work. Thanks, Zarf! (In fact, I should probably give you most of the programming credit, with all the help you've given, man.)

Now this leaves the matter of naming the player, which shouldn't be too hard...right? I'm assuming that it should be somewhat like the white cubes deal in "Balances", but someone [i]please[/i] stop me if that assumption is wrong.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=60#p22220
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: A0d_nl / DateTime: 2011-09-04 01:31:12

Using profanity could spice things up a bit. (especially on a Zombie splatter bonanza. as in 'take this MOFO') But imo. you should always be wary of getting your game in the 'adult' section. The quality in there is mostly not what you want to be shown next to. And somehow just plain old gore doesn't get you in there, A f@ck here and there will.
If you do want to use it to enforce some lovely hollywood clichés use the common eufemisms. (#&^%$, MOFO, sh!t f@ck etc.)
Maybe I'm a bit too serious about it and it is actually no issue at all. But a great game can be ruined by a too shocking first impression.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3127&start=0#p22221
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Dead Horses, and the beating thereof
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-09-04 01:39:05

[quote="duodave"]Oh come on. Pirates in space! What can be better?[/quote]
Pirates and Ninjas in space vs Jesus and Cowboys.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3059&start=0#p22222
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 5.0.20
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-09-04 01:56:25

Thanks, I will take a look.

Incidentally, you can log any bugs you find [url=http://www.adrift.org.uk/bugs5]here[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3129&start=0#p22223
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scope bug?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-09-04 02:42:39

[quote="severedhand"]After all that mucking around, I'm still stuck with my initial problem --- I want to allow some commands to refer to out of scope creatures, but not if you haven't met those creatures yet. [/quote]
Sounds like the easiest solution would be to use the Epistemology extension to track which cats the player has met. (This is the exact same problem that any conversation system that uses things as topics faces, so you might want to look at some conversation extensions and see how they solve it.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3059&start=0#p22224
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 5.0.20
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-09-04 04:56:24

Oh, thanks! I'd been looking for something like that... apparently in all the wrong places.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3130&start=0#p22225
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Problem
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-09-04 05:23:20

Sorry for the inappropriate header, but this time it's [b]two[/b] things I don't understand.

Two statues. Player shall be able to turn each of it left or right.

Problem 1: How to parse "left" and "right"? 
My first guess was to use invisible dummy objects named 'left' and 'right', but that turned out to be crap. Then I thought I could use the 'left'/'right' IDs of the statues to parse it, like, "turn left statue left" being understood as "turn left statue left statue" which I could parse. See problem 2. Now, what can I do to parse this?

Problem 2: How do I parse stuff and then handle it over to the system parser?
[code]
The left statue is here.
Instead of turning the left statue, say "Do you want to turn the left statue left or right?".

Understand the command "turn" as something new. Turning it is an action applying to two things. Understand "turn [something] [something]" as turning it.
[/code]

Produces garbage. But besides to my approach to problem 1 being crap, how do I add a parsing definition for a verb but have the system parser parse stuff I don't want to catch? Like, the system parser would understand "verb object", and if I want to catch "verb object object", how can I put my parse routine in front of what the parser would usually do, but in case of unsuccessful parsing let the system parser do the rest?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3131&start=0#p22226
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Ug  Paragraph breaks
User: Aintelligence / DateTime: 2011-09-04 06:13:18

Well, I've begun to alpha test the first scene in a game I'm making, but I've run into a bit of a problem.  Not a mechanics problem (like usual), but instead a problem with the general look of the piece.  At the moment I have Things 'slurred into eachother, greatly detracting from the look when playing.

ei.

>x door

The door gently rocks back and forth in the wind
You hear a sharp cry over by the brook.  How could you have left Dennis like that?
>

Ok so the problem really is that my actions are colliding with my scene events, and the scene is printed directly underneath the action statement.  I would really love a paragraph break there to make it look nice.

Also the (>) command prompt is appearing directly under that.
Very annoyed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3130&start=0#p22227
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Problem
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-04 06:20:17

I don't think I understand your second question. You cannot parse stuff and then hand it over to the system parser; you can only define grammar lines which get added to the pre-existing grammar lines, and the parser uses those grammer lines to parse commands. (I guess that technically you could use "after reading a command" rules to build a pre-parser, but why would you want to?)

The way to go for implementing turning left and right is actualli quite simple. I would do it like this (untested code):
[code]Left-turning is an action applying to one thing. Understand "turn [something] left" and "turn [something] to the left" and "rotate [something] left" as left-turning.[/code]
And then an equivalent line for turning something right.

If you want a more robust system that allows people to turn things in more directions, you could write something like this:
[code]Turn-direction is a kind of value. The turn-directions are left, right, forwards and backwards.

Direction-turning is an action applying to one thing and one turn-direction. Understand "turn [something] [turn-direction]" as direction-turning.[/code]
There may be mistakes in this code -- I didn't try to compile it -- but the basic scheme is correct.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3132&start=0#p22228
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Why should I even try
User: Andsowejump / DateTime: 2011-09-04 06:51:35

Ok.  Just as the title suggests, what is the point of "try".

Do i use it like this?
[code]Instead of looking through the window during Scene1:
	try examining window.[/code]



2.  Also what is the point of the 'test' command.  I've read about it in the manual but it still seems useless to me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3131&start=0#p22229
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Ug  Paragraph breaks
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-09-04 07:00:55

You have to show the code you use to produce that text. It's pretty much impossible to say anything without seeing it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3131&start=0#p22230
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Ug  Paragraph breaks
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-04 07:34:28

Though if that's a direct copy-and-paste, you need a period at the end of "The door gently rocks back and forth in the wind" -- it actually affects the line spacing (and you should have it anyway). Also, make sure that when you have something that prints "How could you have left Dennis like that?" there's no space between the question mark and the quotation marks -- not that I'm sure it'll solve your problem, it's just something to check. 

I found [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=20724#p20724]this post[/url] very helpful (though I can't vouch for it all).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3132&start=0#p22231
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why should I even try
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-04 07:44:12

1. Yes, that's exactly right. "Try" lets you have the player (or another character) perform an action that's different from the one that is directly triggered by the player's command. (See section 7.4 of the documentation.) 

2. "Test" is used to automatically enter a string of commands when you run the game. So if you want to see what happens when you wait five turns then go west, you include the line:

[code]Test me with "z/z/z/z/z/w".[/code]

And then if you type "test me" at the command prompt, it'll automatically enter the command "z" five times and then "w". This is useful for testing purposes but shouldn't have any effect on the released game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3129&start=10#p22232
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scope bug?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-09-04 07:56:29

Thanks. When matt posted his reply, I'd started a solution involving tagging people like he posted. His worked by letting everyone be tagged, and letting the command refer to everyone. I had already split my commands up to refer to the tagged, the untagged and folks in the room with you. I had a lot of inveigling to do because I have a bunch of commands with tricky physical requirements (and I'd be describing my whole game if I went into it all), but I got there in the end.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3133&start=0#p22233
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Outta world actions
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-09-04 08:04:28

I've got a light in the status bar of my game which comes on whenever your last command didn't make time pass, since the whole game's time-sensitive. (I'm using Eric Eve's Variable Time Control.)

It works for all the things I explicitly designate to take 'no time' ala the extension, but I want it to light up for any out of world actions as well, since they also take no time.

Is there a way to catch the fact of any out of world action occurring and changing a text variable in response? (the variable is how I make my light)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3133&start=0#p22234
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Outta world actions
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-04 08:15:36

Here is what I did in Inform ATTACK:
[code]Section - Out of game is fast

Quitting the game is acting fast.
Saving the game is acting fast.
Restoring the game is acting fast.
Restarting the game is acting fast.
Verifying the story file is acting fast.
Switching the story transcript on is acting fast.
Switching the story transcript off is acting fast.
Requesting the story file version is acting fast.
Requesting the score is acting fast.
Preferring abbreviated room descriptions is acting fast.
Preferring unabbreviated room descriptions is acting fast.
Preferring sometimes abbreviated room descriptions is acting fast.
Switching score notification on is acting fast.
Switching score notification off is acting fast.
Requesting the pronoun meanings is acting fast.

Rule for setting action variables when acting fast:
	now the take no time boolean is true.[/code]
Those are all the out-of-world actions, and you can change the code to work with your way of stopping time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3133&start=0#p22235
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Outta world actions
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-09-04 08:55:29

Thanks a lot for that. The approach seems to be working. I'm having trouble defining some out of world actions from extensions as acting fast, though. If I don't make them acting fast, the source compiles.

I tried putting the extension-related 'acting fasts' in the extension at the end of the extension, but that actually makes the non-troublesome definitions also compile as errors. I also tried pulling them out of the extension and putting them last thing in the source, and that makes those definitions alone throw errors.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3133&start=0#p22236
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Outta world actions
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-09-04 09:25:00

Ugh, that was painful, but I worked it out.

I had an action with the same name as a truth state in an extension. As soon as it saw the truth state was 'acting fast', it decided they were all objects. Took me ages to work this out, changing action names one at a time, etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3134&start=0#p22237
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I7] Glulx, fixed letter spacing, gargoyle, and 'fi'
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-04 10:23:06

My game (Inform 7, Glulx) starts with a menu in fixed letter spacing, where the player types one of several letters in order to start a game, restore, change the difficulty setting, and so on. By adding the correct amount of spaces to all menu options, one can line this out perfectly.

[i]Except[/i] for the fact that gargoyle (and maybe other interpreters, but not all of them) choose to represent the combination 'fi' as a single letter. This is, in fact, a long-standing typographical convention, but I am very surprised to see it pop up in a fixed letter font. And of course, this leads to problems for my menu: if the items line out in gargoyle, they don't line out in other interpreters, and [i]vice versa[/i].

Does anybody know a way to work around this? And should I report this as a bug to the gargoyle maintainers?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3134&start=0#p22238
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Glulx, fixed letter spacing, gargoyle, and 'fi'
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-09-04 10:33:17

I don't think that monospaced fonts should ever choose the "fi" ligature, unless perhaps the font itself actually contains a glyph with a width equivalent to two characters. That sort of defeats the purpose of a ligature, though. Are you sure that the interpreter is actually displaying a monospace font? If I'm not mistaken, Gargoyle uses its own display library and bypasses the OS's text rendering, so that any given font should be displayed similarly if not identically across platforms. I believe that by default Gargoyle attempts to use the same monospace font (Liberation Mono) on all platforms, and on OS X I don't get any ligatures.

Regardless of the ligature question, you may want to know that Kerkerkruip beta 3's "Skip to Normal Difficulty" line is still out of alignment with all the others (which do align as they should). It seems to have one space too many. Copied and pasted:

[code]
 OPTIONS:
   Start a new game             :    (SPACE)
   Skip to Normal difficulty     :       N
   Display help menu            :       M
   Quit                         :       Q
[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3134&start=0#p22239
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Glulx, fixed letter spacing, gargoyle, and 'fi'
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-04 10:38:59

[quote="ektemple"]Are you sure that the interpreter is actually displaying a monospace font?[/quote]
It certainly looks like a monospace font -- except that it shows a weird compressed 'fi' glyph that takes up only one space.

[quote]Regardless of the ligature question, you may want to know that Kerkerkruip beta 3's "Skip to Normal Difficulty" line is still out of alignment with all the others (which do align as they should). It seems to have one space too many.[/quote]
Yes, that's because I made it work on my Windows gargoyle, which needs an additional space in order to compensate for the compressed 'fi'. Once I found out that this was the cause of the problem, I made this topic. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3134&start=0#p22240
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Glulx, fixed letter spacing, gargoyle, and 'fi'
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-09-04 11:56:45

Are you using the latest release of Gargoyle (2010.1) for Windows? Barring customizations in the config file, it should use the same fonts and handle ligatures the same way on all platforms.

[url=http://code.google.com/p/garglk/source/browse/trunk/garglk/draw.c#700]gli_draw_string[/url] will disable ligature substitution if the font is fixed width, or if the font does not contain the required ligatures.

You are using Glulx, right? There were a few bugs with fixed width output in Z-Machine / frotz that I fixed shortly after the last release.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=20#p22241
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: lglasser / DateTime: 2011-09-04 12:03:49

I've been working on a game that has a lot of objects in it too, and I was worried about preserving the realism as well. It didn't make sense that you could carry 25 things constantly in your arms. So I made a system where if you have more than 2 items it gives you a message that you've dumped everything into an "inventory pile" on the floor. It mentions this twice then ignores it. Taking things from the inventory pile lets you know that you've got the objects handy enough. Here's the code:

[code]
Carry out taking something:
	if the player is carrying the noun:
		say "You already have that[if more than two things are held by the player] in your pile.[end if]." instead;
	if the player is carrying more than 1 thing and the player is carrying less than 3 things: 
		say "You take [the noun] and put it with [a list of things carried by the player] into an accessible pile near your feet."

Inventory pile is part of the player.
Instead of examining the inventory pile:
	if fewer than 3 things are carried by the player:
		say "You're not carrying enough stuff to have to drop it into a pile, just [a list of things carried by the player]." instead;
	say "You've got [a list of things carried by the player] in a pile, but really they're all so accessible it's as if you're holding them.[paragraph break][run paragraph on]".

Instead of taking the inventory pile: say "You've already set those items apart as important to carry around."
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3134&start=0#p22242
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Glulx, fixed letter spacing, gargoyle, and 'fi'
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-04 12:30:10

[quote="bcressey"]Are you using the latest release of Gargoyle (2010.1) for Windows? Barring customizations in the config file, it should use the same fonts and handle ligatures the same way on all platforms.[/quote]
Yes, I am using Gargoyle 2010.1 on Windows 7. As far as I know, I have not changed the config file. (I'l upload a screenshot later if this is useful.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=20#p22243
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-09-04 12:56:59

If you have any NPCs in your game, I hope they note that behaviour.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=20#p22244
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-09-04 13:45:37

And I hope it's a one-room game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3134&start=0#p22245
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Glulx, fixed letter spacing, gargoyle, and 'fi'
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-09-04 14:36:40

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Yes, I am using Gargoyle 2010.1 on Windows 7. As far as I know, I have not changed the config file. (I'l upload a screenshot later if this is useful.)[/quote]

Are you using the installer or the zip file?

A screenshot would be great.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=20#p22246
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-09-04 16:11:38

In what way is it realistic to dump items in an inventory pile on the floor?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=30#p22247
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: lglasser / DateTime: 2011-09-04 16:25:11

There's no juggling, and when you move from room to room it just tells you (once) that you pick everything up and move it with you. It's more realistic to haul stuff in an armful and dump it before searching through desks/whatever than to carry 20+ objects while you're opening drawers or lighting torches or whatever.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3134&start=0#p22248
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Glulx, fixed letter spacing, gargoyle, and 'fi'
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-04 16:34:50

[quote="bcressey"]Are you using the installer or the zip file?

A screenshot would be great.[/quote]
I suspect I have used the installer. I could do a reinstall if that is useful to you.

Here is a screenshot:
[img]http://lilith.cc/~victor/temp/gargoyle-fi.JPG[/img]
Check the "fi" in "difficulty".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3134&start=0#p22249
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Glulx, fixed letter spacing, gargoyle, and 'fi'
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-09-04 17:16:33

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Check the "fi" in "difficulty".[/quote]

Very weird. I'll take a look at the code and track this down.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=30#p22250
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-09-04 17:40:35

Would you do that in real life though? Pick up 20 items, walk into another room, drop them on the floor, have a look around, pick all the items up again and walk into another room with them? Rinse and rinse for every room. By the time you do that a couple of times, you might as well throw any attempt at realism out of the window.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=30#p22251
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-09-04 18:13:38

Yeah, I also don't think that sounds very realistic.  If you had too many objects to hold easily, you wouldn't take them all with you from room to room, you'd just take the ones you needed.  And of course there's no way to determine the things the player thinks s/he will need except to just let him/her pick them up.

The great virtue of allowing the player to hold everything is that it doesn't draw any particular attention to your inventory.  Every special way of handling inventory, particularly one that prints messages, is going to draw extra attention to the inventory and its unrealistic aspects.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3059&start=0#p22252
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 5.0.20
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-09-04 18:36:40

I know, it's on my to-do list to move it over to the new site and integrate with the forum authentication and the rest of the site.  [emote]:|[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3135&start=0#p22253
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I7] Action-based Rulebooks and Stored Actions
User: HawkleyFox / DateTime: 2011-09-04 19:44:57

Is it at all possible to have an action-based rulebook process a stored action variable as though it was an action that was performed?  Something like the following:

[code][Defaults to action-based, of course.]
The initializing rules are a rulebook.

Every turn:
	let the action to test be the action of the player jumping;
	consider the initializing rules for the action to test.

Initializing an actor jumping:
	say "Initialized 'jumping' for [the actor].".[/code]
Obviously, the code above fails to compile, but in a manner of speaking, the ingredients should work.  Is there any way to make this sort of scheme function in any sort of capacity without actually attempting the action?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=30#p22254
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-09-04 21:38:18

[quote="katz"]Yeah, I also don't think that sounds very realistic.  If you had too many objects to hold easily, you wouldn't take them all with you from room to room, you'd just take the ones you needed.  And of course there's no way to determine the things the player thinks s/he will need except to just let him/her pick them upinventory and its unrealistic aspects.[/quote]
But if you really felt that you need to take an armful of objects from Place A to Place B, because you really believed you would need to use at least most of them in Place B, EEAtheist's model would be perfectly logical.  Also, the IF player is perfectly free to chose to "just take the ones needed" if that's what he or she wants to do.  Most real people in a real situation [i]wouldn't[/i] choose to walk around everywhere with their arms loaded with miscellaneous things that they [i]don't know[/i] if they are going to need, which is what happens in an IF game with no inventory limit.

I think the problem is that players often want to have an immersive story and a detailed, realistic setting without being willing to contribute to the immersion/realism by roleplaying the player character's motivations.  If players really commanded the PC to act like a real person in such a situation, they would either simply refrain from carrying an unrealistic number of objects or else would accept a simulation model like the one EEAtheist proposed, which allows for circumstances in which the PC really [i]would[/i] want to take armfuls of stuff from place to place.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3135&start=0#p22255
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Action-based Rulebooks and Stored Actions
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-09-04 22:33:52

I had this laying around from a build or two ago.  It works.
[code]Suggesting is an action applying to one stored action. 
To decide which stored action is the stored action understood: (- noun -).

Instead of jumping, try suggesting the action of examining yourself.
Instead of waiting, try suggesting the action of taking inventory. 
Instead of an actor suggesting the action of examining yourself, say "I cannot condone [the stored action understood]."
Report an actor suggesting: say "[The actor] suggested [the stored action understood]."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=30#p22256
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-09-05 01:41:06

The thing is, no one in real life is going to take 20 items with them from room to room on the off chance they might need them. They'd leave them where they are then come back for them later on. When I leave my office at work, I take a pen with me, but do I take a teacup, a notepad, a calculator, an eraser, a pair of scissors, a stapler, a diary, a stack of forms, my coat, etc, etc? Nope.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3059&start=0#p22257
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 5.0.20
User: Sslaxx / DateTime: 2011-09-05 06:31:49

Why multiple threads for this? Can't we have a single thread for ADRIFT releases?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3131&start=0#p22258
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Ug  Paragraph breaks
User: Aintelligence / DateTime: 2011-09-05 07:27:12

sorry that was just an hurriedly crafted example of code, I forgot to add in a bunch of things.

However am I not supposed to put punctuation before the quotes like  "hi he says." or do I have to space it? 
I've basically done the whole thing like the example above.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3131&start=0#p22259
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Ug  Paragraph breaks
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-09-05 08:15:20

As Juhana said, show some code, and it'll be much easier to help you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3059&start=0#p22260
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 5.0.20
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-09-05 08:17:34

[quote="Sslaxx"]Why multiple threads for this?[/quote]
Why not have a new thread for each release?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3059&start=0#p22261
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 5.0.20
User: Sslaxx / DateTime: 2011-09-05 08:28:24

[quote="Trumgottist"][quote="Sslaxx"]Why multiple threads for this?[/quote]
Why not have a new thread for each release?[/quote]
Because it clutters up the forum?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3135&start=0#p22272
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Action-based Rulebooks and Stored Actions
User: HawkleyFox / DateTime: 2011-09-05 08:46:46

That is pretty good so long as it is assumed the player is the one performing the action.  The system I am creating works on NPCs, many of them, somewhat randomly assigning task actions to them to carry out.  A stored action can only contain a specific person performing the action so I would need a way to compare a stored action such as 'Bob jumping' to 'someone jumping', but using non-specific actors like that isn't possible for stored actions.

I think I have a work around for it.  It isn't very elegant though, but it will work going forward, I think.

[code]The setting the stage rules are a stored action based rulebook.
The setting the stage rulebook has a stored action called the task as performed.
The setting the stage rulebook has an action name called the specific task.
The setting the stage rulebook has an object called the person tasked.

Every turn:
	let the action to test be the action of the player jumping;
	consider the setting the stage rules for the action to test.

First setting the stage a stored action (called the action initialized):
	now the task as performed is the action initialized;
	now the specific task is the action name part of the action initialized;
	now the person tasked is the actor part of the action initialized;
	make no decision.

Setting the stage when the specific task is the jumping action:
	say "Setting up 'jumping' for [the person tasked].".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3136&start=0#p22273
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: What do you think is IF's strong point?
User: Kytaari / DateTime: 2011-09-05 09:25:36

I think it has one, but I want to bounce some ideas off other people. This is wait raised the question to my mind:

I was playing a graphic adventure game just after having a long discussion with my friend about all the various strengths of widely different artistic mediums: movies, theater, music, visual art, things like that; we also discussed what each of these creative mediums seems to revolve around the most (music being structure, visual art being contrast, and literature being continuity; film was a special case). I was thinking about some of this stuff, because he had done most of the realizations, and since I wasn't talking to him any longer, I wanted a little more. 

When I think of the differences between graphic adventure games and IF, not very much comes to mind. They are both primarily puzzle-solving and storytelling experiences (I think). This point may be a little off-topic, but I would like to share that most of the graphic adventures I've been playing seem to have better stories than many of the old IF game's I've experienced. Also, I realized now that death in the adventure game medium is very deterring, and doesn't work well very well as a casual punishment. 

Do you suppose graphic adventures and IF have different strengths, despite their similarities? I would like some of your thoughts on much of this. I'm thinking about calling back my friend and giving him this question, though since he hasn't played any IF (but knows about it), I don't suppose there is very much from experience that he could say. I hope you don't find this a tiring question, because I think the main reason I would like to know this mediums strength is so that I can write IF better than before.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3059&start=0#p22274
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 5.0.20
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-05 10:29:20

I count four threads about ADRIFT releases since April, and two threads a little over a month apart about the last two releases. That's not much clutter.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3136&start=0#p22275
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you think is IF's strong point?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-05 10:49:39

The differences between graphical adventures and text adventures are no greater than the differences between movies and novels.

This essay I wrote last year has some relevance: <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/essays/if-for-writers.html">http://eblong.com/zarf/essays/if-for-writers.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3059&start=10#p22276
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 5.0.20
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-09-05 10:49:54

You're trying to group at the wrong level. We have a single section for this stuff. It doesn't need to be in a single thread for the same reason that it doesn't need to be in a single post.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=30#p22277
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-05 10:53:50

[quote]The thing is, no one in real life is going to take 20 items with them from room to room on the off chance they might need them.[/quote]

Right, because in real life the hassle of carrying twenty things is greater than the effort of ducking into another room to grab one. In the IF interface, by default, the reverse is true -- unless the designer specifically adds hassle to the inventory-management experience.

That's an artistic decision. Just be aware of what you're doing: adding hassle (effort, frustration) for the sake of artistic effect. 

(All game design is about frustration for artistic effect. The design part is knowing where to put it.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3131&start=0#p22278
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Ug  Paragraph breaks
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-05 10:55:48

Inform will recognize that

  say "Hello."

and

  say "Bob says 'Hello.'"

both end with line-ending punctuation; it treats them the same way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3136&start=0#p22279
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you think is IF's strong point?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-09-05 11:12:24

I'm aware of the reason I never rated point and click adventure games compared to text ones. With point and click, you can roll the mouse over everything and the answer is somewhere there. Any choices, any hotspots, even a menu of words, they're always there on the screen or in the interface somewhere. It's impossible for the game to not display the answer in some form as a button or buttons.

In a text game, the answers aren't necessarily there in the interface. Whether cued by the game a lot, or not at all, you pull the answers out of your mind. The words that solve the problems may never even have appeared in the game. I call it the 'illusion of promise' (at least I did once in an email). Whether illusory or not at different times, the effect is real in terms of... it's the only one that makes me feel like I'm really in there solving problems and doing things myself. In graphic games, I never escape the feeling I'm just pressing buttons that already exist, in the right order, and you can get lazy and brute force them as well, or painfully drag your mouse over every nook and cranny to pull out the hotspot.

This is just one of lots of reasons why I like text adventures, but it's always the one that's real important to me in the context of what they turned into with graphics and mice.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=30#p22280
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-05 11:26:21

And (maybe repeating myself here), forcing the player to type in every action that they would perform in real life does not aid immersion and even "realism," as we use that word in describing (read-only) fiction. I just got a drink of water. Suppose I were to describe it thus in fiction:

[quote]Matt reached out and picked up the glass sitting next to him on the table. He stood up from his chair and walked over to the sink in the kitchen. Turning on the tap, he filled the glass with the water that streamed out of it. He then turned the tap off, returned to his chair, sat down, and drank the water. When he was done he replaced the glass on the table.[/quote]

This isn't a passage that you'd see in any realistic novel. It's a lot more like something from Samuel Beckett's [i]Watt[/i] than from, say, Ann Beattie. It's just absurd and alienating to describe the process of getting a drink of water in such detail; a realistic writer would write something like "Matt got a drink of water" if she felt the need to note it at all. 

Well, it's equally alienating to force the player to type this:

[quote]>get glass from table. stand. s. turn on faucet. fill glass with water. turn off faucet. n. sit in chair. drink water. put glass on table.[/quote]

I can't even bear to type out the responses that an IF would give to this. Now, a friendly IF will automate some of this -- have you automatically stand before you go south, and turn the faucet on when you fill the glass -- but that still leaves eight commands to drink a glass of water. In real life it just doesn't take that much attention and care to drink a glass of water, so why should it in IF?

(If we're looking for something more simulationist without forcing fine-grained inventory twiddling, the thing to change is probably the requirement that you have to be holding something before you do anything with it. And that it has to be in the same room, maybe, depending on your design. But the convention that you can carry lots of things and use them seems like a handy way of working around that. And the conventions of realism are often just that, conventions to avoid drawing the reader/player's attention to the wrong things.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3113&start=10#p22281
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Participate in the Interactive Fiction Top 50!
User: Rotonoto / DateTime: 2011-09-05 12:28:58

Judging by which games I tend to play over and over, they're mostly Infocom games, except for Adventure. So:

Adventure
A Mind Forever Voyaging
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Zork I
Zork Zero.

That being said, I also love a few games I've only played once or twice--but plan to play again:

For a Change
Lost Pig
The Meteor, the Stone and a Long Glass of Sherbet
Once and Future
Violet
Winter Wonderland (the one by Laura Knauth)

and a special mention for:

Pick Up the Phone Booth and Die!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3137&start=0#p22282
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I7] Extracting the content of a request as a stored action
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-05 12:53:17

Is there a way to winkle out the content of a request as a stored action? So if the player types:

[quote]>Taylor, kiss Jordan[/quote]

I'd like to be able to get "Taylor kissing Jordan" into a stored action.

Also, if Taylor is kissing Jordan as the result of such a request, is that action stored anywhere? "The current action" is "asking Taylor to try kissing Jordan," if I'm not mistaken.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3137&start=0#p22283
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Extracting the content of a request as a stored act
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-09-05 14:10:08

Just sticking "the current action" into a stored action variable of your choice should do what you wish, regardless whether or not the action is a request.  Also remember that a requested action is ran twice through the action machinery, once as the request "asking.. to try..." and once as just the action. 

If you need still finer control, the extension Editable Stored Actions should suffice.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3137&start=0#p22284
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Extracting the content of a request as a stored act
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-05 14:34:28

Ah, I was looking at "the current action" at the wrong time; after failing at what I wanted to do, I wrote an every turn rule to print the current action, and it had always reverted to "waiting" by then; but just now I wrote a before rule to print the current action, and it does what I want. Excellent. The Editable Stored Actions extension also looks like it should be very handy. 

(This has to do with [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2695]this old thing[/url], by the way.)

[UPDATE: Wow, that was unclear. What I mean is, I wrote some code that didn't do what I wanted. Then, to debug it, I wrote an every turn rule to print out the current action. But whenever I entered a request, the current action had always reverted to the waiting action (the default) by the time the every turn stage was reached, so I was utterly confused. Just now I wrote a "Before:" rule that prints the current action, which shows the current action first to be "asking x to try fooing" and then "x fooing," as it should.]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3120&start=10#p22285
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Comprehensive lists
User: A0d_nl / DateTime: 2011-09-05 14:46:48

Finally got around to visit and reply again.
Thanks, Felix for the update. As I said. It isn't all that easy but it makes for vewwy pwwetty cowwde. [emote]:)[/emote]
@ matt w.
Don't worry. I won't make a habit of it. But the body text explains a lot. I am not making a game, as such, with puzzles, and everything, but more or less an interactive novel. (based on a real novel I started a while ago. but writing a complete novel is such hard work.)
So there isn't any real challenge (although in every chapter here is some stuff you have to do to get to the next chapter) but the idea is to give a greater sense of immersion by letting the player explore parts of the world themselves and, in that way, giving the characters more depth.
So that 'left to your bed' business was something leftover from the novel. But I had to remove it anyway because I made an exit to the left. [emote]:)[/emote]
I'm going to insert Felix' lines of code into my program. (and then shout everywhere that I am a genius [emote]:)[/emote]
And If I have something to show or playtest you'll be the first to know.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2259&start=20#p22286
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Creating RIA Interpreter for TADS 3
User: phil932 / DateTime: 2011-09-05 15:58:58

[quote="RealNC"]The language gives you server and client sockets, so you can implement multiplayer servers. The game world would then be hosted by the game running as a server, while players connect as clients.

You could write the clients in some other language if you wish, doesn't have to be in TADS.

Edit: Of course doing this requires programming; adv3 doesn't come with out-of-the-box support for it  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote][/quote]

I've been thinking a bit more about my own motivation.  I suspect want I really want to do is use adv3 as the starting library in a MUD.  It's such a rich library (aside: are there any comparable libraries for conventional MUDs?).  But I appreciate that it's not really intended for multiplayer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3138&start=0#p22287
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I7] Asking multiple actors: a start
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-05 20:26:48

I've made a start on the problem of asking multiple actors to do something, brought up by Endosphere [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2695]here[/url]. The solution is awkward at the level of interaction; instead of just typing in "poet and waldo, north" or "all robots, north," I have the player type "folks, north"; the game then asks who they want to do that. And there are other problems, after the spoiler-tagged code. 

[spoiler][code]"Multiple Requests" by Matt Weiner


[Allows the player to make requests of multiple agents at once, using a two-part command. First the player types "folks, do something"; then the game asks exactly who should do it.]

Part I - Folks

[We need to set up the invisible omnipresent agent, folks, who receives all multirequests.]

Dummybackdrop is a privately-named backdrop. Dummybackdrop is everywhere. A person called folks is part of dummybackdrop. [So folks is everywhere.]

Rule for deciding whether all includes folks: it does not. Rule for deciding whether all includes Dummybackdrop: it does not. [we don't want folks or dummybackdrop ever to show up in the list of actors asked, or in anything else, really]

A robot is a kind of person.  Understand "robot" as a robot.  Understand "robots" as the plural of a robot. [Not strictly part of folks' definition, but...]

Instead of doing something when folks is the noun or folks is the second noun: say "'Folks' is used only to ask multiple agents to do something. Currently available folks are: [list of visible robots]." [Of course this assumes that you can ask robots to do things, and no one else. In a fuller implementation this would invoke a list of visible people you can ask to do stuff..]

After deciding the scope of folks:
	repeat with avatar running through visible things:
		place avatar in scope. [otherwise folks won't be able to do much, because most things aren't in scope for an actor who's part of a backdrop, I don't think]

[After deciding the scope of the player:
	repeat with avatar running through on-stage robots:
		place avatar in scope;
	place folks in scope. [this rule would be used if we wanted to allow youto command robots from anywhere]]
	
Part II - Multi-Requests

Folks-action is a stored action that varies.
Before folks doing something (this is the redirect folks' action rule):
	now folks-action is the current action;
	change the command prompt to "Who do you want to do that?";
	rule succeeds. [We need the rule to succeed so we don't get an "unsuccessful attempt by folks" rule.]
	
The redirect folks' action rule is listed first in the before rulebook. [It needs to happen before absolutely anything else gets in the way.]

Gathering the actors is an action applying to one visible thing.
Understand "[things]" as gathering the actors when the command prompt is "Who do you want to do that?". [So it accepts a list of actors without any verb.]

Carry out gathering the actors:
	now the command prompt is ">";
	if the noun is not a person:
		say "You can't ask [the noun] to do anything."; [this should probably be a library message]
	otherwise:
		convert to request of the noun to perform the action name part of folks-action with the noun part of folks-action and the second noun part of folks-action.

[And you can't do anything else when you're supposed to be gathering the actors.]
Instead of doing anything other than gathering the actors when the command prompt is "Who do you want to do that?":
	say "That isn't a list of actors."; [This is a really awful error message.]
	now the command prompt is ">".
	
Rule for printing a parser error when the command prompt is "Who do you want to do that?":
	say "That isn't a list of actors.";
	now the command prompt is ">".

Part III - Scenario

The Command Center is a room.

A persuasion rule: persuasion succeeds.
Auda, Iris, Sensa, Waldo, Whiz, and Poet are robots in the command center.

A marble is in the command center. The box is a container in the command center.
A leaflet is a kind of thing. Six leaflets are in the command center.
A room called the Weather Monitors is west of the command center.

A room called the Transit Monitors is south of the command center.

A room called the Hydroponics Monitors is east of the command center.

Instead of an actor kissing Iris:
	say "Iris slaps [the actor].";
	rule succeeds.
	
Instead of Waldo kissing Iris:
	say "Iris says, 'oh you!'";
	rule succeeds.

Test me with "folks, kiss iris/poet and waldo/ auda, get marble/ folks, put marble in box/all robots/whiz, get marble/folks, put marble in box/all robots/auda, get leaflet/iris, get leaflet/poet, get leaflet/folks, put leaflet in box/auda and iris and poet and sensa/folks, drop leaflet/all robots".[/code][/spoiler]

OK, some problems that are particularly obvious if you type "actions" before testing:

[list]The actions are sequential rather than simultaneous, and that can have weird effects. You noticed how all the robots succeeded in putting the marble in the box? That's because, after Auda took the marble, the rest all silently picked it up and put it back in the box. That's not great. 

Choice of identical objects is even less great. When you ask all the robots to pick up a leaflet, they all try to pick up the same leaflet. So only one succeeds. I don't know that this is entirely my fault -- I think Inform should default to asking someone to pick up something [i]not[/i] held by another person, if possible -- but it's there. Then, of course, when some of them have leaflets and you ask them all to put the leaflet in the box, the first one puts her leaflet in the box, and the rest pick up that very leaflet and put it back in the box, even if they have one of their own. And if you ask them all to drop a leaflet, the robots after the first one try to drop the same leaflet even if they've got one of their own. Again, I think that's partly a bad decision by Inform (how can a request to drop something not default to something held by the actor?), but it's still not great. [EDIT: No wait, this is entirely my fault. Folks-action selects a leaflet as a noun, and then my convert to request forces every robot to act on that same leaflet. I definitely need some trickery if I want this to work better.]

Text handling seems pretty messed up. If you try "folks, say yes to iris/auda and poet", then Auda and Poet wind up answering Iris that "et". But if you try "folks, say yes to iris/all robots" they answer Iris that "yes," as they ought. Some parts of strings seem to be getting overwritten by other parts of strings in a way that they oughtn't. 

This still uses the "person, foo" syntax. I hate that syntax. Also, the two-part command stuff is not at all elegant. (It was inspired by Scott Adams's method for getting two nouns and a verb out of a two-word parser.)[/list:u]

But it does execute some multiple requests, and maybe it'll inspire someone (or even me) to get something better going. And it didn't even require any I6!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2695&start=10#p22288
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Both Poet and Auda, kiss Iris
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-05 20:42:18

I've got a start on my two-stage command method -- I6-free! Lots of hitches, though. New topic about that [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3138]here[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=30#p22289
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: WaterMonkey / DateTime: 2011-09-05 22:09:21

Just out of curiousity, how hard would it be to hack things so that your inventory consists of things whose location you know rather than things that you physically carry? If you combined it with some scope-hacking, you might get a reasonable compromise: something behind a locked door would be inaccessible without unlocking the door, but going back to the kitchen to get a knife from the drawer could be fully automated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3136&start=0#p22290
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you think is IF's strong point?
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-09-05 22:15:06

There's really two features of IF that, I think, should be discussed separately: the input method (the parser) and the output method (no graphics).

You can mix and match the two. For example, the early Sierra games had text input, but graphics on the screen. Multiple-choice IF like "Choose Your Own Adventure" uses nothing but text, but only allows the player to click on pre-defined choices.

You can even combine output methods (with an IF game that has a few illustrations) or combine input methods (with a game where some options are clickable but some must be typed).

What are the strengths of avoiding graphics?

1) Low cost/barrier to entry. Check the credits on professional AAA games; you'll see dozens and dozens of graphic artists credited. By avoiding graphics and sticking to text, an extremely small team (even one person) can make an entire game in a reasonable time frame.

Lower barriers to entry make it affordable to explore really unique game ideas, to experiment with material that could fail.

The lower cost of text also means that it's more affordable to rewrite. Throwing away work is always painful, but rewriting results in a more polished product. Movies, for example, can almost never afford to go back and reshoot, but novelists almost always rewrite part of their novel.

2) Mental interiority. Only in text can you directly describe what someone is thinking or feeling. (I'm not such a big fan of this one; IMO it's generally better to show the audience how the character is feeling instead of telling the audience directly.)

3) Smells, tastes, and textures. Only in text can you directly describe what something smells, tastes, or feels like.

4) Ambiguity. Visual illustrations leave less to the imagination, which gives the audience less opportunity to decide for themselves how things look.

5) Large blocks of time. Only text can describe large blocks of time. Even movies/television typically put words on the screen ("a few months later") to depict the passage of time.

6) (Un)usual behavior. Only text can state clearly that an event is commonplace, which can be helpful in establishing setting. ("Every night the same dream.") You can hint that something is unusual by showing characters acting surprised, but commonplace items are harder to show without telling. ("As you know, Bob...")

What are the strengths of parser input?

1) The feeling of creativity. When you type in a word not included in the text, and it works, you have the feeling of inventing the idea yourself. This is especially good when the word you typed is the solution to a puzzle; it inspires a feeling of owning the puzzle's solution.

2) The feeling of freedom. Sometimes, with very good parsers, you can make players feel like they could type anything and the game would understand it. This is certainly not literally true, but it can sometimes feel like it's true.

Overall, parser input is a particularly good fit for text adventures, games that give the player the freedom to explore a space while solving puzzles to advance the plot. The feeling of freedom makes exploration feel more fun, and the feeling of creativity makes solving puzzles more rewarding.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=30#p22291
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-05 22:47:30

I don't think it would be all that hard - i.e. you could do it all in I7 without any weird hacks or dynamic memory usage. But it would be a decent chunk of code. I think it would make for an interesting set of puzzles.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3136&start=0#p22292
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you think is IF's strong point?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-09-05 22:50:37

[quote="dfabulich"]There's really two features of IF that, I think, should be discussed separately: the input method (the parser) and the output method (no graphics).[/quote]
I think that there are also unique strengths that emerge from the combination of the two -- as an offhand example, the sense of play as conversation with the narrator. (You can get this from other media, but it's much easier to sustain in IF than in any static media I'm aware of.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3136&start=0#p22293
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you think is IF's strong point?
User: Kytaari / DateTime: 2011-09-05 22:59:38

Yes, I can see your point, especially about the parsers. As for the comparison of IF and graphic adventures being no different than novels and movies, I guess I never considered that, but it sounds reasonable. Yes, I think these were some really good responses, so thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=70#p22294
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-09-05 23:05:25

[quote="A0d_nl"]But imo. you should always be wary of getting your game in the 'adult' section. The quality in there is mostly not what you want to be shown next to. And somehow just plain old gore doesn't get you in there, A f@ck here and there will.[/quote]
If there is an 'adult' section on some store shelf for interactive fiction games, I really want to shop there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3127&start=0#p22295
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Dead Horses, and the beating thereof
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-09-05 23:53:51

[quote]Genres can't be dead horses, but plot devices can. And one in particular comes to mind: the protagonist has amnesia[/quote]

I think I once played a game which used that idea, but I've forgotten about it.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3125&start=0#p22296
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Interpreters and cover art
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-09-06 00:13:07

[quote]The recommendation to use square cover art is so that lists of games with cover art will look nice.[/quote]

My guess would be that it's more likely that people are just accustomed to a square format becauset that's what you need to fit a CD jewel case (and, before that, an LP cover).  Traditionally, a square format is considered not to be particularly attractive.  If you look at the paintings hanging on the wall of an art museum, you will find very few of them to be square.  Of the various film formats which have developed over the years for photography, only one is square, and photos which are shot in 6x6 are usually cropped to a rectangular format for their final use (unless that final use is an LP or CD cover).  I think there's a reason that, ever since the ancient Greeks, two-dimensional art is much more likely to take the shape of a rectangle which is pretty close to the "golden section," rather than a square.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3136&start=0#p22297
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you think is IF's strong point?
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-09-06 00:17:48

[quote="maga"][quote="dfabulich"]There's really two features of IF that, I think, should be discussed separately: the input method (the parser) and the output method (no graphics).[/quote]
I think that there are also unique strengths that emerge from the combination of the two -- as an offhand example, the sense of play as conversation with the narrator. (You can get this from other media, but it's much easier to sustain in IF than in any static media I'm aware of.)[/quote]

I find it odd that you'd mention "conversation with the narrator" as a good example of combining the parser with text-only gaming. In most games, IF and otherwise, authors use multiple-choice menus to sustain [i]dialogue[/i], where I say something and then you say something in reply.

When IF games don't use menus, they typically use a topic-based conversation system ("ask snow white about the queen") where I don't feel like I own lines of dialogue; I'm just directing the overall course of a conversation.

IMO, most IF authors agree that menus beat parsers for dialogue. Which is to say: sure, a good chatbot can be fun to play with, but it's so hard to write a good chatbot (in the context of an adventure game) that nobody does it; when they do, the chatbot becomes the centerpiece of the game.

But maybe I missed your point: it's not about conversations with NPCs, but conversations with the narrator? I dunno; in [i]Violet[/i], I didn't feel like I was in conversation with Violet; I was doing stuff in my office while Violet watched and kibitzed.

Maybe a bit in [i]Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy[/i], when the narrator resisted my commands? But "go south. go south. go south. go south" is not a very good conversation. [emote]:-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3139&start=0#p22298
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Getting a coloured word up into the status window
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-09-06 00:48:23

I know you can do this in glulx, since I saw it done for exits in Aotoeroa.

Glulx Status Window Control seems to be the extension to go to for this, but I can't get just a single word into a colour.

I have [wacky lights] as part of the status bar. I tried this:

[code]To say wacky lights:
	set the text colour of status window to g-pure-green;
	reconstruct the status window;
	say "GAH";
	set the text colour of status window to g-white;
	reconstruct the status window.[/code]

But the 'reconstruct the status window' lines blitz the status window with a flash of green, and when it comes back, it seems to have shrunk to 1 line and become blank.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2951&start=10#p22299
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parchment-transcript hosting
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-09-06 01:03:27

Seems to be working fine in IE9 on a local and remote install.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2481&start=0#p22300
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Crowther's 1976 Adventure ported to I7, with source
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2011-09-06 04:15:43

Bumping because David has let me know that the newest versions of these files are now available on the archive. The changes don't seem to have propagated to all of the mirrors yet, but the links to ifarchive.org proper in my first post still seem to work.

Changes mainly include some bug fixes and oversight corrections, largely thanks to a few testers of mine in the real world. Let me know if anyone finds any other problems!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=30#p22301
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-09-06 06:22:30

[quote="matt w"]And (maybe repeating myself here), forcing the player to type in every action that they would perform in real life does not aid immersion and even "realism," as we use that word in describing (read-only) fiction.[/quote]
...
[quote="matt w"]This isn't a passage that you'd see in any realistic novel. It's a lot more like something from Samuel Beckett's [i]Watt[/i] than from, say, Ann Beattie. It's just absurd and alienating to describe the process of getting a drink of water in such detail; a realistic writer would write something like "Matt got a drink of water" if she felt the need to note it at all.[/quote]
Sorry, I didn't mean to be ignoring your point; I just don't have much to say about it.  It's definitely a good point.  Not everything that happens in "real life" is relevant in any kind of storytelling, I'm sure.  I'm just not sure where the line should be drawn in IF.  I'm sure manipulating inventory may be irrelevant in many IF situations.  Maybe you guys are right that the solution is to simply ignore realistic inventory limits; I just wish I didn't have to see a list of twenty items when I type an "INVENTORY" command. [emote]:-([/emote]

I feel like there's got to be a better solution out there.  Has any text IF game actually implemented a "memory inventory" where the PC goes back and retrieves a remembered object if the player tries to use that object in a command when the PC isn't carrying right now?  Or is that system still purely hypothetical?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=40#p22302
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-06 07:42:23

[quote="Bainespal"] I'm just not sure where the line should be drawn in IF.  I'm sure manipulating inventory may be irrelevant in many IF situations.  Maybe you guys are right that the solution is to simply ignore realistic inventory limits; I just wish I didn't have to see a list of twenty items when I type an "INVENTORY" command. [emote]:-([/emote][/quote]

No, that's not a bad point either. Seeing a list of twenty items when you take inventory is also a little disruptive, if only because the list is so long that it draws attention to itself. Maybe the solution is not to have the characters be such kleptomaniacs? Peter said that he hopes the NPCs remark on EEAtheist's inventory piling, but you'd also expect them to remark on your picking up everything that wasn't nailed down. 

(I'm reminded of a point-and-click game -- I won't name it, for spoilery reasons -- where the last puzzle is a climactic fight with a big boss where you have to 

[spoiler]hit her with a bowl of peanut noodles you've been carrying around all game. Because she's allergic. (You know this because you've also been carrying around her epipen, which you use to save her.)[/spoiler]

That was a bit immersion-breaking, though the (considerable) appeal of that game was more in the art and the atmospherics than in the idea that the story made sense if you thought about it hard.)

Another thought is that simulation and immersion can be in tension. If the players have to deal with something that's realistically simulated, it draws a lot of their attention, and that can take them out of the flow of the story. "Realism" in fiction is more about the flow than the realistic simulation. This is just a longer version of zarf's point about using hassle for artistic effect.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=40#p22303
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-09-06 09:00:52

[quote="Bainespal"]
I feel like there's got to be a better solution out there.  Has any text IF game actually implemented a "memory inventory" where the PC goes back and retrieves a remembered object if the player tries to use that object in a command when the PC isn't carrying right now?  Or is that system still purely hypothetical?[/quote]

I experimented with one a bit, but it was seriously hefty and unbalanced, and didn't play well with other aspects of the game design.  I think it's definitely worth looking at for certain kinds of games, though.

(Spoiler for boring details)
[spoiler]Essentially, it was prone to routing the player back through like 40 rooms and 3 miles of game distance to get a widget, trooping back 40 rooms to use it, then back again 40 rooms to put it away, then back again 40 rooms to the original starting place.  Then the action required a macguffin, ironically next door to the widget, so it was 41 rooms to the macguffin . . .

This was sort of hilarious, but it was hard to get code that ironed the issue out, and I decided it wasn't worth it.  I'm still working on a sort of "clean up" command that replaces objects in their "homes", so if the player is carrying thirty things, they only have to type a single command to return their inventory to sensible, accessible places.  Combined with a "go to [room]" command, the functionality should be almost as good as an auto-grab, with far less silliness.[/spoiler]

I think it's worth considering if story-games really need the kinds of inventory we're talking about.  The fewer puzzles you have, the more you can get away with putting necessary items in the same room as their use, or eliminating the bulk of items in play.  So if you have a knight, the inventory might, by default, talk about your usual knightly gear, but not specify - you're never going to leave your sword behind on purpose, and if you need it, you have it.  Which would be different from "You are wearing your helmet, your armor, your halberk, your greaves, your gloves and your boots.  You are carrying a knife, a sword, a token from your lady, a shield, a shield cover, and your pack mule's lead rope.  On the pack mule is ..."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3136&start=0#p22304
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you think is IF's strong point?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-09-06 09:09:56

Yeah, I don't mean conversations with NPCs. What I meant is: the narrator of an IF game speaks in text, and you speak back in text. There is a sustained illusion -- one that is largely implicit, and only becomes really obvious in games that mess with it -- that you are speaking to the narrator, like the conversation between GM and player in an RPG.
[quote="dfabulich"]But "go south. go south. go south. go south" is not a very good conversation. [/quote]
Well, most Socratic dialogues aren't good conversations either, [i]qua[/i] conversation. Mostly the interlocutors just chip in at intervals while Socrates delivers his lecture. But their form is still fundamentally conversational, and this form gives them important qualities that they would not otherwise have.
[quote="dfabulich"]IMO, most IF authors agree that menus beat parsers for dialogue.[/quote]
I don't think that this is straightforwardly true; there's substantial disagreement on the subject. I think it really depends on the kind of dialogue. Menus tend to make conversation easy, free-flowing and directed; not all real-life conversations are like this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2135&start=10#p22305
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: You know you've played too much IF when...
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-09-06 10:07:54

You often type "l" or "look" into UNIX terminals when you actually mean "ls".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3139&start=0#p22306
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting a coloured word up into the status window
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-09-06 10:35:08

Actually, no-one has to solve this problem on my account now. I came up with a different arrangement I like of changing the whole status bar colour to whatever the player wants, and don't need the individual word anymore. However, feel free to solve the problem as a community service or for personal gratification purposes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=40#p22307
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-09-06 11:14:05

In Emily Short's [i]Bronze[/i], you do have an inventory which is what you are actually carrying, but you also have an "objects" command, which lists all of the objects you've encountered so far in the game (so, basically a memory inventory), and a "go to" which automatically navigates you back to any room or object you've seen.  This isn't a universally-applicable solution -- for one thing, it relies on the game being reasonably short and/or not very object-dense and not having timed puzzles, and for another, would not work well if doors were ever locked behind you -- but for that game, it works very well.  It basically removes all of the tedious mapping and inventory-juggling that games of its genre often require, and allows the player to focus on exploration and narrative.  It also makes perfect sense as far as mimesis goes, since most people don't have to strain to remember how to return to a room in a house that they've already seen, nor does anybody think very hard about just nipping over to the kitchen to grab a whatsit before using it on the thingamabob.  

In a similar sort of game, I'd love to see a "get [whatsit]" command that expands on this by automatically navigating to the whatsit, taking it, then returning to the location in which the command was issued.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=40#p22308
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-06 13:04:27

In my WIP, I've decided to put extreme limits on inventory because the PC is very clumsy. But there's also a very small number of takeable items, and a carryall object. And managing inventory is a central puzzle.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3140&start=0#p22309
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: EITHER Glulx for Android OR Chinese Room z-format
User: Jeff Zeitlin / DateTime: 2011-09-06 13:16:48

Can anyone point me to one or the other?  Googling hasn't been helpful, and I'd like to add Chinese Room to my collection of games on my tablet (I have Twisty installed).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=40#p22310
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-09-06 13:22:16

The idea of a system which allows you easily to return to where you dropped something and pick it up with a single command may work if the game involves a single geographically contiguous area, so that returning from whence you came is always possible.  Unfortunately, that's not a solution for the piece I'm currently working on.  In typical spy-story tradition, you start out in Headquarters where you get briefed on your mission and pick up all your cool gadgets.  Only then do you set forth into the world to complete the mission, and once you do so you can't come back to HQ until you've succeeded -- which means that you've got to take all your cool gadgets with you.  Of course, this structure also means that I don't have the player picking stuff up just "because it's there"; even though he hasn't yet figured out the precise use for each object, he has reason (beyond the mere fact that the objects exist on the game world) to believe that the gadgets will be needed in the performance of the mission, so it would be reasonable to take them.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=40#p22311
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-09-06 17:37:11

[quote]But if you really felt that you need to take an armful of objects from Place A to Place B, because you really believed you would need to use at least most of them in Place B, EEAtheist's model would be perfectly logical. Also, the IF player is perfectly free to chose to "just take the ones needed" if that's what he or she wants to do. Most real people in a real situation wouldn't choose to walk around everywhere with their arms loaded with miscellaneous things that they don't know if they are going to need, which is what happens in an IF game with no inventory limit.[/quote]

I don't see how EEAtheist's model changes this.  You still have (apparently) unlimited inventory; you still pick up everything and carry it from room to room.  Its only difference is that you put everything down when you enter a room.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3140&start=0#p22312
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: EITHER Glulx for Android OR Chinese Room z-format
User: George / DateTime: 2011-09-06 20:32:53

I don't think Twisty supports glulxe, so your best bet probably is quixe. Have you tried the 'play online' button from IFDB using your tablet?

<a class="postlink" href="http://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ifarchive.org%2Fif-archive%2Fgames%2Fcompetition2007%2Fglulx%2Fchineseroom%2FThe%2520Chinese%2520Room.ulx">http://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A%2F%2F ... 20Room.ulx</a>

eta: incidentally, IFDB works great as a permanent portal for an 'IF collection'. I can see the desire for a native app, and maybe speed is an issue on the tablet? I'm curious to know, as I've been holding off on getting a tablet for that reason.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3141&start=0#p22313
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: My Secret Hideout
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-06 22:12:52

I neglected posting here (being rather blogged out last night), and quite possible everybody who reads this has already seen it mentioned on twitter or google+ or my blog or Emily's blog or... etc. But just in case:

I have just released a textual bagatelle for iPad (and iPad 2, but not iPhone yet). It's not a game. It's a sort of generator of IF-like room descriptions, though. I hope you find it fun to play with.

<a class="postlink" href="http://zarfhome.com/hideout">http://zarfhome.com/hideout</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3142&start=0#p22314
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Adjective synonyms
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-09-06 22:34:20

Normally, Inform will automatically accept parts of a phrase as synonyms.  For instance, if Elvis Presley were in your game, it would accept "Elvis" or "Presley" as synonyms, without needing an "understand" statement.

However, I've got a situation where it won't do the same thing for adjectives: it won't accept anything except the entire name.

[code]Substance is a kind of value.  The substances are ale, ginger ale, and none.

Understand "empty" as none.

A container has a substance.  The substance of a container is usually none.

Definition: a container (called the current container) is unfilled rather than filled if the substance of the current container is none.

After printing the name of a container (called the current container):
	If the current container is filled: 
		say " of [substance]".
Understand the substance property as describing a container.
Understand "of" as a container.

Rule for printing room description details of a container:
	stop.
	
The Lab is a room.

A bottle is a kind of container.

In the lab is an ginger ale bottle.

Test me with "x ginger ale/x ale/x ginger".[/code]

An "understand" statement doesn't help because if you say "understand "ale" as ginger ale," then it won't understand "ale" as ale anymore--even if there is no ginger ale present.  (You can verify by changing the ginger ale bottle to an ale bottle.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=70#p22315
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: Beetle B. / DateTime: 2011-09-06 22:42:54

I must confess that the one thing kevinb said in this whole thread that I had independently wished for is the automatic generation of a map by the interpretor. It'll only list rooms you've been to. It's a bit tricky, in that it should know not to reveal hidden exits - nor exclude exits clearly visible but that are "blocked" for some reason...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3127&start=0#p22316
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Dead Horses, and the beating thereof
User: Beetle B. / DateTime: 2011-09-06 22:55:41

This was a fun read.

I'm one of those folks who have been thinking about writing a game on and off for over a decade (first attempt was via AGT in the 90's).

I was actually planning to learn TADS3 and write a simple, formulaic game soon - just as an excuse to get to know TADS3 before attempting more original works. I was thinking of flogging one of these two dead horses:

[list]
[*]A time traveller who goes and visits various scientists in history to collect relevant items for a museum in the future (e.g. fur from a cat Schrodinger owned, or a prism sitting on Newton's desk). For bonus points, the player would "inadvertently" provide hints to the scientists that would lead them to some discovery. Essentially a treasure hunt.[/*:m]
[*]A parody of graduate school. I'm not even sure about the plot - perhaps just getting through a day as a graduate student. Typical humor: Make fun of post-docs, of professor hierarchies, of crazy research, of teaching and dealing with students. I'm surprised university life was not listed here by anyone else (elsewhere on the web I've read it's a common "first game"). [/*:m][/list:u]

What's sad is that the first serious project I was contemplating after doing one of the above two would be one involving amnesia. You suddenly find yourself in a prison (or hospital with a uniformed officer outside who won't let you leave). You don't know how you got there. You escape somehow, and spend the rest of the game figuring it out. The "twist" would be that at some point in the game, depending on the player's actions, the code execution would branch off - one branch where you're innocent - the other where you're guilty. 

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that amnesia is a common theme - and the "twist" probably follows as a result...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3090&start=0#p22317
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: StackExchange Interactive Fiction Q&A site proposal
User: Beetle B. / DateTime: 2011-09-06 23:11:00

I think a StackExchange site would be great, and better than just this forum.

At least when it comes to programming related problems, Stack Overflow has been the most helpful resource in recent years. Especially for commonly asked questions/recipes.

Benefits over this forum:

[list]
[*]Easier to search and get the answer you're looking for. Also almost guaranteed to have the most up to date answer near the top.[/*:m]
[*]Much easier to categorize questions. For example, using tags, you can essentially have a forum for each authoring system, instead of one for TADS, one for Inform, and one for "all others". Have a conversation related question? You can limit your queries to it. NPC question? Search only for questions tagged with NPC.[/*:m][/list:u] 

I can't think of any downsides, other than that many users will now go to two sites: This forum for ordinary IF related discussions, and StackExchange for technical questions about authoring systems. However, for someone who really needs to ask authoring related questions, there's no doubt in my mind that StackExchange would be a better resource.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=70#p22318
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-09-07 04:19:10

[quote="Beetle B."]I must confess that the one thing kevinb said in this whole thread that I had independently wished for is the automatic generation of a map by the interpretor. It'll only list rooms you've been to. It's a bit tricky, in that it should know not to reveal hidden exits - nor exclude exits clearly visible but that are "blocked" for some reason...[/quote]Sounds like the ADRIFT map...  [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=70#p22319
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-09-07 04:52:41

Also, in Inform 7 there's an extension that'll easily accomplish it. I wish it were used more often...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=40#p22320
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-07 06:27:01

[quote="Robert Rothman"]you start out in Headquarters where you get briefed on your mission and pick up all your cool gadgets. [/quote]
In that case I wouldn't worry about inventory limits and holdalls at all (unless the gadgets are described as quite bulky)—surely these things are cool enough to be worn somewhere on your person and still be readily at hand whenever needed!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3142&start=0#p22321
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Adjective synonyms
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-07 06:42:07

[quote="katz"]Normally, Inform will automatically accept parts of a phrase as synonyms.  For instance, if Elvis Presley were in your game, it would accept "Elvis" or "Presley" as synonyms, without needing an "understand" statement.

However, I've got a situation where it won't do the same thing for adjectives: it won't accept anything except the entire name.

[code]Substance is a kind of value.  The substances are ale, ginger ale, and none.

Understand "empty" as none.

A container has a substance.  The substance of a container is usually none.

Definition: a container (called the current container) is unfilled rather than filled if the substance of the current container is none.

After printing the name of a container (called the current container):
	If the current container is filled: 
		say " of [substance]".
Understand the substance property as describing a container.
Understand "of" as a container.

Rule for printing room description details of a container:
	stop.
	
The Lab is a room.

A bottle is a kind of container.

In the lab is an ginger ale bottle.

Test me with "x ginger ale/x ale/x ginger".[/code]

An "understand" statement doesn't help because if you say "understand "ale" as ginger ale," then it won't understand "ale" as ale anymore--even if there is no ginger ale present.  (You can verify by changing the ginger ale bottle to an ale bottle.)[/quote]

You could write:

[code]Understand "ginger" as ginger ale.
Understand "ale" as ginger ale when the player can see a ginger ale container.[/code]

and then it'll understand "ale" as ale when no ginger ale is present. If both are present, though, it'll automatically default to understanding "ale" as the bottle of ginger ale even when both are present. You can work around that thus:

[code]Understand "ginger" as ginger ale.
Understand "ginger ale" as ginger ale. 
Understand "ale" as ginger ale when the player can see a ginger ale container and the player cannot see an ale container.[/code]

The second line seems to be necessary, or when both are present "x ginger ale" will give you an "I only understood you as far as..." message; it seems that "ginger" gets parsed as ginger ale and "ale" gets parsed as ale.

I'm not sure what the underlying mechanism is here (actually I'm a little surprised that "in the lab is an ginger ale bottle" is producing a bottle whose substance is ginger ale at all). And all this was just tested by dropping the code into your example, so I'm not sure how robust it is. -- Oh, and if bottles can be empty you should maybe include a way to refer to them as "empty bottle," to avoid annoying "Which do you mean, the bottle or the bottle of ale?" loops.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3127&start=10#p22322
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Dead Horses, and the beating thereof
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-09-07 07:23:22

[quote="Beetle B."]I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that amnesia is a common theme - and the "twist" probably follows as a result...[/quote]
The thing about clichés is that they usually become overused because they serve a useful purpose. Amnesia puts the player and the player character on equal footing in regards to how much they know about what's going on at the start of the game. Sure, there are other ways to do that, but few are as quick, convenient, and immediately understandable. If that's the best way to make your story work, I don't think you should scrap it just because some people might bitch about it being overused. Especially for a first game, it's better just to get [i]something[/i] written, and worry about originality later (if ever).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2922&start=0#p22323
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Flexible Windows by Jon Ingold
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2011-09-07 08:35:22

It's me, back again!

I finally got around to trying a fix for this Flexible Windows problem. I isolated the text in question and started fumbling with it. No problems seem to appear. Then when I return to the full text I get a full range of problems, depending upon where I place to line:

[quote]Include Flexible Windows by Jon Ingold[/quote].

Look at this sequence:

[quote]Include Glulx Text Effects by Emily Short.
Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short. 
Include Numbers by Krister Fundin.
Include Debugging by Al Golden.
Include Smarter Parser by Aaron Reed.
Include Basic Help Menu by Emily Short.
Include Case Management by Emily Short.
Include Complex Listing by Emily Short.
Include Glulx Entry Points by Emily Short.
Include Locksmith by Emily Short.
Include Rideable Vehicles by Graham Nelson.
Include Punctuation Removal by Emily Short.
Include Recorded Endings by Emily Short.
Include Multiple Exits by Mikael Segercrantz.
Include Glulx Image Centering by Emily Short.
Include Html Color Names For Glulx Text Effects by Erik Temple.
Include Conversation Package by Eric Eve.
Include Config File by Aaron Reed.
Include Metric Units by Graham Nelson.
Include Debugging by Al Golden.
Include Quip-Based Conversation by Michael Martin.
Include Numbers by Krister Fundin.
Include Far Away by Jon Ingold.
Include Secret Doors by Andrew Owen.
Include Permadeath by Victor Gijsbers.
Include Supplemental Actions by Al Golden.
Include Neutral Library Messages by Aaron Reed.
Include Unicode Character Names by Graham Nelson.
Include Disambiguation Control by Jon Ingold.
Include Underside by Eric Eve.
Include Bulk Limiter by Eric Eve.
[Include Consolidated Multiple Actions by John Clemens.]
Include Simple Followers by Emily Short.
[Include Flexible Windows by Jon Ingold.] [<--------------------------------][/quote]

Putting the last line anywhere in the stack will cause a large number of errors to be displayed (some internal to the extension and some external). Yet, when I extract the stack to a virgin project (name, room, and stack) I get no errors. So, I guess I'm asking if anybody has ever had a similar problem and what is the true solution?  [emote]:?[/emote]

Greg The Elder.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3143&start=0#p22324
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: does the player mean consulting it about
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2011-09-07 11:33:39

[code]The reference section is a room.
A book stand is a supporter.  The huge encyclopedia is a thing.  It is on the book stand.  The book stand is in the reference section.  Understand "encyclopaedia" as the encyclopedia.  Understand "book" as the encyclopedia.
Does the player mean doing something to the book stand:
	It is unlikely.
Does the player mean doing something to the encyclopedia:
	It is likely.
Does the player mean consulting the encyclopedia about:
	It is very likely.
Does the player mean consulting the book stand about:
	It is very unlikely.
Test me with "consult book about foo / x book"[/code]

When the player types CONSULT BOOK ABOUT FOO, none of these rules fire and the game defaults to the stand, which is silly.  When the player types X BOOK or similar, the first 2 ensure that it is the encyclopedia.  What am I missing?  How can I make it so that CONSULT BOOK ABOUT FOO is understood as the encyclopedia and not the stand?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3143&start=0#p22325
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: does the player mean consulting it about
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-09-07 11:53:22

I didn't check this, but I believe you need to put something after the "about" in "consulting the encyclopedia about."  If you don't have any preferences there, you can literally just use "something":
[code]Does the player mean consulting the encyclopedia about something:
   It is very likely.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3143&start=0#p22326
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: does the player mean consulting it about
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2011-09-07 11:58:18

Sorry, that's not it.  I took out the "something" because it didn't work, and then I ran out of ideas.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3143&start=0#p22327
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: does the player mean consulting it about
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-09-07 12:04:56

Ah, sorry, I just checked, and it needs to be "some text" after the about.  I found this by looking up "consulting it about" in the Actions tab of the Index.

Edit: ...except that doesn't work either.  Hrmmm.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3143&start=0#p22329
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: does the player mean consulting it about
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2011-09-07 12:07:30

Also untested, and also just stabbing in the dark, but what about "some topic" instead of "something"? Or, if that doesn't work, "some text"? Or maybe there's different syntax, but with the idea that you're not consulting about things but about text. "Consulting it about is an action applying to one thing and one topic."

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3143&start=0#p22330
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: does the player mean consulting it about
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2011-09-07 12:31:33

"some topic" doesn't work and we already tried "some text".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3143&start=0#p22331
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: does the player mean consulting it about
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-09-07 12:33:20

Try "the topic understood" -- this will match the topic already recorded by the understand line, whatever that may have been.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3143&start=0#p22332
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: does the player mean consulting it about
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2011-09-07 12:57:45

"topic understood" doesn't work.  Also, when I tried it with "rules all", it didn't even look at the "does the player mean" rules.  OTOH the "x book" did look at the rules in question.  Is this a bug in Inform?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3134&start=0#p22333
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Glulx, fixed letter spacing, gargoyle, and 'fi'
User: cas / DateTime: 2011-09-07 13:19:14

Have you tried with another monospace font?  I had the same issue a while back, and I dug into the garglk source to find out what was happening.  It turned out that garglk was fine; it does not use ligatures with monospace fonts.  However, my font (which was intended to be monospace) reported itself as proportional, which of course garglk believed.

I can't remember which font I was using, although I'm pretty sure it was DejaVu or Liberation.  I'm currently using Liberation, but I might have changed it fairly recently.  At any rate, the current version of whichever font it was has the fixed-width flag set properly, because I do remember it being fixed.

Edit: Just noticed you haven't changed the config file, which means you haven't changed the font.  I'd recommend giving that a try, using something like Courier New as the font.  I'd be willing to bet that the font you have (and I'm not sure if Windows Gargoyle 2010.1 uses an included font) is buggy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3134&start=0#p22334
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Glulx, fixed letter spacing, gargoyle, and 'fi'
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-09-07 13:52:18

Good catch, it looks like Liberation Mono was incorrectly marked as a proportional font in its 1.02 release. I've merged [url=https://fedorahosted.org/liberation-fonts/]1.07[/url] into trunk and the font seems to work properly now.

I need to figure out how to get the installer to replace an installed font. The current NSIS script only installs the font files if they are not already present.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=40#p22335
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-09-07 14:19:36

That scenario puts you in a pretty good position, actually! If the text for picking up each gadget describes how you click it onto your belt, or slip it up your sleeve, or hide it in the sole of your shoe, then the player's unnatural lust for realism will be sated, and you'll instill in that lustful player the belief that "this protagonist can carry whatever needs carrying!"—so that later on, when the protagonist needs to schlep a stepladder and a monkey skeleton around for the purposes of the mission, the player won't think twice.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3143&start=0#p22336
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: does the player mean consulting it about
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-07 14:21:36

Inform doesn't see any need to disambiguate between the 'book stand' and the 'huge encyclopedia', since their internal names are perfectly distinct. (The understand assertion doesn't change that.) Therefore, the does the player mean rules are not considered.

Adding "book" to the name of the huge encyclopedia ("the huge encyclopedia book") means that the disambiguation machinery starts running. 

However, that gives rise to another weird behaviour: the last word in the command "consult book about foo" influences the parser's interpretation of "book". 

Even after putting "book" into the name of the encyclopedia, the parser will choose the book stand if the player types "consult book about foo" but the encyclopedia if the player types "consult book about huge"!

[code]The reference section is a room.

A book stand is a supporter.  The huge encyclopedia book is a thing.  It is on the book stand.  The book stand is in the reference section. The printed name of the huge encyclopedia book is "huge encyclopedia". Understand "encyclopaedia" as the encyclopedia. 

Does the player mean doing something to the book stand:
	It is unlikely.

Does the player mean doing something to the encyclopedia:
	It is likely.

Does the player mean consulting the encyclopedia about the topic understood:
	It is very likely.

Does the player mean consulting the book stand about the topic understood:
	It is very unlikely.

Test me with "consult encyclopedia about foo / consult book about foo / consult book about huge / x book / x encyclopedia".
[/code]

EDIT: Strangely enough the parser seems to choose the encyclopedia before the book stand as soon as one tries to "consult book about" something in scope ...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3103&start=40#p22337
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Carrying Stuff
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-09-07 14:33:07

Indeed, the "lock and load montage" is one of the few cases where, regardless of medium, the character is specifically shown taking every individual object.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3143&start=0#p22338
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: does the player mean consulting it about
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2011-09-07 14:42:03

Hmm, my game is inventoryless anyway, so maybe I should just have one object instead of 3 (the book stand, the encyclopedia, and an irrelevant object that's part of the stand).  But then parsing becomes a nightmare... Maybe I should just not call it a "book stand" in the first place (the word "stand" was already in use elsewhere, but I can just make it privately-named).

OK, I tested calling it a "book-stand" and then giving it the printed name "stand" and that worked.  It's close enough to what I wanted.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3144&start=0#p22339
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Testers sought for 'Spiral'
User: Kivie / DateTime: 2011-09-07 14:56:19

Hello - I'm still looking for more testers!

I'd like to appeal for beta testers for my short psychological horror/surrealist text adventure [i]Spiral[/i], which I would very much like to enter into IFComp. This may not be possible, unfortuantely, because there is still some work to do and only until the end of the month to do it. If you'd like to test it, I won't be able to send you the game for another few days, possibly a week, and then there is a tight schedule [i]if[/i] we want to meet the deadline (I'm going to have to see how it goes). I don't want other people to feel pressured, though, so please e-mail or PM me with your interest regardless of how much time you might have this month.

I look forward to hearing from you!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3143&start=10#p22340
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: does the player mean consulting it about
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-07 18:23:52

[quote="Felix"]Inform doesn't see any need to disambiguate between the 'book stand' and the 'huge encyclopedia', since their internal names are perfectly distinct. (The understand assertion doesn't change that.) Therefore, the does the player mean rules are not considered.[/quote]

This is ridiculous. I suppose I should file a feature suggestion. Is it documented, though?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2922&start=0#p22341
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Flexible Windows by Jon Ingold
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2011-09-07 22:21:00

[quote="wgm003"]It's me, back again!

I finally got around to trying a fix for this Flexible Windows problem. I isolated the text in question and started fumbling with it. No problems seem to appear. Then when I return to the full text I get a full range of problems, depending upon where I place to line:

[quote]Include Flexible Windows by Jon Ingold[/quote].

Look at this sequence:

[quote]Include Glulx Text Effects by Emily Short.
Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short. 
Include Numbers by Krister Fundin.
Include Debugging by Al Golden.
Include Smarter Parser by Aaron Reed.
Include Basic Help Menu by Emily Short.
Include Case Management by Emily Short.
Include Complex Listing by Emily Short.
Include Glulx Entry Points by Emily Short.
Include Locksmith by Emily Short.
Include Rideable Vehicles by Graham Nelson.
Include Punctuation Removal by Emily Short.
Include Recorded Endings by Emily Short.
Include Multiple Exits by Mikael Segercrantz.
Include Glulx Image Centering by Emily Short.
Include Html Color Names For Glulx Text Effects by Erik Temple.
Include Conversation Package by Eric Eve.
Include Config File by Aaron Reed.
Include Metric Units by Graham Nelson.
Include Debugging by Al Golden.
Include Quip-Based Conversation by Michael Martin.
Include Numbers by Krister Fundin.
Include Far Away by Jon Ingold.
Include Secret Doors by Andrew Owen.
Include Permadeath by Victor Gijsbers.
Include Supplemental Actions by Al Golden.
Include Neutral Library Messages by Aaron Reed.
Include Unicode Character Names by Graham Nelson.
Include Disambiguation Control by Jon Ingold.
Include Underside by Eric Eve.
Include Bulk Limiter by Eric Eve.
[Include Consolidated Multiple Actions by John Clemens.]
Include Simple Followers by Emily Short.
[Include Flexible Windows by Jon Ingold.] [<--------------------------------][/quote]

Putting the last line anywhere in the stack will cause a large number of errors to be displayed (some internal to the extension and some external). Yet, when I extract the stack to a virgin project (name, room, and stack) I get no errors. So, I guess I'm asking if anybody has ever had a similar problem and what is the true solution?  [emote]:?[/emote]

Greg The Elder.[/quote]

Wow, and I thought I used a lot of extensions in [i]Aotearoa[/i]!  Just curious -- what's your approximate ratio of actual story code to code that modifies and integrates your extensions?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=80#p22342
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: Beetle B. / DateTime: 2011-09-07 22:27:52

I didn't know about these, and it looks like I won't use them in the near future (learning/playing with TADS3 these days).

However, the request was that the interpretor handle it - not the author...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3113&start=10#p22343
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Participate in the Interactive Fiction Top 50!
User: Duncan Stevens / DateTime: 2011-09-07 23:02:24

I'll play! Thanks, Victor, for getting this started.

Caveat: my IF involvement has been minimal for the past several years, so this is going to be heavily weighted toward older games. (In particular, I suspect, from what I've read, that Blue Lacuna, Chancellor, Make it Good, Everybody Dies, Cryptozookeeper, Deadline Enchanter, Distress, King of Shreds and Patches, Alabaster, First Things First, and Floatpoint would at least be strong candidates for this list, had I played them. And I have no good excuse for never having finished Bad Machine.) Hopefully that will be balanced out by newbies who never got around to playing older stuff.

My 20, in roughly this order:

1. Spider and Web. Not much to add to what's been said above, and elsewhere. The single best marriage of puzzle and story to date, in my view. and while the central device has been used in static fiction, its effect is magnified by interactivity.
2. Trinity. Strong puzzles, engaging story, and one particular moment that (arguably) introduced the idea of the player's complicity in the plot.
3. Varicella. Viciously difficult, but well worth the many playthroughs it takes to finish. Perhaps the most fitting ending in all of IF.
4. Spellbreaker. Evocative mood, difficult-but-fair puzzles.
5. Anchorhead. Mood builds gradually, and the writing is appropriately restrained; the puzzles are designed in a way that, for the most part, draws out the plot but doesn't bring it to a halt. (The endgame, with some tight timing required, is an exception, but not egregiously so.) Well-designed storytelling that can be enjoyed even by those who don't care for Lovecraft.
6. So Far. More a mood piece than a narrative, but the mood is effectively done, and the puzzles, while sometimes cruel, are worth noodling over.
7. Zork III. The best puzzles of the trilogy (setting aside the timed event that makes the game unforeseeably unwinnable), the most consistently done atmosphere, and a sly subversion of the treasure hunt.
8. Worlds Apart. My memories of this one have grown slightly fuzzy, I confess, but I do remember extraordinarily deep worldbuilding, several well-drawn characters, and puzzles that serve rather than impede the plot.
9. Slouching Toward Bedlam. Not sure moral choice in IF has been done better.
10. Metamorphoses. Notable for the depth of its implementation--in particular, there are devices that can transmute objects into different substances, and the game does a remarkable job of accommodating all the possibilities--and for the indirect way the story is told.
11. Losing Your Grip. It may not be the only IF game that centers on exploration of the protagonist's own mind, but it's the only one I know of that's done it well. Not perfectly--I've never managed to make sense of some of it--but on the whole it rewards close analysis.
12. Augmented Fourth. Somewhat underdiscussed on the IF scene, this one deserves to be better-known; it's a witty sendup of/homage to the fantasy genre with not-too-hard puzzles and some genuinely hilarious prose. The opening scene, where the narrator is being tossed into a pit and mocked by some not-too-bright guards, is particularly good.
13. Lost Pig. The every-response-is-implemented game par excellence, and many, many laugh-out-loud moments.
14. Sunset Over Savannah. Another mood piece, beautifully written, with difficult but well-hinted puzzles.
15. Shadow in the Cathedral. Linear, but takes advantages of the strength of linearity--a strong sense that the puzzle-solving is driving the plot--without making the player feel railroaded. Well-told story, with some very good puzzles and some nice tense moments.
16. Wishbringer. The first, to my knowledge, and the best IF game to deploy the nightmare-version-of-familiar-landscape approach. Lots of multiple-solution puzzles at a time when that wasn't common. The puzzles are kid-oriented, but there's plenty of sly humor.
17. Jigsaw. Some of the puzzles are, in my view, flat-out unfair. But many are just right, and the scope and thoroughness of the thing keeps this among my faves.
18. Small World. Another mostly forgotten game, this one from the 1996 competition. Clever, tricky-but-logical puzzles, and a very funny NPC.
19. Shade. Some touchy event triggers, but still the best mess-with-your-head IF I can think of.
20. Infidel. Lots of clever mechanical puzzles, and an ending that left me slackjawed.

Honorable mentions: Savoir Faire, Christminster, Delusions, Enchanter, City of Secrets, All Things Devours, Not Just an Ordinary Ballerina, Mulldoon Legacy, Dreamhold, Curses, A Mind Forever Voyaging, Galatea, Hunter, in Darkness, Change in the Weather, Suspended, Bronze, The Gostak, Ad Verbum, Moonlit Tower, Fear, Till Death Makes a Monk-Fish Out of Me!, Babel, Zero Sum Game, Janitor, Lurking Horror, Rameses, Rematch, Little Blue Men, Plundered Hearts, For a Change, A Day for Soft Food, A Bear's Night Out, Goose, Egg, Badger, Blighted Isle, Kissing the Buddha's Feet, Lydia's Heart, Violet, Maiden of the Moonlight, Ballyhoo, Djinni Chronicles, Inevitable, LASH, Pytho's Mask, The Weapon, Insight, All Hope Abandon, The Edifice, Scavenger, Heroes, Child's Play

* * *

Victor asked for a list of favorites, but I wonder if there's value in considering what IF we think is objectively the "best," rather than our subjective faves. My view, for what it's worth, is that IF is usually "best" when it most successfully merges story and puzzle, as this medium can do that better than any other. I.e., puzzles that are fully motivated by the plot and organic to the story, not set pieces or "say, here's a locked door, I will stop at nothing to unlock it" types--and advance the narrative rather than putting it on hold. Vividly drawn characters and settings are important too, but a novel can, I think, convey those just as well as IF can. (Admittedly, interactivity makes a difference in how one *experiences* characters and settings, but I don't think we're at the point where IF can clearly depict either *better* than static fiction can.)

Of course, the quality of the story matters too; a flawless game about going to the mailbox wouldn't make my list. Telling a story that matters is important--and the way it's told is just as important. The other way this medium improves on static fiction is finding ways to make the player's role in driving the story give it additional power--complicity, in other words--and games that effectively use IF's unique storytelling force should also be considered among the "best." Relatively few games make much of this, but those that do are, in my view, particularly noteworthy.

For myself, I'd put most of my 20 faves above among the "best" in this sense as well, but not all. As fond as I am of Spellbreaker, for example, I can't dispute that the plot is mostly absent, and it doesn't motivate the puzzle-solving except in the most general sense. Trinity is better in that regard, but still has long stretches where there's no obvious connection between the puzzle-solving and your ultimate goal. Smaller, more focused games like Child's Play, Delusions, Djinni Chronicles, and Change in the Weather integrate the puzzles and story much more tightly. And while Trinity has a "complicity" moment, it's just one moment; other games like Heroes and Bad Machine have done more with that idea.

(Sadly, I lack the time to replay all of my faves to reassess how successful they are on these metrics; I remember what I enjoyed about them, but not necessarily how well they motivate their puzzle-solving, say.)

Or am I just overthinking this?

--Duncan

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3145&start=0#p22344
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: How Do You Selectively Hide Undescribed Objects and Doors?
User: cooper / DateTime: 2011-09-08 01:20:05

I am creating a game where I want to hide some of Inform's automatic descriptions of objects and doors, but I can't find out how. Basically I don't want the "You can see a wooden door here" kind of messages to exist. Can anyone help me with this? Here is a piece of my code.

[code]The Hallway is a room. "There is a door and a box here."

The wooden door is a closed, locked door. The wooden door is west of the Vault and east of the Hallway.[/code]

I would really appreciate any help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3142&start=0#p22345
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Adjective synonyms
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-09-08 01:47:42

Earlier "understand" statements also keep later ones from functioning (so if you have ginger ale and ginger beer with "understand 'ginger'" for both, only the first one will be recognized).  It appears there's no way to make a disambiguation message come up; whichever way you handle it, you're simply establishing a hierarchy of understanding.

(And yes, I have code for empty bottles; I was just keeping the example concise.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3145&start=0#p22346
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How Do You Selectively Hide Undescribed Objects and Door
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-09-08 01:49:33

"It is scenery" will do it for you if you also want the objects to be fixed in place, like the door (see chapter 3.8).  It's a speck more complicated if you want to hide the descriptions of portable objects.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=230#p22347
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: ultimate / DateTime: 2011-09-08 05:07:04

My username is ultimate (no pun intended!) and I'm new to this forum. Some of you may already have me on their radar.  [emote];)[/emote] 

I like to prank people, like the guys from [url=http://www.youtube.com/fridaynightcranks]FridayNightCranks[/url] do, but I don't do pranks on the phone but on internet forums and communities. Check'em out. They are really funny!  [emote]:D[/emote] 

A friend of mine, who is a fan of interactive fiction, told me I should use my pranking skills to try to prank intfiction.org with some unusual posts without being called a "troll". It turns out I failed. This community is really hard to prank with.

Just wanted to inform (no pun intended!) you, so you don't wonder what my past posts were all about.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2978&start=80#p22348
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Some general ill-informed questions about IF directions
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-09-08 07:29:58

[quote="Beetle B."]However, the request was that the interpretor handle it - not the author...[/quote]Well... ADRIFT 4 does that.  But in practice it doesn't work very well as people can so easily create layouts that aren't logically structured, and so the automapper can end up getting confused.  Giving control to the author is in my opinion, a much better strategy.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3146&start=0#p22349
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: Two short swords (currently equipped)
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-09-08 08:01:42

Long story short, I've got some weapons, right? I have it set up so that the player can equip/unequip them, and only have one equipped at a time. This all worked well, and I ironed out all the bugs in only a few hours, until yesterday I decided to implement two indistinguishable swords. Now this happens:

[quote]
>take all from cart
short sword: Removed.
short sword: Removed.
battle axe: Removed.
shillelagh: Removed.
wooden buckler: Removed.

>i
I'm carrying:
  a wooden buckler
  four weapons:
    a shillelagh
    a battle axe
    two short swords

>equip short sword
I equip the short sword.

>i
I'm carrying:
  a wooden buckler
  four weapons:
    a shillelagh
    a battle axe
    two short swords (currently equipped)

>:[
That's not a verb I recognise.
[/quote]

Obviously, only one of the swords is actually equipped. I just don't know how to make the game break the two swords up into two seperate objects, one (currently equipped) and one not. The code relevent to the weapon class is below:

[code]
Class	Weapon
  with	name
	  'weapon',
	list_together WEAPON_GROUP,
	invent [;
	  if (inventory_stage == 2) {
	    if (self has equipped) print " (currently equipped)";
	  }
	],
	each_turn [;
	  if (CurrentWeapon ~= self) give self ~equipped;
	  if (self has equipped) CurrentWeapon = self;
	  StartDaemon(self);
	],
	before [;
	  Equip:      
	  if (self hasnt equipped) {
	    if ((CurrentWeapon ~= 0) && (CurrentWeapon ~= self)) {
	      print "(first unequipping "; print (the) CurrentWeapon; print ")^";
	      give self equipped;
	      CurrentWeapon = self;
	    }
	    else {
	      give self equipped;
	      CurrentWeapon = self;
	    }
	    print
	    "I equip "; print (the) self; print ".^"; return true;
	  }
	  else {
	    print
	    (The) self; print " is already equipped.^"; return true;
	  }
	],
	after [;
	  Drop:
	  if (self has equipped) {
	    give self ~equipped;
	    CurrentWeapon = 0;
	    print
	    "(first unequipping "; print (the) self; print ")^";
	  }
	];
[/code]
(Note: the rules for unequipping are in the Unequip subroutine, but I didn't think it'd be necessary to include those.) And here's the class definition for the swords:

[code]
Class	ShortSword
  class Weapon,
  with  name
	  'short' 'sword' 'swords//p',
	short_name "short sword",
	plural "short swords",
	description
	  "A pretty average short-sword, showing a few signs of wear and tear. They roll thousands of these things out every year for use by royal guards, soldiers,
	  mercenaries, and the like.",
   has  sharp_weapon;
[/code]

So yeah, help with this would be quite appreciated.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3146&start=0#p22350
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Two short swords (currently equipped)
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-09-08 09:06:28

It's because of the list_together.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3146&start=0#p22351
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Two short swords (currently equipped)
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-08 09:08:07

If the swords were worn or lit, the list-writer would not consider them indistinguishable. The routine that checks for this is ListEqual (in the verblibm.h library); it looks as if you could easily make it check for the equipped property as well.
[code]
[ ListEqual o1 o2;
    if (child(o1) ~= 0 && WillRecurs(o1) ~= 0) rfalse;
    if (child(o2) ~= 0 && WillRecurs(o2) ~= 0) rfalse;
    if (c_style & (FULLINV_BIT + PARTINV_BIT) ~= 0) {
        if ((o1 hasnt worn && o2 has worn) || (o2 hasnt worn && o1 has worn)) rfalse;
        if ((o1 hasnt light && o2 has light) || (o2 hasnt light && o1 has light)) rfalse;
!#        if ((o1 hasnt equipped && o2 has equipped) || (o2 hasnt equipped && o1 has equipped)) rfalse; !#
        if (o1 has container) {
            if (o2 hasnt container) rfalse;
            if ((o1 has open && o2 hasnt open) || (o2 has open && o1 hasnt open))
                rfalse;
        }
        else if (o2 has container)
            rfalse;
    }
    return Identical(o1, o2);
];
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3143&start=10#p22352
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: does the player mean consulting it about
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2011-09-08 09:42:02

[quote="matt w"][quote="Felix"]Inform doesn't see any need to disambiguate between the 'book stand' and the 'huge encyclopedia', since their internal names are perfectly distinct. (The understand assertion doesn't change that.) Therefore, the does the player mean rules are not considered.[/quote]

This is ridiculous. I suppose I should file a feature suggestion. Is it documented, though?[/quote]

In addition to being ridiculous, it's wrong: Inform does consult those rules when examining, it just fails to do so when consulting it about.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3145&start=0#p22353
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How Do You Selectively Hide Undescribed Objects and Door
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2011-09-08 09:43:20

I [b]think[/b] I remember reading somewhere that you can mark scenery as "portable", but I'm not sure if it works.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3145&start=0#p22354
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How Do You Selectively Hide Undescribed Objects and Door
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-09-08 09:59:56

[quote]I think I remember reading somewhere that you can mark scenery as "portable", but I'm not sure if it works.
[/quote]

I believe this is correct -- I'm pretty sure scenery is defined as "usually" fixed in place, so that property can be overridden.  However, rather than going through the two steps of declaring something to be scenery and then declaring it to be portable, can't you just use the single "undescribed" property to get where you want?

Of course, in the case of a door, just using the "scenery" property would usually be enough; I imagine it would not be too often that you would want a door to be portable (although one could imagine a Lewis Carroll-type of world where you could carry around a door, set it down somewhere else and create a means of effectively teleporting yourself somewhere).


Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3145&start=0#p22355
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How Do You Selectively Hide Undescribed Objects and Door
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-08 10:07:30

[quote="Robert Rothman"]Of course, in the case of a door, just using the "scenery" property would usually be enough; I imagine it would not be too often that you would want a door to be portable (although one could imagine a Lewis Carroll-type of world where you could carry around a door, set it down somewhere else and create a means of effectively teleporting yourself somewhere).[/quote]

Doors are defined in the Standard Rules as "always fixed in place," so you can't set a door to be portable. Also, you can't  move doors in play (I once wrote a bit of code that remapped the exits of a door, and it threw a run-time error), so I suspect that picking up a door would cause trouble even if you rewrote that bit of the Standard Rules. Some more complicated coding would be called on to make a Lewis Carroll-type of door.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3145&start=0#p22356
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How Do You Selectively Hide Undescribed Objects and Door
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-09-08 10:15:48

[quote]Some more complicated coding would be called on to make a Lewis Carroll-type of door.
[/quote]

Maybe the way to do it would be not  to use an "official"  door at all, just an enterable container (which is described as a door), combined with an "instead" rule which moves the player to a specified location when he tries to enter the container.  If you wanted to make it two-way, you would also move the container itself to the new location (and reverse the "destination").

Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3145&start=0#p22357
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How Do You Selectively Hide Undescribed Objects and Door
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-08 10:34:21

[quote="Robert Rothman"][quote]Some more complicated coding would be called on to make a Lewis Carroll-type of door.
[/quote]

Maybe the way to do it would be not  to use an "official"  door at all, just an enterable container (which is described as a door), combined with an "instead" rule which moves the player to a specified location when he tries to enter the container.  If you wanted to make it two-way, you would also move the container itself to the new location (and reverse the "destination").

Robert Rothman[/quote]

Yeah, that's what I meant by "more complicated coding"; I don't even like to think of what it would take to make an "official" door behave this way. 

I don't know if you remember/were here for Foxaroo's "TARDIS Adrift" thread, but that's where this problem came up. [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=16182#p16182]My solution[/url] was a lot like what you say; Scott Hammack came up with a [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=16185#p16185]much nicer solution[/url] that simply implemented the TARDIS as an enterable container.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3143&start=10#p22358
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: does the player mean consulting it about
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-08 10:48:21

[quote="NYKevin"]In addition to being ridiculous, it's wrong[/quote]
Oops! Sorry, about that.  [emote]:oops:[/emote]  
Then my best guess about what's happening is that something weird is going on.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3147&start=0#p22359
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform: more popular than Clojure!
User: Neurosion / DateTime: 2011-09-08 11:52:11

I've poked around the [url=http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html]Tiobe Programming Community Index[/url] from time to time, but had never noticed that Inform is among the languages that they track.  As of August 2011, Inform is solidly in the middle of the pack.  While they don't publish the precise ranking for languages ranked lower than 50, they do list Inform as falling somewhere in the range 51-100 (out of roughly 150 languages tracked).  That puts it in some pretty good company (including Smalltalk, which was the first programming language I ever studied).

I think that's pretty cool.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3148&start=0#p22360
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Web links
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-09-08 12:44:45

It's hardly worth asking, but there's no way to link to something on the web from inside an Inform game, is there?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3148&start=0#p22361
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Web links
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-09-08 13:50:54

I don't think it's possible in any of the offline interpreters. Hacking Parchment to display web links is discussed in [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3070#p21677]this thread[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3092&start=0#p22362
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Looking for testers for The Underland!
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-09-08 14:59:18

What system is it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3113&start=10#p22363
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Participate in the Interactive Fiction Top 50!
User: joningold / DateTime: 2011-09-08 15:25:38

Nice to take a trip down nostalgia avenue... I wonder if I can get these into order? No, probably not.

1.  Curses - While I don't think I would ever really recommend this to anyone else, I had such an enjoyable time playing it that it has to be top of my list. I don't think anyone has topped Graham here for his ability to turn interactivity into a conversation between player and game, with the successful solver providing the punch-line to so many jokes and having so many moments of real, intuitive insight. The puzzle of the romantic poetry book and the hedge maze are gems, that no-one would be allowed to get away with in the "real" world of games. Magnificent.

2. So Far - Plotkin has always had a wizard-like ability to turn code into world; so that even though So Far is brutally difficult and so easy to break, it never feels inert. From the (unnecessary?) pole-licking to the monster-fight in the arena, So Far felt like a living breathing world in which I was the ghost, drifting from place to place. And the ending of this was alive. Wonderful -- but again, very hard, and very hard to truly recommend!

3. The Witness - Of all the Infocom games, this one was my favourite, because I actually found clues, I actually followed them up, formed hypotheses and eventually cracked the case. It took a lot of replay and a fair amount of luck, and when I played Deadline later I found it impossible, unforgiving, and over-wrought. But The Witness seemed just right to me - simple enough to be accessible, responsive enough to provide a narrative. A great game.

4. Rimworld - (I think was the name.) In the early days of the internet, a few text adventures floated around, that have been largely lost. This one was a standard collection of plastic-purple-squares and plastic-purple-slots, but back when I played it, there were no walkthroughs, no forums, and no authors emails; so I wandered, alone and without help, through an empty alien world, and every discovery was my own. Games will never feel like that again.

5. Ribbons - one of the Art Show pieces, full of connections that might or might not be meaningful. This one was great for me because it made me realise, finally, that interactivity is what happens inside the player's head, and that what happens in the game-code to enable this interactivity is merely academic.

6. Shrapnel - bonkers, devastating, and Cadre at the height of his powers, creating a seamless experience bristling with meaning and consequence. This game for me marked the absolute heyday of the indie community; when games were quick, dirty, but wickedly effective.

7. Spider and Web - this almost doesn't feature because, in truth, I didn't enjoy playing one little bit. But the twist was fantastic, and the conversation system instructive, inspiring and, oh, yeah, really cool.

8. Lost Pig - Lost Pig was great. 

9. LASH - I like all of Paul's work, but this one felt the most solidly built and meaningfully executed.

10. The Weapon - great sci-fi story, with a tight design and great pacing. 

11. Starcross - a masterpiece of puzzle design on a budget.

12. Christminister - this one seems to get forgotten about, but looking back I feel like Rees' invented an entire genre of pacing here: the game is so graceful in ensuring that your scope is always small enough to be playable, but your involvement just gets deeper and deeper. I like to think of The Shadow in the Cathedral as something of a design homage.

13. Plundered Hearts - while not as tightly designed as some of its successors, PH managed to tell a real story and not let its puzzles get in the way, and that was a novelty in the Infocom games. And it was a great romp.

Honourable mentions: Deep Space Drifter, Leather Goddesses of Phobos, The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, 9:05, Dangerous Curves, Slouching Towards Bedlam.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3140&start=0#p22364
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: EITHER Glulx for Android OR Chinese Room z-format
User: Jeff Zeitlin / DateTime: 2011-09-08 15:49:16

[quote="George"]I don't think Twisty supports glulxe, so your best bet probably is quixe. Have you tried the 'play online' button from IFDB using your tablet?

<a class="postlink" href="http://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ifarchive.org%2Fif-archive%2Fgames%2Fcompetition2007%2Fglulx%2Fchineseroom%2FThe%2520Chinese%2520Room.ulx">http://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A%2F%2F ... 20Room.ulx</a>

eta: incidentally, IFDB works great as a permanent portal for an 'IF collection'. I can see the desire for a native app, and maybe speed is an issue on the tablet? I'm curious to know, as I've been holding off on getting a tablet for that reason.[/quote]

In this case, it's more like "This isn't a 'real' tablet; it's a Nook Color with N2A's CM7 card, and thus if there's no wifi that I have the password to available, there's no on-line, so playing using the 'play online' button at IFDB is not an option.".  Sadly, the same issue seems to apply to quixe; the browsers on the N2A card seem not to access local files (and quixe is js-in-browser, so if no browser, no quixe).  Supposedly, Glulx support for twisty is an 'accepted' enhancement, but not likely for 2.0 (which is ostensibly being worked on) - and there's no timetable for 2.0 to be released, so I'm stuck with what I have.  (Thus the request for a possible .z# version.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3149&start=0#p22365
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Beta testers for The House of Fear
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-09-08 15:50:57

I could use one or two more testers for my short surrealist game; I haven't decided if it's worth sending to IF Comp or not.

Edit: Probably not, due to issues getting image use rights.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3150&start=0#p22366
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Help with a tricky rule.
User: Zedreth / DateTime: 2011-09-08 19:58:42

In my game the person kind has a property of either hostile or friendly (usually friendly). There is a type of person called an animal, and a type of animal called a lion. This lion, after examined four times becomes hostile. That whole part is perfect how it is. The problem is in my every turn rule that makes hostile people attack.

I used a basic weapon and fighting system I found in the documentation. In it there are weapons which have an amount of damage.

This is what I want to happen: Every turn that the player can see a hostile person that hostile person should attack the player with a random weapon they carry (If they aren't dead). I've been experimenting with different codes and getting all sorts of errors. 

This is the code I have now:

Every turn when the player can see someone and the person asked is hostile:
	if the person asked is not dead, try the person asked attacking the player with a random weapon which is carried by the person asked.

Currently the code is compiling, but after I examine the lion 4 times, and get the correct messages, the lion never ends up attacking me. 

Any ideas? [emote]:geek:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3150&start=0#p22367
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with a tricky rule.
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-08 20:25:41

"The person asked" is only meaningful during an action like "robot, go north". That's not what you want.

You can do this:

[code]
Every turn when the player can see someone hostile (called P):
	if P is not dead:
		try P attacking the player with a random thing which is carried by P.
[/code]

This will only pick *one* hostile person to test every turn, though, which might give you bad results. (For example, if there's a dead hostile person in the room, it might pick that one every turn and then fail the "if" test.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3150&start=0#p22368
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with a tricky rule.
User: Zedreth / DateTime: 2011-09-08 20:33:20

Thank you for your suggestion. I substituted this in for the code I had, and it worked flawlessly. The only concern I have is the one you said. At the moment only one hostile person is existent at a time. If anyone thinks of another way that would work for all, tell me.

Perhaps something that checks from the person's point of view, checking if it can see the player, etc? That way it's processed for each person in the room? I don't know exactly how writing this would go, any suggestions?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3146&start=0#p22369
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Two short swords (currently equipped)
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-09-08 21:13:01

Ahh, worked like a charm! Thank you!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3150&start=0#p22370
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with a tricky rule.
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-09-08 21:57:08

How about:

[code]
Every turn while the player can see someone hostile:
	repeat with P running through hostile people in the location of the player:
		if P is not dead:
			try P attacking the noun with a random thing which is carried by P.[/code]

EDIT: Oops, Gravel's right.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3148&start=0#p22371
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Web links
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-09-08 22:19:37

Hmm...that would only work with Z-code games, though, right?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3148&start=0#p22375
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Web links
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-09-08 23:58:30

Parchment runs text-only Glulx games too.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3140&start=0#p22376
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: EITHER Glulx for Android OR Chinese Room z-format
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-09-09 03:07:43

I want to copy your post and print it and frame it and treasure it and show it to everyone who insists the ZMachine is a dead format and has no place in the modern IF scene.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3113&start=10#p22377
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Participate in the Interactive Fiction Top 50!
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-09-09 05:56:30

* Adventureland: Sentimental. I keep going back. (I never played texty games until the 90s, but I used to watch my friend Kenny playing this).
* Beyond Zork: My favorite of the Zork-branded games and the game I've completed more times than any other.
* Leather Goddesses of Phobos: My favorite Infocom title and the game I've re-started more times than any other.
* Plundered Hearts: My first real okay-gonna-sit-down-and-play-one-of-these-for-real games, hooked me with style.
* Eric the Unready: My favorite non-Infocom commercial-era game, and on some days maybe my favorite work of IF overall.
* Galatea: Even though that statue is a sourpuss.
* Aisle: Makes me almost want to make my own gimmick game.
* Mentula Macanus: Apocolocyntosis: Modern game voted Most Likely To Make Me Jealous.
* The King of Shreds and Patches: My very favorite Lovecraftian game. Plus it's even now blazing new trails.
* Lost Pig: I bust a gut.
* The Shadow in the Cathedral: Textfyre, I'm sorry I doubted you (but it was Toresal's fault).
* Dragon Adventure: My favorite aimed-at-younger-folks game. Good for me, too.
* Yes, Another Game with a Dragon!: Modern retro done so right it discourages me from trying.
* I-0: I keep finding new angles and loving them all.
* Rameses: Embodied all my modern-IF prejudices and still impressed the heck out of me. So, yeah.
* Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom: As previously mentioned, this game demonstrates that everything I thought I knew about IF design was wrong.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3150&start=0#p22379
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with a tricky rule.
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-09-09 09:02:25

Probably want to attack the player, and not the noun.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3113&start=10#p22380
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Participate in the Interactive Fiction Top 50!
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-09-09 10:50:10

In no particular order:

1 [b]Savoir Faire[/b], Emily Short. The best example of a very powerful design approach: concoct an interaction mechanic that is distinctive and engaging, that can be applied widely and modified into variations and otherwise elaborated upon, then build that mechanic deeply into your world, character and themes. It's also got some immensely satisfying aesthetics. Its main flaw is that the difficulty curve is a little steep at the lower end; like a lot of people, I bounced off the opening section on my first attempt.

2 [b]Spider and Web[/b], Andrew Plotkin. This is the game that made me realise that text adventures could be literate, clever things. Yeah, That Puzzle is a doozy, but that never impressed me as much as the handling of the frame-story.

3 [b]Varicella[/b], Adam Cadre. What Cadre does best is to take really vicious nastiness and transpose it into a funny, larger-than-life, almost slapstick format without taking the edge off. Mechanically, it's excruciatingly hard, the basic assumptions of the world make an unsatisfying ending inevitable, and it's in sore need of multiple solutions.

4 [b]Alabaster[/b], Emily Short et al. If this didn't exist then [i]Galatea[/i] would have this spot. It's the deepest conversational IF to date, it's appropriately sinister, but at the same time it has that satisfying, Bujold-like feel of a conversation between two thoroughly reasonable people. Since this is a work of many hands, the tone is a little uneven in parts, but overall it's excellent. 

5 [b]Violet[/b], Jeremy Freese. One of the games that I have a dismissive reflex about, but which becomes a lot more impressive when I sit down and think about it. It has an extremely firm grasp on a lot of the things that IF does better than any medium: a world teeming with enticing and evocative objects, constraints on interaction defining the protagonist, play as a dialogue with the narrator. It doesn't advance IF design in the slightest, but it employs established techniques to their limits.

6 [b]Photopia[/b], Adam Cadre. Shocking choice, I know. And yeah, a lot of this is because the balls-out cheap emotional manipulation [i]worked[/i]. It's still a brilliantly orchestrated sequence. The heart of it is not really about untimely death; it's about distance, about the other person being necessarily just out of reach.

7 [b]The Baron[/b], Victor Gijsbers. Moral-question IF is extraordinarily difficult to pull off, and this is the best example that I know of. Takes the standard philosophy approach of interrogating a question by repeatedly reframing it, but does so in a way that works as a dramatic story. Wrenching even if you're expecting the carpet to be pulled away.

8 [b]Cryptozookeeper[/b], Robb Sherwin. It didn't strike me as strongly as did [i]Fallacy of Dawn[/i], but a lot of that was because I wasn't expecting to enjoy Fallacy. It's a night journey, sprawling and random and rich and dark and cheesy, it makes no sense in a huge number of ways, it has a heart of gold and a mind in the gutter, it's Americana at its best. The usual things to talk about are Robb's weirdly excellent prose, vibrant NPCs and off-the-wall imagination.

9 [b]Anchorhead[/b], Michael Gentry. A masterpiece of pacing and atmospherics. When I first played it I hadn't read anything from the Lovecraft mythos, so my estimation of how it matches up is unreliable; my feeling is that it's as good as anything in the mythos, although this isn't an incredibly high bar. As with most Lovecraft, the climax doesn't live up to the buildup, but it scarcely matters.

10 [b]Worlds Apart[/b], Suzanne Britton. A touch too new-agey for my tastes, and you get the distinct feeling that it's not a complete story in its own right but rather an excerpt from something much larger. Nonetheless, strong, well-integrated puzzle design, strong setting, and an amnesia device that serves to [i]help[/i] explore the character rather than an excuse to avoid doing so.

11 [b]Bad Machine[/b], Dan Shiovitz: fiendishly difficult, probably incomprehensible to anybody without a little programming background. About a decade since I played it, so possibly I'm viewing it through the rosy mists of nostalgia. Huge amounts of learning by death, though it could hardly be otherwise. Still: dark, atmospheric, clever puzzle mechanics.

12 [b]Mentula Macanus: Apocolocyntosis[/b], Adam Thornton. Again, I had a dismissive reflex about this when I first played it, but it grew steadily on me. Much of this is because the process of appreciating IF isn't a fixed, author-reader experience; much of the fun of Mentula lay in looking up the references, reading the code, talking and thinking about it, reading other people's reactions and analysis, and (ahem) drawing fanart and writing cheap rip-offs. Mentula invites this sort of thing by being self-indulgent and allusive, publishing its code (bringing the player closer to the authorial process), and using an open, fantastic-voyage structure.

13 [b]Moonlit Tower[/b], Yoon Ha Lee. Overwriting that works, rich symbolism and aesthetics-of-objects, a story more suggested than told.

14 [b]Slouching Towards Bedlam[/b], Daniel Ravipinto & Star Foster. Like [i]Savoir Faire[/i], this starts out slowly: when I played it in-comp I got the sense that something good was waiting in the wings, but didn't manage to actually get to it. But on the second attempt, somewhat later, it really opened up. Probably the best, most deeply engaged steampunk I've seen. By which I mean that it's genuinely interested in both the artistic tropes and the technology of the era, rather than treating it as a stylish gloss.

15 [b]The Edifice[/b], Lucian Smith. As anthropology it's honestly pretty crap -- nobody seriously thinks that horses went from wild to riding animals at a single bound -- but it works as a stirring allegory, it has well-integrated puzzles.

16 [b]Vespers[/b], Jason Devlin. The best 9:05 Twist game I know, and a nasty little subversion of metagaming. And I'm all in favour of medieval fiction being bleak and horrible.

17 [b]City of Secrets[/b], Emily Short. I tend to underrate this one, partly because I tested it and partly because Emily has very mixed feelings about it. But even though the underlying story design has some problems, it's full of beautiful details, the setting's well-conceived and there are a lot of individual sequences that are very good indeed.

18 [b]Gun Mute[/b], C.E.J. Pacian. The interaction gimmick is really very effective, but this also does a lot of very strong, economical things with setting, characterisation and NPC interaction. It helps that I grew up on [i]2000 AD[/i].

19 [b]Blue Lacuna[/b], Aaron Reed; 20 [b]Make It Good[/b], Jon Ingold. Both works that I know damn well deserve a spot on this list, even if I haven't finished them and am not in a position to make a complete judgement.

Things that occurred to me while compiling these:

a) We really need to get better at endings. (I think this is a general problem with computer games.)

b) It's really hard to think of genuinely good games that don't seem totally obvious. Genuinely good IF games pretty much always make it into the canon? Which means that if you want to talk about interesting games outside the conventional greats, you pretty much have to deal with things that are mostly broken.

c) I am really not very good at articulating what I [i]like[/i] about games.

d) The ones I was sure about cut off after sixteen entries; after that there were probably a dozen games that I think deserve to be on the list, but I couldn't really distinguish between.

e) man, we are [i]really[/i] not good at doing things that aren't F/SF.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3143&start=10#p22381
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: does the player mean consulting it about
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-09 11:39:48

I obviously shouldn't be too sure, but now I think this is what happens: does the player see rules apparently don't run when the topic is not an object in scope; the parser therefore chooses the book stand rather than the encyclopedia, since the former is in the location with the player, whereas the latter is not (it is on the stand, not in the reference section).

Some such line as [code]Instead of consulting the book stand about anything when the player's command does not include "stand": if the player can see the encyclopedia, try consulting the encyclopedia about the topic understood; otherwise continue the action.[/code] can be used as a fix.

Is this behaviour (ignoring does the player mean rules for actions applying to a topic whenever the topic understood is not also an object in scope) to be considered a bug?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3113&start=10#p22382
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Participate in the Interactive Fiction Top 50!
User: Jeff Zeitlin / DateTime: 2011-09-09 14:41:06

I should preface this by noting that my taste in games and puzzles seems to be somewhat out of the mainstream; the reason I like a game and include it here may reflect that.  That said...

In no particular order:

[b][i]The Gostak[/i][/b] (Carl Muckenhoupt): I got turned on to this as a 'knock-on effect' of a discussion of linguistics, language learning, and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.  In IRC.  Don't ask. The story isn't much, the setting isn't much; what makes it interesting is the process of discovering how that world works, and (for me) thinking about the thought processes involved in such discovery.

[b][i]Ad Verbum[/i][/b] (Nick Montfort): Again, not much story or setting there; it was more fascinating to solve the wordplay puzzles, which are quite different in style than those in [i]Nord and Bert Couldn't Make Head or Tail Of It[/i]. I'm also an ex-programmer, so part of it is wishing I could see the source for it, and admiring a jewel from a distance.

[b][i]Adventure[/i][/b] (William Crowther and Don Woods, subsequently modified by [i]et alia[/i]): At this point, mostly nostalgia (it [i]is[/i] the granddaddy of them all...), even when playing variants like HUGECAVE. It's been years since I played an implementation that was limited to two words (VERB NOUN) for input, yet I still find myself slipping back into that 'mode' (GET BIRD. WAVE WAND. DROP KEYS. FILL BOTTLE. et cetera) when I play a variant of this.

[b][i]Suveh Nux[/i][/b] (David Fisher): Although different from Carl Muckenhoupt's [i]The Gostak[/i], it draws me for much the same reason.

[b][i]A Mind Forever Voyaging[/i][/b] (Steve Meretzky): A fascinating premise, a well-done story. It really draws me in, every time I play it. Maybe someday I'll finish/solve it.

[b][i]> by @[/i][/b] (Aaron Reed): Admiration at such a minimalist game. Anything else one can say about it says more about the sayer than about the game.  Which may well be part of the attraction.

[b][i]Balances[/i][/b] (Graham Nelson): Just because of its simplicity and the connection with Spellbreaker (which I never solved). A bit of relaxing fun every time I return.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3143&start=10#p22383
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: does the player mean consulting it about
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-09-09 16:27:04

I used the TRACE 5 testing command on the original source to figure this out.  Inform scores objects by various criteria and only runs Does The Player Mean if the scores are equal.  The stand got an extra 20 points than the encyclopedia due to the location:  the stand is in the player's location, while the encyclopedia is neither in his location nor in his pocket.  Hence the stand is preferred. 

If you put the encyclopedia in the room but not on the stand you'll get the which did you mean question, as expected.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3155&start=0#p22384
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Understand "[nickname]" as John Doe.
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-09-09 16:35:14

I'm trying to have the game understand a nickname as a character. The code is something like:

[code]A person has some text called nickname.

John Doe is a male person in test place. The description is "He's a tall fellow."

When play begins:
	let possible nicknames be {"Cactus", "Spear", "Pencil"};
	sort possible nicknames in random order;
	now nickname of John Doe is entry 1 from possible nicknames;
	now the printed name of John Doe is "[nickname of John Doe]".
	
Understand "[nickname of John Doe]" as John Doe.[/code]

This produces the error:

[code]Problem. I was unable to understand what you meant by the grammar token 'nickname of John Doe' in the sentence 'Understand "[nickname of John Doe]" as John Doe'.

 See the manual: 16.1 > Understand[/code]

Is there a way to do it? I've read the entire 16th chapter, but to no avail.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3156&start=0#p22385
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Very off-topic: a Kickstarter project I'm working on
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-09-09 17:02:20

(I apologize for the mercenary nature of this post, and will gladly delete it if y'all deem it inappropriate.)

Along with twelve other artists/designers/architects/writers, I spent my summer thinking about national borders, and how they shape the experiences of people that deal with them, as part of the collaborative design studio [url=http://dividedcities.com/]Border Town[/url].  We're working on individual and team projects that reflect the various intricacies of the border condition, and we're taking those projects to a design exhibition in Detroit.

My project is a "design fictional" garment that is sort of cosplay for China Miéville's novel [i]The City and the City[/i] -- I'm making a physical garment, then layering in the fiction through stop-motion video.  I'm also doing the visual design for a card game called Contraband, a two-player game about smugglers and border guards.

Anyway, if this sounds cool to you and you have extra money kicking about, we're trying to fund our Detroit show through Kickstarter, and you should check it out: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/246428154/border-town">http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/246 ... order-town</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3155&start=0#p22386
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Understand "[nickname]" as John Doe.
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-09 17:09:16

You can do it the explicit, one-by-one way:
[code]
Understand "Cactus" as John Doe when the nickname of John Doe is "Cactus".
Understand "Spear" as John Doe when the nickname of John Doe is "Spear".
Understand "Pencil" as John Doe when the nickname of John Doe is "Pencil".
[/code]
If that would be really intractable, the Swedish Inform 7 translation extension includes code for understanding objects (of one's choice) by their (current) printed name. It does mean a lot of indexed text manipulation, though, and, if used heavily, I think it will slow down parsing, at least on slow hardware.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3143&start=10#p22387
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: does the player mean consulting it about
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-09 17:34:18

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Inform scores objects by various criteria and only runs Does The Player Mean if the scores are equal.[/quote]
I don't think so. 
The score is calculated by the ScoreMatchL routine (§38 in the Parser Template), and objects score for does the player mean rules after scoring for location or not being a direction but before scoring for not being scenery.

(ScoreMatchL calls ChooseObjects which calls ScoreDabCombo (both at §62 in Parser) which calls CheckDPMR (Standard Rules ch.2  §20) which runs the does the player mean rulebook.)

X BOOK will run the does the player mean rules, even if the encyclopedia is in the stand; and so will CONSULT BOOK ABOUT ME, CONSULT BOOK ABOUT STAND, CONSULT BOOK ABOUT BOOK, etc. (where the topic is an object in scope), whereas CONSULT BOOK ABOUT FTHAGN, CONSULT BOOK ABOUT SVENSKA AKADEMIEN, or CONSULT BOOK ABOUT IF-COMP (where the topic is not an object in scope) will not run them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3155&start=0#p22388
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Understand "[nickname]" as John Doe.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-09 18:10:23

If you define the nickname as indexed text rather than text, I think the following should work:

[code]Understand the nickname property as describing a person.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3155&start=0#p22389
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Understand "[nickname]" as John Doe - SOLVED
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-09-09 18:18:28

Top notch, matt! Thanks.

Working code:

[code]A person has an indexed text called nickname.

John Doe is a male person in test place. The description is "He's a tall fellow."

When play begins:
	let possible nicknames be {"Cactus", "Spear", "Pencil"};
	sort possible nicknames in random order;
	now nickname of john doe is entry 1 from possible nicknames;
	now the printed name of John Doe is "[nickname of john doe]".
	
Understand the nickname property as describing a person.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3150&start=0#p22390
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with a tricky rule.
User: Zedreth / DateTime: 2011-09-09 18:42:08

The new solution is flawless. Thank you.

I'll say, it's [color=#FF0000]much easier[/color] to solve problems when you have a forum!  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3136&start=0#p22391
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you think is IF's strong point?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-09-09 21:54:33

In terms of [i]gameplay[/i], I think parser-text-gaming has two distinct features:

(A) A convincing illusion of tactical infinity. 
(B) Unknowable boundaries.

The two feed each other. Whether or not they're "strong points" is a matter of debate, but I vote heartily in the affirmative. Beyond that, it's just back to that "we stick our graphics where the sun don't shine" advantage of pure text.

My "home" gaming form (pencil and paper RPGs) has related distinguishing features (tactical infinity and dynamic boundaries) which is why I'm attracted to them in similar ways.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3136&start=0#p22392
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you think is IF's strong point?
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-09-09 23:13:06

[quote="dfabulich"]IMO, most IF authors agree that menus beat parsers for dialogue.[/quote]

If Inform was less object-orientated and more open to simple string parsing, I would not agree. I used to program in LPC for a MUD, and you could parse everything you wanted, which enabled you to generate deep conversations. "NPC, but what about the possibility to zarf the magas with the gravels?" - check for "possibility", "zarf", "magas" and "gravels", check some flags you set on the way, and voila - deep conversation. Stuff like that, ya know.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3136&start=10#p22393
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you think is IF's strong point?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-10 00:33:38

Inform has always had enough string-matching ability to do simple keyword matches of that sort. ("if (snippet) includes (topic)", which came in long before indexed text.) 

However, going from keyword-matching to "deep conversations" is, how shall we say, not a trivial problem.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3136&start=10#p22394
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you think is IF's strong point?
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-09-10 00:52:59

[Off Topic]
That's what I [b]miss[/b]. Player input "NPC, aren't those gazoongas absolutely phantastic?" >>> system string variable containing everything after "npc, " >>> if(member(systemvariable,"gazoongas")==1) answer_something_about_gazoongas;
Inform is so unnecessarily [b]complicated[/b] about strings, at least viewed from my very limited knowledge of it.
[/Off Topic]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3127&start=10#p22395
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Dead Horses, and the beating thereof
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-09-10 01:07:15

[quote="Glorb"]Anyway, the reason I ask is because I occasionally find it hard to muster up the willpower to give certain works (be they movies, games, books, whatever) a chance, because they're a "dead horse" to me, and I know others feel the same way. [/quote]

There are those who have the kind of prejudices you're concerned about, and trad-fantasy is certainly one of the big targets. There's a lot of conflation that goes on with cliche-as-language vs cliche-passed-off-as-substance.

But I think the more crucial question is: are these people your target audience? They're probably not, almost by definition, and thus ignorable/dismissable.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3136&start=10#p22399
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you think is IF's strong point?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-09-10 02:54:04

I don't think it's about the language, but about what we've learned from how it works with actual use. It's a dead horse by this time - we all know and have seen how those systems make it impossible to achieve actual *communication*, because we have no idea what part of our input will be recognized and what part won't; also, we have no idea whether we're on the right *topic* but phrasing it wrong, or worse, phrasing it right but in a way the program won't recognize it.

So, quite aside from the programmer's difficulties with such a system, is the difficulty of interacting with it - and the result will always, always be a broken experience.

Don't go that way, Grueslayer, that way madness lies. [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3136&start=10#p22400
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you think is IF's strong point?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-09-10 03:21:16

[quote="Grueslayer"]Player input "NPC, aren't those gazoongas absolutely phantastic?" >>> system string variable containing everything after "npc, " >>> if(member(systemvariable,"gazoongas")==1) answer_something_about_gazoongas;[/quote]
To me that sounds more complicated than 'Instead of answering NPC that when the topic understood includes "gazoongas": say "Gazoongas are great."'

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3136&start=10#p22401
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you think is IF's strong point?
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-09-10 06:54:59

[quote="Juhana"]To me that sounds more complicated than 'Instead of answering NPC that when the topic understood includes "gazoongas": say "Gazoongas are great."'[/quote]

Agreed regarding that feeble example. But I'm not after parsing one single buzz phrase, that works fine under Inform. I'm rather talking about stuff like "answer X if string contains buzz phrase 1 but not buzz phrase 2, and buzz phrase 3 if variable Y is 138" - stuff you need if you want deeper conversations.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3136&start=10#p22402
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you think is IF's strong point?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-10 07:04:43

[quote="Peter Pears"]I don't think it's about the language, but about what we've learned from how it works with actual use. It's a dead horse by this time - we all know and have seen how those systems make it impossible to achieve actual *communication*, because we have no idea what part of our input will be recognized and what part won't; also, we have no idea whether we're on the right *topic* but phrasing it wrong, or worse, phrasing it right but in a way the program won't recognize it.

So, quite aside from the programmer's difficulties with such a system, is the difficulty of interacting with it - and the result will always, always be a broken experience.

Don't go that way, Grueslayer, that way madness lies. [emote];)[/emote][/quote]

I had an idea for how to do this: You’re in, say, rural Quebec, you barely speak French, and the NPCs don’t speak English at all. So if you type in “Under no circumstances should you hand me the bucket” the response is something like, “You wave your hands around and say ‘Under no circumstances should vous hand moi le seau.’ The concierge, delightedly recognizing the word ‘seau,’ hands you the bucket.” The experience is broken in all the ways you mention -- you don't know what'll be recognized, you don't know whether you're coming up with the right word (though a kind author would program in lots of English synonyms, and stay far far away from "gazoongas" for several reasons), even if you do come up with a word that's recognized the parser is likely to rip it out of context -- but this is mimetic, because the PC's experience is broken in exactly the same way.

I have another similar idea involving a rock concert that's so loud that the NPCs can't hear more than every third word you're saying. The point is that you need some sort of justification for why the parser is ripping individual words out of context. (I figure the player would quickly catch on that it's just parsing keywords, but hopefully it'd be fun.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3136&start=10#p22403
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you think is IF's strong point?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-09-10 07:17:48

I find that first idea delicious. Go and make that game forthwith, I want to play it. [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3136&start=10#p22404
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you think is IF's strong point?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-10 07:42:20

[quote="Peter Pears"]I want to play it[/quote]
Me too!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3157&start=0#p22405
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Beta Testers sought for "Awake the Mighty Dread"
User: lskains / DateTime: 2011-09-10 09:18:05

Hi, I'm a bit new to IF, as I'm a PhD researcher doing it for my dissertation (yes, it's a pretty cool program I'm doing!).

Anyway, I have my first one done, and my supervisors have encouraged me to enter it in the IF Comp this year, so I need testers.  This is cross-posted with <a class="postlink" href="http://if.game-testing.org">http://if.game-testing.org</a>. ([url=http://if.game-testing.org/calls/view/4e6b6f66-c3d8-4205-be14-1f60d04e2930]The direct link is here.[/url])

A description is below - everything is set for testing, just let me know if you're interested and I'll PM the info to you.  Happy to trade testing!

"Awake the Mighty Dread"
Platform: Inform/Glulx
Blurb: [i]You wake up on a train in a strange world, knowing only that if you sleep, the nightmares return. But someone else is also lost, and you must find him, or else the nightmares will capture you forever. [/i] "Awake the Mighty Dread" is a chapter (playable to a winnable chapter-end) in a longer digital story about several characters who find themselves lost. It leans more toward the literary than the puzzle, and is meant to be played in under an hour, even for inexperienced players. It is being entered in the 2011 IFComp.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3136&start=10#p22406
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you think is IF's strong point?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-09-10 09:45:40

[quote="matt w"] even if you do come up with a word that's recognized the parser is likely to rip it out of context -- but this is mimetic, because the PC's experience is broken in exactly the same way.
[/quote]

Ha, awesome.  That sounds like fun.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3158&start=0#p22407
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Replacing "You see..." With "[Name] sees..."
User: Shoal / DateTime: 2011-09-10 10:10:46

Hi all.

I was never really a fan of being called "you" in a game. Therefore in making IF in Inform 7 I don't want it to say "You see" or "You pick up", etc. I want to name the player character and have it say "[Name] sees" or "[Name] picks up" etc.

Is this possible? If so, how would I do it? I hope it's not complicated...

Edit: By extension, is there a way to change the default Inform reactions? For example, if I type "Take [Person]" it would say, "I don't suppose [Person] would like that." Is there any way to change that reaction? To see a list of all the default reactions?

Thanks!

-Shoal

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3158&start=0#p22408
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Replacing "You see..." With "[Name] sees..."
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-09-10 10:54:36

I think what you want is either [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Ron%20Newcomb/Default%20Messages/index.html]Default Messages[/url] or [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Ron%20Newcomb/Custom%20Library%20Messages/doc_0.html]Custom Library Messages[/url] by Ron Newcomb. They're extensions, so you can simply download them and then include them like this:

[code]Include Custom Library Messages by Ron Newcomb.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3158&start=0#p22409
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Replacing "You see..." With "[Name] sees..."
User: Shoal / DateTime: 2011-09-10 11:26:41

This is exactly what I was looking for! Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3158&start=0#p22410
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Replacing "You see..." With "[Name] sees..."
User: Shoal / DateTime: 2011-09-10 11:40:11

It doesn't seem to be working.

I downloaded Default Messages, opened my game in Inform, installed the extension, added "Include Default Messages by Ron Newcomb." (no parenthesis), opened the extension, modified one of the lines, saved the file, saved my game, and ran my game. But the line didn't change! What did I do wrong?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3158&start=0#p22411
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Replacing "You see..." With "[Name] sees..."
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-10 11:55:21

The extension doesn't work by your changing the lines in the example at the end of the extension.

Your are supposed to write something like this inside your own source text:

[code]
Table of custom library messages (continued)
library-action	library-message-id	library-message-text
taking action	3	"[The noun] pulls back from [the actor]."
[/code]

EDIT:
The long, last example in the extension lists all the standard library messages, so you can look up what names they would have in the table of custom library messages. It also gives a lot of hints about how to write custom messages.

Alternatively you could paste the whole last example into you source text and change the lines you want to change from there (pasting examples from extensions can be done from inside the Inform IDE if you go to the "Installed extensions" part of the documentation and open the documentation of the relevant extension).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3127&start=10#p22412
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Dead Horses, and the beating thereof
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-09-10 12:02:05

[quote="Ghalev"]There are those who have the kind of prejudices you're concerned about, and trad-fantasy is certainly one of the big targets. There's a lot of conflation that goes on with cliche-as-language vs cliche-passed-off-as-substance.[/quote]
Yeah, I take it as read that if you're using genre to talk about something, the rules become Different. But that's not, I think, what the original topic suggested:
[quote="Glorb"]I ask because I've begun work on a game that's essentially a straight-up "lazy medieval" fantasy, and makes no illusions about it. It's not a treasure-hunt/cave-crawl, but more of a vaguely Varicella-ish optimization game built around using magic and assorted weapons and laying traps to defend a castle from bad dudes.[/quote]
It's entirely possible that this premise could serve as a framework for something more. But on its own -- which was the question, I think? the lazy-medieval trope is likely to detract.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3159&start=0#p22413
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Announcing Spring Thing 2012
User: gregb / DateTime: 2011-09-10 13:22:19

The Spring Thing 2012 site is up and running:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.springthing.net/2012/">http://www.springthing.net/2012/</a>

The competition last spring was a definite success, and I'm definitely running it again next spring. Sorry I'm a little later than usual in making the announcement this year.

I have some good news to announce: there is already up to $900[*] for the prize pool this year!

The donors are:
$200-$700[*], donated by Kate McKee
$100, donated by Wayne Miller
$100, donated by Greg Boettcher

[*] Kate McKee's donation is "$100.00 US, plus an additional $100 per entrant, up to a maximum of $700." She is willing to donate a very generous amount, but only if it helps encourage a good number of high-quality games. Let's hope her donation, as well as Wayne's and my donation, encourage people to enter the competition.

In case you hadn't heard, the Spring Thing is the *other* annual competition for interactive fiction games. It happens every spring. To find more about it, go to the following link. If you're interested in entering the competition, click on "Rules."

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.springthing.net/2012/">http://www.springthing.net/2012/</a>

Thanks again to last year's donors, judges, entrants, and others who participated last year to make last year's event a success. We had 6 entrants and over $1000 in prizes. 

For more information, you can email me at:

greg AT springthing DOT X, where X = net

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3160&start=0#p22414
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: "Lookahead mode"?
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-09-10 13:28:52

Sometimes (not always) I get the following message at run-time when I type a command which refers to a non-existent noun (for example, if I make a typo when typing the command).  Can anybody shed any light on (i) what it means) and (ii) how to get a more appropriate response?
[quote][Lookahead mode failed to achieve anything. Not sure how this is possible?]

You can't see any such thing.[/quote]

Thanks.


Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3136&start=10#p22415
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you think is IF's strong point?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-10 13:34:00

[quote] I'm rather talking about stuff like "answer X if string contains buzz phrase 1 but not buzz phrase 2, and buzz phrase 3 if variable Y is 138"[/quote]

You are talking about this sort of construct:

[code]
After reading a command:
	let pc be the player's command; [ just an abbreviation, to make the following line easier to read ]
	if pc includes "fizz" and pc includes "buzz" and pc does not include "frog" and YVar is 138:
		now YVar is 236;
		instead say "Hello.";
[/code]

You could build your whole game that way.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3160&start=0#p22416
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: "Lookahead mode"?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-10 13:40:08

Are you using Jon Ingold's Disambiguation Control? That seems to be where the message comes from. (Beyond that, I can't say more than maybe ask him.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3160&start=0#p22417
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: "Lookahead mode"?
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-09-10 14:05:30

Thanks.  I am in fact using that extension.

Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3161&start=0#p22418
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Try Silently Generating Line Break
User: Rob Myall / DateTime: 2011-09-10 14:18:02

So I've got a sequence of events running during a scene, and during a "to say" phrase, I'm trying to seat the player. Unfortunately it seems to be gaining an extra line break from somewhere and I can't seem to track down where. My expectation was that "try silently..." wouldn't print anything so I'm assuming the line-break is getting inserted before the call to Begin-sitting but the generated I6 is being less than edifying!

Simplified example:

[code]"Test" by Rob Myall

Garden is a room. The chair is a fixed in place enterable supporter in  Garden.

When play begins:
	say "You sit[Begin-sitting]."

To say Begin-sitting:
	try silently entering a random visible supporter.
[/code]

Output:
[quote]You sit
.

Test
An Interactive Fiction by Rob Myall
Release 1 / Serial number 110910 / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N) SD

Garden (on the chair)

>[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3162&start=0#p22419
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: A question about preference
User: Zedreth / DateTime: 2011-09-10 14:18:34

This is really more of a "It would be great if.." type of question rather than a "I need.." question. 

I am currently using dual monitors, and I want to figure out a way to have the documentation and testing window displayed on one screen, and the source window displayed on the other. It would give me much more room to program and whatnot. I don't know what to turn any of the panels into separated windows. Anyone know how?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3161&start=0#p22420
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Try Silently Generating Line Break
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-10 14:28:47

That's a tough one. I think you're running into the I7 feature that tries to put a paragraph break between messages printed in different rules. You're right that a "try silently" shouldn't trigger that, because it's not printing anything, but maybe the action mechanism doesn't realize that.

The best I can suggest is to rework your code. Option one, use an ordinary phrase rather than a say phrase:

[code]
When play begins:
	say "You sit.";
	begin-sitting;

To Begin-sitting:
	try silently entering a random visible supporter.
[/code]

Option two, move the player directly rather than using an entering action:

[code]
When play begins:
	say "You sit[Begin-sitting].";

To say Begin-sitting:
	surreptitiously move the player to a random visible supporter.
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3161&start=0#p22421
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Try Silently Generating Line Break
User: Rob Myall / DateTime: 2011-09-10 15:06:48

Thanks.

Unfortunately this particular instance is already nested inside a "to say" phrase so option 1 is a bit of a pain; I guess I could refactor the table lookup to a set of rules rather than straight text to give the extra flexibility.

I'd missed "surreptitiously move..."; that seems to work in this instance.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3161&start=0#p22422
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Try Silently Generating Line Break
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-09-10 15:12:44

I'll hunt it down and see if I can file a bug report.  Silent actions should be silent.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3162&start=0#p22423
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A question about preference
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-09-10 15:14:45

I'm pretty sure the panes aren't detachable, but I think you can un-maximize the Inform window, then manually stretch it across both monitors, then manually adjust the splitter between panes to coincide with the monitors' "seam".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3162&start=0#p22424
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A question about preference
User: Zedreth / DateTime: 2011-09-10 15:36:53

I thought of that, one problem though, my monitors are at the same height, so in my monitor settings I have the right monitor like 4-5 inches lower, and when I stretch it across I only see the bottom half of the panel.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3163&start=0#p22425
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Getting my IF online.
User: Zedreth / DateTime: 2011-09-10 16:08:42

I am kind of a noob when it comes to using my IF works out side of the actual IF creator.

I'm wondering how, in it's most basic form, I would take my IF made in Inform 7 and make it playable in-browser. I know how to use Webs, and that would probably be the best route for me. Any ideas on how I could take my IF files, and turn them into a free, fully functioning in-browser game?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3164&start=0#p22426
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Not getting the expected results.
User: Zedreth / DateTime: 2011-09-10 17:20:18

I am creating an IF in which the player search for who has their phone, keys, hat, and coat. 

The is the code I have for asking a person if they have the phone.
[code]Instead of asking anyone about "phone" when the person is carrying the phone:
	say "I have it!";
	
	
Instead of asking anyone about "phone" when the person is not carrying the phone:
	say "I don't have it!";[/code]

The problem that I am having is even when I force the phone into a certain person's inventory, I always get "I don't have it!" (I'm positive the person has it because I have another command that list's the person's inventory.)

What I don't understand is why it's not saying "I have it!" when the asked person has it. I know the code works, because it displays "I don't have it!" for everyone, and I'm not getting a compile error.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3161&start=0#p22427
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Try Silently Generating Line Break
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-09-10 17:21:02

Wow, it's in ProcessRulebook(), which is recursive.  The relevant piece is this:[code]
	} else {
		if ((say__p) && (bits & RS_NOSKIPS == 0)) DivideParagraphPoint();
		rv = indirect(substituted_rule);
		if (rv == 2) rv = reason_the_action_failed;
		else if (rv) rv = substituted_rule;
	}[/code]
Where say__p is true because "you sit" was printed, and the other condition allows anything except Activities to pass through. 

The I7 way to work around is this:[code]
The pending paragraph break is a truth state that varies.
The pending paragraph break variable translates into I6 as "say__p".

To say Begin-sitting:
   now pending paragraph break is false;
   try silently entering a random visible supporter.[/code]
I'll file a bug report wondering if ProcessRulebook() should have a line prepended for this case.

(EDIT: [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=743]Done with possible solution.[/url])

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3161&start=0#p22428
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Try Silently Generating Line Break
User: Rob Myall / DateTime: 2011-09-10 17:41:00

Thanks Ron.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=30#p22429
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-10 18:15:29

A little update on the Top X. I now have 18 participants, who have voted for a total of 126 games. If my Excel wizardry... excuse me, if my LibreOffice Calc wizardry works, this is the way the number of votes per game is working out right now:

Games with 1 vote: 82
Games with 2 votes: 21
Games with 3 votes: 12
Games with 4 votes: 4
Games with 5 votes: 4
Games with 6 votes: 1
Games with 7 votes: 1
Games with 8 votes: 0
Games with 9 votes: 0
Games with 10 votes: 1

Which gives us a top 11, 23, or 44 depending on how strict you want to be. [emote]:)[/emote] If you haven't participated yet, please consider doing so! Right now, every list of votes makes the project a lot more useful.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3164&start=0#p22430
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Not getting the expected results.
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-10 18:21:08

Those instead rules should read:
[code]Instead of asking anyone about "phone" when the NOUN is carrying the phone:
   say "I have it!";
   
Instead of asking anyone about "phone" when the NOUN is not carrying the phone:
   say "I don't have it!";[/code]
Then they will work as expected. 
(The noun of the action is referred to as 'the noun' whether it is a person or not).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3164&start=0#p22431
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Not getting the expected results.
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-09-10 18:22:43

The problem is that Inform treats "the" and "a" as synonyms, so when you're asking Inform "if the person is carrying the phone," what it's checking for is "if [i]a[/i] person is carrying the phone" -- that is, any person, anywhere in the game.  Similarly, you're checking, in a later rule and therefore the rule Inform consults first, whether anybody in the game [i]isn't[/i] carrying the phone.  So Inform's looking at all the people in the game, and as soon as it finds one that isn't carrying the phone (such as the player), it runs the "I don't have it!" code and calls it a day.

So what you need to do is be checking if [i]that specific person[/i] has the phone.  You do that like this:

[code]Instead of asking someone (called the askee) about "phone":
	if the askee encloses the phone, say "I have it!";
	else say "I don't have it!".[/code]

(By the way, I'm using "enclosed by" instead of "carries" because it also includes indirect enclosure, such as carrying the phone inside a purse.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3163&start=0#p22432
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Getting my IF online.
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-09-10 18:28:56

Assuming you're using a recent version of the Inform 7 IDE, it's as easy as including "Release along with an interpreter" in your code. [emote]:)[/emote]  Check out chapter 23.11 in the built-in documentation.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3127&start=10#p22433
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Dead Horses, and the beating thereof
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-09-10 19:32:24

[quote="maga"]But that's not, I think, what the original topic suggested:[/quote]

Hmm. But either way, the answer is the same: if you want to do X (even if X _really is_ a cave-crawl-treasure-hunt, cliche to the bone and not just on the surface), the fact that there are those who have knee-jerk negativity toward X is always their problem, not yours (the designer's). They are, again, outside the target audience and irrelevant to the design.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3165&start=0#p22434
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Why no interest in real coding with i7?
User: koo5 / DateTime: 2011-09-10 19:38:47

This may belong to another section, or maybe off the planet completely, but im ultimately and presently looking for collaborators after all. 

Why is there no interest in using i7 for real programming? I showed that with a little help from the outside, its possible to use it to do real work, and man is it cool.

So...uh...am i looking in the wrong circles or something?
any ideas? [emote]:ugeek:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3141&start=0#p22435
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: My Secret Hideout
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-09-10 19:51:21

Aw...no PC version? Sounds pretty cool though; could we have a demonstration of its output or somesuch?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3141&start=0#p22436
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: My Secret Hideout
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2011-09-10 20:00:19

If you search Google for the game's name, you should get a number of reviews of it that contain some samples.

-Kevin

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3165&start=0#p22437
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Why no interest in real coding with i7?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-09-10 20:13:52

What exactly do you mean by "real programming"? At its most basic, using Inform 7 is as much a programming language as Tads 3, just with a different vest, and making - programming - a Cloak of Darkness is elementary.

If you want to do fancier stuff with I7, you can.

Maybe you mean an "abuse" (like a Sokoban or Tetris port - things the language was never meant to handle, but does). I'm pretty sure abuses are just as possible as they were in I6, though maybe harder and less intuitive. Nevertheless, an abuse does not constitute "real" programming, not necessarily.

If you simply mean that I7 is not just a toy and is a powerful programming language that's been underused... I wouldn't agree at all, thinking - mostly - of Blue Lacuna.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3162&start=0#p22438
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A question about preference
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-09-10 21:34:39

Could you open 2 instances, one w/the left screen maximized, one with the right maximized, and drag them into place?  If you were using the index or something, it might be problematic, but it should work for documentation.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3165&start=0#p22439
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Why no interest in real coding with i7?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-09-10 21:36:09

[quote="koo5"]Why is there no interest in using i7 for real programming? [/quote]

This question is either incomplete, or not in English.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3164&start=0#p22440
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Not getting the expected results.
User: Zedreth / DateTime: 2011-09-10 21:51:37

Thanks, it works perfectly. I'm learning so much through this forum =)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3165&start=0#p22441
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Why no interest in real coding with i7?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-09-10 21:53:34

Judging by koo5's other posts, I think that by "real," they mean non-IF.  For example, this: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2953&p=20571">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2953&p=20571</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3163&start=0#p22442
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Getting my IF online.
User: Zedreth / DateTime: 2011-09-10 21:55:29

Thanks. Now that I think about it I should have looked there first. I've tried before using 'release with webpage' and almost got one working. I just didn't know the specific place to look in the documentation. Thanks again.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3162&start=0#p22443
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A question about preference
User: Zedreth / DateTime: 2011-09-10 21:56:33

I suppose. But I wouldn't be able to test it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3162&start=0#p22444
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A question about preference
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-09-10 22:30:13

If it's just the docs, use a web browser at <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/learn/man/index.html">http://inform7.com/learn/man/index.html</a> on the other monitor.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2953&start=0#p22445
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a web app
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-09-10 22:37:52

Eh?  It's just an X and nothing else.  I can do that in ascii, watch:  

X

Ta-da!

(Less snarkily, details?)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3164&start=0#p22446
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Not getting the expected results.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-10 22:38:51

[quote="tove"]in a later rule and therefore the rule Inform consults first[/quote]

This isn't actually what's happening -- when rules are equally specific, Inform consults the earlier one first (that is, the one that's earlier in the source code). In this case Inform actually judges "when the person is not carrying the phone" to be more specific than "when the person is carrying the phone" and consults it first. (The index says this is due to Law III.5.2, "Actions/When/Circumstances." That's [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc338.html]supposed to work by counting the clauses[/url]; perhaps "not" counts as an extra clause?)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3165&start=0#p22447
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Why no interest in real coding with i7?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-09-10 22:39:09

Inform only compiles to virtual machines not used outside of the I-F community.  How would you get it to talk to anything else? It's kinda sandboxed by default.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3162&start=0#p22448
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A question about preference
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-09-10 22:45:42

Well, you'd need to manually push the "game" tab after compilation.  Not ideal, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3127&start=10#p22449
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Dead Horses, and the beating thereof
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-09-10 22:49:16

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="maga"]But that's not, I think, what the original topic suggested:[/quote]
Hmm. But either way, the answer is the same: if you want to do X (even if X _really is_ a cave-crawl-treasure-hunt, cliche to the bone and not just on the surface), the fact that there are those who have knee-jerk negativity toward X is always their problem, not yours (the designer's). They are, again, outside the target audience and irrelevant to the design.[/quote]
Well, yes, but rigorous application of this rule can leave you with a target audience of one. (Who will already know all the solutions.) If someone's asking this question, it's fairly safe to say that they're concerned about the extent to which their authorial choices might limit their audience.

You could rephrase this question as "Is there a substantial sub-group of IF players who like (or at least don't totally loathe) lazy-medieval fantasy?" To which the answer is: yes, as is clear from a quick perusal of old comp scores. You could phrase it as "If I write a straight lazy-medieval game, will reviewers say mean things about it?" to which the answer is also yes, probably. You could also phrase it as "If I write a straight lazy-medieval game, will this annoy/alienate/inhibit aesthetic uptake in/bore a substantial portion of the, let's be honest, not precisely gigantic IF audience?" Again, yes, for certain values of 'substantial'. These are all legitimate concerns, I think, even if they're not binding ones.

(Also, the prerogative of an author to do whatever they want does not in any way conflict with the prerogative of readers to tell authors "Never do this.")

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3164&start=0#p22450
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Not getting the expected results.
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-09-10 23:35:20

Oh, interesting.  I thought later rules overruled earlier ones, like how rules in your own source overrule rules in extensions.  Thanks for the clarification!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3136&start=20#p22451
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you think is IF's strong point?
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-09-11 00:45:59

Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3127&start=10#p22452
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Dead Horses, and the beating thereof
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-09-11 00:57:35

[quote="maga"]Well, yes, but rigorous application of this rule can leave you with a target audience of one.[/quote]

I daresay the nature of the work will determine far more than the rigor of the rule. While there are certainly those within the IF community (and elsewhere) who pooh-pooh traditional ("lazy") fantasy automatically, trad-fantasy remains a [i]hugely[/i] popular gaming genre, so such a game could therefore find (or create) a substantial audience if it's done well (or done appealingly).

[quote]If someone's asking this question, it's fairly safe to say that they're concerned about the extent to which their authorial choices might limit their audience.[/quote]

Of course. Hence my response, and yours, and most of the others here. We're each providing our take on exactly that.

[quote](Also, the prerogative of an author to do whatever they want does not in any way conflict with the prerogative of readers to tell authors "Never do this.")[/quote]

I don't recall suggesting otherwise. If I did in fact do so, I humbly recant [emote]:)[/emote]

My point rests on the presumption that the OP author is clearly aware that some people are snobbish about genre and needs no reminding of that. Given that, I think it boils down to "do you want the snobs as part of your target audience?" which is an authorial choice and none of my business ... so the only response I'm left with is a gentle reminder that there are plenty of fish in the sea ... far more than in the pond.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3165&start=0#p22453
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Why no interest in real coding with i7?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-09-11 03:55:16

I suspect you can get away with lots of things using Inform's ability to read/write to a file, but that would be so inneficcient when compared to using a programming language that's actually designed to do those things anyway...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3161&start=0#p22454
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Try Silently Generating Line Break
User: lribeiro / DateTime: 2011-09-11 05:05:56

I've been having a lot of similar issues. One way to solve it is to place the token somewhere else, like this:

[code]"Test" by Rob Myall

Garden is a room. The chair is a fixed in place enterable supporter in  Garden.

When play begins:
	say "[Begin-sitting]You sit."

To say Begin-sitting:
	try silently entering a random visible supporter.[/code]

The problem is you'll have to pay attention, because you can end up with extra lines you don't want. Another solution is to add something to your to say phrase:

[code]"Test" by Rob Myall

Garden is a room. The chair is a fixed in place enterable supporter in  Garden.

When play begins:
	say "You sit[Begin-sitting]."

To say Begin-sitting:
	say run paragraph on;
	try silently entering a random visible supporter.[/code]

But, once again, this spreads to all the line, and you can have lines missing.

These are, of course, workarounds. I use [place to say phrase here with commands instead of prints] a lot, and I have to battle with it sometimes.

EDIT:

I tried to juggle the [] code around, and found that:
[code]When play begins:
         say "You sit.[Begin-sitting]" [the token after the full stop][/code]
And:
[code]When play begins:
	say "You sit."[/code]
Prints in the exactly same way, so it may be better than putting it in the beginning, as I suggested before.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2953&start=0#p22455
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a web app
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-09-11 07:13:32

Oh good, I thought it was just me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3127&start=10#p22456
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Dead Horses, and the beating thereof
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-09-11 07:53:04

Most other mediums just don't care about beating dead horses as much as needed. Why should Interactive Fiction be different?

--

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3113&start=10#p22457
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Participate in the Interactive Fiction Top 50!
User: Rob Myall / DateTime: 2011-09-11 08:32:27

Thinking this through, it's depressing how few of the games considered "great" I've either not played, or barely touched. As such, I can only really come at this from the perspective of "which games did I play lots of and really stuck with me," so some of them might not be all that "great"...

[b]The Hobbit[/b] (Melbourne House): No, I never finished it; spent hours on end carrying people around on my shoulders, or having them carry me around on their shoulders; the parser here was pretty amazing. Probably the game that most made me want to make something similar.

[b]Agatha's Folly[/b] (Linda Wright): The other "good" Spectrum adventure game that stuck with me - the first part at least (I wasn't as enamoured of the second half) is a very dense "examine absolutely everything" puzzler with plenty of storyline buried in there.

Honourable mention probably goes to "Bulbo and the Lizard King" (John Wilson), which I'll admit wasn't very good, but the only other Spectrum-era adventure that I clearly remember chunks of.

[b]Curses[/b] (Graham Nelson): It's a sprawling mess of a puzzler, but somehow better than Jigsaw - it never felt unfair, and I kept coming back to it to [i]try[/i] and finish it.

[b]The Legend Lives[/b] (David Baggett): Another sprawling game with puzzles that didn't feel all that unfair, and a well realised setting (okay, a setting that was mostly a futuristic update from four prior games but it mostly stood on its own).

[b]Lists And Lists[/b] (Andrew Plotkin): Okay, what's this doing here? You could read it as a stand-in for Spider And Web, which I never finished but otherwise quite liked, but on its own merits, it actually does a good job of teaching something. 

[b]Anchorhead[/b] (Michael Gentry): Ah, that's better - good story, great setting, well drawn characters, puzzles that mostly weren't headscratchingly impossible.

[b]Photopia[/b] (Adam Cadre): Lack of interaction didn't bother me in the slightest in this one. Touching and well written.

[b]Lost Pig[/b] (Admiral Jota): Hey, look, I have played a relatively recent game! Brilliant, just brilliant. Great characterisation, good writing, and very witty.

Well. That was short. To be fair, there are lots of other games I liked, but none that have stuck quite like these have. I could probably add honourable mentions for Humbug (Graham Cluley), Christminster (Garath Rees), Uncle Zebulon's Will (Magnus Olsson), Galatea (Emily Short) and Spider And Web (Andrew Plotkin), but they didn't quite have the same memorable impact that the list above.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3161&start=0#p22458
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Try Silently Generating Line Break
User: Rob Myall / DateTime: 2011-09-11 08:48:50

Yes, littering it with [run paragraph on] was an option (technically, it's doing the same thing as Ron's suggestion of setting say__p back to false) but it'll just end with lots of proliferation that is liable to be a bugfixing nightmare so I was hesitant to go down that route when "try silently" really should be silent. At least with the "pending paragraph break" solution, I've got something easy to search for and remove if the core bug gets fixed.

Moving the included "[Begin-sitting]" might work in this test example, but because I was [i]already[/i] nested inside another to-say statement, it wasn't solving the problem in the place I was using it and I was still getting an extra line-break in some cases.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3166&start=0#p22459
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Beta-testers for "The Myothian Falcon"
User: The Pixie / DateTime: 2011-09-11 08:56:42

Hi, I am looking for beta-testers for an IF game I hope to enter in IFcomp 2011, and will be ready in a couple of days.

[quote][b]The Myothian Falcon[/b]

"That day, the 9th of June, 3145, started out like any other, perhaps a little hotter than usual. Then Maisy DeValle entered Vic's office."

Vic Gantry, P.I., has a new client. She's wanted for the murder of her husband, Lawrence, one of the most wealthy men in New Chicago, and she wants Vic to prove her innocence.[/quote]

This is my first attempt at IF, though I have written computer-based stories for competitions before (coming [url=http://www.keepofmetalandgold.com/contestwater.htm]third[/url] and [url=http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=99826]first[/url]), so I do have some sort of track record.

It is written for Quest 5, which you can download for free from here:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.textadventures.co.uk/quest/download/">http://www.textadventures.co.uk/quest/download/</a>

If you are interested PM me, or e-mail the_pix at hotmail dot com.

[i]Andy[/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3141&start=0#p22460
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: My Secret Hideout
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-11 10:09:40

There are samples on the screenshots page (<a class="postlink" href="http://zarfhome.com/hideout/screens.html">http://zarfhome.com/hideout/screens.html</a>) or at <a class="postlink" href="http://gameshelf.jmac.org/2011/08/a-preview-of-my-secret-hideout-plus-catching-up/">http://gameshelf.jmac.org/2011/08/a-pre ... tching-up/</a> .

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3127&start=10#p22461
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Dead Horses, and the beating thereof
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-09-11 10:12:00

[quote="rockersuke"]Why should Interactive Fiction be different?[/quote]

A moot point, I'd imagine. It's never been different before.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3167&start=0#p22462
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7:  A lack of "understanding"
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-09-11 10:50:24

[code]"Understanding" by RPR

This Place is a room.  A machine is in this place.  A lever is part of the machine.

A position is a kind of value.  The positions are left, right and middle.  The lever has a position. 

Understand "center" as "middle".

Instead of setting the lever to "left":
	If the position of the lever is left:
		Say "The lever is already set to the left position.";
	Otherwise:
		Now the position of the lever is left;
		Say "You move the lever to the left position.".
	
Instead of setting the lever to "right":
	If the position of the lever is right:
		Say "The lever is already set to the right position.";
	Otherwise:
		Now the position of the lever is right;
		Say "You move the lever to the right position.".
		
Instead of setting the lever to "middle":
	If the position of the lever is middle:
		Say "The lever is already set to the middle position.";
	Otherwise:
		Now the position of the lever is middle;
		Say "You move the lever to the middle position.".[/code]


This code does not compile.  The problem is the "Understand "center" as "middle" statement.  If I remove the statement and a player types "set lever to center" he gets a response that says "No, you can't set that to anything," which is quite misleading (because in fact he can set the lever to left, right or middle).  Any suggestions would be appreciated.  Thanks.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3167&start=0#p22463
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  A lack of "understanding"
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-11 11:33:39

[quote="Robert Rothman"][code]"Understanding" by RPR

This Place is a room.  A machine is in this place.  A lever is part of the machine.

A position is a kind of value.  The positions are left, right and middle.  The lever has a position. 

Understand "center" as "middle".

Instead of setting the lever to "left":
	If the position of the lever is left:
		Say "The lever is already set to the left position.";
	Otherwise:
		Now the position of the lever is left;
		Say "You move the lever to the left position.".
	
Instead of setting the lever to "right":
	If the position of the lever is right:
		Say "The lever is already set to the right position.";
	Otherwise:
		Now the position of the lever is right;
		Say "You move the lever to the right position.".
		
Instead of setting the lever to "middle":
	If the position of the lever is middle:
		Say "The lever is already set to the middle position.";
	Otherwise:
		Now the position of the lever is middle;
		Say "You move the lever to the middle position.".[/code]


This code does not compile.  The problem is the "Understand "center" as "middle" statement.  If I remove the statement and a player types "set lever to center" he gets a response that says "No, you can't set that to anything," which is quite misleading (because in fact he can set the lever to left, right or middle).  Any suggestions would be appreciated.  Thanks.

Robert Rothman[/quote]

Your understand statements shouldn't have quotes on the right side; to make it compile, remove the quotes around "middle." But then the understand statement won't do anything, because the setting action applies to a thing an a topic (a free-form text string, basically), so the parser isn't even trying to understand the text as a thing or value. If you turn on the actions command, you'll see that the action being carried out is setting the lever to "center" rather than setting the lever to center; even if you type "set lever to left" the action is setting lever to "left" rather than setting the lever to left.

The quick and dirty way to deal with this is just to rewrite your last rule so it catches "center" as well as "middle," by changing the rule heading to this:

[code]Instead of setting the lever to when the topic understood matches "middle" or the topic understood matches "center":[/code]

(There may be a nicer way to do this, but this was the first one I got to compile.) 

And the reason you're getting the misleading error message is that you haven't written a rule to catch setting the lever to an invalid position, so when none of your rules applies it just falls through to the general "block setting it to" rule. You'd get the same message if you typed "set lever to up" or "set lever to foo." You can easily take care of this by writing another rule for setting the lever to something invalid:

[code]Instead of setting the lever to:
	say "You can only set it to left, right, or middle."[/code]

This is less specific than the rules for setting the lever, so it won't block them, but more specific than the general block setting it to rule, so it'll run when you set the lever to a non-choice. But the block setting it to rule is still there, so you'll get that whenever the player tries to set something non-settable. (An aside I thought of while checking this; it's probably kind to redirect any attempts to set the machine toward the lever. "Before setting the machine to: now the noun is the lever" should work.)

A less quick-and-dirty method would be to rewrite the "set" command so that it triggers an action that applies to a thing and a position rather than a thing and a topic; then your understand command would work (without that extra pair of quotes, of course). That would let you add additional synonyms much more easily, though it might also give rise to annoying "that noun did not make sense in that context" errors. (Also, I'm having a little trouble getting it to work in testing; but I think it should be possible.) [UPDATE: OK, I've got it to compile, modeling it on the painting action in ex. 53, "Early Childhood"; and it turns out to yield annoying "I didn't understand that sentence" errors instead.]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3167&start=0#p22464
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  A lack of "understanding"
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-09-11 11:45:04

I agree with Matt, why create a new KOV and then use an action which relies on a topic?  I think it would be easier to create a new action which actually uses the position KOV:[code]This Place is a room.  A machine is in this place.  A lever is part of the machine.

A position is a kind of value.  The positions are left, right and middle.  The lever has a position.

Understand "center" as middle. [<-- note no quotes around the KOV]

Position-setting is an action applying to one thing and one position.
Understand "set [something] to [position]" as position-setting.
Understand "set [something] to the [position]" as position-setting.

Check position-setting (this is the can't position-set something to the same position rule):
	if the position of the noun is the position understood:
		say "[The noun] is already set to the [position understood] position." instead.

Carry out position-setting (this is the default position-setting rule):
	now the position of the noun is the position understood.
      
Report position-setting (this is the report position-setting rule):
	say "You move [the noun] to the [position understood] position.".
	
test me with "set lever to the left / set lever to left / set lever to right / set it to middle / set it to the center / set it to center".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3167&start=0#p22465
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  A lack of "understanding"
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-11 11:52:12

[quote="Skinny Mike"]I agree with Matt, why create a new KOV and then use an action which relies on a topic?  I think it would be easier to create a new action which actually uses the position KOV:[code]This Place is a room.  A machine is in this place.  A lever is part of the machine.

A position is a kind of value.  The positions are left, right and middle.  The lever has a position.

Understand "center" as middle. [<-- note no quotes around the KOV]

Position-setting is an action applying to one thing and one position.
Understand "set [something] to [position]" as position-setting.
Understand "set [something] to the [position]" as position-setting.

Check position-setting (this is the can't position-set something to the same position rule):
	if the position of the noun is the position understood:
		say "[The noun] is already set to the [position understood] position." instead.

Carry out position-setting (this is the default position-setting rule):
	now the position of the noun is the position understood.
      
Report position-setting (this is the report position-setting rule):
	say "You move [the noun] to [the position understood] position.".
	
test me with "set lever to the left / set lever to left / set lever to right / set it to middle / set it to the center / set it to center".[/code][/quote]

Ah, this is nice because it doesn't replace the built-in setting action. So the block setting it to rule is still there, and you don't get "I didn't understand that sentence" errors. Setting the lever to a non-position gets parsed as the built-in setting it to action, so you can give a more useful error by catching that action for the lever:

[code]Instead of setting the lever to: say "You can only set it to [list of positions]."  [NB Not position-setting the lever][/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3167&start=0#p22466
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  A lack of "understanding"
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-09-11 11:59:00

Thanks.  This is very helpful.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3167&start=0#p22467
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  A lack of "understanding"
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-11 13:26:53

is even possible to use kinds of values inside an existing topic as it were, if you find that useful:
[code]
This Place is a room.  A machine is in this place.  A lever is part of the machine.

A position is a kind of value.  The positions are left, right and middle.  The lever has a position. 

Understand  "center" as middle.

Instead of setting the lever to "[position]":
	If the position of the lever is the position understood: 
		Say "The lever is already set to the [position understood] position.";
	Otherwise:
		Now the position of the lever is the position understood;
		Say "You move the lever to the [position understood] position.".

test me with "set lever to the left / set lever to left / set lever to right / set it to middle / set it to the center / set it to center".
[/code]

A drawback is that this doesn't recognize the commands that use the definite article, but you could fix that with some when-clause to the relevant effect in the rule preamble, such as:
[code]Instead of setting the lever to when the topic understood includes "[position]":[/code]
or
[code]Instead of setting the lever to when the topic understood matches "[position]" or the topic understood matches "the [position]":[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3168&start=0#p22468
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: combining [as decreasingly likely outcomes]+[sticky random]
User: Zedreth / DateTime: 2011-09-11 13:46:44

I have a [one of] statement in which I'd like each option to be decreasingly likely (like [as decreasingly likely outcomes]) and sticky (like [sticky random]).

I want it to randomly choose one, the first being most likely, and the last being least likely, and once chosen, keep it forever.

What would I say for it to be like this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3168&start=0#p22469
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: combining [as decreasingly likely outcomes]+[sticky rand
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-11 14:14:52

[quote="Zedreth"]What would I say for it to be like this?[/quote]
You'll have to program it yourself -- there is not standard syntax that does this. So something like (untested code):

[code]Random-quip is a number that varies. When play begins: now random-quip is a random number between 1 and 10.

Every turn: say "You see [if random-quip is less than 5]a rubber duck[otherwise if random-quip is less than 8]several strumpets[otherwise if random-quip is less than 10]the nine worthies dancing a gavotte[otherwise]something that has only a ten percent chance of being chosen[end if]."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3168&start=0#p22470
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: combining [as decreasingly likely outcomes]+[sticky rand
User: Zedreth / DateTime: 2011-09-11 14:18:16

That looks promising, but now I have a new problem. It's a bit different, so I'm going to post it in a new thread.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3169&start=0#p22471
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [sticky random] per person.
User: Zedreth / DateTime: 2011-09-11 14:23:34

I have an if statement when asking an NPC if they have the players phone:

[code]Instead of asking someone (called the askee) about "phone":
	if the askee encloses the phone:
		say "I have it!";
	else:
		say "[the noun] responds, '[one of]I don't have it, sorry[or]I think I saw [random person] with it[or]I think I saw [random person enclosing phone who is not noun] with it[sticky random].'"[/code]

It works, but not quite the way I want. Say I ask Bob if he has the phone. He tells me "I don't have it, sorry." If I come back to him later and ask the same question, he'll respond the same way. That is perfectly fine. But now if I go over to Steve, let's say, and ask if he has the phone, I'll get the response "I don't have it sorry." for him as well. And for Joe, and for Tim, etc. I want the sticky random to be per person, not for everyone. Any ideas? (I also eventually wanted the options to be decreasingly likely as well as sticky, so if you have a solution for that too, just include it as well, if now, that's fine.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3169&start=0#p22472
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [sticky random] per person.
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-09-11 14:35:31

I think I would do this with a table: I'd have a table with the various NPCs as one column and their responses in the other column, and at the start of play, I'd go through the table and assign the responses randomly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3127&start=10#p22473
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Dead Horses, and the beating thereof
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-09-11 14:53:34

[quote="Ghalev"] While there are certainly those within the IF community (and elsewhere) who pooh-pooh traditional ("lazy") fantasy automatically, trad-fantasy remains a [i]hugely[/i] popular gaming genre, so such a game could therefore find (or create) a substantial audience if it's done well (or done appealingly).[/quote]

Actually, I would strongly distinguish "traditional fantasy" and "lazy fantasy." "Traditional fantasy" suggests to me anything on a fairly large continuum including LoTR, Game of Thrones, Wizard of Earthsea, et al -- stuff with a lot of unique world building and often good production values, even if there are certain consistent tropes. I'm up for playing more of that, and it tends to be fairly well received by many IF players, though there are a vocal handful who don't like "escapist" genres at all. (I don't think "escapist" is a sensible label to slap on everything that isn't a realist piece set in the modern day, but that's a different discussion.)

"Lazy fantasy," by contrast, suggests (to me) that it's going to be a lot of bits from other people's worlds glued together without consideration or consistency, and often with an essentially modern-day set of manners and mores underneath the rhinestones. Such a game has to have something else going for it for me to like it. I liked Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom because it was doing comment on the whole genre. I liked Adventurer's Consumer Guide because the puzzles were cool. Combine lazy fantasy with lazy puzzles -- a stock recombination of lock-and-key standbys and NPC fetch quests -- and I feel like I'm playing someone's craft homework.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3169&start=0#p22474
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [sticky random] per person.
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-11 14:56:32

[quote="tove"]I think I would do this with a table: I'd have a table with the various NPCs as one column and their responses in the other column, and at the start of play, I'd go through the table and assign the responses randomly.[/quote]
Either this, or a text property: "A person has some text called the phone-response." Set the phone-responses randomly at the start of the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3127&start=10#p22475
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Dead Horses, and the beating thereof
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-09-11 20:38:53

[quote="emshort"]Actually, I would strongly distinguish "traditional fantasy" and "lazy fantasy." "Traditional fantasy" suggests to me anything on a fairly large continuum including LoTR, Game of Thrones, Wizard of Earthsea, et al -- stuff with a lot of unique world building and often good production values, even if there are certain consistent tropes. I'm up for playing more of that, and it tends to be fairly well received by many IF players, though there are a vocal handful who don't like "escapist" genres at all. (I don't think "escapist" is a sensible label to slap on everything that isn't a realist piece set in the modern day, but that's a different discussion.)

"Lazy fantasy," by contrast, suggests (to me) that it's going to be a lot of bits from other people's worlds glued together without consideration or consistency, and often with an essentially modern-day set of manners and mores underneath the rhinestones. Such a game has to have something else going for it for me to like it. I liked Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom because it was doing comment on the whole genre. I liked Adventurer's Consumer Guide because the puzzles were cool. Combine lazy fantasy with lazy puzzles -- a stock recombination of lock-and-key standbys and NPC fetch quests -- and I feel like I'm playing someone's craft homework.[/quote]

It's a fair distinction*; we have a similar one in pen-and-paper gaming, just with different terms (often [i]trad-fantasy[/i] vs. [i]kitchen-sink fantasy,[/i] so I was taking "lazy" to be an example of the "escapist" thing). But I still think [i]"design for those who might like your game rather than those who'll dismiss it out of hand"[/i] applies whether working hard to be trad or (I'm going to enjoy typing this) working hard to be lazy. Or working hard to write about private eyes or spacefarers, etc. I also think the OP's description of the game's design (an "optimization game built around [...] laying traps to defend a castle from bad dudes") doesn't trip any red alerts re an excess of fetch-quests or lock-and-key puzzles, so it doesn't seem worrying on that score, really (unless the comparison to [i]Varicella [/i]is somehow worrying; I haven't played [i]Varicella [/i]so if there's some kind of undercurrent of [i]Varicella-clone-fatigue[/i] among IF enthusiasts, I'm ignorant of it).

-----
* Though I'd propose that Ed Greenwood's (which is to say Jeff Grubb's) [i]Forgotten Realms,[/i] arguably the best-selling fantasy gameworld ever in terms of total games produced and total units moved,** occupies an uneasy spot somewhere right between the two ... (which is, for better or worse, where pen-and-paper fantasy worlds often end up, not always deliberately***).

** Including computer games, where it's the setting for most of the old SSI gold-box games (Pool of Radiance, etc), most of the Bioware Infinity Engine games (Baldur's Gate, etc), as well as Neverwinter Nights (both SSI and Bioware games of that title), etc.

*** Though I have a [i]Uresia [/i]WIP, speaking of deliberate ...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3127&start=20#p22476
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Dead Horses, and the beating thereof
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-09-11 20:43:42

[quote="rockersuke"]Most other mediums just don't care about beating dead horses as much as needed. Why should Interactive Fiction be different?[/quote]
A key distinction between IF and other media is that we're too small for very much segregation by genre.

In books, there's a SF subgenre of Manly Space Marine stories. These cater to a very particular audience: anybody who isn't a male, right-wing, militarist American is likely to find them annoying, tedious or downright offensive. They don't have to worry about anybody else, because everybody else can happily go through their entire lives, reading voraciously, while totally ignoring manly space marine books. An occasional gawker might wander over to test the waters or to laugh and point, but that's their own call; they don't find manly space marine books feathered into the paranormal romance aisle, have them recommended at their poetry circle, discover them on the syllabus of their C18th French Lit course, or see them nominated for the Newbery. People can fairly easily shape their reading in order to avoid things that annoy the living bejeesus out of them.

This is not true of IF: we release games on the same sites, in the same comps, competing for the same awards. (The exceptions are AIF, non-English games and platforms like ADRIFT. Only one of these is a genre.) There is no such thing as a mystery-IF community or romance-IF institutions; there are just players of IF who like or dislike those genres. This still doesn't mean that authors are obliged to pander shamelessly to the genre tastes of the IF community (we'd have a very dull canon if everyone did that), but it does mean that players have considerably stronger grounds to complain about genres or genre elements that they're sick of.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2993&start=20#p22477
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: a question about motivation
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2011-09-11 23:51:52

One thing that I've found helpful is to have an understanding of the journey you're on and what steps it will take to complete the project.  Then you can start checking things off as you go, which can give you a good sense of progress.  For example, when I started my project, I identified different sub-tasks like defining the characters, figuring out the basic plot, sketching the rooms, creating cover art, getting a rough prototype of the first scene, defining the NPCs, writing dialog, creating the help system, creating hints etc, getting your first external tester, writing documentation etc.  There are lots of different steps, and if you're stuck at one stage, then you might find motivation in pursuing some of the other tasks.  In general, I recommend keeping the scope modest, so that the number of tasks doesn't seem overwhelming.

I hope that's helpful.
--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">http://www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3170&start=0#p22478
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I7] How to apply open all to a group of items
User: rotter / DateTime: 2011-09-12 00:00:40

I have a question about ALL which is puzzling me.  I have a room with a number of individual lockers in it.  Each single locker is working fine.  I've created a kind of container for the locker, so I can refer to all of them

[code]A locker is a kind of container[/code]

What I'm struggling with is how to code for inputs such as EXAMINE ALL THE LOCKERS, OPEN ALL THE LOCKERS etc.  I think I'm asking how do I apply ALL to my lockers?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2993&start=20#p22479
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: a question about motivation
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-09-12 01:03:48

[quote="Nicôle"]What do you do for motivation?[/quote]

I'm mainly motivated by a selfish desire for a finished version of whatever game I'm making. So mainly what I do is: I play another game, one that isn't the game I'm making, become frustrated that it isn't the game I'm making, and then become determined to make the game I'm making so that the game I'm making will get made.

That's (really!) mainly how I'm motivated. Beyond that, what I do to prevent burning out or feeling overwhelmed is just the plain-jane method of dividing every task into smaller mini-tasks and focusing on each, one by one. That way it feels like a bunch of little small, easy projects instead of one huge, terrifying one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3127&start=20#p22480
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Dead Horses, and the beating thereof
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-12 01:43:36

[quote]we're too small for very much segregation by genre[/quote]

I don't think that's entirely a matter of community size. The requirements of building a story as IF are tight (and the requirements of knowing how to play them are tight as well). This means that two IF games *resemble* each other more, for being IF, than two stories about sardonic female space marines with tattooes. It puts them in the same genre no matter where they're set.

To come at it from the other side: it's easier for a random IF player to play a mil-SF IF game and a romance IF game than it is for a random romance reader to read a romance novel and a romance IF game. Thus, the audience clusters around IF, and genre is a discussion among an audience.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2953&start=0#p22481
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a web app
User: koo5 / DateTime: 2011-09-12 05:05:50

umh hmm, so there are still clickers. The virtual server the backend runs on is free and needs to be manually restarted from time to time...which im too lazy to do...

thanks for your interest, anyway [emote]:lol:[/emote]

Ron:
teh code:
<a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/koo5/melon">https://github.com/koo5/melon</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3165&start=0#p22482
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Why no interest in real coding with i7?
User: koo5 / DateTime: 2011-09-12 05:14:55

to kinda answer: my frustration comes from my goal to make i6 compile to another, ordinary, language. The task is clearly on the limits of my abilities, im slacking off, and have barely finished reading the i6 language manual.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3170&start=0#p22483
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] How to apply open all to a group of items
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-12 05:28:12

The possibility to use all is set for a certain command rather than for a certain kind of object.

[code]Understand "open [things]" as opening.[/code] makes the game understand OPEN ALL LOCKERS, OPEN ALL DOORS, OPEN ALL, etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3171&start=0#p22484
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: dropping something into an enterable (while being in it)
User: frudster / DateTime: 2011-09-12 08:20:37

Probably a silly question. Go easy on me. I confess to being an Inform7 noob. 

How do I trigger on the player dropping things into an enterable container regardless of whether or not the player is in it? In this case the ball only splashes when the player character is outside the pool. Is the reason that it doesn't work that the ball is already inside the pool when the character first enters the pool? And how do I fix it? 

[code]The garden is a room. The pool is an enterable container in the garden. The ball is a thing in the garden.

After inserting something into the pool:
	say "Splash!".
	
Test me with "take ball / drop ball in the pool / enter pool / take ball / drop ball in the pool"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3171&start=0#p22485
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: dropping something into an enterable (while being in it)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-12 08:35:01

Not a silly question at all. You're right that the issue is that the player is already in the pool. In particular, if you type "rules" and "actions" into your game before you run the test script, you'll see that what happens is that the "convert insert to drop where possible" rule is running and, well, converting the "inserting the ball into the pool" action into a "dropping the ball" action. So your "after inserting something into the pool" rule doesn't run, since you're not actually carrying out that action. 

So the simplest fix is probably to add:

[code]After dropping something when the player is in the pool: say "Splash!"[/code]

(This will also cause "drop ball" to print "Splash!" when the player is in the pool, but that's probably a good thing.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3171&start=0#p22486
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: dropping something into an enterable (while being in it)
User: frudster / DateTime: 2011-09-12 09:05:19

Right... but then the ball won't splash when the player is [i]outside[/i] of the pool! Is there no way of catching them both, short of creatingamy own "pooldroppping" action? 

Anyway, thanks, this is like StackOverflow.com but for IF geeks! Hooray! And thanks for the "rules" trick, I only saw the "actions" before.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3171&start=0#p22487
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: dropping something into an enterable (while being in it)
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-12 09:16:22

[quote="frudster"]Right... but then the ball won't splash when the player is [i]outside[/i] of the pool! Is there no way of catching them both, short of creatingamy own "pooldroppping" action?[/quote]
You don't need to create a new action. If you want to avoid duplicating code, you can generally just set up your own routine with a "To ..." phrase. Untested code:
[code]After dropping the ball when the player is in the pool:
	do the splash.

After inserting the ball into the pool:
	do the splash.

To do the splash:
	say "Splash!".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3171&start=0#p22488
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: dropping something into an enterable (while being in it)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-12 09:17:55

Sorry if I wasn't clear -- you should have [i]both[/i] rules. One for inserting something into the pool, one for dropping when the player is in the pool. That'll catch both cases. 

My method involves typing "say 'Splash!'" twice. This would get more annoying if you want to do something more complicated than say "Splash!" -- if, for instance, you want to check whether the noun is buoyant. In that case I probably would [UPDATING BEFORE POSTING] do what Victor says, so there's no danger of accidentally forgetting to update one part of the code when you update the other. But that depends on what you want to do.

(Funny you mention Stack Overflow -- [url=http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/34895/interactive-fiction]there's a proposal for an IF site there[/url]. More discussion [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3090&p=22317]here[/url].)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3170&start=0#p22489
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] How to apply open all to a group of items
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-12 10:46:22

It will still process the actions one at a time, though. If you need to react to a multiple-object differently -- that is, if "OPEN ALL" needs to be different from "OPEN LOCKER 1. OPEN LOCKER 2" -- look at chapter 20.6.

It may also be sufficient to create a scenery "lockers" object, and give that a special description.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3172&start=0#p22490
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Disambiguation when actions apply to topics
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-12 11:07:08

In the following example the first command (CONSULT BOOK ABOUT ME) works as expected (disambiguation is achieved by the does the player mean rules) but the second command (CONSULT BOOK ABOUT SNAFU) falls right through to the asking which do you mean activity.

[code]
The Language Lab is a room.
The Book of Lies is in the Lab. The Book of Truth is in the Lab. The absolute is a thing.
	
Does the player mean consulting the Book of Lies about: it is very unlikely.
Does the player mean consulting the Book of Truth about: it is very likely.

Test me with "consult book about me / consult book about snafu / consult book about absolute"  
[/code]
[quote]
Language Lab
You can see a Book of Lies and a Book of Truth here.

>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] consult book about me
(the Book of Truth about)
You discover nothing of interest in the Book of Truth.

>[2] consult book about snafu
Which do you mean, the Book of Lies or the Book of Truth?
[/quote]

In general the above does the player mean rules only run if the topic understood is also an object in scope.

As far as I can tell this behaviour is due to the following piece of code in the ChooseObjects routine found in the Parser Template §62
[code]
	if (line_ttype-->pcount == ELEMENTARY_TT) {
		while (wn <= num_words) {
			l = NextWordStopped(); wn--;
			if ( (l ~= -1 or 0) && (l->#dict_par1) &8 ) { wn++; continue; }! if preposition
			if (l == ALL1__WD or ALL2__WD or ALL3__WD or ALL4__WD or ALL5__WD) { wn++; continue; }
			SafeSkipDescriptors();
			! save the current match state
			@push match_length; @push token_filter; @push match_from;
			alt_match_list-->0 = number_matched;
			COBJ__Copy(number_matched, match_list, alt_match_list+WORDSIZE);
			! now get all the matches for the second noun
			match_length = 0; number_matched = 0; match_from = wn;
			token_filter = 0;
			SearchScope(actor, actors_location, line_tdata-->pcount);
			#ifdef COBJ_DEBUG;
			print number_matched, " possible second nouns]^";
			#endif;
			wn = swn;
			cobj_flag = 1;
			! restore match variables
			COBJ__SwapMatches();
			@pull match_from; @pull token_filter; @pull match_length;
			pcount = spcount;
			jump CodeOne;
		}
	}

[/code]
This apparently sets alt_match_list-->0 to zero when the second noun is a topic (a topic is not an ELEMENTARY_TT), which in turn means that ChooseObjects will not consider the Does the player mean rulebook. Altering the first line above to 
[code]
	if (line_ttype-->pcount == ELEMENTARY_TT | TOPIC_TOKEN) {
[/code]
fixes this particular problem; but I have no idea if it causes others.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3173&start=0#p22491
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Seeking testers for "PataNoir" (Potential IfComp entry)
User: SimonChris / DateTime: 2011-09-12 11:09:35

I am looking for testers for my newest game, "PataNoir", which is a surreal noir story. I intend to submit it to the IfComp if I can finish it in time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2135&start=10#p22492
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: You know you've played too much IF when...
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-09-12 12:22:15

During [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Girl_Who_Waited]the most recent Doctor Who episode[/url], the Doctor said [spoiler]to Rory, "You will be my eyes and hands."[/spoiler] and I thought "Was that a Colossal Cave reference?!"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3173&start=0#p22493
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Seeking testers for "PataNoir" (Potential IfComp entry)
User: SimonChris / DateTime: 2011-09-12 12:35:44

I forgot to mention that the game is for the Glulx platform, and written in Inform 7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3068&start=10#p22494
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Never Comp
User: ultimate / DateTime: 2011-09-12 13:13:12

[quote="duodave"]Maybe someone should write a game that breaks every rule in the "Players Bill of Rights". It could be a pr0n, too.[/quote]

As I demonstrated in my "Too sexy for this comp" thread, pr0n adventures with sexy images and adult language would be viewed as offensive and trollish. If you submit such a game to the IFComp you run the risk of being disqualified or receive very negative feedback in the reviews.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3068&start=10#p22495
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Never Comp
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-09-12 13:39:07

[quote="ultimate"][quote="duodave"]Maybe someone should write a game that breaks every rule in the "Players Bill of Rights". It could be a pr0n, too.[/quote]

As I demonstrated in my "Too sexy for this comp" thread, pr0n adventures with sexy images and adult language would be viewed as offensive and trollish. If you submit such a game to the IFComp you run the risk of being disqualified or receive very negative feedback in the reviews.[/quote]
Maybe the forum is full of virgins and you shouldn't spoil the experience for them. So please, use the spoiler tag.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3170&start=0#p22496
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] How to apply open all to a group of items
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-09-12 14:12:51

Didn't someone make an extension for examine all?  Jon Ingold, I think?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3172&start=0#p22497
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation when actions apply to topics
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-09-12 14:31:38

Weird. I say file a bug report with the possible fix just so the dev team takes a look at the problem.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3172&start=0#p22498
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation when actions apply to topics
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-12 16:31:44

Filed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3171&start=0#p22499
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: dropping something into an enterable (while being in it)
User: Jeff Zeitlin / DateTime: 2011-09-12 16:39:01

Could something like the OP wants be handled by an INSTEAD OF rule?  Guessing at the approximate syntax off the top of my (admittedly imperfect) memory, something like
[code]instead of dropping something when [the player's location] encloses the pool:
   now [the noun] is in the pool
   print 'Splash!'[/code]
N.B. The above should be considered to be more of an I7-esque pseudocode than actual I7 code. I've almost certainly missed some punctuation or nuances of syntax.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3171&start=0#p22500
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: dropping something into an enterable (while being in it)
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-12 16:45:37

[quote="Jeff Zeitlin"]Could something like the OP wants be handled by an INSTEAD OF rule?[/quote]
Well, yes, but if you only want to change the message generated by the action (which I assumed to be what the OP wanted), why would you go through the trouble of having to implement all the rest of the action (like moving the object and making sure that the appropriate checks are run)? Note that your code would allow us to drop scenery objects, people, and so on, because an "instead" rule bypasses all "check" rules.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3068&start=10#p22501
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Never Comp
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-09-12 16:53:32

[quote]would be viewed as offensive and trollish[/quote]

Just to be absolutely clear, you weren't assumed to be a troll until you posted four or five of your "pranks", with the last one being the most glaring. Don't confuse things.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3068&start=10#p22502
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Never Comp
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-12 17:30:19

Hey guys, don't feed the troll.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=40#p22503
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2011-09-12 21:25:06

FYI - I certainly haven't forgotten this project; I dearly want to get back to it but I'm still sorting out RL matters.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3106&start=10#p22504
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Referring to the player in the third person
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-09-12 23:05:21

Not getting into the whole artistic choice of player ~=ing PC, I'm in zarf's boat in that I dig the detached, austere vibe that the responses give off. Used the right way, it could end up like some sort of Tom Waits parser and make almost anything creepy.

Consider:

[quote]
>take vase from mantel
You carefully take the vase from the mantel; as you do, the sound of something stirring outside the window can be heard, faintly.

>x window
You can't see through the window while the blinds are drawn.

>opwn blinds
I don't know the word "opwn".
[/quote]
versus

[quote]
>take vase from mantel
Carefully, Richard takes the vase from off of the mantel. Something moves in the darkness outside the window, unbeknownst to him.

>x window
Richard can't see anything through the window while the blinds are drawn.

>opwn blinds
The player seems to have either mistyped, or used an unneeded word.

Something scrapes by the window.
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3113&start=10#p22505
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Participate in the Interactive Fiction Top 50!
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-09-13 01:09:02

[b]Trinity[/b].

Wonderful/terrible places to visit: [b]Slouching Towards Bedlam[/b], [b]Hoist Sail for the Heliopause and Home[/b], [b]1893: A World's Fair Mystery[/b].

Pioneering explorations of complicity and player/PC relationships: [b]9:05[/b], [b]De Baron[/b], [b]LASH[/b], [b]Rameses[/b], [b]Spider and Web[/b].

Glorious experiments: [b]Aisle[/b], [b]Shrapnel[/b], [b]The Gostak[/b], [b]Ad Verbum[/b].

Deliciously surreal: [b]Blue Chairs[/b], [b]Shade[/b].

Well-crafted: [b]The Warbler's Nest[/b], [b]Delightful Wallpaper[/b], [b]All Things Devours[/b], [b]Gun Mute[/b], [b]Anchorhead[/b].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3068&start=10#p22508
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Never Comp
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-09-13 02:47:55

Oh, I don't think he's a troll *per se*. From his post in the "Introduction" thread, it's clear he came here with a very clear purpose. That purpose was definitely trollish, but his reply in this thread is the very coherent post I've seen him make (after the "Intro" thread), and I felt deserved some sort of reply.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=30#p22509
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-13 03:31:30

I now have 21 voters, and the number of games with only one vote is actually beginning to decrease -- a good sign. The current histogram*:

Games with 1 vote: 79
Games with 2 votes: 27
Games with 3 votes: 13
Games with 4 votes: 5
Games with 5 votes: 7
Games with 6 votes: 0
Games with 7 votes: 1
Games with 8 votes: 1
Games with 9 votes: 1
Games with 10 votes: 0
Games with 11 votes: 1

Keep 'em coming; there are still two weeks to participate.

* Ok, so it's not really a histogram. I'll admit it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=50#p22510
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: Sslaxx / DateTime: 2011-09-13 06:31:16

[quote="thefoxaroo"]FYI - I certainly haven't forgotten this project; I dearly want to get back to it but I'm still sorting out RL matters.[/quote]
Life happens. I'd certainly be interested in seeing this one completed.

On a tangential note, I wish someone could actually finish making a "Doctor Who" game in AGS...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3174&start=0#p22511
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I7] Failing to Understand as new
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-09-13 06:48:08

This is one of those annoying instances where something trivial causes errors I can't comprehend.

[code]Understand the command "get out/off/down/up" as something new.

The Lounge is a room. "This is a room with various surfaces and furniture."

Test me with "get up".[/code]

The understand-as-new instruction obviously refuses to have an effect. Is there something obvious I've overlooked?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3174&start=0#p22512
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Failing to Understand as new
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-09-13 07:09:26

You can only understand one word as something new. You'll have to do "Understand the command "get" as something new" and then replace all the "get"s you want to keep, like taking.

I've always wondered why Inform doesn't throw an error when the author requests to understand more than one word as something new. If it doesn't have any effect, why allow it at all?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3174&start=0#p22513
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Failing to Understand as new
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-09-13 07:10:38

I suppose that's what threw me, yeah. In any case, thank you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=50#p22514
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-13 08:14:51

I think everybody understands! Just keep moving forward, that's all you gotta do...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3106&start=10#p22515
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Referring to the player in the third person
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-13 08:18:16

[quote="Glorb"]Not getting into the whole artistic choice of player ~=ing PC, I'm in zarf's boat in that I dig the detached, austere vibe that the responses give off. Used the right way, it could end up like some sort of Tom Waits parser and make almost anything creepy.[/quote]
Interesting to put both player and PC in third person. I would totally dig a Tom Waits-style parser!

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpEBOavYqHQ">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpEBOavYqHQ</a>

Hmm... "The Fisher King" might adapt well to IF....  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3106&start=10#p22516
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Referring to the player in the third person
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-13 08:41:27

Let the parser refer to the player as a neuter and to itself in the plural, and you'd get yourself a Gollum-parser:

>OPWN WINDOW
We don't know what it means by "opwn". Do we, my preciousss?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3127&start=20#p22517
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Dead Horses, and the beating thereof
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-13 09:18:54

[quote="Beetle B."]I'm one of those folks who have been thinking about writing a game on and off for over a decade (first attempt was via AGT in the 90's).

I was actually planning to learn TADS3 and write a simple, formulaic game soon - just as an excuse to get to know TADS3 before attempting more original works.[/quote]
I'm in a similar boat. I started an IF project around 1998, gave it up, and did nothing for a decade. Then I came back to the community, contributed programming work to a game I did not write, and started my "first" game. Although I'm avoiding obvious turn-offs, I'm still holding onto a bit of a "genre" pattern as a guide. My idea is this: Write a bad game, then make it good. I've now inflicted it on a few testers, and their feedback has inspired some major changes. Thanks, testers!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3106&start=10#p22518
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Referring to the player in the third person
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2011-09-13 09:23:47

How about the parser refers to itself in the second person as a reporter to the player about the third-person PC?

[code]You tell the player that Richard takes the vase from the mantle.

You tell the player that Richard can't see through the window with the blinds are drawn.[/code]

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3106&start=10#p22519
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Referring to the player in the third person
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-09-13 10:23:00

I feel that'd get....pretty weird, actually. I'd get the impression that the player [i]is[/i] the parser, which would be pretty cool. (How about a game where the viewpoint switches from the player, to the parser, to finally the player herself?)

Looking back over what I posted, I'm actually really curious as to what other authors could do with my idea, specifically the fact that things can happen in the game world that the PC isn't aware of. The player herself would be a kind of omniscient force guiding Rich, while assorted beasties close in on him from locations only known to the player. Like,

[quote]
>open blind
Richard opens the blind, just in time to see the hind quarters of something rapidly ascending the tree outside. Startled, he stumbles back, dropping the vase.

Something in the kitchen hears the vase shatter.

>e
Living Room
This sparsely-furnished living room has had most of its contents cleared out. The only things of note left here are the couch, and the television. The parlor lies back to the east, the front door is to the north, and some stairs here lead up.

The television is turned off.

The thing in the kitchen walks into the parlor to investigate the broken vase. It is unsure of which direction Richard went.

>u
Top of Stairs
Richard stands at the top of a staircase in the middle of a hallway that stretches the length of the house north and south. Further stairs lead up to the attic.

Suddenly, Richard hears a shattering sound as the thing jumps from the top of the tree through the window at the north end of the hall.

The thing in the living roof turns on the television.

>s
[/quote]

Essentially, each turn, the player gets a semi-detailed threat report. Would this be interesting to play, or just end up feeling like babysitting some dude?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3174&start=0#p22520
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Failing to Understand as new
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-13 11:17:38

I've [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=745]reported this as a bug[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3175&start=0#p22521
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: New extension: Scope Caching
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-13 11:32:26

I've had this lying around for a while, ever since Zarf explained how to do it. But I came up with a situation where I actually had to use it, so I thought it was time to write some documentation and flesh it out a little.

<a class="postlink" href="http://eyeballsun.org/i/Scope%20Caching.i7x">http://eyeballsun.org/i/Scope%20Caching.i7x</a>

Please have a look at it. I would happily take advice on improving the lame example.

But [i]about that example[/i]...

I'm not 100% sure why this happens, but if I don't use Scope Caching, this gets stuck in an infinite loop:

[code]Indoors is a room.

The front door is a door. It is west of Indoors and east of Outdoors.

There is a container called a pile of balls in Indoors. "There is a pile of rubber balls here." In the pile is a ball.

Understand "rubber" as a pile when the ball is not visible.
Understand "rubber" as a ball when the ball is visible.

The outdoor view is scenery. The description is "It's bright outside.";

After deciding the scope of the player in Indoors when the front door is open:
	place the outdoor view in scope.

Test me with "open door/rules/get rubber"[/code]

I sort of get the idea, but the situation seems weird. What happens during "place the outdoor view in scope" that causes the infinite loop, exactly?

Also, if you think this should be a two-star example rather than a one-star example, let me know.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3106&start=10#p22522
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Referring to the player in the third person
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-13 11:37:53

I've never played Suspended, but that sounds like what it might be like.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3176&start=0#p22523
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: How does the parser use punctuation?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-09-13 11:43:12

If you try to make an understand phrase that includes punctuation you get this error:

[quote]You wrote 'Understand "why?" as doubting'  : but 'understand' text cannot contain literal punctuation, or more specifically cannot contain any of these: . , ! ? : ; since they are already used in various ways by the parser, and would not correctly match here.[/quote]
Full stop is used to chain multiple commands and a comma is used to interact with NPCs, but why are the rest (!?:;) reserved? How does the parser use them?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3106&start=10#p22524
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Referring to the player in the third person
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-09-13 12:03:09

You people might be interested in this authoring system called Curveship...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3175&start=0#p22525
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New extension: Scope Caching
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-13 13:03:00

I found what in PlaceInScope is causing the infinite loop. The first line is "wn = match_from;"

The parse_name routine of the ball does a visibility test, which means a scope test; that invokes PlaceInScope; PlaceInScope resets wn, the global word-count index. Thus the parse_name routine never makes progress through the input buffer. 

(It's *not* an infinite recursion, as I originally thought. Just a loop whose counter keeps being reset.)

I have no idea what that line is doing there, or what case it supports. If I comment it out, this example works.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3129&start=10#p22526
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scope bug?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-13 13:09:57

I was offline last week and got behind, so I just noticed this post. Curiously, I had [i]exactly the same problem[/i] in my WIP, and came up with a totally different solution.

This is thanks to Zarf, who explained how to do it several months ago. I've wrapped up the solution into an extension called "Scope Caching." Normally, Inform runs the entire scope loop for every single object each time one scope test is made. Scope Caching just does it once at the beginning of a turn and then saves the result in a property called "marked visible."

I just posted a thread about it, which includes an example that should solve the OP's problem. Please comment:

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3175">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3175</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3129&start=10#p22528
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scope bug?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-13 13:24:06

Speaking of Epistemology, would Eric like to make use of Scope Caching in future versions...?

[code][ It might seem more straightforward simply to write "Now everything visible in the location is seen." but
  this turns out to be unacceptably slow in practice. The following code does approximately the same thing
  but much faster.]

Carry out looking (this is the mark items as seen when looking rule): 
  unless in darkness begin;    
  repeat with item running through things that are enclosed by the location begin;   
       if the item is not enclosed by an opaque closed container, now the item is seen;  
  end repeat;
 end unless.

Carry out opening a container (this is the mark items as seen on opening a container rule):
  repeat with item running through things that are enclosed by the noun begin;   
       if the item is unseen and the item is visible, now the item is seen;  
  end repeat.

The mark items as seen on opening a container rule is listed after the standard opening rule in the carry out opening rules.
[/code]

I think this whole section could be replaced with:

[code]After reading a command (this is the mark visible items as seen rule):
    Now every marked visible item is seen;

The mark visible items as seen rule is listed after the cache scope after reading a command rule in the after reading a command rulebook.[/code]

...although there may be some extra fiddling needed when objects are revealed during multiple actions - I think that may already be true.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3163&start=0#p22529
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Getting my IF online.
User: ausgerechnet / DateTime: 2011-09-13 13:46:39

if its a z5 game, you can just upload it to the if-archive, and parchment should automatically pick it up for online play, with a url like:

<a class="postlink" href="http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/geb.z5.js">http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/tru ... /geb.z5.js</a>

(replace geb.z5 with your game's filename)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3159&start=0#p22530
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Announcing Spring Thing 2012
User: ausgerechnet / DateTime: 2011-09-13 13:51:05

wow, who is kate mckee? that is incredibly generous!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2894&start=0#p22531
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Recommendation for Interpreter?
User: ausgerechnet / DateTime: 2011-09-13 13:57:05

another vote for gargoyle from me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3145&start=0#p22532
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How Do You Selectively Hide Undescribed Objects and Door
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-13 14:05:30

[quote="Robert Rothman"]I believe this is correct -- I'm pretty sure scenery is defined as "usually" fixed in place, so that property can be overridden.  However, rather than going through the two steps of declaring something to be scenery and then declaring it to be portable, can't you just use the single "undescribed" property to get where you want?[/quote]
 [emote]:o[/emote] Nooooooo!

I think some of the bugs regarding "undescribed" have been fixed, but it's only marginally supported, and there's almost always a better way. The only official use for "undescribed" is for omitting the player from room descriptions, and to be honest, I think it wouldn't be hard to do away with it for that as well. I'm quietly hoping for "undescribed" to disappear from I7 completely.

I'm partial to the "after choosing notable locale objects" rulebook. You can set the locale priority of unmentioned objects to 0, and you can also use the same rulebook to order paragraphs in room descriptions. You can even cause things to show up that aren't actually in scope. (Be careful not to do this by accident!) It's very handy, and deserves more attention in the documentation in my opinion.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3148&start=0#p22533
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Web links
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-13 14:12:57

I use a URL-shortener to make things look tidier. Many of them will allow you to define your own custom shortened URLs if you create an account with them. That way, even if a player has to type, they don't have to type so much.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3143&start=10#p22534
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: does the player mean consulting it about
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-13 14:18:13

I7, I curse you!  [emote]:twisted:[/emote] 

I can't tell you how many parsing problems I've had that are not solved by Does the Player Mean rules. They're just not consulted enough. And even when they are, they don't do any scoring between them - you have to be careful to order them so that exactly the right one fires. One day, one day I tell you, I'm going to rewrite that damn parser and expose all of its workings to I7!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3155&start=0#p22535
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Understand "[nickname]" as John Doe.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-13 14:20:08

Kinds-of-value can also be understood. It seems arbitrary to me that texts can't be understood, but KoVs can, but that's the way it is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3161&start=0#p22536
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Try Silently Generating Line Break
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-13 14:27:44

Keep in mind, though, that "try silently" is only supposed to be silent if a check rule doesn't say anything. It processes the Before, Instead, check and carry out rulebooks, but skips the report rulebook (not sure what it does with the After rulebook).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3143&start=10#p22537
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: does the player mean consulting it about
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-13 14:33:58

[quote]And even when they are, they don't do any scoring between them - you have to be careful to order them so that exactly the right one fires.[/quote]

Yeah, we need a "does the author mean [rule]" activity to resolve them...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3143&start=10#p22538
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: does the player mean consulting it about
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-13 14:38:31

[quote="zarf"][quote]And even when they are, they don't do any scoring between them - you have to be careful to order them so that exactly the right one fires.[/quote]

Yeah, we need a "does the author mean [rule]" activity to resolve them...[/quote]
I suspect you're being a smartass, but I don't quite understand your point...  [emote]:?[/emote]  

What troubles me is that if only one DPMR can make a decision, why are there four different results? Why not just "yes" or "no?" Going the other way, why not make it like choosing notable locale objects activity, where you can have multiple rules in the After rulebook, each of which directly manipulate the score?

[code]Scoring the player's command is an activity.

For scoring the player's command: (- I6 Parser -)

After scoring the player's command when the most likely action is consulting it about and a book is visible:
     Set the noun score for the book-stand to 0;
     Repeat with the tome running through visible books:
         Increase the noun score for the tome by 10;[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3113&start=20#p22539
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Participate in the Interactive Fiction Top 50!
User: ausgerechnet / DateTime: 2011-09-13 14:41:53

commercial classics:
zork - first text adventure to hook me
moonmist - infocom's most playable and accessible
a mind forever voyaging - infocom's best narrative
arthur - infocom's best puzzlefest
gateway - a complete multimedia experience
eric the unready - funniest commercial game ever

modern era:
varicella - great writing, great pc
vespers - best competition winner
anchorhead - best horror
pascal's wager - most replayable
bolivia by night - educational & entertaining
rendition - best political
textfire golf - best z-code abuse
city of secrets - best implementation
stiffy mckane the undiscovered country - funniest free game ever 
hoist sail for the heliopause and home - most elegant structure

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3127&start=20#p22540
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Dead Horses, and the beating thereof
User: ausgerechnet / DateTime: 2011-09-13 14:46:21

[quote="Glorb"]Are there any genres in IF that are universally or near-universally considered to be "dead horses"?
[/quote]

not dead horses, but scifi and fantasy are so over-represented, if you do something that is neither, it immediately stands out and becomes far more interesting just by virtue of avoiding those 2 genres.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3143&start=10#p22541
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: does the player mean consulting it about
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-13 15:17:55

Yes, I'm being a smartass -- the point is that the DTPM rules are a (probably too simplistic) attempt to solve an object precedence problem. Ordering rules in a rulebook is *also* a precedence problem; it's exactly the same once you break it down to a mathematical model.

I still don't have a solution, of course.

[quote]What troubles me is that if only one DPMR can make a decision, why are there four different results? Why not just "yes" or "no?"[/quote]

It's not normally the case that only one rule decides the disambiguation outcome. The rulebook is run separately for each option (perhaps after the parser has pre-eliminated some options). Each option gets a score, and the option with the highest score wins.

Only one rule fires *for each option*. But it is (or can be) a different rule for each of the options.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3143&start=20#p22542
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: does the player mean consulting it about
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-13 15:23:01

Using a scoring activity as you suggest would be more flexible, yes. (But also slower, as the system would have to invoke an activity -- three rulebooks -- rather than one.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3143&start=20#p22543
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: does the player mean consulting it about
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2011-09-13 15:32:13

So I know you (the OP) found a solution that works for you, and the discussion has moved somewhat away from this, but what about the workaround of just having consulting it about actions on the book stand call consulting it about on the encyclopedia? You never (I assume) want to consult the book stand about anything.

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3127&start=20#p22544
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Dead Horses, and the beating thereof
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-09-13 16:02:33

[quote]if you do something that is neither, it immediately stands out and becomes far more interesting just by virtue of avoiding those 2 genres.[/quote]

While it *may* be true that those genres are the most represented (and I might add "Slice of Life"), there's far more variety than you think. The bit I quoted from your post is simply not true.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3127&start=20#p22545
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Dead Horses, and the beating thereof
User: ausgerechnet / DateTime: 2011-09-13 16:35:14

i am aware there is some variety in scifi and fantasy, i already stated they are not dead horses. nevertheless the general tip for authors looking to make a splash still stands: avoid scifi and fantasy and your game will stand out. first impressions count, the first appearance of a robot/spaceship/lasergun/goblin/magic ring/fairytale kingdom will kill off a large chunk of your potential audience (unless the game is damn impressive before that, which most arent).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3127&start=20#p22546
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Dead Horses, and the beating thereof
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-13 16:41:03

[quote="ausgerechnet"]nevertheless the general tip for authors looking to make a splash still stands: avoid scifi and fantasy and your game will stand out.[/quote]
I'm not totally convinced of that. Looking at the [url=http://www.ifcomp.org/comp10/]last IF Comp[/url], I see only two or three SF games; and in fact, if there is a dominant genre there it seems to be horror.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3171&start=0#p22547
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: dropping something into an enterable (while being in it)
User: Jeff Zeitlin / DateTime: 2011-09-13 17:00:53

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="Jeff Zeitlin"]Could something like the OP wants be handled by an INSTEAD OF rule?[/quote]
Well, yes, but if you only want to change the message generated by the action (which I assumed to be what the OP wanted), why would you go through the trouble of having to implement all the rest of the action (like moving the object and making sure that the appropriate checks are run)? Note that your code would allow us to drop scenery objects, people, and so on, because an "instead" rule bypasses all "check" rules.[/quote]
OK, I see.  I infer from that that an AFTER rule allows all of the normal check rules, so unless the OP doesn't want ALL dropped objects to end up in the pool, I should think that
[code]after dropping something when [the player's location] encloses the pool:
   now [the noun] is in the pool
   print 'Splash!'
[/code]
would work instead, possibly eliminating the need to convert a drop action into an insert action when the player is NOT in the pool (or is that done automatically, without the author needing to write additional rules?).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3171&start=0#p22548
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: dropping something into an enterable (while being in it)
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-09-13 17:25:47

[quote="Jeff Zeitlin"]I infer from that that an AFTER rule allows all of the normal check rules, so unless the OP doesn't want ALL dropped objects to end up in the pool, I should think that <code snipped> would work instead, possibly eliminating the need to convert a drop action into an insert action when the player is NOT in the pool (or is that done automatically, without the author needing to write additional rules?).[/quote]
The dropping action isn't converted into inserting it into, it's the other way around (but only when players try to insert something into something that they themselves are in as well).

It looks like you're interpreting the OP's desired behavior differently than the other posters. Based on my reading of the post as well as the included example, the OP wants to control the reporting of the ball being [i]specifically[/i] dropped into the pool using "drop ball into pool" (just another syntax for the inserting it into action) [i]or[/i] when the player drops the ball (using the dropping action) while in the pool.

I can see how the post could be interpreted as "How do I make it so when the player drops the ball (using "drop ball") in the same location as the pool, it lands in the pool with a special message?" which is what it seems you're trying to do. The solutions are different -- maybe frudster could clarify.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3127&start=20#p22549
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Dead Horses, and the beating thereof
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-09-13 18:21:18

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="ausgerechnet"]nevertheless the general tip for authors looking to make a splash still stands: avoid scifi and fantasy and your game will stand out.[/quote]
I'm not totally convinced of that. Looking at the [url=http://www.ifcomp.org/comp10/]last IF Comp[/url], I see only two or three SF games; and in fact, if there is a dominant genre there it seems to be horror.[/quote]
I'd say the four dominant genres of IF are fantasy, SF, mystery and horror, but since these are huge, overlapping categories this isn't really saying all that much. It's probably more interesting to talk about the genres that [i]haven't[/i] been done much, or readily-identified subgenres.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3177&start=0#p22550
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Limit extension to certain sections/chapters?
User: windracer / DateTime: 2011-09-13 21:08:04

Is it possible to limit an included extension to only certain sections or chapters of my game source?

I'm working on my first IF, a game for my daughter. I want to have a certain section of the game be in Spanish, using the Spanish translation extension. If I just 'include' the extension it takes over for the entire time, which I don't want. Ideally I only want the Spanish translation (text, commands, everything) to kick in when the player is in a certain area (section or region) of the game (say, for example, Spain).

Is there any way to accomplish that in Inform7?

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3178&start=0#p22551
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Move to a random room in a specified region
User: windracer / DateTime: 2011-09-13 21:13:25

I'm trying to move the player to a random room in a region. For example, I have two regions: Indoors and Outdoors. One of the objects in my game will (hopefully) teleport the player to a random room in a region. I've been playing around with the 'move the player to a random' syntax and just cannot figure out the way to do this. 

The closest I got was "move the player to Indoors;" which gives me "*** Run-time problem P19: Tried to move yourself (not a backdrop) to Indoors, which is a region." when the action is triggered. 

None of the examples in the documentation or recipe book seem to be helping. Could someone nudge me in the right direction?

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3125&start=0#p22552
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Interpreters and cover art
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-09-13 21:14:31

[quote="katz"]Inform 7 discourages, but allows, the use of cover art that isn't square.  Are there interpreters (for Glulx, specifically) that will distort or otherwise improperly display non-square cover art?  Glulxe displays it correctly.[/quote]

When you say 'displays it correctly', in what capacity is it displaying it? All I mean is - if you're just telling the game to display an image, and it happens to be your cover image and it happens to be rectangular, the program won't know that from any other image you told it to display, so it'll be fine (as it is). Or are you using some particular cover image-related command?... not that I think one exists, but I don't know all.

Mac Zoom is the only interpreter I know that briefly flashes up the cover art of its own accord when the game starts (unless you tick a box to disable it), so it may be worth checking your image in Zoom.

Re: the squareness -- my WIP has rectangular cover art, and in the large version of the cover image (960 x 960 or whatever it is) I letterboxed it with black bars top and bottom.

Then there was the separate issue of the image being crummily indecipherable when shrunk, which wasn't a consequence of the letterboxing but in the nature of this image anyway. Basically I made a modified version of the cover art to suit the thumbnail square, with bigger clearer fonts so it remained legible, etc.

I feel I've proofed myself against everything now - the file is square no matter where it goes or how it's used, but the large image displays correctly in its rectangle, and the thumbnail is more legible than most people's.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3178&start=0#p22553
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Move to a random room in a specified region
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-13 21:26:37

This seems to work on a quick test; is it not working for you?

[code]Instead of jumping: move the player to a random room in indoors.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3178&start=0#p22554
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Move to a random room in a specified region
User: windracer / DateTime: 2011-09-13 21:48:56

Doh!  [emote]:oops:[/emote] 

I swear I tried every combination but apparently I missed the use of 'in' before the region name.

Thank you! I knew it should have been easy!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=50#p22555
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2011-09-13 22:10:15

[quote="Sslaxx"][quote="thefoxaroo"]FYI - I certainly haven't forgotten this project; I dearly want to get back to it but I'm still sorting out RL matters.[/quote]
Life happens. I'd certainly be interested in seeing this one completed.[/quote]thanks.

This is my project to get past the learning curve, and therefore the game design will be somewhat rudimentary.  Hopefully I can make up for it with some half decent prose.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3177&start=0#p22556
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Limit extension to certain sections/chapters?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-13 22:11:58

Some extensions can be turned on and off. (That is, they define effects that can be turned on and off.) However, the parser translations aren't set up that way.

You might be able to rewrite the Spanish translation extension to use a switch... but don't do it for your first IF game. Sorry. Not an easy request.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3161&start=0#p22557
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Try Silently Generating Line Break
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-09-13 22:50:52

Er, Mikee you sure about that?  Check rules are silenced.  [code]Place is a room.  Bob is a man in place. 

persuasion: rule succeeds.

Instead of waiting, try silently Bob jumping.[/code]Entering WAIT to make Bob silently jump prints nothing, as expected.  The block jumping rule is indeed a check rule.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3177&start=0#p22558
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Limit extension to certain sections/chapters?
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-09-13 23:31:22

Assuming that you want to do this for educational purposes - how 'bout using English language, but with the NPCs speaking Spanish only?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3179&start=0#p22559
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Deprecating extensions?
User: paulobrian / DateTime: 2011-09-14 00:16:21

So I'm noodling around with a little I7 project, and I want it to be in first person voice. I don't follow the boards, so instead I just searched the full extension list on the I7 site for "first", and came across Custom Library Messages by David Fisher. Just the thing! Except that a ways into my project, I ran into a bug in that extension. So I searched the forum and found [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2054&hilit=david+fisher]this thread[/url], in which Ron Newcomb says: 

[quote]David Fisher has expressed a desire to no longer maintain those venerable extensions Custom Library Messages and Default Messages, so I created replacements for both.[/quote]
And indeed, I installed Ron's version of CLM, and the bug was fixed! (Thanks to the aforementioned thread.) 

But when I look at David Fisher's CLM entry on the Inform site, I see no indication that it has been deprecated and replaced by Ron's version. Is there any protocol for clearly deprecating extensions that have been abandoned by their author and fixed by a different author, so that out-of-touch types like myself don't get snared by them?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3127&start=20#p22565
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Dead Horses, and the beating thereof
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-09-14 03:20:03

[quote="ausgerechnet"]i am aware there is some variety in scifi and fantasy, i already stated they are not dead horses. nevertheless the general tip for authors looking to make a splash still stands: avoid scifi and fantasy and your game will stand out. first impressions count, the first appearance of a robot/spaceship/lasergun/goblin/magic ring/fairytale kingdom will kill off a large chunk of your potential audience (unless the game is damn impressive before that, which most arent).[/quote]

I believe you misunderstood me. There are many fantasy and Sci-Fi games, true, but the other genres are NOT as under-represented as you seem to think, especially nowadays when those genres are rarely used. I can think of no game - of NO game - that has made a "splash" since I arrived at the community (about a couple of years) by being of any genre whatsoever. Instead, I saw games like "Make it Good" and "Blue Lacuna" making splashes because they were so complex in adapting to the player's experience. THAT seems to be the splasher. Genre has nothing to do with it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3179&start=0#p22566
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Deprecating extensions?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-09-14 03:41:07

The Inform team is working on an expansion of the extensions website, so, not right now but it's in the works.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3179&start=0#p22567
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Deprecating extensions?
User: Sslaxx / DateTime: 2011-09-14 04:46:57

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]The Inform team is working on an expansion of the extensions website, so, not right now but it's in the works.[/quote]
An RSS feed or something along those lines could help in that regard, in that it'd give a means for people to automatically know when an extension has been upload/altered/etc without having to go to the site to look.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3177&start=0#p22568
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Limit extension to certain sections/chapters?
User: windracer / DateTime: 2011-09-14 08:17:22

I will probably do that (write all the room descriptions and text in Spanish for that region) but was hoping I could "turn off" the English commands in the game as well so she'd have to write 'mira perro' instead of 'examine dog' as well.

And yes, it is a sneaky attempt at educational purposes. [emote];)[/emote] She's learning Spanish in school so I thought this would be a cool way to incorporate that into the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3143&start=20#p22569
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: does the player mean consulting it about
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-14 08:38:05

[quote="jacksonmead"]So I know you (the OP) found a solution that works for you, and the discussion has moved somewhat away from this, but what about the workaround of just having consulting it about actions on the book stand call consulting it about on the encyclopedia? You never (I assume) want to consult the book stand about anything.[/quote]
I don't recall if consulting it about requires a held object, but I've been discovering more and more problems with redirecting actions to a different noun. Occasionally, you'll run into something like this:

[quote]> consult book about frobnitz
(consulting the book stand about)
You must be holding the dusty book to consult it about something.[/quote]

In this case it might work, because you're confined to a single action, but if you want to redirect lots of actions, it gets really messy. Another alternative I've tried:

[code]Before doing anything other than examining with the book stand:
    now the noun is the dusty book[/code]

...runs into more problems, because rules that run before it and rules that run after it are dealing with different nouns - you don't always get the full complement of action checks that you would expect with a "try"... but I think to use "try" in such a case you need to do some magic with stored actions.

It's usually preferable to have the parser choose the right object in the first place.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3171&start=0#p22570
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: dropping something into an enterable (while being in it)
User: frudster / DateTime: 2011-09-14 08:39:05

Hi, wow, thanks for digging in everybody. 

and yes, my idea was indeed that dropping something in the water would do the same thing regardless of whether or not the PC was in the water. 

I came up with this, take it for a spin and let me know if I'm doing things extremely backwards - as I said, I'm new here. Also this is just a test so lots of nice stuff is missing. What I'm actually planning to do with this is a pool of muddy water where things you drop disappear into the mud until you figure out how to get them back -- you're not supposed to be able to go and look at the bottom like in this example. 

The "if the bottom of the pool is something" bit is there so you can create a pool that doesn't "sink to" a special bottom; in that case everything just stays in the pool, floating or not. 

Also, a question: is there a way to specify a directional one-to-one relationship and name both sides, like surface / bottom?

[code]"Sinking pool and buoyancy" by frudster

section buoyancy

A weight is a kind of value. 1kg specifies a weight. 1g specifies a weight scaled down by 1000.
Everything has a weight. A thing usually has weight 100g.
A thing has a weight called buoyancy. The buoyancy of a thing is usually 0kg. 

Definition: A thing is buoyant if its weight is less than its buoyancy.

section pool with a hidden bottom

[A pool where you can drop things. If they sink they sink out of sight, actually into 
another coontainer called the bottom of the pool]

A pool is a kind of container. A pool is usually enterable and fixed in place.

Sinking down relates one container to another (called the bottom). The verb to sink to (he sinks to, they sink to) implies the sinking down relation.

After inserting something into a pool, carry out the sinking activity with the noun.

After dropping something when the player is in a pool, carry out the sinking activity with the noun.

Sinking something is an activity on things.

Rule for sinking a thing which is in a pool: 
	Let a pool be the holder of the noun;	
	say "You drop the [noun] into the [pool].";
	if the noun is buoyant:
		say "It floats!";
		stop the action;
	if the bottom of the pool is something:
		say "It sinks out of sight.";
		move the noun to the bottom of the pool;
	otherwise:
		say "It sinks.".
	
section scenario

The garden is a room. "A cute little garden with a fairly unpleasant pond. A ladder goes down a hole in ground. "

The cellar is a room. It is down from the garden. "A damp little space. A ladder goes up into the garden. "

The pond is a pool in the garden. Understand "water" as the pond.

The water wall is an fixed in place enterable container in the cellar. "There's a shimmering vertical surface of water here, like in Stargate. How tacky!" The pond sinks to the water wall.

A rusty bolt is a thing in the garden.

A cork is a thing in the garden. The weight of the cork is 10g. The buoyancy of the cork is 20g.

test pool with "take bolt / drop bolt in pond / take cork / drop cork in water / enter pond / take cork / drop cork / x pond / out /  take cork / drop cork / down / x water / take bolt / up / drop bolt " in the garden

[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3143&start=20#p22571
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: does the player mean consulting it about
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-14 08:40:58

[quote="zarf"]It's not normally the case that only one rule decides the disambiguation outcome. The rulebook is run separately for each option (perhaps after the parser has pre-eliminated some options). Each option gets a score, and the option with the highest score wins.

Only one rule fires *for each option*. But it is (or can be) a different rule for each of the options.[/quote]
Thanks for explaining that. Sometimes I wish the "rules" command had an option to tell you the object or action that the rulebook is operating on...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3177&start=0#p22572
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Limit extension to certain sections/chapters?
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-09-14 08:42:36

Education (sneaky or not) aside, the idea of different languages being spoken in different parts of the game world (just as in the real world) is a great idea.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3177&start=0#p22573
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Limit extension to certain sections/chapters?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-14 09:09:50

The pedagogical merits of Inform (and TADS—and IF-parsers generally?) for teaching foreign languages may be a little doubtful. "Mira perro" and "x dog" etc. aren’t well-formed Spanish or English sentences. Inform (and TADS—and IF-parsers generally?) gladly accepts input in Adventure-Spanish and Adventure-English, which would not really be a foreign language teacher's dialect of choice.

Perhaps, for the Spanish part of the game, you could let the game proceed as a Choose Your Own Adventure, with a number of set choices in Spanish for what to do next to choose from at the end of each turn and bypassing the ordinary English input to and output from Inform's action machinery during the player's stay in Spain?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3175&start=0#p22574
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New extension: Scope Caching
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-14 09:37:20

I've updated the extension to include optimizations for Epistemology by Eric Eve and Remembering by Aaron Reed. Let me know if there are any problems or oversights with the interactions between them.

The same link applies to the extension, but for your convenience, I'll spoiler it right here:

[spoiler][code]Version 1/110913 of Scope Caching by Mike Ciul begins here.

"Gives things the 'marked visible' property, to check the visibility of something without repeating the entire scope loop each time."

Use authorial modesty.

Volume 1 - Scope Caching

Chapter 1 - Iterating over Scope

[Thanks to Andrew Plotkin for this code to make the scope checking not incredibly repetitive]

To iterate scope with (func - phrase thing -> nothing): (- LoopOverScope({func}-->1); -).

To iterate scope for (actor - thing) with (func - phrase thing -> nothing): (- LoopOverScope({func}-->1, {actor}); -).

Chapter 2 - The Marked Visible Property

A thing can be marked visible or marked invisible.

To mark the/-- visibility of (target - a thing) (this is scope caching):
	now target is marked visible;

To cache the/-- scope for (viewer - a person):
	Now everything is marked invisible;
	Iterate scope for viewer with scope caching.

Chapter 3 - When to Perform Scope Caching

After reading a command (this is the cache player's scope rule):
	Cache the scope for the player.

The cache player's scope rule is listed first in the after reading a command rules.

Volume 2 - Interactions with Other Extensions

Book 2 - Sight (in place of Book 1 - Sight in Epistemology by Eric Eve)

A thing can be either seen or unseen. A thing is usually unseen.

[ With the speed advantages of scope caching, we can now do more accurate accounting of what has actually been seen. ]

After reading a command (this is the mark cached items as seen rule):
	Now every marked visible thing is seen.

The mark cached items as seen rule is listed after the cache player's scope rule in the after reading a command rulebook.

The cache player's scope rule is listed last in the carry out looking rules.
The mark cached items as seen rule is listed last in the carry out looking rules.

The cache player's scope rule is listed last in the carry out opening rules.
The mark cached items as seen rule is listed last in the carry out opening rules.

Book 3 - Remembering (for Glulx only)

Section - Rules (in place of Section - Rules in Remembering by Aaron Reed)

After reading a command (this is the update remembered positions of cached things rule):
	repeat with item running through marked visible things that are enclosed by the location:
		if remembered location of item is not holder of item:
			now the remembered location of item is the holder of item.

The update remembered positions of cached things rule is listed after the cache player's scope rule in the after reading a command rules.

First report remembering (this is the Remembering specific report remembering rule):
	if remembered location of noun is nothing, continue the action;
	say the message corresponding to a rule name of Remembering specific report remembering rule in Table of Remembering Messages;
	stop the action. 

Volume 3 - Testing commands - not for release

Checking the scope cache is an action out of world. Understand "scopestat" as checking the scope cache.

Report checking the scope cache:
	say "The following items are marked visible: [line break]";
	repeat with item running through marked visible things:
		say "  [the item][line break]";

Checking the scope cache for is an action out of world applying to one visible thing. Understand "scopestat [any thing]" as checking the scope cache for.

Carry out checking the scope cache for something:
	Cache the scope for the noun;

Report checking the scope cache for something:
	say "The following items are marked visible for [the noun]: [line break]";
	repeat with item running through marked visible things:
		say "  [the item][line break]";

Scope Caching ends here.

---- DOCUMENTATION ----

Optimizes Epistemology by Eric Eve and Remembering by Aaron Reed. I6 code by Andrew Plotkin. Andrew also explained how to pass a phrase as an argument to another phrase for looping.

Section: The Marked Visible Property

Scope Caching creates a property for things called "marked visible." This is equivalent to the "visible" adjective, except it is calculated only at specific times and then stored, trading storage space for speed.

These conditions:

	the player can see the ball

	the ball is visible

Will normally mean the same as:

	the ball is marked visible

Section: The Cache Scope Phrase

If circumstances change during a turn and we need to check scope again, or if we want to check scope for something other than the player, we need to refresh the cache. We can do this with the "cache scope" phrase:

	Before Bob trying doing something:
		cache scope for Bob

This will, of course, leave the "marked visible" property set for Bob, so if we need to check the player's scope again, we need to run the phrase an additional time.

Section: The Cache Scope After Reading a Command Rule

This is the rule which normally sets the "marked visible" property each turn:

	After reading a command (this is the cache scope after reading a command rule):
		Cache the scope for the player.

It's listed first in the "after reading a command" rulebook, so other "after reading a command" rules should be able to make use of the "marked visible" property.

Section: Testing Commands

We can use the "scopestat" command to find out what items are currently marked visible. The command by itself will list the items marked visible for the player, while "scopestat [any thing]" will list the items visible for another person.

Example: * Which Rubber - Uses Scope Caching to prevent an infinite loop. Without it, the "After deciding the scope of the player" rule repeats forever.

	*: "Which Rubber"

	Include Scope Caching by Mike Ciul.

	Indoors is a room.

	The front door is a door. It is west of Indoors and east of Outdoors.

	Bob is a man in Outdoors.

	There is a container called a pile of balls in Indoors. "There is a pile of rubber balls here." In the pile is a ball.

	Understand "rubber" as a pile when the ball is not marked visible.
	Understand "rubber" as a ball when the ball is marked visible.

	The outdoor view is scenery. The description is "It's bright outside.";

	After deciding the scope of the player in Indoors when the front door is open:
		place the outdoor view in scope.
	
	Test me with "rules/open door/get rubber/scopestat/scopestat bob"
[/code][/spoiler]

I had one point I wasn't sure about, in the section of rules for Remembering:

[code]After reading a command (this is the update remembered positions of cached things rule):
	repeat with item running through marked visible things that are enclosed by the location:
		if remembered location of item is not holder of item:
			now the remembered location of item is the holder of item.[/code]

The "enclosed by the location" clause is preserved from the original, where I assume it was used to minimize visibility tests. My question regards objects that are not enclosed by the location, but have been added to scope by a rule. Added objects might be the contents of a room you can look into, or abstract things that don't really exist anywhere. 

Should they also be remembered?

Should they only be remembered if their holder is a thing or a room?

Should they only be remembered if they're not off-stage? 

It's possible that some authors might create a room or a container just to hold abstract things that are added to scope - should we warn authors about it in the documentation?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3129&start=10#p22575
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scope bug?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-14 09:53:54

I remembered today that I can deal with it in my own extension, using the "in place of" section designation. I've done that:

[code]Book 2 - Sight (in place of Book 1 - Sight in Epistemology by Eric Eve)

A thing can be either seen or unseen. A thing is usually unseen.

[ With the speed advantages of scope caching, we can now do more accurate accounting of what has actually been seen. ]

After reading a command (this is the mark cached items as seen rule):
	Now every marked visible thing is seen.

The mark cached items as seen rule is listed after the cache player's scope rule in the after reading a command rulebook.

The cache player's scope rule is listed last in the carry out looking rules.
The mark cached items as seen rule is listed last in the carry out looking rules.

The cache player's scope rule is listed last in the carry out opening rules.
The mark cached items as seen rule is listed last in the carry out opening rules.[/code]

(full source and links are at the other thread I started: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3175">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3175</a>)

I'm wondering if anyone can tell me whether it's redundant to add the "marked as seen" rules to the looking and opening rules in addition to the "after reading a command" rules. Are there cases where after reading a command would miss that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3161&start=10#p22576
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Try Silently Generating Line Break
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-14 10:00:12

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Er, Mikee you sure about that?  Check rules are silenced.  [code]Place is a room.  Bob is a man in place. 

persuasion: rule succeeds.

Instead of waiting, try silently Bob jumping.[/code]Entering WAIT to make Bob silently jump prints nothing, as expected.  The block jumping rule is indeed a check rule.[/quote]

If you remove the word "silently" from that example, you still get no output. But if you remove the word Bob, you see "You jump on the spot, fruitlessly."

Most check rules only print output if the actor is the player - otherwise they delegate the output to the "unsuccessful attempt by" rulebook. Didn't you write an "unsuccessful PC attempt" extension?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3178&start=0#p22577
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Move to a random room in a specified region
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-14 10:07:25

I've done that before - "a random Indoors room" - it doesn't work!

You can always define an adjective if you want:

[code]Definition: a room is indoor rather than outdoor if it is in Indoors.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3179&start=0#p22578
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Deprecating extensions?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-14 10:09:18

The reality is that this forum is still the best source of documentation on I7. Support is plentiful and responses are quick. So use it for all it's worth!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2896&start=10#p22579
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Problems with CocoaGlk on Lion?
User: shammack / DateTime: 2011-09-14 10:38:43

[quote="Bicarbonate of Soda"]At the risk of sounding impatient — although I really understand that Zoom is a community service provided in someone’s off-time — any word on a Zoom fix? There aren’t a whole lot of full-featured Glulx players on OS X. (Although the Gargoyle snapshot provided above does seem to work.)[/quote]
At the risk of also sounding impatient, I just wanted to bump this thread again. I like Gargoyle, but not being able to make it full-screen is kind of a dealbreaker for me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3049&start=10#p22580
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The floor sweeper dude from The Lurking Horror
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-14 11:19:59

[quote="Afterward"]
[spoiler]But if you never came across this, does that mean there's another solution for getting past him?[/spoiler][/quote]
[spoiler]If I remember correctly, it's possible to walk past him and get out of view before he explodes, thus missing the creepy drama. I think I missed it the first time, but I definitely remember it from other attempts.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3140&start=0#p22581
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: EITHER Glulx for Android OR Chinese Room z-format
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-14 11:22:34

[quote="Peter Pears"]I want to copy your post and print it and frame it and treasure it and show it to everyone who insists the ZMachine is a dead format and has no place in the modern IF scene.[/quote]
Now I feel ashamed for giving up on fitting my relatively small WIP into z8. I might just have to rewrite it in I6 someday...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2995&start=0#p22582
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: are Mad-Libs a subgenre of IF?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-14 11:36:41

If you count riddles as IF, then the advent of the computer is no obstacle!

Curiously, Nick Montfort names [i]How Come?[/i] by Agnes Rogers (or Rogers Agnes?) as the "classic collection of situational puzzles" dated... 1953!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=230#p22583
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-14 11:46:53

[quote="ultimate"]A friend of mine, who is a fan of interactive fiction, told me I should use my pranking skills to try to prank intfiction.org with some unusual posts without being called a "troll". It turns out I failed. This community is really hard to prank with.[/quote]
We've had a lot of experience, unfortunately.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3140&start=0#p22584
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: EITHER Glulx for Android OR Chinese Room z-format
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-09-14 12:59:33

Oh, don't be. I also happen to believe that if it doesn't fit in the ZMachine, it doesn't fit, and that's that. Although I highly praise the efforts of people like S. John Ross (who, from what I gather from his relevant posts, did everything he could think of to ENSURE that ToaSK would fit the ZMachine), I would also resent getting a lesser game because there simply wasn't enough room.

I was just referring to a general opinion I picked up, that dismissed the ZMachine as trivial and obsolete now that we have Glulx. An entirely different situation to hitting the limits of the ZMachine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=20#p22585
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-14 13:20:28

There are many things that make U.S. politics confusing for a European, but the fact that some words just mean different things across the Atlantic is certainly one of the more important. I believe I have figured out some of it: American English "liberal" is the approximate equivalent of British English "progressive"; and American English "socialism" is the approximate equivalent of British English "communism".

Over the past few months, I have increasingly gotten the feeling that another word with a different meaning in the U.S. than in Europe is "middle class". One sees a politician telling an audience of unemployed factory workers that he wants to give tax cuts to the middle class -- and I'm like, What do those guys care about the middle class? But that is probably because I misunderstand what the term means. Would I be right in supposing that in the U.S., the "middle class" is not something between the "lower class" and the "upper class", but in fact means "not upper class", which in turn means "not filthily rich"?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3185&start=0#p22586
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Writing a paragraph about, locale priority, etc
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-09-14 13:37:16

A few things I've noticed while messing with these activities:

First, if you write an "after writing a paragraph about" rule, it appears it will always trigger, whether or not there is a paragraph to write.  For instance, if your rule is:

[code]After writing a paragraph about a person while the location is the garden:
	say "  [It-they] meanders about aimlessly."[/code]

Then for any person without a description, it will simply print "He (or she) meanders about aimlessly."  Is there a way to append something to an object's paragraph only if the object in question actually has a paragraph (and otherwise treat it as a normal nondescript object)?

The second thing I noticed is that, unless I'm doing something entirely wrong (which cannot be ruled out), locale priority doesn't seem to influence the order in which paragraphs print.  Is this so?

(Apologies if I've made any code mistakes; I'm away from my Inform machine.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=20#p22587
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-09-14 13:38:23

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Over the past few months, I have increasingly gotten the feeling that another word with a different meaning in the U.S. than in Europe is "middle class". One sees a politician telling an audience of unemployed factory workers that he wants to give tax cuts to the middle class -- and I'm like, What do those guys care about the middle class? But that is probably because I misunderstand what the term means. Would I be right in supposing that in the U.S., the "middle class" is not something between the "lower class" and the "upper class", but in fact means "not upper class", which in turn means "not filthily rich"?[/quote]
In America, as far as I can work out, 'middle class' is a flexible category that can mean a variety of things, including 'everybody who is neither filthy rich nor on welfare', 'everybody who has a job', and 'everybody who can afford to be a homeowner'. This means that a substantial plurality of Americans can count as middle class or not, depending on who's talking and what they're trying to sell you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=30#p22588
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-14 13:39:13

Except possibly for "liberal," I'm not sure that any of the cases you cite are differences in semantics per se. For instance, many Americans seem to think that "socialism" means absolute tyranny -- which is probably why you think they use it to mean "communism" -- but those same Americans are also willing to claim that an exemplar of that socialism is a health care plan which involves subsidizing individuals to by insurance from private companies, and imposing a tax penalty if they do not buy insurance (to avoid [url=http://moneywatch.bnet.com/economic-news/blog/maximum-utility/why-we-need-an-individual-mandate-for-health-insurance/177/]adverse selection problems[/url]), which they describe as a "nationalization" of the health care situation. This can't merely be a definitional difference; it's tied in with a whole complex of factual and normative beliefs that make it very difficult to untangle what's going on. 

It is true that in the US the phrase "working class" isn't used, but other than that "middle class" is a big goo ball, hard to pin down to any single meaning and certainly not to any economic meaning. It may be that people aspire to the middle class, but I would also say that it's impossible to untangle the usage of "middle class" in the US from delusions about the [url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/17/social-immobility-climbin_n_501788.html]US's degree of social mobility[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3140&start=0#p22589
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: EITHER Glulx for Android OR Chinese Room z-format
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-14 14:20:57

I've written a lot of newbie-friendly code that z-machine players probably wouldn't expect or require. I'm trying to create a small game with depth, which means a lot of "unnecessary" detail.

On top of that, I just created an extension for it that trades memory for speed, since it runs beastly slow on Parchment.

So it's hard to say whether my reasons for abandoning the z-machine are good enough. I've felt strongly about supporting the z-machine for quite a while, and I feel like I'm betraying my principles a little.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3185&start=0#p22590
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Writing a paragraph about, locale priority, etc
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-14 14:30:19

[quote="katz"]First, if you write an "after writing a paragraph about" rule, it appears it will always trigger, whether or not there is a paragraph to write.[/quote]

I think what happens is the "writing a paragraph about" activity is carried out with every mentionable object. If the "for" rule succeeds, then the object is marked as mentioned. Perhaps you could check if the object is mentioned in your "after" rule? I'm not sure if this would work, but it's worth a try.
 
In my experience, I haven't found "before" and "after" activity rules to be very good at printing text. There's always something going on beyond the scope of the rulebook that makes them not quite what I wanted. "After" activity rules, however, are useful for modifying default behavior (as in choosing notable locale objects) and timing things optimally (as in reading the player's command).

[quote]The second thing I noticed is that, unless I'm doing something entirely wrong (which cannot be ruled out), locale priority doesn't seem to influence the order in which paragraphs print.  Is this so?[/quote]
I don't believe that is so - I've been using it successfully. Perhaps you could post an example - it's possible that just coming up with an example will reveal to you what's going on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3161&start=10#p22591
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Try Silently Generating Line Break
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-09-14 14:34:22

It's been ages.  I was surprised there were instances when dead silence could happen, is all.  Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3161&start=10#p22592
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Try Silently Generating Line Break
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-14 14:44:07

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]It's been ages.  I was surprised there were instances when dead silence could happen, is all.  Thanks.[/quote]
It is a bit surprising. I expected to see "Bob is unable to do that." But perhaps the unsuccessful attempt rules only run when [i]asking[/i] Bob to try something?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3022&start=0#p22593
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: John Clemens
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-14 14:47:24

I tried contacting him in relation to my update of his "Conditional Backdrops" extension, but did not receive a response.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3143&start=20#p22594
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: does the player mean consulting it about
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-09-14 14:53:08

[quote="capmikee"]One day, one day I tell you, I'm going to rewrite that damn parser and expose all of its workings to I7![/quote]

I think I'll try doing that this week.  Not really with the intention that you'd really want to use it (as I'm pretty sure it will be slower than i6) but just as a learning/teaching tool.  Besides, I made some really cool new Understand tokens and I'd like to show off how powerful the parser can be.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=30#p22595
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-14 15:01:52

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Okay, I'm sticking with Venusian for now. (It is good if the connection to the heavenly bodies is clear.) Now I've got a little interface problem because two of the planets start with an "M" and I'd love to be able to represent them with only one letter -- but hey, maybe I can find a font that actually incorporates the astrological signs? [emote]:geek:[/emote] Actually, it seems that this works out-of-the-box.[/quote]
You could switch to Greek, and use Hermetic and Arean instead of Mercurial and Martian. The periodic table switches languages all the time, why can't you? 

No idea if Arean is etymologically related to Aryan. Probably the safest bet would be to use Hermetic and Martian.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3143&start=20#p22596
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: does the player mean consulting it about
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-14 15:04:53

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]I think I'll try doing that this week.  Not really with the intention that you'd really want to use it (as I'm pretty sure it will be slower than i6) but just as a learning/teaching tool.  Besides, I made some really cool new Understand tokens and I'd like to show off how powerful the parser can be.[/quote]

Throw in some Scope Caching and it might not end up too slow...

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3175">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3175</a>

Feel free to suggest changes or bugfixes for Scope Caching... it's still in beta!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=30#p22597
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-09-14 15:30:05

[quote]There are many things that make U.S. politics confusing for a European, but the fact that some words just mean different things across the Atlantic is certainly one of the more important.[/quote]

True.  For example, what in most countries would be called "fascism" is (in a development of the last few months) designated here in the US by a word that in the rest of the English-speaking world refers to a beverage.  Ironically, most of those who subscibe to that particular philosophy have never tasted a properly-brewed cup of the stuff.

I've got to run and take cover now, since the thea synensists will soon be coming after me with their assault weapons fully loaded. 


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=30#p22598
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-14 15:53:37

"Violence doesn't kill people—thinking kills people."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3140&start=0#p22599
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: EITHER Glulx for Android OR Chinese Room z-format
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-09-14 16:18:17

"Detail" is never unnecessary if you feel it's worth putting in. Don't worry about it. The ZMachine is merely a format. It shouldn't be done away, but neither should we constrain ourselves to it unless we choose to be constrained, recognising how sometimes constraints help us achieve a tighter experience.

Incidently, I've often wondered about the possible benefits of a sort of "Standard-rules-light" extension, to help keep Inform 7 games still within the ZMachine limit when the extra padding isn't necessary. But from what I read from the I7 design team, they're more interested in, as they say, "making Glulx an opt-out instead of an opt-in".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3140&start=0#p22600
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: EITHER Glulx for Android OR Chinese Room z-format
User: Jeff Zeitlin / DateTime: 2011-09-14 17:01:00

For what it's worth, I've never had a conceptual problem with breaking up an IF into multiple 'books' to make it fit within interpreter limits, PROVIDED that (a) the breakpoint is a 'gated choke' game-wise, (b) it is a natural breakpoint story-wise, and (c) it is stated explicitly that this breakup has been done. Dungeon (published as the core ZORK trilogy) was broken up this way, though I think that at least one of the breakpoints was unsatisfying, story-wise (it's been a while since I played the ZORKs), and there was no explicit up-front warning that "This game is part <1/2/3> of a  larger story; you might want to play them in order".

...which leads to another thought: when I was a larval programmer, mumble years ago, it wasn't uncommon for large software systems to be broken up this way, and each segment would execute the next (e.g., the CHAIN statement of GW-BASIC dialects), or arranged so that chunks of code would be swapped in and out of CSEG memory (yes, I wrote code for the segmented architecture of the early Intel iapx86 series CPUs) as "overlays" (Intel/Microsoft Pascal and PL/M-86 OVERLAY PROCEDUREs, or GW-BASIC dialects' CHAIN MERGE).  Does the Z-Machine support either model, and if it does, does INFORM (preferably INFORM 7) have support for that capability?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3140&start=0#p22601
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: EITHER Glulx for Android OR Chinese Room z-format
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-14 17:53:37

No, the Z-machine has no notion of swapping code in and out. (A Z-machine *interpreter* might -- to deal with the situation where the underlying platform is too small to fit the Z-machine image in. If your Android phone has more than a megabyte of real RAM, you're not in need of that technique.)

Z-machine games nearly always run out of RAM before they run out of code space. (All of this comes down to the Z-machine being a 16-bit architecture.) So you'd have to think about ways to swap data storage in and out, rather than code.  Inform's data structures are absolutely not designed for that sort of nonsense. You could do it for your own data structures -- say, a very large array of numbers that gets swapped from a disk file piecewise. But integrating it into an Inform game will be difficult at best.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=0#p22602
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-09-14 20:05:34

I've started on the grand ambition of rewriting Inform's parser in Inform 7, meaning, the entire Parser.i6t template file.  My goal in this is primarily for teaching and learning purposes:  we get questions in this forum pretty regularly about just what, exactly, is going on inside that parser.  While there's a handful of Inform 6 experts here who know this, I feel it would be in everyone's best interest if more people could diagnose parser-related problems with their works-in-progress.

My technical goal in this is to have the Inform 7 compiler generate Inform 6 code that resembles the original Parser.i6t as close as possible.  This is so I don't have to test anything.  [emote]:)[/emote]  Seriously, a full regression test on a rewrite would be nearly impossible to construct, let alone verify.  By ensuring the generated I6 corresponds line-by-line with the original, I also ensure that the I7 code isn't slower than the original I6.  Or at least, not by much.  

I'll further try to use the original I6 names where possible for variables, functions, etc., though I can only go so far.  Inform names parameters and locals formulaically, like t_0, t_1, and so on, but the names will at least appear in the comments in the generated I6. 

I have two examples already.  [url=http://xyzzy.plover.net/~pscion/The%20Parser%201.zip]Version 1[/url] looks like I block-copied Parser.i6t from Appendix B into the IDE and hit compile.  Except, it actually does compile.  Version 1 is just a base-line to start from.  [url=http://xyzzy.plover.net/~pscion/The%20Parser%202.zip]Version 2[/url] I've modernized three functions -- ScopeWithin, PlaceInScope, and AddToScope -- with quite a bit of technical bits added in a volume at the beginning of the file for support.  Version 2 also compiles and works, and indicates what later versions will likely look like. Comments at the beginning of the game file are mine, while most of the comments spread throughout are Graham's from Appendix B.

For the purposes of correctness I won't include any fixes or upgrades that the extensions site have.  For now, this is a pure translation project, nothing more.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3127&start=20#p22603
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Dead Horses, and the beating thereof
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-09-14 22:31:06

[quote="Peter Pears"]Instead, I saw games like "Make it Good" and "Blue Lacuna" making splashes because they were so complex in adapting to the player's experience. THAT seems to be the splasher. Genre has nothing to do with it.[/quote]

Blue Lacuna also "splashed" through sheer ambitious [i]size[/i], I'd say, with the author touting it on multiple occasions as the biggest-largest IF in the history of IF-that's-really-quite-large-and-not-at-all-tiny.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=0#p22604
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-14 23:04:59

Do you think that a line-by-line translation will be more readable than the I6 original?

Looking at this, I see mixed improvements. "The parser's current word" is way better than "wn". "Do scope action and recurse on ... excluding ... under ..." is better than "DoScopeActionAndRecurse(..., ..., ...)", but only by the prepositions. Then you have a lot of lines that are essentially adding spaces and "the" here and there.

The overall logic is exactly the same, which is to say occult in the extreme. (I see you translated the line "wn = match_from", in PlaceInScope. A couple of days I mentioned that particular line, as the immediate cause in the infinite-loop-scope-bug thread. I said I had no idea what it's doing there. I still don't. Do you? Anybody?)

I realize that you've chosen a (sanely) limited goal here; the alternative is "write a new parser in pure I7." (I'm not touching that either, believe me.) I'm wondering what the specific benefits will be. ("Let's find out" is a perfectly good answer.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=0#p22605
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-09-15 02:49:40

[quote="zarf"]Do you think that a line-by-line translation will be more readable than the I6 original?[/quote]Not as readable as a rewrite of course, but I think almost any function written in I7 is more readable than its I6 counterpart.

[quote="zarf"]Looking at this, I see mixed improvements. "The parser's current word" is way better than "wn". "Do scope action and recurse on ... excluding ... under ..." is better than "DoScopeActionAndRecurse(..., ..., ...)", but only by the prepositions. Then you have a lot of lines that are essentially adding spaces and "the" here and there.[/quote]I had a good name for wn only because I already knew exactly what it was from my previous exposure to the code.  The phrase and match_from I have less of an idea, hence the too-literal names.  Since the I6 names are preserved for variables via "translates into I6 as" and to-phrase naming, I can completely rename their I7 selves like I did with wn.  It's just I need to understand the code better before I can pick better names.  You should have seen what I had before I hit upon those particular prepositions.  Ugh!

[quote="zarf"]The overall logic is exactly the same, which is to say occult in the extreme. (I see you translated the line "wn = match_from", in PlaceInScope. A couple of days I mentioned that particular line, as the immediate cause in the infinite-loop-scope-bug thread. I said I had no idea what it's doing there. I still don't. Do you? Anybody?)[/quote]I have a philosophy that if working code is quick and relatively bullet-proof, but its logic looks convoluted, sometimes it's just a question of what you're naming things.  Sometimes the name of a variable is a poor match for the concept that it eventually ended up standing for.  Since this project allows me to name many of the I7 constructs however I wish (parameters excluded), it's possible we find that the parser isn't as convoluted as it seems.  It might even be elegant but we can't see it.

It's also possible to highlight certain patterns in the code, such as a long string of if-statements, which look like they'd be happy as a rulebook.  The scoring especially.  This can be brought out with I7 comments even if I can't express it directly code-wise.  The line you bring up in particular I've seen multiple times, and the word "reset" comes to mind with it.  I believe it's a safety mechanism in case other GPRs didn't reset wn like they're supposed to, or an off-by-one error happened.  (Or maybe, since many matching routines only work on wn, it's using up wn to use one of those functions.  If parsing is done, wn can be trashed.)  

When constructing the Custom Library Messages extension, I slipped in the comment [reset to] in a now...is... assignment so I could tell when an assignment was meaningful or not.  The same can apply here.

[quote="zarf"]I realize that you've chosen a (sanely) limited goal here; the alternative is "write a new parser in pure I7." (I'm not touching that either, believe me.) I'm wondering what the specific benefits will be. ("Let's find out" is a perfectly good answer.)[/quote]
I don't think a brand new I7 parser would gain much traction for the same reason that Glulx didn't immediately obsolete the Z-machine.  So at the very least this project could be a stepping stone toward a better day:  more people could join in with sensible opinions on the parser due to better readability, increasing pressure to standardize things like improved disambiguation, transparent scoring, etc.   Besides, not everyone speaks I6, and that alone is a hurdle.

So I think there isn't much in the way of real technical benefits despite being a technical challenge. But I think the "soft" benefits of bringing in more community eyes are definitely worth it. 

And I'll try to comment more.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=30#p22606
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: RobUK / DateTime: 2011-09-15 04:57:21

I'm trying out HunkyPunk based ont he above , but whenever i try to open a story file the app crashes. I've sent a crashlog to the developers listed email address but not heard anything back. According the the Android Market a lot of people are seeing this.

Rob

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=30#p22607
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-09-15 08:36:26

[quote="RobUK"]I'm trying out HunkyPunk based ont he above , but whenever i try to open a story file the app crashes. I've sent a crashlog to the developers listed email address but not heard anything back. According the the Android Market a lot of people are seeing this.

Rob[/quote]

I haven't had any crashes, but HunkyPunk is sometimes troubled by long text-dumps; it doesn't know quite how to display them :/

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3187&start=0#p22608
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Babel update
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-09-15 09:08:06

I've made some changes to the Babel source code (attached).  My C is a bit rusty, so I wondered if someone could sense check these before they're integrated into the main code.

Speaking of which, does anyone know the procedure for this?  Is it just a case of uploading it to IFArchive?

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=30#p22609
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-09-15 09:14:54

[quote="RobUK"]I'm trying out HunkyPunk based ont he above , but whenever i try to open a story file the app crashes. I've sent a crashlog to the developers listed email address but not heard anything back. According the the Android Market a lot of people are seeing this.[/quote]

Yeah, I have the same bug on my phone. I'm quite sad about the state of interactive fiction on Android, actually. I got a phone with a QWERTY keyboard largely because I wanted to be able to play IF on it. I've been trying to play Savoir Faire - it's been on my wishlist for years and seems ideal for playing 15 minutes at a time on public transport - but I haven't managed to get a single interpreter to run it properly. Hunky Punk crashes when starting a game. Twisty 0.8 replaces punctuation with stray letters of the alphabet. Twisty 2.0 crashes when restoring a game. Parchment doesn't always want to load, and when it does it's too wide for the phone screen, even in landscape orientation (and the Android browser won't let me zoom out any further).

On the upside, Twisty 0.8 is running Planetfall quite well, with only occasional crashes after the phone goes into stand-by.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=30#p22610
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-09-15 09:17:39

Does your phone support J2ME applications? If so, have you tried ZaxMidlet?

I've found that a few games - a very few - crash the interpreter (Deadline being, unfortunately, one of them), but I e-mail the author of ZaxMidlet every time that happens, letting him know exactly what the problem was. I've had a couple of replies which suggest that he's a bit busy right now but intends to look into it.

I like ZaxMidlet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3140&start=10#p22611
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: EITHER Glulx for Android OR Chinese Room z-format
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-15 10:38:36

[quote="Peter Pears"]Incidently, I've often wondered about the possible benefits of a sort of "Standard-rules-light" extension, to help keep Inform 7 games still within the ZMachine limit when the extra padding isn't necessary. But from what I read from the I7 design team, they're more interested in, as they say, "making Glulx an opt-out instead of an opt-in".[/quote]
I think I might have been the primary volunteer for that project.  [emote]:oops:[/emote] 

At this point, though, I'm not sure it would be enough. I think most of the bloat just comes from multiple levels of compilation.

I'm feeling a little discouraged about working on low-level I7 stuff because I have problems with the way library messages are handled, and I know they're going to change in the next release. So I'm procrastinating until then... at least.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=0#p22612
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-15 10:46:19

This is very cool! My idea for a parser rewrite was to keep it in I6 but to break the big routines into small, readable chunks with better naming. But this looks like the beginning of an even better solution. Thanks! ([b]edit:[/b] I see that's what you've actually done, by putting chunks of I6 code into the I7 source.)

Sheesh, sometimes I think I must be the dumbest programmer in the world. Why didn't I think to use "to decide" phrases to set constants?

I have no shame in admitting that this is beyond me, though:

[code]To decide which grammar token is the noun token: [0] (- NOUN_TOKEN -). To decide which grammar token is the end of line token: [15] (- ENDIT_TOKEN -).[/code]

Are you defining "fake" values for the grammar token KoV? Is this a form of typecasting? I wouldn't have expected it to be legal to define a numeric value for a KoV while only giving its name as a phrase-name. I can see that it could be useful for 0, which is not a normally used KoV. (right?) But is it dangerous to specify another integer - couldn't there be collisions? I'm assuming you're doing it because there's a gap in values between topic and EOL, so perhaps it makes sense as a way to keep the numeric values in sync with I6 constants, but it looks arcane and scary.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3188&start=0#p22613
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: Forcing player to be spcific beforehand
User: AceRuley / DateTime: 2011-09-15 11:56:00

Ok, working on a game that I started maybe 2 years ago, abandoned and now hoping to finish.  I'm adding a new feature where the player has to look for a charm in an area (preferably with SEARCH FOR).  I want the player to have specify which charm they're looking for in an area, but not allow general searching.  SEARCH and SEARCH FOR CHARM will not work, probably display a message to be specific, but SEARCH FOR MERMAID CHARM would work if they're in the right location.  Is rewriting the name of the charm the best way to do this (starts off with [color=#00BF00]name 'mermaid' 'chxrm'[/color], and when they pick it up it changes the second name to 'charm'), or is there a better way to do this?  Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=30#p22614
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-09-15 12:13:30

Middle class has a bunch of economic and social indicators that are "squishy".  I was raised in a family that expected me to go to college, and I went, so even though I earn only a little more than some people who would count as lower class, I'm firmly middle class, although I'd say I'm lower middle class.  I have a job with health care and some security, and it's unionized.  There's a reasonable chance the factory workers have those things, too, which is nothing to sneeze at.  And if they're in a two-earner household, there's a good chance they're not too far off from the median family income, especially if they were someplace like Michigan or Mississippi.  The local factory workers here are in the same bracket as a moderately experienced school teacher.

I'd say factory workers could fall either way, depending on the prestige of the job, the risks and securities in place, and the pay.  

It's also good shorthand for "average American", and politicians can get themselves into huge hot water by talking about the lower classes, because there's a lot of unspoken assumptions about mobility and what it means to be lower class.

[quote="Robert Rothman"]Ironically, most of those who subscibe to that particular philosophy have never tasted a properly-brewed cup of the stuff.[/quote]

There's a Beer Party?  

[quote="Robert Rothman"]I've got to run and take cover now, since the thea synensists will soon be coming after me with their assault weapons fully loaded. [/quote]

Oh.  Well, most Americans have never had proper tea.  I like both proper and improper tea, and am essentially too lazy to go to the trouble of making the former when I find the latter drinkable.  But I deeply regret the national horror that is Coors.  (More evidence of my middle class status, I think.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3189&start=0#p22615
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Looking in directions - as a room property?
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-09-15 14:04:25

I have a question which I imagine will be easily answered.

When I look in a direction (the default response is something like "you see nothing unexpected in that direction") can I control this using properties of the room, or do I need to use an instead rule?

I ask because I can't imagine adding 10 "Instead of looking X when the player is in Y" rules for all of my 100+ rooms - that would clog up the rulebook considerably.

My question is this: is there a room property that allows me to specify what the player would see in any of the directions? Or do I need to set up a new looking in a direction activity, add new properties to the room type, and parse appropriately?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3189&start=0#p22616
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Looking in directions - as a room property?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-15 14:31:25

If you want to see the adjacent room when you look in a direction, you can give each room a "remote view" property or something - is that what you had in mind?

[code]A room has a text called the remote view.

Your lawn is a room. "You are out in your lawn." The remote view is "The grass is greener over in your lawn."

Their Lawn is west of Your Lawn. "You are sneaking around in their lawn." The remote view is "The grass is greener over in their lawn."

Instead of examining a direction (called way):
	Let the vista be the room way from the location;
	If the vista is not a room, continue the action;
	If the remote view of the vista is empty, continue the action;
	say the remote view of the vista;
	say paragraph break.[/code]

If you want a special message when looking in each direction from each room, that's a lot of work no matter how you slice it. I think an instead rule would be just as much work as a property, really. You'd have to create 12 properties, or use a table.

[code]Table of Views
vantage	facing	view
a room	a direction	a text
with 0 blank rows

Instead of examining a direction:
	Repeat through Table of Views:
		if the vantage entry is the location and the facing entry is the noun:
			say view entry;
			say paragraph break;
			rule succeeds;
	continue the action;
		
Cell is a room. "A concrete cell."

Table of Views (continued)
vantage	facing	view
Cell	north	"You can see a corridor through the open cell door."
Cell	south	"There is a tiny window high on the south wall."
Cell	west	"There are 69,105 tick marks on the west wall."
Cell	east	"The east wall is completely blank."

Corridor is north of Cell. "A long corridor of cells."

Table of Views (continued)
vantage	facing	view
Corridor	north	"The cell door to the north is closed and locked, and you don't have a key."
Corridor	south	"The cell door to the south stands open."
Corridor	west	"The corridor extends to the west, to the entrance."
Corridor	east	"The corridor extends to the east, ending in a blank wall."
[/code]

You could take a hybrid approach, giving each room a table-name to its own table of views. Maybe slightly less typing, but maybe not.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=0#p22617
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-15 14:42:26

It's just type-casting. Specific values have to be defined for grammar-token values that are referred to in I6 code. Ultimately, I guess, once all the I6 code is gone, those specific value definitions will be eliminated -- the code will be able to rely on "naturally-generated" numbers for each grammar-token value.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=0#p22618
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-15 14:43:09

[quote]Since this project allows me to name many of the I7 constructs however I wish (parameters excluded), it's possible we find that the parser isn't as convoluted as it seems. It might even be elegant but we can't see it.[/quote]

Nope. :/

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3188&start=0#p22619
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Forcing player to be spcific beforehand
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-15 14:47:56

Changing the name property will work. But you should define the extra word with a comma in it (",charm") -- that will make the word genuinely untypable.

For more flexible ways of conditionally parsing object names, see my page <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/inftricks/tip_parsename.html">http://eblong.com/zarf/inftricks/tip_parsename.html</a>

You could also define a "search for" command that uses a scope token. The charm objects would be off-stage, and would be accessible only to that one command. Then you wouldn't have to change the names at all; the charms would be out-of-scope for any normal command.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3187&start=0#p22620
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Babel update
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-15 14:49:49

DorianX (L. Ross Raszewski) is in charge of that codebase, unless he's handed it off. Talk to him.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3189&start=0#p22621
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Looking in directions - as a room property?
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-09-15 14:54:49

Yeah, that's what I figured. I like your tabular approach, since that way I don't have 1000+ rules clogging up the rulebook.
It seems more elegant of a solution than using a mess of instead rules.
I wonder if having 1000+ entries in a table would get slow, especially when accessing entries toward the end of it?

Has anyone experimented with extremely large tables before?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=0#p22622
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-15 14:56:38

This project may inspire me to do that refactoring I wanted to do. But don't let that stop you, if that's something you'd like...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3189&start=0#p22623
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Looking in directions - as a room property?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-15 14:58:45

In my experience, tables are really fast. Quite memory efficient, too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3187&start=0#p22624
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Babel update
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-09-15 15:11:44

Thanks.  I'd already sent him an email but hadn't heard anything back yet.  I am a bit impatient tho... [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=0#p22625
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-09-15 16:28:55

[quote="capmikee"]([b]edit:[/b] I see that's what you've actually done, by putting chunks of I6 code into the I7 source.)[/quote]Eventually those chunks will be commented out and the I7 version will sit beside, so no I6 other than some glue code will be left.

[quote="capmikee"]I have no shame in admitting that this is beyond me, though:[code]To decide which grammar token is the noun token:  (- NOUN_TOKEN -). 
To decide which grammar token is the end of line token:  (- ENDIT_TOKEN -).[/code]Are you defining "fake" values for the grammar token KoV? Is this a form of typecasting? I wouldn't have expected it to be legal to define a numeric value for a KoV while only giving its name as a phrase-name. I can see that it could be useful for 0, which is not a normally used KoV. (right?) But is it dangerous to specify another integer - couldn't there be collisions? I'm assuming you're doing it because there's a gap in values between topic and EOL, so perhaps it makes sense as a way to keep the numeric values in sync with I6 constants, but it looks arcane and scary.[/quote]Apparently it isn't beyond you because you understand it, and its potential problems, perfectly.  Zarf's also right in that the actual number that the enums/constants/kovs/words stand for isn't important, so as long as every use of which is taken into account, I don't have to use the above gymnastics to force a particular name to compile to a particular number. 

[quote="zarf"]Nope. :/[/quote]O ye of little faith. [emote]:)[/emote]  A trick I've started using is exposing the same I6 variable to I7 multiple times under different names, and sometimes with different types. This is useful.  A couple of parser variables actually (but only sometimes) hold a routine to call with indirect(), which one I7 incarnation of I have typed as "phrase object -> nothing" or "phrase nothing -> truth state" as appropriate.  This helps. 

(I just wish I7 implemented it's "applied to" and other of its new functional-programming features were implemented with I6's indirect().  That would have been tidy.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=30#p22626
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: Jeff Zeitlin / DateTime: 2011-09-15 17:53:40

I just downloaded Hunky Punk, and it doesn't seem bad.  I'd like the option to select a game by filename rather than the internal name (I have three games whose internal name Hunky Punk reports as "Adventure" - one is the original 350-point Crowther-and-Woods version, one is the Humongous Cave 1000-point version, and one is the 350-point version, but with the Enchanter trilogy's magic system). It does not seem to handle "Press Space" properly; while Twisty does indeed proceed when you press space, with Hunky Punk, you have to press Enter. I haven't hit any FCs with Hunky Punk yet, but give it time; Twisty does have fairly frequent FCs, but in my experience, only immediately on startup; if it doesn't FC then, it won't FC until some future invocation.

I like the cover downloads. Too bad not all of the games I have seem to have findable covers.

I'll be keeping both on my device.

FTR: Nook Color with N2A CM7 SD, booted into CM7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=0#p22627
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-15 19:15:10

[quote](I just wish I7 implemented it's "applied to" and other of its new functional-programming features were implemented with I6's indirect(). That would have been tidy.)[/quote]

I'm pretty sure that indirect() was deprecated after Inform 5, and only hangs on through habit and indifference. (It's not mentioned in the DM4, for example.) Any line "indirect(x)" can be written as "x()", and that's got to be clearer I6 code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3190&start=0#p22628
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Combining "-who is not the player" + "-who is not the noun"
User: Zedreth / DateTime: 2011-09-15 20:45:27

I have a text substitution that picks a random person from all the people in the game. It happens when the player asks about something specifically, and the one he/she asks is the noun. It worked for a while like this: [random person who is not noun], because I need it to say a random person who isn't the one talking. Recently it said "yourself" as a result. I realized that the player qualifies as one of these people. I tried using [random person who is not the noun or the player], but it can't seem to process both of them. Is there some syntax error I'm not seeing? What should I do to get this working.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3190&start=0#p22629
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combining "-who is not the player" + "-who is not the no
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-15 21:03:54

When you're having syntax troubles like this, it's often easiest to define an adjective that expresses one of your conditions and use that. So in this case you could say:

[code]Definition: a person is other if he is not the player.[/code]

and then "A random other person who is not the noun" should work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3190&start=0#p22630
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combining "-who is not the player" + "-who is not the no
User: Zedreth / DateTime: 2011-09-15 21:55:20

Thanks, works really well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=30#p22631
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-09-15 23:01:39

Running a Droid X on DSX, Hunky Punk doesn't work. The scrolling is broken, so the keyboard covers the text. Also typing after a couple of minutes leads to long strings of seemingly random text into the parser like it's duplicating something. I saw the same behavior running stock Froyo and stock GB. Twisty works great, but if you want to change games, it has to scan your entire SD card for games. Hunky Punk creates an Interactive Fiction folder and only loads games stored there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=0#p22632
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-09-16 01:11:31

[quote="zarf"]I'm pretty sure that indirect() was deprecated after Inform 5, and only hangs on through habit and indifference. (It's not mentioned in the DM4, for example.) Any line "indirect(x)" can be written as "x()", and that's got to be clearer I6 code.[/quote]
Oh that's interesting. The IDE still colorizes it like child(), sibling(), and parent().  Thank you for that info.  An I7 rule is invoked the same exact way from the I6, so I might be able to simplify some stuff. 

Right now I'm working out ways that I7 should access an I6 array, especially if it's sometimes a routine instead, as with add_to_scope.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3185&start=0#p22633
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Writing a paragraph about, locale priority, etc
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-09-16 01:16:17

The behavior is odder than I originally thought.  The "after" rule actually obliterates the paragraph that would otherwise be printed, just like an "instead" rule.  Even if you include "continue the action."  Including an "if it is mentioned" clause makes the rule never trigger; "if it is not mentioned" always triggers.

[code]After writing a paragraph about a thing (called N):
	if N is mentioned:
		say "It is near you.";
	continue the action.
	
The classroom is a room.

The desk is a supporter in the classroom.  "There's a desk here."

The ruler is in the classroom.[/code]

(You're right, the second problem does actually work properly.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=30#p22634
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: RobUK / DateTime: 2011-09-16 03:08:38

I'll be keeping HunkyPunk on my HTC Desire phone in the hope that it will receive an update one day but at present it doesn't work at all on this device.

Rob

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3090&start=0#p22636
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: StackExchange Interactive Fiction Q&A site proposal
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2011-09-16 05:36:57

[quote="Beetle B."]I can't think of any downsides, other than that many users will now go to two sites: This forum for ordinary IF related discussions, and StackExchange for technical questions about authoring systems. However, for someone who really needs to ask authoring related questions, there's no doubt in my mind that StackExchange would be a better resource.[/quote]Should the StackExchange site be limited to technical questions about IF authoring systems? Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's been much more questions asked about IF design from before. I personally grok how a StackExchange site can be beneficial, but if it will be more about technical topics, I'd rather get into StackOverflow.

It's still in the definition phase anyway, so there's still much room for insight into this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=10#p22637
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-09-16 05:46:40

As of [url=http://xyzzy.plover.net/~pscion/The%20Parser%203.zip]version 3[/url] the Book of Scope is complete.  The following functions have been translated: ScopeWithin, PlaceInScope, AddToScope, DoScopeAction, TestScope, LoopOverScope, SearchScope, and DoScopeActionAndRecurse.  (I will likely rename some of the I7 constructs therein as the project continues, of course.)

I've had my first taste of dealing with I6 arrays, hidden object properties, and properties which can be arrays or routines at will, all at once thanks to DoScopeActionAndRecurse. 

In the interests of I7 readability, I exchanged a while loop with a for loop. I had previously exchanged a switch statement with a else-if chain due to an I7 restriction.  I don't believe either of these changes should be a problem. Details on them are in the comments at the beginning of the game file.  The modernized functions are about four-fifths of the way down in the source, or, use the navigation features to jump to the Book of Scope.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3185&start=0#p22638
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Writing a paragraph about, locale priority, etc
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-16 08:26:14

Well, this seems to me as though it's working in accord with the way the activity is described in 17.22, which says:

[quote="Writing with Inform 17.22"][b]1. When it happens.[/b] Just [i]before[/i] writing a paragraph about some item in a room description. (emphasis in original)[/quote]

Which means that, even if you wrap something in an "After writing a paragraph about" rule, that rule will still fire before the paragraph gets written, and will still obliterate your paragraph.

So that looks like it doesn't work as a hook for you. I think that the thing to do might be to put a new rule in the "For printing a locale paragraph" rulebook, but I can't actually get the spacing working very well. The following succeeds in printing "It is near you" after the initial description of the desk (and only the desk), but it's in its own paragraph and looks fugly, and adding [run paragraph on] to the desk's initial appearance didn't do anything. Other people might have a better idea.

[code]The classroom is a room.

The desk is a supporter in the classroom.  "There's a desk here." 

The ruler is in the classroom.

Last for printing a locale paragraph about a thing (called the item) (this is the add a paragraph rule):
	if the item is mentioned and the item is not undescribed:
		say "[The item] is near you.";
	continue the activity.[/code]

UPDATE: No, this isn't good -- it runs even on scenery. We could include a check for scenery, but I have no confidence at all that that would catch all the cases. 

Bluh. If it were me, I'd probably just rewrite the use initial appearance in room descriptions rule and describe what's on scenery supporters in room descriptions rule so this rule was appended to it, since those seem to be the only standard printing a locale paragraph rules that actually print anything; and then if I had any new printing a locale paragraph rules I'd add something else to them. But I think you need better advice from someone else. (Also, if you could post a bit of what you'd like your output to look like, that could help.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3188&start=0#p22639
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Forcing player to be spcific beforehand
User: AceRuley / DateTime: 2011-09-16 08:28:12

Well, that's almost the idea.  I actually plan on giving the bronze charms the conceal attribute and then rewrite the [color=#00FF00]before-take[/color] to basically check for concealment and if found print the standard "Item not found" message (so the player is led to believe the charm is not there).  Only by using a new verb (SEARCH FOR) would they be able to find and acquire them (SEARCH FOR will first find the specific charm refered to, remove concealment and then attemp to take it since there's a carrying capacity limit in place).

I'll try that comma trick and see if I can get that to work.  Would I also need to add a name that includes charm as well, like [color=#00FF00]name 'bronze' ',charm' 'bronze charm'[/color], or would it just read the bronze and be happy to work (and I'll probably comma out the bronze too, so they don't get hints about multiple charms in the same location)?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3188&start=0#p22640
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Forcing player to be spcific beforehand
User: AceRuley / DateTime: 2011-09-16 08:31:00

Actually, just looked at the link you sent, think that will work perfectly.  Check for concealment, if there then ignore charm and bronze.  If no concealment than parse normally.  Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3185&start=0#p22641
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Writing a paragraph about, locale priority, etc
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-16 08:36:50

Ah, you're using initial appearance properties, not "for writing a paragraph about" rules. Kind of explains the difference between the writing a paragraph about activity and the printing a locale paragraph about activity. I was always confused by the latter.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3141&start=0#p22642
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: My Secret Hideout
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-16 09:40:36

A googol different outputs? Okay, but how many bits of entropy?  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3141&start=0#p22643
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: My Secret Hideout
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-16 10:26:20

Almost exactly ten bits per leaf. (Not counting the root, which is fixed and only contributes 2.5 bits.) Maximum of 40 leaves, so about 2^390 (10^117) distinct possible trees.

Good question, though. That "googol" figure was counting generatable possibilities of the text engine. It's a coincidence that the number of possible trees is a few orders of magnitude larger. Would have been embarrassing if I'd run through the calculation and found that only 10^80 outputs were truly possible. :)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=30#p22644
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-09-16 13:39:57

[quote="Emerald"]I've been trying to play Savoir Faire - it's been on my wishlist for years and seems ideal for playing 15 minutes at a time on public transport - but I haven't managed to get a single interpreter to run it properly. Hunky Punk crashes when starting a game. Twisty 0.8 replaces punctuation with stray letters of the alphabet.[/quote]

Aw, sorry. My best guess about what's going on here: Savoir-Faire uses some space-saving tricks that aren't commonly seen in recent Inform games, and though those are within spec, it may be that those interpreters encounter such techniques so seldom that they haven't been debugged for them. For instance, Savoir-Faire is abbreviating a lot of common words and sub-word sections -- the code file starts out with a bunch of lines like this:

[code]Abbreviate " the ";
 Abbreviate "The ";
 Abbreviate "ing ";
 Abbreviate " you";
 Abbreviate "You";
 Abbreviate "magic";[/code]

...and goes on like that for quite a while. Maybe these interpreters either can't handle the abbreviations or are swapping them in wrong. 

(Not that that necessarily helps you much, but it might be a place to look if someone is trying to debug this.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=40#p22645
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-09-16 15:10:28

Heh, I just tried it out in ZaxMidlet and also get the punctuation issue. Thanks for that, I'll e-mail the maintainer right away.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3192&start=0#p22646
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: An error I can't explain
User: Zedreth / DateTime: 2011-09-16 18:03:53

I'm getting an error that is saying:
[quote]You wrote 'while the player has the key-ring'  : but the punctuation here ':' makes me think this should be a definition of a phrase and it doesn't begin as it should, with either 'To' (e.g. 'To flood the riverplain:'), 'Definition:', a name for a rule (e.g. 'This is the devilishly cunning rule:'), 'At' plus a time (e.g. 'At 11:12 PM:' or 'At the time when the clock chimes') or the name of a rulebook, possibly followed by some description of the action or value to apply to (e.g. 'Instead of taking something:' or 'Every turn:').
[/quote]

The code it's saying that about is:
[code]while the player has the key-ring:
	if the key-ring is unnoted:
		increase the score by 1;
		now the key-ring is noted;[/code]

Can anyone explain this for me?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3192&start=0#p22647
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: An error I can't explain
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-16 18:25:39

As the error message suggests, you are probably trying to write an "every turn" rule:

Every turn while the player has the key-ring:
    [...]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3192&start=0#p22648
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: An error I can't explain
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-16 19:00:25

You always have to tell Inform when to run your code. There are basically three ways to do this (correct me if I'm wrong, people). First, there are declarations that set up the initial world model, variables, and so on. Examples:
[code]Church is a room. John is a man in church. The current piety is a number that varies. The current piety is 0.[/code]
Then, there are rules. Every rule should be either named, or placed in a rulebook (or both). So we can have
[code]This is the blossom shaking rule: say "The summer breeze shakes the apple-blossom."[/code]
or we can have
[code]Every turn:
	say "The summer breeze shakes the apple-blossom."[/code]
Note that the former piece of code will do nothing until you add the rule to some rulebook. The latter piece of code will be run whenever the "every turn" rules are run, which is, as the name suggests, every turn.

Finally, you can set up code by defining a routine that can be called from elsewhere in your code.
[code]To shake the blossom:
	say "The summer breeze shakes the apple-blossom."[/code]
And this can be invoked by stating "shake the blossom".

Your original code has none of these forms. It is just some code existing in limbo. Inform would never know when to run it. What happens is that the compiler attempts to understand the code as a rule, cannot find the right syntax, and throws an error.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3192&start=0#p22649
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: An error I can't explain
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-16 19:33:47

Small nitpick: There is a way for a rule to have an effect without being placed in a rulebook. If you have this code:

[code]This is the blossom shaking rule: say "The summer breeze shakes the apple-blossom."[/code]

you can make it run from within another rule by explicitly invoking it, something like this:

[code]Every turn when the location is Orchard: abide by the blossom-shaking rule.[/code]

This is discussed in [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc333.html]section 18.13 of the manual[/url], and [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/ex267.html#e267]example 292, "Pages,"[/url] lets you see how a standalone rule might be invoked by other rules in this way.

But for the most part, you definitely want to put your rules in rulebooks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3193&start=0#p22650
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: "No Rows Chose," So Code Blows
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-09-16 21:37:25

I was going to use this topic title for a question in the Inform forum, but I figured the problem out myself before I had a chance to use it.

So, how are you guys doing?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3193&start=0#p22651
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "No Rows Chose," So Code Blows
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-16 21:46:27

How do Ancient Greek frogs hook up their VCRs?

[spoiler]With a brekekekex koax coaxial cable.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=40#p22652
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-09-16 22:32:51

[quote="Peter Pears"]Does your phone support J2ME applications? If so, have you tried ZaxMidlet?[/quote]
Android doesn't support J2ME apps out of the box. There's an app that's supposed to package J2ME apps so they can run on Android, but I haven't had any luck packaging ZaxMidlet with it. (Also it looks cheap and a bit dodgy and I'm nervous about using it.)

[quote="emshort"]Aw, sorry. My best guess about what's going on here: Savoir-Faire uses some space-saving tricks that aren't commonly seen in recent Inform games, and though those are within spec, it may be that those interpreters encounter such techniques so seldom that they haven't been debugged for them.[/quote]
Hm, interesting. Twisty 2.0 doesn't have that problem, anyway (it's more or less a completely new codebase, as I understand it). Hopefully it won't be too long before Twisty 2.0 is stable enough to use instead of 0.8, and then I can play Savoir Faire to my heart's content!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3192&start=0#p22653
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: An error I can't explain
User: Zedreth / DateTime: 2011-09-17 01:47:42

It works, thanks! Helps a lot.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=10#p22665
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: Sslaxx / DateTime: 2011-09-17 06:01:58

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Right now I'm working out ways that I7 should access an I6 array, especially if it's sometimes a routine instead, as with add_to_scope.[/quote]
How did you get around that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3193&start=0#p22666
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "No Rows Chose," So Code Blows
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-17 08:57:03

[quote="matt w"]How do Ancient Greek frogs hook up their VCRs? [spoiler]With a brekekekex koax coaxial cable.[/spoiler][/quote]
Gosh! This forum has got class! In Sweden anyone who can spell "Nietzsche" will pass as educated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=10#p22667
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-17 09:35:04

Oooh, maybe we could have an "I6 Arrays" extension...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3193&start=0#p22668
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "No Rows Chose," So Code Blows
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-17 09:47:12

[quote="Felix"]Gosh! This forum has got class! In Sweden anyone who can spell "Nietzsche" will pass as educated.[/quote]
I believe that for native speakers of English, the real test is whether they can spell "Tolkien".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3193&start=0#p22669
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "No Rows Chose," So Code Blows
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-09-17 10:10:50

But if we're looking for names difficult to spell, yours (and other names from your part of the world, such as Broekhuis) rank pretty high for me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3193&start=0#p22670
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "No Rows Chose," So Code Blows
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-17 10:24:59

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Tolkien[/quote]The man really had a name that matches his novels perfectly; it could just as well be Sindarin.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3193&start=0#p22671
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "No Rows Chose," So Code Blows
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-17 10:48:40

[quote="Trumgottist"]But if we're looking for names difficult to spell, yours (and other names from your part of the world, such as Broekhuis) rank pretty high for me.[/quote]
Ah, but the trick is simple. Dutch has a couple of diphthongs, and once you recognise them, those mysterious names will look a lot more logical. They are: ui, oe, ei, ie, eu, au, ou and ij. (Though the latter is not, strictly speaking, a diphthong. In fact, for a linguist, several of them are not diphthongs.) To everyone's delight, "ou" and "au" are pronounced identically, and so are "ei" and "ij". Learning when to use which might well be the hardest part of Dutch spelling.

Dutch used to be a fantastic language for stringing vowels together, everyone's favourite word being "koeieuier", "cow's udder". And perhaps a little less impressive, with the 'trema' on the "e", but still cool, was "kraaieëieren", "eggs of crows".

Unfortunately, due to a recent change in the official spelling, these words are now "koeienuier" and "kraaieneieren".

At least we still have the consonant strings of "angstschreeuw" ("scream of fear") and the somewhat dubious "zachtstschrijdende" ("who steps most softly").

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3193&start=0#p22672
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "No Rows Chose," So Code Blows
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-09-17 11:00:47

You've got change-of-spelling too? Here in Portugal we've been forced to start spelling in Brazilian Portuguese, which has pissed a lot of people - it's like English people being forced to write in American, and vice/versa.

Incidently... how DO you pronounce your last name? Is it "Geesbers", with a hard G?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3193&start=0#p22673
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "No Rows Chose," So Code Blows
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-17 11:07:07

[quote="Peter Pears"]Here in Portugal we've been forced to start spelling in Brazilian Portuguese[/quote]
Camoens is turning in his grave.

[quote]Incidently... how DO you pronounce your last name? Is it "Geesbers", with a hard G?[/quote]
The recording is a bit soft (so you might need to tun up the volume), but you can hear me pronouncing my name [url=http://lilith.cc/~victor/temp/VictorGijsbers.ogg]here[/url]. I have found it exceedingly difficult to explain in writing how to pronounce the "ij". In the phonetic alphabet, it is apparently "ɛi".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3193&start=0#p22674
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "No Rows Chose," So Code Blows
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-09-17 11:12:18

You ought to put that recording in your signature.  [emote]:roll:[/emote] Thanks, I am duly enlightened. Sounds like your "G"s borrow from the Spanish "J" (as in "mujer") and from the German "ch" (as in "ich"). Or maybe they all borrowed it from you. Aren't you glad you loaned it to so many people.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3193&start=10#p22675
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "No Rows Chose," So Code Blows
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-09-17 12:16:36

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Ah, but the trick is simple. [/quote]
Isn't that the trick behind most spelling, though? Once you understand how a language works, only a few words in that language remains tricky to spell. "Nietzsche" isn't so tricky if you have German figured out.

I've completely mispronounced "Gijsbers". Not that I've ever actually tried to pronounce it, but I've read your name a lot in these parts of the Internet. [emote];)[/emote] (Dutch is a fun language. In wind and brass band playing, there are eight great studies that many love, called "Acht Klankstudies". Since I learned how to pronounce that, it's a source of childlike joy to me every time I play them.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3193&start=10#p22676
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "No Rows Chose," So Code Blows
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-09-17 13:46:35

Fun with languages? Playing Scrabble when you're speaker of a language that allows [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_(linguistics)]compunds[/url]. Like, German. Donau­dampfschiffahrts­elektrizitäten­hauptbetriebswerk­bauunterbeamten­gesellschaft. 79 letters, and it could still be extended ("lower danube" instead of "danube" etc.).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3193&start=10#p22677
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "No Rows Chose," So Code Blows
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-17 14:59:08

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]the consonant strings of "angstschreeuw" ("scream of fear") and the somewhat dubious "zachtstschrijdende" ("who steps most softly")[/quote]
Love that – I don't think Swedish compunds ever result in more than six or seven consonants in a row: svenskspråkig" ("Swedish speaking") or "längstskrattande" ("laughing the longest").

[quote="Trumgottist"]Once you understand how a language works, only a few words in that language remains tricky to spell.[/quote]
Unless that language happens to French – or Chinese.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=10#p22678
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-09-17 15:03:44

[quote="Sslaxx"][quote="Ron Newcomb"]Right now I'm working out ways that I7 should access an I6 array, especially if it's sometimes a routine instead, as with add_to_scope.[/quote]
How did you get around that?[/quote]
For the type-stacking problem I made a to-decide-if phrase that invokes I6's  "ofclass Routine" condition.  At the I7 level I call them rules rather than routines, of course, but add_to_scope isn't the only place such a condition is useful. 

Arrays are more difficult, but there is precedent for how they should work in I7:  lists, which is how arrays are used, and table columns, which actually are arrays.  So I'll make repeat loops that set the ct_0 and ct_1 table variables to the array name and index.  (Since the I6 parser doesn't use I7 Tables they're free for the taking.)  With those I can make "the chosen row" same as for tables, and either "the chosen element" and/or "the (name of kind of value K) element" for ct_0-->ct_1.  

Exposing them requires I6 inclusions on every single array like I did for the NOUN_TOKEN value up-thread.  I did make a "1-based array" KOV for them:   To decide which 1-based array is the multiple-object list: (-multiple_object-).   I made the type mainly so I don't accidentally pass the wrong kind of thing to the to-phrases that operate on such.  And for documentation purposes too, of course, which this project largely is. 

@Mikee: I doubt I'll make an array extension, partly because creating a new one involves two I6 inclusions per array, and partly because I believe arrays are planned for I7 proper.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3193&start=10#p22679
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "No Rows Chose," So Code Blows
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-17 17:57:20

[quote="Trumgottist"]Isn't that the trick behind most spelling, though? Once you understand how a language works, only a few words in that language remains tricky to spell. "Nietzsche" isn't so tricky if you have German figured out.[/quote]
Well -- there's always English. The spelling-to-pronounciation direction is worse, but the pronounciation-to-spelling direction is pretty bad as well. [emote];)[/emote]

[quote](Dutch is a fun language. In wind and brass band playing, there are eight great studies that many love, called "Acht Klankstudies". Since I learned how to pronounce that, it's a source of childlike joy to me every time I play them.)[/quote]
Yes, it's a fun language. But we need two or three truly world-class authors before I would recommend random people to learn Dutch...

[quote="Grueslayer"]Fun with languages? Playing Scrabble when you're speaker of a language that allows [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_(linguistics)]compunds[/url].[/quote]
Yep, Dutch works like that as well. Unfortunately, the Scrabble board is only 15 spaces in either direction, so you can't get any further than "diepzeeaquarium" (deep sea aquarium) at three times triple word value. (This would be possible if the line already contained "iep" ("elm"), "qua" and two more loose letters, i.e., the "e" at position six or seven and either of the letters at positions 13 and 14. I think it would give you 351 points.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3194&start=0#p22680
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: A container under a supporter?
User: v3ngenc3 / DateTime: 2011-09-17 19:22:15

[code]A bed is a kind of supporter. A bed is usually enterable.
A Key is a kind of thing.
The Firm Bed is a bed. A container called under is part of the Firm Bed. The Firm Bed is enterable. The Spare Key is a Key. The Spare Key is in the container under the Firm Bed.[/code]
Would be nice, but in game, I can't look under the bed and see the key....
....Any ideas on how I should do this?
And since I want the player to be able to also sleep on the bed, I want it enterable, with the distinct difference of on and under the bed...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3195&start=0#p22681
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: How to do numerical inputs
User: Riku / DateTime: 2011-09-17 19:37:21

I have a part in the game I'm writing where the player is required to enter a specific number. How would I write a rule for this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3195&start=0#p22682
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How to do numerical inputs
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-09-17 22:16:40

That depends on which language you're using; are you writing in I7, I6, TADS, Adrift, Hugo...? There are subforums for the appropriate languages.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3193&start=10#p22683
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "No Rows Chose," So Code Blows
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-09-17 22:37:36

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Yes, it's a fun language. But we need two or three truly world-class authors before I would recommend random people to learn Dutch...[/quote]
André Brink writes at least partly in Afrikaans, right? And Coetzee... er, translates. And van der Post... again, oh dear. Erasm... no. I'm beginning to see a pattern here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3196&start=0#p22684
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: fizmo 0.7
User: Christoph / DateTime: 2011-09-18 05:15:43

Version 0.7 of the console-based fizmo Z-Machine interpreter can now be found at <a class="postlink" href="http://spellbreaker.org/~chrender/fizmo/">http://spellbreaker.org/~chrender/fizmo/</a>.

The new version implements Frank Liangs hy-phen-a-tion algorithm and comes with patterns — and locales — for english, french and german. In case there's babel information available, for example through the .(z)blorb file itself, setting the <language> tag to a value like “en”, “fr” or “de” will make the interpreter automatically use the correct localized hyphenation patterns and messages. Thanks to Eric Forgeot for the french localization.

Thanks to Andrew Plotkin, there's now a GLK-interface available, along with a glktermw-based example. While Andrew kindly built the initial version, I'm guilty of all errors and bugs the final experimental fizmo-integration, which means that you should send problem reports to me, not to zarf.

In case the “save-text-history-paragraphs” option is set to some number greater than zero, the corresponding amount of recently displayed paragraphs is written into the savegames and re-displayed upon restore.  I found this to be quite useful to get an idea of the state the game was in when loading a savegame. Since the text is not compressed when saving, this will make savegames considerably larger.

More information about changes can be found in the file “README-0.7.txt” from the new package.

In more technical related news, the X11-frontispiece display should now be actually usable, since the image is no longer written into the terminal window itself, but into a separate X-Window. The old behaviour is still available, but not recommended. Furthermore, it will suffice to have libjpg and/or libpng installed to read images, there's no longer a requirement to have GTK installed.

There are no binary packages available (yet), so at the moment the new version has to be build from source. Information about build requirements can be found in the “INSTALL.txt” file. For easier building, pkg-config is now used whereever possible. 

Any Comments, suggestions, bug reports and so on are appreciated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3193&start=10#p22685
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "No Rows Chose," So Code Blows
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-18 06:14:46

[quote="maga"][quote="VictorGijsbers"]Yes, it's a fun language. But we need two or three truly world-class authors before I would recommend random people to learn Dutch...[/quote]
André Brink writes at least partly in Afrikaans, right? And Coetzee... er, translates. And van der Post... again, oh dear. Erasm... no. I'm beginning to see a pattern here.[/quote]
Coetzee isn't even a native speaker of Afrikaans, actually; he was raised in an English-speaking family. And of course, Afrikaans is not exactly Dutch.

Our best writer of fiction (according to the great authority known as Victor Gijsbers) is Louis Couperus, who deserves to be much better known than he is outside the Dutch-speaking world. Yet, although I admire Couperus, I cannot claim that he is as good as the greatest writers in English, French, German, Russian, Italian or Spanish. Our best writer of non-fiction is probably Johan Huizinga, whose book "Homo Ludens" comes up now and again in discussions about games; his [i]magnum opus[/i] is probably "Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen", translated as "The Waning of the Middle Ages" and "The Autumn of the Middle Ages". And there are other good authors -- but, again, they don't really add up to one of the great national literatures of Europe.

Over the past few decades, Dutch novelists have been especially interested in writing quasi-autobiographical books about supremely unhappy and loveless people who get into all kinds of degrading, sad, and rancid situations. The appeal of this genre has never been clear to me.


P. S.
I found a [url=http://www.manybooks.net/titles/couperuslother08Old_People_and_the_Things_that_Pass.html]free version[/url] of the English translation of one of Couperus's best books, "Van oude mensen, de dingen, die voorbijgaan..." ("Of old people, the things, that pass away..."). Unfortunately, the translation appears to be awful; and awful in a way that you can only recognise by comparison to the original. I would therefore be very wary before picking up a translation of Couperus.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3194&start=0#p22686
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A container under a supporter?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-18 06:30:46

There's been an idea going around that "the [kind]" should always generate a compiler error. It's almost never what you mean.

Instead of "in the container...," I think that line might work if you rewrite it like this:

[code]When play begins:
    Now the Spare Key is in a random container that is part of the Firm Bed.[/code]

Better yet:

[code]A container called the space under the firm bed is part of the Firm Bed. The Firm Bed is enterable. The Spare Key is a Key. The Spare Key is in the space under the Firm Bed.[/code]

Oh, and you still have to redirect the "looking under" action:

[code]Instead of looking under the firm bed:
    Try searching the space under the firm bed.[/code]

Even better, I think there might be an Undersides extension you can use, which will handle redirections for you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3090&start=0#p22687
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: StackExchange Interactive Fiction Q&A site proposal
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-18 06:50:07

Perhaps it would be nice if one day this site was so busy that you'd have to search for answers to your questions. But for now, you can usually just ask them again and you'll get good, fresh answers within hours, sometimes minutes. And that can be valuable, at least for I7, which is still changing so much.

Until that changes, I'm not sure a Q&A style site would be worthwhile.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3193&start=10#p22688
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "No Rows Chose," So Code Blows
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-18 09:23:02

Rereading my post, I suspect that "Afrikaans is not exactly Dutch" might give the wrong impression to people who know neither language. Afrikaans really is not Dutch. Here is an example taken from Wikipedia:

English: "If it rains, this umbrella will protect you."
Dutch: "Als het regent, zal deze paraplu je beschermen."
Afrikaans: "As dit reën, sal dié sambreel jou beskerm."

A lot of the differences are fairly shallow -- changes in spelling, loss of Dutch grammatical structure in Afrikaans -- but there are also many differences in vocabulary. E.g., I would not have been able to understand this Afrikaans sentence, because I had no idea that "sambreel" was "paraplu" (and I'm not sure I would have puzzled out "reën").

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3197&start=0#p22689
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: How to do numerical inputs
User: Riku / DateTime: 2011-09-18 10:38:55

I originally wrote this in the general forum, but discovered that I should put it here instead:

I have a part in the game I'm writing where the player is required to enter a specific number. How would I write a rule for this? I'm using I7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3197&start=0#p22690
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to do numerical inputs
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-18 11:05:59

What more exactly is that you want to do? 
If you want the game to react to a command that only consists of a specific number (and no other text) at just a specific point in the story, you can set some variable to indicate that this point in the story is reached and then catch the input with an after reading a command rule:
[code]Time to guess a number is a truth state that varies.
After examining the Hastings quizz: now the time to guess a number is true.
After reading a command when the time to guess a number is true:
	if the player's command matches "1066": [or whatever number is the right one]
		say "You just won a brand new matchbox!";
		now the player carries the matchbox;
	otherwise:
		say "Sorry, that was not the correct answer.";
	now the time to guess a number is false.[/code]

(A variant on this theme (using the text of the command prompt as variable) for opening a door with a password can be found in this post in an earlier thread on the forum: [url]http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2578&p=17786#p17786[/url])

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3193&start=10#p22691
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "No Rows Chose," So Code Blows
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-09-18 12:59:27

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Rereading my post, I suspect that "Afrikaans is not exactly Dutch" might give the wrong impression to people who know neither language. Afrikaans really is not Dutch. Here is an example taken from Wikipedia:

English: "If it rains, this umbrella will protect you."
Dutch: "Als het regent, zal deze paraplu je beschermen."
Afrikaans: "As dit reën, sal dié sambreel jou beskerm."

A lot of the differences are fairly shallow -- changes in spelling, loss of Dutch grammatical structure in Afrikaans -- but there are also many differences in vocabulary. E.g., I would not have been able to understand this Afrikaans sentence, because I had no idea that "sambreel" was "paraplu" (and I'm not sure I would have puzzled out "reën").[/quote]
Ah, okay. I'd been under the impression that they were, if a bit more distinct than a strong dialect, at least mutually intelligible (about the same level as Haitian Creole to French. Which is to say, if you knew French well enough to appreciate style, you'd be able to appreciate creole, albeit a bit more slowly and with a dictionary on-hand for some of the vocab.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3106&start=10#p22692
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Referring to the player in the third person
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-09-18 15:56:53

[quote="Juhana"]You people might be interested in this authoring system called Curveship...[/quote]

Why? Would it handle some of the topics discussed here more effectively? I periodically see people bring it up but not in terms of why it's worth spending time on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3193&start=10#p22693
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "No Rows Chose," So Code Blows
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-18 15:56:59

[quote="maga"]Ah, okay. I'd been under the impression that they were, if a bit more distinct than a strong dialect, at least mutually intelligible (about the same level as Haitian Creole to French. Which is to say, if you knew French well enough to appreciate style, you'd be able to appreciate creole, albeit a bit more slowly and with a dictionary on-hand for some of the vocab.)[/quote]
I'm not in a position to make a comparison between the Dutch-Afrikaans relation and the French-Creole relation, I'm afraid. Someone who speaks Dutch well will be able to understand the gist of an Afrikaans text, but will also fail to understand quite a bit. I [i]suspect[/i] most of that could be solved by getting accustomed to just a few major differences between the languages, so learning to read Afrikaans with some ease might only be a matter of weeks or even days -- I don't know. I've never spoken to someone who has tried to learn Afrikaans, so don't take me as an authority. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3193&start=10#p22694
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "No Rows Chose," So Code Blows
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-09-18 16:12:10

Well, this went a lot better than I expected!

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]A lot of the differences are fairly shallow -- changes in spelling, loss of Dutch grammatical structure in Afrikaans -- but there are also many differences in vocabulary.[/quote]
Can you elaborate on the "loss of Dutch grammatical structure"?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3197&start=0#p22695
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to do numerical inputs
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2011-09-18 16:22:22

[quote="Riku"]I originally wrote this in the general forum, but discovered that I should put it here instead:

I have a part in the game I'm writing where the player is required to enter a specific number. How would I write a rule for this? I'm using I7.[/quote]

Look at "Down in Oodville" in the help. Example #293.

David

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3197&start=0#p22696
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to do numerical inputs
User: Riku / DateTime: 2011-09-18 19:30:32

Felix: Your external example worked perfectly. Thank you so much.

Also, if anyone will listen, I know this sounds stupid, but how do you define responses to "talk to [person]"?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3197&start=0#p22697
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to do numerical inputs
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-18 20:51:14

"talk to [someone]" isn't programmed in by default, so you can program it in the way you'd create any other command and action. See section 12.7 and the following sections., and maybe chapter 16 on understanding (though you shouldn't need that much).

Exactly how to do it seems like it probably depends on the complexity of the behavior you're trying to include. If you just have a few [url=http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WelcomeToCorneria]NPCs with stock responses[/url], you can use a few rules like this:

[code]Instead of talking to the peasant: say "The peasant sighs and says, 'Times are tough!'"[/code] 

(Assuming your action is "talking to.") Ex. 168 ("Cheese-Makers") shows you how you can vary this up using scenes and a bit of other stuff to vary some of the responses. For some other purposes you might want to use a table.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3199&start=0#p22699
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Native WebOS z-machine?
User: amonroejj / DateTime: 2011-09-18 22:02:53

I've yet to google up a native WebOS z-machine. Does one actually exist, or may be on the horizon? I've seen a couple JavaScript ones, but as a veteran Kronos for Palm user, I would prefer a native one. It would simplify loading .z5 files and save/restore.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3143&start=20#p22700
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: does the player mean consulting it about
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2011-09-18 23:47:57

Someone asked why I didn't simply redirect consulting actions from the stand to the encyclopedia.  The answer is that I could, but then I'd also need to fix this:
>CONSULT BOOK ABOUT FOO
(the book stand)
You discover nothing of interest in the encyclopedia.

That involves not only suppressing the "(the book stand)", but also putting in a "(the encyclopedia)" to replace it.  I simply felt it was not worth the effort.

EDIT:[url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=744]The bug in question[/url].  Apparently I'm not the first person to run into this...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=50#p22701
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2011-09-19 00:34:16

By the way, I'm not sure if anyone's mentioned this syntax, but you can say [code]Change the [X] exit of [Y] to [Z][/code] (assuming X is a direction and Y and Z are rooms).  Unlike the "Now [Z] is mapped [X] of [Y]" syntax, this can also be used when the X is a variable, and is quite capable of mapping a direction to "nowhere".  See [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc126.html]here[/url].  I [i]think[/i] you need to do some other housekeeping yourself, if that's what you want, but I'm not sure... (that is, you need to also say "change the [opposite of X] exit of [Z] to [Y]" and possibly "change the [opposite of X] exit of [W] to nothing" if W used to be X of Y -- unless of course you don't want your exits to make sense, which is par for the course in the Whoniverse).

In particular, if you use the "mapped [X] of" syntax, you need to drop the "of" for up and down (and, in fact, you need to say "mapped above/below", you cannot say "mapped up/down of"), which is rather annoying IMHO.  It's much cleaner to use the "change" syntax.  

Other than this piece of syntax (along with a few others such as "change the text of the player's command"), however, "change" is mostly deprecated; you should usually use "now" instead.  This particular case is a bit of an oddity in that it's the other way around.

Finally, as the manual suggests, there may be an even cleaner way to do this which leaves the map alone... Maybe try [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/ex354.html#e354]this example[/url]?  It uses a door, so you'd need to change it to use a container and a prop door (or two containers), as others have suggested above.  Keep this in mind: if the model world looks a certain way to the player, it doesn't ultimately matter how it's actually laid out.  Your number one concern is how things look to the player.  The precision available via the model world is a tool, to help you achieve your desired behavior, not a goal in and of itself.  In short: if you can get away with it, go ahead and do it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3143&start=20#p22711
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: does the player mean consulting it about
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-19 03:13:22

[quote="NYKevin"]to fix this:
>CONSULT BOOK ABOUT FOO
(the book stand)
You discover nothing of interest in the encyclopedia.

That involves not only suppressing the "(the book stand)", but also putting in a "(the encyclopedia)" to replace it.[/quote]
Actually, that is not at all simple. You'd think you'd only have to write a rule for clarifying the parser's choice of the book stand unders certain conditions (or a rule for printing the name of while clarifying ... etc.). But, as it turns out, the activity of clarifying the parser's choice of something does not happen at all when the action being processed applies to something else than one thing.

In [quote]>consult book about foo
(the book stand about)
You discover nothing of interest in the huge encyclopedia.
[/quote] the message "(the book stand about)" can't be intercepted by a rule for clarifying the parser's choice of something.
Judging from the parser, this is very intentional; but I can't see that it is mentioned in the documentation, so I suppose it belongs in [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=749]the Inform bug tracker's "errata list" for the documentation[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3199&start=0#p22712
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Native WebOS z-machine?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-09-19 03:28:06

Isn't that what Parchment is?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3193&start=20#p22713
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "No Rows Chose," So Code Blows
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-09-19 06:43:08

It has always struck me as a bit strange that English and Dutch are linguistically very close (both derived, I believe, from Old Low German), yet for most native English speakers Dutch seems to be very difficult to pronounce.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3200&start=0#p22714
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Harrr!
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-09-19 07:22:02

For any of ye landlubbers who may have forgottten, today be National Talk Like a Pirate Day.  So shiver me timbers, h'ist the yardarm and keelhaul the cook!  And lest any of ye sojers ferget, it was a pirate who first forced us to enter the maze in Adventure!  Harrr, me hearties!


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3201&start=0#p22715
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: TADS 3 - getting the text of a disambiguation response
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-09-19 07:57:24

I can get the text the player typed with gAction.getOrigText. But if the player's command requires disambiguation, gAction.getOrigText only includes the original, undisambiguated command. How can I get the text of the answer to the disambiguation question? (I want to have a look at it during a beforeAction, to check if the player used a specific word to refer to one of the NPCs.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3202&start=0#p22716
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Looking for Testers for Inform 7 Version of Klaustrophobia
User: wolfganger / DateTime: 2011-09-19 08:04:43

I've just now completed the Inform 7 port of Klaustrophobia.
It's huge at nearly 500 rooms,67 NPCs, and 502 objects.
32,000+ lines of code

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3193&start=20#p22717
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "No Rows Chose," So Code Blows
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-19 09:02:56

[quote="Afterward"]the "loss of Dutch grammatical structure"[/quote]
Sounds like a severe condition – something akin to scurvy, perhaps.
[quote="Robert Rothman"]for most native English speakers Dutch seems to be very difficult to pronounce[/quote]
English is definitely suffering from a massive loss of Low German phonetical structure.
I guess it's not too uncommon that even closely related languages (I'm thinking of Swedish and Danish in particular) are pronounced very differently; my knowledge of Swedish makes written Danish quite readily understandable, but reading it aloud feels totally beyond me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3188&start=0#p22718
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Forcing player to be spcific beforehand
User: AceRuley / DateTime: 2011-09-19 09:15:45

Thought I'd post my eventual solution for anyone who wants to know.  Took three tries to get it right though, I'll post all three and why the first two don't work (so people don't make the same mistakes as me).

[b]Method 1: Ignore the words I don't watch matched.  [color=#FF0000]FAIL[/color][/b]
I took one look at the parse name function and thought this was in the bag.  Just ignore the words I don't want matched in the item and all would be well.  Here's the code for that:
[code]parse_name[ wd num;
	wd = NextWord();
	while (WordInProperty(wd, self, name))
	{	if (self has concealed)
		{	if (wd == 'charm' || wd == 'bronze')
				{ continue; }
		}
		num++;
		wd = NextWord();
	}
	return num;
],[/code]
I actually don't remember if this worked with TAKE TANGLE or not, but it didn't matter to me as TAKE BRONZE or TAKE CHARM would ultimately cause an infinite loop.  Apparently if it didn't find a word it would keep looping until it found one, and since the only word it could find was to be ignored...  Scrapped that idea and tried a second idea.

[b]Method 2: Track two separate counts and return the relevant one.  [color=#FF0000]FAIL[/color][/b]
This idea was based on the idea that I could return one count for normal parsing and one for when the item is concealed and that would work.  Here's the code:
[code]parse_name[ wd nc cc;
	nc=0; ! Normal Parsing
	cc=0; ! Concealed Parsing
	wd = NextWord();
	while (WordInProperty(wd, self, name))
	{	if (wd ~= 'charm' || wd ~= 'bronze') { cc++; }
		nc++;
		wd = NextWord();
	}
	if (self has concealed) { return cc; } else { return nc; }
],[/code]
Now this method seems to work better.  TAKE BRONZE and TAKE CHARM are blocked, but TAKE TANGLE is allowed.  In fact if I hadn't tried TAKE TANGLE CHARM I would have said it was good.  But combining TANGLE with either BRONZE or CHARM results in it being blocked.  Apparently unless the number of words being returned is the same as the number of words inputted it's not a match.  At least that's what I figure because in the end I finally had an aha moment and tried this.

[b]Method 3: Track two separate counts and return based on concealed count.  [color=#00BF00]SUCCESS[/color][/b]
The code starts the same as in Method #2, but replace the final if statment with this:
[code]if (self has concealed)
{	if (cc > 0)
		{ return nc; }
	else
		{ return cc; }
} else {
	return nc;
}[/code]
Basically the idea is that if the object is concealed and the concealed count found anything, then return the normal count (as if it wasn't concealed), otherwise return the concealed count which since it's less than the input (possibly) will fail.  And of course, if not concealed than return normal count.  This worked, even with TAKE BRONZE TANGLE CHARM.

Hopefully this can help other people out.  Thanks for putting me on the right path with parse_name.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3199&start=0#p22719
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Native WebOS z-machine?
User: George / DateTime: 2011-09-19 10:03:57

No, [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebOS]webOS[/url] is its own thing. I haven't heard of a z-machine for it though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3203&start=0#p22720
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Need 5Z71 Version of Adaptive Hints
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2011-09-19 10:46:00

Please?

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3200&start=0#p22721
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Harrr!
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-09-19 10:52:03

My contribution to this most august holiday is to point out the PERHAPSHALF cheat in Treasures of a Slavers Kingdom, which breaks a lot of game logic by letting you PARLEY WITH GUNWAR from the earliest points in the game [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=10#p22722
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-19 10:53:28

I gotta say, looking at the I7 bug site, this project is worthwhile for purely for its stress-testing of the I7 code generator.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3203&start=0#p22723
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Need 5Z71 Version of Adaptive Hints
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2011-09-19 12:05:35

[quote="DavidC"]Please?

David C.[/quote]

Never mind. The current one compiles...just had an off conflict in my source, now resolved.

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3193&start=20#p22724
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "No Rows Chose," So Code Blows
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-09-19 13:13:01

I was at the presentation of a paper last week where, after some less exciting stuff about the role of background noise of speech perception for second language learners, the presenter showed us some results from a study where subjects ranked tokens out of context from unknown languages by their similarity to English. Even native Korean speakers said that Dutch was a lot like English, and not knowing that it was Dutch!

The other interesting (or else just coincidental?) thing was, people ranked Hebrew and Japanese at different distances from English depending on their native language, but for some reason they more or less consistently ranked those two language close to [i]each other.[/i] Do people universally perceive Hebrew and Japanese as similar, or are the two languages perhaps just equally dissimilar from English on some continuum? More research is required, and someone should probably give me a grant.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3204&start=0#p22725
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Problem with Mac 6G60 Compiler
User: wolfganger / DateTime: 2011-09-19 13:19:32

I have a door between 2 rooms which causes a compiler error 
under Mac 6G60 version but NOT under the PC version of the compiler.

when I strip the code out of the main game and run it separately as 
a "mini-game" it works but gives me the 
"there may be a problem with the compiler" message when running on the Mac.

Should I contact Andrew Hunter or Graham about this?[/size][/size][/size]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3204&start=0#p22726
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with Mac 6G60 Compiler
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-19 13:38:34

File a bug report at [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/my_view_page.php]inform7.com/mantis[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=40#p22727
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: Jeff Zeitlin / DateTime: 2011-09-19 16:46:50

[quote="I4L"]Running a Droid X on DSX, Hunky Punk doesn't work. The scrolling is broken, so the keyboard covers the text. Also typing after a couple of minutes leads to long strings of seemingly random text into the parser like it's duplicating something. I saw the same behavior running stock Froyo and stock GB. Twisty works great, but if you want to change games, it has to scan your entire SD card for games. Hunky Punk creates an Interactive Fiction folder and only loads games stored there.[/quote]
Yeah, I can confirm the Hunky scrolling problem as well, on Nook Color with the N2A CM7 card, booted to CM7.  Additionally, where Twisty (and all PC frotzim that I've tried) accept space or any key when the game says 'press space to continue' or 'press any key to continue', Hunky Punk seems only to accept ENTER.  This cause a minor hassle when I got stuck trying to quit from AMFV; on a frotz, if you fatfinger the keyboard and cause it to prompt "Type Y or N", it'll take a Y or an N; on Hunky, you need Y <enter>, and it doesn't like that as input, and repeats the question.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3205&start=0#p22728
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Help Betatest a Sci-Fi mayem :)
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-09-19 18:00:06

Hi all.

I'm trying to be on schedule for the IfComp this year. Too bad it seems I'm a bit late.
If anyone can help me with my Sci-Fi game, it would be appreciated. It's Z-Machine.

I'd need some beta-testers and, given the fact I stubbornly decided to code the game in english -- being italian --, I'd need a proof reading, also, at least to see if my english was wrong and where.

Thank for any help,
—M

my address: [url]minnocenti@kidstudio.it[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=10#p22729
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-09-19 18:12:43

[url=http://xyzzy.plover.net/~pscion/The%20Parser%204.zip]Version 4[/url] is up.  A dozen more functions were converted: MakeMatch, MatchTextAgainstObject, MultiSub, MultiAdd, MultiFilter, Refers, WordInProperty, CreatureTest, ReviseMulti, BestGuess, SingleBestGuess, and PrintInferredCommand.   Plus a few more have partial starts.  The only thing these functions have in common is that they're small or are otherwise low-hanging fruit.  Only two are worth noting.

WordInProperty is the best example of clarity I hope this project can bring.  WordInProperty's former implementation was this:[code]    k = obj.&prop; l = (obj.#prop)/WORDSIZE-1; 
    for (m=0 : m<=l : m++) 
        if (wd == k-->m) rtrue;
    rfalse;[/code]But now, it is this:[code]	if the word is listed in the names of the obj, yes.[/code]
Relatedly is Refers. A minor goal of mine is, when I have to create a new name for a function or whatever, I try to make that name resemble similar stuff from Inform 7.  Refers takes two parameters, an object and a "dictionary word".  But now there's an I7 type called an "understood word", as they come from Understand..as... statements, and invoking Refers resembles a relation:  [i]if the word can refer to the object[/i].  I can't use actual relations due to the code they auto-generate, but I can make it possible to think of some things in that way, and further ease translation to pure I7 if this project once completed is taken further. 

But most of the time I spent on this version went into thinking about all the different kinds of arrays in there.  Some are 1-based with their size in the 0th element (multiple_object), some are 0-based with their size who-knows-where (match_list), one is even 2-based (parse -- but only under the Z-machine, it seems).  Some have object elements, some numbers, a few are byte-based ZSCII characters (buffer).  At least one is an array of structs (parse), the shape of which depends on Z or Glulx.  Sometimes arrays work in concert, like a struct of arrays:  see how match_list and match_score share the same index.  And then there's array-valued properties, which are just different enough from 1-based arrays to be annoying.

Similar to the ideal of making I6 operations resemble I7's is hiding some of these nitpicky differences.  For the I7 author, "1" is always the first element, and size comes from a "size" property.  So I spent a great deal of time creating heavily overloaded array accessor phrases that normalize as much of this as possible.  And one idea that hopefully bears more fruit than problems is, again, relations. 

Type-wise, I've changed arrays from a simple KOV to a relation of index-type to element-type.  This is handy since I can use Inform's generic types to make creating accessor functions easier. Given definitions like this:[code]To decide which relation of 0-based index to numbers is the match scores list: (-match_scores-).
To decide which relation of 1-based index to objects is the multiple-object list: (-multiple_object-).
To decide which relation of 0-based index to ZSCII letters is the player's input buffer: (-buffer-).[/code]I can create phrases with a parameter of [i]a relation of a 0-based index to a value of kind K[/i] and then re-use the K for the element's type.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3207&start=0#p22733
Forum: Competitions / Subject: ADRIFT Review Comp 2011
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-09-20 01:24:47

So, the ADRIFT community has been holding a competition for reviews of some ADRIFT games released between 2000 and 2010 that currently have no reviews on the ADRIFT site.  If you might be interested, check [url=http://forum.adrift.co/viewtopic.php?f=28&p=86106]here[/url] for original thread including rules.  I suppose this competition was never announced here, being caught in the ADRIFT bubble.  Currently, it ends September 24th, but could probably be extended if injected with some participation.

Anyway, just thought I'd throw that out there, I guess.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3166&start=0#p22734
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Beta-testers for "The Myothian Falcon"
User: The Pixie / DateTime: 2011-09-20 02:08:37

I am nearing the end of the first phase of beta-testing, and I am now looking for more testers.

I am planning on putting this on a private web page, so if you do not want to install Quest 5, you can still terst the game. And if you think beta-testing is a chore, just play the game and send me a transcript (you should be able to copy-and-paste the entire text from the game window). This would help me out a great deal.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3166&start=0#p22735
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Beta-testers for "The Myothian Falcon"
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-20 07:28:32

Does Quest 5 give an easy way for you to allow the player to add comments? Something like the command you can add in Inform 7 that makes the parser ignore any command that starts with a *, so the player can type "* Typo in the second sentence...." to put feedback in the transcript. If you can put that in, that'll get you nicer beta-testing transcripts.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3208&start=0#p22736
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Shapeshifting Protagonists?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-20 08:01:47

The other day I read the webcomic "Hitmen for Destiny" (by Oyvind Thorsby, author of "Attack of the Yeti Robot Zombies" and "Adventurer's Consumer Guide"). One of the best moments involved a shapeshifter who's assumed the identity of someone who's living in a house with several other people and (erroneously) deduces that he must be sleeping with one of them. The way he gets out of this situation is, [url=http://www.webcomicsnation.com/thorsby/destiny/series.php?view=archive&chapter=30525]well[/url]. 

This made me think: Maybe someone could use a shapeshifting protagonist to address some of the issues that are sometimes addressed with amnesia? IF often needs to communicate to the player the things that the PC already knows. Amnesia solves that problem by removing the PC's knowledge, and is so useful that it's become a massive cliche. Making the protagonist a shapeshifter could have the same effect -- the player doesn't have any of the knowledge that the PC is supposed to have, because the PC doesn't have any of the knowledge that it's supposed to have, and that's one of the problems the PC has to solve. You could even make puzzles where the PC has to figure out where "his" bedroom is without arousing anyone's suspicion.

Obviously if this were widely used it would become an even more noxious cliche than amnesia, but I thought it might be an interesting premise.

[About the comic: its art style is probably deliberately fairly crude in some ways, there are some issues with English spelling, and it's very gory. But I think it's hilarious and kind of epic.]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=10#p22737
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-20 10:02:41

This is still so cool!

I don't have anything else to add, just bumping the topic.   [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2994&start=0#p22738
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: no emoticon for 'sticking out tongue'
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-20 10:04:20

I just remembered there IS a sticking-out-tongue icon. You have to use a capital P: [emote]:P[/emote]

The trouble is, it looks like the tongue is fully inside the mouth, and you're just smiling really big.

But I find the emoticons on this site to be all oddly unexpressive. The normal smiley [emote]:)[/emote] looks a little nonplussed, and the big D smiley [emote]:D[/emote] looks like a normal one. Mr. Green [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote] is the only really big grin, but why green? The wink [emote];)[/emote] looks like a half-smile. The eye-rolling [emote]:roll:[/emote] looks more embarrassed than the blush [emote]:oops:[/emote], which could be either angry, scared, or depressed. And yes, why two devils? [emote]:evil:[/emote] [emote]:twisted:[/emote] Like the wink, neither of them looks mischievous, so you're pretty much out of options there. For that matter, why two foureyes? [emote]:geek:[/emote] [emote]:ugeek:[/emote] Are they supposed to be geeky or cool? I can't tell, but the first one looks a bit like MC Frontalot, so maybe both.

At least the lol [emote]:lol:[/emote] looks right. Which is why I use it more than the others.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3208&start=0#p22739
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Shapeshifting Protagonists?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-09-20 10:22:31

Oh, this was a common staple of 1980's agent comics. The steely-eyed director of MI5 is told his top infiltrator in St. Petersburg vanished after submitting a report about unusual activity. Obviously, MI5 needs a new man there, ideally one who's already well established with a network of contacts in place. What to do? It's obvious, of course - they must recruit some random civilian who just happens to be a dead ringer for our agent, give him rudimentary training, and send him into the field*.

(*The civilian would, for no obvious reason, be entrusted with secrets and resources normally only reserved for the top agent. Anything else just wouldn't be cricket.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=230#p22740
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: bunderbunder / DateTime: 2011-09-20 10:44:32

Hey y'all,  I'm Sean.

I've been loosely following IF on-an-off since some time in the late '90s, if you don't count playing a few of the old Infocom games when I was an infant (or thereabouts).  

By day I write software for a living.  Late afternoon/early evening, I fly kites.  At night, I generally write more software.  I've been between serious hobby projects lately, so I'd be curious to hear if there are any projects in the IF-o-sphere-o-verse that could use another contributor.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=230#p22741
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-09-20 12:02:37

[quote="bunderbunder"]By day I write software for a living.  Late afternoon/early evening, I fly kites.  At night, I generally write more software.  I've been between serious hobby projects lately, so I'd be curious to hear if there are any projects in the IF-o-sphere-o-verse that could use another contributor.[/quote]

Always happy for more contributors to Quest [emote]:)[/emote]

<a class="postlink" href="http://quest.codeplex.com">http://quest.codeplex.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3208&start=0#p22742
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Shapeshifting Protagonists?
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-09-20 12:04:45

[quote]What to do? It's obvious, of course - they must recruit some random civilian who just happens to be a dead ringer for our agent[/quote]
The "regular guy who just happens to find himself recruited to be a spy" theme goes way back.  I remember a movie in the mid-60's with Marty "Hello Dere" Allen & Steve Rossi (does anybody else remember them?) called The Last of the Secret Agents -- and I suspect that even then it was rehashing an even older idea.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3208&start=0#p22743
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Shapeshifting Protagonists?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-09-20 12:19:49

[quote="Robert Rothman"][quote]What to do? It's obvious, of course - they must recruit some random civilian who just happens to be a dead ringer for our agent[/quote]
The "regular guy who just happens to find himself recruited to be a spy" theme goes way back.  I remember a movie in the mid-60's with Marty "Hello Dere" Allen & Steve Rossi (does anybody else remember them?) called The Last of the Secret Agents -- and I suspect that even then it was rehashing an even older idea.[/quote]

Agreed, although in this instance, the wrinkle is that the recruit not only becomes a spy, but is asked to impersonate the man he's replacing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3209&start=0#p22744
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: keep running into a crash when compiling
User: sqib / DateTime: 2011-09-20 12:23:01

Not sure if this would fall more under a windows or I7 problem but here goes.   My OS is windows 7. Seems like every time I go through compiling now inform will hang up and a window will pop up saying. "Inform 7 for windows has stopped working.

A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Windows will close the program and notify you if a solution is available."

This is becoming quite frustrating to say the least when it crashes over and over. Anyway anyone who has more technical skill than I..if you can point me in the right direction to get this squared away I would be very thankful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3209&start=0#p22745
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: keep running into a crash when compiling
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-09-20 12:33:58

The nice (?) thing about Windows is that its error messages make Inform's error messages look helpful by comparison.  Sort of like going to the doctor:

[quote]Patient:  So, Doc, what's the diagnosis?
Doctor:  You're sick.
Patient:  So what do we do about it?
Doctor:  I'll let you know if I have any ideas.[/quote]
Sorry I can't add anything helpful, other than to confirm that the issue is not as simple as Inform 7 not working with Windows 7.  I've been running Windows 7 for a few months and haven't run into this.  Good luck.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3209&start=0#p22746
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: keep running into a crash when compiling
User: bunderbunder / DateTime: 2011-09-20 13:04:21

I'm not terribly familiar with Inform, but on the Windows side of it I can say that sometimes there's useful information saved to the Windows event log, which you can browse using the Event Viewer.  

I'm guessing any crash reports for Inform would end up under Windows Logs\Application\ .

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3209&start=0#p22747
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: keep running into a crash when compiling
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-09-20 13:20:58

Does it crash when you create a simple test game? If so, you need to reinstall. In that case, save your work in progress to a safe location. (It's a file called story.ni. It's buried somewhere deep in the bowels of your hard drive.) Then uninstall and reinstall.

If the test game compiles and runs, then you've written some code that has run afoul of a bug in the Inform compiler. Load your game, comment out as much as you possibly can, and run it. Assuming it runs, start adding bits, one at a time, by uncommenting them, and keep running the game each time. Sooner or later it will blow up, and you'll be able to locate the bug.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3209&start=0#p22748
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: keep running into a crash when compiling
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-09-20 13:22:36

First, follow Jim's advice above (make sure it's the compiler and not your story).

If that's not the issue, you could do what I did when I kept running into windows problems:
Get an Ubuntu live USB drive ([url=http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/download]download it here[/url]) and load Inform onto it.
Whenever you want to work on inform, just jam it in and reboot - voila: instant stable environment

Of course, this isn't a solution but it will get you up and running.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3209&start=0#p22749
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: keep running into a crash when compiling
User: sqib / DateTime: 2011-09-20 13:33:17

This is something that happened here and there in the past but now alot. It is hanging up most of the time when compiling png files. I dont think it's a code issue since this is a game I have been messing with forever and it was fine.As I go through the game testing things out when I hit on something that displays a png file usually thats when it goes kablooey.  I may try reinstalling inform and see if that cleans it up.  Thanks btw for helping out.   Also I did the error log but its all gobbledygook to me I will cut n paste whats there though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3209&start=0#p22750
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: keep running into a crash when compiling
User: sqib / DateTime: 2011-09-20 13:38:08

Log Name:      Application
Source:        Application Error
Date:          9/20/2011 2:11:13 PM
Event ID:      1000
Task Category: (100)
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      xxxx-PC
Description:
Faulting application name: Inform7.exe, version: 7.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x4d15029e
Faulting module name: Inform7.exe, version: 7.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x4d15029e
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x00060d70
Faulting process id: 0x1280
Faulting application start time: 0x01cc77c039a0a0ea
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Inform 7\Inform7.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Inform 7\Inform7.exe
Report Id: ec99f981-e3b3-11e0-878a-002564874aec
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
  <System>
    <Provider Name="Application Error" />
    <EventID Qualifiers="0">1000</EventID>
    <Level>2</Level>
    <Task>100</Task>
    <Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>
    <TimeCreated SystemTime="2011-09-20T18:11:13.000000000Z" />
    <EventRecordID>26710</EventRecordID>
    <Channel>Application</Channel>
    <Computer>Billy-PC</Computer>
    <Security />
  </System>
  <EventData>
    <Data>Inform7.exe</Data>
    <Data>7.0.0.0</Data>
    <Data>4d15029e</Data>
    <Data>Inform7.exe</Data>
    <Data>7.0.0.0</Data>
    <Data>4d15029e</Data>
    <Data>c0000005</Data>
    <Data>00060d70</Data>
    <Data>1280</Data>
    <Data>01cc77c039a0a0ea</Data>
    <Data>C:\Program Files (x86)\Inform 7\Inform7.exe</Data>
    <Data>C:\Program Files (x86)\Inform 7\Inform7.exe</Data>
    <Data>ec99f981-e3b3-11e0-878a-002564874aec</Data>
  </EventData>
</Event>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3209&start=0#p22751
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: keep running into a crash when compiling
User: bunderbunder / DateTime: 2011-09-20 13:51:38

Exception code c0000005 is for an access violation.  That probably means the compiler is trying to read or write to memory that doesn't belong to it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3209&start=0#p22752
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: keep running into a crash when compiling
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-09-20 13:56:56

[quote="sqib"]Exception code: 0xc0000005[/quote]That's an access violation ([i]Edit: I see that I'm slow to the draw.[/i]); Inform or one of its libraries is trying to use memory that it doesn't own.  If you can come up with a (preferably small) story and steps to reproduce the crash, and then file a report at [url]http://inform7.com/mantis/[/url], that would be great.  If necessary, you can also e-mail the project to <a href="mailto:bugs@inform7.com">bugs@inform7.com</a> and mention the bug number.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3209&start=0#p22753
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: keep running into a crash when compiling
User: sqib / DateTime: 2011-09-20 14:04:28

how would one go about fixing this problem?  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3209&start=10#p22754
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: keep running into a crash when compiling
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-20 14:06:16

File the bug for the windows IDE. That's what's crashing (Inform7.exe).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3209&start=10#p22755
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: keep running into a crash when compiling
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-09-20 14:39:45

Well, if you just need a quick fix to get writing again while waiting for things to work their way through mantis...

[quote="Joel Webster"]You could do what I did when I kept running into windows problems:
Get an Ubuntu live USB drive ([url=http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/download]download it here[/url]) and load Inform onto it.
Whenever you want to work on inform, just jam it in and reboot - voila: instant stable environment

Of course, this isn't a solution but it will get you up and running.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3166&start=0#p22756
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Beta-testers for "The Myothian Falcon"
User: The Pixie / DateTime: 2011-09-20 15:49:39

Not by default, but I have included an in-game journal, and you can add comments to that. Type "bug" or just "b", and return, then type your comment. The comment will then appear in the transcript (as well as going into the journal), with "BUG" prepended.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3208&start=0#p22757
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Shapeshifting Protagonists?
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-09-20 16:09:26

I see a Quantum Leap game crawling out of the woodwork here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3201&start=0#p22758
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 - getting the text of a disambiguation response
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-09-20 16:17:04

This seems to get the job done.

[code]
StringPreParser
	doParsing(str, which) {
		if (which == rmcDisambig)
			libGlobal.disambigText = str;
		else
			libGlobal.disambigText = nil;
		return str;
	}
;

modify libGlobal
	disambigText = nil
;
[/code]

EDIT: used a StringPreParser rather than replacing readMainCommand() directly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=230#p22759
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: bunderbunder / DateTime: 2011-09-20 16:52:39

Ooh, I didn't know there was anything going on in my native platform.  Must investigate!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3147&start=0#p22760
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform: more popular than Clojure!
User: Neurosion / DateTime: 2011-09-20 17:27:20

I've just noticed that Graham actually beat me to [url=http://inform7.com/news/2011/09/06/up-there-with-norwegian/]this news[/url] by a couple of days.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3207&start=0#p22761
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT Review Comp 2011
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-09-20 18:17:29

That's an interesting idea.  Reviewing is often a tedious and thankless task that deserves some recognition.  The competition format could help some potential reviewers decide what to play and review.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3208&start=0#p22762
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Shapeshifting Protagonists?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-20 19:51:28

Actually, I'm seeing this as a bedroom farce (not original, Thorsby's comic features a long sequence like this). Bonus points if you can figure out why the sex scenes would have to be with a gay man. UPDATE: On the other hand, any actual sex would be squicky, so I'd probably want to rule it out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2994&start=0#p22763
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: no emoticon for 'sticking out tongue'
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-09-20 21:18:48

[img]http://foss.aegean.gr/~realnc/forum/Smileys/kamenos/tongue.gif[/img]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3200&start=0#p22764
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Harrr!
User: Utkonos / DateTime: 2011-09-20 23:48:36

I wrote a game, Pirate Railroad, in honour of this year's Talk Like a Pirate day. It's been uploaded to the IF archive, but doesn't seem to be available yet, except at this page:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/date_1.html">http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/date_1.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3200&start=0#p22765
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Harrr!
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-09-21 01:35:36

[quote="Utkonos"]I wrote a game, Pirate Railroad, in honour of this year's Talk Like a Pirate day. It's been uploaded to the IF archive, but doesn't seem to be available yet, except at this page:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/date_1.html">http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/date_1.html</a>[/quote]
It's currently sat in the "unprocessed" directory:

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXunprocessed.html">http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archive ... essed.html</a>

It'll move to a final home in the next few days, when a maintainer gets around to moving it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3209&start=10#p22766
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: keep running into a crash when compiling
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-09-21 01:38:51

[quote="sqib"]how would one go about fixing this problem?  [emote];)[/emote][/quote]You can't: something about your game or system is causing the Inform 7 front-end to generate a fatal error, and to fix that we'll need to investigate the failure. Does it happen only with the game you're working on, or if you try to create a new project too?

Anyway, the best way forward would be to try to figure out whether it's a specific project, and either file a bug report or email the Windows maintainer (me - my email address is in the BugReport.txt file that's included in the Inform 7 install).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3197&start=0#p22767
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to do numerical inputs
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-09-21 10:54:03

Going sideways in this topic - I am interested in catching a range of integer numbers.

As an example - if the player types an integer number between 0 and 300 at the regular parser, I'd like to intercept that and call it 'counting'. I don't need to know what the number was after the match, only that a matching number was typed.

I understand Felix's example about checking the player's input, but how might I check for a range? And also... would adding such code mess up the work of extensions like Numbered Disambiguation Choices?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3210&start=0#p22768
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Listening requires a touchable noun
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-21 11:48:39

Really, it does. So does smelling. Try it!

[code]Test is room.

Every turn:
	showme whether or not the action requires a touchable noun.
	
Test me with "listen/smell/taste me/x me/search me"[/code]

I think this qualifies as a bug, seeing as listening and smelling both default to an untouchable noun.

But I also hope that if anyone writes a Standard Rules Lite, they will do away with touchability requirements for most actions. Even a "no touching required" extension would be nice.

I didn't notice anything in the Index that would say what verbs require a touchable noun/second noun. Is there any way to get a list?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2508&start=0#p22769
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Short, kid-friendly IF
User: desilets / DateTime: 2011-09-21 14:01:53

Hi, All,

Kids really like "Mrs. Pepper's Nasty Secret," and it's not too hard to read. It may a bit too long, though.

Peace,
Brendan Desilets

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3113&start=20#p22770
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Participate in the Interactive Fiction Top 50!
User: desilets / DateTime: 2011-09-21 14:09:53

Hi, All,

Here's one more stab at a list of the top twenty IF stories. It was pretty hard to get the list pared down sufficiently, and I ended up giving myself a new rule—no more than one story per author. Without this rule, Andrew Plotkin, Emily Short, and Brian Moriarty would have appeared more than once.

Peace,
Brendan Desilets

 
1. [i]Spider and Web [/i]by Andrew Plotkin—Remember when we thought that Andrew Plotkin's stories were brilliant, but awfully difficult? This story let us concentrate on the brilliance.
2. [i]Bronze[/i] by Emily Short—A fine plot, engaging characters, and an understated, Gothic setting. The best “worked example” ever.
3. [i]A Mind Forever Voyaging[/i] by Steve Meretzsky—Absolutely compelling. Required reading for Tea Party members  [emote];)[/emote] 
4. [i]Wishbringer[/i] by Brian Moriarty—A gentle adventure for people of all ages. The ending may bring a tear to your eye.
5. [i]Arthur: the Quest for Excalibu[/i]r by Bob Bates—A worthy addition to the Arthurian legends. More historically observant than most.
6. "Photopia" by Adam Cadre—Remarkably original and unforgettably sad.
7. [i]The Firebird[/i] by Bonnie Montgomery—Very funny retelling of a classic tale.
8. [i]Suspect[/i] by Dave Lebling—A surprising mystery that hasn't lost its charm.
9. [i]Jack Toresal and the Secret Letter[/i] by Michael Gentry—Very interactive and engaging story. The ending is a bit weak, but I'm surely looking forward to the sequel.
10. [i]1893: a World's Fair Mystery[/i] by Peter Napstad—Before [i]The Devil in the White City[/i], there was [i]1893: a World's Fair Mystery[/i], with its amazingly detailed evoking of one of the most important events in the history of popular culture.
11. "Lost Pig" by Admiral Jota—This story implements everything, and it's all funny.
12. "The Meteor, the Stone, and a Long Glass of Sherbet" by Graham Nelson—A master at work, short form.
13.[i] LASH[/i] by Paul O'Brian—A serious and creative use of the medium.
14. [i]Lost New York[/i] by Neil deMause—History and adventure, with a bit of nostalgia.
15. [i]Christminster[/i] by Gareth Reese—Alchemy, mystery, and a British college, too.
16. [i]Moon-Shaped[/i] by Jason Ermer—Truly spooky.
17. [i]Once and Future[/i] by G. Kevin Wilson—An exciting time-travel story, with King Arthur, JFK, and Vietnam.
18. "The Warbler's Nest" by Jason McIntosh—There are lots of effective IF horror tales, but few are as subtly frightening as this one.
19. [i]Bonehead[/i] by Sean M. Shore—Baseball, failure, and triumph.
20. [i]Worlds Apart[/i] by Suzanne Britton—A fully-realized fantasy adventure.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3210&start=0#p22771
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Listening requires a touchable noun
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-09-21 15:58:39

I suppose it's a case where you can't have a solution that would work every time -- you shouldn't be able to smell anything that's inside a glass cabinet or listen to a sea shell when you're looking at it through a security camera. A good compromise might be that you usually need to be close enough to touch something to be able to smell it (things don't usually smell that strong) but you shouldn't be required to touch something to listen to them (things that make a sound are usually loud enough that you don't have to put them to your ear to hear them).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3210&start=0#p22772
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Listening requires a touchable noun
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-09-21 16:02:27

I agree with Juhana -- touchability makes more sense as a requirement for smelling than for listening, at least as a default rule.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3197&start=0#p22773
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to do numerical inputs
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-09-21 16:20:23

You could just make an action that applies to a number and use normal check rules to make sure the player stays within range. This doesn't discard the input if it's outside the range, but I assume you would want to have a customized error message anyway.

[code]Counting is an action applying to one number.
Understand "[number]" as counting.

Check counting:
    if the number understood is less than 0 or the number understood is more than 300:
        say "Number out of range." instead.
[/code]
With nice round numbers like 300 you can use some regular expression magic if you want to expand Felix's code:

[code]After reading a command:
	if the player's command matches the regular expression "^<1-2>?\d?\d$" or the player's command matches "300":
		say "Number between 0 and 300!";
		reject the player's command.[/code]

[quote="severedhand"]And also... would adding such code mess up the work of extensions like Numbered Disambiguation Choices?[/quote]
It might, but it's likely that those extensions parse numerical input in such an early phase that there won't be problems, or if you use the after reading a command method you can move the rules around so that the extensions get priority. On the other hand the extensions might mess up the counting action if they reserve numerical input for themselves at all times.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2508&start=0#p22774
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Short, kid-friendly IF
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-09-21 17:00:37

[quote="IF noob"]It's been a while, so I can't remember if it's PG or PG13, but when her kid is a little older, I suggest [url=http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/arrival.zip][b]Arrival, or Attack of the B-Movie Cliches[/b][/url] for HTML Tads.

[url=http://ifarchive.wurb.com/if-archive/programming/tads2/executables/htads_playkit_2513.exe][b]htads_playkit_2513.exe[/b][/url] (v3.0.18.1)[/quote]
Ratings for this IF are here:
[spoiler][url]http://www.carouselchain.com/if/comments.php?rategame=297[/url][/spoiler]
It's not very user friendly, but will appeal to the kid in all of us!
Sorry I can't help with the child friendly games.

I don't know if there's a Scooby Doo Mysteries game (I'm pretty sure there is one somewhere), but that might be a good one for you.

I don't even have to use the spoiler tag to say this:
[rant]"And I would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for (wait for it) [b]you meddling kids![/b]"[/rant]

Flash IF Scooby list ([url]http://www.lovey8.com/se/scooby%20doo[/url])

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3211&start=0#p22775
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: "Flexible Survival" and "Flexible Society"
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-09-21 17:30:24

Anyone ever heard of these? "Survival" was uploaded to the archive in March, but without much fanfare, without entries to IFDB, without posts in this forum or RGIF.

<a class="postlink" href="http://blog.flexiblesurvival.com/">http://blog.flexiblesurvival.com/</a>

"Flexible Survival" seems to be inspired on an existing MUD. It appears to be updated almost every day, and collaboratively - the code seems to be arranged entirely as Inform 7 extensions. The version in the archive is version 24, but you can download version 42 from the site.

I haven't really played it yet, just browsed. It seems enormous in scope and in ambition. I'm very surprised never to have heard of it before - surely it warrants some attention from the community proper, if for nothing else then to just acknowledge the tremendous effort.

"Flexible Society" seems to be a spinoff of sorts.

I hate having to write "seems to be" so often, but this really isn't geared for outsiders, and very little explanation is offered.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3201&start=0#p22776
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3 - getting the text of a disambiguation response
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-09-21 18:10:24

That works, thanks! I just had to change this line:
[code]      if (which == rmcDisambig)[/code]
to:
[code]      if (which is in (rmcDisambig, rmcAskObject))[/code]
to catch cases where the player didn't originally specify an object at all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3211&start=0#p22777
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: "Flexible Survival" and "Flexible Society"
User: George / DateTime: 2011-09-21 20:08:09

[quote="Peter Pears"]
"Flexible Survival" seems to be inspired on an existing MUD.

[....]
I hate having to write "seems to be" so often, but this really isn't geared for outsiders, and very little explanation is offered.[/quote]

You're exactly right, it was created outside the IF community, in the mu* (i.e. roleplaying and social mud) scene, but more than that square in the furry community, which really is its own thing. Kind of like how you don't hear much about AIF in IF conversation. 

I follow another mud forum where the developer posts regularly. I agree, it's a very interesting game from what I've read and warrants more attention.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3113&start=20#p22778
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Participate in the Interactive Fiction Top 50!
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2011-09-21 21:39:49

Unfortunately, I don't have the depth of experience with modern IF that many of the longer-term vets do, so I'm probably missing several games that would otherwise take a spot on my list.

My top 10 (in the order I thought of them):

[b]A Mind Forever Voyaging[/b]:  The game that woke me up to the potential of IF.  From the lavish backstory in the feelies to the moving, nonlinear, experiential gameplay, I considered this game for years the archetype of a perfect gaming experience.

[b]Spider and Web[/b]:  Outstanding mechanics and storytelling combined to produce an experience that challenges -- at times frustrates -- but ultimately satisfies.

[b]Photopia[/b]:  Compelling story from start to finish, told with power and heart.  Yes, I cried.

[b]The Baron[/b]:  Somewhat didactic, and confusing at times, it is also powerful and affecting, with a an impact that lasts for weeks.

[b]Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom[/b]:  A surprise gem, the polish and attention to detail makes this gamer's walk down memory lane a fantastic retro-themed exemplar of how form can be liberating in IF.

[b]LASH[/b]:  Somewhat flawed in execution towards the end, it still packs a tremendous punch and illustrates the power of IF to spur character identification.

[b]Savoir-Faire[/b]:  Emily had all cylinders firing on this one:  great writing, setting, plot, puzzles, topped off by a brilliant magic system.

[b]The Gostak[/b]:  I've never actually gotten through this, but it's the game I keep telling myself I [i]have[/i] to solve next.  Fascinating concept and thorough execution (from what I can see so far).

[b]Lost Pig[/b]:  The more I write IF the more I appreciate the amazing level of technical polish that went into this.  Great writing and characters and imaginative puzzles make this a modern classic.

[b]Blue Lacuna[/b]:  Again, I haven't fully finished this one, but several hours in was enough for me to know that it deserves a spot on my top 10.  The sheer scope and ambition of Blue Lacuna would be plenty, but the amazing technical innovation really cements it for me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3113&start=20#p22782
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Participate in the Interactive Fiction Top 50!
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2011-09-21 23:38:16

I enjoy voting. But like most Americans, I hate leaving the house, so I just use an absentee ballot. I have accepted the fact that my votes will just be thrown into a garbage heap of tires and inexplicably bruised organic bananas because 99% of absentee voters are in the military and vote the opposite of how I do. But when I figured out I didn't have to drive to vote in this thread and that Mike Snyder spambans anyone from registering with a .mil address, it became extremely appealing. 

I have been out of the loop as a player for a few years, so this list will look like it was written in mid-2006. (For instance, George Bush invades someone between picks 13 and 14.) I wasn't going to post it because it's unfair to all the authors making great games in the current day. The world probably doesn't need another multi-Zork list. I'm currently playing Savoir-Faire, so I am so far behind the times, I might as well be playing games from the [i]actual[/i] 18th French Century. I don't want to discourage anyone doing new things, but this happens anytime there's an IF list -- the last few years of text games are almost completely ignored. But while players are behind, word does eventually get out. 


1. [b]Zork I: The Great Underground Empire[/b] by Infocom. The first truly great video game that was ever created. 


2. [b]Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz[/b] by Infocom. To this day there's, what, fewer than a dozen video game sequels that were legitimately as good as the first one? 


3. [b]Knight Orc[/b] by Level 9. They ended up making a MMORPG with characters taking the place of logged-in users. Virtually everyone is reprehensible, there's a ton of emergent gameplay and it really does feel like you got dumped into an unfriendly world, left with only your wits. This sense of community should be what on-line roleplaying games are trying to achieve, instead of bitcoin-based libertarianism and goblin-slobbing. 


4. [b]I-0[/b] by Adam Cadre. Laugh-out-loud funny, with that sense of being able to go anywhere and do anything that I really love in IF. 


5. [b]Jinxter[/b] by Magnetic Scrolls. I only played this game after Michael Bywater made in appearance in the comments of that forum post where Andy Baio published internal Infocom e-mails without asking anyone if that was OK. This really is one of the funniest games ever made. The author's challenge in Jinxter seemed to be to give a payoff for every single response the parser gave the player. (I've never written a proper review, so excuse me going into depth  here.) When I was mid-way through the last game I made, I'll confess that having to come up with so much text for mundane items was starting to become a chore. How many ways can a man describe a desk? Then I played Jinxter. Jinxter was like one of those personal trainers who yell at you. It made me realize what a [i]gift[/i] it is to have the attention of a player. What an *opportunity*. It made me comprehend the rare series of events that need to occur for someone to even begin playing one's text game in this age and if I didn't [i]respect[/i] that, and attempt to make every line of text as good as I could, I should just give up. Bywater doesn't give up anywhere in Jinxter. He's a force of nature here. 

(But it's below I-0 because no hawt chix go topless.) 


6. [b]Narcolepsy[/b] by Adam Cadre. Full review [url=http://www.joltcountry.com/trottingkrips/narcolepsy.html]here[/url]. 


7. [b]Spider and Web[/b] by Andrew Plotkin. Loved how smart I felt when I got inside the building, and the jarring shift that happens next. I never got tired of having the interrogator tell me that I couldn't have possibly done what I did, seeing how what I did resulted in me squicking out. That -- along with V.A.T.S. in Fallout 3 and take-downs in Deus Ex: Human Revolution -- is one of those unique mechanics that I never ended up getting tired of. 


8. [b]Spellcasting 101: Sorcerers Get All The Girls[/b] by Legend. A wise man once pointed out to me that after A Mind Forever Voyaging, an artistic triumph that fared poorly financially, Steve Mertezky did "sex game, then sequel." Sure, but after those two games he came up with what I believe is the most entertaining game of his career. S101 was meticulously plotted with a master of his craft leveraging his years of experience for a great story as well as game. There is a certain pleasure to someone experienced kicking ass in their creative years with such confidence. But at the same time, there was a lot of room for exploration within the game's college campus. You could chose whether or not you went to class or not, and it was better to actually go! Amazing. S101 also holds the distinction of being the only game whose walkthrough of commands has ever made me laugh. 


9. [b]Fail-Safe[/b] by Jon Ingold. I've read some other reviews that indicate that other players had a difficult time navigating things, but this didn't happen in my case. I'm awful at seeing the trick in movies, books and games, so my brain was perfectly pudgy and ululating to be so magnificently tricked by a game like Fail-Safe. 


10. [b]The Circuit's Edge[/b] by Westwood Associates. I used to say this was my favorite book done by my favorite video game company. Then I got older and understood that the Infocom label was being used, though nobody at Infocom proper worked on it. The chief gameplay mechanic of this is just so amazingly brilliant: you can add microchips to your brain and instantly have a new personality or new abilities. This is dead-set sexy for video games. Like, argh, THIS should have been the genre that took over the world, and shooting people in the face with WWII weapons while having the word "[url=http://goo.gl/XSmCI]of[/url]" in the title should have been marginalized. Fantastic soundtrack, graphics that don't look too dated, random combat you can control to some degree via the microchip thing and the writing of (or in the style of) George Alec Effinger. 

NOTE: One of the worst moments of my life was when I was carrying a lot more weight than I am now, and I went into Circuit's Edge and accidentally had the player character eat too much food in one of the shoppes. This game flat-out tells you that you feel "grossly full" and, Christ - it was one of those "self" moments where you feel sick. Both Marid Audran and me made some lifestyle changes, although his involved a lot more bareback prostitute-fucking. 


11. [b]Photopia[/b] by Adam Cadre. I don't have anything special to add, but here's the reason why Adam is my favorite IF author: he has this way of either anticipating what players are going to type, thus making the parser seemless, like how Richard Bartle describes YOUR dragon in Get Lamp, or else he hypnotizes me by writing so well that I don't try to get cute and awkwardly type stuff, struggling to make things work. I'll play in a single setting any IF that manages to make the parser something I barely have to pay attention to. 


12. [b]Savoir-Faire[/b] by Emily Short. I am still playing this, but the humor and magic system really compliment each other. I feel the same way about most games with magic as people today feel about zombie games: there's too many, and they suck right in their very reason for being. SF is an exception, like, say, Left 4 Dead 2. But really, the whole illusion with text games is that you can type anything into that prompt. So I like how Savoir-Faire, through the linking of objects, now has [i]everything[/i] in play as a possible object that can pay off later. That, to me, is better world-building than a magic system where you find spell books or gain them via levels. 


13. [b]Suspended[/b] by Infocom. More for the amazing interface and unique way of looking at Interactive Fiction. Truly set up like a game more than anything else, and I think there was even points, in the form of human lives lost, in the game? I don't remember exactly, but in my defense, I figured the bots were remembering everything for me. Features one of the few player characters I feel I could beat up. 


14. [b]Stiffy Makane: The Undiscovered Country[/b] by One of the Bruces. My appreciation of this one is similar to Mentula Macanus, but I got more of the references in this one. I think I reviewed it on Trotting Krips back in the day. I think the only video game designer in the world whose games I've completely finished is Bruce. The moral of the story is: to be a successful author, develop an atmosphere where people feel that if they don't finish your work, they'll wind up with a mishmash of weird genitals sent through the post. 


15. [b]A Mind Forever Voyaging[/b] by Infocom. There is one thing I really like about this game: Mertezky wanted to write a game because he hated Reagan, and that's great. More text games need to tell me who they're pissed off at. Another guy at Infocom, and I want to say it was Lebling, was like, "That's fine, as long as there's nobody stopping me from doing a pro-Republican game in the future." (Paraphrased.) I mention this only because in our current political climate, everyone involved in such an exchange at almost any place of employment would be dead via the in-fighting, and that re-includes Reagan. 


16. [b]Guilty Bastards[/b] by Kent Tessman. I liked this when I originally played it, because I was trapped in the mind of Kent Tessman, who is wry, clever, witty and fun. I then savaged this game's source as I tried to make things work in my Hugo games, and gained a greater appreciation for it and all the stuff I missed. It was very inspirational - I learned it was OK if you have stuff in a game that all players don't see. Some people will, and those people will appreciate it. 


17. [b]Guild of Thieves[/b] by Magnetic Scrolls. I like to think this is what Zork IV would have been like, if Zork IV didn't become Enchanter and was instead developed 15 years later. Funny, hates the player, gives you an entire world to solve puzzles in and has stunning graphics. Flack and I showed this one on the Amiga during the Oklahoma Video Game Expo, and some frigging reprobate had the unmitigated audacity to write, ">this game sucks" when we weren't looking. Whoever that person was: YOU suck. 


18. [b]At Wit's End[/b] by Mike Sousa. I used to like that, with everything that happens in this game, the Red Sox winning the World Series was still the least believable. Then they won twice and took to scoring like 25 runs a game against the Blue Jays. Therefore this is downgraded to #18 to signify the 18 years since the Jays have last been to the playoffs. 


19. [b]Rameses[/b] by Stephen Bond. Having a text game that basically doesn't let you change anything is such a good idea -- but it also didn't occur to me what was going on until I finished playing it and went "HEY, WHAT THE." This is because I am very stupid. But this game takes an enormous chance by giving us a charismatic player character that we have no real reason to care for. It's that level of guts that made me adore the game so much. 


20. [b]Annoyotron[/b] by Ben Parrish. Because, well. OK. It's here because I can type several thousand words about the best genre in the world and it doesn't change that, to the rest of the populace, they imagine these games we love so much to be exactly like this one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3200&start=0#p22783
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Harrr!
User: Utkonos / DateTime: 2011-09-21 23:52:47

Great! Thanks for the info.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3212&start=0#p22784
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Offline graphic IFs (not AGT)
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-09-22 03:48:47

I've found quite a few online themed graphic IFs, but I can't find any good offline ones, for instance Alice In Wonderland has a some online games (both IF and point and click).
There's even the 2010 AGT game Alice.
There's a tads game of the same name (1998), but it's stuck at v1.0a (I imagine that stands for alpha).

Where can I find a themed graphic IF for html-tads, blorb (for Windows), or inform#?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3211&start=0#p22785
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: "Flexible Survival" and "Flexible Society"
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-09-22 04:11:53

*AND* it's a furry thing. Amazing. So that explains why it's so sparse on up-front information - it's for very specific circles, and assumes that people who want to play it are quite familiar with what it is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3212&start=0#p22786
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Offline graphic IFs (not AGT)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-09-22 04:14:33

I know you have a history for getting your facts completely wrong with complete boldness, but man, where did you get "2010" for the AGT Alice?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3193&start=20#p22787
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: "No Rows Chose," So Code Blows
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-22 06:24:54

[quote="Afterward"]Can you elaborate on the "loss of Dutch grammatical structure"?[/quote]
Among other things, Afrikaans has lost the genders and many verb inflections. An example:
[quote]English: "We will live."
Dutch: "Wij zullen leven."
Afrikaans "Ons sal lewe.".[/quote]
Here Afrikaans has dropped the distinction between "ons" ("us") and "wij" ("we"), and the distinction between "zal" ("will", singular*) and "zullen" ("will", plural). For a Dutch speaker, a lot of Afrikaans sounds the way the following would sound to an English speaker: "Us is go."


* Perhaps not the greatest example, because "zullen" is one of only five verbs in Dutch where the 1st person singular is identical to the 3rd person singular, and where the 2nd person singular has two correct forms. But anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3097&start=0#p22788
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Random off-topic observations
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-22 06:49:36

Time for another random off-topic observation. I was idly looking through the referrers to my website (that is, the URLs from which people navigate to my website), when I saw that someone had come there from a search engine query of "grote fallussen", which means exactly what you think it does. Turns out that this search query has my review of Aristophanes's [i]Lysistrata[/i] on the first page. [emote]:|[/emote] I have some doubts whether the visitor was satisfied.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3200&start=0#p22789
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Harrr!
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-09-22 07:06:28

I played it last night.  I survived the pirates and got the wench!  Harrr!

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3197&start=0#p22790
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to do numerical inputs
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-09-22 07:18:17

Thanks Juhana. I found out that just adding the [number] command worked, and happily, it also did not interfere at all with the working of Numbered Disambiguation.

There was a side effect, though. Previously when you typed a word the game didn't recognise (or nonsense), it would reply with library message "I don't recognise that verb."

After I added the [number] command (the first of its kind in the game), the same circumstances would now reach for a different library message: "I didn't understand that sentence."

If I take it away again, those circumstances go back to the verb message.

I had a custom response set up under "don't recognise that verb", but since I can't imagine a circumstance where the verb line won't make sense when the game was otherwise going to say "I didn't understand that sentence" (I can't remember if in all my testing the game has ever said the latter…) I just replaced the sentence library message with the verb one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3097&start=0#p22791
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Random off-topic observations
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-09-22 08:43:19

That's precious. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3210&start=0#p22792
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Listening requires a touchable noun
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-22 08:47:06

Perhaps smelling should require a touchable noun, but the fact remains that "smell" translates to smelling the location. The location is not touchable. Perhaps it's not a problem, because at the time of the translation, the accessibility rules have been bypassed, but it still bothers me. Maybe the location should be considered touchable, seeing as you're standing on it? You could get fancy and say it's not touchable when you're in an enterable supporter or container, but I don't think that should stop you from smelling it. Smells really carry!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=30#p22793
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-09-22 08:57:26

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]There are many things that make U.S. politics confusing for a European, but the fact that some words just mean different things across the Atlantic is certainly one of the more important. I believe I have figured out some of it: American English "liberal" is the approximate equivalent of British English "progressive"; and American English "socialism" is the approximate equivalent of British English "communism".

Over the past few months, I have increasingly gotten the feeling that another word with a different meaning in the U.S. than in Europe is "middle class". One sees a politician telling an audience of unemployed factory workers that he wants to give tax cuts to the middle class -- and I'm like, What do those guys care about the middle class? But that is probably because I misunderstand what the term means. Would I be right in supposing that in the U.S., the "middle class" is not something between the "lower class" and the "upper class", but in fact means "not upper class", which in turn means "not filthily rich"?[/quote]
What you are missing is that Americans are indoctrinated to believe in the 'American dream' and to expect that whatever their current economic situation, it is about to change for the better, because they are supposed to 'climb the career ladder' and rise up through the capitalist structure. The truth is that the capitalistic structure makes this very difficult and that 99% of people will not rise up and that the middle class increasingly just doesn't exist in America, but everyone believes that they are about to join it, next year. Therefore they don't vote their actual interests, but rather what they mistakenly believe their interests will be in five years. It's a very effective form of indoctrination, isn't it? It results in loopy outcomes like unemployed people who live in their mom's basement styling themselves as Libertarians and talking about survival of the fittest.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=30#p22794
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-09-22 09:01:44

Ah, Calvinism. "Wealth is a gift given by God to the righteous. If you're poor, God wanted you to be so because you're obviously a bad person. But I'm not a bad person. I know I'm a [i]good[/i] person, which means I must be destined for great wealth. Therefore, the smart thing for me to do is to vote for things that primarily benefit the wealthy."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3208&start=0#p22795
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Shapeshifting Protagonists?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-22 09:05:36

That makes me think of the movie "Dave."

Not a spy in this case, and bedroom farce is involved, although sort of in the opposite direction.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vkf4VQx2MHE">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vkf4VQx2MHE</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3208&start=0#p22796
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Shapeshifting Protagonists?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-22 09:06:21

Actually, doesn't most farce involve mistaken identity? It's practically the definition of farce.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=30#p22797
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-09-22 09:24:29

[quote="Eleas"]Ah, Calvinism. "Wealth is a gift given by God to the righteous. If you're poor, God wanted you to be so because you're obviously a bad person. But I'm not a bad person. I know I'm a [i]good[/i] person, which means I must be destined for great wealth. Therefore, the smart thing for me to do is to vote for things that primarily benefit the wealthy."[/quote]
Interesting. Calvinism exists all over Europe, though. There is something uniquely American about buying naively wholesale into the notion that the upper classes want new joiners and are not doing everything humanly possible to prevent them from succeeding. It's the revolution I think — it required a whole new round of mythmaking to the effect that the elites are no longer in charge, which is of course, bunk. And always has been.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2859&start=0#p22798
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The perfect crime is a "thought crime".
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-22 09:49:04

Back in the 90s, the American military started using video games to train troops. It turns out that just like driving games, FPS games don't increase combat skills AT ALL. However, they do increase one thing: Your willingness to shoot and kill another human being.

The Army puts big money into this research - they call it "killology" - no joke! According to Army historian S.L.A. Marshall, as quoted in the film [i]Soldiers of Conscience[/i], “Among U.S. soldiers in combat less than 25% actually fired their weapons at the enemy.” By Vietnam, the number was 85-90%, and it is believed to be even higher now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3213&start=0#p22799
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: US vs UK spelling
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-09-22 10:29:15

I know that the "use American dialect" option tells I7 to use US spelling and grammar in responses which are generated by I7 itself.  I assume that in order to accomplish this, somewhere behind the scenes there must be a list of common words for which the spelling differs depending on which side of the big pond one is on.

My question is whether there is a way to capture the use of UK spelling conventions in player commands.  What I'd like to do is generate a different response when a player uses UK spelling in his commands.  Is there any way to do this, short of manually trying to identify words which might be used in commands for which the spelling differs?

Thanks.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3212&start=0#p22800
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Offline graphic IFs (not AGT)
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-09-22 10:33:20

I can't find it again right now, but the name of it was "Alice In Wonderland" not Alice.
I don't think it's copying the movie by Tim Burton, but it would make more sense if it was.

By the way, there's an Apple ap that has a whole Wonderland series for itunes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2587&start=0#p22801
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: [log] Porting Inform 6 to Chinese
User: minus273 / DateTime: 2011-09-22 11:07:44

Now you can have UTF-8 source input with Inform 6. A dirty hack, though, I hope, bearable in its dirtiness.
<a class="postlink" href="http://minus273.eu/if/">http://minus273.eu/if/</a>

Cu.patch (on the I6 compiler tree of I7)
unidicttest.inf (Test file with $MAX_UNICODE_CHARS=4000 and a famous Chinese text for absence of duplicating characters. The compression algorithm in fact works quite well with Chinese, as zarf suggested.)

The idea is to extend ISO type to represent UTF-8 bytes, and do the UTF-8 -> Unicode expansion in text_* routines.

Enjoy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2859&start=0#p22802
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The perfect crime is a "thought crime".
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-09-22 11:14:37

[quote="capmikee"]Back in the 90s, the American military started using video games to train troops. It turns out that just like driving games, FPS games don't increase combat skills AT ALL. However, they do increase one thing: Your willingness to shoot and kill another human being.

The Army puts big money into this research - they call it "killology" - no joke! According to Army historian S.L.A. Marshall, as quoted in the film [i]Soldiers of Conscience[/i], “Among U.S. soldiers in combat less than 25% actually fired their weapons at the enemy.” By Vietnam, the number was 85-90%, and it is believed to be even higher now.[/quote]
I think the games they used were were from the Socom series, but they've been actually training with video games (war game style not actual combat) since the 60s.

Pong clones, Arkanoid/Break Out, Asteroids, Pole Position, Dig Dug, Donkey Kong, Space Invaders, Centipede, Galaxian, Xazon, and yes, Super Mario Kart (Mario Kart64).
Other Military branches also used this technique, like the Star Fox series and the Star Wars series for the Air Force.
Even Orca The Whale was used by the Coast Gard.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=30#p22803
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: bunderbunder / DateTime: 2011-09-22 11:16:50

What I believe the United States has, and Europe lacks, is the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology]Prosperity Gospel[/url] movement of the middle 20th century. It goes a step or two beyond Calvinism, and underscores a great many of the ideas that are currently circulating in American politics.  

It also teaches that every good Christian is entitled to material prosperity which will be delivered from above Real Soon Now. Which seems to encourage a great many people to bypass any question of whether the upper classes might want new joiners by simply counting themselves among the wealthy regardless of what is indicated by the available evidence.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3214&start=0#p22804
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 6: Having the player select their name
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-09-22 12:01:38

Ah, jeez. I have literally no idea how to go about this. Essentially, I want it to be kind of like Seastalker, where the parser straight-up asks you your name at the beginning, and then reprints the string at appropriate points in the game....but I'm at a loss as to how to do so. Can someone at least point me in the right direction?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=30#p22805
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-22 12:34:22

Speaking strictly from the armchair and with no expertise, I'd say that the Prosperity Gospel is more of a symptom than a cause. The Prosperity Gospel was able to take root in the US because of our societal conviction that anyone can make it and virtue will be rewarded (materially), rather than producing that conviction. 

In some ways there are a lot of parts of the American self-image that make it particularly receptive to the American Dream/Protestant Ethic (obviously I'm talking in huge generalities here). There's the fact that we've never had a nobility or official hereditary aristocracy, and Frederick Jackson Turner's [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_Thesis]Frontier Thesis[/url] that the frontier increased individualism and did away with old hierarchies; the thought that you could make a new life for yourself at the frontier. And if anyone can make it, when someone doesn't make it it's their fault. My guess is that this goes back to before the Prosperity Gospel.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3215&start=0#p22806
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: "try" within an out-of-world action
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-22 12:45:18

I think I know why this doesn't work, but I don't like it:

[code]Test is room.

report requesting the score:
	try examining the player;
	
Instead of examining the player during the Entire Game:
	say "Just look at yourself."
	
test me with "x me/score"[/code]

I'm guessing that since Before, Instead and After rules aren't checked for out-of-world actions, they also aren't checked for any actions that the original one triggers. Bummer. Any thoughts?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2859&start=0#p22807
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The perfect crime is a "thought crime".
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-09-22 12:45:26

[quote="capmikee"]According to Army historian S.L.A. Marshall, as quoted in the film [i]Soldiers of Conscience[/i], “Among U.S. soldiers in combat less than 25% actually fired their weapons at the enemy.” By Vietnam, the number was 85-90%, and it is believed to be even higher now.[/quote]

If the number went from 25% to 85% or more by Vietnam, how did anyone conclude that videogame-training was a factor (even in more recent increases)?

Not being snarky here, just really curious about how they established (or believe they established) causality.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3213&start=0#p22808
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: US vs UK spelling
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-22 12:49:40

[quote="Robert Rothman"]Is there any way to do this, short of manually trying to identify words which might be used in commands for which the spelling differs?[/quote]
No — or I think not.

[quote="Robert Rothman"]somewhere behind the scenes there must be a list of common words for which the spelling differs[/quote]
There is not. The library messages etc. that are affected by differences in US/UK spelling all exist in two editions:
[code]
	    #Ifdef DIALECT_US; 
Sorry: 	"Oh, don’t apologize."; 
	    #Ifnot; 
Sorry: 	"Oh, don’t apologise."; 
	    #Endif; 
[/code]
EDIT: the above code is from the I6 template for standard responses to the saying sorry action.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3215&start=0#p22809
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "try" within an out-of-world action
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-09-22 12:51:02

Not sure if this will work, but could you use a "Understand 'score' as something new" statement to turn off the built-in requesting the score action, and then create a new, in-world, action which is triggered by the "score" command and which behaves the way you want it to?


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3215&start=0#p22810
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "try" within an out-of-world action
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-09-22 12:53:39

It's simply that out of world actions should never change the world state. Those rules would do that so they're skipped. If you need to have an out of world action change the world state you should substitute it with a regular action and have it try both the original out of world action and the normal action. (edit: like Robert said.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3215&start=0#p22811
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "try" within an out-of-world action
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-22 12:54:51

Looks like you're right.

For this particular case you could put the player's description in the description property of the player, and then "x me" would work correctly out-of-world. In general, I don't think there's a solution.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3215&start=0#p22813
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "try" within an out-of-world action
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-22 13:03:13

Commands for actions out of world set the I6 global "meta".
You could toggle it from I7, but I don't know if that's risky somehow.

[code]Test is room.

Out of world is a truth state that varies. The out of world variable translates into I6 as "meta".

report requesting the score:
	now out of world is false;
	try examining the player;
	now out of world is true;

   
Instead of examining the player during the Entire Game:
	say "Just look at yourself."
   
test me with "x me/score"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2859&start=0#p22814
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The perfect crime is a "thought crime".
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-22 13:21:07

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="capmikee"]According to Army historian S.L.A. Marshall, as quoted in the film [i]Soldiers of Conscience[/i], “Among U.S. soldiers in combat less than 25% actually fired their weapons at the enemy.” By Vietnam, the number was 85-90%, and it is believed to be even higher now.[/quote]

If the number went from 25% to 85% or more by Vietnam, how did anyone conclude that videogame-training was a factor (even in more recent increases)?

Not being snarky here, just really curious about how they established (or believe they established) causality.[/quote]
Not trying to establish causality with that factoid, just the credentials of the Army "killologists."

One of the most successful strategies that researchers discovered was having recruits shoot at human-like targets during training - and the more lifelike, the better. I would not be surprised if playing an FPS has similar effects.

Personally, I think there may be more involved than just the content of a video game. When studies point to the 15-year delay between the introduction of television (to children) and increased violence (in young adults), there's no indication of whether 15 years of TV increase acceptance of violence because of witnessing violent acts, or whether watching TV (or playing video games) just wires your brain in a certain way that makes you more violent (by suppressing impulse control, for example). For all we know, Baby Einstein could be making almost as many violent kids as America's Army: True Soldiers...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3215&start=0#p22815
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "try" within an out-of-world action
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-22 13:23:18

I changed my Instead rule to a Check rule - I've started doing this for most Instead rules that only affect one action.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=40#p22816
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-22 15:18:46

[quote="matt w"]Except possibly for "liberal," I'm not sure that any of the cases you cite are differences in semantics per se. For instance, many Americans seem to think that "socialism" means absolute tyranny -- which is probably why you think they use it to mean "communism" -- but those same Americans are also willing to claim that an exemplar of that socialism is a health care plan which involves subsidizing individuals to by insurance from private companies, and imposing a tax penalty if they do not buy insurance (to avoid [url=http://moneywatch.bnet.com/economic-news/blog/maximum-utility/why-we-need-an-individual-mandate-for-health-insurance/177/]adverse selection problems[/url]), which they describe as a "nationalization" of the health care situation. This can't merely be a definitional difference; it's tied in with a whole complex of factual and normative beliefs that make it very difficult to untangle what's going on.[/quote]
Right. But I do think it is usual in the US to say that the USSR was a socialist state, is it not? In western Europe, that would sound really strange. We had our own socialism, so the communists' attempt to claim the term didn't really catch on.

[quote="gravel"]Middle class has a bunch of economic and social indicators that are "squishy".  I was raised in a family that expected me to go to college, and I went, so even though I earn only a little more than some people who would count as lower class, I'm firmly middle class, although I'd say I'm lower middle class.  I have a job with health care and some security, and it's unionized.  There's a reasonable chance the factory workers have those things, too, which is nothing to sneeze at.  And if they're in a two-earner household, there's a good chance they're not too far off from the median family income, especially if they were someplace like Michigan or Mississippi.  The local factory workers here are in the same bracket as a moderately experienced school teacher.[/quote]
I wasn't sneezing at anyone; it is just that for me, it seems part of the definition of the terms "working class" (or "proletariat") and "middle class" that factory workers and farmers belong to the former, and not to the latter, category. Of course, this use of these terms is pretty much bound up with 19th and 20th century political theory, especially Marxism; and that is probably why class terms are almost never used in the Dutch political debate.

[quote="Eleas"]Ah, Calvinism. "Wealth is a gift given by God to the righteous. If you're poor, God wanted you to be so because you're obviously a bad person. But I'm not a bad person. I know I'm a [i]good[/i] person, which means I must be destined for great wealth. Therefore, the smart thing for me to do is to vote for things that primarily benefit the wealthy."[/quote]
Although I won't deny that there is a historical link between Calvinism and capitalism, I do not have the impression that the average Calvinist now thinks in the way you describe them. At least, not in Europe; or at least, not in the Netherlands. The extreme Calvinists are very conservative, but they are not particularly right wing economically. Our extreme Calvinists (who hold two seats out of 150 in parliament) are the guys whose website is unavailable on Sundays. No real capitalist would do that. Checking their reaction to the government's plans for next year (which were presented a few days ago), I see that they want more money for development aid and less cuts on special health care for disabled people. They state that "the government should be a solid shield for the weak". Overall, I would say that they are a centrist party economically, while being extremely conservative.

So, as others have suggested, I think that the line of reasoning you sketch is more typically American than typically Calvinist. [emote]:)[/emote]

By the way, are there many Calvinists in the US? I thought that the religious right mainly consisted of Evangelicals.

[quote="matt w"]In some ways there are a lot of parts of the American self-image that make it particularly receptive to the American Dream/Protestant Ethic (obviously I'm talking in huge generalities here). There's the fact that we've never had a nobility or official hereditary aristocracy, and Frederick Jackson Turner's [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_Thesis]Frontier Thesis[/url] that the frontier increased individualism and did away with old hierarchies; the thought that you could make a new life for yourself at the frontier. And if anyone can make it, when someone doesn't make it it's their fault. My guess is that this goes back to before the Prosperity Gospel.[/quote]
Quiz question of the day: what is the American virtue?

(The answer will be provided by a European, so you might have to take it with a grain of salt. [emote];)[/emote] But the question is not ironical, and I take the term from on of the greatest American thinkers.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=40#p22817
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-22 15:58:00

One of the greatest American thinkers, hein?
Emerson held "self-reliance" to be a very American virtue, didn't he? 
But would that be the nation's reliance upon itself or each American's reliance upon him-or-herself? Or perhaps the reliance of a group of American citizens (a family, say, or a congregation or whatever) upon themselves?

As for the Marxist definition of "proletariat", it's the class of people who don't own their own means of production and who therefore have to sell their labour to someone else to earn their bread. Today, at least, the economic standard of the proletariat in this sense seems to vary significantly (and at least in Sweden factory workers and school teachers alike seem to have roughly average wages).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3216&start=0#p22818
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: disambiguiating similarly named objects fully
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-09-22 16:06:39

Hello--

In the code below, I want to check for if something is in inventory, and use that, before attempting disambiguation.

I have used stuff like

does the player mean giving the grey shirt: it is likely

But 

does the player mean giving a thing in inventory: it is likely

Doesn't work. I think the error messages make sense to me.

It seems the "can't give what you haven't got" rule in Graham Nelson's Standard Rules should apply first, too, but when I type "rules" and then "give white shirt to tex" the game says (first taking the white shirt) before getting to that rule.

So my question is twofold.

1) how can I make it so "give red shirt" does not take the red shirt?
2) how can I avoid the overgeneral disambiguation statement if you have 2 shirts?

I have a feeling I'm missing something very basic with rules--does anyone know how to make the can't give what you haven't got rule apply before we disambiguate or force taking?

Thanks to anyone who can help!

(note: edited as my first example(s) didn't quite clarify things, even though I thought I checked it.)

[code]"shirts" by Andrew Schultz

The Hall of Too Many Shirts is a room.

The white shirt is a thing in the hall of shirts. The blue shirt is a thing in the hall of shirts. The grey shirt is a thing in the hall of shirts.

Tex is a man in the Hall of Too Many Shirts.

when play begins:
	now the player is in the Hall of Too Many Shirts;
	now the player has the grey shirt;


instead of wearing a shirt: say "This is a demo of something the author doesn't understand in Inform, not an actual game.";

test canttake with "give red shirt";
test ambig with "give shirt/give blue shirt/give shirt";
test donttake with "give blue shirt to tex";[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=40#p22819
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-22 16:27:54

[quote="Felix"]But would that be the nation's reliance upon itself or each American's reliance upon him-or-herself? Or perhaps the reliance of a group of American citizens (a family, say, or a congregation or whatever) upon themselves?[/quote]
All of it. From the readiness to start a war without international consent to the hatred against government-provided health care, and from the predominance of evangalicalism (which stressed personal conversion rather than predestination) to the high status of the "self-made man", a lot of American culture make more sense when you think about it in terms of the ideal of self-reliance -- in everything, and on every scale.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=40#p22820
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-09-22 17:01:13

[quote]From the readiness to start a war without international consent to the hatred against government-provided health care, and from the predominance of evangalicalism (which stressed personal conversion rather than predestination) to the high status of the "self-made man", [/quote]

Just for the record, we're not all like that.  Unfortunately, those who are (probably actually a minority) tend to be very loud and willing to resort to any means -- violence not excepted  (and often favored) -- to see their policies put into force.

Also, those who purport to espouse "self-reliance" tend to be far from consistent in doing so.  They are quick to claim credit for their own actions when things go well for them, but just as quick to blame others when it doesn't.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=40#p22821
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-22 17:23:38

[quote="Robert Rothman"]Just for the record, we're not all like that.  Unfortunately, those who are (probably actually a minority) tend to be very loud and willing to resort to any means -- violence not excepted  (and often favored) -- to see their policies put into force.[/quote]
To a certain extent, that is true, and the examples I gave were all of a politically right wing kind. But doesn't the ideal of self-reliance transcend such political barriers? To take a more or less random example, because I recently noticed this, the [url=http://www.burningman.com/]Burning Man[/url] festival sounds left wing and anarchist (though I may be wrong about this), and yet it states self-reliance as a core value it wishes to promote. Harold Bloom is politically left wing (I am not wrong about this, though the claim may surprise some), but his theories of creative genius have the idea of achieving self-reliance at their core.

I may be completely wrong, of course, not being in the US; and what one would need to establish the claim is an intricate comparison of US and European culture. But let us at least stress that the ideal of self-reliance can manifest itself in more ways than a libertarian political philosophy.

[quote]Also, those who purport to espouse "self-reliance" tend to be far from consistent in doing so.  They are quick to claim credit for their own actions when things go well for them, but just as quick to blame others when it doesn't.[/quote]
Very true, of course -- but that is probably the case with almost every ideology. How can you hold on to it if you cannot blaim the failures onto someone else?  [emote]:|[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3216&start=0#p22822
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: disambiguiating similarly named objects fully
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-22 17:55:24

I'm not sure I understand your problem. Inform already automatically assumes that you want to give the grey shirt if you only have the grey shirt, doesn't it? You don't need a parser hint that states that the player is likely to mean something he carries, because that is already part of the way the parser behaves.

Perhaps your problem is that you want the disambiguation question to involve only held shirts when the player tries to give a shirt? I would strongly advise you against programming this. After all, the player might mean the shirt that is lying on the ground; and if we are asking a disambiguation question anyway, we should just ask the most helpful one possible.

[quote]It seems the "can't give what you haven't got" rule in Graham Nelson's Standard Rules should apply first, too, but when I type "rules" and then "give white shirt to tex" the game says (first taking the white shirt) before getting to that rule.[/quote]
What happens is this:

(1) The parser decides what the player means; if there is an ambiguity, the parser asks a disambiguation question. [Rules involving actions cannot run before this step is complete, because we don't know which action will take place before the parser has decided this! So you could not possibly run the "can't give what you haven't got" rule before disambiguation.]
(2) Seeing that you can only give something that is held, Inform now tries the actor taking the noun.
(3) The check giving rules run, and the "can't give what you haven't got" rule fires if the noun is not held by the player character.

The "can't give what you haven't got" rule should fire when it does: we first try to help the player by using implicit taking, and we then only fail the action if the implicit taking didn't work. If you want to get rid of implicit taking (something I should be wary of, because it is simply convenient for the player), you could kill it off entirely. I'd have to think about how you could that, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3211&start=0#p22823
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: "Flexible Survival" and "Flexible Society"
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-22 18:00:07

What is a furry thing? (Except for a thing with fur, which I'm reasonably sure a computer program could not be.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=40#p22824
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-22 18:57:37

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Right. But I do think it is usual in the US to say that the USSR was a socialist state, is it not?[/quote]

I don't think it is, actually. My sense of this was kind of vague, so I searched a right-wing site for "soviet union" and sampled five of the top ten hits, and none of them actually used the word "socialist" or "socialism" to describe it. I think it's much more common to call the USSR itself "communist" rather than "socialist." 

Now, I wouldn't be surprised to hear people attack some policy as "socialist" and then compare it to the Soviet Union. One of the hits on that site described the governor of New Jersey selling off the state-owned broadcasting network, saying that government-owned TV and radio should've ended with the Soviet Union. But that's just another example of the phenomenon I mentioned where some people feel free to describe any economic policy to the left of Ayn Rand as communist.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3211&start=0#p22825
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: "Flexible Survival" and "Flexible Society"
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-22 19:07:13

[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furry_fandom]Furry fandom.[/url] I might add that the game leans rather heavily on the sexual aspect.

[rant][url=http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp03292003.shtml]This comic strip[/url] is surely a rather offensive and inaccurate explanation, but I like it anyway.[/rant]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3200&start=0#p22837
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Harrr!
User: Utkonos / DateTime: 2011-09-23 01:22:03

Awesome! Thanks for playing!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2859&start=0#p22838
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The perfect crime is a "thought crime".
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-09-23 02:57:58

[quote="capmikee"]Not trying to establish causality with that factoid, just the credentials of the Army "killologists."[/quote]

Hm. K.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=40#p22839
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-23 05:33:21

[quote="matt w"]I don't think it is, actually. My sense of this was kind of vague, so I searched a right-wing site for "soviet union" and sampled five of the top ten hits, and none of them actually used the word "socialist" or "socialism" to describe it. I think it's much more common to call the USSR itself "communist" rather than "socialist."[/quote]
Ah, OK. Then I was wrong about that, thanks for clearing it up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3200&start=0#p22840
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Harrr!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-23 06:41:11

I played it a couple times to get all the endings. Nicely done.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=40#p22841
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-23 08:22:14

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]To take a more or less random example, because I recently noticed this, the [url=http://www.burningman.com/]Burning Man[/url] festival sounds left wing and anarchist (though I may be wrong about this), and yet it states self-reliance as a core value it wishes to promote.[/quote]

Burning Man is a great example. The mere fact that it takes place out in the middle of the desert, where you have to bring [i]everything[/i] you need to survive, should be a clue. I think it illustrates the paradox of libertarianism - a philosophy that presents itself as liberal, even anarchist, but remains fiscally conservative because of its fixation on private property.  (Does that make it the opposite of modern European Calvinism?)

To someone interested in local economies, Burning Man represents a grievous transgression against sustainability. I think you could even take "Shade" as a comment on that fact.

It does sound fun, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3214&start=0#p22842
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Having the player select their name
User: AceRuley / DateTime: 2011-09-23 08:52:41

Hmm, I'm still green in writing IF (no games published yet), but I think this should work:

! Doubt a name would be longer than 32 characters, unless last name is included
Global name->35;
[ Initialise;
read name 0;
];

The information on global variables starts on pg 39 of the Designer's Manual, the read command is on pg 44.  Read requires a byte array though, so you might also consider using istring.h and strcat() to concat the string into one easy to use word (instead of an array).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2508&start=10#p22843
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Short, kid-friendly IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-09-23 09:06:27

I would reccommend "The Chasing".

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=zpjzp8drlwozs0j0">http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=zpjzp8drlwozs0j0</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3211&start=0#p22844
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: "Flexible Survival" and "Flexible Society"
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-23 09:19:33

This furry subject provides a perfect pretext for me to link to this semi furry web comic (in this arc a comics loving penguin has just sold a "squirrel with boobs" to some furry fan over E-buy, but for various reasons now he can't deliver):
[url]http://www.collectedcurios.com/sequentialart.php?s=63[/url]
The same artist, [url=http://www.collectedcurios.com/index.html]Phillip M. Jackson[/url], also publishes a series of cartoons on the theme of "How to play" various video games:
[url]http://www.collectedcurios.com/howtoplay.php[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3228&start=0#p22845
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Disabling default behavior of "my"
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-23 09:43:59

[code]Test is room.

There is an electronic nose in Test.

Understand "nose" as a person.
Understand "my nose" as yourself.

test me with "x my nose/get nose/x my nose"[/code]

I can't come up with any way to stop the parser from interpreting "my nose" as a carried item, rather than a specially Understood item. Is there a way?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3208&start=0#p22846
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Shapeshifting Protagonists?
User: duodave / DateTime: 2011-09-23 09:54:26

[quote="capmikee"]Actually, doesn't most farce involve mistaken identity? It's practically the definition of farce.[/quote]

I don't know, the issue seems farced to me. Haha. Sorry, couldn't resist. Well, ok, I guess I could have, but I didn't resist very hard.

But hey, maybe instead of a shapeshifter there's a perception filter like on Doctor Who. I mean, something that would trick people's brains into seeing something else is probably infinitely more believable than a trite, overdone lycanthrope.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3228&start=0#p22847
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disabling default behavior of "my"
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-23 10:49:06

Destroy its entry in the (I6) LanguageDescriptors array:

  LanguageDescriptors-->1 = ',nonword';

Not pretty, no.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3229&start=0#p22848
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Updating "Unknown Word Error" by Neil Cerutti
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-23 11:10:32

I ran into a problem with code I had borrowed from an old version of "Neutral Library Messages" by Aaron Reed. I would get this strange response:

[quote]
> take foo
The word "foo" was not understood.

> get foo
The word "get" was not understood.
[/quote]

I got the latest version of NLM, which seems to fix the problem, but then I noticed the code to do this is borrowed in turn from "Unknown Word Error" by Neil Cerutti. So I got that too.

Turns out Cerutti's extension is not compatible with 6G60, so I updated it. I don't want all of Aaron's messages, just this particular behavior, so I'll probably use my update:

<a class="postlink" href="http://eyeballsun.org/i/Unknown%20Word%20Error.i7x">http://eyeballsun.org/i/Unknown%20Word%20Error.i7x</a>

Neil, are you out there? What do you think of this update? Would you prefer to write your own?

Aaron, I've kept Neil's activity-based approach to the problem, but I'm thinking about incorporating the behavior to work with Ron Newcomb's Default Messages extension. Can you explain a bit about how NLM handles this? I'm confused about what you mean by "the misunderstood word is known elsewhere" and when the "you don't need to use the word 'foo' in that way" message is supposed to come up.

I'd also like to add a message for "I don't know the verb 'foo'" to UWE... what do folks think about that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3228&start=0#p22849
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disabling default behavior of "my"
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-23 11:19:12

This is not an answer to your question, but... you could of course make a "my nose" object that is part of the player. Do you have a special reason for not doing that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3228&start=0#p22850
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disabling default behavior of "my"
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-23 11:47:48

I could try that, but the 'electronic nose' (name disguised to protect the spoilers) is a much more important object, and I was trying to preempt useless disambiguation situations. The only reason to include 'my nose' at all is to provide a polite refusal rather than an accidental interaction with the wrong thing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=40#p22851
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-09-23 11:51:34

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="Eleas"]Ah, Calvinism. "Wealth is a gift given by God to the righteous. If you're poor, God wanted you to be so because you're obviously a bad person. But I'm not a bad person. I know I'm a [i]good[/i] person, which means I must be destined for great wealth. Therefore, the smart thing for me to do is to vote for things that primarily benefit the wealthy."[/quote]
Although I won't deny that there is a historical link between Calvinism and capitalism, I do not have the impression that the average Calvinist now thinks in the way you describe them.[/quote]

Granted. My post may have been a bit lazy since I definitely wanted to point toward the Calvinist heritage rather than today's movement. As for socialism, judging by the current US media discourse it seems the average American couldn't possibly define the term. It's become synonymous with "in opposition to far right-wing principles." [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=40#p22852
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-09-23 12:33:49

[quote]As for socialism, judging by the current US media discourse it seems the average American couldn't possibly define the term. It's become synonymous with "in opposition to far right-wing principles." [/quote]

Which is largely symptomatic of a more general ignorance of political principles on the part of a large segment of the American populace.  I remember a number of years ago, somebody conducted a survey in which a number of Americans were shown two quotations, one from Karl Marx (I believe, although I'm not certain, that it was from the [i]Manifesto[/i]) and one from the US Declaration of Independence.  They were asked to identify which of several documents they thought each quote was from, and whether or not they agreed with it.  The majority of people surveyed identified the Marx quote as being from the US Constitution, and stated that they strongly agreed with it.  They identified the DoI quote as being from the [i]Communist Manifesto[/i] and stated that they strongly disagreed with it.  The hatemongers rely on that ignorance.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3194&start=0#p22853
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A container under a supporter?
User: windracer / DateTime: 2011-09-23 14:31:31

This is how I hid something under a bed, but I'm pretty new to Inform so I'm sure this is not the most elegant solution. [emote];)[/emote] The leash ends up "in" the room instead of "under" the bed but the end result is what I wanted.

[code]There is a blue leash. The description of the blue leash is "A blue leash with a metal clasp." The blue leash can be found or lost. The blue leash is lost.

Your parents' bed is in the Master Bedroom. Your parents' bed is fixed in place and scenery. The description of your parents' bed is "The queen-sized bed is made and doesn't appear to have been slept in recently."

Instead of looking under your parents' bed when the blue leash is lost:
    now the blue leash is found;
    now the blue leash is in Master Bedroom;
    say "Under the bed you find a blue leash.";
    increase the score by 1;[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3228&start=0#p22854
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disabling default behavior of "my"
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-23 15:17:52

[quote="capmikee"]I could try that, but the 'electronic nose' (name disguised to protect the spoilers) is a much more important object, and I was trying to preempt useless disambiguation situations. The only reason to include 'my nose' at all is to provide a polite refusal rather than an accidental interaction with the wrong thing.[/quote]
Right, but stuff like "does the player mean doing anything with my nose: it is very unlikely" would then take care of your disambiguation problem, wouldn't it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=50#p22855
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-23 15:21:33

If [url=http://www2.law.columbia.edu/news/surveys/survey_constitution/index.shtml]this[/url] is what you are referring to, people apparently thought that Marx's classic statement of socialism, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs", was or could have been in the US constitution.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3228&start=0#p22856
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disabling default behavior of "my"
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-23 15:23:39

It might, but I've acquired a deep distrust of the parser that makes me doubt. I'll have to decide if I think it's worth the chance.

Part of the reason is that my Lost Items extension does some hacking of noun understandings - if it has too many out-of-scope objects to choose from, it might choose a really weird one - and it does no disambiguation at all, so it just goes with the first one it finds.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=50#p22857
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-09-23 16:39:34

[quote="Robert Rothman"]For example, what in most countries would be called "fascism" is (in a development of the last few months) designated here in the US by a word that in the rest of the English-speaking world refers to a beverage.[/quote]

[quote="Robert Rothman"]Which is largely symptomatic of a more general ignorance of political principles on the part of a large segment of the American populace.[/quote]

Well played, sir.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3230&start=0#p22858
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [Inform 6] "split must stay vertical" error after restart
User: due / DateTime: 2011-09-23 19:10:57

After playing Emily Short's "Bronze" the other night, I decided to implement a similar "these are the directions you an leave the room" status-line compass rose. It works perfectly! Unfortunately, due to weird font-sizing issues, it doesn't display nicely in Quixe at all. However, I'm using Glulx only, so I decided to be smart and split the statusline into another window, and then use that to draw the compass rose in.

This worked perfectly.

However, restarting the game using the 'restart' verb results in the following error message: "Glk library error: window_set_arrangement: split must stay vertical".

I'm initalising the new window in the Initialise method, and obviously Initialise is called a second time when the game is restarted -- but when the statusline has already been split. My solution around this problem was to replace the RestartSub and use glk_window_close to close the window.

This prevented the statusline from being split a second time, but still results in that error message. I attempted to check to see if gg_statuswin_time (my global variable for the Window ID) was set to zero in the Initialise function, but that still resulted in the window being re-split.

As a last-ditch attempt, I tried to set-up the split statusline in the InitGlkWindow entry-point, but this didn't seem to be early enough in the process to actually do anything.

I'm a bit rusty at Inform 6, and this is the first time I've ever written anything with Glulx, so it's very likely that I'm missing something extremely obvious.

The source is [url=http://wxwhatever.com/due/test.inf]http://wxwhatever.com/due/test.inf[/url] and the compiled ulx is [url=http://wxwhatever.com/due/test.ulx]http://wxwhatever.com/due/test.ulx[/url]. Hopefully someone can point me in the right direction!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3230&start=0#p22859
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Inform 6] "split must stay vertical" error after restar
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-23 20:12:40

I haven't looked at your source code. However, the way this is supposed to work is that the GGRecoverObjects() function detects all open windows by the rock value. After it's run, your window global variable will be properly set (if the window was ever created) or not set (if the game is just starting up and the window was never created.) This is called after all startup/restart/restore/undo events.

You can hack GGRecoverObjects(), or add a IdentifyGlkObject() function -- not normally defined by the I6 or I7 libraries -- to the the job.

After that, your initialise function can look at the window global variable to decide whether it needs to create a new window.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3200&start=0#p22860
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Harrr!
User: Utkonos / DateTime: 2011-09-23 21:15:49

Thanks. I'm honoured! (Although, as I am aware of only one ending, it's possible that we are not talking about the same game!)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3200&start=0#p22861
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Harrr!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-23 21:21:52

Well, I answered "yes" to the final question on the first playthrough and "no" the second. Do these count as different endings? A deep philosophical question.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3230&start=0#p22862
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Inform 6] "split must stay vertical" error after restar
User: due / DateTime: 2011-09-23 22:09:53

Ah, thanks for the hint! I've been working through it a couple of times, and have tried implementing an IdentifyGlkObject routine, based on what I saw in your twocol.inf example file. Unfortunately, this didn't seem to actually /do/ anything. Additionally, hooking the window to be closed after restart/undo/load/etc caused it to only ever have the single window (not constantly resplitting the status), but still presented with the error message.

I have partially confirmed that my code functions as I expected by doing a horizontal split instead of a vertical split (winmethod_Below instead of winmethod_Left), and that caused the error message to go away entirely.

I'm planning on working through it a bit more methodically, and I'll definitely check out GGRecoverObjects. I've been skimming the source of the Glulx Status Window Control extension for Inform 7, and it seems to be managing the status window entirely of its own according, suggesting that it is closed and then re-opened by the engine. If I can't work it out, I'll have a go at managing it all myself...

Thanks again [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3231&start=0#p22863
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Help Needed for Savage Island Part 1
User: Dref / DateTime: 2011-09-23 22:20:09

I'm trying to get the knife from under the lake and from what I understand you have to swim north underwater but when I try this the game tells me it does not understand the word "north!" I can swim east and get the block but north does not work???

I've tired abbreviations and everything else, but I can't swim north no matter what I type.

The version I'm using is the Inform version and I'm using WinFrotz to run it. I'm wondering if this is some bug or quirk just for that version of the game. I hope not, I'd hate to have to scrounge for another version and start all over!

Can anyone help? Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3065&start=0#p22864
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Help with Amnesia!
User: Dref / DateTime: 2011-09-23 22:28:01

Amnesia! I recently played and solved that game, and no it was NOT easy! 

What I did in regards to your problem was simply eat a lot, especially before beginning a big task. You can get a lot of money via begging (but save first each time because a cop will sometimes catch you and haul you off to jail) to pay for all those meals. Bigger meals give you more energy. Later on in the game there is a house you stay at that you can eat the meals there for free and that was a big help too. My mistake at first was thinking sleeping was what mainly kept your energy up when in fact it's meals that actually do the bulk of that.

Hope that helps a little.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3231&start=0#p22865
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Help Needed for Savage Island Part 1
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-23 22:40:43

[url=http://trs-80.com/trs80-adventures-sa10.htm]Here's a walkthrough[/url], though I don't know if everything works on the version you're playing. But it looks like the command you're looking for might be 

[spoiler]hold breath[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3231&start=0#p22866
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Help Needed for Savage Island Part 1
User: Dref / DateTime: 2011-09-23 22:47:50

Thanks for trying, but I've done that. [emote]:([/emote]

I drop the log, hold my breath and then try to swim north to get the knife but it says it doesn't know what a "north" is! Really odd. I can swim east and get the block the walk-through mentions but no north swimming is allowed apparently.

Also, I can't type NORTH on land to go north either even if there is a way north. Same with SOUTH and south. It only lets me do N and S. And no, typing SWIM N fails also. Sigh. The version I downloaded is from the IF archive, so  I wonder if others are having this issue?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3231&start=0#p22867
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Help Needed for Savage Island Part 1
User: Dref / DateTime: 2011-09-24 00:09:18

It must be a bug in that version. I downloaded the games from Scott's own website and that version allows for NORTH and SOUTH. Yikes, that is a bad bug!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=50#p22868
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2011-09-24 02:30:29

HI NYKevin,

(Sorry it's taken so long for me to respond - that's RL again)

That's very useful to know, thanks!  I can already think of some situations where that would enable some entertaining puzzles to be created.  One of the classic Dr Who episodes ([url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Horns_of_Nimon]The Horns of Nimon[/url]) had a maze where the walls periodically changed and objects left behind would vanish (the Doctor tried putting adhesive markers on the walls).  Only the villains and K9 were able to navigate the maze.

Looking quickly through the manual, it appears that in order to achieve such a maze puzzle I'd need to learn how to use tables.  Looking forward to that. [emote]:)[/emote]

(To everyone: See why I chose the Dr Who series to help me with the learning curve? [emote];)[/emote] )

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3065&start=0#p22869
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Help with Amnesia!
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-09-24 05:43:05

Well, thanks for that. [emote]:)[/emote] When I get back to the game - and it seemed too good not to come back - I'll certainly keep that in mind.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3232&start=0#p22870
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Betatesting an ALAN3 game for IFComp2011
User: AnssiR / DateTime: 2011-09-24 11:07:42

Hi, I wrote a small ALAN3 game for IfComp 2011. The deadline for submitting games is drawing close and I would need somebody to have a quick look and give some feedback. I would send the game file to your e-mail if you volunteer. The interpreter would have to be the latest snapshot from the AlanIf website <a class="postlink" href="http://www.alanif.se">http://www.alanif.se</a>  (e.g. for Windows you would have to download
the file "alan3_0beta2-1184.win32.x86.setup" from the home page and play the game with the interpreter found there).  

It's an old-school roam in an abandoned house and solving the secrets therein. The name is "Ted Paladin And The Case Of The Abandoned House".
The gimmick in this game are the abnormal location descriptions that make it harder to solve the puzzles. But there are built-in hints and walkthru included.

Thanks,
-Anssi

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3233&start=0#p22871
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Doors open automatically
User: Riku / DateTime: 2011-09-24 11:22:32

One last question: How do I make a closed door not open automatically when someone tries to go in that direction? In the game I'm working on, going through said door ends the game, and I wouldn't want the player to get mad because he didn't notice it was closed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=50#p22872
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-24 11:27:58

[quote="Robert Rothman"]largely symptomatic of a more general ignorance of political principles[/quote]
Perhaps it rather testifies to a certain ignorance of the history of ideas than to substantial political confusion? I mean, is the maxim »From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs» really something that Jefferson or Franklin couldn't conceivably have written?

For the US constitution is not actually inconsistent with (democratic) socialism, is it? Would a socialist president really be unconstitutional?
To the best of my knowledge, socialist parties are not illegal in the US, and I think they never were (even in the Haymarket or McCarthy days).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3234&start=0#p22873
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Advice on suitable platform
User: Anne / DateTime: 2011-09-24 12:08:52

Greetings all,

I am the lead designer for a multimedia story-driven adventure game. Our team mainly consists of talented individuals putting their heads together, and we currently have a number of talented graphics artists (3d and 2d), composers, well-known voice actors, etc. We originally envisioned creating this project in a full 3d environment, and we got pretty far using the Unreal Development Kit, but soon realized that we needed to do a LOT of customizing to get things to where we wanted them. Essentially, our game is story-driven, dialogue heavy (with lip synching), has inventory management type puzzles etc. We also tried some adventure game systems such as AGS, but found them pretty limiting (e.g. when it comes to the allowed screen resolution).

We may still go the 3d route, but have decided to first focus on creating an interactive fiction version of the actual plot, if nothing else as a proof of concept. That way, we can put a lot of the work we already performed towards an actual finished product, since our original ambitious idea may be delayed. To make a long story short, we're looking to find an interactive fiction developing system that allows:

* Some combination of clicking and typing in order to perform actions (e.g. compass, inventory icons etc).
* Ideally pretty powerful graphics capabilities. We would need the ability to play full screen videos and windowed videos (limited to a section of the screen) efficiently. We'd particularly want the ability to have somewhat animated scenes for the actual rooms, and a system capable of playing videos one after the other pretty seamlessly.
* Full music / sound capabilities.

So my question to you all is, what is the most multimedia capable IF developing system out there? Is there any clever way to incorporate fairly high level videos and animations with a text-based approach to puzzle solving etc (ideally combined with some point and click elements)? 

Thanks!

Anne.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3233&start=0#p22874
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Doors open automatically
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-24 12:17:28

You'll want to change the "can't go through closed doors" rule; that's the rule that tries to open the door if it's closed. I think this should work:

[code]Check an actor going (this is the old-school can't go through closed doors rule):
	if the door gone through is not nothing and the door gone through is closed:
		say "[The door gone through] is closed.";
		stop the action.

The old-school can't go through closed doors rule is listed instead of the can't go through closed doors rule in the check going rulebook.[/code] 

(I'm not entirely clear on your rationale, though; if the players want to go through and the door can be opened, why would they be annoyed because they hadn't noticed that it was closed? Is it something like, when you open the door you see that outside is boiling hot lava, so you don't want them to be able to go through the door without first getting the warning that comes when they open it?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3234&start=0#p22875
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Advice on suitable platform
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-09-24 12:25:05

Sounds like [url=http://www.textadventures.co.uk/quest]Quest[/url] might be your best bet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3233&start=0#p22876
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Doors open automatically
User: Riku / DateTime: 2011-09-24 12:34:07

Well, if you must know, I'm actually making this game for my sister. She hasn't played any IF before, and she might not notice the "there is a door here, which is closed".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=50#p22877
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-09-24 13:15:45

[quote]Perhaps it rather testifies to a certain ignorance of the history of ideas than to substantial political confusion? I mean, is the maxim »From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs» really something that Jefferson or Franklin couldn't conceivably have written?[/quote]
Agreed.  There is certainly nothing inconsistent between socialism and the principles upon which this country was founded (in fact, some of us believe that true democracy can [i]only[/i] exist with a socialist economic system), but far too many people in this country have been fooled into believing otherwise, because they don't understand what the labels mean -- and hence, they act largely against their own interest.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3234&start=0#p22878
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Advice on suitable platform
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-09-24 14:04:17

As the creator of Quest, I agree (recommended by Campbell - that was unexpected [emote]:)[/emote] )

It gives you a clickable compass, on-screen inventory list, hyperlinks, video and sound out of the box - you can embed YouTube and Vimeo clips.

It works with HTML and Javascript, so it is possible to completely customise the game UI. So, if there's a way in JS to trigger an event when a video finishes playing, you could use that to trigger another video, or trigger the description for the next room, etc.

Games can be played either in the Quest software itself, or through a web browser. I'm also currently working on an export facility that will make it possible to create iPhone/iPad/Android apps.

I'm working on Quest full-time at the moment, so I can give you all the help you need.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=50#p22879
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-24 16:36:37

[quote="Laroquod"]Americans are indoctrinated to believe in the 'American dream' and to expect that whatever their current economic situation, it is about to change for the better[/quote]
Yesterday, [url=http://www.skop.se/ekonomi/2011/09/hushallens-forvantningar-om-arbetsmarknaden-2/]a survey was published[/url] here in Sweden according to which 47.3 % of the Swedish people believe in rising unemployement in the country – but only 12.5 % believe that their own employers will make any cuts in the staff at all. 

(Perhaps, the Europeans that didn't go west in the 19th century were as much prey to that dream and stayed home convinced that things – for them at least – would soon take a turn for the better.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3234&start=0#p22880
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Advice on suitable platform
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-09-24 18:08:32

I'm surprised you didn't find AGS to be helpful, and if screen resolution is the only reason you didn't like it... well, when I was there I don't recall a game ever really needing higher resolutions than the ones supported; and the ones that did go as high as they could go were, invariably, not that good.

However, if it's that much a dealbreaker, you might find Wintermute to be worth your while. And maybe Adventure Maker, I've always shied from it but it might be what you're looking for.

In IF, I don't know about the multimedia abilties of Quest, but I think Adrift can do nifty things (just am not sure about the videos). I do know for sure that HTML Tads and Inform have those capabilities, but learning those languages just for this might be extreme.

You could always do something else - recruit a programmer from this forum and let him/her program your multimedia-intensive proof-of-concept, in their language of choice, provided it can do all those nifty things you want. Especially if it really is just a proof of concept - otherwise you'll have to learn a new language from scratch... just to put together a storyboard and LATER make the whole game from scratch AGAIN.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3234&start=0#p22881
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Advice on suitable platform
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-09-24 20:27:29

[quote="Peter Pears"]I do know for sure that HTML Tads and Inform have those capabilities, but learning those languages just for this might be extreme.[/quote]
Tads doesn't support video (MNG animations don't really qualify) nor fullscreen.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3233&start=0#p22882
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Doors open automatically
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-09-24 20:41:49

Comedy is when a person expects a door to open for them, and it doesn't, and they walk into the door. At least for onlookers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3234&start=0#p22883
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Advice on suitable platform
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-09-24 23:02:00

Inform 7 might support what you want, but the extent of customization you'll need to do will be severe. Take a look at any Inform 7 code that's available and you'll see what I mean -- even a relatively straightforward game like Weishaupt Scholars is customized up the butt. And you don't even want to see the source code for Rover's Day Out. I can say this because I've been down that path with New Cat (no source code is available yet, but I've been considering it).

Other platforms have a few nasty restrictions. ADRIFT, for instance, has a horrible parser and can only run on Windows.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3210&start=0#p22884
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Listening requires a touchable noun
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-09-24 23:09:18

A sight/tactile bias is one of the flaws of INFORM's world model. It attempts to shoehorn the other senses into that simplified construct even when doing so is ridiculous. 

Take for instance, an air freshener. You sure don't need to be within arm's reach in order to smell it. And listening has nothing to do with touchability, in the real world. I can hear that oncoming semi WAY before I can touch it. 

I've cobbled together stuff to get around this problem in I6, but those were just bandaids and duct tape. A through re-imagining and redesign of the world model should be done. Smellability and hearability would operate in a different way than touchability.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3230&start=0#p22885
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Inform 6] "split must stay vertical" error after restar
User: due / DateTime: 2011-09-25 00:41:06

Ahah! I've managed to solve it.

The issue in question was StatusLineHeight:

[code][ StatusLineHeight hgt parwin;
    if (gg_statuswin == 0) return;
    if (hgt == gg_statuswin_cursize) return;
    parwin = glk($0029, gg_statuswin); ! window_get_parent
    glk($0026, parwin, $12, hgt, 0); ! window_set_arrangement
    gg_statuswin_cursize = hgt;
];[/code]

Setting up the correct routines in IndentifyGlkObject, etc, results in restarting and loading [b]not[/b] re-splitting the status window. However, the parameters that StatusLineHeight is calling window_set_arrangement with are incompatible with it having been split into two pieces. I'll have to dive a little bit deeper into the Glulx reference to work out what to actually call it with, but replacing this function and commenting out that line solves the issue.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3234&start=0#p22886
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Advice on suitable platform
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-09-25 04:35:55

[quote="Poster"]ADRIFT, for instance, has a horrible parser and can only run on Windows.[/quote]Horrible in what way? And keep up at the back - ADRIFT runs on Linux and I am trialling an online version.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3234&start=0#p22887
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Advice on suitable platform
User: Anne / DateTime: 2011-09-25 07:19:31

Thanks so much for the help so far, guys. It's been really useful.

We have some great connections in our team, but mainly within the area of voice acting / music and scriptwriting (and also somewhat in the field of graphics, even though we will probably need some more help there). Our programming abilities are not quite on level with everything else. Some of our voice actors were in pretty well-known TV and computer game productions, and worked with companies such as Blizzard and Bioware. We have a studio in the Hollywood area, where most of the dialogue is recorded, and where most of the sound/music mixing is performed. We also know some people at EA and some other game companies, so we're going to try to pitch this and pass it around, enroll in some indie game conferences etc. We also know some people at G4 so we're hoping to get at least a small feature in there.

We got fairly far in UDK, including a functional 3d environment with moving NPCs and lip synched dialogue, but ultimately the amount of 3d modeling and programming required turned out quite overwhelming. Things like inventory and even a semblance of a save state system had to be coded totally from scratch. Since we have a LOT of dialogue, music, writing and graphics already finalized, we wanted to focus on another platform to at least make use of a lot of the elements we have so far, and also have it work as a proof of concept that we can pass around to our contacts. Many of the members in our team love interactive fiction, and so we think this may be the best way to go, to get the actual game concept to a workable stage. We don't want it to become one of those unending projects that never result in anything actually playable for years, if we stick exclusively with our exceedingly ambitious 3d version, so this is why we are looking at IF languages so we can get something "out there" fairly fast.

Thanks for the suggestion about Quest, we were pretty unfamiliar with it. Other names you mention we have heard about, but haven't researched a whole lot. We HAVE tried AGS as I mentioned. We did find the screen resolution limiting since we're working with some pretty high-res videos. There were also other aspects that we didn't quite get along with. We have tried Wintermute as well and liked it better, but we still had some issues (I don't want to get long-winded with specifics in my post and bore you all). 

I think ultimately, we veered away from our initial idea to make a proof of concept by way of a point and click 2d/video based game, since it still doesn't allow us to put a proof of concept out there as fast as we want. The game is very cinematic, and some sequences like "X grabs a gun, turns towards Y and fires" are hard to incorporate visually within a reasonable time span (considering the length of the script). Since the game is totally first-person, that makes cinematic style sequences even harder to incorporate realistically in a 2d point and click environment. We know you can rely on pop-ups containing plain text even in a point and click game, but we're not huge fans of that solution, so we figure it would all "blend" more naturally if we focus more on a text-based approach (i.e. IF) to the whole thing. 

Again, thanks for all the help so far. If any of you feel that you're interested in this project and have some time to dedicate to it, don't hesitate to let me know. We are always looking for potential team members, and this project will be our starting point into actually going commercial (even though this one project is performed on a totally volunteer basis). Always hard to tell the future, but if things go like we expect them to, it could be a great entry into the field, and it all looks pretty promising.

Anne.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3234&start=0#p22888
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Advice on suitable platform
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-09-25 08:10:22

[quote="Anne"]We have tried Wintermute as well and liked it better, but we still had some issues (I don't want to get long-winded with specifics in my post and bore you all).[/quote]
If you don't want to get into the specifics, I understand, but I would be interested rather than bored. I've done quite a bit of work on a similar system, so areas of improvement are a very interesting discussion to me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3210&start=0#p22889
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Listening requires a touchable noun
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-09-25 08:19:17

[quote]A through re-imagining and redesign of the world model should be done. Smellability and hearability would operate in a different way than touchability.
[/quote]

The problem with setting up a different set of default rules for when various types of barriers (whether they be room borders, containers, or whatever) are impervious to odors or sounds is that it becomes so object-specific that no set of default rules is likely to make more sense than any other.  Yes, you may be able to hear the oncoming semi from the next "room" where that room represents 100 feet down the road, but not where the next room is a mile away.  And if its not a semi but a bicycle, you probably couldn't hear it even in the former case.  What if its a bicycle with a playing card between the spokes?  Or what if the "room" you're in consists of a soundproofed recording studio?

One approach would be to require that an author actually specify smellability/hearability rules for every object with a smell or an odor (i.e., eliminate defaults altogether) but now you've made it unnecessarily complicated.  Maybe the answer is to have a set of default rules which work basically the way the current rules do (if nothing else, making smellability/hearability work the same way as touchabilty has the advantage of simplicity in those cases where the context does not require anything more complicated) but to make it easier to override the default rules.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3210&start=0#p22890
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Listening requires a touchable noun
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-25 08:50:01

Perhaps we could use an extension that let authors easily create nicely behaving instances of smell and sound kinds to be put in scope even when the object smelling or sounding isn’t. 

(Phenomenologically, I think smells (and tastes) are mostly, and sound at least sometimes, experienced as objects distinct from the things that emit the smell, taste, or sound, in a way that looks and feels are not experienced as distinct from the things that we look or feel at.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3235&start=0#p22891
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Lists with indefinite articles, and identical objects.
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-25 10:03:35

The following code:
[code]"Apples" by Victor Gijsbers

Orchard is a room. The player is in orchard.

An apple is a kind of thing. The player carries two apples.
The player carries a book.

When play begins:
	say "You carry [list of things carried by the player]. In other words, you carry [list of things carried by the player with indefinite articles].".[/code]
leads to the following output:
[quote]You carry two apples and book. In other words, you carry an apple, an apple and a book.[/quote]
This does not make me happy, because I want to see "two apples and a book". Why does a list with articles pull apart identical objects? Is there a way to have this not happen?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3235&start=0#p22892
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lists with indefinite articles, and identical objects.
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-25 10:16:36

You want this:

[code]
	say "You carry [a list of things carried by the player]."
[/code]

Your second phrase invokes a different list-writer, which doesn't collect duplicates. That isn't answering your question so much as restating it, but that's the situation.

(Look in the standard rules, at the difference between "To say a list of (OS - description of objects)" and "To say (L - a list of objects) with indefinite articles".)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3235&start=0#p22893
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lists with indefinite articles, and identical objects.
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-25 10:27:28

Thanks! That works perfectly.

(I must say: the difference in behaviour between these two phrases is not exactly clear from the syntax.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3235&start=0#p22894
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lists with indefinite articles, and identical objects.
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-25 10:46:52

Wait, so does this mean that if you have constructed a list, there is no easy way to get the result I desired? Assuming "K" is your list, you cannot even compile "say [a K]".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3236&start=0#p22895
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7:  Scoring/Table Problem
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-09-25 11:10:44

I'm trying to set up a table-based system for keeping track of achievements that result in scoring points.  I've tried the following code:

[code]"Scoring Test" by RPR

This Place is a room.

Scoring for is an action applying to one topic.

Carry out scoring for:
	Choose the row with an achievement of "[topic understood]" in the table of score awards;
	If earned entry is false:
		Now the score is score + points entry;
		Now earned entry is true.



There is a gizmo in This Place.  There is a gadget in This Place.

After taking the gizmo:
	Try scoring for "getting the gizmo".
	
After examining the gadget:
	Try scoring for "examining the gadget".


Table of Score Awards
Achievement	Points	Earned
 "getting the gizmo"	1	false
 "examining the gadget"	2	false
 
  [/code]

This compiles fine, but results in a run-time error as follows:

[quote]Scoring Test
An Interactive Fiction by RPR
Release 1 / Serial number 110925 / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N) SD

This Place
You can see a gizmo and a gadget here.

>get gizmo

*** Run-time problem P21: Attempt to look up a non-existent correspondence in the table 'Table of Score Awards'.

[Your score has just gone up by one point.]

[/quote]

Except for generating the error, the "scoring for" action seems to have worked correctly; it in fact increased the player's score appropriately.  I'm sure I'm missing something very basic here, but any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3236&start=0#p22896
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Scoring/Table Problem
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-09-25 11:41:15

The problem is, I believe, that you're trying to compare a topic with text. You could convert the topic to indexed text and specify that the achievements in the table are also indexed text, but it's easier to drop the action completely and use a simple to-phrase so you can operate with plain text:

[code]To score for (description - text):
	Choose the row with achievement of description in the table of score awards;
	If earned entry is false:
		Now the score is score + points entry;
		Now earned entry is true.

After taking the gizmo:
	score for "getting the gizmo".
   
After examining the gadget:
	score for "examining the gadget".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3236&start=0#p22897
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Scoring/Table Problem
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-09-25 11:49:42

Thanks.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3236&start=0#p22898
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Scoring/Table Problem
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-25 11:52:55

[UPDATE: yay cross-post with Juhana. Added value in this post is that you need "continue the action" in these After rules, and maybe you need to make sure that they don't get preempted by other After rules?]

Bad news: The scoring action doesn't seem to be working correctly, as you can see by trying "x gadget." You'll only get one point, which suggests to me that after the run-time erroryour code is just picking the first row of the table.

The problem seems to be a type mismatch between what you're looking for and what you're checking. I was able to work around this by forcing both of them to be indexed text:

[code]"Scoring Test" by RPR

This Place is a room.

Scoring for is an action applying to one topic.

Carry out scoring for:
	let accomplishment be indexed text;
	let accomplishment be the topic understood;
	Choose the row with an achievement of accomplishment in the table of score awards;
	If earned entry is false:
		Now the score is score + points entry;
		Now earned entry is true.



There is a gizmo in This Place.  There is a gadget in This Place.

After taking the gizmo:
	Try scoring for "getting the gizmo";
	continue the action.
	
After examining the gadget:
	Try scoring for "examining the gadget".


Table of Score Awards
Achievement (indexed text)	Points	Earned
 "getting the gizmo"	1	false
 "examining the gadget"	2	false[/code]

But that's a very kludgy solution, and indexed text is probably best avoided if you don't need it. (Also, I fear it might goof up other actions involving topics.) I think you really want a "to" phrase rather than an action, since "to" phrases can take text arguments (and don't involve the rest of the action machinery):

[code]"Scoring Test" by RPR

This Place is a room.

Scoring for is an action applying to one topic.

To score for (accomplishment - text):
	Choose the row with an achievement of accomplishment in the table of score awards;
	If earned entry is false:
		Now the score is score + points entry;
		Now earned entry is true.

There is a gizmo in This Place.  There is a gadget in This Place.

After taking the gizmo:
	score for "getting the gizmo";
	continue the action.
	
After examining the gadget:
	score for "examining the gadget".


Table of Score Awards
Achievement	Points	Earned
 "getting the gizmo"	1	false
 "examining the gadget"	2	false[/code]

By the way, you want to continue the action in your after rules -- otherwise they'll cut off the report stage. (I lazily only did that for taking; the text for examining the gadget gets printed in a Carry Out rule so it happens before the After stage ends the action.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3236&start=0#p22899
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Scoring/Table Problem
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-25 11:57:59

[quote="matt w"]By the way, you want to continue the action in your after rules[/quote]
So why not make it a "carry out" rule? Given that it seems to happen silently anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3235&start=0#p22900
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lists with indefinite articles, and identical objects.
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-25 12:20:44

Not very easily, no.

This works, but only for a list that's a global variable:

[code]
K is a list of things variable.

Definition: a thing is K-listed if it is listed in K.

When play begins:
	add the list of carried things to K;
	say "You carry [a list of K-listed things]."
[/code]

I can't figure a way to phrase that without the global "K-listed" adjective. Not without an I6 phrase definition, anyway (which I leave as an exercise for, er, somebody else).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3231&start=0#p22901
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Help Needed for Savage Island Part 1
User: amonroejj / DateTime: 2011-09-25 14:45:40

The Inform conversion of Scott Adams Adventureland was just as buggy. Whoever converted them back in the day must have used a flawed converter.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3113&start=20#p22902
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Participate in the Interactive Fiction Top 50!
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2011-09-25 15:17:18

Cool post!  I'm in.  I've probably played fewer IF games than many hardcore IF fans, so I've limited myself to a top 10 list.

[b]The Witness 
[/b]This is my all-time favorite interactive fiction story and really one of the first that I was able to solve without too many hints.  It's definitely old-school with all the good and bad of what was state of the art Infocom in the 1980s. It also included great "feelies" in the package.  My own work-in-progress game "The Z-Machine Matter" has a modest tip of the hat to The Witness and other IF mystery games.  
  
[b]Border Zone[/b]
Another great Infocom title, Border Zone was an espionage story that took place in 3 acts with a real-time clock.  It's tricky, but a fun story where you have to move quickly.  Definitely gets your heart racing!  I was finally able to pick up a copy on eBay many years after having lost my earlier version in misguided spring cleaning years ago.  What memories this game had for me!

[b]Trinity[/b]
While I never finished Trinity, I still think it is one of the coolest concepts for a game.  Great historical story telling that goes into a while other level of mythology working on multiple levels.  Also included a very cool comic book and great props.

[b]An Act of Murder[/b]
This is a great short "who done it" mystery by Chris Huang.  This was one of the games that got me back into Interactive Fiction after a long absence.  It's very approachable and does a great job of creating a randomized mystery story.  Huang's story is also an inspiration to my own game.

[b]Photopia[/b]
While Photopia is more story than game, it's an excellent example of a more experimental style of IF that is actually interesting and moving.  Definitely worth trying out.  Extremely compelling writing.

[b]Lord Bellwater's Secret[/b]
This is a short one-room mystery.  While it has some quirks and some puzzles that are not completely logical, it's still a pretty darned good piece of entertainment.  The writing is strong and there's some good surprises for such a tight-knit game.  

[b]Spider & Web[/b]
An intriguing piece of IF with some inteesting narrative techniques and solid writing by Andrew Plotkin.

[b]The King of Shreds and Patches[/b]
Admittedly, I'm late to this game, trying it for the first time with the recently released Kindle version.  I could use Zoom on my Mac, but I really wanted to see whether IF could work well on the Kindle.  I'm just blown away at what a great job Jimmy Maher has done exploiting the Kindle UI.  This truly captures what an interactive novel should feel like.  Elizabethan stories are not usually my cup of tea, but this is so well done I'm willing to stretch a bit.  If you have a Kindle, how can you not try this out?  

[b]Make it Good[/b]
This is the most awesome post-Infocom detective mystery story out there.  It's truly an epic piece of work.

[b]Lost Pig[/b]
Despite the fact that it's not a mystery story, this is a fun game with a helluva great narrative voice.  It's fun, it's entertaining and it's not crazy hard.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3231&start=0#p22903
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Help Needed for Savage Island Part 1
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-25 21:07:36

Elsewise discussion have noted that not everybody is aware where the converter is. It's called "scott2zip":

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXscott-adamsXtools.html">http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archive ... tools.html</a>

You can take a look at it if you want. Allow for the fact that it's 1995-era Perl, and generates 1995-era Inform source code (Inform 5). The last time I tried to get it working, I failed. But there it is.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=10#p22905
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-09-26 04:01:58

[url=http://xyzzy.plover.net/~pscion/The%20Parser%205.zip]Version 5[/url] is up, with 25 more functions translated, leaving 25 more yet to go.  

One of the more useful translations is the Keyboard() function, which does the bulk of what we think of as the Reading A Command activity.  It handles OOPS and UNDO processing, plus the blank line parser error. I took extra time to place comments into this function highlighting where and what the check, carry out, and report rules would be for each of those commands if anyone wants to promote them to full out-of-world actions, or just get a sense of how they work.  ScoreMatchL, part of the does-the-player-mean subsystem, was done similarly in case someone wants to break it out into a rulebook or three.  I'm unsure if the first two "rulebooks" are useful, or even necessary, but the third certainly looks promising. 

It was during the translation of Keyboard() that I began to think of placing "landmarks" in the code.  There's a *lot* of code in here with little to distinguish one block of black ink from another block of black ink.  Just scrolling around, it's hard to tell where you are in the source.  So I've decided that all of the calls to the library message system will also have, in blue text, the message that they'll print.  That text isn't actually used, it's just a visual cue and yet another way for one to see what the code is doing.

Another thing I'm trying to do is to remove the GOTO statements (called "jump" in Inform 6).  Keyboard() used break and next statements to mimic them, but I removed even those via else-if chains.  But ChooseObjects, on the other hand, took some doing.  While it was conceptually simple -- make the final third of the function the first third -- code is fussy.  And then it used a while-loop in a peculiar way:  by combining a following if-statement into itself, using next-commands to do the looping, and skipping the following code should the loop fail prematurely.  It was a clever trick, but doesn't jive well with making the code clear and readable.  The solution I found I'm still unsure of.  It's hard to find test cases that hit it particularly. 

However, even if ChooseObjects was a great success, TryGivenObject broke me.   TryGivenObject has only two labels, but with four different jumps that aim at them.  The code is convoluted and difficult to follow even in the translated version.  I certainly intend to come back to it after the rest of the functions are translated, as I'll have a better understanding of the parser code (along with shorter code, I presume), but until then, Inform 7 now has GOTOs under the trumped-up moniker "control labels".  May God have mercy on my soul.

This version also introduces bit-twiddling to the project.  This I've had experience with before, but I started afresh rather than importing an earlier solution.  I've used the verbs include and exclude to do all the bit-twiddling.  As imperatives they work much like Inform's existing increment and decrement phrases.  Because of a bug I hit a year or two ago, most bit tests here take the form "if (x & y) == y" rather than the "if (x & y) ~= 0" which is standard.  This is so I can test "if x includes y1 + y2" safely.  The values for Y are still defined as I6 constants and exposed through KOVs with to-decide phrases.  Include/exclude work on any KOV so long as X and Y are the same KOV.

And finally but certainly (unfortunately) not least, my handling of arrays continues to evolve.  It turns out that relations, at least the ones that are passed through phrases, are treated more like indexed text and less like objects:  they're passed by copy.  Even though I'm using only them as a type, Inform wants to insert code to make copies. And while I've been avoiding that via the {-pointer-to:xxx} directive, it doesn't work when I7 phrases call other I7 phrases.  So arrays as relations, while making sense conceptually as a special case of associative arrays, were a blind alley for this project.   Instead, arrays are now typed as rulebooks.  This makes no sense conceptually, but works mechanically, so shall it be.  

The second difference in how arrays are handled are the arrays of structs, such as the parse array and a couple of pronoun arrays.  I had originally created the fields as a kind-of-value in their own right, but that disallowed the syntax of "the 1st word of the parsed input" since Inform's phrases cannot have two parameters right next to each other.  I found "the word # 1 of the parsed input" to be annoying, so each field now has a phrase dedicated to it.  Inelegant, perhaps, but the client code is more readable as a result, and that's what matters.  

Relatedly, for one phrase, "if x is listed as a (field) in y", I made a handful of field types specifically for that phrase. This is because the field, of type struct, is now a Unit rather than an empty KOV just for automatic phrase-selection purposes, and that allows me to pass two numbers for the price of one.  (It's just like how hours and minutes are both passed together as a single "time" unit.)  The second number is the number of fields ("columns") that that array has, a number that's needed in the for-loop that that phrase masks.  The effect is that I don't need to clutter the actual parser code with extra appelations like "with element size 3" for the ct_1 += 3, because it's hidden in the unit.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=40#p22906
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-26 05:02:16

Another small update. We have 26 voters voting for 159 games. The current pseudo-histogram is:

Games with 1 vote: 87
Games with 2 votes: 37
Games with 3 votes: 12
Games with 4 votes: 7
Games with 5 votes: 7
Games with 6 votes: 4
Games with 7 votes: 1
Games with 8 votes: 0
Games with 9 votes: 0
Games with 10 votes: 2
Games with 11 votes: 0
Games with 12 votes: 1
Games with 13 votes: 0
Games with 14 votes: 0
Games with 15 votes: 1

You still have four days to vote!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=40#p22908
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-26 07:49:40

I'm too lazy to count and too impatient to wait: What's the game with fifteen votes?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=40#p22909
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-26 07:50:34

[quote="matt w"]I'm too lazy to count and too impatient to wait: What's the game with fifteen votes?[/quote]
You get three guesses. Bonus points if your first guess is correct.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=40#p22910
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-26 08:15:29

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="matt w"]I'm too lazy to count and too impatient to wait: What's the game with fifteen votes?[/quote]
You get three guesses. Bonus points if your first guess is correct.[/quote]

Booo. More story, less puzzles!

OK: 1. Blue lacuna
2. Anchorhead

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=40#p22911
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-09-26 08:20:14

Victor, any chance of extending the deadline by a few days? I've been meaning to do up a list, but I've been too busy working on my IFComp entry...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=40#p22912
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-26 08:36:50

Matt: wrong, and wrong again. The second one is pretty close, though. You are thinking about the right era.

Emily: the problem with extending the deadline is that I'll be releasing the results just as we are flooded by IF Comp reviews. I was hoping to get it out early on the 1st of October, so that the IF Top would at least have about 24 hours of attention. [emote]:)[/emote] I definitely do not want to wait until after the IF Comp, because at that point the top will be outdated. Would it be possible for you to send me just a list of games? You can always do a more extensive write-up later.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=40#p22913
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-26 08:39:11

Spider and Web, then?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=40#p22914
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-26 08:48:24

Yep!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3239&start=0#p22915
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Disabling the story title - authorial modesty for the story
User: arylwen / DateTime: 2011-09-26 08:59:07

Greetings,

Is there a way to disable displaying the story title, author and Inform7 details. Something like the authorial modesty, but for the story itself ? (of course, only for own stories [emote]:)[/emote] h

In some cases it is not needed when played from web.

Thank you,
Arylwen

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=40#p22916
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-26 09:07:44

Unfortunately I have missed out on the Last Lousy Point, and typing >UNDO doesn't seem to do anything.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3239&start=0#p22917
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disabling the story title - authorial modesty for the st
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-26 09:14:37

Look at [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/ex35.html#e35]section 17.35 of the documentation[/url]; though as that page notes, it's courteous to print the banner text sometime, so that Inform 7 is acknowledged. ([url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Stephen%20Granade/Extended%20Banner/index.html]Stephen Granade's Extended Banner extension[/url] allows you to change the banner, though I don't know if it works with the most recent builds.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=40#p22918
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-26 09:31:34

Sure it does. You just have to click the edit-button of the post with your first two guesses, and then I will award you the last lousy point.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3239&start=0#p22919
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disabling the story title - authorial modesty for the st
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-26 09:49:34

[quote="matt w"]so that Inform 7 is acknowledged[/quote]
True, but if played from a web site all that information can be presented without being printed by the game.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3239&start=0#p22920
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disabling the story title - authorial modesty for the st
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-26 10:07:10

[quote="matt w"]though as that page notes, it's courteous to print the banner text sometime, so that Inform 7 is acknowledged[/quote]
It's not exactly common to acknowledge the programming language one has used to make a program, is it? [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3239&start=0#p22921
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disabling the story title - authorial modesty for the st
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-26 10:22:33

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="matt w"]though as that page notes, it's courteous to print the banner text sometime, so that Inform 7 is acknowledged[/quote]
It's not exactly common to acknowledge the programming language one has used to make a program, is it? [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Lots of the flash games I play do start with a splash screen for Flixel or Stencyl. Anyhow, I can amend this for "The documentation requests that you put the banner in somewhere, though whether that request is reasonable is another question."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3240&start=0#p22922
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Betatesting an I7 Fantasy Game for IFComp2011
User: LuteinHawthorne / DateTime: 2011-09-26 10:24:25

Hello,

I'm putting the finishing touches on a beginner-level fantasy adventure game in Inform 7 intended for submission to IFComp this year.  I feel that it's ready for beta testers to give it a try.  If interested, please contact me at luteinhawthorne@gmail (dot com).

Regards,
  LH

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3232&start=0#p22923
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Betatesting an ALAN3 game for IFComp2011
User: LuteinHawthorne / DateTime: 2011-09-26 10:26:00

I'd be happy to take a look.  My email address is luteinhawthorne@gmail (dot com) if you'd like to send me the file.

Regards,
  LH

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=0#p22924
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: JimmyMaher / DateTime: 2011-09-26 10:27:26

So, I'm currently working with a partner to bring the second work of modern IF to the Kindle, and we're having a problem with performance. In itself this is nothing new; I had to hack the accelerated opcodes into King of Shreds and Patches and spend hours optimizing the Java code at the interpreter level to get that game running at acceptable speed. Problem is, even those optimizations just aren't quite enough for this project. With nothing left to optimize on the interpreter, I'm thrown back to the Inform library.

One thing we've noticed is that our "After deciding the scope of the player" rules sometimes fire dozens of times in a single turn. I suspect this to be a symptom rather than a cause. Is the game really looping through every object to determine scope that frequently every time it parses a command? If so, it seems to scream out for optimization -- if nothing else, just build a list of applicable objects the first time through, and refer to that for the remainder of the parsing algorithm.

But then the Inform parser is a ridiculously complicated beast, and I'd prefer to hack on it as little as possible. Some of the brighter lights around these parts did quite a bit of Inform 7 profiling in years recently passed. I know this is damnably vague, but I'm just wondering if anyone can, say, point me to what THEY would look to first if they really needed to get some more speed out of Inform 7. Are there any other functions that spring to mind as good candidates for new accelerated opcodes? Any areas of parsing or world-modeling that are known to be bottlenecks?

Again, sorry for the vagueness of all this. Advice or ideas (even if similarly vague) would be greatly appreciated.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=0#p22925
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-26 10:58:59

Back through Inform 6, if someone's game was running slow, the first question to ask was "Are you doing too much work in add_to_scope?"

The parser doesn't loop through every object in the game when it's doing that. It only loops through objects in the location, which is pretty efficient *unless* you've added a large class of objects to scope -- or are doing an expensive test to *decide* what to add to scope. (The classic blunder is logic like "add X to scope if Y is/is not in scope", which triggers recursive scope tests.)

All that aside, it's worth using the profiling features of Glulxe (you'll probably have to recompile the interpreter with profiling on) to see what's eating the lion's share of the time. Just because a function is called "dozens of times" doesn't mean it's the long pole. (At the bottom level of the code, I6 property-reading functions are called *thousands* of times per turn. They're the ones I concentrated on for acceleration. But a bottom-level approach can only go so far.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3207&start=0#p22926
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: ADRIFT Review Comp 2011
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-09-26 11:36:43

ADRIFT Review Comp 2011 voting has started.  Please drop by and cast your vote [url=http://forum.adrift.co/viewtopic.php?f=28&p=86182]here[/url].  Remember, the purpose of this competition is to vote for the best written review, as opposed to voting for the games in question.

Overall, the competition produced 5 total reviews for its selection of games (though more were written over this period, not all were for the games chosen for this comp), 1 of which has been withdrawn by its author (David Whyld's review of [i]Twilight[/i]) and 1 of which is scheduled for an update which will replace it (my review of [i]S Tar Dus T[/i]).  It is unfortunate that only half of the selection of games offered were reviewed, and none of them received a rating of 3 stars or above.  [i]C'est la vie[/i], though I suppose this may be a contributing factor in why some of them hadn't gotten reviews in the first place.

Still, it's likely there are some good ones in the list that just didn't get played.  If you're interested, the ones that went unreviewed are:

•2000: [url=http://www.adrift.co/cgi/adrift.cgi?page=adventure&advid=580]The Twilight[/url]
  [i](reviewed, but its review was pulled by the author upon realizing the game is playable only in ADRIFT 3.8)[/i]
•2002: [url=http://www.adrift.co/cgi/adrift.cgi?page=adventure&advid=586]Scene of the Crime[/url]
  [i](vintage David Whyld detective comedy)[/i]
•2003: [url=http://www.adrift.co/cgi/adrift.cgi?page=adventure&advid=646]Humbug[/url]
  [i](adaptation of Graham Cluley's game into ADRIFT by Campbell Wild)[/i]
•2004: [url=http://www.adrift.co/cgi/adrift.cgi?page=adventure&advid=657]Shards of Memory[/url]
  [i](a serious fantasy offering by David Whyld)[/i]
•2007: [url=http://www.adrift.co/cgi/adrift.cgi?page=adventure&advid=971]Jonathan Grimshaw: Space Tourist[/url]
  [i](a sci-fi comedy by Ren)[/i]
•2008: [url=http://www.adrift.co/cgi/adrift.cgi?page=adventure&advid=1097]Hunting Ground[/url]
  [i](dark & twisted assassinate your whole family adventure with some objectionable content by Dannymac247)[/i]
•2010: [url=http://www.adrift.co/cgi/adrift.cgi?page=adventure&advid=1186]Yon Astounding Castle of some Sort[/url]
  [i](the Post-Comp-Comp 2009 edition of some rather silly, irritatingly written blathering by Tiberius Thingamus)[/i]

... right-o, that's all!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=0#p22927
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-09-26 15:31:21

Capmikee just posted an extension called [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3175]Scope Caching[/url] which sounds like it might be useful to you. 

In other news, I'm [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186]rewriting that parser in Inform 7[/url] so we can see how the magic happens.  AFAICT the add_to_scope thing isn't used in Inform 7, though I'm not finished yet so could be wrong.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2896&start=10#p22928
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Problems with CocoaGlk on Lion?
User: Lioncourt / DateTime: 2011-09-26 15:59:55

Hi all,

I just wanted to clarify a few things, as I'm a Mac/iOS developer. (My company is exploring the possibility of branching out into commercial IF, FWIW.) [emote]:)[/emote]

The ~/Library folder for Mac OS X Lion is hidden from the user, but is functionally the same as it always has been. Applications can still store data there, though it should, typically, be data that an end user is not expected to access from outside your app. In general, app data should be stored at:

~/Library/Application Support/AppName/

And application preferences, (i.e. settings), should be stored at:

~/Library/Preferences/

However, the user's Library folder is still very easily accessed by simply opening the Finder's Go menu and holding down the Option key. A menu item will appear for the user Library folder, which will make it temporarily visible in your home folder.

Document-type files, such as Inform projects, should be saved to the ~/Documents/ folder by default, generally speaking.

I hope this info is useful to some fellow Mac folks. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3102&start=50#p22929
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Top 100
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-09-26 16:02:39

Cheaters.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2896&start=10#p22930
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Problems with CocoaGlk on Lion?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-09-26 16:08:38

[quote="Lioncourt"]I hope this info is useful to some fellow Mac folks. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
Yes, I didn't know about the bit with the option key. Thanks, that's quite useful!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=50#p22931
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-09-26 17:01:36

[quote="Felix"][quote="Laroquod"]Americans are indoctrinated to believe in the 'American dream' and to expect that whatever their current economic situation, it is about to change for the better[/quote]
Yesterday, [url=http://www.skop.se/ekonomi/2011/09/hushallens-forvantningar-om-arbetsmarknaden-2/]a survey was published[/url] here in Sweden according to which 47.3 % of the Swedish people believe in rising unemployement in the country – but only 12.5 % believe that their own employers will make any cuts in the staff at all. 

(Perhaps, the Europeans that didn't go west in the 19th century were as much prey to that dream and stayed home convinced that things – for them at least – would soon take a turn for the better.)[/quote]
I suppose I deserve this sort of rebuttal for generalising so thoroughly. 8)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=50#p22932
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-26 17:35:37

[quote="Felix"]Yesterday, [url=http://www.skop.se/ekonomi/2011/09/hushallens-forvantningar-om-arbetsmarknaden-2/]a survey was published[/url] here in Sweden according to which 47.3 % of the Swedish people believe in rising unemployement in the country – but only 12.5 % believe that their own employers will make any cuts in the staff at all.[/quote]
That isn't a contradiction, is it? If 12.5% of the employers make cuts in the staff, and the other 87.5% don't hire any new employees, unemployment will rise (perhaps dramatically).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3216&start=0#p22933
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: disambiguiating similarly named objects fully
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-09-26 18:20:40

Victor,

Sorry for the delay in replying. I forgot to check the 'notify me' box.

I think I understand what you are saying, and it makes sense in general. This isn't a huge deal, and I had a go at overturning, implicitly taking stuff, but that makes a lot more problems.

It's frustrating for me when I ask a question like this that I think could be important and it isn't. So I appreciate your response very much. It makes a lot of sense & covers more ground than what I asked, which helps the whole learning thing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3242&start=0#p22934
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Betatesters requested for an I7 'historical' game (IF 2011)
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-09-26 18:25:34

I hope this isn't too late, but anyone with a part of 2-3 nights to look at my game would be doing me a great service on such short notice.

The game is about a sporting event where you try to change the outcome of a baseball game as a fan who can't actually storm the field of play.

It's a contemporary fiction game, though it actually takes place in 2003.

I'm interested in people who may be able to guess which game it is and those who can't. People familiar with baseball, or not, would be very helpful to me. People willing to hammer a specific part of the game would also be very welcome.

Email me <a href="mailto:schultz.nospam.andrew@sbcglobal.nospam.net">schultz.nospam.andrew@sbcglobal.nospam.net</a> or send a private message if you're interested & I'll send a link to the file.

Thanks to everyone reading this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3216&start=0#p22935
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: disambiguiating similarly named objects fully
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-26 18:43:53

Glad I could be of help. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3243&start=0#p22936
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Making a passcode to unlock an object (Inform 7)
User: johnmatthais / DateTime: 2011-09-26 22:09:51

I'm trying to make an object that unlocks based on a passcode. However, I have no idea how I'd go about doing it at all, really.

Basically, I want it to accept a code, only in relation to an object (or group of objects, unrelated of course) that are made for it, and I want it to check to make sure that the code is correct.

For example, say you say "enter 1 2 3". I want it to check to see that the actual code is, in fact, "1 2 3", except maybe something closer to "one two three", as I'd be using words.

Thanks in advance. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=0#p22937
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-09-26 23:22:25

[quote="JimmyMaher"]So, I'm currently working with a partner to bring the second work of modern IF to the Kindle [...][/quote]

I've no skills to assist you with your technical challenges; just want to throw in a note of applause for you facing them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3211&start=0#p22938
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: "Flexible Survival" and "Flexible Society"
User: nuku_v / DateTime: 2011-09-26 23:27:40

Hey guys.

The games came first, the MU* is based on the Interactive Fiction, just to clear the air.

You're welcome to stop by and play, if you have a MUD/MUCK/MUSH client, point it at flexiblesurvival.com port 2000 or 2222

If not, browse to <a class="postlink" href="http://flexiblesurvival.com/">http://flexiblesurvival.com/</a> and you can play from the web.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3231&start=0#p22939
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Help Needed for Savage Island Part 1
User: Dref / DateTime: 2011-09-27 00:07:18

The Inform version of Golden Voyage has the same exact problem with ignoring NORTH and SOUTH, which makes sailing to certain locations impossible.

And on most of the conversions if you restore a saved game the parser stops recognizing virtually every word and command making saving useless and thus making certain games, particularly Savage Island 1, virtually impossible to solve unless you get REAL lucky.

Also, the version of Secret Mission is unwinnable because (SPOILER ALERT) the saboteur doesn't die until the final countdown starts (and sometimes he doesn't die at all!) which makes it impossible to frisk him and get the necessary items to finish the game in time.

I mention all this not to pile on whoever did the conversions but to warn those who play those versions from making the mistake I did, which was getting deep into a game and then having to start all over when it got buggy and then driving themselves crazy thinking they must be doing something wrong.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3243&start=0#p22940
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making a passcode to unlock an object (Inform 7)
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-27 03:00:06

You need to create a new action, say "passunlocking", with grammar that accepts text, e.g., 'Understand "enter [text]" as passunlocking.'

Then you can write a check rule that checks whether "the topic understood" matches the text you want the player to match.

(I'm writing this just after I got out of bed and without Inform 7 open, so I might have made a small grammatical mistake. But the principle is the right one.)

[i]Edited due to Matt's post below.[/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3243&start=0#p22941
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making a passcode to unlock an object (Inform 7)
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-27 03:56:25

There's a recipe for a door that open with a password in [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2578&p=17786#p17786]this earlier post[/url]. (It works on a different principle from Victor's and may or may not be what you want.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=50#p22942
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-27 04:18:57

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="Felix"]Yesterday, [url=http://www.skop.se/ekonomi/2011/09/hushallens-forvantningar-om-arbetsmarknaden-2/]a survey was published[/url] here in Sweden according to which 47.3 % of the Swedish people believe in rising unemployement in the country – but only 12.5 % believe that their own employers will make any cuts in the staff at all.[/quote]
That isn't a contradiction, is it? If 12.5% of the employers make cuts in the staff, and the other 87.5% don't hire any new employees, unemployment will rise (perhaps dramatically).[/quote]
Your right; the figures need not be explained by a tendency to paint one's own future groundlessly bright. (I should have seen that!)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3231&start=0#p22943
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Help Needed for Savage Island Part 1
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-09-27 05:47:10

Well, it sounds like the world is ready for another batch of ZMachine versions of all those games. [emote];)[/emote] Preferably bug-free.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=0#p22944
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: JimmyMaher / DateTime: 2011-09-27 06:35:22

Thanks for the suggestions!

I'm afraid that the scope algorithms don't seem to be the source of the problem. Implementing Scope Caching yields no appreciable improvement.

So, I took Zarf's advice and made a profiling build of Glulxe. It turns out the most expensive function is ProcessRulebook. No surprise there, I suppose. But that's a... daunting one to try to implement as an accelerated function.

I did, however, find a few more modest candidates for acceleration. BlkSize in Flex.it6 seems particularly juicy. It's a bottom-level function, with no calls to anyone else. Also, it seems to get called a whole lot during the "insert" command that is particularly slow. I'm going to start with implementing it as an accelerated opcode, and go from there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2001&start=50#p22945
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: English language questions
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-09-27 08:04:31

Also, employers can contribute to unemployment even without cutting staff - by not hiring people to replace those that retire or quit, for example.

Edit: Which is sort of like making cuts, but often cast in terms of "restructuring", at least where I work.  It's not a direct layoff, which is what I'd think of answering this question.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3243&start=0#p22946
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making a passcode to unlock an object (Inform 7)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-27 08:21:44

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Then you can write a check rule that checks whether "the text understood" matches the text you want the player to match.[/quote]

That should be "the topic understood," actually.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3243&start=0#p22947
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making a passcode to unlock an object (Inform 7)
User: johnmatthais / DateTime: 2011-09-27 09:26:16

Alright, so doing that should allow me to create a method to unlock an object through a code? Or is that really possible? It seems like just doing that would force me to have to use a Before opening: / Check opening: or similar to simply emulate the feel of unlocking through a code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3243&start=0#p22948
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making a passcode to unlock an object (Inform 7)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-27 09:33:15

If your object is an openable door or container, you shouldn't have to write any special before/check opening rules -- there are already built-in rules that prevent the player from opening something that's locked. All you should have to do is write "The brown door is locked." or "The safe is an openable container. The safe is locked." in your code, and then write "now the safe is unlocked" at the point in the rule where it actually gets unlocked. (You can see where that happens in the code Felix linked.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3244&start=0#p22949
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Bizarre glk error?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-09-27 09:44:22

Someone playtesting my game got this error:

*** fatal error: Reference to nonexistent Glk object. ***

It happened only two moves after they restored a saved game. I don't know if that's relevant. There was no particular action that looked suspicious to me occurring at the point in the code right after the last recognisable message printed by the game.

Any ideas what's happened?

Edit: It's made with the latest build of Inform, uses sound (semi frequently), uses graphics (infrequently).

EditEdit: I just discovered the player is not using the latest version of Gargoyle, but one from 2009.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3243&start=0#p22950
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making a passcode to unlock an object (Inform 7)
User: johnmatthais / DateTime: 2011-09-27 09:44:42

Gotcha. From that knowledge and the post above, I'll try and figure something out. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3245&start=0#p22951
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: GLK for iOS
User: Lioncourt / DateTime: 2011-09-27 09:54:40

Hi all,

The company for which I work is exploring commercial IF of a specialized nature, with some very specific and unique features of its own, which I'm not at liberty to detail here.

However, we believe that GLK, along with Glulx, will be a good foundation upon which to develop our future titles for iOS.

The advancement of IF in general, though, is a good thing for the medium, so we are toying with the notion of developing a GLK implementation for iOS, which we would offer as open source, and which we will then create proprietary additions to for our commercial titles.

However, we do not want to reinvent the wheel, if there is already a project to which we could contribute and benefit from. Our extensive searching for any projects along this line, however, have turned up only Andrew (Zarf) Plotkin's proposed commercial IF title on KickStarter, and iPhoneFrotz which has a sort of GLK hack included in it, which is not suitable for our purposes.

Being a visually impaired software developer, the idea of implementing GLK for iOS, particularly where regards the very visual medium of window layout and formatting, is a daunting one.

We do have specificimplementation plans in mind, and have mostly resigned ourselves to the fact that we will likely need to do this from scratch, but I wanted to ask here in a final attempt to be certain that we just haven't missed an open project somewhere.

Thanks for reading.

[emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=0#p22952
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-27 11:16:10

It's worth looking at what functions *call* those low-level functions. If a particular path to BlkSize is a majority of the usage, you may be able to find a way to do the same thing without using the same low-level facility. 

Like I said, accelerated opcodes only go so far. You're a lot smarter than the compiler is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3244&start=0#p22953
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Bizarre glk error?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-27 11:26:32

Unfortunately this could be a bug at any of several levels: your code, the I7 multimedia extension you're using, the Glk library, or the Glulxe/Git interpreter. (Probably the I7 standard library, because that doesn't do much with sounds and what it does looks correct.)

The library and interpreter are easiest to check. Does the problem occur with the latest Gargoyle? What about other interpreters?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3245&start=0#p22954
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: GLK for iOS
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-27 11:32:36

My upcoming iOS project is not done, and the Glk library it will use isn't done either, but the library is open-source. You can look at the current state of the project: <a class="postlink" href="http://github.com/erkyrath/iosglk">http://github.com/erkyrath/iosglk</a>

It's functional now -- I've compiled Glulxe and gotten Advent.ulx to run. However, many features are missing (sound, graphics, any serious style customization). I also intend to rewrite quite a bit of the display code. The way it handles text display is non-ideal, in a memory-hogging way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3244&start=0#p22955
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Bizarre glk error?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-09-27 11:42:07

Unfortunately, in acres of playtesting, this is the first time it's happened. I don't think the testers have been doing much saving/restoring, though, per se. I think most people have been using up-to-date Gargoyle. Someone used Filfre.

I advised the person it happened to to download the latest gargoyle, which will take him from git 1.2.4 to git 1.2.8.

I quickly tried saving and restoring the game in the same window, and moving  around in the game a bit after, and doing the same thing but with closing Gargoyle inbetween, and I didn't get any immediate crashes in either case. So least it doesn't seem to happen constantly, but in truth I haven't identified much about it. In the guy's saved game, it happens after he takes a movement-step in the restored game, other actions are okay. However it's not a standard movement, it's programming of mine.

The action's called 'to try a path' - EG there's a line of code which says 'To try a path: do such and such.'

I'm not courting some weird danger by having 'try' in the action name, am I? Cos elsewhere, the cue of the action reads 'try a path', which it occurs to me resembles a line telling inform to try an action, rather than to activate an action called 'try a path'. Just thought maybe this is relevant, as it's what's going on at the crash point. But it's only the crash point in his restored saved game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3245&start=0#p22956
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: GLK for iOS
User: Lioncourt / DateTime: 2011-09-27 12:10:37

Aha! I thought this *must* be out there somewhere. Thanks for the link.

Text display is the most likely area where we will do heavy customization, as we need to ensure accessibility with VoiceOver. Most of our customers are visually impaired, and therefore use screen readers like iOS's VoiceOver.

Planning is still in the early stages, though we've been batting around the idea of using UIWebView for basic text output (i.e. in a GLK text buffer window). The more we can stick with iOS's native controls, the better accessibility is likely to be.

I'm going to start sifting through what you have here.

Thanks again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3246&start=0#p22957
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: ADRIFT WebRunner
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-09-27 12:45:47

Those who visit the ADRIFT Adventures page will now notice a small, green play button next to the names of non-zipped games.  This button initiates online play.  The feature is "still in its infancy," as Campbell has put it, but anyone willing to give it a whirl and provide some response would be quite welcome.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3231&start=0#p22958
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Help Needed for Savage Island Part 1
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-09-27 13:03:59

You might also try Chris Spiegel's Glk port of ScottFree, which can run the original game files.

(It will be available in the forthcoming Gargoyle release but can be had now for the asking.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3244&start=0#p22959
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Bizarre glk error?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-27 13:04:27

Does he still have the save game?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3231&start=0#p22960
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Help Needed for Savage Island Part 1
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-09-27 13:10:03

Oh, yes, not to mention the commodore and spectrum versions and God knows what other formats. He can always play *those*.

Pity there's no reliable ZMachine version, though. It's so portable.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3231&start=10#p22961
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Help Needed for Savage Island Part 1
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-09-27 13:59:38

You seem to have taken my post in the wrong spirit, though I was not responding to you.

Dref mentioned downloading the games from Scott Adams' site; those games are in the ScottFree format, hence it felt topical to mention the existence of a new interpreter for that format.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3243&start=0#p22962
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making a passcode to unlock an object (Inform 7)
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-27 16:06:07

There will be a few things to watch out for: e.g. a passunlocking action probably should only work for doors in scope(!), and this will not automatically happen, if you define the action as just applying to one topic.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3113&start=20#p22963
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Participate in the Interactive Fiction Top 50!
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-09-27 20:16:46

My favorite IF games are pretty much all my favorites for similar reasons: they're the ones that take advantage of IF's strengths, often by playing with the significance of the text interface itself or by awareness of the historical form/tropes of text adventures, and they generally have a high level of polish. I'm probably forgetting something here, but off the top of my head with some help from my "Played Games" list on IFDB:
[i]The Gostak
Bronze
Savoir Faire
Spider and Web
Ad Verbum
Suveh Nux
Rover's Day Out
Rogue of the Multiverse[/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3244&start=0#p22964
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Bizarre glk error?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-09-27 20:20:34

Yes, he does. I got him to send it to me. Then I tried restoring from it in up-to-date Zoom, Gargoyle, and the Mac Inform IDE (which is Zoom or Zoomish isn't it?) - and all rejected it.

Also, the player redid the whole game in new Gargoyle, saved and restored at the same point and it didn't happen again.

So I think signs are pointing to something in either the previous build of Gargoyle, or incompatibility between the shiny new game and an older version of git.

Thanks for input so far.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3246&start=0#p22970
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT WebRunner
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-09-27 22:02:37

You forgot to provide a URL.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3113&start=20#p22971
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Participate in the Interactive Fiction Top 50!
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-09-27 23:09:36

Some of mine in no particular order.

[b]Adventureland[/b]

The first Scott Adams game has a very classic design. It's a treasure hunt through a forest and some caverns, with a bit of magic thrown in and a lot of random things that can go wrong. As a kid, it was one of the first adventure games I was able to make progress in on my own, though my dad already considered it uninteresting compared to the graphic splendour of stuff like Wizard and the Princess. However today, I don't really enjoy playing Wizard and the Princess, but I do enjoy Adventureland. The game has an elemental adventure quality befitting its name

[b]Strange Odyssey[/b]

I still haven't played all the Scott Adams adventures, but this is my other favourite. Relatively speaking, Adventureland comes across as friendly, whereas Strange Odyssey is hostile and properly alien in feel. Again, this is ultimately a treasure hunt, but the treasures are on different mini worlds, reachable through a portal in an abandoned spacecraft. Each world is very dangerous. You might step through a portal into an incompatible gravity field and be crushed immediately. I really like the sense of unpredictable danger and mystery in this game. The minimal prose works well because the worlds are more threatening without explanation.

[b]Wishbringer[/b]

The only Infocom game I was ever able to make major headway in on my own, though that's not the only reason I like it. I love the transformation of the town and its atmosphere, and the black humour attendant upon the transformations. I find the game creepy and mysterious, exciting but threatening, and the puzzles are doable. A great spooky fantasy game.

[b]Suspended[/b]

The first Infocom game I ever played. I didn't achieve much (again, I was probably eight years old) but I kept playing the part I could do again and again because I love the chilling atmosphere. I get creeped out when my robots are dispassionately reporting on the arrival of the humans who have come to turn me off. Also there's the whole business with the robots themselves, named after their propensities (kinda like the Smurfs). I like moving their counters around on the real board, studying the board and thinking about what might be in different locations. I've still got my original copy of this with the big frozen face prop.

[b]Lucifer's Realm[/b]

Ken and Roberta Williams teamed up with the guy who did the graphics for Transylvania to produce a game about dying and going to hell, where Hitler is taking over. This Apple II game is scary, but somehow a better word is freaky. One of the puzzles involves trying to get past the Rev Jim Jones (he's guarding a door). Lots of caverns, abysses of screaming souls, blood and freaky graphics. This game tried to maximise the graphics real estate by using the whole screen for graphics, then hiding the picture for the text interface as soon as you started typing.

[b]Marika the Offering[/b]

This is my favourite one room game from recent times. You play a young woman barricading her room against a vampire. It's not that I'm opposed to one room adventures which are conspicuously adventurey - that is one of the joys of adventure games - but this one is probably not, and its natural quality, earnest tone, the sense of urgency and the neat way of giving you clues when you die all add up.

[b]Theatre[/b]

Just finished playing this the other day, but I would say it's one of the best modern spooky games done in a classic style. After leaving your pager in a theatre, you become trapped in there and get involved with an ancient plot. This is quite a big adventure, but with no terribly abstruse puzzles until near the end. I found it was a game where you could keep circling areas already visited and become unstuck as a result. I hate games where I circle diligently, only to find out the solution was a real mind reading job that wasn't actually to be 'found' anywhere, and wasn't sufficiently suggested. A good atmosphere and good puzzles in this one. (In similar terrain, I also tried Anchorhead, but I find it too hard and abstruse, and it was another experience for me where the walk-through destroyed my interest in the game, resulting in me quitting.)

[b]One Eye Open[/b]

A little buggy in its current state for my tastes, but a great purveyor of a very contemporary style of horror. Psychic experiments go awry, moving you through parallel and alternate realities in a hospital ala Silent Hill. Lots of good creepouts, shocks and guck.

[b]Aotorea[/b]

Just don't make me spell its name… A good and earnest G-rated adventure, very well written, quite action packed in spite of relatively hefty wordiness. The delivery has the kind of grace+flow that tends to make a game of any genre stand out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3247&start=0#p22972
Forum: Feedback / Subject: jimmy1988
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-28 01:11:07

Just in case an admin misses it: jimmy1988 is evidently a spam bot.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3233&start=0#p22973
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Doors open automatically
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-28 09:17:50

This might be a good case for an Instead rule, which you could apply just to the relevant case without messing around with the standard check rules:

[code]Warm Place is a room. The basalt door is a door. It is west of Warm Place and east of Lava Pit.

Instead of going from Warm Place to Lava Pit when the basalt door is closed:
	say "The door feels hot. You might want to open it and see what's on the other side before you walk right through.";
	
Every turn when the location is Lava Pit:
	say "You slide into the molten lava!";
	end the story saying "You have been burned up.";
	
Test me with "w/open door/w"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3236&start=0#p22974
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7:  Scoring/Table Problem
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-28 09:32:27

I'd probably make the achievement a kind of value rather than a text. I'm not sure it makes a difference in this case, but it seems more appropriate to the intent. In fact, if you do that, you don't even really need a table.

[code]An achievement is a kind of value. Some achievements are defined by the Table of Score Awards. 

Table of Score Awards
Achievement	Points	Earned
getting the gizmo	1	0
examining the gadget	2	0
	
To score for (item - an achievement):
	if earned of item is 0:
		Now the score is score + points of item;
		now earned of item is the turn count;

This Place is a room. There is a gizmo in This Place.  There is a gadget in This Place.

Carry out taking the gizmo:
   Score for getting the gizmo
   
Carry out examining the gadget:
   Score for examining the gadget
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3235&start=0#p22975
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lists with indefinite articles, and identical objects.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-28 09:51:22

[quote="zarf"]I can't figure a way to phrase that without the global "K-listed" adjective. Not without an I6 phrase definition, anyway (which I leave as an exercise for, er, somebody else).[/quote]
That was bugging me just now - more generally, the lack of an obvious way to specify an object by its properties. I was messing around with Robert Rothman's scoring question, and discovered that this does not compile:

[code]Report requesting the score:
	Repeat with T running from 1 to the turn count:
		if there is an achievement with earned of T, say "You succeeded in [list of achievements with earned of T] on turn [T].";[/code]

Neither instance of "achievement with earned of T" is allowed. Neither is "If an achievement has earned of T" or any other phrasing I can think of.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=0#p22976
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-28 10:02:26

[quote="JimmyMaher"]I'm afraid that the scope algorithms don't seem to be the source of the problem. Implementing Scope Caching yields no appreciable improvement.[/quote]
Although it can be used to prevent the infinite recursion Zarf described, Scope Caching has no accelerating effect on builtin code. It's primarily useful to speed up visibility tests that you need to perform in your own source.

e.g.:
[code]Repeat with item running through not marked visible things:[/code]
could be considerably faster than:
[code]Repeat with item running through not visible things:[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=0#p22977
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-28 10:04:52

I will follow this with interest, though. I'm using Juhana's Parchment-Transcript tool to collect testing data for my WIP, and I hate that my testers have to wait so long for Parchment - sometimes even for seemingly innocuous commands.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3235&start=0#p22978
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lists with indefinite articles, and identical objects.
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-28 10:40:48

Oh, that's easy -- you have to define a sentence verb.

[code]
An achievement is a kind of thing. Some achievements are defined by the Table of Score Awards. 

Table of Score Awards
Achievement	Points	Earned
giz-getting	1	0
giz-examining	2	0
   
The verb to earn (it earns, they earn, it is earning) implies the earned property.

Report requesting the score:
	Repeat with T running from 1 to the turn count:
		if an achievement earns T:
			say "You succeeded in [list of achievements earning T] on turn [T].";
[/code]

But this doesn't help for the listed-in-K case, because "N is listed in K" is a boolean phrase, not a property of K.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3235&start=0#p22979
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lists with indefinite articles, and identical objects.
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-28 10:42:45

(But please don't iterate from 1 to the turn count. Wow. That would take forever. Just keep a table of achievements, add new ones in order, and write some finicky code to iterate through it.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3235&start=0#p22980
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lists with indefinite articles, and identical objects.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-28 10:51:05

Well, my first thought was to check if you could repeat running through objects in a particular sort order... I guess a table is the only way to sort?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3233&start=0#p22981
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Doors open automatically
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-09-28 11:04:41

[quote="severedhand"]Comedy is when a person expects a door to open for them, and it doesn't, and they walk into the door. At least for onlookers.[/quote]

Which reminds me: I played [i][b]Leather Goddesses of Phobos[/b][/i] a dozen times before accidentally typing WEST while in the Observation Room.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3235&start=0#p22982
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lists with indefinite articles, and identical objects.
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-28 11:07:43

Tables and lists are the only ways to sort. But obviously if you add achievements to a table as they occur, the table will always be in sorted order!

I just realized that my example above works when achievement is a kind of thing, but *not* when achievement is a kind of value. I can't think of any reason why that's not a bug (I'll report it). But you can make them things easily enough.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2357&start=0#p22983
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: [SPAG] #60 Now Available
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2011-09-28 11:13:57

Does anyone know when the next issue (#61) of SPAG will be published? The latest issue was 5 months 
ago...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3235&start=10#p22984
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lists with indefinite articles, and identical objects.
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-28 11:19:10

[quote]I can't figure a way to phrase that without the global "K-listed" adjective.[/quote]

Got it, by way of a sentence verb *and* a conditional relation. I won't claim this is pretty either, but it doesn't require a global variable...

[quote]
List-membership relates a thing (called T) to a list of things (called L) when T is listed in L.

The verb to list-inhabit (it list-inhabits, they list-inhabit) implies the list-membership relation.

When play begins:
	say "You have [a list of things that list-inhabit the list of carried things]."
[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3233&start=0#p22985
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Doors open automatically
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-09-28 12:42:18

Having grown up in the days when you had to open all doors manually (after trudging six miles through the snow barefoot, etc.), I had totally forgotten about the "open doors automatically" rule and as a result almost missed a major bug in my Code.  I have a room which can only be entered via an (intially closed) door from a corridor.  The room contains an NPC, and my intention was that if the player enters the room while the NPC is there, the NPC kills him.  (This takes place inside what the player knows to be the enemy stronghold, and he has been put on notice to tread carefully, so I don't view the insta-kill as unfair in this context).  The "correct" way to play it (i.e., the way which keeps the player alive) is to open the door first, whereupon you see the NPC; if you then keep watching for a few turns he leaves the room and the player can safely enter.

Having written the code for this, I tested it both with the player entering while the NPC was there (in which case he died) and with the player waiting for the NPC to leave.  However, in both cases I only entered after manually opening the door.  When a friend was doing some quick-and-dirty playtesting, he tried entering the room with the door closed, so the auto-open rule kicked in.  It turned out that when you did that, it let you into the room without having the NPC kill you!  When it was pointed out to me I fixed it, but the habit of opening doors manually was so ingrained that I never even thought of trying to go through a door that I was told was closed.


RPR

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3246&start=0#p22986
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT WebRunner
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-09-28 14:04:23

[url=http://www.adrift.co]www.adrift.co[/url], for the interested.  Then click on "Adventures."  The green arrow will launch a game in the WebRunner.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3248&start=0#p22987
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Misc questions thread
User: Kaleb702 Games / DateTime: 2011-09-28 18:55:05

Essentially, if an object is in a specific container, put the object off-stage, then put another object in the container.
How would I do so? I know the movement of objects, but not the inside-container-check.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3248&start=0#p22988
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do you check if an object is in a container?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-28 19:06:08

Something like this should work:

[code]The slug is in East End. There is a snail.
Every turn when the slug is in the transmogrifier:
	now the slug is off-stage;
	now the toad is in the transmogrifier;
 	if the player can see the toad:
		say "The slug transmogrifies into a toad!"[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3248&start=0#p22989
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do you check if an object is in a container?
User: Kaleb702 Games / DateTime: 2011-09-28 19:07:03

[quote="matt w"]Something like this should work:

[code]The slug is in East End. There is a snail.
Every turn when the slug is in the transmogrifier:
	now the slug is off-stage;
	now the toad is in the transmogrifier;
        if the player can see the toad:
            say "The slug transmogrifies into a toad!"[/code][/quote]
Ah ha haaa aaaah.
I did not think of every turn. I was thinking about after-placed-in and the like.

Thanks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3248&start=0#p22990
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do you check if an object is in a container?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-28 19:09:07

Whoa, you are quick on responding. Please note that the indentation was messed up on my original post and I fixed it (what happened was, I pasted some stuff in from the IDE and then tried to manually indent some other stuff, and it came out wrong).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3248&start=0#p22991
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do you check if an object is in a container?
User: Kaleb702 Games / DateTime: 2011-09-28 20:51:58

Knocking is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "knock on [something]" as knocking.

It's saying there is an improper use of understand. What.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3249&start=0#p22992
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: How to Use Values as a measure of time.
User: CupcakeGoesRawr / DateTime: 2011-09-28 20:57:58

I'm working on a project in which the player must decide when to go to sleep for the day, thereby moving the plot forward.  So far, I have days set up into individual scenes as such: Day One is a scene.  Day Two is a scene.  Day Two begins when Day One ends.  What I'm trying to do is set up some kind of numerical indicator so that when the player chooses to sleep I can have something to the effect of:

[code]
Instead of sleeping:
     if the player is in the barracks:
           say "you go to sleep etc."
           Now Day is 2.[/code]

Of course this code doesn't work but what I'm attempting to do is something to this effect where I can assign a varying numerical value to a letter such as T or a word like Day that will change each time the player sleeps but so far I can't find anything to specifically address this in the handbook.

If anyone can help I'd be grateful!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3250&start=0#p22993
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: How to Use Values as a measure of time.
User: CupcakeGoesRawr / DateTime: 2011-09-28 21:01:37

I'm working on a project in which the player must decide when to go to sleep for the day, thereby moving the plot forward.  So far, I have days set up into individual scenes as such: Day One is a scene.  Day Two is a scene.  Day Two begins when Day One ends.  What I'm trying to do is set up some kind of numerical indicator so that when the player chooses to sleep I can have something to the effect of:

[code]
Instead of sleeping:
     if the player is in the barracks:
           say "you go to sleep etc."
           Now Day is 2.[/code]

Of course this code doesn't work but what I'm attempting to do is something to this effect where I can assign a varying numerical value to a letter such as T or a word like Day that will change each time the player sleeps but so far I can't find anything to specifically address this in the handbook.

If anyone can help I'd be grateful!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3239&start=0#p22994
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disabling the story title - authorial modesty for the st
User: Kaleb702 Games / DateTime: 2011-09-28 21:33:04

[quote="matt w"][quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="matt w"]though as that page notes, it's courteous to print the banner text sometime, so that Inform 7 is acknowledged[/quote]
It's not exactly common to acknowledge the programming language one has used to make a program, is it? [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Lots of the flash games I play do start with a splash screen for Flixel or Stencyl. Anyhow, I can amend this for "The documentation requests that you put the banner in somewhere, though whether that request is reasonable is another question."[/quote]


Fixel's not a language.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3250&start=0#p22995
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to Use Values as a measure of time.
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-09-28 21:58:54

You'll need to make a number-that-varies:  [i]The current day is a number that varies. The current day is 1.[/i] and then in your sleep rule you can [i]increment the current day;[/i]

I'm afraid you don't get much value out of having the scenes.  "during day one" is just another way of saying "when the current day is 1" except for needing all the scaffolding: [i]Day One ends when the current day is not 1. Day Two begins when Day One ends.   ....  Day Two ends when the current day is not 2. Day Three begins when Day Two ends.  ...[/i] and so on.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3250&start=0#p22996
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to Use Values as a measure of time.
User: CupcakeGoesRawr / DateTime: 2011-09-28 22:19:43

Thanks for the help!  It works like a charm and I decided to keep the scene format just to help organize my thoughts [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3248&start=0#p22997
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Misc questions thread
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-09-29 01:57:57

Looks fine to me. Could you post the entire error message?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3246&start=0#p22998
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT WebRunner
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-09-29 02:23:07

I don't see any green arrow [emote]:P[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3246&start=0#p22999
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT WebRunner
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-09-29 02:58:30

Currently, you need to be logged in for the arrows to appear.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3246&start=0#p23000
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT WebRunner
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-29 02:59:24

I'm afraid I don't see any green arrows either?

(Obviously, I crossposted with Campbell.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3249&start=0#p23001
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to Use Values as a measure of time.
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-09-29 06:32:52

I7 has a built-in mechanism for keeping track of time, so you may want to look into that.  However, if your question is just how to set up a number variable, you can use a statement like:  Day is a number that varies.  Then, when you want to change its value (such as when a player sleeps) you can use (I believe) "increment day by 1."  This will  not itself trigger the scene changes, but you could add "Day One ends when Day is 2" and "Day Two begins when Day One ends" to have the scenes follow the days.

There's probably a better way to do all of this -- I'm sure somebody who knows a lot more than I do will suggest it.

Robert Rothman

Edit: I just saw that you've already gotten the answer in the other forum.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3248&start=0#p23002
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do you check if an object is in a container?
User: Sslaxx / DateTime: 2011-09-29 08:40:06

[quote="Kaleb702 Games"]Knocking is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "knock on [something]" as knocking.

It's saying there is an improper use of understand. What.[/quote]
Just taking that line compiles without incident here. So it looks like there may be an error somewhere else in your code?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3248&start=0#p23003
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Misc questions thread
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-29 10:29:43

[code]Knocking is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "knock on [something]" as knocking.[/code]
Probably you want knocking to be an action applying to one thing rather than one visible thing. 
If you tell Inform that something is "an action applying to  one thing", it means that the noun has to be touchable  by the player (or other actor) when he/she attempts the action. 
If you tell Inform that something is "an action applying to  one VISIBLE thing", it really only means that the noun DOES NOT HAVE TO TOUCHABLE  by the player (or other actor) when he/she attempts the action; in particular it does NOT by itself mean that the noun has to be visible (i.e. that the player or other actor must be able to see the noun).
The following code
[code]Knocking is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "knock on [something]" as knocking.[/code]
will let the player knock on a thing in the location, if he/she can see it, whether or not he/she can also touch it (examining works that way).
But this code
[code]Knocking is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "knock on [any thing]" as knocking.[/code]
where "any thing" is written as TWO words, will let the player knock on a thing even if it is in another room or inside a closed opaque container or even in darkness.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3252&start=0#p23004
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Wishlist for Comp 2011
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-09-29 10:40:27

I remember when Merk used to post his predictions about what sorts of games would be entered into the competition.  I can't find the more recent prediction threads that I remember by skimming through the forum, but searching it did turn up Merk's predictions from 2006.  Even though I never made any predictions before, it's a fun community thing, so I thought I'd start a similar thread.

Except... I don't feel sufficiently psychic to offer my own predictions, and I don't want to stand in Merk's shoes if he (or anyone else) still might show up here and post predictions before the judging begins.  So, I'll do something a little different -- I'll post a list of games that I would [i]like[/i] to see in the competition this year.  I'm going to stick to reasonable possibilities; otherwise, I might wish for Andrew Plotkin, Eric Eve, and Emily Short each to enter three games, but that's unlikely.  [emote];)[/emote]

[list]
[*]I wish for the total number of entries to number between 35 and 40.[/*:m]
[*]I'd like a good 10 games or so to written with a system other than Inform (a long shot, I know).[/*:m]
[*]It's not reasonable to wish for no bad or broken games (and I'm not sure that I would anyways), but I do wish for no "troll games", where the author just wants to offend the IF community.[/*:m]
[*]I wish for one sincere but shoddily-programed Inform (preferably Z-code) game [u]written by a teenager[/u], which will make me smile fondly for my own bad little game I entered in 2005 when I was 14.[/*:m]
[*]I want [b]one[/b] standalone Windows game with a DOS-console look and feel to be entered, [i]but I want this game to be so amazingly awesome in its implementation and execution that the IF community freezes in shock[/i].[/*:m]
[*]I would like to see at least 4 ADRIFT games, and least one of those has to be written with the new ADRIFT 5.[/*:m]
[*]I want one entry to be written with the new Quest 5, and I want it to be good enough that everybody reconsiders the Quest system for the better.[/*:m]
[*]I'm hoping for about 3 simulation-heavy, detail-oriented [b]TADS 3[/b] games.[/*:m]
[*]Out of all of the very under-represented systems (ALAN, JACL, Hugo, and maybe the new Curveship), I want to see at least [i]2[/i] games.  (Not two for each -- that would be unreasonable -- for instance, one ALAN and one Hugo would count.)  I would have helped fulfill this myself with my own Hugo game, but I failed epically. [emote]:)[/emote][/*:m]
[*]I want there to be one crazily surrealist game that is nonetheless very well implemented and makes everyone wonder whether or not there's supposed to be a Point.[/*:m]
[*]...And I want there to be a few crazily surrealist games that is horribly implemented but that actually has an intriguing atmosphere for those who can understand them.[/*:m]
[*][b]I badly want to see one really good high fantasy game, with a map that allows for exploration of a well-constructed secondary world with corresponding imaginary mythology.[/b][/*:m]
[*]I also want to see one really good space opera game featuring galactic politics and (again) deep worldbuilding and imaginary histories.[/*:m]
[*]Let's have one really really good detective/mystery game.  Like the space opera above, it's a staple, almost so much so that we need a good one in the competition for the competition itself to be good![/*:m]
[*]There should be a handful of mediocre but (probably) lovable B-level science fiction stories.  Where would we be without them? [emote];-)[/emote][/*:m]
[*]I would like to find a game with Christian symbolism or themes.[/*:m]
[*]One or two games of the rare historical fiction genre would be nice.[/*:m]
[*]Even though I don't like arguing politics, I would be interested in seeing one to two games that are written to criticize modern society or take a stance on current events.[/*:m][/list:u]

That's about all I can think of for now.  Maybe I'll post more later.  Anyone else?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3252&start=0#p23005
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Wishlist for Comp 2011
User: LuteinHawthorne / DateTime: 2011-09-29 10:55:29

Here's to your wishes coming true!  If not this year, then next year!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3252&start=0#p23006
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Wishlist for Comp 2011
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-09-29 12:24:46

According to [url=http://forum.adrift.co/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3928&start=30]this thread[/url], we should expect 3 ADRIFT games, one in ADRIFT 5.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2357&start=0#p23007
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: [SPAG] #60 Now Available
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-29 13:02:58

Wow! I love Victor's review of Gigantomania! Not sure why I never read it before, but thanks for the bump.

If I knew as much about the game as he does, I would have done a much better job with the programming.   [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

I think all of the credit must go to Michelle - everything Victor loved about the game came from her, and much of it went right over my head as I was working on it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3253&start=0#p23008
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Love, Hate, and the Mysterious Ocean Tower endings
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-09-29 14:36:02

Following a recent Victor Gijsbers IFDB review I went to play C.E.J. Pacian's [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=t2fhbsa546g11hln]Love, Hate adn the Mysterious Ocean Tower[/url], specially interested on seeing reviewers scale when judging a "polished speed-if entry" as I'm close to release my own one (yeah, right in the middle of the comp, that's timing!)

I got to 3 different endings: [spoiler]I can kill myself, kill Peyton, or run away and see him die.[/spoiler] All of them leaded to 3 different touching and well written finales, but, just out of curiosity, was there any other thing the protagonist could do? Even if not, it's been a short but totally satisfying trip well worth my time!

--

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3252&start=0#p23009
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Wishlist for Comp 2011
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-09-29 14:36:26

I can't believe I forgot one of my primary wishes that I had thought up this morning....

[b]At least one game should feature a full-screen title page consisting of ASCII art, [u]instead[/u] of having a graphical cover image (blorb or otherwise).[/b]

And a less important one:
I want to see several Inform Z-code games that use the old box-quote feature.

These are both matters of nostolgia to me. [emote]:)[/emote] 

[quote="LuteinHawthorne"]Here's to your wishes coming true! If not this year, then next year![/quote]
Indeed!

[quote="bowsmand"]According to this thread, we should expect 3 ADRIFT games, one in ADRIFT 5.[/quote]
Great!  But there could be more -- you never know if there's a secret ADRIFT user who doesn't post on the forum.  I never joined the ADRIFT forum, but I did use both ADRIFT 3 and 4 in my teenage years for some of my little projects.  If I had ever finished one of my more serious ADRIFT attempts, I may well have entered it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3252&start=0#p23010
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Wishlist for Comp 2011
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-09-29 14:54:36

My one wish, as always:

I wish for at least one game that [i]just[b] rocks,[/b][/i] so I can hear about it months later and play it and enjoy it. And feel very slightly guilty that I didn't pay enough attention at the time to have voted for it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3254&start=0#p23011
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: ToaSK Source Code Released In A Much Releasier Way
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-09-29 15:31:17

The Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom source code archive has been available for a while on the Phasic Cyaborg Edition CD (and whenever anyone emailed me to ask for it) but enough people (which is to say, two) have emailed me to ask for it that I just put it on the Web, now, so I can be lazier about it.

Direct link from the IFDB should be working; also linked from the ToaSK homepage.

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=8upuvdnsk4sho6ac">http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=8upuvdnsk4sho6ac</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/toask.htm">http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/toask.htm</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2917&start=0#p23012
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Plugs and Sockets by Sean Turner
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2011-09-29 17:36:02

Just wondering. If Sean Turner reads this.

I have the same problem. Funny enough. I have two copies of I7 ionstalled. One compiles fine, the other gives me the above error message...

They both seem to have the same extensions installed.

Ideas?


BiB

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2088&start=10#p23013
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Frotz updated
User: MikeG / DateTime: 2011-09-29 17:55:00

[quote="DavidK"]As Zarf indicates, this is really an issue with the underlying I6/7 code, not the interpreter. The library code clears the screen in such a way that the status line is reset to zero height, and only puts it back when about to prompt the user for input: in doing so it assumes that any text that is printed to the main window will get pushed down by making the status bar bigger, but it's not entitled to do that: the Z-Machine specification provides no promise that that will happen. This isn't just Frotz: most (though not all) of Infocom's original interpreters behave in the same way.
[/quote]

I'll go even further and say the standard promises that will not happen and that any interpreter which pushes the text down when enlarging the upper window is non-standard. Note the last sentence in this excerpt from the 1.0 standard:

[b]8.6.1

The screen is divided into a lower and an upper window and at any given time one of these is selected. (Initially it is the lower window.) The game uses the set_window opcode to select one of the two. Each window has its own cursor position at which text is printed. Operations in the upper window do not move the cursor of the lower. Whenever the upper window is selected, its cursor position is reset to the top left. Selecting, or re-sizing, the upper window does not change the screen's appearance. [/b]

Frotz does the right thing here.
Sorry about resurrecting old threads. I just discovered this forum!

Edit:
One caveat - Section 8.6.1 does refer to V3 specifically. However the sections on V4-5 don't offer any conflicting advice.
DavidK - You mentioned that some Infocom interpreters do not behave this way. Do you know which ones? I've tested quite a few and have never seen one move the lower window text on a split.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3253&start=0#p23014
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Love, Hate, and the Mysterious Ocean Tower endings
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-29 18:03:38

Yes, you can
[spoiler]both escape[/spoiler]
by
[spoiler]cutting up the blood vessels[/spoiler].

I believe those four are the basic endings, though some of them can be achieved with somewhat different texts. (And I extracted the prose out of the z-code file, so I would be surprised if I missed a major ending.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2357&start=0#p23015
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: [SPAG] #60 Now Available
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-29 18:14:22

I don't think anything about the new SPAG has been announced, though it would be reasonable to expect David to schedule it for just after the competition ends. I haven't heard a lot from David lately, though -- so I hope everything is fine.

Mike, I'm glad that you like the piece! I loved the game, so thank you for programming it.

(Also, due to your post I suddenly remember that I have forgotten to answer an email from Michelle from a few months back. [emote]:oops:[/emote] Let me do it right now...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3253&start=0#p23016
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Love, Hate, and the Mysterious Ocean Tower endings
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-09-29 18:27:35

There's also an ending where
[spoiler]Peyton sacrifices you.[/spoiler]
If I remember correctly, it's possible to lock yourself out of this ending, depending on what choices you made earlier in the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3253&start=0#p23017
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Love, Hate, and the Mysterious Ocean Tower endings
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-29 18:54:26

Yes -- I read the first option mentioned by the OP as including this possibility, but that may indeed have been wrong.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2917&start=0#p23018
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Plugs and Sockets by Sean Turner
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-09-29 18:58:08

[quote="BigBonsai"]Ideas?[/quote]
Which versions of I7 are they?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3255&start=0#p23019
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Stoping automatic examination of object in inventory
User: cooper / DateTime: 2011-09-29 21:43:46

I have an Inform 7 game where I placed an item in the player's inventory and I want them to find it on their own. My problem is that when the examine command is typed without a specified object to examine, Inform automatically examines the object in my inventory. How do I prohibit this? This code can reproduce my problem.
[code]Lab is a room.

Player is carrying potion book.[/code]
I would really appreciate any help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3255&start=0#p23020
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stoping automatic examination of object in inventory
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-29 21:55:59

This is going to sound silly -- but the easiest solution is to give the player a second object. Or have a second object in the room.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3248&start=0#p23021
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Misc questions thread
User: Kaleb702 Games / DateTime: 2011-09-29 22:07:32

Well, that's not needed anymore; thanks for that though.
However, this is broken:
Check reaping:
	if the scythe is not carried, say "You don't have your scythe!" instead.
	if the noun is unreapeable, say "You can't reap [The noun]." instead.


This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6G60) on its most recent run through:


Problem. You wrote 'if the noun is unreapeable, say "You can't reap [The noun]." instead'  : but this seems to give something a name which contains double-quoted text, which is not allowed. If you do need quotes in a name, one option would be to write something like 'In the Saloon is 'Black' Jacques Bernoulli.'; but this problem message is often caused by an accident in punctuation, in which case you never intended to create an object - you thought that the text ended a sentence because it finished with sentence-ending punctuation, when in fact it didn't, so that I read the next words as following on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3248&start=0#p23022
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Misc questions thread
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-29 22:12:06

The line beginning "If the scythe is not carried" should end in a semicolon rather than a period.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3256&start=0#p23023
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6 question: what was the "special token" used for?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-09-29 23:08:55

Inform 6's grammar lines have words like "noun" and "creature" and so on, but one of them is "special", which is either a number or a dictionary word.  Inform 7 doesn't seem to use it.  What was "special" used for?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3256&start=0#p23024
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6 question: what was the "special token" used for?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-09-29 23:31:06

Nevermind, I found it in the DM3: [quote][u]special[/u] Obsolete and best avoided. [/quote] It was labeled obsolete in 1996.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3257&start=0#p23025
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: SF Bay IF Meetup Saturday at 1PM
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-09-30 00:52:28

When: Saturday, October 1, 2011 1:00 PM
Where: Au Coquelet, 2000 University Ave Berkeley, CA 94701 

<a class="postlink" href="http://meetu.ps/40P5z">http://meetu.ps/40P5z</a>

Oct 1 is the first day of IFComp, the biggest interactive fiction competition of the year. I'll bring as many of the entries as I possibly can, and we'll try some. Or we'll just talk about what we're playing and what we're working on. Whatever works!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3256&start=0#p23026
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6 question: what was the "special token" used for?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-30 01:41:10

Best I can recall, it was a crude way of handling numbers and topics in I5, before more specific tokens were invented for them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2917&start=0#p23027
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Plugs and Sockets by Sean Turner
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2011-09-30 02:07:25

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="BigBonsai"]Ideas?[/quote]
Which versions of I7 are they?[/quote]
Wow. I didn't even notice I had two different versions. I thought I installed the same twice.

Well, the one that gives me errors is the 6G60 one. The one that works fine is 6E72.

But doesn't that mean that there must be a way to resolve this? Unfortunately I have very little clue about how extensions work...

That sucks... [emote]:cry:[/emote]


BiB
P.S.: I also tried the portable version of I7 (man - portableness... [emote]:roll:[/emote] would be a dream), but that one crashes on me completely (won't even run).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2088&start=10#p23028
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Frotz updated
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-09-30 02:08:08

[quote="MikeG"]DavidK - You mentioned that some Infocom interpreters do not behave this way. Do you know which ones? I've tested quite a few and have never seen one move the lower window text on a split.[/quote]I was thinking of Infocom's Macintosh interpreters, which I recall had two separate windows: one for the main text and one for the status bar, so by definition resizing the status bar had to affect the overall display. It's perhaps unfortunate but these days Z-code games really have to cope with both approaches to status bar resizing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2917&start=0#p23029
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Plugs and Sockets by Sean Turner
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-09-30 03:15:14

[quote="BigBonsai"]Well, the one that gives me errors is the 6G60 one. The one that works fine is 6E72.

But doesn't that mean that there must be a way to resolve this? Unfortunately I have very little clue about how extensions work...[/quote]
Since 6G60 is the version mentioned in the first post in this thread, the solution above should work for you too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=0#p23030
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: JimmyMaher / DateTime: 2011-09-30 03:15:45

So, I've implemented BlkSize and WhetherProvides as accelerated functions, with some modest improvements. Along the way, though, I've learned something I find pretty interesting.

The slowest command by far is "put." Something like "put hat in chest" could take upwards of 17 seconds on the Kindle (down from almost 30 without acceleration; never say I'm not making progress [emote];)[/emote]). And some investigation has revealed that it's all in the parsing phase.

"Put" is a really complicated verb for the parser to deal with, because it can mean so many things. "Put hat in chest" parses to the Insert action; "Put hat on table" parses to Put On; "Put on hat" parses to Wear; "Put down hat" parses to Drop; etc. In addition, there are different ways to phrase each variation: "Put on hat" vs. "Put hat on", etc. There are 19 separate syntax lines for "Put" in the game I'm working with, many of them quite complicated with prepositions and indirect objects. As it happens, "Put x in x" (leading to Insert, and one of the most common constructions of "Put") is near the end of that group. The parser apparently loops through the syntax lines until it finds a match, and then quits. Thus the Wear variation, which comes at the beginning of the list, parses almost instantly, while Insert takes forever.

My first thought was to ask whether I could optimize the syntax lists, placing the most commonly used near the front. I went so far as to declare "the command 'put' as something new," then add back in all the "Understand" lines from the library in what I judged to be a better order. This accomplishes nothing, however. The compiler apparently makes it own decisions about the proper order, placing the simplest syntax lines first and working up to the more complicated. With a command like "put," this is a recipe for inefficiency in many cases -- the complicated constructions already take much longer to parse, and then to put them at the end of the collection... A useful addition to future versions of Inform 7 might be some way to prioritize certain "Understand" lines as commonly used or having priority.

But given the situation as it is, it seems there are a few options for improving performance. One (kludgy) one is to try to help the game out by catching problematic inputs at the interpreter level and changing them to something the game can process more efficiently. Say, define "place" as a synonym for the Insert version of "put" (only), then substitute where appropriate in the interpreter. Besides being ugly, this is of course also problematic in that it requires us to do a substantial amount of parsing in the interpreter -- exactly the job the parser in the game is supposed to be doing.

Another is to cut down on the number of syntax lines we define for problematic verbs like "put." Since this also means cutting down on the number of possible inputs we understand from the player, it's also not ideal.

The last solution is just to fix the damn parser, find some way to make it faster. But man, is it a complicated and opaque piece of code. I think a logical first step is to set up some performance logging in the parser itself, to try to figure out where it's spending the majority of its time. Then we could perhaps target just that section(s) for optimization -- maybe even an accelerated function if it seems manageable. I suspect that there's some sort of Inform 7 hook in there that is causing a massive slowdown, as the Inform 6 parser never had these problems. I just don't know where or what it might be.

Or maybe we learn something important from Ron's ongoing reconstruction of the parser. That would be nice...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2917&start=0#p23031
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Plugs and Sockets by Sean Turner
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2011-09-30 03:33:16

Yes, I tried that, but replacing first all "female" appearances with something and then all "male" appearances seems to only lead to crashes while compiling. I guess I am just making a mistake somewhere.

Unfortunately [quote="Joel Webster"]I also did a quick workaround when it prints the gender.[/quote] doesn't help me much. [emote];-)[/emote] Can you elaborate on this?

I will be testing 6F95 in a moment to see whether it works there (I'll post the result).

Still, in the end it would be great if the extension could be updated for the current release.


BiB

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2917&start=0#p23032
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Plugs and Sockets by Sean Turner
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2011-09-30 03:49:47

[quote="BigBonsai"]I will be testing 6F95 in a moment to see whether it works there (I'll post the result).[/quote]
Failure.

I7 says (surprise!):
[code]You wrote 'It is always male'  : but the property male for the PS-plug is not allowed to exist, because you haven't said it is. What properties something can have depends on what kind of thing it is: see the Index for details.[/code]

I send the author an email... I am hopeful that this really nice extension will be fixed or a workaround will come up...


BiB

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2917&start=10#p23037
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Plugs and Sockets by Sean Turner
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-09-30 08:19:32

[quote="BigBonsai"]Can you elaborate on this?[/quote]
Sure - here is the original section:[code]A PS-connector is a kind of thing. It has an object called the attachment. It has some text called the type. The type is usually "standard". A PS-connector can be unknown, male or female (this is its gender property).

Instead of examining a PS-connector (called the item):

	say "It is a [gender] [type] connector of [the holder of the noun]. It ";
	if the item is male:
		say "is [if the attachment of the noun is nothing]unplugged[else]plugged into [the holder of the attachment of the noun][end if].";
	else:
		say "has [if the attachment of the noun is nothing]nothing[else][the holder of the attachment of the noun][end if] plugged into it.".

A PS-plug is a kind of PS-connector. It is always male.

A PS-socket is a kind of PS-connector. It is always female.
[/code]
And here is my updated section:[code]A PS-connector is a kind of thing. It has an object called the attachment. It has some text called the type. The type is usually "standard". A PS-connector can be unknown, outy or inny (this is its gender property).

Instead of examining a PS-connector (called the item):
	if the item is outy:
		say "It is a male [type] connector of [the holder of the noun]. It is [if the attachment of the noun is nothing]unplugged[else]plugged into [the holder of the attachment of the noun][end if].";


	else:
		say "It is a female [type] connector of [the holder of the noun]. It has [if the attachment of the noun is nothing]nothing[else][the holder of the attachment of the noun][end if] plugged into it.".

A PS-plug is a kind of PS-connector. It is always outy.

A PS-socket is a kind of PS-connector. It is always inny.[/code]
So in summary, I changed the properties from male and female to outy and inny. I think it wasn't working because male and female are properties belonging to people, and there must have been a conflict of reserved words, or something.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3262&start=0#p23038
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Quest 5 - creating iPhone, iPad and Android apps
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-09-30 08:29:48

I'm working on a tool which converts Quest games into pure Javascript, which can then be used to package games as apps for the various App Stores.

I've written a blog post here: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.textadventures.co.uk/blog/2011/09/30/using-quest-to-create-text-adventures-for-iphone-ipad-android/">http://www.textadventures.co.uk/blog/20 ... d-android/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=0#p23039
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-30 09:08:45

Once again, I suspect that calculating scope is the problem. I am pretty sure that scope is recalculated for every single grammar line. This is reasonable, because the action in the grammar line (and maybe the direct object too) can affect rules in the Deciding the Scope of Something activity. But it seems like there must be a way to make it more efficient.

You have a number of After Deciding the Scope of Something rules, don't you? Do you perhaps have some Understand by a relation rules too? I think those affect scope calculations as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3252&start=0#p23040
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Wishlist for Comp 2011
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-09-30 09:38:52

I hope for at least one game that demonstrates some sort of innovation, perhaps a new mechanic like in Earl Grey or Delightful Wallpaper, a wordplay game like Nord & Bert, or something on that order.

I also would like to see an ADRIFT game place in the Top 10, though I'm sure there will be plenty of competition for those spots this year and I would prefer to form my expectations around quality rather than platform.  

I'd like to see a well-done slice-of-life story told through IF.

A piece that will store some of my earlier command input and spit it back at me later.  Bonus points if it manages to make that input plot significant, especially if it horrifies me in doing so.

And one short-short piece that will never have a chance at placing in the Top 10, but will make me think, "Yes.  That was an excellent use for 5-10 minutes of my time."

Oh, right, almost forgot.  I hope all the authors get along tremendously this year, and that the author's forum will spark amazing, memorable discussions on interactive fiction.  Bonus points for strong involvement from newcomers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3252&start=0#p23041
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Wishlist for Comp 2011
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2011-09-30 09:41:55

[quote]I'd like a good 10 games or so to written with a system other than Inform (a long shot, I know).[/quote]

Why is it a long shot that anyone would write a good game using another system than Iform?
Is the IF Comp about games, or about the developer used to create the game?  [emote];)[/emote] 

While I agree that Inform is a pretty powerful tool, I believe that whether a game is "good" or not depends on the author.
I've played games created using both systems and I have found many Adrift games which, entertainment wise, was just as good as any games made with Inform.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2917&start=10#p23042
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Plugs and Sockets by Sean Turner
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2011-09-30 09:54:55

Great. fantastic! [emote]:-)[/emote]

I tried it and the error is gone. Unfortunately what I now get is this (same message when I just substituted all occurences of male and female):

[code]This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6G60) on its most recent run through:

Problem. An internal error has occurred: Bad index documentation reference. The error was detected at line 452 of "Chapter 3/Index File Services.w". This should never happen, and I am now halting in abject failure.

What has happened here is that one of the checks Inform carries out internally, to see if it is working properly, has failed. There must be a bug in this copy of Inform. It may be worth checking whether you have the current, up-to-date version. If so, please report this problem via www.inform7.com/bugs. 

 As for fixing your source text to avoid this bug, the last thing you changed is probably the cause, if there is a simple cause. Your source text might in fact be wrong, and the problem might be occurring because Inform has failed to find a good way to say so. But even if your source text looks correct, there are probably rephrasings which would achieve the same effect.[/code]

Hmmm... what could I have missed?


BiB

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3252&start=0#p23043
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Wishlist for Comp 2011
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2011-09-30 09:57:55

[quote="Finn Rosenløv"][quote]I'd like a good 10 games or so to written with a system other than Inform (a long shot, I know).[/quote]

Why is it a long shot that anyone would write a good game using another system than Iform?
[/quote]

Well, considering that last year only 4 non Z-code/Glulx games were entered into the Comp, I'd say it's a long shot that 10 games of any sort are entered that aren't Z-code or Glulx (although it's certainly possible, give the known Adrift stuff happening, plus the recent Choicescript activity from IntroComp).

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=10#p23044
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: JimmyMaher / DateTime: 2011-09-30 09:59:39

I do have some "After deciding the scope of" rules. I tried commenting them out, but this makes no real difference in parsing time. Obviously running those rules will lead to slight delays, but they appear to be very slight indeed.

I don't believe I have any understand by relation rules. There are things like "something preferably held" and "other things." Nothing really unusual or that deviates a great deal from the standard rules for understanding.

I only have about 40 objects in scope (checked with the "scope" command), which doesn't seem egregious at all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2088&start=10#p23045
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Frotz updated
User: MikeG / DateTime: 2011-09-30 10:14:34

[quote="DavidK"]I was thinking of Infocom's Macintosh interpreters, which I recall had two separate windows: one for the main text and one for the status bar, so by definition resizing the status bar had to affect the overall display. It's perhaps unfortunate but these days Z-code games really have to cope with both approaches to status bar resizing.[/quote]

I think I remember that too, however I wonder if it was some older (V3) games that did that where the status line was really fixed and not the same as the upper window. I have Masterpieces of Infocom for Mac and was testing yesterday using Beyond Zork and Sherlock (both V5), which use a single window for output and don't move text during a split. I'll test some more when I get home tonight and see what I can find.

At best I think a game or library relying on text moving during a split is relying on undefined behavior. An interpreter that moves text during a split is really going against the grain as evidenced by the excerpt I mentioned before and also section 8.8.3 which pertains to V6: [b]Subsequent movements of the window do not move what was printed and there is no sense in which characters or graphics 'belong' to any particular window once printed.[/b] It is interesting that the standard is silent on this issue with regard to V4-5 although I think there is circumstantial evidence to say it should be the same.

Anyway, enough of that. I have a question if you've got a moment and haven't stopped reading yet...Lately I've been fiddling with the way my interpreter sets header flags in each zmachine version. I noticed that in V3 Frotz sets a value called OLD_SOUND_FLAG which is 0x10 in flags2, obviously for the sound capable version of The Lurking Horror. I remember reading about this flag somewhere else a long time ago, but the source escapes me. I currently set this flag in my interpreter however it bugs me that it isn't mentioned in the standard. A few days ago I was testing the Amiga verison of The Lurking Horror (release 221 with sound) and noted that clearing this in the story file did not stop the game from making sound and a txd dump of the game doesn't seem to reveal a place where that flag is read. Do you know where knowledge of this flag came from or any other information about it? Thanks.

Bonus question: In a hypothetical V4 game with sound, do you think it would use:
A) the old V3 flag
B) the new V5 flag
C) no flag
D) None of the above
   [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3252&start=0#p23046
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Wishlist for Comp 2011
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-30 10:29:12

[quote="Finn Rosenløv"][quote]I'd like a good 10 games or so to written with a system other than Inform (a long shot, I know).[/quote]

Why is it a long shot that anyone would write a good game using another system than Iform?[/quote]

Finn, in (American?) English "a good 10 games" usually doesn't mean "10 good games"; it means something like "ten games would be a lot." For instance, I saw something where someone says "He has a good dozen sock-puppets for occasions such as these"; that person isn't saying that the sock-puppets are good (sock-puppets, as fake internet personae, are generally considered to be bad); they're saying that they have a lot of sock-puppets.

So I don't think Bainespal meant to be disparaging the quality of non-Inform games, just saying that ten games would be a lot for one comp and he doesn't expect that many to be entered.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3262&start=0#p23047
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Quest 5 - creating iPhone, iPad and Android apps
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-09-30 10:37:35

Very nice!  You couldn't whip me up one of those for ADRIFT could you?   [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3263&start=0#p23048
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Testing whether or not an activity is ongoing
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2011-09-30 11:03:16

What's the correct way to test whether or not an activity is ongoing?
"if handling the ... activity" doesn't seem to work.

[code]
Scullery is a room. A sack is carried by the player. The sack contains a yellow onion. The player carries a cork.
[ Before printing the name of the onion while listing contents: 
    if the holder of the onion contains exactly 1 thing, say "single ". ]
Before printing the name of the onion:
	if the holder of the onion contains exactly one thing and handling the listing contents activity begin;
		say "single ";
	end if;
[/code]

Looking at auto.inf, the first code (while listing contents) produces a call to TestActivity; the second produces a call to ForActivity.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2917&start=10#p23049
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Plugs and Sockets by Sean Turner
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-09-30 12:04:41

That looks like [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=47]Bug 47[/url], which is tripped when authors use the syntax[code]... (documented at ...): ...[/code]It's supposed to be reserved for the standard rules.  Do you see any such code in your story or the extension?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3264&start=0#p23050
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Developing a new conversation extension
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-30 12:29:32

I've gotten to a point in my WIP where the conversation system is limiting what I want to do. But I don't think it would take much to change it into what I want.

I'm using Eric Eve's "Conversation Responses," but I'm already mangling it so that most of what it does is redirect to my own code. Up until now, that's worked fine, but now I want to do more with NPCs saying things spontaneously on their own ... or even potentially multiple NPCs responding during a single turn. Also, I may have some characters temporarily unable to speak.

So I took a step back and asked myself, "how [i]should[/i] conversation work?" And I came up with a pretty simple answer, that to my knowledge has never been implemented. Then again, I don't know how Emily Short does conversation, so maybe I'm wrong. Here's how it goes.

When the player types a command to say something, the check rules determine whether the PC is able (and willing) to speak. If they are, then the check phase ends.

The carry out rules determine who heard the PC.

The report rules tell what the PC, [i]and only the PC[/i], does.

Then the every turn rules come along. A rule loops through every NPC who heard the PC and each one has a chance to respond. Kind of like ReactAfter, I guess.

Has anyone ever done it this way in I7? If so, I'd like to hear how it went. And I'd be curious whether you'd be interested in using such a system, and what benefits and drawbacks you think it might have.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3255&start=0#p23051
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stoping automatic examination of object in inventory
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-09-30 12:38:57

I think the extension Disambiguation Control can prevent over-zealous command completion.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3263&start=0#p23052
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Testing whether or not an activity is ongoing
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-30 12:40:34

[quote="ralphmerridew"]What's the correct way to test whether or not an activity is ongoing?[/quote]
[code]if the holder of the onion contains exactly one thing and the listing contents activity is going on begin;[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=10#p23053
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-09-30 13:17:14

[quote]The parser apparently loops through the syntax lines until it finds a match, and then quits.[/quote]

That's correct. However, in a simple game, this is not *enormously* expensive. It should do one scope search per line, maximum.

(Sidebar: this is actually one scope search per noun before the first preposition. "put on X" can be eliminated if word 2 is not "on", so no noun is needed. "give X Y" is an expensive case because the boundary between the two noun phrases requires trial-and-error to determine.)

A scope search should not be so expensive that it crimps your grammar-line writing style.

Really, you should test this. Build a game using the same "put" grammar, but just one room, one object, and no scope rules or noun-understand rules. Is it similarly slow? Then add 40 objects with simple names, but no new rules. Test speed again. Then maybe start adding long names and noun-understand declarations. 

This will give you an idea where the time is going. 

Beyond that, profile. You can't solve this problem blind.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3263&start=0#p23054
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Testing whether or not an activity is ongoing
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2011-09-30 13:20:25

They need to fix the documentation in 17.7, then.
(Don't have my I7 password on this computer)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2917&start=10#p23055
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Plugs and Sockets by Sean Turner
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2011-09-30 13:37:12

[quote="EmacsUser"]That looks like [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=47]Bug 47[/url], which is tripped when authors use the syntax[code]... (documented at ...): ...[/code]It's supposed to be reserved for the standard rules.  Do you see any such code in your story or the extension?[/quote]
Good thinking. Checked everything, though. "documented at" is nowhere to be found. [emote]:-([/emote]

This is a mystery. [emote]:-)[/emote]


BiB

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3265&start=0#p23056
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Gargoyle (or other full-featured IF app) for Android?
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2011-09-30 13:50:06

I recently got an Android tablet and am noticing that there doesn't seem to be a single good option for playing IF on it.  The web interpreters are pretty clunky on the tablet browser, and Hunky Punk seems to only support z-code.

Has anyone looked into porting one of the better interpreter packages to Android, perhaps using the NDK or NativeVM or something like that?  I might be able to assist.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3263&start=0#p23057
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Testing whether or not an activity is ongoing
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-30 13:54:39

Chapter 17.2 says
[quote]If we ever need to find out, we can always test: 

if the printing the name activity is going on, ... 
if the printing the name activity is not going on, ...[/quote]

The "if handling" construction seems meant for pretty special occasions (as when the author of an extension introduces a new activity): specifically, chapter 17.7 says
[quote]We place the activity's normal behaviour inside the "if"; the condition, "if handling...", is true only if no rule has intervened. This means that we (or other authors using our activity) can create their own for rules to substitute here. If we elsewhere write 

Rule for handling the analysing activity with the pitchblende when the player is not sober: 
    say "You can't seem to focus." 

that rule will intervene and take the place of whatever we have placed inside the condition.[/quote]
I suppose this means that the "if handling listing contents" phrase makes the game consider the for listing contents rulebook, and if there had been no rules in that rulebook, the "say 'single'" phrase would have been executed, while, since there actually is a standard contents listing rule in the for listing contents rulebook, that rule will run here instead of "say 'single'".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3264&start=0#p23058
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Developing a new conversation extension
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-09-30 14:04:21

The structure of my conversation extension is something like this, though with more checks.

-- because conversation is often contextual, it doesn't have the player speak at all if there's no one there for him to speak to. 
-- the parser checks against named conversation options to see whether it can match any available comments for the player to speak; if there are several possible things to say, it disambiguates
-- the player's comment is then printed; any facts mentioned by the comment then become "known" to all the people in the room at the time, which means that if you're doing something dependent on what characters have found out what information, they can all respond accordingly
-- the speech action concludes
-- during every turn rules, I call the conversation rules for the other characters; this is the point at which they can give responses to what's just been said, refuse to answer, or change the subject to talk about something else.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3265&start=0#p23059
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gargoyle (or other full-featured IF app) for Android?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-09-30 14:08:41

Gargoyle on Android is probably not going to happen. The lack of native code means that there's no ready access to freetype, and without freetype you are better off with a new Glk implementation that uses the standard platform API for text layout.

[url=https://github.com/weiju/zmpp2]ZMPP2[/url] may be the most promising project since it targets Java and includes Android support as a project goal.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2917&start=10#p23060
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Plugs and Sockets by Sean Turner
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-09-30 14:55:50

In that case, could you file a bug in [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/]the Inform bug tracker[/url]?  Like the problem message says, ``this should never happen,'' and a full bug report will (1) help us figure out what exactly is going on and (2) hopefully prevent similar trouble in the future.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3252&start=0#p23061
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Wishlist for Comp 2011
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2011-09-30 14:56:55

Ooops!!
I stand corrected...   [emote]:oops:[/emote] 
It would be so much easier if everything was in Danish  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 
For instance, In Deamark we use the term General Secretary, whereas I was, politely informed that the correct term is Secretary General ...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3267&start=0#p23063
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [SOLVED] List doors properly. How?
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2011-09-30 15:04:05

Hello.

I have a room with three doors. My output is this:

[code]There are three doors here (Door SR4N, Door EO4 and Door SR4S) as well as a Gangway (34E).

You can see a Door (SR4S), a Door (EO4) and a Gangway (34E) here.[/code]
My goal: either suppress the automatic description of the doors or let them be listed properly.

A little explanation: The first line is part of the description of the room. The second line is the automatic output. All doors are scenery. The reason the first door from the description is not in the automatic output is, because its printed name hasn't been changed. All the other doors have a line like this:
[code]The printed name of the Door EO4 is "Door (EO4)".[/code]
Now, I want either of these options to happen (which I obviously am too unexperienced to manage):
[list][*]Suppress the automatic output or ideally[/*:m]
[*]List the doors properly like this: [i]You can see Door SR4N, Door SR4S, Door EO4 and Gangway 34E here.[/i] (the "a" and brackets removed)[/*:m][/list:u]

Any ideas are welcome. I am sure for you Pros no issue. [emote]:-)[/emote]


BiB

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3252&start=10#p23064
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Wishlist for Comp 2011
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-30 15:11:09

[quote="Finn Rosenløv"]It would be so much easier if everything was in Danish  [emote]:lol:[/emote] [/quote]

Not for me.  [emote];)[/emote]  I'm constantly impressed at how well the non-native-English-speaking members of the IF community deal with English language discussions, when I grew up speaking the language and can't even figure out how to say "non-native-English-speaking" with fewer than three dashes.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3113&start=20#p23065
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Participate in the Interactive Fiction Top 50!
User: lavonardo / DateTime: 2011-09-30 15:24:00

[b]Zork II[/b]: The first Infocom game I ever played (back in 1984), well ahead of the first part of the trilogy. Took a couple of years to finish. Despite its shortcomings (never understood the bank puzzle), this treasure hunt with a persistent enemy is still an entertaining game.

[b]Planetfall[/b]: The first Infocom game with a plot that I played. With the bonus of Floyd the droid, the first properly realized interactive NPC (who even responds to meta-commands).

[b]Wishbringer[/b]: A beautifully written beginners game that had me stumped for a long while. Platypuses, transformed town, multiple solutions to problems. What’s there not to like.

[b]Guild of Thieves[/b]: While The Pawn was more of a technology demo to show Infocom that Magnetic Scrolls were a real competitor, their second game was a much better product. A relentless treasure hunt through a quasi-medieval milieu was perhaps cliched, but an impressively put together collection of puzzles.

[b]Unnkulian Unventure[/b]: The first new generation game that I played. A game that proved that there’s still life in the genre even though the commercial publishers are dead. Humorous and complex. A perfect showcase for TADS, the language and virtual machine that allowed development of highly complex games.

[b]Curses[/b]: The Inform language and compiler began intimately tied to Curses. A massive game that mixes in puzzles of variable quality and difficulty. Immensely enjoyable, but packs a steep learning curve.

[b]Photopia[/b]: Short, pointful and emotional.

[b]Anchorhead[/b]: Long, pointful and powerful. Finest horror game I have played. So good that I actually crafted a mostly functional Call of Cthulhu- scenario out of the plot.

[b]Lost Pig[/b]: The most recent entry on the list is yet another impeccably written game. The point-of-view of a not so smart protagonist is well realized in an avalanche of appropriate responses to most commands.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3267&start=0#p23066
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: List doors properly. How?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-09-30 15:31:45

[quote="BigBonsai"]Any ideas are welcome. I am sure for you Pros no issue. [emote]:-)[/emote][/quote]

I'm not a pro, so I'll leave the solving of your problem to them, but I'm curious: If you don't want the brackets to be printed, why are you including them in the printed name? (I haven't learnt much Inform 7 yet, but I thought the reason to set a printed name was so that you can get lists like this like you want them?)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3252&start=10#p23067
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Wishlist for Comp 2011
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-09-30 15:43:14

[quote]I'm constantly impressed at how well the non-native-English-speaking members of the IF community deal with English language discussions[/quote]

I don't think this phenomenon is limited to the IF community.  Historically, the inbred (OK, more likely learned) chauvinism of the English-speaking peoples of the world is such that we've expected everybody else to learn our language, and have never thought it necessary to take the trouble to learn anybody else's.  (I don't except myself from this observation; I speak and understand only English.)  Of course, that may be forced to change as patterns of world wealth and power change; it may well be that a few decades from now conversations like this will be in Chinese.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2917&start=10#p23068
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Plugs and Sockets by Sean Turner
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2011-09-30 15:48:56

[quote="EmacsUser"]In that case, could you file a bug in [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/]the Inform bug tracker[/url]?  Like the problem message says, ``this should never happen,'' and a full bug report will (1) help us figure out what exactly is going on and (2) hopefully prevent similar trouble in the future.[/quote]
Ok. I posted a report. Hope I did it right. [emote]:-)[/emote]

If nobody else has an idea I guess i will either have to do without this extension or use the old 6E72 version of IF7. None are nice options.

Well, I am putting my faith in Sean Turner. [emote]:-)[/emote] Or the IF7 Team will surprise. [emote];-)[/emote]


BiB

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3267&start=0#p23069
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: List doors properly. How?
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-09-30 15:55:09

By default, scenery is not listed in the automatically-generated room description.  I think part of the problem is that you did not actually define any of the numbered "doors" as an actual door.  If you were to do so, since you made all doors scenery, then you would (I think) achieve the first option.  (I think you've also created, in addition to the specifically enumerated items, three unnamed instances of the "door" kind, which are present but not listed because they are scenery).

As to why SR4N is not being listed and the others are, I have no idea.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3267&start=0#p23070
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: List doors properly. How?
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2011-09-30 15:59:37

[quote="Trumgottist"][quote="BigBonsai"]Any ideas are welcome. I am sure for you Pros no issue. [emote]:-)[/emote][/quote]

I'm not a pro, so I'll leave the solving of your problem to them, but I'm curious: If you don't want the brackets to be printed, why are you including them in the printed name? (I haven't learnt much Inform 7 yet, but I thought the reason to set a printed name was so that you can get lists like this like you want them?)[/quote]
I just used this as a workaround because I couldn't get the list to be displayed properly (my above option 2). Then I realized that I cannot suppress the automatic output. I got stuck. [emote]:-)[/emote]


BiB

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3113&start=20#p23071
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Participate in the Interactive Fiction Top 50!
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-09-30 16:04:32

My top! These are not exactly the works I personally consider the "best" according to my taste, but the ones I both consider as great works (so it doeesn't pretend to be objetive) and would recommend to anyone wether she shares my tastes or not (so a few of my "masterworks" list get excluded).

-[url=http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0006183&loadpics=3]Cozumel[/url]. (A.K.A. [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=pmmrw4wjx3hw5su2]Diosa De Cozumel[/url]) Aventuras AD, 1989
Spanish commercial IF at its peak. It was released for most active 8 and 16 bits platforms at Europe in 1989, and it had evrything in the exact right measure: clever, challenging puzzles, a nice plot, a detailed enviroment which helped inmersion, good NPC characterization, sense of good old clasic exploring and adventuring... all of it as basicly developed as expected for 80's home computers, but so wisely mixed that it makes all prior and subsequent spanish IF production (incuding current modern works) look, well, unbalanced!

-[url=http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0017301&loadpics=3]Floarea Soarelui[/url]. Colin Woodcock, Serban Ovidiu Morcan, 2006
-[url=http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0018544&loadpics=3]On Reflection[/url].  Lee Tonks, 2007
These are two very different approachs to a same goal. Floarea is a spies comedy located in a little village. Reflection is an atmospheric daunting sci-fi thriller. Both are modern works made for an old school 8-bit computer, and they make more than one current platform work pale by comparision just with their carefully stylized writting and powerful ambientation. Strongly recommended.

-[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=4glrrfh7wrp9zz7b]1893 A World's Fair Mystery[/url]. Peter Nepstad, 2002
Now there goes a lesson on how to make commercial IF viable nowadays. Select your audience and give them something of their true interest. There is a fair chance of reaching outside your target if the product is nicely crafted. I was never into History or world's fairs and had a great time with it, anyway. Worth every penny! 

-[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=4glrrfh7wrp9zz7b]Violet[/url]. Jeremy freese, 2008
Cheerful romantic comedy at its best. Casual IF players (if such a thing exits [emote]:lol:[/emote]) could love it just like casual moviegoers could enjoy a Kevin Smith flick. Incidentally, It also has some twist that makes it groundbreaking in terms of IF narrative, but that's not the point now. Play and enjoy!

--

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3267&start=0#p23072
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: List doors properly. How?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-09-30 16:11:18

I see I didn't express myself clearly. (Sorry about that.) What I was wondering was why you gave the door the printed name "Door (EO4)" rather than "Door EO4" when what you wanted printed was "Door EO4". Is there some I7 reason for it that I don't know about or am I misunderstanding what you're trying to do? 

(As I said, I'm just curious.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3253&start=0#p23073
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Love, Hate, and the Mysterious Ocean Tower endings
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-09-30 16:14:24

Aaaha, Thanks! 
So at least I missed a couple of them and probably some variants of the ones I catched (It would have been a great work even without this clever and carefully crafted branching, I must say!)

-

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3267&start=0#p23074
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: List doors properly. How?
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2011-09-30 16:26:14

[quote="Trumgottist"]I see I didn't express myself clearly. (Sorry about that.) What I was wondering was why you gave the door the printed name "Door (EO4)" rather than "Door EO4" when what you wanted printed was "Door EO4". Is there some I7 reason for it that I don't know about or am I misunderstanding what you're trying to do? 

(As I said, I'm just curious.)[/quote]
I think it was me not expressing myself clearly. I am dead tired...  [emote]:oops:[/emote]  [emote]:-)[/emote]

Originally that is what I had. The door was labeled "Door EO4". Then I saw that the output was "a Door EO4". That sounded just wrong, because there is only one "Door EO4" (not "a" door) in the entire game. Most rooms I have created so far have only one door, so I decided to change the printed name to "Door (EO4)". Like that the game could output "A Door" and the detailling of which door it was would be in brackets. Ergo, the "a Door (EO4)" was born.

Then I created the above mentioned room with three doors and I am basically back to square one, because the "a" sounds totally silly again. [emote]:-)[/emote]


BiB

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3267&start=0#p23075
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: List doors properly. How?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-09-30 16:33:01

Thanks, now I understand!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3267&start=0#p23076
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: List doors properly. How?
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2011-09-30 16:36:58

[quote="Robert Rothman"]By default, scenery is not listed in the automatically-generated room description.  I think part of the problem is that you did not actually define any of the numbered "doors" as an actual door.  If you were to do so, since you made all doors scenery, then you would (I think) achieve the first option.  (I think you've also created, in addition to the specifically enumerated items, three unnamed instances of the "door" kind, which are present but not listed because they are scenery).

As to why SR4N is not being listed and the others are, I have no idea.[/quote]
Thanks for your input. All doors are defined like this (using example of "Door EO4"):
[code]The Door EO4 is west of the Engine Output and east of the Section 4-7. The printed name of the Door EO4 is "Door (EO4)".
	It is a lockable and locked door.
	It is closed.
	It is scenery.
	The matching key of the Door EO4 is the Keycard Engine 01.[/code]

Is there something wrong with this?


BiB

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3267&start=0#p23077
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: List doors properly. How?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-09-30 16:50:31

[quote="BigBonsai"]All doors are defined like this (using example of "Door EO4"):
[code]The Door EO4 is west of the Engine Output and east of the Section 4-7. The printed name of the Door EO4 is "Door (EO4)".
	It is a lockable and locked door.
	It is closed.
	It is scenery.
	The matching key of the Door EO4 is the Keycard Engine 01.[/code]

Is there something wrong with this?[/quote]
Try defining the doors without the definite article! Then Inform will treat the names of the doors as true proper names and not as descriptions of doors. (If you had called the doors "the green door", "the iron door" and "the barred door", you would have wanted the output "You can see a green door, an iron door and a barred door here".)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3252&start=10#p23078
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Wishlist for Comp 2011
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-09-30 17:03:32

[quote="matt w"]So I don't think Bainespal meant to be disparaging the quality of non-Inform games, just saying that ten games would be a lot for one comp and he doesn't expect that many to be entered.[/quote]
Thanks for clarifying that.  Finn, I'm sorry that I accidentally provoked you.

[quote="bowsmand"]I hope for at least one game that demonstrates some sort of innovation, perhaps a new mechanic like in Earl Grey or Delightful Wallpaper, a wordplay game like Nord & Bert, or something on that order.[/quote]
I wouldn't have thought to wish for one of those, but they definitely do help to keep things interesting!

[quote="bowsmand"]A piece that will store some of my earlier command input and spit it back at me later. Bonus points if it manages to make that input plot significant, especially if it horrifies me in doing so.[/quote]
 [emote]:shock:[/emote] Awesome!  That's the best wish this thread has produced so far, I think.

[quote="bowsmand"]And one short-short piece that will never have a chance at placing in the Top 10, but will make me think, "Yes. That was an excellent use for 5-10 minutes of my time.[/quote]
Me too, except that I wouldn't limit my version of this wish to a short-short piece.  When you play a Comp game that you absolutely love but are almost certain has no serious chance to place in the top ranks, you get a very profound feeling.

[quote="bowsmand"]Oh, right, almost forgot. I hope all the authors get along tremendously this year, and that the author's forum will spark amazing, memorable discussions on interactive fiction. Bonus points for strong involvement from newcomers.[/quote]
Only one thing can be said in reply to this wish:  Amen.

As the official schedule on IfComp.org says, impatient waiting has set in.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=10#p23079
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-09-30 17:21:16

[quote="JimmyMaher"]The slowest command by far is "put." Something like "put hat in chest" could take upwards of 17 seconds on the Kindle (down from almost 30 without acceleration; never say I'm not making progress [emote];)[/emote]).[/quote]
Wow. But remember that if a noun has "on" in its name, both "put" lines match so their relative ordering is important. 

If you're interested in modifying Parser.i6t just for this one work, I might suggest looking at UnpackGrammarLines.  A grammar line is stored in a compressed, VM-specific format, so before each line is tested against the command it needs to be "unzipped" to a VM-neutral format.  You could modify things such that all grammar lines are unpacked into a big array when play begins.  Glulx has the memory to spare. 

Relatedly, see [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=757]this bug[/url] for a quick hit.

Finally, there's many array copies in Parser.i6t that could use opcodes for the task.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3267&start=0#p23080
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: List doors properly. How?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-30 18:56:49

Have a look at section 3.18 of the Inform documentation. As Felix said, if you just define everything in the source code as "Door E04" without any articles, then Inform should tack on "a" to the beginning of its name. And you can make sure this happens by saying "Door E04 is proper-named."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3268&start=0#p23081
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Rulebook stops on runnable rule
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2011-09-30 19:15:17

With most rulebooks, a rule will continue to the next rule unless there is an explicit stop (stop the action or instead).
With the Instead rulebook, once a rule runs, the rulebook will stop checking rules, unless there is an explicit continue.

Is there a way to make another rulebook work like Instead?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3263&start=0#p23082
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Testing whether or not an activity is ongoing
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2011-09-30 19:29:01

No matter how many times I read that documentation, I can't understand it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3268&start=0#p23083
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rulebook stops on runnable rule
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-30 20:04:27

Doesn't this (from Writing with Inform section 18.10) work? 

[code]The cosmic analysis rules are a rulebook. The cosmic analysis rules have default failure.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3265&start=0#p23084
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gargoyle (or other full-featured IF app) for Android?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-09-30 20:34:45

[quote="mwigdahl"]I recently got an Android tablet and am noticing that there doesn't seem to be a single good option for playing IF on it.  The web interpreters are pretty clunky on the tablet browser, and Hunky Punk seems to only support z-code.[/quote]

And Hunky Punk still has a scrolling issue with long chunks of text, at least on my device [emote]:([/emote]

Given the growing ubiquity of Android, it seems odd that we don't even have a full-on z-machine 'terp yet (let alone Glulx or TADS, etc) ... I'd step up to the plate and take a swing if I had the slightest clue how to code [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3268&start=0#p23085
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rulebook stops on runnable rule
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2011-09-30 20:55:37

Hmmm...  Declaring foo to be default success works as desired; declaring barring it with to be default success has no effect.  Any idea what the correct syntax is?

[code]"Test Rulebooks" by "Mark J. Tilford"

Fooing is an action applying to nothing.  Understand "foo" as fooing.

The carry out fooing rulebook has default success.

Carry out fooing:
	say "This is a foo rule.";
	
Carry out fooing:
	say "This is a different foo rule.";
	
Place is a room.

The player holds a book.  The player holds a rock.

Barring it with is an action applying to two visible objects.  Understand "bar [something] with [something]" as barring it with.

[The carry out barring it with rulebook has default success.][not accepted]
Carry out barring it with has default success.

Carry out barring the book with something:
	say "Barring the book!";
	
Carry out barring something with the rock:
	say "Barring with the rock!";
	
test me with "foo / bar book with rock".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3268&start=0#p23087
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rulebook stops on runnable rule
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-09-30 21:15:48

It looks to me as though it's specifically a problem with "with." If you define the action as "barring it wwith" and double your w's appropriately, then the line that you've commented out will compile.

(I imagine this is a bug.)

UPDATE: But even if we change it to "wwith" and use that line, it doesn't work as intended. And in the index, the carry out barring it with rulebook is listed as having default success, just like the carry out fooing rulebook. OK, this is officially beyond me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3268&start=0#p23088
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rulebook stops on runnable rule
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2011-09-30 21:25:16

It compiles, but both strings still print.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2088&start=10#p23089
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Frotz updated
User: cas / DateTime: 2011-09-30 21:39:50

[quote="MikeG"]
Anyway, enough of that. I have a question if you've got a moment and haven't stopped reading yet...Lately I've been fiddling with the way my interpreter sets header flags in each zmachine version. I noticed that in V3 Frotz sets a value called OLD_SOUND_FLAG which is 0x10 in flags2, obviously for the sound capable version of The Lurking Horror. I remember reading about this flag somewhere else a long time ago, but the source escapes me. I currently set this flag in my interpreter however it bugs me that it isn't mentioned in the standard.
[/quote]
It is briefly mentioned in the standard, in Appendix B: “Bit 4: Set in the Amiga version of The Lurking Horror so presumably to do with sound effects?”  So it's not very certain about what it means, but hazards a guess.
[quote="MikeG"]
A few days ago I was testing the Amiga verison of The Lurking Horror (release 221 with sound) and noted that clearing this in the story file did not stop the game from making sound and a txd dump of the game doesn't seem to reveal a place where that flag is read. Do you know where knowledge of this flag came from or any other information about it? Thanks.
[/quote]
I'm operating on speculation only, which is not what you want, but I'd like to think it's at least an educated guess.

At least one later Infocom game (Beyond Zork) makes use of the interpreter number to choose certain actions when it could instead check flags (see e.g. address 0xe33e in 57-871221, where it sets boldface on all interpreters but Macintosh), so Infocom was not averse to breaking the concept of platform-agnostic story files.

My guess is that the Lurking Horror's Amiga release was similarly “special” in the sense that Infocom knew that this particular story file would run on that particular interpreter.  I suspect the flag was, at least informally, added to the specification with the idea that future interpreters/stories (that were not [i]known[/i] to be pinned to a platform) could make use of it, but V3 was at the end of its life by this point so it never went anywhere, and became a curiosity in a single story file.  Why set it in TLH at all, if that's the case?  Perhaps because it's the Right Thing™ to do, even if it's not strictly necessary.

If this is true, it would explain why the flag is never made use of: it doesn't need to be since the interpreter is (was!) guaranteed to support sound.

[quote="MikeG"]
Bonus question: In a hypothetical V4 game with sound, do you think it would use:
A) the old V3 flag
B) the new V5 flag
C) no flag
D) None of the above
   [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
Hah, I'll say (A) if only because I'd look for consistency with their “backport” of sound to V3.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3262&start=0#p23090
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Quest 5 - creating iPhone, iPad and Android apps
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2011-09-30 23:25:23

Start by writing out a specification for Runner.

Like:
- Exactly when does it substitute ALRs?
- If more than one ALR can run, which will be substituted?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3268&start=0#p23092
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rulebook stops on runnable rule
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-01 01:49:20

Looks like two bugs to me:  "with" not compiling for that assertion, and the default outcome being ignored for action rulebooks with two parameters.  Could you report them both on Mantis?   <a class="postlink" href="http://www.inform7.com/bugs/">www.inform7.com/bugs/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2088&start=10#p23093
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Frotz updated
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-10-01 01:55:15

[quote="MikeG"]At best I think a game or library relying on text moving during a split is relying on undefined behavior. An interpreter that moves text during a split is really going against the grain as evidenced by the excerpt I mentioned before and also section 8.8.3 which pertains to V6: [b]Subsequent movements of the window do not move what was printed and there is no sense in which characters or graphics 'belong' to any particular window once printed.[/b] It is interesting that the standard is silent on this issue with regard to V4-5 although I think there is circumstantial evidence to say it should be the same.[/quote]I'd be cautious about extrapolating from V6 back to V4-5: the V6 screen model is quite different, and a real nuisance on modern systems, where thinking of the display as simply a rectangular array of pixels isn't ideal. The standard should really also reflect reality, and the reality today is that, with both Glk-based interpreters and Javascript/browser based ones, resizing the status bar window will push the main text window down.

[quote="MikeG"]I noticed that in V3 Frotz sets a value called OLD_SOUND_FLAG which is 0x10 in flags2, obviously for the sound capable version of The Lurking Horror. I remember reading about this flag somewhere else a long time ago, but the source escapes me.[/quote]As cas notes, it's alluded to in Appendix B of the specification. I have a vague recollection that this ultimately comes from disassembly of Infocom's Amiga V3 interpreter: various Infocom interpreters contained bits of functionality that didn't always seem to be used, and those areas were always a tricky point for the spec.

[quote="MikeG"]Bonus question: In a hypothetical V4 game with sound, do you think it would use:
A) the old V3 flag
B) the new V5 flag
C) no flag
D) None of the above
[/quote]I'd suggest doing what Windows Frotz does, which is B.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3270&start=0#p23094
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: CA_Pr and bad function calls
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-10-01 02:01:35

I'm making good progress with my new Z-Machine interpreter (<a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/curiousdannii/ifvms.js">https://github.com/curiousdannii/ifvms.js</a>) but have found a bug I can't diagnose.

If you run the test page tests/praxix.html and enter something the interpreter will crash after finding an unimplemented opcode, usually 0. It is finding these opcodes because a call is being made to address 28, which is in the header and most definitely not the correct function. The error occurs in CA_Pr, but I think the cause might be before it. It is calling the number of the object, rather than the address of it's property.

I'm not sure about this however, as the actually code which is in CA_Pr does not seem identical to what should have been compiled from veneer.c. Would the compiler optimise the veneer functions? The bad function call is from indirect().

Any ideas?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3113&start=20#p23095
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Participate in the Interactive Fiction Top 50!
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-01 03:35:39

Thanks for participating, everyone! Voting is now closed and I will process the votes and [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3272]post the results[/url]. But feel free to continue posting your own personal lists here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3271&start=0#p23096
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Fighting Fantasy books on portable devices
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-10-01 04:15:02

The folks with the publishing rights to the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks seem to be releasing various app version. Some are versions of the classic books, some are new. One cute feature is 'shake your iphone to shake the dice.'

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.fightingfantasygamebooks.com/">http://www.fightingfantasygamebooks.com/</a>

If I had some kind of gadget that could run these, I would totally try them... but I don't.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3272&start=0#p23097
Forum: Competitions / Subject: [Results] The Interactive Fiction Top 50
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-01 04:31:17

The results of the [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3113]Interactive Fiction Top 50[/url] are in! No fewer than 35 participants cast a total of 437 votes on 183 different games. Of those games, 48 got three votes or more, and those are the games that will appear in the Top 50 below -- so it is actually a top 48. Games which have the same number of votes appear in the same spot, and will be listed in alphabetical order (ignoring "the", "a" and "an").

Does this mean we finally have proof that game X is better than game Y? Of course not. But I hope you will be inspired to try some of these games. Or perhaps you will be inspired to tell us about that game you think really deserves a spot in this list but hasn't received enough attention. Most of all, I would like you to click on the link above and read the reasons that people gave for choosing one game or another. After all, a reason close to your heart may be more important than a large number of votes.

Fuller results, including a list of games which got two or one votes, will follow; but now, without further ado, the top 48!

[b]First place -- 17 votes[/b]
[list][*][i]Spider and Web[/i], Andrew Plotkin (1998)[/*:m][/list:u]

[b]Second place -- 14 votes[/b]
[list][*][i]Lost Pig[/i], Admiral Jota (2007)[/*:m]
[*][i]Photopia[/i], Adam Cadre (1998)[/*:m][/list:u]

[b]Fourth place -- 11 votes[/b]
[list][*][i]Anchorhead[/i], Michael Gentry (1998)[/*:m][/list:u]

[b]Fifth place -- 10 votes[/b]
[list][*][i]A Mind Forever Voyaging[/i], Steve Meretzky (1985)[/*:m][/list:u]

[b]Sixth place -- 8 votes[/b]
[list][*][i]The Baron[/i], Victor Gijsbers (2006)[/*:m]
[*][i]Blue Lacuna[/i], Aaron A. Reed (2008)[/*:m][/list:u]

[b]Eighth place -- 7 votes[/b]
[list][*][i]Savoir-Faire[/i], Emily Short (2002)[/*:m]
[*][i]Shrapnel[/i], Adam Cadre (2000)[/*:m][/list:u]

[b]Tenth place -- 6 votes[/b]
[list][*][i]Shade[/i], Andrew Plotkin (2000)[/*:m]
[*][i]Slouching towards Bedlam[/i], Star Foster and Daniel Ravipinto (2003)[/*:m]
[*][i]Trinity[/i], Brian Moriarty (1986)[/*:m]
[*][i]Varicella[/i], Adam Cadre (1999)[/*:m]
[*][i]Vespers[/i], Jason Devlin (2005)[/*:m]
[*][i]Violet[/i], Jeremy Freese (2008)[/*:m][/list:u]

[b]Sixteenth place -- 5 votes[/b]
[list][*][i]Galatea[/i], Emily Short (2000)[/*:m]
[*][i]The Gostak[/i], Carl Muckenhoupt (2001)[/*:m]
[*][i]The King of Shreds and Patches[/i], Jimmy Maher (2009)[/*:m]
[*][i]LASH -- Local Asynchronous Satellite Hookup[/i], Paul O'Brian (2000)[/*:m]
[*][i]Make it Good[/i], Jon Ingold (2009)[/*:m]
[*][i]Rameses[/i], Stephen Bond (2000)[/*:m][/list:u]

[b]Twenty-second place -- 4 votes[/b]
[list][*][i]Ad Verbum[/i], Nick Montfort (2000)[/*:m]
[*][i]Aisle[/i], Sam Barlow (1999)[/*:m]
[*][i]All things devours[/i], half sick of shadows (2004)[/*:m]
[*][i]City of Secrets[/i], Emily Short (2003)[/*:m]
[*][i]Curses![/i], Graham Nelson (1994)[/*:m]
[*][i]Fail-safe[/i], Jon Ingold (2000)[/*:m]
[*][i]Gun Mute[/i], C. E. J. Pacian (2008)[/*:m]
[*][i]Sunset over Savannah[/i], Ivan Cockrum (1997)[/*:m]
[*][i]Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom[/i], S. John Ross (2007)[/*:m]
[*][i]Wishbringer[/i], Brian Moriarty (1985)[/*:m]
[*][i]Worlds Apart[/i], Suzanne Britton (1999)[/*:m]
[*][i]Zork I[/i], Marc Blank and Dave Lebling (1980)[/*:m][/list:u]

[b]Thirty-fourth place -- 3 votes[/b]
[list][*][i]1893: A World's Fair Mystery[/i], Peter Nepstad (2002)[/*:m]
[*][i]Adventure[/i], William Crowther and Donald Woods (1976)[/*:m]
[*][i]Aotearoa[/i], Matt Wigdahl (2010)[/*:m]
[*][i]Arthur: the Quest for Excalibur[/i], Bob Bates (1989)[/*:m]
[*][i]Blue Chairs[/i], Chris Klimas (2004)[/*:m]
[*][i]Delightful Wallpaper[/i], Andrew Plotkin (2006)[/*:m]
[*][i]Eric the Unready[/i], Bob Bates (1993)[/*:m]
[*][i]Everybody Dies[/i], Jim Munroe (2008)[/*:m]
[*][i]The Guild of Thieves[/i], Rob Steggles (1987)[/*:m]
[*][i]Hoist Sail for the Heliopause and Home[/i], Andrew Plotkin (2010)[/*:m]
[*][i]Mentula Macanus: Apocolocyntosis[/i], Adam Thornton (2011)[/*:m]
[*][i]Planetfall[/i], Steve Meretzky (1983)[/*:m]
[*][i]So Far[/i], Andrew Plotkin (1996)[/*:m]
[*][i]Suveh Nux[/i], David Fisher (2007)[/*:m]
[*][i]The Warbler's Nest[/i], Jason McIntosh (2010)[/*:m][/list:u]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3267&start=10#p23098
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: List doors properly. How?
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2011-10-01 04:49:04

[quote="Felix"]Try defining the doors without the definite article! Then Inform will treat the names of the doors as true proper names and not as descriptions of doors.[/quote]

[quote="matt w"]Have a look at section 3.18 of the Inform documentation. As Felix said, if you just define everything in the source code as "Door E04" without any articles, then Inform should tack on "a" to the beginning of its name. And you can make sure this happens by saying "Door E04 is proper-named."[/quote]
Thanks you two.

This works great. Also thanks for the guidance to the documentation. I looked for it but didn't see it. My bad.

Thanks a bundle again!


BiB

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3272&start=0#p23099
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: [Results] The Interactive Fiction Top 50
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-01 04:53:46

Groovy; thank you. Will you be doing this as an annual just-before-the-comp poll?

Interesting to compare this to the IFDB star-ratings ... it feels like a few games ([i]Mulldoon Legacy[/i] and [i]Bronze [/i]for example) get a lot of love there but didn't make this list (and for the oldies, not a single member of the [i]Enchanter[/i] trilogy made the cut ...). I imagine, except at the very tip-top, the results will fluctuate interestingly from year to year (whereas the IFDB accumulates in persistent layers ...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3271&start=0#p23100
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Fighting Fantasy books on portable devices
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-01 04:59:09

Oooh, sweet. Some of those are groovy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3272&start=0#p23101
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: [Results] The Interactive Fiction Top 50
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-01 05:01:54

[quote="Ghalev"]Groovy; thank you. Will you be doing this as an annual just-before-the-comp poll?[/quote]
I was thinking about it doing it once every two years, but let's see.

[quote]Interesting to compare this to the IFDB star-ratings ... it feels like a few games ([i]Mulldoon Legacy[/i] and [i]Bronze [/i]for example) get a lot of love there but didn't make this list (and for the oldies, not a single member of the [i]Enchanter[/i] trilogy made the cut ...).[/quote]
[i]Bronze[/i] got two votes, and probably would have gotten more if Emily hadn't made so many other good games. [i]Mulldoon Legacy[/i] received no votes; [i]Enchanter[/i] and [i]Spellbreaker[/i] both received one.

[quote]I imagine, except at the very tip-top, the results will fluctuate interestingly from year to year (whereas the IFDB accumulates in persistent layers ...)[/quote]
Yes, it can fluctuate a lot more than the IFDB can. I also suspect that there are other differences; for instance, I wouldn't be surprised if on the IFDB, "polished but not really special" games will tend to get higher ratings than "special but not really polished" games, whereas in a top like this it would be the other way around.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3273&start=0#p23103
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Indexed text loses formatting information
User: elib / DateTime: 2011-10-01 05:24:58

Hi everyone --
I'm very new to Inform, and I must say I'm having a blast with it. Unfortunately I seem to be doing things the wrong way and/or being too demanding of the system (most likely the former).

The design goal I had in this particular scene is to have certain texts change dynamically according to a global state. That is, performing actions on certain objects would output some constant base text -- but as the player performs these actions, each printout would get more and more "corrupted". The "corruption level" is a property of The Stasis, our current scene. This value is incremented whenever a trigger action occurs.

To achieve this text behavior, I made a new phrase called "corrupted say":

[code]
To corrupted say (original - indexed text):
	Let replacements be words in row (corruption level of the stasis) of the Table of Word Substitutions;
	Let count be number of words in original;
	Let already-chosen be {0};
	Repeat with rep running through replacements:
		Let ran be 0;
		While ran is listed in already-chosen: [no duplicates]
			Let ran be a random number from 1 to count;
		Add ran to already-chosen;
		Replace word number ran in original with rep;
	Say original;
[/code]

This is pretty slow. But that's not what bothers me -- it's the fact that all my formatting is gone! In text passed to this phrase ("original"), I want to use things like [italic type]. As soon as indexed text is used, this is eradicated from the world.

Furthermore, when using Parchment, even [paragraph break] doesn't work. Instead, I get two asterisks **.

I tried using regular expressions to add my own symbols for paragraph breaks and have them Say'd. This slows things down greatly, and I was using up all the memory.

Is there a more elegant way to achieve this? If it were just one object being "corrupted", I could probably use [say phrases].

Thanks for your help!!
-Eli

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3252&start=10#p23104
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Wishlist for Comp 2011
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2011-10-01 06:49:38

[quote="Bainespal"][quote="matt w"]So I don't think Bainespal meant to be disparaging the quality of non-Inform games, just saying that ten games would be a lot for one comp and he doesn't expect that many to be entered.[/quote][/quote]
Thanks for clarifying that.  Finn, I'm sorry that I accidentally provoked you.

No need to be sorry. I't was entirely my fault. 

(A friend of mine in the US once told me that the reason the Americans didn't speak/learn a second language was because everybody speaks English. So why bother?
With that in mind I was geniually surprised when my wife and I drove to LA and got lost. I went into a gas station to ask for directions... The reply?
"No habla Englese"  Damned, for a minute I thought we'd crosed the border in the dark.  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3263&start=0#p23105
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Testing whether or not an activity is ongoing
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-01 07:17:34

[quote="ralphmerridew"]the first code (while listing contents) produces a call to TestActivity; the second produces a call to ForActivity.[/quote]
"... while listing contents" (and "if listing contents activity is going on …") apparently merely tests whether any of the acticvity's rulebook is currently running, 
whereas "if handling the listing contents activity" actually run the activity's for rules, if it has any; if it doesn't have any – and only then –, the program continues to execute the consequent.
(I confess that I never understood that chapter before, either.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3264&start=0#p23106
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Developing a new conversation extension
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2011-10-01 07:20:27

I am completely inexperienced, but it sounds great.

Crowds could be addressed. Meeetings designed.

I wonder whether one could make it a mystery as to who or what answered and leave it for the player to find out?

Could a Com-System be created with varying ranges?

Hmmm... the idea sound great.


BiB

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3272&start=0#p23107
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: [Results] The Interactive Fiction Top 50
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-01 07:38:00

Anyone who wants to point newcomers at this list might prefer to use the [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewcomp?id=oymvom4wrawhd4hr]IFDB page[/url] I just made, since it contains links to the IFDB game pages, which in turn contain links to game files or online play possibilities.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3270&start=0#p23108
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: CA_Pr and bad function calls
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-10-01 08:10:22

[quote="Dannii"]I'm not sure about this however, as the actually code which is in CA_Pr does not seem identical to what should have been compiled from veneer.c. Would the compiler optimise the veneer functions?[/quote]Veneer functions end up being treated exactly as if they were appended to the source file, so they're handled by the compiler exactly as it would any other code. Not sure that that helps, though...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3252&start=10#p23109
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Wishlist for Comp 2011
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-10-01 09:16:19

I once actually met a taxi driver who spoke English.  It was in Zurich.  (And I live in New York!)

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3264&start=0#p23110
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Developing a new conversation extension
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-10-01 09:20:15

The idea of multi-lateral conversation sounds great, but it implies that what each character says, presumably, would be based not only on what the PC said, but also what each of the other characters has already said.  Looking at the number of possible permutations with even a few characters involved, it strikes me that keeping the whole thing from getting out of control could be quite a task.  Good luck!

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3273&start=0#p23111
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indexed text loses formatting information
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-01 10:12:18

I think the problem with asterisks has been fixed in the most recent version of Parchment.

Styles are a more serious problem. As you discovered, indexed text is simply a list of characters, and doesn't support any kind of style information.

A possible idea: rather than indexed text, use a list of (ordinary) text, containing one per word. Use special words ("$ITALIC$", "$NORMAL$") for style markers. You can write a routine to print such a list efficiently, because comparing ordinary texts is fast. It will also be efficient to alter single words in the list.

Unfortunately this will be a nuisance to set up. You'll have to write code like {"This", "is", "the", "$ITALIC$", "room.",  "$NORMAL$"}.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2088&start=10#p23112
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Frotz updated
User: MikeG / DateTime: 2011-10-01 10:31:34

[quote="DavidK"]I'd be cautious about extrapolating from V6 back to V4-5: the V6 screen model is quite different, and a real nuisance on modern systems, where thinking of the display as simply a rectangular array of pixels isn't ideal. The standard should really also reflect reality, and the reality today is that, with both Glk-based interpreters and Javascript/browser based ones, resizing the status bar window will push the main text window down.[/quote]

  I realize V6 is extremely different; It certainly has given me no shortage of headaches while designing my interpreter. I was merely pointing out that the behavior is consistent in both V3 and V6 and also Infocom V4-5 interpreters which to me is a strong indicator we shouldn't be doing something completely different. Do you think the standard should be changed to reflect browser based interpeters? Changing this behavior in my interperter would be a very large amount of work I'd rather not think about, but would gladly do so if the standard were clarified in that direction.

  Pushing the text down raises some nasty questions which probably haven't been addressed fully. What happens if there is more text on the screen than will fit in the now smaller lower window? Is that text lost or does if reappear if I then shrink the upper window again? What if the text was actually printed in an upper window which was shrunk and then re-expanded? How might this affect V6 splits? Is this V5 specific or does it affect V4 too, despite the differences in their lower window cursor handling? Do all windows now 'own' text printed in them?

  If I sound like a broken record, I guess it's because I find it worrisome that z-code games have to take into account which interpreters they are likely to be played on and alter their behavior accordingly. The zmachine's strongest attribute has always been its near universality. I think the zmachine should be pushed towards more consistent behavior by clarifying vague portions of the standard rather than spawning divergent implementations.

[quote="cas"]Hah, I'll say (A) if only because I'd look for consistency with their “backport” of sound to V3.[/quote]
[quote="DavidK"]I'd suggest doing what Windows Frotz does, which is B.[/quote]

Hah, that sums up my dilemma nicely. From the standpoint of logical progression of zmachine features I agree with cas, but on the other hand Frotz is the de facto standard. I currently set the V3 flag, but now I'm leaning towards changing it. Maybe someone should write some V4 games which use sounds effects to force the issue.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3273&start=0#p23113
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indexed text loses formatting information
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2011-10-01 10:33:07

What's the algorithm for "change the nth word to ..."?  If it doesn't have any means of caching progress, then going over the full string will be O( (number of letters) * (number of words) * (cost of looking up a word) ).

For a speedup, how about:
- Put the text to be changed into one indexed text.
- Put the changed text into a second indexed text (or use StreamToArray or whatever it's called).
That'll knock the cost down to O ( (number of letters) + (number of words) * (cost of looking up a word) )

To deal with formatting codes, would this work:
- Declare an activity "Capturing Text to be Corrupted"
- Add say phrase To say bold type while Capturing Text to be Corrupting is going on: say "$BOLD$".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3274&start=0#p23114
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: understand 'verb noun' as 'other verb noun' problem in I7
User: noobish hat / DateTime: 2011-10-01 10:44:55

Hi all, just started using I7, so I don't really know what's going on. Anyway, I have a room with a grate in the floor. The grate is fixed in place, but can be opened. I want the game to understand 'move the grate' as 'open the grate', instead of just telling the player that the grate is fixed in place. Is this possible? Everything I have tried has not worked.

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3272&start=0#p23115
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: [Results] The Interactive Fiction Top 50
User: Al-Khwarizmi / DateTime: 2011-10-01 10:46:30

It's not surprising that the results are different from IFDB star ratings.

On the one hand, a star rating system measures quality, while a "choose your favourite(s)" system measures a mixture of quality and popularity, with popularity being a requisite. If a game is really good but hasn't been played by many, it can get good star ratings but it will never fare well in a "choose your favourite(s)" system.

On the other hand, a star rating computes a mean, while a "choose your favourite(s)" system only takes extremes (good ones) into account. A controversial game that is deemed excellent by some and terrible by others can get high in a "choose your favorite(s)" ranking, but will not do good in star ratings.

In the Spanish community we have always had a "choose your favourite(s)" annual competition, and we now have star ratings as well, and these effects are clearly visible if one compares the rankings.

What's better? I personally prefer star ratings, because I'm more interested in quality than in popularity, and the issue with controversial games mentioned above can be tackled with a histogram of ratings. But each system provides different information, so to each their own.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3274&start=0#p23116
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: understand 'verb noun' as 'other verb noun' problem in I
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-01 11:05:45

The command "move the grate" gets mapped to the action of pushing the grate, so this should work:

[code]Instead of pushing the grate: try opening the grate.[/code]

This will also map "push grate," "shift grate," "clear grate," and "press gate" to opening the grate. That's probably fine for your purposes, but if you don't want any of those to work, you probably have to do something a little more complicated starting with:

[code]Understand the command "move" as something new.[/code]

And you might also want this:

[code]Instead of pulling the grate: try opening the grate.[/code]

which will catch "pull grate" and "drag grate."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3274&start=0#p23117
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: understand 'verb noun' as 'other verb noun' problem in I
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-01 11:07:32

The command "move [something]" triggers the pushing action. You can redirect that action with an instead rule like [code]Instead of pushing the grate: try opening the grate[/code].
EDIT: Matt already said as much.

Alternatively you can have the game understand "move" in a new way when applied to doors or even to the grate specifically:
[code]Understand "move [door]" as opening[/code]
will let the player open any doors with the command MOVE,
[code]Understand "move [grate]" as opening[/code]
will let it open the grate (and nothing else) with that command.
EDIT: You can add such extra ways of understanding "move" without first having to declare it as something new; the context is a little a different in Matt’s example above.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3274&start=0#p23118
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: understand 'verb noun' as 'other verb noun' problem in I
User: noobish hat / DateTime: 2011-10-01 11:18:43

Thanks a whole hell of a lot guys, it worked perfectly! I used

 Understand "move [grate]" as opening

I had tried 

Understand "move grate" as "open grate"

but obviously that was wrong for several reasons.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3275&start=0#p23119
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: IF Horror?
User: MEMiller / DateTime: 2011-10-01 11:29:04

With the Halloween season beginning, I'd like to play a good IF horror game or two.  In years past, I've played and enjoyed The Lurking Horror, Theater and Anchorhead.  Any suggestions for other good ones?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3275&start=0#p23120
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror?
User: Mr. Patient / DateTime: 2011-10-01 11:50:39

I recommend [url=http://www.ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=9ntef9expou18abv]The King of Shreds and Patches[/url] and [url=http://www.ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=qgdgtaroybcdnmi]One Eye Open[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3275&start=0#p23121
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-01 11:52:11

[i]One Eye Open[/i] is pure horror; [i]Vespers[/i] probably counts as horror as well; [i]The King of Shreds and Patches[/i] is Lovecraftian horror, though a lot of the game is spent in relatively normal circumstances. All of these games are very much worth playing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3275&start=0#p23122
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror?
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-10-01 12:01:36

You might also want to check out ADRIFT's [url=http://ifwiki.org/index.php/Ectocomp]Ectocomp[/url] series.  It's a yearly competition held for Hallowe'en Speed-IF (written on a 3 hour limit).  Though its entries are seasonal rather than being based in genre (the comp gets many comedies), it has produced some games which are quite good, bite-sized horror.  I'll recommend one horror story from each year: The Forest House (2007), Drinks with Lord Hansom (2008), The Dangers of Driving at Night (2009), and I Was a Teenage Headless Experiment (2010).

No announcement has been made regarding this year's Ectocomp as of yet, but you might want to participate in the judging if that sort of thing floats your boat.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2088&start=10#p23123
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Frotz updated
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-01 12:48:50

[quote]Pushing the text down raises some nasty questions which probably haven't been addressed fully.[/quote]

The whole idea of "pushing down text" -- and I think I was the first person to tread that territory, in post-Infocom interpreters -- is based on the idea that the story window is a simple text buffer. It can be resized, and the text reflows. Resizing may be done by the user (resizing the whole game window), or as a result of the status line changing size (moving the story window's top margin).

From this perspective, it's not a behavior that has to be specified; it's observing the way interpreters work. Modern OSes (meaning, 1995 and later!) have text-buffer widgets. So does HTML. You don't want to fight those when you're building an interpreter, you want to use them. So text gets reflowed into a smaller space, and probably there are small differences between the way that works on different platforms, but the result should be acceptable on that platform no matter what.

This leaves a side issue of whether the top printed line gets covered up by the story window. That's unfortunate, but it's the kind of legacy issue that can't be eradicated except by declaring some interpreters Just Plain Wrong -- this isn't going to happen. Instead, we print some blank lines, and then both interpreter cases are handled with a minimum of pain.

(So, for the record, I don't think the Z-spec should have the language implying that one case is right and the other is wrong.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3275&start=0#p23124
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-10-01 13:25:32

[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=djxktpw8m6rph2iy]All Alone[/url] is slasher horror; short but effective. One of my personal favorites. (See also [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=z5xgyw0jbt9r3ah1]Babel[/url], which is not quite horror though it has some terrifying moments.)

[url=http://leadlightgame.com/]Leadlight[/url] is survival horror; quite atmospheric if necessarily a bit terse.

[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=7t22wbllftv7nuiw]Lydia's Heart[/url] is comparable to Anchorhead in scope, but sacrifices some tension in favor of more puzzles.

[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=he5spzmz6vr4dgej]The Warbler's Nest[/url] is creepy, and recommended.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3275&start=0#p23125
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-10-01 13:52:50

I also enjoyed the very brief but creepy [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=aqtol7ejlzadgnsz]Ecdysis[/url] by Peter Nepstad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2088&start=10#p23126
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Frotz updated
User: MikeG / DateTime: 2011-10-01 15:36:43

[quote="zarf"]This leaves a side issue of whether the top printed line gets covered up by the story window.[/quote]
I'm not sure I follow. Is that a different issue?

Your other points are interesting. I've been working on my zmachine library with a bunch of different goals in mind. One of them is to encapsulate as much zmachine behavior as possible while still allowing flexibility in the front end implmentation. As such I try not to lock my library into behavior not required by the standard, but one of my assumptions was that 'windows' only exist within the zmachine and the front end knows almost nothing about them. Instead, when text is written the zmachine specifies the region of the display it can be written to and whether or not it should scroll, be buffered, etc. This works fine as long as you assume text doesn't 'belong' to any window once it is displayed, otherwise it won't work. Maybe I should rethink it. Trying to decide what the zmachine knows and/or owns as opposed to the front end has been a huge pain.

I'd love some feedback on how to improve my library. The code is at [url]http://grue.codeplex.com[/url] if anyone wants to look. I have a sample console app front end but the code isn't on the site with the library. I could send it to anyone interested though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3277&start=0#p23128
Forum: Competitions / Subject: IFComp 2011 is on!
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2011-10-01 17:24:35

The games are all up and available from <a class="postlink" href="http://ifcomp.org/">http://ifcomp.org/</a> or your friendly local IF Archive mirror. One change this year: authors will be allowed to update their games during the competition. I'll be posting updated games at least once a week during the competition.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3277&start=0#p23129
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 is on!
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-10-01 17:33:39

There are so many of them! I am psyched.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3277&start=0#p23130
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 is on!
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-10-01 17:40:04

Hooray! Congratulations and good luck to all the entrants.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3277&start=0#p23131
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 is on!
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-10-01 17:51:13

[quote="Sargent"] One change this year: authors will be allowed to update their games during the competition.[/quote]
[i]be still, my heart ![/i]

This is the best news.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3277&start=0#p23132
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 is on!
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-10-01 17:53:29

Lots of games this year. Nice [emote]:)[/emote]

If anyone wants to play my humble effort, please download it. The online version doesn't play correctly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3277&start=0#p23133
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 is on!
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-01 17:57:26

Breaking tradition, I actually went and looked at the list of games right away and ...

"Edmund Wells!" Ha! The author of such classics David Coperfield (the one with one 'p') finally turns his able hand to interactive fiction [emote]:)[/emote]

Is there a "coolest/geekiest pseudonym" award? Because that wins. Now all we need is one by Gertrude Perkins.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3275&start=0#p23134
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-01 18:03:24

[quote="MEMiller"]With the Halloween season beginning, I'd like to play a good IF horror game or two.  In years past, I've played and enjoyed The Lurking Horror, Theater and Anchorhead.  Any suggestions for other good ones?[/quote]

I'll add another vote for King of Shreds and Patches. Though, depending on your definition of horror, I'd say Rameses is still the pinnacle of horror in IF [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3277&start=0#p23135
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 is on!
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2011-10-01 18:30:27

[quote="David Whyld"]Lots of games this year. Nice [emote]:)[/emote]

If anyone wants to play my humble effort, please download it. The online version doesn't play correctly.[/quote]

Would you like me to remove the "Play Online" link for your game?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3277&start=0#p23136
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 is on!
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-10-01 18:46:29

Also, if you send me the details I'll take a look.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3275&start=0#p23137
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-01 18:54:30

I like [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=0f4x5i2elojxez6l]The Act of Misdirection[/url] by Callico Harrison quite a lot. (This one is short and not very puzzle-heavy, though working out exactly what has happened is non-trivial.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3277&start=0#p23138
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 is on!
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-10-01 18:58:25

[quote="Sargent"]The games are all up and available from <a class="postlink" href="http://ifcomp.org/">http://ifcomp.org/</a> or your friendly local IF Archive mirror. One change this year: authors will be allowed to update their games during the competition. I'll be posting updated games at least once a week during the competition.[/quote]
Sweet! Looks like quite the line-up.

PLQ.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3252&start=10#p23139
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Wishlist for Comp 2011
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-10-01 19:10:27

Well... I got two of my wishes were granted straight off!  I'm thrilled that to see that the number of games falls into the range that I wished for!  I thought that was about the maximum number that was reasonable to hope for, and we made it!  Also, I'll say that twelve non-Inform games counts as "a good ten or so"!  [emote];)[/emote] 

Thanks to all the authors who entered!  You've made some of my wishes come true.  And to us who dropped out... let's wish to make the our full visions for our games come to life and to make them even better than they would have been!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3277&start=0#p23140
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 is on!
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-10-01 19:12:44

This certainly looks like a better than average contest already.  For some time, I've felt that the holiday season really starts on October 1st with the release of the IF Comp games, but I'm more excited than usual this year. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3277&start=10#p23141
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 is on!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-01 20:22:45

A request for the comp organizers (that is, Sargent) -- can you make it a little clearer how to find the blurbs? I got to [url=http://www.ifcomp.org/comp11/info.php]this page[/url] and didn't realize I had to click "Show all" to see the blurbs; I thought it meant "Show all game titles" or something like that. Perhaps you could add a line near the "Show all" button explaining what it does a bit more?

Also, I assume you have to download the game files to get the feelies -- they aren't online anywhere? I dimly remember looking at the map for Byzantine Perspective online, but I guess it had its own website. EDIT: They're on the if-archive, duh.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3277&start=10#p23142
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 is on!
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-01 20:39:19

Why, on the IF Comp page, do the blurbs about each piece say if the game was made with TADS 2 or 3, but not say if the Adrift games were made with 4 or 5? 

(Er, and let me add YAY IF-COMP! so I don't look an ungrateful arse.)

I'm also tickled that, as much as Inform had been dominating the IF Comp in recent years, its name doesn't actually appear on said page, just Z or Glulx. 

Alan: 1
Adrift: 3
"web": 3
Quest: 1
TADS3: 1
TADS2: 2
Windows: 1

Total non-Inform: 12, of 38, or about 32%, which, 32 is a power of 2, the 5th, and so, is an auspicious number. 

EDIT:  Hitting that SHOW ALL button is the first thing I always do upon reaching the page.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3277&start=10#p23143
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 is on!
User: vivdunstan / DateTime: 2011-10-01 20:48:19

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]EDIT:  Hitting that SHOW ALL button is the first thing I always do upon reaching the page.[/quote]

I don't think I've ever done it before, which would make this the first year I've ever seen the blurbs on the site. And I've been voting in IF Comp since it started.

I'd echo the request to make the blurbs more obvious. I only realised there were blurbs, and I was missing them and needed to look much harder, after Emily's blog post about the pros and cons of different types of blurbs this year.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3278&start=0#p23144
Forum: Competitions / Subject: IFComp 2011 - 'Six' files note
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-10-01 21:05:55

In the initial zip downloads of the comp games, my glulx game 'Six' has two files in its directory that were generated upon a test play by comp organisers and which should not be there, since they're meant to be generated by the player's own computer. These files are 'sixdata1' and 'sixdata2'. Please delete those files before you play the game so that you get a fresh configuration for your computer. Thank you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3280&start=0#p23146
Forum: Competitions / Subject: IFComp 2011 - 'The Guardian' feelies in archive
User: LuteinHawthorne / DateTime: 2011-10-01 22:35:24

Hello,

There are some feelies for The Guardian including an instruction book, walkthrough, and opening and closing music that were missing from the Play Online version of the game which appeared this morning.  The manual is in a pdf format and has some introductory material as well as a brief essay on how to play which might provide help to a beginner trying he game.

(If anyone needs the text of the manual, please contact me here or at my email address, luteinhawthorne at gmail dot com and I can send you a text file of it.

Also, it's not really stated in the game or instruction book included in the directory, but the two music files are for listening to at the beginning of the game [spoiler](the "opening" ideally in an underground, dimly lit location)[/spoiler] and after finishing the quest.

If you might be hard of hearing or do not care to listen to music, here is a summary in text of what the music is like:

The opening music is [spoiler]a melancholy rondo with trumpets and xylophone,[/spoiler] and the closing music is[spoiler]a much elaborated variation of the primary theme, which is then repeated. A string quartet is introduced, leading to a sombre but calm conclusion.[/spoiler]

EDIT: The files are also here -> <a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2011/zcode/guardian/">http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/gam ... /guardian/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3277&start=10#p23147
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 is on!
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-10-01 23:52:01

[quote="Sargent"][quote="David Whyld"]Lots of games this year. Nice [emote]:)[/emote]

If anyone wants to play my humble effort, please download it. The online version doesn't play correctly.[/quote]

Would you like me to remove the "Play Online" link for your game?[/quote]

Well, this is weird, I'd rather recommend playing it on-line rather than downloading it! I mean, I've just finished it using the web runner [spoiler](scoring 11 points out of 22, so I could give it another try!)[/spoiler] but the off-line Adrift runner version 5.0 couldn't handle the game at all. Right after [spoiler]entering the building[/spoiler] the screen would go totally messed, just like it was loading the wrong font or something that made it unreadable. I tried using a 4.0 runner I had on a dusty corner of my hard drive, but it demmanded an ancient richtextbox ocx long forgotten by Windows 7.

Nice game, by the way! At least I could reach the end, and I could vote it if I decide to act as judge this year (I voted a handful of comps ago and I've just checked my mail and password are still active!  [emote]:D[/emote] )

--

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3281&start=0#p23148
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: ALAN3 going beta
User: AnssiR / DateTime: 2011-10-02 02:06:25

This news fresh from <a class="postlink" href="http://www.alanif.se">www.alanif.se</a> :

With the IF highlight of the year (IFCOMP voting period) coming up, Alan is keeping up and after a period of alpha testing, and is now released as the first public BETA version. (The first beta was never released to the public.)

Alan v3.0 beta2 adds some functionality to the language, corrects a few bugs, and comes with a completely new standard library. But it also delivers drop-in interpreters for Gargoyle on the three major platforms, Windows, MacOSX and Linux. So now you can not only have a new version of the complete Alan system, directly from the developers, but also support for the latest Alan games in your favourite interpreter.

Read the new manual, have a look at the changes and go to download your selection of Alan software!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3277&start=10#p23149
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 is on!
User: rotter / DateTime: 2011-10-02 02:19:46

Good luck to all the authors.  Looking forward to playing them (or as many as I can get through!).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3277&start=10#p23150
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 is on!
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-10-02 02:34:00

[quote="Sargent"][quote="David Whyld"]Lots of games this year. Nice [emote]:)[/emote]

If anyone wants to play my humble effort, please download it. The online version doesn't play correctly.[/quote]

Would you like me to remove the "Play Online" link for your game?[/quote]

Please. The game can still be finished, but it generates an error message when trying to take an item which you should be able to take.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3277&start=10#p23151
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 is on!
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-10-02 02:34:43

[quote="Campbell"]Also, if you send me the details I'll take a look.[/quote]

GET CHAIR in the ground floor location doesn't work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3277&start=10#p23152
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 is on!
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-10-02 02:38:33

[quote="rockersuke"]Well, this is weird, I'd rather recommend playing it on-line rather than downloading it! I mean, I've just finished it using the web runner[/quote]

It can still be finished but generates an error message when trying to take an item, which the offline version doesn't.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3277&start=10#p23153
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 is on!
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-10-02 03:07:55

[quote="David Whyld"][quote="Campbell"]Also, if you send me the details I'll take a look.[/quote]

GET CHAIR in the ground floor location doesn't work.[/quote]Ok. Will see if I can get that fixed ASAP.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3277&start=10#p23154
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 is on!
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-10-02 03:38:54

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3270&start=0#p23155
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: CA_Pr and bad function calls
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-10-02 04:34:58

I found the source of the bug: bad branch addresses. The code that processed branches is given a branch address, but at that stage it can't tell if it was originally, for example, 0x40 or 0x0040, which are two very different addresses (remember that 0x40 in the first byte indicates a single byte address, so it would be 0/rfalse, while the second would be +38.) So I shifted some code around and now it processes the branch address while it still knows whether it was a byte or a word.

ZVM is now passing a substantial amount of Praxix, so I think it will soon be ready for some serious testing. [emote]:)[/emote] I'll be adding it to Parchment soon too, but Gnusto will remain the default for the time being.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3282&start=0#p23156
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Get yer ALAN update here, piping hot!
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-10-02 05:02:37

For the ALAN game in the comp, the beta version of ALAN with which it was written (instructions are included with the game on updating to that) will probably suffice, but ALAN's developer has released a whole new version of ALAN just now, of which you should probably avail yourselves:

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3281">viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3281</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3277&start=20#p23157
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 is on!
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-10-02 05:20:58

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Why, on the IF Comp page, do the blurbs about each piece say if the game was made with TADS 2 or 3, but not say if the Adrift games were made with 4 or 5? [/quote]
Because (as you note with Inform, and can also be noted with Umdum), it doesn't say which system was made to create the games. It says which system you need to play them.

I assume. (Not being a comp organiser in any way.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3277&start=20#p23158
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 is on!
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-10-02 05:28:01

[quote="Campbell"]Ok. Will see if I can get that fixed ASAP.[/quote]This should now work ok.  Please let me know if you spot anything else.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3283&start=0#p23159
Forum: Competitions / Subject: IFComp 2011 - Kerkerkruip files note
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-02 07:41:33

In the initial zip file offered for download on the IF Comp website, the Kerkerkruip directory contains three files which were generated by the competition organisers playing the game: KerkerkruipData, KerkerkruipAchievements and KerkerkruipSaves. Please delete these three files before you start playing! Otherwise the game will start in hard mode.

(As a tester for the game, I can guarantee you that you don't want it starting in hard mode.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3283&start=0#p23160
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 - Kerkerkruip files note
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-10-02 08:29:40

I would like to see the games rebundled. Not everyone's going to come to this forum and that's 2 games negatively affected.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3283&start=0#p23161
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 - Kerkerkruip files note
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-02 08:36:58

I think that's reasonable -- have you asked Stephen Granade to do it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3283&start=0#p23162
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 - Kerkerkruip files note
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-10-02 08:37:54

I said something last night Australian time, but I assume he's asleep now, or perhaps being struck by the first rays of the day [emote]:)[/emote] - okay, I just sent a note asking for the games to be rezipped, also mentioning the issue with Kerk's files.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3283&start=0#p23163
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 - Kerkerkruip files note
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-02 08:44:35

Or being mugged by his kids.  [emote]:D[/emote]

[Also, didn't you send it tomorrow night Australian time? Or have I got that backwards?]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3252&start=10#p23164
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Wishlist for Comp 2011
User: ptimony / DateTime: 2011-10-02 10:46:48

I've got your B level Sci Fi covered, but I hope it's better than mediocre! Try Death of Schlig!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3284&start=0#p23165
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Changing descriptions
User: noobish hat / DateTime: 2011-10-02 11:02:10

Hi, me again. I'm trying to change some descriptions in my game after a certain action is performed. I was rather hoping I could do this without using If clauses. I had

After action is performed:
           say "blah blah blah"; now the door is open; now the object has the description "blah blah blah"

The list of consequences to the action is actually longer in the game, and everything else is working fine (objects are moving and appearing properly), but I'm getting an error message about the new description, which I think means it was expecting a condition to be given (for the change to occur?), but surely the condition is the action being performed, hence the change appearing after the semi-colon.

Any help?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3284&start=0#p23166
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing descriptions
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2011-10-02 11:16:08

Try [code]now the description of object is "...";[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3277&start=20#p23167
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 is on!
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-10-02 11:18:03

Re the Quest 5 game in the IFComp: is it possible to change the default colour and font? I couldn't find an option for it in game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3284&start=0#p23168
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing descriptions
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-02 11:18:58

I think you want:

[code]Now the description of the object is "blah blah blah."[/code]

(Assuming you've got a specific object named in there -- if your rule could apply to different things, then you'd want "Now the description of the noun...."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3277&start=20#p23169
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 is on!
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-10-02 11:25:39

[quote="rockersuke"]Well, this is weird, I'd rather recommend playing it on-line rather than downloading it! I mean, I've just finished it using the web runner [spoiler](scoring 11 points out of 22, so I could give it another try!)[/spoiler] but the off-line Adrift runner version 5.0 couldn't handle the game at all. Right after [spoiler]entering the building[/spoiler] the screen would go totally messed, just like it was loading the wrong font or something that made it unreadable. I tried using a 4.0 runner I had on a dusty corner of my hard drive, but it demmanded an ancient richtextbox ocx long forgotten by Windows 7.[/quote]

The display is bugged in the version of ADRIFT 5 I tested the game with (though hopefully this has since been fixed) which sounds like the problem you ran into here. The main reason I'd prefer online play being disabled is because the game was written with ADRIFT 4 and, when played online, it's automatically updated to ADRIFT 5, and this introduces several bugs. The game can still be finished, but you'll run into error messages and you'll also see the letter "S" displayed three times on either of the location description. Not to mention the font going haywire in the second location. 

If you download the latest version of the ADRIFT 4 Runner from the main site - <a class="postlink" href="http://www.adrift.co/files/ADRIFT40r.zip">http://www.adrift.co/files/ADRIFT40r.zip</a> - you should be able to play the game just fine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3285&start=0#p23170
Forum: Competitions / Subject: [SPOILER] Spider and Web: Uh, which puzzle?
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-10-02 11:26:08

Yesterday I took the time to play through Spider and Web, seeing as it won the IF Top 50 <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3272">viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3272</a>

A number of people in the competition thread talked about the game's framing device, but many mentioned one [i]particular[/i] puzzle, e.g. VictorGijsbers said it had "the most brilliant puzzle in interactive fiction."

I beat the game, but I guess I missed the brilliance of that puzzle, because I have no idea which puzzle everybody's talking about! Which puzzle is it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3285&start=0#p23171
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: [SPOILER] Spider and Web: Uh, which puzzle?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-02 11:27:04

It's the one where you

[spoiler]break out of the interrogation chair.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3247&start=0#p23172
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: jimmy1988
User: Merk / DateTime: 2011-10-02 11:30:42

I'll check it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3247&start=0#p23174
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: jimmy1988
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-10-02 11:35:10

If a username or email address shows up here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.stopforumspam.com/search">http://www.stopforumspam.com/search</a>

which it does, then It's a sure bet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3287&start=0#p23175
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: ADRIFT Forum Linked Here
User: Merk / DateTime: 2011-10-02 11:35:20

A more complete forum for ADRIFT discussion can be found here (link provided by Campbell).

<a class="postlink" href="http://forum.adrift.co">http://forum.adrift.co</a>

ADRIFT discussion is also completely welcome and on-topic here in "Other Development Systems."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3277&start=20#p23176
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 is on!
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-10-02 11:36:26

[quote="David Whyld"]...and you'll also see the letter "S" displayed three times on either of the location description. Not to mention the font going haywire in the second location.[/quote]This is down to the browser not displaying certain fonts correctly.  If you use Chrome it seems to display fine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3288&start=0#p23177
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Quest Forum Linked Here
User: Merk / DateTime: 2011-10-02 11:38:41

Here is a link to the Quest development system forum (link provided by Campbell).

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.textadventures.co.uk/forum/">http://www.textadventures.co.uk/forum/</a>

Quest discussion is also completely welcome and on-topic here in "Other Development Systems."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3284&start=0#p23178
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing descriptions
User: noobish hat / DateTime: 2011-10-02 11:39:59

Thanks so much, that sorted everything. It's so picky!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3089&start=0#p23179
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Allow unregistered users to search
User: Merk / DateTime: 2011-10-02 11:44:42

I think guest searches are disabled intentionally, but I don't remember why. I think it had something to do with bots, but I don't recall. I can try turning it on and see if there's any kind of issue as a result.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3089&start=0#p23180
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Allow unregistered users to search
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-10-02 11:52:07

This is to prevent DOS attacks by bots. Too many simultaneous searches will hog the database, slowing the forum to a crawl. This is usually a concern for large sites with lots of enemies. I'd say intfiction.org isn't in anybody's KOS list [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2088&start=20#p23182
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Windows Frotz updated
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-10-02 12:15:39

[quote="MikeG"]If I sound like a broken record, I guess it's because I find it worrisome that z-code games have to take into account which interpreters they are likely to be played on and alter their behavior accordingly. The zmachine's strongest attribute has always been its near universality. I think the zmachine should be pushed towards more consistent behavior by clarifying vague portions of the standard rather than spawning divergent implementations.[/quote]I guess this comes down to whether you think the spec should be descriptive or proscriptive. It certainly started life as descriptive ("this is what Infocom interpreters do") and the trouble with trying to make it proscriptive is that you're not likely to achieve very much: people like Gargoyle, people like Parchment, and saying "these interpreters don't follow the rules" isn't likely to cause anything to change. If we could ever get everyone to agree on a spec change it would have to be to make this sort of behaviour less tightly defined, not more.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3089&start=0#p23183
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Allow unregistered users to search
User: Merk / DateTime: 2011-10-02 12:48:45

I set the guest search limit to 2 seconds, and there's a setting to disable searching if the Linux load average gets too high. I set this to 1.5 (150%) which probably won't matter given that only 1 guest search is allowed every 2 seconds.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3277&start=20#p23185
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 is on!
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-10-02 14:01:55

[quote="David Whyld"]Re the Quest 5 game in the IFComp: is it possible to change the default colour and font? I couldn't find an option for it in game.[/quote]

I've specifically asked the maintainer of Quest 5 for that option. I would assume he thought it was too low priority. I beg to disagree, and am glad to see the issue raised - customization of text is of the utmost importance in IF.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3278&start=0#p23186
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 - 'Six' files note
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2011-10-02 14:47:55

This has been fixed in the competition .zip and .exe files and on the archive, and has been mentioned in the competition news feed. Sorry for the mistake.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3283&start=0#p23187
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 - Kerkerkruip files note
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2011-10-02 14:48:15

This (and the problem with the Six data files) has been fixed in the competition .zip and .exe files and on the archive, and has been mentioned in the competition news feed. Sorry for the mistake.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3273&start=0#p23188
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indexed text loses formatting information
User: elib / DateTime: 2011-10-02 14:49:43

[quote="zarf"]I think the problem with asterisks has been fixed in the most recent version of Parchment.[/quote]

Perfect, it sure does. Thanks!! As for your text list solution, maybe I could automate generating that somehow, with an external script perhaps.

[quote="ralphmerridew"]What's the algorithm for "change the nth word to ..."? If it doesn't have any means of caching progress, then going over the full string will be O( (number of letters) * (number of words) * (cost of looking up a word) ).

For a speedup, how about:
- Put the text to be changed into one indexed text.
- Put the changed text into a second indexed text (or use StreamToArray or whatever it's called).
That'll knock the cost down to O ( (number of letters) + (number of words) * (cost of looking up a word) )[/quote]

Thanks for the reply! I don't know how "Change the nth word to ..." is implemented. It comes standard with Inform. I think the slowdown comes from using indexed text in general. Every consecutive run gets slower and slower.

I think I understand what you mean with the "Capturing" idea, but I don't know what I would do with an indexed text with $BOLD$ in it. I'd be back at square one with chopping indexed texts up and saying them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3277&start=20#p23191
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 is on!
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2011-10-02 17:27:26

[quote="matt w"]A request for the comp organizers (that is, Sargent) -- can you make it a little clearer how to find the blurbs? I got to [url=http://www.ifcomp.org/comp11/info.php]this page[/url] and didn't realize I had to click "Show all" to see the blurbs; I thought it meant "Show all game titles" or something like that. Perhaps you could add a line near the "Show all" button explaining what it does a bit more?[/quote]

Done. See if it's better now.

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Why, on the IF Comp page, do the blurbs about each piece say if the game was made with TADS 2 or 3, but not say if the Adrift games were made with 4 or 5?[/quote]

Because TADS games originally needed different interpreters to run them, and I thought that ADRIFT 5 was backwards-compatible with 4, which appears not to be the case. I'll fix that next year.

David, I've disabled online play for your game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3277&start=20#p23192
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 is on!
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-10-02 17:54:44

From what I understand, Adrift 5 aims to be fully backwards compatible - with version 4 and even 3.90 (and if I had my way, 3.80, but I should be realistic). But it's a slow process in that the major bugs have been either tracked or squashed... and what's left is almost a game-per-game comparison to see everything that, in THAT particular game, SHOULD work but doesn't. Add to that the fact that every single major version of Adrift has NOT been backwards compatible...

I mean, I accidently found out that 3.90 games played on 5 seem to lose their "examine me" responses. How's that for arbitrary and hard to track. 

Unfortunately, the game that got into the major comp seemed to hit a major unidentified bug...

Mind you, Campbell specifically created a thread where he asked comp participants about their bugs so that comp games would have the highest priority in bugfixing. It's not for lack of effort. Just bad luck.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3273&start=0#p23196
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indexed text loses formatting information
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-02 18:48:04

I have an extension called Output Filtering on the Inform site which has a section of code that does this.  You might be able to steal and modify that.  

Just an idea.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3273&start=0#p23198
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indexed text loses formatting information
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2011-10-02 19:24:10

It's not so much "indexed text" is slow as "doing certain things with indexed text" is slow, and you're doing some of those slow things.

For example, inserting a character in the middle of the string will force it to copy over every character after that.
Finding the nth word may well force it to count through every character up to that point.
Finding word 1, then finding word 2, ... then finding word 50, will force it to iterate through most of the string many times.

With my method, you'll iterate over each character once.  And just before the final output, whenever you hit a $, scan forward until you hit the next $, then call the appropriate function based on whatever was in the middle.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3252&start=10#p23199
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Wishlist for Comp 2011
User: LuteinHawthorne / DateTime: 2011-10-02 19:29:13

Might I ask about the Authors Forum?  Is it on the site here somewhere?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3277&start=20#p23200
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 is on!
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2011-10-02 20:12:33

Ah oh. Thanks for the information.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3252&start=10#p23201
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Wishlist for Comp 2011
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2011-10-02 20:15:07

It is, though private. I've added you to it, and any other authors who are on here who want to be added are free to PM me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3292&start=0#p23202
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: What do you play IF on?
User: George / DateTime: 2011-10-02 20:18:06

With the Comp in full swing and [url=http://www.filfre.net/2011/09/the-king-of-shreds-and-patches-kindle-edition/]other recent announcements[/url], I've been thinking lately about what kind of devices we use to play IF and what particular kind of IF --  parser IF, CYOA, etcetera -- we're playing on those devices. There have been [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422#p2468]some threads here[/url] about the topic but my questions are very general.

So I'd like to take an informal poll of sorts about:

[b]1. What specific platform do you use to play IF -- for example, Windows, iOS, Kindle, Android, Nintendo DS, and which phone, tablet, and laptop?
[/b]
[b]2. How do you rate your experience on those devices, and how would you like to see it improved if at all?
[/b]
[b]3. What kind of IF are you playing on a particular device? Only CYOA on Kindle? Big Inform games only on PC?[/b]

[b]4. What is missing from your platform of choice that you'd like to see?
[/b]

For myself, I only play on a PC, usually at a desk, which unfortunately takes some of the fun out of playing -- I'm keen to find something more suitable but I'd like to survey the landscape a bit first.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3292&start=0#p23205
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: What do you play IF on?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-02 21:10:40

[quote="George"]What specific platform do you use to play IF -- for example, Windows, iOS, Kindle, Android, Nintendo DS, and which phone, tablet, and laptop?[/quote]

I have used the following in recent years:
 * GameBoy Advance SP (the model some fans refer to as the SP2, and what Nintendo just called the SP with a backlight).
 * Nintendo DS Lite
 * Netbook (eeePC), running Windows XP
 * Desktop Computer With Ridiculously Large Monitor, running Windows 7
 * Samsung Galaxy S Smartphone, Android

[quote]How do you rate your experience on those devices, and how would you like to see it improved if at all?[/quote]

* GBA was impressively good; super-portable, impressive keyboard alternative, and the GBA Frotz port could play virtually any z-machine game I could throw at it (a few were slow; most weren't). Sadly, my GBA died.
* Nintendo DS Lite is very good; all the benefits of the GBA port with touch-screen advantages. Z-machine only, but excellent for that.
* Netbook is good. I do more IF-writing on it than IF-playing, but it's good for both. Of the "real" computers I play on, I use the netbook more than the home desktop.
* Desktop is okay (once I made the fonts sufficiently huge and grudgingly accepted that Windows Frotz no longer supports widescreen monitors the way it used to). The main thing I'd improve is some kind of toggle in Windows Frotz to let it support widescreen monitors the way it used to [emote]:([/emote]
* Smartphone: In theory this would be my favorite device for IF. I prefer playing on small portables, and the phone has Swype, which allows for astonishingly quick "typing" via touchscreen twiddling. But the state of the art in IF 'terps on an Android phone is still "a couple of apps that aren't 100% there yet ..." at least that I know of. Twisty has no Swype support and crashes on a lot of ordinary games. Hunky Punk has Swype support and other nice features but stumbles over long text-dumps due to a scrolling bug of some kind. Support outside z-code is minimal and mostly limited to browser-based stuff instead of native apps.

[quote]What kind of IF are you playing on a particular device? Only CYOA on Kindle? Big Inform games only on PC?[/quote]

Only z-code on the portables due to support issues.

[quote]What is missing from your platform of choice that you'd like to see?
[/quote]

My platform of choice would be my Android phone. See above.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3256&start=0#p23207
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6 question: what was the "special token" used for?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-02 21:37:38

Oh, except it's still used today for the testing commands SHOWME and TEST.   Well no matter, I can expose it as a useful understand token easily.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3277&start=20#p23208
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 is on!
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-02 21:43:01

[quote="Trumgottist"]Because (as you note with Inform, and can also be noted with Umdum), it doesn't say which system was made to create the games. It says which system you need to play them.[/quote]

ooooh.  OK, thanks.  In retrospect that seems so obvious.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3292&start=0#p23214
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: What do you play IF on?
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2011-10-03 00:43:29

I currently play most of my games on either my Windows computer (Laptop, XP), or my Linux computer (Desktop, Ubuntu 10.04), though before I got my current phone, I played on my Palm Treo (Windows CE). I haven't played a lot of games, but there you have it.
The Windows machine obviously plays anything out there, because everyone uses Windows.
The Linux box will play *almost* everything, thought it has troubles with a few interpreters (ADRIFT, for one).
I only ever played TADS games on my windows phone, but it worked really well.

Most of the games I've played lately have been TADS or just EXEs, since that's what I've been working with the most.

Improvement? Definitely stuff for Android. I have a Droid, and that keyboard would be very useful for text adventures.
More Linux support, too; TADS has a good interpreter, but some others, not so much.
Better online support - the javascript interpreters are great, but I'd like to see something a little more robust (though what, I've no idea; Java applets are going the way of the dodo...)
Some sort of wrapper. There are a jillion different interpreters out there (it seems), and trying to figure out what game goes with which interpreter is a right pain. If there were some black box that I could throw a file into, and it would open the correct program automatically, that would be a huge step forward for me. If it would index all the games automatically, that would be even better.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3277&start=30#p23216
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 is on!
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-10-03 02:03:48

[quote="Peter Pears"]From what I understand, Adrift 5 aims to be fully backwards compatible - with version 4 and even 3.90 (and if I had my way, 3.80, but I should be realistic). But it's a slow process in that the major bugs have been either tracked or squashed... and what's left is almost a game-per-game comparison to see everything that, in THAT particular game, SHOULD work but doesn't. Add to that the fact that every single major version of Adrift has NOT been backwards compatible...

I mean, I accidently found out that 3.90 games played on 5 seem to lose their "examine me" responses. How's that for arbitrary and hard to track. 

Unfortunately, the game that got into the major comp seemed to hit a major unidentified bug...

Mind you, Campbell specifically created a thread where he asked comp participants about their bugs so that comp games would have the highest priority in bugfixing. It's not for lack of effort. Just bad luck.[/quote]

My game was written with ADRIFT 4 but I tested it with ADRIFT 5 and ran into errors which didn't exist if you played it with ADRIFT 4. Some of these issues were fixed in a new release but others were introduced and with the IFComp deadline looming and ADRIFT 5 still a work in progress, I thought it best if people didn't play it with ADRIFT 5 at all. I even included a note in the READ ME file indicating that people are better off playing my game in ADRIFT 4, but unfortunately when you select online play you don't see the READ ME and the game is automatically converted to ADRIFT 5. I never knew that online play would be enabled because the ADRIFT WebRunner is a very new feature and as such there was no option to test my game with it beforehand to see how well it played.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3295&start=0#p23217
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Beta testers for "maybe make some change"
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-10-03 02:22:22

So, I realized a little too late that the timing of this is awful (what with IF comp and all) but... anyone want to do some last-minute testing?

I'm about ready for a public release of the piece I showed a prototype of in the IF Demo Fair earlier this year (it was called "what if im the bad guy" at that point). It's based on a sad true story set in the war in Afghanistan, so don't be expecting a fun romp, but it's also fairly short and should be playable in 15-30 minutes. I'm mainly looking for technical, "does it work right" feedback, although higher-level comments are always welcome. It will be released in two forms: a browser-based version using fancy bells and whistles, and a simpler Glulx port (but still using multimedia). Testing on both or either version is appreciated.

Please PM or e-mail if you're interested, and thanks very much in advance.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3292&start=0#p23218
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: What do you play IF on?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-10-03 02:35:55

I play on a Linux desktop. No mobile or laptop or kindle or whatever. I'm not interested in getting one either.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3292&start=0#p23220
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: What do you play IF on?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-10-03 03:13:43

I play on a MacBook, and with Frotz on the iPhone. (Though my old iPhone recently died. I haven't decided what to replace it with - I'll wait for the iPhone 5 first.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3297&start=0#p23223
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Return to Camelot
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2011-10-03 03:42:09

I don't know if this is the right forum for this.
But I just thought I'd let you know that if any of you should take a shot at "RtC" I suggest you download the game.
It should run ok playing online, but the RtC zip file contains the hint file, a walk-through and a map.
Just thought I'd let you know.
Happy adventuring.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3292&start=0#p23224
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: What do you play IF on?
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-10-03 03:55:17

iPad for the most part, followed by PC.  Unfortunately most interpreters don't work very well on the iPad, including just HTML games.  Hopefully Apple will update Safari soon to a flashier version.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3292&start=0#p23225
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: What do you play IF on?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-10-03 03:57:09

[quote="Campbell"]iPad for the most part, followed by PC.[/quote]
Is there an iOS version of ADRIFT?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3292&start=0#p23226
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: What do you play IF on?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-03 04:02:51

Linux desktop, sometimes Windows desktop, both using Gargoyle because of its nice typography. Generally this works fine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3292&start=0#p23227
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: What do you play IF on?
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-10-03 04:04:42

[quote="Trumgottist"]Is there an iOS version of ADRIFT?[/quote]No, not yet.  I was just meaning in general for the other IF Comp games.  The Linux Runner should also run on the Mac under Mono, altho I haven't been able to test this to see how well (if at all) this works.

At a later date I intend on looking at [url=http://ios.xamarin.com]MonoTouch[/url], as this may well make it possible to create native apps for iOS and Android.  But I guess I have a few things to concentrate on first...  [emote]:oops:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3298&start=0#p23228
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [SOLVED] Executing action after/before starting conversation
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2011-10-03 05:42:59

Can't seem to figure this one out.

I am using 'Include Patrollers by Michael Callaghan.' But that is not the problem. This is part of the code:

[code]Ada Lonstrøm is a female patroller in Section 4-4.
	The Drive of Ada Lonstrøm is 100.
	Carry out going to Section 4-4 for the first time:
		Activate Ada Lonstrøm.[/code]
This basically creates an NPC who starts walking after entering Section 4-4. Now when I want to talk to her I don't want Ada to walk away. So far she does.

So I tried this:
[code]Before telling Ada Lonstrøm about something for the first time:
	Say "I am tired of walking aimlessly.";
	Deactivate Ada Lonstrøm.[/code]
It doesn't seem to work. 'Deactivate' is supposed to stop the girl from wandering around. The "Say" line is just there to see whether the Before-rule is triggered. It is not.

What am I doing wrong?


BiB

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3297&start=0#p23229
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Return to Camelot
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-03 05:48:51

As with other IFComp entries that have feelies, you can also get the map and, I think walkthrough, from the [url=http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2011/adrift/rtc/]IF Archive[/url]; the hint file is there too, but in my browser it opens up as raw XML source code which seems like it defeats the purpose.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3292&start=0#p23230
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: What do you play IF on?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-03 06:04:11

I play on a Mac laptop -- no phone/pad/pod/reader and no interest in one. I tend to play online if I can; otherwise I use Zoom for everything but ADRIFT, for which I use Spatterlight.

I guess my wishes are for Quixe to get faster so it's a more practical option, and also for my computer/browser performance to improve so I don't ever run into annoying delays.  [emote]:?[/emote] That's not really something the community can do anything about. Also not to worry about messing around with different interpreters so much (for instance, I just tried to download an old ALAN game and it system errored in Spatterlight; Zoom doesn't even acknowledge it). 

[I'd also like the wider general indie gaming community to remember that Macs exist a little more often so I could play Knytt and Space Funeral and lots of other indie games, and for the Braid port for Macs to run on my computer. Does anyone have a sense as to whether I'll have better luck if I switch to LINUX and run Wine?]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3292&start=10#p23231
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: What do you play IF on?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-03 06:32:34

[quote="matt w"][I'd also like the wider general indie gaming community to remember that Macs exist a little more often so I could play Knytt and Space Funeral and lots of other indie games, and for the Braid port for Macs to run on my computer. Does anyone have a sense as to whether I'll have better luck if I switch to LINUX and run Wine?][/quote]
You will presumably have [i]better[/i] luck, but it really depends on the game. Some work perfectly, some not at all. For instance, [url=http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=15839]Knytt Stories[/url] seems to work well if you follow a short How-to.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3297&start=0#p23234
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Return to Camelot
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2011-10-03 06:37:40

Hi Matt
There shold also be a hint file reader...
The idea is that you run the reader and load the hint file.
I must admit that it's pretty new to me, but it worked ok on my computer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3297&start=0#p23235
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Return to Camelot
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-03 07:03:51

Oh, is that what HSReader.exe is? No .exes for me, unfortunately.  [emote]:([/emote] But that's good to know. 

When I just click on the link for the .xml file on the if-archive without trying to download it or use the reader, it opens in a browser window in a way that displays the source. Which, if I can't run the hint file reader, is better for me than nothing (though I suppose I may be able to dig up an xml file reader somewhere). The map shows up in the browser normally, and I'd have to download the walkthrough to open it. 

Anyway, I just wanted to mention that you can pick and choose from feelies by getting them from the archive, even if you're playing the game online.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3280&start=0#p23236
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 - 'The Guardian' feelies in archive
User: LuteinHawthorne / DateTime: 2011-10-03 07:54:00

If you have already read the instruction book, The Guardian can be played here: 

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifcomp.org/comp11/play.php?id=191">http://ifcomp.org/comp11/play.php?id=191</a>

(Without reading it the game will not be as intended due to information and setting which is in that document.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3292&start=10#p23239
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: What do you play IF on?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-10-03 08:32:14

If you have an NVidia graphics card, running games in Wine will be pretty much like running them on Windows. If it's not NVidia, prepare for a lot of glitches and bugs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3292&start=10#p23240
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: What do you play IF on?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-10-03 08:48:44

I play them on my Windows. Here, let me show you my setup.

<a class="postlink" href="http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/521/mysetup.png/">http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/521/mysetup.png/</a>

"Pending Games" is where I keep all uncathegorized games. "SimonSetup" is just a shortcut - I'm currently playing Simon the Sorcerer 3D. Normally, this is where I'd put shortcuts of any game I'm currently playing.

Cathegorizing means checking the game's name and engine, sorting it accordingly, adding it to Grotesque and then playing.

"Tools and Interpreters" is where I've installed all my interpreters, plus some niceties such as Babel and the Eamon CD and iXu and Inform 7.

Usually I do it all alphabetically. But as regards ZCode, I've adopted a different system, because I'm playing those on my mobile phone via ZaxMidlet. After cathegorizing, I don't play them - I add them to my mobile phone. I've got games there I'm still playing, but I give priority to the newest-cathegorized games.

If the game crashes with ZaxMidlet, I inform the maintainer and wait 'till I'm home to play it on my desktop.

You asked for it. [emote];)[/emote]

EDIT - My dream machine would be able to play most IF. Surprisingly, Android may be the way to go - there seem to be emulators for Spectrum, Amiga, Commodore, even DOS. Not TADS or ALAN or HUGO or INFORM, but there are two WIPs for Inform and I know of at least 1 WIP for TADS. Anyway, if the Android could play Parchment and/or Quixe...

EDIT 2 - Oh, and incidently, here's my preferred display.

<a class="postlink" href="http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/829/mydisplaypng.png/">http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/82 ... aypng.png/</a>

Since it's a WideScreen monitor, I often shorten the game to about 4:3 and use the remaining space for Trizbort. A dream setup.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3264&start=0#p23242
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Developing a new conversation extension
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-03 09:24:05

[quote="Robert Rothman"]The idea of multi-lateral conversation sounds great, but it implies that what each character says, presumably, would be based not only on what the PC said, but also what each of the other characters has already said.  Looking at the number of possible permutations with even a few characters involved, it strikes me that keeping the whole thing from getting out of control could be quite a task.[/quote]
I actually already have a system in place for that, although it wasn't originally intended for something so complex.

In essense, there will be a Changing the Subject activity. Every player has their own current interlocutor and their own current subject. When they get the opportunity, they will speak their thoughts about the subject to the interlocutor (or to the general assembly, if no interlocutor is selected). Then everyone listening will perform the Changing the Subject activity. Each player also has a "speech motivation" which tells what prompted them to want to say something. It could be that someone asked them a question, showed them an object... or that they thought of something spontaneously. The activity will decide, based on the way the new subject is being suggested, whether to preempt the current subject that they were originally planning to talk about.

Most conversation verbs will set these variables automatically (with the interlocutor getting the motivation of "asked/told/etc" and everyone else getting the motivation of "overheard.") But there will also be say-phrases to trigger the activity manually. This will enable a flow of conversation, e.g.:
[quote]
> ask bob about shoes[/quote]
triggers Bob to talk about his shoes. Perhaps he'll mention that he bought them at Giga-Mart. This will trigger the subject "Giga-Mart" as "suggested." Now the PC's current subject is Giga-Mart, so it will appear as a conversation suggestion to the player.

A neat side effect that I imagine here is that anyone saying anything could trigger bystanders to respond. But since the Every Turn rule only runs once per turn, they will wait until next turn to speak (provided they're triggered in the proper order). That will give the player the chance to preempt what they were going to say. Potentially it could make for a very lively interchange!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3264&start=0#p23243
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Developing a new conversation extension
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-03 09:36:10

[quote="emshort"]-- because conversation is often contextual, it doesn't have the player speak at all if there's no one there for him to speak to. 
-- the parser checks against named conversation options to see whether it can match any available comments for the player to speak; if there are several possible things to say, it disambiguates
-- the player's comment is then printed; any facts mentioned by the comment then become "known" to all the people in the room at the time, which means that if you're doing something dependent on what characters have found out what information, they can all respond accordingly
-- the speech action concludes
-- during every turn rules, I call the conversation rules for the other characters; this is the point at which they can give responses to what's just been said, refuse to answer, or change the subject to talk about something else.[/quote]
That does sound a lot like what I was trying to do, although I don't have any knowledge tracking for NPCs other than the "current subject."

I've started thinking that conversation is so particular to each individual game that a one-size-fits-all conversation extension might be unfeasible. What do you think?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3292&start=10#p23247
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: What do you play IF on?
User: George / DateTime: 2011-10-03 11:03:04

How well does Android handle Parchment and Quixe? I guess it must depend a great deal on version and device, but what's been people's experience?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3089&start=0#p23251
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Allow unregistered users to search
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-10-03 11:21:47

I've been getting a "Sorry but you cannot use search at this time. Please try again in a few minutes." message a couple of times when I've tried to reach [url]http://www.intfiction.org/forum/search.php?search_id=unreadposts[/url]. Is this a side effect of the setting changes? I've never seen that message before.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3089&start=0#p23261
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Allow unregistered users to search
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-10-03 12:11:04

I'm having the same problem, which is unfortunate since "View unread posts" is my main view. (This also affects "View new posts" and "View your posts".)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3298&start=0#p23267
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Executing action after/before starting a conversation
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-03 13:15:33

Try typing the debugging command "RULES" before you tell Ada about something. "RULES" will make Inform tell you what rules the command runs. That way you might be able to figure out what stops this before rule from running. (To turn it off, type "RULES OFF".)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3298&start=0#p23268
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Executing action after/before starting a conversation
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2011-10-03 13:41:17

Try removing the "for the first time" clause.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3302&start=0#p23270
Forum: Competitions / Subject: The Hours
User: Aquillion / DateTime: 2011-10-03 13:57:02

Am I the only one getting extreme slowdown and huge spaces after each command in this entry?  I'm not experiencing it with any other game, that I can tell.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3292&start=10#p23272
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: What do you play IF on?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-10-03 14:02:35

[quote="matt w"][I'd also like the wider general indie gaming community to remember that Macs exist a little more often so I could play Knytt and Space Funeral and lots of other indie games, and for the Braid port for Macs to run on my computer.][/quote]
My impression is that it is more common now. All the Humble Bundles have been available for Mac, for example.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3292&start=10#p23275
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: What do you play IF on?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-03 14:22:54

[quote="Trumgottist"][quote="matt w"][I'd also like the wider general indie gaming community to remember that Macs exist a little more often so I could play Knytt and Space Funeral and lots of other indie games, and for the Braid port for Macs to run on my computer.][/quote]
My impression is that it is more common now. All the Humble Bundles have been available for Mac, for example.[/quote]

Sure, but it seems to me that windows-only is still the default, to the extent that a lot of games don't even bother saying "Windows only." I mean, I'm basically thinking of one-person-in-their-basement kind of games, so it's not surprising that they don't port it to the Mac if it takes any work, but I'm talking about "things I wish" here. (And as I intimated, Braid didn't run on my Mac, and the eventual response I got from the Bundle organizers was basically a shrug. Penumbra: Whatever didn't work for me either, though that may have to do with my graphics card, which is way below interpreters on the list of things I don't want to have to worry about.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3292&start=10#p23277
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: What do you play IF on?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-10-03 14:31:24

(For the record, I agree with you. I'm optimistic about the future, though.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3277&start=30#p23278
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 is on!
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-10-03 14:42:34

[quote="Peter Pears"][quote="David Whyld"]Re the Quest 5 game in the IFComp: is it possible to change the default colour and font? I couldn't find an option for it in game.[/quote]

I've specifically asked the maintainer of Quest 5 for that option. I would assume he thought it was too low priority. I beg to disagree, and am glad to see the issue raised - customization of text is of the utmost importance in IF.[/quote]

According to a reply I got on the Quest forum - <a class="postlink" href="http://www.axeuk.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2681">http://www.axeuk.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2681</a> - the only way to change the default colour and font in Quest is to change the settings in Internet Explorer because Quest uses IE to display text. Talk about a convoluted way of doing something! Unfortunately it only works with IE8 and as I use IE9 (well, actually I use Firefox but I have IE9 installed) I can't test it to see how it works. 

To the Quest developer: I'd really suggest an easier option of changing the defaults. Even if I was using IE8, I'd be reluctant to go messing around with the fonts just to play an IF game. Every other system lets me change the defaults as and when I see fit. Why does Quest have to be different?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3264&start=0#p23279
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Developing a new conversation extension
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-10-03 14:46:06

[quote="capmikee"]I've started thinking that conversation is so particular to each individual game that a one-size-fits-all conversation extension might be unfeasible. What do you think?[/quote]

That's pretty much been my contention since the outset of Inform -- some games are best suited with menus, some with TALK TO foo implementations, some with more or less complex ask/tell systems, and trying to hit all those marks with one package is really, really hard. 

The thing I've been working on (well, mostly *not* working on, in recent months/years -- real life has taken over with a vengeance) is intended to provide for one possible subset of projects, namely those where you really want the player to be able to articulate a variety of statements about different topics, and characters have highly contextual responses and a fair amount of flow. But I'm not under any illusion that this would work well for all games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3264&start=0#p23282
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Developing a new conversation extension
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-03 15:34:34

Right. The "context-dependent" part is why I wasn't originally interested in using a system like yours. I want a more or less "stateless" conversation system - not that there is no state involved on a turn-by-turn basis, but that the order of statements in a conversation is not important. But it sounds like your approach to the individual turn structure is very close to what I had in mind.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3268&start=0#p23283
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rulebook stops on runnable rule
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-03 15:38:21

I'd expect to get a compiler error if I tried to change the default outcome of a specific action processing rulebook. Sounds dangerous!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3302&start=0#p23284
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Hours
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-10-03 15:40:49

I had the slowdown problem with The Hours, and the huge spacing with The Hours and at least one other game. I think it was Death of Schlig.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3298&start=0#p23285
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Executing action after/before starting a conversation
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2011-10-03 15:55:05

[quote="ralphmerridew"]Try removing the "for the first time" clause.[/quote]
Did it. Same result. Unfortunately. Thanks for the idea, though. [emote]:-)[/emote] Keep 'em coming. PLEASE!

[quote="Felix"]Try typing the debugging command "RULES" before you tell Ada about something. "RULES" will make Inform tell you what rules the command runs. That way you might be able to figure out what stops this before rule from running. (To turn it off, type "RULES OFF".)[/quote]
Did that. The result:
[code]> talk to ada
[Rule "display topic suggestions on explicit greeting rule" applies.]
[Rule "note current interlocutor when greeted rule" applies.]
[Rule "standard report greeting rule" applies.]
[Rule "default greeting rule" applies.]
You say hello to Ada Lonstrøm.[/code]
Sorry for an incredibly stupid question: does this help me somehow? [emote]:?[/emote] 


BiB

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3140&start=10#p23287
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: EITHER Glulx for Android OR Chinese Room z-format
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-10-03 16:08:46

Hello Jeff,

I'm flattered you want to play the game on your android phone. At over 100,000 words, it's way too big to compile in zcode and so will never be able to play on Twisty. If you have internet access on your phone you can play it straight off [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=j6vtd2djn6o97a8b]IFDB[/url]. If you're willing to wait another month or so, we're going to release a long overdue second version, which fixes major bugs, has more depth and more philosophical silliness.

Cheers,

Joey

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3277&start=30#p23289
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 is on!
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-10-03 16:19:24

As I said in my reply, the feature will be added in the next version. The IE setting change is just a workaround that may work for some people.

I'd love to have had the time to implement this option along with many other suggested features for the v5.0 release but the reality of software development is that you have to prioritise certain features above others or you never ship anything.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3298&start=0#p23290
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Executing action after/before starting a conversation
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-03 16:24:42

The problem is that conversation incorporates a very large number of different actions. "Telling Ada about something" might not even map to a successful action - you may have to phrase it as "Telling Ada about a topic."

"talk to" is being parsed as a greeting, not the "telling it about" action. You can use the "actions" debugging command to see exactly what action is being processed. Eric Eve's Conversation Framework defines a couple different kinds-of-action to catch every form of conversation, which he can then handle with some Before rules. You might be able to use the same tactic.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3306&start=0#p23293
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Recommendations: switch-around-protagonist games
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-10-03 16:43:54

This morning I had an incredibly original thought: [i]What about an IF where you control multiple characters and switch between them all willy nilly?[/i] 

I did some "due diligence" and to my utter shock I discovered that this has in fact been done before. The first one I found was [i]Luminous Horizon,[/i] which I have not played before, so I should get around to that.

Are there any other games in this vein that spring to mind? I should clarify that I'm talking specifically about that subset of "multiple protagonist" games in which moving between protagonists is the prerogative of the player, as opposed to games like Photopia and Hitchhiker's Guide where it's imposed as part of the game's progression. Not that there's anything wrong with games like that.

I guess a further distinction could be made between situations in which the switching happens between characters that are occupying the same place and time (and are therefore able to interact directly with each other), as opposed to [i]A Swiftly Tilting Planet[/i]-type situations where the characters involved are all over the place.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3306&start=0#p23294
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Recommendations: switch-around-protagonist games
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-10-03 16:54:33

A while ago I started working on a game where you can switch between playing a ghost, a monkey and a robot- using their strengths and weaknesses to solve puzzles and progress through a story involving a future war and the bombing of a circus. Unfortunately, the computer upon which I was working was stolen and I have since lacked the motivation to recreate my previous efforts.

Luminous Horizons is the only other similar IF I know of.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3306&start=0#p23295
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Recommendations: switch-around-protagonist games
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-03 16:55:05

I believe [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=t47hei9uq10xoar8]Suspended[/url] is the [i]locus classicus[/i], though I have not played it myself.

(My own [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=7hvoj3p9khotuqca]Art of Fugue[/url] has you play four different characters simultaneously, though it should be said that there is no real fiction, only puzzles.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3298&start=0#p23296
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Executing action after/before starting a conversation
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2011-10-03 16:55:26

That was the missing clue. Thanks a bundle.

So for anyone having the same problem, this is how you execute an action before or after a conversation:

[code]Before saying hello to Ada Lonstrøm:
	Deactivate Ada Lonstrøm.
After saying goodbye to Ada Lonstrøm:
	Activate Ada Lonstrøm.[/code]

Seems to work fine. [emote]:-)[/emote]

Thanks all. [emote];-)[/emote]


BiB

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3306&start=0#p23297
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Recommendations: switch-around-protagonist games
User: LuteinHawthorne / DateTime: 2011-10-03 16:58:01

Did you every anything from Quantic Dream?  They had games with multiple main characters, like [spoiler]Fahrenheit and Heavy Rain[/spoiler].  Though they're more action/graphic adventure games, and the character switching is at fixed points, they have interactive stories and scenes that depend on what you've discovered and done during the playthrough which I believe puts them under interactive fiction, at least as a distant cousin.

I really wanted to do a game with this style, but I couldn't figure out how to save the protagonists' contexts in the language I was programming in.  (If someone wants to team up on it, maybe we could do a game together?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3306&start=0#p23298
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Recommendations: switch-around-protagonist games
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-10-03 17:13:14

[quote="LuteinHawthorne"]I really wanted to do a game with this style, but I couldn't figure out how to save the protagonists' contexts in the language I was programming in.  (If someone wants to team up on it, maybe we could do a game together?)[/quote]

What was the language you were programming in? I've got a bunch of projects on the go (something in the ifcomp, rerelease of an old game, game where adverbs are more important than verbs, and a game in which you play the animistic spirit of a room), but I'm always interested in more.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3306&start=0#p23299
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Recommendations: switch-around-protagonist games
User: LuteinHawthorne / DateTime: 2011-10-03 17:18:20

[quote="JoeyJones"] What was the language you were programming in? I've got a bunch of projects on the go (something in the ifcomp, rerelease of an old game, game where adverbs are more important than verbs, and a game in which you play the animistic spirit of a room), but I'm always interested in more.[/quote]

I'm really language-independent, but at the time I was programming in Inform 7.  When I do interactive fiction I usually put together the scenerio independent of the language I'm (trying to) use to make the game work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3264&start=0#p23302
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Developing a new conversation extension
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-03 17:29:18

I like.  You might like this in addition:[code]The command to re-try is indexed text that varies. The command to re-try is usually "".

Rule for reading a command when the command to re-try is not "": 
	change the text of the player's command to the command to re-try;
	now the command to re-try is "".

Check answering when the player's command matches the text ",":
	now the current interlocutor is the noun;
	now the command to re-try is the player's command;
	replace the regular expression "^<^,>+, *" in the command to re-try with "";
	rule succeeds.[/code]It makes BOB, FOO change the current interlocutor to the addressee, then retries the command FOO.  It's useful if the command is implemented as a Mistake, or with a noun token that lacks a verb (such as [i]Understand "[things]" as asking it for.[/i] or whatever.)
And, have you considered replacing the current interlocutor property with a various-to-various talking-with relation?  I've wondered if that would be a good idea or not.

Oh, also, I created the extension Command Prompt On Cue so if your player just wants to silently listen to the conversation coming out of those Every Turn rules, the extension allows for a nice looking transcript that doesn't have WAIT WAIT WAIT everywhere.  Just a thought.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3306&start=0#p23305
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Recommendations: switch-around-protagonist games
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-10-03 17:42:41

[quote="Afterward"]
Are there any other games in this vein that spring to mind?[/quote]

Yup, it was quite common in the 8-bit years: In Melbourne's [url=http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0006601&loadpics=3]Lord Of The Rings[/url] You could control any of the four hobbits at any time. In [url=http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0006856&loadpics=3]Questprobe III[/url] you cuold switch between The Human Torch and The Thing (Yeah!) and in spanish classic [url=http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0006526&loadpics=3]Ke Rulen Los Petas[/url] you could do the same beteween the two main characters.

[center][url=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/165/1003025by5.jpg/][img]http://img165.imageshack.us/img165/7961/1003025by5.th.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/214/1003968.jpg/][img]http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/4623/1003968.th.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/156/pepo1rl9.jpg/][img]http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/2052/pepo1rl9.th.jpg[/img][/url][/center]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3306&start=0#p23307
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Recommendations: switch-around-protagonist games
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-10-03 18:06:19

[quote="LuteinHawthorne"]I'm really language-independent, but at the time I was programming in Inform 7.  When I do interactive fiction I usually put together the scenerio independent of the language I'm (trying to) use to make the game work.[/quote]

That sounds like a good way of working. I'm most familiar with Inform 7, having written two games in the language thus far. Switching player characters is a piece of cake in inform, but you say you were having problems working out how to save the character's contexts- what exactly did you mean by this? If it's their location, what they have on them etc., then I know how to implement that, but perhaps I misunderstood what you meant.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3140&start=10#p23308
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: EITHER Glulx for Android OR Chinese Room z-format
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-10-03 18:14:15

[quote="JoeyJones"]If you're willing to wait another month or so, we're going to release a long overdue second version, which fixes major bugs, has more depth and more philosophical silliness.[/quote]

Yay!

I'm delighted to hear that. I'd sort of figured you guys had moved on to something else.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3302&start=0#p23309
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Hours
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-10-03 18:16:30

[quote="Aquillion"]Am I the only one getting extreme slowdown and huge spaces after each command in this entry?[/quote]

I only get the slowdown when playing on-line. The huge spaces are there also when running off-line. Don't know if they are intended or not. If they aren't, I can only sympathize, as I know how hard can be getting line breaks to work as expected in I7 for a newbie. Once you know how they exactly work it's easy to control, but it takes a lot of struggle and trial and error to get there! (now that I think I finally almost got the whole picture of it, please, I7 developers, don't change it  [emote]:lol:[/emote] )

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3140&start=10#p23312
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: EITHER Glulx for Android OR Chinese Room z-format
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-10-03 18:38:25

[quote="emshort"][quote="JoeyJones"]If you're willing to wait another month or so, we're going to release a long overdue second version, which fixes major bugs, has more depth and more philosophical silliness.[/quote]

Yay!

I'm delighted to hear that. I'd sort of figured you guys had moved on to something else.[/quote]


Well, we both went and completed two degrees after the game, but now I've decided that we should probably release a new version. Especially as most of the game breaking bugs were ridiculously easy to fix. (Stuff like having something marked down as scenery when it really only wanted to be undescribed). I've already had the old code updated and removed all the deprecated features, but there's going to be some more content added before the release.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3306&start=0#p23318
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Recommendations: switch-around-protagonist games
User: LuteinHawthorne / DateTime: 2011-10-03 19:31:35

[quote="JoeyJones"]Switching player characters is a piece of cake in inform, but you say you were having problems working out how to save the character's contexts- what exactly did you mean by this? If it's their location, what they have on them etc., then I know how to implement that, but perhaps I misunderstood what you meant.[/quote]

I wasn't really able to do either of those at my skill level.  Originally, I'd wanted to keep track of some key actions by each character so that I could do some magic later in the story based on how the player had acted, but that got scaled back pretty instantly to what you mentioned.  Maybe we could team up on the project sometime later?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3248&start=10#p23320
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Misc questions thread
User: Kaleb702 Games / DateTime: 2011-10-03 19:42:02

[quote="matt w"]The line beginning "If the scythe is not carried" should end in a semicolon rather than a period.[/quote]
Now I feel stupid. XD

Now for a question I can't find the answer for:
What directory do Location Images files go to?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3306&start=0#p23321
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Recommendations: switch-around-protagonist games
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-10-03 19:54:02

[quote="LuteinHawthorne"]I wasn't really able to do either of those at my skill level.  Originally, I'd wanted to keep track of some key actions by each character so that I could do some magic later in the story based on how the player had acted, but that got scaled back pretty instantly to what you mentioned.  Maybe we could team up on the project sometime later?[/quote]

Basically, there's a difference between 'the player' and 'yourself' in inform. You're always the player, but you can switch between characters other than 'yourself'. When you switch back to them, just like normal npcs they're going to still be in the same place and have all the same stuff as you left them. I'm definitely interested in working on a project sometime. I'll send you my email  [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3275&start=0#p23325
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror?
User: MEMiller / DateTime: 2011-10-03 21:39:06

Thank you all for the suggestions!  Between these games and the Comp, I ought to have plenty to play...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3292&start=10#p23339
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: What do you play IF on?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-10-04 07:09:34

[b]1. What specific platform do you use to play IF -- for example, Windows, iOS, Kindle, Android, Nintendo DS, and which phone, tablet, and laptop?[/b]
I have a slightly aging desktop gaming PC which runs Windows 7 and Ubuntu Linux. I mostly play IF on Ubuntu, but occasionally boot into Windows for a particularly troublesome game that just won't run under Linux or Wine. I also have an Asus eeePC netbook running Ubuntu Netbook Edition and an HTC Desire Z smartphone running Android 2.3.

[b]2. How do you rate your experience on those devices, and how would you like to see it improved if at all?[/b]
Playing IF on Linux is excellent and only getting better. The netbook is particularly good. It's great for curling up in an easy chair with a game or playing IF in bed - it even doubles as a hot water bottle! My phone ought to be good for playing IF, with that lovely QWERTY keyboard, but to be honest, IF support on Android is [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=30#p22609]really poor[/url] at the moment.

[b]3. What kind of IF are you playing on a particular device? Only CYOA on Kindle? Big Inform games only on PC?[/b]
I'll play anything on the desktop and netbook, although I prefer to play games with multimedia on the desktop. The netbook's screen isn't really large enough for fancy graphical IF, and the speakers are far too tinny for anything with sound. My phone is by necessity restricted to Z-code and Choice Of games, but I'd love to play more IF on it if the interpreters were in a more usable (or even existent) state.

[b]4. What is missing from your platform of choice that you'd like to see?[/b]
Android needs interpreters. Glulx and TADS at least, and some improvements to the existing Z-code terps. (I know people are working on Twisty. Thanks, guys!) As for Linux... I guess it'd be nice to have an all-in-one interpreter with an integrated game browser, like Zoom or Spatterlight. A pony would also be lovely.

[quote="George"]How well does Android handle Parchment and Quixe? I guess it must depend a great deal on version and device, but what's been people's experience?[/quote]
Parchment: Runs in the Android browser, but is too wide for my phone's screen even in landscape orientation. The browser won't let me zoom any further out, either.

Quixe: In the Android browser, it loads and looks good. I can enter commands and the game responds (slowly, of course, but what do you expect.) Unfortunately, it doesn't pause when it prints more than a screenful of text, and I can't find a way to scroll back up to see what I missed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3292&start=10#p23341
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: What do you play IF on?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-04 08:26:26

Given the mild complaint I made about Quixe upthread -- which is anyway specific to my aging laptop and browser abuse -- I should maybe mention that I played Patanoir through on Quixe with only occasional short delays. (Calm hung up at what I suspect was the random map generation phase; I suspect my Quixe issues are very game-dependent.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3310&start=0#p23342
Forum: Competitions / Subject: The Play
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-10-04 08:37:57

Anybody else having trouble getting into "The Play" online?  I get the title screen; neither clicking on it nor (as far as I can tell) doing anything else makes the curtain go up.  I'm using Internet Explorer 8.

Thanks.  


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3310&start=0#p23343
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Play
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-04 08:49:05

You might be experiencing an actual bug, but just in case: It took me a little while to get started because the "click to begin" at the bottom of the title screen is very faint, and when I clicked it the new part appeared at the bottom of the screen and I had to scroll down.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3310&start=0#p23345
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Play
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-10-04 09:16:13

Thanks.  I had originally been trying to click in the title box itself (the cursor changes to a pointing hand in that box, which seemed to invite a click).  I've since gone back, and, on my monitor at least, I cannot see any "click to begin" box. I tried clicking randomly all around the bottom of the screen to see if I could find the box blindly -- still no luck.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3264&start=0#p23346
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Developing a new conversation extension
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-04 09:16:26

Thanks for the encouragement!

Sounds like those would fit in well. I will probably plan for compatibility with them, but not implement them for simplicity's sake.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3248&start=10#p23347
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Misc questions thread
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-04 09:25:01

I haven't tried this extension, but I'm pretty sure you're supposed to put these files in a directory/folder called "Figures" inside the materials folder of your project. At least that's where image files generally go. (See ch. 22.4, 22.5 in the documentation.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3310&start=0#p23348
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Play
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-04 09:44:26

Oh, now that I look again, the whole title box is clickable when things are working correctly. You don't have to hit the "click to begin." Looks like a bug or browser problem, then.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3264&start=10#p23349
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Developing a new conversation extension
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-04 09:46:51

Here's a question. I'm using Eric Eve's extensions as a starting point, but I'm not a huge fan of all of his naming conventions. Would it be confusing if I use some of his names, but they mean different things? Or should I make an effort to come up with all new names?

Here's an example of the names I've been working with:

[code]A person has an object called the interlocutor.

To decide what object is the current interlocutor: Decide on the interlocutor of the person asked.

To decide which object is the item of interest: [use a before rule to set a global instead?]
	if conversing, decide on the second noun;
	if examining, decide on the noun;
	if implicit-conversing, decide on the noun;
	if giving something to something, decide on the noun;
	if showing something to something, decide on the noun;
	decide on nothing; [noun for all other actions?]

A person has an object called the concern.

Definition: a person is waiting to speak if the concern of it is a thing.

To decide what object is the current subject: decide on the concern of the person asked.

Carry out an actor informing someone about something (this is the communicate the item of interest rule):
	Now the concern of the current interlocutor is the item of interest;

Voicing concerns is an action applying to nothing. Understand "t" and "talk" as voicing concerns. [Perhaps this should just be called "talking?"]

Every turn (this is the voice concerns rule):
	Repeat with orator running through other people who are waiting to speak:
		Try the orator voicing concerns;

[/code]

In particular, I've been thinking about kinds of action. I find "conversing" and "implicit-conversing" to be confusing. I've been wondering if I could create "subject-first talking" and "subject-second talking" KoAs to be clear about which noun the "item of interest" can be found in. But I also was thinking about having almost all actions have an "item of interest," so that NPCs can comment on whatever the player is doing. Perhaps an "involved" adjective would work better in that case.

A couple other names:

I like the syntax "Response of X when asked-or-told about Y" from Response Rules, but I don't like the fact that they run during the report phase and then stop the action. I have an activity called "speaking out loud" which checks who the actor is but uses the subject matter as a basis. I keep thinking I'd rather it take the speaker as its basis, or even an action (e.g. Bob informing someone about shoes). But even with the confusion issue aside, I haven't quite figured out the syntax I want.

I'm not really happy with treating hello, yes, no, and sorry as separate actions. It seems like there could easily be subjects called greetings, affirmative answer, negative answer, and apologies, and if necessary an "offering" or even just "saying" action for all of them parallel to the topic-based "answering" action.

Thoughts?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3311&start=0#p23350
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Six
User: Healy / DateTime: 2011-10-04 10:40:16

I've been having problems running Six by Wade Clark. Whenever I type "listen" in the place with all the different kinds of trees, there's fatal exception error and the terp closes. I think it says something along the lines of not finding a sound file? Anyway this happens both in WinGlulxe and Gargoyle. Thanks in advance for your help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3310&start=0#p23351
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Play
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-10-04 10:53:13

Undum doesn't officially support IE8. The latest version of Undum works on it, but looks like The Play uses an older version that refused to work altogether. 

You could mail the author and ask her to update the game or, even better, update your browser if at all possible. IE8 has serious issues in general and IE9 is a free (and easy) upgrade, or try a standards-compliant browser like Firefox or Chrome.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3292&start=10#p23352
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: What do you play IF on?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-10-04 10:54:43

I play most of my IF on my computer (that is, the same computer I do pretty much all of my computer-y tasks on), which is a MacBook Pro running OSX.  I use whichever of Zoom or Spatterlight I happen to think of, and only switch to the other if there seems to be a compatibility issue with a non-zcode/glulx game.  I never use Parchment/Quixe, though I do sometimes refer less IF-savvy friends to them.  I don't play full-screen, but I also don't have an elaborate gameplaying setup, because I don't play the kinds of games that are going to require me to take extensive notes or map; on the rare occasion that I am playing such a game, I'll use pen and paper for that.

I also occasionally play IF on my OLPC XO, because the screen is perfect for sitting outside on a nice day and toying with some light IF.  However, the only interpreter I have on it is a command-line zcode interpreter (without even support for blorb, if I recall correctly) that crashes sometimes, so that sort of limits the games I play on it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3310&start=0#p23355
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Play
User: Squinky / DateTime: 2011-10-04 11:28:03

Updated the online version of the game to use the latest Undum code. Hopefully, that works. (Though I still recommend updating your browser, regardless!)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3292&start=20#p23356
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: What do you play IF on?
User: tinman / DateTime: 2011-10-04 12:08:28

OSX; Zoom plus Omnigraffle for mapping.  Have had ugly crashes from Spatterlight but only minor crashes from Zoom. Pretty much an ideal setup, IMHO.

iOS with iPhone; Frotz. Main limitation is lack of TADS terp in Frotz; with TADS capability, Frotz would be excellent, not merely very good.

It's too bad IF can't find a way to "appify" itself. If titles could be packaged as $1 self-contained apps, I think that IF authors could probably make serious livings from the craft. But given the everything-is-free ecosystem as it's currently evolved, this would appear to be an opportunity missed. It's great short-term for players/readers, but long-term this starves the pipeline that lays the golden goose. [emote];-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3310&start=0#p23357
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Play
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-10-04 12:11:18

Thanks.  Now I was able to get in.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3264&start=10#p23358
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Developing a new conversation extension
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2011-10-04 12:35:10

[quote="capmikee"]Here's a question. I'm using Eric Eve's extensions as a starting point, but I'm not a huge fan of all of his naming conventions. Would it be confusing if I use some of his names, but they mean different things? Or should I make an effort to come up with all new names?[/quote]

I think you probably have to just use whichever names make most sense to you, rather than straining to avoid ones I've used. The clash of names meaning slightly different things would only be a major problem if someone tried to use both conversation systems together, which it doesn't look like is something you intend to be possible.

In fact, although you're talking about using my conversation extensions as a starting point (which you're perfectly welcome to do, of course) I get the impression that you want yours to do something rather different, so you may not want to be too constrained by my design. What I was trying to do was something fairly specific, namely to come up with something that would mimic the TADS 3 conversation system as closely as possible in a manner that seemed reasonably natural in Inform 7 (that intent was in turn originally born of the need to port part of a TADS 3 game to Inform so I could provide a demo playable through a web browser). My design decisions (hopefully) make sense within the contect of that limited aim, but may make much less sense in the context of the various things you're trying to do.

-- Eric

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3292&start=20#p23361
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: What do you play IF on?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-04 14:12:40

[quote="tinman"]It's too bad IF can't find a way to "appify" itself. If titles could be packaged as $1 self-contained apps, I think that IF authors could probably make serious livings from the craft. But given the everything-is-free ecosystem as it's currently evolved, this would appear to be an opportunity missed. It's great short-term for players/readers, but long-term this starves the pipeline that lays the golden goose. [emote];-)[/emote][/quote]
The commodification of art isn't necessarily a good thing, you know.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3313&start=0#p23363
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Playing around in the guts of TADS 3
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2011-10-04 14:54:57

This question comes in two parts. But first, a bit of background.
My recent games were written in TADS 2; a great platform, which I was able to learn by stepping through code as it ran, and thus learned what to override and how. Recently, I've begun using TADS 3, which is not nearly as small, simple, and/or easy to step through - making figuring things out a wee bit tougher.

So, my first question: The player's window is a split screen, left and right. Is it possible to tie each screen to an NPC, so that everything sensed by that NPC is displayed in that screen? That is, if the player types "open door", NPC 1 opens the door ("Opened."), and NPC 2 sees it opening ("You see a door open.")
Obviously, the first NPC is easy, but what about the second NPC? I'm assuming I'd need some sort of PromptDaemon to write it all down in the right window, but I'm a bit at a loss as to how to do it.

My second question is, how possible is it to attach the command prompt to two screens at once? That is, NPC 1 is controlled by clicking on screen 1 and typing, and NPC 2 is controlled by clicking on screen 2 and typing. Obviously, if the first part is impossible, this won't apply; however, if this part is impossible, I can always write a simple workaround (make the 'switch to' command not take any turns, etc.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3264&start=10#p23364
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Developing a new conversation extension
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-04 15:01:29

Thanks for the background, Eric (and for your blessing! [emote]:)[/emote] ) I won't worry too much about confusing users who switch between extensions, but when I get around to releasing, I'll try to make sure the documentation is clear.

I hope I didn't come off as disparaging about your collection. I've gotten a lot of great mileage out of it and it's still serving as a template for what a conversation system needs to achieve. It's easy to focus on the perceived faults of something and take its qualities for granted...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3273&start=0#p23365
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indexed text loses formatting information
User: elib / DateTime: 2011-10-04 15:05:19

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]I have an extension called Output Filtering on the Inform site which has a section of code that does this.  You might be able to steal and modify that.  

Just an idea.[/quote]

This is pretty incredible!
It works great. Fast and easy (well, faster at any rate). And paragraphs and formatting are preserved.

Thanks!!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3292&start=20#p23366
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: What do you play IF on?
User: tinman / DateTime: 2011-10-04 15:07:52

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]The commodification of art isn't necessarily a good thing, you know.[/quote]

If an IF revenue model somehow causes authors to produce hackneyed crap, you're absolutely right. 

If on the other hand it allows those with real talent to write as their primary job and produce works of sophistication and interest, then how is that not a good thing? Zarf appears to see the value in finding some sort of monetization for his IF. It's too bad when someone of Emily Short's stature has to attribute a lack of recent IF production to the intrusion of "real life." Regular output from Zarf, Emily, and the many other luminaries because IF is their day job, not their hobby, could only be a huge advance for IF. IMHO.

Anyway, I didn't mean to highjack this thread, though this sub-theme is relevant thus: if IF were packaged into easily and cheaply purchased apps running on the current crop of devices, I think IF would immediately and hugely expand its audience. And surely we'd all agree that would be a good thing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3292&start=20#p23367
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: What do you play IF on?
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-10-04 15:08:33

[quote]It's too bad IF can't find a way to "appify" itself. If titles could be packaged as $1 self-contained apps, I think that IF authors could probably make serious livings from the craft.[/quote]

I'm not sure that that would really make the difference in the commercial viability of the medium -- if it did, somebody would undoubtedly have already done it.

Having said that, and commercialization issues aside, just as a matter of convenience I would love to see an easier way to package IF games as self-contained executable programs.  There was some discussion of this a few weeks back; I believe the point was made that some systems do provide this capability.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3264&start=10#p23368
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Developing a new conversation extension
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2011-10-04 15:12:15

[quote="capmikee"]It's easy to focus on the perceived faults of something and take its qualities for granted...[/quote]
Now [b]that[/b] is wise.


BiB

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3314&start=0#p23369
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Pronoun problems [solved]
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-10-04 15:45:03

I'm running into a problem with pronouns, and my searchings through the forums and included documentation have given me nothing to go on.

In my WIP I have a player character who will eventually be encountering and conversing with various NPCs. I'd like to be able to use the "his/her" pronoun when in the presence of an NPC to examine various features of the NPCs, but I seem to be at a loss for how to do this. Take a look at this excerpt:[code]"Pronoun test" by Joel Webster

Blank room is a room.

A body-part is a kind of thing.
A belly button is a kind of body-part.
Every person incorporates one belly button.

Graham is a man in blank room.
Emily is a woman in blank room.

The player is Graham.

Test me with "pronouns / x belly button / x my belly button / x her belly button / x emily's belly button / x graham's belly button".[/code]This results in:[code]Blank room
You can see Emily here.

> pronouns
At the moment, "it" is unset, "him" is unset, "her" means Emily, "them" is unset and "me" means Graham.

> x belly button
Which do you mean, Graham's belly button or Emily's belly button?

> x my belly button
You can't see any such thing.

> x her belly button
I only understood you as far as wanting to examine Emily.

> x emily's belly button
You see nothing special about Emily's belly button.

> x graham's belly button
You see nothing special about Graham's belly button.[/code]What I want to happen is to have the disambiguation read "Which do you mean, your belly button or Emily's belly button?", and I'd like the two following lines to work properly. I'm currently running on a lack of sleep, so that might have something to do with my frustration, but I don't even know how to begin to attack this.
Thanks in advance for your help!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3315&start=0#p23370
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Door to be unlocked by various keys. Possible?
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2011-10-04 15:55:19

Again a simple question I cannot find an answer for.

I am creating doors that can be unlocked by individual AND master keys.

Is it possible to unlock a door with multiple keys. The following does not work:

[code]The matching key of Door XYZ is Key 1 and Key 2 and Key 3.[/code]
Ideas?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3315&start=0#p23372
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Door to be unlocked by various keys. Possible?
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-10-04 16:24:05

Have you tried separating them into their own objects?[code]Key 1 unlocks Door XYZ. Key 2 unlocks Door XYZ. Key 3 unlocks Door XYZ.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3315&start=0#p23374
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Door to be unlocked by various keys. Possible?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-10-04 16:31:24

This previous thread might help:
<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1134">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1134</a>

The topic has also come up on rec.arts.int-fiction, but I don't remember precisely when.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3315&start=0#p23375
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Door to be unlocked by various keys. Possible?
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2011-10-04 16:53:39

[quote="Joel Webster"]Have you tried separating them into their own objects?[code]Key 1 unlocks Door XYZ. Key 2 unlocks Door XYZ. Key 3 unlocks Door XYZ.[/code][/quote]
Yes. Unfortunately it doesn't work. The Parser tells me the same thing:
[quote="I7 Parser"]You wrote 'Key 3 unlocks Door XYZ'  , but in another sentence 'Key 1 unlocks Door XYZ'  : but this looks like a contradiction, because the same property seems to be being set in each of these sentences, but with a different outcome.[/quote]
So no go. Bummer.

[quote="tove"]This previous thread might help:
<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1134">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1134</a>

The topic has also come up on rec.arts.int-fiction, but I don't remember precisely when.[/quote]
The link discusses a door with two keys (the I7 internal "backup key"). I would like to have more than two. If everything fails, I will stick with two. [emote]:-)[/emote] 

The rec.arts.int-fiction Thread in question is located here: [url]http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/6034176c6c824d61[/url]. They came up with this solution:

[code]Before unlocking Door XYZ with Key 1:
		Now Door XYZ is unlocked;
		rule succeeds.
	Before locking Door XYZ with Key 1:
		Now Door XYZ is locked;
		rule succeeds.
		
	Before unlocking Door XYZ with Key 2:
		Now Door XYZ is unlocked;
		rule succeeds.
	Before locking Door XYZ with Key 2:
		Now Door XYZ is locked;
		rule succeeds.
		
	Before unlocking Door XYZ with Key 3:
		Now Door XYZ is unlocked;
		rule succeeds.
	Before locking Door XYZ with Key 3:
		Now Door XYZ is locked;
		rule succeeds.[/code]

This works.

[b]BUT[/b]: Even if I have the fitting key, it is not recognized automatically as with usual doors. So this doesn't seem ideal.

What can be done? Is there a way to create a workaround a la "if Key 1 is carried by the player..."?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3315&start=0#p23377
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Door to be unlocked by various keys. Possible?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-04 17:11:32

You can set up a many-to-many relation between keys and doors, and then have a before rule that checks whether any of the carried keys has the relation to the door being opened. This shouldn't be hugely difficult, especially if you have used relations before.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3315&start=0#p23378
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Door to be unlocked by various keys. Possible?
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2011-10-04 17:17:27

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]You can set up a many-to-many relation between keys and doors, and then have a before rule that checks whether any of the carried keys has the relation to the door being opened. This shouldn't be hugely difficult, especially if you have used relations before.[/quote]
Could you elaborate? Also, this will unfortunately not fix the issue at the end of my last post, will it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3314&start=0#p23379
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pronoun problems
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-04 17:28:33

When you make every object of a certain kind incorporate an object of a certain other kind Inform 7 is hard coded to give the parts names like this. It doesn't check at run time whom the belly buttons belong to; the body-parts are given their names when the game compiles, and there is very little to do about that.

You could try things like "Understand "her" as a body-part that is part of a woman" or something to that effect, but I'm not sure if that compiles.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3316&start=0#p23380
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Quest 5 interpreter
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-04 17:31:28

Does anyone know where I can find a Quest 5 interpreter? Preferably for Linux, but I can't even find one for Windows. The [url=http://www.textadventures.co.uk/quest/]Quest website[/url] only seems to offer the adventure creation software for download.

Alternatively, I would also be thankful if someone could tell me a way of saving your progress in an online Quest 5 game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3314&start=0#p23381
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pronoun problems
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-04 17:31:54

If I remember correctly you can fix the "Graham's belly button" issue by reordering your source code a little -- I think by putting "Graham is a man in the living room. The player is Graham." before "Every person incorporates a belly button." Then that belly button will get the name "your belly button" instead of "Graham's belly button." (There may be a bug relating to that, though I forget what it is.)

Unfortunately, IIRC handling "her" is difficult, because it can be a straight-up pronoun or a possessive (dative/accusative as well as genitive, or something like that). Someone else may know what to do; otherwise, you could just make Emily the PC....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3315&start=0#p23383
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Door to be unlocked by various keys. Possible?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-04 17:43:05

This should be reasonably close to what you want to have:
[code]"Keys" by Victor Gijsbers

A key is a kind of thing.

Fitting relates various keys to various doors. The verb to fit (he fits, they fit, he fitted, it is fitted, it is fitting) implies the fitting relation.


Hallway is a room.

The blue door is a door. It is south of Hallway. The Azure Room is south of blue door. The blue door is locked.

The red door is a door. It is north of Hallway. The Cherry Room is north of red door. The red door is locked.

The yellow door is a door. It is west of Hallway. The Apricot Room is west of yellow door. The yellow door is locked.


The red key is a key. The red key fits the red door. The red key is in Hallway.
The blue key is a key. The blue key fits the blue door. The blue key is in Hallway.
The yellow key is a key. The yellow key fits the yellow door. The yellow key is in Hallway.
The purple key is a key. The purple key fits the red door and the blue door. The purple key is in Hallway.
The green key is a key. The green key fits the blue door and the yellow door. The green key is in Hallway.
The orange key is a key. The orange key fits the red door and the yellow door. The orange key is in Hallway.
The white key is a key. Every door is fitted by the white key. The white key is in Hallway.


Before opening a locked door (this is the automatically unlock doors rule):
	repeat with item running through keys carried by the player:
		if item fits the noun:
			now the noun is unlocked.[/code]
You need to implement some other stuff to make this work well, of course: explicit locking and unlocking.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3311&start=0#p23386
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Six
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-10-04 18:05:26

Hi, this is Wade. I've not seen a fatal crash like that before in any of the interpreters. May I ask what OS you're running? If you're using several interpreters, you're probably using all the up to date ones, but it's worth making sure you are using the latest Gargoyle. Could you also let me know what exactly the error says? Thank you.

Something else to try is this: Delete the files sixdata1 and sixdata2 from the game folder before rerunning in Gargoyle.

If none of the above solves the problem, perhaps try turning off both sound and music at the start menu before starting the game, though this is obviously less than ideal and can't be guaranteed to be the source of the problem, but worth a shot.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3314&start=0#p23387
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pronoun problems
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-04 18:28:28

OK, I found the passage in the documentation that discusses the "Graham's belly button" problem. It's [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc68.html]section 4.14, "Assemblies and Body Parts"[/url]:

[quote]If we would like to explore Voltaire's suggestion that history would have been very different if only Cleopatra's nose had been shorter, we will need noses:

    [code]A nose is a kind of thing. A nose is part of every person. [/code]

Of course, if we make an assembly like this then we had better remember that the player is also a person and also gets a nose. In fact slightly odd things can happen if we combine this with changing the identity of the player. This works:

   [code] Cleopatra is a woman in Alexandria. The player is Cleopatra.
    A nose is a kind of thing. A nose is part of every person. [/code]

but if those lines are in reverse order then Cleopatra's nose is assembled before she becomes the player, with the result that it ends up called "Cleopatra's nose" rather than "your nose" in play - which is very regal but probably not what we want. To avoid this, settle the player's identity early on in the source text. [/quote]

In earlier versions of I7, "A nose is part of every person" and "Every person incorporates a nose" didn't always work the same way, but now they do, I think.

The bug I was thinking of was [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=655]this one[/url], which has to do with genders -- if you want to say "An Adam's apple is part of every man" then the Adam's apple won't always be generated when you make the player a named man. But that isn't what you're trying to do here, so you may not run up against it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3313&start=0#p23388
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Playing around in the guts of TADS 3
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-10-04 19:07:39

I don't think the TADS screen model allows line input in anything but the main game window. [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/sysman/banners.htm]Banner windows[/url] (what you call screens) can take character input, but that doesn't help you much.

One approach to separating the output would be to have two global window variables (gPlayerWindow and gObserverWindow) and two banner windows (npc1Window and npc2Window). Whenever you promote NPC1 to the PC, set gPlayerWindow to npc1Window and gObserverWindow to npc2Window. And vice versa when you make NPC2 the PC.

Then just write two responses in every one of your action() methods, one that prints to gPlayerWindow to acknowledge the command, and one that prints to gObserverWindow to report what happened.

You'll need to deal with the default library messages at some point, but I'd get a proof of concept up and running first.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3317&start=0#p23390
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: A few problims, please help!
User: Berson / DateTime: 2011-10-04 20:02:32

I am a experienced interactive fiction coder, I'm using a new program that sounds like it might suit my needs better, inform, but I'm having a few problems. The 1st one is where an item is added directly to the players inventory, Ive tried and tried, but I cant get it to work. My 2nd problem; is that I'm trying to set up a timer that every 10 turns it spawns a certain object if there isn't a copy of that object already there, I thought that the code was typed right, but i guess that I'm not even close. All help appreciated, thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3317&start=0#p23391
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A few problims, please help!
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-10-04 20:44:13

For the first one, you probably want the phrase "now the player carries [whatever the object is]".

For the second, if you show us what you have written so far, it'll be easier for us to help you sort it out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3311&start=0#p23392
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Six
User: Healy / DateTime: 2011-10-04 20:44:42

The error says "Glulxe fatal error: Reference to non-existant Glk object." And after testing it some more, it appears to only occur after I restore a saved game; that is to say, I can play through game as normal if I start from the beginning, but restoring a saved game seems to set the bug off. And, come to think of it, the fancy googaws at the top of the screen are gone when I restore a save, too. Hmm. Are saved games working for anyone else?

(P.S. My OS is Windows Vista, and all my interpreters are the latest versions available on the IF Archive.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3314&start=0#p23393
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pronoun problems
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-10-04 20:57:39

Thanks, I'll have to try those suggestions in the morning.

Another issue (probably related) occurred in an earlier iteration. I'm away from my inform computer right now, but what happened was the disambiguation read something like:[code]Which do you mean, yourself's belly button or Emily's belly button?[/code]Which is equally frustrating.

I'll apply your suggestions tomorrow and let you know what I find. Thanks again!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3314&start=0#p23394
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pronoun problems
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-04 21:03:24

You know, when pronoun trouble comes up someone really should link [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6e1hZGDaqIw]this[/url].

ACTUALLY USEFUL UPDATE: I think the way to implement Felix's suggestion about "her" is this:

[code]Understand "her" as a thing when a woman incorporates the item described. [/code]

or "when the item described is part of a woman," I guess.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3318&start=0#p23395
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Games with Similar Premises in Comp 2011
User: Healy / DateTime: 2011-10-04 21:25:52

Does anyone else think that this year's Comp has a lot more games that have similar premises than usual? Usually the Comp gets at least a couple (I hear zombies were popular last year), but this year they practically come in pairs.

Here's the connections I thought of:
[i]It[/i] and [i]Six[/i]: Both games about hide-and-seek variants
[i]Binary[/i] and [i]Hours[/i]: Both about time travellers
[i]Cana According to Micah[/i] and [i]The Tenth Plague[/i]: Both biblical games
(This next bit is a little spoiler-y)
[spoiler][i]Last Day of Summer[/i] and [i]Cold Iron[/i]: Both deal with a story telling reverend in some way. This is actually the weirdest one, I think, because it's so random. Is there some kind of historical character these two are based on that I don't know about?[/spoiler]

Huh. Now that I've written this out, I realize that there weren't that many similar premises after all. Still kind of wigged out about that last one though. And if nothing else, looking for similarities can be a fun little game. So what similarities between games have you guys found?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3319&start=0#p23396
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 6: Having a seperate "you can see" line for a class
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-10-04 21:53:08

So, basically, my game's got a bunch of generic monster classes. How do I set it up so that they all have their own line of "you can see" descriptions? For example:

[quote]
You can see a sword and two coins (a gold coin and a silver coin) here.

Lurking menacingly nearby are three monsters (two kobolds (a short kobold and a tall kobold) and a vampire).
[/quote]

I'm reasonably sure this can be done, right?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3292&start=20#p23397
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: What do you play IF on?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-04 21:57:00

I have also been distracted from the mobile/appifying problem by "real life". Like Emily, my "real life" still consists of game-design work -- just not IF specifically.

My plans for the winter involve getting at least Dreamhold out as a standalone iOS app. (Hadean Lands is unlikely to be done as quickly as the remaining interpreter technical work.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3292&start=20#p23402
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: What do you play IF on?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-10-04 23:14:55

[quote="tinman"]It's too bad when someone of Emily Short's stature has to attribute a lack of recent IF production to the intrusion of "real life."[/quote]

I do interactive narrative design and writing for a living. Some of those projects are text-based, some aren't, but I pretty much [i]am[/i] doing what I want with my time, and being paid to do it, and that's awesome. 

The thing I was talking about was the conversation library, and it's simply taken a back burner to other projects. That's always a risk with hobbyist development, but then, even if I were making money from selling IF apps, it's not clear to me that that would actually be an encouragement to finish and release the library. It's in a state where it's perfectly usable [i]by me[/i]; the remaining work that needs to go into it is beta-testing, refinement and documentation to make it more accessible to other people. If this were a competitive money-making environment, I'd actually have a negative incentive to do that work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3320&start=0#p23403
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Spoilers!
User: Ryusui / DateTime: 2011-10-05 00:11:30

Everything you know about pop culture is wrong. So sayeth the [url=http://watercrown.info/if/spoiler_troll/index.html]Spoiler Troll[/url].

Pull his finger and learn the truth about your favorite movies, TV shows, books, and games!

[b]NOTE: May or may not actually contain spoilers. Spoiler Troll is for entertainment purposes only. Do not get Spoiler Troll wet and never feed him after midnight. Side effects of Spoiler Troll may include headache, mild rash, dry mouth, and spontaneous intestinal reconfiguration. MY SPLEEN![/b]

Suggestions for more spoilers? Send ‘em my way and you might find them horribly butchered by the Spoiler Troll in the future!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3316&start=0#p23406
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Quest 5 interpreter
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-10-05 02:17:37

The Quest 5 interpreter is Quest 5 - you can download and play Quest games in Quest 5.

There's currently no way of saving progress when playing online but this is a planned feature.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3316&start=0#p23407
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Quest 5 interpreter
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-05 02:33:55

OK, thanks. So that means that currently, a Quest 5 game complicated enough to require saving is effectively Windows-only?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3311&start=0#p23418
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Six
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-10-05 03:11:26

Thanks for reporting back, Healy.

One of my playtesters experienced a crash on restore problem, but when we checked his situation carefully, his version of Gargoyle was out of date (it was from 2009 - the latest is from 2010) - and when he moved to the latest Gargoyle it didn't happen anymore.

I have experienced confused in looking for versions of interpreters in the archive myself. Some of the file names and filing can be convoluted. I recommend you try downloading Gargoyle from Gargoyle's own page here, rather than the archive:

<a class="postlink" href="http://code.google.com/p/garglk/downloads/list">http://code.google.com/p/garglk/downloads/list</a>

Unfortunately any saved games you made before may not work anymore. But if you start a fresh game with the latest Gargoyle, I have a feeling (fingers crossed) you won't have any more problems.

Thanks for your patience, and for pointing out the problem.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3292&start=20#p23419
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: What do you play IF on?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-05 03:15:19

[quote="tinman"]It's too bad IF can't find a way to "appify" itself.[/quote]

If adding the line "Release as an Android app" worked in I7, I'd certainly do it because that's one more outlet and outlets are nice ... but it really wouldn't change which games I charged for and which ones I didn't, nor would it change my approach to design at all, or to my workday. I already make my living as a game designer in my home gaming turf (pen-and-paper RPGs) ... IF will always be someplace I go 'cause I enjoy luxuriating in the process (even when "luxuriating" means "banging my head against the same coding challenge for weeks at a time") and because it affords me greater freedom to be snide to the audience [not to be read aloud].

Honestly, I'd be much more excited to personally pay $20 for a rock-solid 'terp for Android than I would be to sell my own games as $1 apps. Much-much-muchly-much.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3292&start=20#p23422
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: What do you play IF on?
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-10-05 03:45:44

"Appification" is what I'm currently working on for Quest games: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.textadventures.co.uk/blog/2011/09/30/using-quest-to-create-text-adventures-for-iphone-ipad-android/">http://www.textadventures.co.uk/blog/20 ... d-android/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3316&start=0#p23423
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Quest 5 interpreter
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-10-05 03:49:53

Unfortunately yes.

Quest games can run on Linux and Mac using Mono, but so far I've only got a console-mode application working - the UI would need redeveloping for these platforms. That shouldn't be too much work actually, because the code is separated quite cleanly, but it just hasn't happened yet.

(<a class="postlink" href="http://quest.codeplex.com">http://quest.codeplex.com</a> if anyone would like to help out!)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3316&start=0#p23424
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Quest 5 interpreter
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-10-05 04:04:35

Glad to see people consistently choosing the wrong dev tools to write their software, with lack of portability biting them in the arse only after it's too late to do anything about it [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3316&start=0#p23429
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Quest 5 interpreter
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-10-05 04:59:00

.NET is about as portable as anything else these days. UI code generally has to be rewritten for each platform unless you want a sucky UI.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3316&start=0#p23431
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Quest 5 interpreter
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-10-05 05:47:11

You can use the same UI code across platforms and have it look nice too. Of course not with .NET. You would need to go the native code route.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3316&start=0#p23433
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Quest 5 interpreter
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-10-05 06:38:15

You can use Gtk# in .NET/Mono for cross-platform UI - but it doesn't look nice.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3318&start=0#p23434
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Games with Similar Premises in Comp 2011
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-10-05 06:41:48

There's at least one more with a sort of religious theme to it:
[spoiler]Beet the Devil[/spoiler]


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3316&start=0#p23435
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Quest 5 interpreter
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-10-05 06:47:42

Aren't there Qt bindings? It looks very nice on all major OSes. Gtk only looks good on 50% of Linux systems (not even all of them.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2917&start=10#p23436
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Plugs and Sockets by Sean Turner
User: saturner65 / DateTime: 2011-10-05 06:57:10

Hello

My name is Sean. I wrote this extension some time ago. I was pleasantly surprised some people want to use it - quite flattering actually.

I haven't looked at Inform for some time - busy with work and study and so on - but I was recently emailed on this so I thought I'd take a look.

I've read through this thread and I'll make the necessary changes accordingly. Something changed in version 6G60 to cause the namespace clash.

Anyway, I should have it fixed during the weekend at the latest.

Sorry about the problem.

Cheers

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3316&start=0#p23438
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Quest 5 interpreter
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-10-05 07:33:55

It looks like there were Qt bindings: <a class="postlink" href="http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2009/Mar-16.html">http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2009/Mar-16.html</a> - but the project stalled due to lack of interest - <a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/codebutler/qyotodevelop/wiki/">https://github.com/codebutler/qyotodevelop/wiki/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3316&start=10#p23439
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Quest 5 interpreter
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-10-05 07:36:00

Ah looks like I misread, the Qyotodevelop project was abandoned, but the bindings still exist - <a class="postlink" href="http://techbase.kde.org/Development/Languages/Qyoto">http://techbase.kde.org/Development/Languages/Qyoto</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3327&start=0#p23440
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Don't Panic -- IFComp 2011 topics moved.
User: Merk / DateTime: 2011-10-05 08:16:59

The missing topics about the IFComp 2011, wish list, feelie info, etc, are safe and sound in the IFComp 2011 Game Discussion forum. It probably should be called "IFComp 2011 All Discussion" or something. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3089&start=0#p23441
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Allow unregistered users to search
User: Merk / DateTime: 2011-10-05 08:20:06

I guess it would have to be related if it didn't used to do that before. But I didn't change anything except for "guest" users, and I'm not reproducing the same problem myself (nor when I switch to a different user's permissions). Is this still happening?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3090&start=10#p23442
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: StackExchange Interactive Fiction Q&A site proposal
User: Merk / DateTime: 2011-10-05 08:33:27

Somebody asked for something like this here, a year or two ago. A way to mark a topic as "solved" and maybe designate the "best answer" if I remember. I don't think anything like that is built into PHPBB3, but there might be a mod. At the expense of somebody's time, it could even be done manually. Have a locked "Q&A Archive" board where a moderator basically re-posts questions and answers if it makes sense to do so, or maybe just moves the topic once it's solved.

What I'd like even more than this would be some kind of account integration among the disparate IF-related sites: here, the IFDB, IFComp, etc. It would probably require a centralized account server and custom changes to all the existing sites (i.e., user authentication via web services or a CGI post/response). So it's probably a pipe dream. Would be nice though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3089&start=10#p23443
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Allow unregistered users to search
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-10-05 09:04:36

I haven't noticed it anymore. It happened a lot for a day or two, but it seems to be working now since yesterday.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3277&start=30#p23444
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 is on!
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-10-05 09:27:21

I've now posted a patch to the Quest forums which lets you override the game colours: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.axeuk.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2681#p19013">http://www.axeuk.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.p ... 681#p19013</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3090&start=10#p23445
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: StackExchange Interactive Fiction Q&A site proposal
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-10-05 09:36:51

[quote="Merk"]What I'd like even more than this would be some kind of account integration among the disparate IF-related sites: here, the IFDB, IFComp, etc. It would probably require a centralized account server and custom changes to all the existing sites (i.e., user authentication via web services or a CGI post/response). So it's probably a pipe dream. Would be nice though.[/quote]I'd be willing to link in to this if anyone else was up for it.  The new ADRIFT [url=http://www.adrift.co]site[/url] does this, so the forum uses the same account as the adventures page, reviews etc.  This has the benefit of linking reviews/ratings to forum accounts.  Would be great to link in to all the other sites, altho I imagine it will require quite a bit of effort.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3328&start=0#p23446
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Site Logo
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-10-05 09:38:06

Isn't it about time we got a nice Int Fiction logo rather than the default phpbb one?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3327&start=0#p23448
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Don't Panic -- IFComp 2011 topics moved.
User: lglasser / DateTime: 2011-10-05 09:42:58

How about the author's discussion, does that exist this year? I haven't seen it or any info on how to make it available. Can you give any info about that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3314&start=0#p23449
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pronoun problems
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-05 10:01:36

[quote="matt w"][code]Understand "her" as a thing when a woman incorporates the item described.[/code][/quote]Yes, that's it!

That will give you the response
[quote]>x her
(Emily)
You see nothing special about Emily.[/quote]

but you can prevent that disambiguation easily by phrasing the understand statement thus:
[code]Understand "her [body-part]" as a thing when a woman incorporates the item described.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3327&start=0#p23451
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Don't Panic -- IFComp 2011 topics moved.
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-05 10:05:59

[quote="EEAtheist"]How about the author's discussion, does that exist this year? I haven't seen it or any info on how to make it available. Can you give any info about that?[/quote]
If you're an author, send a message to Sargent. (You should have gotten an email from the Comp organisers?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3329&start=0#p23453
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Saving reader progress without the Save Dialog
User: EthanHam / DateTime: 2011-10-05 10:21:13

Hi, I'm new to Inform development, so apologies if my question pegs me as a hopeless newbie [emote]:)[/emote]

I'm collaborating on a work of IF that will be presented in a public place in a sort of "kiosk" mode. There will be passerbys interaction with the work of IF and I'd like to give them a simple way of saving their progress and picking up where they left off.

Is there a way to save off a reader's progress without presenting the reader with a save dialog? What I'd like to do is automatically save the game when the reader quits (or saves) and let them recover the game via a user name or unique id number.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3329&start=0#p23456
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Saving reader progress without the Save Dialog
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-05 10:37:51

[quote="EthanHam"]Is there a way to save off a reader's progress without presenting the reader with a save dialog? What I'd like to do is automatically save the game when the reader quits (or saves) and let them recover the game via a user name or unique id number.[/quote]
You may want to take a look at the [url=http://lilith.cc/~victor/temp/Alternative%20Permadeath.i7x]Alternative Permadeath[/url] extension. (Nominally mine, but almost all code comes from Erik Temple. It is not yet officially released, but I put a temporary version online for your use.) It doesn't quite do what you want, but it does show you how to save a game without presenting a save dialog.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3330&start=0#p23458
Forum: Competitions / Subject: IFComp 2011 authors reviewing competition games????
User: ultimate / DateTime: 2011-10-05 11:00:39

I noticed recently that Emily Short alias Boegheim has a game running in the comp called "It" and at the same time reviewing other IFComp 2011 games at [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/]her blog[/url] during the competition. I find that somewhat strange.

Now I may be not familiar with the way things are being handled each year during the competition when you participate as a author, since you know, I never have took part in the IFComp and don't intend to, because of that "no porn allowed" thing.

And I don't really want to troll, freak or rant about it or make an issue of it. Whatever. But I just wonder.

So IFComp 2011 authors are allowed to review other IFComp 2011 games during the comp and thus trying to influence their opinions on games to judges?

That's on a par with the rules, right? Can someone shed light on this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3330&start=0#p23459
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 authors reviewing competition games????
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-05 11:08:24

Emily Short is not Emily Boegheim.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3330&start=0#p23460
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 authors reviewing competition games????
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-10-05 11:09:24

Maybe in some parallel universe, Emily Boegheim and Emily Short are the same person, but not in this one [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3089&start=10#p23461
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Allow unregistered users to search
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-10-05 11:18:27

I expect it's probably a result of your second change - disabling search when the load gets too high.

Actually it may be better this way, if it avoids the "out of memory" errors that used to crop up from time to time. Functional but limited is preferable to completely offline.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3331&start=0#p23462
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Glulx timers
User: EthanHam / DateTime: 2011-10-05 11:19:47

Is there a manual somewhere for Glulx? I'd like to use timers, but can't find documentation about them in the Inform7 manuals. The Glulx Entry Points says that it allows the author to set responses to Timer events, but doesn't give syntax or examples for doing so.

(I tried using Basic Real Time by Sarah Morayati, but her example code isn't compiling).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3329&start=0#p23463
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Saving reader progress without the Save Dialog
User: EthanHam / DateTime: 2011-10-05 11:21:39

Thanks, Victor!  That looks very useful!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3330&start=0#p23464
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 authors reviewing competition games????
User: ultimate / DateTime: 2011-10-05 11:21:44

Oh.. thanks, guys.

Stupid me. I should have known. People with similiar names sound all the same to me. lol

Yes, the parallel universe effect kind of kicks in sometimes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3330&start=0#p23465
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 authors reviewing competition games????
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-10-05 12:02:32

Somewhere, perhaps, there exists a universe (parallel or otherwise) in which we are [i]all[/i] one. [emote]:?[/emote] 

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3319&start=0#p23467
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Having a seperate "you can see" line for a cla
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-05 12:17:01

Read up in Chapter 17, "Activities", especially 17.14. Grouping together something and/or 17.23. Listing nondescript items of something.   I think fiddling with one or both of those is the answer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3331&start=0#p23469
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx timers
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-05 12:27:48

Glulx manual is <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/glulx-spec.html">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/glulx-spec.html</a>  I presume.  I don't know much about timers though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3318&start=0#p23470
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Games with Similar Premises in Comp 2011
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-10-05 12:29:20

Something like this pretty much always happens. One year multiple games prominently featured squid. It's a slightly less calculable variation on the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem]birthday problem[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3317&start=0#p23471
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A few problims, please help!
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-05 12:30:45

To do something every tenth turn, you can use an Every Turn rule that checks the turn count: [code]Every turn when the remainder after dividing the turn count by 10 is 0: say "a 10th turn!".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3317&start=0#p23475
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A few problims, please help!
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-05 12:58:01

[quote="Berson"]every 10 turns it spawns a certain object if there isn't a copy of that object already there[/quote]
It sounds as though you would want the [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Jesse%20McGrew/Dynamic%20Objects/index.html]Dynamic Objects[/url] extension by Jesse McGrew, which lets you create objects at run time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3319&start=0#p23479
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Having a seperate "you can see" line for a cla
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-10-05 13:11:21

Of the DM4? Because I couldn't find anything about that in section 17 and the rest of the document only seems to touch on the normal uses of describe, initial, invent, etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3314&start=0#p23480
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pronoun problems
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-10-05 13:25:24

I've tried your suggestions, and they mostly work.
Thanks to your advice, the pronoun problem with the PC using third person instead of second is solved.

However, the whole business with "her" is not going to be solved so easily.[code]Understand "her [body-part]" as a thing when a woman incorporates the item described.[/code]Gives me this result:[code]> x her belly button
Which do you mean, your belly button or Emily's belly button?[/code]Which is a sideways step from the original "I only understood you as far as wanting to examine Emily."

I've tried various permutations of [code]Understand "her [body-part]" as a thing incorporated by a woman when a woman incorporates the item described.[/code]but the parser rejected this.
So my next plan of attack was:[code]Does the player mean doing something to a thing incorporated by the player: it is unlikely.[/code]And this gives me:[code]> x her belly button
(Emily's belly button)
You see nothing special about Emily's belly button.[/code]Which is what I was hoping for, except for the disambiguation message. I'm sure I can just fudge my way around this somehow.

I think I might need to do something with a "To decide who is the most likely woman" statement, though I'm unfamiliar with the proper use of those as well. I'll keep plugging away on this, please let me know if you have more insight on the matter.
Thank you for your help!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3318&start=0#p23486
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Games with Similar Premises in Comp 2011
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-10-05 13:52:25

[quote]One year multiple games prominently featured squid.[/quote]

Why do so many IF Comp games
Feature themes that are almost the same?
It seems rather odd
That a cephalopod
Gets its own fifteen minutes of fame


(Sorry, I couldn't resist)


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3313&start=0#p23488
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Playing around in the guts of TADS 3
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2011-10-05 14:01:17

That's pretty much what I'd assumed... I'll probably end up using three banners, one for the command prompt, one for NPC1, and one for NPC2. Good idea about the variables, though, that's definitely how I'll do that.

The fun part will be hacking the response library... I'd like to make the interpreter do as much for me as possible, but I'm not completely sure how to get it to parse the command and show all the appropriate information for the player, then go back and show it all again with the player as an NPC. I've got an idea, but right now the programming prospects aren't entirely pleasant. Hopefully that will change [emote]:-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3315&start=0#p23489
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Door to be unlocked by various keys. Possible?
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2011-10-05 14:02:37

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]This should be reasonably close to what you want to have:

[...]

You need to implement some other stuff to make this work well, of course: explicit locking and unlocking.[/quote]
This is indeed reasonably close. [emote]:-)[/emote] Wow. It looks ridiculously easy. Well, obviously you are a pro here. [emote];-)[/emote] I am learning (n00b!). Thanks for that.

With your final statement you mean if someone locks or unlocks a door by saying e.g. "unlock door with Yellow Key"? Is that what you are saying?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3331&start=0#p23490
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx timers
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-10-05 14:09:43

Timers aren't handled by the Glulx VM but by the Glk library.  You will want [url=http://eblong.com/zarf/glk/]the Glk specification[/url] if you are going to do any Glk hacking.  But like you say, there are already extensions for this kind of thing.  If you tell us which version of Sarah's extension you're using, post your source, and mention the problem messages, the folks here can probably tell you how to get things working.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3314&start=0#p23491
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pronoun problems
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-05 14:11:19

[quote="Joel Webster"][code]Understand "her [body-part]" as a thing when a woman incorporates the item described.[/code]Gives me this result:[code]> x her belly buttonWhich do you mean, your belly button or Emily's belly button?[/code][/quote]
Will [code]Understand "her [body-part]" as a thing when a woman incorporates the item described and the player does not incorporate the item described.[/code] work?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3315&start=0#p23492
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Door to be unlocked by various keys. Possible?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-05 14:11:27

[quote="BigBonsai"]With your final statement you mean if someone locks or unlocks a door by saying e.g. "unlock door with Yellow Key"? Is that what you are saying?[/quote]
Yes, you need to make sure that locking and unlocking A with B work if B fits A.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3331&start=0#p23494
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx timers
User: EthanHam / DateTime: 2011-10-05 14:23:41

I seem to have what I need by using the code from this post :

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1340&start=20">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1340&start=20</a>

But I am curious as to why Basic Real Time isn't working for me. The build of Inform 7 I'm using is "Inform (1.2 6.31/6H98)." I have Basic Real Time version 2 installed.

When I run the "Green Button" example code that comes with the extension, I get a compiler error that states:
[quote]Problem. You wrote 'It can be pressed or unpressed'  : but it's often a little ambiguous to declare properties for 'it', so it seems best to spell this out by saying exactly what the property's owner or owners would be.
Problem. The sentence 'It is unpressed'   appears to say two things are the same - I am reading 'It' and 'unpressed' as two different things, and therefore it makes no sense to say that one is the other: it would be like saying that 'the hawk is the handsaw'. It would be all right if the second thing were the name of a kind, perhaps with properties: for instance 'Elsinore is a lighted room' says that something called Elsinore exists and that it is a 'room', which is a kind I know about, combined with a property called 'lighted' which I also know about.[/quote]
I changed "It can be pressed or unpressed." to "The button can be pressed or unpressed." Which seems to solve that problem, but then I get this compiler error:
[quote]This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6G60) on its most recent run through:

Problem. In the sentence 'now the next action is the action of releasing the terrors'  , I was expecting to read a condition, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'next action is the action of releasing the terrors'.
I was trying to match this phrase:

now (next action is the action of releasing the terrors - a condition) 
This was what I found out:

next action is the action of releasing the terrors = something unrecognised[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3315&start=0#p23495
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Door to be unlocked by various keys. Possible?
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2011-10-05 14:26:28

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="BigBonsai"]With your final statement you mean if someone locks or unlocks a door by saying e.g. "unlock door with Yellow Key"? Is that what you are saying?[/quote]
Yes, you need to make sure that locking and unlocking A with B work if B fits A.[/quote]
Thanks. I think that with some experimentation I will be able to handle that. [emote]:-)[/emote]

You helped me a great deal along the way. Thanks!  [emote]:geek:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3315&start=10#p23496
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Door to be unlocked by various keys. Possible?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-05 14:32:38

Glad to be of assistance.  [emote];)[/emote]  Let me know if you get stuck.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3331&start=0#p23498
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx timers
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-05 14:38:32

[quote][code]now the next action is the action of releasing the terrors[/code][/quote]
I think that might be a bug in the example.
It can be that the rule this line is from should read:
[code]
	When play begins:
		now the next real-time action is the action of releasing the terrors;[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3314&start=0#p23499
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pronoun problems
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-10-05 14:49:04

That doesn't work.
I think that would work if it were something that only Emily incorporated. The problem is that there are many pieces of a person that are common to both men and women (such as belly buttons), so it still asks me which do I mean.
If it were something that only Emily were incorporating, then I think your statement would work.

I greatly appreciate all of the help you've given me. Here is what I have now:[code]"Test" by Joel Webster

Blank room is a room.
Empty room is south of blank room.

Graham is a man in empty room.
Emily is a woman in blank room.

The player is Graham.

A body-part is a kind of thing.
A belly button is a kind of body-part.
Every person incorporates one belly button.

Understand "her [body-part]" as a thing when a woman incorporates the item described.

Does the player mean doing something to a thing incorporated by the player: it is unlikely.

Test me with "x belly button/ n / x belly button / x my belly button / x her belly button / x emily's belly button".[/code]Which results in:[code]Empty room

> x belly button
You see nothing special about your belly button.

> n

Blank room
You can see Emily here.

> x belly button
(Emily's belly button)
You see nothing special about Emily's belly button.

> x my belly button
You see nothing special about your belly button.

> x her belly button
(Emily's belly button)
You see nothing special about Emily's belly button.

> x emily's belly button
You see nothing special about Emily's belly button.[/code]I like the way this works now. My only nitpick is the disambiguation statement under "x her belly button" but I can live with that for now.

I'm going to mark the thread solved, but if anyone has any insight on how I might eliminate that one last thing, I'd appreciate it.
Thanks again for all of your help [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3319&start=0#p23500
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Having a seperate "you can see" line for a cla
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-10-05 14:49:21

[quote="Glorb"]Of the DM4? Because I couldn't find anything about that in section 17 and the rest of the document only seems to touch on the normal uses of describe, initial, invent, etc.[/quote]
Ron misread and thought you were using Inform 7, so he was referring to that manual.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3332&start=0#p23503
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Avoiding a loop!
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-10-05 15:52:34

First things first: is it OK to ask for help with the coding of a game now running for the IFComp2011?

Before saying anything else, I'd like to know it. [emote]:)[/emote]


Thanks all!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3330&start=0#p23504
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 authors reviewing competition games????
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-10-05 16:01:44

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Emily Short is not Emily Boegheim.[/quote]
Though I wish I were.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3330&start=0#p23506
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 authors reviewing competition games????
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-05 16:18:53

[quote="Emerald"]Though I wish I were.[/quote]
I don't even understand what it means to wish to be a different person? If you were not yourself, it wouldn't be you that was not yourself. If you see what I mean.

(Also: love yourself. It is the one commandment -- the others follow necessarily. Not that I endorse a morality of commandments.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3332&start=0#p23507
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Avoiding a loop!
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-05 16:19:45

Almost certainly not. But if it's an I7 problem, feel free to send me a private message or an email.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3330&start=0#p23508
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 authors reviewing competition games????
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-10-05 16:29:20

[quote="Emerald"][quote="VictorGijsbers"]Emily Short is not Emily Boegheim.[/quote]
Though I wish I were.[/quote]
No, no, no. I've grown quite fond of that pony avatar [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3314&start=10#p23510
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pronoun problems [solved]
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-05 16:37:51

You could try this, though it might be a bluntish instrument:

[code]Rule for clarifying the parser's choice of Emily's belly button when the player's command includes "her": do nothing.[/code]

EDIT: And you can use a similar trick to make sure that 5 doesn't ask for a disambiguation:

[code]Does the player mean doing something to a thing incorporated by a man [or "the player", if you like]: 
	if the player's command includes "her":
		it is unlikely.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3330&start=0#p23512
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 authors reviewing competition games????
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-10-05 16:53:49

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="Emerald"]Though I wish I were.[/quote]
I don't even understand what it means to wish to be a different person? If you were not yourself, it wouldn't be you that was not yourself. If you see what I mean.

Also: love yourself. It is the one commandment -- the others follow necessarily.[/quote]
The statement is based on an assumption that a person may be separated into (at least) two units: One that is easily observed and (the speaker assumes) extrinsic to the person (in this case, Emily Short's success in the field of putting words together into increasingly complex formations, as well as the legions of fans associated with said success), and one that is hidden, inalienable, the "point of view" that experiences in full detail a given life while insisting on its distinctness from that life.

Emily Boegheim here states a desire that her experiencing "I" be associated, instead of with the experienced "I" she has grown to know [i]all too well[/i] over the years, with the experienced "I" that we all know Emily Short is constantly experiencing all the time. This could be accomplished in manners as mundane as your Prince and Pauper setup, or ridiculous as a Freaky Friday scenario, or as disturbing as a Being John Malkovich thing, with a tiny door.

I admit I am putting words in Boegheim's mouth. It might be that she is already perfectly satisfied with the experienced "I" she's already got, and just wishes that her last name were Shorter.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3330&start=0#p23513
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 authors reviewing competition games????
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-05 17:05:33

[quote="Afterward"]The statement is based on an assumption that a person may be separated into (at least) two units: One that is easily observed and (the speaker assumes) extrinsic to the person (in this case, Emily Short's success in the field of putting words together into increasingly complex formations, as well as the legions of fans associated with said success), and one that is hidden, inalienable, the "point of view" that experiences in full detail a given life while insisting on its distinctness from that life.[/quote]
But this assumption is, of course, false. No experience is neutral; all experience is shaped by our own history, personality, mood, thoughts, and everything else that constitutes our Self. If I were somehow bodily swapped with Emily, and someone came to me to thank me for writing [i]Alabaster[/i], I certainly would not have the same experience that she would have. (For one thing, I could not possibly be proud of my accomplishment, but would feel acutely ashamed for impersonating someone else.) The Self may (and does) [i]transcend[/i] the actual actions and experiences of our life, but it is not independent from them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3318&start=0#p23515
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Games with Similar Premises in Comp 2011
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-10-05 17:18:51

Curiously enough, my soon to reach beta-testing phase Haunted House game is not an IF-Comp game, but just like Anssi Raisanen's Ted Paladin And The Case Of The Abandoned House is just about hanging around a... well, abandoned house! And they both start in a location called "Outside of the house" and the first thing to do is finding a way in! 

I've just started to play with it, so I could find some more coincidences along the way!  [emote]:D[/emote] 

--

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3318&start=0#p23518
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Games with Similar Premises in Comp 2011
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-10-05 17:44:06

[quote="rockersuke"]
I've just started to play with it, so I could find some more coincidences along the way!  [emote]:D[/emote] 
[/quote]

Indeed!
[spoiler]-You reach upstairs using an old ladder which collapses at the last second
-Rooms are named after colors[/spoiler]

And I think this is only the beginning!  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

--

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3319&start=0#p23519
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Having a seperate "you can see" line for a cla
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-10-05 17:52:58

Just off the top of my head, maybe you could have a floating object with a describe routine that takes care of this. Then you could give all the monsters the concealed attribute.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3332&start=0#p23520
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Avoiding a loop!
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2011-10-05 17:59:21

Or ask in the author's forum. (But I'm sure Victor will be able to help you.)

Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3330&start=10#p23524
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 authors reviewing competition games????
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-10-05 18:25:55

You seem to comprehend the issue pretty well, considering you supposedly don't understand the original post! ;D

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3330&start=10#p23525
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 authors reviewing competition games????
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-10-05 18:27:30

In light of the ensuing discussion, I shall certainly not explain that my remark was an off-hand joke made at 5am.

[quote="Afterward"]It might be that she [...] just wishes that her last name were Shorter.[/quote]
Well, that too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3330&start=10#p23530
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 authors reviewing competition games????
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-05 18:43:22

Some people would say that there is no parallel universe where Emily Boegheim is Emily Short, because [url=http://comp.uark.edu/~efunkho/Notes04Meta.pdf]any two things that are identical are necessarily identical, and so any two things that are distinct are necessarily distinct[/url]. But even if this is true, it need not make it incoherent to think about what would be the case if Emily Boegheim were Emily Short -- we can coherently consider counterfactuals with necessarily false antecedents, such as "If n were the largest prime, one added to the product of all primes less than n would be an even larger prime." And if we can wonder what would happen if some impossibility were the case, then we can probably wish that it were the case (though I find it hard to imagine wishing that 163 were the largest prime). 

But what would it be to wish that one were another person? Well, I suspect that we should think about counterfactuals, not (as almost everyone does) by considering possible worlds in which the antecedent were true, but by drawing inferences about what would happen if it were true, holding relevant parts of the background constant. So when I say (perfectly coherently!), "If I were you, I would not try to lift that," what I mean might be that, inferring from "I am you" to "I have certain physical characteristics [yours]" and holding constant "I have certain views [the ones I actually hold] about what would happen if someone with such physical characteristics were to try to lift that," we can draw the conclusion that I would not lift that. So probably what I would mean if I said "I wish I were Emily Short" is that I wish that I had certain of her characteristics -- notably having written, through her own efforts, a lot of great IF -- but holding constant many of the background characteristics -- namely the ones that make me me. Which seems coherent, and not entirely incompatible with self-love, or making jokes at 5 am.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3319&start=0#p23535
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Having a seperate "you can see" line for a cla
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-05 19:49:50

Doh, sorry. I did miss the "6".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3319&start=0#p23540
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Having a seperate "you can see" line for a cla
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-10-05 21:27:59

[quote="Egon"]Just off the top of my head, maybe you could have a floating object with a describe routine that takes care of this. Then you could give all the monsters the concealed attribute.[/quote]

Is there a way to make a floating object where the "found_in" property returns as "wherever the player is"?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3330&start=10#p23541
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 authors reviewing competition games????
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-10-05 21:55:10

[quote="ultimate"]somewhat strange[/quote]

[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_the_Strange]That's someone else entirely![/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3319&start=0#p23542
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Having a seperate "you can see" line for a cla
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-05 22:33:27

The point of a floating object is it's either where the player is, or it's gone. So you're just asking for a floating object that's found everywhere. This is easy:

found_in [; rtrue; ]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3336&start=0#p23547
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: A rule not allowing a certain move during the first turn.
User: Bristo / DateTime: 2011-10-05 23:44:21

I'm writing a story where I want the player to start outside a building, and [i]have[/i] to go inside it. The problem is, there are two other exits. They aren't described in the room, but the player could still move north or south, when I only want them moving east.

Basically, what I have is:
[code]While the player is in the Front Step for the first time:
	If the player tries to go north, say "You're much too eager to see what's inside!";
	If the player tries to go south, say "You're much too eager to see what's inside!";[/code]

But this isn't working. Any help?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3319&start=0#p23551
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Having a seperate "you can see" line for a cla
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-10-06 00:40:47

Oh cool, I didn't know you could do that. Thanks, zarf! All I need to know now is if there a way to list (using WriteListFrom, I s'pose) only objects of a certain class or with a certain attribute (like "hostile"). I assume it's something involving workflags and whatnot, but so far I haven't gotten that to work for me at all. I want to avoid having the "bunch of monsters" object actually contain the monsters, since obviously that would mean that they follow the player around and whale on him/her nonstop like a bunch of angry ghosts. But I can't seem to actually get the object to say "here's a buncha monsters, and they consist of..." and [i]not[/i] say it while there are none around.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3318&start=0#p23554
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Games with Similar Premises in Comp 2011
User: AnssiR / DateTime: 2011-10-06 01:44:26

[quote="rockersuke"][quote="rockersuke"]
I've just started to play with it, so I could find some more coincidences along the way!  [emote]:D[/emote] 
[/quote]

Indeed!
[spoiler]-You reach upstairs using an old ladder which collapses at the last second
-Rooms are named after colors[/spoiler]

And I think this is only the beginning!  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

--[/quote]

Heh, that's spooky! But hey, your game sounds good  [emote];)[/emote] 
-Anssi

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3330&start=10#p23558
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 authors reviewing competition games????
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-06 02:02:56

[quote="matt w"]Some people would say that there is no parallel universe where Emily Boegheim is Emily Short, because [url=http://comp.uark.edu/~efunkho/Notes04Meta.pdf]any two things that are identical are necessarily identical, and so any two things that are distinct are necessarily distinct[/url].[/quote]
When I saw those first posts, I was trying to think of a Kripke joke, but Kripke just seems so unamusing to me that I failed. (If you can explain to me what the appeal of Kripke is, I would be much obliged. When I read that stuff my mind just goes: "Wait, did you just say 'essential'? What do you mean, 'essential'? Wasn't the whole point of the Scientific Revolution that there are no essences? If not, it certainly is the point of half of the philosophy done in the 20th century.")

[quote]So when I say (perfectly coherently!), "If I were you, I would not try to lift that," what I mean might be that, inferring from "I am you" to "I have certain physical characteristics [yours]" and holding constant "I have certain views [the ones I actually hold] about what would happen if someone with such physical characteristics were to try to lift that," we can draw the conclusion that I would not lift that. So probably what I would mean if I said "I wish I were Emily Short" is that I wish that I had certain of her characteristics -- notably having written, through her own efforts, a lot of great IF -- but holding constant many of the background characteristics -- namely the ones that make me me. Which seems coherent, and not entirely incompatible with self-love, or making jokes at 5 am.[/quote]
Right, but I would claim that the phrase "If I were you" [i]only[/i] has meaning in a context that picks out some relevant properties of me that you are considering yourself to have. So if I ask you for advice about how to deal with a nasty landlord, then your phrase "if I were you" means "if I had such a landlord". But without context, the phrase seems to indicate not the switching of a few properties, but the switching of identity itself -- which is surely incoherent.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3336&start=0#p23561
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A rule not allowing a certain move during the first turn
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-10-06 02:30:16

I bet there is a more simple and elegant way of doing it, but right now I can only think of applying 2 different instead rules (one for every direction to be avoided), something like:
[code]
Location_01 is a room. Inside is Location_02. North is Location_03. South is Location_04

Instead of going north when player is in Location_01 for the first time: say "No North!"

Instead of going south when player is in Location_01 for the first time: say "No South!"[/code]

That seems to work, but I've only tested it briefly.

--

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3332&start=0#p23563
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Avoiding a loop!
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-10-06 03:03:15

I don't think there's anything wrong with asking technical questions during the comp. Just make a stand-alone example that demonstrates the problem instead of showing code from the comp game.

(Note: I'm not an IFComp official so you might want to check with Stephen just to make sure.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=10#p23564
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-06 03:17:14

The project's first draft nears completion, with 22 more functions translated in [url=http://xyzzy.plover.net/~pscion/The%20Parser%206.zip]version 6[/url].  Highlights this time around include the translation of NounDomain and Adjudicate, neither of which were trivial to do.  The GOTOs were removed from TryGivenObject and NounDomain, and though it involved creating a new function to do so, that means that this version has no GOTOs in it currently. 

TryNumber was rewritten for efficiency's and readability's sake, namely, using the technique of subtracting a ZSCII character from '0' to translate the ten digits into small numbers.  

Some unidentified magic numbers used by PrepositionChain were given names.

UnpackGrammarLine was slightly modified for efficiency. It previously cleared out three arrays before filling them in, but now it fills them in first as far as possible, then clears out only the remaining entries. 

And finally but most importantly, some of the array copying, searching, and related loops were replaced by VM-specific opcodes for performance reasons.  As well I modified a few loop constructs to use an intermediate global variable to cache the result of array size calculations so it happens once per loop rather than once per iteration. (The original code always did this, but I didn't hit upon a way of mimicing it while preserving readability until now.)  The net result of this is that the I7 expression of the parser code should be able to keep up with, or even exceed, the I6 version's performance.

Three more functions remain, including the grand-daddy of them all:  the monstrous Parser__parse.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3336&start=0#p23565
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A rule not allowing a certain move during the first turn
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-06 03:19:29

All rooms have a "visited" property, so with the INstead rules, you can append something like "when the inside-of-building is not visited".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3336&start=0#p23566
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A rule not allowing a certain move during the first turn
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-06 03:20:50

[code]Instead of going north when player is in Location_01 for the first time: say "No North!"[/code]
That will only stop the player from going north the first time he/she tries it, I think.
I guess I would do it this way:
[code]Front Step is a room. East is Home. North is Away. South is Afar.
Before going somewhere from Front Step when Home is unvisited: if the noun is not east, instead say "You're much too eager to see what's inside!"[/code]
(Of course the condition "when Home is unvisited" could be replaced with "when Captain Kidd's map is not examined" or whatever the player is supposed to accomplish inside the building,)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3332&start=0#p23570
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Avoiding a loop!
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-10-06 05:45:57

Ok, I will pm Victor as soon as I know about an eventual rule-breaking.

I'm actually from the future, being from Italy (--- which is the country more DISTANT from the future one can think of: you know, the politics aren't quite helping, these days...), so it will have to wait until I'm back home. That will be at my 9PM... and your 3PM...

Thanks for the help!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3330&start=10#p23571
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 authors reviewing competition games????
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-10-06 06:41:53

[quote]But without context, the phrase seems to indicate not the switching of a few properties, but the switching of identity itself -- which is surely incoherent.
[/quote]

Or, to put it another way, identity is, by definition, unique to each individual, which is surely what the Mariner (as that ancient philosopher is known) meant when he proclaimed "I am what I am, and that's all what I am!"

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3330&start=10#p23572
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 authors reviewing competition games????
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-06 07:23:36

[quote="VictorGijsbers"](If you can explain to me what the appeal of Kripke is, I would be much obliged. When I read that stuff my mind just goes: "Wait, did you just say 'essential'? What do you mean, 'essential'? Wasn't the whole point of the Scientific Revolution that there are no essences? If not, it certainly is the point of half of the philosophy done in the 20th century.")[/quote]

Isn't that the appeal? Kripke presents an argument that undermines the assumptions of half the philosophy done in the 20th century, and his arguments are hard to refute. In particular, the arguments against descriptivism seem to me very telling. And isn't the very short Leibniz's Law argument for necessity of identity clever? (The arguments about essentiality of origins are much less appealing to me, but I have [url=http://www.uvm.edu/~lderosse/]a colleague[/url] who's really run with them, and I don't have the greatest counterarguments.)

[quote]Right, but I would claim that the phrase "If I were you" [i]only[/i] has meaning in a context that picks out some relevant properties of me that you are considering yourself to have. So if I ask you for advice about how to deal with a nasty landlord, then your phrase "if I were you" means "if I had such a landlord". But without context, the phrase seems to indicate not the switching of a few properties, but the switching of identity itself -- which is surely incoherent.[/quote]

There's aaaaaaaalways a context. For instance, in this context it seems clear that Emerald was picking out Emshort's IF-related properties.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3330&start=10#p23573
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 authors reviewing competition games????
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-06 08:51:05

[quote="matt w"][quote]without context, the phrase seems to indicate not the switching of a few properties, but the switching of identity itself -- which is surely incoherent.[/quote]There's aaaaaaaalways a context.[/quote]
There may always be a context – but that's at most a necessary truth. And this thread hasn't really shied even from conterfactuals with necessarily false antecedents.

If I were *both* Emily Short and Emily Boegheim, I would be able to play my own games without even knowing what would happen in them! (Since, after all, Emily can play Emily's games whithout knowing that and vice versa.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=10#p23574
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: JimmyMaher / DateTime: 2011-10-06 09:36:31

So, I feel like I've mostly solved these problems. I just thought I'd report back here in case there is any interest in what I found. Basically, getting into an acceptable window of performance involved four strategies.

1. A new accelerated opcode for the BlkSize function.

2. Eliminated calls to WhetherProvides entirely through template hacking. This is NOT recommended for anything but polished, tested story files, as it does remove some sanity checking. It is, however, expensive sanity checking, and I judged it acceptable to do away with on the Kindle, which will only run well-tested story files.

3. Modified the concealed possessions routines. The standard parser runs the "deciding concealed possessions of" activity hundreds or thousands of times in the course of parsing a single command, and it is a huge performance drain. I modified the code to only do this once for each object in scope before parsing each verb, caching the results for later use. 

4. Got rid of stuff like this in the Inform 7 source: "Understand 'jail key' as the jail-cell key when the player's command matches the text 'key', case insensitively." I'm not sure why the authors were doing things like this in the first place, but it's VERY expensive for obvious reasons.

With all that, that problematic "put" command of mine has been reduced from almost 30 seconds to under 4. (And just about all other commands run in 2 seconds or less.) I still have to do some clean up and some profiling, and I want to have a look at Ron's replacement of certain array routines with VM opcodes in his own parser project. But, I think the majority of the problem is solved.

Thanks for your advice, everyone!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3338&start=0#p23577
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Can't get to ifcomp.org
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2011-10-06 09:57:24

Oddly, I can't access ifcomp.org, neither from home nor from work; I can, however, access it from my phone. Which isn't terribly helpful, to be honest. I thought, at first, that perhaps the site was down, but no one else seems to have complained about it, and indeed continue to link to the site.
So... have I managed to get myself blacklisted, and if so, who do I contact about that? (Also, I have no idea where I should post this, so I posted it here.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3338&start=0#p23578
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can't get to ifcomp.org
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-06 10:18:16

It is probably a DNS issue, but you'll have to ask the people who manage that. (markm? inky?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3338&start=0#p23579
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can't get to ifcomp.org
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-10-06 10:18:35

I'm not aware of ifcomp.org having any kind of blacklisting going on. As Zarf mentioned, perhaps it's a problem with your ISP's DNS server. Try temporarily switching to [url=http://www.opendns.com]OpenDNS[/url] or [url=http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/]Google's public DNS[/url].

OpenDNS
Primary: 208.67.222.222
Secondary: 208.67.220.220

Google
Primary: 8.8.8.8
Secondary: 8.8.4.4

Don't forget to clear your DNS cache.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3329&start=0#p23580
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Saving reader progress without the Save Dialog
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-10-06 10:22:25

Note that the code in that extension will get you only so far--you will also need a way to dynamically name the file, I think. Some code for doing that can be found here:

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1423">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1423</a>

This example applies to script files, but should be modifiable to work with saved game files.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3319&start=0#p23581
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Having a seperate "you can see" line for a cla
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-06 10:24:56

Roughly, it has to run through the domain of possible objects (presumably objects in the room) twice. The first time, you set or clear workflag, *and* keep a running count of objects for which workflag is set. If the count winds up being zero, print nothing. If it is nonzero, call WriteListFrom with the WORKFLAG_BIT flag.

This then brings up the problem of having a separate paragraph for an object which sometimes prints nothing. You can't use the "initial" property for this, because "initial" always prints a newline. You have to use "describe". An object's describe property can be invisible by printing nothing (and return true). If it does print something, however, it must end with a newline.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=10#p23582
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-06 10:43:22

Thanks for posting this.

I'll keep BlkSize in mind for acceleration. When I did my original profiling for the Glulx acceleration feature, I didn't test any games that were heavy on the dynamic data. I will go back and look at that.

WhetherProvides is a good candidate for improvement. I agree that it shouldn't be removed off the bat; I think that some valid coding patterns rely on it. But a hand-optimized assembly version would be valuable. So would analysis of call points to see if some of them *don't* occur in valid code; those could then be ifdef'd out for release builds.

Concealed possessions surprises me. It hasn't crossed my radar before as a pain point. However, I note that in an out-of-the-box I7 game, the concealed-possession rulebook is empty. This is a case which could really benefit if I7 super-optimized simple rulebooks and activities. (In the meantime, of course, your game can hack it out entirely if you're not adding any concealed-possession rules.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3336&start=0#p23583
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A rule not allowing a certain move during the first turn
User: Bristo / DateTime: 2011-10-06 10:46:13

Ah, got it.  Thanks, it's tough sometimes (especially just starting out) to know which way to approach a problem.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3338&start=0#p23584
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can't get to ifcomp.org
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-06 10:48:23

As a side note, I've had a couple of reports of people being unable to reach ifarchive.org. That is also a DNS issue. (Unrelated -- the two sites use different hosting.) If this happens to you, you can try the direct IP address at <a class="postlink" href="http://128.2.223.51/">http://128.2.223.51/</a> -- but that isn't guaranteed long-term. You can also google "if archive mirror" and pick one that works.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=10#p23585
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-06 11:01:59

By the way, the use of the deciding-concealed-possessions activity is more accurately characterized as "once per scope test per object". So in a one-object game, it's only called about a dozen times for a command. (There are always at least thirteen objects in scope: yourself and twelve compass directions.) As the room gets more crowded, the call count goes up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3338&start=0#p23586
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can't get to ifcomp.org
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2011-10-06 11:13:53

I'm pretty sure it's not a DNS issue; I get the right IP address (I've tested it through a proxy), I just can't seem to connect once I have it. Since I can get to it through proxies, just not locally, I guess I'll just have to stick with that for now, with the hope it smooths out in the next couple weeks or so.

Odd, though; I wonder if it's my location, or what. Several other websites share that IP; maybe one of them is to blame?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=10#p23587
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: JimmyMaher / DateTime: 2011-10-06 11:32:32

You're right that it's once per scope test per object. However, scope tests are actually done for every noun in every grammar syntax line, over and over again, via ScopeWithin and DoScopeActionAndRecurse. Thus for a command like PUT in this game, which has 17 syntax lines, it's potentially done many, many times -- once for every object (about 40), for every noun (one or two per syntax line, depending on whether an indirect object is taken), and for every syntax line (17). That really starts to add up to some serious performance drain for commands that fall toward the end of the potential syntax group for a complex verb, even if there are no or few rules actually in the concealed possession rulebook. I assume the parser is coded this way to allow for the HELD token.

This game does have a handful of concealed possession rules, so I can't just throw it out entirely -- and anyway I'm trying to build something that can be dropped easily into many games to "Kindleize" them. I did enough hacking and special casing to last a lifetime with King. Now it's time to systemize this stuff a bit.

As I've modified the parser code, it now works as you describe -- just once per object in scope, at the start of the command parsing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3330&start=10#p23592
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 authors reviewing competition games????
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-06 12:30:01

[quote="matt w"]Isn't that the appeal? Kripke presents an argument that undermines the assumptions of half the philosophy done in the 20th century, and his arguments are hard to refute. In particular, the arguments against descriptivism seem to me very telling. And isn't the very short Leibniz's Law argument for necessity of identity clever? (The arguments about essentiality of origins are much less appealing to me, but I have [url=http://www.uvm.edu/~lderosse/]a colleague[/url] who's really run with them, and I don't have the greatest counterarguments.)[/quote]
One man's modus ponens is another man's modus tollens, of course: anything that leads to essentialism is therefore wrong. [emote]:)[/emote] But I'll review Kripke when I have the time -- not having essences is important to me, philosophically speaking.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=10#p23594
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-06 12:40:22

[quote="JimmyMaher"]As I've modified the parser code, it now works as you describe -- just once per object in scope, at the start of the command parsing.[/quote]
I'd be interested in adding that code to the Scope Caching extension.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=10#p23595
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: JimmyMaher / DateTime: 2011-10-06 12:44:06

Give me a few days to clean it up a bit more, and I'll get it to you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3338&start=0#p23596
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can't get to ifcomp.org
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-06 13:10:21

What browser are you using?

I've noticed that when I hit ifcomp.org using Lynx, it throws a "406 Not Acceptable" error. This is User-Agent sniffing on the server side, it looks like.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=10#p23599
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-06 13:20:57

[quote]That really starts to add up to some serious performance drain for commands that fall toward the end of the potential syntax group for a complex verb[/quote]

Okay, I see what you mean. 

I couldn't make this happen with the standard library grammar on the "put" or "get" grammars -- those don't resolve at the bottom with a trivial game. However, "switch on obj" goes through three tests (for a carried thing), "switch obj off" goes through four, and "switch off obj" goes through five. Noted for future testing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=0#p23600
Forum: Competitions / Subject: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competition
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2011-10-06 13:24:29

The games Calm, Death of Schlig, The Hours, Fan Interference, Kerkerkruip, Sentencing Mr Liddell, Blind, It, Dead Hotel, Andromeda Awakening, Tenth Plague, and Vestiges have been updated on the IF Archive and for online play.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3340&start=0#p23606
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Dead Hotel Update v2 and feelies
User: Comazombie / DateTime: 2011-10-06 14:04:11

Hello,

the game Dead Hotel has been updated. The new version includes game fixes, gameplay extensions and new feelies. See copy of deadupdate.txt below.

[EDIT]

Download Links:

IFArchive
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXgamesXcompetition2011XwindowsXdeadhotel.html">http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-arc ... hotel.html</a>

Turbobit
<a class="postlink" href="http://turbobit.net/20ikixog9lh3.html">http://turbobit.net/20ikixog9lh3.html</a>

A new video walkthrough for the updated version has also been uploaded to YT:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiqeFT8znzI">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiqeFT8znzI</a>

[quote]DEAD HOTEL

Extended Version 2 Update

Fixes:

- Health points display correctly after loading a savefile.
- Inventory displays after a savefile is loaded w/items stored.
- Choice "use medkit" is not given anymore when health points are 100.
- Melee fights don't continue when health points falls below zero.
- No melee fight when shooting fat zombie after examining corridor.
- Message displays after trying to take items when inventory is full.
- Internal non-gameplay related program fixes.

Extensions:

+ Player can pull the blanket on the bed.
+ Player can jump out the window on the alley.
+ Player can shoot and/or fight zombies outside, alternative ending.
+ Player can behead the fat zombie with the axe and kick his head.
+ Player can ride up/down the elevator between lobby and roof infinitely.
+ Added reception desk and book to lobby (book available in secret mode only).
+ Some ingame texts rephrased, edited or changed.

Feelies:

+ Optional ambient music/sound (deadamb.mp3)
+ Normal-sized version of cover (deadcover.jpg)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3332&start=0#p23607
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Avoiding a loop!
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-10-06 14:56:46

[quote="Jamespking"]Ok, I will pm Victor […] it will have to wait until I'm back home. That will be at my 9PM... and your 3PM...[/quote]

How can it be six hours time difference between Italy and the Netherlands? Or did I misunderstand something?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3332&start=0#p23608
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Avoiding a loop!
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-10-06 15:01:51

[quote="Trumgottist"][quote="Jamespking"]Ok, I will pm Victor […] it will have to wait until I'm back home. That will be at my 9PM... and your 3PM...[/quote]

How can it be six hours time difference between Italy and the Netherlands? Or did I misunderstand something?[/quote]

Oh well. I'm so used to' thinking all IFers Are from the USA... [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3332&start=0#p23611
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Avoiding a loop!
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-06 15:55:30

You'd be surprised -- there are a lot of Europeans on the forum, some Australians, and perhaps some people from other time zones as well. [emote]:)[/emote]

As Juhana pointed out, I was probably a bit too hasty in my first post: you can certainly ask a techincal question if you don't tie it too closely to your game. But feel free to PM me anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2917&start=10#p23614
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Plugs and Sockets by Sean Turner
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2011-10-06 16:32:28

[quote="saturner65"]Anyway, I should have it fixed during the weekend at the latest.[/quote]
My Hero!!!  [emote]8-)[/emote] Thanks a bundle!!!

[quote="saturner65"]Sorry about the problem.[/quote]
Not a problem you caused, Mate. [emote];-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3332&start=0#p23616
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Avoiding a loop!
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-10-06 16:40:32

[quote]I'm actually from the future, being from Italy [/quote]

I'm reminded of Umberto Eco's book entitled (in English translation) The Island of the Day Before.  The premise of the book is a belief (which I assume is based on what was actually generally believed during the period) that the location of the prime meridian is not simply an arbitrary choice, but rather an absolute location, such that "today" and "tomorrow" (or "yesterday") are defined in absolute terms.  The protagonist finds himself on a ship anchored a short distance away from an island, with the prime meridian in between.  The result is that when he looks towards the island, he is seeing "yesterday" -- or, from the perspective of somebody on the island, the man on the ship is indeed "from the future."


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=20#p23619
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-06 18:20:26

[quote="JimmyMaher"]So, I feel like I've mostly solved these problems. I just thought I'd report back here in case there is any interest in what I found. Basically, getting into an acceptable window of performance involved four strategies.[/quote]I'm interested, of course.  I added the opcode calls partly for your benefit. Let me know how helpful they are, if any. I think for the typical turn in a typical game, the parser comprises most of the processing that a game needs to do, so speeding it up is fruitful for everyone. 

I do feel that there's a lot of missed opportunities for performance that Inform 7 & 6 miss and could be implemented with reasonable effort, but until it goes open source there ain't much for us to do on this end.  For example, wrapping #ifs around stuff like empty rulebooks.

Of course, since the procedural rules are going away, (and if Danii gets his way with a series of rules being compiled into the same function), I imagine the overhead on calling rulebooks, and maybe rules, will dramatically decrease.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3330&start=10#p23620
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 authors reviewing competition games????
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-06 21:07:23

[quote="Emerald"]In light of the ensuing discussion, I shall certainly not explain that my remark was an off-hand joke made at 5am.[/quote]

All I know is that, in pen-and-paper RPGs, roughly 700,000 of our designers (mainly the British ones) are named Graeme.

Okay, probably not 700,000. But enough that I lose track of all the Graemes. A half-dozen or so.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3329&start=0#p23621
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Saving reader progress without the Save Dialog
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-06 22:05:49

If your kiosk is running Parchment, then the save action just updates the current URL with an encoded save state. Reloading (or bookmarking, or pasting) the URL will restore the save game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3342&start=0#p23622
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Quest online player session timeout
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-06 22:12:40

I was playing "The Myothian Falcon" online, leaving the game open in a window for a while as I tend to, and when I returned to the window after doing other things for a while (about an hour?) I got this message:

[quote]Sorry, your session has expired and the game has finished.[/quote]

So, don't play this game online unless you plan to finish it in a single sitting.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=20#p23623
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-10-06 22:31:03

I suspect a lot of gain would come from changing the parser to using regexes throughout, and then adding acceleration for regexes (which would be pretty trivial and a good idea even if the parser isn't changed.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=20#p23626
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-07 00:23:35

I have grave doubts about that. The parser is designed around the idea that words can be compared in constant time. Going to per-letter regexes sounds like a nightmare, even if they're running in native code.

(Using a regex algorithm based on words, rather than letters, would avoid that. At that point you're talking about building a state machine for word sequences, which *does* resemble the problem that the parser solves now... but you'd have to demonstrate that you're accelerating the slow part of the problem, rather than the already-fast part. For example, the deciding-concealed-possessions code we were just talking about -- that's a hook for user code. It would be exactly as much of a problem inside a regex parser.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=60#p23633
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-10-07 02:08:35

I now have all the sound changes up and working in Windows Glk, and it's all looking good. Zarf, could you make a proper release of the Glk 0.7.3 spec changes now? It would be good to release that and a new Glulxe that includes the dispatch layer fix from a short while ago. If you do that I can do a similar update of the Git interpreter, and Windows builds of everything.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=20#p23634
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-10-07 02:14:44

[quote="JimmyMaher"]1. A new accelerated opcode for the BlkSize function.[/quote]If this has produced a noticeable speed-up, it may be worth looking at re-writing all the memory block handling code in Flex.i6t. The I7 library has logic here to maintain its own memory heap, but if you're running on a modern Glulx interpreter then you should be able to just rely on the interpreter's heap support (via the @malloc and @mfree opcodes) to get the same effect with much greater efficiency. (I haven't actually tried to do this as yet, but it is something I've considered.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3343&start=0#p23635
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: How do you put in an object in the middle of a play?
User: Steph the rat / DateTime: 2011-10-07 02:15:16

I know this is an amateurish, i tried to figure it out myself but i only find the way to remove objects. What should I write to introduce an object in to the play after doing some actions?

another question is why can't i write about putting objects “in” something?
for example:
---------------------
Ag is a container.
    
Instead of putting the Ba in Ag:
	increase the score by 1;
-----------------------------------------

there comes the problem

Problem. You wrote 'Instead of putting the button in Ahg'  , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is 'putting the button in Ahg'. But that did not make sense as a description of an action. I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook.

 See the manual: 7.1 > Actions



but if I write

---------------------------------
Ag is a container.
    
Instead of putting the Ba on Ag:
	increase the score by 1;
------------------------------------

it works



I can put Ba in Ag in the play, so why there's a problem writing that in the code?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3343&start=0#p23636
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do you put in an object in the middle of a play?
User: Steph the rat / DateTime: 2011-10-07 02:17:41

I forgot to mention i was using inform7

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3343&start=0#p23637
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do you put in an object in the middle of a play?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-10-07 02:51:57

The "putting in" action is actually called "inserting it into", so:

[code]Instead of inserting Ba into Ag:
    ....[/code]
You can find the names of actions from the Actions tab in the index or by typing ACTIONS in the game and then trying the action.

Objects can be moved around with "now ... is in ..." (see ch. 8.11 in the manual).

[code]Instead of inserting Ba into Ag:
    say "The Ba turns in to a Cy!";
    remove Ba from play;
    now Cy is in Ag.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=0#p23640
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-10-07 03:15:01

I'm all for updates, generally speaking, but isn't this going to make it hard for the judges?

For instance: I'm not a judge, but the other day I started - and finished - played Andromeda Awakening. I have a very clear picture of the game, and its issues. I know how I'd judge it.

Now there's an update. If I were a judge, would I be forced to play it all over again? After all, if it's an updated version in the competition, it's going to have to be the one reviewed. But I would not *wish* to play it again, especially since a) the author didn't even bother to change "Release 1" and b) didn't bother to list what changes he made. I would not enjoy being forced to replay just to find out what bits he might have changed. But I can't very well judge it based on a pre-update version.

Similarly, what if I was in the midst of playing one of the games when the update came out?

EDIT - Browsing through RGIF, I found your sort-of-answer to this question. But I also found:

[quote]The full competition .zip file will not be updated, so the original submissions will always be available. [/quote]

Wouldn't it make more sense to also have an updated .zip? You're forcing some people who came late to the party to either download them all individually or download the entire zip and then individually update each game. Plus, some games like Dead Hotel seem to have more feelies that are available in the IFArchive links (which I find an aberration - it becomes hard to keep track of the "best, most complete" version to have).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=20#p23641
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-07 03:15:27

[quote="Dannii"]I suspect a lot of gain would come from changing the parser to using regexes throughout, and then adding acceleration for regexes (which would be pretty trivial and a good idea even if the parser isn't changed.)[/quote]
Actually the parser does surprisingly little with actual text.  Most of the code I'm sifting through deals with arrays of objects: the match list, the multiple object list, scoring objects, grouping objects together for printing purposes, seeing how pronouns and objects relate, and about 15 different ways to filter one set of objects to a smaller set of objects.  Then there's a few oddball heterogeneous arrays like "pattern" which are sometimes objects and sometimes dictionary words. 

The mapping of a mess of letters & spaces to a series of dictionary words happens in the VM already, not the parser.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3340&start=0#p23642
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Dead Hotel Update v2 and feelies
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-10-07 03:25:28

Could you *please* upload this somewhere else? Every single time I try, I get a message saying my IP limit has been reached (and I'd never seen that site before).

Also, why are there more files on your .zip than on the competition?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=0#p23643
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-10-07 03:25:40

Personally I wouldn't worry about it. You judge the game you played based on the merits it had at the time, and that's it.

If all judges based their score on the latest version, it would just encourage sloppyness: why bother testing your game beforehand when you could just submit what you have and fix it as the feedback comes in? Now you get docked points for submitting a buggy game in the first place when the judges who played it early rate it low, but you're still rewarded for actually fixing the game as the judges who play it later will rate it higher.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=0#p23644
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-10-07 03:28:14

Yes, that makes sense. Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=0#p23649
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-10-07 05:55:55

[quote="Peter Pears"]For instance: I'm not a judge, but the other day I started - and finished - played Andromeda Awakening. I have a very clear picture of the game, and its issues.[/quote]
It's [i]many[/i] issues, you mean [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote="Peter Pears"]But I would not *wish* to play it again, especially since a) the author didn't even bother to change "Release 1" and b) didn't bother to list what changes he made. I would not enjoy being forced to replay just to find out what bits he might have changed. But I can't very well judge it based on a pre-update version.[/quote]
I don't think this is a Release 2 as I've just added 3/4 lines to the code. Will fix it up, anyway.

Where is it clever to post the relevant changes made to game? (question for the forum admin)
In the case depicted, btw, just avoid playing it again. There's no need. I:

1) added a few lines in the HINT verb
2) added an EXITS command (this is the major change, as it may now make the experience less frustrating)
3) corrected some typos who passed behing my exceptional testers' shoudlers
4) added some OUT commands for rooms that were obviously "insides".

Nothing was changed in the game itself.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=0#p23650
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-10-07 06:00:41

As Peter Pears said, these updates are causing me some conflictions as a judge.  Specifically, I'm confused about how updates relate to the two-hour rule, and I would like an official clarification, if that's possible.

I've only played four games so far, but two of are on the list of updated games.  I finished both of these games well before the two-hour limit, reaching what I believe is the final ending in one and having found several seemingly satisfactory endings in the other.  Since I still have a good amount of time that I could devote to these two games, I feel a sense of obligation to go back for as long as I can to get a sense of the improved versions.  I especially feel this way about one game, because after playing it I explicitly felt that I could have given it one more point if only a few more things had been implemented.  I will feel guilty if I ultimately cast the lower score for this game, knowing full well that some of the problems I originally had with it had been resolved!

But despite this feeling of obligation, I don't [i]want[/i] to go back and replay these two games for any amount of time.  I normally just play down my randomly-generated list when I judge the Comp, and that's what I want to do again.  I probably won't have time to play all the games in the Comp, and I want to play as many as I can in the judging period, without having to worry about the games I've already evaluated.

Furthermore, I feel a conflicting sense of obligation to the games further down on my list [i]not[/i] to go back to the updates of the games that I already played, because as a judge I'm supposed to play as many games as I can, and those games deserve to played.

I hope someone can clarify this for me, and I would prefer an official ruling as to how updates relate to the two-hour rule for judges.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=0#p23651
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-10-07 06:08:11

[quote="Jamespking"]In the case depicted, btw, just avoid playing it again. There's no need. I:

1) added a few lines in the HINT verb
2) added an EXITS command (this is the major change, as it may now make the experience less frustrating)
3) corrected some typos who passed behing my exceptional testers' shoudlers
4) added some OUT commands for rooms that were obviously "insides".

Nothing was changed in the game itself.[/quote]

[spoiler]That's odd. I could have sworn there were now messages in the area where you have to "push cliff", appearing randomly, drawing your attention to the cliff that you have to push - something I was sure I hadn't seen on my first playthrough.

Incidently, it's great to have a chance to say this directly to the author - that was the point at which the game lost my trust. I can deal with purple prose, with you not being a native english speaker, and even with the ability to "TAKE SWITCH" and "TAKE CUT". But the action of pushing the cliff... well, for starters, I thought I was on top of the cliff looking down (sometimes the prose is so purple it's hard to really visualise). If I did think about causing a portion of the cliff I was on to crumble, it'd seem really, really suicidal. And quite apart from that, "push cliff" seems so... weird.

It was my first major issue with the game, the one that prevented me from really making an effort anymore (well, that and the strange phrasing needed to widen the cut when you have the bar). I'm glad I have a chance to tell you directly.

Also, I rather hope you release an italian version sometime. I'm sure it would read much better.[/spoiler]

EDIT - Also, your game is not always obvious, but it's immersive enough for the need to check a walkthrough to really break it - and you know that once you go to the walkthrough, it's hard to stop. I'd strongly advise you, later on - post-comp, if you wish - to add hints. Preferably adaptive. This is especially important since some of the puzzles are... well, rather baffling.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3342&start=0#p23654
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Quest online player session timeout
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-10-07 06:33:46

ADRIFT WebRunner will also have this issue.  Each active session uses up memory, so there's a trade-off between the time you leave a game idle and tidying up what appear to be abandoned sessions on the server.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=0#p23655
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-10-07 06:44:35

I can't say I really care for the idea of updating games during the comp. What if, for example, someone wrote a review of my game and criticised a certain puzzle as being too hard/too unfair/too poorly clued. What's to stop me including an update of the game that removed what they criticised? Or if someone said "well, I think the game would have been better if..." and then updating my game to include this? I think game updates should only be allowed if the software they're written on has changed since the time they submitted their game, thus rendering their game unplayable through no fault of their own. 

For what it's worth, I'm basing my reviews on the first version of the game submitted to the comp. If things have changed since then, tough.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=0#p23656
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-10-07 06:46:51

[quote="Jamespking"]3) corrected some typos who passed behing my exceptional testers' shoudlers[/quote]

I know it's kinda childish of me to find this amusing, but a line mentioning typos finishing with a misspelt word is just classic.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=0#p23657
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-10-07 06:53:17

[quote="Peter Pears"][spoiler]That's odd. I could have sworn there were now messages in the area where you have to "push cliff", appearing randomly, drawing your attention to the cliff that you have to push - something I was sure I hadn't seen on my first playthrough.[/spoiler][/quote]
Well, you are right. I thought that was done before the comp deadline, but obviously it is not like that. Also, there are a few timed messages [spoiler]that you get at the railway bays[/spoiler] for better pointing at the next move. I forgot about those, honest [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote]Incidently, it's great to have a chance to say this directly to the author.[/quote]
Well, to you and everybody else: I'd be GLAD to get tons of rants or suggestions. You can use my email as stated ingame in the ABOUT command.
Really. That means more than a review to me.

Also: yes, I'm inclined to do a "Final Cut" version of A-A and it will count on adaptive hints and many more features. And (oh, no...) more rooms and bulky, purple-prosed texts!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=10#p23658
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-10-07 06:55:21

[quote="David Whyld"][quote="Jamespking"]3) corrected some typos who passed [b]behing[/b] my exceptional testers' [b]shoudlers[/b][/quote]

I know it's kinda childish of me to find this amusing, but a line mentioning typos finishing with a misspelt word is just classic.  [emote];)[/emote][/quote]

Two, actually [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=10#p23659
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-10-07 06:59:13

[quote="David Whyld"]I can't say I really care for the idea of updating games during the comp. What if....[/quote]
As strange as it may seem, given I'm one of those who uploaded a "better" version, lately, I'm in the same mood. In my case, as it appears, I even tried to better one's playthrough by adding hints... and making the game less frustrating.

In all honesty, this shouldn't be allowed. If only for the fact now the deadline is november, 15.

(although I sound crazy, in this context... bah)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=20#p23660
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-10-07 07:15:53

Yeah I haven't looked at the parser to really see what would help. But Aaron's smarter parser sure does use a lot of regexs (and for things other than just detecting different types of errors), so I'd be surprised if some wouldn't help. And I was thinking of regexes for whole phrases, definitely not letters.

It sounds to my unknowledgeable mind that too much state is being calculated as the parser is running. To borrow a metaphor from SQL, it sounds like more indexes or saved queries are needed! The parser can check if an object is in some list, that's fine. Constructing that list is not.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=10#p23662
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-10-07 07:21:54

[quote="Jamespking"][quote="David Whyld"][quote="Jamespking"]3) corrected some typos who passed [b]behing[/b] my exceptional testers' [b]shoudlers[/b][/quote]

I know it's kinda childish of me to find this amusing, but a line mentioning typos finishing with a misspelt word is just classic.  [emote];)[/emote][/quote]

Two, actually [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Darn, missed that one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=10#p23663
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-07 07:48:43

[size=65]And it should be "typos which", not "typos who".[/size]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=10#p23664
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-10-07 07:56:04

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][size=65]And it should be "typos which", not "typos who".[/size][/quote]

lol I surrender [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3342&start=0#p23665
Forum: Competitions / Subject: session timeouts in Quest and ADRIFT webrunners
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-07 07:57:55

May I suggest popping up a warning about this when the session starts, and maybe another when it's about to run out? I understand the issue with server load, but this was an unpleasant surprise.

Also, can you save in the ADRIFT webrunner, and will that preserve your game across sessions? You can't save in Quest, so finishing the game in one sitting is really the only option (especially because I think offline play is Windows-only).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=10#p23666
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-07 08:16:43

[quote="David Whyld"]I can't say I really care for the idea of updating games during the comp. What if, for example, someone wrote a review of my game and criticised a certain puzzle as being too hard/too unfair/too poorly clued. What's to stop me including an update of the game that removed what they criticised? Or if someone said "well, I think the game would have been better if..." and then updating my game to include this?[/quote]

As a player, I [i]want[/i] authors to do that.* It increases the chance that I'll get to play a good game. And as Juhana said, these authors will still get penalized by the judges who play 

*If they can do it without breaking the game. In one [url=http://ifwiki.org/index.php?title=IFID:E9D41FA3-5579-474D-B18C-47D0315ED2AA]very well-written but not so well implemented entry in the JayIsGames IF comp[/url], the author said he implemented a fix to the way the drainpipe worked, which wound up breaking the drainpipe completely. I mean, "x drainpipe you can't see any such thing" levels of breaking the drainpipe. I'm still not sure how he managed to do that, but the point is, since authors probably don't have time to beta-test their updates that discourages any wholesale changes, I think.

[quote]For what it's worth, I'm basing my reviews on the first version of the game submitted to the comp. If things have changed since then, tough.[/quote]

That's a perfectly valid approach to take. I'll play updated versions if I haven't played the game yet, but if a game is updated after I've played it, I don't intend to replay the update unless there's reason to think it'll really improve my experience (or I've played everything else I can play an I'm curious).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=10#p23667
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-07 08:41:13

[quote="Juhana"]Personally I wouldn't worry about it. You judge the game you played based on the merits it had at the time, and that's it.

If all judges based their score on the latest version, it would just encourage sloppyness: why bother testing your game beforehand when you could just submit what you have and fix it as the feedback comes in? Now you get docked points for submitting a buggy game in the first place when the judges who played it early rate it low, but you're still rewarded for actually fixing the game as the judges who play it later will rate it higher.[/quote]

I think this is entirely logical.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=20#p23672
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-07 09:53:15

One of the first things I noticed when I looked at Ron's code is that allowing access to the input buffers could hold tremendous advantages for Smarter Parser - I expect you could reduce the dependence on indexed text.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3347&start=0#p23673
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Anticipating text
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-07 10:17:47

More than once, I've been stopped by the issue of predicting whether the game is going to print something interesting. Because the approach of Inform (6&7) seems to be to avoid passing texts around, and only printing anything at the last possible minute, we often have completely separate rules for deciding whether to say something and deciding what to say. This can make for some intricate logical gymnastics. I always think of Choosing Notable Locale Objects vs. Writing a Paragraph About as a good example of this. Describing the contents of scenery supporters is a common question, and I've also dealt with distant objects added to scope using these activities.

Writing a Paragraph About is a piece of work in itself. I always assumed there was some "activity succeeded" check that would decide whether the parameter-object had been mentioned yet. Turns out, there's this rather obscure thing instead:
[code]		if a paragraph break is pending, say "[conditional paragraph break]";
		carry out the writing a paragraph about activity with the item;
		if a paragraph break is pending:
			increase the locale paragraph count by 1;
			now the item is mentioned;
			say "[command clarification break]";
[/code]

More recently, I've started looking into the conversation system for my WIP. This is the fundamental method:

1. PC says something.

2. NPC consults a rulebook which searches through multiple tables to see if they have an interesting response.

3. Do some stuff based on whether or not there was an interesting response.

4. Maybe print the interesting response, based on some other decisions.

Right now I'm using a phrase that returns a text to check for interesting responses, but it bothers me because it feels un-informish. Plus, unless I save the text in a variable, I might end up running the rulebook multiple times in a turn - and I've noticed that the game is already slow in Parchment.

In the new conversation system I'm setting up, I have two activities that might help. One is called "getting attention," which attempts to see if an NPC wants to say something about the situation any time a character does or says anything, and the other is called "choosing motivated speakers," which runs every turn. The latter actually borrows the Table of Locale Priorities to do its work, since it works very similarly. Once this activity has decided who is going to talk, I carry out the "handling conversation" activity, which does the printing. I'm much happier with this setup, but I don't think I've successfully avoided the problem of having to run a rulebook to see whether an NPC has a response to a particular subject.

How have you dealt with this sort of situation? Do you try to work with Inform? Do you build tables? Do you just end up passing text around? Or is there some sort of clever paradigm that I'm missing?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3338&start=0#p23674
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can't get to ifcomp.org
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2011-10-07 10:18:19

Opera, in both Windows and Linux, Lynx in Linux, Internet Explorer 8 in Windows... nothing. The odd thing is, I could get to it just fine, at first; I was playing several of the games on the 2nd, then went to open a new one and... nothing. That's when it first started not working, both at home and at work.
I'm really wondering if I've managed to get myself blacklisted somehow, because it seems to be localized to "just me." I know ifcomp.org didn't blacklist me, but it might be an automatic thing at the hosting site, or something. Like I said, I can't get to the IP address (several other sites are hosted at that IP, too, and I can't get to them either).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=20#p23675
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-10-07 10:22:05

[quote="DavidK"][quote="JimmyMaher"]1. A new accelerated opcode for the BlkSize function.[/quote]If this has produced a noticeable speed-up, it may be worth looking at re-writing all the memory block handling code in Flex.i6t. The I7 library has logic here to maintain its own memory heap, but if you're running on a modern Glulx interpreter then you should be able to just rely on the interpreter's heap support (via the @malloc and @mfree opcodes) to get the same effect with much greater efficiency. (I haven't actually tried to do this as yet, but it is something I've considered.)[/quote]
I did try this sometime back, but then got distracted by other things.  As I recall, the improvements were notable when the number of outstanding allocations remained small, but @malloc and @free (at least on the terp I was using, which would have been one of the terps shipped with the Mac IDE) slowed down considerably as allocations piled up.  I will try to dig up the code again and have another look.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3270&start=0#p23676
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: CA_Pr and bad function calls
User: MikeG / DateTime: 2011-10-07 10:48:52

Glad to hear you fixed the bug. I took a look at your site and saw the file praxix.z5 you use for testing. Is this something you created? I've never seen it anywhere else and had some questions about it. My terp passes most of the tests, but fails on a few. One of the failures is on bit shifting operations with shift values beyond +15 or -15 which I thought the 1.1 standard decalared to be undefined. There are a couple other failures that I don't understand yet as well.

Thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3328&start=0#p23677
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Site Logo
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2011-10-07 10:51:40

5 minutes and an online GIF creator later... tada! I used the original image, so the gradient should line up perfectly. Hypothetically, anyway.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3338&start=0#p23678
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can't get to ifcomp.org
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-10-07 11:25:24

Are you using the same computer both at home and at work? There's a small chance that the company firewall has blocked the site as non-work related and the computer still remembers that rule.

It seems unlikely that you're blocked on their end, because presumably you're trying to connect from two different IPs and if you have a different IP and you've tried different browsers and even different operating systems I can't think of how the site could recognize that you're the same person.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=0#p23679
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Ectocomp 2011
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-10-07 11:45:22

I am hosting Ectocomp 2011 this year, in J.J. Guest's stead.  Please consider Ectocomp open for all platforms with willing participants.

The rules: write an IF suitable to Hallowe'en in three hours or less.  You can get a good idea of the spread of available topics by checking out [url=http://ifwiki.org/index.php/Ectocomp]previous year's entries[/url].  We've had a haunted forest house, spoofs on Dracula, a tale from an asylum, freaky trick or treating stories, post-apolcalyptic scenarios, you name it.  It need not be horror, but in the spirit of the season it should involve some Hallowe'en element-- monsters, ghosts, fright, or the like.

A general note has been that the 3 hour restriction applies only to the actual coding of the game.  You may plan for as long as you want, but as soon as you open your developer, start the clock.

Deadline for entries will be October 30th at midnight.  This way people can start playing on Hallowe'en if they so wish.  We will decide how long judging will last based on the number of entries received.

If you have an entry to submit, please send it to me at bowsman d (all one word, lowercase) at geemail.com (except without the e's).  Thank you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3342&start=0#p23680
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Quest online player session timeout
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-10-07 12:24:59

I'll need to look into that.  You can save your game tho, with the save and restore commands.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3340&start=0#p23681
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Dead Hotel Update v2 and feelies
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-10-07 12:25:48

Hrm... I didn't think you could release an updated version of a comp game during the comp, unless said "update" is nothing more than a unplayable bug fix or something.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3350&start=0#p23682
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Begin creating an I7 work from within an I7 "game"
User: branden / DateTime: 2011-10-07 12:42:36

This tool allows the player to create and describe rooms and objects from within the "game".  The resulting [i]very [/i]basic IF work can then be exported as valid source code.  This would allow new programmers, including children, to smoothly transition from IF readers/players to authors.  I wouldn't mind using this to begin sketching locations for a new work.

I have just started coding this, and it is by no means complete or polished.  I'd like to know if further development is warranted.  Specifically:

- Has this been done before?
- Is this useful?  To whom?
- Would more functions (eg item properties) be better, or should new programmers be encouraged to switch to the Inform7 IDE as soon as possible?

Edit:  New version 2012/1/14, with new features and errors:
<a class="postlink" href="https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B8T1brgUcqOTYjFmMGE2OWEtMWE2Ny00ZTNlLWI0ZTUtYWQ0MDdkMjgyZjZm">https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B8T1br ... dkMjgyZjZm</a>

Please reply to this post or email my firstnamelastname at gmail.com

Thanks!
Branden Rishel

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3343&start=0#p23683
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do you put in an object in the middle of a play?
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2011-10-07 12:55:10

[quote="Steph the rat"]I know this is an amateurish, i tried to figure it out myself but i only find the way to remove objects. What should I write to introduce an object in to the play after doing some actions?[/quote]
If the question is how to introduce an object that wasn't there before, can you not create a hidden room (connected to nothing) and put all of the hidden objects in there. As soon as needed, you just move them into place and there they appear. [emote]:-)[/emote]

Don't know whether that helps.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=10#p23684
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-10-07 13:25:38

I'm not a comp author or official, but my take on this is:

-- it's a good thing for games to be updateable during the comp, because it means authors have an incentive to make fixes that they might not bother to come back to afterwards. I can't count the number of games (including some of my own!) that have been released in comps, could really have used a v2 release to fix a few obvious bugs or implementation gaps, but never got one because the author moved on or felt demotivated once the competition was over. Mid-comp updates means (IMO) a likelihood of a better finished crop. This benefits everyone.

-- it's appropriate for judges to score based on the version they played when they played it. This means that authors who released an initially flawless game will still come out ahead of those who released a buggy one and then fixed it (assuming the games are otherwise of equal quality). That seems fair to me.

-- this system also provides more incentive for judges to provide mid-comp feedback, because by doing so they are actively making the comp experience better for everyone else.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3343&start=0#p23685
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do you put in an object in the middle of a play?
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-10-07 13:36:20

I believe you don't actually have to use a hidden room.  You can just say "A gadget is a thing." which creates an offstage gadget.  When you want to bring it into play, "Now the gadget is in the bedroom." brings it into the bedroom.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2509&start=60#p23686
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk sound API plans
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-07 13:48:55

Okay, I'll do that this weekend. (Possibly Monday, which counts as "weekend" because of a US holiday.)

I needed to do cheapglk/glkterm releases anyhow.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3350&start=0#p23687
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Begin creating an I7 work from within an I7 "game"
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-10-07 13:49:09

There are some precedents. Emily Short et al's Alabaster used an in-game questionnaire to allow collaborators to add conversation nodes in-game; I believe that source code was auto-generated from the responses and written to a file that could then be sent to Emily for compilation into the main game. My Glimmr Canvas Editor extension allows you to arrange complex graphical layouts in-game and then export the source code to recreate your composition ([url=http://glimmr.wordpress.com/2010/08/29/basic-floorplan-toolkit-tutorial/]tutorial[/url] here).

I'm not aware of any basic world-building tools, however, so essentially this would be something new.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=10#p23688
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-10-07 13:54:59

My only objection, if any, would be that early reviewed entries hava a better chance to get higher scores later in the comp as some flaws might have been exposed and fixed. I'm sure that won't make any substantial differences in the final comp results, but still I can't help seeing it a bit unfair...

... but just a bit, so don't think of it as a reason to be against updating!  [emote]:)[/emote] 

--

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3270&start=0#p23690
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: CA_Pr and bad function calls
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-07 14:01:07

Praxix is a bunch of tests that I started putting together a couple of years ago. Then Dannii expanded it, and I've also merged in some tests from other Z-machine test suites. 

It lives in the gnusto distribution: <a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/curiousdannii/gnusto/tree/master/tests">https://github.com/curiousdannii/gnusto ... ster/tests</a>

It's not complete (obviously) but I'm not surprised that it also goes beyond the formal Z-spec. I threw in a lot of everything-I-could-think-of tests. If there are tests that we should label "This is undefined according to the spec, failing this is not a disaster", then we can do that. 

(But I don't want to *drop* such tests, because it's good to know what interpreters behave like what other interpreters.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=20#p23691
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-07 14:06:41

Indeed, my @malloc/@mfree implementations are not very smart, and I haven't thought about improving them exactly because the I7 library doesn't rely on them!

Anybody know much about heap management?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3350&start=0#p23692
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Begin creating an I7 work from within an I7 "game"
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-07 14:06:57

This looks sweet! I don't know if it actually would be useful for teaching kids, but I'd encourage you to add more functions and things. For instance, you could give them the option to create a new room whenever they use an exit that doesn't exist yet (or to map the exit to an existing room.)

A couple comments:
[list] You'll need to change the default messages, I think. I created a desk and a lamp and tried to put the lamp on the desk -- which of course I couldn't do, because the desk isn't supporter. But I don't think the target audience will appreciate "Putting things on the desk would achieve nothing."
Letting people create supporters and containers might be nice. Though I think it might be tons of work, since it might involve changing the kind of an item in run-time, which I think means taking an item away and creating a new one.
"Describe location" doesn't work, and "Describe me" yields a run-time error.
I think more in-game prompting would be nice -- I described the location, and then I typed "help" to find out how to do more stuff. It could be cool to prompt the player to describe the room, then describe themselves, then create an item and describe it, then go somewhere and create a new room, and then maybe by then they'll really be playing around.
You might want to do something to make sure the code actually compiles -- I called the location "My Room, Yeah!" and the resulting code didn't compile. Maybe forbid punctuation in names, or if you find punctuation make it so the code says "A room called "My Room, Yeah!"" instead of what actually results.[/list:u]

So that's a lot of work I've assigned you! Such are the wages of showing people cool stuff you're working on.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3343&start=0#p23693
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do you put in an object in the middle of a play?
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2011-10-07 14:18:35

Indeed. [emote]:-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=20#p23696
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-10-07 14:22:58

[quote]Anybody know much about heap management?
[/quote]

Sorry, but to a non-technical guy like me, "heap management" calls to mind the ancient vaudeville routine in which two guys (call them Sam and Irving) run into each other after a few years:

Sam:  So, Irving, how ya doin'?
Irving:  OK.  I just got a new job, as a pilot.
Sam:  A pilot?  What airline do you work for?
Irving:  I don't work for an airline, I work in a stable.
Sam:  A stable?  What does a pilot do in a stable?
Irving:  My job is to take all the manure and [i]pile it[/i].


Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3270&start=0#p23700
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: CA_Pr and bad function calls
User: MikeG / DateTime: 2011-10-07 14:51:51

Thanks, I'll check that out. I've run various test files but am never sure if I have the latest and greatest.  [emote]:)[/emote]
I think marking certain tests being above and beyond the spec is a good idea.

In my terp if the shift amount is out of the range + or - 15, then I signal an error. If the user opts to continue, then the result is simply the unchanged initial value. This is probably very different behavior from most and I will likely change it to bring it in line with the expected results.

I also had some trouble with two of the streamtrip tests and one other set of tests but I can't recall the details at the moment.

[Edit:  I was able to fix the other failed tests. I was allowing null characters to the output stream causing failures in the streamtrip tests. I was also allowing loadw, loadb, storew, and storeb to go beyond 16-bit addresses causing 8 failures in the array tests.]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=10#p23702
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-10-07 15:54:37

While about 99% of this is way over my head, and I'm still not entirely sure what purpose this will serve, I am always drawn here for the latest progress report. Your efforts are tremendous, and your determination is an inspiration to us all. I salute you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3351&start=0#p23703
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Display direction of doors. How?
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2011-10-07 16:03:03

Hello.

This would just be convenient. At the moment I7 prints out this:

[code]You can see Door 1 and Door 2 here.[/code]
The player can of course type "go through Door 2". But most players use the directional shortcuts "w" or "se" and so forth. With the current output that's not possible. I could put it into the description of the room, but that's also not ideal.

Wouldn't it be nicer if it were this:

[code]You can see Door 1 to the west and Door 2 to the northeast here.[/code]
Is there a way to implement this? Or is it in already and I have just overlooked it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=20#p23704
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-10-07 16:06:03

[quote="Peter Pears"]I'm still not entirely sure what purpose this will serve...[/quote]
Ron has already mentioned his reasons for doing this. I think it might be nice to have this I7 parser packaged as an extension, with copious headings as hooks for code replacement. As a basis for extensions that need to hack one part or another of the parser code, this would be much more convenient and readable than what's currently required. I have a few extensions that hack sections of Parser.i6t: to make a simple, one-line change to the underlying parser code, you often need to include a large block of I6 code. It can be even more tiresome to make two extensions that hack the same block in different ways work together nicely. Ron's division of the code into smaller routines and I7 constructs could make things significantly easier on both extension authors and users.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3328&start=0#p23705
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Site Logo
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-10-07 16:07:14

I rather like that!  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3328&start=0#p23706
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Site Logo
User: Pacian / DateTime: 2011-10-07 16:07:30

Surely a blinking cursor cries out to be bookended with a >

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=20#p23707
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-10-07 16:09:50

Allow me to rephrase. I am out of the programming loop enough that however many times he's explained it, it just went over my head, gleefully. And I never really bothered much about it, because I'm certainly not the intended audience.

And yet, I find this whole undertaking a courageous effort worthy of note.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3318&start=0#p23708
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Games with Similar Premises in Comp 2011
User: Aquillion / DateTime: 2011-10-07 16:13:45

ParaNoir and Death of Schlig are both about slightly wonky hard-boiled detectives who have weird personal problems that give them an edge against the game's puzzles.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3330&start=20#p23709
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 authors reviewing competition games????
User: Aquillion / DateTime: 2011-10-07 16:18:51

[quote="Emerald"][quote="VictorGijsbers"]Emily Short is not Emily Boegheim.[/quote]
Though I wish I were.[/quote]Does this mean that we can expect someone to one day write [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=q8y5zup88c9hu499]Being Emily Short[/url]?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3351&start=0#p23710
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Display direction of doors. How?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-10-07 16:33:27

This rule should do it:

[code]Rule for printing the name of a door while listing nondescript items:
	say "[printed name of item described] to the [direction of item described from location]".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=20#p23711
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-10-07 16:40:44

[quote="Peter Pears"]Allow me to rephrase. I am out of the programming loop enough that however many times he's explained it, it just went over my head, gleefully. And I never really bothered much about it, because I'm certainly not the intended audience.

And yet, I find this whole undertaking a courageous effort worthy of note.[/quote]

Sorry, I think that your meaning in the original post was clear enough--I was just using your post as a springboard to say what I hope to get out of the project. To get somewhat programmy again: I haven't had a chance to study the source in any detail, but it also sounds like there might be some useful ideas for manipulating I6 arrays from the I7 level in Ron's code. (On the other hand, I think Ron mentioned that there will be I7 arrays in the upcoming release of Inform, which is also neat.)

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3351&start=0#p23712
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Display direction of doors. How?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-10-07 16:48:37

[quote="BigBonsai"]I could put it into the description of the room, but that's also not ideal.[/quote]

Now that your original question has been answered, let me ask - why not? It's not only how it's always been done, it's the most natural place for them. Even in room descriptions where the last sentences are exclusively dedicated to "North goes to the bedroom and the door to the west leads to the kitchen" it's still usually a part of the room description. Indeed, if I come across a description like so:

[i][b]Hallway[/b]
You are on a rather dull hallway, and have the nagging suspicion you've wandered into a "My Apartment" game. The hallway continues to the south.

You can see a door to the east.[/i]

...in my mind, the last line would be part of the description. Inform 7 is geared mostly this way anyway, which is why doors are "between" rooms (as well as being part of both).

That said - I'm not telling you not to do it. I'm just surprised that you'd describe using the room description as "not ideal" when it's been the standard for so long.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3351&start=0#p23713
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Display direction of doors. How?
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2011-10-07 17:07:14

[quote="Juhana"]This rule should do it:

[code]Rule for printing the name of a door while listing nondescript items:
	say "[printed name of item described] to the [direction of item described from location]".[/code][/quote]
Wow. Thanks. I didn't know that it could be done like this. Thank you!

To answer the following post:

[quote="Peter Pears"]Now that your original question has been answered, let me ask - why not? [...] I'm just surprised that you'd describe using the room description as "not ideal" when it's been the standard for so long.[/quote]
Well, I have always been a friend of challenging tradition. [emote];-)[/emote] You make a compelling argument. I think the ideal case lies somewhere in the middle between our opinions. In many rooms the doors indeed should go into the description, because such descriptions are more... personal, more varying. Yet in my case I have a rather lengthy corridor which is split into several segments. Nobody will care about reading my detailed description of standard doors. In this case I would just appreciate if I7 would do the typing for me. Call it laziness, call it effectiveness, call it a safety measure (if I forget to describe a door).

So usually I like to describe doors too, but then there are those cases... [emote];-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=10#p23714
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-10-07 17:13:16

Updates may make standard deviation mostly meaningless.  Since an updated game will have been played and rated at different states of quality and implementation, a high standard deviation will no longer necessarily mean that a game caused both strongly positive and negative responses among the judges.

May our highly esteemed discordant fruit rest in peace. [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3330&start=20#p23715
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 authors reviewing competition games????
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-07 17:32:26

[quote="Aquillion"]Does this mean that we can expect someone to one day write Being Emily Short?[/quote]
It would seem that there is exactly one person ideally suited to the task.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3350&start=0#p23720
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Begin creating an I7 work from within an I7 "game"
User: branden / DateTime: 2011-10-07 18:18:38

Erik:  Wow, your Glimmr Canvas Editor thing is neat!  I look forward to playing with it.

Matt:  Thanks for finding more bugs!  Yes, there's quite a lot to do.  I think I'll work on item properties (containers, supporters) next.  Note that:
1) You can already add new locations by moving in a new direction (eg EAST when there's no room to the east).
2) I'm a beginner at Inform7 programming, so the string stuff needs a lot of work.  The code should compile for a room called "My Room", but the punctuation in your sample room borks it.  I'll shift that over to a printed name instead.

Again, thanks for the help!

Branden

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3330&start=20#p23721
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 authors reviewing competition games????
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-07 18:22:35

[quote="Felix"][quote="Aquillion"]Does this mean that we can expect someone to one day write Being Emily Short?[/quote]
It would seem that there is exactly one person ideally suited to the task.[/quote]
Actually, I think that there is exactly one person utterly unsuited to the task. For the result could only be this:
[code]"Being Emily Short" by Emily Short

Emily Short's Study is a room.

When play begins:
	end the game saying "You are Emily Short. Unfortunately, that means you will have to write this game yourself.".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3351&start=0#p23724
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Display direction of doors. How?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-07 19:00:20

If you want the door integrated into the room description, you make it scenery, and then it won't get a separate "you see" line. 

If you want the door separated out (thus, not scenery), you may want a "writing a paragraph about" rule so that you can customize it a little more anyway. But this works for a base case.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=20#p23725
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: WaterMonkey / DateTime: 2011-10-07 19:08:41

Would it be too complicated to ask judges to also mark down which "release" their score applies to as well? If we had that data, then we could at least examine the results afterwards to see how thigns really worked out.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1386&start=30#p23726
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Planet IF
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-10-07 19:13:03

Look mom! I've got a blog!  [emote]:D[/emote] 

Well, I've had it for a few years now, though my activity in it has been somehow... erratic. I've just created a category conveniently called "Planet-IF" in order to write posts in English there and add them to, you guessed it, Planet-IF. While It finally appears there (mail already sent to Chris Armstrong!) I'll link the category to my signature, though that's a less than optimal way to reach my target!

If in the end it doesn't work (my request gets spam-filtered, it happens to be technically inviable, or perhaps Planet-IF mantainer simply doesn´t like the idea ^_^') I'll just forget about it all, but of course spanish-reading IF fellows will always be wellcome to come and pay a visit!

The whole blog -> <a class="postlink" href="http://lineadura.wordpress.com/">http://lineadura.wordpress.com/</a>
The english-posts category -> <a class="postlink" href="http://lineadura.wordpress.com/category/planet-if/">http://lineadura.wordpress.com/category/planet-if/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3318&start=0#p23729
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Games with Similar Premises in Comp 2011
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-07 19:37:24

Sentencing Mr Liddell and Awake the Mighty Dread both seem to be nightmarishly surreal games set mostly on trains.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3350&start=0#p23730
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Begin creating an I7 work from within an I7 "game"
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-07 19:44:12

Great! The system for creating a new room already works exactly the way I want it to; just put in some instructions about it and I'll be happy.

I would actually recommend just nicely telling the player that they can't put commas in things' names; messing around with printed names seems like advanced sort of stuff that they can do once they're actually in the IDE.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=20#p23731
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-07 20:33:51

Possibly too late. You'll get incomplete answers now.

And, really, additional complication in the answering process will probably discourage more votes than it's worth.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3340&start=0#p23734
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Dead Hotel Update v2 and feelies
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-10-07 21:01:11

[quote="Jizaboz"]Hrm... I didn't think you could release an updated version of a comp game during the comp, unless said "update" is nothing more than a unplayable bug fix or something.[/quote]

In previous years this was true. This year the rule has been changed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3264&start=10#p23735
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Developing a new conversation extension
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-07 21:28:59

Here's a sneak peek at the extension in its current state. I'm pretty happy with it, so I don't think there will be any fundamental changes. Just testing, debugging, and adding handy phrases. Maybe one or two more minor features.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.eyeballsun.org/i/Speech%20Motivations.i7x">http://www.eyeballsun.org/i/Speech%20Motivations.i7x</a>

A lot of the code from Conversation Framework and Conversation Responses is still there, but it's been reordered quite a bit so you might not recognize it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=20#p23737
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2011-10-07 21:47:59

[quote="Bainespal"]As Peter Pears said, these updates are causing me some conflictions as a judge.  Specifically, I'm confused about how updates relate to the two-hour rule, and I would like an official clarification, if that's possible.[/quote]

Sure. Officially, the two-hour rule is still the two-hour rule. If you spend one hour and fifty minutes playing the first release, if you wish you can spend another ten minutes playing any new release, but no longer. The total play time you spend on any game must stay under two hours. The version or versions of the games don't count.

As for feeling obligated, while I understand that feeling, I don't intend for you to feel obligated by updates. If you want to play an updated game (and have the time), you're free to. But you shouldn't feel like you [i]have[/i] to.

My general approach to the comp is that it's not my place to tell judges how to judge. You rate the games you play from 1 to 10. If you want to take a point off for every typo, you can. If you want to rate games highly based on which ones use the letter 'z' the most, feel free. The same thing holds true with updates. If you want to take them into account when you judge, you can. If you want to stick with the first release, or whatever release you played, please do so.

Were I a judge, I would follow Juhana's suggested approach. But that is me talking with my comp organizer hat off. With it on, I say do what makes sense to you.

[quote="Peter Pears"]Wouldn't it make more sense to also have an updated .zip?[/quote]

My feeling is that few judges would want to download an entire new .zip file to deal with updated games, especially as the .zip file is likely to appeal to more hard-core IF judges who are also more likely to want to see the original game versions. It also adds an incentive to authors to do their best work to start with.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=20#p23738
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-10-07 22:09:08

[quote="Sargent"]Sure. Officially, the two-hour rule is still the two-hour rule. If you spend one hour and fifty minutes playing the first release, if you wish you can spend another ten minutes playing any new release, but no longer. The total play time you spend on any game must stay under two hours. The version or versions of the games don't count.

As for feeling obligated, while I understand that feeling, I don't intend for you to feel obligated by updates. If you want to play an updated game (and have the time), you're free to. But you shouldn't feel like you [i]have[/i] to.[/quote]
Thank you, sir.  That helps a lot. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3328&start=0#p23739
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Site Logo
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-07 22:29:53

[quote="Pacian"]Surely a blinking cursor cries out to be bookended with a >[/quote]

Yah. I think it'd be nice if the blinking cursor (complete with a greater-than) is moved below to its own line, and I think making the IF gold rather than blue might help it pop more (using the same gold the site already uses for contrast, or some kind of two-tone).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=20#p23741
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-07 23:58:07

I'm in favor of updating games especially within the first week, because that's when interpreter issues will rear their ugly heads.  After that I see the real need for updating tapering off: it becomes tweaking for game quality instead.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3353&start=0#p23743
Forum: Competitions / Subject: The First Annual Lime/Coconut IF MiniComp!
User: SOdhner / DateTime: 2011-10-08 00:39:22

[b]What the heck is this?[/b]

It's a contest! You can win real money, and a stupid trophy.

[b]What do I have to do?[/b]

You have to design a test chamber for an Interactive Fiction game in TADS 3. When the object you designate as the Lime is placed in the object you designate as the Coconut, a door opens and allows the player to leave. That's the short version, there are details in the source code.

[b]That's it?  Put a lime in a coconut?[/b]

In theory, yes.  In practice I expect to see everything from Rube Goldberg machines to conversation-driven puzzles.  Some will be simple but hilarious, others will be complex and devious.

[b]How do I enter?[/b]

1. Read through the code and think about what you would like to do. Don't rush it.
2. Allow inspiration to strike.
3. Design a test chamber in TADS 3 that can be added to the bottom of the existing code (as Testing Room 3) without breaking anything.
4. Send the source code to me at sodhner at gmail by December 31st.
5. If I reply and say there's a problem with the code, try to fix it.

[b]Then what?[/b]

I will make each entry available to the public as compiled game files, listed in a random order. People can play, and give each room two ratings: Awesomeness and Difficulty. Awesomeness can be that it is humorous, or clever, or whatever. This is the score that determines the winner of the contest.

[b]Wait, what is 'Difficulty' for then?[/b]

That's because after the contest I plan on stringing the rooms together from least difficult to most difficult. Not all rooms are guaranteed to end up in this version - some might be too similar (in which case the one with the higher score will get in) or maybe everyone hates a room. Then, if this goes well, I'll do the same contest again next year to get a new set of rooms.

[b]Did you say real money earlier?[/b]

I did! It's not a lot, sadly, but enter the contest anyway. First place gets fifty dollars and a stupid trophy, and second place gets ten dollars and a stupid certificate. If you make multiple entries, you can't win both first and second place. The next best person who is not you will get second place. Speaking of multiple entries, if you send a billion entries I may ask you to pick your favorite three or something. As an important final prize-related note: if I get less than five humans with valid entries I will cancel and re-launch at another time of year. Any entries sent in can be re-submitted when I try again.

[b]I'm trying to do something that requires modifying the core code.[/b]

Don't do that.

[b]It's okay though, because it cannot possibly hurt anyone's room in any way. This can't break the game, it can only grant it more flexibility. I swear.[/b]

Oh. Well, I guess let me know what you want. I'm not making any promises though. If you can do it in a stupid clumsy work-around kind of way do that instead, and then I'll update the code with the better way after the contest is over.

[b]Can I share my code prior to the voting?[/b]

That's fine but I don't want to hear anyone saying "so-and-so stole my idea!" because quite frankly there are going to be lots of similar ideas out there for a contest like this and I can't tell when it was 'stolen' and when it was just thought of independently. So if you are worried someone might steal your idea, either don't share or share but be sure that you implement your concept better than anyone else.

[b]Link time![/b]

Here's the main contest page: [b][url]http://therestofyourmice.blogspot.com/p/limecoconut.html[/url][/b]
Here's the basic source file: [b][url]https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B0MqnQyVyeeeNzk4ZWI3MTYtZDdmNC00Yzk5LWJjNDQtY2M3OWMxZGQxNWUw&amp;hl=en_US[/url][/b]
Here's the TADS 3 website: [b][url]http://tads.org/tads3.htm[/url][/b]
Here's a picture of a cat: [b][url]http://images.icanhascheezburger.com/completestore/2008/4/21/limecatisno128532763115781250.jpg[/url][/b]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3353&start=0#p23744
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Annual Lime/Coconut IF MiniComp!
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-10-08 00:49:43

I love it!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3353&start=0#p23745
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Annual Lime/Coconut IF MiniComp!
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-08 01:00:19

[quote="SOdhner"][b]That's it?  Put a lime in a coconut?[/b][/quote]

You don't even have to drink them both up?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=20#p23746
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: SOdhner / DateTime: 2011-10-08 01:19:46

I worry that this will encourage people using the comp as a replacement for beta testing.  Already there are a number of really rough or obviously unfinished games each year, and honestly it bugs me that they couldn't be bothered to finish the game prior to submitting (not that I expect games to be perfect - but there's a minimum amount of effort that should go into an entry).

For myself, I've solved the question by downloading the .zip file and ignoring any updates.  I'll rate the games based off of the way they were submitted.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3353&start=0#p23747
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Annual Lime/Coconut IF MiniComp!
User: SOdhner / DateTime: 2011-10-08 02:05:54

[quote="bcressey"]I love it![/quote]

I'm taking that to mean: "I'm absolutely going to submit an entry for this!"

[quote="Ghalev"]You don't even have to drink them both up?[/quote]

I see you have figured out the inspiration.

Well, honestly, I suspect the inspiration was that my friend was playing too much Portal 2.  But that's fine.  He had me code up some basic game stuff to get him started, and then decided he wasn't going to use it.  So I added more, and more, and made it all cool and modular...

I left in that it says "drink them both [i]down[/i]" rather than "up".  I argued with him about that, but he insisted he got it right and, looking at the lyrics, it does say down one time.  Of course it says 'up' about a million times, but whatever.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3354&start=0#p23749
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [Inform 6] Names of Class Objects
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-10-08 03:08:08

I have some fruits here, which are class objects. They shall appear as "a fruit" if it's just one and "some fruits" if there's several of them*. The class object also has a "known" flag according to which the printed name shall differ. While the plural objects are listed properly in the inventory, I have problems with the singular.
[code]
		short_name [;
				if(self.known==0) 
						print "fruit";
				else
						print "pokenoboy fruit";
				],

[/code]
results in "a fruitFruitclass_5". Why is that, and what can I do about it?

Thanks!

* I know that's not proper English.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3353&start=0#p23751
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Annual Lime/Coconut IF MiniComp!
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-08 03:40:17

[quote="SOdhner"]Well, honestly, I suspect the inspiration was that my friend was playing too much Portal 2.[/quote]

I'm on my second run through that, myself ... I'm almost to Chapter 6 again, which is my favorite (with the first wave of "Cave Johnson" levels).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3331&start=0#p23753
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glulx timers
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-10-08 05:58:03

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Glulx manual is <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/glulx-spec.html">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/glulx-spec.html</a>  I presume.  I don't know much about timers though.[/quote]

There are other guides out there, but there is no other manual for Glulx, and that should tell you something. You may want to consider a different language, as it will be hard rowing with Glulx.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3353&start=0#p23754
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Annual Lime/Coconut IF MiniComp!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-08 06:08:09

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="SOdhner"][b]That's it?  Put a lime in a coconut?[/b][/quote]

You don't even have to drink them both up?[/quote]

I was looking around for the +1 button and then I remembered there isn't one.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3343&start=0#p23755
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do you put in an object in the middle of a play?
User: Steph the rat / DateTime: 2011-10-08 06:11:12

[emote]:D[/emote] thanks alot. I was introduced to interactive fiction recently and I found that this kind of game is really suitable for me since I enjoyed reading.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=20#p23756
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-08 06:39:14

I don't think this is a problem -- I think people who try to use the comp as a beta-testing lab will find themselves ruthlessly punished by getting a bunch of feedback of the form "If you didn't test your game, I can't be bothered to give you any feedback." Reviewers aren't going to give you as much feedback as betatesters. Also they'll get slated on the first batch of reviews. And (in response to Ron) tweaking for game quality is a good thing.

Following on what Emily said, I think and hope this might lead to better post-comp versions. Even if authors won't be able to make all the changes they might want by the end of the comp, it could keep them working on improvements through the comp, instead of forcing a period of inactivity which would make it difficult for them to get working on revisions. 

By the way, is it OK for authors to revise supplementary material, like walkthroughs? Because there's a few games where I'd like to advise the authors to annotate their walkthroughs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3355&start=0#p23757
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Updating games in the comp.
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2011-10-08 06:46:54

This post is moved to the correct toipc.. Sorry

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3355&start=0#p23758
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Updating games in the comp.
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-08 07:23:42

[quote="Finn Rosenløv"]Can someone please explain why the rule about allowing updates to submitted games has been applied?

I must admit that I personally feel it's a bit like cheating. Which game is to be evaluated, the game that was first entered, or the game that has been altered as the competition progresses?[/quote]

There's already a thread addressing this.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3355&start=0#p23763
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Updating games in the comp.
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-10-08 07:34:43

Just out of curiosity, is this going to be a rule that's included in every IFComp from now on?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3355&start=0#p23764
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Updating games in the comp.
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2011-10-08 07:35:34

Ok.. Found it....
Will move my post there... Thanks

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3355&start=0#p23766
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Updating games in the comp.
User: ultimate / DateTime: 2011-10-08 07:58:22

Hmm, looking at the news at ifcomp.org it seems a lot of IFComp games have been updated recently.

[quote]Welcome to IFComp 2011, the competition for short text adventures.

News

06 October: The games Calm, Death of Schlig, The Hours, Fan Interference, Kerkerkruip, Sentencing Mr Liddell, Blind, It, Dead Hotel, Andromeda Awakening, Tenth Plague, and Vestiges have been updated.[/quote]

I've also found a topic by Stephen Granade where he talks about it.

[quote]The games are all up and available from <a class="postlink" href="http://ifcomp.org/">http://ifcomp.org/</a> or your
friendly local IF Archive mirror. One change this year: authors will be
allowed to update their games during the competition. I'll be posting
updated games at least once a week during the competition.

Stephen

-- 
Stephen Granade[/quote]

<a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/924fb3038784086a#">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... 38784086a#</a>

I don't want to troll or criticise Stephen, but I'm not sure if that new rule will work out as he expects. I mean a lot of people have already reviewed, played or are currently playing the original games. So who's going to play the updated versions of the games during the competition? Eeeh, how is that supposed to work? Stephen said he want to allow updates each week? So what, we gonna play new update versions of the games each week? How is that supposed to work with the 2-hour play rule where judges have 2 hours to play and judge each game? So now it's 2 hours per update? I'm confused.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=20#p23767
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2011-10-08 08:04:46

I must admit that I personally feel it's a bit like cheating.  It's like being allowed to alter your final exams project after having turned it in...  [emote]:)[/emote] 
It's not whether an update gives the player a better experience playing the game, it's about you turning in a piece of work and that piece of work is evaluated, good or bad.

Everyone pretty much knows when the annual IF Comp is launched. So there's nothing stopping the author from working on his/her game until "perfection" in good time before the comp. If entering the comp is more important than the quality of the game it's just bad luck.

Also, not every author may be able to update his/her game for various reasons, thus allowing other entries an advantage.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=20#p23777
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2011-10-08 09:54:31

Is the point of the comp for the authors to win? Or is the point of the comp for players to have games to play? If the former, then, sure, you could make comparisons to cheating on a test. But if it's the latter, then it doesn't make sense.

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3355&start=0#p23778
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Updating games in the comp.
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-08 09:58:01

See the thread where Sargent comments on this: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=20">viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=20</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3354&start=0#p23779
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Inform 6] Names of Class Objects
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-08 09:59:50

short_name follows the convention of most I6 properties: if you want to do something special, return true. If you return false, the library performs the default behavior.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3328&start=0#p23780
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Site Logo
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-08 10:01:55

Speaking as a person who uses computers, I vote against any use of a blinking cursor that isn't an actual input cursor. Fake blinkies in GIFs are bad.

(Yes, I hate that collection of smileys to the left of where I'm typing.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3353&start=0#p23781
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Annual Lime/Coconut IF MiniComp!
User: SOdhner / DateTime: 2011-10-08 10:02:09

Guh.  Had to make a super-minor change to the source code file.  One line (the entry event trigger in the door code) was a few lines above where it should be, which wouldn't matter for most situations but would make it so if you wanted to move the exit you couldn't do it with the entry event because it would move right back.  Fixed now.

Also, one person reported that Google Docs was asking him to log in to download the file.  It shouldn't do that (and doesn't for me) but if you have any trouble at all I have also put the file here: <a class="postlink" href="http://odhneruniversity.com/Lime-Coconut.t">http://odhneruniversity.com/Lime-Coconut.t</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3354&start=0#p23783
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Inform 6] Names of Class Objects
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-10-08 10:44:53

BTW, the plural of "fruit" is "fruit." Same as "fish" (although the Bible has "fishes," because that form was used more in the days of King James than today).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=30#p23784
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-10-08 10:51:15

Okay, so I did find the template hacking I mentioned earlier.  It's now bundled as an extension, attached for your reference, but be warned that the code is in quite a yucky state.

I also ran some quick-and-dirty performance tests on both Glulxe and git, and I found out that I don't have such a good @malloc/non-@malloc comparison as I thought yesterday---any performance differences from switching to @malloc are drowned out by other effects.

An example:[code]There is a room.

Instead of singing:
	let W be some indexed text;
	repeat with X running from one to 80:
		now W is "[W][X][W]";
	say "[the number of characters in W]."

Foo relates numbers to numbers.

Instead of waving hands:
	repeat with the counter running from zero to 8000:
		now the foo relation relates the counter to the counter;
	showme the number that relates to 1592 by the foo relation.

Instead of jumping:
	let Y be a list of indexed text;
	repeat with X running from one to 8000:
		add "[X]" to Y.[/code]
With a debug build of this source and the extension, Git ran the script sing/wave/quit about six times faster, and Glulxe (profiling) went at roughly a tenfold pace.  (Though, admittedly, neither the sing nor the wave rule is likely to be representative of actual IF.)  The profiling output is spoilered below.

Without the extension:[spoiler][code]Code segment begins at 0x3c
290 called functions found in ./profile-raw
1276 functions found in test-debug were never called
Functions that consumed the most time (excluding children):
RT__ChLDB:
  at $03eddb (line 1); called 40991752 times (4294967296 accelerated)
  43.076851 sec (4540917808 ops) spent executing
  80.325556 sec (17753753712 ops) including child calls
Unsigned__Compare:
  at $03e6f6 (line 1); called 46466034 times (4294967296 accelerated)
  42.222459 sec (4666695568 ops) spent executing
  42.222459 sec (17551597456 ops) including child calls
BlkSize:
  at $0310e3 (line 27569); called 3792638 times (4294967296 accelerated)
  30.291623 sec (4498572034 ops) spent executing
  108.539218 sec (17942947802 ops) including child calls
RT__ChLDW:
  at $03ee0c (line 1); called 3451082 times (4294967296 accelerated)
  4.148779 sec (4319124870 ops) spent executing
  7.317254 sec (17231635414 ops) including child calls
BlkValueWrite:
  at $031e0b (line 27972); called 363600 times (4294967296 accelerated)
  3.859299 sec (4319845324 ops) spent executing
  70.812351 sec (17676125153 ops) including child calls
BlkValueRead:
  at $031d12 (line 27946); called 361973 times (4294967296 accelerated)
  3.269208 sec (4316540557 ops) spent executing
  55.611922 sec (17569324293 ops) including child calls
RT__ChSTB:
  at $03ee41 (line 1); called 793328 times (4294967296 accelerated)
  1.255341 sec (4302107248 ops) spent executing
  2.666186 sec (17199702384 ops) including child calls
RT__ChSTW:
  at $03ee8b (line 1); called 218272 times (4294967296 accelerated)
  0.390770 sec (4297150016 ops) spent executing
  0.785204 sec (17185544256 ops) including child calls
BlkAllocate:
  at $0314e0 (line 27686); called 39 times (4294967296 accelerated)
  0.302045 sec (4296977667 ops) spent executing
  1.964846 sec (17194490934 ops) including child calls
HashCoreCheckResize:
  at $03bf70 (line 33297); called 8000 times (4294967296 accelerated)
  0.224566 sec (4296280743 ops) spent executing
  55.649696 sec (17571155823 ops) including child calls
>>> ^D[/code][/spoiler]With the extension:[spoiler][code]Code segment begins at 0x3c
285 called functions found in ./profile-raw
1273 functions found in test-debug were never called
Functions that consumed the most time (excluding children):
Unsigned__Compare:
  at $03e013 (line 1); called 2349167 times (4294967296 accelerated)
  2.177504 sec (4313760632 ops) spent executing
  2.177504 sec (120277877624 ops) including child calls
RT__ChLDB:
  at $03e6f8 (line 1); called 1452052 times (4294967296 accelerated)
  1.681527 sec (4303679608 ops) spent executing
  3.032960 sec (120279413016 ops) including child calls
BlkValueWrite:
  at $03172a (line 27890); called 363600 times (4294967296 accelerated)
  1.114526 sec (4302745734 ops) spent executing
  3.697855 sec (120283951311 ops) including child calls
BlkValueRead:
  at $0315c4 (line 27832); called 361973 times (4294967296 accelerated)
  1.102141 sec (4302688473 ops) spent executing
  3.708498 sec (120283816891 ops) including child calls
RT__ChLDW:
  at $03e729 (line 1); called 896525 times (4294967296 accelerated)
  1.061123 sec (4301242971 ops) spent executing
  1.886649 sec (120272532163 ops) including child calls
BlkSize:
  at $03115a (line 27628); called 725826 times (4294967296 accelerated)
  0.642042 sec (4297870600 ops) spent executing
  2.155998 sec (120272149156 ops) including child calls
HashCoreCheckResize:
  at $03b88d (line 33225); called 8000 times (4294967296 accelerated)
  0.226893 sec (4296280743 ops) spent executing
  3.530675 sec (120282662662 ops) including child calls
INDEXED_TEXT_TY_Cast:
  at $031edf (line 28337); called 80 times (4294967296 accelerated)
  0.183588 sec (4295847646 ops) spent executing
  3.825970 sec (120283077175 ops) including child calls
INDEXED_TEXT_TY_Say:
  at $03218d (line 28469); called 164 times (4294967296 accelerated)
  0.170247 sec (4295868348 ops) spent executing
  1.868206 sec (120270349406 ops) including child calls
glk_put_char_uni:
  at $000564 (line 1390); called 149902 times (4294967296 accelerated)
  0.096039 sec (4295417002 ops) spent executing
  0.175487 sec (120259533994 ops) including child calls
>>> ^D[/code][/spoiler]
The short story is that time spent in BlkSize drops considerably: it runs nine or ten times faster (presumably because I used @shiftl in place of a loop), and is called about one fifth as often (likely because I opted to keep data in a single block and relocate it when space ran out, rather than overflowing to multiple blocks).  But without more and more careful experiments, it's not clear how much speed-up is contributed by @malloc.

Still, I can make some comment on how it scales with outstanding allocations.  I was half-wrong yesterday: the terps do slow down as the number of outstanding allocations grows, but, using the story above and jump/quit, I watched the extension vs. no-extension runtime ratio steadily improve as the loop bound in the jump rule increased.  So, it seems that the terps scale better than Inform's code does.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3356&start=0#p23785
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Request to allow .i7x attachments
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-10-08 10:57:01

Could ``.i7x'' be added to the list of safe file extensions, so that Inform 7 extensions can be attached to posts without renaming?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=20#p23786
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-08 10:59:02

[quote="Finn Rosenløv"]I must admit that I personally feel it's a bit like cheating.  It's like being allowed to alter your final exams project after having turned it in...  [emote]:)[/emote] 
It's not whether an update gives the player a better experience playing the game, it's about you turning in a piece of work and that piece of work is evaluated, good or bad.[/quote]

As a teacher, if I had enough time to always let students revise their projects I would. It's more important to me that they produce better work than that they be graded on the stuff they produce the first time. (In practice, I make them write shorter papers so they've got feedback on something before they try their final project.)

I would feel even more strongly about this if I intended to play their projects for fun.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=30#p23787
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-10-08 11:04:10

[quote="jacksonmead"]Is the point of the comp for the authors to win? Or is the point of the comp for players to have games to play? If the former, then, sure, you could make comparisons to cheating on a test. But if it's the latter, then it doesn't make sense.

-Kevin[/quote]

I'd have said the point was to decide which game is the best, not which game is best once it's been fixed, updated, extended, etc. If my game receives less reviews than other games, and as a result I'm not able to fix whatever might be wrong with it, do I get extra time at the end of the comp, before the results are announced, for me to add extra features I feel people would like?

Maybe next year the IFComp could be renamed The Public Betatest Comp because that looks to be the way it's going.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=30#p23788
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2011-10-08 11:22:39

[quote="jacksonmead"]Is the point of the comp for the authors to win? Or is the point of the comp for players to have games to play? If the former, then, sure, you could make comparisons to cheating on a test. But if it's the latter, then it doesn't make sense.

-Kevin[/quote]

I think it makes perfect sense.
There's a deadline for when the game has to be submitted to the comnpetition and that's it. It's no big secret when the annual IF Comp is being launched. People pretty much know about what time of year it is, so they have plenty of time to work on their game and polish it.

With this rule people can (I'm not saying their doing it) actually submit a practically new game. Who's to decide whether it's an update or a new game? 
I can see David's point in renaming the comp.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=30#p23790
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-08 11:57:49

I think you guys are seriously exaggerating the advantage that this gives people. (Not to mention that it's not an unfair advantage, since everyone has the chance to make changes.) Are people seriously going to say, "Ha ha, I have the chance to make major changes in my game in the six weeks the competition is running"? Who would do that? It's just creating a lot of extra work for themselves -- and remember, they're going to get bad scores from the first batch of reviewers anyway, as well as from anyone who (reasonably) decides to ignore the updates. 

You might also be interested to read [url=http://gameshelf.jmac.org/2010/12/the-warblers-nest-and-some-ifc/]Jason McIntosh's post-mortem on The Warbler's Nest[/url]. He wound up telling his friends not to play the game during the competition, because the rules [i]prevented him from fixing the problems that he learned about from the first reviews[/i] until the competition had finished. And I think these rules are probably friendlier to new authors as well. Do we care about the sanctity of a deadline, or do we care about encouraging the creation of good games? I know my answer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=30#p23791
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-10-08 12:30:40

[quote="David Whyld"][quote="jacksonmead"]Is the point of the comp for the authors to win? Or is the point of the comp for players to have games to play? If the former, then, sure, you could make comparisons to cheating on a test. But if it's the latter, then it doesn't make sense.

-Kevin[/quote]

I'd have said the point was to decide which game is the best, not which game is best once it's been fixed, updated, extended, etc. If my game receives less reviews than other games, and as a result I'm not able to fix whatever might be wrong with it, do I get extra time at the end of the comp, before the results are announced, for me to add extra features I feel people would like?

Maybe next year the IFComp could be renamed The Public Betatest Comp because that looks to be the way it's going.[/quote]

Mods, please delete my post immediately if this violates rule 5. I've tried to discuss generalities here, but I may have slipped.

I agree with Kevin--one writer just didn't know the general rules of ABOUT and CREDITS. That would potentially cost that person, who would've added them if they'd known, reviews from longtime and very good reviewers. Because they did update things. Now, maybe we can argue that this relatively recent expectation of longtime reviewers should be more prominent in the competition instructions, but I think we've found one example where updates ARE a good thing.

I would say the updates are, or should be, more like special-case patches being rolled out for a big product than re-beta-testing. Patches get more specific and local tests. That seems to be what people are trying to do here. I think the authors likely to update all recognize the risk/reward involved.

The rest is potentially TL/DR...

[spoiler]Anyone with a middling game is not going to come up with a killer hook that bumps them up much (barring something very exceptional that I think most authors would gladly sacrifice a place in the comp to see) and anyone with a top-tier game probably won't want to put anything at risk. They've planned things out too well.

And anyone in the bottom tier due to a gross error deserves a chance to explain away or correct stuff that can be easily corrected. I think the games that most need feedback/touchups aren't going to be the ones at the top end of the competition. In the authors' board there are a lot of people just interested in what they could've done better, and I am guessing most people aren't doing it to jump over others but to give it their best shot.

I know at the end of last year, when the scores were revealed, they didn't matter so much to me, though I had some attachment to the game I beta-tested. I enjoyed reading different perspectives and what should and shouldn't be done, and even seeing people finding good in games I hated. I didn't let a few typos or missed verbs get in the way of the overall picture.

In addition it's tough to feel shackled for six weeks--yes, there's nothing against locally touching up code, but being able to show you can improve stuff you -knew- you should have fixed makes that much less helplessness. Many of us do this to improve, not to place.

I doubt many people will change the general overall game--and those who do will be found out by comparative reviews.

I'd also say that there is diminishing return to scale on # of reviews--the first few big needs will probably show up right away, and there'll quickly be enough overlap and consensus that the writer can pretty clearly and quickly decide what to fix.

I have to admit I was unaware of this rule and spent more time than I needed to worrying about a game-killing bug instead of planning to hunt for them. Yes, a lot of that is on me, but it's a very human thing to think, and if this rule lets in a few people who are willing to learn and apply that knowledge immediately, well--the competition's about more than just a score, isn't it?

There's a possibility of someone submitting a silly game and then monstrously updating it, but generally, people trying to make that sort of silly joke get bored of it well before six weeks anyway.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3355&start=0#p23793
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Updating games in the comp.
User: ultimate / DateTime: 2011-10-08 13:19:47

[quote="zarf"]See the thread where Sargent comments on this: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=20">viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=20</a>[/quote]

What the heck? Why is there a new thread for this topic on each fucking subforum on this site? Can't we discuss that in one place?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=30#p23795
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: ultimate / DateTime: 2011-10-08 13:29:13

[quote="matt w"]I think you guys are seriously exaggerating the advantage that this gives people. (Not to mention that it's not an unfair advantage, since everyone has the chance to make changes.) Are people seriously going to say, "Ha ha, I have the chance to make major changes in my game in the six weeks the competition is running"? Who would do that?[/quote]

Well, I think we can safely assume that no author knew about this new feature since Stephen Granade has announced the changes on October 1st at rec.arts.int-fiction after everyone has finished uploading their games to the ifcomp site. 

Unless we have authors in the comp who can foretell the future.  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote] 

[quote]Stephen Granade
Date: Sat, 01 Oct 2011 12:25:17
Subject: [IFComp] The 2011 IFComp has begun!

The games are all up and available from <a class="postlink" href="http://ifcomp.org/">http://ifcomp.org/</a> or your 
friendly local IF Archive mirror. One change this year: authors will be 
allowed to update their games during the competition. I'll be posting 
updated games at least once a week during the competition. 

Stephen 


-- 
Stephen Granade[/quote]

<a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/924fb3038784086a#">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... 38784086a#</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3357&start=0#p23796
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Announce: "maybe make some change"
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-10-08 13:44:26

Presumably some people saw either [url=http://eis-blog.ucsc.edu/2011/10/games-for-grief-mourning-and-anger/]my write-up[/url] or [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2011/10/07/maybe-make-some-change/]Emily's write-up[/url] syndicated on Planet IF, but somehow it doesn't feel like something's released until I've officially announced it somewhere IF-y. So:

My new interactive story [url=http://change.textories.com/]maybe make some change[/url] is now available in both web-based and Glulx forms. The latter version might be a useful modern stress test for Glulx interpreter authors, since it uses most of the tricks in the book, including multiple sound channels.

(Speaking of which: does anyone know what's up with the sound in Windows Gargoyle? It sounds tinny and compressed compared to Spatterlight. I saw a post suggesting this might be a result of playing sounds with different sampling rates at the same time, but all the sounds are OGG files with an identical 44.1kHz rate.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=30#p23797
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: ultimate / DateTime: 2011-10-08 13:45:50

[quote="Finn Rosenløv"]There's a deadline for when the game has to be submitted to the comnpetition and that's it.[/quote]

Fuck it. I don't mind if Stephen allows authors to update their games each week. All I care about is how I should judge games being updated each friggin' week?!

There are 38 fucking games in this non-porn-comp. You can't expect the fucking judges to replay 38 games and rewrite reviews over and over again each damn week.

I knew it! I told you guys to screw IFComp 2011! First we got Emily Short and Emily Boegheim sucked in from a parellel universe who claim to be different persons, but could be the same for all I know. And now we see tons of authors updating their games each week.

This is cheat GOD MODE!!!!!! This is like Obama being re-elected in 2012. No, no, noooooooo!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=30#p23798
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-10-08 13:51:30

To be honest, I'd have been a whole lot happier with this rule if it had been announced a little earlier. It just seems kind of misleading to come up with a brand new rule after the competition has already started.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3358&start=0#p23801
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Haunetd House goes beta!
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-10-08 14:31:38

Calling for beta-testers for Haunted House!

At the worst possible timing, just in the middle of the annual IFCOMP, my Indigo speed-if post-comp release of Haunted House enters public beta-testing phase.

This should have happened long ago, but I fell under a severe writer’s block when I was just a few paragraphs away from consider it finished. I think there is still a lot to improve, but I guess it’s time to stop the neverending polishing loop and give it a go!

All kinds of feedback are wellcome, but proofreading of my not-precisely-state-of-the-art English is the most desperately needed.

Volunteers for beta-testing will receive a link with the game website. They can play it on-line or download the z8 file and play with an ordinary interpreter and send me transcripts.

A proofreading of the accompanying booklet will also be quite appreciated!

During beta-testing the source code will also be available at the game’s site, just in case any tester feels like taking a peek into it. It is reasonably short, so it can also help proofreading.

Volunteers can contact me at rockersuke in that evil ugly thing known as hotmail or sending me a private meesage at the IF Forum.

As the whole thing is about hanging around an abandoned house It would be nice to make the final release somewhere around the upcoming Halloween, but that’s not mandatory (and we’ll have a bunch of Halloween games out there with the Ectocomp anyway )

Thanks everybody in advance!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3338&start=0#p23802
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can't get to ifcomp.org
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2011-10-08 14:57:02

Heh, that's what confuses me. I'm connecting from different IPs, different computers, even different OSes; my home computer is Linux, my work computer is XP. They're as different as can be, apart from being within a few miles of each other. It's not DNS, because the IP I reach with my phone is the same as the IP from my computers. It's not a browser issue, because I've tried several browsers. The site isn't down, because I can still get to it through proxies. Best I can figure, either a region got blacklisted, or two specific IPs that just happen to be me at work and me at home... and if that is the case, I've no idea how to proceed from there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3359&start=0#p23803
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Is Stephen Granade the Antichrist?
User: ultimate / DateTime: 2011-10-08 15:03:42

Is Stephen Granade the Antichrist for changing the comp rules and letting authors upload game updates each week?

Obama heckled and called the Antichrist
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cP-FTX5tVg">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cP-FTX5tVg</a>

RON PAUL 2012!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3328&start=0#p23804
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Site Logo
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2011-10-08 15:12:39

A little more work - no more blinky, and with a few color choices. The blink is easy enough to add, if the majority likes it; I think somehow it just doesn't look the same without it.
[attachment=2]logo1.png[/attachment]
[attachment=1]logo2.png[/attachment]
[attachment=0]logo3.png[/attachment]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3359&start=0#p23805
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Is Stephen Granade the Antichrist?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-10-08 15:17:07

It looks like you could use a short vacation from the forum.

If you have trouble finding the self control to enforce this yourself, let me know and I can assist with a temporary ban.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3361&start=0#p23806
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Basic Transcripting question
User: WaterMonkey / DateTime: 2011-10-08 16:53:11

Apologies for the rather dumb question, but is there a way to make in-line comments in a transcript of an IF game? I think I've seen this done before, but I don't know the command - I have figured out TRANSCRIPT ON to get the transcript going, but nothing beyond that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3361&start=0#p23807
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Basic Transcripting question
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-08 17:56:15

Some games allow beginning a command with * or ! or some other thing so that the rest of the line only produces "noted." or similar.  Inform games no longer have that as a default command though, so eliciting parser errors will have to do. 

However, if you always begin your notes in a transcript with the same word or punctuation mark, the author reading it will see the pattern then can search the transcript for whatever you're using to flag your notes with.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3328&start=0#p23808
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Site Logo
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-08 18:08:45

We re-named the Seattle IF group blog to the Seattle Interactive Fiction blog on the off-chance that if a Google search dropped someone onto it cold, they could get an immediate idea of what the blog's about via its title.  "If" is a word, and it's a bit unfortunate that that's what interactive fiction abbreviates to.  However, I'm still of the opinion we shouldn't use acronyms for everything.  This is partly a (my) reaction to the increase of technology in everyday lives, and technology seems to love naming things with acronyms rather than actual words.  

I agree with zarf about having blinking things incessantly blinking in my peripheral vision.  Websites with banner ads on the side that continually animate irritate me to no end.  They fatigue my attention.

Also: I like blue gradient.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3356&start=0#p23809
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Request to allow .i7x attachments
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-08 18:10:18

Hey, yeah.  Maybe also ".ni" and ".i6t" and other authoring tools' filename extensions while we're at it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3328&start=0#p23810
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Site Logo
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-10-08 18:12:58

Personally I like the blink.  I mean, it's not a huge blink is it?  Also it will be off the top of the screen for a fair amount of the time.  And my vote would be for the first one, it looks more classic.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3328&start=0#p23811
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Site Logo
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-08 18:37:35

I'm fine with or without the blink, though I understand it can drive some people batty.

Now I'm torn on the gold; not sure what I think about that anymore. Hmm. Maybe white-box-gold-effs or vice-versa? I dunno. I still worry about the white getting lost, but the gold seems a bit brutal.

Anyway, fine work overall and whatever you settle on will definitely be a step up from the phpbb thing [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3328&start=10#p23812
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Site Logo
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-08 18:38:29

I like the third and don't like the second -- something about the gold border on the blue makes my eyes water.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3328&start=10#p23813
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Site Logo
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2011-10-08 19:04:37

Personally, I like the first and third ones... as long as the favicon is the white IF, the top one matches; but, if I were to stray from the favicon completely, I might do a white-on-black (or green-on-green) IF, in ye-old-console font.
I experimented with the colors a bit and didn't get anything better than those, but YMMV.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=30#p23814
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-08 19:19:12

[quote="jacksonmead"]Is the point of the comp for the authors to win? Or is the point of the comp for players to have games to play? If the former, then, sure, you could make comparisons to cheating on a test. But if it's the latter, then it doesn't make sense.
[/quote]
For articulating the crux of the argument, Kevin wins the thread. 

I feel IFComp should grow the audience for IF.  It seems we lost at least one author (and hence, player) due to his 2008 Adrift work having 'terp issues, so I believe allowing updates would support that goal.  

I would like the all-games zip files to have the latest and greatest, though.  Not all of us grab the games the very instant the comp starts, and piecemeal updating is a pain.  Causal comp players would not only just hit the all-games zip and stick with it, but wouldn't download and begin IF Comp playing until they're good and ready -- which isn't necessarily in week #1 of the comp.

I do think it wise that the games are only updated at most once a week, and am assuming the rule change wasn't announced until the first was so this year's authors couldn't allow themselves to relax.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3361&start=0#p23815
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Basic Transcripting question
User: WaterMonkey / DateTime: 2011-10-08 19:28:03

Ah, ok. Thanks for the help! [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=30#p23816
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-08 20:01:35

[quote="Dannii"]But Aaron's smarter parser sure does use a lot of regexs (and for things other than just detecting different types of errors), so I'd be surprised if some wouldn't help. And I was thinking of regexes for whole phrases, definitely not letters.[/quote]
IIRC Smarter Parser recognized questions and sentences, rather than just imperatives, that ordinary people were prone to typing in.  That doesn't really require a parser rewrite so much as a few additional Understand tokens and grammar lines that use them. 

As for regexes themselves, writers don't regex, so the way understand lines are written now can't change.  And since understand lines aren't as complicated as regexes, it seems like using a Buick to swat a fly.  I'm not even sure how "the regex engine" would be sped up by opcode use.  What would the opcode(s) even do?  How would that work?  

[quote]It sounds to my unknowledgeable mind that too much state is being calculated as the parser is running. To borrow a metaphor from SQL, it sounds like more indexes or saved queries are needed! The parser can check if an object is in some list, that's fine. Constructing that list is not.[/quote]
If it fell to me to rewrite Parser.i6t from scratch in I7, the first thing I'd do is replace any & all arrays with object attributes.   For example, instead of adding & removing objects to the match list (an array), I'd give or remove the "marked for listing" property.  It's something of a dream of mine to have a parser who's first line is "now every object is not marked for listing" and go from there, efficiency be damned.  I was tempted when writing the default behavior for the which-did-you-mean activity to do something very similar to that, so customizing that activity wouldn't require the arcane I6 code seen at the bottom in the Cleopatra's Nose example.

I'm currently about halfway through the convoluted flow of Parser__parse, and am waiting to see what else I learn.  For example, did you know you could enter "LOOK, INVENTORY, EXAMINE ME" as a single command and have it work in every Inform game?  I didn't know that. I didn't know commas could be used in that way. But, I think the ability to do that falls far behind in importance nowadays than being able to parse "WHAT SHOULD I DO?" and the like.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=30#p23817
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-08 20:35:41

[quote]I'm not even sure how "the regex engine" would be sped up by opcode use. What would the opcode(s) even do? How would that work?[/quote]

Currently the Inform library has a regex-matching routine, written in I6. It would be fairly easy to add a Glulx opcode which did exactly the same thing. The new implementation would be in native code (C, or whatever the interpreter was written in) and so would be faster.

We've been very conservative with these move-functionality-to-VM-opcodes decisions. It effectively locks down functionality. (Right now, if somebody finds a bug in the Inform library -- or wants to add a feature -- it can be patched in an individual game, and then integrated into the next I7 release. If the behavior has been moved into the VM, it's a lot harder to change, and raises game/interpreter compatibility headaches.) Currently Glulx has opcodes for copying arrays; searching arrays and linked lists; and a few *very* low-level pieces of I6 functionality. (Property-checking and class-checking routines which haven't changed since the early I6 releases.)

[quote]If it fell to me to rewrite Parser.i6t from scratch in I7, the first thing I'd do is replace any & all arrays with object attributes.[/quote]

Mm. The tradeoff there is that adding objects to lists becomes somewhat faster, but iterating through lists becomes much slower. Whether this is an improvement would depend entirely on the code in question.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3270&start=0#p23818
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: CA_Pr and bad function calls
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-10-08 21:13:35

I've updated Praxix to note when a test is checking something unspecified. Get the new version from

<a class="postlink" href="http://curiousdannii.github.com/if/tests.html">http://curiousdannii.github.com/if/tests.html</a>

You should use the other unit tests there too. Czech covers a lot of the same material as Praxix, but it also tests the object opcodes and has some print tests. TerpEtude covers a lot of IO stuff. Maybe some day I'll combine all the static (ie, non-input dependant) tests into Praxix, but it's no priority. Maybe even that initial choose-a-test should be removed, and then we could work on another test suite covering everything input.

(Zarf, I've made my if repo the new home for Praxix, so if you ever want to add more tests then clone it instead.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=30#p23821
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-08 22:14:19

[quote="Finn Rosenløv"]I must admit that I personally feel it's a bit like cheating.[/quote]

"Cheating" implies [i]deliberately [/i]gaming the system to win, though. How would that even be possible?

What I mean is, imagine this: It's 2012. Turns out the world isn't ending, so you decide to write an IF game and enter it into the comp. What's more, you twirl your waxy black mustache and [i]decide to cheat using this rule.[/i] On purpose. You have months to plan your cheating for maximum advantage and ...

What's the plan? How could you possibly improve your chances/score/whatever by deliberately making use of the rule? Maybe I'm just missing it, but could you provide a walkthrough?

I think the posts by Juhana, Matt W and Emily Short (and others, but those three with the greatest clarity) outline the reasons why the rule (A) at its worst can do no harm and (B) at its best can benefit everyone.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3319&start=10#p23822
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Having a seperate "you can see" line for a cla
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-10-08 22:21:54

Well, here's what I came up with:

[code]Object  monsters_monitor
  with  describe [ npc;
	  objectloop (npc in location) {
	    if (npc hasnt hostile) give npc ~workflag;
	    else give npc workflag;
	  }
	  objectloop (npc in location) {
	    if (npc hasnt workflag) {
	      print "";
	      return;
	    }
	    else {
	      print "^There is a group of monsters consisting of ";
	      WriteListFrom(child(location), ENGLISH_BIT + RECURSE_BIT + WORKFLAG_BIT);
	    }
	  }
	],
	found_in [; 
	  return true;
	],
  has	;[/code]

I'm still a little confused as to how objectloop and workflags really work, though, so when I compile, it just seems to cheerfully ignore all that and continue to print "You can see two kobolds (a level 1 kobold and a level 2 kobold) and a cart here". Am I on the right track, or no?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=30#p23823
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-08 22:49:41

[quote]"Cheating" implies deliberately gaming the system to win, though. How would that even be possible?[/quote]

Look at transcripts and early reviews after the first week. Rewrite chunks of your game to better fit with the zeitgeist of this year's judges.

It may not be an *effective* way to cheat, but it's a possible advantage over authors who never update their game.

Or how about this: it's the day before the entry deadline, and you have another week of work to do. You add a faux bug to your game -- something which prevents the player from getting out of the first room. Upload it. Spend the next week finishing your game. Post the update with a "hey, sorry about the bug!" note.

Sure, it's ridiculous (and won't save you from the wrath of early judges). But I'm looking back at the first (1995) IFComp discussion, and something like this *nearly happened* -- one entry was uploaded a week late, and then there was some controversy about how to handle it. 

(Although the bigger controversy was about what to do with games which were released *before* the deadline. Nobody had thought about an organized all-at-once release process, so games sort of straggled in for a month.)

To be clear: I'm not saying that this rule change is a bad idea. My bias is against it -- but then we did it the old way for fifteen years. I'm okay with trying the new way for a few years to see how it feels.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=40#p23824
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-08 22:55:38

[quote]But I'm looking back at the first (1995) IFComp discussion, and something like this *nearly happened* -- one entry was uploaded a week late[/quote]

Sorry, that's not right. (I misread somebody's review post.) It was released on time, but then an update was posted a week later. The organizers ruled that the original version was the one to judge (thus establishing the precedent kept until last year).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3356&start=0#p23825
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Request to allow .i7x attachments
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-10-08 23:04:37

For TADS 3, ".t" and ".t3m" could be handy. (".h" is already permitted.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3319&start=10#p23826
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Having a seperate "you can see" line for a cla
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-08 23:08:18

I think you're trying to write this:

[code]
    describe [ npc count;
     objectloop (npc in location) {
       if (npc hasnt hostile) {
         give npc ~workflag;
       }
       else {
         give npc workflag;
         count++;
       }
     }
     if	(count > 0) {
       print "^There is a group of monsters consisting of ";
       WriteListFrom(child(location), ENGLISH_BIT + RECURSE_BIT + WORKFLAG_BIT);
     }
     rtrue;
   ],
[/code]

However, this doesn't *disable* the normal printing of object descriptions. For that, you'll have to do something else. Making all the monsters scenery would work. Or give them a describe property that prints nothing (returning true) if they're hostile.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3319&start=10#p23828
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Having a seperate "you can see" line for a cla
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-10-09 00:25:37

Ah, that works perfectly! I hadn't thought of having a second variable there. Dude, thank you so much for the help, and for being available at this ungodly hour (assuming you're on the east coast). At this rate it feels like half my code is actually yours...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3363&start=0#p23829
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Remove all the objects from a location
User: rotter / DateTime: 2011-10-09 00:47:12

In my latest creation set in space I have the good old standard airlock, which if opened will cause any object not nailed down to be blown outside.  My problem is that I can't work out how to identify any object on the inside part of the door, to then remove from play. Could anyone point me in the right direction?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=30#p23830
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-10-09 01:26:27

[quote="EmacsUser"]Okay, so I did find the template hacking I mentioned earlier.  It's now bundled as an extension, attached for your reference, but be warned that the code is in quite a yucky state.

I also ran some quick-and-dirty performance tests on both Glulxe and git, and I found out that I don't have such a good @malloc/non-@malloc comparison as I thought yesterday---any performance differences from switching to @malloc are drowned out by other effects.[/quote]Still, interesting. I can see that BlkSize() is the major hold-up in the current implementation, but I guess the real solution is to think about how to modify the I7 memory code (and possibly the Glulx opcodes) to fit together better, rather than just accelerating BlkSize().

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=40#p23831
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-09 02:08:19

[quote="zarf"]It may not be an *effective* way to cheat [...][/quote]

I'd ballpark that as a cheat on statistical par with, say, a simple blackjack card-counting scheme (where the payoff would require a few hundred IF comps to be noticeable) [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote]Or how about this: it's the day before the entry deadline, and you have another week of work to do. You add a faux bug to your game -- something which prevents the player from getting out of the first room. Upload it. Spend the next week finishing your game. Post the update with a "hey, sorry about the bug!" note.[/quote]

Okay, I can't dismiss that one at all. [emote]:([/emote] Well-spotted and slightly spooky.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3363&start=0#p23832
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Remove all the objects from a location
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-10-09 02:13:29

Objectloop helps here.

[code]
objectloop(obj) {if(obj in name_of_the_room && obj~=player) remove obj;}
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3363&start=0#p23833
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Remove all the objects from a location
User: rotter / DateTime: 2011-10-09 02:30:28

[quote="Grueslayer"]Objectloop helps here.

[code]
objectloop(obj) {if(obj in name_of_the_room && obj~=player) remove obj;}
[/code][/quote]

Thanks for your help, but like the fool I am I forgot to say which version!  Doh!  Sorry about that.  I'm grappling with I7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=40#p23834
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-10-09 02:44:10

[quote="zarf"][quote]"Cheating" implies deliberately gaming the system to win, though. How would that even be possible?[/quote]

Look at transcripts and early reviews after the first week. Rewrite chunks of your game to better fit with the zeitgeist of this year's judges.

It may not be an *effective* way to cheat, but it's a possible advantage over authors who never update their game.[/quote]

That's the sort of thing that bothers me about it. If your game is reviewed early enough, and you're provided with transcripts to read through, there's a very good chance you can update your game to remove whatever it was about it that people disliked*. If that isn't cheating, I don't know what is. As said in other posts, not everyone plays the games the week the comp begins. Allow people to update their games and a game played in week 4 might be a wholly different game than one played in week 1.

* Which might already have happened this year. I see Comazombie's [b]Dead Hotel[/b] has been 'updated' to add extra commands people felt were lacking.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=40#p23835
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-09 02:53:04

[quote="David Whyld"]If your game is reviewed early enough, and you're provided with transcripts to read through, there's a very good chance you can update your game to remove whatever it was about it that people disliked.[/quote]

But fixing problems (implementing more nouns, improving responsiveness, repairing bugs, tidying up the game-logic, etc) and retro-fitting "to better fit with the zeitgeist of this year's judges," are two different things, really.

[quote]* Which might already have happened this year. I see Comazombie's Dead Hotel has been 'updated' to add extra commands people felt were lacking.[/quote]

That strikes me as an entirely honest and positive application of the rule.

(Bear in mind, though, that I'm neither a judge nor a competitor and absolutely never will be, so my priorities may differ dramatically from those who are)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3255&start=0#p23836
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stoping automatic examination of object in inventory
User: cooper / DateTime: 2011-10-09 03:23:55

I added another object to the player's inventory and it seems to work well. Thanks for your help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=40#p23837
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-10-09 03:47:06

I think it's time for something from the authors, in this thread.

Cheating is like stealing. Cheating is breaking the rules, doing something that they forbid.
What we did (myself included), by releasing an updated version of the game, did't break any rule. We actually did something we felt COMPELLED to do, as a new rule would do to everybody. 
I'm not saying I'm glad this new rule is in, as I stated a few posts back, still I'm not thinking I'm stealing to anyone in this particular case. It just was there and I used the opportunity.
The fact that the rule was out after the deadline (though I'm not sure about it--- I'm quite sure I've read it days before the Comp started) should just put an end to the discussion.

The second point is that now this long thread is actually becoming punitive for those who followed a rule you yourself built up. The updated versions of the games were, up to a day ago, just updated versions of the games. Now, they are like a giant, red finger pointing at our work with a neon sign on it reading "look, this is a cheater, his/her game was a total ball of poo before the author uploaded a new version."

I had an early transcript. I actually DID put some tweaking ingame to smooth the player experience (as tho pointlessly, as stated here [url]http://emshort.wordpress.com/2011/10/09/if-comp-2011-andromeda-awakening/[/url]) but, as long as I feel it being awkward, due to rules one USUALLY would find in competitions, I can't feel like cheating. I will NEVER feel like I was cheating. 

Too bad, a lot of readers of this forum will think differently, now.

What I'm saying is: 
1) If there were all those doubts about this new rule, they should have been discussed BEFORE the Comp.
2) Now that it's too late, you should have discussed this in a hidden forum or, at least, after november, 15.

Because, now, just following a rule THAT WAS THERE -- we didn't CHEAT -- we gave a hard bonk on the head of our games and hardly they will regain their consciousness.

Sorry for the rant. But, uhm, well: try and look it from our perspective also.
You talk rather often about ways to keep the players interested. How to bring new ones into IF. It's about fair (if not mandatory) to think about ways to keep authors interested also. [emote]:)[/emote]

----

Uhm, one last word.
Can experienced players/testers/writers or even iconic figures like EmShort or Zarf really be fooled by a rule like this? You mean a troll-post and a game with some mistake (although fatal, as in my case) could look the same? [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=40#p23838
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-10-09 04:00:45

[quote="Jamespking"]
1) If there were all those doubts about this new rule, they should have been discussed BEFORE the Comp.[/quote]

I'd have loved to have been given the opportunity for that but the first time I heard about the rule was after the comp had begun.

And for what it's worth, I am an author and I still think it's cheating.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=40#p23839
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-09 04:09:56

[quote="David Whyld"]I'd have loved to have been given the opportunity for that but the first time I heard about the rule was after the comp had begun.[/quote]
Yes, I too was quite surprised.

[quote]And for what it's worth, I am an author and I still think it's cheating.[/quote]
It can't possibly be cheating if you act in accordance with the rules, can it? The question is not whether there is a moral problem with an author who updates his or her game (e.g., whether that is "fair" or "cheating"), the question is whether this rule change has an overall positive effect on the competition. My gut instinct is that is doesn't, but I can see the arguments on the other side. So count me undecided.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3363&start=0#p23840
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Remove all the objects from a location
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-09 04:14:35

Untested code, but something like this should work:
[code][i]whatever rule triggers this[/i]:
	repeat with item running through things in Airlock:
		unless item is scenery:
			move item to Outer Space.[/code]
Of course, you can put more complex conditions in there if you want different classes of objects to be sucked out into space.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=40#p23841
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-10-09 04:20:22

[quote="David Whyld"]And for what it's worth, I am an author and I still think it's cheating.[/quote]

Look: no.

I live in a Country where avoiding paying the taxes is widely considered the right thing to do. Out Prime Minister is a tard* who did that and does that for hundreds of millions and has inspired a whole Country to think it's fair to fuck the others in order to get a new 100 yard yacht.

BUT: the law in Italy goes AGAINST that. It frankly states one gets to JAIL if he's caught stealing money from the state.

THAT'S cheating.

If the codex said "it's ok to stop paying taxes" that would be a moral problem (the kind of we have here, now). At the moment its against the law. This IFComp says "it's ok to stop paying the taxes". And so I did. I feel this morally doubtful, at best. But I am NO F**ING CHEATING. [emote]:)[/emote]

---

* Actually, he's no tard. Tards are those who vote him. I'm frankly honored to be able to say I'm not one of those [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3363&start=0#p23842
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Remove all the objects from a location
User: rotter / DateTime: 2011-10-09 05:04:29

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Untested code, but something like this should work:
[code][i]whatever rule triggers this[/i]:
	repeat with item running through things in Airlock:
		unless item is scenery:
			move item to Outer Space.[/code]
Of course, you can put more complex conditions in there if you want different classes of objects to be sucked out into space.[/quote]

Thanks, this set me on the right track.  I had to mod it slightly as I was mixing : and ; but otherwise it was spot on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=40#p23845
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2011-10-09 06:03:17

Folks, seriously. Let's look at what could possibly happen due to this rule (ignoring attempts at deliberate cheating for a moment, which I think at least in this year, we can rule out unless anyone wants to include Stephen into any sort of conspiracy):

- Authors change their games based on every review they get, trying to 'resolve' all issues raised by making big changes. Their games will end up as an inconsistent mess, because they were not strong enough to stick to their own original vision. Since they only ever try to please the judge/reviewer who has already made up his/her mind (which is not necessarily the same view of the next judge), ratings will still not be great.

- Authors use early transcripts and reviews to add synonyms for nouns and actions, maybe fix actual, small bugs and do other small fixes like dropping a small hint about a puzzle solution here and there. All for the better, I'd say. Out of the eight games I've played so far, this kind of change would only possibly change my overall impression of the respective game in maybe one case. That being because the game was virtually unplayable; from my short e-mail exchange, it didn't even sound like this author had the skill to quickly fix things up (remember: the scope we're talking about here is counted in few weeks) -- after all, there must have been a reason for the initial problems. All the other games, while they would all benefit from improvements like this, I would not rate differently after such changes.

I also exchanged a few mails with Jamespking (if I'm reading this correctly that he is the author of Andromeda Awakening) and one thing I told him was not to try to make too basic changes in the course of the competition. The risk of breaking something as opposed to fixing a perceived issue is too big anyway. I think any sensible author will see that. If not... case #1 [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=40#p23849
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-09 06:22:47

FWIW, though I still think this rule is a great idea for the reasons I and others said before, I sympathize with David's surprise at the rule having been announced when it was. 

Still, if the rule is allowing people to implement more commands and synonyms in later versions, yay. I've got a couple for you when I get my review up, David. [UPDATE: That may have come across as more hostile than I wanted -- I just meant that, as often happens in any game, I found a typo and some unimplemented phrasing, and if you were to patch them I think it might help the experience for later players.] And I don't see someone retroactively tweaking their game to fit with the zeitgeist as a serious problem -- wouldn't it have been a lot of work to insert zombies into A Quiet Evening at Home?

Another anecdote in support of the rule: In the JayIsGames IFComp, which was set up to encourage constant feedback, I encountered a pretty nasty bug in [url=http://saucersofmud.wordpress.com/2010/02/04/jayisgames-interactive-fiction-escape-comp-some-brief-reviews/]Hoosegow[/url] where falling off a supporter effectively put you half on it and half off it, and also blew up the hint system. The authors fixed it, and the game won the competition -- though it might have anyway, since many players might not have encountered the bug (it took a particular kind of failure to trigger it). I don't think would it have improved anyone's experience to force players to continue to deal with a potential game-breaking bug, except maybe for the authors whose games came in second place.... and one of those is Sargent (another is zarf), so I'm guessing that he wasn't too upset.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3365&start=0#p23850
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Suppress Message "Nothing obvious happens"
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2011-10-09 10:12:11

It begins to be annoying. One n00b question after the other. [emote]:)[/emote]

Here my most recent one. This is a code snippet I have:

[code]Instead of pushing the Activation-Key:
		Say "The screen flickers up and displays this:[paragraph break]";
		Now the command prompt is "Please enter the password to access this terminal: ";
		Continue the action.[/code]
The result is this:
[quote="I7"]> push Activation-Key
The screen flickers up and displays this:

Nothing obvious happens.

Please enter the password to access this terminal: [/quote]
So quite obviously the "Nothing obvious happens." is a blatant lie. [emote];-)[/emote] What am I doing wrong or how do I get rid of the lie?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3365&start=0#p23851
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Suppress Message "Nothing obvious happens"
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-09 10:17:18

You don't want to continue the action, because that means that the default behaviour will take place after your special behaviour. Instead of "continue the action", you want its opposite, "stop the action".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3365&start=0#p23853
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Suppress Message "Nothing obvious happens"
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-09 10:29:10

Though in this case you don't need "stop the action," because it's an instead rule; every Instead rule by default stops the action unless you tell it to continue.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=50#p23855
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-09 11:14:52

This thread is neither vehement enough nor unanimous enough to convince anybody that any author has done anything wrong. This is a good thing. Discussing the situation isn't punitive, it helps people clarify what *they* want to do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3363&start=0#p23856
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Remove all the objects from a location
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-09 11:19:05

Or even:

[code]
	now every not scenery thing in the Kitchen is in the Bathroom.
[/code]

Although that gets harder to write if the condition gets more complicated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3366&start=0#p23857
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Going in and going out seem to be two different things.
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-10-09 11:20:12

... and that shouldn't surprise anyone.

Fact is, if i code something like
[code]Instead of exiting when the player is in his_house, say "You don't want to go out."[/code]
it works, while if I code
[code]Instead of going in when the player is in his_house, say "You don't want to go in, also."[/code]
the game replies with the conventional "You can't go that way."

Given the standard responses being different I sense there are two different rules applying here, but I can't get past around it.

Any suggestion?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3365&start=0#p23858
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Suppress Message "Nothing obvious happens"
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-10-09 11:46:34

And if you want the action to register as succesful (which is one of the reasons you'd use "continue the action"), you should use an after rule, not an instead rule.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3366&start=0#p23859
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Going in and going out seem to be two different things.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-09 11:57:33

Shouldn't it be this?

[code]Instead of going inside when the player is in his_house, say "You don't want to go in, also."[/code]

The going action applies to directions, and "inside" is a direction while "in" isn't. When I dropped your line into a project I had, your line didn't compile, but it worked when I changed it to "inside." (You might also need a line for "going outside," which is a different action from exiting.) 

Anyway, you might want to look at section 7.13 of the documentation, which will tell you how to tighten these up a little. This also works:

[code]Instead of going inside in My Room, say "You don't want to go in, also."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3366&start=0#p23861
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Going in and going out seem to be two different things.
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-10-09 12:12:14

Bah. I always get stuck on things like that.
You can't understand how much of an idiot now I feel [emote]:)[/emote]

Thanks.

As a sidenote: going in when the player is in etc. compiles in my I7. It doesn't when it's a global thing (es: Instead of going in, try going out). That's funny.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3328&start=10#p23862
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Site Logo
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-10-09 12:38:09

I dislike the blink.  In my opinion, the first one of the revised batch is the best option presented.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3365&start=0#p23865
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Suppress Message "Nothing obvious happens"
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2011-10-09 12:52:11

Thank you for helping me with this. The solution was blindingly obvious! Thanks a bundle.

[quote="Juhana"]And if you want the action to register as succesful (which is one of the reasons you'd use "continue the action"), you should use an after rule, not an instead rule.[/quote]
Generally I know the difference between "instead" and "after". Just in this case I am uncertain whether there is any difference. I am sure there is, but I can't discern it.

Could anyone shed light on this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=50#p23868
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-10-09 15:32:31

My first thought on this is if I had entered this comp, I would be on a total obsessive compulsive binge during the whole judging phase of the competition doing updates and fixes. While I wish I had one more chance in Spring Thing 2010 to fix some of the dumb mistakes I had made on low sleep right before release (a big gap after a quote in some text due to an out of place [paragraph break], etc)... there was a sense of contentment for me to say "There, it's done. No going back now!" and then not really worrying about it for a month.

In other words, I have mixed feelings about it and that's just my opinion.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3365&start=0#p23870
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Suppress Message "Nothing obvious happens"
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-10-09 15:44:28

I would code something like this like so:
[code]"Test" by Jizaboz

Test Lab is a room. The description of Test Lab is "A plain, white room with a terminal in the middle of the room.".

A terminal is a thing in Test Lab. The description of terminal is "An old machine with a keyboard and monitor. On the terminal keyboard there is an activation-key that stands out from the rest.".

Activation-Key is a part of terminal.

Instead of pushing the Activation-Key:
      Say "The screen flickers up and displays this:[paragraph break]";
      Now the command prompt is "Please enter the password to access this terminal: ";
      Continue the action.
      
Report pushing the Activation-Key:
	do nothing instead.[/code]

(Note the last bit of code referring to reporting the action)

[quote="BigBonsai"]

[quote="Juhana"]And if you want the action to register as succesful (which is one of the reasons you'd use "continue the action"), you should use an after rule, not an instead rule.[/quote]
Generally I know the difference between "instead" and "after". Just in this case I am uncertain whether there is any difference. I am sure there is, but I can't discern it.

Could anyone shed light on this?[/quote]


Take a look at the Inform Cheat Sheet [url]http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~moreiser/inform/Inform7_CheatSheet.pdf[/url] and scroll a couple of pages down.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=50#p23872
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-10-09 16:27:01

[quote="Jizaboz"]My first thought on this is if I had entered this comp, I would be on a total obsessive compulsive binge during the whole judging phase of the competition doing updates and fixes. [/quote]

Yeah, that was pretty much my reaction to it from a potential-author standpoint.  And from a potential-judge standpoint, my reaction was similar to what others have voiced in this thread: "oh no there were already so many games to play, and now we're looking at different versions?"  But both of these are problems that are easily solved with some self-control on my part, and I think there's potential in the new rule to help authors who would otherwise either spend the Comp in despair over a silly bug or who would submit the game and never look back after the Comp to tidy it up. 

An author who submits a game with a game-ending bug in the first room could be mendacious, as in Zarf's scenario, but it seems to me that any possible advantage of an extra week's development time would be more than offset by the judges who assume the author is an idiot for having a game-ending bug in the first room.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3328&start=10#p23875
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Site Logo
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-10-09 17:36:14

Isn't text in the logo redundant, as the name of the forum is to the right? (If you're replacing the header completely, I think another format of the image would be suitable.)

[quote="ArmanX"]I might do a white-on-black (or green-on-green) IF, in ye-old-console font.[/quote]
Please no! I'm not here for nostalgia - in fact, as I'm in my early thirties, I'm too young for that. The first computer games I played were graphical. A green console font would signal that IF is something outdated, to which I object.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3328&start=10#p23879
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Site Logo
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-10-09 18:28:06

[quote="Trumgottist"]Isn't text in the logo redundant, as the name of the forum is to the right? (If you're replacing the header completely, I think another format of the image would be suitable.)[/quote]

Yes. Also remember that there are two designs available for this forum. The one I use looks like this:

[img]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/phpBB2.png[/img]

[quote="Trumgottist"][quote="ArmanX"]I might do a white-on-black (or green-on-green) IF, in ye-old-console font.[/quote]
Please no! I'm not here for nostalgia - in fact, as I'm in my early thirties, I'm too young for that. The first computer games I played were graphical. A green console font would signal that IF is something outdated, to which I object.[/quote]

Hearty agreement with Trumgottist.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=50#p23880
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2011-10-09 18:32:21

[quote="matt w"]By the way, is it OK for authors to revise supplementary material, like walkthroughs? Because there's a few games where I'd like to advise the authors to annotate their walkthroughs.[/quote]

Yeah, absolutely.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=50#p23881
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2011-10-09 18:48:12

[quote="matt w"]You might also be interested to read [url=http://gameshelf.jmac.org/2010/12/the-warblers-nest-and-some-ifc/]Jason McIntosh's post-mortem on The Warbler's Nest[/url]. He wound up telling his friends not to play the game during the competition, because the rules [i]prevented him from fixing the problems that he learned about from the first reviews[/i] until the competition had finished. And I think these rules are probably friendlier to new authors as well. Do we care about the sanctity of a deadline, or do we care about encouraging the creation of good games? I know my answer.[/quote]

My answer is "yes". [emote]:)[/emote] I do care about the deadline, but I also want the competition to result in good games. As the IFComp has gotten wider notice and more people outside the traditional IF community have begun playing the games, IFComp has in effect become not only a competition but also an outreach tool. The rule change and my approach to implementing it is my attempt to promote better games in the competition while not completely stomping on the competition aspect.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3328&start=10#p23892
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Site Logo
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2011-10-09 22:05:00

I'd forgotten about the second layout... with that in mind, I may re-design those to use transparency, rather than a matching gradient. Does the site allow for PNG files? (The first and third have transparency)

[quote="Trumgottist"]Please no! I'm not here for nostalgia - in fact, as I'm in my early thirties, I'm too young for that. The first computer games I played were graphical. A green console font would signal that IF is something outdated, to which I object.[/quote]

Heh, I'm younger than you, but the first computer games I played were in orange-and-black... still, I understand the point. Here's a couple more tries:
[attachment=2]logo_text1.png[/attachment]
[attachment=0]logo_text2.png[/attachment]

If we didn't use the IF logo, what would be better suited? For me, nothing says interactive fiction better than this:
[attachment=1]cursor1.png[/attachment]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=30#p23893
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-09 22:05:03

[quote="zarf"][quote]If it fell to me to rewrite Parser.i6t from scratch in I7, the first thing I'd do is replace any & all arrays with object attributes.[/quote]

Mm. The tradeoff there is that adding objects to lists becomes somewhat faster, but iterating through lists becomes much slower. Whether this is an improvement would depend entirely on the code in question.[/quote]
Aren't tables (or arrays) the only way to sort? Isn't sorting important?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3365&start=0#p23894
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Suppress Message "Nothing obvious happens"
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-09 22:14:33

[quote="BigBonsai"][quote="Juhana"]And if you want the action to register as succesful (which is one of the reasons you'd use "continue the action"), you should use an after rule, not an instead rule.[/quote]
Generally I know the difference between "instead" and "after". Just in this case I am uncertain whether there is any difference. I am sure there is, but I can't discern it.

Could anyone shed light on this?[/quote]

Here is the order of action processing rules:

[b]Before[/b] (default continue the action)
[b]Instead[/b] (default stop the action)
[b]Check[/b] (default continue the action)
[b]Carry Out[/b] (should ALWAYS continue the action)
[b]After[/b] (default stop the action, but counts as success)
[b]Report[/b] (default continue the action)

As you see, the Check rules run before the After rules, so it's useful to use After if you don't want to interfere with rules that would normally stop the action. However, if I'm not mistaken, the pushing action is always stopped by a check rule, so if you ever want it to work, you must use an Instead rule. If I remember correctly, you can end the Instead rule with "rule succeeds" to make it count as success, although I'm not positive.

An additional thing to note is that Check, Carry Out and Report rules can only handle one action, which is why the action name is part of their rulebook name. Before, Instead, and After rules can work for descriptions of actions ("doing anything") and kinds of action ("pushing is technical work. Instead of technical work...")

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1386&start=30#p23895
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Planet IF
User: radix / DateTime: 2011-10-09 22:14:50

Latest batch of additions is now up. Sorry for the delay!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3366&start=0#p23897
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Going in and going out seem to be two different things.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-09 22:21:15

I wrote some code to erase the difference between the (intransitive) exiting action and going outside, as well as the difference between the (transitive) entering action and going inside. I made transitive and intransitive alternatives for entering and exiting as well. If you want to see the code, I'll post it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=50#p23898
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-10-09 22:40:01

I can't wait for the second round of game updates—and its very own six-page forum thread!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=30#p23899
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-09 22:55:58

[quote="capmikee"]Isn't sorting important?[/quote]
Nope.  The objects in the match list & multiple object list (and by list I mean array) are populated by whatever order the objects come out of the object containment tree in.  The tree itself has a kind of an ordering to it, and the DM4 spends some ink on managing it -- such as saying X is in Y when it already was:  it moves X to the front of the list, the "first child".  

Parser.i6t only ensures it doesn't screw up whatever order the objects are in.  For example, when removing an element x at index i from an array, rather than copying the last element into the i-th slot, it'll shift all the elements left by one slot, starting at i+1.    

I think, though I'm not sure, that I7's "now every..." command traverses the containment tree in the same way.   Assuming it does, removing an object (or objects, as with a ALL EXCEPT command) would be much faster when using a property instead of an array. 

But as I said, I wouldn't really expect an easy, from-scratch I7 re-implementation to produce quick code by accident, so such speed comparisons are probably moot.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3328&start=10#p23900
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Site Logo
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-09 22:59:21

[quote="ektemple"]Hearty agreement with Trumgottist.[/quote]
Ditto. Give the retro a rest.

[quote="ektemple"]Yes. Also remember that there are two designs available for this forum. The one I use looks like this:[/quote]
It's like... getting jabbed in the eyeballs.  Twice. 

I know one other forum uses that layout (Adrift's? Quest's? It was linked to when the comp began.) but it looks busy to me.  I much prefer the muted forum appearance.  I believe it helps concentrate one's focus on the words in the forum, rather than on the garishly strong colors and cutesy icons.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3328&start=10#p23901
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Site Logo
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-10-09 23:47:43

[quote="Ron Newcomb"][quote="ektemple"]Yes. Also remember that there are two designs available for this forum. The one I use looks like this:[/quote]
It's like... getting jabbed in the eyeballs.  Twice. 

I know one other forum uses that layout (Adrift's? Quest's? It was linked to when the comp began.) but it looks busy to me.  I much prefer the muted forum appearance.  I believe it helps concentrate one's focus on the words in the forum, rather than on the garishly strong colors and cutesy icons.[/quote]

Er, the original design actually uses more colors and more obnoxious gradients, doesn't it? Home page: Two gradients, horizontal and vertical, in the table of contents, plus wholly unnecessary double whammy of background color and vertical rule on the right-hand columns. A whole mess of tables at the bottom of the page to handle what the alternate design does in a couple short lines of standard text. And the header: not content with just a type mark (phpBB), we also have an obscenely foreshortened circus tent, three shades of orange, and a weird wee willy of an exclamation mark... The title is not centered; it floats off to the right of where it ought to be.... All very distracting, at least if you stop to look at it. The only thing that could be said to be more busy about the alternate design is that the sections on the main page are separated by thin bits of white space, whereas the original design has them rammed together in a single table. Icon design: hm, the standard design looks like Office 95, the alternate like some latter-day flavor of Linux--neither one is very pretty. The alternate design at least has the advantage of using rounded corners, which I find easier on the eyes, and undoubtedly a more pleasant header. (Also a more functional header: there's a search box, so you can search w/o going to a dedicated search page.)

Still, neither design is very pretty, and none of the things I've mentioned actually explain why I switched to the alternate--the reason I did that, if I remember right, is that the type and colors of the alternate design are better on small mobile screens. Better, though, would be a page that's actually designed for mobiles.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=30#p23902
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-10 01:22:37

[quote]I think, though I'm not sure, that I7's "now every..." command traverses the containment tree in the same way.[/quote]

No, that statement usually iterates through all things. (Although if it can pick a narrower kind, e.g. "now every person...", it will iterate through a shorter array containing only things of that kind.)

There may be other cases, but I don't recall ever catching it traversing the world tree.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3328&start=10#p23904
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Site Logo
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-10-10 02:40:13

[quote="ektemple"]Also remember that there are two designs available for this forum.[/quote]The skins for each design are held separately, so there's no reason a different image couldn't be used for each design, if required.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3328&start=10#p23905
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Site Logo
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-10-10 02:52:26

I like the first one and the third one. For preference, I'd go with the first one; it's minimalist, which I like.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3297&start=0#p23911
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Return to Camelot
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-10-10 04:15:32

I'm running into a different problem. I'm trying to play online (I may check the feelies from the download, but I can't run exes on my Mac). Unfortunately, a few turns into the game, the WebRunner started displaying all text with a strikethrough effect applied. >GET GLASS was the action I took right before this started, though I'm not certain that's what actually triggered the effect.

I can still read through the strikethrough with a bit of effort, but it's not the ideal experience. Did anyone else run into this problem? Any advice for making it go away again?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3340&start=0#p23913
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Dead Hotel Update v2 and feelies
User: Comazombie / DateTime: 2011-10-10 05:05:12

[quote="Peter Pears"]Could you *please* upload this somewhere else? Every single time I try, I get a message saying my IP limit has been reached (and I'd never seen that site before).[/quote]

Done.

[quote]Also, why are there more files on your .zip than on the competition?[/quote]

Because you can't add new gamefiles to the competition. You can only replace those which you have uploaded originally for some reason.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3366&start=0#p23915
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Going in and going out seem to be two different things.
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-10-10 05:37:23

Of course I'd like!

thanx.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3297&start=0#p23916
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Return to Camelot
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2011-10-10 06:13:45

Hi Em.
I've copied your remark and forwarded it to Camapbell. Hopefully he has a solution.
Cheers

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3328&start=20#p23917
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Site Logo
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-10 06:33:12

I don't like the logo-over-text in ArmanX's second post -- it seems way too busy to me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3264&start=10#p23918
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Developing a new conversation extension
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-10 07:12:46

[quote="capmikee"]Here's a sneak peek at the extension in its current state.[/quote]

Why so many implicit-... actions? Does the supplying a missing noun rules not work? Or do I misunderstand what they do?

Also, it includes epistemology twice. [emote]:)[/emote]

I'm interested in this because my WIP treads the same ground.  I remember this part of the WIP being a part I didn't enjoy coding up.  

But also, since Eric says his extension tries to pattern itself after another (to reduce the learning curve for authors who use both systems, I'm sure), I'm interested in a system that plays to Inform's strengths.  For example, the bit about each person having an interlocutor I think might be more natural as a relation.  I also wonder that many-to-many relations might be the way to go for representing group conversations (if not just making a "conversation" a type of sub-room).   Using a global variable just seems archaic.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3297&start=0#p23919
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Return to Camelot
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-10-10 07:30:41

Ok, that should be fixed.  Was caused by the <del> tag, which I didn't realise browsers used to go into strikethrough mode.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3264&start=10#p23920
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Developing a new conversation extension
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-10 09:04:08

[quote="Ron Newcomb"][quote="capmikee"]Here's a sneak peek at the extension in its current state.[/quote]

Why so many implicit-... actions? Does the supplying a missing noun rules not work? Or do I misunderstand what they do?[/quote]
I don't know what Eric's reason was, but in my experience, I've had trouble with supplying a missing noun, and found multiple actions that redirect to a single action to be more reliable. Most recently I had trouble with persuasion - when omitting the noun in a command to an NPC, you get the error "you must supply a noun." But perhaps I just needed a "for supplying a missing noun when an actor...?"

[quote]Also, it includes epistemology twice. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
Still lots of copy-and-paste in there...  [emote]:P[/emote] 

[quote]I'm interested in this because my WIP treads the same ground.  I remember this part of the WIP being a part I didn't enjoy coding up.  

But also, since Eric says his extension tries to pattern itself after another (to reduce the learning curve for authors who use both systems, I'm sure), I'm interested in a system that plays to Inform's strengths.  For example, the bit about each person having an interlocutor I think might be more natural as a relation.  I also wonder that many-to-many relations might be the way to go for representing group conversations (if not just making a "conversation" a type of sub-room).   Using a global variable just seems archaic.[/quote]

I appreciate your perspective, especially if you've been working on something similar. My choice was to avoid many-to-many relations just to keep things light & simple, and to use a property rather than a relation for the interlocutor because the syntax is simpler. The "current interlocutor" phrase was mainly there for backwards compatibility and could be removed without much trouble. I would consider a one-to-many relation. Right now it's assumed that if the interlocutor is nothing and there are multiple listeners then the speaker is addressing the room. But perhaps there should be a "general audience" placeholder, or the interlocutor should actually BE the room...

Still looking for improved variable/action/activity/phrase/rulebook/extension name suggestions. Has your parser experience given you any insight?

In particular, I'm stuck on "imploring it for/inquiring it for." I thought "inquiring" would be an improvement, but it hasn't sat well with me. There are THREE ways that "ask for" can be parsed:

1. asking it for - builtin action applying to things in scope
2. requesting it for - applying to any visible things
3. imploring/inquiring it for - applying to topics

I've largely eschewed topics since it's always possible to create a familiar thing (i.e. a subject) with a topic in an "understand" line. So I've thought about making #3 into an "Understand as a mistake" rather than an actual action. But I don't think you can quote the topic understood if you do that. (i.e. "This game does not know the word 'mercy,' so you can't ask for it.") What do you think?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3366&start=0#p23921
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Going in and going out seem to be two different things.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-10 09:10:43

[code]Chapter - Exiting and Entering

Section - Transitive Exiting
	
Getting out of is an action applying to one thing. Understand "exit [something]" as getting out of.

Understand "out/off/down/up" as "[out]". Understand "of/from" as "[from]". Understand "[out]" and "[out] [from]" and "[from]" as "[out of]".

Understand "exit [out of] [something]" as getting out of. Understand "get [out of] [something]" as getting out of. Understand "go [out of] [something]" as getting out of.

Check getting out of when the noun does not enclose the player:
	say "You're not [if the noun is a supporter]on[otherwise]in[end if] [the noun] right now."

Check getting out of:
	Let the outer enclosure be the noun;
	while the outer enclosure encloses the player:
		let the inner enclosure be the holder of the player;
		If the inner enclosure is not the outer enclosure:
			say "(First exiting [the inner enclosure])[command clarification break]";
			silently try exiting;
		otherwise:
			try exiting;
		if the inner enclosure is the holder of the player:
			stop the action;
		

Section - Going Outside

Check going nowhere when the noun is outside:
	Try exiting instead.
	

Section - The Way Out

A room has an object called the way out.

Definition: A room is exitable if the way out of it is a direction.

Definition: A direction (called way) is viable:
	Decide on whether or not the room to the way is a room.

Definition: A direction (called way) is outward:
	If way is the way out of the location, yes;
	If way is inward, no;
	decide on whether or not way is viable.
	
Check exiting when the holder of the player is an exitable room:
	Try going the way out of the location instead.
	
Check exiting when the holder of the player is a not exitable room:
	If the number of outward directions is 1:
		let the way be a random outward direction;
		say "(leaving to [the way])[command clarification break]";
		try going the way instead.
			
Section - The Way In

Definition: A direction (called way) is inward:
	Let destination be the room to the way;
	if destination is not a room, no;
	decide on whether or not the way out of destination is the way from destination.
		
To decide what object is the way in:
	If the number of inward directions is 1, decide on a random inward direction;
	decide on nothing.
	
Check going nowhere when the noun is inside and the way in is a direction:
	Try going the way in instead.
 
Section - Intransitive Entering

for supplying a missing noun when entering (this is the enter the location rule):
	Now the noun is the location.
	
The enter the location rule is listed after the find what to enter rule in the for supplying a missing noun rulebook.

Check entering the location:
	Try going inside instead.
	
Check going nowhere when the noun is inside:
	say "There's no obvious way to go inside from here." instead.
[/code]

You could probably simplify that by removing the "way out/way in" stuff. As it stands, it requires you to state explicitly what the way out of every room is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3366&start=0#p23922
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Going in and going out seem to be two different things.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-10 09:49:09

[code]"(leaving to [the way])[command clarification break]"[/code]

Won't this produce goofy results when the way is up or down? Maybe "(leaving by going [way])" would work better.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3366&start=0#p23924
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Going in and going out seem to be two different things.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-10 10:02:24

[quote="matt w"][code]"(leaving to [the way])[command clarification break]"[/code]

Won't this produce goofy results when the way is up or down? Maybe "(leaving by going [way])" would work better.[/quote]
Yes, it would. My WIP doesn't have any up or down, so I never thought of it.

I've thought about writing an extension for describing directions and relative locations. This would have to be part of it. Something like:

[code]To say to the/-- (way - a direction):
	If way is:
		-- up: say "upwards";
		-- down: say "downwards";
		-- inside: say "inwards";
		-- outside: say "outwards";
		-- otherwise: say "to [the way]";[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3366&start=0#p23926
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Going in and going out seem to be two different things.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-10 10:17:32

Yeah, that seems like it'd be useful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3264&start=10#p23927
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Developing a new conversation extension
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-10 10:39:28

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Why so many implicit-... actions? Does the supplying a missing noun rules not work? Or do I misunderstand what they do?[/quote]
I just had a second look at this. I think the problem is that all of those implicit-actions include what would be the [b]second[/b] noun in the full action. You can't write a rule for supplying missing noun when your grammar line already has one noun in it, can you?

Or do you cheat by writing a rule like this?
[code]
Understand "ask about [any known thing]" as quizzing it about.

For supplying a missing second noun when an actor quizzing something about:
	Now the second noun is the noun;
	Now the noun is the interlocutor of the person asked.
[/code]

Hey... I think that works!

How would that work with DPMR, though? Don't they run before supplying a missing noun rules? It would be difficult to write things like this:

[code]A person has an object called the favorite subject. Does the player mean quizzing someone about the favorite subject of the noun: It is very likely.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3366&start=0#p23929
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Going in and going out seem to be two different things.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-10 11:12:14

The main reason I haven't done it is that there are too many prepositions. So far it's been too tedious to come up with say phrases for all of them:

"You head north."

"You see a light to the north."

"You see movement in the north."

"You see movement out the window."

"You see a light shining in through the window."

"Bob enters through the door."

"Bob comes in from the foyer."

"You head towards the door."

"Bob comes out the employee entrance."

"Bob heads out the door."

"A strange man bursts out of the closet."

"Bob looks towards the north."

"Bob goes up the stairs." [stairs and windows can act like doors!]

All slightly different, and hard to predict which to use with which combinations of objects, locations, doors, and rooms.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3372&start=0#p23930
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: How do you, personally, usually begin writing a game?
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2011-10-10 11:47:41

These questions are in part to satisfy my own idle curiosity, and in part to assume myself that I'm just as strange as everyone else. So, how do you start writing a game (or other interactive prose [or poetry... hmm, now there's an idea])?
Personally, I start with a simple outline of the plot and a map, then start writing code, filling in the plot and making up details as I go along. How about you? Do you jump straight into code, or do you write the 'Lost Tales' and the 'Silmarillion' before you ever write a line of code?

Also,what is your junk/testing/working game ratio? For every game I know I'm going to finish, I have at least three test games (trying out some new idea, or working on a some difficult code), and two games that I abandon when I realize my idea is too hard to implement, too long, or too boring - a 1:3:2 ratio.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3297&start=0#p23934
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Return to Camelot
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-10-10 13:41:05

Thanks, guys! I'll have another try.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3372&start=0#p23936
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How do you, personally, usually begin writing a game?
User: LuteinHawthorne / DateTime: 2011-10-10 13:48:25

Usually when I write a game I start out by doing the scenario and scene dressing for iconic sections of it, then draw up the story line second.  I generally keep a list of motives front and center while I'm putting stuff together so the characters act believably, but generally I'm limited by my actual programming skill so things get simpler as they go on.

I'd say finished to unfinished is probably 1 out of 10 or 15, mostly because of design elements that are necessary for the story but which I can't figure out how to implement.

Mostly I finish the entire game design (characters, general places) before I start writing the code for it, but leave some details (the particular linkages of rooms) for the actual implementing time.  I've been kicking around the idea of doing the whole game specification in a spreadsheet or something else electronic, but I mostly do the designs in my head during dreamland, or write them in notebooks while I'm away from my computer.

Thanks for sharing your approach.  Implementing is really hard o___o

LH

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3372&start=0#p23937
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How do you, personally, usually begin writing a game?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-10 13:58:46

[quote="ArmanX"]So, how do you start writing a game?[/quote]

Varies by project, but my general process is:

(A) Conception
(B) Game Design Thumbnail (lots of scribbled notes or spreadsheeting)
(C) Test Implementation (seeing if I can actually implement critical things that the game will need ... many projects die in this phase when I realize that I cannot, in fact, implement the critical things the game will need).
(D) Game Design Actual (even more scribbled notes and lots and lots of spreadsheeting, plus some actual writing at this point)
(E) Crude Implementation (the wireframe version, if you will, without much writing but which functionally implements the design)
(F) Self-Testing and Writing (layering words over the wireframe, replacing placeholders)
(G) Revisions (projects can get mired here; "don't get stuck in Molasses Swamp!") Can theoretically move game back on the track to any prior stage.
(H) Alpha Testing
(I) Post-Alpha Revisions (see G for dangers, but less so), preparation of release candidate
(J) Beta Testing
(K) Post-Beta Revisions (see G, but now much much less danger)
(L) Release, ahhhh.

[quote]Also,what is your junk/testing/working game ratio?[/quote]

I'm not sure how to separate "junk" from "testing," really. But my ratio of "stuff that isn't a working game" to "stuff that is a working game" is probably around 8:1 ... which might sound high, but to me I7 is kind of a game all its own. Just [i]playing around in it[/i] is something I find rewarding, and it helps me learn it.

And the usual disclaimer: my professional background is game design and game writing, with zero programming. I have no training, experience, or aptitude as a programmer, so any method I may describe should be approached with appropriate caution.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3372&start=0#p23939
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How do you, personally, usually begin writing a game?
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2011-10-10 14:19:08

[quote="LuteinHawthorne"]Implementing is really hard o___o[/quote]
I know! That's the death of most of my attempts... for instance, I started a game in which the main character was a hat; whatever NPC the hat was on would become the main character. Cool, right? Well, obviously you'll need lots of NPCs... and things should react differently to each NPC. What eventually killed it was the realization that every NPC would have to be on a track for movement, and would need to know how to get back to said track.
Four rooms and twenty (!!!!) NPCs later, I called it quits :-P
I'll come back to it eventually, but... whew. Good idea, bad implementation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3373&start=0#p23940
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Glk 0.7.3 is out
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-10 14:21:19

I've posted the spec, and also the cheapglk 1.0.2 and glkterm 1.0.2 libraries. And glulxe 0.4.7.

This contains the new sound API. David Kinder has an implementation for Windows, which he will release soon.

Glulxe, cheapglk, and glkterm all have important (if obscure) bug fixes, too.

I have not done a release of GlkOte/Quixe, because they don't support sound anyhow. Games that test the gestalt_Sound2 selector will work (soundlessly) on the current Quixe release.

I should put together a sound unit test for David to try... not today, I'm afraid.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3372&start=0#p23942
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How do you, personally, usually begin writing a game?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-10-10 14:28:42

Since pretty much all of my IF is 1) short and 2) based on a central trick/gimmick, I start by coding that gimmick to see if I can.  Then I talk to friends and myself about the implications of that gimmick, then write some more code and some descriptions, then alpha-test, then make feelies and/or cover art, then beta-test, then release.

My Inform documents folder has four subfolders: Current, for works-in-progress; Final, for things that I consider polished and done with, such as the Post-Comp version of [i]Byzantine Perspective[/i]; Past, for everything that I'm done working on but is not the Final version of that project, such as previous releases of [i]BP[/i], one-off games, and stuff I'm just sick of; and Swatches, for everything else.  Current and Final also have a subfolder called "Experiments," which is for games that I never really intend[ed] to release very widely (such as [url=http://instamatique.com/games/]Sugar[/url]).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3374&start=0#p23943
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: removing parts of things
User: Bristo / DateTime: 2011-10-10 14:32:50

Okay, so here's my next issue. I have a hand rail on a staircase that I want to remove a spindle from.

What I tried first was making the handrail an actual supporter, then made the spindle an object that was on it. The problem is, after the description of the handrail inform tells the player "There is a spindle on the handrail." I don't want that.

I get the exact effect I want when I make the spindle a part of the handrail, but the player can't take it (I think).

There's got to be a way to do what I'm trying to, but I'm having a hard time finding the solution in the documentation. Any ideas?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3375&start=0#p23944
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Is it too soon for another paragraph break problem?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-10 14:33:34

I feel like I ask about these all the time. Here's the latest:

[code]Test is a room. "This is a test[do some stuff]. [paragraph break]This is the second paragraph of the test."

To say do some stuff:
	say run paragraph on;
	follow the little-used do nothing rule.[/code]

This example prints:
[quote]Test
This is a test. 
This is the second paragraph of the test.
[/quote]

If I remove the "run paragraph on" line, it looks like this:

[quote]Test
This is a test
. 

This is the second paragraph of the test.[/quote]

Of course what I want is this:
[quote]Test
This is a test. 

This is the second paragraph of the test.[/quote]

How do I get it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3375&start=0#p23945
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is it too soon for another paragraph break problem?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-10-10 14:43:25

[code]Test is a room. "This is a test[do some stuff].[line break][paragraph break]This is the second paragraph of the test."
[/code]
Don't ask me why it works.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3372&start=0#p23946
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How do you, personally, usually begin writing a game?
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2011-10-10 14:44:09

A while back Emily went through five ways of going from a starting premise or idea to writing a game: <a class="postlink" href="http://emshort.wordpress.com/2009/08/23/idea-to-implementation/">http://emshort.wordpress.com/2009/08/23 ... mentation/</a>

I did a post-mortem on Fragile Shells that went through my design process beginning with "no way am I writing an escape-the-room game": <a class="postlink" href="http://granades.com/2010/03/31/making-fragile-shells/">http://granades.com/2010/03/31/making-fragile-shells/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3374&start=0#p23947
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: removing parts of things
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-10 14:50:05

If you want something very simple, this will work:

[code]Test is a room. "There is a handrail here[if the spindle is part of the handrail]. One of the spindles is loose[end if]."

A handrail is scenery in Test. A spindle is part of the handrail.

Instead of taking the spindle when the spindle is part of the handrail:
	say "You give the spindle a little tug, and it pops right out.";
	Now the player carries the spindle.
	[/code]

It's not really necessary to make the spindle part of the handrail, but it does hide it from room descriptions conveniently. But you have to bypass the "can't take component parts" rule. An Instead rule will do that for you, but it also bypasses all the other check rules, so it will ignore the player's carrying capacity, etc.

The trickier part is if you want to parse "take spindle from handrail." Unfortunately this translates to the removing it from action, which has a rather nasty "[things inside]" grammar token. Pretty much the only way to avoid being told "you can't see any such thing" is to make the handrail a container or supporter with the spindle in (or on) it. 

But you can fix that by adding your own grammar lines:

[code]Understand "take [something] from [something]" as removing it from.
Understand "get [something] from [something]" as removing it from.
Understand "remove [something] from [something]" as removing it from.

Instead of removing the spindle from the handrail when the handrail encloses the spindle:
	try taking the spindle.[/code]

I don't think you'll even need to write checks for removing things from places where they're not. There's already a check rule for that, which to my knowledge can never fire without these additional grammar lines.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3374&start=0#p23949
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: removing parts of things
User: Bristo / DateTime: 2011-10-10 15:04:17

Yup, that worked! Thanks!

This stuff is complicated for a newbie like me, thanks for helping out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3376&start=0#p23955
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Prealpha testers wanted for"Project Red," a mimetic thriller
User: LuteinHawthorne / DateTime: 2011-10-10 19:08:08

Hello,

If anyone would like to help test a psychological horror/thriller interactive fiction game codenamed "Project Red," currently in its prototype stage, and offer feedback and/or suggestions, it would be quite a treat for its author.

The game design is experimental, and currently "in development;" comments on the usability of the interface and how it is introduced to the player during the opening would be especially appreciated.

System Requirements:

The "Project Red" system is implemented as a scripted web page and is meant to be browsed locally.  A web browser such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Opera would be required for testing, and the total size of the game data download is currently around 600 kB when decompressed.

(The game also partly works in iPhone/iPod, though the author is aware that saving does not appear to function correctly on that platform at the moment.)

You Can Be Recruited:

If interested in being a guinea pig, please PM the author on the forum for more information, or by email at luteinhawthorne on Google Mail.

-LH

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3295&start=0#p23956
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Beta testers for "maybe make some change"
User: LuteinHawthorne / DateTime: 2011-10-10 19:09:18

I would be happy to take a look if you would like.  My email address is luteinhawthorne (at) gmail dot com, or I can be reached here on the forum.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3372&start=0#p23960
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How do you, personally, usually begin writing a game?
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-10-10 20:25:09

The way I tend to work is contrary to the conventional wisdom, which probably means I'm either unconventional or unwise (most likely both).

First, I think about the structure, in very general terms, and decide generally on what is going to happen in each major "division" (for lack of a better term) of the game.  Depending on the particular design, the "divisions" might be geographic, temporal, or based on something else.  For example, if the game is about a man and a bird, the basic divisions might be (1) boy meets gull, (2) boy loses gull, and (3) boy either gets gull back or dies when he tries to fly and learns that, unlike a gull, he has no wings.  At this stage, I make no attempt to work out the plot details for each division beyond that kind of general idea.

Next, focussing on the first division only, I map out, both in geographic and plot terms, the lay of the land on a somewhat more detailed level, identifying each location and what the important plot elements are (i.e., what happens so that boy meets gull).

At this stage, I start coding the first division.  Once I start coding, my goal is not just to get a barely workable game; rather, as I code each room, thing, NPC, etc., I attempt to implement not only the essentials, but also the "color" details (for these latter details, design tends to happen simultaneously with coding).  The idea is get the first division in reasonably complete shape.

Once that is done, I go back to the design table for the second division.  Often, I find that ideas for that have been coming to me all along as I've been working on the first division.  Once I have the second division mapped out, I'll code that (in detail), and so on.

A lot of people would probably say this approach is crazy, but it seems to work pretty well for me.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3295&start=0#p23961
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Beta testers for "maybe make some change"
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-10-10 20:26:30

Thanks for the offer! The game has actually already launched at <a class="postlink" href="http://change.textories.com">http://change.textories.com</a>, but if you see any bugs in the released version, please let me know. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=50#p23962
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-10-10 21:13:55

[quote="David Whyld"]If your game is reviewed early enough, and you're provided with transcripts to read through, there's a very good chance you can update your game to remove whatever it was about it that people disliked*.[/quote]

Exactly? 

I'm fairly surprised there's anything controversial about this, although I can appreciate that there are cash prizes and people are naturally eager to "win." But from the point of view of a non-competitor, the games getting better seems like the best possible scenario, and I'd prefer that to happen sooner (when more people will be actually playing them and authors have a motivation to do so, i.e. during the comp) than later (in a "post-comp release" that may never actually happen because you get distracted by real-life and have no more incentive to improve your game).

As an outside data point, most indie game festivals in the outside world (I know this was/is true for at least Slamdance, IndieCade, and IGF) allow you to continue updating your game throughout the judging and exhibition process. If a judge or attendee plays an earlier, suckier version of your game, that's your own problem for not getting the better version ready sooner.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3372&start=0#p23966
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How do you, personally, usually begin writing a game?
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-10-10 22:16:05

As with actual prose fiction, I start with very little planning; I feel that planning almost always kills whatever creative spark I had going in the first place. So, essentially, I try and start with some sort of hook, or gimmick (say, the protagonist has no legs or the antagonist has a severe caffeine dependency or whatever), and then slowly build a story around that premise in layers. You know, what does the main character want, etc. etc.

When it comes to setting, I inevitably end up "writing what I know", as they say. I find that West Virginia can make a backdrop for just about anything as long as you're willing to use its weirdness to your advantage.

Using this process, I end up writing like six crappy stories, and then condensing the good ideas of each into something hopefully less crappy. I'm in the process of applying this technique to my current game, and slowly but surely, it's working.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3372&start=0#p23969
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How do you, personally, usually begin writing a game?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-10 23:06:03

Well, I haven't started that many projects - one, a decade ago, that never went anywhere, and two, my current WIP.

When writing prose, I find that I have to really commit. What's finished is more a matter of what I stay interested in than what is good. So with my current project, I have promised myself to continue working on it until it is done, and not start any other projects that would suck energy away from it.

Of course I give myself free reign to jot down ideas.

When writing music (with the kind of music I make, 'writing' is sometimes the wrong word, but whatever), I go through tons of ideas, and throw most of them away. The ones I finish are the ones that won't let go of me - that happens with music in a way it doesn't with prose.

As for the process, I had a devil of a time getting started. I came up with a premise and an opening text pretty easily - it popped into my head as a result of a discussion. But then I had this situation - the protagonist has a seemingly intractable problem. To finish the story, I have to come up with a solution. So I brainstormed for a couple weeks (maybe more) using a tip from Jim Aikin about switching off the inner critic. While I was doing that, I coded up random things for the game's opening that might turn out to be interesting.

Eventually I came up with an ending I thought would be satisfying and then started thinking about what should come in the middle. I developed a couple puzzles based on the protagonists needs, and a couple based on what I thought would be fun given the environment he was in. Then I spent several months trying to implement all that. As a programmer, I took it as a point of pride that NOTHING should be impossible to implement, as long as I could completely visualize the way it should behave. I still stuck with what I thought were reasonably modest goals but...

...along the way I got sidetracked by writing extensions. I still feel like writing extensions is progress, but I think I've thrown away about 3 out of 4 extension ideas that I've started. So in that sense I guess I do have "trash" that I write and discard.

I also ended up throwing out a lot of the game's opening, which was coded before I was really sure what direction I was going. I think it was very valuable for helping me get started, though. Right now I'm in alpha testing and I'm starting to think throwing away more. We'll see how it goes...

As for details, I've tried to at least write room descriptions as I go. But there's been a lot where I've said "I need to just write SOMETHING to get past this block. I'll deal with the details later." And then I'll have detail-sweep days where I just pick up stuff that got skipped over earlier. Alpha testing has been a great motivator for this.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3380&start=0#p23980
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [Inform 7][SOLVED] I7 On the web?
User: Sho Ke / DateTime: 2011-10-11 10:30:10

Hi everyone, jr I7/Web Developer and IF enthusiast here [emote]:D[/emote]

When I first started looking into Inform 7(and text-based games alike), I came across one of Emily Short's creations, which was available for play on the web ([url]http://inform7.com/learn/eg/glass/play.html[/url]). I was intrigued at how she was able to do this, and instantly I thought about how to put my own I7 creation online.

Would putting I7 games available for play on the Web be possible without requiring the viewer to download the source code and have I7 installed? If so, how?


Thanks in advance,
-Sho Ke

--EDIT--
Thanks zarf for the answer, all good now [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3380&start=0#p23981
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Inform 7] I7 On the web?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-11 10:35:37

Look in the I7 manual, chapter 23, particularly section 11.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3381&start=0#p23982
Forum: Competitions / Subject: The Second Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competition
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2011-10-11 10:42:57

The games Andromeda Awakening, Awake the Mighty Dread, Death of Schlig, Fan Interference, The Guardian, The Myothian Falcon, Operation Extraction, The Play, Sentencing Mr Liddell, and Taco Fiction have been updated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3380&start=0#p23983
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Inform 7] I7 On the web?
User: Sho Ke / DateTime: 2011-10-11 10:51:33

[quote="zarf"]Look in the I7 manual, chapter 23, particularly section 11.[/quote]
Of course, the manual! I feel ashamed now  [emote]:oops:[/emote] 
Thanks for the help, I had only read to about chapter 6 when I decided to stop and take a crack at creating a small game with I7. I didn't even know there was a chapter titled 'Publishing'!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3382&start=0#p23986
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: What you like most in Interactive Fiction Games?
User: LearningIF / DateTime: 2011-10-11 11:16:10

Hello, i'm new to interactive fiction games, and i was wondering what do you like most on them?
I personally like the immersion in the stories [emote]:D[/emote] .

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3383&start=0#p23990
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: This is tricky... getting a double period as a literal
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2011-10-11 12:17:27

I'm implementing a command line (like DOS, or Linux) in a game, and while I have most of my commands working perfectly, one is becoming a problem:
[code]cd ..[/code]
The parser automatically strips the double period out, treating it like punctuation. getLiteral returns nil, and getOrigText only says 'cd', not 'cd ..' - which doesn't help. I tried tracing it in the actual code (input.t, actor.t), but lost it somewhere in actor.t...
While I'm quite willing to replace or modify code, I'd much rather just get my original string, and the get* variables hint that it's possible... without actually making it possible (as far as I know).

So, is there some magic bullet out there that let's me get the original text, as it was typed?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3382&start=0#p23991
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What you like most in Interactive Fiction Games?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-11 12:39:54

My kicks from IF are mainly:

* Characterization: I dig seeing characters defined clearly with very brief strokes of decision or description. Even moreso: I super-dig characters defined by their perspective. You have two characters examine the same ballpoint pen and you have two opportunities to show that they're very different people. IF is good for stuff like that.

* Environment: Call it voyeurism, but I like games where I go rooting around in other people's spaces and other people's pasts. That's a lot of IF, really, and the process goes hand-in-hand with the perspective thing. I also like the idea (and some IF lives up to this) of being able to choose how I experience an environment; choose what I focus on and how long and how much.

* Illusion of Interactivity and Tactical Infinity: I think, of all the computer-game forms, IF can (and frequently does) come closest to providing a really convincing, immersive illusion of both interactivity and tactical infinity.

* Pace: When IF is really on its game, even genuine urgency can be stretched out over time and [i]savored [/i](and still feel like genuine urgency). How cool is that?

Plus, as the old joke goes, the graphics are better.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3382&start=0#p23992
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What you like most in Interactive Fiction Games?
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-10-11 12:51:17

As a caveman who cut my teeth in the pre-Infocom paleolithic age and grew up on Infocom, I still enjoy exploring an interesting world that the author has created and solving puzzles.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3383&start=0#p23993
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: This is tricky... getting a double period as a literal
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2011-10-11 13:09:53

One way to deal with this is to use a StringPreParser to wrap whatever follows a command beginning with CD in double qoutes, so it's all treated as one string literal and not parsed any further:

[code]
StringPreParser
    doParsing(str, which)
    {              
        if(str.startsWith('cd '))
        {
            str = str.substr(1 ,3) + '"' + str.substr(4) + '"';
        }
        return str;            
    }    
;
[/code]

I tested this with the following very basic code for a CD command, and it seemed to work:

[code]
DefineLiteralAction(CD)
    execAction()
    {
        say(gLiteral);
    }
;

VerbRule(CD)
    'cd' singleLiteral
    : CDAction
;
[/code]

-- Eric

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3383&start=0#p23996
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: This is tricky... getting a double period as a literal
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2011-10-11 14:00:11

Aha! Nice! I was about halfway there, but I couldn't quite figure out what to modify... thanks!
I must say, going from TADS 2 to TADS 3... there's a lot more nice stuff, but trying to hack in your own weird ideas gets a bit harder. Heh.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3059&start=10#p24002
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: ADRIFT 5.0.21
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-10-11 17:44:18

ADRIFT v5.0.21 is now [url=http://www.adrift.co/cgi/adrift.cgi?page=download]available[/url]. This brings the Windows and Linux versions into line with WebRunner which was already on that version.

This release fixes a few compatibility issues with v4, amongst other [url=http://www.adrift.org.uk/cgi/new/releasenotes.cgi?version=5.0.21]things[/url]. It also implements map navigation, so you can route to anywhere previously visited in the game.

Please let me know if there are any problems.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3353&start=0#p24003
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Annual Lime/Coconut IF MiniComp!
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2011-10-11 18:05:32

As a TADS 3 programmer, I am willing to do this! Expect my entry sometime... or... another... but yes! I'll enter this!

Question: do you allow custom verbs?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3384&start=0#p24004
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Beyond Zork Random Room Connections
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2011-10-11 20:31:02

So I want to have a game where certain regions have random room connections (such as in beyond zork). A given region (let's say the desert) would have 10 differently named rooms, and the first room would connect to one region, and the last room would connect out to another region, but inside the region would have random connections. 

How do I do this with the following criteria:

1) the room exits change on each playthrough (you don't always just keep going west to get to the ending)
2) the rooms may have more than one exit, but not necessarily (meaning sometimes you can go in a whole circle, sometimes you don't)
3) The last room's exit to the new region must always be the same direction, like the first room's exit to the old region must always be the same direction, though those two rooms need not be the same rooms each time.

Basically the same way that beyond zork does it.

Ideally, the actual randomization will happen when first entering the region (so if you restore your game to before you entered the region the region would be re-randomized).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3384&start=0#p24007
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beyond Zork Random Room Connections
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-11 21:22:37

I've been wanting to play with BZ-style randomized zones as well; I banged my head against it for a few weeks once but never got anywhere :/ (The Recipe Book has that honeycomb example which is quite nice, but it's a very different thing, alas)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3382&start=0#p24010
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What you like most in Interactive Fiction Games?
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-10-11 22:41:55

I'm a big fan of IF worlds that employ "simulationist" elements, whether it's magic, liquids, fire, whatever. I get these goofy pavlovian jollies from finding that, yes, I can pour half a gallon of water onto the floor, or yes, casting frotz on something will always make it shiny and glowy. In general, IF that actually lets me do something stupid as opposed to just offering a snarky response always gets a good response from me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3384&start=0#p24011
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beyond Zork Random Room Connections
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-10-11 22:44:09

Do you guys think this might help at all?

Sorry if I can't respond and this is a bit rushed, but I was curious myself, and this might be a good start.

Obviously not all the rooms are randomized, but I bet the program could be tweaked e.g. have a bunch of second-rooms room 2 in the table, then have a random row with room 2's 2nd location turned to room 3, and so forth. That might be in another table...

...or you might be able to define a region and define each room as "sorted" or "unsorted" and say each region has a boss room. Each second-room entry of the table is a boss room--one that, say, leads to another region.

Then running through the regions, for each row with a second-room of boss room, let its second-room be a random unsorted room in region X. Now the second-room is sorted.

Hope this makes some sort of sense.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3354&start=0#p24022
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Inform 6] Names of Class Objects
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-10-12 00:03:52

Works like a charm, thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3311&start=0#p24029
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Six
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-10-12 00:39:37

PS - If anyone experiences a startup-ish failure of Gargoyle running under OS X Lion for any games (have not experienced this myself but I saw it reported) there is a temporary fix build of Gargoyle available that should get around the problem:

Direct link to the file:   <a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2759298/gargoyle-2011.1-mac_r557.dmg">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2759298/gargoyl ... c_r557.dmg</a>

A link to the development page explaining the issue:   <a class="postlink" href="http://code.google.com/p/garglk/issues/detail?id=162">http://code.google.com/p/garglk/issues/detail?id=162</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2519&start=20#p24033
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: IF and Linux
User: tunc-page / DateTime: 2011-10-12 05:11:16

[quote="drayakir"][quote]Unpacking inform (from .../inform_6.31.1+dfsg-1_i386.deb) ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
Setting up inform (6.31.1+dfsg-1) ...
update-alternatives: error: alternative path /usr/bin/inform-6.31 doesn't exist.
dpkg: error processing inform (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 2
configured to not write apport reports
                                      Errors were encountered while processing:
 inform
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
A package failed to install.  Trying to recover:
Setting up inform (6.31.1+dfsg-1) ...
update-alternatives: error: alternative path /usr/bin/inform-6.31 doesn't exist.
dpkg: error processing inform (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 2
Errors were encountered while processing:
 inform[/quote]

That's what happens when I try to install the package provided by Synaptic Package Manager. BTW, I'm using Debian.[/quote]
The update-alternatives error can be handled with
[code]# ln -s /usr/bin/inform /usr/bin/inform-6.31[/code]
and running [code]# apt-get install[/code] or [code]# aptitude install[/code] (according to which is your preference) afterwards.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3387&start=0#p24034
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Game Announcement: Plan DSDS From Practice Space
User: stadtgorilla / DateTime: 2011-10-12 06:47:00

Hi everybody,

maybe some of you might remember, we did a nice IF event this May in Munich, Germany. For that occasion, a little game was programmed (which actually takes place at the event, at least partially), which we now have finally released to the public. This is by no means a very good game, puzzlewise or technically, it is our first game ever, it has lots of completely stupid stuff in it, but we wanted to put it out more or less the way it is, in a documentary manner. The worst bugs have been eliminated, it's very much playable, and people seem to actually enjoy playing it. 

The game is written in English and we have set up a little page for it at

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.volxvergnuegen.org/textadventure/index.html">http://www.volxvergnuegen.org/textadventure/index.html</a>

The game is playable online and can be downloaded along with a couple of feelies.

And now the crazy part: We have actually made 42 real packages of the game, containing a dvd with the game file and interpreters, photos, movies and audio files from the event and a couple of other nice goodies. More info at the website mentioned above.

Cheers!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3388&start=0#p24042
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: IF and licenses (GPL vs FAL vs ???)
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-10-12 08:59:00

I've been scouring these forums for a while, and I'm wondering about free licenses.
I'd like to release my WIP under a free license, but I'm not entirely familiar with the legality of that.

If I release my WIP under the GPL ([url=http://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html]GNU General Public License[/url]), I would be obligated to release the source to it, and I'm fine with that. But would I also need to release the source to the following?[list][*]The interpreter (quixe and glulx)[/*:m][*]The website hosting it[/*:m][*]All extensions associated with it[/*:m][/list:u]

Or what about the FAL ([url=http://artlibre.org/licence/lal/en]Free Art License[/url])? This covers works of art and their distribution.

As I read the summaries of these licenses, I'm leaning more toward the FAL. My primary question is this:

[size=150]Are works of interactive fiction primarily computer programs or art?[/size]
If they're computer programs, I'd release it under the GPL. If they're art, I'd release it under the FAL.

Does anyone have any experience/insight into this?
Should I just skip this whole ordeal?
Does it even matter?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3384&start=0#p24043
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beyond Zork Random Room Connections
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-10-12 09:02:02

I had something similar that worked, but I don't remember what I did - it became an abandoned idea.  I'll dig through my files and see if I can find it - it was quite a while ago.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3388&start=0#p24046
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF and licenses (GPL vs FAL vs ???)
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-12 10:04:23

There are some GPL IF games, and the authors traditionally just post the source code plus links to the interpreter distributions. To be complete, it's best to also post the source of all extensions that are included in the game. (Both for GPL reasons, and to make it easy for somebody to build your game with the same version of everything that you used.)

An IF game is not linked to the interpreter in the sense the GPL talks about; the interpreter is a program that loads the IF game file as data.

Your web site is available as source code no matter what you do. :)

Licensing: Frotz and Parchment are GPL. Quixe and Glulxe are under my IF short-and-simple license, basically BSD. I7 extensions (those hosted on the I7 site) are licensed Creative Commons - Attribution.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3388&start=0#p24047
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF and licenses (GPL vs FAL vs ???)
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-12 10:06:23

As for the programs-or-art question, I can only say "both". But I haven't gone over FAL to compare it in detail to the GPL.

Footnote: I am not a lawyer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3384&start=0#p24048
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beyond Zork Random Room Connections
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-12 10:13:55

As I recall, BZ obeyed a grid constraint for its randomized sections. This makes things easier.

I'd do it roughly like this:

[code]
have a 5x5 array, empty;
put a room in the middle;
repeat until five rooms exist:
    pick a random room X;
    pick a random direction D (n/s/e/w/ne/se/nw/sw);
    look at the location Y which is D from X;
    if it's outside the grid, restart loop;
    if Y is occupied by a room, add an exit from X to Y (if there isn't one) and restart the loop;
    otherwise add a room at Y, add an exit;
add an exterior exit east from the easternmost room (or a random one);
add an exterior exit west from the westernmost room (or a random one).
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3388&start=0#p24049
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF and licenses (GPL vs FAL vs ???)
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-10-12 10:39:58

[quote="zarf"]Footnote: I am not a lawyer.[/quote]I'd love to see an IF story written by a lawyer [emote]:)[/emote]

Thanks for the summary of the various licenses of the interpreters, that makes it easy to decide if I even [b]can[/b] release it under GPL.
I might as well release it under both licenses (that's possible, right?) since you're right - they're both software [i]and[/i] art at the same time. (although some stories are more art and some are more software, but that's a debate for another day)

Thanks, Mr. Plotkin.
Does anyone else have any thoughts on this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3388&start=0#p24050
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF and licenses (GPL vs FAL vs ???)
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-12 10:44:46

I concur with Andrew. Most of my games (all of them?) have been released under the GPL, and I have generally just released the source code to the game. Adding the extensions of others might be a nice courtesy, but you would have to make it [b]very clear[/b] that they are not licensed under the GPL. (Most are licensed under a less restrictive Creative Commons license, and you are not allowed to relicense them.)

Anyway, you, as the copyright holder, are obligated to do almost nothing. You cannot violate your own rights, nor do you give up your rights when you release a game under the GPL. For instance, you could release a non-free version later. You can stop hosting the files. You can refuse people asking you for the source code. (I don't know why you would want to, but you [i]can[/i].)

The license of the interpreter is perfectly irrelevant. You can write free software for Windows, even though Windows is not free. In the same vein, you can write free software for virtual machine X even though all the software implementations of X are non-free.

A work of IF is definitely a computer program, and for that reason it is desirable to choose a software license. Only software licenses make the distinction between the compiled work and the source code, which is necessary if you want to make it clear what people are and are not allowed to do with your software.

And by the way -- I'm not a lawyer either. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3389&start=0#p24051
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Hallow Eve 2.0
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-10-12 11:15:21

Looking for a couple more testers that will have a couple of hours or so to put into trying the game between this Saturday night (the 15th) and Sunday the 22nd.

More on this here:

[url]http://jizaboz.blogspot.com/2011/10/hallow-eve-20-almost-ready-for-testing.html[/url]

Reply this or email to jizaboz (at) hotmail.com to be a tester.  [emote]:)[/emote]

10/15/11 EDIT: Tester request closed. Files should be sent to the 3 testers tonight.  [emote]8-)[/emote]

10/16/11 EDIT: Actually make that 4 testers. Also, sending this out a little later today.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3388&start=0#p24053
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF and licenses (GPL vs FAL vs ???)
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-10-12 11:36:36

[quote]I'd love to see an IF story written by a lawyer 
[/quote]

I expect to release one pretty soon.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3384&start=0#p24058
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beyond Zork Random Room Connections
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-12 12:13:44

I had so much fun with this problem that I think I've worked out a complete solution:

[code]Shore is a room.

Oasis is a room.

The player carries a first marker, a second marker, and a third marker.

A maze is a kind of room.

A maze-region is a kind of region. A maze-region has a text called the room description. A maze-region has room called the entrance. A maze-region has a room called the exit. A maze-region has a direction called the way in. A maze-region has a number called the connectivity. The connectivity of a maze-region is usually 3.

The Desert is a maze-region. There are ten mazes in the desert. The entrance of the desert is Shore. The exit of the desert is Oasis. The way in of the desert is west. The room description of the desert is "You are in a desert. Dunes allow passage to [the list of viable directions]."

When play begins:
	Repeat with area running through maze-regions:
		Repeat with place running through mazes in area:
			Now the description of place is the room description of area;
			Now the printed name of place is the printed name of area;
	
Definition: A direction is horizontal if it is not up and it is not down and it is not inside and it is not outside.

Definition: a room (called place) is connected rather than unconnected:
	Repeat with way running through directions:
		If the room way from place is a room, yes;
	no.
	
Connection availability relates a direction (called way) to a room (called origin) when the room way from origin is nothing. The verb to be unused from implies the connection availability relation.

Definition: a direction (called way) is viable if it is not unused from the location.

Maze entry relates a room (called origin) to a maze-region (called area) when origin is the entrance of area. The verb to be the starting point of implies the maze entry relation

Before going nowhere from a room that is the starting point of a maze-region (called area):
	if the noun is not the way in of area, continue the action;
	Let last-step be a random unconnected maze in area;
	Link last-step symmetrically to the exit of area via the way in of area;
	Let origin be the entrance of area;
	Let way be the way in of area;
	While there is an unconnected maze (called destination) in area:
		Link origin symmetrically to destination via way;
		Now way is a random connection from origin to destination;
		Now origin is destination;
	Link origin symmetrically to last-step via a random connection from origin to last-step;
	[This makes a single path from the entrance to the exit. It may be twisty, but it's not really a maze.
	But you can use a the same phrases to add additional random connections, e.g.:]
	Repeat with N running from 1 to the connectivity of area:
		Now origin is a random maze in area;
		Now destination is a random maze in area;
		Let way be a random connection from origin to destination;
		If way is a direction, link origin symmetrically to destination via way.
		
To decide which object is a random connection from (origin - a room) to (destination - a room):
	Let choices be 0;
	Repeat with way running through horizontal directions that are unused from origin:
		If the opposite of way is unused from destination, increment choices;
	Let N be a random number from 1 to choices;
	Repeat with way running through horizontal directions that are unused from origin:
		if the opposite of way is unused from destination, decrement N;
		if N is 0, decide on way;
	[We should never get here during the creation of the "correct path."]
	decide on nothing;
	
To link (origin - a room) symmetrically to (destination - a room) via (way - a direction):
	link origin one way to destination via way;
	link destination one way to origin via the opposite of way;
				
To link (origin - a room) one way to (destination - a room) via (way - a direction):
	If way is:
		-- north: now destination is mapped north of origin;
		-- northwest: now destination is mapped northwest of origin;
		-- west: now destination is mapped west of origin;
		-- southwest: now destination is mapped southwest of origin;
		-- south: now destination is mapped south of origin;
		-- southeast: now destination is mapped southeast of origin;
		-- east: now destination is mapped east of origin;
		-- northeast: now destination is mapped northeast of origin;
		-- down: now destination is mapped below origin;
		-- up: now destination is mapped above origin;
		-- inside: now destination is mapped inside origin;
		-- outside: now destination is mapped outside origin;
		
test me with "w"
[/code]

You can see there are a couple of ugly hacks:

1. It seems that it's not possible to use a variable in the "now X is mapped Y of Z" phrase. [rant]In addition, I couldn't come up with [i]any[/i] legal way to say "Now X is mapped inside/outside of Z." [b]edit: Thanks for the answer, Felix.[/b][/rant]

2. I couldn't come up with a legal phrase meaning "a random horizontal direction that is unused from A and is the opposite of a horizontal direction that is unused from B." Which is why I wrote the crazy loop over N instead.

My knowledge of graph theory is sketchy, but I think my algorithm is sound and covers all cases. Of course I spent so long on this that Zarf came up with a much simpler solution. Using real geometry seems like a smart way to solve the problem.

One question: does the random number seed get saved as well when you save the game? If so, then last-minute calculations may be pointless.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3384&start=0#p24060
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beyond Zork Random Room Connections
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-12 12:30:52

[quote="capmikee"]I couldn't come up with any legal way to say "Now X is mapped inside/outside of Z."
[/quote]
The required syntax, I believe, is [code]now X is mapped outside Z[/code] without the "of"—similarly for all the non-compass compass directions: above, below, inside, and outside.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3380&start=0#p24063
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Inform 7] I7 On the web?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-12 12:58:16

Don't be ashamed! The manual is notoriously hard to find things in.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3384&start=0#p24064
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beyond Zork Random Room Connections
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-12 13:02:36

[quote]One question: does the random number seed get saved as well when you save the game?[/quote]

No.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3384&start=0#p24068
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: saving the random seed
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-12 13:39:07

[quote="zarf"][quote]One question: does the random number seed get saved as well when you save the game?[/quote]

No.[/quote]

Is there a way to fake this? For instance, is there a way to find out what the seed is, write it to an external file associated with the saved game, and then read it back after restoring and seed the random-number generator with it (as per WI 8.18)?

EDIT: In this case we don't want to save the seed; I'm just asking in case you want to save the random seed for some reason -- like [url=http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2010/09/column_play_the_implementation_specifics_of_mayflight.php#more]using the seed to re-generate something the same way each time, without needing to store the stuff in memory[/url]. (Which I think zarf has done in one of his games, unless I misunderstood what he was saying about it.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3311&start=0#p24072
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Six
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-10-12 14:35:14

I'm planning to do a real release of Gargoyle soon. I'm just waiting on the latest Alan 3 source code to become available.

(That Dropbox link goes to my account, in case anyone is concerned.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3106&start=20#p24073
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Referring to the player in the third person
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2011-10-12 15:00:43

This is actually something I've considered quite a bit; I think that perspective can make or break a game. For example, if there is a creepy noise:
[code]I hear a sound - I'm starting to get a bit creeped out!
You hear a sound - you're starting to get a bit creeped out!
Jill hears a sound - she's starting to get a bit creeped out![/code]
The first is the PC telling the player about something, and sounds a bit scared; the second, the game is 'forcing' something on the player (the feeling of being creeped out), which can get a bit annoying if done poorly; and the third is more a simple status - we may not care about Jill at all.

However, the vast majority of games stick with one of those three, usually the first and second, because usually, they are trying to be invisible. But what about other responses? Instead of treating the player as a puppet master, actually involve them in the game; make the characters know that they are being given directions, say, as if player is typing responses through something like text messaging:
[code]Susie: Ok, I opened the door.
Susie: There's a weird man there!
You:x man
Susie: He's just standing there. Hold on, I'll tell him to leave. He's really creepy...
You:close door
You:close door
You:x man
You:look
MESSAGE SEND FAILED[/code]
Or, for even more creepiness... have the character refuse to respond:
[code]
>get lamp
Straining, Fred finally tears himself away from your control! He stares up at the corner of the room, as if he's looking right at you.
>get lamp
Fred doesn't belong to you any more, player.
Fred exits the room to the north.
>north
Who are you talking to? There is no one here to obey you any more.
>look
The room is empty, player. Go torment someone else.
[/code]

You get even creepier than that, too; it's not too hard to set up a section that looks like a command prompt, but that isn't; when the player starts typing (say, "open door"), it instead types out "kill man", or something equally as horrific. That's a concept I'd really like to see - forcing the player into situations outside of just participation, taking them from "That character just killed someone!" to "[b][i]I[/i][/b] just killed someone!"

Obviously, it could go the other way, too; in a more comedic game, the player could get fed up with the player and solve a puzzle on their own, or start daydreaming after too many 'wait' commands and miss what the player says next - or even the parser itself could interfere:
[code]>get vase
Fred picks up the vase, spliling some dirt on the conter as he does so.
>x vase
Wait, sorry, that was terrible. Let me try that again.
Fred actually [i]spilled[/i] some dirt on the conter.
>x vase
Oh man, I'm an idiot - it was a [i]counter[/i]! Just be glad I didn't misspell it without other letters!
>north
Oh right! Sorry! Um, the vase is really pretty and - no? sorry, I'm a terrible parser, BAD PARSER, BAD PARSER!
Fred walks north in disgust AT ME! BECAUSE I'M A BAD PARSER!
etc.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3384&start=0#p24074
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: saving the random seed
User: djfletch / DateTime: 2011-10-12 16:38:27

[quote="matt w"]
Is there a way to fake this? For instance, is there a way to find out what the seed is, write it to an external file associated with the saved game, and then read it back after restoring and seed the random-number generator with it (as per WI 8.18)?
[/quote]
Glulx doesn't let you get the current seed, but it does let you set one.  So you could take the first random value, save that, and then set it as the seed. It's probably dubious in theory to reseed a random-number generator with its own output, but since we aren't doing cryptography it's unlikely to matter.

This would only let you recreate the same sequence of numbers as long as the same interpreter was used, because the spec doesn't define a particular algorithm.  To do it reliably across interpreters you'd want to ignore the inbuilt RNG and use your own.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3391&start=0#p24075
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I7] Understanding a property as one of its properties
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-12 16:59:51

This is probably self-explanatory:
[code]The materials are defined by the Table of Materials.

Table of Materials
material		material-adjective		destroying heat		heat-behaviour		corrosion resistance
iron			"iron"				10					melter				995
wood			"wooden"				3					burner				970
adamant		"adamantine"			999					melter				1000

Understand the material property as describing a thing.
Understand the material-adjective property as describing a material.[/code]
I want the player to be able to refer to things made of wood by typing "wooden", and so on, but Inform doesn't allow the final line of code. Of course, I can just write a series of understand phrases. (Understand "wooden" as wood.) No problem, except that it would be somewhat ugly, because I am now defining the adjective twice. So mostly out of curiosity and perfectionism: is there a way to use my table for understanding?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3106&start=20#p24077
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Referring to the player in the third person
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-10-12 17:39:10

[quote]You get even creepier than that, too; it's not too hard to set up a section that looks like a command prompt, but that isn't; when the player starts typing (say, "open door"), it instead types out "kill man", or something equally as horrific. That's a concept I'd really like to see - forcing the player into situations outside of just participation, taking them from "That character just killed someone!" to "I just killed someone!"
[/quote]

One can certainly imagine "Dr. Jekyll" type scenarios, where, upon the occurrence of some trigger (or even at random) the PC goes back and forth between being controlled by the player and behaving on its own.  Perhaps one could write a game where the whole idea is to figure out how to maintain control of the PC -- where the out-of-control episodes become more and more frequent and eventually become permanent (if you haven't figured out how to prevent it by that time).

I've used a very rudimentry take on this, where the player finds a bottle of booze; if he drinks it, he gets drunk and for a certain number of turns he just wanders around randomly, ignoring what the player types.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3384&start=10#p24078
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beyond Zork Random Room Connections
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-12 17:39:21

djfletch is correct.

What I was doing in the game you're thinking of (Hunter in Darkness) was using an algorithm to repeatably generate text from a seed value. But it wasn't an randomly-generated seed value; it was fixed. The whole point of that code was to *not* use the VM's random number generator at all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3353&start=0#p24079
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Annual Lime/Coconut IF MiniComp!
User: SOdhner / DateTime: 2011-10-12 18:45:50

[quote="ArmanX"]Question: do you allow custom verbs?[/quote]

I think custom verbs should be fine.  Either they'll be common ones and multiple uses of them will mesh together without too much fuss, or they'll be odd ones and won't have an occasion to clash between rooms.  I don't think the middle case of them being common but implemented in a problematic way will come up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3106&start=20#p24080
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Referring to the player in the third person
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-12 19:03:00

There's precedent for both PC as someone you're talking to through some communication line (Jon Ingold's Fail-Safe) and a PC that you don't control all the time and must manipulate (a 2010 IntroComp game, though I don't want to say which for spoilery reasons).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=0#p24081
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-10-12 19:53:35

Ectocomp 2011 has its first entry: [i]Bloodless on the Orient Express[/i], by Hannes Schueller!

This game has the distinction of being the first non-ADRIFT game to be accepted for any Ectocomp.  Huzzah!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3392&start=0#p24082
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Get the thing another thing is part of
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-10-12 19:58:28

I'm new to inform and this problem is driving me nuts.

I have something (let's say a drawer) that is part of something else (let's say a desk). What I want to be able to do in a function is for a given drawer, get the desk (a kind) it is part of. This seems like it should be trivial, but maybe there's some subtlety to the incorporation relationship that I don't get. For example:

if the drawer is part of a desk

This works (where "the drawer" is a value and "a desk" is a kind).

However, Inform chokes on:

Let p be the desk that incorporates the drawer
Let p be the desk that the drawer is part of
Let p be the desk to which the drawer relates to by incorporation

And any number of other combinations I've tried. Inform complains that "I was expecting to read a value", but this seems to be the syntax suggested in section 13.13. of the manual. Any ideas? What am I missing here?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3392&start=0#p24083
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Get the thing another thing is part of
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-10-12 20:12:09

Not sure whether this will work, but have you tried "a random thing which incorporates the drawer"?  If the only thing that the drawer is part of is the desk, then this might do it, since it will (I think) start by essentially generating the list of things that incorporate the drawer, and then choosing something from that list at random; since there is only one such thing, it automatically gets picked.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3393&start=0#p24084
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Item detail
User: ibonny / DateTime: 2011-10-12 20:23:24

Good evening,

I've been bashing my head against the wall about this problem for a while. I'm writing my first Inform 7 code, and I'm stuck giving even the slightest detail to an item beyond its regular description. For example (please excuse any semantic errors, I've generalized for the sake of simplicity):

There is a ball here. "This is a bouncy, red ball." The description is "This ball can bounce really high! It has a white stripe running around its circumference."

Now, the player might type: [i]look at white stripe[/i] which would then turn up an error, such as: "You see no such thing."

I've tried adding "There is a white stripe on the ball", which works, but turns the ball into a supporter, and doesn't work for animals, or other types of things which can't be converted to "containers" or "supporters". How do I add detail to my items simply? I've also attempted to overload the "Instead of looking at [the noun]:" instruction to attempt to capture the word I want, and it doesn't work if the [the noun] isn't defined.

Thanks,

Ian

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3392&start=0#p24085
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Get the thing another thing is part of
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-10-12 20:23:41

Thanks Robert. That does seem to work. Although I'm still at a loss as to why the other things I tried didn't work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3393&start=0#p24086
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item detail
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-10-12 20:25:09

Have you tried "the white stripe is part of the ball"? 
The incorporation relationship should work for (I think) all things.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3393&start=0#p24087
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item detail
User: ibonny / DateTime: 2011-10-12 20:26:25

As an addendum, I've also attempted to add scenery to the room to compensate for the lack of item descriptions, and this works, but they aren't portable with the object. So, if the object moves, its a heck of a lot of work to move the scenery with it. (Just letting everyone know what I've tried already.)

Ian

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3393&start=0#p24088
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item detail
User: ibonny / DateTime: 2011-10-12 20:30:44

wjousts:

That works for items that become "containers" as I've mentioned before, which preclude animals, as an example, and probably other items that aren't containers. Its weird. The compiler accepts the syntax, such as:

[code]
There is a female cat here. "It is a pretty cat."

The collar is part of the cat. It has a description "The collar is bright and white."
[/code]

This works, but then when you do a [i]SHOWME cat[/i], the item isn't on the cat. The whole item compiles, but the "part" doesn't show up in the cat's inventory.

Ian

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3393&start=0#p24091
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item detail
User: ibonny / DateTime: 2011-10-12 20:36:33

Another addendum:

I attempted to have the cat "wear" a tag or a collar, and the item never appears on the cat. (Of course, I have to name a specific instance of the cat, since you can't put items on a "kind" of cat.) This is in attempt to get around the "living" nature of the cat.

Ian

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=0#p24092
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-10-12 20:43:26

I noticed the wiki page mentioned EctoComp is for ADRIFT games only. Has that restriction been removed? Or is there a higher bar for non-ADRIFT games?

It'd be cool to learn ADRIFT one day but I don't think I can pull it off in three weeks.

Edit: yay! I might have an idea, then.

/prepares for some speed typin'

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3393&start=0#p24093
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item detail
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-12 20:47:49

You could try this:

[code]Understand "white" and "stripe" as the ball.[/code]

Then if the player tries "x white stripe" they'll just get the description of the ball again, which is probably what you want to happen (unless they have to do something specific with the white stripe).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=0#p24094
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-10-12 20:52:54

This year it's open platform.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3393&start=0#p24095
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item detail
User: ibonny / DateTime: 2011-10-12 21:11:08

I finally found the problem. It appeared that I defined a cat as a kind of animal, which turned "the cat" into a kind as well. What I really needed to do is instantiate the cat as an animal with "The cat is an animal in....", and then it had all the properties of that kind, including the ability to "wear" a collar. Once that was allowed, the item showed up with:

[code]
The cat is wearing a collar. The description of the collar is "A collar that shines in the light."
[/code]

and "showme cat" gives:

cat - animal
    collar (worn)

Thanks everyone,

Ian

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3394&start=0#p24098
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Using "room description control" extension by Emily Short
User: Bristo / DateTime: 2011-10-12 22:24:36

Does anyone use this extension? I'm not sure how to use it aside from "Including" it. How do I actually take advantage of its features?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3106&start=20#p24099
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Referring to the player in the third person
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-12 22:43:50

[quote="Robert Rothman"]I've used a very rudimentry take on this, where the player finds a bottle of booze; if he drinks it, he gets drunk and for a certain number of turns he just wanders around randomly, ignoring what the player types.
[/quote]
I've been fascinated by the idea of an intoxicated PC for quite a while. My WIP contains a variation on this, but I hope to take it further in future works. I think there's a fine line between making the situation funny/scary/mind-bending and simply putting the player off. Even though I thought my schtick was pretty mild and easy to comprehend, I got a lot of negative feedback from testers. I haven't figured out how to create the effect of a really blitzed-out PC in an effective way, but I'll keep thinking about it.

I found "Blue Chairs" to be largely disappointing, but I appreciated that it dealt with this theme.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3392&start=0#p24100
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Get the thing another thing is part of
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-12 22:58:10

There are a couple of ways to approach this. Robert's suggestion is one.

Another way: when you specify an object via an "if" statement, you can always name it. So this works:

[code]
	if the noun is part of a desk (called D):
		say "[The noun] is part of [a D].";
[/code]

What you can't do is expect the compiler to presume that there must be exactly one such desk. Even if the incorporation relation were one-to-one (which it isn't), Inform isn't good at picking exactly one described item. You have to tell it to pick a random one, either explicitly or with this sort of "if" clause.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3311&start=0#p24101
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Six
User: AnssiR / DateTime: 2011-10-12 23:44:58

I've informed the ALAN developer Thomas Nilsson of your intent to release a new version of Gargoyle soon.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3391&start=0#p24102
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Understanding a property as one of its properties
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-12 23:48:40

What happens when you remove the quotes so they're no longer text strings, but another KOV instead?  (It'll require another "Some... are defined by..." line.)  Or if that doesn't work since "defined by" requires the first column, a 2nd table with the 2nd KOV in the first column, in the same order as the first table.

Also, can you understand "[the material-adjective corresponding to...]" as a thing? I cannot remember.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3394&start=0#p24103
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using "room description control" extension by Emily Shor
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-12 23:51:59

All extensions come with documentation explaining how to use them. It's found from the HELP menu.  Is this extension missing its documentation?  Or is it not compiling for you?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3394&start=0#p24106
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using "room description control" extension by Emily Shor
User: Bristo / DateTime: 2011-10-13 00:25:27

I have the documentation that comes with the extension, there just aren't examples of how each different feature can be included. Or if there are, they certainly aren't clear.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3311&start=0#p24107
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Six
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-10-13 00:52:16

Oh, he knows. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3394&start=0#p24108
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using "room description control" extension by Emily Shor
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-10-13 00:52:18

Room Description Control provides a framework to be used either with the extension Tailored Room Description or with activities defined by the author. (It's a bit technical, but essentially what Room Description Control  does is take over from the default Inform library the job of making a list of objects that need to be described; removing from that list anything you want to have concealed; and then ordering the list according to priorities you've set. But all that doesn't [i]print[/i] anything to screen unless you've written some "writing a paragraph about..." activities to tell it what it should say about each object on its list.)

If you use them together, TRD has examples of what it can do and how; if you want to write your own activities, TRD may serve as a good example for how. (That said, writing your own suite equivalent to Tailored Room Description is likely to be challenging if you're relatively new to Inform. I'm not sure what your experience level is, but I wouldn't recommend that to everyone just starting out.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=0#p24109
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-10-13 02:29:34

[quote="aschultz"]It'd be cool to learn ADRIFT one day but I don't think I can pull it off in three weeks.[/quote]I bet you could...  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3106&start=20#p24114
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Referring to the player in the third person
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-10-13 05:06:30

Yup! In my very first text adventure, a homebrew game I made in the mid 80's, player character could get drunk and would reject any player command save moving around, which he would do quite awkardly. The only feedback player would receive of the situation was a dull message of  the "You're so drunk you hardly can do anything at all" kind. It worked nicely, as that was the level of implementation players expected in something created in BASIC for an 8-bit computer.

In my latest Beta thing, after a scene in which PC witness a rather terryfying vision, he gets so shocked he'll refuse to do anything for a brief amount of turns, and then player will gradiently get control back. Beta-testing has proved it to be rather confusing if not properly paced (but that was entirely my own fault!  [emote]:)[/emote]  )

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3392&start=0#p24115
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Get the thing another thing is part of
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-10-13 05:06:32

Ahh....thanks zarf. That makes sense.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3396&start=0#p24116
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: What not to wear
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-10-13 05:27:57

I've been playing around with this example from the manual and I've come to the conclusion that (while the example works) it sucks.

Aside from only working for the player (which was a relatively easy fix). The bigger problem is that I had it working great with only two people (including the player) in the game, but once I thought I'd create the rest of the cast (before I forget who they are!) then a simple wear shirt ends up taking several seconds to complete.

Has anybody else encountered this and have an elegant work around? I believe the problem comes from the when play begins part where every shirt is defined as covering every torso, etc and where every person is defined as having one torso. The number of relationships that inform has to manage increases exponentially as you add more garments and more people.

I've been mulling one approach:

I was thinking I should define a value type, let's call it body-area and maybe it has values head, upper-body, lower-body and feet. Then each body-part will have a body-area property which defines which area it is part of (so head is head, torso is upper body, legs are lower body, etc). Now every garment  will also have a body-area, so a hat has a body-area of head, a shirt is upper-body, pants are lower-body (first problem, how to handle long garments that cover multiple areas, like a dress - if I was writing C I might make body-area a bit field, but I don't think inform has anything like that). Now, instead of defining every shirt as overlying every torso, etc, only when a attempt is made to wear a garment will we look for the body-part of the person doing the action that the garment will cover and then check to see if any other garment is already worn by the person on that body-part (by matching body-area values). Now to handle layers, I can give every garment a layering depth value (a number) and when wearing, if another garment is worn on a particular body part then I can check to see if it's layering depth is more or less than the garment I'm trying to wear. If it's less, we wear it and set the noun as overlaying the previously worn item. If it isn't then we start remove items until we get to a point where we can wear the new item.

I don't know. It seems like the complexity has increased rapidly and I'm wondering if it's worth the effort. Another approach might be to try and radically trim the number of relationships. One idea was to add an owning relationship which basically states that this shirt belongs to bob (regardless of whether he is wearing or holding it) and then when play begins use a loop to run through all garments and set them as only overlying garments that are owned by the same person. Then I'd have to stop the player from wearing other people's clothes (which, let's face it, probably don't fit anyway). But that seems like it would restrict some puzzles I might think about. I guess I could make exceptions for a limited number of garments.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3397&start=0#p24117
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Just another English language question!
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-10-13 06:02:01

Just another English language question!

So we have these three teens knocking on the door of an old mansion. Then the door opens, the butler appears and receives them with a:

"Good evening, young sirs, what can I do for you?"

Sounds right? I'm doubtful of the "sirs" bit. Googling through language forums I've spotted some comments suggesting that it was quite old fashioned (which will incidentally fit the mood, anyway!)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3397&start=0#p24118
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Just another English language question!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-13 06:22:17

It sounds appropriate to me when said by an old-fashioned butler. At least if you're not trying to be too serious and accurate -- I saw something where the author has a character say "Young sirs" and then comments that he had learned all his English mannerisms from P.G. Wodehouse, and of course that's where I learned mine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3397&start=0#p24119
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Just another English language question!
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-10-13 06:32:30

I agree with both of you: it sounds old-fashioned, and it also seems appropriate for a butler in a mansion.

Of course, that's based on the perception (based mostly, I imagine, on movies and books) that I have of how a butler in a mansion would be expected to talk.  I don't think I've actually ever been in a mansion that has a butler.  If anybody here is to the manor born (or, alternatively, works or worked below stairs) they might have a better sense of the reality.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3398&start=0#p24121
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: vocabulary level
User: Steph the rat / DateTime: 2011-10-13 07:37:41

I wondered what is the vocabulary level of most authors ? Most interective fiction was designed for readership from what age?

Are their any games designed for kids? I want to introduce it to my 11 years old cousin.

By the way, I have a really off topic question, do anyone one have any tips or advice for preparing for PSAT, i'm taking it on this Saturday and now i'm getting a little nervous...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3398&start=0#p24122
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: vocabulary level
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-10-13 07:54:14

I think there have been some threads on this forum about kid-friendly IF (within the last month or two), so you may want to do a search.  It also wouldn't surprise me at all if somebody has compiled a list on IFDB of games appropriate for children.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3397&start=0#p24123
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Just another English language question!
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-10-13 08:22:47

Aha! "Old fashion" and "not so serious" is exactly what was needed. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3391&start=0#p24125
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Understanding a property as one of its properties
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-13 08:55:14

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]What happens when you remove the quotes so they're no longer text strings, but another KOV instead?  (It'll require another "Some... are defined by..." line.)  Or if that doesn't work since "defined by" requires the first column, a 2nd table with the 2nd KOV in the first column, in the same order as the first table.[/quote]
I would love it if KOVs could be created at the time of assignment! Even something like this would be great:

[code]A material is a kind of value. Unknown stuff is a material.

A thing has a material called the composition.

The composition of the toy sword is wood.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3393&start=0#p24126
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item detail
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-13 08:58:57

[quote="ibonny"]I finally found the problem. It appeared that I defined a cat as a kind of animal, which turned "the cat" into a kind as well.[/quote]
Don't feel bad! That's such a common mistake that there's a feature request to have the compiler reject any instance of "the [kind]." It's almost never what the author meant.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3396&start=0#p24127
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What not to wear
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-13 09:10:20

[quote="wjousts"]I don't know. It seems like the complexity has increased rapidly and I'm wondering if it's worth the effort. Another approach might be to try and radically trim the number of relationships.[/quote]
Your instincts are good. An IF author has to distinguish between simulation for its own sake and world-modeling that serves the story. 

The hard part of course is figuring out the minimal level of implementation that will provide a satisfying player experience. If only a couple characters have clothes that the player needs to interact with, you might be better off defining each article explicitly rather than saying "every person wears a shirt," etc.

Another alternative is to create kinds of people:

[code]A snappy dresser is a kind of person. Every snappy dresser wears a tie.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3399&start=0#p24128
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [solved] testing UNDO in I7 <- use skeins, not 'test'
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-10-13 09:17:44

I've noted that Inform does not allow a line such as

test try-endings with "e/tug superman's cape/undo/w/spit into wind/undo/n/pull mask off lone ranger/undo/s/s/mess around with slim/undo/mess around with jim";

However, this seems like a sort of test that could be very useful.

I think I understand why, but I'm wondering...does anyone here have a better solution than taking a transcript while using a keystroke sender (e.g. AutoIt) with various commands to test this sort of thing? Because that seems to replace the skein adequately but has the problem of running into having to type space, too...

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3400&start=0#p24129
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: cue a scene with a "to ..." or say phrase?
User: frudster / DateTime: 2011-10-13 10:18:13

Is there a way to explicitly cue a scene? I would like to be able to do something like 

[code]say "You tumble down the stairs [cue white rabbit]"[/code]

My best bet yet is something like 

[code]
The bedroom is a room.

A scene can be cued.

Enter sandman is a scene. Enter sandman begins when enter sandman is cued. When enter sandman begins, say "A tall dark man knocks on your window. ";

The bed is an enterable fixed in place container in the bedroom. 

After entering the bed: 
	now enter sandman is cued.[/code]

But this feels like a workaround -- is there some easier way that I'm missing?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3400&start=0#p24130
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: cue a scene with a "to ..." or say phrase?
User: frudster / DateTime: 2011-10-13 10:23:01

Actually I guess that works pretty well, all I need to do is 

[code]
A scene can be cued. 
To say cue (s - a scene): cue s.
To cue (s - a scene): now s is cued.
[/code]

And then do say "blah blah blah [cue enter sandman]". 

Inform7 is really cool.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3399&start=0#p24132
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: testing UNDO in I7
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-13 10:37:18

There's a feature request page for this: <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/797667-testing-let-undo-work-within-test-me-">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... n-test-me-</a>

Unfortunately, as noted there, it's difficult to set up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3397&start=0#p24133
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Just another English language question!
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-10-13 11:14:56

If you're going to be writing much dialogue for the butler, you might enjoy reading some P.G. Wodehouse. As matt w says, though they can hardly be called an accurate portrayal of, well, anything, his books pretty much defined the archetype of the stiffly mannered butler in the English-speaking world.  The character you should pay attention to is Jeeves, who actually is not old or crotchety, but does stand firmly by his antiquated speaking patterns and over-the-top formality.  The ongoing schtick is that his employer Wooster, the narrator of the series, is young, idly wealthy, and frankly a bit of an idiot, and Jeeves constantly has to get him out of scrapes without losing poise; both of them have very distinctive verbal styles.  

Here's a taste of it from the television adaptation, starring the wonderful team of Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie as Jeeves and Wooster, respectively: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf0nW_vfk1Q">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf0nW_vfk1Q</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3397&start=0#p24134
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Just another English language question!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-13 11:23:06

Mind you, Jeeves is not a butler but a valet (or a "gentleman's personal gentleman" as Wooster tends to call him). Though as Wooster observes, "If the call comes, he can buttle with the best of them." 

Anyway, read P.G. Wodehouse. This advice holds regardless of your interests, but in your case, you will find a wide selection of butlers and their speaking styles. (You might also want to look at the Blandings Castle novels, with Beach the Butler --  maybe start at the beginning with "Something Fresh/New.")

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3399&start=0#p24135
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: testing UNDO in I7
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-10-13 11:23:29

Great, thanks! I didn't have the feature requests page etc. bookmarked, but I will now. It'll be useful to look for next time when I have this sort of question.

Given the error message, I just assumed UNDOing was impossible/way down on the list.

My workaround seems to work for now. I was just curious if anyone had something slick, or there was some convention the community had.

ETA: never mind. For some reason I thought skeins didn't work with UNDO. Turns out, that was just me projecting from TESTs. That makes everything double super accessible.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3396&start=0#p24136
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What not to wear
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-10-13 11:31:23

[quote="capmikee"]
Your instincts are good. An IF author has to distinguish between simulation for its own sake and world-modeling that serves the story. [/quote]

Unfortunately my instincts as a programmer of more conventional object-oriented languages makes me want to abstract to the most generic solution possible and not hard code a bunch of relationships when I can make the computer do it for me. I'm having a bit of an existential crisis over this! But I started playing with Inform exactly because I was intrigued by how different it is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3392&start=0#p24137
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Get the thing another thing is part of
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-10-13 11:38:18

[quote="zarf"]
[code]
	if the noun is part of a desk (called D):
		say "[The noun] is part of [a D].";
[/code]
[/quote]

Actually, thinking about this some more (it'll have to wait until tonight before I can try it), this ought to be more efficient than the previous suggest (depending on how smart inform is).

In the first case of "a random thing which incorporates the drawer", Inform would presumably have to go through the entire list of things (of course, it could be restricted to a random desk) and test to see if they incorporate the drawer, but since it doesn't know if there is more than one, it must test all things. On the other hand, with the if test, it can quit as soon as it finds the first thing that satisfies the condition since I didn't ask it to find all of them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3396&start=0#p24138
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What not to wear
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-13 12:05:02

[quote="wjousts"]Unfortunately my instincts as a programmer of more conventional object-oriented languages makes me want to abstract to the most generic solution possible and not hard code a bunch of relationships when I can make the computer do it for me.[/quote]
I fight with that too. One thing I've started trying to do is remove unnecessary references to specific things from more general sections of code. More than once I've had to progressively trim my huge source file in order to find a bug - that's a lot easier to do when you don't have to use search-and-replace to remove specific objects and behaviors.

Writing code that way sometimes actually makes it more general too. Instead of saying "do the frobsholt with the goozbar", I'll say "do the frobsholt with every knickish thing," and it's really no more work to code. The trick is to come up with narrow categories of things that match the game behavior closely. Then you're still using abstraction, but only where it's needed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3402&start=0#p24139
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: playing ALAN3 in OS X?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-13 12:10:56

How do you play ALAN3 games in OS X? The interpreter page on IFWIki suggests Spatterlight, but "Ted Paladin..." crashes when I try to run it in Spatterlight 0.5.0.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3403&start=0#p24140
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Instead of unscrewing the panel with the screwdriver[solved]
User: lowey / DateTime: 2011-10-13 12:11:03

First post!

Hello. I'm just getting started with I7 and I'm loving it so far, but I've hit a snag and just don't seem to be able to get past it. I'm writing a fairly basic one-room puzzler, it's not original in any way and I doubt I'll ever release it, I'm just honing my I7 skills with this story.

The story takes place in a jail cell. There's a hacksaw conveniently hidden behind a metal panel in the cell door. The panel is screwed on. After a convoluted plot-turn you get a screwdriver which you then use to remove the screws on the panel. Simple, right? So here's the code for unscrewing:

[code]
Screwing is an action applying to two things. [not like that, get your mind out of the gutter]

Understand "Screw [something] with [something]" as screwing. Understand "Unscrew [something] with [something]" as screwing. Understand "Remove [something] with [something]" as screwing.

Carry out screwing:
	If the second noun is screwdriver:
		If the noun is screws:
			Say "You unscrew the 8 screws holding the panel in place on the door. With a little persuasion it eventually drops from the door to reveal a hidden alcove with a rusty hacksaw in it. How rather convenient!";
			[then obviously make the hacksaw visible etc etc]
[/code]

That's fine, but I want the action to apply to either the panel (e.g. "unscrew the panel with the screwdriver") or the screws themselves (e.g. "unscrew the screws with the screwdriver").

I thought this would work:

[code]
Instead of screwing the panel:
	Try screwing the Screws.
[/code]

But of course that doesn't supply the second noun to the action. I'm not sure how to make the "instead" rule pass on the second noun. Can anyone help? It seems such a trivial thing, but I've spent hours trying to figure this out and just can't find any similar examples anywhere (which seems weird in itself, I'd have thought this would be a relatively common scenario). Any help would be greatly appreciated!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3403&start=0#p24142
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Instead of unscrewing the panel with the screwdriver
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-10-13 12:21:34

What about:

Instead of screwing the panel with something, try screwing the screws with the second noun.


(Anybody seeing this out of context could get some very strange ideas about what's going on.)

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3402&start=0#p24143
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: playing ALAN3 in OS X?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-10-13 12:36:39

The interpreter in Spatterlight is one of the early Alan 3 alpha releases, and cannot run alan3 beta games.

The game comes with instructions in an RTF file for plugging in a replacement for Gargoyle's alan3 interpreter.

The next Gargoyle release should make these contortions unnecessary.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3403&start=0#p24144
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Instead of unscrewing the panel with the screwdriver
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-13 12:37:35

Couple things:

I think you need to define the action thus:

[code]Screwing it with is an action applying to two things. Understand "screw [something] with [something]" as screwing it with. [etc.][/code]

The "it" tells Inform where the first noun is expected to go. (This is mentioned somewhat offhand in section 12.7 of the documentation.) That's how it knows that the action is "screwing the panel with the screwdriver" rather than some other preposition. (I mean, when you refer to the action in your source code, not when the player types it.) 

Then this (as Robert points out) will work:

[code]Instead of screwing the panel with something:
	try screwing the screws with the second noun.[/code]

I think that in rule headers involving an action applying to two things, you have to mention both nouns or neither. So "instead of screwing" compiles, but "instead of screwing the panel" doesn't. 

Some other things to watch out for: "screw" and "unscrew" are already built in as synonyms for "turn"; your code doesn't interfere with that because turning only applies to one thing, but it'll yield a misleading message if the player tried "UNSCREW PANEL" without supplying a "with." You might be able to get around this by blocking turning the screws with a message telling the player to say what he's unscrewing them with. Also, you need to supply something for your carry out unscrewing rule to handle the cases when the player has typed "Unscrew me with screws" or something -- as it is that will simply return a blank command prompt. You might also want to force the player to be holding the screwdriver rather than just having it lying around (though it might be courteous to automate picking up the screwdriver).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3402&start=0#p24146
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: playing ALAN3 in OS X?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-13 12:40:13

I guess this means I have to download Gargoyle. Does time spent monkeying with interpreters count against the two-hour limit? (Alternatively, will the next Gargoyle release be out by the end of the comp?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3402&start=0#p24147
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: playing ALAN3 in OS X?
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2011-10-13 12:44:39

The intent is that the two-hour limit is play time rather than setup time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3402&start=0#p24148
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: playing ALAN3 in OS X?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-13 12:48:18

Thanks! (I did figure that was the case -- just grumbling.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3402&start=0#p24149
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: playing ALAN3 in OS X?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-10-13 12:49:20

My hands are tied until I get the alan3 source code. Any new release will break that (unofficial) plugin, so it has to include the updated interpreter or it will only compound the problem.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=70#p24150
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-13 13:23:31

I was just going through the source of my WIP, and noticed this line:

[code]Understand the commands "damn" and "dang" and "motherfucker" and "mother-fucker" and "mother" as "bother".[/code]

There's something sweetly poetic about it...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3403&start=0#p24151
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Instead of unscrewing the panel with the screwdriver
User: lowey / DateTime: 2011-10-13 13:25:43

Ah splendid, that's done it!

[quote="matt w"]Some other things to watch out for: "screw" and "unscrew" are already built in as synonyms for "turn"; your code doesn't interfere with that because turning only applies to one thing, but it'll yield a misleading message if the player tried "UNSCREW PANEL" without supplying a "with."[/quote]

Yes I'd already spotted this and had made a mental note to fix it later [emote]:)[/emote] Right now I'm just trying to get a skeleton of a game, true spit and polish will be done once the game is playable to completion. I just really wanted to get this one thing working because my personal inclination would be to "unscrew panel with the screwdriver" which gave an unhelpful message before. If I can't figure out my own game then what chance does anyone else have? heheh.

[quote="matt w"]Also, you need to supply something for your carry out unscrewing rule to handle the cases when the player has typed "Unscrew me with screws" or something -- as it is that will simply return a blank command prompt.[/quote]

Yep, true.

[quote="matt w"]You might also want to force the player to be holding the screwdriver rather than just having it lying around (though it might be courteous to automate picking up the screwdriver).[/quote]

This is actually the next thing I planned to implement. As is there's little checking of that sort of thing meaning the game can be completed without actually having discovered the screwdriver (for example).

Thanks for your help both! In case anyone else should run into this problem, here's the full complete solution:

[code]Screwing it with is an action applying to two things. [not like that, get your mind out of the gutter]

Understand "Screw [something] with [something]" as screwing it with. Understand "Unscrew [something] with [something]" as screwing it with. Understand "Remove [something] with [something]" as screwing it with.

Carry out screwing it with:
	If the second noun is screwdriver:
		If the noun is screws:
			Say "You unscrew the 8 screws holding the panel in place on the door. With a little persuasion it eventually drops from the door to reveal a hidden alcove with a rusty hacksaw in it. How rather convenient!";
			[then obviously make the hacksaw visible etc etc]

Instead of screwing the panel with something:
	Try screwing the Screws with the second noun.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3402&start=0#p24152
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: playing ALAN3 in OS X?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-10-13 13:32:12

FWIW, I went through exactly this process (installing Mac Gargoyle, then installing the plugin) and it is really pretty painless. Didn't take me more than five minutes or so.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2552&start=0#p24153
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A Search-and-Replace Dilemma
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-13 13:32:24

Just going through old stuff and found this topic.

A guy I work with has written a very handy script called "shloop" (pronounced sha-loop) for people who like to do this sort of thing with Perl:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=154018">http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=154018</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3403&start=0#p24154
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Instead of unscrewing the panel with the screwdriver[sol
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-10-13 13:37:04

It sounds like you're all set now, but for future reference: the first couple sections of the "commands" chapter in the recipe book are meant to provide an overview of designing and implementing new actions in a step by step way, with some examples and then pointers to where in the main manual to seek more information for each portion.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3397&start=0#p24155
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Just another English language question!
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-10-13 13:37:11

If you're a second-language English speaker, though, you may find Wodehouse pretty difficult.  There is a TON of very period-specific slang and idioms, most of them from the narrator.  But the stories are very fun and well written.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3397&start=0#p24157
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Just another English language question!
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-10-13 14:20:28

I've (so far) only read them in translation, but I remember that it was sometimes difficult to keep track of the people with all their nicknames. The books were a fun read, though. (And the tv series is fun too.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=20#p24158
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-13 15:10:15

I've got a practical question. Going over my Speech Motivations extension (there's got to be a better name for it...), I realized that this gives a misleading response to "'[person], [any known thing]":

[code]Check an actor answering something that (this is the block talking about topics rule):
	say "'[The topic understood]' was not recognized as something you can talk about.";
	stop the action.[/code]

The issue is the comma (again). The command "[person], [text]" is translated to answering it that before any I7 Understand lines can get to it... because Understand lines can't include commas. But perhaps your I7 parser could be applied to this problem, or at least could give enough insight to include an I6 hack that could help. This is my current workaround:

[code]Check an actor answering something that (this is the block misparsed orders rule):
	unless the player's command includes "tell/answer/say/shout/speak": [we assume there was a comma]
		say "'[The topic understood]' was not recognized as something you can ask someone to do.";
		stop the action;[/code]
Not ideal, but it works as long as authors don't define any additional synonyms for 'answer'. Unfortunately, my WIP does add some synonyms for 'answer.' I could just add them to the extension, but that seems like dodging the problem instead of solving it. Is there a way to say this instead?

[code]if the player's command includes a comma[/code]

[b]Edit: I came up with a better test:[/b] (though this still may give weird results for "tell [someone] that [any unknown thing]")
[code]if the topic understood matches "[any thing]"[/code]

Or better yet,

[code]Understand "[something] [comma] [any known thing]" as informing it about.[/code]

?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=20#p24159
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-13 15:22:28

Damn. Testing this turned up a bug in Scope Caching. It looks like a successfully parsed grammar line with an "any" token will cause out-of-play objects to become marked visible, which triggers Scope Caching's modifications to Epistemology to mark them as known. Or something.

[spoiler][code]include Epistemology by Eric Eve.
Include Scope Caching by Mike Ciul.

Test is a room. Bob is a man in Test.

Check answering something that when the player's command matches "[any thing]":
	say "[The topic understood] was not recognized as a command, but now every thing is in scope.";

There is a rock.

After reading a command: showme the list of marked visible things.

test me with "rules/epistat rock/bob, rock/z/epistat rock"[/code][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3404&start=0#p24161
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Reign of Grelok
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-13 15:59:00

I just wandered across the easter-eggish "Reign of Grelok" text-adventure hidden in [b][i]Fallout 3.[/i][/b] I am amused, verily.

Do games like Reign of Grelok rate a spot in the IFDB, I wonder? I wouldn't mind writing a review [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3403&start=0#p24162
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Instead of unscrewing the panel with the screwdriver[sol
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-13 16:38:59

[quote="matt w"]I think that in rule headers involving an action applying to two things, you have to mention both nouns or neither. So "instead of screwing" compiles, but "instead of screwing the panel" doesn't. [/quote]
You can mention only the first noun in this case, too; but then you need to follow up with the preposition as well: "instead of screwing the panel with" compiles (and, I think, means the same as "instead of screwing the panel with something").

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=0#p24164
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-10-13 18:38:09

[quote="Campbell"][quote="aschultz"]It'd be cool to learn ADRIFT one day but I don't think I can pull it off in three weeks.[/quote]I bet you could...  [emote]:lol:[/emote][/quote]
Not only is it possible, I have seen it done. (Jacqueline Lott learned ADRIFT within a three-week deadline for SpeedIF Indigo, and, being a constantly overcommitted person, didn't actually spend any time on it for most of the allocated days. And Jacq is very far from being a top-flight coder.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=0#p24165
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-10-13 19:02:37

I would join this if I weren't already committed to releasing Hallow Eve 2.0 by Halloween, which way breaks the 3-hour development period of Ectocomp. I do look forward to playing the games though. Perhaps will enter next year with a much shorter Halloween-themed IF.

Hallow Eve was written in Inform7, and like Maga mentioned above I think that a crash-course in Adrift would be fun once I have the time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3400&start=0#p24166
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: cue a scene with a "to ..." or say phrase?
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-10-13 19:08:09

[quote="frudster"]
Inform7 is really cool.[/quote]

Aye  [emote]8-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3396&start=0#p24167
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What not to wear
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-10-13 19:27:13

Ok, I started playing around with this. I defined a body-area:

Body-area is a kind of value. The body-areas are feet, lower-body, legs, hips, upper-body, full-body, head, none.

And I defined a garment-element which has a body-area and a layer-level:

A garment-element is a kind of thing. A garment-element has a number called the layer-level. A garment-element has a body-area called the area.

And some kinds of garments:

A pair of pants is a kind of garment. The plural of pair of pants is pairs of pants. The area of a pair of pants is lower-body. A pair of pants usually has layer-level 5.

So far so good.

Now we come to before an actor wearing a garment rule.

What I need to do is get a list of all garments being worn by the actor that have a body-area equal to the noun (the thing the actor is attempting to wear) and a layer-level > the layer-level of the noun. If the list isn't empty, all the things in that list need to be removed first.

Any ideas how to do this? I tried may variations on:

let conflicting be the list of garments worn by the actor

But even this fails, although, strangely, this works:

say "[the list of garments worn by the actor]"

So how come I can say the list, but I can't create a temporary value to hold the list or otherwise process the list?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3405&start=0#p24168
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Using value properties
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-10-13 20:18:19

I seem to have run into a brick wall. I have a defined a value thus:

[code]Body-area is a kind of value. The body-areas are feet, lower-body, legs, hips, upper-body, full-body, head, none.[/code]

And I have defined a property of type body-area on a kind like this:

[code]A garment-element is a kind of thing. A garment-element has a number called the layer-level. A garment-element has a body-area called the area.[/code]

Now my problem is, that elsewhere in rules I can do something like this:

[code]say "[the area of the noun]"[/code]

But Inform doesn't understand something like this:

[code]if the area of the noun is equal to the area of the whatsit[/code]

Why? It seems like I can't use value properties anywhere other than as a sayable value? What gives? I assumed they'd behave like enums in other languages and I'd be able to compare them as a way to find other objects with same property value.  [emote]:|[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3405&start=0#p24169
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using value properties
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-10-13 20:41:30

Unbelievable. I just spent the best part of the last hour trying to figure this out before stumbling on what I need isn't "is equal to" it's just "is".  [emote]:oops:[/emote] 

I was ready to throw the thing out a window.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3394&start=0#p24171
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using "room description control" extension by Emily Shor
User: Bristo / DateTime: 2011-10-13 21:27:42

Thanks Emily. It helps to get input from the writer [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3391&start=0#p24172
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Understanding a property as one of its properties
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-10-13 21:33:38

Something like[code][Setup]
There is a room.
Heat-behavior is a kind of value.  The heat-behaviors are melter and burner.
A material is a kind of thing.
Some materials are defined by the Table of Material Properties.

[Table]
Table of Material Properties
material	material-adjective (indexed text)	destroying heat	heat-behaviour	corrosion resistance
iron	"iron"	10	melter	995
wood	"wooden"	3	burner	970
adamant	"adamantine"	999	melter	1000

[Subkind]
A material thing is a kind of thing.
Every material thing has a material called the substance.

[Intermediate Relation]
Constitution relates a material thing (called the item) to a material (called the substance) when the substance is the substance of the item.

[Understanding]
Understand "[something related by constitution]" as a material thing.  [Understanding by relation for understanding things as things.]
Understand the material-adjective property as describing a material.  [Understanding by property for understanding other understandable values as things.]

[Demo]
A shield is a kind of material thing.  The substance of a shield is usually iron.
A staff is a kind of material thing.  The substance of a staff is usually wood.
A ring is a kind of material thing.  The substance of a ring is usually adamant.
Here are a shield, a staff, and a ring.
Test me with "x wooden/x iron/x adamantine".[/code] perhaps?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3328&start=20#p24173
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Site Logo
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-10-13 22:24:55

[quote="ArmanX"]
If we didn't use the IF logo, what would be better suited? For me, nothing says interactive fiction better than this:
[attachment=1]cursor1.png[/attachment][/quote]

I'd love to steal this for an unrelated, on-again-off-again love affair that I'm currently working on, full credit of course, if no one else is going to take it. Might bastardize it a little... somehow... But this makes me happy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3396&start=0#p24176
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What not to wear
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-14 03:16:37

The explanation that the problem message in the IDE gives is that
[quote]descriptions used as values are not allowed to contain references to temporary variables defined by 'let' or by loops, because they may very well not exist any more when the description needs to be used, in another time and another place.[/quote]
I don't see how the description "garments worn by the player" would contain a reference to the variable "conflicting" (rather than the other way around); but that might well be due to ignorance on my part. However, "let conflicting be the list of garments" compiles fine. And it's perfectly possible to remove all garments not worn by the player from "conflicting" defined that way. So, why isn't "let conflicting be the list of garments worn by the player" allowed?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3404&start=0#p24177
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Reign of Grelok
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-14 03:39:37

I think they do.

Where is it hidden?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3392&start=0#p24178
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Get the thing another thing is part of
User: frudster / DateTime: 2011-10-14 03:48:49

Thanks for this, I've meant to ask the same thing. It feels like there ought to be some kind of "the first thing that" rather than "a random thing that"... but I guess it's just not a list like that? 

Inform7 is really cool, but when it comes to handling collections (lists, sets, dictionaries, maps, arrays, stacks, queues, what have you) I 'd really much rather be doing stuff in Java or some other type of language. Maybe I ought to write an extension for this. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3404&start=0#p24179
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Reign of Grelok
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-14 04:04:18

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]I think they do.

Where is it hidden?[/quote]

The Hubris Comics building, in the (I think) lowest level. In through the front door, around over the barricade to the left, through some corridors and down through a collapsed floor.

Really, I guess it's only "hidden" in the sense of "geez, there's a lot of wasteland to pick through and ... oh look, one terminal has a text-adventure game on it!" [emote]:)[/emote] Once you find the building it's in, they even point you towards it (the terminal in the reception area teases that there's a computer-game being tested elsewhere in the building).

<a class="postlink" href="http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Hubris_Comics_%28location%29">http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Hubris_Co ... ocation%29</a>

<a class="postlink" href="http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Reign_of_Grelok">http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Reign_of_Grelok</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=0#p24181
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-10-14 06:31:08

Just unveiling this year's banner by Jacob Garbe.

[img]http://ifwiki.org/images/5/59/2011_banner.jpg[/img]

We decided to keep the "ADRIFT" part in the banner as an indication of the roots of the competition.  I also plan to originally post it on the ADRIFT Adventures page, subversive a move as it might be to put Z-code games and the like on the ADRIFT site (*gasp*). 

Remember, any and all prizes for Ectocomp are of the kind given for IFComp: purely by donation.  If you have anything you might want to throw in, even if you're a contestant, it can make for a fun gift-and-story type of exchange.  I will personally be donating a Cthulhu action figure with pose-able tentacles to whomever picks it from the prize pool.  [emote]:geek:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3328&start=20#p24182
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Site Logo
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2011-10-14 08:32:26

Be my guest; I hereby release all the images in this thread that were created by me under a "do whatever you want with them, no really, it's ok" license :-)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3396&start=0#p24183
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What not to wear
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-14 08:49:27

Is it possible that I7 considers "the actor" to be a temporary variable, and so won't let you use "things held by the actor" as a value? This got me the error:

[code]Instead of singing:
	let conflicting be the list of things held by the actor;
	say "Held: [conflicting]."[/code]

but this worked as intended:

[code]Permanent-actor is a person that varies.
Instead of singing:
	now permanent-actor is the actor;
	let conflicting be the list of things held by permanent-actor;
	say "Held: [conflicting]."[/code]

(This seems like a "poorly worded error message" bug, if my diagnosis is correct.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3396&start=0#p24184
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What not to wear
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-10-14 09:10:35

[quote="matt w"]Is it possible that I7 considers "the actor" to be a temporary variable, and so won't let you use "things held by the actor" as a value? [/quote]

Sounds reasonable. You might be on to something. It would explain why it seemed to be okay when I used "the player" but not when I used "the actor". The player is global and exists outside the scope of the rule whereas the actor does not.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3396&start=0#p24185
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What not to wear
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-14 09:16:46

[quote="matt w"][code]Instead of singing:
	let conflicting be the list of things held by the actor;
	say "Held: [conflicting]."[/code]

but this worked as intended:

[code]Permanent-actor is a person that varies.
Instead of singing:
	now permanent-actor is the actor;
	let conflicting be the list of things held by permanent-actor;
	say "Held: [conflicting]."[/code]

(This seems like a "poorly worded error message" bug, if my diagnosis is correct.)[/quote]
That looks weird. The actor is a temporary variable but I'm surprised it couldn't be used that way. But you shouldn't need to define a new global. Try using "the person asked."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3396&start=0#p24186
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What not to wear
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-14 09:28:18

[quote="wjousts"]Any ideas how to do this? I tried may variations on:

let conflicting be the list of garments worn by the actor[/quote]

This looks like a good place for some conditional relations:

[code]Clothing conflict relates a garment (called the top layer) to a garment (called the conflicting layer) when the conflicting layer is worn by the person asked and the area of the conflicting layer is the area of the top layer and the layer-level of the conflicting layer is not less than the layer-level of the top layer.

The verb to be unwearable because of implies the clothing conflict relation.

The verb to prevent wearing (he prevents wearing, they prevent wearing, he prevented wearing, he is preventing wearing) implies the reversed clothing conflict relation.[/code]

What's the difference between a garment and a garment-element?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3396&start=10#p24187
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What not to wear
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-14 09:56:35

[quote="capmikee"]But you shouldn't need to define a new global. Try using "the person asked."[/quote]

The new global is a kludge, but "the person asked" won't work for indirectly triggered actions, will it? "Carry out turning on the searchlight: Try George putting on the sunglasses" and the like. {EDIT: On further testing, this is not correct.]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3396&start=10#p24188
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What not to wear
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-14 10:10:10

I didn't catch on that you needed that. But do you? Is it even possible to have someone other than the player asking someone else to try doing something?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3392&start=0#p24189
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Get the thing another thing is part of
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-14 10:41:43

There is a canonical list of each kind, but it's not up to you -- it's the order the compiler puts things in. (Which is not always the same as source-code order.) Since it's an implementation detail, exposing it would be more confusing than not; it would effectively be "a random thing that mostly doesn't change between runs"..

The good news is that the "a random DESC" routine is quite efficient, particularly for the case where there's exactly one thing that matches. It doesn't need to create a dynamic list and measure it.

(However, a property lookup or one-to-one relation is more efficient.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3381&start=0#p24190
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Second Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competi
User: ultimate / DateTime: 2011-10-14 11:07:59

Would someone care to explain to me what the purpose of competition updates is, because I still don't see  the point. And I still don't know how to judge such games. I refuse to replay any of the games which have been updated!

And I'm not trolling here or anything, but expressing my serious opinion. And I have a damn right to do so! Moderators like "bcressey" or whatever his name is, should make sure to remember that before they have the cockiness to block my topics again! [emote]:evil:[/emote] 

I strongly agree with what Finn Rosenløv said about it [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=20]here[/url].

[quote="Finn Rosenløv"]I must admit that I personally feel it's a bit like cheating. It's like being allowed to alter your final exams project after having turned it in...[/quote]

It is cheating by the authors and it has to stop! If updates of any of the games continue then I'm going to send a formal complaint to Stephen Granade...

This is not a Beta-test Comp! This will have consequences to all those authors who updated their games. And I don't care what nature the update is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3396&start=10#p24191
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What not to wear
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-14 11:18:16

[quote="wjousts"]Any ideas how to do this? I tried may variations on:

let conflicting be the list of garments worn by the actor

But even this fails, although, strangely, this works:

say "[the list of garments worn by the actor]"

So how come I can say the list, but I can't create a temporary value to hold the list or otherwise process the list?[/quote]
This is an area of Inform I have a lot of trouble with. I wonder if going back to Ron Newcomb's book would help. In the meantime, have a gander at the error message for this code:

[code]To decide what description of objects is the conflicting items: Decide on the list of garments that are worn by the person asked.[/code]
[quote]Problem. You wrote 'Decide on the list of garments that are worn by the person asked'   as the outcome of a phrase to decide a value, but this was the wrong kind of value: an instruction to work out a list of garments rather than a description of objects.[/quote]

So we have three different types: A list of things of some kind, an instruction to work out a list of things of some kind, and a description of objects. Can anyone explain the difference?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3381&start=0#p24192
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Second Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competi
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-10-14 11:21:17

I hate it when I find myself agreeing with the forum’s resident mud-slinger.

Next year I predict we’ll have someone abuse this new ‘rule’ by submitting an unfinished game, updating it to something radically different a day later, then continually updating it until it’s so far removed from the original game as to be a totally separate game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3396&start=10#p24193
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What not to wear
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-10-14 11:37:13

[quote="wjousts"]So how come I can say the list, but I can't create a temporary value to hold the list or otherwise process the list?[/quote]

I'd call it a bug in the compiler. It isn't mysterious that you can "say" the list, because that is an immediate use of the temporary values involved (no attempt to store it). But you should certainly be able to define a temporary variable that makes use of a temporary variable with the same (or, as in this case, broader) scope. 

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3398&start=0#p24194
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: vocabulary level
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-10-14 11:39:27

A substantial majority of IF is written by adults for adults. Quite a lot happens to be child-suitable (assuming you have a pretty bright kid who enjoys reading and problem-solving), but the proportion of games written specifically for children is relatively low. This proportion has increased quite a bit in the last year or two, but the field of quality child-targeted games is still not very deep; if the child isn't at the point where they're comfortable with reading grown-up novels, they might run out of suitable games fairly quickly.

I'd suggest Lost Pig or Aotearoa as introductory games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3381&start=0#p24196
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Second Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competi
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-10-14 12:02:54

I almost hate to get involved in what seems to have become a very emotional topic.  I think there are valid arguments to be made on both sides, and I don't really have a strong feeling one way or the other.

I would point out, however, that I think David's concern may not be all that realistic.  If anybody is skilled enough to write an entirely new polished piece in one day, he probably doesn't need to engage in the subterfuge of calling it an "update" of the previous day's less well-polished (and totally different) piece.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3407&start=0#p24197
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: print_unicode
User: MikeG / DateTime: 2011-10-14 12:03:11

I'm currently reworking the print_unicode opcode in my interpeter and I'm trying to get a feel for what some other interpeters do in some oddball cases.

For example: Say a memory stream is active and the supplied operand is a unicode 'null', 'tab', or 'newline' character. Would these be translated to equivalent zscii characters for writing to the stream or produce question marks as in section 7.5.3 of the standard if they did not appear explicitly in the unicode characters table? In the 'null' case, the standard specifies that a Zscii null value produces no output in any stream but it doesn't explicitly say a unicode null translates to a zscii null, even though they do share the same underlying value. Same argument applies for 'newline' and 'tab'. I realize it is unlikely and not particularly useful for someone to send these values to print_unicode, I'm just considering the possibility.

Following are some of the relevent standard sections I've been looking at:

[b]3.8.5.1

*** To define which characters are required, the Unicode (or ISO 10646-1) character set is used: characters are specified by unsigned 16-bit codes. These values agree with ISO 8859 Latin-1 in the range 0 to 255, and with ASCII and ZSCII in the range 32 to 126. The Unicode standard leaves a range of values, the Private Use Area, free: however, an Internet group called the ConScript Unicode Registry is organising a standard mapping of invented scripts (such as Klingon, or Tolkien's Elvish) into the Private Use Area, and this should be considered part of the Unicode standard for Z-machine purposes. 

7.5

*** Because of the print_unicode opcode, it is possible for arbitrary Unicode characters to be sent to the output streams: that is, for characters which are not in the ZSCII set at all, even in the "extra characters" range. 

7.5.3

When printed to stream 3, Unicode characters should be converted to ZSCII if possible. If this is not possible, a question mark should be printed to stream 3.

[/b]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3381&start=0#p24198
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Second Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competi
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-14 12:07:05

[quote="ultimate"]Would someone care to explain to me what the purpose of competition updates is, because I still don't see  the point. [/quote]

Others have done so in related threads.

[quote]And I still don't know how to judge such games.[/quote]

This, too, has already been explained.

[quote]If updates of any of the games continue then I'm going to send a formal complaint to Stephen Granade...[/quote]

Good heavens to Betsy no!

[quote]This will have consequences to all those authors who updated their games.[/quote]

I see the point has finally dawned on you. No? So close ... so close ... [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3381&start=0#p24199
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Second Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competi
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-14 12:12:46

You can't cheat by simply following the rules of a competition. Since updates are explicitly allowed, updating your games can't be cheating. It may or may not be a wise rule, but following it just isn't cheating.

As for how to judge an updated game, I think that was made clear in the previous thread on the subject:
[quote="Sargent"]Officially, the two-hour rule is still the two-hour rule. If you spend one hour and fifty minutes playing the first release, if you wish you can spend another ten minutes playing any new release, but no longer. The total play time you spend on any game must stay under two hours. The version or versions of the games don't count.[/quote]
No judge is forced to replay any game or even to play the latest available version of any game.

Also, I doubt that an author would gain much by releasing a whole string of widely different games masquerading as one entry. At least, I think it is quite unlikely that such a game would end up top three of thirty entries.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3396&start=10#p24201
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What not to wear
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-10-14 12:26:11

[quote="capmikee"]
What's the difference between a garment and a garment-element?[/quote]

It comes from the original what not to wear example, and I'm not sure it's strictly necessary any more. The way the example has it body-part and garment are both garment-elements, but garments are wearable where body-parts aren't. 

The implementation I'm playing with at the moment doesn't actually need the body-parts at all (and I haven't defined any) because I can just work with the body-area value instead. However, that won't let you, for example, examine somebody's head.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3408&start=0#p24203
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: advice on easy-to-start platforms?
User: 1000T / DateTime: 2011-10-14 12:54:42

Please suggest a system/engine/platform for me...

The first thing I'm looking for is that it is easy to start authoring content. Ideally, I'm looking for something as immediate as those wiki's allowing you to write "choose your own adventures". 

However, they have two deal-breaking limitations:
1) public access to the content. I don't want any schmuck to be able to delete or edit at will. 
[size=85]Allowing users to add more content is fine, however, just as long as the core game (that I write) remains "read-only". But not necessary.[/size]
2) they seem to have a total lack of storing persistent information. If you "return" to a page it'll be like everything that happened in between was just a bad memory. Just writing a big tree of branching content is too limiting for my needs.
[size=85]Supporting a (short) list of attributes would be fine. But being allowed to define a bunch of (hidden) variables that you can check later is really all that I need. Supporting a small set of items and an inventory would be great. If only because they can emulate variables (like in gamebooks: if you have the mushroom, I know you have defeated the monster, so I can have the guardian let you pass, etc)[/size]

I really would like to not have to deal with the full complexity of TADS and other engines. Partly because I want to focus on story and not programming. Party because this will not be a locations-driven thing. Those full-blown engines simply contain way too much functionality for my simple needs.

The other thing is that ideally the user/reader should be able to navigate around the game world using the mouse only, selecting among 1-6 alternatives (some of which are available only after certain conditions are met). In other words, no "go north" or "pick up lantern". Also a big reason why I feel TADS like systems are not right for me...

Again, if there were a service that allowed you your own wiki-ish thing (automatically storing the story/adventure with public web access as well as automatically hyperlinking the different pages), and it allowed you to set a bunch of game variables as well as lock your pages using a password, then that would be super-great. 

Or perhaps an editor with similar capabilities that compile your story into a Flash .swf file that everybody could play just using their web browser (and which could even be hosted and played directly online)...

Barring that, what are my options?
[size=85]There are no stupid suggestions. Assume I'm a total newbie (which is almost the truth here; I do have messed around in TADS), so assume I know of none of the options you know of...![/size]


Thank you very much!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3408&start=0#p24204
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: advice on easy-to-start platforms?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-10-14 13:05:10

Have you looked at [url=http://www.choiceofgames.com/make-your-own-games/choicescript-intro/]ChoiceScript[/url]?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3381&start=0#p24205
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Second Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competi
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-10-14 13:46:59

[quote="Felix"]Also, I doubt that an author would gain much by releasing a whole string of widely different games masquerading as one entry. At least, I think it is quite unlikely that such a game would end up top three of thirty entries.[/quote]
Now that would be a fun experiment. Write two or three good games that share the same name and opening scene, replace one with the other during the competition and see if anyone notices. (Couldn't be done this year since nobody knew about the new rule in advance.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3381&start=0#p24206
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Second Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competi
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-14 13:48:25

[quote="ultimate"]I refuse to replay any of the games which have been updated![/quote]

Ok.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3407&start=0#p24207
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: print_unicode
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-14 13:56:27

It's possible for a game to print everything in unicode, (like, say, because the authoring tool's library causes it to do so), so getting unicode newlines and tabs and such I would imagine should produce said newlines and tabs and such.  Besides, why shouldn't a newline, etc. be a newline just because unicode said so?  Any particular reason to be prejudice against unicode?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3409&start=0#p24208
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform7 Quick Changes to Printed Names
User: RR-GraphixGuy / DateTime: 2011-10-14 14:00:23

I am a little new to IF, but have had lifelong experience in programming in general. I stumbled across Inform7 in a totally unrelated search, so now I have been playing with it for the last few days, and I feel like I am picking it up fairly quickly. Forgive me if my question is in the documentation or answered elsewhere, but I can not seem to find the answer. 

Containers seem to by default report their status as empty or containing items. (e.g. "You can see a trash can (empty) here.") How do I duplicate the same effect for other properties (especially custom properties) of other objects or kinds?

In my test script, I have the following set up and working:
[list]
[*]I added that: "A thing can be useful or useless. It is usually useful."[/*:m]
[*]"A ladder can be folded or unfolded. It is usually folded." and later on "The stepladder is a ladder."[/*:m]
[*]a trash can.[/*:m]
[*]You can make things useless by bashing them (with your fists? Just pretend you have special fists...) [/*:m][/list:u]

The following logic applies, and currently works to these effects:
[list]
[*]If the stepladder is folded, you cannot stand on it. You can only stand on it in its unfolded state.[/*:m]
[*]If you bash it while it is folded, it becomes useless, you cannot unfold it, ergo you will not be able to stand on it.[/*:m]
[*]If you bash it while it is unfolded, it becomes useless, you will not be able to fold it. You will be able to stand on it (unfolded), however, if you risk standing on it, because it is now damaged its ability to support you has been compromised, and you fall, break your neck, and die. (Harsh, I know, but you shouldn't bash ladders and then expect them to work.)[/*:m]
[*]If the stepladder is useful, you cannot put it in the trash can.[/*:m]
[*]If the stepladder is useless, then it may be put in the trash can... as long as you haven't bashed the trash can and made [i]it[/i] useless.[/*:m][/list:u]

So depending on what state things are in, I'd like those important details reflected in the name as adjectives instead of having to examine the item to find out the state (which I have rules for examining.) I'd like to be able to see "You can see a damaged trash can, and a damaged stepladder." which seems would be a simple matter of concatenating "useless" into the printed name of the thing. 

I suspect that the change should take place once the item has been bashed, somewhere in this part of the script:
[code]Bashing is an action applying to one thing. Understand "bash [something]" as bashing.

Carry out bashing something (called whatever):
	say "[The whatever] is no match for your bare fists and you successfully beat the tar out of it.";
	[right here we should somehow change the printed name... like "now the printed name of whatever is"... ???]
	now whatever is useless.
[/code]
Thanks in advance...

- Mike

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3381&start=0#p24209
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Second Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competi
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-14 14:00:47

[quote="Trumgottist"][quote="Felix"]Also, I doubt that an author would gain much by releasing a whole string of widely different games masquerading as one entry. At least, I think it is quite unlikely that such a game would end up top three of thirty entries.[/quote]
Now that would be a fun experiment. Write two or three good games that share the same name and opening scene, replace one with the other during the competition and see if anyone notices. (Couldn't be done this year since nobody knew about the new rule in advance.)[/quote]

Oooh, I propose UpdateComp. Everyone submits a game, then halfway through they have to submit an update that starts out the same but goes somewhere totally different. You could include some sort of Speed-IF style key that has to be included in the update to prevent people from cheating by preparing their updates in advance.

[On the main topic: No one is making anyone replay games that have been updated. Chill.]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3381&start=0#p24210
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Second Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competi
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-14 14:01:13

[quote="Trumgottist"]Now that would be a fun experiment. [/quote]

Another one: run a "RevisionComp" where the entire idea is to "cheat" using the various methods described as "cheating" on this board, and see if there's any difference between the kind of people who can make winning games by cheating, and the kind of people who can just make winning games [emote];)[/emote]

EDIT: Aw, jinx, Matt W [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3398&start=0#p24211
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: vocabulary level
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-14 14:01:24

The IFDB has tags for children games. Try <a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=zpjzp8drlwozs0j0">http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=zpjzp8drlwozs0j0</a> or click on one of the tags.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=20#p24212
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-14 14:10:16

[quote="capmikee"]The issue is the comma (again). The command "[person], [text]" is translated to answering it that before any I7 Understand lines can get to it... because Understand lines can't include commas.[/quote]

(I believe the code at <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3264&start=0#p23302">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3264&start=0#p23302</a> fixes that issue.) 

However, I am seriously considering spinning off that part of the parser to its own rulebook, as a way of shortening Parser__parse, if no other reason.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3328&start=20#p24213
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Site Logo
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-10-14 14:34:13

I like the blinking one. I didn't even notice at first. The "blinking images are bad" point is moot here because the effect is extremely subtle. You don't notice unless you're staring directly at it.

Another thing worth trying might be replacing the Lucida font with an real console font (those used by MS-DOS.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3408&start=0#p24214
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: advice on easy-to-start platforms?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-10-14 14:37:17

I think you might like Twine: <a class="postlink" href="http://gimcrackd.com/etc/src/">http://gimcrackd.com/etc/src/</a>

The editor for OSX or Windows is a very simple GUI.  You write your story/game/whatever as a collection of hyperlinked cards, and there's support for variable tracking ( <a class="postlink" href="http://gimcrackd.com/etc/doc/#code,variables">http://gimcrackd.com/etc/doc/#code,variables</a> ).  It can output as web-ready HTML, and some of the output options include slick-looking Javascript transitions, if that's your thing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3381&start=10#p24215
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Second Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competi
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-10-14 14:53:22

What bewilders me is why anyone is bothering to respond to ultimate about this at all. To quote from his self-introduction over in the general chat board:

[quote]My username is ultimate (no pun intended!) and I'm new to this forum. Some of you may already have me on their radar.   

I like to prank people, like the guys from FridayNightCranks do, but I don't do pranks on the phone but on internet forums and communities. Check'em out. They are really funny!   

A friend of mine, who is a fan of interactive fiction, told me I should use my pranking skills to try to prank intfiction.org with some unusual posts without being called a "troll". It turns out I failed. This community is really hard to prank with.

Just wanted to inform (no pun intended!) you, so you don't wonder what my past posts were all about.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3407&start=0#p24216
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: print_unicode
User: cas / DateTime: 2011-10-14 15:04:32

Version 1.1 of the standard has this to say: “Unicode characters U+0000 to U+001F and U+007F to U+009F are control codes, and must not be used.”

I take this to mean that it's undefined behavior if such values are passed to @print_unicode.  I'd think it makes sense to convert values like newline to the proper ZSCII equivalent, but I'd also think it's not mandatory.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3410&start=0#p24217
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Two Points about ToaSK
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-14 15:17:18

I've been fielding emails about this stuff (dozens of them, all from one person), so I'm posting this here (and elsewhere) in the hopes of fending off a few repetitions. It's simple stuff relating to Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom (Release 7) and the released source code for same:

(A) The source code compiles perfectly (both to .z8 and to .glulx) in the environment it was coded for, using the versions of the extensions it was coded to work with, in the computing environment it was designed to compile in. Failure to compile [i]under other conditions[/i] does not constitute an error (neither an error of the source nor an error of the alternate environment you've attempted to shoehorn it into).

(B) The "Gunwar's Booty" file of bonus "extras" (meant for those who have completed the game at least once) opens perfectly for the correct password. Failure to open for an [i]incorrect [/i]password does not mean the file is corrupt, the clues are broken, or the game-file contains incorrect numbers. All it means is that you have the wrong password.

As the Doc says, folks, this ain't rocket surgery.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=20#p24218
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-14 15:19:54

[quote="Ron Newcomb"](I believe the code at <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3264&start=0#p23302">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3264&start=0#p23302</a> fixes that issue.)[/quote]
How funny, and embarrassing, that you anticipated and answered my question, and I forgot about it! I think I mainly skipped over it because it uses indexed text, but it looks like "the player's command matches the text ','" is useful in itself. I didn' t know there was [i]any[/i] way to detect a comma.

[quote]However, I am seriously considering spinning off that part of the parser to its own rulebook, as a way of shortening Parser__parse, if no other reason.[/quote]
I'm all for spinning off parts of the parser, especially that one!

Functions that are too big to fit on one screen are a pet peeve of mine.  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3381&start=10#p24219
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Second Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competi
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-14 15:31:35

[quote="emshort"]What bewilders me is why anyone is bothering to respond to ultimate about this at all. [/quote]

I think, if his trolling differed significantly from the posts of many others on the subject (those who aren't avowed trolls, I mean), that might help [emote]:([/emote]

On the other hand, it does mean he's failing at his goal as he describes it, since his posts are not at all "unusual," just echoes of what others are already saying.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3407&start=0#p24221
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: print_unicode
User: MikeG / DateTime: 2011-10-14 15:41:05

[quote="cas"]Version 1.1 of the standard has this to say: “Unicode characters U+0000 to U+001F and U+007F to U+009F are control codes, and must not be used.”

I take this to mean that it's undefined behavior if such values are passed to @print_unicode.  I'd think it makes sense to convert values like newline to the proper ZSCII equivalent, but I'd also think it's not mandatory.[/quote]

Interesting, I missed that one today. That seems to reinforce section 3.8.5.1 which says that the unicode characters agree with ZSCII in the range 32 to 126.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3411&start=0#p24222
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Help: Last point in Lost Pig?
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-10-14 15:44:34

"Lost Pig" is an awesomely fun game. But after completing it I am wondering how to get that last point.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3411&start=0#p24225
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Help: Last point in Lost Pig?
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-10-14 16:08:29

[spoiler]The last point is fairly complicated; there are a lot of things you have to do and it's not immediately obvious that they're related (or even that they should matter). The idea is that you have to impress your gnome friend by cleaning up after yourself before you leave: Put the chair back where you found it, close and lock the chest, close the final door behind you, etc. I don't remember what all the criteria are exactly, but it's not hard when you know what you're doing.

The reward for getting every point is totally worth it.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3381&start=10#p24226
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Second Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competi
User: ultimate / DateTime: 2011-10-14 16:09:18

[quote="David Whyld"]... the forum’s resident mud-slinger.[/quote]

Hey mud-slinger, what about the ring trick? You know that one?

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LzZhidarXs&feature=fvwrel">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LzZhida ... ure=fvwrel</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3411&start=0#p24227
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Help: Last point in Lost Pig?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-14 16:11:21

That is one [i]classy [/i]last point. [emote]:)[/emote] Man o man what a good game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3381&start=10#p24228
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Second Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competi
User: ultimate / DateTime: 2011-10-14 16:13:15

[quote="emshort"]What bewilders me is why anyone is bothering to respond to ultimate about this at all. To quote from his self-introduction over in the general chat board:[/quote]

Very smart you digged that up. But this time it is not a prank.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3409&start=0#p24229
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform7 Quick Changes to Printed Names
User: SJ_43 / DateTime: 2011-10-14 16:16:29

Try this:
[code]Before printing the name of something useless, say "damaged ".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3407&start=0#p24230
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: print_unicode
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-14 16:21:47

Seems weird -- newline and tab *are* control codes, equally so in ASCII and Unicode.

But I see that Frotz prints question marks for 0-31. If the spec says it and Frotz does it, that's pretty much a Security Council majority. :)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3409&start=0#p24231
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform7 Quick Changes to Printed Names
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-14 16:29:25

Also:

Understand "damaged" as a thing when the item described is useless.

{Sorry, three edits in a row, I shouldn't post without testing...]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3328&start=20#p24232
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Site Logo
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2011-10-14 16:45:00

Using a more text-based approach (including using Fixedsys as a font, the default console font in Windows), I came up with this. It has a transparent background, and yes, it blinks. Gently, though.
[attachment=0]twisty.gif[/attachment]

Note that I'm staying in the size boundaries of the original post; I'm fairly certain I can make it bigger, but I don't know what size the forum (and the members' bandwidth) will tolerate.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3381&start=10#p24233
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Second Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competi
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-14 16:50:07

[quote="matt w"]Oooh, I propose UpdateComp. Everyone submits a game, then halfway through they have to submit an update that starts out the same but goes somewhere totally different. You could include some sort of Speed-IF style key that has to be included in the update to prevent people from cheating by preparing their updates in advance.[/quote]
Awesome! But updates should have to be according to the suggestions from reviewers (who would share the shame or glory of updated entries). It could run as a kind of marathon until nobody could be bothered to submit yet another update.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3396&start=10#p24234
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What not to wear
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-14 16:54:30

[quote]So we have three different types: A list of things of some kind, an instruction to work out a list of things of some kind, and a description of objects. Can anyone explain the difference?[/quote]

"Worn garments" and "garments worn by the player" are descriptions. Descriptions are a core I7 feature, but they are not values, and you can't store them in variables. That's because a description is a bit of code that can be used in various ways; it may describe different objects every time it is evaluated.

[code]
let D be the number of worn garments;
now all worn garments are smelly;
repeat with T running through worn garments: ...
[/code]

A list is a value; it's a data structure containing some things. Its contents are set when you build the thing, and then don't change unless you explicitly change the list. (This is a mutable array in the usual programming language sense.) (The confusion here comes from the fact that lists were added to I7 only recently. Descriptions have been in since the beginning.)

You can build a list from a description:

[code]
let L be the list of worn garments;
[/code]

That evaluates the description and sets L to its contents at that moment.

(You could also make a description based on a list, but it's awkward and requires some ancilliary relation verbs.)

Further confusion: there's a standard "say" phrase in the library defined this way:

[code]
To say a list of (OS - description of objects): ...
[/code]

So when you say "I see [a list of worn garments]," you're not creating a list at all. (Again, this dates from the days before I7 had a list type.) If you define L as above, and then say "I see [L]," you're actually invoking different code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3411&start=0#p24235
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Help: Last point in Lost Pig?
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-10-14 16:54:59

Haha, thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3381&start=10#p24236
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Second Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competi
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2011-10-14 16:55:50

[quote="matt w"]Oooh, I propose UpdateComp. Everyone submits a game, then halfway through they have to submit an update that starts out the same but goes somewhere totally different.[/quote]
When I read this, I pictured a "Whos Line Is It Anyway" style contest; write a short game (in, say, a week), then you have one week to make it into a Western, then another week to make it into a comedy sketch, then horror, etc. - where the 'genre' is chosen from a hat (full of suggestions, as noted by Felix).

Four-five weeks of heavy coding and game-writing... Now that could be fun :-D

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3396&start=10#p24237
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What not to wear
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-10-14 17:06:22

[quote="zarf"][code]
let L be the list of worn garments;
[/code]

That evaluates the description and sets L to its contents at that moment.[/quote]

...and this is why the code "let L be the list of things worn by the actor" should be allowed by the compiler. There is no need for the compiler to store the actor; all it needs to do is evaluate the description and save the list of things to L.

[quote="zarf"]
Further confusion: there's a standard "say" phrase in the library defined this way:

[code]
To say a list of (OS - description of objects): ...
[/code]

So when you say "I see [a list of worn garments]," you're not creating a list at all. (Again, this dates from the days before I7 had a list type.) If you define L as above, and then say "I see [L]," you're actually invoking different code.[/quote]

I succumbed to this confusion in my post above.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3396&start=10#p24238
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What not to wear
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-14 17:27:32

Right, the "descriptions used as values are not allowed to contain references to temporary variables" problem. I have no good answer for that. In theory, I agree with you. In theory, I also see why it's hard for the compiler to know which phrases use a description "in place" and which phrases store the description. 

There may also be scoping issues. A description based on local variables may not be abstractable as a separate function. (Although "the actor" is not actually a local variable; it's a rulebook variable, so I6 code *can* access it...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3381&start=10#p24239
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Second Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competi
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-14 18:18:04

[quote="Felix"][quote="matt w"]Oooh, I propose UpdateComp. Everyone submits a game, then halfway through they have to submit an update that starts out the same but goes somewhere totally different. You could include some sort of Speed-IF style key that has to be included in the update to prevent people from cheating by preparing their updates in advance.[/quote]
Awesome! But updates should have to be according to the suggestions from reviewers (who would share the shame or glory of updated entries). It could run as a kind of marathon until nobody could be bothered to submit yet another update.[/quote]

Well, only so long as the reviewers aren't providing [i]constructive[/i] criticism. I don't want to see gradual improvements, I want to see "OK, now make Victor Pavlovich run off and join the circus."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3381&start=10#p24240
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Second Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competi
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-10-14 18:54:26

[quote="matt w"]Well, only so long as the reviewers aren't providing [i]constructive[/i] criticism.[/quote]
Now I'm envisaging the competition as a Speed-IF interpretation of [url=http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2470/the-extraordinary-adventures-of-baron-munchausen]The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen[/url]. "But my dear Baroness, surely you must be mistaken in saying I could make no impression upon the lunar surface. For as everyone knows, the moon is made of green cheese."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3412&start=0#p24241
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Request for the comp organizers
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-14 18:59:37

Over here -- <a class="postlink" href="http://ifcomp.org/comp11/download.html">http://ifcomp.org/comp11/download.html</a>  -- provides handy links for downloading the interpreters "Z-code and Glulx and TADS."   I actually went back to that page cause I can't get an offline Adrift title running.  Could the organizers stick some more links up there?

Neither my Gargoyle (either of them) nor my Zoom is working.  Adrift uses a separate program to run those games, yes?   (See, I was hoping the comp page would've had all the answers.)

EDIT TO ADD:  it seems doubly odd because TADS hasn't been the #2 system for a couple of years now, IIRC.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3412&start=0#p24242
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Request for the comp organizers
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-10-14 19:31:54

I don't think there is a working OS X interpreter for Adrift 5 games at the moment, so you'll need to play [i]Return to Camelot[/i] online (or on a PC).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3412&start=0#p24243
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Request for the comp organizers
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-14 19:36:09

I was aiming at [i]Curses[/i]. 

And: crappola.  But thanks for the quick reply.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3412&start=0#p24244
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Request for the comp organizers
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-14 19:37:54

Hey waitaminute, if Adrift is Windows-only, then why do both my terps purport to support them?   Oh, Curses is v5 and the terps are v4, right?  Bother.  Thanks again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3412&start=0#p24245
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Request for the comp organizers
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-14 19:42:38

Have you tried Spatterlight? I played How Suzy Got Her Powers in Spatterlight -- it didn't display perfectly, but I was able to complete the game. 

When I try to launch The Ascot in Zoom I get this:

[quote]Zoom CocoaGlk Plugin
Will read data from: /Users/mcweiner/Downloads/YNKaboom.taf
Launching client: scare-terp
Glk client has terminated
Client crashed with code 5[/quote]

which makes me think Zoom thinks it supports ADRIFT (SCARE is the ADRIFT terp that Spatterlight uses), but it don't.

EDIT: I think both Suzy and Cursed are ADRIFT 4. David Whyld might be able to tell us if running Suzy under SCARE introduces bugs beyond the display thing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3412&start=0#p24246
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Request for the comp organizers
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-10-14 20:18:06

I successfully played the Alan game and the two ADRIFT 4 games in Gargoyle on Mac OS X (they didn't work in Zoom and I didn't try Spatterlight, as it's kind of old and creaky); the ADRIFT 5 and the Quest game I played online. Everything else was either web-based or worked fine for me in Zoom, which remains my default interpreter.

So possibly if you're not getting ADRIFT 4 to run in your Gargoyle, that means you need to update its plug-in for ADRIFT? I'm not sure, but my Gargoyle was a fresh download for the comp and needed no further modification to deal with those two.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3381&start=10#p24247
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Second Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competi
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-10-14 20:50:59

Or something like a gradual version of the blurb-based Speed IF.  The author submits a short work, a critic says, "oh, I wish it were more like [such and such ridiculous thing]," the author adds another location or NPC or puzzle, rinse and repeat...  We could even have the authors trade works with each other after each round of reviews, to bring in an IF Whispers element.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3412&start=0#p24249
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Request for the comp organizers
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-10-14 21:03:32

The ADRIFT games should run in Gargoyle and Spatterlight. I don't think I've ever seen Zoom play an ADRIFT game correctly, though... whether it's not displaying variables correctly, changing display, or just plain not functioning... maybe it's no longer supported? I dunno.

Just checked games on Spatterlight and they seem to work, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3381&start=10#p24251
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Second Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competi
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-14 22:00:39

[quote="Emerald"]Now I'm envisaging the competition as a Speed-IF interpretation of [url=http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2470/the-extraordinary-adventures-of-baron-munchausen]The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen[/url]. "But my dear Baroness, surely you must be mistaken in saying I could make no impression upon the lunar surface. For as everyone knows, the moon is made of green cheese."[/quote]

Ah, memories.

I remember sitting behind Derek Pearcy, looking over his shoulder while he was doing some graphic production on that thing for James ... he was rhapsodizing about Gustave Doré and how they got away without needing an art budget [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3130&start=0#p24256
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Problem
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-10-15 03:38:14

Sorry for coming back to this.
[code]
Understand the command "turn" as something new. Left-turning is an action applying to one thing. Understand "turn [something] left" and "turn [something] to the left" and "rotate [something] left" as left-turning.
Check Left-turning when the noun is the left statue: say "TEST" instead.
[/code]
results in "I didn't understand that sentence." when entering "turn left statue left". I suspect that's because the original "turn" rule applies. What must I do about this?

[size=50]If you brrod over the time gap, I was busy with my main game.[/size]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3412&start=0#p24259
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Request for the comp organizers
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-10-15 04:15:07

If you are unable to get them to run on anything else, WebRunner now does a much better job of running v4 games than when the comp began. I've also released a new v5 download which handles the same.

As for the Mac, if you have Mono installed the Linux version may well run on this, but I haven't had the opportunity to check.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3381&start=20#p24260
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Second Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competi
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-10-15 07:27:37

[quote="Robert Rothman"]I would point out, however, that I think David's concern may not be all that realistic.  If anybody is skilled enough to write an entirely new polished piece in one day, he probably doesn't need to engage in the subterfuge of calling it an "update" of the previous day's less well-polished (and totally different) piece.[/quote]

Actually, I don't think for a second someone will do that. What I think is more likely is someone writing several different versions of the same game then submitting them one after another in an effort to abuse the rule.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3414&start=0#p24261
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Git and Windows Glk updates
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-10-15 07:29:50

Following Zarf pushing out the Glk 0.7.3 spec and Glulxe 0.4.7, there are related new versions of the following:

* Git (Iain Merrick's fast Glulx interpreter) 1.2.9, which includes several corrections that follow similar fixes in Glulxe 0.4.7, notably a long-standing bug in the dispatch later.

* Windows Glk library 1.43, which supports all the new sound functions in the Glk 0.7.3 specification.

* New executable builds of Windows Glulxe and Windows Git, which are the latest Glulxe and Git interpreters built against the latest Windows Glk library. Unless you're actually involved in writing interpreters this will be what you want - these can be downloaded from the IF-Archive:
[url]http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXprogrammingXglulxXinterpretersXglulxe.html[/url]
[url]http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXprogrammingXglulxXinterpretersXgit.html[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3408&start=0#p24262
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: advice on easy-to-start platforms?
User: 1000T / DateTime: 2011-10-15 07:44:25

Thanks! 

Your suggestions are really spot on, complexity-wise. However, nothing is ever as easy as it should be...:

[b]Twine:[/b] browsing through its Google Groups, it seems the project is abandoned by its developer. Have you completed a story in Twine/Twee, Tove? (It looks really promising, but if the program can't handle non-trivial programs I'm hesitant to dive in. It also appears the main thrust is supporting the "Jonah" style with expanding/collapsing passages and not the "usual" style of hyperlinked pages here called "Sugarcane"). In short, can you point toward any finished (or even semi-finished) Twine-driven story that can allay my fears the project isn't stable enough for a real project? (Normally the developer would be eager to highlight these on the homepage. Not finding any is the main reason to not jump in head first)


[b]ChoiceScript:[/b] here I have completely different concerns. Put simply: how do you distribute your finished story for others to read? 

I mean, by posting say a link to a zip archive at this forum, so that I can post my work completely anonymously, and that you can read it whereever you want, also anonymously. Is there a ChoiceScript reader you can download and use to read the ChoiceScript games I create? (I'm not interested in involving ChoiceOfGames and/or making money. I definitely don't want to be restricted to a platform that requires some kind of approval process or censoring scheme)

Possibly this is a stupid question with an obvious answer, but since I couldn't find anything surfing their website...



I am still grateful - both suggestions are definitely in the right ball-park for my needs. If anyone can just vouch Twine is minimally robust, or that ChoiceScript stories can be published completely independently, I'll probably use one of them.

But feel free to suggest other solutions in the meanwhile! [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3381&start=20#p24264
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Second Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competi
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-10-15 08:02:46

[quote="David Whyld"]What I think is more likely is someone writing several different versions of the same game then submitting them one after another in an effort to abuse the rule.[/quote]
I'm hesitant to get involved in this, but I still don't understand why anyone would do such a thing. Ok, you might do it if your only goal in participating to the comp is to find and exploit loopholes, but there's [i]no way[/i] that anyone could improve their final score by doing something like this. Judging by the reactions here any update that would go against the spirit of the rule would be severely punished by the judges. Any potential benefit from getting higher points from anyone who doesn't notice the switch would be overwhelmingly negated by the general reaction (there are not that many voters and word travels fast.)

And if you really have made two different games, what's the point in trying to switch between them mid-comp? Wouldn't it be much more reasonable to submit them both in the first place?

So I'm not sure why there's such an outrage over a potential abuse that would not have any positive effect to anyone who would use it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3408&start=0#p24266
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: advice on easy-to-start platforms?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-10-15 08:31:12

You might want to take a look at these two Inform 7 extensions: [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Mark%20Tilford/Simple%20CYOA/index.html]Simple CYOA[/url] and [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Edward%20Griffiths/Adventure%20Book/index.html]Adventure Book[/url]. I haven't used them but it looks like you could use them easily without knowing much about Inform 7, but if you need more power you could use Inform to add any level of complexity you need.

Then there's [url=http://undum.com]Undum[/url] which is a JavaScript hypertext fiction framework. It's not as easy to get started with as the other options but it's not [i]that[/i] much harder, and having some experience with TADS helps.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3130&start=0#p24267
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Problem
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-15 09:21:44

[quote]I suspect that's because the original "turn" rule applies.[/quote]

No, you successfully eliminated the original "turn" grammar with your "understand ... as something new" line.

The problem here is that, by default, I7 doesn't enforce any ordering of adjectives and nouns. So "x statue", "x left statue", and "x statue left" are all equivalent. For your grammar, it matches "turn" as the verb, matches "statue left" as the noun, and then fails to find the word "left" to complete the grammar line.

The solution is easy: you have to make the statue respond to "left statue" but not "statue left".

[code]
The left-statue is here. The printed name is "left statue".
Understand "statue", "left statue" as the left-statue.
[/code]

(When you add a right statue, you'll get correct disambiguation on "turn statue left".)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3408&start=0#p24268
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: advice on easy-to-start platforms?
User: George / DateTime: 2011-10-15 09:29:22

[quote]Again, if there were a service that allowed you your own wiki-ish thing (automatically storing the story/adventure with public web access as well as automatically hyperlinking the different pages), and it allowed you to set a bunch of game variables as well as lock your pages using a password, then that would be super-great. [/quote]

This sounds like what you want:

<a class="postlink" href="http://chooseyourstory.com">http://chooseyourstory.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3130&start=0#p24269
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Problem
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-15 09:41:53

With that out of the way, I would not actually knock out the original turn grammar. This works well:

[code]

Left-turning is an action applying to one thing. 
Right-turning is an action applying to one thing. 

Understand "turn [something] left" and "turn [something] to the left" as left-turning.
Understand "turn [something] right" and "turn [something] to the right" as right-turning.

Carry out left-turning:
	say "Turned [the noun] left."
Carry out right-turning:
	say "Turned [the noun] right."

Check turning the left-statue:
	instead say "You could turn it left or right."
Check turning the right-statue:
	instead say "You could turn it left or right."
[/code]

Now "turn wheel" works as usual (which you may want elsewhere in the game). "Turn left statue" tells the player to be more specific.

Note that the more-specific reply is *not* phrased in the form of a question. This is because the parser's disambiguator isn't engaged. If you print "Do you want to turn the left statue left or right?" then the player will type "left", which won't work. 

Unfortunately, there is no built-in way for you to get the disambiguator lined up. (There's an extension which does this, but don't get into that until you're more familiar with the basic I7 model.)

If you use a kind of value, it gets slightly simpler:

[code]
Rotation is a kind of value. The rotations are left and right.

Dir-turning is an action applying to one thing and one rotation. 

Understand "turn [something] [rotation]" as dir-turning.
Understand "turn [something] to [rotation]" as dir-turning.
Understand "turn [something] to the [rotation]" as dir-turning.

Carry out dir-turning:
	say "Turned [the noun] [the rotation understood]."

Check turning the left-statue:
	instead say "You could turn it left or right."
Check turning the right-statue:
	instead say "You could turn it left or right."
[/code]

Now there's only one special action, not two.

Also, it's probably a good idea to make the statues distinct in some other way! If one of them is "chipped" and the other is "worn", a player uncomfortable with the "turn left statue left" thing will have an alternative way to phrase it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3396&start=10#p24270
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What not to wear
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-10-15 10:09:34

Okay, thanks everybody for your help. capmikee's comment on relationships was a huge help and let me greatly simplify everything. Here's the code I currently have which seems to work fairly well (so far, I haven't really tested it with multiple NPC's yet):

[spoiler][code]
"What not to wear II" by Anonymous

Part 1 - Body areas

Body-area is a kind of value. The body-areas are feet, lower-body, legs, hips, upper-body, full-body, head, none.

[relates with areas include other areas]
Body-includes relates various body-area to various body-areas. The verb to body-include (it body-includes, they body-include, it body-included, it is body-including) implies the body-includes relation. The verb to be body-included by implies the reversed body-includes relation.

full-body body-includes hips, legs and upper-body. lower-body body-includes hips and legs.

[identity relationships]
feet body-includes feet. lower-body body-includes lower-body. legs body-includes legs. hips body-includes hips. upper-body body-includes upper-body. full-body body-includes full-body. head body-includes head.

Part 2 - Garments

Chapter 1 - Defining base kinds

A garment-element is a kind of thing. A garment-element has a number called the layer-level. A garment-element has a body-area called the area.

[not actually needed - but you might add body-parts and then test if they are covered in a similar way to testing if a garment covers another garment]
A body-part is a kind of garment-element. A body-part has layer-level 0.

A garment is a kind of garment-element. A garment is wearable. A garment can be transparent. 

A pair of pants is a kind of garment. The plural of pair of pants is pairs of pants. The area of a pair of pants is lower-body. A pair of pants usually has layer-level 5.

A pair of underpants is a kind of garment. The plural of pair of underpants is pairs of underpants. The area of a pair of underpants is hips. A pair of underpants usually has layer-level 2.

A foundation garment is a kind of garment. The area of a foundation garment is upper-body. A foundation garment usually has layer-level 2.

A pair of socks is a kind of garment. The plural of pair of socks is pairs of socks. The area of a pair of socks is feet. A pair of socks usually has layer-level 2.

A pair of shoes is a kind of garment. The plural of pair of shoes is pairs of shoes. The area of a pair of shoes is feet. A pair of shoes usually has layer-level 5.

A jacket is a kind of garment. The area of a jacket is usually upper-body. A jacket usually has layer-level 10.

A hat is a kind of garment. The area of a hat is head. A hat usually has layer-level 5.

A dress is a kind of garment. The area of a dress is full-body. A dress usually has layer-level 5.

A skirt is a kind of garment. The area of a skirt is lower-body. A skirt usually has layer-level 5.

A tie is a kind of garment. The area of a tie is upper-body. A tie usually has layer-level 7. A tie is always transparent.

A shirt is a kind of garment.  The area of a shirt is upper-body. A shirt usually has layer-level 5.

Chapter 2 - Relationships

Definition: a garment-element is uppermost if it is not unwearable because of something opaque. 

Clothing conflict relates a garment (called the top layer) to a garment (called the conflicting layer) when the conflicting layer is worn by the person asked and the top layer conflicts with the conflicting layer.

The verb to be unwearable because of implies the clothing conflict relation.

The verb to prevent wearing (he prevents wearing, they prevent wearing, he prevented wearing, he is preventing wearing) implies the reversed clothing conflict relation.

To decide if (top layer - a garment) conflicts with (conflicting layer - a garment):
	[simplest case - if the two garment are the same, they don't conflict]
	if the top layer is the conflicting layer:
		decide no;
	[simple case - if the top layer has a higher level, it doesn't conflict]
	if the layer-level of the top layer is greater than the layer-level of the conflicting layer:
		decide no;
	[some part of the top layer area = some part of the conflicting layer area]
	otherwise if a body-area body-included by the area of the conflicting layer is body-included by the area of the top layer:
		decide yes;
	otherwise:
		decide no;

Chapter 3 - Rules for handling garments

Section 1 - removing
	
Before an actor taking off something which is unwearable because of something which is worn by the actor:
	while the noun is unwearable because of something (called the impediment) which is worn by the actor:
		say "(first removing [the impediment])[command clarification break]"; 
		silently try actor taking off the impediment; 
		if the noun is unwearable because of the impediment, stop the action.
		
Check an actor taking off a garment: 
    if the noun is unwearable because of something (called the impediment) which is worn by the actor, say "[The impediment] is in the way." instead. 

Report taking off something: 
    say "You are now wearing [a list of uppermost things worn by the player]." instead. 
        
Section 2 - wearing
	
Before an actor wearing something unwearable because of a garment worn by the actor:
	while the actor wears a garment (called the impediment) which prevent wearing  the noun:
		say "(first removing [the impediment])[command clarification break]"; 
		silently try actor taking off the impediment; 
		if the actor is wearing the impediment, stop the action.
		 
Instead of taking inventory: 
	say "You're carrying [a list of things carried by the player][if the player wears something]. You are wearing [a list of uppermost garments worn by the player][end if]." 

Part 3 - The Scenario 


The Dressing Room is a room. 


The player carries some capris, some jeans, a corset, a plunge bra, a thong, boy-shorts, black satin D'Orsay pumps, brown leather boots, a camisole, a cocktail dress, a bolero, a cashmere shrug, a sheer wrap, and a linen tunic. 


The woolly socks are a pair of socks. 
The D'Orsay pumps and the brown leather boots are pairs of shoes. 
The thong and the boy-shorts are pairs of underpants. 
The capris and the jeans are pairs of pants. 
The tunic is a shirt. 
The camisole, the corset, and the plunge bra are foundation garments. 
The cocktail dress is a dress. 
The bolero, the cashmere shrug, and the sheer wrap are jackets. The shrug and the wrap are transparent. 


Test me with "wear capris / wear jeans / i / wear thong / i / wear dress / wear corset / wear dress / i / wear wrap / i / wear boots / wear pumps / i". 
[/code][/spoiler]

Any comments? Criticisms? 

I learnt a lot about inform by doing this, the sad part is that I'm not sure I can really think of too many scenarios where this level of clothing detail might actually be useful, so I might well end up never using it. Still, finding the limitations of the original example compelled me to try and find a more efficient solution.

With a little tweaking, a similar system could be created for a situation where you have to keep track of items overlying (either completely or partially) over items.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3408&start=0#p24271
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: advice on easy-to-start platforms?
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-10-15 11:20:32

If you just want to concentrate on the story, you can't really go wrong with [url=http://www.adrift.co]ADRIFT[/url]...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3408&start=0#p24272
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: advice on easy-to-start platforms?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-15 11:41:24

Anna Anthropy's [url=http://www.auntiepixelante.com/encyclopediafuckme]Encyclopedia F*ckme and the Case of the Missing Entree[/url] is a story that just appeared that was made with Twee -- same underlying system as Twine, but I think it means she didn't use the GUI. So I think it means that it's definitely stable enough to support a finished product. (Content warning: well, look at the title. Also, [url=http://www.auntiepixelante.com/?p=1271#comment-50009]Christine Love[/url] who is not entirely erotica-averse said "This kind of really freaked me out." Also, if anyone knows exactly how to get the winning ending, let me know.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3408&start=0#p24273
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: advice on easy-to-start platforms?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-10-15 12:00:45

[quote="1000T"][b]ChoiceScript:[/b] here I have completely different concerns. Put simply: how do you distribute your finished story for others to read?[/quote]

There were a fair number of ChoiceScript entries in [url=http://www.allthingsjacq.com/introcomp/]IntroComp[/url] this year. Check out the Comp games to get a sense of what that feels like for the player. It's just a zip file that they unpack, and then they double-click the index page to launch the game.

You can also host your game on another website, though if you don't go through Choice of Games, you're restricted to noncommercial use - no ads on the site.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3381&start=20#p24274
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Second Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competi
User: ultimate / DateTime: 2011-10-15 12:24:01

[quote="David Whyld"]What I think is more likely is someone writing several different versions of the same game then submitting them one after another in an effort to abuse the rule.[/quote]

It's funny that YOU talk about people abusing rules. You have a game running in this competition and you have insulted me as a "mud-slinger". You better control yourself, mud-slinger. Remember, I'm a judge and I can do the [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LzZhidarXs]ring trick[/url] on you! At first I thought you were serious, because you agreed with me. But now that you called me a "mud-slinger" I don't take you seriously.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3408&start=0#p24275
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: advice on easy-to-start platforms?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-10-15 13:08:28

I haven't done anything more than a test program in Twine, but as mattw said, Anna Anthropy has done a few projects in Twine that she's posted.  Encyclopedia F*ckme and [url=http://www.auntiepixelante.com/?p=488]Choose Your Own Predicament[/url] are both NSFW.  I haven't played through [url=http://www.auntiepixelante.com/secrets/]Afternoon in the House of Secrets[/url], but, well, it's Anna Anthropy so expect the unexpected.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3408&start=10#p24276
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: advice on easy-to-start platforms?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-15 13:16:00

Afternoon in the House of Secrets is safe for work (unless there's a secret I've missed). The central puzzle can be super frustrating, so I'm going to post the solution below a spoiler tag.

[spoiler]The combination is printed invisibly between the paragraphs of the room descriptions. Highlight to see it.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3396&start=10#p24277
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What not to wear
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-10-15 14:08:58

So one last thing. I wanted to implement partial covering logic for deciding if a garment is uppermost. Right now we do this:

[code]Definition: a garment-element is uppermost if it is not unwearable because of something opaque. [/code]

What I want to do is replace that with a slightly more advanced logic. If (to use the what not to wear example) you wear the dress and the opaque jacket (the bolero - whatever that is) you should be able to still see the dress even though you can't remove it because of the jacket (unless I'm completely misunderstand what a bolero is and it's something more akin to a trench coat). So, what I want to do when deciding if something is uppermost is test whether any part of the body area it covers is not covered by something else.

I've been trying something along these lines, but can't quite get it to work:

[code]
To decide if (item - a garment) is uppermost on (actor - a person):
	if the area of the item is not complex:
		if the item is not unwearable because of something opaque:
			decide yes;
		otherwise:
			decide no;
	otherwise:
		repeat with test-area running through body-area body-included by the area of the item:			
[the next condition I can't figure out - what I have here isn't any where close and won't compile anyway]
			if the layer-level of a garment worn by the actor is greater than the layer-level of the item:
				decide yes;
		decide no;
[/code]

That last condition should say something equivalent to if there are no garments worn by the actor with a layer-level greater than the layer-level of the item which include the body-area I'm testing, then I can decide yes, this item is uppermost (i.e. it should be listed in the inventory).

Any ideas?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3130&start=0#p24278
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Problem
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-10-15 14:28:45

Maybe one statue looks really sinister, and the other one looks really, um,



[size=50]dextrous[/size]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3396&start=20#p24279
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What not to wear
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-10-15 14:32:05

Okay, this seems to work for the time being:

[code]
Covering relates a garment (called item) to a body-area (called test-area) when the area of the item body-includes the test-area. The verb to cover (it covers, they cover, it is covering, it is covered) implies the covering relation.

Definition: a garment-element is uppermost if it is uppermost on the person asked.

To decide if (item - a garment) is uppermost on (actor - a person):
	if the area of the item is not complex:
		if the item is not unwearable because of something opaque:
			decide yes;
		otherwise:
			decide no;
	otherwise:
		repeat with test-area running through body-area body-included by the area of the item:			
			if the actor is wearing an opaque garment (called the coverer) which covers the test-area and the layer-level of the coverer is greater than the layer-level of the item:
				next;
			otherwise:
				decide yes;
		decide no;
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3396&start=20#p24281
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What not to wear
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-10-15 15:38:18

I was almost there, but I had some problems once I tried to introduce another NPC. It seems "the person asked" in the clothing conflict relationship doesn't really work right when I used it while trying to list the items an NPC was wearing. So I needed a subtly different relationship called "garment covers". The code below (maybe) fixes all the problems:

[spoiler][code]
"What not to wear II" by Anonymous

Part 1 - Body areas

Body-area is a kind of value. The body-areas are feet, lower-body, legs, hips, upper-body, full-body, head, none.

[relates with areas include other areas]
Body-includes relates various body-area to various body-areas. The verb to body-include (it body-includes, they body-include, it body-included, it is body-including) implies the body-includes relation. The verb to be body-included by implies the reversed body-includes relation.

full-body body-includes hips, legs and upper-body. lower-body body-includes hips and legs.

[identity relationships]
feet body-includes feet. lower-body body-includes lower-body. legs body-includes legs. hips body-includes hips. upper-body body-includes upper-body. full-body body-includes full-body. head body-includes head.

Definition: A body-area is complex rather than not complex if it body-includes more than one body-area.

Part 2 - Garments

Chapter 1 - Defining base kinds

A garment-element is a kind of thing. A garment-element has a number called the layer-level. A garment-element has a body-area called the area.

[not actually needed - but you might add body-parts and then test if they are covered in a similar way to testing if a garment covers another garment]
A body-part is a kind of garment-element. A body-part has layer-level 0.

A garment is a kind of garment-element. A garment is wearable. A garment can be transparent. 

A pair of pants is a kind of garment. The plural of pair of pants is pairs of pants. The area of a pair of pants is lower-body. A pair of pants usually has layer-level 5.

A pair of underpants is a kind of garment. The plural of pair of underpants is pairs of underpants. The area of a pair of underpants is hips. A pair of underpants usually has layer-level 2.

A foundation garment is a kind of garment. The area of a foundation garment is upper-body. A foundation garment usually has layer-level 2.

A pair of socks is a kind of garment. The plural of pair of socks is pairs of socks. The area of a pair of socks is feet. A pair of socks usually has layer-level 2.

A pair of shoes is a kind of garment. The plural of pair of shoes is pairs of shoes. The area of a pair of shoes is feet. A pair of shoes usually has layer-level 5.

A jacket is a kind of garment. The area of a jacket is usually upper-body. A jacket usually has layer-level 10.

A hat is a kind of garment. The area of a hat is head. A hat usually has layer-level 5.

A dress is a kind of garment. The area of a dress is full-body. A dress usually has layer-level 5.

A skirt is a kind of garment. The area of a skirt is lower-body. A skirt usually has layer-level 5.

A tie is a kind of garment. The area of a tie is upper-body. A tie usually has layer-level 7. A tie is always transparent.

A shirt is a kind of garment.  The area of a shirt is upper-body. A shirt usually has layer-level 5.

Chapter 2 - Relationships

Covering relates a garment (called item) to a body-area (called test-area) when the area of the item body-includes the test-area. The verb to cover (it covers, they cover, it is covering, it is covered) implies the covering relation.

Definition: a garment-element (called item) is uppermost if the item is uppermost on a random person wearing the item.

To decide if (item - a garment) is uppermost on (actor - a person):
	if (actor is nothing):
		decide yes;
	if the area of the item is not complex:
		[if the item is not unwearable because of something opaque:]
		if the item is not overlaid by something opaque:
			decide yes;
		otherwise:
			decide no;
	otherwise:
		repeat with test-area running through body-area body-included by the area of the item:			
			if the actor is wearing an opaque garment (called the coverer) which covers the test-area and the layer-level of the coverer is greater than the layer-level of the item:
				next;
			otherwise:
				decide yes;
		decide no;

Garment covers relates a garment (called the top layer) to a garment (called the bottom layer) when the bottom layer is worn by a random person wearing the top layer and the top layer conflicts with the bottom layer.

The verb to be overlaid by implies the garment covers relation.

Clothing conflict relates a garment (called the top layer) to a garment (called the conflicting layer) when the conflicting layer is worn by the person asked and the top layer conflicts with the conflicting layer.

The verb to be unwearable because of implies the clothing conflict relation.

The verb to prevent wearing (he prevents wearing, they prevent wearing, he prevented wearing, he is preventing wearing) implies the reversed clothing conflict relation.

To decide if (top layer - a garment) conflicts with (conflicting layer - a garment):
	[simplest case - if the two garment are the same, they don't conflict]
	if the top layer is the conflicting layer:
		decide no;
	[simple case - if the top layer has a higher level, it doesn't conflict]
	if the layer-level of the top layer is greater than the layer-level of the conflicting layer:
		decide no;
	[some part of the top layer area = some part of the conflicting layer area]
	otherwise if a body-area body-included by the area of the conflicting layer is body-included by the area of the top layer:
		decide yes;
	otherwise:
		decide no;

Chapter 3 - Rules for handling garments

Section 1 - removing
	
Before an actor taking off something which is unwearable because of something which is worn by the actor:
	while the noun is unwearable because of something (called the impediment) which is worn by the actor:
		say "(first removing [the impediment])[command clarification break]"; 
		silently try actor taking off the impediment; 
		if the noun is unwearable because of the impediment, stop the action.
		
Check an actor taking off a garment: 
    if the noun is unwearable because of something (called the impediment) which is worn by the actor, say "[The impediment] is in the way." instead. 

Report taking off something: 
    say "You are now wearing [a list of uppermost things worn by the player]." instead. 
        
Section 2 - wearing
	
Before an actor wearing something unwearable because of a garment worn by the actor:
	while the actor wears a garment (called the impediment) which prevent wearing  the noun:
		say "(first removing [the impediment])[command clarification break]"; 
		silently try actor taking off the impediment; 
		if the actor is wearing the impediment, stop the action.
		 
Instead of taking inventory: 
	say "You're carrying [a list of things carried by the player][if the player wears something]. You are wearing [a list of uppermost garments worn by the player][end if]." 

Section 3 - The Scenario 


The Dressing Room is a room. 


some capris, some jeans, a corset, a plunge bra, a thong, boy-shorts, black satin D'Orsay pumps, brown leather boots, a camisole, a cocktail dress, a bolero, a cashmere shrug, a sheer wrap, and a linen tunic are in the dressing room.


The woolly socks are a pair of socks. 
The D'Orsay pumps and the brown leather boots are pairs of shoes. 
The thong and the boy-shorts are pairs of underpants. 
The capris and the jeans are pairs of pants. 
The tunic is a shirt. 
The camisole, the corset, and the plunge bra are foundation garments. 
The cocktail dress is a dress. 
The bolero, the cashmere shrug, and the sheer wrap are jackets. The shrug and the wrap are transparent. 

Jane Doe is a person in the dressing room. The description of Jane is "Jane is carrying [a list of things carried by Jane][if Jane wears something]. Jane is wearing [a list of uppermost garments worn by Jane][end if]."   

Persuasion rule for asking somebody to try doing something: 
	persuasion succeeds.

Test me with "take all / wear capris / wear jeans / i / wear thong / i / wear dress / wear corset / wear dress / i / wear wrap / i / wear boots / wear pumps / i". 

Test jane with "jane, take all / jane, wear thong / jane, wear dress / x jane / jane, wear bra / x jane / jane, wear dress / jane, wear bolero / x jane / jane, remove dress".
[/code][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3338&start=0#p24282
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Can't get to ifcomp.org
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2011-10-15 15:51:30

Just an update; suddenly, magically, I can get to the website again, from home at least. Strange, but I'm not complaining (any more)!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3415&start=0#p24285
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Games with falling scenes
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-10-15 16:52:50

Since my WIP includes one, I'm interested in a list of games with scenes where the player is falling from a great height, especially ones where a puzzle has to be solved before splatting on the ground. I seem to recall that one of the Zork series may have one?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3415&start=0#p24286
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Games with falling scenes
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-10-15 17:17:54

[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=v0a4wtgwepxumryc]Future Boy![/url] starts with a falling scene, as does [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=cpwktis6qwh9ydn8]Augmented Fourth[/url]. Then there's a Speed-IF called [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=qtb5hu2huk1w96no]AFGNCAAP - IF Agent! Todays Adventure: Holy Goat![/url] that starts with a scene where the PC is falling from an airplane.

I don't remember if any of these have a timer, though. Except [spoiler]Augmented Fourth where you're supposed to reach the bottom.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3408&start=10#p24287
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: advice on easy-to-start platforms?
User: 1000T / DateTime: 2011-10-15 17:24:36

Thanks everybody - this really was the right place to ask! [emote]:)[/emote]

Twee: Yes, I was made aware of Anna Anthropy quite recently (through the A.V. Club's coverage of cheap/free video games). Okay, so my hesitation against Twee disappears (and I will probably skip Twine completely).

ChoiceScript: Thanks, I'll check those entries out. I guess I was expecting something like this - I would have been surprised if you were forced to use CoG... but since there was *nothing* on their web pages to even hint at a non-CoG method of distribution I had to ask.

Simple CYOA and Adventure Book: I don't think they're right for me (the first being too simple and the second retaining text input) but I'll keep them in mind if I can't use my primary options.

Undum: I had a quick peek. It did look promising, but I guess better documentation - read "more immediate help to the impatient newcomer" - would have been necessary to hook me.

chooseyourstory.com: Sorry but no; the stuff there is moderated. And if the site goes down, it would have taken my work with it.

ADRIFT: Sorry, I'm not interested in text input. Need the game to provide choices as clickable buttons or links. I'm actively uninterested in putting players in the text equivalent of pixel-bitching dilemmas like "is it OPEN DOOR WITH KEY" or "USE KEY TO OPEN DOOR"... [emote]:)[/emote] Besides, fancy stuff like pictures or 3D maps only give me stage fright...


At the moment I'm going to go ahead with 1) Twee 2) CS
...but don't let that stop you all from posting more suggestions! 

I did google around a bit, finding these lists of resources:
<a class="postlink" href="http://members.tripod.com/~virtual_cat/games/complete.html">http://members.tripod.com/~virtual_cat/ ... plete.html</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Category:Authoring_system">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Categor ... ing_system</a>

...but all that did was take me from a state of knowing of no good (non-text) systems to learning about a bewildering overload of them...! [emote]:)[/emote] Meaning your suggestions still count - I will probably not check out a system not mentioned here...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3415&start=0#p24288
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Games with falling scenes
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-10-15 17:42:11

Flight of the Hummingbird is almost entirely about falling from a great height, and one of the chapters of Constraints, by Martin Bays, is entitled Falling and is about just that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3412&start=0#p24289
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Request for the comp organizers
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-15 17:43:43

Well if Em got that game running in Gargoyle without problems, I gave re-downloading it a try.  Now, even though the one I downloaded has the same time & date stamp as the one already on my system, it works and the previous didn't.  How weird is that? 

Anyway, thanks gang.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3381&start=20#p24290
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Second Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competi
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-15 18:09:09

[quote]I don't take you seriously.[/quote]

Mm.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3415&start=0#p24291
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Games with falling scenes
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-15 18:10:43

Spellbreaker.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3408&start=10#p24292
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: advice on easy-to-start platforms?
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-10-15 20:12:00

(I work on ChoiceScript at Choice of Games.) Our website doesn't discuss distributing CS games outside of our website because it's actually a bit tricky; we don't yet provide a build tool to roll everything up as one file like Twine, and this creates bugs on Google Chrome and Internet Explorer when running the game off of a filesystem. (I'll probably do some work in 2012 on making a build tool for ChoiceScript that generates an executable version that can be played more easily offline.)

So, for now, ChoiceScript games really are easier to play on a website (or as a mobile app), and ours is as good a place as any!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3396&start=20#p24293
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What not to wear
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-15 20:13:19

[quote="wjousts"]I learnt a lot about inform by doing this, the sad part is that I'm not sure I can really think of two many scenarios where this level of clothing detail might actually be useful, so I might well end up never using it.[/quote]
I don't think there's anything wrong with that. As Eric S. Reynolds describes it, you were "scratching a developer's itch." I've taken frequent breaks from working on my WIP to write extensions. I've found it a satisfying way to work out a problem that's on my mind without it interfering with the player experience of the actual game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=230#p24294
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Rymbeld / DateTime: 2011-10-15 22:08:48

Greetings! I am new to this forum and writing IF. Let's see...I'm 34, a grad student, and all-around bum. I recall playing text adventures as a child, and I played MUDs in my twenties, and now again I've been bitten by the IF bug. I've always wanted to write a text adventure game, but I don't have strong programming skills. However, I recently discovered Inform 7 and was blown away. This is something I've wanted for a long time. I remember dabbling around with BASIC back in the day, but never could figure out the more complex aspects of programming (in particular, I'm not good at quantitative thinking. Once numbers are involved my brain vanishes!). Anyway, I'm glad I found this forum, because I will probably have some questions about how to do things. Hopefully I'm not too annoying.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3252&start=10#p24295
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Wishlist for Comp 2011
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-10-15 22:12:10

Well, I get to check off two of my wishes tonight... tentatively in one case.  A pretty good judging day, all things considered. [emote]:)[/emote] 

[i]Cursed[/i] fits my definition of high fantasy.  It tends toward the classic Arthurian-esque model with the setting looking very much like a magical version of medieval Europe/England, but since it's not [u]actually[/u] set in a magical version of the past, I consider it an example of mythopeoeia (however that word is supposed to be spelled) -- artificially constructed myths that draw from real ones.  I'm thrilled to see a completely serious and sincere representation of my favorite genre, but I'm also a bit disappointed that I didn't get to explore the worldbuilding very much before I ran into the two-hour cutoff due to frustrating and (in my opinion) seemingly irrelevant puzzles.

[i]Cana Acording to Micah[/i] is not symbolic, and it does not necessarily follow that it makes serious use of Christian themes just because it's based on a setting out of the New Testament.  However, the end of the game clarifies any doubt that it does indeed use Christian themes in a serious way, connecting them to the player's actions.  It's a sincerely religious work that does not deserve to be labeled "preachy" in any way, at least in my opinion.  It's a work of art, not propaganda.  No need to worry about the likes of [i]Jarod's Journey[/i] here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=230#p24296
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: vivdunstan / DateTime: 2011-10-15 22:20:46

Welcome Rymbeld. Glad discovering Inform 7 has been so exciting for you. I must say I'm really inspired by it too. I have coded in MUDs before (LPC, an object oriented language), and a bit of Inform 6. But Inform 7 is the first time that writing text adventures has seemed quite so much fun, and interactive. Though MUDs came pretty close. I loved the way I could summon up objects and rooms in the game, while playing. It had that similar mix of playing and coding that Inform 7 seems to manage.

My problem isn't the programming one (my first degree was computer science), but more the creative / writing one. That's hampered me writing more text adventures. But I'm determined to overcome it and become more creative [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3396&start=20#p24297
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What not to wear
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-15 22:38:56

This is very cool. I was wrong earlier about "the person asked"; it seems to be whoever is either being asked to do something ortrying an action, whether or not they are doing so as a result of being asked to do something. Have I got that right? Anyway, I added this:

[code]Instead of singing when Jane wears the bolero:
	say "Jane says, 'I can't resist a musical pun.'";
	repeat with item running through things worn by Jane:
		if item is not the bolero:
			try Jane taking off item.[/code]

and Jane takes off the bolero if she is wearing something under it, as she ought. (I think this tells us what sort of game needs this kind of modeling -- roguelike-likes with various sorts of overlapping armor, of course.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3372&start=0#p24298
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How do you, personally, usually begin writing a game?
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-10-15 22:45:45

[quote="Glorb"]Using this process, I end up writing like six crappy stories, and then condensing the good ideas of each into something hopefully less crappy.[/quote]
Some of the best IF advice I ever was to combine ideas from different games ([url=http://www.brasslantern.org/writers/iftheory/setting.html]Emily short, "Developing a Setting for Fantastical IF"[/url]).  I've wanted to write IF for almost as long as I've been playing it, I'm not even sure why.  My best abandoned ideas, the ones with the potential to actually go somewhere, have always been built on the bones of less inspired ideas, both ideas that I originally conceived for IF or for something else.  Even my one published game, the Comp entry "Dreary Lands" from 2005, was based on an idea I had originally thought up for a junior-high short story assignment.

I think I do have an idea I can run with now, and I think I'm approximately in an alpha stage with the project (I had hoped to enter this years Comp a while back).  The first thing I did when the idea came to me was to make a map of the core part of the game with Trizbort.  Then I used Storybook to write a very crude mock transcript broken down my important scenes, with lots of glossing over unformed parts, notes, and database entries to represent the rooms and NPCs.  Then I implemented my map in Hugo code, including only scenery objects and the few puzzles necessary to allow the hole map to be traversed.  I tried to implement more, but I got stuck with details I hadn't fully worked out before.  I had to take a step back and write a totally new mock transcript, with more detailed notes on objects and my changed ideas for characters and plot.  In this second pre-script, I concentrated on nailing down all the important interactions into sequences that could definitely go into the final game without modifying much more than perhaps the wording of the prose.

I began implementing again [i]before[/i] I had completely finished this second script.  Once I nailed down the entire midgame and decided that I wouldn't change anything, I figured I might as well go back to coding.  I'm almost done with this second round of implementation, and I'm beginning to be overwhelmed by the amount of debugging that has to happen as I see the game start to come together.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3415&start=0#p24299
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Games with falling scenes
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-15 22:52:11

I think there may be one in [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=akinghyw9jcrg02z]Lurid Dreams[/url], though I'm not sure.

There's a fall in [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=3oez457dpng7ktzb]Snowquest[/url], though I'm not sure the falling part lasts long enough to be called a scene.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3415&start=0#p24300
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Games with falling scenes
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-15 23:32:27

All I know is that any falling scene is better if at least one character has a Slow Clap Processor.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3149&start=0#p24301
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Beta testers for The House of Fear
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-10-16 00:22:42

Obviously this didn't get released for IFComp, probably for the best.  I'll release it in a few days if no one else wants to have a look at the beta first.

(OK, I've probably got enough testers now.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3130&start=0#p24303
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Problem
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-10-16 04:44:19

Shalala, I'm on my way... Thanks Zarf!!!1

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3408&start=10#p24309
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: advice on easy-to-start platforms?
User: 1000T / DateTime: 2011-10-16 09:47:57

Hi dfabulich,

I actually registered on your CS google group, but I don't think the moderators there have approved my questions threads just yet. So I might just ask here as well:

When you download the zip file you can start playing the example directly. Am I getting you wrong, but that works off-line right? It's not just that I was lucky I used Firefox I hope... Regardless: my question was indeed if you need to do your story and wrap up that entire (now personalized) zip archive for distribution, and I guess I have my answer. Thanks.

The other question I asked (will be asking [emote];)[/emote] ) at Groups is this: 

Is ChoiceScript suitable only for strictly tree-based games? Or does it support going between, say, location A and B repeatedly. (Perhaps something random happens at location B each time you visit). I'm asking since I haven't seen any mention of proceeding through chapters in any other order than pure sequentially (as you define in that javascript file) A->B->C etc. And none of the games I've checked out (say Choice of Dragon) seem to divert from this strict order (making decisions regarding thing A, then moving on to decide on thing B, then thing C etc but never making repeat visits to thing A)... It's cool either way, I sure understand if you want to keep things simple by catering to linear stories only.

(An "ugly" solution like a goto command would suffice, as long as you're not limited to an arbitrary stack depth or something. I need a game engine allowing the story to go around and around an arbitrary number of circles. Which I now realize I probably should have specified already in my OP)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3408&start=10#p24310
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: advice on easy-to-start platforms?
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-10-16 10:48:21

Perhaps consider Quest: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.textadventures.co.uk/quest/">http://www.textadventures.co.uk/quest/</a>

I know you ruled out ADRIFT because you didn't want a parser in your game - Quest is similar BUT you don't have to have command input. Instead you can [url=http://www.textadventures.co.uk/blog/2011/07/11/eliminating-guess-the-verb/]use hyperlinks[/url] - players could play the entire game without having to type anything. If you want to enforce no typing, you can turn the command input box off.

This will give you the full flexibility of a system with a world model, so you can use scripts to check if the player has a particular object etc, but with a simple interface.

Quest games can be played in a web browser, and they can be packaged into iPhone apps too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3416&start=0#p24313
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: SF Bay IF Meetup in Berkeley Nov 5 1PM
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-10-16 12:22:49

We wound up playing "Spider and Web" last month instead of playing IFComp entries, because they weren't released until later that day. So we'll play a few IFComp entries THIS month instead. 

Some IFComp games are looking particularly great this year; try a few at ifcomp.org and suggest your favorites at the meetup. 

For more details, see the full listing: 
<a class="postlink" href="http://meetu.ps/4X6Zn">http://meetu.ps/4X6Zn</a>

When: Saturday, November 5, 2011, 1:00 PM 

Where: Au Coquelet, 
2000 University Ave 
Berkeley, CA 94701 
510 845-0433 

This Meetup repeats on the 1st Saturday of every month. 

If the changes affect your plans to attend, please take a moment to update your RSVP. (You can RSVP "No" or "Yes".) 

You can always get in touch with me through the Contact Us link on Meetup.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3408&start=10#p24314
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: advice on easy-to-start platforms?
User: 1000T / DateTime: 2011-10-16 12:34:28

Thanks, yes hyperlinks are acceptable. (Actually they're more than acceptable, providing the player with short lists of links to click on to choose between options is exactly what I want) So Quest is on the list!

Btw: I'm almost giving up on Twinkle, because 1) little to no activity in the support group 2) no real documentation (which macros are there?) 3) the GUI tool seems unstable and not really suited to larger projects 4) I've encountered bugs in my simple 5(!) paragraph test story. (The twee command line interface is something else and I've not given up there but I can't figure out to make it plus Python work  [emote]:oops:[/emote]  - again the instructions are [i]minimal[/i]; and besides, even if I get it up and running, I really do need a comprehensive reference document of the twee/twinkle language; several question are posted at the google groups but left unanswered for months). A shame really, it seemed to be wonderfully simple and yet powerful enough.

Also btw: Googling found this: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1778">viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1778</a> Interesting - everybody seem to agree there is a real need for exactly the tool I wish for  [emote]:)[/emote] 

A bit strange really - those TADS-like systems are incredibly complex, huge projects. Is it just me that is wondering how come such enormous resources have been spent on Infocom-style adventures but next to none on simpler tools. (I'm gathering you could create [i]ten[/i] twee's for even one tads!)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3408&start=10#p24315
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: advice on easy-to-start platforms?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-10-16 12:39:06

[quote="1000T"]Undum: I had a quick peek. It did look promising, but I guess better documentation - read "more immediate help to the impatient newcomer" - would have been necessary to hook me.[/quote]

Yeah, I'm really hoping that somebody who has figured out how to use Undum puts together a full tutorial.  The results I've seen so far have been really inspiring (Zarf's [url=http://eblong.com/zarf/zweb/matter/]The Matter of the Monster[/url], Jon Ingold's [url=http://www.archimedes.plus.com/shaggydog/flaws.html]Flaws[/url], and Dierdra Kiai's [url=http://www.deirdrakiai.com/theplay]The Play[/url] come immediately to mind), but I kind of just don't know where to start with it.  I'm sure I [i]could[/i] figure it out, but since I already know Inform 7, and would probably use Twine if I wanted to do CYOA, there's just slightly too much inertia.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3408&start=10#p24316
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: advice on easy-to-start platforms?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-16 13:02:18

[quote="tove"][quote="1000T"]Undum: I had a quick peek. It did look promising, but I guess better documentation - read "more immediate help to the impatient newcomer" - would have been necessary to hook me.[/quote]

Yeah, I'm really hoping that somebody who has figured out how to use Undum puts together a full tutorial.  The results I've seen so far have been really inspiring (Zarf's [url=http://eblong.com/zarf/zweb/matter/]The Matter of the Monster[/url], Jon Ingold's [url=http://www.archimedes.plus.com/shaggydog/flaws.html]Flaws[/url], and Dierdra Kiai's [url=http://www.deirdrakiai.com/theplay]The Play[/url] come immediately to mind), but I kind of just don't know where to start with it.  I'm sure I [i]could[/i] figure it out, but since I already know Inform 7, and would probably use Twine if I wanted to do CYOA, there's just slightly too much inertia.[/quote]

Seconded. [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=16219#p16219]Jon Ingold says he's working on releasing a perl script to help make Undum games[/url], but until something like that happens I think Undum will only be accessible to people who know stuff. (I never wound up doing anything with Firebug and TextWrangler because I don't really understand what the other people in that thread are talking about.) 

[1000T -- is it possible to get what you want by setting up wiki software, and then not letting anyone else have an account with editing privileges?]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3408&start=10#p24317
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: advice on easy-to-start platforms?
User: 1000T / DateTime: 2011-10-16 13:03:16

[quote="Alex"]Perhaps consider Quest: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.textadventures.co.uk/quest/">http://www.textadventures.co.uk/quest/</a>

I know you ruled out ADRIFT because you didn't want a parser in your game - Quest is similar BUT you don't have to have command input. Instead you can [url=http://www.textadventures.co.uk/blog/2011/07/11/eliminating-guess-the-verb/]use hyperlinks[/url] - players could play the entire game without having to type anything. If you want to enforce no typing, you can turn the command input box off.

This will give you the full flexibility of a system with a world model, so you can use scripts to check if the player has a particular object etc, but with a simple interface.

Quest games can be played in a web browser, and they can be packaged into iPhone apps too.[/quote]
Okay, so I had a peek at the tutorial. 

It quite quickly delved straight to the nitty gritty of detailing objects, exits, descriptions and verbs.

So let me ask a direct question: how do you envision me using Quest?

I want to describe a scene and allow perhaps four choices of what you can do. Kill the goblin, run away, smell some flowers or climb a tree to look at the view. 

I don't want the hassle of actually defining "kill", "run", "pick" and "climb". I don't care to actually define flowers and trees - they're just part of the scenery. I have no intention of building a general parser which understands "climbing rocks" or "climbing staircases". Those things don't exist other than pure languages in scene descriptions (and choices).

What I can be bothered to do, however, is to set up a dozen "rooms" or so. Having the game automatically take care of inventory (in case you can pick the flowers or loot the goblin) is nice.

But in each room I need to simply and quickly be able to tell the system what the alternatives are. As opposed to (the much more complex and ambitious alternative of) presenting a number of objects the player then can freely interact with.

The reason I brought up the wiki comparison is because it's like a hyperlinked set of paragraphs. What a wonderfully simple platform! 

What I need over and above this is:
1) not be dependent on some online server. I want to write my stuff on my own computer and give you the finished work for you to read/play wherever you want. Also, I don't need moderation or censorship.
2) the story is more like a simulation in that it is not linear and has no finite set of endings. You can play the game, moving about the "world", as long as you like (within certain limits). Merely a branching tree won't do.
3) of course it needs to support variables (no ultra-simple CYOA). Setting them, allowing choices based on them etc. The easier it is (more transparent, less cumbersome syntax) to output conditional text the better!

A full-blown inventory system isn't required. Nice, but not required. (I think I could manage by simply setting variables to and fro, like WEAPON = 3 for the sword and = 4 for the axe; meaning no real objects are needed).

And that's it really. The closer you can get to just focusing on the story and not the "innards" of your chosen development system (while still allowing the above) the better! [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3408&start=10#p24318
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: advice on easy-to-start platforms?
User: 1000T / DateTime: 2011-10-16 13:05:24

[quote="matt w"][1000T -- is it possible to get what you want by setting up wiki software, and then not letting anyone else have an account with editing privileges?][/quote]
My answer: not sure but don't think so. You're thinking of chooseyourstory?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3408&start=20#p24319
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: advice on easy-to-start platforms?
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-10-16 13:13:25

[quote="1000T"]
So let me ask a direct question: how do you envision me using Quest?

I want to describe a scene and allow perhaps four choices of what you can do. Kill the goblin, run away, smell some flowers or climb a tree to look at the view. 

I don't want the hassle of actually defining "kill", "run", "pick" and "climb". I don't care to actually define flowers and trees - they're just part of the scenery. I have no intention of building a general parser which understands "climbing rocks" or "climbing staircases". Those things don't exist other than pure languages in scene descriptions (and choices).
[/quote]

In Quest you would set up a "goblin" object, "flowers" object, "tree" object. You would then set the "display verbs" list for each object. For the goblin it would be "kill", for flowers it would be "smell", for the tree it would be "climb". Then for each object you would implement those verbs on the Verbs tab - for the flowers, add "smell", make it print a message or something.

Because you'd be disabling text input, it wouldn't be too much effort to implement each object, because you know the player could only ever do the things to that object that are listed in the display verbs for that object. So you don't need to worry about the player trying to climb the goblin, because the goblin wouldn't provide a "climb" option when the player clicked the goblin link.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3408&start=20#p24320
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: advice on easy-to-start platforms?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-16 13:37:01

[quote="1000T"][quote="matt w"][1000T -- is it possible to get what you want by setting up wiki software, and then not letting anyone else have an account with editing privileges?][/quote]
My answer: not sure but don't think so. You're thinking of chooseyourstory?[/quote]

Nah, just that you mentioned at the beginning that you might want something like those sites where you use a wiki to make a CYOA -- like [url=http://www.bucsdugout.com/2011/10/10/2481750/langosch-paul-maholm-probably-gone]this[/url], I assumed -- but where your work wouldn't be open to editing by other people. I just thought that if you could host your own wiki, you might be able to set up a wiki like that and then have your account be the only one with editing privileges. But I don't know how plausible it would be to set that up.

[UPDATE: And I don't think it would give you any variables you could set, so never mind.]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3408&start=20#p24323
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: advice on easy-to-start platforms?
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-10-16 17:20:17

[quote="1000T"]When you download the zip file you can start playing the example directly. Am I getting you wrong, but that works off-line right? It's not just that I was lucky I used Firefox I hope...[/quote]

Sadly, yes, you got lucky. If you try it in Google Chrome it won't work off the disk, and if you try it in Internet Explorer, it won't work unless you click on the security bar at the top of your screen and allow JS.

[quote="1000T"]Is ChoiceScript suitable only for strictly tree-based games? Or does it support going between, say, location A and B repeatedly. (Perhaps something random happens at location B each time you visit). I'm asking since I haven't seen any mention of proceeding through chapters in any other order than pure sequentially (as you define in that javascript file) A->B->C etc. And none of the games I've checked out (say Choice of Dragon) seem to divert from this strict order (making decisions regarding thing A, then moving on to decide on thing B, then thing C etc but never making repeat visits to thing A)... It's cool either way, I sure understand if you want to keep things simple by catering to linear stories only.

(An "ugly" solution like a goto command would suffice, as long as you're not limited to an arbitrary stack depth or something. I need a game engine allowing the story to go around and around an arbitrary number of circles. Which I now realize I probably should have specified already in my OP)[/quote]

I posted my answer about this to the Google Group, but I'll cross-post it here:


Yes, you can definitely do a location-based game using ChoiceScript. For example, take a look at "The Land of Three Classes" <a class="postlink" href="http://www.choiceofgames.com/user-contributed/3class/">http://www.choiceofgames.com/user-contributed/3class/</a>

You can either do it all as a single chapter using *goto, or you can use *goto_scene to jump between chapters.

Having said that, I don't think ChoiceScript is the best language for designing location-based games.

In a location-based language like Inform, you begin by defining a map of locations, the objects within them, and what the objects do. The actions you can take at any given time depend on where you are and what objects are around; in a location-based game, players are expected to explore the game's map to find out what's possible.

Location-based games usually include puzzles that control the flow of the plot, especially "locked door" puzzles where some locations are unreachable until the player solves a puzzle. The player is therefore completely in control of the pace of the story; the player might even "get stuck" by getting lost in the map of locations or by being unable to solve the next puzzle.

ChoiceScript is designed for games in which the author has complete control over the pace of the story, where one thing happens right after another, so it's impossible to get lost or stuck.

So ChoiceScript has no built-in way to handle map locations ("rooms"), no inventory system, and no triggers ("do X whenever Y happens"). You could implement any of these yourself. The ChoiceScript language has *if and *goto, which means you can do practically anything that a Turing-complete universal computer can do. But it's not necessarily going to be easy!

P.S. As you may be able to tell, I'm personally not such a big fan of location-based games. Getting lost or stuck gets in the way of interactive storytelling, IMO.

Think hard about what your story is about; if your story isn't *about* exploration (and getting lost/stuck), then I recommend against including locations in your story.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3417&start=0#p24328
Forum: Competitions / Subject: The Third Round of IFComp 2011 Updates
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2011-10-16 18:52:58

It's the third update! The games Andromeda Awakening, Blind, Calm, Cana According To Micah, Cold Iron, Fan Interference, The Myothian Falcon, and The Play have been updated, and the walkthrough for Elfen Maiden has been expanded.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3372&start=10#p24334
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How do you, personally, usually begin writing a game?
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-10-17 00:51:42

Some more advice that may seem awfully bizarre: Write while tired. I'm talking, like, just-worked-a-12-hour-shift, had-a-crappy-day kind of tired, too. Your mind seems to shut off whatever center of the brain produces writer's block, and you just [i]write.[/i] Try to go as long as possible without resorting to coffee/energy drinks; the more caffeine in you, the more likely you are to get impatient, which leads to you eventally saying "guh, fuck this, time to go to sleep".

Naturally, your mileage may vary, but I think everyone should give it a shot at least once. At the minimum, you might end up with some pretty entertaining room descriptions. Additionally, try not to [i]code[/i] while tired, or at least do any heavy amount of coding aside from new rooms or other easy things; that's just a recipe for disaster.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3106&start=20#p24340
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Referring to the player in the third person
User: Glorb / DateTime: 2011-10-17 01:25:50

[quote="capmikee"][quote="Robert Rothman"]I've used a very rudimentry take on this, where the player finds a bottle of booze; if he drinks it, he gets drunk and for a certain number of turns he just wanders around randomly, ignoring what the player types.
[/quote]
I've been fascinated by the idea of an intoxicated PC for quite a while. My WIP contains a variation on this, but I hope to take it further in future works. I think there's a fine line between making the situation funny/scary/mind-bending and simply putting the player off. Even though I thought my schtick was pretty mild and easy to comprehend, I got a lot of negative feedback from testers. I haven't figured out how to create the effect of a really blitzed-out PC in an effective way, but I'll keep thinking about it.

I found "Blue Chairs" to be largely disappointing, but I appreciated that it dealt with this theme.[/quote]

You could have room/object descriptions be more vague. Have a pool of randomized generic responses for when the player is unable to do something (i.e., "You're far too wasted to do something requiring that much dexterity"). Make it so certain actions the player normally takes for granted (">take all") suddenly become difficult ("glancing around, you decide that you would probably fall on your face if you tried to take more than one thing at a time"). Have the player confuse some objects for other things, but in a way that's obvious that it's the result of the booze (i.e., a coat rack in a dark corner could become a tall, skinny, perfectly immobile man holding a couple of coats, or a rope could become a dead snake), until interacted with directly. Give the narration a "drunk mindset" - empty rooms are either boring or creepy, things on the other side of the room sometimes feel deceptively close, mildly annoying jerks are suddenly begging to be punched out by the PC, and so on. And try little touches - instead of having the PC just wander in a random direction, have the player go where he/she wants to go, but in a drunk kind of way - maybe there's a X% chance that entering a room while drunk will cause the player to knock something over or drop something.

Of course, that would be a ton of effort to write and code, but I feel it'd be worth it (depending, of course, on the game), especially since I've never seen any game thate ever comes close to showing what intoxication is like outside of the screen getting wobbly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3408&start=20#p24351
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: advice on easy-to-start platforms?
User: 1000T / DateTime: 2011-10-17 03:33:37

Thanks dfabulich (and let me say your rapid replies have already put choicescript lightyears ahead of twine/twee in my mind).

Since you don't seem to mind discussing here (where I won't have to await comment moderation), let me explain a bit more.

You're completely right about locations. And "scenes" is a much more accurate term for what I need.

I guess it is because you need to be able to "go back" to an earlier scene it is easy to think of them as locations.

But "scenes" is really all I need. One scene might well be "at the church" or "by the farm". But another scene might be "Aunt Jemima shows up", or for that matter, "Waking tired, trying to use your toothbrush to scrub away yesterday's hangover".

I am actively uninterested in mazes or making it difficult to know "where you are". 

You telling me you can visit any chapter in any order any number of times is key. Thank you. I really appreciate it, especially since ChoiceScript (and for that matter, Twine) has the direct simplicity I really really think I need to be able to pull off much of anything at all...!

(This is also the reason I hesitate using something like Quest. For example, in one scene the four choices might be four different lines of dialogue. Some of which might not even make grammatical sense. Since I am unsure a "verb" in Quest - or TADS - can be something along the lines of "please pass the salt, would you dearie?" without the program asking which dearie you're talking to, or telling you things like "you don't have the salt"... I simply have absolutely no need for a "parser", and multiple ways of expressing your selection. Thus I really will try to make the simpler choice-based engines work before I have a second look at Quest, unless somebody can address specifically my issues and how me exactly how straight-forwardly or not they can be implemented)

Okay, so if I make an example ChoiceScript game, I need to pack up the entire (modified) zip file, and I need to state "use Chrome or IE at your own peril". Gotcha. (And yes, I am not forgetting about CoGs offer to host the game; but that presumes a level of commitment, expertise, and completeness I'm not ready to subscribe to, at least not yet. Knowing you can just dump your stuff somewhere for actively interested parties to explore with a minimal amount of "ceremony" - I'm thinking of supplying a Rapidshare link at a forum like this one perhaps - is a real help to me.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3408&start=20#p24352
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: advice on easy-to-start platforms?
User: 1000T / DateTime: 2011-10-17 03:36:14

[quote="1000T"]address specifically my issues and how me exactly how straight-forwardly or not they can be implemented[/quote]
*show me exactly how

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3408&start=20#p24353
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: advice on easy-to-start platforms?
User: 1000T / DateTime: 2011-10-17 03:50:39

[quote="bcressey"][quote="1000T"][b]ChoiceScript:[/b] here I have completely different concerns. Put simply: how do you distribute your finished story for others to read?[/quote]

There were a fair number of ChoiceScript entries in [url=http://www.allthingsjacq.com/introcomp/]IntroComp[/url] this year. Check out the Comp games to get a sense of what that feels like for the player. It's just a zip file that they unpack, and then they double-click the index page to launch the game.

You can also host your game on another website, though if you don't go through Choice of Games, you're restricted to noncommercial use - no ads on the site.[/quote]
I downloaded IntroComp2011.zip and found the "Exile" game that looks like a ChoiceScript game.

I compared it to the CoG download (poetically called "dfabulich-choicescript-ee11ad2") and noted Exile was much slimmer.

Where do I go if I want to find out exactly how much of the cruft in the CoG download I need to keep in the zip file?

Or perhaps looking at Exile's folder gives me the answer? (Specifically, it contains two folders "icons" and "mygame" as well as a bunch of .js files in the archive root). However, I'm guessing you would need "cleaning instructions" to make this happen, so are there any such anywhere? Perhaps the Exile authors have posted on a CoG google grounds thread or something...)

[i]Since "Gargoyle", another IntroComp entry, features the exact same zip structure, I really think I'm onto something here...[/i]

Reason I'm asking is the response I got over at the Google groups:
[quote]You only need the "web" folder.[/quote]
Pardon the amateurish question, but... these contest entries do not contain any web folders?  [emote]:?[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3106&start=20#p24355
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Referring to the player in the third person
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-17 09:10:34

That's a lot of ideas - thanks! I've actually tried a couple of them (like dropping stuff when you enter a room). Not so popular with testers, but I think there might be a way to make it work.

I've also tried giving a couple descriptions a "drunk mindset," but it's tricky - just as in real life sometimes, it's hard for the player to see that their experience of the world is different from the way it would be if they were sober.

I'm more optimistic about the "hallucinatory" effects (I love your examples!), and I'm hoping that will add some humor. But there's also a possibility that they'll just be confusing. It's a fine line!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3408&start=20#p24356
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: advice on easy-to-start platforms?
User: George / DateTime: 2011-10-17 10:21:42

Those entries [i]are [/i]the web folders.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3423&start=0#p24357
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: File management of Mac I7: weirder than I thought
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-17 10:41:56

[code]feather:eyeballsun mike$ pre-commit
[my script to copy files from I7 projects to svn directories. I know, it's silly to copy anything besides Source.ni, but I set it up this way without realizing that and I'm too lazy to change it. Anyway, here's what the script does:

cp -r $HOME/i/ $HOME/eyeballsun/i/
cp -r $HOME/Library/Inform/Extensions/Mike\ Ciul/ $HOME/eyeballsun/public_html/i/
]
feather:eyeballsun mike$ ls -lt ~/i/headache.inform/Build/
total 12816
-rw-r--r--  1 mike  staff   554942 Oct 17 10:54 gameinfo.dbg
-rw-r--r--  1 mike  staff   951552 Oct 17 10:54 output.ulx
-rw-r--r--  1 mike  staff     5863 Oct 17 10:54 Debug log.txt
-rw-r--r--  1 mike  staff     6008 Oct 17 10:54 Problems.html
-rw-r--r--  1 mike  staff  3413613 Oct 17 10:54 auto.inf
-rw-r--r--  1 mike  staff    11891 Sep 29 09:27 Map.eps
-rw-r--r--  1 mike  staff     3439 Sep 29 09:27 StatusCblorb.html
-rw-r--r--  1 mike  staff   870050 Sep 29 09:27 output.gblorb
-rw-r--r--  1 mike  staff   256512 Sep 29 09:27 output.z5
-rw-r--r--  1 mike  staff   467456 Sep 29 09:27 output.z8
feather:eyeballsun mike$ svn ci
[waited a typically long time for the editor to come up before entering commit message.
Did some work on the source file in the meantime.
Finally entered commit message and quit editor. Then...]
Sending        i/headache.inform/Index/Actions.html
Sending        i/headache.inform/Index/Contents.html
[etc, etc]
Transmitting file data ............................................................................
Committed revision 323.
feather:eyeballsun mike$ ls -lt ~/i/headache.inform/Build/
total 12792
-rw-r--r--  1 mike  staff   553829 Oct 14 16:06 gameinfo.dbg
-rw-r--r--  1 mike  staff   949248 Oct 14 16:06 output.ulx
-rw-r--r--  1 mike  staff     5863 Oct 14 16:06 Debug log.txt
-rw-r--r--  1 mike  staff     6008 Oct 14 16:06 Problems.html
-rw-r--r--  1 mike  staff  3407678 Oct 14 16:06 auto.inf
-rw-r--r--  1 mike  staff    11891 Sep 29 09:27 Map.eps
-rw-r--r--  1 mike  staff     3439 Sep 29 09:27 StatusCblorb.html
-rw-r--r--  1 mike  staff   870050 Sep 29 09:27 output.gblorb
-rw-r--r--  1 mike  staff   256512 Sep 29 09:27 output.z5
[/code]
I've been aware for a while that my pre-commit script doesn't always capture the latest version of my I7 projects, and I know that has something to do with the fact that the I7 IDE sometimes deletes the project directory and recreates it. But this is the first time I've noticed that I started with a CURRENT project directory and then after rebuilding, ended up with an OLDER one. Now that's just weird.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3424&start=0#p24358
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Algorithmic elegance in I7
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-10-17 10:48:12

I thought I'd start this thread as a place for folks to post short algorithms, with the idea that someone out there might be able to show us how to do what we're doing better, more efficiently, or in fewer words.

Here's my entry (Wikipedia tells me that it's [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greatest_common_divisor#Using_Euclid.27s_algorithm]Euclid's algorithm[/url], though the description there isn't quite right):

[code]To decide what number is the greatest common divisor of (A - a number) and (B - a number):
	let R be the remainder after dividing A by B;
	if R is 0, let R be B;
	while R is greater than 0:
		let S be the remainder after dividing B by R;
		if S is 0, break;
		let B be R;
		let R be S;
	decide on R.[/code]

Is there a way to do this more elegantly? I'm especially thinking about all of the reassignments (let R be B, let B be R, let R be S), but of course it's also possible that I'm missing something at a higher level.

I'm not a programmer by trade or by training, and most of what I know of programming I've learned via Inform 7, dipping a toe into I6 once in awhile, and through all the help I've gotten on this forum. Which I guess is just a long way of saying please don't laugh too hard at my code  [emote];)[/emote] 

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3424&start=0#p24359
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Algorithmic elegance in I7
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-17 11:30:36

Greatest common *divisor*, not greatest common multiple. There is no greatest common multiple of two numbers, because you can always find a greater one. :)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3424&start=0#p24360
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Algorithmic elegance in I7
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-10-17 11:31:01

As a rule of thumb, a recursive definition of an algorithm tends to be more readable than an iterative one.

[code]
To decide what number is the greatest common divisor of (A - a number) and (B - a number):
	if b is 0, decide on A;
	decide on the greatest common divisor of B and the remainder after dividing A by B.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3423&start=0#p24361
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: File management of Mac I7: weirder than I thought
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-17 11:35:11

SVN notoriously stores its project information in every subdirectory, which means Mac I7 corrupts your SVN history as you go. Don't go that way.

(I believe that SVN 1.7 has finally fixed this?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3424&start=0#p24362
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Algorithmic elegance in I7
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-10-17 11:40:07

Thanks, Zarf. Original post corrected.

And Ben, that sweet little smidge of code is exactly the reason I posted--thanks!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3424&start=0#p24363
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Algorithmic elegance in I7
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-17 12:03:43

[quote="ektemple"][code]To decide what number is the greatest common multiple of (A - a number) and (B - a number):
	let R be the remainder after dividing A by B;
	if R is 0, let R be B;
	while R is greater than 0:
		let S be the remainder after dividing B by R;
		if S is 0, break;
		let B be R;
		let R be S;
	decide on R.[/code][/quote]
As Zarf already pointed out, the "greatest common multiple" of two numbers wouldn't be a very useful thing to know. It would always be either zero or an infinite number.

I think I also like the recursive version better, but here's how I would rewrite the loop version:

First, there's no need for the "break" since your while loop is testing the value of S after it's assigned to R. There's also a bug - your phrase would return 0 every time it got to the while loop. I think you meant to return B, not R. Giving variables more descriptive names can sometimes avoid bugs like that.

In terms of Inform syntax, you only need "let" the first time you define a variable. After that it's typical to use "now."

You really do need an extra temporary variable when you're juggling values like that. Personally, I might also create one more temporary variable just for clarity.

[code]To decide what number is the greatest common factor of (A - a number) and (B - a number):
	let the candidate be B;
	let the old remainder be the remainder after dividing A by the candidate;
	while the old remainder is greater than 0:
		let the new remainder be the remainder after dividing the candidate by the old remainder;
		Now the candidate is the old remainder;
		Now the old remainder is the new remainder;
	decide on the candidate.
[/code]

I looked at the Wikipedia page, and I decided I like the recursive version better:

[code]To decide what number is the GCF of (A - a number) and (B - a number):
	if B is 0, decide on A;
	Decide on the GCF of B and the remainder after dividing A by B;[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3424&start=0#p24364
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Algorithmic elegance in I7
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-10-17 12:58:32

Is it just me, or does I7 look incredibly awkward with that kind of stuff? A bit like trying to solve a math equation without being able to use math notation...  [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3424&start=0#p24366
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Algorithmic elegance in I7
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-10-17 13:20:31

[quote="capmikee"]First, there's no need for the "break" since your while loop is testing the value of S after it's assigned to R.[/quote]
That true, there isn't a need for the break anymore (originally there was).

[quote="capmikee"]There's also a bug - your phrase would return 0 every time it got to the while loop. I think you meant to return B, not R. Giving variables more descriptive names can sometimes avoid bugs like that.[/quote]
I'm not seeing that bug. I don't protect against illegal division when the user supplies 0 for B (as Ben's code does and yours does not), but I don't think that's what you're talking about. Could you specify the conditions under which it might occur? I haven't been able to break the routine with any input except 0 (intentional).

Using more descriptive names probably would have been better for seeing issues, though, and I normally would have done that--except that I used letters to work this out on paper, then just transferred the logic to Inform.

[quote="capmikee"]In terms of Inform syntax, you only need "let" the first time you define a variable. After that it's typical to use "now."[/quote]I consciously use "let" anytime the variable is temporary, regardless of whether it is a declaration or an assignment--it makes it easier to tell at a glance what's temporary and what's not. Unless there is a sound technical (performance or something) reason for using "now", I think I'll stick with using "let".

[quote="capmikee"]
You really do need an extra temporary variable when you're juggling values like that. Personally, I might also create one more temporary variable just for clarity.

[code]To decide what number is the greatest common factor of (A - a number) and (B - a number):
	let the candidate be B;
	let the old remainder be the remainder after dividing A by the candidate;
	while the old remainder is greater than 0:
		let the new remainder be the remainder after dividing the candidate by the old remainder;
		Now the candidate is the old remainder;
		Now the old remainder is the new remainder;
	decide on the candidate.
[/code][/quote]

Not as elegant as Ben's, but definitely more readable than mine.

[quote="RealNC"]Is it just me, or does I7 look incredibly awkward with that kind of stuff? A bit like trying to solve a math equation without being able to use math notation...  [emote]:P[/emote][/quote]

You actually can use the math notation, to some degree (requires a lot more parentheses, not every operation has a built-in symbol), but it doesn't work so well with I7's larger convention of using full words for everything. Code that does lots of math, especially with properties of objects, starts to look far more verbose than it needs to.

Thanks to all!
Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3424&start=0#p24367
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Algorithmic elegance in I7
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-17 13:38:19

Erik - 

You're right, I was reading your code wrong. The "break" prevents returning a value of 0. So my real complaint would be that the "break" obscures the true nature of the loop - it would be exactly the same if you phrased it as "while true is true."

I also realized that I could roll the loop more fully AND avoid division by zero by naming the input arguments more cleverly:

[code]To decide what number is the greatest common factor of (candidate - a number) and (old remainder - a number):
	while the old remainder is greater than 0:
		let the new remainder be the remainder after dividing the candidate by the old remainder;
		Now the candidate is the old remainder;
		Now the old remainder is the new remainder;
	decide on the candidate.[/code]

I like to use "now" because then I know that I'm reusing existing variables as opposed to new ones. But in general I like languages like Python where you don't have to declare variables at all most of the time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3423&start=0#p24368
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: File management of Mac I7: weirder than I thought
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-17 13:51:05

[quote="zarf"]SVN notoriously stores its project information in every subdirectory, which means Mac I7 corrupts your SVN history as you go. Don't go that way.

(I believe that SVN 1.7 has finally fixed this?)[/quote]
Is that really the problem? There's no .svn directories in my project directory, only in the working directory that I copy the projects into - so I'm not sure how anything could get corrupted.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3372&start=10#p24369
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How do you, personally, usually begin writing a game?
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-10-17 14:20:09

[quote="Glorb"]As with actual prose fiction, I start with very little planning; I feel that planning almost always kills whatever creative spark I had going in the first place. (...) When it comes to setting, I inevitably end up "writing what I know", as they say. I find that West Virginia can make a backdrop for just about anything as long as you're willing to use its weirdness to your advantage.[/quote]
Looks like you are a huge fan of Stephen King. [emote]:)[/emote]

That's what I do myself. I just start, then it all comes down to something. Never stop. Even when all you are doing looks like "shoveling shit from a sitting position."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3423&start=0#p24370
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: File management of Mac I7: weirder than I thought
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-17 14:22:00

Ah, I skipped over your explanation of the script. Sorry.

I do not know what happened there, then.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3425&start=0#p24372
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: i7 equivalent to i6 'box' statement?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-10-17 15:14:03

I've searched around for this on these forums and in r.a.i-f, but have come up empy.

You know those boxed, often reversed-text quotation blocks that show up in Trinity and many other infocom-style games? It used to be easy to replicate this behaviour: there was a 'box' command or some such that just printed it for you centered and overlaid on the transcript, and then the box would scroll up with the transcript. (If you didn't place it carefully, it could easily obscure some previously printed text.)

I want to do that in my i7 game. Is there still an easy way, I hope?

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3426&start=0#p24373
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Easiest platform for a beginner
User: MikeG / DateTime: 2011-10-17 15:27:40

I'm wondering what would be the easiest platform to make a simple IF game for an absolute beginner?
Specifically, it must be easy to grasp and [u]less typing equals better[/u].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3425&start=0#p24374
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: i7 equivalent to i6 'box' statement?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-17 15:48:20

See the built-in documentation ch. 5.12.
I vaguely remember that this effect is z-machine only, but I may well be wrong about that (there's no note to the effect in the section on it.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3425&start=0#p24375
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: i7 equivalent to i6 'box' statement?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-17 16:04:46

It works in Glulx too, although it doesn't look exactly the same -- the quotation appears in its own pane, rather than overlaid on the story window. (And disappears after the next input.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3426&start=0#p24376
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Easiest platform for a beginner
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-10-17 16:22:46

It depends what you want to do. Inform 7 is popular for making parser-based games because the code readable English, and so there's not so steep a learning curve. A simple hyperlink choose-your-own-adventure without state tracking can be made using html with no difficulty whatsoever.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3235&start=10#p24377
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Lists with indefinite articles, and identical objects.
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-17 16:23:45

I only see this now -- great!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3426&start=0#p24378
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Easiest platform for a beginner
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-17 16:24:35

If you specifically want to avoid typing, try Adrift or Quest. (Though you'll inevitably have to type a lot, if you're writing a text-based game.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3426&start=0#p24379
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Easiest platform for a beginner
User: rotter / DateTime: 2011-10-17 16:42:42

I have experience of both ADRIFT and Inform7 (I7).  I can say that for an absolute beginner who wants to create something quickly then nothing will beat ADRIFT.  I've about broken I7 to my will but it does take much longer to master. I had a workable game up and running in ADRIFT in around 2-3 months when I first started. My conversation from ADRIFT to I7 of [url=http://www.delron.org.uk/d_pathway_to_destruction.htm]Pathway to Destruction[/url] took a lot lot longer than that.  But, much as I love ADRIFT I think that I7 creates a more solid game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3426&start=0#p24380
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Easiest platform for a beginner
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-17 17:17:41

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][...] you'll inevitably have to type a lot, if you're writing a text-based game.[/quote]

This.

I only have experience with I7, myself, but I can vouch for it as being very beginner-friendly. With zero programming experience, I had a small, complete and reasonably-polished game finished within 4 hours of cracking it open for the very first time.

There was, however, plenty of typing ... because without typing, the player would have nothing to read.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3426&start=0#p24381
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Easiest platform for a beginner
User: MikeG / DateTime: 2011-10-17 17:18:23

Thanks for the ideas.

I'm looking for something for my son to use to create a basic game. I haven't actually tried making an IF game since the days of Adventure Writer on my C-64 so I'm a bit out of touch. My son is 11 and has Asperger's; writing is painfully difficult for him and typing is only marginally better. Because of the difficulty, he resists most efforts to enourage him to write or type but he needs experience putting his thoughts down in sentences for school. Making a simple game may be a way to help as he enjoys playing Zork and I think the idea of creating something like that might appeal to him.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3426&start=0#p24382
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Easiest platform for a beginner
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-17 17:24:39

I would take a look at ADRIFT: it is a popular system, and you can start out by using a menu-like interface.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3426&start=0#p24384
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Easiest platform for a beginner
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-10-17 18:14:11

Sounds like ADRIFT is your best bet there. If the whole typing thing really doesn't work out, other types of games can be made just using a mouse. When I was younger I used to make simple platformers (some with alternative paths, top-down driving sequences, mini-games etc.) just using amateur game developing software [i]Klik & Play[/i]. That's very old software now, but I'm led to believe [i]Scratch[/i] and [i]Game Maker[/i] are more up-to-date versions, and you can download them for free. I still think the text adventure is the best kind of game for amateur game-makers to make because pretty much no matter what platform you use you can make a game of the quality, or exceeding the quality, of the commercial text adventures at their height. (You don't need a team of artists and programmers).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3426&start=0#p24385
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Easiest platform for a beginner
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-10-17 18:25:46

Quest is also mostly point and click: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.textadventures.co.uk/quest/">http://www.textadventures.co.uk/quest/</a> - for simple games you should only need to type in things like object names and descriptions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3426&start=0#p24387
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Easiest platform for a beginner
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-17 18:35:33

If you're interested in Game Maker you might want to have a look at [url=http://www.auntiepixelante.com/?p=1240]this[/url]; the newest version of Game Maker apparently puts a watermark on your game unless you pay for the full version, but you can get a slightly older free version of Game Maker that doesn't do that. (I've never used Game Maker, so I can't say how suitable it is otherwise.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3372&start=10#p24388
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How do you, personally, usually begin writing a game?
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-10-17 18:57:51

[quote="Glorb"]Some more advice that may seem awfully bizarre: Write while tired. I'm talking, like, just-worked-a-12-hour-shift, had-a-crappy-day kind of tired, too. Your mind seems to shut off whatever center of the brain produces writer's block, and you just [i]write.[/i] Try to go as long as possible without resorting to coffee/energy drinks; the more caffeine in you, the more likely you are to get impatient, which leads to you eventally saying "guh, fuck this, time to go to sleep".[/quote]
You're right.  There's a state where being tired can make it easier to concentrate, at least for me.  That's why I've occasionally had success in pulling all-nighters to get homework done, but I've learned that I can't count on being able to do that all the time, or at any particular time.  Mostly, though, I'm too lazy and undisciplined.

As another piece of generic advice, I'd add that it's worth spending just a little bit of time working on your game if you don't have a lot of time.  If you only have ten free minutes in the morning before you have to go to work or school, I've found that it really is worthwhile and even satisfying to spend those ten minutes working on a hobbyist project.  You can always run or speed to be on time afterwards.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3382&start=0#p24389
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What you like most in Interactive Fiction Games?
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-10-17 19:06:43

You guys already hit the two big selling points for me -- immersion and simulation.  I think the presence of [i]both[/i] those elements is what makes IF so special.  Getting to be personally present in the fictional world and to manipulate it in realistic ways makes that world seem all the more wonderful and satisfying.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3425&start=0#p24390
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: i7 equivalent to i6 'box' statement?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-10-17 19:46:17

Thank you, fellows. Much obliged! 8)

BTW I hope since this is standard Infocom behaviour that it is supported on all terps. The note I was thinking of including in the box is an important one that I wouldn't want anyone to miss...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3392&start=0#p24393
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Get the thing another thing is part of
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2011-10-17 20:33:51

I know this is already solved, but I noticed this in the OP
[code]Let p be the desk that incorporates the drawer
Let p be the desk that the drawer is part of
Let p be the desk to which the drawer relates to by incorporation[/code]
Any time you say "the [kind]", you're asking for trouble since Inform does not distinguish between that and "a [kind]", so as far as Inform was concerned, you said[code]Let p be a desk that incorporates the drawer
Let p be a desk that the drawer is part of
Let p be a desk to which the drawer relates to by incorporation[/code]
And of course, Inform complains that you're not being specific enough!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3425&start=0#p24396
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: i7 equivalent to i6 'box' statement?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-17 21:48:18

It will be supported, *except* on a dumb-stream interpreter (like the ClubFloyd bot). What happens there is questionable. (But then, so is the entire status line.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3424&start=0#p24399
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Algorithmic elegance in I7
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2011-10-17 22:40:51

How about this: (not tested)

[code]To decide what number is the greatest common factor of (a - a number) and (b - a number):
    while a is not 0:
        now b be the remainder after dividing b by a;
        if b is 0, decide on a;
        now a be the remainder after dividing a by b;
    decide on b;

or

To decide what number is the greatest common factor of (a - a number) and (b - a number):
    forever:  [or while 1 is 1, if I7 lacks this]
        if a is 0, decide on b;
        now b be the remainder after dividing b by a;
        if b is 0, decide on a;
        now a be the remainder after dividing a by b;
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3408&start=20#p24401
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: advice on easy-to-start platforms?
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-10-17 23:19:49

[quote="1000T"]Okay, so if I make an example ChoiceScript game, I need to pack up the entire (modified) zip file, and I need to state "use Chrome or IE at your own peril". Gotcha.[/quote]

To be clear, your better bet is to get some free hosting and copy the web folder in there; IE and Chrome work fine when you play the game on a web site.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3060&start=10#p24402
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF cover = Square ?
User: Sig / DateTime: 2011-10-17 23:30:45

As a data point, Fallout 3 and Dragon Age (sitting on the shelf next to me) are in DVD-movie-aspect-size cases, albeit a double-thickness one for Fallout 3.  Those are the newest things I own purchased on physical medium, though.

I like squares.  I have nothing useful to add, sorry.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3060&start=10#p24406
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF cover = Square ?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-18 01:17:28

[quote]Inform7 documentation recommends it, and I imagine it being practical when printing CD sleeves [...][/quote]

I really don't think the intended function of IF cover-art has anything to do with physical distribution formats, new or old.

If you're publishing your game physically, just produce whatever cover you need. If not, not. What's the question again?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3424&start=0#p24408
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Algorithmic elegance in I7
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-18 02:54:05

[quote="RealNC"]Is it just me, or does I7 look incredibly awkward with that kind of stuff? A bit like trying to solve a math equation without being able to use math notation...  [emote]:P[/emote][/quote]
Yeah, I think that's why I7 introduced the concept of "Equations", to address this issue.  Having said that, I haven't been able to find an opportunity to use equations except to create examples of how to use equations.

And even then it's pretty limited. It can't do the quadratic equation, for example.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3428&start=0#p24411
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Question about Dropbox
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-10-18 05:01:07

Hello everyone.

I'd like to have my game's files in a Dropbox folder, so I can update, code etcetera from whatever terminal I'm at at the moment.
Is there a[an easy] way to do it?
It seems Inform7 makes it difficult, stating it misses some files... Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks for any help incoming.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3428&start=0#p24412
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Dropbox
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-10-18 05:24:39

Do you mean it seems to be missing some files when Inform7 compiles? If you have cover art, you need to bring that file over as well. And of course you may need to sync the extensions from one machine to the next.

Also, one thing I recommend is to back up your files for the first stretch while you use Dropbox. Because I had some problems with copying an earlier version to a later version when switching between two computers.

I don't think an Inform project warrants a full source control, if you are doing everything by yourself--though I've seen where it can be useful for two collaborators. I also assume, if you are thinking of Dropbox anyway, that you don't use source control much.

I just have a small script that compares the Dropbox location with the Inform location for certain files, then copies the latest version over to the earlier. I'm not sure what OS you are on--Unix seems most likely to use a shell script, but I use a Perl script to see which file to update. It also helps to have something like WinMerge in case you do forget to copy your source over locally.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3428&start=0#p24413
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Dropbox
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-10-18 05:42:57

I'm on a Mac with Snow Leopard and a Mac with Lion.

Thx for the help, I will try and make it work tonight. (and eventually being more specific about what's the problem--- which might help!)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=30#p24416
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-10-18 07:07:53

[quote="zarf"][quote]I'm not even sure how "the regex engine" would be sped up by opcode use. What would the opcode(s) even do? How would that work?[/quote]

Currently the Inform library has a regex-matching routine, written in I6. It would be fairly easy to add a Glulx opcode which did exactly the same thing. The new implementation would be in native code (C, or whatever the interpreter was written in) and so would be faster.

We've been very conservative with these move-functionality-to-VM-opcodes decisions. It effectively locks down functionality. (Right now, if somebody finds a bug in the Inform library -- or wants to add a feature -- it can be patched in an individual game, and then integrated into the next I7 release. If the behavior has been moved into the VM, it's a lot harder to change, and raises game/interpreter compatibility headaches.) Currently Glulx has opcodes for copying arrays; searching arrays and linked lists; and a few *very* low-level pieces of I6 functionality. (Property-checking and class-checking routines which haven't changed since the early I6 releases.)[/quote]

Other people may disagree with me, but if I added an accelerated function for something like regexs, it would be to implement the feature as it was intended, not to precisely duplicate the I6 code - ie, more like a real opcode. Any bugs in the I6 code would be fixed independently of updating the accelerated function.

Of course it would be really good for the I7 test suite to be made public so that any new accelerated functions or opcodes could be tested more thoroughly!

In other news my news VM will now sometimes produce real loops (as well as nested block if statements)! When I can get it to produce loops in more situations then it will be even faster. And it won't be hard to turn the e.pc= into a break statement either...
[code]/* 3462/2 */ while (!(!(e.U2S(l[3])<e.U2S(l[2]))))
    {
    s.push(/* 3466/15 */ m.getUint16(l[1]+2*e.U2S(l[3])));
    /* 3470/1 */ if(!(!(s.pop()==l[0])))
    {
        l[5]=/* 3474/13 */ l[4];
        /* 3477/140 */ e.pc=7+3478; return
    };
    /* 3480/133 */ e.incdec(4,1)
};[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3429&start=0#p24417
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Inform 7 site problems?
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-10-18 07:15:29

Has anybody else been having trouble getting into the main Inform 7 site this morning?  Instead of the normal-looking site, I'm getting the following:


[quote]<class 'django.core.exceptions.ImproperlyConfigured'> Python 2.5: /home/informer7/local/bin/python

A problem occurred in a Python script. Here is the sequence of function calls leading up to the error, in the order they occurred.[/quote]

followed by a lot of code.



Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3408&start=20#p24418
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: advice on easy-to-start platforms?
User: 1000T / DateTime: 2011-10-18 07:41:35

Thanks. Yes, I've started getting the hang of things now. 

Will settle for the distribution method used by those contest entries. For now at least.

I really appreciate the straight-forward way of building your adventure/story using CS. God knows it's hard work to make even the smallest scene - when you take into account the number of choices you minimally need for the player to have a real impact on how the story proceeds...!

(I can only imagine the hours it took to write the text for even a single play-through of a story like Choice of Vampire or Intrigue... let alone all of them! 

And yes, I do realize you need to start small... and I realize you should do what CS already encourages you to do, that is merge branches early and often. Merge, merge, merge! But still, you quickly end up with a LOT of variables and small description differences if you want previous decisions to influence later ones). Coming up with an idea for a scene is like 10 minutes of work, tops. Actually sketching this into details, making sure you aren't missing something takes an [i]hour[/i]. And then writing it... there goes your evening. Well, at least there isn't a coding phase after that!

Well, anyway, thanks again to everybody for your help. And I'm sure glad you steered me in the direction of something like ChoiceScript; I can't imagine how anyone ever managed to finish a story using anything more involved; CS uses simple text files with almost no control code, letting me focus on the text itself. That's plenty difficult by itself *phew*

I'll return somewhere sometime if and when I do get something finished enough for public consumption!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3429&start=0#p24419
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Inform 7 site problems?
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-10-18 07:44:38

[quote="Robert Rothman"]Has anybody else been having trouble getting into the main Inform 7 site this morning? [/quote]

Yup, I'm having the same trouble right now! (using both Firefox and IE)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3428&start=0#p24420
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Dropbox
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-10-18 08:26:46

I use Dropbox myself to keep up with my Inform stuff. What I do is create a folder in the Dropbox for my project. Every day when I'm done messing with my source at home or free time at work, I compress the projects and materials file from my project in the Inform folder. I name it with the date.. i.e. myproject.11.17.11.zip  so that I can fall back on any one days work and move that zip into Dropbox. I also keep a .txt file in the Dropbox with "release notes" for each version.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3430&start=0#p24421
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 - Menus table
User: AaronP / DateTime: 2011-10-18 08:57:49

So I'm new to Inform and writing IF in general, and I've run into what looks to be a fairly newbie-ish problem, so bear with me.  [emote]:)[/emote] 

What I want in this IF is to include 4 separate short stories. Emily Shorts "Menus" seems to be the functionality that I'm looking for, but I'm having trouble with the tables not compiling. Probably a syntax error somewhere (I've run into plenty in I7. Ironic that I'm more likely to run into syntax errors when the code is made to resemble/is easily confused with actual English  [emote]:P[/emote] ), but the error is a genric "I don't understand this at all" one, so I'm not sure what I've done wrong. 

[code]
Include Menus by Emily Short.
Include Player Experience Upgrade by Aaron Reed.
Include Custom Library Messages by Ron Newcomb.

Book 1 - In the Beginning

Chapter 1 - At the beginning of play

Use American dialect and serial comma. 

Table of Stories
title			subtable			description			toggle
"Story of Oma"	--					--					Start Play 1.
"Story of Bob"	--					--					Start Play 3.

When play begins:
	say "Which story would you like to read?[paragraph break]";
	now the current menu is the Table of Stories. 
	

To start play (story - a number):
	clear the screen.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3424&start=10#p24422
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Algorithmic elegance in I7
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-10-18 09:10:41

My current project actually has a perfect application for equations, but I found that I couldn't use them because of the lack of fractional math. I needed to have accurate fractional multipliers and divisors to arrive at the solutions for many of the equations. I could have gotten there by refactoring the equations, I suppose, but they were already complex enough for my little brain. (I ended up using a phrase structure, which let me use Fixed Point Maths to take care of the fractional values. But Inform's general disregard for the rules of precedence then meant I spent many hours adding parentheses to make all precedence explicit.)

If and when the Inform library gets support for the Glulx floating point spec, equations might become at least slightly useful.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3430&start=0#p24423
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Menus table
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-10-18 09:11:23

The immediate problem is that you have punctuation at the end of table rows. You should remove the full stops from the line ends.

After fixing that the code still won't compile, because "Start Play X" is not a rule but a phrase. Only rules can be used in the toggle column. Change the phrases to rules and it should work:

[code]
This is the start play 1 rule:
   clear the screen.
   
This is the start play 3 rule:
   clear the screen.
   
Table of Stories
title	subtable	description	toggle
"Story of Oma"	--	--	start play 1 rule
"Story of Bob"	--	--	start play 3 rule[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3430&start=0#p24424
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Menus table
User: AaronP / DateTime: 2011-10-18 09:19:59

Ah, that makes sense, thanks. I did try using that syntax at one point, but I had the period so I still got the error. A related question, can you not pass parameters in this situation? 

Like:

[code]
This is the start play (x - a number) rule:
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3431&start=0#p24425
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Interviews
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-10-18 09:22:41

Where do I post interviews?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3428&start=0#p24426
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Dropbox
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-18 09:26:53

I don't use Dropbox, but I use svn. I have a little script in my $HOME/bin directory called "pre-commit:"

[code]#!/bin/sh

cp -r $HOME/i/ $HOME/eyeballsun/i/
cp -r $HOME/Library/Inform/Extensions/Mike\ Ciul/ $HOME/eyeballsun/public_html/i/[/code]

$HOME/i/ is my Inform projects directory.

$HOME/eyeballsun/ is my svn working directory
$HOME/eyeballsun/public_html is synched to <a class="postlink" href="http://www.eyeballsun.org/">http://www.eyeballsun.org/</a>

So I run that script before I run "svn ci ~/eyeballsun" and it commits all my work on Inform projects. It's very inefficient, because all I really need to copy is the story.ni files, but it's easier to do than to find all of the story.ni files in all of the Inform projects, and I don't mind waiting for it to run.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3430&start=0#p24427
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Menus table
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-10-18 09:30:50

Not that I know of, but then again that extension is not really designed for this kind of thing. As the documentation says:

[quote]"Menus" is not suitable for contexts where we want the player to be able to choose a numbered option during regular play (such as a menu of conversation choices when talking to another character). It is intended rather for situations where we wish to give the player optional instructions or hints separated from the main game. [/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3432&start=0#p24428
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Prompt Placement
User: Borogove / DateTime: 2011-10-18 09:31:33

I've noticed when loading some of the Infocom .dats in winfrotz that the prompt is sometimes anchored at the bottom of the window, and that at the start of the game the text scrolls up to meet the status line. I've played around, using the 0->32 array and a do-until (taking it for granted that the overture and initial description take up twelve lines):[code]screen_height = 0->32; screen_height = screen_height - 12;
do {new_line; screen_height--} until (screen_height == 0)[/code]But this simply dumps them at the bottom of the screen, without any scrolling, while moving them further down simply triggers a [MORE] prompt.

Is there any way to emulate the old bottom-to-top scolling in modern inform?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3430&start=0#p24429
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Menus table
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-18 09:57:32

I was about to go look up the "Questions" extension to see if it would be more appropriate to this situation, but it looks like <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/">http://inform7.com/</a> is down right now.

[spoiler][code] 
<class 'django.core.exceptions.ImproperlyConfigured'>	Python 2.5: /home/informer7/local/bin/python
Tue Oct 18 10:56:58 2011

A problem occurred in a Python script. Here is the sequence of function calls leading up to the error, in the order they occurred.
 /home/informer7/inform7.com/fcgi.py in run(self=<fcgi.Request object at 0x958c50>)
  578         """Runs the handler, flushes the streams, and ends the request."""
  579         try:
  580             protocolStatus, appStatus = self.server.handler(self)
  581         except:
  582             traceback.print_exc(file=self.stderr)
protocolStatus undefined, appStatus undefined, self = <fcgi.Request object at 0x958c50>, self.server = <fcgi.WSGIServer object at 0x958b50>, self.server.handler = <bound method WSGIServer.handler of <fcgi.WSGIServer object at 0x958b50>>
 /home/informer7/inform7.com/fcgi.py in handler(self=<fcgi.WSGIServer object at 0x958b50>, req=<fcgi.Request object at 0x958c50>)
 1264         try:
 1265             try:
 1266                 result = self.application(environ, start_response)
 1267                 try:
 1268                     for data in result:
result = None, self = <fcgi.WSGIServer object at 0x958b50>, self.application = <django.core.handlers.wsgi.WSGIHandler object at 0x958790>, environ = {'DH_USER': 'informer7', 'DOCUMENT_ROOT': '/home/informer7/inform7.com', 'GATEWAY_INTERFACE': 'CGI/1.1', 'HTTP_ACCEPT': 'text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8', 'HTTP_ACCEPT_CHARSET': 'ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7', 'HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING': 'gzip,deflate', 'HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE': 'en-us,en;q=0.5', 'HTTP_CACHE_CONTROL': 'max-age=0', 'HTTP_CONNECTION': 'close', 'HTTP_HOST': 'inform7.com', ...}, start_response = <function start_response at 0x2aae5d1e848>
 /home/informer7/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/Django-1.0.2_final-py2.5.egg/django/core/handlers/wsgi.py in __call__(self=<django.core.handlers.wsgi.WSGIHandler object at 0x958790>, environ={'DH_USER': 'informer7', 'DOCUMENT_ROOT': '/home/informer7/inform7.com', 'GATEWAY_INTERFACE': 'CGI/1.1', 'HTTP_ACCEPT': 'text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8', 'HTTP_ACCEPT_CHARSET': 'ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7', 'HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING': 'gzip,deflate', 'HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE': 'en-us,en;q=0.5', 'HTTP_CACHE_CONTROL': 'max-age=0', 'HTTP_CONNECTION': 'close', 'HTTP_HOST': 'inform7.com', ...}, start_response=<function start_response at 0x2aae5d1e848>)
  237                 response = http.HttpResponseBadRequest()
  238             else:
  239                 response = self.get_response(request)
  240 
  241                 # Apply response middleware
response undefined, self = <django.core.handlers.wsgi.WSGIHandler object at 0x958790>, self.get_response = <bound method WSGIHandler.get_response of <djang...re.handlers.wsgi.WSGIHandler object at 0x958790>>, request = <WSGIRequest GET:<QueryDict: {}>, POST:<QueryDic...gi.url_scheme': 'http', 'wsgi.version': (1, 0)}>
 /home/informer7/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/Django-1.0.2_final-py2.5.egg/django/core/handlers/base.py in get_response(self=<django.core.handlers.wsgi.WSGIHandler object at 0x958790>, request=<WSGIRequest GET:<QueryDict: {}>, POST:<QueryDic...gi.url_scheme': 'http', 'wsgi.version': (1, 0)}>)
   65         # Apply request middleware
   66         for middleware_method in self._request_middleware:
   67             response = middleware_method(request)
   68             if response:
   69                 return response
response = None, middleware_method = <bound method SessionMiddleware.process_request ...middleware.SessionMiddleware object at 0xa4c710>>, request = <WSGIRequest GET:<QueryDict: {}>, POST:<QueryDic...gi.url_scheme': 'http', 'wsgi.version': (1, 0)}>
 /home/informer7/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/Django-1.0.2_final-py2.5.egg/django/contrib/sessions/middleware.py in process_request(self=<django.contrib.sessions.middleware.SessionMiddleware object at 0xa4c710>, request=<WSGIRequest GET:<QueryDict: {}>, POST:<QueryDic...gi.url_scheme': 'http', 'wsgi.version': (1, 0)}>)
    7 class SessionMiddleware(object):
    8     def process_request(self, request):
    9         engine = __import__(settings.SESSION_ENGINE, {}, {}, [''])
   10         session_key = request.COOKIES.get(settings.SESSION_COOKIE_NAME, None)
   11         request.session = engine.SessionStore(session_key)
engine undefined, builtin __import__ = <built-in function __import__>, global settings = <django.conf.LazySettings object at 0x2aae2980810>, settings.SESSION_ENGINE = 'django.contrib.sessions.backends.db'
 /home/informer7/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/Django-1.0.2_final-py2.5.egg/django/contrib/sessions/backends/db.py in ()
    2 from django.contrib.sessions.models import Session
    3 from django.contrib.sessions.backends.base import SessionBase, CreateError
    4 from django.core.exceptions import SuspiciousOperation
    5 from django.db import IntegrityError, transaction
    6 from django.utils.encoding import force_unicode
django undefined, Session undefined
 /home/informer7/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/Django-1.0.2_final-py2.5.egg/django/contrib/sessions/models.py in ()
    2 import cPickle as pickle
    3 
    4 from django.db import models
    5 from django.utils.translation import ugettext_lazy as _
    6 from django.conf import settings
django undefined, models undefined
 /home/informer7/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/Django-1.0.2_final-py2.5.egg/django/db/__init__.py in ()
   14     # backends that ships with Django, so look there first.
   15     _import_path = 'django.db.backends.'
   16     backend = __import__('%s%s.base' % (_import_path, settings.DATABASE_ENGINE), {}, {}, [''])
   17 except ImportError, e:
   18     # If the import failed, we might be looking for a database backend
backend undefined, builtin __import__ = <built-in function __import__>, _import_path = None, settings = None, settings.DATABASE_ENGINE undefined
 /home/informer7/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/Django-1.0.2_final-py2.5.egg/django/db/backends/mysql/base.py in ()
   11 except ImportError, e:
   12     from django.core.exceptions import ImproperlyConfigured
   13     raise ImproperlyConfigured("Error loading MySQLdb module: %s" % e)
   14 
   15 # We want version (1, 2, 1, 'final', 2) or later. We can't just use
ImproperlyConfigured = None, e = None

<class 'django.core.exceptions.ImproperlyConfigured'>: Error loading MySQLdb module: libmysqlclient_r.so.15: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
      args = ('Error loading MySQLdb module: libmysqlclient_r.s...pen shared object file: No such file or directory',)
      message = 'Error loading MySQLdb module: libmysqlclient_r.s...pen shared object file: No such file or directory' [/code][/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3372&start=10#p24430
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How do you, personally, usually begin writing a game?
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2011-10-18 10:02:23

[quote="Glorb"]Write while tired.[/quote]
This, I've done. Well, in writing prose, anyway; one of my best stories is due to writing late at night.

[quote="Bainespal"]If you only have ten free minutes in the morning before you have to go to work or school, I've found that it really is worthwhile and even satisfying to spend those ten minutes working on a hobbyist project.  You can always run or speed to be on time afterwards.  ;)[/quote]
this, I've also done. Trouble is, I look at the clock and see I have 10 minutes free; ten minutes later, I look at the clock and realize I'm half an hour late. Heh. I try not to do that very much these days; late for class is one thing, late for work is something entirely different.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3382&start=0#p24431
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What you like most in Interactive Fiction Games?
User: Mr. Patient / DateTime: 2011-10-18 10:02:32

Pacing.  I like to be able to walk away easily and come back, or spend a few minutes reading and re-reading descriptions.

I also like that I can play at the office.  One window full of text looks pretty much like any other.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3425&start=0#p24432
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: i7 equivalent to i6 'box' statement?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-10-18 10:06:17

[quote="Laroquod"]The note I was thinking of including in the box is an important one that I wouldn't want anyone to miss...[/quote]

This made me cringe a bit, because I find those boxes annoying and tend to "click through" them very quickly, and they don't show up on scrollback.  So I'd encourage you to have the information available in a more lasting form as well, regardless of whether you trust the interpreter to support quote boxes.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3430&start=0#p24433
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Menus table
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-18 10:06:21

Keeping in mind Juhana's point that Menus isn't really designed for this sort of thing, you could probably hack your original code to work by using a say-phrase under the description column instead of a toggle rule. Something like this:

[code]Include Menus by Emily Short.
Include Player Experience Upgrade by Aaron Reed.
Include Custom Library Messages by Ron Newcomb.

Book 1 - In the Beginning

Chapter 1 - At the beginning of play

Use American dialect and serial comma.

Table of Stories
title         subtable         description         toggle
"Story of Oma"   --             "[start play 1]"             --
"Story of Bob"   --               "[start play 3]"               --

When play begins:
   say "Which story would you like to read?[paragraph break]";
   now the current menu is the Table of Stories.
   

To say start play (story - a number):
   clear the screen.[/code]

[Untested, and because of the way I entered this in you probably can't copy-paste from this post even using the "hit reply and copy from the text box" trick.]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3425&start=0#p24434
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: i7 equivalent to i6 'box' statement?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-10-18 10:12:59

[quote="tove"]This made me cringe a bit, because I find those boxes annoying and tend to "click through" them very quickly, and they don't show up on scrollback.  So I'd encourage you to have the information available in a more lasting form as well, regardless of whether you trust the interpreter to support quote boxes.[/quote]
Seconded. I don't remember seeing a quotebox that didn't have anything other than a random mood-setting quote, so at least to me a quotebox means pretty much the opposite of "important information".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3425&start=0#p24435
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: i7 equivalent to i6 'box' statement?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-18 10:36:04

[quote="Juhana"][quote="tove"]This made me cringe a bit, because I find those boxes annoying and tend to "click through" them very quickly, and they don't show up on scrollback.  So I'd encourage you to have the information available in a more lasting form as well, regardless of whether you trust the interpreter to support quote boxes.[/quote]
Seconded. I don't remember seeing a quotebox that didn't have anything other than a random mood-setting quote, so at least to me a quotebox means pretty much the opposite of "important information".[/quote]

Thirded. Reliques of Tolti-Aph actually did put a clue in a quotebox, and it was [i]so annoying[/i]. In addition to what Juhana and tove say, the quotebox shows up out of my main line-of-sight -- I'm looking at the bottom, where the prompt is. The first time I played it I didn't notice it had popped up at all. (They don't display as prominently in Zoom as in Spatterlight, I think.)

[EDIT: I think I may have had an identical experience with Fail-Safe, although at the time I thought that my interpreter just hadn't displayed the material in question.

[spoiler]I don't remember the exact details, but I think you had to enter an access code that seemed like a username, and the menu options that you needed to end the game popped up in a box. When I didn't see them, I thought I needed to find another code asa password. I couldn't find it.[/spoiler]

Boy, that was frustrating, even if it was probably my fault in retrospect.]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3431&start=0#p24436
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interviews
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-18 11:10:11

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]Where do I post interviews?[/quote]

To your blog or website, I'd imagine (if you have a blog or website).

To your editor, perhaps (if you have a market for it).

If it's IF-specific, maybe post a copy to the IF Archive? They have directories for that sort of thing, IIRC.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3431&start=0#p24439
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interviews
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-10-18 11:36:09

The interview the Get Lamp guy did with Stephen Grenade has so far been watched by four people. I'm one of them. Call me an egomaniac, but I want a bigger audience than that. Is there a place on this forum where I can post interviews with pre-eminent members of this community?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3431&start=0#p24440
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interviews
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-10-18 11:50:47

It depends on the interview, but I'd say that either this forum or "Getting Started and General Game Design" are probably the most on-topic places to post a link.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3430&start=0#p24441
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Menus table
User: AaronP / DateTime: 2011-10-18 11:56:48

Well I'm wanting to use Menus rather than Questions because, if I understand it correctly, Menus allow you to select the option with arrow keys. I think that might be [i]slightly[/i] less intimidating for novices? 

Matt, your solution compiles, woo! Appended a "carry out the displaying activity." to the end of When play begins. Now, however, the program will carry out the function and then loop back to the menu. Is this intended? I'm looking at the docs and I don't see any way to explicitly close the menu.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3431&start=0#p24442
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interviews
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-18 12:05:02

SPAG would be my guess.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3432&start=0#p24443
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Prompt Placement
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-18 12:17:38

You can turn the whole screen into a status line, which works by being a grid rather than being flowable text.  It would take some hacking and possibly some @opcode use.  And you'd have to do your own word-wrapping.

Oh, also, I think the Basic Screen Effects extension has a "clear the screen" instruction which happens to place the cursor at the top.  IIRC.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3430&start=0#p24444
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Menus table
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-10-18 12:17:38

[quote="AaronP"]Well I'm wanting to use Menus rather than Questions because, if I understand it correctly, Menus allow you to select the option with arrow keys. I think that might be [i]slightly[/i] less intimidating for novices?[/quote]

Personally, I'd say that simple keystrokes, rather than menus, would be easier. Personally, I've always found menus fairly awkward, and of course they feel a bit retrograde today.  (They also flicker abominably in Zoom on OS X.)

Note that when I say keystrokes, I mean single keystrokes ("Press A, B, or C"), not standard parser input. Emily Short's Basic Screen Effects includes support for keystroke input, as does Flexible Windows if you think you might to divide the screen into multiple "windows". 

OT, keystroke input is underused I think. In addition to menus and similar applications, there are other avenues: I put up a demo awhile back for parser-based IF using only keystroke input, which you can see [url=http://glimmr.wordpress.com/2010/10/29/an-experiment-with-keystroke-input-in-if/]here[/url]. Better, Jon Ingold has recreated the parser using keystroke input, which allows for autocomplete and various other niceties. The latest post about that is [url=http://threeedgedsword.wordpress.com/2011/05/20/interactive-parsing-v4/]here[/url], I think.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3431&start=0#p24445
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interviews
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-10-18 12:20:59

Not a link. I want the interview to be posted directly and in its entirety on this forum, so that it may be archived and preserved for posterity. The best solution would a subdirectory called Pudloland, devoted solely to my stuff. It ought to be preceded by the following warning.

A WARNING: I think fast and I think deep. Because I do not want to waste your time, I suggest that all but the most intelligent readers ignore this subdirectory. If you do go on from here, please have the courtesy to concentrate. The art of deep thinking is disappearing, much thanks to the mental laziness of such audiences as the present one. Thinking is after all one of the two main pleasures of an intelligent human being, the other being fucking, known in polite society as "the pursuit of happiness." If you find the thinking in this subdirectory too fast and too intricate, I suggest you pursue your happiness elsewhere.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3424&start=10#p24446
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Algorithmic elegance in I7
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-18 12:24:22

[quote="ektemple"]Inform's general disregard for the rules of precedence then meant I spent many hours adding parentheses to make all precedence explicit.[/quote]
Your pain is felt.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3429&start=0#p24447
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Inform 7 site problems?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-18 12:25:55

Really colorful code, though. Is that lavender? Mmmm... lavender.....

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3431&start=0#p24448
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interviews
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-18 12:43:15

Posting them in a single thread seems best. This thread will work, since you've already added the warning.

(I assume you're talking about text transcripts rather than video; the web forum doesn't host video or image uploads.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3431&start=0#p24449
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interviews
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-10-18 12:43:36

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]SPAG would be my guess.[/quote]

That place is controlled by the Establishment.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3432&start=0#p24450
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Prompt Placement
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-18 12:48:43

I believe the difference you're seeing is that Frotz scrolls V3 games from the bottom, and V5/8 from the top. I don't remember if this is something recommended by the spec, or an adaptation to make legacy Infocom games play better.

There's no perfect way to get the from-the-bottom behavior in all interpreters. You could measure the screen height and print that many blank lines, but the screen height is typically measured in the fixed-width font (because it's typically used to lay out the status window) and there's no guarantee that the story window font is the same height.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3431&start=0#p24451
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interviews
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-10-18 12:51:01

[quote="zarf"]Posting them in a single thread seems best. This thread will work, since you've already added the warning.[/quote]

I'm going to post them in this directory but in a separate thread.

[quote="zarf"](I assume you're talking about text transcripts rather than video; the web forum doesn't host video or image uploads.)[/quote]

You assume correctly.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=30#p24452
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: JimmyMaher / DateTime: 2011-10-18 12:59:02

[quote]I'd be interested in adding that code to the Scope Caching extension.[/quote]

Really sorry to be so long in getting this to you. I got kind of pulled away for a while there. ("Squirreled," as my wife and I say in reference to our favorite character from Up.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3430&start=0#p24453
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Menus table
User: AaronP / DateTime: 2011-10-18 13:01:24

You know, for the case of a small number of choices like I've got, you may be right about that. I'll see if I can't implement it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3433&start=0#p24454
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Interview: Jacek does Jacek
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-10-18 13:02:35

A WARNING: I think fast and I think deep. Because I do not want to waste your time, I suggest that all but the most intelligent readers ignore this post. If you do go on from here, please have the courtesy to concentrate. The art of deep thinking is disappearing, much thanks to the mental laziness of such audiences as the present one. Thinking is after all one of the two main pleasures of an intelligent human being, the other being fucking, known in polite society as "the pursuit of happiness." If you find the thinking in this post too fast and too intricate, I suggest you pursue your happiness elsewhere.


This is the first in a series of interviews with pre-eminent members of the IF community. My first interviewee is none other than the (in)famous founder and CEO of Pudlo Industries, Jacek Pudlo.


Jacek: Why do you write interactive fiction, Jacek?

Jacek: So that I can reach out to millions and change the course of history.

Jacek: Okay, let me rephrase that. What do you *seek* specifically in interactive fiction that you cannot find in other media?

Jacek: I seek to discover in it the mode of art whereby my genius could express itself in unfettered freedom.

Jacek: What do you see as the most important quality in an IF writer?

Jacek: Sincerity. Once you learn to fake it, you’ve got it made.

Jacek: You’re flippant. Do you feel threatened by my questions?

Jacek: To be honest, yes. The long, sincere, non-flippant response to your question is that the most important quality in any writer is to always be more of a crackpot than a nudnik. A man on the street wears his shoes hanging from his ears. The nudnik asks the man why his shoes are hanging from his ears. The crackpot asks why they are untied. The problem is that the very act of painstakingly explaining the difference between a nudnik and a crackpot has made me into a nudnik. Wisdom is cheap and talent is precious and a writer should always aim for the latter. This is why interviews pose a threat to writers, because they tap a writer’s wisdom, not his talent. There I go again, being a nudnik.

Jacek: Do you have any religious ambitions?

Jacek: You can’t grow up in an orthodox Jewish family without thinking once in a while of becoming Messiah. But ever since my last attempt to walk on water ended in embarrassment, I try not to think about it too much.

Jacek: Are you a narcissist?

Jacek:  Drowning while kissing your own reflection is such a wussy way to go. The character in Greek mythology I identify most readily with is Zeus. I guess that makes me a Zeusist.

Jacek: Do you think psychiatry will ever solve the problems that beset you?

Jacek: No doubt it will, and by doing so create new ones.

Jacek: How do you feel about money?

Jacek: Money is the one thing that gives a sense of dignity to people who otherwise don’t have it, which is why so many people humiliate and dishonour themselves to get it.

Jacek: You don’t think money is freedom?

Jacek: Not if your only way of getting it is becoming a wage slave.

Jacek: Do you believe the government was behind the 9/11 attacks?

Jacek: No, but I think it’s a healthy lie.

Jacek: Why?

Jacek: Because it creates the illusion of a government that is potent and competent enough to perpetrate a complex plot, and therefore dangerous and therefore worthy of our grudging respect. If people knew just how impotent and inept a democracy truly is, they would opt for National Socialism, as the Germans did when they realised just how inept the Weimar republic was.

Jacek: Do you believe in alien abductions?

Jacek: No, but my answer is based solely on cognitive empathy.

Jacek: Eh?

Jacek: Picture a family of space aliens living somewhere in the Andromeda galaxy. It’s Labour Day in Andromeda and Daddy asks Mom & Kids where they’d rather spend the holiday: on Planet Zyglot, which is just around the corner and has a new amusement park, or on Planet Earth, which is millions of light years away and where the only amusement is abducting humans and probing their anuses. Unless this family is *seriously* into rectal photography, they should opt for Zyglot. Assuming they’ve mastered inter-galactic travel, the cognitive gap between them and us is like the gap between us and dogs. When was the last time you spent Labour Day abducting dogs and probing their anuses?

Jacek: What is the meaning of life?

Jacek: (Here Jacek’s answer was lost to static in the tape.)

Jacek: That is really something. I’ve never heard anyone define the meaning of life so eloquently and succinctly. This will be a life-changing insight to so many people!

Jacek: Thank you.

Jacek: You have famously likened the IF community to "a cottage industry of isolated cranks who write computer games no one wants to buy and few want to play." What kind of shape do you see interactive fiction in today?

Jacek: To see it really well I'd have to play more of it than I currently do. I belong to the fin-de-millennium generation, which means that by 2001 my tastes had congealed into a fairly stable jelly. Emily Short's _Savoir Faire_, Mike Gentry's _Anchorhead_, Adam Cadre's _Varicella_ and Jon Ingold's _All Roads_ are the games that define IF for me. Games written since that could equal these are few and far in between. _Slouching Towards Bedlam_ has an interesting concept but sloppy execution while Emily Short's more recent (over)production has yet to yield anything even remotely comparable to _Savoir Faire_. Cadre's _Nercolepsy_ was unplayable and Gentry is sadly as unproductive as Short is überprolific.

Jacek: These four are your idea of the IF Canon?

Jacek: Not in the Must-Play-Before-You-Die sense. More in the sense that when you can’t get what you like, you learn to like what you can get. Playing IF today is very much a process of learning to like stuff you would normally wrinkle your nose at, like the pseudo-profundities of _Metamorphoses_ or the god-awful Lovecraftian prose of _Anchorhead_ or the sophomorisms of _Photopia_ or the obscurantism of _All Roads_.

Jacek: What about commercial old school games?

Jacek: Like _Zork_?

Jacek: Yes.

Jacek: I never understood the attraction. To me _Zork_ has always been a trivial exercise in arbitrary puzzles with no sense of language, little sense of detail and a sense of humour that is uniquely dreary. It's something you pay lip service to simply because it's been around for a long time. Like a senile aunt or YAHWEH or Andrew Plotkin. But _Zork_ is also inescapable. No other game is so widely and lovingly parodied. Like all crap, it improves greatly when seen through the lens of nostalgia. It's one of those games that are more fun to reminisce than to play. A lot of noise has been made about how post-commercial IF has raised the standards compared to Infocom’s games. I suppose that’s true. The games mentioned earlier are hopelessly minor league, but unlike _Zork_ they are not autistic.

Jacek: I couldn't help noticing you didn't include Plotkin in your IF Canon. I’m sure Andy’s mom and dad would beg to differ. And they are just two of the several people around the globe whose imaginations have been touched by the magic of Andy’s games. I didn't want to upset you then, but now that you've brought him up yourself, perhaps you could calmly explain the exclusion?

Jacek: I come to IF not as a player would but as a thief. When I come across something witty in a Thornton game, I don't write the author an email offering him goats and sweet incense in gratitude, as an ordinary player might, but instead ask myself this. How can I appropriate Adam's wit in my own work without committing blatant plagiarism? This never happens when I play a Plotkin game. Wit, or indeed intelligence of any kind, is a rare occurrence in his work, and considering the paucity of his mind I can see why he is reluctant to insert it gratuitously.

Jacek: What about your own IF? Why the prolonged silence? Why haven’t you released anything since 2004?

Jacek: I can write only after at least one day of celibacy. I have not been blessed with such a prolonged hiatus of sexual activity since I was awarded the Golden Banana of Discord. The constant orgies (where the Banana figures prominently among other stuffed fruits and vegetables) have drained my creative powers. I need the energy of sexual frustration to sustain the anger that is the source of my creativity. It’s really a question of spermatic economy. The more jizz I spend on sex the less I can afford to ejaculate into my art.

Jacek: So what you’re saying is that your orgiastic lifestyle has castrated your art?

Jacek: Let it suffice to say that it’s not inkwells I’ve been dipping my quill into lately.

Jacek: This would be an incredibly tasteless reference to Oksana in _Gamlet_?

Jacek: (Jacek nods.)

Jacek: I suppose the question on everyone’s lips is how real is Oksana? Is she a mere foetus of your oversexed imagination or is she based on a real woman?

Jacek: She is neither. Oksana is a composite of sixteen women whose houses I had broken into to ejaculate in their hair as they slept. But Oksana is more than just a boyish prank. She is also a dozen or so publishing houses whose employees I viciously harassed for several months. Like all great artists I had sublimated my sex drive into art and written a bulky volume of poetry that absolutely no one on this planet wanted to publish.

Jacek: Despite the universal acclaim of _Gamlet_, you don’t seem to have many friends among your fellow interactive fictioneers. Most see you as a contradictious and divisive figure while some have not shied away from excoriating your good name with odious innuendos. What gives you the strength and conviction to persevere in your one-man crusade?

Jacek: Interactive fiction is facing big, complex problems. If Jesus Christ and Steven Segal have taught me anything, it is that big, complex problems are best tackled by a lonely guy with a god complex who’s crazy enough to take on the whole world.

Jacek: You do understand, though, why people react to you the way they do?

Jacek: I’m too honest, too intense, too fucking REAL. I suppose that makes people afraid and people who are afraid are often hostile.

Jacek: Do you think they are afraid of you because they understand you or because they don’t?

Jacek: That’s a good question, Jacek. I think they are initially mildly annoyed and begin to understand me as they grow furious.

Jacek: Adam Cadre has dubbed you a “sociopathic asshole” and compared you to the perpetrators of the Abu Ghraib scandal simply because you disliked his novel. How do you feel about that?

Jacek: A billionaire friend of mine invites me sporadically to his London townhouse where we get drunk and have merciless philosophical disputes where no feelings are spared. One time I won the dispute and awoke the following day with a hangover and the dread of having gone too far and lost a friend. The servants informed me he had left. On the kitchen table I found the keys to his Jaguar and a note. “I’m off to Baghdad to close a deal. Help yourself to the booze and the Jaguar, not necessarily in that order.” It’s hard to wound a man of action. It’s hard to nurture a grudge when you’re off to Baghdad the next day to be received as a personal guest by the Iraqi prime minister. Adam Cadre is a wonderful IF writer and a god-awful novelist. He’s also an idle man with enough leisure to nurture a silly grudge.

Jacek: How do you feel about I7?

Jacek: Before I answer that question, I’d like to expand on the Cadre debacle.

Jacek: Please do.

Jacek: Adam Cadre likes to quote Rilke and drop Heidegger’s name here and there, but he’s much more at home with The Fantastic Four than serious poets and thinkers. He has a comic book mind, which is fine when you’re writing light-hearted IF like _Varicella_ or _I-0_, but a disaster when you’re writing a novel. _Ready, OK!_ is one gimmick plus some silly anecdotes diluted to fill 360 pages. Reading it is a bonanza of vicarious shame. It’s an embarrassment of such proportions, the very fact that Adam is still among us is a testimony to the strength and perseverance of his personality. A lesser man would have thrown in the towel a long time ago. As to I7, I am certain it’s an MI6 conspiracy to take over our computers.

Jacek: But seriously.

Jacek: Seriously I think I7 is as useful as a fountain in the rain. A lot of this is going to get cut out, right? The Establishment will surely not allow this.

Jacek: Perhaps, but I’ll make the decision what will, not the Establishment.

Jacek: There is something heroic about Graham Nelson writing _Curses_ while creating I6. I am reminded of Whitman personally typesetting _Leaves of Grass_. Nelson not only wrote a seminal game, but created one of the most useful and prolific tools of IF design. He is thus both the Gutenberg and Goethe of IF. I’m afraid I can’t say the same thing about his work on I7. 

Jacek: In a recent interview E. L. Doctorow describes the novel as a "large canvas capable of holding the most substantial themes." Do you think this description applies to IF?

Jacek: Is this what they call a subtle bridge? It's funny you should mention that interview, by the way, because I'd just finished reading it and had asked myself the very same question.

Jacek: And?

Jacek: Is IF a large canvas? No. There's some genre fiction, mostly sci-fi and fantasy, and there are some noteworthy murder mysteries and horror stories but nothing that approaches in seriousness the kind of work you might expect from, say, E. L. Doctorow.

Jacek: Why is that do you think?

Jacek: The narrative vehicle of a novel is the interaction between its characters. The narrative vehicle of IF is the manipulation of objects through the intermediary of a playing character who is usually a sociopathic kleptomaniac whose only aim in his interactive little life is to stuff his incredibly spacious inventory with everything that hasn't been nailed down. It's difficult enough to address "the most substantial themes" through the proxy of object manipulation. When you add a single-minded maniac to the equation, the problems become almost insurmountable. On top of everything there's the crazy economic logic of IF.

Jacek: Crazy economic logic?

Jacek: The way the Incredible Underground Empire contains incredible riches but only one screwdriver and one pair of ear muffs and you know the screwdriver and the ear muffs are much more valuable than the riches because their singularity implies they are part of some future puzzle. You'd think that the people who built the Incredible Underground Empire and filled it with incredible riches could afford one more pair of ear muffs. On top of this there’s a tradition of IF puzzle design going way back to _Zork_ that presupposes a barter economy. _Stiffy Makane_, _Mentula Macanus_ and many other games have puzzle schemes where item A must be given to character X so that X may release item B to the PC which is then given to character Y releasing item C, etc. This is barter at its crudest. It’s basically Stone Age economics. There’s no way you could make this work within a realist mimetic tradition, unless your game is set in a Neanderthal community or among wizards and “moon ministers,” which amounts to the same thing. The problem is that IF depends on a verbal interface that works smoothly only when handling objects with unique names. This is why you don’t see many representations of monetary economy in IF.

Jacek: Are you saying that IF's problems are endemic to the medium?

Jacek: Not so much to the medium as the tradition within which most IF writers have chosen to work. You can’t really play Chopin on an accordion. There are instruments and puzzle schemes that severely limit your repertoire. To widen our repertoire, we need to abandon the Zorkian tradition of puzzle design. If you’re wondering how a post-Zorkian puzzle scheme might look like, have a look at _Savoir Faire_. _Savoir Faire_ is a good example of a game that spurns the Zorkian puzzle design tradition while retaining IF’s preference for uniquely named, singular objects. But these are fairly minor issues compared to the major hurdle, which is the IF community.

Jacek: Care to elaborate?

Jacek: The IF community is too geographically and culturally dispersed to engender any sense of commonality. It's true that all great literature is universal in this sense, but there's an oxymoron lurking in this statement, because while being universal great literature is also local and specific. Few novelists are as universal as Dostoyevsky, and yet his global appeal is possible only by dint of his distinct Russianness. The paradox of literary universality is that it feeds off specificity. There is an acute sense in Dostoyevsky’s novels of addressing not only a Russian-language audience, but more importantly a Russian *nation*, a people with a common destiny, and thereby shaping and defining that destiny. Please note that I am not using "nation" in a purely ethnic sense. Americans are not a cohesive ethnic entity, but they are nonetheless a nation, a people with a common destiny, and that destiny has been shaped by Whitman, Twain and Hemingway. There is no such thing as an IF nation, nor is there any sense of a common destiny among the people who play IF, which is why fantasy and sci-fi are the predominant genres of IF. Neither is exactly renowned for being capable of "holding the most substantial themes."

Jacek: You're not a big fan of _Solaris_, then?

Jacek: As a matter of fact, I am. I can see where you're heading with this.

Jacek: I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be combative.

Jacek: That's okay. _Solaris_ is an extreme rarity. It’s a speculative novel that has successfully broken into the Canon. I can think of only two other such novels, _Brave New World_ and _The Left Hand of Darkness_. It’s vital not to confuse speculative fiction with science fiction. These novels are not brainy episodes of _Star Trek_. They are conceptual experiments presenting us with contra-factual scenarios that extrapolate real social and technological trends into the future, thus helping us to question things we usually take for granted. The vast majority of Canonical novels are not contra-factual in this sense but highly specific works, set in a factual space and a factual time and informed by the author’s own experience. This specificity and factuality and authorial honesty is missing from IF today. _The Dreamhold_ was written by an American man living in New York, but it might as well have been written by a mildly retarded Chinese woman living in Beijing.

Jacek: Are you suggesting that we write more non-English-language IF?

Jacek: Not at all. I don’t think there’s much future in Greek-language IF, but I do think Greek IF has a future.

Jacek: Now I’m confused.

Jacek: Don’t be. It’s really quite simple. _Ulysses_ is a uniquely Irish novel despite having been written in English. What I’m suggesting is that Greeks write in English about their Greek experience, instead of wasting theirs and my time with flying unicorns and vapid surrealism. If you live in New York, don’t set your game in some insipid “memory palace,” but use the city you live in as a backdrop for your story. After all, that’s what writers do all the time – use their lives as material for their fiction. Reading a novel like _Ulysses_ today is the closest you’ll ever get to time travel. Playing _Metamorphoses_ fifty years from now will be like going to Moscow only to find they have the very same McDonalds there that they have everywhere else. The problem with inanity is that it’s the same no matter whether it’s made in Europe, China or America. What has stronger resonance for an educated adult: a story about a non-descript wizard haplessly roaming his “memory palace,” or a novel by Paul Auster?

Jacek: So why don’t you kindly fuck off and go read your Auster novel? What makes you think a tourist blithely strolling into the ghetto can presume to lecture its inhabitants about a place they’ve lived in for decades?

Jacek: Because I don’t think you necessarily must live in a ghetto. 

Jacek: Point taken. Do you hope to achieve immortality through your IF?

Jacek: I’d much rather achieve immortality by never dying.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3434&start=0#p24455
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Beatle Quest
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-18 13:03:27

The IFDB has no listing for it, but what scraps I can find make it sound kind of fascinating:

<a class="postlink" href="http://yois.if-legends.org/vault.php?id=465">http://yois.if-legends.org/vault.php?id=465</a>

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.worldofspectrum.org/showmag.cgi?mag=YourComputer/Issue8509/Pages/YourComputer850900039.jpg">http://www.worldofspectrum.org/showmag. ... 900039.jpg</a>

The bit where puzzles seem to be based on recognizing lyrics sounds like an amusing example of wordplay-based design.

[for emulatin': <a class="postlink" href="http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0005994">http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseek ... id=0005994</a>]

Gonna go play it now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3431&start=0#p24456
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interviews
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-18 13:17:54

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]The interview the Get Lamp guy did with Stephen Grenade has so far been watched by four people. I'm one of them.[/quote]

Have you seen the interview he did with Demian Katz? I actually purchased Get Lamp [i]specifically [/i]for the Demian Katz stuff, and it turns out that none of the Katz footage survived the final cut [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3433&start=0#p24457
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview: Jacek does Jacek
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-18 13:19:45

I think I would find this easier to read if Jacek's questions and Jacek's answers were somehow typographically distinguished.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3431&start=10#p24458
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interviews
User: Tale / DateTime: 2011-10-18 13:27:36

Okay, I'll bite. Who will you interview?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3430&start=0#p24459
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Menus table
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-18 13:28:04

AaronP, I haven't actually used Menus myself except to twiddle with other people's code, but IIRC you can close the menu with a "decrease the menu depth" command that decreases it to zero. Not sure how that would work in this situation (maybe you would need to do it before you started the story?). 

Anyway, I think Erik is probably right that this is a good case for keystroke input.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3431&start=10#p24460
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interviews
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-10-18 13:30:42

Himself. He already posted it. It's quite funny.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3356&start=0#p24461
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Request to allow .i7x attachments
User: Merk / DateTime: 2011-10-18 13:58:09

Uh... probably. None of those are default executable types are they?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=30#p24462
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: JimmyMaher / DateTime: 2011-10-18 14:15:16

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]I'm interested, of course.  I added the opcode calls partly for your benefit. Let me know how helpful they are, if any. I think for the typical turn in a typical game, the parser comprises most of the processing that a game needs to do, so speeding it up is fruitful for everyone. 
[/quote]

I've been experimenting a bit with the opcode calls, and haven't found them to deliver enough of a performance boost to be worth implementing throughout the parser. Which doesn't mean that I don't hugely appreciate your work, of course...

At this point I think any further performance gains I find will not come through the parser. In that spirit, I'm going to do one more round of performance profiling to see if any more functions elsewhere stand out as particular time sinks. If I turn up anything interesting, I'll report back here again. If not, I'm about ready to judge performance acceptable (at least on this story file) and call it a day (at least for now).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3356&start=0#p24463
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Request to allow .i7x attachments
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-10-18 14:39:57

Nope - at least not in my experience.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3431&start=10#p24464
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interviews
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-18 14:40:41

[quote="RealNC"]Himself. He already posted it. It's quite funny.[/quote]

In a cowardly, Socratic-Dialogue sort of way [emote]:)[/emote]

But he's no Demian Katz. I want that Demian Katz material [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=40#p24465
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-18 14:56:05

[quote="JimmyMaher"]Really sorry to be so long in getting this to you. I got kind of pulled away for a while there. ("Squirreled," as my wife and I say in reference to our favorite character from Up.)[/quote]
Thanks!

I notice that you record concealment after reading a command. That's when I was caching scope as well, but I recently ran into some weirdness. I think it had to do with actions by NPCs that have an "[any known thing]" token in the grammar line. I thought I made myself a note somewhere, but for now all I can offer is a vague warning...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3433&start=0#p24466
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview: Jacek does Jacek
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-10-18 15:09:27

[quote="matt w"]I think I would find this easier to read if Jacek's questions and Jacek's answers were somehow typographically distinguished.[/quote]

Did you not read the warning, or are you deliberately jerking my chain? Should you decide to read the warning, you will notice that I am asking my readers to concentrate. If you... concentrate... on the... question marks... you will... notice... which Jacek is asking... the questions... and which Jacek is anwsering. Sorry about the ellipses. They are my only typographical means of calming myself down in the face of mental laziness. Also, the idea of there being two Jaceks is deeply insulting to my monotheism. There can only be one Jacek.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3433&start=0#p24467
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview: Jacek does Jacek
User: Tale / DateTime: 2011-10-18 15:32:23

Hey, that's quite good, old chap. Who will you interview next?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3433&start=0#p24468
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview: Jacek does Jacek
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-10-18 15:46:42

[quote="Taleslinger"]Hey, that's quite good, old chap. Who will you interview next?[/quote]

I will shortly send my Nazgûls after the Hobbits. [Jacek clears his throat.] I mean, send emails to possible subjects.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3060&start=10#p24470
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF cover = Square ?
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2011-10-18 17:28:40

My argument for a square would be while a "squared rectangle" (that is, black borders added to the top/bottom or left/right) look ok, while a "rectangled" square doesn't look nearly as good.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3433&start=0#p24471
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview: Jacek does Jacek
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-18 18:13:29

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"][quote="matt w"]I think I would find this easier to read if Jacek's questions and Jacek's answers were somehow typographically distinguished.[/quote]

Did you not read the warning, or are you deliberately jerking my chain? Should you decide to read the warning, you will notice that I am asking my readers to concentrate. If you... concentrate... on the... question marks... you will... notice... which Jacek is asking... the questions... and which Jacek is anwsering. Sorry about the ellipses. They are my only typographical means of calming myself down in the face of mental laziness. Also, the idea of there being two Jaceks is deeply insulting to my monotheism. There can only be one Jacek.[/quote]

Perhaps I am just letting you know that your strategy for reducing your readership is succeeding! Although I would also suggest that putting strain on the readers' eyes is not the ideal way to encourage mental concentration, a point that you have implicitly recognized by including paragraph breaks -- for even without this typographical convenience, a reader could tell where the questions ended and the answers began by concentrating on the "Jacek:"s.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3425&start=0#p24472
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: i7 equivalent to i6 'box' statement?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-10-18 18:23:55

[quote="tove"][quote="Laroquod"]The note I was thinking of including in the box is an important one that I wouldn't want anyone to miss...[/quote]

This made me cringe a bit, because I find those boxes annoying and tend to "click through" them very quickly, and they don't show up on scrollback.  So I'd encourage you to have the information available in a more lasting form as well, regardless of whether you trust the interpreter to support quote boxes.[/quote]
Fourthded, as far as in-world clues go. But this is an out-of-world note for friends and playtesters, not intended for the final release, so not to worry, peeps! I just wanted a method that would seem somewhat removed from the main transcript while altering the look and feel of the opening screen as little as possible. If I could just make it an OS dialog box, I would.

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3435&start=0#p24473
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Mapping physical space
User: Rymbeld / DateTime: 2011-10-18 18:51:42

Hi, I'm new. 
I'm not that good at asking questions, but I do have a concern. Usually when I have a question on the internet, I simply describe my approach to something and then ask for feedback. So, I'm just getting into Inform 7, with almost no previous programming experience, but a long-standing desire to write IF. My first learning project is to "map" out my neighbourhood. The finished project will serve as something like a tour, describing the buildings and such, which adding in my memories, etc. The next layer will add some sort of an autobiographical story--so that "you" in the text represents [b]me.[/b].

Anyway, this past weekend I went on a walk with a stopwatch and a quad-ruled composition book. Since I knew that, from my apartment to the east, the first "room" I wanted was the local bakery, I timed the walk. Three minutes. Thus, the basic unit of distance from room to room would be however far I could walk in three minutes. I made a few minor adjustments if I came across a spot I knew I wanted to write into the project. But you know what? I've got an issue. How do I convey this sense of travel? There were times when I wanted to produce some text [i]between[/i] rooms. That is, I don't want the user interacting with them, or even trying to, because they aren't features of the space, but of the experience of walking through the neighbourhood. 

Am I coming at it the right way? Maybe the problem is that I am thinking of a "room" as a point in space, leaving lines undescribed. Another related problem is that there are some parts I don't want to bother with, because they are boring...which would mean that the distance between some rooms will be two or three times greater than the usual distance. I'm not sure how to convey that to the reader--I can't write "you walk a long way" in the room description, because it might only be a long way when coming from one direction! Hmmm. I've tried coding "Before going south" or "before going south from the shops..." but neither work the way I want them to. 

Also, could anyone recommend an IF that is a good study in representing space, or an attempt to map an actual space? (Yes, I know there is Colossal Cave, but I've never been spelunking, never even been inside a cave since elementary school, so that might not translate well for me, but it is on my playlist. Any others?)

thanks, and sorry if this is a bad question.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3415&start=0#p24474
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Games with falling scenes
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-10-18 19:50:29

Thanks, everyone. Here's hoping I get a little inspiration.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3433&start=0#p24475
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview: Jacek does Jacek
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-10-18 19:59:01

Ha! I knew Jacek can't write. He misspelled "Steven Seagal".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3435&start=0#p24476
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Mapping physical space
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-10-18 20:00:26

1) A very common instinct, for novice IF authors, is 'I want to map my house/apartment/neighbourhood/dorm room/campus.' This approach isn't inherently awful, but because so many inexperienced authors try it, they have a pretty bad reputation as bland and boring. (We call 'em My Apartment games.) Not trying to discourage you, just giving fair warning. It's great as a learning project -- but it's possible that you may want to think carefully about publishing the first IF game you ever write. (I'm deeply grateful that I never did.) But there's been some discussion in recent years about the potential for nonfiction IF, including autobiography, so that would definitely be an interesting direction.

[quote="Rymbeld"]Anyway, this past weekend I went on a walk with a stopwatch and a quad-ruled composition book. Since I knew that, from my apartment to the east, the first "room" I wanted was the local bakery, I timed the walk. Three minutes. Thus, the basic unit of distance from room to room would be however far I could walk in three minutes.[/quote]
2) A foolish realism is the hobgoblin of little designers. And unrecognisably mangled adages. IF convention assumes that the distance between one room and another is flexible: however far makes sense. If a road is pretty much the same all the way along, it's simplest to make it one room even if it's much larger than the distance between, say, the rooms in a house. As for time -- very precise measurements of time are usually not all that important.

3) [quote="Rymbeld"]How do I convey this sense of travel? There were times when I wanted to produce some text between rooms. That is, I don't want the user interacting with them, or even trying to, because they aren't features of the space, but of the experience of walking through the neighbourhood. [/quote]
It's pretty common for IF games to contain descriptions of travel in between rooms; unfortunately, the habits of experienced readers tend to mean that any text displayed above the room title is likely to get missed. What do you want your output to look like,  exactly?
You can also put in a number of interstitial rooms that contain nothing very different but mean that the player has to keep actively travelling; this is generally considered crap design, although you may get away with it if it's used lightly.

4) [quote="Rymbeld"]Also, could anyone recommend an IF that is a good study in representing space, or an attempt to map an actual space? [/quote]
Jacqueline Lott's [i]The Fire Tower[/i] is a representation of a real hiking trail in the Great Smoky Mountains, although it was written from memory. Some time after it was released Jacq and I walked back over the trail and took thorough notes for a putative 2.0 version; that never materialised, and the game as-is isn't as precise a representation of the real-world place as it could be.
Sarah Morayati has designed a system for nonfiction IF, [i]You Are Here[/i]. (See <a class="postlink" href="http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/backissues/spag60.html#here">http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/backissue ... .html#here</a> ). I don't know its current status, though.
And of course there's Peter Nepstad's gigantic [i]1893: A World's Fair Mystery[/i], which maps out a well-documented historic site.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3435&start=0#p24477
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Mapping physical space
User: Rymbeld / DateTime: 2011-10-18 20:34:09

Oh, this is definitely a learning project. I only intend to show this to people I know here in town.  You don't need to worry about seeing "my apartment" in IFCOMP2012. It would be hard to write a good story, I think, if I were to only to precisely map physical spaces. That's what I'm doing now, though, but I'm practicing.

I suppose I have an explicit question about travel between rooms: I can't figure it out. But this is an Inform question, I guess. I want to do something like:

[quote]
ROOM 1
You are in location x.
>s
You wait a few minutes for the traffic to clear before crossing the street.
ROOM 2
You are in location y [/quote]

Coding [code]before going south say "blah" [/code] will print "blah" every time the uses enters s; that won't work. Coding [code]before going south from ROOM 1 say "blah"[/code] didn't do anything at all. I couldn't find any examples of this sort of thing in the documentation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3435&start=0#p24478
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Mapping physical space
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-10-18 22:51:44

Hmm. It works for me. Can you post the smallest possible game that shows this behaviour?

Note that a rule for going south FROM room 1 will only work if going south succeeds; if you want something that'll fire regardless of whether the player can go that way or not, "before going south IN room 1" is what you're after.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3435&start=0#p24479
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Mapping physical space
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-18 23:13:31

[quote]IF convention assumes that the distance between one room and another is flexible: however far makes sense.[/quote]

A good rule of thumb is that a game turn is not so many minutes; a game turn is so many things impinging on the player's attention.

Of course, this doesn't apply directly to room exits. The second time a player takes an exit, that exit takes *zero* attention. The player whacks through it on autopilot.

The first time counts for a lot, obviously. So think about distributing rooms -- and their contents -- so that each move reveals a comparable amount of new stuff.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3435&start=0#p24480
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Mapping physical space
User: Rymbeld / DateTime: 2011-10-18 23:50:21

[quote="maga"]Hmm. It works for me. Can you post the smallest possible game that shows this behaviour?

Note that a rule for going south FROM room 1 will only work if going south succeeds; if you want something that'll fire regardless of whether the player can go that way or not, "before going south IN room 1" is what you're after.[/quote]

Thanks! It does work. I went back and realised that I did wrong: What I had done was (1) create the room (2) described the room (3) put a thing in the room (4) added the "before going" bit. I needed to invert (3) and (4)--I guess that some rule about moving in and out of a room needs to be right next to the room in the code, not separated from it. In the same way, any rule that specified some before-xing-of-the-thing would go in position (4), not (3)....I'm guessing. 

I think I need to just first finish up about thirty room descriptions and map out all their spatial relations, then read more of the documentation, then add more things, etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3435&start=0#p24481
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Mapping physical space
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-18 23:56:27

That particular source-code ordering doesn't sound as though it should have made a difference. If you don't mind my saying so, my guess is that you had some irritatingly hard to notice typo, and when you were switching 3 and 4 you fixed the typo.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3435&start=0#p24482
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Mapping physical space
User: George / DateTime: 2011-10-19 00:03:13

I second the notion that a strength of rooms in IF (rather than, say, 2D coordinates) is time and space dilation/compression, but if you're interested in highlighting the travel time between rooms you should have a play with this experiment:

<a class="postlink" href="http://glimmr.wordpress.com/2011/01/27/if-gameplay-experiment-experiential-movement/">http://glimmr.wordpress.com/2011/01/27/ ... -movement/</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3429&start=0#p24484
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Inform 7 site problems?
User: tansaku / DateTime: 2011-10-19 05:02:39

likewise - anyone know who the site admin is?  I can't get a google cache or an archive.org look at the pages ...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3429&start=0#p24486
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Inform 7 site problems?
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-10-19 08:43:12

Yeah, still down.  [emote]:?[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3435&start=0#p24487
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Mapping physical space
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-10-19 09:21:50

[quote="George"]I second the notion that a strength of rooms in IF (rather than, say, 2D coordinates) is time and space dilation/compression, but if you're interested in highlighting the travel time between rooms you should have a play with this experiment:

<a class="postlink" href="http://glimmr.wordpress.com/2011/01/27/if-gameplay-experiment-experiential-movement/">http://glimmr.wordpress.com/2011/01/27/ ... -movement/</a>[/quote]

If you do try out that experiment, be sure to also read the comments. Not only do the commenters do a good job describing what doesn't work in the experiment, they also suggest a couple of games to try that might be interesting to look at. I think if the real-time aspect was going to work at all, it would need to be in the context of a game where other real-time events also take place, and George cites a MUD in the comments that can give you a sense of what that would be like. I found it somewhat harrying myself to have to try to keep up in real time...

[quote="maga"]It's pretty common for IF games to contain descriptions of travel in between rooms; unfortunately, the habits of experienced readers tend to mean that any text displayed above the room title is likely to get missed.[/quote]

I've often wondered why so few people have experimented with getting rid of the in-transcript room titles altogether. With the room name in the status bar, they aren't really necessary; just conventional. This approach would require a bit more between-room text: you've now got to mark that the player has moved on, e.g. "You enter the room to the north. It is painted in all the colors of the rainbow." It would probably also make it slightly more difficult to skim past text you've seen before. But the effect might be interesting, particularly if the rooms aren't what your game was about in the first place, or if you're trying to create a more continuous sense of movement through the world.

(The room titles probably also help anchor your eye given that most interpreters aren't smooth scrolling, but I'm not sure how much of an issue that would be.)

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3435&start=0#p24488
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Mapping physical space
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-10-19 09:35:03

[quote]It's pretty common for IF games to contain descriptions of travel in between rooms; unfortunately, the habits of experienced readers tend to mean that any text displayed above the room title is likely to get missed.[/quote]

Where I have text above the room name (for example, describing anything usual or important relating to the experience of travelling from the previous location to the new location), I often add a blank line or two before the text.  By setting it off from the text has has already been seen, I think this makes it a little less likely that a player will miss it.

Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3437&start=0#p24489
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Time to cheer up!
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-10-19 09:56:46

Hi!

So I was going to title this thread something like "Sorry for the vast amount of rudeness following!" as it's all about something I noticed when trying to implement a "piss off" action in my WIP (so there was a lot of piss off this and piss off that!) but I found an alternative example to ilustrate the same issue (if it's an issue at all!)

Imagine I'm trying to code a "cheer up" action in my Beta thing, something that would certainly have an effect on people, but not on things. Something like this:
[code]
Location_01 is a room. "You're in Location_01.". 

A book is a thing in location_01

Rose is a woman in Location_01.

Cheering up is an action applying to one thing.
Understand "cheer [someone]" as cheering up.
Understand "cheer [someone] up" as cheering up.
Understand "cheer up [someone]" as cheering up.
Report cheering up: say "'Hey, hey, hey! It's cheering up time!' you say, while [noun] stares at you with amazement."

test me with "cheer/cheer up/cheer rose/cheer rose up/cheer up rose/cheer book/cheer book up/cheer up book".[/code]

The test outputs this:
[quote]
Location_01
You're in Location_01.

You can see a book and Rose here.

>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] cheer
(Rose)
"Hey, hey, hey! It's cheering up time!" you say, while Rose stares at you with amazement.

>[2] cheer up
(Rose)
"Hey, hey, hey! It's cheering up time!" you say, while Rose stares at you with amazement.

>[3] cheer rose
"Hey, hey, hey! It's cheering up time!" you say, while Rose stares at you with amazement.

>[4] cheer rose up
"Hey, hey, hey! It's cheering up time!" you say, while Rose stares at you with amazement.

>[5] cheer up rose
"Hey, hey, hey! It's cheering up time!" you say, while Rose stares at you with amazement.

>[6] cheer book
You can only do that to something animate.

>[7] cheer book up
You can only do that to something animate.

>[8] cheer up book
You can't see any such thing.
[/quote]

I expected [8] to be the same that [6] and [7], but that was not the case!
I took a look into cheer grammar lines in auto.inf. As expected, they were just like this:
[code]
Verb 'cheer'
    * creature  -> A80_cheering_up
    * creature 'up'  -> A80_cheering_up
    * 'up' creature  -> A80_cheering_up[/code]

I tried doing the same in a plain Inform 6 project and "cheer up book" gave the expected response requiring an animate object (and not claiming the book was not in sight)

I'm aware that I could easily work it out creating a check rule of my own instead of just trusting the "someone" tokens to do the job. What I would like to know is whether that [8] output in the first test is right or perhaps something is not working as it should.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3429&start=0#p24490
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Inform 7 site problems?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-19 10:18:18

I filed <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=780">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=780</a> -- the bug-tracker still works.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3437&start=0#p24491
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Time to cheer up!
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-19 10:22:38

My answer is "probably". The exact handling of rejected parser lines has shifted since the I6 days, but I don't have a precise handle on how. This does not surprise me.

Even in the I6 days, best practice was to never use a conditional token ("creature" then, "[someone]" now) without adding a "noun" / "[something]" grammar line to catch everything else. Or, as you say, discriminate at the check level rather than the grammar level.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3437&start=0#p24492
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Time to cheer up!
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-19 10:24:16

(I think the current behavior is cleaner, actually. The I6 "creature" token was a weird hybrid that would match non-creatures but generate an error. That's more work than you really want a grammar line to do.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3437&start=0#p24493
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Time to cheer up!
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-10-19 10:33:10

FWIW, the reason behind the difference is that the priority of the parser errors has changed:[code]Constant ANIMA_PE     = 4;
Constant CANTSEE_PE   = 5;[/code] in Definitions.i6t (used by I7) vs. [code]Constant CANTSEE_PE   = 4;
! ...
Constant ANIMA_PE     = 11;[/code] in parserm.h (used by I6).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3435&start=10#p24494
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Mapping physical space
User: Rymbeld / DateTime: 2011-10-19 11:01:51

[quote="matt w"]That particular source-code ordering doesn't sound as though it should have made a difference. If you don't mind my saying so, my guess is that you had some irritatingly hard to notice typo, and when you were switching 3 and 4 you fixed the typo.[/quote]

I believe you are correct. I went over the code several times before and must have missed it every time!  [emote]:oops:[/emote] Since I've been doing this for less than a week, I just figured that I was taking to totally wrong approach. My next goal, I think, is to play all of the example games on the Inform site and then read their source codes. So far I've only played Bronze.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3437&start=0#p24495
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Time to cheer up!
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-19 11:06:00

Ah, thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3437&start=0#p24496
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Time to cheer up!
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-10-19 11:25:00

[quote="zarf"]Ah, thanks.[/quote]

... and thank you both for clarifying it up!   [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3432&start=0#p24497
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Prompt Placement
User: Borogove / DateTime: 2011-10-19 11:30:45

[quote="zarf"]I believe the difference you're seeing is that Frotz scrolls V3 games from the bottom, and V5/8 from the top. I don't remember if this is something recommended by the spec, or an adaptation to make legacy Infocom games play better.[/quote]
Yeah, it's 8.5.2 and 8.6.3 of the standard:[url=http://www.inform-fiction.org/zmachine/standards/z1point0/sect08.html#six][quote="Section 8.6.3 of the The Z-Machine Standards Document"]At the start of a game, the screen should be cleared and the text cursor placed at the bottom left (so that text scrolls upwards as the game gets under way).[/quote][/url]While the cursor for V5 and onwards can be anywhere. I don't know why I didn't see that before.

I also note that a screen height of 255 lines ought to suppress the [More] prompts, so maybe emulating an infinite screen and then dumping a number of new_line statements equal to the real screen height would do it. Hmm. [b]Edit[/b]: No, wait, you can't write to 0->32, what was I thinking.

Anyhoo, thank you both for the help.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3435&start=10#p24498
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Mapping physical space
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-10-19 12:40:50

Since you say you've played [i]Bronze[/i], I'll point out that I think the navigation mechanic in it (that allows the player to simply "go to" any previously-visited location) is extremely well suited to the kind of game you're talking about, with a lot of rooms that the player character is supposed to know fairly well and might need to spend time revisiting.  I personally resent having to put a lot of effort into navigating, and I find that having to pay a lot of attention to how to get back to a place I've been breaks the immersion except in the few kinds of settings where conscious navigation is expected (such as, say, a series of caves).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3438&start=0#p24499
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Determining whether a name is definite or indefinite
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-19 13:27:06

Is there any way to tell if the printing the name activity is happening for a definite or an indefinite noun? Something like this:

[code]There is a man called a senior citizen in Bus Stop. For printing the name of the senior citizen when the item described is definite, say "old codger".[/code]

So we get something like this:

[quote]Bus Stop

You can see a senior citizen here.

> take senior citizien

I don't suppose the old codger would care for that.[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3438&start=0#p24500
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Determining whether a name is definite or indefinite
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-19 13:39:36

Inform keeps track of whether or not the I6 global indef_mode is true or false. ("indef_mode" for "indefinite mode", obviously). But that, I think, depends on how the player phrases his/her input rather than on the objects themselves.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3439&start=0#p24501
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Printing a character after the prompt
User: EthanHam / DateTime: 2011-10-19 13:40:17

I have a situation where I'm using printing out a series of lines of dialogue with a pause between each line using code that largely borrows from Real-Time Delays by Erik Temple.

As those lines of dialogue appear, no prompt is given. But if the player presses a key, the code provides a prompt and continues showing it after every line of dialogue. I accomplished this by using the code Erik Temple posted here: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1340&start=20">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1340&start=20</a>

The problem I was having is that whatever key the user pressed to interrupt the timer, the corresponding character was lost. So if the play typed "look at window" it would come out as "ook at window"

I fixed this by editing Erik's code so that the key pressed is stored in a buffer:
[code]
[ WaitDelay key ix;
	glk_request_char_event(gg_mainwin);
	while (wait_flag) {
		glk_select(gg_event); 
		ix = HandleGlkEvent(gg_event, 1, gg_arguments); 
		if (ix >= 0 && gg_event-->0 == 2)
		 { 	
			key = gg_event-->2;
			
			stored_buffer->WORDSIZE = key;
			stored_buffer-->0 = 1;	
			stop_loop_flag = 1;
			wait_flag = 0;	
		} 
	}
	
];[/code]

that character gets displayed after the prompt via this:


[code]To re-request line event in main window:
	(-  glk_request_line_event(gg_mainwin, stored_buffer + WORDSIZE, INPUT_BUFFER_LEN - WORDSIZE, stored_buffer-->0); -)
[/code]

I'm just doing this by trial and error... I'm far from understanding Glulx.

The problem I'm running into is that for some reason the character that's being added after prompt is not [b]bolded[/b]. So the player's text ends up looking like this:

[b]>[/b] l[b]ook at window[/b]

The code Erik posted at <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1340&start=20">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1340&start=20</a> doesn't have that problem, so I'm a bit mystified.

I'd appreciate any thoughts folks have (up to & including "stop messing around in code you don't understand!" [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3438&start=0#p24502
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Determining whether a name is definite or indefinite
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-10-19 14:25:14

indef_mode is indeed what you want, but it only means ``which article should be printed'' for a fleeting moment—it's reset before the printing a name activity begins.  The simplest solution I see is to track whether an indefinite article has been printed for the most recent object (assuming that you never print an article without the noun following):[code]The indefinite article flag is a truth state that varies.  The indefinite article flag is false.
After printing the name of something:
	now the indefinite article flag is false.
To say note an indefinite article:
	now the indefinite article flag is true.
To decide whether the item described is definite:
	decide on whether or not the indefinite article flag is false.

Bus Stop is a room.
There is a man called a senior citizen in the Bus Stop.
The indefinite article of a senior citizen is "[note an indefinite article]a".
For printing the name of a senior citizen when the item described is definite:
	say "old codger".
Test me with "take him".[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3438&start=0#p24504
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Determining whether a name is definite or indefinite
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-19 14:30:07

[quote="EmacsUser"][code]
The indefinite article of a senior citizen is "[note an indefinite article]a".
[/code][/quote]
That's very clever! Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3440&start=0#p24506
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: New JACL Server
User: stuart / DateTime: 2011-10-19 15:30:27

Hi all

Just a quick note to say that I've finally got around to setting up a new JACL server out in the white and fluffy for hosting games and other JACL programs. The address is [url]http://jacl.animats.net[/url]

All the JACL code still lives at [url]http://code.google.com/p/jacl[/url]

Regards,
Stuart

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3441&start=0#p24507
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Andromeda Awakening CREDITS
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-10-19 16:17:22

I must have been drunk for the past 20 days.
I just found out I mis-credited one of my betatesters.

It says "Joel Hawthorn" but that guy doesn't exist. Or, at least, he did not betatest my game. There is Lutein Hawthorne, correctly credited, but that's another person entirely.

The real guy, who I will thank all my life, is called [b]JOEL WEBSTER[/b].

Joel, sorry for being so cretin. I'm posting my fourth upgrade of the game this very moment with just this correction. I'm really sorry. It was a lapsus of sorts I can't fully place.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3439&start=0#p24509
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Printing a character after the prompt
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-10-19 18:14:05

This sounds like it could be a bug in your interpreter (Glk implementation). What happens if you try it in a different interpreter, such as Gargoyle?

Failing that, it might help if you posted a complete code example.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3442&start=0#p24510
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Best responses of IFComp 2011
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-19 18:23:54

Last year we had an enjoyable thread with our favorite responses from the comp games.  We need a new one.  

From Adam Le Doux's "A Comedy of Error Messages" (a.k.a. "The Elfen Maiden"):
[spoiler]>read dothisnow_jan2_1999.txt
There is only one item on the todo list: "sign up for Geocities website account."[/spoiler]

I laughed, then I cried.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3443&start=0#p24512
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Removing a Disambig Report
User: QueenoftheCapes / DateTime: 2011-10-19 23:27:42

So, I had to use vocablikelihood to seperate an object from nigh-identical scenery -- think one nondescript chicken in a store full of them.  It works, but looks like this now:

[quote]
>[b]x chicken[/b]
(the chicken)
You see nothing unusual about it. 
[/quote]

Is there a way of removing that bit in the parentheses?  I just think it's kind of ugly and unnecessary in this context.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3443&start=0#p24514
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Removing a Disambig Report
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-10-20 00:12:47

You can use the action's verify() routine for this. vocabLikelihood tells the parser what to do in the event of ambiguity; verify can remove the ambiguity outright, by presenting one object as vastly more appropriate than another.

[code]
redbook: Thing 'book' 'RED BOOK' "A red book. "
	dobjFor(Examine) {
		verify() { nonObvious; }
	}
;

bluebook: Thing 'book' 'BLUE BOOK' "A blue book. "
;
[/code]

[quote]
You see a RED BOOK and a BLUE BOOK here.

> x book
A blue book.
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3382&start=0#p24516
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What you like most in Interactive Fiction Games?
User: evouga / DateTime: 2011-10-20 03:31:51

I too like games with simulationist elements, as well as epic puzzlefests like Mulldoon Legacy or Not Just an Ordinary Ballerina with dozens of parallel puzzles that can be tackled nonlinearly.

Sadly it seems the IF community has moved away from these genres and they've become somewhat of a lost art.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3429&start=0#p24517
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Inform 7 site problems?
User: farvardin / DateTime: 2011-10-20 05:08:19

we can't even download extensions from the website, for example I needed badly  <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/Edward%20Griffiths/Adventure%20Book/Adventure%20Book.i7x">http://inform7.com/extensions/Edward%20 ... 20Book.i7x</a> which I hadn't saved

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3429&start=0#p24518
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Inform 7 site problems?
User: G.D. Lascelle / DateTime: 2011-10-20 06:23:39

[quote="farvardin"]we can't even download extensions from the website ...[/quote]

Ditto ... I'm really needing to download some extensions. A bit of a frustrating roadblock!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3445&start=0#p24519
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Pass by reference in I7?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-20 11:42:25

I'm just wondering if something like this is possible:

[code]To increment (N - a number passed by reference) within bounds:
    if N is less than the maximum allowed number, increment N;[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3445&start=0#p24520
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pass by reference in I7?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-20 12:13:09

Not in a way you can use directly.

You can look at the way the increment phrase is defined, and write your own. But you'd be relying on I7 internals which are subject to change.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3446&start=0#p24522
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: for use with Version X of Extension Y
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-20 13:54:53

I just updated my version of Conditional Backdrops to Version 3, providing a "moving floating objects" activity. This allows my Scope Caching extension to re-cache scope "after moving floating objects." I thought I should include this conditionally with a section heading like this:

[code]Section - Interactions with Conditional Backdrops (for use with Version 3 of Conditional Backdrops)[/code]

Unfortunately, that does not get included ever. I had to take out the "Version 3" specification to get it to be included. While this is unlikely to ever be a problem for anyone, it's [i]possible[/i] that one day Scope Caching could get uploaded to the i7 site, and someone could download it having already installed Version 2 of Conditional Backdrops, which does not have the "moving floating objects" activity. If they used these two extensions together, they'd get a compiler error.

Is the ability to specify extension version in "for use with" directives in the works for future versions of I7?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3445&start=0#p24523
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pass by reference in I7?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-20 13:59:32

[quote="zarf"]Not in a way you can use directly.

You can look at the way the increment phrase is defined, and write your own. But you'd be relying on I7 internals which are subject to change.[/quote]
I tried that, and got this message:
[quote]Problem. In 'To increment (S - storage) within limits'  , the text 'storage' after the hyphen should tell me what kind of value goes here (like 'a number', or 'a vehicle'), but this is not a kind: it does describe something I can understand, but not something which can then be used as a value. (It would be allowed in low-level, so-called 'inline' phrase definitions, but not in a standard phrase definition like this one.)[/quote]
So I decided to go with this instead:

[code]To decide what number is the counting number after (N - a number):[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3433&start=0#p24524
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview: Jacek does Jacek
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-20 14:55:01

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]are you deliberately jerking my chain?[/quote]
 [emote]:lol:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3429&start=0#p24525
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Inform 7 site problems?
User: AaronP / DateTime: 2011-10-20 14:56:37

I sent an email to Graham Nelson yesterday and he said they were investigating the cause of the problem. So work is being done, and all that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3429&start=0#p24526
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Inform 7 site problems?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-10-20 15:08:23

FWIW, it looks like what's happened is that the people running the server upgraded some software and left out a piece we need to run the site. So we're looking into this, but I don't know an exact timeframe on when it's likely to be fixed.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3429&start=10#p24527
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Inform 7 site problems?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-20 15:23:50

[quote="emshort"]FWIW, it looks like what's happened is that the people running the server upgraded some software and left out a piece we need to run the site. So we're looking into this, but I don't know an exact timeframe on when it's likely to be fixed.[/quote]
Any chance of temporarily hosting the extensions somewhere if it takes long? (Even if it's just the plain .i7x files.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3429&start=10#p24528
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Inform 7 site problems?
User: George / DateTime: 2011-10-20 21:40:09

Is there a reason the extensions aren't hosted on the Archive?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3447&start=0#p24529
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 website is down
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2011-10-20 21:45:41

[url]http://inform7.com/[/url] appears to be down...  More specifically, I'm getting an error about some Python script misbehaving (although apparently it's also giving a 200 OK as the http status, oddly enough, instead of a 5xx error).  Is anyone else having difficulties?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3447&start=0#p24530
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 website is down
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-20 22:02:37

Yup, [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=24526#p24526]it's down like duck feathers[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3428&start=0#p24531
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Dropbox
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2011-10-20 22:03:26

I'm a Windows user.  I also have an Ubuntu dual boot, but that doesn't currently enter into this.

I solved this problem with an [url=http://enwp.org/NTFS_junction_point]NTFS junction point[/url].  Basically, I moved my whole Inform folder (in My Documents) to the Dropbox folder, then created a junction point from the old location to the new location.  The result is that Inform transparently sees the Inform folder exactly where it expects it, and Dropbox backs it up seamlessly.  Of course, this also means that more than just the "Project.inform" directory gets backed up...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3447&start=0#p24532
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 website is down
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2011-10-20 22:07:05

Well, that'll teach me to use search next time... [emote]:oops:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3442&start=0#p24536
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Best responses of IFComp 2011
User: Healy / DateTime: 2011-10-20 23:42:33

Well, to start things out:
From [i]Cana According to Micah[/i]
[spoiler]>x plate of honeyed locusts
Honeyed locusts ... this was Amos's idea.  Something he picked up from one of the slaves of a Roman household somewhere.  The dish sparked off a huge discussion as to whether this particular breed of locust was clean or unclean, and then nobody -- except the Rabbi and his son -- dared to touch it.

>eat it
(first taking the plate of honeyed locusts)
Well ... even if they are technically acceptable ... they don't exactly strike you as being particularly appetising.[/spoiler]

There were a couple more lines from that game that I liked. I'll see if I can dig them up later.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3449&start=0#p24537
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Trizbort on Linux
User: AaronP / DateTime: 2011-10-21 00:11:03

UPDATE: I've solved the problem. The solution for me was using the windows version of Mono inside Wine. Using native .NET in wine [i]did not work[/i] for me; it couldn't draw the toolbar. Using the windows mono, I still get a few ui bugs in the menus, and it's not as pretty as the native linux mono, but it works and no functionality is lost.  [emote]:)[/emote] 

Trizbort seems to be just what I need to make nice looking maps intuitively. On the site, it says that people have managed to run it just fine on Mono, but I'm running into some problems. 

[img]http://i.imgur.com/Whbeb.png[/img]

As you can see, I've got a few UI bugs that really break almost all of the functionality of the program. I'm not getting any text to display on the map. Has anyone run into this problem and found a solution?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3429&start=10#p24538
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Inform 7 site problems?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-10-21 00:11:18

I can mirror the site until whatever is resolved if need be.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3442&start=0#p24539
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Best responses of IFComp 2011
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-21 01:28:06

Also from [i]Cana According to Micah[/i], happened upon only because I'm a little too quick with the return key, and I'm carrying said item:
[spoiler]>follow
(the wine jug)
Where you go, so goes the wine jug.[/spoiler]
Need a Benny Hill sound effect for that one.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3429&start=10#p24541
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Inform 7 site problems?
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-10-21 08:02:16

Most extensions are cached by Google.  For instance, if you need Permadeath by Victor Gijsbers, you could [url=http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://inform7.com/extensions/Victor%2520Gijsbers/Permadeath/source.txt]search for cache:http://inform7.com/extensions/Victor%20Gijsbers/Permadeath/source.txt[/url].  Similarly, to get a list of extensions you could [url=http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://inform7.com/extensions/all-extensions/]search for cache:http://inform7.com/extensions/all-extensions/[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3429&start=10#p24542
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Inform 7 site problems?
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-10-21 09:05:19

[quote="emshort"]FWIW, it looks like what's happened is that the people running the server upgraded some software and left out a piece we need to run the site.[/quote]

Yes, it's always someone else's fault. With that kind of attitude, I'm not surprised you can't get even the simplest things to work.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3429&start=10#p24544
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Inform 7 site problems?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-21 10:13:45

In case anyone else is wondering: [url]http://www.intfiction.org/forum/faq.php#f6r0[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3429&start=10#p24545
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Inform 7 site problems?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-21 10:20:44

The site now has a temporary home page that links to the (static) I7 download page and extensions directory.

EDIT-ADD: Scratch that. All fixed now. :)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3447&start=0#p24546
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 website is down
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-21 10:21:06

The site now has a temporary home page that links to the (static) I7 download page and extensions directory.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3447&start=0#p24548
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 website is down
User: markm / DateTime: 2011-10-21 11:42:50

Aaaaand.... we're back up. Sorry for the outage.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3439&start=0#p24549
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Printing a character after the prompt
User: EthanHam / DateTime: 2011-10-21 11:47:02

It must've been some intermittent bug... I can no longer reproduce the problem.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3447&start=0#p24550
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 website is down
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-21 11:52:26

Yay! [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3060&start=10#p24551
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF cover = Square ?
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-10-21 12:26:43

I had this question earlier and the main concern, for me, was that according to the I7 documentation, interpreters will scale the cover image up and down, and whether any of them would force your image into a square aspect ratio (ie, if an interpreter was designed to always display the cover image at 600x600 regardless of its original dimensions).  I haven't noticed any of them doing that, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3447&start=0#p24553
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 website is down
User: Graham Nelson / DateTime: 2011-10-21 15:08:51

My thanks to the much more savvy people than myself who fixed this, and particularly to Mark Musante.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3429&start=10#p24554
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Inform 7 site problems?
User: Graham Nelson / DateTime: 2011-10-21 15:21:48

The site is, indeed, now back up. Dreamhost are not at all bad, as hosts go: but funny things happen in dreams.

As to Jacek Pudlo's remarks: nobody has to pay any money to access Inform or its website. It's a free service, entirely volunteer-run, and the (not very large) financial costs of hosting, etc., aren't passed on to the writers, students and games-people who want to give it a try. It costs nothing to use except for basic courtesy and community spirit. Almost all of its users are happy to pay this price; but those who aren't are entirely welcome to use other software instead.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3429&start=10#p24556
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Inform 7 site problems?
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-10-21 17:29:26

[quote="Graham Nelson"]As to Jacek Pudlo's remarks: nobody has to pay any money to access Inform or its website. It's a free service, entirely volunteer-run, and the (not very large) financial costs of hosting, etc., aren't passed on to the writers, students and games-people who want to give it a try. It costs nothing to use except for basic courtesy and community spirit. Almost all of its users are happy to pay this price; but those who aren't are entirely welcome to use other software instead.[/quote]

A problem that was allowed to remain unsolved for days on end was solved one hour and fifteen minutes after my intervention. I'm surprised I have such influence in this community. My only regret is that I didn't intervene earlier. Rest assured I will use my powers wisely. Oh, and there's absolutely no need to thank me or pay me for my services. My work is purely pro bono, my only reward being the basic courtesy and community spirit my presence here engenders.

As to the notion that volunteer work is somehow beyond the pale of criticism, I do hope you are not extending that notion to the artistic output of this community. I'm sure you are aware of the fact that writers do not pass the costs of writing interactive fiction on to their players.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3429&start=10#p24557
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Inform 7 site problems?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-21 18:24:59

[quote]I'm surprised I have such influence in this community.[/quote]

Mm.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3372&start=10#p24558
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How do you, personally, usually begin writing a game?
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2011-10-21 21:31:17

[quote="ArmanX"][quote="Glorb"]Write while tired.[/quote]
This, I've done. Well, in writing prose, anyway; one of my best stories is due to writing late at night.[/quote]

The flip side to this is - allow yourself to rest.  One of my breakthrough moments on a recent project came when I said to myself, "No, I'm too tired to work on this, but [i]as soon as I get up in the morning, I will go back to writing[/i]."  It gave me time to think about it as I fell asleep, and let my subconscious turn the matter over, and then I woke up inspired.  (And I was all proud of myself for being good to my body.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3372&start=10#p24559
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How do you, personally, usually begin writing a game?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-21 22:26:07

[quote="cvaneseltine"](And I was all proud of myself for being good to my body.)[/quote]

Yeah, I'm a best-while-rested writer, myself. When I'm exhausted but still working, I do graphic design or typography instead of writing.

As near as I can tell, the reason is that I have only one "gear" when writing. I write at exactly one brain-speed. Trying to write while tired has me fighting that, and it's just unpleasant and inefficient and dreary.

With graphics, I can be meticulous at a variety of speeds. I still don't get a lot done if I'm tired, but it doesn't feel like I'm fighting my own gears.

The lesson being: we're all such very different creatures, really.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3372&start=10#p24560
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How do you, personally, usually begin writing a game?
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2011-10-21 22:36:20

I think that being tired can really help with imagination, the flow of ideas - that is, the plot, and those things that directly hinge on it. However, being tired is terrible for actually fixing things; once the plot is there, you don't want to try to troubleshoot (or tie the story together) when you're nodding off.  There's a time for imagination, and there's a time for focus; a good story needs both.

So, the moral of this is: if you start tired and wake up gradually as the story goes on, and it'll be perfect!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3453&start=0#p24561
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Cover art not displaying on gargoyle
User: Tale / DateTime: 2011-10-22 03:29:19

Hi,

so I am using Gargoyle on Linux Mint.
The way the program works for me is that I open gargoyle and it asks me to specify a game file. I can play the games with no troubles. But I can neither set any settings (the font is quite small) or see any covert art at all.
Does anyone have a similiar problem?

Thanks in advance for the help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3454&start=0#p24562
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: How to make NPCs identity others by appearance
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2011-10-22 03:36:16

I would like to implement disguises, where an actor can disguise himself as somebody else and the NPCs respond intelligently.

That is:

[code]An appearance is a kind of thing.

Resemblance relates a person to an appearance.  The verb to resemble (he resembles, they resemble, it is resembling, he is resembling) implies the resemblance relation.[/code]
So I can get as far as, to use a somewhat silly example, "Zorro-mask is an appearance.  Diego resembles Zorro-mask."  Or maybe "when an actor wears the hood and cape, he resembles Zorro-mask."

Then what I need is some way to create a correspondence between what an actor [i]looks like[/i], and what other actors think that means.  When Rosa and Juan see Diego walk in the door, wearing his disguise, Juan thinks it's Zorro, but Rosa knows it's Diego.

But relationships can't include three poles — Juan identifies the Zorro-mask appearance as Zorro.  (I presume I have to create a placeholder "person" named Zorro.)  And four is right out (eg, "When Diego resembles Zorro-mask, Juan identifies Diego as Zorro").  Ultimately, I would like a system flexible enough to understand that [i]anybody[/i] with that disguise may be identified as Zorro.  The player might walk into the room and see "Zorro is here," but not know who was in the disguise just now.

Where do I start?  A table?  I have no idea which tools to use, here.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3372&start=10#p24563
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: How do you, personally, usually begin writing a game?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-10-22 04:32:10

This discussion reminds me of [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=as0dail3h6I#t=306s]this question in QI[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3429&start=20#p24564
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Inform 7 site problems?
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-10-22 04:55:19

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]In case anyone else is wondering: [url]http://www.intfiction.org/forum/faq.php#f6r0[/url].[/quote]

It's a nice gesture, but it's not necessary. If more people want to follow Victor's example and show their gratitude to me for speeding things up, you may of course add me to your Friends list, but keep in mind that, unlike some members of this community, it's not your gratitude I crave. If you [i]really[/i] wish to express your thanks for my work, do so by writing brilliant interactive fiction.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3453&start=0#p24565
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Cover art not displaying on gargoyle
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-10-22 06:28:06

Gargoyle uses a configuration file for its settings and doesn't provide a GUI for it. Look for "garglk.ini" in /etc/ or /etc/games/. As for the cover art, Gargoyle doesn't support that (yet?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=0#p24566
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-22 08:36:12

Hello, I'm just getting into inform for the first time, and I'm having a bit of trouble right from the start. I'm wondering about promting at the first of the game. I want an intro text before anything else.

I typed

say " ..... "

and pressed the go button, but I got this error.

Problem. You wrote 'say "Hello"'  : but I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with, so I am ignoring this sentence altogether.

Thanks in advanced,
Jb.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=0#p24567
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-22 08:48:13

That's a common mistake.

Inform works by invoking a number of rules (normally) organized in "rulebooks". It goes through the relevant rulebooks in order and if it finds a rule in the rulebook that applies to the state the game is in, that rule is run.

So to make the game say anything, you have to put the say-phrase inside a rule, such as
[code]When play begins: say "Hello world!"[/code]

(EDIT: "When play begins" is the name of a rulebook. 
A line that starts with the name of rulebook and a colon creates a new rule in the rulebook specified. The content of that new rule is whatever comes after the colon.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=0#p24568
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-22 08:57:41

Note that you also have to create a room, for the game to compile at all.

This should work:
[code]
The World is a room.
When play begins: say "Ciao mondo!"
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3454&start=0#p24569
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to make NPCs identity others by appearance
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-22 09:44:43

I think a rulebook might be reasonable. I never remember how rulebooks return a value, but I'm pretty sure that they can. So you set up a "perception" rulebook that returns an appearance.

[code]Perception of Juan when the person asked is Diego: Rule succeeds with result Diego-appearance.

Perception of Rosa when the person asked wears the Zorro mask: Rule succeeds with result Zorro-appearance.[/code]

For convenience, you can create a "to decide which appearance" phrase that runs the rulebook and returns the result. [note to Inform developers - can we integrate "to decide" phrases with rulebooks more seamlessly?]

If "the person asked" doesn't work for you, you'll have to set up a new global variable to use as a parameter, since a rulebook can only take one parameter. Perhaps "the disguised person" or "the perceived person".

It's not clear to me that the resemblance relation helps you at all. You could just have the rulebook return objects (so Diego resembles Diego or the Zorro mask, etc.) To decide phrases can take multiple parameters, and I've done something like this before:

[code]To decide which object is the appearance of (the view - a thing) to (the viewer - a person):
    Now the disguised item is the view;
    Follow the perception rules with the viewer;
    decide on the result of the rulebook.[/code]
Like I said, I don't remember the syntax for rulebooks that return a result, so that probably won't compile, but you get the idea for how to turn phrase parameters into global variables for use in a rulebook.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=0#p24570
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-22 09:58:25

Awesome, that worked great. I'm gonna keep going trough the documentation. I just jumped the gun here at the first because I wanted to start, lol.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3433&start=0#p24571
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview: Jacek does Jacek
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-10-22 10:01:16

The time has come when I've got to ask:

Most of the time, when somebody like this shows up, he is either ignored or promptly shot down.  For some reason, neither is happening here; to the contrary, many of the people on the board seem to be fawning over (and, worse, encouraging) him.  I can only conclude that there must be one of two explanations:  Either (i) other people know something about Mr. Pudlo that I don't and, appearances notwithstanding, he is not really the biggest shithead to have shown up here in a while (in which case I owe him an apology), or (ii) he has photographs of many of the people on the board doing indescribable things with barnyard animals.

Would somebody please enlighten me as to which it is (no need to go into detail about the photos and the critters)?


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3433&start=0#p24572
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview: Jacek does Jacek
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-22 10:09:11

I think he's just a familiar name (from rec.arts.int-fiction). He was a jerk there too, but most people here are so friendly that they've refrained from being truly rude. And although I only skimmed the interview (I must not be intelligent enough to appreciate it), I got the impression that parts of it might actually be funny. It's refreshing that folks here are slow to judge even the most obnoxious participants in the conversation.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3433&start=10#p24573
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview: Jacek does Jacek
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-10-22 10:30:45

I liked it because it's funny. Well, to me. Also, I appreciate well crafted trolling (as opposed to "your stupid - no you" type of trolls; fortunately we don't have any of those in this forum.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3454&start=0#p24574
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to make NPCs identity others by appearance
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-22 10:38:21

A phrase, a rulebook, or an activity would all work. (A phrase is simple but gives you limited ability to split up the code. A rulebook is middlin' flexible. An activity has before/during/after rulebooks, which gives you extra stages to work with.)

The important thing -- the tricky part, really -- is to have a test that you can put in your code. For maximum flexibility, this test should be an adjective. That means relying on "is" verbs, which is awkward, but gives you options. For example:

Definition: a person is Juan-like if ...

Now you can write any of:

if Steve is Juan-like: ...
if someone in the Kitchen is Juan-like: ...
if someone (called P) in the location of Rosa is Juan-like: ...
for all Juan-like people in the Kitchen: ...

I think these are the constructions you'll be relying on in your code.

Now, in that definition line, "Juan" isn't a variable. (A definition can't take multiple arguments.) So you'll need one of those definition lines per character, and you won't be able to say

*if Steve is someone-in-the-Kitchen-like: ...

But I suspect that will never come up.

As for the *body* of the definition, that's where you stick in a phrase or rulebook or activity invocation. There is more work there, but I think it will be easier when you know what framework it has to go in.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3433&start=10#p24575
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview: Jacek does Jacek
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-22 10:43:23

The background is: One, Jacek has been around for a long time. If ignoring him made him go away, it would have worked by now. 

Two, Jacek being a clowning jackass -- under his known identity -- is actually his *good* behavior. We try to encourage that. Or at least not discourage it. As noted above, he can be funny when he wants to be.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3454&start=0#p24576
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to make NPCs identity others by appearance
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2011-10-22 11:44:01

Thank you, zarf and capmikee.  Of the solutions presented, I think capmikee has the edge, at least in simplicity. Defining adjectives never occurred to me.

Where I was going with the appearance object, zarf, was to establish actor knowledge; by creating a relationship between appearance and actor, I could establish that while Juan and Rosa have both seen Zorro (that is, the appearance Diego resembled), only Rosa knows it was Don Diego.  Then at a later time, Juan learns who Zorro really is, so I'll figure out a way to shift that dynamically.  I figured an appearance object, related to an actor, gave me stuff to tie recognition to.  Maybe I should tie recognition to the actor itself.  To decide if Juan recognizes Diego when Diego is not Diego-like, or something.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3430&start=10#p24577
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Menus table
User: AaronP / DateTime: 2011-10-22 12:59:25

Ok, I've come back to this using Erik Temples Glulx Input Loops. Can anyone tell me what's wrong with this syntax?

[code]To start main menu loop:
	wait for any key;
	if keystroke is:
		-- "1": start play 1;
		-- "2": start play 2;
		-- "3": start play 3;
		-- "4": start play 4;
		-- otherwise: start main menu loop.[/code]

The first error message is as follows, but I'm not sure what it implies. Can you not evaluate indexed text like this?

[quote]Problem. You wrote 'if keystroke is begin', but 'keystroke' has the wrong kind of value: an indexed text rather than a word value.[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3456&start=0#p24578
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Slouching
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-10-22 13:01:16

I was looking at the slouching example in the recipe book and one thing I'd like to change is the text that appears after the room name when you look and you are, for example, sitting somewhere.

For example, from the slouching example:

[quote]
[b]Resort[/b]
Clark is standing nearby.

You can also see a banana hammock (empty) and a stone bench here.

>sit on bench
You are now seated on the stone bench.

>l
[b]Resort[/b] (on the stone bench)
Clark is standing nearby.

You can also see a banana hammock (empty) here.
[/quote]

Which rule do I need to alter the "(on the stone bench)" text? I want to change it to something more descriptive, for example: "(sitting on the stone bench)".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3430&start=10#p24579
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Menus table
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-22 13:15:58

I think that's a bug. The keystroke is an indexed text variable, and it's legal to say

if the keystroke is "1": ...

You can avoid this by checking keystroke-code instead. That's a number, containing the ASCII code:

[code]
	if keystroke-code is:
		-- 49: start play 1;
		-- 50: start play 2;
		-- 51: start play 3;
		-- 52: start play 4;
		-- otherwise: start main menu loop.
[/code]

Also, don't call "start main menu loop" in a recursive loop like this. The VM doesn't have unlimited stack space. Instead, say:

[code]
	while 1 is 1:
		if keystroke-code is:
			-- 49: start play 1;
			-- 50: start play 2;
			-- 51: start play 3;
			-- 52: start play 4;
			-- otherwise: next;
		break.
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3430&start=10#p24580
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Menus table
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-22 13:20:19

Actually, it may be just a poor error message, not a bug. The "is -- case, -- case" syntax isn't supposed to be as powerful as a general "is".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3456&start=0#p24581
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Slouching
User: AaronP / DateTime: 2011-10-22 13:23:39

Just from a quick glance, is this what you're looking to do?

[code]The description of The Resort is "[if the holder of the player is the stone bench](sitting on stone bench)[end if]".[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=0#p24582
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-10-22 13:24:59

My Inform Handbook (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm">http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm</a>) hasn't been updated to cover a few features in the latest versions, but it's designed to help you grasp the basics.

--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3430&start=10#p24583
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Menus table
User: AaronP / DateTime: 2011-10-22 13:35:47

Hmm. This works, except that using "next" seems to put it in an infinite loop if I give it an invalid input. Or I think that's what's happening; the effect is that the game freezes. Using a recursive function works as intended. How likely am I to run into memory issues in Glulx like this?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3430&start=10#p24584
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Menus table
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-22 13:37:24

Sorry -- I left out the "wait for any key". That needs to be inside the loop.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3430&start=10#p24585
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Menus table
User: AaronP / DateTime: 2011-10-22 13:40:40

Yeesh, no worries. I should have noticed that one myself. [emote]:)[/emote] Well I've finally got this working. Thanks for the help!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3456&start=0#p24586
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Slouching
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-22 14:39:28

That parenthetical remark is one of the slightly bothersome outputs to change in standard Inform.

It's a library message (looking action #8) printed by the room description heading rule (from the carry out looking rulebook). You should be able to replace the message using the extension Default Messages by Ron Newcomb.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3353&start=0#p24587
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Annual Lime/Coconut IF MiniComp!
User: SOdhner / DateTime: 2011-10-22 15:03:41

Super minor update!

Someone requested that the code be changed so they could customize the open/close messages for the door, which is super reasonable and in fact I thought about doing it in the first place and almost did.  Not sure why I didn't then, but I did now.

As with any other code updates, this will have ZERO impact on rooms created prior to this update.  If you don't specify a message it will default to what it always was.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=0#p24588
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-10-22 15:13:25

Ectocomp 2011 now has 3 entries and 2 donated prizes.

The games:
-"Bloodless on the Orient Express," by Hannes Schueller (Z-code)
-"Hungry," by Richard Otter (ADRIFT 4)
-"The House," by Finn Rosenloev (ADRIFT 5)

The prizes:
-Cthulhu action figure with pose-able tentacles
-$10 Amazon gift certificate

Several authors are still working on games.  If any are interested, there is still until October 30th-- just over a week for 3 hours of writing-- to submit a piece for this competition.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=0#p24589
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-22 15:41:22

Two questions:
Do the three hours have to be continuous?
Is it cheating to write a bunch of prose (or code, even) in an external editor before you open the development environment?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3456&start=0#p24590
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Slouching
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-10-22 16:03:33

[quote="Felix"]That parenthetical remark is one of the slightly bothersome outputs to change in standard Inform.

It's a library message (looking action #8) printed by the room description heading rule (from the carry out looking rulebook). You should be able to replace the message using the extension Default Messages by Ron Newcomb.[/quote]

Thanks Felix, while searching for that extension I also came across room description headings by Erwin Genstein which looks like it'll do exactly what I need with a little more syntactic sugar on top. So I'll try that one out.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3456&start=0#p24591
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Slouching
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-10-22 16:13:28

Yeah, the room description headings works a treat. I added these lines to the slouching example in the recipe book:

[code]
Rule for printing an enclosure preposition when the posture of the player is seated:
	say "sitting on ".
	
Rule for printing an enclosure preposition when the posture of the player is standing:
	say "standing on ".
	
Rule for printing an enclosure preposition when the posture of the player is reclining:
	say "lying on ".
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3433&start=10#p24592
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview: Jacek does Jacek
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-22 16:44:48

[quote="zarf"]Two, Jacek being a clowning jackass -- under his known identity -- is actually his *good* behavior.[/quote]

Keenly observed, sir.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=10#p24596
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-10-22 19:37:08

The 3 hours need not be continuous, but they should be tracked.  From what I understand of the rules' intent, it is not cheating to write something in an external editor before putting it in a game.  Copy-pasting is discouraged, mainly on the grounds that it could inflate an entry to well past what might be write-able in 3 hours, but as the technique hasn't been abused, it has not been specifically disallowed.  I believe James Webb used some copy-pasting to write [i]Drinks with Lord Hansom[/i] in '08, but his effort didn't strike anyone as having been more than 3 hours of work so it was okay.

If the main question here is whether or not one might write out pages of Inform 7 code and then copy-paste it into that development environment over the course of 3 hours, I think I would argue that writing code constitutes writing the game as opposed to planning.  But, again, it's mainly the spirit of the rule that's important.  Needless to say, a novel-length work would probably not be appropriate for Ectocomp.

I hope this answers your questions?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=10#p24597
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-22 20:27:22

Yes, excellent! Both those rulings are probably good for me, time-wise (I'd have trouble finding a three-hour block, and if I actually tried to write copy-pastable prose at my usual pace I'd never finish).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3433&start=10#p24598
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview: Jacek does Jacek
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-10-22 20:30:19

I was especially amused by the gentleman who asks if I'm officially to be considered a shithead. Imagine a man so pusillanimous he's so afraid to make up his own mind on a matter of personal taste, he asks management to send him a memo stating their current consensus on "Mr. Pudlo." For a bunch of people who are supposed to be writers and artists, this is an oddly timid crowd. I'm reminded of the "Emily Short" person suggesting that members of this community write angry letters to my "employer" in response to an unfavourable review of _Galatea_. Timidity may be a healthy state of mind when you're a wage slave terrified of the vast office landscape outside your cibicle. It is not a healthy state of mind when you're writing fiction. In the opening paragraph of this thread I warn stupid people to stay out of my way. I wonder if cowardice is not a greater problem than stupidity in this crowd. How many people here share the cubicle mentality of the likes of Mr. Rothman and the "Emily Short" person?

As to Andy declaring that I'm a harmless clown, I'm curious how he sees himself. Assuming we perform at the same circus, is he the lion tamer or the guy who cleans up after the elephants?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3443&start=0#p24602
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Removing a Disambig Report
User: QueenoftheCapes / DateTime: 2011-10-22 22:21:15

Ah, thanks. ^^

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3433&start=10#p24603
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview: Jacek does Jacek
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-10-22 22:49:07

Sir, "pusillanimous" and "cubicle mentality" are one thing, but when you accuse me of being a gentleman, well, sir, them's fightin' words!

Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3458&start=0#p24604
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Mapping the north pole
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2011-10-22 23:05:06

My WIP has a point geographically equivalent to the North Pole.  That is, there are a lot of rooms which are all "south" of this point, in the sense that going north from those rooms brings you to that point (but not vice verse, for hopefully obvious reasons (there are too many such rooms)).  I know that there's an obvious gameplay difficulty with that (how do I walk away from the north pole when "go south" is ambiguous?  How do I get to a particular room from the North Pole?  etc.), but I solved it via interesting but irrelevant means.  The problem I seem to be having is that mapping this is proving to be a nightmare.  It looks like I'll have to manually specify the locations of more than half the map (basically anything that isn't directly on the prime meridian).  This is untenable.  I'm using Inform 7, and I'd basically have to have "Index map with X mapped Y of Z" statements for practically every room.  Right now, I'm just trying to keep the index map vaguely usable, but getting it to release quality would require either all those statements, or hand-drawing the map, which I would prefer not to do as Inkscape is a pain in the ass for this kind of work.  Are there any tools for hand-drawing maps, or any suggestions for making my room layout reasonably mappable?

Also, I'd prefer to keep the actual, in-game layout the way it is.

This is mostly irrelevant, but I'm using custom directions in this project, so when I say "north" I actually mean something else, but I'd rather not get into that.  The point is that I can freely say things like "Index map with X mapped as Y", where X is a custom direction and Y is not.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3459&start=0#p24605
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Problems printing the name of an object
User: Divarin / DateTime: 2011-10-22 23:35:29

In inform 7 I am trying to put together a rudimentary RPG system to make into a game.
here is the routine I'm having a problem with
[code]Instead of attacking a person (called foe):
	let hitamount be a number;
	let weaponName be some text;
	now weaponName is "your bare fists";
	now hitamount is 1;
	if the player carries a weapon (called tmpWeapon) begin;
		now weaponName is "[tmpWeapon]";
		now hitamount is the damage of tmpWeapon;
	end if;
	decrease the HitPoints of the foe by hitamount;
	say "You swing at [the foe] with [weaponName].";
	say "You hit [the foe] for [hitamount] point[if hitamount > 1]s[end if] of damage.".	[/code]

the problem is on the line [code]now weaponName is "[tmpWeapon]";[/code]
I'm using tmpWeapon to be sure there's no conflict with the "weapon" which is "a kind of thing"
If I comment out that line it works fine and I get the hit amount adjusted properly, but I can't seem to simply *say* the name of the weapon being used.
if I replace it with a specific object like "[the wooden training sword]" then it works fine, but when I try to use the variable (as I am in the above example) I get an error on that line that states that "tmpWeapon = something unrecognized".
this is especially odd since it's recognized in the next line [code]now hitamount is the damage of tmpWeapon;[/code]

I'm assuming the []'s can't be used in strings at run time and any values put in there need to exist at compile time.  If this is the case is there another way to simply say the name of whatever weapon is being used?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3458&start=0#p24608
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Mapping the north pole
User: AaronP / DateTime: 2011-10-23 01:17:29

You could try using Trizbort for mapping.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2599&start=0#p24619
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Glimmr Canvas Animation extension (testing)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-10-23 08:22:34

Glimmr Canvas Animation has now been released. More info here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://glimmr.wordpress.com/2011/10/23/glimmr-canvas-animation-released/">http://glimmr.wordpress.com/2011/10/23/ ... -released/</a>

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3456&start=0#p24622
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Slouching
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-23 10:04:01

[quote="wjousts"]room description headings by Erwin Genstein[/quote]

Great! I was not aware of that extension, but I'll download it. It's obviously useful.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3459&start=0#p24623
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problems printing the name of an object
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-23 10:21:16

[quote="Divarin"]I'm assuming the []'s can't be used in strings at run time and any values put in there need to exist at compile time.[/quote]
No, after all
[code]   say "You swing at [the foe] with [weaponName]."[/code]
compiles, even though both foe and weaponName are local variables.

What you need is [i]either[/i]
[code]   now weaponName is the printed name of tmpWeapon;[/code]
[i]or[/i]
[code]   let weaponName be some indexed text;[/code]

("Ordinary" text is saved in some kind of compressed format by Inform, I think. Well, to be honest, I don't actually know why indexed text works here, while text doesn't ...)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3459&start=0#p24624
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problems printing the name of an object
User: Divarin / DateTime: 2011-10-23 10:30:11

ah beautiful, that's exactly what I needed. Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3459&start=0#p24625
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problems printing the name of an object
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-23 10:36:20

A simpler way to do it is to refer to objects directly, rather than their names.

[code]
Your bare fists are a weapon.

	[...]
	let curweapon be bare fists;
	if the player carries a weapon (called W):
		now curweapon is W;
	say "You hit with [the curweapon]."
[/code]

The bare-fists object is offstage, so the player will never interact with it, but you can still use it in code.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3459&start=0#p24628
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problems printing the name of an object
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-23 11:03:56

[quote="Divarin"]In inform 7 I am trying to put together a rudimentary RPG system to make into a game.[/quote]
You might be interested in taking a look at my combat extension: [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2925]Inform ATTACK[/url]. (Or not: ATTACK is quite big and powerful, so if you want a very simple system, it would be overkill.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3458&start=0#p24629
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Mapping the north pole
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2011-10-23 11:28:30

Thanks, that did it.  Trizbort is much better than Inkscape for this.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3459&start=0#p24630
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problems printing the name of an object
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2011-10-23 11:33:55

If you're using Glulx, you can ignore me, but if not, please be aware that any mention of indexed text will increase memory usage by a fair amount.  If you use Glulx, memory usage will not be a problem under any reasonable circumstances, but some authors like to use the Z-machine instead...

I would recommend zarf's solution if you're tight on memory.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3461&start=0#p24631
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Problem with system date
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-10-23 13:35:53

My Glulx game checks the system date using Real Date and Time and prints an error if it can't.  It works fine for me (Windows 7/Glulx), but a play tester is reporting that he gets the error.  Any ideas why?  Does it work on your system?

[code]Include Real Date and Time by Ron Newcomb.

When play begins:
	unless the player's time is available:
		say "[italic type]This interpreter lacks a necessary feature."[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3430&start=10#p24632
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Menus table
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-10-23 14:17:27

[quote="AaronP"][code]To start main menu loop:
	wait for any key;
	if keystroke is:
		-- "1": start play 1;
		-- "2": start play 2;
		-- "3": start play 3;
		-- "4": start play 4;
		-- otherwise: start main menu loop.[/code]

The first error message is as follows, but I'm not sure what it implies. Can you not evaluate indexed text like this?

[quote]Problem. You wrote 'if keystroke is begin', but 'keystroke' has the wrong kind of value: an indexed text rather than a word value.[/quote][/quote]

It's disappointing that indexed text can't be used in switch-style statements. Does anyone know a way to allow the author the convenience of referring to keystroke input, which is stored internally as ASCII/Unicode character codes, using text strings as in the OP's code above--but without using indexed text?

[spoiler]For reference, here is how Glulx Input Loops converts character codes to indexed text:

[code]To decide which indexed text is (N - a number) resolved to an/-- indexed text:
	if (N > 31 and N < 127) or (N > 160 and N < 384):[i.e., we have a standard keystroke and not an unprintable one]
		decide on "[char-code (N)]";
	otherwise:
		decide on "".
		
To say char-code (N - a number):
	(- print (char) {N}; -)[/code][/spoiler]

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3461&start=0#p24633
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with system date
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-10-23 14:29:49

The obvious answer would be that the tester's interpreter doesn't support that feature. Which interpreter are they using?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3461&start=0#p24634
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with system date
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-10-23 14:30:10

The system date calls were only added to the Glk specification in version 0.7.2, which was earlier this year. Your tester's interpreter doesn't support the system date calls, most likely because it pre-dates this. Your tester will have to update their interpreter to whatever the latest one is, or switch to a more recent interpreter.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3430&start=10#p24635
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Menus table
User: AaronP / DateTime: 2011-10-23 14:47:43

Hmm, could you not just have a table of valid ASCII codes?

[code]Table of ASCII
code        char
32          " "
33          "!"
34          "'"[/code]

And then something like

[code]Now keystroke is "[the char corresponding to the code N in the Table of ASCII]"[/code]

Or some such?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=0#p24636
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2011-10-23 14:58:17

I strongly recommend you pick up the book "Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform7" by Aaron Reed.  You can get electronic or printed versions via Amazon etc.  It's a great book to introduce Inform7 and how to write interactive fiction.

More info and links available here:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com/2010/10/aaron-reed-inform7.html">http://www.z-machine-matter.com/2010/10 ... form7.html</a>
--Zack

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3430&start=10#p24637
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Menus table
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-10-23 16:02:43

Yes, you could do it that way, but I'm looking for a non-manual solution. Inform already knows which codes correspond to which characters, so it seems wasteful to have to include a few hundred rows of table just to get a conversion at the I7 level. 

There probably is no way to do this w/o indexed text--at least not yet--but it's cheap to ask, and there are some folks on this board who have done a lot of poking into I7's innards...

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3430&start=10#p24639
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Menus table
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-23 16:14:05

[quote="ektemple"]Does anyone know a way to allow the author the convenience of referring to keystroke input, using text strings as in the OP's code above--but without using indexed text?[/quote]

I have an I6 function that'll pluck the first letter off of an I7 string and return it as the ZSCII number (or as a KOV, as you prefer), but you still wouldn't be able to use it in a switch statement.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3462&start=0#p24642
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Making an NPC follow a script of actions
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-10-23 17:46:12

I want to give an NPC a short list of actions for them to carry out, one per turn, until they exhaust the list. Any tips on how to do it? There are some examples in the recipe book, (for example "Odyssey") but it only deals with going. I want to be able to assign a script to an NPC that involves going places and manipulating objects (taking, dropping, switching on, whatever). I thought maybe I could create a table of actions and have inform execute them, but I can't make that work.

Any ideas?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3462&start=0#p24644
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making an NPC follow a script of actions
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2011-10-23 18:22:06

See [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rdoc58.html]the recipe book[/url].  In particular, see Robo 1 and 2.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3462&start=0#p24645
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making an NPC follow a script of actions
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-23 18:52:46

And if you just want a script that you program in yourself, instead of one that the player creates dynamically, you should be able to do it with a table of stored actions:

[code]Lab is a room. George is a man in Lab. A thingy is in Lab.

Table 1 - George action
action (stored action)
george trying waiting
george trying singing
george trying taking thingy
george trying dropping thingy

Every turn: 
	if the Table of George action is not empty:
		repeat through the table of george action:
			try the action entry;
			blank out the whole row;
			break.
						
Instead of someone singing:
	say "[The actor] hums a few bars."
		

Test me with "z/z/z/z".[/code]

("Break" stops the while loop without interrupting the "every turn" rulebook -- as discussed [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3037]here[/url], the example "Odyssey" should have "break" or "make no decision" instead of "rule succeeds.")

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3462&start=0#p24646
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making an NPC follow a script of actions
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-10-23 19:41:57

Thanks matt w, I think that is exactly what I was looking for.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=0#p24648
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-10-23 21:08:10

Yes, the book Zurlocker mentioned was how I got into Inform, as it has a much nicer introductory curve and focuses on things in a way that seems to make more sense. It also does this hand in hand with discussing the most obvious design issues authors face. The Inform docs are full of informative nuggets of, uh, information, but the nuggets are sometimes hard to find, and ultimately I don't think the arrangement is great for beginners.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=10#p24650
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-10-23 21:54:49

Thanks for the clarification about what can and can't be done beforehand. I sort of wanted to ask these myself, but I got caught up, etc. I had a lot of questions like "What if I want to give a random message here" and such. So it's good to know that I can wait til I put the big ideas into an editor.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3465&start=0#p24662
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: IF borked on Lion
User: tinman / DateTime: 2011-10-23 22:37:28

Just got a new MacBook Pro running OSX 10.7.x aka Lion, and as briefly noted in some earlier threads, the available IF terps appear to be generally borked with Lion:

- Zoom's nifty iTunes-like game organization mechanism is broken (only Inform and Z code games appear in its listings; all the other info previously added manually to a repository disappears), and the various plugins also crash with various obscure errors (as previously reported). Zoom worked perfectly with 10.6 Snow Leopard.
- Gargoyle simply hangs and can't move beyond the opening bit of text.
- Spatterlight doesn't crash (so far have only tested I7 and T3 games) -- but it was quite unstable with Snow Leopard oddly enough.

There appear to be lots of Mac people in this space, so what are you all doing now? Have you simply not yet moved on to Lion? Are you not playing IF for the time being? Is Spatterlight really the best option now? Is there some glaringly simple solution otherwise that I'm just not tumbling to? TIA!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3465&start=0#p24665
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: IF borked on Lion
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-23 23:54:11

Use this version of Gargoyle:

<a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2759298/gargoyle-2011.1-mac_r557.dmg">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2759298/gargoyl ... c_r557.dmg</a>

A Gargoyle release containing this fix will appear soon. Also of Zoom, hopefully.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3465&start=0#p24667
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: IF borked on Lion
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-10-24 01:34:08

I have been using the above mentioned build of Gargoyle, but I'm eager for a Zoom update to appear (the file icons are so much prettier!).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3466&start=0#p24668
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Secret doors by Andrew Owen - broken or corrupt file?
User: frudster / DateTime: 2011-10-24 01:47:31

When I grab the "Secret Doors" extension by Andrew Owen from <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/authors/#Andrew_Owen">http://inform7.com/extensions/authors/#Andrew_Owen</a> it doesn't compile. Looking at the code there are two problems, (1) weird line breaks and (2) a duplicated "when when" in two places. It looks like this:
[code]
Before doing something when when a secret door is the second noun and
the
second noun is unrevealed:
    print the you can't see message instead.
[/code]

Is it just me having these issues? If not, surely somebody else must have noticed this since 2007 when the extension was published. The fix is simple, just fix formatting and remove the extra "when".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3430&start=20#p24679
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Menus table
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-10-24 09:39:01

Thanks, Ron. The only reason to do any of this is author convenience (why, in writing a text game, should authors have to look up character codes by number? is the question that motivated me in the first place), so you're right that it probably isn't worth pursuing this using the I6 code you mentioned, though it probably would make the folks who mistrust indexed text happier. 

Sounds like a cool bit of code, though! Do you write the text to a temporary array and then peel off the first entry?

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3466&start=0#p24690
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Secret doors by Andrew Owen - broken or corrupt file?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-10-24 14:40:32

It's a known issue. I don't know why nobody has bothered to upload a working version. (I haven't done so, so I'm in no position to complain.)

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3465&start=0#p24691
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: IF borked on Lion
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-10-24 14:55:24

I don't think I've played any off-line IF since I upgraded to Lion, so thanks for the link! (I've been meaning to play the comp games, and I may have the time for it, starting the end of this week.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3469&start=0#p24697
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Conversation Responses and tables
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-10-24 17:21:50

I'm playing around with Conversation Responses by Eric Eve and it seems like a very tidy way to handle conversation, but I also like the table of responses that is illustrated in several places in the manual. What I can't figure out is how to combine these approaches. Is it possible?

For example, I tried variations this:

[code]
Response of Bob when asked about an item in table of bob's responses:
	say "[response]";
[/code]

With a table defined like this:

[code]
Table of bob's responses
item	response
Bob	"blah, blah, blah"
[/code]

But I can't seem to get inform to understand it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=230#p24698
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Dane-Ed / DateTime: 2011-10-24 18:06:06

Hello, I'm guessing I'm a bit late joining the game heheh. Where to start? Okay well I'm 17, I know a bit young to be into text games, I might not have grown up with them but I find it interesting how compelled you can become to a game with just the story. Anyway I'm here to discuss games among others that play, and cure my ignorance on some stuff that I honestly have no idea how to figure out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2519&start=20#p24699
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: IF and Linux
User: AaronP / DateTime: 2011-10-24 18:22:17

I'm on Arch Linux, and I had a lot of trouble when I first started trying to setup IF interpreters. At first, I wanted to use all native software. Arch Linux is a lightweight distribution, though, and the user repository people usually follow that philosophy. Interpreters like Zoom and Scarce were not built with multimedia support. Really the only thing I got working without any problems was QTads, and like 90% of the IF I've played is from Inform, not TADS. Support for glk seems to be especially terrible on Linux. When I tried to build glulx, I didn't know whether to use gtkglk or xglk, but in the end it didn't matter because neither seem to be in active development and none of them would build on my system. x_x

In the end, I gave up and installed the Windows version of Gargoyle in wine, which seems to be the most widely-compatible solution and provides a very attractive, consistent interface for all my IF. Well, except for those few TADS games, for which I use the much less pretty but very multimedia capable QTads.

One thing I can be thankful for is gnome-inform7. Generally, I don't like my software to have a lot of unnecessary dependencies (If you can stick with GTK and forgo gnome/kde, I'm more likely to use your software rather than an alternative), but I hope someone has given that Chimento fellow a pat on the back recently, because the linux Inform7 IDE is rock solid.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2894&start=0#p24701
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Recommendation for Interpreter?
User: AaronP / DateTime: 2011-10-24 18:38:33

I think Gargoyle is definitely the most easy on the eyes that I've seen. Makes IF look like a page in a book. If they had a feature like in the Windows ebook reader where if you maximize the software it gives you an appropriately dimensioned page surrounded by a plain black screen, it'd be perfect.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3384&start=10#p24702
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beyond Zork Random Room Connections
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2011-10-24 18:58:05

I'm starting to wonder if the only way to really do this is to have 5 or 6 different "maps" of a given region, and have it choose one of those maps at random when you first enter the area...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3384&start=10#p24703
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beyond Zork Random Room Connections
User: tggdan3 / DateTime: 2011-10-24 18:58:35

Is there any way to break into the beyond zork code and see how infocom did it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3461&start=0#p24709
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with system date
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-10-24 20:24:58

Tester is using Linux.  Does Real Date and Time not work for all operating systems?  It doesn't mention any such restriction in the documentation, that I saw.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3384&start=10#p24713
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beyond Zork Random Room Connections
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-24 21:17:41

[quote="tggdan3"]I'm starting to wonder if the only way to really do this is to have 5 or 6 different "maps" of a given region, and have it choose one of those maps at random when you first enter the area...[/quote]
Why is that? Zarf's grid solution seemed to me like it would work perfectly.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2894&start=0#p24714
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Recommendation for Interpreter?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-24 21:25:28

[quote="AaronP"]I think Gargoyle is definitely the most easy on the eyes that I've seen. Makes IF look like a page in a book. If they had a feature like in the Windows ebook reader where if you maximize the software it gives you an appropriately dimensioned page surrounded by a plain black screen, it'd be perfect.[/quote]

A gui for the settings would be nice, too. I like different colors and fonts for different moods, so juggling lots of themed configuration files is a bit of a pain.

On the other hand, Windows Frotz allows for easy-peasy changes, but doesn't let me save themes.

Followup: while Gargoyle won't do this automatically (and sadly, has no "fullscreen mode"), you _can_ set those dimensions however you like ...

(screencap from my netbook) <a class="postlink" href="http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/screens/">http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/screens/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=240#p24715
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-24 21:35:01

Welcome! How did you get introduced to IF? What was your first game?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3469&start=0#p24716
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Responses and tables
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-24 21:39:19

I think the correct phrase is "listed in..." but unfortunately a bug in I7 has prevented this from working as expected. You'll either have to hack the extension or loop over the entire table to find your entry. The good news is, it has been fixed for the next version - I just got notice of that this week!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3384&start=10#p24718
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beyond Zork Random Room Connections
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-10-24 22:15:01

I'd love to see the reverse engineering for that. And, since I'm greedy, Double Fanucci in Zork Zero [emote]:)[/emote] -- if anyone super talented in that sort of thing has/finds the z-machine specs and/or a lot of time, that could be really cool. The maps (more practically) or (cause I'm insanely curious about silly things) Double Fanucci.

Still, I don't know--maybe you can play a little number magic. You could have 4 rooms in a 3x3 box. They are placed at random, and any room adjacent or diagonal to another is connected to that room. Maybe you could refine that and allow for a dead end or two if you're careful.

Then you could have, say,

--the southwesternmost room has a passage south to a non-random area

--the northeasternmost room has a passage east to a non-random area.

This'd roughly conform to Zork's having 4 random areas (I think?) though it wouldn't be as spread out, and the possibilities might not be exciting.

This seems a lot less elegant than Zarf's idea--and probably owes more to it than I thought at first glance--and a lot less generalizable. But it seems doable without too much problems. It looks like there's a tradeoff between immediate usability and generalizability--at my level at least.

Whatever the ideal solution is, it's interesting to see others' approaches. I always wondered how they did this as a kid.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3461&start=0#p24719
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with system date
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-10-24 22:34:59

It's not an OS limitation; it comes down to what the tester's Glk implementation supports.

The date/time functions were added to Glk in February; any Glk library that has not released an update since then will not support the API functions needed for Ron's Real Date and Time extension.

I added these functions to Gargoyle back in February but haven't done a proper release since last October. A new version should be out very soon. If your tester is using that Glk library then this will resolve the issue.

Bear in mind that there are many other Glk implementations in the wild and not all of these are actively maintained (for certain values of "active"). Tying your game to very recent Glk features is a perfectly valid design choice, but you may nevertheless leave some players out in the cold, if they have not, cannot, or will not upgrade their interpreter.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3384&start=10#p24720
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beyond Zork Random Room Connections
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-24 22:40:51

The disassembler tools at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXinfocomXtoolsXztools.html">http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-arc ... tools.html</a> work on Beyond Zork. However, grokking Z-machine assembly is more work than writing your own implementation from scratch, in all likelihood.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2519&start=20#p24721
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: IF and Linux
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-10-24 22:58:31

[quote="AaronP"]In the end, I gave up and installed the Windows version of Gargoyle in wine, which seems to be the most widely-compatible solution and provides a very attractive, consistent interface for all my IF. Well, except for those few TADS games, for which I use the much less pretty but very multimedia capable QTads.[/quote]

Is there a reason you're not using Gargoyle's native Gtk layer under Linux? There's even [url=http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=16008&detail=1]an ArchLinux package for it[/url].

Also, [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018]Grotesque[/url] deserves a mention (along with [url=https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=28915]its ArchLinux package[/url].)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2519&start=20#p24722
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: IF and Linux
User: AaronP / DateTime: 2011-10-24 23:43:15

[quote="bcressey"][quote="AaronP"]In the end, I gave up and installed the Windows version of Gargoyle in wine, which seems to be the most widely-compatible solution and provides a very attractive, consistent interface for all my IF. Well, except for those few TADS games, for which I use the much less pretty but very multimedia capable QTads.[/quote]

Is there a reason you're not using Gargoyle's native Gtk layer under Linux? There's even [url=http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=16008&detail=1]an ArchLinux package for it[/url].

Also, [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018]Grotesque[/url] deserves a mention (along with [url=https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=28915]its ArchLinux package[/url].)[/quote]

I downloaded Gargoyle at the suggestion of the wiki, which implies that the linux version does not fully support zblorb files. Grotesque looks interesting. I'll read up on it some more, thanks. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=120#p24723
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.3: IF library manager
User: AaronP / DateTime: 2011-10-25 02:36:10

Hmm, imports seem to be stalling at the cover art.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3466&start=0#p24734
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Secret doors by Andrew Owen - broken or corrupt file?
User: frudster / DateTime: 2011-10-25 02:49:55

OK, cool.

On a tangent - wouldn't it be a good idea to host extensions somewhere - on github, perhaps? Or is there already some infrastructure out there for collaborating on extensions that I don't know about? How would I go about to submit a bugfix to that extension?

While I really like the "Include XX by N.N." syntax it also seems like this might hold back shared extension development. Not so much for licensing or technical reasons, more that it seems to imply and encourage a single author.

Is the Andrew Owen here on the forums the same Andrew Owen, btw?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3470&start=0#p24735
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: About default responses using Small Kndness extension.
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-10-25 03:03:52

Hi!

I was surprised in my WIP when testers transcripts showed that the default response upon trying to look/examine unexistent or non present objects had spontaneously changed from the usual "I can't see such a thing" into "That noun did not make sense in this context". Other actions as taking or hitting were not affected.

It happened to be a side effect of including Aaron Reed's Small Kindness extension. In fact, it seems to be related to the examining rooms chapter, as it still happened when instead of installing the whole extension I just copypasted the following part (the one I was interested in):
[code]
Understand "look at/around/in/into the/a/an/some [any player-enclosing room]" or "look at/around/in/into [any player-enclosing room]" or "look [any player-enclosing room]" or "x [any player-enclosing room]" or "examine [any player-enclosing room]" or "search [any player-enclosing room]" as overly elaborate looking.

Overly elaborate looking is an action applying to one thing.

Definition: a room is player-enclosing if it encloses the player.

Carry out overly elaborate looking:
	instead try looking;[/code]

It's not [i]that[/i] bad, I mean, after all this other response is as meaningful as the original, but I still feel curious about why it is happening and what could be done (if anything) to get the original output.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3428&start=0#p24736
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Dropbox
User: frudster / DateTime: 2011-10-25 03:04:19

If you're feeling bold you can also set up a bare git repo in dropbox and push and pull from that to your local working directories. I haven't tried that with I7 but I've done it with other stuff and it seems to work. 

Like this: <a class="postlink" href="http://tumblr.intranation.com/post/766290743/using-dropbox-git-repository">http://tumblr.intranation.com/post/7662 ... repository</a>
// F

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3428&start=0#p24737
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Dropbox
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-10-25 03:14:20

[quote="frudster"]If you're feeling bold...[/quote]

Nope, I'm not feeling bold. To be honest I get quite puzzled at system maintenances [emote]:)[/emote]

Thanks for the effort, anyway!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=0#p24739
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-25 05:17:05

awesome, thanks guys. I'm gonna have a look around for those books. Also in the meantime, I have another post to put in here. I'm having a little trouble trying to learn this on the fly with the included documentation, creating a game as I go. Here's a little bit, can you have a look at it and maybe show me some errors, and ways to improve?

[code]"Eshers Quest" by InterFiction

chapter 1 - Esher's Island

Esher's Cabin is a room. Esher's bed is in Esher's Cabin. Esher's bed is a supporter. Esher's chest is in Esher's cabin by Esher's bed Esher's chest is a closed container. Esher's cape is a thing. Esher's cape is in Esher's chest.

when play begins: say "Esher lay asleep in his home, a small log cabin his father, the lighthouse keeper, had built years before. The wind outside howled like raging wolves, while rain pummelled down on the home outside.

'Esher....' a faint voice called.

'Esher...' it spoke again within his head.

'huh....' Esher groaned as he stirred from his sleep.

'Esher!' The voice said again, this time, more urgent, but only slightly so.

Esher jumped out of his bed, and looked about, but no one was there. Lightning claps lit up the room casting eerie shadows about the place.

'Esher...check the light.' The voice said. It was the sound of a beautiful woman. She spoke within his mind with peace, but also a sense of urgency, a need. She sounded like she needed freedom.

'Who's there!?' He called as he looked about the room, but there was no one."
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=0#p24740
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-25 05:47:48

Your code gives the following error message (by the way -- including error messages in your posts is often helpful):

[quote]In Part SR4 - Actions, Section SR4/3 - Standard actions which move the actor in the extension Standard Rules by Graham Nelson:

Problem. You wrote 'if the actor is in a closed container (called the cage), stop the action with library message exiting action number 2 for the cage'  : but a 'called' name can only be given to something which is described vaguely, and can't be given to a definite object or value. So 'if a thing (called the gadget) is carried' is allowed, but 'if the X-Ray Zapper (called the gadget) is carried' isn't allowed - if it's the X-Ray Zapper, then call it that.[/quote]
 
The Standard Rules are the rules that get Inform 7 running. 

What has happened is that Inform reads the line 
[code]Esher's chest is in Esher's cabin by Esher's bed Esher's chest is a closed container.[/code]
as
 '(A thing called) "Esher's chest" is in (a container called) "Esher's cabin by Esher's bed Esher's chest is a closed container".'

So you have inadvertently created a container called "Esher's cabin by Esher's bed Esher's chest is a closed container". (The absurd name is a result of your omitting a full stop after "Esher's bed".) And Inform allows authors (and players) to refer to in-game objects by merely a part of their names. Therefore, since "closed container" is part of the name of this container, Inform thinks that the Standard Rules are here referring to that container in a context where it can't do so. And that is what the error message objects to (even though, in this case, it apparently supposes that it was you who wrote the Standard Rules!).

EDIT:
Note that even if you put the full stop where it should be
[code]Esher's chest is in Esher's cabin by Esher's bed. Esher's chest is a closed container.[/code]
these lines will create two containers: a container called "Esher's cabin by Esher's bed" and (inside it)  a closed container called "Esher's chest". 
Moreover, neither of them will be in the room called "Esher's cabin".
What you want is this:
[code]Esher's chest is in Esher's cabin. Esher's chest is a closed container.[/code]
That works since you have already told Inform that Esher's Cabin is a room. Otherwise it would again have interpreted it as the name of a container.

Inform has no built-in notion of one thing being by or beside another.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3469&start=0#p24741
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Responses and tables
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-10-25 06:22:47

[quote="capmikee"]The good news is, it has been fixed for the next version - I just got notice of that this week![/quote]

Next version of Inform? Or the next version of the extension?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3384&start=10#p24748
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beyond Zork Random Room Connections
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-25 08:31:27

If you really want to replicate BZ behavior exactly, you'd probably do better to run the game over and over again until you understand what the algorithm does by demonstration.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3469&start=0#p24749
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Responses and tables
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-25 08:39:57

Inform.

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=448">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=448</a>

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=444">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=444</a>

Reviewing my experience with this issue, I see that the problem only comes up within an extension if you use Conversation Rules. If you are creating the tables yourself, the solution is in your hands.

Here's how I hacked Conversation Rules to make the example (The Tribune's Report) work correctly:

[code]Table of Null Response
subject (object)		response rule			response table	suggest
yourself		default no response rule		table-name	0
[/code]
The (object) specification for the subject column is all I added. If you create tables yourself, make sure to include that for any column that has a "listed in" phrase in your source. Then this sort of thing (also from Conversation Rules) will work:

[code]Report informing someone about something known when the second noun is a subject listed in the informing table of the noun (this is the standard informing report rule):  
  if there is a suggest entry and the suggest entry is -1, continue the action;
  if there is a response rule entry, consider the response rule entry;
  if there is a response table entry, show the next response from the response table entry;
  if there is a suggest entry and the suggest entry > 0 begin;
    let sug be the suggest entry;
    decrease sug by 1;
    now the suggest entry is sug;
 end if;
 stop the action.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3470&start=0#p24750
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: About default responses using Small Kndness extension.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-25 08:52:38

It's because of the "any" token. If Inform can't find a noun in scope for the grammar line, it says "I can't see any such thing." But if the grammar line has an "any" token, it stops assuming that things are out of scope just because you can't see them. 

If you had a "go to [any room]" command and a "talk about [any subject]" command, then "that noun did not make sense in that context" might be the correct error message when a player types "go to the meaning of life." Unfortunately, most of the time that message makes no sense to the player, who can't see what grammar lines you've written.

Aaron has made some more recent player-friendly extensions, and it might be worth checking them out. The Player Experience Upgrade bundles a bunch of them together, but if you don't want to go that route, I'd suggest installing Neutral Library Messages and see if that fixes the problem on its own.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3470&start=0#p24751
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: About default responses using Small Kndness extension.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-25 08:57:26

Here's an alternative. This seems to work:

[code]Understand "look at/around/in/into the/a/an/some [room]" or "look at/around/in/into [room]" or "look [room]" or "x [room]" or "examine [room]" or "search [room]" as overly elaborate looking.

Overly elaborate looking is an action applying to one thing.

After deciding the scope of the player when overly elaborate looking:
	place the location in scope, but not its contents.
	
Carry out overly elaborate looking:
   instead try looking;[/code]

I'm not totally sure what "but not its contents" does, but my sense is that it will make the operation faster and it will prevent hidden things from being placed in scope by accident.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3470&start=0#p24752
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: About default responses using Small Kndness extension.
User: SJ_43 / DateTime: 2011-10-25 09:01:31

You could also use something like this to get the normal message back:
[code]Rule for printing a parser error when the latest parser error is the noun did not make sense in that context error: 
	if the player's command includes "look" or the player's command includes "x" or the player's command includes "examine"or the player's command includes "search", say "You can't see any such thing.";
	otherwise make no decision.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3470&start=0#p24754
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: About default responses using Small Kndness extension.
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-25 09:21:18

(EDIT: This post turned out to be totally mistaken!)

[quote="capmikee"]This seems to work:

Code:
Understand "look at/around/in/into the/a/an/some [room]" or "look at/around/in/into [room]" or "look [room]" or "x [room]" or "examine [room]" or "search [room]" as overly elaborate looking.

Overly elaborate looking is an action applying to one thing.

After deciding the scope of the player when overly elaborate looking:
   place the location in scope, but not its contents.
   
Carry out overly elaborate looking:
   instead try looking;[/quote]

For some or no -- but weird -- reason, this overrides the standard response to "X ME" with a looking action.
[quote]>x me
Lab
You can see a grej and a box (empty) here.
[/quote]
I haven't got the slightest clue as to why, but you could add something like this to the carry out rule to prevent it:
[code]
Carry out overly elaborate looking: 
	if the noun is a room:
		instead try looking;
	otherwise:
		instead try examining the noun.
   [/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=0#p24755
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-25 09:24:36

Thanks for breaking that down, Felix. I think I've gotten that kind of error before, and was annoyed that the error message was so unhelpful. I wonder if it would be possible for the message to add one of those "what I understood was" lists, explaining the name of the object that it understood and where it was defined.

Of course if you want to move things together in a room you can create a relation for it:

[code]Proximity relates various things to each other in groups. The verb to be nearby implies the proximity relation.

Esher's chest is nearby Esher's bed.[/code]

 [emote]:idea:[/emote] Whoa - this just occurred to me. A while back I was trying to write a ropes extension, and the relations were killing me. Maybe I should have used group relations....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3470&start=0#p24757
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: About default responses using Small Kndness extension.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-25 09:35:44

Felix, are you sure about that bug? When I try this:

[code]Lab is a room. George is a man in Lab. A thingy is in Lab.

Elaborate looking is an action applying to one thing. Carry out elaborate looking: try looking.
Understand "x [room]" as elaborate looking.
After deciding the scope of the player when elaborate looking: place the location in scope, but not its contents.[/code]

I get the usual response to "x me."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3470&start=0#p24758
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: About default responses using Small Kndness extension.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-25 09:42:23

Could you give us your full source, Felix?

It would probably be good to make sure that the noun is the location at least, in case a rule adds other rooms to scope.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2519&start=20#p24759
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: IF and Linux
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-10-25 11:27:32

I'm not aware of any shortcomings in the way Gargoyle handles zblorb files on Linux. The blorb loading and interpreter selection code is the same on all platforms.

This wasn't true before last year's release, though. Before then, Gargoyle under Gtk was launched from a command line shell script.

It's possible that this rumor got started because of Floatpoint, which (incorrectly) has a zblorb extension despite being a Glulx story file. The shell script wasn't smart enough to handle this case, and would try to load it with Frotz.

The current launcher [i]is[/i] smart enough, but gets overridden by the default .ini settings, which enforce opening .zblorb files with a particular interpreter. This allows players to easily switch between Frotz, Nitfol, and Bocfel, at the cost of subverting the blorb-handling logic. So the .ini also contains a setting to force Floatpoint to be loaded with Glulxe.

Hacks within hacks, I know, but at least I've stopped getting bug reports about it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3470&start=0#p24760
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: About default responses using Small Kndness extension.
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-10-25 12:19:33

I can confirm that capmike's rule doesn't affect the "x me" action in my story and also that SJ_43's rule is the only one to succesfully bring the "can't see such a thing" message back so far!

And, of course, thanks to all of you for your answers, I'm learning a lot of things of I7 internals with them!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3471&start=0#p24761
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Adapting menu-based conversation into menu-based combat
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2011-10-25 13:26:43

I'd like to adapt Simple Chat from a menu-driven NPC conversation extension to a menu-driven combat system, rather than devise a multitude of variables, objects and verbs — then design and balance a system of combat, stances, postures, ripostes, and so on.  I'd like the combat to run more like a narrative than a war game anyway.

Ex:
[quote]The guard captain scowls at you and draws his sword.  "As you desire, dog."
1.  Kick over the table.
2.  Bar the door.
3.  Attack the guard captain with the sword.
4.  "I've killed tougher men than you!"
0.  Retreat.[/quote]

Obviously, I must change the names of the menus and verbs, so it would be compatible with Simple Chat itself. I must also include (on the combat table?) any effects of the maneuver — ex: your attack pushes the enemy into the adjoining room.

Are there any obvious pitfalls to this?  What is the proper protocol for crediting the original author for the structure I'm building on?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2519&start=20#p24762
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: IF and Linux
User: AaronP / DateTime: 2011-10-25 13:55:01

Ah, ok. I switched to the Linux version and haven't run into any problems. Thanks. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3470&start=0#p24763
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: About default responses using Small Kndness extension.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-25 14:26:48

I'm banging on the grammar a little bit and I did find one problem:

[quote]>look around me
That noun did not make sense in this context.[/quote]

There's no corresponding grammar line for "look around [something]", apparently. This would probably work:

[code]Understand "look around [something]" as searching.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3470&start=0#p24764
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: About default responses using Small Kndness extension.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-25 14:28:20

[quote="rockersuke"]I can confirm that capmike's rule doesn't affect the "x me" action in my story and also that SJ_43's rule is the only one to succesfully bring the "can't see such a thing" message back so far![/quote]
I'd really like to see a source that can reproduce the problem. Perhaps there are other Understand lines involved?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3470&start=10#p24765
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: About default responses using Small Kndness extension.
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-25 14:44:20

Sure, this bug was too weird to be genuine.

I had been playing around with the example without coming up with anything, and then I apparently only pasted part of capmikee's solution into my source text -- ending up with an "x [person]" instead of an "x [room]" in the row of understand lines.
 [emote]:oops:[/emote] 
Awfully sorry about that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3471&start=0#p24766
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Adapting menu-based conversation into menu-based combat
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-25 14:45:12

Before you do anything with Simple Chat, be aware that it discards the parser and halts the turn structure, so that an entire conversation (or any sort of exchange) takes place within the space of a single turn. If that's not a problem for you, go ahead, but otherwise you might consider using the Questions extension instead.

Either way, I think there will be very little effective difference between a spoken exchange and an exchange of blows, as it were. Keeping track of combat state is also very similar to keeping track of a conversation's context. It's a lot of work either way, regardless of what extension you use. I don't think there's anything out there that will do it for you, although you may want to look at the "Attack" and "Postures" extensions.

"Attack" is not on the I7 site, but you can find it here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://gamingphilosopher.blogspot.com/2011/04/attack-inform-attack-version-2-released.html">http://gamingphilosopher.blogspot.com/2 ... eased.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=10#p24767
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-25 15:41:49

Hey, thanks guys. I'm starting to get the basics here. I can now create rooms that link, with working descriptions...so that's a plus, lol.

now I've run into a new problem though..

I'm having trouble understanding how to change room description after it's been entered, so that when they type look they get something else...

also having an issue with moving the player. I'd like to move the player as soon as they enter a certain room how would I go about that?

I've tried.

if player is in RoomName: move player to RoomName... but that clearly didn't work, lol...bot names being different.

also

when player is in roomname: now player is in roomnam, and a bunch of others but it's not working..

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=10#p24768
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-25 15:52:01

To make those phrasings work, you have to wrap them in headings, like "every turn," like this:

[code]Every turn when the player is in Room 1: Move the player to Room 2.[/code]

or this:

[code]Every turn: If the player is in Room 1, move the player to Room 2.[/code]

Those will print the description of Room 1, move the player to Room 2, and then print its description. (You'd probably want to say something about how the player got moved!) If you just want to move the player to Room 2 without printing anything about Room 1, you could try:

[code]After going to Room 1: Move the player to Room 2.[/code]

Though that would raise the question of why Room 1 was there at all!

For changing room descriptions, you could just try making the description something like 

[code]The description of room 1 is "[one of]Description 1 goes here.[or]Description 2 goes here.[stopping]".[/code]

Section 5.7 of the documentation gives you a lot of different ways to vary texts like this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3472&start=0#p24769
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I7] Supplying a Missing Noun with "Consult"
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-25 15:56:22

The following compiles, but doesn't work:

[code]
Study is room. "Long before the rot and mold set in, this study must have been gorgeous. Only rotting books remain."

Some rotting books are in the study. They are scenery. "They're mainly rotting fragments. You could take the time to consult them on any number of topics, but you doubt you'd find much in the scraps of legibility that remain."

Check consulting the rotting books about a topic listed in the Table of Research:
   say "[response entry][paragraph break]" instead.

Check consulting the rotting books about: say "You rummage, but find nothing you didn't already know." instead.

Table of Research
Topic		Response
"murder/homicide/killing"	"Turns out that's illegal here."
"sex"	"Sadly, the monks have systematically stolen those pages over the years, for their private amusement."

Rule for supplying a missing noun while consulting: 
    now the noun is the rotting books. 
    
Test me with "read about sex in the books / read about sex"[/code]

Help me obi-wan-community, you're my only hope.

(I've been able to end-run around this by creating a new "research" action that applies to a topic only instead of a topic and a noun, but that feels messy and makes the whole job more complex ...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=10#p24770
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-25 16:21:18

Thanks, I'm gonna take a look at that. I don't know why, but once things get a bit more advanced I have trouble learning it, book or no book, haha, I guess that's normal. I find forums a good source, advanced users are like tutors, lol..

I do have a book by the way, and combing the documentation has helped a little, but I find a bit of it to be vague. I guess I'm having trouble with this rule business..

now I'm having trouble moving objects based on what room they're the players in. I have a dream state where the player is surrounded by light, and created it as an thing, but now I need to move this thing as the player moves through the four rooms of the dream...

I can't figure out how to move objects based on what room the player is in though..

I've tried using the same method..

[code]After going to Room 1: Move the player to Room 2.[/code]

but making it

[quote]After going to Room 2: Move The Light to Room 2.[/quote]

but that's not working...

it's a little fustrating, lol.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3472&start=0#p24771
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Supplying a Missing Noun with "Consult"
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-25 16:48:38

It seems that Inform wants a "preposition" (which means, I think, any string of characters) to tell where the topic ends.

The command "Read about sex in" gives the wanted response.

Adding the line 
[code]Understand "read about [text] [something]" as consulting it about (with nouns reversed).[/code]
also makes the game respond as wanted to "Read about sex", but alas! with a run-time error message objecting to the lack of prepositions.

[quote]>read about sex
** Library error 13 (0,0) **
** A 'topic' token can only be followed by a preposition **

*** Run-time problem P37: Low level error.

(the rotting books)
Sadly, the monks have systematically stolen those pages over the years, for their private amusement.
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=10#p24772
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-25 17:26:12

Here's an exact example of what I mean in my source code. I'm not sure how to work this..

[code]after going to Memory Of Childhood: move The Light to Memory Of Childhood.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3472&start=0#p24773
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Supplying a Missing Noun with "Consult"
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-25 17:31:57

Argh [emote]:([/emote]

See, this works (as far as it goes, anyway):

[code]

Study is room. "Long before the rot and mold set in, this study must have been gorgeous. Only rotting books remain. There's a cave to the east for some reason."

Some rotting books are in the study. They are scenery. "They're mainly rotting fragments. You could take the time to consult them on any number of topics, but you doubt you'd find much in the scraps of legibility that remain."

Researching is an action applying to one topic. Understand "Look up [text]" or "Research [text]" or "Read about [text]" or "Look [text] up" as Researching.

Check researching a topic listed in the Table of Research when the rotting books are touchable:
   say "[response entry][paragraph break]" instead.

Check consulting the rotting books about a topic listed in the Table of Research:
   say "[response entry][paragraph break]" instead.

Check researching:
   if the rotting books are touchable, say "You rummage, but find nothing you didn't already know." instead;
   say "There isn't much here in the way of research material."

Check consulting the rotting books about: say "You rummage, but find nothing you didn't already know." instead.

Table of Research
Topic		Response
"murder/homicide/killing"	"Turns out that's illegal here."
"sex"	"Sadly, the monks have systematically stolen those pages over the years, for their private amusement."

Cave is east of Study. "Yes indeedy. It's a cave alright."

Test me with "read about sex in the books / read about sex"
[/code]

But if feels like a kludge to me. But, it works at least ... hrmmmm ...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=10#p24774
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-25 17:38:31

okay folks. Inform is not only case sensitive, but word sensitive..haha...I was using names of rooms that weren't the names of the rooms. This little issue has been fixed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3472&start=0#p24775
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Supplying a Missing Noun with "Consult"
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-25 17:50:52

That's what I'd do, really. The standard "consult" grammar takes two objects. Nothing wrong with defining a one-object version that infers its second noun.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=10#p24776
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-25 18:09:39

on thing I am having trouble with now is moving multiple things. It seems that if I type each thing its line of code only the first thing is moved. I tried combining the code, but inform seems to think I'm trying to move an object to an object, or something like that... Here's what I have..

[code]after going to Childhood Memory: move The child to Childhood Memory and move The Light to Childhood Memory.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=10#p24777
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-25 18:28:11

If you want to do two things in one rule, indent them on separate lines and join them with semicolons:

[code]After going to Childhood Memory:
    move the light to Childhood Memory;
    move the child to Childhood Memory.[/code]

The second and third lines should be indented with tab stops. 

One issue that you're probably having is that "after" rules by default end the action, so if you have two different "after" rules they won't both fire (unless you do something special to make them fire, which is usually to put "continue the action" in your rule). See section 7.5 of the documentation. (Perhaps I should have mentioned that when I suggested the "after going" rule; sorry!) One way to get around this would be to use "carry out" rules instead, so instead of "after going to childhood memory" you write "carry out going to childhood memory." 

Also, if you want the light to move around with the player in the dream state, have you thought about making it a backdrop? See section 3.9; backdrops are designed to be things that are in a bunch of different rooms at once, or anyway to fake it. To get this to work the way you want it, you'd probably have to define the rooms of the dream state as a region, as in section 3.4. 

Sorry if I'm throwing too much stuff at you!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=10#p24778
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-25 18:42:53

nope it's fine. I've got regions set up in the game. Dream containing 4 rooms, each a memory, and after that an island containing a few locations. Thanks for giving exact locations in documentation too. It helps.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=10#p24781
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-25 19:18:20

I found a closer representation of what I was trying to do with the room descriptions changing. It's using [if unvisites].  I have one room working, but the other it's not working so well.

this one works.
[code]the description of Childhood Memory is "[if unvisited]Esher could see himself as a child playing with a ball. He laughed as he saw the memory of himself kicking the little red ball, that his father had given him, back and forth. Somehow the memory made him feel uneasy though. It was as if remembering how things were, remembering how simple things were when he was a child, made him realize how difficult things had become...

To the north Esher could vaguely make out another memory. He could see himself talking to his father. Part of him wanted to get there quickly so that he didn't miss much of the conversation.[end if] Esher could see himself as a child kicking about a ball that his father had given him".
[/code]

when the player enters the room it gives the description I want, and then when they type look it gives the second description..

This one is only half working.

[code]the description of Memory Of Father is "[if unvisited]Esher could see himself talking to his father.

'Now Esher, be a good boy.' his father said, as his son nodded happily.

'I'm going to check on the light, and make sure everything’s alright. Make sure nothing happens to the house while I'm gone.' he said, and then added 'I wont be long.'

'Yes dad' Esher said.

Unlike in his prior memory Esher was now an adolescent. Looking at the memory brought back a great love that Esher had for his father.

'Esher' The female voice spoke from within the light again. 

'To the north is the memory of your father leaving.'[end if] Esher is standing there, thinking about his father.".
[/code]

it gives the description as well as the second part, yet when the player types look it only gives the second part..lol Which is what I would like, without it giving the second part the first time..

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3472&start=0#p24782
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Supplying a Missing Noun with "Consult"
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-25 19:21:31

[quote="zarf"]That's what I'd do, really. The standard "consult" grammar takes two objects. Nothing wrong with defining a one-object version that infers its second noun.[/quote]

I guess that's true. Thing is, this is for my "Bare Bones" WIP, where I'm trying to cram as much as possible into a .z5 file, so every little addition makes me wince [emote]:)[/emote]

But if I gotta, I gotta (and I think I gotta).

Thanks, guys. If nothing else it's nice to know I'm not (in this specific context) entirely off track ...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3473&start=0#p24784
Forum: Competitions / Subject: The Fourth Round of IFComp 2011 Updates
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2011-10-25 19:24:23

For the fourth update, the games A Comedy of Error Messages (originally Elfen Maiden), Andromeda Awakening, Fog Convict, Operation Extraction, and PataNoir have been updated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3469&start=0#p24785
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Responses and tables
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-10-25 19:38:05

[quote="capmikee"]Inform.

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=448">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=448</a>

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=444">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=444</a>

Reviewing my experience with this issue, I see that the problem only comes up within an extension if you use Conversation Rules. If you are creating the tables yourself, the solution is in your hands.

Here's how I hacked Conversation Rules to make the example (The Tribune's Report) work correctly:

[code]Table of Null Response
subject (object)		response rule			response table	suggest
yourself		default no response rule		table-name	0
[/code]
[/quote]

I apologize in advance for being dense here, but I've tried 100 and 1 different combinations of my original question (including adding "listed in") and none of them worked, but okay whatever. It sounds like it's broken.

I haven't used the Conversation rules at all, but since you mentioned it, I took a look at it. It looks interesting and maybe it's what I need, but what exactly is supposed to be wrong with the example that is fixed by the above code?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=10#p24787
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-25 20:42:13

say "[if unvisited]Text 1.[else]Text 2.[end if]"

Although that may generate extra newlines. If so, the common (although annoying) fix is to move both periods outside the if section:

say "[if unvisited]Text 1[else]Text 2[end if]."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=20#p24788
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-25 20:55:48

Works perfect thanks [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3469&start=0#p24789
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Responses and tables
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-25 21:22:06

Sorry I haven't actually tried out your code - and right now I can't because I'm not at my Mac.

What exactly happens with your source? Does it compile? Do you get the default "There is no reply" response?

So is this the code you're using now?

[code]Response of Bob when asked about an item listed in table of bob's responses:
   say "[response entry]";[/code]

Sometimes there are namespace issues with table columns. "item" is a commonly used variable name. I don't think that's the problem, but you could try changing it and see what happens.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=20#p24790
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-25 21:30:06

My room that transfers my player to another room is still giving me problems. How would I go about using this line of code..

[code]after going to Memory Of Father Leaving: move player to Esher's Cabin.[/code]

and still displaying description of the first room. As it is the player is transferred, but the rooom descriptino is skipped...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3469&start=0#p24791
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Responses and tables
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-10-25 21:32:43

It doesn't compile:

[quote]
Problem. You wrote 'Response of Bob when asked about an item listed in table of bob's responses'  : but this form of table entry can only be used in certain special phrases, because it doesn't explicitly refer to a single value. (You can see which phrases in the Phrasebook index: it's allowed wherever a 'table entry' is wanted.)

I was trying to match one of these phrases:

1. asked about (an item listed in table of bob's responses - object) 

2. asked about (an item listed in table of bob's responses - description of objects) 

3. asked about (an item listed in table of bob's responses - topic) 

This was what I found out:

an item listed in table of bob's responses = a table entry, holding an object
[/quote]

I tried a number of names for the column other than item and none of them worked either

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3428&start=0#p24792
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Dropbox
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-10-25 21:44:35

Wow, I'd never tried junction points/Windows symbolic linking til now. Glad I subscribed to this thread.

For those still curious/confused, a short tutorial...I have vista at home, XP at work.

Vista used mklink. It comes with vista. I don't think it makes a difference which way the junctions/links point.

mklink /d (inform folder) (dropbox folder)

Sysinternals's junction.exe worked great for XP.

junction (dropbox folder) (inform folder)

Note: I may have these backwards, but there's enough error checking that you won't wipe any files if there is an order the junctions/links point and you mess it up.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3469&start=0#p24793
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Responses and tables
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-25 21:56:33

Well, the error message tells you what the problem is: You can't use a table entry there. It seems a bit capricious, but I think part of the problem is the way Conversation Responses is set up. "asked about [something]" is a to decide whether phrase. I believe there are two forms of it - one takes a specific object as an argument, the other takes a description of objects. A table entry doesn't seem to count as either of those.

When I'm writing in I7, I try to avoid a "to decide whether" phrase when I can define an adjective instead. I'm actually working on a conversation extension and I've been a bit stumped on how to name these adjectives. Perhaps the simplest thing would be:

[code]Definition: A thing is asked-about when asked about it.[/code]

Using that you might be able to say "response of Bob when an item listed in table of bob's responses is asked-about."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=20#p24794
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-25 21:56:49

Did you try "Every turn when the player is in Memory of Father Leaving..."? That seems like it should do it (though there may be some timing issues.)  Actually "Every turn when the location is Memory of Father Leaving" might be better; the location is the room where the player is (techically the player isn't "in" the room if he's, for instance, on a supporter in the room).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=20#p24795
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-25 22:05:06

That worked out perfect. It's only ever going to be entered once, but it does the trick...

I find with the documentation it gives the simplest answers, but not really what I'm looking for, lol...

do you have any other book suggestions? I think there was a couple suggested on the first page. I'm gonna go back, and take a look.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3475&start=0#p24797
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: topics and text subsitutions in Inform 7
User: Hector / DateTime: 2011-10-26 01:15:39

The following code works fine. 

<code> 

The test is a room. Peter is a person. Mary is a person. Peter is in the test. Mary is in the test. 

Table of Characterization
Suspect	Topic			Generic Remark 
Peter	"Mary"	"I love money"


Instead of asking someone about something: 
	choose row with a suspect of the noun in the Table of Characterization; 
	if the topic understood includes the topic entry:
		say "[noun] says [generic remark entry]". 

</code>

However, if I change the topic entry in the table, using a text substitution instead, problems arise: 

<code> 
Table of Characterization
Suspect	Topic			Generic Remark 
Peter	"[Mary]"	"I love money"

</code> 

Now inform understands Mary as the noun. So if the command is 
> Ask Peter about Mary, 
it prints "Mary says...." 

Is it out of the question to use text substitutions in a topics column? 

Thanks in advance.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3475&start=0#p24798
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: topics and text subsitutions in Inform 7
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-26 02:48:40

What I think happens is that, since "[Mary]" is not just literal text, Inform has to work out who Mary is, and, apparently, when it does, it resets the noun to Mary. 
(If you use the debug command TRACE 4 before ASK PETER ABOUT MARY, you'll see that there is a difference in how the asking command is parsed according to as the topic entry is "Mary" or "[Mary]" -- it runs an Inform 6 routine called NounDomain to find out who Mary is in the latter case but not in the former.)

There is an easy fix to the present problem, though:
[code]
Instead of asking someone (called informant) about something:
	choose row with a suspect of the noun in the Table of Characterization;
	if the topic understood includes the topic entry:
		say "[The informant] says [generic remark entry]".
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3473&start=0#p24799
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Fourth Round of IFComp 2011 Updates
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-10-26 03:43:44

FYI, the update in [i]Andromeda Awakening[/i] consists of a betatester being rightly credited ([b]Joel Webster[/b], to whom I apologize  [emote]:oops:[/emote] ). 

There's is nothing more, so no need to replay it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3470&start=10#p24800
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: About default responses using Small Kndness extension.
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-10-26 03:45:35

[quote="Felix"]and then I apparently only pasted part of capmikee's solution into my source text -- [/quote]

Could you believe the same happened to me? I only noticed when I started a whole new project with a couple of rooms and objects just to isolate what was happening. Now I have not one but two working alternatives. Thanks again you all!  [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3477&start=0#p24805
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Problem using extension Consolidate Multiple Actions
User: Gogyn / DateTime: 2011-10-26 07:40:18

I'm getting an error when compiling the Clutter example for John Clemens Consolidate Multiple Actions extension. Being new at inform 7 it's probably some thing simple.

Here's the error message.

[i][color=#0040FF]Problem. In the sentence 'say "[The actor] picks up [consolidated objects]."'  , I was expecting to read an object, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'actor'.

I was trying to match one of these phrases:
1. say "[The actor - object]" 
2. say "[the actor - object]" 
3. say "actor - text" 
4. say "[actor - number]" 
5. say "[actor - unicode character]" 
6. say "[actor - sayable value]" 
7. say "" picks up " - text" 
8. say "[consolidated objects]" 
9. say "consolidated objects - text" 
10. say "[consolidated objects - number]" 
11. say "[consolidated objects - unicode character]" 
12. say "[consolidated objects - sayable value]" 
13. say ""." - text" 
This was what I found out:
actor = something unrecognised
consolidated objects = something unrecognised[/color][/i]

Appreciate any insight to the cause of the problem.

Thanks

Jacques Leclerc

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3477&start=0#p24806
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem using extension Consolidate Multiple Actions
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-26 08:08:53

What does your rule with the offending line look like?

The standard rules document seems to imply that "actor" is a variable local to an ongoing action, so if you use it in a rule that has nothing to do with actions, it may not be understood.
(Though experiment proves that it can actually be used even in a When play begins rule!)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3477&start=0#p24807
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem using extension Consolidate Multiple Actions
User: Gogyn / DateTime: 2011-10-26 08:21:02

The offending rule is in the extenstion.

This is the line that is highlighted.
[i][color=#0080FF]Last for reporting consolidated actions rule when asking someone to try taking (this is the standard consolidated report taking by others rule): say "[The actor] picks up [consolidated objects]."[/color][/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3477&start=0#p24808
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem using extension Consolidate Multiple Actions
User: Gogyn / DateTime: 2011-10-26 08:38:57

The error occurs when trying to compile the sample supplied with the extension. The sample contains the line [i]Include Consolidated Multiple Actions by John Clemens.[/i] . 

When attempting to install the extension into the IDE it says that it is already included. If iI remove the Include statement from the sample the error does not occur. I'm assuming at this point that any extensions that have been built in do not need the include statement for that extension within the source. Is this a correct assumption?


Jacques Leclerc

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3477&start=0#p24809
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem using extension Consolidate Multiple Actions
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-26 09:06:23

Aha! It's a line in the extension itself that triggers the error ...

This seems to fix it (though of course it's anything but thoroughly tested):

Open the extension (from the file menu in the IDE).
Find the lines
[code]Section 3 -Reporting consolidated actions

Reporting consolidated actions is an activity.
[/code]
Add the variable to the activity and a rule to set it:
[code]Section 3 -Reporting consolidated actions

Reporting consolidated actions is an activity.
Reporting consolidated actions activity has a person called the actor. 
Before reporting consolidated actions: now the actor is the person asked.[/code]
Beware of bugs.

EDIT:
Come to think of it, you need not edit the very extension. You can simply add those two lines to your own source text.
[code]Reporting consolidated actions activity has a person called the actor. 
Before reporting consolidated actions: now the actor is the person asked.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3477&start=0#p24810
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem using extension Consolidate Multiple Actions
User: SJ_43 / DateTime: 2011-10-26 09:10:10

The actor is a variable that belongs to the action-processing rules. It can't be used outside of those so Inform doesn't recognize it. But I think the extension means to use the I6 global variable "actor", which is called "the person asked" in I7. Perhaps the extension was written for an older version of Inform?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3477&start=0#p24811
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem using extension Consolidate Multiple Actions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-26 09:43:55

It seems likely, since no one has heard from John Clemens lately.

I have already updated and submitted his "Conditional Backdrops" extension under my name. If there are no objections, I volunteer to send an update for this extension as well.

I fixed it by replacing every instance of "the actor" with "the person asked." As this is an extremely minor change, I propose submitting it under John Clemens' name. How does that sound?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3477&start=0#p24812
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem using extension Consolidate Multiple Actions
User: Gogyn / DateTime: 2011-10-26 09:52:58

[quote="capmikee"]It seems likely, since no one has heard from John Clemens lately.

I have already updated and submitted his "Conditional Backdrops" extension under my name. If there are no objections, I volunteer to do the same with this extension.[/quote]

I'd appreciate it. Having come from an object oriented background, there are enough challenges learning Inform 7 without having to also debug extensions.

Appreciate your effort.

Thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3469&start=0#p24813
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Responses and tables
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-10-26 09:58:25

Or you can get avoid the special case handling of ``listed in'' entirely if you move the condition inside the rule:[code]Response of Bob when asked about something:
	unless the second noun is an item listed in the Table of Bob's Responses:
		make no decision;
	say "[the response entry]".[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3477&start=0#p24814
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem using extension Consolidate Multiple Actions
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-26 10:21:14

[quote="capmikee"]As this is an extremely minor change, I propose submitting it under John Clemens' name. How does that sound?[/quote]
It sounds sensible. (I'm sure there are all kinds of principled objections to it -- it still *sounds* ... well, sensible.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3477&start=0#p24815
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem using extension Consolidate Multiple Actions
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-26 10:30:13

[quote="Gogyn"]I'm assuming at this point that any extensions that have been built in do not need the include statement for that extension within the source. Is this a correct assumption?[/quote]

After you have installed an extension so that it shows up in the IDE, you still need to include it explicitly in each game that wants to make use of it. This is true of all extensions (except the Standard Rules), even those that are known as "built-in", i.e. those that come pre-installed with the IDE (like Plurality by Emily Short).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3478&start=0#p24816
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: The AdventureWeb Interactive Fiction System
User: Shoal / DateTime: 2011-10-26 10:42:53

EDIT 11/1/11: For now, I have decided to not make AdventureWeb a general authoring system but simply to use it for my own games and without the "AdventureWeb" name.

I have removed all the links leading to AdventureWeb material, and even removed the content from the web altogether. When the current game project is completed I'll post it to a new thread.

Meanwhile, I have created the following website explaining how to play the IF games I'll be creating:

[url]http://www.littlenewer.com/ifplay.htm[/url]

-------

OLD:

Hi all! I just completed and uploaded an explanation of my new AdventureWeb online interactive fiction system. It's a system for using text and basic HTML alone, combined with some manual record keeping, to create and play interactive fiction without needing to know any programming whatsoever. Nothing but basic HTML and its links and pages are used! Best yet, the AW system is capable of doing almost anything programmed interactive fiction can do!

I'm currently working on an example game. Unfortunately games are harder to make for me than systems, so it'll be a little bit before the example is ready.

Take a look at AdventureWeb and tell me what you think:

EDIT: [b]Removed Link[/b]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3469&start=0#p24817
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Responses and tables
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-26 11:27:03

That's not actually necessary. The special case only happens when using the phrase "asked about [something]". This also works:

[code]Response of Bob when asked about something and the second noun is an item listed in table of bob's responses:
	say "[response entry]";[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=20#p24818
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-26 11:37:32

Erg. I'm having a bit of trouble with a door. It's one that the player can't pass through unless they're wearing a cape.

[code]Esher's Door is a door. Esher's Door is north of Esher's Cabin and South of Outdoors. Esher's Door is scenery. Esher's door is closed.
	before going through Esher's Door:
	if Esher's Door is closed;
	if the player is wearing Esher's Cape;
	say "You step outside".
	otherwise if the player is not wearing Esher's Cape:
	say "You decide not to go outside without your cape because of the story.".[/code]

I get this error.

The sentence 'Esher's Door is north of Esher's Cabin and South of Outdoors'   appears to say two things are the same - I am reading 'Esher's Door' and 'South of Outdoors' as two different things, and therefore it makes no sense to say that one is the other:

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3469&start=10#p24819
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Responses and tables
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-26 11:40:39

[quote="capmikee"][code]Definition: A thing is asked-about when asked about it.[/code]

Using that you might be able to say "response of Bob when an item listed in table of bob's responses is asked-about."[/quote]

I finally got to try this out. It still doesn't work because you can't use a description with "listed in" - it has to be a specific object. I finally figured out what the error message is really telling you: it can only loop over the table [O(n)] - it can't do a nested loop over all objects and all table rows [O(n^2)].

You could do it like this, though:

[code]To decide which object is the subject asked about:
	unless quizzing someone about, decide on nothing;
	Decide on the second noun.
		
Response of Bob when the subject asked about is an item listed in Table of Bob's responses:
	say "[response entry]";[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=20#p24820
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-26 11:55:31

The capital S in "south of Outdoors" confuses Inform.
Make it a lower case s and it's gonna work (supposing you have a room called "Outdoors" rather than "South of Outdoors").

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=20#p24821
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-26 12:04:09

Thanks, didn't notice that error, but I'm still getting another one. It's something to do with puncuation..

this is the new code.

[code]Esher's Door is north of Esher's Cabin and south of Outdoors. Esher's Door is a door.  Esher's door is closed.
	before going through Esher's Door:
	if Esher's Door is open;
	if the player is wearing Esher's Cape;
	say "You step outside".
	otherwise if the player is not wearing Esher's Cape:
	say "You decide not to go outside without your cape because of the storm.".[/code]

new error is.

 The sentence 'otherwise if the player is not wearing Esher's Cape'   appears to say two things are the same - I am reading 'otherwise if the player' and 'not wearing Esher's Cape' as two different things, and therefore it makes no sense to say that one is the other:.


could you possibly clearify the difference between : and ; as a side note?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=20#p24822
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-26 12:07:33

Also the before rule needs to be properly indented and punctuated.
The rule preamble (the name etc. of the rule) should end in a colon.
Conditions (if, else, and otherwise) should end in a colon, too.
All other lines should end in a semicolon.
Except the last one, which can end in a full stop instead.
Indentations represent the scope (so to speak) of the conditions: a condition holds for everything that is further indented than itself.
[code]Before going through Esher's Door:
	if Esher's Door is closed: [colon]
		if the player is wearing Esher's Cape: [colon]
			say "You step outside."; [semicolon]
		[here ends the condition about wearing the cape]
		otherwise if the player is not wearing Esher's Cape:
			say "You decide not to go outside without your cape because of the story."
		[here ends the condition about *not* wearing the cape]
	[here ends the condition about the door being closed]
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=20#p24823
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-26 12:15:05

Also, you should make that an instead rule, instead. Otherwise, when a player tries to go through the door, your before rule will run first (telling him he can't leave without the cape) and then the ordinary rules for going through doors will also run (letting him out anyway).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=20#p24824
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-26 12:21:17

Check and Before rules continue the action by default. Using an Instead rule is one alternative, but I like check rules. If you use a check or before rule, you have to say "stop the action," or begin or end a statement with "instead" to make the action stop. If you use an Instead rule, you have to say "continue the action" to let it continue as normal.

A few suggestions:

First, "otherwise if the player is not wearing Esher's cape" is redundant unless the first part of the if statement changes whether or not the player is wearing the cape. A simple "otherwise" will do. If it's not redundant, consider removing the word "otherwise."

Second, I'd probably make this a check rule rather than a Before or Instead rule. Then the standard rules will handle checking whether the door is open or not. If you don't use an Instead rule, though, you probably want to put the "you step outside" message into an After rule so it appears at the right time. You can do it all with an Instead rule, but then you have to do the open-door check yourself.

Third, you're going to get the message "you step outside" every time you go through the door, even when you're going inside. You might want to change that.

[code]Esher's Door is a scenery door. It is north of Esher's Cabin and south of Outdoors.

Check going to Outside through Esher's Door:
	if the player is not wearing Esher's Cape:
		say "You decide not to go outside without your cape because of the story.";
		stop the action.
		
After going to Outside through Esher's Door:
	say "You step outside.";
	continue the action.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=30#p24825
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-26 12:30:24

Okay, here's what I have..

[code]Before going through Esher's Door:
	if Esher's Door is closed:
		if the player is wearing Esher's Cape:
			say "You open the door and step outside";
	otherwise if the player is not wearing Esher's Cape:
		say "You decide not to go outside without your cape because of the storm.".[/code]

*I fixed a typo realized I had story instead of storm there, lol.*

is that right?

also I haven't gone about creating the cape in the room yet, is that why I get these errors...

[quote]Problem. In the sentence 'if the player is wearing Esher's Cape begin'  , I was expecting to read a condition, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'player is wearing Esher's Cape'.

I was trying to match this phrase:

if (player is wearing esher's cape - a condition): 

This was what I found out:

player is wearing Esher's Cape = something unrecognised



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem. In the sentence 'otherwise if the player is not wearing Esher's Cape'  , I was expecting to read a condition, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'player is not wearing Esher's Cape'.

I was trying to match one of these phrases:

1. otherwise if (player is not wearing esher's cape - a condition) 

2. otherwise (if the player is not wearing esher's cape - a phrase) 

This was what I found out:

player is not wearing Esher's Cape = something unrecognised

if the player is not wearing Esher's Cape = something unrecognised
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=30#p24826
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-26 13:12:22

[quote="InterFiction"][code]Before going through Esher's Door:
	if Esher's Door is closed:
		if the player is wearing Esher's Cape:
			say "You open the door and step outside";
	otherwise if the player is not wearing Esher's Cape:
		say "You decide not to go outside without your cape because of the storm.".[/code]

*I fixed a typo realized I had story instead of storm there, lol.*[/quote]
 [emote]:lol:[/emote] Aha - storm makes a lot more sense!

Why not write yourself a little test script? Something like:

[code]Test me with "n/wear cape/n/remove cape/s"[/code]

Then you'll know if your game is doing what you expect. It looks to me like you're still not stopping the action, and you're still saying "you step outside" even when you're going inside, but that's the sort of thing test scripts are good at catching.

[quote]also I haven't gone about creating the cape in the room yet, is that why I get these errors...[/quote]
It's simple to check:

[code]Esher's cape is a wearable thing in Esher's Cabin.[/code]

The quickest way to fix something when you think you know the problem is to try it out. Then you'll see. It certainly looks like the problem to me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=30#p24827
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-26 13:31:00

Yup. I've been playtesting all along...which brought up another issue...

here's my code for that part of the game.

[code]Before going through Esher's Door:
	if Esher's Door is closed:
		if the player is wearing Esher's Cape:
			say "You open the door and step outside";
	otherwise if the player is not wearing Esher's Cape:
		say "You decide not to go outside without your cape because of the storm.".
		
[Room Descriptions In Chapter 1 - Esher's Island]

[Things in Chapter 1 - Esher's Island]

Esher's chest is a closed openable container in Esher's Cabin.

Esher's cape is a thing. Esher's cape is wearable. Esher's cape is in Esher's chest.
		[/code]

The issue is. Nothing is stopping the player from going outside...he's able to do it with or without the cape, lol.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=30#p24828
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-26 13:32:49

just look at it I'm thinking it's because I'm using the before rule...should that be something else?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=30#p24829
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-26 13:42:16

I answered that question in one of my earlier posts, when I discussed the differences between Before, check, and Instead rules, and the need for "stop the action" and "continue the action." Did you miss it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=30#p24830
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-26 13:48:20

A harder to spot problem is that the indentation of the rule as you have it, correlates the "otherwise" with the first "if" (the "if the door is closed") rather than with the second "if" (the "if the player wears the cape"). Which means that the rule will say "You open the door and step outside.", if and only if  BOTH the door is closed AND the player wears the cape; and it will say "You decide not to go outside without your cape because of the storm.", if and only if BOTH the door is open AND the player doesn't wear the cape.
If the door is closed but the player doesn't wear the cape, the rule will do nothing. And if the door is already open and the player does wear the cape, the rule again won't do anything.

A second subtle thing is that you should keep the full stop inside the quotation marks of "You open the door and step outside." (and end the whole line with a semicolon outside the quotation). That full stop ensures that a line break is printed after the sentence.

Also, if you won't use capmikee's suggestion for rules (which I recommend you to do), your before rule needs the line 'stop the action;' after the line 'say "You decide not to &c.";' (or if you make it an instead rule, it would need the line 'continue the action;' after the line 'say "You open the door &c.";').

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=30#p24831
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-10-26 14:08:59

I'm a big fan of having a different rule for each case instead of one rule with complex control structures. It makes the code easier to read (YMMV), maintain and organize, and you rarely if ever need to use "stop the action" or "continue the action".

[code]Before going through closed Esher's Door when the player is wearing Esher's Cape:
    say "You open the door and step outside."

Instead of going through Esher's Door when the player is not wearing Esher's Cape:
    say "You decide not to go outside without your cape because of the storm."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=30#p24832
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-26 14:34:58

Yeah, that does seem easier, lol..

capmikee, sorry, I missed that post all together, but I went back to read it. Certianly helpfull..

Where can I find more information on the proper spacing of control structures?

Felix, I'm having a hard time understanding that at all, haha. sorry.

I think it's because I need to learn more about control sturctures, and indentation in general.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3471&start=0#p24834
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Adapting menu-based conversation into menu-based combat
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2011-10-26 15:20:08

Thanks, capmikee.  Writing and planning narrative forks will take time but I think it's more satisfying (if it works, that is).  Menus cut down on guess-the-verb roadblocks, and scripted combat choices mean I only need to concern myself with the battles that matter to the story (rather than modeling combat like a war game and balancing a range of power levels).  There won't be warrior-vs-shopkeeper combat, so why concern myself with combat modeling and hit points?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=30#p24841
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-26 16:40:17

[quote="InterFiction"]
Felix, I'm having a hard time understanding that at all, haha. sorry.
[/quote]
All the more reason to go by Juhana's wise suggestions. [emote]:)[/emote]
(In my opinion, that kind of solution is much more Informish than the other ones discussed in this thread.) 


[quote="InterFiction"]Where can I find more information on the proper spacing of control structures?[/quote]
See the built-in documentation chapter 11 ("Phrases").
(When-clauses in rule preambles are discussed in chapter 7.12.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=30#p24842
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-26 16:42:47

I'm working on a set up cupboards in Esher's Cabin. I want them to contain things that the player can't take. What's the best way to do this? having each thing be it's own thing? or by making whats in the cupboard scenery...but then I run into the problem of if the player looks in the cupboards sees this scenery, and types take..they'll get you dont see any such thing, or something like that....

I could make a thing for each thing...like Esher's cups, Esher's plates, Eshers utencils, and what not...

also...is there any easy way to tell inform not to display whats in the room?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=40#p24846
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-26 18:36:47

I can't find a way to make this work out right.

[code]some ashes in Esher's stove is a fixed in place thing in Esher's stove. the description is "a pile of burnt wood from last nights fire, resulting in the ash that now resides in the belly of the stove.".
understand "ash", and "ashes" as some ashes in Esher's stove.
instead of taking some ashes in Esher's stove, say "you don't see any point in taking ash with you, as useless as that would be.".[/code]

when the player types take ash it just says they're fixed in place...

on a side not I'm starting to understand this a little better..bouncing from book to book, and having people help has been a real bonus, lol. I found an extension that's really helped me, and I'm only using it for one feature. Emily Shortls Room Description Control. That why I can make ghost items, that the players can interact with, and still have the other items in my rooms...like...have cupboards with plates in them...create a plate item with what ever name...and now the players can try to take a plate...when there are plates in the cupboard..but not get one of course, haha...

I'm not sure if that's the long way of doing things or not, but it's helping.

Also a new issue has arrised with backdrops in a region. It's saying that I'm trying to create two regions or something, lol..

[code]Island Ocean is a backdrop. "You can't see the ocean through the storm, but you can hear it crashing down on the island shores." Island Ocean is in The Island.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3479&start=0#p24847
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Length of status bar messages
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-10-26 20:59:59

Anyone know how to change the length of the left-hand and right-hand sides of the status bar with a minimum of fuss?  By default, it seems to be about 16 characters, and that's too short for me.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3479&start=0#p24848
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Length of status bar messages
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-10-26 22:06:46

This won't answer your question, but isn't the left-hand side pretty long? As it's able to accommodate long room names.

On the other hand, the right hand side does seem annoyingly short.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3480&start=0#p24849
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: A kerning game
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-26 22:30:41

And now for something completely different:  [url=http://type.method.ac/]a kerning game[/url].  Drag-drop the letters for perfect kerning, and a perfect score.  Multi-touch capable.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3481&start=0#p24850
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: You can see your former self here.
User: AaronP / DateTime: 2011-10-26 23:28:34

So in this project I'm working for, I have a number of different player characters, different perspectives, all that good stuff.

Here's a minimal example that reproduces the issue I'm getting:

[code]
When play begins: now the player is lady.

World is a room. Down from the World is a Tortoise. 

Lady is a woman in World.[/code]

I must be using those features incorrectly. For one thing, the player's "character" does not move with the character. Or is it that "your former self" is the default character that does not have a name? That would make more sense. How do I get rid of this ... featureless gender neutral semi-autonomous entity?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3480&start=0#p24851
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A kerning game
User: AaronP / DateTime: 2011-10-26 23:55:23

I was way off on a couple [emote]:)[/emote] 70% overall.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3481&start=0#p24852
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: You can see your former self here.
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-10-27 00:46:32

You can specify who the player is by just saying "The Lady is a woman.  The player is the Lady."

If you don't specify the player in that way, Inform will make a character (the famous ageless faceless gender-neutral culturally-ambiguous adventurer person) for the player.  (Try just compiling "The World is a room." all by itself.)  So what's happening is Inform is creating a character for the player to be, then carrying out the "when play begins" rule and switching the player from the generic character to the Lady, and so you see the generic character standing there.  Using the above syntax instead of a "when play begins" rule will get rid of the problem.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3481&start=0#p24853
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: You can see your former self here.
User: AaronP / DateTime: 2011-10-27 00:57:01

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks.  [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3479&start=0#p24855
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Length of status bar messages
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-27 02:10:57

You can use Emily Short's built-in Basic Screen Effects extension to customize the status line.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3483&start=0#p24856
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Pronouns: "it" and "he" for the same object?
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-10-27 02:32:02

Can I make both gendered and gender-neutral pronouns apply to the same object, and be set accordingly?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3483&start=0#p24857
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pronouns: "it" and "he" for the same object?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-27 03:00:25

Some time ago, I wrote an extension that allows an object to have two genders at the same time. It hasn't been uploaded to the extension site, because I hoped to add more features to it; but it can be found in this thread: [url]http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2222&p=15204#p15204[/url]. And I'll attach it to this post.

Please, report any bugs, if you decide to use it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3480&start=0#p24858
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A kerning game
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-10-27 04:15:55

I suspect this "game" is a means of gathering some real data about people's kerning preferences. People don't want to do boring work for free, so it's disguised as a game, right? [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3478&start=0#p24859
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The AdventureWeb Interactive Fiction System
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-10-27 04:25:14

The canonical example game everybody wants to see on new platforms is "Cloak of Darkness":

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.firthworks.com/roger/cloak/">http://www.firthworks.com/roger/cloak/</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=40#p24862
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-27 08:39:47

hmm.. I seem to be getting the same problem if I try to make the backdrop into a scenery..

[code]Island Ocean is scenery. "You can't see the ocean through the storm, but you can hear it crashing down on the island shores." Island Ocean is in Outdoors, Path To Lighthouse, Path To Lighthouse Continued, Outside The Lighthouse,  Path To Cliffs, Path To Cliffs Continued,  The Cliffs, and Over The Cliffs.[/code]

the error message I get is that I'm trying to create a new region called Island Ocean..

---edit -----

I realize now that's porbably because scenery can only be in one place like things, but I don't understand why when I put backdrop in place of scenerey it still thinks I'm trying to create a region, lol.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3484&start=0#p24863
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Idea I have, possibly already implemented
User: dusty_thoreau / DateTime: 2011-10-27 09:02:56

So I was thinking about two games, both made by the same author, but one's the first and the other is a sequel, and what if you had the player be able to transfer their game file from one game to the other? Like, all the items and such that the character is carrying within the game be able to transfer along with their save file to the next game? Has this already been done?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=40#p24864
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-27 09:04:12

Here's a bit more insite into my backdrop problem if it helps..

This is where I tried to make the backdrop. It's at the top of all my source code..

[code]Island Ocean is backdrop. "You can't see the ocean through the storm, but you can hear it crashing down on the island shores." Island Ocean is in Outdoors, Path To Lighthouse, Path To Lighthouse Continued, Outside The Lighthouse, Path To Cliffs, Path To Cliffs Continued, The Cliffs, and Over The Cliffs.[/code]

Here's where I defined the region, much farther down in the source..

[code]The Island is a region.
Outdoors, Path To Lighthouse, Path To Lighthouse Continued, Outside The Lighthouse,  Path To Cliffs, Path To Cliffs Continued,  The Cliffs, and Over The Cliffs are in The Island.
Esher's Cabin is a room.
Path To Lighthouse is west of Outdoors. Path To Lighthouse Continued is west of Path To Lighthouse. Outside Lighthouse is north of Path To Lighthouse Continued. Path To Cliffs is east of Outdoors. Path To Cliffs Continued is east of Path To Cliffs. The Cliffs is north of Path To Cliffs Continued. Over The Cliffs is north of The Cliffs.[/code]


**Edit**

I made some headway in my backdrop issue. If I declare the backdrop below where I declared the region it complies. There's a problem though...

[code]Ocean is a backdrop.[/code]

that code placed below where the region is declared in source works...but..

[code]Ocean is a backdrop. "You can't see the ocean through the storm, but you can hear it crashing down on the island shores" Ocean is in The Island.
[/code]

that code gives me this compile error..

Problem. You wrote '"You can't see the ocean through th [...] crashing down on the island shores" Ocean is in The Island'  : but it looks as if perhaps you did not intend that to read as a single sentence, and possibly the text in quotes was supposed to stand as as a sentence on its own? (The convention is that if text ends in a full stop, exclamation or question mark, perhaps with a close bracket or quotation mark involved as well, then that punctuation mark also closes the sentence to which the text belongs: but otherwise the words following the quoted text are considered part of the same sentence.)

this is the section of code in entirety...

[code]The Island is a region.
Outdoors, Path To Lighthouse, Path To Lighthouse Continued, Outside The Lighthouse,  Path To Cliffs, Path To Cliffs Continued, The Cliffs, and Over The Cliffs are in The Island.
Esher's Cabin is a room.
Path To Lighthouse is west of Outdoors. Path To Lighthouse Continued is west of Path To Lighthouse. Outside Lighthouse is north of Path To Lighthouse Continued. Path To Cliffs is east of Outdoors. Path To Cliffs Continued is east of Path To Cliffs. The Cliffs is north of Path To Cliffs Continued. Over The Cliffs is north of The Cliffs.

Ocean is a backdrop. "You can't see the ocean through the storm, but you can hear it crashing down on the island shores" Ocean is in The Island.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3471&start=0#p24865
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Adapting menu-based conversation into menu-based combat
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-27 09:32:03

I've never looked at "attack," but it sounds like it won't be so useful to you.

I wonder if there are any CYOA-like extensions for I7? That sounds like what you'd really need.

I've always wanted to see a game that had a more qualitative description of combat. I've heard it discussed a few times, and it may have been done, but I've never come into contact with it. Good luck!

There's an interesting fight scene in Pytho's Mask, by the way. As I recall, you don't get so much choice about how the fight proceeds, but you do control what you say to your opponent as it goes on.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3471&start=0#p24866
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Adapting menu-based conversation into menu-based combat
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-27 09:48:37

[quote="capmikee"]I've never looked at "ATTACK," but it sounds like it won't be so useful to you.[/quote]
No, definitely not. ATTACK is only useful if you want RPG-style combat.

[quote]I wonder if there are any CYOA-like extensions for I7? That sounds like what you'd really need.[/quote]
Simple Chat by Mark Tilford should be able to handle this perfectly.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3484&start=0#p24868
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Idea I have, possibly already implemented
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-10-27 09:51:24

I can't think of any off the top of my head that do it, but it's definitely possible with Inform 7 and Glulx.  It's talked about in the documentation in chapter 22.10-22.13.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3484&start=0#p24869
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Idea I have, possibly already implemented
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-27 09:52:09

You can read and write data files with Inform, but I think Glulx is required, and I'm not sure if it would work in Parchment. But the data files are your own data, not savegames. You'd need to specify all the necessary state information yourself.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=40#p24870
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-27 09:55:55

[quote="InterFiction"][code]Ocean is a backdrop. "You can't see the ocean through the storm, but you can hear it crashing down on the island shores" Ocean is in The Island.
[/code]

that code gives me this compile error..

Problem. You wrote '"You can't see the ocean through th [...] crashing down on the island shores" Ocean is in The Island'  : but it looks as if perhaps you did not intend that to read as a single sentence, and possibly the text in quotes was supposed to stand as as a sentence on its own? (The convention is that if text ends in a full stop, exclamation or question mark, perhaps with a close bracket or quotation mark involved as well, then that punctuation mark also closes the sentence to which the text belongs: but otherwise the words following the quoted text are considered part of the same sentence.)[/quote]

It's just that you're missing a period after "island shores."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3484&start=0#p24871
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Idea I have, possibly already implemented
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2011-10-27 10:00:44

I think this question has come up in the forums before. Maybe try searching for it.

But if all you want is to keep track of items, what about just giving the player a code at the end of the first game and having them type in that code at the beginning of the second game? Assuming the set of items is fixed and not random, you could accomplish what you want without having to worry about files.

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3484&start=0#p24872
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Idea I have, possibly already implemented
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-10-27 10:18:04

Another option is to ask a series of questions from the player at the start of the second part, like "Did you find the gold treasure?" and "Were you carrying the stuffed squirrel?" I seem to recall the [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=series:Earth+and+Sky]Earth & Sky[/url] series did this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3478&start=0#p24873
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The AdventureWeb Interactive Fiction System
User: Shoal / DateTime: 2011-10-27 10:55:14

Interesting. I did not know that, but now I do. I will have to look into it. Thanks! [emote]:)[/emote]

EDIT: It's good to see this because through making this example I realized there were actually few things I didn't address in AW. But that's all fixed up now. AW can and will run Cloak of Darkness, I'll have it up very soon!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3471&start=0#p24875
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Adapting menu-based conversation into menu-based combat
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2011-10-27 11:38:39

[quote="capmikee"]I wonder if there are any CYOA-like extensions for I7? That sounds like what you'd really need.

I've always wanted to see a game that had a more qualitative description of combat. I've heard it discussed a few times, and it may have been done, but I've never come into contact with it. Good luck[/quote]
if my adaption of Simple Chat into Simple Combat doesn't pan out, I'll check into it.  This is a game project I've wanted to do for a while, but for which I have not yet found or made the extensions for functions I want.  I've got as far as swords and knives which have scabbards and sheaths, which automatically recognize which weapon you're trying to sheathe and where to put it; and I have a modified extension of Bulky Items that only allows the player to carry heavy objects when at least one of his hands is free (that is, when weapons are sheathed and items are stowed in a sporran).  It calculates the difference in one-handed strength versus two, as well.

The idea is to make a Conan-style big manly warrior adventure, carrying off slave princesses over one shoulder while fighting the enemy.  The puzzles, therefore, aren't about carrying an inventory of fiddly bits, keys, newspapers, string, zorkmids, vases, inflatable rafts, etc., nor about gaining XP or levels.  You're already at the top of your game; thus your combat puzzles should be tactical and narrative, not stat-crunching or XP-grinding.  That's my goal, anyway.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3483&start=0#p24878
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pronouns: "it" and "he" for the same object?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-27 12:44:25

[quote="katz"]Can I make both gendered and gender-neutral pronouns apply to the same object, and be set accordingly?[/quote]

This has come up several times in my games (mainly because I think a game's quality can be directly and literally measured by counting the number of robots/golems, monstrous aliens, spirit-possessed inanimate objects and talking animals it contains) [emote]:([/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3480&start=0#p24879
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A kerning game
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-10-27 13:10:17

As far as I know, it's a teaser for the company's upcoming series of design lessons for technical people.  (Personally, if I were teaching kerning to technical people, I'd start by telling them some of the known rules of thumb, but that's just me.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=40#p24880
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-27 14:32:25

oh, lol. Thanks..

I'm trying to create a ladder, to go from one floor of the lighthouse to the second floor. I'm not sure how to go about this...should I make it a door? Then how do I make it climbable.

[code]Lighthouse Ladder is a scenery door. it is north of Lighhouse First Floor and south of Lighthouse Second Floor. it is open and not openable. the description is "A large metlal ladder reaching up into the second floor of the lighthouse. It looks safe enough."[/code]

I know I need to make a rule for the door..Not sure how..

I've tried this..

[code]Instead of climbing Lighthouse Ladder:
           try entering Lighthouse Ladder.[/code]

What's the best way to go about making ladders that go from one room to another?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=40#p24881
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-27 14:55:20

Yeah, just make it a door but have the prose call it a ladder.  And [i]Instead of climbing the ladder, try going up instead.[/i]  Or if you do this more than once, [i]Instead of climbing a door...[/i] and use a when clause to test if the ladder goes up or down from the location. Staircases are the same way.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3480&start=0#p24882
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A kerning game
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-27 14:58:54

Far as I know it's just to teach a layman what "kerning" is.  I thought kerning was the vertical space between lines, or something.  Or maybe it's to make us appreciate typography people. 

It took ten minutes of practice but I can get 100% mostly consistently now.

I also didn't know that there could be preferences in kerning.  I mean, spacing out letters evenly seems a no-brainer to me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3483&start=0#p24883
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pronouns: "it" and "he" for the same object?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-27 15:01:40

I wrote the [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Ron%20Newcomb/Pronouns/index.html]Pronouns[/url] extension for this.  It's tiny enough I think even Ghalev will approve.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=40#p24884
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-27 15:02:54

If the ladder is portable, it's probably not a good idea to make it a door, since there are specific low-level rules that determine where doors appear. But you might have a door that pretends to be the ladder, which is only present when the ladder is set up. It is a bit of a tricky problem.

One way would be to have a separate scenery (or at least fixed in place) object called "the top of the ladder." You'd have to do some careful management to make sure it appeared where it needed to be. One way would be to use the Conditional Backdrops extension.

[code]Instead of climbing the ladder:
	[this rule is listed later because it's less specific]
	say "The ladder doesn't lead anywhere right now."
	
Instead of climbing the ladder when the top of the ladder is in a room (called the destination):
	move the player to the destination.
	
Instead of climbing the top of the ladder:
	move the player to the location of the ladder.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3480&start=0#p24885
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A kerning game
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-10-27 15:41:38

There aren't really "preferences," which is why RealNC's comment seemed extremely weird to me. (That and, kerning isn't really "boring work" since 1) it's kind of fun, and 2) no one really does that much of it, with the exception of actual type designers, who still spend much [i]more[/i] time on the letterforms themselves.)  So I'll just assume it was a joke, and that I'm overly sensitive about design-related things. [emote]:)[/emote]

(The space between lines is called "leading," by the way.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3480&start=0#p24890
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A kerning game
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-10-27 17:08:05

By preferences I mean expectations. For example, do you place an "o" under a "Y", and if yes, how close. How do people perceive character "densities"? Does it look asymmetrical to them? Stuff like that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3486&start=0#p24891
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: How long do you take?
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-27 17:14:45

I'm just wondering how long it takes you to write, and complete an IF story. I've been working on Esher's quest for about a week now, and I'm still on the first section of a game, which is meant to be quite a long story. I don't mind this though. I want it to have enough detail, but not too much, as well as be fun to play...not so much detail that people get bored of reading, but enough that it's interesting and fun..

I'm wondering.. Have any of you been working on a game for months...years? lol

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2894&start=0#p24892
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Recommendation for Interpreter?
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-27 17:21:08

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]I prefer gargoyle, because it looks so good typographically.

<a class="postlink" href="https://code.google.com/p/garglk/downloads/detail?name=gargoyle-2010.1-windows.exe&can=2&q=">https://code.google.com/p/garglk/downlo ... e&can=2&q=</a>[/quote]

I have to agree with you there. I LOVE gargoyle's simple grey look...it's beautiful lol

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=40#p24894
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-27 17:44:23

Thanks guys. I appreciate the help. I'm sorry so much of this is causing me problems, lol...some examples I'm working with are from books, and they still aren't working!!

like this one isn't killing my player, lol.

[quote]after entering Over The Cliffs:
	end the game in death.[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3487&start=0#p24895
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: AdventureWeb Greatly Updated, Added "Cloak of Darkness"
User: Shoal / DateTime: 2011-10-27 18:35:31

EDIT 11/1/11: For now, I have decided to not make AdventureWeb a general authoring system but simply to use it for my own games and without the "AdventureWeb" name.

I have removed all the links leading to AdventureWeb material, and even removed the content from the web altogether. When the current game project is completed I'll post it to a new thread.

Meanwhile, I have created the following website explaining how to play the IF games I'll be creating:

[url]http://www.littlenewer.com/ifplay.htm[/url]

-------

OLD:

I have greatly updated the AdventureWeb interaction fiction authoring system (it's now on release 4), and I have uploaded an example game: [i]Cloak of Darkness[/i]. (A member of the forums here suggested I build this as my example game.)

(Note: the web host will sometimes tell you the file or the graphics aren't there. Just hit refresh until they are.)

Here's a link to AdventureWeb:
EDIT: [b]Removed Link[/b]

(Before playing the game, PLEASE read the AdventureWeb document. It explains how to play an AW game! If you don't read it you may end up thinking some things are errors when they're not, or you may be confused as to how to play.)

Here's a link to [i]Cloak of Darkness[/i]:
EDIT: [b]Removed Link[/b]

Please let me know what you think!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3486&start=0#p24896
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: How long do you take?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-27 18:35:45

There are big games and small games. Big games take longer.

My own fastest time: 4 hours. Still my best game, really.
My own longest (completed) time: around 400 hours, including revisions and testing. Second-best game.

So for me, so far it's from 4 to 400 hours [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3486&start=0#p24898
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: How long do you take?
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-27 18:57:37

That's not too bad. I have to take into consideration that I'm coming to grips with learning the language too, so that's really slowing down the process...other than that I dunno how long it's gonna take to complete Esher's Quest, lol. Knowing me I'll work on it all year, haha.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3487&start=0#p24899
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: AdventureWeb Greatly Updated, Added "Cloak of Darkness"
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-27 19:06:57

When I clicked on the inventory description (of something I didn't have anymore), there wasn't a link to take me back to where I'd been. The browser back button worked, but you might want to automate that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3487&start=0#p24901
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: AdventureWeb Greatly Updated, Added "Cloak of Darkness"
User: Shoal / DateTime: 2011-10-27 20:12:48

Only now have I discovered it's possible with a very simply JavaScript command to automate such returns. You see, I didn't do it before because the author can't know what page the player game from. But with a simple function I can fix that! Awesome! [emote]:)[/emote]

And yes, you're able to view descriptions of items you don't have anymore or even never had. Again, it's by necessity. The game has nothing but the simplest HTML put into it and the rules explain how you're supposed to simply use the "honor system" while playing.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3481&start=0#p24902
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: You can see your former self here.
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-10-27 20:13:05

That is a creepy dang message. Reminds me of genociding @ while polymorphed in Nethack.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=40#p24903
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-27 20:24:36

This is what I've changed the code to..

[code]after entering Over The Cliffs:
	say "Esher fell to his death.";
	end the game in death.[/code]

after everything I've read on google, and in the books I have this should kill the player, but he's certianly not dying, lol..it's funny, cuz you can go over the cliff read that the player died, and then just walk right back where ya came from, lol. If only falling off cliffs was like that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=40#p24904
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-10-27 20:39:35

I believe the problem is that you're using "entering," which is the verb for, say, an enterable container (like a car or elevator or big cardboard box).  For a room, the player gets there by "going," so here you probably want to use "going to".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3480&start=0#p24905
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A kerning game
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-10-27 21:46:49

Do you mean to say this "game" is [i]silently collecting personal data[/i] about my perception of character densities? Looks like 1984 has come, just 35 years late.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=50#p24907
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-27 22:15:44

That was exactly it, thanks  [emote]:D[/emote] . I was thinking entering a room, lol. I was hoping I would get help with that because I got stuck coding my first puzzle. It's rather simple, but I'm not sure about the best way in doing it. I'm trying to create a simple lock with three levers that can either be up, or down. this is the code that I have so far...

[code]Lighthouse Lock is a fixed in place thing in Outside Lighthouse. the description is "There's three tiny levers, that look like switches in a row. Each lever can either be up, or down. They have to be operated in the right sequence in order for the old lock to disengage its latch."
LightLockLever1 lever is a part of Lighthouse Lock. the description is "the first of three tiny levers in a row on the lighthouse lock.".
understand "lever one", "lever 1", "the first lever", and "first lever" as LightLockLever1.
LightLockLever2 lever is a part of Lighthouse Lock. the description is "the second of three tiny levers in a row on the lighthouse lock.".
understand "lever two", "lever 2",  and "the second lever" as LightLockLever2.
LightLockLever3 lever is a part of Lighthouse Lock. the description is "the third of three levers in a row on the lighthouse lock.".
understand "lever three", "lever 3", and "the third lever" as LightLockLever3.[/code]

but then I realized after testing that when you pull a lever it says nothing obvious happens...I'm thinking a lever might only have one state...pulled, lol...is that right?

because I'd like the lock to have three tiny levers that can be either be up, or down, and they have to be in the right sequence to disengage the lock.

I thought then it might be a good idea to use devices, because they have two states...but those states are on, and off..which don't really work either...unless there's a way to tell inform that off means down, and on means up...I'm not sure of how to do something like that though..

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3480&start=0#p24908
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A kerning game
User: AaronP / DateTime: 2011-10-27 22:24:07

Welcome to the Internet. :p

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3480&start=0#p24909
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A kerning game
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-27 22:28:37

[quote="tove"][...]) no one really does that much of it, with the exception of actual type designers, who still spend much [i]more[/i] time on the letterforms themselves.)[/quote]

Not always. I logged well over a hundred hours kerning Sans Sara, and I don't think the letterforms took me nearly that long (they're pretty simple bauhaus-style letterforms).

Which doesn't mean the kerning is actually _finished_ on Sans Sara. Kerning is never, ever finished. [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3483&start=0#p24910
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pronouns: "it" and "he" for the same object?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-27 22:31:51

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]I wrote the [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Ron%20Newcomb/Pronouns/index.html]Pronouns[/url] extension for this.  It's tiny enough I think even Ghalev will approve.[/quote]

Woo [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3486&start=0#p24911
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: How long do you take?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-27 22:36:13

[quote="InterFiction"]I have to take into consideration that I'm coming to grips with learning the language too, so that's really slowing down the process...[/quote]

My four-hour game was my first effort, created the same day I first installed Inform 7.

Buuuut ... I think the real trick was that I was very careful to start with a game with ... well, virtually no ambition whatsoever. Tiny, one or two puzzles (if you stretch the definition of "puzzle" to include "do the very obvious thing with the very obvious object"), very minimal scope. Because I wanted to see what it was like to get to the end of making one (I have "Deluxe Ham House" in the works, but that's another story and it's taken a lot more hours of work ...)

So make sure you didn't bite off such a big hunk of game that you get discouraged! Even a medium-sized or shortish game can surprise you with just how much work there is to be done. Either way, if you ever feel lost, there are a lot of folks here who'll help you out of any coding scrapes.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3484&start=0#p24912
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Idea I have, possibly already implemented
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-27 22:42:27

[quote="jacksonmead"]I think this question has come up in the forums before. Maybe try searching for it.

But if all you want is to keep track of items, what about just giving the player a code at the end of the first game and having them type in that code at the beginning of the second game? Assuming the set of items is fixed and not random, you could accomplish what you want without having to worry about files.

-Kevin[/quote]

You could even implement this idea with random items if you wanted to, but it would be a lot more work, and a lot more codes involved, lol. Maybe you could have a certain length digit..and a number of items...

like say 9 helms, 9 armours, 9 swords, 9 rings...what ever...

if you have sword 1 the first digit is 1
if you have helm 4 the second digit is 4
ring 6 third digit is 6

thus your code is 146..

lol.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3478&start=0#p24914
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The AdventureWeb Interactive Fiction System
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-10-28 02:19:10

I'd still like to see Cloak of Darkness 2; something a bit more meaty and covering more aspects of interactive fiction systems.  Unfortunately someone would need to come up with the story, and I'm not very good at that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=50#p24917
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-28 03:02:41

By default, whatever you pull nothing obvious happens.

Inform comes with only a small set of predefined kinds of objects, and levers are not one of them. (Uou can see which they are by looking at the Kinds tab after clicking the Index tab in the IDE.)
If you want more kinds of things, you'll have to create them yourself, giving them whatever properties they need (see documentation ch. 4):

[code]
A lever is a kind of thing. A lever can be *up or *down. A lever is usually *down. 

LightLockLever1 is a lever [&c.]

Carry out pulling a lever: 
	if the noun is *down, now the noun is *up; 
	otherwise now the noun is *down.

After pulling a lever: 
	say "You pull the lever [if the noun is *up]up[otherwise]down[end if]."

Instead of pushing a lever: try pulling the noun.
[/code]

(I wrote "*up" and "*down", with asterisks, to distinguish these either/or properties of levers from the directions up and down -- which are built into Inform.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3478&start=0#p24921
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The AdventureWeb Interactive Fiction System
User: Shoal / DateTime: 2011-10-28 09:45:42

Yeah, you and me both. Stories are a lot harder than designs for me!

But yeah, some kind of sequel would make sense. Something that really tests the limits of an authoring system (other than for game size). If I had done [i]Cloak of Darkness[/i] straight-up without the few additions I made to it then it would have barely tested AdventureWeb. Nevertheless, I must confess that it pretty much covered most of what AW can do! All it lacked were conversations, state parts, dice and dying.

...but really, I'm not sure what an interactive fiction game would truly need beyond what AW can do. Everything else--perhaps beyond timed and arcade sequences and maybe some advanced puzzles--seems like only icing. Then again, maybe I'm wrong! Time will tell as I (and maybe others?) produce AW games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3480&start=10#p24922
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A kerning game
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-10-28 09:51:41

Well, okay, it might make sense to GWAP out kerning of a typeface that's still in-progress.  But the typefaces they're using are existing, famous typefaces.  And of course, as you say, kerning is never done, because it's dependent on the word, the font, tracking, the color of the type vs background, etc.  So I'd be surprised if any more meaningful data could be pulled out of the same ten words at a consistent size than what we already have.  Perhaps, instead, they're seeing which font+word combination is most likely to have its default kerning challenged (through the "think yours is better?" interface)?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3480&start=10#p24923
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A kerning game
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-28 10:24:59

I think that covert information gathering is the less likely hypothesis, honestly. "We wanted to make a fun game about kerning and get it talked about" is a thing that normal geeks think.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3396&start=20#p24924
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What not to wear
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2011-10-28 10:32:42

How speedy is this code?  I may have to borrow it — what should I include as your byline?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=50#p24925
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-28 11:31:02

For the lock unlocking how would I got about that? I could create an action called unlocking, but that it would have to be player typed right? I've tried a simple sentence like..

[code]if Locklever1 is *up and LockLever2 is *down and LockLever3 us *down now Lighthouse Door is unlocked.[/code]

but that didn't work...can you create actions that carry out themselves? cuz I'd like to include a message saying the lock clicks as it dissengages its latch or something like that..

I mean I could create

[code]unlocking is an action applying to one thing.
check unlocking:
     if the noun is Lighthouse Lock:
          if Lighthouse Door is locked;
               say "you unlock the door";
                     now the Lighthouse Door is unlocked;
     otherwise:
                say "it's already unlocked."[/code]

I'm not even sure if that's coded right, it's on the fly, and I'm still trying to grasp this, lol..

but what I'd really rather have happen is the lock unlocking itself when the player has the levers in the right positions..

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=50#p24926
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-28 11:54:57

[quote="InterFiction"]
[code]if Locklever1 is *up and LockLever2 is *down and LockLever3 us *down now Lighthouse Door is unlocked.
[/code][/quote]
It'll work, if properly spelled and punctuated* and PUT INSIDE A RULE.
Inform never does anything, unless you write a rule for it!
An every turn rule would probable work fine in this case. 

* One proper punctuation:
[code]if Locklever1 is *up and LockLever2 is *down and LockLever3 is *down:
	now Lighthouse Door is unlocked.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3480&start=10#p24927
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A kerning game
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-10-28 12:14:21

Sure, I think it's highly unlikely that their goal is other than [url=http://method.ac/blog/design/what.html]as stated[/url]; my point is that even if they [i]are[/i] data mining, I can't really see it being useful data.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3396&start=20#p24929
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What not to wear
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-10-28 12:40:20

[quote="Hertz"]How speedy is this code?  I may have to borrow it — what should I include as your byline?[/quote]

Knock yourself out. It seems to be a lot speedier than the original by removing all the many-to-many relationships that caused the original to choke. I can't guarantee it won't break at some point, but so far, so good.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=50#p24930
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-28 12:57:35

I was actually trying to work it into an everyturn rule before but was having trouble with it, now I'm a lot closer though [emote]:)[/emote]

Here's the door declared higher up in my source..

[code]Lighthouse Door is a scenery door. it is openable. It is locked. it is north of Outside Lighthouse and south of Lighthouse First Floor.[/code]

here's my code for the lock..

[code]a lever is a kind of thing. a lever can be *up or *down.

Lighthouse Lock is a fixed in place thing in Outside Lighthouse. the description is "There's three tiny levers, that look like switches in a row. Each lever can either be up, or down. They have to be operated in the right sequence in order for the old lock to disengage its latch. Right now the first lever is [if LightLockLever1 is *down]down[otherwise ]up[end if] the second lever is [if LightLockLever2 is *down]down[otherwise]up[end if] the third lever is [if LightLockLever3 is *down] down[otherwise]up[end if]".

LightLockLever1 is a lever. it is a part of Lighthouse Lock. the description is "the first of three tiny levers in a row on the lighthouse lock.".
understand "lever1", "lever 1", "lever one", "first lever", and "1st lever" as LightLockLever1.
LightLockLever2 is a lever. it is part of Lighthouse Lock. the description is "the second of three tiny levers in a row on the lighthouse lock.".
understand "lever2", "lever 2", "lever two", "second lever", and "2nd lever" as LightLockLever2.
LightLockLever3 is a lever. it is part of Lighthouse Lock. the description is "the third of three tiny levers in a row on the lighthouse lock.".
understand "lever3", "lever 3", "lever three", "third lever", and "3rd lever" as LightLockLever3.

Carry out pulling a lever:
	if the noun is *down, now the noun is *down;
	otherwise now the noun is *down.
	
After pulling the lever:
	say "you pull the lever [if the noun is *up] up [otherwise]down[end if]."
	
Every turn:
	if LockLever1 is *up and LockLever2 is *down and LockLever3 is *up and Lighthouse Door is locked:
		say "The lock makes a loud clicking noise as its latch disengages.".
			now Lighthouse Door is unlocked.[/code]

I've got it down to one error message when I try to compile though...It says..

[quote]You wrote 'now Lighthouse Door is unlocked'  : but the property unlocked for the now Lighthouse Door is not allowed to exist, because you haven't said it is. What properties something can have depends on what kind of thing it is: see the Index for details.[/quote]

I'm not sure why though, because doors definitly have the locked property, and its been assigned to this one, lol.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=50#p24933
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-28 13:20:41

"the now lighthouse door" should be a red flag to you: It's interpreting the word "now" as part of the name and not as a directive to change something. I searched for it in your code and found the problem right away: You put a period at the end of the previous line, thus ending the rule.

You also have an unnecessary indentation at the beginning of that line.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3396&start=20#p24934
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What not to wear
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2011-10-28 13:23:12

Thanks.  I'll probably call it "Efficient Layered Clothing" in my files, unless you can suggest a better descriptor.  I may even expand it to include more narrowly defined body regions (Expanded ELC?) for a project that calls for it.  (I have this idea of spotting a tattoo on someone's scapula, but only while she is wearing a certain outfit.  Or a scar ... a watch ... you get the idea.)

I believe I'll also create "male/female supermodel" as a sub-category of "man/woman."  Man or woman would suitable for random NPCs who never change attire; there's no need to even create garnent objects for them, or associate them with body parts.  Their clothing can be included in the description.  There are, after all, only a few characters we probably need in such detail as to interact with their underwear or examine their elbows. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=50#p24935
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-28 13:25:15

When I take the period out of that line the code becomes..

[code]Every turn:
	if LockLever1 is *up and LockLever2 is *down and LockLever3 is *up and Lighthouse Door is locked:
		say "The lock makes a loud clicking noise as its latch disengages."
			now Lighthouse Door is unlocked.[/code]

but then I get these errors..

[quote]This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6G60) on its most recent run through:

In Chapter 2 - Esher's Island:

Problem. In the sentence 'if LockLever1 is *up and LockLever2 is *down and LockLever3 is *up and Lighthouse Door is locked begin'  , I was expecting that 'LockLever1 is *up and LockLever2 is *down and LockLever3 is *up and Lighthouse Door is locked' would be a condition. It didn't make sense as one long phrase, but because it was divided up by 'and'/'or', I tried breaking it down into smaller conditions, but that didn't work either. 'LockLever1 is *up' did not make sense; 'LockLever2 is *down' did not make sense; 'LockLever3 is *up' did not make sense; 'Lighthouse Door is locked' was okay; so I ran out of ideas.

I was trying to match this phrase:

if (locklever1 is *up and locklever2 is *down and locklever3 is *up and lighthouse door is locked - a condition): 

This was what I found out:

LockLever1 is *up and LockLever2 is *down and LockLever3 is *up and Lighthouse Door is locked = something unrecognised



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem. In the line 'say "The lock makes a loud clicking noise as its latch disengages." now Lighthouse Door is unlocked'  , I was expecting that '"The lock makes a loud clicking noise as its latch disengages." now Lighthouse Door is unlocked' would be something to 'say', but it didn't look like any form of 'say' that I know. So I tried to read '"The lock makes a loud clicking noise as its latch disengages." now Lighthouse Door is unlocked' as a value of some kind (because it's legal to say values), but couldn't make sense of it that way either. 

 Sometimes this happens because punctuation has gone wrong - for instance, if you've omitted a semicolon or full stop at the end of the 'say' phrase.

I was trying to match one of these phrases:

1. say ""The lock makes a loud clicking noise as its latch disengages." now lighthouse door is unlocked - text" 

2. say "["The lock makes a loud clicking noise as its latch disengages." now lighthouse door is unlocked - number]" 

3. say "["The lock makes a loud clicking noise as its latch disengages." now lighthouse door is unlocked - unicode character]" 

4. say "["The lock makes a loud clicking noise as its latch disengages." now lighthouse door is unlocked - sayable value]" 

This was what I found out:

"The lock makes a loud clicking noise as its latch disengages." now Lighthouse Door is unlocked = something unrecognised
[/quote]

I noticed from the error before that it was trying to say the name of something was now lighthouse door, lol..I was trying to understand why, lol.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=50#p24936
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-28 13:45:07

[quote="InterFiction"]When I take the period out of that line the code becomes..

[code]Every turn:
	if LockLever1 is *up and LockLever2 is *down and LockLever3 is *up and Lighthouse Door is locked:
		say "The lock makes a loud clicking noise as its latch disengages."
			now Lighthouse Door is unlocked.[/code]
[/quote]

[quote="Felix"]
The rule preamble (the name etc. of the rule) should end in a colon.
Conditions (if, else, and otherwise) should end in a colon, too.
All other lines should end in a semicolon.
Except the last one, which can end in a full stop instead.
Indentations represent the scope (so to speak) of the conditions: a condition holds for everything that is further indented than itself.[/quote]
See especially the points about semicolons and indentation.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=50#p24937
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-28 14:04:41

sorry, I remember you telling me about the colons, and semi colons. I've got that much fixed, but that tabbing I think is giving me an issue. I can't for the life of me get it tabbed right, and tried different ways of tabbing it, lol...I matched the code to the tabbing of a check rule you guys helped me with, but that didn't help either...

[code]Every turn:
	if LockLever1 is *up and LockLever2 is *down and LockLever3 is *up and Lighthouse Door is locked:
		say "The lock makes a loud clicking noise as its latch disengages.";
		now Lighthouse Door is unlocked.[/code]

I've also tried..

[code]Every turn:
	if LockLever1 is *up and LockLever2 is *down and LockLever3 is *up and Lighthouse Door is locked:
		say "The lock makes a loud clicking noise as its latch disengages.";
			now Lighthouse Door is unlocked.[/code]

but get this error..

[quote]Problem. The phrase or rule definition 'Every turn'   is written using the 'colon and indentation' syntax for its 'if's, 'repeat's and 'while's, where blocks of phrases grouped together are indented one tab step inward from the 'if ...:' or similar phrase to which they belong. But the tabs here seem to be misaligned, and I can't determine the structure. The first phrase going awry in the definition seems to be 'now Lighthouse Door is unlocked'  , in case that helps. 

 This sometimes happens even when the code looks about right, to the eye, if rows of spaces have been used to indent phrases instead of tabs.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3486&start=0#p24939
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: How long do you take?
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-28 14:38:18

ohh I know this to be true. There's a couple that have helped me extensively, lol. I have these books and stuff, they're a big help, but I find that some of the code examples aren't working in them right, or I'm not indenting them right...but Felix, and Matt have been a big help, a long with a few others...

I'm seeing Esher's Quest as being a game that will probably take me a while to complete, lol...

I can't wait to release it though, it should be a good game...depending on preference of course.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3480&start=10#p24942
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A kerning game
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-10-28 14:50:35

[quote="Afterward"]Do you mean to say this "game" is [i]silently collecting personal data[/i] about my perception of character densities? Looks like 1984 has come, just 35 years late.[/quote]
Well, it's not personal data to begin with, so there are no legal problems. Take reCAPTCHA as an example. It's a challenge-response ("CR" for short) system "intended" to make it difficult for bots to register on forums and such. It presents you with two images of letters, which you have to type in order to proceed. But, the real purpose of reCAPTCHA is more sinister than just being an anti-bot system. It presents you with two images. Only one of them is part of the CR. The other one is an image of text that current OCR systems are unable to recognize correctly. So you do the recognition for them. Very old issues of the New York Times are being digitized this way, by reCAPTCHA users all over the world.

That means you're being used for labor without getting paid. I thought this "kerning" game would be using the same idea; let the "players" come up with the perfect way of kerning characters.

Edit:
There are many more examples in the Internet where similar things happen. Google for example generates quite interesting data from the search terms people are using. This data can help in predicting stock prices, how a (biological) virus spreads, and more.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3489&start=0#p24943
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Online Playing System
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-10-28 14:51:50

Does anyone know how close MJR is to releasing the online play update of T3?

I'm contemplating in a vague way (probability between 5% and 50%) completing a half-finished game for the Spring Thing. My guess is that voters may be influenced by how easy it is to play the game, so I'm pondering which system to use.

Thanks for any insights!

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3490&start=0#p24944
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Optional Prologue
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-10-28 14:56:56

In my WIP, the player character is already extensively familiar with the game world, but the human player may not be. I'd like to add an optional prologue to the game, where the player can wander around the game world and familiarize herself with it before diving into the game proper.

I notice that this is somewhat similar to [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1223]this post[/url], though with some fundamental differences.

I was hoping to accomplish this using a combination of scenes and Jon Ingold's Title Page extension.
In the title page part, I added lines "Start with prologue" and "Start without prologue". My problem comes in with the scene bits.

[code]
Part - Prologue

StopPrologue is a truth state that varies;

Prologue is a scene.
Prologue begins when play begins.
Prologue ends thoroughly when the player is enclosed by the SpecificChair.
Prologue ends abruptly when StopPrologue is true;

This is the end prologue rule:
	say "A bit of text to draw attention to impending scene change.";

When Prologue ends:
	follow the end prologue rule;

Part - HappyHappyFunTimes

HappyHappyFunTimes is a scene.
HappyHappyFunTimes begins when Prologue ends.

This is the initialize HappyHappyFunTimes rule:
	clear the screen;
	repeat with individual running through women:
		now individual is in CertainRoom;
	say "Surprise! They're here!";
	say banner text;
	try looking;
		
When HappyHappyFunTimes begins:
	follow the initialize HappyHappyFunTimes rule;
[/code](Note that the real names have been changed)

The way I have it rigged up, the prologue is a scene that ends when the player decides they're done exploring by sitting down in a specific chair, at which point the scenes change and certain events begin to transpire. That's the easy part, and it works perfectly.

When I choose to skip the prologue at the title page, I have it set StopThePrologue to true, then fire off the end prologue rule and the begin HappyHappyFunTimes rule. It then looks visually similar to the proper way to do things, except that instead of printing the banner text, it prints the room description followed closely by the room description caused by the "try looking" line. Then, when I try doing anything, the scene change rules fire again, and this time it properly prints the banner text.

Why is this duplicating the scene changes? I just want it to seamlessly start at the HappyHappyFunTimes scene when I choose that in the title page. Is there any way to forcibly end a scene and begin another without any turns taking place?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3478&start=0#p24945
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The AdventureWeb Interactive Fiction System
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-10-28 15:01:21

[quote="Shoal"]...but really, I'm not sure what an interactive fiction game would truly need beyond what AW can do.[/quote]
OK, I ran "Cloak" now. Here's my answer to the above question. It would need a way to type in commands.

>x me
>go south
>xyzzy

Without that, it's not really Interactive Fiction, you know.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=50#p24946
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-28 15:07:27

[quote="InterFiction"]sorry, I remember you telling me about the colons, and semi colons. I've got that much fixed, but that tabbing I think is giving me an issue. I can't for the life of me get it tabbed right, and tried different ways of tabbing it, lol...I matched the code to the tabbing of a check rule you guys helped me with, but that didn't help either...

[code]Every turn:
	if LockLever1 is *up and LockLever2 is *down and LockLever3 is *up and Lighthouse Door is locked:
		say "The lock makes a loud clicking noise as its latch disengages.";
		now Lighthouse Door is unlocked.[/code][/quote]
The first one works for me. Are you sure you were getting the same error message for both? I bet there's a problem somewhere else in your code.

For example, I had to change "LightLockLever1" to "LockLever1", etc, in the rest of the code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=60#p24947
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-28 15:15:56

awesome, no wonder I was beating my head off this for tabbing, lol..I had some names miss matched..thanks a million guys! Everything works now. The lock, and the ladder works...now I can beggin chapter 2...this shuld be fun, lol.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=60#p24948
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-28 15:18:08

as a side note..is it conventional to use devices as booleans in coding or is there another way to do that...like devices the player doesn't see, but put in place simply for the use of booleans within my code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3486&start=0#p24949
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: How long do you take?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-28 15:22:45

About how many months were those 400 hours spread out over, Ghalev?

I've been working on a game for about a year. It's not long, but I'm trying to make sure it has plenty of detail and depth. I hope it will be done in time for IFComp 2012 - about another year from now. I put in varying amounts of work, but I try to get something done every day, even if it's just a few minutes. Of course some days I put in several hours.

InterFiction, from your questions on the Inform forum, I see that you're still in the very early stages of getting familiar with the language. It may be a few months before you're really comfortable programming. I'd advise against implementing a lot of detail at this point, and focus on writing, creating locations and moving the story forward. 

Here's a tip: Whenever I have ideas that I'm not ready to implement, I add a comment to the game with a big TODO: at the beginning of it. Then I can come back later and search for my TODOs. It keeps me motivated because I can work on whatever I feel like working on, knowing that I'll come back to the other stuff later.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3389&start=0#p24950
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Hallow Eve 2.0
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-10-28 15:23:21

Full final version has been released!

[url]http://jizaboz.blogspot.com/2011/10/hallow-eve-20-released.html[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=60#p24951
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-28 15:24:56

Consider these variations:

Ex 1
[code]A first golden rule:
	if Condition1 is true:
		say "This1.";
	if Condition2 is true:
		say "This2.";
	otherwise:
		say "This3.".[/code]

Now, an 'otherwise' always negates some previous if-condition. 
In this case 'otherwise' means the same thing as 'if Condition2 is not true'.

(If both conditions are true, the first golden rule will produce the output
[quote]This1.
This2.[/quote]
If only Condition1 is true, it will produce the output
[quote]This1.
This3.
[/quote]
If only Condition2 is true, it will produce the output
[quote]This2.[/quote]
If neither condition is true, it will produce the output[quote]
This 3.[/quote])

Ex 2
[code]A golden rule:
	if Condition1 is true:
		say "This1.";
		if Condition2 is true:
			say "This2.";
	otherwise:
		say "This3.".[/code]

In this case 'otherwise' means the same thing as 'if Condition1 is not true'! This is because the 'otherwise'-line has got the same number of tabs before it as the "if Condition1"-line, but NOT the same of tabs before it as the "if Condition2"-line.

Ex 3
[code]A last golden rule:
	if Condition1 is true:
		say "This1.";
		if Condition2 is true:
			say "This2.";
		otherwise:
			say "This3.".
[/code]
In this case, again 'otherwise' means the same thing as 'if Condition2 is not true'! This is because now the 'otherwise'-line has got the same number of tabs before it as the "if Condition2"-line, but NOT the same of tabs before it as the "if Condition1"-line.

These three are (I think) the only combinations of indentations of these lines that will compile.

Now consider another couple of examples.

Ex 4
[code]A first silver rule:
	if Condition3 is true:
		say "This.";
		say "That.".[/code]

If condition1 is true, the first silver rule will produce the output
[quote]This.
That.
[/quote]
Ex 5
[code]A last silver rule:
	if Condition3 is true:
		say "This.";
			say "That.".
[/code]
Example 5 won't even compile. That is because the 'say "That."'-line has one tab too much before it. The 'say "That."'-line should be executed under the same condition as the 'say "This."'-line; but all lines that belong to the same condition (i.e., all lines that should be executed together) must have the same number of tabs before them (and they must all have exactly one tab more before them than the condition they belong to).
(This is what explains the details of indentation in Ex 2 and Ex 3.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=60#p24952
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-28 15:29:36

[quote="InterFiction"]as a side note..is it conventional to use devices as booleans in coding or is there another way to do that...like devices the player doesn't see, but put in place simply for the use of booleans within my code.[/quote]
It is not the preferred way. You can create your own booleans in at least two ways: as either/or properties of an object (ch. 3.6) or as global truth state variables (ch. 11.5).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3486&start=0#p24953
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: How long do you take?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-28 15:40:19

[quote="capmikee"]About how many months were those 400 hours spread out over, Ghalev?[/quote]

Right around four. Three to complete the game (in alpha), then a month's worth of testing and tweaking (9 testing rounds, including the final release version). Plus extra time for feelie-making, etc.

It was pretty intensive stuff, taking up most of my workday for several weeks running and a healthy chunk for the rest of the time. But I was on an enthusiastic burn, to say the least [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=60#p24954
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-28 15:41:57

I noticed in the lock example that you had some names that look like they're borrowed from more old-school programming languages. You've already seen how powerful Inform is at naming objects, since you have things like "Esher's pot pie" and "Esher's roundabout" without any conflict. One thing that's handy about that is it can be easier for you as the programmer to remember what things are called, and to refer to them in any way that's convenient. If you'd called your levers "the first lighthouse lock lever," etc., you should be able to refer to them as "the first lever" and whatnot without worrying whether that's the exact name you gave them.

If that ends up making your rules too wordy, you can split them up into separate conditions and definitions. That's a very Informish way to work anyway. Here's an example where I define a "current position" and "desired position" for every lever:

[code]Lighthouse Door is a scenery door. it is openable. It is locked. it is north of Outside Lighthouse and south of Lighthouse First Floor.

Lighthouse Lock is a fixed in place thing in Outside Lighthouse. the description is "There's three tiny levers, that look like switches in a row. Each lever can either be up, or down. They have to be operated in the right sequence in order for the old lock to disengage its latch. Right now the first lever is [position of first lever], the second lever is [position of second lever], and the third lever is [position of third lever].".

Vertical position is a kind of value. The vertical positions are raised and lowered.

a lever is a kind of thing. A lever has a vertical position called the current position. A lever has a vertical position called the desired position. Understand "switch" as a lever.

Definition: A lever (called the item) is engaged:
	 decide on whether or not the current position of item is the desired position of item.

The first lock lever is a lever with desired position raised. The description is "the first of three tiny levers in a row on the lighthouse lock.". understand "lever1", "lever 1", "lever one", "1st" as the first lever.

The second lock lever is a lever with desired position lowered. The description is "the second of three tiny levers in a row on the lighthouse lock.". understand "lever2", "lever 2", "lever two", and "2nd" as the second lever.

The third lock lever is a lever with desired position raised. The description is "the third of three tiny levers in a row on the lighthouse lock.". understand "lever3", "lever 3", "lever three", and "3rd" as the third lever.

When play begins: Now every lever is part of Lighthouse Lock.

Carry out pulling a lever:
	if the current position of the noun is lowered, now the current position of the noun is raised;
	otherwise now the current position of the noun is lowered.
	
To say position of (item - a lever):
	if the current position of item is raised, say "up";
	otherwise say "down";
	
After pulling the lever:
	say "You pull the lever [position of the noun]."
	
Every turn:
	if every lever is engaged and Lighthouse Door is locked:
		say "The lock makes a loud clicking noise as its latch disengages.";
		now Lighthouse Door is unlocked.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3478&start=0#p24955
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The AdventureWeb Interactive Fiction System
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-10-28 15:50:42

To be honest, I can't say I really see the point in a system that requires me to keep a note of my inventory items instead of simply displaying them when I type "inventory". Requiring me to make a note that H4 is the cloak seems strange. The bit about states "001" and "002" was also quite odd, and in a proper game would ruin any kind of depth you're going for. What does this system have to offer that any of the existing ones don't?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3489&start=0#p24956
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Online Playing System
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-10-28 16:04:12

I talked to him about this last week, as it happens. He is setting up the public server for running games, and adding one last feature to the networking code.

I didn't get the impression that it would be done in the next month, or even by the end of the year, but it seems reasonable to expect it before April.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=40#p24958
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-28 16:46:31

I remembered where the bug comes in. If a rule uses the phrase:

[code]if the player's command includes "[any thing]"[/code]

... then the scope context will be set to that list of things, and it will stay that way during the "after reading a command" rulebook on the next turn. Here's an example:

[code]include Scope Caching by Mike Ciul.

Test is a room. There is a rock.

last after reading a command: showme the list of marked visible things.

For printing a parser error when the latest parser error is the can't see any such thing error:
	if the player's command includes "[any off-stage thing]":
		say "You can't see any of the following: [the list of off-stage things].";
	otherwise:
		make no decision.
	
Test me with "get rock/z"[/code]

On the second turn, exactly one thing is visible during the after reading a command rulebook: the rock. If we record what items are visible at that time, scope caching gets messed up.

Can anyone explain this? How can I fix it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3478&start=0#p24959
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The AdventureWeb Interactive Fiction System
User: Shoal / DateTime: 2011-10-28 17:02:53

It's not interactive without a parser interface? I totally disagree. Any activity that is active as opposed to passive is interactive. Just because you're clicking on links rather than typing in commands doesn't make it any less interactive. It just requires a different way of thinking because it's not what we're used to.

Yes, the system is odd. That's because it's HTML-based rather than programming-based. There's no programming involved in the creation of an AW game. All you need to know is a few little HTML tags and you're good to go! And it's in that where the strength of AW lies. Yes, it's very odd compared to other authoring systems, I confess that. But as I said above it just requires a different way of thinking because it's not what we're used to. Is immersion impossible? I don't think so. Again, it's just not what we're used to experiencing.

I'm working on a full-fledged AW game at the moment. Let's see how that turns out. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3329&start=0#p24960
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Saving reader progress without the Save Dialog
User: EthanHam / DateTime: 2011-10-28 17:18:22

Thanks for the code suggestions... I've been playing around with Alternative Permadeath and the dynamic file naming code and they are doing the trick. 

I did run into a file loading sensitivity that I would love to get advice regarding. It appears that successfully loading a saved game requires the game to not have changed at all. The slightest change to the game code (such as adding a space in quoted text) seems to be enough to make a glkdata file unloadable.

Does that sound correct? If so, is there any way around it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3329&start=0#p24961
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Saving reader progress without the Save Dialog
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-28 17:27:00

[quote="EthanHam"]Does that sound correct?[/quote]
Yes.

[quote]If so, is there any way around it?[/quote]
Not that I know of, unfortunately.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3478&start=0#p24962
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The AdventureWeb Interactive Fiction System
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-10-28 17:30:16

Without trying to put words in his mouth, what I suspect RealNC is saying is that this isn't "interactive fiction," not that it's not interactive.  This particular community has a pretty tight definition of IF that varies from person to person, but generally involves a textual interface and a modeled world.

Since AW does no state tracking of its own, it seems like it would be suited for automating the production of old style printed-out adventures.  Is that something AW supports or will support?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=60#p24963
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-28 17:31:57

[emote]:lol:[/emote]  I think that's a bit beyond where I'm comfortable in coding right now...but I think my names looking like old school programming languages is because I've dabbled in a few, vbnet, C++, and had a peek at Python...but I couldn't really make myself learn those unless I was in a schooling environment with tutors, and teachers, lol....I'd love to be a programmer!

I'm having a bit of trouble with truth state though...I'm beginning to think that hidden divices as booleens would be easier for me to work [emote]:)[/emote]

I have a door that I don't want player to be able to go through until a certain point is reached in a conversation with another character..

[code]Tia's Front Door is a scenery door. the description is "A beautiful wooden door engraved with an intricate design of floral patterns." Tia's Front Door has a truth state called CanLeaveTia's which is false. Tia's front door is east of Tia's House First Floor and west of Outside Tia's Kileaf.
[/code]

I tried testing the door by using this code..

[code]instead of entering Outside Tia's when CanLeaveTia's is false, say "Esher probably shouldn't leave Tia's house yet.".[/code]

I'm not sure how these tuth things work...much easier to work with Boleens in say vbnet..

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3491&start=0#p24964
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Problem with Numbered Disambiguation Choices
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-28 17:33:00

This code:
[code]"Apples" by Victor Gijsbers

Include Numbered Disambiguation Choices by Aaron Reed.

Orchard is a room. The player is in orchard.

A green apple is a kind of thing.
A yellow apple is a kind of thing.
A red apple is a kind of thing.

In orchard are a green apple, a red apple and a yellow apple.

The basket is a container in orchard.

Test me with "put apple in basket / 2".[/code]
doesn't work. It gives the error "I didn't understand that sentence". Weirdly enough, it works perfectly if you type "1", and it also works perfectly if you have single objects rather than representatives of kinds.

Am I simply being hit with [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=700]this Inform 7 bug[/url] (see also [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2817]this topic[/url]), or is there some way I can solve this?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3480&start=10#p24965
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A kerning game
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-10-28 17:46:03

Guys, guys. I was making a joke, guys. It was a joke. I spent like a full minute deciding which incorrect number of years would be funniest.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3486&start=0#p24966
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: How long do you take?
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-28 18:00:56

[quote="capmikee"]About how many months were those 400 hours spread out over, Ghalev?
InterFiction, from your questions on the Inform forum, I see that you're still in the very early stages of getting familiar with the language. It may be a few months before you're really comfortable programming. I'd advise against implementing a lot of detail at this point, and focus on writing, creating locations and moving the story forward. 
[/quote]

That would be good, but to advance the story I need to implement the puzzles...to do that I have to code them, lol. That and certain things in the story can't happen until other things do, so really the easiest thing to do in this case is study, read, and try and make the code as I go. Esher's Quest is a big project of mine....I'm creating a IF story as well as a 2d rpg version of the game [emote]:)[/emote]

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.interfiction100.wordpress.com">http://www.interfiction100.wordpress.com</a>

[emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3478&start=0#p24967
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The AdventureWeb Interactive Fiction System
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-10-28 18:57:26

Please try this:

<a class="postlink" href="http://iplayif.com/?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/curses.z5.js">http://iplayif.com/?story=http://parchm ... rses.z5.js</a>

to see what "Interactive Fiction" is. Don't confuse the literal meaning of the term (fiction that is interactive) with the game genre of the same name. Just because a system allows for writing fiction that is somehow interactive doesn't mean it's Interactive Fiction. Someone could write an opera where every actor is holding a soap. This wouldn't mean it's a soap opera. "Soap opera" is a term that refers to something specific and it not about operas that contain soap.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3478&start=10#p24969
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The AdventureWeb Interactive Fiction System
User: Shoal / DateTime: 2011-10-28 20:19:39

[quote="tove"]Without trying to put words in his mouth, what I suspect RealNC is saying is that this isn't "interactive fiction," not that it's not interactive.  This particular community has a pretty tight definition of IF that varies from person to person, but generally involves a textual interface and a modeled world.[/quote]

With all due respect (and I'm serious about that), it may be that the general definition has become too narrow. If AW can produce a text adventure that at least in the most fundamental fashion mirrors that of traditional programmed, state-tracking, parser-interface interactive fiction, then why does it not deserve to be called interactive fiction?

[quote="tove"]Since AW does no state tracking of its own, it seems like it would be suited for automating the production of old style printed-out adventures.  Is that something AW supports or will support?[/quote]

I don't even know what those are, so I guess not. But I will say this: I originally developed the system under the title "Adventure Stories" and it was meant to be something printed out like a very complicated [i]Choose Your Own Adventure[/i]. The original intention was to not be on a screen at all! Problem is, it got [i]too[/i] complicated for printing and I had to abandon that idea. Even a microscopic adventure like [i]Cloak of Darkness[/i] took 26 pages to build! The [i]first room[/i] of the AW adventure I'm currently building takes 17!

It was actually suggested to me that I start making the Adventure Stories' pages out of HTML instead of trees. [emote]:)[/emote] I hadn't even thought of it but I accepted it as what appeared to be the only possible alternative. The "AdventureWeb" was born. (Well, first it was "Adventure Web" but then I took out the space. Seemed better that way.)

I'm not out to break any ground or molds. I'm not even out to make AW a truly competing authoring system. AW was, essentially, born by accident! It wasn't intended to be what it is, but has become the only thing it can be. Besides, if I've created an authoring system no one else will use that wouldn't the first time I've done something like that. For example, I have a calendar hanging on my wall which has the current date of "Sixth Day, Bartholomew 13, 2011". (It's hanging right next to the Hebrew calendar. Clearly I'm a man of practicality. As of 6pm this evening it's Cheshvan 1, 5772, don't you know?)

It's just [i]fun[/i]. And I like AW, probably because I have never not sucked at programming but have dreamed of designing video games from the age of five when I first played the original [i]King's Quest[/i]. Developing for the interactive fiction genre, probably in the form of AW, is my little way of touching that old dream. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3478&start=10#p24970
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The AdventureWeb Interactive Fiction System
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-28 20:22:41

Of course RealNC is only offering his personal opinion here; there are many people who see various forms of CYOA as perfectly respectable examples of interactive fiction. A web-based CYOA even won the last IntroComp. He's right that there are plenty of things that you can do with free-form parsers that you can't do with CYOAs, of course (and there's a lot you can do with CYOAs that keep stats instead of purely keeping track of milestones).

It does seem to me that, as tove said, your system is basically simulating the experience of reading a CYOA book that asks you to keep track of some states yourself. I think I see why you want something stripped-down, though it's less convenient for the players than something that takes care of things automatically. But it would be much more convenient if you could add something that automatically kept track of your milestones.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3478&start=10#p24971
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The AdventureWeb Interactive Fiction System
User: Shoal / DateTime: 2011-10-28 20:54:27

[quote="matt w"]Of course RealNC is only offering his personal opinion here; there are many people who see various forms of CYOA as perfectly respectable examples of interactive fiction. A web-based CYOA even won the last IntroComp. He's right that there are plenty of things that you can do with free-form parsers that you can't do with CYOAs, of course (and there's a lot you can do with CYOAs that keep stats instead of purely keeping track of milestones).[/quote]

I do confess that it's true: AW can't do as much as a parser in a traditional IF format. I've never harbored any illusions about that! [emote]:)[/emote] Yet also I like to think of AW as capable of much, much more than a mere CYOA. (But I'm picturing the old books in my head. I don't know what they're doing these days or what "CYOA-style" games have done.)

[quote="matt w"]It does seem to me that, as tove said, your system is basically simulating the experience of reading a CYOA book that asks you to keep track of some states yourself. I think I see why you want something stripped-down, though it's less convenient for the players than something that takes care of things automatically. But it would be much more convenient if you could add something that automatically kept track of your milestones.[/quote]

I've been thinking a lot about it. But I can't see that not involving... programming. I first starting designing this system with the intention in mind of avoiding that because I have no head for it. Plus, what happens if variables are stored in, say, cookies, but the cookies are erased as often occurs? And how do you take the save from one computer to another? I guess I just don't see how making it all automatic would work in the context of my abilities and the original goals of AW. If there were a very easy way to do it and make the save safe and easily transferable I might consider it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3478&start=10#p24972
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The AdventureWeb Interactive Fiction System
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-28 21:01:11

You might be interested in some of the more modern online CYOA systems; [url=http://www.choiceofgames.com/category/our-games/]Choice of Games[/url] has a lot of long games which do quite a bit of stat-tracking, and Dierdra Kiai's [url=http://www.deirdrakiai.com/theplay/]The Play[/url] from our current IF competition is in the Undum system, which allows for some atmospheric choices that don't have any effect on the branching and which also does some stat-tracking (you have to balance the moods of several cast members, and their mood can affect what happens next).

Neither of these really fit a programming-free model, though. (Undum in particular seems to be fairly incomprehensible at the moment to people, like me, who don't know Javascript.) I'm nowhere near familiar enough with HTML to know the answers to any of your questions about whether you could keep track of milestones, etc., without heavier programming, cookies, etc.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3396&start=20#p24973
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What not to wear
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2011-10-28 21:04:33

You must be using a modified form of "What Not To Wear" part 1.  Part II doesn't play nice with the one from the documentation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3396&start=20#p24974
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What not to wear
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-28 21:47:26

It replaces the one from the documentation instead of adding on to it. (Think of it as version 2 instead of part 2.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=60#p24975
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-28 22:09:26

Truth states are awkward in I7. You can't just say "if CanLeaveTia's:" - you have to phrase it as "if CanLeaveTia's is true." There's no need to compound the awkwardness by making a truth state a property of something, just do either one of these:

[code]Permission to leave Tia's is a truth state that varies.[/code]

[code]Tia's front door can be leavable.[/code]

Of course, if there's no key for the door, you can just borrow the locked/unlocked state of the door to do what you need - no additional variables necessary!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3486&start=0#p24976
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: How long do you take?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-28 22:16:28

Of course you have to implement the key plot elements. I was referring to what some people call the "detail trap" - making peripheral elements of the story fully functional when they don't need to be. Jim Aikin talks about it in his Handbook. Have you seen it? I think you might find it helpful.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm">http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2481&start=0#p24977
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Crowther's 1976 Adventure ported to I7, with source
User: NathanaelCulver / DateTime: 2011-10-28 22:17:58

Is this intended to be playable? I've tried playing it and have run into a number of untenable situations. Twopit Room, for example, is unnavigable. There seems no way to go down into the pits. Another room (can't remember which) description lists exits of N SE and E (or S?) which don't seem to actually exist.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3492&start=0#p24978
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Updated Adventure Family Tree - any interest?
User: NathanaelCulver / DateTime: 2011-10-28 22:23:40

I've been working, purely for my own enjoyment, on a vastly expanded version of Russel Dalenberg's Adventure Family Tree, from Mike Arnautov's site at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.mipmip.org/adv/advfamily.shtml">http://www.mipmip.org/adv/advfamily.shtml</a>. I've currently incorporated 64 versions (Russel had 21), and am still expanding.

Would there be any interest in making this available?

--Nathanael

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3493&start=0#p24979
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [Inform 6] Parsing Issues
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-10-28 22:45:44

I'm stuck with parsing text again. Wanted to finally do some decent parsing beyond ASK/TELL ABOUT, but have no clue how. I want to parse

npc, i want to keyword

. My first feeble attempt to detect the "i" failed already:

[code]
		grammar [tmp;
				wn=verb_wordnum;
				tmp=NextWord();
				if(tmp=='i') print "Found first word.";
[/code]

Can anyone spare a hint on how to go through the players' input to detect a certain keyword that's not in the dictionary?

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3490&start=0#p24980
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Optional Prologue
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-28 23:21:17

No. Scene changes are checked as part of the end-of-turn sequence.

You could run that machinery yourself, but at the point it's easier to forget the scenes and just write a "to end the prologue: ..." function.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3493&start=0#p24981
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Inform 6] Parsing Issues
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-28 23:24:52

You are running into the I6 quirk that a single-quoted string 'foo' is interpreted as a dictionary word, *unless* it is one character long, in which case it is interpreted as a character constant instead. To get a one-letter dict word, you need to include two slashes.

So, "if (tmp=='i//') ..."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3493&start=0#p24982
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Inform 6] Parsing Issues
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-10-28 23:32:46

...

You rule!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=20#p24983
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-28 23:56:35

Hey Ron, how is this project going? I keep coming back to it, reading a little more each time. I ran into some issues between my Lost Items and Scope Caching extensions that made me think I really need to understand the parser better. It's quite an impressive undertaking you have here!

I was just examining the "Truth States as 'We' Commands" mini-extension. I'd like to see these mini-extensions available, maybe as a package if they're too small to justify independent release. It looks very handy, and I'm impressed that it's possible to overload phrases like "we shouldn't" as both a "to decide if" and a "to" phrase.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3396&start=20#p24984
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What not to wear
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2011-10-29 00:04:25

Got it working.  It was the cut 'n' paste, it didn't preserve the proper tabulations.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3480&start=10#p24987
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A kerning game
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-29 01:11:56

Gasoline on the fire: now they have a character-shape game too!

I didn't do as well as with the kerning.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3492&start=0#p24988
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Updated Adventure Family Tree - any interest?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-29 01:12:33

Sure.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3492&start=0#p24990
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Updated Adventure Family Tree - any interest?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-29 02:58:19

Seconded!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3396&start=30#p24991
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What not to wear
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-10-29 03:10:54

[quote="Hertz"]Got it working.  It was the cut 'n' paste, it didn't preserve the proper tabulations.[/quote]

Best way to avoid that is to hit the quote button and copy it from the edit box, which preserves tabs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3465&start=0#p24992
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: IF borked on Lion
User: The Prof / DateTime: 2011-10-29 03:21:09

After updating to Lion (wish I hadn't, but that's another story) Zoom got wonky in me. It won't work with some games and will with others. I've been using Spatterlight and it hasn't given a single hiccup. It even runs TADS games without a hitch. So a vote for Spatterlight here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3486&start=0#p24993
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: How long do you take?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-10-29 04:01:29

The detail trap is indeed the bane of many a project. One way to avoid getting mired in details is to write a bare-bones implementation first, and then color in the details as the game progresses; this may be what [b]capmikee[/b] was getting at. [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2009/08/23/idea-to-implementation/]This article[/url] by Emily Short has some good ideas on the subject.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3478&start=10#p24994
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The AdventureWeb Interactive Fiction System
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-10-29 04:13:24

[quote="matt w"]Neither of these really fit a programming-free model, though. (Undum in particular seems to be fairly incomprehensible at the moment to people, like me, who don't know Javascript.) I'm nowhere near familiar enough with HTML to know the answers to any of your questions about whether you could keep track of milestones, etc., without heavier programming, cookies, etc.[/quote]
As someone familiar with Javascript (or reasonably so), I can only say that I wanted to like Undum, but that it simply feels too much of a hassle to piece out what a given sequence does. Whenever I try to write in Undum, the Javascript is staring me in the face. 

Undum is undoubtedly slick, but it needs some work on the author side. An IDE would be a lovely thing or, failing that, some kind of prose-to-code converter (I believe Jon Ingold took a stab at such a thing) -- anything that would give you the ability to concentrate on the story rather than the Javascript framework.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3495&start=0#p24995
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Malinche
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-10-29 05:14:21

I hesitated to ask this coz it might be superfluous, but I can't seem to find any feedback on [url=http://www.malinche.net/index.html]Malinche[/url] games here, nor does a quick Google search show a representative quantity of reviews. Not that I'd buy any - they come for about six times the price I'd pay for decent IF with feelies - but I'm curious anyway, and so for quite a while - are they good? Do they have any technical gimmicks I'd like to see as a player, such as an automapper or a map feelie? Is the guy behind it some sort of a taboo since he's never mentioned here? Do people actually buy his games at these high prices?

And, off topic thought, could a little pocket money be made by selling hundreds of IF games online for 0.99€ per game, forwarding the money to the authors?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3478&start=10#p24996
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The AdventureWeb Interactive Fiction System
User: Shoal / DateTime: 2011-10-29 06:00:53

[quote="matt w"]You might be interested in some of the more modern online CYOA systems...[/quote]

They look pretty interesting and I look forward to playing through a few! However, they certainly don't emulate the traditional model. They seem to be going for something new altogether. AW wants to be a traditional text adventure but to do so without any real programming required.

[quote="matt w"]Neither of these really fit a programming-free model, though... I'm nowhere near familiar enough with HTML to know the answers to any of your questions about whether you could keep track of milestones, etc., without heavier programming, cookies, etc.[/quote]

Yeah, I just don't think it's possible. AW, for good or ill, is what it is and I suppose will remain so. (BTW, I call milestones "states" now. I realized the term "milestone" doesn't really work since you can get them out of order, some are negative, and some you can lose.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3495&start=0#p24997
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Malinche
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-10-29 06:56:28

My impression is that the Malinche guy refuses to acknowledge that the modern IF scene exists, so in turn the community pretty much ignores him as well. I think there has been more direct confrontations in the past. There's some background in this thread: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=38">viewtopic.php?f=4&t=38</a>

The reason why there aren't reviews from outside the community might be, as you say, that the games are too expensive for anyone to buy and review.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=60#p24998
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-29 09:35:17

hmm... It's not really a locked door. I'm trying to make her front door not leavable until after a conversatoin with her, and then resting upstairs, and then a few other things happen. Then I'll make the door leavable...on easy way I thought of doing this was with a boolean haha thry're my duct tape in programming, haha.

[quote]you can just borrow the locked/unlocked state of the door to do what you need[/quote]

The problem with that is the player will be told the door is locked when they try to take that direction.. I'd rather them get a message like "Esher shouldn't leave Tia's yet...

I'm more or less looking for a boolean that I can set...so if the boolean is off they can't leave and get that message...her's a suado.


[code]instead of entering Out Side Tia's Kileaf when bolean1 is false, say "Esher shouldn't leave Tia's yet"[/code]

Then I can make a sertain point in there conversation set the boolean to true.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3495&start=0#p24999
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Malinche
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-10-29 09:48:46

He once received a five-star review from Just Adventure that I suspect he wrote himself.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=60#p25000
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-29 10:05:00

[quote="InterFiction"]

[code]instead of entering Out Side Tia's Kileaf when bolean1 is false, say "Esher shouldn't leave Tia's yet"[/code]


Then I can make a sertain point in there conversation set the boolean to true.
[/quote]
Sounds reasonable.
[code]
ConversationFinished is a truth state that varies. ConversationFinished is false.

[Bla bla:]
now ConversationFinished is true;
[bla bla;]
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3495&start=0#p25001
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Malinche
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-29 11:38:54

[quote="Grueslayer"] are they good?[/quote]

There's one just called Pentari which is a free "prequel" to Pentari: First Light. <a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=llchvog0ukwrphih">http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=llchvog0ukwrphih</a>

I played it a long time ago and had vague memories of awfulness. I played it again this morning and found that nostalgia had crept in; there was nothing vague about the awful.

Just reading his adcopy makes my brain bleed.

[quote="Egon"]He once received a five-star review from Just Adventure that I suspect he wrote himself.[/quote]

Speaking of his many testimonials (from such luminaries as Joan B, Alan M and Vivienne S) can that Marc Blank quote be for real?

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.malinche.net/pfl.html">http://www.malinche.net/pfl.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=60#p25003
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-29 11:59:13

Ahh that seems easy enough. I think I had my syntax a bit off with the truth state. I'm gonna play around with it, and see what I can come up with. So far the games going good, thanks to you guys  [emote];)[/emote] .

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3495&start=0#p25004
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Malinche
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-29 12:26:18

[quote="Ghalev"]Speaking of his many testimonials (from such luminaries as Joan B, Alan M and Vivienne S) can that Marc Blank quote be for real?[/quote]
One doubts. But my favourite is:
[quote]"The writing is good... on the level of the Dragonlance novels I would say." -Download.Com[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3496&start=0#p25005
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 6: Z limitations
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-10-29 12:31:07

I just used the -s switch on my z8 I6 WIP and froze in utter terror. I have 539 objects, which according to the compiler is exactly 100 below maximum. 639? I mean, talk about an arbitrary number! Is there any way I can increase this whimsical "maximum"? I also have 1503 dictionary entries, the maximum being 2000.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=70#p25006
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-29 12:37:11

as always having a bit of trouble with this truth state thing...

[code]CanLeaveTia's is a truth state that varies. CanLeaveTia's is false.[/code]

I tried this

[code]instead of entering Outside Tia's Kileaf when CanLeaveTia's is false:
	say "Esher shouldn't leave Tia's yet.".[/code]

and this

[code]instead of entering Tia's Front Door when CanLeaveTia's is false
        say "Esher shouldn't leave Tia's yet.[/code]

but neither are keeping the player from leaving the room...am I missing something again? lol

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=70#p25008
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-29 12:56:53

[quote="InterFiction"]as always having a bit of trouble with this truth state thing...

[code]CanLeaveTia's is a truth state that varies. CanLeaveTia's is false.[/code]

I tried this

[code]instead of entering Outside Tia's Kileaf when CanLeaveTia's is false:
	say "Esher shouldn't leave Tia's yet.".[/code]

and this

[code]instead of entering Tia's Front Door when CanLeaveTia's is false
        say "Esher shouldn't leave Tia's yet.[/code]

but neither are keeping the player from leaving the room...am I missing something again? lol[/quote]

I think you want "going to" instead of "entering" -- "entering" is for containers, "going to" is for rooms. (See also section 7.13 on the difference between "going to" and "going in," and other good stuff.) 

By the way writing your game in third person is going to present additional complications, as the messages Inform automatically generates are in second person. Ron Newcomb has an extension that lets you change those messages to third person (I think it's Custom Library Messages), though you might not want to worry about that until you've got what you're working on in place.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=70#p25009
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-29 13:18:23

Yeah, I'm gonna have to take a look at that. I've been playing with extensions a bit. Emily Shorts Extension Room Description Conrol will be used to hide what's in the rooms, and I'm thinking about learning how to use simple chat because I like the menu based conversations [emote]:)[/emote]...I'm gonna have to take a look at that extension you mentioned. I never really thought of that before now, lol.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3495&start=0#p25010
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Malinche
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-29 13:49:37

[quote]"The writing is good... on the level of the Dragonlance novels I would say." -Download.Com[/quote]

Yeah, that got a grin out of me, too [emote]:)[/emote]

My personal favorite part of the website, though, is this:

[quote]We Want You to Try This Amazing Fantasy Adventure with Zero Risk

We aren't going to ask you to trust us on this.  We respect you too much for that.

Instead,  Malinche provides a generous return policy.

Malinche's own President & CEO has PERSONALLY approved this policy:[/quote]

I love the image of a busy boardroom full of Malinche Entertainment executives, having drafted this generous return policy, waiting with bated breath to see if the big boss will sign off on it [emote]:)[/emote] And then ... RAPTURE, he does so! PERSONALLY!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=70#p25011
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-29 14:13:21

[quote="InterFiction"][quote]you can just borrow the locked/unlocked state of the door to do what you need[/quote]

The problem with that is the player will be told the door is locked when they try to take that direction.. I'd rather them get a message like "Esher shouldn't leave Tia's yet...[/quote]
Only if you don't tell the player something else first - that's what I meant by "borrowing" the state.

This:

[code]instead of going to Outside Tia's Kileaf when bolean1 is false, say "Esher shouldn't leave Tia's yet."[/code]

Could be changed to this, and the player would never know:

[code]instead of opening locked Tia's door, say "Esher shouldn't leave Tia's yet."[/code]

There's no rule that says you can't make a door locked and not lockable. You can still manipulate the locked state of a door in your code, but the game will tell the player "That doesn't seem to be something you can lock/unlock." Of course you can override that message too:

[code]Instead of locking or unlocking Tia's door with, say "That's Tia's job.";[/code]

Come to think of it, you could even use the open/closed state as your indicator - I don't think the Standard Rules ever tell you whether or not the door is open.

But it doesn't matter much - whatever you're more comfortable with!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=70#p25012
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-29 15:36:57

Yeah, that does sound like a good solution. Better than having to take care of a number of Booleans...when learning VB net I was boolean nuth, haha...use them as switches for this an that...I'm not a very effective programmer in that sense, lol..

If I had programmed something like photoshop, if I had the skill at all, it would be 10X slower, have 10,000000 trillion times more coding than actually needed to acheive the same things, lol...just the way it is I guess...

I was also wondering. Is there a way of saying if an object hasn't been seen before... like [if unvisited] for rooms?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3486&start=10#p25013
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: How long do you take?
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-29 16:20:05

This is true. I read the article too. It's quite nicely put. This happened with the 2d rpg game version of Esher's Quest. Our team didn't have enough of our plot built to carry on with the project in an effective way. We scrapped what we had, and settled into just writing the plot, and then we're going to script out dialogue, and start making the game.

It's important, because if you don't have basic things like that you can end up making a game that's a little too fast paced. That's what was happening with the 2d project. We decided that finishing the plot, and scripting dialogue would slow things down a little more...creating a funner, and more effective game to play.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3382&start=0#p25014
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What you like most in Interactive Fiction Games?
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-29 16:26:12

for me I would have to say the style of writing has to be within my taste. I've played IF games I couldn't enjoy because I didn't like the writing style..It also has to be a setting I enjoy, I'm a big fantasy medieval fan...

also lots of detail. Everything in the room that has a description should also have an object the player can look at...like

if there's a book case with books on history topics, books on this and that...

and they type look at history books they should get a suitable description...after all they were told it was there...

also everything the player types should come up with something other than the default message..

after the player types "play with the winkle garphunkle biggenheimer"

any type of output  like "You can't do that"

"that's not a verb I recognize" lol..

also player should be able to use lots of commands like shout talk whisper yell, walk, run, jog..

A good IF game should take a long time to complete I think..lol.

********* EDIT *************

also don't let maps destroy your game. Since IF is based on rooms that make up a map, don't have boring maps. A cave complex with 300 rooms of rubble floor, and stone walls is boring! I'd shut the game off after maybe 20 rooms lol

I'm making a game called Esher's Quest which is going to contain a number of different locations.

I'm trying to keep my maps small, and detailed, yet balance it in a good way..Even big mazes should have tons of different room descriptions. If you want to make an effective complex like 300 rooms...do your best to make every room different...atleast something has to be different...even if it's along the same trail...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3496&start=0#p25015
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Z limitations
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-10-29 16:50:39

o_O Same problem here: 405/639 objects, 206/233 global vars...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2859&start=0#p25016
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The perfect crime is a "thought crime".
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-29 16:56:51

I'll try and sum this up in truth. Many people say games can't do this, games can do that. Either they can, or they can't. lol...

if a game alters somones mind it alters someone's mind. If it doesn't, it doesn't....

but you can't say what will happen to one will happen to another either....

if a game has altered someones mind, how would we even know? likewise if it hasn't how would we know?

man plays a violent game kills his family. You and I don't know if the game tirggered this. How could we possibly?

Yet we know this. There are people that can play violent games all their lives, and not kill someone...

so as far as enforcing goes. It should be freedom of choice. Same with violent movies. 

If you make the choice to play that game and it does or does not alter your mind, and you do something that is a crime then you should be punished for that crime....

if they can PROVE that the game altered the mind, less the punishment on them. Just like if they were under the influence of a substance and didn't really know what they were doing. 

however pinning something on a game, weather or not it was the games fault, will be a hard thing for anyone to do.

--- on a side note ---

there are studies that show that music, and things like that, that we listen to, do affect the brain.

also you would think that if a game altered someones mind, like stated, they were probably in a poor mental frame for reality to begin with.

This is a very deep life thing on the other hand it's not knowing things that are beyond us...

what if a game could alter someone's mind? so what, it's unlikely to happen on as savere scale as someone going out and killing somone..

what if the next time your cousin calls you and says something about popcorn, and you go out and kill someone...

haha

what if your cousin wouldn't have mentioned popcorn, and you wouldn't have gone out and did that??

this is life...we don't know the deep things, haha

welcome to the twilight zone haha

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3497&start=0#p25017
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: The limitations of stored actions in I7
User: faiuwle / DateTime: 2011-10-29 17:27:07

While trying to use "instead" to redirect actions in a sensible way, I've noticed that you can do this kind of thing:

[code]Instead of taking the X or the Y or the Z, try taking the A.[/code]

but it doesn't seem possible to do this kind of thing:

[code]Instead of taking or touching or pushing the X, try doing it to the Y.[/code]

This isn't a big deal, since obviously it's possible to accomplish that in a slightly wordier fashion, although it means it's a pain to try and redirect "doing anything".  But then I reread the documentation about stored actions and tried this instead:

[code]Instead of taking or touching or pushing the X:
  now the noun part of the current action is the Y;
  continue the action.[/code]

This doesn't work either, but it made me wonder: [i]can[/i] stored actions be modified in this way at all?  Or can you store different parts of the stored action separately, so that you have one variable which can refer to "taking" or "jumping" or "pushing it to", and two variables that can refer to objects, and use them to create a new stored action?  Alternatively, is there some kind of hackish thing that would simulate this ability?  I can think of some really fun uses for this kind of thing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3496&start=0#p25018
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Z limitations
User: cas / DateTime: 2011-10-29 18:21:29

Some limits can be increased by passing arguments to inform:
[code]
inform '$MAX_OBJECTS=1000' '$MAX_DICT_ENTRIES=3000'
[/code]
I'm not sure if there is a master list of such variables, but in any case Inform should tell you how to increase a limit if you run into one (and if it's possible to increase that particular limit).

There is no maximum number of objects in V4+ games, apart from limitations due to memory.  With memory constraints in mind, the absolute maximum number of objects you might cram into a game is something like 4500.  If your objects actually have properties, though, that number drops...

The number of dictionary entries, like objects, is limited only by memory.

As for global variables, Grueslayer, the 233 is a hard limit (the library uses around 100 of those itself).  You really shouldn't be using too many globals, though; as with most languages, globals should be used sparingly in Inform, and if you find yourself hitting the limit, there are probably better ways to achieve your desired outcome.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3497&start=0#p25019
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The limitations of stored actions in I7
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-29 18:53:11

It's certainly possible to hack it in, since a stored action is just a memory structure containing values. The only practical problem is type-safety -- the values might be any kind, depending on the action, and you'd have to keep them consistent when you changed them.

I don't have code for you, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3497&start=0#p25020
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The limitations of stored actions in I7
User: faiuwle / DateTime: 2011-10-29 21:14:05

Ok, so after some more critical thinking about this, (and playing) it seems like you can at least do the store-separate-variables thing.  You apparently can assign an action that normally requires a noun or second noun to a stored action without specifying the noun/second noun (in spite of what the documentation says).  Strangely, though, you can only assign it with "now..." - trying to specify a default value results in complaints about trying to change constant values.  Anyway, you can then splice in the noun (and presumably the second noun) with the rule for supplying a missing noun.

[code]Test_action is a stored action which varies.  When play begins, now test_action is the action of taking.

Testing stored actions is an action applying to nothing.  Understand "testaction" as testing stored actions.  Instead of testing stored actions: try test_action.
	
Test_object is a thing which varies.  Every turn: now test_object is a random thing in the location; say "test_object is [test_object]."
	
Rule for supplying a missing noun when the current action is test_action: now the noun is test_object.[/code]

The RFSaMN doesn't trigger when you just type "take" with no noun, only when you type "testaction".  So you could have variables representing actions without nouns, and variables representing nouns, and combine them every which way and switch them out dynamically.  It might be possible to create a fully-modifiable kind to replace the built-in stored action (which has as properties a stored action and two nouns, all variable), but I can't think of an elegant way to supply missing nouns/etc. with that setup.

(Actually, if inform only understood "Every turn: now test_action is a random action." you could make a crashme test for IF.  I'd never seen the default response for trying to take yourself before.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3498&start=0#p25021
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Simple Chat V4
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-29 21:19:32

I'm wondering if somone expirienced with Simple chat could give me a little hand... I've got the basics of a conversation going, but I can't seem to figure out how to make new things appear..

here's my code thus far. My issue is that the new nodes don't show up in the window for selection. The nodes that don't show are chat-WhoHelped, and chat-NoIt'sFine....

[code]Tia is a woman in Tia's House First Floor.

chat-hello-Tia, chat-NoIt'sFine, chat-WhoHelped, and chat-WhereAmI are chat nodes.

chat-NoIt'sFine is sc-inactive. chat-WhoHelped is sc-inactive.

Report giving text for chat-hello-Tia: instead say "Tia looks up surprised to see you".
Carry out finding responses to chat-hello-Tia: link to chat-WhereAmI.

Instead of talking to Tia: run a conversation from chat-hello-Tia.

Report giving link to chat-WhereAmI: instead say "'Where am I?' ".
Report giving text for chat-WhereAmI: now EsherKnowsTia is true; now chat-WhereAmI is sc-inactive; now chat-NoIt'sFine is sc-active; now chat-WhoHelped is sc-active; instead say "Tia looks at Esher unblinking, and begins to speak. 'don't worry' she says in a sympathetic tone. 'I know you're probably shaken, but I'm not going to hurt you. Last night when I came downstairs to get a drink the entire room filled with a bright white light. I was completely surprised! You fell out of the light, all the way from the ceiling to the floor! I didn't know what to do. You wouldn't wake up. I got someone from town to help carry you upstairs into the spare room. I hope you didn't mind waking up there too much.' ".

Report giving link to chat-NoIt'sFine: instead say "'No, it's alright. ".
	Report giving text for chat-NoIt'sFine: instead say "Harry sighs. 'I'm never going to get rid of it.'".
	Carry out finding responses to chat-NoIt'sFine: try finding responses to chat-hello-Tia instead.
[/code]

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3498&start=0#p25022
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple Chat V4
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-29 21:24:01

[emote]:lol:[/emote]  as you can see I've been cutting and pasting from the documentation as I go.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3498&start=0#p25023
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple Chat V4
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-29 21:55:33

Here's a revision I made adding a bit of code that was link to...I figured for sure that would fix the problem, but still the extra chat options aren't popping up...

[code]Tia is a woman in Tia's House First Floor.

chat-hello-Tia, chat-NoIt'sFine, chat-WhoHelped, and chat-WhereAmI are chat nodes.

chat-NoIt'sFine is sc-inactive. chat-WhoHelped is sc-inactive.

Report giving text for chat-hello-Tia: instead say "[if EsherKnowsTia is false]Tia looks up surprised to see you[else]Tia looks up at you, blinking beautifully[end if]".
Carry out finding responses to chat-hello-Tia: link to chat-WhereAmI.

Instead of talking to Tia: run a conversation from chat-hello-Tia.

Report giving link to chat-WhereAmI: instead say "'Where am I?' ".
Report giving text for chat-WhereAmI: now EsherKnowsTia is true; now chat-WhereAmI is sc-inactive; now chat-NoIt'sFine is sc-active; now chat-WhoHelped is sc-active; link to chat-NoIt'sFine; link to chat-WhoHelped; instead say "Tia looks at Esher unblinking, and begins to speak. 'don't worry' she says in a sympathetic tone. 'I know you're probably shaken, but I'm not going to hurt you. Last night when I came downstairs to get a drink the entire room filled with a bright white light. I was completely surprised! You fell out of the light, all the way from the ceiling to the floor! I didn't know what to do. You wouldn't wake up. I got someone from town to help carry you upstairs into the spare room. I hope you didn't mind waking up there too much.' ".

Report giving link to chat-NoIt'sFine: instead say "'No, it's alright. ".
	Report giving text for chat-NoIt'sFine: instead say "Bla Blah Blah'".
	Carry out finding responses to chat-NoIt'sFine: try finding responses to chat-hello-Tia instead.

Report giving link to chat-WhoHelped: instead say "'Who helped?. ".
	Report giving text for chat-WhoHelped: instead say "Blah Blah Blah'".
	Carry out finding responses to chat-WhoHelped: try finding responses to chat-hello-Tia instead.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=20#p25024
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-29 22:29:49

I put it on pause for the Comp.  Current state as of a couple weeks ago:  all functions translated, but I want to test it out and maybe rename some stuff for clarity's sake before next release.  Parser__parse is very long so I'm looking into extracting certain subsections.  

As for the things I call mini-extensions in there, I didn't really feel any of them are substantial enough for independent release.  I only gathered related phrases under headings like that so readers can distinguish support code from the parser itself.

I still have another round of Comp games to go through before I come back to this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3497&start=0#p25025
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The limitations of stored actions in I7
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-10-29 22:33:02

There's an extension called Editable Stored Actions which may be useful to you: <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/Ron%20Newcomb/Editable%20Stored%20Actions/index.html">http://inform7.com/extensions/Ron%20New ... index.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3496&start=0#p25026
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Z limitations
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-10-30 00:53:37

Oh dear. I'm doing [i]everything[/i] with global variables, like flags and stati of puzzles. Hm, probably need to turn a few of them into properties then...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3498&start=0#p25027
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple Chat V4
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-30 01:00:15

[emote]:lol:[/emote]  [emote]:lol:[/emote]  I must say. I almost blew up my computer with this one!

[code]Tia is a woman in Tia's House First Floor. 

chat-HelloTia, chat-NoIt'sFine, chat-WhoHelped, chat-GoodBye and chat-WhereAmI are chat nodes.

chat-NoIt'sFine is sc-inactive. chat-WhoHelped is sc-inactive.

Report giving text for chat-HelloTia: instead say "[if EsherKnowsTia is false]Tia looks up surprised to see you[else]Tia looks up at you, blinking beautifully.[end if]".
Carry out finding responses to chat-HelloTia: link to chat-WhereAmI.

Instead of talking to Tia: run a conversation from chat-HelloTia.


Report giving link to chat-WhereAmI: instead say "'Where am I?' ".
Report giving text for chat-WhereAmI: now EsherKnowsTia is true; now chat-WhereAmI is sc-inactive; 
	Carry out finding responses to chat-HelloTia: try finding responses to chat-HelloTia instead; now
	chat-NoIt'sFine is sc-active; now chat-WhoHelped is sc-active; link to chat-NoIt'sFine; link to chat-WhoHelped; say "Tia looks at Esher unblinking, and begins to speak. 'don't worry' she says in a sympathetic tone. 'I know you're probably shaken, but I'm not going to hurt you. Last night when I came downstairs to get a drink the entire room filled with a bright white light. I was completely surprised! You fell out of the light, all the way from the ceiling to the floor! I didn't know what to do. You wouldn't wake up, so I got someone from town to help carry you upstairs into the spare room. I hope you didn't mind waking up there too much.' ".

Report giving link to chat-NoIt'sFine: instead say "'No, it's alright. ".
	Report giving text for chat-NoIt'sFine: instead say "Bla Blah Blah'".
	Carry out finding responses to chat-NoIt'sFine: try finding responses to chat-HelloTia instead.

Report giving link to chat-WhoHelped: instead say "'Who helped?. ".
	Report giving text for chat-WhoHelped: instead say "Blah Blah Blah'".
	Carry out finding responses to chat-WhoHelped: try finding responses to chat-HelloTia instead.[/code]

when I typed talk to Tia my screen filled with a bunch of crazy jargin like this..

[quote]43 
Block at 107 owner ID 12 size 6
1 1 365 366 367 1 
Block at 104 owner ID 10 size 1
43 
Block at 96 owner ID 12 size 6
1 1 365 366 367 1 
Block at 93 owner ID 10 size 1
43 
Block at 85 owner ID 12 size 6
1 1 365 366 367 1 
Block at 82 owner ID 10 size 1
43 
Block at 74 owner ID 12 size 6
[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2859&start=0#p25028
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The perfect crime is a "thought crime".
User: AaronP / DateTime: 2011-10-30 03:29:13

Everybody is influenced, some small amount, by everything that goes on around them. [i]Of course[/i] video games have an influence on our culture; just look around the Internet!

That said, it's irrelevant. By the time you are an adult, you are responsible for how you let things influence you. You are expected to be able to think for yourself; it isn't a game developers responsibility to babysit you. An adult can play and enjoy RapeLay and its ilk all they want. As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing wrong with it. Someone can disagree and express that opinion, and that's great! When you try to legislate expression, however, is dangerous territory. Unfortunate, because it's a step the "free" world has taken already. Or perhaps that is the wrong thing to say; free expression has always been, in some cases, an illusion.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=70#p25029
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: Gogyn / DateTime: 2011-10-30 07:23:45

visited/unvisited are properties already assigned that can be used to check if the room has been visited before. See chapter 3 of the documentation for further information. Chapter 3.27 has the information on visited/unvisited.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2859&start=10#p25030
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The perfect crime is a "thought crime".
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-10-30 09:12:02

[quote="InterFiction"]I'll try and sum this up in truth. Many people say games can't do this, games can do that. Either they can, or they can't. lol...

if a game alters somones mind it alters someone's mind. If it doesn't, it doesn't....

but you can't say what will happen to one will happen to another either....

if a game has altered someones mind, how would we even know? likewise if it hasn't how would we know?

man plays a violent game kills his family. You and I don't know if the game tirggered this. How could we possibly?

Yet we know this. There are people that can play violent games all their lives, and not kill someone...

so as far as enforcing goes. It should be freedom of choice. Same with violent movies. 

If you make the choice to play that game and it does or does not alter your mind, and you do something that is a crime then you should be punished for that crime....

if they can PROVE that the game altered the mind, less the punishment on them. Just like if they were under the influence of a substance and didn't really know what they were doing. 

however pinning something on a game, weather or not it was the games fault, will be a hard thing for anyone to do.

--- on a side note ---

there are studies that show that music, and things like that, that we listen to, do affect the brain.

also you would think that if a game altered someones mind, like stated, they were probably in a poor mental frame for reality to begin with.

This is a very deep life thing on the other hand it's not knowing things that are beyond us...

what if a game could alter someone's mind? so what, it's unlikely to happen on as savere scale as someone going out and killing somone..

what if the next time your cousin calls you and says something about popcorn, and you go out and kill someone...

haha

what if your cousin wouldn't have mentioned popcorn, and you wouldn't have gone out and did that??

this is life...we don't know the deep things, haha

welcome to the twilight zone haha[/quote]
I think all that can be summed up with this question:
"Do violent videogames create violent people, or do violent people gravitate towards violent videogames?"

As for music, you can go on some Websites and buy a piece of music for hypnotic therapy or just cool effects (like restaurants making you hungry with music to come back again).
It isn't a stretch of the imagination that a group of people are doing the same thing with punk and metal (AC/DC, Alice Cooper, Marilin Manson, and others).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2859&start=10#p25031
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The perfect crime is a "thought crime".
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-10-30 09:41:27

[quote="AaronP"]An adult can play and enjoy RapeLay and its ilk all they want. As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing wrong with it. Someone can disagree and express that opinion, and that's great! When you try to legislate expression, however, is dangerous territory. Unfortunate, because it's a step the "free" world has taken already. Or perhaps that is the wrong thing to say; free expression has always been, in some cases, an illusion.[/quote]
Although I agree that there's nothing wrong with mature games, or even extreme adult games, RapeLay is on the border of acceptable and disgusting.
Almost all female characters are minors, and the purpose of the game is to have non consensual sex with each one, like a Sexy Beach with 12 year olds.
The images are pretty graphic (graphic as in blood and guts) and sound is explicate.

This game should stay in Japan (an American company) but even lolicon there is banned (currently just in Tokyo, but expanding).
Love/sex doll sellers beware.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=70#p25032
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-10-30 10:02:08

[quote="InterFiction"]I was also wondering. Is there a way of saying if an object hasn't been seen before... like [if unvisited] for rooms?[/quote]
The built-in [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Eric%20Eve/Epistemology/source.html]Epistemology[/url] extension introduces the property of seen/unseen. You can use it to track whether a given thing has been encountered in-game.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3382&start=0#p25033
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What you like most in Interactive Fiction Games?
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-10-30 10:44:45

[quote]I'm making a game called Esher's Quest[/quote]
Really?
Like the painting with the upside-down staircase?
You'll really need maps for that (like in the game Monitor's Maze, in which you navigate a cavern of moving walls)!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3382&start=0#p25034
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What you like most in Interactive Fiction Games?
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-10-30 11:01:03

[quote="Robert Rothman"]As a caveman who cut my teeth in the pre-Infocom paleolithic age and grew up on Infocom, I still enjoy exploring an interesting world that the author has created and solving puzzles.

Robert Rothman[/quote]
I don't know about infocom, but that type of play first peaked my interest in Tomb Raider 1 (Gold) so I'm no stranger to the "pull lever to get key and run back to open door" type play, in fact I like this best when basic (non specific) maps are introduced like in that AIF game I was talking about.

I get self satisfaction from scoring and I like to go back to look at an inventory.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3498&start=0#p25035
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple Chat V4
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-30 11:16:34

The culprit is likely to be this piece of code:
[code] Carry out finding responses to chat-HelloTia: try finding responses to chat-HelloTia instead;[/code]
which goes into an infinite loop.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3498&start=0#p25036
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple Chat V4
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-30 12:23:00

Hey, thanks. I got that fixed up, and things are working better now that I touched up a couple other things. Now I just need to figure out how the converation will be.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3442&start=0#p25037
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Best responses of IFComp 2011
User: JTN / DateTime: 2011-10-30 13:31:00

Fog Convict (original version)

[spoiler]The first time these stairs come up in the game (and every subsequent time):
[quote]west entryway
   This is the west entry to Mabee Hall.  Stairs lead up to the second floor,
and a dingy orange door leads south.  The fire door to the west is open.

>u
You start up the stairs, but then remember what happened last time, and go back
down.
[/quote]
Brilliant get-out-of-implementation-free card.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3499&start=0#p25038
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Beet the Devil
User: JTN / DateTime: 2011-10-30 13:38:29

I have nothing substantial to add about this game, just[spoiler][url=http://www.rathergood.com/potato]a video I'd like Monty the psychiatric demon to watch.[/url][/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3318&start=0#p25040
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Games with Similar Premises in Comp 2011
User: JTN / DateTime: 2011-10-30 14:19:07

[quote="Aquillion"]ParaNoir and Death of Schlig are both about slightly wonky hard-boiled detectives who have weird personal problems that give them an edge against the game's puzzles.[/quote]We certainly had our share of detectives this year:
[list][*]PataNoir[/*:m][*]Death of Schlig[/*:m][*]The Myothian Falcon[/*:m][*]Return to Camelot[/*:m][*]Taco Fiction[/*:m][/list:u]

Also, indescribable hats! Owned by mysterious characters! In four games!
(Playing Games, Cold Iron, Last Day of Summer, Doctor M)
[spoiler][b]Playing Games[/b]
[quote]The man is wearing a large cloak, which covers most of his features, giving you simply the impression of darkness. The only thing that stands out about the man is his hat, which is almost completely indescribable.[/quote]
[quote]*** You sometimes dream of a hat, but you can never describe it upon waking ***[/quote]

[b]Cold Iron[/b]
[quote]A spry-looking man sits crosslegged on the forest floor. He wears a lazy grin, threadbare clothes, and an absurd sort of a hat.[/quote]

[b]Last Day of Summer[/b]
[quote]As you step back out into the building site, a man in a hat walks up and peers around you through the door into the chapel.  "Oh, it looks like I'm too late," he says, somberly.

>X HAT
The hat is surprisingly... well, it's just... surprising.[/quote]

[b]The Life (and Deaths) of Doctor M[/b]
[quote]In a place built upon the ruins of one place... someday to become the ruins of another place... a man in an oversized chair turns the final page of his book. He wears a hat considered hideous by some, but such trifles don't matter to him. He likes the hat, and that's what counts.[/quote]
OK, that one isn't actually indescribable. It doesn't say [i]why[/i] it's hideous, though.
[quote]>ANGEL, DESCRIBE HAT
You say, "DESCRIBE HAT."

"I'm such a silly! I don't think I can help with that," says the angel, merrily.[/quote][/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3455&start=70#p25042
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Basics (Need Some Help I7)
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-30 15:46:58

Awesome, thanks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3498&start=0#p25043
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple Chat V4
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-30 15:49:15

hmm. I'm getting a new kind of error, but it's wierd.

[code]Tia is a woman in Tia's House First Floor. 

chat-HelloTia, chat-NoIt'sFine, chat-WhoHelped, chat-WhereAmI , chat-Tia-YouGoToBeKidding and chat-GoodBye are chat nodes.
chat-WhereAmI is sc-shown-once.
chat-NoIt'sFine is sc-inactive. chat-WhoHelped is sc-inactive. chat-Tia-YouGoToBeKidding is sc-inactive

Instead of talking to Tia: run a conversation from chat-HelloTia.

Report giving text for chat-HelloTia: instead say "[if EsherKnowsTia is false]Tia looks up surprised to see you[else]Tia looks up at you, blinking beautifully.[end if]".
Carry out finding responses to chat-HelloTia: link to chat-WhereAmI.

Report giving link to chat-WhereAmI: instead say "'Where am I?' ".
Report giving text for chat-WhereAmI: now EsherKnowsTia is true;  
	Carry out finding responses to chat-WhereAmI:  now
	chat-NoIt'sFine is sc-active; now chat-WhoHelped is sc-active; link to chat-NoIt'sFine; link to chat-WhoHelped; instead say "Tia looks at Esher unblinking, and begins to speak. 'don't worry' she says in a sympathetic tone. 'I know you're probably shaken, but I'm not going to hurt you. Last night when I came downstairs to get a drink the entire room filled with a bright white light. I was completely surprised! You fell out of the light, all the way from the ceiling to the floor! I didn't know what to do. You wouldn't wake up, so I got someone from town to help carry you upstairs into the spare room. I hope you didn't mind waking up there too much.' ".

Report giving link to chat-NoIt'sFine: instead say "'No, it's alright. ".
	Report giving text for chat-NoIt'sFine: instead say "Tia looks at you and says 'Good, I was hoping you wouldn't be to surprised, what happened anyway?'".
	Carry out finding responses to chat-NoIt'sFine: try finding responses to chat-HelloTia instead.

Report giving link to chat-WhoHelped: instead say "'Who helped?. ".
	Report giving text for chat-WhoHelped: instead say "Tia looks at you and says 'I got chopper the town's wood cutter to help. He's big and strong. He was the first person I could think of that would be able to carry you upstairs.'".
	Carry out finding responses to chat-WhoHelped: try finding responses to chat-HelloTia instead.[/code]

When I type talk to Tia the conversation starts...but when I press the first and only option available at the start of the conversation I get this error, but yet, it still works, lol...

[quote]>talk to tia
Tia looks up surprised to see you
1) "Where am I?" 
(Choose Option.)
>> 1
Error: no text for chat-WhereAmI.

Tia looks at Esher unblinking, and begins to speak. "don't worry" she says in a sympathetic tone. "I know you're probably shaken, but I'm not going to hurt you. Last night when I came downstairs to get a drink the entire room filled with a bright white light. I was completely surprised! You fell out of the light, all the way from the ceiling to the floor! I didn't know what to do. You wouldn't wake up, so I got someone from town to help carry you upstairs into the spare room. I hope you didn't mind waking up there too much." 
1) "No, it's alright. 
2) "Who helped?. 
(Choose Option.)
>> [/quote]

as you can see the conversation carries on, but that error will look bad in the game. I'm not sure what's causing it..

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3497&start=0#p25046
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The limitations of stored actions in I7
User: faiuwle / DateTime: 2011-10-30 16:31:24

Ahh, cool, thanks.  I'll have to play with that.

Does it deal with the type-checking issues zarf mentioned, or is that a caller responsibility?  (I'm guessing this is stuff like winding up with nouns that are the wrong types for the action (like setting the action name to GO but the noun to something that's not a direction) or setting nouns for actions that don't have nouns, etc.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3382&start=10#p25047
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What you like most in Interactive Fiction Games?
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-30 16:31:53

[quote="IF noob"][quote]I'm making a game called Esher's Quest[/quote]
Really?
Like the painting with the upside-down staircase?
[/quote]

haha I guess I don't know what you mean.

Below is a short history breakdown.

[spoiler]Esher's Quest is a fantasy setting. Esher gets drawn into a world protected by Lissara a God type in that world. She has been sealed away by a circle of mages who used her power to protect that world through the elementals. After a war with an ancient evil called Zotar they decided to seal her in a crystal, and hide her away against her will, but yet for the worlds own good. The elementals angered by their foolish choice abandonded them leaving them in a world of dying magic. Another war ensued taking the lives of what is believed to be all the mages. Now, Lissara trapped, reaches out from her space between spaces, and brings Esher into Lisim (her world).

and thus Esher's Quest begins.[/spoiler]

It's also going to be a 2D RPG. my buddy Ugaki, and I, are working out the plot right now. If anyones interested you can learn more at.

[url=http://www.interfiction100.wordpress.com]InterFiction Blog Site[/url]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3501&start=0#p25048
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: What do you like in MMORPGs?
User: Kytaari / DateTime: 2011-10-30 16:33:46

I've been playing MMORPGs lately, after taking a long break, and I began wondering what you guys like seeing in this medium.

I like exploring landscapes, talking to NPCs, and unraveling the story of the environment in a very nonlinear fashion.

What I don't like is grinding and the level treadmill [emote]:([/emote]

For these reason, I usually think MUDs are better [emote]:)[/emote], but since MMORPGs are more immediately accessible, I still play them. Also, I seldom reach very high in the ladder do to my fickleness and uncompetitive nature when I play.

I've never been addicted to an MMO, but I can still find them amusing. I'm sure the play-to-play are much more interesting, but since I'm very low on cash I'm sticking to freebies [emote]:)[/emote] It's definitely not my favorite genre, but I think it has some interesting elements when you play:

[list]Huge free-roaming environment[/list:u]
[list]Setting tells most of the story[/list:u]
[list]Tasks can be completed in very non-linear orders[/list:u]

I think that if, as an interactive fiction writer, I were to absorb some of the interesting aspects of this genre that might enhance interactive storytelling (while ignoring all the RPG mechanics), I can bring some interesting aspects to IF: something like side-quests that enhance your score, but by the solution of puzzles instead of the grinding of endless mobs.

I have a lot of ideas, and this is just one thing that I felt like sharing [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3497&start=0#p25049
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The limitations of stored actions in I7
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-30 16:33:51

Yes, this is very nice; it looks like it could help with a couple things I've been playing around with.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2917&start=10#p25050
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Plugs and Sockets by Sean Turner
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2011-10-30 16:56:03

Didn't have the time to write over the last days. I was wondering whether there is any news on the above issue?

So basically this is a *bump*


BiB

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3382&start=10#p25051
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What you like most in Interactive Fiction Games?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-10-30 17:12:29

He is probably referring to [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._C._Escher]M.C. Escher[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3498&start=0#p25052
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple Chat V4
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-30 18:15:11

First your rule "report giving text for chat-WereAmI" runs (and sets EsherKnowsTia to true).
Then a report giving text rule defined in the extension also runs (and produces the error message).
That is because report rules do not stop the action. By default ALL the report rules for a given action run one after another.
However, you can easily stop an action short by adding the word "instead" to the body of your rule. Try this:
[code]Report giving text for chat-WhereAmI: instead now EsherKnowsTia is true;  [/code] or this:
[code]Report giving text for chat-WhereAmI: now EsherKnowsTia is true; stop the action.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3498&start=0#p25053
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple Chat V4
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-30 18:32:22

oops. I was just about to come on here, and say that I found a solution to that error. I had the code ordered wrong. I had to change that whole section to..

[code]Report giving link to chat-WhereAmI: instead say "'Where am I?' ".
Report giving text for chat-WhereAmI: instead say "Tia looks at Esher unblinking, and begins to speak. 'don't worry' she says in a sympathetic tone. 'I know you're probably shaken, but I'm not going to hurt you. Last night when I came downstairs to get a drink the entire room filled with a bright white light. I was completely surprised! You fell out of the light, all the way from the ceiling to the floor! I didn't know what to do. You wouldn't wake up, so I got someone from town to help carry you upstairs into the spare room. I hope you didn't mind waking up there too much.' ";  
	Carry out finding responses to chat-WhereAmI: now EsherKnowsTia is true; now chat-NoIt'sFine is sc-active; now chat-WhoHelped is sc-active; link to chat-NoIt'sFine; link to chat-WhoHelped; 
[/code]

that fixed that, but I still have a bug in my conversation that I can't quite pinpoint yet. The entirety of my code is a bit messy, and will need to be tidied up, but this what I have so far..

[code]Tia is a woman in Tia's House First Floor. 

chat-HelloTia, chat-NoIt'sFine, chat-WhoHelped, chat-WhereAmI , chat-Tia-WhoAreYou, chat-TiaI'mNotSure, chat-TiaChatAgain and chat-GoodBye are chat nodes.

chat-WhereAmI is sc-shown-once.

chat-NoIt'sFine is sc-inactive. chat-WhoHelped is sc-inactive. chat-TiaI'mNotSure is sc-inactive.

Instead of talking to Tia: run a conversation from chat-HelloTia.

Report giving text for chat-HelloTia: instead say "[if EsherKnowsTia is false]Tia looks up surprised to see you[else]Tia looks up at you, blinking beautifully.[end if]".
Carry out finding responses to chat-HelloTia: link to chat-WhereAmI; link to chat-Tia-WhoAreYou.

Report giving link to chat-WhereAmI: instead say "'Where am I?' ".
Report giving text for chat-WhereAmI: instead say "Tia looks at Esher unblinking, and begins to speak. 'don't worry' she says in a sympathetic tone. 'I know you're probably shaken, but I'm not going to hurt you. Last night when I came downstairs to get a drink the entire room filled with a bright white light. I was completely surprised! You fell out of the light, all the way from the ceiling to the floor! I didn't know what to do. You wouldn't wake up, so I got someone from town to help carry you upstairs into the spare room. I hope you didn't mind waking up there too much.' ";  
	Carry out finding responses to chat-WhereAmI: now EsherKnowsTia is true; now chat-NoIt'sFine is sc-active; now chat-WhoHelped is sc-active; link to chat-NoIt'sFine; link to chat-WhoHelped; 

Report giving link to chat-NoIt'sFine: instead say "'No, it's alright. ".
	Report giving text for chat-NoIt'sFine: now chat-TiaI'mNotSure is sc-active; link to chat-TiaI'mNotSure; instead say "Tia looks at you and says 'Good, I was hoping you wouldn't be to surprised, what happened anyway?'"; 
	Carry out finding responses to chat-NoIt'sFine: try finding responses to chat-HelloTia instead; link to chat-Tia-WhoAreYou.

Report giving link to chat-WhoHelped: instead say "'Who helped?. ".
	Report giving text for chat-WhoHelped: instead say "Tia looks at you and says 'I got chopper the town's wood cutter to help. He's big and strong. He was the first person I could think of that would be able to carry you upstairs.'";
	Carry out finding responses to chat-WhoHelped: try finding responses to chat-HelloTia instead; link to chat-Tia-WhoAreYou.
	
Report giving link to chat-Tia-WhoAreYou: instead say "Who are you?".
Report giving text for chat-Tia-WhoAreYou: instead say "Tia looks away for a brief moment then returns to Esher's gaze, saying 'I'm Tia, of Kileaf. I'm the flower girl here. What happened to you anyway?"; now chat-TiaI'mNotSure is sc-active; now EsherKnowsTia is true;
		Carry out finding responses to chat-Tia-WhoAreYou: try finding responses to chat-HelloTia instead; now chat-TiaI'mNotSure is sc-active; link to chat-TiaI'mNotSure.
	
Report giving link to chat-TiaI'mNotSure: instead say "I'm not sure."
	Report giving text for chat-TiaI'mNotSure: instead say "Esher looked up at Tia and said 'I'm not sure. I was on the light, the lighthouse back home, and all of a sudden I was surrounded by a bright white light.' he paused for a moment and added 'I must have fallen off, or drifted.' he paused a moment then asked 'Where's Kileaf anyway, in Celius?'";
		carry out finding responses to chat-TiaI'mNotSure: try finding responses to chat-HelloTia instead.[/code]

the new bug is coming from this section here...

[code]Report giving link to chat-Tia-WhoAreYou: instead say "Who are you?".
Report giving text for chat-Tia-WhoAreYou: instead say "Tia looks away for a brief moment then returns to Esher's gaze, saying 'I'm Tia, of Kileaf. I'm the flower girl here. What happened to you anyway?"; now chat-TiaI'mNotSure is sc-active; now EsherKnowsTia is true;
		Carry out finding responses to chat-Tia-WhoAreYou: try finding responses to chat-HelloTia instead; now chat-TiaI'mNotSure is sc-active; link to chat-TiaI'mNotSure.
	
Report giving link to chat-TiaI'mNotSure: instead say "I'm not sure."
	Report giving text for chat-TiaI'mNotSure: instead say "Esher looked up at Tia and said 'I'm not sure. I was on the light, the lighthouse back home, and all of a sudden I was surrounded by a bright white light.' he paused for a moment and added 'I must have fallen off, or drifted.' he paused a moment then asked 'Where's Kileaf anyway, in Celius?'";
		carry out finding responses to chat-TiaI'mNotSure: try finding responses to chat-HelloTia instead.[/code]

when the player gets to choose option who are you the answer is dissplayed, and then that's all the player can choose..for some reason it's not linking to "I'm not sure." That option never appears, and now all the player can do is choose 1 over, and over..which is "who are you."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3503&start=0#p25055
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I7] Forbidding Actions: Why Doesn't This Work?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-30 20:44:52

Okay, the following tiny example compiles and functions (as far as it goes):

[code]"Apple Example"

The Foyer is a room. "It's just a foyer. The exit leads east."

The apple is here.

The Room That Actually Matters is east of the Foyer. "This is the room that actually matters. The exit leads west."

The small pillar is here. "Here stands a small, faux-Greek pillar, made of plaster[if the pillar encloses the apple][otherwise]. You can't help but think that what this pillar really needs is an apple on it[end if]." The pillar is a supporter. Check taking the pillar: say "Nah." instead.

Instead of doing something other than putting [the apple on the pillar] when the pillar is touchable and the apple is enclosed by the player, say "You should really put the apple on the pillar."[/code]

If the player has the apple and he's in the room with the pillar, the game won't let him do anything else except put the apple on the pillar. That's the intended behavior, so, good.

BUT ... un-bracket the bracketed text in the final line of code. NOW, it will compile without complaint ... and structurally it resembles some example code in the documentation ... but it won't function. That last line seems, then, to have no effect at all.

Insights and help welcome [emote]:([/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3501&start=0#p25056
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What do you like in MMORPGs?
User: George / DateTime: 2011-10-30 21:11:44

I've played muds a lot too, though never graphical MMOs. I think it would be interesting to make a limited duration, massively single-player IF that borrowed some language from MMOs. You kind of see that with games like Echo Bazaar, Naked on Pluto, and that promotional one for Night Circus.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3503&start=0#p25057
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Forbidding Actions: Why Doesn't This Work?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-30 21:17:12

I don't know exactly why that doesn't work, but does this help?

[code]First instead when the pillar is touchable and the apple is enclosed by the player:
	if the current action is putting the apple on the pillar:
		continue the action;
	otherwise:
		 say "You should really put the apple on the pillar."[/code]

(You don't have to say "instead of" any particular action, you see.) 

Since "instead" rules run after "before" rules IIRC, you might even want to make that a "before" rule instead, like this:

[code]First before when the pillar is touchable and the apple is enclosed by the player: unless the current action is putting the apple on the pillar, say "You should really put the apple on the pillar." instead.[/code]

(The odds are pretty high that someone else will have a better solution.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=40#p25058
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-10-30 21:17:21

Under the hood, [any off-stage thing] works by asking the parser to match [thing] at various word offsets after changing scope to be the set of off-stage things.  It's reset only when a different scope is needed, which SearchScope decides by consulting scope_token.  But Scope Caching doesn't touch scope_token before calling LoopOverScope, so the most recent routine is used, which in this case thinks that no reset is necessary.  Change your inline I6 to[code]To iterate scope with (func - phrase thing -> nothing): (- scope_token=0;LoopOverScope({func}-->1); -).

To iterate scope for (actor - thing) with (func - phrase thing -> nothing): (- scope_token=0;LoopOverScope({func}-->1, {actor}); -).[/code] and you should be good.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3491&start=0#p25059
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with Numbered Disambiguation Choices
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-10-30 21:18:09

Looks like the same bug to me, seeing as [code]Test me with "put apple extraWord in basket / 2".[/code] works.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2917&start=10#p25060
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Plugs and Sockets by Sean Turner
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-10-30 21:27:50

Let me also bump your bug report, which is awaiting feedback.  I'd really like to track down the internal error [emote]:)[/emote].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3503&start=0#p25062
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Forbidding Actions: Why Doesn't This Work?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-30 22:21:30

[quote="matt w"]I don't know exactly why that doesn't work, but does this help?[/quote]

It does indeed, thank you! It compiles [i]large,[/i] though (46 kilobytes larger than the other way!), so I will have to ponder [emote]:([/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2859&start=10#p25063
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The perfect crime is a "thought crime".
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-30 22:25:05

[quote="IF noob"]Although I agree that there's nothing wrong with mature games, or even extreme adult games, RapeLay is on the border of acceptable and disgusting.[/quote]

Border? I think it's 100% all-the-way disgusting ... but there is (or should be) a vast cosmic gulf between between disgust and censorship.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3503&start=0#p25064
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Forbidding Actions: Why Doesn't This Work?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-30 22:40:48

You can simplify this example down to any of

[code]
Instead of doing something other than putting the apple on the pillar:
	...

Instead of doing something other than putting the apple on something:
	...

Instead of doing something other than touching the apple:
	...
[/code]

You still get the wrong result in each of these cases. In the last one, for example, the compiler seems to parse "instead of doing anything-other-than-touching to the apple". And similarly the others.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3503&start=0#p25069
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Forbidding Actions: Why Doesn't This Work?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-30 22:53:20

I filed <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=784">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=784</a> , although I'm surprised nobody's run into this before.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3503&start=0#p25071
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Forbidding Actions: Why Doesn't This Work?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-30 22:57:02

[quote="zarf"]I filed <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=784">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=784</a> , although I'm surprised nobody's run into this before.[/quote]

Thanks for that, and yeah [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3501&start=0#p25072
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What do you like in MMORPGs?
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-10-31 00:39:12

I played some Puzzle Pirates back in the day, and I played some Spiral Knights when it first came out. What I really liked in both games was watching people engaging with/defining an artificial society (especially the economic and linguistic aspects), and working together with strangers to fight crazy monsters.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3484&start=0#p25073
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Idea I have, possibly already implemented
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-10-31 01:05:27

I was thinking of doing a code like Jackson suggested; my idea would just be to give every item a unique number and assemble the code by just repeating through inventory and sticking them all together, with or without a separating character.  Then you break the string up at the separating characters and add each item back into inventory.  This would allow you to have any number of items as long as they're numbered.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1965&start=20#p25074
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Curveship released
User: Gio / DateTime: 2011-10-31 01:30:39

[quote="bukayeva"]So color me confused. What is this Curveship thing doing that Inform or TADS currently can't do?[/quote]

So color me confused. What is this Inform 7 thing doing that Inform 6 or TADS currently can't do?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=40#p25075
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: evouga / DateTime: 2011-10-31 01:53:41

A naive question: is there a theoretical reason to expect Inform to be slow? Or it the problem that the specific implementation of the Inform 6/7 compiler is generating egregiously inefficient byte code?

I would think that since the typical game has only on the order of 1,000 objects, even the most straightforward O(n^2) algorithms would be plenty fast...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2859&start=10#p25076
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The perfect crime is a "thought crime".
User: AaronP / DateTime: 2011-10-31 03:00:54

[quote="IF noob"][quote="AaronP"]An adult can play and enjoy RapeLay and its ilk all they want. As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing wrong with it. Someone can disagree and express that opinion, and that's great! When you try to legislate expression, however, is dangerous territory. Unfortunate, because it's a step the "free" world has taken already. Or perhaps that is the wrong thing to say; free expression has always been, in some cases, an illusion.[/quote]
Although I agree that there's nothing wrong with mature games, or even extreme adult games, RapeLay is on the border of acceptable and disgusting.
Almost all female characters are minors, and the purpose of the game is to have non consensual sex with each one, like a Sexy Beach with 12 year olds.
The images are pretty graphic (graphic as in blood and guts) and sound is explicate.

This game should stay in Japan (an American company) but even lolicon there is banned (currently just in Tokyo, but expanding).
Love/sex doll sellers beware.[/quote]

For me, the different between a digital, visual, or literary representation of a person and an actual person makes all the difference, but there is nothing wrong with being offended by the subject matter of a game if you're so inclined.

The Japanese lolicon ban is unfortunate. Not surprising, though. Censorship is nothing new to Japan where, as in the US, it is constitutionally illegal. It was only a matter of time.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3484&start=0#p25077
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Idea I have, possibly already implemented
User: frudster / DateTime: 2011-10-31 04:05:53

Suggestion: You could use something like [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base64]Base64[/url] encoding to keep the string shorter. You could just do it "manually" - assign fix-length strings instead of numbers to your "flags" - it doesn't have to be just objects, it could be other types of choices too. (Did the player damage his knee? Append "xh1" to the string, etc.)

Or here's another wacky idea: to make up a list of generic codes like that and allow you to transfer characters between games in general!

Such as 
pgm: player gender is male
pgf: player gender is female
wr0 - wr9: (player has a) weapon, ranged (wr0 is a rock, wr9 is the "BFG")
wc0 - wc9: (player has a) weapon, cutting (0 is something reasonably sharp, 9 is some arcane super-sword).
rr0 : romantic relationship: the player has fallen for contestant #0.
ls0: the player has a light source (torch, flashlight, etc) 

etc - I'm obviously just winging this.

Then every game would be responsible for importing a character (Jules:pgmwr3rr0) and interpreting the codes as applicable in that particular game (No fighting? Just ignore the weapons). 

And when the game ends, export the code: ("To continue the game in another IF Transport-enabled game: enter this code at the beginning of play: 'Jules:pgmwr3rr0'".)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3510&start=0#p25079
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Conversation Suggestions - avoid suggesting things said
User: frudster / DateTime: 2011-10-31 04:21:37

I'm digging in to Eric Eve's Conversation Package and came across something I need to solve. 

Is there some simple way of checking whether a thing has already been talked about? What I'm doing is basically that in the "response for N when asked about X" the character (N) mentions something else (Y) and so I add that as a suggestion to ask more about ("add Y to the ask-suggestions of N"). But if the player has already talked to N about Y I'd rather not suggest it. So I'm looking for something like

[code]
response for Bill when asked about the journey:
    say "Well, we just took the carpet for a spin. ";
    [if the carpet has not been mentioned] add the carpet to the ask-suggestions of Bill.
[/code]

Is there some way of doing that "if the carpet has not been mentioned" clause?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3491&start=0#p25080
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with Numbered Disambiguation Choices
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-10-31 04:43:21

Ah, OK. In that case, I'll mark it as "unfixable"!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3498&start=0#p25081
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple Chat V4
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-31 06:06:26

It's the "insteads" that are fooling you.

An "instead" first or last on a line means (more or less) the same as a "stop the action;" after that line. 

So, when Inform gets to a line that begins or ends with "instead", it executes that line and then calls it a day, considering itself done with processing player actions for that turn.

So this:
[code]Carry out finding responses to chat-Tia-WhoAreYou:
	try finding responses to chat-HelloTia instead;
	now chat-TiaI'mNotSure is sc-active;
	link to chat-TiaI'mNotSure.[/code]
only ever gets as far as this:
[code]Carry out finding responses to chat-Tia-WhoAreYou:
	try finding responses to chat-HelloTia instead;[/code]
It stops short after "instead".

You can move the "instead" to that last line of the rule instead (or -- since the extensions default carry out finding responses rule actually does nothing -- you can just skip the "instead" completely; the extension will not by default print any error message in this case, though it does that in the case of the report giving link to rulebook.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2859&start=10#p25082
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The perfect crime is a "thought crime".
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-10-31 07:40:36

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="IF noob"]Although I agree that there's nothing wrong with mature games, or even extreme adult games, RapeLay is on the border of acceptable and disgusting.[/quote]

Border? I think it's 100% all-the-way disgusting ... but there is (or should be) a vast cosmic gulf between between disgust and censorship.[/quote]
Actually it was accepted that the subject matter is disgusting in a "Don't like it, don't play," kind of way.
The controversy was over these images as interactive which would be more likely to create a pedophile type mentality.

I can see their point (for a temporary taboo release), but I think it's as good an argument as turning violent because of violent videogames.

This reminds me of the case of a "Time" like Australian magazine that had a 6 year old girl posing like a classic nude painting on the cover (the 6 year old was ok with artistic nudity, and her parents consented, and were allowed to take the pictures).
The case had just been resolved in the child's (now teen) favor.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2859&start=10#p25083
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The perfect crime is a "thought crime".
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-10-31 08:04:34

[quote="AaronP"][quote="IF noob"][quote="AaronP"]An adult can play and enjoy RapeLay and its ilk all they want. As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing wrong with it. Someone can disagree and express that opinion, and that's great! When you try to legislate expression, however, is dangerous territory. Unfortunate, because it's a step the "free" world has taken already. Or perhaps that is the wrong thing to say; free expression has always been, in some cases, an illusion.[/quote]
Although I agree that there's nothing wrong with mature games, or even extreme adult games, RapeLay is on the border of acceptable and disgusting.
Almost all female characters are minors, and the purpose of the game is to have non consensual sex with each one, like a Sexy Beach with 12 year olds.
The images are pretty graphic (graphic as in blood and guts) and sound is explicate.

This game should stay in Japan (an American company) but even lolicon there is banned (currently just in Tokyo, but expanding).
Love/sex doll sellers beware.[/quote]

For me, the different between a digital, visual, or literary representation of a person and an actual person makes all the difference, but there is nothing wrong with being offended by the subject matter of a game if you're so inclined.

The Japanese lolicon ban is unfortunate. Not surprising, though. Censorship is nothing new to Japan where, as in the US, it is constitutionally illegal. It was only a matter of time.[/quote]
It's not constitutionally illegal, in fact to the constitution, artistic freedom (no matter the subject) is every man's right.
That's why George W. Bush signed the Protect Act of 2003 because children weren't constitutionally protected from people who would exploit their sexuality.

Are children so much more special than adults they would need legal protection?
If so, where's the crackdown on the celebrity sex tape law?

Lolicon itself is considered freedom of expression if the child is fictional, however if you base physical characteristics of your drawing on a real person, you'll be arrested and will have to register as a sex offender.

I haven't met a sculptor yet deemed as a sex offender.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2859&start=10#p25084
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The perfect crime is a "thought crime".
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-10-31 08:16:32

Hey, I just looked at the date.
[b]Happy [size=150]Halloween[/size] everyone![/b]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=40#p25085
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-31 09:16:13

[quote="EmacsUser"]Change your inline I6 to[code]To iterate scope with (func - phrase thing -> nothing): (- scope_token=0;LoopOverScope({func}-->1); -).

To iterate scope for (actor - thing) with (func - phrase thing -> nothing): (- scope_token=0;LoopOverScope({func}-->1, {actor}); -).[/code] and you should be good.[/quote]
Perfect. Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3496&start=0#p25086
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Z limitations
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-31 09:25:05

[quote="cas"]You really shouldn't be using too many globals, though; as with most languages, globals should be used sparingly in Inform, and if you find yourself hitting the limit, there are probably better ways to achieve your desired outcome.[/quote]
So how do you explain I7?  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2859&start=10#p25087
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The perfect crime is a "thought crime".
User: AaronP / DateTime: 2011-10-31 09:25:51

Censorship is constitutionally illegal. But it hasn't prevented censorship in either country, as we can see. In the United States and Japan, people can be, and have been, prosecuted for obscenity.

Actual children are protected, and that can be justified because the idea isn't to prevent expression, but [i]exploitation[/i]. Practically speaking, children [i]are[/i] special. The constitution is not applied to them as it is everyone else, and the constitution itself doesn't deal with children specifically because of, presumably, a lack of foresight by the authors. 

It's not practical to teach children like adults, because they aren't. Ideally, we'd amend the constitution, though, so that the courts can at least keep up the pretense that they have some respect for it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3510&start=0#p25088
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Suggestions - avoid suggesting things said
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-31 09:36:50

I haven't used the whole package, but when I was working with Conversation Responses, I did have to add this:

[code]A thing can be discussed.[/code]

...and then at the appropriate place in conversation code:

[code]now the noun [or the second noun] is discussed.[/code]

I usually would hold off on making something discussed until an NPC actually says something substantial about it.

To enable multiple conversations, I'd set everything not discussed at the beginning of a scene. But if you need finer detail, you might have to use a many-to-many relation:

[code]Discussion relates various things to various people. The verb to be discussed with implies the discussion relation.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2859&start=10#p25089
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The perfect crime is a "thought crime".
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-10-31 09:44:53

[quote="AaronP"]Censorship is constitutionally illegal. But it hasn't prevented censorship in either country, as we can see. In the United States and Japan, people can be, and have been, prosecuted for obscenity.

Actual children are protected, and that can be justified because the idea isn't to prevent expression, but [i]exploitation[/i]. Practically speaking, children [i]are[/i] special. The constitution is not applied to them as it is everyone else, and the constitution itself doesn't deal with children specifically because of, presumably, a lack of foresight by the authors. 

It's not practical to teach children like adults, because they aren't. Ideally, we'd amend the constitution, though, so that the courts can at least keep up the pretense that they have some respect for it.[/quote]
I'm confused, are you agreeing with me that they are not protected as the constitution was originally meant, or do you believe the law was there to begin with and there was no reason for that part of the Protect Act?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3387&start=0#p25090
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Game Announcement: Plan DSDS From Practice Space
User: stadtgorilla / DateTime: 2011-10-31 10:17:53

Yeah! We've gotten our first rating! It got one star on IFDB! [emote];)[/emote] 

And we sold about seven packages, that must be a lucky number!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2859&start=10#p25091
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The perfect crime is a "thought crime".
User: AaronP / DateTime: 2011-10-31 10:20:58

I [b]do not[/b] think the constitution is enough to protect children. Children require special considerations that aren't addressed in the constitution, so it's a bit inadequate in that regard.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2917&start=20#p25092
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Plugs and Sockets by Sean Turner
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2011-10-31 10:30:39

Thanks a bundle! [emote]:-)[/emote]

It annoys me a little that I must keep using a stone-age version of I7. [emote];-)[/emote]


BiB

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3496&start=0#p25093
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Z limitations
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-10-31 10:41:35

[quote="capmikee"][quote="cas"]You really shouldn't be using too many globals, though; as with most languages, globals should be used sparingly in Inform, and if you find yourself hitting the limit, there are probably better ways to achieve your desired outcome.[/quote]
So how do you explain I7?  :lol:[/quote]
I suppose it depends on how you define a global, but if you narrow it down to only actual global variables (and not objects etc) people tend to abuse them in I7 just like in any other language.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3496&start=0#p25094
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Z limitations
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-10-31 10:55:51

But does it count as abuse when sometimes it's the only way to pass additional data to a function? That seems to me like it's just normal use. Also, aren't built-in phrases like "we have taken the book" and "the Dungeon has been lit for at least three turns" modeled using global variables?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2859&start=20#p25097
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The perfect crime is a "thought crime".
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-10-31 11:44:58

[quote="IF noob"]That's why George W. Bush signed the Protect Act of 2003 because children weren't constitutionally protected from people who would exploit their sexuality.

Are children so much more special than adults they would need legal protection?[/quote]

Hang on. Are you - are you [i]questioning[/i] George W. Bush? One of the greatest Republican presidents since Ronald Reagan?

I'm all for a little free speech around the edges, but let's not get carried away.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3498&start=10#p25098
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple Chat V4
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-31 11:48:48

okay, I see what you're saying. I'm glad that come up, because I'm sure that would have been the dawning of many trip ups, not knowing that. Thanks again [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3496&start=0#p25099
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 6: Z limitations
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-31 12:02:07

IF languages (including both I6 and I7) usually put every game object in a global namespace. So the principle of avoiding global variables is more or less meaningless. I6 just happens to be short on them, so there's a *practical* reason to avoid them. Instead, you wind up making a two-level namespace (properties and attributes of the global objects).

This turns out to fit most IF programming pretty well; you often *do* think about states in association with objects.

Since I7 was built on I6, by people *familiar* with I6, it retains this orientation -- it gives you several ways to store your state object-wise. (Properties, relations on objects, tables with an object column, etc.) But then there are global variables, tables with other formats, properties of scenes, and so on. None of these are limited (well, not nearly as tightly as I6's global variables) so you can really handle them however is comfortable.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2859&start=20#p25100
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The perfect crime is a "thought crime".
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-10-31 12:08:31

[quote="bcressey"][quote="IF noob"]That's why George W. Bush signed the Protect Act of 2003 because children weren't constitutionally protected from people who would exploit their sexuality.

Are children so much more special than adults they would need legal protection?[/quote]

Hang on. Are you - are you [i]questioning[/i] George W. Bush? One of the greatest Republican presidents since Ronald Reagan?

I'm all for a little free speech around the edges, but let's not get carried away.[/quote]
Ah come on!
Even Nixon admitted wire tapping was illegal.
I think terrorists were planning to spread emotional chaos all along, rather than actual murder.
Now things like wire tapping and reading private E-mails are completely legal.

By the way, Reagen was more of a "yes man" than his "yes men".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=40#p25101
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-10-31 12:19:46

[quote]A naive question: is there a theoretical reason to expect Inform to be slow? Or it the problem that the specific implementation of the Inform 6/7 compiler is generating egregiously inefficient byte code?[/quote]

Well, if you look back through this thread, you'll see that Inform *isn't* inherently slow. Inform games can be fast or slow, depending on what they do. The problem is it's hard to know what's slow unless you're a serious I6 maven. Most game designers pick some tools from the manual, get the effect they want, and don't worry about efficiency. That's what they *should* be doing, but unfortunately the platform isn't as forgiving as it should be.

The games run on a virtual machine, and the interpreters aren't as aggressively optimized as big-label VMs like Javascript. That's one thing. Then the interpreter might be built on top of Javascript, or on top of a low-power mobile CPU. That's another thing. Result: an N^2 loop over 1000 objects is undesirable.

At the low level, I6 generates efficient byte code, because I6 is a low-level language and is easy to compile. (Again, it doesn't have giant compiler teams working on optimizing it, so it does miss tricks. But hand-crafting efficient I6 is straightforward.)

At the next level up, I7's libraries -- which are hand-crafted I6 -- are a bit of a mix. Some of that code is tight; some could use some work.

The I6 code that I7 *generates*, from user code, is fairly good. It's also a minority of the problem; i.e., it's generally a thin layer that calls down to the library level. (Of course, if you write nested "repeat through everything" loops, I7 will generate nested repeat-through-everything loops, and then it's not so thin.)

But at this point there are enough layers that the *whole system* has some slack in it. A simple-appearing construct like "try taking the foo" invokes a complex action mechanism, which invokes a complex scope mechanism, which checks a lot of objects, and each object check is a property read, and the property read does some type-checking... so low-level code gets invoked *a whole lot*.

The good news is that this problem is amenable to improvements at every level. We talk about optimizing low-level functions, because they invoked thousands of times. We also talk about ways for scope-checking to cache its results. And about ways for rulebook invocations to be compiled down to more efficient code. And, since all of that is hard work, we wind up going back to the author and saying "Could you not check scope so many times per turn? I know it's hard to see where it's happening. But it's kind of important."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2859&start=20#p25102
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The perfect crime is a "thought crime".
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-10-31 12:25:02

[quote="AaronP"]I [b]do not[/b] think the constitution is enough to protect children. Children require special considerations that aren't addressed in the constitution, so it's a bit inadequate in that regard.[/quote]
I just don't see what's so special about them.
Children are just smaller versions of adults with under developed minds.
For instance:
Film a flirtatious adult in a skimpy bikini and get famous from the Internet.
Film a flirtatious child in a one piece bathing suit and go to prison for a few days along with paying a hefty fine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3512&start=0#p25103
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Level9 Authoring?
User: Gio / DateTime: 2011-10-31 13:47:27

Probably an odd question, but does a compiler (or whatever) exist for making A-Code games? Kinda like Inform.

I should sleep more..

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2917&start=20#p25104
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Plugs and Sockets by Sean Turner
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-10-31 14:02:13

Er, I mean awaiting feedback from you...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3513&start=0#p25105
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Is IF a game or a story?
User: Kytaari / DateTime: 2011-10-31 14:30:33

I kind of have a feeling this question might have been asked a lot, but I'll ask anyway. Do you think being an IF writer is more like being a writer or being a game designer?

I like this medium, but I don't see myself as extraordinary at building puzzles, and I think my strong point is my skill in ideas and written exposition. I think I can take advantage of this medium's interactive element by designing non-linear investigation that could tell a very interesting story, but I'm beginning to wonder just how necessary very refined puzzles are to this medium.

Also, do you think a lot of IF writers incorporate role-playing game elements in some of their stories because it's a good idea, or because these mechanics are something they really like? Do you think there are some situations where statistics may be necessary to convey a good idea or provide framework for a very interesting puzzle? 

I would just like to know beforehand what the community thinks about this issue: mainly, whether IF should be seen more as a game or a story.

I'm feeling kind of insecure about what I'm choosing to do, and that's why I'm asking this question. I have a novel-length project that I'm working on intermittently, between my more standard IF stories, and I must confess there are not a lot of puzzles. I incorporate a lot of elements of mystery in my story, and most of the interaction takes place as investigation undergone by the protagonists in these plots. I don't design practical problems very easily, and many obstacles can be overcome by speaking with the right people and creative puzzle solving in terms of advancing the plot, rather than attaining any definite treasure or goals. I only have a lot of experience playing classical IF, and they don't seem very story-oriented to me; but I know that more modern games in this genre are more heavy on the narrative element.

I guess that what I'm saying is game design probably isn't my strong point, but I really find allure with the interactivity in this medium, and levity it brings with setting exploration and plot investigation. I think it's very suitable for the stories I would like to tell, and much of my scoring system revolves around how much information the player has successfully divulged. You don't have to directly tell me whether or not I'm making a bad decision using this medium primarily as a means to tell my story, rather than experimenting with interesting game mechanics, though this is to me a big concern; but I would very much appreciate any input in terms of whether you see this discipline as primarily story-telling or game design, which element is more important, and whether or not too much linearity and straight-forwardness in this medium is a bad idea.

I apologize for this long post, but please take the time to consider these ideas. I would really like to have a good discussion about this problem.

*)Japanese visual novels, which are sometimes compared to interactive fiction, are sometime entirely linear, and oftentimes require very little input other than pivotal moments that are branching in a plot. Yet these PC still remain very popular in the Eastern hemisphere. Does this convince you that story might be enough as a chief element in games to pull some games through successfully, and if so than why do more similarly structured gaming mediums in the west, like gamebooks, remain unpopular?

*)Did the Infocom games remain popular with people during the commercial era of IF more for story or for gameplay? Was complicity enough to pull these games through?

*)Do you believe it's more important to be a good writer or a good game designer to create a well-crafted text-based adventure game. *This question is probably my biggest concern in this post.

I know this topic was long, but I'd appreciate any honest and reflective responses.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3501&start=0#p25106
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What do you like in MMORPGs?
User: Kytaari / DateTime: 2011-10-31 14:34:00

[quote="Afterward"]I played some Puzzle Pirates back in the day, and I played some Spiral Knights when it first came out. What I really liked in both games was watching people engaging with/defining an artificial society (especially the economic and linguistic aspects), and working together with strangers to fight crazy monsters.[/quote]
Yes, this sounds far more thoughtful and interesting than the majority of the MMOs I've played. Maybe I should look more into these sort of games in regards to graphical virtual worlds.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3513&start=0#p25107
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Is IF a game or a story?
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2011-10-31 14:52:27

I'm not exactly a regular, so maybe what someone else says will carry more weight with you.  Personally, I think you should just do what you want, and not worry too much about what your audience wants.  My WIP is (mostly) inventoryless and puzzleless.

For example, Lock & Key is one big puzzle, and there are a lot of other "one big puzzle" games.  OTOH, Alabaster is very story-heavy; the only puzzle is "how do I find other possible endings?" (incidentally, Emily Short is very good at writing this sort of game -- just look at Galatea -- but she's also quite good at writing balanced games with a little of both).  AMFV is a good example of a story-heavy game which is not exclusively story-based.

If you try to balance puzzles and story, you may appeal to more people, but each half may end up shallower because of it.  OTOH it is quite possible to interweave puzzles and story well (cf. Bronze), but IMHO it's more challenging because you need to balance them.

TL;DR: IF is a wide field; you can get away with a lot.  Don't worry too much about not having the right "balance" of puzzles and story.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3513&start=0#p25108
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Is IF a game or a story?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-31 14:57:35

[quote="Kytaari"]I kind of have a feeling this question might have been asked a lot[...][/quote]

Yeah. [emote]:)[/emote] I'm sure someone will chime in with that quote about the crossword puzzle at some point ... [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote]Do you think being an IF writer is more like being a writer or being a game designer?[/quote]

Like most folks plodding around in IF, I wear all three hats: writer, designer, and programmer. I'm a crappy, utterly unqualified, kludgy, clumsy, confused programmer. I'm a competent, professional game designer. I'm a kickass game writer. I play to my strengths on large projects, challenge my weaknesses on small ones.

[quote]I'm beginning to wonder just how necessary very refined puzzles are to this medium.[/quote]

Puzzle design is distinct from game design. You seem to be conflating them a bit.

[quote]Do you think there are some situations where statistics may be necessary to convey a good idea or provide framework for a very interesting puzzle?[/quote]

There are some good ideas and interesting puzzles which directly involve statistics. So for those, yes. For others, no. Replace the word "statistics" with words like "hats" or "pomegranates" or "color-coded key cards" and it's the same question with the same answer.

[quote][...] whether IF should be seen more as a game or a story.[/quote]

It's a medium all its own, and it's most likely to excel when it's approached that way, I think. Evoking other things is fine and fun, but game-scenario includes everything "story" could ever hope to be, and more. IF games are (usually) scenario-based, so they're games that soar above story.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2859&start=20#p25109
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The perfect crime is a "thought crime".
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-31 14:57:50

[quote="IF noob"][quote="AaronP"]I [b]do not[/b] think the constitution is enough to protect children. Children require special considerations that aren't addressed in the constitution, so it's a bit inadequate in that regard.[/quote]
I just don't see what's so special about them.
Children are just smaller versions of adults with under developed minds.
For instance:
Film a flirtatious adult in a skimpy bikini and get famous from the Internet.
Film a flirtatious child in a one piece bathing suit and go to prison for a few days along with paying a hefty fine.[/quote]

You're kiddding right? You can't look at a child, and see the difference between them, and full grown adults?

"Film a flirtatious child in a one piece bathing suit and go to prison for a few days along with paying a hefty fine."

This statement depends...are you filming a little girl who is being flirtatious, or are you purposly trying to film a flirtatious little girl with a knowing mind of what you're trying to achieve?

one is catching a little girls nature, which of course should be immediatly addressed by parents or guardian, the other is an act of perversity. One that should be punished.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2859&start=20#p25110
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The perfect crime is a "thought crime".
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-31 15:04:00

[quote="bcressey"][quote="IF noob"]That's why George W. Bush signed the Protect Act of 2003 because children weren't constitutionally protected from people who would exploit their sexuality.

Are children so much more special than adults they would need legal protection?[/quote]

Hang on. Are you - are you [i]questioning[/i] George W. Bush? One of the greatest Republican presidents since Ronald Reagan?

I'm all for a little free speech around the edges, but let's not get carried away.[/quote]

hahah, Goerge w Bush, and his father are my enemies! haha...and bill clinton...and hillory clinton...and probably obama...hhaa.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3513&start=0#p25111
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Is IF a game or a story?
User: Kytaari / DateTime: 2011-10-31 15:15:32

Thank you very much. I think these were very good responses. 

I have been feeling insecure about myself, and maybe puzzles aren't really an element of game design as I once thought they were. I do admit I have a tendency to try and classify everything, so maybe this can easily make me feel mixed-up and confused [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

I see myself wearing the same three hats as you, Ghalev, and in the same proportions too. I think the puzzles in my story mix very well with my narrative, but I don't consider myself somebody good with physics are with numbers.

I do believe interactivity is necessary to some extent in this medium, but the ideas in my story will probably be my strong point. I don't see myself designing brutal puzzles, but something more akin to problems that need to solved in different phases of a long situation. I do think a score system would provide some of my stories with interesting features [emote]:)[/emote]

I'll stick to what I think I'm good at, and try and make myself decent at everything else. Maybe I just got too worked up over nothing; that happens to me quite a bit. What you said about IF being scenario based really struck a chord with me, because I kind of saw the medium in the same light, without being able to express this concept into words. Maybe that's one of the things I really find alluring about it, but who knows.

So I guess I'll just stick to my script [emote]:)[/emote] Ghalev, you told me that IF is a medium of it's own, and shouldn't be classified as either a "game" or "story," but this leaves me wondering just what the implications of its artistic rules means. Perhaps everyone here's still trying to find the answer to that one, so I won't expect a full-blown answer. Still, I'd appreciate hearing any opinions on this. I'll try approaching the medium this way from now on, instead of trying to draw clear dilineations between other mediums like novels and video games which are still a little different.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3513&start=0#p25112
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Is IF a game or a story?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-31 15:33:56

[quote]Ghalev, you told me that IF [...] shouldn't be classified as either a "game" or "story,"[/quote]

I said no such thing. [emote]:([/emote]

But anyway, good luck with your game, be sure and post for testers when it's time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3513&start=0#p25113
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Is IF a game or a story?
User: Kytaari / DateTime: 2011-10-31 15:38:00

[quote="Ghalev"][quote]Ghalev, you told me that IF [...] shouldn't be classified as either a "game" or "story,"[/quote]

I said no such thing. [emote]:([/emote][/quote]
Sorry, maybe I misinterpreted your words. You seemed to tell me IF was a medium of itself, and I extended it to mean this. You also said it should be approached that way when crafting your story that way, so I guess, from that, I construed this.

Maybe you mean it's both?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3513&start=0#p25114
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Is IF a game or a story?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-31 15:40:18

[quote="Kytaari"]You seemed to tell me IF was a medium of itself[/quote]

That's correct.

[quote], and I extended it to mean this.[/quote]

Yes, you did. To clarify my position on "classifying:" Those who can, do. Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach, teach gym. Those who can't teach gym, classify and theorize.

I was talking (entirely) about making stuff, and approaches to making stuff. I only classify things when I'm feeling under the weather, but today I'm pretty healthy [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3501&start=0#p25115
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What do you like in MMORPGs?
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-10-31 15:41:28

I've been hooked on [i]World of Warcraft[/i] for years and while it doesn't seem as much fun now as it used to be, it's still head and shoulders above everything else on the MMO market... mainly because everything else on the MMO market is a poor man's copy of [i]WoW[/i].

What appeals to me mainly about MMOs is the massive amount of things there are to do in the game, compared to your average solo-player game. In [i]WoW[/i], I can do run dungeons, raids, battlegrounds, solo quests, level up my professions, grind out some rep with various factions, even run old content for those ever elusive mounts which never ever ever ever seem to drop for me. You can, literally, play an MMO for years and still never see everything it has to offer.

And soon I'll be able to play a kung fu panda which is seriously cool in the most uncool way I can think.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3501&start=0#p25116
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What do you like in MMORPGs?
User: Kytaari / DateTime: 2011-10-31 15:45:15

[quote="David Whyld"]I've been hooked on [i]World of Warcraft[/i] for years and while it doesn't seem as much fun now as it used to be, it's still head and shoulders above everything else on the MMO market... mainly because everything else on the MMO market is a poor man's copy of [i]WoW[/i].

What appeals to me mainly about MMOs is the massive amount of things there are to do in the game, compared to your average solo-player game. In [i]WoW[/i], I can do run dungeons, raids, battlegrounds, solo quests, level up my professions, grind out some rep with various factions, even run old content for those ever elusive mounts which never ever ever ever seem to drop for me. You can, literally, play an MMO for years and still never see everything it has to offer.

And soon I'll be able to play a kung fu panda which is seriously cool in the most uncool way I can think.[/quote]
Yeah, I can relate to this a lot. It's still a mystery to me why single-player games just have never reached this kind of stage of content complexity. I like having a lot of stuff to do, as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=10#p25117
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-10-31 15:50:36

The release of Ectocomp is nigh!  This year we have at least 8 games.  However, some authors on the ADRIFT Forum have expressed that they still wish to write something, but missed the deadline.  I have offered an extension, if there is sufficient interest.  If there is interest here, as well, for an extension, just let me know.

Update on this situation coming soon!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3513&start=0#p25118
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Is IF a game or a story?
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-10-31 16:43:24

I've seen this subject covered both in different forums and different languages, but I've always found a common conception (or is it a mis-conception?) where it's taken for granted that IF is a medium in which interaction is in permanent struggle against story-telling... and interactivity equals puzzle-solving and story-telling equals linnearity.

I'm sorry I can't extend on this, but I'm trying to finish a WIP which should have been out in time to Halloween (and now I hope will be released just a few days after, if nothing goes horribly wrong! ^_^'). My point, in short, is that IF as a medium should aspire to be the tangible proof that the former equation is not an absolute and immutable truth at all.

Good luck with your project!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3513&start=0#p25119
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Is IF a game or a story?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-31 16:47:39

[quote="rockersuke"]IF as a medium should aspire to be the tangible proof that the former equation is not an absolute and immutable truth at all.[/quote]

Nicely said [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3513&start=0#p25120
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Is IF a game or a story?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-10-31 16:49:30

[quote="Ghalev"]Those who can, do. Those who can't do, teach.[/quote]
That phrase always annoys me*. Yes, being able to teach something requires a different skill set than being able to do it does, but in my experience it also helps if you can do what you're teaching. I'm a music teacher and I constantly work on my craft. I believe that by becoming a better musician I'll also become a better teacher.

[size=85]* Yes, I do realise that the phrase usually is used for comedic effect, and that people saying it usually don't mean it. It still annoys me.[/size]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3513&start=10#p25121
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Is IF a game or a story?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-31 17:12:56

[quote="Trumgottist"]That phrase always annoys me[/quote]

That tingle means it's working [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote]Yes, I do realise that the phrase usually is used for comedic effect[/quote]

Excellent.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=10#p25122
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-10-31 17:17:03

I wouldn't mind a small extension. I finally got something reasonable to compile--I have about an hour and a half left of programming time, but I'd like it to count. I, uh, thought the deadline was the 31st.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=10#p25123
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-31 17:37:17

[quote="bowsmand"]Deadline for entries will be October 30th at midnight.  This way people can start playing on Hallowe'en if they so wish.[/quote]

This makes sense. It's Halloween; Halloween games would be cool [emote]:)[/emote]

(extensions are fine, too, but it would still be nice to try the finished games on the holiday ...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3498&start=10#p25124
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple Chat V4
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-10-31 18:01:48

The whole rulebooks thing is a little confusing at first.

The most used rulebooks to do with actions are (in the order they are run through by Inform):

1) Before
2) Instead
3) Check
4) Carry out
5) After
6) Report

Instead and after rules by default stop the action:
that is, writing an instead or after rule (unless it explicitly tells the game to "continue the action;") means that no more rules concerning that action will be considered.
The other rulebooks do not stop the action by default.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=10#p25125
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-31 18:16:30

I missed the deadline AND exceeded the programming time by, like, a lot. I'll probably release my game in the next couple of weeks (or just after the IFComp voting deadline) as a sort of annex. 

(I also thought the deadline was the 31st, but it wouldn't have mattered.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3387&start=0#p25126
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Game Announcement: Plan DSDS From Practice Space
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-10-31 18:19:32

I bought one! Nice package! [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3501&start=0#p25127
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What do you like in MMORPGs?
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-10-31 18:40:41

What I used to like about WoW - killing bosses. Preferably before others did. Getting 40 (or 25, later) friends to perform an elephant ballet. That was a cool time, though I wouldn't like to revive it, for the sake of my real life.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3513&start=10#p25128
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Is IF a game or a story?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-31 18:52:26

[quote="Kytaari"]I like this medium, but I don't see myself as extraordinary at building puzzles, and I think my strong point is my skill in ideas and written exposition. I think I can take advantage of this medium's interactive element by designing non-linear investigation that could tell a very interesting story, but I'm beginning to wonder just how necessary very refined puzzles are to this medium.[/quote]

You've probably gathered something like this from the other responses, but for my money, refined puzzles are not at all necessary. I like a good puzzle, and really like a great puzzle.* But I really like a game with a good story, and there's nothing more frustrating then a game with an interesting story that suddenly grinds to a screeching halt because I didn't think to frobozz the grue, or because I didn't mention the magic topic to the Keeper Of The Plot Trigger. (Well, you can make it more frustrating if I had to frobozz the grue fifty turns ago, and more frustrating still if there are no available hints.) 

So, if puzzles aren't your thing, leave them out. And some things that you think aren't puzzling may be. Your beta testers will tell you about that.

*Definition: A puzzle is good if, when I read the solution in the hints, I slap my head and say "Why didn't I think of that? That's clever."
A puzzle is great if I can solve it myself.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3514&start=0#p25130
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Filtering and picking a random row from a table
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-10-31 19:33:16

So the manual says you can do something like this:

choose a random row in my table

My question is, say my table has a column called foo, which contains a number. How can I select a random row in the table with a specified value of foo. I.e. something like this:

chose a random row in my table where foo is 1

(which obviously doesn't compile, or I wouldn't be asking the question).

So any ideas on how to pick a random row, but with some precondition on which row you pick?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3513&start=10#p25131
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Is IF a game or a story?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-31 20:33:06

[quote="matt w"]A puzzle is great if I can solve it myself.[/quote]

Amen to that [emote]:)[/emote] For me, more specifically, a puzzle is great if it leads me through three stages with very careful timing for each:

(A) Ah, a conundrum! At last, a worthy foe! I will now study it to learn its parameters![Pretty Brief]
(B) Damn ... damn ... I have no idea ... gah ... lost ... hopeless ... [Longer than A, but still preferably briefish]
(C) EUREKA! BEHOLD MY AWESOME COSMIC STUDLINESS!!! [Duration equal to underwear-clad victory lap around the living room, high-fives to nearby stuffed animals, etc]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3498&start=10#p25132
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple Chat V4
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-10-31 21:00:48

Thanks, I'm learning quite a lot from you guys. I was able to progress the story quite a bit..make some actions that worked without getting helpm, except they're simple..

I got the player to have to go to sleep before having a second conversation with tia, and being able to leave her house, but I can't quite seem to get the last conversation piece to link to the conversation..

[code]chat-TiaWhatsWrong is a chat node.  chat-TiaWhatAreYouGoingToDo is a chat node.  chat-TiaTalkToTiaMore is a chat node.
chat-TiaWhatsWrong is sc-inactive. chat-TiaWhatAreYouGoingToDo is sc-inactive. chat-TiaTalkToTiaMore is sc-active.

Report giving link to chat-TiaWhatsWrong: instead say "what's wrong!?".
Report giving text for chat-TiaWhatsWrong: instead say "I was upstairs when all of a sudden I heard some rustling downstairs. I came down to check it out, and to my surprise an imp was taking off with some of my flowers! I chased it through the kitchen a bit, and finally out the door.".	
	carry out finding responses to chat-TiaWhatsWrong:  now chat-TiaWhatsWrong is sc-inactive; now chat-TiaWhatAreYouGoingToDo is sc-active; link to chat-TiaWhatAreYouGoingToDo; try finding responses to chat-HelloTia instead.
	
Report giving link to chat-TiaWhatAreYouGoingToDo: instead say "What are you going to do?".
Report giving text for chat-TiaWhatAreYouGoingToDo: instead say "Tia looks at you plainly and says 'nothing. It's not the first time this has happened here in town. The imp has actually been causing quite a disturbance within the village lately. We know that he's coming from within the kraven forest, because people have seen him retreat there after being chased away by some of the villagers.'".
	carry out finding responses to chat-TiaWhatsWrong: link to chat-TiaTalkToTiaMore; now chat-TiaTalkToTiaMore is sc-active;  try finding responses to chat-HelloTia instead.
	
Report giving link to chat-TiaTalkToTiaMore: instead say "Talk to tia more.".
Report giving text for chat-TiaTalkToTiaMore: instead say "Tia, and Esher carried on a conversation that went well into the the morning's day. 'You should probably go explore town Tia said. It might be a good idea for you to get to know some people, and possibly find some answers you may be looking for.' she then sighed 'I doubt you'll find any information too useful though. It is a small village tucked in the back of the kingdoms forest.' Esher though about it for a moment, and spoke in agreement 'You're right. If I want to get out of here I've got to start somewhere..'".
	carry out finding responses to chat-TiaTalkToTiaMore: now CanLeaveTia's is true; try finding responses to chat-HelloTia instead.[/code]

for some reason talk to Tia more doesn't come up in the options to pick from...I've looked over the code, but I can't figure out why..It looks right to me, lol.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3514&start=0#p25133
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Filtering and picking a random row from a table
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2011-10-31 21:55:34

Try this:
[code]Sort the table of whatever in random order;
If the interesting foo is a foo listed in the table of whatever:
	(the row is chosen within this scope)
Otherwise:
	(the interesting foo does not occur at all)
[/code]

Obviously, this has the side-effect of reordering the table.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=10#p25134
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-10-31 21:56:41

So far, the competition has turned out 9 entries-- the biggest Ectocomp yet!

I believe the .zip should be attached in this post?  Okay, tested.  Works for me!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3514&start=0#p25135
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Filtering and picking a random row from a table
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-10-31 22:05:35

So, if I understand this correct, that'll pick the first row with "interesting foo", but because we shuffled the list first, it won't be the same one every time. Nice! Thanks.

On the other hand, it doesn't seem terribly efficient to shuffle a table and then search it for a value, but I guess since the table is likely to be small, it's not too much of a big deal.

I guess the final option, although it's a bit of a pain to code, is to keep a separate table for each value of foo and just switch to a different table based on foo (maybe even have another table to act as an index). 

I.e. something like this:
[code]
table of index
foo   table
1      foo-table-1
2      foo-table-2

table of foo-table-1
bar
"blah, blah, blah"
"yadda, yadda, yadda"

table of foo-table-2
bar
"etc, etc, etc"
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3492&start=0#p25136
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Updated Adventure Family Tree - any interest?
User: NathanaelCulver / DateTime: 2011-10-31 22:52:35

Putting the finishing touches on. So far I've got 96 versions, ports and translations, more than 4.5x Dalenberg's, but I'm sure I don't have them all. I [i]am[/i] sure I have 96 errors and ommissons, however, so additions and corrections will be welcome.

So I'm looking for a good home for my little pet -- plenty of food and water and loving attention. Any suggestions?

--Nathanael

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=10#p25137
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-10-31 22:53:28

Will the games be made available in unzipped versions, or online? I don't really trust Spatterlight with ADRIFT 5 games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=10#p25138
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-10-31 23:18:43

[quote="bowsmand"]I believe the .zip should be attached in this post?  Okay, tested.  Works for me![/quote]

Works here, too; thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2917&start=20#p25139
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Plugs and Sockets by Sean Turner
User: BigBonsai / DateTime: 2011-10-31 23:25:40

[quote="EmacsUser"]Er, I mean awaiting feedback from you...[/quote]
 [emote]:lol:[/emote] I am sorry... I was obviously tired. *smacking head against wall*

Is on the way... 


BiB

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3514&start=0#p25140
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Filtering and picking a random row from a table
User: faiuwle / DateTime: 2011-11-01 00:33:29

If your randomly selected values are strings, it might be neater to just have one string per foo, but have that string be one with lots of "[one of]...[or]...[or]...[in random order]".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=20#p25142
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2011-11-01 02:06:26

The archive seems to be missing my game's walkthrough (didn't I send it?), but in any case, I've posted it at [url]http://www.yllr.net/if/orient_express/[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3515&start=0#p25143
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Dead Hotel Soundtrack - Night of the Undead (Halloween)
User: Comazombie / DateTime: 2011-11-01 02:07:20

Dead Hotel Soundtrack - Night of the Undead (Halloween 11 Version)

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJfCMA0kDCY">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJfCMA0kDCY</a>

Little bonus music for my CYOA game Dead Hotel to listen on Youtube only. No update, just an extra feelie made in occasion of Halloween.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=20#p25144
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-11-01 02:50:37

[quote="matt w"]Will the games be made available in unzipped versions, or online? I don't really trust Spatterlight with ADRIFT 5 games.[/quote]

I don't think it's possible to trust or distrust Spatterlight, since it can't actually open ADRIFT 5 games [emote]:)[/emote]

Until there's a terp for Macs, I'm in a bad place with Adrift 5. The online runner produces output I find really hard to read or follow. I usually play offline by text-to-speech, which I can't do with most of this year's Adrift 5 ectocrop.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3514&start=0#p25145
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Filtering and picking a random row from a table
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-11-01 03:40:25

[quote="wjousts"]On the other hand, it doesn't seem terribly efficient to shuffle a table and then search it for a value, but I guess since the table is likely to be small, it's not too much of a big deal.[/quote]
The more efficient solution is probably to have two tables, A and B, and use the following algorithm:

* Empty B.
* Repeat through A; if value of the column is foo, copy line to B.
* Choose a random row from B.

This way you won't have to do any sorting, and you will not change the order of A (if that is important to you).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=240#p25146
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-11-01 04:30:10

Hey, figured I'd add to the hellos. I'm Jb. 25 from a small island, called Grand Manan...it's in New Brunswick Canada, haha. I couldn't be tucked any farther away, unless I lived on Nantucket, or on great duck, which are small islands off the coast of Grand Manan, haha.

ahh, I love IF..

The first IF game I can ever remember playing, was the Hugo series, back when our first computer ran on Dos. I loved those games. I'm not sure if that even counts as IF or not, but they were great. I loved hugo house of horrors, and who done it, I think was the other one in the series...also the one in the jungle where you have to save penelope or what ever her name was...

other than text graphic games I loved point and click....Some of the kings quest games are legendary!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=240#p25147
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-11-01 05:31:03

[quote="InterFiction"]Some of the kings quest games are legendary![/quote]
That'd be KQ7, then.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3089&start=10#p25148
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Allow unregistered users to search
User: IF noob / DateTime: 2011-11-01 05:45:19

[quote="Juhana"]phpBB's search is practically useless anyway, so I'd just direct people to use Google (adding site:intfiction.org searches only this site) or install a custom Google search widget.[/quote]
[size=150]A Search Box on Your Website[/size]

You can place a powerful Startingpage search box on your own website. Simply follow the instructions below:
[size=150][b]Ground rules[/b][/size]

[list]Don't imply that Startingpage endorses or has a relationship with your website.
Don't put Startingpage Search on a tasteless site. (Startingpage's judgment.)
You may "frame" Startingpage's searches if the entire Startingpage page is displayed unaltered!
By placing the Startingpage Search Box on your Website, you agree to our [url=https://startingpage.com/eng/terms-and-conditions.html]Terms and Conditions[/url].[/list:u]

[url=https://startingpage.com/eng/link-instructions.html][b]CLICK HERE[/b][/url] FOR DETAILS.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3159&start=0#p25149
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Announcing Spring Thing 2012
User: evouga / DateTime: 2011-11-01 05:53:41

Excellent. I've always liked the Spring Thing: the average quality of the games is usually high and the number of entries low enough that I can play them all without being overwhelmed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3516&start=0#p25151
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Currency
User: EthanHam / DateTime: 2011-11-01 08:03:16

Is there a currency built into Inform 7 or available via an extension? It seems like there must be, but I can't find one. 

I'm looking for something that allows attributing a cost to items and manages the player's bankroll (deducting when taking an item, preventing taking an item that can be afforded, etc.).

I'll put together an extension and share it if this isn't already available, but want to save myself the effort if it already exists.

Ethan

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3516&start=0#p25154
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Currency
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-01 09:17:20

It's certainly not built-in, and I can't recall hearing of any Inform 7 extension to the purpose (nor find one on the extensions site). 

(There is a "Money" library extension for Inform 6, though.)

If you do go ahead and write an extension, I suppose it would be nice if it could easily be customized so that the end author could choose the name of his currency (dollars, euros, yuan, pounds, dubloons, gold pieces, credits, galleons, cash, or whatever) and, if the extension handles systems with several units (dollars and cents; pounds, shillings, and pence; galleons, sickles, and knuts), determine the exchange rate between the units.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3514&start=0#p25155
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Filtering and picking a random row from a table
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-01 09:24:23

You can do the same thing without an extra table, also in O(N) time:

1. Count the number of matching rows in your table.

2. Pick a random number from 1 to the count.

3. Loop through your table again, until the count matches the random number you picked.

It's not as Informish, but it's still relatively quick and doesn't use much memory.

But in practical terms, sorting in Inform is very fast. After all, how often do you have more than a couple dozen rows in your table? I wouldn't expect to see a noticeable difference in speed. If anyone decides to benchmark it, please let me know the results!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3513&start=10#p25156
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Is IF a game or a story?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-01 09:32:53

[quote="Ghalev"](A) Ah, a conundrum! At last, a worthy foe! I will now study it to learn its parameters![Pretty Brief]
(B) Damn ... damn ... I have no idea ... gah ... lost ... hopeless ... [Longer than A, but still preferably briefish]
(C) EUREKA! BEHOLD MY AWESOME COSMIC STUDLINESS!!! [Duration equal to underwear-clad victory lap around the living room, high-fives to nearby stuffed animals, etc][/quote]
Would you be my beta-tester please?  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3517&start=0#p25157
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [i7] Abbreviated nouns with periods
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-11-01 10:09:01

There is a building in my WIP called 'St. Christopher House'. That is its proper name, so matters of opinion as to whether it is desirable to expand 'St.' into 'Saint' are not really relevant: this is an attempt to depict the reality of a particular Toronto geography, so I need to spell it as it is written on the actual building. But Inform 7 won't accept names with periods in them. I can give it the appearance of having the correct name with...

The printed name of Saint Christopher House is "St. Christopher House".

...but the player can't refer to it that way, and when I try a line like...

Understand "St. Christopher House" as Saint Christopher House.

...i7 rejects that too, saying punctuation isn't allowed there. I also tried using a text substitution that references a period without any line break, like so...

Understand "St[dot] Christopher House" as Saint Christopher House.

...but i7 didn't like that either, says it was unable to understand what I meant by the grammar token 'dot'.

I am at a personal dead-end in getting this building to respond to the player as it should. Any ideas that do not involved renaming the building to my own or i7's tastes, since that's not really an option here?

Thanks for any light you could shed,

Paul.

P.S. This is also an issue that comes up when trying to refer to churches by their proper legal names.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3519&start=0#p25159
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: looking for beta testers
User: djmeister / DateTime: 2011-11-01 10:23:33

hi, i would like to know if i could interest some of you in a little beta testing for my new interactive fiction. the short description of the game would be: 

The Dragonkins Inheritance by djmeister
English language fantasy/science fiction in beta stage requesting gametesters and proofreaders

Author's blurb

Genre: Science Fantasy and Exploration

Plays like: classic Infocom

status: complete except for a short piece of intro (which is included as non interactive text at the moment)

Difficulty (according to testers): advanced to expert


thx and lg, stefan

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3517&start=0#p25160
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] Abbreviated nouns with periods
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-01 10:27:01

As far as understanding the period properly goes, have you tried Emily Short's Puncutation Removal extension? It seems as though the "Abbreviation" example is the sort of thing you need.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3517&start=0#p25161
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] Abbreviated nouns with periods
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-11-01 10:31:22

Thanks Matt, I haven't tried it. I will check it out. Hate to add an extension just for this -- hopefully I can just hack what I need out of it.

P.S. There were typos in my original examples above, now corrected.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=240#p25162
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-11-01 10:44:24

[quote] I'm Jb. 25 from a small island, called Grand Manan...it's in New Brunswick Canada, haha.[/quote]

I visited the Maritimes a few years ago.  I didn't get to Grand Manan -- spent most of my time on PEI, but I guess its in the general neighborhood.  Had a great time -- lots of good food and good music, with good beer to wash it all down.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3425&start=0#p25163
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: i7 equivalent to i6 'box' statement?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-11-01 10:45:43

I didn't end up using this method for my playtester's note: the text grew too large and I ended up having to blast it into the main scroll area, followed by a Yes/No question and then the the proper start of the game. Ah, well. I should have predicted I'd bust the comfortable confines of the box with my interminable verbiage. 87

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3517&start=0#p25170
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] Abbreviated nouns with periods
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-01 11:02:44

If you don't want to add the extension, I think you will at least need to duplicate the relevant parts of it. The I7 parser is somewhat hostile to punctuation currently.

I have high hopes that Ron Newcomb's translation of the parser into I7 will lead to a new renaissance in this area, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2917&start=20#p25173
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Plugs and Sockets by Sean Turner
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-11-01 12:08:06

No worries.  I'm glad we have a lead now.  For the future you might want to check whether your spam filter settings allow notification e-mails from <a href="mailto:bugs_noreply@inform7.com">bugs_noreply@inform7.com</a>.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3517&start=0#p25174
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] Abbreviated nouns with periods
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-11-01 12:18:45

[quote="capmikee"]If you don't want to add the extension, I think you will at least need to duplicate the relevant parts of it. The I7 parser is somewhat hostile to punctuation currently.

I have high hopes that Ron Newcomb's translation of the parser into I7 will lead to a new renaissance in this area, though.[/quote]
I never want to add an extension, because they almost always solve more than I need solved. Particularly since there are many IF command conventions that I disagree with and prefer blocked; thus I don't need any code that serves to keep those command options open.

So I will probably either do exactly as you suggest, or rejig the geography so that the protagonist doesn't actually come anywhere near St. Christopher House. It's not an important landmark to me; it just happens to sit prominently on a street corner I am using.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=240#p25175
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-11-01 12:21:19

You went to an island, ate lots of food and drank beer. That's a fucking twisted story. You're one dark and edgy dude.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3516&start=0#p25176
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Currency
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-11-01 12:23:31

There's no extension for this, but there are [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rdoc71.html]several examples in the Recipe Book[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3517&start=0#p25177
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] Abbreviated nouns with periods
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-01 12:39:45

[quote]I never want to add an extension[/quote]

Then you should definitely download the extension and figure out how it does what it does. :)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3520&start=0#p25178
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: A tool to help think about puzzle design
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-01 12:44:48

I don't mean designing individual puzzles, but designing how puzzles fit together in your game.

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/plotex/">http://eblong.com/zarf/plotex/</a>

I threw this together to help me visualize Hadean Lands structure. Well, not "visualize" -- it's not a visual tool. But explore.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2859&start=20#p25179
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The perfect crime is a "thought crime".
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-11-01 13:03:30

[quote="InterFiction"]hahah, Goerge w Bush, and his father are my enemies! haha...and bill clinton...and hillory clinton...and probably obama...hhaa.[/quote]

And yet despite all those formidable enemies, it is spelling that is your arch-nemesis. You're the only person I know who has managed to misspell an onomatopoeia. What's your secret?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3517&start=0#p25180
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] Abbreviated nouns with periods
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-11-01 13:11:02

[quote="zarf"]Then you should definitely download the extension and figure out how it does what it does. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
Yep. I will try that first. 8)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2859&start=20#p25181
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The perfect crime is a "thought crime".
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-01 13:18:38

I didn't interpret that as a misspelling! I think it's the hoarse wheezing sound made by laughing so hard you can't breathe. I'm intimately familiar with that sound because I make it every time I read your posts, Jacek.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3517&start=0#p25182
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] Abbreviated nouns with periods
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-11-01 13:24:33

If it's only this one word, you could replace "st." with "saint" (or "st") before the game parses the command.

[code]After reading a command:
	let T be indexed text; 
	let T be the player's command; 
	replace the text "st." in T with "saint";
	change the text of the player's command to T.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3473&start=0#p25183
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Fourth Round of IFComp 2011 Updates
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-11-01 13:26:14

[quote="Sargent"]For the fourth update, the games A Comedy of Error Messages (originally Elfen Maiden)[/quote]

If you keep this up, my 2012 entry will be named _A Comedy of Updates_.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3517&start=0#p25184
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] Abbreviated nouns with periods
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-01 13:57:09

Way exceeding my competence here, but my guess is that like you can get what you want from Punctuation Removal like this:

[spoiler][code]To resolve punctuated titles:
	(- DeTitler(); players_command = 100 + WordCount(); -)

Include (- 

[ Detitler i j buffer_length flag; 

#ifdef TARGET_ZCODE;
	buffer_length = buffer->1+(WORDSIZE-1);
#endif;
#ifdef TARGET_GLULX;
	buffer_length = (buffer-->0)+(WORDSIZE-1);
#endif; 
	for (i = WORDSIZE : i <= buffer_length: i++)
	{ 
		if ((buffer->i) == '.' && (i > WORDSIZE + 1)) 
		{ 
			! flag if the period follows Mr, Mrs, Dr, prof, rev, or st
			!
			! This is hackish, but our hearts are pure
			
			if ((buffer->(i-1)=='r') && (buffer->(i-2)=='m') && ((buffer->(i-3)==' ') || ((i-3) < WORDSIZE))) flag = 1;
			if ((buffer->(i-1)=='r') && (buffer->(i-2)=='d') && ((buffer->(i-3)==' ') || ((i-3) < WORDSIZE))) flag = 1;
			if ((buffer->(i-1)=='t') && (buffer->(i-2)=='s') && ((buffer->(i-3)==' ') || ((i-3) < WORDSIZE))) flag = 1;
			if ((buffer->(i-1)=='s') && (buffer->(i-2)=='r') && (buffer->(i-3)=='m') && ((buffer->(i-4)==' ') || ((i-4) < WORDSIZE))) flag = 1;
			if ((buffer->(i-1)=='v') && (buffer->(i-2)=='e') && (buffer->(i-3)=='r') && ((buffer->(i-4)==' ') || ((i-4) < WORDSIZE))) flag = 1;
			if ((buffer->(i-1)=='f') && (buffer->(i-2)=='o') && (buffer->(i-3)=='r') && (buffer->(i-4)=='p') && ((buffer->(i-5)==' ') || ((i-5) < WORDSIZE))) flag = 1;
			if (flag) buffer->i = ' ';   
		}
	}
	VM_Tokenise(buffer, parse);
]; 

-) 


After reading a command:
	resolve punctuated titles.[/code][/spoiler]

At an even wilder guess, if "st." is the only title you need to resolve, you can probably do this:

[spoiler][code]To resolve punctuated titles:
	(- DeTitler(); players_command = 100 + WordCount(); -)

Include (- 

[ Detitler i j buffer_length flag; 

#ifdef TARGET_ZCODE;
	buffer_length = buffer->1+(WORDSIZE-1);
#endif;
#ifdef TARGET_GLULX;
	buffer_length = (buffer-->0)+(WORDSIZE-1);
#endif; 
	for (i = WORDSIZE : i <= buffer_length: i++)
	{ 
		if ((buffer->i) == '.' && (i > WORDSIZE + 1)) 
		{ 
			! flag if the period follows st
			!
			! This is hackish, but our hearts are pure
			
			if ((buffer->(i-1)=='t') && (buffer->(i-2)=='s') && ((buffer->(i-3)==' ') || ((i-3) < WORDSIZE))) flag = 1;
			if (flag) buffer->i = ' ';   
		}
	}
	VM_Tokenise(buffer, parse);
]; 

-) 


After reading a command:
	resolve punctuated titles.[/code][/spoiler]

Juhana's solution is surely nicer, but this might work if you don't want to use indexed text.

I do like being able to enter multiple commands on the same line, but it does not work well with titles. Perhaps this is another reflection of Inform's British origins.

(BTW, you don't have to download this extension; it's built-in.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3520&start=0#p25185
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: A tool to help think about puzzle design
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-01 13:58:32

Saw this earlier today -- it looks great.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3520&start=0#p25186
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: A tool to help think about puzzle design
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-01 14:46:43

To the extent that I understand it, it looks awesome.

It's probably awesome far, far past that extent as well [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3521&start=0#p25187
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Creating dictionary words in I7
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-01 14:46:59

In Inform 6, you can do things like this:
[code]global foo = 'bar';[/code]

I.e. you can create a new dictionary word out of the blue (without it being a name of an object or a property, without putting it in a grammar line, or anything) and assign it to any handy variable.

Is that possible in Inform 7? (And if so, how so?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2859&start=20#p25188
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The perfect crime is a "thought crime".
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-01 15:41:26

Sweden has pretty strict censorship laws on this particular issue. Last year a Swedish manga collector and translator was convicted of committing an offence against the Swedish law against child pornography -- for owning lolicon manga images. (He was fined some 800 US dollars.)

Apparently, the case is now to be decided in the Supreme Court of Sweden.

Swedish law does not make any distinction between photos or drawings (whether from a model or not) that depict underage people (i.e. people that look under 18 years of age) engaged in sexual activities. Actually, it would be illegal not only to own these mangas in Sweden but even to look at them at all. 

Written works, however, are not censored. So, Nabokov's "Lolita" and Casanova's autobiography are OK as written, while illustrated editions might well be illegal. (I don't know if there is much AIF with graphics -- it sounds like a pretty obvious idea --, but if there is, some of it is pretty much bound to be illegal on a Swedish server.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3521&start=0#p25189
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Creating dictionary words in I7
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-01 15:47:57

Would that be the same as saying this?

[code]Understand "bar" as "[foo]"[/code]

It sounds like you want two separate things:

1. To be able to create arbitrary dictionary words
2. To have a variable that holds a token

#2 looks like the hard part to me. I think the normal way to do this in I7 would be understanding by relation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3495&start=0#p25192
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Malinche
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-11-01 17:37:44

There's a type of promiscuous women who enjoy to vilify prostitutes. These women see themselves as heroically depraved amateurs who'll have sex with just about anyone for free. They see the prostitutes as vulgar money-grabbing whores who have no respect for the beauty and purity of their promiscuous craft. What these amateurs of promiscuity are not comprehending is the fact that the true heroism of their craft lies not in the act of spreading their legs, but in the act of putting a price tag on their product.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3522&start=0#p25194
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I7] The Muffin Man
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-01 19:18:39

Nine times out of ten, when I think I've found either a bug or a bit of Inform that I don't understand, I write an example to post here, and in the process of writing the example I figure out what I was doing wrong.

This always makes me a little sad, because I try to make my examples cute, and this wastes the effort. Of course, making my examples cute means I'm making them less minimal than they should be to be ideal examples. But that's only because I'm a bad person.

This example has no problems. I thought it did. I was wrong. But dammit, it's cute.

[code]"The Muffin Man"

The Kitchen is a room. "Gleaming stainless-steel and ruthless science collide in this, your temple of culinary achievement. An exit leads north." Rule for printing the name of the Kitchen: say "Utility Muffin Research Kitchen".

The muffin is here. The description of the muffin is "It's a muffin of your own design." Instead of taking the muffin, say "You've positioned it far too nicely to mess with it further. Time to put the icing on it."

The player carries a fully-charged icing anointment utensil. The description of the utensil is "Your piping bag is fully-charged with icing."

Understand "icing bag" and "pastry bag" and "piping bag" and "canvas snoot" and "sterile canvas snoot" and "snoot/bag/icing" as the utensil.

The can't put onto what's not a supporter rule is not listed in the check putting it on rulebook.

Check putting it on:
   if the noun is the utensil and the second noun is the muffin, end the game in victory instead;
   if the second noun is not a supporter, say "Nah." instead;
   
Volume of Things That Work Just Fine

The Break Room is north of the Kitchen. "The only exit leads south."

A dummy is here. It is fixed in place. The dummy can be hostile. The dummy is hostile. The description of the dummy is "The words I HATE YOU are stencilled across the front of the dummy. Because it hates you. And because you stencilled them there. Because it hates you."

Understand "Wail on [something]" as attacking when the muffin is not touchable and the dummy is hostile. [this works cleanly with the two conditions ...]

Understand "Hate [something]" as attacking.

Instead of attacking the dummy, say "You wail on the dummy for a while, making it hate you more."
   
Volume of the Code I Mistakenly Thought Wasn't Working

Understand "ice [something] with [other things]" as putting it on (with nouns reversed) when the muffin is touchable and the dummy is hostile.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3523&start=0#p25195
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: Hyperlinks in Glulx
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-11-01 20:03:43

I'm curious whether Glulx (and its interpreters) allows clickable text links to be used issue commands -- in an I6 game, not I7. This is a standard feature in T3, for instance. You can make the descriptions of the room's exits ("A path leads _north_.") into hyperlinks that, when clicked, will issue a relevant command ('go north').

There's an I6 extension called Markup.h, but I can't quite tell whether it allows this functionality. The documentation on it says:

! By itself, this tag [the a href= tag] is not terribly useful.  It becomes useful only when
! the game has code in it to listen for hyperlink events, in order to attach
! actions to the links.

That seems clear. But I can't find a word in Markup.h about how one would add code to listen for hyperlink events and attach actions to them. So I'm left pretty much in the dark.

I do understand that not all interpreters will support links as a way to enter commands with the mouse. I also understand that Markup.h inconveniently forces one to number the href entities in the anchor tag. That's all okay with me. I'm just wondering, how would I handle the mouse button event?

Or is there another I6/glulx extension that does this, perhaps in a more straightforward way?

Thanks!

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3522&start=0#p25197
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] The Muffin Man
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-01 20:38:25

This example does too have a problem. Why the hell isn't the location Drury Lane?

(I asked my wife how many times I've sung this song in the last week, and she just laughed.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3522&start=0#p25198
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] The Muffin Man
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-11-01 21:21:31

Matt missed the Zappa reference, evidently.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3522&start=0#p25199
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] The Muffin Man
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-01 21:26:11

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Matt missed the Zappa reference, evidently.

--JA[/quote]

Though in fairness, I could have touched on both muffin men at once. Next bug or non-bug ...

(and if Adam Thornton were to listen in, it suddenly becomes [i]also[/i] a James Beard joke, since James Beard was the anti-muffin man)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3495&start=0#p25200
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Malinche
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-01 21:36:05

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]There's a type of promiscuous women who enjoy to vilify prostitutes.[/quote]

Nobody here is taking him to task for selling, though. If anyone here had an issue with just [i]selling,[/i] they would have dogpiled on [i]me [/i]by now (unless they're simply cowed by my enormous flame-red eyebrows).

I assume from your writing that English isn't your first language, but surely you can't be [i]that [/i]confused by the thread.

To extend the prostitution metaphor, if I (or Textfyre or Peter Nepstad, etc) are escorts selling a friendly lay for a few c-notes, Malinche seems to be a diseased madwoman offering handjobs starting at half a million, using her rusty hook-hand with motor oil for lube, complete with promotional quotes from Mae West.

But to properly [i]torture [/i]the metaphor: maybe the feelies are [i]fantastic [/i]:)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3523&start=0#p25201
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Hyperlinks in Glulx
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-01 21:51:37

In I6, you would write a HandleGlkEvent() function which catches event type 8.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3523&start=0#p25202
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Hyperlinks in Glulx
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-11-01 22:11:05

Hmm. Doe has some information on her site about how to use this, but I'm too tired tonight to make sense of it.

It's not entirely clear to me, for example, which of the words in the ev argument one would test to see if it's an event of type 8. Nor is it clear to me how one would find the value of href= in the anchor tag. Nor is it clear how one would then generate an artificial command line input from within HandleGlkEvent.

But as I said, I'm too tired. I'll take a closer look tomorrow. Thanks for the pointer.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3523&start=0#p25203
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Hyperlinks in Glulx
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-11-01 23:06:40

Gull also has discussion, with examples:

<a class="postlink" href="http://adamcadre.ac/gull/index.html">http://adamcadre.ac/gull/index.html</a>

You could probably reverse-engineer the I6 by looking at the Basic Hyperlinks I7 extension.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3495&start=0#p25208
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Malinche
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-11-02 02:02:11

I think you'll find Jacek's just trolling (as per usual). Posting gibberish in the hope of getting a response from someone, and succeeding.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3495&start=0#p25210
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Malinche
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-02 06:55:47

Oh, I expect that, I just don't expect him to botch his grammar so badly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3495&start=10#p25211
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Malinche
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-11-02 07:44:25

<a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Howard-Sherman-Malinche-Entertainment.jpg">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Howar ... inment.jpg</a>

When you people look at this photograph, your feel Schadenfreude, which is convenient as Schadenfreude happens to be your favourite emotion. When I look at it, and see Howard's ugly shirt, cheap pants and insane smile, I feel pity. Then I look at his merchandise and begin to admire his relentless courage. How many of you people have such faith in your interactive fiction, you would rent a booth at the largest gaming convention in North America and stand there for hours on end trying to sell your stuff? The irony, of course, is that while you guys are slurping semen for free, Howard is leading an artistic existence of near-celibacy. This fact amuses you to no end. It's an itch you love to scratch. How about renting a booth at Gen Con and competing with Howard on his own turf?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3529&start=0#p25212
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Parchment update: ifvms.js ZVM new default engine
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-11-02 08:34:47

Hello everyone!

Tonight I have uploaded my new Z-Machine implementation to Parchment. I would appreciate your help in testing it. To switch to ZVM, just add &vm=zvm to the end of a normal Parchment URL (ex: <a class="postlink" href="http://iplayif.com/?story=stories/troll.z5&vm=zvm">http://iplayif.com/?story=stories/troll.z5&vm=zvm</a>). Once I've fixed a few minor things, and fix any bugs you help find, then I plan to make ZVM the default Z-Machine implementation in Parchment, and Gnusto will be used only as a backup (for version 3 etc.)

Some things aren't supported yet:
- Colours/styles in the status window
- A few rarely used opcodes (one of which has never been supported by Gnusto): @catch, @throw, @get_cursor
- Z-machine versions other than 5 and 8 (I have no plans for the other versions, sorry, but I do have plans for Glulx! [emote];)[/emote] )
- Quotation boxes won't be displayed
- The main window's width is too wide

I also have some questions for the experts among you:
- What do the operands of @throw mean?
- The monospace header bit is clearly independent of other UI stuff. Are @set_text_style and @set_font also independent? Or, would @set_text_style 8 then make @set_font return 4?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3495&start=10#p25215
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Malinche
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-02 11:38:57

[quote="matt w"]Oh, I expect that, I just don't expect him to botch his grammar so badly.[/quote]

He's been doing that a lot more lately, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3529&start=0#p25217
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ifvms.js ZVM Preview
User: weiju / DateTime: 2011-11-02 12:13:07

[quote="Dannii"]Hello everyone!

I also have some questions for the experts among you:
- What do the operands of @throw mean?
- The monospace header bit is clearly independent of other UI stuff. Are @set_text_style and @set_font also independent? Or, would @set_text_style 8 then make @set_font return 4?[/quote]

Hi Danii,

I have problems getting your example running on Chrome 15 (Uncaught Error: INDEX_SIZE_ERR: DOM Exception 1 in /?story=stories/troll.z5&vm=zvm:13)

as for @throw:

As I understand it, you store the value of your current stack frame in the @catch instruction. That value is then given to you in the @throw instruction as the second parameter, together with a routine return value in the first, which is used when you return from the state after unwinding the stack up to the saved state.
(this is how I implemented it in ZMPP).

Hope that was not too confusing of a sentence [emote];)[/emote],

Wei-ju

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3529&start=0#p25218
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ifvms.js ZVM Preview
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-11-02 12:24:35

Very cool. What are the benefits compared to Gnusto?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3522&start=0#p25222
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] The Muffin Man
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-11-02 13:25:04

Now this puzzles me.

[quote][code]The Kitchen is a room. "Gleaming stainless-steel and ruthless science collide in this, your temple of culinary achievement. An exit leads north." Rule for printing the name of the Kitchen: say "Utility Muffin Research Kitchen".[/code][/quote]
Why don't you use -- the printed name of the Kitchen is "Utility Muffin Research Kitchen" -- ?
Are they different one from the other?

Am I missing something?

(--- I'm serious.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3522&start=0#p25225
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] The Muffin Man
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-02 14:37:06

[quote="Jamespking"]Why don't you use -- the printed name of the Kitchen is "Utility Muffin Research Kitchen" -- ?
Are they different one from the other?[/quote]

To my (very, very limited) knowledge, it's six of one.

But I can't emphasize enough that I don't actually know what I'm talking about when it comes to any matter of actual I7 ... stuff.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3522&start=0#p25226
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] The Muffin Man
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-11-02 14:41:57

I mean: you used "Rule for Printing the name etc" instead of "the printed name of the kitchen is etc". Is there a reason? Or is it just the same?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3531&start=0#p25227
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Setting in IF
User: Kytaari / DateTime: 2011-11-02 14:46:03

I may have came across a discovery today: what I like the most about playing games is exploring and learning about a virtual environment, and what I think I like the most in story is a well-developed setting.

I'm just wondering what you're thoughts on setting in IF is. I personally really like being immersed in a very detailed fictional environment, and I think I've read some posts on this forum that say something similar.

So just how important is setting in IF? Are there games in this medium that tell good stories where setting isn't the central focus? I know I have a similar attitude when exploring MUDs: I like to really explore the backstory and think about the environment. How much pleasure does manipulating the environment bring to you when you play IF? Or what about exploring various rooms? What do you think about those old classic text-based adventure games where story isn't exactly the focus, but you read most of the story from the manual, and then explore the environment while manipulating objects to solve puzzles in different rooms? Do you suppose the old way of telling the story and introducing the player to the environment via means of the manual is dead now, or do people still attach similar readmes in their games sometimes?

I think this kind of correlates with my interests in history and the huge adventure romps I read in high fantasy and space operas. I've never been a very competitive gamer, but something about thinking about a really interesting setting, both whole you're playing the game and when you're taking a break, really appeals to me and my sensibilities.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3532&start=0#p25228
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: How many rooms is too many?
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2011-11-02 15:03:45

Is there an upper limit on rooms, items, actors, scenes, conversation tables, or other elements?  At what point does Inform start to choke?

I'm trying to limit the items in this game, primarily because I'm looking for a big beefy warrior style, fighting and trash-talking and lifting heavy things, rather than a packrat who hauls a multitude of trinkets and geegaws.  I'm hoping to avoid XP, levels, and merchants who sell lists of junk you won't use.  However, it looks to be on balance more filled with rooms, actors and conversations than otherwise.

Is there some rule of thumb, like 1 room = 50K of memory, or something?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3531&start=0#p25229
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Setting in IF
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-11-02 15:16:36

In one sense, IF began with setting: before there were any puzzles, before there was a plot, before there was even a dwarf or a pirate, there was a cave.  In another sense also, setting is the [i]sine qua non[/i] of IF: at least in Inform 7 (I don't know about other languages) the only line of code which is absolutely necessary is a line which defines a room.  There can be no action without a place in which it can occur.

To me, exploring a world is a very important part of the experience.  Being an old-timer (I guess the proper term is probably old fart) I have no problem playing a game without much in the way of NPCs, and while I like some element of plot I can also live with a more free-form game.  Without setting, however, its difficult for a game to capture my attention.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3522&start=0#p25230
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] The Muffin Man
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-02 15:17:28

[quote="Jamespking"]I mean: you used "Rule for Printing the name etc" instead of "the printed name of the kitchen is etc".[/quote]

Yes, exactly. See prior post.

[quote]Is there a reason? Or is it just the same?[/quote]

See prior post.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3532&start=0#p25231
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How many rooms is too many?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-11-02 15:20:03

I would guess that a room takes exceedingly little memory. But I wouldn't worry, if I were you: a Glulx file can be up to 4GB, if I recall correctly, which probably means that it can contain millions of rooms.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3532&start=0#p25232
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How many rooms is too many?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-02 15:21:08

[quote="Hertz"]Is there an upper limit on rooms, items, actors, scenes, conversation tables, or other elements?  At what point does Inform start to choke?[/quote]

There are limits in z-code output; sometimes they can be pretty tight.

There are limits in Glulx ... but you'd have to almost go out of your way to get anywhere near them.

[quote]Is there some rule of thumb, like 1 room = 50K of memory, or something?[/quote]

A "room" can mean so many different things, at so many levels of detail, that you'll basically need to find a personal version of that rule of thumb re your own design style. I don't think any generalities apply, really.

But those who know much more are likely to chime in soon.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3531&start=0#p25233
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Setting in IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-02 15:27:32

[quote="Kytaari"]I'm just wondering what you're thoughts on setting in IF is. I personally really like being immersed in a very detailed fictional environment, and I think I've read some posts on this forum that say something similar.[/quote]

Setting is the core of most of what I love about IF, too. That said, the phrase "very detailed" is a tricky sort of thing. A surgically-targeted [i]small [/i]set of details can bring a world to bursting with evocative awesomeness, while a truckload of lah-de-dah detail can be a finger-drumming bore. The best details evoke, connect to each other in unexpected and telling ways, and inspire vistas between data-points without literally plodding across them.

Setting is king, but [i]detail[/i] is a power tool. Like any other power tool, in the wrong hands it's just a [i]disaster[/i].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3522&start=0#p25234
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] The Muffin Man
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-11-02 15:34:09

Oh, ok. Lol!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=20#p25235
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-11-02 15:36:33

My apologies for the wait, but attached is the final version of Ectocomp 2011.  We received one more game during the extension and I have also added the walkthrough for "Bloodless on the Orient Express," which I had previously forgotten.  Also, the scoring sheet has been added for those following along at home who wish to judge.

As for running ADRIFT 5 games, as soon as we can get the games up on the ADRIFT website they should be playable online.  Yes, both ADRIFT 5 and the online ADRIFT interpreter are in beta.  Sadly, I don't have a technical answer to the problem other than "We apologize for the inconvenience."   [emote]:([/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3522&start=0#p25236
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] The Muffin Man
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-02 15:39:47

[quote="Jamespking"]Oh, ok. Lol![/quote]

[emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3522&start=10#p25237
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] The Muffin Man
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-02 16:11:45

NB, "six of one" = "six of one, half a dozen of the other" = "it doesn't matter."

(Thought that might be an idiom that's a little hard to puzzle out if you're not a native speaker.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3522&start=10#p25238
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] The Muffin Man
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-02 16:15:58

[quote="matt w"]NB, "six of one" = "six of one, half a dozen of the other" = "it doesn't matter."

(Thought that might be an idiom that's a little hard to puzzle out if you're not a native speaker.)[/quote]

D'oh! Good call. Lookit me, I'm writing my own baseball-diamond puzzles, here [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3532&start=0#p25239
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How many rooms is too many?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-02 16:16:46

Everything costs RAM, and the Z-machine only has 64k. But the memory usage of any given element of your game depends entirely on how complex it is.

Result: there are no simple answers, unfortunately.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3532&start=0#p25240
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How many rooms is too many?
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2011-11-02 16:56:46

So it allocates memory at need, or at compile time?  That's good. I was thinking that every time you declare a specific object, it sets aside a certain footprint of memory.  (Don't ask why I thought that; I'm no programmer.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3532&start=0#p25241
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How many rooms is too many?
User: SJ_43 / DateTime: 2011-11-02 17:24:22

If you're compiling for the z-machine you can see some numbers for your game under the contents tab in the index (near the bottom). 
[img]http://i.imgur.com/MrnsW.jpg[/img]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3529&start=0#p25242
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ifvms.js ZVM Preview
User: cas / DateTime: 2011-11-02 18:10:39

[quote="Dannii"]
- What do the operands of @throw mean?
[/quote]To augment Wei-ju's response: if you implement Quetzal, @catch is required to return the number of frames on the call stack (it uses the phrase “system stack”, but it seems obvious that the call stack is meant).  So @catch in Main() returns 1; if you call another function, @catch in that function returns 2, etc.  See §6.2 of Quetzal 1.4.

[quote]
- The monospace header bit is clearly independent of other UI stuff. Are @set_text_style and @set_font also independent? Or, would @set_text_style 8 then make @set_font return 4?[/quote]
I see nothing in the standard linking text styles and fonts, and I did not implement it that way.  More importantly, the gold standard—Windows Frotz—does not appear to link them, which is as close to a de jure answer as you can get if there is nothing in the standard.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3531&start=0#p25246
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Setting in IF
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-11-02 23:15:45

One way of looking at setting is to borrow a term from conventional fiction: In IF, to a very considerable extent, the player is the protagonist and the setting itself is the antagonist. The villain, if you will. The setting as a whole is likely to be a much more effective antagonist than an individual NPC. The latter, even in games with well-developed villains, tend to be rather one-dimensional. The setting can be far more effective in thwarting the protagonist's ambitions, because the setting is everywhere.

Beyond that, the fact that in IF one has to traverse a rather limited set of locations gives each location a sense of importance. In conventional fiction, on the other hand, the lead character can walk halfway across Europe or spend a lifetime in the court at Versailles without the setting ever becoming the main point of interest.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3429&start=20#p25247
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Inform 7 site problems?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-03 00:12:27

I don't get it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3428&start=0#p25248
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Dropbox
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-03 00:30:35

I use Dropbox. I just dragged the whole Inform folder over into the Dropbox folder and it works fine. Granted, I'm only adding the data folder (from Documents) not the actual Inform program folder. I've never had an error or a hiccup. I work directly from the Dropbox folder. As long as everything I'm calling in the game as far as extensions and whatnot are present and installed on the box I'm accessing it from, it works like a dream.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2859&start=20#p25249
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The perfect crime is a "thought crime".
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-03 01:20:09

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"][quote="InterFiction"]hahah, Goerge w Bush, and his father are my enemies! haha...and bill clinton...and hillory clinton...and probably obama...hhaa.[/quote]

And yet despite all those formidable enemies, it is spelling that is your arch-nemesis. You're the only person I know who has managed to misspell an onomatopoeia. What's your secret?[/quote]

I have to go ahead and say something here. This entire Jacek Pudlo thing is an obvious joke. Looking back at your post history and your profiles, this isn't for real. The fact that you can spot onomatopoeia, and spell it, says something, but it's absolutely unnecessary for you to flash this kind of bitterness against another visitor without provocation. The others in the community might find your "humor" endearing, but I do not share their sympathy.

I've just started introducing my children (ages 10 - 12) to IF. I will be encouraging them to read this forum. I don't find your sense of humor, if that's what it's supposed to be, appropriate, educational or encouraging. I'm gonna go ahead and ask you politely to knock it off, if you'd be so kind.

"Arch-nemesis" isn't actually a word, by the way, no matter how often you see it in a comic book. If you're going to slam someone's grammatical sins, at least move out of the glass house.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2859&start=20#p25250
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The perfect crime is a "thought crime".
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-03 01:27:31

[quote="I4L"]This entire Jacek Pudlo thing is an obvious joke.[/quote]

Shh! You'll ruin it! At the end, there's cake.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2859&start=30#p25251
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The perfect crime is a "thought crime".
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-11-03 03:08:21

[quote="bcressey"]Hang on. Are you - are you [i]questioning[/i] George W. Bush? One of the greatest Republican presidents since Ronald Reagan?[/quote]
I don't think anyone can deny that George W. Bush was one of the greatest Republican presidents since Ronald Reagan.

[quote="I4L"]I have to go ahead and say something here. This entire Jacek Pudlo thing is an obvious joke. Looking back at your post history and your profiles, this isn't for real.[/quote]
Pudlo has been the most notorious IF troll for well over a decade. Just ignore him. Or...

[quote]I've just started introducing my children (ages 10 - 12) to IF. I will be encouraging them to read this forum. I don't find your sense of humor, if that's what it's supposed to be, appropriate, educational or encouraging. I'm gonna go ahead and ask you politely to knock it off, if you'd be so kind.[/quote]
...[url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=3984]go here[/url], and click on "Add foe". Pudlo's flames will now be blessedly hidden from your eyes.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3529&start=0#p25252
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ifvms.js ZVM Preview
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-11-03 05:53:27

Thanks for your comments everyone. I thought @throw worked that way. Gnusto has implemented it wrongly.

I've now more thoroughly tested it in Chrome and have pushed an update so that it works in Chrome, FF and IE. However I haven't tested every file in existence, and the test suites aren't comprehensive enough yet, so, if you use Parchment, I would appreciate you trying ZVM next time you use it.

Juhana, ifvms.js is a new way of writing JIT VMs, by using Abstract Syntax Trees. My plan is that there will be a common core, which ZVM and a future VM for Glulx and maybe even one for TADS would be built on top of. The big advantage is that an AST is much more manipulatable than the JIT systems of Gnusto and Quixe are, which just write out code to run. Instructions can easily be reordered, and structures like loops can be identified and converted into real JS loops, rather than a series of branches and jumps. Previously if you had a loop the JITer would have to stop before and after it, so that you would have three code sections. ifvms.js can compile a loop in place, with the code before and after it, and a JS loop in the middle which will run itself, rather than the VM framework telling it to run multiple times.

Here's an example of the code it generates, which has a while loop inside a block if statement. This would be close to impossible under Gnusto. It's not pretty code, but it's fast.
(But not fast enough. The .incdec() function needs to be inlined, and the push/pop can be optimised too.)

[code]if(!(!(m.getUint16(2985)==1))) {
  l[5]= 0;
  while(!(!(e.U2S(l[5])<8))) {
    s.push( m.getUint16(3559+2*e.U2S(l[5])));
    m.setUint16(l[0]+2*e.U2S(l[5]), s.pop());
    e.incdec(6,1)
  };
  m.setUint16(2985, 0);
  e.ret(1); return
};[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3535&start=0#p25254
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Printing the name of a room in Caps on my whim
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-11-03 08:19:35

There are before and after 'printing the name of a room' actions, but can you actually access the printed name itself with these rules?

For instance, to italicise all room names, you can put an italic tag in the before rule and a 'regular' style tag in the after rule.

But what if I want to capitalise the room name itself, and only if a certain flag is currently set? Normally you have to use indexed text to capitalise on the fly, right? Is there a way to inveigle this kind of thing into these printing actions?

Thanks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3535&start=0#p25255
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Printing the name of a room in Caps on my whim
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-11-03 08:24:14

[quote="severedhand"]There are before and after 'printing the name of a room' actions, but can you actually access the printed name itself with these rules?

For instance, to italicise all room names, you can put an italic tag in the before rule and a 'regular' style tag in the after rule.

But what if I want to capitalise the room name itself, and only if a certain flag is currently set? Normally you have to use indexed text to capitalise on the fly, right? Is there a way to inveigle this kind of thing into these printing actions?[/quote]

Something like this? 
[code]For printing the name of a room (called place):
	say the printed name of the place in upper case.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2859&start=30#p25256
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The perfect crime is a "thought crime".
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-03 08:25:20

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]click on "Add foe". Pudlo's flames will now be blessedly hidden from your eyes.[/quote]
Except for those portions quoted by others, correct?

Which is a great reason for others never to respond to him. I apologize for my sins in this particular case.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3522&start=10#p25258
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] The Muffin Man
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-11-03 08:29:57

Just to be nitpicky: I've always heard "whale on" as a synonym for attacking, and think of "wail on" as something that's only done with shoulders.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3522&start=10#p25259
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] The Muffin Man
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-03 08:31:50

I'm far from an expert on this, but I've never seen "whale on" at all.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3522&start=10#p25260
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] The Muffin Man
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-11-03 08:36:53

[quote="gravel"]Just to be nitpicky: I've always heard "whale on" as a synonym for attacking, and think of "wail on" as something that's only done with shoulders.[/quote]

Yeah, I was about to say. It makes sense, too. If you wail at someone, they'll be disturbed, frightened at the most. Conversely, a few solid whacks with a huge marine mammal would definitely qualify as full-blown assault.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3531&start=0#p25261
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Setting in IF
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-03 08:37:51

[quote="Kytaari"]I think this kind of correlates with my interests in history and the huge adventure romps I read in high fantasy and space operas. I've never been a very competitive gamer, but something about thinking about a really interesting setting, both whole you're playing the game and when you're taking a break, really appeals to me and my sensibilities.[/quote]
It never occurred to me to make the connection, but this is also why I love the movie Tron. The plot is ridiculous, the characters are instantly forgettable, but the setting is [i]amazing[/i].

Well, that and the soundtrack.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2859&start=30#p25262
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The perfect crime is a "thought crime".
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-11-03 08:38:16

Why not just ban him outright? His past conduct on RAIF/RGIF ought to be reason enough for a lifetime ban.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2859&start=30#p25263
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The perfect crime is a "thought crime".
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-11-03 08:52:54

[quote="I4L"]I've just started introducing my children (ages 10 - 12) to IF. I will be encouraging them to read this forum. I don't find your sense of humor, if that's what it's supposed to be, appropriate, educational or encouraging. I'm gonna go ahead and ask you politely to knock it off, if you'd be so kind.[/quote]

You're like the guy who walks into the smoking area of a restaurant and "politely" asks everyone to stop smoking because he has asthma. If you want a child-safe environment, why don't you take your kids to a theme park or the movies or out on a picnic? Why Bambify this forum, when you can take your kids to Disneyland and show them the real thing?

[quote="earlier I4L"]I'll crush a spider with my hand without flinching. I have firearms in almost every room of my house. I have more than one weapon on my person at any given time. There isn't a man, beast or thing on the face of the planet that I fear or that I don't think I can deal with. Even if I can't deal with it, I'm confident enough to believe that I can.[/quote]

You're a control freak so terrified of your own shadow, you dare not leave your house unarmed. Crushing a spider is a heroic deed of Homeric proportions for you. I can see why a picnic is out of the question. I can also see what hell you're putting your children through.

[quote="I4L"]"Arch-nemesis" isn't actually a word[/quote]

That's right. It's two words.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3529&start=0#p25264
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ifvms.js ZVM Preview
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-03 09:00:11

Dannii, apologies if this is off-topic, but the other day I was showing someone an IF ("Cold Iron," FWIW) on the iPad and it froze up on a "press any key to continue" event. Apparently on the iPad's browser, you bring up the keyboard by clicking in a text field, and since there's no text field in a "press any key to continue" event, there was no way to bring up the keyboard and press a key without losing focus -- at least not one we could think of. 

Do you know a way around this? 

(I was actually a little surprised that we got as far as we did on the iPad's browser, because I'd been under the impression that it just didn't play nice with Parchment at all.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2859&start=30#p25265
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The perfect crime is a "thought crime".
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-11-03 09:08:05

[quote="David Whyld"]Why not just ban him outright? His past conduct on RAIF/RGIF ought to be reason enough for a lifetime ban.[/quote]

[Jacek takes off his shades and stares David straight in the eye.]

If you so much as [i]dream[/i] of banning me, you better wake up and apologize.

[Jacek leaves to the accompaniment of maniacal laughter.]

Oops. I'm back. I forgot my shades. Michael, could you please do the exit scene again?

[Jacek leaves to the accompaniment of maniacal laughter.]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3519&start=0#p25266
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: looking for beta testers
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-11-03 09:32:12

Shoot me a copy and I'll check it out.

jizaboz (at) hotmail.com

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3535&start=0#p25267
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Printing the name of a room in Caps on my whim
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-11-03 10:09:14

Thanks, that's the kind of thing I was after.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2859&start=30#p25268
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The perfect crime is a "thought crime".
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-11-03 10:31:27

[quote]You're like the guy who walks into the smoking area of a restaurant and "politely" asks everyone to stop smoking because he has asthma.[/quote]

Actually, the better analogy would be to someone who is sitting in a restaurant, attempting quietly to enjoy his meal, when some jerk starts walking around the restaurant and puking on everybody else's table -- which, in the eyes of most people, would justify a "request" from management to leave the premises or at least to control one's regurgitative instincts.  I second the suggestion to ban this joker.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2859&start=30#p25269
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The perfect crime is a "thought crime".
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-11-03 10:38:00

Just let it go bro and make him a foe! (had to edit that to rhyme heh). I found his stuff unfunny and annoying, so that's what I did to keep from even seeing it and wasting my time reading it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3522&start=10#p25270
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] The Muffin Man
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-11-03 10:40:03

[quote]Conversely, a few solid whacks with a huge marine mammal would definitely qualify as full-blown assault.
[/quote]

I don't know, it might just be a [i]fluke[/i].  On the other hand, it might [i]seal[/i] the fate of the one being attacked.

Isn't whaling now banned by international treaty?


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3537&start=0#p25271
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: WinQuill
User: Gio / DateTime: 2011-11-03 11:19:55

So I download WinQuill, and here it is telling me that it'll shut down after 30 days unless I get the (free) registration key.. which is all well and good, but the WinQuill site doesn't appear to exist anymore, not to mention the email address. Uh.. help? >.<

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3538&start=0#p25272
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Level9 authoring systems?
User: Gio / DateTime: 2011-11-03 11:21:41

Are there any Level9 authoring systems out there? Kinda like Visionary for Scott Adams. o.o

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3522&start=10#p25273
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] The Muffin Man
User: djfletch / DateTime: 2011-11-03 11:38:45

All of you are wrong. It's "wale".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3529&start=0#p25274
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ifvms.js ZVM Preview
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-03 12:14:29

Turns out there's an invisible text entry field, either right at the last character printed in the status window, or at the bottom edge of the story window. If you feel around you can find it.

(I've done this with <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/zweb/huntdark/">http://eblong.com/zarf/zweb/huntdark/</a> . I haven't tested it with Cold Iron.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3522&start=10#p25275
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] The Muffin Man
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-03 12:19:49

[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gHTw9XjKMc]O Waly Waly[/url] (Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3529&start=0#p25276
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ifvms.js ZVM Preview
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-03 12:45:08

Hm. May I suggest that it might be a little more user-friendly to make the field less invisible, or to provide some other workaround? I guess that the workaround would show up whenever anyone uses Parchment, even if they don't need it, but what with iThings being all the rave now it seems like it might be worth it for outreach's sake.

(I don't have an iPad so I can't look for the text field myself.)

(Definitely OT, but I was impressed at how much of my friend's totally naive input Cold Iron understood. Some of it was built-in I7 parsing, like "pick up the book," but I didn't have to say "No, the game won't understand you unless you say this exactly" as much as I expected.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3522&start=10#p25277
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] The Muffin Man
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-03 12:59:54

[quote="gravel"]Just to be nitpicky [...][/quote]

Wail, Whale, and Wale are each as correct (or incorrect) as anyone wants them to be.

"Wale" is the more historical version, slowly edging into archaism. "Whale" is favored by most modern dictionaries (though not all). "Wail" has been colloquial for at least a couple of decades (which makes it my natural choice, but not everyone's).

[quote="Robert Rothman"]Isn't whaling now banned by international treaty?[/quote]

Best joke of the thread [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3522&start=10#p25278
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] The Muffin Man
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-11-03 14:26:28

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="Robert Rothman"]Isn't whaling now banned by international treaty?[/quote]
Best joke of the thread [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
Rothman, you'll rue the day you upstaged me.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3539&start=0#p25279
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: HANGAR 22 by Rob O'Hara
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2011-11-03 14:27:57

Rob O'Hara recently finished an IF game in Inform 6 called Hangar 22. It's got about an hour or 90 minutes of gameplay and in his words, he was shooting for more "text adventure" than "interactive fiction." I don't believe it is on the IF Archive yet, but here is an URL for the .z5 file: 

<a class="postlink" href="http://robohara.com/temp/hangar_22.z5">http://robohara.com/temp/hangar_22.z5</a>

Enjoy! I certainly did.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3539&start=0#p25280
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: HANGAR 22 by Rob O'Hara
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-11-03 15:15:31

I'll try to check it out this evening.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3540&start=0#p25281
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Tutorials
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-11-03 15:40:14

I've only recently read EmShort's [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/06/07/so-do-we-need-this-parser-thing-anyway/]essay[/url] on, erm, various things. Many interesting things in fact, but what immediately came to my mind is -

Would it be helpful to have a "standard" tutorial available as source code for various programming languages to include into one's games? Like, a "tutorial" command that starts a room with, say, an NPC and an object or two where the most basic playing commands are explained to the player. 

- While I personally think that not each and every game would be chosen by someone completely new to IF to start playing, a tutorial would be useful in case it actually is chosen.
- Writing a tutorial takes time; could be saved if there's a "template" available.
- Time would not be wasted on writing "bad" tutorials.
- The source code could actually teach new authors some basic game mechanics.
- One standard tutorial source code might be regarded inappropriate for the actual game, which couldn't be completely avoided, but there could be several tutorials for standard settings like fantasy, scifi, today's world.

Just a thought, might have been discussed and discarded earlier, just wanted to mention it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3541&start=0#p25282
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Nationality relationship
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2011-11-03 15:57:58

The recipe book mentions nationality as a many-to-one relationship but doesn't give an example of it.  I've been trying to make this work to my satisfaction but I'm doing something wrong.

Ideally, I want the player to say "examine Allurian woman" and get a sensible response or a disambiguation.  I also want to be able to use the nationality in the code itself, to determine (for example) if there are any Gemnians in the room who might take offense to something the player does.
[code]A nation is a kind of value.  The nations are Allor, Dasine, Gemnos, Magna Etolia, and Rhothes.

Nationality relates various people to a nation.  The verb to hail from (he hails from, they hail from) implies the nationality relation.

A nationality-name is a kind of value.  The nationality-names are Allurian, Dasinian, Gemnian, Magnar and Rhothian.

A person has a nationality-name called demonym.  The plural of demonym is demonyms.

To decide which nationality-name is the demonym of (sample - a person):
	if the nationality of the sample is Allor, decide on Allurian;
	if the nationality of the sample is Dasine, decide on Dasinian;
	if the nationality of the sample is Gemnos, decide on Gemnian;
	if the nationality of the sample is Magna Etolia, decide on Magnar;
	if the sample hails from Rhothes, decide on Rhothian;
	decide on Gemnian.

Bob is a man from Testbed.  Bob hails from Gemnos.

The description of Bob is "Bob is a[if the demonym of Bob is Allurian]n[end if] [demonym of Bob] man.  He is from [nationality of Bob]."  
[/code]
This correctly prints the nationality — the name of the nation.  It does not decide upon the correct demonym, defaulting to "Allurian."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3429&start=20#p25283
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Inform 7 site problems?
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-11-03 15:59:22

I don't get Donald Duck. I mean, ducks don't talk.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3541&start=0#p25284
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Nationality relationship
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-03 16:07:43

[rant]What happens if you change "If the nationality of the sample is Allor" to "If the sample hails from Allor" etc.? The way you've defined it, it doesn't look as though "the nationality of" should make any sense, since "nationality" isn't the name of the property of a person (you haven't written "A person has a nation called nationality"). Untested, though.[/rant]

UPDATE: OK, I've tested it, and that's not it. The problem, I think, might be that if you define "demonym" as a property of a person, you can't use a to-decide phrase to set it. If you comment out "A person has a nationality-name called demonym.  The plural of demonym is demonyms." it seems to work. 

Unfortunately, I think this might make it harder to understand "x gemnian" ultimately -- I remember running into trouble with something similar before, but I don't have time to look up the particulars now.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3541&start=0#p25285
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Nationality relationship
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2011-11-03 16:12:14

I had that also; it produced a similar effect.

[b]Fixed.[/b]  I removed the line establishing a demonym as a property of people, and it works just fine.

[b]Edit:[/b]  Thanks for your help.  I think we did it concurrently.  Now to understand the words as adjectives.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3541&start=0#p25286
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Nationality relationship
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-03 16:18:00

Yup -- I just updated my original post with more info. [And while I was posting to say that, you updated to say you figured it out yourself.]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3539&start=0#p25287
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: HANGAR 22 by Rob O'Hara
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2011-11-03 16:36:54

Jizaboz, I'm willing to bet you are on the Internet. Well here is an Internet link to Mr O'Hara's game!

<a class="postlink" href="http://iplayif.com/?story=http://www.robohara.com/temp/Hangar_22.z5">http://iplayif.com/?story=http://www.ro ... ngar_22.z5</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3541&start=0#p25288
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Nationality relationship
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-03 17:15:20

As far as understanding the name goes, unfortunately I don't think the obvious solution works -- see [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=647]this bug report[/url] and [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2356&p=16097]this thread[/url]. Understand tokens are only allowed to search relations between things, so setting up a relation between a person and demonym and using a token like "[something related by demonymizing]" doesn't seem like it'd work. 

Someone might have a clever solution, but what I might try is deleting the to-decide phrase, putting back the line about "A person has a nationality-name called the demonym," and then looping through persons when play begins to set their nationality according to their nation. Then I think you could use the line "Understand the demonym property as describing a person." It wouldn't handle people changing their nationality in the course of play, but maybe that won't happen.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3540&start=0#p25289
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Tutorials
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-03 18:00:05

[quote="Grueslayer"]Would it be helpful to have a "standard" tutorial available as source code for various programming languages to include into one's games?[/quote]

Well, if there were (for an example) an I7 extension that did that, I'm sure some folks would use it. The same would go for other languages, I imagine.

I've been pondering doing a standardized tutorial for my own games, but I've been thinking in terms of a separate (standalone) game-file, rather than an in-game thing.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3540&start=0#p25290
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Tutorials
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-11-03 18:17:23

There are quite a few games that bill themselves or are pointed to by others as good introductions to the medium, but it's not always that easy for a new player to find them. I really like the idea of tiny, optional in-game tutorials, since a total novice could just type "HELP" (or some minimum of useless, flailing inputs) and get some very direct and hands-on assistance.

You're wrong about the standard settings, though. There's no need for "fantasy, scifi, today's world," but there should be tailored tutorials for "locked in room," "goofy detective," and "zombies."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3539&start=0#p25291
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: HANGAR 22 by Rob O'Hara
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-11-03 18:29:44

I'm enjoying it so far. Even though this game starts out in "my crappy apartment mode", it's still one of the most convincing of that environment that I've played.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3540&start=0#p25292
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Tutorials
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-11-03 19:00:11

Yes, this has been a recurring idea, and there have been a couple of attempts. I think [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1223]this thread[/url] has the latest discussion.

I took part of a tutorial/beginner game project myself last year that's currently on hold, but I'm very much in favor of game-specific tutorials. For one, it's very hard if not impossible to come up with a tutorial that would be suitable as is to most games because games typically use only a small subset of common IF features. The tutorial would have to be highly customizable and customization should be very easy. Even then any game-specific features would have to be added manually. Also, it's been said that it's unreasonable to ask someone to play this other game before they can play the game they [i]actually[/i] want to play.

It's a much better introduction for the new player if their first contact is primarily a good game and only secondarily a learning tool, so I'd just make sure that the most newbie-friendly games are the ones that are most promoted outside the community.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3540&start=0#p25293
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Tutorials
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-03 19:49:35

[quote="Juhana"]For one, it's very hard if not impossible to come up with a tutorial that would be suitable as is to most games because games typically use only a small subset of common IF features. [/quote]

Plus, many good games [i]add [/i]a feature or two, or depend on a less-used standard one ...

These are the reasons I'd personally have no use for a generic tutorial. The one I'm thinking of making would accompany a specific set of related WIPs, each set in the same setting and presuming a lot of the same things, marketed to that setting's existing fanbase rather than IF devotees ... so it would be feasible (I still haven't decided if it would be desirable) to make a small tutorial-game that would entertainingly (I hope) teach the basics to that audience.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3542&start=0#p25315
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Intro Page Break?
User: QueenoftheCapes / DateTime: 2011-11-03 23:10:33

Okay, this might be a dumb question, but I'm having trouble finding an answer.  [emote]:oops:[/emote] 

You know how some games will have a page for just the intro, and then you have to tap 'space' to get to the actual game?  How do I set that up?  Is there a function or property for it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3523&start=0#p25316
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Hyperlinks in Glulx
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-11-03 23:38:41

[quote="ektemple"]Gull also has discussion, with examples:

<a class="postlink" href="http://adamcadre.ac/gull/index.html">http://adamcadre.ac/gull/index.html</a>[/quote]
Right now I'm looking at the Gull page on capabilities testing (<a class="postlink" href="http://adamcadre.ac/gull/gull-2c.html">http://adamcadre.ac/gull/gull-2c.html</a>). That page offers this code:
[code]if (glk_gestalt(gestalt_Graphics, 0)) {[/code]
...so I'm trying that in a simple test game, using Inform 6.31 (in Windows 7, if that matters). I'm using the -G flag, and I know the test game is compiling to Glulx, because I get an output file called MyGame1.ulx.

However, the compiler reports, "Error:  No such constant as "glk_gestalt" and "Error:  No such constant as "gestalt_Hyperlinks".

I've pretty much ruled out a typo in my code. One possibility that remains is that the Gull page has obsolete information. Another possibility is that I need to set a constant somewhere in addition to using the -G switch.

I'll keep poking at it, but if anyone has any suggestions, I'd appreciate hearing them!

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3523&start=0#p25317
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Hyperlinks in Glulx
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-11-03 23:41:04

Okay, got it. False alarm. Never mind. I needed to include Infglk.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3522&start=20#p25318
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] The Muffin Man
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-11-03 23:42:27

Ah, wale!  That makes sense.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3542&start=0#p25319
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Intro Page Break?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-03 23:53:34

[Useless response for wrong system deleted.]

It's late. Oops [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3542&start=0#p25320
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Intro Page Break?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-11-03 23:54:13

I think showIntro() in your GameMainDef is the standard place to handle it.

[code]
gameMain: GameMainDef
	// ... other major properties snipped ...
	showIntro()
	{
		statuslineBanner.removeBanner();
		cls();
		showText();
		"<p>";
		"<i>Press any key to continue.</i>";
		inputManager.getKey(nil,nil);
		cls();
		showText();
		"<p>";
		statusLine.initBannerWindow(statuslineBanner);
		inherited();
	}

	showText()
	{
		"Replace me with your own breathless prose! ";
	}
;
[/code]

I am 80% sure that the statusline stuff works even when the runtime doesn't support banner windows, but it's been a while since I tested it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3523&start=0#p25321
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Hyperlinks in Glulx
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-11-04 00:22:02

Here's a slightly more interesting question. I'm attempting to set up a text link so that when the player clicks the word "east" in the room description, the command "go east" (followed by a Return) will appear on the command line of the interpreter, with the expected result.

It's not working yet.

The link appears correctly in the terp. Here's the code that sets it up:
[code][link_set dir;
  switch (dir) {
	E_GOING: glk_set_hyperlink(E_GOING);
	print "east";
	glk_set_hyperlink(0);
	};
];

Room    study "Your Study"
  with  description [;
	print "There is a doorway to the ";
	link_set(E_GOING);
	" of this austere room.";
	],
        e_to hallway;[/code]
Here's how I'm trying (and failing) to handle the click on the hyperlink:
[code]Constant E_GOING = 1;
Constant W_GOING = 2;

[ HandleGlkEvent ev context abortres newcmd cmdlen;
      switch (ev-->0) {
         evtype_Hyperlink:
            glk_request_hyperlink_event(gg_mainwin);
			glk_cancel_line_event(gg_mainwin, 0);
			if (ev-->2 == E_GOING) {
				newcmd = "go east";
				cmdlen = PrintAnyToArray(abortres+WORDSIZE, INPUT_BUFFER_LEN-WORDSIZE, newcmd);
				abortres-->0 = cmdlen;
				glk_set_style(style_Input);
				print "go east";
				glk_set_style(style_Normal);
				new_line;
			}
		}
];[/code]
What this does is, when I click on the link, the words "go east" are printed on the line BELOW the prompt, the input cursor remains on the line with the prompt, and input is dead. The game no longer accepts typing input.

I'm trying to use the explanation on the Gull pages. I think I've copied the code exactly. Adam says those lines are supposed to do the job. But they don't. Since I can't find a reference to PrintAnyToArray in the DM4, I have no idea what it's doing. I'm stumped.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3523&start=0#p25324
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Hyperlinks in Glulx
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-11-04 03:19:08

Now I can't remember how it worked (not hacked with glulx low level stuff for quite a long time!), but just in case it helps, a couple of years ago we were looking for a way to type a verb, like "examine", and then click on a link with an object and make the command "ex object" to be atomatically executed. As I'm reading that thread now, we were taking for granted that making a full command work from a link was actually the easy part!

It was [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/e515bf2d710d93c/fc0eb1cd8fcc038e?]here[/url]. Perhaps something in that thread helps.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3540&start=0#p25325
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Tutorials
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-11-04 04:05:20

A comercial precedent:

[center][url=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/222/dscn1345.jpg/][img]http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/9201/dscn1345.th.jpg[/img][/url][/center]

[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=m2wl06w0irs8vgdc]MIndshadow[/url], edited by Activision in 1984, included a tutorial as a separate load from the main game (8 bit computers wouldn't have enough memory to make it in-game).

Other than the historical interest, I personally wouldn't like a bunch of games with the same tutorial or even not identical tutorials but noticeably based on the same template. If authors feel the need to [i]educate [/i]or [i]initiate [/i]their audience, let them be creative in their own way!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3165&start=0#p25326
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Why no interest in real coding with i7?
User: faiuwle / DateTime: 2011-11-04 04:33:04

What do you mean by "compile to"?  Do you want to translate I6 source code into, say, C source code?  Do you want to compile I6 source code into a machine-code executable?  I'm not sure what the purpose of either of these would be, other than as a (admittedly pretty interesting but ultimately useless) programming exercise.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=20#p25327
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: Tale / DateTime: 2011-11-04 04:57:13

Is there a reason why the Competition page lists only the ADRIFT games? (The z-code games are present in the .zip) 

ARE YOU DISCRIMINATING AGAINST I7 ????   [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=20#p25328
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2011-11-04 07:08:28

It is obviously a huuuuge conspiracy!

Counterpoint: [url]http://ifdb.tads.org/viewcomp?id=b98q8oo6x14j0yx[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3529&start=0#p25329
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ifvms.js ZVM Preview
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-11-04 07:19:58

Making it mobile friendly is something I'm planning, but I've been waiting to get the new VM to the working stage first. I have an Android phone, but they're similar enough that I expect fixing it for Android will fix it for Apple devices too.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3529&start=0#p25330
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ifvms.js ZVM Preview
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-04 07:47:11

Cool, thanks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3543&start=0#p25331
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Synonyms in "understand the ... property as describing...
User: frudster / DateTime: 2011-11-04 08:38:26

Is there a way of storing a more complicated expression in a property (a token? a list? some sort of "foo/bar" string?) and using that "as describing" something so you can use more than a single verbatim text? Let me show you what I'm trying to do: 

[code]
Dublin is a room. 

A knowable man is a kind of man. A person has an indexed text called the real name. Understand the real name property as describing the knowable man.

Steve is a knowable man in Dublin. The real name of Steve is "Stephen Daedalus". The printed name of Steve is "man". He is not proper-named. Understand "man" as Steve. 

test me with "x man / x stephen daedalus / x stephen / x daedalus"
[/code]

This will give you 
[quote]
>[1] x man
You see nothing special about the man.

>[2] x stephen daedalus
You see nothing special about the man.

>[3] x stephen
You can't see any such thing.

>[4] x daedalus
You can't see any such thing.[/quote]

I'd like to have "stephen", "stephen daedalus" and "daedalus" all to be understood as out man steve here. 

This is of course not a complete example - what I'm actually trying to achieve is NPCs who will introduce themselves properly, and only after that will you know their names. I guess you can do this with "Understand ... as ... when" type phrases but I'm trying to do it with a property so I can do things in a more reusable way. 

Does my question even make sense? 

I suspect (once again) what I really should do is just stop trying to coerce I7 into behaving like other programming languages. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3541&start=0#p25332
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Nationality relationship
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-04 09:17:09

This thread discusses how to understand relations as adjectival forms of the objects they relate to:

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3391">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3391</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3543&start=0#p25333
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Synonyms in "understand the ... property as describing..
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-04 10:10:46

This works:

[code]Dublin is a room. 

A person can be knowable. Understand the knowable property as describing a person.

Steve is a knowable man in Dublin. Understand "Stephen/Daedalus" as knowable when the item described is Steve. The printed name of Steve is "one man". He is not proper-named. Understand "one/man" as Steve. 
Flann is a knowable man in Dublin. Understand "Flann/O'Brien" as knowable when the item described is Flann. The printed name of Flann is "other man". He is not proper-named. Understand "other/man" as Flann. 


test me with "x man / x stephen daedalus / x stephen / x daedalus / X Flann / x O'Brien / x Flann O'Brien"[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3542&start=0#p25334
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Intro Page Break?
User: QueenoftheCapes / DateTime: 2011-11-04 11:46:18

Thanks, bcressy!  [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3543&start=0#p25335
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Synonyms in "understand the ... property as describing..
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-04 11:50:29

[code]
Understand "Flann/O'Brien" as knowable when the item described is Flann.
[/code]

The straightforward "Understand" method would be:

[code]
Understand "Flann/O'Brien" as Flann when Flann is knowable.
[/code]

Purely a matter of taste, I'd say.

Another way, using properties:

[code]
FlannO is a person.
SteveD is a person.

Real name is a kind of value. The real names are nameless, Flann-name, and Steve-name.

A person has a real name. A person is usually nameless.
Understand the real name property as describing a person.

Understand "Stephen", "Daedalus" as Steve-name.
Understand "Flann", "O'Brien" as Flann-name.

...:
	now FlannO is Flann-name.
	now SteveD is Steve-name.
[/code]

You'd also want printed-name rules, of course.

(I made the object name "FlannO" to avoid conflict with the value name "Flann". If both contain "Flann", the parser will parse correctly, but it will print unnecessary "(...)" clarifications. You could probably work around this with privately-named, instead.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3523&start=0#p25336
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Hyperlinks in Glulx
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-11-04 12:06:42

Thanks, rockersuke. I looked at the thread, and tried a couple of things that it suggested, but I'm still getting the same results as before.

I'm not sure what you're doing with this line:

for (i=4:buffer->i:i++);

Does that increment i until the value of buffer->i is zero? I think so. It wouldn't help in my code, so I guess I should ignore it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3544&start=0#p25337
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Limiting objects listed for "Which do you mean"?
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-11-04 13:48:29

Note to those in charge of the forum: why can't I search for the exact phrase "which do you mean"? Please fix this!

I'm having a bit of difficulty with the "which do you mean" activity.
I have a mechanism type, and each object of the mechanism type has 25 things which are part of it. Some are functional (buttons, levers, etc) and some are not (warning labels, rusty spots, etc).
I have a room with a blue machine, a red machine, a yellow machine and a green machine.
When I type in X MACHINE, what I want is this:[code]Which do you mean, the blue machine, the red machine, the yellow machine or the green machine?[/code]But instead I get a list of all 100 elements which are a part of any machine:[code]Which do you mean, then blue machine's blue button, the blue machine's red button, the blue machine's yellow button, the blue machine's warning label, the blue machine's left lever....and on and on and on and on...[/code]How do I accomplish this? I want to limit items listed in the "which do you mean" list to objects which are not a part of anything else.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=20#p25338
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-11-04 13:51:06

The reason is probably because I was unable to upload the adventures as a .zip for some reason, so I handed them off to Campbell for an upload.  He has it set up so that only games uploaded individually to the ADRIFT Adventures page show up on competition pages.  He has apparently only uploaded the ADRIFT games to the Adventures page, likely for reasons of promoting his brand.  I will talk with him about it and see if we can't get the others (the z-code games and the web-based hypertext piece) up there with links to IFDB.  I mean, they count for half the competition... I don't see why they shouldn't be up there!

I'll also see about getting Ectocomp 2011 in general onto IFDB when I find a moment for it (hopefully this weekend at latest).  I see Hannes has already jumpstarted that effort, which is excellent.  The only thing is I don't know what authors will want to say about their particular games (outside of my own), so I'll leave it up to authors to edit their game's pages.

You have my apologies for this inconvenience.  I hope we can work out a solution that's good for everybody.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3545&start=0#p25339
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Glulx on DOS
User: EthanHam / DateTime: 2011-11-04 14:05:09

Can anyone tell me the system requirements for glulx interpreters that run in MS DOS?

I'm looking at things like Dos Git and Glulxe compiled for DOS and wondering what version of DOS they require. My understanding is that Glulxe is 32-bit, but DOS is 16-bit. Do these interpreters thunk to 32-bits or are they really intended for something like the Win32 console and not MS DOS?

Thanks for any clarification!
Ethan

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3544&start=0#p25340
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Limiting objects listed for "Which do you mean"?
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-11-04 14:21:56

I don't know how much control the forum admins have over the terrible search function, but there's alway's Google's 'site:' function, as in 'site:intfiction.org "which do you mean"'

I also don't know how to limit objects listed in the way you're asking about.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=20#p25341
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: Tale / DateTime: 2011-11-04 14:30:09

No worries. I also took the liberty of making a page for mine and edited the download link for Hannes' game.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3544&start=0#p25342
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Limiting objects listed for "Which do you mean"?
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-11-04 14:33:55

You should be able to do something like (untested - I probably have the exact wording wrong):

does the player mean doing something with something that is part of a machine: it is unlikely.

That should filter out the parts of the machine unless the player specifically refers to some part of the machine. I.e. x machine, should now work like you want, but x button should still list the buttons on each machine (because although the rules states that it's unlikely, nothing else is more likely).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3544&start=0#p25343
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Limiting objects listed for "Which do you mean"?
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-11-04 14:56:58

[quote="wjousts"]does the player mean doing something with something that is part of a machine: it is unlikely.[/quote]I tried this (and several variations) and it didn't work. It looks like this decision only takes place [i]after[/i] the "which did you mean" list is built.

Anyone have any other thoughts?
I've tried the "does all include" but that doesn't affect this activity.

Perhaps I can just put a check in where if the list is more than 10 long, I'll just block it and say "sorry, you'll have to be more specific". Anybody know how to catch and handle that?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3523&start=0#p25344
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Hyperlinks in Glulx
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-11-04 15:08:51

[quote="Jim Aikin"]
Does that increment i until the value of buffer->i is zero? I think so. It wouldn't help in my code, so I guess I should ignore it.[/quote]

That's right, that was for the specific subject in that thread.

Concerning your question, put the printing of the new prompt right [i]before[/i] the glk_cancel_line_event() call and don't forget to finish it all with a return 2. It's working for me right now!

(well, almost, there's an ugly side effect if player types anything in the prompt before clicking on the link, but dealing with that is far beyond my very rusty glulx knowledge! ^_^')

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3544&start=0#p25345
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Limiting objects listed for "Which do you mean"?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-04 15:12:19

I think the extension Disambiguation Control by Jon Ingold can be helpful.

(It does have documentation, it just doesn't show up on the extensions site.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3544&start=0#p25346
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Limiting objects listed for "Which do you mean"?
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-11-04 15:29:32

[quote="Felix"]I think the extension Disambiguation Control by Jon Ingold can be helpful.[/quote]That looks promising, I don't know why I didn't think to look among the extensions. Just another facepalm moment.
Thanks, I'll let everyone know if this works for me.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3544&start=0#p25347
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Limiting objects listed for "Which do you mean"?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-04 15:44:00

It might also help if you posted your original code, or a slimmed-down fragment that reproduced the problem. Do you by any chance have a line like this?

[code]Understand "machine" as a thing when the item described is part of a machine.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3544&start=0#p25348
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Limiting objects listed for "Which do you mean"?
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-11-04 15:49:05

Jon Ingold's Disambiguation control seems to be doing what I want, except I came up against this error:[code]> x machine
[** Programming error: tried to read from -->100 in the array "match_list", which has entries 0 up to 99 **]

[** Programming error: tried to read from -->100 in the array "match_scores", which has entries 0 up to 99 **]
What do you want to examine: 1) blue machine, 2) red machine, 3) yellow machine or 4) green machine?[/code]Anyone know if/how I can fix this? I tried looking in the extension to see where the length of these two arrays are set, but I can't seem to find it, and I don't know i6 code very well so I'd probably end up breaking it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3523&start=10#p25349
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Hyperlinks in Glulx
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-11-04 16:44:43

The printing of the new prompt? Sorry ... what line causes that?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3544&start=0#p25350
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Limiting objects listed for "Which do you mean"?
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-11-04 16:56:19

How are you assigning your parts? Because if I do this:

[code]
Engineering is a room.

A machine is a kind of thing. 
A button is a kind of thing.

A red machine, a blue machine and a green machine are machines in Engineering.

One button is a part of every machine.
[/code]

I don't have a problem:

[code]
Engineering
You can see a red machine, a blue machine and a green machine here.

>x machine
Which do you mean, the red machine, the blue machine or the green machine?

>x red machine
You see nothing special about the red machine.

>x red machine's button
You see nothing special about the red machine's button.
[/code]

Slightly off-topic: Which does bring up another question that I had before which is how it decides the names of part that are assigned with a "part of every x" and whether or not you can control how it does that. I encountered that when I had a head as part of every person and hair as part of every head. Then the hair becomes "Bob's head's hair" which is obviously stupid (the fix is not to worry about the hair being part of the head, unless you intend to separate the head from Bob at some point, it should be a problem).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3127&start=30#p25351
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Dead Horses, and the beating thereof
User: Gio / DateTime: 2011-11-04 17:06:24

[quote="Ghalev"]as the biggest-largest IF in the history of IF-that's-really-quite-large-and-not-at-all-tiny.[/quote]

Epic.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3544&start=0#p25352
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Limiting objects listed for "Which do you mean"?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-11-04 17:07:38

[quote="Joel Webster"]Jon Ingold's Disambiguation control seems to be doing what I want, except I came up against this error:[code]> x machine
[** Programming error: tried to read from -->100 in the array "match_list", which has entries 0 up to 99 **]

[** Programming error: tried to read from -->100 in the array "match_scores", which has entries 0 up to 99 **]
What do you want to examine: 1) blue machine, 2) red machine, 3) yellow machine or 4) green machine?[/code]Anyone know if/how I can fix this? I tried looking in the extension to see where the length of these two arrays are set, but I can't seem to find it, and I don't know i6 code very well so I'd probably end up breaking it.[/quote]
Maybe fiddle with this bit:[code]To decide which list of objects is the match list:
    let L be a list of objects;
    repeat with N running from 1 to 100:[/code] and change the 100 to 99?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3517&start=0#p25353
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] Abbreviated nouns with periods
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-11-04 17:14:10

Thanks again Matt, and also Juhana. These are some good tips. Juhana's does certainly look more compact; I'm not sure what the consequences will be of converting the command to indexed text. In any case I will try both out and see how they shake out.

P.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3544&start=10#p25354
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Limiting objects listed for "Which do you mean"?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-04 17:26:53

[quote="wjousts"]how it decides the names of part that are assigned with a "part of every x" and whether or not you can control how it does that[/quote]
You can't. Or at least it is quite hardcoded into Inform. 

For the Swedish I7 translation, I was trying to find a way to give such assembly parts names in Swedish. But there seems to be nothing in either the Standard Rules or the I6 Templates that is responsible for those names.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3523&start=10#p25355
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Hyperlinks in Glulx
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-11-04 18:22:24

There goes a very basic implementation of it. It doesn't even check the number of the link, just tries to execute "go n" when you click in the "NORTH" link of the room 01 description.

[code]!% -G
!% -D

Include "Parser";
Include "Verblib";
Include "Infglk";

Object Room_01 "Room 01"
with
description
[;
	print "You're in Room 01. An exit leads ";
	glk_set_hyperlink(1);
	print "NORTH";
	glk_set_hyperlink(0);
	print_ret ".";
],
n_to Room_02,
has light
;

Object Room_02 "Room 02"
with
description "You're in Room 2",
s_to Room_01,
has light
;

[Initialise;
	glk_request_hyperlink_event(gg_mainwin);
	lookmode = 2;
	location=Room_01;
];

[HandleGlkEvent ev context abortres newcmd cmdlen;
	switch (ev-->0)
	{
		evtype_hyperlink:
			glk_request_hyperlink_event(gg_mainwin);
			
			glk_set_style(style_Input);
			print "go north";
			glk_set_style(style_Normal);
			
			glk_cancel_line_event(gg_mainwin,0);
			newcmd="go n";
			cmdlen=PrintAnyToArray(abortres+WORDSIZE,INPUT_BUFFER_LEN-WORDSIZE,newcmd);
			abortres-->0=cmdlen;
			
			return 2;  
  }
]; 

Include "Grammar";[/code]

As mentioned, its only drawback is the mixing of the "go north" new command line with anything the player had typed before clicking (which would go unnoticed if she hasn't typed anything, of course).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=20#p25356
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-11-04 19:05:41

[quote="bowsmand"]He has apparently only uploaded the ADRIFT games to the Adventures page, likely for reasons of promoting his brand.  I will talk with him about it and see if we can't get the others (the z-code games and the web-based hypertext piece) up there with links to IFDB.[/quote]It's nothing sinister, the upload has always been restricted to ADRIFT games. If you packaged the other games individually in zip files they could also be uploaded. Let me know if you have any problems.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3546&start=0#p25357
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Hundredth idiotic question.
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-11-04 19:23:39

This doesn't work.

[code]The Hut is a room. "This is a hut."

A steel bar is in the Hut.

A cut in the wall is a container in the hut. "There is a cut in the wall." It is fixed in place.

Instead of unlocking the cut in the wall with the steel bar, say "ok!".

Instead of opening the cut in the wall, say "Not with bare hands. Impossible."[/code]
Ofc, I can "unlock" the cut in the wall ("open cut with bar", don't mind it actually doesn't open, the SAY result is enough).

When I try "OPEN CUT" it either says "it's already open/that's not something you can open" and so forth, depending if I made it openable, open, closed or whatever.

Keep in mind I don't want it to really open. BUT, I want a particular thing to fit inside (the bar, in the given example). So, saying it is a closed container will make things difficult and the parser will try to open it when I "put bar in cut".


--- So far I've tried a [i]before[/i] rule, an [i]instead[/i]. Even a [i]check[/i] and a [i]carry out[/i]. 
I don't seem to be able to give a custom response to the player as the parser keeps doing the job for me.

Where am I wrong?


Thank a lot for the help. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3547&start=0#p25358
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Studying Inform 6 parser -- baffled by Adjudicate
User: nelsnelson / DateTime: 2011-11-04 19:31:38

Hi forum,

Long time Inform fan, first time poster.

I have a little bit of a weird question.  At about line 3206 of the parserm.h file provided with Inform Release 6/11 -- Serial number 040227... I find the following code:

[code]for (i=0 : i<number_matched : i++) match_classes-->i = 0;
n = 1;
for (i=0 : i<number_matched : i++)
    if (match_classes-->i == 0) {
        match_classes-->i = n++; flag = 0;
        for (j=i+1 : j<number_matched : j++)
            if (match_classes-->j == 0 && Identical(match_list-->i, match_list-->j) == 1) {
                flag=1;
                match_classes-->j = match_classes-->i;
            }
        if (flag == 1) match_classes-->i = 1-n;
    }
 n--; number_of_classes = n;[/code]

Near as I can tell, this code is just taking a bunch of possible matches and attempting to group the matches by class and similarity, or something.

However, when I debug this code during runtime, I find that the outermost for loop is being executed only one single time.

I cannot figure this out.  It *appears* that match_classes should look something like this where number_matched == 17 :
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17]

But it does not.  Running in Frotz V2.43, it instead looks like this:
[1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0]

What is going on here?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3546&start=0#p25359
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hundredth idiotic question.
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-04 19:39:29

Try this:
[code]Instead of opening when the noun is the cut in the wall, say "Not with bare hands. Impossible."[/code]
Don't know _why_ that syntax is required, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3546&start=0#p25360
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hundredth idiotic question.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-04 20:03:45

This also seems to work:

[code]Instead of opening the cut, say "Not with bare hands. Impossible."
[/code]

So I think what's going on is that the preposition "in" is confusing the I7 compiler somehow. (This is based on my experiences with a lot of room names with "and" in their names, like "Body and Blood of Christ Church" and "Gun and Knife Emporium," which seemed to make the compiler cry salty tears unless I used partial names.) At an even less educated guess, maybe the compiler is parsing it as something like this:

[code]Instead of opening the cut [in the wall when] in [the cut in] the wall[/code]

-- in other words, both "the cut" and "the wall" are [i]separately[/i] getting translated as "the cut in the wall," and the "in" is getting translated as a modifier somehow. But someone would probably have to look at the I6 that this gets compiled to in order to check my hunch.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=20#p25361
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-11-04 20:27:51

Yeah, I didn't assume it was anything sinister.

(Campbell, are you capable of sinister behaviour?  Do you own a white cat and a swivel chair?  Do you have a ghastly facial scar you just never show on your profile?  Have you launched any laser satellites in the past week?)

Sounds like that's what I'll do, zip 'em all up.  I'll see about getting around to it tonight, if I can.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3544&start=10#p25362
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Limiting objects listed for "Which do you mean"?
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-11-04 21:02:16

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Maybe fiddle with this bit:[code]To decide which list of objects is the match list:
    let L be a list of objects;
    repeat with N running from 1 to 100:[/code] and change the 100 to 99?[/quote]I found that line, and I changed the 100 to 500 (because the disambiguation was running through over 100 parts) and it didn't change anything. When I'm back on my Inform machine I'll try that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3523&start=10#p25363
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Hyperlinks in Glulx
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-11-04 22:20:15

Thanks. That was very helpful. I seem to have it working now ... almost. The only bit of piffle that remains is that when I click a link, the result looks like this:

[quote]>
go east[/quote]

I'm using a dummy object to print the command, and I'm sure that's horribly wrong, but it's the best I've been able to figure out. Here's what I have at present:

[code]Object px "dummy"
	with short_name "dummy",
	has proper
;

[ HandleGlkEvent ev context abortres newcmd cmdlen;
		! To suppress a compiler warning:
		context = 0;
      switch (ev-->0) {
         evtype_Hyperlink:
            glk_request_hyperlink_event(gg_mainwin);
			glk_cancel_line_event(gg_mainwin, 0);
			switch (ev-->2) {
				e_obj: newcmd = "go east"; px.short_name = "go east";
				w_obj: newcmd = "go west"; px.short_name = "go west";
				axe: newcmd = "x axe"; px.short_name = "x axe";
			}
			glk_set_style(style_Input);
			print (The) px;
			glk_set_style(style_Normal);
			new_line;
			cmdlen = PrintAnyToArray(abortres+WORDSIZE, INPUT_BUFFER_LEN-WORDSIZE, newcmd);
			abortres-->0 = cmdlen;
		};
		return 2;
   ];[/code]

If I don't use the four lines before cmdlen = PrintAnyToArray, the new command is never printed at all, even though it's carried out. So evidently I need to get rid of that kluge and figure out a way to stuff the actual command on the line with the command prompt. I have no clue where to look for a way to do that.

Adam Cadre, very unhelpfully, says this: "Now, you can either place that very phrase at the prompt to let the player know that's what's been done, or you can do something like this...." He then gives, more or less, the four lines that are printing my output in the wrong place.

<Sigh.>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3547&start=0#p25364
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Studying Inform 6 parser -- baffled by Adjudicate
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-04 22:41:10

When you added debugging, did you add braces for the "for" statement? If you just stuck a print statement inside the existing braces, it's in an "if", not in the main loop.

The I6 library uses a wacky indenting style.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3523&start=10#p25365
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Hyperlinks in Glulx
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-11-04 23:29:13

No sooner do I solve that problem than I find I have a worse problem. When the player (at the moment, player = me) resizes the game window, a GlkEvent is generated, which means that HandleGlkEvent is called. This has the effect of repeating the last command, whatever it was -- and whether or not it resulted from clicking a link. I have no smegging idea how to prevent this, because nothing in my HandleGlkEvent code seems to be responsible for it. Here's what I have:

[code][ HandleGlkEvent ev context abortres newcmd cmdlen;
      switch (ev-->0) {
         evtype_Hyperlink:
            glk_request_hyperlink_event(gg_mainwin);
			switch (ev-->2) {
				e_obj: newcmd = "go east"; px.short_name = "go east";
				w_obj: newcmd = "go west"; px.short_name = "go west";
				axe: newcmd = "x axe"; px.short_name = "x axe";
			}
			glk_set_style(style_Input);
			! print the command, whose text is now stored as the short_name of dummy object px:
			print (The) px;
			glk_set_style(style_Normal);
			new_line;

			cmdlen = PrintAnyToArray(abortres+WORDSIZE, INPUT_BUFFER_LEN-WORDSIZE, newcmd);
			abortres-->0 = cmdlen;
		default:
			context = 0;
		};
		return 2;
   ];[/code]

One would naively expect that a window resize event would fall through to the default case, which would do nothing. But no ... a new command is silently issued in the background.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=20#p25366
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-04 23:29:38

[quote="bowsmand"]Have you launched any laser satellites in the past week?[/quote]

[guilty eye-darting] Wait is that ... is that bad?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3547&start=0#p25367
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Studying Inform 6 parser -- baffled by Adjudicate
User: nelsnelson / DateTime: 2011-11-04 23:54:24

Well, that was actually not quite my problem.  My problem was actually far more stupid -- I actually used the same index variable (i) to iterate through the match_classes list for debugging (the numbers between the square brackets.)  Now I am using k, and same as before, I am careful of the for loop and if conditional nesting (it's no different from the C syntax [emote]:-)[/emote].

So now, the supposedly correct output is

[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0]

(Brackets added.)

The first 12 match_classes are the classes of the compass directions, including the up above, ground, inside, and outside.  The remaining 5 zeros apparently belong to rest of the objects in scope, including the selfobj.

Such a stupid mistake.  [emote]:-)[/emote]  Anyway, I still can't quite understand what a match_class of zero (0) means.  Any idea about that?
-Nels

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3523&start=10#p25368
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Hyperlinks in Glulx
User: George / DateTime: 2011-11-05 00:03:37

[quote="Jim Aikin"]
[code][ HandleGlkEvent ev context abortres newcmd cmdlen;
      switch (ev-->0) {
         evtype_Hyperlink:
            glk_request_hyperlink_event(gg_mainwin);
			switch (ev-->2) {
				e_obj: newcmd = "go east"; px.short_name = "go east";
				w_obj: newcmd = "go west"; px.short_name = "go west";
				axe: newcmd = "x axe"; px.short_name = "x axe";
			}[/code][/quote]

Are evtype_Hyperlink and switch (ev-->2) supposed to be indented to the same level like that?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3523&start=10#p25369
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Hyperlinks in Glulx
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-11-05 00:40:56

[quote="Jim Aikin"]The only bit of piffle that remains is that when I click a link, the result looks like this:

[quote]>
go east[/quote]
[/quote]

You can change this behavior by taking advantage of one of the new Glk calls: [url=http://eblong.com/zarf/glk/glk-spec-073_4.html#s.2]glk_set_echo_line_event[/url].

It lets you turn off the automatic printing of the player's input - but you are then responsible for printing something to the screen in its place. (You might also need to update your copy of infglk.h, depending on how recent it is.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3547&start=0#p25371
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Studying Inform 6 parser -- baffled by Adjudicate
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-05 00:56:41

That loop shouldn't leave any of the match_class entries as zero. I'm not sure how you got it to.

(The library already contains some debugging for that routine. Type "trace 4" at the command line.)

It's dividing the match_list into groups, as you say, based on indistinguishability: two objects wind up in the same group if they have identical names (so the player has no way of disambiguating them). Each group gets a number from 1 up, except that if a group has more than one object, the first one's match_class is negated.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3523&start=10#p25372
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Hyperlinks in Glulx
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-11-05 01:08:24

[quote="George"]Are evtype_Hyperlink and switch (ev-->2) supposed to be indented to the same level like that?[/quote]
Indentation is not significant in I6.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3549&start=0#p25394
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: |
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-11-05 04:11:03

Quite frankly, you need to work on your room descriptions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3570&start=0#p25395
Forum: Feedback / Subject: SPAM
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-11-05 04:20:05

I think perhaps this forum should use the Newly Registered Users group, so any new poster has to post a sensible post that gets signed off by a moderator, before being allowed to post freely.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3328&start=20#p25396
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Site Logo
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-11-05 04:22:06

So... what are we doing? Do we need a vote topic?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=30#p25397
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: Tale / DateTime: 2011-11-05 04:25:23

If you forget the thrusters on the satellites they'll be ... adrift.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3570&start=0#p25398
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SPAM
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-11-05 04:29:08

I personally think that'd be too harsh, but someone new to the forum seeking for help should maybe cope with one post only for the first... 15 minutes or so.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3127&start=30#p25399
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Dead Horses, and the beating thereof
User: Laurie-K / DateTime: 2011-11-05 05:30:11

Reactivation of dead horses is best attempted by flogging rather than beating.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3546&start=0#p25400
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hundredth idiotic question.
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-11-05 05:32:53

Grrr. Yes, and I shoulda thought about it.

The funny part is that the cut in the wall worked fine with 30 lines of code and goes broken just for the [i]opening[/i] instance.

Calling the item [i]cut_in_the_wall with printed name "cut in the wall"[/i] and (wtf!)[i] understand "cut/wall", "cut in the wall"[/i] solves it.

Thx for the help guys.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3571&start=0#p25401
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: How to determine in code if a restore succeeds or fails?
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-11-05 06:05:21

My WIP has an initial menu (like The Blind House, and others) where the user can choose to restore a previous game. If the restore fails, then I don't want to let the user out of this initial menu. However, to determine that, I need to know whether the restore fails or succeeds within I6/Glulx. Any ideas? Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3570&start=0#p25402
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SPAM
User: Laurie-K / DateTime: 2011-11-05 06:23:28

If you 'view new posts' you will see that some loony called pseupssigue has just become a member and sent 21 junk posts in half an hour.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3517&start=10#p25403
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] Abbreviated nouns with periods
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-11-05 06:24:09

The conversion from a snippet to indexed text is only so that you can compare and modify it. Note that the last line isn't changing the player's command, it's changing the [i]text[/i] of the player's command.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3570&start=0#p25404
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SPAM
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-11-05 06:38:43

It's safe to guess that that's what Campbell is referring to. You just have to keep two types of people in mind - the spam-o-bot nobody wants and the guy who's new to IF and has a question.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3523&start=10#p25405
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Hyperlinks in Glulx
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-11-05 07:51:17

[quote="Jim Aikin"]The only bit of piffle that remains is that when I click a link, the result looks like this:

[quote]>
go east[/quote]

[/quote]

As I told you before, you must put the lines that write the new command at the prompt [i]before[/i] calling the glk cancel line function, that's to say:

this
[code]
glk_set_style(style_Input);
print "MY NEW COMMAND HERE!";
glk_set_style(style_Normal);
[/code]

goes before this:

[code]glk_cancel_line_event(gg_mainwin,0);[/code]

And as I mentioned, the ugly side effect is that if the player types something before clicking the result could be like this (in the example she has typed "xyzzy", then, for any reason, changed her mind and clicked on the "NORTH" link)
[quote]
[b]Room 01[/b]
You're in Room 01. An exit leads [u]NORTH[/u]

>xyzzy

(now player clicks on NORTH before typing ENTER)

>[b]go north[/b]xyzzy

[b]Room 02[/b]
You're in Room 02.[/quote]

I'm going to take a look to this glk set echo calls (I didn't know they existed! nice!) to see if they can help with this.

 [quote="Jim Akin"]
No sooner do I solve that problem than I find I have a worse problem. When the player (at the moment, player = me) resizes the game window, a GlkEvent is generated, which means that HandleGlkEvent is called. This has the effect of repeating the last command, whatever it was -- and whether or not it resulted from clicking a link. I have no smegging idea how to prevent this, because nothing in my HandleGlkEvent code seems to be responsible for it. Here's what I have:[/quote]

You're doing the "return 2" from the HandleGlkEvent main routine. You should put it in the [b]evtype_hyperlink:[/b] case of the [b]switch (ev-->0)[/b] switch. If not, you're returning "2" wichever the event is, which has the effect of canceling the current command line. And I miss the glk_cancel_line_event() call in your last code, which surely is causing some more adiotional chaos ^_^'.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3546&start=0#p25406
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hundredth idiotic question.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-05 08:30:09

[quote]Yes, and I shoulda thought about it.[/quote]

Well, I sure wouldn't have known that this would cause trouble in advance. It was only when Felix posted his solution that I realized what was going on. 

(By the way, "Not with your bare hands" is more idiomatic.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3523&start=10#p25407
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Hyperlinks in Glulx
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-11-05 08:43:57

[quote="rockersuke"]
As I told you before, you must put the lines that write the new command at the prompt [i]before[/i] calling the glk cancel line function.
[/quote]

No, that's not legal. You can't print* when there's a line event pending, so the cancelation needs to happen first. The only way to prevent the line break is to use the set echo function that Ben mentioned.

--Erik

*Some interpreters will print text to the window while a line event is pending, but it is unambiguously out-of-spec.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3572&start=0#p25408
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Glulx on DOS
User: EthanHam / DateTime: 2011-11-05 08:45:47

Hi folks,

Can anyone tell me the system requirements for glulx interpreters that run in MS DOS?

I'm looking at things like Dos Git and Glulxe compiled for DOS and wondering what version of DOS they require (I didn't see any documentation in the download  about it). My understanding is that Glulxe is 32-bit, but DOS is 16-bit. Do these interpreters thunk to 32-bits or are they really intended for something like the Win32 console and not MS DOS?

Thanks for any clarification!
Ethan

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3546&start=0#p25409
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hundredth idiotic question.
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-11-05 09:12:11

Thanks, but I've shoulda thought about it. It's like the 21.563th time I get error messages due to stange object namings. It's usually about that... 
Thx for the comfort, anyway. [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote="matt w"](By the way, "Not with your bare hands" is more idiomatic.)[/quote]
Thanks! I don't wanna be in my proofreaders' shoes...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3523&start=10#p25410
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Hyperlinks in Glulx
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-11-05 11:21:16

[quote="ektemple"][quote="rockersuke"]
As I told you before, you must put the lines that write the new command at the prompt [i]before[/i] calling the glk cancel line function.
[/quote]
No, that's not legal. You can't print* when there's a line event pending, so the cancelation needs to happen first. The only way to prevent the line break is to use the set echo function that Ben mentioned.[/quote]
Thanks to everyone for offering suggestions. My reasons for wanting to use I6 were (a) I dislike I7, but (b) I want my game to be playable in a Web browser.

But the underlying impulse behind (b) is, I want the player to have a pleasant, modern experience. My foray into Glulx programming for I6 has convinced me that I'm unlikely to be able to provide that experience using these tools -- not without becoming so frustrated that I'll lose all interest in the project. The I6/glulx documentation is bad to nonexistent, and the coding requirements seem to be pretty much a mess.

At this point, it seems clear to me that using TADS 3 will be a much better alternative. Even if MJR doesn't have his Web server implementation up and running any time soon, the [i]other [/i]aspects of the user experience will be more comprehensive, more reliable, and a whole lot easier to code. On balance, I6 loses; T3 wins.

Too bad. I like I6, and I was sort of looking forward to becoming an I6 virtuoso. YCAGWYW, but if you try some time, you just might find....

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3523&start=20#p25411
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Hyperlinks in Glulx
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-11-05 12:09:34

[quote="ektemple"][quote="rockersuke"]
As I told you before, you must put the lines that write the new command at the prompt [i]before[/i] calling the glk cancel line function.
[/quote]

No, that's not legal. You can't print* when there's a line event pending, so the cancelation needs to happen first. The only way to prevent the line break is to use the set echo function that Ben mentioned.

--Erik

*Some interpreters will print text to the window while a line event is pending, but it is unambiguously out-of-spec.[/quote]

Cool!  [emote]:D[/emote]  That means it was working nicely for me 'cause my terp was acting in an illegal way!  [emote]:P[/emote] 

OK, as I said, I've been trying with this glk_set_echo_line_event() function (which I checked was supported in my Windows Glulxe)(remember to get the latest infglk.h, not the one in the IF Archive but [url=https://github.com/erkyrath/glk-dev/blob/work/dispatch_dump/infglk.h]the one in zarf's github thing[/url]). Almost there...!

It happens that, as documented in the GLK 0.7.3 API specification that Ben linked ([url=http://eblong.com/zarf/glk/glk-spec-073_4.html#s.2]here[/url]), this function only works in [i]subsequent[/i] line input requests... So the line break would be there when you catch the hyperlink event but won't appear in subsequent turns... Of course in these subsequent turns ordinary behavoiur is overidden by this save you turn it off, which would then have an effect not in the current turn, but in the following ones...

Save I'm missing something, this make this feature very useful if you know in advance that your work is meant to be used exclusively in one or the other mode, but not if both are supposed to co-exist and you can't predict wether the player is going to type or click.

Still I do hope I'm missing something...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3571&start=0#p25412
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: How to determine in code if a restore succeeds or fa
User: SJ_43 / DateTime: 2011-11-05 12:25:54

I think you can safely assume that any code after the restore statement will only be executed if the restore failed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3523&start=20#p25413
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Hyperlinks in Glulx
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-11-05 12:26:15

As a practical matter, you would want to turn off the echo when the game starts. Then just print the player's input after line input events - it comes back to you in the event struct - and discard it when you cancel the line input request.

Example code [url=http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/inputfeaturetest.inf]here[/url]; demo [url=http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quixe/play-remote.html?story=stories/inputfeaturetest.ulx.js]here[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3523&start=20#p25414
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Hyperlinks in Glulx
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-05 12:40:57

Would it be pushy to ask someone to wrap this up in a nice I7 extension when it's all ironed out? Because that would be great.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3523&start=20#p25415
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Hyperlinks in Glulx
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-11-05 13:22:36

[quote="matt w"]Would it be pushy to ask someone to wrap this up in a nice I7 extension when it's all ironed out? Because that would be great.[/quote]
There are already three or four I7 extensions that offer the basic hyperlink functionality, including the ability to link a command that is different that the linked text (e.g., clicking on the text "north" to produce "go north"). What all of them are missing, though, is the new echo functionality to fix the default line break that accompanies a canceled input event. I second the request for an extension or a demo of that for I7...

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3465&start=0#p25416
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: IF borked on Lion
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-05 14:04:28

A new version of Zoom is now up that fixes this:

<a class="postlink" href="http://logicalshift.co.uk/rotate/2011/11/05/zoom-1-1-5-has-been-released/">http://logicalshift.co.uk/rotate/2011/1 ... -released/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3549&start=0#p25417
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: |
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-11-05 14:11:10

[img]http://www.gifs.net/Animation11/Science_and_Body/Hands_and_Feet/Clapping.gif[/img]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3544&start=10#p25418
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Limiting objects listed for "Which do you mean"?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-05 15:32:25

[quote="Joel Webster"]I found that line, and I changed the 100 to 500 (because the disambiguation was running through over 100 parts) and it didn't change anything. When I'm back on my Inform machine I'll try that.[/quote]
The standard rules by default sets the MATCH_LIST_WORDS constant that determines the length of the match_list array by the use option 'Use maximum things understood at once' to 'at least 100'. That's probably the line you should change:
[code]Use maximum things understood at once of at least 500.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3573&start=0#p25419
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: indexed text .. [?]
User: koo5 / DateTime: 2011-11-05 16:08:39

[code]"wut" by "kook"

wut is a room;

global indexed text is some indexed text that varies;

when play begins:
	let local indexed text  be "[wut]";
	if local indexed text is "wut":
		say "local ok";
	now global indexed text is "[wut]";
	if global indexed text is "wut":
		say "global ok!";

[/code] [emote]:roll:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3523&start=20#p25422
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Hyperlinks in Glulx
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-11-05 16:41:00

[quote="bcressey"]As a practical matter, you would want to turn off the echo when the game starts. Then just print the player's input after line input events - it comes back to you in the event struct - and discard it when you cancel the line input request.

Example code [url=http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/inputfeaturetest.inf]here[/url]; demo [url=http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quixe/play-remote.html?story=stories/inputfeaturetest.ulx.js]here[/url].[/quote]

Aha, thanks!
That linked example is not in the format of an actual game and makes its glk calls with numbers instead of meaningful names (which are luckily mentioned after that in comments) so yeah, I'm having the mother of all headaches right now  [emote]:lol:[/emote], but I guess I have a working (and hopefully not based on an illegal feature if WinGlulxe) example:

[code]
!% -G
!% -D

Include "Parser";
Include "Verblib";
Include "Infglk";

Object Room_01 "Room 01"
with
description
[;
	print "You're in Room 01. An exit leads ";
	glk_set_hyperlink(1);
	print "NORTH";
	glk_set_hyperlink(0);
	print_ret ".";
],
n_to Room_02,
has light
;

Object Room_02 "Room 02"
with
description "You're in Room 2",
s_to Room_01,
has light
;

[Initialise;
	glk_request_hyperlink_event(gg_mainwin);
	glk_set_echo_line_event(gg_mainwin,0);
	lookmode = 2;
	location=Room_01;
];

[HandleGlkEvent ev context abortres newcmd cmdlen;
	switch (ev-->0)
	{
		evtype_hyperlink:
			glk_request_hyperlink_event(gg_mainwin);
			glk_cancel_line_event(gg_mainwin,0);
			
			newcmd="go north";
			cmdlen=PrintAnyToArray(abortres+WORDSIZE,INPUT_BUFFER_LEN-WORDSIZE,newcmd);
			abortres-->0=cmdlen;
			
			Command_printing();
			
			return 2;
		evtype_LineInput:
			Command_printing();
	}
]; 

[Command_printing;
	glk_set_style(style_Input);
	glk_put_buffer(buffer+WORDSIZE, buffer-->0);
	glk_set_style(style_Normal);
	new_line;
];

Include "Grammar";[/code]

It's probably too late to help Jim, but I didn't want to just forget about it. What it does is:

-Sets echo off at the begining of the game.
-Uses the line input event to manually print the contents of the player input (calling the Command_printing routine)
-After a click is detected, its command is also printed calling the same routine.

Seems to work, though I've hardly tested it! ^_^' any contraindication or just something that could go wrong with this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3575&start=0#p25424
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Scene description before room description?
User: Twi / DateTime: 2011-11-05 17:27:51

Hello everyone! I apologize if this has already been answered on the forums, but I didn't find anything through the search function. Anyway, I'm currently working on my first IF game and I'm wondering: how do I get a scene description to appear before my room description? I'm using IF7.

I essentially want the scene to start by spitting a little text at the player right as they enter a room for the first time. However I keep having the description of the room you enter appear before that, making what I want to say in the scene's text somewhat odd. The scene appears first and the room description needs to only pop up if the player types "look" or if they re-enter the room another time. Here's what I have currently:

[quote]Trapped is a scene.

Trapped begins when the player is in the Throne Room for the first time;
	When Trapped begins: say "After finally leaving the library you find yourself still unsure about the world you stumbled into. However, you're ripped out of your thoughts as you're greeted by piles of slumping bodies. They are strewn in various places throughout the large room you just entered: some are at tables with rotten food, others are immobile on the floor. You're once again met with complete and heavy silence. What could have happened here?"

Throne Room is east of Library. The description is "Large and cold, a feeling of lonliness sweeps over you. As you turn about you can see a [large ornated chair] against the southern wall facing the rest of the room. Sitting on it is a [slumped figure] with something hanging around his neck. It glitters in what little light can make it through the arched windows"[/quote]

Would it just be easier to change the room description so that it says something different upon first entrance? If so, how exactly would you code that? Thanks in advance for reading! Any help is appreciated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=240#p25425
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Twi / DateTime: 2011-11-05 17:38:17

Hello! I'm Courtney, 21 and from Ohio, USA. I'm currently in my fourth year of college and should graduate in May.

I'm very new to the world of IF, and was introduced to the medium via my IMS238 course (IMS=Interactive Media Studies) that I'm in right now. Our final project is to build a complete IF by the end of the semester. I have to say that I really like it. I'm still struggling along to learn how to play and how to build, but so far it has been a fun ride. So I hope to have a good time here with everyone.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3571&start=0#p25426
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: How to determine in code if a restore succeeds or fa
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-11-05 17:40:27

The easiest way to do this is to find the code that prints the default success or failure messages and insert your custom code there. You can provide custom instructions for a failed restore, as well as do anything you like after a successful restore.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3575&start=0#p25427
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scene description before room description?
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-11-05 17:41:36

[quote="Twi"]
Would it just be easier to change the room description so that it says something different upon first entrance?[/quote]

Surely so! I've been extensively using that in my WIP. It's just something like:

[code]
Throne Room is east of Library. The description is "[if unvisited]After finally leaving the library...[otherwise]Large and cold..."[/code]

Which of course only makes sense if you are sure the first time you're entering the throne room you are coming from the library.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3575&start=0#p25428
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scene description before room description?
User: Twi / DateTime: 2011-11-05 18:05:43

That's perfect! Thank you very much.

I'm sorry, that seems so simple now that I read it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3498&start=10#p25430
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple Chat V4
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-11-05 18:25:00

[emote]:lol:[/emote]  anyone?  hope I can find the bug in this, haven't been able to work on the game for awhile.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3523&start=20#p25432
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Hyperlinks in Glulx
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-11-05 18:31:57

[quote="rockersuke"]It's probably too late to help Jim, but I didn't want to just forget about it.[/quote]
Far from being offended by this unintentional slight, I'm amused. I agree -- I'm quite beyond help!

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3575&start=0#p25433
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scene description before room description?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-05 18:42:13

If you want some text to show up before the room heading, instead of putting it in the room description, you can try an "after going" rule like "After going east from the Library for the first time..." or "After going to the Throne Room for the first time..." (I haven't checked either of those.) As rockersuke says, you don't want to use the second one unless you're sure that you're going from the library.

I managed to hack up something ugly that seems to work with the scene-changing mechanism too. The deal seems to be that I7 only checks for scene changes at the beginning and end of the turn, so I wanted to delay going east until after the scene-changing machinery had run. That meant trapping the "going east" action when it's going to trigger the scene change, using a flag to make that trigger the scene, and then making the player go east as part of the "when trapped begins" rules. 

[spoiler][code]
Trapped is a scene.
Trapped-cue is a truth-state that varies. Trapped-cue is false. Trapped-triggered is a truth-state that varies. Trapped-triggered is false.
Last check going when the room gone to is the Throne Room and trapped-triggered is false:
	now trapped-cue is true;
	now trapped-triggered is true;
	rule succeeds.
	
Trapped begins when trapped-cue is true;
When Trapped begins: 
	say "After finally leaving the library you find yourself still unsure about the world you stumbled into. However, you're ripped out of your thoughts as you're greeted by piles of slumping bodies. They are strewn in various places throughout the large room you just entered: some are at tables with rotten food, others are immobile on the floor. You're once again met with complete and heavy silence. What could have happened here?";
	now trapped-cue is false;
	try going east.

Library is a room. The description is "The only thing to do is go east to the Throne room."
Throne Room is east of Library. The description is "Large and cold, a feeling of loneliness sweeps over you. As you turn about you can see a large ornate chair against the southern wall facing the rest of the room. Sitting on it is a slumped figure with something hanging around his neck. It glitters in what little light can make it through the arched windows."

The reserved book is in the Library.
Check going east when the location is the library and the Library encloses the book and the player does not enclose the book::
	say "Not without the book you were supposed to get!" instead.
	
Every turn when the location is the Library: say "You hear a faint shushing sound."
Every turn when the location is the Throne Room: say "You hear a faint flushing sound."[/code][/spoiler]

I used a "last check going" rule to make sure that the check rules are properly respected -- if you change it to an "instead of going" rule, then you can go east without the book. Somewhat to my surprise, the "every turn" rules do work properly, though I wouldn't be surprised if this is breakable somehow. You probably also can check something like "if Trapped is happening or Trapped has happened" instead of using the trapped-triggered global. 

(BTW, there are a couple typos; it should be "loneliness" and "ornate," and you have a missing period which will mess up your line breaks as well as being missing.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3547&start=0#p25434
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Studying Inform 6 parser -- baffled by Adjudicate
User: nelsnelson / DateTime: 2011-11-05 18:56:27

[quote]That loop shouldn't leave any of the match_class entries as zero. I'm not sure how you got it to.[/quote]

Ohhhh.  I see.  It was a problem with the way Frotz scrolls in my terminal.  [emote]:-([/emote]

There were 1-17 match classes after all.  Thank you very much for your help!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3575&start=0#p25436
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scene description before room description?
User: Twi / DateTime: 2011-11-05 19:03:21

@matt w: Oh wow! First of all, thank you for catching my typos. I really need to be careful about that so I don't run into problems later.

Second: This was a great example! I'm learning how to use IF7 primarily through Aaron Reed's book, so I haven't really seen this "cue" system before. I noticed this was appearing in a couple of other threads as well.

Thanks a lot! I'll definitely keep this format in mind.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3575&start=0#p25438
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scene description before room description?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-05 19:36:03

Well, there isn't really a "cue" system per se; "trapped-cue" is just the name of something that could be set to true or false, which lets us use it to start the scene (with the line "Trapped begins when trapped-cue" is false). I could have called it anything else and it would work the same. 

Also, I'll bet Aaron's book has something nicer about how to deal with scenes. I don't really know much about them; I basically just tinkered until I got something that seemed to work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3576&start=0#p25447
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Resetting objects
User: sciberdude / DateTime: 2011-11-05 21:53:47

I'm developing a game that requires for every object in the game to be reset to where they were at the beginning of the day. How would I make sure that everything is reset to the point it started without it becoming tedious? 

For example, if Mrs. Miggins starts walking around the city at 7:00 AM, I need her to be back at her house, at 7:00, ready to walk again.
Think of it like Majora's Mask, or Groundhog Day. Whenever the player calls for it, everything resets.

And, of course, there are also things that only happen the first day or second, so I don't want to have the game actually end and start again, either.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3576&start=0#p25448
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Resetting objects
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-05 22:38:49

Resetting objects is tedious, in general.

(An older discussion on this topic: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1939">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1939</a> )

In Glulx you can do a full restart while saving a few values for the next go-round. This may be sufficient for what you want.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3576&start=0#p25449
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Resetting objects
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-05 22:47:50

[quote="sciberdude"]How would I make sure that everything is reset to the point it started without it becoming tedious?[/quote]

I can think of several [i]different [/i]tedious ways [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3576&start=0#p25450
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Resetting objects
User: koo5 / DateTime: 2011-11-05 22:51:30

[code]"im bored" by "kook"


moo is a room;  a table is here; there is an apple on the table;
foo is west of moo; a wooden table is here; there is a pear on the wooden table;

a thing has a room called default location;

when play begins:
	repeat with x running through everything:
		say "[x].";
		now the default location of x is the location of x;
		
understand "reboot" as rebooting; rebooting is an action applying to nothing;

carry out rebooting:
	repeat with x running through everything:
		say "[x].";
		move x to the default location of x;
			[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3576&start=0#p25451
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Resetting objects
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-05 22:54:59

Groovy. I assumed something like that was possible, but for the life of me I've never been able to wrap my head around the "running through" syntax (which is kind of crippling) ...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2859&start=30#p25453
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The perfect crime is a "thought crime".
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-11-06 01:28:03

no secret, just plain skill....not my fauly if I can't spill, atleast you can red rite? lol

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"][quote="InterFiction"]hahah, Goerge w Bush, and his father are my enemies! haha...and bill clinton...and hillory clinton...and probably obama...hhaa.[/quote]

And yet despite all those formidable enemies, it is spelling that is your arch-nemesis. You're the only person I know who has managed to misspell an onomatopoeia. What's your secret?[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3545&start=0#p25457
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx on DOS
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-11-06 05:16:10

[quote="EthanHam"]Can anyone tell me the system requirements for glulx interpreters that run in MS DOS?
I'm looking at things like Dos Git and Glulxe compiled for DOS and wondering what version of DOS they require.

My understanding is that Glulxe is 32-bit, but DOS is 16-bit. Do these interpreters thunk to 32-bits or are they really intended for something like the Win32 console and not MS DOS?[/quote]The DOS builds of Git and Glulxe on the IF-Archive all use some form of DOS extender, so they're really 32-bit programs running under DPMI (Dos Protected Mode Interface): the only important requirement these have is at least an 80386 processor.

That said, all the DOS builds on the IF-Archive are of old versions of the interpreters, and will probably cause problems with recent games that make use of newer Glulx and Glk features. It wouldn't be impossible for you to create more up-to-date builds if you really want to, though.

As an aside, it wouldn't be impossible to create a 16-bit DOS interpreter for Glulx games: the fact that the VM itself is 32-bit doesn't preclude it being implemented on an underlying system that is not. A more significant problem would be the 16-bit DOS memory architecture, with memory allocation blocks limited to 64k, though even that could be dealt with. It would be a huge amount of work, though, for not much result.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3512&start=0#p25458
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Level9 Authoring?
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-11-06 05:17:12

[quote="Gio"]Probably an odd question, but does a compiler (or whatever) exist for making A-Code games? Kinda like Inform.

I should sleep more..[/quote]
There's no such system. Writing a simple assembler for Level 9 A-code wouldn't be beyond the bounds of possiblity, but I can't imagine it getting much use.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3498&start=10#p25459
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Simple Chat V4
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-06 08:29:23

You have two 'Carry out finding responses to chat-TiaWhatsWrong' rules. Only the first runs (since it ends with an "instead".)
I guess the second one was meant to be rather a 'Carry out finding responses to chat-TiaWhatAreYouGoingToDo' rule. (Probably you copy-pasted code and forgot to change the name of the chat-node.)

So change 
[code]carry out finding responses to chat-TiaWhatsWrong: link to chat-TiaTalkToTiaMore; now chat-TiaTalkToTiaMore is sc-active;  try finding responses to chat-HelloTia instead.[/code]
to
[code]carry out finding responses to chat-TiaWhatAreYouGoingToDo: link to chat-TiaTalkToTiaMore; now chat-TiaTalkToTiaMore is sc-active;  try finding responses to chat-HelloTia instead.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3579&start=0#p25462
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Randomness and Simple Chat
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-11-06 11:28:36

So I thought I had this figured out, but apparently not. What I want to do is have a section of dialog that is controlled by numbered menus - i.e. what simple chat does. But there's a twist, I want it to have some randomness in it. I'll try to explain.

The conversation starts with Bob picking a random node to start at. The player gives a response and then regardless of which node bob started at or what response the player gives we (usually - some responses may have special handling) end up at the same node. The player picks and option, Bob gives a response and then we have to pick another random node for Bob.

I thought I could accomplish this by adding some "run a conversation from the [i]bob's randomly picked node[/i]" and then "run a conversation from the player master node" or something to that effect, and it works. Up to a point. What I didn't realize is that running another conversation from within a conversation doesn't automatically end the current one. This leads to recursion, which isn't a problem at first, but eventually causes Inform to complain about too many rulebooks in use.

So my question is this; is there a way within simple chat to accomplish this. What I guess I need to be able to do is after completing one node, automatically jump to another node. Any ideas?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3581&start=0#p25484
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: IF paratroopers needed for Limbs of Osiris
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-11-06 14:30:59

I need brave men and women who can be dropped behind enemy lines and survive in a hostile world model. The game in question is called [i]Limbs of Osiris[/i] and takes place partly in 1346 BC Egypt. It is written in I6 and fits into a single z file. It is large, detailed, puzzley and story-driven. Please note that this is a request for alpha testers, as Limbs is still unfinished. The game is sexually explicit, so if you're a kid blablabla. I possess riches beyond reckonig, but because they are fictional I can offer my brave paratrooper only spiritual reward: the pleasure of interacting with my warm and fuzzy personality.

PM me if you're interested.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3582&start=0#p25486
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Using alternate verbs in TADS3 command.
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-11-06 15:58:57

Using alternate verbs on TADS3.

I would like to be able to use alternate verbs in a comand. In other words, I want to be able to use such related verbs as get/grab/lift/handle/etc. to get an object. I've tried different approaches but get either assembly errors or a response such as 'lift' is not required or used. This should apply also to 'heavy' objects and the like.

Would appreciate some help with this. Thanks in advance. [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3583&start=0#p25487
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Letting actor drown in the ocean. - TADS3
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-11-06 16:16:50

I have included some code that, among other things, should let my actor drown and die if he goes 'ne','nw, or 'w' of if he tries to swim in the ocean. I just can't get this to work if I try the 'swim' verb. Would appreciate any help on this.

My player is on a beach near the ocean. I want him to drown if he goes
north, northeast, or northwest or 'swims', The code I've included does
not not recognize the command swim. Need some help with this. Here's
the code:

/* (Room001) The player begins the game at this location/room.
****************/

startroom : OutdoorRoom 'On the Beach' 'The Beach'
roomFirstDesc()
{
  "The rocky beach continues north and south. Toward the westward
directions, is
  the vast, blue ocean which stretches as far as the eye can see. The
many-sized
  rocks, jutting out of the beach and the ocean, look quite dangerous
to
  explore. A wide, inviting path heads east into the dense
  forest. ";
beachAchievement.awardPointsOnce();
}
shortDesc = "You are at the rocky beach. "

north : FakeConnector {
  "As much as you would want to explore the beach, you can't. For one
thing, the
  forest seems to tug at you relentlessly. Besides, you are a
professional
  explorer and are being paid to get this stuff done. The sooner, the
  better."
}
south : FakeConnector {
  "I know that you would like to roam up and down the beach. You will
be
   disappointed. There's nothing to be found but sand, rock, the ocean
and the
   barrier of the dense forest. You should stick to your task. "
}
northwest : FakeConnector {
  " << me.swim >>"
}
west : FakeConnector {
  " << me.swim >>"
}
southwest : FakeConnector {
  " << me.swim >>"
}
swim asExit (west);

east : DynamicTravelMessage
{
->path
"You head into the path and are shocked to see that it seems more worn
than you
 could have imagined; as if someone has been through here recently.
This isn't a
 fact that your new employers chose to reveal. "
"You enter the eastern path."
}
beachAchievement : Achievement { +5 "reaching the beach " }
;

/* Define the sound of the beach
**********************************************/

+ SimpleNoise 'ocean/wave/waves' 'waves'
"You hear the slapping of the water against unyielding rocks. "
;

+ SimpleOdor 'salty' 'salty'
"You smell the salty odor of the ocean. "
;

/* Define Player Character
****************************************************/

+me: BagOfHolding, Actor
  vocabWords = 'tom thomas tom/thomas/leavens'
    desc
    {
       "You are Thomas Leavens; also known as Doctor Tom to all your
friends
       and by all of your enemies. Your ex-wife calls you names that
could
       never be repeated. You graduated from college with a Doctorate
in
       biology and a minor in world history. Shortly after, as part of
your
       first job, you became involved in exploring cave systems
(spelunking).
       This quickly evolved into self-employment in all types of world-
wide
       exploration. Your intelligence and expertise in many fields
makes you a
       greatly sought after scientist and explorer.";

     /* Show my Posture. */
      "<.p>";
      postureDesc;
      "<.p>";

     /* Show my Inventory. */
      holdingDesc;
    }

bulk = 10
goingToOcean = 1
swim
{
switch (me.goingToOcean)
{
case 1:
"As much as you would want to take a much needed break and go for a
swim, the
 water seems dangerous.";
me.goingToOcean++;
break;
case 2:
"You step to the edge of the shore and consider jumping into the
ocean. However,
 the strength, speed and size of the waves make you step back, shaking
your
 head.";
me.goingToOcean++;
break;
case 3:
"Delaying your quest,for the moment, you remove everything and throw
it onto the
sand. Having done that, you jump into the water and immediately are
buffeted
against the hard rocks by wave after wave. You begin to struggle and
scream in
your last moments, but it is too late.";
finishGameMsg(ftDeath, [finishOptionUndo, finishOptionFullScore]);
}
}
;

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3584&start=0#p25488
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Help, Please.
User: rakel / DateTime: 2011-11-06 16:28:46

Right, For order for you to help me ill tell you what i do know 
(To help you help me - if that makes sense at all)

I'm a New to Imform 7
But, I know already how to make a place/room, set the scenry and place any objects or people/man/woman
into the room i know how to give a description and how to make some fixed in place.

What I would like is for the player to be-able to have a conversation/s with the people/persons

I put in the game - to like be-able to 
> ask martin about photo (or to)
> talk to martin

I've seen that when i look this up others say to make a table 
or make a new rule
but I can never get the tables to work and im a bit stuck
I'm not sure I'm even making the table or rule right
can you help explain how to make talking/asking other people (for example martin)
possible and how to also make a response
so that something like this example

>take photo
photo taken

>ask martin about photo
martin says "he remembers that photo"

and i want like options so they can ask martin loads of things
like to ask him about himself, about the other people and yourself - ect. ect.

>ask martin about himself
martin says after dinner he is feeling better

>ask martin about yourself
you look great to night, I'm glad you came 

also how do make it that they have to do this (talk to/ask Martin)
before they can leave the room/place

a simple as possible or step by step guide would be the best way for me to understand i think
thanks much love xx

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3584&start=0#p25490
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help, Please.
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-11-06 18:02:07

I'm composing a little example to illustrate how to do this; I'll put it up in a sec.  (EDIT: And I'm clearly confused.)  (EDIT EDIT: No, I'm not.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3584&start=0#p25491
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help, Please.
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-11-06 18:47:36

OK, here we go.  The relevant section of the manual is 7.6; in fact this example is a variant on Example 94 tailored specifically to conversation.  You should also be generally familiar with chapters 7 and 12, especially 7.2-7.5 and 12.7-12.9.

First off, the Inform conversational actions are asking it about and telling it about (and answering it that, but we'll leave that out for now).  There's no "talking to" action by default, although it's added fairly often.  I'll start this example with asking.  The setting:

[code]The darkroom is a room.  "This small room is illuminated only with a faint red glow."

Martin is a man in the darkroom.  The description of Martin is "In ordinary light, Martin has brown hair and green eyes."

The photo is in the darkroom.  The description of the photo is "That's definitely Martin, but who's the other person in the picture?  Perhaps he knows."

The technician is a man in the darkroom.  The description of the technician is "He's busy developing the photos."[/code]

To start, you'll probably want to replace the default asking response ("There is no reply") with something a bit more customized (note the word instead):

[code]Report asking someone about:
	say "[The noun] doesn't know anything about that." instead.[/code]

The asking action has two variables: the noun (who you asked) and the topic understood (what you asked about).  The above uses the noun, so it will print the name of the person in the response, ie, "Martin doesn't know anything about that."  But perhaps you want Martin to have his own response, so that asking Martin about something is different than asking the technician or anyone else:

[code]Report asking Martin about:
	say "Martin says that [the topic understood] falls outside his area of expertise." instead.[/code]

Now Martin will respond differently than other people, and he'll mention the topic you asked about, so if you ask about watermelons, you'll get "Martin says that watermelons fall outside his area of expertise."

But you want to write specific responses for specific topics.  If there are only one or two topics you care about and not very many people in the game, you can write individual Instead rules for each one; for instance, this rule will make everyone in the game panic at the thought of snakes:

[code]Instead of asking someone about "snakes", say "[The noun] screams in terror!"[/code]

But that would be inefficient, so we'll use tables.  But I'll break it up because this example is already tremendously long.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3582&start=0#p25492
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using alternate verbs in TADS3 command.
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-11-06 19:04:02

It's pretty easy. Here's how I defined 'grab' as a new synonym for 'take':

[code]VerbRule(Grab)
    'grab' dobjList
    : TakeAction
    verbPhrase = 'grab/grabbing (what)'
;[/code]

The section in the Technical Manual on how to create verbs pretty much assumes you're creating entirely new actions. The syntax above allows you to add new vocabulary to an existing action (in this case, TakeAction).

There are other ways to do it, which might be useful in special cases. You could create an entirely new GrabAction, and then modify the Thing class so that it would usually map 'grab' to 'take':

[code]modify Thing
    dobjFor(Grab) asDobjFor(Take)
;[/code]

Having done this, you could then override the mapping in special cases. For instance, 'grab princess' might be mapped to the hugging action instead.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3584&start=0#p25493
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help, Please.
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-11-06 19:10:43

Rather than writing a different rule for every single conversational topic, we'll give each person a table that contains all his or her replies.  See chapter 15 for more about tables.

[code]A person has a table name called the questions table.
The questions table of Martin is the Table of Martin.

Table of Martin
Topic	Reply
"photo"	"Martin says 'He remembers that photo.'"
"technician"	"Martin says 'I've never seen him before in my life.'"[/code]

(Note the single quotes.  As you probably know, they'll appear as double quotes in the game.)  As written, the topic has to be that exact word in the quotes: if you ask martin about "picture", that will fall outside his area of expertise.  We could get around this by just listing all the synonyms we want:

[code]Table of Martin (continued)
Topic	Reply
"you" or "yourself"	"You look great to night, I'm glad you came."
[/code]

There are two problems: First, that's unwieldy, and second, only Martin will recognize those synonyms because they're in his table.  For the technician, "you" and "yourself" will be different topics.  A text token (see 16.3) is more efficient.

[code]Table of Martin (continued)
Topic	Reply
"[himself]"	"martin says after dinner he is feeling better"

Understand "him" or "himself" as "[himself]" when asking someone about.[/code]

Now anyone you ask will respond the same to "him" and "himself."  But we don't always want everyone to respond to the same synonyms, so here's a final refinement to make Martin, but not the technician or anyone else, understand his own name as "himself":

[code]Understand "Martin" as "[himself]" when asking Martin about.[/code]

And finally, the actual line that looks up the entry in the person's table and prints the reply:

[code]Instead of asking someone about a topic listed in the questions table of the noun:
	say "[reply entry][paragraph break]".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3583&start=0#p25494
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Letting actor drown in the ocean. - TADS3
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-11-06 19:20:24

My T3 is real rusty, but I can see a couple of problems here. First, I don't think it will work to define:

[code]swim asExit(west)[/code]

on the room, because swim isn't a direction property that the library will ever use. Thus, the asExit macro won't do anything. In addition, I don't think you want a semicolon after that line, because the semicolon will terminate the room definition.

Second, I don't think "<<me.swim>>" will do what you want, because the me object doesn't have a swim property. All that will do is call the swim property on the me object -- it won't generate a new action. I've been poking through "Learning T3" to try to find the syntax for triggering a new action, and I can't find it, but I don't think that's it.

In any case, the library doesn't define a SwimAction. (Nor does it define a SwimInAction, which you're also going to want.) You'll need to define that and then do some other stuff, which I'll work out later if nobody else has replied.

--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3584&start=0#p25495
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help, Please.
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-11-06 19:23:23

You might want to take a look at Eric Eve's Conversation Framework extensions. They provide more functionality and eliminate some of the messy stuff.


--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3571&start=0#p25496
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: How to determine in code if a restore succeeds or fa
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-11-06 19:23:34

I have a different set of windows operating in the initial menu than I do in the main game. I'm not sure at this point whether or not a restore would even work without custom code; however, I do know that when a restore fails, it jumps out of the menu to the usual prompt. That's highly inelegant, and looks broken. 

I thought that there would be some globals set upon failure or success, but I can't find them. I really don't want to hack the libraries to find out whether it succeeded or not, but I guess that is a last-ditch option.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3584&start=0#p25497
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help, Please.
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-11-06 19:42:37

True, but they still require a basic knowledge of the "ask" and "tell" actions.

You can add rules for telling someone about exactly the same way as asking someone about: Give each person another table called the answers table, define what table it is for each person, and fill that table with the appropriate responses.  You'll probably want to modify the Understand statements so they apply to both actions:

[code]Understand "darkroom" or "dark room" as "[darkroom]" when asking someone about or telling someone about.[/code]

Talking to is more complicated because it involves creating an entirely new action.  If you want to keep things simple, you might want to skip it.  Otherwise, look at 12.7-12.9 and then you'll make an action that takes one noun:

[code]Talking to is an action applying to one thing.
Understand "talk to/with [something]" or "speak to/with [something]" as talking to.[/code]

An action involves three sets of rules: check, carry out, and report.  Inform will move through the rules in that order.  Let's start with the Check rules.  You can use these to exclude any cases that don't make sense:

[code]Check talking to:
	if the noun is not a person, say "You look ridiculous talking to [a noun]." instead.[/code]

Since this is a really simple action, you don't really need any carry out rules.  Normally that's where you put all the complicated stuff, but all you want to do is print a response, so you can move straight to the report rules.  This is the generic response:

[code]Report talking to:
	say "[The noun] doesn't want to talk to you."[/code]

And then you can write Instead rules to make specific people reply specific ways:

[code]Instead of talking to Martin, say "Martin says, 'I'm so glad you're here.'"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3584&start=0#p25498
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help, Please.
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-11-06 19:50:23

To keep the player from leaving before talking to Martin, you'll need a flag: a variable that is false to begin with and then becomes true when we've done the thing we want.

[code]Martin greeted is a truth state that varies.  Martin greeted is false.[/code]

While this variable is false, a rule keeps you from leaving:

[code]Instead of going while Martin greeted is false, say "You don't want to go just yet.  Who knows when you'll next have a chance to talk to Martin?"[/code]

And we can have various actions set the variable to true:

[code]Before talking to Martin:
	now Martin greeted is true.
	
Before asking Martin about:
	now Martin greeted is true.
	
Before telling Martin about:
	now Martin greeted is true.[/code]

That's all I got.  I hope that gets you on the right track.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3571&start=0#p25499
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: How to determine in code if a restore succeeds or fa
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-11-06 19:51:18

Well, you could set the turn count to 0 at the earliest opportunity, then set it back to 1 just before reading in the first command. This will mean that any successfully restored game must have a turn count of at least 1, whereas the turn count will be still be 0 if the pre-game restore fails.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3583&start=0#p25500
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Letting actor drown in the ocean. - TADS3
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-11-06 19:53:06

Okay, here's an example that I think does basically what you're thinking of. It should be pretty easy to adapt to your game.

[code]DefineIAction(Swim)
    execAction() { "There is no large body of water nearby. ";
    }
;
VerbRule(Swim)
    'swim'
    : SwimAction
    verbPhrase = 'swim/swimming'
;
DefineTAction(SwimIn);
VerbRule(SwimIn)
    'swim' 'in' singleDobj
    : SwimInAction
    verbPhrase = 'swim/swimming in (what)'
;
modify Thing
    dobjFor(SwimIn) {
        verify() {
            illogical ('{You/he} can\'t swim in {that dobj/him}. ');
        }
    }
;
    

beach: Room 'Beach'
    "You're at the beach. There's some ocean here. "
    east = forest
    roomBeforeAction() {
        if (gActionIn(North, South, West, Swim, SwimIn)) {
            drown;
            exit;
        }
    }
    drown { "Glub, glub, glub...."; }
;

+ me: Actor
;

+ ocean: Fixture 'ocean' 'ocean'
    dobjFor(SwimIn) {
        verify() {
            logical;
        }
    }
;[/code]
Just put whatever code you want in the drown routine, including killing the player, and you should be good to go.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3571&start=0#p25501
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: How to determine in code if a restore succeeds or fa
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-11-06 20:11:48

In my projects, I usually have a number variable called game_started. I leave it at 0 while the player's up in the menu area, and I have a 'when play begins: now game_started is 1' rule. So by definition, any restored game will have that flag set to 1.

If you put in this system, all you need to do is add a line after the from-menu restore attempt checking to see if game_started is still 0. If it is, you know the restore failed.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3582&start=0#p25505
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using alternate verbs in TADS3 command.
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-11-06 23:08:29

You can also extend the existing "take" grammar, like so:

[code]
modify grammar predicate(Take) :
    ('take' | 'pick' 'up' | 'get' | 'grab' | 'handle') dobjList
    | 'pick' dobjList 'up' :
    verbPhrase = 'take/taking (what)'
;
[/code]

(The [url=http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/libref/object/predicate.html]grammar predicates[/url] are listed in the Library Reference Manual under Grammar > Predicate.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3571&start=0#p25506
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: How to determine in code if a restore succeeds or fa
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-11-06 23:35:28

As it turns out, in I6/Glulx, you pretty much have to hack the library, or at least create a new verb to replace Restore (much cleaner). Thanks for steering me that direction. Here's what I did:

1. Created a new verb to substitute for Restore, but copied all of the RestoreSub in
2. Modified the RestoreSub to set a global variable to tell if the restore was successful (oddly, RestoreSub doesn't do this by itself), and also checked to see if we were still in the menu. If in the menu, don't do the default restore.
3.Checked for the variable in the menu, and if it was true, fall out of the loop and into the restored game

The turns trick is cleaner still, but I had a solution before I checked back here (you guys are fast).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3587&start=0#p25507
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: What's your take?
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-11-07 00:02:15

I'm wondering about peoples take on certain issues. It's a topic that's probably going to spark quite a debate. I'm sure it's been had here before, but I wasn't around to witness it, or be a part of it.

What's your take on certain theories that are out there? Some people would call them conspiracy theories, but I'm not talking about tinfoil hats, but more on governmental matters.

What's your take on the masons, the new world order, it's ties to Christianity. Do you believe in any of it? I don't believe it all, but some of it is so clearly documented that anyone can look it up, and learn about it. I know some of it's phony, but the simple truth is: What has been done has been done, and what has been done by certain groups have been done. That can't be refuted. The big question is. What exactly has been done, and by who. Is there a collective? Is there a major goal? Is it a mix of a collective, and 'random things', bringing something about..

what do you guys think?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3587&start=0#p25508
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What's your take?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-07 00:19:58

[quote="InterFiction"]the simple truth is: What has been done has been done, and what has been done by certain groups have been done. That can't be refuted.[/quote]

"And east is east and west is west, and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce, they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does."

- Marx

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3587&start=0#p25509
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What's your take?
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-11-07 00:31:51

[emote]:lol:[/emote]  I think I missed your overall point, lol. It's a nice quote, but it doesn't take the truth out of the statement, nor does it answer a single question asked in the thread.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3587&start=0#p25510
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What's your take?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-07 01:27:11

[quote="InterFiction"]:lol:  I think I missed your overall point, lol.[/quote]

I just saw someone throwing a tautophrase party and joined in to show my support [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3587&start=0#p25514
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What's your take?
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-11-07 05:13:58

I'm sure conspiracy theories are occasionally true, but I don't really approve of the attitude of the stereotype conspiracy theorist.  A conspiracy theorist unwilling to honestly and deeply consider the majority/established opinion is just as closed minded as a person who always believes established theories.

It's also entirely possible that any given conspiracy theory may have some relevant points but still be wrong.  That's what I believe about the idea that the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks were an inside job.  I read some stuff on the Internet back in September about those conspiracy theories and their claims, and I don't think there's any case that the destruction of the Towers was coordinated ahead of time.  However, I think it's highly probable that the U.S. government may have known about the possibility of a terrorist attack and failed to take appropriate measures to prevent it (simply out of arrogance and carelessness, not an Evil Plot), and that the government would naturally have tried to cover up its own gross incompetence.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3517&start=10#p25515
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] Abbreviated nouns with periods
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-11-07 06:26:50

[quote="Juhana"]The conversion from a snippet to indexed text is only so that you can compare and modify it. Note that the last line isn't changing the player's command, it's changing the [i]text[/i] of the player's command.[/quote]
Oh yes... I see your point and of course the indexed text type will not be carried from T into that text: just the data, right? So the text of the player's command will remain non-indexed, I assume. Or, if not, it may not even matter, since as I say I don't even know why indexed text would create a problem. Presumably it's a data type that eats up more memory than an ordinary string variable, otherwise they'd all be indexed. I am not storing a lot of player commands (or texts of player commands) so it's hard to see how it would have any bad consequences, anyway.

It looks like this is going to be the simplest way. I just haven't tried any ways yet because this solution got postponed in favour of other improvements that are now holding my attention. Thanks again!

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=30#p25516
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-11-07 06:43:28

[quote="Campbell"]It's nothing sinister, the upload has always been restricted to ADRIFT games. If you packaged the other games individually in zip files they could also be uploaded. Let me know if you have any problems.[/quote]I notice these still haven't been uploaded.  Any registered member should be able to do this.  Were you wanting/expecting me to?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3587&start=0#p25517
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What's your take?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-07 07:07:50

Of course big time industrialists know each other; of course they meet, dicuss, plan, and work to promote their common interests.
Of course people devoted to some cause also cooperate to promote that cause.
And the very reason there are politicians is that they should meet, discuss, plan, and work for the good of those they represent.

The idea that all really important work of this kind really takes place in secret cabals  (with or without exotic and bizarre rituals) adds nothing to that picture, I think, except a sense of romance.,

Again, of course, industrialist, politicians, etc. don't always tell the truth and especially not the whole truth, if they want popular support for a scheme that has consequences that they suspect might be unacceptable to the people whose support they seek. 

But I can see no reason at all to suppose that the ultimate goal of big time industrialists (or politicians -- or others) really is secretly something quite different from what one would rationally expect. In particular, I very much doubt that there are any long term plans or goals that industrialist or other cabals have been slowly and slyly working to realize for several generations. There seems to be exactly nothing that suggests that markets or nations have any noticeable tendency to consider the long term effects of anything.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3587&start=0#p25518
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What's your take?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-11-07 07:26:44

I agree. Yet these situations, despite being created by people committed to short-term interests, often take on the impression of conspiracy. In many cases, different actors aim for the same thing in response to the same stimuli, and what then ensues is an apparently coordinated move effected by shadowy masterminds... when it's really just a bunch of opportunists taking advantage of an extant situation.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3587&start=0#p25519
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What's your take?
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-11-07 07:55:00

[quote="Eleas"]when it's really just a bunch of opportunists taking advantage of an extant situation.[/quote]

almost like when a guy sits down with a pencil, starts doodling, and ends up with a masterpiece. We think he's some genius, but really he was just a guy with a pencil, and ended up doing what he did, rather than doing something that he set out to do, lol.

I like that to an extent, but we can't really lump this all into that, because there are different elements involved. Different groups that have done different things, the way certain things coexist, even though they don't in reality. Really hard to explain. Maybe what I should have said is these elements coexist, but pausibly unknowingly to some. I guess I'm not even going to try, and explain that anymore, lol..

Do you think they'll ever get their New World Order, or one governmental body, or do you think the world will fall into a collapse before that can ever truly come about?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3587&start=0#p25520
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What's your take?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-11-07 08:01:17

[quote="InterFiction"]Do you think they'll ever get their New World Order, or one governmental body, or do you think the world will fall into a collapse before that can ever truly come about?[/quote]

Okay, now we're officially veering into cloud-cuckoo land. If you can even define who "they" are, then at least it'd be a start at answering the question. 

My point is, you have the kind of situation causing disruption across the US right now, the same situation that has ruled poorer countries for the last half century, not due to some vast conspiracy but because it's a power vacuum. If one oil company refused to use despicable tactics and declined to lobby, threaten, and instigate, then they'd rapidly be crushed by other oil companies. So it is in other matters, as well. 

In other words it's not a conspiracy but a sociopolitical structure. Those aren't nearly as easy to tear down.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3587&start=0#p25521
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What's your take?
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-11-07 08:04:10

on a side note, a new world order could be a wonderful thing if it were run by say...someone decent, rather than, say hitler, lol.

Then there's the issue of what will the laws be, what will be manditory, what will be the punishment? Will we be aloud to run our own business easily? Would the government start treating protesters like terrorists, and lock them in camps. It's hard to say..

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3587&start=10#p25522
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What's your take?
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-11-07 08:06:19

[quote="Eleas"][quote="InterFiction"]Do you think they'll ever get their New World Order, or one governmental body, or do you think the world will fall into a collapse before that can ever truly come about?

Okay, now we're officially veering into cloud-cuckoo land. If you can even define who "they" are, then at least it'd be a start at answering the question. [/quote][/quote]

I say they loosely. The governments that are working together to bring about a one world government. Why would you say something like veering into cloud-cuckoo land. Have you not heard George bush senior, junior, bill clinton, obama, and tony blare use the term New World Order?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3517&start=10#p25523
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] Abbreviated nouns with periods
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-07 08:41:53

If I'm not mistaken, indexed text is stored on the heap, so it can theoretically lead to runtime problems on the Z-machine. In practice, I don't think that happens under normal usage. All "dynamic" data types (indexed text, stored actions, and lists) are stored the same way. The first time you use them, there's a big jump in memory usage as the storage is allocated, but to use more doesn't take up much additional space.

I think normal "text" is stored in compressed form, and only uncompressed when it is printed.

The text of the player's command is an I6 character array, a data type not accessible in I7. See Ron Newcomb's work on the parser for a (not practical for everyday use) way around this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3573&start=0#p25524
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: indexed text .. [?]
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-07 08:50:37

Local indexed text is not actually an indexed text:

[code]wut is a room;

global indexed text is some indexed text that varies;

when play begins:
	let local indexed text  be "[wut]";
	showme local indexed text;
	if local indexed text is "wut":
		say "local ok";
	now global indexed text is "[wut]";
	showme global indexed text;
	if global indexed text is "wut":
		say "global ok!";[/code]

Whenever you create an indexed text variable, you have to declare its type before assigning a value:

[code]Let local indexed text be indexed text;
Now local indexed text is "[wut]"[/code]

Internally, a text given the value "[wut]" will be represented as a function that prints the name of wut. So if the name of wut changes, the text will change too:

[code]wut is a room;

global text is a text that varies.
global text is "[wut]";

when play begins:
	showme global text;
		
Every turn:
	now the printed name of wut is "woot";
	showme global text;[/code]

You can see why that can't be considered equal to an indexed text.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3543&start=0#p25525
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Synonyms in "understand the ... property as describing..
User: frudster / DateTime: 2011-11-07 10:01:49

Thanks, both of you. 

Felix wins this round [emote];)[/emote] , I'll do something like that but maybe also add
[code]A person can be introduced.[/code]

And use that:
[code]Understand "Stephen/Daedalus" as knowable when the item described is Steve and Steve is introduced.[/code]

That's close enough to what I was looking for. It bugs me that you need to write these long rules though, I wish you could do these things with just a property.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3587&start=10#p25526
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What's your take?
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-11-07 10:04:47

You can see people talking about it. Different countries leader's. Here's a list of people I've heard use the term New World Order.
Bill Clinton, Obama,George Bush, George W Bush,Tony Blair, President Nixon,Kissinger,Gary Hart,David Rockefeller,Gordon Brown.

One question that has to be asked though is are they speaking collectively on a new world order, or is each nation's government talking about their own new world order?

here's a quote from a book.

Rockefeller's 2002 autobiography "Memoirs" he wrote: "For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as internationalists and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure — one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.".

Maybe the question I should have asked was do you think someone will achieve a new world order, or will the world collapse before it comes about?

However, I tend to believe that there is a working order between the stronger nations of the world. Definitely Canada, States, and Britain. When they say NWO, I believe they're speaking collectively. I don't know for a fact, no, but it seems like the obvious route, lol.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3576&start=0#p25527
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Resetting objects
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-07 10:06:18

Surely you would want "an object called the default holder" instead, for things that are offstage or contained by other things?

Another approach would be to avoid declarative sentences, and put all initialization in a rulebook:

Instead of:
[code]Mrs Miggins is a woman in Mrs Miggins' house[/code]

You'd have:

[code]Resetting is a rulebook. When play begins: follow the resetting rules. Every turn when the time of day is 7:00 AM: follow the resetting rules.

Mrs Miggins is a woman. Resetting: Now Mrs Miggins is in Mrs Miggins' house.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=30#p25528
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2011-11-07 10:14:28

Campbell: I tried it, but after submitting the file for upload, I get this error message:
[quote]You may only edit your own adventures![/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3582&start=0#p25530
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using alternate verbs in TADS3 command.
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-11-07 10:34:18

Thanks a ton for such a rapid reply to my problem. Looks like the answers are there. Will give it a shot soon as I'm able.

Ron

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3583&start=0#p25531
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Letting actor drown in the ocean. - TADS3
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-11-07 10:41:25

Thanks for your thoughts. Looks like the answer is there. Will give it all a try as soon as I'm able.

Ron

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3587&start=10#p25532
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What's your take?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-07 10:45:12

I like to look at complex systems as manifolds. Chaos theory can help with this.

To put it simply, a manifold is a surface in three (or more) dimensions. You can envision the current state of the system as a ball rolling around on the surface. It can sit precariously on top of a hill, but if you give it a shake, it rolls towards the nearest valley. If you give it a bigger shake, it jumps from a little valley and rolls to a deeper one. If you tip it towards a cliff, it rolls slowly until it experiences a catastrophic drop.

When you have as many people and as many natural forces as we do in the world, you can think of general tendencies of people as forces that shape the manifold. Dictators, conspirators, governments, corporations - they fill environmental niches that are provided by the system we have. To blame individuals can be a mistake - all it takes is for someone sufficiently ambitious to fill a niche that already exists. I think it's important to think of it as a system and not as something that can be blamed on one person or group of people. Trying to expose or depose individual people has limited benefit when we allow the system that rewards their exploitative behavior to persist.

To influence the system, we have to look at it from a point of view of chaos and catastrophe theory. We find the valley that represents a stable desirable situation, and figure out the smallest change we can make to the terrain to make the ball roll that way. This can be very different from seeking great powers: "Powerful" people often have very limited powers - the might be able to make an entire nation go to war, because the people of the nation are ready to do that. A powerful person might be able to fan the flames of hate, and direct them towards a particular target. But they can't destroy hate. If the people who are supposedly in power suddenly changed what they were telling their followers, they might find that they no longer have power. Take the example of Jesus. He preached love and equality and he was executed for it. Some might consider him a rare exception because his message of love became one of the dominant religions of the world. But many will be eager to point out all the acts of hate carried out in the name of that love. Even the man who said "love your enemies" and "turn the other cheek" has been used as a figurehead for genocide and oppression.

One of my favorite articles makes an important point about how sometimes inaction is the best action:
<a class="postlink" href="http://blog.techfun.org/zentv/">http://blog.techfun.org/zentv/</a>
[quote]There is an old Zen analogy that the way to calm, clear and quiet the mind is similar to the way to clear a muddy pool — not by action, by doing, by stirring it up, but by stillness, by letting it be, by letting it settle itself.[/quote]
This can be very difficult for those with "great power" to carry out - there's always a temptation to meddle. In the end it doesn't matter whether it's well-intentioned or not, because there are so many unforseeable consequences. When we act in small ways, we see the consequences before they get out of control, but when we mobilize huge armies, institutions, and sums of money, that's not possible.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3576&start=0#p25533
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Resetting objects
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-07 11:05:22

The tedious part is resetting the open state of doors and containers, and the locked state (if appropriate), and any other properties you define or make use of. You can do it; it's just a pain.

I don't know a good way to reset "[first time]...[only]" say phrases. You might have to replace those with manually-set flags. On the other hand, you may not need to. If the protagonist is aware of repeating time, it may make sense for first-time descriptions to only appear on the first go-round.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3543&start=0#p25534
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Synonyms in "understand the ... property as describing..
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-07 11:07:06

Well, you can. That was my second example.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3587&start=10#p25536
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What's your take?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-07 11:30:48

[quote="InterFiction"]When they say NWO, I believe they're speaking collectively.[/quote]

There is always _some_ political and economical structure in the world (though at times it can be a very fragmented or chaotic structure), i.e. people everywhere always manage what can be deemed political and economical affairs in _some_ way or other. One does no violence on language, if one calls _any_ such structure for a world order. If those structures change more or less drastically (which they have done every now and then throughout all history), one gets a new world order. 

So, when the Soviet Union collapsed, we got a new world order; when China appears a major global economy, we get a new world order. When politicians talk about a new world order, they need not mean anything more sinister than that: they just intend to state a fact, not to hint at the impending completion of their own hidden plans to take over the world. 

Just look at the sorry spectacle when EU leaders from different countries try to do something to save the European political and economic order or the equally sorry wrangling in US congress and senate that replaces any measures to do something to help the US economic and political order. Is there _anything_ in these attempts to make collective decisions to suggest that US or Europeans governments would be able to work together to establish a New Global Dictatorship under their collective leadership?

To my mind theories about conspiracies on any scale above court intrigues and coups d'état are of a kind with Sherlockian and Donaldist historiography.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3584&start=0#p25539
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help, Please.
User: rakel / DateTime: 2011-11-07 12:12:43

Thanks so much!!!, that really helpful  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote] 
But, I am still having trouble unfortantly with my table. 

I put like your example:
[code]A person has a table name called the questions table.
The questions table of Martin is the Table of Martin.

Table of Martin
Topic	Reply
"photo"  	"Martin says        'He remembers that photo.' "
"yourself"    "Martin says       'You look great to night, I'm glad you came.' "
"himself"     "Martin says       'After dinner he is feeling better.' "
[/code]

And I get this: -

[i]This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6G60) on its most recent run through:

Problem. In the table Martin, the entry '"yourself" "Martin says ' You look great to night, I'm glad you came.' "' 
 is not something I recognise, and should either be a value, or a kind (such as 'a number'), or a blank entry '--'.

 See the manual: 15.1 > Laying out tables
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem. In the table Martin, the entry '"himself" "Martin says 'After dinner he is feeling better.' "' 
 is not something I recognise.[/i]


i dont quite understand where im going wrong
and don't understand the need for numbers or a blank entry 
as it is a table to do with talking
15.1 dosn't really help me as the explication is a table that would use numbers
and dose not tell you about blank entry 

ps. i love how it understands the photo yet it is no different  [emote]:roll:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3584&start=0#p25542
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help, Please.
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-11-07 12:54:16

Did you remember to use tabs to separate columns, not spaces? That is, "Yourself"[i]<tab>[/i]"Martin says..."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3584&start=0#p25543
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help, Please.
User: rakel / DateTime: 2011-11-07 13:01:34

[emote]:lol:[/emote]  [emote]:lol:[/emote]  no.
haha it been a long day at work  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 
thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3587&start=10#p25544
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What's your take?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-07 13:03:54

[quote="InterFiction"]on a side note, a new world order could be a wonderful thing if it were run by say...someone decent, rather than, say hitler, lol.[/quote]

This is why conspiracy theory is often, for many, basically an alternative religion. The phrase "everything is under control" can be read as sinister, or it can be read as comforting. That, and paranoia requires a delusional sense of one's own importance (if a guy believes the government/NWO/Illuminati/whichever is monitoring his activities, for example, the core comfort of that belief is that his activities are important enough to be monitored).

[quote="Felix"]To my mind theories about conspiracies on any scale above court intrigues and coups d'état are of a kind with Sherlockian and Donaldist historiography.[/quote]

Especially since they boil down to "a bunch of super-secretive, power-hungry, greedy, hyper-ambitious people who all want to rule the world are, once you get to know them, really good at cooperating with one another and sharing!" Uh. [i]Yeah.[/i] [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3589&start=0#p25546
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: How To
User: bladejc / DateTime: 2011-11-07 13:27:36

Ok so I am running into some trouble figuring out how to build a puzzle I want. Was hoping someone can give me an idea on how to code it or another puzzle very close to the one i'm about to mention.


The puzzle is basically to unlock a door. You walk into a room and there is a robot missing a gear sitting there. You have to go find the gear and insert it into the robot. Once this is done I want the robot to unlock the door it is in front of. 

Now I have the door, robot and gear all placed but im not sure how to link them all together.

Any ideas would be helpful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3589&start=0#p25547
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How To
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-07 13:37:18

[quote="bladejc"]Now I have the door, robot and gear all placed but im not sure how to link them all together.[/quote]

What have you tried so far that hasn't worked?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3544&start=10#p25548
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Limiting objects listed for "Which do you mean"?
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-11-07 13:49:59

[quote="Felix"]That's probably the line you should change:
[code]Use maximum things understood at once of at least 500.[/code][/quote]That did the trick, thank you!
Now I've got my disambiguation control working perfectly, thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3589&start=0#p25549
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How To
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-11-07 13:52:50

You could do something like this (note that the syntax will necessarily be incorrect, please revise)[code]After inserting something (called the macguffin) into the robot:
    if the macguffin is the missing gear:
        say "The robot grinds into life, reaching over with its noodly appendage and unlocking the sinister black door for you.";
        now the sinister black door is unlocked;
    otherwise:
        say "[The macguffin] doesn't seem to fit correctly.";[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3589&start=0#p25551
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How To
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-07 14:01:29

[quote="Joel Webster"]You could do something like this (note that the syntax will necessarily be incorrect, please revise)[code]After inserting something (called the macguffin) into the robot:
    if the macguffin is the missing gear:
        say "The robot grinds into life, reaching over with its noodly appendage and unlocking the sinister black door for you.";
        now the sinister black door is unlocked;
    otherwise:
        say "[The macguffin] doesn't seem to fit correctly.";[/code][/quote]

If you haven't made the robot into a container, you probably want to make that an "Instead" rule (so it runs before the "check" rule that would print up "That can't contain things"). You'd also want to remove the gear from play.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3589&start=0#p25552
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How To
User: bladejc / DateTime: 2011-11-07 14:23:33

Ok I think I have the idea but having trouble implementing it. I am trying to use a instead line. This is what I have setup.


[code]Instead of inserting gear into the robot:
    if the Maintenance Robot Gear is the missing gear:
        say "The robot sparks back into gear and starts moving again. As the robot slowly rolls up to the door a small panel lifts near the bottom. The Maintence robot inserts a small robotic rod into the panel and makes a very sutle beeping noise";
        now the Common Area door is unlocked;
    otherwise:
        say "You don't seem to have the gear that fits";[/code]

And thank you both for helping me out.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3589&start=0#p25553
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How To
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-07 14:38:41

If you've defined a gear as a kind, then you should change the second line to "if the noun is the maintenance robot gear". (See section 7.10 of the documentation for "the noun," which is one of the most important bits of Inform 7 to know.) If you haven't defined a gear is a kind, make the first line "instead of inserting something into the robot" (and change "missing gear" to "the noun" as well).

("The missing gear" from the code was supposed to be the name of the object -- since your object is named "maintenance robot gear", you don't need to use "the missing gear" anywhere.)

Also, you should add "Remove the maintenance robot gear from play" after this rule, or the player will still have the gear in her inventory after doing this, which would be bad. 

Another point -- make sure to end your sentences with periods inside the quotations, or the spacing will get missed up (not to mention that you'll be missing periods). Also, "subtle" has a b in it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3587&start=10#p25554
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What's your take?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-07 14:44:50

I hope this is all giving somebody plot ideas somewhere.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3587&start=10#p25557
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What's your take?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-07 15:22:46

[quote="capmikee"]I hope this is all giving somebody plot ideas somewhere.[/quote]

Heh. I already did my conspiracy-fun book years ago. Good bathroom reading, if I do say so [emote]:)[/emote] Long out of print, of course, but available on eBay and in electronic versions, I think ... (definitely on eBay; honestly I'm not 100% sure about the electronic ...)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3589&start=0#p25558
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How To
User: bladejc / DateTime: 2011-11-07 15:23:19

I'm getting lost now. I just made up a new file with just this puzzle to show you what I have.

[code]Station Docking Communication Center is a room.

Station Docking Lobby is east of Station Docking Communication Center.

Maintenance Robot Gear is thing inside Station Docking Lobby.

Maintenance Robot is a  thing in the Station Docking Lobby. Maintenance Robot is scenery.


Instead of inserting something into the robot:
    if the Maintenance Robot Gear is [The noun]:
	say "The robot sparks back into gear and starts moving again. As the robot slowly rolls up to the door a small panel lifts near the bottom. The Maintenance robot inserts a small robotic rod into the panel and makes a very subtle beeping noise.";
        now the Common Area door is unlocked;
    otherwise:
        say "You don't seem to have the gear that fits.";

Common Area is west of Station Docking Area.

Common Area Door is east of Station Docking Lobby and west of Common Area. Common Area Door is a door.  Common Area door is locked. Common Area Door is scenery.[/code]


As I post this I will look into kinds.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3589&start=0#p25559
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How To
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-11-07 15:34:07

Your two things (Maintenance Robot and Maintenance Robot Gear) cause a namespace clash. By naming them in a different order and by providing some "Does the player mean" statements this is resolved.
Here is my revision:[code]Station Docking Communication Center is a room.

Station Docking Lobby is east of Station Docking Communication Center.

Maintenance Robot is a thing in the Station Docking Lobby.

Maintenance Robot Gear is thing in the Station Docking Lobby.

Does the player mean inserting something into the Maintenance Robot Gear: it is very unlikely.
Does the player mean inserting something into the Maintenance Robot: it is very likely.
Does the player mean inserting the Maintenance Robot Gear into something: it is very likely.
Does the player mean inserting the Maintenance Robot into something: it is very unlikely.

Instead of inserting something (called the noun) into the Maintenance Robot:
	if the noun is the Maintenance Robot Gear:
		say "The robot sparks back into gear and starts moving again. As the robot slowly rolls up to the door a small panel lifts near the bottom. The Maintenance robot inserts a small robotic rod into the panel and makes a very subtle beeping noise.";
		now the Common Area door is unlocked;
		now the Maintenance Robot Gear is off-stage;
	otherwise:
		say "You don't seem to have the gear that fits.";

Common Area is west of Station Docking Area.

Common Area Door is a door. It is east of Station Docking Lobby and west of Common Area. Common Area door is locked and scenery.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3589&start=0#p25563
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How To
User: bladejc / DateTime: 2011-11-07 15:57:41

Hooray it works. Thank you both for your help. If you would like I can credit you in the game credits just let me know. =]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3592&start=0#p25571
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: NPC, hello
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-11-07 16:43:56

I must be blind, as this seems like it should be a very basic question, but I can't find in the Inform documentation how to handle when the player types FRED, HELLO or similar. I'm thinking that saying hello to Fred is considered as an order to Fred, kind of like how FRED, JUMP could be handled by something like...

[code]Persuasion rule for asking Fred to try jumping: persuasion succeeds.
Instead of Fred jumping:
	say "Fred jumps in place, touching the ceiling easily.";
	the rule succeeds.[/code]

The problem is, I can't seem to figure out the actual verb that is associated with HELLO. [i]Persuasion rule for asking Fred to try helloing[/i] obviously isn't right. So, how do I get something other than the default "There is no reply" to come up when the player says "FRED, HELLO"?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3579&start=0#p25572
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Randomness and Simple Chat
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-11-07 16:57:53

Okay, I guess maybe my question wasn't clear. Here's a simple example that demonstrates the problem:

[code]
"The Quiz"

Include Simple Chat by Mark Tilford.

The studio is a room.

The Quiz Master is a person in the studio.

quiz_master, question1, question2, question3, rome, paris, london, node_11, node_12, node_20, june, may and december are chat nodes;

when play begins:
	run a conversation from the quiz_master;

instead of giving text for quiz_master:
	choose a random row from the table of quiz questions;
	run a conversation from the node entry;

Table of quiz questions
node	question-text	response-1	response-2	response-3
question1	"'What's the capital of France?'"	rome	paris	london
question2	"'How many are in a dozen?"	node_11	node_12	node_20
question3	"'What is the fifth month of the year?'"	june	may	december

Table of quiz responses
node	link-text	response-text
rome	"Rome"	"You say 'Is it Rome?'"
paris	"Paris"	"You say 'Is it Paris?'"
london	"London"	"You say 'Is it London?'"	
node_11	"11"	"You say 'Is it 11?'"
node_12	"12"	"You say 'Is it 12?'"
node_20	"20"	"You say 'Is it 20?'"
june	"June"	"You say 'Is it June?'"
may	"May"	"You say 'Is it May?'"
december	"December"	"You say 'Is it December?'"

Report giving text for a node listed in the table of quiz questions:
	say "[question-text entry]" instead;

Carry out finding responses to a node listed in the table of quiz questions:
	if there is a response-1 entry:
		link to response-1 entry;
	if there is a response-2 entry:
		link to response-2 entry;
	if there is a response-3 entry:
		link to response-3 entry;

Report giving link to a node listed in the table of quiz responses:
	say "[link-text entry]" instead;

Report giving text for a node listed in the table of quiz responses:
	say "[response-text entry]";
	run a conversation from quiz_master instead;
[/code]

Run this (and yes it will repeat questions) and keep answering questions. Around the 9 or 10th question inform will crap out. It doesn't like using "run a conversation from [i]x[/i]" as a way to skip around nodes. Anybody got any better ideas? And I certainly don't excluding dumping simple chat altogether if there's a better way. My requirements are to be able to pick a random question and then present answers in a numbered menu (because asking / telling obviously ain't gonna cut it) and keep cycling until I decide to stop.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3592&start=0#p25573
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: NPC, hello
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-11-07 17:00:00

You might look at the conversation framework (<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/Eric%20Eve/Conversation%20Framework/doc_0.html">http://inform7.com/extensions/Eric%20Ev ... doc_0.html</a>) which includes support for greeting.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3592&start=0#p25574
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: NPC, hello
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-07 17:04:01

If you turn on actions tracing ("actions on"), you'll see:

[code]
>steve, hello
[answering Steve that "hello"]
There is no reply.
[answering Steve that "hello" - succeeded]

>steve, dfgdfg
[answering Steve that "dfgdfg"]
There is no reply.
[answering Steve that "dfgdfg" - succeeded]
[/code]

This is mentioned in chapter 7.6.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3592&start=0#p25575
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: NPC, hello
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-11-07 17:24:33

Thanks! That answers my question.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3587&start=10#p25579
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What's your take?
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-11-07 18:04:04

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="InterFiction"]on a side note, a new world order could be a wonderful thing if it were run by say...someone decent, rather than, say hitler, lol.[/quote]

This is why conspiracy theory is often, for many, basically an alternative religion. The phrase "everything is under control" can be read as sinister, or it can be read as comforting. That, and paranoia requires a delusional sense of one's own importance (if a guy believes the government/NWO/Illuminati/whichever is monitoring his activities, for example, the core comfort of that belief is that his activities are important enough to be monitored).[/quote]
Evidently, we know that the world is out of control and needs some kind of new order.  And we need to feel important, I think.  That is where religion comes in.  But we can't make the world right; I think any one of us who would become head of a one-world government would fail miserably.  We all have different blindnesses and failings.  Any of us would make this world even more of a hell than it already is, even if intending all the time to do good.  I don't need to repeat the proverb about power corrupting and absolute power corrupting absolutely.

[quote="capmikee"]Take the example of Jesus. He preached love and equality and he was executed for it. Some might consider him a rare exception because his message of love became one of the dominant religions of the world. But many will be eager to point out all the acts of hate carried out in the name of that love. Even the man who said "love your enemies" and "turn the other cheek" has been used as a figurehead for genocide and oppression.[/quote]
Because Christians like myself are as hypocritical and incompetent as all other people.  It is sadly ironic, but probably inevitable, that crimes of hate would be committed in the name of the supreme example of love who died to conquer that inner hate.

That's my take. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3579&start=0#p25582
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Randomness and Simple Chat
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-11-07 18:06:20

Inform's limits on the number of rulebooks that can run simultaneously makes your approach impossible; the simplest solution would be to let each conversation end and immediately start a new one. What about something like:
[code]Running-quiz is a truth state that varies. Running-quiz is true.

Every turn:
	while running-quiz is true:
		choose a random row from the table of quiz questions;
		run a conversation from the node entry.[/code]
Untested code, but I guess the principle should work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3579&start=0#p25583
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Randomness and Simple Chat
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-11-07 18:08:18

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Inform's limits on the number of rulebooks that can run simultaneously makes your approach impossible; the simplest solution would be to let each conversation end and immediately start a new one. What about something like:
[code]Running-quiz is a truth state that varies. Running-quiz is true.

Every turn:
	while running-quiz is true:
		choose a random row from the table of quiz questions;
		run a conversation from the node entry.[/code]
Untested code, but I guess the principle should work.[/quote]

Hmmm...that's a thought - I'll have to give it a try.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3587&start=10#p25591
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What's your take?
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-11-07 19:13:50

[quote]
Because Christians like myself are as hypocritical and incompetent as all other people.  It is sadly ironic, but probably inevitable, that crimes of hate would be committed in the name of the supreme example of love who died to conquer that inner hate.

That's my take. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

That makes you a brother [emote]:)[/emote], or a sister, depending, lol

I am too, although I tend not to believe the bible as God's supreme word. A book that's been printed so many times, and through so many hands must have been taxed over the years in one way or another...

also I don't believe Jesus died because of the message he was preaching. That's like saying the pizza got ate because it went in my mouth. It's just not true.

I'm not saying it didn't have anything to do with, but I wouldn't say that's why...

I'm not really sure why, lol.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3587&start=10#p25593
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What's your take?
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-11-07 20:34:55

[quote="InterFiction"]That makes you a brother [emote]:)[/emote], or a sister, depending, lol[/quote]
I'm glad to hear that.  (I'm male, btw.)  We don't have to worry about conspiracy theories and all the intellectual confusion, even though I do worry.  Whatever is true will certainly prevail; otherwise it was never true.  And I think all truth leads to God, to Christ.  Our King will yet reign over a New Earth -- better than a "NWO" -- and everything will yet be restored.  [emote]:)[/emote] 


[quote]also I don't believe Jesus died because of the message he was preaching. That's like saying the pizza got ate because it went in my mouth. It's just not true.[/quote]
I agree.  That's a good observation.  He gave His life willingly to pay for sin.  I don't think His life was wrested from Him.  And I do believe in the resurrection.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3442&start=0#p25594
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Best responses of IFComp 2011
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-11-07 20:37:10

[i]The Myothian Falcon[/i] has an awesome response for "XYZZY"!  It's not at all the run-of-the-mill joke that we often see.

[spoiler]It suddenly struck Vic that he had forgotten his sister Xanthe's birthday. "Sorry Xyzzy," he muttered under his breathe, "I'll do better next year." He might even have the cash to buy her present, he thought ruefully.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3402&start=0#p25595
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: playing ALAN3 in OS X?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-07 20:40:30

I suppose this goes in "interpreters," but I followed the instructions and now I can't run Gargoyle at all. Any troubleshooting suggestions?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3593&start=0#p25596
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: OS X Gargoyle crashing after Alan update
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-07 20:42:55

I've updated my copy of Gargoyle in accordance with the instructions that come with Ted Paladin, and now it won't run at all. Anyone have any troubleshooting suggestions? (If all else fails, I'll redownload Gargoyle and give up on Ted Paladin until the Alan issues are resolved.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3587&start=20#p25597
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What's your take?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-07 20:49:50

[quote="Bainespal"]Evidently, we know that the world is out of control and needs some kind of new order.[/quote]

I think the world is troubled and needs a lot of things. A new perspective. A new empathy. A new awareness.

A new [i]order?[/i] No effing thanks. [emote]:)[/emote] The old order still hasn't shipped.

[quote]And we need to feel important, I think.  That is where religion comes in.[/quote]

For some.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3587&start=20#p25599
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What's your take?
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-11-07 22:10:07

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="Bainespal"]Evidently, we know that the world is out of control and needs some kind of new order.[/quote]

I think the world is troubled and needs a lot of things. A new perspective. A new empathy. A new awareness. A new [i]order?[/i] No effing thanks. [emote]:)[/emote] The old order still hasn't shipped.

[quote]And we need to feel important, I think.  That is where religion comes in.[/quote]

For some.[/quote]

agreed. I think we lie a lot wether we realize it or not, lol....What is the truth? That is the question.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3587&start=20#p25603
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What's your take?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-07 23:32:20

[quote="Bainespal"]Because Christians like myself are as hypocritical and incompetent as all other people.  It is sadly ironic, but probably inevitable, that crimes of hate would be committed in the name of the supreme example of love who died to conquer that inner hate.[/quote]
That's getting at something I wanted to say, but it's hard. Some people might say it shows that people are basically rotten, but I don't think that's quite it. I think we're all capable of evil, but I don't think that makes us evil. I think it's easier to get large groups of people to do evil things than good things, but I don't think it's impossible. Maybe it's just that our faults have more in common than our qualities. People tend to do their best when they're allowed to follow their own conscience rather than following orders.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3594&start=0#p25604
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Commanding actors in TADS 2
User: Artisan / DateTime: 2011-11-08 00:23:18

I've been looking around for code examples of how to get NPCs to carry out a specific command, i.e. to go in a certain direction or to a specific location, take an object, etc. In my case, I'm looking to have the player be able to command an NPC to take the player to a specific location. For instance, something along the lines of "npc, take me home."

I've looked into TADS 3 from time to time, as it seems it makes it easier to execute such functions, but as a writer (and not a programmer), I find TADS 2 code to be exceedingly readable and easy to construct, whereas TADS 3 seems very "code heavy," for want of a better description. I had a similar problem learning Inform 7, which ironically uses natural language, but somehow seems much more difficult than TADS 2 to put together a story. Also, I don't believe TADS 3 is compatible with legacy DOS or Mac systems, whereas TADS 2 interpreters exist for a wide variety of legacy platforms.

I might tackle TADS 3 at some point, but in the meantime, if anyone can enlighten me how to tackle this problem in TADS 2, that would be much appreciated. Thank you.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3593&start=0#p25605
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: OS X Gargoyle crashing after Alan update
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-11-08 02:17:49

I think the Alan update's for x86 Macs only.   This was my problem.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3402&start=0#p25606
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: playing ALAN3 in OS X?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-11-08 02:18:26

I think it's for x86 Macs only.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3587&start=20#p25607
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What's your take?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-11-08 02:54:55

[quote="InterFiction"]What's your take on the masons, the new world order, it's ties to Christianity. Do you believe in any of it?[/quote]

Reminds me of [url=http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354.500-revealed--the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world.html]this article[/url] regarding how a sizeable portion of the world's wealth is controlled by just a few companies.  Money shot if you don't have the time to read it: those kinds of patterns happen naturally.

Also, anyone who wants to construct a conspiracy, for any reason:  don't name your clubhouse.  Creating a name that strangers might overhear, wonder about, investigate who belongs to it, etc., is one of the stupidest things you could possibly do.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=30#p25609
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-11-08 04:39:45

Thanks.  This should now be fixed.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3593&start=0#p25611
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: OS X Gargoyle crashing after Alan update
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-08 05:34:37

I don't think that's my problem -- my Mac is "intel core 2 duo" which is x86, isn't it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3593&start=0#p25612
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: OS X Gargoyle crashing after Alan update
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-11-08 06:19:48

[quote="matt w"]I don't think that's my problem -- my Mac is "intel core 2 duo" which is x86, isn't it?[/quote]
Yes. (Specifically, it's x86-64, but I doubt that anyone would write a 32-bit only tutorial nowadays.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3473&start=0#p25615
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Fourth Round of IFComp 2011 Updates
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-11-08 07:40:54

Wow. Andromeda Awakening has been updates *4 times*, and is up to release *2*. Is the author purpusefully out to confuse us?

Well, I've been out of a computer for one month. I would have thought it'd be easy enough to see which games have been updated, and which haven't, but if games are *changing names midway through the competition*, and others fail to properly reflect the changes, and the reply to my suggestion regarding "having an updated ZIP of all the games" on the other thread having been declined... this is a fine muddle of a comp, right now.

I trust that, at the very least, at the end of the comp there will be a ZIP of all the current versions of all the games? In which case, I think I'll wait until the comp is over to play any more IF Comp games.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3595&start=0#p25616
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Betatester needed
User: Mikawa / DateTime: 2011-11-08 07:48:51

Hi all,

my entry for "Herbstlaub" competition needs betatesters. If anyone could spend a little time, I would be very glad, because the deadline is 22th November. It's a rather small game (in german), divided in chapters.
Regards,
-- MI

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=0#p25617
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-11-08 08:44:48

Just for fun and to play a little devil's advocate, I thought I'd create a poll to see what the overall consensus is about this year's rule change.  I know it's not a black and white answer, but that's the answer I'd like to see. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3597&start=0#p25618
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: PMs stay in outbox?
User: HanonO / DateTime: 2011-11-08 08:56:31

I have pm's in my outbox. They don't need to go to sent since they are like private posts, correct?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3587&start=20#p25619
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What's your take?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-08 09:02:26

That article is awesome because it illustrates exactly what I was trying to say about complex systems.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3597&start=0#p25620
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: PMs stay in outbox?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-11-08 09:15:13

I believe they are "sent" when opened by the recipient, and will stay in your outbox until then.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3442&start=0#p25621
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Best responses of IFComp 2011
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-11-08 09:18:05

I thought the response to getting a particular item in [i]Beet the Devil[/i] was pretty hilarious.

[spoiler][b]>get beet[/b]
Taking a careful grip, you uproot the beet.  It is a round red specimen, full and healthy, and totally untouched by evil - in fact, you can see the holiness shining straight off it.  This is no ordinary beet.  This is a miracle beet!
 
[i]God meant you to have this beet.[/i]
 
You're not quite sure why yet, but you're pretty darn sure you'll find out.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3318&start=10#p25622
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Games with Similar Premises in Comp 2011
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-11-08 09:31:03

[i]Cold Iron[/i] and [i]Beet the Devil[/i] have very similar premises in that...

[spoiler]In both games, the PC is a highly religious farmer-type with little to no schooling who lives in an unspecified period of distant history, and whose livelihood is suddenly disrupted by the supernatural one day. Yet, interestingly, neither game really plays their rustic protagonist for cheap laughs.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=0#p25623
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: George / DateTime: 2011-11-08 09:33:51

I voted yes; in my opinion the prospect of better games is worth more than some notion of correct competition.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=0#p25624
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-08 09:46:14

[quote="George"]I voted yes; in my opinion the prospect of better games is worth more than some notion of correct competition.[/quote]

Ditto.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=30#p25625
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2011-11-08 10:38:59

Thanks, Campbell, it worked now! I entered [url=http://www.adrift.co/cgi/adrift.cgi?page=adventure&advid=1317]my own game[/url] and classified it as a "Complete Adventure" rather than a "Competition Entry" since that is what the other Ectocomp games seem to be, too. 

Taleslinger: I thought about entering your game, too, but it seems that would give me sole ownership of the entry, i.e. not allow you to edit it. Do you have an account on the Adrift site? If not and you approve, I'll gladly enter it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3595&start=0#p25626
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Betatester needed
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-11-08 10:44:10

[quote="Mikawa"]Hi all,

my entry for "Herbstlaub" competition needs betatesters. If anyone could spend a little time, I would be very glad, because the deadline is 22th November. It's a rather small game (in german), divided in chapters.
Regards,
-- MI[/quote]

Mein Deutsch ist überwunderbar! Ich müchte -- nein, ich MUß unbedingt Dein Spiel testen!

Aber ernsthaft, ich habe so selten die Gelegenheit deutsches IF zu spielen, ich tue es mit Vergnügen.

PM mich falls Du interessiert bist.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=0#p25628
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-11-08 11:01:57

I voted no for... well, lots of reasons. It seems like cheating to me to be able to update your game during the competition, a bit like handing your exam papers in, getting them marked and then changing your answers because the ones you initially gave weren’t good enough. 

If this rule does stay in next year, I hope it’s handled a bit better than the haphazard way it’s been done this year (I'm looking at Peter Pears’ comment in another thread which highlights perfectly why this new rule is a bad one). I also hope the organiser doesn't decide to spring another surprise rule on entrants [i]after[/i] the competition has begun.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=0#p25630
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-08 11:05:22

[quote="David Whyld"]I voted no for... well, lots of reasons. It seems like cheating to me to be able to update your game during the competition, a bit like handing your exam papers in, getting them marked and then changing your answers because the ones you initially gave weren’t good enough.[/quote]

I do this in some of the classes I teach. Revision in response to criticism is a good thing!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1965&start=20#p25631
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Curveship released
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-11-08 11:20:32

[quote="Gio"][quote="bukayeva"]So color me confused. What is this Curveship thing doing that Inform or TADS currently can't do?[/quote]

So color me confused. What is this Inform 7 thing doing that Inform 6 or TADS currently can't do?[/quote]

Well, this Inform 7 thing is an improvement in some levels to I6 (i.e., ease of constructing liquids, fire, and the whole concept of "relations"), as well as trying out a new way of communicating with the program. It's unrelated to TADS. If you ask what is this inform thing that does what TADS doesn't, that's an older question.

By this time, everyone who's interested knows the difference in the mechanics of writing a game in I6, I7 and TADS. Also, everyone knows that apart from a couple of niceties here and there, the final output will make no difference to the player.

Whereas I don't think people have realised what Curveship is trying to do, either on the authorial or... er... "playerorial" level.

Well, I certainly haven't.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3597&start=0#p25632
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: PMs stay in outbox?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-11-08 11:20:47

Yep. They'll remain in the outbox for as long as the recipient(s) didn't read them yet.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3584&start=10#p25633
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help, Please.
User: rakel / DateTime: 2011-11-08 11:48:19

Update:
I have now completed my game but im now having issues Releasing it
I've tried releasing it with a website (Ref: Ch 12.10)
(without artwork or music)
and it dose make a website and i can browse the website
and i get file:///C:/Users/user/Desktop/Documents/Inform/Projects/project%20x%20Materials/Release/index.html
as the website adress but this only makes it view-able to me 
and i want my freind to be able to play the game
i then use Ch 12:11 to Release along with an interpreter. 
i have Windows Glulxe for Windows.
i ask it to release with Glulxe but it fails
[code]Release along with the "Glulxe" interpreter.[/code]
i think im doing wrong - how do i do this?

EDIT:
wait i think i worked it out with Windows Frotz
EDIT EDIT:
nope im more confused then ever all ive managed is to get the game to play in frotz

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3598&start=0#p25634
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: How long does it take IFDB to process games?
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-11-08 11:50:45

There are games on IFDB as far back as October 29 that still don't have download links.  Perhaps it should say it takes a few weeks instead of a few days?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=0#p25635
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-11-08 11:55:03

I voted "yes", but with some pain in my stomach.

On the one side, it spoils the competition thought. I have no experience here, but I imagine a shitstorm of transcripts and hints raining down onto the author, and not everyone has the time to work down on it.

On the other side, it improves the games, and that's worth a lot. And then, can the fixing of some glitches in game A spoil the experience of playing game B? Without the glitch game A is what the author wanted it to be and what he wanted to be rated. We know that programming isn't the easiest thing in the world, and that beta testers are a rare good. I'd prefer the thought of having working games competing against each other, and not great games to get a low voting just because there was a bug the author didn't find.

Theoratically intra-comp updates can be misused to prolong the deadline by providing a half-baked game and complete it while the competition runs. But I personally wouldn't want to have the theoretical possibility of misuse dominate the competition rules.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3584&start=10#p25636
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help, Please.
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-08 12:05:05

Just use the formula 
[code]Release along with an interpreter.[/code]
That should release your game as a website playable in any browser.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3584&start=10#p25637
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help, Please.
User: rakel / DateTime: 2011-11-08 12:22:00

Thanks Felix, I've gone and done that and Imform 7 Succeeded.
but - when I browse 'Play-in-browser page'

i get an error code 
[code]An error occurred:
Component: engine
Code: 200

Detail: 3

Traceback (most recent call last):

  (anonymous function)
  (anonymous function)
  (anonymous function)
  (anonymous function)
  ge_run
  ge_compile
  gnusto_error
  (anonymous function)[/code]

plus this still anyway dosn't make the webpage viewable to other people
it just makes the game playable on the webpage *sigh*
im not very clever  [emote]:|[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3584&start=10#p25638
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help, Please.
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-11-08 12:28:38

If you want to let other people play the game, options are that you send the story file (.ulx or .gblorb) to them and ask them to install an interpreter. You don't need the "install along with an interpreter" option for this, it's only for online play.

The other option is to release along with the (web) interpreter and upload the whole thing on your personal web pages. If you don't have that possibility, it's better to use the "old fashioned" way and send the story file only.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3584&start=10#p25639
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help, Please.
User: rakel / DateTime: 2011-11-08 12:44:10

ok so - how do you release along with the (web) interpreter and upload the whole thing on your personal web page (freewebs)
(would it work with a freewebs?)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3584&start=10#p25641
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help, Please.
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-11-08 13:05:21

It will work with any website that you can directly upload files to (e.g. FTP).
Just upload the whole Release directory and you'll be set.

If freewebs doesn't allow direct uploading, you can always go with github (though the learning curve on using git is quite steep)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=0#p25642
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-11-08 13:38:29

[quote="David Whyld"]I voted no for... well, lots of reasons. It seems like cheating to me to be able to update your game during the competition, a bit like handing your exam papers in, getting them marked and then changing your answers because the ones you initially gave weren’t good enough.[/quote]

Well, on a multiple choice exam--definitely. And it also depends on the goal of the exam/competition. For instance, in a standardized test situation, changing answers doesn't work. But this sort of competition is about learning, and I think there are good threads on the authors' board about that.

And if someone does come up with a great idea to add to their game during the competition, they really only robbed themselves by not taking care of things sooner. And I also feel that any game that -can- be seriously changed in a short time and be fully tested may not be a contender to begin with. Or that moving up a few places in the IFComp won't be worth an author's sanity. These things don't create themselves--or lurch off in a new direction--overnight. Even minor changes can be mentally and physically exhausting.

One big thing that made me more comfortable is seeing that the graders do not have to accept the revised version. I think there are a lot of reviewers who've stated they won't, explicitly, go for the latest version of a game. And that's fair. A lot of them have still made great points. Authors seeking to improve, then, know that the best way is still to get it right the first time.

But I think the best thing for me, as an author, is that I didn't feel helpless about flaws I, or others, found. I mean, details get lost. I'd love to see more of them added to certain other authors' games and have one less reason for a writer to wait six weeks before fixing things. I think a lot of authors have felt there were things they could and should've done and are now fixing, because they don't want to have to wait. They don't seem to be doing so to place higher. It's more "Oops, that was huge and it escaped, and I want to fix that."

I'd be interested to see the correlations between # of updates and placings, or even the # of updates and standard deviations. If updates cause serious variance in how a game is ranked, or if they impact the bigger prizes, then that may be cause for concern.

If the organizers choose to keep this rule and let people know about it--and give general guidelines for how not to abuse this rule--I think that would help some new people get in. People who maybe aren't looking to place high but who have good ideas and just realize all that could go wrong.

So, I think there are a lot of authors genuinely concerned with improving at a good pace, and I think this rule helps a lot with that. Though details need to be worked out.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=0#p25643
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-11-08 13:44:22

Is "I know it's not a black and white answer" an admission that the options you're presenting constitute a false dichotomy? Maybe the new policy is a step forward or maybe it's not, but even under the policy you're not prevented from playing the games as originally released. Everyone who found out about the new rule had the opportunity to download that first batch of releases, play those exclusively, and in every meaningful way experience the competition as if the new rule did not exist.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3598&start=0#p25644
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: How long does it take IFDB to process games?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-11-08 13:58:53

[quote="katz"]There are games on IFDB as far back as October 29 that still don't have download links.  Perhaps it should say it takes a few weeks instead of a few days?[/quote]
IFDB works like a wiki; if you want a download link, you can add it yourself.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3598&start=0#p25645
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: How long does it take IFDB to process games?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-08 14:01:34

[quote="katz"]There are games on IFDB as far back as October 29 that still don't have download links.  Perhaps it should say it takes a few weeks instead of a few days?[/quote]

IFDB updates appear instantly. It's the people who sometime experience a processing delay [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=240#p25646
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-11-08 14:07:51

[quote="Trumgottist"][quote="InterFiction"]Some of the kings quest games are legendary![/quote]
That'd be KQ7, then.[/quote]

Oh, well, you don't have to like them particularly, but you have to admit that KQ6 is very impressive in depth.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3598&start=0#p25648
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: How long does it take IFDB to process games?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-11-08 14:09:34

Yes, the thing is people often upload to the archive - then we have to wait for the file to become available in the archive for the link to appear.

Of course, some people just go ahead and make entries without giving download links. That's another matter entirely. They probably think we're a community of mind-readers, what with decades of verb-guessing and all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=0#p25649
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-11-08 15:04:50

My humble suggestion: let future comp rules explicitly state that no one by any means forbids an author to make updated versions of her entry and upload them wherever and whenever she considers (her own website or even the IF archive) during voting time, so we acomplish the ideal of encouraging the completion of better IF works based on feedback received during the comp, but make clear that the ones to be judged and scored are definitively the ones submitted to the IF Comp [i]before [/i]the deadline, so we avoid potential unfair situations.

I've got a firm intention to go IF comp next year, and that would be the rules which I personally would feel more comfortable with.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3584&start=10#p25650
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help, Please.
User: rakel / DateTime: 2011-11-08 15:08:08

thanks joel ive made myself a github and seted up and made a repo [emote]:)[/emote]
im finding this easy it reminds me of DOS.  [emote]8-)[/emote] 
but i don't quite understand how i get my if story up there

im glad you guys are so nice to help a village idiot like me  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3584&start=10#p25652
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help, Please.
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-11-08 15:18:36

[quote="rakel"]
but i don't quite understand how i get my if story up there[/quote]There is some good advice here: <a class="postlink" href="http://pages.github.com/">http://pages.github.com/</a>
Basically you just set up a branch named "gh-pages" and commit everything to that branch.
They make it sound far more complicated than it has to be. Just follow the steps and you should be good to go [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3600&start=0#p25653
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Meanwhile by zarf
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-11-08 15:20:16

Has everyone bought their copy yet? It's AWESOME!

<a class="postlink" href="http://zarfhome.com/meanwhile/">http://zarfhome.com/meanwhile/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3598&start=0#p25655
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: How long does it take IFDB to process games?
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-11-08 15:28:36

[quote="Peter Pears"]Yes, the thing is people often upload to the archive - then we have to wait for the file to become available in the archive for the link to appear.

Of course, some people just go ahead and make entries without giving download links. That's another matter entirely. They probably think we're a community of mind-readers, what with decades of verb-guessing and all.[/quote]There isn't currently anything on the Archive in "unprocessed" that's been uploaded through IFDB, so any IFDB page still without a download link was either created like that by its author, someone has edited the download links to remove the pending link to the archive, or there's a problem at the IFDB end...

[As an aside, that's not quite true: the uploads "Dodge City Desperados.zip" and "Destination Mars.zip" both seem to have been uploaded through IFDB, but the entries on IFDB seem to have been removed. Also, the zip files contain Windows or DOS executables. Hmmm, those will have to be treated with a lot of caution...]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3584&start=10#p25656
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help, Please.
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-11-08 15:28:36

It's ridiculously easy to use Dropbox for this. Just put your folder in your Public folder and share the link to the html file.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3539&start=0#p25657
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: HANGAR 22 by Rob O'Hara
User: Flack / DateTime: 2011-11-08 15:37:40

Thanks for checking it out. If you have any questions about the game or get stuck anywhere, please let me know.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3600&start=0#p25659
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Meanwhile by zarf
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-08 15:39:00

Does it have a purely branching structure or does it rejoin? I'm assuming that if it was first published in hardcopy it doesn't have any state-tracking...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3598&start=0#p25660
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: How long does it take IFDB to process games?
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-11-08 15:39:02

[quote="katz"]There are games on IFDB as far back as October 29 that still don't have download links.  Perhaps it should say it takes a few weeks instead of a few days?[/quote]If you're specifically asking about your game ("The House of Fear") then I can see that the upload to the Archive came from IFDB, but the IFDB page seems to have been created with no download links. It should have had a pending download link so that when the game was moved into the Archive, then IFDB was also updated, but something seems to have gone wrong at the IFDB end. It might be worth you asking Mike Roberts to have a look.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=240#p25662
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-11-08 15:47:32

[quote="Peter Pears"]Oh, well, you don't have to like them particularly, but you have to admit that KQ6 is very impressive in depth.[/quote]
A depth that I haven't seen because it kept killing me until I put it back on the shelf, where it's waiting for the day when I'll give it a second chance.

(I am aware that KQ6 is generally considered the best of the series and that KQ fans generally look down on number seven, but I quite liked KQ7 and haven't been able to finish any of the others.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3600&start=0#p25663
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Meanwhile by zarf
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-08 15:59:12

Going off the hardcover (to which I believe the app is extremely faithful), there are some puzzles where you need to have found codes, and there may be a loop or two. Also going off the hardcover, it's awesome and if you're thinking you might want it, you do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3584&start=10#p25665
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help, Please.
User: rakel / DateTime: 2011-11-08 16:11:58

ok i think ive made a project page now 
but that doesn't like push my story to it 
sorry i really dont have clue now  [emote]:|[/emote] 
(brain hurt) 
i think im meant to wait 10 mins for this page i made to work
(cus it not currently working)
<a class="postlink" href="https://HGSkarendiva@github.com/HGSkarendiva/Project-X..git">https://HGSkarendiva@github.com/HGSkare ... ect-X..git</a>

EDIT: im going to give this drop box a try
EDIT EDIT: dropbox is no good i dont want to give them the file 
i want a page to like hold it like the games on em.. <a class="postlink" href="http://www.miniclip.com">http://www.miniclip.com</a>
so they can play them on the site  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote] 
thanks anyway.

right back to github my page works now
but it doesn't hold the game
im starting to think that i should just tell them to download the stupid file
this is getting more fuss then i wanted it to *sigh*
ive uploaded the game to repo and its in downloads
i guessed that what i had to do to get it on to the site

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3601&start=0#p25666
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Indexed text and tables
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-11-08 16:32:36

I'm trying to make a system whereby NPC activities are added to a table and then regurgitated at the end of the turn. The goal of this is to combine something like this:[code]Paul goes south.

John goes south.

Ringo goes south.

George goes south.[/code]into this:[code]Paul, John, Ringo and George go south.[/code]A little more elegant, I think; and since the majority of my WIP is being in an area with these NPCs, this will condense the output and make it much easier to read.

Here is what I have so far:[code]Table of NPC Activity
who	activity
person	indexed text
Paul	--
John	--
Ringo	--
George	--

Every turn:
...
*** major snip ***
...
		now the activity corresponding to a who of whoIsIt in the Table of NPC Activity is "goes [whichWay] to [curLocation]";[/code]
This line is giving me the following error:[code]*** BlkValueWrite: writing to index out of range: 24 in 781990 ***[/code]I originally thought that perhaps it had something to do with calculating the contents of the indexed text, and so I did this:[code]let tempActivity be indexed text;
now tempActivity is "goes [whichWay] to [curLocation]";
now the activity corresponding to a who of whoIsIt in the Table of NPC Activity is tempActivity;[/code]But that gave me the following error:[code]*** Deep copy failed: destination empty ***[/code]And so with this I'm out of ideas.

How do I put this simple indexed text into a table? What am I missing?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3473&start=0#p25667
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Fourth Round of IFComp 2011 Updates
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-11-08 16:36:39

[quote="Peter Pears"]Wow. Andromeda Awakening has been updates *4 times*, and is up to release *2*.[/quote][quote="Jacek Pudlo"][quote="Sargent"]For the fourth update, the games A Comedy of Error Messages (originally Elfen Maiden)[/quote]
If you keep this up, my 2012 entry will be named _A Comedy of Updates_.[/quote]

So the next update of Andromeda Awakening will only change the release number to 5?   

Our reality is stranger than Jacek's fiction...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3473&start=0#p25668
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Fourth Round of IFComp 2011 Updates
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-11-08 16:45:17

[quote]So the next update of Andromeda Awakening will only change the release number to 5?[/quote]

Heh. Ridiculous, I agree, but oddly enough, it would be right.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3600&start=0#p25669
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Meanwhile by zarf
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-11-08 16:52:30

[quote="Joel Webster"]Has everyone bought their copy yet? It's AWESOME![/quote]
Doesn't run on any hardware I own.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3600&start=0#p25670
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Meanwhile by zarf
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-08 16:56:55

It has state-rejoining, yes.

It has state-tracking in a couple of senses -- information-based, but still significant. There are a couple of security codes that you have to discover. And, more generally, the story only really makes sense once you understand the full sequence of events, which takes a couple of go-rounds.

All of this was in the original book, of course. Deciding how to render it in the app was an interesting question. I could have locked in the puzzles -- forcing you to go "discover" the security codes before making use of them, in a single run-through. But t seemed like a terrible idea. The way I set it up, you can "cheat" by flipping around randomly (as you can in the book). I figure people can approach the understanding of the story from that direction or not, as suits them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3600&start=0#p25671
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Meanwhile by zarf
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-11-08 16:57:26

I bought the hardcover not long ago at my local comics-shop through Diamond Previews catalog. In fact It was Shiga's latest work which catched my attention in it. It was [i]Empire State, A Love Story (Or Not)[/i]. [i]Meanwhile [/i]was offered as well and just out of curiosity I ordered both.

I just loved [i]Empire State[/i], and for pure chance I read it almost simultaneously with Adrian Tomime's [i]Shortcomings[/i], which offered a radically different view on a somehow similar subject (asian-american nerd makes all the travel from nowhere to New York City in an attempt to get back in touch with a lost love and finds...). Hey! if I had the time I would talk about it all in an hipotetical comics category at my blog thing!  [emote]8-)[/emote] 

Back on [i]Meanwhile[/i]. It's cheerfully fun and worth every second you spend taking a walk through its panels. If there ever is an Android version I would happily buy it and make the tour again!

Some pics with a page of the book and some blatant subliminal propaganda of my work in prog... eer, no, no, the three aforementioned books!  [emote]:P[/emote] 

[center][url=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/510/pepo11110801.jpg/][img]http://img510.imageshack.us/img510/5248/pepo11110801.th.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/256/pepo11110802.jpg/][img]http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/4005/pepo11110802.th.jpg[/img][/url][/center]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3601&start=0#p25672
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indexed text and tables
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-11-08 16:57:50

I think you might have to "choose" the corresponding row, then change the "activity entry" to said text. 

I'll report this as a bug but I don't know if it is or not.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=0#p25673
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-11-08 16:58:20

[quote="Afterward"]Is "I know it's not a black and white answer" an admission that the options you're presenting constitute a false dichotomy?[/quote]Well yes, I suppose so. It would be naive to think we either had to have these updates, or not, without giving good consideration to alternatives that everyone is happy with. And given the split so far, that's where my money is.

Ooh, 100th post.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3601&start=0#p25675
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indexed text and tables
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-11-08 17:56:18

[quote="Joel Webster"][code]Paul, John, Ringo and George go south.[/code][/quote]
Shouldn't it be east? (Or west, if I'm misreading Google Maps.)

[size=85](I don't have anything useful to add - I just liked your example.)[/size]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3579&start=0#p25681
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Randomness and Simple Chat
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-11-08 18:47:34

Okay, that actually works great. Thanks.

Here's an idea of what I eventually settled on (leaving out the special handling of whether the answers to questions are right or wrong):

[code]
"The Quiz"

Include Simple Chat by Mark Tilford.

The studio is a room.

The Quiz Master is a person in the studio.

quiz_master, question1, question2, question3, myq1, myq2, myq3, rome, paris, london, node_11, node_12, node_20, june, may and december are chat nodes;
	
Running-quiz is a truth state that varies. Running-quiz is true.

To decide which chat node is the next question:
	choose a random row from the table of quiz questions;
	decide on the node entry.

Next-node is a chat node that varies.

when play begins:
	now the next-node is the next question;

Every turn:
	while next-node is not no quip chosen:
		run a conversation from the next-node;

Table of quiz questions
node	question-text	response-1	response-2	response-3
question1	"'What's the capital of France?'"	rome	paris	london
question2	"'How many are in a dozen?"	node_11	node_12	node_20
question3	"'What is the fifth month of the year?'"	june	may	december

Table of quiz responses
node	link-text	response-text
rome	"Rome"	"You say 'Is it Rome?'"
paris	"Paris"	"You say 'Is it Paris?'"
london	"London"	"You say 'Is it London?'"	
node_11	"11"	"You say 'Is it 11?'"
node_12	"12"	"You say 'Is it 12?'"
node_20	"20"	"You say 'Is it 20?'"
june	"June"	"You say 'Is it June?'"
may	"May"	"You say 'Is it May?'"
december	"December"	"You say 'Is it December?'"

Table of my-quiz questions
node	question-text	response-text
myq1	"'What is the square root of 81?'"	"'Ha! Easy...9!'"
myq2	"'Who was know as the Red Baron?'"	"'Baron von Richthofen. Give me a difficult one!'"
myq3	"'What is the meaning of life, the universe and everything?'"	"'43!' The quiz master says confidently.[paragraph break]'No! 42! You lose!' You laugh."

Report giving text for a node listed in the table of quiz questions:
	say "[question-text entry]" instead;

Carry out finding responses to a node listed in the table of quiz questions:
	if there is a response-1 entry:
		link to response-1 entry;
	if there is a response-2 entry:
		link to response-2 entry;
	if there is a response-3 entry:
		link to response-3 entry;

Report giving link to a node listed in the table of quiz responses:
	say "[link-text entry]" instead;

Report giving text for a node listed in the table of quiz responses:
	say "[response-text entry]";
	now the next-node is quiz_master instead;

Report giving link to a node listed in the table of my-quiz questions:
	say "[question-text entry]" instead;
	
Report giving text for quiz_master:
	say "[paragraph break]'Ok, now you ask me one.' The quiz master says with glee.'" instead;
	
Carry out finding responses to quiz_master:
	repeat through table of my-quiz questions:
		link to node entry;
	
Report giving text for a node listed in the table of my-quiz questions:
	say "[response-text entry][paragraph break]";
	now the next-node is the next question instead;
[/code]

Ignoring my stupid questions for a moment, this could actually form the basis of an interesting puzzle where you have to figure out what the quiz master doesn't know about in catch him out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2517&start=0#p25690
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Tapatalk Suggestion
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-08 20:05:55

I'd be glad to donate a little something if someone can make this happen. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3603&start=0#p25697
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: State Health Department Promotes Emergency Preparedness 
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-11-08 20:42:25

Viagra for babies?! I think this bot might be a troll.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3605&start=0#p25702
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: After pressing the release button
User: sqib / DateTime: 2011-11-08 22:04:26

the gblorb file is not in the folder that it says it should be in.

ill copy and paste the output of what i7 says. The release subfolder is completely empty.

thoughts?


Packaging up for Release - Succeeded 

  Peril in Pleasantville Materials 
 Release 
  Peril in Pleasantville.gblorb 
 

All went well. I've put the released material into the 'Release' subfolder of the Materials folder for the project: you can take a look with the menu option Release > Open Materials Folder or by clicking the blue folders above.

Releases can range in size from a single blorb file to a medium-sized website. Here's what we currently have:


•The blorb file Peril in Pleasantville.gblorb (897086K in size, including 1921 figures(s) and 0 sound(s))
Here are some other possibilities you might want to consider:


•Using 'Release along with cover art', to provide something more distinctive than the default artwork above 
•Using 'Release along with a website' 
•Using 'Release along with an interpreter', for in-browser play on your website 
•Using 'Release along with the "Such-and-Such" file called "whatever.pdf"', perhaps to add a manual, or a welcoming note 
•Using 'Release along with the source text' 
•Using 'Release along with a solution' 
•Using 'Release along with the library card'

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3587&start=20#p25703
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What's your take?
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-11-08 22:35:13

[quote="capmikee"][quote="Bainespal"]Because Christians like myself are as hypocritical and incompetent as all other people.  It is sadly ironic, but probably inevitable, that crimes of hate would be committed in the name of the supreme example of love who died to conquer that inner hate.[/quote]
 I think we're all capable of evil, but I don't think that makes us evil. [/quote]

This is very true. Any being that carries the spirit of the Lord can not be evil. If you don't believe in God, which I would say is not good, you could also say any being that contains truth can not be evil. Even wicked people aren't evil...they're wicked.

if there are evil people then the saying would be 'evil', and not evil. one being evil to a measure, the other being completely evil....

which I don't think any man has been.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3606&start=0#p25705
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: World Climate & Greening!
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-11-08 22:51:14

I like these kinds of topics. They usually spark great debates. I'm wondering what your ideas should be for the future, and making the planet a better place. This happening completely, nope...but it doesn't hurt to talk about it, and share ideas so that small impacts can be made within our own lives, and the lives of others for a time.

I'm thinking recycle, reduce, and reuse. Now I don't think that the first one is used in a way that will ever benefit the planet, unless it's done in a completely green way..a little pollution for less bottles laying around, why not? No. That's not the answer. I think the answer for recycle lies in not recycling plastics, and things that give off harmful chemicals. How would the world do this? Stop using the materials! gonna happen? nope, lol.

Reduce. This should be done by individuals but companies as well. Sure a giant half filled package makes your product look nice, but it's wasteful, and disrespectful in a sense to the world, and it's condition. Where trying to safe the planet here! or at least we should be, lol

Another thing is oil consumption. does this need to be reduced? no...it needs to be ceased. Will that happen? nope, lol.

another reason why this should be reduced is the theory of increasing earthquakes if, and I say IF this is true, do we really want to be sucking the worlds lubrication out of the planet...the last thing we need is for the world to split in half, lol.

another thing is power use. I don't think stopping it would be better than cutting back on it. 

Also I wonder if the world is coming to a place where cutting back isn't enough, and the only solution is to just stop, and do things the way we used to...we could still have fancy homes, and stuff. We just wouldn't have the technology we have, we can do without it..do I want to, nope, lol, but maybe it's the only easy way until they come up with a better power supply.

What I wonder is if the talk about ice caps melting within 50-100 years, and there being mass flooding and what not. If that's the case than maybe we are nearing a time when cutting back wont do the job...lol

any ideas?

I know the above are extreme, and that would cause mass effects, and what not, and it will never happen, but I also know that if it could be done, and people could just simply behave themselves...it may be the best way, lol.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3607&start=0#p25706
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Can't enter room.
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-11-08 22:55:32

Hey, I can't seem to enter a room, and there's no obvious reason as to why it's happening. I took the room name, and searched it in my code for every place that it's mentioned. There doesn't seem to be any reason for what's happening that I can see. When I try to go in that direction it simply says 'you can't go that way' or something like that. I also checked the map, and it's definitely connected to the room I'm in.

the only new rule I've added is this..

[code]after going to Tia's Garden:
	now chat-TiaNiceGarden is sc-active; now chat-TiaWhoMadeThisPlace is sc-active; now chat-TiaWow is sc-active.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3607&start=0#p25707
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can't enter room.
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-08 23:00:13

Did you remember to connect it to another room? [emote]:)[/emote] (Sorry if that sounds obvious, but your post doesn't include many relevant details ...) in the index map, is a connection visible?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3594&start=0#p25709
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Commanding actors in TADS 2
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-11-08 23:26:16

I believe you use actorAction() for this in TADS 2. Googling for an example turned up [url=http://www.delron.org.uk/erin/2009-09-01.txt]this AIF newsletter[/url] with source code excerpts.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3484&start=0#p25715
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Idea I have, possibly already implemented
User: dusty_thoreau / DateTime: 2011-11-09 01:00:44

hey thanks for the advice guys [emote]:)[/emote] 

I'll look throughout the forums and see what I can dig up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3607&start=0#p25718
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can't enter room.
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-11-09 01:19:28

lol, that was the last thing I said in the post.

ahh, I'll paste all the code relating to the room.. The room name is Tia's Garden.

this one isn't causing the error.
[code]carry out finding responses to chat-TiaImp: link to chat-TiaNiceGarden; now EsherCanEnterGarden is true; now TiaInGarden is true; now Tia is in Tia's Garden;  try finding responses to chat-HelloTia instead.[/code]

this one isn't either.
[code]after going to Tia's Garden:
	now chat-TiaNiceGarden is sc-active; now chat-TiaWhoMadeThisPlace is sc-active; now chat-TiaWow is sc-active.[/code]

don't think it's this one..
[code]the description of Tia's Garden is "[if TiaInGarden is true]When Esher stepped out of the thin trail to where Tia was he was met by the most wondrous garden. It was placed in a small well rounded clearing, sitting on top of a soft later of lush green moss. All the flowers there were beautiful, perfectly placed, and perfectly planted, to complement one another. Butterflies fluttered about the flowers sipping the sweet nectar from the ones it oozed from like candy. The air smelled sweet, and was filled with pedals that drifted about in the warm days breeze. Tia was sitting there in the soft moss amongst the the beautiful flowers.[else]When Esher stepped out of the thin trail with Tia he was met by the most wondrous garden. It was placed in a small well rounded clearing, sitting on top of a soft later of lush green moss. All the flowers there were beautiful, perfectly placed, and perfectly planted, to complement one another. Butterflies fluttered about the flowers sipping the sweet nectar from the ones it oozed from like candy. The air smelled sweet, and was filled with pedals that drifted about in the warm days breeze.[end if]"[/code]

not this one...
[code]Tia's Garden is south of Kileaf Thin Trail Continued. [/code]

the region it's in..probably not this one, lol.

[code]Tia's Garden, Kileaf Thin Trail, Kileaf Thin Trail Continued, Outside Tia's Kileaf, Kileaf Main Road, Kileaf Center, Kileaf Main Road Continued, Kraven Forest Entrance, Kileaf Spring, Lumber Jack's Woodpile, Kileaf Houses, and Lumber Jack's House are in Kileaf. [/code]

definitely not this one..
[code]carry out finding responses to chat-TiaImp: link to chat-TiaNiceGarden; now EsherCanEnterGarden is true; now TiaInGarden is true; now Tia is in Tia's Garden;  try finding responses to chat-HelloTia instead.[/code]

This is the newest bit of code I added relating to the room...

[code]after going to Tia's Garden:
	now chat-TiaNiceGarden is sc-active; now chat-TiaWhoMadeThisPlace is sc-active; now chat-TiaWow is sc-active.[/code]

That's it....as far as I can tell there's no reason...but I could be missing something..

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3607&start=0#p25721
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can't enter room.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-09 01:38:29

Is it possible you're getting a namespace clash between "Kileaf Thin Trail" and "Kileaf Thin Trail Continued"? Inform doesn't always play nice with overlapping names (I defined a "bus pass" and then a "bus" and it kept thinking I was talking about the bus pass whenever I said "bus"); if it thinks you're in Kileaf Thin Trail when you want to be in KTT Continued, that might cause the problem. So I'd try changing one of those names a bit and see if it helps.

(I really need to go to bed, though, so take this with a bucket o' salt.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3607&start=0#p25723
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can't enter room.
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-09 02:17:07

[quote="InterFiction"]lol, that was the last thing I said in the post.[/quote]

So it was [emote]:)[/emote]

Other than that: what Matt said. Could be a naming clash. If it is, you can skirt those by giving a room an internal name and a printed name.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3607&start=0#p25725
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can't enter room.
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-11-09 02:38:11

Could it be that you can enter the room but you just don't see a room description? You have to add "continue the action" to the end of any "After going to" rule, otherwise the after rule will override the report rules that print the room description.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3607&start=0#p25726
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can't enter room.
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-11-09 03:07:21

[quote="Juhana"]Could it be that you can enter the room but you just don't see a room description? You have to add "continue the action" to the end of any "After going to" rule, otherwise the after rule will override the report rules that print the room description.[/quote]
I'm pretty certain that Juhana is correct.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3607&start=0#p25727
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can't enter room.
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-11-09 03:37:52

Yeah, the continue the action fixed the problem. I wondered if that was the code that did it, sense it was the newest I entered. Thanks guys.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3608&start=0#p25728
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Message wont dissplay
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-11-09 03:46:43

I'm trying to have a message display the first time the player enters the room based on a truth state, and have that truth state switch after entering the room. The message isn't showing though. I've tried before, and after rules, but neither are working..

I'm not sure if it's because of the time the truth state switches, or what..

[code]after going to Tia's Garden:
	now chat-TiaNiceGarden is sc-active; now EsherEnteredGarden is true; now chat-TiaWhoMadeThisPlace is sc-active; now chat-TiaWow is sc-active; continue the action.

before going to Tia's Garden when EsherEnteredGarden is false:
	say "Esher Entered the garden!"; [/code]

actually with the before rule the message is posted in the end of the prior room...so now I know what that does, but I'd like the message to be posted in the entered room..

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3608&start=0#p25729
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Message wont dissplay
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-11-09 03:59:12

okay, on an update to the situation I edited the room description..

[code]the description of Tia's Garden is "[if EsherEnteredGarden is false]When Esher stepped out of the thin trail to where Tia was he was met by the most wondrous garden. It was placed in a small well rounded clearing, sitting on top of a soft later of lush green moss. All the flowers there were beautiful, perfectly placed, and perfectly planted, to complement one another. Butterflies fluttered about the flowers sipping the sweet nectar from the ones it oozed from like candy. The air smelled sweet, and was filled with pedals that drifted about in the warm days breeze. Tia was sitting there in the soft moss amongst the the beautiful flowers.[else] Esher was standing in the most wondrous garden he had ever saw in his life. It was placed in a small well rounded clearing, sitting on top of a soft later of lush green moss. All the flowers there were beautiful, perfectly placed, and perfectly planted, to complement one another. Butterflies fluttered about the flowers sipping the sweet nectar from the ones it oozed from like candy. The air smelled sweet, and was filled with pedals that drifted about in the warm days breeze. Tia was sitting there in the soft moss amongst the the beautiful flowers.[end if]"[/code]

I need the truth state EsherEnteredGarden to change after he enters the garden.

I figured an after rule would produce this, but it didn't work. With that, and before rule I get the second room description..

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=240#p25731
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-11-09 05:07:44

Oh, I can understand that completely. [emote]:)[/emote] But I think when that "second chance" day comes you'll find it more enjoyable... now that you know what to expect in terms of gameplay, and how to adjust your strategies accordingly. It's how I got to the end of Avon (enjoying it, even), after giving up in disgust my first time around.

Well, that and hints. But a lot less hints that I would have thought.

Incidently, while I understand why most fans look down on KQ7, my personal take is: their loss if they can't appreciate it for what it is. Still, KQ8 gave them some perspective, heh?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3608&start=0#p25732
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Message wont dissplay
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-09 05:16:26

Inform has built-in support for checking if a room has been visited before or not, so for that particular purpose you need not create your own truth state.

Just write:
[code]The description of Tia's Garden is "[if unvisited]When Esher stepped out of the thin trail to where Tia was he was met by the most wondrous garden[else]Esher was standing in the most wondrous garden he had ever saw in his life[end if]. It was placed in a small well rounded clearing, sitting on top of a soft layer of lush green moss. All the flowers there were beautiful, perfectly placed, and perfectly planted, to complement one another. Butterflies fluttered about the flowers sipping the sweet nectar from the ones it oozed from like candy. The air smelled sweet, and was filled with petals that drifted about in the warm day's breeze. Tia was sitting there in the soft moss amongst the the beautiful flowers."[/code]
Then the first sentence will change according to whether the player has been in the room before or not.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3608&start=0#p25734
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Message wont dissplay
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-09 05:46:27

Inform gives every room a Boolean property, stating that it can be visited or unvisited. After the player has entered a particular room for the first time the visited property of that room is set (i.e. it changes from unvisited to visited, i.e. this Boolean changes from false to true).

So, sometimes it can be an alternative to flag things with Booleans that are properties of individual objects, rather than with global Boolean variables.

(If you want to use the EsherEnteredGarden variable, you'd actually have to write an after [color=#FF4080]looking[/color] rule! This is because room descriptions are printed by the looking action, whose rulebooks Inform runs as soon as the player enters a room. Indeed the visited property of the room is set by the last carry out looking rule.)[code]After looking in Tia's Garden: now EsherEnteredGarden is true; continue the action.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=240#p25735
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2011-11-09 06:13:06

[quote]Other than text graphic games I loved point and click....Some of the kings quest games are legendary![/quote]

I loved the text graphic games too. I liked the text based games better, even though the parer was terrible, and the graphics looked like chunks. But, to me, it felt like so much more fantasy was put into the game-play than the later point and clicks. (Monkey Island not included) ...  Games like Larry & Space Quest was my favorites. But Police Quest and Kings Quest wasn't bad either.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3605&start=0#p25737
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: After pressing the release button
User: HanonO / DateTime: 2011-11-09 07:08:55

Did you try clicking the links in the output message?  That should open them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=10#p25738
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-11-09 07:13:11

Although I can see the wisdom of the updates and I only admire the authors who had the stamina to consistently improve their games, my personal vote is No.

I will accept and follow these new rules, if they persist; I'm not going to restrict my judging to the original versions.  If I ever were to enter the Comp, I might update for a big game-breaking bug or accidental omission, but otherwise I think I would be more stressed out than relieved by the fact that I can (and therefore probably should, not necessarily to be competitive but just in order to bring my best forward) improve my entry based on feedback during the judging period.

I'm also concerned about the standard deviation statistic becoming meaningless.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3473&start=0#p25739
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Fourth Round of IFComp 2011 Updates
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-11-09 07:23:55

[quote="Peter Pears"][quote]So the next update of Andromeda Awakening will only change the release number to 5?[/quote]

Heh. Ridiculous, I agree, but oddly enough, it would be right.[/quote]
Nope. It would be wrong. 
In my opinion a Release change must involve something structural about game or gameplay.

First update introduced some timed comments that would hint as to the next step of game, an aid for players on unhinted puzzles. The third updates just had a "PRESS [something]" implemented, which was something I overdid in the second release when I added a "PUSH ACROSS [something]" So: Release 2. (it was just an unlucky bad timing, as the two updates were just a few minutes one from the other... Stephen was too fast for me in that occasion)

The latest (and last) update just changes the surname of a tester.

That isn't a new release imo. So: if you have update 2 or 4, the gameplay is perfectly the same. Release 1: the game "pre-comp"; Release 2: the game NOW (and it won't be further modified).

Release 3 WILL have major updates to text/introduction/gaming experience/hint system/map, and that will go live AFTER the comp.

Hope this clarifies and hope this talking-out-of-the-authors-forum will not be a rulebreaker.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3609&start=0#p25740
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [solved] Plurality problems: [it-them] prints wrong pronouns
User: Mr Wendal / DateTime: 2011-11-09 07:42:06

I'm pretty new to this. This code:

[code]Include Plurality by Emily Short.

The Kitchen is a room.

A table is here. A man called Bob is here. A woman called Sara is here.

Instead of attacking something, say "I don't want to attack [it-them]."[/code]

Produces this in game:

[quote]
Kitchen
You can see a table, Bob and Sara here.

>attack table
I don't want to attack her.
>attack bob
I don't want to attack her.
>attack sara
I don't want to attack her.
>[/quote]

This is just for example. In my main game it prints all male pronouns instead of all female ones, and sometimes randomly switches to "It." In the above code, there must be a problem with my "instead" line, but I can't find what it is. Any help would be appreciated. Running Inform 7 (build 6G60) with inbuilt Version 9 of Plurality by Emily Short. Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3601&start=0#p25741
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indexed text and tables
User: koo5 / DateTime: 2011-11-09 07:52:11

you can use some first class citizens :

[code]
Table of NPC directions
person	direction	destination
[/code]

i totally failed to make a whole example tho, gave up when trying to translate the printing logic to inform

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3609&start=0#p25742
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Plurality problems: [it-them] prints wrong pronouns
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-09 07:54:09

Plurality's pronouns agrees with the most recently mentioned object. Sara in this case (if you declare the objects in another order, it will say "it" or "him".)

Unless you use the variable pronouns after just having mentioned an object in your source text, you should tell Inform what object the pronoun should agree with:
[code]Instead of attacking something, say "I don't want to attack [it-them of the noun]."[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3601&start=0#p25743
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indexed text and tables
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-09 08:09:28

[quote="Trumgottist"][quote="Joel Webster"][code]Paul, John, Ringo and George go south.[/code][/quote]
Shouldn't it be east? (Or west, if I'm misreading Google Maps.)

[size=85](I don't have anything useful to add - I just liked your example.)[/size][/quote]

I was a trifle disappointed by Joseph Ratzinger; after one John XXIII, one Paul VI, and two John Pauls, all in a row, I felt it was high time for a George Ringo I.

(Well, no, I didn't, actually; but I kind of liked the thought of it.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=10#p25745
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2011-11-09 09:29:23

I voted yes because, well, I'm considering entering a game in that mentions other competing games. I'll start with a placeholder,then add the games as the first update.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3607&start=0#p25749
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can't enter room.
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-11-09 10:54:45

Guess you fixed you're problem, but two things from your room description:

1) what's "a soft later of lush green moss"? Did you mean lather (as in soap)?

2) Why repeat so much text when the only bit that's different is at the very end? I.e.:

[code]
the description of Tia's Garden is "When Esher stepped out of the thin trail to where Tia was he was met by the most wondrous garden. It was placed in a small well rounded clearing, sitting on top of a soft later of lush green moss. All the flowers there were beautiful, perfectly placed, and perfectly planted, to complement one another. Butterflies fluttered about the flowers sipping the sweet nectar from the ones it oozed from like candy. The air smelled sweet, and was filled with pedals that drifted about in the warm days breeze. [if TiaInGarden is true]Tia was sitting there in the soft moss amongst the the beautiful flowers.[end if]"
[/code]

Should (unless there are other differences I didn't spot) achieve the same effect, no?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3610&start=0#p25751
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Unique NPC Names
User: Sonic 4305 / DateTime: 2011-11-09 11:34:18

How would I make it possible to allow player's to specify NPC names?
Also how do I store user input into variables?

Here is some code I currently have:

[code]NPCOne Name is some text that varies. NPCOne Name is usually "Pearl". [Here is where I would like user to specify NPCOne Name value]
NPCOne is a female person.
The printed name of NPCOne is "[NPCOne Name]". [this does work]
Understand "[NPCOne Name]" as NPCOne. [exception thrown here]
[I need this last command so they can do actions on an NPC with the printed name rather than real name][/code]

Right now the last line does not compile. I have tried switching "[NPCOne Name]" to "[NPCOne]" since [NPCOne] gives you printed name
but it gives a stack overflow exception.
Also, as you can see, I don't know how to get user input and store it in NPCOne Name. 

Any help is greatly appreciated [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3484&start=0#p25752
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Idea I have, possibly already implemented
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-11-09 11:36:02

frudster:  That could be a totally fun idea for a minicomp.  There could be an extension that handles the input and output strings and everyone has to write a compatible game.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3612&start=0#p25755
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Grammar lines in wrong order!
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-09 11:52:32

I can't believe I never encountered this problem before. Maybe I did, and just forgot how I dealt with it.

I want to create an action for "show X to Y" that doesn't have a carried requirement. But this fails to override the builtin grammar lines:

[code]Section - Pointing it Out To

Pointing it out to is an action applying to one thing and one thing.

Understand "show [something] to [something]" as pointing it out to.
Understand "show [someone] [something]" as pointing it out to (with nouns reversed).
Understand "point out [something] to [something]" as pointing it out to.
Understand "point [something] out to [something]" as pointing it out to.

Report pointing something out to:
	say "You indicate [the noun] to [the second noun]."

The specification of the pointing it out to action is "This action is like showing it to, but it allows the player to show something that is not carried."

Section - Test Scenario

Studio is a room.

An easel is fixed in place in Studio.

Bob is a man in Studio.

test me with "show easel to bob/point out easel to bob"
[/code]

What can I do?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3573&start=0#p25756
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: indexed text .. [?]
User: koo5 / DateTime: 2011-11-09 11:58:50

thanks for the lengthy explanation . inform can be intriguing [emote]:ugeek:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3612&start=0#p25757
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Grammar lines in wrong order!
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-11-09 12:06:14

[code]Understand the command "show" as something new.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3612&start=0#p25759
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Grammar lines in wrong order!
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-09 12:11:49

Thanks, Jim!

There's something slightly counterintuitive about "something new." I had gotten to the point where I was thinking that all it did was destroy command synonym links. But it appears to do more than that. Can anyone explain exactly how it works?

For example, if I declare "show" as something new, will it ever match the original "showing it to" grammar lines? Can I recreate my own "showing it to" action, leaving out the carrying requirement?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3606&start=0#p25760
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: World Climate & Greening!
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-09 12:24:31

Our family is car-free, and we try to keep our heat off from March 15-December 15 every year. We eat local food, and sometimes we keep chickens. The chickens eat a lot of our food waste, and we compost as well. I think we'll be planting a few food crops in our alleyway next year. We don't eat any grains. Although grains can feed a lot of people, their production is pretty much the worst environmental disaster ever.

I can't say this is really enough to make a difference, but I'm not sure how much more of a difference it would make to stress about the environment all the time. I try to keep calm, keep an open mind, and pray for the best.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3613&start=0#p25761
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Gargoyle 2011.1 released
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-11-09 12:28:36

The new version of Gargoyle is out! Features include: two new OS ports; new Glk API functions; Treaty of Babel support; Bocfel, the new Z-Machine interpreter; and ScottFree, an interpreter for Scott Adams games.

A complete list of changes is available here:
<a class="postlink" href="http://code.google.com/p/garglk/wiki/Changes">http://code.google.com/p/garglk/wiki/Changes</a>

Thanks again to everyone who has submitted bug reports, sent me patches, or contributed to the discussions on the project mailing list. I've tried to include you all on the following credits page; please let me know right away if I've missed your name:
<a class="postlink" href="http://code.google.com/p/garglk/wiki/Credits">http://code.google.com/p/garglk/wiki/Credits</a>

Packages for Windows, Ubuntu, and Mac, as well as the cross-platform source code, are now available on the project download page, located here:
<a class="postlink" href="http://code.google.com/p/garglk/downloads/list">http://code.google.com/p/garglk/downloads/list</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3612&start=0#p25762
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Grammar lines in wrong order!
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-09 12:33:55

Hmm... "present" and "display" still match the grammar lines for showing it to. So I guess "something new" does two things: It splits the word out of the synonym set it belongs to, and it also removes it from any grammar line it was in before.

To fully recreate the grammar, I have to do this:
[code]Understand the commands "show" and "present" and "display" as something new.

Pointing it out to is an action applying to one thing and one thing.

Understand "show [something] to [something]" as pointing it out to.
Understand "show [someone] [something]" as pointing it out to (with nouns reversed).
Understand "point out [something] to [something]" as pointing it out to.
Understand "point [something] out to [something]" as pointing it out to.

Understand the commands "present" and "display" as "show".[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3610&start=0#p25764
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unique NPC Names
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-11-09 12:48:50

Check [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rex141.html#e141]example 408 "Fido"[/url] in the manual (ch. 8.3. in the Recipe Book or 19.8. in Writing with Inform).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3484&start=10#p25767
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Idea I have, possibly already implemented
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-11-09 13:21:19

Exquisite Corpse: the IF Comp.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3615&start=0#p25768
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Find a paragraph?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-09 13:27:09

I got this run-time problem:

[quote]*** Run-time problem P47 (at paragraph 6140 in the source text): Phrase applied to an incompatible kind of value.[/quote]

But I have no idea how to find paragraph 6140 using the Mac IDE. Is there a way?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3613&start=0#p25770
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gargoyle 2011.1 released
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-09 13:38:26

Awesome, thank you so much!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3601&start=0#p25772
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indexed text and tables
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-11-09 13:46:33

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]I think you might have to "choose" the corresponding row, then change the "activity entry" to said text.[/quote]
That did the trick! Thank you!
I wonder why it does that? Something to do with the row processing/identification, maybe?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3615&start=0#p25775
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Find a paragraph?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-11-09 14:06:48

I don't know, but I'm skeptical that it's referring to a paragraph in your I7 code; I would tend to assume it's referring to the compiled I6.  If I were you, I'd try doing a rules trace instead of trying to find the right paragraph.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3612&start=0#p25778
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Grammar lines in wrong order!
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-11-09 14:31:43

This is one of the weaknesses of Inform 7, in my opinion. In Inform 6 you can simply add your own grammar line to a verb and make it the first line, so that the player's input will be tested against it first, after which, if there is no match, the parser will "fall through" to the existing library grammar. To get the equivalent functionality in I7, you have to obliterate the library's grammar lines for that command and then recreate manually the functionality that you have obliterated.

I could be misrepresenting the situation. It's been a while since I did anything with I7. I'm sure someone will swiftly correct me if I'm wrong. But that's my best recollection of what "understand ... as something new" does.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3606&start=0#p25779
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: World Climate & Greening!
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-11-09 14:38:44

Too poor to give a damn.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3473&start=0#p25780
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Fourth Round of IFComp 2011 Updates
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-11-09 15:15:53

[quote]In my opinion a Release change must involve something structural about game or gameplay.[/quote]

Hence such niceties as "2.01". I HAVE seen released products where the version number changes just because a name was misspelled or left out, and it seems to be common courtesy from the author towards the consumer. Because like it or not, even if it's just a single typo you fixed... it's a change, and you made that change for a reason, and if you're identifying the pre-change version the same as you're identifying the post-change version, then you're sending out the message that the change was unnecessary.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3473&start=0#p25781
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Fourth Round of IFComp 2011 Updates
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-11-09 15:33:18

I prefer the version number, at the moment. I want to go with a history of versions. I think it's just flat out more informative, and it's less work than decimalizing the release number.

Since this doesn't work:

[code]The release number is 2.01[/code]

You seem to have to do the following (or I did.)

[code]"releasenum" by andrew

The release number is 2.

Rule for printing the banner text:
	say "[bold type]My game[roman type][line break]Well, not really a game. Just a proof of concept.[line break]Release 2.01/ Serial number 1337 / Inform 7 build 5Z71 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N) SD[line break]Type [quotation mark]help[quotation mark] for instructions.[paragraph break]" instead.

room 1 is a room.[/code]

Which feels totally artificial.

Or am I missing something obvious that everyone who wants to update his game should know?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3610&start=0#p25782
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unique NPC Names
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-09 15:34:06

Because the players's ability to name things in the game fits perfectly under the "Vehicles, Animals, and Furniture" category. Of course.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3617&start=0#p25783
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [solved] Flashback scenes -- how to, the right way?
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-11-09 15:49:12

I sense I'm missing some important commands, here. The following code works but feels highly artificial. Basically, I want to be able to flashback to a scene where you have no items, and then give you the items back once you return.

Creating a nonfunctional person to safeguard your items seems grossly artificial, and I think there has to be a better way.

Is there an extension for this? Or some simple part of Inform syntax I'm missing? I didn't find anything in the docs' chapter on scenes.

Thanks!

[code]"inventory" by Andrew

the thingamabob is a thing.

when play begins:
	now the player carries the thingamabob.

room 1 is a room.

shazaming is an action out of world. understand the command "shazam" as something new. understand "shazam" as shazaming.

zashaming is an action out of world. understand the command "zasham" as something new. understand "zasham" as zashaming.

Bob T[period] Hingama is a person.

carry out shazaming:
	repeat with q running through things:
		if player carries q:
			now Bob carries q;
			
carry out zashaming:
	repeat with q running through things:
		if Bob carries q:
			now player carries q;
			
test pow with "i/shazam/i/zasham/i/shazam/i/zasham"[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3605&start=0#p25784
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: After pressing the release button
User: sqib / DateTime: 2011-11-09 16:11:38

Nah, all that does is give you different options you can use in the release of a game. I tried it with a smaller test game and after it printed out the similar message as the one posted I clicked on the top release tab and then it created that gblorb.  When I try doing that with the release this post is about a small window  pops up and says out of memory.  That has been a  problem for awhile now, I keep having to copy and past the story.ni file because I get a window popping up that says out of memory and it deletes the story.ni file.  I posted about that problem here:[url]http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3209[/url]

so just be clear on what i'm doing I press the purple release button, after what seems like an eternity it prints out the message I put in the original post, the gblorb is not in the release folder at that point. If I then press the release drop down tab from the top and then click the release option a window pops up saying "out of memory" at that point you cant save or do anything. you exit out of inform and now the story.ni file is 0kb.  I then have to copy the backed up story.ni file I have in another place and replace the now 0kb one. My computer has 8 gigs on memory so I really doubt I am out of memory.

I have an older computer I may dig out (windows xp) and try it on and see if it works.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3617&start=0#p25785
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Flashback scenes -- how to, the right way?
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-11-09 16:12:22

It might be easier to have the flashback scene played out by a different viewpoint character in a different room (or set of rooms). This will take care of both inventory and X ME automatically.

[code]"inventory" by Andrew

the thingamabob is a thing.

when play begins:
   now the player carries the thingamabob.

Present-day Room 1 is a room. 
Bob Hingama is a man in Present-day Room 1. The player is Bob Hingama. The description is "You look old."


Room 1 of the Distant Past is a room.
Young Bob is a man in Room 1 of the Distant Past. The description is "You look young."

shazaming is an action out of world. understand the command "shazam" as something new. understand "shazam" as shazaming.

zashaming is an action out of world. understand the command "zasham" as something new. understand "zasham" as zashaming.


carry out shazaming:
   say "SHAZAM!";
   now the player is Young Bob.
         
carry out zashaming:
   say "ZASHAM!";
   now the player is Bob Hingama.
         
test pow with "i/x me/shazam/i/x me/zasham/i/x me/shazam/i/x me/zasham"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3617&start=0#p25786
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Flashback scenes -- how to, the right way?
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-11-09 16:17:53

Man, that's nice. Thanks much. I've wanted to try for a way to make you play 2 different characters, but I'd been intimidated, and this is a great introduction. And, like you said, it takes care of a few other things, too.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3605&start=0#p25787
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: After pressing the release button
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-11-09 16:20:48

[quote="sqib"]I posted about that problem here:[url]http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3209[/url][/quote]You could try the suggestion I made in the last reply on that post...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3473&start=0#p25788
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Fourth Round of IFComp 2011 Updates
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-09 16:21:44

Another point is that (I'm pretty sure) any change whatsoever breaks save-file compatibility. So that might be a good reason to update version numbers even if you're only fixing a typo in the credits.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3617&start=0#p25789
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [solved] Flashback scenes -- how to, the right way?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-09 16:35:21

You might also want to check out the "Pine" series of examples in the documentation, which have lots of flashbacks. As I remember, it creates a special room to store your pre-flashback inventory, which is not so different from your approach.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3612&start=0#p25790
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Grammar lines in wrong order!
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-11-09 16:47:39

Could also do it this way. Not sure which is better, but this takes care of PRESENT and DISPLAY automatically.

[code]Procedural rule while showing: 
	ignore the carrying requirements rule;
	ignore the can't show what you haven't got rule.

Understand "point out [something] to [something]" as showing it to.
Understand "point [something] out to [something]" as showing it to.

Instead of showing something to someone:
   say "You indicate [the noun] to [the second noun].";
   rule succeeds.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3617&start=0#p25791
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [solved] Flashback scenes -- how to, the right way?
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-11-09 16:51:40

Thanks, again...somehow, I missed those examples. It's good to have more than one way to do things. I like the solution of a different room.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3605&start=0#p25792
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: After pressing the release button
User: sqib / DateTime: 2011-11-09 17:00:30

[quote="DavidK"][quote="sqib"]I posted about that problem here:[url]http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3209[/url][/quote]You could try the suggestion I made in the last reply on that post...[/quote]
Ok I am filling in the bug report and I am at step 4 the part where you ask to have the part of the source code that causes the error to happen.  The problem is the source text is completely gigantic, (417,560 words long). The problem seems to happen most when a part comes up where a figure is shown. there are alot of them.  I wouldn't know where to begin as far as copying and pasting source into the bug form. if you want I can save the source code into a few txt files and attach it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3615&start=0#p25793
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Find a paragraph?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-09 17:12:50

There are several ways to approach debugging, but in this error message "paragraph" does refer to your I7 source code. (However, it might or might not be wise about included extensions.)

I don't think the IDE has an option for this. Try copying Source/story.ni to a temporary file and loading it into a text editor. (I use TextWrangler.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3615&start=0#p25794
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Find a paragraph?
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-11-09 17:26:21

Assuming a paragraph is not a line, and/or you don't have a text editor that tells you which paragraph you're in, then one other option could be to make a rule that doesn't apply.

Put it in the middle of the file and compile. If the error is in paragraph 6141, then the error is in the second half of the file. If it is in paragraph 6140, then it is the first.

Repeat the binary search til you find it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3529&start=10#p25795
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ifvms.js ZVM Preview
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-11-09 17:38:02

[quote="Dannii"]The big advantage is that an AST is much more manipulatable than the JIT systems of Gnusto and Quixe are, which just write out code to run. Instructions can easily be reordered, and structures like loops can be identified and converted into real JS loops, rather than a series of branches and jumps. Previously if you had a loop the JITer would have to stop before and after it, so that you would have three code sections. ifvms.js can compile a loop in place, with the code before and after it, and a JS loop in the middle which will run itself, rather than the VM framework telling it to run multiple times.[/quote]

I don't have a CS background, and I don't know how to formulate these questions in a way that Google could answer, so I thought I'd ask you.

It seems like the naive approach to a VM would be to load the data and then just start running opcodes. Read the current one, call the appropriate (native code) function to handle it & update the global state, and repeat until finished. (I believe this is called a bytecode interpreter.)

I infer from your efforts (and the use of JIT systems in Gnusto and Quixe) that this is inadequate, presumably for performance reasons. It seems like the JIT capabilities in modern JavaScript VMs would optimize the native code functions, which implies that the bottleneck must be caused by the overhead of running every opcode through a large switch statement.

So Gnusto / Quixe improve the situation by being more clever: instead of calling one function per opcode, they look ahead to see what the next opcode will do, and they keep looking until they find an operation with unpredictable results - like a branch that depends on a value known only at runtime. Then they write out a new function which does the work of the collected opcodes as a text string, and hand that string off to the JS eval() function for execution.

The new function benefits from all the optimizations that the JIT compiler can bring to bear, and because it is somewhat longer, there is more for the compiler to work with. That might yield better results, but in general the savings comes from staying away from the switch statement.

Assuming I understand that correctly, it seems like IFVM improves the situation by moving up a level of abstraction - reordering and replacing instructions with a more efficient JS representation. You still write out code for eval to run, but it's better code - the kind that the JIT compiler knows how to optimize.

Is this analogous to what [url=https://github.com/kripken/emscripten]emscripten[/url] does with its "relooper" algorithm? Except with Z-Machine bytecode instead of LLVM bitcode?

It seems like the logical extension of this would be to dispense with any "runtime" interpretation and instead to decompile the bytecode into a set of equivalent JS functions, which could be executed independently from the original bytecode.

Is that a viable technique? Is that what you're doing here?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3613&start=0#p25796
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gargoyle 2011.1 released
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-11-09 17:56:31

Great!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=30#p25798
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2011-11-09 18:08:22

[quote="rockersuke"]Damn! I wish I had been a regular here when this thread was hot! Having had some experiences writting IF for 80's computers this is the stuff I'm interested in!

I bumped into Visionary when looking for info about another IF creating tool[url=http://hol.abime.net/1587]also called Visionary[/url], an early 90's system for the Commodore Amiga, that's a pic of the copy from my little collection of IF related things.


[center][url=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/194/dscn1399.jpg/][img]http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/3781/dscn1399.th.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/195/dscn1410.jpg/][img]http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/2461/dscn1410.th.jpg[/img][/url][/center]


I tried running therealeasterbunny's Visionary, but my Windows 7 is anything but cooperative. Can anyone confirm if it is safe to install visual basic 6 runtime in Win7 and if that would make this Visionary work?

On other subject, I think working for "old school" environments doesn´t mean you're unavoidably restricted to terse prosed puzzle based text games. My favourite examples are Colin Woodcock's [url=http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0017301&loadpics=3]Floarea Soarelu[/url]i and Lee Tonks' [url=http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0018544&loadpics=3]On Reflection[/url], both for ZX Spectrum computers, which I highly recommend to Speccy users (wether for real or through emulation)!

--[/quote]

Hi,

Sorry, just stopped by here after a long time away. Did you try the VB6 Runtime in W7? If not, email me and I will rig up a Win7 test machine and try it for you. (I am only on Win XP currently but can borrow my brothers PC). 

This might help also ... [url]http://news.softpedia.com/news/Visual-Basic-6-0-on-Windows-7-but-Not-on-Windows-8-105474.shtml[/url]

Its spooky about the Visionary naming thing on the Amiga as my retro gaming ended with the C64 after which I moved onto PCs. Unless I subconciously saw this somewhere it is spookily coincidental as I named it "Visionary" after Scott Adams being the 'Visionary' after playing  Adventure and bringing text adventures to the micro when everyone thought he was nuts and it could not be done to  machines with micro RAM.

Cheers!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3598&start=0#p25801
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: How long does it take IFDB to process games?
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-11-09 18:42:31

OK, there must have been a mix-up.  It's up now.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3613&start=0#p25802
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gargoyle 2011.1 released
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-11-09 18:59:16

Now with support for TADS 3 banner windows! Hurrah!

(Admittedly, I've been running a snapshot for a year or so, so my Gargoyle has had banner windows since you first implemented them, but it's great to finally see them in a public release.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3619&start=0#p25825
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: The House of Fear finally released
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-11-09 19:34:49

After some confusion at IFDB, I've finally got it uploaded, so you can play it if you like.  It's a historical fiction about Surrealist artists during WWII.

The page is [url="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=byksqp7x5kvtutoj"]here[/url]; it's got pictures, so Parchment doesn't work (I don't see any way to keep it from displaying the Parchment link; anyone know?).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3484&start=10#p25826
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Idea I have, possibly already implemented
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-11-09 19:54:47

See also [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eamon_(video_game)]Eamon[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3613&start=0#p25827
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gargoyle 2011.1 released
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-09 19:56:09

And working ALAN! Thank you!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3610&start=0#p25828
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unique NPC Names
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-11-09 19:59:57

It's under animals because it's about a dog, but because it's about naming, it's also cross-referenced from Adaptive Prose / 	2.3. Using the Player's Input. 

Did you find somewhere else it should sensibly be linked from?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3610&start=0#p25830
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unique NPC Names
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-11-09 20:54:40

Well, I don't have a dog.

But I did name my bicycle.

So.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3529&start=10#p25831
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ifvms.js ZVM Preview
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-09 20:57:24

[quote]So Gnusto / Quixe improve the situation by being more clever: instead of calling one function per opcode, they look ahead to see what the next opcode will do, and they keep looking until they find an operation with unpredictable results - like a branch that depends on a value known only at runtime. Then they write out a new function which does the work of the collected opcodes as a text string, and hand that string off to the JS eval() function for execution.[/quote]

That's correct. They go one step farther too: the string that gets eval'ed is a Javascript function definition, not just a sequence of operations. The compiled function gets cached, using the first opcode address as a key. So future execution of those opcodes doesn't have to get recompiled. 

The number of opcodes that get compiled into a single JS function is hairy. You're roughly correct that it goes until the next branch. However, you can be more or less clever about it. In Quixe, I continue along the non-branchy path of conditional jumps. I stop at unconditional jumps, function calls, function returns, and a few other cases too obscure to be interesting.

What Dannii is doing is adding another layer of abstraction, so that the JS code can be put together with more flexibility than "append opcodes until you decide to stop".

If the JS runtime was perfectly efficient, this wouldn't matter -- executing a lot of small simple JS functions would take the same amount of CPU as a few, larger, more structured JS functions. But of course these things *aren't* perfectly efficient, so it's worth taking this path.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3484&start=10#p25832
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Idea I have, possibly already implemented
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-11-09 21:21:09

Do people like this idea?  Because I could try whipping up an extension to handle it if there's some interest.  I think it would be fun.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3612&start=0#p25835
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Grammar lines in wrong order!
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-09 21:57:32

Far be it from me to make a judgment, but I think the fact that they're deprecated would indicate that using procedural rules is worse.

However, identifying those two rules might be enough to replace them within their rulebooks. I was a bit hazy on those early action-processing rules. When the "does not apply" rule syntax comes out, it will perform the same function as procedural rules, so your solution will work very well with a minor syntax change.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3615&start=0#p25836
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Find a paragraph?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-09 22:03:26

In this particular case, I was able to guess which phrase was causing the problem on the first try. But I think it's infuriating that the runtime could give you information about the source that the IDE can't even process.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3605&start=0#p25837
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: After pressing the release button
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-09 22:07:52

Don't copy and paste your whole project into the online form! The suggestion in the other thread was to email the source, not to shoehorn it into the Mantis interface. Mantis is good for bugs that have not been reported yet, which you can reproduce in a few lines.

Generally, if you can't figure out how to reproduce your bug in a short demo game, it's not likely that anyone else will be able to make sense of it. The case of memory overflow may be an exception, but I still wouldn't recommend pasting the full source into Mantis. Just describe the problem and mention that you're emailing some files, and mention the bug number in your email.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3610&start=0#p25838
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unique NPC Names
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-09 22:17:19

[quote="emshort"]It's under animals because it's about a dog, but because it's about naming, it's also cross-referenced from Adaptive Prose / 	2.3. Using the Player's Input. 

Did you find somewhere else it should sensibly be linked from?[/quote]
I'm not at my Mac right now, but I remember looking under "Using the Player's Input" and not seeing it. But sometimes I miss things. I'll check again tomorrow.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3617&start=0#p25840
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [solved] Flashback scenes -- how to, the right way?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-09 22:25:16

Switching the player is often the right thing to do. I sometimes wish I'd chosen to do my WIP that way, but I ended up doing it more like the Space Patrol example, which is like your Bob T. Hingama except it uses separate containers for carried and worn objects.

But for me, the critical problem with your first attempt is not the approach, but the naming of objects. I'd probably name the backup person "the costume dummy" or "the storage mannequin." In my WIP, things sometimes have to be removed from rooms as well as people, so I have a holder for those things called "the present place."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3617&start=0#p25841
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [solved] Flashback scenes -- how to, the right way?
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-11-09 22:41:53

[quote="capmikee"]But for me, the critical problem with your first attempt is not the approach, but the naming of objects. I'd probably name the backup person "the costume dummy" or "the storage mannequin." In my WIP, things sometimes have to be removed from rooms as well as people, so I have a holder for those things called "the present place."[/quote]

I agree. I would definitely change Bob's name during actual coding of something I'd release. The thing is, when I'm trying to write a chunk of code as an exercise--simple, dumb humor goes a long way in reducing frustrations. It doesn't have to be a gut-buster, or classic humor, or anything like that, and it probably shouldn't be. Too much would detract. But I really believe that the humor in some of the Inform IDE or even in some extension documentation eases the pain of cluelessness.

Other people's mileage may vary. But yes, for actually doing something meaningful, I like your place/person names for games.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3605&start=0#p25842
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: After pressing the release button
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-11-09 22:56:49

[quote="sqib"]The problem is the source text is completely gigantic, (417,560 words long).[/quote]Yes, that's big [emote]:-)[/emote]The best thing is probably to zip up the whole project and either put it up on the Internet somewhere, or email it to me (my email address is in BugReport.txt).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3605&start=0#p25843
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: After pressing the release button
User: sqib / DateTime: 2011-11-09 23:31:17

I'll get on that tomorrow most likely. I did try it on a older win xp computer and after pressing release after quite some time it ran out of memory as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3609&start=0#p25844
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [solved] Plurality problems: [it-them] prints wrong pron
User: Mr Wendal / DateTime: 2011-11-10 00:06:38

That worked, thanks a bunch Felix. I owe you one.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=10#p25850
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-11-10 02:15:05

One suggestion beyond the yes/no--you could, in <a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifcomp.org/">http://www.ifcomp.org/</a>, allow the user to set an option:

prefer originals (should be default) vs prefer updates

Then the online links could point to an original or updated version, whether for download or play, based on that.

I think also it could be worthwhile (or would have been) to track whether the judge played the original or not. This would require some effort on the part of the judges, or perhaps on the site maintainers to mention when a game was last updated along with the voting. But we might be able to see how much updates during the comp actually affect scores--if we have a large enough sample size.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=10#p25851
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-10 03:03:04

Well, I have no horse in the race apart from "I like to play the games eventually, and I prefer better games." With that in mind, it's an easy "yes." The arguments in favor of the updates leading to better games have been very solid (especially the "intra-comp updates are simply more likely to happen, if allowed, than post-comp updates" one).

I can respect that those interested in the [i]competition [/i]part of the competition might feel differently, but I think all of the nightmare scenarios folks have come up with to describe potential abuses fall into two main categories, the Self-Defeating (where any "cheat" seems more likely to hurt a game's chances than improve them) and the Absurdly Theoretical (ranging from "anyone who could cheat like that could make a better game to begin with" to "that puts a lot of faith in variables the entrant would have no control over").

The only exception I saw was Zarf's "release delay" trick, where an incomplete game could be released with a deliberate (later-fixed) "bug" making the unfinished parts unreachable, giving the entrant extra time past the entry deadline to finish the game. But I can also imagine a couple of ways this could be rendered a non-issue.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3621&start=0#p25854
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Body parts, alteration thereof
User: Plantar Humdrum / DateTime: 2011-11-10 03:21:47

I am creating a game in which the player is a revenant who must complete his task and save himself before his body rots away to nothing.

Questions:
Does Inform support the modification and addition or subtraction of body parts to the player character?
Does Inform support body parts that also function as other things-- like containers-- e.g. a  hollow exposed ulna with a note rolled up in it?
Is it possible to have a "conversable" character that is also a vehicle, e.g. a hollow golem that will follow you but can also be ridden inside and steered?

Thank you for any answers you may be able to provide.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3608&start=0#p25856
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Message wont dissplay
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-11-10 04:33:19

[if unvisited]  [emote]:lol:[/emote]  shows where my brain was at the time. I've used that already tons. Too many consecutive coding hours, or something, ahah.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3608&start=0#p25857
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Message wont dissplay
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-11-10 04:53:23

I don't know if it works in the case under exam, but I try and avoid using the "visited/unvisited" rule and use a lot of "first time"s which are quicker and less problematic.

[code]The description of the IntFiction Forum is "A massive display of power by programmers and geeks who find their life more amusing after a '>' prompt[first time].[paragraph break]Now that you think of it, you are one of those also[only]."[/code]

Edit: OUCH. This doesn't provide an "else" rule, tho.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3621&start=0#p25860
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Body parts, alteration thereof
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-10 05:39:15

It does none of those things by deafult. But look at ch. 3.23 "Parts of things" and especially ex. 34 "Brown" for detaching parts -- and also ch. 4.14 "Assemblies and body parts", if you want all objects of a kind to come equipped with the same collection of parts.

Inform 7 does not support multiple inheritance, so an object can't be both a person and a vehicle. But you can make a container part of a person:
[code]
Prague is a room.
South of Prague is Budweis.
The golem is a person in Prague.
The golem's interior is an enterable open opaque container. It is part of the golem.
Instead of entering the golem: try entering the golem's interior.
Persuasion rule for asking the golem to try doing something: persuasion succeeds.
Test me with "enter golem / golem, go south / exit".
[/code]
If you enter the golem in Prague and tell it to go south, you can exit in Budweis.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3621&start=0#p25861
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Body parts, alteration thereof
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-10 06:32:36

The extension "Rideable Animals" lets you create a rideable animal, which would be both a person and a vehicle that you ride on top of; I'd guess that you might be able to create a person you ride inside of in a similar way, though I think it'd involve some fiddling in I6. Felix's method is probably better.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=10#p25862
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-11-10 06:34:45

I don't have a strong gut reaction.

I think that the most conspicuous update in this year's comp makes it pretty clear that making major changes during the comp is unlikely to help you much. So I don't think there's a significant risk in that quarter.

On the other hand, I [i]do[/i] think that there's potential for mixed messages about the nature of IF Comp and what's expected of its entries. At least some games in the comp could reasonably be interpreted as open alpha versions rather than a best attempt at a finished product. I know that there's been a fair amount of talk in the community about how it'd be easier to create good games if the development process was more open earlier on, with more focus on rolling updates and a long public beta before reaching 1.0 (as is common elsewhere in indie games); but I'm not sure how I feel about the idea of using the comp that way. (And from a player's view, reviewing 38 games at version 1.0 is a very different kind of experience to testing 38 games in alpha.)

On the other hand, the comp has always been used in different ways by different authors, and I don't know how likely a shift in expectations of that scale would be; there'd still be incentive to produce polished versions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3606&start=0#p25863
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: World Climate & Greening!
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-11-10 06:47:43

Yeah, not a lot of people really care, that's part of the problem...then there's people like me that kinda know what to do, but don't do it...one thing I try never to do it litter though...although....I don't know if there's any big difference in not littering except for the visual appearance of a place.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3621&start=0#p25864
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Body parts, alteration thereof
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-10 09:23:26

[emote]:!:[/emote] Actually, you don't necessarily have to make a container part of the golem to enter it. You can simply make persons enterable:
[code]A person can be enterable.
The golem is an enterable person.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3606&start=0#p25866
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: World Climate & Greening!
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-11-10 10:25:02

Right yeah littering and purposely going out of your way not to recycle things isn't cool.

What I meant was it would be neat to have the $ for solar panels, the time for a vegetable garden, etc but right now I just don't. Maybe one day though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3610&start=0#p25867
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Unique NPC Names
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-10 10:40:53

I see. It says "See Animals for a dog which the player can re-name." I missed it because was scanning the list of examples, and Fido wasn't listed there I didn't go back to the text above, I just looked somewhere else.

So it's a usability issue, not an organizational issue. Sort of. Personally I'd probably change Fido so it wasn't an example about an animal, or place it directly in 2.3 and cross-reference it from 8.3.

I also looked for it under 9.12, "Cameras and Recording Devices," thinking that's where the featureless cubes from Spellbreaker/Balances might be found. I even searched the documentation for "burin" (not found) and "featureless cube" (found in "Depth," which is listed in Recipe Book 10.5, "Volume, Height, Weight" -- but it's not a cube you can write on)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3621&start=0#p25868
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Body parts, alteration thereof
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-11-10 10:49:04

All I can add is that your game sounds awesome, Plantar.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3581&start=0#p25869
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: IF paratroopers needed for Limbs of Osiris
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-11-10 11:31:36

These are just some of the things those of you who haven't joined my Alpha Team are missing:

1) a playing character with detachable bodyparts,
2) a playing character who can look inside his own head and witness the inner workings of his mind,
3) several hint systems, one of which is telepathic,
4) lots and lots of superweird sex,
just to name a few.

Look at it this way. Would anyone today know who the Nazgûl were had they not alpha tested for Sauron? This is your passport to eternal fame and glory. Don't be a sucker. Be a Nazgûl and join my A-Team.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3623&start=0#p25870
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Non-interactive command-line Glulx interpreter for Mac
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-10 12:07:18

I've pretty much given up on having the skein or other testing schemes work reliably within the IDE. I've already written a script for extracting commands from a Parchment transcript and turning them into a test command - but I'd also like to write a script to run that test and compare its output with a saved transcript. For that I would need an interpreter that can receive piped commands, and doesn't wait for keystrokes ever. Is there anything like that? For Mac?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=10#p25871
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-11-10 12:09:53

Life is full of deadlines, it even ends with one. If you people can't cope with the IF comp having a deadline, how do you cope with life?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3621&start=0#p25872
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Body parts, alteration thereof
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-10 12:21:46

Ah, pity! You can't enter yourself. (Or, rather, you're already in yourself!)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3529&start=10#p25873
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ifvms.js ZVM Preview
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-11-10 12:25:46

[quote="zarf"]The number of opcodes that get compiled into a single JS function is hairy. You're roughly correct that it goes until the next branch. However, you can be more or less clever about it. In Quixe, I continue along the non-branchy path of conditional jumps. I stop at unconditional jumps, function calls, function returns, and a few other cases too obscure to be interesting.[/quote]

Cool. That makes sense - since you know where the jump would go, you can write the actual value into the function and keep going.

I am easing my way into a T3 VM, and just got to the opcode handling stage. I had a rough sense of how it "should" look (based on Frotz / Glulxe / Git), so reading through the Quixe source was a bit mind-blowing. I appreciate your insight into what it's doing, and why.

I think the T3 VM structure should really lend itself to this approach, since there are no non-local branches. Hence the JS output function could correspond more or less exactly to its bytecode counterpart, and there are a limited number of functions defined in the bytecode.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3621&start=0#p25874
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Body parts, alteration thereof
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-11-10 12:44:59

[quote]Ah, pity! You can't enter yourself. (Or, rather, you're already in yourself!)
[/quote]
If you're in yourself, does that mean that you're full of yourself? [emote]:)[/emote] 


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3621&start=0#p25875
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Body parts, alteration thereof
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-10 13:31:01

[quote="Felix"]Inform 7 does not support multiple inheritance, so an object can't be both a person and a vehicle. [/quote]

Though, with a bit of misdirection, you can make multiple objects look and behave like a single object, fortunately, with the player never aware of the utter mess you've tangled behind the scenes for their amusement ...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3623&start=0#p25876
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Non-interactive command-line Glulx interpreter for Mac
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-11-10 14:32:45

Yes.  The [url=https://github.com/erkyrath/glulxe]Glulxe[/url] README will tell you how to build it with [url=http://eblong.com/zarf/glk/cheapglk-102.tar.gz]CheapGlk[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3624&start=0#p25878
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Speed-testing i7 story
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-11-10 14:59:10

I have a rather complex WIP with lots of NPC tracking.
Because of this, the story runs rather slowly, with lag times of up to three seconds between accepting a command and printing the results to the screen (this is on an Intel Core i5 w/ 8GB of ram).

I'm wondering if anyone can think of a way to reliably detect which parts of my code are the biggest time hogs.
Is there any conceivable way to use a real-world timer inside of i7? My idea was to print out the current time at the beginning and end of certain computationally heavy rules/actions so that I can debug out what's taking so long.

Has anyone tried this anything like this before? Is it even possible to speed-optimize a story?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=30#p25879
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: Tale / DateTime: 2011-11-10 15:12:36

I'd be much obliged if you did, Hannes. [emote]:-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3624&start=0#p25880
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Speed-testing i7 story
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-10 15:24:27

See discussion in this thread: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241</a>

It is possible to build a Glulx interpreter with profiling, if you're comfortable compiling C code. This is your best shot for getting a detailed view of what's slow. 

However, it's not too hard to figure out what's going on without that. You can comment out your NPC every-turn rules and see if that changes the behavior. If it does, look at what you're doing and think about whether it's expensive.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3529&start=10#p25881
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ifvms.js ZVM Preview
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-10 15:27:41

[quote]I think the T3 VM structure should really lend itself to this approach, since there are no non-local branches.[/quote]

When I defined the Glulx VM, I said "no non-local branches". But it turns out this restriction doesn't matter at all (and I've deleted it). Quixe doesn't care what locality is. Branching to an address exits the JS function, and the next JS function to be called is found (in the cache) by the new address.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3625&start=0#p25882
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Activities producing values?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-10 16:21:13

I was going on the assumption that it was possible for activities to produce values, and I was just too lazy to look up how to do it. But after a brief search today, I'm not so sure.

Is it possible to create an activity that produces a value?

What about named outcomes for activities?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=10#p25883
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: vivdunstan / DateTime: 2011-11-10 16:42:14

I voted no. I download the complete package of competition games as soon as they are released, and I play from those. I am not willing to keep checking for new versions. I also think the IF Comp schedule is well enough known in advance that game authors should be able to stick to it.

The only case I can see for new versions is if the comp organiser has made a dire mistake with the released files for a game. But that's it, and is usually fixed very quickly after 1st October.

And I am judging the versions of the games I downloaded.

I'm also very concerned about games changing names. I struggled to vote on one game because the voting page showed the new name for a game, not the 1st October name.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=10#p25884
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-10 18:39:37

[quote="vivdunstan"]I voted no. I download the complete package of competition games as soon as they are released, and I play from those. I am not willing to keep checking for new versions.[/quote]

Leaving aside your other concerns, nothing in the current rules prevents you from doing this (obviously, since you're doing it), and I don't think anyone is even discouraging you from doing it. In fact, even if you don't download the games in a lump, the original versions seem to remain available on the IF Archive (filed under "original"). If you play online, then I suppose you have to play the updated version, but I don't know how much the "play everything online" faction overlaps with the folks who want to play the original versions. (Mostly because I'm the only person who I'm sure plays everything he can online, and I like updates.) 

Mostly this is just a pretext for complaining that the poll choices are slightly misleading. The alternative to allowing updates isn't "let us play the original versions"; it's "make us play the original versions."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3621&start=0#p25885
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Body parts, alteration thereof
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-10 18:42:45

[quote="Felix"]:!: Actually, you don't necessarily have to make a container part of the golem to enter it. You can simply make persons enterable:
[code]A person can be enterable.
The golem is an enterable person.
[/code][/quote]

Calling Adam Thornton. Adam Thornton, do you copy?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3605&start=0#p25888
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: After pressing the release button
User: sqib / DateTime: 2011-11-10 19:59:42

mail sent

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3628&start=0#p25891
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Compilation efficiency
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-11-10 20:26:09

I was just wondering about rules and pieces of code that are in your source, or the standard rules, but don't end up being referenced by your game at all when you compile it. Does the compiler just jettison them? Or can you benefit from cleaning things up a bit yourself?

A couple of examples I was thinking of:

- Maybe you paste in some big table of glulx styles, and a lot aren't used. I'm guessing Inform has to include those anyway cos you put them in a table? I assume the result is a peanuts increase of some bytes or kb in file size, and no efficiency change.

- How about if you axe lots of standard commands with 'understand as something new's? Are all of their rulebooks still compiled? Or only if those rules are referenced by other commands or programming? This is probably what I'm more interested in for something I'm working on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3373&start=0#p25903
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk 0.7.3 is out
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-11-10 20:44:43

Are there any I6/I7 sound programming differences as a result of the new glk?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3512&start=0#p25914
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Level9 Authoring?
User: Gio / DateTime: 2011-11-10 21:05:51

[quote="DavidK"]There's no such system. Writing a simple assembler for Level 9 A-code wouldn't be beyond the bounds of possibility, but I can't imagine it getting much use.[/quote]

No, I suppose it wouldn't.. still would be interesting, though. Apparently Level 9 had a novel method of making NPCs.

I've found a disassembler for their games, but it's an early (and abandoned) beta project. This, your interpreter, and other snippets I've found, might be of interest to someone. Maybe I can bribe a programmer with cookies..

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3628&start=0#p25915
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compilation efficiency
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-10 21:06:16

[quote="severedhand"]I was just wondering about rules and pieces of code that are in your source, or the standard rules, but don't end up being referenced by your game at all when you compile it. Does the compiler just jettison them? Or can you benefit from cleaning things up a bit yourself?[/quote]

As far as I know, you gain nothing back by not referencing them (just as you gain nothing back from unlisting a rule, etc). I think the core machinery compiles as-is, no matter how much of it is used.

I wish it were otherwise, but I [i]think [/i]that's the case. I never use (for example) standard Inform doors ... not a single one, but I think the mechanics for them are contained in any game I compile, anyway. I have the vague impression that it's all pretty tightly bound, and not "modular" in a way that would allow chunks to be safely and neatly dropped out.

On the other hand, this is actually my ass typing. It's what I speak out of when it comes to technical matters.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3373&start=0#p25916
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk 0.7.3 is out
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-10 21:55:17

A description of the new I6 Glk calls: <a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/erkyrath/glk-dev/wiki/Glk-073-draft-spec-changes">https://github.com/erkyrath/glk-dev/wik ... ec-changes</a>

(Actually those are C calls, but the I6 calls will be close parallels.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3621&start=0#p25917
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Body parts, alteration thereof
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-10 22:38:43

Curse you for stealing all my ideas (some of them before I even thought of them)! [emote]:lol:[/emote]

Sounds like an awesome game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3628&start=0#p25918
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compilation efficiency
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-10 22:41:17

The translated I6 is not as hard to understand as you might think - most of the original I7 code is still there within the comments - so it's possible you could search auto.inf to see which rules are there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3512&start=0#p25919
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Level9 Authoring?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-11-11 01:57:52

[quote="Gio"]No, I suppose it wouldn't.. still would be interesting, though. Apparently Level 9 had a novel method of making NPCs.[/quote]

A compiler for Level 9 games would probably be on a lower level than whatever the NPC system was, so even if there were a compiler it wouldn't automatically provide the NPC system. It would have to be built for the compiler as a higher level library, but if you're doing that you might as well use some of the existing systems.  (This is purely an educated guess but extremely likely.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3512&start=0#p25921
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Level9 Authoring?
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-11-11 03:24:15

[quote="DavidK"]but I can't imagine it getting much use.[/quote]

Not here, probably, but perhaps it could catch the attention of a handful of regulars (me included) at retro-gaming comunities. The kind of people who uses [url=http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0006825&loadpics=3]PAWS[/url]to make text adventures for 8 bit computers as the ZX spectrum and the like.

Last example I know is this "[url=http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0026599&loadpics=3]Wicker Woman[/url]" game for the Speccy. Its author wrote the whole thing but had trouble making a tape image for use with Spectrum emulators, so when I helped him with that my nick was included in the credits (typing "credits" in the game)... mispelled (I love it when that happens!  [emote]:lol:[/emote] )

(and yes, I'm toying with Zilf for some nebulous future project I'm thinking of, but that will take time!)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3628&start=0#p25923
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compilation efficiency
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-11-11 06:48:08

[quote="Ghalev"]On the other hand, this is actually my ass typing. It's what I speak out of when it comes to technical matters.[/quote]
Even a stopped ass is right twice a day. Ghalev's is correct.  If you want to nix stuff for significant memory regain, you ought to use section replacement or, most likely, replace sections out of the various i6t files.  But neither are really intended for everyday folk. 

Which raises the question: what features do you find indispensable?  I created a version of I7 so stripped down it was basically I6, and then started adding bits back to it piecemeal.  Like, the "say" statement, which is always handy...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3512&start=0#p25925
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Level9 Authoring?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-11-11 07:01:10

[quote="Gio"]Apparently Level 9 had a novel method of making NPCs.[/quote]
eh? In what way?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3631&start=0#p25926
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: displaying object added to room as result of action
User: Gogyn / DateTime: 2011-11-11 07:08:06

I'm having trouble in displaying an object headed to her room drain the course of an action. When examining a specific item an object is moved into the room. The object is not being displayed after the room description. I know that the object has been moved to the room since it appears after the next player issued command.

How do I get the item to be displayed at the conclusion of the turn in which it has been moved into the room.

Thanks in advance for the help.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3631&start=0#p25927
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: displaying object added to room as result of action
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-11 07:38:57

I'm not entirely sure I understand the question. If examining the desk causes the key to be moved to the room, then by default the key won't be mentioned in the turn when you type "x desk," because you're not printing the room description at all that turn. If you want something to be printed when the key moves to the room, you should just have the rule that moves the key to the room print some text, like this:

[code]Office is a room. A desk is in office. A key is a thing.
After examining the desk:
	say "A key falls out from behind the desk!";
	move the key to the location.
Test me with "l/x desk/l".[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3631&start=0#p25928
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: displaying object added to room as result of action
User: Gogyn / DateTime: 2011-11-11 08:16:26

it had slipped my mind that the room description is not being displayed on that turn. Easy enough to display it in the examining message.

Thanks for the reply.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3628&start=0#p25929
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compilation efficiency
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-11-11 08:32:34

[quote="capmikee"]The translated I6 is not as hard to understand as you might think - most of the original I7 code is still there within the comments - so it's possible you could search auto.inf to see which rules are there.[/quote]
I've always wanted to know where exactly the intermediary I6 code is placed before compilation. Are you saying it's stored somewhere?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3631&start=0#p25930
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: displaying object added to room as result of action
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-11 09:01:24

If you want the whole room description to be printed on that turn, you could always use "try looking" after moving the object to the location -- but you probably don't want that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3582&start=0#p25931
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using alternate verbs in TADS3 command.
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-11-11 09:11:57

Tried your suggestions and everything works fine. Thanks a ton.

Ron

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3628&start=0#p25932
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compilation efficiency
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-11 10:21:33

It's in the project folder under Build/auto.inf. (On a Mac, you'll have to use the "Show Package Contents" finder option to open the project folder.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3631&start=0#p25933
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: displaying object added to room as result of action
User: Gogyn / DateTime: 2011-11-11 10:25:49

[quote]If you want the whole room description to be printed on that turn, you could always use "try looking" after moving the object to the location -- but you probably don't want that.[/quote]

it definitely is cleaner displaying the new object text as part of the examining rule instead of displaying the complete room description.

But I will make note of the '[i]try looking[/i]'. I can think of a few occasions where it may come in helpful.

Thanks for the reply.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3631&start=0#p25934
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: displaying object added to room as result of action
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-11-11 10:32:46

Just to be a lil bit obsessive:

If I'm not wrong, the "move the object to the location" is a now deprecated action, although it works fine (up to now).
You should use "now the item is in the location", which has the same effect.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=10#p25935
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-11-11 11:15:08

Doesn't it defeat the point of the IFComp being a [i]competition[/i] if authors are allowed to update their games during the comp? In the spirit of competition, we should all be on an equal basis, whereas authors whose games are reviewed early on have the opportunity to fix their games in time for people who came to the competition late to play them.

The argument that it allows for better games to be produced is a valid one, but isn't that the whole idea behind testing and beta-testing? There's nothing to stop people updating their games after the comp is over once all the reviews have been written and all the feedback received, the way it’s always been done in the past.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3628&start=0#p25936
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compilation efficiency
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-11 11:26:45

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]I created a version of I7 so stripped down it was basically I6, and then started adding bits back to it piecemeal.[/quote]

Want [emote]:([/emote] [emote]:([/emote] [emote]:([/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=10#p25937
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-11 11:27:47

[quote="David Whyld"]Doesn't it defeat the point of the IFComp being a [i]competition[/i] if authors are allowed to update their games during the comp?[/quote]

Dear God, let's hope so.

[notices the mic is on]

I mean: oh, good heavens! That would be terrible.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3631&start=0#p25939
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: displaying object added to room as result of action
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-11 11:54:07

"Move ... to ..." is not deprecated; even though the documentation points out that "now ..." is more flexible.

(It's "change ... to ..." that is deprecated in favour of "now ..." -- and the procedural rules phrases "move ... to before ..." and "move ... to after ..." are deprecated, too.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=20#p25940
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: vivdunstan / DateTime: 2011-11-11 11:58:47

[quote="matt w"]Mostly this is just a pretext for complaining that the poll choices are slightly misleading. The alternative to allowing updates isn't "let us play the original versions"; it's "make us play the original versions."[/quote]

I don't view those as the options as such. More the problem for me is that people are ending up judging very different games, if the games are updated. I'm thinking of one game in particular, which has changed name and changed significantly within it (including the player character). Yet other games are unchanged. is that fair, either to the judges as a whole, or the competitors?

Competition games have traditionally been revamped post-competition, and that system has worked well. I don't see the need for changing them in the middle of the competition, and I think it introduces a lot of questionable issues, which shouldn't be there.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=20#p25941
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-11-11 12:14:36

[quote="vivdunstan"]Competition games have traditionally been revamped post-competition, and that system has worked well.[/quote]
A small correction: It has been expected for the games to make post-comp updates, but that system has [i]not[/i] worked at all well -- most games never get a single update, even those that have serious game-breaking bugs, and this has been a major point of frustration. I assume this has been one of the reasons for allowing updates during the comp and I expect that it will produce more updated games than in the previous years.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3529&start=10#p25942
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ifvms.js ZVM Preview
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-11-11 12:39:17

Well, if jumps are guaranteed to be local, you can represent the bytecode function as a single JS function, rather than a set of functions.

E.g. this function:
[code]
foo() {
	local x = 1;
	while (x < 10)
		x++;
	print(x);
}
[/code]

becomes something like this:
[code]
var lcl;
var jump = 0x0A;
while (jump) {
	switch (jump) {
		case 0x0A:
			lcl = 1;
		case 0x0B:
			if (lcl >= 10) {
				jump = 0x0C;
				break;
			}
			lcl += 1;
			jump = 0x0B;
			break;
		case 0x0C:
			print(lcl);
		case 0xFF:
			jump = undefined;
			break;
	}
}
[/code]

Which is several kinds of ugly, but has fewer function calls. It strikes me as not obviously terrible from a performance perspective. Loops suffer from the need to test all the case labels between the start of the function and the start of the loop, but the cost is proportional to the number of branches.

If there's a 1:1 mapping between bytecode functions and JS output, I see an opportunity for optimized code replacement in key areas. You could hash the planned function and compare it to the hash of known adv3 functions, then swap in the hand-coded version if available.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=20#p25943
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-11 12:48:29

[quote="Juhana"][...] most games never get a single update, even those that have serious game-breaking bugs, and this has been a major point of frustration.[/quote]

It'd be interesting (if a little tragic ... plus a bit of a grind) to assemble a list of games where the author has expressed intent to do a post-comp update but just never got around to it [emote]:([/emote]

If such a list could be accurately compiled, I don't think it would be tiny.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3529&start=10#p25944
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ifvms.js ZVM Preview
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-11 13:19:00

Quixe started out with that switch structure, but early testing convinced me that it was slower than a set of small functions.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3628&start=0#p25945
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compilation efficiency
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-11 13:20:58

Oh yes, it's kept at yourproject.inform/Build/auto.inf

Of course there can sometimes be issues with the path, at least on the Mac. If I open auto.inf in MacVim and then recompile, MacVim is unable to find the new version of the file because the entire directory has been deleted and rewritten.

If there are compilation errors, you can sometimes view the i6 source within the IDE under the Errors tab. I can't remember if it's in the "Progress" or "Inform 6" sub-tabs.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3632&start=0#p25946
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Betatester looking for game to test
User: Hagbard Celine / DateTime: 2011-11-11 13:27:06

hey y'all

if anybody needs a somewhat experienced tester feel free to contact me  [emote]:)[/emote] 

yeah, usually it's the other way around but I'd like to have something to do

HC

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3628&start=0#p25947
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compilation efficiency
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-11-11 13:31:48

Ah, right. I never realized; apparently it's erased the moment you exit the application. Thanks for the heads-up.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3632&start=0#p25948
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Betatester looking for game to test
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-11 13:46:01

[quote="Hagbard Celine"]hey y'all

if anybody needs a somewhat experienced tester feel free to contact me  [emote]:)[/emote] 

yeah, usually it's the other way around but I'd like to have something to do

HC[/quote]



I've got this work in progress where the player has to immanentize an eschaton; sound like something you might want to try? [emote]:)[/emote]

(And wow, what a guess-the-verb THAT could be ...)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3529&start=10#p25949
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ifvms.js ZVM Preview
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-11-11 13:50:14

Here's a tip for JS optimizers: [url=http://jsperf.com]jsperf.com[/url] lets you compare algorithms by running each of them and timing how many times per second they're executed. Example: <a class="postlink" href="http://jsperf.com/loop">http://jsperf.com/loop</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3628&start=0#p25951
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compilation efficiency
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-11 14:11:31

In Preferences -> Advanced, there's a checkbox labeled "Clean build files from projects before closing." Uncheck it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3529&start=10#p25952
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ifvms.js ZVM Preview
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-11-11 14:28:36

[quote="zarf"]Quixe started out with that switch structure, but early testing convinced me that it was slower than a set of small functions.[/quote]

Very interesting. Thanks, that's good to know!

[quote="Juhana"]Here's a tip for JS optimizers: [url=http://jsperf.com]jsperf.com[/url] lets you compare algorithms by running each of them and timing how many times per second they're executed. Example: <a class="postlink" href="http://jsperf.com/loop">http://jsperf.com/loop</a>[/quote]

I saw that site the other day but assumed it was infected with malware because Chrome prompted me to load the JVM plugin, and there was no obvious reason for it to require Java.

The [url=http://jsperf.com/faq#java-applet]jsperf FAQ[/url] covers that objection, at least, though it's somewhat uncomfortable to discover a Java applet that isn't either terrible or malicious.

Still, that seems quite handy. Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=0#p25953
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: Kytaari / DateTime: 2011-11-11 14:32:33

I also would like to know if anyone here takes the medium very seriously or not. Here are some of my thoughts.

I believe in my potential to tell good stories, but I'm only interested in telling them in this format. People think this is just a phase that I'm going through, and that it will pass. I have a lot of ideas about how to evolve the medium, but so far I've only shared some of them with friends and family. People see this medium as something kiddy and not worthy of being taken seriously.

Do you suppose this assumption is correct? I've tried writing my stories down as novels, but it just doesn't feel the same. I can't explain what I like so much about this medium, but it's the only means that seems to be inspiring to me. I've tried standard game design, and I didn't relate to it at all. I related to writing prose much, much more, but I still felt a little different in the communities that I went to; that, and something about who I was writing to while I was writing static prose just felt a little odd to me. It was kind of like my audience felt a little out of place, like somebody writers in my medium generally don't write for. I know this is a very vague impression, but it still feels kind of accurate.

Maybe this post is more about a sense of community than I originally thought it would, but I think the question still stands. Do you think IF is justly or unjustly seen as something juvenile? I know not very many good stories have been told in any interactive form of art, but I still believe the possibility is open. I just find this attitude towards my interest as just some kind of phase very disheartening, and it makes me kind of doubt the authenticity of my own emotions. I didn't mean the post to get so psychological like this, but I really feel a need to be receptive towards what people in this community think about this issue. Is this medium fairly or unfairly treated so?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=0#p25954
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-11 14:44:57

[quote="Kytaari"]I also would like to know if anyone here takes the medium very seriously or not.[/quote]

I feel very, very comfortable calling that a silly question.

[quote]People see this medium as something kiddy and not worthy of being taken seriously.[/quote]

"People" see [i]every [/i]medium that way, depending on which "people" you mean. There are those who don't take film seriously, those who don't take graphic novels seriously, etc.

If you have work you need to make, you'll make it. If you need help with the technical side, there's a small army of skilled folks here who will assist with the craft. If you're feeling discouraged by the attitudes of Group X or Group Y, just stop bothering with Group X or Group Y.  If you're feeling discouraged by yourself, well, work on that.

[quote]Do you think IF is justly or unjustly seen as something juvenile?[/quote]

By whom? In what context?

[quote]I know not very many good stories have been told in any interactive form of art[/quote]

You "know" that, do you?

[quote]I just find this attitude towards my interest as just some kind of phase very disheartening, and it makes me kind of doubt the authenticity of my own emotions.[/quote]

It sounds like you have a lot of growing up to do.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=0#p25955
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-11-11 14:48:44

Someone will always see any kind of game as childish and not take it seriously. But if you like something, does the opinion of someone else really matter that much? I spend half my time killing big pixel dragons and demons in online games but I don't tend to worry whether people think it's childish or not.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=0#p25956
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-11 15:11:39

I think sometimes people forget that all media are forms of [i]entertainment[/i]. Even Great Literature was written for [i]entertainment[/i]. My wife likes to point this out, especially when people talk about reading books as if the mere act of reading was somehow virtuous. It really doesn't matter whether you prefer Charlotte Brontë or Danielle Steel - the point is to entertain yourself!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=0#p25957
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-11 15:17:31

[quote="capmikee"]I think sometimes people forget that all media are forms of [i]entertainment[/i]. Even Great Literature was written for [i]entertainment[/i]. My wife likes to point this out, especially when people talk about reading books as if the mere act of reading was somehow virtuous. It really doesn't matter whether you prefer Charlotte Brontë or Danielle Steel - the point is to entertain yourself![/quote]

Your wife is [i]awesome[/i]. But you knew that already [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=20#p25958
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-11 15:18:33

[quote="vivdunstan"][quote="matt w"]Mostly this is just a pretext for complaining that the poll choices are slightly misleading. The alternative to allowing updates isn't "let us play the original versions"; it's "make us play the original versions."[/quote]

I don't view those as the options as such.[/quote]

I'm just referring to the wording of the poll:

[quote="Campbell"]
Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
Yes, it's a step forward having intra-comp updates 	
No, let us play the games as originally released[/quote]

As I said, judges always have the option to play the games as originally released (except perhaps in the case of online play). If there were no updates, they would have to play the games that way.

[quote="vivdunstan"]More the problem for me is that people are ending up judging very different games, if the games are updated. I'm thinking of one game in particular, which has changed name and changed significantly within it (including the player character). Yet other games are unchanged. is that fair, either to the judges as a whole, or the competitors?[/quote]

I just don't see the unfairness here. Who's being treated unequally? The judges can always play the original versions; I suppose that a judge who would've preferred the revision might miss out if she played the game early, but then if there were no updates she'd have missed out anyway. There's David's point that authors whose games are reviewed later miss out, but if judges use the randomizer then that won't be a problem. In any case there are all sorts of unfairnesses that can arise from the order in which games are played; I suspect that judges tend to rate games more highly if they play them in their first burst of enthusiasm. 

As for post-comp revisions, what Juhana and Ghalev said. Even Sarah Morayati, who cared so much about post-Comp revisions that she organized a competition for them, never finished her post-Comp revision of Broken Legs.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3606&start=0#p25959
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: World Climate & Greening!
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-11 15:18:50

Sometimes not spending money is more environmental than being a "green consumer." It's better not to consume anything at all, right?

Littering can be an environmental issue in the case of some things, like plastic bags. But I'm not sure if paper or food litter is as much of a big deal. A terrifyingly large amount of plastic ends up in the ocean, and I assume it's from littering, though there may be some actual dumping of trash in the ocean. But the biggest threat to the Earth's waters is agricultural runoff - waste fertilizer from growing annual crops (i.e. grains) and from "manure lagoons" in animal feedlots. Actually, annual crops are the biggest threat to the soil, too.

As far as I know, potatoes are more environmental than grains, and still cheap. Butter's pretty cheap per calorie, and eggs are a cheaper form of high-quality protein than most things. Your money could probably go pretty far, even with the highest quality pastured/organic/local sources for those three. Splurge on liver once or twice a month and you've got pretty much complete nutrition right there.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3612&start=0#p25960
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Grammar lines in wrong order!
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-11 15:44:30

Trojo has inspired me to come up with a more general solution:

[code]Eating is flexible about touchability.

An action-processing rule (this is the flexible carrying requirements rule):
	If flexible about touchability, continue the action;
	abide by the carrying requirements rule.
	
The flexible carrying requirements rule is listed instead of the carrying requirements rule in the action-processing rules.

Wimbledon Stadium is a room. A giant blancmange is a fixed in place edible thing in Wimbledon Stadium.

Test me with "take blancmange/eat blancmange"[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=20#p25961
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2011-11-11 15:49:03

[quote="Juhana"][quote="vivdunstan"]Competition games have traditionally been revamped post-competition, and that system has worked well.[/quote]
A small correction: It has been expected for the games to make post-comp updates, but that system has [i]not[/i] worked at all well -- most games never get a single update, even those that have serious game-breaking bugs, and this has been a major point of frustration. I assume this has been one of the reasons for allowing updates during the comp and I expect that it will produce more updated games than in the previous years.[/quote]

In fact, that's been enough of a problem that in 2009 Sarah Morayati organized a post-comp comp to encourage authors to update their games. Five games out of twenty-four were updated.

This year, twenty-five games were updated.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=30#p25963
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2011-11-11 16:20:35

Added here: [url]http://www.adrift.co/cgi/adrift.cgi?page=adventure&advid=1318[/url]. There is one problem; [b]Campbell[/b], maybe you can help: Although I entered "Taleslinger" as author, his name is linked to me and the game appears on the list of games I've written. This is not the intention, maybe you can fix it? I didn't find a way.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=20#p25964
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2011-11-11 16:27:14

The problem with post-comp releases, in my view, is that nobody ever plays them. At least that's the way it seems. I entered an updated version of my own 2009 comp game into Sarah's Post-Comp Comp and I (as well as the fresh beta testers I recruited) invested a lot of time into that update. But for what? The game's track record still consists 100% of reviews and ratings of the original competition version. This is hardly encouraging for authors. So I like the intra-comp updates, because then, there is at least still a small incentive.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=20#p25965
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-11 16:43:29

[quote="Hannes"]The problem with post-comp releases, in my view, is that nobody ever plays them. At least that's the way it seems.[/quote]

I think that's a version of a pretty common perception. The comp is a high-energy time of attention for the games, and allowing updates while that energy is still hot can have results.

I don't think it's actually [i]true [/i]that nobody plays games post-comp ... obviously, some comp games have gone on to become enduring favorites (including not only "winning" games but games that received more moderate attention during the comp itself) ... but I think that perception (or a less-absolute variant of it) is pretty common among the entrants, that the spotlight is Here and Now, during the comp, and then it's gone.

I personally rarely touch a comp game until the comp is over, unless I'm a tester.

[quote]So I like the intra-comp updates, because then, there is at least still a small incentive.[/quote]

Yep.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=30#p25966
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-11-11 16:43:49

If Taleslinger is not signed up as a user, you should be able to assign it to "Anonymous".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3628&start=10#p25967
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compilation efficiency
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-11-11 17:08:00

Awesome. Thank you kindly.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3636&start=0#p25968
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Help using Emily Short's Power Sources extension
User: mxpf / DateTime: 2011-11-11 17:11:09

I'm using Emily Short's "Power Sources" extension, which builds upon Sean Turner's "Plugs and Sockets" extension, for a game I'm building. I'm trying to start the game with several items already plugged in to wall sockets. The documentation solves this problem by providing this snippet:

[code]When play begins:
     let spot be a random wall socket in the Salon;
     if spot is a wall socket:
         silently try plugging the lamp into spot.[/code]

The problem here is that the player needs to be in the room where this activity is happening for it to work. What about plugging in devices elsewhere, in rooms where the player is not present? Any ideas? Thanks in advance for your help.

[url]http://inform7.com/extensions/Emily%20Short/Power%20Sources/index.html[/url]

-Max

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3636&start=0#p25969
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help using Emily Short's Power Sources extension
User: mxpf / DateTime: 2011-11-11 17:53:05

Ah! Ok, after a little experimenting, I found this solution:

[code]A rule for reaching inside the Kitchenette:
	if the turn count is greater than 1:
		deny access;
	otherwise:
		allow access.
	
When play begins:
	let spot be a random wall socket in the Kitchenette;
	if spot is a wall socket:
		silently try plugging the coffeemaker into spot.[/code]

This seems to work just fine; let me know if you can think of a better way.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=20#p25970
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-11-11 17:53:44

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="Hannes"]The problem with post-comp releases, in my view, is that nobody ever plays them. At least that's the way it seems.[/quote]
I don't think it's actually [i]true [/i]that nobody plays games post-comp ... obviously, some comp games have gone on to become enduring favorites (including not only "winning" games but games that received more moderate attention during the comp itself) ... but I think that perception (or a less-absolute variant of it) is pretty common among the entrants, that the spotlight is Here and Now, during the comp, and then it's gone.

I personally rarely touch a comp game until the comp is over, unless I'm a tester.[/quote]
A further datapoint is ClubFloyd, which typically plays a good number of the higher-placed comp games in the weeks following the comp. ClubFloyd has a profile that's a fair bit larger than its player-base might suggest, and that extends some way outside the visible community; because it maintains public transcripts, and because transcripts are easier to access than the games themselves, it's likely to play a significant role in the perception of your work. So if you've placed in the top five or so, there's definitely good reason to get a post-comp release out within a few weeks of the final results.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=30#p25971
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-11-11 18:03:55

This year's Ectocomp games are all up on [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewcomp?id=b98q8oo6x14j0yx]IFDB[/url].  I have given them the description "Written for Ectocomp 2011" and the genre "Seasonal."  If you'd like to change your game's description, feel free.

Just a small note, the following authors don't have profiles on IFDB I could link their games to: Andrew Schultz, Mel S, and Justahack.  To those authors, you might want to consider making a profile and linking your games to it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=20#p25972
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-11-11 18:11:01

[quote="Hannes"]The problem with post-comp releases, in my view, is that nobody ever plays them. At least that's the way it seems. I entered an updated version of my own 2009 comp game into Sarah's Post-Comp Comp and I (as well as the fresh beta testers I recruited) invested a lot of time into that update. But for what? The game's track record still consists 100% of reviews and ratings of the original competition version. This is hardly encouraging for authors. So I like the intra-comp updates, because then, there is at least still a small incentive.[/quote]
Just seconding this.  Same experience.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3612&start=0#p25973
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Grammar lines in wrong order!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-11 18:14:44

That is a very sweet solution. Do you think it would be worth packaging into a tiny extension?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=20#p25974
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-11 18:19:51

One thing is that, if anyone clicks on the "play on-line" button on IFDb for "Believable Adventures of an Invisible Man," they'll get the new version.* So that's something.

But I agree, the post-comp comp didn't seem to raise the visibility for the updates as much as it should have. If the rolling comp updates do that, it'd be a good thing.

*This doesn't work for Snowquest, for some reason -- I recently played through it almost all the way before I realized I was playing the same version I'd already played.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=30#p25975
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-11-11 18:36:44

[quote="matt w"]*This doesn't work for Snowquest, for some reason -- I recently played through it almost all the way before I realized I was playing the same version I'd already played.[/quote]
I'm guessing that's because the post-comp version of Snowquest is in a .zip file.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=30#p25977
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-11 19:30:45

[quote="Emerald"][quote="matt w"]*This doesn't work for Snowquest, for some reason -- I recently played through it almost all the way before I realized I was playing the same version I'd already played.[/quote]
I'm guessing that's because the post-comp version of Snowquest is in a .zip file.[/quote]

But why? Why? I want my revised Snowquest online!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3637&start=0#p25978
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7 Headings
User: joelsanda / DateTime: 2011-11-11 19:38:45

Hi,

I'm trying to figure out Inform 7 headings. I've perused the Inform 7 built-in documentation as well as Ron Newcomb's [i]Inform 7 Programmer's Manual[/i] and I think I have them nailed down, but would like confirmation - and to ask one additional question.

It looks like Inform 7 likes the following hierarchical headings. I think I understand the good-practice behind using them, from reading Newcomb's book and Reed's [i]Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7[/i] - they make debugging a little easier and can help organize the project the way I ordered essays when I was doing a lot of writing.

[list]
[*]Volume[/*:m]
[*]Book[/*:m]
[*]Part[/*:m]
[*]Chapter[/*:m]
[*]Section[/*:m][/list:u]
Now my question on their use: do you use headings to organize the source text or to organize the story? If Inform 7 was object-oriented I'd expect headings like "Rooms", "Traps", "Puzzles", "NPCs", and so on. But it seems the headings features is really intended to help structure a story?

If it's not obvious I'm working on my first Inform 7 project and am struggling with organizing it - seems to me it should be written as a story and less like the javascript libraries I used to tinker with when my business card had the job title "Webmaster". 

Thanks for any input!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3529&start=10#p25979
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ifvms.js ZVM Preview
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-11-11 19:52:26

Zarf's covered a lot of the theory so I won't repeat it. But I will add a few things.

Modern JIT VMs (including JS ones) generally don't JIT compile everything. They have a layered approach, starting with a bytecode interpreter. As our web interpreters are VMs inside VMs we skip that stage because it will probably never have the potential to be worth it (though that is unproven, and if anyone wanted to try adding that layer I wouldn't be opposed.) Our VMs JIT everything, but browser VMs JIT only the code they have determined is run most frequently. They do that by tracing when code is run. Code within a function is easily traced, but they can also trace function calls. But our VMs have one set of code, the VM itself, and another set, the JIT code. The JIT functions are all stored as members of an array, and the VM has a function which says "run the function stored in JITCODE[PROGRAMCOUNTER]". The browser VMs can trace our VM code, and they can trace the JIT code, but I don't think that they can trace the link between them, because the function call depends on a variable which could, from the browser's perspective, be anything at all. To let the browser's JIT do it's magic we must aim to reduce the number of changes from our VM to JIT code, and we do that by making our JIT code stop as rarely as we can.

The problem is that branches and jumps are gotos. Now if JS had a goto statement that would make it very easy to produce long stable JIT code, but it doesn't. Because gotos can go to basically anywhere, whenever we get a branch or a jump the JIT must reluctantly stop. Inform doesn't have a goto command either (ignoring the fact that you could use assembly to compile a branch/jump), but it does have if statements and loops. But those structures must be assembled by Inform into branches and jumps. What ifvms.js does is recognise those patterns, Idioms in CS terminology, and convert them back into JS ifs and loops. Because we use normally use only those Inform structures, and we don't manually assemble our own jumps, then the bytecode those structures will be assembled into is very regularly, and easy to detect. With those idioms we can then eliminate the branches/jumps and can continue JIT compiling. ifvms.js is essentially a decompiler, turning low level branches into higher level control structures. At the moment it only recognises idioms for if blocks and while loops, but do/while loops will be easy to add.

Branches and jumps can be taken care of with idioms, which leaves the other main source of JIT stoppages: function calls. To handle them we need function acceleration, and as well as implementing Glulx's acceleration system, I also plan to experiment with pattern matching, as vaporware's .NET VM does. (ZLR I think?). Ben's idea of hashing functions is the same idea. As there will be only a few veneer functions that are accelerated I think it is possible that the browser VMs will be able to trace down into the accelerated veneer and back again. It's possible that checking whether two AST are the same will work efficiently, but I'm not sure. The only thing we must always stop for is input, and in those cases both the JIT and the VM stop, handing control back to the UI. (Though potentially with a threaded UI system the VM could do background compilation.)

Ben, your example is far more complicated than it needs to be, because loops are really very simple. The condition of the loop is made into a branch, whose target is the instruction after the loop. Then immediately before that a jump instruction is added, whose target is that branch instruction. Without that jump instruction it is identical to an if block. To recognise the loop all we need to do is test whether the last statement in the block is a jump that goes to the condition. The bytecode of do/while loops is simpler because there is no jump, but a little harder to identify because nothing in the bytecode marks where the do statement started - only the target of the final branch.

jsperf.com is indeed a brilliant website and I use it myself. I don't think it will work well for testing a whole IF VM though. My plan is to write a test suite using the Glulx timer opcodes, and with the same statistical maths as jsperf.com

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3612&start=0#p25980
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Grammar lines in wrong order!
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-11 21:32:51

I've been thinking about that all afternoon. Questions:

Should I split up carried noun and carried second noun requirements into separate rules, so they can be overridden separately?

Should I create similar KoAs that cause accessibility rules to be overridden as well? It looks like accessibility requirements are handled slightly differently.

At one point I went off on a wild tangent, thinking about rewriting the entire Actions.i6t in I7... "if Ron can rewrite the whole parser, I can do it with one little template!" But then I looked over the file and saw how much low-level stuff I'd have to reimplement for no particular gain. If I were going to rewrite anything, I think it would be the builtin actions in the Standard Rules.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3529&start=10#p25983
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ifvms.js ZVM Preview
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-11 22:19:36

[quote]Inform doesn't have a goto command either[/quote]

Correction: Inform 6 does. The parser uses it heavily. It's not exactly pretty, but then it's old code.

The early testing I mentioned didn't use jsperf, but did the same thing: ran a test case a thousand times, using Javascript's timestamp calls to measure the duration. It's generally easier to throw that sort of thing together than to integrate it with somebody's test suite.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3637&start=0#p25985
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Headings
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-11 22:22:15

[quote]do you use headings to organize the source text or to organize the story?[/quote]

I use the story to organize the source text, and then I use the headings to label them.

But that's just me. You can use them however you want.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3637&start=0#p25986
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Headings
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-11 22:23:43

...In case it's not clear, you can name any section anything you want. E.g.

Chapter - Traps
Section - The Nasty Spiked Pit In Yon Basement

...if that was what you wanted.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=0#p25987
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: Kytaari / DateTime: 2011-11-11 22:24:42

I think I received some good responses on this thread, but I need sometime to shake off my negative sentiments about some of the responses. I don't know why I was so bothered by this earlier, but maybe it was because comments just piled up.

I understand that people here take the medium seriously, and I shouldn't have assumed they didn't. Perhaps just being by myself for so long just made me wonder pessimistically. I also understand that there are people here willing to assist me with my projects if I need any help, so I have no reason to despair about not being able to meet my vision. I'll try to be more open about my problems with game design on this forum, because I'm currently facing a lot of problems with my two projects, and have only tried tackling them by myself.

But I think the main reason I've been feeling so disheartened lately are due to matters of uncertainty, and perhaps I rubbed my doubts across the wrong way with this post. I think this was some very sound advice, but there still remain some matters about my writing that I haven't resolved. I have yet to explore very many of IF's capabilities, and a very nagging part of my mind left me wondering if trying to tell my stories in this medium was just a waste of time. Some people in my family think it is, though not to any drastic extent.

I'm sorry I've been very vague with some of my descriptions, it's just that I don't feel comfortable pointing anybody I'm close to out. I tried to be less vague with my concerns in this response. Maybe I should try practicing ignoring these doubts some more, and being more open with my technical problems and ideas with this community. Maybe that way I'll feel less intimidated by my projects. I don't completely know what I should do and shouldn't do, due to my lack of experience. I only have some instinctual impressions.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=40#p25988
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-11 22:26:54

Recently tried Hunky again... Not sure what changed. I don't know if it's a new version, since I haven't been keeping up with it. I'm not getting the repeating characters issue anymore. There's still no scroll. But it doesn't accept any input. Doesn't matter what I try to do, it just tells me that it's not a verb that it recognizes.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=0#p25989
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-11 22:38:43

I think Ghalev hit the nail on the head... over and over and over.

It boils down to why you're doing what you're doing. If you're looking to make a million dollars, IF probably isn't the medium for it. (Not that it couldn't happen.) If you're looking to win the adoration and respect of the world, this might be the right medium for it. (Not likely.) If you're looking to create something in a medium that makes you happy because you feel you have a story that needs to be told, and IF fits that requirement, you're on the right track.

I guess it boils down to why you're doing what you're doing and who you're doing it for. My insanely massive and overly ambitious WIP is something that I'm working on because I enjoy the medium. I don't care if Andrew Reed hates it. (Okay, maybe a little.) I don't care if my mom loves it. (She can't read anyway. (Just kidding.)) I don't care if all my friends are out playing the new "Elder Scrolls of Duty: Modern FIFA". 

I'm writing it because I enjoy writing it, even if it may very well never see the light of day. (And it probably won't, because I'm in WAY over my head. [emote];)[/emote] )

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3540&start=0#p25990
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Tutorials
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-11 22:42:04

I think the best tutorial is the one you don't even know you're playing...

Which makes standardization difficult.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3637&start=0#p25991
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Headings
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-11 22:43:05

I fuss around with organization from time to time. I tend to refactor whenever anything starts to bug me. 

There are different ways to organize, of course, but this is what I've done with my WIP:

The first half of my source is sort of "mini-extensions" - new actions, modifications to grammar, common properties and relations, general stuff that's not quite general or complex enough to go in a full extension, but not specific enough that it needs to refer to any specific objects in my game.

The second half isn't quite as well organized. My original plan was to divide it into "Places," "People," and "Events," but of course the story isn't as neat as that. If I had it to do again, I might divide it into beginning, middle, and endgame, or into areas of the map that have more tightly coupled puzzles.

Whenever I refactor anything, I try to move stuff so that I can comment out parts of the source working backwards from the end without breaking any dependencies. That way it's easier to trim the source down when looking for bugs.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=70#p25992
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-11 22:49:57

[quote="capmikee"]I was just going through the source of my WIP, and noticed this line:

[code]Understand the commands "damn" and "dang" and "motherfucker" and "mother-fucker" and "mother" as "bother".[/code]

There's something sweetly poetic about it...[/quote]

I'd +1 this if there was an option for it...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3637&start=0#p25993
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Headings
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-11-11 22:52:30

[quote="joelsanda"] - they make debugging a little easier and can help organize the project the way I ordered essays when I was doing a lot of writing.
<snip>
If it's not obvious I'm working on my first Inform 7 project and am struggling with organizing it - seems to me it should be written as a story and less like the javascript libraries I used to tinker with when my business card had the job title "Webmaster". [/quote]
In addition to making debugging easier, the headings also allow you to use shortened versions of object names unambiguously. If you have, let's say, a bunk bed declared in Chapter 1 and a double bed in Chapter 2, then the compiler will (if memory serves) understand that you mean the bunk bed if you just call it "bed" provided you're writing in Chapter 1, whereas in Chapter 2 an unadorned reference to "bed" will refer unambiguously to the double bed.

With respect to "it should be written as a story," I think that depends on how you view stories as being written. It also depends on how you envision your story as being unfolded or encountered by the player during the course of the game.

I don't think there's any right or wrong way to use headings. You can easily make every room a separate Chapter in Volume 1, put all of the scene-related code in Volume 2, put the hints in Volume 3, and so on. Inform is pretty open-ended (though not entirely open-ended) in letting you structure the code however you prefer.

What's helpful, I think, is a certain measure of internal consistency. If the butler is an NPC, I would personally suggest putting all of the code that directly controls the butler object in one section, rather than leaving some of it in the room where the butler is first encountered, some of it in a separate chapter on NPC conversations, some of it in a chapter containing newly defined actions, and so on. Inform will let you organize it that way, but it's messy and error-prone.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=0#p25994
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-11 22:52:42

[quote="I4L"]I think Ghalev hit the nail on the head... over and over and over.[/quote]
He does that. [emote]:lol:[/emote]

[quote]I guess it boils down to why you're doing what you're doing and who you're doing it for. My insanely massive and overly ambitious WIP is something that I'm working on because I enjoy the medium. I don't care if Andrew Reed hates it. (Okay, maybe a little.) I don't care if my mom loves it. (She can't read anyway. (Just kidding.)) I don't care if all my friends are out playing the new "Elder Scrolls of Duty: Modern FIFA". 

I'm writing it because I enjoy writing it, even if it may very well never see the light of day. (And it probably won't, because I'm in WAY over my head. [emote];)[/emote] )[/quote]
Before I started my WIP I had a different idea. I was worried that it was too vague and ambitious and might just end up as a big rant anyway. I had some stuff going on in my head that I wanted to make other people suffer.... er, [i]share and enjoy[/i], and while I was working out how to put it all in this big conspiracy-theory plot involving sentient fungus from space, it would be a lot more feasible just to write a snappy little piece of vitriol about zombies. I sure hope that somebody likes it, but mainly I just want to take all this baggage and unload it somewhere [i]outside my head[/i].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3637&start=0#p25995
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Headings
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-11 22:53:54

Though it may make your head a'splode, I'd really recommend looking at the source for Blue Lacuna. Due to the scope of the game, organization is really... um... important. Though I haven't the slightest idea what Mr. Reed is doing for most of this, it's a pretty fine example of how using Inform's limited organizational capabilities can be used to their seemingly ideal potential.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3638&start=0#p25996
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7: An Added Layer of Complexity
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-11 23:04:43

I know that the intent of Inform 7 is to add a layer of diplomacy between human language and the mysteries of Inform 6 (for the uninitiated). However, much like recent incarnations of PHP, I'm finding debugging difficult due to the vague and seemingly disjointed explanations of coding errors produced by the software. A misplaced semicolon makes it appear as though a code block "two pages" down in the text has performed some kind of syntactical suicide bombing on the rest of the program.

So while I'm beating, banging and ironing out some self-inflicted bugs, I'm asking myself if it would be easier to have some kind of GUI that translates my intentions to the language of I7 which, of course, would translate to the language of I6.

There are obvious obstacles to this kind of setup. I almost started coding an AJAX/PHP thing on a whim earlier in the week, but got distracted by some kind of collapsed lung thing or whatever. 

There are development systems out there that work this way. I was just wondering if anyone had considered something like this for I7? Some kind of IDE instead of just pounding out text?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=0#p25997
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-11 23:18:15

[quote="capmikee"][quote="I4L"]I think Ghalev hit the nail on the head... over and over and over.[/quote]
He does that. [emote]:lol:[/emote]

[quote]I guess it boils down to why you're doing what you're doing and who you're doing it for. My insanely massive and overly ambitious WIP is something that I'm working on because I enjoy the medium. I don't care if Andrew Reed hates it. (Okay, maybe a little.) I don't care if my mom loves it. (She can't read anyway. (Just kidding.)) I don't care if all my friends are out playing the new "Elder Scrolls of Duty: Modern FIFA". 

I'm writing it because I enjoy writing it, even if it may very well never see the light of day. (And it probably won't, because I'm in WAY over my head. [emote];)[/emote] )[/quote]
Before I started my WIP I had a different idea. I was worried that it was too vague and ambitious and might just end up as a big rant anyway. I had some stuff going on in my head that I wanted to make other people suffer.... er, [i]share and enjoy[/i], and while I was working out how to put it all in this big conspiracy-theory plot involving sentient fungus from space, it would be a lot more feasible just to write a snappy little piece of vitriol about zombies. I sure hope that somebody likes it, but mainly I just want to take all this baggage and unload it somewhere [i]outside my head[/i].[/quote]

Exactly. It's about personal preference.

Take someone like James Patterson. He doesn't care what gets written, as long as somone pays $19.95 for it, his name is on the cover and no one asks too many questions.

Then take something like "Why Did I Ever" by Mary Robison. Phenomenal and hilarious book. But written for completely different reasons.

Patterson is a complete fraud with no real story to tell himself, but he makes money doing what he does (and paying other people to write his stuff for him [reference needed]). Robison tells a "story" because she has to get it on paper for her.

Like I said, it all boils down to why you're in it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=0#p25998
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: Kytaari / DateTime: 2011-11-11 23:45:59

Thanks for the advice, I4L. I think I can understand where Ghalev was coming from more clearly. I'll stick to writing IF, because that's what I truly enjoy. My stories matter most to me when they're written in this format, but it's just felt frustrating to me knowing some people that I'm close to don't seem to take this seriously.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=10#p25999
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-12 00:10:47

[quote="Kytaari"][...] it's just felt frustrating to me knowing some people that I'm close to don't seem to take this seriously.[/quote]

Well, the folks around you not quite "getting it" is at least a time-honored artistic theme, so if nothing else you can buy the sackcloth right off the rack.

You'll find lots of allies around here, though. Even subtle fellows like myself, defined mainly by our subtlety. And grace. 

Because while any given one of us may not understand your specific passion, we certainly understand the general one and feel it should be encouraged [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3632&start=0#p26000
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Betatester looking for game to test
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-11-12 00:44:59

I just got The House of Fear uploaded to IFDB, but nobody's rated or reviewed it yet.  You could have a look if you liked.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=10#p26001
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-11-12 00:49:00

For what it's worth, IF gets more respect out there in the world than you may realize. It's on college curricula in new media, English, and computing departments; it's a source of interest and inspiration to many game designers working on AAA videogame products; and it's played by many, many more people than ever feel inclined to post on the IF community forums. For several of us, hobbyist work in IF has laid the ground for paid work in interactive narrative and gaming in one form or another. (Zarf, me, Jon Ingold; probably others.) 

Not everyone gets that. Last Thanksgiving I was seated next to an older friend of my parents who went on a diatribe about her withering contempt for all computer/video games and more broadly for any form of personal connection made on the internet. And I kept my mouth shut about the fact that those things have made my life [i]awesome[/i] -- they've brought me work full of creativity and variety; dear friends in several corners of the world; sweet travel opportunities; and love. She didn't know what she was talking about, but she'd also lost her husband to a heartbreaking medical surprise two weeks previously and I wasn't going to make a scene with her. So I went away and washed some dishes and was thankful by myself in the kitchen. 

Sometimes people in your life don't understand something or don't respect it. That's not a measure of the worth of that thing. You decide for yourself what you value and what works for you. But if it helps to know that there are people who do think that IF is intrinsically worthwhile, there are. And not all of them are the people you see here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2472&start=0#p26002
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Portable
User: Nyx / DateTime: 2011-11-12 01:57:29

I realeased a new version of the Windows Inform 7 Portable Application.

Changes:
- Used the right category for placing the link in the right place in the PortableApp menu.
- Changed the name of the installerfile to avoid irritation.
- Changed the installation directory mainly to make future updates convenient.
- Used the new tools of PortableApps ([url]http://portableapps.com/[/url]) to create it.

Download:
[i]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/29620803/InformPortable_6G60_English.paf.exe[/i]

SHA-1 Checksum:
[i]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/29620803/InformPortable_6G60_English.paf.sha1[/i]

Readme:
[i]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/29620803/InformPotable_6G60_Portable_Readme.txt[/i]

Any testers or suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your support!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=30#p26003
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2011-11-12 03:40:43

Campbell: Thanks, this worked.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=40#p26004
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-11-12 03:48:07

The ADRIFT IFIDs on IFDB are wrong.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3637&start=0#p26005
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Headings
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-11-12 04:25:24

I think the best way to find how you like to use them is by experience and trial and error.

Code away at your game. Eventually there'll be a moment where you say to yourself, 'Hm, it's annoying that A isn't next to B.' Then you might cut and paste so that A is now next to B, and put a heading above them describing the connection you just made. It might be a well different one to one I would make. But you've now grouped things in a way that is useful to you in this particular project.

In fact, the unique ways people group stuff makes following anyone else's lengthy I7 code difficult, I find, but it makes it easy for me to follow my own code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=40#p26006
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2011-11-12 06:12:14

I also entered Dash Slapney to the Adrift site, but I forgot to add the customary Z-Code note. Since I attributed the game to Anonymous again, I can't edit it anymore.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=30#p26007
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2011-11-12 06:31:29

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="Hannes"]The problem with post-comp releases, in my view, is that nobody ever plays them. At least that's the way it seems.[/quote]
I don't think it's actually [i]true [/i]that nobody plays games post-comp ... obviously, some comp games have gone on to become enduring favorites (including not only "winning" games but games that received more moderate attention during the comp itself) ... but I think that perception (or a less-absolute variant of it) is pretty common among the entrants, that the spotlight is Here and Now, during the comp, and then it's gone.

I personally rarely touch a comp game until the comp is over, unless I'm a tester.[/quote]
I certainly cannot judge for how many people this is true, but the issue of perception still remains. Players of the competition are likely to make themselves be heard, either in the form of reviews, short comments or at least ratings in places like IFDB. Players of later versions don't. So anyone looking for opinions on a game will find a pack of stuff about competition release and nothing else. You might say "fair enough" and sure, it is - a release is a release. However, a newer version is also a release and larger changes in subsequent versions will remain invisible to the general public.

Another fact feeding my impression is that the people writing reviews of competition games also stop dead on November 15th sharp. Hardly anyone manages to get through all games by that and it's not like the game aren't there anymore, but when the judging period is over, they don't bother anymore. I don't understand why, but that's the way it is.

[quote="maga"]A further datapoint is ClubFloyd, which typically plays a good number of the higher-placed comp games in the weeks following the comp. ClubFloyd has a profile that's a fair bit larger than its player-base might suggest, and that extends some way outside the visible community; because it maintains public transcripts, and because transcripts are easier to access than the games themselves, it's likely to play a significant role in the perception of your work. So if you've placed in the top five or so, there's definitely good reason to get a post-comp release out within a few weeks of the final results.[/quote]
It's just that the top five games of the competition are usually [i]not[/i] the ones in dire need of post-comp updates. Snowquest is one of the few such games which got an update which actually changed things (as opposed to making small technical fixes only). And even so, it obviously wouldn't have [i]needed[/i] it, judging from its high placement in the comp. That game was an exception, not the rule.

So I reiterate my proposal already made on the newsgroup: It would be great if the competition website would be retroactively updated to additionally link to updated versions of its entries so that people browsing the competition archives, but don't want to research each and every game in detail using other sources can choose which version to play. Likewise, this would be great for Baf's Guide which, IFDB or not, I'm pretty sure is still the #1 place to browse for IF for non-insiders.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3637&start=0#p26008
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Headings
User: joelsanda / DateTime: 2011-11-12 08:42:58

[quote="Jim Aikin"]
What's helpful, I think, is a certain measure of internal consistency. If the butler is an NPC, I would personally suggest putting all of the code that directly controls the butler object in one section, rather than leaving some of it in the room where the butler is first encountered, some of it in a separate chapter on NPC conversations, some of it in a chapter containing newly defined actions, and so on. Inform will let you organize it that way, but it's messy and error-prone.
[/quote]

That's right - you mention this in [i]The Inform 7 Handbook[/i].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3637&start=0#p26009
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Headings
User: joelsanda / DateTime: 2011-11-12 08:44:38

Thanks, everyone, for the responses. Fertile battleground for right and left brain modes of organization on a canvass [emote]:-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3632&start=0#p26010
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Betatester looking for game to test
User: Hagbard Celine / DateTime: 2011-11-12 09:24:23

[quote="katz"]I just got The House of Fear uploaded to IFDB, but nobody's rated or reviewed it yet.  You could have a look if you liked.[/quote]

I'll give it a try later  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3632&start=0#p26011
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Betatester looking for game to test
User: Hagbard Celine / DateTime: 2011-11-12 09:24:48

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="Hagbard Celine"]hey y'all

if anybody needs a somewhat experienced tester feel free to contact me  [emote]:)[/emote] 

yeah, usually it's the other way around but I'd like to have something to do

HC[/quote]



I've got this work in progress where the player has to immanentize an eschaton; sound like something you might want to try? [emote]:)[/emote]

(And wow, what a guess-the-verb THAT could be ...)[/quote]
lol

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=30#p26012
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-11-12 09:39:57

Every year, I want to finish playing the games that I had to abandon because I reached the time limit; I even in some cases want to finish the games that I gave up on because I was stuck and the walkthrough didn't work or wasn't provided, or there was a game-stopping bug.

However, I have rarely ever made good my resolution to finish those games.  Usually, after the competition finishes, my first priority is to play the games that I missed before the end of the judging period, especially if they placed highly or they sounded interesting to me.  There's a good chance that I might actually play one or two Comp games that I had not begun playing at all during the judging period -- [i]Floatpoint[/i] and [i]Rogue of the Multiverse[/i] both fell into this category for me.  But by the time I'm done playing those, I'm just too burned out to want to go back to the games that I [i]started[/i] playing and [i]did[/i] submit a vote for.  Often I'd been playing a longer game (or had been planning to play other non-Comp games for a long time) before the judging period, and I want to go back to those game(s).  Even more than that, each year I usually want to go back to my own current work-in-progress, feeling bad that I had neglected it so much during the voting period, ashamed that I once again will fail to meet my personal deadlines and show it to the people whom I had told that I would show it to.  And I want to go back to my other occasional recreational interests -- such as lightly playing browser-based MMORPGs and reading high fantasy novels (gotta read Sanderson's new series some time!).  I remember restoring a saved sessions on a couple Comp games that I hadn't finished, but I simply had no motivation to try to finish those games, even though I badly wanted to. [emote]:-([/emote]

Burnout is a two-edged sword.  Comp authors run out of motivation to release new versions after the judging period, and judges run out of motivation to play the same games again.  This is the only aspect of the debate about the new update policy that actually makes me feel a little better about the updates.  With updates, at least some of the later games I encounter may be more playable, which means I may be more likely to finish them and not have to wish that I had time to go back and play them again after the competition.

[quote="Hannes"]Players of the competition are likely to make themselves be heard, either in the form of reviews, short comments or at least ratings in places like IFDB. Players of later versions don't. So anyone looking for opinions on a game will find a pack of stuff about competition release and nothing else.[/quote]
There are SPAG reviews.  If I felt so motivated by a Comp game (whether it deeply intrigued me, or just totally loved it) that I wanted to review it, I would definately make sure that I not only finished the game but saw as complete a picture of it as possible, and that would certainly include re-examining the game if a post-Comp version were released.  Although I rarely write reviews, when I do, I don't take reviewing lightly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3628&start=10#p26013
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compilation efficiency
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-11-12 11:19:38

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="Ron Newcomb"]I created a version of I7 so stripped down it was basically I6, and then started adding bits back to it piecemeal.[/quote]

Want [emote]:([/emote] [emote]:([/emote] [emote]:([/emote][/quote]

[url=http://www.plover.net/~pscion/Naga.zip]As you wish.[/url]  But if you pride yourself on being non-technical, you may lose your sense of pride.  Here's what it can't do:  actions, objects, properties, activities, relations, and I haven't tested scenes so probably not that either. Here's what it can do:  ask if a piece of text "has been said" (this isn't robust, but it works);  compiles to a Z-code game about 2K in size, most of which is the I6 veneer; has basic bibliographic info; basic typography (bold, italic, highlight, newline); if-statements and say-phrases; uses "responses", a kind of value, instead of objects (see the few Understand..as.. lines); and getting input from the user is done from a say-phrase. 

So you might have a rule like this:[code]every turn, say "Yay or nay? [if yes]OK: [response][or no]Nope.[or anything else]What?"[/code]Since "yes", "no", and "anything else" are "responses", it will stop writing prose to the screen at the "if", get input from the reader, and then process the if-chain according to what the reader typed in.  There's also a variable, "the response", which remembers what was typed in so you can save it away from later if you want.

Oh, there's 11 rulebooks in the system only because I7 complains if any fewer exist.  Only maybe 5 of them are used. See the code that follows the heading, "end New Standard Rules" for examples of how this tiny, tinny little thing can be used.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3529&start=20#p26014
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ifvms.js ZVM Preview
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-11-12 11:45:27

[quote="Dannii"]Ben, your example is far more complicated than it needs to be, because loops are really very simple.[/quote]

I meant it more as a prototype for how an entire function (containing one or more loops, plus other operations) could be structured, if jumps are known to be local to that function.

What do you make of this test case that I put together?
<a class="postlink" href="http://jsperf.com/case-inside-loop">http://jsperf.com/case-inside-loop</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3639&start=0#p26015
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 - GLIMMR - scenic window issues
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-11-12 13:28:04

With version 2.0 of Hallow Eve done, I have come back to my interactive dreaming project which utilizes Erik Temple's Glimmr tools. Last night I found something I don't understand. Basically, I'm trying to have some elements in my scenic window graphic change when things happen in the game. In this example, I have 2 images. One is a garage with a bucket visible, one is an empty garage. When the player takes the bucket (removing it from the Garage room) I want the scenic window to display the empty garage.

This works (specifying on one scenic window image):

[code]Garage is a room. Garage is north of House. The description of Garage is "Blah blah old greasy garage.". 

The blue bucket is a container. There is blue bucket in Garage. The description of blue bucket is "An ordinary blue plastic blue bucket."

Check looking in Garage:
	Now the image-ID of the scenery-container is Figure of GaragePic1;
[/code]


This does not (trying to check for 1 of 2):

[code]Garage is a room. Garage is north of House. The description of Garage is "Blah blah old greasy garage.". 

The blue bucket is a container. There is blue bucket in Garage. The description of blue bucket is "An ordinary blue plastic blue bucket."

Check looking in Garage:
	if the blue bucket is in Garage begin;
		now the image-ID of the scenery-container is Figure of GaragePic1;
	else if the blue bucket is not in Garage;
		now the image-ID of the scenery-container is Figure of GaragePic2;
end if;
[/code]

Any idea as to why this is? Can I just not use a 'check' in this fashion? Is there some other way to go about this for the desired effect? I'm having no problem changing the image-ID when moving from room to room, or even after carrying out an action. However, in this case I can't just use "carry out taking the blue bucket.. now image-ID is garagePic2" because it will revert back to GaragePic1 whenever the player 'look's again. Thanks in advance for any help. I'm still having a lot of fun playing with these tools.

EDIT: Fixed code per Erik's post below.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=40#p26016
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-11-12 13:36:19

No probs, I will update.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3637&start=0#p26017
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Headings
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-11-12 13:38:49

"Sections" really do help as far as compile errors when your source gets a bit huge. I set up mine like:

Section 1 - Game Setup (I throw my extension includes, mistake understandings, basic rule changes, scoring, etc all in here)

Section 2 - New Commands (I find it easier to throw all new understanding of actions here)

Section 3 - First Room(s)

Section 4 - First NPC

Secton 5 - Story part 1

Section 6 - Story part 2

etc...

Section 20 - Endings

Also, for more organization you can always comment things like:

[ROOM NAME]

[NPC NAME]

etc..

And those will show up in green in the source, also making it easier to CTRL+F your code.

This of course though is just my style. I'm sure others would find it "weird" or whatever, but for me it works. Like SeveredHand said too though, you'll probably find yourself plugging away for a while and then end up moving chunks of code around later on as the game fleshes out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3628&start=10#p26018
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compilation efficiency
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-11-12 13:42:42

[quote="capmikee"]In Preferences -> Advanced, there's a checkbox labeled "Clean build files from projects before closing." Uncheck it.[/quote]

What does that do exactly? (Just out of curiosity)
Is there any drawback to it?

I've noticed text-only games in Inform compile quite quickly, whereas my project that uses Glimmr takes about 8-10 seconds and heats up the CPU a bit as it finishes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3639&start=0#p26019
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - GLIMMR - scenic window issues
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-11-12 13:46:58

Your if and your else if are both testing the same condition.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=10#p26020
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-11-12 13:47:34

Of all the unjust dismissals I'd expect to hear leveled at IF, "it's for kids" is not one of them, since kids who grew up playing IF are now in their thirties.  Compared against other types of computer games, it's literary, slow-paced, and requires critical thinking (remember Douglas Adams comparing point-and-click games to "grunting and banging rocks together?"), all points in it's favor as an "adult" medium, you'd think.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3628&start=10#p26021
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compilation efficiency
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-11-12 13:51:15

Glimmr defines a lot of new phrases that it takes the compiler some time to resolve; that would be the main reason for slower compilation. However, 8-10 seconds is a lot longer than it takes on my machine (5-year old MacBook), and I also don't think there's any greater hit on the CPU. So maybe something else is going on there.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3638&start=0#p26022
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: An Added Layer of Complexity
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-11-12 13:51:53

All I can say really is "practice makes perfect". I was always more of a C++, C#, and web programming dude before I came to find Inform. Wasted countless hours just trying to figure out what syntax the compiler wanted or (even worse) how to word things correctly. After a while of doing it though it sort of comes natural.. though I know I'm probably still wasting many lines of code that could be cleaned up if I didn't rely on basic algebra so much when programming [emote]:lol:[/emote]  

A friend of mine with a bachelors in computer science basically told me that he prefers TADS over Inform for this reason. Says TADS is more of a "programmer's IF language" to him. *shrug*

[quote="I4L"]
There are obvious obstacles to this kind of setup. I almost started coding an AJAX/PHP thing on a whim earlier in the week, but got distracted by [b]some kind of collapsed lung thing[/b] or whatever. 
[/quote]

Wait.. what?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3639&start=0#p26023
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - GLIMMR - scenic window issues
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-11-12 13:56:27

Haha! Copy+paste got me in trouble (or maybe the Budweiser last night). Wow.. that's weird. I would think me doing something like that should have produced a compile error instead of just keeping the last image-ID from the scenic window. 

OK, changed the code to the edit above. All is working nicely now. Thanks! Hope this helps someone else.

EDIT: Note this code does require you to actually drop the bucket in another room. I'll have to change things a bit to make it disappear when you just take it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3640&start=0#p26024
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: TADS3 Versus INFORM7
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-11-12 14:40:34

I have been working as a professional in both the computer hardware and software fields since 1965. Now, at the age of seventy-three, I'm still very interested in writing yet another IF game. However, I'm finding that I am now forgetting more coding techniques than I remember. This brings up the question of which is more powerful and easier to learn between TADS3 and INFORM7? I'm leaning toward TADS3 but would appreciate some honest opinions about which path to take. I will looking for help on the basics of getting started no matter which of these I decide to use. Hope you don't mind my bothering you people at some times [emote]:roll:[/emote] 

Would appreciate some of your opinions. [emote]:?:[/emote]

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3639&start=0#p26025
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - GLIMMR - scenic window issues
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-12 15:04:04

Also, you have Erik Temple and Eric Eve mixed up a bit.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3640&start=0#p26026
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 Versus INFORM7
User: George / DateTime: 2011-11-12 15:22:54

I think we need more information first about what kind of game you want to make.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3628&start=10#p26027
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compilation efficiency
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-12 15:25:48

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]But if you pride yourself on being non-technical, you may lose your sense of pride. [/quote]

Oh, I promise, that's not something I'm [i]proud [/i]of. I pride myself on what I'm good at (and what I'm wise enough to avoid); I have no bumpkin's pride in my areas of ignorance [emote]:)[/emote]

But thank you, I will try to see what I can achieve with it [emote]:)[/emote]

My dream-version of I7 is basically the one that lives in the question that started the thread: a version that's internally modular, and compiles only the bits you make reference to ... so, if I put a door in the game, in goes the door stuff, along with the door. If I never mention a door, that stuff is left out. Etc.

An almost-as-awesome version would be a more stripped-down core with more things available as extensions.

I have no idea if this would even be feasible, since I know nothing of the guts inside the machine. But if anyone is working on either of those things, I'd of course volunteer time for testing, etc., to the extent that my limited understanding would allow me to contribute.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=30#p26028
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-12 15:36:25

[quote="Hannes"]Another fact feeding my impression is that the people writing reviews of competition games also stop dead on November 15th sharp. Hardly anyone manages to get through all games by that and it's not like the game aren't there anymore, but when the judging period is over, they don't bother anymore. I don't understand why, but that's the way it is.[/quote]

I think it's exactly the same phenomenon, really: the time of the Comp is spotlight-time, for the games [i]and [/i]for the reviews of the games. It's all exciting and happening and there's a certain thrill of it being a shared, rather than solitary, experience.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3640&start=0#p26029
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 Versus INFORM7
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-11-12 15:58:39

Inform 7 does a lot of interesting things with rules and natural language. I think it's worth looking at in any case, and if it grabs you then there's no reason not to stick with it. To the extent that you are not swayed by nostalgia, you should target Glulx and never look back at the Z-Machine.

TADS 3 the language is extremely easy to learn. If you have any experience with C-style syntax, I expect you could master it in a few hours. Objects are straightforward, inheritance somewhat less so. 

(I am quite biased; I would say TADS 3 is my favorite programming language, to the extent such a statement makes sense. Dynamic (but strict) typing, anonymous functions, and macros all make for a wonderful level of expressiveness.)

The adv3 library - the huge chunk of standard TADS 3 code you will almost certainly use to write games - is not easy to learn. Rather the opposite. It is big and complicated and hard to understand. But it is wonderful in its own right, as a sort of monument to the lessons learned in IF design over the last two decades.

It is difficult to love, in the way I love the language, because so much of any given session is spent trying to coax adv3 into delivering the desired effect. Fighting it is a losing battle. But there is a sort of zen that comes with embracing its structure and falling in line.

I don't think it's easy to write an IF game in any language. I do think it's harder to write an out-and-out bad game in TADS 3, because adv3 makes it difficult to create one that doesn't at least showcase MJR's considerable talent. Inform 7, if and when you master the syntax, tends to stay out of the way.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3640&start=0#p26030
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 Versus INFORM7
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-12 16:03:00

[quote="bcressey"]To the extent that you are not swayed by nostalgia, you should target Glulx and never look back at the Z-Machine.[/quote]

Nostalgia or portability. For some of us it's all about our preference for playing on portable devices ...

(Given a few more years, that'll hopefully become moot ... but it hasn't happened just yet)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3640&start=0#p26031
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 Versus INFORM7
User: tomasb / DateTime: 2011-11-12 16:07:00

There is also Eric Eve's comparison of both languages: [url]http://brasslantern.org/writers/iftheory/tads3andi7.html[/url]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3639&start=0#p26032
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - GLIMMR - scenic window issues
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-11-12 16:37:26

[quote="matt w"]Also, you have Erik Temple and Eric Eve mixed up a bit.[/quote]

OK, I'll just go sit in the corner now while you all laugh.  [emote]:oops:[/emote] 

Heh, edited. Sorry about that Erik.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3641&start=0#p26033
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Weirdness with every man
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-11-12 16:43:39

Consider this simple example:

[code]
Test is a room.

Bob is a man. The player is bob.

Jon is a man in test.

a scarf is a kind of thing. a scarf is wearable.

a hat is a kind of thing. a hat is wearable.

Every person wears a scarf.

Every man wears a hat.

test me with "showme me / showme jon".
[/code]

The output of test is:

[spoiler]>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] showme me
yourself - man
    scarf (worn) - scarf
location: in Test
singular-named, proper-named; unlit, inedible, portable; male
printed name: "Bob"
printed plural name: "men"
indefinite article: none
description: none
initial appearance: none
carrying capacity: 100

>[2] showme jon
Jon - man
    scarf (worn) - scarf
    hat (worn) - hat
location: in Test
singular-named, proper-named; unlit, inedible, portable; male
printed name: "Jon"
printed plural name: "men"
indefinite article: none
description: none
initial appearance: none
carrying capacity: 100[/spoiler]

For some reason, it doesn't pick up that bob should be wearing a hat. Now try moving the "bob is a man. the player is bob" line to the end code and it works as expected:

[spoiler]>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] showme me
yourself - man
    hat (worn) - hat
    scarf (worn) - scarf
location: in Test
singular-named, proper-named; unlit, inedible, portable; male
printed name: "Bob"
printed plural name: "men"
indefinite article: none
description: none
initial appearance: none
carrying capacity: 100

>[2] showme jon
Jon - man
    scarf (worn) - scarf
    hat (worn) - hat
location: in Test
singular-named, proper-named; unlit, inedible, portable; male
printed name: "Jon"
printed plural name: "men"
indefinite article: none
description: none
initial appearance: none
carrying capacity: 100[/spoiler]

Is this a bug? Note that if I say something about every person, it doesn't seem to be a problem.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3642&start=0#p26034
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Truth States vs Tables
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-12 17:51:51

Is there any kind of real difference between using a truth state variable and using a table of "flags" to determine whether something is true or not? There's obviously a lot more code involved in using a table, and I can't imagine that there would be a performance increase for looping through table rows versus grabbing the boolean value of a single variable.

As it stands, I'm leaning toward truth state variables because I still haven't come to grips with the way tables are created or referenced. Can someone who knows more about this kind of thing (which is pretty much anyone) weigh in on the pros and cons?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3641&start=0#p26035
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Weirdness with every man
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-12 18:30:25

Weirdness With Every Man would be a cool title for a game.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3628&start=10#p26036
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Compilation efficiency
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-12 18:42:50

Maybe games which include a lot of graphics files take extra time to put the blorb together? I haven't tested it myself.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3641&start=0#p26037
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Weirdness with every man
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-12 18:43:57

That looks like [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=655]this bug[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3640&start=0#p26040
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 Versus INFORM7
User: tinman / DateTime: 2011-11-12 19:20:57

IMHO it's quite useful to play a few games written on each platform and then read their source code. Check [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=sicva377zqygxcq2]Return to Ditch Day[/url] on T3 and [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=9p8kh3im2j9h2881]Bronze[/url] or one of the other  [url=http://inform7.com/learn/complete-examples/]I7 examples[/url]. That reveals not only what can be done but also how it's done and which metaphors and constructs fit you better.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3643&start=0#p26041
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: [Quixe] Styling windowport?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-11-12 19:39:25

I'd like to give Quixe's windowport element rounded corners (CSS). Unfortunately, immediately after the element renders with my chosen styling, Quixe (actually GlkOte, I think) apparently restyles the element (via javascript) to have squared corners. I've looked at the javascript source, but don't see right off how to prevent this. Any ideas how to accomplish this?

Thanks!
Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3637&start=10#p26042
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Headings
User: joelsanda / DateTime: 2011-11-12 19:47:28

Thanks, Jizaboz - that's *very* helpful. That's how I was doing it, but since this is my first attempt I started second guessing that organizational schema.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3640&start=0#p26045
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 Versus INFORM7
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-11-12 21:21:16

If you're using a Macintosh, I7 has a great advantage. TADS Workbench is not cross-platform. Even under Crossover, it's only about 99% functional on a Mac.

I7 also has, at the moment, a considerable advantage if you hope to attract players who prefer to play in their web browser rather than download an interpreter program.

I've written games in both languages, and I strongly prefer T3. But I'm quite aware that others disagree.

Quite aside from questions of which syntax you prefer, T3 is more mature and more stable. In addition, its library is far more extensive. Harder to learn, perhaps, but more extensive. T3 has multiple inheritance; I7 does not. I7 has an active community of users who are developing extensions, which is good ... but some of the extensions aren't updated to be compatible with new releases, which is bad.

--JA

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3645&start=0#p26046
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Conversation Package triggering things... I think?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-12 21:24:32

I apologize, I can't come up with a better subject...

So I got all up in Matt Wigdahl's "Keywords for Conversation" extension, which includes (individually, it seems) all of Dr. Eve's conversation extensions. I like the idea of guided conversation, since conversation is pretty much the most ambiguous crime you can inflict on a game without some direction. (Obvious exceptions notwithstanding.)

I'm thinking that there are several aspects of this system that I don't care for and some things that need some additional capability.

First of all, I'm not a fan of the player being told that there's nothing s/he needs to discuss with an NPC if I don't specify topic suggestions. There are, of course, things that need to be discussed, but I'd like to handle that prompting differently. I haven't attempted to alter this behavior because I'm not familiar enough with the language to try to delve into the extension and modify it manually. Is there a setting somewhere that just... disables this?

Second, I'd like to be able to end a conversation. Once it gets to a certain point (or a certain topic has been discussed), I'd really like to disallow further interrogation. I dunno, maybe set a flag or something and use an "Instead" rule to prevent the player from pestering the NPC further.

Is this possible? I tried just setting a variable for it, but Inform apparently doesn't care for it. Maybe it's a syntax thing. Here's a mock-up, since I don't know the underlying rule for "talking".

[code]
Done_With_You is a truth state variable.

Instead of talking to NPC: [Throws an error]
     If Done_With_You is true:
          say "He doesn't have anything else to say."

Response of NPC when asked about blinker fluid:
     say "It's on aisle five. I'm busy, so get lost.";
     Now Done_With_You is true.
[/code]

I'm sure that there's a way to do exactly what I'm wanting to do. Is it built into the Conversation Package? Do I need to look elsewhere? Or am I just doing the "Instead of talking" thing wrong, since that was the only thing giving me an error message on the last build?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3646&start=0#p26047
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Viewing the real-time state of variables...
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-12 21:28:19

Is there a command that shows you the value of a variable while in-game? Showme only works on objects.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3646&start=0#p26048
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Viewing the real-time state of variables...
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-12 21:59:53

No, you'd have to write your own out-of-world action.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3640&start=0#p26049
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 Versus INFORM7
User: tinman / DateTime: 2011-11-12 22:05:20

1+ for VMWare Fusion4 to run T3 Workbench on Win7 via your Mac. Best of both worlds!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3643&start=0#p26050
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: [Quixe] Styling windowport?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-12 22:09:00

Hm. I don't remember doing anything to the windowport at all. The only style-setting I do is to the individual window divs (to set their position), and to the input field.

Can you apply your styles to the gameport? The windowport is 100% of the gameport.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3646&start=0#p26051
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Viewing the real-time state of variables...
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-12 22:24:02

Well, that seems like a debugging oversight...

Anyway, obliged for the insight, sir.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3646&start=0#p26052
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Viewing the real-time state of variables...
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-12 22:33:44

[quote="zarf"]No, you'd have to write your own out-of-world action.[/quote]

For some games, for some variables, I actually just stick it in the Status Bar (or the prompt) during testing [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3642&start=0#p26053
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Truth States vs Tables
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-12 22:39:08

[quote="I4L"]Can someone who knows more about this kind of thing (which is pretty much anyone) [...][/quote]

If it helps you feel better, I can wander in and demonstrate how much [i]less [/i]I know at any time. Just gimme a buzz.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3646&start=0#p26054
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Viewing the real-time state of variables...
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-12 22:41:51

That absolutely works in some situations. But I think that for debugging how a certain extension affects your world, or how some things are happening when, it'd be nice to be able to say something like "Showstate Variable" and just be told what it is, instead of having to change the code on each compile to display something in the status bar. I would think that given everything else Inform is capable of, this would be one of those "given" kinds of things. Especially for the uninitiated.

S'okay, though. I'm working on trying to figure out how to write this out of world action to show me the specified variable.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3529&start=20#p26055
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ifvms.js ZVM Preview
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-11-12 22:51:10

Thanks for the correction Zarf.

Ben, Your second test case is broken, try <a class="postlink" href="http://jsperf.com/case-inside-loop/3">http://jsperf.com/case-inside-loop/3</a>
The setup is only run between tests, so after it had run once jump would remain undefined and the test would turn into a loop that never ran. Once I fixed it the fasted test was the third, which is what I expected. While and for loops are basically equivalent, except that your for loop increments two variables but your while loop only incremented one.

After thinking a bit longer I finally understand what your switch idea is meant to do. I think though that the call instructions will make it impractical. jsperf isn't ideal for testing such a thing though, because your other two test cases don't represent what our VMs do, with all their extra infrastructure. Hence why I want to make a glulx performance test suite.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3640&start=0#p26056
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 Versus INFORM7
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-11-12 23:00:42

[quote="tinman"]1+ for VMWare Fusion4 to run T3 Workbench on Win7 via your Mac. Best of both worlds![/quote]
Could be a good solution (though it appears you would have to purchase both Fusion4 and a copy of Windows, right?). Have you tried using Workbench in this setup?

Also, I'm curious about the use of keystroke equivalents. When running Workbench on my PC, I use a very nice macro program called Auto Hot Key, which saves me a certain amount of typing by letting me define macros. But this program works at a pretty low level in the OS. Do you happen to know if Auto Hot Key or other such macro programs will work under Fusion4?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3646&start=0#p26057
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Viewing the real-time state of variables...
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-12 23:04:49

[quote="I4L"]That absolutely works in some situations.[/quote]

Oh, dude, I wasn't recommending it. Just an example of the kind of clownish crap I do while swimming in a sea of my own ignorance [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote]S'okay, though. I'm working on trying to figure out how to write this out of world action to show me the specified variable.[/quote]

I do it this way (there's probably a better method):

[code]Cave is a room. "Whatta dump."

BOOJUM is a number variable. BOOJUM is 876.

Every turn: increase BOOJUM by a random number from 1 to 100;

Snarkasking is an action out of world. Understand "snark" as snarkasking.

Carry out snarkasking: say "[BOOJUM]!";

Test me with "snark/wait/snark/wait/snark".
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3640&start=0#p26058
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 Versus INFORM7
User: tinman / DateTime: 2011-11-12 23:15:21

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Could be a good solution (though it appears you would have to purchase both Fusion4 and a copy of Windows, right?). Have you tried using Workbench in this setup?[/quote]
Yes, you need to buy both -- not a big investment, though, for the flexibility it allows. Workbench on Windoze on a Mac seems like a brilliant platform to me.
[quote="Jim Aikin"]Also, I'm curious about the use of keystroke equivalents. When running Workbench on my PC, I use a very nice macro program called Auto Hot Key, which saves me a certain amount of typing by letting me define macros. But this program works at a pretty low level in the OS. Do you happen to know if Auto Hot Key or other such macro programs will work under Fusion4?[/quote]
No experience with Auto Hot Key. VMWare gives you a Windoze environment exactly like any PC -- except for variations imposed by the Apple keyboard, if you're using one; if you're using a third party keyboard and mouse, it will work exactly as a PC. Mac-specific macro apps presumably will not work when running Windoze on your Mac -- but I'm just guessing.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3645&start=0#p26059
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Package triggering things... I think?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-11-12 23:32:01

My memory is hazy, but I think Eric's conversation extensions define a bunch of new activities, none of which is "talking to". Try compiling without that Instead rule and look in the actions index to see what actions have been defined by the extension(s).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3529&start=20#p26060
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ifvms.js ZVM Preview
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-11-12 23:37:31

Thanks, I figured something must be broken but I didn't know what.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3643&start=0#p26061
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: [Quixe] Styling windowport?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-11-12 23:41:36

[quote="zarf"]The only style-setting I do is to the individual window divs (to set their position)[/quote]

Ah, that's the solution--each window's corners must be rounded individually in addition to the underlying windowport or gameport (whichever you decide to style--I was putting a shadow on the gameport). Should have thought of that--thanks!

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3640&start=10#p26063
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 Versus INFORM7
User: George / DateTime: 2011-11-13 00:34:20

[quote="Jim Aikin"]
Could be a good solution (though it appears you would have to purchase both Fusion4 and a copy of Windows, right?). Have you tried using Workbench in this setup?[/quote]

You could get VirtualBox instead of Fusion, would save a bit up front if you just want to try it out.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=40#p26064
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-11-13 01:21:25

[quote="Campbell"]The ADRIFT IFIDs on IFDB are wrong.[/quote]
All of them?  In what way?  I used TADS to read IFIDs from the files.  AFAIK, this has always successfully read IFIDs from ADRIFT files before.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=40#p26065
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-11-13 03:38:09

TADS probably doesn't include the update I added to the Babel code which extracts the IFID rather than generates a new one. The v4 ones should be fine tho.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=70#p26067
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-11-13 06:16:36

[quote="I4L"][quote="capmikee"]I was just going through the source of my WIP, and noticed this line:

[code]Understand the commands "damn" and "dang" and "motherfucker" and "mother-fucker" and "mother" as "bother".[/code]

There's something sweetly poetic about it...[/quote]

I'd +1 this if there was an option for it...[/quote]
Heh. Only trouble with it is classifying all of the above as 'swearing mildly'. Actually in general the 'swearing mildly' vs. 'swearing obscenely' divisions don't make sense to me. Why is 'damn' on the 'swearing obscenely' list? In the modern era, that word is not considered obscene -- only by a very tiny minority of people who still take very old religious prohibitions seriously. Even the religious mostly don't anymore. In fact, the religious are more likely to say 'damn' or 'goddamn' than anyone else. So I shifted those words into the 'mildly' camp, plus like capnmikee I added a whole bunch of synonyms so that my game would be good and educated. I also firmly believe that when a player swears at a game, the best possible response is for the game to swear back at as close to the same level of 'social transgression' as possible. After all, this is what the player is clearly interested in: they have expressed an emotional linguistic preference by reacting with a swear word, and therefore the best possible response is to indulge them in that preference, at least briefly -- just as we would do with any other expressed player preference. In general, pointless fear and meaningless decorum has sucked all the power out of some important language, as it is used in IF.

That is unfortunate and should be rectified. That is why the best possible tactic vis-a-vis profanity (or anything, really) when it comes to the IF scene presently, is to blow the doors off and 'fly 'er apart', Sulu-style. This is why I've argued as I have in this thread, because it is what's best for the medium. Don't get me wrong; there are awesome games being written that I enjoy playing; and profanity isn't a prerequisite or anything for a good experience; but we are still being way too precious about flying this amazing vessel. That's why Sulu told his navigator to 'fly 'er apart'. This creative tool has an awesome dynamic range: why on Earth would we want to discourage anyone from using the full spectrum; especially since a common criticism of the form that gets a lot of traction out there, is that the emotional dynamics of game stories are necessarily limited. It's bad enough when the media make such assumptions about an art form: it's much worse when the artists do it to themselves.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3647&start=0#p26071
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Playtesters wanted for The Spy Who Ate Lunch
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-11-13 09:21:06

I'm looking for a small number of playtesters for [i]The Spy Who Ate Lunch[/i].  Written in Inform 7 and compiled to Glulx, TSWAL is a parody of 1960's-style spy stories/films (although set in the modern era).  You are a secret agent for a fictitious (or is it?) American agency.  Your mission, should you decide to accept it (by playing the game), is to foil a terrorist plot so sinister it just might make you lose your lunch.

TSWAL is shorter than old-style commercial games (e.g., Infocom's offerings), but (I think) somewhat longer than comp-length.  (I'm kind of guessing here; if you know exactly how to proceed you can certainly type in the necessary commands in far less than two hours, but I think most players would require more than that to figure it out).

[i]The Spy Who Ate Lunch[/i] is basically complete, and has already undergone some playtesting, but it couldn't hurt to have a couple more sets of eyes look at it.  Any comments would be gratefully accepted, but for the most part I'm looking to identify any bugs and/or inappropriate or inadequate responses.

One warning, in light of recent discussions on this board: if TSWAL were a movie, it would probably be rated PG (in the American MPAA system) for language.  It may not be for very young children, and if you're offended by words which are banned on TV it might not be for you.

If you're interested, please let me know and I can e-mail you the gblorb file.  Thanks.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3645&start=0#p26073
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Package triggering things... I think?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-13 11:05:47

And by typing the "rules" debug command, you can see what rule triggers the line about you not having anything to discuss with an NPC.

As it happens, though, the action name is "quizzing it about" ("asking it about" was already in the Standard Rules); and that default reponse is defined by a say phrase ("To say nothing specific"). You can override it by defining a phrase with the same name directly in your source text. To get rid of it:
[code]To say nothing specific:
	say "[run paragraph on]".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3640&start=10#p26074
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 Versus INFORM7
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-11-13 11:12:08

[quote="tinman"][quote="Jim Aikin"]Could be a good solution (though it appears you would have to purchase both Fusion4 and a copy of Windows, right?). Have you tried using Workbench in this setup?[/quote]
Yes, you need to buy both -- not a big investment, though, for the flexibility it allows. Workbench on Windoze on a Mac seems like a brilliant platform to me.[/quote]
Are you saying yes, you've tried running Workbench with this setup, or are you just saying yes, you'd have to buy the software?

The reason I ask is because I've used Workbench under Crossover on the Mac, and it's NOT 100% functional. The options box doesn't display properly, and although you can select new options for your work session, they're not saved properly when you exit the program. So the real question is, have you personally tried using Workbench in this setup?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3640&start=10#p26075
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 Versus INFORM7
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-11-13 11:20:52

Crossover is Wine under the hood, which is to say that it doesn't actually use Windows--it uses other libraries to mimic Windows functionality. VMware (about $80?) and VirtualBox (free!), on the other hand, are full emulators of x86 machines, which means that you're actually installing and running Windows itself on a VM. In other words, running the Workbench under VMware or VirtualBox [i]is[/i] running it on Windows, so it will work, and so will your Windows hotkey program.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=40#p26076
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-11-13 14:40:18

Thanks for the note about IFDB profiles! I actually did have one, but it was "ASchultz." That is changed now, but I suppose guess-the-initial is about as fun of a game as guess-the-verb. I just sort of reflexively use aschultz a lot in forums, but yeah, the full name makes sense here.

I got a kick out of being able to add things to my page, too, so there's that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3648&start=0#p26085
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Ask someone about something the first time...
User: chaosxkitten / DateTime: 2011-11-13 20:31:46

I cannot get the syntax right! What am I doing? 


[code]Instead of asking the Silver-haired Woman about "something/somethings" for the first time: say "this stuff". [/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3659&start=0#p26101
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Room with multiple exits in the same direction?
User: Exoow / DateTime: 2011-11-14 05:51:16

I'm new to IF so this might be a dumb question... Anyways:

I've followed the basic description/room/map tutorials and modeled my house in IF for practice. [emote]:)[/emote]

The problem is there's a larger room (C) that has two doors in one wall... So:

[code]Chamber B is south of Chamber A.
Chamber C is west of Chamber B and west of Chamber A.[/code]
doesn't work when going "east" from C to A (the player enters B automatically).

Is there a way to handle similar constructions?

Thank you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3659&start=0#p26102
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room with multiple exits in the same direction?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-11-14 06:13:39

What do you want the game to do when the player types EAST in room C?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3465&start=0#p26103
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: IF borked on Lion
User: tinman / DateTime: 2011-11-14 06:34:24

[quote="zarf"]A new version of Zoom is now up that fixes this:

<a class="postlink" href="http://logicalshift.co.uk/rotate/2011/11/05/zoom-1-1-5-has-been-released/">http://logicalshift.co.uk/rotate/2011/1 ... -released/</a>[/quote]
Many thanks, Zarf! This is a beautiful thing indeed!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=70#p26104
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-14 08:53:22

I think I got rid of 'swearing obscenely' completely. Now I have "swearing mildly," which might be classified better as "swearing vaguely," and then I have "sexually cursing" and "blaspheming." I also distinguish between "sexually cursing" and "copulating with," as well as parsing commands to defecate and urinate. As you might suspect, even though this is not AIF, commands that might be directed at the PC are processed that way whenever possible.

From a practical standpoint, this might interest some people:

[code]A subject can be blasphemous.

Blaspheming is an action applying to one visible thing and one topic.

Understand "[any blasphemous thing] [text]" as blaspheming.

Check blaspheming:
	instead try swearing mildly.
	
Check abstract-keywording something blasphemous:
	instead try swearing mildly.

Hell is a subject. Understand "damned/damnation", "punish/punished/punishment", "purgatory", "hades", "perdition", "eternal/eternity", "fire/firey/fiery", "inferno", "pit", "gehenna", "of gehenna" as hell.

Hell is blasphemous.

A prayer-recipient is a kind of subject. A prayer-recipient has a prayer called the plea. Understand "our" as a prayer-recipient.

The Blessed Virgin Mary is a prayer-recipient. Understand "holy", "mother", "of god", "lady" as the virgin mary. The plea of the Blessed Virgin Mary is Hail Mary.

The Almighty Creator is a prayer-recipient. Understand "father", "lord", "god" as The Almighty Creator. The plea of the almighty is Our Father.

Lord Jesus Christ is a prayer-recipient. Understand "son", "of god" as Lord Jesus Christ. The plea of Jesus is the publican.

Does the player mean praying to Jesus when the player's command includes "lord": It is very unlikely.

A prayer-recipient is usually blasphemous.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3570&start=0#p26106
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SPAM
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-11-14 09:10:40

The spam accounts are probably a big pain for the administrata to deal with (and pretty annoying to some live human users, although I find them mildly amusing most of the time) but whitelists, waiting periods, and that kind of thing can be huge, [i]huge[/i] deterrents for new live human users, even on forums much more active than this one.

Grueslayer's solution is probably the safest one I've heard of, but I think it's still a really big risk.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3648&start=0#p26107
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Ask someone about something the first time...
User: HanonO / DateTime: 2011-11-14 09:24:34

Instead of asking the silverhaired woman about foo:
   say "[one of]'I'll only say this once!'[or]'You missed it the first time?  Sorry.'[stopping]"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3570&start=0#p26108
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SPAM
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-11-14 09:41:30

Looking at the Register page, there's not even a CAPTCHA set up. I know they're annoying and also aren't 100% reliable, but the combination of CAPTCHA and simple question (on my forum, simply "Type the number 7 in this box") has dramatically reduced the amount of spam on my forums.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3641&start=0#p26109
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Weirdness with every man
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-11-14 09:41:54

[quote="Ghalev"]Weirdness With Every Man would be a cool title for a game.[/quote]

The universe will shortly implode, because I thought the same exact thing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3570&start=0#p26110
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SPAM
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-11-14 09:43:08

I should also add, blocking spammer IPs works well too. I've found they often come from the same limited IP ranges.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3659&start=0#p26111
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room with multiple exits in the same direction?
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-11-14 09:59:35

I'd personally model it:
[code]
Chamber B is south of Chamber A. Chamber C is west of Chamber B and southwest of Chamber A.
[/code]
and then make clear in the description text that both doors lead out along the same wall. If you're standing in the middle of Chamber C, one of the rooms is going to be more northeasterly than the other- both doors to the rooms can't be in the exact same cardinal direction relative to an onlooker. To have Chamber C be west of Chamber A, you can say something like:
[code]Before going west when the player is in Chamber A, try going southwest instead.[/code] 

If you really wanted to you could have some sort of disambiguation ("Did you mean going east to Chamber A, or east to Chamber B?") when the player tries going east from the Chamber C, but that'd be really annoying.

--

Your house is a fun thing to model when you're learning Inform but often makes for a terrible game; so unless you end up with solid gold on your hands, resist the urge to publish.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3660&start=0#p26113
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Why text adventures beat graphical games in realism
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-11-14 10:16:07

Why are text adventures more realistic that graphical games? Because in a piece of IF, you can't just:

>put bucket on merchant
>steal his stuff

But in a graphical game, you get this:

<a class="postlink" href="http://youtu.be/rt5aUdijAN8">http://youtu.be/rt5aUdijAN8</a>

(It's not fake or anything. I tried it myself and it works [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote])

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3659&start=0#p26114
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room with multiple exits in the same direction?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-14 10:19:07

Here's a pretty easy way out:
[code]The Pub, the Gents' and the Ladies' are rooms.
The Gents' is southeast of the Pub.
The Ladies' is northeast of the Pub.
The Pub is west of Gents' and west of Ladies'. 
Understand "east" or "e" as a mistake ( "You can go northeast to the Ladies['] room or southeast to the Gents['].") when the location is the Pub.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3648&start=0#p26115
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Ask someone about something the first time...
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-14 10:32:29

Isn't that a bug?
Both
[code]Instead of asking the Silver-haired Woman about "something/somethings": say "this stuff".
[/code]and
[code]Instead of asking the Silver-haired Woman about "somethings" for the first time: say "this stuff".
[/code]work as expected, but
[code]Instead of asking the Silver-haired Woman about "something/somethings" for the first time: say "this stuff".
[/code]doesn't.

Anyway, you can try
[code]Understand "something/somethings" as "[some]".
Instead of asking the Silver-haired Woman about "[some]" for the first time: say "this stuff".[/code]
That seems to do what you want.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3648&start=0#p26116
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Ask someone about something the first time...
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-11-14 10:44:22

[code]Test me with "ask silver-haired woman about something / somethings".[/code]
I'm pretty sure this bug is on Mantis somewhere....  Ah yes.  [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=767]Here[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3659&start=0#p26117
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room with multiple exits in the same direction?
User: Exoow / DateTime: 2011-11-14 10:54:30

Thanks for the replies.

Juhana: some disambiguation like Joey suggested, but that would indeed grow annoying with multiple visits.

Joey: thanks for the insights and don't worry, I won't publish anything soon. [emote]:)[/emote]

Felix: cool idea! Although the description would need to provide details as well, similar to Joey's example.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3659&start=0#p26118
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room with multiple exits in the same direction?
User: HanonO / DateTime: 2011-11-14 11:25:22

Isn't this what northeast and southeast were invented for?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3659&start=0#p26119
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room with multiple exits in the same direction?
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-11-14 11:49:32

When modelling real houses and trying to have inform rooms match real rooms, it soon becomes obvious that real-life architects rarely have the consideration to lay out houses in square grids aligned neatly to the north-south line. One thing you could play around with if you wanted to be more faithful to a complex layout is eschew cardinal directions entirely, and have the game behave like the following (although, hopefully better written):

[quote]
You're in the bathroom. The tiles are as black and white as your mother's views on keeping the toilet seat down. In here are the usual bathroom stuff that you don't have to bother with, a frosted window, and the door to the living room.

> open door

You open the bathroom door, revealing the living room beyond.

> enter living room

You're in the living room. All along the back wall are embarrassing pictures of your family arranged around a mysterious red door. The open-plan kitchen juts out to one side and a bewildering array of sofas, chairs and electrical devices clutter up the remaining space.

From here you can go back to the bathroom, try opening the mysterious red door or go into the kitchen. 

> go to kitchen

[etc.]
[/quote]
I don't know how much success games have had using this sort of thing. It would seem more intuitive given that people (other than aborigines) tend to navigate using relative rather than absolute directions. We say, "turn left, left again, then right", rather than, "when heading north, turn west, south, then west again".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3660&start=0#p26120
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Why text adventures beat graphical games in realism
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-11-14 12:27:57

Hold your horses, man. You can't say for sure which is more realistic before you've tried the same strategy in real life.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3660&start=0#p26121
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Why text adventures beat graphical games in realism
User: Miseri / DateTime: 2011-11-14 13:03:34

I should like to see someone try to sporgulate a shmelnix in a graphical game.

This reminds me of a story about the superiority of radio over television:

"All right, here we are at Lake Erie (sound of waves in the background).  First we'll drain it dry (sound of water going down a drain) and now we'll pump it full of vanilla ice cream (whir-gloopgloopgloop).  And now, we're getting a helicopter (whupwhupwhup) to deposit a giant cherry on top (splorcht).  There.  Let's see you do the same on television."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=250#p26122
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-11-14 13:31:36

I suppose I should go ahead and introduce myself since I've posted a few times on the forum already. My name's Troy Jones; I'm 35 and live in Alabama.

I played IF when I was a kid, although I wasn't familiar with the term "IF" then-- they will always be "text adventures" to me. [i]Enchanter[/i] was probably my favorite from that time. I also really liked the old Sierra adventure games like [i]Space Quest[/i], [i]Quest for Glory[/i], etc, which were very similar to text adventures, except with a lot of painfully slow walking all the way across the screen.

I only became aware of the current IF hobbyist scene a couple of years ago when I randomly ran across the Inform 7 site. I'd been meaning to get into it since then, but I've only recently been making a serious effort at writing something that other people might find worth reading. I may or may not have that something ready for next Spring Thing-- I guess we'll find out soon enough.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3640&start=10#p26123
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 Versus INFORM7
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-11-14 13:32:52

Here's a little more information about my plans for an IF game. It will loosely follow the drift of the older "Humongeus Cave" type games. However, The scene will be a recently discovered Mayan-type civilization and ancient large city that has recently been found in Peru in the mountains. My Plans will, hopefully, include such things as eating, sleeping and varying time passage; which will include the passing of day and night. It is because of these plans that I feel that TADS3 will be the more suitable language than Inform.

My biggest problem right now is how to go about searching the various Tads manuals, extensions and examples on how to accomplish various actions. I hope this makes some sense.

For example I'm looking for some code in Tads that forces me to wait for any certain keypress before proceeding with the text of the story. I know I've seen this example but I can't find it right now. Anyone willing to help [emote]:?:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3570&start=0#p26124
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SPAM
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-14 13:47:58

Well, there's this:

<a class="postlink" href="http://lithiumstudios.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=941">http://lithiumstudios.org/forum/viewtop ... f=31&t=941</a>

I'm pretty sure there's also a Honey Pot mod.

reCaptcha is built into phpBB3, but it's been cracked already. Plus if it's a human registration, that won't help.

The only thing that I've ever had to stop 99.9% of spam traffic is to put a question on the forum that only someone interested in the forum's content would know or care to go find out. I believe that idea has already been shot down.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3660&start=0#p26125
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Why text adventures beat graphical games in realism
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-11-14 14:12:44

Actually, I think the idea sort of originated on the text side.  In one of the Infocom games (I don't remember which -- too many brain cells are gone at my age) there was some sort of creature which was described as being so dumb that it thought that if you coudn't see it, it couldn't see you.  The way you got past the critter was by covering your own eyes, thereby convincing the dumb thing that it could not see you.  So at least the idea that you can used blocked vision, under ridiculous circumstances, to solve a problem started in IF.

Does anybody remember which game it was?


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3640&start=10#p26126
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 Versus INFORM7
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-11-14 14:12:54

[quote="RonG"]My biggest problem right now is how to go about searching the various Tads manuals, extensions and examples on how to accomplish various actions. I hope this makes some sense.

For example I'm looking for some code in Tads that forces me to wait for any certain keypress before proceeding with the text of the story. I know I've seen this example but I can't find it right now. Anyone willing to help [emote]:?:[/emote][/quote]
Yeah, that used to drive me crazy too. There's no overall index of the manuals. You just have to poke around.

For this particular problem, look in the Technical Manual, in the article "Some Common Input/Output Issues."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3661&start=0#p26128
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Player's holdall and the "handled" property
User: windracer / DateTime: 2011-11-14 14:20:11

I have some objects that score points when they are handled for the first time:

[code]After taking a book when the book is not handled:
	say "Taken.";
	increase the score by 1;[/code]

This has been working just fine. Now I have added a holdall to the game:

[code]The carrying capacity of the player is 5.

The backpack is a player's holdall. The description of the backpack is "This is your purple backpack that you take to school every day." The backpack is wearable.[/code]

What I've found is that if I put a book into the backpack (or Inform puts it there automatically), when it's taken out of the backpack again, the player scores a point. It's like the act of putting the book into the holdall is resetting the "handled" property. 

Am I missing something obvious with how the holdall and the "handled" property interact? I guess one way around this is to change my "after taking" rule to check if the book is already in the backpack, which means the player has already had to touch it and thus scored the point.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3660&start=0#p26129
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Why text adventures beat graphical games in realism
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-11-14 14:28:01

[quote="Robert Rothman"]Actually, I think the idea sort of originated on the text side.  In one of the Infocom games (I don't remember which -- too many brain cells are gone at my age) there was some sort of creature which was described as being so dumb that it thought that if you coudn't see it, it couldn't see you.  The way you got past the critter was by covering your own eyes, thereby convincing the dumb thing that it could not see you.  So at least the idea that you can used blocked vision, under ridiculous circumstances, to solve a problem started in IF.

Does anybody remember which game it was?[/quote]
Since that joke also appears in the [i]Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy[/i] book, I assume it is from that game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3661&start=0#p26130
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Player's holdall and the "handled" property
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-14 14:46:52

If an object goes directly from the floor to a container, it won't set "handled". Does that explain what you're seeing? The object will only score once, but perhaps not the first time it enters the player's possession.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3659&start=0#p26131
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room with multiple exits in the same direction?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-14 14:48:37

[quote="JoeyJones"]It would seem more intuitive given that people (other than aborigines) tend to navigate using relative rather than absolute directions. We say, "turn left, left again, then right", rather than, "when heading north, turn west, south, then west again".[/quote]

If you ever have a long winter evening and want to curl up with some amusing reading, go hunting for all the threads devoted to this topic over the years [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3661&start=0#p26132
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Player's holdall and the "handled" property
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-11-14 14:51:08

I had a play around with your little code snippet. I assumed you made 'book' a kind of thing. In that case when you say "after taking a book when the book is not handled", I think Inform doesn't realise that the first book you're talking about is the same as the second.

This works just fine:

[code]After taking a book when the noun is not handled:
	say "Taken.";
	increase the score by 1.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3638&start=0#p26133
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: An Added Layer of Complexity
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-14 14:56:30

[quote="Jizaboz"]A friend of mine with a bachelors in computer science basically told me that he prefers TADS over Inform for this reason. Says TADS is more of a "programmer's IF language" to him. *shrug*[/quote]
I probably shouldn't say anything at all, but I can't resist...  [emote]:?[/emote] 

I can see two reasons why people say that:

1. TADS is a more consistent language. Its complexities are in the libraries and the basic tools it provides don't require hours and hours of learning and confusion. Fair enough, especially if you're the kind of programmer that doesn't mind learning how to use lots of libraries.

2. TADS is a more traditional language. It's strongly object-oriented, and doesn't have any of this newfangled imperative/declarative/predicate hoo-hah. To make this claim, however, you have to limit your definition of "programmer" to someone who isn't really interested in computer science... or in learning new computer languages.

I7 is the Perl of IF languages. TADS is the Java of IF languages. When the Python and Ruby of IF languages show up, please let me know.

[quote="Jizaboz"][quote="I4L"]
There are obvious obstacles to this kind of setup. I almost started coding an AJAX/PHP thing on a whim earlier in the week, but got distracted by [b]some kind of collapsed lung thing[/b] or whatever. 
[/quote]

Wait.. what?[/quote]
Uh, I was kinda wondering about that too.... Hope you're ok!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3661&start=0#p26134
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Player's holdall and the "handled" property
User: windracer / DateTime: 2011-11-14 15:00:54

[quote="JoeyJones"]I had a play around with your little code snippet. I assumed you made 'book' a kind of thing. In that case when you say "after taking a book when the book is not handled", I think Inform doesn't realise that the first book you're talking about is the same as the second.[/quote]
Yes, book is defined as a kind of thing.

[code]A book is a kind of thing. Understand "book" as a book. A book has some text called title. A book has some text called author. A book is either scanned or unscanned.[/code]

Sure enough, you were right. When I changed my "before taking" rule to use "the noun" it now works as I expected.

Thanks for the quick replies!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3642&start=0#p26135
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Truth States vs Tables
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-14 15:03:00

I would expect a truth state variable to be easier AND faster than a table of flags, unless you had a large number of truth states that were closely related enough that they could all be processed with a loop.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3541&start=0#p26136
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Nationality relationship
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2011-11-14 15:04:40

[quote="matt w"]Someone might have a clever solution, but what I might try is deleting the to-decide phrase, putting back the line about "A person has a nationality-name called the demonym," and then looping through persons when play begins to set their nationality according to their nation. Then I think you could use the line "Understand the demonym property as describing a person." It wouldn't handle people changing their nationality in the course of play, but maybe that won't happen.[/quote]
This works beautifully.  It asks for disambiguation ("who did you mean?") when there's more than one of that demonym in the room.

The only hiccup is that the player can say "examine magnar" (for instance) and get a description of himself.  I can live with that, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3646&start=0#p26137
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Viewing the real-time state of variables...
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-14 15:07:15

[quote="I4L"]But I think that for debugging how a certain extension affects your world, or how some things are happening when, it'd be nice to be able to say something like "Showstate Variable" and just be told what it is, instead of having to change the code on each compile to display something in the status bar.[/quote]
It's certainly something I'd like to see, but I think the problem is parsing. The parser is built to understand things, and on rare occasions, rooms, numbers and kinds-of-value. But I'm not sure the names of variables and properties are even preserved in the compiled story, much less in a form that can be understood by the parser.

If I'm wrong, please let me know how it can be done!

I do sometimes "showme [object]" when the object has a property I want to know about. But sometimes I want to know how the result of a dynamic property or relation for an object or pair of objects. Not sure if that can be done either.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3539&start=0#p26138
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: HANGAR 22 by Rob O'Hara
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-11-14 15:11:34

OK, just finished it. Pretty fun! Will PM thoughts/critique.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3645&start=0#p26139
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conversation Package triggering things... I think?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-14 15:18:23

[quote="I4L"][code]Instead of talking to NPC: [Throws an error]
     If Done_With_You is true:
          say "He doesn't have anything else to say."

Response of NPC when asked about blinker fluid:
     say "It's on aisle five. I'm busy, so get lost.";
     Now Done_With_You is true.
[/code][/quote]

A couple ideas:

In another thread you said you were considering using a table as an alternative to truth states. In this particular case, it looks like what you really want is a property:

[code]A person can be done talking.[/code]

Aside from the action descriptions already mentioned, you have to be careful with Instead rules because they stop the action by default, preventing any other rules from firing. If you have an Instead rule that isn't specific, but then do a test within the rule, you might end up getting no output at all.

Sorry if that came out kind of garbled. Here's a rule of thumb:

If an Instead rule doesn't handle the action, it must continue the action.

In this case, I think a response rule would work:

[code]First response of a done talking person (called responder):
    say "[That-those of responder] do[es]n't have anything else to say.";[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3659&start=0#p26140
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room with multiple exits in the same direction?
User: Exoow / DateTime: 2011-11-14 15:26:47

HanonO: probably! I suspect I was imagining the directions too rigidly, as if drawn on a grid.

JoeyJones: keen observation. As a beginner, I'll stick with the default system for now. It poses enough challenges as it is. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3660&start=0#p26142
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Why text adventures beat graphical games in realism
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-11-14 15:32:02

The Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal first was referenced/appeared on the HHGG radio show, but it looks like the joke in question didn't come up there. I have a feeling like the joke showed up in the books first and then was used in the game? But I don't know. (These hypernerdy dedicated wikis still aren't nerdy enough to cite their dang sources.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3661&start=0#p26143
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Player's holdall and the "handled" property
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-14 15:35:15

You might still run into Zarf's problem if you have a situation like this:

[code]Test is a room.
	
A book is a kind of thing.

There is one book in Test.
	
After taking a not handled book:
	increase the score by 1;
	continue the action;

The carrying capacity of the player is 5.

The backpack is a player's holdall. The description of the backpack is "This is your purple backpack that you take to school every day." The player wears the backpack.

Test me with "put book in backpack/take book"[/code]

You can fix that like this:

[code]Last after taking something:
	now the noun is handled;
	continue the action;
[/code]
If you make both rules into "carry out" rules, you don't need to say "continue the action," but whatever you do, you have to make sure the rules fire in the right order.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3660&start=0#p26144
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Why text adventures beat graphical games in realism
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-11-14 15:44:37

It sounds like Hitchhiker's Guide is what I was thinking of.  Interesting that I remembered it from the game, but not from the book.  I guess too much Vogon poetry has taken its toll on what's left of my brain.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3659&start=0#p26145
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room with multiple exits in the same direction?
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-11-14 15:55:30

Alternately for rooms like hallways, you can just break it into two rooms and have Room A west of Hallway North and Room B west of Hallway South.  This increases your travel time and can seem odd when you can't see an object at the other end off the hallway, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3661&start=0#p26146
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Player's holdall and the "handled" property
User: windracer / DateTime: 2011-11-14 16:14:23

Ah, thanks for that! I hadn't played with the 'put' command so I didn't realize that was what Zarf was referring to. I think I've got it working now, thanks again!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3638&start=0#p26147
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: An Added Layer of Complexity
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-11-14 16:22:53

[quote="capmikee"]TADS is the Java of IF languages.[/quote]

I heard this comparison a lot before learning TADS 3, and it actually kept me away from the language since I never warmed to Java.

I think it is not accurate, or at least the salient features of Java - massive swathes of boilerplate and EnterpriseStyleVariableNames - are nowhere to be found in idiomatic T3.

TADS 3 has:
- Macros
- First class functions
- Anonymous functions
- Strong dynamic typing
- Prototype-based inheritance

I would call it a multi-paradigm language that supports both functional and object-oriented styles. The sort of language that's somewhat fashionable at the moment, in fact. The dynamic compilation features in 3.1 push it squarely into "not Java" territory.

IMO Inform 7 is more like the Haskell of IF languages; it is as genuinely innovative as it is unorthodox; for the uninitiated, the major challenge is getting your source code past the compiler.

I could see calling I7 the "academic's IF language" on those grounds, to the extent you accept that as a neutral term. It is not unfair to call T3 the "programmer's IF language" by way of contrast, though of course programmers use I7 (by definition), and in fact T3 is not bereft of design choices that might interest an academic.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3638&start=0#p26150
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: An Added Layer of Complexity
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-11-14 17:19:59

To me (and I think I'm decidedly in the minority here), the fact that I7 works differently than most traditional programming languages is precisely what makes it usable for me.  Prior to working with I7, the extent of my programming experience was a "bytes for troglodytes" introductory course in college in which we learned to say "hello, world" in WATFIV (this was about 35 years ago), and to me "C" refers to the grade I probably got in the course and Java refers to the hot brown liquid in my cup.  My mind just does not work in a way that takes well to traditional programming languages, and as a practical matter if those were the only choices I would not be writing IF.  I7, although it clearly not just standard English and requires a bunch of playing around to learn what works and what doesn't, is nonethless far more consistent with the way my own mind works and far more "comfortable" for me.  It allows people like me, who have ideas but don't have a programming background, to produce a functional piece of IF.

I can understand why I7 is frustrating for those who do think more in traditional programming terms, but I think its great that there's something available that is comfortable for the rest of us.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3638&start=0#p26151
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: An Added Layer of Complexity
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-14 17:46:48

[quote]I can understand why I7 is frustrating for those who do think more in traditional programming terms[/quote]

Some of us think it's great.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=250#p26155
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: George / DateTime: 2011-11-14 18:57:02

[quote="trojo"]which were very similar to text adventures, except with a lot of painfully slow walking all the way across the screen[/quote]

haha, so true. Welcome to the forums trojo [emote]:)[/emote].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3638&start=0#p26158
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: An Added Layer of Complexity
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-14 21:15:03

[quote="zarf"][quote]I can understand why I7 is frustrating for those who do think more in traditional programming terms[/quote]

Some of us think it's great.[/quote]

We all think it's great. That's why we use it. But some of us also find some of the "conveniences" (Personally for me, the tab thing makes me crazy) a little difficult to get used to.

Yes, there are differences between I7 and TADS. My question, though, was regarding an IDE for I7. I hope that error reporting in I7 is going to improve. From the standpoint of "the rest of us", I don't need to be told "That's like saying an apple is an orange". I need to know that I have a semicolon on line 472 instead of a period. 

I know that there are things to learn and adjust to. Like I can't define a piece of furniture for a room before I've defined the room. I understand why, but... I don't like it. And I struggle with organizing things like this.

I was just wondering if anyone had considered an IDE for "the rest" who are struggling with the syntax. At least in the beginning, until we complete our crucible and are fully baptized in the gospel of I7. Or maybe for those people who just work better with more pointy-clicky.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3638&start=0#p26159
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: An Added Layer of Complexity
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-14 21:35:45

[quote="zarf"][quote]I can understand why I7 is frustrating for those who do think more in traditional programming terms[/quote]
Some of us think it's great.[/quote]
I guess it depends how you define "traditional," as well. I wasn't counting among those people programmers who spend their spare time thinking up schemes for a 100% rule-based programming language...

But back to the topic: I could imagine an IDE where you go into the World index and create rooms and objects and set their properties and connect them with relations. But the thing for me is that's the EASY part of I7. The hard part is getting things to behave in special ways, and I can't see a connect-the-boxes GUI doing that for you.

It would be nice to be able to drag things around the World index so they look nicer, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3339&start=50#p26160
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Round of Game Updates for the 2011 IF Competit
User: mwigdahl / DateTime: 2011-11-14 22:44:11

As a player, I'm all in favor of getting bugs fixed quickly.  As an author, it would be nice to be able to make some forward progress on the game during the Comp, and not have an enforced six-week stasis period where you lose momentum.  As a reviewer, I simply downloaded the lot at the beginning of the Comp and played what I got, as my only "fairness" concern was that I didn't want to play Game A early on, ding it for a bunch of bugs, and then later play Game B, which was just as buggy but had been thoroughly fixed by that point.  I decided I was going to play and review the first release only, which dovetailed nicely with my laziness.

I think the risk of trying to make major changes in a game mid-Comp somewhat balances out the "unfairness" of being able to put a new version in front of (some) players.  An example from this year that Emily pointed out as well:  I'm not at all sure that Adam's changes to [i]The Elfen Maiden[/i] / [i]A Comedy of Error Messages[/i] actually improved the game, despite his well-intentioned effort at maximizing political correctness.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3638&start=0#p26161
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: An Added Layer of Complexity
User: George / DateTime: 2011-11-14 23:06:01

[quote="bcressey"]IMO Inform 7 is more like the Haskell of IF languages[/quote]

This rings so true. [url=http://blog.ezyang.com/2011/11/how-to-read-haskell/]Check this out[/url] for example. 

Does that make T3 the Scala? [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=30#p26163
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-11-15 00:34:33

Awesome pictures. Glad this thread got necro'd.

I still want to write a game in this. It might not be publishable, but dang if it wouldn't be fun.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3638&start=0#p26166
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: An Added Layer of Complexity
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-15 01:00:54

[quote="capmikee"]The hard part is getting things to behave in special ways, and I can't see a connect-the-boxes GUI doing that for you.[/quote]

I'll take that challenge.

Not promising results... Just that I'll take the challenge. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3660&start=0#p26168
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Why text adventures beat graphical games in realism
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-15 02:12:03

The Goon Show sports an escape from the Roman catacombs by one of the characters climbing the shoulders of the other and then hauling the one below up to climb his shoulders in turn. One of the characters comments "I'd like to see them do this on television ..."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3666&start=0#p26170
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: every turn
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-11-15 04:21:47

How do you effectively write an ever turn rule based on a truth state? like..

[code]every turn if PlayInChair is true:
	say "hello".[/code]


also an every turn rule that adds to a variable based on a truth state..

example

[code]every turn if PlayerInChair is true:
          x+=1[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3666&start=0#p26174
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: every turn
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-15 05:24:50

When conditions are made part of rule preambles, you have to use "when" or "while" instead of "if":
[code]Every turn while PlayInChair is true:
	say "hello".[/code]

For adding to a number variable, see ch. 8.12. "Increasing and decreasing".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3666&start=0#p26175
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: every turn
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-11-15 06:56:22

how about checking the equality of a variable? I can't seem to find that.

[code]Every turn while WaterRising = 5:
	end game in death.[/code]

will that do it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3666&start=0#p26176
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: every turn
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-15 07:23:57

Just "is" instead of "=" should do it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3666&start=0#p26177
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: every turn
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-11-15 07:42:23

hmm, end game in death isn't working... also tried end game. Here's a code snippet..

[code]Every turn while WaterRising is 5:
	say " You fail to escape from the chair. The water slowly rises up over your face. You try to hold your breath, but it only lasts so long. A final scream of terror, and gasp for breath, brings about your horrific demise.";end game.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3666&start=0#p26178
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: every turn
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-11-15 08:20:43

I think if you use the style of putting each part of a rule on a separate line, with indentations to indicate the "levels," you need to do that throughout the entire rule.  Thus:

[code]Every turn while WaterRising is 5:
   say " You fail to escape from the chair. The water slowly rises up over your face. You try to hold your breath, but it only lasts so long. A final scream of terror, and gasp for breath, brings about your horrific demise.";
   end game in death.
[/code]


(Note that the above example uses spaces to indent before the "end game" line; the spaces need to be replaced with a tab character to work properly.)

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3666&start=0#p26179
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: every turn
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-15 08:50:29

For some or no reason Inform never accepted 'end game'; the correct syntax was 'end [u]the[/u] game' with a mandatory definite article.

However, that phrase is now deprecated and will probably not be part of future Inform syntax. Use [code]end the story finally saying "You have died!"[/code](or "You have won!" or "You fail to escape from the chair. The water slowly rises up over your face. You try to hold your breath, but it only lasts so long. A final scream of terror, and gasp for breath, brings about your horrific demise." or whatever you want Inform to print at that ending). See ch. 9.4. "When play ends".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3638&start=10#p26180
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: An Added Layer of Complexity
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-15 08:56:01

Okay then! I'd love to see that.

I have a hazy memory of the old Mac OS IDE - pre-OSX, not CodeWarrior but the free one. I think it was for creating dialog boxes but it might have been something else. It had a bunch of checkboxes and entry fields, and as you set them, it would change the line of code that would be written. Does anyone remember more details? I know we've got some long-time Mac programmers out there...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3666&start=0#p26181
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: every turn
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-15 08:57:10

You probably don't want "end the story finally"; that's the equivalent to ending the game in victory. (This can affect the options for what the player can do after the game ends; many games prompt you for AMUSING things to do if the story has ended finally.) Just leave out "finally."

Also, the last text Felix gives is too long. If you want to say something long, you should print it using a say phrase, and then end the story saying "You have drowned".  (I'm sure Felix didn't mean it as a serious example, but one of the comp games actually did something like that, and it was confusing.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3668&start=0#p26183
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: PLSG #10: The Valley House
User: Rotonoto / DateTime: 2011-11-15 09:23:55

I've put the last in the Painless Little Stupid Games series on my Website for betatesting. To download it to your interpreter, go to <a class="postlink" href="http://w3.cnm.edu/~mrblonde/The%20Valley%20House.z8">http://w3.cnm.edu/~mrblonde/The%20Valley%20House.z8</a>. To play it using Parchment in your Web browser, go to <a class="postlink" href="http://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A//w3.cnm.edu/%7Emrblonde/The%20Valley%20House.z8">http://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A//w3.c ... 20House.z8</a>.

As you see, it's a z8 game (I think because of the number of objects implemented), but still very brief.  Quoting from the ABOUT text:

[i]The Valley House[/i] is puzzle-free interactive fiction.  The story (such as it is) will proceed without your help, or you can try to discover the activities that push it forward.  There's time to look around you and explore your surroundings - cursorily or in detail - in the spaces between time transitions.  The game will carry you through a day, in some ways a typical day, in other ways not.  How much you discover about the nature of this day, and your part in it, is up to you.

Please send any comments to (symbols for words) payyasi at hotmail dot com.  Thanks!

Bob Reeves

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3638&start=10#p26185
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: An Added Layer of Complexity
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-11-15 12:19:09

[quote="George"]Does that make T3 the Scala? [emote];)[/emote][/quote]

I really liked Scala until I started using generics, where type inference breaks down and you're forced to annotate everything.

[spoiler]Scala:
[code]
def compose[T](f:(T)=>T,g:(T)=>T):T=>T =
{
    (x:T)=>f(g(x))
}
[/code]

T3:
[code]
compose(f,g) {
    return ({x: f(g(x))});
}
[/code][/spoiler]

There are definite similarities, but static vs. dynamic typing makes functional constructs a lot less appealing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3670&start=0#p26187
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: New extension: Flexible Action Requirements
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-15 13:37:43

I think I will be submitting this extension to the inform7 site, so please have a good hard look at it and let me know what you think.

This came out of the discussion on making new actions with more flexible behavior than the original, in this thread:

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3612">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3612</a>

Thanks to Trojo and Matt W for their inspiration and encouragement!

You can download the extension here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://eyeballsun.org/i/Flexible%20Action%20Requirements.i7x">http://eyeballsun.org/i/Flexible%20Acti ... ements.i7x</a>

Or unspoiler it here:

[spoiler][code]Version 1 of Flexible Action Requirements by Mike Ciul begins here.

"Overrides carrying requirements for specific actions, and provides more nuanced carrying and touchability requirements when needed."

Volume - Flexible Kinds of Action

Waiting is flexible about carrying the noun.
Waiting is flexible about carrying the second noun.
Waiting is flexible about touching the noun.
Waiting is flexible about touching the second noun.

Definition: An object is involved if the current action involves it.

Volume - Carrying Requirements

Part - Determining Carrying Requirements

Chapter - Only Available When Carried and Must Be Carried

Definition: an object (called item) is only available when carried:
	Follow the custom carrying requirements for the item;
	If the outcome of the rulebook is the it must be carried outcome, yes;
	no.
	
To decide whether (item - a thing) must be carried:
	If item is not involved, no;
	Decide on whether or not item is only available when carried.

Chapter - Custom Carrying Requirements Rules

The custom carrying requirements is an object-based rulebook. The custom carrying requirements rules have outcomes it must be carried (failure) and it may be merely visible (success).

Custom carrying requirements for the noun (this is the basic carrying requirements for the noun rule):
	If flexible about carrying the noun, make no decision;
	If the action requires a carried noun, it must be carried.
	
Custom carrying requirements for the second noun (this is the basic carrying requirements for the second noun rule):
	If flexible about carrying the second noun, make no decision;
	If the action requires a carried second noun, it must be carried.
			
Part - Enforcing Carrying Requirements

Chapter - The Flexible Carrying Requirements Rule

Section - Definition

An action-processing rule (this is the flexible carrying requirements rule):
	Repeat with item running through involved things:
		If the item is only available when carried:
			Carry out the implicitly taking activity with the item;
			If the item is not carried, stop the action.

The flexible carrying requirements rule is listed instead of the carrying requirements rule in the action-processing rules.

Chapter - Implicit Taking

For implicitly taking something (called the item):
	Do an implicit take with the item;
	
To do an implicit take with (O - an object):
	(- ImplicitTake({O}); -)
		
Volume - Touchability Requirements

Part - Determining Touchability

Chapter - Only Available When Touchable and Must Be Touched

Definition: an object (called item) is only available when touchable:
	Follow the custom touchability requirements for the item;
	If the outcome of the rulebook is the it must be touchable outcome, yes;
	no.

To decide whether (item - a thing) must be touched:
	If item is not involved, no;
	Decide on whether or not item is only available when touchable.

Chapter - Custom Touchability Requirements Rules
	
The custom touchability requirements is an object-based rulebook. The custom touchability requirements rules have outcomes it must be touchable (failure) and it may be merely visible (success).

Custom touchability requirements for the noun (this is the basic touchability requirements for the noun rule):
	If flexible about touching the noun, make no decision;
	If the action requires a touchable noun, it must be touchable.
	
Custom touchability requirements for the second noun (this is the basic touchability requirements for the second noun rule):
	If flexible about touching the second noun, make no decision;
	If the action requires a touchable second noun, it must be touchable.

Flexible Action Requirements ends here.

---- DOCUMENTATION ----

Section: Altering Action Requirements

Some actions in the Standard Rules are described as acting on "one carried thing." If we want to waive those requirements, our only option is to create a new action that doesn't have them. This extension removes that problem by making the carrying requirements more flexible.

In addition, we can now specify touchability requirements in the same level of detail as with carrying requirements. We can also use it to make fine-tuned tests in our own accessibility rules.

Section: Carrying Requirements

To waive the carrying requirements for an action, we can designate it as either of the "flexible about carrying the noun" or "flexible about carrying the second noun" kinds of action.

	Eating is flexible about carrying the noun.
	Unlocking something with the Force is flexible about carrying the second noun.

If that's not fine enough detail, we can add rules to the "custom carrying requirements" rulebook, which is an object-based rulebook. The rulebook has two outcomes, "it must be carried," and "it may be merely visible." If the rulebook makes no decision, we assume there are no carrying requirements.

	Custom carrying requirements for the speck of dust:
		if taking, make no decision;
		If the current action involves the speck of dust, it must be carried.

	Custom carrying requirements for the Force:
		it may be merely visible.

To test the carrying requirements, we can use the "only available when carried" adjective.

	Before doing something when the noun is only available when carried:
		if the noun is not carried:
			say "Sorry, you can't do that when you're not carrying [the noun].";
			stop the action;
		otherwise:
			say "(Good thing you're carrying [the noun] now)[command clarification break]"

All of the built-in custom carrying requirements rules test if the item is "involved," i.e. it is the noun or the second noun. If you create custom carrying requirements rules that decide "it must be carried" for any other objects, you might get unexpected results when using the "only available when carried" adjective. If you must be absolutely sure that the item is both involved AND required for its role in the current action, you can use this to-decide-whether phrase:

	if the golden plough must be carried:

Section: Touchability Requirements

Two similar kinds of action are defined so we can waive touchability requirements for objects: "flexible about touching the noun" and "flexible about touching the second noun."

The adjective "only available when touchable" will tell us if an object is subject to touchability requirements of the current action. And we can make sure it is also involved in the current action using the to-decide-whether phrase "must be touched."

To meddle with touchability requirements further, we may create "custom touchability requirements" rules. The outcomes are called "it must be touchable," and again, "it may be merely visible."

Unlike the carrying requirements modifications, though, there are no built-in changes to accessibility rules. Declaring that
	
	listening is flexible about touching the noun

will not allow us to listen to things that are out of reach. We'd have to define our own rules, perhaps like this:

	Reaching outside (this is the can always reach available when merely visible objects rule):
		unless an involved thing is only available when touchable, allow access;

	The can always reach available when merely visible objects rule is listed before the can't reach outside closed containers rule in the reaching outside rules.

Even then, we would still need additional grammar lines or "try" statements to enable the player to perform actions on things that are not in scope.

The main value of the touchability requirements, then, is so we can designate some objects in scope as "too far away" or "too high up:" 

	Accessibility rule when the fans must be touched:
		say "The fans are too far away.";
		stop the action;

Section: Notes

Thanks to Trojo and Matt W for inspiring this extension. You may contact Mike Ciul at captainmikee@yahoo.com with bug reports and feedback.

Example: * "Mange Tout" - A blancmange that can't be taken but can be eaten, and tennis fans who can't be touched but can be heard.

	*: "Mange Tout"
	
	Include Flexible Action Requirements by Mike Ciul.

	Wimbledon Stadium is a room. A giant blancmange is a fixed in place edible thing in Wimbledon Stadium.

	The fans are a plural-named person in Wimbledon.

	Accessibility rule when the fans must be touched:
		say "The fans are too far away.";
		stop the action;

	Instead of listening to the fans when the blancmange is off-stage:
		say "A tremendous roar of jubilation washes over you.";
		end the story finally saying "You have won the match."
	
	Instead of listening to the fans:
		say "The crowd is hushed with terror and anticipation.";
	
	Eating is flexible about carrying the noun;
	Listening is flexible about touching the noun;

	Test me with "listen to fans/eat fans/take blancmange/eat blancmange/listen to fans"

[/code][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3638&start=10#p26188
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: An Added Layer of Complexity
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-11-15 13:47:54

[quote="bcressey"]IMO Inform 7 is more like the Haskell of IF languages; it is as genuinely innovative as it is unorthodox; for the uninitiated, the major challenge is getting your source code past the compiler. I could see calling I7 the "academic's IF language" on those grounds, to the extent you accept that as a neutral term.[/quote]Thirded.[quote]It is not unfair to call T3 the "programmer's IF language" by way of contrast, though of course programmers use I7 (by definition), and in fact T3 is not bereft of design choices that might interest an academic.[/quote]The "practical programmer's" language? The "work-a-day programmer's" language?  Something like that.  As opposed to the programmer who's interested in languages for their own sake.

Scala with generics looks a lot like C#.  [quote="capmikee"]I have a hazy memory of the old Mac OS IDE - pre-OSX, not CodeWarrior but the free one.[/quote]XCode, formerly ProjectBuilder, had a sticks n' springs way of constructing GUIs, and used the same property-setting window that Borland  pioneered with Delphi in the late 90's. 

But to answer the original poster, if you want to make IF with GUIs there are quality authoring tools other than Inform & TADS which allow that methodology.   But I am surprised that someone who can AJAX has difficulty with compiler errors of that sort. All languages have an initial curve until you understand what each error message "really means".  I have a short list of C# error messages with "what it really means by that" explanations in a text document somewhere around here.  There's a popular one involving an inability to chain struct assignments the way proper classes can be done, for example.   
 
However, I think someone did make an attempt at generating I7 from some other tool, though I can't remember off the top of my head who or how or why.  Um, try searching this I7 forum's back messages over the past year or two?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3670&start=0#p26189
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New extension: Flexible Action Requirements
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2011-11-15 14:03:24

"Australia?"

"No, try again."

"Australia!"

Python aside, this sounds very useful.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3670&start=0#p26190
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New extension: Flexible Action Requirements
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-15 14:13:37

I've already found a problem. My example doesn't involve anything that IS takeable, so I neglected to test for that in my new carrying requirements rule. And when I did test for that, I realized that the carrying requirements allow wearing as well as carrying. I think...

[code]There is a kilt in Wimbledon. The kilt is wearable.

Test me with "take kilt/wear kilt/drop kilt/wear kilt/remove kilt"[/code]

Here's the update to the flexible carrying requirements rule:
[code]An action-processing rule (this is the flexible carrying requirements rule):
	Repeat with item running through involved things that are not held by the person asked:
		If the item is only available when carried:
			Carry out the implicitly taking activity with the item;
			If the item is not carried, stop the action.[/code]
Does that look right now?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3670&start=0#p26191
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New extension: Flexible Action Requirements
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-15 15:09:48

I'm not sure whether this answers your question (or causes more problems), but if you eat something that you're wearing, the implicit action that it triggers is "taking it off" rather than "taking." I think this means that you have to make some more changes to your implicitly taking activity, because as written the implicit take will yield "you already have that." I think. 

(Another point is that taking things off can [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=804]break the player's carrying capacity[/url]; that's not really your problem but you might want to be aware of the coming bugfix.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3642&start=0#p26192
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Truth States vs Tables
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-11-15 15:28:55

I've run into this same issue.
I use many truth state variables, and I tried the whole Table idea.
I ended up iterating over the table dozens of times each turn and even though tables are supposed to be fast, there is no replacement for direct access.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=40#p26193
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-11-15 15:48:12

Just a small note: ADRIFT's online interpreter seems to have trouble executing the >GIVE commands I put into Doc Lobster. I would recommend using the ADRIFT 4 Runner, Gargoyle, or Spatterlight to play through it.

If anyone else runs into any trouble with it, please let me know.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3671&start=0#p26194
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Using Tags, Variables, Canstants. etc. in TADS3
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-11-15 15:51:40

If you remember AGT, MAGX and so forth, You will recall that they used many tags, constants, variables and such that you could use/check/alter with every command/turn in the game. I'm talking about such things as 'food left', 'time to rest', defining treasure points and things and so on.

I'm just starting to write my TADS3 IF game and would like to know how these are employed in that language. I have been reading the TADS3 manuals like crazy to determine various uses of macros and such but still seem to need lots of help. Can anyone offer some help in this regard. [emote]:?:[/emote] 

What are the best extensions, source files. games and so forth to give me some ideas. [emote]:?:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3671&start=0#p26195
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using Tags, Variables, Canstants. etc. in TADS3
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-11-15 16:33:30

For the most part, you shouldn't need to mess with macros. Each of the items you've mentioned would normally be defined as a property of an object.

To start with foodLeft, I'm not sure what object you'd want that to apply to, as food items are more likely to be individual objects. You might want something like this (untested):

[code]breadLoaf: Food 'loaf bread' 'loaf of bread'
bitesRemaining = 5
dobjFor(Eat) {
     action () {
          bitesRemaining = bitesRemaining - 1;
          if (bitesRemaining == 0) {
               moveInto(nil);
               "You wolf down the last of the bread. ";
          }
          else "You tear off a hunk of bread and eat it. ";
     }
}
// etc.[/code]
The me object is an object just like any other, so you can easily give it a daemon that counts down a timeToRest property and nags the player in increasingly strident terms as that property approaches zero.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3671&start=0#p26196
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using Tags, Variables, Canstants. etc. in TADS3
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-11-15 16:45:36

When you can't think of a specific place to put a property, one possibility is to add it to libGlobal.

[code]
modify libGlobal
    foodCt = 200
;
[/code]

If I do something like that, I also define a macro alias in the game's .h file.
[code]
#define gFoodCt   (libGlobal.foodCt)
[/code]

Then it's just a matter of assigning the updated value to that property whenever it is recalculated.

Adv3 has some infrastructure for [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/tourguide/scoring-overview.htm]scoring[/url]; I recommend using Achievement objects - they are quite handy! For "every turn" stuff, you can set up a [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/tourguide/daemon.htm]Daemon[/url] to run your calculations.

I did some of this stuff in my T3 port of ToaURoD (the Inform 7 homebrew adventure kit for [url=http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/toask.htm]Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom[/url]). You're welcome to look at that source code if you think it would help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3670&start=0#p26197
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New extension: Flexible Action Requirements
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-15 16:50:30

[quote="matt w"]I'm not sure whether this answers your question (or causes more problems), but if you eat something that you're wearing, the implicit action that it triggers is "taking it off" rather than "taking." I think this means that you have to make some more changes to your implicitly taking activity, because as written the implicit take will yield "you already have that." I think.[/quote]
It seems there's no problem there - confirming my impression that carrying requirements allow wearing, it's handled by a check rule called "can't eat clothing without removing it first." Of course.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3670&start=0#p26198
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New extension: Flexible Action Requirements
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-15 16:53:57

[quote="matt w"](Another point is that taking things off can [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=804]break the player's carrying capacity[/url]; that's not really your problem but you might want to be aware of the coming bugfix.)[/quote]
Err... that's good to know. It has pretty serious effects on my WIP, which has carrying capacity issues.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3671&start=0#p26201
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using Tags, Variables, Canstants. etc. in TADS3
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-11-15 17:43:22

Thanks a million for the help. It's all (TADS3) starting to make sense. All of the different coding examples I've received over the last few days have been invaluable. [emote]:D[/emote] 

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3638&start=10#p26207
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: An Added Layer of Complexity
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-15 18:52:03

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]But I am surprised that someone who can AJAX has difficulty with compiler errors of that sort. [/quote]

Well, I don't personally AJAX. But I'm not above borrowing that part heavily from those who do. [emote]:)[/emote]
 
[quote="Ron Newcomb"]However, I think someone did make an attempt at generating I7 from some other tool, though I can't remember off the top of my head who or how or why.  Um, try searching this I7 forum's back messages over the past year or two?[/quote]

We've beaten the error messages to death. Maybe I gave a bad example. Situations I'm talking about crop up when you forget some piece of punctuation somewhere, but it doesn't actually choke the compiler until several lines (or blocks) of code later. So you're left looking at a piece of code that is generating an error caused by something completely unrelated in a complete different part of the code.

Not saying it would be hugely successful. Not saying you could use it to write complete, complex games. (Not saying you couldn't.) Just saying that maybe it would be useful for framing a game or ironing out the tricky bits.

I might go back through the forums to see what I can find about this archaic tool to which you make reference. It would have to be on a weekend during some heavy drinking, as I can't think of a search function that I hate worse than this one. May try to bribe Google for some assistance.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3674&start=0#p26212
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Do you think IF LPs is a bad idea?
User: Kytaari / DateTime: 2011-11-15 19:27:18

I've tried this many times on youtube, and it never seems to pick up. I may be doing something wrong. It doesn't help that I often have to go through the puzzles inexperienced. Maybe I'm just not very entertaining? 

If you have any advice, I'd feel great. I don't know what might make the videos more fun. My RPG videos have decent hits, but nothing I've uploaded that's IF related does. People would much rather see me explore a more graphic world.

You know, I'm beginning to think; do you think youtube just isn't the place for this? I know transcripts have been around, so do you suppose IF is more meant to be [i]read[/i] instead of [i]watched[/i]?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3675&start=0#p26214
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: first time during scene
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-11-15 19:39:58

I thought it would be possible to do something like:

[code]
instead of examining foo for the first time during my scene:
[/code]

But if you do this, it's looking for the first time during play, not the first time during my scene. In other words, if you examined foo before the start of my scene, the above code would never fire.

I also tried this:

[code]
instead of examining foo during my scene for the first time:
[/code]

But that won't even compile.

Is there an elegant way to catch the first time something happens during a scene? At the moment I'm just doing something like this:

[code]
my scene has a truth state called foo-examined.
[/code]

Then I can do this:

[code]
instead of examining foo during my scene:
    if the foo-examined of my scene is false:
        say "first time!";
        now the foo-examined of my scene is true;
    otherwise:
        say "whatever.";
[/code]

But it feels like an ugly hack and becomes a real pain if you need to track several "first times"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3674&start=0#p26217
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Do you think IF LPs is a bad idea?
User: mao42ranma / DateTime: 2011-11-15 19:52:50

Well, I don't think they're meant to be watched, but rather experienced. I often do play throughs with my friends and my wife, where others can add their input and share in the game, give advice, things like that. You could see if there is anyone locally willing to join a group for that kind of thing and you could do regular meet-ups. Alternately, live-streaming with chat could also work. Turn your watcher's into co-players.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3674&start=0#p26219
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Do you think IF LPs is a bad idea?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-11-15 20:09:06

Yeah, I think YouTube is not inherently a very good format for IF playthroughs. I've seen IF LPs done successfully on a forum; [url=http://www.allthingsjacq.com/interactive_fiction.html#clubfloyd]in an interpreter ported to a MUD[/url]; and as group play in meatspace. The first two have the advantage of being in IF's natural medium of text; the latter two allow for quicker response and finer-grained audience participation. I'm not sure what special advantages a video of play would bring.

(Also, what are you meaning by LP? I've seen two senses: one with strong audience participation, one that's just 'here is my play session'.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3670&start=0#p26220
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New extension: Flexible Action Requirements
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-15 20:17:23

You probably just have to write a "check taking off" rule that's analogous to the can't exceed carrying capacity rule (and one more for holdalls, if you have holdalls). There's a similar issue with giving, which may or may not come up.

(Did you catch the subtle plug for my new [url=http://mattweiner.net/Mirthful%20Messiahs/]game[/url]? Official rollout, such as it is, when I finish my comp reviews, probably.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3638&start=10#p26221
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: An Added Layer of Complexity
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-11-15 20:36:57

Are you maybe thinking of Juhana's [url=http://nitku.net/if/thingcreator/]I7 Thing Creator[/url]?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3638&start=10#p26222
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: An Added Layer of Complexity
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-15 21:08:56

That's a pretty good bet.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3670&start=0#p26223
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New extension: Flexible Action Requirements
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-15 21:11:18

[quote="matt w"]You probably just have to write a "check taking off" rule that's analogous to the can't exceed carrying capacity rule (and one more for holdalls, if you have holdalls). There's a similar issue with giving, which may or may not come up.[/quote]
Yeah, it wasn't too hard once I knew about it.

I think I've got giving taken care of - Giving is rolled into my Speech Motivations extension, and it's translated into something more like "offering," with the accepting part handled by an actual take.

[quote](Did you catch the subtle plug for my new [url=http://mattweiner.net/Mirthful%20Messiahs/]game[/url]? Official rollout, such as it is, when I finish my comp reviews, probably.)[/quote]
Oh yes, I tried it out. Although with the spoilers, it didn't take more that 5 minutes or so to get through! [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3676&start=0#p26224
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: When play begins, move character if...?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-15 21:21:40

Okay, so... Yet another "problem".

I'm using Menus by Emily Short to toggle a couple of things before game play. One of the "toggles" is a tutorial mode. Toggling the mode is fine, all that is working well. Sets the truth state variable, which is my new best friend. The problem is determining what happens based on that variable.

I'm looking for ideas on how to handle this. Basically when play begins, I want to check to see if the tutorial mode variable is true. If it is, I want to trigger putting the player into a specific room. This seems easiest to begin a scene, dole out advice and whatever.

But I can't seem to make anything fire like it's supposed to.The menu example is, if I recall, taken straight out of the documentation for Menus. My understanding is that after the player "quits" the menu (which I need to change), s/he is dumped straight into the game, being the first room that I have defined.

So the problem I'm running into is that no matter where I put the "If tutorial mode is..." statement, Inform chokes on it. 

If I need to post code examples, I can. But it seems like one of those things that should be very simple. Hopefully I'm doing a better job of explaining it than I am coding it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3677&start=0#p26226
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I7] Hidden Objects
User: LCamelot / DateTime: 2011-11-15 21:36:28

How can I create objects that, while they exist in the current location, are not described and cannot be interacted with until the player uses an action such as "searching the room"?

I know this is probably an oft-asked question that has a simple answer, but I'll be a monkey's uncle if I can find a single example on how to do it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3670&start=0#p26228
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New extension: Flexible Action Requirements
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-15 22:06:16

Did you find the Secret Implemented Action?

[spoiler]HONK HORN (or SQUEEZE HORN)[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3677&start=0#p26229
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Hidden Objects
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-15 22:11:36

Is there any reason that they need to exist in the room? Because if not, I'd do this:

[code]The Yard is a room. "There's a huge pile of leaves in the middle of the yard." 
The pile of leaves is scenery in The Yard. "These leaves are piled very high. You could fit a horse under them."
The tennis ball is a thing.
Instead of searching the pile of leaves:
   say "You discover a tennis ball that you lost a while ago.";
   move the tennis ball to The Yard.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3677&start=0#p26232
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Hidden Objects
User: LCamelot / DateTime: 2011-11-15 22:39:13

As of now, there is no need for the objects I want hidden to be in the room.  But later I might implement something that repeats through every object in the room and does something to it, even hidden ones, in which case it might become problematic.

I wonder how complex creating a relation between objects and the room they're supposed to be in would be.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3675&start=0#p26235
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: first time during scene
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-15 22:45:15

So, first, the syntax you want is "Instead of examining the ball when my-scene is happening for the first time". "Scene is happening" is a condition that can be combined with other conditions in a "when" clause.

More generally:

Don't think of truth flags as an ugly hack for "first time" clauses. It's the other way around: "first time" is a handy shortcut for truth flags. It's nice shortcut to have, but don't get attached. Never waste more time trying to make a "first time" syntax work than it would have taken you to stick in a flag.

That said, here's another shortcut, which is sufficiently nifty that I'm surprised it's not in the standard rules:

[code]
To decide whether first occurrence:
	(- {-allocate-storage:first_occurrence}  (I7_ST_first_occurrence --> {-advance-counter:first_occurrence} )++ == 0 -).
[/code]

With that definition, you can stick in an "if first occurrence" anywhere a condition can go. It's not attached to any action success or failure; it's a test-and-set flag specific to that instance of the phrase "first occurrence".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=0#p26256
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2011-11-16 00:05:18

The Interactive Fiction Competition has ended. Congratulations to Ryan Veeder, whose "Taco Fiction" took first place! The top three games were:

Taco Fiction, by Ryan Veeder
Six, by Wade Clarke
The Play, by Deirdra Kiai(tie) 

The winners of the Miss Congeniality contest were:

Taco Fiction, by Ryan Veeder
The Play, by Deirdra Kiai
The Life (and Deaths) of Doctor M, by Edmund Wells and
Kerkerkruip, by Victor Gijsbers (tie for third)

Congratulations to all who entered!

The full results list:

1. Taco Fiction, by Ryan Veeder
2. Six, by Wade Clarke
3. The Play, by Deirdra Kiai
4. Escape From Santaland, by Jason Ermer
5. PataNoir, by Simon Christiansen
6. The Life (and Deaths) of Doctor M, by Edmund Wells
7. Beet the Devil, by Carolyn VanEseltine
8. Kerkerkruip, by Victor Gijsbers
9. Cana According To Micah, by Christopher Huang (writing as Rev. Stephen Dawson)
10. A Comedy of Error Messages, by Adam Le Doux
11. The Binary, by Simon (writing as Bloomengine)
12. Tenth Plague, by Lynnea Dally
13. Cursed, by Nick Rogers
(tie) Ted Paladin And The Case Of The Abandoned House, by Anssi Raisanen
15. Cold Iron, by Lyman Clive Charles
16. It, by Emily Boegheim
17. Andromeda Awakening, by Marco Innocenti
18. Keepsake, by Savaric
19. Sentencing Mr Liddell, by I-K. Huuhtanen
20. Calm, by Joey Jones and Melvin Rangasamy
21. The Guardian, by Lutein Hawthorne
22. The Hours, by Robert Patten
23. Blind, by Andrew Metzger (writing as Arman)
24. The Myothian Falcon, by Andy Joel
25. Last Day of Summer, by Cameron Fox
26. Death of Schlig, by Peter Timony
27. Fan Interference, by Andrew Schultz
28. Playing Games, by Pam Comfite
29. How Suzy Got Her Powers, by David Whyld
30. Return to Camelot, by Finn Rosenløv (writing as Po. Prune)
31. Awake the Mighty Dread, by Lyle Skains
32. The Ship of Whimsy, by U. N. Owen
33. Operation Extraction, by Ming-Yee Iu
34. Professor Frank, by Laurence Kilday
35. Dead Hotel, by Comazombie
36. Fog Convict, by Andrew Metzger (writing as Arman)
37. Luster, by Jared Smith
38. Vestiges, by Joanna Houston (writing as Josephine Wynter)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=0#p26258
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-11-16 00:08:57

Well done everybody! Especially Ryan! Pats on backs all round are in order. Also, those that know comp history better, is this the highest a hypertext game has placed?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=0#p26262
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: Miseri / DateTime: 2011-11-16 00:33:40

Congratulations all around, and good work, Sarge!

And I've just uploaded my Breakfast Reviews: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.ricordius.com/others/ifcomp11/index.html">http://www.ricordius.com/others/ifcomp11/index.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=0#p26263
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: Squinky / DateTime: 2011-11-16 00:39:24

Conga rats, all, and thanks! I've just gone and posted a [url=http://www.deirdrakiai.com/2011/11/15/some-notes-on-the-play/]"making of" article[/url] to my blog about "The Play".

[quote="Miseri"]And I've just uploaded my Breakfast Reviews: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.ricordius.com/others/ifcomp11/index.html">http://www.ricordius.com/others/ifcomp11/index.html</a>[/quote]
Heh, mine sounds exactly like the sort of thing I enjoy eating for breakfast. Awesome!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=0#p26265
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-11-16 01:37:43

[quote="Miseri"]And I've just uploaded my Breakfast Reviews: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.ricordius.com/others/ifcomp11/index.html">http://www.ricordius.com/others/ifcomp11/index.html</a>[/quote]
I've just broken my fast on the recommended Calm breakfast. Lacking in expected flavour, but not without its own merits.

Dry toast, a poached egg, and soy milk:
[spoiler][img]http://www.bubbleof.me/myjustbreakfasts.jpg[/img][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=0#p26266
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: SimonChris / DateTime: 2011-11-16 02:03:58

Yay, fifth place again! Last year I took fifth place out of 25. This year it's out of 38, so I am moving up in percentile. Next year I hope to take fifth place out of [i]fifty[/i].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=0#p26270
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-11-16 02:23:22

Yay, more reviews! I was hoping for something just before the deadline...but this is just as good! Right after the results, which came right after the deadline. Good work both, and good work all the authors.

I would love to see 50 authors next year. But it would be so tough for me to get through all the games, no matter which side of the judging veil I'm on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=40#p26271
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: RedHatter / DateTime: 2011-11-16 02:44:21

I love love love this program!  [emote]:D[/emote]  I've used GUEmap extensively, but never really liked it.  [emote]:twisted:[/emote]  I tried IFMapper, but it doesn't play very well with linux/wine/mono, while Trizbort only has a few styling problems. 

I had a few thoughts for improvement:
  1. Wile auto-mapping, getting an item, drop one, something coming into the room etc. changes the description and so the disambiguating dialog opens. This is especially irritating when you have something fallowing you (e.g. the turtle in enchanter). Comparing descriptions for truncation or the opposite should be able to give a good indication whether it's a new room or an item change.

  2. Similar to #1, it would be nice for the disambiguating dialog to automatically select the option with the closest description.

  2. When hovering over rooms it might be good to display the description in some way. Maybe a tool-tip?

  3. Is it possible to add an option to export to gmp (GUEmap format)?

  4. Display options for exporting to PDF. Very needed.

  5. A way to undo last action done by program (create room, create connection, move focus, etc.) from transcript.

  6. An undo button/menuitem.


Thanks for the program, it has been very useful, especially the auto-mapping.  [emote]8-)[/emote]

P.S. Would you be open to releasing to source code for poking around and dev help [emote]:?:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=0#p26272
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-16 03:23:40

Congrats to everyone! Soon I'll be playing some of these; oh yes I will ...

([i]The Play[/i], in particular, has my interest piqued)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3676&start=0#p26273
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: When play begins, move character if...?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-16 03:25:53

[quote="I4L"]If I need to post code examples, I can. But it seems like one of those things that should be very simple. Hopefully I'm doing a better job of explaining it than I am coding it.[/quote]

At what point is the player prompted to request the mode? Some kind of opening-screen menu-choice? In some cases like this, you can slip some "say" tokens into strings to make things happen. I've seen this technique described as poor form, so I use it as often as possible.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=40#p26274
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2011-11-16 03:26:32

[quote="bowsmand"]Just a small note: ADRIFT's online interpreter seems to have trouble executing the >GIVE commands I put into Doc Lobster.[/quote]
What works is to GET everything twice (first pinching it with the claws, then taking it from the claws) and [i]then[/i] GIVE it to the servant [emote];)[/emote]

By the way, it would be great if the Adrift website would clearly state whether a game is in version 4 or 5 format. It's a little annoying to first download every game and try it in SCARE only to find it's apparantly v5.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=0#p26276
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2011-11-16 04:00:27

Congratulations and thanks to the participants for the great time!

Sargent: <a class="postlink" href="http://ifcomp.org/comp11/results.html">http://ifcomp.org/comp11/results.html</a> says "Results of the 15th annual Interactive Fiction Competition". You might want to change that [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3677&start=0#p26279
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Hidden Objects
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-16 04:19:50

Emily Short's extension Room Description Control provides rules for concealing objects in a room.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=0#p26280
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: SimonChris / DateTime: 2011-11-16 04:30:41

Also, games no. 5 and 7 seem to be missing from the prize choice list for some reason.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=10#p26281
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-11-16 04:42:46

[quote="SimonChris"]Also, games no. 5 and 7 seem to be missing from the prize choice list for some reason.[/quote]
Also no. 12?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3676&start=0#p26283
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: When play begins, move character if...?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-16 04:54:58

What about something like this?
[code]Include Menus by Emily Short.

When play begins:
	now the current menu is the Table of Options; carry out the displaying activity; clear the screen.
	
Table of Options
title	subtable	description	toggle
"Tutorial mode is [if tutorial mode is true]on[otherwise]off[end if]"	--	--	switch mode rule

This is the switch mode rule:
	if tutorial mode is true, now tutorial mode is false;
	otherwise now tutorial mode is true.
	
Tutorial mode is a truth state that varies. Tutorial mode is false.
	
[The table amendments replace the extension's original 'quit rule' with a 'new quit rule' that is sensitive to the tutorial mode.]

Table of Menu Commands (amended)
number	effect
81	new quit rule
113	new quit rule
27	new quit rule

This is the new quit rule:  
	decrease the menu depth by 1;
	if the tutorial mode is true, move the player to the Exercise Room;
	rule succeeds. 


The World is a room. "Hello World!"

The Exercise Room is a room. "Back to school ..."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=120#p26284
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.3: IF library manager
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-11-16 06:03:30

Sorry I missed your message; I'm super busy with work these days and I have no internet connection at home.
Are you still having the problem? My first guess would be that there's a connection issue with IFDB that's stalling the process. If that's definitely not the case, let me know what operating system you're running and perhaps any other relevant info.


For everyone else, regarding progress on coding, don't worry, I haven't forgotten. There are some big things lined up. Unfortunately, I'll be very honest and say that I probably won't be able to work on them much before the new year since at the moment all of my time and energy are tied up in my PhD research. Hopefully the current version is at least stable enough that you can use it without major problems!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=40#p26285
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-11-16 06:03:45

[quote="Hannes"]What works is to GET everything twice (first pinching it with the claws, then taking it from the claws) and [i]then[/i] GIVE it to the servant [emote];)[/emote][/quote]Or as described in the ADRIFT [url=http://forum.adrift.co/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=7521&p=86904#p86904]post[/url], add a word (such as 'the') after the word 'give'.  Alternatively, (and if the competition allows) this could easily be corrected to work in both interpreters.

[quote]By the way, it would be great if the Adrift website would clearly state whether a game is in version 4 or 5 format. It's a little annoying to first download every game and try it in SCARE only to find it's apparantly v5.[/quote]Any games uploaded as TAFs will display the version as a number on the Icon.  And Blorbs will be v5 only.  Good idea tho, I should also state it in the details section of the adventure page.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3675&start=0#p26286
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: first time during scene
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-11-16 06:57:30

[quote="zarf"]So, first, the syntax you want is "Instead of examining the ball when my-scene is happening for the first time". "Scene is happening" is a condition that can be combined with other conditions in a "when" clause.[/quote]

But wouldn't that be the first time the my-scene is happening (i.e. if this was a recurring scene it wouldn't happen the second time the scene runs) rather than the first time examining the ball during my-scene? At least that's what I would have assumed that line meant (can't test it right now)?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=10#p26287
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-11-16 06:58:34

Reading this list just makes me disappointed to know that I have yet to play many of the best games from this year's contest. Looking forward to check them out!

Congrats to everyone [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=10#p26288
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-16 07:23:09

Congratulations to all! This was a very interesting comp. I'm curious whether the other pseudonymous authors will reveal themselves. 

(BTW, sargent, the "Main Page" link at the bottom of the IFComp site 404s.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=10#p26289
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-11-16 07:30:08

[quote="JoeyJones"]Well done everybody! Especially Ryan! Pats on backs all round are in order. Also, those that know comp history better, is this the highest a hypertext game has placed?[/quote]
I'm not sure that [i]The Play[/i] really counts as hypertext fiction in the usual sense, but I suppose that's how Undum describes itself ('CYOA' annoys the good people at ChooseCo, and 'choice-based narrative' isn't very specific.)

Regardless of what you call it, it's definitely the highest-placed. I [i]think[/i] that the previous highest-placed CYOA was Duncan Bowsman's [i]The Ascot[/i], which placed 15th of 24. ([i]Desert Heat[/i] technically placed above a higher proportion of the field, at 28 of 53, but I'm not sure that you can compare one of the highest-entry years to one of the lowest this way.) In fact, I don't think that CYOA has ever placed [i]in the top half[/i] before, which means that this year would be mildly notable for [i]The Binary[/i] even without [i]The Play[/i].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3670&start=0#p26290
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New extension: Flexible Action Requirements
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-16 07:34:46

Yes, I did! I liked it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=40#p26291
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-16 07:38:07

I have a belated EctoComp addendum, if anyone wants something more to play: [url=http://mattweiner.net/Mirthful%20Messiahs/]The Coming of the Mirthful Messiahs[/url]. (Because this is exactly the time of year when everyone wants more IF to play.)

This one was coded in less than three hours. The game I was actually working on is going to take a lot more than three hours and might not get finished till sometime in 2012. Protip: Don't try to implement a bus and a phone in a game that you're supposed to finish in three hours.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3638&start=10#p26293
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: An Added Layer of Complexity
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-11-16 07:48:11

[quote="I4L"]Situations I'm talking about crop up when you forget some piece of punctuation somewhere, but it doesn't actually choke the compiler until several lines (or blocks) of code later.[/quote]That's something of a tautological problem: if the compiler could definitely know a punctuation mark was elided, then it didn't need the punctuation mark to flag the spot in the first place.  

[quote="emshort"]Are you maybe thinking of Juhana's [url=http://nitku.net/if/thingcreator/]I7 Thing Creator[/url]?[/quote]
Ah, I believe I was.  Good memory.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=50#p26294
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2011-11-16 07:48:35

[quote="matt w"]I have a belated EctoComp addendum, if anyone wants something more to play: [url=http://mattweiner.net/Mirthful%20Messiahs/]The Coming of the Mirthful Messiahs[/url]. (Because this is exactly the time of year when everyone wants more IF to play.)[/quote]
Solved. I didn't think it was all that unfair, the hint about it being a bug in the world model made it pretty clear [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3674&start=0#p26295
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Do you think IF LPs is a bad idea?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-11-16 07:54:25

What does LP stand for? 

Um, yeah, a video of text is pretty boring to look at, and video is pretty demanding on older computers. 

I could imagine videos of I-F playthroughs with commentators in the room, almost doing an MST3K thing a la the Angry Video Game Nerd.  

Also, for highly entertaining platformer design critique, search youtube for "egoraptor sequelitis", assuming I spelled that correctly.  He only has 2 episodes so far, but way funny.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3681&start=0#p26296
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: weird I6 library error
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-11-16 08:08:02

** Library error 11 (230,0) **

Anyone knows what it means? It occurs after PlayerTo() is used to "teleport" the Player object to another location.

Okay, found the cause of the error. I forgot the comma after the name property of the new location. I'm posting this anyway to demonstrate how hard and manly I6 is compared to the soft and wussy I7. Chopping away at the Z Machine with I6, I feel like a lumberjack felling trees with an axe in an arctic forest. That's a feeling you effeminate I7 geek-boys are unlikely to ever experience.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3674&start=0#p26299
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Do you think IF LPs is a bad idea?
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-11-16 08:27:29

[quote]What does LP stand for? [/quote]
I was wondering about that myself.  I'm of the generation to which LP means a vinyl record that plays at 33 1/3 rpm -- which gave rise to the expresssion "groovy."


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3674&start=0#p26300
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Do you think IF LPs is a bad idea?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-16 08:31:12

LP stands for "Let's Play."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3674&start=0#p26303
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Do you think IF LPs is a bad idea?
User: SimonChris / DateTime: 2011-11-16 08:42:33

Video is probably a bad format for text games, but there are plenty of forum Let's Plays of Interactive Fiction. The Something Awful forums has a "Short Text Games Megathread" at [url]http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3423879[/url], where they are currently playing Gun Mute.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=10#p26308
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: Comazombie / DateTime: 2011-11-16 08:56:31

[quote]3. The Play, by Deirdra Kiai[/quote]

Cool, a CYOA game has managed to rank in the Top 10 this year. I see there is demand for CYOA authors and games after all.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1060&start=0#p26310
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: 9 Phoenix conversions
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-11-16 09:03:56

A new set of builds of these games have been uploaded to the IF-Archive. These new versions fix a cosmetic issue relating to blank lines, and more importantly, fix a problem with Crobe that could, depending on luck, lead to the player being trapped in the Mithril Mines.

All the Z-code versions are here: <a class="postlink" href="http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXphoenixXgamesXzcode.html">http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archive ... zcode.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3682&start=0#p26311
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: new actions
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-11-16 09:15:06

I'm having a bit of trouble with new actions. I'm making a mini game that takes place in probably three or four rooms. Just a short one. It's a break from my bigger longer project... I'm trying to make an action for cutting rope that binds the player. It's pretty simple...

[code]CuttingRope is an action applying to nothing. understand "cut the rope", "cut rope", "cut the rope","cut bindings", "cut rope with glass", "cut the rope with glass", "cut the rope with the glass", " cut the bindings", "cut the bindings with glass", "cut the bindings with the glass", "slice the rope", and "slice the bindings" as CuttingRope.[/code]

the problem I'm facing is that if the player types 'cut the rope they get this message 'Cutting that up would achieve little.'

how ever if they type 'cut rope' or any of the other understands I got in there it works fine, lol.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3676&start=0#p26312
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: When play begins, move character if...?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-16 09:15:53

[quote="Ghalev"]In some cases like this, you can slip some "say" tokens into strings to make things happen. I've seen this technique described as poor form, so I use it as often as possible.[/quote]
Oh no! I've been using it more and more... does this mean I'm becoming a lowbrow hack?  [emote]:shock:[/emote] 

Of course I've always been a lowbrow hack... I just have a lot of highbrow pretensions.  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

Lately I've been suspecting these say-phrases of causing trouble with line breaks, though. If a say phrase runs a rulebook, I think it triggers an extra line break. I guess you can't really blame the side effects for that, though. Even something as simple as this seems to make things messy:

[code]To say flashback style:
    say italic type.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3683&start=0#p26313
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: (first taking [the noun])
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-16 09:39:43

I want to modify the library message given during an implicit take. I looked in Aaron Reed's "Neutral Library Messages" for where that is defined and I found two separate answers:

[code]--	26	"(first taking [the noun])[ignore library line break]"
--	69	"(first taking [the noun])"[/code]
I looked through the templates with "grep L__M *.i6t | grep 69" and found the line in Actions.i6t where this is called. Miscellaneous library message 26 does not seem to appear in the templates, but it is used in the Standard Rules. So why are there two separate messages? And where's that nice guide to library messages that I can't find anymore?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3683&start=0#p26314
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: (first taking [the noun])
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-16 10:06:51

Hmmm... and now a more serious problem, which I think is a bug in Neutral Library Messages. We don't always want to issue this message for the noun, because sometimes it's the second noun. In Language.i6t, it's actually the variable "x1" in the call to LanguageLM. Is there a way to refer to that in I7?

The same assumption is made in Ron Newcomb's "Custom Library Messages." Is it really that hard to access the actual variable being referred to?

[b]Edit:[/b] Using "the item described" in this case seems to fix the problem, since it is the parameter-object of the implicitly taking activity.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3670&start=10#p26315
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New extension: Flexible Action Requirements
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-16 10:57:06

[quote="capmikee"][code]An action-processing rule (this is the flexible carrying requirements rule):
	Repeat with item running through involved things that are not held by the person asked:
		If the item is only available when carried:
			Carry out the implicitly taking activity with the item;
			If the item is not carried, stop the action.[/code][/quote]
It turns out there was a subtle problem with that loop, which has prompted me to unroll it:
[code]An action-processing rule (this is the flexible carrying requirements rule):
	If the noun is not held by the person asked and the noun is only available when carried:
		Carry out the implicitly taking activity with the noun;
		If the noun is not carried, stop the action.
	If the second noun is not held by the person asked and the second noun is only available when carried:
		Carry out the implicitly taking activity with the second noun;
		If the second noun is not carried, stop the action.[/code]

The issue came up when I was trying to redirect a regular take - if the redirected take succeeds (silently), the original take does not result in the original object being held, so the implicit take stops the action with no further messages. I created a special "for implicitly taking" rule, but because the loop doesn't check if the noun or second noun has changed, it still failed. But the unrolled version works correctly with something like this:

[code]A stand-in is a kind of thing. A stand-in has a thing called the real item.

For implicitly taking a stand-in (called the fake) when the real item of the fake is visible:
	If the noun is the fake, now the noun is the real item of the fake;
	If the second noun is the fake, now the second noun is the real item of the fake;
	Carry out the implicitly taking activity with the real item of the fake;[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3682&start=0#p26316
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: new actions
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-16 11:05:04

The library already has a "cutting" action. You're half-overriding it.

It's better form to use the existing action, in an "instead" or other action rule. That way, the library takes care of all the synonyms properly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3682&start=0#p26317
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: new actions
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-11-16 11:11:21

Two comments:

First, the cutting action is already defined by the library. It would be easier to use this action than to define a new one. However, if you do that, you'll still need to define a new "cutting it with" action to handle the commands 'cut rope with glass' and so forth.

If you do it your way, you'll need to begin by saying,

[code]Understand the command "cut" as something new.[/code]
Second, defining an action the way you're doing it, by manually listing all of the grammar you want (including and not including 'the', for example) is a bad idea. Sorry to be so blunt, but don't do it this way. Study how to create new actions, and use the standard methods.

The Inform manual is a bit dodgy on this point. Chapters 7 and 12 contain a lot of information, but page 12.7 still begins, "It is not often that we need to create new actions," and that's dead wrong (as well as needlessly discouraging). You might want to download my Handbook (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm">http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm</a>), which has a chapter explaining how to do it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3682&start=0#p26318
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: new actions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-16 11:26:03

I have some grammar to support cutting in my WIP. I'll share a bit of it with you:

[code]Section - Attacking it With

[If you have no combat, you can simplify this to "Cutting it With."]

attacking it with is an action applying to two things. [You might want to make it one thing and one carried thing]

Understand "off/up/apart/open" and "in/into two/twain/pieces" as "[apart]"

Understand "attack [something] with/using [something preferably held]" as attacking it with.
Understand "cut [something] with/using [something preferably held]" as attacking it with.
Understand "cut [apart] [something] with/using [something preferably held]" as attacking it with.
Understand "cut [something] [apart] with/using [something preferably held]" as attacking it with.
Understand "break [apart] [something] with/using [something preferably held]" as attacking it with.
Understand "break [something] [apart] with/using [something preferably held]" as attacking it with.
Understand "beat [something] with/using [something]" and "beat [something] up with/using [something]" and "beat up [something] with/using [something]" as attacking it with.

Check attacking something with something:
	Try attacking the noun instead;

Section - Blades and Cutting

A blade is a kind of thing.

Check cutting (this is the cutting with blades rule):
	If the player encloses a blade (called the item):
		say "(with [the item])[command clarification break]";
		try attacking the noun with the item instead;
	say "You don't have [if the noun is a person]a weapon[otherwise]anything[end if] to cut with." instead.
	
The cutting with blades rule is listed instead of the block cutting rule in the check cutting rulebook.

Understand "cut [apart] [something]" and "cut [something] [apart]" as cutting.

Check attacking something with a blade:
	say "You [if the noun is a person]wouldn't[otherwise]can't[end if] cut [the noun]." instead;
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3638&start=10#p26320
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: An Added Layer of Complexity
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-16 11:46:04

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]That's something of a tautological problem: if the compiler could definitely know a punctuation mark was elided, then it didn't need the punctuation mark to flag the spot in the first place.[/quote]
Unless there was a lot of redundancy built into the syntax.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3675&start=0#p26322
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: first time during scene
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-16 11:53:06

I'm always hazy on what "for the first time" means - in the case of that condition, it depends on precedence rules.

I'm not a huge fan of truth states either, but I do like binary properties.

[code]foo can be inspected or uninspected.

Instead of examining uninspected foo during my scene:
    Now foo is inspected;
    ....[/code]

Or even:

[code]A thing can be inspected or uninspected.

When a scene begins: Now every thing is uninspected.

Carry out examining something: Now the noun is inspected [be aware this will be skipped by Instead rules][/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=30#p26323
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-11-16 12:00:24

Now that Rule 5 doesn't apply any more, I'll be able to expound. Hopefully not into TLDRville.

I'd planned to update a lot more than I did, and I was worried I might be abusing the rule. I don't feel that way any more. Because even doing minor stuff is exhausting. The stakes are high in-comp. For me, making those small tweaks paved the way to realizing the big stuff I needed to fix. I am talking about learning, understanding and implementing extensions.

Someone made the point that a person could just have the game beta-tested during the competition, which is possible...but who are the beta testers going to be? They're all likely to be playing the games. So thorough beta-testing is not really possible. And I'd rather see a game, whether I'm competing against it or not, that is more likely to do the small things you know the writer's talent allows instead of having moments where I'm pretty sure the author meant to mean this, or they may've skipped explaining something.

These sort of touch-ups are ideal, and I don't think they were abused. And I think that while having the authors' forums to discuss future goals helped, it was also nice to have the option to do something about it. Now it's debatable whether the rule or the reaction to the rule spurred me trying to nail things out...but I think six weeks of helplessness can be very, very tough for an author.

And as others pointed out, nobody's under obligation to play the latest version.

I just want to do things right. I understand my game's subject matter may turn people off. But I think having the option to update helped. There is a lot I want to do in my game--small items or scenery that give hints, tying up the endings better, and tidying up conversations, for starters. This isn't something that can be dashed off. I soon realized my time was better spent reading the Inform documentation that's out there.

And I guess I have been in too many situations where people have deliberately said "We can't STOP you doing X, but..." when of course they were trying to stop me doing it all along. There was clearly no malicious intent before the revision rule, and there is no malicious intent on the part of people who dislike it. But all the same there are rules that can't STOP authors making needed updates when they're most immediately motivated (e.g. right after a tough review,) but without a revision rule, there's one less reason to go through all the steps ASAP.

I can't say for sure whether or not I would've researched skeins, written up test cases, a formal test plan, or written all possible outcomes of the baseball game inside my game, or even started to look into extensions and conventions that would make my code neater and minimize testing. But knowing games could be updated was an immediate morale booster and probably spawned some of the more forward-looking discussions and posts in the authors' forums.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=10#p26324
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2011-11-16 12:00:53

[quote="matt w"](BTW, sargent, the "Main Page" link at the bottom of the IFComp site 404s.)[/quote]

Thanks, fixed!

Also please give a big hand to Dan Shiovitz, Mark Musante, and our other IFComp volunteers without whom this competition wouldn't happen.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3682&start=0#p26325
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: new actions
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-11-16 12:04:15

[quote="Jim Aikin"]but page 12.7 still begins, "It is not often that we need to create new actions," and that's dead wrong (as well as needlessly discouraging).[/quote]

++ to that.

[quote]You might want to download my Handbook (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm">http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm</a>), which has a chapter explaining how to do it.[/quote]

And that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3683&start=0#p26326
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: (first taking [the noun])
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-16 12:08:01

[quote="capmikee"]why are there two separate messages?[/quote]
Well, they are different, aren't they? One "ignores a library line break", the other doesn't.

[quote="capmikee"]where's that nice guide to library messages that I can't find anymore?[/quote]
Ooh! I never heard of it before, but I already miss it!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=10#p26327
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-11-16 12:10:55

I'm quite grateful for everyone's work. The intra-comp updates were clearly nontrivial, and the online transcripts were quite nice, though I didn't use them as much as I should've.

How long will the transcripts be around for? I want to do a lot of post-comp work, so I'm not sure if I should save them locally. They take up a bit of space, and I may want to access them from multiple computers.

Also, one hour turnaround time for results = wow. Your guys were very effective.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3683&start=0#p26328
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: (first taking [the noun])
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-16 12:12:06

Are you thinking of <a class="postlink" href="http://www.inform-fiction.org/manual/html/sa4.html">http://www.inform-fiction.org/manual/html/sa4.html</a> ? 

The list has been extended since the I6 days, but most of the old ones remain. Misc 69 is new in I7, which is not surprising, since its only difference ties into I7's newline mechanism. I don't know why the difference is needed, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3570&start=0#p26329
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SPAM
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-11-16 12:22:58

It's a shame there's no way to auto-ban anyone who fills in an ICQ address.

It might be time to change the secret question, at any rate. The spam problem has gotten markedly worse here in the last two weeks.

One issue is that although we moderators can ban accounts, we can't delete them altogether. So those accounts still show up in the members list, along with a link to whatever site they are hawking.

That may make this board relatively more attractive as a target.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3675&start=0#p26330
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: first time during scene
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-16 12:24:04

[quote]But wouldn't that be the first time the my-scene is happening[/quote]

In this case, no. Test it.

This is why I mentioned the "first occurrence" thing. "Instead of examining the ball when my-scene is happening and first occurrence" is clearer, because you don't have to figure out *what* is happening for the first time. It's whether *this condition* is being checked for the first time. You just have to remember that "and" conditions are evaluated left to right (so if the scene isn't happening, the code doesn't reach the second half of the condition).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=10#p26331
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2011-11-16 12:25:24

So, not to spoil the party, but has it occured to anyone that while the number of participants has increased, the number of people who voted has decreased quite significantly? Any thoughts on this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=10#p26332
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: Squinky / DateTime: 2011-11-16 12:27:22

[quote="Sargent"]Also please give a big hand to Dan Shiovitz, Mark Musante, and our other IFComp volunteers without whom this competition wouldn't happen.[/quote]

*presents the volunteers with a large hand* Thanks! You folks are awesome!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=10#p26334
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-11-16 12:33:53

[quote="Hannes"]So, not to spoil the party, but has it occured to anyone that while the number of participants has increased, the number of people who voted has decreased quite significantly? Any thoughts on this?[/quote]
I noticed that. The two facts might be related. Not sure if this is right, but there may have been roughly the same number of judges, each of them playing a smaller proportion of the games (given the huge number of games to get through).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3638&start=10#p26335
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: An Added Layer of Complexity
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-16 12:36:36

There may be programming languages designed to be redundant about syntax in a way that makes it easy to track down punctuation errors. However, I can't think of any off-hand. (I6 isn't one; neither is C, Python, Java... I remember my very first Pascal class, which was punctuated by repeated shrieks of "don't put a semicolon before an ELSE!") 

(Javascript was originally intended to be resilient about missing semicolons, a terrible idea which is still causing problems today.)

I7 is somewhat *more* redundant than average, because it uses both indentation and semicolons for structure. (If you choose to use the indentation code form.) And (like some languages, but not all) it looks for different syntax inside and outside of code blocks. This means that it can *detect* most indentation errors and semicolon/period errors. But, obviously, not all of them; and it doesn't have enough information to fix your code for you. 

(Unless someone wants to quote an I7 case that generates an unusually good problem message. My tests mostly turn up either "But the tabs here seem to be misaligned, and I can't determine the structure" or "the punctuation here ':' makes me think this should be a definition of a phrase and it doesn't begin as it should".)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3682&start=0#p26336
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: new actions
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-11-16 12:36:38

[emote]:lol:[/emote]  I downloaded the handbook the first time you offered it back in my first post here, needing help with the basics, or something like that, lol..

it's been a big help, but learning to create actions is something that I've failed to learn...I guess I find it confusing..

I don't understand how to write them like..

action applying to two things, and understand do [something] with [something] as  <action name here> hahaha.

how does inform know what all these somethings are, and how am I suppose to know what I'm writing when it looks so confusing? hahah

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=20#p26337
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2011-11-16 12:41:59

The total number of judges is noted on the bottom of the results page:

2011: 109
2010: 150
2009: 133
2008: 177
2007 and before: no data

The typical number of votes per game interestingly enough always seems to have been around 100 (or slightly below), regardless of the number of entries. Now it is what? 60?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=30#p26338
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Squinky / DateTime: 2011-11-16 12:44:27

I just wanted to say that I as an author really appreciated the intra-comp updates as well. I didn't feel right about making changes to the content (although I didn't particularly mind other people doing so), but I did really appreciate the opportunity to immediately fix small errors, from typos to Internet Explorer bugginess to making the game actually playable by colourblind people. (Admittedly, being the developer of a web-based hypertext game gives me different sets of problems from most entrants, but if I were writing a parser game, I can imagine appreciating the ability to quickly fix guess-the-verb issues that my beta testers weren't able to catch.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=20#p26339
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-11-16 12:49:07

[quote="Hannes"]So, not to spoil the party, but has it occured to anyone that while the number of participants has increased, the number of people who voted has decreased quite significantly? Any thoughts on this?[/quote]

Confusion over which version of the games they were meant to be voting on? I'm sure there are other reasons but that's the one which occurs to me right off the bat.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=30#p26340
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2011-11-16 12:49:29

Hmm.... this is a good point: If this rule were not in effect, how would the organisers [i]prevent[/i] intra-comp updates of web-based games? [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3512&start=0#p26341
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Level9 Authoring?
User: Gio / DateTime: 2011-11-16 12:50:39

Well, to quote from the Level9_Facts.txt in the IF Archive:


[quote="Level9_Facts.txt"]b) A-Code

Level 9 used their own interpretation language, A-code, which was more memory
efficient even than plain Z80 assembler. It was developed around 1979, long
before the first L9 game appeared, as the Colossal Cave port was intended
to fit into 8 KB.

A-code underwent a couple of revisions: there are three distinct versions in
all, plus a couple of extensions which form new A-code versions of their own.

The A-code data files were usually incorporated into the executable file for
specific machines, together with the interpreter part. Still, even those
executables were significantly shorter than pure assembly code files would
have been!

This efficiency was partially due to advanced text compression routines that
reduced the memory need for texts to about 50% of their true length.
Infocom's text compression, in comparison, only reduced text strings to about
67% of their real length (abbreviation alphabets notwithstanding: see
elsewhere for details).

A strength of the A-code system -- and at the same time one of its greatest
weaknesses -- is a system of script variables, of which there are a fixed
number: generally more in higher A-code versions.

For the later three-part games, Knight Orc, Scapeghost, and the Ingrid
series, the script variable system was extended by an NPC movement and action
system which was internally called KAOS. The framework of this new system was
originally developed by John Jones-Steele who had gained first experiences at
Melbourne House. KAOS was able to make NPCs appear "intelligent": they move
independently of the player's commands, pick up things, utilise weapons,
etc., following so-called "racetracks," which could be quite complex (as
Knight Orc demonstrates impressively). The name "KAOS" is a mangled acronym
of "Knight Orc Adventure System."[/quote]

So that's what I was referring to. And another reason I was interested in a possible Level 9-style system was that I was reading about Visionary, and it occurred to me in my state of near-exhaustion (I was a day or two without sleep when I posted) that it would make sense to have something similar for L9 games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3570&start=0#p26342
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SPAM
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-16 12:58:28

Possibility that it may be time to re-evaluate some things...? Including mod permissions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3638&start=10#p26343
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: An Added Layer of Complexity
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-11-16 13:07:09

[quote="emshort"]Are you maybe thinking of Juhana's [url=http://nitku.net/if/thingcreator/]I7 Thing Creator[/url]?[/quote]
Now that that has been brought up, maybe a couple of words about it might be in order: First the disclaimer. it's outdated, slightly buggy and the JavaScript behind it is just nauseous to read (I was just beginning with JS programming back then). It was made for an older I7 build and the syntax of some things and some default messages have since been changed. Secondly, one of the goals for that tool was to make it easier to see which default messages were inappropriate for the item in question so that they could be changed. The [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Juhana%20Leinonen/Object%20Response%20Tests/index.html]Object Response Tests[/url] extension later replaced that function and IMHO is much more better suited for the task.

The #1 problem with generators such as the Thing Creator and [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=827]tools that turn transcripts into playable games[/url] is that writing a game is an organic process where you typically start with just the basic functionality and gradually add to it as you go on. These kind of tools assume that you have everything all thought out and that you actually know right from the start what to put in all the fields in the generator's forms. (In project management terms you could say that they expect the process to follow a strict [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_model]waterfall model[/url].) I do think these kind of generators could be useful (think Adrift or Quest), but they really must be able to modify existing code so that you don't have to make the exact final implementation right then and there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3682&start=0#p26344
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: new actions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-16 13:14:23

It takes a while to get used to it, especially what to call the actions in different contexts. But here's how I think of it.

What the player experiences as an "action" has two parts: The first part is the command that they type in. That's the part handled by the parser. The second part is what the player-character actually does, and what happens next. That's the part handled by the world model.

So:

Parser --> grammar line ("Understand ... as [action-name]")
World model --> action ("... is an action applying to ...")

You can create an action with no grammar lines, and that might even be useful -- that's what Simple Chat does with actions like "providing links" and "finding responses." But when you write a grammar line, it has to be understood as an action.

What are grammar lines exactly? They're a bit like a big rulebook that the parser follows. When the player types a command, the parser compares the command to each line in order. As soon as a line matches with some combination of noun and second noun, it chooses that action and starts looking for the best match of objects.

There are a few other confusing cases, like command synonyms. Command synonyms are much more restricted than other types of "Understand" statement. You might expect command synonyms to map as an action, but you'd get an error if you tried that. Command synonyms link command words together, so both sides of the "understand the commands ... as ..." must contain single words in quotes, with no other Understand tokens.

Then there's the confusion of actions that take a second noun. When you define an action, and when you refer to the action-name in the "abstract," you have to use the placeholder "it" to show the separating words between noun and second noun. But whenever you refer to the action later, you must use "something" (or a more specific description of an object) rather than "it."

Examples:

Action definition:
[code]attacking it with is an action applying to one thing and one carried thing. [Using the word "carried" here will generate an implicit take.][/code]

Grammar line:
[code]Understand "attack [something] with [something preferably held]" as attacking it with. [The "preferably held" token causes the parser to look for already held items during disambiguation.][/code]

Command synonyms:
[code]Understand the command "kill" as something new. [This removes the word "kill" from any set of synonyms that it belonged to before, as well as any grammar line that used that set of synonyms.]

Understand the commands "cut" and "break" as "attack". [This creates a set of synonyms that includes "cut", "break", and "attack". They will be considered as exactly the same word in every grammar line that uses one of them as the command word.][/code]

Action descriptions and specific action processing rulebooks:
[code]Instead of attacking something with: [This is the minimum description that the compiler needs to always understand that you mean the "attacking it with" action.]

Check attacking something with a blade: [This rule will be automatically placed in the "check attacking it with" rulebook.]

Carry out attacking a person with something: [This rule will be automatically placed in the "carry out attacking it with" rulebook.]

Report an actor attacking something with: [This rule will be automatically placed in the "report attacking it with" rulebook.][/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=20#p26345
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-16 13:16:22

[quote="David Whyld"][quote="Hannes"]So, not to spoil the party, but has it occured to anyone that while the number of participants has increased, the number of people who voted has decreased quite significantly? Any thoughts on this?[/quote]

Confusion over which version of the games they were meant to be voting on? I'm sure there are other reasons but that's the one which occurs to me right off the bat.[/quote]

I would be astounded if more than one person failed to vote for that reason.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=20#p26346
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-11-16 13:23:40

Yeah, I doubt that the updating rules have anything to do with it. We're talking about a fairly small number here, one that's subject to pretty large variation and doesn't have a very big dataset. I'm not sure that very much can be drawn from a single datapoint.

More broadly, everybody I know who's given a reason for not playing enough games to vote this year has said that it's because they have a) kids, b) a busy career or c) both. If you [i]do[/i] want to make a pattern out of a datapoint, then it's probably going to be a demographic one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3683&start=0#p26347
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: (first taking [the noun])
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-16 13:26:21

That's handy, but no, that's not the one. It might actually be better than the one I saw, which only showed you one small subset of the messages per html page. But it was formatted nicer, and perhaps more up to date.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3676&start=0#p26348
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: When play begins, move character if...?
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-11-16 13:52:47

My understanding of menus is that the menus are actually "part" of the game - that is, the When play begins rules fire, and [i]then[/i] the menus get displayed.

You might want to encapsulate your current When play begins rules into a new rule, and have that rule fire upon selection of the menu entry.

For example:[code]The begin play without tutorial mode rule:
    Now TutorialMode is false;
    Now the player is in Perfectly Normal Room;

The begin play using tutorial mode rule:
    Now TutorialMode is true;
    Now the player is in Training Room;[/code]And depending on the selection the player makes in the menu, either of those rules fire.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3675&start=0#p26349
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: first time during scene
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-11-16 14:12:12

[quote="zarf"][quote]But wouldn't that be the first time the my-scene is happening[/quote]

In this case, no. Test it.[/quote]

I believe you, I just can't test it until I get home, but that's some really awkward syntax. It makes me wonder what if I wanted to test if it's the first time my-scene is happening (I don't, at the moment, but maybe I might want to at some point in the future) rather than the first time examining something during my-scene?

[quote="zarf"]This is why I mentioned the "first occurrence" thing. "Instead of examining the ball when my-scene is happening and first occurrence" is clearer, because you don't have to figure out *what* is happening for the first time. It's whether *this condition* is being checked for the first time. You just have to remember that "and" conditions are evaluated left to right (so if the scene isn't happening, the code doesn't reach the second half of the condition).[/quote]

Ok, now I understand your "first occurrence". Yes, that does look useful. I'll have to remember it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=20#p26350
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-16 14:17:21

Another point is that authors can't vote.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=20#p26352
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-11-16 14:23:18

Actually, my more sensible theory would be that the sheer number of games in the comp is so daunting that people who would otherwise be inclined to vote for, say, a comp with half a dozen games in it, look at the figures - 38 games, six weeks to play them all, almost one a day on average - realise they'll never make it and decide in the interests of fairness not to vote at all. I've played a grand total of a dozen IF games over the past year, and some of them were small games written for mini-comps. Compared to that, 38 games in six weeks is a heck of a lot of games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=20#p26354
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-11-16 14:30:24

[quote="maga"]More broadly, everybody I know who's given a reason for not playing enough games to vote this year has said that it's because they have a) kids, b) a busy career or c) both. If you [i]do[/i] want to make a pattern out of a datapoint, then it's probably going to be a demographic one.[/quote]
b) for me. I kept intending to get to the comp, up until I found it was too late. I haven't even played The Play yet (I'm looking forward to it, Deirdra!).

Another reason that I come to think of is that the Comp is no longer seen as much as something to point new people at as it may have been in the past (or at least, that's my impression). Outreach to the general public takes other forms now.

(David's and Matt's theories makes sense too.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=20#p26355
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-11-16 14:37:56

[quote="matt w"]
I would be astounded if more than one person failed to vote for that reason.[/quote]

 Then I was probably that one!  [emote]:)[/emote]  As I stated at the early judging days, I was quite enthusiast about voting this year, which I haven't done since 2006 comp. But on second thought I preferred to stay away. It wasn't that I felt confused about which versions to score. I was aware that I could freely make my choice about that. It was just that I couldn't get the point of a same work receiving several votes based on different versions of it, among other possible unfair things I mentioned in a couple of brief posts.

 I'm glad most other judges felt comfortable with the new rule and acted accordingly, but I sincerely thought I shouldn't actively support it. 
 I'm still considering to enter next year comp with an IF work. At least we'll be aware in anticipation of this new [i]deadline that is not a deadline[/i] (the [i]un-deadline[/i]? If I find the time to make a short satirical IF game I'll call it [i]The Walking Deadline[/i]!  [emote]:lol:[/emote] )

Congrats to the winners and to everyone that made it all possible! Now let's play all this new bunch of works and enjoy!  [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3687&start=0#p26358
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Announcing release of Signal Error
User: Joel Webster / DateTime: 2011-11-16 14:55:29

I've decided to release my most recently completed story.
Please play it and let me know if you had fun with it [emote]:)[/emote]

[url=http://jnwebster.github.com/signal-error/]Story website[/url]
[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=32id49lmaviphkas]IFDB link[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=20#p26360
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-11-16 15:38:41

I won't be entering the IFComp next year but I was planning on voting on the games... but now I'm having second thoughts about that as well. How am I meant to vote in a way that's totally fair?

a) I download all the games on day one and base my vote off version one, but... if next year is like this year, some of the games will be updated as many as half a dozen times and the final version will probably be a vastly different game than the one I played, thus rendering my vote kind of meaningless. Best scrap this idea.

b) I download all the games on day one but update my vote every time a new version is released, but... if next year is like this year, some of the games will be updated as many as half a dozen times and keep playing the same game over and over again and keeping track of what's changed and how it affects my vote... No, too much hassle. Best scrap this idea, too.

c) I download all the games once the IFComp is done and the final versions have all been released, but... the IFComp's done by then so clearly my vote won't count for a thing by then. Scrap another idea.

Well, I'm stumped. I can't think of a single fair way of voting at all. Maybe I'd better skip voting at all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=20#p26362
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2011-11-16 15:45:17

While I didn't do any voting this year, being an author, I would suggest following my plan - instead of downloading all the games at once, I played each game one at a time, downloading a new game only when I finished the previous game. The first games I played weren't updated; the later games were, and that was just the luck of the draw.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=30#p26363
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-16 15:58:03

[quote="David Whyld"]I won't be entering the IFComp next year but I was planning on voting on the games... but now I'm having second thoughts about that as well. How am I meant to vote in a way that's totally fair?

a) I download all the games on day one and base my vote off version one, but... if next year is like this year, some of the games will be updated as many as half a dozen times and the final version will probably be a vastly different game than the one I played, thus rendering my vote kind of meaningless. Best scrap this idea.

b) I download all the games on day one but update my vote every time a new version is released, but... if next year is like this year, some of the games will be updated as many as half a dozen times and keep playing the same game over and over again and keeping track of what's changed and how it affects my vote... No, too much hassle. Best scrap this idea, too.

c) I download all the games once the IFComp is done and the final versions have all been released, but... the IFComp's done by then so clearly my vote won't count for a thing by then. Scrap another idea.

Well, I'm stumped. I can't think of a single fair way of voting at all. Maybe I'd better skip voting at all.[/quote]

Yes, if you wish to make up reasons not to vote because of this rule, you certainly can!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=30#p26364
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-16 16:12:37

[quote="matt w"]Yes, if you wish to make up reasons not to vote because of this rule, you certainly can![/quote]

There should be a rule explicitly allowing people to make up reasons not to vote because of that rule, and then a set of guidelines on how best to do so. Because otherwise, how can people know if they're making up fair reasons not to vote? What if someone's reason not to vote changes in the middle of the comp? What then?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=30#p26365
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-11-16 16:12:49

[quote="David Whyld"]I won't be entering the IFComp next year but I was planning on voting on the games... but now I'm having second thoughts about that as well. How am I meant to vote in a way that's totally fair?[/quote]

Well, I don't know if you need to worry about Absolute Fairness per se. That requires many different judges with many different outlooks, and the more there are, the more this sort of thing gets ironed out (e.g. someone will play an updated game early, someone will play it late--or people will like some genres but not others.)

I'd say that the percentage of people who download and play the updated/better version will work itself out as more people vote. That means, if a game is updated quickly with a bug that really deserved to be fixed, it won't get nailed badly. But if it's tacked on at the end, that's the author's fault.

I think most authors accept the potential for unfairness in any sort of competition. You can just do whatever you feel is best. Sort of like how there is no standard template for grading IF games, themselves. It's important to consider exceptions to rules and potential for abuse, but at the end, I think judges just want to play good games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3676&start=0#p26366
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: When play begins, move character if...?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-16 16:17:29

[quote="capmikee"]Of course I've always been a lowbrow hack... I just have a lot of highbrow pretensions.  [emote]:lol:[/emote] [/quote]

I can help you discard those through the ancient science of mockery.

[quote]Lately I've been suspecting these say-phrases of causing trouble with line breaks, though.[/quote]

Well, I'm constantly chasing down line-break issues and hacking them back into politeness with silliness like [run paragraph on][line break] ... but it's been my impression that simply using I7 causes trouble with line breaks [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=30#p26367
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-11-16 16:23:09

Yeah, I don't really see how updates during the comp are unfair to anyone. I mean, I suppose it's unfair to people who don't want to update their games mid-comp, but that's like saying that it's unfair to allow betatested games. (Some authors will have had better testers than others! And they'll have spent different amounts of time on testing! How can I, the pure-minded voter, retain my perfect impartiality under such conditions?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=30#p26369
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: Squinky / DateTime: 2011-11-16 16:31:06

There's also the fact that adding too many new features often winds up introducing new bugs, which could potentially result in an arguably [i]worse[/i] game than before...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=30#p26370
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: djfletch / DateTime: 2011-11-16 16:35:42

I've just put my notes up at [url]http://www.bubblycloud.com/ifcomp2011/[/url].  I managed to play all the games this year.

I've got transcripts from most of my playing, so if any authors want theirs you can email me.

Congratulations and thanks, everyone.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=30#p26371
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-16 17:05:10

[quote="deirdrakiai"]There's also the fact that adding too many new features often winds up introducing new bugs, which could potentially result in an arguably [i]worse[/i] game than before...[/quote]

Even without adding features, this is true. Fixing bugs is often like squashing bubbles in the wallpaper; it just causes two different bubbles to pop up somewhere else [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=30#p26372
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2011-11-16 17:08:41

[quote="aschultz"]I'm quite grateful for everyone's work. The intra-comp updates were clearly nontrivial, and the online transcripts were quite nice, though I didn't use them as much as I should've.

How long will the transcripts be around for? I want to do a lot of post-comp work, so I'm not sure if I should save them locally. They take up a bit of space, and I may want to access them from multiple computers.[/quote]

I'd suggest going ahead and saving them locally. You should have access to them for a while now, but still.

[quote="aschultz"]Also, one hour turnaround time for results = wow. Your guys were very effective.[/quote]

Thanks! Mark Musante actually had the results ready to go in about 20 minutes; the rest of it was my processing time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3674&start=0#p26373
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Do you think IF LPs is a bad idea?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-16 17:11:34

[quote="Kytaari"]I know transcripts have been around, so do you suppose IF is more meant to be [i]read[/i] instead of [i]watched[/i]?[/quote]

The thing I've learned (through the testing process) is that a raw, honest transcript of someone playing a text-adventure for the very first time is an almost uncanny window into their thought process. You can really get a sense of what they're thinking, what they're attempting, at what point realization dawns, etc.

Throw in a few asides and commentaries along the way, and a transcript can be an amazing textual equivalent to a gameplay video, and more suited (I think) to IF.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=30#p26374
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-11-16 17:55:06

I assign a preliminary score based on the vowel : consonant ratio in the game's file name. I ignore the file extension to avoid platform bias. A "y" is counted as a vowel if vowels predominate; otherwise it is not counted.

After starting the game, I type HELP, ABOUT, or CREDITS until I locate this information. I check to see if IF Comp judges are thanked; if so, I allocate a bonus point for common courtesy. If the game is dedicated to a pet or a child, I assign another bonus point. This is because I am sentimental to a fault.

I spend the remainder of the two hours discovering what the game says about me. Points are subtracted for serious factual errors. For example, I have a velvety baritone of which I am quite proud. A game that denigrates my singing ability or repudiates it outright is a game that strikes at the root of my identity. In such cases, I will remove any bonus points awarded during the CREDITS stage, since the author did not really mean it.

I do all of my judging on November 7. I call this day Red October because I am always late turning my wall calendar to the next page. That is a little joke I tell people after I sing a song.

I am concerned that allowing authors to update games will undermine the exactitude of my process. I harbored suspicions when [i]Aotearoa[/i] came out last year, but I said nothing because I have dark brown hair, green eyes, and an abiding love of dinosaurs.

This year, a game was renamed outright. Again I said nothing, because the change lowered its score.

I have read enough popular quotes to know that next year they will come for the judges, and there will be no one left to vote.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=30#p26375
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-11-16 18:18:33

[quote="djfletch"]I've just put my notes up at [url]http://www.bubblycloud.com/ifcomp2011/[/url].  I managed to play all the games this year.

I've got transcripts from most of my playing, so if any authors want theirs you can email me.

Congratulations and thanks, everyone.[/quote]
Well, thanks for the reviews. Mine was very funny, although it gave me even MORE to think about and try and correct. 
So: in part I love you, in part I hate you. That's how it went for my game in judges' eyes, so it is quite fair, anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=40#p26376
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-11-16 18:26:32

Stephen--all downloaded. And dropbox-ed. Which I thought of 2 minutes after asking that question. I guess that's how I roll.

[quote="bcressey"]After starting the game, I type HELP, ABOUT, or CREDITS until I locate this information. I check to see if IF Comp judges are thanked; if so, I allocate a bonus point for common courtesy. If the game is dedicated to a pet or a child, I assign another bonus point. This is because I am sentimental to a fault.[/quote]

I'm very worried by this-here flippancy, because I put thought and tender care into

[spoiler]my XYZZY response,[/spoiler]

which is something every judge should look for.

Plus I had to take my pet into the vet two weeks ago for something minor, so not being able to update stuff and mention that might've cost me a half-point or something.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=40#p26377
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: Squinky / DateTime: 2011-11-16 18:30:51

[quote="bcressey"]I spend the remainder of the two hours discovering what the game says about me. Points are subtracted for serious factual errors. For example, I have a velvety baritone of which I am quite proud. A game that denigrates my singing ability or repudiates it outright is a game that strikes at the root of my identity. In such cases, I will remove any bonus points awarded during the CREDITS stage, since the author did not really mean it.[/quote]

In that case, I hope my assumption that you used to dress in drag at college parties was accurate.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3688&start=0#p26378
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Strange question for combatting meta-gamers in I6
User: ajesster / DateTime: 2011-11-16 18:32:36

Hello all. I am new. I am not sure how to search for a solution, so I figured the best way to start is to describe my problem.

I am trying to build a minor IF as a scavenger hunt clue. It's not the most complex thing in the world, but I have something I want to include to punish the meta-gamers which has me stumped.

Essentially, I want to put an object in the game that is not referenced anywhere, which will set a deadflag if referred to in any way. I could set a before statement with every verb in the library, but that seems cumbersome and inefficient.

I would think there would be an easier way to accomplish this, but at the moment, I cannot think of one and I am sure it is not a common problem.

Thanks in advance,
Jesse

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=40#p26379
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-11-16 18:43:09

It was a high school party, but otherwise spot on. Well done!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=40#p26380
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-11-16 19:09:26

[quote="djfletch"]I've just put my notes up at [url]http://www.bubblycloud.com/ifcomp2011/[/url].[quote]It's also evidence for my theory (unless it was someone else's theory that I stole) that the really funny IF games do most of the jokes in responses. This one is mostly being joky in descriptions, which isn't quite as good.[/quote][/quote]
Interesting observation, this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3688&start=0#p26381
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Strange question for combatting meta-gamers in I6
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-11-16 19:15:56

Generally speaking, here's what I would do. I'd create an object that had an AddToScope routine attached to it. Then, in the Initialise routine, change the player to that object. In that object's AddToScope routine, have a PlaceInScope(your object). That way the player can refer to it wherever he is and yet the object is nowhere around.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3688&start=0#p26382
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Strange question for combatting meta-gamers in I6
User: ajesster / DateTime: 2011-11-16 19:29:09

This helps in the creating the object phase that I haven't gotten to yet, thanks. My problem is I want to end the game if they refer to it.

If they examine it, smell it, or refer to it in any way, I want to take control of the interpreters response. Making a before statement for every verb is the only way I can come up with.

Can I throw a variable on the object that starts the first time its referred to? That could work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3688&start=0#p26383
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Strange question for combatting meta-gamers in I6
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-11-16 20:47:58

Untested, but I think you can put a single line in the before block, rather than a bunch of verbs. Another option -- possibly better -- would be a react_before in that object that tests whether the object itself is the noun or second. This way, you get the desired result even when it's the second (as in, 'hit the monkey with the kryptonite').

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3689&start=0#p26384
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Controlling how contents are presented
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-11-16 21:18:29

Ok, I can't quite work this out. Let's say, for arguments sake, I have a table. The table is marked as "enterable" but what the player is actually doing is hiding underneath it. I add some suitable grammar lines like understand "get under [table]" as entering" and everything works fine.

The problem is, if the player should happen to drop anything under there, then the item will be listed as being "in" the table rather than "under" it. I.e. it'll say something like "In the table is whatsit". How do I change it to say "Under the table is a whatsit"? I thought a "before listing contents of the table" rule might work:
[code]
Before listing contents of the table:
    say "Under the table is ";
[/code]

But it seems to still print the "In the table" part first!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3688&start=0#p26385
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Strange question for combatting meta-gamers in I6
User: ajesster / DateTime: 2011-11-16 21:30:42

Thanks, I will try that out when I get back to developing it. I'll follow up later and let you know how it works.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3674&start=0#p26386
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Do you think IF LPs is a bad idea?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-11-16 22:05:57

[quote="Ghalev"]You can really get a sense of what they're thinking, what they're attempting, at what point realization dawns, etc.[/quote]

Yeah, this is why watching the video-form review of my Comp game was so painful, once I got over the thrill of hearing my prose spoken aloud in a charming accent and the hilarity of hearing my name and gender mangled.  It was just a little... [i]too[/i] honest, ya know?  [emote]:)[/emote] 

In general, I have very little patience for watching videos when a transcript would be as good.  I do occasionally watch gameplay videos, when I can't convince anybody to play a particular game in front of me in real life, but for IF, I'm perfectly happy with the Club Floyd transcripts.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3674&start=0#p26387
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Do you think IF LPs is a bad idea?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-16 22:16:30

[quote="tove"][quote="Ghalev"]You can really get a sense of what they're thinking, what they're attempting, at what point realization dawns, etc.[/quote]

Yeah, this is why watching the video-form review of my Comp game was so painful[/quote]

I

found 

that 

what

was 

painful

about 

watching 

the 

video

review

of 

your 

game

was

the 

agonizing

pace

of 

staring

at

the

screen

while

he

read

every

single

word

aloud.

I mean, I think I watched five minutes of him playing a game that starts "now all you have to do is take the chalice" (approx.), and the mfer hadn't even typed "take chalice" yet. I realized that I had some paint that I could be watching dry instead.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=30#p26388
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: rpatten / DateTime: 2011-11-16 23:11:25

If intra-comp updates are allowed next year, maybe the reviewers could post what version of a game they played.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3689&start=0#p26389
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Controlling how contents are presented
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-16 23:21:13

Maybe something like:
[code]The space under the table is an enterable container. It is part of the table.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=30#p26390
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-11-17 00:15:29

[quote="rpatten"]If intra-comp updates are allowed next year, maybe the reviewers could post what version of a game they played.[/quote]
This would be okay if authors were better about updating their version info -- a couple of times I checked games that I [i]knew[/i] had been quick-updated and they still claimed to be version 1.0, so I pretty much gave that up as a lost cause. I know it's an easy thing to miss when you're knocking out a fast update, and that at present there's no streamlined way for the organisers to enforce this; so I'm not sure what the solution is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=40#p26394
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: rpatten / DateTime: 2011-11-17 00:22:32

[quote="maga"][quote="rpatten"]If intra-comp updates are allowed next year, maybe the reviewers could post what version of a game they played.[/quote]
This would be okay if authors were better about updating their version info -- a couple of times I checked games that I [i]knew[/i] had been quick-updated and they still claimed to be version 1.0, so I pretty much gave that up as a lost cause. I know it's an easy thing to miss when you're knocking out a fast update, and that at present there's no streamlined way for the organisers to enforce this; so I'm not sure what the solution is.[/quote]

You have a point. I nearly forgot to change the version number when I updated during the comp. But if the author forgets, it's not the reviewer's responsibility -- just like any other mistake. And reviewers noting what version they played could encourage authors to be more accurate in their version numbers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=40#p26395
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-11-17 00:53:36

[quote]You have a point. I nearly forgot to change the version number when I updated during the comp. But if the author forgets, it's not the reviewer's responsibility -- just like any other mistake. And reviewers noting what version they played could encourage authors to be more accurate in their version numbers.[/quote]

Well, technically, there's way to find out, even if the author forgets...the serial number at the top is of the form YYMMDD. It's probably too much for the reviewer to remember this, but if they are keeping transcripts to mark down a full review, it's something they can recheck.

I doubt this shifts responsibility to the reviewer, but it does provide the author a way to check the transcript for which release was played, even if the author forgot to square things away.

I don't know if other IF languages have a time-of-build tracker like this, but it is a nice stopgap--and anyone who actually tinkers with the banner text deserves to risk losing this information. Or probably knows another way to find it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3690&start=0#p26397
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I7]How long can be a music file?
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-11-17 04:18:02

I have followed the development of Inform7 since the start but never have coded anything more than fun rooms for myself.
Now I am trying to code a game and would like to have information on music (if possible I may put some into).

I want to know if I can use several music files, what formats are supported, as well the max length or weight of a single file. 
Well, I'd like to know the limitations and the possibilities.

By the way is it possible to play a music by scene for example?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3689&start=0#p26398
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Controlling how contents are presented
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-17 05:42:11

Ron Newcomb's extension Default Messages can be used to tweak some of these messages -- though not all of them I think: the you-can-also-see rule (from the rules for the printing the locale description acticvity) would still give you "In the table you can see a whatsit.", since apparently this rule doesn't make use of the library messages at all. But it's possible to replace it, too, with a custom you-can-also-see rule, of course.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=40#p26399
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: sedm0784 / DateTime: 2011-11-17 06:10:39

Ignoring any arguments about fairness/cheating (because I disagree with them entirely) it seems to me that there is also a pragmatic reason not to keep this rule.

There might be people that are so vehemently opposed to the rule that they would not enter a game (and apparently, will refuse to even [i]vote[/i]) in any competition which uses the rule. So if it stays in force next year, it's possible it may mean fewer games, and fewer judges. Which is a bad thing.

It's worth noting that the people arguing for the rule seem (to me) to be rather less passionate about their position.

My personal feeling is that the benefits of the rule far outstrip this potential downside, but I don't think it's been mentioned before, so I thought I should bring it up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3690&start=0#p26400
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7]How long can be a music file?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-17 06:35:37

Chapter 22.7 of the documentation suggests no limit to the length of sound files. Formats have to be AIFF or OGG. The extension Multiple Sounds by Massimo Stella lets you play soundfiles continuously or a specific number of times, or even several soundfiles at once. It seems this extension would make it easy to start playing a sound file when a scene begins and stop it when the scene ends.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=40#p26401
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-11-17 07:23:14

[quote="sedm0784"]There might be people that are so vehemently opposed to the rule that they would not enter a game (and apparently, will refuse to even [i]vote[/i]) in any competition which uses the rule. So if it stays in force next year, it's possible it may mean fewer games, and fewer judges. Which is a bad thing.[/quote]
It's come up. I don't take it very seriously.

I don't think it really affects the basic motivations of authors to enter the comp, and it seems to have improved the comp experience of most authors. If authors decide to release their games out of comp instead, it's not as if We the Community lose anything: the game's still there. The author, on the other hand, stands to lose exposure and reviews. For this to work as a credible argument, you'd have to say that authors would get so pouty about the rule that they'd decide [i]not write games at all.[/i] This seems like a little bit of an overreaction to what's basically a change in administrative procedure.

As for judging: I do think that a better job could be done of making things clear to judges. The comp site's set up so that the ongoing process of updating is very visible, but the current version and update history of a game is not, and nor are the rules for how judges should treat updated versions. (This is presumably because there aren't really any, and judges are free to do as they see fit; but it would be good if it were clearly laid out somewhere where they'd be seen by everyone.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=40#p26402
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2011-11-17 07:32:29

[quote="sedm0784"]There might be people that are so vehemently opposed to the rule that they would not enter a game (and apparently, will refuse to even [i]vote[/i]) in any competition which uses the rule. So if it stays in force next year, it's possible it may mean fewer games, and fewer judges. Which is a bad thing.[/quote]
In the last two or three years, there always have been authors saying they will never enter the competition again, because it [i]does not[/i] allow them to post updated versions in a timely manner.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=40#p26403
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-11-17 07:36:58

I think it's worth noting that while the majority prefer the rule, a good portion of the voters (a full 39%) dislike it. If even half of them decline to enter or vote in the IFComp next year, that's a significant hit.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3688&start=0#p26404
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Strange question for combatting meta-gamers in I6
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-17 07:40:05

I'm pretty sure there's an:

[code]
Instead of doing anything with the noun:
     say "I pity da foo'.";
     End the game with a hail of bullets wherein no one is actually shot;
     Smoke cigar.
[/code]

Don't hold me to it and perhaps not syntactically correct. I'm not at a machine where I can test it right now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3676&start=0#p26406
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: When play begins, move character if...?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-17 07:44:35

You guys crack me up.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll give these a run through when I'm able.

The menus are part of the game, invoked by "When play begins..." which is why I just kind of thought that "quitting" the menu would result in the next rule firing. As it happens, this isn't the case. Inform doesn't know what to do with these seemingly random conditionals.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=40#p26407
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: sedm0784 / DateTime: 2011-11-17 07:47:36

[quote="David Whyld"]I think it's worth noting that while the majority prefer the rule, a good portion of the voters (a full 39%) dislike it. If even half of them decline to enter or vote in the IFComp next year, that's a significant hit.[/quote]

In addition to your "half" assumption, you're also presuming that the people who voted on this poll were people who would have entered or voted anyway. I don't think the poll as it stands really tells us much about how the rule affects (or doesn't) the number of participants.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3688&start=0#p26410
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Strange question for combatting meta-gamers in I6
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-11-17 08:09:15

[quote="I4L"]Don't hold me to it and perhaps not syntactically correct. I'm not at a machine where I can test it right now.[/quote]
You missed the number in the topic title. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3688&start=0#p26411
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Strange question for combatting meta-gamers in I6
User: ajesster / DateTime: 2011-11-17 08:16:05

Yeah, someday I should switch, since the majority of people are on 7, but all my half finished projects are on 6, and i really don't understand programming in 7 right now. I can't wrap my head around the natural language thing, but of course I have never really tried to either.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3692&start=0#p26412
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Trapped - V1.0
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-11-17 09:14:18

Hey,

I've finished a short game called trapped. Can you escape the home of a deranged serial killer before he takes your life? Don't forget to sign up for the forums if you're at all interested. Let me know what you think. This is my first release. Great for fans of survival horror.

<a class="postlink" href="http://s11.zetaboards.com/InterFiction/topic/7493684/1/?x=0#post8208494">http://s11.zetaboards.com/InterFiction/ ... ost8208494</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3688&start=0#p26413
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Strange question for combatting meta-gamers in I6
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-17 10:20:31

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="I4L"]Don't hold me to it and perhaps not syntactically correct. I'm not at a machine where I can test it right now.[/quote]
You missed the number in the topic title. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

I did at that.

No more forum trolling before coffee...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3688&start=0#p26416
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Strange question for combatting meta-gamers in I6
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-17 10:35:28

[quote="ajesster"]Yeah, someday I should switch, since the majority of people are on 7, but all my half finished projects are on 6, and i really don't understand programming in 7 right now. I can't wrap my head around the natural language thing, but of course I have never really tried to either.[/quote]
Stick with what you know, I say. Both languages have a bit of a learning curve. The main drawback of I6 is that fewer people here will be able to give you advice. But you'll probably need less.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3693&start=0#p26418
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: How to make inform understand
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-11-17 11:02:43

What's the best way to make inform understand that these are two different things?

[code]clothes is a scenery in the closet. the description is "a number of suits that fill your closet. Since you've been in the secret service you've always warn the suits, and have grown to love them.". understand "clothing", "clothes", and "suits" as clothes.

black suit and tie is a a thing in the closet. it is wearable. the description is "Your favorite black suit and tie.". understand "suit", "clothes", "clothing", and "suit and tie" as black suit and tie.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3671&start=0#p26419
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using Tags, Variables, Canstants. etc. in TADS3
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-11-17 11:04:51

I tried looking for the T3 Port of ToaURod but wasn't quite sure what I should be downloading. My philosophy of life is now "Never get old." I need a hint about this. [emote]:cry:[/emote]  

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=40#p26420
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-11-17 11:08:46

I seem to fail in understanding.
Are we talking about games or [i]judges[/i]?

Authors have expressed how the updates are going to make their games better. Me and Andrew Shultz stated quite frankly that our games will benefit a LOT from the will to update them when the iron is still warm. Also Deirdra Kiai has said something about updating her game, even if it is almost perfect. In the end, only time will tell if our modifications will make a better game, but no inComp updates would have meant maybe no update at all.

And I thought it was about games.

More good games? Yay!

Less judges... uhm, well?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=40#p26421
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-17 11:40:38

One concern I thought of: If I'm playing online and I save, will updates disrupt my save files? (Or whatever there are instead of save files when you play online?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3688&start=10#p26422
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Strange question for combatting meta-gamers in I6
User: ajesster / DateTime: 2011-11-17 11:54:01

It worked! I used your return_before option, and just omitted any verb references, and it applies to all of them. Thanks all, you saved me a ton of time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3693&start=0#p26423
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to make inform understand
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-17 12:10:43

I guess the "and" in the name confuses Inform somehow. Create the black suit and tie this way instead:
[code]A thing called the black suit and tie is in the closet.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=40#p26425
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-17 12:34:45

[quote="matt w"]One concern I thought of: If I'm playing online and I save, will updates disrupt my save files? (Or whatever there are instead of save files when you play online?)[/quote]

If it's a z-machine game, save-files aren't compatible at all across revisions, played online or not. I think (?) maybe (?) that's true for Glulx as well. Not sure about others.

For that, some kind of grandfathering archive would do the trick.

(apologies if I've misunderstood the question)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3693&start=0#p26426
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to make inform understand
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-17 12:35:41

One more thing
 When you create a thing with a phrase such as 
[code]A thing called the black suit and tie is in the closet.[/code]
Inform automatically understands every word in the name of the thing ("black", "suit", "and", and "tie") as that thing.
So, it is quite unnecessary to include any of these words (or any combination of them, like "suit and tie") in an understand statement. 
All of this is true, also when you create things in this way:
[code]A collection of clothes are scenery in the closet.[/code]
"Collection", "of", and "clothes" will in this case automatically be understood as the collection of clothes. There is no need of an explicit understand statement for them.
Likewise, it is in general unnecessary to put "the", "a", "an", or "some" in understand statements

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3671&start=0#p26427
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using Tags, Variables, Canstants. etc. in TADS3
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-11-17 12:46:49

You can get it here:
<a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2759298/toaurod_t3.zip">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2759298/toaurod_t3.zip</a>

I need to do a final polish on the code at some point soon. It was my first sustained effort with T3 and I expect that comes through in parts. (Also I was in the middle of a love affair with very long lines. It ended badly and I would prefer to forget.)

My goal was not so much to produce a game; rather, I wanted to end up with a library (wrapping adv3) that would make it easy to produce homebrew ToaSK adventures.

Hence the source code organization:
- toaurod.h defines templates and macros for convenience
- toaurod.t handles the basic game logic and turn rules
- commands.t deals with verbs
- strings.t contains virtually all the printed text
- world.t sets up the sample scenario

Ideally an author would only need to modify world.t (to add places, NPCs, and scenes) and he'd be off and running. But there's quite a lot happening under the hood to make it all come together.

Together with the original code, this is the largest work of IF written in both Inform 7 and TADS 3. So it works on some level as a [i]Cloak of Darkness[/i] writ large, though that wasn't the motivation in either case.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3688&start=10#p26428
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Strange question for combatting meta-gamers in I6
User: ajesster / DateTime: 2011-11-17 12:55:20

Oops, spoke too soon. While it works, because I was using 

found_in [; return true; ],

it triggers as soon as the game starts. I think poster's placeinscope can help with that, so I have some reading to do to figure out how to use it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=50#p26429
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Cameron Fox / DateTime: 2011-11-17 13:01:19

[quote="maga"][quote="rpatten"]If intra-comp updates are allowed next year, maybe the reviewers could post what version of a game they played.[/quote]
This would be okay if authors were better about updating their version info -- a couple of times I checked games that I [i]knew[/i] had been quick-updated and they still claimed to be version 1.0, so I pretty much gave that up as a lost cause. I know it's an easy thing to miss when you're knocking out a fast update, and that at present there's no streamlined way for the organisers to enforce this; so I'm not sure what the solution is.[/quote]

I think one solution would be for the website to have links to all versions of a game, with dates clearly marked.  Maybe not all on the main page, but if each game had its own page the update history could go there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3541&start=0#p26431
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Nationality relationship
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2011-11-17 13:07:06

The painfully obvious solution is simply not to assign the player a (known) demonym.  I'll do that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3688&start=10#p26432
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Strange question for combatting meta-gamers in I6
User: ajesster / DateTime: 2011-11-17 13:22:49

Nope, same issue. react_before with no verb may just be too broad sweeping. It looks like when it determines which objects can be interacted with in the room, it triggers. 

Oh well, unless someone chimes in with a different solution, I am satisfied with just having before work. This is supposed to be a simple little project after all.

Thanks for the help all, I appreciate it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=50#p26433
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-17 13:24:09

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="matt w"]One concern I thought of: If I'm playing online and I save, will updates disrupt my save files? (Or whatever there are instead of save files when you play online?)[/quote]

If it's a z-machine game, save-files aren't compatible at all across revisions, played online or not. I think (?) maybe (?) that's true for Glulx as well. Not sure about others.

For that, some kind of grandfathering archive would do the trick.

(apologies if I've misunderstood the question)[/quote]

You're definitely right about glulx. My question is more about what goes on under the hood and with the URL. 

I assume that, if I take down the file I've currently got for [url=http://mattweiner.net/Mirthful%20Messiahs/play.html]The Coming of the Mirthful Messiahs[/url] and replace it with a different version in which the description of the tragicomedy mask states that it's one of the Three Sacred Objects of Mystery, anyone who goes back to that URL will not be able to open their old save file.* 

So the question is, when the author updates the game, does the URL that I was playing at start to point to a new file? Would I have any way of continuing to play the old version online? Obviously, if I'm playing off-line and I have a save file, I can just not download the new version, but that might not be the case online.

However, it may be that the number of people who play online and save their games is vanishingly small.

*And in fact, I just found a bug. Fortunately, no one who is not COMPLETELY INSANE will need a save file.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=50#p26438
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-11-17 13:42:25

[quote="sedm0784"]
There might be people that are so vehemently opposed to the rule that they would not enter a game (and apparently, will refuse to even [i]vote[/i]) in any competition which uses the rule. So if it stays in force next year, it's possible it may mean fewer games, and fewer judges. Which is a bad thing.
[/quote]

You're not to worry. Save I've missed something outside this forum, the only potential author for next year's comp who has expressed any objection to the update rule has been, eer... me! And I've clearly stated (twice) that I had, and still have, the firm intention to enter, so no entry has been lost.  [emote]:)[/emote] 

So far it seems that only my votes have been missed this year, which, given the amount of voters, hasn't caused any noticeable difference in the results. Again, next year I'll be an entering author, so I couldn't vote anyway. That means that, in the worst case scenario, we have lost one judge this year (me) and perhaps (and I can't take it for granted) another one for next's (David). My guess is that probably more judges are being lost for not having enough time for playing due to real-life demmands, so I sincerely don't think our so [i]vehement[/i], [i]passionate[/i], [i]overrreacted[/i], two-person dissidence could actually threaten in any way the benefits derived from the new rule.  [emote]:)[/emote]

Other than that, concerning things that have been said in the other thread but I prefer to mention here to make this post make sense as a whole (sorry for any inconvenience! ^_^') :

[quote="bcressey"]I am concerned that allowing authors to update games will undermine the exactitude of my process.[/quote]
[quote="maga"](Some authors will have had better testers than others! And they'll have spent different amounts of time on testing! How can I, the pure-minded voter, retain my perfect impartiality under such conditions?)[/quote]

I get the message, and of course, I apologize. On making lame jokes about un-deadlines I just pretended to expose my disagreement in a friendly way (which would have been unfortunate even if my pooor english hadn't ruined it all in the first place  [emote]:lol:[/emote] ). Sorry again!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3693&start=0#p26440
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to make inform understand
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-11-17 13:59:32

This works. An item with "and" in the name will usually cause problems; you can get around it with printed names and understands.

[code]The Walk-in Closet is a room. "Lots of clothes fill this space."

clothes is a scenery in the closet. the description is "a number of suits that fill your closet. Since you've been in the secret service you've always worn the suits, and have grown to love them.". understand "clothing" and "suits" as clothes.

favorite black suit is a a thing in the closet. the printed name is "your favorite suit and tie". it is wearable. the description is "It's your favorite black suit and tie.". understand "tie", "clothes", "clothing", and "suit and tie" as black suit.[/code]
The other issue here is that you tell Inform to understand "clothing" as the black suit and tie, but you also tell it to understand "clothing" as the clothes scenery object. (And similarly, you have it understand "clothes" as both the black suit and the clothes scenery). It compiles, but it may not behave quite in the way you expect during play. For example, X CLOTHES will examine the suit and tie without a disambiguation prompt, probably because the parser will assume that takeable things are more likely to be what the player wants to interact with than scenery. 

Decide what you want "clothes" to refer to, and have it understand it only as that one thing. Don't force the player to have to rely on the disambiguator more than necessary.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3695&start=0#p26442
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Time passing
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2011-11-17 14:36:59

Time passing is something most games don't worry about - either the PC is only there for a short time, so the day doesn't need to change, or there are cut-scenes that take care of the changing time. However, if a game implements things like food, drink, and especially sleep, there needs to be some sense of time passing - day to night, etc.
In my current experiment, turns last about 5 minutes "real life time", except for moving, which takes up to 2 hours depending on what transport you use and what land you are traveling on. You have to eat at least once every 3 days, drink at least once a day, and sleep at least once every two days to keep from dying and/or going insane.
Those number sounded good, until I realized that someone may take over 800 turns without starving, or over 300 turns without needing a drink. My game may just be winnable in less time than that, which effectively means players could go without eating, drinking, or sleeping for the entire game... bit of a bummer, since I put all this time into that.

So, what would you consider a good number of turns for a player to go without food, water, or sleep?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3696&start=0#p26443
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Trying to 'reset' to starting values
User: jackcust / DateTime: 2011-11-17 14:41:21

I am very new to Inform, and in my first project I've taken on the perhaps too-difficult task of making a chess board.  So I have 'pieces' as a kind, and pawns and knights etc. as kinds of pieces.  Pieces have two values, position and color, where position is a1, a2, ... a8, b1, b2 etc...  I made an action that lets you "play e2 to e4", which changes the position value of the piece on e2 to e4.

My problem is that I want an easy way to reset all the pieces back to their original values.  There are lots of different conditions that cause the game to end, and I want to be able to point them all to a resetting function - maybe by putting in "try resetting" wherever I need it, and defining the action to do what it needs to do.  But I don't know how to write it.  The reset needs to work regardless of the position of the pieces.

I think there are probably lots of clever ways to do this but I don't understand Inform (especially values) well enough.  Can anyone suggest an idea?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3697&start=0#p26444
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Cloned (dynamic objects) rooms are mis-behaving
User: veryalien / DateTime: 2011-11-17 14:47:43

I am experimenting with cloning rooms using the Dynamic Objects extension by Jesse McGrew.
It's nearly working but I've got some really weird problems with the connections between cloned rooms.

Before we go any further... Yes, I know, dynamic objects, do I [i]really[/i] need them? Probably not. I was just messing about and then this potential bug started bugging me and I'm curious to know what is happening!

I've assumed that with Dynamic Objects you can create as many clones of the same 'empty' room as you like and then link all the clones into the overall map. But the resulting links between the rooms don't work as expected and you end up going round in circles!

I've also tried pre-defined rooms (similar to Aaron Reed in Dynamic Rooms) and those rooms are all linked into the map as I expect.

Is there something I have to do after cloning a room object? Is the room a fully-functional room after cloning? Maybe something specific only for cloned room objects is also needed?

At the moment I really do suspect there is a tricky bug somewhere in the Dynamic Objects extension and specifically the cloning of rooms isn't as clean as it should be. I don't think the clones are really independent objects, something tells me they are still internally linked to the original room object and then after cloning maybe to each other?

Here is a relatively small 'hard-coded' example of correct and incorrect behaviour with changing links to some pre-defined room objects and then with clones. Just compare going south three times and then returning north to the first room with trying to go north from the first room three times...

Can anyone see anything worng with the cloned rooms and linking of the exits? At the moment I'm stumped!

[spoiler]Include Dynamic Objects by Jesse Mcgrew.

Use slow route-finding.
[Slow route-finding should always be used with Dynamic Objects and cloned rooms]

The first room is a room.
[A room to act as a starting point for building]

The clone room is a room.
[A room to be cloned during building]

The second room, the third room and the fourth room are rooms.
[Three normal, initially un-linked empty rooms to be used during building]

When play begins:
  [First place a set of 3 pre-defined rooms running south from the first room. These are not clones, they are simply linked into the correct positions by changing their exits. The resulting chain of rooms works as expected, after building you can go south 3 times and return north through the rooms to the first room.]
  change the south exit of the first room to the second room;
  change the north exit of the second room to the first room;
  change the south exit of the second room to the third room;
  change the north exit of the third room to the second room;
  change the south exit of the third room to the fourth room;
  change the north exit of the fourth room to the third room;
  [Now place a set of 3 rooms all cloned from the clone room, running north. You can go north once, but then north again goes straight to the fourth clone room and then going north always goes to the fourth room. Going south goes to the third room and repeat south also goes to the third room!?! You cannot get back to the second clone room or the first room. For some reason the second, third and fourth clones seem to be linked incorrectly, why???]
  let the second clone room be a new object cloned from the clone room;
  now the printed name of the second clone room is "second clone room";
  change the north exit of the first room to the second clone room;
  change the south exit of the second clone room to the first room;
  let the third clone room be a new object cloned from the clone room;
  now the printed name of the third clone room is "third clone room";
  change the north exit of the second clone room to the third clone room;
  change the south exit of the third clone room to the second clone room;
  let the fourth clone room be a new object cloned from the clone room;
  now the printed name of the fourth clone room is "fourth clone room";
  change the north exit of the third clone room to the fourth clone room;
  change the south exit of the fourth clone room to the third clone room.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3695&start=0#p26445
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Time passing
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-11-17 14:48:00

[quote="ArmanX"]So, what would you consider a good number of turns for a player to go without food, water, or sleep?[/quote]
I think most players would say that the good number of turns is ∞.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=50#p26447
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2011-11-17 15:08:04

[quote="Hannes"][quote="sedm0784"]There might be people that are so vehemently opposed to the rule that they would not enter a game (and apparently, will refuse to even [i]vote[/i]) in any competition which uses the rule. So if it stays in force next year, it's possible it may mean fewer games, and fewer judges. Which is a bad thing.[/quote]
In the last two or three years, there always have been authors saying they will never enter the competition again, because it [i]does not[/i] allow them to post updated versions in a timely manner.[/quote]

Jason McIntosh, for example, [url=http://gameshelf.jmac.org/2010/12/the-warblers-nest-and-some-ifc/]said explicitly that not being able to update his game was why he wouldn't enter the IFComp again[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3695&start=0#p26448
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Time passing
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-11-17 15:08:40

This is really an issue of what you want your game to be about. Ideally, the things that the player will spend most attention on, the things that take up most of their energy, should be the stuff that you want the game to be about.

If you write a game that includes strong mechanics about basic life-sustaining functions, much of the player's energy and attention will be directed towards that. For many or most stories, this is going to be a bad thing. Think of some good stories. How many of them describe every meal, bath, toilet break and naptime of the protagonist? If they do, what does this accomplish?

I can imagine exceptions. If you were writing about a story about surviving through a famine, for instance, attention to getting food and how often you needed to eat would be really significant. But even in that kind of situation, a hard rule describing how often you need to eat is likely to be a bad idea, unless the world is modelled in a very simulationist way and the ways in which the player can acquire food are [i]extremely[/i] open. (Doing this will make the game a lot harder to write.) Usually it'd be better to set up each food puzzle as its own set-piece, rather than governed by a regular mechanic.

[quote]However, if a game implements things like food, drink, and especially sleep, there needs to be some sense of time passing - day to night, etc.[/quote]
Why? You seem to be meaning 'implement food' as 'implement food in a manner that simulates the real-life functions of food,' but with a particular focus. You're not worrying about, say, implementing a nutrition system that penalises the player if they don't get all their vitamins, or a taste system that means that the flavour of an apple is described differently if you've just brushed your teeth. Why is the possibility of the player starving more important than those things?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3696&start=0#p26449
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trying to 'reset' to starting values
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-17 15:29:40

What about giving each piece an original_position value that you can reset their position value to when needed?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3695&start=0#p26450
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Time passing
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2011-11-17 15:42:34

[quote="maga"]This is really an issue of what you want your game to be about. Ideally, the things that the player will spend most attention on, the things that take up most of their energy, should be the stuff that you want the game to be about.

If you write a game that includes strong mechanics about basic life-sustaining functions, much of the player's energy and attention will be directed towards that. For many or most stories, this is going to be a bad thing. Think of some good stories. How many of them describe every meal, bath, toilet break and naptime of the protagonist? If they do, what does this accomplish?

I can imagine exceptions. If you were writing about a story about surviving through a famine, for instance, attention to getting food and how often you needed to eat would be really significant. But even in that kind of situation, a hard rule describing how often you need to eat is likely to be a bad idea, unless the world is modelled in a very simulationist way and the ways in which the player can acquire food are [i]extremely[/i] open. (Doing this will make the game a lot harder to write.) Usually it'd be better to set up each food puzzle as its own set-piece, rather than having regular mechanic.[/quote]

In this game, there are two puzzle categories: solving a mystery, and surviving a desert. Surviving isn't terribly hard when you don't need to worry about resources... though, I may make sleep a "find shelter from the nightly desert storm", instead, and drop food entirely, or at least make it merely annoying, rather than deadly.
The map for this game is very, very, very large - upwards of 2,000 rooms. Most of them are either empty desert or otherwise useless, but that's part of the survival - learning what parts of the map are useful, and what parts aren't. The 'mystery' is really only incidental, there to give the player the ability to win...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3696&start=0#p26451
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trying to 'reset' to starting values
User: jackcust / DateTime: 2011-11-17 15:47:41

[quote="Felix"]What about giving each piece an original_position value that you can reset their position value to when needed?[/quote]

Sounds like it could help, but two things -

1. Wouldn't they original_position values have to have the same names as the position values, and wouldn't that be problematic?

2.  I can't seem to change the position value of any of my pieces to something set - like changing an e4 pawn to be an e2 pawn.  Whenever I try to refer to the e4 pawn Inform tells me "this is not explicit enough", I guess because all my pawns are the same thing.  The only way I've been able to change the values is through player commands, I guess because when the player types e2 pawn, it is able to pick that out as one individual thing.  But it never works in the source - if I start a line with 'now the e2 pawn...' it says I'm not explicit enough.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3692&start=0#p26453
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Trapped - V1.0
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-11-17 16:05:38

Given your questions about I7, I supposed your game was made in Inform... Why do I have to download an installer? :O
I'd give it a try, but I'm not going to install anything [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3692&start=0#p26454
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Trapped - V1.0
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-17 16:25:34

I'm all about survival horror. It's my favorite. Like strawberry cheesecake.

I'm also not a fan of downloading an installer, though. Or anything not hosted on IFDB, as it makes it more difficult to leave feedback.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3696&start=0#p26455
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trying to 'reset' to starting values
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-11-17 16:59:11

[quote="jackcust"][quote="Felix"]What about giving each piece an original_position value that you can reset their position value to when needed?[/quote]

Sounds like it could help, but two things -

1. Wouldn't they original_position values have to have the same names as the position values, and wouldn't that be problematic?[/quote]

No. Something like this (untested, YMMV):
[code]
A chess piece is a kind of thing. A chess piece has a room called original_position. [I don't know are you using rooms? or doing something else?]

A king is a kind of chess piece.

A queen is a kind of chess piece.

[...etc]

When play begins:
    repeat with piece running through all chess pieces:
        now the original_position of the piece is the location of the piece.

[/code]

Now when resetting:

[code]
repeat with piece running through all chess pieces:
    now the location of the piece is the original_position;
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=50#p26456
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-11-17 17:09:30

I haven't gone so far as swearing off the IFComp or anything, but I remember how much I wanted an update rule when I entered in '09.  Because the goofy writing turned some people off (granted, there are probably a lot of assumptions behind it that the game was actually intending to build off of in the first place), some players just quit when they hit the >CLIMB TREE error in the first room of [i]Yon Astounding Castle! of some sort[/i], assuming the whole game was a mess of unimplemented whatnot when, instead, >CLIMB TREE actually HAD been implemented, but was being blocked by a silly and totally easily fixable synonym error.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3696&start=0#p26457
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trying to 'reset' to starting values
User: jackcust / DateTime: 2011-11-17 17:29:29

[quote="wjousts"]

No. Something like this (untested, YMMV):
[code]
A chess piece is a kind of thing. A chess piece has a room called original_position. [I don't know are you using rooms? or doing something else?]

A king is a kind of chess piece.

A queen is a kind of chess piece.

[...etc]

When play begins:
    repeat with piece running through all chess pieces:
        now the original_position of the piece is the location of the piece.

[/code]

Now when resetting:

[code]
repeat with piece running through all chess pieces:
    now the location of the piece is the original_position;
[/code][/quote]


Not sure I quite understand, but in any case I want to do this all in one room.  So I made a value:

[code]Position is a kind of value. The positions are a1, a2, a3, a4, a5, a6, a7, a8, b1, b2, b3, b4, b5, b6, b7, b8, c1, c2, c3, c4, c5, c6, c7, c8, d1, d2, d3, d4, d5, d6, d7, d8, e1, e2, e3, e4, e5, e6, e7, e8, f1, f2, f3, f4, f5, f6, f7, f8, g1, g2, g3, g4, g5, g6, g7, g8, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, h7, and h8.[/code]

And a kind called pieces, and then particular pieces, like this:

[code]A pawn is a kind of piece.
On the board are a white a2 pawn, a white b2 pawn, a white c2 pawn,
etc...[/code]

Now when I try to refer, in the code, to one of these pawns to change it's value, I'm told I'm not being explicit enough.  And if I try to create another value called StartingPosition, so that the pieces have 'memory' of where they came from, I can't because it can't have possible values a1, a2, etc. since they're already used.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3697&start=0#p26459
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Cloned (dynamic objects) rooms are mis-behaving
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-11-17 18:06:13

Map connections aren't tracked by individual rooms, but by a fixed-size global array, called Map_Storage at the I6 level.  It looks like this:[code]Array Map_Storage -->
 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ! Exits from: I88_first_room
 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ! Exits from: I89_clone_room
 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ! Exits from: I90_second_room
 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ! Exits from: I91_third_room
 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ! Exits from: I92_fourth_room
;[/code]Each room knows what 'row' its exits are in (the IK1_count property at the I6 level), and this index is copied by dynamic objects when you clone something.  So cloned rooms share exits.  (Still, this is surely better than trying to use out-of-bounds rows.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=50#p26461
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-11-17 18:37:40

If we were to lose judges for the new rule, then it already happened this year.  The rule was stated as the comp began, so any offended judges who wouldn't vote under the new rule have already omitted themselves.  I think we're safe.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3696&start=0#p26462
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trying to 'reset' to starting values
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-17 18:59:45

Overall, this looks pretty complicated as something to start with. However, defining original-position shouldn't be too awful. You can say "Every pawn has a position called current-position" and also "Every pawn has a position called original-position"; that way, you can write a routine that sets the current-position of all the pawns to their original-positions, and invoke it whenever you need to.

I wasn't quite sure about what you said about referring to "black b2 pawn" etc. in the source, but if you just write "on the board is a black b2 pawn" etc., you won't actually create a pawn (let alone one with color black and position b2); you'll just create a thing called "black b2 pawn." At least that's what happened when I tried to type it in. To avoid giving myself the screaming heebie-jeebies, I'd define the pieces with a table, as in section 15.16. Even then, many pitfalls await. 

I put a semi-working thingy under the spoiler tag. If you want to try it out, hit the "quote" button as if you were replying to this post, then copy-paste the code out of that box; that'll preserve the all-important tab stops.

[spoiler][code]Position is a kind of value. The positions are a1, a2, a3, a4, a5, a6, a7, a8, b1, b2, b3, b4, b5, b6, b7, b8, c1, c2, c3, c4, c5, c6, c7, c8, d1, d2, d3, d4, d5, d6, d7, d8, e1, e2, e3, e4, e5, e6, e7, e8, f1, f2, f3, f4, f5, f6, f7, f8, g1, g2, g3, g4, g5, g6, g7, g8, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, h7, and h8.

Color is a kind of value. The colors are black and white.
A pawn is a kind of thing. A pawn has a color. A pawn has a position called current-position. A pawn has a position called original-position.
[Note that the pawn has two different positions associated with it; this is legal.]
 The printed name of a pawn is "[color of the item described] [current-position of the item described] pawn". 
[This means that, whenever the game talks about the pawn, it'll say "white a5 pawn" or whatever instead of using the goofy names defined in the table.]

Chess club is a room. A board is a supporter in chess club. 

Some pawns are defined by the table of chessfolk. [Unfortunately the compiler barfs if you say "table of pawns." Hence this dumb name.]

Table of chessfolk
pawn	color	original-position
white-a pawn	white	a2 
white-b pawn	white	b2
white-c pawn	white	c2
black-a pawn	black	a7
black-b pawn	black	b7
black-c pawn	black	c7 [Also, unfortunately, the compiler barfs if you name pawns things like "white b pawn" without the hyphen. Apparently, it then interprets "white" in the color column as referring to the white b pawn thing, instead of the color "white." There may be a way around this namespace clash, but I just put in a hyphen.]

To reset the pawns: [This is the rule for restoring things to the original position. Alice is just a temporary variable name.]
	repeat with Alice running through pawns:
		now Alice is on the board; [this was the easiest way I could think of to put all the pawns on the board]
		now the current-position of Alice is the original-position of Alice.
		
When play begins: reset the pawns. [This way we don't actually have to specify the starting current-position in the table.]


[Now let's implement some moves.]
Moving it to is an action applying to one thing and one position.
Understand "move [something] to [position]" as moving it to.
Check moving it to: if the noun is not a pawn, say "You can only move pawns." instead. [You could also write rules restricting the moves to legal positions. Better you than me, I fear.]
Carry out moving it to:
	now the current-position of the noun is the position understood.
Report moving it to:
	say "You move the pawn to [current-position of the noun]." [If we were being really stylish, we'd save the old current-position so we could say which square you were moving it from as well. We're not being really stylish.]

Understand the current-position property as describing a pawn. Understand the color property as describing a pawn.  [This means that commands like "move black pawn" and "move a5 pawn" will be understood. I'm not sure, but I think "pawn" may be understood only because all the pawns have "pawn" in their names. There's a better way to make that happen but I came down with a case of the fails and couldn't find it. "white-a pawn" will probably also be understood, but there's no risk of the player actually trying it.]

Moving it wrong is an action applying to one thing and one topic. Understand "move [something] to [text]" as moving it wrong. [This just catches cases where the player types in an invalid position.]
Instead of moving something wrong: say "You can't move something to [topic understood]; you can only move things to positions on the board."

Resigning is an action applying to nothing. Understand "resign" as resigning.

Carry out resigning: reset the pawns.
Report resigning: say "You move the pawns back to their original places."[/code][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3696&start=0#p26464
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trying to 'reset' to starting values
User: jackcust / DateTime: 2011-11-17 19:47:56

[quote="matt w"]Overall, this looks pretty complicated as something to start with. However, defining original-position shouldn't be too awful. You can say "Every pawn has a position called current-position" and also "Every pawn has a position called original-position"; that way, you can write a routine that sets the current-position of all the pawns to their original-positions, and invoke it whenever you need to.

I wasn't quite sure about what you said about referring to "black b2 pawn" etc. in the source, but if you just write "on the board is a black b2 pawn" etc., you won't actually create a pawn (let alone one with color black and position b2); you'll just create a thing called "black b2 pawn." At least that's what happened when I tried to type it in. To avoid giving myself the screaming heebie-jeebies, I'd define the pieces with a table, as in section 15.16. Even then, many pitfalls await. 

I put a semi-working thingy under the spoiler tag. If you want to try it out, hit the "quote" button as if you were replying to this post, then copy-paste the code out of that box; that'll preserve the all-important tab stops.[/quote]

Thanks! - I had a lot of that code but there were a few key things I was missing.  One was the "repeat with .. running through the pieces" mechanism that you and the previous poster mentioned - I didn't know anything about that before.  But the real aha! was seeing that your pawns have two different position values, but [u]only one[/u] is "understood...as describing the pawn", so that there won't be any confusion when the player refers to them.

The project won't actually be too tough - the games will be four moves long at most, and only one or two in most lines.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3696&start=0#p26465
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trying to 'reset' to starting values
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-17 20:15:29

Ah, I thought you maybe wanted to implement a lot of different possible moves, which seems like it would be well into blinding headache territory. Understanding via properties and relations is wonderful and weird stuff, anyway. 

[Are you related to the baseball player, by any chance?]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3690&start=0#p26466
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7]How long can be a music file?
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-11-17 20:34:35

Thank you for your help.
I checked the extension and it may be updated soon so it is very good news.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=30#p26468
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-11-17 20:51:49

I was thinking the same thing. Though I'd still want mine to be publishable [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3696&start=0#p26470
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trying to 'reset' to starting values
User: jackcust / DateTime: 2011-11-17 21:32:08

[quote="matt w"]Ah, I thought you maybe wanted to implement a lot of different possible moves, which seems like it would be well into blinding headache territory. Understanding via properties and relations is wonderful and weird stuff, anyway. 

[Are you related to the baseball player, by any chance?][/quote]

I am not, but that he is the inspiration for the username.
Thanks again for the help, I've got the whole thing working very well now.  I added PieceType to the chart so now I don't need separate kinds for pawns and knights and such, and can use [PieceType of noun] in my descriptions  - very happy!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3692&start=0#p26472
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Trapped - V1.0
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-17 23:26:21

Questions resolved. Thanks. [emote]:)[/emote]

(I did manage to get a little further, too.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3695&start=0#p26473
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Time passing
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-17 23:45:40

[quote="ArmanX"]So, what would you consider a good number of turns for a player to go without food, water, or sleep?[/quote]

If your game is specifically [i]about [/i] managing things like food, water, and sleep ... If that's the actual topic ... if the title is like [i][b]"A Game About Managing Food, Water and Sleep, What Fucking Joy,"[/b][/i] then it depends if your goal is realism or some kind of genre-flavor evocation. If the former, stick with realistic values, obviously, and scale the game-time to fit. If the latter, go with whatever is the most challenging, appropriately evocative, and fun.

If these are incidental management details unrelated to what the game is about, pause to consider how much fun they are. If they're not meant to be fun, consider hitting yourself with something. Nothing lethal, obviously, but something that hurts.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3570&start=10#p26474
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SPAM
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-11-18 00:58:50

Related: Happy birthday, Merk! And a bunch of other people apparently!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=50#p26475
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-11-18 01:04:38

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]If we were to lose judges for the new rule, then it already happened this year.  The rule was stated as the comp began, so any offended judges who wouldn't vote under the new rule have already omitted themselves.  I think we're safe.[/quote]

That's an interesting comment, particularly in light of the massive drop in voters this year.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3695&start=0#p26476
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Time passing
User: TheOtherMattW / DateTime: 2011-11-18 02:27:31

[quote="ArmanX"]The map for this game is very, very, very large - upwards of 2,000 rooms. Most of them are either empty desert or otherwise useless, but that's part of the survival - learning what parts of the map are useful, and what parts aren't. The 'mystery' is really only incidental, there to give the player the ability to win...[/quote]

I don't mean to rain on your parade, but "upwards of 2,000 rooms" does not seem like a game a lot of people will want to play. If I can walk north for 30 times without the room description changing significantly, without anything happening, I will not be thinking: "Wow, what a cool game, this vast desert is really implemented quite realistically." but rather "Let's play something else. This is ridiculously underimplemented."

What players (generally) want from IF, puzzle- or story-based, is *for something to happen*. While boredom, frustration (with endless treks across the countryside or through a desert, for example) etc. can be part of the story, you want to make sure that they happen to the player character rather than the *player*.

I would try to describe the desert as vast rather for it to actually *be* vast. Make finding that oasis or watering hole depend on finding a map of the region or talking to someone, maybe. Make the game a series of scenes strung together by cut-scenes of travelling.

That's just my .02

Matthias

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3697&start=0#p26477
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Cloned (dynamic objects) rooms are mis-behaving
User: veryalien / DateTime: 2011-11-18 03:37:56

[quote]So cloned rooms share exits.[/quote]
OK, it's not a bug in Dynamic Objects (sorry for the assumption), it's a feature. Unfortunately the result seems to be that re-linking cloned rooms may lead to other issues with exits from existing rooms.

Does dynamic cloning of rooms make any sense? Is there any practical use for cloned rooms?

I'll go back to the 'pool of rooms' approach à la Dynamic Rooms and link them in and out of the map as required. But I don't know if you have to be very careful with the inital size of the off-stage pool for rooms and objects (for the z-machine).

How much room does an empty room consume, if an empty room consumes room?!  [emote]:roll:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3692&start=0#p26478
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Trapped - V1.0
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-11-18 03:44:42

<a class="postlink" href="http://s11.zetaboards.com/InterFiction/topic/7493684/1/?x=0#post8208494">http://s11.zetaboards.com/InterFiction/ ... ost8208494</a>

I've added a link so that users can download the zblorb file alone. The installer installs a folder with documentation, and a folder with gargoyles installer because I will be promoting my game outside the If community, to my friends on Facebook. Many of them don't know what If is, let alone and interpreter. The installation of the interpreter in the interpreter folder is not mandatory, and is there for peoples ease of use that have not played IF before.

The dll file is a library used by setup factory, the program I used to create the installer. I don't know why un-installer didn't work, I'm going to re-create the installer using visual studio, and get it working properly. Thanks for the feedback.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3692&start=0#p26479
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Trapped - V1.0
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-11-18 04:08:51

I Would be interested in knowing how to release with interpreter, so that the game can be played as a stand alone.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3701&start=0#p26480
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Using verbose room descriptions by default
User: sedm0784 / DateTime: 2011-11-18 04:45:39

I always type VERBOSE to switch on full-length room descriptions when I start playing a piece of IF. I find it much easier to skip passages of text I'm not interested in reading again, than to remember or scroll to potentially important text that has disappeared off-screen.

Furthermore, I feel having verbose descriptions turned on initially is a better default for games. My reasoning being that beginners would benefit from having the descriptions on, but wouldn't even realise this was possible, whereas most people that didn't want them would likely know how to turn them off.

TADS 3 (I think) has full-length descriptions on by default. Inform 7 has them off, and the documentation states that the reasoning for this is "convention". This doesn't seem like a great reason to me.

I'm obviously biased by the fact that I like having them on, though. Is there anyone that would be actively put off by starting a game where full-length descriptions have been turned on? Do any of you turn them off when writing TADS? Is it a bad idea for me to turn them on in every (hypothetical, at this point) game I write?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3692&start=0#p26481
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Trapped - V1.0
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-11-18 04:48:02

Okay, everything has been fixed. There is an installer for those of you who are new to If, and zblorb file for those of you with an interpreter. The install file has been created with Visual Studio, and uninstall errors have been removed.

<a class="postlink" href="http://s11.zetaboards.com/InterFiction/topic/7493684/1/?x=0#post8208494">http://s11.zetaboards.com/InterFiction/ ... ost8208494</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3701&start=0#p26482
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Using verbose room descriptions by default
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-11-18 05:00:14

In the game I just co-wrote we had verbose always on. It saves the player looking every time they change location, and it makes sense in the game world because the character will obviously be moving around with their eyes open. For similar reasons we had unexamined items autoexamined whenever they're taken. Furthermore, unless you're listing all the exits in the status bar, the room description is giving the player vital info on how to continue navigating through the game.

I can, however, see the drawbacks if you have a mountain of unvarying text in each room description.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3701&start=0#p26483
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Using verbose room descriptions by default
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-11-18 05:10:12

[quote="sedm0784"]Inform 7 has them off, and the documentation states that the reasoning for this is "convention". This doesn't seem like a great reason to me.[/quote]
Inform 7 has had verbose mode on by default for at least a year now. Maybe it's time to update?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3692&start=0#p26484
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Trapped - V1.0
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-11-18 05:16:46

Thanks. One of Z-machine's strengths is that you can play the games on just about any platform, so it's polite to provide the plain story file for us who don't have a Windows machine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3701&start=0#p26485
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Using verbose room descriptions by default
User: sedm0784 / DateTime: 2011-11-18 05:17:58

[quote="Juhana"][quote="sedm0784"]Inform 7 has them off, and the documentation states that the reasoning for this is "convention". This doesn't seem like a great reason to me.[/quote]
Inform 7 has had verbose mode on by default for at least a year now. Maybe it's time to update?[/quote]
Well that makes this thread a bit pointless then!

Someone should update [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rdoc32.html]the recipe book[/url], though.

P.S. I am up to date. I just didn't realise the default had changed because I always have full-length descriptions turned on manually. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3701&start=0#p26486
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Using verbose room descriptions by default
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-11-18 05:34:37

Good catch, I [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=805]reported the issue[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=10#p26488
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-11-18 06:03:21

[quote="Kytaari"]I also would like to know if anyone here takes the medium very seriously or not. Here are some of my thoughts.
[/quote]

Yes. Some of us take it *extremely* seriously. It has gripped us with fierce talons and has not remanded for many years.

[quote="Kytaari"]
People see this medium as something kiddy and not worthy of being taken seriously.
[/quote]

Two responses here: 1) they are ignorant (so do not bother with their uninformed opinions) 2) I can't really blame them. If they have actually been out to [url]ifdb.tads.org[/url] and looked around, they might well conclude IF is not a serious enterprise, because of the number of garbage games released (Speed IF/joke/test), the number of games hobbled and never fixed, the number of pornographic wastes of time, and the entire politically-correct malady that dumps on anything that doesn't fit a certain perspective. 

[quote="Kytaari"]I didn't mean the post to get so psychological like this, but I really feel a need to be receptive towards what people in this community think about this issue. Is this medium fairly or unfairly treated so?[/quote]

Unfortunately, IF doesn't have a community in any way, shape, or form. What you'll find is a group of people that have much love in correcting you, some interest in answering your technical questions, and nothing but scorn once you do things your own way. Expect intense opposition. Expect it to be lonely. I wish I could say it was otherwise, but it won't be. You'll find mountains of haters here, and few encouragers. (Personally, though, I salute you for asking the question and daring the responses.)

Now, is the medium fairly treated in the world at large? No, and that is because of ignorance of the medium, the number of garbage games, and the attitudes of the major players in IF. There is also a severe spirit of hate for anyone who attempts to sell their game, and the usual ghetto attitudes -- once you do what others have not done, all those friendly voices start calling for your death. 

However, with all that said, it sounds like you have understood what IF does and how it alone can do what you want to do. If it too has seized you, then you must create in this medium, and I welcome you to it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3695&start=0#p26489
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Time passing
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-11-18 06:13:03

[quote="ArmanX"]
In this game, there are two puzzle categories: solving a mystery, and surviving a desert. Surviving isn't terribly hard when you don't need to worry about resources... though, I may make sleep a "find shelter from the nightly desert storm", instead, and drop food entirely, or at least make it merely annoying, rather than deadly.
The map for this game is very, very, very large - upwards of 2,000 rooms. Most of them are either empty desert or otherwise useless, but that's part of the survival - learning what parts of the map are useful, and what parts aren't. The 'mystery' is really only incidental, there to give the player the ability to win...[/quote]

Uh oh. Please [b]don't[/b] do that -- the mostly empty rooms. Seriously. You will get caustic reviews and probably personally hateful emails about the need to map, the wasted space, and the off-the-charts annoyance factor. And the mystery being incidental is just salt in the wounds.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=10#p26490
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-11-18 06:45:34

Just to be clear, Poster's experience of the community is not very typical. For example, during the six weeks of the recent IF Competition I spent a lot of time with my 30+ fellow competing authors in the Author's forum (the only place where you're allowed to post about your own and each other's games during the competition). There was a great mix of new and established authors, and the atmosphere was excellent, supportive, encouraging. A fantastic community experience.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=40#p26491
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-11-18 06:49:06

Sargent, game 12 is still missing from <a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifcomp.org/comp11/prize-choices.php">http://www.ifcomp.org/comp11/prize-choices.php</a>.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3702&start=0#p26492
Forum: Competitions / Subject: I did not write Comedy of Errors
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-11-18 07:13:25

I've just received the second mail congratulating me on a what a funny game Comedy of Errors is. Just because something is funny, doesn't mean I wrote it.

Adam le Doux: I've received a transcript of your game, which may be of interest to you. PM me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=40#p26493
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-18 07:37:30

Looking at the prize list, Simon Christiansen sure is putting that donor through the paces.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=40#p26494
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: SimonChris / DateTime: 2011-11-18 07:44:06

[quote="matt w"]Looking at the prize list, Simon Christiansen sure is putting that donor through the paces.  [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

I must confess to a certain sadistic pleasure when choosing that prize. However, the German reviewer gave me the most positive review, so I figured he would appreciate a translation. Also, having the game translated into German seems like an excellent way to avoid the usual "no one reviews the post-comp release" problem. Releasing the post-comp version in both English and German is bound to get me some new reviews.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3499&start=0#p26496
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Beet the Devil
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2011-11-18 07:46:55

[quote="JTN"]I have nothing substantial to add about this game, just...[/quote]

That was awful and wonderful.  Thank you!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=50#p26497
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2011-11-18 08:03:49

I personally disliked the rule this year, and I think it will make the competition a more grueling and less pleasant experience for me.  Thus, I personally hope that it goes away.  However, it is successful at increasing the quality of games produced by IFComp, and for that reason, despite my personal dislike, it should probably stay.

I didn't update my game (Beet the Devil) during the competition.  There's a basic reason why:

I didn't have the energy.  The competition took place during a fairly hectic time for me personally and professionally.  I was able to block away time leading up to the competition in order to work on it, and I worked on it like crazy, but there was a great deal of relief in knowing that, when October 1 rolled around, everything was out of my hands and I wouldn't have to sweat it any more.

Except that it wasn't.  That came as a shock.  (If there were any advance warnings about this rules change, I missed them entirely.)

Problems definitely materialized with my game*.  But I couldn't find it in myself to rewrite code, rewrangle my testers, and pull things together when I had "known" that I could give it a rest and stop worrying about it once my code was uploaded.  I kept an eye out for reports of any game-breaking bugs**, but I didn't spot any, so I let everything go.

On the flip side, I would absolutely have done competition updates on One Eye Open if I'd had the opportunity.  But with OEO, I went into the competition knowing I had bugs, knowing where some of the bugs were, knowing exactly how to fix them, and knowing that I didn't have time to retest the areas.  I was far too afraid of introducing a new A-level bug to fix any of the remaining B or C-level bugs with only a couple days left.  As a result, I cringed every time someone mentioned the problem with the fan in my reviews.

Additionally, for all of my "I knew exactly where the OEO bugs were!" above, I didn't fix any of them.  We have a whole list of bugs and plans for fixing them, but we have no post-comp release.  And, given the during-competition chance, I believe that I would have fixed those bugs and a superior version of OEO would be available.

So - I didn't feel particularly positive about the change this year, and I wish it hadn't happened.  And I'm not very happy about it as an author, because it will make the competition experience dramatically more stressful for me.  But I think it's probably a good thing and I won't complain if it sticks around.

[size=85]*Starting from day 1's realization that I hadn't credited my girlfriend by name as a playtester after she stayed up all night to help me sort out a particularly ugly bug.  Dani, I'm really sorry about that.

**Ironically, when Spatch came over to play tonight, he promptly found a game-breaking bug.  Sigh.
[/size]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3695&start=0#p26498
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Time passing
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-18 08:21:47

I'm going to swim against the grain a bit here and offer some mild encouragement -- new styles of play can be interesting if you're aware that what you're doing is something completely different from the usual IF style of play, and if you tailor it so it can be fun. If you have a game where you have to spend a lot of time going from A to B to get the widget that you need to solve the puzzle in point B, it's very annoying if on top of everything else you can starve to death if you don't take the shortest route. But if the whole point is figuring out how not to starve, that might be interesting. New styles of IF play are good! (For an example, check out Kerkerkruip; Victor decided to make a game about randomized combat and made it work.) 

But you have to do it in a way that's interesting. That doesn't mean using typical IF-style puzzles, but it means giving the player something to do. In particular, give the player some way to figure out how to learn what parts of the map are useful. It sounds like your game will probably involve some trying and dying, but for heaven's sake don't make the player learn which parts of the map are useful by going east, finding nothing, dying, and saying "Welp, east isn't useful." 

You might want to look at Hunter, In Darkness and Gator-On, Friend to Wetlands. HiD has a section with an enormous maze that gives you a hint as to how to get through it. This is successful. Gator-On has a ton of empty rooms with unvarying descriptions, designed to set up a couple of puzzles about finding things in a large space. This is unsuccessful (partly because you eventually have to either memorize a location or wander around anyway). It's worth thinking about the differences. One moral, I think, is that the useless rooms shouldn't be useless; they should give you hints about the useful ones. ("You can see a cactus off to the northwest" whenever the cactus is to the northwest; that sort of thing.) 

Sheer numbers aren't going to impress anyone; [url=http://www.filfre.net/2011/10/the-wizard-and-the-princess-part-2/]here[/url] (scroll way down to the comments) Jimmy Maher mentions Level 9 advertising a game with 1000 rooms, "at least 950 of which are completely empty clones of each other." No one wants that. If you're going to make the player play for 800 turns, make sure there's something interesting to do for 800 turns. That would probably mean some sort of system that they need to master to make good use of their resources, as in a roguelike. 

Think about what you want to do, and good luck!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=50#p26499
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-18 08:29:31

Carolyn -- was the thing where

[spoiler]if you stay in the room with the brussels sprouts while you're boiling them, the guard in the hall never seems to leave[/spoiler]

a bug?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=50#p26500
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-11-18 08:40:21

Carolyn, it sounds like a lot of your stress occurred this year because nobody knew there would be this particular rule change, and you couldn't plan or block time for it. That's fair enough - all authors were in that boat. However, I expect that next year, the authors will be told in advance whether or not the rule will be in place, so being surprised won't be an issue.

It remains logical that anyone would want to have their game in the best possible shape before the comp starts, for their own sake, and should probably view the ability to change things as a safeguard against undetected bugs rather than an extended development period. Six weeks isn't much of a bonus on top of the theoretically infinite amount of time an author can spend on their game before making the decision to enter the comp.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=60#p26501
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-11-18 09:07:58

I have to say that it was a lot more pleasant to write code when I had a lot more time. There was a definite price paid in stress/time and general guilt over not planning things better when I updated things, and I did not make anywhere near the changes I ultimately wanted to. It was mostly band-aids.

Given this, anyone who tries to mess with the rules deliberately to, say, fix that one puzzle mid-comp, will find it more trouble than it's worth.

Also, if we keep this rule, then yes, it would be nice to have guidelines spelled out in advance. I don't know what they would be, yet. But I'm open to a survey (which I'd usually dread) from the organizers, because I think it'd be useful and worth my time in this case, whether I am an author or judge next year.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3695&start=0#p26502
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Time passing
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2011-11-18 09:22:55

Filling the rooms with stuff is part of the goal of this experiment; I want to create a huge, believable world, just as full of secrets as the real world, yet completely randomized. When I say "mostly empty", I really mean "mostly empty of plot-moving devices" - every room will be fully described, with lots of random plants, traveling animals, and other interesting things. I do agree with the "endless number of useless rooms"... but, on the other hand, I have a game mechanism just waiting for a game, and I'm trying to find the best way of using it.

Thanks for the thoughts, though; this looks like it may be a project that will need a lot of work before it's worth considering. Still, that's the fun part, eh? :-)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3570&start=10#p26503
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SPAM
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2011-11-18 09:34:06

...That is going to be the most awkward mass birthday party EVER.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3689&start=0#p26504
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Controlling how contents are presented
User: HanonO / DateTime: 2011-11-18 09:38:05

Could you make "under the table" a location that is "in" from.the room that encloses it and then just adjust scope to make things audible or visible from.there?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3695&start=0#p26505
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Time passing
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-18 10:01:58

See, if the plants, animals, etc. are what you're using to solve the hunger and thirst puzzles, then you've sort of got a kind of roguelike. And that could be cool.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=40#p26506
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-18 10:23:10

There was a tie for 13th place, so -- oh, right. The tie means there's no #14 slot, but there should be a #12 slot, and it is indeed missing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3697&start=0#p26507
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Cloned (dynamic objects) rooms are mis-behaving
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-18 10:28:58

The memory usage of a room (or thing, or other object) depends on how many properties you stick on the kind and its members. For an estimate you can look in the index: "Contents" tab, "story file format", click on the little "See estimates of memory usage" + button.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3703&start=0#p26508
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Pseudonyms
User: Squinky / DateTime: 2011-11-18 11:10:45

So... when do we get to learn the true identities of Edmund Wells and Lyman Clive Charles?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=40#p26509
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: Tale / DateTime: 2011-11-18 12:04:25

The reviewer is a different german, though...  [emote]:)[/emote] 

I'm looking forward to this task, actually. Might be interesting. And perhaps quite a different game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=40#p26510
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-11-18 12:22:19

[quote="Taleslinger"]The reviewer is a different german, though...  [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
Well, if there's one thing I learned from playing [i]Wolfenstein[/i], it's that most Germans are identical.


(Just to be absolutely clear: I love Germany. I was at a great workshop in Düsseldorf last week, I was smart enough not to order Kölsch so I had a pleasant time, and the Germans were very non-identical.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=50#p26511
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-11-18 12:33:40

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Well, if there's one thing I learned from playing [i]Wolfenstein[/i], it's that most Germans are identical.[/quote]
I loled [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=50#p26512
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: Tale / DateTime: 2011-11-18 12:35:14

Victor, all is forgiven since you hate Kölsch.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3695&start=10#p26513
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Time passing
User: SJ_43 / DateTime: 2011-11-18 12:53:31

[quote="matt w"]Jimmy Maher mentions Level 9 advertising a game with 1000 rooms, "at least 950 of which are completely empty clones of each other." No one wants that.[/quote]
[url=http://www.worldofspectrum.org/showmag.cgi?mag=MicroAdventurer/Issue01/Pages/MicroAdventurer0100002.jpg]"Set aboard a huge starship that would really work."[/url]

It's funny that the number of rooms is one of its main selling points!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3703&start=0#p26514
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Pseudonyms
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-18 13:01:23

Switching sides in the nym wars, are we?  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=60#p26515
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2011-11-18 13:02:16

[quote="matt w"]Carolyn -- was the thing where

[spoiler]if you stay in the room with the brussels sprouts while you're boiling them, the guard in the hall never seems to leave[/spoiler]

a bug?[/quote]

Sure is.  (And that's the one Spatch just showed me.  He also found some way to

[spoiler]walk off with the pot - I SWEAR that object is fixed in place.[/spoiler]

Must work on this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=60#p26516
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2011-11-18 13:02:50

[quote="severedhand"]Carolyn, it sounds like a lot of your stress occurred this year because nobody knew there would be this particular rule change, and you couldn't plan or block time for it. That's fair enough - all authors were in that boat. However, I expect that next year, the authors will be told in advance whether or not the rule will be in place, so being surprised won't be an issue.[/quote]

I agree with this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3704&start=0#p26517
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: built in actions
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-11-18 13:10:29

I'm not sure if they're called actions, or rules...but I had made a rule for doing something, and someone said that it was a built in thing, and I was basically overriding it making the action. How do use the built ins?

sorta like you can type destoy something, and it says "violence isn't the answer here".

how do you tell inform that something is destroyable, climable, or any of the other built in features?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3704&start=0#p26518
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: built in actions
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-18 13:18:56

[quote="InterFiction"]sorta like you can type destoy something, and it says "violence isn't the answer here".[/quote]

In the case of "destroy," it's (by default) just a synonym for "attack," so to fiddle with it you mess with the Attacking action. Attacking is normally dismissed, so you either need to write an "instead" or unlist the block attacking rule, etc. You can also redefine "destroy" and attach it to a different noun (or make it a noun of your own) if you'd prefer it be separated from "attack."

For a complete list, the Actions index ("Actions" is a tab under the general "Index" tab) is your pal. It's got handy little unlisting buttons and such, too.

[code]The Quarry is a room. "It's a quarry. No exits."

The stone block is in the quarry.

Instead of attacking the block: say "You pummel the block to powder, using only your massive fists and forehead."; remove the stone block from play;
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3704&start=0#p26519
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: built in actions
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-11-18 13:29:45

ohh okay, awesome. Thanks for the info.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=10#p26520
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-18 13:31:26

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Just to be clear, Poster's experience of the community is not very typical. For example, during the six weeks of the recent IF Competition I spent a lot of time with my 30+ fellow competing authors in the Author's forum (the only place where you're allowed to post about your own and each other's games during the competition). There was a great mix of new and established authors, and the atmosphere was excellent, supportive, encouraging. A fantastic community experience.[/quote]

According to Poster's claims (and in fact, according to my initial expectations) the community would have nothing to do with someone like me, because I design against the grain (and display little respect for many of the community's design ideals) and (gasp) I [i]sell [/i]my work. Yet, the community has been nothing but good to me and supportive of my efforts.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3704&start=0#p26521
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: built in actions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-18 13:52:34

My favorite part of the actions tab is the "Actions A-Z" section. There you will find all the possible meanings of each command word - for example, you could go there and search for "destroy," where you will find it's a synonym for "attack." Then you look for "attack" and find that there is just one way to parse it: "attack [something]" is parsed as the attacking action.

Do you know about the "actions" debugging command? If you enter it while you're playing, it will tell you every action that is generated by your commands.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3703&start=0#p26522
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Pseudonyms
User: Squinky / DateTime: 2011-11-18 14:05:43

Yes, now that I'm owned by Google, this information is of vital importance.

[spoiler]Not really.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=10#p26523
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-18 14:13:58

I've heard this story once or twice in various sermons:

[i]A young traveler arrived at the gates of a city and there he met a wise, old man. The traveler asked the old man what the people of the city were like, and the old man asked him "What are the people like where you come from?"

The traveler said, "They're awful. Mean, selfish, and bigoted. They'll beat you up and steal the clothes off your back. They'll cheat you at every opportunity. That's why I left. Is it any better here?"

The wise man replied, "I'm sorry to tell you this young man, but the people here are just like where you came from."

The traveler went on into the city with a heavy heart.

Another traveler came along a while later and asked the old man the same question. The old man asked the new traveler about where he came from.

"Where I come from is a wonderful place. The people are kind and generous. They'll invite you into their homes and treat you like royalty. They're always eager to help. I was sorry to leave them behind."

And the wise man replied, "Then rejoice, friend! The people here are just like where you came from."[/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=10#p26524
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-11-18 14:57:47

It amuses me that the rant on how the community mistreats newcomers was succeeded literally 10 minutes later by a post in another thread where the very same person tells a newcomer how much their proposed game idea sucks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3705&start=0#p26525
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Death And Resurrection.
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-11-18 15:24:03

You can tell by the number of topics I've posted that I have a long way to go with TADS3. In this one, I would like a person to die (from various means) and then be resurrected if he says yes to a question asking if he would like to be resurrected. The resurrection should put him in a special room and will also subtract points from his score.

Any ideas [emote]:?:[/emote] 

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3707&start=0#p26527
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Moving between non-sequential rooms.
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-11-18 15:43:04

Here's another topic. If my TADS3 manuals weren't on my computer, they would be worn out by now [emote]:!:[/emote] 

I would like to be able to move from one non-attached room to another by using a synonym that would take me to directly to the object room; if it has been formerly seen. The synonyms for each room would be derived from the name of the second room.

Example: To move to the beach room, the command verb would be 'beach'. 

I know this is done in 'Polyadv.game.'; which is TADS2 but I'm not sure if the same code will work in TADS3.

Any ideas [emote]:?:[/emote] 

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3570&start=10#p26528
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SPAM
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-11-18 16:05:27

Where dd all the birthdays go?

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3705&start=0#p26529
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Death And Resurrection.
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-11-18 16:06:23

Here's a way to use a [url=http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/libref/object/FinishOption.html]FinishOption[/url] object for this.

[code]
#charset "us-ascii"
#include <adv3.h>
#include <en_us.h>


versionInfo: GameID
	name = 'The Deadly Dungeon'
	byline = 'by Anonymous Bard'
	version = '1'
;

gameMain: GameMainDef
	initialPlayerChar = me
;

me: Actor
	vocabWords = 'self'
	location = dungeon
;

dungeon: Room 'DUNGEON'
	"Monsters lurk in every shadow. You could DIE at any time. "
;

hospital: Room 'HOSPITAL'
	"Doctors lurk in every shadow. You could CHECK OUT at any time. "
;

DefineIAction(Die);
DefineIAction(CheckOut);

VerbRule(Die)
	'die'
	:  DieAction
	verbPhrase = 'die/dying'
;

VerbRule(CheckOut)
	'check' 'out'
	:  CheckOutAction
	verbPhrase = 'check/checking out'
;

modify DieAction
	execAction() {
		finishGameMsg(ftDeath, [finishOptionResurrect]);
	}
;

modify CheckOutAction
	execAction() {
		gPlayerChar.moveInto(dungeon);
		cls();
		gPlayerChar.lookAround(true);
	}
;

finishOptionResurrect: FinishOption
	desc = "PRAY for mercy"
	responseKeyword = 'pray'
	responseChar = 'p'
	doOption() {
		cls();
		gPlayerChar.moveInto(hospital);
		gPlayerChar.lookAround(true);
		addToScore(-2, 'dying');
	}
;
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3570&start=10#p26530
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SPAM
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-11-18 16:16:15

I banned them all - around 80 new accounts. Wish I'd taken a screenshot first.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3707&start=0#p26531
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Moving between non-sequential rooms.
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2011-11-18 16:30:33

I'm mostly a TADS 3 newbie myself, but I would suggest using the command "move to beach" or "go to beach". The parser would recognize the name of the room, and you could simply use moveIntoViaTravel.
Hypothetically, anyway; I haven't tried this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3695&start=10#p26532
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Time passing
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-11-18 16:40:24

[quote="ArmanX"]
The map for this game is very, very, very large - upwards of 2,000 rooms. Most of them are either empty desert or otherwise useless, but that's part of the survival - learning what parts of the map are useful, and what parts aren't. The 'mystery' is really only incidental, there to give the player the ability to win...[/quote]
...and now you have two problems.

I'd look at some existing games that model exploratory, outdoor environments. [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=pk89q1m7lrz7mg73]The Cove[/url] has a very small map with very rich detail; [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=fcm1ikz9ttr6i99a]The Fire Tower[/url] has a larger map, but still quite a lot of detail and environmental effects. [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ez2mcyx4zi98qlkh]Blue Lacuna[/url] is a very large game with an environment that changes over time (night and day, weather, tides).

One of the things you'll notice from these games is that an exploratory, environmental play-style is in direct conflict with timed management puzzles. If you've gone to the trouble of putting in all this detail, the player will be frustrated that they don't have time to stop and look at it. If you're randomly generating most of the environment, there's a risk that the player will resort to mechanical play (explore the whole grid in a pattern, examine every tree to check whether it has fruit on it), which is inherently really boring.

All this is sort of hypothetical, of course, without knowing how precisely you'd approach it. But I would definitely make sure to send an early version of this game to some alpha-testers. Otherwise you're likely commit a metric fuckton of work to the project, realise that there's a major design problem, then having to choose between throwing a significant chunk of that work away or leaving the problem in place.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3707&start=0#p26533
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Moving between non-sequential rooms.
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-11-18 16:50:49

There are a few parts to this problem.

- As ArmanX suggests, you need a verb like "visit A" for which the action method moves the player into the specified room.

- However, rooms other than the current one are not in scope, so you'll need to modify the scope list for your action so that the parser can match those objects.

- Rooms are also typically not set up with vocabWords, and the default Room template does not provide a slot for them. You'll want a new template that does.

- Once you have commands of the form "visit A" working, you can collapse it down to just "A" by using the keyword extension that some of us hashed out earlier this year.

The code for all of this may be rather daunting. (It's all in the ToaURod source.) You might want to skip this until you have more important mechanics implemented. 

I don't mind saying that I really envy the Inform 7 equivalent:

[code]
Understand "[any room]" as namegoing.
[/code]

Plus a line or two to implement the action.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3695&start=10#p26534
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Time passing
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2011-11-18 17:01:29

This game (as are the other dozen games I've started but never finished) is a grand experiment, to see what I can do, and what will work. Right now, it's little more than that... very interesting to me as a concept, but dead boring to everyone else.

My thought process for this went mostly like this:
First, I built an auto-generating map. Once the map itself could be made on the fly, I could make it as large as I wanted - 50x50 means 2500 rooms.
That many rooms needs a map, which the PC picks up early on; it shows his location, and a general view of the world.
Once I had rooms, I added plants, animals, etc., and had those auto-populate as well.
With a world that large, you want changing scenery, so I added time; now the day changes from morning, to afternoon, to evening, to night, with appropriate changes in descriptions for the various land types and animal behavior (ok, so the animals aren't completely working).
With night and day, I'd think the PC should sleep; with deserts to walk through, the PC should probably carry water, too; and as long as you're drinking and sleeping, food might as well work in there somewhere.

I am toying with the idea of a rogue-like, but at this point, nothing is set in stone. I don't mind doing a huge amount of work, only to throw away 90% of it as a loss, as long as I come up with a good game in the end. :-)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=10#p26535
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-11-18 17:46:04

[quote="Juhana"]It amuses me that the rant on how the community mistreats newcomers was succeeded literally 10 minutes later by a post in another thread where the very same person tells a newcomer how much their proposed game idea sucks.[/quote]
That is not entirely fair. Poster told that person not that his game idea sucks, but that it would get bad reviews, which I think was a realistic appraisal of the situation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=50#p26536
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-11-18 17:47:47

[quote="Taleslinger"]Victor, all is forgiven since you hate Kölsch.[/quote]
Actually, what I [i]meant[/i] was that ordering Kölsch in Düsseldorf would have been a very bad thing. But, yeah, Kölsch is nothing special.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3708&start=0#p26537
Forum: Competitions / Subject: The counting girl in Six
User: huftis / DateTime: 2011-11-18 18:03:52

Six was my favourite game in the competition; it was just so much [b]fun[/b] playing! And while most of the game revolves around happy kids playing, there is one much darker element, the counting girl (Rose). I found her really disturbing. I did very much like the inclusion of her in the game, though, perhaps as a contrast to the other kids and the general ‘bright and happy’ mood of the rest of the game. But is it possible to get a happy ending for her? I very much hope so (even though the inclusion of a girl that you [b]can’t[/b] help certainly makes the game more emotionally powerful).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3709&start=0#p26538
Forum: Competitions / Subject: The man with the hat
User: Cameron Fox / DateTime: 2011-11-18 18:20:04

No one has yet put together the full truth. Will the man with the hat ever be redeemed?

(signed) Lyman Clive Charles, Pam Comfite, Cameron Fox, and Edmund Wells.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=10#p26539
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-11-18 19:18:54

[quote="Kytaari"]I also would like to know if anyone here takes the medium very seriously or not.[/quote]

No one will make a living writing IF, and no matter how "successful" an IF wriiter you become, no one will devote their doctoral thesis to your work. The first applies to poetry as well, but the second doesn't. Rectal photography and ufology come to mind.

[quote="Kytaari"]I believe in my potential to tell good stories, but I'm only interested in telling them in this format. People think this is just a phase that I'm going through, and that it will pass. I have a lot of ideas about how to evolve the medium, but so far I've only shared some of them with friends and family. People see this medium as something kiddy and not worthy of being taken seriously.[/quote]

In life you can either play it safe and become a dentist, or you can play blackjack with your future and become an artist. Both options require vastly different kinds of courage. The dentist must face the prospect of spending the entirety of his "career" staring into people's mouths while chatting about the weather. The artist must face the possibility of failure. IF tends to attract the kind of people who have the courage for neither. IF attracts them because it's kind of fun -- as opposed to dentistry -- and because it's impossible to fail at it.

[quote="Kytaari"]Do you suppose this assumption is correct? I've tried writing my stories down as novels, but it just doesn't feel the same. I can't explain what I like so much about this medium[/quote]

You like it because you fear the possiblity of failure so much, you're prepared to accept the impossibility of success.

[quote="Kytaari"]Do you think IF is justly or unjustly seen as something juvenile?[/quote]

Judging by the quality of available works, IF [i]is[/i] juvenile. If anyone thinks I'm wrong, [i]prove[/i] me wrong. Show me mature IF.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3695&start=10#p26540
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Time passing
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-18 19:21:28

This sounds like the sort of thing that would be fun to program, at least. 

I'd be a little cautious about thinking "If I have time passing, I should include sleep, food, and water." At least including them as puzzles. As maga says, if you want people to look at your big world, you shouldn't make them worry about managing their hunger, sleep, and thirst. Time-management puzzles basically punish people for exploring. 

That's not to say that you can't put eating, drinking, and sleeping into the world as a way of marking the passage of time. But if I were doing it, I'd automate it; give the player a bottomless water flask that they automatically drink out of every so often (or stick their knife into a cactus, if that works), have them catch something to eat when they're hungry, have them bed down at night in the sleeping bag they carry with them. That way, these things become part of the atmosphere instead of interfering with it. As Ghalev says, if this isn't the point of your game, make it fun; and it'll probably be more fun if it's automatic instead of being a puzzle that could wipe out your progress. 

Or you could go roguelike-like and really make it a focus of the gameplay. But then it takes a lot of work to make it not annoying.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=20#p26541
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-11-18 19:31:11

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]No one will make a living writing IF, and no matter how "successful" an IF wriiter you become, no one will devote their doctoral thesis to your work.[/quote]
But you might get an undergraduate essay or even - if you're very lucky - an honours dissertation!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=20#p26542
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-18 19:37:23

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="Juhana"]It amuses me that the rant on how the community mistreats newcomers was succeeded literally 10 minutes later by a post in another thread where the very same person tells a newcomer how much their proposed game idea sucks.[/quote]
That is not entirely fair. Poster told that person not that his game idea sucks, but that it would get bad reviews, which I think was a realistic appraisal of the situation.[/quote]

Agreed. Everyone in that thread, including Poster, is being helpful (not the same as coddling, IMO; this isn't some coffeehouse poetry club ...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3709&start=0#p26543
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The man with the hat
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-11-18 19:39:58

Is he a coupon? 

I'm definitely curious what this all means, but it's not obvious to me how those four very different games might fit together.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3709&start=0#p26544
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The man with the hat
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-11-18 19:41:59

We're trying to untangle this on #hatmystery over on ifMUD, if anyone cares to join in.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=20#p26545
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: rpatten / DateTime: 2011-11-18 19:48:41

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]Judging by the quality of available works, IF [i]is[/i] juvenile. If anyone thinks I'm wrong, [i]prove[/i] me wrong. Show me mature IF.[/quote]
Define "mature."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=20#p26546
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-11-18 20:00:08

[quote="Emerald"][quote="Jacek Pudlo"]No one will make a living writing IF, and no matter how "successful" an IF wriiter you become, no one will devote their doctoral thesis to your work.[/quote]
But you might get an undergraduate essay or even - if you're very lucky - an honours dissertation![/quote]

This is factually false on its own terms anyway -- see [url=http://jeremydouglass.com/dissertation.html]Jeremy Douglass' dissertation[/url] if you're curious.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3570&start=10#p26547
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SPAM
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-11-18 20:01:19

Aww, man, you just made the average age around here about a decade older.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3704&start=0#p26548
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: built in actions
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-18 20:05:19

[quote="Ghalev"]
Instead of attacking the block: say "You pummel the block to powder, using only your massive fists and forehead."; remove the stone block from play;
[/quote]

Brutal Legend reference?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3709&start=0#p26549
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The man with the hat
User: Squinky / DateTime: 2011-11-18 20:13:29

Bit of an inconvenient time for me right now, but I too am curious.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3709&start=0#p26550
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The man with the hat
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-11-18 20:33:24

Our paranoia is riding high.
[quote]
SUSPICIOUS CROWD: Tear him to pieces, he's a Reverend!
HUANG: I didn't mention Theophilus Alltext, I mentioned Theophilus the Luke-Acts correspondent!
CROWD: Tear him for his bad puzzles!
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3704&start=0#p26551
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: built in actions
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-18 20:57:54

[quote="I4L"][quote="Ghalev"]
Instead of attacking the block: say "You pummel the block to powder, using only your massive fists and forehead."; remove the stone block from play;
[/quote]

Brutal Legend reference?[/quote]

I wish! There's no PC version that I know of, so I never got to try that one. I do love Full Throttle and Grim Fandango, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3709&start=0#p26552
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The man with the hat
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-18 21:21:36

A partial transcript of the MUD chatter so far: <a class="postlink" href="http://ziz.org/~devesine/ifmud/hatmystery2011-11-06-2100.txt">http://ziz.org/~devesine/ifmud/hatmyste ... 6-2100.txt</a> (thanks to vimes)

It has a discovery of one connection as of right now. The chat itself has gotten farther, but I don't know when vimes will update the file again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=20#p26553
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-18 22:01:19

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.umu.se/english/research/research-news/newsdetail/interactive-gothic-.cid116514">http://www.umu.se/english/research/rese ... .cid116514</a> is also a doctoral thesis.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3159&start=0#p26554
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Announcing Spring Thing 2012
User: InterFiction / DateTime: 2011-11-18 23:01:47

Sounds awesome. Makes me want to enter with the game I'm working on at the moment [emote]:)[/emote].

one thing I did notice on the site though was this. 

"you should then send a non-refundable entry fee of $7 US to the prize pool."

There will be several prizes, including the cash taken from the pool of entry fees.

is that because the entry fees will be spread out amongst winners?

For a little feedback, in the future as the competition grows I would change this

"please email me and I'll put you down on the list. I'll have you hold your prize until the competition is over, then mail the prize directly to the author who chooses it."

reason being as it grows, and more people get involved there may be better chances of a donator not pulling through, or even now. It would be heart breaking for a winner not to get their prize because someone didn't send it, lol..

maybe take some of the money from fees, and what not to handle shipping, say nothing over a pound. Another alternative would be no non cash prizes over 5-10 dollars, send item with money order to cover shipping. If they decide to spend more on the prize it's up to them, but must still include sufficient shipping. That way you're in control of prizes, and know exactly what there is to give, and offer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3159&start=0#p26555
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Announcing Spring Thing 2012
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-18 23:19:21

[quote="InterFiction"]Sounds awesome. Makes me want to enter with the game I'm working on at the moment [emote]:)[/emote].

one thing I did notice on the site though was this. 

"you should then send a non-refundable entry fee of $7 US to the prize pool."

There will be several prizes, including the cash taken from the pool of entry fees.

is that because the entry fees will be spread out amongst winners?

For a little feedback, in the future as the competition grows I would change this

"please email me and I'll put you down on the list. I'll have you hold your prize until the competition is over, then mail the prize directly to the author who chooses it."

reason being as it grows, and more people get involved there may be better chances of a donator not pulling through, or even now. It would be heart breaking for a winner not to get their prize because someone didn't send it, lol..

maybe take some of the money from fees, and what not to handle shipping, say nothing over a pound. Another alternative would be no non cash prizes over 5-10 dollars, send item with money order to cover shipping. If they decide to spend more on the prize it's up to them, but must still include sufficient shipping. That way you're in control of prizes, and know exactly what there is to give, and offer.[/quote]

There are... several points of contention with this post.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3709&start=0#p26556
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The man with the hat
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2011-11-19 00:12:46

This has now been solved on the MUD. Expect more of a writeup this weekend (and post-comp releases of the games soon).

-Kevin, aka Pam Comfite

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1419&start=0#p26557
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Web Hosting
User: mao42ranma / DateTime: 2011-11-19 00:16:31

It's an odd suggestion, but it works and I can give you an example. Dropbox. If you post an html file to the public folder and copy the public link, it will work just like a webpage.

Here is an IF I was testing some things with writing in IF7, released with parchment.

<a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7783089/Release/index.html">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7783089/Release/index.html</a>

It's also handy because you can release the project to the Dropbox public folder where ever it is on your computer, and the Dropbox program will automatically upload, thus updating the public link as well.

If you decide to give it a try, please use my referral link at the bottom to create your 2GB free account, and if you have one, use a .edu email. You earn free 500MB with each referral instead of the standard 250, and up to 16GB free instead of the standard 8. And by using my referral link, you get me as your first referral, starting off with a free 250/500MB.

<a class="postlink" href="http://db.tt/67JrHQQ">http://db.tt/67JrHQQ</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=20#p26574
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-11-19 05:56:37

[quote="I"]No one will make a living writing IF, and no matter how "successful" an IF writer you become, no one will devote their doctoral thesis to your work.[/quote]
[quote="The Dynamic Duo"]This is factually false on its own terms anyway -- see [url=http://jeremydouglass.com/dissertation.html]Jeremy Douglass' dissertation[/url] if you're curious.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.umu.se/english/research/rese">http://www.umu.se/english/research/rese</a> ... .cid116514 is also a doctoral thesis
[/quote]

The first is a thesis devoted to IF, very broadly defined. The second is a thesis devoted to a literary genre supposedly exemplified by four IF works by four authors. Neither is devoted solely to the work of a specific IF author.

You both failed to refute my statement, but Andy came closer. This puzzles me. Isn't Emily supposed to be the intelligent one? Is it the eagerness to prove me wrong that dulls your mind, Em?

[quote="rpatten"]Define "mature."[/quote]

E. L. Doctorow describes the novel as a "large canvas capable of holding the most substantial themes." Does this apply to any work of IF you know of? Can you think of any work of IF that deals with substantial themes in a mature way? Take Doctorow's [i]Ragtime[/i]. Do you see this kind of depth and breadth in IF?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=20#p26575
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-19 07:01:04

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]The first is a thesis devoted to IF, very broadly defined. The second is a thesis devoted to a literary genre supposedly exemplified by four IF works by four authors. Neither is devoted solely to the work of a specific IF author.[/quote]

weeeeeaaaaak

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=20#p26576
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-11-19 07:23:00

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]IF tends to attract the kind of people who have the courage for neither. IF attracts them because it's kind of fun -- as opposed to dentistry -- and because it's impossible to fail at it.[/quote]

I actually do find a lot of truth in this. Text adventures (or "IF" if people want to pretend this fiction is somehow more interactive than other game fiction) are performed in the context of a relatively small community. Yes, that community does reach others outside of it. But there are no real pressures to be good, per se, except that which drives the artist. Hollywood, make of it what you will, does at the very least have pressure to try to succeed. Not necessarily to be "good," I suppose. But there is a monetary basis -- box office -- as well as a prestige factor, such as the need for directors and actors to establish themselves. The book writing world has a similar pressure. Your chances of actually being on a shelf in a bookstore are fairly slim -- and that's even if you are published. Yes, self-publishing has changed your chances of getting things "out there" -- but not necessarily increased the pressure to be good and since the self-publishing often has little or no cost, even bad reviews don't really have to matter all that much. Just publish another one and hope for better next time.

The reviews on novels and films are many and often harsh. You are subjected to much critical review. Even before you get published, you'll probably get rejected more often than not. That's simply not the case at all in text adventures. Even game companies that have to pitch concept games have a very strict percentage of what they can and can't accept so, as a game artist -- in the broad sense -- you do have pressures on you to "compete" -- to be "good", to be "better." And, as with book and film, game reviews are many and harsh. Not only do you have the professional game resources that critique games but you have numerous players making reviews on Amazon, GameSpot, and many other forums.

Text adventures currently don't have any of these pressures beyond the community they reach. (Outside of the community I think they're seen more as novelties and, as such, any reviews are more in that context.) That lack of pressure can be very comforting to someone who does take storytelling seriously but who is a bit afraid or at least mildly apprehensive about having their work scrutinized by a wider community that will not only take it seriously, but that will also -- to a certain very real extent -- judge the medium as a whole by examples, of which yours will now be one.

I do see text adventures as a way to play it very safe. The barrier to entry is very low. You don't have to have sound or graphic skills. You don't even really have to have good game design skills necessarily. Based on a lot of text adventures I've played, you don't even have to necessarily have a lot of storytelling skill. There are examples of text adventures that have good design and that have good storytelling. I know this so no one needs to jump down my throat telling me what I already know. But I'm simply saying that in the hobbyist world that is text adventures, none of that stuff necessarily has to be in place. And even if it's not, and even if your game is pretty bad ... well, really, so what? It doesn't matter in any wider scheme except in terms of the onus you put on yourself to be an effective artist within text adventures.

Beyond that, unless you enter your game in a Comp, there's a fairly good chance no one will even know you produced it anyway.

So to the OP:

Text adventures are a very experimental medium in many ways ... but they are often performing experiments that the vast majority of readers and gamers don't care about. So if part of being an arist for you is reaching a wide audience, and gathering criticism and feedback in a context that matters to you, then text adventures may simply not be the place to plant your flag. As someone else said, it's a personal decision. If you find yourself constantly questioning "Should I be doing this or something else?", that's probably telling you that you should be doing something else.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=20#p26577
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-19 07:30:28

I've actually read Van Leavenworth's dissertation. It's a close reading of "Nevermore", "Anchorhead", "Madam Spider's Web", and "Slouching towards Bedlam" -- very much more a work of literary criticism than of new media studies. It concerns itself with a common theme in the four works: the threats to stable subject boundaries (as expressed in these works by the way player characters are depicted, by the way player control is restricted, and by the way player/PC relationship is maintained).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3687&start=0#p26578
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Announcing release of Signal Error
User: stadtgorilla / DateTime: 2011-11-19 08:25:25

will have a look, thx.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=20#p26579
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-19 10:20:29

[quote="bukayeva"]Your chances of actually being on a shelf in a bookstore are fairly slim -- and that's even if you are published.[/quote]

I've been on plenty of bookstore shelves in multiple languages, from hobby shops to mainstream, and none of that is [i]"chance."[/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=30#p26580
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-11-19 10:46:25

[quote="Ghalev"]I've been on plenty of bookstore shelves in multiple languages, from hobby shops to mainstream bookstores, and none of that is [i]"chance."[/i][/quote]

Good for you. I'm sure someone here will be very impressed to hear that. But there are many others that have not had your situation. Sometimes that's due to the quality of their work. Other times it's due to the pressures of others who are just a little bit better. There are many authors that do get published but don't see a book store. Others do see that. You happen to be one. Again, good for you.

Your data point, however, does not refute the argument even one bit. Nor does your mischaracterization of "chance" when I said "chances are." I didn't say it was just chance that got someone on a book shelf. What I said is exactly what I said: the chances are that many authors out there will not see their book on a bookshelf. If I had said that to Stephen King, Tom Clancy, Robin Cook, and others I would have been as incorrect [i]for them[/i] as I was for you. As I'm sure many would agree, there are some "bad" books that [i]do[/i] get on bookshelves. The "chances are" statement is a function of how many authors are actively trying, how many are succeeding, and what the reasons may be for that success or lack thereof.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=30#p26581
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-19 10:52:38

[quote="bukayeva"] You happen to be one.[/quote]

I don't "happen" to be one. It isn't chance and it isn't [i]happenstance[/i], either.

[quote]Nor does your mischaracterization of "chance" when I said "chances are." [...] the chances are that many authors out there will not see their book on a bookshelf.[/quote]

Which is on logical par with observations like "100% of those who eat grapes eventually die;" it's [i]factual [/i]without containing any relevant [i]truths.[/i] I wasn't the one mischaracterizing.

If five men get into airplanes and try to fly them, and only one is a pilot, it is not [i]meaningful [/i]to say "chances are that most of those men won't take off successfully." Most of those men will not, and it has nothing to do with "chances." The "chances" that a real pilot can get the plane off the ground [i]bear no resemblance or relationship to[/i] the "chances" that the non-pilots will miraculously succeed, so lumping them together creates a nonsensical statement. The same goes for writing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=30#p26582
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-11-19 11:23:04

[quote="Ghalev"]I don't "happen" to be one. It isn't chance and it isn't [i]happenstance[/i], either.[/quote]

[i]Anyway[/i] ... making this not about you and instead going back to the original topic .........

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=30#p26583
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-19 11:27:38

[quote="bukayeva"] ... making this not about you and instead going back to the original topic .........[/quote]

The original topic is some guy worrying about his family and friends' attitudes. Your tangent is no more relevant than me correcting your tangent's error.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=30#p26584
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-11-19 11:40:14

[quote="Ghalev"]The original topic is some guy worrying about his family and friends' attitudes. Your tangent is no more relevant than me correcting your tangent's error.[/quote]

The question of the thread is why "IF" is not taken seriously. I was offering one reason why, for many, it's not with some, yes, tangential points. So ... trying to keep this on track one more time:

Some don't see text adventures as a serious medium because it's not subject to the same pressures (competitive and otherwise) that other arenas are nor is it is subject to the same kind of widespread feedback nor is it necessarily an area where your name has a chance to become "known" outside of a small circle. Whether that's "right" or "wrong" isn't the issue; it's a possible perception and an opinion.

You may disagree with that reason either as given or as presented by me. Whether you've been on a bookshelf or not is responding to only one small part of that, and I doubt it's one that adds much to the discussion. There are many authors that don't get out of the slush pile; there are some that do. Some screenwriters never see their screenplay get turned into film; others do. The very fact that not everyone can do these things, for whatever reason that might be, is one of the reasons that many people see the book publishing arena as "serious" just as they do the filmmaking arena. There are no such constraints on hobbyist text adventures (nor are there on other hobbyist game types). For some people, that matters. For others, it doesn't. I don't know where the original poster falls on that or if that aspect even matters.

I don't know what "taken seriously" means since everyone seems to be using the phrase with different criteria. I gave one possible set of criteria that might be operative for some people. I don't even know if you disagree with that since you only responded to one aspect and one that, yes, I agree, was tangential.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=30#p26585
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-19 11:43:43

[quote][...] and I doubt it's one that adds much to the discussion.[/quote]

The relevance is that your nonsense observation counts either as fear-mongering or coddling, depending on who reads it, and both of those matter to someone writing. To the wannabe, it's a coddling comfort, like telling a kid who can't do math the (alleged) bit about Einstein being a poor math student. To someone who can actually write, it's fear-mongering, because to them it describes a scenario that isn't relevant to them ... in a way that makes the process of writing professionally sound like a long shot when, to them, it isn't a long shot. Because they can write.

But to focus on what seems to be your more central (or at least preferred) point:

[quote="bukayeva"]There are no such constraints on hobbyist text adventures (nor are there on other hobbyist game types). For some people, that matters. For others, it doesn't. [/quote]

You said that you, personally, see IF as playing it safe. Are those who fly kites "playing it safe" because they're not out flying a hang-glider instead? Are model railroad enthusiasts "playing it safe" because they're not out in dungarees laying steel rail and risking their hands and feet to serious injury? Are stamp collectors "playing it safe" because they're collecting pictures of presidents instead of running for office? Sincerely: the whole notion that text adventures are "a way to play it very safe" seems to [i]presume [/i]an awful lot about the "player" seeking the "safety." It seems to presume a basis for comparison that strikes me as, well, [i]imaginary [/i]on a level that ... normally we see mainly from Pudlo.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3613&start=0#p26586
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gargoyle 2011.1 released
User: Roody_Yogurt / DateTime: 2011-11-19 11:44:39

Bocfel seems very nice. Also, I am glad to see that command line option support has been added. Good work!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3703&start=0#p26587
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Pseudonyms
User: Doug Orleans / DateTime: 2011-11-19 11:45:00

Now that [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=26556#p26556]the meta-puzzle has been solved[/url], its authors have revealed themselves:

Lyman Clive Charles is Andrew Plotkin.
Pam Comfite is Kevin Jackson-Mead.
Cameron Fox is Doug Orleans.
Edmund Wells is Michael Hilborn.

I encourage others to try to solve it too!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3703&start=0#p26588
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Pseudonyms
User: Squinky / DateTime: 2011-11-19 12:03:44

Well played.

[spoiler]And here I was, sure one of them had to be Jason McIntosh, given the Warbler's Nest resemblances.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3703&start=0#p26589
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Pseudonyms
User: Doug Orleans / DateTime: 2011-11-19 12:11:27

[quote="deirdrakiai"]Well played.

[spoiler]And here I was, sure one of them had to be Jason McIntosh, given the Warbler's Nest resemblances.[/spoiler][/quote]
[spoiler]Jason is, of course, a fellow [url=http://pr-if.org/]PR-IF[/url] member, and was present during some discussions of the meta-puzzle idea, but I think the resemblances were mostly not intentional.  Still, it was amusing to see how many reviews referred to Warbler's Nest.  He'll be glad to know it's become a sort of archetype in the community's mind![/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=120#p26590
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.3: IF library manager
User: mao42ranma / DateTime: 2011-11-19 12:18:19

I can't seem to get Grotesque to run at all. I get this error.

[code]Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "grotesque", line 59, in <module>
  File "grotesque", line 44, in main
NameError: global name 'Gtk' is not defined[/code]

Running Windows 7 Pro, 64bit

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=30#p26591
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-19 12:31:50

[quote="bukayeva"]The question of the thread is why "IF" is not taken seriously.[/quote]

If you want to know why I (for one) don't take you seriously, this weird tic of yours goes a long way toward explaining it. Leaving aside the rest of your posts, it's just stupid to come to a board about interactive fiction and make a fuss about how we ought to be saying "text adventures" instead. It's like showing up to a discussion among a bunch of Democrats with a long explanation about how it should be called "the Democrat Party"; whatever the underlying issues, it's obvious that you're doing it just to be obnoxious.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3703&start=0#p26592
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Pseudonyms
User: Squinky / DateTime: 2011-11-19 12:38:47

There was also that whole matter of [spoiler]the rules being changed to allow in-game updates, which was partly in response to Jason's complaints last year...[/spoiler]

But anyway, [spoiler]wow, I wouldn't have even guessed Zarf, but given the meta-puzzle, it makes more and more sense to me. Kevin I should've guessed, since his last comp entry was also a pure puzzly thing, though I hadn't played it. I vaguely remember Michael's entries for IF Writing Month, in which I also participated, and was impressed by them. As for you, Doug, I have to say "Cameron Fox" was a brilliant pseudonym in that I was absolutely sure it wasn't a pseudonym, but when I googled it, the first result was for a porn star.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=30#p26593
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-11-19 13:12:39

[quote="Ghalev"]I don't "happen" to be one. It isn't chance and it isn't [i]happenstance[/i], either.[/quote]

Cool it down, sonny. Yes, we know, you don't just "happen" to be one dark and edgy dude. You were chosen by a higher entity to change the course of history with your, your... [Jacek googles "S John Ross" and finds a dead musician, then he googles some more and finds] oh, your... role playing games.  

[quote="Ghalev"]If five men get into airplanes and try to fly them, and only one is a pilot[/quote]

But you're not really a pilot, are you now? You're a 40-year-old man who writes RPGs. Your choice of locomotion is a tricycle, not an airplane. We're discussing interactive fiction here. You're welcome to stay and listen, but don't feel obliged to take part.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=30#p26595
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-19 14:01:47

Yes, Pudlo, I'm a professional game writer, talking about writing games. I've also written professionally about computer games in one of my editorial positions. Try not to injure yourself unraveling the complexities.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=30#p26596
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-11-19 14:18:55

So IF is not taken seriously because...you're capable of belittling people on a message board?

[quote]The reviews on novels and films are many and often harsh. You are subjected to much critical review. Even before you get published, you'll probably get rejected more often than not. That's simply not the case at all in text adventures.[/quote]

Writing in particular is a huge, complex, and multilayered ecosystem.  Seasoned experts on one level are laughable rookies on another.  Below the level of publication or attempted publication, there are large communities like NaNoWriMo with low publication focus, and ones like FanFiction.net with no publication focus at all.  You can become a prominent and well-regarded member of one of these communities without ever aspiring to get published.

With the rise of webcams and YouTube, this has become more and more the case for films as well.  There are internet celebrities with their own fan followings who will never enter a movie into a festival.

All of this is to say that, in communities as large as writing, how much critical review you receive (and how well-regarded you are) is strictly a factor of how much you want to receive.  IF, being a small community, lacks this luxury--you can either be subject to the same criticism everyone else receives or to none.

[quote]I do see text adventures as a way to play it very safe. The barrier to entry is very low. You don't have to have sound or graphic skills. You don't even really have to have good game design skills necessarily. Based on a lot of text adventures I've played, you don't even have to necessarily have a lot of storytelling skill.[/quote]

Well?  There are plenty of writers with no storytelling skill.  "It's physically possible to be bad at the thing you're doing" is a truism.  And IF encompasses a wider skill set than many other media.  For that matter I've yet to write an IF that didn't incorporate graphics in some capacity.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3703&start=0#p26597
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Pseudonyms
User: Doug Orleans / DateTime: 2011-11-19 14:26:12

Yeah, my goal was to use a pseudonym that did not look like a pseudonym.  (It's the maiden names of my grandmothers, both of whom just died in the last two years.)  The only reason we used pseudonyms was so that people wouldn't guess that there was something up just based on seeing four entries from PR-IF members, but as it turns out we were much more careful than we probably needed to be...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=40#p26598
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-11-19 14:42:33

[quote="bukayeva"]The question of the thread is why "IF" is not taken seriously.[/quote]

Because there is so far not a single work of IF that deserves to be treated as serious literature. If I've missed something, please do correct me.

[quote="matt w"]If you want to know why I (for one) don't take you seriously, this weird tic of yours goes a long way toward explaining it. Leaving aside the rest of your posts, it's just stupid to come to a board about interactive fiction and make a fuss about how we ought to be saying "text adventures" instead. It's like showing up to a discussion among a bunch of Democrats with a long explanation about how it should be called "the Democrat Party"; whatever the underlying issues, it's obvious that you're doing it just to be obnoxious.[/quote]

Here's a somewhat less specious analogy. A guy at a KKK rally politely raises his arm and says "Yeah, I totally hate Jews and papists, but don't you guys know that 'clan' is spelled with a C? Don't you guys wan't to break the stereotype of the Clan being perceived as a bunch of illiterate hillbillies?" 

[quote="The RPG Dude"]Are those who fly kites "playing it safe" because they're not out flying a hang-glider instead?"[/quote]

When they're twelve, no. When they're 40, yes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=40#p26599
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-11-19 15:48:11

[quote="bukayeva"]I do see text adventures as a way to play it very safe.[/quote]
Not [i]very[/i] safe, surely. There are many online communities which are far more interested in giving mutual support and far less interested in criticism than the IF community.

Will a work of IF be subject to far less scrutiny than a novel, and will it be judged by lower standards than a (serious) novel? Of course. That immediately follows from the fact that the community of IF readers is so much smaller than the community of novel readers. I don't think this fact is particularly interesting, or revealing, or that anyone is under any delusions about it. Nobody has claimed that IF has already been proved to be one of the great branches of literature.

Does that mean IF should not be taken seriously? Well, if people were saying things like "this is Adam Cadre, and he is as important as Tolstoy", they would be taking the medium far more seriously than is currently warranted. On the other hand, if they were saying "there is interesting work being done in this medium, and it something we should keep exploring", they are taking the medium seriously in a way that it surely deserves.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3712&start=0#p26600
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Help with a modified action
User: nado / DateTime: 2011-11-19 16:17:13

I've put this in for my code:
Instead of punching Guards: say "[If player has Spirit]Words will do you no good here, so instead...[paragraph break] You punch the burly guard with all your might.  (You're pretty sure the only reason he actually was moved was because you caught him off guard)  All noise stops outside the base entrance.[paragraph break] 'What the hell!  Who do you think you are?  I oughta' Uh-oh, you're done for now.  'Wait,' the man holds her back then looks down at you, 'that took guts.  Gang 2 kinda guts.  Go on inside if you're serious about joining.  But one wrong move and I will deal with you personally.'[otherwise] You're about to wind up and punch, but you become unsure of your action and don't follow through.[end if]".

But get an error message: Problem. You wrote 'Instead of punching Guards'  , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is 'punching Guards'. But that did not make sense as a description of an action. I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook.

If I replace "punching" with "pushing" or "attacking", the game will compile but when the player gets to that point and says to attack or push guards, there is no output text for the action.  How can I fix this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=40#p26601
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-19 16:18:44

[quote="bukayeva"][quote="Jacek Pudlo"]
IF tends to attract the kind of people who have the courage for neither. IF attracts them because it's kind of fun -- as opposed to dentistry -- and because it's impossible to fail at it.[/quote]

I actually do find a lot of truth in this. ... there are no real pressures to be good, per se, except that which drives the artist. Hollywood, make of it what you will, does at the very least have pressure to try to succeed. [/quote]


I, too, find some truth in this, though I don't agree with the attitude (or it doesn'¨t agree with me). 

Of course, writing IF* for the mere fun of it is less competitive and less serious than trying to get a job (or getting a novel published (or making a living out of writing IF)), because else you'll go hungry or lose your home. Indeed, THAT IS PART OF WHAT MAKES IT FUN. If your aim in life is to make a success out of yourself, go become a dentist or a rock star or a senator; don't write IF for the fun of it. If your aim in life is to show great courage, go join the dissidents in Syria or do some other worthwhile thing. 

If you still choose to write IF for the fun it, remember that things freely done although they serve no further purpose at all are surely the best of things (as they are done because they are perceived to be valuable in their own right not just as means to an end) and those most worthy of a good human life. 


* Interactive fiction indeed happens -- necessarily happens, that is -- to be no more interactive nor more fictional than any game of make-believe, which makes it a case of synecdeoche, as when "America" refers to the USA specifically (or like "USA" refers to one specific union of American states rather than another (e.g. not to the Mexican union of American states)). Well, so be it...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3712&start=0#p26602
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with a modified action
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-19 16:37:11

There is no standard 'punching' action. The command PUNCH by default triggers the 'attacking' action. So you should make that an 'instead of attacking the guards' rule.

As to why it doesn't fire, I don't know. It should. If you use the command RULES when testing your game in the IDE, Inform will go into one of its debug modes. If you then type PUNCH GUARDS, Inform will list all rules the game considers when it decides how to respond to that command (on that occasion). The last rule in that list is likely to be the one that messes with the output.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=40#p26604
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-11-19 17:58:29

While I can't address the whole issue directly - indeed, I have no interest in doing so, because I lack the discursive and argumentative skills of most people involved - I can't help but think of "Exhibition" every time someone says how far from maturity IF is.

(and no, the fact that it's not "normal IF" isn't lost in me. I could also mention Anchorhead and All Alone, but I don't think people arguing against the maturity of IF will recognise horror as a mature genre. Their loss.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3714&start=0#p26605
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Darkness inside a container
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-11-19 19:38:59

This should be easy, but: How do you make it dark inside a container?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3715&start=0#p26606
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Question about speaking
User: Querada / DateTime: 2011-11-19 19:48:12

Hello, 

Completely new to writing with Inform 7.  I would appreciate some advice.

I'm looking to make a player be able to perform the command 

Say {text}
Which appears in the game as 'You say, "{text}."'

Also, I would like to be able to have NPCs in the room pick up on specific words that the player says, for example.

You are in a room
Sylvester the Cat is here.
>say I like cats
You say, "I like cats."
Sylvester the Cat looks at you and says, "What's that about cats?  I'm the only cat around these parts."


Thanks for your advice.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3714&start=0#p26607
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Darkness inside a container
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-19 20:08:33

If the container is enterable, closed, and opaque it should be dark by default.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3715&start=0#p26608
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about speaking
User: Querada / DateTime: 2011-11-19 20:24:23

Another question.  

I've been able to create a table to responses to "ask Sylvester about a topic."

I'm trying to create a similar table to examine things in the room.  But it does not appear to be working.  Here's my source text.  The first line about the ears works in-game.  The table causes an error (see below)

The ears are a part of Sylvester.  Instead of examining the ears: say "Sylvester says, 'I can hear you looking at my ears.  That's how sharp they are.'"

The tail is a part of Sylvester. The coat is part of Sylvester.
Instead of examining a object listed in the Table of the objects: say "Sylvester says, '[answer entry]'."


Table of the object.
Object	answer
"tail"	         "My tail is long and bushy."
"coat"       "I see you appreciate a healthy coat.  Go on, pet it."

Problem. You wrote 'Instead of examining a object listed in the Table of the object'  , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is 'examining a object listed in the Table of the object'. But that did not make sense as a description of an action. I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook.

Am tabbing between object and answer.  Have tried using other table titles.

Appreciate comments.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3714&start=0#p26609
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Darkness inside a container
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-11-19 20:43:43

What if it's not openable?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3714&start=0#p26610
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Darkness inside a container
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-19 21:22:28

Hrmp. Someone probably knows better than I do, but I might try just surreptitiously closing and opening the container as you enter and exit:

[code]The Bedroom is a room.
The underside of the bed is a container in the Bedroom. The underside is enterable.
After entering the underside: now the underside is closed.
Before exiting from the underside: now the underside is open.
Report exiting from the underside (this is the don't describe the darkness rule): rule succeeds.
The don't describe the darkness rule is listed after the standard report exiting rule in the report exiting rulebook.[/code]

The don't describe the darkness rule was necessary because the describe room emerged into rule was printing a description of darkness before the description of the Bedroom printed. I think that it may not have recalculated the lighting situation at the right time -- it thought it was still dark when it was time to report exiting, so it printed the description of a dark room, and then it recalculated that it was light, so it tried looking (does that usually happen when the lights go on?) Anyway, this seems to work for now, though it's obviously hacky.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3674&start=10#p26611
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Do you think IF LPs is a bad idea?
User: Kytaari / DateTime: 2011-11-19 21:47:43

Thanks for all the advice. I think I'll just either save IF for a live-streaming thing, or just try to find people nearby in my town who might be interested in playing. Maybe I'll talk to people about it in a gaming club, or something. 

I totally agree about transcripts being a more appropriate experience. I guess the video format just wasn't a very good idea. I'll keep looking for new possibilities, but this one just didn't seem to work. I appreciate all the input, everybody.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3674&start=10#p26612
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Do you think IF LPs is a bad idea?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-19 22:03:35

[quote="Kytaari"][...] or just try to find people nearby in my town who might be interested in playing. Maybe I'll talk to people about it in a gaming club, or something.[/quote]

Social play can be amazingly fun. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3709&start=0#p26613
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The man with the hat
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-19 22:04:07

I've put up a complete transcript of that night's discussion:

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/zweb/coldiron/mud-solve-transcript.txt">http://eblong.com/zarf/zweb/coldiron/mu ... script.txt</a>

(with missing lines corrected, thanks Doug)

Complete spoilers for the metapuzzle, of course.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3709&start=0#p26614
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The man with the hat
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-19 22:14:30

And, speaking for Lyman Clive Charles (who speaks only for me): Thanks to everyone who contributed to the solution last night! (Yes, I was part of the discussion. I was careful not to contribute, except to adumbrate a warning that decompiling _Cold Iron_ would be a serious spoiler.)

This was a lot of fun. Obviously it would have been cooler if people had caught on during the IFComp, without us having to nudge you. But the level of hintage was very hard to judge in advance -- I will say "impossible", really. And I'm happy with how it all turned out.

Let me also congratulate Mike for placing sixth (and in Miss Congeniality, and I believe for the Golden Banana as well). Our original plan for the metapuzzle assumed four *small* games built around the man-with-hat. _Doctor M_ goes way beyond that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3716&start=0#p26615
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: A tomb on Craigslist
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-11-19 22:42:59

Thought some of you might be amused by [url=http://sfbay.craigslist.org/scz/reo/2711744707.html]this[/url] bit of... "grave humor?"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3715&start=0#p26616
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about speaking
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-19 22:56:50

Did you re-type your source rather than pasting it in? I noticed you have a reference to "table of the objects" rather than "table of the object." If you copy and paste, and put the whole thing inside code tags, it'll be easier for people to evaluate your code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3676&start=0#p26617
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: When play begins, move character if...?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-19 23:01:41

Joel: Thanks for the suggestion. That would have worked great, had I been doing things a little differently. I'll definitely keep it for future reference, in simpler situations.

Felix: This did exactly the trick, given the added complication that I didn't mention in the initial post. Not sure what the menu change did, though? The part I want (and am going) to change is "quitting" the menu. Just a verbiage thing. I'd like it to be like "<P> to Play" or something instead of "<Q> to quit". Doesn't make much sense for an opening menu, ya know?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3716&start=0#p26618
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A tomb on Craigslist
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-11-19 23:05:01

That was dead funny. Especially[spoiler]the 'fungal phosphorescence'.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3674&start=10#p26619
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Do you think IF LPs is a bad idea?
User: mao42ranma / DateTime: 2011-11-19 23:43:56

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="Kytaari"][...] or just try to find people nearby in my town who might be interested in playing. Maybe I'll talk to people about it in a gaming club, or something.[/quote]

Social play can be amazingly fun. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Double plus true.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3328&start=20#p26620
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Site Logo
User: mao42ranma / DateTime: 2011-11-19 23:51:43

[quote="ArmanX"]Using a more text-based approach (including using Fixedsys as a font, the default console font in Windows), I came up with this. It has a transparent background, and yes, it blinks. Gently, though.
[attachment=0]twisty.gif[/attachment]

Note that I'm staying in the size boundaries of the original post; I'm fairly certain I can make it bigger, but I don't know what size the forum (and the members' bandwidth) will tolerate.[/quote]

I like this one, what would it like in courier, and maybe green font on black, would like to see a black theme soon, all this brightness makes me blind. [emote]8-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3681&start=0#p26621
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: weird I6 library error
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-11-20 00:17:57

Well done. Maybe you'd like to try writing 8k games in BASIC next, show us how much of a macho you are. Be the next Dunric.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3714&start=0#p26622
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Darkness inside a container
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-11-20 01:35:34

Huh.  I've run into a strange issue:  This code continues to report darkness even after you open the container and get out.

[code]The house is a room.

The box is an enterable, opaque container.  It is closed and openable.  It is in the house.
	
Mary is a woman.  She is in the box.  The player is Mary.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3717&start=0#p26623
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Marked for listing: What is this missing?
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-11-20 03:17:46

What's the trick to removing things on supporters from being listed in the room description?  The below doesn't work, nor do listing-contents rules seem to help.

[code]The house is a room.

A supporter can be tall.

Definition: a thing (called prop) is obscure:
	if the prop is on a tall supporter, yes;
	no.

Before listing nondescript items:
	now every obscure thing is not marked for listing.
	
The table is an enterable supporter in the house.  It is scenery.  It is tall.

The candle is on the table.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3714&start=0#p26624
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Darkness inside a container
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-11-20 03:19:54

[quote="katz"]Huh.  I've run into a strange issue:  This code continues to report darkness even after you open the container and get out.

[code]The house is a room.

The box is an enterable, opaque container.  It is closed and openable.  It is in the house.
	
Mary is a woman.  She is in the box.  The player is Mary.[/code][/quote]
Indeed. This looks like a big bug in Inform 7 to me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=70#p26625
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-11-20 07:13:53

Heh heh — I'm impressed. You went much further than I did on the religious stuff -- I mostly just intercepted 'god'. I didn't get denominational. I did a triple-axle George-Carlin on the sexual stuff though. XD

P.S. Capmikee I just realised that I had seen you before not on Diaspora, but on here -- sorry about that brainfart!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=60#p26626
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-11-20 07:24:12

If this rule changed this year it was quite under the radar. I did read the announcement that bugs could be fixed in mid-comp this year, but I re-downloaded comp11.zip well into November, and all the game versions in that zip file were the original versions as of October 1st. There had been no bug-fixes in an entire month. I don't know if the new rule was revoked and I missed it, or the bug-fixes didn't make it into 'all-in-one' download, or something else happened to derail this intention, but I never saw the benefit of a bug fix.

For the record I have no problem with mid-comp updates, but there is no way I am going to re-download individual games to get the updates. I will only download the all-in-one file; if the bug-fixes aren't in there then I am never going to chase them down, one-by-one. Maybe I'm just lazy -- I can accept that -- but that's my truth. If the bug fixes are only going to be done on the individual downloads/embeds then from where I stand there is no point.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=50#p26627
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-11-20 07:31:38

I only managed to truly play about 5 games this year. I wish I had managed to make more time. Looks like I'm going back to using the winner's list as a guide to what to play later. Sorry about that, but congrats to all the winners! I will play your games.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=60#p26628
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-11-20 07:32:37

[quote="Laroquod"]I don't know if the new rule was revoked and I missed it, [i]or the bug-fixes didn't make it into 'all-in-one' download[/i], or something else happened to derail this intention, but I never saw the benefit of a bug fix.[/quote]
The thing I have italicised.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=60#p26629
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-11-20 07:37:27

Will the all-games download be updated with the updates in future?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3714&start=0#p26630
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Darkness inside a container
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-20 07:42:54

Yup, that's what led me to include the don't describe the darkness rule. (Which has the effect of suppressing the describe room emerged into rule when exiting the underside of the bed.) I've [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=806]reported it[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=40#p26631
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-11-20 07:43:15

[quote="Poster"]Unfortunately, IF doesn't have a community in any way, shape, or form. What you'll find is a group of people that have much love in correcting you, some interest in answering your technical questions, and nothing but scorn once you do things your own way. Expect intense opposition. Expect it to be lonely. I wish I could say it was otherwise, but it won't be. You'll find mountains of haters here, and few encouragers. (Personally, though, I salute you for asking the question and daring the responses.)[/quote]
I know exactly what you're talking about, but I don't see the critics and/or the resisters as 'haters'. They merely feel very strongly about their own theories about what is the best way to go: so do I. I can understand them on that level. Plus there is a macho culture that infected (and in my opinion, ruined) all of USENET, where most of this community originated. I feel that in this webforum (and in other places, like on Twitter) that put-down-the-noobs culture is waning and losing its grip on the IF crowd; people are starting to see other fans as the great throbbing opportunities they are. Specific people who I recall used to not be so friendly, on USENET where the prevailing 'tude I felt was always of knee-jerk dismissal of new ideas, seem to have mellowed. So there is hope; people are giving more thought to the consequences to the medium of their individual behaviour toward new interested parties -- i.e. the culture has been adultificating. And anyway, they were never truly against you in any personal way: they only felt as passionately about their ideas as you do about yours.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3714&start=0#p26632
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Darkness inside a container
User: SJ_43 / DateTime: 2011-11-20 07:51:08

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Indeed. This looks like a big bug in Inform 7 to me.[/quote]
I tracked it down to the following lines in the Position Player In Model World Rule:
[code]if (player_to_be ~= player) { remove selfobj; ChangePlayer(player_to_be); }
real_location = location; SilentlyConsiderLight();
[/code]
The ChangePlayer routine correctly sets location and real_location to thedark and the house respectively. But then the next line sets real_location from location, so now it too is thedark (which it should never be). 

In the meantime you can fix it like this:

[code]The house is a room.
The box is a closed, openable, enterable, opaque container in the house.
Mary is a woman in the box. The player is Mary.

Include (-
[ POSITION_PLAYER_IN_MODEL_R player_to_be;

   player = selfobj;
   player_to_be = InitialSituation-->PLAYER_OBJECT_INIS;
   
   location = LocationOf(player_to_be);
   if (location == 0) {
      location = InitialSituation-->START_ROOM_INIS;
      if (InitialSituation-->START_OBJECT_INIS)
         move player_to_be to InitialSituation-->START_OBJECT_INIS;
      else move player_to_be to location;
   }

   if (player_to_be ~= player) { remove selfobj; ChangePlayer(player_to_be); }
   else { real_location = location; SilentlyConsiderLight(); }

   NOTE_OBJECT_ACQUISITIONS_R(); MoveFloatingObjects();
   
   actor = player; act_requester = nothing; actors_location = real_location; action = ##Wait;

   InitialSituation-->DONE_INIS = true;
   rfalse;
];
-) instead of "Position Player In Model World Rule" in "OrderOfPlay.i6t".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=40#p26633
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-11-20 08:06:40

P.S. As to the question of this thread; it's a pointless question. If you are doing something in order to be 'taken seriously' then you are doing it wrong and will likely fail, regardless. Only the things that you would definitely do regardless of whether people take them seriously, will you ever truly master. This goes for IF as well as film, novels, etc. If your motivation is to be taken seriously, then you will probably stop soon after you achieve that (and BTW it is trivially easy to achieve people taking you seriously compared to actually creating a sophisticated work of art) -- which means you likely won't go very far.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=60#p26634
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-11-20 08:40:19

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="Laroquod"]I don't know if the new rule was revoked and I missed it, [i]or the bug-fixes didn't make it into 'all-in-one' download[/i], or something else happened to derail this intention, but I never saw the benefit of a bug fix.[/quote]
The thing I have italicised.[/quote]
Thanks for that. 8)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3674&start=10#p26635
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Do you think IF LPs is a bad idea?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-11-20 08:49:28

I play IF with a friend in Berlin -- in fact, it's so much fun this way that I play more games that way than any other way. It's very simple all we do is both keep a chat window open at the same time as a interpreter window, and exchange tips, and make new score/advancement announcements. We generally avoid spoiling each other, but act as each other's hint fairies. Essentially it's a collaborative solve.

We tried it with video conferencing too and that works OK as well.

Notice the key fun-generating principle is that it is splitscreen. Perhaps a similar YouTube approach would work. Two people debating over what to type into a single game: their interplay provides the sizzle -- the IF transcript on the other side of the screen provides the steak. And I wouldn't read every single thing out, either -- I would only read the important things. The actual story is the story of two people playing a game -- their interplay is the most important thing; text should only be read out if it is key to that interplay. The interlocutors serve essentially as curators for the text, picking out what's important so you don't have to read everything. For that: play the game.

Just suggestions.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=50#p26636
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: SimonChris / DateTime: 2011-11-20 08:58:11

[quote="Taleslinger"]The reviewer is a different german, though...  [emote]:)[/emote] 

I'm looking forward to this task, actually. Might be interesting. And perhaps quite a different game.[/quote]

Yes, but I meant that the reviewer would appreciate having a translation available, not that he would appreciate translating it [emote]:)[/emote]. I am looking forward to working with you, too. I just need to finish the post-comp release first, so the translated version won't be inferior to the english one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3695&start=10#p26637
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Time passing
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-11-20 09:00:31

If there is a type of game for which it is absolutely appropriate to have a lot of resource-management puzzles, it is a game about surviving in a desert. In fact, I can't imagine that you could make such a game that makes any sense without resource-management puzzles. I realise that resource-management has been overused where it detracted from the story, but let's not knee-jerk the baby out with the bathwater. If you want the player to feel like they are in an inhospitable environment that is unlikely to sustain life, resource-management puzzles are definitely the way to go.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3638&start=20#p26638
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: An Added Layer of Complexity
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-11-20 09:12:10

I was annoyed by this (the vague syntax error reports) as well in early days but it's the kind of thing I only get caught up a few times before you figure it out. In general I find i7's error messages to be more useful than those of other languages. After using it over the past year the only behaviour that still bothers me is how picky i7 is about its various grammars -- compared with how unpicky I [i]believe[/i] it could be (perhaps based on faulty knowledge of the underlying challenges in resolving ambiguity, but I just intuitively feel that there is tons of room for improvement there).

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3642&start=0#p26639
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Truth States vs Tables
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-11-20 09:16:27

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't implementing a bunch of truth state variables eat up a lot more precious dynamic memory than implementing a table?

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3660&start=0#p26640
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Why text adventures beat graphical games in realism
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-11-20 09:23:35

I put text adventures in the same class as 3D games for realism -- I put them both above pixelly 2D games. The reasoning may be obvious, but here it is. In a pixelly game, you don't need to create a lot of visual assets. You create a maze; player can go left/right/up/down. You code collision effects and a movement routine for the player going left/right/up/down; draw a few sprites; and you're done.

In a 3D game, on the other hand, you have to create a lot of visual assets to make that particular intersection 'feel real'. The 2D game designer does not worry about this even a little bit.

A text adventure designer is more like a 3D game designer. They have an idea for a game mechanic -- but they know that the great majority of their time is going to be spent adding assets to the game so that the mechanic 'feels real' -- in this case, instead of indicental models and textures, the assets are added in the form of incidental objects and their synonyms and incidental commands and their synonyms -- all added for no other purpose than to 'feel real' (2D games rarely have any concept of interactable 'scenery' -- just a scrolling background).

So, text adventures don't beat 3D graphical games in realism, IMO. They both are typically aimed at realism and each form comes with its own 'cracks in reality' that are artifacts of the tools used to build them -- i.e. neither is going to be a perfect representation. But both are likely going to [i]try[/i]. That is not true at all of a typical 2D graphical game, in which the game mechanic's the thing, and the only function of the graphics is to entertain. To complain that Pac-Man for example is not realistic is to entirely miss the point, though you can reasonably complain that Zork isn't. Therefore, Zork set for itself a more ambitious goal.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3695&start=10#p26641
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Time passing
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-20 09:48:16

[quote="Laroquod"]If there is a type of game for which it is absolutely appropriate to have a lot of resource-management puzzles, it is a game about surviving in a desert. In fact, I can't imagine that you could make such a game that makes any sense without resource-management puzzles.[/quote]

[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=hsfc7fnl40k4a30q]Ahem.[/url] (Link is a spoiler; don't click on it if you don't already know where it goes.)

Still, you make an excellent point. Just because resource-management is annoying when it gets in the way of the story, doesn't mean that we should dismiss it out of hand where it could create a great new focus of the story. Maybe a good thing to do would be to have non-management parts of the game be rewards rather than extra puzzles; if you survive to location X, you find out something more (without having to solve a lock-and-key puzzle there), and if you do that enough, you know what happened. Which I think might have been ArmanX's original vision, even.

Adding: And then, back to the original question, the appropriate turn limits for the timers wouldn't be based on realism, they'd be based on what makes good gameplay.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3642&start=0#p26642
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Truth States vs Tables
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-20 09:58:32

Dunno. Doesn't seem like it should. I don't know of a way to test it, either.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3642&start=0#p26643
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Truth States vs Tables
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-11-20 10:14:58

I only mention it because I had this problem with lists vs. tables; but I'm not sure whether truth state variables are allocated memory similarly to lists in inform. Mind you, booleans shouldn't really cost that much anyway; you would need very very many of them to make it a problem.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3642&start=0#p26644
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Truth States vs Tables
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-20 10:24:35

Well, the problem with lists is apparently that Inform doesn't know how long they're going to be at compile-time, so it allocates a lot of memory to each list at startup. (See [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2112&p=14403#p14412]here[/url].) That doesn't seem like it should be an issue with booleans.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3695&start=10#p26645
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Time passing
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-11-20 10:29:46

[quote="matt w"][url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=hsfc7fnl40k4a30q]Ahem.[/url] (Link is a spoiler; don't click on it if you don't already know where it goes.)[/quote]
Heh. I had a feeling someone would mention that one. I am generalising, of course. If I wanted to avoid having to make an exception for it, though, I could do so by pointing out that it may not qualify as being about 'surviving', nor as 'making sense' (tongue in cheek that: the game you linked to is one of my favourite games but achieving a realistic-feeling environment is not really what it did for me nor what it set out to do).

[quote="matt w"]Still, you make an excellent point. Just because resource-management is annoying when it gets in the way of the story, doesn't mean that we should dismiss it out of hand where it could create a great new focus of the story. Maybe a good thing to do would be to have non-management parts of the game be rewards rather than extra puzzles; if you survive to location X, you find out something more (without having to solve a lock-and-key puzzle there), and if you do that enough, you know what happened. Which I think might have been ArmanX's original vision, even.[/quote]
I like the purity of that. But it also might work if when I reach such an 'oasis', I can work on other kinds of puzzles with less worry about the resources for a while. One way to do this would be to play at different timescales -- when I am in the desert time passes much more quickly, thereby bringing resource issues much more to the fore. On the oasis I can relax a bit -- this would echo reality and keep the different gameplay strategies from crosstalking against each other (although the entire basis of my WIP is to offer a set of different gameplay strategies that all DO crosstalk against each other, so I believe any rule can be broken really when done to enhance the emotions of the story).

EDITED TO ADD: Like you, I seem to have reiterated some of the OP's ideas -- so it sounds like they might fly, for my tastes anyway. Good luck with it, ArmanX!

[quote="matt w"]Adding: And then, back to the original question, the appropriate turn limits for the timers wouldn't be based on realism, they'd be based on what makes good gameplay.[/quote]
I prefer to say that in the entire range of things that can be considered plausible, choose the part of that spectrum that provides the best gameplay. Or alternatively, choose the part of the 'good gameplay' spectrum that qualifies best as realistic -- they are two ways of saying the same thing.

Paul.

EDIT: Remove possibly spoilery references to the title of a game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3718&start=0#p26646
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Inconsistent application of After reading a command
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-11-20 10:31:01

I have a situation where I need to call a certain bit of code after each time the player presses return on the input line. I have been using the "after reading a command" rules to do this, but I'm finding that Inform is inconsistent about it when it invokes those rules.

They are always invoked after a simple command, of course. But beyond that point, Inform seems to take a hacky and inconsistent approach to calling them. After disambiguating between two objects ("Which key do you mean, the red or the blue?"), the after reading a command rules are called from the NounDomain routine. The same routine also handles cases like this: 

[quote="Inform"]>UNLOCK DOOR
What do you want to unlock the door with?

>KEY
You unlock the door.[/quote]

However, NounDomain does NOT call the after reading a command rules for this type of two-part input. I can hack it into NounDomain at the end of that routine on the same model used for the multiple-disambiguation does (placing it after the second input has been combined with the first to produce a full command, just before the RETURN RE_PARSE), and things seem to work fine. But is it really necessary that I hack the template layer, or is there somewhere else I could insert the instruction? There are other situations, such as after Yes/No questions, where Inform also does not call the "after reading a command" rules--do I just have to hack into the template layer to get at those too?

[spoiler][quote="Inform"]>QUIT
Are you sure you want to quit?
N[/quote][/spoiler]

Are there other potential situations that I'm missing? Why does Inform not handle this consistently?

Thanks,
Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3695&start=10#p26647
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Time passing
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-20 10:44:34

[quote="Laroquod"]But it also might work if when I reach such an 'oasis', I can work on other kinds of puzzles with less worry about the resources for a while.[/quote]

Well, the concern I have with that is that, if you're playing because you find the oasis puzzles interesting, it's very annoying when you keep dying on the way from one to the next. Like some Flash games that are almost all logic puzzles but have some reflex challenges in the middle; it's so annoying when you don't get to do the next puzzle because you can't hit the keys fast enough. Or vice versa, I suppose. Not to say this couldn't work; I guess my preference would be to keep the oasis puzzles simple (and definitely self-contained; having to backtrack would be way annoying.

But yes, I think we're in sync. Good luck, ArmanX!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3642&start=0#p26648
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Truth States vs Tables
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-11-20 10:44:46

Oh right. I started that thread but some of the info musta fell out. *knocks head* Thanks for the reminder, Matt.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3695&start=10#p26649
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Time passing
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-11-20 10:54:47

[quote="matt w"]Well, the concern I have with that is that, if you're playing because you find the oasis puzzles interesting, it's very annoying when you keep dying on the way from one to the next. Like some Flash games that are almost all logic puzzles but have some reflex challenges in the middle; it's so annoying when you don't get to do the next puzzle because you can't hit the keys fast enough.[/quote]
You raise a very important issue. I think of this as more a question of tone. I feel that the problem with your example is not that there are two interlocking strategies, but that the two strategies are so different in feel — it's like making a tearjerker drama interspersed with standup comedy scenes. (BTW I think Tom Hanks/Sally Fields movie Punchline was exactly this, and ironically it was excellent -- but hopefully it is obvious how this combo could be awful in a similar way in my mind to some of these Flash experiments you mention.)

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3719&start=0#p26650
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: iPhone game testing
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-11-20 11:08:09

I've been working on converting Quest games into iPhone apps. The first Quest-powered iPhone game will be a version of The Things That Go Bump In The Night, by Tim Hamilton - <a class="postlink" href="http://www.textadventures.co.uk/review/346/">http://www.textadventures.co.uk/review/346/</a>

If you'd like to test the beta, please email me at <a href="mailto:alex@axeuk.com">alex@axeuk.com</a>.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3676&start=0#p26651
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: When play begins, move character if...?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-20 11:16:24

Those numbers in the table are ascii-code (81 = O, 113 = q, 27 = Esc).

So you need to change the 'Q = Quit' option to a 'P = Play' option (and you can't do that by table amendment).
But the P and p keys (ascii 80 & 112) are already mapped to the 'P = Previous' option, so you have to change that as well.

[code]
When play begins: [Changes "Quit" to "Play" and "Previous" to "Last"]
	now the right in row 3 of the Table of Deep Menu Status is "P = Play";
	now the left in row 4 of the Table of Deep Menu Status is " L = Last";
	now the current menu is the Table of Options;
	carry out the displaying activity;
	clear the screen.

Table of Menu Commands (continued) [Maps L and l keys (for "Last") to the move up rule]
number	effect
76	move up rule
108	move up rule

Table of Menu Commands (amended) [Maps P and p keys (for "Play") to the play rule]
number	effect
80	play rule
112	play rule

This is the play rule: 
   decrease the menu depth by 1;
   if the tutorial mode is true, move the player to the Exercise Room;
   rule succeeds.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3717&start=0#p26652
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Marked for listing: What is this missing?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-20 11:36:55

That information is listed by the 'describe what's on scenery supporters in room descriptions rule'. You can unlist it or replace it.

[code]The describe what's on non-tall scenery supporters in room descriptions rule is listed instead of the describe what's on scenery supporters in room descriptions rule in the for printing a locale paragraph about rulebook.

For printing a locale paragraph about a thing (called the item)
	(this is the describe what's on non-tall scenery supporters in room descriptions rule):
	if the item is tall, do nothing;
	otherwise consider the describe what's on scenery supporters in room descriptions rule.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3695&start=10#p26653
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Time passing
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-11-20 11:41:03

[quote]Heh. I had a feeling someone would mention that one. I am generalising, of course. If I wanted to avoid having to make an exception for[/quote]

Please, could you edit your post and hide the name of the game in a spoiler? There *are* people (I for one) who haven't played it yet, and are not grateful for the spoil-

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3718&start=0#p26654
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Inconsistent application of After reading a command
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-11-20 11:43:23

OK, I've got the solution. Since I'm using Glulx, I can slot my code into HandleGlkEvent so that it will be fired whenever line input is received. However, I have the feeling that if I were using Z-code I'd be having to hack routines all over the parser template. Is there any good reason for the inconsistency with which this is handed?

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3695&start=20#p26655
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Time passing
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-11-20 11:55:39

[quote="Peter Pears"][quote]Heh. I had a feeling someone would mention that one. I am generalising, of course. If I wanted to avoid having to make an exception for[/quote]

Please, could you edit your post and hide the name of the game in a spoiler? There *are* people (I for one) who haven't played it yet, and are not grateful for the spoil-[/quote]
I apologise. I had not realised that I had revealed a spoiler. Looking back on it, I think actually I kinda did, or rather the relevance of the game in question to this thread could itself be interpreted to be sort of a spoiler — so I will edit.

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3695&start=20#p26656
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Time passing
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-11-20 11:57:28

Thanks. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3674&start=10#p26657
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Do you think IF LPs is a bad idea?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-11-20 12:26:27

You could try a podcast, if you have a good voice and good commentary as to why you chose to input one command over another.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3720&start=0#p26658
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Flowchart for choosing how to code something?
User: George / DateTime: 2011-11-20 12:30:21

I was looking at [url=http://chasemerick.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/choosingtypeforms1.png?w=594&h=761]this neat flowchart yesterday[/url] and I was wondering if anyone has something like this for I7. I remember Emily Short making a [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2009/01/01/geekiness/]chart of rules[/url] and there've been posts about when to use what, but does anyone have a diagram similar to that flowchart?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3674&start=10#p26659
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Do you think IF LPs is a bad idea?
User: mao42ranma / DateTime: 2011-11-20 12:33:13

Also, the ifMUD has Floyd, a bot for playing IF with multiple people in the MUD. It's fun too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3674&start=10#p26660
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Do you think IF LPs is a bad idea?
User: mao42ranma / DateTime: 2011-11-20 12:36:14

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]You could try a podcast, if you have a good voice and good commentary as to why you chose to input one command over another.[/quote]

Yea, sort of like an audio book format, you can read the text said.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3671&start=0#p26661
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using Tags, Variables, Canstants. etc. in TADS3
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-11-20 12:38:28

I found, downloaded and have been examining toaurod. I'm very impressed with all of it. A heck of a lot of thought and work must have gone into this. 

Once again, I thank all of you for your help.

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=40#p26662
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-20 12:43:45

[quote="Laroquod"]If you are doing something in order to be 'taken seriously' then you are doing it wrong [...][/quote]

Distilled truth.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3718&start=0#p26663
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Inconsistent application of After reading a command
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-11-20 13:05:09

It seems weird and inconsistent to me. (Not a very enlightening answer, I know.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=70#p26664
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-20 13:37:05

[quote="Laroquod"]Heh heh — I'm impressed. You went much further than I did on the religious stuff -- I mostly just intercepted 'god'. I didn't get denominational. I did a triple-axle George-Carlin on the sexual stuff though. XD

P.S. Capmikee I just realised that I had seen you before not on Diaspora, but on here -- sorry about that brainfart![/quote]
No biggie. I'm not so impressed with G+. How's Diaspora?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3714&start=0#p26665
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Darkness inside a container
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-11-20 14:04:35

Matt, this seems to happen even with your modified rule in play:

[code]The house is a room.

The box is an enterable, opaque container.  It is closed and openable.  It is in the house.
	
After entering the box:
	now the box is closed;
	continue the action.
	
Before exiting from the box:
	now the box is open.
	
Report exiting from the box (this is the don't describe the darkness rule): rule succeeds.
The don't describe the darkness rule is listed after the standard report exiting rule in the report exiting rulebook.

Mary is a woman.  The player is Mary.  Mary is in the box.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3714&start=0#p26666
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Darkness inside a container
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-20 14:33:32

Weird. When the player is asserted to start in the box, the game never seems to realize that the house is lighted even when you leave the box. If you replace "Mary is in the box" with "When play begins: Now Mary is in the box," that doesn't happen. But "showme house" reveals that the room is lighted. 

Sort of seems like a separate bug to me -- my rule is preventing the "describe room emerged into" rule from firing, but the looking action is producing a darkness report. (If you delete the "don't describe the darkness" rule, then exiting the box will produce two reports of darkness!) I don't have time to report that just now -- anyone want to take a whack at it, feel free. 

Anyway, this is further proof that my solution is hacky; you should probably try SJ's.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3714&start=10#p26667
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Darkness inside a container
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-11-20 15:05:37

Three further observations:

1) You actually have to use both solutions, because Matt's rule is still needed to suppress the announcement of darkness after you leave the box.

2) When you get back in the box, because you're changing it from open to closed after you get in, it tells you "It is now pitch dark in here!", which is awkward in this case, so you need one additional rule (this is adequate in my case because it's the only area of darkness in the game):

[code]Rule for printing the announcement of darkness: 
    stop.[/code]

3) Since it's momentarily light when you get in the container, it lists all the contents of the container--but if you try to do anything with them, it'll tell you you can't see any such thing because it's dark.

All in all, I really wish I could just set enterable containers to always be dark.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3714&start=10#p26668
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Darkness inside a container
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-11-20 15:36:02

Are you sure you want to use the built in darkness? It seems to me that what you want probably can be accomplished in some easier way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3073&start=70#p26669
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Profanity
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-11-20 15:39:33

[quote="capmikee"]How's Diaspora?[/quote]
Community-wise, it's awesome. It's like a self-selected network of people who believe in digital freedom. It's like I'm in Candyland, opinion-wise. (If you are majorly pro-DRM and stuff and/or you think the insult 'freetard' is hilarious, Diaspora might not be the network for you as it is presently populated.) Software-wise, it still has some growing up to do. It's slow and major things keep changing in a rather disorienting way. Plus one of the founders just committed suicide -- I bet that's put a kink in some of the plans. I have high hopes for it, but I don't have that much patience for dealing with the interface at present.

I can send invites -- I am on the semi-official beta test pod. (On Diaspora, you don't sign up for the whole site -- you sign up for one specific pod that shares data with the other pods, more like email.) If any one wants an invite just PM me your email address.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3714&start=10#p26670
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Darkness inside a container
User: SJ_43 / DateTime: 2011-11-20 15:42:14

[quote="matt w"]Sort of seems like a separate bug to me[/quote]Yeah, you seem to be talking about two unrelated issues. My post was about katz's Mary Trapped In Darkness Forever bug.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3695&start=20#p26671
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Time passing
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2011-11-20 15:49:33

Thanks for those comments - that's actually what I was thinking of. The puzzles between surviving are probably not going to be much more than "you find the next piece of the map", and have to find a good way to get from where you are to where the map points.

Meanwhile, my original experiment has become at least three games... the plot of the original game has become a game on its own, minus most of the "survive the desert" and huge map; the second is almost entirely "survive", and the third game... I dunno. It's an exercise in "what can this interpreter do" more than anything else, still. Currently, it's a map editor. It may end up as a hunt-or-be-hunted game. There's also a rougelike haunting the back of my head...

Experimenting is fun :-D

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3714&start=10#p26673
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Darkness inside a container
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-20 16:09:20

Would this work for you?
[code]The house is a room.
The box is an enterable, opaque, closed, container.  It is in the house.
Mary is a woman.  She is in the box.  The player is Mary.

Instead of entering a container (called the box): move the player to the box.
Instead of exiting from a container (called the box): move the player to the location of the box.

For printing room description details of an enterable container: stop.[/code]

The last rule of course stops all room description details of enterable containers; but if they are always dark, that might not matter to you.
Apparently, the Trapped In Darkness Forever bug is circumvented by moving Mary out of darkness by force rather than letting her exit by herself.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3720&start=0#p26674
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Flowchart for choosing how to code something?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-20 17:13:13

You mean a flowchart to decide whether to use an instead, before, check, report, etc rulebook for a particular bit of code?

The manual chapter 12.21 has some guidelines on this, although they're not laid out in a flowcharty way. They could be. However, as that page notes, they're not rigorous.

You can get away with some things depending on what you know is in your game. For example, for some "first time" constructs it matters whether an action succeeds or fails. If you're using those, you have to remember which rulebook outcomes make an action fail. But if you're not, that concern evaporates, and those techniques become interchangeable.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3718&start=0#p26675
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Inconsistent application of After reading a command
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-20 17:16:18

No, there's no good reason that disambiguation re-invokes the read-a-line routine. It's just always been that way (certainly since Inform 5); it's the bottom layer of the parser, it's old code, and rewriting it would break who-knows-what.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3714&start=10#p26676
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Darkness inside a container
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-20 17:18:43

[quote="SJ_43"][quote="matt w"]Sort of seems like a separate bug to me[/quote]Yeah, you seem to be talking about two unrelated issues. My post was about katz's Mary Trapped In Darkness Forever bug.[/quote]

I see -- I hadn't tested her new code, so I hadn't yet realized that there were two bugs there (and that your code was addressing the other one). OK, if no one else gets to that one then I'll file the Darkness Forever bug with a pointer to your solution. Eventually.

UPDATE: [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=807]Reported.[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3718&start=0#p26677
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Inconsistent application of After reading a command
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-11-20 19:02:39

Thanks. That actually does seem to point out one difference between the handling of this in I5/I6 and I7--I7 doesn't reinvoke the read-a-line routine after accepting a disambiguation response, it runs [i]only[/i] the after phase of the reading a command activity. Presumably this is safer than actually re-requesting input, but it's certainly possible that messing with it could still break things...!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3722&start=0#p26679
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Help with an action please!
User: nado / DateTime: 2011-11-20 19:38:36

Here's the code I have:
The Prisoner is a person in Hostage Barracks.  Understand "Prisoner/Jon D" as Prisoner.

Instead of asking Prisoner about "name/his name": say "[if Scene 4 ended happily] 'My name is Jon D.  Who are you?'  Something clicks in your brain.  He has a name.  He has a life, one he's barely begun to live yet.  And you are going to end that life.[otherwise] 'I'm Jon D.  Who are you?'".
Instead of telling Prisoner about "self/you/name": say "[if Scene 4 ended happily] 'It doesn't matter.'[otherwise] It doesn't matter, I was sent by Gang 1 but we don't have much time.'".

Killing is an action applying to one thing.  Understand "kill [someone]" as killing.

Instead of killing Prisoner: say "[if Scene 4 ended happily] You look at the table.  A slew of devices lay on the table.  Your eyes pass the more gruesome objects until they fall upon a sharp knife.  You pick it up and take a deep breath.  The prisoner's eyes have lost that spark of life again.  As you place the knife at his neck, you think about apologizing but what good would that do?  You close your eyes and move your arm in a jerky motion, slitting the man's throat.  You open your eyes and see a lifeless body.  A glowing orb is rising out of the body's chest and floating near your hands.  You close your fingers over the object, orange light penetrating through the gaps, and take it."
After killing Prisoner: say "Now the Prisoner is dead.".

The game compiles and plays but when I get to this point and try to ask the prisoner anything it goes with the default "there is no reply".  Same for attempting to kill the prisoner, it just says "violence isn't the answer to this one".  Any help would be greatly appreciated!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3723&start=0#p26680
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: UI Design of Zifmia Branching/Turn Feature
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2011-11-20 19:45:01

So I'm relatively close to getting a new website for Textfyre out...it will not be a corporate site but a game portal. Currently you can play a game from front to back, but I don't have the save/restore mechanism implemented yet and that's what I'm working on. This is strictly a design issue as the functionality is there and working.

When playing through the new portal, the server will store the results of every turn (in fact, I store a serialized version of the game engine, not a save game file).

For a given game session, this will mean that the player can go back and forth without any concern for undo, save, or restore. The UI will simply remember every turn regardless of the player's intentions.

So let's walk through this process...

Player starts game. Plays for 20 turns. They go back to turn 5 and enter a different command than on the original turn 5. This is a new branch. The player plays until turn 47. They go back to turn 25 and enter a new command. This is branch 3. If the player goes "back" to a turn prior to the beginning of a branch, they will automatically go back to the parent branch. If they enter a command at a branch or node that already exists, the server is smart enough to simply "place them" on that node.

Got it? good...

* * *

Now how do I display this capability to the player? I've been thinking about menus, tree controls, accordion controls, horizontal scrolling lists for turn numbers, mouse based controls, keyboard based controls, etc.

I think it's safe to assume that the Page Up key will display the previous turn/node. Page Down, if available, will display the next turn/node in the current branch. If there's a branch at the current turn/node, hitting Page Down will ask which branch you want to traverse, even allowing you to hit 1, 2, 3, etc on a branch turn/node.

There can be an "always on" control or a button to a modal ajax window that displays a control. But what sort of control?

The goal is to make this simple, intuitive, and informative.

Thoughts?

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3724&start=0#p26681
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Help with Inform 7, trying to make stuff untouchable.
User: somerandomdude42 / DateTime: 2011-11-20 20:02:11

First post here, having some trouble with Inform.

So here's the deal, I need to make an IF for class and in this, I want the player to be a ghost. I want to keep the player from really interacting with most of the environment, instead passing through objects, like a ghost. I'm trying to flag most objects as untouchable but Inform refuses to do this. Here is my current code.

Objects can be physical or mental. Objects are usually physical. Physical objects are untouchable.

Inform then won't compile the game, saying:
"You wrote 'Physical objects are untouchable'  : but that's an implication where the outcome is an adjective other than a simple either/or property, which is the only form of implication I can handle."

I really don't want to go and have to find each and every object and mark them as untouchable. Can anyone help?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3723&start=0#p26682
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: UI Design of Zifmia Branching/Turn Feature
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-20 20:10:27

Spitballing, but maybe the archive page of [url=http://www.epicsplosion.com/archive/]Epicsplosion[/url] might be a model? This is a CYOA comic (which is being updated as it goes along), which tends to have long strings of panels between branch points; which will probably be even more true of your branching structure. You can look at any page in its context, and fold and unfold branches to hide and reveal them. Looks like it might be the sort of thing you're looking for, though it might be hells of difficult to generate on the fly.

(There was some discussion about how the webmaster for the Epicsplosion site was having financial trouble a little while back, so if you want him to help you out with his code you'd probably have to pay him. OTOH, if you're willing to pay him I expect he'd probably help you out with his code.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3723&start=0#p26683
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: UI Design of Zifmia Branching/Turn Feature
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-11-20 20:14:49

Strictly off the top of my head, I think a simple graphical tree view, like I7's "skein view", is most intuitive, but having the whole thing visible at all times would probably be distracting.  So instead, I'm picturing a skein that only shows the currently-active command history, with a visual indication (different color? plus-sign?) of where the branches came off, that the player can expand.  I'd definitely want to be able to click it (and in clicky-mode, I want hovering over a branch point to expand that branch temporarily), but I like the arrow key navigation as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3724&start=0#p26684
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with Inform 7, trying to make stuff untouchable.
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-11-20 20:22:55

Is "untouchable" a built-in property? If so, I'd imagine the rules for deciding touchability involve arcane magic like calculating scope and containment, since there are many reasons why something could be not touchable, which is why Inform might be reluctant to just let you declare it. If not, you'd need to define it yourself.  

But in either case, it seems like you basically want it to be redundant with "physical," so you can just do:[code]Instead of touching a physical object: say "Your fingers slide right through it."[/code] (And of course you'll also need to handle taking, eating, etc.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3714&start=10#p26685
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Darkness inside a container
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-11-20 22:55:47

Yeah, I'm thinking it would be easier to just suppress the description of the outside when in the container; that's the most important concern for me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3714&start=10#p26686
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Darkness inside a container
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-20 23:16:25

Why not make it a room? That is, you could implement the container as a container, but whenever the player enters it you could send her to a room. (Ditto when she puts something in it.) If you look around for the Foxaroo TARDIS thread there's some discussion of that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3725&start=0#p26687
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Incapacitated player being moved through rooms?
User: JPLeBreton / DateTime: 2011-11-20 23:22:12

Hi folks.  I'm new to Inform7, and finding it really interesting but hard to wrap my programmer-brain around in some parts.

One thing I'm trying to do: start the game with the player physically immobilized - able to do things like look around and speak, but unable to move.  I can kinda do this with:

[code]Instead of going in the Starting Room, say "You attempt to move, but you seem to be immobilized."[/code]

which works, but it repeats that sentence every time.  Question #1: How would I display one such message the first time, and a second, different message all subsequent times the player tries to move?

Question #2: During this time of immobilization, the player will be slowly recovering consciousness, which changes the description of the rooms they're in.  I do this with:

[code]At 7:01PM: now the description of the Starting Room is "Things appear clearer as you recover consciousness.  You notice blah blah blah"[/code]

and then another similar statement for 7:02PM, etc.  This seems to work, except for the fact that time elapses strangely in the first two turns.  When play begins 7:00PM, a single "wait" command says "Time passes", when it seems like the time should have elapsed to 7:01 and displayed the next message.  After that, one "wait" seems to reliably elapse one minute.  Any idea why?

During this time of immobilization, the player will be wheeled through a series of rooms on a gurney.  My best guess for how to do this right now is:

[code]
At 7:04 PM:
	say "A nurse wheels your bed into Room 4117.";
	now the player is in Room 4117;
	now the hospital bed is in Room 4117.
[/code]

Question #3: are there any downsides to this approach, effectively teleporting the player into each new room?  I'm realizing that Inform7 provides a lot of ways for representing state and state transitions, and I'm unclear on how much fakery to use versus actual systemic rigor (the classic level design question).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3726&start=0#p26688
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Need to record transcripts with quixe on web site
User: sfernald / DateTime: 2011-11-20 23:31:56

Moved this question to proper forum. Please delete. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3727&start=0#p26689
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Can Quixe record transcripts to web site?
User: sfernald / DateTime: 2011-11-20 23:45:40

Oops, I think I posted this is the wrong spot, so I'm reposting it here. Apologies.

Hi, I'm getting close to releasing my game to beta. I want to release it on a web site using quixe because it seems to be much more friendly with the iPad and smart phones (and also faster in general).

One feature I really want to have is for the game to save every session as a text file in a directory on the web site. I want this of course so I can review how users play the game and hopefully improve the game's logic and vocabulary.

I know there is a script called parchment-transcript for parchment. I was wondering is there is a way to save transcripts on quixe? Thanks so much!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3727&start=0#p26690
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Can Quixe record transcripts to web site?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-11-21 02:51:16

The script you mentioned is [url=https://github.com/juhana/if-recorder/wiki]here[/url] and it supports only Parchment, but Parchment can play Glulx files as well. There are no plans on porting it to Quixe because of the overlap. I'm not completely sure if you're comparing Quixe's speed to Parchment, but there shouldn't be a practical difference because they both use the same engine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3725&start=0#p26692
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Incapacitated player being moved through rooms?
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2011-11-21 03:38:36

[quote="JPLeBreton"]

[code]Instead of going in the Starting Room, say "You attempt to move, but you seem to be immobilized."[/code]

which works, but it repeats that sentence every time.  Question #1: How would I display one such message the first time, and a second, different message all subsequent times the player tries to move?[/quote] Look into chapter 5 of Writing with Inform, especially 5.7. The [b][one of][or][stopping][/b] and [b][first time][only][/b] constructs should provide the functionality you're looking for.
[quote]
Question #2: During this time of immobilization, the player will be slowly recovering consciousness, which changes the description of the rooms they're in.  I do this with:

[code]At 7:01PM: now the description of the Starting Room is "Things appear clearer as you recover consciousness.  You notice blah blah blah"[/code]

and then another similar statement for 7:02PM, etc.  This seems to work, except for the fact that time elapses strangely in the first two turns.  When play begins 7:00PM, a single "wait" command says "Time passes", when it seems like the time should have elapsed to 7:01 and displayed the next message.  After that, one "wait" seems to reliably elapse one minute.  Any idea why?[/quote] I've noticed that the very first turn in the game, Inform behaves a bit irregularly; the first turn seems to be a kind of zeroth turn instead, in some ways, which causes problems in some edge cases. I'm not sure exactly why that is the case!

[quote]
During this time of immobilization, the player will be wheeled through a series of rooms on a gurney.  My best guess for how to do this right now is:

[code]
At 7:04 PM:
	say "A nurse wheels your bed into Room 4117.";
	now the player is in Room 4117;
	now the hospital bed is in Room 4117.
[/code]

Question #3: are there any downsides to this approach, effectively teleporting the player into each new room?  I'm realizing that Inform7 provides a lot of ways for representing state and state transitions, and I'm unclear on how much fakery to use versus actual systemic rigor (the classic level design question).[/quote]

What you've written will work fine in a simple system without many moving parts, or complex interlocking rules based on movement. The only time I'd say it'd be worth it to [i]actually[/i] give the nurse an action like "try the nurse pushing the hospital bed east" is if there are rules involving things being pushed around into certain places, or at certain times, or by certain people, etc. 

My rule of thumb is if an event only happens once or a few times, faking it will usually work fine; if it can happen an [i]arbitrary[/i] number of times, systematizing it will often save you a headache down the road, either in implementation or debugging.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3729&start=0#p26693
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Interview: Jacek does Adam
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-11-21 05:05:33

This is the second in a series of interviews with pre-eminent members of the IF community. My second interviewee is the hard-drinking, dazzlingly original Missouri classicist, author of Stiffy Makane: The Undiscovered Country, Mentula Macanus: Apocolocyntosis and lifelong president of the Adam Thornton Fan Club: Adam Thornton.



Jacek: As a writer, what do you seek specifically in interactive fiction that you cannot find in other media?

Adam: An audience small enough that I can become notorious without having to actually be all that good at my craft.  It's also an entertaining medium for forcing your readers to become complicit in heinous acts.  And then there's a long-standing perversion of mine, which is to perform acts of artistic creation in wildly-inappropriate forms--like cramming The Fellowship Of The Ring into an Atari 2600 text adventure cartridge.

Jacek: But if the heinous acts are going to have any resonance (beyond being merely gross), we must assume the acts the player commits by proxy have moral significance. Do you think IF can simulate morality the way it can simulate a cupboard, or do you think that SAVE, RESTORE and UNDO make morality in IF moot?

Adam: You know, you'd think they'd make it moot.  I mean, clearly, logically, rationally, they should.  But I still feel sort of bad about crushing that lizard in Trinity, and The Baron is set up to also make you make distasteful choices in order to further your character's own narrative arc.  In both those cases, though, there's a positive consequence to doing something wrong--you get to see more of the game.  As far as simulating morality in a more open world, well, there no longer is interactive fiction that really takes place in much of a sandbox.  For that you have to go to the RPG world, and there, usually, the choice is "torture a puppy while pistol-whipping grandma" versus "save the orphans and accept no payment" and the mechanical consequence is whether red or blue lightning bolts come out of your fingertips. 
So I don't think save/undo/restore make morality moot, but the Hobson's Choice foisted upon us by game design sorta does; you steer the player, in general, towards the choice you require him to make, or the game ends with a "HA HA SUCKER" message.  I don't think it has to be this way--in fact, Phallus of Don, although very linear for the most part, does have a variety of endings based on some function of your moral choices and your perspicacity in defeating D&D undead.  The problem is, more generally, that your moral choices generally just reflect how far right or left on the meter your game-ending-infodump is.  And that's because giving totally different story arcs that depend on your choices is a hell of a lot of writing.

Jacek: What do you see as the most important quality in an IF writer?

Adam: Self-delusion.  Followed at some distance by obsessive-compulsive disorder and a Rabbinical love of argument for its own sake.

Jacek: Could you elaborate on the self-delusion part?

Adam: You work for six years, and maybe 5000 hours, on a game that perhaps fifty people play, six of whom write reviews, three of which are positive.  You have to delude yourself somehow that it matters.  Even if you're fairly up-front with yourself that it's self-gratification, actual masturbation gives you a whole lot better effort-to-reward ratio. 

Jacek: Do you have any religious ambitions?

Adam: That's an odd question.  The straight answer is "no," but there must be some reason you're asking.

Jacek: No, meaning you don’t believe in the possibility of salvation, or no, meaning you believe your soul is beyond redemption?

Adam: Oh.  Much closer to the first.  I'm an atheist, myself.  And, oh boy, will I be surprised if I was wrong. 

Jacek: Do you prefer writing drunk or sober?

Adam: You really have to ask?  Drunk, of course.

Jacek: Are you drunk and disciplined when you write, like Hemingway, or just drunk, like Cheever? 

Adam: When I am writing and I am drunk I am disciplined.  The trick is, of course, that often when I get drunk, even if I had thought beforehand that I wanted to write, it turns out that I lack the motivation.  Once I get rolling, I'm pretty fearsomely disciplined about continuing to write.  Most of my marathon writing sessions, in fact, end when the bottle is empty and/or when I pass out.  If I'm sober and writing I'm likely to notice that my back hurts after a few hours, or that there are other things I ought to be doing. 

Jacek: Do you believe the government was behind the 9/11 attacks?

Adam: No.

Jacek: Do you believe in alien abductions?

Adam: No.  So, er, I think you're trying to draw me out on something here, but I don't see what.  Do I come across as a tinfoil-hatted conspiracy theorist?  'Cause I *thought* I was trying to portray Grumpy Drunken Hillbilly.

Jacek: I didn’t mean to be tricky. These are calibrating questions. Their purpose is to establish exactly how much of a space cadet you are. Some of the greatest writers were space cadets, as I’m sure you know. The “philosophical” chapters that punctuate War and Peace are insanely dull, and yet the novel as a whole is a masterpiece. Tolstoy the Nudnik almost wrecked the novel, but Tolstoy the Space Cadet saved it. Would you agree that there is an opposition between a writer’s self-perceived wisdom (which more often than not turns out to be unwisdom) and his talent, and that the talent part usually has a crackpot component to it? Do you think Ezra Pound would have been a stronger poet had he not been an anti-Semite? Or do you think it doesn’t matter, because his talent was of such a magnitude, it compensated for his unwisdom?

Adam: I don't think Ezra Pound would have been a stronger poet if he were not an anti-Semite.  He might well have been a weaker one.  I now see where you're going, and, sure, I'll grant you that genius and madness are often pretty inextricably intertwined.  Let us, however, grant that I am *not* prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be. 

Jacek: What kind of shape do you see interactive fiction in today?

Adam: Well, every time I think, "this is it; it really is moribund this time," something new pops up and people notice it outside our incestuous little community again.  This time around, it's mobile devices, although Robb Sherwin has gotten some notice in the wider indie-game scene for Cryptozookeeper too, even though Hugo is not mobile-playable as far as I know.  I'm not sure it's any worse off than it was in 1998, actually.

Jacek: You’re not discouraged by the impossibility of failure in IF?

Adam: I don't understand what you mean.  There's plenty of IF that fails.  Please explain.

Jacek: Consider the phrase "aspiring novelist." The reason why we never hear the word "aspiring" applied to an IF writer is because IF is a self-"publishing" medium. As an aspiring novelist you spend X years writing, and then you spend another Y years pitching your novel to publishing houses while collecting a pile of rejection letters. Only a fraction of aspiring novelists ever publish. This creates tense competition, which is a healthy thing. It also creates the possibility of failure. There is dignity in failure because it takes courage to face its possibility. IF offers neither the competition nor the dignity. What it does offer is a ghost town into which anyone can move in and declare himself sheriff.

Adam: Oh, OK.  But there's no room for failure if there's no room for success.  And five years ago I would definitely have told you that IF was dead as a commercial medium and it wasn't coming back, so there's no failure there.
But these days…all kinds of unlikely people are buying iPads, and everyone's phone can run IF interpreters, and people are reading a hell of a lot of text on these devices.  So I'm not sure at all that IF really doesn't have commercial potential anymore.  Certainly Zarf quit his day job and got some Kickstarter funding to write a piece of IF for mobile devices.  If (and it's still a big if) and when there's a commercial market again, then there will be again room for failure.

Jacek: It’s interesting you should mention Robb Sherwin. I remember playing Necrotic Drift and being awed by the paucity of the story’s social register. The characters in Drift are so atavistic, they are often less human than the zombies. Then it struck me that I’m being unfair to Robb. The protagonist of Drift has a father, friends and a girlfriend. That’s more by far than most IF protagonists. The standard IF relationship is that of wizard/apprentice, where the wizard is a distant admonishing figure sending his apprentice on an insanely vague mission. Would you agree that IF suffers from relationshiplessness?

Adam: Oh, absolutely.  Writing characters is hard even in just-plain-old-fiction.  Writing characters who respond believably to stuff players say and do?  To do that right, in the general case, is to solve the AI problem.  So almost everyone skirts around it, by having characters that speak their monologues and move quickly off the stage, or act as gates barring progress until unlocked with the correct item.  The games that do it the best do it by placing the significant characters totally offstage, so that they exist only inside the imagination of the protagonist--at which point the hard work of coding interaction isn't the author's problem anymore.
Weirdly, you'd think that the IF-protagonist-as-an-island trope would lead to a genre of Randian IF, in which the rewards for making selfish versus altruistic choices were a little different than they are in most actual games.  Stephen Granade pondered this a couple years ago.  Strange that it doesn't seem to have happened, especially since the troglodytic followers of the batshit-crazy Ayn Rand have seized the upper hand in United States political discourse.

Jacek: Do you believe there is such a thing as an IF Canon, and if so, what games are part of it?

Adam: Well, this is part of a larger question about Canon In General.  Let's presume that I think it's reasonable for forms to have canonical works, with which everyone who considers him-or-herself knowledgeable about the form should be familiar.  Granted that, yes, there is an IF Canon.  What's in it?  Well, roughly-chronologically:

In the commercial era:

Adventure
Zork/Dungeon
Adventureland, The Count, Voodoo Castle, and maybe a couple other of the Scott Adams adventures
Much of the Infocom catalog; at least, the Zorks-and-Enchanters, Suspended, Deadline, The Lurking Horror, Trinity, Planetfall.  Perhaps a few others
Mystery House
The Wizard and the Princess
Knight Orc
Spellcasting 101

Post-commercial era (no longer even vaguely chronological):

Curses
Jigsaw
Varicella
I-0
Fallacy of Dawn
Anchorhead
Aisle
Pick Up the Phone Booth And Die
Spider and Web
Metamorphoses
Little Blue Men

….I'm sure there are others, but that's a top-of-my-head list

I'm not at all sure about that initial presumption, though.

Jacek: Chronologically, Adventure and Zork would be analogous to The Iliad and The Odyssey. Do you feel that these two games are as playable today as the two poems are readable?

Adam: It's an interesting question--everyone reads the poems in translation, but almost everyone plays the games in the original.  Well, maybe not.  There's an Inform version of Adventure which gives you a much better parser, and no one plays on a paper teletype anymore.  In short, once you adjust for the relative scope of the works (Adventure is at most a novella; Zork a short novel), yeah, sure.  They're quite playable although they also provide a window into a world with some very different shared axioms.

Jacek: Assuming there is no possibility of an IF Canon, what would the reason for writing IF be?

Adam: Gonna have to fall back on self-gratification.  In which case, yeah, I don't have a good answer for why you wouldn't simply masturbate instead, because it's a lot easier.

Jacek: Harold Bloom argues re-readability is one of the signs of canonicity. Do you think this poses a problem for IF?

Adam: No.  I actually do replay games that I enjoyed.  Finding the correct path through the game is usually the primary goal, but afterwards it's often entertaining to look for less-than-optimal endings, to read the prose for itself rather than as the mechanism to push you to the next gate blocking progress, or to look at where and how the author foreshadowed events that, having played the whole thing, you now know are coming.

Jacek: Do you feel the games you have listed have literary merit? Let me put this more bluntly. When you compare the prose of Anchorhead to that of Mason & Dixon, do you feel that Gentry and Pynchon are in the same league? Do you think it’s fair to compare a work of IF to a novel?

Adam: It is fair to compare the works, but I don't think Gentry and Pynchon are in the same league; but then, the novelists who are in the same league with Pynchon, I can count on not very many hands (and often Pynchon isn't in Pynchon's league).  The comparison isn't exactly straightforward, but it's certainly no less fair than comparing a novel and a movie, which is something that has become, effectively, critically unproblematic. 

Jacek: How do you feel about the old Infocom games?

Adam: Quality is wildly inconsistent.  Many of them are more notable for being groundbreaking first-in-genre pieces than for being really all that good.  The best games these days are easily as good as the best of Infocom.  _Starcross_ is pretty much _Rendezvous With Rama_ plus Niven's stepping discs, right?  _The Witness_ is a mediocre film noir piece, and _Deadline_ was a good-but-not-great locked-room murder mystery.  But each was the first time we'd seen anything like that in a text adventure.  Then again, I play a lot of D&D; I like D&D; I have a soft spot for everything-and-the-kitchen-sink genre mashups.
However, that said, there's some legitimately excellent design in there: A lot of the cube manipulation in _Spellbreaker_ is terrific puzzlecraft (not, I hasten to point out, the object-weighing puzzle).  Look at the multiple-first-person narration in Suspended--that's never been done as well since (and that's the bar I'm trying to leap for my next project).  
So, for the most part: spectacular and revolutionary when introduced, and often they hold up pretty well.

Jacek: How do you feel about I6?

Adam: I really enjoyed working on that use of timed input we recently looked at together.  As you know, I'm an I7 convert (and except for special effects like timed output, it's really very seldom necessary to drop from I7 to I6 or inline z-code/glulx assembly), but it's not bad at all.  It's much more like writing a computer program than I7 is, which, depending on whether I'm in the writing-the-narrative part of a game or the implementing-particular-puzzles part, can be either bad or good.  I do feel like I have to put on a slightly different thinking cap to write in I6 versus I7.  See my answer to your next question.

Jacek: Wow! You can predict my next question! So it’s true what they say? That you and Graham Nelson have been working on a telepathy extension in I6?

Adam: I can neither confirm nor deny that rumor. 

Jacek: In an interview E. L. Doctorow described the novel as a "large canvas capable of holding the most substantial themes." Do you think this description applies to IF?

Adam: There's no reason it couldn't.  And yes, I do mean that position despite the fact that it's impossible to control the reader's experience the way you can in a novel, unless you write a tied-to-a-chair-and-being-shouted-at game.  It just demands a different structure to tell a big story, and I do not think it's impossible to make that work in IF.
However, I think IF suffers from the problem Don Knuth identified: about 1 in 20 people are capable of really programming well.  About 1 in 20 people are capable of writing well.  The skills don't seem to have any correlation with one another, so you end up with about 1 in 400 people able to do both well.  And then there's the whole aspect of game design, which may or may not overlap with either writing or programming all that much.  This, plus the limited scope of the overall corpus plus its limited audience, means that we haven't had too many spectacular authors trying to write IF; it also likely means that, if we did, we'd have someone who wrote well but couldn't game-design or code his way out of a wet paper bag.

Jacek: An interesting thought-experiment is to take your favourite novel and ask yourself if it would work as IF. If you consider IF as capable a medium as the novel – as you obviously do – can you conceive of an IF adaptation of Gravity’s Rainbow?

Adam: I've tried many times.  And, no, I cannot, although IF adaptations of sections of the novel are quite feasible.  I do not know how or what an adaptation of the work-as-a-whole would look like or be.  Conversely, I can't imagine filming the damn thing either.
But then, it's somewhat debatable whether GR is really a novel in the normal sense.
I could much more easily imagine adapting Inherent Vice but I'm not sure why I'd want to.  I can also more easily imagine adapting Against The Day except that the IF adaptation would be about twenty million words, and would suffer from all the faults of Mentula Macanus: Apocolocyntosis in that it would be a fairly haphazard succession of loosely-joined, geographically-constrained, set pieces.  In this case, it wouldn't be the fault of the adaptation, and to be fair, many of the threads would get tied together by the end. 
Novels with a more traditional structure, have, of course, been adapted to IF many times.

Jacek: Do you feel I7 makes it easier for writers to programme?

Adam: It makes it easier for writers to code the easier things.  I find--as someone who is quite capable of getting paid to write computer programs--that, although cumbersome and verbose, it doesn't actually make the hard things much harder.  But then, I never had a big problem with Applescript either.  The syntactic sugar is very definitely in some ways a treacherous promise: once you get to needing to do something that isn't already in the libraries, you're going to have to buckle down and write some code, and that code is not going to be expressed most clearly in English syntax.  I think the hope is that you can draw in writers who are committed enough to the work that they're willing to try writing code once they get to the hard parts, and that they will find that the logic necessary to work their way through it isn't all that different from what they need to do to plot the fiction.  This obviously works better for genres like the murder mystery than for whatever-you-would-call Italo Calvino. 

Jacek: Ever since you released _Mentula Macanus_, the question on everyone’s lips has been, does Julia’s nose occur in nature? If so, where can we find its habitat?

Adam: Why, yes, it does indeed.  However, a gentleman never blows and tells.  I will point out that Julia herself is taken directly from the seminal work of Hans Ørberg in Lingua Latina.  Nasus Iuliae foedus est.

Jacek: How would you define the literary genre(s) of your games?

Adam: Much to my chagrin, Emily Short is right.  They're literary criticism, and not, much as I would like them to be, pornography.  Dammit.

Jacek: I was hoping you would say “picaresque,” and we’d have a discussion about how well/ill-suited this genre is to IF.

Adam: Oh.  Well, in that case, "Menippean Satire," which is distinguished from "picaresque" in that the picaresque is, as you have noted, driven by strong characterization (indeed, usually, the protagonist's name is the name of the book).  Whereas "Menippean Satire" is "a bunch of wacky shit happens, for no particular reason other than it amused the author, and then the book is over."
Which is to say, you're basically right: characterization in IF basically sucks, and that might be inherent in the medium.  Because for the player to have some agency, he has to be able to direct the viewpoint character.  Although you can have games which say "You can't do that because it's too icky/you're scared of rejection/it would be unseemly" this trick gets old fast.  The CRPG method of dealing with this is to keep track of your scores along some number of axes, and your score determines whether you get to Force Choke your opponents or deflect their blaster shots with your light saber, or whether beggar children hit you up for bottle caps or flee screaming.

Jacek: If you had a say in the jury that sentenced Socrates, would you vote for acquittal or death?

Adam: Well, you know, it's pretty hard to argue against that "corrupting the morals of the young," charge.  I mean, we're still talking about it, right?  If there's anyone who thoroughly infected our discourse, it's Socrates (or at least, yes, Socrates by way of Plato).  So, you gotta grant that the jury made the right call there.  It's a fair cop.

Jacek: But don’t you think that Socrates’ death was a blow to reason and a triumph of unreason?

Adam: If the jury had acquitted Socrates, and said, "Go home and don't do it again," and he had, do you think we'd have had Western Philosophy in anything like its current form? 
The other conclusion you could draw from the trial is that democracy is a dumb idea.  Over on this side of the Atlantic, we're kind of having that debate again right now.  I'm interested in whether people think 2012 is going to look like either of 1968 or 1886.

Jacek: You know, this could be a great argument for crucifying Christ. Let us all give thanks to Pilate for the Sistine Chapel. But seriously, are the Chinese worse off because they didn't put Confucius to death? Of course, all this is peripheral to IF. Socrates/Plato wanted to establish a bulwark against the barbarous excesses of unreason. It's not like the Blond Beast is likely to emerge from among the bland little souls that write IF today, present company excluded. And if it did, it might actually be a good thing.

Adam: For starters, I'm not blond.  Second, the Ethiopians are way ahead of you.  St. Pontius Pilate.  No kidding.  And who knows, maybe we stand at the crossroads of an IF resurgence.  What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?  The barbarians have always been at the gates; Europe has always been at war with Eastasia.

Jacek: Do you hope to achieve immortality through your art?

Adam: I'd prefer to say that my art is an idealized reflection of my immorality, but yes, of course I would love to encourage dissolute libertinism through it.  Oh.  You said "immortality."  As Roseanne Rosanna-Danna put it, "Never mind."  As Woody Allen points out, achieving it through not dying would be preferable.  And as for me, what do I care?  I'll be dead.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3722&start=0#p26694
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with an action please!
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-21 05:59:07

The rule 'Instead of asking Prisoner about "name/his name"' only tells Inform how to react to the commands ASK PRISONER ABOUT HIS NAME and ASK PRISONER ABOUT NAME NAME; it does not give the game a rule for what to do on ASK PRISONER ABOUT NAME. This is because "name/his name" means "name name" or "his name" and not "name" or "his name". See documentation ch. 16.13.

"Kill" is a default synonym for "attack". If you don't necessarily need different killing and attacking actions, the easy thing is not to define a new killing action and to make those last two rules 'instead of attacking' and 'after attacking' rules instead.

If you do want to distinguish between attacking and killing, you need to add the line 'Understand the command "kill" as something new.' *before* the line 'Understand "kill [something]" as killing.'.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3724&start=0#p26695
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with Inform 7, trying to make stuff untouchable.
User: SJ_43 / DateTime: 2011-11-21 06:22:57

As tove said, you can't declare something untouchable like that: it's not a simple property, but something that must be tested every time based on the world model - is there direct physical access from the player to the object?

What you can do is modify the world model with an accessibility rule:
[code]
Accessibility rule:
	if the noun is physical:
		if the action requires a touchable noun, say "Your ghostly hand passes right through [the noun].";
		stop the action;
	if the second noun is physical:
		if the action requires a touchable second noun, say "Your ghostly hand passes right through [the second noun].";
		stop the action.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3714&start=10#p26696
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Darkness inside a container
User: SJ_43 / DateTime: 2011-11-21 06:37:57

[quote="matt w"]UPDATE: [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=807]Reported.[/url][/quote]
Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3730&start=0#p26697
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: "the player cannot see ..." is broken by scope rule
User: ChristianB / DateTime: 2011-11-21 06:59:18

It seems like the following example leads into an endless loop: The terp hangs immediately after "x anne", before printing anything.

[code]"Endless Loop Ahead"

Main Road is a room.

Anne is a woman. Understand "woman" as Anne.

The Dummy is a thing.

The crowd is a plural-named person, here.

Understand "Anne" as the crowd when the player cannot see Anne.

After deciding the scope of the player (this is the place dummy in scope rule): place dummy in scope.

[The place dummy in scope rule is not listed in any rulebook.]

test me with "x dummy / x woman / x anne".[/code]

Without the scope rule, everything's fine.

Could this be a bug, probably a known one? Or are we messing things up here?

Regards,
Christian

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3731&start=0#p26698
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 - multidimensional arrays?
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-11-21 08:45:04

I need to keep a table with a list of objects and a lot of parameters that vary.
I tried with a table but the inform IDE wrap is not configurable and long lines wrap making the use of tables very difficult.

Are there better ways of handling multidimensional arrays in inform7?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3731&start=0#p26699
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - multidimensional arrays?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-11-21 09:19:56

Tables are the best way. You may find it easier to create your tables in Excel, Numbers, or Google Spreadsheets and then copy and paste into your source code. At least on a Mac, they paste seamlessly.

However, if your parameters vary by object, then you could use object properties instead of a table to store them. Like so:

[code]The Orc is a male monster. The odor is foul. The strength is moderate. The endurance is low.[/code]

Personally, even when I'm storing the parameters in properties, I prefer to define them in a table for succinctness and readability.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3725&start=0#p26700
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Incapacitated player being moved through rooms?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-21 09:20:34

I agree with ChrisC that moving the bed by hand is almost certainly OK; I'd just add that if the bed is an enterable supporter and the player is on it (both of which should probably be true), then just "now the hospital bed is in Room 4117" should work. I have a WIP with a bus in it, and when the player is in the bus s/he moves with it. (For some reason my code say "move the bus to room X" instead of "Now the bus is in move X," but "Now the bus is in..." works too.) If you do move the player and the bed separately, then the player will wind up on the floor. 

You might also want to include a sanity check to make sure that the player is on the bed, though the player probably won't be able to exit the bed. But make sure you block that! One of the comp games strapped you down to the bed, and blocked you from getting down from the bed when you tried to go in a certain direction -- but it didn't block you from getting off the bed directly, so I was able to get off and wander around anyway, which was unfortuate.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3717&start=0#p26701
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Marked for listing: What is this missing?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-21 09:55:51

I think you could also do it in an after choosing notable locale objects rule:

[code]After choosing notable locale objects when a tall scenery supporter is in the location:
    Repeat with item running through things enclosed by a tall scenery supporter:
        Set the locale priority of item to 0.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3722&start=0#p26702
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with an action please!
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-21 10:16:22

I'd also like to point out that if Scene 4 has not ended happily, you're going to see some blank responses to commands.

Additionally, an After rule will not run if an Instead rule has stopped the action, which Instead rules do by default.

I think what you probably want is to add "when Scene 4 has ended happily" in the preamble for the relevant rules. Alternatively, you can say "if scene 4 has ended happily, continue the action" within the rule.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3724&start=0#p26703
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with Inform 7, trying to make stuff untouchable.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-21 10:21:25

Which is a great opportunity for me to plug my new "Flexible action requirements" extension. Please check it out and let me know if it's useful or if you have any suggestions for it!

<a class="postlink" href="http://eyeballsun.org/i/Flexible%20Action%20Requirements.i7x">http://eyeballsun.org/i/Flexible%20Acti ... ements.i7x</a>

In particular, you'll discover that actions like listening and smelling require a touchable noun. Using Flexible Action Requirements, you can declare

[code]Listening is flexible about touching the noun.[/code]

and then use a preamble like this: 

[code]Accessibility rule when a physical thing (called the item) is only available when touchable:[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3730&start=0#p26704
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "the player cannot see ..." is broken by scope rule
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-21 10:35:40

This has come up before: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3129">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3129</a> . More discussion: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3175">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3175</a>

I see I didn't file a bug, probably because I wasn't sure why the code was written the way it was. I'll file one now.

There's an extension linked in that thread which you can use to work around the problem. You may also be able to simplify your test: if there are no opaque wardrobes in the game, you can just say "...when Anne is not in the location" and thus avoid the "seeing" scope test.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3730&start=0#p26705
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "the player cannot see ..." is broken by scope rule
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-21 10:39:34

I think this is the same bug that Zarf found in this thread:

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3175&p=22525">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3175&p=22525</a>

You can use my Scope Caching extension to work around it.

<a class="postlink" href="http://eyeballsun.org/i/Scope%20Caching.i7x">http://eyeballsun.org/i/Scope%20Caching.i7x</a>

I'm thinking it's time I should submit this to the official site.

[b]Edit:[/b] I see Zarf already said most of that...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3730&start=0#p26706
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "the player cannot see ..." is broken by scope rule
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-21 10:47:08

Filed as <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=808">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=808</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=40#p26707
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-21 10:51:46

[quote="JimmyMaher"][quote]I'd be interested in adding that code to the Scope Caching extension.[/quote]

Really sorry to be so long in getting this to you. I got kind of pulled away for a while there. ("Squirreled," as my wife and I say in reference to our favorite character from Up.)[/quote]
Jimmy,

I came back to this because I've decided to release Scope Caching officially. Do you plan to release concealment as an extension? Did you already do that and I missed it? I think I'd rather give people the option to include it alongside scope caching than try to duplicate its functions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3725&start=0#p26708
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Incapacitated player being moved through rooms?
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-11-21 11:02:16

[quote="JPLeBreton"]During this time of immobilization, the player will be wheeled through a series of rooms on a gurney.  My best guess for how to do this right now is:

[code]
At 7:04 PM:
	say "A nurse wheels your bed into Room 4117.";
	now the player is in Room 4117;
	now the hospital bed is in Room 4117.
[/code]

Question #3: are there any downsides to this approach, effectively teleporting the player into each new room?  I'm realizing that Inform7 provides a lot of ways for representing state and state transitions, and I'm unclear on how much fakery to use versus actual systemic rigor (the classic level design question).[/quote]Fakery is usually fine. Note that faking this has the advantage that you can still move the gurney programmatically even if it is fixed-in-place or scenery.

Note however that the code as written will take the player off the bed, since it moves the player to the new room (so he is now no longer on the bed) and then moves the bed to that room.

One thing I would suggest is to use Scenes instead of time of day. This below may illustrate some of the things you are trying to do. Controlling descriptions and such is much easier with Scenes:

[code]Moving the Patient is a scene. Moving the Patient begins when play begins.

The Hospital Hallway is a room. "[if Moving the Patient is happening]Vague images whirl past. You don't feel so great. You are dimly aware of being on some kind of gurney, currently being wheeled down a hall to who-knows-where[otherwise]This must be the hallway you came in through. Room 4117 is to the south[end if]." The printed name is "[if Moving the Patient is happening]Hallway?[otherwise]Hospital Hallway[end if]".

The hospital gurney is a scenery supporter in the Hospital Hallway. Understand "bed" and "hospital bed" as the gurney.

The player is on the gurney. The description of the player is "[if Moving the Patient is happening]You don't look so hot[otherwise]You look a lot better now[end if]." The description of the gurney is "[if Moving the Patient is happening]You can't see much of it from this angle aside from the IV bags swaying above you, but it feels like what you imagine being on a hospital gurney would feel like. Of note: you seem to be securely strapped to it[otherwise]It's a hospital gurney much like any other[end if]."

Instead of doing something other than examining or waiting or looking or listening or taking inventory or telling or asking during Moving the Patient, say "[one of]You can't move at all for some reason[or]You find you're strapped down, severely constricting your freedom of movement[or]You are still strapped down on the gurney[stopping]."

Every turn during Moving the Patient:
	if the time since Moving the Patient began is 4 minutes:
		say "A nurse wheels your bed into another room...";
		now the gurney is in Room 4117.
	
Room 4117 is a south of Hospital Hallway. The description is "[if Moving the Patient is happening][one of]You can't make out much of the room at all yet[or]White walls, hospital smells. You can't make out much else yet[or]You can make out white walls, windows, and a TV[stopping][otherwise]An ordinary hopsital room with the usual windows and TV. The gurney you were brought here on is still here. To the north is the hallway[end if]." The printed name is "[if Moving the Patient is happening]Another Room[otherwise]Room 4117[end if]".

Moving the Patient ends when the time since Moving the Patient began is 10 minutes.
When Moving the Patient ends:
	say "You get better. You unstrap yourself from the gurney and pull out all the IV drips and whatnot.";
	try getting off the gurney.
	
test me with "jump / stand / l / x bed / x me / l / stand / l / x me / get gurney / get gurney / n / jump".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3729&start=0#p26709
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview: Jacek does Adam
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-11-21 11:42:52

Writing code under the influence of alcohol seems like a particularly challenging endeavour. This was a surprisingly interesting interview, although the interviewing technique was really strange. Sometimes it was insightful, relevant questions, sometimes it was scattershot irrelevancies. Adam managed to rise above these and ended up coming across as quite an intelligent man. 

So who's next Jacek?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3730&start=0#p26710
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "the player cannot see ..." is broken by scope rule
User: ChristianB / DateTime: 2011-11-21 11:43:27

Thank you both for your help and for reporting the bug!

-- C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3732&start=0#p26711
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Interview - Victor Gijsbers on Kerkerkruip
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-11-21 13:02:00

Victor Gijsber's [i]Kerkerkruip[/i] is a remarkable undertaking, combining two well-established and highly dissimilar forms to deliver the interacting systems and randomness (not to mention the addictive quality) of a roguelike in an immersive IF environment. If you haven't played it, [i]you should get around to doing that.[/i]

If you have, then you have been impressed by its depth, and you have probably wondered how such a game is possible. I did too. So I interviewed the author:

***

[i]I am required by International Interview Law to start out by asking: What inspired you to make a roguelike in text?[/i]

Many people in the Interactive Fiction community -- though the percentage is becoming smaller -- started out playing the old commercial interactive fiction games. My own background in computer gaming is very different, with role playing games and strategy games always having made up the majority of what I play. So even though I came to IF mostly from an interest in interactive storytelling, as The Baron and Fate testify, I guess it was only natural that I wanted to experiment with tactical RPG mechanics as well. This led me to write ATTACK as a basis on which tactical combat IF could be built.

I started writing an ATTACK-based RPG several times, but I never got very far. It not only takes a lot of time to write a story-heavy role playing game, but you also need to alpha test the game much more than a typical work of IF, because you need to balance the combat system. And the problem is that playing the same identical fragment of game over and over again is not a lot of fun.

The idea of writing a short roguelike game almost came to me as a revelation. You don't need insane amounts of content to have a complete game, so it seemed feasible for a single developer to write in a relatively short time; and because of the random generation, it is actually fun to test even for the author. And indeed, writing Kerkerkruip turned out to be very enjoyable, and something I managed to do in     about six months. (Although ATTACK was already finished when I began.)

[i]What are your favorite roguelikes? Which ones informed the development of Kerkerkruip?[/i]

I have played only two of the major roguelikes, Nethack and Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. I found Nethack far too wilfully opaque, but I have really fallen in love with DCSS. Their design philosophy is very sensible, and the game is just plain fun. With an online graphical version now available (<a class="postlink" href="https://tiles.crawl.develz.org/">https://tiles.crawl.develz.org/</a>) it is also about as accessible as a major roguelike is likely to get.

The game that was most instrumental in getting me to write Kerkerkruip was Desktop Dungeons. Not because of any particular mechanic, but because it too is a very short roguelike, and it made me realise that this was a possible genre. So it didn't inform the development so much as set it in motion.

[i]What inspiration did you draw from other IF?[/i]

In terms of specific mechanics, I don't think I took a lot from earlier IF. IF gameplay often centres on some combination of meticulous exploration, puzzle-solving, developing story through conversation, and making choices with narrative impact. None of these play an important role in Kerkerkruip. You don't want a game where you need to type "look under rug" every time you enter the room with the rug, for instance, and you certainly don't want the same puzzles and conversations coming up again and again. So while my use of the medium has of course been informed by playing many pieces of IF, the mechanics of Kerkerkruip owe little to that tradition.

[i]How long did this project take? Was everything as difficult to code as it looks?[/i]

Kerkerkruip took me about 6 months, perhaps 4 months of which could be designated as active development. As I said, ATTACK was already finished before I started; while only a small part of the total amount of code, it was the most fundamental and difficult code. (ATTACK messes with the turn sequence in several big ways. There's nothing like it in the Inform 7 Recipe Book, you can be sure.)

In general, the coding was not very difficult. Most of it is just pretty straightforward Inform 7 code, with heavy use of rulebooks. Some of it was more difficult, but I got help several times: the scroll identification code and the automatic saving mechanism, for instance, were mostly written by other people.

Of course, Kerkerkruip is mechanically much more complicated than a standard piece of IF. Relative to other games of mine, such as Fate and The Baron, it was certainly harder to write. (Though The Art of Fugue wasn't easy either.) When you write a game like this you need to be very methodical. You must resist the temptation to write special cases -- something we normally do all the time when programming IF -- and take the time to write general code for whatever behaviour you would like to see in your game. If you don't do that, the game will die in a horrible mess of bugs.

[i]What was the philosophy of combat-in-text that led to the design of your ATTACK extension? How did you hit upon the act/react system?[/i]

Much of the tactics in role playing games, including roguelikes, is intimately connected with representations of space. The distinction between melee and ranged combat is an obvious example, and so are the different ranges and areas of effect of spells. Running away, charging, doing as much damage as you can before the enemy has reached you -- those are all essential elements of most combat games.

When I started thinking about combat in IF, one of the first things I realised is that our medium is really bad at representing space. But, being turn-based, it is really good at representing time. If you want tactical combat in IF, you'll have to give up all the forms of tactics that are based on space, and you'd better introduced some that are based on time and turns. That is where the concentration mechanic comes from, with which I'm rather pleased; and I think you'll be able to see this thinking in some of the other parts of the design as well.

Another thing that was very important to me was to make sure that you never get into boring, repetitive situations where damage dealt per turn is so low on average that the fight just goes on, and on, and on. Here I suspect I took my cue from the indie pen and paper RPGs that I used to play a lot: if things threaten to get boring, escalate! The tension mechanic is an automatic escalation that raises both the stakes and the probability of resolution.

I'm not sure what I thought when I implement the act-react system -- though it must have been something profound, since it was one of the     hardest parts of ATTACK to write -- but I suspect I just thought it would feel more intense and interesting. It's like the gamemaster saying: "He runs towards you with a huge axe raised... what do you do NOW?" And you can stand your ground or run away. It doesn't work quite like that in ATTACK, but close enough.

Fun fact: ATTACK has full support for one action provoking reactions from multiple people ("he casts a fireball at all of you... what do you do now?"), but this has never been used.

[i]In a roguelike, the idea is that you die over and over again, but over many playthroughs you improve with practice. I can see this posing an issue during testing, with testers trying to master the game while you're trying to tweak the difficulty. How did you handle the tester/difficulty interaction, and how did you know when the game was hard enough (or too hard)?[/i]

Matt Weiner, my first tester, likes to tell people that when he first played Kerkerkruip, it was really hard -- nothing like the easy time you have today! It's true: the enemies were tougher, the loot was worse, there were several instant death situations. During testing, I decreased the difficulty a lot because I saw again and again that the game was just too hard.

How do you see that, even though the testers may just not be good enough to beat the game yet? Well, I myself have some idea of what the right tactics and decisions would be. So if I see a tester losing the game, I check what he was doing with what I believe to be the optimal tactics. If he is just making mistakes -- attacking with inappropriate weapons, killing monsters in the wrong order, forgetting to use items he found -- everything is fine. But if he is playing really well and still losing, than the game is probably too hard.

[i]I don't think I've seen so many grenades in any other roguelike. Where did those come from?[/i]

I'm not sure about that specifically, but my aim has been to avoid some of the most common roguelike items. So while there are scrolls, at least there are no potions. Grenades are uncommon in roguelikes, but common in other games -- I suppose I thought they would be intuitive yet distinctive.

[i]In the game's help menu you mention several things that you'd like to add to the game. Are there any features that you considered and rejected?[/i]

Vast amounts, probably, but most of them will have disappeared from my memory. One idea I played with was adding an automatic puzzle generating mechanism: e.g., you find a locked door, and the game will have put a key somewhere in an accessible place. I might still do that, but it isn't clear to me yet how that would have to be designed in order to make it interesting.

I once started to code up enemies that regenerated their health, until I realised that this would break one of my core design ideas -- it would make for really boring, drawn out fights.

Oh, and for the competition, I commented out a chunk of code that handled objects heating up each other and damaging whoever was carrying or wearing them. My beta testers would pick up the flaming scythe and put it in their inventory; immediately, all their scrolls were set on fire, after a few turns their armour would melt, and then they would die horribly and looking at a screen covered with "The X catches fire!" messages. This idea may return in one way or another, but not in exactly that way.

[i]What about features that you wanted to include but couldn't?[/i]

Nothing really comes to mind. Well, if I had had more time, I would have included more stuff, of course. All kinds of stuff. And I hope to do so in future releases. But there was nothing I couldn't include for technical reasons.

[i]A roguelike usually isn't about worldbuilding, but unlike Nethack's patchwork of geeky in-jokes, Kerkerkruip is composed (as far as I can tell) of original elements. How much backstory is there to the people, nations, and gods of Kerkerkruip's world? [If Malygris is the Wizard of Kerkerkruip, then what exactly is Kerkerkruip? The dungeon?][/i]

There is just enough world building for me to write the somewhat coherent descriptions in the game. This was very much a post facto thing I did after some of my beta testers complained about a lack of coherence. Obviously, I had tried to populate my game with enemies that were as far removed as possible from stereotypical fantasy / RPG types, but the result felt a bit too much like just a random collection of things. So I quickly thought up a world to tie it all together.

That is certainly something I want to change in a future release. Not, by the way, through better world building. The idea that a good fantasy book needs a coherent world with twenty nations, fifteen centuries of history, a map and an appendix full of genealogical tables is horrifying to me -- I like to call it Tolkien's disease. If someone tells me that a game has good "lore", I groan.

What I'll probably do is throw out all the current world building, and add a sad story about how Malygris came to be the way he is. I think I have some neat ideas, but we'll have to see.

And yes, Kerkerkruip is the name of the dungeon.

[i]For the benefit of players who might never defeat Malygris, could you share perhaps a partial "list of amusing things to try"?[/i]

Anyone can defeat Malygris, if they continue playing. If you feel like you're not progressing any more, you might have failed to understand the way that souls are absorbed. Make sure you know why killing two level 1 creatures in a row is the worst thing you could do.

But I can suggest some amusing things, of course. Try digging around when you have found a digging tool -- you may discover weird things. Fill the dungeon with rust spores once you've found a non-iron weapon. Kill the mindslug without killing his slaves. Search that pile of body parts on the quartering room. Try to win the game after you've been turned undead and have summoned an abyss of the soul. And for a very special victory: try to win the game after you have unleased a nameless horror on the world.

[i]How should we be pronouncing "Kerkerkruip"?[/i]

The only hard part is the "ui" vowel. Apparently, phonetically it should be written "œy", but that doesn't really help. Here someone pronounces "ui": <a class="postlink" href="http://www.forvo.com/word/ui/">http://www.forvo.com/word/ui/</a> -- be sure to click on the Dutch link, not the Finnish one!

***

Thanks to Victor for giving the interview and making this great game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3715&start=0#p26712
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about speaking
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-11-21 13:12:11

Query one: Michael Martin's [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Michael%20Martin/Reactable%20Quips/index.html]Reactable Quips[/url] is a good extension for what you want to do. Look at the Security Consultant example in the extension, you'll see that there's a response for: "> say password". It gives this response so long as you have "password" in the string of text following "say". So, "say I know the password! It's 'password'" also works.

To have your "You say "{blah}" line will require a bit more trickiness. Perhaps someone else on the board knows an easy way to do this? (I'm thinking of reading the player's command, and then stripping out the text that matches stuff like 'tell x about'/ 'say / 'ask about' and then storing what remains as an indexed text that is then inserted before the player says anything. Sound about right?). I might wonder whether it really is necessary: the player has already typed 'say blah', so surely they know that the character has just said that.

Query two: There are ways of doing it in the way that you seem to want to, but why don't you just have:
[code]The ears are a part of Sylvester.  The description of the ears is "Sylvester says, 'I can hear you looking at my ears. That's how sharp they are."[/code] Much easier, no?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3724&start=0#p26713
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with Inform 7, trying to make stuff untouchable.
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-21 13:17:27

katz just did something like this in "House of Fear", no?

Maybe this is saying the same thing that SJ_43 just said, but wouldn't it be more resource friendly to set a player property and check that property before interacting with a noun?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3715&start=0#p26714
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about speaking
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-21 14:04:24

[quote="JoeyJones"]To have your "You say "{blah}" line will require a bit more trickiness. Perhaps someone else on the board knows an easy way to do this? (I'm thinking of reading the player's command, and then stripping out the text that matches stuff like 'tell x about'/ 'say / 'ask about' and then storing what remains as an indexed text that is then inserted before the player says anything. Sound about right?).[/quote]
It's actually not that hard:

[code]Test is a room.

Bob is a man in test.

Instead of answering someone that:
	say "You say '[the topic understood]' to [the noun]."[/code]
If you want to mess around with capitalization and punctuation you might have to copy it to an indexed text, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3732&start=0#p26715
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Interview - Victor Gijsbers on Kerkerkruip
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-21 14:12:00

Thanks for this; it's a groovy interview.

I still haven't gotten around to Kerkerkruip (beyond the obligatory open-it-to-see-if-it-runs phase), but it glows hotly in my to-play stack and I'm looking forward to it even more after reading this ... This year's comp was a revelation to me, not because of what it contained, but because of which games were celebrated. One of the reasons I've always felt that I could never really feel a part of the IF community is that the IF community seemed to me (and obviously I was mistaken) to be very snobbish about -- even dismissive of -- awesome stuff like roguelikes and CYOA (while at the same time fetishizing teacher-said-so works of ho-hum dead prose), and yet games that could be fairly described as each placed highly in the comp. Insert retroactively stupid-obvious observation about vocal minorities representing larger groups here [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3715&start=0#p26716
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about speaking
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-11-21 14:41:43

That works great except it has to be a before rule, not an instead (otherwise you'd never get a response from anyone).

So Querada probably wants this:

[code]Before answering someone that:
   say "You say, '[the topic understood]'"[/code]

Except, this isn't quite in line with the brief: Querada wanted the player to be able to say something, and then have whoever was about give a response. What if multiple NPCs are about and they each have a response? Or Querada wants the player just to be able to say stuff regardless of whether there's anyone around to hear it. Maybe a new action? Hmm.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3715&start=0#p26717
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about speaking
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-21 14:42:36

Wouldn't you have to use something like Eric Eve's conversation packages for something like this? I mean, I guess you could do it without it, but doesn't the extension include functionality for NPC response when they are the implicit interlocutor provided the subject is in their list of things to talk about? Unless you just want a random response from a random NPC to whatever you say or if there's only a single NPC in the room...

I'm still trying to get my head around that extension, so I'll be keeping an eye on the commentary.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3724&start=0#p26718
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with Inform 7, trying to make stuff untouchable.
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-11-21 14:53:56

[quote="I4L"]Maybe this is saying the same thing that SJ_43 just said, but wouldn't it be more resource friendly to set a player property and check that property before interacting with a noun?[/quote]
That depends on whether the player will ever need to become solid at some point in the game. If not, then just blocking all actions other than examining (and I suppose listening to) should be sufficient. If the player will be switching between a ghostly state and a solid state during the course of the game, then things become a bit more complex-- for example, mental objects will have to be dropped when the player becomes physical (and vice versa), and X ME should reflect the current status. 

This should be a good start for that scenario though:

[code]A thing can be mental or physical. A thing is usually physical.

The player is mental. [heh heh] The description is "[if the player is mental]You seem to be translucent and glowing[otherwise]You seem solidly tangible[end if]."

Xyzzying is an action applying to nothing. Understand "xyzzy" as xyzzying.
Carry out xyzzying:
	if the player is mental:
		say "You solidify.";
		repeat with possession running through carried things:
			if the possession is mental, silently try dropping the possession;
		now the player is physical;
	otherwise:
		say "You ectoplasmize.";
		repeat with Larry running through carried things:
			if Larry is physical, silently try dropping Larry;
		now the player is mental.

Instead of doing something other than listening to or examining with a physical thing when the player is mental, say "Your ghostly hand passes through [the noun] without effect."

Instead of doing something other than listening to or examining with a mental thing when the player is physical, say "Your solid hand passes through the ephemeral [noun] without effect."

Haunted Living Room is a room. "This place is all spooky and whatever. On the wall the word XYZZY is written... in blood, of course."

The lamp is in the living room. The description is "It's a lamp." The couch is in the living room. The description is "It's a couch." It is fixed in place.

The ectoplasm is in the living room. It is mental. The description is "It glows eerily." The indefinite article is "some".

test me with "x me / x lamp / listen to lamp / get lamp / x couch / eat couch / push couch / get ectoplasm / lock ectoplasm with lamp / lock lamp with ectoplasm".

test me2 with "xyzzy / test me".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=30#p26719
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2011-11-21 15:07:33

[quote="aschultz"]Awesome pictures. Glad this thread got necro'd.

I still want to write a game in this. It might not be publishable, but dang if it wouldn't be fun.[/quote]

[quote="severedhand"]I was thinking the same thing. Though I'd still want mine to be publishable [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Thanks chaps. Its nice to hear the Scott Adams Format still makes people's hearts flutter to hark back to the (good imo) old days.

It's also nice to learn something new each day (having just googled 'necro'd')! [emote]:)[/emote]

Perhaps we should have a Scott Adams Format Text Adventure Comp (SAFTAC?)  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote] 

Even if its just for fun. I think I got more pleasure out of creating a game in this format than playing some [emote]:)[/emote] I suppose I am biased thouh as mixed in with making a game was making and debugging Visionary along the way whilst learning how the Scott Adams format ticked (including "magic numbers")! Anyway, its all in the docs.

If you ever do make a text Adventure in Visionary, ENJOY [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3732&start=0#p26720
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Interview - Victor Gijsbers on Kerkerkruip
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-11-21 15:16:19

[quote="Ghalev"]One of the reasons I've always felt that I could never really feel a part of the IF community is that the IF community seemed to me (and obviously I was mistaken) to be very snobbish about -- even dismissive of -- awesome stuff like roguelikes and CYOA[/quote]
You've just given me an excellent idea for next year: a roguelike choose-your-own-adventure! Each 'page' and the links between them would be randomly generated at the start of play, in a way structured to maintain internal sense. This plan inspires in me much hand-rubbing, moustache twirling and maniacal laughter: it must be done!
                                              
---

Great interview. I like the idea of IF interviews in general. It seems like a great way of getting to know some of the thought processes behind the writing of different games. Here's a question for [b]Victor[/b]:

The game environments of roguelikes are randomised, but the extent and form of this randomisation varies considerably. Some games like ADOM and Caves of Qud have a fixed macro-level map and fixed layout of villages, with everything else completely randomised at the beginning of play. Other dungeon based games like the Angband series have one fixed starting location, with every level of the dungeon randomly generated upon entry (even previously visited levels). Finally, there are games like Dwarf Fortress which randomly generate (along certain patterns) a complete game world, npcs, and series of events leading up to the start of the first game in that world, with no pre-written locations, characters, items or plot.

In Kerkerkruip, the locations, characters, items and plot are all pre-written. It is just the order and relation of rooms and the occurrence and location of the characters and items that are randomised. (Unless I misunderstood). I understand that this works well given the form and limitations of IF, but were there more specific reasons why you chose this particular structure of randomisation?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3715&start=0#p26721
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about speaking
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-21 15:43:02

[quote="JoeyJones"]That works great except it has to be a before rule, not an instead (otherwise you'd never get a response from anyone).[/quote]
Are you referring to the fact that an Instead rule stops the action? You can always add "continue the action" if that's not what you want. Or you could handle the response within the Instead rule. But I came up with an alternative, for your consideration:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.eyeballsun.org/i/Speech%20Motivations.i7x">http://www.eyeballsun.org/i/Speech%20Motivations.i7x</a>

Speech Motivations is a work in progress, but it demonstrates how I think this sort of thing could be handled. The player's action only deals with the PC's actions (including speech). But it triggers all NPCs in the room to respond, and any of those who were addressed are flagged as "expected to respond." During the Every Turn phase, those triggers are checked and the NPCs have their say.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3715&start=0#p26722
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about speaking
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-21 15:49:33

[quote="I4L"]Wouldn't you have to use something like Eric Eve's conversation packages for something like this? I mean, I guess you could do it without it, but doesn't the extension include functionality for NPC response when they are the implicit interlocutor provided the subject is in their list of things to talk about? Unless you just want a random response from a random NPC to whatever you say or if there's only a single NPC in the room...[/quote]
Both Dr. Eve's and my extensions are designed to handle conversation about in-game objects rather than pure-text topics. There's very little in them to support or augment Inform's built-in conversational actions, which all work with topics and set "the topic understood" to a snippet, which is a range of words within the player's command. In contrast, the extensions usually define actions that discuss the second noun (and sometimes the noun, such as giving and showing), using Eric Eve's "Epistemology" to define abstractions as "subjects" rather than text-topics.

I generally assume that anyone who is dealing with snippets is only implementing conversation within a limited context, and extensions are not all that useful for them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3732&start=0#p26723
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Interview - Victor Gijsbers on Kerkerkruip
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-21 16:09:19

[quote="JoeyJones"]You've just given me an excellent idea for next year: a roguelike choose-your-own-adventure! Each 'page' and the links between them would be randomly generated at the start of play, in a way structured to maintain internal sense. This plan inspires in me much hand-rubbing, moustache twirling and maniacal laughter: it must be done![/quote]

Mind. Blown.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3733&start=0#p26724
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [IFDB List] Conversation (Heavy?) Games with I7 Source
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-21 16:35:35

If you guys don't mind terribly... (Or even if you do!) I seem to be having some kind of search dysfunction as of late. Searching for the appropriate tags turns up bupkiss, which means I'm either doing it wrong or there's no combination of these tags available. (Or both.)

[url]http://ifdb.tads.org/viewlist?id=9nsk2wmdgki41vyy[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3715&start=0#p26725
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about speaking
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-11-21 16:51:03

[quote="capmikee"]Are you referring to the fact that an Instead rule stops the action? You can always add "continue the action" if that's not what you want. Or you could handle the response within the Instead rule.[/quote]
I [i]never[/i] use instead rules anymore: they act as special cases blocking the success of an action. Certainly you can 'continue the action' and so on, but that's inelegant. Much better to use Check and Carry Out rules. Or at least, my collaborator Melvin assures me that this is good practice, I'm not sure whether this is an ideological matter if the results end up functionally equivalent. 
[size=75][As a point of interest, in the 90K+ source of Calm there isn't a single Instead rule][/size]

[quote="capmikee"]But I came up with an alternative, for your consideration:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.eyeballsun.org/i/Speech%20Motivations.i7x">http://www.eyeballsun.org/i/Speech%20Motivations.i7x</a>[/quote]

Ooh, I tried to get it to work. And it needed Scope Caching. So I got that off your site (because I am an elite detective I figured, correctly, that it'd be under "/Scope%20Caching.i7x"), but then Scope Caching wouldn't work. So then I stared at Speech Motivations for a little bit. I can sort of see how you've gone about making it do. If it were to work, this would be an excellent conversation writing option for IF writers. You say it's a work in progress: what doesn't work yet?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3733&start=0#p26726
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [IFDB List] Conversation (Heavy?) Games with I7 Source
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-11-21 16:58:20

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=tag%3AI7+source+available+tag%3Aconversation&searchgo=Search+Games">http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=t ... arch+Games</a> is what you want. The search field was:
[code]
tag:I7 source available tag:conversation
[/code]
Protip: don't use commas in the search box.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3734&start=0#p26727
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Thanksgiving Speed-IF
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-11-21 17:05:27

Justin 'vimes' de Vesine is running a speed-IF this week; I thought I'd repost here in case anybody felt like a post-comp breather.

It's a more traditional style of speedIF than we've had here in the past:
[quote][Start whenever you want, but the deadline is] noon-ish Eastern on Sunday the 27th of November.  Take all the time you like, or limit it to the time-outs and halftimes of your favorite American Football game, as you prefer.

List of items: a top hat. a dragonfly*. a small crystal ball. two optical prisms. a water pistol. a magnifying glass. a bowtie. a jar of silica. a polished piece of labradorite. a bow and arrow. an archer's arm guard. a bismuth crystal.

* missing[/quote]
Use as many or few of these as you like. Have fun!

Submissions should be emailed to dragonfly2011 (at) plover.net , which will stop working after the SpeedIF is complete.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3733&start=0#p26728
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [IFDB List] Conversation (Heavy?) Games with I7 Source
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-11-21 17:09:16

If you're interested in multiple choice conversations, you could also check my [i]Fate[/i].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3734&start=0#p26729
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Thanksgiving Speed-IF
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-11-21 17:14:11

I take it then that there's no time constraint other than the fact that it has to be written by Sunday? Or does it have to be written on Sunday before midday?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3734&start=0#p26730
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Thanksgiving Speed-IF
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-11-21 17:15:51

Oops, that wasn't hugely clear: yes, you can write your game any time between now and the deadline.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3733&start=0#p26731
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [IFDB List] Conversation (Heavy?) Games with I7 Source
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-21 17:19:13

[quote="JoeyJones"]http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=tag%3AI7+source+available+tag%3Aconversation&searchgo=Search+Games is what you want. The search field was:
[code]
tag:I7 source available tag:conversation
[/code]
Protip: don't use commas in the search box.[/quote]

No commas. But I saw an example somewhere on the site that implied I should use:

[code]
tag:I7 source available +tag:conversation
[/code]

Which didn't work. So I removed the + and it worked, which brought up the four games listed on your link. But I figure there's gotta be more than that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3733&start=0#p26732
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [IFDB List] Conversation (Heavy?) Games with I7 Source
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-11-21 17:22:22

It's just that the conversation tag is underapplied. I'd look through games with the source code available, most will involve conversation of some form or another. What kind of conversation system were you interested in implementing? Or were you just surveying the state of what has come before?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3733&start=0#p26733
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [IFDB List] Conversation (Heavy?) Games with I7 Source
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-21 17:36:17

Well, I kinda want my overly ambitious WIP to be heavy on dynamic conversation. While the examples for conversation extensions are great, they're somewhat limited in scope, as examples tend to be by necessity. So I'm looking to see what's come before, what the result was and how it was done. I haven't really settled on a style or a system, though I like the idea of a keyword-highlighted, node-based approach.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3733&start=0#p26734
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [IFDB List] Conversation (Heavy?) Games with I7 Source
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-11-21 17:53:59

Been a while since I played it, but Alabaster definitely struck me a particularly strong way of writing conversation. The player can chat about whatever they like and conversation responses lead on to new and relevant suggestions about the direction of the conversation. Seems to combine the best of all worlds, and there's scope there for tracking the mood of NPCs and varying responses accordingly if you want to do that sort of thing. Hitherto, I've only used traditional menu-based conversation. It's relatively simple to code and the player doesn't have to read the author's mind to discover what topics are relevant. It's also easy to create branching tree-like structures of conversation. But, you never get the joy of the player thinking up for themselves the correct thing to ask.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3734&start=0#p26736
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Thanksgiving Speed-IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-21 18:37:35

Alas. I heart speed-IF and would participate, but this week I'm swamped with anniversary, work, and holiday stuff. I already had to deep-six some social obligations [emote]:([/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3731&start=0#p26737
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - multidimensional arrays?
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-11-21 19:14:03

Thank you for your answer.
Yes, properties are not easily readable nor runnable like tables so I guess I will stay with tables but edit them like you say with an other software.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3725&start=0#p26738
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Incapacitated player being moved through rooms?
User: JPLeBreton / DateTime: 2011-11-21 23:11:25

These are fantastic answers, thanks so much folks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3733&start=0#p26739
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [IFDB List] Conversation (Heavy?) Games with I7 Source
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-21 23:12:51

[quote="JoeyJones"]It's just that the conversation tag is underapplied.[/quote]

So very this. So much tagging to be done ... (I tag often, but so many games ...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3736&start=0#p26740
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Holding vs. having parts of the player
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-11-22 02:06:29

I notice that parts of the player fall under the holding relation but not the possession relation.  This is doubly confusing to me: First, I thought that holding was a subset of possession, so I don't understand why it's possible to hold but not have something in this case.

Second, and the pertinent one to me, this can lead to some awkward results if you're trying to work with the things the player has actually picked up ("you are carrying your head").  Shouldn't things that are part of the player count as had but not held?

[code]The outback is in the room.

The kangaroo is a person in the outback.  The pouch is a container.  It is part of the kangaroo.  The player is the kangaroo.

The joey is a thing in the pouch.

Every turn:
	say "You are holding [list of things held by the player].  You have [list of things had by the player]."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3736&start=0#p26741
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Holding vs. having parts of the player
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-11-22 02:31:40

Things that are part of the player certainly shouldn't count as had, because "having" is "carrying" + "wearing" (see manual 13.4). If I recall correctly, parts are related to wholes by the "incorporating" relation.

From your example, I assume (but I might be wrong) that the verb "holds" is a synonym of "encloses". A encloses B if either A carries B, A wears B, B is in A, B is a part of A, or A supports B.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3736&start=0#p26742
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Holding vs. having parts of the player
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-22 02:58:03

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]From your example, I assume (but I might be wrong) that the verb "holds" is a synonym of "encloses". A encloses B if either A carries B, A wears B, B is in A, B is a part of A, or A supports B.[/quote]
That seems to be nearly true. As far as I can tell, holding and enclosure are near synonyms, the difference being that encloses is a transitive relation: 
A holds B iff A carries B or A wears B or B is in A or B is on A or B is a part of A.
A encloses C iff 1) A holds C or 2) A holds B and B holds C.
So holding is "directly enclosing" as it were.

Perhaps the choice of names for the holding and having relations sometimes results in non-idiomatic English, but I guess that can hardly be avoided.

(Is the holding relation documented? It is used a few times in the recipe book, but I didn't find a discussion of it.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3736&start=0#p26743
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Holding vs. having parts of the player
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-11-22 03:37:20

According to the index, one difference between holding and enclosure is that holding only relates a person to a thing, whereas enclosure relates a thing to a thing.

Which only makes things more misleading; I can see how the apparent definition of holding makes sense in the context of things ("the drawer holds a sock"), but a person holding something definitely sounds like a synonym for carrying.  

Disclaimer: I both see how this relation could be useful and appreciate that there may not be a better name for it.  Better documentation would indeed be nice, though--the index [i]lists[/i] these tropes, but doesn't define them anywhere I see.  The documentation only talks about carrying, wearing, support, containment, incorporation, and possession.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3736&start=0#p26745
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Holding vs. having parts of the player
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-22 04:37:10

[quote="katz"]According to the index, one difference between holding and enclosure is that holding only relates a person to a thing, whereas enclosure relates a thing to a thing.
[/quote]
Yes, I see that now. But apparently the index is wrong. At least, you can add an every turn rule that says a list of things held by the location or by the outback or by the pouch to your sample game without Inform protesting.

[quote="katz"]the index lists these tropes, but doesn't define them anywhere I see. The documentation only talks about carrying, wearing, support, containment, incorporation, and possession.[/quote]
So the documentation leaves out the holding relation (having is the same as possession).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3729&start=0#p26746
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview: Jacek does Adam
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-11-22 05:18:09

[quote="JoeyJones"]Writing code under the influence of alcohol seems like a particularly challenging endeavour. This was a surprisingly interesting interview, although the interviewing technique was really strange. Sometimes it was insightful, relevant questions, sometimes it was scattershot irrelevancies. Adam managed to rise above these and ended up coming across as quite an intelligent man.[/quote]

The booze thing is indeed odd. Here we have a devotee of Dionysus who eschews madness and ecstasy in favour of logos. No religious beliefs, no UFOs, no conspiracy theories. Why unsoberise yourself if you're going to stay utterly sane? I'm also miffed by Adam's claim that writing IF is as meaningful as jerking off and less fun.

[quote="JoeyJones"]So who's next Jacek?[/quote]

I've already interviewed Myself and Adam. What other pre-eminent members of this community can you think of?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3738&start=0#p26747
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Dead Hotel - Unlocked Secrets
User: Comazombie / DateTime: 2011-11-22 05:47:51

[quote]Secrets can be unlocked once zombies
reach Lake Gardens in New York City.[/quote]

It is 11/22/2011 today. Zombies have reached Lake Gardens in New York City.
This means that the game automatically unlocks secrets from this date on.

To activate the secrets, choose "> SECRETS" from the main menu.
A new screen will appear:

[quote]IFComp 2011 has ended.
Unlock Secrets? (Y/N)[/quote]

Press Y for Yes to be able to replay the game in secret mode. Press N to switch back to competition mode.

Secrets include:
- Author's real name displayed in main menu
- Uzi 9mm weapon in inventory at start
- Reception book w/special entry in lobby

The following walkthrough video demonstrates how to kill the entire horde of zombies
and win the game with a high score:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLa8Ov2Svtg">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLa8Ov2Svtg</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=120#p26748
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.3: IF library manager
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-11-22 07:12:27

[quote="mao42ranma"]I can't seem to get Grotesque to run at all. I get this error.

[code]Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "grotesque", line 59, in <module>
  File "grotesque", line 44, in main
NameError: global name 'Gtk' is not defined[/code]

Running Windows 7 Pro, 64bit[/quote]

It looks like you downloaded the GTK3 version, which is currently for Linux only. I would recommend downloading the [url=http://downloads.sourceforge.net/grotesque/grotesque-0.9.3-gtk3.tar.gz]Windows executable[/url], otherwise you will need the [url=http://downloads.sourceforge.net/grotesque/grotesque-0.9.3-gtk2.tar.gz]GTK2 version[/url] along with [url=http://www.pygtk.org/downloads.html]PyGtk[/url] to run it via Python.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=130#p26749
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.3: IF library manager
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-11-22 07:16:34

[quote="AaronP"]Hmm, imports seem to be stalling at the cover art.[/quote]

I just strangely ran into the same problem, however in my case it was due to some proxy server issues. If you're running Linux, could you please run it from the terminal and tell me if it's throwing any errors when it tries accessing IFDB? Otherwise, if you're in windows, in the same folder as the executable file there should be an error log file that gets generated ("grotesque.log" or something similar). Thanks!
My guess is that something's preventing you from connecting to IFDB...If it continues, you can disable coverart and metadata fetching for now until we get it worked out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=130#p26750
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.3: IF library manager
User: mao42ranma / DateTime: 2011-11-22 09:04:50

[quote="jakobcreutzfeldt"][quote="mao42ranma"]I can't seem to get Grotesque to run at all. I get this error.

[code]Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "grotesque", line 59, in <module>
  File "grotesque", line 44, in main
NameError: global name 'Gtk' is not defined[/code]

Running Windows 7 Pro, 64bit[/quote]

It looks like you downloaded the GTK3 version, which is currently for Linux only. I would recommend downloading the [url=http://downloads.sourceforge.net/grotesque/grotesque-0.9.3-gtk3.tar.gz]Windows executable[/url], otherwise you will need the [url=http://downloads.sourceforge.net/grotesque/grotesque-0.9.3-gtk2.tar.gz]GTK2 version[/url] along with [url=http://www.pygtk.org/downloads.html]PyGtk[/url] to run it via Python.[/quote]

I thought that too, but I used the executable windows package, and it didn't work. I'll try downloading the GTK2 version instead and running it via python using PyGtk instead and see if I can get it running that way.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=130#p26751
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.3: IF library manager
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-22 09:15:10

[quote="jakobcreutzfeldt"] I would recommend downloading the [url=http://downloads.sourceforge.net/grotesque/grotesque-0.9.3-gtk3.tar.gz]Windows executable[/url] [/quote]
That seems to link to the GTK3 version, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=130#p26752
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.3: IF library manager
User: mao42ranma / DateTime: 2011-11-22 09:32:44

[quote="mao42ranma"][quote="jakobcreutzfeldt"][quote="mao42ranma"]I can't seem to get Grotesque to run at all. I get this error.

[code]Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "grotesque", line 59, in <module>
  File "grotesque", line 44, in main
NameError: global name 'Gtk' is not defined[/code]

Running Windows 7 Pro, 64bit[/quote]

It looks like you downloaded the GTK3 version, which is currently for Linux only. I would recommend downloading the [url=http://downloads.sourceforge.net/grotesque/grotesque-0.9.3-gtk3.tar.gz]Windows executable[/url], otherwise you will need the [url=http://downloads.sourceforge.net/grotesque/grotesque-0.9.3-gtk2.tar.gz]GTK2 version[/url] along with [url=http://www.pygtk.org/downloads.html]PyGtk[/url] to run it via Python.[/quote]

I thought that too, but I used the executable windows package, and it didn't work. I'll try downloading the GTK2 version instead and running it via python using PyGtk instead and see if I can get it running that way.[/quote]

Now I get: 

[code]Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\Noah\Apps\grotesque\setup.py", line 32, in <module>
    data_files=[(doc_dir, ['COPYING', 'README'])],
NameError: name 'doc_dir' is not defined[/code]

Python 2.7.2, GTK2 2.24.0

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3715&start=10#p26753
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about speaking
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-22 10:03:59

[quote="JoeyJones"]I [i]never[/i] use instead rules anymore: they act as special cases blocking the success of an action. Certainly you can 'continue the action' and so on, but that's inelegant. Much better to use Check and Carry Out rules. Or at least, my collaborator Melvin assures me that this is good practice, I'm not sure whether this is an ideological matter if the results end up functionally equivalent. 
[size=75][As a point of interest, in the 90K+ source of Calm there isn't a single Instead rule][/size][/quote]
To each their own, I suppose. Here are some considerations:

The Before, Instead, and After rulebooks run for every action (unless it is stopped, of course). That means each one of these rules will slightly slow down execution of each action, even if it is totally irrelevant. Check, Carry Out and Report rules only run for the actions they apply to, so they will have no effect on other actions.

However, if I understand correctly, the real slowdown is in starting up the rulebooks, not processing individual rules. And parsing tends to be slower than changing the world model or printing text. So unless your game is slow and you've identified the holdup as action processing, this would not be my first choice for optimization. On the other hand, if your rule really only applies to one action, there may be no reason use a Before, Instead or After rule.

Another disadvantage with Instead rules is that they bypass all the normal Check rules. This can be a huge pain in the butt, but occasionally it's useful when the Check rules are too restrictive. Replacing Check rules may be faster than running Instead rules, but it may take up more memory. However, this situation may change radically in future versions of Inform, with the addition of the "X rule does not apply when..." feature to replace procedural rules.

Of course, the all-actions coverage of Before, Instead and After rules can be used to your advantage, if you wish to use action descriptions or kinds-of-action to catch many different behaviors...

Stopping a wide range of actions:
[code]Instead of doing anything other than looking when the player is on the gurney:[/code]

Setting variables that apply to multiple actions:
[code]Asking someone about is addressing the noun. Telling someone about is addressing the noun. Answering someone that is addressing the noun. Before an actor addressing the noun: Now the interlocutor of the actor is the noun.[/code]

Another consideration is the way Inform is expected to behave. Check and Report rules are not expected to change the world model. Carry out rules are not expected to output text unless the command was specifically a request for information with no side effects. Sometimes this is awkward, especially if variations in the action would necessitate action variables, which can't be shared between different actions or scoped outside of action processing, even when the action delegates behavior to another rule or phrase. So it may make more sense to handle every stage of action processing with a single Instead rule for each different case.

As suggested by the previous consideration, grouping of concepts sometimes makes Before, Instead, or After rules easier to understand than a splintered array of specific action processing rules. Most commonly, authors use Instead rules for processing of specific objects:

[code]Instead of doing anything other than drinking with the glass of water:[/code]

My rule of thumb is to use Instead for specific objects, but to define groups of objects that might fit into a specific action processing rule whenever possible:

[code]A beverage is a kind of thing. Definition: A thing is drinkable if it is a beverage or it holds a beverage. Check drinking something not drinkable: say "You can't drink that!"[/code]

I do try to avoid Before rules. In my experience, they usually just interfere with Instead rules when you don't want them to. But I make the exception for variable-setting as above.

Another action processing rulebook I've come to appreciate is the accessibility rulebook. It automatically covers wide ranges of actions, often in a well-targeted way. I recently wrote a "Flexible Action Requirements" extension to improve the targeting even more - but it's probably slowing my game down quite a bit, so if speed is your goal, maybe that's not such a super option.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3715&start=10#p26754
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about speaking
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-22 10:12:31

[quote="JoeyJones"][quote="capmikee"]But I came up with an alternative, for your consideration:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.eyeballsun.org/i/Speech%20Motivations.i7x">http://www.eyeballsun.org/i/Speech%20Motivations.i7x</a>[/quote]

Ooh, I tried to get it to work. And it needed Scope Caching. So I got that off your site (because I am an elite detective I figured, correctly, that it'd be under "/Scope%20Caching.i7x"), but then Scope Caching wouldn't work. So then I stared at Speech Motivations for a little bit. I can sort of see how you've gone about making it do. If it were to work, this would be an excellent conversation writing option for IF writers. You say it's a work in progress: what doesn't work yet?[/quote]
Oh no! Well, first of all, thanks for volunteering as a beta tester!  [emote]:lol:[/emote] It works for me - what I meant by it being a work in progress is that I haven't decided to freeze the API yet. Well, that and I haven't done any beta testing!  [emote]:oops:[/emote] 

First of all, this tells me that I REALLY need to submit Scope Caching to the Inform site. But it doesn't work? Double oh no!

I'd really like to help you get this working - it would help me a lot too. Can you post a short example of the problem, or at least the compiler error? If you don't think it would be helpful for other people on this thread, or if it contains spoilers, you can pm me.

Thanks!

Oh, and one note: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.eyeballsun.org/i/">http://www.eyeballsun.org/i/</a> allows indexing, so you can see all my extensions there.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3736&start=0#p26755
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Holding vs. having parts of the player
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-22 10:23:07

[quote]At least, you can add an every turn rule that says a list of things held by the location or by the outback or by the pouch to your sample game without Inform protesting.[/quote]

Inform doesn't protest about type-violating descriptions like "things held by the location" or "people regionally in the player". They are empty descriptions. (Nothing can have that relation.)

Looking at the code, I see that the holding relation is the (non-transitive) union of carrying, wearing, and incorporation. (Everything carried, worn by, or part of a person.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3736&start=0#p26756
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Holding vs. having parts of the player
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-22 10:30:36

[quote]As far as I can tell, holding and enclosure are near synonyms, the difference being that encloses is a transitive relation[/quote]

Basically right. Enclosure has some special cases for doors and backdrops. (Backdrops are never enclosed by anything; a door can be enclosed by two different rooms.)

The enclosure relation serves two main purposes for IF. "Things enclosed by room X" is an approximation of "things close to the player", which might be important if you set the room on fire. And, more importantly, "things enclosed by the player" is exactly the set of things which move around the game with the player. You use it for "if the player takes X into room Y..." sorts of puzzles.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=130#p26757
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.3: IF library manager
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-11-22 10:31:45

[quote="Felix"][quote="jakobcreutzfeldt"] I would recommend downloading the [url=http://downloads.sourceforge.net/grotesque/grotesque-0.9.3-gtk3.tar.gz]Windows executable[/url] [/quote]
That seems to link to the GTK3 version, though.[/quote]

Oops, you're right, should be: <a class="postlink" href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/grotesque/files/grotesque/0.9.3/grotesque-0.9.3-win.zip/download">http://sourceforge.net/projects/grotesq ... p/download</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3736&start=0#p26758
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Holding vs. having parts of the player
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-22 10:37:55

[quote="zarf"]Inform doesn't protest about type-violating descriptions like "things held by the location" or "people regionally in the player". They are empty descriptions. (Nothing can have that relation.)[/quote]
That doesn't seem right either. "[list of things held by the pouch]" prints out "joey."

[quote]Looking at the code, I see that the holding relation is the (non-transitive) union of carrying, wearing, and incorporation. (Everything carried, worn by, or part of a person.)[/quote]
In my experience it also covers containment and support, as you would expect from behavior of the phrase "the holder of X." What code are you looking at?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3733&start=0#p26759
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [IFDB List] Conversation (Heavy?) Games with I7 Source
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-22 10:47:37

Well, this is not what you asked for, but it seems I have a need for beta testers of my Speech Motivations extension.

I would really love to hear your feedback.

<a class="postlink" href="http://eyeballsun.org/i/Speech%20Motivations.i7x">http://eyeballsun.org/i/Speech%20Motivations.i7x</a>

As JoeyJones pointed out, it requires Scope Caching:

<a class="postlink" href="http://eyeballsun.org/i/Scope%20Caching.i7x">http://eyeballsun.org/i/Scope%20Caching.i7x</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3733&start=0#p26760
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [IFDB List] Conversation (Heavy?) Games with I7 Source
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-22 10:50:41

[quote="JoeyJones"]Been a while since I played it, but Alabaster definitely struck me a particularly strong way of writing conversation.[/quote]

I have this one on the list. I've been reading through the source code.

[quote="capmikee"]
Well, this is not what you asked for, but it seems I have a need for beta testers of my Speech Motivations extension.

I would really love to hear your feedback.
[/quote]

I will most assuredly have a look, sir, and provide whatever feedback I'm able from a novice's point of view.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3736&start=0#p26761
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Holding vs. having parts of the player
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-22 11:23:11

[quote="zarf"]Enclosure has some special cases for doors and backdrops. (Backdrops are never enclosed by anything; a door can be enclosed by two different rooms.)[/quote]
Right.
So, backdrops are not enclosed by rooms they are in, and they are not held or contained by them either.
Doors, on the other hand, can be enclosed by two rooms, but apparently they are only contained (and held) by one of them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3733&start=10#p26762
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [IFDB List] Conversation (Heavy?) Games with I7 Source
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-22 11:23:34

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="JoeyJones"]It's just that the conversation tag is underapplied.[/quote]

So very this. So much tagging to be done ... (I tag often, but so many games ...)[/quote]
Is there way to find out what tags people are searching for, or using often, or interested in? I'm going back through games I've played and giving the "conversation" tag to ones that need it.

And then I saw Infidel. What's the opposite of "conversation?" I gave it a "no NPCs" tag but I don't know if there are similar tags used elsewhere.

There ought to be a "memorable npc" tag - She's Got a Thing for a Spring and The One That Got Away both have great NPCs, but they're not sidekicks. Is there anything like that?

Some other tags I created:

active NPC (inspired by Emily Short's list)
complex NPC
hostile NPC
puzzlefest (there's already a "puzzles" tag, but I'm not sure how it's being used)
changing environment

You know what would be handy on ifdb? Some way to choose a particular tag and apply it to multiple games. Maybe polls should automatically show up as tags too?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=130#p26763
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.3: IF library manager
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-11-22 11:23:53

[quote="mao42ranma"][quote="mao42ranma"]

I thought that too, but I used the executable windows package, and it didn't work. I'll try downloading the GTK2 version instead and running it via python using PyGtk instead and see if I can get it running that way.[/quote]

Now I get: 

[code]Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\Noah\Apps\grotesque\setup.py", line 32, in <module>
    data_files=[(doc_dir, ['COPYING', 'README'])],
NameError: name 'doc_dir' is not defined[/code]

Python 2.7.2, GTK2 2.24.0[/quote]


So, just to confirm, the original error message you gave was from the grotesque error log file or from the command prompt?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1419&start=0#p26764
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Web Hosting
User: stadtgorilla / DateTime: 2011-11-22 11:34:00

wordpress makes it very easy to create very nice looking sites. download their open source package, upload it to some webspace, done. ultimately tweakable. love it. and i have no idea of webdesign. i only know iweb, which sucks ass.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3715&start=10#p26765
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about speaking
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-11-22 11:52:53

[quote="capmikee"]
My rule of thumb is to use Instead for specific objects, but to define groups of objects that might fit into a specific action processing rule whenever possible:

[code]A beverage is a kind of thing. Definition: A thing is drinkable if it is a beverage or it holds a beverage. Check drinking something not drinkable: say "You can't drink that!"[/code]
[/quote]

The way we've been working is to have general properties (A thing is either this or that. A thing is seldom that), even for one off items. That way it's easy to implement new, similar items, into the game by giving the new item a bunch of properties (for instance, 'The burnt bits of wood are medium, useless, dirty, soft and breakable'). All the game-interactions then require items with a given property or set of properties, that can be satisfied by any item that has those properties. One of the strengths of Inform is that it allows for so many different approaches.

[quote="capmikee"]Oh no! Well, first of all, thanks for volunteering as a beta tester!   It works for me - what I meant by it being a work in progress is that I haven't decided to freeze the API yet. Well, that and I haven't done any beta testing!   

First of all, this tells me that I REALLY need to submit Scope Caching to the Inform site. But it doesn't work? Double oh no!

I'd really like to help you get this working - it would help me a lot too. Can you post a short example of the problem, or at least the compiler error? If you don't think it would be helpful for other people on this thread, or if it contains spoilers, you can pm me.

Thanks!

Oh, and one note: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.eyeballsun.org/i/">http://www.eyeballsun.org/i/</a> allows indexing, so you can see all my extensions there.[/quote]
I'm going to try it all again and make sure that I definitely installed the installation correctly. Then we can start a new topic on the forum to discuss the extension  [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3733&start=10#p26766
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [IFDB List] Conversation (Heavy?) Games with I7 Source
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-22 11:58:48

[quote="capmikee"]Is there way to find out what tags people are searching for, or using often, or interested in? [/quote]

The first one ... not that I'm aware of (except perhaps to the site's admin).

The middle one, yes. When tagging, there's an option to show the most commonly-used tags (and a further option to show all of them).

The third one: right here, probably [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=30#p26767
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-11-22 12:00:49

[quote="therealeasterbunny"]Perhaps we should have a Scott Adams Format Text Adventure Comp (SAFTAC?)  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote] 
[/quote]

I'd be up for it. As you say, it'd be fun to participate. It could be good for new authors, too, or for people who don't want to deal with rulebooks and such, yet.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3715&start=10#p26768
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about speaking
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-11-22 12:04:55

That didn't take long. The problem arose on my side. Basically, when I downloaded it, I accidentally downloaded it as a html file, then I removed the tags and made it an .i7x file and somewhere along the line something messed up. Redownloaded it as an .i7x file and it works just fine. Incidentally, which version is the definitive version? (I assume the one that doesn't have numbers after it).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3715&start=10#p26769
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about speaking
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-22 12:12:07

[quote="JoeyJones"]That didn't take long. The problem arose on my side. Basically, when I downloaded it, I accidentally downloaded it as a html file, then I removed the tags and made it an .i7x file and somewhere along the line something messed up. Redownloaded it as an .i7x file and it works just fine.[/quote]
Feh. Browsers! It seems like that's the default now - for the browser to mangle your file when you save it.

[quote]Incidentally, which version is the definitive version? (I assume the one that doesn't have numbers after it).[/quote]

That's right. When I want to make an old version available, I make a copy with the numbers after it. The one without numbers is always the latest.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3715&start=10#p26770
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about speaking
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-11-22 12:21:10

[quote="JoeyJones"]
The way we've been working is to have general properties (A thing is either this or that. A thing is seldom that), even for one off items. That way it's easy to implement new, similar items, into the game by giving the new item a bunch of properties (for instance, 'The burnt bits of wood are medium, useless, dirty, soft and breakable'). All the game-interactions then require items with a given property or set of properties, that can be satisfied by any item that has those properties. One of the strengths of Inform is that it allows for so many different approaches.[/quote]
This is a good, flexible approach. More of your code becomes reusable, and you can also much more easily overlay new functionality on your game. For example, a hyperlink interface like [url=http://glimmr.wordpress.com/2011/11/21/sand-dancer-sans-keyboard-an-experiment-with-hyperlink-input-in-if/]this one[/url] can be set up to generate action buttons based on object properties, rather than via special-case coding. Avoidance of "instead" rules for action-handling, which you mentioned earlier, is also a good way to ensure that Inform properly tracks success/failure conditions, again giving you more flexibility should you want to overlay another interface with minimal additional code.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3736&start=0#p26771
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Holding vs. having parts of the player
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-22 12:27:28

[quote]In my experience it also covers containment and support, as you would expect from behavior of the phrase "the holder of X." What code are you looking at?[/quote]

Hm, you're probably right. I was looking at test code with "things held by the player", with no containers or supporters in the mix.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3733&start=10#p26772
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [IFDB List] Conversation (Heavy?) Games with I7 Source
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-22 12:31:10

When you view the tag cloud, the tags are different sizes. This is a common and annoying convention for displaying tag clouds. The word "conversation" is rather large. Since it's only actually appied to four games, I suspect that this is due to search traffic. Really only speculation, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3715&start=10#p26773
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about speaking
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-11-22 12:38:56

[quote="capmikee"][quote="JoeyJones"]That didn't take long. The problem arose on my side. Basically, when I downloaded it, I accidentally downloaded it as a html file, then I removed the tags and made it an .i7x file and somewhere along the line something messed up. Redownloaded it as an .i7x file and it works just fine.[/quote]
Feh. Browsers! It seems like that's the default now - for the browser to mangle your file when you save it.

[quote]Incidentally, which version is the definitive version? (I assume the one that doesn't have numbers after it).[/quote]

That's right. When I want to make an old version available, I make a copy with the numbers after it. The one without numbers is always the latest.[/quote]
I've asked my friend Melv (who's more code-savvy than I) to take a look at scope caching. In the meantime, now I've got it to work I'll have a play around with Speech Motivations. Also, if it works just fine, you really should publish Scope Caching on the inform 7 website.

[quote="ektemple"]This is a good, flexible approach. More of your code becomes reusable, and you can also much more easily overlay new functionality on your game. For example, a hyperlink interface like [url=http://glimmr.wordpress.com/2011/11/21/sand-dancer-sans-keyboard-an-experiment-with-hyperlink-input-in-if/]this one[/url] can be set up to generate action buttons based on object properties, rather than via special-case coding. Avoidance of "instead" rules for action-handling, which you mentioned earlier, is also a good way to ensure that Inform properly tracks success/failure conditions, again giving you more flexibility should you want to overlay another interface with minimal additional code.

--Erik[/quote]
That hyperlink interface is amaaaaaaazzzing. [b]This[/b] is how I want to make future games. Well, if it was a bit speedier. I can see exactly how the properties-based approach would make that easier: we even experimented with an auto-hinting system that worked the same as the suggested actions in the top right pane. (It ran too slowly and wasn't very helpful in the way we implemented it so we're jettisoning it in the next release).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1419&start=0#p26774
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Web Hosting
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-22 12:49:09

Dropbox would probably be the best option if you're not doing anything but hosting your game files in an HTML interface and not do anything dynamic. There are also a lot of "websites in a box" out there that require minimal experience, but you might struggle with customization. A lot of them are available as installers through cPanel, if your web host uses it. 

If you're wanting to save your transcripts to your database with Parchment, Dropbox obviously won't work and you'll either have to buckle down and learn some basics or get some kind volunteer to help you out.

My current pet project would be good for this, but it's FAR from finished.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3733&start=10#p26775
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [IFDB List] Conversation (Heavy?) Games with I7 Source
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-22 12:51:25

[quote="I4L"]When you view the tag cloud, the tags are different sizes. This is a common and annoying convention for displaying tag clouds. The word "conversation" is rather large. Since it's only actually appied to four games, I suspect that this is due to search traffic. Really only speculation, though.[/quote]

Interesting. I wonder if it appears differently on different users' pages?

From here, it's of moderate/medium size, and is attached to a number games comparable to other moderate-sized tags.

Maybe it makes it bigger if it's used very recently?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3733&start=10#p26776
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [IFDB List] Conversation (Heavy?) Games with I7 Source
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-22 12:52:51

[quote="I4L"]When you view the tag cloud, the tags are different sizes. This is a common and annoying convention for displaying tag clouds. The word "conversation" is rather large. Since it's only actually appied to four games, I suspect that this is due to search traffic. Really only speculation, though.[/quote]
No, there are 27 games tagged with "conversation." It's just that only 4 of them are also tagged with "source."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3733&start=10#p26777
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [IFDB List] Conversation (Heavy?) Games with I7 Source
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-22 13:16:43

[quote="capmikee"][quote="I4L"]When you view the tag cloud, the tags are different sizes. This is a common and annoying convention for displaying tag clouds. The word "conversation" is rather large. Since it's only actually appied to four games, I suspect that this is due to search traffic. Really only speculation, though.[/quote]
No, there are 27 games tagged with "conversation." It's just that only 4 of them are also tagged with "source."[/quote]

You're right, of course.

It's probably safe to say, then, that the size of the font is, in this case, indicative of the frequency of application.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3695&start=20#p26778
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Time passing
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-22 13:49:33

I just flashed back to when I played Infidel as a kid. I didn't have any of the game packaging with me, including the map coordinates provided as copy-protection. But I eventually found the pyramid by exploring a grid pattern and digging in every single damn location.

I think I might have done that with the combination lock in Planetfall once too, though I may be remembering wrong. As a result, it's made me a little wary of this kind of information puzzles. I'm always thinking "what if someone tries to solve this by brute force? Will they succeed? Will they hate the author as a result?" You can use resource management to discourage brute-force solutions (you had to eat and sleep in Planetfall, and maybe you die in the desert in Infidel) - but that just pushes the brute-force solution into meta-gaming territory - you save and restore when you run out of time.

I've never played Roguelikes much, but I've always been impressed with the "security" measures they include to prevent metagaming.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3733&start=10#p26779
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [IFDB List] Conversation (Heavy?) Games with I7 Source
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2011-11-22 13:56:12

I4L,
my game The Z-Machine Matter is still very much a work in progress (with lots of improvement needed).  I implement a basic "ASK about / TELL about" conversation system using code from Jim Aikin's Inform 7 Handbook and the Implied Conversers extension. (Though I don't have that working 100%.)   I also use Aaron Reed's Player Experience Upgrade extension along with Exit Lister, Keyword Interface, Menus by Emily Short and a couple of other random extensions.

Although I have not published the source code, if it's helpful to you I would be willing to share it in its current state.  If you're interested shoot me email to ZUrlocker at hot mail etc 
--Zack

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3733&start=10#p26780
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [IFDB List] Conversation (Heavy?) Games with I7 Source
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-22 14:03:39

Alright, so here's the basic rundown of what I'm looking to do:

[list]
[*]Have multiple conversation topics per NPC.[/*:m]
[*]Not drag the player forcefully down any conversational path, but not drop them in blind, either.[/*:m]
[*]Have different topics available at certain points in the conversation.[/*:m]
[*]Not have the NPC just repeat the same things for the same topics no matter what you're talking about.[/*:m]
[*]Have the NPC refuse to engage in conversation unless certain criteria are met.[/*:m]
[*]Have the NPC refuse to acknowledge a certain topic unless certain criteria are met.[/*:m][/list:u]

You know... things like that. I know that all of these points aren't handled by a single extension (or in some cases by any extension at all). But I'm trying to avoid at all costs having the conversation look scripted or robotic.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3695&start=20#p26781
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Time passing
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-22 14:11:39

[quote="capmikee"]I just flashed back to when I played Infidel as a kid. I didn't have any of the game packaging with me, including the map coordinates provided as copy-protection. But I eventually found the pyramid by exploring a grid pattern and digging in every single damn location.[/quote]

Heh. They did much better with, say,[i] Leather Goddesses of Phobos,[/i] where brute-force attempts to solve the maze under the Sultan's palace would certainly fail [emote]:)[/emote] Which was the genius of it, really ... it walked like a maze and quacked like a maze, but it was [i]not [/i]a maze, rather a kind of password-protected combination lock ... thingy.

(Mind you, when attaching the word "genius" to IF, I'll pretty much always think of [i]LGoP [/i]first).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3328&start=20#p26782
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Site Logo
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-22 14:14:35

[quote="ArmanX"]Be my guest; I hereby release all the images in this thread that were created by me under a "do whatever you want with them, no really, it's ok" license [emote]:-)[/emote][/quote]

Dag, yo. Baf's already uses this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3733&start=10#p26783
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [IFDB List] Conversation (Heavy?) Games with I7 Source
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-22 14:29:05

[quote="I4L"][list]
[*]Have multiple conversation topics per NPC.[/*:m]
[*]Not drag the player forcefully down any conversational path, but not drop them in blind, either.[/*:m]
[*]Have different topics available at certain points in the conversation.[/*:m]
[*]Not have the NPC just repeat the same things for the same topics no matter what you're talking about.[/*:m]
[*]Have the NPC refuse to engage in conversation unless certain criteria are met.[/*:m]
[*]Have the NPC refuse to acknowledge a certain topic unless certain criteria are met.[/*:m][/list:u][/quote]

Heck, you can do all of that with just plain old Ask/Tell and a well-stocked set of response tables (including some conditional stuff packed into the response strings).

Of my own WIPs, only one of them (one of the larger commercial ones) is "conversation-heavy," and I'm doing this oddball thing with convo verbs, but I'm also supporting Ask/Tell and ... I really don't know why people are (often) so down on it. Ask/Tell has strong shoulders.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3733&start=10#p26784
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [IFDB List] Conversation (Heavy?) Games with I7 Source
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-22 14:36:29

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="I4L"][list]
[*]Have multiple conversation topics per NPC.[/*:m]
[*]Not drag the player forcefully down any conversational path, but not drop them in blind, either.[/*:m]
[*]Have different topics available at certain points in the conversation.[/*:m]
[*]Not have the NPC just repeat the same things for the same topics no matter what you're talking about.[/*:m]
[*]Have the NPC refuse to engage in conversation unless certain criteria are met.[/*:m]
[*]Have the NPC refuse to acknowledge a certain topic unless certain criteria are met.[/*:m][/list:u][/quote]

Heck, you can do all of that with just plain old Ask/Tell and a well-stocked set of response tables (including some conditional stuff packed into the response strings).

Of my own WIPs, only one of them (one of the larger commercial ones) is "conversation-heavy," and I'm doing this oddball thing with convo verbs, but I'm also supporting Ask/Tell and ... I really don't know why people are (often) so down on it. Ask/Tell has strong shoulders.[/quote]

Well, now... see, that's why I'm looking for examples and source code. [emote]:)[/emote] To see how different people approach it and what would be the best approach for me.

Plus tables still confuse me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3733&start=20#p26785
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [IFDB List] Conversation (Heavy?) Games with I7 Source
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-22 14:45:34

[quote="I4L"]Well, now... see, that's why I'm looking for examples and source code. [emote]:)[/emote] To see how different people approach it and what would be the best approach for me.[/quote]

Oh, I get that. Just offering encouragement of the don't-worry-you've-got-it-made-in-the-shade sort [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote]Plus tables still confuse me.[/quote]

Oh god, me too [emote]:([/emote] But fortunately, topic-response type tables can be super-simple.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3733&start=20#p26786
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [IFDB List] Conversation (Heavy?) Games with I7 Source
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-11-22 14:58:30

Brilliant solution: make the game only playable online. A team of chair-bound conversationalists watch the live transcripts play out and then respond back with spontaneous conversation. Solves the problem of AI by getting rid of the A.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3733&start=20#p26787
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [IFDB List] Conversation (Heavy?) Games with I7 Source
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-22 15:14:36

I just realized I hadn't written any documentation for Speech Motivations yet. I just wrote a general overview and added it to the extension.

It doesn't do a lot of the things that you want to do, but it was intended to be flexible enough that you [i]can[/i] do them if you want.

What it [i]does[/i] do is decouple NPC speech from PC speech. You can try to say something, and the game can tell you you can't. You can succeed in saying something, and the NPC can refuse to respond. You can do something not expecting a response, and the NPC can decide to start talking to you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3715&start=10#p26788
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about speaking
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-11-22 15:15:27

[quote="JoeyJones"]That hyperlink interface is amaaaaaaazzzing. [b]This[/b] is how I want to make future games. Well, if it was a bit speedier. I can see exactly how the properties-based approach would make that easier: we even experimented with an auto-hinting system that worked the same as the suggested actions in the top right pane. (It ran too slowly and wasn't very helpful in the way we implemented it so we're jettisoning it in the next release).[/quote]

Yes, you could also use properties to do a kind of general auto-hinting; might be useful to train newbies about what's possible... You might want to check out Aaron Reed's Intelligent Hinting extension (I think that's the right title) for a relatively simple pseudo-AI hinting mechanism. 

[ I should probably point out that most of the slowness with that hyperlink demo is due to its being on a web terp--the original web-playable Sand-Dancer is only a tiny smidge faster, at least on my machine. (Which suggests that the javascript interpreter is pretty speedy when it comes to lists and indexed texts, both of which are heavily used to create the hyperlink overlay.) It runs without any noticeable lag on a desktop terp, though it's not very appealingly aesthetically. ]

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3733&start=20#p26789
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [IFDB List] Conversation (Heavy?) Games with I7 Source
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-22 15:18:14

[quote="capmikee"]I just realized I hadn't written any documentation for Speech Motivations yet. I just wrote a general overview and added it to the extension.

It doesn't do a lot of the things that you want to do, but it was intended to be flexible enough that you [i]can[/i] do them if you want.

What it [i]does[/i] do is decouple NPC speech from PC speech. You can try to say something, and the game can tell you you can't. You can succeed in saying something, and the NPC can refuse to respond. You can do something not expecting a response, and the NPC can decide to start talking to you.[/quote]

Sounds like a step in the right direction.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3695&start=20#p26790
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Time passing
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-22 15:19:49

Oh, it was more brutal than that! [spoiler]The comic book and the map told you what the maze was, but inside that was another maze that you had to figure out, with all the blocked passages.[/spoiler] It may be a brilliant puzzle, but the first word that would come to my mind would not be "genius!"

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3739&start=0#p26791
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: "Z-code cannot get the system time."
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-11-22 16:31:11

I read this sentence recently and it answered a question I had about Z-code. But now I have a new question: What/who [i]can[/i] get the system time? Or the date? And how?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=50#p26792
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-11-22 16:31:33

Just a heads up, there's about a week left to send in your votes for this year's Ectocomp.  I haven't received any as of yet.  If you've sent in votes and I haven't received them, please let me know.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3739&start=0#p26793
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: "Z-code cannot get the system time."
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-11-22 16:38:22

I can. By looking at the clock at the upper right of my screen, but that's probably not what you meant, so I'll ask for a clarification: Are you asking which IF systems can access the system clock, or asking for how to do it in your own program (if so, which OS?), or something else?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3738&start=0#p26794
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Dead Hotel - Unlocked Secrets
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-11-22 16:50:29

I only played the first version during the Comp.  Now that I've just played the second one, it does seem like a good single-problem type game.  Reaching the secret showdown at the end makes for a decent puzzle, and I like the interface, deliberately reminiscent of old-school IF.  The secret ending moves the game more toward being a self-contained (though small) game instead of being simply a teaser, which is how it seemed to me when I played it for the Comp.

Two observations:
[spoiler]I was trying to figure out how to drop the medkit.  The lack of an option to drop the medkit (unless I missed that option) doesn't seem like a very good way to lock the player into one set path.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]When I figured out how to jump out the window with both the revolver and the Uzzi, all the zombies got killed immediately when I chose to shoot them.  I only saw the RPG element at the end in the YouTube video.  Though I did try to punch the horde to death once, before I turned on the secrets.[/spoiler]

So, this makes two meta-puzzles in this year's competition.  I had no idea about the existence of the other one, but I thought Emilian was probably the author of this game.  And he did well.  [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3740&start=0#p26795
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Handling TREASURE objects in TADS3
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-11-22 16:57:23

I'm trying to figure out the right information and methods for handling objects that are considered to be treasures. In the game RUINS, I found the following information:

class Treasure: Thing
 culturalValue=5

Can someone tell me how they are used. I didn't have much luck searching the TADS3 user manuals.

RonG

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3739&start=0#p26796
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: "Z-code cannot get the system time."
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-11-22 17:16:43

Yeah, sorry, I'm asking about IF systems.

[url=http://wondermark.com/729/]I guess there's also this.[/url]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3741&start=0#p26797
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: A quest list?
User: BishyT / DateTime: 2011-11-22 17:25:02

Does anyone know of an addon for generating quests lists? I've been trying to make a very basic one (one where you won't know what a quest is until you're given it, thus making it active, and also with the ability to view active quests in their own list), but i've been having issues getting it to work. I basically created a new thing called "quest" that could be either unknown, discovered, or solved. My problem is that I can't seem to change this property after it's already been set, inform won't accept any variation of "Change QuestBlahBlah to discovered.".

If there's already an addon that makes quest lists, it'd save a lot of trouble. -_-

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=130#p26798
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.3: IF library manager
User: mao42ranma / DateTime: 2011-11-22 17:28:41

[quote="jakobcreutzfeldt"][quote="mao42ranma"][quote="mao42ranma"]

I thought that too, but I used the executable windows package, and it didn't work. I'll try downloading the GTK2 version instead and running it via python using PyGtk instead and see if I can get it running that way.[/quote]

Now I get: 

[code]Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\Noah\Apps\grotesque\setup.py", line 32, in <module>
    data_files=[(doc_dir, ['COPYING', 'README'])],
NameError: name 'doc_dir' is not defined[/code]

Python 2.7.2, GTK2 2.24.0[/quote]


So, just to confirm, the original error message you gave was from the grotesque error log file or from the command prompt?[/quote]

Yes, the first error message came from the grotesque.exe.log file, the second came from the command prompt.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3733&start=20#p26799
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [IFDB List] Conversation (Heavy?) Games with I7 Source
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-11-22 17:38:07

[quote="I4L"][quote="capmikee"][quote="I4L"]When you view the tag cloud, the tags are different sizes. This is a common and annoying convention for displaying tag clouds. The word "conversation" is rather large. Since it's only actually appied to four games, I suspect that this is due to search traffic. Really only speculation, though.[/quote]
No, there are 27 games tagged with "conversation." It's just that only 4 of them are also tagged with "source."[/quote]

You're right, of course.

It's probably safe to say, then, that the size of the font is, in this case, indicative of the frequency of application.[/quote]
Yup. "Tags that are used more frequently are shown in larger type, and newer tags are in darker colors." - IFDB

EDIT: Oh, I see the confusion. I guess "used" could be construed to include "searched for" as well as "added to games".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3739&start=0#p26800
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: "Z-code cannot get the system time."
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-11-22 18:21:49

TADS can do it (certainly T3, and I vaguely remember it in T2 also, but treat that one with caution.)
Glulx also supports this (but zarf has said that he doesn't know whether all interpreters support it yet), as does Vorple.
A quick google suggests that Hugo can also do this.
Not sure about ADRIFT; it looks as if it checks system time to tell how long the game has been played, but directly accessing system time may be trickier.
Undum is built in Javascript, so that should be straightforward.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3739&start=0#p26801
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: "Z-code cannot get the system time."
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-11-22 18:32:51

Glulx does via [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Ron%20Newcomb/Real%20Date%20and%20Time/index.html]an extension.[/url]  It also has some code to test whether the interpreter supports the feature, so your game can take compensatory measures.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3739&start=0#p26802
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: "Z-code cannot get the system time."
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-11-22 20:11:14

Nice! Thanks very much.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3741&start=0#p26803
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A quest list?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-22 20:27:08

There are addons that make lists. There are addons that make using lists more... flexible? I don't know anything about lists. I hear they're resource hogs, so I've been avoiding them.

I suppose you could create a table.

[code]
Table of Quests
Name                                                  Discovered                       Completed
"Kill All Rats"                                        0                                     0
"Talk to Old Man"                                  1                                     1
[/code]

Et cetera. Change the value of the discovered column when you need to.

If you've defined a thing with a property:

[code]
A quest is a kind of thing. A quest can be discovered. A quest is usually not discovered. A quest can be completed. A quest is usually not completed.

Kill All Rats is a quest in The Dungeon.

[Insert whatever code here gives the quest]

Now Kill All Rats is discovered.

[Insert whatever code here kills all rats]

Now Kill All Rats is completed.
[/code]

Hope you get the idea without a complete code sample. What happens when you try to compile? Any errors? Does anything at all change?

I don't know if a table would be faster for this or not. I'm basically just trying to avoid tables at all costs. Anything I can use a property or a truth state variable for, I'm gonna do it.

[Edit: Apparently spacing is hard.]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3741&start=0#p26804
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A quest list?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-22 22:14:54

[quote="I4L"][code]
A quest is a kind of thing. A quest can be discovered. A quest is usually not discovered. A quest can be completed. A quest is usually not completed.
[/code]
[/quote]
It took me a while to figure out how property defaults work, so I will share with you what I've learned. Your example can be simplified to the following, and I'll explain why:
[code]A quest is a kind of thing. A quest can be discovered. A quest can be completed.[/code]

When you declare a binary property, the first (and possibly only) value that you give is the "turned on" value. By default, binary properties are "turned off:"

[code]a quest can be discovered [but by default it is not discovered, so you don't have to state that explicitly.][/code]

Even if you give a name to the second, "turned off" value, that's still true:
[code]a quest can be discovered or undiscovered [the default is still "not discovered," but now that has a name: "undiscovered."][/code]

But beware! As soon as you add a third possible value, the property stops being binary, and the default values are flipped. Instead of the last value being the default, now the first one is the default! For example:

[code]A quest can be discovered, completed, or undiscovered. [the default for THIS is "discovered!"][/code]

In practice, this is usually what you want. You can think of a binary property as something you "turn on" when the time comes, so it starts out in a nondescript "turned off" state. But an enumerated property is something that counts up from zero, so it's natural for it to start out at zero. The following ordering would make more sense, wouldn't it?

[code]A quest can be undiscovered, discovered, or completed.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3741&start=0#p26805
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A quest list?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-22 22:33:15

You're absolutely right. But since in all of the "beginner" examples I've ever seen, this value is specified as false, I always include it. Much the same as boolean values (exactly the same thing, which I'm sure is what you meant) also appear to be false if not specified true.

I think I would disagree with your appraisal of desired behavior on the third property, however. What if I want "A stone is heavy, square and igneous" but later in the game I want "A stone is light, round and sedimentary"? Maybe it's just my understanding of the mechanics.

As you're correct in the case of the former, however, I'll assume you to be correct in the latter.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3741&start=0#p26806
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A quest list?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-22 22:59:10

[quote="I4L"]I think I would disagree with your appraisal of desired behavior on the third property, however. What if I want "A stone is heavy, square and igneous" but later in the game I want "A stone is light, round and sedimentary"? Maybe it's just my understanding of the mechanics.[/quote]
It sounds like you're talking about three independent properties. I was talking about having three or more possible values for the same property. Perhaps it was confusing because in the original example, "discovered" and "completed" were independent values. You could do it that way, but would you ever want to have a quest that was completed but not discovered? My example uses a single property that has mutually exclusive values, so a quest can never be undiscovered (or discovered) if it is completed.

When you declare a property with three or more values, it becomes a kind of value rather than a Boolean:

[code]A sound is a kind of thing. A sound can be silent, barely audible, clear, loud, or deafening.[/code]

Internally, Inform represents these as numbers. Silent would evaluate to 0, barely audible to 1, all the way to 4 for deafening.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3674&start=10#p26807
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Do you think IF LPs is a bad idea?
User: Kytaari / DateTime: 2011-11-23 00:07:44

I think all these suggestions are good. but I'm still having problems with my channel. Do you think I just shouldn't make LPs since I'm not witty? I know this isn't very related to IF, but it's something that's bothering me. I don't have a very sharp sense of humor, so maybe making LPs just isn't a good idea for me. It might be possible for me to do something like and LP that can bypass this weakness, but I don't see myself as a funny person. 

Should I just forget about this? I've been watching LPs for the last few years, and I enjoy them thoroughly, but I just don't have the clever disposition that good LPers have. I can't think of clever commentary on the spot, and that's really the bread-and-butter when it comes to this medium. I'm good at telling people how I feel about things I see in the game, but I'm not humorously insightful. Maybe this kind of thing really just isn't for me, and I should move on to something else. But then again, maybe I could just make Let's Plays without any commentary, and that way people can just expect to see the game. What do you think I should do? I don't think I'll ever be a clever person, unless I do it by writing stories. With stories, I can think my ideas through. Let's Plays are very much impromptu, and I'm no good at this. I just thought this medium might be a nice project to broaden my horizons, especially since I've enjoyed watching them. My problem is, I'm not very good at making them, and I just don't believe I have the talent for this sort of thing. Should that stop me? Do you think I should just stay out of this, if I really don't believe I'm any good at it? I can't watch my own videos, because I think they're so bad. Maybe I should just put this idea behind me, and leave kind of projects for other people. Right now I'm thinking, I've already tried this, and the results have not been good, so maybe I should use my channel for talents that come more naturally to me, if such an opportunity ever can arise. I like watching youtube videos, but I can't find my strength in making them. I don't know what I have to offer people with my channel.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3674&start=10#p26808
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Do you think IF LPs is a bad idea?
User: George / DateTime: 2011-11-23 00:17:34

I think you need to read this:

<a class="postlink" href="http://writerunderground.com/2011/04/28/ira-glass-on-creativity-or-the-gap-between-our-taste-and-our-work/">http://writerunderground.com/2011/04/28 ... -our-work/</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3674&start=10#p26809
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Do you think IF LPs is a bad idea?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-23 00:18:24

[quote="Kytaari"][...] I just don't believe I have the talent for this sort of thing. Should that stop me?[/quote]

If you were pondering a career as a surgeon ... or even a public bus driver ... then yeah, being bad at something should stop you [emote]:)[/emote]

But you're talking about doing something as a pastime, and posting it free to the Internet. If you enjoy it, do what you enjoy (even if you don't enjoy watching your own videos, do you enjoy making them?) ... if not, not.

If your goal is to 'give back' to the community that makes the videos you do enjoy watching, just thank them and provide feedback and the other usual stuff.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3674&start=20#p26812
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Do you think IF LPs is a bad idea?
User: Kytaari / DateTime: 2011-11-23 01:15:26

I read the article and saw the video, and I thought it was great stuff. I felt interested that the article was mainly about writing, because I'm striving diligently to make my stories better, too. I've been doing this a while, and I know that I have very good tastes, but I don't know how to execute the ideas as perfectly as I'd like to.

I do enjoy making the videos, so I think I'll keep it up. I guess, like writing, I just need to continue striving to improve. I've been making efforts already, so I know I'm at least on the right track. My main concern is that I haven't identified my natural talents, the ones I can bring the most to this medium. I know my natural talents very well in storytelling, but not in this.

The idea of posting positive comments was interesting to me. I might look into giving more "fan-oriented" reception sometime in the future.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3674&start=20#p26813
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Do you think IF LPs is a bad idea?
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-11-23 02:31:39

[quote="Kytaari"]I don't have a very sharp sense of humor, so maybe making LPs just isn't a good idea for me. It might be possible for me to do something like and LP that can bypass this weakness, but I don't see myself as a funny person.[/quote]

You're much funnier than you suspect.

[quote="Kytaari"]I know that I have very good tastes[/quote]

This, combined with your choice of avatar and your morbid self-obsession, is what makes you a comedy hit.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3743&start=0#p26814
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re-release?
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-11-23 04:35:12

I need advice on this.

Release 3 (The Final Cut) Of [i]Andromeda Awakening[/i] is halfway through being done.

The final cut will contain: additional content (different beginning, more puzzles in the mid-game, a complete new area in the end-game), a hint system (maybe, tbh), a revision on many puzzles to make the experience less of a struggle and much more trivia, for in my opinion the original story doesn't tell all the truth...

My question. Is it right I release this as a version 3 or would it be more fair if it is [i]Andromeda Awakening - The Final Cut[/i], with release 3 (to link it to the previous, IFComp releases), but in a different IFDB page?

I'm gonna change the cover art, also.

What do you think?


Thanks for the suggestions.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3740&start=0#p26815
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Handling TREASURE objects in TADS3
User: tomasb / DateTime: 2011-11-23 05:00:59

That's not one of TADS's standard classes, so you won't find any information in TADS documentation. The code

[code]class Treasure: Thing
...
;
[/code] means that this class is a new class based on Thing and is created right there. From a quick look it seems, that culturalValue is used for scoring and photographedInSitu mainly for variation of messages. Action a check phases are specialized for dobjFor Take, PutIn and Photograph. Apart from that its an ordinary Thing.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3744&start=0#p26816
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Herbstlaub
User: Tale / DateTime: 2011-11-23 05:44:19

Dear english-speaking community,

for those of you interested in the German scene, we had two entries to our Herbstlaub competition.

You can find the respective thread here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://forum.ifzentrale.de/viewtopic.php?t=1060">http://forum.ifzentrale.de/viewtopic.php?t=1060</a>

Danke und auf Wiedersehen,

Geschichtenslinger

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3743&start=0#p26817
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Re-release?
User: riktik / DateTime: 2011-11-23 05:53:17

I think it depends on what you want. Do you want next players will play only your "final cut" or you want to show the progress between the 2 versions (as two different games).

I don't think the problem is about fairness. The competition has ended.

ciao

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3743&start=0#p26818
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Re-release?
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-11-23 06:02:56

Yeah, in my opinion these are two different releases, maybe two different games. Like [i]Apocalypse Now[/i] and [i]Apocalypse Now Redux[/i]. So I'd rather put it on a different page.
You don't HAVE to play the original, as it is flawed. But of course there is a link and it should be evident. (Maybe the name by itself will be enough?). And, of course, I don't wanna make the original version, which actually placed 17th in the 17th IFComp, to vanish. It is my first game. A sort of memento. Dunno [emote]:)[/emote]

I don't know, though, if there is a kind of method [i]people are used to[/i] when delivering such a kind of upgrade. 'Cause I don't wanna break the habits.

That's all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3743&start=0#p26819
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Re-release?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-11-23 06:30:49

Well, there are two versions of Curses available at IFDB - the z3 version and the z5 version. Does that sort of answer your question? Because the z5 version, like your "final cut", contains tons more than the original z3 version.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3729&start=0#p26820
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview: Jacek does Adam
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-11-23 06:44:03

Is this fake? Just asking...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3743&start=0#p26821
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Re-release?
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-11-23 06:48:51

Yes, that answers!
I've checked the page about curses and understood. 

Have to think about new cover, though. I don't think one can upload both.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3729&start=0#p26824
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview: Jacek does Adam
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-11-23 08:52:57

It's probably real, and it is actually worth reading. The hobbyhorses may be Jacek's, but Adam rides them with flair.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3740&start=0#p26826
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Handling TREASURE objects in TADS3
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-11-23 11:16:29

What you probably want is the Achievement class. This provides various ways of keeping score.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3747&start=0#p26827
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [solved] Filenames wrong in several extensions...
User: snowdrop / DateTime: 2011-11-23 11:43:07

Could somebody please verify that there is something off with the following extensions?

[code]Include Glulx Entry Points by Emeily Short.
Include Basic Hyperlinks by Emeliy Short.
Include Hyperlink Interface by Leonardo Boselli. [/code]

Inform 7 (Inform (1.2 6.31/6G60)) says it can't find them even though they are installed. Extension info shows me this:
[code]
Warning. Inform checks the folder of user-installed extensions each time it translates the source text, in order to keep this directory page up to date. Each file must be a properly labelled extension (with its titling line correctly identifying itself), and must be in the right place - e.g. 'Marbles by Daphne Quilt' must have the filename 'Marbles.i7x' (or just 'Marbles' with no file extension) and be stored in the folder 'Daphne Quilt'. The title should be at most 51 characters long.......[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3741&start=0#p26828
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A quest list?
User: BishyT / DateTime: 2011-11-23 12:24:57

Why yes! It worked! I now have a quest list! I was even able to create a new action that would say [list of discovered quests]. Giving each quest a printed name also allows me to elaborate on what the player needs to do to complete the quest when checking the list. Thank you. [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3747&start=0#p26829
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Filenames wrong in several extensions...
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-11-23 12:32:54

'Emily' only has one E [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3747&start=0#p26830
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Filenames wrong in several extensions...
User: snowdrop / DateTime: 2011-11-23 12:53:03

[quote="JoeyJones"]'Emily' only has one E [emote]:D[/emote][/quote]

Fixed. It still throws me errors though:
[code]
Include Basic Help Menu by Emily Short.
Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short.
Include Glulx Entry Points (for Glulx only) by Emily Short.
Include Text Capture by Eric Eve.
Include Basic Hyperlinks (for Glulx only) by Emily Short.
Include Hyperlink Interface (for Glulx only) by Leonardo Boselli. [/code]

Gives:

[code]This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6G60) on its most recent run through:

Problem. You wrote 'Include Basic Hyperlinks (for Glulx only) by Emily Short'  : but I can't find that extension, which seems not to be installed. (You can get hold of extensions which people have made public at the Inform website.)
Problem. You wrote 'Include Hyperlink Interface (for Glulx only) by Leonardo Boselli'  : again, I can't find that extension.[/code]

Edit: Problem fixed. The filenames of the extensions had " (for Glulx only)" in them. Remove that and they will load properly.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3748&start=0#p26831
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Disambiguation in a container
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-23 13:06:35

Here we go again. I thought I'd solved this well enough, but now it's not working again.

[code]Test is a room. 

A container called the closet is fixed in place in Test.

A man called Herb Chin is in the closet. Understand "man" as Herb Chin.
	
There is a thing called Herb Chin's Chin. It is part of Herb Chin.

Your nose is part of the player. The elbow is part of the player.

Instead of pushing Herb Chin:
	say "[The noun] steps out on the floor.";
	Now the noun is in the location.

Does the player mean:
	say "DTPMR running!";

test me with "show chin my ear/push man/show chin my ear/show chin my elbow"[/code]
The output I see is:
[quote]>[1] show chin my ear
Which do you mean, Herb Chin or Herb Chin's Chin?

>[2] push man
Herb Chin steps out on the floor.

>[3] show chin my ear
I only understood you as far as wanting to show Herb Chin your nose.

>[4] show chin my elbow
(Herb Chin the elbow)
(first taking the elbow)
That seems to be a part of yourself.
[/quote]

As you can see, the Does the Player Mean rules never even run. Shouldn't they [i]always[/i] run before asking the player which do you mean?

Plus, I threw in another weird behavior I noticed from my WIP: If the word "your" appears in the name of an object, the parser parses the word "my" as the object. "My" can refer to the player's other enclosures, but only when another word identifies them, and once again, DtPMR are no help. I'm not sure how to handle that one...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3729&start=0#p26832
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview: Jacek does Adam
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-23 13:18:22

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]It's probably real, and it is actually worth reading. The hobbyhorses may be Jacek's, but Adam rides them with flair.[/quote]

Almost certainly real, yeah. Adam and Pudlo are friends/correspondents, IIRC, so Adam would be one of the smallish handful of gents who'd kindly give Pudlo the time of day on this sort of project. Help a brother out kind of thing. Adam's good people.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3716&start=0#p26833
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A tomb on Craigslist
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-11-23 13:41:52

I suppose it bears mentioning that this little prank was of my own doing.  So far nobody has contacted me about it...  [emote]:roll:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3748&start=0#p26834
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation in a container
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-11-23 14:24:00

Don't know why it doesn't come up with your disambiguation writing when Herb is in something. The my problem can be fixed like so: 
[code]The nose is part of the player. The indefinite article of the nose is "your". The elbow is part of the player. The indefinite article of the elbow is "your".
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3748&start=0#p26835
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation in a container
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-23 14:50:07

[quote="JoeyJones"]Don't know why it doesn't come up with your disambiguation writing when Herb is in something. The my problem can be fixed like so: 
[code]The nose is part of the player. The indefinite article of the nose is "your". The elbow is part of the player. The indefinite article of the elbow is "your".
[/code][/quote]
Yes, I already dealt with this with other items in my WIP. It's a little tricky because you can't change the definite article. But you can make it a kind of X and define a phrase:

[code]to say the (item - an X):
    say "your [item]"[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3748&start=0#p26836
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation in a container
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-23 15:17:16

Try this slight variation:
[code]
Test is a room.

A container called the closet is fixed in place in Test.

A man called Herb Chin is in the closet. Understand "man" as Herb Chin.
   
There is a thing called Herb Chin's Chin. It is part of Herb Chin.

Your nose is part of the player. Your elbow is part of the player.

Instead of pushing Herb Chin:
   say "[The noun] steps out on the floor.";
   Now the noun is in the location.

Does the player mean [showing something to Herb Chin]:
   say "DTPMR running!";

test me with "show chin ear / z / show chin my ear / z / show chin my"
[/code]

What happens, I think, is that "ear" and "my ear" are treated as topics understood ([text] tokens), and the DPMR is not considered in those cases. 
(See [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=744]this bug report[/url].)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3749&start=0#p26837
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7 update?
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-11-23 16:58:30

Just out of curiosity, is there some major feature widely expected in the next update?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3749&start=0#p26838
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 update?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-23 17:03:36

[quote="sai"]Just out of curiosity, is there some major feature widely expected in the next update?[/quote]

I'm still holding out for "Release with a panther," because that would be badass.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3749&start=0#p26839
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 update?
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-11-23 17:29:41

[quote="Ghalev"]I'm still holding out for "Release with a panther," because that would be badass.[/quote]
Would they mail it to your house or would you just get to permission to visit it at  zoo?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3716&start=0#p26840
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A tomb on Craigslist
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-11-23 17:36:11

Perhaps the meaning of the deal was too [i]crypt[/i]ic.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3749&start=0#p26841
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 update?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-23 18:00:55

[quote="JoeyJones"]Would they mail it to your house or would you just get to permission to visit it at  zoo?[/quote]

It would simply leap out of the upper optical-drive tray when the game begins (on most systems). There'd also be a USB option.

Sadly, it will be Glulx-only.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3749&start=0#p26842
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 update?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-11-23 18:08:52

[quote="sai"]Just out of curiosity, is there some major feature widely expected in the next update?[/quote]
Far more powerful support for translations into other languages. That's what I know of.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=50#p26843
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-11-23 18:15:20

I've been playing the games and writing short reviews as I go along.

I am running into problems so far running these games though:

Death Shack
Ignis Fatuus
Stuck Piggy
the House

What version of interpreter should I use to load these games? All of the rest load fine in the newest version of Gargoyle, except for the z-stuff which I loaded in Frotz. 

Also curious.. what is the rating scale of the games in this comp? Do you accept partial votes or do voters have to vote on all games?

(Sorry if the above questions are obvious somewhere else, I'm not an Adrift site member yet)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3743&start=0#p26844
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Re-release?
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-11-23 20:36:24

^^I was wondering about that myself.  Does one normally create two separate pages if you want to release similar-but-not-identical versions of the game in multiple formats, or do they go on the same page?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3743&start=0#p26845
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Re-release?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-23 20:47:56

Lemme put it this way [emote]:)[/emote]

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=0dbnusxunq7fw5ro">http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=0dbnusxunq7fw5ro</a>

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=1rea34vqnz3mtyq1">http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=1rea34vqnz3mtyq1</a>

I think, if it's really-very-different, there's certainly nothing wrong with drawing attention to the really-very-differentness by giving it a variant title and cover, etc. As someone pointed out above, fairness isn't a factor one way or another.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3743&start=0#p26846
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Re-release?
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-11-23 21:05:38

I think it generally depends whether you want people to play the old version (which, of course, will still be available on the archive). If you want the new version to be the definitive version, I'd put it in on the same page.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3751&start=0#p26848
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [solved] Why did I zap "deciding the scope?" (used 'player')
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-11-23 22:26:09

I was tidying up the code for my IFComp entry, and the part in question boils down to this:

[code]A jerk is a kind of man.

room 1 is a room. room 2 is north of room 1. room 3 is north of room 2. room 4 is north of room 3.

Biff is a jerk. Biff is in room 4.

Tad is a jerk. Tad is in room 3.

Dylan is a jerk. Dylan is in room 2.

Chad is a jerk. Chad is in room 1.

[if you comment out the line below, we scope properly. If not, we don't.]
a utility player is a thing.

After deciding the scope of the player:
	say "Scoping!";
	place room 2 in scope;

before doing something with a jerk:
	if location of player is not location of noun:
		say "Man, [noun]'s nowhere near. You don't even want to think about him right now." instead;
	
test ohno with "x biff/x tad/x dylan/x chad";
[/code]

In the example above, X DYLAN gives the sort of reaction I want--as long as you comment out the seemingly irrelevant "a utility player is a thing." Otherwise, Inform fails to decide the scope.

Why did this happen? I'm baffled. And how do I check for certain keywords that might cause this sort of behavior from Inform in the future? Does "utility player" have some meaning in Inform I'm not aware of?

This sort of thing seems like it happens rarely, and in fact I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner...but all the same, if I can avoid a silly mistake in the future, that'd be wonderful.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3743&start=0#p26849
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Re-release?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-23 22:33:37

[quote="JoeyJones"] If you want the new version to be the definitive version, I'd put it in on the same page.[/quote]

If we're just talking about something as small as a [i]version[/i], then yeah, absolutely. But if it's functionally a [i]different game[/i] evolved from an earlier one, the question opens (not to any definite answer, but I think is really becomes an open question, and the author's prerogative).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=50#p26850
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2011-11-24 01:12:32

ADRIFTv5 games are currently not supported by SCARE (which is used in Gargoyle). You need to download the official interpreter (if available for your system) or play them online.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3751&start=0#p26851
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why did I zap "deciding the scope?"
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-24 02:21:58

I haven't tested this, but I bet that one or both of the following lines that mention "the player" wind up referring to your "utility player" object, instead of the (global variable) "player".

I7 doesn't have keywords in the usual programming language sense. Names refer to things in the code; partial names are disambiguated; occasionally the disambiguation can surprise you.

You could work around this (assuming I'm not totally wrong) by saying 

[code]
A utility-player is a thing. The printed name is "utility player".
Understand "utility", "player" as the utility-player.
[/code]

This is more verbose, but unambiguous.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3751&start=0#p26852
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why did I zap "deciding the scope?"
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-24 02:29:36

The problem (in a sense) seems to lie with  the 'after deciding the scope of' rule.
[quote="aschultz"]
a utility player is a thing.

After deciding the scope of the player:
   say "Scoping!";
   place room 2 in scope;[/quote]
Inform does interpret the word "player" in the rule as a name of the utility player object rather than as a name of the player variable.
(If anyone wonders: you can see that by searching for "deciding the scope" in the auto.inf text file that translates the project into  I6 -- it's in the build folder of the .inform folder of the project (on a Mac it's a "package" that looks like an application and has to be opened by right-clicking/ctrl-clicking).)

The 'before doing something with' rule, however, gets the intended interpretation  -- unless you're too explicit:
[code]
Before the player doing something to a jerk:
[/code]
will be interpreted as 'the utility player doing something to a jerk' (but the location is still tested for the player variable).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=50#p26858
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: Tale / DateTime: 2011-11-24 04:20:51

Hey Jizaboz,

all the rules are here <a class="postlink" href="http://forum.adrift.co/viewtopic.php?f=6&p=86384">http://forum.adrift.co/viewtopic.php?f=6&p=86384</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3529&start=20#p26859
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Parchment update: ifvms.js ZVM new default engine
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-11-24 05:34:27

I have just pushed forward an update, so that ZVM is now the default Z-Machine engine! In addition, the problems I listed in the first post have been fixed.

Quote boxes are displayed, however they sometimes take part of the status line with them too. I don't know why this is - I'll consult some other Z-Machine implementations soon to see how they do it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=130#p26860
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.3: IF library manager
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-11-24 06:02:22

Ok, I'm very sorry to hear this. I'll look into it this evening!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3749&start=0#p26883
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 update?
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-11-24 08:55:59

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="sai"]Just out of curiosity, is there some major feature widely expected in the next update?[/quote]
Far more powerful support for translations into other languages. That's what I know of.[/quote]

Oh this is interesting, thank you very much.
Should I dare expecting an easy way to translate it in japanese...?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3749&start=0#p26884
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 update?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-24 09:16:03

Certainly not an easy one.
I'd say European languages are the primary target, and even for them translating Inform is unlikely to be actually easy.
On the other hand, I suppose it all depends on what the particular difficulties of a Japanese translation would consist in -- and that, of course, I couldn't tell.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=50#p26885
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-11-24 12:27:47

The voting scale is a simple 1-10, along with any other commentary you care to include.  There should be a voting sheet included with the Ectocomp games as a .txt file.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3751&start=0#p26886
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why did I zap "deciding the scope?"
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-11-24 15:55:08

Thanks very much for the explanations. I was able to fix things by privately naming things, but it's very good to be able to understand that much more.

For some reason I didn't think to tinker with the name to see which word caused things to go funny. But it makes sense now.

I thought I put the scope text at both the end and beginning of the file to see if that made a difference, but maybe I didn't. One more thing to double check.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=50#p26887
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-11-24 16:14:04

I must be doing something stupid. I downloaded the Windows installer for Adrift 5.0 and ran it. Then I opened Adrift Runner, tried to open the .taf games listed above, and I keep getting errors.

CopyStream error: unknown compression method (-3).
Error loading Adventure: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
Tool Click error: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

[emote]:|[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3755&start=0#p26889
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Taco Fiction "Good" Ending
User: WaterMonkey / DateTime: 2011-11-24 20:30:41

I fell behind quite a bit when trying to play the comp games and only had a chance to play Taco Fiction on a plane flight home for Thanksgiving. While playing it (1st version - couldn't update it while on the plane), I managed to beat the game and guess at the "good" ending. However, I couldn't quite figure out what conversation options were necessary to trigger it. The hints didn't help, as they implied the same thing I was already trying to do.

More specifically,
[spoiler]I had all the ending items (I think - notably the maps and the menus), but I couldn't generate the option to give/show the documents I found to the ice cream cashier (I've forgotten her name by now). GIVE/ SHOW documents don't seem to work, since they just kick me to the "Interact with characters by using TALK TO" message.

I might have confused the game, since my adventurer instincts kicked in at the beginning... and I went to La Pizza before going to Paco's Tacos. I also did several other things out of order compared to the walkthrough.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=40#p26890
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-24 21:07:04

Another feature request. While not serving any useful purpose during game play or automapping, it would be hella sweet if there was an option to create regions and then assign rooms to that region. Maybe a drop down, since a room can only be in a single region.

This occurs to me as I manually type and assign dozens of rooms to regions inside of I7. Would have been so much sweeter if I could have just assigned them in Trizbort before exporting the Inform source.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3755&start=0#p26892
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Taco Fiction "Good" Ending
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-24 21:38:15

I haven't actually tried this in-game yet, but from the horse's mouth:

[spoiler]To get the best ending, you not only need the documents, you need to have put yourself in a situation where you want/know that you have to use them.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]Talk to the cashier a lot. You should find out her name. Get to know her in a couple other ways.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]Find out her story about why her business isn't doing so well. Get her to show you her tattoo. Play a game with her.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]Then when you come back at the end with the documents, the option to show them to her should have opened up.[/spoiler]

Or so I'm told. As I said, I haven't tried it yet.

[spoiler]On my first playthrough, I did a few of the above-mentioned things, but I didn't manage to get the menus and maps or anything else from the table. Then on my second playthrough, I the player was motivated to help her out, but the PC wasn't, so the conversation option hadn't unlocked.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3757&start=0#p26893
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Hiding "containers" in room names...
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-24 22:52:42

Someone please refresh my memory, as I know I've seen a post about this, but can't seem to find it...

I wanna kill the parenthetical beside the room name when you're inside of a container (ie in a bed.) While I'm sure it may be good practice, and probably even useful, to be told:

[code]
The Bedroom (in your bed)
[/code]

I'd just as soon the last part of that not be there.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3757&start=0#p26894
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hiding "containers" in room names...
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-24 23:09:47

I found the post about the Room Description Headings extension, which does the job. Just seems like kind of a heavy hammer. I don't know that I want an entire extension just to hide these few little words.

Anyone have a "Plan B" that doesn't involve modifying the standard rules?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=130#p26895
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.3: IF library manager
User: mao42ranma / DateTime: 2011-11-25 00:26:35

[quote="jakobcreutzfeldt"]Ok, I'm very sorry to hear this. I'll look into it this evening![/quote]

To add, I decided to try 0.9.2 win, and it worked okay. For some reason, right clicking on Emily Short's Galatea doesn't bring the popup box, but works for the other games, and I did get some errors in the log:

[code]Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "grotesque\libraryview.pyc", line 99, in on_played_toggled
    
TypeError: mark_story_played() takes at most 3 arguments (4 given)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "grotesque\libraryview.pyc", line 99, in on_played_toggled
    
TypeError: mark_story_played() takes at most 3 arguments (4 given)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "grotesque\libraryview.pyc", line 99, in on_played_toggled
    
TypeError: mark_story_played() takes at most 3 arguments (4 given)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "grotesque\libraryview.pyc", line 99, in on_played_toggled
    
TypeError: mark_story_played() takes at most 3 arguments (4 given)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "grotesque\libraryview.pyc", line 99, in on_played_toggled
    
TypeError: mark_story_played() takes at most 3 arguments (4 given)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "grotesque\libraryview.pyc", line 99, in on_played_toggled
    
TypeError: mark_story_played() takes at most 3 arguments (4 given)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "grotesque\libraryview.pyc", line 99, in on_played_toggled
    
TypeError: mark_story_played() takes at most 3 arguments (4 given)[/code]

But other than that, it looks nice.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3758&start=0#p26896
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Object Description Array or One Time Description
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2011-11-25 01:19:25

I have been scouring the tutorials and manuals for a way to do one, or both of the following:

When examining an object etc - show one description, then any following examination show a different description.

or

When examining an object etc - show a random description from within an array of descriptions.

I would like to use these techniques to provide the player with some lengthy story development, but if they examine the item again, give them a brief description of it.

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3757&start=0#p26897
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hiding "containers" in room names...
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-25 01:22:51

Sure. Make yourself a copy of the room description headings rule with a new name, replace the old one with it, and change it to do what you want:

[code]Carry out looking (this is the room description heading rule):
	say bold type;
	if the visibility level count is 0:
		begin the printing the name of a dark room activity;
		if handling the printing the name of a dark room activity,
			issue miscellaneous library message number 71;
		end the printing the name of a dark room activity;
	otherwise if the visibility ceiling is the location:
		say "[visibility ceiling]";
	otherwise:
		say "[The visibility ceiling]";
	say roman type;
	let intermediate level be the visibility-holder of the actor;
	repeat with intermediate level count running from 2 to the visibility level count:
		issue library message looking action number 8 for the intermediate level;
		let the intermediate level be the visibility-holder of the intermediate level;
	say line break;
	say run paragraph on with special look spacing.[/code]

Without delving any deeper, I would guess that library message looking action number 8 is what prints the offending text. If you're lucky, you may get away with simply changing that message using Ron Newcomb's Default Messages.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=130#p26898
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.3: IF library manager
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-11-25 04:21:57

Hrm that's also strange, so thanks for letting me know. 
I'm making an international trip this weekend and then an international move next week, so life's a bit crazy at the moment, but once I settle back in later next week I'll have a lot more time for development than I have for the past three months so I should be able to have this stuff fixed soon.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3759&start=0#p26899
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Read/unread
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-11-25 06:00:18

Sorry if this has been asked somewhere else. Is there a way to mark all posts in the forum as 'read'?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3734&start=0#p26900
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Thanksgiving Speed-IF
User: frudster / DateTime: 2011-11-25 06:18:48

Reposting from where? Is there any more info on this somewhere?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3759&start=0#p26901
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Read/unread
User: sedm0784 / DateTime: 2011-11-25 06:29:22

There's a "Mark forums read" link on the right-hand side of the Board index page, above the list of forums.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3758&start=0#p26902
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Object Description Array or One Time Description
User: tomasb / DateTime: 2011-11-25 06:39:12

[quote="baiguai"]
When examining an object etc - show one description, then any following examination show a different description.
[/quote]

You can use initDesc property of an object for this:

[code]
modify Thing
    isInInitState = (!described)
;

someRoom: Room 'xxx' 'xxx'
;

+ Thing 'nice little thing' 'little thing'
    "Ordinary description "
    initDesc = "First time description. "
;
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3734&start=0#p26903
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Thanksgiving Speed-IF
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-11-25 07:19:26

[quote="frudster"]Reposting from where? Is there any more info on this somewhere?[/quote]
From [url=http://ifmud.port4000.com/]ifMUD[/url]. Yes, there's a slightly longer version of the same information available there. For the curious, here's both announcements, in full:
[quote]A speed-IF!  A veritable feast!  Using the following inventory items, based on a list of photographed items from Grocible's book-in-progress:

a top hat. a dragonfly*. a small crystal ball. two optical prisms. a water pistol. a magnifying glass. a bowtie. a jar of silica. a polished piece of labradorite. a bow and arrow. an archer's arm guard. a bismuth crystal.

Email or mudmail entries to vimes by noon-ish MUD time on Sunday the 27th of November.  Sign here for intent.[/quote]
and
[quote]Signable is in the lounge to intent the speed-if based on the random things Grocible is photographing, for Thanksgiving weekend.  Email or mudmail entries to me by noon-ish MUD time on Sunday the 27th of November.  Take all the time you like, or limit it to the time-outs and halftimes of your favorite American Football game, as you prefer.

List of items: a top hat. a dragonfly*. a small crystal ball. two optical prisms. a water pistol. a magnifying glass. a bowtie. a jar of silica. a polished piece of labradorite. a bow and arrow. an archer's arm guard. a bismuth crystal.

* missing[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3759&start=0#p26904
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Read/unread
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-11-25 07:30:25

Thanks! Seems i Missed it!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3760&start=0#p26905
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [solved] I7: Bizarre missing noun problem
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-11-25 08:28:44

We have an action called disassembling. It goes like this:

[code]Disassembling is an action applying to one thing. Disassembling something is tough work. Understand "Disassemble [something]", "Unfurl [something]", "Pull down [something]" and "Take down [something]" as disassembling.[/code]

When you type 'disassemble' it comes up with the following message:
[quote]What do you want to disassemb?[/quote]

That's odd enough. To compound it, we've got an almost identical action called assembling. This looks like this: 

[code]Assembling is an action applying to one thing. Assembling something is tough work. Understand "Assemble [something]", "Build [something]" and "Put up [something]" as assembling.
[/code]

When you type 'assemble' it comes up with the correct question:
[quote]What do you want to assemble?[/quote]

Furthermore, putting in a rule for supplying a missing noun does nothing:
[code]Rule for supplying a missing noun while disassembling (this is the disassemble missing noun rule):
say "What would you like to disassemble?" instead.[/code]

My collaborator Melvin looked carefully at the rules that were firing or not firing and he reckons it's an Inform 6 bug. Anyone have a clue?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3760&start=0#p26906
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Bizarre missing noun problem with 'disassembling'
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-25 09:07:11

Inform internally represents dictionary words only with the first 9 characters of their names, so the command "disassemble" matches the dictionary word 'disassemb', which is what is printed.

Fix thus:
[code]
Include (-
[ LanguageVerb i;
switch (i) {
’i//’,’inv’,’inventory’:
print "take inventory";
’l//’: print "look";
’x//’: print "examine";
’z//’: print "wait";
’disassemble’: print "disassemble";   ! Here we add the fix
default: rfalse;
}
rtrue;
];

[ LanguageVerbLikesAdverb w;
if (w == ’look’ or ’go’ or ’push’ or ’walk’)
rtrue;
rfalse;
];

[ LanguageVerbMayBeName w;
if (w == ’long’ or ’short’ or ’normal’
or ’brief’ or ’full’ or ’verbose’)
rtrue;
rfalse;
];
-) instead of "Commands" in "Language.i6t".
[/code]

(It's only the first of these three I6 function you're interested in, but you need to do replacements of I6 templates sectionwise.)


EDIT:
You could do this:

[code]Understand "disassemble" as disassembling.

Rule for supplying a missing noun while disassembling (this is the disassemble missing noun rule):
say "What would you like to disassemble?" instead.[/code]

(Supplying a missing noun rules only run, if you have actually defined a command with too few understand tokens.)

However, I think the LanguageVerb function is called in some situations besides the one that can be handled by the supplying a missing noun activity, so the I6 hack is probably preferable.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3755&start=0#p26907
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Taco Fiction "Good" Ending
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-11-25 09:13:37

[quote="matt w"][spoiler]On my first playthrough, I did a few of the above-mentioned things, but I didn't manage to get the menus and maps or anything else from the table. Then on my second playthrough, I the player was motivated to help her out, but the PC wasn't, so the conversation option hadn't unlocked.[/spoiler][/quote]
I think that's what they call "ludo-narrative dissonance."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3757&start=0#p26908
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hiding "containers" in room names...
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-25 09:29:46

Thanks, sir. I was hoping to just be able to override that rule without re-writing it or without having to use an extension for it. The Room Description Headings extension will remove the parenthetical, but it also does some other things that I've no use for, so it's really a waste of memory.

I don't want to rewrite the rule that fires the message. I'm going to poke around on Mr. Newcomb's extension. There might be some other things I'd like to use it for, so if it will do the job, it might be a better option.

Thanks again.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3757&start=0#p26909
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hiding "containers" in room names...
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-25 09:40:55

So the Default Messages extension will allow you to override this:

[code]
Table of custom library messages (continued)
library-action		library-message-id			library-message-text
looking action		8						" "
[/code]

Easy enough. 

I hadn't planned on rewriting some of the other messages, but since I have to have the extension installed anyway, I may as well.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3760&start=0#p26910
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Bizarre missing noun problem with 'disassembling'
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-11-25 10:05:14

Your I6 code works great, thanks! (Melvin says thanks too). The frustrating thing was that we knew about having to define a command with too few understand tokens, as we've already got a bunch of supplying a missing noun rules in the game. It was definitely a face-to-palm moment.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3758&start=0#p26911
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Object Description Array or One Time Description
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-11-25 12:55:53

If you want a randomly varying description, here's one way to do it. I'm creating a ShuffledEventList object as a property:

[code]    desc = "<<varyingDesc.doScript>>"
    varyingDesc: ShuffledEventList {[
        'Some description. ',
        'A different description. ',
        'Another different description. '
    ]}[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3755&start=0#p26912
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Taco Fiction "Good" Ending
User: WaterMonkey / DateTime: 2011-11-25 13:35:54

[quote="matt w"]
[spoiler]Find out her story about why her business isn't doing so well. Get her to show you her tattoo. Play a game with her.[/spoiler]
[/quote]

I think I got the first two - but not the last one.

[spoiler]Does the game involve tasting all the different flavors? I haven't done that yet.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3755&start=0#p26913
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Taco Fiction "Good" Ending
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-11-25 13:40:25

[quote="WaterMonkey"][spoiler]Does the game involve tasting all the different flavors? I haven't done that yet.[/spoiler][/quote]
[spoiler]Assuming you mean 'is it necessary in order to get the best ending': no.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3755&start=0#p26914
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Taco Fiction "Good" Ending
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-25 13:46:21

I don't think you need to do all the specific things I mentioned, but what I meant by that comment was

[spoiler]you can play checkers with her if you examine the checkerboard first. So "the game" is checkers. (I haven't done this myself, just been told that you can do it.)[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=40#p26915
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: mao42ranma / DateTime: 2011-11-25 14:11:21

A feature request. Door support. The ability to put a door between rooms, give it a description, etc; and have it output source. Currently I'm making rooms between rooms smaller, then editing the source after.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3761&start=0#p26916
Forum: Competitions / Subject: The Hugo "Open House" Competition
User: Roody_Yogurt / DateTime: 2011-11-25 15:04:49

2011 saw the Hugo release of Robb Sherwin's [url=http://www.joltcountry.com/index.php/robbsherwin_videogame/cryptozookeeper]Cryptozookeeper[/url], one of the largest multimedia-enhanced IF games ever. That alone makes it a good year for Hugo, as we Hugo users are few. A handful of us thought we'd end the year on a good note and challenge ourselves to a SpeedIF. Schedule-fitting and unexpected interest from some non-Hugo-savvy authors have turned that idea into an altogether different thing, though.

Now, we christen that thing, "The Hugo 'Open House' Competition." The rules:

- Games can be [i]any[/i] size and can even be a work already in progress.
- Games are due the [i]morning[/i] of December 31st. The entrant is then free to (and somewhat expected to) celebrate the transition into the new year heartily. 
- Waiting until the last week (or day) even and writing a [i]classic-SpeedIF[/i]-sized game is viable (we made the coding-time intentionally vague so newcomers can as much time as they want acquainting themselves).
- Links to games can either be posted here or at the joltcountry forum. If you don't have any place to upload your game, e-mail your entry to roodyyogurt at gmail.

Games will not be ranked. There will not be prizes other than acceptance into a small yet tightknit group of IF enthusiasts.

People new to Hugo may want to look at [url=http://hugo.gerynarsabode.org/index.php?title=Main_Page]Hugo by Example's[/url] [url=http://hugo.gerynarsabode.org/index.php?title=Getting_Started]"Getting Started"[/url] page.

Questions about Hugo coding can, of course, be answered on this forum in the "Other Development Systems" base or at [url=http://www.joltcountry.com/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=8]the Hugo base at joltcountry.com[/url].

NOTE: This competition does not intend to interfere with the several-years-strong [url=http://ifwiki.org/index.php/New_Year%27s_Speed]New Year's Speed IF tradition[/url]. Hopefully, the two will coexist nicely. I, for one, intend to enter both (assuming there is a New Year's Speed IF).

Good luck!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3755&start=0#p26918
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Taco Fiction "Good" Ending
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-11-25 18:23:28

[quote="WaterMonkey"]...on a plane flight home for Thanksgiving ... I managed to beat the game and guess at the "good" ending.[/quote]How long was the flight?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3709&start=0#p26919
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The man with the hat
User: JTN / DateTime: 2011-11-25 18:35:02

<a class="postlink" href="http://grammargrabber.tripod.com/hatmysterious.htm">http://grammargrabber.tripod.com/hatmysterious.htm</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3761&start=0#p26922
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Hugo "Open House" Competition
User: Roody_Yogurt / DateTime: 2011-11-25 20:33:18

Let me add that while Hugo "Open House" games have no required premise, those looking for ideas are invited to design games inspired by the trailer to that upcoming movie, Hugo. Robots, giant clocks, what have you- would all be cool.

2011 was also a good year for Hugo because of Nikos Chantziaras' [url=http://ifwiki.org/index.php/Hugor]Hugor[/url] interpreter, which has made it easier for people on Macs and Linux to get multimedia Hugo games up and running. An additional "Open House" suggestion is to write a game with someone or something with the intriguing name "Hugor."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3738&start=0#p26923
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Dead Hotel - Unlocked Secrets
User: Comazombie / DateTime: 2011-11-25 21:12:16

Dead Hotel was never meant to be a teaser. It was a completed and self-contained game indeed, although some people felt it was too short.

[quote]Two observations:
[spoiler]I was trying to figure out how to drop the medkit.  The lack of an option to drop the medkit (unless I missed that option) doesn't seem like a very good way to lock the player into one set path.[/spoiler][/quote]

I didn't add a drop function for items this time, like I did in my previous games, because I felt it would make no sense in this adventure game. I wanted to encourage players to a) carefully plan beforehand which items to take and which to leave and b) try to replay the game with a different inventory configuration.

[quote][spoiler]When I figured out how to jump out the window with both the revolver and the Uzzi, all the zombies got killed immediately when I chose to shoot them.  I only saw the RPG element at the end in the YouTube video.  Though I did try to punch the horde to death once, before I turned on the secrets.[/spoiler][/quote]

Well, you can't punch/kick the entire horde of 11 zombies and expect to win without firing weapons. You can only retreat in such case.

Here is how you do it:
[spoiler]But if you carry both weapons, the Uzi and the Revolver, you can kill them all and win. The number of zombies being killed with both weapons varies randomly after you fire all ammo at them. Sometimes you kill all 11, sometimes 9-10. The remaining number of zombies have to be fought against without weapons in order to win. But you can always retreat in any of the cases and still win the game too, but with lower score.[/spoiler]

[quote]So, this makes two meta-puzzles in this year's competition.  I had no idea about the existence of the other one, but I thought Emilian was probably the author of this game.  And he did well.  [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

MS Windows, homebrew CYOA system, retro-look, weird english. Wasn't hard to guess who programmed and wrote this one, was it.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3764&start=0#p26924
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform7 iPad port?
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-11-25 21:36:41

i don't think such thing will be implemented quickly but for the sake of asking,
will there be an Inform7 version for iPad (so no more computer would be needed to write games.
It is easier to bring along an iPad on the go and work with it than a notebook, even a macbook air.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3734&start=0#p26925
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Thanksgiving Speed-IF
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-11-25 22:00:26

Is it necessary to sign up in ifMUD first or can you just email an entry without signing up?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3764&start=0#p26926
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform7 iPad port?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-25 22:41:14

This has come up before. I'm not sure what the status of programming apps on the iPad is these days. (There was a well-publicized rejection in early 2010 -- the Scratch programming language -- but Apple has since changed their app store guidelines to be friendlier to interpreted languages.)

The direct answer is that nobody is working on such a thing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3743&start=0#p26931
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Re-release?
User: Grueslayer / DateTime: 2011-11-26 00:11:03

I personally wouldn't like to IFDB to be clogged with games in different versions, no matter how large the changes are. While certainly different pages for one game don't harm me physically or monetarily, I'm pretty sure nobody's gonna download and play the outdated version, so I'd prefer to have them downloadable on the page of the latest version for historical reasons (and I'd never DL them, why should I?). But that's just my personal opinion.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3613&start=0#p26932
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gargoyle 2011.1 released
User: mao42ranma / DateTime: 2011-11-26 01:21:29

I'd love TAB auto-complete, just saying.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3766&start=0#p26933
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: The game that has the best world simulation?
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-11-26 02:39:46

I am looking for games that have a very advanced world simulation. 
For example you can walk in a town, and if break through any house you can find realistic interiors and objects.
Or games that simulate a lot of npc in a realistic way if we interact with them even though we are not forced by the plot to do so.
Well, games that have a good enough world simulation to give the player the illusion he is free of his actions, and that manage to process it in a useful way to make the game more interesting and more in-depth.

Thank you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3758&start=0#p26934
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Object Description Array or One Time Description
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2011-11-26 02:59:39

Thank you so much! I have tried the isInInitState and that works great. The script solution seems to do exactly what I need.  Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3764&start=0#p26935
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform7 iPad port?
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-11-26 03:31:37

Inform is an interpreted language but not the software itself. Anyway I don't think this is a problem as of today as you says.
Thank you for your reply.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3743&start=10#p26938
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Re-release?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-11-26 03:36:38

[quote]I'm pretty sure nobody's gonna download and play the outdated version[/quote]

Well, indeed the majority of players probably won't, but you can't really speak for everyone. I tried out Curses.z3 for two reasons: because it was smaller and hopefully less overwhelming, and because the interpreter I was using for playing IF on my mobile then (Z2ME) didn't work with z5. That's two good reasons to play an outdated version of that particular game.

Also, I feel like playing Mini-Zork one of these days, because I want to see how far it goes - and I'd like a quick dip back into Zork without going the whole hog.

Just, you know, showing the other side of the coin.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3734&start=0#p26941
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Thanksgiving Speed-IF
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-11-26 06:45:27

[quote="trojo"]Is it necessary to sign up in ifMUD first or can you just email an entry without signing up?[/quote]
Signup is totally optional: in the past signups have mostly been used to gauge interest in whether to run a speed-IF or not.

Speed-IF is not an event with a whole lot of rules. If you're wondering "do I have to..." the answer is probably "no".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3613&start=0#p26942
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gargoyle 2011.1 released
User: cas / DateTime: 2011-11-26 09:17:26

[quote="mao42ranma"]I'd love TAB auto-complete, just saying.[/quote]
Speaking for the Z-machine, tab completion for the dictionary would be easy enough; however, it would be ridiculously difficult (if not impossible) to limit tab completion to dictionary words that are "known" by the player.  If such limitations were not in place, then the player could easily find object names that are supposed to be secret.

The Z-machine also limits the length of dictionary words.  You can refer to a windshield or a windscreen in Moonmist, for example, but the resolution of those words is 6 characters, so you'd only tab complete to windsc or windsh.  V4+ games are better in this regard, but still have a limit: In HHGG there is an extinguisher, but it would complete to extinguis.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3771&start=0#p26943
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Dropping Actions & Library Messages
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-26 10:03:15

I was wondering if someone could explain this behavior to me before I start mucking around with the output. 

If you "move" an object to a location, Inform considers this item dropped. If you pick up an item and drop it, Inform considers this item dropped. If you then pick up the item and place it on a table, Inform considers this item placed.

So... 

When the scene opens, there's an item on the table. If I try to drop that item, I get a response from dropping action #2, which tells me correctly that I ain't got it.

During the course of the scene, I move an item to that location. If I try to drop that item, I get a response from dropping action #1, which tells me that it's already there. If I then pick up said item, place it on the table and try to drop it again, I get dropping action #2.

Now... Is there a reason to have two separate dropping messages? Can someone give me an example of where this might be necessary?

Also, since I'm finicky and I don't like the idea of my freshly moved item being "dropped" before it's ever been touched, is there a way to make the item not flagged as dropped without having to pick it up and place it somewhere first?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3771&start=0#p26944
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dropping Actions & Library Messages
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-26 10:44:13

I don't think that objects really are flagged as dropped or undropped (at least not by the Standard Rules). But they are flagged as "handled" or not. And a thing that hasn't been handled by the player, can't have been dropped by him/her either (at least not during game-play).

When you try dropping something in scope that you're not currently holding, you get message 1 if that thing is in or on  the same thing as you are without either one being in or on anything that the other is not in or on. 
If you or the thing is in or on something that the other is not in or on, you get message 2.
I can see that message 1 could sometimes be inappropriate as replacement of message 2. But message 2 seems general enough to replace message 1. On the other hand, message 1 suggests that the thing you try to drop is actually there for the taking, whereas message 2 would perhaps be given even if the thing in scope is not actually touchable.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3613&start=0#p26945
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gargoyle 2011.1 released
User: huftis / DateTime: 2011-11-26 11:00:58

[quote="cas"][quote="mao42ranma"]I'd love TAB auto-complete, just saying.[/quote]
Speaking for the Z-machine, tab completion for the dictionary would be easy enough; however, it would be ridiculously difficult (if not impossible) to limit tab completion to dictionary words that are "known" by the player.[/quote]
Couldn’t the tab completion be based on the text already displayed on the screen (perhaps excluding some common words, like ‘the’)? Then the player could never accidentally discover any secrets. And it would really help when spelling some long or hard-to-remember words (for example, the names of the medicine bottles in [i]The Life (and Deaths) of Doctor M[/i]).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3613&start=0#p26946
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Gargoyle 2011.1 released
User: mao42ranma / DateTime: 2011-11-26 11:15:56

[quote="huftis"][quote="cas"][quote="mao42ranma"]I'd love TAB auto-complete, just saying.[/quote]
Speaking for the Z-machine, tab completion for the dictionary would be easy enough; however, it would be ridiculously difficult (if not impossible) to limit tab completion to dictionary words that are "known" by the player.[/quote]
Couldn’t the tab completion be based on the text already displayed on the screen (perhaps excluding some common words, like ‘the’)? Then the player could never accidentally discover any secrets. And it would really help when spelling some long or hard-to-remember words (for example, the names of the medicine bottles in [i]The Life (and Deaths) of Doctor M[/i]).[/quote]

Yes, most tab completion is based what has already been printed to the screen. I've seen this in other interpreters, and that's how they work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3772&start=0#p26947
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: IFMud hates me
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-11-26 11:21:10

I've tried to register at IFMud. It says "you will soon receive an email etc etc". I guess a week is still too "soon". 

Am I doing something wrong? Is it a club of sorts? If so, can someone invite me? I'll bring the chips and the booze.

Thanks [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3771&start=0#p26948
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dropping Actions & Library Messages
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-26 11:36:06

[code]
"Dropping Messages" by I4L

The Shop is a room. "There are various and sundry items lying about."

There is a screw.

A table is a supporter in the Shop.

A toolbox is on the table.

Instead of examining the toolbox for the first time:
	say "A screw falls out and is lying on the floor.";
	Move the screw to location.
	Test me with "drop toolbox/x toolbox/drop screw/get screw/put screw on table/drop screw/get screw/drop screw/drop screw"
[/code]

This results in:

[code]
Dropping Messages
An Interactive Fiction by I4L
Release 1 / Serial number 111127 / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N) SD

Shop
There are various and sundry items lying about.

You can see a table (on which is a toolbox) here.

>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] drop toolbox
You haven't got that.

>[2] x toolbox
A screw falls out and is lying on the floor.

>[3] drop screw
The screw is already here.

>[4] get screw
Taken.

>[5] put screw on table
You put the screw on the table.

>[6] drop screw
You haven't got that.

>[7] get screw
Taken.

>[8] drop screw
Dropped.

>[9] drop screw
The screw is already here.

>
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3766&start=0#p26949
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The game that has the best world simulation?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-11-26 11:39:21

[quote="sai"]I am looking for games that have a very advanced world simulation. 
For example you can walk in a town, and if break through any house you can find realistic interiors and objects.[/quote]
This doesn't really happen in IF. IF tends to be strongly oriented towards story: open worlds where you can go anywhere and do anything make storytelling very difficult. 
Also, making this kind of game and doing it well is a ton of work -- either to write a really complicated procedural generator, to hand-craft an enormous amount of content, or both. IF authors are not major game studios. There have been one or two games that try a big open world with sandboxy gameplay ([i]Gilded[/i], for example) but unless you have a large, professional and full-time dev team or a few decades to spare, they're going to be riddled with bugs.
Because IF's output is primarily narrated text rather than graphics, it can get away with certain things more easily. In a graphical game, if you try to walk over a cliff the game has to either let you do it, or put something artificial in the way to stop you, breaking your illusion of reality or of control. If someone's telling you a story, if you randomly ask "Did he jump of the cliff next?", you can't really expect the narrator to accomodate you. IF is somewhere in between.

There [i]are[/i] games that have large, scenic, exploratory worlds ([i]1893: A World's Fair Mystery[/i], [i]Blue Lacuna[/i]), but you won't be able to climb every tree, poke every pedestrian and break into every house. There are a number of mid-sized or smaller games with very detailed worlds and no driving central plot, like [i]The Cove[/i], but they don't have the kind of sprawl you're talking about.
[quote="sai"]Or games that simulate a lot of npc in a realistic way if we interact with them even though we are not forced by the plot to do so.[/quote]
Again: simulating a [i]single[/i] NPC in a vaguely realistic way is a huge amount of work. There are entire games (not small ones, either) that are just about interacting with a single NPC. Certain games ([i]City of Secrets[/i], for instance) involve a fairly large map with many background characters, some of which can optionally be lightly interacted with. But a deeply-implemented NPC who isn't important to the story is not really good design.
[quote]Well, games that have a good enough world simulation to give the player the illusion he is free of his actions, and that manage to process it in a useful way to make the game more interesting and more in-depth.[/quote]
This is a really vague statement. The illusion of realism or of free will in a game is not a simple thing, and can be approached in a number of ways, each with disadvantages. Simulating a very expansive environment and letting the player do whatever they want in it is one approach, but it has some major problems -- not just for gameplay, but for realistic simulation.

See, in the real world we assume we're free-willed, but we don't generally break into houses to look at the interiors, or accost strangers on the street to ask them about things for no reason, or jump off high buildings to our death on a whim. People who do that are generally considered crazy. IF is generally more interested in realistic representation of the [i]player character[/i] (the illusion that the PC is a real person) than the realistic simulation of things that the player character could do if they were crazy. This isn't to say that open-world games are bad or anything; it's just that they're not a natural strength of IF, and mediums generally play to their strengths.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3771&start=0#p26950
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dropping Actions & Library Messages
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-26 11:44:03

That transcript looks correct.

If you type "drop screw" and the screw is on the floor, the response is "The screw is already here." If the screw is on the table, the response is "You haven't got that." This isn't based on flags, it's based on where the object is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3773&start=0#p26951
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: IFArchive DNS fixed, we hope
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-26 11:49:16

We have shifted the DNS for ifarchive.org to a new service. (Not the Archive itself, but the service that handles its domain name lookup.)

This should fix the problem where some people were unable to reach <a class="postlink" href="http://ifarchive.org/">http://ifarchive.org/</a> . If you are still having trouble, please let us know.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3772&start=0#p26952
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IFMud hates me
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-11-26 11:50:49

Account creation is automatic. Are you sure that your mail server's not marked the email as spam or something?

It does look as if your account was created; your address is @kidstudio.it , right?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3774&start=0#p26953
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Checking the Player's Inventory / Required Objects
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2011-11-26 11:59:58

I have been searching through the documentation, internet and this forum for information on checking the player's inventory but haven't yet found how this is done. My situation is this:

I'm not sure how to use darkness on a thing or container level, so I was going to check to see of the player has the lantern (in my case the only light source they could have on them), if they do have it describe what they see, otherwise tell them it is too dark etc.

So the correct way to do this would be able to get darkness working correctly (in this scenario, under a bed) - or - get the inventory check working so that I can fake it by checking their inventory for the lantern (this is def. not ideal since perhaps later they could be carrying any number of light sources.).

I hope I explained this clearly.

Thanks in advance!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3771&start=0#p26954
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dropping Actions & Library Messages
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-26 12:28:31

[quote="zarf"]That transcript looks correct.

If you type "drop screw" and the screw is on the floor, the response is "The screw is already here." If the screw is on the table, the response is "You haven't got that." This isn't based on flags, it's based on where the object is.[/quote]

Makes sense as far as a technical explanation of what's happening. I can't say that I care for the output. So... I guess I'll see what I can do about that.

Thanks, zarf.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3774&start=0#p26955
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Checking the Player's Inventory / Required Objects
User: George / DateTime: 2011-11-26 12:31:09

The basic way to deal with light and darkness is to create light source objects by giving them brightness levels or using LightSource classes, and create dark areas by adjusting their brightness or using classes, such as DarkRoom.

Are you using TADS 3 and the Workbench? If so, just do a documentation search for 'darkness' and 'brightness' and you'll see some code examples.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3774&start=0#p26956
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Checking the Player's Inventory / Required Objects
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2011-11-26 12:56:56

I am using TADS3 and have all the docs - but I wasn't sure how to code a non-dark room with a dark thing in it - in my case a bed that is dark under it. Should I maybe use the rarely needed nested room so I can set that 'room' to dark and use it as the bed's underside?

Thank you for your timely response and all your help!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3772&start=0#p26957
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IFMud hates me
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-11-26 12:58:04

Affirmative. I hate antispam bots.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3772&start=0#p26958
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IFMud hates me
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-11-26 13:17:02

If you can't find the email, your best bet is to log on as a guest (username: guest, password: guest) and talk to a wizard. They'll be able to fix you right up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3772&start=0#p26959
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IFMud hates me
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-11-26 13:38:38

Thanks a lot. Will do.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3771&start=0#p26960
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dropping Actions & Library Messages
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-26 13:48:13

One way of thinking about it is this: you're trying to put the screw on the floor. If the screw is on the table, you get message 1, which tells you that you fail -- you can't put the screw on the floor unless you've already got it. If the screw is on the floor, you get message 2, which tells you that you don't need to try -- you don't have to put the screw on the floor, because the screw is already on the floor.

Message 2 [i]is[/i] a bit confusing, because it tells you that the screw is "already here," which is true even in case 1 (it's here, it's just not on the floor). So one way to fix it might be to change it to "The screw is already on the floor/ground," though that might require implementing the floor/ground as an object. 

[I was going to compare this to similar messages for putting things on things, but it turns out that with the Standard Rules you won't trigger those messages; if you try "put screw on table" when the screw is already on the table, you wind up taking the screw and putting it back on the table, instead of being told it's already on the table. That seems like something worth hacking the Standard Rules to avoid, if you have the wherewithal.]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3771&start=0#p26961
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dropping Actions & Library Messages
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-26 14:08:41

Right, I tried putting it on the floor and was told that there was no such thing, which is bothersome.

I understand now the need for the two separate error messages. However, I do think they need to be phrased differently. So I'm gonna go ahead and do that, I guess.

I appreciate everyone's input.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3766&start=0#p26962
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The game that has the best world simulation?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-11-26 14:25:18

As maga said, this isn't what IF usually does, but there are some games that come closer to it than others. Besides the games he mentions, I would recommend checking out Dangerous Curves and Worlds Apart.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3761&start=0#p26963
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Hugo "Open House" Competition
User: Gerynar / DateTime: 2011-11-26 14:30:22

I have started looking into some of my WnIPs (Works not [i]currently[/i] In Progress) to see if I might be able to finish one of them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3660&start=0#p26964
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Why text adventures beat graphical games in realism
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-11-26 14:48:21

[quote="Laroquod"]In a 3D game, on the other hand, you have to create a lot of visual assets to make that particular intersection 'feel real'.[/quote]

Perhaps a good case in point is that I just started playing Crysis 2. A different style of game than something like Skyrim, I realize. I bring it up because of the feel you mention. There is no text adventure at all that could convey the feel of me walking through a decimated New York, hearing broadcasts of emergency, hearing the odd "hooooooooooahhhh" sound of the alien ships as they fly around a couple blocks over, the constant sound of the wind and the occasional tinkling sound of glass falling to the street from above, and so forth. There's no text adventure that could give me the immediate feeling of sneaking around an a camp filled with troops, hearing their banter, even as I keep moving, making sure to stay in the shadows and out of sight.


[quote]So, text adventures don't beat 3D graphical games in realism, IMO. They both are typically aimed at realism and each form comes with its own 'cracks in reality' that are artifacts of the tools used to build them -- i.e. neither is going to be a perfect representation.[/quote]

Agreed. In Crysis 2, for example, I can't just go [i]anywhere[/i]. I can't break down any door and in any area -- which, of course, in reality I could do.

[quote]To complain that Pac-Man for example is not realistic is to entirely miss the point, though you can reasonably complain that Zork isn't. Therefore, Zork set for itself a more ambitious goal.[/quote]

I also think part of this feel is the emotional or visceral reaction you have. For example, taking another game, Modern Warfare 3. This is the final game of the series. The ending -- which I won't spoil here for those still playing -- is somewhat predictable; you can see it coming. Yet -- the way it plays out, the suddenness of the action, the scream of the person you end up fighting with, it's actually really intense even when the game mechanic itself intrudes quite a bit. So realistic? Well, not any more or less than a text adventure perhaps. But for the sheer unmitigated feeling of a consistent action taking place in a visual and aural medium, a text adventure could never replicate that for me.

Just as Zork tried for a different experience than Pac-Man, so too does a text adventure and a game like those I mentioned. All of these can provide a narrative of sorts -- hell, even Donkey Kong had a narrative -- but it's the "feel" that the game is going for that will make the difference.

A good example that's more in line with adventure game may be the recent To The Moon. That's a surprising strong story and it reminded me a bit of the text adventure Tapestry although it also showed me, again, why a text adventure may have a hard time giving that kind of experience.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3771&start=0#p26965
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dropping Actions & Library Messages
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-26 14:54:57

Can someone with a more critical/knowledgable eye point out any potential issues with this type of setup?

[code]
"Dropping Messages" by I4L

Include Default Messages by Ron Newcomb.

Use library message alerts.

Table of custom library messages (continued)
library-action		library-message-id			library-message-text
dropping action	1						"The [noun] is already on the [if player is in Indoors Area]floor[otherwise]ground."
dropping action	4						"You drop the [noun] on the [if player is in Indoors Area]floor[otherwise]ground."
--				26						"You pick up the [noun]."
putting it on action	8						"You place the [noun] on the [second noun]."
-- 				30						"You don't see a [noun] here."
taking action		1						"You pick up the [noun]."
examining action	2						"You see nothing of importance about the [noun]."

Indoors Area is a region. Shop is in Indoors Area. Outdoors Area is a region. Front Yard is in Outdoors Area.

The floor is a backdrop. The floor is in Indoors Area. The sky is a backdrop. The sky is in Outdoors Area.

The Shop is a room. "There are various and sundry items lying about."

There is a screw.

A table is a supporter in the Shop. A toolbox is on the table.

Instead of examining the toolbox for the first time:
	say "A screw falls out and is lying on the [if player is in Indoors Area]floor[otherwise]ground.";
	Move the screw to location.
	Test me with "get toolbox/drop toolbox/x toolbox/x screw/get screw/drop screw/get screw/put screw on table/put screw on table/get screw/n/drop screw"
	
Front yard is a room. "Your front lawn is trimmed nice and proper." Front yard is north of the Shop.
[/code]

It does say "You can see a table (on which is a toolbox) here." This aggravates me because the library message #119 is just "(on", it seems. So taking it out results in "You can see a table which is a toolbox) here." I haven't found this message yet, as searching the Standard Rules for 119 doesn't turn up anything.

I can set the table to scenery and it has a more attractive output, but if I want the supporter to be something that can be moved, this obviously doesn't work.

That's a battle for another day.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3771&start=0#p26966
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dropping Actions & Library Messages
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-26 14:57:48

Well, first problem (test your examples before making them public) was the missing periods. That's been fixed. Second problem is since the floor is set as a backdrop, trying to put something on it results in being advised that doing so would achieve nothing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3771&start=0#p26967
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dropping Actions & Library Messages
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-26 15:44:57

Also, the game will respond with dropping action messages number 1 and 4, even when the player is in a container or on a supporter, in which case "floor" or "ground" may not be appropriate.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3771&start=10#p26968
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dropping Actions & Library Messages
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-26 15:45:12

[quote="I4L"]Well, first problem (test your examples before making them public) was the missing periods. That's been fixed. Second problem is since the floor is set as a backdrop, trying to put something on it results in being advised that doing so would achieve nothing.[/quote]

Ah, you definitely would want something like this (untested):

[code]Check an actor putting something on (this is the convert put on the floor to drop rule):
   if the second noun is a floor:
      convert to the dropping action on the noun.

The convert put on the floor to drop rule is listed after the convert put to drop where possible rule in the check putting it on [or whatever it's called] rulebook.[/code]

Or if you like you could rewrite the convert put to drop where possible rule to include that case as well. 

You might want to implement the ground as a similar backdrop in Outdoors Area.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3766&start=0#p26969
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The game that has the best world simulation?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-11-26 17:30:09

Gravel's vision for [i]Farming the Apocalypse[/i] is very sandboxy as well, but of course that is still in-progress: <a class="postlink" href="http://gravelgamedesign.blogspot.com/p/about-fta.html">http://gravelgamedesign.blogspot.com/p/about-fta.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3775&start=0#p26970
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Looking after being "moved"
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-26 17:41:39

Is there a way to make this stop? I tried turning on rules and actions to see what was going on, but since this is happening "when play begins", they are apparently reset after "restart".

As a very basic example:

[code]
"Looking Twice" by I4L

When play begins:
	Move the player to the Front Yard.
	
There is a room called the Shop. "You're standing in the shop."

There is a room called Front Yard. "You're standing in the front yard."
[/code]

Results in:

[code]
Front Yard
You're standing in the front yard.

Looking Twice
An Interactive Fiction by I4L
Release 1 / Serial number 111127 / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N) SD

Front Yard
You're standing in the front yard.
[/code]

So even though the first (starting room) isn't the front yard, it still displays that twice. I've tried a couple combinations of "Stop the action" and "Instead of looking", but haven't hit upon anything that works.

Suggestions?

[Edit: Changing to "Instead of looking for the first time" seems to have fixed it...?]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3775&start=0#p26971
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Looking after being "moved"
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-26 18:02:10

If you don't want the first description to show up, you can say "move the player to the Front Yard, without printing a room description." See section 8.9 of Writing with Inform.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3774&start=0#p26972
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Checking the Player's Inventory / Required Objects
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-11-26 18:05:03

Here's one way to do it.

[code]
me: Actor
	vocabWords = 'self'
	location = bedroom
;

+ light: Flashlight 'flash flashlight/light' 'flashlight'
	brightnessOn = 5
;

bedroom: Room 'bedroom' 'bedroom'
	"Just another sparsely implemented bedroom. "
;

+ bed: Heavy, Surface 'bed' 'bed'
	"Your bed is filthy. Shame on you! "
	initSpecialDesc = "Your bed is here. "

	dobjFor(LookUnder) remapTo(LookUnder, underBed)
;

++ underBed: NameAsOther, Underside, Component
	targetObj = bed

	dobjFor(LookUnder) {
		preCond = [objSearchable]
	}
;

+++ widget: Hidden 'widget' 'widget'
	"You see nothing unusual about it. "
;

objSearchable: PreCondition
	verifyPreCondition(obj) {
		if (!gActor.isLocationBright())
			inaccessible(&tooDarkMsg);
	}
;

modify Actor
	isLocationBright() {
		if (sightlikeSenses.indexOf(sight) != nil
			&& location != nil
			&& location.brightness > 3
			&& location.transSensingOut(sight) == transparent)
			return true;
		return (getVisualAmbient() > 3);
	}
;
[/code]

Looking under the bed remaps to looking under the bed's Underside object, which has a custom precondition for the LookUnder action. This is essentially [url=http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/libref/source/precond.t.html#124]objVisible[/url] with some logic ripped out, and the call to gActor's [url=http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/libref/source/actor.t.html#8309]isLocationLit[/url] method replaced with one to isLocationBright.

This new method checks to see if the brightness is greater than 3 (the default brightness). That will only happen if the flashlight (with brightness 5) is turned on; otherwise the action will fail with the message "It's too dark to do that."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3766&start=0#p26973
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The game that has the best world simulation?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-11-26 18:37:08

[quote="tove"]Gravel's vision for [i]Farming the Apocalypse[/i] is very sandboxy as well, but of course that is still in-progress: <a class="postlink" href="http://gravelgamedesign.blogspot.com/p/about-fta.html">http://gravelgamedesign.blogspot.com/p/about-fta.html</a>[/quote]
I'd got the impression that FtA was going to be sandboxy both in gameplay and in world generation -- more like [i]Dwarf Fortress[/i] or [i]Minecraft[/i] than a triple-A RPG. I think that sai was thinking about a game with sandboxy gameplay and a hand-crafted world. (Not to say that it isn't a suggestion as good as any: a completed FtA would probably top the list of Least Unsuitable.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3775&start=0#p26974
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Looking after being "moved"
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-26 18:41:09

[quote="matt w"]If you don't want the first description to show up, you can say "move the player to the Front Yard, without printing a room description." See section 8.9 of Writing with Inform.[/quote]

Thanks, sir. One of these days I'll actually... you know... sit down and read the manual.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3774&start=0#p26975
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Checking the Player's Inventory / Required Objects
User: George / DateTime: 2011-11-26 18:52:24

I was looking at this earlier and was surprised not to find a basic 'this container is dark inside' kind of property. Is that by design or was I missing something?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3777&start=0#p26977
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Understand "T.V." as the television.
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-26 19:13:47

So I can't use literal punctuation in an understand statement, it seems. I can't figure out what the text replacement for a period would be or if that would even work. I've tried.

T[dot]V[dot]
T[period]V[period]
T[.]V[.]

That last one is cute.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3777&start=0#p26979
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Understand "T.V." as the television.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-26 19:43:02

You can't do this at all in a straightforward fashion, because Inform interprets a dot in a command as separating two commands that are entered on the same line (as in "s. s. e. e. d"). Either use an after reading the command rule to convert "T.V." and its spaced-out variants into "TV", or use Emily Short's built-in Punctuation Removal extension.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3775&start=0#p26980
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Looking after being "moved"
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-26 19:46:43

[quote="I4L"][quote="matt w"]If you don't want the first description to show up, you can say "move the player to the Front Yard, without printing a room description." See section 8.9 of Writing with Inform.[/quote]

Thanks, sir. One of these days I'll actually... you know... sit down and read the manual.[/quote]

No problem -- I may be the only person who actually started learning I7 by reading the manual, and I still forget a lot of it. It's a tough read unless you're willing to consume it a bit at a time as a procrastination device, before starting to do anything with it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=0#p26981
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: Kate McKee / DateTime: 2011-11-26 19:58:49

Last month, I had the pleasure of visiting the PR-IF meeting.  It was mentioned that the Parchment transcripts were stored and made available to the authors.

I was wondering if any of the authors cared to share any particularly insightful, unusual, humorous, or unexpected player commands.    Also, was the transcript logging useful as a feedback tool?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3774&start=0#p26982
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Checking the Player's Inventory / Required Objects
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2011-11-26 20:12:07

Yeah, I would think that this would be a common situation but perhaps not. I'll try the solution outlined above tonight and let you know how it goes. Thanks again!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3755&start=0#p26983
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Taco Fiction "Good" Ending
User: WaterMonkey / DateTime: 2011-11-26 20:12:37

Not all that long - just under 2 hours? I tend to go through games fairly quickly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3766&start=0#p26984
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The game that has the best world simulation?
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-11-26 20:43:17

[quote="maga"]
Also, making this kind of game and doing it well is a ton of work -- 
[/quote]

Yes I know that, I am trying to do it right now [emote];)[/emote]
But, in fact it is a lot less work to do it in a text game than a graphic game, and it is in fact easier than most people think.
I tried to create a realistic clothes engine in inform 7 and I surprisingly managed to do without being familiar with the language at the beginning. So I think we can reasonably create a world simulation faster and better in a text game than in any other game (this is not IF but I am influenced by dwarf fortress which may be the most realistic simulated game, and that was possible because the graphics are not the priority)
I also know a lot of people use IF for telling stories more than for making really playable games, but the potential for games is enormous in my opinion (at least for independant developpers).

[quote="maga"]
Again: simulating a [i]single[/i] NPC in a vaguely realistic way is a huge amount of work. There are entire games (not small ones, either) that are just about interacting with a single NPC. 
[/quote]

Yes I know this also, I have played Galatea for example and I wasn't even really convinced by the thing in fact.
I have personal ideas for implementing realistic NPC characters in exploratory games, a way that would allow to create a lot of characters with very interesting personalities and stories, but with a limited amount of work. I am creating a game right now that will allow me to sketch all the ingredients (I mean code routines, or extensions in inform7) to allow this.
I think that conversation can't be simulated realistically even with the most advanced AI in the world so this is the area to take advantage of the story-driven specificity of IF ^^
I will check all the games you talk about, as additional reference.

[quote="maga"]
But a deeply-implemented NPC who isn't important to the story is not really good design
[/quote]

this may be true for a story-driven game, but not if the story is constructed by the player, so that interacting with a so-called "not important npc" would make him the important one. 
It may be look impossible to design but I think there are ways and tools to approach this problem in text games.

[quote="maga"]
 The illusion of realism or of free will in a game is not a simple thing, and can be approached in a number of ways, each with disadvantages. Simulating a very expansive environment and letting the player do whatever they want in it is one approach, but it has some major problems -- not just for gameplay, but for realistic simulation.
[/quote]

Yes. In fact my purpose is not to create a completely realistic game, but a rich game. And I think the secret to make the player at ease is to be able to answer most of the requests he can do in a way that seems logical in the game itself.
For example you could try to make a realistic game of someone in a prison where there is only 1 room. It could be very in depth, realistic, and manageable. You need to have some sort of limit to the world, but you should make it logical in-game.

[quote="maga"]
See, in the real world we assume we're free-willed, but we don't generally break into houses to look at the interiors
[/quote]

Most people don't do it because it would have bad repercussions. Making a game realistic would only require to implement the bad repercussions so that it may be a possible thing but with consequences that may not be wanted (but they may also become part of the story/or add problems to solve or to be overwhelmed by, in the game). I guess this is where realism lies.
Not implementing the thing is the common solution, but if there is a not so difficult way of implementing something, even small but satisfying, it is easier to do in a text game that anywhere else I think.
At least, in my project this sort of actions have influence on the story and ending of the game, and are a realistic possibility to answer to some problems in game.

Thank you for the explanations, I will look into these games to have an overview of the thing ^^

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=0#p26985
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-11-26 20:45:26

It was pretty useful, but with hundreds of transcripts, a little overwhelming. Just clicked on a transcript at random. It ended:
[quote]where am i[/quote]

The following transcript led to a substantial change in the code after Marcus talked himself into permanent death:
[quote]talk to self
"Hello," you say to yourself, "what a fine pickle we find ourselves in this time."

[1] Berate yourself
[2] Stop talking to yourself

>
1
"You worthless cur," you say to yourself, "I could do way better than you if I wasn't you."

[Your stress level has increased slightly.]



    *** You succumb to stress and reach the limit of your mortality. You are dead. Jorge looks at you funny. "Did that really happen?" he asks. ***



Would you like to RESTART, RESTORE a saved game, QUIT or UNDO the last command?
> 
undo
You can't undo conversations.

Would you like to RESTART, RESTORE a saved game, QUIT or UNDO the last command?
> 
quit[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3766&start=0#p26986
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The game that has the best world simulation?
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-11-26 20:49:19

[quote="emshort"]As maga said, this isn't what IF usually does, but there are some games that come closer to it than others. Besides the games he mentions, I would recommend checking out Dangerous Curves and Worlds Apart.[/quote]

Thank you I didn't realized worlds apart was such a detailed exploratory game, I will look into it ^^



[quote="tove"]Farming the Apocalypse[/quote]
Thank you very much. This looks like what I am looking for. This kind of games are so ambitious they are always "in development" so I am not surprised by the status of this one. In fact beeing regularly updated is what makes them interesting and different from "finished" games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3766&start=0#p26988
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The game that has the best world simulation?
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-11-26 21:08:52

[quote="maga"][quote="tove"]Gravel's vision for [i]Farming the Apocalypse[/i] is very sandboxy as well, but of course that is still in-progress: <a class="postlink" href="http://gravelgamedesign.blogspot.com/p/about-fta.html">http://gravelgamedesign.blogspot.com/p/about-fta.html</a>[/quote]
I'd got the impression that FtA was going to be sandboxy both in gameplay and in world generation -- more like [i]Dwarf Fortress[/i] or [i]Minecraft[/i] than a triple-A RPG. I think that sai was thinking about a game with sandboxy gameplay and a hand-crafted world. (Not to say that it isn't a suggestion as good as any: a completed FtA would probably top the list of Least Unsuitable.)[/quote]

In fact I am thinking about randomizing world generation to a certain point.
If you want some realism you need variation, but you need as much as possible hand-crafted variation.
I guess I want to use the best features of both worlds (in there is indeed such thing as 2 worlds [emote];)[/emote])

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=0#p26989
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-26 21:12:06

I said some of this at the meeting, but it's worth repeating...

The transcripts were *tremendously* helpful. I got a Cold Iron update out late in the competition, but there's no reason I couldn't have gotten it into the first update cycle -- I was just lazy.

It was easy to tell the experienced IF players from the newcomers. Experienced players all started out referring to the named, portable objects (in my game, the book); then looked at the named scenery (the table); and then went outside.

The newcomers weren't that predictable. I see an "open book" here, for example, which I think most of us would never try. There was a large contingent of people who didn't try normal compass movement -- at least, not right off. "go to center of room", "go around in room", "walk to the door", etc. One notable case tried "m n", "m w", "m sw" -- I assume this is some convention from a MUD that I've never seen.

I don't expect to catch the completely confused players. There was another contigent who were clearly not experts, but were typing acceptable commands: "go west", "walk south", etc. They didn't get stuck. (I probably should have caught "leave house", which was tried a lot in that group. "leave" by itself works.)

Then there was "find axe", "get axe", "look for axe" -- commands which I really should have caught. That was the major addition in my update.

(Almost all the newcomers showed up in the first few days of judging. After the first two weeks, it was nearly all experts.)

Synonyms count. My game text said "A battered book is lying on the table", and people typed "read the battered book". If I'd been lazy about the "battered", that would have been a noticeable hit. Also, there's a reason the Inform library accepts "a" and "the" on all objects. Don't short-circuit that when you implement new commands.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3774&start=0#p26990
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Checking the Player's Inventory / Required Objects
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-11-26 21:12:57

I don't think you're missing anything, but it's not hard to leverage the sense-passing mechanics to roll your own.

[spoiler][code]
darkness: FillMedium
	material : Material {
		hearThru = transparent
		seeThru = opaque
		smellThru = transparent
		touchThru = transparent
	}
;

bag: Container 'bag' 'bag'
	lookInDesc = "The bag is filled with darkness. "
	dobjFor(Examine) remapTo(LookIn, self)

	// ought to be a method that changes the medium based on ambient light
	fillMedium = darkness
;

+ Thing 'gold coin' 'coin'
	"A gold coin. "
;
[/code][/spoiler]

Perhaps there's a more elegant way to do it; I don't know as much as I'd like about sense-passing in adv3.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2481&start=0#p26991
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Crowther's 1976 Adventure ported to I7, with source
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-11-26 21:21:57

[quote="NathanaelCulver"]Is this intended to be playable? I've tried playing it and have run into a number of untenable situations. Twopit Room, for example, is unnavigable. There seems no way to go down into the pits. Another room (can't remember which) description lists exits of N SE and E (or S?) which don't seem to actually exist.[/quote]

It's intended, from what I understand, to be as close as possible to the earliest known version of Adventure, done before Woods came along. And from what I've read, it succeeds - this really is an unfinished work, playable only as far down as two levels, give or take.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3766&start=0#p26992
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The game that has the best world simulation?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-26 21:42:46

[quote="maga"]This doesn't really happen in IF.[/quote]

Or in computer games at all, ever, really. Even if you pull out some games hailed as high-simulation "sandboxes," it takes only a few minutes of play to notice that they stick to modeling only a tiny subset of a tiny subset of the details that [i]seem [/i]to be there, or which might be sensibly inferred.

[quote="sai"]And I think the secret to make the player at ease is to be able to answer most of the requests he can do in a way that seems logical in the game itself.[/quote]

Well, [i]that [/i]is one of the things IF has a track record for doing well. But I think the words mean something different [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2481&start=0#p26993
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Crowther's 1976 Adventure ported to I7, with source
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-26 21:43:21

For more on Crowther's (pre-Don Woods) version of Adventure, see [url=http://www.filfre.net/2011/05/will-crowthers-adventure-part-2/]Jimmy Maher[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3766&start=0#p26996
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The game that has the best world simulation?
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-11-26 22:20:27

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="maga"]This doesn't really happen in IF.[/quote]

Or in computer games at all, ever, really. Even if you pull out some games hailed as high-simulation "sandboxes," it takes only a few minutes of play to notice that they stick to modeling only a tiny subset of a tiny subset of the details that [i]seem [/i]to be there.[/quote]

As I said I think dwarf fortress is a high standard of the genre, but most MUDs are also fairly realistic on a lot of levels and since they have no graphics it is a lot easier to really feel in a realistic environment. 
When you read a novel you don't remark all the non-realistic stuff that would be obvious if the world was modelized. I think using litterature kind of design for things difficult to modelize and simulation models for the rest could help creating a good and rich user experience, at least for a game which story fits to this kind of modelling.
You can't create a realistic conversation even with a single NPC but you can write realistic and interesting stories for several characters.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3781&start=0#p26997
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Partial external URL support in Quixe
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-26 22:23:58

Occasionally people ask about external hyperlinks in Inform games -- that is, a link which fires up a page in an external browser.

This is not part of the Glk/Glulx specs, but interpreters are free to turn URLs in the game output into clickable links. 

For a native app, I like the idea of putting "launch URL" into a context menu (right-click or control-click popup menu).  For a web app, that's a nuisance. (I think one could hack it in in some browsers, but not universally.)

Therefore, I've added the feature to Quixe in a simpler, but opt-in way. By default, nothing special is done to URLs. But if you add a configuration line to Quixe, external URLs are automatically turned into clickable hyperlinks wherever they occur in the game output.

To give you more control, there are two options available. The "search" option detects all URLs in the output. The "match" option only converts URLs that are a complete line or style span. (This is faster, because it can use a much simpler regex. It also allows you to decide which URLs are linky on a case-by-case basis, by changing when you set the styles.)

For a demo, go to <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glk/glkote/sample-demo.html">http://eblong.com/zarf/glk/glkote/sample-demo.html</a> and type "links". That's the "match" option. For the "search" option, see <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glk/glkote/sample-demo2.html">http://eblong.com/zarf/glk/glkote/sample-demo2.html</a> .

(This code is not yet released. It's in my github repository, however.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3766&start=10#p26998
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The game that has the best world simulation?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-26 22:25:14

[quote="sai"]As I said I think dwarf fortress is a high standard of the genre [...][/quote]

Yes, you did say.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3766&start=10#p26999
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The game that has the best world simulation?
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-11-26 22:33:39

[quote="Ghalev"]
[quote="sai"]And I think the secret to make the player at ease is to be able to answer most of the requests he can do in a way that seems logical in the game itself.[/quote]
Well, [i]that [/i]is one of the things IF has a track record for doing well. But I think the words mean something different [emote]:)[/emote]
[/quote]

I think the IF languages provide the tools to do it well, but I don't have seen it well implemented at least in most games I have played (I remember varicella to be rather good though). I particularly dislike the "guess the verb" design. I think the player should know what he can do and the interest should raise from what he decides to do or not do (the game should not be a quest to find how to say what we want to do. I don't think this should be called "puzzle" as well [emote];)[/emote] )

By the way, "attack, kill" etc... are not in my opinion anything that makes sense. We can have the purpose of killing but this should not be an action triggered by an informal word. THIS is a big step towards realism and it is only a matter of choosing words for actions. You may want to differentiate purposes for a same action with different words (I don't know if it is a good idea though)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3766&start=10#p27000
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The game that has the best world simulation?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-26 22:41:02

[quote="sai"]I think the IF languages provide the tools to do it well, but I don't have seen it well implemented at least in most games I have played (I remember varicella to be rather good though). I particularly dislike the "guess the verb" design. I think the player should know what he can do and the interest should raise from what he decides to do or not do (the game should not be a quest to find how to say what we want to do. I don't think this should be called "puzzle" as well [emote];)[/emote] )

By the way, "attack, kill" etc... are not in my opinion anything that makes sense. We can have the purpose of killing but this should not be an action triggered by an informal word. THIS is a big step towards realism and it is only a matter of choosing words for actions.[/quote]

You go, girl.

As I said, I think the words mean something different.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3766&start=10#p27001
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The game that has the best world simulation?
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-11-26 23:11:23

[quote="Ghalev"]

As I said, I think the words mean something different.[/quote]

Yes, you did say.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3766&start=10#p27002
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The game that has the best world simulation?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-11-26 23:44:49

Gods know I love me some Dwarf Fortress, but you certainly can't choose the kind of story you want to tell in it: basically all Adventurer stories are of the form "a guy went around and fought some stuff and then died horribly in a pile of his own carefully-specified fluids". There's a bit more choice in Fortress mode, but you're still bound into a quite narrow range of narratives.

[quote="sai"] I particularly dislike the "guess the verb" design. I think the player should know what he can do and the interest should raise from what he decides to do or not do (the game should not be a quest to find how to say what we want to do. I don't think this should be called "puzzle" as well [emote];)[/emote] )[/quote]
This is standard wisdom in IF and has been for many years. I have never heard anybody defend guess-the-verb, per se. (Theory: much easier than practice.)

[quote="sai"]By the way, "attack, kill" etc... are not in my opinion anything that makes sense. We can have the purpose of killing but this should not be an action triggered by an informal word. THIS is a big step towards realism and it is only a matter of choosing words for actions. You may want to differentiate purposes for a same action with different words (I don't know if it is a good idea though)[/quote]
Again, your definition of what constitutes realism is a bit arbitrary. "Attack" is not an informal word, although it's a non-specific one, which might be what you mean. The people I've known in the real world who have attacked people have not spent any time considering the specifics of how they're going to go about it; ATTACK BOB would be a far more accurate representation of that mental process than STRIKE BOB REPEATEDLY ABOUT THE HEAD AND NECK WITH A RUSTY SPOON. Now, there's nothing to say that you have to consider command style through the lens of the PC's thoughts: in some situations your approach might be more appropriate. But the point is, what looks like realism to you (in terms of the things that you're interested in) is likely to look hugely unrealistic from another perspective. All simulations omit many things: the choice of which things to simulate closely and which to handwave is yours. Nobody ever really wants artistic realism for realism's sake: they want realism for a particular purpose. It's a good idea to know what your purposes are.

I also note that virtually in the same breath, you've said "guess-the-verb is bad" and "the player should have to express how they attack someone without using the verb ATTACK."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=0#p27003
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-11-26 23:50:05

[quote]
>where am i
>go to center of room
>go around in room
>walk to the door
[/quote]
[url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Aaron%20Reed/Player%20Experience%20Upgrade/index.html]Player Experience Upgrade[/url] (or, if cherry-picking, just [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Aaron%20Reed/Smarter%20Parser/index.html]Smarter Parser[/url]) would catch all of these. BOOYAH!
[quote]
>leave [current room]
[/quote]
This one isn't caught, but I've now added it to [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Aaron%20Reed/Small%20Kindnesses/index.html]Small Kindnesses[/url] (also part of Player Experience Upgrade) for the next release.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3749&start=0#p27004
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 update?
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-11-26 23:55:25

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="JoeyJones"]Would they mail it to your house or would you just get to permission to visit it at  zoo?[/quote]

It would simply leap out of the upper optical-drive tray when the game begins (on most systems). There'd also be a USB option.

Sadly, it will be Glulx-only.[/quote]

Really, people, it's well past time to let z-code go and switch your project to Glulx. I've tried to fit a panther in z-code's limited memory space, and believe me, it's not pretty.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3749&start=0#p27005
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 update?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-27 00:24:25

[quote="aaronius"][quote="Ghalev"][quote="JoeyJones"]Would they mail it to your house or would you just get to permission to visit it at  zoo?[/quote]

It would simply leap out of the upper optical-drive tray when the game begins (on most systems). There'd also be a USB option.

Sadly, it will be Glulx-only.[/quote]

Really, people, it's well past time to let z-code go and switch your project to Glulx. I've tried to fit a panther in z-code's limited memory space, and believe me, it's not pretty.[/quote]

But the [i]panther portability,[/i] man! Panther[i] portablity![/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3774&start=0#p27006
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Checking the Player's Inventory / Required Objects
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2011-11-27 02:30:08

The under-bed remap technique above seems to work well, as long as I don't give the 'widget' a specialDesc.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=40#p27007
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-11-27 03:53:17

[quote="I4L"]Maybe a drop down, since a room can only be in a single region.[/quote]

You can place one or more I7 region(s) inside another region, however.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3783&start=0#p27009
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Breaking a Mirror
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2011-11-27 04:12:50

I am having trouble getting my mirror breaking code to work - perhaps someone here can see where I am messing up. Here is the code I have so far (my verify code is not implemented yet, I just want to get it to fire before I begin to update it to check that the mirror hasn't already been broken). The code below results in: "Nothing obvious happens."

[code]
mirror: Thing 'mirror/bathroom mirror' 'bathroom mirror'
{
    location = MasterBathroom
    isBroken = nil
    specialDesc = ''

    desc = ""

    dobjFor(Break)
    {
        verify() {}
        action()
        {
            'You break the mirror.';
        }
    }
}
[/code]



Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3777&start=0#p27010
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Understand "T.V." as the television.
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-11-27 04:35:52

See also this thread: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3517">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3517</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3766&start=10#p27011
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The game that has the best world simulation?
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-11-27 05:35:19

I talked about the verbs attack and kill but 'kill' alone was a better example.
As for realism I think that having the player of the aventure mode in dwarf fortress coming from nowhere and going nowhere is far from realistic and lacks a story that would make it realistic.
The problems with realism in IF come most of the time because of the text parser that eventually let you think you can write anything, or more exactly that doesn't make clear all the possible commands (which vary a lot from game to game) so that even simple puzzles can be very frustrating. 
And IF games most of the time don't let the player get the commands gradually, like most videogames do. I think this may be a bad habit of the genre [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=40#p27012
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-27 06:09:12

[quote="Eleas"][quote="I4L"]Maybe a drop down, since a room can only be in a single region.[/quote]

You can place one or more I7 region(s) inside another region, however.[/quote]

That's absolutely true. However, it's much easier to manually group six or seven smaller regions into larger regions in the source text than it is to group dozens or hundreds of individual rooms into smaller regions, then into larger regions.

I'm all for being able to add regions into regions and if that were available, that would be great also. Just seems like the less important feature (and the more error prone).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3771&start=10#p27013
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dropping Actions & Library Messages
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-27 07:14:39

I think that the noun variable is not yet set, when the miscellanous library message number 30 is called: so "X SREW" (etc.) will give you "You don't see nothing here."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3766&start=10#p27014
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The game that has the best world simulation?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-11-27 08:33:15

This discussion got me thinking about two very different games, and I think it might be relevant to point them out.

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=f9jkiwt1ae9g5c1g">http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=f9jkiwt1ae9g5c1g</a>

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=z69xitgxqpj96jwx">http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=z69xitgxqpj96jwx</a>

The latter's relevance to the discussion becomes relevant only after this command:

[spoiler]KILL LION[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3766&start=10#p27015
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The game that has the best world simulation?
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-11-27 08:54:01

[quote="Peter Pears"]This discussion got me thinking about two very different games, and I think it might be relevant to point them out.

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=f9jkiwt1ae9g5c1g">http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=f9jkiwt1ae9g5c1g</a>

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=z69xitgxqpj96jwx">http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=z69xitgxqpj96jwx</a>

The latter's relevance to the discussion becomes relevant only after this command:

[spoiler]KILL LION[/spoiler][/quote]

LOL

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3784&start=0#p27016
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Indentation Headaches? Back to the Shop...
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-27 09:13:42

Alright, I don't know if this is an indentation issue or if I'm just nesting conditionals incorrectly. Here's what I've got:

[code]
"Indendation" by I4L

SomeNumber is a number variable.

Instead of examining anything:
	Say "You have more important things on your mind! [run paragraph on]"

The Shop is a room. "Various and sundry items are scattered about. You are currently strapped to a conveyor that pulls your head closer and closer to a deadly table saw."

The Front Yard is a room. "It doesn't matter what this looks like, as you'll never live to see it." The Front Yard is north of the Shop.

TableSaw is a device in the Shop. The printed name is "Table Saw". Understand "saw" as TableSaw. TableSaw is switched on. The TableSaw is undescribed.

The conveyor is in the Shop. Understand "belt" as conveyor. The conveyor is undescribed.

SomeScene is a scene. SomeScene begins when play begins. SomeScene ends when SomeNumber is 20.

When SomeScene begins:
	Every turn when TableSaw is switched on:
		Increase SomeNumber by 1;
		say "You are pulled a little closer to the saw!";
		say SomeNumber;
		If SomeNumber is 10:
			say "Unfortunately Supes was having a kryptonian bowel movement and Spidey was picking up his tights from the dry cleaners. On the positive side, the blinding and searing pain in your skull is mercifully short-lived, as the blade of the saw divides you evenly in twain to the shoulders.[paragraph break]This all started with that damn screw...";
			End the game.
[/code]

This particular incarnation produces the following foolishness:

[quote]
This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6G60) on its most recent run through:


Problem. The phrase or rule definition 'Every turn when TableSaw is switched on'   is written using the 'colon and indentation' syntax for its 'if's, 'repeat's and 'while's, where blocks of phrases grouped together are indented one tab step inward from the 'if ...:' or similar phrase to which they belong. But the tabs here seem to be misaligned, and I can't determine the structure. The first phrase going awry in the definition seems to be 'Increase SomeNumber by 1'  , in case that helps. 

 This sometimes happens even when the code looks about right, to the eye, if rows of spaces have been used to indent phrases instead of tabs.
[/quote]

Points of interest:

[list]
[*]"The first phrase gone awry..." is 100% not true, because there are no errors if I remove everything after "Say SomeNumber;"[/*:m]
[*]I've tried all manner of indentation and get varied error messages depending on how deeply (or not) things are indented.[/*:m][/list:u]

The question, then... Golly gee, is this truly an indentation problem or just sloppy writing? Or both?

I've looked through the manual (just for you, matt w) and I've searched the first half dozen or so pages of the forum. (Indendation is common term.) But the indentation [i]looks[/i] right to me.

[I know, I probably should have removed a lot of the "fluff" in the sample.]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3784&start=0#p27017
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indentation Headaches? Back to the Shop...
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-11-27 09:19:40

Is the problem that you have both "When SomeScene begins:" and "Every turn when TableSaw is switched on:"?  (I don't have time to test, nor am I an Inform Master, but that looks fishy to me.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3784&start=0#p27018
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indentation Headaches? Back to the Shop...
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-27 09:29:50

[quote="tove"]Is the problem that you have both "When SomeScene begins:" and "Every turn when TableSaw is switched on:"?  (I don't have time to test, nor am I an Inform Master, but that looks fishy to me.)[/quote]

That apparently would be the problem. I'm hoping that this is only because it's a "when play begins" scene, as I can foresee wanting to use turn checking during scenes at some point.

(Also just saying "End the game" is not for cool kids.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3783&start=0#p27019
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Breaking a Mirror
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2011-11-27 10:13:35

I believe the single quotes around "You break..." should be double quotes.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3784&start=0#p27020
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indentation Headaches? Back to the Shop...
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-11-27 10:16:52

Maybe "Every turn during SomeScene" is the phrase you're looking for?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3784&start=0#p27021
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indentation Headaches? Back to the Shop...
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-27 10:19:56

[quote="Trumgottist"]Maybe "Every turn during SomeScene" is the phrase you're looking for?[/quote]

Well, in the actual project, I don't want that counter running every turn, only when a specific thing is happening. I'm obviously mishandling the scene functionality somehow.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3784&start=0#p27022
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indentation Headaches? Back to the Shop...
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-27 10:38:42

You can add that to the rule preamble as well:
[code]Every turn when TableSaw is switched on during SomeScene:[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3783&start=0#p27023
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Breaking a Mirror
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2011-11-27 10:47:18

Haha wow - I could have SWORN I tried both double and single quotes with no success, but you are exactly right thank you so much!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3766&start=10#p27024
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The game that has the best world simulation?
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-11-27 10:58:51

[quote="maga"]Gods know I love me some Dwarf Fortress, but you certainly can't choose the kind of story you want to tell in it: basically all Adventurer stories are of the form "a guy went around and fought some stuff and then died horribly in a pile of his own carefully-specified fluids". There's a bit more choice in Fortress mode, but you're still bound into a quite narrow range of narratives.[/quote]

I have two fortress narratives: hubris and madness.

The hubris narrative goes like this: ruler of fortress has grand vision (33-storey obsidian pyramid over an active volcano; draining an entire ocean into the underground caverns; suicidal fortress over a seemingly bottomless pit), sacrifices the livelihood and happiness of many dwarves to bring about this vision, dwarves spiral into chaos and unhappiness as goblins steal their children and forgotten beasts splatter their blood upon the elaborate engravings of strawberries.

The madness narrative goes like this: a healthy, happy, productive fortress of over a hundred dwarves is built up from but a small settlement; there are many pets and livestock; life slows to an infuriating treacle pace; fortress is either abandoned in rage, or the entire populace is induced to pull a lever, opening a sluice, bringing the water to wash them down a magma chute.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3766&start=10#p27025
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The game that has the best world simulation?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-11-27 11:18:27

My bad, the command I gave for the "nemean lion" is only half the fun. Try rather [spoiler]cut lion[/spoiler].

Of course, this whole Lion business is a joke that one probably wouldn't get at first, maybe ever. But it's followed by a much more mundane sequence where typing the most obvious command wields a repeat of the joke, making it more accessible. In fact, the way the resulting actions are unavoidable, it might be a way to express a disparity between PC and player - the action dictated by the player prompted the PC to take actions that the player never intended, but which make perfect sense for the PC.

Or maybe I'm just way over-analysing.

I probably am.

Bah.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3784&start=0#p27026
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indentation Headaches? Back to the Shop...
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-27 11:23:33

So the moral of the story, basically, is that this had absolutely nothing to do with indentation...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3764&start=0#p27027
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform7 iPad port?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-27 12:20:51

One possibility for moving in this direction is I7 as a web service. Port the IDE to Javascript, run it on a server that can accept I7 compile jobs and post the games as Parchment on the fly. 

If you could invoke the I7 compiler via a web API, you could also implement a middle ground: an iPad native IDE which exports the code to the server for compilation. You'd need a live internet connection to use it, but it would probably be more comfortable than a web app. (Mike Sugarbaker pointed me at CodeToGo, an iOS app that does this with a bunch of programming languages, although not I6 or I7.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3784&start=0#p27028
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indentation Headaches? Back to the Shop...
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-27 12:27:24

Right. I think this is what happens.

Inform reads the original code as
[code]When SomeScene begins: do nothing.

	Every turn when TableSaw is switched on:
		Increase SomeNumber by 1;
		[etc.][/code]

In a technical sense there is an indentation issue here, since the line "Increase SomeNumber by 1;" is two tabs indented (whereas, of course, it should be only one tab indented).
When you delete or comment out the closing lines (from "If SomeNumber is 10;" on), that particular issue disappears, because the rule is then formally no longer written with colon-and-indentation syntax. This is because the phrases that remain could all be written on the same line and would still compile fine:
[code]Every turn when TableSaw is switched on: Increase SomeNumber by 1; say "You are pulled a little closer to the saw!"; say SomeNumber.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3785&start=0#p27029
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [solved] converting topic to indexed text
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-11-27 14:20:49

So I have some conversation code:

[code]"convos" by Andrew Schultz

room 1 is a room. Biff is a man in room 1. 3-D is a man in room 1.

the block asking rule is not listed in any rulebook.

check asking about:
	repeat through the table of biff-convo:
		if the topic understood matches the topic entry:
			if the speaker entry is noun:
				say "[speaker entry] sez [statement entry][line break]" instead;
	let L be a list of indexed text;
	repeat through the table of biff-convo:
		if speaker entry is the noun:
			if there is an askable entry and the askable entry > 0:
				add shorthand entry to L;
	if number of entries in L is 0:
		say "You don't have anything specific to ask [noun] right now." instead;
	if number of entries in L is 1:
		say "All you can ask [noun] about right now is [entry 1 of L]." instead;
	say "[noun] won't know anything about that. You can currently ask [noun] about ";
	let count be 1;
	repeat with LL running through L:
		if count < number of entries in L - 1:
			say "[LL], ";
		otherwise if count is number of entries in L - 1:
			say "[LL] ";
		otherwise:
			say "or [LL].";
		increment count;
				
table of biff-convo
topic	speaker	statement	shorthand	askable
"wxy/xyz"	Biff	"[one of]Xyz is xyz.[or]What else is there to say?[stopping]"	"xyz"	1
"Biff/himself/him"	Biff	"[one of]I'm awesome.[or]You don't deserve to hear how awesome I am yet.[stopping]"	"Biff"	1
"hidden"	Biff	"You shouldn't be able to ask about this!"	"hidden"	-1
"Biff"	3-D	"Hey Biff! This kid doesn't know who you are!"	"Biff"	1[/code]

The "shorthand" entry in the table looks redundant. I'd like to be able to express the topic entry (a topic) as indexed text, and then cut off the first / and everything right of it.

unfortunately, I can't get the second sentence straight...

Let I be indexed text. Let I be the topic understood as indexed text. replace the regular expression "\/.*" in I with "".

I know there are robust conversation packages out there that I'll want to look at in the future--but they might take a while to implement/understand, and I had general questions about converting between indexed text and topics in addition to being able to clean up this table.

Thanks for any and all advice!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3784&start=0#p27030
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indentation Headaches? Back to the Shop...
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-11-27 14:27:30

This is probably connected to [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=417]this bug[/url] that (seemingly) allows nesting rule definitions. The compiler isn't prepared to find such situation so it behaves erratically.

But yes, the main problem was that you were trying to create a rule mid-game, which is not possible.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3785&start=0#p27031
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: converting topic to indexed text
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-27 15:12:25

[quote="aschultz"]I can't get the second sentence straight...

Let I be indexed text. Let I be the topic understood as indexed text. replace the regular expression "\/.*" in I with "".[/quote]

That would be just
[code]
let I be indexed text;
let I be the topic understood;
replace the regular expression "\/.*" in I with "".
[/code]

You've already declared I as indexed text.
(I think phrases such as "the topic understood as indexed text" and the like are custom phrases only used by a couple of extensions that define them specially.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3783&start=0#p27032
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Breaking a Mirror
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2011-11-27 16:09:26

No problem :-)

Single quotes are used for things that are strings - stuff like
[code]local str1 = 'this is';
local str2 = 'a string';
return str1 + ' ' + str2;[/code]
while double quotes are used to actually display messages, like:
[code]myFunction{
"This will print";
}[/code]
It takes a little getting used to, but it will eventually all make sense :-)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3784&start=0#p27033
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indentation Headaches? Back to the Shop...
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-11-27 16:18:23

[quote="I4L"]
Points of interest:

[list]
[*]"The first phrase gone awry..." is 100% not true, because there are no errors if I remove everything after "Say SomeNumber;"[/*:m]
[*]I've tried all manner of indentation and get varied error messages depending on how deeply (or not) things are indented.[/*:m][/list:u]

The question, then... Golly gee, is this truly an indentation problem or just sloppy writing? Or both?

I've looked through the manual (just for you, matt w) and I've searched the first half dozen or so pages of the forum. (Indendation is common term.) But the indentation [i]looks[/i] right to me.

[/quote]

No, the problem is that I7 makes learning so freakin' difficult, as you've discovered. It sounds like you have a solution to this particular problem, but I hope you've steeled yourself for the long haul. There will be many, many more problems of similar asininity. Trash like that is why I gave up on I7.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3775&start=0#p27034
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Looking after being "moved"
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-11-27 16:20:13

[quote="matt w"][quote="I4L"][quote="matt w"]If you don't want the first description to show up, you can say "move the player to the Front Yard, without printing a room description." See section 8.9 of Writing with Inform.[/quote]

Thanks, sir. One of these days I'll actually... you know... sit down and read the manual.[/quote]

No problem -- I may be the only person who actually started learning I7 by reading the manual, and I still forget a lot of it. It's a tough read unless you're willing to consume it a bit at a time as a procrastination device, before starting to do anything with it.[/quote]

You're right. The manual is not written as a manual. It's written like a novel.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3786&start=0#p27035
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Getting Run Time Error on subtime.t on TADS13
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-11-27 16:47:13

I am looking for someone who has used 'subtime.t' on TADS13. I included it in my code as "subtime.t" It compiles with no error. But, when I test the compile, I get the following error at the code location: vec[1], eventReached();

The runtime error I get is: index out of range.

This is probably because I haven't yet learned how and where to attach the first time vector.

I plan to have my player wear a watch which he will use to tell the time but I'm not sure how to do that yet.

The watch will be wearable and he will not be able to take it off.

Sure could use some help on this [emote]:roll:[/emote] 

RonG

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3786&start=0#p27036
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Getting Run Time Error on subtime.t on TADS13
User: tomasb / DateTime: 2011-11-27 17:04:33

TADS13? Probably you should check out the source code of MJR's game "Return to Ditch Day" which employs subtime.t: [url]http://www.tads.org/games/ditch3/index.htm[/url]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3786&start=0#p27037
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Getting Run Time Error on subtime.t on TADS13
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-11-27 17:46:17

Sorry. I meant TADS3, not TADS13.

RonG [emote]:oops:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3786&start=0#p27038
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Getting Run Time Error on subtime.t on TADS13
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-11-27 17:53:49

When you say you included it, do you mean like this?

[code]
#include "extensions/subtime.t"
[/code]

Because that is incorrect; you have to add it as another source file in your Makefile.t3m.

[code]
-lib system
-lib adv3/adv3
-source extensions/subtime
-source foo
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3786&start=0#p27039
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Getting Run Time Error on subtime.t on TADS13
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-11-27 18:21:13

I inclduded the following:

#include "subtime.t"

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=50#p27040
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Genstein / DateTime: 2011-11-27 18:25:41

Hey all,

I'm a bit tied up with other things for a few days, but wanted to post to say that there are some excellent suggestions here! I'll post back with thoughts (and indeed questions) as soon as I can. Keep the suggestions coming though, if you'd like to [emote]:)[/emote] I'm not sure how many new features I can fit into the next release as it won't be as big a set of changes as the last release - but I can see what I can do about the top few requests at least, esp. if they're little ones [emote]:)[/emote] And I do plan on keeping the Trizbort versions going.

Would people prefer a uservoice style affair, or is that totally over the top for such a tiny tool as Trizbort? Thoughts welcome.

Thanks,
eg.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3761&start=0#p27041
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Hugo "Open House" Competition
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-11-27 18:31:35

[quote="Roody_Yogurt"]- Waiting until the last week (or day) even and writing a classic-SpeedIF-sized game is viable (we made the coding-time intentionally vague so newcomers can as much time as they want acquainting themselves).[/quote]
I may try to do this.  I don't have any chance of finishing a thorough game, but I think I might try to write something in one sitting and then maybe clean it up.

Since works already in progress are allowed, I suppose I hypothetically could enter the game I've been working on for a year now, but I think I would rather write a quick, no-pressure game based on the suggested theme.  Also, I've already failed to meet all the deadlines and goals I've set for myself for my game, so I don't have a right to intend to have it done in time for this comp, even though I feel that I could get it done.

Sounds like fun. [emote]:-)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3784&start=10#p27042
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indentation Headaches? Back to the Shop...
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-27 19:04:58

Haha. Well, I refuse to let it beat me! I think I've overcome the major obstacles that I need to at this point. Not looking forward to dialog, but I'll hopefully be able to save that for the end.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3786&start=0#p27043
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Getting Run Time Error on subtime.t on TADS13
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-11-27 19:09:53

OK, that's the problem. Put it in your Makefile as an additional source file and it should compile without a runtime error.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=0#p27044
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-11-27 19:22:03

The Baron is the Id, the Castle is the Psychic Apparatus, the Lumberjack is the Superego and the axe is a defense mechanism. This is not a subtle game, nor is this a proper review. That something as crude and stupid as [i]The Baron[/i] could win the Spring Thing is a testimony to the crudity and stupidity of the IF crowd. That it was nominated for best writing, I can only hope was some kind of cruel joke at the author's expense.



Examples of award-winning IF prose:

"When you open your eyes, you see the head of the dragon approaching you, its mouth wide open--once again it breaths its deadly fire at you, and after a short scream you can no longer hear yourself the darkness falls over you like a cool blanket."

There is one grammatical error, one missing comma and one redundancy in the above sentence. Can you spot them?


"The weak light of the moon, which enters the room through the window, envelops the furniture of the bedroom in a cloak of unworldly beauty."

Does the "light of the moon" (why not simply "moonlight"?) also put proper postage on the furniture it envelops?


"The landing is enveloped by uneven darkness."

The author really likes postal metaphors.


"It is half a year later, in the icy months of winter. You have gone sledging with Maartje
over the thick layer of snow that has deposited itself on the village during the past few days."

Yes, indeed, winter months tend to be icy. The snow depositing itself is the third postal metaphor so far.


"Next to the stairs down stands an elegant cupboard"

Does this parse?


"From his unreachable heights the moon looks reproachfully down on you."

The game tells me the moon is not important to the story, so I assume this is what they call atmosphere.


"The top of the church tower just peeks above the houses on the other side of the street, like a black finger against the star-filled sky."

The church is giving God the finger? How... Updikean, I guess.


"In elegant handwriting, a message has been written on the parchment"

Lumberjacks wear jeans and people write letters on parchment. What epoch is this exactly? Oh, right! It's a Freudian parable, a timeless piece.


"A sheet of paper, crumpled and torn, on which sentences written in black ink--the careful handwriting of a girl--tell their sorrowful story."

I take it that the sorrowful story of the sentences is their stilted diction. 


>SWING AXE
"There's nothing sensible to swing here."


"You can see a dead young wolf and a dead she-wolf here."

>X YOUNG
"Like its mother, the young wolf has a dark grey pelt, turned dirty and lustreless through hardships.
He is so lean that you can count all his ribs. If his mother doesn't find a prey soon, he will not survive the winter."

Never mind the inconsistency. A far bigger problem for this childish morality tale is the euphemism "find a prey."
Replace it with "kill a cute little rabbit" and you've seen through its silly hypocrisy.


"A wooden torch of about half a meter ends in a lustily burning flame."

This would have been much funnier in an Adam Thornton game.


"In the bleak light that comes through the trapdoor, you can just see descry that this has been a dungeon."

Descry?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3766&start=20#p27046
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The game that has the best world simulation?
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-11-27 20:46:52

[quote="Peter Pears"]My bad, the command I gave for the "nemean lion" is only half the fun. Try rather [spoiler]cut lion[/spoiler].

Of course, this whole Lion business is a joke that one probably wouldn't get at first, maybe ever. But it's followed by a much more mundane sequence where typing the most obvious command wields a repeat of the joke, making it more accessible. In fact, the way the resulting actions are unavoidable, it might be a way to express a disparity between PC and player - the action dictated by the player prompted the PC to take actions that the player never intended, but which make perfect sense for the PC.

Or maybe I'm just way over-analysing.

I probably am.

Bah.[/quote]

This may be the game that has the best laugh reward on time spent playing I have ever seen.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3785&start=0#p27047
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: converting topic to indexed text
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-11-27 21:34:45

Hmm. I didn't know you could do that. Thanks very much!

But I think I phrased my question poorly. I didn't realize you could call a column something, then put its type in parentheses. So I'll try to pare things down to what I really want.

Currently the code works ok as such:

[code]"convos" by Andrew Schultz

The Diner is a room. Biff is a man in The Diner.

the block asking rule is not listed in any rulebook.

check asking about:
	repeat through the table of biff-convo:
		if topic understood matches the blather entry:
			say "[statement entry]" instead;
	say "Biff's not very smart. Here's all you can ask him about:[paragraph break]";
	repeat through the table of biff-convo:
		say "-- [shorthand entry][line break]";

table of biff-convo
blather (topic)	statement	shorthand
"Biff/himself/him"	"[one of]I'm awesome.[or]You don't deserve to hear how awesome I am yet.[stopping]"	"Biff"
"McFly"	"He should be writing my paper by now!"	"McFly"
"Marty/Calvin"	"That punk's dead meat when I catch him!"	"Calvin"
"Tree/trees"	"Make like one and get out of here."	"Tree"

test askbiff with "ask biff about himself/ask biff about xyz";
[/code]

But what I want to do is replace

[code]		say "-- [shorthand entry][line break]";[/code]

With something more manageable, e.g. 

[code]		let X be indexed text;
		let X be the regex manipulation of the coded text in the blather entry (replace "\/.*" with "");
		say "-- [shorthand entry][line break]";[/code]

Is the 2nd line of the pseudocode manageable with some trick I don't know yet? Or am I just not allowed to mix topic entries (as opposed to the topic understood) with indexed text?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=0#p27048
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-27 21:42:52

Having played a couple of IFComp games with Smarter Parser, as a player I would dearly like the option to turn it off in any given game. A fair amount of what it does seems like it captures stuff that isn't a problem for me as a moderately experienced player (I'm not going to type "where am i" unless heavily prompted to do so), so it doesn't do much to upgrade my personal experience. 

Less selfishly, it also seems to slow things down considerably. Playing online on an admittedly tetchy laptop, referring to an unimplemented object would sometimes send Parchment into such a deep think that it would give me an "unresponsive script" error; it was a great disappointment when a long wait yielded only "You can't see any such thing here!"* Trying it again on a non-overloaded browser just now, the delay caused by error messages wasn't nearly as drastic, but it's noticeable.

And I sometimes found that Smarter Parser clashed with the game in a way that made me mistrust the messages I was getting from it. The most drastic example was the message that you don't usually need to use adverbs ending in "-ly"... in a game whose main character was named Lilly. (Which has since been revised so that error message is less likely to show, but still.) It remains true that you don't need to use adverbs, but the message so clearly is mismatched to the details of the game that it makes me distrust the other error messages I get. So when Smarter Parser later tells me that I don't need to refer to body parts, I don't believe it. And I wouldn't be surprised to find that message popping up sometime when you do need to refer to body parts.

So, I would advise caution about just dropping Smarter Parser into a project unless you know exactly what it does and can customize any messages that aren't exactly appropriate. And, though it surely does help with some of the most common misunderstood commands that novices type in, I'm not convinced it has that much to offer the non-novice player, and it would be nice to be able to avoid its costs. 

Of course I haven't analyzed transcripts, so maybe non-novice players are making these errors too, but from zarf's account it didn't sound like it. (BTW, I think I recognize some of those commands from [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=25264#p25264]this playthrough[/url], which was somewhat unusual in that you had a total noob and an experienced player looking over her shoulder to occasionally offer suggestions, like "try going in a compass direction." I was impressed at how much was understood; as zarf says, accepting "a" and "the" is really helpful.)

Having complained, thank God for Small Kindnesses. I can't stand being told "I only understood you as far as wanting to exit" when I try to exit the thing I'm in.) 

*This was a game that used Smarter Parser but not Neutral Library Messages.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=0#p27049
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-11-27 22:34:06

[quote="matt w"]Having played a couple of IFComp games with Smarter Parser, as a player I would dearly like the option to turn it off in any given game.[/quote]

This is perhaps not as well-known as it should be, but you can in fact type NOVICE OFF to disable Smarter Parser.

[quote="matt w"]I'm not convinced it has that much to offer the non-novice player...[/quote]

No, it's definitely targeted squarely at novices, who in most collections of IF transcripts I've studied are the majority of players. (This is usually in contexts outside of interactive fictions competitions, mind.)

[quote="matt w"]Less selfishly, it also seems to slow things down considerably [in browsers].[/quote]

This is a legitimate concern for both authors and players, I know. Progress continues on several fronts, including low-level Inform 7 optimizations and the continuing Javascript execution speed browser wars. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think regular expressions are not particularly optimized in I7 at present. I know Dannii opined at some point that this might be relatively easy code to optimise, but I don't think that's happened yet.

[quote="matt w"]The most drastic example was the message that you don't usually need to use adverbs ending in "-ly"... in a game whose main character was named Lilly.[/quote]

[quote="matt w"]So when Smarter Parser later tells me that I don't need to refer to body parts, I don't believe it. And I wouldn't be surprised to find that message popping up sometime when you do need to refer to body parts.[/quote]

Yeah, these are both genuine concerns with Smarter Parser. On the -ly front, this was an attempt to make things run faster (natch) by switching out a list of common adjectives in a regular expression for something simpler. I don't have a good sense of whether it's doing more good than harm in present form, although this example is certainly a data point against.

The latter case is also problematic. Certainly if I was writing a game that *did* involve the use of body parts, I would probably override the Smarter Parser block related to this, or at least change its message. I do realize that not every author who can use an extension knows how to do this. But here I think there's more of a clear win: I'd feel safe in saying there are many more games without implemented body parts than those with, so the benefit of matching the semi-common novice error of trying to interact with them outweighs the cases where it might produce a misleading message.

In general, extensions or no, authors should *always* customize the built-in messages for their own game. It's not as easy as it should be to do this right now, especially for extensions in a consistent way, but it's still true.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=0#p27050
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-11-27 22:35:32

Oh, and also! Thanks very much for the feedback. [emote]:)[/emote] Extensions do not get the light shined on them often enough.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3715&start=10#p27054
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about speaking
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-27 23:46:22

[quote="yingxuy"]I guess you can not do without it, but does not include the expansion of the national response function, the implied offer of the main interlocutors in the list of things they talk about?[/quote]

I'm sorry... Gotta flag this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3788&start=0#p27055
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Rounding to the nearest unit
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2011-11-27 23:51:17

I am having trouble getting Inform to convert from centimeters to inches, and round at the same time.  Here is what I have:
[code]Section 1 - Units

Measurement is a kind of value.  The measurements are metric and imperial.

The player has a measurement called preferred unit.  The preferred unit of the player is usually imperial.

Height is a kind of value.  19900 decimillimeters specifies a height.  The plural of decimillimeter is decimillimeters.

1 cm (in metric units, in centimeters, plural) specifies a height scaled up by 100.

1 inches (in imperial units, in inches, plural) specifies a height scaled up by 254.

A person has a height.  The height of a person is usually 170 cm.

To say height of (Bob - a person):
	let H be the height of Bob;
	if the preferred unit of the player is metric:
		say H in metric units;
	else if the preferred unit of the player is imperial:
		say H in imperial units.

Section 2 - Room

Testbed is a room.  The player is in Testbed.  Measurement is imperial.

Anne is a woman in Testbed.  The height of Anne is 170 cm.  The description of Anne is "She appears to be [height of Anne] tall."[/code]
It correctly displays metric height as "170 cm" but it displays "66.933 inches" in imperial units.  How do I make it drop the decimal?  (I'd prefer to display it in feet + inches, but I'm content with inches only.)

I can't use [b]say H in imperial units to the nearest 1[/b] because it says "Problem. You wrote 'say H in imperial units to the nearest 1'  , and in particular 'H in imperial units to the nearest 1': but this asked to say something which describes items too vaguely, and so does not (or not in an elementary enough way) tell me exactly which thing or room should have its name printed."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3570&start=10#p27056
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SPAM
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-28 00:22:42

With the recent responses of ying-whatever, it's safe to say that the forum spam has officially taken on a personal approach.

Moderation needs to be stepped up. Permissions need to be adjusted. What we have here is effectively a default phpbb3 install. (See the logo.)

This forum is obviously popular and becoming increasing more so. It needs to be run like a forum and moderated like a forum, not an offshoot of the IF community. Take the guys and gals who are here all the time and who are willing to take on the responsibility and make them moderators. Not only that, make them moderators with the ability to actually do something besides delete some posts.

I'm familiar with phpbb inside and out. I have been for years. It's my favored "forum platform". I'd make a horrible moderator here, because of the lenient nature of the community. I wouldn't recommend myself, but I can point to a half-dozen people who would be fantastic if they were so inclined.

The spam hasn't reached intolerable levels yet. But it will if some changes aren't made. The more popular something becomes and the fewer safety nets that are in place, the more lucrative an avenue appears. We can ignore the spam, in its many forms, but we shouldn't have to.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3570&start=10#p27057
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SPAM
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-28 00:25:41

And for the love of Zork, please install Tapatalk. It's just a Javascript include. It doesn't cost anything. It won't be painful at all. Modify the overall_header and flush the cache. Then it's mobile goodness for anyone who wants to drop five bucks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3749&start=0#p27058
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 update?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-11-28 07:56:16

Wish I had a panther jump out of my mobile phone whenever I wanted to.

All I get is tiny little baby kittens.

Not that they aren't cute, mind. But panthers, ah, panthers...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=0#p27059
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-11-28 08:35:31

Some of the criticism here is fair: whatever greater merit it may have, the actual prose of [i]The Baron[/i] could be sharper. I wouldn't want to sound language-chauvinistic, but it's possible that when writing in a second language, a writer may be at a disadvantage when it comes to spotting how natural a sentence reads. Having said that, I know of many native English speakers who mangle their sentences (myself at times included) .

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]
"Next to the stairs down stands an elegant cupboard"

Does this parse?
[/quote]
I don't see the problem: I'd always parse "next to the stairs down stands an elegant cupboard" as "next to the stairs (that lead down) stands an elegant cupboard". The sentence is passive and this might slow down understanding. Basically, here Victor is looking for a short way of mentioning both the exit out of the room and the cupboard in the same sentence, while giving a spatial indication of how the room is laid out. I think it works, and though I didn't find the meaning unclear "an elegant cupboard stands next to the stairs down" would have been a more direct way of saying exactly the same thing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3342&start=0#p27060
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Quest online player session timeout
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-11-28 08:40:35

This was in fact the reason why I didn't complete the Myothian Falcon. After getting half way through the game online and having it time out, I couldn't be bothered to restart and do everything over again.

Online play with other systems can be equally frustrating. Often, I would accidentally click out of the command box. Not noticing, I would then press backspace to amend a half-written command. This would take me back a page, losing all progress on the game. This happened three times, and then I vowed just to download the bleedin' things.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3342&start=0#p27061
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Quest online player session timeout
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-28 09:01:37

[quote="JoeyJones"]Online play with other systems can be equally frustrating. Often, I would accidentally click out of the command box. Not noticing, I would then press backspace to amend a half-written command. This would take me back a page, losing all progress on the game. This happened three times, and then I vowed just to download the bleedin' things.[/quote]

I blame the browser for this. I have never, never, never wanted to go back a page by pressing backspace, but I have often accidentally done it anyway (usually when composing a blog comment).

I must have lucked into a browser that doesn't do this anymore, because it didn't happen to me at all in this comp (I played almost everything online), and that almost certainly wasn't because of lack of user error.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3771&start=10#p27062
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dropping Actions & Library Messages
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-28 09:35:38

In my WIP, I created a ground/floor backdrop that is everywhere:

[code]Part - The Ground Backdrop

The ground is a backdrop. It is everywhere. Understand "floor", "dirt", "dust" as the ground.

For printing the name of the ground when the location is not in outdoors: say "floor".

Instead of inserting something into the ground:
        Try dropping the noun.

Instead of putting something on the ground:
        Try dropping the noun.

Check looking under the ground:
        say "You don't need to look underground." instead;

Check entering the ground:
        say "You don't need to go underground." instead;[/code]
Now you can say "on [the ground]" in your library messages.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3771&start=10#p27063
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dropping Actions & Library Messages
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-28 09:40:31

[quote="Felix"]I don't think that objects really are flagged as dropped or undropped (at least not by the Standard Rules). But they are flagged as "handled" or not. And a thing that hasn't been handled by the player, can't have been dropped by him/her either (at least not during game-play).[/quote]
It's worth noting here that the "handled" property is only set at the end of a turn, not after taking something. So if the screw is in the location and you give the command "put screw on table," the screw will not be handled even if the command is successful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3734&start=0#p27064
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Thanksgiving Speed-IF
User: vimes / DateTime: 2011-11-28 10:02:45

Thanks to all who participated; this was a very successful speed.

You can find a game list and the ClubFloyd transcripts at the [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Thanksgiving_Speed-IF]ifwiki page[/url], and the games themselves are either available in the [url=http://mirror.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXunprocessed.html]ifarchive unprocessed directory[/url] or the [url=http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXgamesXmini-compsXspeedif.html]ifarchive speedif directory[/url] depending on when you look.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3786&start=0#p27065
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Getting Run Time Error on subtime.t on TADS13
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-11-28 10:32:55

[quote="RonG"]I inclduded the following:

#include "subtime.t"[/quote]
Files that can be #included, always use *.h as file suffix, not *.t.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3749&start=10#p27066
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 update?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-11-28 10:42:58

Maybe if you tried something with a bigger screen: a tablet, perhaps?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=0#p27067
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-11-28 10:44:43

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]That something as crude and stupid as [i]The Baron[/i] could win the Spring Thing is a testimony to the crudity and stupidity of the IF crowd. That it was nominated for best writing, I can only hope was some kind of cruel joke at the author's expense.[/quote]

I haven't played the other games in [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Spring_Thing_2006#Entries]Spring Thing 2006[/url], but I'll bite. Which would you have picked as the winner?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3784&start=10#p27068
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indentation Headaches? Back to the Shop...
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-28 10:48:22

[quote="Poster"]No, the problem is that I7 makes learning so freakin' difficult, as you've discovered. It sounds like you have a solution to this particular problem, but I hope you've steeled yourself for the long haul. There will be many, many more problems of similar asininity. Trash like that is why I gave up on I7.[/quote]
Actually, I consider this particular situation to be 100% a problem of documentation. After getting the hang of the rule paradigm, I really love it, but there's just not enough explanation of it in the manual.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=0#p27069
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-11-28 10:51:25

The mind boggles. Ten years this guy trolled RAIF/RGIF, he’s now shown up to troll the new IF playground and still – still! – people respond to him as if he’s making valid points instead of just throwing mud at whichever target takes his fancy. Why not just add him to your foe list and never have to see his posts again? Or ban him?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3785&start=0#p27070
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: converting topic to indexed text
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-28 10:54:48

I wouldn't consider the shorthand redundant at all - that's exactly how I'd do it. I used something like it in Gigantomania. Sometimes formatting and capitalization are hard to work out deterministically, and I wouldn't consider it worth the trouble of indexed text.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3784&start=10#p27071
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Indentation Headaches? Back to the Shop...
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-28 11:24:47

[quote="capmikee"][quote="Poster"]No, the problem is that I7 makes learning so freakin' difficult, as you've discovered. It sounds like you have a solution to this particular problem, but I hope you've steeled yourself for the long haul. There will be many, many more problems of similar asininity. Trash like that is why I gave up on I7.[/quote]
Actually, I consider this particular situation to be 100% a problem of documentation. After getting the hang of the rule paradigm, I really love it, but there's just not enough explanation of it in the manual.[/quote]

I think it was Poster who said in another thread that the documentation was written more like a novel. As I was reading said documentation last night, there was a sentence along the lines of "So far our interactions with the player have been nothing but ripostes."

Made me think of that thread. Gave me a little chuckle. I don't think I've ever seen the word "ripostes" used in a technical manual before.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3342&start=0#p27072
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Quest online player session timeout
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-11-28 11:39:44

My trouble is compounded by the fact that I [i]do[/i] use the backspace button for going back a page, so picking a browser without this function wouldn't be all that great. (In general, I prefer to use a keyboard short-cut rather than use a mouse.) If I went to the trouble of downloading a browser or extension to prevent the backspace from working when playing IF, then I might as well just download the games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3786&start=0#p27074
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Getting Run Time Error on subtime.t on TADS13
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-11-28 13:13:09

Boy, am I confused?

The Ditch Day source does not include a subtime.h file.

Where do the lines of code in the previous post belong?

The subtime code states that a t least one clockevent must be used at the start of game and shows ClockEvent eventTime=[1,10,35];

Where and how does all this fit?

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3771&start=10#p27075
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dropping Actions & Library Messages
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-28 13:28:42

[quote="capmikee"]the "handled" property is only set at the end of a turn, not after taking something. [/quote]
Ach, so?! I never knew...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3749&start=10#p27076
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 update?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-11-28 13:43:49

A panther is [i]so[/i] last decade. Now it's all about lions. Get with the times!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3789&start=0#p27077
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: the best route from... to... without using doors
User: Exoow / DateTime: 2011-11-28 14:16:03

Everything works fine, except one situation... I'm trying to have a dog follow the player whenever she's outdoors. However, I don't want the dog to enter areas that are separated from other outdoor rooms by a door. So I'm leaving out the "using doors" part of the phrase.
Now, if the player enters a room (through a door), Inform7 returns the following in-game: [b]You must supply a noun.[/b] instead of [b]The dog arrives from the north.[/b], which is rendered when changing rooms without a door between them.

I could do without the meta-comment. What am I missing? [emote]:)[/emote]

Basic code to illustrate.
[code]
The garden is a room. "This is the garden." The dog is a male animal in the garden.
The enclosure is a room. "This is the enclosure."
The fence is a door. The fence is south of the garden and north of the enclosure. The fence is closed, openable and unlocked.

Outdoors is a region. The enclosure, the garden are in Outdoors.

Every turn when the player is in Outdoors:
	if the location of the dog is not the location of the player:
		let the way be the best route from the location of the dog to the location of the player;
		try the dog going the way;
	otherwise:
		say "The dog lets out a short bark in excitement."
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3342&start=0#p27078
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Quest online player session timeout
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-28 14:22:44

JavaScript to disable the backspace key could be put into the Parchment template? Untested, as I'm at work, and I just dredged it up off the interwebz... I know it works, I tested that much. But I don't remember what the Parchment files look like.

[code]
<script type="text/javascript">

document.onkeydown = function () {
	var e = event || window.event;
	var keyASCII = parseInt(e.keyCode, 10);
	var src = e.srcElement;
	var tag = src.tagName.toUpperCase();
	if(keyASCII == 13) {
		return false;
	}
	if(keyASCII == 8) {
		if(src.readOnly || src.disabled || (tag != "INPUT" && tag != "TEXTAREA")) {
			return false;
		}
		if(src.type) {
			var type = ("" + src.type).toUpperCase();
			return type != "CHECKBOX" && type != "RADIO" && type != "BUTTON";
		}
	}
	return true;
}
</script>

[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3789&start=0#p27079
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: the best route from... to... without using doors
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-28 14:51:08

I think you want to say something like 

[code]unless the way is nothing:
   try the dog going the way; [/code]

with proper indentation. As it is, when you go through the door, the best route is nothing (there's no route), so your code has you trying the dog going nothing, which is what gets you the error. (I think; haven't tested it.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3789&start=0#p27080
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: the best route from... to... without using doors
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-28 14:57:22

I was hoping that the "actions" debugging command would show what the dog was actually trying, but it didn't. So I had to resort to "print" statments, which confirmed my suspicion:

[code]Every turn when the player is in Outdoors:
	if the location of the dog is not the location of the player:
		let the way be the best route from the location of the dog to the location of the player;
		showme the way;
		try the dog going the way;
	otherwise:
		say "The dog lets out a short bark in excitement."[/code]

This reveals:
[quote]>s
[going south]

enclosure
This is the enclosure.

You can see a fence here.

[going south - succeeded]

"way" = object: nothing
You must supply a noun.
[/quote]

There's no way for the dog to get to you without using doors, so the best route is nothing. If you "try the dog going nothing," you get an error!

Probably what you want is to make sure there's a way between every outside location with no doors. But just in case there isn't, you can add this:

[code]Every turn when the player is in Outdoors:
	if the location of the dog is not the location of the player:
		let the way be the best route from the location of the dog to the location of the player;
		if the way is a direction, try the dog going the way;
	otherwise:
		say "The dog lets out a short bark in excitement."[/code]

I suppose this might be considered a bug, because failed actions by NPCs are supposed to be reported by the "unsuccessful attempt" rules, not the regular check rules. But it appears that Graham never expected anyone to use "try" to go nowhere.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3786&start=0#p27081
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Getting Run Time Error on subtime.t on TADS13
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-11-28 15:00:24

There is no subtime.h file. Most extensions don't have headers.

It sounds like you are building your project with Workbench rather than with an external editor. Workbench builds a Makefile for you based on the files you add to your project.

In that case, you can right-click "Source Files", choose "Add file", and navigate to subtime.t.

It is probably in C:\Program Files\TADS 3\lib\extensions. (On a 64-bit system, it will be in C:\Program Files (x86)\TADS 3\lib\extensions.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3357&start=0#p27082
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Announce: "maybe make some change"
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-11-28 15:18:10

Anything that is not 16 bit stereo 44.1 KHz has to go through the conversion path, which hurts audio quality.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3789&start=0#p27083
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: the best route from... to... without using doors
User: Exoow / DateTime: 2011-11-28 15:28:46

Thanks both, it seems an extra check will clear things up. 

I'm still fairly new to this, but I expected "try" would yield a correct result, given its inherent meaning, after all.

Also, I don't quite see the point of the phrase addition "using doors" (or rather, its omission) as it results in an error once the condition isn't always fulfilled? 
I.e. I thought that "using doors" (or not) was the check in itself as to whether the action could succeed.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3789&start=0#p27084
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: the best route from... to... without using doors
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-28 15:39:19

[quote="Exoow"]Also, I don't quite see the point of the phrase addition "using doors" (or rather, its omission) as it results in an error once the condition isn't always fulfilled? 
I.e. I thought that "using doors" (or not) was the check in itself as to whether the action could succeed.[/quote]
I think it makes sense if you consider all the possibilities. Suppose you added this:

[code]The pasture is southwest of the garden and northwest of the enclosure.[/code]

Now the dog can go around the fence, and it does. If you had said "using doors," the dog would arrive 1 turn sooner by way of the fence.

You'll note that the "best route" phrase never results in an error by itself - it's a phrase that returns an object, not a phrase that returns a direction. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want the phrase to lie to me when there really was no route from A to B. So the "nothing" object is an allowable value for it to return. The problem is when you try to use the "nothing" object as a noun.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3785&start=0#p27085
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [solved] Re: converting topic to indexed text
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-11-28 15:40:14

Thanks! I appreciate just knowing that someone else figured it was expedient to do things this way.

I know I've had a lot of cases during my first few tries at coding where I thought I could do something similar. This looked like them, but if someone who knows what they're doing says they didn't bother, then...I'm not going to sweat it either.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3788&start=0#p27086
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rounding to the nearest unit
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-28 16:03:55

This does the trick:
[code]To say height of (Bob - a person):
   let H be the height of Bob;
   if the preferred unit of the player is metric:
      say H in metric units;
   else if the preferred unit of the player is imperial:
      say H to the nearest 1 inches.
[/code]
(as does "say H to the nearest 1 inches in imperial units").

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3786&start=0#p27087
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Getting Run Time Error on subtime.t on TADS13
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-11-28 16:12:27

subtime.t is shown in the following location:

C:/program files/tads3/extensions

When I open my game source with workbench it indeed does show subtime.t as one of the source files. The runtime error I get is in the 'subtime' section when I test run my game with workbench. All that looks about correct to me.

I'm going to add a Clock Event to the beginning of my game and see what happens. It will be right after my include statements.

Will send the results.

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3786&start=10#p27088
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Getting Run Time Error on subtime.t on TADS13
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-11-28 16:19:33

I'm making a blind guess here, but Workbench DOES care what order the included files are listed in. You might try dragging subtime.t down lower or up higher in your list of files.

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=250#p27089
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Peter Rickardson / DateTime: 2011-11-28 16:50:25

[quote="trojo"]I suppose I should go ahead and introduce myself since I've posted a few times on the forum already. My name's Troy Jones; I'm 35 and live in Alabama.

I played IF when I was a kid, although I wasn't familiar with the term "IF" then-- they will always be "text adventures" to me. [i]Enchanter[/i] was probably my favorite from that time. I also really liked the old Sierra adventure games like [i]Space Quest[/i], [i]Quest for Glory[/i], etc, which were very similar to text adventures, except with a lot of painfully slow walking all the way across the screen.[/quote]

[i]Leisure Suit Larry[/i] sure brings back some fond memories.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=0#p27090
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Peter Rickardson / DateTime: 2011-11-28 16:57:36

[quote="JoeyJones"]Some of the criticism here is fair: whatever greater merit it may have, [/quote]

I'm curious what you think that might be, the merit part.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3357&start=0#p27091
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Announce: "maybe make some change"
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-11-28 17:57:28

[quote="bcressey"]Anything that is not 16 bit stereo 44.1 KHz has to go through the conversion path, which hurts audio quality.[/quote]

I'm pretty sure they are 16-bit and 44.1 KHz... it's possible they're not stereo, I don't remember off-hand but I can check.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=0#p27092
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-11-28 18:00:08

[quote="bcressey"][quote="Jacek Pudlo"]That something as crude and stupid as [i]The Baron[/i] could win the Spring Thing is a testimony to the crudity and stupidity of the IF crowd. That it was nominated for best writing, I can only hope was some kind of cruel joke at the author's expense.[/quote]

I haven't played the other games in [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Spring_Thing_2006#Entries]Spring Thing 2006[/url], but I'll bite. Which would you have picked as the winner?[/quote]

Two of the four entries are in Adrift, which leaves [i]Pantomime[/i], a game with all the hallmarks of a Robb Sherwin product: verbose, directionless and unfunny. Mr Sherwin has the unique gift of hurling hundreds of jokes at the player, not one of which is amusing. So yes, I can see how [i]The Baron[/i] could have won. Choosing between the Uncomic Comedy and the Turgid Tragedy, the judges chose the game addressing the Big Issue. So what would I have voted for? Nothing. I believe that if you announce a chess tournament and only four people show up, two of which insist on playing checkers and the other two drunk, the honest thing to do is to refund the entry fees and cancel the tournament.

[quote="JoeyJones"]I don't see the problem: I'd always parse "next to the stairs down stands an elegant cupboard" as "next to the stairs (that lead down) stands an elegant cupboard".[/quote]

That answers my question, then. As to Peter's question, I personally don't see any merit in [i]The Baron[/i]. Yes, it does attempt to tackle a Big Issue, namely child molestation, but so ineptly and coarsely, it left me with a bad aftertaste. If you come to interactive fiction from the world of literature -- as I do -- you're bound to compare a work of IF with its thematically closest literary counterpart. I believe that had Victor read [i]Lolita[/i], he would not have written such an awful game.  

[quote="David Whyld"]The mind boggles.[/quote]

I'm sure yours does, on a regular basis.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3749&start=10#p27093
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 update?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-28 19:58:13

[quote="Trumgottist"]A panther is [i]so[/i] last decade. Now it's all about lions. Get with the times![/quote]

I'd like to think it's a given that those who'd be interested in an I7 update are also the kind to avoid jumping on every little large-predatorial-cat fad that whizzes by on the whims of the media machine. Lions. Pff. Lions are fine for ... Twitter, say. It's fun to tweet a lion to someone. But I don't think they have the [i]gravitas [/i]for much more than that, and in six months they'll be stale, anyway.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3570&start=10#p27114
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SPAM
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-28 21:33:25

[quote="I4L"]With the recent responses of ying-whatever, it's safe to say that the forum spam has officially taken on a personal approach.

Moderation needs to be stepped up. Permissions need to be adjusted. What we have here is effectively a default phpbb3 install. (See the logo.)[/quote]

I'm starting to agree. I don't know anything about phpbb, but I would happily volunteer to moderate for the purpose of zapping spammers' accounts, if that could easily be done. (And that's all I'd do.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3600&start=0#p27115
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Meanwhile by zarf
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-28 21:56:09

[quote="capmikee"]Does it have a purely branching structure or does it rejoin? I'm assuming that if it was first published in hardcopy it doesn't have any state-tracking...[/quote]

Odd presumption, considering how common state-tracking is among the hardcopy CYOAs on my bookshelf [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3749&start=10#p27116
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 update?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-11-28 23:42:09

Any type of predatory feline, really -- so passe. I'm hoping Apple will come up with something more imaginative for OSXI. Like, 11.1 Wildebeest. 11.2 Grizzly. 11.3 Warthog. 11.4 Skunk.

Well, maybe not skunk.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3342&start=0#p27117
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Quest online player session timeout
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-11-29 00:53:34

Parchment does a pretty good job keeping the focus in the input field at all times so it's not an issue there (as evidenced by Matt's experience). The only way I could get the backspace to work as a back button is if you highlight some text on the page first and then press backspace.

The best solution would be if the interpreter would autosave after every turn. You'd never lose progress, no matter why the browser window was closed.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3789&start=0#p27118
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: the best route from... to... without using doors
User: Exoow / DateTime: 2011-11-29 00:55:09

Yup, you're right. I was too quick to respond. [emote]:)[/emote]

Thanks again!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3600&start=0#p27119
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Meanwhile by zarf
User: evouga / DateTime: 2011-11-29 01:57:37

Any plans for a PC version?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=0#p27120
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2011-11-29 02:00:58

Disclaimer: I'm not intimately familiar with this set of extensions from an author's perspective, so please forgive me if I'm just talking about "smarter parser" as a synonym to include some others.

I believe this extension is seriously overused right now. If you're actually writing a game targeted specfically at newbies, fair enough, use it. If not, then think hard if you really know the implications before you drop it into your game. Out of the games which used this (or parts of it) in this year's IF Comp, it only did harm in a good number of them. At some point, it already made me crabby if I noticed one f these "friendly" messages in a game for the first time, because I [i]knew[/i] there would be problems.

I absolutely hate how this thing breaks the fourth wall constantly, e.g. to explain that (parahrasing) "sorry you are feeling frustrated, maybe you should save and come back later". In response to a completely legitimate command attempt, by the way -- the frustration only resulted [i]from reading this brain-dead parser reply[/i]. Everybody here seems to be talking about immersion here, and then you've got parser messages like that? And what's the deal with "That noun did not make sense in this context"? Every single time I've seen this message, it was in reply to a command whose noun made [i]perfect[/i] sense in the given context -- it was just the game which couldn't [i]make[/i] sense of it. A newbie-geared extension putting the blame on the player? Seriously?

And don't get me started on "I understood X, trying that instead". That is outright [i]dangerous[/i]. These shortened implicit re-interpretations often mean something vastly different than the player intended. "throw object out of something" might be a smart idea in some situation, but dropping "object" (which is "throw object") might not. 

Of course, these are just examples of what I believe are big problems in any game whose author tries to improve his game by simply inserting this hyped extension he's heard so much of. Don't do that! The default Inform parser has seen years of careful tweaking and optimisation. If you mess with something this crucial, you can break many things. If you know what you're doing, fine, but don't think this will somehow magically improve your game.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3749&start=10#p27131
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 update?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-11-29 02:55:38

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Any type of predatory feline, really -- so passe. I'm hoping Apple will come up with something more imaginative for OSXI. Like, 11.1 Wildebeest. 11.2 Grizzly. 11.3 Warthog. 11.4 Skunk.[/quote]
Warthog, hedgehog, badger, drake, eft, fawn, gibbon, heron, ibex, jackalope, koala, lynx, meerkat, narwhal, ocelot, pangolin -- Ubuntu is way ahead of you. [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3570&start=10#p27132
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SPAM
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-11-29 03:56:27

Yeah, spam is getting out of hand. We really need Merk to make any changes to the board, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3749&start=10#p27134
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 update?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-29 04:13:54

Steve Jobs greets us from the Outer Side. He insists that OS X be officially renamed "The Elder Thing" and wants Apple to launch Mac OS XI 11.1 Shoggoth 11.2 Mi-Go 11.3 Shub-Niggurath 11.4 Cthulhu 11.5 Yog-Sothoth 11.6 Nyarlathotep 11.7 Azathoth. (He also expresses a concern about the lack of what he calls "blasphemous angles" in the Apple Logo.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=0#p27135
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-11-29 04:55:50

More on this:

I think, although aimed at a wider audience, IFComp is nonetheless a Comp for IF. Meaning it should be aimed to people at least knowing what an IF is. 
Many of my transcripts are 10 turns long, with them 10 being "walk here/do this/use that/sympathize with minorities/remember childhood/etc" if not straightforward profanities aimed at the parser (or so I'd like to think... ehm). Well, my game, as many of the IFComp games, isn't targeted in that direction, and I don't really care about what my father would experience in a game like mine.

After all, if I go looking at a football championship, I'm supposed to know what an off-side is and how it is allowed to score a goal.

So, in my mind there is no worst thing as a game too much aimed at newbies. A parser can be more or less understanding but, c'mon, I can't foresee what happens when someone types what I know are WRONG commands in a text adventure. Let alone trying and find a solution to "f**k off author" that is more nub-friendly as the regular "Real adventurers do not use such language".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=0#p27136
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-29 06:31:35

[quote="Hannes"]And what's the deal with "That noun did not make sense in this context"? Every single time I've seen this message, it was in reply to a command whose noun made [i]perfect[/i] sense in the given context -- it was just the game which couldn't [i]make[/i] sense of it. A newbie-geared extension putting the blame on the player? Seriously?
[/quote]
That particular response is a default Inform library message, actually. (Your general point about overuse may of course be valid nevertheless.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3342&start=0#p27137
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Quest online player session timeout
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-11-29 06:48:28

Firstly, it sounds like you need to update your browser Joey! I'm using Firefox 5, which is a few versions out of date now (I think they're up to version 7) you can go back and forward through history without reloading the page. (Chrome 15 doesn't however, I'm not sure how out of date that is.) I assume that all browsers will be moving to support that - it's just a matter of memory, and most of us have the memory to spare. Mobiles might be different, but they have different interfaces.

Secondly, I admit that Parchment still needs improving! Just yesterday I was playing and noticed that if the input field wasn't focused then pressing up to go through the command history didn't work on the first key press - for some reason it needs two, unlike for other keys. Parchment tries to automatically focus the input field, but only in certain situations: you have to be scrolled fairly close to the bottom of the page, and not have selected any text (so that copying etc will work). We don't want it so that clicking the page will scroll down to the input if you're reading something a few pages up, but perhaps pressing keys could have different rules, and would focus the input even if it was a few pages down? What do you all think?

Autosaving is an interesting idea. It could be tricky - the VM's state has to be saved at a particular place in the code, so that when it's restored it will recover successfully. If you have a savefile you can force the engine to load it, but you can't really ask the engine for a savefile, it has to give it to you instead. However we could piggyback on the undo system, and automatically save the last undo data. Such an autosave wouldn't be a Quetzal file but you can't even download savefiles from Parchment yet, so it's not like that would matter. (Downloading savefiles is a feature that will be coming!)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3570&start=10#p27138
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SPAM
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-29 07:40:08

It's understandable if Merk isn't paying too much attention to the board now after the horrific health problems he had; maybe one of the mods could petition him for an upgrade to administrator status? (There's another adminstrator, rioshin, but I don't think he's active anymore.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3570&start=20#p27139
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SPAM
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-29 07:57:34

I'd also like to point out that banning the accounts and deleting the spam posts is all well and good. However, some of the spammers have links in their profiles, which are visible from Google as well as from inside the site. So even if their profiles have been banned, they're still serving a purpose.

phpBB3 has an expansive and highly customizable permissions system. (Sometimes this isn't a good thing.) It's possible to give someone enough control without giving them too much. (It's also possible to give someone too much unintentionally.) Fortunately, it also has a pretty good system of permission inheritance, which is great when adjusting permissions on an existing install with this many forums in place already.

There are a lot of active, mature users here who wouldn't mind lending a hand. All it would take is a couple of mod installs, just to tighten and clean things up a bit, and to increase the permissions for two or three of them (for redundancy). Matt has already volunteered. Could possibly look to capmikee, Ghalev, Juhana, Victor, Felix, Jim or Robert, among others, as knowledgeable, (mostly) level-headed and very active, if any of them are interested.

Just that while the forum isn't flooded with spam yet, it certainly isn't getting any less frequent. And as more time passes and the site gets more popular, it's very likely to get worse if unaddressed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=10#p27140
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-29 08:06:59

Aaron -- thanks for the gracious response, and for telling me about Novice Off! I think the way to publicize it is probably in the ABOUT text of games containing Smarter Parser, which is probably not something you can automate. 

About the body part thing, I'm not so sure that it's a clear win. Very few games will have implemented body parts (though I have a WIP that implements a furniture leg!), but those games would really be harmed by this message, while the gain for the ones that don't doesn't seem [i]so[/i] great. 

But I think what would really help is an expansion of the Smarter Parser documentation to explain exactly what each rule is, what it does, and how careful you should be about using it. During the comp I looked around the docs to find out where these things were explained, and I couldn't find it. Now I see that it's in the existing rules section, but that's kind of terse. Pretty far down we see 
[quote="Smarter Parser Documentation"]   the stripping body parts rule
        ">take woman's hand" --> "take woman"[/quote]
(which, followed by the "usually no clothing rule," seems like something suitable for Stiffy Makane). But it's easy not to understand exactly what it does, or what message it'll produce. 

In some ways, this means that I think Hannes is basically right -- don't plug and play this extension unless you know exactly what it'll do! 

I also agree that retrying the shorter command can be downright dangerous -- maybe the default should be to retry the command if the player consents. And I think it would really be player-friendly just to sever the link between "throw the rock" and "drop the rock." I hate that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3342&start=10#p27141
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Quest online player session timeout
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-29 08:10:58

[quote="Juhana"]The best solution would be if the interpreter would autosave after every turn. You'd never lose progress, no matter why the browser window was closed.[/quote]

This could mess up the saves the player actually wants (in z-code). If I want to keep a single save to revert to in case I mess up in the game, I think I can currently save and then refresh the browser window to revert (because the save file info is stored in the URL). If Parchment autosaves after every turn, I won't be able to do that so easily, will I?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=10#p27142
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-11-29 08:56:43

[quote="Felix"][quote="Hannes"]And what's the deal with "That noun did not make sense in this context"? Every single time I've seen this message, it was in reply to a command whose noun made [i]perfect[/i] sense in the given context -- it was just the game which couldn't [i]make[/i] sense of it. A newbie-geared extension putting the blame on the player? Seriously?
[/quote]
That particular response is a default Inform library message, actually. (Your general point about overuse may of course be valid nevertheless.)[/quote]
Actually, I think that Small Kindnesses suppresses "You can't see any such thing" in favor of "That noun did not make sense in this context". I'm not sure if Hannes is getting burned by this, but it is a very unfortunate bug (design choice?) in the extension.

Both the problem and a fix have been discussed on this forum: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3470">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3470</a>

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3342&start=10#p27143
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Quest online player session timeout
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-11-29 09:19:15

I was thinking more like a system that many non-IF games have where you have the player's own saves and a separate autosave file. The save info doesn't necessarily have to be stored in the URL.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3748&start=0#p27144
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation in a container
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-29 09:24:53

[quote="Felix"]Try this slight variation:
What happens, I think, is that "ear" and "my ear" are treated as topics understood ([text] tokens), and the DPMR is not considered in those cases. 
(See [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=744]this bug report[/url].)[/quote]
It would make sense, except that there are no grammar lines using "show" that accept a [text] token. Is the bug bigger than the ticket suggests, or is this something else?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3793&start=0#p27146
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Maximum number of characters in player's input
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-11-29 10:13:29

What's the limit for the number of characters in player's command in Z-code and Glulx? I tried with this I7 code:

[code]Test is a room.

Length testing is an action applying to one topic. Understand "[text]" as length testing.

Carry out length testing:
	say topic understood.[/code]
The Mac IDE interpreter says 119 characters with Z-code, 255 with Glulx. Is the limit in the interpreter or in Inform itself? Is there a way to increase the limit?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3342&start=10#p27147
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Quest online player session timeout
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-11-29 10:50:39

[quote="Dannii"]Firstly, it sounds like you need to update your browser Joey! I'm using Firefox 5, which is a few versions out of date now (I think they're up to version 7) you can go back and forward through history without reloading the page. (Chrome 15 doesn't however, I'm not sure how out of date that is.) I assume that all browsers will be moving to support that - it's just a matter of memory, and most of us have the memory to spare. Mobiles might be different, but they have different interfaces.[/quote]
I'm using the most up to date version of google chrome. Mostly because it has the least cluttered interface, as I cannot stand bars. It doesn't reload the page on going back and forward. I tested it out using this post. I've gone back and forth with impunity. But Parchment, Quest and Adrift restart their virtual machines when you go back and then forth.

Also, testing it again just now, has anyone else found Quest to be noticeably slower to load than the other game systems. My experience has been that of the comp games playable online (excluding the web-based games), Adrift loads the fastest, then Parchment, then Quest.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3794&start=0#p27148
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Moving the player.
User: Eyesee / DateTime: 2011-11-29 10:53:23

Hi everyone,
      Complete newbie here. This is my first attempt to do anything with inform 7. All I'm trying to do is move the player to a Given location. But every time I type "Move the player to location." it will not complie and gives me the error that it can't understand the verb? Example follows :-

JumpA is a room. The description is "Room A".
JumpB is a room. The description is " Room B". Move the player to JumpC.
JumpC is a room. The description is "Room C".

error message :-

Problem. You wrote 'Move the player to JumpC'  : but I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with, so I am ignoring this sentence altogether. Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

 See the manual: 2.17 > Review of Chapter 2: The Source Text
 
I know the example isn't very practical, but I was trying to keep it simple. I've also tried "Now the player is in location.". This compiles but doesn't do anything(i.e the player doesn't move)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3794&start=0#p27149
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving the player.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-29 11:05:43

[quote="Eyesee"]Hi everyone,
      Complete newbie here. This is my first attempt to do anything with inform 7. All I'm trying to do is move the player to a Given location. But every time I type "Move the player to location." it will not complie and gives me the error that it can't understand the verb? Example follows :-

JumpA is a room. The description is "Room A".
JumpB is a room. The description is " Room B". Move the player to JumpC.
JumpC is a room. The description is "Room C".

error message :-

Problem. You wrote 'Move the player to JumpC'  : but I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with, so I am ignoring this sentence altogether. Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

 See the manual: 2.17 > Review of Chapter 2: The Source Text
 
I know the example isn't very practical, but I was trying to keep it simple. I've also tried "Now the player is in location.". This compiles but doesn't do anything(i.e the player doesn't move)[/quote]

When do you want to move the player to JumpC? The "move the player" command only works within a rule that tells you under what circumstances the player is supposed to be moved. For instance, you could have the player move when he tries to perform a certain action:

[code]Instead of singing: Move the player to JumpC.[/code]

or you could have the player move when certain conditions are fulfilled:

[code]Every turn when the player is in JumpB: move the player to JumpC.[/code]

You could even move them at the very start of play:

[code]When play begins: move the player to JumpC.[/code]

Although if you're going to do that, you probably just want to use a special kind of assertion that says where things are at the beginning:

[code]The player is in JumpC. [This puts the player in JumpC at the beginning of play; it doesn't do anything in the course of play.][/code]

Finally, may I suggest that you might find things easier to learn if you use [url=http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm]Jim Aikin's Inform handbook[/url]? I think some details are probably out of date, because it was written for a slightly older build, and the stuff about programming doesn't really start till chapter 2, but it's a much easier way to get started than by reading the Inform manuals. (You could also try Aaron Reed's Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7; I've never tried that, myself.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3600&start=0#p27150
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Meanwhile by zarf
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-29 11:09:39

No, sorry.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3794&start=0#p27151
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving the player.
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2011-11-29 11:10:38

[quote="matt w"]
You could even move them at the very start of play:

[code]When play begins: move the player to JumpC.[/code]

Although if you're going to do that, you probably just want to use a special kind of assertion that says where things are at the beginning:

[code]The player is in JumpC. [This puts the player in JumpC at the beginning of play; it doesn't do anything in the course of play.][/code]
[/quote]

Or simply change the order of your room declarations around so that JumpC is the first room mentioned. By default, the player starts the game in the first room declared.

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3794&start=0#p27152
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving the player.
User: Eyesee / DateTime: 2011-11-29 11:17:11

Thanks very much that's solved it. What I needed was "Every turn the player is in ....". Thanks for your advice about where to learn. I've worked my way through "Aaron Reeds Creating Interactive fiction with Inform 7" but it didn't cover what I was trying to do. I looked in the manual and the example they gave didn't have "Move the Player" as part of another command but was stand alone (Chapter 8.7). But I missed the fact it has to be a thing not the player.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3793&start=0#p27153
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Maximum number of characters in player's input
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-29 11:17:25

The limit is defined by the INPUT_BUFFER_LEN constant, which is defined in the Glulx.i6t and ZMachine.i6t files of the I6 template layer.

In Glulx you can increase this as much as you want. 

In Z-code I'm not sure what the practical maximum is. (Certainly less than 256.) The current value is a legacy least-guaranteed-maximum from the first generation of Z-code interpreters, but it's possible that nobody's bothered testing larger values on current interpreters.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3794&start=0#p27154
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving the player.
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-29 11:25:01

[quote="Eyesee"]Thanks very much that's solved it. What I needed was "Every turn the player is in ....". Thanks for your advice about where to learn. I've worked my way through "Aaron Reeds Creating Interactive fiction with Inform 7" but it didn't cover what I was trying to do. I looked in the manual and the example they gave didn't have "Move the Player" as part of another command but was stand alone (Chapter 8.7). But I missed the fact it has to be a thing not the player.[/quote]

A point of caution... This rule was just an example and was probably intended to be used in conjuction with something else. Using this rule completely negates the need for JumpB to exist at all if not combined with some other condition.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3794&start=0#p27155
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving the player.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-29 11:28:27

[quote="Eyesee"]Thanks very much that's solved it. What I needed was "Every turn the player is in ....". Thanks for your advice about where to learn. I've worked my way through "Aaron Reeds Creating Interactive fiction with Inform 7" but it didn't cover what I was trying to do. I looked in the manual and the example they gave didn't have "Move the Player" as part of another command but was stand alone (Chapter 8.7). But I missed the fact it has to be a thing not the player.[/quote]

The examples from Chapter 8.7 aren't really standalone (they work the same way for things and for the player, in fact). They still have to be embedded in rules as in the examples I gave. If you search the documentation for "move the player" and look at all the examples it brings up, you'll see lots of different ways that it can be embedded in different kinds of rules -- some very complicated!

Also, I4L is right about the every turn rule -- if you put that exact rule in the player will never get to spend any time in JumpB.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=10#p27156
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-11-29 11:33:58

So I'm hearing the frustration, and thanks for airing it. The more feedback, the better these extensions can get.

Let me address a couple points, but first, mind that I did not invent this stuff out of whole cloth: most of the changes are in direct response to specific issues I've seen real people having. [url=http://aaronareed.net/2010/bl-indiecade/lacuna-transcripts.html]Some of the research I did on this is here[/url], for anyone interested.

Also, these extensions are *explicitly* targeted at authors who want to make their stories more accessible to people not familiar with IF conventions. This is sort of a no-brainer for me: I would prefer to write work capable of being enjoyed by the 99.9% percent of people in the world who aren't IF experts. But again, authors who don't care about that crowd are free to ignore them.

(Although, if I could make a humble observation, I feel like my success bringing IF to places like IndieCade and PAX East has less to do with the quality of my work and more to do with the effort I've put into making that work accessible. People have a real hunger for interactive fictions; most people just can't figure out how to play them.)

[quote="Hannes"]A newbie-geared extension putting the blame on the player? Seriously?[/quote]

If you have specific examples of messages that you feel are putting the blame on the player, I would really like to hear them. I agree that this is bad, and my extensions have tried very hard to re-write any default library messages that do so into more neutral forms. The default response for waving, "You look ridiculous waving the noun," is replaced by the less-insulting "You wave the noun," for example. 

[quote="ektemple"]Actually, I think that Small Kindnesses suppresses "You can't see any such thing" in favor of "That noun did not make sense in this context". I'm not sure if Hannes is getting burned by this, but it is a very unfortunate bug (design choice?) in the extension.[/quote]

This took longer to get around to than I'd intended, but thanks to Erik's help this has been fixed for a new version of the extension pending an update to the I7 extensions page.

[quote="matt w"]Very few games will have implemented body parts (though I have a WIP that implements a furniture leg!), but those games would really be harmed by this message, while the gain for the ones that don't doesn't seem so great.[/quote]

Perhaps. I have definitely seen a lot of newbies in a lot of different contexts refer to body parts and draw incorrect conclusions about what it meant that their command was rejected. But it could be this functionality should be subsumed by the "with my X" section. I'll put some thought into it.

[quote="matt w"]But I think what would really help is an expansion of the Smarter Parser documentation to explain exactly what each rule is, what it does, and how careful you should be about using it. [/quote]

That's probably a good idea, but are the authors who aren't replacing the built-in messages when they should really going to wade through a dozen extra pages of extension documentation?

[quote="Hannes"]I absolutely hate how this thing breaks the fourth wall constantly.[/quote]

Isn't any parser error message breaking the fourth wall? The ones that don't are making assumptions that are often absolutely incorrect. This boils down to a difference in philosophy, but I'd much prefer the parser be honest with me about whether it understood me or not, rather than pretending to with a message like "Attacking the troll would have no effect."

[quote="Hannes"]In response to a completely legitimate command attempt, by the way -- the frustration only resulted from reading this brain-dead parser reply.[/quote]

Can you give me an example of a completely legitimate command you typed in which Smarter Parser misinterpreted? It should only kick in for commands that the parser couldn't understand at all.

[quote="Hannes"]And don't get me started on "I understood X, trying that instead". That is outright dangerous.[/quote]

So, scenario one: someone who doesn't know the correct command structure tries something overly complicated and gets a flat-out refusal with no clue what the correct syntax is. They're stuck on a guess-the-verb puzzle and end up quitting your game in frustration. Scenario two: Smarter Parser either correctly simplifies something and the game works, *or* mistakenly guesses and the player has to type UNDO, now understanding how that verb is supposed to work. Two seems like the clear win to me.

This is "dangerous" if the game prevents UNDO and is liable to instantly kill you, I suppose, or if the player doesn't know about UNDO. But I suppose I would prefer moments of danger to most people never getting past a syntax problem.

[quote="jamespking"]So, in my mind there is no worst thing as a game too much aimed at newbies.[/quote]

Fair enough. For me, there is no worse thing than nine out of ten people who try an exciting medium I care a lot about being frustrated and turned off to it by easily correctable problems.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3794&start=0#p27157
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving the player.
User: Eyesee / DateTime: 2011-11-29 11:48:16

Perhaps this will show better what I'm trying to do :-

Section -[275]Giaks Fly Over

Giaks Fly Over is a room. The description is "You have followed this twisting track for about twenty minutes when you hear the beating of wings high above the trees. Looking up you see a large Kraan approaching from the north, its huge black wings casting a gigantic shadow on the trees below.
[Paragraph Break]On its back are two creatures armed with long spears. They are Mountain Giaks—small ugly creatures full of hatred and malice. Many centuries ago, their ancestors were used by the Darklords to build the infernal city of Helgedad, which lies in the volcanic wastelands beyond the Durncrag mountain range. The construction of the city was long and torturous, and only the strongest of the creatures survived the heat and poisonous atmosphere of Helgedad.
[Paragraph Break]Quickly you dive for the shelter of a large fern tree as the Kraan passes overhead. With heart pounding, you pray that your quick reactions have saved you from being spotted."

If a random chance of 5 in 10 succeeds
	Every turn when the player is in Giaks Fly Over:
	Move the player to Escape The Giaks
                    Otherwise
                         Every turn when the player is in Giaks Fly Over: 
                         Move the player to The Giaks Land.

Section - [099]Deeper In The Forest

South Fork is south of Deeper In The Forest.
East Fork   is east   of Deeper In The Forest.
Deeper In The Forest is a room. The description is "You dive into the undergrowth just as the beast screams past your head. You quickly look back to see the Kraan turning in the air in preparation for another dive. You scramble to your feet and run deeper into the safety of the forest.[Paragraph Break] As you go on you discover a forest path that divides at the point you join it. You can take the south fork or the east fork."

													[Discipline of Tracking[067]]

Section - [345]Escape The Giaks

Escape The Giaks is a room. The description is "You pull up the hood of your green Kai cloak and hold your breath as the Kraan circles above. After a few minutes, you hear the frantic curses of the Giaks. The beating of Kraan wings fades, as they disappear towards the west. Your quick reactions have saved you from capture and likely death.From here you can return to the southward track or push through the undergrowth to the east"

Section - [074]The Giaks Land

The Giaks Land is a room. The description is "The Kraan and its riders land on the track barely ten feet from where you are hidden. The Giaks leap from the scaly backs of the Kraan and move towards you, their spears raised to strike. You have been seen. From here you can run eastward further into the forest."

But I think your right I need to do more learning before I attempt to do this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3794&start=0#p27158
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving the player.
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-11-29 11:55:18

It looks like you're using rooms as a sort of method to run scenes -- I suppose it will work to some degree but there are much more suitable options available, most importantly the aptly named "scenes" mechanism (chapter 10 in the manual). Now if the player types LOOK in the "Escape The Giaks" room they'll see the same action description again.

Also, you need to switch the "if a random chance of 5 in 10 succeeds" block the other way around. The conditional must be inside a rule.

[code]Every turn when the player is in Giaks Fly Over:
    If a random chance of 5 in 10 succeeds:
        Move the player to Escape The Giaks
    Otherwise:
        Move the player to The Giaks Land.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=50#p27159
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Morley / DateTime: 2011-11-29 12:05:28

Okay, I've just tried this out, and already I'm somewhat infatuated with it.

I'd like to echo the requests for doors and regions, if either are at all likely. Probably not as an automapper feature, but for export purposes these would be extremely useful.

I'd also really like to be able to duplicate chunks of map using copy/paste, or something of that nature. Maybe even an option to rotate them, so a long north-south road can become an east-west road without any hassle.

Also, I'm not sure if this would be possible, but it would be amazing if there was a way for Trizbort to [i]import[/i] project files from Inform, TADS, etc, even if the source of the project needs to be neatened up a bit before it'll work.

I'll definitely be looking out for new releases of this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3794&start=0#p27160
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving the player.
User: Eyesee / DateTime: 2011-11-29 12:06:53

Thanks that's exactly what I needed. I think I'll work through Jim Aitken's Inform Handbook before I try any more. Thanks everyone for your help!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3786&start=10#p27161
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Getting Run Time Error on subtime.t on TADS13
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-11-29 12:12:50

I included subtime.t and also placed the following line directly beneath the include section of my code:

ClockEvent eventTime=[1,10,35];

Now the game compiles and runs in test mode with no run time errors.

The next problem is how to make use of the ClockEvent. Perhaps I need a clock or watch to check? Any more ideas?

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=10#p27162
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-29 12:33:06

[quote="aaronius"]That's probably a good idea, but are the authors who aren't replacing the built-in messages when they should really going to wade through a dozen extra pages of extension documentation?[/quote]

I don't know. Maybe you should be discouraging authors from dropping this in if they're not going to replace this message when they should! But I think there's no reason not to make it possible for authors to find out what this extension will do in their game, if they want to.

[quote="aaronius"]So, scenario one: someone who doesn't know the correct command structure tries something overly complicated and gets a flat-out refusal with no clue what the correct syntax is. They're stuck on a guess-the-verb puzzle and end up quitting your game in frustration. Scenario two: Smarter Parser either correctly simplifies something and the game works, *or* mistakenly guesses and the player has to type UNDO, now understanding how that verb is supposed to work. Two seems like the clear win to me.[/quote]

Scenario two: The thing you wanted to throw is on the floor. You're still stuck in the guess-the-syntax puzzle if the problem was that you were using the wrong preposition (this has happened to me), and it's obnoxious to have to pick it back up; it's also obnoxious to have to type UNDO (do newbies even know how to do this?) because the parser grabbed your action and turned it into something different. What's wrong with asking the player whether he wants to carry out the revised action?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=10#p27163
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: Doug Orleans / DateTime: 2011-11-29 12:54:34

Going back to the original question: Yes, I found the transcripts to be very helpful and enlightening.  Of course I still haven't updated my game yet, but I have a long list of bug tickets to fix based on the IFcomp transcripts.  The biggest no-brainer for me was when I had a character say "I don't suppose you'd trade [something the player has] to me?" but I didn't implement the verb "trade" (and none of my beta-testers noticed).  Bracket Every Notable Verb Too, I guess!

The most amusing/sad transcript is this one:

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifcomp.org/authors/transcripts.php?session=1317768053891715&statusline=off&output=html">http://ifcomp.org/authors/transcripts.p ... utput=html</a>

In particular, they expect this command to work:

>Find the shallowest point in the river and cross.

It ends in sadness, though, when they try various versions of "exit boat", and never stumble upon just "exit" (or "south").  It might be that Small Kindnesses would have covered this case; I had in fact been using Small Kindnesses earlier in the development process, but I was running into weird/confusing messages and I didn't have the time to fix them so I just removed the whole extension.  (Sorry, Aaron, I don't recall what they were, but when I get around to it I will look at it again and let you know.)

I did keep Neutral Library Messages, because I hate many of the I7 default messages.  In general, though, I think I would rather just remove an unneeded command altogether (leaving some sort of "I don't understand that word" reply), rather than having a different "that doesn't do anything" message for each thing that people might type, especially when it's a command I didn't even realize was implemented by default in I7 (like "hug", which results in a message about kissing).  I spent a lot more time fixing messages for commands that don't work than implementing the commands that actually do work.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=10#p27164
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-29 13:09:56

Yeah, "exit [the container you're in]" really really needs to be implemented. I always do that even though I know how it usually works. This just inspired me to install Small Kindnesses into my no-longer Speed IF, so bad things don't happen when people try "get off the bus."

Neutral Library Messages seems like it's actually causing trouble here, though; if the parser had responded "I only understood you as far as wanting to exit" there's a fighting chance they might have tried "exit" next.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=10#p27165
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-11-29 13:22:31

[quote="aaronius"]This is "dangerous" if the game prevents UNDO and is liable to instantly kill you, I suppose, or if the player doesn't know about UNDO. But I suppose I would prefer moments of danger to most people never getting past a syntax problem.[/quote]

I don't have a problem with the parser trying a new command on the player's behalf, but it should mention the option to UNDO when it redirects the command, e.g.:
[quote]
Trying to OPEN THE DOOR instead. (If that was not what you intended, type UNDO to retract this command.)[/quote]

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3342&start=10#p27166
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Quest online player session timeout
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-11-29 13:29:33

Quest 5 games can take a few seconds to load on the server - it's something I need to look at. Quest 4 games load a bit more quickly. It depends very much on the size of the game - Myothian Falcon is fairly big and takes about 10 seconds to load. Once it's loaded though the performance seems acceptable.

By the way, I'll be deploying an update in the next day or two which adds the ability to save games if you're logged in.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3748&start=0#p27167
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Disambiguation in a container
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-11-29 13:47:56

Right now, the more I think about it, the less sense it makes to me.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3786&start=10#p27168
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Getting Run Time Error on subtime.t on TADS13
User: tomasb / DateTime: 2011-11-29 13:48:58

That's the plot event describing the time at the start of the game. Now whenever player reaches some goal with fixed known time, declare new event and call eventReached() of that particular event.

[code]
adminLobby: Room 'Lobby' 'the lobby'
    "On past visits to the administration center, this large, open lobby
    was quite austere and utilitarian, but it's been transformed... "
    /*
     *   reaching this room is a time-based plot point, so set a marker
     *   here
     */
    afterTravel(traveler, conn)
    {
        inherited(traveler, conn);
        plotMarker.eventReached();
    }
    
    /* arrive here at about noon */
    plotMarker: ClockEvent { eventTime = [1, 12, 8] }
;
[/code]

And wristwatch should be easy to implement:

[code]
+ AlwaysWorn 'wrist wristwatch/watch' 'wristwatch'
    "It's nothing fancy; just a cheap analog model.  It
    currently reads <<clockManager.checkTimeFmt('[am][pm]h:mm a')>>. "
;
[/code]

Actually I'm only showing relevant parts of RTDD game, not tested it myself. Ask again if that doesn't work.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=10#p27169
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-11-29 13:55:47

[quote="Hannes"]I absolutely hate how this thing breaks the fourth wall constantly, e.g. to explain that (parahrasing) "sorry you are feeling frustrated, maybe you should save and come back later".[/quote]
Standard I7 responses break the fourth wall constantly. The difference is that you're more used to them.
[quote="Hannes"] The default Inform parser has seen years of careful tweaking and optimisation.[/quote]
...an incomplete and ongoing process, of which Smarter Parser is an important part.

Part of the issue there is the 'careful'. After two decades of careful tweaking, the parser doesn't really seem (to the casual observer) all that different from AGT. To make larger-scale improvements, occasionally it's necessary to make bigger, riskier jumps, and piss a bunch of people off in the process. I dunno whether Smarter Parser is going to become a good answer or an instructive failure, but either way.
[quote="Jamespking"]I think, although aimed at a wider audience, IFComp is nonetheless a Comp for IF. Meaning it should be aimed to people at least knowing what an IF is... After all, if I go looking at a football championship, I'm supposed to know what an off-side is and how it is allowed to score a goal.[/quote]
This is a valid point, and I don't particularly want to see IF change so much that it can be easily played by all of the Other 99.9%. But I'd like to see it be positioned more like, say, literary poetry: not many people actually consume much of the stuff, but if you present some to any reasonably smart person they'll probably be able to read it without getting angry and confused because the line breaks are all in the wrong places.

(IF isn't football. IF isn't even [i]Australian[/i] football. IF is the Eton Wall Game. If you turned on a sports channel and they were broadcasting the Eton Wall Game, you'd probably expect the announcer to explain the rules a lot more patiently.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3794&start=0#p27170
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving the player.
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-29 14:16:53

[quote="matt w"]Finally, may I suggest that you might find things easier to learn if you use [url=http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm]Jim Aikin's Inform handbook[/url]? I think some details are probably out of date, because it was written for a slightly older build, and the stuff about programming doesn't really start till chapter 2, but it's a much easier way to get started than by reading the Inform manuals.[/quote]

This has my attention.

As someone with utterly zero programming experience (past a whirlwind introduction to BASIC in fifth-grade G&T), I found the I7 docs super-accessible and easy. I had a working game (still my best one, IMO) finished in the same afternoon I installed it. It's difficult to wrap my brain around the idea of something being [i]even easier.[/i]

The reason it has my attention, though, is that there comes a point in the I7 docs when it drops all that "natural language" pretense and starts talking about stuff in dry-as-a-bone terms that presumably make sense to programmers but which I can't wrap my brain around at all (my assumption is that natural-language syntax will be added to these sections later on, as the language matures). If Jim's book might offer some assistance in those areas, that would be of serious interest.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3794&start=10#p27171
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving the player.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-29 14:21:28

Sounds like we're back to the old tutorial-vs-reference conflict.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3794&start=10#p27172
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving the player.
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-29 14:30:19

[quote="capmikee"]Sounds like we're back to the old tutorial-vs-reference conflict.[/quote]

There seems to be no "conflict" of any kind in this thread.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3794&start=10#p27173
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving the player.
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-29 14:31:12

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="matt w"]Finally, may I suggest that you might find things easier to learn if you use [url=http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm]Jim Aikin's Inform handbook[/url]? I think some details are probably out of date, because it was written for a slightly older build, and the stuff about programming doesn't really start till chapter 2, but it's a much easier way to get started than by reading the Inform manuals.[/quote]

This has my attention.

As someone with utterly zero programming experience (past a whirlwind introduction to BASIC in fifth-grade G&T), I found the I7 docs super-accessible and easy. I had a working game (still my best one, IMO) finished in the same afternoon I installed it. It's difficult to wrap my brain around the idea of something being [i]even easier.[/i]

The reason it has my attention, though, is that there comes a point in the I7 docs when it drops all that "natural language" pretense and starts talking about stuff in dry-as-a-bone terms that presumably make sense to programmers but which I can't wrap my brain around at all (my assumption is that natural-language syntax will be added to these sections later on, as the language matures). If Jim's book might offer some assistance in those areas, that would be of serious interest.[/quote]

Jim's book is excellent for beginners. I think the problem with the documentation is that it's a weird mash-up of a technical manual and an exploratory essay, which makes it somewhat difficult to follow along with at times. Additionally, the examples (while functional) don't exactly break down how things are happening and why. You get an explanation of the material (in some cases brief) and are then smacked with a fully functioning example.

The nice things about both Jim's and Aaron's books are they they break down the examples they provide, explaining how and why things work the way they do. They also point out possible "gotcha" points and things to keep an eye out for while you're working the material into other material.

Take the documentation for tables, for example. My head gets all sideways like Stewie Griffin when I start trying to read that stuff. That's part of the reason I still have yet to try to tackle them with any degree of confidence.

Different people just learn differently, I guess.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3794&start=10#p27174
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving the player.
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-29 14:33:10

[quote="I4L"]Take the documentation for tables, for example. My head gets all sideways like Stewie Griffin when I start trying to read that stuff. That's part of the reason I still have yet to try to tackle them with any degree of confidence.[/quote]

That's my experience with the Tables material, too, precisely. That's one of the parts where the I7 docs start losing me, which (to me) is astonishing because up until then, I found them incredibly clear and informative.

Did Jim's book clear up Tables for you? If so, I'm there. I'm sold.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3794&start=10#p27175
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving the player.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-29 14:34:36

[quote="Ghalev"]There seems to be no "conflict" of any kind in this thread.[/quote]
Oh yeah? You wanna make something of it?  [emote]:twisted:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3794&start=10#p27176
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving the player.
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-29 14:45:08

[quote="Ghalev"]
That's my experience with the Tables material, too, precisely. That's one of the parts where the I7 docs start losing me, which (to me) is astonishing because up until then, I found them incredibly clear and informative.

Did Jim's book clear up Tables for you? If so, I'm there. I'm sold.[/quote]

He doesn't devote a whole lot of time to them. He does give a pretty good explanation of them and the basics of how to use them, but nothing advanced. He says, which has pretty much become my mantra:

"I'm pretty sure you can write a complete and satisfying game without ever using tables."

This is pretty much what prompted my question on tables versus variables.

So no, he isn't going to blow your mind on tables and their use. I haven't got to that part in Aaron's book yet.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3794&start=10#p27177
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving the player.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-29 14:48:23

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="matt w"]Finally, may I suggest that you might find things easier to learn if you use [url=http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm]Jim Aikin's Inform handbook[/url]? I think some details are probably out of date, because it was written for a slightly older build, and the stuff about programming doesn't really start till chapter 2, but it's a much easier way to get started than by reading the Inform manuals.[/quote]

This has my attention.

As someone with utterly zero programming experience (past a whirlwind introduction to BASIC in fifth-grade G&T), I found the I7 docs super-accessible and easy. I had a working game (still my best one, IMO) finished in the same afternoon I installed it. It's difficult to wrap my brain around the idea of something being [i]even easier.[/i]

The reason it has my attention, though, is that there comes a point in the I7 docs when it drops all that "natural language" pretense and starts talking about stuff in dry-as-a-bone terms that presumably make sense to programmers but which I can't wrap my brain around at all (my assumption is that natural-language syntax will be added to these sections later on, as the language matures). If Jim's book might offer some assistance in those areas, that would be of serious interest.[/quote]

Interesting. I mostly learned from the docs too (I started with an early version of Jim's handbook), but I did it the opposite way; over a long period of having little bits of time, I read through every section and ran pretty much every example. And I certainly didn't finish anything the afternoon I installed it; in fact, I still haven't finished anything that has more than one room in it. [This is partly because I'm not in a big hurry and don't work and write that fast.] Which I figure is not a great approach for most people. 

Which were the dry-as-a-bone parts? If it's the Backus-Naur form business, I don't think you're actually supposed to follow that. [On previewing, I see that it's Tables. Four legs and a top, I say.]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3794&start=10#p27178
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving the player.
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-29 14:52:37

[quote="matt w"]Which were the dry-as-a-bone parts? If it's the Backus-Naur form business, I don't think you're actually supposed to follow that. [On previewing, I see that it's Tables. Four legs and a top, I say.][/quote]

Not just Tables. Tables are just where things [i]start [/i]to slip and I [i]start [/i]to skim. I've tried learning Lists several times too, for example (sound of deep existential screaming).

And then there are nonsense phrases like all that "repeat while running naked past upside-down in reverse" type stuff, which isn't any sort of language, natural or otherwise. I can only use those things by aping donated code and swapping out strings.

[quote="I4L"]"I'm pretty sure you can write a complete and satisfying game without ever using tables."[/quote]

Oh, I don't doubt that for a moment [emote]:)[/emote] But I am, to the core of my soul, a tabletop RPG player, so tabular data is second-nature to me, and I often think in terms of tables ... so it kind of bothers me that I7, an environment where I'm generally very happy and content, is an environment in which I can't translate my tabular thinking into tabular information for a texty game. Building a table is easy-peasy (you can paste them directly from a spreadsheet into the IDE and they compile; how sweet is that?) it's the syntax for referring to them and using them where I get utterly lost, pretty much at square one.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3795&start=0#p27180
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Scope Caching causes author's brain to recurse
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-29 15:02:32

Errr... I'm getting stuck on this one.

Scope Caching source:
[spoiler][code]Version 1/111117 of Scope Caching by Mike Ciul begins here.

"Gives things the 'marked visible' property, to check the visibility of something without repeating the entire scope loop each time. Works with Epistemology by Eric Eve, Conditional Backdrops by Mike Ciul, and Remembering by Aaron Reed."

"based on code provided by Andrew Plotkin"

[and Jimmy Maher? http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=40]

Use authorial modesty.

Volume - Scope Caching

Chapter - Iterating over Scope

[Thanks to Andrew Plotkin for this code to make the scope checking not incredibly repetitive]

To iterate scope with (func - phrase thing -> nothing): (-scope_token=0; LoopOverScope({func}-->1); -).

To iterate scope for (actor - thing) with (func - phrase thing -> nothing): (- scope_token=0; LoopOverScope({func}-->1, {actor}); -).

Chapter - The Marked Visible Property

A thing can be marked visible or marked invisible.

To mark the/-- visibility of (target - a thing) (this is scope caching):
	now target is marked visible;

To cache the/-- scope for (viewer - a person):
	Now everything is marked invisible;
	Iterate scope for viewer with scope caching.

Chapter - When to Perform Scope Caching

After reading a command (this is the cache player's scope rule):
	Cache the scope for the player.

The cache player's scope rule is listed first in the after reading a command rules.

Volume - Interactions with Conditional Backdrops (for use with Conditional Backdrops by Mike Ciul)

After moving floating objects:
	cache scope for the player;

Volume - Interactions with Epistemology (for use with Epistemology by Eric Eve)

Book - Sight (in place of Book 1 - Sight in Epistemology by Eric Eve)

A thing can be either seen or unseen. A thing is usually unseen.

[ With the speed advantages of scope caching, we can now do more accurate accounting of what has actually been seen. ]

After reading a command (this is the mark cached items as seen rule):
	Now every marked visible thing is seen.

The mark cached items as seen rule is listed after the cache player's scope rule in the after reading a command rulebook.

The cache player's scope rule is listed last in the carry out looking rules.
The mark cached items as seen rule is listed last in the carry out looking rules.

The cache player's scope rule is listed last in the carry out opening rules.
The mark cached items as seen rule is listed last in the carry out opening rules.

Volume - Interactions with Remembering (for use with Remembering by Aaron Reed)

Book - Keeping Track (for Glulx only)

Section - Rules (in place of Section - Rules in Remembering by Aaron Reed)

After reading a command (this is the update remembered positions of cached things rule):
	repeat with item running through marked visible things that are enclosed by the location:
		if remembered location of item is not holder of item:
			now the remembered location of item is the holder of item.

The update remembered positions of cached things rule is listed after the cache player's scope rule in the after reading a command rules.

First report remembering (this is the Remembering specific report remembering rule):
	if remembered location of noun is nothing, continue the action;
	say the message corresponding to a rule name of Remembering specific report remembering rule in Table of Remembering Messages;
	stop the action. 

Volume - Testing commands - not for release

Checking the scope cache is an action out of world. Understand "scopestat" as checking the scope cache.

Report checking the scope cache (this is the standard report checking the scope cache rule):
	say "The following items are marked visible: [line break]";
	repeat with item running through marked visible things:
		say "  [the item][line break]";

Checking the scope cache for is an action out of world applying to one visible thing. Understand "scopestat [any thing]" as checking the scope cache for.

Carry out checking the scope cache for something (this is the recache scope when checking the scope cache for rule):
	Cache the scope for the noun;

Report checking the scope cache for something (this is the standard report checking the scope cache for rule):
	say "The following items are marked visible for [the noun]: [line break]";
	repeat with item running through marked visible things:
		say "  [the item][line break]";

Scope Caching ends here.

---- DOCUMENTATION ----

Optimizes Epistemology by Eric Eve and Remembering by Aaron Reed. I6 code by Andrew Plotkin. Andrew also explained how to pass a phrase as an argument to another phrase for looping.

Section: The Marked Visible Property

Scope Caching creates a property for things called "marked visible." This is equivalent to the "visible" adjective, except it is calculated only at specific times and then stored, trading storage space for speed.

These conditions:

	the player can see the ball

	the ball is visible

Will normally mean the same as:

	the ball is marked visible

Section: The Cache Scope Phrase

If circumstances change during a turn and we need to check scope again, or if we want to check scope for something other than the player, we need to refresh the cache. We can do this with the "cache scope" phrase:

	Before Bob trying doing something:
		cache scope for Bob

This will, of course, leave the "marked visible" property set for Bob, so if we need to check the player's scope again, we need to run the phrase an additional time.

Section: The Cache Scope After Reading a Command Rule

This is the rule which normally sets the "marked visible" property each turn:

	After reading a command (this is the cache scope after reading a command rule):
		Cache the scope for the player.

It's listed first in the "after reading a command" rulebook, so other "after reading a command" rules should be able to make use of the "marked visible" property.

Section: Testing Commands

We can use the "scopestat" command to find out what items are currently marked visible. The command by itself will list the items marked visible for the player, while "scopestat [any thing]" will list the items visible for another person.

Example: * Which Rubber - Uses Scope Caching to prevent an infinite loop. Without it, the "After deciding the scope of the player" rule repeats forever.

	*: "Which Rubber"

	Include Scope Caching by Mike Ciul.

	Indoors is a room.

	The front door is a door. It is west of Indoors and east of Outdoors.

	Bob is a man in Outdoors.

	There is a container called a pile of balls in Indoors. "There is a pile of rubber balls here." In the pile is a ball.

	Understand "rubber" as a pile when the ball is not marked visible.
	Understand "rubber" as a ball when the ball is marked visible.

	The outdoor view is scenery. The description is "It's bright outside.";

	After deciding the scope of the player in Indoors when the front door is open:
		place the outdoor view in scope.
	
	Test me with "rules/open door/get rubber/scopestat/scopestat bob"
[/code][/spoiler]

Problem example:
[code]Include Scope Caching by Mike Ciul.

A nose is a kind of thing. A nose is a part of every person.

Test is a room.

When play begins: Remove your nose from play.

After deciding the scope of the player:
	if no nose is marked visible or the player's command includes "my":
		place your nose in scope;
		say "Placed your nose in scope after deciding the scope of the player.";
	otherwise:
		say "Declined to place your nose in scope after deciding the scope of the player because [the list of marked visible noses] is already marked visible.";
		
Before printing a parser error:
	showme the list of visible things;
	showme the list of marked visible things;

Test me with "x nose/x my nose"[/code]
As with most examples of this type, it's rendered moot by changing "marked visible" to "enclosed by the location," but I'm not confident that [i]all[/i] possible situations could be handled that way. And yes, this whole nonsense is an attempt to preempt the maddeningly unreliable no-shows of the Does the Player Mean rulebook.

What's bothering me is the frequency with which the scope loop takes place. It seems that "place X in scope" causes the entire "deciding the scope" activity to run again. Is this the same old bug that Zarf saw, or something more sinister? How can I keep "marked visible" in sync with actual visibility when these rules keep moving under my feet?

(this ties into my thoughts on Lost Items Version 3, which will use iterative parsing and swap all visible things out of scope, replacing them with all lost things)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3794&start=10#p27181
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving the player.
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-29 15:04:58

(Some time ago, this topic should have been split and made a new thread. [emote]:)[/emote] )

[quote="matt w"]On previewing, I see that it's Tables. Four legs and a top, I say.][/quote]

I'm working this into a game somewhere, as a salute. I swear it.

[quote="Ghalev"]And then there are nonsense phrases like all that "repeat while running naked past upside-down in reverse" type stuff, which isn't any sort of language, natural or otherwise.[/quote]

Also things I avoid. I guess this is the I6 holdover stuff for which there is no real natural transation. Reverse relations and whatnot. I guess they might make sense if explained in a "for dummies" (which I certainly feel like at times) kind of syntax, but as it is, they go so far over my head I can't even feel the breeze.

[quote="Ghalev"]But I am, to the core of my soul, a tabletop RPG player, so tabular data is second-nature to me.[/quote]

I also cut my teeth on tabletop. (Not including gems such as Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy and Phantasy Star.) I regularly spend my spare time staring at MySQL databases. I love tables. Maybe I'm just [i]perceiving[/i] data access through them in I7 to be more difficult than it is. But where tables are concerned, I'm accusing to specifying the piece of data that I want and having software go get it for me. I don't know about all this "loop through the so and so until N becomes purple" stuff.

/shrug

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3794&start=10#p27182
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving the player.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-29 15:18:14

[quote="Ghalev"]Not just Tables. Tables are just where things [i]start [/i]to slip and I [i]start [/i]to skim. I've tried learning Lists several times too, for example (sound of deep existential screaming).[/quote]
I don't even go near Lists. Not only do they use [i]dynamic memory[/i], their syntax (and even their typing) is even more bizarre and arcane than Tables. And they require [i]punctuation![/i]

The thing about Tables is that the syntax is almost like other I7 syntax, but not quite (repeat through the Table of Running Screaming). You can do something with "a random foozable itinerant cephalopod that fondles a humshaw," but you can only choose a table row by comparing a single object with a single column. Plus, it's buggy. Mantis is full of bug reports on tables that often stop authors short. I predict they will one day be a thing of beauty, though. You can't sort "the list of cephalopods," or "repeat with item running through every cephalopod in number of tentacles order" but you can put all cephalopods in a table and then sort it. Maybe one day you'll be able to declare a table of cephalopods that automatically has the right number of rows.

It seems like pasteability is improving, but I don't think it's quite there yet, either.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3794&start=20#p27183
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving the player.
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-29 15:21:23

[quote="I4L"](Some time ago, this topic should have been split and made a new thread. [emote]:)[/emote] )[/quote]

Oh, I like the quiet intimacy here. It's like knowing about a nice little coffee shop the hipsters haven't ruined and overwhelmed with their iPad power cords yet.

[quote]I also cut my teeth on tabletop.[/quote]

Oh, for me it goes a [i]lot [/i]deeper than teeth. Heart and soul, body and mind, my life belongs to them, and I only wish I could live longer so I could give 'em more years [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3794&start=20#p27184
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving the player.
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-29 15:28:40

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="I4L"]Oh, for me it goes a [i]lot [/i]deeper than teeth. Heart and soul, body and mind, my life belongs to them, and I only wish I could live longer so I could give 'em more years [emote]:)[/emote][/quote][/quote]

No no, don't get me wrong. I only weeks ago bequeathed my remaining treasures to my son in an attempt to interest him in the genre. This consisted of little and was sorely outdated. (2nd Edition AD&D, among which were my coveted Menzoberranzan and original Ruins of Undermountain boxed sets) I lived in those boxes and books for many, many years.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3794&start=20#p27185
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving the player.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-29 15:34:56

So, Ghalev, is it safe to say that you're not interested in reading the [url=http://mattweiner.net/ifiction/table%20source.txt]source code for my demo[/url] "The Table," which (aside from a massive blort of I6 that Victor wrote) consists mostly of a bunch of tables of lists? 

(You don't want to play it, either.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3794&start=20#p27186
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving the player.
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-29 15:38:02

[quote="matt w"]So, Ghalev, is it safe to say that you're not interested in reading the [url=http://mattweiner.net/ifiction/table%20source.txt]source code for my demo[/url] "The Table," which (aside from a massive blort of I6 that Victor wrote) consists mostly of a bunch of tables of lists? 

(You don't want to play it, either.)[/quote]


It's safe to say that I wish I [i]could [/i]read it [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3794&start=20#p27187
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving the player.
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-11-29 15:41:36

If I can interrupt your fun (I found the docs to be quite adequate, although I echo the sentiments about table syntax), might I suggest that the OP probably doesn't even need scenes and can just print the paragraphs at the appropriate intervals?  Like so (forgive me for any syntactical errors, this is off the top of my head):

[code]After going from the Edge of the Forest to Deeper in the Forest for the first time:
	say "(Giaks flyover description)";
	if a random chance of 1 in 2 succeeds:
		the Giaks land in 1 turn from now;
	otherwise:
		you escape in 1 turn from now.

At the time when the Giaks land:
	say "(Giaks land description)".

At the time when you escape:
	say "(escape the Giaks description)".[/code]

About the random chance:  First, 5 in 10 is the same as 1 in 2.  Second, it's not very exciting to have the escape be completely random.  From the player's perspective, without replaying the game, you don't even know that there were other possible outcomes--you only know what happened to you.  Wouldn't it be more fun for the player to be able to make a choice governing the escape (eg, "run east" vs "run south"), or to have it depend on some other condition (eg, "if the player is wearing the boots of speed...")?

For that matter, it looks more like a CYOA than a regular IF.  Perhaps the OP should try ChoiceScript or something of that nature if that's the direction s/he is going?

I'm also sensing this is one of those games that needs a pronunciation guide.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3793&start=0#p27188
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Maximum number of characters in player's input
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-11-29 15:48:30

I'm imagining now a game in which the player must enter commands like "say supercalifragilisticexpialidocious to the woman with hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3794&start=20#p27189
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving the player.
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-29 15:56:33

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="matt w"]So, Ghalev, is it safe to say that you're not interested in reading the [url=http://mattweiner.net/ifiction/table%20source.txt]source code for my demo[/url] "The Table," which (aside from a massive blort of I6 that Victor wrote) consists mostly of a bunch of tables of lists? 

(You don't want to play it, either.)[/quote]


It's safe to say that I wish I [i]could [/i]read it [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

I tried and my computer tazed me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3794&start=20#p27190
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving the player.
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-29 16:01:32

[quote="katz"]For that matter, it looks more like a CYOA than a regular IF.  Perhaps the OP should try ChoiceScript or something of that nature if that's the direction s/he is going?[/quote]

Given the reference to both Giaks and Helgedad, it would seem to take place in Magnamund, so very CYOA (well, gamebook) indeed, at least at its roots [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3794&start=20#p27191
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving the player.
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-11-29 16:11:34

Right you are.  Gamebook beats the author's house as a first game, I suppose (although I do often wonder about the dearth of first-game creativity).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3794&start=20#p27192
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving the player.
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-29 16:39:50

[quote="katz"]Right you are.  Gamebook beats the author's house as a first game, I suppose (although I do often wonder about the dearth of first-game creativity).[/quote]

I'm actually working on a "deluxe" edition of my own first effort right now ... as if it could [i]get [/i]better.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3794&start=20#p27193
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving the player.
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-29 16:58:40

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="katz"]Right you are.  Gamebook beats the author's house as a first game, I suppose (although I do often wonder about the dearth of first-game creativity).[/quote]

I'm actually working on a "deluxe" edition of my own first effort right now ... as if it could [i]get [/i]better.[/quote]

Could if you worked in some tables of lists...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3342&start=10#p27194
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Quest online player session timeout
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-11-29 17:18:16

Juhana, exactly my thoughts too. There'll still be the option to bookmark a savefile because they're useful for sharing, but savefiles will be saved to localStorage instead.

Joey, well the Firefox interface is almost the same as Chrome's now, the difference being a separate search box which can be removed. I'm not telling you that you have to change browsers, but just pointing out that this problem is really your browser's fault, and not Parchment's.

Intercepting keys at all scroll positions is problematic because I want the up and down keys to scroll through the page, until you get to the bottom when they'll scroll through the command history. However, I guess we could distinguish between the keys we intercept. Maybe it would be safe to block the backspace key from going back a page at all times? Hmm. I think I'll do that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=10#p27195
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-11-29 17:19:37

[quote="maga"]I dunno whether Smarter Parser is going to become a good answer or an instructive failure, but either way.[/quote]

Probably the best outcome I could hope for is that I piss someone off enough that they write a better extension. [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote="matt w"]But I think there's no reason not to make it possible for authors to find out what this extension will do in their game, if they want to.[/quote]

I agree in principle, but at some point I'm just verbosely duplicating what authors could see for themselves by just opening up the extension source and taking a look at it-- they're decently commented and divided into sections. But I will take a look at whether I can clarify some things without turning the extension documentation into a novel.

Maybe a better approach could be to make more use options to easily enable/disable bits of the extension based on the specific contents of your game. If you have implemented body parts, the extension docs could direct you to add "Use no body part assumptions" to your source. Something like that.

[quote="matt w"]The thing you wanted to throw is on the floor... and it's obnoxious to have to pick it back up; it's also obnoxious to have to type UNDO (do newbies even know how to do this?) because the parser grabbed your action and turned it into something different. [/quote]

This particular example seems to be more the fault of the built-in throw = drop assumption. So far my extensions haven't removed anything from the standard rules, just replaced or expanded on them. I'm starting to see more demand for an extension that goes farther, though (specifically, to remove all the do-nothing verbs.) Might be worth looking into, although the danger is that this breaks any other extensions that refer to those verbs.

[quote="matt w"]What's wrong with asking the player whether he wants to carry out the revised action?[/quote]

A couple things: it makes the annoying, fourth-wall-breaking parser intrusion take two turns, not just one; using "if the player consents" breaks the skein and test commands; and certain phone/tablet/experimental IF environments are not set up to handle input in the middle of the normal parsing sequence like this. These are not insurmountable problems, but they're the reasons I don't use yes/no questions currently-- I did consider them.

[quote="ektemple"]I don't have a problem with the parser trying a new command on the player's behalf, but it should mention the option to UNDO when it redirects the command.[/quote]

This is a good idea-- I'll add it. I could probably do a better job at working in more meta-instruction into the error messages. Perhaps the first time a Smarter Parser messages is shown, it could add that you can disable these messages by typing NOVICE OFF, or the first time a command is auto-completed, it lets you permanently disable that behavior.

[quote="matt w"]Neutral Library Messages seems like it's actually causing trouble here, though; if the parser had responded "I only understood you as far as wanting to exit" there's a fighting chance they might have tried "exit" next.[/quote]

NLM's version of this is "I can't understand your entire command: the first part might be an action I know, but I didn't expect the word [x] next." This is more verbose but seems equally likely to get the player to type "exit" next, and fixes situations where the original format produces confusing messages (like "I only understood you as far as wanting to take inventory" if you start a command with "I".)

This is all great stuff, everyone. Didn't mean to hijack this thread, but I've got a good pile of notes for future improvements now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3794&start=30#p27196
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving the player.
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-29 17:32:59

[quote="I4L"][quote="Ghalev"][quote="katz"]Right you are.  Gamebook beats the author's house as a first game, I suppose (although I do often wonder about the dearth of first-game creativity).[/quote]

I'm actually working on a "deluxe" edition of my own first effort right now ... as if it could [i]get [/i]better.[/quote]

Could if you worked in some tables of lists...[/quote]

I'm pretty sure I could work those in from the [i]player's[/i] perspective! (Of course, I'd code them using something entirely other ...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3570&start=20#p27197
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SPAM
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-11-29 17:40:10

[quote="matt w"](There's another adminstrator, rioshin, but I don't think he's active anymore.)[/quote]
Rioshin has been in hospital for months, so I'm not surprised he hasn't been active here. I believe he's a lot better now, though. I can try to get in touch with him and see if he can do something about the forum.

Has anyone tried emailing Merk and asking him to have a look at the issue?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1185&start=50#p27198
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Trizbort, an IF mapping tool for Windows
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-11-29 17:41:44

It's on my to-do list to create an Import and Export to Trizbort from ADRIFT. Should be pretty straightforward as they're both XML (in case you wish to do the same ;- )

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=10#p27199
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-11-29 18:00:22

[quote](IF isn't football. IF isn't even Australian football. IF is the Eton Wall Game. If you turned on a sports channel and they were broadcasting the Eton Wall Game, you'd probably expect the announcer to explain the rules a lot more patiently.)[/quote]

Point taken. 

Anyway, Aaron, I was not trying to upset you. Sorry if I did. I'm just a lil bit mad at all those 400+ people who dropped my game after 6 turns cause it didn't let them "patronize the environment" or something like that. 
I think that anyone coding an extension is doing something noble, and you are one of those noblemen. 


What's eton wall game?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=20#p27200
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-11-29 18:36:20

[quote="Jamespking"]What's eton wall game?[/quote]
This: [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eton_Wall_Game[/url]. Played by a small minority of students at a single English public school.

[quote]The main game consists of the two sets of players forming a rugby-style scrummage (called a "Bully") in which neither team may "furk" the ball, which is to hook it backwards (except in Calx, where a different type of Bully called a Calx Bully occurs).[/quote]
Worst guess-the-verb ever.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=20#p27201
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-29 19:11:36

[quote="aaronius"]NLM's version of this is "I can't understand your entire command: the first part might be an action I know, but I didn't expect the word [x] next." This is more verbose but seems equally likely to get the player to type "exit" next, and fixes situations where the original format produces confusing messages (like "I only understood you as far as wanting to take inventory" if you start a command with "I".)[/quote]

It didn't work in this case, though, and I honestly think it's less likely to work. You have to do work to figure out what the NLM message is telling you it understood. The default message is usually pretty clear about that, if a little brusque. (It doesn't respond well to "north to the hills," though.) 

What about "I can't understand your entire command, but the first part might have been something I know. You could try typing [snippet of understood part in all caps] in order to [action name]." (Had to be careful not to phrase that as a question, which the player might try to answer!) 

This:
[quote]
I can't understand your entire command, but the first part might have been something I know. You could try typing I in order to take inventory.[/quote]

is still a little confusing as a response to "I capture the castle," but I don't know if it's that much worse than 

[quote]I can't understand your entire command: the first part might be an action I know, but I didn't expect the word capture next.[/quote]

(Of course Smarter Parser captures this.) 

And in the case of Doug's player, "I can't understand your entire command, but the first part might have been something I know. You could try typing EXIT in order to exit" might have worked. (Or not. Ideally, the action name would show up as "exit something you're in or on," but that might involve some annoying exception-coding.) 

On the documentation, one problem with source-diving is that the source is very regexy. I don't really understand [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Aaron%20Reed/Smarter%20Parser/source_7.html]this[/url], and without that I don't know why reference to a "walk-in closet" don't seem to trigger [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Aaron%20Reed/Smarter%20Parser/source_34.html]this[/url]. Maybe the thing to do is comment the sections more?

I appreciate all the work you've put in this, and the graciousness with which you're taking the criticism!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3795&start=0#p27209
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scope Caching causes author's brain to recurse
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-30 00:05:10

The bug I found was not an infinite recursion, so I'm going to say "No, it's not the same old bug". I have not analyzed what *is* going on, however.

EDIT: Actually, strike that. I'm not sure I understood your description of what's going on. The bug in question ( <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=808">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=808</a> ) is a parse_name routine invoking a scope test over and over, in a loop. Maybe that is what you're seeing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3342&start=10#p27210
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Quest online player session timeout
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-11-30 08:07:58

Okay, I've updated iplayif.com to catch the backspace key.

And remember, in the future please make an issue in Parchment's bug tracker for any other problems you find! [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3795&start=0#p27211
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scope Caching causes author's brain to recurse
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-30 11:17:07

I have confirmed that it's not the same bug. Removing the line from PlaceInScope does not solve the problem.

This is the part where by brain gets turned inside out. Do I have to add another property to distinguish between things that were already visible during caching and things that should now be made visible regardless of their original state? Or is there some point in time where I can cleverly distinguish between the two and make a designation that sticks?

Because of the way scope work, it's [i]impossible[/i] to cache the scope without triggering the deciding the scope activity. So trying to do so in an "after deciding the scope" or "before deciding the scope" rule always results in recursion.

I tried to stop [i]infinite[/i] recursion by making "caching scope" an activity rather than a phrase (probably a good idea), and adding this:

[code]After deciding the scope of the player:
	if the caching scope activity is not going on, carry out the caching scope activity with the player.
[/code]But this still doesn't stop the recursion altogether, so it doesn't help.

Maybe there's something in the scope reason variable that can tell me whether we've already done our regular caching?

Or perhaps I can go down a deeper level, so that the PlaceInScope function itself does the caching?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3799&start=0#p27212
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Dynamically setting and retrieving varaibles
User: Slynderdale / DateTime: 2011-11-30 11:42:55

Is it possible to dynamically set a variable using another variable that contains the name of the aforementioned variable? Similar to [[var]] which doesn't work. Where var contains the name of the variable I want to set. I'm trying to learn the Inform 6 and 7 interpreter so I working on a basic multi-purpose debugger for future projects and was wondering if there was a way to add a command that lets you show and set variables mid-game. Like debug set var value and debug get var.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3799&start=0#p27213
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Dynamically setting and retrieving varaibles
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-11-30 11:52:26

No, there's no way to do this.

If you want a double-indirection sort of pattern in game code, you usually either use a table, or a property of objects (so the first reference is an object reference). But Inform isn't really up to writing a debugger in itself.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3795&start=0#p27214
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Scope Caching causes author's brain to recurse
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-11-30 11:55:43

Yes, I think I've got it!

[code]To decide whether looping over scope:
	(- scope_reason == LOOPOVERSCOPE_REASON -)
	
After deciding the scope of the player when not looping over scope:
	if no nose is marked visible or the player's command includes "my":
		place your nose in scope;
[/code]
Actually, the phrase isn't even needed now that I can test if the caching scope activity is going on.

It seems that this works by making the nose visible without it being "marked visible" - another potential problem down the road...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=20#p27216
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2011-11-30 12:53:51

[quote]I would prefer to write work capable of being enjoyed by the 99.9% percent of people in the world who aren't IF experts. But again, authors who don't care about that crowd are free to ignore them.[/quote]
Could you please be a little [i]more[/i] condescending? People really like that, you know. [i]Of course[/i] you are [i]the only person in the world[/i] who cares about people etc. pp. But let's get to the point.

[quote]If you have specific examples of messages that you feel are putting the blame on the player, I would really like to hear them.[/quote]
I believe I already have: [quote]That noun did not make sense in this context.[/quote] That one makes me want to stop playing any game which throws this at me immediately.

[quote]Can you give me an example of a completely legitimate command you typed in which Smarter Parser misinterpreted? It should only kick in for commands that the parser couldn't understand at all.[/quote]
What about this one:
[quote]>screw lid on jar
I'm sorry if you're feeling frustrated. If you like, you can type SAVE to store your progress to a file, then RESTORE to come back to it later. In the meantime, you might try searching t
he web to see if there are hints available.[/quote]
I see people mocking ADRIFT4's parser all the time for breakage like this:
[quote]>ask kid about fire
How Suzy Got Her Powers {version 1} was written with ADRIFT 4, Release 51 and
was completed on 24th June 2011.
        Size: 40Kb; Locations 5 {8 as per the ADRIFT Generator but only 5 are
accessible during the game); Objects 84; Tasks 380; Events 11; Characters 2.[/quote]
How is that "smarter" parser better?

[quote]Fair enough. For me, there is no worse thing than nine out of ten people who try an exciting medium I care a lot about being frustrated and turned off to it by easily correctable problems.[/quote]
...and what about those people who want to try a game in a genre they are already familiar with being frustrated by being treated like total idiots?

You keep talking about your "research", however, that's only half of the story. The results are meaningless without analysing how many players who would otherwise have stopped playing you have gotten back on track with these changes to the defaults. The person in the transcript Doug Orleans posted certainly wasn't impressed by your efforts at newbie-friendliness. [i]That[/i] is the number you have to determine and compare it to the number of players you have pissed off with the same changes.

[quote][quote]The default Inform parser has seen years of careful tweaking and optimisation.[/quote]

...an incomplete and ongoing process, of which Smarter Parser is an important part.

Part of the issue there is the 'careful'. After two decades of careful tweaking, the parser doesn't really seem (to the casual observer) all that different from AGT. To make larger-scale improvements, occasionally it's necessary to make bigger, riskier jumps, and piss a bunch of people off in the process. I dunno whether Smarter Parser is going to become a good answer or an instructive failure, but either way.[/quote]
Absolutely! I don't see anyone here arguing against experimentation. I see people who are against advocating usage of experimental, immature software in "production" environments. What we've got right now, in my opinion, is a step back: much more frequent fourth-wall-breaking, uninformative rejections, blatant misinterpretations and rules which make the games "stupider". I have no interest in sinking to the level of "It looks like you want to write a letter. Should I help you with that?"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=20#p27217
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-30 13:34:02

[quote="Hannes"][quote]I would prefer to write work capable of being enjoyed by the 99.9% percent of people in the world who aren't IF experts. But again, authors who don't care about that crowd are free to ignore them.[/quote]
Could you please be a little [i]more[/i] condescending? People really like that, you know. [i]Of course[/i] you are [i]the only person in the world[/i] who cares about people etc. pp. But let's get to the point.[/quote]

To play devil's advocate here just a little...

I think Aaron meant this to be taken somewhat differently than it was. There are several of the "higher profile" members of the IF community whose communications I have to take a step back from and read a couple of times before I get my hackles up. I don't think that they intend to come off sounding like they do. At least I hope this is the case. (Pudlo is the exception, but I believe he does it on purpose.) In this case, the discussion is getting a smidge heated at times, so that may have influenced the response.

There seems to be a subtle undercurrent of suspicion among the newer "authors" regarding the intent of IF. I've seen it voiced on more than one website that IF is written for other authors, not players, and that the community is small-minded and cliquish. While I certainly haven't experienced this myself (at least not intentionally), I have seen instances where a response could have been smoothed over a little before someone hit the "Submit" button or where maybe someone should have better assessed the recipient of their "wisdom".

I think that what Aaron is trying to do is develop an environment that is easier for newcomers or the idly curious to pick up a game and enjoy it for being that, not wrestle with an exercise in guessing verbs and deciphering error messages. The hardcore IF community is full of traditionalists, just like any other community.

Take Sandra Lee, for example. As a self-professed "foodie", I hate the woman. I echo Bordain's sentiment of "she tells you to take a box of crap and smear it on some other crap and call it quickie gourmet". I don't cook like that. I prefer traditional methods, fresh ingredients and putting some work into my food. Everyone doesn't share that passion. While some of her stuff is tasty, it lingers in the back of my mind that part of this came from a can, which doesn't suit me.

Personally... I hated Zork. I played it for maybe 10 minutes. I think it's one of the most worthless pieces of crap I've ever played. Same with "Adventure". They were tedious, bland and at times downright infuriating. I respect them as forerunners to the genre, but I don't go back and play them again for a nostalgia high. Because they sucked. Everyone doesn't share my opinion. But I don't want to write things that emulate their style. There's a reason that most people don't do the "jitterbug" anymore. Frankly, it looks retarded.

(I also hate Star Wars, for the record. But that's another rant.)

Newcomers to the genre may not want to learn IF equivalents of [i]brunoise[/i] or [i]allumette[/i]. They just wanna "cut some stuff up and get tasty results".

Everyone seems to have agreed that, while not perfect, Aaron's extension is a step in the right direction. Maybe the only step I've seen, outside of rewriting parser messages every single game or writing our own extension. He admitted that it could possibly be an educational failure, which he's okay with. Nothing improves without feedback. Seems like that's what he needs to be getting.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=20#p27218
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-11-30 14:02:55

[quote="Hannes"][quote]I would prefer to write work capable of being enjoyed by the 99.9% percent of people in the world who aren't IF experts. But again, authors who don't care about that crowd are free to ignore them.[/quote]
Could you please be a little [i]more[/i] condescending? People really like that, you know. [/quote]

Dude, can you chill out a little? I wasn't being condescending; I meant what I said. There are novelists who write novels exclusively for people who love literary writing and analysis that are boring or incomprehensible for most readers. Ditto for film, music, and most other art forms. I don't have a beef with that at all. It's just not what I'm personally interested in doing in the case of IF. I have good friends who write IF for that crowd and more power to them. It just isn't my thing.

As other people have pointed out, "That noun did not make sense in this context" is a default library error, not something to do with one of my extensions. The fact that it was showing up in a certain context was a bug, but I didn't write the message.

The default response to "screw lid on jar" is "You can't see any such thing," even if a jar is in the room. To me, that just seems broken in a different way. You can argue about whether you personally prefer the parser to misinterpret you one way rather than another, but I'm not sure why the way I do it is making you so angry.

A case can be made that trying to recognize foul language and respond to it is pointless. Currently, the standard library already does this, and my extensions haven't yet changed any core behavior of the standard library, just the messages. Maybe a better approach would be just removing swearing verbs entirely. I could be down for that, but the current extensions are trying to just come up with a better alternative than "Real adventurers do not use such language." I'd be open to hearing alternatives to that message.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=20#p27219
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-11-30 14:20:23

[quote="aaronius"]
A case can be made that trying to recognize foul language and respond to it is pointless. Currently, the standard library already does this, and my extensions haven't yet changed any core behavior of the standard library, just the messages. Maybe a better approach would be just removing swearing verbs entirely. I could be down for that, but the current extensions are trying to just come up with a better alternative than "Real adventurers do not use such language." I'd be open to hearing alternatives to that message.[/quote]
Indeed, [url=http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/873945-show-the-list-of-swear-words-in-the-index]they were removed from the standard library earlier this year,[/url] although there hasn't been a release since then. 

I only remember this because I wrote a poem to commemorate the occasion:
[quote]So, farewell then
'I only understood you as far as
Wanting to fuck.'
A softer era can no more excuse
Concessions to the kind of muck
That real adventurers knew, but did not use.
A modern parser must, first, be 
Consid'rate of its partner's needs,
Behave in classroom and in app,
And neutral keep its words and deeds.
O withered is the youthful sap,
Now that we are all adults grown:
No more the wry authorial mask
Shall give the wink, and winking, break the tone.
(We'd rather focus on the task
Than laugh or cry or diss or bone.)
But should the vulgar feel dissent,
It's such fun to reimplement.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=20#p27220
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-11-30 15:14:57

[quote="Aaronius"]A case can be made that trying to recognize foul language and respond to it is pointless. Currently, the standard library already does this, and my extensions haven't yet changed any core behavior of the standard library, just the messages. Maybe a better approach would be just removing swearing verbs entirely. I could be down for that, but the current extensions are trying to just come up with a better alternative than "Real adventurers do not use such language." I'd be open to hearing alternatives to that message[/quote]
I guess there's some reticence in de-implementing a specific response in favour of a general one, but it might be for the best. In most games, most swear words aren't even recognised. The author then either has to put up with a specialised response for a tiny subset of swear words, or devote unnecessary time in implementing a wider variety of swear words. My collaborator Melvin tried to persuade me to write a [i]Curse Words[/i] extension, so authors could have the benefit of swear words being recognised without having to actually read any in their source code. I declined.

There are some specific issues with the Signs of Frustration component of Smarter Parser. 'Screw' as Hannes I think tried to point out, might have perfectly legitimate use in a game ([i]Calm[/i] contains screws, and the ability to unscrew); and a lot of the words might be meaningful things to bring up in a conversation with an NPC. However, as far as I can see, the author's own definitions of these words overrides the Smarter Parser usages. "Screw you", and "screw the jar" definitely give different responses when an author has implemented "screwing" as a synonym for twisting or whatever.

This is all to say the obvious: often there will be clashes between the contents of an extension and what an author is trying to express in their game. Extensions are very useful tools; but they're essentially an easy way of copy-pasting in someone else's code. And it behooves us to look carefully at what code we're pasting into our games.

To weave it back into the topic at hand: one of the parchment transcripts for our game had someone quit after receiving no good response to "where am I" (despite, of course, the room description having just been given. Did he want a map, or to be told that he was in such and such a town?). Smarter Parser would have given a response (it would have reprinted the room description). I was pretty sure we had included Smarter Parser, and checking just now I see that we did, but it only fires when the game is in easy mode. So the player, starting in normal mode, wasn't directed to those messages. 

This leads to a question: in cases where there are different difficulties, should concessions for newcomers be extended throughout or only be in 'easy mode', risking newcomers who resent playing on easy never seeing those messages?

--

Oh and I love the poem Maga!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=0#p27222
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: George / DateTime: 2011-11-30 15:46:16

...does this game's IFDB page look different to you?

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=sicva377zqygxcq2">http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=sicva377zqygxcq2</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=20#p27223
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-11-30 15:47:23

[quote="aaronius"]There are novelists who write novels exclusively for people who love literary writing and analysis that are boring or incomprehensible for most readers. Ditto for film, music, and most other art forms. I don't have a beef with that at all. It's just not what I'm personally interested in doing in the case of IF. [/quote]

I'm absolutely one of those people writing IF for IF lovers, and I love to riff on the default parser messages because my niche intended audience will pick up on that sort of thing.

But I'm also the sort of person who occasionally puts interactive works up in a gallery or other such public setting.  And you can bet that if I ever do that with a work of IF, I'll be including Smarter Parser et al, posthaste.  And I'll be super glad that Aaron is helping me take care of my helpless n00bs I mean audience. (The Public can break [i]anything[/i].)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=0#p27224
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2011-11-30 15:56:00

Lonc, your self-interview was the single most desperate and unfunny piece of writing ever associated with interactive fiction. Everyone who has read it has said they were [i]actively embarrassed[/i] on your behalf. The thing you did with Adam left us all amazed that he was able to carry you throughout your strained and sad attempts at being amusing. It was like watching a shallow backwater creek somehow roll the moon. 

We all just assumed that you have come to grips with the fact that you are a tedious bore. It seemed to make you happy. However, your preposterously stupid reply when Emily and zarf schooled you about IF dissertations has made it clear that you really [b]don't[/b] understand English. You aren't trying to "troll" anyone, you're just a very stupid person who is unknowingly presenting himself as an uncultured pube across multiple cultures, nations and languages. You're the Tropic of Capricorn of unfunny. You simply aren't intelligent enough to read and write in the de facto language of the Internet, and it's better for your sake that you stop trying. 

And look - it's been ten years. A decade of you so desperately trying to fit in around here. If anything, your reading comprehension has gotten worse! Perhaps it's time to consider this experiment the failure we've all known you to be for a decade now. I mean, go ahead and tell Jeremy Douglass -- who has spoken at length about his dissertation being about Interactive Fiction -- that his dissertation is not about Interactive Fiction before you hang it up. That might be good for the only laugh you have ever generated. Afterwards, though, it's really time to work on an exit strategy. 

You have fetishized the role of the agent and publisher in the past, and done so in a really creepy way. One of your more moronic suggestions has been that IF is a shitty medium because there isn't some gateway involved in releasing it, so it must be a failure, like Shakespeare, Linux and sex. (I'm sure you believe I'm getting your inane pish wrong, but believe me, I still said it better than you could.) Consider this post to be someone giving you the feedback that an editor would, then: you are untalented, mindlessly illiterate and unfunny. Stop fucking posting.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=20#p27225
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-11-30 16:12:45

[quote="maga"]Indeed, [swear words] were removed from the standard library earlier this year, although there hasn't been a release since then.[/quote]

I forgot all about this, and the lovely poem. (More changes to software ought to be accompanied by verse.)

In light of this, I don't have any further problem removing the swearing stuff from Smarter Parser. The "signs of frustration" section could also be up for the chopping block, or at least retooled to make it less likely to conflict with nouns. Yay progress!

...I've also updated my signature in the hopes of seeming less condescending.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3581&start=0#p27226
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: IF paratroopers needed for Limbs of Osiris
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2011-11-30 16:16:38

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]These are just some of the things those of you who haven't joined my Alpha Team are missing:[/quote]

Why is nobody volunteering to help this wretched bore make the world a marginally worse place???! Ha ha ha!

[quote]1) a playing character with detachable bodyparts[/quote]

Yes, you too can betatest a game where there is a grammar mistake two words into the thing's blurb. 

[quote]2) a playing character who can look inside his own head and witness the inner workings of his mind[/quote]

Most of which is just the words "GALATEA" and "NNNGHHH" over and over again, natch.  

[quote]3) several hint systems, one of which is telepathic[/quote]

I love this part. Only a barely-literate slop of ballsac like Lonc would think his players are so stupid they need MULTIPLE WAYS for him to patiently explain why they aren't getting his brilliant puzzles. 

[quote]4) lots and lots of superweird sex[/quote]

Chiefly: having it outside a Warsaw prison. 

[quote]Look at it this way. Would anyone today know who the Nazgûl were had they not alpha tested for Sauron? This is your passport to eternal fame and glory. Don't be a sucker. Be a Nazgûl and join my A-Team.[/quote]

Annnnnnnd just like the real A-Team, progress inevitably requires that your friends hit you in the back of the head with a wrench for your own good.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=0#p27227
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-11-30 16:30:04

[quote]Ten years this guy trolled RAIF/RGIF, he’s now shown up to troll the new IF playground and still – still! – people respond to him as if he’s making valid points instead of just throwing mud at whichever target takes his fancy.[/quote]

Dude.  The IF community treats [i]everything[/i] like valid criticism.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=0#p27228
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-11-30 16:51:34

[quote] You're the Tropic of Capricorn of unfunny. [/quote]

This made me lol. [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=0#p27229
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: tomasb / DateTime: 2011-11-30 17:01:31

I've seen this few days back, but I've resisted to spoil out [emote]:-)[/emote] Still I'm looking forward for an official release so I can play with the code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=0#p27230
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-11-30 17:09:34

[quote="Ice Cream Jonsey"]We all just assumed that you have come to grips with the fact that you are a tedious bore. ... And look - it's been ten years. A decade of you so desperately trying to fit in around here.  ... Consider this post to be someone giving you the feedback that an editor would, then: you are untalented, mindlessly illiterate and unfunny. Stop fucking posting.[/quote]

If you want someone to stop posting, you have to negate their posting by simply ignoring them. Yet, according to your own analyis, you have thrown fuel on the fire. What you're basically saying is "people should just ignore you" and you make that point while not following your own advice.

Personally, I like Jacek's gadfly approach to what often seems like a community that it takes itself way too seriously.

Beyond that, while you may not agree with the post regarding details of The Baron, it is a substative post stating an opinion backed up by examples. So perhaps a better way to respond -- since you clearly wanted to respond -- is to avoid saying someone is "untalented, mindlessly illiterate and unfunny," -- thus apparently reducing yourself to what you perceive as "their level" -- and instead respond to the substantive points. Otherwise you might risk looking just as much a "jerk" as the person you are railing against.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3803&start=0#p27232
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: What is CYOA as opposed to IF
User: Eyesee / DateTime: 2011-11-30 17:28:30

I've noticed that some people don't like the idea of CYOA's but like IF. What  I don't understand is the difference in the two. CYOA's have different locations, different items to find and use, and hopefully a story. The only difference I can see is that CYOA's have set instructions to follow while IF doesn't, so your free to make your own choices based on clues in the text.

Have I misunderstood or missed something?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=0#p27233
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-11-30 17:41:41

Mike really doesn't do things by halves, does he?

[spoiler][attachment=0]customizedisplay.jpg[/attachment][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3803&start=0#p27234
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What is CYOA as opposed to IF
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-11-30 17:42:22

There are lots of possible reasons to dislike CYOA. But I think most people who know about them just have poor associations. 

Most people I've met associate CYOA game books with fantasy books written for children. They're about the same level as old text adventure games so far as game design is concerned: often you would die arbitrarily for taking the wrong time, the writing wasn't amazing and the scenes and set pieces were often frankly ridiculous.

This all said, I greatly enjoyed CYOA books when I was a child, and recently I had fun playing through a ridiculous underwater adventure with some friends, taking turns acting out all the parts of the monsters. In the latest IFComp, both the Play and Binary presented themselves as successful examples of CYOA-style games, both placing higher than any other CYOA game in the comp's history.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3803&start=0#p27235
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What is CYOA as opposed to IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-11-30 18:05:06

[quote]What  I don't understand is the difference in the two.[/quote]

CYOA is more awesome, in a lot of ways. But ... parser-based IF has the special-case awesomeness and implied freedom of the parser. That it's illusory to a great extent is undeniable, but it's a sexy illusion as illusions go, and the [i]extent to which[/i] it's illusory varies game-to-game, keeping the tease alive [emote]:)[/emote]

The way I like to think of them is: CYOA is like skiing downhill ... pure rush, pure progress, pure substance, pure course. Parser-Based IF is like walking the same slopes, downhill if you like, uphill if you like, or just spending all day poking at the same leaf. Or, if you feel like it: wandering off-course until that little stick-figure yeti thing eats you.

[or it's like being [i]airdropped [/i]onto the same slope, but wearing snowshoes instead of skis, and armed with a magnifying glass, some litmus strips, and a tuning fork ... possibly one of several tuning forks ... there could be a disambiguation question later ...]

There are adventures that rock in parser form that would be lame in CYOA form, and the reverse is also true. CYOA is better for exploring impactful narrative choices, I think, and for exploring vastly [i]divergent [/i]choices that would break or explode an IF's model universe. IF is good for poking at potsherds and getting flashbacks. Currently, CYOA has much better porn.

I enjoy writing (and playing) both.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=0#p27236
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-11-30 18:05:09

I am hoping to see IFDB profile integration for custom settings, but that can wait until after the official launch.

Multi-user sessions are the killer feature for me. My brother swears he will play IF as soon as we can go through the same game together. It looks like now we can.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=0#p27237
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: George / DateTime: 2011-11-30 18:06:26

It seems like the way the web UI is set up you'll be able to make pretty much whatever interface you want with Javascript as well?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3803&start=0#p27238
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What is CYOA as opposed to IF
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-11-30 18:13:52

[quote="Eyesee"]What  I don't understand is the difference in the two. CYOA's have different locations, different items to find and use, and hopefully a story. The only difference I can see is that CYOA's have set instructions to follow while IF doesn't, so your free to make your own choices based on clues in the text.

Have I misunderstood or missed something?[/quote]
CYOA does not necessarily model either locations or items. The series that gave CYOA its name, Choose Your Own Adventure, does not involve a world-model, an inventory or even (usually) much player knowledge: you just turn to the right page-number. There are plenty of works of CYOA, both electronic and paper-copy, that involve a lot of state-tracking, but it's not a necessary feature of the form.

There's a small minority of CYOA games that model the world in a manner somewhat similar to IF, with maps and inventory and so on, but even the most complicated computer-driven CYOA doesn't tend to have a world-model built out of objects. (As a dangerous overgeneralisation, IF tends to be organised by physical location, while CYOA tends to be organised by time.) And, yes, there's the parser, which is important in many ways.

Although you can [i]technically[/i] produce CYOA-like works in IF and adapt IF-like works to a CYOA format, the forms tend towards different styles of play and of narration. IF tends to have finer-grained stories and worlds, while CYOA would rather keep the plot moving and deliver longer-arc stories. It's easier for IF to be deeply interactive, have puzzles, etc., but easier for CYOA authors to deliver flowing narrative. This forms different kinds of expectation: if an IF game switches into CYOA-like play for a while, it's a bit like reading a comic and then discovering that the second half of the story is all prose fiction. You might like prose fiction, but that wasn't what you signed on for, and you'll probably feel that the artist just got lazy.

There are also some historical differences: CYOA was traditionally written mostly for a broad audience of children and teenagers, and never really aspired to be Great Writing, while IF has generally been written for a somewhat older, savvier audience (people nerdy enough to own computers) and had literary aims even at the time when it was a commercial success. This has changed somewhat in recent years, but there's still a widespread perception that CYOA is low-grade kid's stuff by default.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=10#p27239
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2011-11-30 18:14:05

[quote="bukayeva"]So perhaps a better way to respond -- since you clearly wanted to respond -- is to avoid saying someone is "untalented, mindlessly illiterate and unfunny," -- thus apparently reducing yourself to what you perceive as "their level" -- and instead respond to the substantive points. Otherwise you might risk looking just as much a "jerk" as the person you are railing against.[/quote]

Thanks killer, but I know what I'm doing over here. 

Here is some THRILLING analysis of Pudlo's though:

[quote]>SWING AXE
"There's nothing sensible to swing here."[/quote]

Mmm. I melt due to the brillance of Pudlo pointing this out. It's almost as if we're dealing with a guy who [i]actually works[/i] in the publishing industry!! Since The Baron is not a game about chopping up all the non-<strike>player</strike>playing characters with an axe, the fact there wasn't a better reply here absolutely needed to be pointed out a billion years after the game's release. Thank God we've got a smug, self-important, sniveling little weasel of a nobody letting us know that the parser doesn't do natural language processing. You just know that Pudlo smirked and readjusted his shorts after pointing out this catastrophic failure of text games. Wumpus: [b]HUNTED[/b]

It's terrible analysis from a stupid person. He's about the last person on earth who should be giving a hard time to people who are writing IF in their second or third language.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=0#p27240
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-11-30 18:18:23

That's right. You just have to modify the [url=http://www.assembla.com/code/frobtads/git/nodes/tads3/lib/webuires]webui[/url] resources that get packed into the T3 file. Or roll a webui of your own and link to it instead.

There is a Flash dependency (TADS.swf) but I'm not sure how much functionality is tied to it. Font picking and file handling, at least.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3804&start=0#p27241
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Farm Quest-Testing and general opinions
User: phatmonkey / DateTime: 2011-11-30 18:33:28

I designed an interactive fiction for a business of game design course and I would appreciate any feedback, whether its bugs or incomplete object descriptions or any sort of usability issue, as well as general opinions on how enjoyable or un-enjoyable it is.  This is my first interactive fiction and working with Inform 7 was both fun and frustrating.  I plan to make more updates when I have more time to work on it.

The game can be played on my host site.

farmfictiononline.webs.com

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3804&start=0#p27242
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Farm Quest-Testing and general opinions
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-11-30 18:59:37

Hi, after a few turns I've noticed a couple typos:

[spoiler]In the first speech, "folliwng" should be "following" or maybe "followin" and you have an "it's" that should be "its"

"He hides it from the wife as he recieved it" should be "received"

there are a few stray quotation marks, too.[/spoiler]

More importantly, 

[spoiler]The room description for the stables doesn't change after I've let the horse out -- the horse and flies are still said to be there.[/spoiler]

I'd also suggest that

[spoiler]"search straw" should yield an indication that there's something you can't reach near the horse, and then should actually yield the key if the horse is gone.[/spoiler]

I also had this sub-optimal interaction:

[spoiler][quote]>unlock box with key
You unlock the lockedbox.
 
>open box
You open the lockedbox, revealing .
 
>search box
The lockedbox is empty.
 [/quote]

You probably want a rule for printing the name of the box that prefaces it with its locked property, and also a rule that says "understand the locked property as describing the box" (not too sure about that). And there seems to be another bug in here -- I'm not sure how the second message happened, but isn't there supposed to be a gun in here?[/spoiler]

Finally, you should probably "Use American dialect" -- it feels weird to have the word "recognise" show up in this game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=10#p27243
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-11-30 18:59:39

While I admire the way this community can start interesting conversations from nonsensical five-word posts (I've seen it happen), it does boggle me somewhat that some people are still *defending* Pudlo. I guess if you haven't seen anything of his except his forum posts then you might get the impression - just - that he's got a particular point of view which the community has been shunning for a long time now, making every post of his automatically a target.

Which is all well and good, I guess, if you're uncapable of picking up on his hostility, and negativity. "Hostility" where he acts as though he's a genius and is surrounded by retarded people (ocasionally funny, nearly-always infuriating) and "negativity" where you realise that this guy has spent the last 10 years (using Robb's figure) criticising things (hardly ever in a constructive manner, and often not even in a coherent manner) without bothering to come up with alternatives, or to be constructive about the whole thing.

I guess if you're new to Pudlo you might think he's got something to say. And you're right. He has this to say: "I'm the best fricking person in the whole wide world, and I'm way better than you in every way".

If you ask me, bukayeva, Robb's reply was a long time coming.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3804&start=0#p27245
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Farm Quest-Testing and general opinions
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-30 19:22:25

Quick run-through of what I've had time to look at so far:
[spoiler][list]
[*]In the first room, "x tools" leads to examining the shelves instead. "x tool" tells me I don't see any such thing, even though I see a whole shelf of them.[/*:m]
[*]"x toolbox" tells me I can't see any such thing, but "x box" describes the toolbox.[/*:m]
[*]Trying to take the box tells me it's fixed in place, which is fine. But it would be nicer to tell me why it's fixed in place. Is it too heavy? Too large? Am I a duck?[/*:m]
[*]In the pig sty, I'm told that there are walls covered with shelves and equipment. But when I try to examine either, I'm told they don't exist.[/*:m]
[*]Why am I talking to animals again? Maybe we'll find out later on...[/*:m]
[*]I like the description of the pigs.[/*:m]
[*]In the hen house, I'm told there's a large box with a hole in it. I can't examine that, either.[/*:m]
[*]When I open the toolbox, I'm told that I unlock the "lockedbox". You need some love from: The printed name of the lockedbox is "The Toolbox". Understand "toolbox" as the lockedbox.[/*:m]
[*]When I unlocked the box, I'm told "You open the lockedbox, revealing ." I tried examing again and got the usual description. I tried to look inside the box and was told it was empty. Then I looked at my inventory and saw the instructions.[/*:m]
[*]So now I have the instructions. I'm not sure how I feel about having to complete a puzzle to get instructions on how to play the IF. I mean... If I got this far, haven't I already kinda figured it out? Or maybe this wasn't what was in the box, since I didn't do an inventory before I opened the lockedbox. I just kind of assumed my inventory was empty. My bad.[/*:m]
[*]The pigs are too absorbed in their food to consider "replaying". Should be "replying".[/*:m]
[*]I can get the scarecrow. But I couldn't get the lockedbox. After taking the scarecrow, it's still in the description.[/*:m]
[*]In the woodland path, I see "acrons" instead of acorns.[/*:m]
[*]In the kitchen, there's a chicken. But I get more "you can't see any such thing" when I try to examine it.[/*:m]
[*]Or any of the other scenery items in the kitchen. Back to the sty to presumably feed the pigs their children.[/*:m]
[*]After I take the bacon, it's still in the description. Maybe I didn't take all of it?[/*:m]
[*]I try to take more, it says I already have it. When I try to eat it, it says it's inedible. Maybe the old bat is a horrible cook.[/*:m]
[*]Where did that silly horse go?[/*:m][/list:u]

Okay, well, that's about all I have time for at the moment. I can't give the bacon to the pigs, which it seems I should. I can't take the hen, body, chicken, remains or corpse for the chickens.

So... I'm stuck! I'll take another crack at it soonish.

Overall, good opening effort, I think.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=20#p27246
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-11-30 20:52:48

For my comp game Six, in a sense, I did write a 'smarter parser' from the ground up for the game. This is because I believe in what Aaron said - that every author would, in an ideal world, consider/address/rewrite all default material for their game. I did this and it's a lot of work, but it's probably something I'll do on every game I make due to my perfectionist streak. It doesn't cover as many cases as Aaron's because some of the cases I'm not interested in, but on the other hand, since it's built for my game only, it works well and doesn't have edge cases or lead to mishaps.

For everyone who can't/won't/doesn't want to write all that from the ground up, but wants most of those effects, there's Smarter Parser.

I was less of a fan of Neutral library messages, but in the end, it's up to the author whether they want to use these extensions or not in line with their aims and tastes. And if they do, it is of course up to them to test their resulting game thoroughly. I find it can be hard  excavating even all of Inform's default messages, let alone the smarter parser ones as well, but as I say, that's why I roll my own.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=30#p27247
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-11-30 22:09:51

[quote="JoeyJones"]
This leads to a question: in cases where there are different difficulties, should concessions for newcomers be extended throughout or only be in 'easy mode', risking newcomers who resent playing on easy never seeing those messages?[/quote]
This was discussed in a panel at this year's IF Suite at PAX, and one of the core take-home messages was that you should never, [i]never[/i] expect beginners to play in a mode called Beginner or Easy. You either have to call Easy mode Normal and Normal mode EXTREME NIGHTMARE UNFAIR MASTERCLASS OF MASOCH +11, or set difficulty to Easy by default and put the controls to change it to Normal somewhere obscure, or give up on a nice simple fix. 

(In non-simple fixes, [i]Blue Lacuna[/i] does some things to detect experienced IF players and recommend an appropriate track, but I think its effectiveness was pretty mixed.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3804&start=0#p27248
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Farm Quest-Testing and general opinions
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-30 22:17:40

[spoiler]Okay, so I did already have the instructions.
[list]
[*]When I talk to the horse, I'm advised to ask him about the treasure instead of saying hello. Why wouldn't I introduce myself first?[/*:m][/list:u]

Okay, so I tried again. I still can't get the chicken corpse, still can't get anything out of the box and still can't give the bacon to the pigs. Am I missing something?[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3806&start=0#p27249
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Gnome Ranger help needed! (SPOILERS)
User: Dref / DateTime: 2011-11-30 23:12:11

(SPOILERS)






Is there anyway to get the stinkwort shoot without the telelilys? If not, is there a way to get the white telelily back after you

(SPOILER) 

blow up the beanstalk with it?

If the answer to both questions is no, then I'm in trouble.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3806&start=0#p27250
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Gnome Ranger help needed! (SPOILERS)
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-11-30 23:53:39

Helpful hint?

Click the button above the text entry box that says "spoiler". Then put your questions between those tags.

Sorry, no helpful hints about this game. Haven't played it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=0#p27262
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-01 00:30:43

I'm a horror fanatic. Besides cookbooks, it's pretty much the only thing I like to read these days. That being the case, it's really the only type of IF that I enjoy playing. No matter how beautiful, masterful and moving a piece of IF is, if it isn't surreal and horrific, I'm not buying.

This frustrates me because I can't find any truly good horror IF. I say this with the disclaimer that I haven't finished Anchorhead and I've barely started Shreds & Patches.

In searching IFDB, there are shockingly very few games tagged as horror, comparitively. When I do find it, it's flagged as "Lovecraft crap", basically, which I can't understand.

Just played Shade for the first time. Just now. Just played through it. Twice. Hated it. Absolutely hated it. About five minutes into it, I already knew what the end result was and was just trying to see what profundity would accompany the actual revalation. There was none. Just a "my turn". Maybe the game is too smart for me, but I don't even know what the hell that means, forget being deeply affected by it. This isn't to say the game is bad or that I could do better. I just... don't get it and it didn't move me. I didn't find anything about it "creepy" or "scary" in the most charitable definition of the term.

Ecdysis... I absolutely loved this. Not because it was particularly well written, because I don't think it was. But I do think it was ballsy. And it was Lovecraftian. Very Lovecraftian. I happen to be a fan of Lovecraft. I happen to have two plush Cthulhus on my desk at work. One is wearing a straw hat and a Hawaiin shirt and is sporting several pins of Lovecraft and Crowley. Holdovers from a younger, more ignorant day. Beside the point...

Played "One Eye Open". Hated it. Very well executed game. Very campy and desperate. Everything eats you. The washing machine can eat you. The laundry chute can eat you. The hallway can eat you. It's very Star Wars Meets Silent Hill. Lots of potential for an excellent psychological thriller/surreal horror. Never met that expectation for me. Tried too hard and I wound up quitting about twenty minutes in.

Games I've been put off playing: Lydia's Heart, Dead Cities, Critical Breach. I tried Slouching some time ago, but for some reason got put off by it and just never picked it up again.

So to come back to my original point: why all the Lovecraft hate? And why the comparative void of horror in IF? Is it too cliche? Has Lovecraft become cliche? What isn't cliche? What hasn't been done time and time and time and time again? Psychiatric hospitals? Check. Hordes of random animals/insects? Check. Viruses? Check. In a medium ripe with possibility, we get "Shade" and "Gonna Eat You Up Hallways". 

I want something that's going to make me think. Shade showed that Plotkin has an interesting take on what dying in the desert feels like if you're in limbo or something, despite probably having never died in the desert or been in limbo. But that didn't make it scary. Anchorhead is still the proverbial carrot. Ecdysis was perfect bite-sized horror, despite the vehicle making no sense to someone not having ridden shotgun. 

So... what gives?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=0#p27263
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-01 00:34:29

Also Warbler's Nest was neither horror nor creepy. It was actually a pretty accurate jab at old world ignorance. It stuck with you. But it wasn't scary. Plus...

[spoiler]I know that this is all based on folklore. I know I'm not gonna chuck a baby in the river, no matter how much the game tells me that it might be my only chance at peace. So while it tried (and tried well) to convince me that maybe I didn't think what I had thought I thought, it still didn't convince me to hurl a screaming infant to its watery death, so...[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=0#p27264
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-01 00:47:02

[quote]why all the Lovecraft hate?[/quote]

What Lovecraft hate? I like Lovecraft pastiches.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=0#p27265
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-01 00:53:36

(To be clear, I like Lovecraft too, but he didn't write any IF, so in that realm we're stuck with pastiches.)

It looks like you're saying that you only like Lovecraftian IF but you won't play any game that's labelled "Lovecraftian" in IFDB. This appears to be a problem, but I probably misunderstand you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3819&start=0#p27266
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: A simple parser
User: codem2 / DateTime: 2011-12-01 00:55:37

Hi, I am new here. I am interested in developing a simple text adventure system as a programming project. The most important part of the program would be the parser. Could someone point me in the right direction as to where I can get an example and a simple explanation on how to implement a parser. The programming language is not important. Even pseudo code would be fine as long as it details how I would implement it. Google does not find any examples, just definitions for parser. Even a 2 token verb noun parser example is helpful if you know how. My programming constructs are very simple, so I am looking for simple explanations. As a side note, I am trying to write this in VB.NET.

Thank you!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3820&start=0#p27267
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: A good "recent" spy thriller?
User: codem2 / DateTime: 2011-12-01 01:00:06

Does anyone know of a good IF spy thriller? A sci-fi theme is ok also, but I am looking for something written within the last year.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3806&start=0#p27268
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Gnome Ranger help needed! (SPOILERS)
User: Dref / DateTime: 2011-12-01 01:22:15

Hint taken, thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3819&start=0#p27269
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: A simple parser
User: George / DateTime: 2011-12-01 01:39:17

Here is an excellent explanation of writing an IF parser. You don't have to get as complex as he does but the principles are sound:

<a class="postlink" href="http://delicious.com/redirect?url=http%3A//groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/msg/f545963efb72ec7b%3Fdmode%3Dsource">http://delicious.com/redirect?url=http% ... e%3Dsource</a>

Otherwise I would recommend two things; first, looking at mud engines (search on Sourceforge, Github, BitBucket, Google Code, Mudbytes code repository, etc.). Mud parsers usually are less complex than IF parsers and you might even find a mud written in vb.net. Second, search the IF Archive (and those other code repositories too) for stand-alone text adventures (i.e. those not written in Inform, Tads, etc.). There might be some with source there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=0#p27270
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-12-01 02:48:27

[quote="George"]...does this game's IFDB page look different to you?[/quote]
Uh, no? It looks exactly like every other IFDB page. What am I missing?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=0#p27271
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-01 02:49:19

[quote="I4L"]So to come back to my original point: why all the Lovecraft hate? And why the comparative void of horror in IF? Is it too cliche?[/quote]

The Lovecraft-hate puzzles me, too, but there's a lot of knee-jerk this-and-that at the vocal edges of the IF mob. I don't take it as really representing anything [i]but [/i]the vocal edges, though, since when IF folk [i]do [/i]settle in to write something horrorish, it's very often Lovecraftian. And bravo to that. Personally, I didn't cotton to Anchorhead, but I think Shreds and Patches is good stuff.

Void of horror: Not sure, really. I've seen ample evidence that there's interest in [i]playing [/i]it.

The phrase "too cliche" does not parse.  [emote]:D[/emote]  No such thing (well, provided it's [i]cliche-as-language[/i] rather than [i]cliche-passed-off-as-substance[/i] ... and I think the knee-jerk reaction people have to cliche is mostly founded on the presumption that any given use of cliche will be the latter rather than the former). The letter "L" has been done. The color blue has been done. Having been done means nothing if we're talking about tools and components, and cliche, used properly, is a pile of tools and components. It's only when someone takes some blue paint, slaps a big "L" on a canvas, and calls it artistic license instead of laziness, that we get into trouble.

So, I dunno [emote]:([/emote] I'm more of a space-opera, hardboiled-crime and trad-fantasy guy myself, and I feel all three of [i]those [/i]are under-represented as well, at least in modern works ... I gather that, with some writers, there's such a strong apparent need to make things [i]distinguished [/i]from genre work that good genre work becomes a bit neglected, the rarest of gems (ironically) ... the people who could do it well, avoid it, and the people who don't avoid it are often ... still learning the fundamentals of their craft, let's say.

So, yeah. I dunno [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=0#p27273
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-12-01 03:00:38

[quote="I4L"]So to come back to my original point: why all the Lovecraft hate?[/quote]
Because he is an awful writer? I know that Duncan is going to kick me for this, but I did give the man a chance; although I had giving up on him, I was persuaded to read [i]At the Mountains of Madness[/i], and made a good faith effort to like it. But even that supposed magnum opus was bad. Not as bad as most of his other stuff, but still quite bad. I wrote a short analysis of it, but [url=http://lilith.cc/~victor/?q=content/h-p-lovecraft-mountains-madness-1936]it is in Dutch[/url].

Which doesn't mean I cannot enjoy a good Lovecraft-inspired game. I loved [i]Anchorhead[/i] and [i]The King of Shreds and Patches[/i], both of which are explicitly based on Lovecraft. But even there, although these games are very good and I enjoyed them greatly, it was the Lovecraft stuff that least appealed to me. Why? I tried to explain that in my analysis of [i]King[/i]:
[quote]Lovecraftian horror is a strange genre, because its very premises set the writer up for failure. For what is its essence? Lovecraft took the gothic tale of terror and pushed it towards transcendence--a dark, anti-humanistic transcendence. Perhaps it is said most clearly in the first sentences of his famous [i]The Call of Cthulhu[/i]:
[quote]The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.[/quote]
One can immediately see why this vision is attractive to the reader and the writer of horror: where the gothic tale was always only an escape from the rationality of our daily lives, never to be taken quite seriously, the Lovecraftian tale presents itself as a full-fledged alternative to rationalism. Yes, your science seems useful... but! You believe you understand the universe... but! With Lovecraft, horror gains a metaphysical import which it had hitherto lacked.

So why do I claim it sets the writer up for failure? Because those things and beings that are so alien that mere knowledge of them makes us insane, cannot be represented, cannot be captured in language--and of course it is precisely the writer's job to put his subject matter in language. At the end of a Lovecraftian tale, when the horror finally appears in person, the writer has only three basic options. First, he can try to describe the monster, as an "awful squid-head with writhing feelers" for instance. Second, he can describe the effect of seeing the monster on human beings: "Of the six men who never reached the ship, he thinks two perished of pure fright in that accursed instant." Third, he can tell (rather than show) us that the horror transcends human categories: "The Thing cannot be described—there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order." Or he can do some combination of the three, as Lovecraft did in [i]The Call of Cthulhu[/i], from which all these citations were taken.

But each of these three possibilities is a failure. If the thing is described, we laugh. Writhing feelers? It's only a giant squid! Are we supposed to believe in the metaphysical import of giant squids, and science's inability to deal with them? If we are told that the people around the horror go mad, we rightly ask [i]why[/i] they go mad. What happens to them? What do they see? In what sense is this thing not just a giant squid? If, finally, the writer tells us that the horror cannot be put into words, he merely admits his own failure as a writer. Thus, we have a trilemma from which no escape is possible--and Lovecraft himself is among those who fail to escape, as is shown by passages like this one: "The Thing cannot be described—there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order. A mountain walked or stumbled." A mountain stumbled? Did it trip over its own foothills, or what? The image evokes laughter rather than terror.[/quote]
I don't know if this is helpful to you, but it is my explanation of why there is such a thing as Lovecraft hate.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=0#p27274
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-01 03:08:20

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]--and of course it is precisely the writer's job to put his subject matter in language. [/quote]

I've spotted your misunderstanding for you [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=0#p27275
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: tomasb / DateTime: 2011-12-01 03:23:42

[quote="bcressey"]There is a Flash dependency (TADS.swf) but I'm not sure how much functionality is tied to it. Font picking and file handling, at least.[/quote]

That flash object is there for sound output and for some font measurement on initialization.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3821&start=0#p27276
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: The BBC Micro Celebrates 30 years
User: J. J. Guest / DateTime: 2011-12-01 04:01:54

Hi All,

There doesn't seem to be much else in the news to celebrate at the moment, so I thought I'd bring this little article to your attention:

[url]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15969065[/url]

This month marks the 30 year anniversary of the BBC Microcomputer. There must be a fair few people in this community who, like me, wrote their first work of IF in BBC Basic. I started off with the slightly cheaper Acorn Electron before moving up to the BBC Master Compact when I was in my late teens. I still have the original cassette tapes for games like Adventure, several Scott Adams and Brian Howarth titles, the Epic Adventure games "Kingdom of Klein" and "The Lost Crystal", "Dodgy Geezers" by Melbourne House and topologika's "Avon", among others. Lurking in another box are my own, largely unfinished efforts, "Hotel Ghastly", "Mud, Glorious Mud", "Once, on a Blue Moon" and "Who'd be a Spy". The less said about those, the better! Enjoy the article.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=0#p27277
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-12-01 04:02:33

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="George"]...does this game's IFDB page look different to you?[/quote]
Uh, no? It looks exactly like every other IFDB page. What am I missing?[/quote]
The Play Online button.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3822&start=0#p27278
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Is it possible to assign a table to a person?
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-12-01 04:14:26

I created a table of parameters for body parts as well as others things and I want to assign a table to each person, the same way we say a person has a number called health.
So that any modification of a table would modify only the table of person to who it is attached.

Is there a way to do it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3822&start=0#p27279
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is it possible to assign a table to a person?
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-12-01 04:59:30

I suppose it is not possible to create a list of lists as well.

mmh

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=0#p27280
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-12-01 04:59:44

[quote="Emerald"]The Play Online button.[/quote]
Ah, yes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3822&start=0#p27281
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is it possible to assign a table to a person?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-01 06:14:19

[quote="sai"]Is there a way to do it?[/quote]
You can do things like this if you like:
[code]"Breakfast for Champions" by Your Self

A Bowl of milk is a room

Every person has a table name called a Table of Stats. The Table of Stats of a person is usually the Table of General Conditions.

Table of General Conditions
Skill	Stamina	Luck
7	13	7

Snap is a person in a bowl of milk. The Table of Stats is the Table of Snap Conditions.
Crackle is a person in a bowl of milk. The Table of Stats is the Table of Crackle Conditions.
Pop is a person in a bowl of milk. The Table of Stats is the Table of Pop Conditions.

Tony the Tiger is a person in a bowl of milk.

Table of Snap Conditions
Skill	Stamina	Luck
8	8	8

Table of Crackle Conditions
Skill	Stamina	Luck
8	8	8

Table of Pop Conditions
Skill	Stamina	Luck
8	8	8

Every turn: choose row 1 in the Table of Stats of Crackle; now the Luck entry is a random number from 1 to 12; hoose row 1 in the Table of Stats of Tony; increment the stamina entry.


Every turn:
	repeat with Kellogg running through persons:
		choose row 1 in the Table of Stats of Kellogg;
		say "[Kellogg]:[line break]Skill: [skill entry] Stamina: [stamina entry] Luck: [luck entry][paragraph break]"
		
Test me with "z/z/z/z/z"[/code]
You have to define the Table of Stats of people separately, as per above, if you want them to change independently. (As you see, changing Tony's Table of Stats means changing the Table of General Conditions, which is also the player's Table of Stats.) But having done that, you can access them all through the Table of Stats attribute.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3822&start=0#p27282
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is it possible to assign a table to a person?
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-12-01 08:43:49

Thank you very much for your answer, with a very clear example.

So I guess there is no way to create a single table of stats that can be attributed to every person when play begins for example?

I may have just a dozen characters in the present game so I could do it, but if I want to add a column for example, I would need to add it too all the tables. And if I want to use this stats system in another game it will be very difficult to adapt, and will never be usable if there are a lot of characters, or for example dynamically created characters.

I would like to find a workaround with lists or whatever will do...
I need to have table of lists, or lists of lists, or something that can store lists in arrays.

Do you think there is a way?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3822&start=0#p27283
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is it possible to assign a table to a person?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-12-01 08:58:55

[quote="sai"]Thank you very much for your answer, with a very clear example.

So I guess there is no way to create a single table of stats that can be attributed to every person when play begins for example? I may have just a dozen characters in the present game so I could do it, but if I want to add a column for example, I would need to add it too all the tables. And if I want to use this stats system in another game it will be very difficult to adapt, and will never be usable if there are a lot of characters, or for example dynamically created characters.[/quote]

I'm not sure I understand exactly what you mean, but it sounds like you actually don't want a table for every character. It sounds like you want to have all the characters' stats in one single table:

[code]Table of Character Stats
NPC	Skill	Stamina	Luck
Snap	8	8	8
Crackle	8	8	8
Pop	8	8	8[/code]

You can just look up the stats for any given character in this centralized table using the standard table access commands given in Chapter 15 of the manual.

[quote="sai"]I would like to find a workaround with lists or whatever will do...
I need to have table of lists, or lists of lists, or something that can store lists in arrays.[/quote]

You can use lists too, I guess, those tables feel more natural to me for this purpose. You can nest lists as deeply as you like.

A list of numbers: {1, 2, 3, 4}
A list of lists of numbers: {{1, 2}, {3, 4}}
A list of lists of lists of numbers: { {{1,2}, {3,4}}, {{5,6}, {7,8}} }

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3822&start=0#p27284
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is it possible to assign a table to a person?
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-12-01 09:06:12

Thank you for your answer. 
But I may have explained myself incorrectly.

I have a table of body parts with a column with names and other columns with a lot of parameters.
This is a big table.

I want at the beginning of the game all the persons to have a copy of this table as it is defined (everyone with the same values).
But during play for example if someone is wounded I want only this person to be wounded, so I want to be able to change the value of the table without having everyone's value changing.

I don't want to copy/paste the initial table as many times as there are people.

I would like to access it with
The table of body parts of character A
now the name corresponding to a xxxx of yyyyy in the table of body parts of character B is zzzz.
etc...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3822&start=0#p27285
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is it possible to assign a table to a person?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-01 09:18:17

I'd lean toward properties, I guess. I can't give a clear, tested example unfortunately, because I'm at work. But something like:

A left arm is a part of every person. A left arm can be lacerated. A left arm can be bruised. A left arm can be broken.

All of these are, of course, false by default. 

It's hard to really say. I avoid tables like the plague, so I can't offer any advice on how to handle it using a table. Seems like a lot more work. The Basic Characters extension could probably handle health or I you could assign a number called health to all people.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3822&start=0#p27286
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is it possible to assign a table to a person?
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-12-01 09:23:16

[quote="I4L"]I'd lean toward properties, I guess. I can't give a clear, tested example unfortunately, because I'm at work. But something like:

A left arm is a part of every person. A left arm can be lacerated. A left arm can be bruised. A left arm can be broken.

All of these are, of course, false by default. 

It's hard to really say. I avoid tables like the plague, so I can't offer any advice on how to handle it using a table. Seems like a lot more work. The Basic Characters extension could probably handle health or I you could assign a number called health to all people.[/quote]

I started with properties but I ended with too many parameters to track so a table was the way to go.
If I do this with properties I will need to have properties of properties... I guess this won't be possible, or manageable...

As a last method I will do with lists since I know now that is technically possible. Though a lot more cumbersome and memory heavy than tables.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=10#p27287
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-12-01 09:31:15

[quote="Ice Cream Jonsey"]

[quote]>SWING AXE
"There's nothing sensible to swing here."[/quote]

Mmm. I melt due to the brillance of Pudlo pointing this out.[/quote]

The PC being a lumberjack, you'd think he'd know how to swing an axe. And yes, the axe is used as a weapon in the game. I think this thread would benefit if the participants had bothered to play the game under discussion.

[quote="Ice Cream Jonsey"]It's terrible analysis from a stupid person. He's about the last person on earth who should be giving a hard time to people who are writing IF in their second or third language.[/quote]

If it's any comfort, I don't think you're quite as talentless as Victor. You have a gift for the catchy noun phrase. [i]Necrotic Drift[/i] is a slick title and [i]Chicks Dig Jerks[/i] is probably the funniest game title in existence. Occasionally, you write funny sentences. But when you leave the noun phrase/sentence microcosm and move into the paragraph, something happens to your writing. It becomes flat like a pancake. Those amusing anecdotes that make up 90% of the textual mass of your games are NEVER amusing. Your ice cream truck is stuck in the trailer park of your mind. You need to move out of the trailer park and park your ice cream truck in Pudlostan. That's right, I'm offering to become your mentor. I need a new sex gimp, and having seen the Get Lamp interview with you, I must say you're kind of cute, in a pudgy, bleached way. So how about exchanging services? You'll be my anal cowboy and I'll teach you how to write, eh?

[quote="Peter Pears"]Which is all well and good, I guess, if you're uncapable [sic] of picking up on his hostility, and negativity. "Hostility" where he acts as though he's a genius and is surrounded by retarded people (ocasionally funny, nearly-always infuriating) and "negativity" where you realise that this guy has spent the last 10 years (using Robb's figure) criticising things (hardly ever in a constructive manner, and often not even in a coherent manner) without bothering to come up with alternatives, or to be constructive about the whole thing.[/quote]

If any of you have ANY doubts whatsoever concerning my Genius, I invite you to join my Alpha Team and play [i]Limbs of Osiris[/i]. Just PM me and you'll have a first-hand look at the game that will revolutionise IF.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3822&start=0#p27288
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is it possible to assign a table to a person?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-01 10:04:26

Yes, it sounds too complicated for a table, when you can just define all your stats as properties of a person. And it's okay for properties to have properties - as you'll see below, kinds-of-value can have properties too.

BUT, if you wanted to, you could do something like this:

[code]Body part is a kind of value. Some body parts are defined by Table of Body Parts.

Table of Body Parts
item (object)	maximum damage (number)	current damage (number)
head	10	0
torso	20	0
left arm	5	0
right arm	5	0
left leg	7	0
right leg	7	0

Table of Injuries
combatant (object)	item (object)	current damage (number)
with 12 blank rows

Arena is a room. The Black Knight is a man in Arena.

When play begins:
	Repeat through Table of Body Parts:
		Let item be item entry;
		Let current damage be current damage entry;
		Repeat with combatant running through people:
			Choose a blank row in Table of Injuries;
			Now combatant entry is combatant;
			Now item entry is item;
			Now current damage entry is current damage;
	Repeat through Table of Injuries:
		say "[combatant entry] [item entry] [current damage entry][line break]";[/code]
Note that sometimes you can use a table to create objects, and then you don't actually ever need to look anything up in it again. I could have said "repeat with item running through body parts" instead of using the table.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=0#p27289
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-01 10:13:13

The simple answer to "Why isn't there more good [genre] IF?" is just that there isn't enough good IF for there to be a deep field of any particular genre. Horror is one of the more common IF genres, but if a few key works don't click for you, there's not much left. 

And horror is a genre strongly defined by the kind of feeling it induces in its readers, so it-doesn't-work-as-$GENRE-for-me is going to be a lot more subjective. This goes double for Lovecraft: if the cosmic-horror stuff doesn't quite click for you, you're left with something with a lot of silly tentacles, purple prose and nineteenth-century anxieties. (For what it's worth, I don't think that IF has a particular hate-on for Lovecraft; Lovecraftian horror is more dominant in IF horror than it is in most media, and Anchorhead heads up the canon.)

[quote="I4L"]Also Warbler's Nest was neither horror nor creepy. It was actually a pretty accurate jab at old world ignorance. It stuck with you. But it wasn't scary. Plus...

[spoiler]I know that this is all based on folklore. I know I'm not gonna chuck a baby in the river, no matter how much the game tells me that it might be my only chance at peace. So while it tried (and tried well) to convince me that maybe I didn't think what I had thought I thought, it still didn't convince me to hurl a screaming infant to its watery death, so...[/spoiler][/quote]
[spoiler]Warbler's Nest works very well as horror if you're not sure what the genre is. If you decide early on that it's not a world where elves really exist, it'll fall flat, so I can see why it didn't click for some people. But it's very effective as horror if you're genuinely unsure what kind of story you're in.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3803&start=0#p27290
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: What is CYOA as opposed to IF
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-01 10:16:42

CYOA seems to have gained popularity since this Emily Short article:

<a class="postlink" href="http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/06/07/so-do-we-need-this-parser-thing-anyway/">http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/06/07 ... ng-anyway/</a>

Nick Montfort defined IF by two key elements: A world model and a parser. CYOA can have a world model, although it often doesn't. CYOA never has a parser.

My favorite thing about Emily's article is that it mentions a game called Kingdom Without End by Shannon Cochran. Not only does it sound very cool - it has a complex world model and many more choices per turn than most CYOA, but no parser - but I went to college with Shannon and we took a short fiction writing class together!

My personal reason for not playing CYOA is that I don't really like branching stories. I avoid IF with multiple endings too - I like to see the "whole world" when I play a game, and get to the "right ending" when I'm done. Reading a whole CYOA by backtracking meticulously seems tedious.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3823&start=0#p27291
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: The Pudlothon: Ecce Jacek
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-12-01 10:24:39

The Pudlothon is a thread devoted to all things Pudlo. This is the place where I will post my random thoughts immediately as they occur so that they may be known to the entire IF community without unnecessary delay. That explains the title, but what about the subtitle? For those of you not versed in St John's Gospel, Ecce Jacek is a riff on Pilate bringing Jesus out with his crown of thorns for the Jews to see and saying to them: "Ecce Homo!" Behold the man! I am asking you thus to Behold the Jacek, to see me at my most honest, naked, suffering and vulnerable. I am evidently comparing myself to Christ. Am I a blaspheming clown, or the Real Thing? You be the judge.

>WALK ON WATER
Done.

>RAISE THE DEAD
Done.

>TURN PEPSI INTO COKE
Done.

If you doubt me now, you do so at your own peril.




RANDOM THOUGHT #1

I have a billionaire friend who's terrified of falling in love because he thinks women are attracted not to him but to his money. Apparently he thinks there's an essential 'I' which exists independently of his wealth, which he considers an accidental attribute, a detached garage of the mansion of the Self. But what if women are attracted to his good looks? After all, his looks are just as accidental as his inherited fortune. His intelligence? His charm? Where do the attributes end and the 'I' begin?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3823&start=0#p27292
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The Pudlothon: Ecce Jacek
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-01 10:27:44

If being a billionaire is ruining his love life, there's a simple solution...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=10#p27293
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-01 11:15:28

[quote="bcressey"]There is a Flash dependency (TADS.swf) but I'm not sure how much functionality is tied to it. Font picking and file handling, at least.[/quote]
Bad news for iOS users, then?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=10#p27294
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-01 11:18:05

[quote="Jim Aikin"][quote="bcressey"]There is a Flash dependency (TADS.swf) but I'm not sure how much functionality is tied to it. Font picking and file handling, at least.[/quote]
Bad news for iOS users, then?[/quote]
It's optional. You can check by disabling Flash; it will still work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=10#p27295
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-12-01 11:44:19

Well done for spotting the typo on my 1am post and then drawing attention to it with the [sic] thing. Indeed, genius does need to constantly point out other people's shortcomings, however small and insignificant, 

Hang on, no, it's the other way around, isn't it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3824&start=0#p27296
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Rules refuse to order correctly
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-01 11:50:15

I've posted about rule order before, but I think this is a little different. Unless there's something missing, I7 is ordering these rules in an unambiguously wrong way:

[code]
Alley is a room. Street is south of Alley.

Report going (this is the report traveling impediments rule):
	say "You trudge forward with difficulty...";
		
The report traveling impediments rule is listed before the report being followed rule in the report going rulebook.

Report going to a room (this is the report being followed rule):
	say "Out of the corner of your eye, you catch a flicker of movement.";
	
The report being followed rule is listed before the describe room gone into rule in the report going rulebook.[/code]

From these declarations, it seems to me the only correct ordering is:

Report traveling impediments
Report being followed
Describe room gone into

But when this compiles, the actual order is:

Report being followed
Report traveling impediments
Describe room gone into

If I remove the "to a room" from the preamble of the Report being followed rule, the order is different, but still wrong:

report being followed
describe room gone into
report traveling impediments rule

I think I just figured out why. Rule ordering directives are processed in source order - no attempt is made to ensure that they all hold at the end of the ordering process. If I reverse the declarations, it works correctly. Is this a bug? If it's not, it should be more clearly documented:

[quote]"Listed" sentences are obeyed by Inform in sequence, so if later ones issue instructions contradicting earlier ones, it's the later ones which win out. Thus if we say "A is listed before B in X" and then "B is listed before A in X", the result is that B comes before A.[/quote]

...this says what happens in the case of a direct conflict, but it's ambiguous about what happens when a non-conflicting order is possible. I'm sure attempting to honor the ordering in a case like this would slow the compiler down, but I'd appreciate it. Rule order is very important!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3824&start=0#p27297
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rules refuse to order correctly
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-12-01 12:01:28

That sounds like a bug to me. I was under the same impression that listing order (not source order) determined which rules would fire, and the documentation, as it stands is WRONG. I'd go ahead and file a bug report [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/my_view_page.php]here.[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3822&start=0#p27298
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is it possible to assign a table to a person?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-01 12:17:00

If you're implementing the body parts as things, along the lines of I4L's "A left arm is a part of every person," then you can use a table to automatically give every body part of a certain kind a certain health (and other properties) to start with. [This is mentioned somewhat in passing in section 15.16 of the documentation, which is mostly about defining things with tables but also mentions that you can define kinds with tables too.]

Here's an example that seems to work as far as it goes:

[code]The arena is a room. The black knight is a man in the arena. The white knight is a man in the arena.

A body part is a kind of thing. Some kinds of body part are defined by the Table of Body Part Health.
A left leg is part of every person. A right leg is part of every person. A right arm is part of every person. A left arm is part of every person. [As far as I know, there's no neat way to say "every person has one of each kind of every body part" or "one of each kind of body part listed in the table of body part health.]
	
Table of body part health
body part  	health [This means that every body part defined in this table is automatically assigned a number called health as a property, and that is initially set to the value listed in the table.]
left leg	7
right leg	7
left arm	3
right arm	3
		
[And now let's give some rules for examining and changing body part health, so we can see that it works.]

Instead of examining a person:
	if the noun incorporates a body part:
		repeat with limb running through body parts incorporated by the noun:
			say "[The limb] has health [health of limb].";
	otherwise:
		say "[The noun] is waddling around, limbless, threatening to bite your knees off."
		
Instead of examining a body part:
	say "[The noun] has health [health of noun]."
	
Instead of attacking a body part:
	decrease the health of the noun by 1; 
	if the health of the noun is 0:
		say "You strike [the noun] clean off!";
		remove the noun from play;
	otherwise:
		say "You deal [the noun] a cruel blow, reducing its health to [health of noun]!"
		
Instead of attacking a person:
	if the noun is the player:
		say "That's not a good idea.";
	otherwise if the noun incorporates a body part:
		try attacking a random body part that is part of the noun;
	otherwise:
		say "[The noun] is currently waddling around, limbless, threatening to bite your knees off. You haven't the heart to attack him."[/code]

Note that you can attack your own limbs, if you specify them precisely in the command.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=10#p27299
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-12-01 12:30:53

[quote="Peter Pears"]Well done for spotting the typo on my 1am post and then drawing attention to it with the [sic] thing. Indeed, genius does need to constantly point out other people's shortcomings, however small and insignificant, [/quote]

Hey, don't be so touchy! That was my [i]friendly[/i] sic. The angry one looks like this: [SIC!]. Some people argue that the exclamation point is redundant, but they are soulless pedants. When I'm on a spelling rampage, I like my angry sics to have flair.

[quote="Peter Pears"]Hang on, no, it's the other way around, isn't it?[/quote]

If you think I'm a moron, there's a very easy way of verifying that assumption. Just sink your teeth in [i]Limbs of Osiris[/i] and you'll see what I'm made of.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=10#p27300
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-12-01 12:34:07

This is cool. I see that it works on Firefox and Chrome. I do notice that IE 9 doesn't work. I haven't been able to try on any other IE version yet.

But you'll get stuff like this in the console view:

SCRIPT575: Could not complete the operation due to error c00c023f. 
util.js, line 2777 character 9

You may also see:

SCRIPT5007: Unable to get value of the property 'htmlify': object is null or undefined 
?TADS_session=63a800ad-0344-1605-9615d8943c01-2672, line 963 character 5

If you try refreshing, you'll probably see:

Resource: /webui/getEvent
HTTP Status: 12029 Unknown

That being said, I personally can't stand the Internet Explorer browser and I would be quite happy with this working as well as it seemingly does on Chrome and Firefox.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3679&start=50#p27301
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Results of the 2011 IF Competition
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2011-12-01 12:36:39

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Sargent, game 12 is still missing from <a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifcomp.org/comp11/prize-choices.php">http://www.ifcomp.org/comp11/prize-choices.php</a>.[/quote]

That should be fixed now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3824&start=0#p27302
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rules refuse to order correctly
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-01 12:38:00

Is that [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=514]this bug[/url]?

I agree that this should be made to work better.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=60#p27303
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2011-12-01 12:40:57

[quote="JoeyJones"]Will the all-games download be updated with the updates in future?[/quote]

I've been giving this a lot of thought, and I think I should update the .zip file. My original thinking was that people who were likely to care about playing the original games would strongly overlap with those who downloaded the entire .zip file, and so I didn't update it. What I plan on doing next year is having a separate unchanging .zip file while updating games in the standard all-in-one .zip file.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=60#p27304
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-12-01 12:56:16

So I'm guessing that despite 42% of the voters disliking the rule, it's staying for next year?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3824&start=0#p27305
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rules refuse to order correctly
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-01 12:56:39

As far as I know, I7 just punts on the problem of ordering rule ordering declarations. (I trust that nobody wants to add rule ordering ordering declarations to the system.) So yeah, source order probably holds. (And the bug that mattw linked to is the same sort of thing.)

[quote]I was under the same impression that listing order (not source order) determined which rules would fire[/quote]

It does. The problem is one level higher.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=10#p27306
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-12-01 13:02:37

I sometimes wonder just what it takes for someone to get banned from this forum. Don't we have moderators who are meant to, um, moderate? If trolls like Pudlo can post with impunity, then, well, we might as well all go back to that sad excuse for a newsgroup that was the main home of the IF community for X amount of years.

In a way, it's even more annoying that nothing is done here. On a newsgroup, there is no moderation so the trolls and spammers can do whatever they like and nothing can be done about it; here, we have moderators who do nothing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=60#p27307
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-01 13:14:23

58 > 42

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=70#p27308
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-12-01 13:19:08

Ah, that's okay then. I guess the 42% don't matter?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3824&start=0#p27309
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rules refuse to order correctly
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-01 13:26:31

What I find unclear is what's going on under the hood here. The I7 compiler is going through the source in order, and attempting to apply each declaration to the rules as they stand, correct? That's why the following bit from the Standard Rules works as desired:

[quote]The start in the correct scenes rule is listed first in the startup rulebook. [6th.]
The position player in model world rule is listed first in the startup rulebook. [5th.]
The update chronological records rule is listed first in the startup rulebook. [4th.]
The seed random number generator rule is listed first in the startup rulebook. [3rd.]
The virtual machine startup rule is listed first in the startup rulebook. [2nd.]
The initialise memory rule is listed first in the startup rulebook. [1st.][/quote]

But what happens when it hits one of these "listed before" declarations? In the original case, is it something like this?

Order before any declarations are processed:
report being followed
report traveling impediments
describe room gone into

Order after processing "The report traveling impediments rule is listed before the report being followed rule"
report traveling impediments
report being followed
describe room gone into

Order after processing "The report being followed rule is listed before the describe room gone into rule"
-- well, it seems to me that the desirable behavior would be to check that this constraint is in fact respected, and do nothing. But does the compiler now try to put the report traveling impediments rule into the rulebook where it would anyway, while respecting the constraint -- meaning that it gets put [i]after[/i] the report being followed rule, because it's less specific than the report being followed rule? If we omitted the second rule order declaration completely, would it work as intended? [UPDATE: Confirmed: if we omit the second declaration, we get the desired order.] Or have I got things completely wrong?

It seems opaque to me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=10#p27310
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Peter Rickardson / DateTime: 2011-12-01 13:34:48

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"][Just sink your teeth in [i]Limbs of Osiris[/i] and you'll see what I'm made of.[/quote]

I'll probably regret this, but what the hell. Where do I sign up?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=70#p27311
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-01 13:36:43

[quote="David Whyld"]Ah, that's okay then. I guess the 42% don't matter?[/quote]
Okay, let's make it so that authors can only update 58% of their game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=10#p27312
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-01 13:37:30

Spammers get banned. People who post topical reviews of critically-acclaimed IF games do not get banned.

Allow me to disabuse you of the notion that the moderators here do nothing. I spend 10-30 minutes a day cleaning up spam and banning user accounts. Sometimes I catch them before they post anything, which requires checking the new members list periodically. I try to ban IP address blocks where the collateral damage will be minimal, which means checking ARIN / RIPE / APNIC before I pull the trigger.

It's not a huge amount of time. It's not a lot of fun, either.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=10#p27313
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-12-01 13:38:45

[quote="Peter Rickardson"][quote="Jacek Pudlo"][Just sink your teeth in [i]Limbs of Osiris[/i] and you'll see what I'm made of.[/quote]

I'll probably regret this, but what the hell. Where do I sign up?[/quote]

Send me your address via PM and I'll send you the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=10#p27314
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-12-01 13:43:40

Well, hmm. I did get it to work on IE 6 -- and IE 6 barely even works with itself. I did have to install Adobe Flash Player 11.1. But after that it worked like a champ.

Then I tried it on another IE 9 and it also worked fine.

Interestingly, the IE 9 that I tried it on that did not work also cannot call up Gmail in Enhanced view. No idea if that is relevant, but clearly something is wonky with that IE 9.

So -- never mind. This seems to work really well. Pretty cool stuff.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3823&start=0#p27315
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The Pudlothon: Ecce Jacek
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-12-01 13:56:02

[quote="capmikee"]If being a billionaire is ruining his love life, there's a simple solution...[/quote]
Yeah. Stop worring about love.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3824&start=0#p27316
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rules refuse to order correctly
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-01 14:00:41

[quote="matt w"]But what happens when it hits one of these "listed before" declarations? In the original case, is it something like this?

Order before any declarations are processed:
report being followed
report traveling impediments
describe room gone into[/quote]
No, the "describe room gone into" rule appears first in the source because it's in the Standard Rules. The "report being followed" rule is more specific, but the "report traveling impediments" rule is not, so it goes last. This is the actual order before any directives are processed:
[quote]report being followed
describe room gone into
report traveling impediments[/quote]

The first directive, "report traveling impediments rule is listed before the report being followed rule," actually puts the rules in the desired order:
[quote]report traveling impediments rule
report being followed rule 
describe room gone into rule
[/quote]

But the second directive messes everything up. It appears that the compiler doesn't check whether the "listed before" condition is already true, it just moves the report being followed rule to the beginning of the rulebook. It's hard to imagine why it does this - it seems like the safest action (other than leaving it alone) would be to move the first rule [b]immediately before[/b] the second rule, but it doesn't do that. My guess is that it moves it to immediately after all the "listed first" rules if the rule it's supposed to precede is not itself "listed first." But maybe "listed before" is processed exactly the same as "listed first," rendering it a meaningless distinction.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=10#p27317
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-12-01 14:03:52

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"][quote="Peter Rickardson"][quote="Jacek Pudlo"][Just sink your teeth in [i]Limbs of Osiris[/i] and you'll see what I'm made of.[/quote]

I'll probably regret this, but what the hell. Where do I sign up?[/quote]

Send me your address via PM and I'll send you the game.[/quote]
Hahahahah! What?! And then being trolled AT HOME?! Sounds terrific!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=70#p27318
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-01 14:07:02

If you can think of a proposal that will get 100% support, or even more than 58% support,* then you should put it forth. And in fact people have proposed tweaks to make it more acceptable either way. But if the choice is going to be updates or no updates, then I don't see why the 42% should matter more than the 58%. 

And frankly, I think you're coming off as though you think your views have a right to be heard to the exclusion of anyone else's. There are very few occasions on which everyone will be satisfied with something. If the rule isn't changed back, it doesn't mean that the views of the people who disliked the rule don't matter, it just means that they didn't carry the day. That'll happen. 

*Mind you, all these polls are incredibly unscientific, so I wouldn't take 58% as a gospel number either way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=70#p27319
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-12-01 14:07:33

[quote="David Whyld"]Ah, that's okay then. I guess the 42% don't matter?[/quote]

The 42% have a lot of options as to how to judge their games, including the original way to. As part of the 58%, I wouldn't mind original versions being the defaults.

That aside, I think there's a reasonable point here. How strongly do the 42% feel, and how strongly do the 58% feel, and what are the key sticking points? I suppose a lot of this has been addressed in this topic, but if the 42% say "No way. Burn IFComp burn!!!!" and the 58% think "gee, it's kind of neat," that's a bit different than people not minding either way but slightly preferring allowing updates.

Similarly if there is a huge break in judges' opinions on updating and authors', that's important. I don't know what it'd mean specifically, but it'd help point towards a solution.

As much as I dread surveys, I'd be willing to put up with one just so that we have relatively agreed-upon rules for 2012. I think people have found a lot of approaches to this that aren't black and white.

And I think it might be useful to see how many authors update their games from 2011 as opposed to the previous year, to see if the new rule actually got the results it intended to.

I just feel that we could have written/unwritten guidelines for judging games that may be modified. Sort of like how guidelines have been developed for beta-testing. Many people auto-give 1's if there are no beta testers in the credits. This is fair and valid, but I'd hate for this to be a hard and fast competition rule, especially since some authors DID have their games tested and did not put it in. (Note: updates worked very well for some people who didn't know about this. But perhaps this could be added to the rules for writing a game for IFComp, that ABOUT or CREDITS should have such a list of people. Or placed more prominently.)

Similarly I'd hate for there to be a hard and fast rule against updating, but I wouldn't mind if conventional wisdom says the updates won't get looked at as hard.

I don't think any authors really bent the rules this year with updates, and I don't think anyone who did so or plans to do so would be particularly welcome in the community in the future.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=20#p27320
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-12-01 14:23:05

[quote="bcressey"]Spammers get banned. People who post topical reviews of critically-acclaimed IF games do not get banned.

Allow me to disabuse you of the notion that the moderators here do nothing. I spend 10-30 minutes a day cleaning up spam and banning user accounts. Sometimes I catch them before they post anything, which requires checking the new members list periodically. I try to ban IP address blocks where the collateral damage will be minimal, which means checking ARIN / RIPE / APNIC before I pull the trigger.

It's not a huge amount of time. It's not a lot of fun, either.[/quote]

I wasn't suggesting Pudlo be banned because he posted a negative review and you know it. I was wondering how many years he has to troll this place before you finally ban his sorry ass. Spam isn't half as damaging as a troll who feels he can do whatever he wants because moderators aren't prepared to do anything about him.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=70#p27321
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-12-01 14:24:47

[quote="matt w"]Mind you, all these polls are incredibly unscientific, so I wouldn't take 58% as a gospel number either way.[/quote]

Yep. And in this sort of poll, where the choice is whether or not to change a state of affairs that already exists, you can probably expect the "no" votes to over-represent the actual population of naysayers, since they are most likely to feel aggrieved at status quo. (FWIW, to the degree that I give a fig about the issue at all, I'm firmly in the "yes" camp--but I didn't bother to vote.)

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=20#p27322
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Peter Rickardson / DateTime: 2011-12-01 14:32:03

[quote="Jamespking"][quote="Jacek Pudlo"]Send me your address via PM and I'll send you the game.[/quote]
Hahahahah! What?! And then being trolled AT HOME?! Sounds terrific![/quote]

You have a point.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=70#p27323
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-01 14:38:56

[quote="ektemple"][quote="matt w"]Mind you, all these polls are incredibly unscientific, so I wouldn't take 58% as a gospel number either way.[/quote]

Yep. And in this sort of poll, where the choice is whether or not to change a state of affairs that already exists, you can probably expect the "no" votes to over-represent the actual population of naysayers, since they are most likely to feel aggrieved at status quo. (FWIW, to the degree that I give a fig about the issue at all, I'm firmly in the "yes" camp--but I didn't bother to vote.)[/quote]
I'm not sure that this is entirely good statistics -- for a start, updates-allowed is both the status quo [i]and[/i] a change to long-established rules, so it doesn't quite fit with your principle as stated. And I think the principle's kind of shaky anyway: polling often shifts substantially to favour new policies as they become well-established.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=70#p27324
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-12-01 14:42:59

For what it's worth, this part of the 42% don't have strong feelings on the matter, and would even change his vote if it was possible. (Since I voted early, before the debate really got started.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3824&start=0#p27325
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rules refuse to order correctly
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-01 14:43:40

OK, I'm very puzzled here. I thought the problem had to do with the specificity of the rules, but it seems to me that the RBF rule is less specific than the RTI rule, so it should be getting listed after it even when the second rule order declaration reshuffles the rulebook -- if that's what's happening. [Which is what section 18.4 of the documentation somewhat suggests: "the... rule would now be placed in specificity order only in the first half of the... rulebook," viz., the half before the rule it's explicitly listed before.]

But I can report that if you change the RBF rule heading to "report going to a room," then the rules wind up in the correct order. So it seems as though it has something to do with specificity -- either that, or the behavior isn't very predictable. 

Unfortunately, those helpful little things in the index that explain why the rules are in certain order aren't showing up here. They show up in rulebooks that are listed under the "rules" tab, but apparently not in rulebooks listed under the "Actions" tab. [As seen in section 18.5.]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=20#p27326
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-12-01 14:46:25

[quote="Peter Rickardson"][quote="Jamespking"][quote="Jacek Pudlo"]Send me your address via PM and I'll send you the game.[/quote]
Hahahahah! What?! And then being trolled AT HOME?! Sounds terrific![/quote]

You have a point.[/quote]

Aw common guys, I'd never shit in my own nest. Ask Adam Thornton or Dan Shiovitz or Graham Holden or Hanon Ondricek or anyone who's tested for me and they'll tell you I'm the perfect gentleman with my testers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=20#p27327
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-12-01 14:49:06

[quote="David Whyld"]I wasn't suggesting Pudlo be banned because he posted a negative review and you know it. I was wondering how many years he has to troll this place before you finally ban his sorry ass.[/quote]

I think the implicit point was ban him for [i]what[/i]?

I'm curious why people get so worked up. If you don't like someone's posts, and you see they posted something --- don't read it! Don't respond to that thread! If you see they jump in to a thread that you are already reading -- skip over their post! Empower yourself to not get worked up over it by not even reading it in the first place. Practice selective viewing and simply ignore that which you don't want to see. This is good practice for some aspects of life.

The funny thing is, when I read this thread, I see other people acting worse than Jacek. I personally choose to see his responses as a bit of a "counter-cultural shot across the bow", a bit tongue-in-cheek, and a bit of -- as I said -- a gadfly. Let's say I even grant that this is all mean-spirited. Okay, but, if I don't take all this too seriously, I actually see a lot of it as amusing and a good break from reading about other things on the forum.

So, ask yourself this: you chose to read a thread posted by a person you don't like and wish would go away. Why did you start reading the thread in the first place?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3824&start=0#p27328
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rules refuse to order correctly
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-01 15:06:15

I think specificity affects the initial ordering, which in turn affects what happens when ordering directives are applied.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=70#p27329
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-12-01 15:17:19

[quote="maga"][quote="ektemple"][quote="matt w"]Mind you, all these polls are incredibly unscientific, so I wouldn't take 58% as a gospel number either way.[/quote]

Yep. And in this sort of poll, where the choice is whether or not to change a state of affairs that already exists, you can probably expect the "no" votes to over-represent the actual population of naysayers, since they are most likely to feel aggrieved at status quo. (FWIW, to the degree that I give a fig about the issue at all, I'm firmly in the "yes" camp--but I didn't bother to vote.)[/quote]
I'm not sure that this is entirely good statistics -- for a start, updates-allowed is both the status quo [i]and[/i] a change to long-established rules, so it doesn't quite fit with your principle as stated.[/quote]

It's not only not good statistics, it's not statistics at all  [emote];)[/emote] 

My main point is simply that internet polls like this one self-select their samples, whereas scientific polls attempt to select a sample without inherent bias. People will vote in a poll like this to the extent they feel aggrieved by the situation, to the degree they think the new policy is cool, to the degree the debate provokes them, etc. (limited of course by whether they actively visit this forum).* I haven't really been following this--except to be mildly exasperated once in a while by some of the sky-is-falling rhetoric--but the balance of passions in the arguments suggests to me that the status-quo dynamic is in play regardless of how new the status quo is. (Also, didn't the comp organizer indicate an intent to keep the rule for next year, and isn't the poll itself something of a protest of that..?)

None of this means anything, of course--it's just a half-hearted defense of a thumbnail argument, one that never had any data behind it. 

--Erik

* I suppose that there is also a subset of people who just like to participate and express an opinion. Depending on how many of those folks are voting, you might get closer to an unbiased sample.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3823&start=0#p27330
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The Pudlothon: Ecce Jacek
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-12-01 15:21:09

[quote="capmikee"]If being a billionaire is ruining his love life, there's a simple solution...[/quote]

Even a poor man attracts women not with his innermost Self, but by accidental attributes, such as good looks or intelligence. So where does the Self begin and is it possible to love an abstract Self?

[quote="Jamespking"]Yeah. Stop worring about love.[/quote]

When you're poor you think if only you had money you'd be happy. When you're rich you're convinced your wealth is making you miserable. The conclusion is that neither love nor wealth can make you happy. It can only make you unhappy in new and hopefully interesting ways.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3825&start=0#p27331
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Announcement: Dragon Flies Like Labradorite
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-12-01 15:22:35

Here is the post-event version of [i]Dragon Flies Like Labradorite[/i]. It was a speed-IF and also a debut work, so be sure to go in with very low expectations and you won't be quite as bitterly disappointed!

[url]http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=disk8jhpff89uh4s[/url]

There's also a Club Floyd transcript on that page if you need a walk-through.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=20#p27333
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-01 15:35:02

[quote="David Whyld"]Spam isn't half as damaging as a troll who feels he can do whatever he wants because moderators aren't prepared to do anything about him.[/quote]

Banning his account would only inconvenience the people who have added him to their foes list. I expect he is savvy enough that an IP ban would not pose much of a challenge.

The only way to keep him out would be to create a closed forum where new members had to be approved by moderators. That's not the forum we have, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3827&start=0#p27334
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Parchment problems
User: SimonChris / DateTime: 2011-12-01 15:37:02

I have been having problems with Parchment lately, and I was wondering if other people are having the same experiences.

First of all, I don't seem to be able to play glulx games in the browser anymore. Any attempt to play a .gblorb file through iplayif.com results in "Parchment loading..." followed by a blank screen. zblorb files seem to work fine.

Furthermore, trying to play any file hosted at ifarchive.wurb.com results in a bunch of angry red error messages, even though the file can be downloaded with no problems. Changing the address to <a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifarchive.org">www.ifarchive.org</a> fixes the problem, but it seems strange that this makes a difference when I can access the file normally at both locations.

Has anyone else experienced either or both of these problems?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3823&start=0#p27335
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The Pudlothon: Ecce Jacek
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-01 15:42:26

[url=http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-reasons-money-can-buy-happiness_p2/]5 Reasons Money Can Buy Happiness[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=20#p27336
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-12-01 15:42:49

Then ban him again when he registers under a different name and then again and again and again. Are you really saying you haven't banned him yet because he'll probably be able to fake an IP address and sidestep the ban? That's a bit like a bank manager saying they might as well leave the safe open because some bank robbers are smart enough to pick locks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=70#p27337
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-12-01 15:46:37

[quote="matt w"]If you can think of a proposal that will get 100% support, or even more than 58% support,* then you should put it forth. And in fact people have proposed tweaks to make it more acceptable either way. But if the choice is going to be updates or no updates, then I don't see why the 42% should matter more than the 58%. 

And frankly, I think you're coming off as though you think your views have a right to be heard to the exclusion of anyone else's. There are very few occasions on which everyone will be satisfied with something. If the rule isn't changed back, it doesn't mean that the views of the people who disliked the rule don't matter, it just means that they didn't carry the day. That'll happen. 

*Mind you, all these polls are incredibly unscientific, so I wouldn't take 58% as a gospel number either way.[/quote]

Didn't the old rule (of not allowing updates) meet with pretty much 100% support? I don't remember there ever being this level of discussion before when the old rule was in place, aside from that guy who entered a buggy game and then wasn't allowed to fix it and complained long and loud about the rule being in place that he was fully aware of when he entered the comp. Oh, and Paul Panks. I remember him complaining about the old rules a time or two but I doubt anyone would claim he was an authority on anything.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=20#p27338
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-12-01 15:58:09

[quote="bcressey"][quote="David Whyld"]Spam isn't half as damaging as a troll who feels he can do whatever he wants because moderators aren't prepared to do anything about him.[/quote]

Banning his account would only inconvenience the people who have added him to their foes list. I expect he is savvy enough that an IP ban would not pose much of a challenge.

The only way to keep him out would be to create a closed forum where new members had to be approved by moderators. That's not the forum we have, though.[/quote]

If you have objections concerning my behaviour, why don't you simply take them up with me?

If I've insulted anyone and that someone demands satisfaction, I'm more than willing to accommodate. Select your online wargame of choice and we'll battle it out like two honorable geeks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3819&start=0#p27339
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: A simple parser
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-01 16:03:13

[quote="George"]Second, search the IF Archive (and those other code repositories too) for stand-alone text adventures (i.e. those not written in Inform, Tads, etc.). There might be some with source there.[/quote]
Example: "Aunts and Butlers" is written entirely in Javascript, so I'm sure it has its own parser, for which the source code is completely viewable.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=70#p27340
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-01 16:03:52

[quote="David Whyld"]Didn't the old rule (of not allowing updates) meet with pretty much 100% support?[/quote]

Dude, your argument's getting ridiculously extended. Seriously, you're [i]this[/i] close to The Lurkers Support Me In Email.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=20#p27341
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-01 16:05:08

No, I haven't banned him because he's not a spammer and he posts topical reviews of critically-acclaimed IF games.

The thing about spammers is that they move on to greener pastures once banned. Pudlo isn't going anywhere. I'm not so hard-pressed for leisure activities that I want to engage in a pointless moderation war with a determined adversary.

The path of least resistance for you and least effort for me is to add him to your foes list. You may have to expand the net a bit to catch anyone who quotes Pudlo in reply. If you're very unlucky, that might take more of your time over the next ten years than I spend dealing with forum spam in a single afternoon.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3819&start=0#p27342
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: A simple parser
User: codem2 / DateTime: 2011-12-01 16:08:11

Ok, I'll look further into this. The first link to the newsgroup looks a little complex, but I will try to figure it out. I will also look at the javascript source, thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=20#p27343
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-12-01 16:11:10

Well, nice to know that's been cleared up anyway. Trolls are free to do as they please because it requires effort to ban them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=80#p27344
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-12-01 16:12:42

[quote="maga"][quote="David Whyld"]Didn't the old rule (of not allowing updates) meet with pretty much 100% support?[/quote]

Dude, your argument's getting ridiculously extended. Seriously, you're [i]this[/i] close to The Lurkers Support Me In Email.[/quote]

The old rule was hotly debated on this forum then and lots of people disagreed with it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=20#p27345
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-12-01 16:14:44

[quote="David Whyld"]Well, nice to know that's been cleared up anyway. Trolls are free to do as they please because it requires effort to ban them.[/quote]

But, look at it this way: you are free to do as you please and ignore them entirely. You can immediately skip over their posts or avoid threads they start. On the other hand, you are also free to do as you please and keep worrying about it. At least you have options. Now just think if you had something [i]serious[/i] to worry about like unemployment, losing your house, living out of your car, being unable to afford gifts for your kids, etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3828&start=0#p27346
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Announcing Calm Post-Comp Release
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-12-01 16:21:28

[url=http://www.bubbleof.me]Calm[/url] is a game of postapocalyptic relaxation set in a future in which stress is deadly and wilderness has reclaimed the cities.

Since the beginning of the ifcomp when reviews started rolling in, Melvin and I have been taking a look at the game and thought about the ways in which it could be improved. Over the last month and a half we've been working away, and today we have released Version 2.

This is a release we're both proud of; we believe it is a significant improvement on the more alpha-like version that was first entered into the competition. Changes include richer descriptions, a more forgiving parser and a comprehensive inbuilt hint system. Efforts have been taken to minimise fiddliness: you can now also just [i]make hot chocolate[/i] if you don't fancy going through all the individual steps. There may be further releases in the future, but this is likely to be it for this year at least.

I've posted it the ifarchive, so soon the latest release will be playable off [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=l63f3uuzl1x8a1]IFDB[/url], but until that's uploaded, it can played on or downloaded from [url=http://www.bubbleof.me/]bubbleof.me[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3827&start=0#p27347
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Parchment problems
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-12-01 16:23:16

Thanks for reporting the problems, I'll look into them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=30#p27348
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2011-12-01 16:23:40

Can we ban bukayeva for that last stupid post?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=80#p27349
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-01 16:26:44

[quote="David Whyld"]
The old rule was hotly debated on this forum then and lots of people disagreed with it?[/quote]
You're taking 1) a debate and poll which your position seems to be a minority, and 2) an unsupported hypothesis about how people might have felt about the issue before it was raised, and making a claim that your position is the majority one. That is, you're claiming that silence equals support. At least when The Lurkers Support Me In Email they're assumed to be [i]contemporary[/i] lurkers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=30#p27350
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-12-01 16:30:26

[quote="bcressey"]Pudlo isn't going anywhere. I'm not so hard-pressed for leisure activities that I want to engage in a pointless moderation war with a determined adversary.[/quote]

This is Kafkaesque. Could you at least explain to me why you consider me a potential adversary?

[quote="bukayeva"]I think the implicit point was ban him for [i]what?[/i][/quote]

Exactly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=30#p27351
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-01 16:39:08

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]If you have objections concerning my behaviour, why don't you simply take them up with me?[/quote]

I don't have any concerns about your behavior here. Some of your raif posts were hilarious; others were rather shocking and hateful. That gives rise to a certain ambivalence.

On balance I'm glad you decided to join the forum and happy that you've found a way to tone down the vitriol. It's a more interesting place when there are dissenting opinions.

Your reviews are harsh and unfair and tend to ignore the genuine merits of the work. But you target established authors rather than raw newcomers, and in doing so you offer an ironic commentary on the bulk of IF criticism. I happen to think that's a useful function.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=30#p27353
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-01 16:44:07

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]This is Kafkaesque. Could you at least explain to me why you consider me a potential adversary?[/quote]

I don't. I was attempting to deal with the question of banning trolls in the abstract, and evidently doing a poor job of it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3827&start=0#p27354
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Parchment problems
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-01 16:45:45

This is a problem with IE8 and IE9. I think there's an "issue" on the parchment site about JS files not being loaded in the correct order. It may happen with IE7 as well. Compatibility mode doesn't help.

Everything works fine in Mozilla.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=80#p27355
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-12-01 16:45:53

I've never claimed my view is the majority one; if anything - based mainly on this poll - I'm in the minority. That said, I think any issue that has been debated as hotly as this one needs to be looked at more closely and not simply ignored because the majority are in favour of it. Quite a few people dislike the new rule and may not enter the IFComp next year because of it; the ones in favour of the rule don't seem to really care that much and I don't think anyone has said they won't enter the comp if the rule is removed.

In the interests of the IFComp having as many entrants as possible, wouldn't it make more sense that a rule as contentious as this one shouldn't be allowed?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3820&start=0#p27356
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: A good "recent" spy thriller?
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-12-01 16:54:25

I don't know whether a comic parody of a spy story fits your tastes, but if so, I hope to be ready to release The Spy Who Ate Lunch within the next few weeks.  As to your futher specification that it be "good," that remains to be seen.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3827&start=0#p27357
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Parchment problems
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-01 16:54:44

There's some other behavioral weirdness with the more recent versions of IE. On my system, any time I try to play something from IFDB, it tells me that the page cannot be displayed. Possibly because of the URL encoding. But Mozilla plays it like a champ.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2517&start=0#p27358
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Tapatalk Suggestion
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-01 17:06:55

As I know have it running on a couple of forums I manage, here's a link to their "promotional materials".

(Sorry I keep coming back to this. I still think it's a value add.)

[url]http://www.tapatalk.com/promotion.php[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=80#p27359
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-12-01 17:14:30

[quote="David Whyld"]
In the interests of the IFComp having as many entrants as possible, wouldn't it make more sense that a rule as contentious as this one shouldn't be allowed?[/quote]
Sorry, David, I'm not with you on this one. 
The interest of the comp should be to have as many GOOD GAMES as possibile. Not entrants. And imo this new rule helps it a lot. 
Also, too many entrants is an hinderance, not an aid. Many have frankly stated that 38 games are too many to hope and judge them all fairly. This round we got lucky, as almost no game did suck, but are going to be that lucky next time?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=30#p27360
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-12-01 17:18:02

[quote="bcressey"]Your reviews are harsh and unfair and tend to ignore the genuine merits of the work. But you target established authors rather than raw newcomers, and in doing so you offer an ironic commentary on the bulk of IF criticism. I happen to think that's a useful function.[/quote]

Established? In what way exactly are these authors I "target" established? Has any of them won the Man Booker Prize? Are they being published by Knopf? Do they have a movie deal with Paramount? Please do tell us how one becomes an established IF author. I'm sure this will be of great interest to many, not least to the raw newcomers.

If you believe that I have ignored the genuine merits of [i]The Baron[/i], tell me what you think they are. I'm not being combative. I really would like to know your opinion on Victor's game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=0#p27361
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-01 17:21:50

[quote="maga"]This goes double for Lovecraft: if the cosmic-horror stuff doesn't quite click for you, you're left with something with a lot of silly tentacles, purple prose and nineteenth-century anxieties.[/quote]

With Lovecraft himself, yes, you get purple prose and nineteenth-century anxieties. You [i]almost never get tentacles,[/i] though; that's just ... that's like characterizing a "typical" geek as having coke-bottle glasses that have been taped in the middle, and a pocket protector. Yes, it [i]has [/i]happened but it's not even [i]remotely [/i]typical of HPL's stories. There are no tentacles in [insert the name of [i]almost [/i]every HPL story ever].

With Lovecraft pastiche, you get any of those things to varying degrees. In general, I agree with Victor on Lovecraft's qualities as a writer. Lovecraft desperately wanted to be Poe and Dunsany simultaneously, and sadly for all of us, he frequently succeeded. I am not a fan of Lovecraft pastiche (here I'm using "pastiche" specifically to mean writing or games which honestly and sincerely want to [i]emulate [/i]Lovecraft's own work and style) because it tends to preserve the badness of Lovecraft without contributing anything like the good of him.

But then there's a third thing (and I think one of the things that confuses the topic is that there really are these three things): which is Lovecraftian gaming which is [i]not [/i]pastiche (in the narrow sense used above), where the goal is to plunder Lovecraft for the good bits and casually discard the rest. No purple prose, no trembling nebbishes required (optional, sometimes used ironically, or in one case I can think of used as a really fun and non-ironic contrast-study), no thanks on the tentacles (though again, maybe ironically). But still jam-packed with the cool stuff Lovecraft brought to the pulp-fantasy table. Lovecraft done way, way better than Lovecraft ... and this third thing is something gamers can be astonishingly good at. Mind you, this stuff is only [i]sometimes [/i]horror, so may not be satisfying to the OP ... but even Lovecraft was only sometimes horror, IMO. Most often just dark pulp-fantasy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3820&start=0#p27362
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: A good "recent" spy thriller?
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-12-01 17:42:20

There were no good thrillers released in 2011. That is to say, of the games released in 2011 on the IFDB, the only games that could be classed as thrillers received less than than three out of five stars on average. Unless Andomeda Awakening counts as a thriller [i]qua[/i] thriller, rather than a science fiction thriller.

The following games were released this year within the science fiction genre and received at least 2.5/5 rating:

[list]
[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ajzw6jutat2aeqa]Andromeda Awakening[/url] - Thriller
[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=gasd3wl2sj34hhyn]The Binary[/url] - Time Travel
[url=http://www.bubbleof.me]Calm[/url] - Postapocalyptic
[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=fa611qgdh7ftft4b]Death of Shlig[/url] - Space/Humour
[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=oru7cthwzbdenled]The Hours[/url]- Time Travel
[/list:u]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=30#p27374
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-01 18:06:02

[quote="bcressey"]Sometimes I catch them before they post anything, which requires checking the new members list periodically. I try to ban IP address blocks where the collateral damage will be minimal, which means checking ARIN / RIPE / APNIC before I pull the trigger.[/quote]

Speaking of the spamfloods ... would it be feasible just to put some kind of gentle barrier to board entry, along the lines of like a little three-question questionnaire, answer to be sent to a moderator? Name your two favorite text games, favorite TV show heroine, and how you like your eggs? [emote]:)[/emote]

There'd be no wrong answers since the goal wouldn't be to filter out any [i]people[/i], obviously (I don't think the Pudlos of the world need to be banned; they shoot themselves in the mouth everytime they open it), just the automata? Drop the responses into a queue of some kind, maybe have a small group of volunteers who could check that queue at any time to clear them?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=30#p27384
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-12-01 18:16:36

[i]I sometimes wonder just what it takes for someone to get banned from this forum. Don't we have moderators who are meant to, um, moderate?[/i]

A question that I have also pondered, along with its corollary: How pointless does a review have to be before it stops being treated like a real review?  I'm too much of a good citizen at heart to actually try posting "a very nice game FREE V1AGRA!!!" around the forums, so perhaps we'll never know.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3828&start=0#p27402
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Announcing Calm Post-Comp Release
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-01 18:34:30

Hooray! This was one of the post-comp releases I was most looking forward to.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=0#p27407
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-12-01 18:47:03

[quote="zarf"]It looks like you're saying that you only like Lovecraftian IF but you won't play any game that's labelled "Lovecraftian" in IFDB.[/quote]

That was my read of the situation as well.  Then I thought that maybe I4L meant that games on IFDB were [i]literally[/i] "flagged as Lovecraft crap," but my search for the "Lovecraft crap" tag on IFDB returned nothing. 

[quote="I4L"]And why the comparative void of horror in IF?[/quote]

I largely agree with maga that there's just not enough IF for there to be well-populated genres.  However, I also wonder if it might have something to do with the way that horror* often plays either on the disconnect between the audience's view and the characters' ("Don't go in the basement!") or on complicated character tensions/loyalties (pretty much any "converting" monster, like vampires or zombies).  The former seems like a waste of interactivity -- though I'm sure there are clever ways to explore/exploit this -- and the latter requires more NPC depth than most games have.

*as I understand it; I'm not a big fan of horror other than the extremely cheesy kind

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=30#p27408
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-01 18:51:20

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]Established? In what way exactly are these authors I "target" established?[/quote]

Emily Short, Adam Cadre, Aaron Reed and Victor Gijsbers are established in the sense that they have a reputation for creating IF of such quality that their future efforts are guaranteed to find an audience. 

[quote]If you believe that I have ignored the genuine merits of [i]The Baron[/i], tell me what you think they are. I'm not being combative. I really would like to know your opinion on Victor's game.[/quote]

I think it is a very fine work of IF. Perhaps the finest yet produced.

When confronted by the existence of some human monster, I often wonder where their humanity ends and the monstrous begins. Part of me wants to believe I am an exceptional person with heroic qualities, but that has not been the lesson of my life. That part clings to the hope that I am at least not as bad as the worst of us.

Set against that is my axiomatic belief that people are more alike than different; that however messy, complicated, and infinitely varied their circumstances, they are interchangeable at some fundamental level. I do not see how it is possible to be a writer without feeling this to be true.

Hence my inner conflict, between the hero I know I am not and the monster I would rather not know. It seems to me that those two bounds encompass most of humanity, perhaps all of it. It may be that none of us is as good as he believes, nor so evil that we could renounce him with a clear conscience.

[i]De Baron[/i] switches so frequently between heroic discourse and monstrous self-examination that it became for me an interactive exploration of that conflict. The fact that Victor was able to accomplish this is simultaneously reassuring - for at least I am not alone in perceiving such conflicts - and deeply upsetting, in that it reaffirms the fundamental sameness that binds us together. 

I have not read [i]Lolita[/i] and knowing the subject matter, I am unlikely to do so. [i]De Baron[/i] may or may not cover similar ground in an inferior way, but its opening hook was so brilliantly effective that it drew me in unawares and ruined my day with thoughts like these.

I think Victor is a bastard for writing [i]De Baron[/i], but I admire the hell out of his courage. As a parent I don't have it in me to gaze at length into that particular abyss. It terrifies me and gives me a small measure of hope that someone else does.

I don't know what it cost Victor to write it, but it earned him my profound and lasting respect.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=80#p27409
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-12-01 18:56:55

I hope I don't inflame the argument any more, but I seriously can't resist this...

[rant][size=150][color=#FF0000][b]WE ARE THE 58%! OCCUPY INTFICTION![/b][/color][/size][/rant]

Seriously, though, I'm not really upset even though I'm solidly in the minority opinion.  I don't think the issue is that dire either way; it's not going to make or brake the Comp whether or not future competitions allow updates.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=30#p27410
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-01 18:57:05

[quote="katz"]A question that I have also pondered, along with its corollary: How pointless does a review have to be before it stops being treated like a real review? [/quote]

There have been a few on IFDB that are little more than "I like this gaim it is really gud so I gave it five stars it is exciting i n teh descriptions."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=80#p27411
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-01 19:02:24

[quote="Bainespal"]I don't think the issue is that dire either way.[/quote]

This. [i]Sturm im wasserglas.[/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3828&start=0#p27412
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Announcing Calm Post-Comp Release
User: Squinky / DateTime: 2011-12-01 19:05:06

Neat! Looking forward to checking it out, and, you know, actually finishing the game!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3830&start=0#p27413
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Restore game/sound crash observation + a fix
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-12-01 19:31:31

I'm testing post-comp Six. Last night I saved my game. This morning I restored it (in the latest Gargoyle) and it immediately crashed like this:

[i]   [Saved file successfully restored.]

   *** fatal error: Reference to nonexistent Glk object. ***[/i]

I had restored it from the game's front-end menu, so I tried  again by typing RESTORE at the parser after starting a new game, and got the same error.

I then took the game to a terp with no sound enabled (Zoom), and found I was able to restore the save.

Then I took it to an old terp with sound support (Spatterlight), and tried to restore, and got the error again.

So I'd learned it was sound-related and not just Gargoyle. I never saw this happen before, and a lot of people have played the game, and none have reported this happening. That suggested it might be something in the new glk spec, but it could equally have been luck.

Then I tried an experiment. I started playing and saved the game while a sound was playing. Then I tried to restore that game. It crashed. I restarted, walked to the same room, let the sound finish playing and saved. I was able to restore from that position.

So it seems if you save while a sound's playing, when you restore, something akin to the absence of that sound makes it crash. I was able to fix this by adding a rule before any SAVE attempt that stops all audio.

I just put this observation and fix here for anyone using sound (again, next to nobody. Sound remains unpopular [emote];)[/emote])

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3831&start=0#p27414
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: closing a room until the right time
User: nado / DateTime: 2011-12-01 19:33:10

Is it possible to have a room but make it so the player cannot go through until they've persuaded a guard to pass or done some other stipulation?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=10#p27415
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: George / DateTime: 2011-12-01 19:41:48

And if it's not clear, this isn't done and Mike hasn't announced it. I was just too excited [emote]:)[/emote].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3822&start=10#p27416
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is it possible to assign a table to a person?
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-12-01 19:44:49

Capmikee and Matt w thank you very much.
I think I have enough material now to implement the thing.

I guess the method of capmikee with a blank table may be more adapted to what I want to do since I can have several columns of properties. But i also need body parts objects incorporated to every person so I will use a mix of your 2 propositions. 
I wanted to track not only health but also blood and bones, yes I am crazy but if there is a not so difficult way to do it, it is not so much work to have this added dynamic functionality.

Thank you very much, I may post again if I have other difficulties implementing a method or the other ^^

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3831&start=0#p27417
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: closing a room until the right time
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-01 19:51:40

Yes! I'm not sure whether you want to prevent the player from going to the room or leaving the room, but neither is too complicated. You can write:

[code]Instead of going to the Vault when the guard is not happy: say "The guard stops you and says 'You're not coming in here, buster."[/code]

or 

[code]Instead of going from the Prison Cell when the guard is not happy: say "The guard stops you and says 'You're staying right here.'"[/code]

And if you want code for how to make the guard happy, it could be something like this (untested, so I may have goofed the syntax a little):

[code]The guard can be happy. The guard is not happy.
Instead of singing in the presence of the guard:
   say "The guard wipes a tear from his eye and says, 'Ah, a song like that, it reminds me of me old ma. You may go, and good luck to you.";
   now the guard is happy. [/code]

Of course, for that to work, you want the guard to be in the room you're in!

Section 7.13 of the documentation has more on some of the subtleties of "going from" and "going in," and example 101 does pretty much what you're looking for (except it blocks you from going to a region rather than a room).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3822&start=10#p27418
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is it possible to assign a table to a person?
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-12-01 20:04:03

Oh by the way, in the example of Matt w, there is only the health column but it seems possible to add other columns with other properties right?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3822&start=10#p27419
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is it possible to assign a table to a person?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-01 20:13:09

[quote="sai"]Oh by the way, inthe example of Matt w, there us only the health column but it seems possibke to add other columns with other properties right?[/quote]

Yes, for every column you add, you will create a property with that name that all the kinds of body part have (at least the ones created by that table).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3830&start=0#p27420
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Restore game/sound crash observation + a fix
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-01 20:22:46

This happens if a game has a sound channel open at save (or restore) time, and doesn't do the appropriate work in GGRecoverObjects() or IdentifyGlkObject() to determine its identity.

The game says it's using the "Multiple Sounds" extension... I haven't looked at that to see if it's doing it right.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3822&start=10#p27421
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is it possible to assign a table to a person?
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-12-01 20:27:41

[quote="matt w"][quote="sai"]Oh by the way, inthe example of Matt w, there us only the health column but it seems possibke to add other columns with other properties right?[/quote]

Yes, for every column you add, you will create a property with that name that all the kinds of body part have (at least the ones created by that table).[/quote]

Wonderful!
You made my day ^^

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=10#p27422
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-01 20:28:21

I disagree with the premise, not the reasoning. I'd say that horror is noticeably *common* in modern IF games. Some of it is Lovecraftian, some is psychological/surreal, much of it is mixed with other genres (_Slouching Towards Bedlam_) but it's all pretty blatantly *there*.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3830&start=0#p27423
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Restore game/sound crash observation + a fix
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-12-01 20:41:57

Multiple Sounds doesn't have anything in it to do with save or restore. It just creates channels, plays sounds and changes volumes. My contribution to the extension was the part which adds more channels than the default 2. I'm still pretty proud of that part given that I don't know any C or i6, hehe.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=10#p27424
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-01 20:43:36

[quote="zarf"]I disagree with the premise, not the reasoning. I'd say that horror is noticeably *common* in modern IF games. Some of it is Lovecraftian, some is psychological/surreal, much of it is mixed with other genres (_Slouching Towards Bedlam_) but it's all pretty blatantly *there*.[/quote]

Well, he never said he couldn't find horror IF, rather "truly good" horror IF, which takes us into entirely subjective territory.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3830&start=0#p27426
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Restore game/sound crash observation + a fix
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-01 21:35:28

Mm. Well, your fix is correct in that case -- you can't have a sound playing when you save or restore.

You'll probably run into the same problem with undo, I'm afraid. (If you undo across an event that starts or stops a sound.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3660&start=10#p27427
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Why text adventures beat graphical games in realism
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-12-01 21:39:25

[quote="bukayeva"][quote="Laroquod"]In a 3D game, on the other hand, you have to create a lot of visual assets to make that particular intersection 'feel real'.[/quote]

Perhaps a good case in point is that I just started playing Crysis 2. A different style of game than something like Skyrim, I realize. I bring it up because of the feel you mention. There is no text adventure at all that could convey the feel of me walking through a decimated New York, hearing broadcasts of emergency, hearing the odd "hooooooooooahhhh" sound of the alien ships as they fly around a couple blocks over, the constant sound of the wind and the occasional tinkling sound of glass falling to the street from above, and so forth. There's no text adventure that could give me the immediate feeling of sneaking around an a camp filled with troops, hearing their banter, even as I keep moving, making sure to stay in the shadows and out of sight.


[quote]So, text adventures don't beat 3D graphical games in realism, IMO. They both are typically aimed at realism and each form comes with its own 'cracks in reality' that are artifacts of the tools used to build them -- i.e. neither is going to be a perfect representation.[/quote]

Agreed. In Crysis 2, for example, I can't just go [i]anywhere[/i]. I can't break down any door and in any area -- which, of course, in reality I could do.

[quote]To complain that Pac-Man for example is not realistic is to entirely miss the point, though you can reasonably complain that Zork isn't. Therefore, Zork set for itself a more ambitious goal.[/quote]

I also think part of this feel is the emotional or visceral reaction you have. For example, taking another game, Modern Warfare 3. This is the final game of the series. The ending -- which I won't spoil here for those still playing -- is somewhat predictable; you can see it coming. Yet -- the way it plays out, the suddenness of the action, the scream of the person you end up fighting with, it's actually really intense even when the game mechanic itself intrudes quite a bit. So realistic? Well, not any more or less than a text adventure perhaps. But for the sheer unmitigated feeling of a consistent action taking place in a visual and aural medium, a text adventure could never replicate that for me.

Just as Zork tried for a different experience than Pac-Man, so too does a text adventure and a game like those I mentioned. All of these can provide a narrative of sorts -- hell, even Donkey Kong had a narrative -- but it's the "feel" that the game is going for that will make the difference.

A good example that's more in line with adventure game may be the recent To The Moon. That's a surprising strong story and it reminded me a bit of the text adventure Tapestry although it also showed me, again, why a text adventure may have a hard time giving that kind of experience.[/quote]
Interesting points. Properly played, you are supposed to use your imagination to supply those visual/aural experiences when you read. Just like when you read a book. Often, with the way puzzles are oriented (text adventures broadly only utilise one type of text puzzle -- but there are actually an infinite number of possible types of text puzzles that haven't really been tried), this experience of idenification is interfered with in a text adventure. But it doesn't have to be this way at all. Clearly words are capable of transmitting a very full-featured experience of reality to the imagination. If text adventures haven't been doing so (and some have, but most haven't, IMO), it is iikely because some of the standard IF conventions interfere with the process of identification. And I'm not talking about superficial stuff like scoring. I'm talking about second person (which translates dramatically into 'no person'). I'm talking about the spatial-room-filled-with-spatial-objects paradigm. I'm talking about the idea of time being essentially frozen as you explore objects that represent purely space. None of these things are absolutely necessary to the creations of text puzzles in interactive form. All of them can easily interfere with the imagination and particularly they can block emotional identification with the main character, which requires the perception of a personality that is NOT exactly one's own; and the observation of changes in that personality through time -- the exploration of space is irrelevant [edit: or rather I should say, 'orthogonal'] to this process; therefore, I feel that its primacy has been a mistake.

Paul.

P.S. This is something text can do that 3D can't really, as well. Slip into a non-spatial (or not literally spatial) realm, seamlessly without breaking the tone. In a 3D game you'd have to go all infographics and people tend to think of that as boring exposition that looks like an in-game web site. It could be so much more even in graphic form, but text definitely has the edge on this, as the set of things that you can express in full sentences is actually much greater. Yet we [i]mostly[/i] use it to describe… three dimensional rooms and stuff. (I'm aware that there are exceptions, although I'm certain I'm not aware of [i]all[/i] the exceptions. Feel free to name some of the best; I'd like that. I'd also like to scope out if anyone else has 'gone there' in the way my WIP is going.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3830&start=0#p27428
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Restore game/sound crash observation + a fix
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-12-01 21:42:36

Thanks for the info.

That's interesting about Undo - it has always worked fine, and with no extra programming from me. I observed that it immediately cuts any sounds playing when you do it, but I was okay with that. And it's never caused a crash.

Edit - For safety, I hooked into Undo and added manual sound stopping before all Undos.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3804&start=0#p27429
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Farm Quest-Testing and general opinions
User: phatmonkey / DateTime: 2011-12-01 21:56:12

I'm surprised giving bacon to the pigs doesn't work...  This feedback is very useful, I appreciate it.  I never did have a proper chance to run more play testing other than my professor's play through, which was lenient since many of us struggled with getting Inform 7 to do what we wanted, let alone design a good narrative flow.  Its pretty fun when you have time to work with it though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3804&start=0#p27430
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Farm Quest-Testing and general opinions
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-01 22:09:04

[quote="phatmonkey"]I'm surprised giving bacon to the pigs doesn't work...  This feedback is very useful, I appreciate it.  I never did have a proper chance to run more play testing other than my professor's play through, which was lenient since many of us struggled with getting Inform 7 to do what we wanted, let alone design a good narrative flow.  Its pretty fun when you have time to work with it though.[/quote]

Well, I like the description of the pigs. So... 

[spoiler]I'm curious as to what happens when you give the pigs the bacon, once you make it work. However, in the initial description, you capitalize TASTE like you're supposed to taste the bacon or have them taste the bacon. You emphasize taste over smell or giving. If tasting isn't involved in the action, I'd take the emphasis off of it.

So make the pigs workk, man! (or woman, whatever the case may be)[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=10#p27432
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-01 22:32:49

I feel that I should clarify a couple of things...

"Shade" was a phenomenal game. I didn't care for the delivery or the end result. That's all. I certainly don't believe I could do better. But I put off playing it for a very long time. I kept reading about how "creepy" it was. It kept coming up in discussions about horror. So I finally played the thing and it just... wasn't what I was expecting. That probably colored my opinion of it. I had high hopes with phrases like "you can't face the night" or the fear of turning off the lamp. But I don't think those expectations were met. I get the point of them. It wasn't that I was expecting more. Just something different.

For the record, after I played through, I looked it up to see if I'd missed anything. I had not read any spoilers, walkthroughs or the like prior.

As for Warbler's Nest, I just couldn't get into it. I couldn't relate. It was a "cute" twist, but again, I expected more. The projected "fear" of entering the house intrigued me. When I got into the house and found out it was just a screaming kid... I have three kids, now almost teenagers. One of them screamed a lot as an infant, one of them yells a lot now. I also have a very diverse religious/spiritual background. So the egg thing already put me on the edge. Once the two came together, I was just done. Admittedly, I did chuck the kid into the river the first time and into the crib the second time. So I did play it through. Again, very well written game, but neither touched that "horror nerve" for me.

Anyway, to my original point, I disagree that Lovecraft was a terrible writer. To his audience, one not saturated by the glories of the silver screen and the immersive interaction of big budget video games, this was as horrifying as it got, I'd expect. The idea that something so grotesque, powerful and indescribably was sleeping at the bottom of the ocean waiting to gobble them up hit home for them. It was the things that Lovecraft alluded to, not necessarily explicitly described, that was the true fear.

What I meant was that I've looked through the things tagged as "horror" on IFDB. I didn't see much that I was impressed with. I didn't search for Lovecraftian horror, though I did see the tag. The things that I did see that caught my eye were slighted for their Lovecraftian bent.

So point being... I didn't find a lot of horror. Or maybe you guys are right in that it doesn't match my [i]idea[/i] of horror. Maybe Lovecraftian horror is really my thing. Being a die hard, long time fan of King and Barker, I thought I'd be hesitant to agree. (Regardless of what criticism anyone may have of either, they're both two of the best at what they do.) Maybe it's my thing in IF.

Psychological horror doesn't really do it for me because it's too easily explained. Same with thrillers. Zombies. Virus outbreaks. Et cetera ad nauseum. Maybe I am attracted to "that which cannot be comprehended by the human mind" for that reason. People don't scare me. Strangers breaking into my house don't scare me. Jump scares are for teenagers. Maybe it's pomp or pride or ego or whatever. But if I can put a name, a face or a form to it, I'll take a pass. 

Clear as mud?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=10#p27433
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-01 22:36:13

I should also say that SUTWIN is what revived my interest in IF. That game was creepy. I don't know what it was intended to be. I've never found what I thought to be an "ending" that didn't involve [spoiler]the window breaking[/spoiler] with unfortunate side effects. But I friggin' love that "game". I just wish it was part of a bigger organism.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3822&start=10#p27434
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is it possible to assign a table to a person?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-01 22:36:23

I'm not too sure about this, but try moving "Some kinds of bodypart are defined by the table of bodyparts" to before the declarations like "A torso is part of every person" (though still after "A bodypart is a kind of thing"). It looks to me as though the problem is that when it hits "A torso is part of every person" it doesn't yet know that you're defining a torso as a kind of bodypart, because that happens when it hits the line "Some kinds of bodypart are defined...." So if you switch the order there, you might not get the error.

You wouldn't need to move the table, just the "some kinds of bodypart are defined..." line.

Anyway, I'm not sure about that, but that's a difference I notice between my code and yours -- I've got things in a slightly different order.

EDIT: Whoops, the post I was responding to seems to have disappeared. I hope this means you solved the problem yourself!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3822&start=10#p27435
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is it possible to assign a table to a person?
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-12-01 23:42:26

[quote="matt w"]I'm not too sure about this, but try moving "Some kinds of bodypart are defined by the table of bodyparts" to before the declarations like "A torso is part of every person" (though still after "A bodypart is a kind of thing"). It looks to me as though the problem is that when it hits "A torso is part of every person" it doesn't yet know that you're defining a torso as a kind of bodypart, because that happens when it hits the line "Some kinds of bodypart are defined...." So if you switch the order there, you might not get the error.

You wouldn't need to move the table, just the "some kinds of bodypart are defined..." line.

Anyway, I'm not sure about that, but that's a difference I notice between my code and yours -- I've got things in a slightly different order.

EDIT: Whoops, the post I was responding to seems to have disappeared. I hope this means you solved the problem yourself![/quote]

Yes I have solved the problem just after have posted (lol)
Thank you it was exactly that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3820&start=0#p27436
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: A good "recent" spy thriller?
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2011-12-02 00:02:41

I'm working on a detective murder mystery The Z-Machine Matter, set in the 1950s.  It has some cold war espionage elements to it, but not really a James Bond type of spy thriller.  It's still a work in progress, but I'm happy to share it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3833&start=0#p27437
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: SF Bay IF Meetup in Berkeley Saturday 1PM
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-12-02 00:21:00

Taco Fiction won IF Comp this year, and it isn't one of the ones we tried last month, so let's try playing it this month!

We're also going to try a new location: the community play space at Eudemonia. I'll bring a projector (which may not work), but in the worst case we'll all play on laptops/tablets like last time.

See you there!

For more details, see the full listing: <a class="postlink" href="http://meetu.ps/51Lz8">http://meetu.ps/51Lz8</a>

When: Saturday, December 3, 2011 1:00 PM

Where: Eudemonia
2154 University Ave 
Berkeley, CA 94704 
(510) 883-0814

This Meetup repeats on the 1st Saturday of every month.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3827&start=0#p27439
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Parchment problems
User: SimonChris / DateTime: 2011-12-02 02:17:36

[quote="I4L"]This is a problem with IE8 and IE9. I think there's an "issue" on the parchment site about JS files not being loaded in the correct order. It may happen with IE7 as well. Compatibility mode doesn't help.

Everything works fine in Mozilla.[/quote]

I am using Firefox, so that can't be it. Parchment doesn't seem to work at all in IE9. When i try to run a game in IE9, I just get a message explaining what Parchment is. In Firefox 8 I get the problems mentioned above.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3827&start=0#p27440
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Parchment problems
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-02 06:01:44

That is odd. I just upgraded to Firefox 8.0.1 last night and it's working fine for me. Possible add-on conflict? Could try installing Firebug and see if that shows anything unusual?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=30#p27441
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-12-02 06:34:07

[quote="bcressey"]Emily Short, Adam Cadre, Aaron Reed and Victor Gijsbers are established in the sense that they have a reputation for creating IF of such quality that their future efforts are guaranteed to find an audience.[/quote]

You do realise that it's impossible to verify what kind of audience an IF game is guaranteed to find? Once an IF game is released, it is cast into the void.

[quote="bcressey"]I think it is a very fine work of IF. Perhaps the finest yet produced.

When confronted by the existence of some human monster, I often wonder where their humanity ends and the monstrous begins. Part of me wants to believe I am an exceptional person with heroic qualities, but that has not been the lesson of my life. That part clings to the hope that I am at least not as bad as the worst of us.

Set against that is my axiomatic belief that people are more alike than different; that however messy, complicated, and infinitely varied their circumstances, they are interchangeable at some fundamental level. I do not see how it is possible to be a writer without feeling this to be true.

Hence my inner conflict, between the hero I know I am not and the monster I would rather not know. It seems to me that those two bounds encompass most of humanity, perhaps all of it. It may be that none of us is as good as he believes, nor so evil that we could renounce him with a clear conscience.

[i]De Baron[/i] switches so frequently between heroic discourse and monstrous self-examination that it became for me an interactive exploration of that conflict. The fact that Victor was able to accomplish this is simultaneously reassuring - for at least I am not alone in perceiving such conflicts - and deeply upsetting, in that it reaffirms the fundamental sameness that binds us together. 

I have not read [i]Lolita[/i] and knowing the subject matter, I am unlikely to do so. [i]De Baron[/i] may or may not cover similar ground in an inferior way, but its opening hook was so brilliantly effective that it drew me in unawares and ruined my day with thoughts like these.

I think Victor is a bastard for writing [i]De Baron[/i], but I admire the hell out of his courage. As a parent I don't have it in me to gaze at length into that particular abyss. It terrifies me and gives me a small measure of hope that someone else does.

I don't know what it cost Victor to write it, but it earned him my profound and lasting respect.[/quote]

It seems to me that you are praising [i]The Baron[/i] solely for its good intentions while overlooking its bad execution. So what's so bad about the [i]The Baron[/i]'s execution? As I already pointed out, the prose is execrable. Hardly a single sentence sounds like something a native speaker might write. It has been pointed out to me that Victor is not a native speaker. Well, neither was Conrad or Nabokov. As a non-native speaker myself, I find the notion that Victor deserves lenience insulting.

The two laziest opening scenes in IF are the Dragon and the Bedroom. It is a testimony to the poverty of Victor's imagination that he has somehow managed to incorporate them both. That he has chosen to symbolise the struggle between the Luke Skywalker of the Self and its Darth Vader by a warrior battling a dragon is another low imagination-wise.

What about the implementation? As I already pointed out, [i]The Baron[/i] is a game about a lumberjack who doesn't know how to swing an axe. Unfortunately, the unintentional comedy doesn't end here. The bedroom contains a wife object, which leads to the following odd interchange.

>FUCK WIFE
You curse the evil baron for all he has done to you.

If you know nothing about IF design, you might think something profoundly Freudian is going on here. But what is going on here is Inform grammar treating FUCK as a synonym of DAMN. It's the author's job to extend FUCK to its transitive meaning.

And then there's the "dungeon." This is where the [i]The Baron[/i] lifts from being just another turgid morality tale and becomes a parody of itself. The symbolic vocabulary Victor employs in this section is so crude and infantile, I can't shake off the impression that I'm playing a game written by a twelve-year-old.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=10#p27442
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: sedm0784 / DateTime: 2011-12-02 06:47:52

[quote="I4L"]Also Warbler's Nest was neither horror nor creepy. It was actually a pretty accurate jab at old world ignorance. It stuck with you. But it wasn't scary. Plus...[/quote]
My mileage definitely varied:

[spoiler]I find the concept that what I think is my baby is actually something [i]else[/i] both horrific and creepy. And the fact that people in real life may have believed this to the extent that they actually [i]killed their own children[/i] even more so. (Maybe this has never actually happened in the history of man, but again, the concept that it might have... [i]creepy[/i].)[/spoiler]
Whether this qualifies it for the genre I have no idea.

I'd like to recommend the game that has affected my heart rate the most here, but I played it without knowing its genre, and I suspect saying "this is horror" will lessen its impact somewhat. Also, from what you've written in the thread I don't think you're going to like it:

[spoiler]The Act of Misdirection[/spoiler]
Specifically, the bit:

[spoiler]...at the end of the magic trick. I was [i]completely[/i] taken by surprise. (Hence the name of the game?) The second half of the game I was less impressed by.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=50#p27443
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-12-02 07:50:23

Ectocomp 2011 results are up!  Find 'em [url=http://forum.adrift.co/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=7660&p=87177]here[/url].

I would like to extend my thanks to all who participated and to intfiction.org for providing a space to host the games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=10#p27444
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-02 07:58:56

[quote="sedm0784"]
My mileage definitely varied:

[spoiler]I find the concept that what I think is my baby is actually something [i]else[/i] both horrific and creepy. And the fact that people in real life may have believed this to the extent that they actually [i]killed their own children[/i] even more so. (Maybe this has never actually happened in the history of man, but again, the concept that it might have... [i]creepy[/i].)[/spoiler]
[/quote]

I agree. I would argue, however...

[spoiler]... that there isn't enough substance here to convince me that the child may be something else. All it did was cry. Granted, it cried a lot. And we're told that it cried a lot. I think that the faerie ring may have been added to lend some "credibility" to the lore, but it wasn't close enough for me.

The Romans just dumped their weak or sick babies in the woods for the animals. There's a good starting point, if anyone wants to run with that. Maybe one of those kids survived? Maybe a whole bunch of 'em survived? Something I'd love to write, but I don't know enough about Roman history (or have the time to research it) to do it any justice.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]The Act of Misdirection[/spoiler]

Of course, there have been a lot of great things said about this game. It's another one of those that I've never got around to playing. I will, at some point. I'll try to keep an open mind. I appreciate the suggestion.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=10#p27445
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-12-02 08:03:06

I really like reading H.P. Lovecraft, yet I really disliked Anchorhead. *shrug* Go figure.

Clive Barker has always been my favorite modern horror author. There's about as many sub-genres to horror as there are to "metal" music. My own horror game is meant to be both silly and campy but still have some creepy or unnerving elements, though I don't expect any of those to be effective with every player. 

I don't plan on returning to writing horror IF any time soon. I'm more interested in other genres right now. If and when I do make another though I will keep in mind that many people that play IF do not seem very amused with the "campy" element.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3827&start=0#p27446
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Parchment problems
User: SimonChris / DateTime: 2011-12-02 08:04:50

[quote="I4L"]That is odd. I just upgraded to Firefox 8.0.1 last night and it's working fine for me. Possible add-on conflict? Could try installing Firebug and see if that shows anything unusual?[/quote]

I have the same problems on my work computer, so it doesn't seem likely that it is caused by an add-on. I will try the Firebug thing when I get home.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3827&start=0#p27447
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Parchment problems
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-02 08:18:56

I just checked from my work computer, which is running Firefox 8.0, and it's running fine as well. Both systems are running Windows 7 x64. Wouldn't hurt to go to "Firefox > Help > Restart with Addons Disabled" just to see if it makes any difference. But I have two machines with Firefox running it fine, so it doesn't seem like it can be in the browser itself.

If anyone else is running Firefox would would care to chime in on their experiences with it, that may be helpful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=40#p27448
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-12-02 08:59:02

What I miss completely is a reason to be so insulting. Using harsh words and being so straightforwardly unpleasant that in a RL occasion you would have been beaten to a pulp. Left lifeless on the sidewalk, in a pool of your own blood, if you can picture it.

I don't think Victor deserves it. 

And I don't think you were forced to play his game so hard that you must go that lengths to state a reason — which although formally legitimate, in some moderators' eye, is bull's crap anyway, period — or that you paid real money for it or anything.
It's not like Victor has addressed you in his game or has been so childishly arrogant in any of the posts I've read.

So why the insults?

Who the hell do you think you are, apart from an obvious loser?

---

As an answer to somebody's feelings: nope, you can't kill a troll. You won't kill him by ignoring him or by banning him or whatever. If he's been hanging around for 10 years now, as I read, chances are high he will be here for another 10. Common sense should be enough to tell a troll from a bastard (those are entirely different human beings, you know), but a truth has been spoken here: if a troll doesn't break a rule, you cannot enforce your will on him unless you want to be called judge, jury and executioner. The next time you will be doing this on unharmful posts that you judge by your own meter, no matter what.
So, troll stays. And this is the only rule. 

But, at least, give us the opportunity to bash him as he deserves. 
Sometimes, lettin' it go is cathartic.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=40#p27449
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-12-02 09:22:52

Huh. The troll as the punching bag, thus actually rendering the community a service. Funny way of looking at it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3827&start=0#p27450
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Parchment problems
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-12-02 09:24:49

SimonChris, can you give us some specific links that you're having problems with?

I4L: have I still not removed the defer attribute? Oh dear, I thought I had. I'll do that too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3827&start=0#p27451
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Parchment problems
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-12-02 09:27:16

It'd be helpful if you could look at the error console and see if there are any errors displayed there. You can view the error console by pressing ctrl+shift+J.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=40#p27452
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-02 09:34:13

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]It seems to me that you are praising [i]The Baron[/i] solely for its good intentions while overlooking its bad execution. So what's so bad about the [i]The Baron[/i]'s execution? As I already pointed out, the prose is execrable. Hardly a single sentence sounds like something a native speaker might write. It has been pointed out to me that Victor is not a native speaker. Well, neither was Conrad or Nabokov. As a non-native speaker myself, I find the notion that Victor deserves lenience insulting.[/quote]

The writing in [i]De Baron[/i] is effective because it serves the goals of the work. It does come across as non-native but that only lowers the barrier to entry and engages the player. By the time I realized that this was not simply a cute little game about killing a dragon put out by an earnest but unpolished author, the hook was already set.

And then he cuts to a bedroom scene? That is both risky and brilliant. The most reviled IF setting, coming hard on the heels of a generic dragon fight, all conveyed through artful but somewhat inelegant prose. It's like he's reassuring you that this won't be so bad, you've seen this before, it'll be kind of fun. And then he kicks your teeth in.

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]And then there's the "dungeon." This is where the [i]The Baron[/i] lifts from being just another turgid morality tale and becomes a parody of itself. The symbolic vocabulary Victor employs in this section is so crude and infantile, I can't shake off the impression that I'm playing a game written by a twelve-year-old.[/quote]

The fact that the dungeon lies on the non-essential path interests me as an artistic choice. The symbols it contains may be somewhat incoherent, but that is part of their charm. It's as though the dungeon is where Victor stored all of the metaphors he discarded while creating the larger work. I'm glad it's there.

It strikes me as a signature of sorts, repeated later through its absence in [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=7a3yn4x0aor0jxfd]Hidden Nazi Mode[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3827&start=10#p27453
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Parchment problems
User: SimonChris / DateTime: 2011-12-02 09:54:30

Using the console window, I get the error:

"Error: a is undefined
Source File: <a class="postlink" href="http://iplayif.com/lib/jquery.min.js">http://iplayif.com/lib/jquery.min.js</a>
Line: 18"

I also sometimes get the error:
"Warning: Use of captureEvents() is deprecated. To upgrade your code, use the DOM 2 addEventListener() method. For more help <a class="postlink" href="http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/DOM:element.addEventListener">http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/DO ... ntListener</a>
Source File: <a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=lrbpmlpsknsgvgem">http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=lrbpmlpsknsgvgem</a>
Line: 0"

For examples, check out the IFDB entries for PataNoir and Taco Fiction. For the former, clicking the "Play Online" button just gives me a blank screen, while the latter, which points at ifarchive.wurb.com, produces the error message "Parchment could not load your story. Check your connection, and that the URL is correct." In both cases, I get exactly the same errors if I try to copy-paste the archive link in after "http://iplayif.com/?story=".

Edit: I should probably mention that the "Play Online" links at the IfComp.org page work just fine. I am not sure what the difference is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3749&start=10#p27454
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 update?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-12-02 10:03:20

All joking aside for a second...

[quote]Far more powerful support for translations into other languages. That's what I know of.[/quote]

Does this mean that I7 will natively allow for some niceties that'll make translations easier, such as in-built object gender and the appropriate corresponding pronouns? Sort of what some extensions do already?

(I'm not saying "It's not necessary because we have extensions for it", mind. I'm just comparing)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3827&start=10#p27455
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Parchment problems
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-02 10:04:57

[quote="Dannii"]SimonChris, can you give us some specific links that you're having problems with?

I4L: have I still not removed the defer attribute? Oh dear, I thought I had. I'll do that too.[/quote]

Dannii: I haven't pulled down a new copy in a couple of days. I reinstalled it this past weekend because I was having the issues with IE. I thought it might be related. You may have already removed the tag and I haven't updated, but it's still in my copy. 

I just removed the defer tags from my copy and IE appears to be working fine in it now. I've tested on both IE8 and IE9. However, attempting to run anything hosted at iplayif.com still work, so I'm guessing theirs hasn't been updated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3827&start=10#p27456
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Parchment problems
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-02 10:05:31

Sounds like maybe the copy of the script at ifplay just needs to be updated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=10#p27457
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-02 10:07:33

I'm certainly not the voice of the majority. Just voicing my own personal concerns about the genre and the subs thereof.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=80#p27458
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-12-02 10:24:39

I don't know if the comp website did this or not, but it could email voters if a game they've voted on has received an update. Or, if people wanted them, for every update (or for all the updates each day.)

The Jay Is Games comp allowed updates and was very successful. It might be worth re-reading the debates about updates concerning that comp.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=40#p27459
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-02 10:30:24

[quote="Jamespking"]What I miss completely is a reason to be so insulting. Using harsh words and being so straightforwardly unpleasant that in a RL occasion you would have been beaten to a pulp. Left lifeless on the sidewalk, in a pool of your own blood, if you can picture it.[/quote]

Steady on. I don't think this kind of language is at all appropriate, based on what Jacek has done here.

[quote]Who the hell do you think you are, apart from an obvious loser?[/quote]

This seems more like the appropriate register. Insults are fine, threatlike things aren't.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3830&start=0#p27460
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Restore game/sound crash observation + a fix
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-12-02 10:38:28

[quote="severedhand"]For safety, I hooked into Undo and added manual sound stopping before all Undos.[/quote]

You should probably add a record-scratching sound for good measure. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3835&start=0#p27461
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Get Lamp...?
User: rae_bot / DateTime: 2011-12-02 10:40:08

Hey...so I decided I wanted to buy the Get Lamp documentary, and...long story short, my question is this: is Jason Scott alive?  Functional?  MIA?  Still operating the website?

Thanks, all.

-Rae

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3749&start=10#p27462
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 update?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-02 10:41:07

[quote="Peter Pears"]I7 will natively allow for some niceties that'll make translations easier, such as in-built object gender and the appropriate corresponding pronouns?[/quote]
Yes! I'm pretty sure it will do at least that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3835&start=0#p27463
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Get Lamp...?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-02 10:43:33

[url=https://twitter.com/#!/textfiles]Yes[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3835&start=0#p27464
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Get Lamp...?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-12-02 10:46:19

Why do you ask? Are you having problems placing the order?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3820&start=0#p27465
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: A good "recent" spy thriller?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-12-02 10:47:30

Is there any particular reason for applying the "in the last year" restriction?  This community sees fairly few releases per year, so the odds of getting a particular genre in any given year are pretty low.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=10#p27466
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-12-02 10:54:07

Have you played, [url=http://www.illuminatedlantern.com/?page_id=33]Ecdysis[/url], based on a Lovecraft's Commonplace Book? Or The two Dunsany adaptations, [url=http://www.illuminatedlantern.com/?page_id=6]The Journey of the King[/url] and [url=http://www.illuminatedlantern.com/?page_id=21]The Ebb and Flow of the Tide[/url]? I can't personally vouch for any of them, but it seems to be up your street. I enjoyed Anchorhead; I played it entirely on Twisty on my phone and although I found parts of it very creepy I was never truly horrified. Perhaps horror is not best served through a bright and shiny screen. Better a paperback read by torch light, or by a small fire in the middle of the woods.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3835&start=0#p27467
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Get Lamp...?
User: rae_bot / DateTime: 2011-12-02 11:02:17

Apparently my mother ordered it for me for Christmas, waited like a month, and never heard from the guy.  She tried e-mailing, and she tried calling, and whatever number she found was disconnected.  Obviously, I find it hard (read: impossible) to believe he suddenly turned into an Internet scam artist, so I'm trying to figure out what to do next.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=10#p27468
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-02 11:06:23

[quote="JoeyJones"]Have you played, [url=http://www.illuminatedlantern.com/?page_id=33]Ecdysis[/url], based on a Lovecraft's Commonplace Book? Or The two Dunsany adaptations, [url=http://www.illuminatedlantern.com/?page_id=6]The Journey of the King[/url] and [url=http://www.illuminatedlantern.com/?page_id=21]The Ebb and Flow of the Tide[/url]? I can't personally vouch for any of them, but it seems to be up your street. I enjoyed Anchorhead; I played it entirely on Twisty on my phone and although I found parts of it very creepy I was never truly horrified. Perhaps horror is not best served through a bright and shiny screen. Better a paperback read by torch light, or by a small fire in the middle of the woods.[/quote]

I mentioned Ecdysis as one that I enjoyed. I haven't played Journey of the King or Ebb and Flow of the Tide. I've added them both to my wish list as a reminder.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3827&start=10#p27469
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Parchment problems
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-02 11:09:37

On further investigation, I can't say that my copy of the file was updated or not. Some code that I had written (for another purpose) is at the top of that page. I can't say whether I used the old copy or whether I added the code to the new copy. I'm 95% sure that I added the code to the top of the new copy and deleted the old one, but don't hold me to it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3835&start=0#p27470
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Get Lamp...?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-02 11:16:36

It looks like his site was hacked at some point in the recent past.

Google has some of the pages in its cache:
<a class="postlink" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=+site:getlamp.com">https://www.google.com/search?q=+site:getlamp.com</a>

He seems to have it cleaned up, but if your mom placed an order in the meantime it may have been intercepted or diverted.

You should email him about it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=40#p27471
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2011-12-02 11:17:18

[quote]Hardly a single sentence sounds like something a native speaker might write. It has been pointed out to me that Victor is not a native speaker. Well, neither was Conrad or Nabokov. As a non-native speaker myself, I find the notion that Victor deserves lenience insulting.[/quote]

You get plenty of lenience. If we'd pointed out all the times concepts soared completely over your head on Usenet, we would have filled Usenet up, with the last trillion bits being the word "Galatea." You once argued that being insulted over a message post was slander instead of libel because it was "fleeting." Nobody called you on that was because -- as a group -- we are easy-going and chill. 

([url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/msg/0d0e8b8db9a0bcdb?dmode=source]Here's how fleeting your message was, by the way[/url].)  

So yeah, people are gonna play The Baron, recognize that its appeal is in its concepts instead of prose and axe-murdering and enjoy or dislike it based on that. This happens everywhere. Nobody read Asimov because of his characters. Nobody liked Michelangelo's stuff because of the robots. When you release Temple of Apshite, I'm gonna judge it on how well the mechanic of removable limbs works and not on how likeable the narrator is. If you want to pretend there are thick, black, throbbing Comic Sans-styled question marks above your head because Victor put commas in the wrong spot that's fine, but don't pretend you don't understand why nobody is agreeing with you. 

Now, at [i]this[/i] point, my inability to write properly is depressing [i]me[/i], because I lack the words to properly respond to your awful take that the game must suck because, as a non-native work, its not written as well as the guy who wrote Lolita, for fuck's sake. Hurrr I just put my fist through my LCD monitor because it's not as bright as the Sun.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3836&start=0#p27472
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Constructing Sentences
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-02 11:24:25

I'm toying with the idea of writing a "describing travel" extension - my WIP does a lot of that, and I recently encountered some issues with the way it's managed.

At its core, it's so simple it doesn't really need an extension:

[code]Describing travel from something is an activity on objects.

Report going (this is the describe travel rule):
	Carry out the describing travel from activity with the room gone from;
	
The describe travel rule is listed before the describe room gone into rule in the report going rulebook.[/code]

But my big question right now is this: I want to wrap all the travel descriptions into one sentence:

[quote]>n
Bob comes along with you.

Family Room

Sheila is here.

>n
Sheila follows you, and Bob comes along.

Kitchen

Bob and Sheila's 3-year-old son Tommy is here.

Tommy leaps upon your left leg and holds on tight.

>n
You hobble away with Tommy dragging from your left leg, and Sheila comes along, and Bob comes along.

Dining Room[/quote]

I'm imagining a activity a bit like writing a list, a bit like writing a paragraph. Something like this:

[code]For printing a phrase about travel when a person (called follower) is following:
    if starting a sentence, say "[The follower] comes along with you[.]";
    otherwise say ", and [the follower] comes along[.]";[/code]

A system like this would allow rule-order to determine what order the phrases appear in. The part I can't figure out is how to print the final punctuation. This problem is big, and if solved, would be useful for much more than just this extension - I have need of it all over my WIP. How do we know whether to end a sentence with "." or "!" or ".'" or some arbitrary punctuation? Never mind the line breaks. The syntax I have here with the final punctuation in brackets is the best I can think of, but I haven't even checked if you can write a to-say phrase for it. I'm open to suggestions for other syntax. It should be concise and easy to use everywhere. It can set a global variable if necessary, allowing the most recent setting to decide the end of the sentence. Perhaps it should be possible to override that, though, so exclamation points and question marks replace periods. As usual, I want to do it without indexed text, and I want it to flow smoothly with common expectations of I7.

Any ideas?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=40#p27473
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-12-02 11:24:55

I don't think for a second Pudlo believes half the stuff he posts. He’s simply picking a target – in this case Victor and his game [i]The Baron[/i] – and insulting it to annoy people, and probably having a good laugh at the people debating his “review”. He’s deliberately insulting not because it’s a good way to get a point across, but because he’s more likely to annoy people by doing it and he’s curious as to how far he can go before the moderators step in and do anything. As the moderators are unwilling to do anything, he’s only going to get worse.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=80#p27474
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-12-02 11:25:14

[quote="Bainespal"]I hope I don't inflame the argument any more, but I seriously can't resist this...

[rant][size=150][color=#FF0000][b]WE ARE THE 58%! OCCUPY INTFICTION![/b][/color][/size][/rant]
[/quote]

First there was permanent revolution, and now, permanent updates!

[rant][img]http://bubbleof.me/occupyintfiction.png[/img][/rant]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3835&start=0#p27475
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Get Lamp...?
User: rae_bot / DateTime: 2011-12-02 11:27:38

Oh Golly.  I'll try that, thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=40#p27476
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-02 11:30:27

[quote="Ice Cream Jonsey"]Nobody read Asimov because of his characters.[/quote]

Well, that was certainly [i]his[/i] take on things, anyway. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3786&start=10#p27477
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Getting Run Time Error on subtime.t on TADS13
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-12-02 11:41:57

Thanks again for everyone's help. This forum has been a wealth of information since I started posting to it. Will try this all out at my first opportunity.

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=20#p27478
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-12-02 11:44:55

*reading back*, oh so you did. Oh, looking now, there was a Commonplace Book [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/HP_Lovecraft:_The_Commonplace_Book_Project_2007]competition[/url], with six other games (although two of the games aren't in English).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3835&start=0#p27479
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Get Lamp...?
User: rae_bot / DateTime: 2011-12-02 11:48:11

Yay, he responded to my tweet, and it seems all is well.  Thank you!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3836&start=0#p27480
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Constructing Sentences
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-02 11:53:39

Stringing together phrases like this is not a difficult problem. (It's essentially the same code I used for "Secret Hideout" and <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/mutagen/">http://eblong.com/zarf/mutagen/</a> and so on.)

The hard part at this level is capitalizing the first word -- well, not hard, but annoying. It becomes easy if you use indexed text, of course. Absent that, you could create an I6 phrase to capitalize an arbitrary word by printing to a memory buffer; this wouldn't require the full indexed-text library.

Fitting it into an activity model is somewhat tricky. You don't want *an* activity, you want one such activity for each instance in your game. You could think of it as "a kind of activity" except I7 doesn't have that notion. So I think you wind up with a lot of boilerplate -- you'd have to declare the same beginning and ending (or before/after) rule for every such activity you built.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3835&start=0#p27481
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Get Lamp...?
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-12-02 11:56:34

Just regarding site hacking, he may or may not have cleaned it up - some hacked websites only look hacked to Googlebot, they present the "normal" version of the site to everybody else.

Very nasty - it happened to me: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.alexwarren.co.uk/2011/11/30/my-website-was-hacked-yours-could-be-too-you-wont-know-until-its-too-late/">http://www.alexwarren.co.uk/2011/11/30/ ... -too-late/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=40#p27482
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-02 12:01:37

[quote="David Whyld"]I don't think for a second Pudlo believes half the stuff he posts. He’s simply picking a target – in this case Victor and his game [i]The Baron[/i] – and insulting it to annoy people, and probably having a good laugh at the people debating his “review”.[/quote]

You are conflating Victor and his game into a single entity. From the standpoint of critical discussion, I think it's appropriate to separate them. Saying mean things about someone's game doesn't bother me nearly as much as personal attacks or threats. The first contributes to a conversation and the second tries to silence it.

Jacek has made one direct assertion about Victor - that he "really likes postal metaphors" - and one uncomplimentary aside about the "poverty of [his] imagination". He also said that Victor was not as talented as Robb Sherwin, which I regard as a not unflattering statement in spite of its hostile phrasing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3836&start=0#p27483
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Constructing Sentences
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-02 12:03:35

You and your lofty thinking, Zarf!

Perhaps I get too muddled in details, but what I'm thinking about here is the API. What's the best syntax to use? What works with say phrases? What's a reasonable way to keep track of state? How should punctuation behave? Should I expect people to write their own conjunctions or should that be automated, including serial comma options?

I'm not really thinking about capitalization because I want the author to have a chance to say something special in the main clause. The verb may change from "You hobble" to ", hobbling", for example. I might apply some linguistic rules to automate that, but if other authors are like me, they'd rather I didn't, leaving the decision up to them.

As for generic activities, I personally wouldn't mind saving some state somewhere so there could be just one "writing a sentence phrase" activity.

[code]For writing a sentence phrase while describing travel and Bob is following:[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3835&start=0#p27484
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Get Lamp...?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-02 12:09:28

Actually, it doesn't look cleaned up at all. Hrm. Or else it was tagged a second time.

I pinged Jason on twitter about it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3836&start=0#p27485
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Constructing Sentences
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-02 12:21:02

Roughly, you track a current terminator state. Make that a kind of value: beginning-of-text, paragraph-break, period, semicolon, emdash, comma, space.

At the beginning of each chunk of text, you look at the current state and print the appropriate string.

beginning-of-text: none
paragraph-break: "[paragraph break]"
period: ". "
semicolon: "; "
comma: ", "
space: " "

At the end of each chunk of text, reset it to space.

At the beginning *or* end of the chunk, you can change the current state. This doesn't print anything. I find it nice to have a "set" function that actually sets the state to MAX(newstate, currentstate). That is, if the last chunk ended with a comma, but you want this chunk to begin a new sentence, you forget about the comma and start with ". " instead.

And you need an end-of-activity rule to print a final period. (Regardless of current state. Except that if the current state is beginning-of-text, nothing at all got printed, so the entire paragraph is null and you print no final period.)

To decide whether starting a sentence: if current state is beginning-of-text or current state is paragraph-break: yes.

This all gets more complicated if you want sentences (or paragraphs) to end with other punctuation, such as ? or .) or ." or whatever. Changing verbs ("You hobble" / "hobbling") is another layer of fun. I'd recommend starting with the basics.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=40#p27486
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2011-12-02 12:21:34

Every other forum in the world bans people. I like that it doesn't happen here. The only annoying thing Jacek does is make claims that are proven false which he abandons, only to re-assert them later. For instance - Cadre sold the movie rights to one of his games. Zarf got $31,000 from people to make games. Dan Schmidt has made three of the best games ever in Terra Nova, Guitar Hero and Rock Band. There are a lot of IF people who meet the standards of quality  and success that Jacek says nobody around here has met. This comes up time and time again and he keeps banging the same drum. Whatever. 

(He also bullies people, but this is the Internet. That's never going to stop happening on the Internet.)

Let me put it this way - your favorite band probably put out a CD you thought was terrible at one point. You might have even posted that the new disc by [i]Kekeke and the Plagoos[/i] sucks ass, never thinking that they'd see it or care if they did. Jacek seeing only the negative side of things is how creative content is reviewed in virtually EVERY other form of media. It's just that there are fewer of us, so we all see it. It's motivating to me and it's not like the guy is going to carve your family up if you speak to him in the same tone he uses. 

If we were all making first person shooters or sports games, there would be thousands of people with similar attitudes as Jacek.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=40#p27487
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-02 12:45:18

I have my suspicions about Pudlo. It seems to me that things there may not be all that they appear.

Regardless, I do have to say that since adding him to my "Foe" list, my quality of life here on the forum has improved dramatically. So even if it doesn't make "Pudlo" go away, it's certainly a lot more pleasant. This doesn't prepare newcomers to the forum for what they're in for, but hopefully they get the idea and follow suit.

I haven't seen any "Code of Conduct" or "Forum Rules" posted anywhere on the forum or the site, which I thought was unusual. So technically by the letter of the law, anyone can say whatever they want to say. Most of us don't, out of common courtesy for everyone else. However, "Pudlo" doesn't seem to share this sense of community. Thus he's treated like the body attacking a virus -- desperately wanting to be rid of it, but not having the ability to eject it or destroy it.

I haven't (and still don't) spend any time in the IF newsgroups. I don't know what community reaction to "Pudlo" has been. It seems that all we're seeing here is people at their breaking point. They're trying (most of the time) to be courteous and helpful. Then this "individual" who has been plaguing the community for years is permitted to carry on with his usual pot-stirring unhindered.

As a privately operated forum, there's no such thing as Freedom of Speech unless those in charge allow there to be. There's nothing wrong with that approach. Inevitably tempers will be lost and the community will rise up against it. At that point you consider the impact to your community and whether the desires of a few (or one, in this case) are more important than the desires of the many.

We can't put the fault on the shoulders of the mods or the admins. There's nothing anywhere saying that "Pudlo" can't say any of the things that he says or the way that he says them. There's a thread in the Feedback forum, if I recall, centering around hate speech or some such. The higher powers are willing to let a lot go in the spirit of letting the community work it out themselves. When action absolutely has to be taken, it seems to be taken.

"Pudlo" doesn't appear to be driving any of the "regulars" away. Whether "his" behavior is discouraging to those who visit less frequently or completely turns off newcomers altogether is difficult (impossible) to say. "His" approach would not be welcomed, and would indeed be short-lived, on [i]every[/i] other forum that I frequent. On those that I manage, "he" would have been stricken from record and memory after a single post, as I am neither a patient nor forgiving admin.  [emote]:D[/emote] 

All things considered, until things change, I think it's best that those of us who don't wish to deal with "him" do add "him" to the foe list. If you can't see what "he" has to say, you can't be antagonized to respond.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=50#p27488
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-12-02 12:46:44

[quote="matt w"][quote="Jamespking"]What I miss completely is a reason to be so insulting. Using harsh words and being so straightforwardly unpleasant that in a RL occasion you would have been beaten to a pulp. Left lifeless on the sidewalk, in a pool of your own blood, if you can picture it.[/quote]

Steady on. I don't think this kind of language is at all appropriate, based on what Jacek has done here.

[quote]Who the hell do you think you are, apart from an obvious loser?[/quote]

This seems more like the appropriate register. Insults are fine, threatlike things aren't.[/quote]

Sec. I didn't threaten anyone. I was just trying to say that such arrogance when used on the street would end you up beaten. That was not a threaten. I'm not gonna beat anyone. It's just that such insults I'm pretty sure one wouldn't use face to face.
Apart from the fact they are at all inappropriate, given the target.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=50#p27489
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-12-02 13:09:17

No, seriously, "I'm just saying something could happen to you" is a threat.  Don't do it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=50#p27490
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2011-12-02 13:10:25

[quote="katz"]No, seriously, "I'm just saying something could happen to you" is a threat.  Don't do it.[/quote]

Agree.

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3835&start=0#p27491
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Get Lamp...?
User: rae_bot / DateTime: 2011-12-02 13:14:31

Alex - That's horrifying.

zarf - I hope he's able to fix it, and permanently.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=50#p27492
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-02 13:22:46

[quote="katz"]"I'm just saying something could happen to you" is a threat.[/quote]

True. Plus irrelevant.

"I'm just saying that[i] if you did that in real life,[/i] something probably [i]would [/i]happen to you" is not a threat. Not even close. Not even if you squint your eyes and blur them on purpose.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3660&start=10#p27493
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Why text adventures beat graphical games in realism
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-12-02 13:23:24

[quote="Laroquod"]Interesting points. Properly played, you are supposed to use your imagination to supply those visual/aural experiences when you read. Just like when you read a book.[/quote]

Right, but with a book I just get to experience it as a linear flow (or at least as linear as I want to keep reading). I can do that with text games but the problem is it's totally dependent on the skill of the game writer to make the narrative good and to align the action in such a way that there are consistent cues as to what to do. Otherwise I get stuck in the text game where I wouldn't in a book. I can get stuck in a graphical game as well, of course, but I find that's less often the case because I have more than just the author's words to go on. I have various cues.

Some of the better text adventures I played ended up leaving me with the feeling that "Man, I wish this was just a book. This is a good story but I'm sick of having it stopped up all the time." So when the story is really good in a text adventure, I find that I just wish it was something I could read rather than have to play through. I have felt a similar way about movies. I've felt "Wow, this movie is almost really good; I can see the story. It would probably make a much better book." But I have yet to find a graphical game where I said "Yeah, I really this was a text adventure instead." And I've never really had a great book experience where I said "I wish this book was a text adventure so I could play this character."

[quote]Clearly words are capable of transmitting a very full-featured experience of reality to the imagination. If text adventures haven't been doing so (and some have, but most haven't, IMO), it is iikely because some of the standard IF conventions interfere with the process of identification.[/quote]

I totally agree. The conventions of text adventures, set down awhile ago, do seem to cause some issues with with the form really being all that different or innovative in some ways. I look at many text adventures today and the ones I played years ago and, basically, they're just about the same in a lot of ways. That's not the case at all for most other game formats. And I'm not just talking about graphic cards being improved and stuff like that. I'm talking about the nature of how stories are told in the context of games and how various cues (identifications?) are used to make the experience more compelling.

I basically agree with everything you say regarding the conventions you bring up.

[quote]P.S. This is something text can do that 3D can't really, as well. Slip into a non-spatial (or not literally spatial) realm, seamlessly without breaking the tone.[/quote]

Yeah, that's an interesting point. I think the trick is that things still have to be relatable though. While text can be amenable to much more expressiveness, it's also easy for it to become mired in ambiguity and confusion such that the playing experience could become very muddied. But I do agree that the "internal space" -- and thus not actually a spatial set of locations at all -- could be a rich vein to tap. Like everything with text games, though, the writing is going to come front and center. You're going to need people who can convey well via text.

I think for me, the more a text game is like a book, I would just prefer a book. The more a text adventure is like a game, I would prefer a game that's not so static. Thoughts still forming on this but that's where I'm at right now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=50#p27494
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-02 13:27:18

What he was saying is that "Pudlo's" brand of interaction is tolerated only on the internet. He was saying that if "Pudlo" spoke to someone in person, on the street or in conversation, the way "he" speaks to or about people here, it would likely incite "his" target or subject to violence. He never threatened "Pudlo". He never said he was going to harm him, wanted to harm him or would harm him if given the opportunity. I agree with him. "Pudlo's" behavior is very [i]Kanye West[/i]. I believe "he" knows what "he" can get away with, when and with whom. "He" knows "he" can get away with it on the internet, so "he" does. James merely pointed out that he likely wouldn't get away with it face-to-face.

Jamespking is Italian. I believe I saw somewhere that English isn't his native language. I could be wrong. But that could be lending to the confusion.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3837&start=0#p27495
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: A rather abnormal use of a StopEventList.
User: Arag-e / DateTime: 2011-12-02 13:42:03

This is a weird one…

I was wondering if it’s possible to make an EventList, a StopEventList specifically, go through certain events if a certain property is set to true, and another event if it’s set to nil. In short, if a == true, show these events and if a == nil, show these others. 

To catch the obvious question of why not simply trigger another StopEventList, I’m brutalizing somebody else’s code and finding a way to redirect this to another EventList would be an enormous amount of extra work. That’s why I was wondering if it’s possible to insert the check within the stopEventList itself.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3836&start=0#p27496
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Constructing Sentences
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-12-02 13:47:14

[quote="zarf"]Changing verbs ("You hobble" / "hobbling") is another layer of fun.[/quote]

I have some nice code for this that I need to push out into an extension...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=50#p27497
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-12-02 14:07:21

Pudlo is extremely good at detecting sensitive subjects to which people might react emotionally. On Usenet he crafted subtle yet maximally inflammatory posts, carefully avoiding making them obvious trolls, and posted them using a fake name. It was also common for two or three people to mysteriously appear from nowhere and agree with Pudlo. At some point he took a step up from fictional sockpuppets and started posing as other well-known people from the community.  (Remember that on Usenet there's no verification of any kind. You can post using any name and email address you like.) That was also the point where it wasn't just annoying (or amusing, depending how you took it), harmless trolling anymore. I'm not a huge fan of displaying the post count next to every post, but it does prevent anything like that from happening on the forums.

Personally I can live with Pudlo being active on the forums. If you put him on the foe list you don't see his posts. If he makes a post, I click it open and go back again just so that it's removed from the unread posts list. It becomes annoying only when people take the bait. The thread becomes active and keeps coming up in the unread posts list. Sometimes a genuinely interesting and constructive discussion comes out, and that's great, but mostly it's just a bunch of people battling against windmills. It's useless to try to argue with Pudlo, because his posts don't reflect his opinions -- the posts are completely artificial, their only purpose is to annoy people. There's no reason to tell him that his review is unfair or that he is nitpicking about inconsequential things. He already knows it because he does it on purpose.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3835&start=10#p27498
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Get Lamp...?
User: rae_bot / DateTime: 2011-12-02 14:13:04

The "News" link goes to a blank screen, on both my iPhone and my Mac (Chrome browser).  Related?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3836&start=0#p27499
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Constructing Sentences
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-02 14:29:10

[quote]To decide whether starting a sentence: if current state is beginning-of-text or current state is paragraph-break: yes.[/quote]

Add "...or period", obviously. Whoops. Also, the insertion string for paragraph break should be ".[paragraph]"

Implementing this always requires a little bit of futzing before it's right.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3835&start=10#p27500
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Get Lamp...?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-02 14:31:21

Jason just fixed the spammage. It was indeed doing some browser-sniffing.

The news links goes to <a class="postlink" href="http://inventory.getlamp.com/">http://inventory.getlamp.com/</a> , which is a standard Wordpress setup -- I don't think there was anything wrong with that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3837&start=0#p27501
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: A rather abnormal use of a StopEventList.
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-02 14:51:22

Yes, although the implementation depends on how you want to track your position in each list. Here's one approach that treats the lists as independent - they can have a different number of events and can reach the stopped state at different times.

[code]
modify StopEventList
	altList = []

	getAltState() {
		return altScriptState;
	}

	advanceAltState() {
		if (altScriptState < altList.length())
			++altScriptState;
	}

	altScriptState = 1

	altDone() {
		advanceAltState();
	}

	doScript() {
		local idx, lst, done;
		if (check()) {
			idx = getScriptState();
			lst = eventList;
			done = &scriptDone;
		}
		else {
			idx = getAltState();
			lst = altList;
			done = &altDone;
		}

		if (idx >= 1 && idx <= lst.length()) {
			doScriptEvent(lst[idx]);
		}

		done();
	}
	
	check() {
		return true;
	}
;
[/code]

And here is a simple test case.

[code]
testEvents: StopEventList
	eventList = ['Yes', 'Affirmative', 'Understood', 'OK']
	altList = ['No', 'Never', 'Negative', 'Stop']

	check() {
		_value ++;
		return (_value % 2 == 0 ? true : nil);
	}
	
	_value = 1

;

modify WaitAction
	execAction() {
		testEvents.doScript();
	}
;
[/code]

The modified StopEventList class will work as usual unless you override the check() function. If check() returns nil then it will display an event from altList.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3835&start=10#p27502
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Get Lamp...?
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-12-02 14:52:20

Blank page in Chrome for me - if I make IE pretend it's Lynx, the page loads and looks OK but View Source shows spammy stuff.

Similar problems on specific articles on ascii.textfiles.com too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=50#p27503
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-02 15:18:51

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="katz"]"I'm just saying something could happen to you" is a threat.[/quote]

True. Plus irrelevant.

"I'm just saying that[i] if you did that in real life,[/i] something probably [i]would [/i]happen to you" is not a threat. Not even close. Not even if you squint your eyes and blur them on purpose.[/quote]

Debatable, but anyway that's why I called it a "threatlike thing." Even if it's not a threat, using the imagery of violence against another poster is inappropriate. Kind of like that Introcomp reviewer who told Poster to kill himself; that's obviously not a threat, but it's not an appropriate thing to say. 

I'm not advocating being nice here. It's perfectly appropriate to sling insults Pudlo's way; that's sauce for the gander.* It's the violent imagery that I don't like. 

*[url=http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/What%27s+sauce+for+the+goose]Explanation for non-native speakers.[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=50#p27504
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-12-02 15:25:58

[quote]Jamespking is Italian. I believe I saw somewhere that English isn't his native language.[/quote]
Indeed. I was just hoping I wouldn't sound like micheal corleone. You know: "I fink somefink bad could happen too yoo. I'm makin yoo an offer one can't refoose."
[emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3838&start=0#p27505
Forum: Competitions / Subject: The penultimate not numbered New Year's Speed IF
User: Tale / DateTime: 2011-12-02 15:44:53

Another good year for IF draws to a close. So it's time for another New Year's Speed!

The motivation behind it is to offer people a chance at writing a small work of IF at the end of the year. Traditionally, the rules have been very loosely defined. However, as people have complained about this lack in direction, I'm offering two variants:

1) Write whatever game you like, in any system you like, starting now. Games should be submitted by December 31st.

2) If you want to take the classical Speed IF route, take two hours, or however much you like, and use one/all/none of the items mentioned on this list:

- your mum's shoes
- Italians
-a tanning bed
- a copy of Doom III
-the color chatreuse
-Tiny Tim (preferably as a foe)
-the smell of your evil twin
- an e-peen hammer (whatever that may be)
- A shirt which says "I killed my father and all I got was this lousy t-shirt"

Any approach that lies between the two is also okay.

If you're thinking "So am I allowed to..." the answer is yes.

Games should be submitted to <a href="mailto:marius.ts.muellerSPAM@gmail.com">marius.ts.muellerSPAM@gmail.com</a> by 23:59 GMT+1, Dec. 30th 2011.

New Year's Speed games have been played on Clubfloyd traditionally, but I haven't spoken to Jacq yet. So, no promises.

A last thing: Please take note of the Hugo Open House competition, with which we coexist peacefully. I for one am trying to enter both.

(Announcement here = <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3761">viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3761</a>)

Thank you and , most importantly, have fun!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=50#p27506
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-02 15:59:21

[quote="Jamespking"][quote]Jamespking is Italian. I believe I saw somewhere that English isn't his native language.[/quote]
Indeed. I was just hoping I wouldn't sound like micheal corleone. You know: "I fink somefink bad could happen too yoo. I'm makin yoo an offer one can't refoose."
[emote]:D[/emote][/quote]

Sounds more like Sonny or maybe Vito -- I remember Michael as being smoother.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3839&start=0#p27507
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Becoming another character mid-conversation
User: rpatten / DateTime: 2011-12-02 16:17:11

My WIP that allows the player to switch characters as long as they are in the same room. The problem I am running into is conversation.

What would be the smoothest approach to a topic-based conversation system that would allow the player to shift to control of a different character in mid-conversation? 

I suppose the easiest answer would be to lock the player into the current PC when the conversation begins and allow switching characters again only when the conversation ends, but that seems kind of cheap to me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3839&start=0#p27508
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Becoming another character mid-conversation
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-02 16:35:51

I'd like some clarification:

If the player is switching characters, what happens to the character they were before the switch? Does that character disappear? Go catatonic? Continue to behave as normal?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3839&start=0#p27509
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Becoming another character mid-conversation
User: rpatten / DateTime: 2011-12-02 16:42:29

[quote]I'd like some clarification:

If the player is switching characters, what happens to the character they were before the switch? Does that character disappear? Go catatonic? Continue to behave as normal?[/quote]

The character the player was before the switch does not disappear, but functions as an NPC who remembers everything that happened during the possession. Thus, it would be possible to switch back and forth with the person you are talking to.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3840&start=0#p27510
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Getting over the hump
User: Kytaari / DateTime: 2011-12-02 16:48:53

Hey, everybody, this post is just about a problem I've been recently having with the creative writing process. I'm working on a novel-length IF, and the puzzles just don't seem to be falling into place. I'm worrying extensively about developing my characters, presenting a realistic setting, and presenting the ideas in such a way that tells a cohesive story; but the game design elements aren't sinking in yet.

I'm writing my script now, and I'm having trouble presenting a more coherent plot. I'm good with the ideas, but I seem to keep making a lot of amateurish decisions. The stories not as good as I keep envisioning it to be. And, like I've already mentioned, I keep worrying that there aren't enough puzzles. 

Most of the interaction coming from the player revolves around investigation. I plan to plant a lot of interesting items in this first chapter, and I need to find a way to get all the subplots to meet together do to the player's creative efforts. I'm not used to telling stories with this kind of medium, although I'm very used to writing literature that involves some kind of mystery. 

I've decided to write my novel in this medium, because I've decided I like this medium the most. My only problem is my inability to transpose what I know about great exposition techniques in static literature, to more interactive prose. I don't want the story to seem too linear, although the tale still has a definite direction. There is certainly a goal, but I would like to keep the old adventure game habit of solving puzzles in multiple orders. I need some kind of technique to organize my plot. Are there are any useful links I could use? Or should I just try writing my first drafts of this interactive novel as straight as I possibly can, before settling on some of the more alternative choices the player might muster? 

I believe this story needs its challenges, but the conflict involved is mainly a mystery. I feel like I need to plant story ideas in the setting somehow, but I keep having to adjust the map, reconfigure the plotline, elaborate ideas; it's getting very complicated. What do you think the best way of approaching puzzle-design might be, especially in regards to meshing it with story?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3840&start=0#p27511
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Getting over the hump
User: George / DateTime: 2011-12-02 17:07:19

You might find this helpful:

<a class="postlink" href="http://emshort.wordpress.com/2009/08/23/idea-to-implementation/">http://emshort.wordpress.com/2009/08/23 ... mentation/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3839&start=0#p27512
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Becoming another character mid-conversation
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-02 17:29:22

I would think that to be unsteady ground in the middle of a conversation. I mean... Once you switch, the original character would have to continue the conversation, either randomly or along a plotted course.

And why talk to the person at all, if I can just switch over to them and know everything that they know? Unless I don't have conversational control over either character. In which case it doesn't matter when you switch.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3839&start=0#p27513
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Becoming another character mid-conversation
User: rpatten / DateTime: 2011-12-02 17:56:58

[quote="I4L"]And why talk to the person at all, if I can just switch over to them and know everything that they know? Unless I don't have conversational control over either character. In which case it doesn't matter when you switch.[/quote]

Sorry for the confusion. I was trying to keep it simple, and it didn't work.  [emote]:([/emote] 

I say you "become" another character, and for all intents and purposes, you do (from a coding standpoint) but the player is actually possessing the other characters. The player does not gain the host's knowledge automatically. If you want to know more about Character A, for example, you would need to interview her as Character B.

[quote]I would think that to be unsteady ground in the middle of a conversation.[/quote]

I am starting to agree. Still, the rest of the game (as currently planned) would allow a high degree of freedom for the player, and it seems like restricting the conversation system rather than allowing it to be flexible enough to accommodate multiple viewpoints would be jarring.

If anyone has an idea of how to approach multiple viewpoint conversation in Inform 7 or knows of a smooth way to skirt the problem, I'd be interested.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3827&start=10#p27514
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Parchment problems
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-12-02 18:04:06

I'll be updating iplayif soon.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=50#p27515
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-02 18:35:36

[quote="matt w"]Debatable, but anyway that's why I called it a "threatlike thing." [/quote]

My comment was a response to katz (see above), and was specific to katz' comment.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3839&start=0#p27516
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Becoming another character mid-conversation
User: George / DateTime: 2011-12-02 19:02:31

Can you give an example of a problem that this creates? Are you using a specific extension?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3839&start=0#p27517
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Becoming another character mid-conversation
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-02 19:07:18

If the character being abandoned has no knowledge of being possessed, and believes him/herself to have beenbthe one executing the conversation, I don't guess the conversation itself would be that confusing. You'd just change the target interlocutor. I guess that as long as the conversation continues to flow and both characters have the same motivations for the discussion, it could work just fine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3841&start=0#p27518
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Announcing Post-Comp Release
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-12-02 19:08:13

There is a new release for my game [i][url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=dqqpdmlkuw8o9e05]You've Got a Stew Going![/url][/i] which was never in a competition, but it is technically being released after a competition/competitions.

List of revisions (spoilers):
[spoiler]* Added some clues for the 'annoy a human' puzzle
* Added a Worldbuilding Detail
* Added additional discouragement
* Probably fixed some other things too
* The way I did the revisions a while back was I had a list of things I needed to fix and every time I fixed something I deleted it from the list, which was cathartic I guess but probably not the smartest thing way to do it[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3839&start=0#p27519
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Becoming another character mid-conversation
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-02 19:09:02

Let me say, though, that you'd have to double the amount of work you do for each convoy, as now you're writing responses for both characters, unless the conversation is subtly guided.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3840&start=0#p27520
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Getting over the hump
User: Kytaari / DateTime: 2011-12-02 19:28:09

Thanks for the link. It's been very helpful. I don't know how to use any IF development systems yet, but I've created some separate word documents to list what I could otherwise describe in a development system; I also created a scene index, to organize my sense of direction. This takes a different approach than writing static prose, it seems: you can't just draft you story over-and-over again, because IF seems to take a more organized method than that. Fortunately, I'm very organized with my knowledge, so this isn't a big stretch for me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3840&start=0#p27521
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Getting over the hump
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-12-02 19:36:49

[quote="Kytaari"]Hey, everybody, this post is just about a problem I've been recently having with the creative writing process. I'm working on a novel-length IF, and the puzzles just don't seem to be falling into place... I've already mentioned, I keep worrying that there aren't enough puzzles... What do you think the best way of approaching puzzle-design might be, especially in regards to meshing it with story?[/quote]

Here's an approach I take to designing puzzles/challenges around story-heavy games. 

1) Figure out which pieces of your story are [i]mandatory[/i], such that the player will not understand or have the full experience of your narrative without them. These can be twists and outcomes that happen as the player goes along; they can also be bits of backstory that illuminate characters and provide motivation. These are the backbone of your piece. 

Other interesting/fun facts about your world and characters that [i]aren't[/i] mandatory, note down and set aside. You'll use those later, but they don't go into the core puzzle design.

2) For each of the things you need the player to understand thoroughly, ask yourself: how could I ask the player to demonstrate an understanding of this story element? If the story point is about learning that NPC X secretly hates NPC Y, maybe the puzzle is about using X against Y somehow. Ideally, you want to make sure that the player has a chance both to discover the information and then to make use of that information again, creating active knowledge of your most important plot points. (If this helps, I think of my job as *teaching the player the story*, just as a textbook would have some explanation followed by an exercise to cement understanding.) 

You may find that certain pieces of information don't depend on each other and can be made into parallel puzzles, creating the "discover in any order" effect you're talking about. I usually [url=http://inform-fiction.org/I7Downloads/Examples/bronze/Overview.html]make a chart[/url] with lines and boxes. [url=http://www.xyzzynews.com/xyzzy.6g.html]Gareth Rees' classic article on the plot and puzzle design of Christminster[/url] might also be helpful reading, though he disagrees with some of the advice I just offered. But hey.

Also, note that the difficulty of these puzzles is totally up to you, and sometimes if you're doing something story-heavy, it's best to err on the side of more accessible puzzles; if they're doing their essential job of checking that the player understands something and making sure he doesn't see a later part of the story before he's ready to get it, they're narratively functional.

3) For each of the big emotional or choice moments: how can I use interactivity to reinforce the feelings of helplessness, agency, or other characterization points that go here? 

These elements don't have to be puzzles in the sense of challenging the player to know or prove something -- they can be, but it's not required. [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2008/05/04/plot-scene-by-scene/]This article[/url] talks about some different scene styles to achieve different effects; [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2011/07/14/plotting-for-interactivity-the-set-piece-or-crisis/]this one[/url] about the specific challenges of creating an interactive set piece scene.

4) Plan out or even implement a skeleton version: discoveries followed by challenges to make sure the player understands the necessary facts; dramatic scenes that intensify emotion or feeling around crisis moments.

5) Test the skeleton. See where the pacing feels wrong and where more depth would be nice. Alpha testing with one or two trusted friends who aren't you can help you identify blindspots. Warn them that they're not getting a fully finished game but that you want feedback on what you have.

6) Flesh the game out. All the backstory that you decided wasn't critical enough to deserve its own puzzle? Add that in now, as optional things the player can find. It can appear in dialogue, it can be in side scenes, whatever.

Design so that the player can choose to dig in more deeply to interesting issues if he wants to, but always knows what to do in order to advance the main story plot. (More about the expand/advance distinction shows up in [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2011/10/02/if-comp-2011-the-play/]this review[/url].)

This is also the right point to adjust the pacing and foreshadowing based on your testing from step four. Do you find that the big twist scene doesn't have enough impact on the player because he just doesn't actually care enough about the protagonist's girlfriend yet? Maybe you need an earlier scene to set up the relationship more.


As a bonus, I suggest trying (if you haven't) [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=jdrbw1htq4ah8q57]Make It Good[/url]. It's pretty difficult, but it's an amazing game in terms of mostly avoiding really artificial puzzles in favor of a mystery scenario that naturally contains challenge and discovery.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3839&start=0#p27522
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Becoming another character mid-conversation
User: rpatten / DateTime: 2011-12-02 19:57:05

[quote="George"]Can you give an example of a problem that this creates? Are you using a specific extension?[/quote]

I haven't gotten to the coding phase yet -- I am looking for suggestions on where to start, honestly. I have the feeling that a simple conversation table would not cut it.

I am not planning on using a specific extension. I would use Eric Eve's Conversation Framework, but I do not think it would keep up with multiple characters in a conversation. It could be my inability, not the extension -- I experimented with it a year ago. Still, keeping track of the flow of a multiple viewpoint conversation seems to be outside of Framework's purpose, even if I did use it.

[quote="I4L"]If the character being abandoned has no knowledge of being possessed, and believes him/herself to have been the one executing the conversation, I don't guess the conversation itself would be that confusing. You'd just change the target interlocutor. I guess that as long as the conversation continues to flow and both characters have the same motivations for the discussion, it could work just fine.[/quote]

At first, the characters are not sure what is happening. Emotions eventually escalate to panic and terror, which puts another variable into the mix.

However, for now, I am only concerned with the basics of the system -- the ability to switch from character to another in mid-conversation with a minimum of awkwardness.

[quote="I4L"]Let me say, though, that you'd have to double the amount of work you do for each convoy, as now you're writing responses for both characters, unless the conversation is subtly guided.[/quote]

Double? Probably triple. But I am looking for ideas on subtly guiding the conversation.

I've looked at blogs, articles and coding examples, but either I'm missing something, or this hasn't been talked about much. Perhaps it is unattainable, but I believe it can be done.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=80#p27523
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-12-02 19:58:03

[quote="matt w"]You're definitely right about glulx. My question is more about what goes on under the hood and with the URL. 

I assume that, if I take down the file I've currently got for [url=http://mattweiner.net/Mirthful%20Messiahs/play.html]The Coming of the Mirthful Messiahs[/url] and replace it with a different version in which the description of the tragicomedy mask states that it's one of the Three Sacred Objects of Mystery, anyone who goes back to that URL will not be able to open their old save file.* 

So the question is, when the author updates the game, does the URL that I was playing at start to point to a new file? Would I have any way of continuing to play the old version online? Obviously, if I'm playing off-line and I have a save file, I can just not download the new version, but that might not be the case online.

However, it may be that the number of people who play online and save their games is vanishingly small.

*And in fact, I just found a bug. Fortunately, no one who is not COMPLETELY INSANE will need a save file.[/quote]

If you use external files then your savefiles will work across updates, but you have to completely manage saving everything yourself. External files should be usable with the Z-Machine, btw. The feature is in the spec, but I don't know of anyone who uses it. If there was a desire for it then I'll add support to Parchment.

As for web play, I'm currently working on offline support for Parchment, but it has implications for playing even when you're still online. In the library branch it now stores the storyfiles to localStorage, so even if there is an update Parchment will keep the old version. My plan is for the library UI to give you the option to check for updates and to download them if there are any. If you had no savefiles then it would just replace the existing storyfile, but if you did have savefiles then it would keep the old version, and the library would then have two copies of that storyfile.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3839&start=0#p27524
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Becoming another character mid-conversation
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-02 20:13:36

I haven't scratched the surface of the conversation aspect of my WIP yet. It's an abyss that I'm hesitant to look into. I wouldn't think it would be impossible, though, using a node-based conversation system. Switch interlocutors, switch nodes. But again, I'm not entirely sure how it would work out, since I haven't bothered trying. It would seem, though, that this is perfectly doable, regardless of the level of complexity.

One of the authors with experience in conversation heavy games (Emily Short, Eric Eve) should shine some light on this sort of thing. I'm sure they'll wander around to it eventually.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3830&start=0#p27525
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Restore game/sound crash observation + a fix
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-12-02 20:17:43

[quote="tove"][quote="severedhand"]For safety, I hooked into Undo and added manual sound stopping before all Undos.[/quote]

You should probably add a record-scratching sound for good measure. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Hehehe!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3838&start=0#p27526
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The penultimate not numbered New Year's Speed IF
User: Jacqueline / DateTime: 2011-12-02 20:22:57

Sure, why not?  All games playable on Floyd (and if you're nice, even Undum games) will be played on ClubFloyd on New Year's Day, Jan 1, at noon Eastern in the Toyshop on the trusty ifMUD.  : )

Have fun writing, everyone!   [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=80#p27527
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-02 20:41:19

This could work for non-web-based interpreters, too -- particularly ones which manage an IF library for you. Stash copies of every game file somewhere in a private location.

Alternatively: a while ago I proposed a way to pack two game file versions into one blorb file, so you could distribute an update which didn't squash your old save files. What do people think of that path?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3839&start=10#p27528
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Becoming another character mid-conversation
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-12-02 21:43:17

In one of the dreams in Blue Lacuna there's a conversation scene where you can change between which character you are at any time. I don't remember how I did this except that is was semi-painful, but you might check out the source if you're curious.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3837&start=0#p27529
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: A rather abnormal use of a StopEventList.
User: Arag-e / DateTime: 2011-12-02 21:45:46

That did it. I wanted only a few specific EventLists to have this behaviour, so all I have to do is make check() look for the state of the relevant property and return true or nil depending on its state.

Thank you very much, you saved me a really big load of work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3839&start=10#p27530
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Becoming another character mid-conversation
User: rpatten / DateTime: 2011-12-02 21:57:29

Thanks, Aaron. I will check that out. Do you remember which dream scene it was? It's been a few months since I finished the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3839&start=10#p27531
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Becoming another character mid-conversation
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-12-02 22:12:52

[url=http://lacunastory.com/source/source_419.html]Found it.[/url] The code is kind of a mess, so I don't know if this will be of any use. But it looks like I just had versions of each conversation point for each speaker, and then used the BL convo system's ability to have a "default next" beat if the player doesn't say anything to drive what should happen regardless of who's talking.

Err, not sure if that made any sense, but anyway, there's the link to the code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=90#p27532
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2011-12-02 22:27:59

[quote="zarf"]Alternatively: a while ago I proposed a way to pack two game file versions into one blorb file, so you could distribute an update which didn't squash your old save files. What do people think of that path?[/quote]That would result in one blorb file having 2 distinct IFIDs, wouldn't it?  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3839&start=10#p27533
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Becoming another character mid-conversation
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-02 23:10:02

Once again, allow me to offer my in-progress extension, Speech Motivations:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.eyeballsun.org/i/Speech%20Motivations.i7x">http://www.eyeballsun.org/i/Speech%20Motivations.i7x</a>

It requires Scope Caching (which I have submitted to the I7 site but received no response):

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.eyeballsun.org/i/Scope%20Caching.i7x">http://www.eyeballsun.org/i/Scope%20Caching.i7x</a>

Speech Motivations treats every character, PC and NPC, pretty much the same way. NPCs only talk during the Every Turn phase -- the PC's actions only cause the PC to speak. Any character speaking has the potential to create a "speech motivation" in any listener, who will then respond if they choose during the Every Turn phase.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=90#p27534
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Doug Orleans / DateTime: 2011-12-02 23:16:26

Could it store the command log alongside the save file?  Then if needed it could play the commands back into the new version, which should in most cases put you back where you were.  It might take a while to replay all the commands, but this would only need to be done once for each version change.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3840&start=0#p27535
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Getting over the hump
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-02 23:24:40

I think I've talked about this before: I have a habit of trying to put all my eggs in one basket. I come up with some big epic idea, where I'm vague on the details, and then I dig myself a big hole and get stuck. At some point in my life I discovered that (if you don't mind me switching metaphors) I don't have to implement all my ideas at once, I can put some on the back burner, er, for a rainy day, so to speak. [emote]:P[/emote]

The key is, I tell myself, "what I am going to create now is not my last and greatest work. I am only going to use some of my ideas, the ones that fit here and the ones I am able to implement given the time, tools, and skills I have available right now." If that means postponing your big novel to make a shorter work that helps you get familiar with the development system you're using, maybe that's okay. My dad came back to many of his childhood hobbies in his 40s, even went back and got a college degree. "Life is long," he told me: you don't have to do everything right now.

Even if that means writing [i]the same story twice,[/i] maybe that's okay. Lots of writers write the same story over and over again. Some of them did a great job at least one of those times, and it wasn't always the first time. I don't think there's any shame in that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=90#p27536
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-03 00:56:42

[quote]That would result in one blorb file having 2 distinct IFIDs, wouldn't it?[/quote]

No, IFID is supposed to be stable across game versions.

[quote]Could it store the command log alongside the save file?[/quote]

See earlier discussion on this subject. It's easy to do but I wouldn't call it reliable enough to put into default use.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3828&start=0#p27537
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Announcing Calm Post-Comp Release
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-12-03 00:56:52

Congrats on doing this so quickly--I know you wanted to write in a lot of changes. I'm hoping to see them, too, and poke around a lot more.

/downloads version 2 from IFDB, since it's there now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=20#p27538
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-12-03 00:59:19

As far as horror in IF, I think I might be in the same boat as I4L here.  Though I will make one exception for Ecdysis, little of what is labelled as "Lovecraftian" strikes me as actually horrific in the way my main man HPL can be.  I've played a few games that I felt were horrific that weren't intended that way, but as those were all about my own reading and expectations I don't know they should count (for one, I find something really creepy in underimplementation without totally knowing why).  But what I tend to look for in horror isn't blood or "tentacles" (come now-- nobody but an irrational phobic actually goes looking for just a specific type of appendage for terror) or any such thing, but "a suspension of those natural laws against whose universal dominance our fancies rebel," that which "permits... the momentary illusion that almost any vista of wonder and beauty might open up, or almost any laws of time or space or matter or energy be marvellously (sic) defeated or reversed or modified or transcended."

My apologies whilst I veer from the subject of IF to defend Mr. Lovecraft.  I recognize I sometimes have a tendency to fly off the handle on the subject.  Perhaps another thread is the better place for this or it is unwanted... if so, please just let me know.  Begin rant tag.

[rant][quote="Ghalev"]With Lovecraft himself, yes, you get purple prose and nineteenth-century anxieties.[/quote]
His earlier stories may have been more prone to affectations (largely the Dunsanian tales), but overall Lovecraft's writing (student of Poe that he was) exhibits a strong unity of effect that "purple prose" just doesn't hold up to.  As for any anxieties he expressed, they were either those of an EIGHTEENTH century gentleman, as he took himself to be through lineage and imaginative escape, or of the early 20th century (where he found himself), or of man's eternal fear of insignificance in a vast and indifferent cosmos.

[quote="Victor Gijsbers"]I was persuaded to read At the Mountains of Madness, and made a good faith effort to like it. But even that supposed magnum opus was bad.[/quote]
I'm going to make a leap here and infer that it was my suggestion you're referring to.  In that case, I'll reaffirm why I thought it would be important for you to see: specifically because you had repeated a bad stereotype of Lovecraft, that he never describes creatures.  1) Lovecraft is NOT creature horror.  2) You'll note that At the Mountains of Madness neatly refutes the idea that Lovecraft never describes creatures, as he devotes at least 5 pages (the length of some of his previous entire stories!) describing what become known as "The Elder Ones."  This story aside, even his earlier stories like "From Beyond" clearly describe the horrors their protagonists face.

Yes, it's easy to see Mountains as a poorly written story if what you focus on is the Spenglerian rhetoric of an elder civilization's decadent decline from greatness (HPL uses the word "decadent" or variations thereon no less than 20 times throughout the story), and the knee jerk giggle when a penguin is described as "grotesque," but (at least for me) there's a more poignant horror going on beyond all of that.  This horror comes from the treatment of the Elder Ones.  The author says it best when he writes:
[spoiler][quote="Lovecraft"]They were men of another age and another order of being.  Nature had played a hellish jest on them[...] and this was their tragic homecoming.

They had not even been savages-- for what indeed had they done?  That awful awakening in the cold of an unknown epoch-- perhaps an attack by the furry, frantically barking quadrupeds, and a dazed defence against them and the equally frantic white simians with the queer wrappings and paraphernalia... poor Lake, poor Gedney... and poor Old Ones!  Scientists to the last-- what had they done that we would not have done in their place?  God, what intelligence and persistence!  What a facing of the incredible[...] Radiates, vegetables, monstrosities, star-spawn-- whatever they had been, they were men![/quote][/spoiler]

Here Lovecraft lays plain the metaphor of the Elder Ones.  In this light, they are *not* monsters, but intelligent, sympathetic creatures, misunderstood MEN whom OUR basic inhumanity has made into something terrible.  If your mind still tries to fit them into the scheme of "alien" or "monster," then I think that is exactly Lovecraft's point.  The piece is practically an imagined autobiographical send-up from Lovecraft's time in Brooklyn, right down to the horror of imagining, but finding no comfort in, the stations of the Boston-Cambridge subway tunnel.

Perhaps a little known fact?  The final paragraph of section XI which describes the shoggoth which decapitated the Elder Ones was originally written by Lovecraft (sans penguins) as a description of [i]a crowd of people[/i] on the subway.  Here HPL gets to sublimate his own CONTEMPORARY fears and horror safely through the magic of sci-fi fantasy.

[quote="Victor"]we rightly ask why they go mad. What happens to them?[/quote]
In reference only to The Call of Cthulhu, the [i]dreaming[/i] of Cthulhu drives men mad (or "fhtagning," if you prefer-- "Their mode of speech was transmitted thought"-- "and dreams are older than brooding Tyre, or the contemplative Sphinx, or garden-girdled Babylon.").  Its dreams infiltrate the minds of men, dominate their thoughts and actions not just on a specific, but global scale.  Cf. the last paragraph of section I.

The artist Wilcox is the prime example here, and the most obvious one, for his thoughts and dreams are influenced directly by Cthulhu ("poor Wilcox raved with fever in that telepathic instant") the nights of March 23rd, 1925 to April 2nd "at about 3 P.M."  I'm not certain if it goes missing in a translation, but my good Dr. Gijsbers, the edition I have describes over the course of two-and-a-half pages the exact maladies which afflict Henry Anthony Wilcox.

Moreover, the narrator's own derangement and paranoia resulting from his investigation is evident from the moment he begins to sympathize for the "strange survivals" spoken of by theosophists to his confession that "even the skies of spring... must ever afterward be poison to me."  Clearly the associations of a cluster of terrible events from March 23rd-April 2nd with the Cthulhu being and ultimately his own self have disturbed our narrator.  We're not just told his mental state... the entire story shows it.  

"God rest them," he says of the [i]Alert[/i] crew, "if there be any rest in the universe."  Our narrator seems to suggest he now believes there to be no rest in the universe.  He is no longer able to isolate, anchor, or properly distract his consciousness against the enormous, undying, telepathic THING whose shape is "not made of matter," who could control him if the stars only became "right" again and whose untold number of secretive followers hide amongst all of us.

[quote="I4L"]sleeping at the bottom of the ocean waiting to gobble them up[/quote]
It is naive to think anyone would be scared of Cthulhu waiting to "gobble them up."  That's not what Cthulhu *does*.  I could be wrong-- I'm not going to re-read the whole story just right now-- but I don't think Cthulhu eats anyone in the whole story.  Though he does attack some people with his "flabby tentacles."  At any rate, the primary terror of Cthulhu is not something wrought through physical force.

... have I really been writing at this post for this long?  Perhaps it's time I draw this to a close.  I hope none of it comes off as mean-spirited in any way, as I consider all involved in this conversation to be good friends to me.  I'm just... maybe a bit touchy about unfortunately common misunderstandings and misrepresentations of Lovecraft, even from incredibly intelligent men like Victor.

Victor, you might be more of a guy for [url=http://www.lovecraftlibrary.org/hpl/silverkey/]"The Silver Key,"[/url] where the primary horror is the loss of the protagonist's ability to dream.  I would hope something like that might strike a chord with a romanticist such as yourself... unless I misunderstand romanticism?  Or, if you want to read Lovecraft writing satire, check out [url="http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/se.asp"]"Sweet Ermengarde."[/url][/rant]

... this thread may now return to its regularly scheduled programming...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3820&start=0#p27539
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: A good "recent" spy thriller?
User: codem2 / DateTime: 2011-12-03 01:11:10

It took me a while to get back here, sorry.

Some random responses to posts ->

Ok, the Spy Who Ate Lunch, I read about the beta test, but I was not sure if I was up to something comedic, but I think I will be interested in it when it is released. Do you have an indepth description? Is there a homepage for the game?

As for "current". There is alot of intrigue in the world today, so I was thinking of current events being the driving force behind a story. It's not absolutely necessary, but it would be interesting. A sci-fi twist would be ok also.

I agree with the odds, the stories are spread out over alot of genre and randomly in the last 10 years. The last story I tried was City of Secrets, but I'm stuck at the moment so I put it off since I don't like reading spoilers or walkthroughs. I tend to load up on games I don't complete, so sometimes it does take me some time to catch up, but I do try to keep up with world events, which is the reason I mentioned about staying current.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=20#p27540
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-03 01:36:12

I've toyed with the idea of doing some of Lovecraft's stories as IF, inspired by Peter Nepstad's wonderful treatment of the two Dunsany tales.

If the idea grabs anyone else, we should start up a project.

I liked [i]Mountains of Madness[/i], but if we're talking the best Lovecraft, I don't think anything touches [i]The Colour Out of Space[/i]. [i]The Music of Erich Zann[/i], maybe.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3839&start=10#p27541
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Becoming another character mid-conversation
User: rpatten / DateTime: 2011-12-03 02:00:29

[quote]Found it. The code is kind of a mess, so I don't know if this will be of any use. But it looks like I just had versions of each conversation point for each speaker, and then used the BL convo system's ability to have a "default next" beat if the player doesn't say anything to drive what should happen regardless of who's talking.

Err, not sure if that made any sense, but anyway, there's the link to the code.[/quote]

Thanks for that. I have tried to wrap my head around the Blue Lacuna conversation system before, and this is a good reason to try again, especially since in my WIP, no more than one NPC who can participate in conversation will be in a location at one time. I imagine, though, that you have not released your conversation system as an extension because it is so integrated (or appears to be so) with the game itself.

(Oh, and completely off topic: I live in frozen Idaho. I played Blue Lacuna last winter, and I very much enjoyed wandering around a tropical island.  [emote]:)[/emote] )

[quote]
Once again, allow me to offer my in-progress extension, Speech Motivations:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.eyeballsun.org/i/Speech%20Motivations.i7x">http://www.eyeballsun.org/i/Speech%20Motivations.i7x</a>

It requires Scope Caching (which I have submitted to the I7 site but received no response):

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.eyeballsun.org/i/Scope%20Caching.i7x">http://www.eyeballsun.org/i/Scope%20Caching.i7x</a>

Speech Motivations treats every character, PC and NPC, pretty much the same way. NPCs only talk during the Every Turn phase -- the PC's actions only cause the PC to speak. Any character speaking has the potential to create a "speech motivation" in any listener, who will then respond if they choose during the Every Turn phase.[/quote]

I am intrigued. Is there an example to accompany Speech Motivations?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3842&start=0#p27542
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Local Character set "CP437" Error
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2011-12-03 02:56:29

I keep getting the following error when I run my T3 games:

[Warning: no mapping file is available for the local character set "CP437"...

I have looked around but haven't found anything that resolves the issue yet. All my game files begin with:

#charset "us-ascii"
#include <adv3.h>
#include <en_us.h>

Shouldn't this set the game to use the ASCII character set?

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=20#p27543
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-03 03:25:15

[quote="bcressey"] [i]The Music of Erich Zann[/i], maybe.[/quote]

That one's my favorite. I've read it probably a hundred times, literally. It helps that it's really short, of course [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=20#p27544
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-12-03 03:47:01

Reply to Duncan on Lovecraft:
[rant]Hi Duncan, I knew you would come here to hit me! [emote]:)[/emote]

I agree with you that the failure of [i]At the Mountains of Madness[/i] is not that it is cliché. The treatment of the Elder Ones is interesting and has, as you point out, a clear dimension of tragedy. So I don't think we disagree too much about the analysis of the meaning of the piece. But the lifeless prose, and the constant repetition of the same ideas! (You mention the word "decadent"; I believe that at one point, Lovecraft tells us that certain sculptures are decadent no less than five times in two pages.) Some stereotypes about Lovecraft may be wrong, but the stylistic stereotypes are not. Whenever he wants us to feel an uncomfortable emotion, he gets out his list of "horrifying words": epoch, aeon, elder, eldritch, forbidden, forgotten, nameless, horror, terror, madness, blasphemous, decadent; and he presents us some random combination of these, and assumes that they will do his work. For me, reading [i]At the Mountains of Madness[/i] was a chore not because I failed to understand the tragedy and humanity of the story, but because I was constantly irritated by the writing.

My question "What happens to them?" was perhaps not too clear; it was meant to refer to the moment that these people go mad. Central in some (perhaps many ?)of Lovecraft's stories, and in many stories written to be Lovecraftian, is the "moment that changes a man forever", and this is the moment that he perceives the transcendent horror and his mind is destroyed. This moment is by its very nature indescribable, and that makes it -- in my opinion -- a hopeless subject for fiction. Perhaps I am wrong about that, but I have not read the story that proves me wrong.

Also, I don't think I said Lovecraft never describes his creatures? It is just that when he does, their transcendent horror disappears. Of course, the Elder Ones are not the horror of [i]At the Mountains of Madness[/i], so they don't fall under my theory at all. In this story, the role of horror is filled by the shoggoth, and I don't think that they are particularly well-handled when they are described as an underground train. Or rather, I'm fine with that description; it is imaginative; but it is not horrifying, and cannot sustain the atmosphere of "elder madness" that Lovecraft has been trying to build up.

I am not denying that Lovecraft has done interesting things. In fact, his continued influence pretty much proves that he has, and his treatment of the Elder Ones in the novella we are speaking of is a good example. If you can read Lovecraft without being constantly annoyed by the prose, more power to you. But I would rather read your analysis of Lovecraft than Lovecraft himself, because his writing really turns me off.[/rant]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=10#p27545
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-12-03 06:18:57

Wow, this is big news. Shouldn't this be elsewhere on the forum where it gets more visibility? It's not just a TADS-related thing, it's a new web-interpreter for TADS. Which is awesome and should be announced elsewhere.

<daydreams about playing TADS and Glulx games on his J2ME mobile phone, realises it's not going to happen, and sighs deeply, deeply>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=60#p27546
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-12-03 06:35:34

[quote="bcressey"]The writing in [i]De Baron[/i] is effective because it serves the goals of the work. It does come across as non-native but that only lowers the barrier to entry and engages the player. By the time I realized that this was not simply a cute little game about killing a dragon put out by an earnest but unpolished author, the hook was already set.[/quote]

Bad prose is by definition unengaging prose. Unless, of course, you have a vicarious shame fetish and enjoy to be embarrassed on other people's account. I see that a lot in the IF crowd. I suppose it's comforting to know that no matter how mediocre one's own writing is, there's always someone like Victor around.

[quote="bcressey"]And then he cuts to a bedroom scene? That is both risky and brilliant. The most reviled IF setting, coming hard on the heels of a generic dragon fight, all conveyed through artful but somewhat inelegant prose.[/quote]

Artful in the sense of being artificial, certainly not in the sense of being skillful.

[quote="bcressey"]The fact that the dungeon lies on the non-essential path interests me as an artistic choice. The symbols it contains may be somewhat incoherent, but that is part of their charm. It's as though the dungeon is where Victor stored all of the metaphors he discarded while creating the larger work. I'm glad it's there.[/quote]

You admit that Victor's prose is inelegant, and yet you find it engaging. You concede that his symbols are incoherent, and yet you find them charming. I'm beginning to suspect that you like this game so much because it allows you to feel superior.

[quote="Robb"]Now, at this point, my inability to write properly is depressing me, because I lack the words to properly respond to your awful take that the game must suck because, as a non-native work, its not written as well as the guy who wrote Lolita, for fuck's sake. Hurrr I just put my fist through my LCD monitor because it's not as bright as the Sun.[/quote]

Victor not being in the same league as Nabokov is a minor issue. After all, very few writers are. A far bigger issue is the appalling lack of literary culture among the IF crowd. Before you write a game about rebellious robots, it's a good idea to have read your Clarke and Asimov. Before you write anything about adults having sexual relationships with children/adolescents, it's a good idea to have read Nabokov, Hardy and Petronius. I can see you people scratching your plebeian heads and going: "Who the fuck is Petronius? Who the hell is Hardy?" That's a BIG part of the problem. You ALWAYS write within a tradition. When you don't know the tradition you're writing in, you end up writing [i]The Baron[/i].

As to the notion that Victor is outside the pale of criticism because he writes in his second language, how about the Paralympics of IF? We'll have one venue where only the natives compete and another one for the cripples.

[quote="Peter Pears"]Huh. The troll as the punching bag, thus actually rendering the community a service. Funny way of looking at it.[/quote]

You're still hurting from that sic?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=60#p27547
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-12-03 06:46:28

[quote][quote="Peter Pears"]Huh. The troll as the punching bag, thus actually rendering the community a service. Funny way of looking at it.[/quote]

You're still hurting from that sic?[/quote]

No, I've moved on - unlike you, apparently.

Regarding all your "bad prose means the game's unenjoyable" diatribe... I've reviewed a game, just yesterday, where the purple and overdone prose failed to engage me as a reader. However, it achieves a rather excellent atmosphere. I was immersed by the overal text even as I was skimming through the actual words and sentences. "Andromeda Awakening", also, I have a lot of peeves with, but I can't deny it's good at establishing atmosphere and location, even when it fails abysmally at times in the actual words (case in point: a room called "Nail" when it should be called "Talon").

If you want to limit yourself to perfection, there's very little you'll find. If you can't admire the good in spite of the bad, can't spot the success even in the failures, can't find enjoyment without constantly finding fault, there's really no point in you being in a growing, mostly Indie community at all.

EDIT - Just for clarification, I'm not saying prose isn't important, I'm not saying prose can't make or break a game. It can. It is all-important, and off the top of my head I can cite "Dangerous Curves" as great prose, an example you'll probably scoff for being genre literature/pastiche. "Death off the Cuff", in a different way, also has great prose - and it lives on that prose. Remove the prose and the game becomes very dull very fast.

So I'm not saying it isn't very important. But I am saying there's more to the prose in IF, and bad prose doesn't always mean bad, unenjoyable experience.

Unless you're pedantic. In which case good luck finding something you'll enjoy.

Unless you're a pedantic masochist. In which case have fun playing games you don't like and then posting not-quite-reviews about them.

EDIT 2 - Another example that's just occured to me - you're not going to watch "Il Trovatore" for the libretto, it's infamous as one of the worst librettos in opera. That doesn't mean the music isn't fantastic, and it doesn't mean Opera isn't supposed to be primarily a combination of story and music.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3840&start=0#p27548
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Getting over the hump
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-12-03 06:50:17

One alternative is to collaborate with someone that finds puzzle design comparatively easy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3749&start=10#p27549
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 update?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-12-03 06:53:06

[quote="Felix"][quote="Peter Pears"]I7 will natively allow for some niceties that'll make translations easier, such as in-built object gender and the appropriate corresponding pronouns?[/quote]
Yes! I'm pretty sure it will do at least that.[/quote]
Not to rain on anyone's parade, I'll confess to being bothered about the idea of a built-in object gender, mainly because gender isn't properly a feature of the object but the word used to describe it. For instance, in Swedish, the same concept could be referred to as "en byggnad" (a building), "ett hus" (a house), "en bostad" (a dwelling), "ett hem" (a home), and none of these would be incorrect.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3749&start=10#p27550
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 update?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-12-03 07:00:10

I'm sure if those issues are taken on-board - if the I7 crew is made aware of them, as it's very possible they aren't - they'll think about it and about the best way to implement it. Or they'll just ignore it, but only after having come to the conclusion that there is no way to simply and universally achieve it, leaving it for extension writers.

But the crew has to know about it. I hadn't thought of it at all myself.

A workaround would be for an object to have several printed names, and the printed name include the article (previously defined by the user), such as "o edifício/a casa/o lar" (to use your examples), and then adjust the pronoun according to the word the player used, based on the information in the printed name.

I think it's nightmarish to implement, but it's a possible solution. I'm sure others exist.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3749&start=20#p27551
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 update?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-12-03 07:09:18

But an object can have only one printed name at the same time. The same problem is in English with a/an (and proper/improper-named objects). When the game reads player input it should (IMHO) understand even if the article is wrong (just like it now understands TAKE A APPLE or ENTER AN CAR), unless you're making a language-learning tool or something similar where you want to force proper grammar.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3749&start=20#p27552
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 update?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-12-03 07:15:40

Oh, right, I said "printed name". I'm sorry, I was referring to "Understand" tokens.

But yeah, if not implementable, then I'm all for the engine ignoring some of the subtleties. After all, if the player types "examinar casa", then it's a fair bet he'll be using "entrar nela" or "examiná-la" next, instead of using the article for "edifício".

It depends on how powerful the parser needs to be. Do we really need it to parse "examinar maçã" ("x apple" - female), "examinar bolo" ("x cake - male"), "comê-la" ("eat it" - female), "comê-lo" ("eat it" - male") as having the player examine the apple, then the cake, then eating the apple, then eating the cake? I don't think so, really. It's not an issue that comes up in English, which is why we can have separate pronouns for it, them, him, her (and oh boy, in Portuguese at least the pronouns for female people are the same for female objects, how's that for confusion?). When translating we have to ask how necessary it really is to keep all that.

EDIT - However, I just noticed that it's not really comparable to "a/an", because "a/an" is essentially the same article with a letter added if the next word begins with a vowel. The difference between "a machine" and "an elephant" is not the same as between "uma máquina" (female) and "um elefante" (male), and Inform-wise this becomes relevant and apparent when you start distinguishing genders in people. If you do, it's natural to distinguish genders in objects.

But again, this might be more trouble than it's practically worth it. It might be simple just to allow some objects to have multiple genders, depending on the understand tokens, and be done with it. Sure, there will be some confusion eventually, but much less, I think, than the bother of being grammar-perfect.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3749&start=20#p27553
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 update?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-03 08:24:07

The problem is only partly with the player's input.
In English X IT can only refer to something inanimate. Whereas in Portuguese (judging from Peter Pears's example) EXAMINA-LA  and EXAMINA-LO  (X HIM and X HER) will have to refer indiscriminately to any object (since any object, animate or inanimate) may be masculine under one description (o edicificio – the he-building) but feminine under another description (la casa – the she-house). So a pronoun will always refer to the last mentioned object (which can be annoying to the player).

But there is also a problem with the game's outpout. Portuguese responses to commands can't refer to anything as ”it” but only as ”she” or ”he” (as ”la” or ”lo” or whatever the correct form is in Portuguese). So a response such as "Firsting taking it off" needs to make a choice between "First taking her off" and "First taking him off", and that choice should be based on the gender of the synonym used for the object in the player's command responded to (and not on the gender of the internal name of the object).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=20#p27554
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-03 09:39:25

[quote="bowsmand"]My apologies whilst I veer from the subject of IF to defend Mr. Lovecraft. I recognize I sometimes have a tendency to fly off the handle on the subject. Perhaps another thread is the better place for this or it is unwanted... if so, please just let me know.[/quote]

I don't think the conversation could by any means suffer for the segue. 

[quote="bowsmand"][quote="I4L"]sleeping at the bottom of the ocean waiting to gobble them up[/quote]
It is naive to think anyone would be scared of Cthulhu waiting to "gobble them up." That's not what Cthulhu *does*. I could be wrong-- I'm not going to re-read the whole story just right now-- but I don't think Cthulhu eats anyone in the whole story.
[/quote]

I didn't mean this literally, of course. However, in [i]Madness from the Sea[/i], we are led to believe that Cthulhu is a thing of destruction, be it intentionally or driven by madness, as he certainly didn't rise from his slumber for crumpets and a cuddle.

I have issues with this story, however. A lot of issues. I won't get into them here, especially as I'd like to read it again. I will say, though, that I feel this story cheapened the mythos.

[quote="bcressey"]I've toyed with the idea of doing some of Lovecraft's stories as IF, inspired by Peter Nepstad's wonderful treatment of the two Dunsany tales.

If the idea grabs anyone else, we should start up a project.[/quote]

Certainly has my attention and I've toyed with the idea of doing exactly that. As my living situation is unstable at the moment, I haven't had as much time as I'd like to devote to my side project, which I think could handle this sort of thing.

I've also been hesitant to recommend any kind of Speed IF because... well... I don't care for Speed IF. Seems like someone throws out a Speed IF competition every couple of weeks just for the sake of making it seem like the community is doing something. It could perhaps be my own personal adoration for the subject, and I'm certain that there are authors who could produce something worthwhile in a couple of hours, but I don't believe that cobbling something together in a couple of hours is going to give the subject the treatment it demands. 

If someone wants to take up the reins and spearhead something, I'm on board. But I think there does need to be some guidelines. Otherwise, I'll work on putting something together when I'm able.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=60#p27555
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-12-03 09:54:00

I wasn't planning to post here, but some of the comments have been so heart-warming that I wanted to show that I have seen them. And while I do that, I guess I can weigh in on the "issue".

I have not read Pudlo's posts (which are hidden from me), but from what I gather he has heavily criticised the prose of [i]The Baron[/i]. That is fine. If the game reads like a hasty translation from the Dutch original, that is because it is a hasty translation from the Dutch original. One thing writing [i]The Baron[/i] has taught me is that if you want to write a text in both your native and your second language, you should write the latter first, and then translate back to your native tongue. There is a good reason translators generally translate to their native tongue.

Improving the prose of [i]The Baron[/i] is one of my sleeping projects. I have a partly rewritten version somewhere on my HD, and if I ever return to that, I'll certainly click open Pudlo's review and scan it through for valid criticisms of the prose. After all, a bad sentence found by Pudlo is still a bad sentence, and a game with fewer bad sentences is a better game.

On the one hand, then, Pudlo illustrates the fact that you can be a jerk without being wrong. On the other hand, he illustrates the fact that you can be right and yet have no understanding. His review of [i]Blue Lacuna[/i] was a perfect example of this: he spent his entire review criticising some prose passages at the start of the game. He was mostly right in his criticisms, and I do not even think that such criticism is unimportant, since bad writing is, well, bad. And yet, it was the least enlightening review of [i]Blue Lacuna[/i] that I have seen. I do not know whether the same holds for his review of [i]The Baron[/i], but I would not be surprised.

The cause of this, of course, is that Pudlo is not interested in reviewing or analysing games. He is interested in his [i]idée fixe[/i]: that only genius is worth living for; that most IF falls far short of genius; and that these two truths have to be made clear to a a community that fails to acknowledge them. I have sympathy for the first claim, though I do not hold it as dogmatically as Pudlo does. The second claim seems unassailable to me. But the idea that there is community that must be enlightened about these claims, and that must be enlightened through techniques of trolling, is absurd, and Pudlo's behaviour is not that of a wise man.

Of course, fools have their uses. If a whole community has fallen into a dogmatic slumber and self-satisfied sleep, and lies dreaming that their meagre accomplishments are the pinnacle of creation, then they need to be hit with a bladder on a stick, forcefully, until they awake. That is the task of the fool. It is, I think, Pudlo's self-image. Unfortunately for him, nobody seems to be sleeping: many of us are not looking for genius, and those who are (I consider myself among them) know that they have not yet found it. And when everyone is awake and trying to do his or her work, the guy with the bladder is bound to be both useless and pretty annoying.

Don't feed the troll and don't fight the fool. After all, we have work to do; you do not get to the level of Nabokov and Conrad by idling!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3749&start=20#p27557
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 update?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-12-03 10:30:11

It seems to me that in an ambiguous language such as English, "First taking it off" is quite enough. Perhaps for other languages and other outputs it would be enough to simply say "First taking (the noun) off"?

But of course, output is tricky. Because "it" is always it: "x apple", "eat it". Response: "(first picking it up) You eat it." Consider, say, Portuguese: "x maçã", "comê-[b]la[/b]" (or "come-[b]a[/b]"). Response: "(apanhando-[b]a[/b] primeiro) Tu come-[b]la[/b]." Gramatically correct, rather ugly, but that's beside the point. Consider that the response could also have been "(pegando [b]nela[/b])" for picking it up.

For all this, it would make more sense to simply go with the simplest output: optionally do away with "it" and replacing it with the noun. It would be unrealistic to ask for the engine to deal with all these variants itself.

[quote]So a pronoun will always refer to the last mentioned object (which can be annoying to the player).[/quote]

Or maybe the house/building can accept both masculine and feminine pronouns. Still seems the simplest way to do it.

Actually, it would be interesting to have input from the extension writers for the Spanish, French, German and Italian extensions and libraries. Maybe they've sorted this mess all out a long time ago.

EDIT - In fact, it might be as simple as allowing for a gender-based system. The current system, the English one, is also of gender - but it assumes only three forms, because male/female will always be people, and "them" is plural regardless of gender. If it were allowed to be overriden with a gender-based system, the pronouns were set as "male", "female", "neuter" (not used in Portuguese, but used in, say, German), "male plural", "female plural" and "neuter plural", then it would make sense to discard the whole concept of "him/her", instead of creating loops for the system to recognise it. Then the user can just program, say, "a/-a/ela/nela/na/-na" for reffering to "female single".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3839&start=10#p27558
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Becoming another character mid-conversation
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-12-03 10:33:39

[quote="rpatten"]
Double? Probably triple. But I am looking for ideas on subtly guiding the conversation.

I've looked at blogs, articles and coding examples, but either I'm missing something, or this hasn't been talked about much. Perhaps it is unattainable, but I believe it can be done.[/quote]

Conversation is the biggest pain as far as game design goes, and at some point, you've got to look at the law of diminishing returns. If you have only a small number of conversations in the game (say three), then ok. More than that, I'd say it's not worth doing. 

Why do I say that? The complexity explosion for one. If you have three NPCs interacting, say, and each has two topics, then you have nine possibilities that you have to design (3^2). More topics = more possibilities, and even if each topic only has one NPC that will say something about it, you still have to go through the work to design all of this. Now if the PC possesses an NPC, if he's not going to be bound by the NPC's knowledge (or script), then your conversation map just went out the window, and the complexity ramped up even more.

For two, most players won't care about switching characters at conversation point A versus B, and you can easily concoct a plausible explanation why possession can't happen in midstream (concentration perhaps). All your work just won't be used in most game sessions. 

Last, the ability to take over an NPC is way more interesting than the ability to do so in the middle of a conversation. If you forbid this, the PC will possess different people, trying to see what they know about the other characters. If the PC can possess someone in the middle of a conversation, he'll still resort to this serial conversation technique, because there's no guarantee he can switch in time once he discovers something. Many conversations are one-way streets ("I've already talked about that and I'm done with it!"), so he'll have to go back and start from square one with a new conversation anyways. 

My WIP, Seasons, is pretty heavy on conversation, and I'm not using I7, but the same principles apply. Only you'll probably be more frustrated than I am, due to the endless beta of I7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3842&start=0#p27559
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Local Character set "CP437" Error
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-03 10:48:27

I think so, provided that the #charset directive is on the first line of the file with no spaces before it.

It's a weird message, though, because you should have a cp437.tcm character map that was installed along with the compiler. What distribution are you using - the Workbench or frobtads?

Does your source code contain any extended ASCII characters? That's anything from row 8 on, in [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_437]the code page 437 table[/url].

I don't know what happens if you specify ASCII but include higher characters.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=10#p27560
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-03 11:04:14

[quote="Peter Pears"]Wow, this is big news. Shouldn't this be elsewhere on the forum where it gets more visibility?[/quote]
It's not an official release, AFAIK. It's a stealth thing. And even when it is officially released, my understanding is that you won't be able to use it to play existing TADS games. In order to take advantage of the browser/web playback, the author will have to recompile the game.

One hopes this will be a fairly simple process. I certainly plan to do it with my TADS games. But the point is, it [i]will [/i]be a TADS-specific announcement, because TADS authors will have to do some work before it trickles down (or out) to players.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=10#p27561
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-12-03 11:24:59

Aaaaaaah. I'd managed to skip that. Ok, thanks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=60#p27562
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-12-03 12:18:44

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]I have not read Pudlo's posts (which are hidden from me)[/quote]

How childish. Are you afraid my posts will traumatise your delicate psyche? Could someone please explain to me why a grown person would be afraid of reading reviews of their own work? If you're too delicate to take criticism in stride, why do you release your work to the public?

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]but from what I gather he has heavily criticised the prose of [i]The Baron[/i]. That is fine. If the game reads like a hasty translation from the Dutch original, that is because it is a hasty translation from the Dutch original.[/quote]

I'm sure it's very comforting to see the flaws purely as a translation issue. The problem with that approach is that the badness of your prose transcends language.

[quote="Victor in The Baron"]The weak light of the moon, which enters the room through the window, envelops the furniture of the bedroom in a cloak of unworldly beauty.[/quote]

The above is bad prose not because it was poorly translated from Dutch, but because its metaphors are trite. I'm sure the original is just as trite as the translation.

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]On the one hand, then, Pudlo illustrates the fact that you can be a jerk without being wrong. On the other hand, he illustrates the fact that you can be right and yet have no understanding. His review of [i]Blue Lacuna[/i] was a perfect example of this: he spent his entire review criticising some prose passages at the start of the game. He was mostly right in his criticisms, and I do not even think that such criticism is unimportant, since bad writing is, well, bad. And yet, it was the least enlightening review of [i]Blue Lacuna[/i] that I have seen. I do not know whether the same holds for his review of [i]The Baron[/i], but I would not be surprised.[/quote]

The reason why [i]The Baron[/i] is bad fiction, apart from the prose? Well, since there's not much else to look at, let's look at your use of symbols. The broken mirror as a symbol of split personality is so tired, even Hollywood has stopped using it. The dolls in the "dungeon" are laughable, and so is the "dungeon." The wolf and the cub as a Moral Dilemma is transparent in its silly hypocrisy. The gargoyle with its multiple choice questions is tedious in the extreme. The decision to have a "simple" lumberjack as a stand-in for the Good Guy and a "sophisticated" baron for the "Evil" gynophile completely misses the psychological mark. There is nothing sophisticated about people who molest children. For the most part they are emotionally retarded men who are afraid of women. The [i]coup de grâce[/i] of the piece, the "unexpected" twist where the Good Guy and the Bad Guy are revealed to be the same person has been done to death, not least by Hollywood. Check out [i]Angel Heart[/i] for a decent treatment of this particular cliché.

I was hoping you'd have the sense and maturity to admit that [i]The Baron[/i] was a youthful indiscretion, and leave it at that. The fact that you persevere in defending it, while flaunting your disdain for me, I find perplexing. Do you seriously think [i]The Baron[/i] is an important contribution worth defending?

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Don't feed the troll and don't fight the fool.[/quote]

How is insulting me going to change the fact that you have no talent for writing?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3749&start=20#p27563
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 update?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-03 13:02:35

[quote="Peter Pears"]Quote:
So a pronoun will always refer to the last mentioned object (which can be annoying to the player).


Or maybe the house/building can accept both masculine and feminine pronouns. Still seems the simplest way to do it.[/quote]
Well, if any object (or at least any inanimate object) could take both feminine and masculine synonyms, then, for players to be able by default to use both feminine and masculine pronouns for a single object, either the author needs a way to set more than one gender to a single object, or pronouns mustn't discriminate between objects based on their gender (since it's not the objects that have a gender in most languages but the nouns for them).

[quote="Peter Pears"]it would be interesting to have input from the extension writers for the Spanish, French, German and Italian extensions and libraries. Maybe they've sorted this mess all out a long time ago.[/quote]
I had a quick look at it when writing the Swedish extension (which had to add a fourth gender to the language); obviously I can't be sure, but I don't think they've hit upon a solution. (The German extension is a quite complex affair though, so I suppose there may be something hidden away somewhere in there that takes care of the issue.)

[quote="Peter Pears"] Then the user can just program, say, "a/-a/ela/nela/na/-na" for reffering to "female single".[/quote]
In effect that is how Inform does it at present (only you set those values in the I6 Language Template).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=60#p27564
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Peter Rickardson / DateTime: 2011-12-03 13:03:45

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"][The reason why [i]The Baron[/i] is bad fiction, apart from the prose? Well, since there's not much else to look at, let's look at your use of symbols. The broken mirror as a symbol of split personality is so tired, even Hollywood has stopped using it. The dolls in the "dungeon" are laughable, and so is the "dungeon." The wolf and the cub as a Moral Dilemma is transparent in its silly hypocrisy. The gargoyle with its multiple choice questions is tedious in the extreme. The decision to have a "simple" lumberjack as a stand-in for the Good Guy and a "sophisticated" baron for the "Evil" gynophile completely misses the psychological mark. There is nothing sophisticated about people who molest children. For the most part they are emotionally retarded men who are afraid of women. The [i]coup de grâce[/i] of the piece, the "unexpected" twist where the Good Guy and the Bad Guy are revealed to be the same person has been done to death, not least by Hollywood. Check out [i]Angel Heart[/i] for a decent treatment of this particular cliché.[/quote]

Having just finished The Baron my biggest concern is its failure to problematize its subject matter. Portraying the insestuous half of the personality as a dragon and the uninsestuous part as a warior doesnt tell me any thing about the nature of insest. It just trivializes the issue by using old textadventure tropes. Maybe a textadventure is not the right platform for this kind of subject.


(Sorry for my english)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3842&start=0#p27565
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Local Character set "CP437" Error
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2011-12-03 13:04:50

Workbench - but I'm using t3make/run within my dev folder - so I haven't installed workbench on this machine. It sounds like I need to reinstall workbench then. But when I redistribute the game, does that mean the player would have to run a tads install? I was hoping to make it portable if possible (actually would like to let them play it online but it sounds like that can't be done in T3).

Thanks for the help!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=20#p27566
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-03 13:35:15

[quote="I4L"][...] Cthulhu is a thing of destruction, be it intentionally or driven by madness, as he certainly didn't rise from his slumber for crumpets and a cuddle.[/quote]

Though, wouldn't that be scarier?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3842&start=0#p27567
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Local Character set "CP437" Error
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-03 14:08:29

Online play is just around the corner; see [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801]this discussion[/url].

The character maps are what the TADS 3 compiler uses to transform text written in any given encoding into UTF-8. All text strings in a T3 file are guaranteed to be UTF-8.

Your players will need an interpreter of some kind, which could mean an install (frob, gargoyle) or not. If you package the game as a Windows executable, it wraps it in an interpreter for you. This interpreter handles the job of displaying the UTF-8 text, and it's not something you need to worry about as an author.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3842&start=0#p27568
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Local Character set "CP437" Error
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2011-12-03 14:21:11

Excellent information thank you. And the lack of web support is my one major issue with T3, so I'm excited to check that discussion out. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=20#p27569
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-12-03 15:34:01

I apologize for making this thread about my aggravation rather than I4L's.  I'm easy bait for this unfortunately, and learning only by recent prodding from housemates to control it.  I have a very physical reaction to mentions of Lovecraft, especially to bad Lovecraft stereotypes and most especially to misappropriations of his name and works like in the movie [i]H.P. Lovecraft's The Tomb[/i] (which was nothing more than a cheap [i]Saw[/i] knock-off and nearly made me destroy my television after a few minutes) or the unnecessary insertion of Cthulhu into "Symetry."  About a month ago I nearly got kicked out of a restaurant after somebody called [i]Hellboy[/i] “Lovecraftian” (it should be noted, I hate that word in general).  I don't want to think of this as a sort of combat, though (I'm a genuine coward with no intention of trying to “hit” or “kick” the author of Attack himself!), but perhaps as a debate, discussion, or maybe, yes, a bit of a rant.  I just don't think it's right to cast anyone here as opponents.

[rant][quote]some stereotypes may be wrong, but the stylistic ones are not[/quote]
I can see how you might think this is you've only read “The Call of Cthulhu” and [i]At the Mountains of Madness[/i], two of the stories from which the majority of all Lovecraft stereotypes have been drawn.  Certainly you should avoid reading “The Shunned House,” in which he only indulges more in such language.  By my own admission, I didn't think highly of [i]Mountains[/i] until after I'd read a substantial amount of Lovecraft and returned to it later.

But I'm keen to mention your criticism of his use of terms like epoch, aeon, elder, and forgotten.  These don't feel like on-point criticism for a story which discusses beings and events which literally came from another, pre-Cenozoic era.  What other words would you have him use to describe such gulfs of time?  Not even “millenia” quite gets the point across because we're talking about millions of years.  I can understand wanting leaner prose (though Lovecraft's verbosity doesn't work against him when I read him), but this in particular doesn't seem to fit.

As to the accusation that HPL expects a certain list of “horrifying words” to create feeling stories, this strikes me as a rather low evaluation of the man rather than his work.  HPL's general aesthetic is one of cosmic horror, of self-loathing, and of imaginative wonder or awe.  To say he expected to represent his (quite finely honed) philosophy using just a few words over and over feels, to me, akin to accusing Shakespeare of just saying “Milord” all the time, or of saying J.D. Salinger just called everything “crazy.”  No author expects a few choice words to create affect in their stories, nor to carry out their conflicts or concepts.

[quote]Central in some (perhaps many ?)of Lovecraft's stories, and in many stories written to be Lovecraftian, is the "moment that changes a man forever", and this is the moment that he perceives the transcendent horror and his mind is destroyed... a hopeless subject for fiction.[/quote]
Another stereotype of Lovecraft, one I was sad to see Maher indulge in [i]The King of Shreds and Patches[/i] (it's curious to me that he, too, and even Michael Gentry seem to express a rather low opinion of Lovecraft as a writer).  I recall specifically an ending [spoiler]one obtains by looking into a gem which failed to be effective for its lack of thematic build.  It was presented as essentially the sort of “oops, you died,” ending we'd expect in ol' Ray Montgomery's work, but themed with strange geometry and with “died” crossed out and replaced with “went insane.”[/spoiler]

To help overcome this stereotype, I took the space of a short bus ride to write up a list of some stories by H.P. Lovecraft in which the narrator does [i]not[/i] end with the perception of some transcendent horror that destroys his mind.

The Alchemist
The Beast in the Cave
Two Black Bottles
The Music of Erich Zann
The Silver Key
Sweet Ermengarde
The Green Meadow (collaboration)
The Electric Executioner (collaboration)
Herbert West- Reanimator
The Whisperer in the Darkness
The Shadow Out of Time
The White Ship
The Cats of Ulthar
The Temple
The Street
The Tomb
The Tree
The Statement of Randolph Carter
The Quest of Iranon
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
Till A' the Seas
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
The Picture in the House
Cool Air
The Thing on the Doorstep (IMO, one of the most emotionally true romances ever written)

I can't list [i]Fungi from Yuggoth[/i], as it is a series of poems rather than a story.

[quote]Also, I don't think I said Lovecraft never describes his creatures?[/quote]
Not in this forum, no.  I was referring to our discussion at PAX East, where I admittedly butted into the middle of the conversation. You had just indulged yourself in a stereotype about Lovecraft's overuse of the occultatio.  I believe I recommended [i]At the Mountains of Madness[/i] as a counter-example, but I could be remembering the events completely incorrectly at this point.  PAX East is always such a blur... too many good times!

As for the description of the shoggoth, here we diverge in our opinions.  I don't hold the shoggoth's actual description to be a description of “elder madness”-- that comes much earlier when describing the way they were used to build cities.  Rather, I think it is one of panic.  There's no reason for it to be “elder madness” when the thing is right behind them, in the present, chasing them down.  But I suppose it all comes down to what one considers horrifying?[/rant]
[quote]I would rather read your analysis of Lovecraft than Lovecraft himself[/quote]
I appreciate this compliment.  For what it's worth, I have no problem with people not liking Lovecraft.  There's plenty to not like.  It's the stereotypes, the misappropriations, misuses, and misunderstanding that bother me, as they appear to be rampant.  I realize everyone has an author or two they just will never click with (for me it's Neil Gaiman!) and it's fine if Mr. Lovecraft is one of yours.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=20#p27570
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-03 15:40:56

[quote="I4L"]I've also been hesitant to recommend any kind of Speed IF because... well... I don't care for Speed IF. Seems like someone throws out a Speed IF competition every couple of weeks just for the sake of making it seem like the community is doing something. It could perhaps be my own personal adoration for the subject, and I'm certain that there are authors who could produce something worthwhile in a couple of hours, but I don't believe that cobbling something together in a couple of hours is going to give the subject the treatment it demands.[/quote]
I think you've got the wrong idea about the purposes of Speed-IF: it's not about "making it seem" anything. Speed-IF is primarily for the benefit of the participants. (I agree that two hours is a harsh limit to produce anything in, which is precisely why Speed-IFs rarely have a limit anywhere close to two hours these days.) But yeah, if your complaint is that there are not enough [i]quality[/i] games of a certain type, Speed-IF is not the way to remedy that.

(Since I'm already committed to pedantry, there have been five-and-a-bit Speed-IFs this year, which is one about every ten weeks. And that's a pretty good year.)

I'd guess what you'd want is more of a minicomp with a judging panel.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3843&start=0#p27571
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I7] Definition failure
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-12-03 15:52:58

So to distract myself from the beginnings of a cold, I thought I'd do another experiment. 

[code]A cosmic room is a kind of room. Outer space is a cosmic room. 

A starship is a kind of thing. A starship is usually scenery.
Room-inclusion relates a starship to various rooms. The verb to comprise (it comprises, they comprised, it is comprising) implies the room-inclusion relation.


A window is a kind of thing. A window is usually fixed in place.
Remote viewing relates a window (called A) to a room (called B) when something in B comprises the holder of A. The verb to show (it shows, they show, he showed, it is showing) implies the remote viewing relation.

For writing a paragraph about a window showing outer space: 
	say "Through the cockpit window, you can see [if the window is empty][the list of relevant things in outer space] against[otherwise]nothing but[end if] the blackness of space."

Definition: a thing is relevant unless it comprises the location.
Definition: a window is empty if it does not show a relevant thing.


The Millennium Falcon is a starship. It is in outer space.
The Cockpit is a room. The Falcon comprises the cockpit. The viewport is a window. It is in the cockpit.

The player is in the cockpit.[/code]

Doubtless this could be made a lot smoother, but the basic idea is to hide the starship the player is in from being displayed in the description of the window. The reason for the relations is to allow the writer to use phrases like "now the Falcon is in hyperspace". Strangely though, the "empty window" definition doesn't work as intended, instead producing the output "Through the cockpit window, you can see nothing against the blackness of space." 

It's probably something basic that I've forgotten, but at the moment I can't really see it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3843&start=0#p27572
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Definition failure
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-03 16:24:09

You've got some kinds clashing.

[code]
Definition: a window is empty if it does not show a relevant thing.
[/code]

Windows show rooms, not things. "Room" and "thing" are mutually exclusive kinds, so windows are always empty.

On top of that, the "if" in your descriptive text has reversed logic. :)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3843&start=0#p27573
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Definition failure
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-12-03 16:38:04

[quote="zarf"]You've got some kinds clashing.

[code]
Definition: a window is empty if it does not show a relevant thing.
[/code]

Windows show rooms, not things. "Room" and "thing" are mutually exclusive kinds, so windows are always empty.

On top of that, the "if" in your descriptive text has reversed logic. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Jeez. Ok, obviously the sign for me to stop pounding my head against the metaphorical brick wall until the fog clears.

Thanks, zarf.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3843&start=0#p27574
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Definition failure
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-12-03 16:40:03

Also, as you know, ``if the window'' means ``if a window'' (in the writing a paragraph about rule).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=20#p27575
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-12-03 16:43:35

What maga said. Someone could do a minicomp, or a non-competitive anthology: lay out the description of what you want to see, line up a couple of committed reviewers to give feedback on each work, promise to release the games to the community together. Maybe have someone put together a nice banner or cover art for the anthologized set. Give it a deadline at least a couple of months off. This is more or less what the Commonplace Book project did, though that also had a museum showing associated with it; there have also been a couple of other genre-specific collections over the years. I did a romance-themed one, oh, a decade ago or so.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3837&start=0#p27576
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: A rather abnormal use of a StopEventList.
User: Arag-e / DateTime: 2011-12-03 16:57:50

Crap, I’m still not done.

There’s one, and I think final, hitch I need to sort. In the above problem, both the plain EventList and the AltList are StopEventLists. For the behaviour I’m thinking of, it would work better if the altList where a ShuffledEventList instead.

…thinking about it, the best idea I get is to stick an embedded expression in the altList to fire a separate ShuffledEventList which contains the events previously in the altList. So if A == true, the regular StopEventList will fire and if A == nil, the altList will redirect things into the ShuffledEventList.

I know I can stick an embedded expression in an EventList like
[code]
EventList
[
       {: “<<something()>>” } 
] [/code]
But I don’t know how to trigger an EventList from scratch (I’ve always worked by piggybacking on pre-existing code like atmospereList and the stuff I’m clumsily defacing right now). Can I do that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=30#p27577
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2011-12-03 17:07:13

Until anyone does some sound "research" concerning the effectiveness of different approaches to accessibility, any projection is pure speculation. I'm seriously surprised that so many people seem to be happy with a big bag of assumptions. What I took offense in before (and still do) is the insinuation that sticking to the defaults in-game automatically means that an author does not care about newcomers to the genre. This is as short-sighted and one-dimensional as it gets.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3837&start=0#p27578
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: A rather abnormal use of a StopEventList.
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-03 17:20:28

Yes. You probably also want to redefine advanceAltState() to roll back around, or to do nothing at all.

[code]
myCrazyList: StopEventList
   altList = [ {: someShuffledEventList.doScript() } ]

   advanceAltState() {}
;
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=10#p27579
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-03 17:41:49

There's a good chance a release will happen before the end of the month. Unless some show-stopper bug pops up, of course.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=60#p27580
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-12-03 17:52:18

Funny. Where you see trivialising, I see an opening scene which, in retrospect, is rather heavy handed in its symbolism, but which as a mood-setter did a fine job of making me expect a certain setting, only to yank the rug from under my feet later on. It didn't seem such an important scene in respect to the main theme, either - not compared to the final bedroom scene, and the previous scene in the hallway.

It's bugging me a bit that no-one seems to talk much about their first experience of the game - where the main theme isn't made clear. Of course the game would be much better, artistically, if it could stand that sort of analysis as well as it stands the first impressions - that goes without saying. Yes, once you've played it through you may feel a certain heavy-handedness. But when I played it first I didn't assign any meaning to the dragon other than seeing it's a fight scene between a protagonist and an antagonist, a powerful antagonist. It's very possible that that's all it's meant to do - set a scene.

I'm perfectly happy with letting a certain symbol be less meaningful if it's to communicate something to me as a player/reader. Yes, it's better if I can later dissect the symbol and see how rich it is, but if it worked the first time around, I'm happy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=10#p27581
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-12-03 17:55:39

[quote="RealNC"]There's a good chance a release will happen before the end of the month. Unless some show-stopper bug pops up, of course.[/quote]
Yay! Another reason to get busy with the post-comp release of It...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3844&start=0#p27582
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Doors, Stairs, etc - TravelWithMessage
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2011-12-03 17:56:30

Ok, I have - yet another - T3 question...

I'm guessing it is possible to define doors that have travel messages, using TravelWithMessage or something similar but I have yet to find an example of this and all of my attempts have failed so far. I have a main stair case in my game and would like to describe the player's descent - or their ascent (I'm using DownStairs and UpStairs). It just seems too abrupt to have them *poof* on the next floor of the house.

Thanks in advance!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3246&start=0#p27583
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT WebRunner
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-12-03 18:18:01

If ADRIFT games can be played over the web, why not release the source code so that the ADRIFT Runner apps can be updated?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=30#p27584
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-03 18:36:21

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="I4L"][...] Cthulhu is a thing of destruction, be it intentionally or driven by madness, as he certainly didn't rise from his slumber for crumpets and a cuddle.[/quote]

Though, wouldn't that be scarier?[/quote]

[url=http://homestuck.bandcamp.com/album/squiddles]Squiddles![/url]

[url=http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=004748]SQUIDDLES![/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=30#p27585
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-03 19:17:21

Having posted that, Duncan's post reminds me that, having read "The Thing on the Doorstep" after getting into the Alternia part of Homestuck, I couldn't keep a straight face when the climactic horrible utterance was "glub... glub... glub." 

"The Rats in the Walls" seriously creeped me out though (shame about the cat's name). One good thing there was that Lovecraft actually describes some of the horrible things that they discover, and they are indeed horrible. Horror stories and ghost stories often do walk a fine line in deciding what to describe and what to leave to your imagination. "[url=http://www.classicreader.com/book/1833/1/]Also[/url], after a judicious interval, Harrington repeated to Dunning something of what he had heard his brother say in his sleep: but it was not long before Dunning stopped him" is effective up to a point, but it gets overused. Arthur Machen's "[url=http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/389]The Great God Pan[/url]," which Lovecraft admired (and specifically mentions in "The Dunwich Horror"), is a big offender.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3837&start=0#p27586
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: A rather abnormal use of a StopEventList.
User: Arag-e / DateTime: 2011-12-03 19:17:58

Haha, I deserved the "crazy" thing. 

That worked perfectly, thank you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=30#p27587
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-03 19:38:29

[quote="maga"][quote="I4L"]I've also been hesitant to recommend any kind of Speed IF because... well... I don't care for Speed IF. Seems like someone throws out a Speed IF competition every couple of weeks just for the sake of making it seem like the community is doing something. It could perhaps be my own personal adoration for the subject, and I'm certain that there are authors who could produce something worthwhile in a couple of hours, but I don't believe that cobbling something together in a couple of hours is going to give the subject the treatment it demands.[/quote]
I think you've got the wrong idea about the purposes of Speed-IF: it's not about "making it seem" anything. Speed-IF is primarily for the benefit of the participants. (I agree that two hours is a harsh limit to produce anything in, which is precisely why Speed-IFs rarely have a limit anywhere close to two hours these days.) But yeah, if your complaint is that there are not enough [i]quality[/i] games of a certain type, Speed-IF is not the way to remedy that.

(Since I'm already committed to pedantry, there have been five-and-a-bit Speed-IFs this year, which is one about every ten weeks. And that's a pretty good year.)

I'd guess what you'd want is more of a minicomp with a judging panel.[/quote]

I don't have the wrong idea about speed IF. But maybe I applied it poorly. Strike the "maybe", I certainly applied it poorly. But more in part to my child-like enthusiasm than to my misunderstanding. Speed IF (and "Pudlo") is the only time I see the community really rally around anything. I brought it (and my dislike of it) up merely as a knee-jerk to ideas for a means to provoke community response. Thinking out loud. There's an obvious overflowing of talent and none of it is in the direction I'm aiming for. The comment was partially out of context in that I had been entertaining the idea of some kind of comp or speed IF purely to see what could be come up with along the vein of what I'd been looking to see.

This doesn't change my opinion of speed IF. I still see it as holding no real value, whether you have two weeks or two months to prepare a game. It is, to me, a gimmick-y kind of block party thing with no lasting impact. (Disclaimer: I haven't followed the timeline of every comp, speed IF or related game ever created.) Quality games are next to non-existent. I fail to see how either the community or the author benefits from it, unless there is a prize involved. In which case, maybe that "prize" would be better donated to one of the more substantial competitions to a game more likely to have a lasting impact. Otherwise, why don't we just spend a day a week cranking out the fastest IF we can based on a random theme? This week... marsupials. Next week... half-melted candles. Next month... carpet lint.

Okay, maybe I don't get it. Maybe I don't understand the point of speed IF. I can still sleep at night comfortable in that revelation.

[quote="emshort"]What maga said. Someone could do a minicomp, or a non-competitive anthology: lay out the description of what you want to see, line up a couple of committed reviewers to give feedback on each work, promise to release the games to the community together.[/quote]

Would love to see it done. I personally don't have the imagination to participate. But I'd love to see what comes of it. Which is why I echoed Ben's suggestion that something be organized. I'll gladly lend whatever I can offer, be it hosting space, domain name, coding assistance (PHP) or what-have-you. But from a purely selfish standpoint, I'd rather someone established in the community kick it off, so it isn't as likely to be snubbed completely.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=30#p27588
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-03 20:17:28

[quote="I4L"][Speed IF] is, to me, a gimmick-y kind of block party thing with no lasting impact.[/quote]

I don't think lasting impact is actually the [i]goal [/i]of a speed IF, though. I think "block party" sounds about right ... that, and coding practice. Up against a hot deadline, you can encounter coding challenges and race for solutions that wouldn't happen in a more considered project. Then, it's fun to see the silly results (which are occasionally actually quite good). Plus, they're not (usually?) [i]comps,[/i] so non-comp folk such as myself can partake.

How much "lasting impact" do you typically demand of a block party?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3828&start=0#p27589
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Announcing Calm Post-Comp Release
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-12-03 20:38:59

Joey, you can also go to the game's page on IFDB and click 'Add a news item' to announce this there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=30#p27591
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-12-03 21:29:11

[quote="I4L"]But from a purely selfish standpoint, I'd rather someone established in the community kick it off, so it isn't as likely to be snubbed completely.[/quote]

I feel a little sad and frustrated when I read this. I can think of various comps and projects that fizzled because the idea was too difficult (asking for long games or sandbox games or things with a bunch of NPCs to be written in a short timeframe) or too esoteric (focusing on a theme hardly anyone was into) or happened to be scheduled poorly (e.g., at the same time of year as other more established comps that were sucking all the oxygen up). 

But my impression has always been that an anthology or comp project succeeds or fails based on the choice of parameters and the nature of the incentives (feedback, broader audience, prizes, etc.), and that running one is a totally doable way for someone new to make a distinctive contribution. (Often less work than actually writing a game.)

Am I wrong about this? I hope not -- if cool new IF projects can only happen through the offices of people who have already led at least one group project before, only a tiny percentage of the possible coolness can be realized. 

But I realize my perception of the situation may not match other people's.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=30#p27592
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-12-03 21:44:59

Horror will probably always be my first love. Primarily in movie form, less so in book form. And in game form it really went up in importance for me after Resident Evil and Silent Hill and the technical advances that allowed for the console survival horror explosion.

I recently went looking for games tagged 'horror' on IFDB and reviewed some of them. One of them with 'horror' in the title turned out to be a non-horror Eamon game from 20 years ago [emote]:)[/emote]

Re: Lovecraft's presence in IF games... I think it's just that pastiches of his ideas or style or content appear to be over-represented as a percentage of the horror IF games. When I glance down the list of games tagged horror and groan: 'What, another Lovecraft game?' - it's not  because I dislike Lovecraft. Au contraire, I have read probably 90% of his work and I like his ideas and writing. It's just that I was hoping to find some original horror games, original meaning at least 'Not being a pastiche of the work of one particular author, namely H P Lovecraft.' Lovecraft's already so specific in his aesthetic and concerns, and prolific, that you'll admit it is a little funny so many people have chosen to imitate something so specific in their IF games.

My problem with Anchorhead was basically that it was too hard, and it has one of those walkthroughs that can just torch your experience if you have to go to it. No separation of different problems. I had to scour the transcript of commands looking for helpful stuff. In the process it made me see, 'What? I missed A? I missed B, too? I missed, C?' - the apprehension at once of all I'd missed after the amount of time I'd spent on it already made my spirit klunk onto the floor, and I stopped.

I enjoyed Theatre a lot and I thought the puzzles were really good in being difficult, but solveable if you retrod the ground and considered your inventory and thought about stuff. I haven't got to my review of it yet. Again with the Lovecraft focus, there are reviews of it complaining about it mixing different types of horror. Of course I can complain with the best of them about things mixing elements that I didn't think gelled, but certainly there can be no rule about people doing it in the first place. And I didn't see anything to complain about at all along those lines in Theatre.

I hope my next game will be back in horror again, though that will probably be a long way off.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3828&start=0#p27593
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Announcing Calm Post-Comp Release
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-12-03 21:45:09

For those curious, I just verified that Calm is now (as expected)

1) most definitely solvable,
2) more loaded with cool clues to tell you the right things to do
[spoiler]especially on easy mode, where I like how it clues what you can interact with,[/spoiler]
3) more organized and streamlined with regard to the puzzles and world map
4) more robust as I compared my comp-version transcripts to the version-2 transcripts
and
5) more than interesting enough to try as a different type of character now that I've won it one way. So, well done!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=30#p27594
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-12-03 21:53:29

[quote="emshort"]Am I wrong about this?[/quote]

I don't think so.  I haven't tried running a competition of any kind, but I did propose/run IF Month* as a total unheard-of tyro -- I emailed Zarf to get an idea of where I should even put up the announcements -- and got a heartwarmingly positive reaction from the community that I was only, at the time, barely aware of.

I agree that scheduling (both in terms of absolute time allotted and where deadlines fall relative to the rest of the IF social calendar) and incentives (whether in the form of interesting themes or as prizes) are much more important to the success of this sort of thing than "community status."

*a month-long set of learning exercises to encourage people, including myself, to learn Inform


[quote="Ghalev"]I don't think lasting impact is actually the [i]goal [/i]of a speed IF, though. I think "block party" sounds about right ... that, and coding practice. Up against a hot deadline, you can encounter coding challenges and race for solutions that wouldn't happen in a more considered project.[/quote]

It's also, in my opinion, Good For the Soul to actually finish projects, and sometimes tossing off a silly side project can put you in a better mood to work on the "real ones."  And sometimes, a couple hours is all the implementation an idea deserves.  I'm not a big fan of overly constrained challenges -- I'd rather work on some backburnered idea than have to incorporate a red ball, a moldy orange, and a rainbow-striped umbrella -- but some of my best work has been done under time constraints. (I even have a [url=http://instamatique.com/lea/timeconstrained.html]category for that in my portfolio[/url].)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=30#p27595
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-03 22:00:11

[quote="tove"]It's also, in my opinion, Good For the Soul to actually finish projects, and sometimes tossing off a silly side project can put you in a better mood to work on the "real ones."[/quote]

Yes, that rings true. Sometimes I take a break from a long writing project and just make a font, or a map, or something, for similar reasons ... it's nice to just see something from beginning to end and get that little benny of energy at the finish.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=30#p27597
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-03 23:40:59

[quote="emshort"]I feel a little sad and frustrated when I read this. I can think of various comps and projects that fizzled because the idea was too difficult (asking for long games or sandbox games or things with a bunch of NPCs to be written in a short timeframe) or too esoteric (focusing on a theme hardly anyone was into) or happened to be scheduled poorly (e.g., at the same time of year as other more established comps that were sucking all the oxygen up).[/quote]

This is why I said I'd rather someone more established in the community run this kind of thing. I don't know the parameters that authors are prepared or willing to work with. I don't know what kind of "impact" that Spring Thing has on the community. I don't know what kind of timeline is appropriate for this sort of thing. 

I know what I'd like to see. I know what kind of objectives I'd like to see. I know what I'm personally into. I basically asked someone more experienced to pick up the gauntlet. If they don't or aren't willing to... I will.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=30#p27598
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-03 23:45:06

I also have to say that [i]Dark Corners of the Earth[/i] was a pretty damn good game until the end.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3839&start=10#p27599
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Becoming another character mid-conversation
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-04 00:28:27

[quote="rpatten"]I am intrigued. Is there an example to accompany Speech Motivations?[/quote]
If you ask nicely, I'll write one. [emote];)[/emote]

I think I can tack a little 1-star example onto the documentation on Monday or Tuesday.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=40#p27602
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-12-04 03:12:42

For Speed-IF horror, I think Ectocomp has produced a few games of quality.  The revised, original episode of "The Forest House" (2007) was intriguing enough to be creepy.  "Drinks with Lord Hansom" (2008) has a competent horror story in it, but the interactive puzzle is sort of shoehorned into that framework.  "Salutations" (2008) was sort of scary, but a little buggy, with a tight focus on a single puzzle.  For horror in this year's Ectocomp, check out Taleslinger's "Blue."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3844&start=0#p27603
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Doors, Stairs, etc - TravelWithMessage
User: tomasb / DateTime: 2011-12-04 04:56:07

Example can be found in the Connectors.t sample game: [url]http://www.tads.org/learning_tads3_sample_games.htm[/url]. Look for the laundryChute object. TravelWithMessage is a mix in class that can be added to any TravelConnector derived class such as Door, ThroughPassage or Stairway. Please note that mix-in classes are always written before an actual class.

[code]
+ laundryChute: RoomPartItem, TravelWithMessage, ThroughPassage
    'laundry chute' 'laundry chute'
    "Although it's intended for laundry, it's large enough for a person to fit
    into as well. "
    specialNominalRoomPartLocation = defaultWestWall
    specialDesc = "A laundry chute is set in the west wall. "
    travelBarrier = [bikeBarrier, trolleyBarrier]
    travelDesc = "You find yourself tumbling rapidly down the laundry chute
        until you are unceremoniously ejected from its lower end, landing with a
        bone-shaking bump. ";
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=40#p27622
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-12-04 05:20:26

[quote="I4L"]This is why I said I'd rather someone more established in the community run this kind of thing. I don't know the parameters that authors are prepared or willing to work with. I don't know what kind of "impact" that Spring Thing has on the community. I don't know what kind of timeline is appropriate for this sort of thing.[/quote]

Ah. Well, in that case I think your best bet is to ask for advice about hows and whens, but still to run it yourself. Only you have the unique passion for the specific thing you want to do. 

My own advice would be: 

-- aim for short games, as in less than an hour average playtime. People are more likely to be willing to write constrained/themed stuff if it's shortish; if they're going to invest the time to write something really massive, they're more likely to want it to be on a theme of their own choosing, but sometimes a specific constraint will spark them to try a small project.
-- consult the front page of ifwiki to find out what other comps are currently scheduled
-- pick a date that's roughly two months distant from now, at least two weeks from any other comp due date, and not during IF Comp or Spring Thing judging; if no such dates are available, wait a bit (but I don't think that's the case right now)
-- decide whether you actually want it to be a competition with winners, or something more like an anthology/showcase -- there's a trend for comps in this community, but some people like non-competition formats better, and they can be fun too
-- likewise, if it is a competition, do you want winners to be determined with open voting (like IF Comp and Spring Thing) or by a judging panel? (NB that if you do go with open voting and want help managing this, you might be able to talk to the comp organizers about sharing their tech for collecting votes so that you don't have to go to the bother of setting this up yourself.)
-- consider what incentives you'd like to offer, bearing in mind that material rewards aren't the only option and that authors also strongly value feedback, reach beyond the typical IF audience pool, coolness factor, and assets that their game wouldn't otherwise be able to have. So: prizes, not just money but thematic stuff like classic horror books/magazines, or Lovecraftian fonts? guaranteed reviews (typically achieved by asking a named group of judges/reviewers to commit to writing something about each game)? a showcase in a particular context that the community doesn't usually reach, say by arranging to have the comp profiled in an online horror fiction zine that specializes in this subgenre? or maybe a nice packaging reward, like finding some volunteer artists or designers willing to cook up cover art or feelies for each entry in collaboration with the author? This element is likely to depend a lot on what you're able to offer and what you think might appeal, and you may need to ask some people for help. I usually do this by emailing potential judges/zine editors/donors directly, since for this kind of task, people almost always respond better to a direct personal appeal than to a posting asking generically for help.
-- write a blurb that expresses your theme and constraints as clearly [i]and inspiringly[/i] as possible -- that is, something that communicates your enthusiasm for the coolness of the subject matter; if you're not sure of yourself, run this blurb past a friend or two to help hone it
-- decide any key rules, which may include the following: do entries have to be in any specific format? can they make use of copyrighted intellectual property or must they be original? if it is a competition with open judging, may beta-testers vote on games they tested? may reviewers discuss the games during competition time? may the authors? Read the announcement pages for some recent competitions to get an idea of what's involved. ifwiki may be able to help you locate these as well. Focus especially on projects that you liked/thought were cool/would like to emulate.
-- present your blurb, followed by a description of the incentives and finally the fine-print rules

Other people might have more advice; it's even possible someone might be up for being your comp-running mentor, as it were, and talk over your concept with you until you're both happy with it. Asking for that kind of feedback isn't necessarily a sign of inexperience. Most of the comps, shows, projects, etc. that I've seen started by the IF community go through some discussion before they're officially announced. It's like beta-testing for your project idea. 

[quote="I4L"]I know what I'd like to see. I know what kind of objectives I'd like to see. I know what I'm personally into. I basically asked someone more experienced to pick up the gauntlet.[/quote]

I can't speak for anyone else, but here's why I'm not going to: I have lots of other projects of my own to do; I'd be happy to see something like this happen because I like to see a rich diversity of genres and content, but I'm not that into horror myself; I think it's actively a good thing for more people to get involved with community events and would rather see a novice do it than someone "established"; and I get a metric asston of requests of the form "X would be good for IF/the community/the fulfillment of my personal tastes, so please make that happen." It's a matter of self-defense at this point that my response has to be some form of "hey, sounds like you're the one with the vision here! Go for it." And maybe some getting-started advice if I think of any, and/or a couple of links to resources if I know of some relevant ones.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=40#p27626
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-12-04 05:57:06

[quote="emshort"]Only you have the unique passion for the specific thing you want to do.[/quote]

[Jacek rolls his eyes.]

Fortune cookie, anyone?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3850&start=0#p27648
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: A story of nosing around which has no moral.
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-12-04 06:53:14

I was looking around in the glulx section of ifarchive and found some games that seem to have no mentions or reviews at IFDB or IFwiki - EG The Thief of Woven Woods.

Then I saw an educational game there called 'Counting Crabs'. I typed 'counting crabs' into ifdb and was taken directly to the page for a game called 'Greystone'. Why did that happen?

Sorry, this story has no structure or moral, except maybe it's fun to go looking around for undocumented IF games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=40#p27649
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-04 07:00:51

[quote="emshort"]I can't speak for anyone else, but here's why I'm not going to[/quote]

All good advice. My statement was more directed toward the people who [i]do[/i] have an active interest in the (sub)genre, who are familiar with the community and do have the time to devote to it. Particularly those who have been actively involved in or following this conversation. Ben suggested that "something" could be done. Not saying he needs to take it on either. I just threw it out there, more than once, that if someone wants to go ahead and take it on, I'd be in. Otherwise, I don't mind doing it myself eventually, as my plate is somewhat full at the moment as well. Tech isn't a problem, it would just be a matter of deciding what the parameters would be.

I'll keep your responses in mind if and when that time should come.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3570&start=20#p27650
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SPAM
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-04 07:05:32

Lots o' spam this morning. Lots and lots of it. Many long pages of spam. It's not very delicious. I prefer my spam in bite-sized portions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3570&start=20#p27651
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SPAM
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-12-04 07:22:16

I contacted rioshin. He said he doesn't remember the password for his account, or the password for the email address he signed up with, if that email address even exists any more... Long story short, it looks like Merk is the only person who can do anything about it at the moment.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3839&start=10#p27652
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Becoming another character mid-conversation
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-04 07:28:07

[quote="capmikee"]you ask nicely[/quote]
Please

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3840&start=0#p27653
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Getting over the hump
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-12-04 07:50:22

I envision the setting, the characters, the theme, the one true path and alternate paths in detail before I code them. For the plot, I come up with a outline with the one true path and any alternate paths that work with the story and that's all I need. Then I begin implementing. This probably results in a game that doesn't have as many choices, but if you go over to [url=http://tads.ifdb.org]ifdb[/url], you'll find that people will hate whatever you make, so as far as popularity goes, it doesn't matter anyways. The actual puzzles I work out as I'm working on the game. My games are not puzzle-heavy or even have hard puzzles in them, because I'm an atmosphere kind of guy. So, this approach works for me. 

You can spend months planning something and never get started on a project, or you can understand that you're imperfect and you will make imperfect things, and just go for it. The key is to shoot for excellence, not perfection.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=40#p27654
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-12-04 08:28:15

Fair enough. Sorry if I seemed cranky.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3570&start=20#p27655
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SPAM
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-12-04 08:53:47

Ben has mailed Merk about the volumes of spam, but until he responds, there isn't anything we can do other than delete it as it appears.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=60#p27656
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-12-04 09:54:07

[quote="Peter Pears"]Funny. Where you see trivialising, I see an opening scene which, in retrospect, is rather heavy handed in its symbolism, but which as a mood-setter did a fine job of making me expect a certain setting, only to yank the rug from under my feet later on.[/quote]

You're reducing the game to its twist-value.

[quote="Peter Pears"]It's bugging me a bit that no-one seems to talk much about their first experience of the game - where the main theme isn't made clear.[/quote]

That's the consequence of reducing the game to its twist-value. It becomes a disposable item, since it can only surprise you once.

[quote="Peter Pears"]I'm perfectly happy with letting a certain symbol be less meaningful if it's to communicate something to me as a player/reader. Yes, it's better if I can later dissect the symbol and see how rich it is, but if it worked the first time around, I'm happy.[/quote]


When you release a literary text -- and I believe IF games are literary texts -- you are inviting people to visit your planet. Planet Thornton has a department of classical studies, a gay bar frequented by Caesar, a seedy strip club full of T.S. Eliot-quoting drunks, a statue of Pynchon, a cheeky Space Moose and a bunch of other stuff. Planet Gijsbers is dimly lit. It's hard to see much, and the little you do see is symbolic, never literal, always referring to something beyond itself. As you explore Planet Gijsbers and realise that the axe isn't really an axe, that it can't be swung, and that the wife object isn't even a proper object but a dumb noun with an EXAMINE routine attached to it, you come to the conclusion that you've been invited to the planet of a young man who is a bore to his friends and a nag to his family and whose imagination couldn't fill a thimble, much less a planet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=40#p27657
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-04 10:04:56

[quote="emshort"]Fair enough. Sorry if I seemed cranky.[/quote]

No ma'am, not at all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=40#p27658
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-04 11:13:02

[quote="severedhand"]My problem with Anchorhead was basically that it was too hard, and it has one of those walkthroughs that can just torch your experience if you have to go to it. No separation of different problems. I had to scour the transcript of commands looking for helpful stuff. In the process it made me see, 'What? I missed A? I missed B, too? I missed, C?' - the apprehension at once of all I'd missed after the amount of time I'd spent on it already made my spirit klunk onto the floor, and I stopped.[/quote]

Rewriting the walkthrough might be a good project for somebody! Maybe it won't be that much work to take the existing walkthrough, divide it up, and include a few comments about what problems the player is working on in each part. It'd get used, and I suspect it'd be much appreciated.

(Particularly by me. This is one of those things I'm not volunteering to do, because I want to use the improved walkthrough myself.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=60#p27659
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-12-04 11:27:13

That's probably the best post you wrote in this thread. Keep it up.

[quote]You're reducing the game to its twist-value.[/quote]

I wouldn't call it "reduce". Possibly "focusing", because the twist-value is a big part of it, and a big part of the overall experience - that moment when you re-evaluate all that's gone before in light of what you've learned. Badly done, twist-value is dull, cheap, trite. I didn't find it badly done here, because it was preceeded by rather obvious symbolism (meaning, it didn't "fall from the sky in a parachute", as we say in Portugal). I get it that what bugs you is how obvious it was, in retrospect.

But the value of the game isn't all in that twist-value, and just because the symbolism is a bit heavy-handed (once you've played it through - until then, it establishes setting and mood, which is a very important part of an immersive experience) it doesn't mean there aren't parts worthy of reliving. I found it very curious to revisit the first bedroom scene, interacting with everything in very many ways, knowing what I know now. That part I found to be very well done. Then there's the conversation with the gargoyle, which becomes much more meaningful - and that conversation is preceded by the wolf scene, which is at once something completely different from the rest of the story (in which it analyses the actions and motivations of an IF player, and forces him then to acknowledge them - something very interesting in IF, where actions are usually much more important than motivation) and completely, er, related to it, excuse my bad English (in which it forces the PC - distint from the player - to take action and then to evaluate it, which sums up the overall theme of the game: taking an actions, realising the motivation behind it, feel the consequences... and then hopefully to dare to take a different action).

There are scenes in the Baron which I remember well for the emotional response they evoked in me. I'm more than willing to overlook a bit of heavy-handedness here and there (especially since it didn't feel that heavy-handed to me).

[quote]Planet Gijsbers is dimly lit. It's hard to see much, and the little you do see is symbolic, never literal, always referring to something beyond itself.[/quote]

Heh, that's actually a bit more like Planet Ingold. [emote];)[/emote] Jon, I don't mean to offend you, but however much I like All Roads, and I do, Pudlo just described how it makes me feel.

Maybe we should just accept that we're looking through different telescopes. Planet Gisjbers does feel a bit pretentious to me, at times - not in a bad way, but rather like... hmm, like I enter a pub in Manchester and am greeted by a bartender speaking flawless BBC English. A bit high-tone. Doesn't bother me, and I like how that tone meshes in with his stories, be they a tale about actions and motivations like The Baron, a story about how far one is willing to go and to self-sacrifice for the future like in Fate (a game which I feel has some issues as a "game" but which I highly respect and admire for its ambition), or Figaro, which I always considered to be the essential Gisjbers when reduced to the smallest possible particle without losing any of its properties.

The rest of your sentence you devote to issues that reveal only that a bit more beta-testing couldn't have hurt. That's all they reveal.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=60#p27660
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2011-12-04 11:55:15

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"] Before you write anything about adults having sexual relationships with children/adolescents, it's a good idea to have read Nabokov, Hardy and Petronius. I can see you people scratching your plebeian heads and going: "Who the fuck is Petronius? Who the hell is Hardy?" That's a BIG part of the problem. You ALWAYS write within a tradition. When you don't know the tradition you're writing in, you end up writing [i]The Baron[/i].[/quote]

OK, but "You plebeians lack my vast knowledge when it comes to adults banging the shit out of kids" is probably not the slick burn you think it is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=40#p27661
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-04 12:05:28

Not entirely sure I follow. What's wrong with the walkthrough as it is now?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=40#p27662
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-04 12:08:14

Actually, [url=http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/solutions/anchor.sol]this one[/url] looks like exactly what I was envisioning, so never mind. ([url=http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/solutions/AnchorSolve.txt]This one[/url] is the sort of thing that's no use unless you're willing to type it in exactly.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3850&start=0#p27663
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A story of nosing around which has no moral.
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-12-04 12:09:27

[quote="severedhand"]I typed 'counting crabs' into ifdb and was taken directly to the page for a game called 'Greystone'. Why did that happen?
[/quote]

A curse maybe? (heh-heh)  [emote]8-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=40#p27664
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-12-04 12:13:41

Oh wow, that is a nice walkthrough. Might have to give the game another whirl now with the use of that. I think part of my problem playing Anchorhead is that I was interested in things I either could you at the time or weren't important, but completely overlooking things that were essential to moving the game along.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=60#p27665
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Miseri / DateTime: 2011-12-04 12:51:41

Y'know, it has always been my impression that the incestuous child abuse aspect of "De Baron" is not in fact the central focus of the story: it is merely a tool by which the main theme of moral discernment might be illustrated.  As such, I would disagree that the game belongs in the same tradition as Nabokov; in my opinion, it has more in common with Waugh and Greene; and I would point out Trollope's "The Warden" as another tale of discernment.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3581&start=0#p27666
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: IF paratroopers needed for Limbs of Osiris
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-12-04 12:57:27

[quote="Ice Cream Jonsey"][quote="Jacek Pudlo"]4) lots and lots of superweird sex[/quote]

Chiefly: having it outside a Warsaw prison.[/quote]

As of now, [i]Limbs of Osiris[/i] features a pair of lesbian giraffes doing a 69, pistoning each other's vulvas. I'm still looking for testers, so if lesbian giraffes are your thing, PM me.

No, I wasn't talking to you, Robb. You've been sucking on too many Polish pickles to appreciate the finer things in life, such as lesbian giraffes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=70#p27667
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-04 13:59:40

[quote]You ALWAYS write within a tradition. When you don't know the tradition you're writing in, you end up writing The Baron.[/quote]
Quite possibly, when you don't know what tradition someone's writing in, you risk end up writing not-quite-a-review of it. 
Supposing Victor hasn't read Lolita (and with the rest of the IF plebs has never heard of neither Hardy nor Petronius), what reason is there to suppose that [i]The Baron[/i] IS written in the tradition of Nabokov, Hardy, and Petronius (even supposing there is such a tradition in the first place)? The matter of child/adult "sexual relationship"? In that case, why not equally well assume that [i]The Baron[/i] is written rather in the tradition of [i]Jin Ping Mei[/i]? Or does [i]Jin Ping Mei[/i] belong to the same tradition with [i]Satyricon[/i]?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3851&start=0#p27668
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I7] Tying two things with 1 object
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-12-04 14:40:11

A few searches didn't turn up anything on this, though I figure it has been discussed before. I am looking at this example [url]http://inform7.com/learn/man/ex316.html#e316[/url] and wondering how best to modify this to my needs. 

Here is a current test room code I'm working with that's a modified version of this example:

[code]
"Hose Test" by Jizaboz

The Garden is a room. The hose is a thing in the Garden. The description of the hose is "An ordinary rubber hose[if the hose is part of something (called the parent)]. It is attached to [the parent][end if]."

A faucet is a thing in Garden. The description is "An ordinary faucet."  The handle is a thing in Garden. The description is "An ordinary spray handle."

After examining something when the hose is part of the noun:
	say "The hose is attached to [the noun]!"

[Here is the essential point: whenever we ATTACH HOSE TO something, it becomes part of that object.]

Instead of tying the hose to something:
	now the hose is part of the second noun;
	say "You attach [the hose] to [the second noun]."

[And of course the hose CAN be attached to more than one thing at a time. (But not itself)]

Instead of tying the hose to something when the hose is part of something:
	if the hose is part of the second noun:
		say "[The hose] is already attached to [the second noun]." instead;
	otherwise:
		now the hose is part of the second noun;
	say "You attach [the hose] to [the second noun]."

Instead of tying the hose to the hose:
	say "You can not attach the hose to itself"

Instead of taking the hose when the hose is part of something:
	say "Try detaching the hose first."

[Much of the rest is just tidying to make sure that the player's commands are redirected into the right syntax.]

Instead of tying something to the hose:
	try tying the hose to the noun.

Instead of putting the hose on something:
	try tying the hose to the second noun.

Instead of inserting the hose into something:
	try tying the hose to the second noun.

Understand the command "connect" as "tie".
[/code]

Here is the result of a test play:

[code]Hose Test
An Interactive Fiction by Jizaboz
Release 1 / Serial number 111204 / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N) SD

Garden
You can see a hose, a faucet and a handle here.

>x hose
An ordinary rubber hose.

>x faucet
An ordinary faucet.

>x handle
An ordinary spray handle.

>attach hose to faucet
You attach the hose to the faucet.

>x hose
An ordinary rubber hose. It is attached to the faucet.

>x faucet
An ordinary faucet.

The hose is attached to the faucet!

>attach hose to handle
You attach the hose to the handle.

>x hose
An ordinary rubber hose. It is attached to the handle.

>x handle
An ordinary spray handle.

The hose is attached to the handle!

>[/code]

I would like the description to read "The hose is attached to the handle AND the faucet" and all variations thereof. This is something I've tinkered with at various times since I began learning Inform and still don't grasp.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3851&start=0#p27669
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Tying two things with 1 object
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-04 15:01:07

The hose can be part of only one object at a time (the handle or the faucet). That's a basic rule of the I7 component relation. So the way you've chosen to model this isn't going to work.

The easiest fix, for this case, is to reverse one of the relationships. The hose becomes part of the faucet, but the handle becomes part of the hose. It's then easy to write descriptions that handle all four cases.

As a bonus, if the player picks up the hose with the handle attached, the handle will automatically come with it. (The faucet is presumably fixed in place.)

This model works for "big-to-small" attachment chains. It wouldn't work if you wanted to attach the hose between two fixed objects.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3852&start=0#p27670
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Gamebook recommendations
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-12-04 15:19:55

There was a thread on the forum a few days ago that mentioned gamebooks and how awesome they can be. Anyone want to make some specific recommendations? Personally, I [i]think[/i] I'm most interested in books that provide a bit more granularity for player action than the baseline, but this thread doesn't have to be only about me. Also, I may be wrong about what I'm most interested in, so please feel free to suggest what [i]you[/i] think I (and others) should be looking at.

Thanks!
Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3851&start=0#p27671
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Tying two things with 1 object
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-12-04 15:28:00

[quote="zarf"][b]The hose can be part of only one object at a time[/b] (the handle or the faucet). That's a basic rule of the I7 component relation. So the way you've chosen to model this isn't going to work.
[/quote]

Ah, I suspected that after seeing the behavior in my example. Thanks for confirming it.  [emote]:)[/emote] 

[quote="zarf"]
The easiest fix, for this case, is to reverse one of the relationships. The hose becomes part of the faucet, but the handle becomes part of the hose. It's then easy to write descriptions that handle all four cases.
[/quote]

Cool, that makes sense. I was trying to do something like that with my last attempt before this.

[quote="zarf"]As a bonus, if the player picks up the hose with the handle attached, the handle will automatically come with it. (The faucet is presumably fixed in place.)

This model works for "big-to-small" attachment chains. It wouldn't work if you wanted to attach the hose between two fixed objects.[/quote]

You presume correctly. The faucet should be 'fixed in place' while the handle is not. The hose itself is not. Thanks for the advice, Zarf. I'll try to add a post to this thread soon with the desired example code. I'm still kind of shady as to how this will all be described, but maybe I'll have more understanding after edit this I code a bit as advised.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3851&start=0#p27672
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Tying two things with 1 object
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-04 15:32:26

Have you looked at the [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rex326.html#e326]Otranto example[/url]? That implements a rope that can be attached to two objects, though it goes a completely different way than the way you've been going. Not sure what the advantages of each approach are.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3851&start=0#p27673
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Tying two things with 1 object
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-12-04 15:51:05

[quote="matt w"]Have you looked at the [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rex326.html#e326]Otranto example[/url]?[/quote]

I had looked at that before and thank you for reminding me of it. Although at first glance months back I thought it did more than I wanted it to, "anchoring" the player when holding something attached to something fixed in place is important here and that probably would have been my next question. 

I think I have enough to go on now for how I want to do this. Thanks again guys.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3852&start=0#p27674
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Gamebook recommendations
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-04 16:12:18

I'm writing a series about CYOA/gamebooks over [url=http://maga-dogg.livejournal.com/tag/cyoa]here[/url], although it's focused more on structure than on works that are excellent per se. (So I'm very interested in what other people have to say, too, because the genre's pretty splintered; you could play Fighting Fantasy for years without ever becoming aware of Choose Your Own Adventure, and vice versa. There are certainly entire subgenres of CYOA that I don't know about.)

Two above-average things (that I have yet to deal with) are Jason Shiga's [i]Meanwhile[/i] (now available in a zarf-made iPhone/iPad app, as well as the traditional hard-copy) and the various efforts of [url=http://www.choiceofgames.com/]Choice of Games.[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3853&start=0#p27675
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Testing if an object is a certain type - using tables
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-12-04 17:10:26

I wanted to have a table of kinds of things that I could use to test if the player is carrying a certain kind of object (rather than a specific object), but I can't figure out how to make it work. Here's a very simple example:

[code]
"Kinds"

Equipment room is a room;

ball is a kind of thing.

hat is a kind of thing. a hat is always wearable.

bat is a kind of thing.

table of stuff
type	message
ball	"It's a ball of some kind. You could probably throw it."
hat	"It's a hat of some kind. You could probably wear it."
bat	"It's some kind of bat. You could use it to hit things."

baseball is a ball in the equipment room.
basketball is a ball in the equipment room.
cap is a hat in the equipment room.
cricket bat is a bat in the equipment room.
tennis racket is a bat in the equipment room.

Instead of examining something:
	if the noun is a type listed in the table of stuff:
		say "[message entry]";
	otherwise:
		continue the action;
[/code]

It should, if I was to say, "x baseball", see that the baseball is a kind of ball and therefore display the associated message. Needless to say, it doesn't. What's the right syntax here? How do I say if the noun is of a particular kind? (with the kind taken from a table)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3853&start=0#p27676
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Testing if an object is a certain type - using tables
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-04 17:29:18

Tables aren't necessary.

[code]
"Kinds" by I4L

A ball is a kind of thing. The description of a ball is usually "It's a ball of some kind. You could probably throw it."

A hat is a kind of thing. A hat is usually wearable. The description of a hat is "It's a hat of some kind. You could probably wear it."

Equipment Room is a room. "There is a lot of sports gear lying around."

Instead of taking a ball when player carries a ball:
	say "Hey, buddy! You can't play with more than one ball!"

Baseball is a ball in the Equipment Room.
Basketball is a ball in the Equipment Room.
Helmet is a hat in the Equipment Room.

Test me with "x baseball/x basketball/x helmet/get baseball/get basketball/drop baseball/get basketball/get baseball/drop all/get all/wear helmet"
[/code]

Updated the example to show rudimentary testing of carrying kinds, which I think is what the initial question was?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3852&start=0#p27677
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Gamebook recommendations
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-04 17:36:19

[quote="ektemple"]Anyone want to make some specific recommendations?[/quote]

The center of the gamebook universe online is Demian Katz' excellent site:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.gamebooks.org/">http://www.gamebooks.org/</a>

It's an amazing work; he reviews, he posts scans of pieces that might be missing (character-sheet bookmarks and other stuff that gets lost) and so on.

As for specific gamebooks, I'm contractually obligated to pimp [i]Ring of Thieves,[/i] of course!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3853&start=0#p27678
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Testing if an object is a certain type - using tables
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-04 17:42:09

I'm also pretty sure you're missing something in that table look up/say. But as I don't use tables, I couldn't tell you what without going to look it up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=70#p27679
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-04 17:46:04

[quote="Ice Cream Jonsey"]OK, but "You plebeians lack my vast knowledge when it comes to adults banging the shit out of kids" is probably not the slick burn you think it is.[/quote]

And while I've never read Petronius (saw the movie, doubt it bears a strong resemblance, content to miss the relevant in-jokes in a certain semi-recent work of IF), I'm entirely comfortable saying that Nabokov and Hardy are both tedious, slogging crap, and the idea that anyone [i]needs [/i]to read them for any reason (other than to get a passing grade in some soul-grinding class designed to turn you away from reading forever) is just such a bland, emptyheaded Uncle-Tom notion. Pudlo's fetishizing of anointed (rather than quality) writing reveals his limitations far more than anything [i]else [/i]he might fetishize.

[quote="Felix"][...] what reason is there to suppose that [i]The Baron[/i] IS written in the tradition of Nabokov, Hardy, and Petronius (even supposing there is such a tradition in the first place)? [/quote]

None. One of Pudlo's chief trolling methods is arbitrarily declaring conditions which bear no relationship to reality (like his broken-record Lucy-Van-Pelt-style bubblegum-card thing). Like all of his techniques, it's either fundamentally dishonest or shockingly ignorant, depending on your guess about the Pudlo character and the person (and/or AI and/or spam-generation script) behind it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3853&start=0#p27680
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Testing if an object is a certain type - using tables
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-12-04 17:48:32

Thanks but, I know tables are [i]strictly[/i] necessary, but neither is my very simple example the be all and end all of the real problem I'm trying to tackle. What I have to do is test whether a player has done something with a number of different types (kinds) of object. I'm using the table so I can blank at rows as they are done. When the table is empty, I know all the preconditions have been met. 

As an example, change my above example with this:

[quote]
Instead of examining something:
	if the noun is a type listed in the table of stuff:
		say "[message entry]";
		blank out the whole row;
	otherwise:
		continue the action;
		
every turn:
	if the number of rows in the table of stuff is zero:
		say "You've examined one of everything!";
	otherwise:
		say "there are still [number of rows in the table of stuff] types of things to examine."
[/quote]

Even this doesn't quite capture everything I'm trying to do, because I want to also enforce the order. So the second row doesn't get blanked out until the first row has been blanked out.

I know I could tackle this several different ways, but using a bunch of properties to do it seems like a massive pain in the ass versus keeping track of things in a table.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=50#p27681
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-04 18:01:42

[quote="Jizaboz"]Oh wow, that is a nice walkthrough. Might have to give the game another whirl now with the use of that. [/quote]

Ditto that. I've tried Anchorhead a handful of times, but I've always just wandered away from it again, chalking it up to different strokes. But a good walkthrough might at least give me the grand tour of what others groove so hard on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3853&start=0#p27682
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Testing if an object is a certain type - using tables
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-04 18:08:23

I haven't... mentioned... properties...?

I kinda get what you're trying to do. But I don't think you can define "kinds" inside of a table, so maybe there's some confusion there. Your example could work okay, I suppose, but that table won't have anything to do with "kinds".

I'll fiddle with it. Far as I'm concerned, there's [i]always[/i] a better way than tables. If someone with more table-love doesn't come along before me and knock it out of the park, I'll let you know what I come up with.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3853&start=0#p27683
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Testing if an object is a certain type - using tables
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-12-04 18:19:53

The description of a ball is a property of the ball. But anyway, you can actually define kinds of things using the a table (it's in the manual on the page about defining things in a table), but that's not what I'm doing either. What I have is a column of type "kind", which inform doesn't seem to have a problem with (although I can't specify in brackets that it's "kind" for some strange reason). The problem seems to be with the attempt to compare the noun with a kind in the table. 

You can do this:

if the noun is a ball

but for some reason this doesn't seem to work:

if the noun is a type listed in the table of stuff.

Even though the type should resolve to a kind (for example, ball).

And I'll give you that the tables in inform are often really awkward to use (inform is really fussy about the [i]exact[/i] way you reference a table). But they are useful once in a while.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3853&start=0#p27684
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Testing if an object is a certain type - using tables
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-04 18:27:00

In the documentation example that you're referring to, the "kind" was defined outside of the table. The description and some properties were defined inside of it. 

Anyway, moot point. I can't find anything in the documentation anywhere that tells you how to compare something with a specific item entry from the table. Several three star examples about how to look up information on the table, but that's not what I'm looking for. I have the row that I want. I have the value I want to compare it to. The words "equal to" and "corresponds to" cause Inform to choke...

I hate tables.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=50#p27685
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-04 18:50:36

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="Jizaboz"]Oh wow, that is a nice walkthrough. Might have to give the game another whirl now with the use of that. [/quote]

Ditto that. I've tried Anchorhead a handful of times, but I've always just wandered away from it again, chalking it up to different strokes. But a good walkthrough might at least give me the grand tour of what others groove so hard on.[/quote]
A lot of the appeal of Anchorhead lies in its old-school play style: it's designed to be played over days or weeks, getting stuck a lot, switching between a number of different puzzles and taking breaks until you get one to work. I think that heavy walkthrough reliance would risk missing a central part of what it's loved for.

Light walkthrough reliance, now, that I'm all in favour of.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3852&start=0#p27686
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Gamebook recommendations
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-12-04 19:05:58

Thanks, guys. I'm familiar with everything mentioned so far. (Well, I downloaded Ring of Thieves a few weeks ago but haven't had a chance to play through it yet. Maybe tonight!) I highly recommend maga's blog series on branching narratives to anyone who hasn't read it yet.

I've used gamebooks.org to look up a number of things, including character sheets. Unfortunately, going there for gamebook recommendations is on a par with visiting the IF Archive for IF recommendations. There's [i]tons[/i] of stuff, but not much in the way of an entry point... 

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3853&start=0#p27687
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Testing if an object is a certain type - using tables
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-04 19:31:55

wjousts is right about defining kinds with tables -- I don't think there are any examples in the documentation, but it's mentioned briefly at the end of section 15.16 which refers you to the source for "Reliques of Tolti-Aph." [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=27298#p27298]Here's a shorter example.[/url]

Buuut that won't help us here, because that example isn't about retrieving the kind from the table. And here the problem isn't really about retrieving kinds from tables, it's about what to do when you've retrieved the kind. There may be a syntax that allows you to test whether an object is of a certain kind, once you've retrieved the kind from a table, but I don't know it. It seems like the sort of thing that you ought to be able to do with kind variables, but those really make my head hurt. [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1756&start=0]This thread[/url] might have some ideas, but they seem to involve I6 or not work or both. 

However, gravel's comment in there points the way. Instead of trying to get a kind out of the table and see whether a thing belongs to it, give everything of a kind a throwaway property and store that in the table. Thus:

[code]"Kinds"

Equipment room is a room;

ball is a kind of thing.

hat is a kind of thing. a hat is always wearable.

bat is a kind of thing.

A thing has some text called typetext. The typetext of a ball is "ball". The typetext of a bat is "bat". The typetext of a hat is "hat".

table of stuff
typetext	message
"ball"	  "It's a ball of some kind. You could probably throw it."
"hat"	    "It's a hat of some kind. You could probably wear it."
"bat"  	"It's some kind of bat. You could use it to hit things."

The baseball is a ball in the equipment room.
The basketball is a ball in the equipment room.
The cap is a hat in the equipment room.
The cricket bat is a bat in the equipment room.
The tennis racket is a bat in the equipment room.

Instead of examining something:
	if the typetext of the noun is a typetext listed in the table of stuff:
		say "[message entry]";
		blank out the whole row;
	otherwise:
		continue the action.

every turn:
	if the number of filled rows in the table of stuff is zero:
		say "You've examined one of everything!";
	otherwise:
		say "There are still [number of filled rows in the table of stuff] types of things to examine."[/code]

Couple of notes:
You need to say "filled rows" to get the number of rows you haven't blanked out -- "the number of rows in the table of stuff" will always be 3.
I added articles to the names of your individual things in order to make the output more elegant.
The table may have copypasted funny; watch the tabs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=50#p27688
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-12-04 19:38:50

[quote="maga"]A lot of the appeal of Anchorhead lies in its old-school play style: it's designed to be played over days or weeks, getting stuck a lot, switching between a number of different puzzles and taking breaks until you get one to work. I think that heavy walkthrough reliance would risk missing a central part of what it's loved for.

Light walkthrough reliance, now, that I'm all in favour of.[/quote]

Light walkthrough reliance is not possible with Anchorhead only because its walkthrough is a tight transcript of typed commands. If, as matt suggested, some kind soul who has played the game through (to avoid spoiling the whole thing for themselves) could produce a more clue-based/contextual/divvied-up type hintbook for the peeps who haven't, I think future generations would benefit. Also, I would benefit today!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3853&start=0#p27689
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Testing if an object is a certain type - using tables
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-12-04 19:40:09

Thanks matt w. It's kind of annoying that I can't just test the kind, but your solution seems to be probably the easiest way to handle it. I'll give it a try.

And thanks I4L. Hopefully one day you'll find a space in your heart for inform tables! Maybe after another couple more versions of Inform when they (hopefully) become easier to work with.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3839&start=10#p27690
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Becoming another character mid-conversation
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-12-04 19:43:46

You know what would be cool? Becoming another character mid-sentence.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3852&start=0#p27691
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Gamebook recommendations
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-04 19:53:29

What genre do you most enjoy for game stuff? I'd be happy to offer more starter points.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=50#p27692
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-04 19:58:28

[quote="severedhand"][quote="maga"]A lot of the appeal of Anchorhead lies in its old-school play style: it's designed to be played over days or weeks, getting stuck a lot, switching between a number of different puzzles and taking breaks until you get one to work. I think that heavy walkthrough reliance would risk missing a central part of what it's loved for.

Light walkthrough reliance, now, that I'm all in favour of.[/quote]

Light walkthrough reliance is not possible with Anchorhead only because its walkthrough is a tight transcript of typed commands. If, as matt suggested, some kind soul who has played the game through (to avoid spoiling the whole thing for themselves) could produce a more clue-based/contextual/divvied-up type hintbook for the peeps who haven't, I think future generations would benefit. Also, I would benefit today![/quote]

They have, or at least they've come up with a more narrative walkthrough -- check my previous post (or the walkthrough section of if-archive.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3353&start=10#p27693
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Annual Lime/Coconut IF MiniComp!
User: SOdhner / DateTime: 2011-12-04 20:11:03

It's December!

That means you have the rest of this month to send in an entry to the First Annual Lime/Coconut IF MiniComp!  Right now, while a number of people have expressed interest only a few have sent actual entries in.

[b]WHAT THAT MEANS IF YOU WERE THINKING ABOUT ENTERING:[/b]

It means you have less competition than you may have been previously expecting!  How exciting for you!  If you haven't started yet, you can probably do something pretty cool in a month.  It's possible that you will be a little distracted due to the various holidays taking place around this time of year, but even so I have faith in you, hypothetical person!  Get going!

[b]WHAT IT MEANS IF YOU HAVE ALREADY ENTERED:[/b]

If I don't get more people participating, then as promised in the original announcement the contest will be called off and no prize will be awarded.  I will re-announce the contest at some later date and notify you via email, and you can let me know if you want to re-enter.  Your code will not be used or released in any way if there's no contest.  The details of the contest are not guaranteed to remain exactly the same when re-announced, but are highly likely to do so.

[b]WHAT IT MEANS IF YOU WEREN'T PLANNING ON ENTERING ANYWAY:[/b]

Nothing, really.  You can just carry on with your day.  But hey, since you're reading this there must be some small spark of interest.  Think it over again, this time remembering that the odds are (at least for the moment) pretty favorable.  I mean, yeah, it won't be determined by random so it's not just about how many people entered but don't sell yourself short!  You're talented and have good ideas, you can totally compete with the others!

[b]WHAT IT MEANS IF YOU ARE A LIME AND/OR A COCONUT:[/b]

It's a pretty safe bet to say that if you are a lime or a coconut you can't read, or even ask someone to read this to you.  In fact, most studies indicate that neither limes nor coconuts have brains and wouldn't be able to comprehend or participate in this contest.  Although coconuts do have some things in common with mammals.  I mean, they have fur (of a sort) and produce milk (of a sort).  Anyway, I remain fairly confident that what is needed here is a central nervous system (of a sort).  And even then, not all things with brains are up to the task.  Lemurs, for example, make terrible text adventures.  Always a "guess-the-verb" situation with those guys.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3852&start=0#p27694
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Gamebook recommendations
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-12-04 20:28:15

Thanks for the offer! I don't care much about the genre--horror, fantasy, western, whatever. (I guess I often find space opera to be a bit of a bore, but if a given piece is really good, then I won't flinch from that either.) I don't want to leave you without any guidance, though, so here is some more background: I'm mostly looking to explore game design ideas. What works--for me--in simple branching narrative? How does procedural stuff (stats, die rolls, free movement or magic a la the Middle Earth Quest books) interact with the branching narrative to make interaction more compelling? What worlds of stuff have I missed by having perused a fairly narrow range of things?

Here are some things that I've looked at, in addition to the stuff mentioned above:

[url=http://www.gamebooks.org/show_series.php?id=270]Middle Earth/Tolkien Quest gamebooks[/url] (first book, enjoyed it)
[url=http://www.gamebooks.org/show_series.php?id=145]Fabled Lands[/url] (interesting, may be a lot of potential in extending the approach)
Fighting Fantasy
Sorcery! (to a lesser extent than FF)
Choose Your Own Adventure (don't need more of this!)
Master of Ravenloft and others in the [url=http://www.gamebooks.org/show_series.php?id=21]AD&D series[/url] (though it's been 20 years or so and I need to revisit)
Lone Wolf (played one of these electronically recently--wasn't as fun as I remembered it being as a kid)

I hope that helps!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=50#p27695
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-04 20:34:35

[quote="maga"]A lot of the appeal of Anchorhead lies in its old-school play style: it's designed to be played over days or weeks, getting stuck a lot, switching between a number of different puzzles and taking breaks until you get one to work.[/quote]

Which I usually love, but I've already given Anchorhead multiple shots at engaging me and ... it just didn't work out. The writing just doesn't smack my particular buzzer, is all.

But because I do love Lovecraftian gaming in general (and because Anchorhead has a unique place in my relationship to IF ... it is, in a very real sense, [i]exactly [/i]why I'm here) I feel hopeful that a walkthrough play might offer me an opportunity to appreciate it, and I'd like to appreciate it. I'm more than willing to meet it 75% of the way, and maybe a walkthrough can provide the missing 25%.

And its on my mind lately because Gentry is taunting the universe on Facebook by eating at some of my favorite Austin restaurants, while I'm stuck in Denver, which is like a culinary hole of suck (I love Denver in so many ways, none of which involve restaurant food).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=50#p27696
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-12-04 20:59:49

[quote="matt w"]They have, or at least they've come up with a more narrative walkthrough -- check my previous post (or the walkthrough section of if-archive.)[/quote]

Oh, duh me - the link everyone's been talking about. Thanks [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3348&start=50#p27697
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ectocomp 2011
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-12-04 21:05:01

Congrats to the winners (I enjoyed #1 very much--not surprised it won) and thanks for holding this--and giving an extension!

Thanks to the voters, too. I'd have no idea how to vote on SpeedIF, but I hope they had as much fun as I had writing.

I also have no idea how to get the activation email around my ISP's spam filter, or I'd have said thanks over there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3852&start=0#p27698
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Gamebook recommendations
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-04 21:07:43

[quote="ektemple"]I'm mostly looking to explore game design ideas. What works--for me--in simple branching narrative? How does procedural stuff (stats, die rolls, free movement or magic a la the Middle Earth Quest books) interact with the branching narrative to make interaction more compelling? What worlds of stuff have I missed by having perused a fairly narrow range of things?[/quote]

Aha. That's important stuff. My recommendations for "start here for game design study" would be very different from my "play this 'cause it rocks" recommendations [emote]:)[/emote]

Honestly, [i]Ring of Thieves[/i] is probably not worth your time, in that case; it's traditional in terms of game design. I daresay it's a good work (though I did it a few geologic eras ago, I think it holds up reasonably well; I still like the characters), but it's good because it's good ... it breaks no game-design ground.

Re the Iron Crown free-movement books: I think the best examples are really in their Narnia books rather than in their Middle-Earth ones, in terms of really cracking open what can be done with free movement on a map. That said, I'm of the opinion that if you push that past a certain point, you've escaped the gravitational pull of what gamebooks do best, and have wandered into territory best handled by computers.

Re Fabled Lands: A very ambitious bit of work really elevated by the quality of the writing and artwork, IMO. Conceptually, again, I think it's straining at the edges of the gamebook sweet-spot, but they pulled it off with such panache it's impossible to fault them for it [emote]:)[/emote]

Re Fighting Fantasy: Wildly varying quality. Two (count 'em, two) Steve Jacksons. You pays your hours and you takes your chances. 100% traditional, though, with nothing new to show you in terms of game design.

Re Sorcery!: The one obvious bit of game-design gimmickry is both clever and effectively atmospheric, IMO. Worth knowing well, if you only know it in passing.

Master of Ravenloft and other AD&D books in that series: Some of those are pretty good, though many of them (including some of the good ones) suffer from long stretches of text without meaningful choice.

Lone Wolf: I think Lone Wolf peaked in quality with Caverns of Kalte (the finest by far, IMO) but Dever was experimenting the whole time, so the books often have dramatically different structures, often worth more for studying than enjoying. I think the World of Lone Wolf series (only four volumes, not by Dever) has better writing, better game design, and holds a much stronger atmosphere throughout. Ironically (or perhaps educationally) both series fall shortest when they try to take you to the Daziarn ... I think the fantasy-astral-plane thing is just too abstract to hold together with any sense of travel.

Hm. A couple of recommendations then:

Faerie Mound of Dragonkind, published by TSR. Not in the same series as Master of Ravenloft, but in another series entirely: large-format, heavily-illustrated with discrete sections representing physical areas. Not free-movmeent of the kind ICE experimented with, but a different sort of hybrid thing. They only did a couple of these (including one espionage one), and they're all kind of interesting, but I think Faerie Mound shows off the format best (even if it's kind of a nonsensical adventure). Runner-up for TSR would be some of their "red plastic window" solitaire stuff, which are very free-movement indeed.

The Tunnels & Trolls solitaires: Technically, these are solitaires rather than Gamebooks (so is Ring of Thieves, come to that) and like any multi-author series, they're all over the place. But they're worth studying both for their energetic style and open-minded attitude toward (in many cases) bringing in whatever character you feel like, including those who've been through other books and those who haven't. The way they handle this (or sometimes, not-quite-handle it) is worth watching both in the "ooh cool a wizardly touch" way and the "ooh cool a train wreck" way.

The Rebel's Gamble: A Doctor Who gamebook published by FASA. One of the best examples I know of really hybridizing the sense of being a novel with being a gamebook (normally a terrible idea to make anything more novel-like, IMO, but this one pulls it off). This sometimes suffers from too-few-choices, but the choices it offers have real impact, and you really feel that. It's a shame it's about the meanest of the doctors, but ah well [emote]:)[/emote]

A few of the Crossroads series are worth examining. They're all licensed works, set in worlds popularized in sci-fi/fantasy novels, and some of them take very novel approaches to capturing the feel of their source material (more military/tactical choices for the military-themed novels, for example).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3853&start=0#p27700
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Testing if an object is a certain type - using tables
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-04 21:25:16

[quote="wjousts"]And thanks I4L. Hopefully one day you'll find a space in your heart for inform tables! Maybe after another couple more versions of Inform when they (hopefully) become easier to work with.[/quote]

As long as they continue to give me alternatives, I'm not going to hold my breath.  [emote]:D[/emote] 

Glad you got this worked out. Good luck on your project.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3852&start=0#p27701
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Gamebook recommendations
User: George / DateTime: 2011-12-04 21:42:40

I think it's worth looking at the game design in the [url=http://www.gamebooks.org/show_series.php?id=92]'Combat Command' series[/url] (akin to the Crossroads books). Since that was a SF series in homage to popular SF authors of the time (compared to the generic fantasy of the same period) I think the writing, plot and pacing is a bit above average too. 

Admittedly Lone Wolf remains a guilty pleasure from my youth (guilty in the sense that a few years ago I went to eBay to re-acquire a complete run of the first twelve books [emote]:D[/emote] ) but if that doesn't do it for you I'd suggest the [url=http://www.gamebooks.org/show_series.php?id=469]Way of the Tiger series[/url], which did some really interesting stuff with player actions.

There also was a series of [url=http://www.gamebooks.org/show_series.php?id=291]two-player gamebooks[/url] by TSR (though I don't see a historical Japanese release in that list, so I may be thinking of more than one series) where two people would play head-to-head, basically reading their story at the same time, and occasionally interacting when the narratives/gameplay intersected. I've always thought that was a very interesting design with ideas to borrow for two-player IF (which to my knowledge has never been done?).

Finally for a modern take on it you should look at [url=http://gamebookadventures.com/]Tin Man Games Gamebook Adventures[/url], an Aussie outfit who are doing iOS (and soon multi-platform) games in the FF tradition.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3852&start=0#p27702
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Gamebook recommendations
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-04 21:52:58

[quote="George"]I think it's worth looking at the game design in the [url=http://www.gamebooks.org/show_series.php?id=92]'Combat Command' series[/url] (akin to the Crossroads books). Since that was a SF series in homage to popular SF authors of the time (compared to the generic fantasy of the same period) I think the writing, plot and pacing is a bit above average too. [/quote]

Agreed, yeah. If military stuff is of particular interest, Combat Command is where to start (I guess the "advanced course" for that sort of thing would be something like Antal's "Armor Attacks" and his others).

[quote]There also was a series of [url=http://www.gamebooks.org/show_series.php?id=291]two-player gamebooks[/url] by TSR (though I don't see a historical Japanese release in that list, so I may be thinking of more than one series) where two people would play head-to-head, basically reading their story at the same time, and occasionally interacting when the narratives/gameplay intersected. [/quote]

Man, those play [i]so[/i] so goofy [emote]:)[/emote] But yeah (and I do love 'em). Less gamebookish, but educational in that vein, would be the Lost Worlds booklets, and Joe Dever's "Combat Heroes" books.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3852&start=0#p27703
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Gamebook recommendations
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-04 22:03:20

And I'd just like to add that this entire thread makes me want to shove my work aside and just go wallow in my gamebook collection, playing them 'til I fall alseep sometime around sunrise.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3852&start=10#p27704
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Gamebook recommendations
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-12-04 22:28:15

I, too, am contractually obligated to pimp [url=http://www.choiceofgames.com/]Choice of Games[/url], but in this particular case I think I want to pimp the game design category of our blog: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.choiceofgames.com/category/blog/game-design/">http://www.choiceofgames.com/category/blog/game-design/</a>

Our particular stance on branching narrative is that a linear series of chapters full of delayed branching is the best way to go. <a class="postlink" href="http://www.choiceofgames.com/2011/07/by-the-numbers-how-to-write-a-long-interactive-novel-that-doesnt-suck/">http://www.choiceofgames.com/2011/07/by ... esnt-suck/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=20#p27705
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: DavidPT / DateTime: 2011-12-04 22:45:55

Nice to see 3.1 getting closer.  Doesn't look like this is compatible with Google chrome though.  pressing enter does nothing so there is no way to start the game.  No problem, I have Firefox as well.  I will just use that for web play.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=20#p27706
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-04 23:41:50

It works fine in Chrome 17, and I haven't noticed any problems in earlier versions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3852&start=10#p27707
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Gamebook recommendations
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-12-05 00:24:22

I certainly know and like Fighting Fantasy best and I have a very large collection.

Ghalev said of them '100% traditional, though, with nothing new to show you in terms of game design' - I don't think I can agree with that, given the number of books there are. With every book able to make its own rules on top of the baseline combat, and not necessarily set in the same world or time (though a number are) there's huge design variation.

Here are some examples.

Scorpion Swamp (only the 8th book) is almost like a solo boardgame in book form. The map is grid-like and you can revisit locations. The results of revisiting are not surprising - it's like revisiting a previously searched location in an IF game.

43 books later, a similar idea was carried out with far greater elegance and transparency in Island of the Undead (#51). You can revisit locations and move freely around the island in non-linear fashion, until you move onto a second stage.

Phantoms of Fear (#28) gives you the ability to move into and out of a parallel dream world whenever you see certain marks against the paragraph numbers. For instance, if you see a symbol, there'll be no explicit direction that you can start dreaming. You just add a fixed number (say 20) to your current paragraph and start reading there. Unfortunately, this is quite bitchily designed book, ultimately, but the atmosphere is fascinating and creepy.

Robot Commando (#22) lets you hop in and out of different giant robots with their own stats and powers.

Different books have different skill and spell systems. Citadel of Chaos, for instance, has you picking a finite number when play begins, and crossing em off as you fire them.

Steve Jackson's Sorcery Series (1-4) has a really fun spell system made of mnemonics. You're expected to commit 3 letter code words to memory before playing, and told not to look in the spellbook again while playing. When you're given a chance to cast, you're just presented with choices of mnemonic codes. You'll probably get a few legitimate options, some spells that are completely irrelevant to the situation, and some mnemonics that aren't even real spells. The penalty for goofing is wasted stamina points.

I should also point out the Sorcery books are excellent and obviously form 1 story arc (carry things through the books), quite difficult, and have a slightly more adult tone in the behaviour of the other characters than the regular FF books. They're great.

It remains that different authors had different FF styles, and these will effect how you play different books. For instance, Ian Livingstone's are often ridiculously cruel. On them, it's worth cheating your stats to have a chance, and also not to take clueing from the text. EG - In Crypt of the Sorcerer, you have to do something morally dubious and suffer hits to your stats in the process to obtain a critical item needed for later.

----- Away from FF, the 6 Way of the Tiger Books form 1 martial arts world arc, and have a lot of sophistication, and a really strong sense of that world. Incidentally, there is one FF set in the same world as these books written by the same guy, called Talisman of Death (#11)

I've only played one Lone Wolf book (Shadow on the Sands) but dear god it was fun. My friend and I were pretty obsessed with it in primary school.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=20#p27708
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: DavidPT / DateTime: 2011-12-05 00:35:06

It was my pop-up blocker causing the problem.  Once I told the blocker to allow pop-ups on the site, the game started working correctly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3822&start=10#p27709
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is it possible to assign a table to a person?
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-12-05 00:57:25

I have a question.

I have a funtion that checks which body part has been hit, and I would like to write a switch/case like condition like

[code]if the part-hit is:
-- a head:
-- a torso:[/code]


etc...
though I get an error message.

What is strange is that if I write:

[code]if the part-hit is a head:[/code]

it works.
So at the moment I am doing it with a lot of "otherwise", it is not very easy to read or to correct.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3852&start=10#p27710
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Gamebook recommendations
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-12-05 01:08:45

For anyone who's interested, the people behind [b]Fabled Lands[/b] are actually writing a new gamebook now: [url]http://fabledlands.blogspot.com/2011/12/i-began-creation-of-human-being.html[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3844&start=0#p27711
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Doors, Stairs, etc - TravelWithMessage
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2011-12-05 01:37:00

Thank you so much, that worked perfect! I think I was not including the TravelWithMessage class, so my travelDesc wasn't doing anything.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=250#p27712
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: The Xenographer / DateTime: 2011-12-05 02:01:47

Hi guys, I'm The Xenographer (here, on IFDB, and on the ifMUD), also known as E. Joyce when something resembling a real name is  required. I am oddly squeamish about giving out my full name on the internet, sorry.

Anyway, although I'm pretty young as IF fans go, I played some commercial text adventures back in middle school thanks to my dad, who was into text adventures back when they were the only game(s) in town, and somehow eventually I stumbled onto modern IF. I can't for the life of me remember how I found it, but I'm glad I did. I've been skulking about, playing the games but not really engaging with the community, for 6+ years; it wasn't until I started writing my first piece of IF a couple months ago that I realized that (a) none of my friends were interested in IF at all and (b) I really wanted to talk to people who were. So I've been getting more involved since then, although I'm still pretty lurk-y.

(I've since finished the game, which "won" the Saugus.net Halloween competition this year by virtue of being the only entrant, and have wildly ambitious ideas for several future projects which may or may not ever materialize.)

I guess that's about it. Nice to meet you all!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3852&start=10#p27713
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Gamebook recommendations
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-05 02:12:22

[quote="severedhand"]Ghalev said of them '100% traditional, though, with nothing new to show you in terms of game design' - I don't think I can agree with that [...][/quote]

I meant the specific "you [which is to say, the OP]," not the general "you." Since the OP had already expressed familiarity with the ICE free-movement books (for example) books like [i]Scorpion Swamp[/i] and [i]Island of the Undead[/i] would have nothing new to show the OP (and I think the ICE titles are better examples for design study). I think that's true in some form of virtually anything from a [i]Fighting Fantasy[/i] book compared to the other books and series discussed. I had forgotten[i] Phantoms of Fear,[/i] though, so thank you for that.

[quote]Steve Jackson's Sorcery Series (1-4) has a really fun spell system made of mnemonics.[/quote]

That's the gimmick I was referring to (and yes, it's pretty awesome).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=250#p27715
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-05 05:47:06

[quote="The Xenographer"]wildly ambitious ideas for several future projects[/quote]
Sounds promising. 
Welcome, Xenographer!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3856&start=0#p27716
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: The Things That Go Bump In The Night - for iPhone & Android
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-12-05 05:48:01

The first Quest-powered iPhone and Android app is here - a text adventure specifically designed for smartphones.

Read all about it on the blog: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.textadventures.co.uk/blog/2011/12/05/the-things-that-go-bump-in-the-night-now-available-for-ios-and-android/">http://www.textadventures.co.uk/blog/20 ... d-android/</a>
App Store: <a class="postlink" href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-things-that-go-bump-in/id483544547?ls=1&mt=8">http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-thin ... ?ls=1&mt=8</a>
Android Market: <a class="postlink" href="https://market.android.com/details?id=com.axeuk.android.bump">https://market.android.com/details?id=c ... droid.bump</a>

Any game written for Quest 5 can now be turned into an app - so if you're interested in writing a game for the app store, please email me at <a href="mailto:alex@axeuk.com">alex@axeuk.com</a>.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3856&start=0#p27717
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Things That Go Bump In The Night - for iPhone & Andr
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-12-05 06:10:13

I don't have either device yet, but just wanted to say congratulations on taking this step.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3856&start=0#p27718
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Things That Go Bump In The Night - for iPhone & Andr
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-05 06:12:57

Nifty. Snagging it to my phone e'en now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3856&start=0#p27719
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Things That Go Bump In The Night - for iPhone & Andr
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-12-05 07:28:34

Does night security work really only pay $9 an hour in the US? No wonder you're #occupying Wall Street. Here in Australia, even an entry-level security guard gets $22+ (IIRC) an hour for casual night shifts, more on weekends.

On topic: it looks like the Android app either doesn't have a landscape mode or it doesn't work on my phone (HTC Desire Z). Which is a shame, because it means I can't use my phone's QWERTY keyboard to play the game. Also, when I tap on a button in an action menu (Look At/Take/etc.), there's no visual feedback to indicate that I tapped that button, and sometimes it will instead highlight a link underneath the menu. But otherwise the app looks really nice, congratulations!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3852&start=10#p27720
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Gamebook recommendations
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-12-05 07:32:28

[quote="severedhand"]----- Away from FF, the 6 Way of the Tiger Books form 1 martial arts world arc, and have a lot of sophistication, and a really strong sense of that world. Incidentally, there is one FF set in the same world as these books written by the same guy, called Talisman of Death (#11)[/quote]

[b]Sword of the Samurai[/b] (FF21) is also set in the world of Orb, the setting for [b]Talisman of Death[/b].

I'm surprised no one has yet mentioned the [b]Bloodsword[/b] series of gamebooks, the only series (as far as I'm aware) that lets you play as a solo player, or in a group of two, three or four players.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3822&start=10#p27721
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is it possible to assign a table to a person?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-05 07:45:19

I'm pretty sure you have to use a cascade of otherwise-ifs there. The format you want to use only works when you're checking the exact value of something. So you could use it if you wanted a series of things like "if the number of items held is 1," "if the number of items held is 2," etc., but not "if the number of items held is odd" or "if the number of items held is even." (Assuming "even" and "odd" are defined.) 

It has to be the "is" of identity rather than the "is" of predication, if that's helpful. If that's not helpful, which it probably isn't, you can think of it that it only works when you might be able to substitute "equals" for "is" in English. (Though I don't think Inform itself lets you use "equals" there.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3856&start=0#p27722
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Things That Go Bump In The Night - for iPhone & Andr
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-12-05 07:56:24

[quote="Emerald"]Does night security work really only pay $9 an hour in the US?[/quote]

Yeah, 8-10 is an average rate for basic security work in the U.S. While I don't work in security myself, all jobs (wearing a multitude of hats) I've held since 1999 have been in the 9-11$ an hour range here in the southeastern U.S.

On topic: Congratulations Alex! I do have fun doing stuff in the Quest system, though I haven't made a lot in it yet. Any plans for a Linux port yet?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3856&start=0#p27723
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Things That Go Bump In The Night - for iPhone & Andr
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-05 08:10:55

[quote="Emerald"]Does night security work really only pay $9 an hour in the US? No wonder you're #occupying Wall Street. Here in Australia, even an entry-level security guard gets $22+ (IIRC) an hour for casual night shifts, more on weekends.[/quote]

It actually depends on what part of the country you're in and what type of security guard you are. Unarmed security pretty much does nothing but "Observe and Report". They're not really placing themselves in any danger. Just false reassurance.

Armed security gaurds, who work at banks, check cashing places and the like, tend to make a little more. But their responsibilities would put them in harm's way.

But even the honest to goodness cops around here don't get paid very well. When I first got out of the army, I was looking into becoming a state trooper. I think the starting pay was somewhere in the vicinity of $14.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3852&start=10#p27724
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Gamebook recommendations
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-12-05 08:23:09

Oh yeah I forgot SotS was set there too. Thanks for the reminder.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3828&start=0#p27725
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Announcing Calm Post-Comp Release
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-12-05 08:55:03

[quote="severedhand"]Joey, you can also go to the game's page on IFDB and click 'Add a news item' to announce this there.[/quote]
Ooh thanks, I'll do just that!

[quote="aschultz"]For those curious, I just verified that Calm is now (as expected)

1) most definitely solvable,
2) more loaded with cool clues to tell you the right things to do
[spoiler]especially on easy mode, where I like how it clues what you can interact with,[/spoiler]
3) more organized and streamlined with regard to the puzzles and world map
4) more robust as I compared my comp-version transcripts to the version-2 transcripts
and
5) more than interesting enough to try as a different type of character now that I've won it one way. So, well done![/quote]

The bribe's in the post  [emote];)[/emote]  In all seriousness, as far as I can tell only two people managed to complete the game in the old version. The game is much more accessible now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3856&start=0#p27726
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Things That Go Bump In The Night - for iPhone & Andr
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-12-05 08:57:33

Thanks for the comments so far!

Tim works as a security guard so I believe the details in the game are pretty accurate (though hopefully he deals with rather fewer monsters in real life!)

The app is only portrait mode at the moment - I need to do a bit more work to make it cope better with different orientations and layouts, so I will implement this in an update soon.

I don't have immediate plans for a Linux port, though I'd be happy to collaborate on this if someone wants to pick it up. Quest runs in .net so it could work on Linux using Mono, but the UI would need to be redone. I'm also working on a web-based editor which may remove much of the need for a Linux version.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=50#p27728
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-12-05 08:58:21

[quote="maga"]The simple answer to "Why isn't there more good [genre] IF?" is just that there isn't enough good IF for there to be a deep field of any particular genre.[/quote]
This. There is not enough IF to be picky about genre — or really, anything. Anyone who has read my posts on this forum knows that I am very picky indeed about all sorts of stuff when it comes to IF. But I don't let that restrict what I will try to play — I will try to play anything that someone (or some resource) I respect recommends.

For example, I [i]absolutely can't stand[/i] the 'ask X about Y' dialogue interface. Imagine how little would remain if I decided that I refuse to play anything that utilises it.

In fact, categorical decision-making in general is notoriously unreliable in the search for a good experience. The IF field happens to be small enough that the ineffectiveness of this kind of blanket criterion is exposed rather than buried with sheer volume. That doesn't mean it's more reliable in more popular media, either; it just means that you are less likely to notice the faults in the reasoning of applying superficial, blanket criteria to your input.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=50#p27729
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-05 09:25:40

[quote="Laroquod"]
For example, I absolutely can't stand the 'ask X about Y' dialogue interface. Imagine how little would remain if I decided that I refuse to play anything that utilises it.
[/quote]

I'm typically pretty forgiving about mechanics. I just prefer to read horror (and some fantasy, but I've found my patience for fantasy in IF doesn't translate nearly as well), which carries over into my genre preference for IF. I don't read Nicholas Sparks because I'm not a fan of romantic drama. Not a fan of mystery, which is unfortunate given all the positive reviews of "Make It Good", though I'll probably wind up playing it anyway. I don't read Stephanie Myer or Charlaine Harris because I avoid the genre of "Take a steaming, runny dump between two covers". I hope the jack wagon who coined the term "Paranormal/Supernatural Romance" dies of colon cancer.

I am, ashamedly, a Harry Potter fan boy. I also read a lot of the crap that my kids read, such as D.J. McHale's "Pendragon" series.

Anyway, I obviously limit my IF based on what I like to read. I'm not one of those voracious readers who just tears through anything I can get my hands on. Probably won't ever be that way with IF, either.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=250#p27730
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-12-05 09:54:14

Welcome, Xenographer!  Happy for your involvement in the community.  Especial thanks for your much appreciated votes in Ectocomp 2011.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3822&start=10#p27731
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is it possible to assign a table to a person?
User: wjousts / DateTime: 2011-12-05 11:55:40

[quote="matt w"]I'm pretty sure you have to use a cascade of otherwise-ifs there.[/quote]

I suspect this might be related to the problem I had with using kinds as a column in a table (<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3853">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3853</a>). Basically sai is trying to switch on a kind just like I was trying to compare an object to a kind from a table. 
I suspect you could solve it using the same solution you suggested for me. In other words, add some property to each body part (with a different value for each kind) that you can match on instead.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3839&start=10#p27732
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Becoming another character mid-conversation
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-05 12:22:54

Here you go then.

[spoiler][code]"Ran Over"

Include Speech Motivations by Mike Ciul.

Highway is a room. Jay is a man in highway. Bob is a man in highway.
Bob wears a coat. Jay carries a joint. God is a subject.

The description of the player is "You're completely naked, and still smarting from your fall out of heaven."

For getting attention of Bob when Bob is not expected to respond:
	forget the concerns of Bob.

First for speaking out loud of something (called the subject matter):
	Repeat through Table of Responses:
		if the speaker entry is the person asked and the subject entry is the subject matter:
			say response entry;
			say paragraph break;
			rule succeeds;
	continue the activity.

For speaking out loud when Bob is the person asked:
	say "Bob shrugs."

For getting attention of Jay when Jay is not expected to respond:
	If the new subject matter is Jay or the new subject matter is Bob:
		confirm motivation of Jay;
	otherwise if someone is expected to respond:
		forget the concerns of Jay;
	otherwise:
		confirm motivation of Jay.
		
For speaking out loud of something (called the subject matter) when Jay is the person asked:
	say "Jay expounds at great length, with multiple interjections of colorful profanity, on the subject of [the subject matter], but at the end you're still not sure how he feels."

For printing the name of Jay when the speaking out loud activity is going on and the person asked is Jay:
	say "himself";

Table of Responses
speaker (object)	subject (object)	response (text)
yourself	joint	"You comment on Jay's joint."
yourself	yourself	"'What's the matter? You never saw a naked black man before?' you say."
yourself	coat	"You tell [the current interlocutor] that you just want to borrow the coat until you can find some other clothes."
Bob	Jay	"Bob smiles and pats his friend on the back."
Bob	joint	"Bob raises his eyebrows."
Bob	God	"Bob shakes his head."
Bob	Bob	"Bob grins and thumps his chest."
Bob	yourself	"Bob tries not to look at your nakedness."
Jay	joint	"'Dude, have some! First one's free!'"
Jay	coat	"'Dude, [if jay is expected to respond]what are you thinking? My man doesn't want your dick rubbing all over the inside of his armor!'[otherwise]why you eyeing my man's coat?' Jay yells at you."
Jay	yourself	"'I'm not staring at a naked black man. I'm staring at naked black man who just [italic type]fell out of the f***ing sky![roman type]'"

First for speaking out loud of yourself when the person asked is Jay and Jay is not expected to respond:
	say "Jay tries to pretend that he's not staring at your nakedness.";

For speaking out loud of the coat when Bob is the person asked:
	say "Bob removes his coat and hands it to you.";
	end the story finally saying "You are no longer naked."

test me with "x bob/ask jay about joint/x me/ask jay about me/x coat/ask jay about coat/tell jay about coat/ask jay for coat/ask bob about jay/ask bob about joint/tell bob about god/ask bob about bob/ask bob about me/ask bob about joint/ask bob for coat"[/code][/spoiler]

The updated version, with example, is still at <a class="postlink" href="http://eyeballsun.org/i/Speech%20Motivations.i7x">http://eyeballsun.org/i/Speech%20Motivations.i7x</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=20#p27733
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2011-12-05 12:35:51

Nice!! Oops, sorry just got too excited. Heh.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3839&start=20#p27734
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Becoming another character mid-conversation
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-05 12:46:29

Hah! +1 for using Dogma in an example. One of my favorites.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3852&start=10#p27735
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Gamebook recommendations
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-12-05 13:45:23

Wow, there's a lot here already--thanks to everyone who's contributed!

Ghalev, your recommendations align superbly with what I am interested in right now. My goal for this ...research... is ultimately to apply it to computer games, not gamebooks, so your observations on that front are astute. There are major gaps in the possibility space for text games--both in terms of interface and mechanics--that we haven't begun to fill yet, and one way to approach them may be to study these older attempts to push at the boundaries of the (game)book. So I'm very interested in the examples you laid out. But I do think that there's a lot to be gained from looking at non-experimental or non-innovative examples in terms of identifying where the "art" lies, and your and other folks' care in laying out both types is also quite helpful. (Speaking of which, I did play some of Ring of Thieves last night and am enjoying it!)

[quote="George"]There also was a series of [url=http://www.gamebooks.org/show_series.php?id=291]two-player gamebooks[/url] by TSR [/quote]
I had a few of these as a lad and had forgotten all about them. Thanks for the reminder!

[quote="George"]For a modern take on it you should look at [url=http://gamebookadventures.com/]Tin Man Games Gamebook Adventures[/url], an Aussie outfit who are doing iOS (and soon multi-platform) games in the FF tradition.[/quote]
You know, I have a couple of these, and it actually strikes me how not-modern they are! (As you say, more or less in the FF tradition.) I would have liked them to try something new with the interface, rather than pretend that they had converted an old gamebook into a new app (again, a la FF).

[quote="dfabulich"]I, too, am contractually obligated to pimp [url=http://www.choiceofgames.com/]Choice of Games[/url], but in this particular case I think I want to pimp the game design category of our blog: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.choiceofgames.com/category/blog/game-design/">http://www.choiceofgames.com/category/blog/game-design/</a>[/quote]
Thanks for the reminder. I'll have to look back through those. Is the blog still syndicated on Planet-IF?

[quote="severedhand"]Ghalev said of them '100% traditional, though, with nothing new to show you in terms of game design' - I don't think I can agree with that, given the number of books there are. With every book able to make its own rules on top of the baseline combat, and not necessarily set in the same world or time (though a number are) there's huge design variation.[/quote]
Thanks for those recommendations. It definitely sounds like some of those could be interesting.

[quote="severedhand"]I've only played one Lone Wolf book (Shadow on the Sands) but dear god it was fun. My friend and I were pretty obsessed with it in primary school.[/quote]
Yeah, I remember enjoying Lone Wolf as a kid too. I should look at Shadow on the Sands and the one that Ghalev mentioned before I write it off. The one I replayed recently was the first one, and it stands to reason that things might have improved after that!

OK, now I have a bunch of 20- or 30-year-old books I need to try to get my hands on...! In the meantime, here's a modern one that you all may be interested in. It's not extremely polished, but it does have some neat sequences of Calvino's brand of fabulism:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ageoffable.net/">http://www.ageoffable.net/</a>

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3839&start=20#p27736
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Becoming another character mid-conversation
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-05 13:46:50

It was an obvious choice for characters with contrasting verbosity.... [emote]:lol:[/emote]

I guess I could have used Penn and Teller, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3749&start=20#p27737
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 update?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-05 13:53:41

English Inform already has a problem with number: "a bunch of marbles" or "some marbles."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3843&start=0#p27738
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Definition failure
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-05 14:00:36

I'd love to see a "multi-room vehicles" extension! Starships, sailing ships, trains... the possibilities are numerous!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3828&start=0#p27739
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Announcing Calm Post-Comp Release
User: Mr. Patient / DateTime: 2011-12-05 14:36:34

[quote="JoeyJones"]In all seriousness, as far as I can tell only two people managed to complete the game in the old version.[/quote]

At least three.  Unless you somehow knew that I did, which would be very creepy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3856&start=0#p27740
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Things That Go Bump In The Night - for iPhone & Andr
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-12-05 14:38:40

Congrats on getting this out there, and good luck!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3851&start=0#p27741
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Tying two things with 1 object
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-05 14:51:03

[quote="Jizaboz"]I'll try to add a post to this thread soon with the desired example code. I'm still kind of shady as to how this will all be described, but maybe I'll have more understanding after edit this I code a bit as advised.[/quote]
I have a couple ropelike things in my WIP, so I toyed with the idea of writing a rope extension. Unfortunately, I discovered that the general case is [i]much[/i] harder to solve than two or three specific cases. But I can share with you some things from my WIP about describing connected objects...

I decided not to use incorporation, because not only does it prevent additional incorporation, it also prevents any other object-tree relation, such as carrying. So if you used Zarf's method, you wouldn't be able to hold the spray handle while it was attached to the hose.

[code]A watering attachment is a kind of thing. A watering attachment can be pumped or unpumped.

Garden is a room. A faucet is fixed in place watering attachment in the garden. A spray handle is a watering attachment in the garden. A hose is in the garden.

Patio is west of Garden.

Definition: The hose is dragging if the player encloses a pumped watering attachment.
Definition: A thing is externally visible if it is visible and it is not enclosed by the player and it is not the hose.
Definition: The hose is anchored if an externally visible watering attachment is pumped.

Section - Describing Connections

After choosing notable locale objects when the hose is anchored:
	set the locale priority of the hose to 4;
	
After choosing notable locale objects when a externally visible watering attachment is pumped:
	Repeat with the anchor running through externally visible pumped things:
		set the locale priority of the anchor to 9;

For writing a paragraph about the hose when a externally visible watering attachment is pumped:
	Let first end be a random pumped thing;
	Let second end be a random pumped thing that is not first end;
	say "The hose has one end hooked up to [the first end][if second end is not nothing] and [the second end] on the other end[end if].";
	
For writing a paragraph about the dragging hose when every externally visible watering attachment is unpumped:
	Let the source be a random pumped watering attachment enclosed by the player;
	say "The hose runs from the [the source], with its free end dragging on the ground.";

After printing the name of something enclosed by the player when writing a paragraph about the hose:
	if the item described is carried:
		say " (which you are carrying)";
	otherwise if the item described is worn:
		say " (which you are wearing)";
	otherwise:
		say " (which is in [the holder of the item described])";
	
After printing the name of a pumped watering attachment while taking inventory:
	say " (with the hose attached to it)";

Last report examining the hose when a watering attachment is pumped:
	Carry out the writing a paragraph about activity with the hose.
	
Last report examining a pumped watering attachment:
	say "[The noun] is attached to the hose.";

First report going when the hose is dragging:
	say "The hose drags along behind you...";
	
Section - Tying

The block tying rule is not listed in the check tying it to rulebook.

Check tying a watering attachment to the hose:
	instead try tying the hose to the noun.
	
Check tying something that is not the hose to something:
	say "Only the hose can be attached to things." instead;
	
First check tying the hose to a pumped watering attachment:
	say "That already has one end of the hose attached to it." instead;
	
Check tying the hose to a watering attachment when at least two watering attachments are pumped:
	say "There's no free end." instead;
		
Check tying the hose to something that is not a watering attachment:
	say "[The second noun] can't connect to the hose." instead.
	
Check tying the hose to the hose:
	say "The hose can't connect to itself." instead.
	
Carry out tying the hose to something:
	Now the second noun is pumped;
	Now the hose is in the location.
			
Report tying the hose to something:
	say "You attach the hose to [the second noun].";
	
Section - Managing hose connections

First check going when the player encloses the hose or the hose is dragging:
	If an externally visible watering attachment is pumped:
		say "You'll have to disconnect the hose from [the list of externally visible watering attachments], or leave it behind.";
		stop the action;

Last carry out going (this is the drag the hose rule):
	If the hose is dragging and the hose is not enclosed by the player, now the hose is in the holder of the player;
	
Last carry out entering:
	Follow the drag the hose rule.

Last carry out exiting:
	Follow the drag the hose rule.
	
Last carry out getting off:
	Follow the drag the hose rule.

[we must also follow the drag the hose rule if we use the "move the player" phrase.]	

Check taking the hose when a watering attachment is pumped:
	Repeat with receptacle running through pumped watering attachments:
		say "(disconnecting the hose from [the receptacle])[command clarification break]";
		Now the receptacle is unpumped.

test me with "get handle/attach handle to hose/l/x handle/x hose/w/l/x hose/e/attach hose to faucet/l/x faucet/x hose/i/w"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3828&start=0#p27742
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Announcing Calm Post-Comp Release
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-12-05 15:15:46

[quote="Mr. Patient"][quote="JoeyJones"]In all seriousness, as far as I can tell only two people managed to complete the game in the old version.[/quote]

At least three. Unless you somehow knew that I did, which would be very creepy.[/quote]
You know that black car that's been tailing you recently? No? Good...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3843&start=0#p27743
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Definition failure
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-12-05 15:18:55

[quote="EmacsUser"]Also, as you know, ``if the window'' means ``if a window'' (in the writing a paragraph about rule).[/quote]
I knew that. In the technical, not actual, sense. Grah.

[quote="capmikee"]I'd love to see a "multi-room vehicles" extension! Starships, sailing ships, trains... the possibilities are numerous![/quote]
I'll see what I can do, soon as I regain full use of my head.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3858&start=0#p27744
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Mirror|rorriM CYOA - Looking for Opinions and Critiques
User: Kediil / DateTime: 2011-12-05 16:25:44

Hi there. I'm new to this forum, but it looks like it could be an interesting place to play.

A course I'm taking in school (Storytelling for New Media) had me putting together an interactive story for a final project and I find myself both loving and hating it. In the time allotted for the project (only a few weeks) I've managed to put out one of the two stories I want to form the whole of what I've called MirrorlrorriM. The name.. could probably use changing, because as I wrote, I strayed from my original idea quite a bit, and found myself burning out a lot sooner than I'd hoped.

While I do plan to connect up the second story once I'm done with finals, I'd love to get some opinions and critiques and the like from any of you who might be interested! With a little luck and some perseverance, maybe I can find people with the technical skills to match my writing and make something bigger than the simple WordPress text I'm currently stuck with.

<a class="postlink" href="http://mirrorlrorrim.wordpress.com/">http://mirrorlrorrim.wordpress.com/</a> <-- That's the link to MirrorlrorriM

Thanks so much for anything you can send my way here!

Edit: Links to pages with errors or breaks would much appreciated! I didn't title things so as to keep the pages uncluttered. Perhaps not one of my best decisions to date.
       I know I'm a bit prose-ish, so it's more experiential than puzzle based. Not to mention I've had a heap of writers block you wouldn't believe.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3852&start=10#p27745
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Gamebook recommendations
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-05 16:43:09

[quote="ektemple"]
OK, now I have a bunch of 20- or 30-year-old books I need to try to get my hands on...! In the meantime, here's a modern one that you all may be interested in. It's not extremely polished, but it does have some neat sequences of Calvino's brand of fabulism:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ageoffable.net/">http://www.ageoffable.net/</a>[/quote]
That's pretty cool; thanks! Still feels a lot closer to Steve Jackson than to Calvino, but still tasty.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3852&start=10#p27746
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Gamebook recommendations
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-12-05 16:49:13

As I recall, the events I thought of as Calvinoesque didn't show up until later on. (I feel like there is less combat as you go along too--at least that was the case in my playthroughs.)

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3852&start=10#p27747
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Gamebook recommendations
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-05 17:19:26

[quote="maga"]That's pretty cool; thanks! Still feels a lot closer to Steve Jackson than to Calvino, but still tasty.[/quote]

But [i]which [/i]Steve Jackson? Steve Jackson who co-founded Games Workshop and who wrote [b]Fighting Fantasy[/b] books? Or Steve Jackson who founded SJGames and who [i]also [/i]wrote [b]Fighting Fantasy[/b] books? [i]It's all so confusing!!![/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3858&start=0#p27748
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Mirror|rorriM CYOA - Looking for Opinions and Critiques
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-05 17:34:23

Standard warning: Choose Your Own Adventure is a registered trademark, the series is still being published, and they have been known to sue. Casually referring to your game as 'a CYOA' is one thing, putting 'Choose Your Own Adventure' at the top of your intro page is another. I doubt that this is likely to matter all that much for a school project, but it's probably worth a mention.

I'd suggest looking at a custom-made CYOA language -- given that visual presentation seems important to you, I'd recommend [url=http://undum.com]Undum[/url], but [url=http://www.choiceofgames.com/make-your-own-games/choicescript-intro/]Choicescript[/url] is also solid. Both of these require a little simple coding, but it's [i]very[/i] simple.

[quote] But as in any dream, the paths are unique, many and each fairs differently.[/quote]
S/fairs/fares.

Under-construction female path: if this is an alpha, that's fine. If you're planning to present this, just make the character male and skip over this step. If you want to talk about your future plans for the work, tuck them away in a game notes section -- don't offer the player a major choice and then apologise that they can't take it.

My general feeling about the prose is that it's somewhat overwritten and could benefit from some paring-down. Take this, for instance:
[quote]A murky light, tinged a sickly greenish black in colour, shows a dank, dark room hardly more than an arm span across from wall to wall.[/quote]
Would it really lose anything by being turned into this:
[quote]A sickly greenish-black light shows a dank room hardly more than an arm span across.[/quote]
Don't pile on redundancies in your writing, and particularly don't use lots of overlapping adjectives. "Dank" already has an implication of darkness; "murky" and "sickly" are gesturing at the same thing. Adjectivitis makes writing look uncertain, as if description is a struggle; and it bloats your word count, which is rarely a good thing (and is especially troublesome in writing for games.)

[quote]A thick, soupy wall of fog stands just outside the wooden grate covering the opening. Only the changing colours within the wet depths giving hint to the possibility of a sunrise.[/quote]
The second sentence is a fragment. Either combine the sentences with a comma, or change "giving hint" to "give any hint" or similar.

[quote]Odd silver lensed goggles of varying sizes and shapes line the shelves.[/quote]
Hyphenate 'silver-lensed'.
[quote]Sliding the goggles over your eyes you mumble a hearty thanks.[/quote]
I'm not sure what a hearty mumble would be like. Perhaps you mean "heartfelt"?
[quote]At the end of the short corridor are two sets of stairs, each going up in opposite directions. Carved into a stone toward the left is an X, towards the right a stone is marked with an O.[/quote]
Arbitrary decisions are not interesting. This is a general problem of the piece: the just-a-dream framing means that the player character never really seems to have any motivation or significant angency, and there doesn't seem to be much connection between individual incidents. (I say this having played through once; possibly things make more sense after several playthroughs, but there isn't much to suggest this.) There are hints that the idea is learning-by-dying (the key I chose doesn't match up with the staircase I chose), but I'm not really given any reason, in or out of character, to want to solve this puzzle. If you want to make a pure-experiential piece, that's cool, but combining pure-experiential content with puzzles is unlikely to work well.
[quote] The stars shining above to be forever tainted by a wall of living slime.[/quote]
Sentence fragment. Do you mean "will be forever..."?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3858&start=0#p27749
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Mirror|rorriM CYOA - Looking for Opinions and Critiques
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-12-05 17:37:37

Some minor stuff...
[spoiler]You breath* in deeply

*breathe[/spoiler]

[spoiler]trying hard to reach for the light their larger kyn* block far above

*kin[/spoiler]

[spoiler]She leans back into the water and float* on the surface

*floats[/spoiler]

[spoiler]It’s* mouth hangs slightly open in what you image must be a smile

*Its[/spoiler]

A slightly more serious error...
[spoiler]After choosing "Navigating the Forest to the Water", the "Join Her" option doesn't seem to work.[/spoiler]

This one is kind of subjective, I admit...
[spoiler]She is tall, thin and wispy, her skin gleaming alabaster against the black pebbled sluice at the riverside. Long silver tresses, loosely plaited, drape down her back, curling gently against her hips and buttocks before dispersing delicate tendrils out across the top of the water. The lady turns her head and sees you watching her. She titters girlishly, smoothing loose silver curls over her perky breasts.

This description of the silver-haired woman is a little bit inelegant, what with the direct references to "buttocks" and "perky breasts". Whenever I hear the word "buttocks", I think of Forrest Gump: "Where were you wounded, soldier? In the buttocks, sir." It is possible to make a woman sound desirable in prose without resorting to saying straight out that she has nice T&A.[/spoiler]

Overall thoughts...
[spoiler]It would be nice if there were some sort of revelation or explanation or something at the end other than, "it was all a dream," especially considering we already knew that it was a dream at the beginning of the story. There are already a ton of games and stories, the plot of which could be summed up as, "you're in a dream; random and/or symbolic stuff happens; you wake up".[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3843&start=0#p27750
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Definition failure
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-12-05 18:25:57

[quote="capmikee"]I'd love to see a "multi-room vehicles" extension! Starships, sailing ships, trains... the possibilities are numerous![/quote]
Maybe hold a comp/anthology/whatever with the stipulation that submitted games include a multi-room vehicle that moves from place to place and that they be submitted along with source code? That might produce some seed ideas of different ways to approach creating a more general-purpose multi-room vehicle.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3858&start=0#p27751
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Mirror|rorriM CYOA - Looking for Opinions and Critiques
User: Kediil / DateTime: 2011-12-05 18:32:52

[quote="maga"]..worth a mention..[/quote]

I altered the header. I'll have to give those engines a glance. To be honest, I'm not sure how far I'll pursue this CYOA style, much as I do plan on fleshing this one out some more, it's so easy to burn out, and I never had much luck with good endings when I read the darn things. XD

Due date + writers block = bs like crazy. I definitely understand what you're saying. All of this is first draft really, so I'd need to be able to walk away for a day or two and come back to edit. No doubt there's a LOT that can be simplified.

I had meant 'gives' rather than 'giving', which still may be a fragment, but I've always liked fragmented sentences if they portray something that doesn't need to be complete. Even though it's not grammatically correct.

Heartfelt is a much better word. ^..^

The X-O, dagger-star thing was my own personal rant against all the point and click games I've tried that leave me at a point where I have NO idea what to do and no possible way to figure it out, so I end up madly clicking until the spiderweb in the corner falls the ground so I can wrap it around a stick and light a fire with a pocket watch to crawl through a tunnel that I can see the other side of anyhow.. Yeah. Game rage. So my own twisted mind connected a star radiating with an O, and a dagger's point with the single connected point of an X. I'm not sure how to change it. I suppose I could make it more obvious and just hope that people are reading to experience everything, rather than wanting to get to the 'proper' way out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=90#p27752
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2011-12-05 18:33:00

[quote="David Whyld"]Didn't the old rule (of not allowing updates) meet with pretty much 100% support?[/quote]

No, it didn't. In fact, in prior discussions with you about this subject, I've pointed you to counter-examples. I understand you're incensed about the issue and feel you're not being heard, but you have been, and the option remains for authors not to update their works and for judges not to play updated works while still voting in the competition. So far I have only you on the record as saying you absolutely won't enter if authors can update their games during the competition. rockersuke has objected to the rule but still plans on entering. If you don't ever want to enter the competition again because this rule angers you so much, I'm sorry to see you go, but I find your hand-waving and alarums regarding the rule destroying the competition unpersuasive.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=20#p27753
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2011-12-05 18:43:55

Will you have to upload your games to the IFDB server etc. Or will this be a package that can be downloaded and run on your own server?

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3858&start=0#p27754
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Mirror|rorriM CYOA - Looking for Opinions and Critiques
User: Kediil / DateTime: 2011-12-05 18:47:01

[quote="trojo"]Some minor stuff...[/quote]


Yeah. I hate when I can't breath.

Kyn is actually the Norse spelling of the English cyn which is modern day kin. 'Kyn' has a special place in my heart, so I use it in place of the more modern spelling.

Fixed the break. Thank you!

The description is supposed to portray a sense of 'too much' beauty, the way an overly thin supermodel stop looking pretty and starts looking ill. It's a slight reference to the fact she's not human. And I was trying to stay away from anything too raunchy, not meaning to strike your Forest reflex. XD If you have a suggestion as to how it could be changed, I'd appreciate it.

Yeah. I'm not really a big fan of the dream thing, and potentially, if this were fleshed out to the extent of a short novel like the CYOA books, then a lot of things, especially that, would be changed. Maybe when I get a chance to get away from it and recover from school I'll be able to take a more leisurely approach and lead it away from the dreamstate concept.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=20#p27755
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-05 18:51:46

[quote="baiguai"]Will you have to upload your games to the IFDB server etc. Or will this be a package that can be downloaded and run on your own server?

Thanks![/quote]
You can run it on your own server.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=20#p27756
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2011-12-05 18:59:09

Beautiful! Thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3851&start=0#p27757
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Tying two things with 1 object
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-12-05 18:59:11

Excellent, capmikee! Not only is this what I'm looking for, I'm sure it will also serve as a great example to others trying to do this same thing in the future. Instead of wasting another hour or few getting this right (though the input from matt w and zarf helped me actually understand a bit more about this in general than I did), I've been spending that time playing with plugging my own things into your example. Thank you very much for taking the time to post it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=90#p27758
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-12-05 19:09:40

You can put me down too for "Doesn't really like the rule change but would still enter". 

I think the fact that you don't demand the voters base their score on an updated version keeps any problem with it in check. While I don't like the change, I can see where people who may exploit the change would oppose to insisting people only vote on the newest version.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3858&start=0#p27759
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Mirror|rorriM CYOA - Looking for Opinions and Critiques
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-05 19:23:56

[quote="Kediil"]
The description is supposed to portray a sense of 'too much' beauty, the way an overly thin supermodel stop looking pretty and starts looking ill. It's a slight reference to the fact she's not human. And I was trying to stay away from anything too raunchy, not meaning to strike your Forest reflex. XD If you have a suggestion as to how it could be changed, I'd appreciate it.[/quote]
[spoiler]I agree with trojo that this doesn't really come across the way you intended. (Though I have less of a problem with 'buttocks': none of the available words here are ideal.) You need to work in [i]something[/i] that makes the description seem uncanny. Yeah, the description's got touches that are a little creepy -- 'alabaster', 'titters girlishly', the vaguely-fetishy attention to hair, the way that her immediate response to being seen is to giggle and grope herself -- but these are all things that a writer would be likely to write because they think it's totally hot.

There's no obvious fix here: writing attractive women without coming across as creepy is a pretty delicate art. And your aim here is a bit more complicated than simply writing an attractive woman. The focus on T&A does make it seem as if the player character's reaction is meant to be a straightforward boner; toning that down might leave more room for a more complex reading. One approach might be to go over the individual words and shift them to words with a similar meaning but a slightly more negative sense, or. Another might be to just say what the effect is, although that's obviously not ideal.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=90#p27760
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-12-05 19:29:06

As a show of support, I won't enter the comp if the update rule is revoked.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3749&start=20#p27761
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 update?
User: ChristianB / DateTime: 2011-12-05 19:30:29

[quote="Felix"]The German extension is a quite complex affair though, so I suppose there may be something hidden away somewhere in there that takes care of the issue.[/quote]
The "main gender" (that is the one that correlates with the printed name) is given to an object with one of the attributes male, female, neuter, or plural-named. The German plural is gender-independent, so we implemented it as a fourth gender.

[color=blue]The apple is an edible thing in the garden. It is male.
The pear is a female edible thing in the garden.[/color]

This sounds strange, but people got used to it (and there will soon be an alternative way). The gender information is used to print the article in the correct grammatical case and to set the suffixes for adjectives and nouns (in printed names), and the pronouns.

For dictionary words that have a different grammatical gender than the printed name, we are using a concept we refer to as "Changing Gender" or "CG". The author can add one of the labels (m, f, n, or p [masculine, feminine, neuter, plural]) to the dictionary word directly in the Understand-phrase.

[color=blue]Understand "Apfel", "Frucht [f]", or "Fruechtchen [n]" as the apple.[/color]

The word "Apfel" does not have to be labelled, because it is of the same gender as the printed name. The pronouns are set according to the dictionary word the player uses to address the object.

We are about to offer an alternative method to set the main gender directly in the printed name, in order to create formal analogy between the output and the input definitions:

[color=blue]The apple is an edible thing in the garden. The printed name is "Apfel[-s][m]".
The pear is an edible thing in the garden. The printed name is "Birne[f]".[/color]

([-s] is a suffix for masculine genitives, [m]/[f] set the grammatical gender of the fruit.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3749&start=20#p27762
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 update?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-05 19:46:37

Note that the VM format allows flags to be attached directly to dictionary words. I6 only uses this to mark words "plural", "verb", "noun", "adjective" (really preposition), and "meta". Eleven bits are unused in Zcode, more in Glulx.

Grammatical gender could be added here, although it would require an I6 patch.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3858&start=0#p27764
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Mirror|rorriM CYOA - Looking for Opinions and Critiques
User: Kediil / DateTime: 2011-12-05 20:27:37

[quote="maga"]Another might be to just say what the effect is, although that's obviously not ideal.[/quote]

Yeah. It's much easier to read an established author's description of slightly creepy, ethereal beauty.  I'll tab it on my list of things to revisit when my muse gets back from freaking out.

I really appreciate the suggestions. It'll help when I get back around to it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3831&start=0#p27765
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: closing a room until the right time
User: nado / DateTime: 2011-12-05 22:49:50

That did the trick, thank you!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3858&start=0#p27766
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Mirror|rorriM CYOA - Looking for Opinions and Critiques
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-12-05 22:56:21

I'm noticing a fair number of grammatical mistakes and a whole lot of could-be-betters.  How much are you looking for editing and how much are you just looking for general feedback?  Either way, you need to watch your comma splices.  I'll agree with you about fragments as long as they're very short and to-the-point, but comma splices never have any virtue.

If you're looking for detailed editing, I could just post comments on the pages themselves, if you like.  (I wouldn't do this without asking because I don't want to clutter up your game with criticism.)

Overall, my criticism is that this game has no hook: We're not given any reason why we should care about what's happening--doubly so since we know it's all a dream and thus lose our concern that the PC might be harmed, killed, or suffer any other kind of negative repercussion.  That leaves you with an extremely high burden to fulfill with your descriptions: You've got to convince us that we really want to find out what's at the bottom of the mist, even if we don't think it matters.  See the issue?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3858&start=0#p27767
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Mirror|rorriM CYOA - Looking for Opinions and Critiques
User: Kediil / DateTime: 2011-12-05 23:26:44

[quote="katz"]See the issue?[/quote]


Yeah, this whole experience has been experimental for me, and its a first draft as it currently stands. The project is more a combination of storytelling elements, player interaction, and potentially real world elements in a new media, read internet, format. 

I have to admit, it's been a long time since I played any mini games / ARGs / point-click / CYO / etc where I felt any level of dedication to the character or story, maybe that's where I'm failing. I never had much luck with those darn CYOA books either. I used to read them constantly, but can't remember ever getting to a 'good' ending, and I can only remember one page of one of the books - some chick who wanted the character's face for its own..

For the time being, I'm looking mostly for general critique. I'm thinking to take out the couple of moments where the character's gender is mentioned and merge this story with what I was going to separate as the 'female' story. It would at least double the size of it all. And potentially allow me to incorporate my original mirror idea (hence the title before it went horribly off track and turned to mist) as well as move away from the dreamstate, though I'm not sure how to bring a world of portals, fantasy and myth together into a whole without it having that dream-like quality. Perhaps a meditative state or something..

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3858&start=0#p27768
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Mirror|rorriM CYOA - Looking for Opinions and Critiques
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-12-06 00:24:11

Dream states are not the problem (I obviously don't think so, given that my only completed game is a dream sequence); the problem is dream [i]endings[/i]: Waking up and finding out that nothing you did actually mattered.  Even something as simple as implying that there's a goal to the dream, something the PC has been trying to find but never can, would work.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=90#p27769
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-12-06 01:04:04

[quote="Sargent"][quote="David Whyld"]Didn't the old rule (of not allowing updates) meet with pretty much 100% support?[/quote]

No, it didn't. In fact, in prior discussions with you about this subject, I've pointed you to counter-examples. I understand you're incensed about the issue and feel you're not being heard, but you have been, and the option remains for authors not to update their works and for judges not to play updated works while still voting in the competition. So far I have only you on the record as saying you absolutely won't enter if authors can update their games during the competition. rockersuke has objected to the rule but still plans on entering. If you don't ever want to enter the competition again because this rule angers you so much, I'm sorry to see you go, but I find your hand-waving and alarums regarding the rule destroying the competition unpersuasive.[/quote]

I know a few other people who've said they won't enter because of the rule (lurkers support me in e-mail, guys, it's true!) but okay. Consider me out of the IFComp.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=90#p27770
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2011-12-06 01:33:24

[quote="bowsmand"]As a show of support, I won't enter the comp if the update rule is revoked.[/quote]
Heh [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3822&start=10#p27771
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is it possible to assign a table to a person?
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-12-06 01:34:10

[quote="wjousts"][quote="matt w"]I'm pretty sure you have to use a cascade of otherwise-ifs there.[/quote]

I suspect this might be related to the problem I had with using kinds as a column in a table (<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3853">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3853</a>). Basically sai is trying to switch on a kind just like I was trying to compare an object to a kind from a table. 
I suspect you could solve it using the same solution you suggested for me. In other words, add some property to each body part (with a different value for each kind) that you can match on instead.[/quote]

Oh yes I could do it, but I already have so much properties and tables I guess I will stay with a cascade of ifs and otherwises for now.

Thank you.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3860&start=0#p27772
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Things vs. people on supporters
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-12-06 01:59:58

Why do the first and third of the following conditions work, but not the second?  That is, why can you write a condition about an object on a supporter (or in a container) or a person in a room, but not, apparently, about a person on a supporter?

[code]The park is a room.

The bench is an enterable supporter in the park.

Every turn:
	if something is on the bench:
		say "Something is on the bench.";
	if someone is on the bench:
		say "Someone is on the bench.";
	if someone is in the park:
		say "Someone is in the park."
		
Alice is on the bench.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3840&start=0#p27773
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Getting over the hump
User: Kytaari / DateTime: 2011-12-06 02:02:36

Thanks for all these great posts, and thank you Emily Short for the great article as well as the great tips that I thought were very relevant to my project.

I believe the tidbit about staring pretty small was very sound, and this story that I'm writing now is not that "deep," compared to some other ideas that I have. I think what I'm tackling now is fairly easy. I'm a very atmosphere-heavy guy, so I think that's mainly what I'll be going for. I can experiment with puzzle-design some type later, once I get more experienced with this medium.

What Poster mentioned about their being one true path, and a lot of alternate paths, in an interactive fiction story resonated with me a lot, because I have a similar structure with my narratives. I don't believe I'll be able to please the whole fan-base with this story, especially considering my relative inexperience, but I believe that pleasing myself should be a sufficient way to start. Although I don't think puzzles are gonna be my forte anytime soon, I'm looking forward to using the interactivity imbued within this medium to enable my readers to explore my fictional territories and lore more thoroughly, than something like a novel might provide. I'll think about this advice, and check up on it some more, as I write and experiment with my draft. The implementing strategy has eased my writer's block considerably, but there may still be some holes I haven't learned to flank just yet. I'm sure I'm getting better though, so I'll just keep hacking at my draft, using this thread as a kind of cornerstone at times, whenever I come across any substantial stumbling-blocks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3860&start=0#p27774
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Things vs. people on supporters
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-06 02:16:59

You haven't told the game that Alice is a person, so it believes she's a thing. Therefore the first condition is met, but not the second. The third condition is met, not because Alice is in the park, but because the player is.

Also, "in the park" means directly in the room, withou being in or on anything else. If you want the game to recognize that Alice is in the park even though she's also on the bench, you need to write "if someone is enclosed by the park".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3858&start=10#p27775
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Mirror|rorriM CYOA - Looking for Opinions and Critiques
User: Kediil / DateTime: 2011-12-06 02:25:59

[quote="katz"]Dream states are not the problem (I obviously don't think so, given that my only completed game is a dream sequence); the problem is dream [i]endings[/i]: Waking up and finding out that nothing you did actually mattered.  Even something as simple as implying that there's a goal to the dream, something the PC has been trying to find but never can, would work.[/quote]

I suppose I've been linking waking up with success in my mind. I definitely see what you're saying. I don't think I've ever had a dream where I knew the purpose before I found it. It will definitely take some pondering to figure out how to incorporate something so the reader can feel more invested in the character and outcome.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=90#p27776
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2011-12-06 03:24:50

[quote]I know a few other people who've said they won't enter because of the rule (lurkers support me in e-mail, guys, it's true!) but okay. Consider me out of the IFComp.[/quote]


I've said it before, and I'll say it again. This was the first and last time I joined the IFComp. 
I support David's views regarding the competition.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3806&start=0#p27777
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Gnome Ranger help needed! (SPOILERS)
User: Dref / DateTime: 2011-12-06 04:42:16

Never mind. You can't and I had to start over. [emote]:([/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3749&start=20#p27778
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 update?
User: ChristianB / DateTime: 2011-12-06 05:02:12

It would be really neat if the dictionary parameter bits could be used to set the gender of a noun word at compile time. I experimented with that possibility, but (incapable of applying compiler patches) I tried setting the gender-bits at runtime (when play begins) which worked at least for Glulx, if I recall correctly.

Our CG method, though, has turned out to be pretty stable. The CG markers are GPRs (represented in I7 by "understand tokens") that are interpreted as prepositions, so they are overread by the parser; in these routines, the changing gender is referenced to the object (in an array with 8 entries called CG_buffer). Linking a dictionary word to the respective object is something that would have to be done even if the gender would be coded in the dictionary parameters, doesn' it?. (As long as there is no way of checking the context of a dictionary word.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3861&start=0#p27779
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Moving from Room to Room
User: Deain / DateTime: 2011-12-06 06:55:48

[color=#408080]Hey guys, I'm new at interactive fiction writing and I'm using Imform 7 for the first time.  I'm enjoying it and I'm hoping to write a simple IF game.  So I need some help in my story.  I want to allow the player to go go to a different room.  Here is what I wrote:
[/color]
After eating the mushroom:
	say "As you pop the little musshroom into your mouth, your stomach twists in nervousness. You knew very well what would happen to you if you had made the wrong decission.  But as you tentatively chewed it, you were surprised to find that it was sweet and not at all bad.  Eagerly, you gathered more and stuffed them in your shorts poket to keep for later  After your hunger has been satisfied, you decided to explore the clearing further.  You see something to the east.."
	
 The cave is a room. It is east from the rorest. "As you head east, you see that it's the enterance to a cave of unsure death.  Water dripp don and echoed throughout the rock cavern you are in.  As your eyes adjust to the darkness, you see that the cave wall is covered by a fine layer of moss and algae."
	
[color=#008080]I want the player to go east from where the mushroom is so that they will get to the cave.  What I wrote didn't work.  Would any mind helping me out?  Thanks! [emote]:P[/emote]

PS: I forgot to say that my first room is the "Island" and I want the player to get to the second room "The cave".  Thanks again [emote]:P[/emote][/color]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3861&start=0#p27780
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving from Room to Room
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-12-06 07:13:10

[quote="Deain"]It is east from the rorest.[/quote]
I guess you meant to write "Forest"? Or "Island", if that is the name of your first room.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3861&start=0#p27781
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving from Room to Room
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-06 07:16:12

[quote="Deain"]It is east from the rorest.[/quote]

This would create a room called "rorest" and place the cave east of it. Check your "Index" tab and the "World" tab within that after compiling, and you'll see a map showing the rooms you've made. As Victor indicated, you probably want to say "The cave is a room. It is east from the Island."

Also: be careful with including [i]travel [/i]in room descriptions. The game will keep on saying "As you head east ..." every time the player types LOOK in that room.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=90#p27782
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-12-06 07:29:51

I'm fine with the new rule. I was the first person to express some doubt about it in the authors forum, but I quickly found I wasn't worried about it. And the authors this year didn't know it was coming - that, in retrospect, was my primary concern for our competition. If the rule is in next time, I expect entrants will know about it.

In a sample space of one, it worked very well. When I uploaded the updated Death of Schlig, it was way better playing without the excess line breaks than with. I saw other games get helpful cosmetic fixes which made me gladder in playing them. Elfen Maiden twisted about every which way, to the extent I don't think you could easily assess how voting for it changed over time. It certainly didn't leapfrog 20 places, though.

I breathed a sigh of relief that if someone did find a way to crash my game Six in spite of all the testing, I would be allowed to fix it, but I didn't have to. The game that won was updated maybe once, ditto the game that came 3rd (only cosmetically). Six came second and wasn't updated.

It's like a lot of comments about IF games -- I don't know that there are enough of them overall that you can afford to tamp down on any way to improve them en masse, especially one that worked so well. I think I am pretty competitively spirited in this kind of thing, but more games were fixed during this comp than during a whole year outside of it, and my competitive spirit was still very satisfied. If the IFComp prizes were up in the 1000s of dollars (though Kate McKee alone has pushed them a little more that way!) maybe then I'd feel it more pertinent prevent any wiggle in the outcome at all. But they're not. Pretty quickly down the list, you're winning a paperbook. Pretty soon after that, only glory, and still 20 places after that, still glory.

So as per what I've said, and what others have said, I support the rule.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3861&start=0#p27783
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving from Room to Room
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-12-06 08:22:13

A couple of points:

First, if you've defined your first room as the "Island," then you need to place the cave east of the island, not the forest.

Second, in your "after eating the mushroom rule," if you want to use the colon style I think you need to indent (via a tab character) the line which begins "say ..."  Alternatively, you can do the whole rule as a single sentence, using a comma instead of the colon.  Also, I believe that, by default, an "after" rule does not stop the action, so in addition to your custom message you would also get the standard "eaten" message.  If you don't want that you need to use a "stop the action" phrase after your custom message.

Third, under this approach, the player can go from the island to the cave even before eating the mushroom; eating it simply tells him about the room to the east, but the connection exists anyway.  If you want to block access until he's eaten the 'shroom, you need to use a different approach.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=30#p27784
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-12-06 09:12:47

I haven't used Smarter Parser, so am not in a position to comment specifically.  However, I do have a few thoughts concerning the general idea of "accessibility" to beginners.

When I think back to my own first experience with what we now call IF, a couple of things (in addition to the incredible amount of fun I had) stick in my mind.  The year was circa 1977, the game was Adventure, and the parser was a lot more primitive than anything used today.  One thing I remember was that, although the puzzles in the game itself were far from easy (I don't think I ever did actually get all the way through), learning how to play -- getting a sense of what kinds of commands the machine would likely understand -- wasn't all that difficult.  I -- and I think most other people who tried it -- managed to get the hang of it in fairly short order.  Second, at the beginning, the experience of "exploring" how this new genre worked -- of how to play the game -- was, in its way, almost as much fun as exploring the cave.

I'm certainly not suggesting that we go back to the primitive two-word parsers of the 1970's, but it would be a shame if, in our zeal to make things "easy" and "accessible," we deprive today's novices of the experience of exploring the world of IF itself, along with exploring the particular "world" that forms the setting for the game -- particularly since I just don't see that it is at all necessary to do so.  Granted, there are undoubtedly some people out there who have such a short attention span, or who are willing to invest so little effort, that they will give up if they aren't walked through everything step by step.  That's fine, but maybe those people should stick to comic books.  IF, by its very nature, requires a certain amount of thought and participation on the part of the player/reader, and maybe it just isn't the right genre for somebody who isn't interested in making that investment.  And if we remove the need for thought and participation in an attempt to get a larger audience, haven't we gotten rid of the very attributes that make it what it is?


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3860&start=0#p27785
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Things vs. people on supporters
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-06 09:45:25

To debug a situation like this, you can use naming or list-printing:

[code]Every turn:
	if something (called the item) is on the bench:
		say "[The item] is on the bench.";
	if someone (called the sitter) is on the bench:
		say "[The sitter] is on the bench.";
	if someone (called the visitor) is in the park:
		say "[The visitor] is in the park."
[/code]

or:

[code]When play begins:
	showme the list of things on the bench;
	showme the list of people on the bench;
	showme the list of people in the park;
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=30#p27786
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-12-06 09:52:06

[quote="Robert Rothman"]When I think back to my own first experience with what we now call IF, a couple of things (in addition to the incredible amount of fun I had) stick in my mind.  The year was circa 1977, the game was Adventure, and the parser was a lot more primitive than anything used today.  One thing I remember was that, although the puzzles in the game itself were far from easy (I don't think I ever did actually get all the way through), learning how to play -- getting a sense of what kinds of commands the machine would likely understand -- wasn't all that difficult.  I -- and I think most other people who tried it -- managed to get the hang of it in fairly short order. [/quote]

I think that you're failing to consider that, back in 1977, imperative textual commands were the dominant mode for interaction with computers. The experience of text adventures was like all other computing, only [i]easier[/i]: you didn't need to remember to use proper punctuation, for the most part, or weird abbreviations. 

In contrast, the vast majority of users today never even see the command line, or only see it when they've suffered some nasty error or software failure. Outside of expert-only command line systems, the only interface that looks anything like the textual interchange of IF is a text-messaging application--which, given that there is a human on the other end, has essentially no syntax rules.

So while the parser interface [i]is[/i] relatively easy to learn, expectations today are much different than they were in the 1970s and 1980s, and so there's a much bigger gap to cross in acclimatizing newcomers to the IF interface.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3858&start=10#p27787
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Mirror|rorriM CYOA - Looking for Opinions and Critiques
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-12-06 10:35:52

[quote="Kediil"]The description is supposed to portray a sense of 'too much' beauty, the way an overly thin supermodel stop looking pretty and starts looking ill. It's a slight reference to the fact she's not human. And I was trying to stay away from anything too raunchy, not meaning to strike your Forest reflex. XD If you have a suggestion as to how it could be changed, I'd appreciate it.[/quote]
You could just remove the word buttocks altogether instead of trying to find a synonym. If her hair curls around her hips, then it's already implied that it curls around her butt as well. "Breasts" could be replaced with the more circumspect "body". And to make her sound inhuman, you could replace the word "lady" with something less human-sounding, e.g. "creature". (Note that "creature" is not always used in a negative sense, e.g. "lovely creature", but here would be intentionally ambivalent.)

Something like this:

"She is tall, thin and wispy, her skin gleaming alabaster against the black-pebbled sluice at the riverside. Long silver tresses, loosely plaited, drape down her back, curling gently against her hips before dispersing delicate tendrils across the water. The creature turns her head and sees you watching her. She titters girlishly, stroking the silver hair clinging wetly to her body."

[quote]Yeah. I'm not really a big fan of the dream thing, and potentially, if this were fleshed out to the extent of a short novel like the CYOA books, then a lot of things, especially that, would be changed. Maybe when I get a chance to get away from it and recover from school I'll be able to take a more leisurely approach and lead it away from the dreamstate concept.[/quote]I guess it's not so much the dream itself as it is the feeling that a protagonist character should be changed by the experience of a story. That's harder to do with a dream than with a story about an actual physical experience. Also, dream stories have been done [i]a lot[/i].

Also, it isn't clear if the endings where you "die" in the dream cause your character to die for real, since the link back to the beginning says "Perchance you will dream again." It's like, oops, the mermaid ate me, I'll just go to sleep and try again. Maybe the bad endings should say, "You never wake up again" in scary red letters. That would at least seem to raise the stakes for the protagonist.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3839&start=20#p27788
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Becoming another character mid-conversation
User: Hertz / DateTime: 2011-12-06 10:46:54

I would advise you keep a lid on combinatorial explosion by simply giving the player isolated, selective moments at which he can initiate a change during conversation.  Always after the introduction, and optionally thereafter at certain key topics that you choose.  (For instance, after the NPC reveals he carries the gold passkey to the lab.) This gives the illusion of unfettered switching without bogging down in excessive dialog branching.  The player can always switch again after the conversation ends, so there isn't a requirement for switching back at any point in every convo.

What does unfettered freedom get you, switching every turn?  The first time is interesting and dramatic; the second is "hey, that was weird." After that you alternate between "here we go again" and "oops, we're back to normal." Are those third, fourth, fifth, etc. switches giving you value for time?  Do all those extra conversation nodes interrupt the story value of a crucial piece of information?  "Quick, Bill, i aint got much time, I'm shot real bad.  The money's in the ... what the heck?"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=30#p27789
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-06 10:50:12

[quote="Robert Rothman"]Granted, there are undoubtedly some people out there who have such a short attention span, or who are willing to invest so little effort, that they will give up if they aren't walked through everything step by step. That's fine, but maybe those people should stick to comic books. IF, by its very nature, requires a certain amount of thought and participation on the part of the player/reader, and maybe it just isn't the right genre for somebody who isn't interested in making that investment. And if we remove the need for thought and participation in an attempt to get a larger audience, haven't we gotten rid of the very attributes that make it what it is?[/quote]

What Erik said. And complaints about the parser don't just come from hapless noobs whose gaming literacy ends at Farmville and Minesweeper. We're talking dedicated indie gamers, game-designers, game critics. People who don't blink at memorising five pages of keymaps for a roguelike. Programmers. People who live and breathe literature. Smartest-kids-in-the-class. These aren't people who are [i]incapable[/i] of learning the parser, or too lazy to do it. But they're capable of learning it in the same sense that they're capable of learning Old Church Slavonic: it's tough, it's frustrating and they really can't see why they should invest all that effort for a niche system that won't meet them halfway.

Saying that the only problem is that everybody who bounces off the parser is stupid or lazy is deeply unhelpful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3863&start=0#p27790
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Room compile error - TADS3
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-12-06 11:49:56

What's wrong with this picture? I'm starting to put together my TADS3 game and I'm getting a compile error that I can't understand. Heres the code:

[code][/code]

#charset "us-ascii"

/*******************************************************************************
*  Copyright (c) 1999, 2002 by Michael J. Roberts.  Permission is granted 
*  to anyone to copy and use this file for any purpose.  
*******************************************************************************/

/*  Includes ** Adds source files and sets language. **************************/

#include <adv3.h>          
#include <en_us.h>

/*******************************************************************************
*  User-Defined Classes.
*******************************************************************************/ 

class DynamicTravelMessage: TravelMessage
travelDesc()
{
if(!destination.seen) //Our destination isn't seen. 
return firstTravelDesc; 
else //It is seen. 
return secondTravelDesc; 
} 
;

/*******************************************************************************
*  Templates     
*******************************************************************************/
 
DynamicTravelMessage template
->destination
"firstTravelDesc"
"secondTravelDesc";

/*******************************************************************************
*  Modifications
*******************************************************************************/ 

modify Lockable
 replace examineStatus()
 {
  /* Inherit the default handling. */ 
 inherited();
  /* If our lock status is visually apparent, and we want to mention the 
   * lock status in our current state, show the lock status. */    
 if(lockStatusObvious&&lockStatusReportable)
   say(isLocked?currentlyLockedMsg:currentlyUnlockedMsg);
 }
 currentlyLockedMsg=(gLibMessages.currentlyLocked)
 currentlyUnlockedMsg=(gLibMessages.currentlyUnlocked)
;
  
replace VerbRule(Drink)
 ('drink'|'quaff'|'imbibe'|'sip'|'gulp'|'swallow')dobjList
 [emote]:D[/emote]rinkAction
 verbPhrase='drink/drinking(what)'
; 

replace VerbRule(AttachTo)
 ('attach'|'connect'|'hook'|'fasten')dobjList'to'singleIobj
 :AttachToAction
 askIobjResponseProd=toSingleNoun
 verbPhrase='attach/attaching(what)(to what)'
;

modify grammar predicate(Take):
 ('take'|'pick' 'up'|'get'|'grab'|'handle'|'lift')
 dobjList
 |'pick'dobjList'up':
 verbPhrase='take/taking(what)'
;

modify Room
 desc()
 {
 /*Has the room been seen before?*/ 
 if (!seen)
 return(roomFirstDesc);
 else
 return(shortDesc);
 }
; 
   
The error is on the return(shortDesc); line and is stated as the "shortDesc" is undefined. I am only providing the code down to the error. Could I be missing something further on that is the cause of this error?

RonG

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3863&start=0#p27791
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Room compile error - TADS3
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-06 12:08:35

You are getting that message because shortDesc is undefined. [emote]:)[/emote] It's not defined anywhere in adv3 and you haven't declared it as a property on any object or class.

At a minimum, you need to do something like this, somewhere:
[code]
foo: Object
    shortDesc = nil
;
[/code]

(Defining a property anywhere defines it everywhere.)

However, for this specific effect, you can put your short description in desc (as a dquote or function) and your first description in roomFirstDesc (as another dquote or function).

Like:

[code]
myRoom: Room 'ROOM'
    "This is my short description for subsequent visits. "
    roomFirstDesc = "This is the longer description for the first visit. "
;
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3839&start=20#p27792
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Becoming another character mid-conversation
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-06 13:11:54

I see your point, but I don't think there needs to be much explosion at all. The example I posted could easily be switched to multiple viewpoints. At most you would expand by a factor of two - instead of using "[The person asked] say[s]" for certain quips, you might have to split it into "Bob says 'I'm fine'" and "You tell the others that you're fine." Of course if you wanted to get complicated you could have people say different things depending on who they're talking to, but you don't have to.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=30#p27793
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-12-06 13:27:35

I never meant to suggest that somebody who doesn't want to take the small amount of trouble needed to learn what kinds of commands are likely to be accepted and understood is stupid or lazy -- simply that he may just not be interested.

My point was simply that if you put an automatic transmission in a racing car to make it more attractive to people (like me) who are not interested in learing to drive a stick, it's not a race car any more.


Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=30#p27794
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-12-06 13:37:56

[quote="Robert Rothman"]I never meant to suggest that somebody who doesn't want to take the small amount of trouble needed to learn what kinds of commands are likely to be accepted and understood is stupid or lazy -- simply that he may just not be interested.[/quote]

While I don't have any scientific data to back this up, I've presented IF in enough public contexts now that I've seen hundreds, maybe even close to a thousand, non-IF people interact with IF. And in my anecdotal experience, I can say that lack of interest is not the problem for most people.

By far the most common reaction is something like "This seems really cool, but I can't figure out how to make it work."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=30#p27795
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-12-06 14:06:47

Sorry for the (second) intermission, but...

I've been trying a game lately (one I should have been betatesting but, to my fault, I didn't due to the Comp being in the way) which was really good imo, but in which the fourth wall was crushed every other turn. It kept "annoying" me with outputs more aimed at one who never saw an IF in his life and, yes, was more a teenager than a devote fan. Those brackets soon got to my nerves. To the point that my transcript contains, at some point, "grrrr. can we drop these messages asap, please??".

Now I understand there is a NOVICE OFF command and that is fair. Funny that a routine for the newcomers got to the point of being a guess the verb for me who finished The Hobbit 25 years ago. [emote]:)[/emote]

What I'm trying to say is: Ok I understand everything about the topic, and I trust Aaron's experience above mine.
But: i.e., isn't the default hint menu in EmShort extension enough for newcomers to know how to play a game? I don't mean that should be the ONLY way to approach the matter but I neatly prefer it. "To play IF you can LOOK at things, GO directions or even N/W/E etc" isn't a nice and straightforward way to put people on tracks by itself?

I feel like Smarter parser is trying to achieve more than this. Especially when deciding what the player meant or something like that. It tries to avoid the guess the verb at all, which imo sounds like a gargantuan task. One hardly we will ever accomplish. In the end, IF IS about guessing the verb, even when doing the easiest things ("I've found an egg. What now? Shall I EAT it? BREAK it? WARM it?")

I'm not sure I've made myself clear. Before answering anything, convince yourself I'm not trying to lecture or assault anyone [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=30#p27796
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-06 14:35:30

[quote="Jamespking"]But: i.e., isn't the default hint menu in EmShort extension enough for newcomers to know how to play a game? I don't mean that should be the ONLY way to approach the matter but I neatly prefer it. "To play IF you can LOOK at things, GO directions or even N/W/E etc" isn't a nice and straightforward way to put people on tracks by itself?[/quote]
It would be great, but this is 2011. Nobody ever reads the manual. Nobody expects that they'll have to. Most games don't even come with a proper manual any more. Gamers generally expect to be able to jump into the game and learn through play, or at the very least to have a shiny tutorial game*. The main exceptions I can think of are the kind of open-ended indie games -- big roguelikes, Minecraft, complicated strategy sims -- where you know you're going to be playing for a long time, so the time required to learn stuff is trivial relative to total play time. (This was also true, to some extent, of the first generation of IF players.) And if this is true of gamers, what do you do about non-gamers?

* I'm sure this has been discussed before, but: a pre-made IF tutorial game accessible from a first-screen choice wouldn't be an awful idea. Although it wouldn't be simple to just drop into an existing work. But it could serve the function of keeping newbie stuff out of the faces of experienced players, and impart information in a more engaging way than RTFM.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=40#p27797
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: The Xenographer / DateTime: 2011-12-06 14:49:09

[quote="Jeff Zeitlin"][quote="I4L"]Running a Droid X on DSX, Hunky Punk doesn't work. The scrolling is broken, so the keyboard covers the text. Also typing after a couple of minutes leads to long strings of seemingly random text into the parser like it's duplicating something. I saw the same behavior running stock Froyo and stock GB. Twisty works great, but if you want to change games, it has to scan your entire SD card for games. Hunky Punk creates an Interactive Fiction folder and only loads games stored there.[/quote]
Yeah, I can confirm the Hunky scrolling problem as well, on Nook Color with the N2A CM7 card, booted to CM7.  Additionally, where Twisty (and all PC frotzim that I've tried) accept space or any key when the game says 'press space to continue' or 'press any key to continue', Hunky Punk seems only to accept ENTER.  This cause a minor hassle when I got stuck trying to quit from AMFV; on a frotz, if you fatfinger the keyboard and cause it to prompt "Type Y or N", it'll take a Y or an N; on Hunky, you need Y <enter>, and it doesn't like that as input, and repeats the question.[/quote]

I had the same problems with Hunky Punk on my Pantech phone running Android 2.3.3 -- plus the app crashes if you try to open menus, which is very frustrating if you want to make use of built-in hint systems or what have you. I gave up and started using Twisty instead, and that's worked well so far.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=250#p27798
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: The Xenographer / DateTime: 2011-12-06 14:53:00

[quote="Felix"][quote="The Xenographer"]wildly ambitious ideas for several future projects[/quote]
Sounds promising. 
Welcome, Xenographer![/quote]

Well, if the projects ever do get finished, they're probably not going to end up anywhere near as ambitious as they were when originally conceived. (Isn't that always how it goes?) Anyway, thanks!

[quote="bowsmand"]Welcome, Xenographer!  Happy for your involvement in the community.  Especial thanks for your much appreciated votes in Ectocomp 2011.[/quote]

No problem! It was a fun thing to do over Thanksgiving whenever I needed some time off from family togetherness.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=30#p27799
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-12-06 15:09:22

[quote="maga"]It would be great, but this is 2011. Nobody ever reads the manual.[/quote]
Yeah, point taken.
Well, I know you are right. But, just for the sake of discussion --  I believe IF to be a "harder" media than the average iPhone game. I understand the audience is probably the same (as in: everybody), though... it's like reading a book. It's not like watching a movie, isn't it? It takes time. And passion. And patience.

But, as I said: yeah, you are right.

I love the idea of a tutorial in the main menu. As in most of the games nowadays, just a few steps in which to direct the newcomer. After all, IF takes LESS than [i]Modern Warfare 3[/i] to be fully grasped.

As Doc Manhattan once said: "I think I'll create some."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3858&start=10#p27800
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Mirror|rorriM CYOA - Looking for Opinions and Critiques
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-12-06 16:33:56

Waking up doesn't feel like winning or succeeding, at least to me, because:

a) It's a foregone outcome.  If you start out asleep, you'll end by waking up.  At the very least you need to make it clear--at the beginning--that there are possible endings where you [i]don't[/i] wake up.

b) It's an essentially random outcome.  None of the choices in the game encourage the player to weigh the options and decide which one is likely to turn out better.  Consider "take the star key" vs. "take the dagger key": You're given no basis to decide except "Well, I like stars..."

c) It's a meaningless outcome.  You end up exactly where you started (for that matter, we don't even [i]know[/i] anything about where we started), and nothing has changed.  All stories except vignettes ought to change the world in some way so that it matters whether the story took place or not--eg, trojo's apt suggestion that the events of the story should change the protagonist.

(Two random things about the website:  First, I think you made rather clever use of Wordpress, and second, get rid of that hit counter.  It is not 1999 and Wordpress keeps track of your stats already.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3864&start=0#p27801
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Announcing: Zombie Exodus
User: jimd / DateTime: 2011-12-06 18:34:18

Zombie Exodus is a CYOA game developed using ChoiceScript and hosted by Choice of Games. After building your character, you set off on a search to find your sister in a zombie-filled city. Along the way, you deal with military blockades, bandit groups, and, of course, the living dead. This release includes two parts, comprised of eight chapters, with future parts planned. It is available for free at Choice of Game's Web site and as an app for iPhone, iPad, and Android devices.

• On the Web: [url]http://www.choiceofgames.com/user-contributed/zombie-exodus/[/url]
• iPhone version [url]http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/zombie-exodus/id482427167?mt=8[/url]
• Android version. [url]https://market.android.com/details?id=org.hostedgames.zombieexodus[/url]

I have always enjoyed horror fiction and CYOA, and with the proliferation of zombie stories and films in recent years, I wanted to contribute to the genre. 

I am happy to receive any constructive feedback on the story, characters, or use of choices in the game.

Thanks in advance!
Jim

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=40#p27802
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-12-06 19:28:01

[quote="Jamespking"]But: i.e., isn't the default hint menu in EmShort extension enough for newcomers to know how to play a game?[/quote]

On the topic of default stuff -- actually I suspect the amount of default content could muddy the waters for newcomers.

My understanding of why IF games come with instructions which aren't actually for that particular game, but are a (relatively) vague attempt to hit something from all IF games (EG Andrew Plotkin's card, Emily Short's extension) is that we're all doing this off our own backs, not for money (mostly!), not in teams, and not everyone has the time, skills or even interest or desire to produce specific help & instructions for their game.

That can make sense if you pitch your game at people in the know already. But all the accessibility talk is related to pitching games to people not in the know. What other genre of game out there comes with a generic slip saying something like 'In most FPSes, this button is shoot, jumping might work if you press this button, usually you aim with this stick.'? Etc. Even if you think few people read instructions, new games comes with instructions for that game, and any tutorial and help content will be for that game only.

Given how unfamiliar the parser can be per se, having default instructions is obviously better than none, but it's obviously not as good as having specific instructions, and can potentially add to querulousness when they have to impart a message along the lines of 'try some of these things, they might work in the game you're playing.'

Btw, I don't intend this as any kind of attack on the card or Emily Short's help extensions. They've helped with a zillion games that would otherwise have no help content. I'm just pointing to an issue concerning specificity of instructions for IF games in general that I don't know if people have talked about before.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3864&start=0#p27803
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Announcing: Zombie Exodus
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-06 19:36:33

I want to like that there's a "native" Android app, but it looks like a web wrapper. I haven't seen the in-game advertising yet, but it could be the ad blocker. I've made it through the "character creation" part of it, which reminds me quite a bit of MySpace personality tests. I checked my stats and hit the "Back" button to return to the game and it closed the app instead. I haven't picked it up again, because I'm not a fan of the zombie genre. But if I do, I'll give some actual feedback. 

Congratulations on your finished product. Hope you get a little slice of the ad-removal pie.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=40#p27804
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-12-06 20:03:41

[quote="severedhand"]Given how unfamiliar the parser can be per se, having default instructions is obviously better than none, but it's obviously not as good as having specific instructions, and can potentially add to querulousness when they have to impart a message along the lines of 'try some of these things, they might work in the game you're playing.'

Btw, I don't intend this as any kind of attack on the card or Emily Short's help extensions. They've helped with a zillion games that would otherwise have no help content. I'm just pointing to an issue concerning specificity of instructions for IF games in general that I don't know if people have talked about before.[/quote]

No, I completely agree, and encourage people to customize the messages. The intent at least with my stuff was always to give people something they could tweak to suit their particular game, which would be a little easier than starting from scratch.

That said, I increasingly think that it's necessary, accessibility-wise, to have an explicitly tutorial opening that teaches people the essential commands as they play. That's what pretty much every other kind of game does these days. Walls of text are overwhelming and unattractive. I also think that if you ask people if they want to play on easy mode, or whether they want instructions, half the time they will say no even though they need those instructions. That's why I've gone over to prefacing instructional content with "have you played interactive fiction before?", a factual question I feel they're less likely to lie about directly, and turn off the tutorial if they answer yes.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3865&start=0#p27805
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Parchment/Transcript Recorder 3.0 Issues...?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-06 20:04:49

Haven't done anything with Firebug yet, as I haven't been back to my primary machine in some days. Just crapping around on this old laptop. But I was messing around with Parchment at work earlier when I had some downtime. I noticed that even though the transcript recorder is saving the actual transcripts, it isn't populating the "stories" table to link those transcripts to the associated games / session information. 

Odd that it would store the transcript info and not the other. If anyone has anything they can can throw out from the hip, that'd be great. Otherwise I'll debug it in further detail this weekend. Need to make some changes to the script anyway.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3866&start=0#p27806
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Speech Motivations - Questions
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-06 20:34:02

So... Liking what I see so far, just from messing around with the example. I apologize that I wasn't able to give feedback sooner, but my diving into the source of an extension to find out how it ticks is a dangerous thing...

There are a couple of things that don't appear to be working properly for me on the example. Was wondering if I could get some feedback:

[code]
For speaking out loud of the coat when Bob is the person asked:
[/code]

This doesn't seem to result in anything other than your asking Bob for the coat. I tried removing that entry from the table and it just gives me a blank response.

Here's the example again for reference:

[spoiler]"Ran Over"

Include Speech Motivations by Mike Ciul.

Highway is a room. Jay is a man in highway. Bob is a man in highway.
Bob wears a coat. Jay carries a joint. God is a subject.

The description of the player is "You're completely naked, and still smarting from your fall out of heaven."

For getting attention of Bob when Bob is not expected to respond:
    forget the concerns of Bob.

First for speaking out loud of something (called the subject matter):
    Repeat through Table of Responses:
        if the speaker entry is the person asked and the subject entry is the subject matter:
            say response entry;
            say paragraph break;
            rule succeeds;
            continue the activity.

For speaking out loud when Bob is the person asked:
    say "Bob shrugs."

For getting attention of Jay when Jay is not expected to respond:
    If the new subject matter is Jay or the new subject matter is Bob:
        confirm motivation of Jay;
    otherwise if someone is expected to respond:
        forget the concerns of Jay;
    otherwise:
        confirm motivation of Jay.
      
For speaking out loud of something (called the subject matter) when Jay is the person asked:
    say "Jay expounds at great length, with multiple interjections of colorful profanity, on the subject of [the subject matter], but at the end you're still not sure how he feels."

For printing the name of Jay when the speaking out loud activity is going on and the person asked is Jay:
    say "himself";

Table of Responses
speaker (object)    subject (object)    response (text)
yourself    joint    "You comment on Jay's joint."
yourself    yourself    "'What's the matter? You never saw a naked black man before?' you say."
yourself    coat    "You tell [the current interlocutor] that you just want to borrow the coat until you can find some other clothes."
Bob    Jay    "Bob smiles and pats his friend on the back."
Bob    joint    "Bob raises his eyebrows."
Bob    God    "Bob shakes his head."
Bob    Bob    "Bob grins and thumps his chest."
Bob    yourself    "Bob tries not to look at your nakedness."
Jay    joint    "'Dude, have some! First one's free!'"
Jay    coat    "'Dude, [if jay is expected to respond]what are you thinking? My man doesn't want your dick rubbing all over the inside of his armor!'[otherwise]why you eyeing my man's coat?' Jay yells at you."
Jay    yourself    "'I'm not staring at a naked black man. I'm staring at naked black man who just [italic type]fell out of the f***ing sky![roman type]'"

First for speaking out loud of yourself when the person asked is Jay and Jay is not expected to respond:
    say "Jay tries to pretend that he's not staring at your nakedness.";

For speaking out loud of the coat when Bob is the person asked:
    say "Bob removes his coat and hands it to you.";
    end the story finally saying "You are no longer naked."

test me with "x bob/ask jay about joint/x me/ask jay about me/x coat/ask jay about coat/tell jay about coat/ask jay for coat/ask bob about jay/ask bob about joint/tell bob about god/ask bob about bob/ask bob about me/ask bob about joint/ask bob for coat"
 [/spoiler]

Why is God defined as a subject, but also defined in the table of responses? And when I ask Jay about God, I get a blank response?

However, my tinkering did result in a somewhat amusing response. Not sure where it's coming from:

[spoiler]>ask self about coat
You isn't here.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3860&start=0#p27807
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Things vs. people on supporters
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-12-06 20:39:52

...Dammit, that's what I get for trying to error trap late at night.  I did have a real problem and I'll post it as soon as I can actually replicate it.

EDIT: Never mind, found it.  It did behave strikingly like the above, but for different reasons.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3867&start=0#p27808
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: The Cellar
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-06 22:25:33

I started to download and play this, but when I try, I get a four oh four error.

(From IFDB, I mean. Something about a fertility decline site...?)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3868&start=0#p27809
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Ebb, Flow & Journey
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-06 22:33:02

I can't download either of these, either. Decompress breaks with "Unexpected End of Archive". Tried downloading other zip files, just to make sure it wasn't this junky box. They opened just fine. This is apparently the night of "play nothing that you want".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3867&start=0#p27810
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Cellar
User: George / DateTime: 2011-12-06 22:57:05

The download link is to Shadowvault, which if I'm not mistaken went under a while ago. Many of its files were mirrored but I can't remember which site unfortunately.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3867&start=0#p27812
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Cellar
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-06 23:40:50

I found a copy. Version 1, as the ending states. I'm not thrilled with it. It's a love-hate thing.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=40#p27813
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2011-12-07 01:23:39

Careful, though, what you"re communicatingto your players. If you give them a tutorial explaining exactly how [i]this[/i] game is played, that is what they will understand: These are instructions for [i]this[/i] game. How much time would you think the average newcomer would be willing to spend learning to play a random IF Comp sized game?

Telling them "this is how you play this game and a couple of thousand more", on the other hand, might make it worth the effort learning these basics.

[quote="emshort"]Walls of text are overwhelming and unattractive.[/quote]
That is irony incarnate.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3867&start=0#p27814
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Cellar
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-12-07 01:39:30

Shadowvault indeed went under a few years back, however someone kindly offered to host the site at [url]http://ultranine.novahost.org/shadowvault/[/url]; though any link to the old site would need updating to the new one.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=40#p27816
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-12-07 02:11:26

[quote="Hannes"]Telling them "this is how you play this game and a couple of thousand more", on the other hand, might make it worth the effort learning these basics.[/quote]
In that case, I suggest adding an introduction (interactive, maybe) to the Comp's site, rather than in all of the games. A big red button before the download, saying "click here if you haven't played IF before".

Now that I think about it, wall of texts, instructions and tutorials (all the xtras that don't shout "this is the main game and just the main game") are very likely skipped. By anyone. Take the game [i]The Guardian[/i] by Lutein Hawthorn. It had feelies. Not even experienced players looked at those feelies. Half the story was in there, 90% of the people missed it. 

So, on one hand we have people who will not read the hint menu.
On the other, imagine strolling through a dozen or more (38!) tutorials all alike for a dozen (38!) games who differ just for the ability to PUSH CLIFF or not to PUSH CLIFF.
If we had a third hand (and I hope none of you do), in there would fit people so lost to the parser as to try and use it as a web browser.
The eventual fourth hand would hold people that won't go in a game other than by the game itself, skipping all the extras.

This is a mess.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=40#p27817
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-12-07 02:22:37

[quote="Hannes"][quote="emshort"]Walls of text are overwhelming and unattractive.[/quote]
That is irony incarnate.[/quote]

Sorry.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=40#p27836
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-12-07 02:39:44

[quote="Jamespking"]Now that I think about it, wall of texts, instructions and tutorials (all the xtras that don't shout "this is the main game and just the main game") are very likely skipped. By anyone. Take the game [i]The Guardian[/i] by Lutein Hawthorn. It had feelies. Not even experienced players looked at those feelies. Half the story was in there, 90% of the people missed it.[/quote]

I don't think this is a good example because this didn't happen because of a lack of interest in feelies. Lutein hit a specific problem - I would say he made a mistake (or an oversight - he might have failed to tick or untick a box) concerning a thing that I thought might happen if I let my game be played online... that it would become detached from its feelies. That did happen for The Guardian, so for people playing online, there was no sign initially that feelies existed. Then on the IFComp website, the gblorbs and such were available on their own, again detached from the feelies. So that's the kind of thing all authors have to be wary of, and probably a logistical improvement that IFComp should look into next year.

[quote]On the other, imagine strolling through a dozen or more (38!) tutorials all alike for a dozen (38!) games who differ just for the ability to PUSH CLIFF or not to PUSH CLIFF.[/quote]

In such a scenario, I expect you'd play one game with tutorial mode, hopefully get the idea, then you might play one more game with tutorial mode, or just proceed to leaving tute mode off from then on. I don't think anyone's advocating forcing tutorial mode to be on in every game. You can just ask the player.

[quote]The eventual fourth hand would hold people that won't go in a game other than by the game itself, skipping all the extras.[/quote]

Some people will never read anything extra-curricular, but it's not really worth worrying about them. Just concentrate on making sure people who will or might  read stuff are given the opportunity to do so when it's relevant. Obviously not every game has to be for everyone or do things the same way. But if you've got feelies or instructions and do want people to read them, you have to do what you can as an author to encourage that to happen with your game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3864&start=0#p27837
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Announcing: Zombie Exodus
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-12-07 04:14:10

I'll be sure to play it as soon as you distribute an offline version I can download and keep in my hard drive.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3868&start=0#p27838
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Ebb, Flow & Journey
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-12-07 04:15:02

That sometimes happened with me when I was downloading lots of files. Silly question, but did you try to re-download them a couple of times?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3889&start=0#p27839
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Ring of Thieves Standalone POD Thingy
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-07 08:24:07

This isn't Interactive Fiction by [i]every [/i]definition, but it fits the cooler ones [emote]:)[/emote]

For those who enjoy my free CYOA-Gamebook thingy, [i][b]Ring of Thieves,[/b][/i] you can now throw money at it if you want to (it's still free in PDF, of course).

<a class="postlink" href="http://temphis.deviantart.com/art/Ring-of-Thieves-Cover-272786532">http://temphis.deviantart.com/art/Ring- ... -272786532</a> is probably the best place to start (there's a link in the description to the Lulu page, yadda).

The POD editions are ridiculously wasteful and expensive. Buy fifty, plz and thx.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3867&start=0#p27840
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Cellar
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-07 08:37:33

[quote="David Whyld"]Shadowvault indeed went under a few years back, however someone kindly offered to host the site at [url]http://ultranine.novahost.org/shadowvault/[/url]; though any link to the old site would need updating to the new one.[/quote]

Maybe I'm missing it... There appears to be lists of authors on this site, but no way to download anything?

Is "Version 1" the only version? If so, I'm good with the copy I have. Need to replay it, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3868&start=0#p27841
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Ebb, Flow & Journey
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-07 08:38:41

[quote="Peter Pears"]That sometimes happened with me when I was downloading lots of files. Silly question, but did you try to re-download them a couple of times?[/quote]

They were the only files downloading. And yessir, I deleted them and tried a few times to redownload them. No love. I'm sure I'll find a copy at some point today. Just wasn't my night to play IF, I guess.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3889&start=0#p27842
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Ring of Thieves Standalone POD Thingy
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-07 08:42:14

Not surprisingly, deviantart.com is blocked on my company's proxy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3867&start=0#p27843
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Cellar
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-12-07 09:31:59

I don't have anything to do with the website these days, so I'm not sure whether all the links work or not. I'll have to check with the guy who hosts it now.

As far as I remember (it's been a few years and I'm terrible at keeping notes of such things), there was only ever one version of the game. I received only limited feedback and nothing that really made me feel that a second version was necessary.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3889&start=0#p27844
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Ring of Thieves Standalone POD Thingy
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-07 09:47:33

[quote="I4L"]Not surprisingly, deviantart.com is blocked on my company's proxy.[/quote]

Aw [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3867&start=0#p27845
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Cellar
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-07 09:53:06

[quote="David Whyld"]I don't have anything to do with the website these days, so I'm not sure whether all the links work or not. I'll have to check with the guy who hosts it now.

As far as I remember (it's been a few years and I'm terrible at keeping notes of such things), there was only ever one version of the game. I received only limited feedback and nothing that really made me feel that a second version was necessary.[/quote]

That works for me, thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=40#p27846
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-12-07 10:30:18

[quote="Jamespking"][quote="Hannes"]Telling them "this is how you play this game and a couple of thousand more", on the other hand, might make it worth the effort learning these basics.[/quote]
In that case, I suggest adding an introduction (interactive, maybe) to the Comp's site, rather than in all of the games. A big red button before the download, saying "click here if you haven't played IF before".[/quote]A big red button to click first might be a good idea. Apparently IFComp does draw at least some non-IF people every year based on what some people have said about the online transcripts they got back. A tutorial would definitely help get new people oriented, but it would have to be IF also (not static text), and it would have to be fun-- short, merciful, VERY robust in responding logically to user input, not fiddly, no custom verbs, no excessively purple prose, no maudlin/angsty story-line, and focused on having the player learn by doing instead of throwing walls of explanatory text at them. 

We don't need yet another static-text article about "how to play IF". There are several of those already, and it's not reasonable to expect a player to have to read so much before starting to have fun and play.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=40#p27847
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-12-07 10:55:10

[quote="trojo"]A tutorial would definitely help get new people oriented, but it would have to be IF also (not static text), and it would have to be fun-- short, merciful, VERY robust in responding logically to user input, not fiddly, no custom verbs, no excessively purple prose...[/quote]
That means I can't be doing the job [emote]:)[/emote]

But yes, I mean a very fast, very easy tutorial IF.
I'm working on it. Will show something for you all to put straight in no time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=40#p27848
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2011-12-07 11:10:41

[quote="Hannes"][quote="emshort"]Walls of text are overwhelming and unattractive.[/quote]

That is irony incarnate.[/quote]

Wow, you're an asshole!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3866&start=0#p27849
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Speech Motivations - Questions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-07 11:14:27

Your tabs seem funny. Did you paste the example from a post rather than using the paste utility in the IDE or using the "quote" feature to copy the raw text?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3866&start=0#p27850
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Speech Motivations - Questions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-07 11:15:40

[quote="I4L"][spoiler]>ask self about coat
You isn't here.[/spoiler][/quote]
Now that's a real bug. I'll work on that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3866&start=0#p27851
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Speech Motivations - Questions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-07 11:36:51

Here's the fix: I added this before the can't converse with absent interlocutor rule:

[code]Before addressing the default when the current interlocutor is the person asked (this is the address the assembly instead of talking to yourself rule):
	reset the interlocutor;[/code]

When other people are present this looks like:
[quote]>ask me about god
(addressing Jay and Bob)
You ask about God.

Jay expounds at great length, with multiple interjections of colorful profanity, on the subject of God, but at the end you're still not sure how he feels.[/quote]

When nobody else is around, you get:
[quote]>ask me about god
There's no one here to talk to.[/quote]

Does that seem reasonable? If not, what do you suggest?

By the way, I got tired of writing my own verb conjugations and included Plurality. Any objections? Does that cause conflicts with Custom Library Messages, for example?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=40#p27852
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-07 11:41:57

[quote="severedhand"][quote="Jamespking"]The eventual fourth hand would hold people that won't go in a game other than by the game itself, skipping all the extras.[/quote]

Some people will never read anything extra-curricular, but it's not really worth worrying about them. Just concentrate on making sure people who will or might  read stuff are given the opportunity to do so when it's relevant. Obviously not every game has to be for everyone or do things the same way. But if you've got feelies or instructions and do want people to read them, you have to do what you can as an author to encourage that to happen with your game.[/quote]
I almost never read supplemental materials until [i]after[/i] I've played the game, and then only if I liked the game fairly well.

If I'm playing an IF game, that's what I've signed on for: it doesn't necessarily mean that I'm interested in the author's static fiction or art or whatnot. I think it's reasonable to assume that all crucial information will be delivered within the game, and that supplemental materials will be supplemental. If I like a game enough that I want more, I'll look at feelies. If I'm unimpressed by the game, I'm not going to waste my time on them.

The design assumption that feelies will be experienced [i]before[/i] the game is a holdover from the Infocom days, when it made sense: when you opened the box, you could read the leaflets and fondle the whatsits more immediately than you could load up the game. For moderns, this isn't the case: the files are all equally accessible (or the reverse: my IF terps load a lot faster than my PDF viewer.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=50#p27853
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2011-12-07 11:43:35

Eh? I'm confused.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3865&start=0#p27854
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment/Transcript Recorder 3.0 Issues...?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-12-07 12:39:04

I can't reproduce the bug, so I can't say right away what's going on. If you manage to find the bug or even narrow down the problem, I'd appreciate more details so I could fix it in the official version. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=50#p27855
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-12-07 12:57:22

[quote="Hannes"]Eh? I'm confused.[/quote]
Seems like there's confusion and misunderstanding both ways: It [i]looks like[/i] you're saying that it's ironic that it's Emily who discredits walls of text, implying that the irony is that she herself made the extension that's basically a collection of walls of text (and/or that she tends to write games that are too wordy). You probably [i]wanted to say[/i], instead of specifically pointing at a single person, that it's ironic that text is undesired in the context of text-only games in general.

At least I hope this is the case. I've been known to misinterpret things.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3868&start=0#p27856
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Ebb, Flow & Journey
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-12-07 13:43:35

I was going to upload my copies to megaupload for you, and then I realised I don't really know what games you mean. Do you mean "The Ebb and Flow of the Tide"? And by "journey" what game do you mean?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3868&start=0#p27857
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Ebb, Flow & Journey
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-07 14:19:49

Journey of the King. Sorry, it was a long night.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3865&start=0#p27858
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment/Transcript Recorder 3.0 Issues...?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-07 14:23:09

Not entirely sure what the deal was. Dropped the database tables and recreated them. Then nothing would work. Deleted the files (except for the db.php and what used to be index.html) and reuploaded them. Now everything is fine. Most likely some kinda of version mix-up where I was reinstalling from different computers. Probably had some 2.1 stuff in there somewhere. Seems to be okay now.

Once I get it to write an additional column to the stories table from a $_GET, I'll be golden. Haven't looked at it yet, but it probably won't be a big deal.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3889&start=0#p27859
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Ring of Thieves Standalone POD Thingy
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-12-07 15:36:05

[quote="I4L"]Not surprisingly, deviantart.com is blocked on my company's proxy.[/quote]
You're probably not still at work, but <a class="postlink" href="http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/cumberland">http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/cumberland</a> is the site you get redirected to from deviantart.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3889&start=0#p27860
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Ring of Thieves Standalone POD Thingy
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-07 15:40:06

[quote="JoeyJones"][quote="I4L"]Not surprisingly, deviantart.com is blocked on my company's proxy.[/quote]
You're probably not still at work, but <a class="postlink" href="http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/cumberland">http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/cumberland</a> is the site you get redirected to from deviantart.[/quote]

I am, unfortunately.  [emote]:?[/emote] 

Thanks for the link.

(I didn't buy 50.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=50#p27861
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-12-07 17:20:52

Just a note: I'm working on some major updates to Smarter Parser and related extensions taking into account the feedback here, but this is [i]not[/i] reflected in the updates that just were posted on the I7 Extensions page, which were older fixes I hadn't submitted until recently.

But I am listening to the feedback, and future updates will definitely take advantage of it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3889&start=0#p27862
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Ring of Thieves Standalone POD Thingy
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-07 18:08:47

[quote="I4L"](I didn't buy 50.)[/quote]

Aw [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3890&start=0#p27863
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Beginning in the middle of the action: is it a bad idea?
User: Morley / DateTime: 2011-12-07 19:22:00

So for the game I'm sort of halfway planning, I had the idea of starting the game, against IF tradition, in the middle of an action-oriented sequence. I'm not entirely sure it's a good idea, though.

 I know if this were a piece of static fiction, I'd consider it the strongest opening.  I'm relatively sure I can set the thing up so there's no problem with it being too hard to understand what's going on. My concern is that in IF,  players typically want to spend their first few turns poking around, testing the depth of the implimentation,  XYZZYing, etc, before commiting to the story.  

I'm wondering: are there any games you've played that effectively begin in the middle of a relatively suspenseful or fast-paced sequence? A timed sequence? A conversation?  In general, do you as a player tend to reserve those first few turns for getting your bearings and/or messing around in an unmimetic fashion? Are there cases where a particularly compelling opening sequence has caused you to want to act in character right away?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=50#p27864
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-12-07 19:44:24

[quote="maga"]If I'm playing an IF game, that's what I've signed on for: it doesn't necessarily mean that I'm interested in the author's static fiction or art or whatnot. I think it's reasonable to assume that all crucial information will be delivered within the game, and that supplemental materials will be supplemental. If I like a game enough that I want more, I'll look at feelies. If I'm unimpressed by the game, I'm not going to waste my time on them.

The design assumption that feelies will be experienced [i]before[/i] the game is a holdover from the Infocom days, when it made sense: when you opened the box, you could read the leaflets and fondle the whatsits more immediately than you could load up the game. For moderns, this isn't the case: the files are all equally accessible (or the reverse: my IF terps load a lot faster than my PDF viewer.)[/quote]

Hehe, putting the floppy in the computer and turning it on was not a big deal. 8-bit computers may have had loading times, but they had no startup time and no hard drives and no fans or anything that had to power up. They booted up way faster than 16 bit computers, often instantly. I speak from experience [emote]:)[/emote]

My point was about the author taking responsbility for what they're doing, not about people's habits. If Lutein was dead set on having that feelie, with you personally, he's not gonna succeed no matter what he does. If he doesn't tell you to read it, you won't read it. If he tells you to read it at the start of the game, you've said you won't read it. Basically, you're not gonna read it til after, which with this game, was too late. In that sense, you're one of the players I would say he can't worry about.

On the other hand, if he wants to scoop up such players - who as you say, are the majority - he'd move the feelie content into the game. But then in his case, it potentially becomes a wall of text issue. And you lose all the aesthetics of the feelie. If we keep viewing it from all these bad things that might happen, it keeps looking like a negative. I view it as a positive when the author owns and dictates the circumstances of the thing they really want to do (in this case - tell player at game start to read feelie - though more gracefully than I just did) and is clear in communicating it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3890&start=0#p27865
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Beginning in the middle of the action: is it a bad idea?
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-12-07 19:56:14

It seems to me that the biggest concern would be making sure that the player can know what they need to do.  It's true that players often poke around a bit at the beginning of a game, and seasoned IF players are frequently doing exactly what you say (XYZZYing, etc), but new players are often trying to figure out how to communicate with the parser.  A new player could be very turned off by being thrown into an action scene and possibly insta-dying before they can figure out how to interact.  So unless you're aiming for a masochistic audience, it's crucial that the writing prompts correct action, possibly even heavy-handedly.  I'd be sure to beta-test thoroughly with some non-IF-playing friends unless you specifically don't care about the audience outside of this community.

This is more of an example of comedy than action per se, but I though [i]Taco Fiction[/i] (the winner of the recent Comp) did an excellent job of setting up the action scene, which I suspect worked for players of all levels of experience. (Of course, the game immediately [spoiler]scrapped those expectations hilariously[/spoiler]...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3890&start=0#p27866
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Beginning in the middle of the action: is it a bad idea?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-07 19:59:05

You're pretty much right: it's a good dramatic choice, and it's likely to be tricky in IF.

The main issue is if you equate 'fast-paced action scene' with 'difficult gameplay'. Usually in IF, things should work the other way around: the fast-paced scenes should be forgiving, and the difficult stuff (if you want it) should take place when the player has more breathing space. 

I'd say: start in an action scene, but follow the rules of heroic action. In story-oriented, mechanics-light RPGs, a common rule is that there's no question whether the hero is able to do the Heroic Thing: the interesting questions are about how, at what cost, what it means, etc. So, for example, if you start out in the middle of a fight, and the hero needs to win the fight for the plot to advance, try and make sure that more or less everything the hero could plausibly do will lead to them winning. (A lot of this is likely to involve steering them towards useful actions, which is a subtle and difficult art.)

[quote]My concern is that in IF, players typically want to spend their first few turns poking around, testing the depth of the implimentation, XYZZYing, etc, before commiting to the story.[/quote]
A good player will, I think, usually commit to an action scene by being more action-oriented rather than examining everything and poking the implementation: that's just part of the willing suspension of disbelief. But you need to signal to the player that this is the kind of scene that's going on, which is a strong-writing thing. There are lots of ways to do this (write less descriptively, more tersely, emphasis on things that the player needs to react to), but it does place extra demands on your writing in the first screen, which has very heavy demands on it already.

C.E.J. Pacian writes some excellent action scenes, although I can't think of one that opens a game. I'd also look at [i]Hoist Sail for the Heliopause and Home[/i], which eases the player very quickly into action.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3890&start=0#p27867
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Beginning in the middle of the action: is it a bad idea?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-07 20:38:44

Mentula Macanus: Apocolowhateverthehell starts in the middle of an action scene and then flashes back. It cues what you have to do pretty well (I mean, I died a few times before I got it right, but that's because I'm bad at this). 

The Act of Misdirection also does this, I'd say, and pretty much everyone agrees that the opening is the best part -- though I like the other parts too. It also does a pretty good job of cuing what you need to do, partly because it's the sort of action where you can extemporize and stall for time. And it definitely made me want to act in character. As tove said, Taco Fiction also did a good job of motivating you like this, up to (at a critical point) giving you a script for your next eight actions or so.

I prefer an opening sequence that pushes me through some pretty well-cued actions to the typical "Go examine ten objects and look through five rooms so you can find the puzzle" IF opening. (That may be an unfair characterization.) So go for it, I say!

NB: Corrected the typo in the first word of the post.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3890&start=0#p27868
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Beginning in the middle of the action: is it a bad idea?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-07 20:46:48

[quote="matt w"]Mentual Macanus: Apocolowhateverthehell starts in the middle of an action scene and then flashes back. It cues what you have to do pretty well (I mean, I died a few times before I got it right, but that's because I'm bad at this).[/quote]
Note: Mentula Macanus is not for the weak of stomach. And I mean 'stomach' in Victorian sense.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=50#p27869
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-07 20:49:13

[quote="severedhand"]Hehe, putting the floppy in the computer and turning it on was not a big deal. 8-bit computers may have had loading times, but they had no startup time and no hard drives and no fans or anything that had to power up. They booted up way faster than 16 bit computers, often instantly.[/quote]
Still, you open the box and you can read the text straight away. If you can read data from a floppy in your hand faster than you can read text on a piece of paper in your hand, I think you've got a non-trivial superpower.

[quote="severedhand"]On the other hand, if he wants to scoop up such players - who as you say, are the majority - he'd move the feelie content into the game. But then in his case, it potentially becomes a wall of text issue. And you lose all the aesthetics of the feelie. If we keep viewing it from all these bad things that might happen, it keeps looking like a negative.[/quote]
Well, it isn't very difficult to get images into games. If I were going to spend time on making illustrations, say, given the current distribution model of IF I'd never consider putting them anywhere except in-game. Even if they weren't crucial content. Art's really hard work!

The wall-o'-text thing is another issue, though. I remember really enjoying [i]Worlds Apart[/i] but glazing over at the big piles of information in the (in-game) leaflet. But this is an inherent problem of mixed-media, I think, and not one that I can solve in this margin.
[quote] I view it as a positive when the author owns and dictates the circumstances of the thing they really want to do (in this case - tell player at game start to read feelie - though more gracefully than I just did) and is clear in communicating it.[/quote]
Yes! Totally! But it's not really dictating the circumstances if you put your feelies in the same folder and mention them in the game. That's like saying "you really ought to to read the tie-in novel before you see my movie" and leaving copies in the cinema lobby. If there's something that you need the player to know, it's best to put it where they can't miss it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3890&start=0#p27870
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Beginning in the middle of the action: is it a bad idea?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-07 21:29:50

[quote="Morley"]I'm wondering: are there any games you've played that effectively begin in the middle of a relatively suspenseful or fast-paced sequence?[/quote]

Another vote for [i]Mentula Thingy-with-the-dick-jokes game[/i]. The opening action bit works very well in that, I think. And to echo Maga's praise of it: as a bonus, it would be offensive to those fun to offend.

Another one I liked was John Kean's [i]Yes, Another Game with a Dragon![/i] ... a very solid use of opening action-sequence (complete with a mild puzzle, but very very guided).

[quote]A timed sequence?[/quote]

Gah. I could swear I remember at least one of those, but it's hanging at the tip of my brain [emote]:([/emote]

[quote]A conversation?[/quote]

There are a lot of games where there's a conversation more-or-less immediately, but I can't remember any that begin in the [i]middle [/i]of one ...

[quote]In general, do you as a player tend to reserve those first few turns for getting your bearings and/or messing around in an unmimetic fashion? Are there cases where a particularly compelling opening sequence has caused you to want to act in character right away?[/quote]

In every game, I try to play the way the game seems to be built for. If it starts in Tone X and Mode 4 and Mood 8 using props and costumes from Genre H, that's the code I punch into the keypad on the side of my head.

Whether I stick with a game depends in part on whether it's well-made and in part on whether I enjoy it's intended (or apparently-intended) alphanumeric combination [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3890&start=0#p27871
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Beginning in the middle of the action: is it a bad idea?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-07 21:37:29

Hunter in Darkness begins in the middle of a tense scene, although it's not exactly an action scene.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3890&start=0#p27872
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Beginning in the middle of the action: is it a bad idea?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-07 22:04:54

Photopia begins in the middle of a timed sequence and a conversation, doesn't it? Though it's not a puzzle really. Seriously, I think it's a good model for this. 

Starting with a timed sequence you can die in is very risky, because it can basically go experiment-die-experiment-die-ragequit, and you might not hold your audience even that long. You could try Lurid Dreams for one of these, though the opening textdump is too long for it to count as in medias res (also it's kind of a big sequence of timed puzzles). 

The Hours (from the recent IFComp) starts with an action sequence, too, which when you complete it takes you to an area where things are much more leisurely, though it's not in medias res; the game follows sequentially in your subjective timeline. You can die in this one, but you have to try pretty hard not to get the right commands at the beginning. I found this effective but I don't know if anyone else liked this game as much as I did.

All Roads is a good in medias res opening, though the whole game takes place in medias res. But the opening works partly because it doesn't give you a puzzle to solve.

All told, I think the challenge is making it pretty clear what you're to do. If the mediasness of the res is gripping enough, you won't have to worry about the player's desire to poke around and xyzzy (I'm kind of sympathetic to the Pacian game that responds to xyzzy by killing you off with a score of -20). A good action sequence can capture our interest at the beginning, and we can worry about xyzzying later.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3891&start=0#p27873
Forum: Competitions / Subject: I need help writing short IF
User: Kytaari / DateTime: 2011-12-07 22:21:37

My problem is puzzle-design, and I think collaborating with somebody might help. I'm full of story ideas, but I don't know how to demonstrate them very well in an interactive format. Somebody suggested trying something shorter than the previous project I had in mind, and, in recent hindsight, I feel ready to acquiesce. 

I'm looking for a collaborator who is good at piecing adventure game challenges together. I want to learn from first-hand experience how good IF stories can be told. i have a lot of story content in my brain, that I'm willing to share, but I don't have the appropriate experience to tell them in this medium. It comes so much easier to me when I write them down as short stories or books.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3890&start=0#p27874
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Beginning in the middle of the action: is it a bad idea?
User: Morley / DateTime: 2011-12-07 23:05:09

This is all extremely encouraging. 

I actually hadn't intended for it to be a difficult sequence, and since it's the beginning of the game, I feel comfortable having the protagonist's inner monologue tell the player what to do fairly directly, not unlike the opening to Taco Fiction. (It's also a short sequence, so hopefully the heavy-handedness won't have time to get annoying). I'll probably permit death-by-obviously-unwise action (>HUG ASSASSIN) and possibly death by extremes of inaction, but I'm thinking that rather than establishing agency by having a lot of ways to fail, I'd just cheat a little and have most reasonable actions during the first scene work out. 

Incidentally, of the titles mentioned I've only played Photopia, Hunter In Darkness, and Taco Fiction, but will check out the others and anything else that turns up on this thread. Beginning with an Act of Misdirection, if the opening's so well regarded.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3891&start=0#p27875
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: I need help writing short IF
User: George / DateTime: 2011-12-07 23:14:44

Have you ever looked at the transcript that (the IF Comp winning) Sussman and Welch wrote before they wrote their first piece of code?

<a class="postlink" href="http://rovers-day-out.googlecode.com/hg/rover_transcript.html">http://rovers-day-out.googlecode.com/hg ... cript.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3891&start=0#p27876
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: I need help writing short IF
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-07 23:21:10

1) We have a special subforum for this: [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=33]Looking for Collaborators[/url].

2) It would be a good idea to include some pitches for the game ideas you have. Nobody wants to buy a pig in a poke.

3) It's probably also a good idea to include links to some of your previous work, even if it's static fiction. Collaboration is a big freakin' commitment, and nobody wants to be flaked out on. (I say this as someone who's been both a flaker and a flakee.) A potential collaborator will want to see some evidence that you can come up with the goods -- particularly since you seem to be looking for a designer/coder, which is a bigger role than just a coder.

One of the Big Unsolved Problems of the IF community is that we don't have a very good established framework for mentoring and/or collaboration; there's a fine line to navigate between Patronising Pronouncements from the Masters and O Hai Please Write My Game For Me. So, yeah, sorry about that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3891&start=0#p27877
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: I need help writing short IF
User: George / DateTime: 2011-12-07 23:24:13

[quote="maga"]
One of the Big Unsolved Problems of the IF community is that we don't have a very good established framework for mentoring and/or collaboration[/quote]

What about the mud?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3891&start=0#p27878
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: I need help writing short IF
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-07 23:34:47

[quote="George"][quote="maga"]
One of the Big Unsolved Problems of the IF community is that we don't have a very good established framework for mentoring and/or collaboration[/quote]

What about the mud?[/quote]
ifMUD is awesome if you want good in-depth testers or coding help or chat about design questions. In the eleven wonderful years I've been on it, it's never shown itself to be a great platform for close mentoring or collaboration. I can't think of a single piece of good collaborative IF that came out of ifMUD talk: the closest I can think of are the IF Whispers games, which were a lot of fun for the participants but kind of enh as actual games.

If you go onto ifMUD, hang out, make a friend, get a really great creative rapport going, and then decide to make a game, that's one thing. But that wouldn't really be a straightforward route to finding a collaborator, you know?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3861&start=0#p27879
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving from Room to Room
User: Deain / DateTime: 2011-12-07 23:38:50

[color=#40BF80]Well i tried doing the room thing, but it still didn't work.  What am I doing wring?  This is what I wrote:

After eating the mushroom:
	say "As you pop the little musshroom into your mouth, your stomach twists in nervousness. You knew very well what would happen to you if you had made the wrong decission.  But as you tentatively chewed it, you were surprised to find that it was sweet and not at all bad.  Eagerly, you gathered more and stuffed them in your shorts poket to keep for later  After your hunger has been satisfied, you decided to explore the clearing further.  To the east you see a cave opening.."

The cave is a room. It is east from the island.. "After a while, you see that it's the enterance to a cave of unsure death.  Water dripp don and echoed throughout the rock cavern you are in.  As your eyes adjust to the darkness, you see that the cave wall is covered by a fine layer of moss and algae."

And this is what Imform showed when I pressed Go:
>eat
(the mushroom)
As you pop the little musshroom into your mouth, your stomach twists in nervousness. You knew very well what would happen to you if you had made the wrong decission.  But as you tentatively chewed it, you were surprised to find that it was sweet and not at all bad.  Eagerly, you gathered more and stuffed them in your shorts poket to keep for later  After your hunger has been satisfied, you decided to explore the clearing further.  To the east you see a cave opening..

>e
You can't go that way.

[color=#408080]Why didn't it give me an error message, but not allow me to go to the cave?

I'm really sorry, I'm never good with this stuff, but our school needs us to use this.  Sorry for sounding like an idiot. [/color]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3890&start=0#p27880
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Beginning in the middle of the action: is it a bad idea?
User: rpatten / DateTime: 2011-12-07 23:42:19

[quote="matt w"]

The Hours (from the recent IFComp) starts with an action sequence, too, which when you complete it takes you to an area where things are much more leisurely, though it's not in medias res; the game follows sequentially in your subjective timeline. You can die in this one, but you have to try pretty hard not to get the right commands at the beginning. I found this effective but I don't know if anyone else liked this game as much as I did.[/quote]

One lesson I learned from The Hours was that an in media res beginning can potentially put the rest of the story at a disadvantage. The heavy action in Alexandria left some players with a downer feeling when the game turned to intrigue in the middle of the game (though the action returned at the end). In retrospect, the pacing as a whole was steady, but the tone of the fast beginning could not be completely maintained as the conspiracy unraveled. All Roads succeeded in this aspect, I think, because it was able to maintain the tone it started with. 

When you start your game, you have to ask yourself if your pacing AND your tone can be maintained. Choose your beginning carefully.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3890&start=10#p27881
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Beginning in the middle of the action: is it a bad idea?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-07 23:49:20

I remember Pytho's Mask dropping you right into the conversation at the beginning, but when I went back to check, you actually start will full freedom and you can have the obvious conversation whenever you want.

I've noticed that in IF you can play with time a lot. A critical moment that would take only seconds in real life can be extended for quite a few turns without feeling awkward. It's possible to create a sense of urgency with every-turn messages even if they don't actually result in any actual harm to the PC. Of course some savvy players may type "z" repeatedly just to see if anything will happen, but I consider that an intentional breaking of mimesis.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3890&start=10#p27882
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Beginning in the middle of the action: is it a bad idea?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-07 23:57:13

Another good counterpoint is [i]Heroine's Mantle[/i], which has a lot of heavy action scenes that are intended to work as a fast-paced superhero/spy plot, but makes most of them critical (and often quite difficult) puzzles.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3890&start=10#p27883
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Beginning in the middle of the action: is it a bad idea?
User: Morley / DateTime: 2011-12-08 00:31:22

[quote="capmikee"]It's possible to create a sense of urgency with every-turn messages even if they don't actually result in any actual harm to the PC. Of course some savvy players may type "z" repeatedly just to see if anything will happen, but I consider that an intentional breaking of mimesis.[/quote]
In that case, I'd be tempted to have "z" secretly be the only thing that can bring about the harm threatened.  [emote]8-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3890&start=10#p27884
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Beginning in the middle of the action: is it a bad idea?
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-12-08 01:08:29

If you start with a multiple-choice question, you can make it very clear what to do right away; starting in the middle of the action is no hinderance. All of our games at [url=http://www.choiceofgames.com]Choice of Games[/url] start in the middle of action. (Our games are nothing but multiple-choice questions, but there's no reason you couldn't ask a few multiple-choice questions and then move on to a parser game.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=50#p27885
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2011-12-08 01:30:41

[quote="Juhana"][quote="Hannes"]Eh? I'm confused.[/quote]
Seems like there's confusion and misunderstanding both ways: It [i]looks like[/i] you're saying that it's ironic that it's Emily who discredits walls of text, implying that the irony is that she herself made the extension that's basically a collection of walls of text (and/or that she tends to write games that are too wordy). [b]You probably [i]wanted to say[/i], instead of specifically pointing at a single person, that it's ironic that text is undesired in the context of text-only games in general[/b].[/quote]
Exactly. I merely meant that this statement about "walls of text" being "unattractive" made me smile, because I couldn't help thinking about applying it to the medium as a whole. Whether I believe Emily's games too wordy (or too brief, for that matter) is hardly of any consequence to this discussion and I've used the help menu extension in games myself before. My sincere apologies if this came across in an insulting or otherwise offensive way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3890&start=10#p27889
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Beginning in the middle of the action: is it a bad idea?
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-12-08 06:43:51

[quote="dfabulich"]There's no reason you couldn't ask a few multiple-choice questions and then move on to a parser game.[/quote]
This is essentially what happens in [i]Calm[/i]: the game starts with a little bit of drama and a quick multiple choice conversation, this way the player has an ease in to the dangers of the game-world before the full game starts at a slower pace with a flashback. I'm not sure whether it was the [i]best[/i] choice, but framing the game as a story told from a known future gives the player a clear idea of where they're eventually going to end up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=50#p27891
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-12-08 08:28:17

[quote]The design assumption that feelies will be experienced before the game is a holdover from the Infocom days, when it made sense: when you opened the box, you could read the leaflets and fondle the whatsits more immediately than you could load up the game. [/quote]

You make it sound as though that were the major reason for feelies. IIRC, the major major reason for the first Infocom game to have feelies - Deadline - was because there was a heapload of background information, necessary information, that simply wouldn't fit in the disk. Things got more expansive and more fun and soon included glow-in-the-dark wishbringers, and a lot of copy-protection, but it originated simply because there was more game that could fit in the disk.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3890&start=10#p27892
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Beginning in the middle of the action: is it a bad idea?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-12-08 08:31:40

[quote="Morley"][quote="capmikee"]It's possible to create a sense of urgency with every-turn messages even if they don't actually result in any actual harm to the PC. Of course some savvy players may type "z" repeatedly just to see if anything will happen, but I consider that an intentional breaking of mimesis.[/quote]
In that case, I'd be tempted to have "z" secretly be the only thing that can bring about the harm threatened.  [emote]8-)[/emote][/quote]

Well, it's better to "z" some turns and to find out whether there really is a limit or there isn't, and what sort of limit it is, than to spend lots of turns pursuing some action or other which will lead me to an endgame past UNDO. Whenever I think there's a limit, I ALWAYS "z" to see if it's real. I've had too many rugs pulled from under my feet, thank you very much.

Incidently, it doesn't stop immersion any more than save/restore/undo. Not for me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=50#p27893
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-08 08:50:43

[quote="Peter Pears"][quote]The design assumption that feelies will be experienced before the game is a holdover from the Infocom days, when it made sense: when you opened the box, you could read the leaflets and fondle the whatsits more immediately than you could load up the game. [/quote]

You make it sound as though that were the major reason for feelies. IIRC, the major major reason for the first Infocom game to have feelies - Deadline - was because there was a heapload of background information, necessary information, that simply wouldn't fit in the disk. Things got more expansive and more fun and soon included glow-in-the-dark wishbringers, and a lot of copy-protection, but it originated simply because there was more game that could fit in the disk.[/quote]
Yeah, I wasn't meaning to say anything about the reasons for feelies, just why there was more expectation that they would be consumed before the game was played.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3895&start=0#p27894
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Research
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-12-08 09:13:47

How much research do you do when writing interactive fiction?

An anecdote: Melv and I were writing a puzzle in [i]Calm[/i] that involved smothering some barbed wire in order to climb over the top of a fence. We both agreed that a mattress would do the trick. I also thought that a door mat would also work. Melvin thought that a mat would be too thin and the barbs would stick through. So we cycled to the other side of town with a door mat wedged between my brake lines. We eventually found a barbed wire fence with no onlookers. I placed the mat over the wires and scrambled over into an overgrown lot beyond. The barbed wire didn't penetrate the door mat and so a door mat was implemented in the game as a smothering item.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3895&start=0#p27895
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Research
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-08 09:21:17

[quote="JoeyJones"]How much research do you do when writing interactive fiction?[/quote]

Depends on the piece, but always [i]some[/i]. Sometimes lots. Sometimes not lots.

My current hardboiled detective huge-o-gigant-o WIP has involved a ton of research already and there's more to come (it's a tie-in with Fly From Evil, which has been responsible for absorbing many of my bookshelves with its ravenous need for research material).

My current small-piece WIP about using magic to get rid of cottage cheese has been less demanding in terms of research (although there's still been a little).

For two examples.

If I find myself reading about physics or chemistry for a puzzle design, I consider it a warning sign. Doesn't always stop me or even slow me down, but boy-howdy I feel warned.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=50#p27896
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-12-08 09:36:04

Nah. 

The two main reasons they had feelies are:
1) they contained anti-pirating codes
2) they felt guilty for pricing $50+ games with no graphics. 

[emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=50#p27897
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-12-08 09:39:20

[quote]The first exotic package was for Deadline (the third game, after Zork I and II). It was created because Marc Blank couldn't fit all the information he wanted to include into the 80K game size. Marc and the ad agency, Giardini/Russel (G/R), co-created the police dossier which included photos, interrogation reports, lab reports and pills found near the body. [See images at the top of this post.] The result was phenomenally successful, and Infocom decided to make all subsequent packages truly special (a big benefit was the reduction in piracy, which was rampant at the time).[/quote]

<a class="postlink" href="http://futuryst.blogspot.com/2009/02/thoughts-about-feelies.html">http://futuryst.blogspot.com/2009/02/th ... elies.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3895&start=0#p27898
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Research
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-08 09:43:05

The Internet makes research so easy I sometimes don't want to call it research.

For my WIP, I researched locations using Google Street View, wildlife information sites, and online weather data. The game starts in a trailer, so I looked at mobile home sales sites to create the name and description of that. It makes a very small part of the game, but I wanted the place to feel real, and not like the bizarre hodgepodge of locations you might find in Dora the Explorer or just about about any Zork game. I've looked up product information for a couple objects in the game, to find out what names they're called by and what they look like.

I'm all in favor of real research, but I'm too lazy to do that sort of thing. Although I have an idea for a cover-art photograph that will take some legwork...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3895&start=0#p27899
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Research
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-08 09:50:07

[quote="capmikee"]The Internet makes research so easy I sometimes don't want to call it research.[/quote]

For a [i]lot [/i]of things, yeah. But ... there are still so many things you can only get by digging into the stacks, and quite a lot of really juicy things you can only get via live interviews (my favorite type of research, for a variety of reasons).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3895&start=0#p27900
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Research
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-08 09:51:31

[quote="Ghalev"]For a [i]lot [/i]of things, yeah. But ... there are still so many things you can only get by digging into the stacks, and quite a lot of really juicy things you can only get via live interviews (my favorite type of research, for a variety of reasons).[/quote]
That's what I mean. That's [i]real[/i] research. The sad thing is that I have an access card to an Ivy League university library, which is two blocks from my office. And the closest thing I've done to research there is check out "Twisty Little Passages."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3863&start=0#p27901
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Room compile error - TADS3
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-12-08 10:29:11

Thanks again for your help. Once I got my first room installed, It has helped things to start falling into place. Now I can move onward and upward. The whole TADS3 thing is getting progressively easier as I struggle along.

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3861&start=0#p27902
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving from Room to Room
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-12-08 10:38:42

Whatever room you define first in your code will be the room the player starts in (unless you override that by saying "The player is in" whichever room).  Assuming what you've posted is the entirety of your code, the parts that define rooms are:[code]The cave is a room. It is east from the island.[/code]  The first sentence tells Inform to make a room called the cave, and is, of course, the most straightforward way to make a room.  When Inform reads the second sentence, it assumes that you mean "the island" to also be a room, so it makes "the island" as well.  Which is all fine and good, except that now the starting room is the cave. 

Either you need to define the island first, like so: [code]The island is a room[/code] before any other room-defining code, or (if you're likely to change around the order of your code, or you're not totally sure what other code defines rooms), simply declare that [code]The player is in the island.[/code]  Declarative statements like that, outside of rules and without using "now," are how you can make things true at the beginning of play.


By the way, since you don't have any code blocking off the cave before the player eats the mushroom, the player can just wander east whenever they like.  This recent thread: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3831">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3831</a> might point you in the right direction for fixing that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3861&start=0#p27903
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving from Room to Room
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-08 10:43:18

If you put "code" tags around your code, it will display better in your post, with tabs and whatnot. Also, it's helpful to post a complete example that demonstrates your problem so other people can try it out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=60#p27904
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2011-12-08 10:55:39

[quote="Hannes"][quote="Juhana"][quote="Hannes"]Eh? I'm confused.[/quote]
Seems like there's confusion and misunderstanding both ways: It [i]looks like[/i] you're saying that it's ironic that it's Emily who discredits walls of text, implying that the irony is that she herself made the extension that's basically a collection of walls of text (and/or that she tends to write games that are too wordy). [b]You probably [i]wanted to say[/i], instead of specifically pointing at a single person, that it's ironic that text is undesired in the context of text-only games in general[/b].[/quote]
Exactly. I merely meant that this statement about "walls of text" being "unattractive" made me smile, because I couldn't help thinking about applying it to the medium as a whole. Whether I believe Emily's games too wordy (or too brief, for that matter) is hardly of any consequence to this discussion and I've used the help menu extension in games myself before. My sincere apologies if this came across in an insulting or otherwise offensive way.[/quote]

I'd like to sincerely apologize to you, Hannes. I misinterpreted your post.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3863&start=0#p27905
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Room compile error - TADS3
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-08 11:15:27

[quote="RonG"]The whole TADS3 thing is getting progressively easier as I struggle along.[/quote]
The first time I tried to learn T3, I got more and more frustrated and eventually gave up. The problem was, I was trying to do complicated stuff before I learned to do simple stuff.

The second time, I got much more methodical, and the fog gradually cleared. It [i]does [/i]get progressively easier. Even so, I sometimes found myself crying, "Classes and templates and macros, oh my!"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3895&start=0#p27906
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Research
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-12-08 11:20:35

[quote="Ghalev"]My current small-piece WIP about using magic to get rid of cottage cheese has been less demanding in terms of research (although there's still been a little).[/quote]
Sounds like pretty tasty research opportunities there...
[quote="capmikee"]For my WIP, I researched locations using Google Street View, wildlife information sites, and online weather data. The game starts in a trailer, so I looked at mobile home sales sites to create the name and description of that. It makes a very small part of the game, but I wanted the place to feel real, and not like the bizarre hodgepodge of locations you might find in Dora the Explorer or just about about any Zork game. I've looked up product information for a couple objects in the game, to find out what names they're called by and what they look like.[/quote]
There's some good ideas here: I had planned to write a game with a scene in Guyana, but I've never been there. Google maps, however, links to a fine series of photographs of the place.

--

Does anyone else find it really obvious when an author has so [i]obviously[/i] researched something (rocket-propelled grenade launchers, snowboarding, making pastry etc.), and they come across as mostly trying to show off everything they learned about subject x regardless of how integral it is to the plot?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3895&start=0#p27907
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Research
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-08 11:29:54

[quote="JoeyJones"]Does anyone else find it really obvious when an author has so [i]obviously[/i] researched something (rocket-propelled grenade launchers, snowboarding, making pastry etc.), and they come across as mostly trying to show off everything they learned about subject x regardless of how integral it is to the plot?[/quote]

Yes, that's a form of bad writing, punishable by wedgies. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3896&start=0#p27908
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Using a file is an include or as a source in TADS3?
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-12-08 12:17:59

I would like to use the Main Game routines file used in RTD by Michael Roberts. This brings up a number of questions. Do I use this file as an include or as a source. Should a place it at the beginning (since his file begins with gameMain) of my source or somewhere else? Does that really matter? Is there a way to do this much simpler by including his 'newGame' information into the the beginning of the 'Introduction' text message?

I've read the manuals about this but I'm really not positive how to go about such a thing  [emote]:?:[/emote]  could use some help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3897&start=0#p27909
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Plurality and [s]
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-08 12:18:09

I've been trying to get my head about the "[s]" say-phrase for a while. It took me a realize that it's actually part of the Standard Library and Plurality merely extends it with some backstage voodoo. Which is all fine, except when you have something like this:

[code]Include Plurality by Emily Short.

The auditorium is a room. The audience is a person in the auditorium. The audience is ambiguously plural.

Definition: A person is other if it is not the player.

Instead of singing when an other person (called the listener) is in the location:
    say "You see awe and appreciation light up [the listener]'s face[s]."

test me with "sing"[/code]

I don't think this is terribly hard to solve, but what I want is to solve it gracefully. Has anyone else already handled this? What do you suggest?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3898&start=0#p27910
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: First rule... is different from ...rule is listed first...
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-08 12:44:29

Consider this:

[code]After reading a command (this is the first in source rule):
	say "This should have been preempted."
	
The first in source rule is listed first in the after reading a command rules.
	
Test is a room.

First after reading a command (this is the not really first rule):
	say "This was supposed to be first."
	
test me with "rules/z"[/code]

There's an "after reading a command" rule which is "...listed first" in the extension., which gets ordered before the "first..." rule in the source. If I say "the not really first rule is listed first in the after reading a command rules," it goes where you'd expect, but I thought these two syntaxes were synonymous.

Plus, the "rules" reporting never even tells me that the not really first rule is running. I tried this example with an extension, and the ARaC rule in the extension DID get reported. Why is that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3896&start=0#p27911
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using a file is an include or as a source in TADS3?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-08 12:50:26

You are talking about the gameMain object in main.t, from the [i]Return to Ditch Day[/i] source?

You can just take his newGame method and paste that into your own gameMain object. (Make it an object of class GameMainDef, so that you inherit all the other defaults.)

At a glance, it looks like you will also need the runStartupOptions method, the sessionInfo object, and the initScreen function from that same file.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3896&start=0#p27912
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using a file is an include or as a source in TADS3?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-08 13:00:45

If it's a .t file, you compile it. If it's a .h file, you #include it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3899&start=0#p27913
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Searching IFDB
User: Eyesee / DateTime: 2011-12-08 13:02:47

Can anyone tell me if it's possible to search IFDB for programs written in inform 7 and which have the source for download and how to do it if it is possible.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3895&start=0#p27914
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Research
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-08 13:03:06

[quote="JoeyJones"]Does anyone else find it really obvious when an author has so [i]obviously[/i] researched something (rocket-propelled grenade launchers, snowboarding, making pastry etc.), and they come across as mostly trying to show off everything they learned about subject x regardless of how integral it is to the plot?[/quote]
You can certainly over-research. (The worst offender I know is Harry Turtledove, who does huge amounts of rather focused research and is a lot more interested in letting you know how much research he's done than in anything else. Okay, fine: he's not writing for me, he's writing for military history wonks and the reactionaries who love them.)

My worst inclination is language research. When I was testing [i]The King of Shreds and Patches[/i], I kept wanting to squish vocabulary and idiom that wasn't plausible Shakespearean English. Jimmy Maher very sensibly told me to stop it and just worry about non-period [i]things[/i]. Now I'm doing something that's closer to Chaucerian and wasting copious time on language stuff. NO. BAD.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3899&start=0#p27915
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Searching IFDB
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2011-12-08 13:11:29

You want to search for the "I7 source available" tag:

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=tag:I7+source+available">http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=t ... +available</a>

You can see a list of the tags here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/showtags">http://ifdb.tads.org/showtags</a>

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3895&start=0#p27916
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Research
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-08 13:19:40

[quote="maga"]Now I'm doing something that's closer to Chaucerian and wasting copious time on language stuff. NO. BAD.[/quote]

Whatchoo talking about? If someone who wasn't me was writing an IF that was all "Whan that Aprille, with hise shoures soote, The droghte of March hath perced to the roote," that would be awesome.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3890&start=10#p27917
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Beginning in the middle of the action: is it a bad idea?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-12-08 13:24:35

I'd like to mention one of my favourite beginnings too: Augmented Fourth. It starts with a sort-of action sequence with limited options for the player. It also suggests possible things to try.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3895&start=0#p27918
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Research
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-12-08 13:39:23

For The House of Fear, tons.  Right up until the end I was discovering new facts that forced me to rewrite.  That's the nature of historical fiction.

And I still haven't satisfactorily answered the question of whether an Englishwoman living in France in the 1930s would think in meters or feet.

(And I would play a Chaucer English game forever.  Is it something in the vein of [url=http://houseoffame.blogspot.com/]Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog[/url]?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3897&start=0#p27919
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Plurality and [s]
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-12-08 13:41:23

The [s] is being inflected as for a verb, I think.

[code]Include Plurality by Emily Short.

The auditorium is a room. 
Ralph is a man in the auditorium.

Definition: A person is other if it is not the player.

Instead of singing when an other person (called the listener) is in the location:
    say "You see awe and appreciation light up [the listener]'s face[s]."

test me with "sing"[/code]

Produces...

[quote]auditorium
You can see Ralph here.

>sing
You see awe and appreciation light up Ralph's faces.[/quote]

Which doesn't fix anything, but maybe it gets us closer to figuring out what's going on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3823&start=0#p27920
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The Pudlothon: Ecce Jacek
User: evouga / DateTime: 2011-12-08 13:41:48

[quote]So where does the Self begin and is it possible to love an abstract Self?[/quote]
Of course not. If this "abstract Self" is unobservable by others, to them it may as well not exist.

There is the perception that personality, your particular quirks, are unique and immutable -- even if accidental. And a woman who loves something you uniquely possess won't stop loving you, unlike the woman who loves you for your wealth or beauty, who could at any time leave you for someone richer or more dashing.

That is the perception. It's false, of course, but fear and insecurity do not need to be rooted in reality to thrive.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3895&start=10#p27921
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Research
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-08 13:49:01

[quote="matt w"][quote="maga"]Now I'm doing something that's closer to Chaucerian and wasting copious time on language stuff. NO. BAD.[/quote]

Whatchoo talking about? If someone who wasn't me was writing an IF that was all "Whan that Aprille, with hise shoures soote, The droghte of March hath perced to the roote," that would be awesome.[/quote]
Nah; lamentably I don't have the chops to write passably-fake Chaucerian English, deeply entertaining though that would be. I'm just trying to avoid vocabulary, senses of words, etc. that aren't period, in an attempt to make the writing feel a little less anachronistic. It's not really a good investment of time and energy, but it's highly entertaining.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3895&start=10#p27922
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Research
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-12-08 13:49:43

[quote="katz"]And I still haven't satisfactorily answered the question of whether an Englishwoman living in France in the 1930s would think in meters or feet.[/quote]
It depends how long she'd lived in France. If she grew up in England it would probably be feet and yards. I know an Englishwoman who grew up under imperial measurement and still hasn't fathomed the mysteries of Celsius despite the fact that the central heating control for more than thirty years has been in Celsius. If an Englishwoman in France did think in meters, she'd think in [i]metres[/i].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3749&start=20#p27923
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 update?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-08 13:57:56

[quote]English Inform already has a problem with number: "a bunch of marbles" or "some marbles."[/quote]
I forgot what the specific issue with this was, but now I remember: It often makes sense to set the "a bunch of" phrase as the indefinite article. But then you need to use a different verb depending on whether or not the noun occurs with the definite or indefinite article.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3897&start=0#p27924
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Plurality and [s]
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-08 14:03:51

Yes, that's the issue. How do you write a phrase that distinguishes between [s] for a verb and [s] for a noun? Plurality guesses based on whether the most recently mentioned thing was a number (implies [s] for a noun) or a noun (implies [s] for a verb). In this case, the most recently mentioned thing was a noun, but we want to use [s] for another noun. The simplest thing to do is to use a different phrase, such as [s for a noun], or even [if the prior named noun acts plural]s[end if], but I'd prefer one of the following:

A briefer, more elegantly-named say-phrase that clearly distinguishes between verbs and nouns.

A brief, elegant say-phrase that appears before the [s] to clarify whether it will apply to a verb or a noun.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3895&start=10#p27925
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Research
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-08 14:10:48

[quote="maga"]My worst inclination is language research. When I was testing [i]The King of Shreds and Patches[/i], I kept wanting to squish vocabulary and idiom that wasn't plausible Shakespearean English. Jimmy Maher very sensibly told me to stop it and just worry about non-period [i]things[/i]. Now I'm doing something that's closer to Chaucerian and wasting copious time on language stuff. NO. BAD.[/quote]
That's a pet peeve of mine. When people speak French in a story written in English, and the reader is expected to understand, their words are translated into modern English. When animals talk to each other in a story that's not about talking animals, their speech is expressed in the reader's language. Why not do the same for old languages?

I guess it's less annoying if the language is consistent and not obviously made up, though, so if you're going to use it, I applaud your research. As long as it's still comprehensible to the modern reader...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3895&start=10#p27926
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Research
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-08 14:13:54

[quote="matt w"]If someone who wasn't me was writing an IF that was all "Whan that Aprille, with hise shoures soote, The droghte of March hath perced to the roote," that would be awesome.[/quote]
Now that's just spelling. That would bug the hell out of me.

I love reading French-American Creole - it's French with reasonable spellings!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3895&start=10#p27927
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Research
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-08 14:25:41

[quote="capmikee"]That's a pet peeve of mine. When people speak French in a story written in English, and the reader is expected to understand, their words are translated into modern English. When animals talk to each other in a story that's not about talking animals, their speech is expressed in the reader's language. Why not do the same for old languages?

I guess it's less annoying if the language is consistent and not obviously made up, though, so if you're going to use it, I applaud your research. As long as it's still comprehensible to the modern reader...[/quote]
Yes, yes, totally agree. The hope is that things should read like natural modern English, just with a smaller vocabulary. (Much as I love a lot of archaic Chaucerian words, it's really awkward and annoying when writers shoehorn random archaisms into the text.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3891&start=0#p27928
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: I need help writing short IF
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-12-08 14:32:27

And requisite explanation that game design and coding is in fact far harder than coming up with story ideas, fewer people are good at them, and vanishingly few are good at them and bad at coming up with ideas (much like the common author-illustrator dilemma, but even more severe).

That said, I'm between projects.  Shoot me an explicatory PM if you like.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3895&start=10#p27929
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Research
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-12-08 14:37:46

[quote="JoeyJones"]How much research do you do when writing interactive fiction?[/quote]

Things I have researched for my WIP:

-- nautical speed and sample floor plan of a luxury yacht
-- recipe for a gimlet cocktail
-- content of World War II propaganda posters
-- mating behavior of pigs (YouTube can show you *anything*)
-- common methods of non-violent protest
-- growth zones of kudzu
-- contemporary opinions of Noah Webster
-- patterns of Phoenician colonization in the ancient Mediterranean
-- espionage tradecraft in the LeCarre tradition
-- appearance of a condor taking off

...and a lot of other things. In the vast majority of those cases I was going for breadth rather than depth: I didn't need to know *everything* about the topic, just a representative example, or some visuals to help me write a persuasive description of something I haven't seen myself. Often I'll stick a URL in the source text so I can get back to the research material later if I need to double-check something.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3749&start=30#p27930
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 update?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-08 14:49:56

Another number issue is that you might want to support this:

x bunch of marbles. take it
x marbles. take them

That is, set pronouns based on the referring phrase, not an inherent property of the objects. This is theoretically possible in Inform (because dict words can have a "plural" flag) but the parser doesn't do it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3895&start=10#p27931
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Research
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-12-08 14:53:29

I'm eagerly awaiting that WIP to be finished.

And no, it's not because of the pigs. Sheesh.

Or because I'd rather wait to find out what a "kudzu" is rather than google it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3895&start=10#p27932
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Research
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-12-08 15:15:41

[quote="emshort"]
-- contemporary opinions of Noah Webster[/quote]
I was curious so I looked it up. A 'forgotten founding father' who 'invented American nationalism long before the American nation came into existence', [url=http://theforgottenfoundingfather.com/]apparently[/url].
[quote]...just a representative example, or some visuals to help me write a persuasive description of something I haven't seen myself.[/quote]
This seems like a reasonable extent for research. I find it quite easy to get distracted: I'll start reading about Edwardian patents, Esperanto grammar or the early life of Antonín Dvořák and then look up some time later and wonder how I got there.
[quote="Peter Pears"]Or because I'd rather wait to find out what a "kudzu" is rather than google it.[/quote]
Coincidentally, I learned what a kudzu was from a game. In this case it was the postapocalyptic roguelike [url=http://forums.freeholdentertainment.com/showthread.php?10-Welcome-to-the-Caves-of-Qud-beta]Caves of Qud[/url]. I won't tell you what it is, but I will recommend avoiding the command >HUG KUDZU.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3891&start=0#p27933
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: I need help writing short IF
User: Kytaari / DateTime: 2011-12-08 16:05:30

Sorry about the mispost in the wrong sub-forum.

Maybe I should just spend more time experimenting with my drafts, and ask any questions I have about it, about game design, to people in the IF community; either through IF mud, the forums, or anything like that. I guess this might have to be a rather solitary thing for me, with the occasional help of more experienced IF players. Since I don't have anything very substantive to show right now, I may just have to reciprocate between working alone and studying with other players. I'll check out IF wiki fist, before asking any more questions. 

Thanks for your participation in this thread anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3895&start=10#p27934
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Research
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-12-08 16:22:52

[quote]Or because I'd rather wait to find out what a "kudzu" is rather than google it.[/quote]

It will come to you.  Literally.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3890&start=10#p27935
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Beginning in the middle of the action: is it a bad idea?
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-12-08 16:34:55

[quote="maga"][quote="matt w"]Mentual Macanus: Apocolowhateverthehell starts in the middle of an action scene and then flashes back. It cues what you have to do pretty well (I mean, I died a few times before I got it right, but that's because I'm bad at this).[/quote]
Note: Mentula Macanus is not for the weak of stomach. And I mean 'stomach' in Victorian sense.[/quote]

Agreed. It's porn, and the people that think it's funny to offend others using porn, I pity. They know not what they do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3895&start=10#p27936
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Research
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-12-08 16:47:58

[quote="JoeyJones"]How much research do you do when writing interactive fiction?

An anecdote: Melv and I were writing a puzzle in [i]Calm[/i] that involved smothering some barbed wire in order to climb over the top of a fence. We both agreed that a mattress would do the trick. I also thought that a door mat would also work. Melvin thought that a mat would be too thin and the barbs would stick through. So we cycled to the other side of town with a door mat wedged between my brake lines. We eventually found a barbed wire fence with no onlookers. I placed the mat over the wires and scrambled over into an overgrown lot beyond. The barbed wire didn't penetrate the door mat and so a door mat was implemented in the game as a smothering item.[/quote]

I do enough to make the game feel realistic, which is a fair amount but not a crazy amount. The interweb is all I need, 99% of the time. For stuff I haven't been able to find, I've either adjusted the setting slightly or worked something into the character's psyche so that the problem doesn't come up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3897&start=0#p27937
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Plurality and [s]
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-12-08 16:54:48

Doesn't Plurality define something along the lines of [-s] for this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3851&start=0#p27938
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Tying two things with 1 object
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-12-08 17:00:44

OK, one more little thing on this.

If I want to begin the game with the hoses already attached, what should I use?

[code]now the hose is tied the faucet[/code] Doesn't compile

[code]the hose is part of the faucet[/code] Compiles, but it overrides the code in the example and permanently makes it a part of the faucet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3897&start=0#p27939
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Plurality and [s]
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-12-08 17:35:50

[quote="aaronius"]Doesn't Plurality define something along the lines of [-s] for this?[/quote]
I don't think so, or if it does I'm not seeing it. You may be thinking of the ['s-'re] token, which is for contractions.

I think now [s] just always appears as if for a verb, no matter what precedes it.

[code]Include Plurality by Emily Short.

The auditorium is a room. The audience is a person in the auditorium. The audience is ambiguously plural.
Ralph is a man in the auditorium.
The singers are a person, here. They are plural-named.

Definition: A person is other if it is not the player.

Instead of touching an other person (called the touchee):
    say "[The touchee] watch[es] you with light breaking across [its-their] face[s]. Possibly a rash.";
    say "[Possessive of the touchee] face[s] light[s] up.";

test me with "touch Ralph / touch audience / touch singers"[/code]

Solution: light up their eyes instead of their faces, and don't include any cyclopes or eye-patch-wearers in your game. [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3891&start=0#p27940
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: I need help writing short IF
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-08 17:38:42

I'd start with some small, low-pressure, easily-completed writing/coding/design exercises. Speed-IF can be a good format for this, because it forces you to produce a tiny-but-playable piece to a deadline, going through a microcosm of the concept->design->implementation->test->release cycle, and you can release a game that a few people will play (and perhaps comment on) without the anxiety-inducing expectation that it'll be any good. There's one running [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3838]right now[/url].

That particular format may not be your cup of tea, of course, but the best practice for producing games, generally speaking, is [i]producing games.[/i]

If you think your strengths lie in a particular area, like writing, then you could plausibly focus on that, but pick up just enough coding and design to produce a smallish, tested-and-playable-but-not-wonderfully-robust, but well-written game; release it where it'll get some attention ([url=http://ifwiki.org/index.php/IntroComp]Introcomp[/url] might be a good venue for that) and then look for a coder. Your chances will be much better if you're a known quantity, and even if you don't find someone to work with, you'll have boosted your skills through practice.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3851&start=0#p27941
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Tying two things with 1 object
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-12-08 17:57:53

[quote="Jizaboz"]OK, one more little thing on this.

If I want to begin the game with the hoses already attached, what should I use?[/quote]

This is extremely ghetto, but it works-- assuming the player starts in the same room with the faucet and hose:
[code]
When play begins:
	silently try tying the hose to the faucet.[/code]

If the player is to start in some other room, this even-more-ghetto solution will work:
[code]
When play begins:
	silently try tying the hose to the faucet;
	move the player to patio, without printing a room description.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3895&start=20#p27942
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Research
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-12-08 18:18:49

Curiously enough, my most technically oriented IF work was the one I made the less researching work for! It's an incomplete little adventure (meant to be the prologue for a longer work which I still pretend to write some day...) full of technicisms related to the Commodore Amiga computer, as It was suppossed to enter an Amiga fast programming Christmas comp a couple of years ago. Player had to boot a netbook with an AROS operating system in it, connect it to an Amiga 1200 through a LAN using a PCMCIA based wifi-thing... things like that! ([url=http://www.rockersuke.com/if/christmasadv/christmasadv.html]Amiga executables here[/url]) It was stuff I was dealing with at the time and the target audience was also familiar with, so it all came up in a natural way (and it was all handled with easy actions like "put this into that", "insert disk", "turn this on" anyway, so even the un-initiated had a chance!)

On the other extreme, for my current WIP I spent a whole evening googling around love-letters related websites. I didn't pretend to copy any thing from them, just get in the mood to write just a couple of lines (my poor English made a whole letter totally out of the question) of something that sounded as I pretended (over-charged, old styled, close to purpleprosed but not too ridiculous). I read dozens of samples of texts covering all the range from current letters to stuff written by one of Henry the VIII wives. Whether it served its purpose or not, it was a weird experience! 

And for my next WIP, I'm currently reading a whole Edgar Rice Burroughs novel, as the plan is to make some sort of fan-fiction IF work based on it ([url=http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?p=785453#post785453]long story behind it[/url]). Hey, It's beeing a lot of fun!  [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3861&start=0#p27943
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving from Room to Room
User: Deain / DateTime: 2011-12-08 18:19:11

This is everything I've done so far:



The island is a room. "You have no idea what happened, all you know is that you are suddenly on a tropical island and you need to find your way home.  The only problem is that you remember nothing beyond your name.The island is in an irregular shape,   Behind you, you hear the washing of the waves on to the beach and birds sang in the trees all around you. The beach you stand on is the eastern side and  to the west is the forest." 

Forest is west. "The path you start down is narrow and long grass brush against your leg making it hard to walk.  All you see round you are trees and sometimes, a splash of bright color as a bird sped past.  As you contine on, you come to a deer trail that will bring you deeper into the forest.  The deer trail is northwest of where you are."

The deer trail is northwest. "The trail soon brings you to a clearing ringed by trees.  The sun is blocked out by the thick canopy and you look around curiously. " 

A mushroom is here. It is edible. "The mushroom growing on a fallen trunk is of a brownish white color and you think it might be safe to eat.  You vaguely remember that most mushrooms that aren't of a bright color are usually safe to be consumed."

After taking the mushroom:
   say "You took the mushroom from where it grew with a swift yank then decided to give eating it a go."

After eating the mushroom:
	say "As you pop the little musshroom into your mouth, your stomach twists in nervousness. You knew very well what would happen to you if you had made the wrong decission.  But as you tentatively chewed it, you were surprised to find that it was sweet and not at all bad.  Eagerly, you gathered more and stuffed them in your shorts poket to keep for later  After your hunger has been satisfied, you decided to explore the clearing further.  To the east you see a cave opening.."
	
	
The cave is a room. It is east from the island. "After a while, you see that it's the enterance to a cave of unsure death.  Water dripp don and echoed throughout the rock cavern you are in.  As your eyes adjust to the darkness, you see that the cave wall is covered by a fine layer of moss and algae."
-------------------------------------
When the game is run:

island
You have no idea what happened, all you know is that you are suddenly on a tropical island and you need to find your way home.  The only problem is that you remember nothing beyond your name.The island is in an irregular shape,   Behind you, you hear the washing of the waves on to the beach and birds sang in the trees all around you. The beach you stand on is the eastern side and  to the west is the forest.

>w

Forest
The path you start down is narrow and long grass brush against your leg making it hard to walk.  All you see round you are trees and sometimes, a splash of bright color as a bird sped past.  As you contine on, you come to a deer trail that will bring you deeper into the forest.  The deer trail is northwest of where you are.

>nw

deer trail
The trail soon brings you to a clearing ringed by trees.  The sun is blocked out by the thick canopy and you look around curiously. 

The mushroom growing on a fallen trunk is of a brownish white color and you think it might be safe to eat.  You vaguely remember that most mushrooms that aren't of a bright color are usually safe to be consumed.

>eadtd
That's not a verb I recognise.

>eat
(the mushroom)
(first taking the mushroom)
You took the mushroom from where it grew with a swift yank then decided to give eating it a go.

As you pop the little musshroom into your mouth, your stomach twists in nervousness. You knew very well what would happen to you if you had made the wrong decission.  But as you tentatively chewed it, you were surprised to find that it was sweet and not at all bad.  Eagerly, you gathered more and stuffed them in your shorts poket to keep for later  After your hunger has been satisfied, you decided to explore the clearing further.

>e
You can't go that way.

Would you mind actually writing what I need to put in Imform if it's not too much trouble?  Thanks so much.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3900&start=0#p27945
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Six updated to version 2, and has a homepage
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-12-08 19:33:00

Six has been updated to Version 2 with some important bugfixes and numerous polishes & improvements.

The game now also has a homepage at <a class="postlink" href="http://wadeclarke.com/greengumgames/">http://wadeclarke.com/greengumgames/</a> , and for folks who've played Six, there's a not-very-secret secret page on the website with some beta artwork of Rose that wasn't used in the release. Click on the little pencil pics to go to it.

Here's a summary of the changes for Version 2:

MAIN BUGFIXES:
1. If Six was unable to create its data files for any reason it would eventually crash with runtime errors. The game now checks that it can write the files on startup and advises the player if it can't.
2. The game failed to store the player's chosen volume settings. Fixed, plus now the current settings always override those of a saved game.
3. The game could crash after a RESTORE if sounds were playing at the moment the game was saved. Fixed.
4. If player restored a game from the front-end menu, the status bar didn't reappear. Fixed.
5. Game's story description tag is now filled out properly for programs that use it.
6. Demi's leaf no longer disappears forever if used.
7. There were a couple of moments where you couldn't follow Ayla, though you should have been able to. Fixed.

IMPROVEMENTS:
- 30+ tweaks, fixes, improvements and clarifications made to prose, in-game hinting and dialogue.
- 18 new commands/bits of grammar understood.
- Added a new layer of pronoun code. Pronouns typed by the player are now handled pretty well.
- Made the maze less querulous and more helpful. If you're taking too long, it gets easier. One maze advice message is now also explicit about the fact you can use stereo speakers to help work out which way to go.
- Due to popular demand, Harriet can now hug Ayla.

- Wade

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3900&start=0#p27947
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Six updated to version 2, and has a homepage
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-12-08 22:15:33

Way to go with the update!

(I was going to pun and say 'Wade to go', but it doesn't come across as well in text-form as it does me speaking out loud, and I thought attaching a voice recording to a forum post might be going a little bit [i]too[/i] far.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3900&start=0#p27948
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Six updated to version 2, and has a homepage
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-12-08 22:28:56

Thanks, and I'm pleased I was exposed to your pun [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3851&start=0#p27949
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Tying two things with 1 object
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-08 22:46:08

I'm not sure what example you're referring to. If you mean my example, you need to use the "pumped" property, not a "tied to" relation or a "part of" relation:

[quote="Jizaboz"][code]now the hose is tied the faucet[/code] Doesn't compile[/quote]
[code]When play begins:
    now the faucet is pumped[/code]

or if you want to use a declarative sentence:
[quote][code]the hose is part of the faucet[/code][/quote]
[code]The faucet is pumped.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3861&start=0#p27950
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving from Room to Room
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-08 22:54:03

To use the code tags, highlight the code that you pasted into your post and then click the "code" button up above the edit window.

As Ghalev suggested, the "world" map in the index can be very helpful to figure out what's actually going on. Click the "Index" tab along the right of the panel, then click the "world" tab that appears at the top of the panel. You'll see a map of the world as Inform understands it.

As you'll see, the cave is to the east of the island, exactly as you stated in your source. And yet when you play the game, you seem to expect that it is east of the deer trail. If that's what you want, you need to say so.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3897&start=0#p27951
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Plurality and [s]
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-08 23:08:08

The [s] behavior after saying a number still works:

[code]say "[2 in words] of the singers' face[s] light up."[/code]

Looking through the source of Plurality, I see a phrase to "To mark (target - a thing) in output." It looks like it's supposed to make Inform think you just said a number, but it doesn't work. Maybe something in the template layer changed since this extension was written?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3861&start=0#p27952
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving from Room to Room
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-12-08 23:11:05

I didn't actually realize you could just say "The Forest is west."  Terribly bad practice, of course, since you'll then have to scroll up to find the previous room you created in order to see what the forest is west from.  And because you could only ever code a long daisy-chain of rooms that way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3890&start=10#p27953
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Beginning in the middle of the action: is it a bad idea?
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-12-08 23:45:29

I was thinking the same thing for a game project.

I guess you should make sure the story and the action are the main thing, and propose the player only 1(continue...) or 2 choices at each step to keep the fast paced action running.
The player should know clearly what he can and can't do and should not have a lot of choices. Since you intend to use it as an introduction it may be a very good one.
I would ask at each turn "do you do X or Y?" and watch the input for these answers only.

[quote="Morley"]So for the game I'm sort of halfway planning, I had the idea of starting the game, against IF tradition, in the middle of an action-oriented sequence. I'm not entirely sure it's a good idea, though.

 I know if this were a piece of static fiction, I'd consider it the strongest opening.  I'm relatively sure I can set the thing up so there's no problem with it being too hard to understand what's going on. My concern is that in IF,  players typically want to spend their first few turns poking around, testing the depth of the implimentation,  XYZZYing, etc, before commiting to the story.  

I'm wondering: are there any games you've played that effectively begin in the middle of a relatively suspenseful or fast-paced sequence? A timed sequence? A conversation?  In general, do you as a player tend to reserve those first few turns for getting your bearings and/or messing around in an unmimetic fashion? Are there cases where a particularly compelling opening sequence has caused you to want to act in character right away?[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3867&start=0#p27954
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Cellar
User: The Xenographer / DateTime: 2011-12-09 01:24:32

[quote="David Whyld"]nothing that really made me feel that a second version was necessary[/quote]

Not even the bug where you get kicked back to the study with no way to make the story progress from there? I don't remember what triggered that, but I remember hitting it and having to restart, which was frustrating, and I could swear I remember some reviews I read mentioning that. Or would it have been more trouble than it was worth to fix that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3867&start=0#p27955
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The Cellar
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-12-09 03:13:06

I don't recall that bug, or reading any reviews which mentioned it, but it's been a few years so I could be mistaken. But yes, that's something I would have fixed before had I been aware of it. Thanks for pointing it out in a not-at-all patronising tone.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3895&start=20#p27961
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Research
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-09 04:42:42

[quote="rockersuke"]And for my next WIP, I'm currently reading a whole Edgar Rice Burroughs novel, as the plan is to make some sort of fan-fiction IF work based on it [...][/quote]

I want someone to run a [i]BurroughsComp,[/i] where every entry has to mash-up Edger Rice and William S. in some way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3897&start=0#p27962
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Plurality and [s]
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-09 04:56:33

The [s] of the Standard Rules lets you add a conditional plural noun ending "-s" after printing a number. It is conditional upon the value of say__n: if it is 1, it prints nothing; if it is anything else it prints "s". (So 1 means singular, anything else means plural.)

Plurality in effect reverses this to let you add a conditional singular verb ending "-s" after printing a noun. It is still conditional upon the values of say__n; if it is 1 it still prints nothing, and anything else still prints "s". But for verbs the "-s" ending signifies the singular and the null ending signfies the plural, so Plurality sets say__n to 1 if the noun printed was plural and to 29 if it was singular. 

The result is that the extension makes Inform think that you said a plural number if the noun was really singular and vice versa. That way it can make the plural noun ending "-s" of the Standard Rules do service as the singular verb ending "-s"

You can re-revert it by defining an alternative text substitution for the plural "-s".
    
[code]To say -s: (- if (say__n == 1) print "s"; -).[/code]

and use that when needed.

[code]say "You see awe and appreciation light up [the listener]'s face[-s]."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3895&start=20#p27963
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Research
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-12-09 05:06:08

[i]It[/i] didn't really require much research, but I did some anyway. I did a bit of Googling to try to gauge how well known Sardines was as a variant of Hide and Seek. My extended family played it a lot when I was a kid, but I wasn't sure whether it was played overseas, or even interstate.

But most of my research time was spent on
[spoiler]the baby bird. You can't possibly tell from what ended up in the game, but I spent hours looking up different bird species to try to work out what the baby bird and its nest should look like, what time of the year it must be, what the baby bird should smell like... Google proved strangely unhelpful on the last point, although I did discover that some bird fanciers love to smell their (adult) birds, as they sometimes smell like spices. Apparently.

Anyway, in case you're wondering, the bird is a honeyeater. I don't think I quite decided on a specific species, but I was leaning towards the Brown-Headed Honeyeater.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3906&start=0#p27964
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: graphics resolution in t3
User: zodraz / DateTime: 2011-12-09 05:10:45

I have been working on some graphics for my game which were 800 x 600 as per the manual.  After everything went bang, I am re-doing the graphics at 1024 x 768 which gives a bit more detail.

Any thoughts about the resolution?  Does anyone think that this is too big?

I should say that each object that you can use and each location has a graphic instead of a description.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3898&start=0#p27965
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: First rule... is different from ...rule is listed first.
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-09 05:22:31

[quote="capmikee"] I thought these two syntaxes were synonymous.
[/quote]
Obviously, I don't know the answer, but perhaps they are parsed at different times. If the compiler first orders rules after their preambles (putting a first rule first and a last one last and the others in order of specificity), and only after that works through what rules are explicitly listed first or last, before or after each other etc. (thus moving the rule explicitly listed first first etc.), then this is the result you'd get, right?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3861&start=10#p27967
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving from Room to Room
User: Deain / DateTime: 2011-12-09 07:43:45

I want to thank everyone who has taken the time in helping me.  Thanks VictorGijsbers, Ghalev, Robert Rothman, tove, capmikee and katz for sticking with me.  It's working now. [emote]:)[/emote] I really hope I hadn't bothered all of you too much and if I have a problem again, I hope you won't mind helping me again.  Thanks again!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3851&start=10#p27968
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Tying two things with 1 object
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2011-12-09 08:20:34

Sorry about that cap. Yes, I was referring to your example. 

I could have sworn I tried 

[code]When play begins:
	now the faucet is pumped.[/code]

first actually, but I guess I had a typo or something last night. Anyway, thanks for clearing that up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3895&start=20#p27969
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Research
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-09 09:02:03

[quote="Emerald"][i]It[/i] didn't really require much research, but I did some anyway. I did a bit of Googling to try to gauge how well known Sardines was as a variant of Hide and Seek. My extended family played it a lot when I was a kid, but I wasn't sure whether it was played overseas, or even interstate.[/quote]
I learned about it as an adult. When I was a kid there were two accretive variations of hide-and-seek, "blob tag" where everybody who's it has to hold hands and run around together, and "ditch," where, once you're found, you have to help find everybody else who's hiding.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3897&start=0#p27970
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Plurality and [s]
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-09 09:12:17

Aha, that explains it. I was staring that code and I just wasn't getting it.

So a partial solution would be to comment out the "mark prior named noun in output" for possessives. And then somehow call "mark prior named noun in output" after the next "[s]" invocation. Except that wouldn't work for cases like this:

[code]say "[Possessive of the noun] eyes light[s] up."[/code]

I think we need something like

[code]say "[Possessive noun phrase of the noun] face[end possessive noun phrase]"[/code]

which is horrible. I think I'll stick with "[if the prior named noun acts plural]s[end if]".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3898&start=0#p27971
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: First rule... is different from ...rule is listed first.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-09 09:14:49

That makes perfect sense. Except that I never would have thought of it. Ugh.

What's not intuitive is that it seems rule ordering is done in two passes. First, the rules are created in the order that their preambles state. Then the rules are reorganized according to the "...listed..." directives. If they were both done in a single pass, I think the ordering would have ended up the way I expected.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3908&start=0#p27972
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Too many actions?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-09 09:48:08

Someone commented recently that it's preferable to write a "for supplying a missing noun" rule than to create a new action that has fewer nouns. Ever since then, I've been thinking about Speech Motivations, which has quite a large number of actions, following in the pattern of Eric Eve's Conversation Framework:

[code]Informing it about is an action applying to two visible things.
Quizzing it about is an action applying to two visible things.
Requesting it for is an action applying to two visible things.
Pointing it out to is an action applying to two visible things.
Inquiring it for is an action applying to one visible thing and one topic.
greeting is an action applying to one visible thing.
saying hello is an action applying to nothing.
Saying goodbye to is an action applying to one visible thing.
Leavetaking is an action applying to nothing.
Voicing concerns is an action applying to nothing.
Talking about is an action applying to one visible thing.
wondering about is an action applying to one visible thing.
pointing at is an action applying to one visible thing.
Talking with is an action applying to one visible thing.
Implicit-asking is an action applying to one topic.
implicit-telling is an action applying to one topic.
implicit-requesting is an action applying to one visible thing.
implicit-inquiring is an action applying to one topic.
[/code]

My pain concern is the 3-pronged style of "informing it about/talking about/voicing concerns," which are all the same except that some of them rely on properties of the actor rather than nouns given in a command.

This morning I set out to tackle them, only to discover that:

[quote]Problem. You wrote 'Understand "t [something]" as informing it about (with nouns reversed)'  : but you can't use a 'reversed' action when you supply fewer than two values for it to apply to, since reversal is the process of exchanging them.[/quote]

So talking about has to stay. 

Voicing concerns would be easier, I could just do this:

[code]For supplying a missing noun when an actor talking about:
    Now the noun is the concern of the actor.[/code]

Except that it then becomes ambiguous what happened when the noun is nothing. Right now I have "check an actor voicing concerns" rules to handle that, but I'm concerned that customizing the failure message would be harder when supplying a missing noun. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to replace it with a "check an actor talking about nothing" rule... what do you think?

Also, for simplicity, I try to have as many actions as possible redirect to one single action, to make it simpler to process. Usually that's "voicing concerns," because many different talking actions can be described that way, but sometimes it doesn't work - especially since the concern property of the PC is often not what the player wants to talk about. Do you think it would be better to have everything redirect up to one of the fully-specified actions (informing it about, quizzing it about, requesting it for, giving it to, showing it to, etc)?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3906&start=0#p27973
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: graphics resolution in t3
User: George / DateTime: 2011-12-09 10:03:44

That might be a little big. My laptop is that resolution, so if your graphic is that size it won't fit on my screen once you take into account the window, any padding, etcetera. You could think about scaling based on window size, if T3 supports that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3897&start=0#p27975
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Plurality and [s]
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-09 11:00:20

[quote]"mark prior named noun in output"[/quote]

I wouldn't be surprised to see this show up in the source code for Fan Interference. ([url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Prior]Footnote.[/url])

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3910&start=0#p27976
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6 patch for setting dict flags
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-09 11:38:01

This came up in the Plurality thread, so I did a quick implementation. The patch is in my I6 work branch:

<a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/erkyrath/inform6/commit/8f48e298ac97e7e2558e57da51c0aa76b3d8a50c">https://github.com/erkyrath/inform6/com ... 76b3d8a50c</a>

I wound up supporting three forms of the directive:

  Dictionary 'word';
  Dictionary 'word' val1;
  Dictionary 'word' val1 val3;

The first just adds the word to the dictionary, with all flags set to zero, if it's not already in the dictionary. (It was not previously possible to create a dict entry with all zero flags.)

The second form adds the word, and also sets the dict_par1 flag to the given value. If the word already exists, the value is bitwise-or'ed with the dict_par1 flags. (So you can set flags this way, but not clear them.) The third form does all that and also sets (or bitwise-ors) the dict_par3 flags.

(I didn't include a way to set dict_par2, because that's reserved for the verb number, as generated by Verb declarations. There's no sensible way to merge user values with the grammar's value.)

As an example:

  Dictionary 'oxen' 4;

...sets the plural-word flag for 'oxen'. This has exactly the same effect as using the literal 'oxen//p' in I6 code.

The flag values can be 0-255 in Z-code, 0-65535 in Glulx.

It turns out that in dict_par1, only bits 4 and 5 are completely unused. (In Glulx, you also have bits 8-15 to play with.) If you write an I6 program without using the Verb or Extend declarations at all, then bits 0, 1, 3, 6 will never be set, so you could use those too. On the other hand, bit 7 is essentially useless, because it's set for any word which is mentioned in code -- you'd have to do a lot of dancing to make use of a word that *doesn't* have bit 7 set.

I6 unit test and demo for the new directive:

<a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/erkyrath/glk-dev/blob/master/unittests/dictflagtest.inf">https://github.com/erkyrath/glk-dev/blo ... agtest.inf</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3911&start=0#p27977
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Matching objects with snippets
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-09 12:10:51

This is the second time I've wanted to match objects with snippets, so I thought maybe I could write a little mini-extension for it. But I'm getting a weird compilation error:

[code]
Volume - Matching Snippets with Objects

The item to match is an object that varies.

Definition: A thing is matchable if it is the item to match.

To decide which object is the (O - description of objects) matching (S - a snippet):
	Repeat with item running through O:
		now the item to match is item;
		if S matches "[any matchable thing]":
			decide on item;
	decide on nothing.
	
Volume - Test

Exclaiming it to is an action applying to two visible things.
Report exclaiming it to: say "You say '[noun]' to [the second noun]."
	
An exclamation is a kind of thing.
Fnord is an exclamation.

The item to match is a object that varies.
Definition: A thing is matchable if it is the item to match.

Check answering someone that:
	Let item be the exclamation matching the topic understood;
	If item is a thing:
		instead try exclaiming item to the noun;
	
Test is a room. Bob is a man in Test.


Test me with "say fnord to bob"[/code]

I get:
[quote]Problem. You wrote 'if S matches "[any matchable thing]" begin'  : but complicated instructions on understanding the player's command are not allowed in the past tense, for instance by being applied to several previous turns in a row.[/quote]

What does that even mean?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3911&start=0#p27978
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Matching objects with snippets
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-09 13:14:24

I still don't understand the error, but through experimentation it seems to have something to do with saying "... matches [any...]" within a to-decide phrase. If I make that test within an activity, it works:

[code]Volume - Matching Snippets with Objects

The item to match is an object that varies.

Definition: A thing is matchable if it is the item to match.
A thing can be matched.

Finding a match something is an activity on snippets.

For finding a match for a snippet (called S):
	Now every thing is not matched;
	Repeat with candidate running through things:
		Now the item to match is candidate;
		If S matches "[any matchable thing]", now candidate is matched.
		
To decide which object is the (O - description of objects) that matches (S - a snippet):
	Carry out the finding a match activity with S;
	Repeat with item running through the list of O:
		if item is matched, decide on item;
	decide on nothing;
	
Volume - Test

Exclaiming it to is an action applying to two visible things.
Report exclaiming it to: say "You say '[noun]' to [the second noun]."
	
An exclamation is a kind of thing.
Fnord is an exclamation.

The item to match is a object that varies.
Definition: A thing is matchable if it is the item to match.

Check answering someone that:
	Let item be the exclamation that matches the topic understood;
	If item is a thing:
		instead try exclaiming item to the noun;
	
Test is a room. Bob is a man in Test.


Test me with "say fnord to bob"[/code]

I would really appreciate if someone could explain this to me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3895&start=20#p27979
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Research
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-12-09 13:40:28

I managed to miss the "WIP" in emshort's post, leaving me thinking that I'd missed a whole lot of bizarre easter eggs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3856&start=0#p27980
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Things That Go Bump In The Night - for iPhone & Andr
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-12-09 13:55:42

Just posted a bug-fix update for the Android version. This fixes the visual feedback issue, so you now have a better idea of what you tapped in the menus and lists.

Other improvements (like working in landscape mode, and better layout on big screens) are still in the pipeline for v1.1.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3912&start=0#p27981
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: New project - questions about Inform7
User: dgeorgea / DateTime: 2011-12-09 14:05:35

I am looking to create a training program that will help people to consider they way they think and make decisions.

The setting will be a fictitious company with the person starting at the bottom and making their way up.

The basic set up I have in mind is simple enough, a series of scenarios where the person has to make a decision and the scenario carries on until the next choice has been made. At the end of the scenario the likely outcome is shown and the person either progresses to the next scenario or is fired.

At the end of the level depending on how the person has done they will be fired, kept on at the same level or promoted.

Most of the mechanics are easy to work out. [color=#400080]but to work out if the person is kept at the same level or promoted I want to award points for each decision, the person needing to exceed a certain amount of points to be promoted, and allowed to continue, does Inform7 make this easy?[/color]

The other feature I want to include is for poor decisions earlier in the game/story to come back later on, so some of the later scenarios will be dependent on earlier decisions taken earlier. Consequences would be slight embarrasment, new problems to solve, discipline procedures being used or being instantly sacked. For this I need two variables, 1 to trigger an event, 1 to store how often the poor reasons behind the decision have been used to determine what consequence will apply, [color=#400080]does Inform7 cover this?[/color]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3912&start=0#p27982
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New project - questions about Inform7
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-09 14:33:19

Short answer: yes.

Slightly longer answer: Get started on your project. If you need help, ask questions here. I think Inform 7 would work fine, but if most of the player's "moves" are multiple-choice questions, a CYOA-type system might be better.

You sound concerned about Inform 7 being powerful and flexible enough to do what you need. I7, like TADS3, is a fully capable programming language that can do basically [i]anything[/i] you want. It might be more reasonable to ask whether I7 is [i]too much[/i] for your project.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3912&start=0#p27983
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New project - questions about Inform7
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-12-09 14:35:33

Inform has a "score" for the player that is built in. If you let the boss win at golf, you can... 
[code]increase the score by 17.[/code]

You can also decrease the score in the same way. You can also "increment" or "decrement" the score, which just means increasing or decreasing by one.

The score can be used in if statements or can be used to trigger a Scene, like this...

[code]The Mailroom is a room. "A grimy mailroom. Here is where careers come to die."
The Boardroom is a room. "This place is appointed in rich leather and mahogany."

Instead of singing:
	say "Lalala...";
	increment score.
	
Getting Promoted to the Board is a scene. Getting Promoted to the Board begins when the score is three.
When Getting Promoted to the Board begins:
	say "You've been promoted to the board!";
	move the player to the boardroom.
	
test me with "sing / sing / sing".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3912&start=0#p27984
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New project - questions about Inform7
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-09 14:39:39

To follow on from Trojo's example, you can test the score whenever you want:

[code]Performance Appraisal is a scene. Performance Appraisal begins when the player is in Mr. Fernwells's Office.

When Performance Appraisal begins:
    if the score is less than 30:
         say "'I'm afraid you haven't been pulling your weight, Knurlman. We're going to have to let you go,' Fernwell says.":
         end the story saying "You've been fired."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3912&start=0#p27985
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New project - questions about Inform7
User: dgeorgea / DateTime: 2011-12-09 15:39:42

Thank you for your replies.

capmikee,

Like any new program I appreciate that there is a learning curve to get the most out of a program. I just wanted to be sure that it lives up to its hype before downloading and starting to play with it then finding it is not as easy to do what I want.

I will certainly stop by if I need assistance and thank you for your assurance.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3890&start=10#p27986
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Beginning in the middle of the action: is it a bad idea?
User: Morley / DateTime: 2011-12-09 17:11:11

[quote="Peter Pears"][quote="Morley"][quote="capmikee"]It's possible to create a sense of urgency with every-turn messages even if they don't actually result in any actual harm to the PC. Of course some savvy players may type "z" repeatedly just to see if anything will happen, but I consider that an intentional breaking of mimesis.[/quote]
In that case, I'd be tempted to have "z" secretly be the only thing that can bring about the harm threatened.  [emote]8-)[/emote][/quote]

Well, it's better to "z" some turns and to find out whether there really is a limit or there isn't, and what sort of limit it is, than to spend lots of turns pursuing some action or other which will lead me to an endgame past UNDO. Whenever I think there's a limit, I ALWAYS "z" to see if it's real. I've had too many rugs pulled from under my feet, thank you very much.

Incidently, it doesn't stop immersion any more than save/restore/undo. Not for me.[/quote]

So, do you start using the wait-and-restore technique as soon as you see signs that you're probably being timed, or only after you've been forced to restore once and know it's a timed sequence?

For me this is where it moves into tricky area. I sort of feel that if PC is in a situation that logically would be time-sensitive and the game strongly hints that you should [i]play as though[/i] there were a time limit, then the player has no business messing around trying to figure out if it's a real limit before even attempting the sequence. There may be situations I'm not imagining where that makes more sense, but presumably they'd all be rated "cruel".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3913&start=0#p27987
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Frustrated with Choices
User: Kytaari / DateTime: 2011-12-09 17:22:41

I know this sounds ironic, considering the medium, but I feel so bogged down by all the choices I can offer the player. It would be so much easier for me to write a linear and--[i]and yet[/i], I want to give my readers the capability to think about the problems and explore. 

There seems to be no end to all the design elements I can offer in IF, and all this possible content is bogging my narrative down. I changed my draft into a more linear form of fiction, and so far it's gone more seamlessly, it's so much easier for me to tell stories that are linear, yet I would still like to give my readers the capability to explore.

I don't know how to eliminate all the excessive content ideas that keep popping up in my mind, and all these ideas are bogging down the project. What is the best way of balancing story with interactivity? I've asked a similar question before concerning puzzles, but this riddle has more to do with all the choices this medium can offer. Where is the best place to draw the fine line between telling a story and providing good interactivity?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3913&start=0#p27988
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Frustrated with Choices
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-09 17:56:19

Whether or not your story is linear, it has to feel interactive or players will hate it.

[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=0stz0hr7a98bp9mp]Rameses[/url] and [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ju778uv5xaswnlpl]Photopia[/url] are good examples of linear storytelling in IF.

Both are heavily railroaded while encouraging players to derail the narrative. In a game like this, you have to anticipate everything a player might try, so you can refuse them in a rewarding way.

This is a good general strategy - you can have a fun time in [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=8upuvdnsk4sho6ac]Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom[/url] just typing nonsense into the prompt - but the stakes are higher when your player has nothing else to do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3912&start=0#p27989
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New project - questions about Inform7
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-09 18:19:22

[quote="dgeorgea"]I just wanted to be sure that it lives up to its hype before downloading and starting to play with it then finding it is not as easy to do what I want.[/quote]
From your description, I think you may find that creating commands for the user to enter will require some creative thinking. Interactive fiction is structured around a world model in which the reader/player interacts with simulated objects using simple commands like "open the sack" and "eat the mushroom." Inform can certainly do more than this -- but the further you stray from this world model, the more customization you'll need to do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3913&start=0#p27990
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Frustrated with Choices
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-09 18:40:08

[quote]Whether or not your story is linear, it has to feel interactive or players will hate it.[/quote]

"Linear" is a sick bird. All games give some kinds of choices to the player, and reserve some to the designer. Decide which is which.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3913&start=0#p27991
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Frustrated with Choices
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-09 19:54:34

1) Think about which player choices are interesting and which are important to the story. Focus on those.

2) Think about the kinds of interaction that would be enjoyable and well-suited to an IF format. Focus on those.

Also, dude, you're spending way too much energy on stressing out about every single thing you can find to stress about. Chill out. You're not going to produce a masterpiece on your first try. Write some short stupid games. Write a game with no gameplay at all, just a bunch of scenery or random events or whatever. Write a game that will make no sense to anybody else but makes you smile. Just get into the habit of writing, and of having fun writing. Thinking about design theory is valuable, but it's worse than useless if it's what you do to procrastinate.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3890&start=20#p27992
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Beginning in the middle of the action: is it a bad idea?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-09 20:02:11

[quote="Morley"]For me this is where it moves into tricky area. I sort of feel that if PC is in a situation that logically would be time-sensitive and the game strongly hints that you should [i]play as though[/i] there were a time limit, then the player has no business messing around trying to figure out if it's a real limit before even attempting the sequence.[/quote]
IF players are, on the whole, geeks. They like to take things apart to see how they work. Sometimes they break them in the process.

(But they know the risks, and hopefully they'll be gracious enough not to blame you.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3890&start=20#p27994
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Beginning in the middle of the action: is it a bad idea?
User: Morley / DateTime: 2011-12-09 21:49:14

Well, yeah. I didn't mean they have no business checking it out [i]ever[/i].  But checking in the middle of a critical sequence during your initial playthrough is, IMO, playing a bit rough.  I want to believe it's possible for an author to do a good enough job to effectively delay the code-poking habits of even the most poking-inclined players for a least a bit, but I wonder about this. Especially when fabulously well-implemented games can be the ones we feel most inclined to break.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3890&start=20#p27995
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Beginning in the middle of the action: is it a bad idea?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-09 21:50:26

I think that has as much to do with the quality of writing as with the quality of implementation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3913&start=0#p27996
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Frustrated with Choices
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-09 22:42:01

In the vein of offering some practical advice that I myself am having some difficulty accepting...

Good writers read. They read a lot. When they're standing in line at the grocery store, they read. While they're waiting for their car to fill up with gas, they read. Great chefs eat. They sample everything, no matter how crazy. Everyone isn't a prodigy. We don't all take to this medium like Maga, Zarf, Emily, Graham, Mike, et cetera ad nauseum. While they all have different "strengths", I'm going to assume that they all have one thing in common.

They play a lot of IF. 

Play a lot of IF. Note those things that you tried and didn't work. Note those things that you tried and didn't work like you wanted. Read transcripts. Club Floyd is both educational and hilarious. Figure out those things that you can write a universal reaction to and respond to those. Figure out those things that require special attention and respond to those. Hopefully you get the idea.

You can't just let the player run wild through your world. You can't possible anticipate or program everything they might do. You have to guide them gently and as invisibly as possible. Take the following example.

[code]
You're standing on the front lawn. An autumn sun lends some warmth to what would be a chilly breeze as it brushes gently across your face, disturbing the overgrown grass. The flowers that you planted last year for your mother have bloomed beautifully, seemingly in reverence to her passing. The flower beds are ringed in large pieces of sand stone and filled with pea gravel. The front door of the house is north, offering the bittersweet recollection of a time you haven't reflected on in months.
[/code]

Not a great example. But what can we reasonably expect the player to do here?

[list]
[*]Examine flowers[/*:m]
[*]Examine sand stone[/*:m]
[*]Examine gravel[/*:m]
[*]Get gravel/stone[/*:m][/list:u]

And what are they probably not going to care less about?

[list]
[*]Examine grass[/*:m]
[*]Examine sun[/*:m]
[*]Sniff breeze[/*:m]
[*]Get grass[/*:m]
[*]Scratch arm[/*:m]
[*]Check watch[/*:m][/list:u]

Your problem isn't what your players might possibly do or try. Sometimes they're going to get a nonsensical response from the interpreter. Your problem is writing prose that makes sense, that leads the character in the direction that you want them to go while at the same time accomodating the obvious things that the player might try to do. There will always be people out there who try to do stupid things, (hopefully) knowing that they won't work.

I'm going to go ahead and promote Aaron's book again here. He discusses, encourages and provides examples of what to emphasize and when. The way you write is going to dictate a lot of what the player does. Not their whims.

The truth of the matter is that people want to play your game. They want to get through the story. They want to see what all you have to offer them in the way of a playing experience. If they try to do something that makes sense, something that it seems viable they should be able to do and can't do it, they may complain. Otherwise, you can't stress it.

[code]
You see a brick wall.
[/code]

I'm not going to examine the bricks. I'm not going to count them. I'm not going to examine the mortar to make sure they used appropriately sized spacers for the size of the bricks and the intent of the application when they were doing the masonry. I'm going to check my inventory for a rope or some dynamite. I might poke the wall a couple of times to make sure there isn't a secret passage. Then I'm gonna find something better to do.

So again... How you present it dictates what the player will do far more than your anticipating their every whim. Play some games. Run some beta tests. Find out what players are likely to try and what they aren't.

Go from there.

[Edited to get a cooking reference in there.]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3895&start=20#p27997
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Research
User: Sargent / DateTime: 2011-12-09 22:45:11

The trick is to balance doing research that furthers the game with doing research that keeps you from actually writing your game. It also depends on how rooted in realism your game is going to be. For instance, for [i]Fragile Shells[/i] I drew on pictures of the ISS and reports of life aboard it. I dug into information about space stations and space station equipment.

For [i]Child's Play[/i] I had a kid.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3912&start=0#p27998
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New project - questions about Inform7
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-09 22:56:15

[quote="dgeorgea"]Thank you for your replies.

capmikee,

Like any new program I appreciate that there is a learning curve to get the most out of a program. I just wanted to be sure that it lives up to its hype before downloading and starting to play with it then finding it is not as easy to do what I want.

I will certainly stop by if I need assistance and thank you for your assurance.[/quote]

Speaking from experience...

It's not a matter of I7 living up to the hype that you have to worry about. (I wasn't even aware there was hype...?)

It's you living up to the hype of I7. The basics are very, very easy. The more advanced stuff... Eh... Depends on how much you enjoy intertwining a sometimes convoluted attempt to twist and contort "natural language" into programming code and how much you love your grammar. There are some things that people are doing that you have to know the difference between different types of adjectives. Which makes I7 for nerdy bookworms and not programmers.

Dorks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3911&start=0#p27999
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Matching objects with snippets
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-09 23:19:20

I've streamlined the workaround a little, but in a way this is even more obviously a hack, and it could potentially be very slow:

[code]Volume - Matching Snippets with Objects

The item to match is an object that varies.

Definition: A thing is matchable if it is the item to match.
A thing can be matched.

Does the object match is a snippet based rulebook. The does the object match rulebook has outcomes it does (success) and it does not (failure).

Does the object match a snippet (called S):
	if S matches "[any matchable thing]", it does;
	it does not.

To decide which object is the (O - description of objects) that matches (S - a snippet):
	Repeat with candidate running through the list of O:
		Now the item to match is candidate;
		follow the does the object match rules for S;
		if the outcome of the rulebook is the it does outcome, decide on candidate;
	decide on nothing;
	
Volume - Test

Exclaiming it to is an action applying to two visible things.
Report exclaiming it to: say "You say '[noun]' to [the second noun]."
	
An exclamation is a kind of thing.
Fnord is an exclamation.

The item to match is a object that varies.
Definition: A thing is matchable if it is the item to match.

Check answering someone that:
	Let item be the exclamation that matches the topic understood;
	If item is a thing:
		instead try exclaiming item to the noun;
	
Test is a room. Bob is a man in Test.


Test me with "say fnord to bob"[/code]

I'm just gonna keep posting here until someone responds...!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3895&start=20#p28000
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Research
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-09 23:24:01

[quote="Sargent"]For [i]Child's Play[/i] I had a kid.[/quote]

That counts as research that keeps you from writing, I assume.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3911&start=0#p28001
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Matching objects with snippets
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-09 23:26:34

I don't even know what... Like... Is it...? So ummm... Is the answer bigger than a breadbox? Is this a multiple choice question? Does it rhyme with "spinux"? Did it strike its mother as a child? Is it brown?

I'm going to need you to be a little more specific, sir...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3911&start=0#p28002
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Matching objects with snippets
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-09 23:37:55

Okay, here's a simple yes or no question. Is this a bug?

The following rather roundabout example compiles and other tests demonstrate that it works as expected:
[code]Does a thing match is a snippet based rulebook. The does a thing match rulebook has outcomes it does (success) and it does not (failure).

Does a thing match a snippet (called S):
	if S matches "[any thing]", it does;
	it does not.

To decide whether a thing matches (S - a snippet):
	follow the does a thing match rules for S;
	decide on whether or not the outcome of the rulebook is the it does outcome;
	
Test is a room.[/code]

The following more direct and reasonable example does not compile:

[code]To decide whether a thing matches (S - a snippet):
	decide on whether or not S matches "[any thing]";
	
Test is a room.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3890&start=20#p28003
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Beginning in the middle of the action: is it a bad idea?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-09 23:45:10

[quote="Morley"] I want to believe it's possible for an author to do a good enough job to effectively delay the code-poking habits of even the most poking-inclined players for a least a bit, but I wonder about this. Especially when fabulously well-implemented games can be the ones we feel most inclined to break.[/quote]

I think at some point (preferably Square One) you have to have a crystal clear idea of who you're designing for, and design for them, and only them, and dismiss the rest of the universe as (literally, actually, simply and sincerely) irrelevant.

The person who delights mainly in throwing themselves at the walls to see if they'll hold, or prying into the crevices to see what squirms out ... god bless them as [i]testers.[/i] But they aren't (for most works) the audience, and rate no consideration except as a playful afterthought. The reasonable (or even the desperate and confused) actions of the audience are paramount. The parser-poking antics of the XYZZY crowd are ... optional yuks, not to be conflated. If time allows, by all means, toss them a few bones: [i]there's a good lad, pat on the head, good little geek,[/i] etc. But they're not the audience.

Even if the audience are sometimes [i]biologically the same people,[/i] in a different frame of mind.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3895&start=20#p28004
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Research
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-09 23:54:46

[quote="Sargent"]It also depends on how rooted in realism your game is going to be.[/quote]

Sometimes. Honestly, I tend to research my nonsense as thoroughly as (say) my historical or hard-science stuff. It's just very [i]different [/i]research, sometimes research into the purely subjective. When I was preparing to write The [b][i]Pokéthulhu Adventure Game,[/i][/b] for example, I knew my Lovecraft inside and out ... I knew I'd have no trouble packing it floor to ceiling with half-assed HPL references (I've read all the stories, all the volumes of correspondence, many of the pastiches, etc). But my Pokémon knowledge was nearly zip, so I had to (A) watch several episodes and then (B) interview children to see what the show, the card game, etc. meant to them. For the latter, I went to a public library first, explained my needs to the children's librarian, and she sat me down with some of her regulars to discuss it with them (girls and boys had dramatically different takes on it, which I should have expected but it really bowled me over). Then, I went to a Border's and did the same thing with the old lady running the kid's department ... she introduced me to a couple of tots who were planted in the Poké-section, and I talked to the kids [i]and [/i]I talked to their folks to get a real sense of the scope of the obsession.

All of this was pretty [i]meta [/i]to the game, so it had nothing to do with realism (and the game has nothing to do with realism) but without it, it would have just been a bunch of Lovecraft jokes with a halfhearted nod to something I had no idea about. As it was, I went in with a powerful confidence that I could make the game the brief and unholy union of two strong things it needed to be.

(Disclaimer: not a work of IF, but I think the principles hold, re the research)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3895&start=20#p28005
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Research
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-10 00:16:47

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="Sargent"]It also depends on how rooted in realism your game is going to be.[/quote]

Sometimes. Honestly, I tend to research my nonsense as thoroughly as (say) my historical or hard-science stuff. It's just very [i]different [/i]research, sometimes research into the purely subjective. When I was preparing to write The [b][i]Pokéthulhu Adventure Game,[/i][/b] for example, I knew my Lovecraft inside and out ... I knew I'd have no trouble packing it floor to ceiling with half-assed HPL references (I've read all the stories, all the volumes of correspondence, many of the pastiches, etc). But my Pokémon knowledge was nearly zip, so I had to (A) watch several episodes and then (B) interview children to see what the show, the card game, etc. meant to them. For the latter, I went to a public library first, explained my needs to the children's librarian, and she sat me down with some of her regulars to discuss it with them (girls and boys had dramatically different takes on it, which I should have expected but it really bowled me over). Then, I went to a Border's and did the same thing with the old lady running the kid's department ... she introduced me to a couple of tots who were planted in the Poké-section, and I talked to the kids [i]and [/i]I talked to their folks to get a real sense of the scope of the obsession.

All of this was pretty [i]meta [/i]to the game, so it had nothing to do with realism (and the game has nothing to do with realism) but without it, it would have just been a bunch of Lovecraft jokes with a halfhearted nod to something I had no idea about. As it was, I went in with a powerful confidence that I could make the game the brief and unholy union of two strong things it needed to be.

(Disclaimer: not a work of IF, but I think the principles hold, re the research)[/quote]

As a middle-aged man who loves both Lovecraft and Pokemon... I want this. And it better not suck.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3895&start=20#p28007
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Research
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-10 00:30:04

[quote="I4L"]As a middle-aged man who loves both Lovecraft and Pokemon... I want this. And it better not suck.[/quote]

Oh, I can promise that it [i]does.[/i] I worked very hard on that part. But the third edition is a freebie (after a nice run in the earlier editions with a stack of printings, a couple of foreign translations, etc) so the price is just a few minutes of your time to peruse (mind you, the Internet is full of free crap and time is the only coin worth counting ...)

And I have, since then, played three of the Nintendo games, which means in practice I've played the same game three times, but still, cheers. With that added experience, the [i]only [/i]thing I would have added to the RPG would be a passing joke about fishing. I didn't understand about the fishing before (the game mentions fishing, but only as something the grownups do, which could have been a joke playing both sides, but wasn't).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2250&start=10#p28008
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: SpeedIF Jacket 4
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-10 01:07:14

Old post. Not currently happening. Regulations for SpeedIF change with the competition, so they don't matter anymore once the competition is over.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2250&start=10#p28009
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: SpeedIF Jacket 4
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-10 01:18:00

[quote="I4L"]they don't matter anymore once the competition is over.[/quote]

Harsh, but true [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3913&start=0#p28010
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Frustrated with Choices
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-12-10 01:23:54

Ugh, I wish that were true.  I distinctly recall having to implement a room's featureless white walls because some people could not accept that they were indeed featureless.

That gets into the uniquely IF-specific art of writing descriptions without mentioning any nouns you don't want to implement.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3913&start=0#p28011
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Frustrated with Choices
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-10 01:30:24

[quote="katz"]Ugh, I wish that were true.  I distinctly recall having to implement a room's featureless white walls because some people could not accept that they were indeed featureless.

That gets into the uniquely IF-specific art of writing descriptions without mentioning any nouns you don't want to implement.[/quote]

Adjectives, too ... If you take the time to [i]specifically mention[/i] that the walls are both [i]white [/i]and [i]featureless, [/i]that's two points of detail, thus proving they must be critically important to a puzzle at some point [emote]:)[/emote]

I do think the IF community suffers a bit from overcompensating for the missing nouns of past ages, though. To me, the worst offender is [i][b]Zork III,[/b][/i] which, in the opening room, describes shadows as "strange" and then refuses to admit they exist. Well, I guess that (and directionless light casting shadows) [i]is[/i] a form of strange ...

But the other extreme, where people feel they need to pander to commands like "smell the upholstery" when all the room mentioned was "furniture ..." well, there [i]is[/i] a fine line, somewhere [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3913&start=0#p28012
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Frustrated with Choices
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2011-12-10 02:09:52

[quote]I do think the IF community suffers a bit from overcompensating for the missing nouns of past ages, though. To me, the worst offender is [i][b]Zork III,[/b][/i] which, in the opening room, describes shadows as "strange" and then refuses to admit they exist. Well, I guess that (and directionless light casting shadows) [i]is[/i] a form of strange ...[/quote]
I so agree with you.
But it's also a matter of the player not being able to distinguish between what is scenery and objects. In the "golden age" it was easy to see what was what since object s was usually listed: "You also see": etc. etc. 
But is it "fair" to complain about a lot of text? (not that I'm saying it's happening here) 
Although I'll admit that some descriptions can be overwhelming, isn't the idea of a text adventure that the author creates an atmosphere, a little like the author of a book?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3915&start=0#p28013
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: The World Map
User: Deain / DateTime: 2011-12-10 02:15:01

Ok, so I was making my game, all well and good so far.  Then I checked the world map and I saw that the grids are almost all used up.  As I continue making my game and add more rooms, will the map expand itself automatically or do I have to make the map bigger manually?  If the latter, how do I do it?  

Right now, this is how my map is looking like: [img]http://i42.servimg.com/u/f42/16/52/23/81/screen13.png[/img]

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3915&start=0#p28014
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The World Map
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-12-10 02:41:07

The easiest way to find out is to add some rooms and see for yourself, but yes, the index will always show the full map.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3913&start=0#p28015
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Frustrated with Choices
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-10 03:55:13

[quote]Although I'll admit that some descriptions can be overwhelming, isn't the idea of a text adventure that the author creates an atmosphere, a little like the author of a book?[/quote]

Hopefully far better than a [i]book,[/i] but some of the same principles apply, including the twin wonder-powers of focus and brevity. Prosy meanderings (whether in style or amount) are a bit like butter: they can make things [i]delicious [/i]when applied expertly, but with a heavy hand they'll just make things fatty and bland. More to the point, an [i]unfinished [/i]game pleases no one, and injudicious pursuit of so-called "deep" implementation can trap a game in eternal development, essentially destroying it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3890&start=20#p28016
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Beginning in the middle of the action: is it a bad idea?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-12-10 03:55:46

[quote]So, do you start using the wait-and-restore technique as soon as you see signs that you're probably being timed, or only after you've been forced to restore once and know it's a timed sequence?[/quote]

Yep. I want to know if I'm really constrained, I want to know if my game session is in real jeopardy. *Timers* don't make me excited, don't make me type faster even though real time's not an issue; *timers* don't make my run blood faster. Good-written fast-paced well-designed sequences do that.

Most people stick with the timers, they're easier. So I stick to "z" until the game proves me to be better,

[quote]For me this is where it moves into tricky area. I sort of feel that if PC is in a situation that logically would be time-sensitive and the game strongly hints that you should play as though there were a time limit, then the player has no business messing around trying to figure out if it's a real limit before even attempting the sequence. There may be situations I'm not imagining where that makes more sense, but presumably they'd all be rated "cruel".[/quote]

You'd like Infocom games. Their time-limit (when there is one) actually allows you time to explore, think and then solve. Whereas Magnetic Scrolls, whose "Fish!" I recently played, allowed me no time to finish even when I was optimizing my every move (since it was my first playthrough, I allowed some examining time, some exploration time, minimal as it was. No dice. That timer is *tight*).

So in Infocom games I can take it easy. In MS I can't. In other games... I assume there will be a timer, and will try to see how long the timer is. It will also give me an idea of how convoluted the solution will be - smaller timers will probably equal solutions where I have to move around less, do less things.

Of course, if the game is well-designed, I'll probably just save at the beginnning of the timing and then try to work it out without "z"ing. But the game had better have me hooked.

And it seems that this behaviour horrifies some of you game writers. It shouldn't, it's just my personal strategy born of playing lots of old-school (I recently played Avon. Wouldn't have gotten anywhere without this and other strategies. With them, and a couple of hints, I actually won the game). It doesn't bother my immersion or atmosphere anymore than, say, a QuickSave/QuickLoad will diminish my enjoyment of Unreal, or the VitaChambers will diminish the excitement of BioShock.

What WILL hurt my immersion is a fast-paced scene that, because of shoddy design, I can't get past. I'm stuck forever in a fast paced scene, and that hurts. And putting a timer there is adding insult to injury.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3915&start=0#p28017
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The World Map
User: Deain / DateTime: 2011-12-10 05:18:12

Thanks Juhana, I was worried that my map might run out of space. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3915&start=0#p28018
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The World Map
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-12-10 07:16:54

[quote="Deain"]Thanks Juhana, I was worried that my map might run out of space. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
If that was the case, [i]Andromeda[/i]'s useless rooms would be written on a block notes. A whole block notes [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3895&start=30#p28019
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Research
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-12-10 07:23:19

I'm not the research guy, but I often jump to Wikipedia (the [i]worst[/i] at giving the truth, out there) for non trivial subjects. 
Sometimes, tho, I have to dive into deep research in order to accomplish something. For my latest game, I had to investigate how [i]vibertron[/i] and [i]pshychoglass[/i] work together, and that was the easy part. There is a lot of material on the subject in the [i]Encyclopedia Frobozzica[/i].

Then, I discovered the [i]Hyerotropes[/i]. There was nothing in the known universe about them, so I had to resort to Ancient Alien Populations Whose Civilization Spanned Billions of Years to find stuff. 

They were gentle enuf, altho I'm quite sure they didn't give me the whole picture... Bet I'll have to trip the cosmos forth and back again for the eventual sequel.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3915&start=0#p28020
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The World Map
User: Deain / DateTime: 2011-12-10 07:45:39

Just curious, have you ever ran out of space?  And roughly, how long does the story has to be before the map is full?  Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3913&start=0#p28021
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Frustrated with Choices
User: Deain / DateTime: 2011-12-10 07:57:13

I'm also new in using Inform and making IF games, and I totally understand how you felt.  I myself also want to make the game interesting with choices, so when I write a room that is a cave, I linked 2 soon to be 3 other rooms to my original room.  Perhaps this coding of what I did will explain better what I'm trying to say:

[code]The cave is a room.  It is east from the deer trail.  "After a while, you see that it's the enterance to a cave of unsure death.  Water dripp don and echoed throughout the rock cavern you are in.  As your eyes adjust to the darkness, you see that the cave wall is covered by a fine layer of moss and algae.  Three dark passage ways lead deeper into the cave.  The first passage is east, just infront of you.  The second passage is southwest with a narrow opening and the third is north of you.  Which passage way will you take?"

Passage 1 is a room.  It is east from the cave. "As you walk deeper into the passage way, you begin to hear a high pitched twitering and something akin to swooshing of wings.  Wondering what is a head, you picked up your pace.  Your footsteps rang on the solid rock ground and the air is tight with the closeness of the rock walls on both sides of  you.  After what seamed forever, you came to a dark cavern.  inmidiately, a stentch hit your nose and looking up, you can just make out the fluttering shapes of thousands of bats from a thin ray of light coming from one side of the cave.  Looking around, you see no other way to continue.  Seeing no point staying in the reeking cavern for much longer, you decide to return to the cave by heading back west." 

Passage 2 is a room. It is southwest of the cave. "Though the crack in the wall doesn't look like much seen from where you currently stand, you decide to give it a shot anyway.  The slimness of your form now came in handy as you barely managed to wriggle through the gap.  As you head down the passage way, you are forced  to shuffle sideways like an over-sized crab.  Suddenly, you feel a slight stiring in the air.  You walked on eagerly.  It wasn't long before the passage way came to an abrupt end and you find yourself looking into a large cavern.  The walls of the cavern is barely covered with moss like the outside and faint carving can dimly be seen on the rock walls.  A thin layer of sand covers the ground.  Heading forward, you encountered something with your foot.  Banding down, you could see a square shape lieing in front of you.  You nudged it slightly with your foot and something inside rattled."

A wooden crate is here.  "As you examine the object infront of  you and ran your hands along its sides, you found that it was made of a sturdy material, perhaps wood." The description is "Upon further examination, you discover that there is indeed some other object in the crate's deaths."

After examining the crate:
	say "Reaching your hand into the crate, you came across an object and drew it out gingerly.  To your surprice, you see that it was a rusty oil lamp.  The oil lamp is rusty and it gives off a metallic scent.  There is a rounded handle, which you used to hold the lamp steady.  Shaking it, a slight swooshing told you that there was still oil in the long abandoned lamp." [/code]

I hope this helps, I find this the easiest way in creating choices, but of corse more experienced writers than my self probably  have an even easier way of making choices for the player.  I hope this helps.

Deain

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3895&start=30#p28022
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Research
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-12-10 08:30:18

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="I4L"]As a middle-aged man who loves both Lovecraft and Pokemon... I want this. And it better not suck.[/quote]

Oh, I can promise that it [i]does.[/i] I worked very hard on that part. But the third edition is a freebie (after a nice run in the earlier editions with a stack of printings, a couple of foreign translations, etc) so the price is just a few minutes of your time to peruse (mind you, the Internet is full of free crap and time is the only coin worth counting ...)

And I have, since then, played three of the Nintendo games, which means in practice I've played the same game three times, but still, cheers. With that added experience, the [i]only [/i]thing I would have added to the RPG would be a passing joke about fishing. I didn't understand about the fishing before (the game mentions fishing, but only as something the grownups do, which could have been a joke playing both sides, but wasn't).[/quote]
When I read the RPG, I thought the grown-ups spending their time fishing was a reference to the economically unsustainable numbers of fishermen in the Pokemon games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3913&start=10#p28023
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Frustrated with Choices
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-12-10 08:37:23

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="katz"]Adjectives, too ... If you take the time to [i]specifically mention[/i] that the walls are both [i]white [/i]and [i]featureless, [/i]that's two points of detail, thus proving they must be critically important to a puzzle at some point[/quote][/quote]
Well, yes and definitely NO.

In my game there is an abrupt cul-de-sac where the player finds him/herself in a white and featureless corridor. There's no pointing that out but it's fairly obvious you have to do something with the white and featureless walls in the white and featureless corridor. (Well, tbh the game doesn't point at the walls, but c'mon, they are all there is in the white and featureless corridor, why don't aim at those?).

Fact is: rarely players have addressed the walls ingame before resorting to the walkthrough. As in "nobody except betatesters", who obviously were to good to find such a flaw in my game.* 

So, release 3 now shows dark spots in the wall and better clues the puzzle.

My game was (is!) flawed by how it resorts to long descriptions where shorter ones would be better. Often, exits are named inside walls of text and a lot of scenery is there just for the purpose of being... well, scenery. This, the average player doesn't like. It's better to avoid showing glowing cracks in the floor if those are not a medium to solve a puzzle.**

Giving choices imo means:
1) dropping here and there an alternate solution to a puzzle (or give a better response for failure than "you can't do this";
2) allowing the player to face two or more puzzles at once, thus giving him a tiny resemblance of non-linearity.

As addicted as I am to regular writing/reading, this is the parts I have more difficulties in. In a book you can talk three pages about a buffet for a dinner (The Buddenbrook, anyone?), still, no one will have the chance at examining/interacting with any of the 146 dishes.

----

* Sometimes, intelligent and sharp betatesters are [i]not[/i] what you need. Mine were far to accustomed to hard IF. They were too bright an imaginative. None pointed out the [i]cyanotic[/i] light that sent many so off the tracks. None stuck in that white and featureless corridor too much. They just went in and... opps! they solved the game. I remember Joel Webster writing comments in the transcript actually [i]anticipating[/i] how a puzzle, who left many puzzled (ehm...), was going to be solved. I will ask him to be my betatester forever, cause he shoveled out so much s**t from my game that I oughta pay him -- yeah, you don't want to know how bad it was in the beginning! -- and he gave me so much strength with his participation that I just went ohwmygad! Next time, though, I want some more "dumb" testers, also, or else I'll keep satisfying only the strong ones [emote]:)[/emote]

** I love how my game has been both heavily downgraded by its purple prose (altho I'm not quite sure I wanna dig it: purple prose is a thing, over-describing is another) and loved for the atmosphere that purple prose gave it. You know, you can't quite be liked by everyone, but sometimes it's really hard to understand how things go out there... so the best is to stop worrying and just [i]do it[/i].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3913&start=10#p28024
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Frustrated with Choices
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-10 08:51:32

[quote="Jamespking"]Well, yes and definitely NO.[/quote]

Apparently the smiley didn't translate to your monitor. I'm sorry you didn't find the joke funny, but your response wasn't exactly a knee-slapper, either.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3895&start=30#p28025
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Research
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-10 08:53:23

[quote="JoeyJones"]When I read the RPG, I thought the grown-ups spending their time fishing was a reference to the economically unsustainable numbers of fishermen in the Pokemon games.[/quote]

And it [i]should [/i]have been. But it's nice to know that some folks are sufficiently imaginative to pull the sled that extra inch on the game's behalf [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3916&start=0#p28026
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: [Announcement] New web fic with IF-style rooms/descriptions
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-12-10 09:03:45

In my last Internet Design & Publishing class on Thursday, I presented my [url=http://students.herkimer.edu/~leep518/index.html]website project[/url] in front of the class and instructor.

My site, hosted on my community college's webspace for now, is based on an IF experiment that I worked on through the fall of 2010.  I was trying to build a large fantasy landscape.  I didn't get much further in the actual implementation than the first room -- an dome-shaped observatory at the top of a high tower upon Mount Anuël, the highest mountain in Edȇn (I cut back on the fantasy names for the website [emote];)[/emote]).  This first room contained dozens of scenery objects representing the view of the whole landscape as seen from the observatory, and the descriptions of these objects formed the basis for my room-based web work.  I sometimes copied my old descriptions straight from the Hugo source file of my original game.

I think I'll refrain from announcing the main feature of my website and let readers discover it for themselves.  My website is clearly not interactive in the sense of parser IF or even most CYOAs, since you can only control the order in which you see information.  It's not even a story, since it does not contain a narrative and cannot generate one, but it [i]is[/i] fantasy fiction.  I hope that my project might contribute to the discourse about what an interactive experience fundamentally is, if only as an example of the limits of interactivity in a work that uses no code besides CSS and HTML.

Here's the link: <a class="postlink" href="http://students.herkimer.edu/~leep518/index.html">http://students.herkimer.edu/~leep518/index.html</a>

I wish I were announcing the parser IF game that I've been working on for a year (since abandoning the fantasy game upon which this website was built), but I still haven't gotten my current Hugo game to a beta stage (or even gotten it to be playable from end to end without debugging commands; there's still a couple interactions to be implemented).  But at least I have something to show for all my tinkering! [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3913&start=10#p28027
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Frustrated with Choices
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-12-10 09:05:39

[quote="Jamespking"]In my game there is an abrupt cul-de-sac where the player finds him/herself in a white and featureless corridor. There's no pointing that out but it's fairly obvious you have to do something with the white and featureless walls in the white and featureless corridor. (Well, tbh the game doesn't point at the walls, but c'mon, they are all there is in the white and featureless corridor, why don't aim at those?).[/quote]

I remember that puzzle very well, and I played the very first release. You also had a sort of PDA-encyclopedia thing where the walls-puzzle was hinted at, so when I went in I expected to do some wall-interacting.

But even in your example you left out a way for the player to know WHICH wall he was supposed to interact with. I completely missed the eastern section of the map, because I'd been there, checked the eastern wall, saw nothing, saw no indication that there would be anything else to do there, moved west. Then when I moved west and I found a wall that I could interact with - the WESTERN wall - I thought ok, this is the one, and completely forgot about the other cul-de-sac, thinking it was just that.

Because heck, I'd think there would be SOMETHING in the description about featureless white walls and ONE of them having a dark spot. Otherwise the player has to blindly examine every wall. That's not good.

It's like in the game "Building". There's part of a room description that goes "There's something strange about the eastern wall." Examining that wall gives "There are some words written on the dusty wall", and proceeds to tell you the message on said wall. And I'm left thinking, what, is THIS what was so strange about the wall? Couldn't the game just tell me there was something written there? Is there something else to this wall? Something that's ACTUALLY strange?" I ended up spending a lot of time butting heads with that bloody wall, which, as it turned out, was just a piece of scenery with writing on it, nothing more.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3913&start=10#p28028
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Frustrated with Choices
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-12-10 09:08:08

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="Jamespking"]Well, yes and definitely NO.[/quote]

Apparently the smiley didn't translate to your monitor. I'm sorry you didn't find the joke funny, but your response wasn't exactly a knee-slapper, either.[/quote]
Ouch. Why are you taking this personally? :O
I saw the smiley but I didn't understand it was aimed at me. That's why I try to add something to the subject.
I didn't mean to be funny, or to make fun at you. Sorry  [emote]:([/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3913&start=10#p28029
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Frustrated with Choices
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-12-10 09:17:56

[quote="Peter Pears"]But even in your example you left out a way for the player to know WHICH wall he was supposed to interact with. (...) Because heck, I'd think there would be SOMETHING in the description about featureless white walls and ONE of them having a dark spot. Otherwise the player has to blindly examine every wall. That's not good.[/quote]
Indeed. That's why I've added non-scenery dark spots in the final release (out soon!). It was a mistake, nothing to add here. Also, the puzzle is hard enough even if you don't have to struggle finding WHERE to solve it.
Ah, and yeah: trying many objects to discover which one is the right one is VERY BAD design.
Rookie mistake.

[quote="Peter Pears"]It's like in the game "Building". There's part of a room description that goes "There's something strange about the eastern wall." Examining that wall gives "There are some words written on the dusty wall", and proceeds to tell you the message on said wall. And I'm left thinking, what, is THIS what was so strange about the wall? Couldn't the game just tell me there was something written there?[/quote]
Another bad design example. Many times I'm forced to examine the GLASS BOTTLE to see what's inside. And this is idiotic. 
To bad, there is a deep and spanning chasm between what one wants to be and what he is. That's why I've put some of those in my game, also. And probably will still do in ages. Rewriting is the trick, sometimes.

[code]Something in the pond catches your attention.

>X POND

A giant tentacular water dragon is spitting lava streams into the air.

> WTF[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3913&start=10#p28030
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Frustrated with Choices
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-10 09:26:50

[quote="Jamespking"]In my game there is an abrupt cul-de-sac where the player finds him/herself in a white and featureless corridor. There's no pointing that out but it's fairly obvious you have to do something with the white and featureless walls in the white and featureless corridor. (Well, tbh the game doesn't point at the walls, but c'mon, they are all there is in the white and featureless corridor, why don't aim at those?).[/quote]

Well, there's also the floor. A corridor surely has a floor. And a ceiling -- in fact, if I remember correctly, the ceiling was specifically mentioned, and that's what I tried to interact with. 

In general, even if something is implicitly there, I don't assume I need to interact with it unless it's explicitly mentioned. I won't assume that the walls are implemented if they aren't mentioned any more than I'd assume that [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=1z2lxiqua980sedk]my clothing is[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3915&start=0#p28031
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The World Map
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-10 09:47:27

I don't believe there's any such thing as running out of map space. You can add rooms, items, NPCs, actions and the like until Inform itself runs out of resources. There are ways (USE options) to increase what Inform will be able to process. I believe someone said in another thread that the biggest they suspected a game could be was around 4GB.

I can't imagine putting that much into a game.

Blue Lacuna (one of the longest games written) weighs in at just under 5.5MB. I just test compiled a project with 315 "rooms". I believe Inform also counts regions as rooms, so that number is somewhat inflated. There's a lot of other stuff in it, but it comes in at just over 800KB. 

I don't think you'll need to worry about running out of grid space.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3915&start=0#p28032
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The World Map
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-10 09:54:16

Also worth nothing that Anchorhead, also a very long game, has around 120 rooms, not counting regions.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3915&start=0#p28033
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The World Map
User: Deain / DateTime: 2011-12-10 09:59:10

Thanks mate for that info.  I very much doubt that my game will be that big.  Also thanks to all others who helped; Juhana and Jamespking.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2250&start=10#p28034
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: SpeedIF Jacket 4
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-10 10:01:46

Hah. Didn't mean it to be harsh, sir.

I don't think I posted on this thread this morning. I'm pretty sure this is old. Was I conscious at two in the morning? Surely not... Or was I?

I don't even remember. But I'm pretty sure I posted this a while ago.

I think...

And where's the post I responded to...?

Some kinda guv'ment conspiracy, I say.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3913&start=10#p28035
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Frustrated with Choices
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-12-10 10:25:44

[quote="matt w"]Well, there's also the floor. A corridor surely has a floor.[/quote]
Infact. It ended up being a lil bit like the 3 game. And I hope I've corrected it. But... if you looked at the right walls... [emote]:)[/emote]
Lesson learned (I hope.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3917&start=0#p28036
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: [Alpha and Beta testers required] Andromeda Awakening R3
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-12-10 12:09:03

Hello Everyone!

Anyone is interested in (re)trying my game? 
It's NOT the finished project, as the new endgame is just about being added, but I've made many changes in the beginning and in the puzzles structure and hinting.
So far it's the original version and a couple more rooms at the end, which lead nowhere, tho.

I'd need people who have played it, as long with newcomers, to test the improvements and to check if the game is or isn't more playable. It will be much of a job, so I'd better do it step by step.

I still haven't changed much of the writing, so those looking for a fast experience should not apply [emote]:)[/emote]



PM me and I'll send the Gblorb (800k, half of it just for the Approaches extension).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3917&start=0#p28037
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: [Alpha and Beta testers required] Andromeda Awakening R3
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-12-10 12:10:58

As an appetizer: the new Cover Art. Hope you like it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3917&start=0#p28038
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: [Alpha and Beta testers required] Andromeda Awakening R3
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-10 12:32:06

Too many lens flare effects! Hell with this game.













Just kidding. I'll give it a go.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3917&start=0#p28039
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: [Alpha and Beta testers required] Andromeda Awakening R3
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-10 12:33:53

[quote="Jamespking"](800k, half of it just for the Approaches extension).[/quote]

Yay! 

Don't have time to test this now, but I wanted to give you positive feedback on this.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3856&start=0#p28040
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Things That Go Bump In The Night - for iPhone & Andr
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2011-12-10 13:07:17

I downloaded this and am poking around in the game. I like it so far! ^5

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3917&start=0#p28042
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: [Alpha and Beta testers required] Andromeda Awakening R3
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-12-10 15:15:41

[quote="matt w"]Don't have time to test this now, but I wanted to give you positive feedback on this.[/quote]
Yeah. The extension is there... just because of you!
It may sound non-plausible, but I tried and follow every and each suggestion I got from the reviews and feedbacks.

These long walks were another rookie mistake. I hope I was able to correct. And I hope I didn't crash the game in doing so...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3913&start=10#p28043
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Frustrated with Choices
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-12-10 15:45:15

I had a playtester give up after finding that he could interact with neither the walls nor the floor nor the ceiling of the featureless white hall.

The moral of which is "don't make the player walk down a featureless white hall to get to most of the interesting stuff."  Lesson learned.  (But the point is that I don't think you can actually count on the player focusing on the more interesting stuff, nor can you count on the player putting up with boring actions that don't yield good replies.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3915&start=0#p28044
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The World Map
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-12-10 15:48:07

Since I rather suspect this problem will arise soon, your project [i]will[/i] probably get too big for Z-code version 5 and give you an error, so you should go to the Settings tab and change it to Z-code version 8.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3919&start=0#p28045
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inexhaustible supply: how is this different from the example
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-12-10 16:00:07

This is basically a straight copy of Example 363...except it won't compile.  It refuses to accept the line "let the current item be a random seed in the hidden place," which looks to me like a perfectly ordinary declaration of a temporary named variable.  Ideas?

[code]The storage room is a room.

The food stash is in the storage room.  "There's a pile of food here." 

A seed is a thing.  It is edible.  The description of a seed is "A seed out of your food stash."

After eating a seed:
	say "You eat the seed.  That's pretty good!";
	move the noun to the hidden place.

The hidden place is a room.
In the hidden place are 20 seeds.

Instead of taking the food stash:
	let the current item be a random seed in the hidden place;
	if the current item is nothing:
		say "No thanks.  You're stuffed.";
	otherwise:
		move the current item to the player;
		say "You take a seed."
		
Rule for implicitly taking the food stash:
	let the chosen seed be a random seed in the hidden place;
	if the chosen seed is nothing:
		say "No thanks.  You've eaten way too many!";
	otherwise:
		move the  chosen seed to the player;
		say "(helping yourself to a seed)";
		now the noun is the chosen seed.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3913&start=10#p28047
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Frustrated with Choices
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-10 16:09:41

[quote="Jamespking"]Ouch. Why are you taking this personally? :O[/quote]

No, there's nothing personal about it; I just found it slightly creepy.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2250&start=10#p28048
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: SpeedIF Jacket 4
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-10 16:11:10

[quote="I4L"]Some kinda guv'ment conspiracy, I say.[/quote]

S'okay. I never take this tinfoil off.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3919&start=0#p28049
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inexhaustible supply: how is this different from the exa
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-12-10 16:14:16

I think "a seed is a thing" should be "a seed is a kind of thing". You have now just declared a single item called "a seed".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3915&start=0#p28050
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The World Map
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-12-10 16:15:14

[quote="katz"]Since I rather suspect this problem will arise soon, your project [i]will[/i] probably get too big for Z-code version 5 and give you an error, so you should go to the Settings tab and change it to Z-code version 8.[/quote]
Or even better, Glulx. (Hasn't that been made standard yet?)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=30#p28051
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2011-12-10 16:16:07

[quote="aschultz"][quote="therealeasterbunny"]Perhaps we should have a Scott Adams Format Text Adventure Comp (SAFTAC?)  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote] 
[/quote]

I'd be up for it. As you say, it'd be fun to participate. It could be good for new authors, too, or for people who don't want to deal with rulebooks and such, yet.[/quote]

You know, you might have a point there ... let me have a think and I will report back soon to see if I can set something up from a fun comp perspective point of view...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3919&start=0#p28052
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inexhaustible supply: how is this different from the exa
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-12-10 16:16:55

Huh.  So then when I make 20 seeds, I suppose it's making an actual thing called "20 seeds."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3919&start=0#p28053
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inexhaustible supply: how is this different from the exa
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-12-10 16:34:07

Yep. [emote]:)[/emote] By the way, you can check this by checking the index, or by typing "tree" in the game-window.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=40#p28077
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2011-12-10 22:08:14

[quote="Isxek"]Any updates? [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]Looks like the [url=http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/mini-comps/speedif/SpeedIF_IndigoNewLanguage.zip]ZIP file[/url] for all the entries in this comp was recently posted on the IF Archive. Jacqueline, if you were the one who posted it, thanks! [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3919&start=0#p28078
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inexhaustible supply: how is this different from the exa
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-10 22:38:17

[quote="katz"]Huh.  So then when I make 20 seeds, I suppose it's making an actual thing called "20 seeds."[/quote]

Made twenty individual seeds for me.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3919&start=0#p28079
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inexhaustible supply: how is this different from the exa
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-10 22:52:22

[quote="I4L"][quote="katz"]Huh.  So then when I make 20 seeds, I suppose it's making an actual thing called "20 seeds."[/quote]

Made twenty individual seeds for me.[/quote]
If the source doesn't compile, the index doesn't get updated. But when I commented out the rules for taking seeds, I got it to compile with a single object called "20 seeds."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3919&start=0#p28080
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inexhaustible supply: how is this different from the exa
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-10 22:53:44

[quote="I4L"][quote="katz"]Huh.  So then when I make 20 seeds, I suppose it's making an actual thing called "20 seeds."[/quote]

Made twenty individual seeds for me.[/quote]

That's what it does (and rightly so!) if you've defined a seed as a kind of thing. If you haven't, then you get one object called "20 seeds." (Because there's no such thing as an "individual seed," if seed isn't a kind of thing.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3919&start=0#p28081
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inexhaustible supply: how is this different from the exa
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-10 23:12:51

Right, defining it as a kind makes 20 seeds. Maybe I misunderstood the question...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3912&start=0#p28082
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New project - questions about Inform7
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-10 23:29:13

I take it you've given up on I7, then? It is a traditional thing to do.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3915&start=10#p28083
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The World Map
User: Deain / DateTime: 2011-12-11 00:30:57

Thanks Katz, I just checked my settings and made it z-code 8, but I don't think I have what you mentioned Vic.  Thanks both of you lodes [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3915&start=10#p28084
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The World Map
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-11 01:20:16

It's right under "Z-Code version 8" in the settings.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3912&start=0#p28085
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New project - questions about Inform7
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-11 01:34:11

[quote="zarf"]I take it you've given up on I7, then? It is a traditional thing to do.[/quote]

Assuming you're referring to me... I wouldn't say that exactly.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3924&start=0#p28086
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: So I have this game where you are a hamster
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-12-11 02:02:51

It's short, it's (hopefully) funny, and it could be either a stand-alone minigame or an intro to a longer game (the latter was the intent, but I haven't written or even plotted the rest of the game yet).  I'd enter it in IntroComp if IntroComp weren't an extremely long ways away.

So someone should take a look at it and, along with the normal play-testing feedback, tell me if I should wait and enter it, or release it now as an intro, or release it now as a stand-alone.  Or, I suppose, bury it forever because it is terrible.  But that would not be a very nice thing to say.

Edit: I've got enough playtesters for now.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3915&start=10#p28087
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The World Map
User: Deain / DateTime: 2011-12-11 05:15:35

The one that says : Glulx (large)?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3925&start=0#p28088
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: So it's time for...
User: lemort / DateTime: 2011-12-11 06:52:36

Hi

Was a huge fan of adventures back then and have revisited some games many times. 
(Huge Magnetic Scrolls fan)

I also love to write.
It so happens that I now have the time needed for doing a project like this. My wish is to recreate and further develope something I made in GAC on cbm64 way back then. (Outta memory, game itself is lost)

As a non-english speaker (natively) I am a bit in doubt over what program to choose. 
I was looking into Inform7 last night and got this feeling that me not being "expert at english talker" could be an obstacle.  But, although I have some programming experience, I might be put of by the technical aspect of Tad. (I tried TAD many years ago but I had to put the project aside, lack of time)

What would people in general suggests to a non-english person?

I see the point in doing Inform7, since it will also train my language skills. 
On the other hand, I was quite frustrated when trying to achieve some "simple" stuff last night and maybe the logic that occurs in programming could be better.

M:)rten

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3926&start=0#p28089
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: game suggestions
User: lemort / DateTime: 2011-12-11 07:18:07

Hi again

any suggestions to "short, silly" games I can play, to see what people do, what games can do and generally be inspired?  I see several recommendations that newbies should write short, silly games just for fun, totally agree (my plan) and seeing others would be fun.

M:)rten

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3925&start=0#p28090
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: So it's time for...
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-12-11 07:19:31

Inform 6 is an option to consider, then, as it's closer to that "logic that occurs on programming" than its latest incarnation. I7 is also a programming language, but its disguise of "something you're casually writting" make orthodox programmers feel uneasy. You can take a look at I6 at:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.inform-fiction.org/inform6.html">http://www.inform-fiction.org/inform6.html</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3926&start=0#p28092
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: game suggestions
User: lemort / DateTime: 2011-12-11 08:22:38

found 9:05 by Adam Cadre at IFDB. 
Hilarious  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

M:)rten

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3925&start=0#p28093
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: So it's time for...
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-11 08:58:35

[quote="lemort"] 
I was looking into Inform7 last night and got this feeling that me not being "expert at english talker" could be an obstacle.  But, although I have some programming experience, I might be put of by the technical aspect of Tad. (I tried TAD many years ago but I had to put the project aside, lack of time)
...
I see the point in doing Inform7, since it will also train my language skills. [/quote]
I have been hoping, ever since I7 came out, for a person to emerge whose English was learned entirely from I7. (Well, ideally enough people to form a small but viable language community. But we're getting into SF territory here.)

I7 aims at being natural English, but is much simpler and more rules-bound. Plenty of things that are well-formed statements in Inform are not grammatically correct English, and vice versa. (You may actually have one small advantage over a fluent English speaker: the English speaker will often know four or five grammatically-correct ways to express a particular idea, and forget which particular one I7 understands.) And I7 is, not very deep beneath the surface, still a technical programming language. You still have to think like a programmer to use it.

When you tried TADS, was it TADS 2 or TADS 3? T3 is pretty intimidating, but I picked up TADS 2 more or less easily as a non-programmer.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3915&start=10#p28094
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The World Map
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-11 09:06:52

[quote="Deain"]The one that says : Glulx (large)?[/quote]

Correct. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3925&start=0#p28095
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: So it's time for...
User: lemort / DateTime: 2011-12-11 09:37:52

[quote="maga"]

When you tried TADS, was it TADS 2 or TADS 3? T3 is pretty intimidating, but I picked up TADS 2 more or less easily as a non-programmer.[/quote]

I think it must have been TADS 2. I looked into IF twice the last ten years and I think TADS was tested when I studied multimedia in Melbourne. Tads 3 wasn't around then. 

I know I've seen Inform7 before, so I probably tested that when I intended to do an interactive example for my students at the University of Stavanger, where I worked for some years. 
Unfortunately, time was always an issue and I had to drop the idea of the example. Still makes me a bit sad, IF is so good when it comes to this.

I'm looking into Inform7 now and I am still struggling with (I guess) a pretty basic thing, so I'm probably going to bother you guys with the problem. (Trying to search atm)

M:)rten

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3912&start=0#p28096
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New project - questions about Inform7
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-11 09:42:31

[quote="I4L"]Speaking from experience...[/quote]

Apparently the tongue-in-cheek tone of my post, introduced by the admission of my own personal struggles with Inform, was not obvious, to put it mildly. Allow me to clarify, since I've no desire to turn away newcomers to the language or offend those who have a deep love for it.

[quote="I4L"]The more advanced stuff... Eh... Depends on how much you enjoy intertwining a sometimes convoluted attempt to twist and contort "natural language" into programming code and how much you love your grammar.[/quote]

This has been discussed at length. Not only by those of us who are new to the language, but also to those who have lived and breathed Inform for years. While the basics are very easy to grasp, anything much more than that results in being forced to pepper in I6 code (or some rough approximations of it) or dramatically stretching one's understanding of what constitutes "natural language". While I suppose that this is sometimes necessary, no one is trying to pretend it doesn't happen.

[quote="I4L"]
There are some things that people are doing that you have to know the difference between different types of adjectives.
[/quote]

Well, there are. This isn't a jab.

[quote="I4L"]
Which makes I7 for nerdy bookworms and not programmers.

Dorks.
[/quote]

Maybe this is fly in the soup. Again, this was a shot at [b][i]me[/i][/b] not any of [b][i]you[/i][/b]. Yes, I can completely understand the knotted Fruit of the Looms here. So I apologize for this little misunderstanding.

So let's try this again:

[i]Inform 7 is a powerful, flexible and versatile development platform capable of translating a semi-natural language approach to programming into a (hopefully) playable interpretation of your story. While at its simplest level a perfectly acceptable game can be produced using phrases little more complex than "The description of..." and "The printed name is...", a more advanced understanding of the English language and forgiveness of what can considered "natural language" becomes necessary as your project becomes more developed. Inform is capable of producing almost anything, but like anything else, you get out of it what you put into it.[/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3912&start=10#p28097
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New project - questions about Inform7
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-12-11 09:56:05

Why do people feel the need to apologize if they are a little critical of Inform 7? I've noticed this a lot. It's like people are afraid of offending the gods or something. (I never see this kind of sentiment when people talk about ADRIFT, TADS, or just about anything else.)

Anyway ... I personally really like Inform 7. I think it's a cool language, attempting some neat things. I also think it's a fundamentally flawed approach that leads to more verbose and ambiguous code in the long run. I can maintain both positions without problem. It's a fun language to play around in but it's definitely not for everybody.

So responding to this part of the OP's comments:

[quote]"I just wanted to be sure that it lives up to its hype before downloading and starting to play with it then finding it is not as easy to do what I want."[/quote]

First: what hype? There's the hype of it being a new language doing things in a unique way in the text adventure world. But I doubt that hype has anything to do with your question since the hype does not say "Inform 7 can do anything you may ever want to do. Ever."

Beyond that, ANY language can make doing what you want to do not easy if you don't know how to do it. That's the nature of programming languages. Once you know how to do things, then, yes, some languages can make certain things harder or easier. But that doesn't mean you can't do it. It just means it might take more work.

If you want to judge the language on whether it can do something AT ALL, that's one thing, and is more objective. If you want to judge whether a language makes doing a particular thing harder or easier, well, that's more subjective and it's sort of up to you to decide that for yourself. What you find cumbersome, I might find easy and vice versa. Basically try it out; experiment; see what you think. Maybe even try it in another language (or two) to get a feel for how those tools work. Then choose the one you feel most comfortable working in.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3925&start=0#p28098
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: So it's time for...
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-11 09:57:00

Judging by the English of your posts, you're quite as good at English as I (a Swede) am, and I've never found the problem to be my faulty grasp of idiomatic English. Whatever difficulties there is with learning I7, I doubt that being a non-native speaker (or reader/writer) of English is a very crucial one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3926&start=0#p28099
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: game suggestions
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-11 09:58:27

There's also Bob Reeves collection of "Painless Little Stupid Games" as well as most any Speed IF entry.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3925&start=0#p28100
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: So it's time for...
User: lemort / DateTime: 2011-12-11 10:11:11

[quote="Felix"]Judging by the English of your posts, you're quite as good at English as I (a Swede) am, and I've never found the problem to be my faulty grasp of idiomatic English. Whatever difficulties there is with learning I7, I doubt that being a non-native speaker (or reader/writer) of English is a very crucial one.[/quote]

Thank you for the compliment  [emote]:oops:[/emote] 
I'm Norwegian btw, so we're basically neighbours. (If we take the whole universe into account, we're basically sitting next to each other... [emote]:lol:[/emote] )

M:)rten

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3912&start=10#p28101
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New project - questions about Inform7
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-11 10:35:41

[quote="bukayeva"]Why do people feel the need to apologize if they are a little critical of Inform 7? I've noticed this a lot. It's like people are afraid of offending the gods or something. (I never see this kind of sentiment when people talk about ADRIFT, TADS, or just about anything else.)[/quote]

I wasn't apologizing for being critical of Inform. I was apologizing that some people (understandably, to some points) were under the impression that I was taking shots at them. There are those I couldn't really give two if I offend. There are others I'd prefer didn't walk away with that impression.

Just clarifying the intent of my post, that's all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3925&start=0#p28102
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: So it's time for...
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-12-11 10:36:07

Sincerely, M:)rten. I wouldn't have ever written a game if not for I7 (I can hear the curses running towards Nelson and the rest... c'mon it's not THEIR fault!).
I tried it in I6.
I tried with C64GAC, an aeon ago.
I tried with C64 basic.

At a certain point, I found out that a] I was too lazy to finish a job (cases with the C64 machine); or b] I got to the point where the programming language was too hard for me.

I7 helped a lot. It's just a matter of saying "Here is a room; this is the description; this is what you can do inside it" quite literally and it all flows. Every here and there you have to write a rule and that is really a little bit of nothing compared to what you must learn when programming in other languages.
In the end, it's just the same matter of learning a language. But I7 proved itself easier than all the rest.

Give it a try. I'm expecting something from you soon [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3928&start=0#p28103
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Off and On-stage, if Player does... and so on.
User: lemort / DateTime: 2011-12-11 10:47:56

I'm pretty sure the answer is to be found in the documentation or on this forum, but I haven't been able to search it up, sorry. (I've really tried!)
[quote]
Personal Office is a room. "You're sitting in your home office staring blankly at the white papersheet on the left side of Inform7's GUI."
[/quote]
I want An Idea to swirl about. Since We can't see an Idea, I used the following code.

[quote]
Personal Office is a room. "You're sitting in your home office staring blankly at the white papersheet on the left side of Inform7's GUI.There is an Idea swirling about."

There is An Idea.
[/quote]
I've added the presence of the Idea to the description, and I've told Inform the Idea exists.
But now I can't find out how to do the next thing.

When the player gets the idea (or takes it) I need it to be takable.
It isn't now. 

I've tried to make it touchable, I've tried to place it in a Storage-room and move it into the location, but it won't work. 

So 1;
How do I write something like

If the player takes An Idea, move it to location/inventory/Players head.

    2;

Where in the documentation can I find how to define an object as visible, invisible, touchable (and so on) at the beginning of the game? It won't let me now.
??

[quote]
Problem. In the sentence 'An Idea is touchable'  , you ask me to arrange for something to be 'touchable' at the start of play. There are some adjectives ('open' or 'dark', for instance) which I can fix, but others are just too vague. For example, saying 'Peter is visible.' isn't allowed, because it doesn't tell me where Peter is. Like 'visible', being 'touchable' is something I can test during play at any time, but not something I can arrange at the start.

 See the manual: 2.17 > Review of Chapter 2: The Source Text
[/quote]
It refers to the manual, but I can't understand how to translate that example into what I try to achieve.


I think the manual is wonderful, humorous and very well written. But I do not always get the examples. [emote]:([/emote]

M:)rten

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3928&start=0#p28104
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Off and On-stage, if Player does... and so on.
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-11 11:07:35

Your problem is that the idea is offstage (not in any room).
You can confirm that by clicking the Index panel and then the World subtab. It will bring up a map of the game, show you the initial location of all things at the start of the game and a list of all objects in the game (directions are a kind of object).

So, explicitly placing the idea in the office should solve your problems (things in the same place with the player are visible and touchable by default).
[code]Personal Office is a room. "You're sitting in your home office staring blankly at the white papersheet on the left side of Inform7's GUI.There is an Idea swirling about."

In the Personal Office is An Idea.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3928&start=0#p28105
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Off and On-stage, if Player does... and so on.
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-12-11 11:08:39

Touchable is not a value one can set easily (if one can, and I'm not sure). It is set by the positioning of an object etc and not by direct messings.

What you want to do is (I think):

[code]An idea is in the Personal Office. It is scenery. The description is "You can't really [italic type]see[roman type] and idea. It's more a matter of feeling."

Instead of touching the idea, say "Yeah, you can really feel it!" [note: I didn't check if "touch" and "feel" are the same, I'm going by memory]
[/code]

At this point, you can do whatever with your idea, except taking it if not via another instead or similar rule.

Edit: Ouch, Felix. Too fast for me [emote]:)[/emote]

Anyway, the "scenery" value means an object is there but is not listed in the room's description. Also, it is fixed in place, so you cannot move it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3928&start=0#p28106
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Off and On-stage, if Player does... and so on.
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-11 11:09:18

Also, while not a thorough example:

[code]
Personal Office is a room. "You're sitting in your home office staring blankly at the white papersheet on the left side of Inform7's GUI."

Instead of thinking:
	Say "It suddenly hits you!";
	Move the Idea to the player.

The Void is a room.

The Idea is in the Void.

Test me with "l/think/i".
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3928&start=0#p28107
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Off and On-stage, if Player does... and so on.
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-12-11 11:13:09

[quote="I4L"]Also, while not a thorough example:

[code]
Personal Office is a room. "You're sitting in your home office staring blankly at the white papersheet on the left side of Inform7's GUI."

Instead of thinking:
	Say "It suddenly hits you!";
	Move the Idea to the player.

The Void is a room.

The Idea is in the Void.

Test me with "l/think/i".
[/code][/quote]
Yeah, I love this approach. I don't think you have to put things in a fake room to make this work, though (I think this is I6 old habits). Just say "An Idea is a thing (etc)". And then:

[code]Instead of thinking:
	Say "It suddenly hits you!";
	now the Idea is carried by the player.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3928&start=0#p28109
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Off and On-stage, if Player does... and so on.
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-11 11:19:15

[quote="Jamespking"]Yeah, I love this approach. I don't think you have to put things in a fake room to make this work, though (I think this is I6 old habits). Just say "An Idea is a thing (etc)". And then:[/quote]

You're absolutely right. This also works:

[code]
Personal Office is a room. "You're sitting in your home office staring blankly at the white papersheet on the left side of Inform7's GUI."

The Idea is a thing.

Instead of thinking:
	Say "It suddenly hits you!";
	Now the idea is carried by the player.

Test me with "l/think/i"[/code]

More resource friendly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3929&start=0#p28110
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: This is getting to my nerves. Really.
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-12-11 11:20:05

As will do the solution, which as usual I'd overlooked but was really simple.

[code]The mouth is a thing. The description is "It is a devouring mouth".
The player carries a mint. The description is "A mint."

Instead of inserting something (called this_little_bastard_that_wont_work) into the mouth:
    say "The mouth devours [the noun]!";
    remove this_little_bastard_that_wont_work from play.

Instead of giving something to the mouth, try inserting the noun into the mouth.[/code]
I hate it. The mouth won't accept any offerings 'cause [b]it is not animate[/b]. I don't WANT it animate.

I have tried befores, reports, checks. I've tried praying. I've even called Graham Nelson and Emily Short and Andrew Plotkin and Steve Meretzki (they were all off-line).

Help. Please.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3928&start=0#p28111
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Off and On-stage, if Player does... and so on.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-11 11:21:11

[pre-posting UPDATE: While I was typing, a bunch of people posted some of the stuff I was going to say, but I hope this is helpful.]

The problem is that, if Inform doesn't think you can reach or touch the Idea to begin with, then the game won't even understand a command that refers to the idea. So a rule along the lines of "If the player takes an idea..." won't work, because you don't even get to the rules for taking an idea -- the game won't even process the option "TAKE IDEA," because it doesn't understand "IDEA" as something you can interact with at the moment.

[It also won't work because you don't want the rule to start "If the player takes an idea...." If you've got a rule for taking an idea, it should begin something like "Before taking an idea..." or "Instead of taking an idea..." or "Carry out taking an idea...." See chapters 7, 12, and 18 of the documentation -- hopefully you won't need to read all the way through all three of those to understand what I'm saying, though!]

Inform has some complicated rules to decide whether something is visible (which basically means you can refer to it in a command) or touchable. That's why it's saying you can't set that directly; Inform wants to be able to calculate that by itself. If you want to take something that wouldn't be visible otherwise, and make it visible so that the player can refer to it in a command, you have to place it in scope. The way to do this is described in section 17.27 of the manual. 

That won't let you [i]take[/i] the idea, though, because in order to take something you have to be able to touch it. Section 12.18 might help here. 

I [i]think[/i] that if you put these together, it may do what you want. I tried something along these lines and it seemed to work:

[code]Brain is a room. An idea is a thing in Brain.
After deciding the scope of the player when taking or examining: Place the idea in scope.
Rule for reaching inside Brain: allow access. [/code]

("When taking or examining" means you can take the idea, or examine the idea, but you can't put it on the table. Actually a better thing to do would probably be to write a rule that blocks any action involving the idea other than taking or examining, as discussed [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1152]here[/url].) 

You'll note that this is pretty complicated! Another thing you could do [pre-posting UPDATE: as Felix says] is actually put the idea in the room, but make it scenery (so the game doesn't print "You can see an idea here") and portable (so you can take it); though then you'd only be able to take the idea in that room. You'll also want to make sure people can't do anything outlandish with the idea once they have it, unless you want them to. And you might want to think of a way [pre-posting UPDATE: as I4L says] to let people do something with "think" or similar commands, because most people aren't going to try "take idea." After all, ordinary ideas can't be picked up in real life.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3925&start=0#p28112
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: So it's time for...
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-11 11:27:55

[quote="lemort"][quote="Felix"] you're quite as good at English as I am.[/quote]

Thank you for the compliment.
[/quote]
Well, I'm relieved you didn't take it rather as an insult, kjære nabo [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3929&start=0#p28113
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: This is getting to my nerves. Really.
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-11 11:38:44

The commands for giving are defined so as to require a person for the second noun:
[code]Understand "give [something preferably held] to [someone]" as giving it to.
Understand "give [someone] [something preferably held]" as giving it to (with nouns reversed).
[/code]

Define a couple of new commands for giving something to something inanimate and your code will work:
[code]Understand "give [something preferably held] to [something]" as giving it to.
Understand "give [something] [something preferably held]" as giving it to (with nouns reversed).
[/code]

(Quite possibly, you need a look at the Standard Rules to find that out.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3929&start=0#p28114
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: This is getting to my nerves. Really.
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-11 11:41:10

Putting the mint in the mouth works just fine. So is it just that you want to use the terms "offer" or "give"?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3928&start=0#p28115
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Off and On-stage, if Player does... and so on.
User: lemort / DateTime: 2011-12-11 11:41:21

Wow!!

Thank you all for all that input, so fast!

A lot to digest, but hey; this looks fun. And I think I've got the idea ( [emote]:D[/emote] )  now.


I will try to solve the problem with this new information, although I had slightly different plans for it. 
When the player "gets" the idea, a counter starts. If he doesn't use the idea fast enough, it will vanish. 
Or something like that

M:)rten

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3929&start=0#p28116
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: This is getting to my nerves. Really.
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-12-11 12:28:48

No, no, no, no, no no no nonononogawd no!

Oh no.

I [i]knew[/i] it was trivial. 

Thank Felix. You saved my sanity. Grrrrrr..... [emote]:)[/emote]


Yeah, I4L. I want it to accept giving it to to inanimate objects. And it was that simple. Inform even has an automated response for when the object is inanimate. 
Talking of which... this is funny.

Now the game accepts "offer [etc]". But I didn't code [i]Understand "offer something etc"[/i]. just the "give" command. That puzzles me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3929&start=0#p28117
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: This is getting to my nerves. Really.
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-12-11 12:58:15

"offer" is a synonym for "give" so it automatically applies to all grammar lines that start with "give".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3928&start=0#p28118
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Off and On-stage, if Player does... and so on.
User: lemort / DateTime: 2011-12-11 13:23:37

Ok, I more or less managed to pull this off by myself. 
(I stole some ideas from [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3784&hilit=SomeNumber]this thread[/url] though)

[quote]

SomeNumber is a number variable.
SomeNumber is 0.

Personal Office is a room. "You're sitting in your home office staring blankly at the white papersheet on the left side of Inform7's GUI. You can feel an idea swirling around."
An idea is a device in the Personal Office. It is scenery. The description is "You can't really [italic type]see[roman type] and idea. It's more a matter of feeling."



Instead of touching the idea, say "Yeah, you can really feel it!" 

Instead of thinking:
   Say "It suddenly hits you!";
   Move the Idea to the player.
   An Idea is switched on.
   

   
   UseIdea is a scene. UseIdea begins when SomeNumber is 1.  UseIdea ends when SomeNumber is 4.
   
   When UseIdea begins:
	Every turn when An Idea is switched on:
		Increase SomeNumber by 1;
		say SomeNumber;
		
When UseIdea ends:
	change the SomeNumber to 0;
		say "You've failed to use a brilliant idea. It has vanished.".
[/quote]

Although this IS working (kinda), I can see several small problems. 

First of all, to be able to count I turned the Idea into a device that is switched on, and counted when switched on.
Not the best solution maybe?  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote] 

Secondly, and this is the real problem:
It should not start to count *until* the player thinks. Now it starts counting wether you try to feel the Idea or if you just wait. 

I managed to turn the variable back to zero though, struggled a bit until I understood it was a matter of positioning in the code.

Anyway, it has been fun so far!

M:)rten

(Going to look into the other solutions mentioned now)

[edit: PS, I'm not sure now, if An Idea (which is the device) and the Idea is two different things. Not sure how I could check that]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3311&start=0#p28119
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Six
User: Benjamin Sokal / DateTime: 2011-12-11 13:49:05

Okay all I'm stumped. How do I catch Jack as Harriet? I have chased him everywhere and tried everything I can think of to do it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=250#p28120
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: lemort / DateTime: 2011-12-11 13:57:01

Hi. 

I'm Morten.
I am a Norwegian, aged somewhere between 44 and 46.
I live with my wife,dog and some cats in a small "cabin - out in the forest". To the south you'll find a neighbour. Evey other directions is forest as far as you can see. 

(Actually, it is a house, but it is somewhat in the forest).

The silence out here is amazing. 
I'm educated as a Multimedia Engineer (whatever that means).
I'm very fond of interactivity and non-linearity. I've been into that since I first discovered the interactive possibilites on my cbm64 back then. I love games. 

And I love Interactive fiction. Although I haven't spent that much time with it the last years I've never forgotten the impact text-adventures had on me. Personally I would rate The Pawn and Guild of Thieves higher, and more important to me than - for instance - Doom and Quake.  

I'm quite into Photoshop and that kinda stuff as well, but my main love is music. I play guitar (and other instruments) and have finally been able to setup a small personal studio here.

It ain't much time left for tv and movies, but I do like a good tv-show and a good movie. 

I also love to write. 

So, I wrote some small adventure-games in GAC on cbm64 way back then. I feel the urge to write some more now. 

Guess that's me. 

M:)rten

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3311&start=0#p28121
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Six
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-11 13:59:38

Okay, I think I remember. Let's check...
[spoiler]At one point you're given this clue:
[quote]How rude! You feel like throwing something at him to annoy him.[/quote]
But not something that'll hurt him, of course.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3311&start=10#p28122
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Six
User: Benjamin Sokal / DateTime: 2011-12-11 14:01:47

Ah! Got it, thank you. I thought of that option but for some reason thought I had tried it before.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3929&start=0#p28123
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: This is getting to my nerves. Really.
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-12-11 14:06:36

[quote="Juhana"]"offer" is a synonym for "give" so it automatically applies to all grammar lines that start with "give".[/quote]
How does this work? Is there a way to use such a function in I7? 
I know it's somewhere in the manual...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3928&start=0#p28124
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Off and On-stage, if Player does... and so on.
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-12-11 14:10:50

I think you don't need neither a counter nor a scene running.

The syntax (not tested) could be

[code]Instead of thinking:
     Say "It suddenly hits you!";
     Move the Idea to the player;
     Now the idea is switched on; [watch out for periods and colons... a period strops the rule]
     The time runs out in 6 turns from now.

At the time when the time runs out:
     now the idea is switched off;
     remove the idea from play.[/code]

Inform7 has a nice way to run daemons.


[quote][edit: PS, I'm not sure now, if An Idea (which is the device) and the Idea is two different things. Not sure how I could check that][/quote]

Yeah. The articles are not important. Usually.


Edit: Watch out for indents, also. They are mandatory.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3928&start=10#p28125
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Off and On-stage, if Player does... and so on.
User: lemort / DateTime: 2011-12-11 14:16:15

Cool. That worked. Thx!

M:)rten

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3912&start=10#p28126
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New project - questions about Inform7
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-11 14:17:31

[quote]Yes, I can completely understand the knotted Fruit of the Looms here. So I apologize for this little misunderstanding.[/quote]

No problem. Thanks for clarifying.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3929&start=0#p28127
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: This is getting to my nerves. Really.
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-11 14:22:33

The grammar of the giving action is set by these lines in the Standard Rules: (You can go find 'em if you look.)

[code]
Understand "give [something preferably held] to [someone]" as giving it to.
Understand "give [someone] [something preferably held]" as giving it to (with nouns reversed).
Understand the commands "pay" and "offer" and "feed" as "give".
[/code]

The third line there sets up the synonyms. It's in the Understanding chapter of the manual somewhere.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3929&start=0#p28128
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: This is getting to my nerves. Really.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-11 14:24:09

[quote="Jamespking"][quote="Juhana"]"offer" is a synonym for "give" so it automatically applies to all grammar lines that start with "give".[/quote]
How does this work? Is there a way to use such a function in I7? 
I know it's somewhere in the manual...[/quote]

Check section 16.2 (and 16.3, somewhat). Somewhere in the bowels of the standard rules is a command like this:

[code]Understand the command "offer" [and some others] as "give".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3928&start=10#p28129
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Off and On-stage, if Player does... and so on.
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-11 14:29:44

[quote="Jamespking"]Watch out for indents, also. They are mandatory.[/quote]
I think indents are only important to rules that contain some kind of control phrase, like "if" or "repeat".

The problems with your code as it stood was
[code]Instead of thinking:
Say "It suddenly hits you!";
Move the Idea to the player.
An Idea is switched on.[/code]
You had a full stop after "player", which meant the rule ended  there; in consequence "An Idea is switched on" was read as initializing the switched property of the idea (so the idea started out switched on).

[code]
When UseIdea begins:
Every turn when An Idea is switched on:
Increase SomeNumber by 1;
say SomeNumber;[/code]
You can't put an "every turn" rule inside a "when scene begins" rule like that (generally, you can't put a rule inside another rule like that (though, you can tell a rule to consider/follow another rule)). Inform read this as 
[code]When UseIdea begins: do nothing.

Every turn when An Idea is switched on: Increase SomeNumber by 1; say SomeNumber.[/code]
So nothing special happened when UseIdea began; and since the idea was switched on from start, the counter started immediately.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3928&start=10#p28130
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Off and On-stage, if Player does... and so on.
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-11 14:36:22

I got to thinking about this whole business of managing things the player can think about. I think maybe having an idea object and moving it to the player is perhaps a bit artificial. Here's an example I whipped up that I think may do what's needed.

[code]The dining hall is a room. "You can go south from here."

The kitchen is south of the dining hall. "You can go north from here." A banana is in the kitchen.

Thinking about is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "think about [any thing]" as thinking about.

A thing can be known or unknown. A thing is usually unknown. A thing has a number called memory. The memory of a thing is usually 6.

Before printing the name of something (called the target):
	now the target is known;
	now the memory of the target is 6.
	
Every turn when the location of the banana is not the location of the player:
	decrease the memory of the banana by 1.

Check thinking about the banana:
	if the banana is unknown or the memory of the banana is less than 1:
		say "Banana? What banana?";
		stop the action.

Report thinking about the banana:
	say "Possibly the banana is yellow."

Test me with "think about banana / s / think about banana / n / think about banana / g / g / g / g / g".[/code]
The point of this is that the player can think about the banana for some number of turns after leaving the vicinity of the banana, but eventually the memory of the banana will fade, until the banana is forgotten.

This code could easily be modified so that the memory of some items lasts longer than the memory of others, or so that things can be thought about even before they're encountered. It would malfunction, however, if the things being thought about are scenery, because the name of a scenery item is not printed when the room description is printed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3926&start=0#p28131
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: game suggestions
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-12-11 14:45:36

How short?  There's Aisle.  Also Glass, A Day for Fresh Sushi (example #112 in the documentation), In the House of Professor Evil: The Ham House (a first game, IIRC)...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3929&start=0#p28132
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: This is getting to my nerves. Really.
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-12-11 14:50:10

[quote="matt w"]Check section 16.2 (and 16.3, somewhat).[/code][/quote]
16.2.
I've always completely missed that part. Now that I know it, my game can be 20% smaller :S

Thx for the insight Zarf and MattW.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3928&start=10#p28133
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Off and On-stage, if Player does... and so on.
User: lemort / DateTime: 2011-12-11 15:02:15

[quote="Jim Aikin"]

[code]
Thinking about is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "think about [any thing]" as thinking about.
[/code]
[/quote]

Thanks for this. You gave me the solution for what I was struggling with now. 
I tried to use
[code]Instead of using:
         Say "You managed to use the idea."[/code]
but it refused to compile. 

It worked however when I wrote the rule as "Using is an action....."

I'm struggling a bit with the solution felix gave. 

[quote="felix"]
You had a full stop after "player", which meant the rule ended there; in consequence "An Idea is switched on" was read as initializing the switched property of the idea (so the idea started out switched on).
[/quote]

Trying to figure that one out now. 

Anyway, again. Thx for solutions. I've learned a lot today!

M:)rten

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3926&start=0#p28134
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: game suggestions
User: lemort / DateTime: 2011-12-11 15:12:15

Thanks for the suggestions. I got things to look into now [emote]:)[/emote]

M:)rten

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3928&start=10#p28135
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Off and On-stage, if Player does... and so on.
User: lemort / DateTime: 2011-12-11 15:15:38

[quote="Jamespking"]I think you don't need neither a counter nor a scene running.

The syntax (not tested) could be

[code]Instead of thinking:
     Say "It suddenly hits you!";
     Move the Idea to the player;
     Now the idea is switched on; [watch out for periods and colons... a period strops the rule]
     The time runs out in 6 turns from now.

At the time when the time runs out:
     now the idea is switched off;
     remove the idea from play.[/code]

[/quote]

Nice solution, as mentioned, but I've been trying to stop the timer. 
Can that be done without a counter in action?

M:)rten

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3926&start=0#p28136
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: game suggestions
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-12-11 15:42:32

These IFDB lists might be relevant as well:

DavidW's [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewlist?id=5fiqk398itsghjgo]Best of SpeedIF list[/url]
Danielle's [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewlist?id=wupnbkm7150oku5o]list of short silly IF[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3930&start=0#p28137
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Triggering a scene.... with multiple object.
User: chaosxkitten / DateTime: 2011-12-11 16:10:55

I don't want a scene to happen until the player is carrying three different objects and is in a specific room. Right now, my code is not working! All the object names are correct, as well as the room name. I have tried a few variations but I cannot seem to get the syntax working. 

Thanks!

[code] The Understanding is a scene. "Scene."

The Understanding begins when
	the player is holding the Ballet Slippers; 
	 and the player is holding the Glass Owl;
	and the player is holding the Car Keys; 
	and the player is in The Courtyard.][/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3724&start=0#p28138
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with Inform 7, trying to make stuff untouchable.
User: chaosxkitten / DateTime: 2011-12-11 16:33:12

Hello person who is in my class.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3925&start=0#p28139
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: So it's time for...
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-12-11 16:41:18

I also think that you will I6 less frustrating, as it's a lot more logical and programmer-friendly. This is not a native/non-native issue, really. I find I6 a lot less frustrating and I'm a native speaker.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3928&start=10#p28140
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Off and On-stage, if Player does... and so on.
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-11 16:53:36

"The time runs out in 6 turns from now" in effect creates a counter that gets the name "the time runs out" and that counts down from 6 (I suppose).

The rule "At the time when the time runs out" tells the game what to do when the counter "the time runs out" reaches 0.

So it seems, it does what you want. (You'll find it documented in Ch. 9.11)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3930&start=0#p28141
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Triggering a scene.... with multiple object.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-11 16:55:58

Have you tried putting them all on the same line with no semicolons? There are occasionally some quirks in the syntax for starting scenes, but that's the first thing I'd try.

Oh, and I think you may need "the player holds" instead of "the player is holding."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3930&start=0#p28142
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Triggering a scene.... with multiple object.
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-11 16:59:10

That should be one long sentence without semicolons.
[code]The Understanding begins when
    the player is holding the Ballet Slippers
and the player is holding the Glass Owl
and the player is holding the Car Keys
and the player is in The Courtyard.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3931&start=0#p28143
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: swanky supporters for swanky items
User: Peter Rickardson / DateTime: 2011-12-11 17:34:41

I'm trying to implement a system of supporters that would over-ride the standard supporter/item scheme of the Libraries. 

Example 1: Let's say the PC is in a swanky ballroom, holding a cup of tea, and the player types DROP CUP. I want the game to recognise that a cup can't be dropped to the floor (or whatever the text beneath the room description listing "loose" items refers to), but must be placed on top of a suitable supporter. The game should search for such a supporter in the current location, and not finding one inform the player that the action could not be performed.

Example 2: The PC is standing in the pantry, holding a length of saussage. There are shelves in the pantry as well as a hook in the ceiling. When the player types DROP SAUSSAGE I want the game to automatically hang the saussage on the hook. To place the saussage on the shelves, the player must type PUT SAUSSAGE ON SHELVES. Should the player decide to leave the pantry holding the saussage, go to the music room and attempt to PUT SAUSSAGE IN TROMBONE, the game must disallow such a beastly action. Putting a pack of cards inside the trombone is fine though.

I've tried implementing this with a lot of react_before routines. While the result is semi-functional, it is also utterly inelegant. So what I'm looking for are guidelines (examples in I6 would be appreciated) for this kind of scheme, perhaps using classes and inheritance?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3911&start=0#p28144
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Matching objects with snippets
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-12-11 18:00:10

Yes, it is a bug, and it has nothing to do with snippets:[code]Test is a room.
To foo (T - a topic):
	do nothing.
To bar:
	foo "[any thing]".[/code] Please report it.  In the meantime, you can get by with just following a rule; you don't need all the code entailed by an activity.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=140#p28145
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.3: IF library manager
User: George / DateTime: 2011-12-11 18:50:27

Got this error when starting the 0.9.3 .exe (on Windows XP)

[code]
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "grotesque", line 29, in <module>
  File "gtk\__init__.pyc", line 40, in <module>
    
  File "gtk\_gtk.pyc", line 12, in <module>
    
  File "gtk\_gtk.pyc", line 10, in __load
    
ImportError: DLL load failed: The specified procedure could not be found.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3931&start=0#p28146
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: swanky supporters for swanky items
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-11 19:30:18

Been a while since I tried this stuff in I6... you really want before routines on the items, rather than react_before. You can supply these through inheritance. Create a swanky_item class with appropriate before code, and give the objects some property that identifies the appropriate kind of supporter.

The only tricky part is if you want an individual object to have its *own* before:Drop routine. Before clauses stack, but the object's own code runs before inherited code. To reverse that order, you'd have to write a specific before routine that invoked the general before routine.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3931&start=0#p28147
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: swanky supporters for swanky items
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-11 19:48:55

Standard handling in the before routine should be able to cover all of this. react_before is really for when some OTHER object in the room needs to react before an action occurs.

If the silver tea tray is movable, then before Drop: would have to look around to see whether the tray is in the location -- something like this (untested, and my I6 is rusty):

[code]before [;
     Drop: if (tea_tray in location) {
          move self to tea_tray;
          "You set the cup gently on the silver tea tray.";
          }
     else "If you drop the cup on the floor, it will surely break.";
],[/code]
Actually, that "else" isn't needed, is it?

BTW, "sausage" is spelled with only one 's' in the middle.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3925&start=0#p28148
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: So it's time for...
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-12-11 20:44:22

I actually wouldn't be surprised if it's actually helpful to writing in Inform to be not perfectly fluent in English. [emote]:)[/emote]  (To explain, I find that many of my Inform-related problems arise when I try to use a phrase that is perfectly synonymous in actual English to an Inform phrase, but is not in fact an Inform phrase itself.  I suspect that brains store phrases as [closer to] their meaning, and don't necessarily cast them into the same words every time.  So knowing fewer synonyms could be helpful to having fewer Inform issues!)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3932&start=0#p28149
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: IF at POPL 2012
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-12-11 21:03:28

Those of you who've been following Zarf's [url=http://eblong.com/zarf/essays/rule-based-if/index.html]thoughts on rule-based programming for IF[/url] might be excited to hear that there will be a presentation on rule-based IF at the [url=http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~dpw/obt/]"Off the Beaten Track" workshop[/url] colocated with the [url=http://www.cse.psu.edu/popl/12/]Principles of Programming Languages symposium[/url] in January.  The presenters include Will Byrd, whom you may recall from the [url=http://eblong.com/zarf/essays/rule-based-if/ruleday-log.html]Junkyard Wars conversation[/url], and my own housemate Chris (which is why I have the scoop).  

You can read the brief submitted paper here: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~cmartens/if.pdf">http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~cmartens/if.pdf</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3928&start=10#p28150
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Off and On-stage, if Player does... and so on.
User: lemort / DateTime: 2011-12-11 21:18:51

So I thought, I was writing it wrong. sometimes I keep on going for to long [emote]:)[/emote]

Morten

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3932&start=0#p28151
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF at POPL 2012
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-11 22:16:11

That is exciting!

I'll have to see if I can get down there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=0#p28152
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-12-11 23:24:36

I have reached the max_static_data limits (which are 180000) and I have changed tham to 990000.

What are these limits for?

I mean, I have created 8 or 10 tables with 5 to 10 rows and maybe a dozen columns each or a little more.
I will need to create a lot more tables but I already reached a limit.
I don't get the meaning since we use now pretty much powerful computers with a whole lot of memory available, and considering I am writing a text game I see no reason why some memory limit should be reached so fast.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=0#p28153
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-11 23:58:05

These limits serve no current purpose. However, the I6 compiler is built on the model of pre-allocating all memory, and redesigning it will be a lot of work.

Until somebody does that work, the static limits will remain. They will probably be bumped up occasionally, but this is a somewhat reactive process.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=0#p28154
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-12 00:14:58

[quote="sai"]I have reached the max_static_data limits (which are 180000) and I have changed tham to 990000.

What are these limits for?

I mean, I have created 8 or 10 tables with 5 to 10 rows and maybe a dozen columns each or a little more.
I will need to create a lot more tables but I already reached a limit.
I don't get the meaning since we use now pretty much powerful computers with a whole lot of memory available, and considering I am writing a text game I see no reason why some memory limit should be reached so fast.[/quote]

Seems like something else is going on. Given what you're saying, you shouldn't be maxed out on anything...?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=0#p28155
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-12-12 04:49:55

[quote="I4L"][quote="sai"]I have reached the max_static_data limits (which are 180000) and I have changed tham to 990000.

What are these limits for?

I mean, I have created 8 or 10 tables with 5 to 10 rows and maybe a dozen columns each or a little more.
I will need to create a lot more tables but I already reached a limit.
I don't get the meaning since we use now pretty much powerful computers with a whole lot of memory available, and considering I am writing a text game I see no reason why some memory limit should be reached so fast.[/quote]

Seems like something else is going on. Given what you're saying, you shouldn't be maxed out on anything...?[/quote]

I have exactly 14 tables. 2 of them have 2 columns, most of them have 24 columns. None have more than 15 rows.
btw I have 2 or 3 tables of lists (small lists, but lists).
Well, after have changed the limit everything looked fine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=0#p28156
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-12 06:46:31

[quote="sai"]
btw I have 2 or 3 tables of lists (small lists, but lists).[/quote]

FWIW, even very small lists are tremendous memory hogs. There's some discussion of it [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2112]here[/url]; as zarf says:

[quote="zarf"]Lists are memory-hoggy because I7 doesn't just reserve memory for the data, it reserves memory for how much you might expand the lists dynamically during the game. Of course it's only guessing about this, and it doesn't know when you create a list that you intend to never expand. The memory usage increases in jumps, so I'm not sure how to estimate it (estimating I7's estimate!) but that's what's going on.[/quote]

I made a game that basically had nothing in it but tables of lists (one room, eight objects I think, a couple of relations, 52 lists) and it blew right past the z-machine memory limits. (Don't worry if that doesn't mean anything to you -- what I mean is, it ate up a lot of memory.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=50#p28157
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-12-12 07:02:44

[quote="I4L"]Anyway, I obviously limit my IF based on what I like to read. I'm not one of those voracious readers who just tears through anything I can get my hands on. Probably won't ever be that way with IF, either.[/quote]
There are other ways to limit your input than purely genre, like recommendations from people with good track records on their opinions. If you combine recommendations with genre, though, the available pool gets even smaller. But if you discard recommendations, then you end up playing everything that fits a genre even if it's crap -- that would be too disappointing for me. That's why I go with recommendations as my input-restriction method of choice. I would not characterise myself as 'voracious' because I just don't have the time.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3912&start=10#p28158
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New project - questions about Inform7
User: dgeorgea / DateTime: 2011-12-12 07:10:34

The project is one I've had in mind for a year or two but did not have the software to make it easy to do without too much programming knowledge.

The hype is talking to various people Inform has come up a few times as a possibility. When I looked at the site it seemed to offer a range of tools that would help make the experience more interesting.

As I said it is aimed at challenging how people come to decisions, and the potential consequences of how we make decisions. It is aimed at a particular group of people who may not have had experience in the type of decisions they may be faced with, or those who have but want to improve how they make decisions. Recently a number potential parties interested in distributing it have come forward, and one has asked me to definately go ahead and they will help promote and distribute it.

At present my intention is for the final product to be free, or at cost for disk, post and packaging if necessary. My aim is to try and have it ready for a national conference next June. This may be a little ambitious, but once the first scenario is done most of the coding will be in place and it should be a matter of copying and pasting, with some minor alterations. Most of the work will be in creating the evidence needed to make the decisions.

The point system will be simple. Points for each piece of evidence looked at, set points for decisions. Counters used for certain type of decisions.

So for example if the player always opt for the cheapest option there may be a news article that the organisation is constantly doing things on the cheap which is causing the organisation some problems. If it continues later on it triggers a crises and the person's services are disposed of. With a small amount of randomness set in for when these are triggered.

One of the main concerns is that the event of making a decision is what causes the game to move on to the next 'room' so the normal command of stating a direction to move to is not ideal.

I have downloaded Inform 7 now and started playing with it.

If the project is successful I may well look at doing others using some of the more advanced features.

Thanks for all the comments.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=140#p28159
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.3: IF library manager
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2011-12-12 07:10:43

Was this a fresh download?

I'll be repackaging the Windows 0.9.3 since there seem to be some problems with it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=0#p28160
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-12 07:19:59

Are you compiling as Glulx? And maybe find a way to handle your mechanic other than lists?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=250#p28161
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Laurie-K / DateTime: 2011-12-12 07:23:36

Hi there E.Joyce!
If you are 'The Xenographer', why are you writing in English?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3913&start=10#p28162
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Frustrated with Choices
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-12-12 07:25:02

[quote="Kytaari"]There seems to be no end to all the design elements I can offer in IF, and all this possible content is bogging my narrative down. I changed my draft into a more linear form of fiction, and so far it's gone more seamlessly, it's so much easier for me to tell stories that are linear, yet I would still like to give my readers the capability to explore.[/quote]
A false dichotomy is holding you back. I believe you are equating 'linear' with 'write what you feel' and 'interactive' with 'serve the players what they want, capability to explore'. So when you start to write interactively, you start to become service-oriented and start to try to fill in all the possibiilities, and lose sight of what you *feel* is the right story story to tell. I have had this trouble, too.

My solution was to break the dichotomy. I just have to write 'linearly' and write what I feel, but do it multiple times in parallel. At no time am I thinking about serving the player what they want when it comes to the storyline -- I only really focus on that when I am thinking about puzzles and other types of game navigation mechanics -- are they fun? I ask myself this quesiton all the time. But when thinking about the story, I only express what *I* want. Therefore, I only write the things I am passionate about. I just have to find multiple such things that can run in parallel.

Writing a text adventure is a potentially exponentially-increasing workload — your successful completion depends primarily on your ability to control that exponential growth of possibilities, AND on your ability to slog through all the gruntwork that you don't feel you can avoid. You need to make multiple choices that can *each* independently conserve your writer's passion about the truths you are telling as far through that process as possible: if you can do this it will narrow the field AND preserve your desire to work. So banish the player from your mind and find something to say that you genuinely feel can go different ways, all of which you, personally, feel interested in and passionate about exploring. Discard possibilities you don't feel passionate about, even if they are very logical outcomes (just conveniently block them with a single throwaway response so the player won't feel the game is incomplete, that's the minimum service I perform to openly signal unimplemented paths -- the players will get it, you just didn't want to implement that path -- make the reason why it is blocked halfway-believable and they'll be with you).

I don't know, it might not be the best advice -- I am still on my first i7 game and the interactive storytelling is still the hardest part, by far -- but it's the best advice I got. When there is an infinite field of possibility, you can't analyse it inch-by-inch: you have to use your passion as your guide.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=100#p28163
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-12-12 07:56:42

This thread is becoming rather comical. Personally, I feel there should be no comp at all, because 'winning' is kind of meaningless in this context. (No offence meant to the winners.) It should obviously be a festival, not a comp, especially with the community as small as it is. It's the way a niche film community would do it. And yet I am fine with what the majority of the community prefers to do. Why would I take a refusenik stand in an attempt to impose my personal views? It's a [i]community[/i] — not a 'collection of people who really need to think carefully about what Paul wants [i]or else[/i]'.

Paul.

P.S. Framing a festival as an all-out 'competition' in my opinion is what fosters this kind of response, and why I am not in favour of it. From the outside, these kinds of arguments look lame — like people leaving the table because they can't agree on the house rules for a game of D&D. You see that and you think, [i]Whatever it is, it couldn't possibly matter that much[/i].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3925&start=10#p28164
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: So it's time for...
User: lemort / DateTime: 2011-12-12 08:25:31

[quote="Jamespking"]

Give it a try. I'm expecting something from you soon [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Hehe. Maybe....

I've been fooling around with Inform7 for 2 days now.
The "Not Programming language" approach of I7 is kinda frustrating, but I think I'll choose to see that as a challenge. 
Obviously, the simple tasks in I7 are very easy to do.

I have, for now, chosen I7. I need to brush up my english anyway, and altough I7 is not correct english, I still have to write the words correct. And so on. 

I would very much like to write a game in Norwegian, but I think that would be a game without audience. And I'm not the one to translate it either.  (Not saying my future English game(s) will have an audience either, but at least the possibility is there  [emote]:lol:[/emote] )

THanks for the advices. 

M:)rten

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3926&start=0#p28165
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: game suggestions
User: lemort / DateTime: 2011-12-12 08:33:27

Thanks again. [emote]:)[/emote]

I've tried some of the ones mentioned and will try the others too. 

I like the concept of very short games. In the old days, if you got stuck, you had to wait for the next number of your favourite computer mag and *hope* the solution might be hinted. Playing the Pawn for instance was a very long, sometimes frustrating, journey. And the puzzle that halted me completely turned out to be a language-problem. (I saw the solution, but didn't express it correctly)  
(So sad I no longer have the short nice letter from Magnetic Scrolls telling me what to do....)

What also strucks me with these short games are how difficult it must be to write a *good* short game.
Hmmm, maybe I should drop the plans in recreating every single detail in Lord Of The Rings in an IF-game  [emote]:roll:[/emote]   [emote]:twisted:[/emote] )

M:)rten

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3915&start=10#p28166
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The World Map
User: Deain / DateTime: 2011-12-12 08:49:12

[emote]:)[/emote] thanks just making sure I wasn't mucking up anything.  Thanks everyone who helped again, this forum is great I have to say!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3911&start=0#p28167
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Matching objects with snippets
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-12 09:01:57

Thanks for the confirmation, EmacsUser. Here's the link:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=813">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=813</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3932&start=0#p28168
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF at POPL 2012
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-12 09:17:10

I'm not much of a conference-goer, but I live in Philly. If anyone decides to come, I'd love to meet you for lunch - please send me a PM!

Looking at the conference page, it looks like it's possible to register just for the OBT workshop? I might be able to afford $80...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3932&start=0#p28169
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF at POPL 2012
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-12-12 09:40:14

I should point out that the IF presentation is probably only 1/2 hour long, so it might not be worth the travel time and registration fees just for that.  On the other hand, [url=http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~dpw/obt/obt_program.html]some of the other talks look neat[/url], too, if that's your thing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3912&start=10#p28170
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New project - questions about Inform7
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-12-12 10:00:45

[quote="dgeorgea"]One of the main concerns is that the event of making a decision is what causes the game to move on to the next 'room' so the normal command of stating a direction to move to is not ideal.[/quote]Movement is pretty simple to block. First, make sure your rooms are not connected to each other geographically. In the example I posted earlier in this thread, the Mailroom and the Boardroom are not linked-- the player cannot walk from one to the other. The only way to get to the Boardroom is to trigger the scene called Getting Promoted to the Board, and there is no way to backtrack to the Mailroom after that happens.

But what if the player tries to GO NORTH or whatever anyway? You can let them know that that isn't going to work with an error message like this:
[code]Instead of going nowhere, say "(You do not need to travel by compass direction in this game. To advance the story, make a decision as to what to do next)."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2323&start=40#p28171
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Indigo New Language Speed IF
User: Jacqueline / DateTime: 2011-12-12 10:04:43

Heh - yes.  Better late than never, I suppose.  I contacted all the authors when I uploaded the file, but completely forgot to post that I'd done so here, so thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3823&start=0#p28172
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The Pudlothon: Ecce Jacek
User: lemort / DateTime: 2011-12-12 10:10:45

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]
>TURN PEPSI INTO COKE
Done.
[/quote]


Impressive!

M:)rten

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3913&start=20#p28173
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Frustrated with Choices
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-12-12 10:23:52

[quote="Kytaari"]There seems to be no end to all the design elements I can offer in IF, and all this possible content is bogging my narrative down. I changed my draft into a more linear form of fiction, and so far it's gone more seamlessly, it's so much easier for me to tell stories that are linear, yet I would still like to give my readers the capability to explore.[/quote]
This is a perfectly valid way to approach creating something that will ultimately be a work of IF. A possible next step would be to convert your linear draft into a transcript of what your game would look like for a player who makes all the "right" moves and finds the most efficient path to the end. Then code the game to make that transcript doable. Then flesh the game out as much as you feel necessary, implementing scenery, reasonable synonyms, maybe a few dead-end side-paths, etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3912&start=10#p28174
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New project - questions about Inform7
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-12 10:24:08

If you want the choices to be multiple-choice, where the game presents you with options and you have to choose one, you might also want to consider [url=http://www.choiceofgames.com/make-your-own-games/choicescript-intro/]ChoiceScript[/url]. It's specifically for multiple-choice games, and it lets you keep track of a lot of statistics. (ChoiceScript games primarily wind up on the Web, but I think there may be other ways to distribute them.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=140#p28175
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.3: IF library manager
User: George / DateTime: 2011-12-12 10:32:26

Yep, downloaded yesterday.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3934&start=0#p28176
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Just want to say;
User: lemort / DateTime: 2011-12-12 14:42:18

Kinda deep into my "first" adventure now. This is fun.  [emote]:D[/emote] 
From not understanding a thing I have now managed to make several rooms, a self-locking door, a person you're kinda interacting with and I'm pretty sure there is an evil witch in there as well. 

Thanks for all the help yesterday, I am starting to see the logic in I7 now.
I think I will be able to continue with some evil counter routines and a way to survive tomorrow....

M:)rten

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3935&start=0#p28177
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: Waterelement.h
User: Peter Rickardson / DateTime: 2011-12-12 15:00:17

Has anyone used it in their project? I'm asking because judging by the documentation it looks awesome, but I've never seen anyone actually use it, except the author in Savoir-Faire. So, is it too good to be true, or what?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3936&start=0#p28178
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: help modifying a thing to have a color property
User: nado / DateTime: 2011-12-12 15:06:15

I'm trying to implement a system in which the player recieves Spirit (as an object).  In order to do this I'd like to have three different colors of spirit and then have the description of the player change based on which color of spirit they currently have.  Is there a way to do this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3936&start=0#p28179
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: help modifying a thing to have a color property
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-12 15:15:50

[quote="nado"]I'm trying to implement a system in which the player recieves Spirit (as an object).  In order to do this I'd like to have three different colors of spirit and then have the description of the player change based on which color of spirit they currently have.  Is there a way to do this?[/quote]

Lots of ways. Easiest way is probably to set a "Spirit" property for the player. I think you'd have to do text replacement, though, because Inform will only let you do a single if/else conditional in a say statement. Something along the lines of:

[code]

To say spirit_description:
     if the spirit of the player is blue:
          "You glow with a faint blue aura."

The player has a property called spirit. The spirit of the player can be blue, red or green. The description of the player is "[spirit_description]".
[/code]

Changing the spirit property is as easy as:

[code]
Now the spirit of the player is red.
[/code]

Untested and very incomplete example, as I'm at the office dodging actual work. Hopefully that's enough to explain what I'm trying to say.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3935&start=0#p28180
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Waterelement.h
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-12 15:50:55

Haven't used it, but it does look good, doesn't it? Emily is usually very careful and thorough with her code, so I would have a lot of confidence that it will work. Try it out and let us know!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3934&start=0#p28181
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Just want to say;
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-12 16:24:57

That first rush when you realise that you can actually make things work is pretty awesome, isn't it? I remember spending a glorious, sunny week of the Easter holidays cloistered in my room and typing furiously.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3937&start=0#p28182
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Unix Frotz and DOS Frotz development
User: frotz / DateTime: 2011-12-12 18:14:29

I wasn't previously aware of this place.  It seems that most people bailed out of Usenet for this place.  Kinda sad really.  Anyhow, I thought I'd let people know that I've picked up Frotz development again.  The codebase is now in a Git repository hosted at Sourceforge.  The latest code supports Blorb.  I've also been bringing the DOS interface up to date.  The DOS interface as written with Turbo C in mind is quite different from the one written with DJGPP in mind.  I've resolved those differences and now have 2.40 compiled such that the IBM PC 5150 should be able to run it.  Everything works with it except compiling with sound support and saves.  There's also a strange problem with Arthur causing DOSbox to freeze after a random period of time.  The next step is to bring it in line with the master branch, add Blorb support and hopefully correct the aforementioned bugs in the process.

Please take a look at <a class="postlink" href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/frotz/">http://sourceforge.net/projects/frotz/</a> and let me know what you think.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=100#p28183
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-12 19:00:57

[quote="Laroquod"]It should obviously be a festival, not a comp, especially with the community as small as it is. [/quote]

The comp is the comp (I'm not a comp guy, myself, for the reason you cite and others), but it'd be nice to see more "festivals" added. In theory there's the IF Art Show thingy, which seems cool, but it's becoming more theoretical as time goes on, it seems :/

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=100#p28184
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-12 19:31:48

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="Laroquod"]It should obviously be a festival, not a comp, especially with the community as small as it is. [/quote]

The comp is the comp (I'm not a comp guy, myself, for the reason you cite and others), but it'd be nice to see more "festivals" added. In theory there's the IF Art Show thingy, which seems cool, but it's becoming more theoretical as time goes on, it seems :/[/quote]
I'm probably going to try running a judging-panel/curated minicomp of some sort at some point next year. Not quite sure when, and I've got a few conflicting ideas for theme, but right now I'm thinking that it'd be vaguely similar to a single-category Art Show.

(For what it's worth, the Art Show had a Best In Category and a Best In Show, so it was technically a comp, though that wasn't really the focus to the extent that it is in IF Comp. I'm not sure whether that would be a dealbreaker for you.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3938&start=0#p28185
Forum: Feedback / Subject: PM Attachment File Types
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-12-12 21:38:51

You know what would rock?  If common game file types were among the allowed types for PMs.  Right now you can PM a game transcript but not a game itself.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3938&start=0#p28186
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: PM Attachment File Types
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-12 22:21:35

Isn't stuff like zip and rar allowed?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3913&start=20#p28187
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Frustrated with Choices
User: Kytaari / DateTime: 2011-12-12 22:23:52

I think this thread has received some very good advice. I'm sorry if my response has been kind of slow. I believe writing the script linearly, with the exploratory puzzles thrown in to make the game more interactive, should make this project turn out the way I want. There are instances in my story where I just don't want any possibilities to go, no matter what, so I'll just have to find expert ways to ignore these useless passages. I think I need to develop my ability to discern how to tell my story interactively, without thinking of these two disciplines as separate.

I'll keep hacking at it. Right now I'm learning how to use Inform 7, and writing my script in a "pseudo-Inform" style to develop my story ideas efficiently. I have very little experience programming, and I don't want my current ineptitude in this area to hold me back from writing; so I'm balancing the pursuit of reading the Inform book to writing the "program chart" on a word document. I still don't know which project of mine I'm gonna write, but, as of right now, I'm thinking about just doing "whatever," just for the experience. I feel very passionate about this medium, but transcribing my stories to it has been seeming very difficult.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=100#p28188
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: George / DateTime: 2011-12-12 22:55:54

I'd love to see the Art Show come back. I really liked the tight theme and judging panel as a change of pace from the other comps. 

A festival is a rather good idea, maybe building on the example of the Demo Fair from last year?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=30#p28189
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-12-12 22:58:27

I think one neat thing about such a comp is that there'd probably be some people entering who might not have been interested in trying these games as players, but given a non-complex tool to make a non-complex game, would be interested in trying to make a game with the system. Inevitably, being on the creating end inspires some increased interest in the product of that system.

But before you go ahead, I think there definitely has to be a more PC friendly player program for the games. The tiny screen of AdvPDA, used on a desktop computer, aggravated a lot of people in ifcomp 2010. I would say at the least, the desktop version needs a resizable window and changeable font size(s). Another step up  would be a choice of fonts. I imagine if you can program Visionary, these things wouldn't be too hard to add.

Edit: Back at ifcomp 2010, I played R on an emulated Amiga. Btw I can report it ran just fine, and this was using some Scott Adams engine I just pulled out of ifarchive. Though I remember it was kinda nightmarish setting up a whole Amiga hard drive etc. just to run this thing. But I was able to play R on a decent sized screen [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=40#p28190
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-12 23:35:27

The most recent release of Gargoyle includes Chris Spiegel's port of ScottFree to Glk, which can run R.

You might want to give the games a less generic extension; I can't associate something as generic as .dat with Gargoyle. I picked .saga out of a hat but I am open to other suggestions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=100#p28191
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-12 23:35:48

[quote="maga"](For what it's worth, the Art Show had a Best In Category and a Best In Show, so it was technically a comp, though that wasn't really the focus to the extent that it is in IF Comp. I'm not sure whether that would be a dealbreaker for you.)[/quote]

I spoke to whomever was running the Art Show at one point (before it kind of faded out) and was assured that I could opt out of the judging and simply enter a show piece, which was good enough for me [emote]:)[/emote] I still have all the scrap-work I did for the entry I was going to design, as well [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=0#p28192
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-12-13 00:05:39

[quote="I4L"]Are you compiling as Glulx? And maybe find a way to handle your mechanic other than lists?[/quote]

I compile as glulx.
Since I knew lists eat a lot of memory, I have very few lists. And each have just a few items in it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=40#p28193
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-12-13 01:29:10

[quote="bcressey"]The most recent release of Gargoyle includes Chris Spiegel's port of ScottFree to Glk, which can run R.[/quote]

Oh neat. Well, that solves most of what I spake of. I'm guessing ScottFree was probably what I ran on the Amiga.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3889&start=0#p28196
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Ring of Thieves Standalone POD Thingy
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-13 01:41:55

And, finally, I've updated the[b][i] Ring of Thieves[/i][/b] homepage appropriately:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/thieves.htm">http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/thieves.htm</a>

Note that I've also added a third way to enjoy [i][b]RoT,[/b][/i] a new (freebie) "Homebrew Booklet" PDF, for those gamers who (like me) love their long-reach stapler more than ... more than other staplers and select other office supplies.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=40#p28198
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2011-12-13 01:47:35

Thanks for the hints and tips chaps. This is good feedback. I was just about to say ... "please look here ... [url]http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXscott-adamsXinterpretersXscottfree.html[/url] ... for Scott Adams Interpreters - some of which are PC based - my favourite being ASFDDOS (Another Scott Free Driver for DOS) which is some of what I referenced in helping me when creating AdvPDA (and subsequently Visionary'" but I see bcressey has just replied with some useful info I did not know.

I did note that ASFDDOS (and ScottFree) as a minimum did have some bugs in which I subsequently ironed out in my code when playtesting some of Scott's later releases. I'm sure these were documented in my version history.

I'm getting all tingly with excitement - I have Christmas off from work so I think the next steps are:

1) I will zap Scott a message to see if he is OK with what we are planning - A Scott Adams Format Text Adventure Comp (just for fun at this point)
2) Over Christmas, have a tinker converting AdvPDA to a Windows program (probably using VB6 will be the easiest port path) with the ability for font resizing etc.
3) A quick chat to the moderators for this forum to see if the have no objection to anything / check the forum rules etc
4) Create a new Topic post for suggestions of how the SAFTAC should proceed (such as release dates / voting types etc)
5) etc from here - watch this space!

As for the extension, I will have a search on [url]http://filext.com/[/url] to see whats what and whats not - yes, perhaps .saga as mentioned (but this could affect olde wurlde DOS players?), .SAG? .SAA?, .SAF?

Back soon! Need to go to work now [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3939&start=0#p28201
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Activities VS To statements... What is the difference?
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-12-13 02:12:38

I began using activities for my subroutines but quickly I changed them all for the easier to write, use and read To statements (To decide etc...)

What can activities do that To statements can't do?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3939&start=0#p28202
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Activities VS To statements... What is the difference?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-12-13 02:49:39

Activities are much more powerful: you can write before/after rules for them, check whether they are going on, add while clauses to them.

That said, you don't need this power very often. As you have found, "To"-phrases are mostly sufficient.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=40#p28203
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-12-13 04:34:53

[quote="severedhand"]
Oh neat. Well, that solves most of what I spake of. I'm guessing ScottFree was probably what I ran on the Amiga.[/quote]

Sure, as I use it both in my emulated and real miggys. I have also the windows port (it must also be in the archive, where therealeasterbunny has linked) installed in my PC. I haven't used it for long, and I remember it wasn't exactly pleasant to the eye, anyway.

I would love to enter a comp like this. I'm not 100% sure I would find the time (too many simultaneous projects ^^') but I would surely try!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=40#p28204
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-12-13 06:55:05

Re: suffixes... Yeah, SAG had popped in my mind, but let's face it, it just sounds too sad [emote];)[/emote]

I think 'SCA' might be cool. Sounds good, looks good. Has good connotations in what it sounds like (people think scars are cool.)

Haven't thought on this topic super extensively yet, but that's my best obvious idea to date.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=50#p28205
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2011-12-13 06:59:09

[quote="maga"](For what it's worth, I don't think that IF has a particular hate-on for Lovecraft; Lovecraftian horror is more dominant in IF horror than it is in most media, and Anchorhead heads up the canon.)[/quote]

Second that.  Colin and I perceived that Lovecraftian horror was the dominant form of horror in IF, which is why we wrote a horror game (One Eye Open) that didn't go anywhere near the Lovecraftian mythos.

Still, while I'm not a fan of Lovecraft's writing per se, I enjoy his themes, so I'm sorry to hear you're having trouble finding the brand of horror you prefer.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3940&start=0#p28206
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Bug with verb containing the word "of?"
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-13 09:57:38

Is this a bug?

[code]Colocation relates an object (called first item) to an object (called second item) when the location of the first item is the location of the second item.

The verb to share the home of (he shares the home of, they share the home of, it is shared in home, he is sharing the home of) implies the colocation relation.

Every turn: 
	showme a random thing sharing the home of the player;
	showme a random room sharing the home of the player;
	
Test is a room.[/code]

The first showme works just fine, but the second one doesn't compile:

[quote]Problem. In the sentence 'showme a random room sharing the home of the player'  , I was expecting to read a description of directions, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'sharing the home'.
I was trying to match this phrase:

room (sharing the home - direction) from/of (player - room) 
This was what I found out:

sharing the home = something unrecognised
player = a non-temporary variable, holding a person[/quote]

Changing the preposition from "of" to "with" allows this example to compile and run successfully. Alternatively, "a random room" can be changed to "the list of rooms," and that also works. It looks like after the compiler fails to match the phrase "room [way] from/of [a room]," it stops looking for ways to parse the line.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3936&start=0#p28207
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: help modifying a thing to have a color property
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-13 10:09:09

If the player has to choose between different spirits, it may be useful to be able to differentiate them. There are numerous examples that explain how to use properties to alter the name and parsing of objects. The first one I found after quickly browsing through the recipe book was "Lemonade." It's way more complicated than you need, so I'll quote just the relevant parts here:

[code]Liquid is a kind of value. The liquids are water, milk, lemonade, and iced tea. A fluid container has a liquid.

Understand the liquid property as describing a fluid container. Understand "of" as a fluid container.

After printing the name of a fluid container (called the target) while not examining: 
    unless the target is empty: 
        say " of [liquid of the target]"; 
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=0#p28208
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-13 10:12:51

As others have mentioned before, it doesn't matter how small your lists are, they still munch memory. Also, having just one list requires quite a bit more memory than having none at all. Not that there's anything to worry about with Glulx, but if you're using lists anyway, there's no need to be stingy with them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=40#p28209
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-12-13 10:15:28

[quote="severedhand"]I think 'SCA' might be cool. Sounds good, looks good. Has good connotations in what it sounds like (people think scars are cool.)[/quote]

People in the States might associate 'SCA' with the [url=http://www.sca.org/]Society for Creative Anachronism[/url].  I know I do, to the point of giggling a little bit when I see [url=http://www.sca.com/en/Products/]SCA-brand toilet paper[/url] (what, is it made from leaves?).  It's probably not a problem for file extensions, though, because of the lowercase.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3939&start=0#p28210
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Activities VS To statements... What is the difference?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-13 10:16:16

It usually comes down to how complicated an action you want to perform. If it's a simple matter of making one change or calculation each time, and it's always the same, a "to..." phrase makes sense. But if it depends on the circumstances, and has many repercussions in the game world, an activity is much more flexible.

There are two things that "To" phrases don't handle well:

Being detected and extended: You can always test "if the foo activity is going on," but there's no way to know if the thing you're doing now was invoked by a particular phrase. Activities also have "before" and "after" rulebooks so you can add on extra behaviors to them. I had some big headaches with the low-level "update backdrop positions" phrase. I wanted to do some extra things every time it ran, but I had no way to do that.

Being replaced and varied: There is only one "to" phrase for each syntax. But you can have as many "for" rules for an activity as you want. As long as you make sure they're ordered correctly, you can arrange for any level of nuance in circumstances.

In general, I use more "to" phrases in my game source, and more activities in extensions that I write. It's critical to be flexible when you're writing code that others will share, but if you can go back and modify the code easily, it makes more sense to start with something simple.

I like your approach though. I was afraid to use activities for a long time and I ended up with some awkward and bloated phrases. It's much easier to simplify an activity to a phrase than to go the other way around...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=0#p28211
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-12-13 10:23:11

[quote="sai"]I compile as glulx.
Since I knew lists eat a lot of memory, I have very few lists. And each have just a few items in it.[/quote]

I wouldn't worry about the memory consumption if you're compiling to Glulx. "Lots" is a relative term, and while it certainly applies to lists when you're compiling to the tiny Z-machine, it isn't the appropriate descriptor when you're compiling to the Glulx VM. Even lists with several thousand entries won't cause you any problems with Glulx.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3913&start=20#p28212
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Frustrated with Choices
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-13 10:29:29

Have you thought about collaborating with someone? Finding a programmer who's interested in your story might free up more of your headspace for writing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3915&start=10#p28213
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The World Map
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-12-13 11:40:47

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="katz"]Since I rather suspect this problem will arise soon, your project [i]will[/i] probably get too big for Z-code version 5 and give you an error, so you should go to the Settings tab and change it to Z-code version 8.[/quote]
Or even better, Glulx. (Hasn't that been made standard yet?)[/quote]
Better, unless you want the game to be playable on a phone without the internet (with Twisty etc.).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3938&start=0#p28214
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: PM Attachment File Types
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-12-13 11:42:24

I would be nice if you could attach file types like .z8 and .gblorb.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3941&start=0#p28215
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Interactive Fiction Festival?
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-12-13 12:18:39

[b]Interactive Fiction Festival[/b]

There have been [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=100]rumblings[/url] on the [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=30]forum[/url] about the desire for a non-competitive, focused showcase of interactive fiction. It would be like the [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/HP_Lovecraft:_The_Commonplace_Book_Project_2007]Commonplace Book Project[/url], or the [url=http://www.wurb.com/if/award/5]IF Art Show[/url] in that there would be a pre-arranged theme for the games, and the release could perhaps be tied in with an offline event. It wouldn't be a competition (the games wouldn't be ranked), but there should probably be relevant rewards for the entrants. Perhaps commissioned analytical reviews/discussions accompanying each entry?

I know that there is some tentative interest in this idea, but I thought there should be some constructive discussion to get the ball rolling in the right direction. The basic thought is, if we have a cool idea then we shouldn't sit around just waiting for someone else to implement it.

What needs to be decided:

[list]
[*] The [b]theme[/b] for the first showcase.[/*:m]
[*] This [b]theme[/b] will then inform the [b]title[/b] of the showcase.[/*:m]
[*] [b]When[/b] it would take place.[/*:m]
[*] Who should [b]curate[/b] the showcase.[/*:m]
[*] Where online the showcase should be [b]hosted[/b].[/*:m]
[*] Depending on the [b]theme[/b], we could tie the showcase in with some offline publication or [b]event[/b].[/*:m]
[*] What [b]reward[/b], if any and who should supply it.[/*:m][/list:u]

In the spirit of not expecting anyone else to do what I will not, providing there is plenty of interest in the thing going ahead, I'm happy to fill in any of these roles (curator, webhost, provider of analysis etc.). Obviously should we decide on a theme that I'm not excited about such as Horror, then someone who is more passionate about that theme should probably curate. And so on.

Emily Short has some good advice [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=40]here[/url] on the matter. I open it up to the floor.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3938&start=0#p28216
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: PM Attachment File Types
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-13 12:28:06

Does it work if you change the extension to .txt and then have the recipient change it back? I think some people have posted .i7x files that way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3941&start=0#p28217
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction Festival?
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-12-13 13:34:43

I would have an interest in participating.

A possible theme, just throwing it out there: vehicles. The festival site could have kind of a car show theme sort of like how the old IF Art Show site has a museum theme. But the vehicles in the games wouldn't need to be cars. They could feature a spaceship or a submarine or a schoolbus or an elephant-carried siege-tower or whatever. Thus it would have a unified theme of sorts, but people could still write in whatever genre they prefer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3941&start=0#p28218
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction Festival?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-13 13:37:32

Personally, I'd be a lot more interested in a comp themed around an IF element (the ones I was thinking of were setting, NPCs, and scale of action) rather than a genre, but either's good.

We'd want at least a two-month space between the announcement and the entry deadline, preferably something at least twice that, possibly up to a year. If there's a judging/curation/review panel, we'd want at least a month after entry the deadline to give them time for substantial reviews.

Definitely don't want to clash with the Comp. The other main conflict to worry about is Spring Thing: intent-to-enter deadline March 1, games released April 2/3, results out probably mid-May. Introcomp (voting probably somewhere around June-July) is probably less of a conflict as far as authors go, but it'd be good to give it some space for audience purposes. 

So... aim for a deadline somewhere around late July-early August, judge/review process September sometime?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3913&start=20#p28219
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Frustrated with Choices
User: Kytaari / DateTime: 2011-12-13 13:48:29

[quote="capmikee"]Have you thought about collaborating with someone? Finding a programmer who's interested in your story might free up more of your headspace for writing.[/quote]
I think this is a very good idea! I can collaborate with a programmer, and save all the writing for myself. Thanks for the suggestion. I'll get around to asking for one once I have a more substantial script. I also have some ideas about making parsers more intuitive and convenient for newcomers, but I'd have to discuss this with my potential programmer first before I can see how well this idea could be implemented.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3941&start=0#p28220
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction Festival?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-13 13:48:38

(And in case it wasn't clear, I'd be happy to organise, review, whatever.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3942&start=0#p28221
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: IF Project for Android
User: Eastep / DateTime: 2011-12-13 13:55:15

So, a friend of mine asked me if I wanted to write him a "Choose Your Own Adventure" story, and if I did, then he would publish it in an interactive format on the Android marketplace. So I tell him sure, and then remember all the Interactive Fiction I've played over the years. "Hmmm," I say to myself. "What about those devilishly brilliant authors of IF? Surely they would be interested in something like this."
So I do a quick google search for a suitable forum, and start browsing my finds for a few hours. After I bit, I decide to write this topic, albeit with some trepidation. It isn't every day that I decide to write a forum post. I doubt that I ever write forum posts in this format, either.

But, for those of you who TL;DR'd you can just skip all that explanation up there.
Me and my friend wish to publish various CYOA (basically IF, but he won't call it that.) stories to an app he wrote, that would then be available on the marketplace. I'm only one writer working on my own (on a kick ass story, by the way) so we thought it would be a good idea to recruit more people, so there was more variety for the reader.
You are those people.
You have the talents we need (chiefly writing, and the knowledge of what makes an interactive story fun) to make this project work. We can take on as many, or as few, writers as possible. We're pretty much giving you free reign over the story that you want to write, but we want you to at least run the concept past us first, so we can make sure we don't include content on the app that would be... frowned upon.

Also, I'm very big on collaborative writing, so if possible, I would love to do one of the stories collaboratively.

Now, the nitty gritty details. There is a playable demo of the app, and a windows executable as well. The engine is almost complete, and I have my story at the halfway point. So basically, we're working on just the writing.
We use Skype for all our communication, and we do so pretty often. All of the stories are shared on Dropbox, which you will need to have if you wish to join.


So, if you're interested, post here, send me a PM, shoot me an email, or contact me on skype. I hope to be working with you all soon!

[b]Contact Details[/b]
You can reach me at <a href="mailto:Ionstormeastep@hotmail.com">Ionstormeastep@hotmail.com</a> or contact me on Skype. I'm leadheadcrushermachine there.
Those will be the easiest ways to contact me, but you can also send me a private message here, or just post your interest/questions on the thread.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3943&start=0#p28222
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: New Mini-Extension: Objects Matching Snippets
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-13 15:38:23

I just created this extension - it's very short and simple, but I think it might be handy. It allows you to test if an object "is identified with" a snippet (the snippet matches the object) or "is named in" a snippet (the snippet includes the object).

<a class="postlink" href="http://eyeballsun.org/i/Objects%20Matching%20Snippets.i7x">http://eyeballsun.org/i/Objects%20Match ... ippets.i7x</a>

[spoiler][code]Objects Matching Snippets by Mike Ciul begins here.

Section - The Item to Match

The item to match is a object that varies.
Definition: A thing is matchable if it is the item to match.
Definition: An room is matchable if it is the item to match.
Definition: A direction is matchable if it is the item to match.
Definition: A region is matchable if it is the item to match.

Section - Snippet-matching

Does the object match is a snippet based rulebook. The does the object match rulebook has outcomes it does (success) and it does not (failure).

Does the object match a snippet (called S):
	if the item to match is a thing and S matches "[any matchable thing]", it does;
	if the item to match is a room and S matches "[any matchable room]", it does;
	if the item to match is a direction and S matches "[any matchable direction]", it does;
	if the item to match is a region and S matches "[any matchable region]", it does;
	it does not.

To decide whether (candidate - an object) matches (S - a snippet):
	Now the item to match is candidate;
	follow the does the object match rules for S;
	decide on whether or not the outcome of the rulebook is the it does outcome;
	
Snippet-matching relates an object (called candidate) to a snippet (called S) when candidate matches S. The verb to be identified with implies the snippet-matching relation.

Objects Matching Snippets ends here.

Section - Snippet-inclusion

Does the object's name appear in is a snippet based rulebook. The does the object's name appear in rulebook has outcomes it does (success) and it does not (failure).

Does the object's name appear in a snippet (called S):
	if the item to match is a thing and S includes "[any matchable thing]", it does;
	if the item to match is a room and S includes "[any matchable room]", it does;
	if the item to match is a direction and S includes "[any matchable direction]", it does;
	if the item to match is a region and S includes "[any matchable region]", it does;
	it does not.

To decide whether the name of (candidate - an object) appears in (S - a snippet):
	Now the item to match is candidate;
	follow the does the object's name appear in rules for S;
	decide on whether or not the outcome of the rulebook is the it does outcome;
	
Snippet-inclusion relates an object (called candidate) to a snippet (called S) when the name of candidate appears in S. The verb to be named in implies the snippet-inclusion relation.


---- DOCUMENTATION ----

Objects Matching Snippets is a very simple extension that provides a convenient way to search for names of objects within a snippet such as the player's command or the topic understood.

There are two relations that can be used for this: snippet-matching ("O is identified with S") and snippet-inclusion ("O is named in S"). These correspond to the built-in phrases "S matches O" and "S includes O."

Snippet-matching tests whether the name of object O matches the snippet S:
	
	say "[The list of things identified with the topic understood] all match the phrase '[the topic understood]' in your command.";

Snippet-inclusion tests whether the name of object O appears in the snippet S:

	say "The rooms [list of rooms named in the player's command] are all mentioned in your command."

Note that these are both object-to-snippet relations, so you can test them on rooms, directions, and regions as well as things.

Example: * Exclamations - Creates a new action that can be parsed from the command "[someone], [something]"

	*: "Exclamations"

	Include Objects Matching Snippets by Mike Ciul.

	Exclaiming it to is an action applying to two visible things.
	Report exclaiming it to: say "You say '[noun]' to [the second noun]."
	
	An exclamation is a kind of thing. Hello is an exclamation.

	Check answering someone that:
		Let item be a random exclamation identified with the topic understood;
		If item is a thing:
			instead try exclaiming item to the noun;
		If there is an exclamation named in the topic understood:
			say "Your command did not exactly match anything you can say, but perhaps you meant '[a random exclamation named in the topic understood]?'";
			stop the action.
	
	Test is a room. Bob is a man in Test.

	Test me with "say hello to bob/bob, hello how are you"[/code][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3941&start=0#p28223
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction Festival?
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-12-13 15:48:14

[quote="trojo"]I would have an interest in participating.

A possible theme, just throwing it out there: vehicles. The festival site could have kind of a car show theme sort of like how the old IF Art Show site has a museum theme. But the vehicles in the games wouldn't need to be cars. They could feature a spaceship or a submarine or a schoolbus or an elephant-carried siege-tower or whatever. Thus it would have a unified theme of sorts, but people could still write in whatever genre they prefer.[/quote]
Glad you're on board. Bonaj ideoj, Troy, keep 'em coming. The vehicular idea would certainly allow for a broad scope of games, but I don't think it would give the reviewers/audience any concrete grounds for comparison of the games.  

[quote="maga"]Personally, I'd be a lot more interested in a comp themed around an IF element (the ones I was thinking of were setting, NPCs, and scale of action) rather than a genre, but either's good.[/quote]
I think broadly I'm in favour of this approach, especially as it would give the commissioned reviewers something concrete and interesting to discuss about each game's approach to the chosen element. Could you unpack 'scale of action' a little bit? Every game takes place somewhere along the universal/global/local/individual scale. What kind of game would a focus on scale of action encourage?  

[quote="maga"]
We'd want at least a two-month space between the announcement and the entry deadline, preferably something at least twice that, possibly up to a year. If there's a judging/curation/review panel, we'd want at least a month after the deadline to give them time for substantial reviews.

Definitely don't want to clash with the Comp. The other main conflict to worry about is Spring Thing: intent-to-enter deadline March 1, games released April 2/3, results out probably mid-May. Introcomp (voting probably somewhere around June-July) is probably less of a conflict as far as authors go, but it'd be good to give it some space for audience purposes. 

So... aim for a deadline somewhere around late July-early August, judge/review process September sometime?[/quote]
This seem reasonable. If we can get this off the ground in the next month or so, there should be plenty of time to announce for, say, August 1st 2012.

--

As for the reviewing process: I'm very much in favour of having a board of judges and maybe a 'best in show' type award (that participants can opt out of the reckoning for). We want it to be friendly for non-comp people, so it's important that it isn't billed as Another Comp Comp.

[quote](And in case it wasn't clear, I'd be happy to organise, review, whatever.)[/quote]
I figured that [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=100]might be[/url] the case  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3944&start=0#p28224
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Getting two warnings on TADS3 compile
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-12-13 16:13:54

Does anyone have any ideas as to what is causing these two warnings [emote]:?:[/emote] 


            else if ('copyright'.startsWith(kw))
            {
                /* show the copyright/license information */
                versionInfo.showCopyright();
            }



"\b<b>The Magic Forest</b>
\nRelease <<versionInfo.version>> (<<versionInfo.serialNum>>)
\nCopyright &copy;2004, 2006 Michael J.\ Roberts
/ Freeware / Type <<aHref('copyright', 'COPYRIGHT')>> for details\n



Tip: you can go to the source location of a compile error
by double-clicking on the error message in this window

----- begin build: Tue Dec 13 17:05:23 2011 -----
>t3make -Fy "C:\Documents and Settings\Frenchy\Desktop\The Magic Forest\obj" -Fo "C:\Documents and Settings\Frenchy\Desktop\The Magic Forest\obj" -o "debug\The Magic Forest.t3" -a -D "LANGUAGE=en_us" -D "MESSAGESTYLE=neu" -v -d -statprefix <@> "system.tl" "adv3\adv3.tl" "The Magic Forest.t" -res "GameInfo.txt"
TADS Compiler 3.0.18.1  Copyright 1999, 2007 Michael J. Roberts
The Magic Forest.t(243): warning: 
The symbol "serialNum" is undefined, but appears from context to be a property
name.  The compiler is assuming that this is a property.  Check the spelling of
the symbol.  If this assumption is correct, you can avoid this warning by
explicitly declaring a value to the property in an object definition rather
than in method code.


The Magic Forest.t(352): warning: 
The symbol "showCopyright" is undefined, but appears from context to be a
property name.  The compiler is assuming that this is a property.  Check the
spelling of the symbol.  If this assumption is correct, you can avoid this
warning by explicitly declaring a value to the property in an object definition
rather than in method code.


Errors:   0
Warnings: 2


Build successfully completed.
----- end build: Tue Dec 13 17:05:29 2011 -----

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3945&start=0#p28225
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: strange compiler bug
User: Peter Rickardson / DateTime: 2011-12-13 16:16:07

Trying to get WaterElement to work, I ran into this


Expected new constant name but found NULL


right after the System_file statement at the top of the modified parserm file.

What does it mean? I'm using Release 6/11.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3942&start=0#p28226
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: IF Project for Android
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-13 16:25:39

[quote="Eastep"][...] so we can make sure we don't include content on the app that would be... frowned upon.[/quote]

Writing CYOA for Android sounds fun, but I'm a firm believer that anything worth doing is worth doing in a way that's frowned upon [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3944&start=0#p28227
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Getting two warnings on TADS3 compile
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-13 16:46:59

Looks like you also need the serialNum property and the showCopyright method from the versionInfo object in about.t. (Part of the [i]Return to Ditch Day[/i] source archive.)

I haven't seen those verbose compiler warnings before. They remind me a lot of Inform 7's messages.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3941&start=0#p28228
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction Festival?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-13 16:52:21

[quote="JoeyJones"]Could you unpack 'scale of action' a little bit? Every game takes place somewhere along the universal/global/local/individual scale. What kind of game would a focus on scale of action encourage? [/quote]
Okay, so: the great majority of IF games involve interaction at the same scale: you control a single person, taking direct physical actions that take between a few seconds and a few minutes to resolve. This heavily influences (or limits) the kind of stories that can be told in IF, and there's no inherent reason for it (just, y'know, the slight circumstances of tradition, established practice and existing tools). So I'd very much like to see more games where normal actions take place at different scales -- scales of action, of time, of character, whatever. To a great extent this is just a hobby-horse of mine, and may be of little interest to anybody else.

There are two approaches here, which will change the nature of the event pretty heavily: pick something that IF is traditionally strong at (setting, Lovecraftian horror) and solicit high expressions of craft; or pick something where IF has a weaker record, and encourage innovation (NPCs, romance, scale).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3945&start=0#p28229
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: strange compiler bug
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-13 16:54:40

Is it trying to define NULL in more than one place?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3945&start=0#p28230
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: strange compiler bug
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-12-13 17:02:03

?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3942&start=0#p28231
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: IF Project for Android
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2011-12-13 17:15:39

Speaking on behalf of [url=http://www.choiceofgames.com]Choice of Games[/url], you might enjoy writing your CYOA in [url=http://www.choiceofgames.com/make-your-own-games/choicescript-intro/]ChoiceScript[/url], rather than writing your own engine. If you do, [url=http://www.choiceofgames.com/make-your-own-games/let-us-host-your-choicescript-games/]we'll publish your games[/url] on iOS, Android and the web.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=40#p28232
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-12-13 17:40:59

[quote="tove"][quote="severedhand"]I think 'SCA' might be cool. Sounds good, looks good. Has good connotations in what it sounds like (people think scars are cool.)[/quote][/quote]

Hm, ok. How about SAF? (sounds reassuring)
SAA? (utilitarian)
SCT? (cute)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=40#p28233
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-12-13 17:51:46

After ggogling for a while I'm getting to see what my troubles running Visionary exactly were. It seems it wasn't actually related to the VB6 runtime, which is, as mentioned, included by default in Windows 7. Program will refuse to run claiming it needs some MSSTDFMT.DLL file, which doesn't form part if this runtime, but is suppossed to be distributed with the application... but it isn't!

Details [url=http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/ms788708]here[/url]. As stated in that page, MSSTDFMT.DLL is meant to be distributed with your program.

My guess is the file would be automatically included if the application was properly compiled and packaged in an installer file instead of just distributing the .exe file and the Visual Basic sources, but that's just a quick guess!

As an alternative, I could download and register manually that dll file, but I can't find it as a separate download in any official Microsoft site, and I would prefer not to get it at some of the available third party dll repositories, which, call me paranoid, but I personally don't trust.

Suggestions are wellcome! ^^'

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3941&start=0#p28234
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction Festival?
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-12-13 18:23:24

Here are some more ideas for themes. I tried to think of as many as possible. Volume always beats quality, despite [i]millions of claims to the contrary[/i]:

Famous rivalries (Edison/Tesla, cobra/mongoose, sperm whale/giant squid)
Emperor Norton
Birds (player character is a bird, or something else in the game is a bird)
Scarves and the art students who love them
The Finno-Ugric language family (comparative phonologies/syntaxes)
Some famous literature kind of thing, but it has to be from the public domain, like some poems or something
The Bill of Rights (limited to ten pieces; each game focuses on one amendment; typical American ethnocentrism)
A trial? A famous trial, from history; one that is interesting
Pre-microchip cryptography (Scytales, Enigma machines)
Dice
Our Favorite Popes
"Greco-Norman History" (note to me: check to see if this is a real thing)
Steampunk, or some other "-punk" kind of thing
A series of public service announcements warning tweens not to huff paint
Choose a "trope" and "deconstruct" it
Folk songs
The PC is a barber, and you can't move, you just stand there and cut people's hair
[i]Pictures at an Exhibition[/i] (1874)
[i]Friends[/i] (1994-2004)
Races—not like, ethnicity (boring), but people racing against each other
Household objects that come to life and have personalities, a la Disney's [i]Beauty and the Beast[/i]
I guess in [i]Beauty and the Beast[/i] it was the other way around, but that could be a theme too
Games without pronouns
Games modeling naval warfare
Games modeling various strengths of adhesives
Games modeling a light-sensitive fungus that seeks out sources of water
Games with twist endings
"Boogeymen" from children's tales around the world
Vengeance
The months of the year
Gulliver's Travels (heavy-handed social commentary)
Dog shows, cat shows, beauty pageants, that kind of thing
[i]The Prisoner[/i] (1967-1968)
Inventions that have been lost to time (I can only think of Greek Fire right now but you could probably make some up)
A tribute to some classic game that nobody's made a tribute to yet
Cave People

That's all I can think of! And incidentally that last one, "Cave People," is the best one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3941&start=0#p28235
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction Festival?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-13 18:27:12

[quote="Afterward"]Volume always beats quality, despite [i]millions of claims to the contrary[/i][/quote]:

I don't see how that can possibly be true.

I like trojo's "vehicles" idea, and I did even before I realized my WIP has a bus in it. It seems like it strikes the right note of not-overly-specificness.

EDIT: Sorry Joey, I didn't see your comment. Do we need to give the reviewers a basis for comparison, though?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3941&start=0#p28236
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction Festival?
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-12-13 19:35:52

[quote="maga"]
Okay, so: the great majority of IF games involve interaction at the same scale: you control a single person, taking direct physical actions that take between a few seconds and a few minutes to resolve. This heavily influences (or limits) the kind of stories that can be told in IF, and there's no inherent reason for it (just, y'know, the slight circumstances of tradition, established practice and existing tools). So I'd very much like to see more games where normal actions take place at different scales -- scales of action, of time, of character, whatever. To a great extent this is just a hobby-horse of mine, and may be of little interest to anybody else.[/quote]
This idea definitely has legs. I'd be very interested in seeing the results of successful experiments with nonstandard scopes. Possible ideas this suggests to me:
[list]
[*] Player is a government. Plays out globe/decade spanning policies.[/*:m]
[*] Player decides what their character will do with whole days, rather than minutes. Story lasts a year.[/*:m]
[*] Player controls a whole household, can set default actions for characters not currently being micromanaged. [/*:m][/list:u]

[quote]
There are two approaches here, which will change the nature of the event pretty heavily: pick something that IF is traditionally strong at (setting, Lovecraftian horror) and solicit high expressions of craft; or pick something where IF has a weaker record, and encourage innovation (NPCs, romance, scale).[/quote]
It's a tough call, I can see merits in both approaches. If possible, could we do [b]both[/b]? A Grand Showcase in Two Parts: high quality submissions on the theme of [i]x[/i], and submissions focusing on innovation in theme [i]y[/i]. Or would that threaten to weaken the concept and dilute the submissions? 

[quote="Afterward"]Here are some more ideas for themes. 
Famous rivalries (Edison/Tesla, cobra/mongoose, sperm whale/giant squid)
Birds (player character is a bird, or something else in the game is a bird)
A trial? A famous trial, from history; one that is interesting
Steampunk, or some other "-punk" kind of thing
Folk songs
Games with twist endings
Vengeance
The months of the year
[/quote]
I like the dizzying breadth. I've whittled the list down to what I take to be the most promising themes. Ideally, you want something that it's engaging, suggests to authors game ideas and doesn't lead to the attempted implementation of the same idea by seven different people. 

[quote="matt w"]
I like trojo's "vehicles" idea, and I did even before I realized my WIP has a bus in it. It seems like it strikes the right note of not-overly-specificness.

EDIT: Sorry Joey, I didn't see your comment. Do we need to give the reviewers a basis for comparison, though?[/quote]
It's not an absolute necessity, but I think that it would certainly be a strength of the showcase if the games shared grounds for comparison. While it may hit the right note for specificity, comparing how well and in what way authors implemented vehicles might not be the most interesting or relevant grounds for understanding games in relation to one another. I guess it depends really what the showcase [i]aims[/i] to do.

---

What should the showcase aim to achieve?

Games with 'high expressions of craft'? Games that deepen the IF canon.
Innovative games? Games that broaden the IF canon.
More games of any kind? (Encouraged by having a broad and accessible theme)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3941&start=0#p28237
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction Festival?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-13 20:10:52

[quote="JoeyJones"]
[quote="maga"]
There are two approaches here, which will change the nature of the event pretty heavily: pick something that IF is traditionally strong at (setting, Lovecraftian horror) and solicit high expressions of craft; or pick something where IF has a weaker record, and encourage innovation (NPCs, romance, scale).[/quote]
It's a tough call, I can see merits in both approaches. If possible, could we do [b]both[/b]? A Grand Showcase in Two Parts: high quality submissions on the theme of [i]x[/i], and submissions focusing on innovation in theme [i]y[/i]. Or would that threaten to weaken the concept and dilute the submissions? [/quote]
I think dilution is a valid concern: the Art Show never really managed to fill all of its categories. Having two categories that are intended to attract very different kinds of author might offset this. Or not.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3941&start=10#p28238
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction Festival?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-12-13 21:35:13

It might be worth thinking about whether the theme of the festival also makes a strong pitch to [i]players[/i]. Does it have a cool hook that would make people think, "oh, hey, yeah, I want to play some of those!"? (Especially people who are casual/indie players rather than hardcore IFfers?) If so, it's more likely to get coverage on indie gaming blogs and fulfill an outreach function. (Assuming that's in fact what you want to do here, but that's the impression I got from previous posts.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3936&start=0#p28239
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: help modifying a thing to have a color property
User: nado / DateTime: 2011-12-13 21:39:46

[quote="I4L"]Lots of ways. Easiest way is probably to set a "Spirit" property for the player. I think you'd have to do text replacement, though, because Inform will only let you do a single if/else conditional in a say statement. Something along the lines of:

[code]

To say spirit_description:
     if the spirit of the player is blue:
          "You glow with a faint blue aura."

The player has a property called spirit. The spirit of the player can be blue, red or green. The description of the player is "[spirit_description]".
[/code]

Changing the spirit property is as easy as:

[code]
Now the spirit of the player is red.
[/code]

Untested and very incomplete example, as I'm at the office dodging actual work. Hopefully that's enough to explain what I'm trying to say.[/quote]

Thanks, that makes a lot of sense!  I've been tripped up a little in implementing it though as when I try inputing "The player has a property called spirit.  The spirit of the player can be blue, orange, or green..." I get a message saying "only a room, thing or kind can have such adjectives applied to it..."  Any ideas how to get past this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3941&start=10#p28240
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction Festival?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-13 21:43:37

Yeah, having a pitch that can be expressed neatly in a couple of words is a useful thing, propaganda-wise. 

I hadn't really noticed a desire for an outreach component in this, thus far, but it'd be useful just in terms of awareness within the IF community and getting the thing into people's minds. (I remember having a pretty hazy idea for many years about what the point of Spring Thing was, other than 'the Adam is grouchy about the Comp comp.')

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3936&start=0#p28241
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: help modifying a thing to have a color property
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-12-13 21:53:13

Say ``yourself'' or another specific person instead of ``the player.''  The player is a person that varies, so if Inform accepted the code you quoted there would be some question as to what would happen if the player changed identity.  ``Yourself'' is the default identity of the player, and probably what you meant.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3941&start=10#p28242
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction Festival?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-13 21:54:19

[quote="Afterward"]Here are some more ideas for themes. I tried to think of as many as possible. Volume always beats quality, despite [i]millions of claims to the contrary[/i]:[/quote]

Shouldn't that be "... despite very small numbers of well-reasoned and eloquent claims to the contrary?" Otherwise you end up in a loop [emote]:([/emote]

[quote]Choose a "trope" and "deconstruct" it[/quote]

Well, I'm always down for deconstruction (and subversion) [emote]:)[/emote]

But I [i]strongly [/i]agree with Emily that the theme should broadcast a strong [i][b]wanna-play these coolfun gamethings[/b][/i] vibe, and any theme best expressed in theoretical, structrual, critical or otherwise boringal terms ... is [i]not [/i]that.

[quote]Inventions that have been lost to time (I can only think of Greek Fire right now but you could probably make some up)[/quote]

Miniature-Mammoth Vacuum Cleaner, obviously.

[quote]Cave People[/quote]

Village People!

[quote]I hadn't really noticed a desire for an outreach component in this,[/quote]

I don't care about outreach at all, myself, but I see no need to scare nice people off, either [emote]:)[/emote] Unless they're dull nice people, then it's okay to scare them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3936&start=0#p28243
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: help modifying a thing to have a color property
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-13 21:56:19

That's not the right syntax. You're not supposed to use the word "property" - it's not a keyword. Try this, like in the lemonade example:

[code]Color is a kind of value. The colors are none, red, blue and green. The player has a color called spirit.[/code]

Edit - EmacsUser has a good point, but in this case it seems to work even when you do use "the player" instead of "yourself."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3936&start=0#p28245
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: help modifying a thing to have a color property
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-12-13 22:04:02

...which is why I should try things before posting.  Thanks, capmikee.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3941&start=10#p28246
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction Festival?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-12-13 22:18:43

[quote="maga"]I hadn't really noticed a desire for an outreach component in this[/quote]

Not in this thread, but in previous threads, I had the impression a couple people thought a non-competition-y festival would be good for that purpose.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3941&start=10#p28247
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction Festival?
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-12-13 22:22:21

I would dig this.  Games that get released as part of a contest get a ton more buzz than games that get released on their own, to the dismay of the competition-averse among us.  Since non-competition would be the big distinguishing factor of this thing, I'd want to structure it to play up that aspect.  I would prefer a more literary theme to a more technical one, but that doesn't mean it has to be a genre--it can just be a concept, like "second chances."

If there are awards, could they be more "just for fun" than serious awards?  Most Creative, Most Fun, Best New Author, etc.

It may also be helpful to limit it to one entry per author so that no one just throws in a bunch of random junk.  Because that never happens in judged contests [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

You could indeed sneak this in before Spring Thing if you wanted, particularly if the games are short.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3936&start=0#p28248
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: help modifying a thing to have a color property
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-13 22:37:14

I think you could also say this:

[code]The player can be red, green, or blue (this is its spirit property).[/code]

As in section 4.10 of the documentation. (Or does this only work with kinds?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3941&start=10#p28249
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction Festival?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-13 22:42:01

[quote="katz"]If there are awards, could they be more "just for fun" than serious awards?  Most Creative, Most Fun, Best New Author, etc.[/quote]

Class Clown, Most Likely To Die In A Car Crash, Most Obvious Pseudonym

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3947&start=0#p28250
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Pushing Between Rooms
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-12-13 22:44:27

How exactly does the "pushing it to" action work?  I've noticed that it can trigger carrying rules, like so:

[code]The storage room is a room.  The garage is south of the storage room.

The very heavy bookcase is a thing in the storage room.  It is pushable between rooms.

Instead of going while the player is carrying something:
	say "You can't walk while you're holding [the list of things held by the player]."
	
Test me with "push bookcase s".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3941&start=10#p28251
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction Festival?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-12-13 23:09:51

If prearranged reviewer(s) write up some remarks that would be released alongside the games, each game would come with its own blurb and feedback, making it easier for external game sites to profile the contents. In years past, IF Art Show worked this way. 

This collapses the release, then judging, then feedback cycle -- but that's another thing that would set it apart from typical comps.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3947&start=0#p28253
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pushing Between Rooms
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-13 23:28:23

It's a regular "going" action, but the action variable "thing gone with" is set.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3947&start=0#p28254
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pushing Between Rooms
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-13 23:34:29

But does that count as carried or held?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3947&start=0#p28255
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pushing Between Rooms
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-12-13 23:43:03

It appears to count as both carried and held (either phrasing will trigger the message in the above example), even though the item is never in inventory.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=40#p28256
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2011-12-14 00:14:14

I've had a quick rummage on my system here and on installation media for MSSTDFMT.DLL and it exists in:

Office 2003 with SP3 installation CD under \FILES\SYSTEM (118,784 bytes v6.00.8450)

VB6 installation CD under \OS\SYSTEM (118,784 bytes v6.00.8450)

C:\WINDOWS\system32 (119,808 bytes v6.01.9782)

In File, Properties, its description is: 'Microsoft Standard Data Formating Object DLL' 

From this, as I write, I am assuming it is also in the VB6SP6 service pack due to the file size differences --- time passes --- just checked and yes, it is in a sub package in VB6SP6 called MSSTDFMT.CAB and sure enough the DLL is 119808 bytes and v6.01.9782.

I didn't know about this file requirement as I always have MS Office on my PCs I use so the issue would have been masked for me. Thanks for pointing this out.

I have always been one to prefer programs that do not install but just run (such as 'FileZillas' ZIP file download offered over the 'Setup' package download) but I will now offer both (and also pop in the additional DLL in the ZIP version).

I will package Visionary up tonight into a setup kit using the VB Package and Deploy Wizard to see what additional files it puts in. I am guessing like you that it will pop this file in. From this, I will pop it on my site for download.

In the mean time, if anyone wishes it, I have extracted the MSSTDFMT.CAB from Microsoft's official VB6SP6 setup package and popped it on my website. The direct link is:

[url]http://www.therealeasterbunny.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/msstdfmt.cab[/url]

Simply download and use a zip extraction utility to get the DLL - it may just work by copying the DLL straight into the folder containing the Visionary EXE file - if not, it will need to go into your system 32 folder within your Windows folder and then register it by running 

REGSVR32 MSSTDFMT.DLL

(Precede the dll filename with the path if you are not in a DOS box in the folder where the DLL is when executing the last command) - but as I say, I will get a setup kit done tonight also.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3947&start=0#p28257
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pushing Between Rooms
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-14 00:19:35

Sorry, I didn't understand what you were asking.

It looks like the item is momentarily moved to the player's inventory, when the action is invoked. This is handled by the ConvertToGoingWithPush() function (at the I6 level).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=40#p28258
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2011-12-14 00:30:57

I also got a reply from Scott saying he's good with our recent thoughts of having a 'Scott Adams Format Text Adventure Comp'. He has no issues with it.

I did invite him along to enter a game himself but he's a busy bunny at the moment (I guess as always for him) and he also needs to finish off another project he is working on called 'The Inheritance'.

I think .SAF is nice, short, sweet, simple and, like comments above, sounds nice [emote]:)[/emote]

Unless anyone has any objections can we agree on .SAF (Scott Adams Format)?

.SACA would have been cool but am thinking back to people still running DOS 2.11 with the old FAT 8.3 filename/extension limitations? ... mmmm... DOS 2...

Anyway ...

I will publish more tonight on stuff as well as setting up some new topics for suggestions on stuff I will knock up soon on how we should progress.

Am thinking currently of three main things:

1) Creating a Windows app from AdvPDA code to play SAF games (so will need 'basic' suggestions of how it should look / feel with basic options it should have.
2) Rejigging (and renaming Visionary) to cater for multiple screen / font sizes as currently it is fixed at 1024x768 (which suited me back in the day but if everyone is using it (as I have just tried on my new 1920 monitor) it needs changing.
3) Rig up some new topics to discuss the above as well as next years SAFTAC [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3942&start=0#p28259
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: IF Project for Android
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-14 01:41:16

There's so very, very much wrong with this post. This post strikes me as a sales pitch. A bad one. One from the sixties. Not that I was alive then. But I've seen enough of them to know better. References to how awesome a product is that we're offering without giving out too many details. Requests for "clients" without giving any specifics. "Just give us a taste so that we know we're interested, all you devishly creative sheep." Suggesting that "we have all this awesomeness lined up, but you have to show us what you can do. My friend got this idea to just start publishing the CYOA and asked me to drum up some business on top of my own kick ass awesome-o story."

I see an offered concept with zero credentials, reference to an unfinished game engine, questionable explanation of the project, uncertain recruiting tactics and a request to "let us see your stuff". And I still haven't figured out what "TL;DR'd" means.

I'm hesitant to call this spam, because this is a more difficult case of spam to prove than some of the others.

But I'm going to have to call the bluff.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3942&start=0#p28260
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: IF Project for Android
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-14 01:53:44

[quote="I4L"]But I'm going to have to call the bluff.[/quote]

Could be shady/smarmy ... but to me it just reads "awkward newbie." I've had my share of run-ins with both shady operations and [i]clueless [/i]operations in game and magazine publishing ... and the whiff on the OP feels more like the latter, to me. My guess is: wet-behind-the-ears, probably fly-by-night but without [i]intending [/i]to be. Possible [i]aspirations [/i]to shadiness (without the smooth to get there), but more likely just over-enthused and under-experienced.

But it's just a guess on my part, too, based on the vibe.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3937&start=0#p28261
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Unix Frotz and DOS Frotz development
User: frotz / DateTime: 2011-12-14 02:11:20

I've pushed into the Master branch DOS code that [i]should[/i] work.  I'm having some trouble with a complaint of "Invalid combination of opcode and operands" relating to certain macros.  If there are any people out there who grok programming with Turbo C, I'd appreciate it if you take a look and let me know what the problem and solution might be.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3949&start=0#p28262
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Frotz development help needed
User: frotz / DateTime: 2011-12-14 02:18:51

I'm in need of some people who can do Unix and/or DOS C coding to come on board the Frotz development team.  I don't understand audio coding in Unix very well and have forgotten much about coding in DOS.  Please take a look at the Frotz sourceforge page at <a class="postlink" href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/frotz/">http://sourceforge.net/projects/frotz/</a> and see if there's anything you can do to help.  I just committed a bunch of DOS code for the master branch, that worked when it was compiled to 2.40, but Turbo C is throwing fits about passing struct members to macros.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=100#p28263
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-12-14 06:47:37

[quote="maga"](For what it's worth, the Art Show had a Best In Category and a Best In Show, so it was technically a comp, though that wasn't really the focus to the extent that it is in IF Comp. I'm not sure whether that would be a dealbreaker for you.)[/quote]
Don't think this question was directed at me, but the project sounds very interesting — I wasn't aware of it, before. BTW, many film festivals (to stick with my mental model from before) also have awards; it's just that outside of the big glitzy festivals, nobody really takes film festival awards very seriously; it isn't *framed* as a competition. It's just an art meet where there just happen to also be judges and awards. The point is people coming together for an art festival, to celebrate a certain kind of art, not the awards; that is very clear. And even at the big prestigious festivals, like the Toronto Film Festival, they are not nearly as picky as some in this thread would have the IFcomp be. At TIFF I have seen filmmakers allowed to change their films and remain in competition, right up to the very last minute. Heck, I have even been present at the second showing of a film that the director did not have ready in time for the [i]first[/i] showing (i.e. the first screening had to be cancelled because the film wasn't ready), and [i]still[/i] they were allowed to 'compete'.

Nobody stamps their feet about this; it is just understood that the whole thing is subjective anyway. Perhaps it is only artists/programmers who resist the inherently subjective nature of judging art, who tend to want to 'even the playing field'.

But let's assume for a moment, for the sake of argument, that evening the playing field is a sensible goal for art (discarding the issue of subjectivity). [i]Even then[/i], and in a situation where you can start work on your film/game whenever you want (and in the IFcomp I believe that you can start writing whenever), it simply makes no sense to quibble over whether one filmmaker/programmer took more time to perfect his/her art than another, after the fact. There is no meaningful time limit to corrupt, so nothing has been corrupted.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=0#p28264
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: ela / DateTime: 2011-12-14 08:31:51

I'm working on a project which focuses on the effect of [b]interactive fictions[/b] on the [b]second language learning[/b]. All I need is some very short simple interesting fiction games based on [b]particular word lists [/b]. Can anyone do this for me or at least suggest a person who can?
All responses to this forum as well as emails to <a href="mailto:elaheh.rafat@gmail.com">elaheh.rafat@gmail.com</a> are highly appreciated.

About 10 words or more (of your choice) out of 550 words should be used in each game and these words are supposed to be repeated throughout each game (about 7-8 times each word) as I am working on my students incidental vocabulary learning. I don't want the games to be complicated or anything. I just want them to be fun and easy, a simple story which involves the readers without any difficult problem-solving (different genres). The players will be 18-20 year old non-native learners of English.

The word list: [url]https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ujcxOxqNE7l2yaHNnhrbMx1NeRBRSJMEGjkEgMXWvtg/edit?hl=en_US[/url]
My deadline for having games: about 9th of February!  

P.S. I won't mind paying for a few good quality games ( I don't have a large amount of budget though). [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3945&start=0#p28265
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: strange compiler bug
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-14 09:07:53

It would seem that WaterElement was written for Inform 6/10, where the NULL constant is defined in parserm, of which the extension provides a custom version.

In 6/11 however, NULL is instead defined in linklpa, which the extensios includes.

So, if you use WaterElement's version of parserm together with the 6/11 version of linklpa, the constant NULL gets defined in two places.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=0#p28266
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-14 09:31:19

[quote="ela"][...] some very short simple interesting fiction games or choose your adventure stories based on [b]particular word lists [/b]. Can anyone do this for me or at least suggest a person who can?[/quote]

Could be fun depending on the time-frame. What kind of word lists? (and what kind of time-frame?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3941&start=10#p28267
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction Festival?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-14 09:47:46

[quote="emshort"]If prearranged reviewer(s) write up some remarks that would be released alongside the games, each game would come with its own blurb and feedback, making it easier for external game sites to profile the contents. In years past, IF Art Show worked this way. 

This collapses the release, then judging, then feedback cycle -- but that's another thing that would set it apart from typical comps.[/quote]
We seem to have something like a consensus that the above would be a good way to handle things. (I think?)

The tricky bit, which we've avoided discussing thus far, is the negative side of curation: are all entries accepted, and if not, on what grounds can entries be turned away?

An entry bar is player-friendly (guaranteeing that anything they play from the festival will be of a certain quality) and judge/reviewing-panel friendly (by committing to substantive reviews, they aren't committing to five thousand words on [i]Stupid Kittens[/i]). On the other hand, it potentially exposes the festival to Epic Whine Flamewars from rejected authors (particularly if it's based on subjective standards) and might make the comp less attractive to authors (but that's kind of the point).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3945&start=0#p28268
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: strange compiler bug
User: Peter Rickardson / DateTime: 2011-12-14 10:02:36

[quote="Felix"]It would seem that WaterElement was written for Inform 6/10, where the NULL constant is defined in parserm, of which the extension provides a custom version.

In 6/11 however, NULL is instead defined in linklpa, which the extensios includes.

So, if you use WaterElement's version of parserm together with the 6/11 version of linklpa, the constant NULL gets defined in two places.[/quote]

With NULL fixed, I now get 6 errors in verblibm. The following snippet of code 

[ CommandsOnSub;
    @output_stream 4;
    xcommsdir = 1;
    L__M(##CommandsOn, 1);
];

causes a

'=' applied to undeclared variable

It seems xcommsdir is undeclared. So how do I declare it without breaking the libraries?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3951&start=0#p28269
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: What does "visible" actually mean?
User: evouga / DateTime: 2011-12-14 10:09:43

Consider the following example program:

[code]
The world is a room.

The apple is a thing.

Pondering is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "ponder [any thing]" as pondering.

Poking is an action applying to one touchable thing. Understand "poke [any thing]" as poking.
[/code]

"Ponder apple" now works even though it isn't visible to the player, but "poke apple" does not. In other words, the "any" in the understand statement seems to override the action's visibility, but not touchability, requirement. This leaves me confused: first, why is an understand rule modifying the "type signature" of the action? I would have thought that there were two completely different steps: first the parser converts the input into a verb and up to two nouns (with understanding helping it do so), and then, completely separately, it tries to invoke the corresponding action, and checks that the object is visible/touchable/carried by the player, as required by that action. But apparently understanding and actions are a lot more coupled than I thought?

So secondly, what exactly does "visible" formally mean? Is there a chapter in the manual that discusses this? I've read 12.17 but it's very vague.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3942&start=0#p28270
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: IF Project for Android
User: Eastep / DateTime: 2011-12-14 10:19:28

Thanks for the interest, guys! It looks like I came off a little differently than I thought... so, I'll make some clarifications, justifications, and all that stuff that generally leads to that tense, awkward mistrust.

[quote="Ghalev"]Writing CYOA for Android sounds fun, but I'm a firm believer that anything worth doing is worth doing in a way that's frowned upon[/quote]

ANARCHY! Stick it to the man! Break the rules, defy the norms!  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 
All that is fine and good, but we just wanted to screen for any possible racism, vulgarity... you know, that kind of thing.


[quote="dfabulich"]Speaking on behalf of [url=http://www.choiceofgames.com]Choice of Games[/url], you might enjoy writing your CYOA in [url=http://www.choiceofgames.com/make-your-own-games/choicescript-intro/]ChoiceScript[/url], rather than writing your own engine. If you do, [url=http://www.choiceofgames.com/make-your-own-games/let-us-host-your-choicescript-games/]we'll publish your games[/url] on iOS, Android and the web.[/quote]

Now this looks promising! I would actually be very interested in working on this. I doubt the programmer would have any interest, but mine is piqued.

[quote="I4L"]the sixties.[/quote]

So sorry, I wasn't trying to come off that way at all! I was aiming for a happy, laid back, easy to work with kind of mood. Although, I am rather fond of the fifties and sixties adverts...

Sadly, this was just one of those things my friend decided to spring on me all of sudden. He had bought an Android publishing licence for a game he had built, and decided he wanted to showcase my writing, and get some practice. And now, all of a sudden, he wants more writers involved in the project for "greater variety". >.<

Also, "TL;DR" is a term that I thought was much more popular than it actually is. It stands for: "Too long; didn't read"


[quote="Ghalev"]but more likely just over-enthused and under-experienced.[/quote]

That quote pretty much sums up the operation. I enjoy writing the CYOA, he likes coding the engine, and we thought we'd post here looking for like minded individuals.


Sorry for the misunderstandings.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3951&start=0#p28271
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What does "visible" actually mean?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-14 10:26:02

This is the key part of section 12.17:

[quote]To be "visible", something needs only to be possible to refer to by the player....[/quote]

This is accurate, but the following gloss ("the player can see it") is misleading in many important cases. 

In your case, you have to combine this with the following (from section 16.7):

[quote]If we use the special word "any", as in

[code]Understand "manipulate [any door]". [NB: This is a sentence fragment; you'd have to write "...as manipulating" or something.][/code]

then any door, anywhere in the model world, can be allowed in the player's command. (Of course, the manipulation rules may not do what the player hopes: all that has happened is that the command is now possible to type.)[/quote]

Since it's possible to refer to any door, that means the doors count as visible as per the bit I quoted from section 12.17, since you [i]can[/i] refer to them. Or in your case, when you type "poke apple," you're allowed to refer to the apple or any other thing anywhere in the model world (since there's an [any thing] token in the relevant understand line), so they all count as visible. 

Another important case is when you've manually placed something in scope, as in section 17.27 of the manual; usually then that thing will count as "visible" but not touchable.

It might help to think of "visible" as meaning "referable." Ironically, things that are "visible" but not touchable are often things that you can't see, but can refer to because of an [any] token or because you've manually placed them in scope. (And since "applying to one thing" defaults to "one touchable thing," I think, "visible thing" is usually broader than thing and you need to say "applying to one visible thing" when you want the action to apply to things you can't see!)

Hope this is helpful and accurate!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3951&start=0#p28272
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What does "visible" actually mean?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-12-14 10:30:26

"Visible" means that there is no touchability requirement, whereas the "any thing" token applies to any item in scope. Consider the following:

[code]
Lab is a room.
Closet is a room.

A glass box is a transparent, closed container. It is in lab.
An apple is in the glass box.
A broom is in the closet.

Pondering is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "ponder [any thing]" as pondering.
Glancing at is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "glance at [a thing]" as glancing at.
Poking is an action applying to one thing. Understand "poke [any thing]" as poking.
Cleaning with is an action applying to one thing. Understand "clean with [a thing]" as cleaning with.

After doing something:
    say "Action succeeded."

Test me with "ponder broom/ponder box/ponder apple/glance at broom/glance at box/glance at apple/poke broom/poke box/poke apple/clean with broom/clean with box/clean with apple".
[/code]

You can see that pondering works always, no matter where the object is or whether it's touchable or not. 

If you change the the token from "any thing" to "a thing" you force the parser to consider the scope (only things that the player can see). Now the action fails for everything that isn't in the same location (or anything that can't be seen).

If you keep the "any thing" token and remove the visibility requirement (thus enforcing that the player must be able to touch the object; note that "...applying to one thing" is equal to "...applying to one touchable thing"), you get a response from trying to poke the broom that says you can't touch the broom because it's too far away (in another room). 

Finally if you have the standard "a thing" token and the touchability requirement, the action fails for the broom (it's not in scope) and the apple (not touchable).

Hopefully this clears it up a bit. The "visible" keyword is rather misleading and there's [url=http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/751924-syntax-change-the-misleading-visible-in-appli]a request[/url] that it should be changed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3941&start=10#p28273
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction Festival?
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-12-14 10:39:21

The theme will play a part in deciding how outreachy the festival is. (Outreachy is a word, right? No? Well, it is now.) An esoteric-sounding or highly-technical theme that aims to produce ground-breaking technical innovations and/or avant-garde literature might not produce games that are as newbie-accessible as a theme like "truly massive explosions" would. Not that there's anything wrong with a festival focusing on technical innovations or avant-garde approaches to story-telling, but that would probably end up being aimed more at the existing IF community than the wider world.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=0#p28274
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: ela / DateTime: 2011-12-14 10:49:19

Could be fun depending on the time-frame. What kind of word lists? (and what kind of time-frame?)[/quote]

Paul Nation's second 1000 words of the General Service List should be used in the games and I want them in less than 2 months. If you are interested please leave your email and we'll talk about the details.

Thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3945&start=0#p28275
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: strange compiler bug
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-14 10:55:48

Add

Global xcommsdir;

...in parserm.h.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3941&start=10#p28276
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction Festival?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-14 11:03:38

[quote="maga"]The tricky bit, which we've avoided discussing thus far, is the negative side of curation: are all entries accepted, and if not, on what grounds can entries be turned away?

An entry bar is player-friendly (guaranteeing that anything they play from the festival will be of a certain quality) and judge/reviewing-panel friendly (by committing to substantive reviews, they aren't committing to five thousand words on [i]Stupid Kittens[/i]). On the other hand, it potentially exposes the festival to Epic Whine Flamewars from rejected authors (particularly if it's based on subjective standards) and might make the comp less attractive to authors (but that's kind of the point).[/quote]

Assuming the entry bar would be based on quality, or someone's subjective judgment, then might it be better to have a Festival Showcase and a Festival Annex or something like that? It could still be player-friendly, in that the players could guarantee quality by sticking to Showcase games, and panel-friendly, in that the judges wouldn't have to review Annex games (but maybe they could, if there was one they wanted to). But it might tamp the Epic Whine Flamewars (just) a bit if people whose games were rejected were still in the festival somewhere, and it would be less disappointing for an author than if they worked on their game and had nowhere to put it at all. Though if making the comp less attractive to authors is a goal, that might not be a good thing. 

If there were objective requirements (e.g. "You have to list some beta-testers"), then this wouldn't be an issue, though then you might not have as much guarantee of quality. OTOH having someone screen the games in advance seems like it might be a ton of work, so maybe objective requirements would be the way to go.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=100#p28277
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-14 11:11:18

A deadline is not quite the same as a time limit.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3941&start=20#p28278
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction Festival?
User: George / DateTime: 2011-12-14 11:16:16

Did the Art Show screen games?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3941&start=20#p28279
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction Festival?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-14 11:28:53

[quote="IF Art Show"]Any piece that fits into the above parameters is IF Art. There 
is no one "set" way to do it or view it. Note that no entries 
are rejected. Those not meeting the above guidelines may not 
win, but they will not be rejected and will be put on display.

[...][i]Remember:[/i] "Bad" art is still art. [/quote]
The Art Show had fairly specific purposes: it was not particularly intended to produce complete, playable games (winnable, plot-driven, or puzzly), but rather went for experiential stuff.

Promoting a particular kind of attitude to IF, and particular kinds of game, was probably a more central purpose than producing an outreach showcase. The Art Show was to a great extent a salvo in the conflict between Old-School (big, puzzly, difficult, traditional themes) and New-School (smaller, easy or puzzle-free, experiential, literary themes), which I think the community has mostly progressed beyond.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3951&start=0#p28280
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What does "visible" actually mean?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-14 11:31:13

What always gets me in a bind is that "visible" actually has two different meanings, depending on context. In the definition of an action it means there is no touchability requirement. But it's also defined as an adjective meaning "in scope." So sometimes "visible" means exactly what you think it does, which only makes it more confusing when it doesn't.

As far as I know, there's no adjective meaning "applicable to the current grammar line" - so for example if you have this:

[code]Understand "open [any closed thing]" as telekinetically opening.[/code]

you'll just have to reiterate "closed things" to figure out what might apply.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3945&start=0#p28281
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: strange compiler bug
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2011-12-14 11:32:24

?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3951&start=0#p28282
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What does "visible" actually mean?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-14 11:40:19

I just looked at the Uservoice request and I noticed an even deeper potential for confusion:

People there are suggesting the phrase "in scope" instead of visible, but at the moment, this is closer to the adjective definition than the action definition:

[code]Test is a room. There is an apple.

Discussing is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "discuss [any thing]" as discussing. Report discussing: say "You talk about [the noun].";

After deciding the scope of the player when touching: place the apple in scope;

Every turn: showme the list of visible things.

test me with "discuss apple/touch apple/z"[/code]

If you run this, you'll see that using the "any" token in the discussing command does not make the apple visible. Does that mean it's not in scope? I'm not sure.

On the other hand, placing the apple in scope explicitly when touching causes the apple to become visible, even though it really isn't.

My conclusion: Not only is the word "visible" ambiguous and confusing, but the phrase "in scope" is not much better. We need a clearer distinction between "available to the current action," "available to the parser," and "perceptible to the PC."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3945&start=0#p28283
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: strange compiler bug
User: Peter Rickardson / DateTime: 2011-12-14 11:41:45

It works, or at least it compiles. Thank you all for your help, not least Jacek Pudlo whose cryptic question marks have been a source of inspiration [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=50#p28284
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-12-14 11:50:04

Yay! registering the dll from your cab file (anyone in the same case, remember to run the command line as an administrator to avoid more troubleshooting than needed!) has done the job. Thanks a lot!  [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3941&start=20#p28285
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction Festival?
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-12-14 12:05:18

[quote="matt w"]But it might tamp the Epic Whine Flamewars (just) a bit if people whose games were rejected were still in the festival somewhere, and it would be less disappointing for an author than if they worked on their game and had nowhere to put it at all.[/quote]My feeling is that it would be better to not release "rejected" games at all if we are going to be doing any rejecting. The reason being, a game that is privately submitted for consideration but rejected altogether could still be eligible for some other, later comp, being still unreleased. A game that's released with the festival as "Here are the sucky games that were also submitted, but we recommend you not play them" is basically buried forever.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3941&start=20#p28286
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction Festival?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-14 12:13:42

[quote="trojo"][quote="matt w"]But it might tamp the Epic Whine Flamewars (just) a bit if people whose games were rejected were still in the festival somewhere, and it would be less disappointing for an author than if they worked on their game and had nowhere to put it at all.[/quote]My feeling is that it would be better to not release "rejected" games at all if we are going to be doing any rejecting. The reason being, a game that is privately submitted for consideration but rejected altogether could still be eligible for some other, later comp, being still unreleased. A game that's released with the festival as "Here are the sucky games that were also submitted, but we recommend you not play them" is basically buried forever.[/quote]

I was thinking that authors would have the option of whether to participate in the Annex or not, but fair enough.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3941&start=20#p28287
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction Festival?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-14 12:20:55

[quote="trojo"][quote="matt w"]But it might tamp the Epic Whine Flamewars (just) a bit if people whose games were rejected were still in the festival somewhere, and it would be less disappointing for an author than if they worked on their game and had nowhere to put it at all.[/quote]My feeling is that it would be better to not release "rejected" games at all if we are going to be doing any rejecting. The reason being, a game that is privately submitted for consideration but rejected altogether could still be eligible for some other, later comp, being still unreleased. A game that's released with the festival as "Here are the sucky games that were also submitted, but we recommend you not play them" is basically buried forever.[/quote]
That was more or less my thought also: "I'm sorry, but we don't think that your game is suitable for this event: here are some brief, private recommendations about how it might be improved, and we wish you success in some other venue."

The first idea I had about how to do this: some kind of supermajority vote from the judges to reject a game, held privately, according to some kind of loosely-worded standard ("the game is adequately implemented, appears written in good faith and fits the premise of the category", say). Of course, that could lead to accusations of secret trials and hooded Old One cabals, but I for one don't really give a toss.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3947&start=0#p28288
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pushing Between Rooms
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-12-14 12:24:24

OK, so what would be the best workaround if you want the player to be able to push and pick up the very heavy bookcase but not carry it between rooms?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3947&start=0#p28289
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pushing Between Rooms
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-14 12:28:56

How about this?

[code]Instead of going while the player is carrying something that is not the thing gone with:
   say "You can't walk while you're holding [the list of carried things that are not the thing gone with]."[/code]

Action variables can be a pain in the rear. It would be nice to define an adjective that means "carried but not because it's being pushed," but you can't refer to an action variable in the definition, so I don't think it's possible.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3949&start=0#p28290
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Frotz development help needed
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-12-14 13:36:08

I've done a lot of Turbo C + DOS in my time.  If you know where I can get a copy of Turbo C nowadays, I can spot-check particular problems.   

I don't have a lot of time for fun stuff right now though, and it could be the better part of a month before I do.  I already have a parser project looking at me like a stood-up date.  But if you just need someone to ask about particular compiler errors and whatnot I could probably find a half-hour every so often.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3944&start=0#p28291
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Getting two warnings on TADS3 compile
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-12-14 13:45:50

Thanks again for the help. I hate to sound ignorant about all this stuff but I should make it known the I have Dementia which is a short term memory loss. I have to read the TADS manuals many, many times because I forget what I have learned in the recent past. However, I am slowly remembering the things that I have repeatly read.

Having said this, I am asking how I can recognise both the serialNum property and the showCopyright method that, indeed, are from RTDD. I am using RTDD as well as the manuals to learn the basics of TADS. Some of the applications I'm writing are no doubt advanced for me at this point but I'm attempting to write my game source in a linear fashion so that I have a better feel about how everything interconnects.

Thanks and please bear with me. [emote]:D[/emote] 

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1651&start=50#p28292
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary: A Scott Adams Classic Adventure Format Creato
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2011-12-14 14:10:41

Cool, thanks for the report back. Glad it works!

Official setup kit now available at: [url]http://www.therealeasterbunny.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/visionary.htm[/url] [emote]:)[/emote]

Back soon after much thought on all things SAFTAC / software jigging etc ...

By the way, the VB Package Wizard did include automatically:

MSSTDFMT.DLL             !!! Aha --- confirmed this was the missing bit needed !!!
SETUP.EXE                   !!! VB stuff
SETUP1.EXE                  !!! VB stuff
ST6UNST.EXE                !!! VB unistall stuff
VB6 Runtime and OLE Automation            !!! Extra bits which I thought *everything* was in
VB6STKIT.DLL                !!! VB stuff
Visionary.EXE                 !!! The EXE [emote]:)[/emote]

---------

Then I manually added the following into the package:

Sample_game.dat
index.htm
version_history.txt
visionary.ini


Thanks again for your feedback!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3947&start=0#p28293
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pushing Between Rooms
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-14 14:25:27

Easiest workaround, I guess, would be to write an "instead of pushing the bookcase to" rule that doesn't invoke going at all. (Just set the player and bookcase location manually.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3944&start=0#p28294
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Getting two warnings on TADS3 compile
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-14 14:58:14

[quote="RonG"]I am asking how I can recognise both the serialNum property and the showCopyright method that, indeed, are from RTDD.[/quote]

You can fix the compiler warnings by adding those properties / methods to your versionInfo object, or by putting this code somewhere:

[code]
modify versionInfo
    serialNum = 12345678

    showCopyright()
    {
        "Blah blah blah. ";
    }
;
[/code]

If you're asking how do you tell that serialNum and showCopyright are custom properties, the general approach is to go to the [url=http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/libref/index.html]Library Reference[/url], click on All Symbols in the upper left, and then search for those by name.

In this case they aren't listed, which means they aren't part of adv3, which in turn means that they must be defined in the source code for the game you're pulling the example code from.

Figuring out exactly where is a job for your tools. Workbench has a Project > Find in Project Files command which is ideal for this sort of thing. (For that matter, it will find the adv3 symbols, but often these are defined and redefined in several places, and it's easier to use the Library Reference to decide which definition is relevant.)

If you haven't done so already, you may want to set up RtDD as its own project in Workbench, so you can easily switch to it and search the code when you run into situations like this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=0#p28295
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-12-14 15:40:56

When you say based on a word list, do you mean a game that includes [i]all[/i] the words on the list, or a game that uses [i]nothing but[/i] the words on the list, or something else?

I might be interested, although it would help to have some information about the audience (children?  high schoolers?  adults?) and what sort of content you would or wouldn't want.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3941&start=20#p28296
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction Festival?
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-12-14 15:49:15

[quote]Of course, that could lead to accusations of secret trials and hooded Old One cabals, but I for one don't really give a toss.[/quote]

Not as long as the author is provided with a substantive reason why it was rejected.  From the author's perspective it would  be nice to get full feedback even if you're rejected, but that puts the burden on the reviewers again, so some brief comments are probably the best compromise.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3941&start=20#p28297
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction Festival?
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-12-14 16:09:18

You guys haven't even picked a theme (Cave People) and you're already kicking people out?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3952&start=0#p28298
Forum: Competitions / Subject: IF Festival poll 1: general directions
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-14 16:13:19

Given that the options for a theme are extremely open at the moment, and nobody seems prepared to make an executive decision, let's take it to a poll: what kind of games would you like to see encouraged by a curated IF festival / Art Show-type event?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3941&start=20#p28299
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction Festival?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-14 16:21:56

[quote="Afterward"]You guys haven't even picked a theme (Cave People) and you're already kicking people out?[/quote]
We're talking about the nature of the event. We haven't even decided about whether we [i]are[/i] going to have curation or entry restrictions: but in order to make that decision, we have to have some idea about how those restrictions might be put in place. (If, for example, there's no good way to do it, that's a pretty straightforward reason why we shouldn't do it at all.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3941&start=20#p28300
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction Festival?
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-12-14 17:40:37

I think that, if there isn't any scoring, there ought to be [i]some[/i] kind of screening, particularly if it's an outreach event: You want to be able to pick any game and have a reasonably good experience and come away with a good opinion of IF; you don't want people who are curious about the genre stumbling into someone's half-implemented sandbox of their apartment and getting the impression that all IF is totally half-assed.  Finishability, for instance, would be a good requirement.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3943&start=0#p28301
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New Mini-Extension: Objects Matching Snippets
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-12-14 17:42:47

I don't know if this'll be directly useful, but as usual a few programming details (of the well of COURSE you can do it that way if you think about it that way type) hit me on the head once I paid a bit of attention. So even if it's not directly useful, it's helpful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3931&start=0#p28302
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: swanky supporters for swanky items
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-12-14 18:10:59

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Standard handling in the before routine should be able to cover all of this. react_before is really for when some OTHER object in the room needs to react before an action occurs.

If the silver tea tray is movable, then before Drop: would have to look around to see whether the tray is in the location -- something like this (untested, and my I6 is rusty):

[code]before [;
     Drop: if (tea_tray in location) {
          move self to tea_tray;
          "You set the cup gently on the silver tea tray.";
          }
     else "If you drop the cup on the floor, it will surely break.";
],[/code]
[/quote]

That places the emphasis on the items that you're dropping. That approach is fine if you have only a few items that you need to drop. However, if you have a lot of items that might be dropped, then the emphasis should be on the supporter objects.

Imagine this:

Class catcher
with
     react_before[;
          Drop: move noun to self; 
                    "Oh no! Dropping ", the (noun), " on the floor just wouldn't do. You place it carefully on ", (the) self, " instead.";
    ];

Object sballrm "Stanky Ballroom"
with 
     description "A stinky place where people dance. Fun!",
has light;

Catcher tray "silver tray" sballrm
with 
    name 'silver tray' 'tray',
has supporter;

Object doshrip "day-old shrimp" sballrm
with
     name 'shrimp';

This is fairly crude as the Catcher items will prevent ANYTHING from being dropped in their location, which may not be what you want. Some things, like say, a handkerchief, might be able to be dropped on the floor. In that case, you'd need to do an (ofclass) in the react_before for the Catcher class.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3943&start=0#p28303
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New Mini-Extension: Objects Matching Snippets
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-14 19:58:52

I've added a rulebook called "did the player choose" - it works like "does the player mean" but for objects. It's not invoked during normal parsing, but you can use it with the relations in the extension to find "the most likely thing identified by the topic understood," for example.

The updated version is at the same link:

<a class="postlink" href="http://eyeballsun.org/i/Objects%20Matching%20Snippets.i7x">http://eyeballsun.org/i/Objects%20Match ... ippets.i7x</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3931&start=0#p28304
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: swanky supporters for swanky items
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-14 20:47:59

Never mind ... earlier version of this response deleted. You're right -- a react_before would be appropriate in this case.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=0#p28305
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-12-14 20:54:31

[quote="ektemple"][quote="sai"]I compile as glulx.
Since I knew lists eat a lot of memory, I have very few lists. And each have just a few items in it.[/quote]

I wouldn't worry about the memory consumption if you're compiling to Glulx. "Lots" is a relative term, and while it certainly applies to lists when you're compiling to the tiny Z-machine, it isn't the appropriate descriptor when you're compiling to the Glulx VM. Even lists with several thousand entries won't cause you any problems with Glulx.

--Erik[/quote]

Okay thank you.
I bumped into another limitation yesterday, not about lists but the number of temporary variables allowed (it is said the limit is 15).
I created several subfunctions to solve the problem.
I haven written 5% of the game and already hitting so many limitation I am wondering if Inform 7 was the right choice (lol)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3939&start=0#p28306
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Activities VS To statements... What is the difference?
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-12-14 20:59:28

[quote="capmikee"]It usually comes down to how complicated an action you want to perform. If it's a simple matter of making one change or calculation each time, and it's always the same, a "to..." phrase makes sense. But if it depends on the circumstances, and has many repercussions in the game world, an activity is much more flexible.

There are two things that "To" phrases don't handle well:

Being detected and extended: You can always test "if the foo activity is going on," but there's no way to know if the thing you're doing now was invoked by a particular phrase. Activities also have "before" and "after" rulebooks so you can add on extra behaviors to them. I had some big headaches with the low-level "update backdrop positions" phrase. I wanted to do some extra things every time it ran, but I had no way to do that.

Being replaced and varied: There is only one "to" phrase for each syntax. But you can have as many "for" rules for an activity as you want. As long as you make sure they're ordered correctly, you can arrange for any level of nuance in circumstances.

In general, I use more "to" phrases in my game source, and more activities in extensions that I write. It's critical to be flexible when you're writing code that others will share, but if you can go back and modify the code easily, it makes more sense to start with something simple.

I like your approach though. I was afraid to use activities for a long time and I ended up with some awkward and bloated phrases. It's much easier to simplify an activity to a phrase than to go the other way around...[/quote]

Thank you very much for the explanation. I guess this will be very useful since I begin to feel the limitations of the To statements, and awkard phrases are beginning to hold up the source (^^)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=10#p28308
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-14 21:48:16

This is not a problem that people report frequently. I suspect there's something about the way you're writing the game that is taking up more resources than you really need. You might want to find a friendly programmer to look at your entire source in detail and see if there are any red flags.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=10#p28309
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-14 21:50:02

[quote]I bumped into another limitation yesterday, not about lists but the number of temporary variables allowed (it is said the limit is 15).[/quote]

You mean "Too many local variables for a routine"? I am curious how you hit that in I7.

In Glulx this limit is raised to 119.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3941&start=20#p28310
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction Festival?
User: George / DateTime: 2011-12-14 22:03:03

I like the idea that a Festival could be something that other comps haven't been before. We talk a good deal about innovation in IF games, how about changing up how comps have been done? To that point I think screening games, etc. isn't a bad idea. 

On the flip side, how many comps have there been where there were enough games to screen?  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=10#p28311
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-12-14 22:56:19

The I7 compiler has a limit of 15 temporary variables in a single rule. I suspect that this is the limit referred to. It shouldn't affect most authors, but I've run into while having to do a lot of math...

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=10#p28312
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-12-14 22:58:48

[quote="ektemple"]The I7 compiler has a limit of 15 temporary variables in a single rule. I suspect that this is the limit referred to. It shouldn't affect most authors, but I've run into while having to do a lot of math...

--Erik[/quote]

Yes this is it.
You can hit it easily.
Try to create more than 15 variables with
let X be a number
let Y be a text
etc...

If they deal with tables it may be limited to 7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=10#p28313
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-14 23:07:53

I have a strong feeling you are treating I7 like some other programming language, and not taking advantage of the power that it does have. You could take a step back, and look for things that you could do in a more "Informish" way, or you could look around for a language that fits your style better. TADS 3 is more like traditional object-oriented languages, for example. So is Inform 6.

I'm definitely curious now. Would you mind posting the full text of a rule or phrase you've written that contains more than 15 variables?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=10#p28314
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-14 23:11:36

This has been bothering me since your first post. I'd like to take a look at your code. Or your pseudo code. Or whatever you'd like to provide. You shouldn't be hitting this many memory limitations.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3941&start=30#p28317
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction Festival?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-15 01:49:12

Hmmm. This seems to be going into territory where people like me do not belong at all, but I'll cheer from the sidelines, as it were. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=0#p28318
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-15 01:52:01

[quote="ela"]Paul Nation's second 1000 words of the General Service List should be used in the games[/quote]

That's a specific [i]list,[/i] but otherwise a very vague thing to say.

[quote="ela"]If you are interested please leave your email and we'll talk about the details.[/quote]

Here's just fine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3938&start=0#p28319
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: PM Attachment File Types
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-15 01:54:12

That wastes space on the forum. You should zip or rar it and then post it. I don't see why anyone wouldn't want to do that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=10#p28320
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-15 01:56:49

I haven't run into this I7 limit before. I suspect that most game authors haven't.

It's worth filing a feature request to raise it (for Glulx games). It's probably easy enough, and it just hasn't been looked at, simply *because* most game authors don't run into it.

On the flip side, as capmikee was saying -- most authors don't run into it because there are often ways to do things that don't require temporary variables.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3942&start=0#p28321
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: IF Project for Android
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-15 02:12:30

[quote="Eastep"]ANARCHY! Stick it to the man! Break the rules, defy the norms![/quote]

Um. Okay.

What?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3955&start=0#p28322
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Taking and description
User: lemort / DateTime: 2011-12-15 03:25:22

Hi 

never mind the nonsense text, this is just for testing.  

 [code] 

Bedroom is a room. "Very nice bedroom, lots of sleeping in here, occasionally."

A pillow is in the bedroom. Description of pillow is "Love it, yeah."
A mat is in the bedroom. Description of Mat is "This is too much for a classy room like this."
A CD is in the bedroom. Description of CD is "High-culture music." 
A book is in the bedroom. Description of book is "Not Kama Sutra, it's just the latest novel by Danielle Steel."

Instead of taking:
	if the noun is pillow:
		say "yeah. [line break]";
	otherwise:
		if the noun is CD:
			say "cool thing. [line break]";
		otherwise:
			say "You're right. You can take that too (and so you did) [line break]".

 [/code]

Can a description of a thing when taken/dropped be added to the lines that are putting the stuff into the game?
something like

[code]

The thingy is in the bedroom. Description of thingy is "a thingy thing, this thing." When thingy is taken "you took it.". When thingy is dropped "and now you dropped it, this thingy."
[/code]


If you check out this transcript of "playing the game" you'll see that the book can be taken several times and that, if dropped, already is in the room.  But I thought a thing would automatically move to the player when taken?

[rant][quote] 
Bedroom
Very nice bedroom, lots of sleeping in here, occasionally.

You can see a pillow, a mat, a CD and a book here.

>take book
You're right. You can take that too (and so you did) 

>take all
pillow: yeah. 
mat: You're right. You can take that too (and so you did) 
CD: cool thing. 
book: You're right. You can take that too (and so you did) 

>drop book
The book is already here.

 [/quote][/rant]

M:)rten

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3956&start=0#p28323
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: How to discard most default actions and rules?
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-12-15 03:33:40

I am writing a small game and I dont need most of the default actions.

I created an awkward :
instead of the player doing something other than...
and a:
Rule for printing a parser error

to block all commands except a few.

But for example if the player types "attack"
there is the default rule that provides a missing noun that displays "(Charles)" if for example a person called Charles is here, before writing the expected error message.

How can I disable all these kind of problems I can't even imagine since I don't know all the default rules and actions?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3955&start=0#p28324
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Taking and description
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-12-15 03:39:29

The Instead rule has a default result of "failure." That means the action stops at the end of the rule. In the case of your example, this happens after printing the message about taking the thing, so taking never actually happens. One thing you could do is use an After rule:

[code]After taking the pillow: say "You snag the thing. O the pillowy goodness!"[/code]

After rules, as the name implies, fire after the action has already made changes in the world model (the Carry Out phase). That means you can use them to print messages about what happened, or create secondary effects that spring from the action. Reporting what happened could also be done with the Report rules, but in this case After rules should be more straightforward. 

A word about rules may be in order. The nested construction you're using,

[code]Instead of taking:
   if the noun is pillow:
      say "yeah. [line break]";
   otherwise:
      if the noun is CD:
         say "cool thing. [line break]";
      otherwise:
         say "You're right. You can take that too (and so you did) [line break]".[/code]

works, but the way rules are intended to work provides an easier, more I7 method of doing it.

[code]After taking something: say "You're right. You can take that too (and so you did)."

After taking the pillow: say "Nice. Also, fluffy."
After taking the CD: say "Cool thing!"[/code]

Now the general statement ("taking something") will be overridden by the more specific ones, in a way that can be extended as needed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3956&start=0#p28325
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to discard most default actions and rules?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-15 04:18:59

Below is code for making Inform forget all player's command verbs defined by the Standard Rules. Edit to suit your purpose.

[rant]Understand the commands "take", "carry", "hold", "get" and "pick" as something new.
Understand the command "stand" as something new.
Understand the commands "remove", "shed", "doff", "wear" and "don" as something new.
Understand the commands "put", "insert", "drop", "throw" and "discard" as something new.
Understand the commands "give", "pay", "offer", "feed", "show", "present" and "display" as something new.
Understand the commands "go", "walk" and "run" as something new.
Understand the commands "inventory", "i" and "inv" as something new.
Understand the commands "look", "l" and "consult" as something new.
Understand the commands "open", "unwrap", "uncover", "close", "shut" and "cover" as something new.
Understand the commands "enter", "cross", "sit", "exit", "leave" and "out" as something new.
Understand the commands "examine", "x", "watch", "describe", "check" and "read" as something new.
Understand the commands "yes", "y", "no" and "sorry" as something new.
Understand the commands "bother", "curses", "drat", "darn", "shit", "fuck" and "damn" as something new.
Understand the command "search" as something new.
Understand the command "wave" as something new.
Understand the commands "set" and "adjust" as something new.
Understand the commands "pull", "drag", "push", "move", "shift", "clear" and "press" as something new.
Understand the commands "turn", "rotate", "twist", "unscrew", "screw", and "switch" as something new.
Understand the commands "lock" and "unlock" as something new.
Understand the commands "attack", "break", "smash", "hit", "fight", "torture", "wreck", "crack", "destroy", "murder", "kill", "punch" and "thump" as something new.
Understand the commands "wait" and "z" as something new.
Understand the commands "answer", "say", "shout", "speak", "tell" and "ask" as something new.
Understand the command "eat" as something new.
Understand the commands "sleep" and "nap" as something new.
Understand the command "sing" as something new.
Understand the commands "climb" and "scale" as something new.
Understand the commands "buy" and "purchase" as something new.
Understand the commands "squeeze" and "squash" as something new.
Understand the commands "take", "carry", "hold", "get" and "pick" as something new.
Understand the command "swing" as something new.
Understand the commands "wake", "awake" and "awaken" as something new.
Understand the commands "kiss", "embrace" and "hug" as something new.
Understand the commands "think" as something new.
Understand the commands "smell", "sniff", "listen", "hear", "taste" and "touch" as something new.
Understand the commands "rub", "shine", "polish", "sweep", "clean", "dust", "wipe", and "scrub" as something new.
Understand the commands "tie", "attach" and "fasten" as something new.
Understand the commands "burn" and "light" as something new.
Understand the commands "drink", "swallow" and "sip" as something new.
Understand the commands "cut", "slice", "prune" and "chop" as something new.
Understand the commands "jump", "skip" and "hop" as something new.
[Understand the commands "score", "quit", "q", "save", "restart" and "restore" as something new.
Understand the commands "verify" and "version" as something new.
Understand the commands "script" and "transcript" as something new.
Understand the commands "superbrief", "short", "verbose", "long", "brief" and "normal" as something new.
Understand the commands "nouns" and "pronouns" as something new.
Understand the command "notify" as something new.][/rant]

(This approach won't result in a notably smaller game file however. All the actions etc. will still be defined as usual, only the player can't trigger them. So, its usefulness depends on why you want to disable standard actions.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3955&start=0#p28326
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Taking and description
User: lemort / DateTime: 2011-12-15 04:34:23

Thank you!

Interesting and informative. 

I see the logic in Instead-failure. Thx

(I love the humour you guys comes up with all the time. Nice pillow-statements Eleas! )

M:)rten

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=100#p28327
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-12-15 05:07:16

Right. A deadline does not represent a meaningful time limit at all unless everybody also starts at the same time. The point of the deadline here is not so that everybody has the same amount of time; it's so that everybody has a bunch of games available to play at the same time.

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=0#p28328
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: ela / DateTime: 2011-12-15 07:50:24

[quote="katz"]When you say based on a word list, do you mean a game that includes [i]all[/i] the words on the list, or a game that uses [i]nothing but[/i] the words on the list, or something else?

I might be interested, although it would help to have some information about the audience (children?  high schoolers?  adults?) and what sort of content you would or wouldn't want.[/quote]


About 10 words or more [b](your choice)[/b] out of 1000 words (which I'll give you) should be used in each game and these words are supposed to be repeated throughout each game (about 7-8 times each word) as I am working on my students incidental vocabulary learning. I don't want the games to be complicated or anything. I just want them to be fun and easy (different genres). The players will be 18-20 year old non-native learners of English.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=0#p28329
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: ela / DateTime: 2011-12-15 07:53:02

[quote="Ghalev"] That's a specific [i]list,[/i] but otherwise a very vague thing to say[/quote]


About 10 words or more (your choice) out of 1000 words (which I'll give you) should be used in each game and these words are supposed to be repeated throughout each game (about 7-8 times each word) as I am working on my students incidental vocabulary learning. I don't want the games to be complicated or anything. I just want them to be fun and easy (different genres). The players will be 18-20 year old non-native learners of English.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=0#p28330
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-15 07:54:32

[quote="ela"]About 10 words or more (your choice) out of 1000 words (which I'll give you) should be used in each game and these words are supposed to be repeated throughout each game (about 7-8 times each word) as I am working on my students incidental vocabulary learning. I don't want the games to be complicated or anything. I just want them to be fun and easy (different genres). The players will be 18-20 year old non-native learners of English.[/quote]

Oh, that does sound fun, actually. I've also got some training and experience as an ESL coach, so I'm sure I could dust off that part of my brain as well. Hmmmm ....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=0#p28331
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: ela / DateTime: 2011-12-15 07:57:17

[quote="Ghalev"]Oh, that does sound fun, actually. I've also got some training and experience as an ESL coach, so I'm sure I could dust off that part of my brain as well. Hmmmm ....[/quote]

Say yes, Say yes  [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=0#p28332
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-15 08:02:40

[quote="ela"][quote="Ghalev"]Oh, that does sound fun, actually. I've also got some training and experience as an ESL coach, so I'm sure I could dust off that part of my brain as well. Hmmmm ....[/quote]

Say yes, Say yes  [emote]:D[/emote][/quote]

Well, I'll say an enthused maybe [emote]:)[/emote] I'm neck-deep in production work on one of my books right now and the holidays are on, etc, but once that clears off I'll be anxious for a little break from it all, and this sounds like a good excuse to write something small, simple and engaging.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=10#p28333
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: ela / DateTime: 2011-12-15 08:08:41

[quote="Ghalev"]...once that clears off I'll be anxious for a little break from it all, and this sounds like a good excuse to write something small, simple and engaging.[/quote]

So when are you going to let me know? Cause this research is for the academic purpose and I have time limitations.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=10#p28334
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-15 08:34:30

[quote="ela"][quote="Ghalev"]...once that clears off I'll be anxious for a little break from it all, and this sounds like a good excuse to write something small, simple and engaging.[/quote]

So when are you going to let me know? Cause this research is for the academic purpose and I have time limitations.[/quote]

I thought you said two months?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=10#p28335
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: ela / DateTime: 2011-12-15 08:37:34

[quote="Ghalev"] I thought you said two months?[/quote]

Yeah about 2 months!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=10#p28336
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-15 08:39:11

[quote="ela"][quote="Ghalev"] I thought you said two months?[/quote]

Yeah about 2 months![/quote]

Well, I'll let you know in five weeks or less [emote]:)[/emote] And hopefully a few other folks will want to pitch in as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3957&start=0#p28337
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Doors and "removing" them
User: lemort / DateTime: 2011-12-15 08:58:01

Hi

First of all, a note. I do not intend to flood this board with "every little problem" i have. But still a bit unfamiliar with I7's "way of thinking" and easily getting lost in the manual...

I want a door to lock itself (done), being blown to pieces (kinda done) and "removed". Removed for the reason that I don't want it to be there anymore. So if it's "forced open and defined as uncloseable" is sort of good enough. 

But I can't manage to do it. And removing doors seems to be a bit illegal.....

[rant][code]
"So, testing is the new fun" by Morten Flaten

Shaking is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "shake [any thing]" as shaking.

A Kitchen is a Room. South of Kitchen is Living Room. West of Kitchen is Bathroom. Down from Kitchen is Basement. Up from Kitchen is Attic.

	

Section Kitchen

Door from Hell is east of Kitchen. Office is east from Door from Hell. Door from Hell is a door. Door from Hell is lockable and unlocked.

there is a Thingy in the Office. "Thingy thing is thingy, but not that much."

After going through Door From Hell for the first time:
	say "muhaaahaaa, door from Hell!!! It slams shut behind you! (spooky).";
	move player to office;
	Now the Door from Hell is closed;
	Now Door from Hell is locked.
	
Before opening Door from Hell when Door from Hell is locked:
	say "Buhu, the door is locked." [this obviously "doesn't work", the [after opening] message is still around]

Before shaking thingy:
	say "smart move. The thingy now explodes and the door vanishes in a pretty vague vanish-kaboom.";
	Now Door from Hell is open; [/code][/rant]

Text is still pure nonsense and not meant to be anything else. yet. 

One other thing I can't seem to get done. (I know I saw this in the manual, or elsewhere, but I can't relocate it [emote]:([/emote] ) :

When the door is locked, you can't open it. Ofcourse. But if you try to go W it says something like "after opening the door" but it seems to be locked. I want that default "[after opening....]" to be very very gone. From my game(s).  [emote]:)[/emote]

M:)rten

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=10#p28338
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: ela / DateTime: 2011-12-15 08:58:19

[quote="Ghalev"] I'll let you know in five weeks or less [emote]:)[/emote] And hopefully a few other folks will want to pitch in as well.[/quote]

That's awesome!!!! I'm looking forward to hearing from you as soon as possible.   

Thanks a lot !  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3956&start=0#p28339
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to discard most default actions and rules?
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-12-15 09:16:22

There is no simple solution ? incredible! 
Anyway thank you it will be useful. I will delete just the few I need the parser to answer to ^^

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3956&start=0#p28340
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to discard most default actions and rules?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-15 09:28:13

It's looking more and more like I7 may not be the right language for your project.

There has been talk of writing a "Standard Rules Lite" extension. I did some poking around to see if I could delete all actions at a low level, but there appear to be complications.

I could have sworn someone else has already started work on the project though. Was it Ron Newcomb?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=10#p28341
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-12-15 09:31:59

since I corrected the problem I am not sure if seeing the code would help (anyway I post from my phone right now so I can't past it).
This is a code for a punching action which checks in order the potential damage done to a body part, the potential damage done to its bone(s) the potential damage done to the internal organs, and that calculatel also the critical hits. The relative size of the persons is also taken in account. The progression of the damages and their probabilities are define for each bodypart, bone and organ in tables.

I couls have done it more informishly but I am not familiar with rulebooks and activities yet. I would't know how to code an in depth fighting system with them...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=10#p28342
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-15 09:45:59

Oh, you're the one doing the complex RPG/simulation. Let me guess, every person has a collection of body parts, every body part has a collection of tissues, every tissue has a collection of statistics, and you end up with a really big amount of data because of that.

I think it could be done in I7, but it might be a good idea to get more familiar with the language first, perhaps with a simpler project. Or you could use a language that's better adapted to detailed simulations. Inform was originally created for more descriptive games, where the world model has only enough detail to represent it as prose.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3957&start=0#p28343
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Doors and "removing" them
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-15 10:07:03

No worries, Mort. Your examples are fun!

It looks like you're putting the rules in the wrong rulebook again. Before rules continue the action by default. I think what you really want here is an Instead rule:

[code]Instead of opening locked Door from Hell:
   say "Buhu, the door is locked."[/code]

You'll noticed I also stuck the "locked" adjective before the name of the door for brevity. I7 lets you do lots of handy things like that.

I think shaking the thingy works better with an Instead rule too, but you need to do some extra things to make everything work right:

[code]Instead of shaking thingy:
   say "smart move. The thingy now explodes and the door vanishes in a pretty vague vanish-kaboom.";
   Now Door from Hell is open;
   Now Door from Hell is unlocked;
   Now Door from Hell is not openable;
   Now Door from Hell is improper-named;
   Now the printed name of Door from Hell is "blackened hole in the wall";[/code]

The door must be open, obviously. But it must also be unlocked to prevent the special "locked" message you wrote (alternatively, you could change that Instead rule to test for the [b]closed locked[/b] door.) If you make the door "not openable," then you'll be prevented from closing it, which is good when the door's not really there. The last two lines work together. Since we can't remove the door from play, I change the name of the door so it doesn't look like a door anymore, and I make it improper-named so it will get an "a" or "the" before its name in descriptions.

This is sort of the reverse of a hidden-door puzzle. Kinda cool! There are tried-and-true approaches to creating hidden doors, but I've never looked at them - maybe someone else will have some tips.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3957&start=0#p28344
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Doors and "removing" them
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-15 10:18:48

[quote="lemort"]Hi
But I can't manage to do it. And removing doors seems to be a bit illegal.....
[/quote]

So it won't let you

[code]Remove Door from Hell from play.[/code]

Or move it out of scope?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=10#p28345
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-15 10:20:54

I still think this could be done more simply with properties.

/shrug

Curious to see what the end result looks like, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3956&start=0#p28346
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to discard most default actions and rules?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-15 10:23:20

I'm pretty sure that "Default Messages" (which I love) will let you define a custom default response.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3956&start=0#p28347
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to discard most default actions and rules?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-15 10:31:44

This is a simple but brutal solution, which basically throws out the whole parser and then puts a few bits back in:

[code]Section Grammar (in place of Section SR4/10 - Grammar in Standard Rules by Graham Nelson)

[by Juhana Leitonen]

Understand "quit" or "q" as quitting the game.
Understand "save" as saving the game.
Understand "restart" as restarting the game.
Understand "restore" as restoring the game.
Understand "verify" as verifying the story file.
Understand "version" as requesting the story file version.
Understand "script" or "script on" or "transcript" or "transcript on" as switching the story
   transcript on.
Understand "script off" or "transcript off" as switching the story transcript off.[/code]

Simply writing a section that goes in place of SR4/10 eliminates the part of the Standard Rules that contains all the declarations; the actual section puts back some of the metacommands that your players are going to want. (Especially quitting. Don't remove quitting.) Then you'd have to declare all the commands that you want to work -- in the games Juhana and I used this in, we were processing commands entirely through keywords. 

Even with this section put in, the game will still understand a direction as going in that direction (so "w" would be understood as going west). I think that's hardcoded into I6.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3957&start=0#p28348
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Doors and "removing" them
User: lemort / DateTime: 2011-12-15 10:34:43

[quote="I4L"]

Or move it out of scope?[/quote]

Here is another thing I don't understand, maybe because I don't fully understand what the word scope is saying. 
I read about "scope" yesterday, but didn't get it.

[quote="capmikee"]No worries, Mort. Your examples are fun!

It looks like you're putting the rules in the wrong rulebook again. Before rules continue the action by default. I think what you really want here is an Instead rule:[/quote]

Glad to hear! 

Yeah, I start to get it now. I really have to dig a bit deeper into what the "words" instead, before, after and so on actually does. 
Their more than words, they are powerful rules and commands. (repeat x1000)

I liked what you did to the door, good solution. Learned a lot from it.  
(That's something I like about Inform7, when you explain one thing to me I start to see how it relates to other things as well. Easier to see bigger pictures in I7 than when writing stuff like
if x=y, 
else when z; 
come on, do f now; 
Now
or else;

I had a lot of fun writing ActionScript 3 a couple of years ago, but it was hard to remember stuff and also hard to see bigger pics. )

M:)rten

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3957&start=0#p28349
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Doors and "removing" them
User: lemort / DateTime: 2011-12-15 10:48:51

[quote="capmikee"]

[code]Instead of opening locked Door from Hell:
   say "Buhu, the door is locked."[/code]

[/quote]

Do I miss something here? 

This code does not remove the default (first opening door from hell) when I try to go west when door is locked.

M:)rten

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3957&start=0#p28350
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Doors and "removing" them
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-12-15 10:54:38

[quote="I4L"][quote="lemort"]Hi
But I can't manage to do it. And removing doors seems to be a bit illegal.....
[/quote]

So it won't let you

[code]Remove Door from Hell from play.[/code]

Or move it out of scope?[/quote]
Removing it from play won't work. It compiles, but it throws a run-time error when you shake the thingy: "P44 - Attempt to remove a door from play... Doors are part of the fixed geography of the model world, and are tied in to the map, so it is illegal to remove them from play. (Of course rules can be used to simulate the absence of a door, or to change its behaviour almost completely.)"

Even if you could remove it from play, it would not work as intended since the player would still be stuck in the office even so. The door is east from the kitchen and the office is east from the door. With no door, there is no more connection between office and kitchen.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3956&start=0#p28351
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to discard most default actions and rules?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-15 11:03:32

I tried ripping out the whole of Part SR4, which includes not only the grammar section but all the action definitions and specific action processing rules. That didn't go so well - most of the actions are built into I6, below even the template layer.

But your idea makes me think I can at least do a little better. Here I copied Part SR4 and edited out all the specific action processing rules except for the out-of-world ones. Then I used your grammar section:

[spoiler][code]Part SR4 - Minimal Actions (in place of Part SR4 - Actions in Standard Rules by Graham Nelson)

Section SR4/1 - Generic action patterns

Section SR4/2 - Standard actions concerning the actor's possessions

Taking inventory is an action applying to nothing.
The taking inventory action translates into I6 as "Inv".
Taking is an action applying to one thing.
The taking action translates into I6 as "Take".
Removing it from is an action applying to two things.
The removing it from action translates into I6 as "Remove".
Dropping is an action applying to one thing.
The dropping action translates into I6 as "Drop".
Putting it on is an action applying to two things.
The putting it on action translates into I6 as "PutOn".
Inserting it into is an action applying to two things.
The inserting it into action translates into I6 as "Insert".
Eating is an action applying to one carried thing.
The eating action translates into I6 as "Eat".

Section SR4/3 - Standard actions which move the actor

Going is an action applying to one visible thing.
The going action translates into I6 as "Go".
Entering is an action applying to one thing.
The entering action translates into I6 as "Enter".
Exiting is an action applying to nothing.
The exiting action translates into I6 as "Exit".
Getting off is an action applying to one thing.
The getting off action translates into I6 as "GetOff".

Section SR4/4 - Standard actions concerning the actor's vision

Looking is an action applying to nothing.
The looking action translates into I6 as "Look".
Examining is an action applying to one visible thing and requiring light.
The examining action translates into I6 as "Examine".
Looking under is an action applying to one visible thing and requiring light.
The looking under action translates into I6 as "LookUnder".
Searching is an action applying to one thing and requiring light.
The searching action translates into I6 as "Search".
Consulting it about is an action applying to one thing and one topic.
The consulting it about action translates into I6 as "Consult".

Section SR4/5 - Standard actions which change the state of things

Locking it with is an action applying to one thing and one carried thing.
The locking it with action translates into I6 as "Lock".
Unlocking it with is an action applying to one thing and one carried thing.
The unlocking it with action translates into I6 as "Unlock".
Switching on is an action applying to one thing.
The switching on action translates into I6 as "SwitchOn".
Switching off is an action applying to one thing.
The switching off action translates into I6 as "SwitchOff".
Opening is an action applying to one thing.
The opening action translates into I6 as "Open".
Closing is an action applying to one thing.
The closing action translates into I6 as "Close".
Wearing is an action applying to one carried thing.
The wearing action translates into I6 as "Wear".
Taking off is an action applying to one carried thing.
The taking off action translates into I6 as "Disrobe".

Section SR4/6 - Standard actions concerning other people

Giving it to is an action applying to one carried thing and one thing.
The giving it to action translates into I6 as "Give".
Showing it to is an action applying to one carried thing and one visible thing.
The showing it to action translates into I6 as "Show".
Waking is an action applying to one thing.
The waking action translates into I6 as "WakeOther".
Throwing it at is an action applying to one carried thing and one visible thing.
The throwing it at action translates into I6 as "ThrowAt".
Attacking is an action applying to one thing.
The attacking action translates into I6 as "Attack".
Kissing is an action applying to one thing.
The kissing action translates into I6 as "Kiss".
Answering it that is an action applying to one thing and one topic.
The answering it that action translates into I6 as "Answer".
Telling it about is an action applying to one thing and one topic.
The telling it about action translates into I6 as "Tell".
Asking it about is an action applying to one thing and one topic.
The asking it about action translates into I6 as "Ask".
Asking it for is an action applying to two things.
The asking it for action translates into I6 as "AskFor".

Section SR4/7 - Standard actions which are checked but then do nothing unless rules intervene

Waiting is an action applying to nothing.
The waiting action translates into I6 as "Wait".
Touching is an action applying to one thing.
The touching action translates into I6 as "Touch".
Waving is an action applying to one thing.
The waving action translates into I6 as "Wave".
Pulling is an action applying to one thing.
The Pulling action translates into I6 as "Pull".
Pushing is an action applying to one thing.
The Pushing action translates into I6 as "Push".
Turning is an action applying to one thing.
The Turning action translates into I6 as "Turn".
Pushing it to is an action applying to one thing and one visible thing.
The Pushing it to action translates into I6 as "PushDir".
Squeezing is an action applying to one thing.
The Squeezing action translates into I6 as "Squeeze".

Section SR4/8 - Standard actions which always do nothing unless rules intervene

Saying yes is an action applying to nothing.
The Saying yes action translates into I6 as "Yes".
Saying no is an action applying to nothing.
The Saying no action translates into I6 as "No".
Burning is an action applying to one thing.
The Burning action translates into I6 as "Burn".
Waking up is an action applying to nothing.
The Waking up action translates into I6 as "Wake".
Thinking is an action applying to nothing.
The Thinking action translates into I6 as "Think".
Smelling is an action applying to one thing.
The Smelling action translates into I6 as "Smell".
Listening to is an action applying to one thing.
The Listening to action translates into I6 as "Listen".
Tasting is an action applying to one thing.
The Tasting action translates into I6 as "Taste".
Cutting is an action applying to one thing.
The Cutting action translates into I6 as "Cut".
Jumping is an action applying to nothing.
The Jumping action translates into I6 as "Jump".
Tying it to is an action applying to two things.
The Tying it to action translates into I6 as "Tie".
Drinking is an action applying to one thing.
The Drinking action translates into I6 as "Drink".
Saying sorry is an action applying to nothing.
The Saying sorry action translates into I6 as "Sorry".
Swearing obscenely is an action censored, and applying to nothing.
The Swearing obscenely action translates into I6 as "Strong".
Swearing mildly is an action censored, and applying to nothing.
The Swearing mildly action translates into I6 as "Mild".
Swinging is an action applying to one thing.
The Swinging action translates into I6 as "Swing".
Rubbing is an action applying to one thing.
The Rubbing action translates into I6 as "Rub".
Setting it to is an action applying to one thing and one topic.
The Setting it to action translates into I6 as "SetTo".
Waving hands is an action applying to nothing.
The Waving hands action translates into I6 as "WaveHands".
Buying is an action applying to one thing.
The Buying action translates into I6 as "Buy".
Singing is an action applying to nothing.
The Singing action translates into I6 as "Sing".
Climbing is an action applying to one thing.
The Climbing action translates into I6 as "Climb".
Sleeping is an action applying to nothing.
The Sleeping action translates into I6 as "Sleep".

Section SR4/9 - Standard actions which happen out of world

Quitting the game is an action out of world and applying to nothing.
The quitting the game action translates into I6 as "Quit".

The quit the game rule is listed in the carry out quitting the game rulebook.
The quit the game rule translates into I6 as "QUIT_THE_GAME_R".

Saving the game is an action out of world and applying to nothing.
The saving the game action translates into I6 as "Save".

The save the game rule is listed in the carry out saving the game rulebook.
The save the game rule translates into I6 as "SAVE_THE_GAME_R".

Restoring the game is an action out of world and applying to nothing.
The restoring the game action translates into I6 as "Restore".

The restore the game rule is listed in the carry out restoring the game rulebook.
The restore the game rule translates into I6 as "RESTORE_THE_GAME_R".

Restarting the game is an action out of world and applying to nothing.
The restarting the game action translates into I6 as "Restart".

The restart the game rule is listed in the carry out restarting the game rulebook.
The restart the game rule translates into I6 as "RESTART_THE_GAME_R".

Verifying the story file is an action out of world applying to nothing.
The verifying the story file action translates into I6 as "Verify".

The verify the story file rule is listed in the carry out verifying the story file rulebook.
The verify the story file rule translates into I6 as "VERIFY_THE_STORY_FILE_R".

Switching the story transcript on is an action out of world and applying to nothing.
The switching the story transcript on action translates into I6 as "ScriptOn".

The switch the story transcript on rule is listed in the carry out switching the story
	transcript on rulebook.
The switch the story transcript on rule translates into I6 as "SWITCH_TRANSCRIPT_ON_R".

Switching the story transcript off is an action out of world and applying to nothing.
The switching the story transcript off action translates into I6 as "ScriptOff".

The switch the story transcript off rule is listed in the carry out switching the story
	transcript off rulebook.
The switch the story transcript off rule translates into I6 as "SWITCH_TRANSCRIPT_OFF_R".

Requesting the story file version is an action out of world and applying to nothing.
The requesting the story file version action translates into I6 as "Version".

The announce the story file version rule is listed in the carry out requesting the story
	file version rulebook.
The announce the story file version rule translates into I6 as "ANNOUNCE_STORY_FILE_VERSION_R".

Requesting the score is an action out of world and applying to nothing.
The requesting the score action translates into I6 as "Score".

The announce the score rule is listed in the carry out requesting the score rulebook.
The announce the score rule translates into I6 as "ANNOUNCE_SCORE_R".

Preferring abbreviated room descriptions is an action out of world and applying to nothing.
The preferring abbreviated room descriptions action translates into I6 as "LMode3".

The prefer abbreviated room descriptions rule is listed in the carry out preferring
	abbreviated room descriptions rulebook.
The prefer abbreviated room descriptions rule translates into I6 as "PREFER_ABBREVIATED_R".

The standard report preferring abbreviated room descriptions rule is listed in the
	report preferring abbreviated room descriptions rulebook.
The standard report preferring abbreviated room descriptions rule translates into
	I6 as "REP_PREFER_ABBREVIATED_R".

Preferring unabbreviated room descriptions is an action out of world and applying to nothing.
The preferring unabbreviated room descriptions action translates into I6 as "LMode2".

The prefer unabbreviated room descriptions rule is listed in the carry out preferring
	unabbreviated room descriptions rulebook.
The prefer unabbreviated room descriptions rule translates into I6 as "PREFER_UNABBREVIATED_R".

The standard report preferring unabbreviated room descriptions rule is listed in the
	report preferring unabbreviated room descriptions rulebook.
The standard report preferring unabbreviated room descriptions rule translates into
	I6 as "REP_PREFER_UNABBREVIATED_R".

Preferring sometimes abbreviated room descriptions is an action out of world and
	applying to nothing.
The preferring sometimes abbreviated room descriptions action translates into I6 as "LMode1".

The prefer sometimes abbreviated room descriptions rule is listed in the carry out
	preferring sometimes abbreviated room descriptions rulebook.
The prefer sometimes abbreviated room descriptions rule translates into I6 as
	"PREFER_SOMETIMES_ABBREVIATED_R".

The standard report preferring sometimes abbreviated room descriptions rule is listed
	in the report preferring sometimes abbreviated room descriptions rulebook.
The standard report preferring sometimes abbreviated room descriptions rule translates
	into I6 as "REP_PREFER_SOMETIMES_ABBR_R".

Switching score notification on is an action out of world and applying to nothing.
The switching score notification on action translates into I6 as "NotifyOn".

The switch score notification on rule is listed in the carry out switching score
	notification on rulebook.
The switch score notification on rule translates into I6 as "SWITCH_SCORE_NOTIFY_ON_R".

The standard report switching score notification on rule is listed in the report
	switching score notification on rulebook.
The standard report switching score notification on rule translates into
	I6 as "REP_SWITCH_NOTIFY_ON_R".

Switching score notification off is an action out of world and applying to nothing.
The switching score notification off action translates into I6 as "NotifyOff".

The switch score notification off rule is listed in the carry out switching score
	notification off rulebook.
The switch score notification off rule translates into I6 as "SWITCH_SCORE_NOTIFY_OFF_R".

The standard report switching score notification off rule is listed in the report
	switching score notification off rulebook.
The standard report switching score notification off rule translates into
	I6 as "REP_SWITCH_NOTIFY_OFF_R".

Requesting the pronoun meanings is an action out of world and applying to nothing.
The requesting the pronoun meanings action translates into I6 as "Pronouns".

The announce the pronoun meanings rule is listed in the carry out requesting the
	pronoun meanings rulebook.
The announce the pronoun meanings rule translates into I6 as "ANNOUNCE_PRONOUN_MEANINGS_R".

The understand token a time period translates into I6 as "RELATIVE_TIME_TOKEN".

Section SR4/10 - Grammar

Understand "quit" or "q" as quitting the game.
Understand "save" as saving the game.
Understand "restart" as restarting the game.
Understand "restore" as restoring the game.
Understand "verify" as verifying the story file.
Understand "version" as requesting the story file version.
Understand "script" or "script on" or "transcript" or "transcript on" as switching the story
   transcript on.
Understand "script off" or "transcript off" as switching the story transcript off.
[/code][/spoiler]

Depending on what you're doing, you might want to put back the rules and specifications for a couple actions, for example looking, going and taking, which can be triggered by low-level events.

If there's not already an extension to do this, what do you think about me or Matt or Juhana submitting this modification as an extension?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3957&start=0#p28352
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Doors and "removing" them
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-12-15 11:04:44

[quote="lemort"]This code does not remove the default (first opening door from hell) when I try to go west when door is locked.[/quote]
That is considered normal behavior. The implicit "(first opening door from hell)" means, before we go west we are attempting to open the door from hell. If you don't want that message to show up, here is one way to stop it:

[code]Instead of going west in office when Door from Hell is locked, try opening door from hell.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3955&start=0#p28353
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Taking and description
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-12-15 11:26:29

This way is slightly more extensible if you are going to have a lot of items with custom messages for taking or dropping.

[code]Bedroom is a room. "Very nice bedroom, lots of sleeping in here, occasionally."

A thing has a text called drop-message. The drop-message is usually "And now you are having dropped this thing you were having had."
A thing has a text called take-message. The take-message is usually "You're right. You can take that too (and so you did)."

A pillow is in the bedroom. Description of pillow is "Love it, yeah." The take-message is "Nice. Also, fluffy." The drop-message is "You will miss its fluffiness greatly."
A mat is in the bedroom. Description of Mat is "This is too much for a classy room like this." The take-message is "You take this cool thing."
A CD is in the bedroom. Description of CD is "High-culture music." The drop-message is "You'd really rather not... but okay."
A book is in the bedroom. Description of book is "Not Kama Sutra, it's just the latest novel by Danielle Steel." The take-message is "Really? You took that? Seriously?". The drop-message is "Good call."

After dropping something (called Larry):
	say the drop-message of Larry;
	say "[paragraph break]".

After taking something (called Ralph):
	say the take-message of Ralph;
	say "[paragraph break]".
	
test me with "get pillow / get all / drop pillow / drop all".[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3958&start=0#p28354
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Help for a beginner.
User: StewartF94 / DateTime: 2011-12-15 11:40:29

Hi there.

I have just started learning how to use TADS3. I am creating a game in it for my project in my final year of High School. 

One of the conditions of the project is that it must include one of the following:
1. File Handling (I was thinking of maybe a leaderboard being read into the game from an external source?)
2. Sorting Algorithm (Like bubble sort or something.)
3. A 2-d Array.

Thing is, I have no idea of the capabilities of TADS 3 for these types of things so, seeing as you all probably know a lot more than myself, I am looking for some advice on what could work, what wouldn't, and how to implement a solution.

If anyone has the time to spare, your help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3944&start=0#p28355
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Getting two warnings on TADS3 compile
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-12-15 11:41:00

I included the short piece of code that you provided and when I  compile the game this new piece of code produces an error. I have attached that error. I have also attached the two sections of code that I believe are causing my problems. I also tried the other suggestions that you provided. I searched all around the manuals, RTDD, and my code and couldn't find anything helpful.

By the way, I no longer get the two compile warnings that I got before. I have included the error from your code first and then the two sections of code. Any ideas [emote]:?:[/emote] 

RonG

[code][/code]


New code you supplied:



----- begin build: Thu Dec 15 12:19:06 2011 -----
>t3make -Fy "C:\Documents and Settings\Frenchy\Desktop\The Magic Forest\obj" -Fo
"C:\Documents and Settings\Frenchy\Desktop\The Magic Forest\obj" -o "debug\The
 Magic Forest.t3" -a -D "LANGUAGE=en_us" -D "MESSAGESTYLE=neu" -v -d -statprefix
 <@> "system.tl" "adv3\adv3.tl" "The Magic Forest.t" -res "GameInfo.txt"

TADS Compiler 3.0.18.1  Copyright 1999, 2007 Michael J. Roberts
The Magic Forest.t(110): error: 
The object "versionInfo" is already defined earlier in the program.  Each
object must have a unique name.  Remove the redundant definition or change the
name of one of the objects.


Errors:   1
Warnings: 0

t3make: error code 1

Build failed.
----- end build: Thu Dec 15 12:19:08 2011 -----


First section:
********************************************************************************

/*******************************************************************************
*  Game credits and version information.                                       *
*******************************************************************************/ 
 
versionInfo: GameID
IFID = '196fcc08-7a97-c389-9f06-5e7d3106fc33'
name = 'The Magic Forest'
byline = 'by Ron Gaudet'
htmlByline = 'by <a href="mailto:rgaudet1938@buckeye-access.com">
Ron Gaudet</a>'
version = '1'
authorEmail = 'Ron Gaudet <rgaudet1938@buckeye-access.com>'
desc = 'An extended IF adventure'
htmlDesc = 'An extended IF adventure'

showCredit()
{
/* show our credits */
"Put credits for the game here. ";
  
/*******************************************************************************
*  The game credits are displayed first.                                       *
*******************************************************************************/
"\b";
}

showAbout()
{
  "Put information for players here.  Many authors like to mention
  any unusual commands here, along with background information on
  the game (for example, the author might mention that the game
  was created as an entry for a particular competition). ";
}
;

Second Section:
********************************************************************************



sessionInfo.showStartupOptions = nil;
                
/* show the title/author/version and startup options */
        
"\b<b>The Magic Forest</b>
\nRelease <<versionInfo.version>> <<versionInfo.serialNum>>
\nCopyright &copy;2011 Ron \ Gaudet
/ Freeware / Type <<aHref('copyright', 'COPYRIGHT')>> for details\n
        
<.p>If this is your first time playing this game, please type
<<aHref('about', 'ABOUT')>> (or just 'A') for some important
information.  To restore a position you saved earlier, type
<<aHref('restore', 'RESTORE')>> (or 'R').
<.p>To <<aHref('', 'begin the game')>>, just press the Enter key. ";

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3957&start=0#p28356
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Doors and "removing" them
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-15 11:41:58

I thought you could simplify that to "instead of going through locked Door from Hell," but for some reason the compiler trips up on this line because the name of the object has the word "from" in it and it thinks I'm talking about "going from" a room called "Hell." It looks like the compiler is actually case-sensitive here - if you capitalize "From," it works!

[code]Instead of going through locked Door From Hell:
	try opening Door from Hell;[/code]

If I were writing this, I might rename it Hell-Door and give it the printed name "Door from Hell," just to make the compiler's job easier.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3955&start=0#p28357
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Taking and description
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-15 11:48:02

You can certainly do it that way, but I'm not sure it's actually more extensible. As I get more familiar with I7, I find rules often work better and more flexibly than properties. You might experience a slight memory-for-speed tradeoff, but in this particular case, I think the difference would be tiny.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3958&start=0#p28358
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Help for a beginner.
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-15 12:04:06

You asked about this on RAIF several months ago. Can you review [url=https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.arts.int-fiction/_uULAYmjbqI/discussion]the follow-up discussion[/url] and let us know what you've implemented and where you're stuck?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3957&start=0#p28359
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Doors and "removing" them
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-15 12:11:11

[quote="capmikee"]I thought you could simplify that to "instead of going through locked Door from Hell," but for some reason the compiler trips up on this line because the name of the object has the word "from" in it and it thinks I'm talking about "going from" a room called "Hell." It looks like the compiler is actually case-sensitive here - if you capitalize "From," it works!

[code]Instead of going through locked Door From Hell:
	try opening Door from Hell;[/code]

If I were writing this, I might rename it Hell-Door and give it the printed name "Door from Hell," just to make the compiler's job easier.[/quote]

I was going to mention the "from" earlier, but didn't want to look like an idiot if I was wrong! :p

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3944&start=0#p28360
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Getting two warnings on TADS3 compile
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-15 12:15:18

Delete the code you added from my earlier reply and change your versionInfo object like this:

[code]
versionInfo: GameID
	IFID = '196fcc08-7a97-c389-9f06-5e7d3106fc33'
	name = 'The Magic Forest'
	byline = 'by Ron Gaudet'
	htmlByline = 'by <a href="mailto:rgaudet1938@buckeye-access.com">
		Ron Gaudet</a>'
	version = '1'
	authorEmail = 'Ron Gaudet <rgaudet1938@buckeye-access.com>'
	desc = 'An extended IF adventure'
	htmlDesc = 'An extended IF adventure'

	showCredit()
	{
		/* show our credits */
		"Put credits for the game here. ";

		/*******************************************************************************
		* The game credits are displayed first. *
		*******************************************************************************/
		"\b";
	}

	showAbout()
	{
		"Put information for players here. Many authors like to mention
		any unusual commands here, along with background information on
		the game (for example, the author might mention that the game
		was created as an entry for a particular competition). ";
	}

	serialNum = 12345678

	showCopyright()
	{
		"Copyright info here. ";
	}
;
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3959&start=0#p28361
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: You must supply a noun (even when you don't want to)
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-15 12:32:53

I have been trying to reduce the number of actions in Speech Motivations, but I have been thwarted at every turn. Check this out:

[code]
Test is a room. Bob is a man in Test.

Persuasion: Persuasion succeeds.

Discussing is an action applying to one thing. Understand "discuss" as discussing. Understand "discuss [something]" as discussing.

Report an actor discussing: say "[The actor] discuss[if the actor is not the player]es[end if] [the noun]."

For supplying a missing noun when discussing:
	if the person asked is the player, say "You ramble.";
	[otherwise keep silent;]
	stop the action.
	
Every turn:
	try Bob discussing the noun;
	
test me with "discuss bob/discuss/bob, discuss"[/code]

It appears that if you decline to say anything when supplying a missing noun, and then you stop the action, the parser decides that it really wants to say SOMETHING, so it tells you "you must supply a noun." Previously, I had this logic in a check rule for a dedicated action, and I was quite happy for it to say nothing at all when an NPC had nothing to say. Is there a way to make this work, or do I have to bring my dedicated action back?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3959&start=0#p28362
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: You must supply a noun (even when you don't want to)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-15 12:56:15

Your "supplying a missing noun" rule only runs when the player is the actor. This seems to fix it:

[code]For supplying a missing noun when an actor discussing:
	if the person asked is the player:
		 say "You ramble.";
	otherwise:
		say "[The person asked] rambles.";
	[otherwise keep silent;]
	stop the action.[/code]

UPDATE: Right, you don't want it to print anything when another person discusses nothing. Changing the otherwise clause to 

[code]	otherwise:
		say "";
[/code]

seems to work, but I'm not sure why it doesn't work when you just omit it completely. Anyway, I think you still need to change the rule header.

SUPER-CONFUSING UPDATE: OK, this:

[rant][code]Test is a room. Bob is a man in Test.

Persuasion: Persuasion succeeds.

Discussing is an action applying to one thing. Understand "discuss" as discussing. Understand "discuss [something]" as discussing.

Report an actor discussing: say "[The actor] discuss[if the actor is not the player]es[end if] [the noun]."

For supplying a missing noun when an actor discussing:
	if the person asked is the player:
		 say "You ramble.";
	otherwise:
		say "";
	[otherwise keep silent;]
	stop the action.
	
Every turn:
	try Bob discussing the noun;
	
test me with "discuss bob/sing/discuss/sing/bob, discuss/sing"[/code][/rant]

works as desired, except perhaps for extra spaces.

This:

[rant][code]Test is a room. Bob is a man in Test.

Persuasion: Persuasion succeeds.

Discussing is an action applying to one thing. Understand "discuss" as discussing. Understand "discuss [something]" as discussing.

Report an actor discussing: say "[The actor] discuss[if the actor is not the player]es[end if] [the noun]."

For supplying a missing noun when an actor discussing:
	if the person asked is the player:
		 say "You ramble.";
	otherwise:
		say "[run paragraph on]";
	[otherwise keep silent;]
	stop the action.
	
Every turn:
	try Bob discussing the noun;
	
test me with "discuss bob/sing/discuss/sing/bob, discuss/sing"[/code][/rant]

sprouts "You must supply a noun"s everywhere. But the only difference is that I replaced "" with "[run paragraph on]"! I have no idea what can possibly be happening.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3955&start=0#p28363
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Taking and description
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-12-15 13:13:33

[quote="capmikee"]You can certainly do it that way, but I'm not sure it's actually more extensible. As I get more familiar with I7, I find rules often work better and more flexibly than properties. You might experience a slight memory-for-speed tradeoff, but in this particular case, I think the difference would be tiny.[/quote]When I say extensible, I mean for example, let's say after you have already coded 200 take-able items in the game you decide you want the drop-message to also show up when the player inserts an item into a container that the player isn't holding (which, from a real-world logical standpoint, amounts to the same thing as dropping it in many ways, but it is not actually handled by the dropping action in Inform, of course). This would be a lot of work to go back and change if there are individual rules for each item, but with properties, you can just say this:

[code]After inserting something (called Larry) into something not enclosed by the player:
	say the drop-message of Larry;
	say "[paragraph break]".[/code]

And also you can change the take-messages and such during the course of play, e.g...

[code]Instead of thinking:
	say "Upon further reflection, you decide you kind of like Danielle Steele's work after all.";
	now the take-message of the book is "You eagerly snatch up the novel.";
	now the drop-message of the book is "You reluctantly part with your new favorite book."[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3959&start=0#p28364
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: You must supply a noun (even when you don't want to)
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-15 13:14:34

Yeah, I forgot the "an actor" in my example, even though I had one in the original code.

I have a suspicion about what's going on. I looked at how the Standard Rules handle writing a paragraph about, and there's this little bit of chicanery:

[code]		if a paragraph break is pending, say "[conditional paragraph break]";
		carry out the writing a paragraph about activity with the item;
		if a paragraph break is pending:
			increase the locale paragraph count by 1;
			now the item is mentioned;
			say "[command clarification break]";
[/code]
It seems that Inform is communicating with itself via paragraph breaks...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3951&start=0#p28365
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What does "visible" actually mean?
User: evouga / DateTime: 2011-12-15 13:14:40

[quote]It might help to think of "visible" as meaning "referable." Ironically, things that are "visible" but not touchable are often things that you can't see, but can refer to because of an [any] token or because you've manually placed them in scope.[/quote]

Thanks everyone, you've cleared up my understanding.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3955&start=0#p28366
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Taking and description
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-15 13:21:51

Those are two great reasons to use properties.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3952&start=0#p28367
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IF Festival poll 1: general directions
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-15 13:33:24

In the tradition of democracies everywhere, I feel that we should take this apathetic, equivocal response as a resounding mandate to do whatever we want.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3956&start=0#p28368
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to discard most default actions and rules?
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-12-15 13:42:07

[quote="capmikee"]If there's not already an extension to do this, what do you think about me or Matt or Juhana submitting this modification as an extension?[/quote]

Yes please! [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3959&start=0#p28369
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: You must supply a noun (even when you don't want to)
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-15 13:47:12

Yeah. This is implicit in the manual where it describes the "printing a locale paragraph" activity:

[quote]
This activity is then called for each candidate in turn, starting with the highest priority items and working downwards. It can either print some text or not, and can either mark the item as "mentioned" or not: if it does, then the item won't appear subsequently in the locale description. If the activity does nothing, the item becomes "nondescript" and falls through into the final "You can also see..." paragraph, unless another rule mentions it in the mean time.
[/quote]

The only library-detectable difference between doing nothing and printing a paragraph is that the latter contains a paragraph break.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3952&start=0#p28370
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IF Festival poll 1: general directions
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-12-15 13:50:40

The results could scarcely be more equally distributed. I agree, let's just do whatever.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3959&start=0#p28371
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: You must supply a noun (even when you don't want to)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-15 13:52:01

But why is this affecting the "supplying a missing noun" rules?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3941&start=30#p28372
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction Festival?
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-12-15 13:52:26

[quote="Ghalev"]Hmmm. This seems to be going into territory where people like me do not belong at all, but I'll cheer from the sidelines, as it were. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
Specifically, what don't you like the sound of? It'd be good to have a showcase in which non-comp people like yourself would feel comfortable entering.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3959&start=0#p28373
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: You must supply a noun (even when you don't want to)
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-15 13:53:24

It's Bob's discussing the noun every turn that results in a line break those turns when he has nothing to discuss. So only invoking that rule when he does, prevents the line break.

[code]For supplying a missing noun when an actor discussing:
	if the person asked is the player, say "You ramble.";
	otherwise say "".
		
Every turn when the noun is not nothing:
	try Bob discussing the noun.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3959&start=0#p28374
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: You must supply a noun (even when you don't want to)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-15 14:49:01

That's a good solution, but I'm still curious what's going on under the hood. Why does the supplying a missing noun activity care whether you've printed anything?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3956&start=0#p28375
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to discard most default actions and rules?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-15 15:11:25

Okay, that's a nice vote of confidence!

What do you think about keeping at least some of the rules for looking, taking, and going? (probably just the ones that interact with each other)

I think I'm remembering what Ron Newcomb did. It was even more drastic - I think he may have even removed most of I6 from the story. I'll go look for his post...

Here it is:

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3628&p=26013#p26013">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3628&p=26013#p26013</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3956&start=0#p28376
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to discard most default actions and rules?
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-12-15 15:26:27

It seems like there are several layers which you might want to strip away:

[list]
[*]Commands which do nothing: rubbing, turning, jumping etc.[/*:m]
[*]All commands except those which have a direct effect on the world model: so this also tosses out waiting, listening, asking etc.[/*:m]
[*]All commands except for some very basic subset, as you suggest... although I'm not sure whether there could be an agreed-upon subset that would be useful to people. LOOK, TAKE, DROP, GO? (edit: oh yeah, and that EXAMINE thing.)[/*:m]
[*]All commands except meta-commands like UNDO etc.[/*:m]
[*]Every single command.[/*:m][/list:u]

Ideally you could offer use options that would let an extension user just pick what they wanted, but until/unless [url=http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/750974-add-use-options-to-control-compilation]conditional compilation is added[/url] to Inform, this isn't possible.

The most-requested variants of this, it seems to me, are the first and maybe the fourth. Either one would probably find an appreciative audience.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3956&start=10#p28377
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to discard most default actions and rules?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-15 15:33:44

It looks like even Ron's version doesn't remove the underlying I6 actions. But they don't take up so much space, I suppose.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3960&start=0#p28378
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Javascript Gurus?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-15 16:10:49

Consider the following code that I dug up off the internet, as I am not versed in JS:

[code]
    <script type="text/javascript">
      var Dom = {
        get: function(el) {
          if (typeof el === 'string') {
            return document.getElementById(el);
          } else {
            return el;
          }
        },
        add: function(el, dest) {
          var el = this.get(el);
          var dest = this.get(dest);
          dest.appendChild(el);
        },
        remove: function(el) {
          var el = this.get(el);
          el.parentNode.removeChild(el);
        }
      };
      var Event = {
        add: function() {
          if (window.addEventListener) {
            return function(el, type, fn) {
              Dom.get(el).addEventListener(type, fn, false);
            };
          } else if (window.attachEvent) {
            return function(el, type, fn) {
              var f = function() {
                fn.call(Dom.get(el), window.event);
              };
              Dom.get(el).attachEvent('on' + type, f);
            };
          }
        }()
      };
      Event.add(window, 'load', function() {
        var i = 0;
        Event.add('add-element', 'click', function() {
          var el = document.createElement('p');
          el.innerHTML = 'Remove This Element (' + ++i + ')';
          Dom.add(el, 'content');
          Event.add(el, 'click', function(e) {
            Dom.remove(this);
          });
        });
      });
    </script>
[/code]

As you can see, the code adds a specified element to the DOM. This works beautifully. The problem is that due to the way the removal is handled, clicking anywhere on the added element removes it. The element spans the entire screen. This is problematic, since I'm trying to use it to add form fields. Clicking on the field, of course, removes the element.

I need to break that "Dom.remove(this);" out and make it so that it removes the element if I click on an image or button associated with the element. Por ejemplo:

[[FORM ELEMENT]] [X]

So if I click the X, it needs to remove its associated element. Clicking anywhere else should not affect the element.

Thoughts?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3956&start=10#p28379
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to discard most default actions and rules?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-12-15 16:15:11

I think the bedrock version of an extension like this needs to strip out everything except the parser-implemented metacommands (OOPS and UNDO), which are not listed in the Standard Rules. It's easier to paste things back in than it is to remove more things from an already replaced section.

You could then have a couple of pasteable code blocks in the extension docs that users can include to selectively restore some of the layers that Aaron mentioned. Conditional compilation would, as Aaron mentioned, be much nicer--but basic, non-sexy functionality like this has not tended to perform well in the Uservoice rankings. I don't know how important the votes are when Graham et al make decisions, but if they use votes to prioritize, conditional compilation isn't happening anytime soon.

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3944&start=0#p28380
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Getting two warnings on TADS3 compile
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-12-15 16:19:36

That did it [emote]:!:[/emote]  [emote]:!:[/emote] 

Now I can move on to adding my rooms and other objects.

Many thanks,

RonG

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3959&start=0#p28381
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: You must supply a noun (even when you don't want to)
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-12-15 16:20:08

The relevant check is in the I6 routine ActionVariablesNotTypeSafe: [code]if (say__p) rtrue;
return L__M(##Miscellany, 59);[/code]  But more importantly, ``stop the action'' does not do what it looks like it does here, because it's a synonym for ``rule fails'' and not meant for an activity's rule (see WI 18.10).  That's why the error messages are appearing in the first place: the action carries on even though the for-supplying-a-missing-noun rule didn't supply any noun.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3960&start=0#p28382
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Javascript Gurus?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-12-15 16:32:03

I would recommend that you use jQuery or a similar js library. jQuery is designed to make DOM manipulation like this as simple as possible, and it really does make javascript much easier for those of us who aren't programmers.

Anyway, if I understand your problem right, one way to handle it would be to start with the layout. Wrap the delete button and the form field in the same div element, e.g.:

[code]<div class="wrapper">
     <img class="button" />
     <input type="text"></input>
</div>[/code]

When the user clicks on the image/button, you then delete the [i]parent[/i] of the element That was clicked (the div wrapper), rather than the element itself. This will remove both the button and the field together, but do nothing at all unless the user clicks on the button. Given this HTML structure, something like this should work for the code you posted:

[code]Dom.remove(this.parentNode);[/code]

But really, investing a little time in learning jQuery will pay rich dividends...

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3958&start=0#p28383
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Help for a beginner.
User: StewartF94 / DateTime: 2011-12-15 17:28:34

Hi. Yes I remember this, but I thought since it had been inactive for a while I should start a new thread to continue it, if that makes sense?

Anyway, if I'm being completely honest, I have failed to make next to any headway with the file handling stuff at all. I think this is due to my lack of knowledge with TADS3. I just don't know what to code and where to code it. [emote]:([/emote]

I have, however, worked my way through the Getting Started guide (The Further Adventures of Heidi) so I guess I know the basics.

The more complicated stuff though just goes right over my head. The furthest I got was to write something like this:

local f = File.openTextFile('myfile.txt', FileAccessWrite); 
f.writeFile('Line of text\n'); 
f.writeFile('Line of text\n'); 
f.closeFile(); 

but when running got a nil object reference and thats where i got stuck i guess.

sorry for being so useless at all this [emote]:P[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3937&start=0#p28384
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Unix Frotz and DOS Frotz development
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-12-15 17:31:59

[quote="frotz"]I've pushed into the Master branch DOS code that [i]should[/i] work.  I'm having some trouble with a complaint of "Invalid combination of opcode and operands" relating to certain macros.  If there are any people out there who grok programming with Turbo C, I'd appreciate it if you take a look and let me know what the problem and solution might be.[/quote]

The "invalid combination..." line refers to assembly language, not C.  You're either using opcodes that don't exist on the older processor(s) you're compiling for, or, you're using the wrong DOS memory model.  To change the latter in Turbo C, go to OPTIONS, COMPILER, CODE GENERATION, and its the left-most selection. You're probably on Small but need Medium or Compact or whatever.   (DOS memory models is a subject unto itself, and I'm not an expert.  I never aimed at older hardware even in 1991.)

Anyway, I can't compile any Frotz at all. (But Hello World and my own old Versus project compile, so it's not the installation.) Does the download on the link you gave above missing its makefile?  Or the .PRJ project file for Turbo C?  Or are you compiling Frotz with one extremely long line at the command prompt?   I ask because under the /common/ subfolder there's a file called  main.c  which I presumed was the, ahem, main file.  But it doesn't #include anything except that folder's header files.. such as the 20 or so C files that sit next to it in said folder.  

I tried looking in the other folders in your download, but same problem.  What am I missing here?  How are you compiling it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3958&start=0#p28385
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Help for a beginner.
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-15 17:58:15

Make sure you #include <file.h> at the top of the file.

Apart from that, what you posted should work.

[code]
modify WaitAction
	execAction() {
		local f = File.openTextFile('myfile.txt', FileAccessWrite); 
		f.writeFile('Line of text\n'); 
		f.writeFile('Line of text\n'); 
		f.closeFile();
	}
;
[/code]

I tested it with 'wait' and myfile.txt was created with those two lines of text.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3956&start=10#p28386
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to discard most default actions and rules?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-12-15 18:04:42

[quote="capmikee"]It looks like even Ron's version doesn't remove the underlying I6 actions. But they don't take up so much space, I suppose.[/quote]
The actions are gone from the compiled game -- along with most everything else that doesn't explicitly appear in the source -- but the Naga project isn't suitable for being an extension because it breaks so much of I7.  

If you're wanting to remove actions wholly (not just the player's references as done up-thread), then after doing said replacement,  use the template replacement functionality mentioned in 25.25 "The Template Layer" in the manual.  Spatchcock stubs as needed. 

OTOH, for Michael Bacon's Interactive Poetry extension (see the Inform site), we just hid the actions, since it was easier than to remove them from the templates and memory. 

Did that make sense?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3941&start=30#p28387
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction Festival?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-15 18:28:38

[quote="JoeyJones"]Specifically, what don't you like the sound of? It'd be good to have a showcase in which non-comp people like yourself would feel comfortable entering.[/quote]

Just a vibe thing (as festivals go, it isn't sounding very festive). I'll hold out hopes for the return of the Art Show [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3960&start=0#p28389
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Javascript Gurus?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-15 20:43:22

To clarify, I do use jQuery in the majority of my projects. However this one, while large in scope, is small in stature. This will (hopefully) be the solitary instance of Javascript in the entire thing. I don't really want to have to jack into jQuery for it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3952&start=0#p28390
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IF Festival poll 1: general directions
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-12-15 20:53:56

I voted 'I don't really care' because it seems closest to what I feel, which is that the theme doesn't matter and so it would be better to have none, yeah.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=20#p28391
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-12-15 21:42:09

[quote="capmikee"]Oh, you're the one doing the complex RPG/simulation. Let me guess, every person has a collection of body parts, every body part has a collection of tissues, every tissue has a collection of statistics, and you end up with a really big amount of data because of that.

I think it could be done in I7, but it might be a good idea to get more familiar with the language first, perhaps with a simpler project. Or you could use a language that's better adapted to detailed simulations. Inform was originally created for more descriptive games, where the world model has only enough detail to represent it as prose.[/quote]

I am using tables and properties but this is cumbersome. You are right I may benefit from doing a simple game before... I am thinking about it.
In the meantime if someone knows a language that is more appropriated for complex world simulations I'd like to know... of course I could do it in C something but I guess this won't be as fun as inform, and may end in a steeper learning curve in fact... ^^;

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3956&start=10#p28392
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to discard most default actions and rules?
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-12-15 21:45:06

[quote="capmikee"]It's looking more and more like I7 may not be the right language for your project.

There has been talk of writing a "Standard Rules Lite" extension. I did some poking around to see if I could delete all actions at a low level, but there appear to be complications.

I could have sworn someone else has already started work on the project though. Was it Ron Newcomb?[/quote]

In fact I decided to make a very simple game to learn I7 a bit more and I ended with this problem (lol)
"Very simple" is not so simple to do with inform7 as well [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3956&start=10#p28393
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to discard most default actions and rules?
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-12-15 21:47:34

Ooh this looks nice.
It seems I can add the few actions I need as well.
Thanks a lot!

[quote="matt w"]This is a simple but brutal solution, which basically throws out the whole parser and then puts a few bits back in:

[code]Section Grammar (in place of Section SR4/10 - Grammar in Standard Rules by Graham Nelson)

[by Juhana Leitonen]

Understand "quit" or "q" as quitting the game.
Understand "save" as saving the game.
Understand "restart" as restarting the game.
Understand "restore" as restoring the game.
Understand "verify" as verifying the story file.
Understand "version" as requesting the story file version.
Understand "script" or "script on" or "transcript" or "transcript on" as switching the story
   transcript on.
Understand "script off" or "transcript off" as switching the story transcript off.[/code]

Simply writing a section that goes in place of SR4/10 eliminates the part of the Standard Rules that contains all the declarations; the actual section puts back some of the metacommands that your players are going to want. (Especially quitting. Don't remove quitting.) Then you'd have to declare all the commands that you want to work -- in the games Juhana and I used this in, we were processing commands entirely through keywords. 

Even with this section put in, the game will still understand a direction as going in that direction (so "w" would be understood as going west). I think that's hardcoded into I6.[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3956&start=10#p28394
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to discard most default actions and rules?
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-12-15 21:51:04

Yes thank you very much, I in fact need the opening action.
I also use a talking action and an examining action (maybe) as well.
The game is mostly a talk thing... and there is only one room. And it is more a story than a game.

[quote="capmikee"]I tried ripping out the whole of Part SR4, which includes not only the grammar section but all the action definitions and specific action processing rules. That didn't go so well - most of the actions are built into I6, below even the template layer.

But your idea makes me think I can at least do a little better. Here I copied Part SR4 and edited out all the specific action processing rules except for the out-of-world ones. Then I used your grammar section:

[spoiler][code]Part SR4 - Minimal Actions (in place of Part SR4 - Actions in Standard Rules by Graham Nelson)

Section SR4/1 - Generic action patterns

Section SR4/2 - Standard actions concerning the actor's possessions

Taking inventory is an action applying to nothing.
The taking inventory action translates into I6 as "Inv".
Taking is an action applying to one thing.
The taking action translates into I6 as "Take".
Removing it from is an action applying to two things.
The removing it from action translates into I6 as "Remove".
Dropping is an action applying to one thing.
The dropping action translates into I6 as "Drop".
Putting it on is an action applying to two things.
The putting it on action translates into I6 as "PutOn".
Inserting it into is an action applying to two things.
The inserting it into action translates into I6 as "Insert".
Eating is an action applying to one carried thing.
The eating action translates into I6 as "Eat".

Section SR4/3 - Standard actions which move the actor

Going is an action applying to one visible thing.
The going action translates into I6 as "Go".
Entering is an action applying to one thing.
The entering action translates into I6 as "Enter".
Exiting is an action applying to nothing.
The exiting action translates into I6 as "Exit".
Getting off is an action applying to one thing.
The getting off action translates into I6 as "GetOff".

Section SR4/4 - Standard actions concerning the actor's vision

Looking is an action applying to nothing.
The looking action translates into I6 as "Look".
Examining is an action applying to one visible thing and requiring light.
The examining action translates into I6 as "Examine".
Looking under is an action applying to one visible thing and requiring light.
The looking under action translates into I6 as "LookUnder".
Searching is an action applying to one thing and requiring light.
The searching action translates into I6 as "Search".
Consulting it about is an action applying to one thing and one topic.
The consulting it about action translates into I6 as "Consult".

Section SR4/5 - Standard actions which change the state of things

Locking it with is an action applying to one thing and one carried thing.
The locking it with action translates into I6 as "Lock".
Unlocking it with is an action applying to one thing and one carried thing.
The unlocking it with action translates into I6 as "Unlock".
Switching on is an action applying to one thing.
The switching on action translates into I6 as "SwitchOn".
Switching off is an action applying to one thing.
The switching off action translates into I6 as "SwitchOff".
Opening is an action applying to one thing.
The opening action translates into I6 as "Open".
Closing is an action applying to one thing.
The closing action translates into I6 as "Close".
Wearing is an action applying to one carried thing.
The wearing action translates into I6 as "Wear".
Taking off is an action applying to one carried thing.
The taking off action translates into I6 as "Disrobe".

Section SR4/6 - Standard actions concerning other people

Giving it to is an action applying to one carried thing and one thing.
The giving it to action translates into I6 as "Give".
Showing it to is an action applying to one carried thing and one visible thing.
The showing it to action translates into I6 as "Show".
Waking is an action applying to one thing.
The waking action translates into I6 as "WakeOther".
Throwing it at is an action applying to one carried thing and one visible thing.
The throwing it at action translates into I6 as "ThrowAt".
Attacking is an action applying to one thing.
The attacking action translates into I6 as "Attack".
Kissing is an action applying to one thing.
The kissing action translates into I6 as "Kiss".
Answering it that is an action applying to one thing and one topic.
The answering it that action translates into I6 as "Answer".
Telling it about is an action applying to one thing and one topic.
The telling it about action translates into I6 as "Tell".
Asking it about is an action applying to one thing and one topic.
The asking it about action translates into I6 as "Ask".
Asking it for is an action applying to two things.
The asking it for action translates into I6 as "AskFor".

Section SR4/7 - Standard actions which are checked but then do nothing unless rules intervene

Waiting is an action applying to nothing.
The waiting action translates into I6 as "Wait".
Touching is an action applying to one thing.
The touching action translates into I6 as "Touch".
Waving is an action applying to one thing.
The waving action translates into I6 as "Wave".
Pulling is an action applying to one thing.
The Pulling action translates into I6 as "Pull".
Pushing is an action applying to one thing.
The Pushing action translates into I6 as "Push".
Turning is an action applying to one thing.
The Turning action translates into I6 as "Turn".
Pushing it to is an action applying to one thing and one visible thing.
The Pushing it to action translates into I6 as "PushDir".
Squeezing is an action applying to one thing.
The Squeezing action translates into I6 as "Squeeze".

Section SR4/8 - Standard actions which always do nothing unless rules intervene

Saying yes is an action applying to nothing.
The Saying yes action translates into I6 as "Yes".
Saying no is an action applying to nothing.
The Saying no action translates into I6 as "No".
Burning is an action applying to one thing.
The Burning action translates into I6 as "Burn".
Waking up is an action applying to nothing.
The Waking up action translates into I6 as "Wake".
Thinking is an action applying to nothing.
The Thinking action translates into I6 as "Think".
Smelling is an action applying to one thing.
The Smelling action translates into I6 as "Smell".
Listening to is an action applying to one thing.
The Listening to action translates into I6 as "Listen".
Tasting is an action applying to one thing.
The Tasting action translates into I6 as "Taste".
Cutting is an action applying to one thing.
The Cutting action translates into I6 as "Cut".
Jumping is an action applying to nothing.
The Jumping action translates into I6 as "Jump".
Tying it to is an action applying to two things.
The Tying it to action translates into I6 as "Tie".
Drinking is an action applying to one thing.
The Drinking action translates into I6 as "Drink".
Saying sorry is an action applying to nothing.
The Saying sorry action translates into I6 as "Sorry".
Swearing obscenely is an action censored, and applying to nothing.
The Swearing obscenely action translates into I6 as "Strong".
Swearing mildly is an action censored, and applying to nothing.
The Swearing mildly action translates into I6 as "Mild".
Swinging is an action applying to one thing.
The Swinging action translates into I6 as "Swing".
Rubbing is an action applying to one thing.
The Rubbing action translates into I6 as "Rub".
Setting it to is an action applying to one thing and one topic.
The Setting it to action translates into I6 as "SetTo".
Waving hands is an action applying to nothing.
The Waving hands action translates into I6 as "WaveHands".
Buying is an action applying to one thing.
The Buying action translates into I6 as "Buy".
Singing is an action applying to nothing.
The Singing action translates into I6 as "Sing".
Climbing is an action applying to one thing.
The Climbing action translates into I6 as "Climb".
Sleeping is an action applying to nothing.
The Sleeping action translates into I6 as "Sleep".

Section SR4/9 - Standard actions which happen out of world

Quitting the game is an action out of world and applying to nothing.
The quitting the game action translates into I6 as "Quit".

The quit the game rule is listed in the carry out quitting the game rulebook.
The quit the game rule translates into I6 as "QUIT_THE_GAME_R".

Saving the game is an action out of world and applying to nothing.
The saving the game action translates into I6 as "Save".

The save the game rule is listed in the carry out saving the game rulebook.
The save the game rule translates into I6 as "SAVE_THE_GAME_R".

Restoring the game is an action out of world and applying to nothing.
The restoring the game action translates into I6 as "Restore".

The restore the game rule is listed in the carry out restoring the game rulebook.
The restore the game rule translates into I6 as "RESTORE_THE_GAME_R".

Restarting the game is an action out of world and applying to nothing.
The restarting the game action translates into I6 as "Restart".

The restart the game rule is listed in the carry out restarting the game rulebook.
The restart the game rule translates into I6 as "RESTART_THE_GAME_R".

Verifying the story file is an action out of world applying to nothing.
The verifying the story file action translates into I6 as "Verify".

The verify the story file rule is listed in the carry out verifying the story file rulebook.
The verify the story file rule translates into I6 as "VERIFY_THE_STORY_FILE_R".

Switching the story transcript on is an action out of world and applying to nothing.
The switching the story transcript on action translates into I6 as "ScriptOn".

The switch the story transcript on rule is listed in the carry out switching the story
	transcript on rulebook.
The switch the story transcript on rule translates into I6 as "SWITCH_TRANSCRIPT_ON_R".

Switching the story transcript off is an action out of world and applying to nothing.
The switching the story transcript off action translates into I6 as "ScriptOff".

The switch the story transcript off rule is listed in the carry out switching the story
	transcript off rulebook.
The switch the story transcript off rule translates into I6 as "SWITCH_TRANSCRIPT_OFF_R".

Requesting the story file version is an action out of world and applying to nothing.
The requesting the story file version action translates into I6 as "Version".

The announce the story file version rule is listed in the carry out requesting the story
	file version rulebook.
The announce the story file version rule translates into I6 as "ANNOUNCE_STORY_FILE_VERSION_R".

Requesting the score is an action out of world and applying to nothing.
The requesting the score action translates into I6 as "Score".

The announce the score rule is listed in the carry out requesting the score rulebook.
The announce the score rule translates into I6 as "ANNOUNCE_SCORE_R".

Preferring abbreviated room descriptions is an action out of world and applying to nothing.
The preferring abbreviated room descriptions action translates into I6 as "LMode3".

The prefer abbreviated room descriptions rule is listed in the carry out preferring
	abbreviated room descriptions rulebook.
The prefer abbreviated room descriptions rule translates into I6 as "PREFER_ABBREVIATED_R".

The standard report preferring abbreviated room descriptions rule is listed in the
	report preferring abbreviated room descriptions rulebook.
The standard report preferring abbreviated room descriptions rule translates into
	I6 as "REP_PREFER_ABBREVIATED_R".

Preferring unabbreviated room descriptions is an action out of world and applying to nothing.
The preferring unabbreviated room descriptions action translates into I6 as "LMode2".

The prefer unabbreviated room descriptions rule is listed in the carry out preferring
	unabbreviated room descriptions rulebook.
The prefer unabbreviated room descriptions rule translates into I6 as "PREFER_UNABBREVIATED_R".

The standard report preferring unabbreviated room descriptions rule is listed in the
	report preferring unabbreviated room descriptions rulebook.
The standard report preferring unabbreviated room descriptions rule translates into
	I6 as "REP_PREFER_UNABBREVIATED_R".

Preferring sometimes abbreviated room descriptions is an action out of world and
	applying to nothing.
The preferring sometimes abbreviated room descriptions action translates into I6 as "LMode1".

The prefer sometimes abbreviated room descriptions rule is listed in the carry out
	preferring sometimes abbreviated room descriptions rulebook.
The prefer sometimes abbreviated room descriptions rule translates into I6 as
	"PREFER_SOMETIMES_ABBREVIATED_R".

The standard report preferring sometimes abbreviated room descriptions rule is listed
	in the report preferring sometimes abbreviated room descriptions rulebook.
The standard report preferring sometimes abbreviated room descriptions rule translates
	into I6 as "REP_PREFER_SOMETIMES_ABBR_R".

Switching score notification on is an action out of world and applying to nothing.
The switching score notification on action translates into I6 as "NotifyOn".

The switch score notification on rule is listed in the carry out switching score
	notification on rulebook.
The switch score notification on rule translates into I6 as "SWITCH_SCORE_NOTIFY_ON_R".

The standard report switching score notification on rule is listed in the report
	switching score notification on rulebook.
The standard report switching score notification on rule translates into
	I6 as "REP_SWITCH_NOTIFY_ON_R".

Switching score notification off is an action out of world and applying to nothing.
The switching score notification off action translates into I6 as "NotifyOff".

The switch score notification off rule is listed in the carry out switching score
	notification off rulebook.
The switch score notification off rule translates into I6 as "SWITCH_SCORE_NOTIFY_OFF_R".

The standard report switching score notification off rule is listed in the report
	switching score notification off rulebook.
The standard report switching score notification off rule translates into
	I6 as "REP_SWITCH_NOTIFY_OFF_R".

Requesting the pronoun meanings is an action out of world and applying to nothing.
The requesting the pronoun meanings action translates into I6 as "Pronouns".

The announce the pronoun meanings rule is listed in the carry out requesting the
	pronoun meanings rulebook.
The announce the pronoun meanings rule translates into I6 as "ANNOUNCE_PRONOUN_MEANINGS_R".

The understand token a time period translates into I6 as "RELATIVE_TIME_TOKEN".

Section SR4/10 - Grammar

Understand "quit" or "q" as quitting the game.
Understand "save" as saving the game.
Understand "restart" as restarting the game.
Understand "restore" as restoring the game.
Understand "verify" as verifying the story file.
Understand "version" as requesting the story file version.
Understand "script" or "script on" or "transcript" or "transcript on" as switching the story
   transcript on.
Understand "script off" or "transcript off" as switching the story transcript off.
[/code][/spoiler]

Depending on what you're doing, you might want to put back the rules and specifications for a couple actions, for example looking, going and taking, which can be triggered by low-level events.

If there's not already an extension to do this, what do you think about me or Matt or Juhana submitting this modification as an extension?[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3937&start=0#p28395
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Unix Frotz and DOS Frotz development
User: frotz / DateTime: 2011-12-15 22:03:57

The file Makefile.tc is for use with Turbo C.  Typing "make -f Makefile.tc" should start the compiling process.  Also, I forgot to put the latest makefile in place.  The git is now at the point where the build complains about invalid combinations.  The problem seems to be coming from the fact that those macros it's complaining about resolve to some assembly code.  That isn't done with any of the other ports.  I'm fiddling with using C instead of assembly there.  Maybe if I simplify things, I'll more clearly see what needs to be done.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=20#p28396
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-12-15 22:11:57

So for those who wanted to know here is the function (I splitted it in 3 to resolve the limitation).
It works and I am pretty pleased with the output.
But as you can see it is not easy to understand what is going on (btw I didn't included the tables which are refered to).

I have also used very-long-names-with-hyphens to be sure the engine doesn't mistake them for other commands.
I also chose absolutely non consistent variable namings... I didn't know it would become so big... See this as a very first draft.

And there is a lot of intermediate say statements for debugging purpose.

It is very very ugly with too many cascading ifs, but it was the first time I wrote such a complicated thing in I7. Since it works I expect to simplify it, or maybe to change it competely to a rulebook or activity when I know how to use them. I am sure there is a lot simpler way to do the same thing. Of course the tables won't change much I think.

[spoiler][code]
to decide which number is the punch-damage-to (grocon - a person) hurting (victim - bodypart):
	let X be a number;
	let critical be a number;	
	let beforedegat be the part-state of the victim;   		[body part]	
	let degat be the contondant-poing2 corresponding to a part-state of beforedegat in the table of body part damage;
	now critical is the contondant-poing2-proba corresponding to a part-state of beforedegat in the table of body part damage switch probability;
	say "maxproba : [critical] | beforedegat [beforedegat] | degat [degat]";
	let minusnrj be the energy corresponding to a part-state of degat in the table of body part energy damage;
	decrease the energy of the grocon by minusnrj;			
	if critical > 0:
		now X is a random number between 1 and critical;
		if X is 1:
			now the part-state of the victim is degat;		
	let beforedegat-bone be the bone-state of the victim;    [bone]
	let degat-bone be the contondant-poing2-bonedamage corresponding to a bone-state of beforedegat-bone in the table of bone part damage;
	now critical is the contondant-poing2-proba corresponding to a bone-state of beforedegat-bone in the Table of bone damage switch probability;		
	let toto be the part-name of the victim;			
	say "[line break]-- bone damage check --";
	if critical > 0:
		now X is a random number between 1 and critical;
		if X is 1:
			now the victim is degat-bone;
			if the victim is broken:
				let minusnrj be the energy corresponding to a part-name of toto in the Table of broken bone damage;
				decrease the energy of the grocon by minusnrj;
				say "[line break]Bone Damaged!!! [line break]energy [energy of the grocon]";
				now the health of the grocon is the health corresponding to a part-name of toto in the Table of broken bone damage; [ add the time penalty here]
				say "[line break][the grocon] is [health of the grocon]";
		otherwise:
			say "[line break]Bone not damaged.";
	say "[line break]-- bone criticality check --";			
	if the bone-state of the victim is not broken or the bone-state of the victim is not broken to pieces: [bone critical]
		now critical is the contondant-poing2-proba corresponding to a part-name of toto in the Table of critical bone damage probability;
		if critical > 0:
			now X is a random number between 1 and critical;
			if X is critical:
				now the bone-state of the victim is broken;
				let minusnrj be the energy corresponding to a part-name of toto in the Table of broken bone damage;
				decrease the energy of the grocon by minusnrj;
				say "[line break]Bone Critic!!! [line break] energy [energy of the grocon]";
				now the health of the grocon is the health corresponding to a part-name of toto in the Table of broken bone damage; [ add the time penalty here]
				say "[line break][the grocon] is [health of the grocon]";
			otherwise:
				say "[line break]Criticality failed on a total of [critical] chances.";	
	check-the-organ-criticality-of the grocon with the victim;
	if a face (called the-face) is part of the victim:
		check-the-organ-criticality-of the grocon with the-face;
	Decide on energy of the grocon.
	
	
		
	to check-the-organ-criticality-of	(grocon - a person) with (victim - a bodypart):	
	say "[line break]-- organ criticality check --";
	let toto be the part-name of the victim;
	if there is a part-name of toto in the table of potential organ damage:     [organ critical]
		if there is a contondant-poing2-hitorganlist corresponding to a part-name of toto in the table of potential organ damage:
			let L be a list of organs;
			now L is the contondant-poing2-hitorganlist corresponding to a part-name of toto in the table of potential organ damage;
			say "[line break]list of organs L : [L].";					
			let X be a random number between 1 and number of entries in L;
			let organ-to-burst be the entry X of L;
			say "[line break]Organ touched : [organ-to-burst].";							
			repeat with n running from 1 to number of entries in the list-of-organs of the grocon: 
				let organ-check be entry n of list-of-organs of grocon;
				if organ-check is organ-to-burst:
					now X is n;
			if the entry X of the list-of-organ-states of grocon is whole:
				let critical be the contondant-poing2-proba corresponding to an organ of organ-to-burst in the table of critical organ damage probability;
				if critical > 0:
					let n be a random number between 1 and critical;
					if n is critical:		
						now the entry X of the list-of-organ-states of the grocon is crushed;
						let minusnrj be the energy corresponding to an organ of organ-to-burst in the Table of critical organ damage;
						decrease the energy of the grocon by minusnrj;
						say "[line break]ORGAN Critic!!! [line break] energy [energy of the grocon]";
						if there is a health corresponding to an organ of organ-to-burst in the Table of critical organ damage:
							now the health of the grocon is the health corresponding to an organ of organ-to-burst in the Table of critical organ damage; [ add the time penalty here]
						say "[line break][the grocon] is [health of the grocon]";
					otherwise:
						say "[line break]Criticality failed on a total of [critical] chances.";	
		
	To process-the-health-of (the victim - a person):
	say "[line break] Process health status - ";
	if the energy of the victim > 120:
		if the victim is-not-disabled:
			now the health of the victim is genki; 
			say "/ health -> genki/";
	otherwise:
		if the energy of the victim > 100:
			if the victim is-not-disabled:				
				now the health of the victim is tired; 
				say "/ health -> tired/";
		otherwise:
			if the energy of the victim > 80:
				if the victim is-not-disabled:
					now the health of the victim is very tired; 
					say "/ health -> very tired/";
			otherwise:
				if the energy of the victim > 40:
					if the victim is-not-disabled:
						now the health of the victim is unable to stand up; 
						say "/ health -> unbale to stand/";
				otherwise:
					if the energy of the victim > 0:
						if the health of the victim is not unconscious:
							now the health of the victim is unable to move; 
							say "/ health -> unable to move/";
					otherwise:
						now the health of the victim is unconscious; 
						say "/ health -> unconscious/";
	say "[line break]*** Health of [victim] : energy : [energy of the victim] | health : [health of the victim]".
	
								
	To decide if (the patient - a person) is-not-disabled:
	if the health of the patient is unconscious or the health of the patient is unable to move or the health of the patient is unable to stand up:
		decide no;
	otherwise:
		decide yes.
[/code][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3956&start=10#p28397
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to discard most default actions and rules?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-15 22:47:37

[quote="I4L"]I'm pretty sure that "Default Messages" (which I love) will let you define a custom default response.[/quote]

Second vote on the love. Love love love. I think if I had to pick just one extension to bring to a desert island, my brain would explode deciding between that one and Plurality.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3962&start=0#p28398
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Need a tester for AIF
User: HanonO / DateTime: 2011-12-15 22:50:38

PM me if you're up to alpha test an incomplete game.

Adult content.  Pornographic, but hopefully also fun.  The sets are built and some of the actors are doing stuff.  I'm looking for some transcripts to see where attention is directed.  Also looking for failures with props and actions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3952&start=0#p28399
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IF Festival poll 1: general directions
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-15 22:54:29

I'll play whichever games get reviews that catch my attention, same as always [emote]:)[/emote]

Sounds kind of like a science fair ... "should we build better mousetraps by engineering more ideal versions of extant designs, or experiment with entirely new mechanisms for the restriction and cessation of unwanted rodent activity?" [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3962&start=0#p28400
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Need a tester for AIF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-15 22:57:23

[quote="HanonO"]PM me if you're up to alpha test an incomplete game.

Adult content.  Pornographic, but hopefully also fun.  The sets are built and some of the actors are doing stuff.  I'm looking for some transcripts to see where attention is directed.  Also looking for failures with props and actions.[/quote]

For me it depends entirely on this and only on this and very much this: what's it written in? If it's TADS, I'll pass. If it's z-code or Glulx, I am so there, with bells on. Only bells.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3956&start=10#p28401
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to discard most default actions and rules?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-15 22:57:25

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]OTOH, for Michael Bacon's Interactive Poetry extension (see the Inform site), we just hid the actions, since it was easier than to remove them from the templates and memory. [/quote]
I [i]knew[/i] there was something like that already! I looked at the site, but as usual, their system of organization doesn't lead me to anything.

I'll have a look at Interactive Poetry and think about submitting something complementary, or creating an update.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3959&start=0#p28402
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: You must supply a noun (even when you don't want to)
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-15 23:03:39

So what's the deal? The supplying a missing noun activity has to say something in order to stop the action? What if it says something clarifying, intending to continue the action?

I'd be tempted to do something like this:

[code]The showstopper is an thing.

Before doing something when the showstopper is the noun or the showstopper is the second noun:
    stop the action.

For supplying a missing noun when an actor doing something (this is the stop the action silently rule):
    if the actor is not the player, now the noun is the showstopper;[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=20#p28403
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-15 23:34:01

You're using variables in some places where Inform doesn't really need variables. Also, I understand the aversion to using spaces in identifiers, but for the most part, using them is one of the things that makes Inform exceptionally easy to read. It takes some experience to figure out when you can get away with it, but it works often enough that the occasional compiler-failure won't ruin your day.

I'm looking for examples of variables you don't need...

It looks like X is always a random number. You don't need it at all, because you can say:

[code]If a random chance of 1 in critical succeeds:[/code]

[code]choose a random row in Table of Silly Events;[/code]

You also rarely need count variables. You can loop over just about anything:

[code]repeat running through Table of Things To Mention:[/code]

[code]repeat with the limb running through Table of Body Parts:[/code]

I'm not sure why you're using lists. If there is a finite limit to whatever you're listing, it's probably more efficient (and easier) to use a table instead. Tables can be written as well as read:

[code]Blank out the whole of Table of Parts To Process;
Repeat with limb running through injured body parts:
    choose a blank row in Table of Parts To Process;
    now body part entry is the limb;
    now damage entry is the damage of limb;
sort Table of Parts To Process in damage order;[/code]

You certainly don't need list variables in places where you can do this:

[code]let the organ to burst be a random organ in the contondant-poing2-hitorganlist corresponding to a part-name of toto in the table of potential organ damage[/code]

Now I admit that's a bit wordy, and that's exactly the sort of situation in Inform where you might want to write a [i]short[/i] phrase:

[code]To decide what list of organs is the set of organs in (limb - an organ):
    Decide on the the contondant-poing2-hitorganlist corresponding to a part-name of the part-name of the limb;[/code]

Now you have a phrase that not only does one specific useful thing, but has a name describing what that specific useful thing is. And as a bonus, you don't need the "toto" variable any more.

Here's a way to avoid lists entirely:

[code]A part-name is a kind of value. Some part-names are head, arm, torso, and leg.

An tissue is a kind of value. Some tissues are brain, blood, bone, and heart.

Flesh-housing relates various tissues to various part-names. The verb to house (he houses, they house, it is housed, he is housing) implies the flesh-housing relation.

The head houses the brain. The head houses blood. The head houses bone.
The torso houses the heart. The torso houses blood. The torso houses bone.
The arm houses blood. The arm houses bone.
The leg houses blood. The leg houses bone.

To decide which tissue is the site of impact in (limb - a body-part):
   Decide on a random tissue that is housed by the part-name of the limb;[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3956&start=10#p28404
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to discard most default actions and rules?
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-12-16 00:29:11

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="I4L"]I'm pretty sure that "Default Messages" (which I love) will let you define a custom default response.[/quote]

Second vote on the love. Love love love. I think if I had to pick just one extension to bring to a desert island, my brain would explode deciding between that one and Plurality.[/quote]

I guess I should look into it ^^

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=20#p28405
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-12-16 00:49:09

[quote="capmikee"]You're using variables in some places where Inform doesn't really need variables. Also, I understand the aversion to using spaces in identifiers, but for the most part, using them is one of the things that makes Inform exceptionally easy to read. It takes some experience to figure out when you can get away with it, but it works often enough that the occasional compiler-failure won't ruin your day.
[/quote]

Yes I have bumped in a few errors like that so I decided to free myself from this problem for the moment with the intermediate variables, I use more than I should but it is to avoid writing long phrases that may confuse inform7 (Or should I say I got an error when writing it in a single phrase and didn't manage to write it correctly).

Thank you for your help ^^

I need to count variables in a few cases because it didn't work (or can't work) with the running through table thing because of the design of the tables...
I haven't found a better solution yet. I guess there is though.

I use lists for 2 things.
First to list the organs that are attached or inside a body part (in the table of body parts I have a column of organs lists). I didn't really attached the objects to the persons because it became too big and broke some objects number limitations (while only 4 persons were in the game at the moment). So I use tables, properties and lists to simulate almost everything.
I use another 2 lists to track the damage of all the organs. So a list with all the organs and a list with their status. I can't do this with a table since I need separate data for each person. At least it is the way I managed to implement it for the moment. Not the best that is for sure.

Your example with a table works well but I would have to create a table for each person right? I need to have dynamically assigned such a table for each person. If there is a way, I guess this is what I would like to do.

>You certainly don't need list variables in places where you can do this:
>let the organ to burst be a random organ in the contondant-poing2-hitorganlist corresponding to a part-name of toto in the table of potential organ damage

I tried to do it but I had errors so as a temporary solution I created intermediate variables.

> Decide on the the contondant-poing2-hitorganlist corresponding to a part-name of the part-name of the limb;

"the part-name of the part-name of the limb" is a good example of phrase that sometimes work but most of the time don't for some reason... ^^;

>flesh housing relation.

Yes, I knew relations could help me but I had difficulties to manage them and didn't know their limitations so I prefered doing withut, but I guess I should try to use them...
Though, do your relation example work for multiple persons,.
Since the tissue is a kind of value it may be lighter than objects, so I wouldn't need to attach them to every person. This sounds like a working solution...
I must find a way to differenciate males and females either... but I think it shouldn't be too difficult (in the present implementation all the persons have all male and female organs (lol) and I do a male/female check when an inappropriate organ is randomly selected)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3962&start=0#p28406
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Need a tester for AIF
User: HanonO / DateTime: 2011-12-16 02:17:08

Forgot to say - Inform 7 Glulx.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3963&start=0#p28407
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: try silently even if the action fails?
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2011-12-16 03:20:16

Hi

Is there a way to do a "try silently" that also suppresses output when the action is [b]not[/b] successful? 

Alternatively: is there some other way of predicting whether a thing can be picked up? Something like "if the noun can be taken by the player"? 

My problem is I'm getting "You can't reach into [i] whatever room the thing is in[/i]" messages when I do a "try taking" - also "silently try taking" - and to avoid that I first need to check whether the thing "can be touched by the player". 

My best code bet yet is something like this (entirely contrived) example: 

[code]
before enchanting:
	if the player is not holding a wand:
		let W be a random wand which can be touched by the player;
		if W is not nothing:
			say "(first taking [W])";
			silently try taking W;
		if the player is [still] not holding a wand:
			say "You'll need to be holding a wand to enchant something. ";
			stop the action.
[/code]

I guess it works but it feels like a workaround. Maybe I should be using some completely different approach, using a "preferably held" action somehow? But I don't want the player having to type "enchant frog with the cherrywood wand", i just want to have her typing "enchant frog". The player character should just have to have access to a wand.  

It's not actually a wand in my game. Or a frog. Or enchanting.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3962&start=0#p28408
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Need a tester for AIF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-16 03:27:19

[quote="HanonO"]Forgot to say - Inform 7 Glulx.[/quote]

Woohoo!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3959&start=0#p28409
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: You must supply a noun (even when you don't want to)
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-16 03:43:09

The I6 templates are often written so that I7 activities replace the default behaviour (in case the author has written any rules for the activity). But the supplying a missing noun activity does not work like that. 

The I6 routine ActionVariablesNotTypeSafe calls the rulebooks for that activity; the activity rules do their work; and then control returns to the calling I6 routine, which decides whether or not to print the library message "You must supply a noun". 

This decision is taken depending on what, if anything, happened during the activity: if a noun was supplied, the action processing will continue as normal; if no noun was supplied, but something was printed, the I6 routine stops short (it returns true); if none of this happened, the routine prints the library message "You must supply a noun" and stops.

(The supplying a missing second noun activity works analogously.)

As for the I7 phrase 'Stop the action', it's just a name for an I6 'rtrue' statement. I would have thought that what happens is that it does stop the activity and returns control to the ActionVariablesNotTypeSafe routine, which then decides what to do as per above.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3964&start=0#p28410
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Carrying Bulk/Weight Limit and Bags/Backpacks
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2011-12-16 03:50:36

Here is the scenario, perhaps there are some samples or tutorials you could point me to. I would like to allow the player to only carry a large Bible and a lantern. If they try to pick up anything else, they should be told their hands are too full etc. But somewhere in the game will be a messenger bag. If they are carrying or wearing the bag, then they can carry a great deal more.

I have looked around online and in the docs but haven't found an example of a scenario similar to this.

I have tried using a bulk attribute on the actor, then setting weight values in the Things but that didn't work, I was allowed to pick up any items I wanted.

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3952&start=0#p28412
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IF Festival poll 1: general directions
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-12-16 06:57:56

[quote="Ghalev"]unwanted rodent activity[/quote]
This should be the title of someone's next WIP. Sci-fi piece on a spaceship. Lasers. Alien pirate threat. Dimensional rift? NO robot cats.

Oh. In the true spirit of art, my vote goes to "whatever."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3964&start=0#p28413
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Carrying Bulk/Weight Limit and Bags/Backpacks
User: tomasb / DateTime: 2011-12-16 07:06:21

[quote="baiguai"]I have tried using a bulk attribute on the actor, then setting weight values in the Things but that didn't work, I was allowed to pick up any items I wanted.[/quote]

Bulk and weight are two independent limitation factors. Try setting bulk on items and bulkCapacity on actor (or weight on items and weightCapacity on actor or both). Look here: [url]http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/tourguide/bulkandweight.htm[/url] for these properties and here: [url]http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/tourguide/bagofaffinity.htm[/url] for a bag.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=20#p28414
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-16 09:10:30

I will say that if you get this all ironed out, it may be worth releasing as an extension alongside Magic, Combat and Basic Characters.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=20#p28415
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-12-16 09:22:38

[quote="sai"]> Decide on the the contondant-poing2-hitorganlist corresponding to a part-name of the part-name of the limb;

"the part-name of the part-name of the limb" is a good example of phrase that sometimes work but most of the time don't for some reason... ^^;[/quote]

If Inform is misinterpreting these constructions, you can use parentheses to group entities to help it get things right, e.g.:

[code]the part-name of (the part-name of the limb)[/code]

[quote="sai"]Your example with a table works well but I would have to create a table for each person right? I need to have dynamically assigned such a table for each person. If there is a way, I guess this is what I would like to do.[/quote]
You could dynamically insert your data into blank tables preassigned to each character, but you'd still need to manually include a table for each character, e.g.

[code]Table of Fred
body part     damage
with 50 blank rows[/code]

But this is not very convenient.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3963&start=0#p28416
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: try silently even if the action fails?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-16 09:28:51

Distributing the functionality over a couple of rules may perhaps feel more Informish:
[code]Before enchanting when the player does not carry a wand:
	if a touchable wand (called an instrument) is in the location:
		say "(first taking [the instrument])";
		silently try taking the instrument.
						[This will always choose the same wand, I think; 
						presumably the earliest fitting one defined in source text]

Check enchanting:
	if the player does not carry a wand: 
		say "You'll need to be holding a wand to enchant something.";
		stop the action.
			
Report enchanting: say "Xyzzy! You enchant [the noun]."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=20#p28417
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-16 10:02:35

[quote]I use lists for 2 things.
First to list the organs that are attached or inside a body part (in the table of body parts I have a column of organs lists). I didn't really attached the objects to the persons because it became too big and broke some objects number limitations (while only 4 persons were in the game at the moment). So I use tables, properties and lists to simulate almost everything.[/quote]
As I mentioned, you can use relations, but you can also use a table for this. 

[quote]I use another 2 lists to track the damage of all the organs. So a list with all the organs and a list with their status. I can't do this with a table since I need separate data for each person.
[/quote]

Sure you can. Inform won't conveniently look up the row in the table for you if you need to constrain your search by two columns at once, but you can still loop through it manually. Didn't we talk about this in an earlier thread? Here's a working example that uses a Table of Tissue Containment as a reference to create a Table of Tissue Damage that records damage for every person. I've also written a couple of useful phrases to illustrate one possible style of phrase-writing you could employ:

[spoiler][code]Body part is a kind of value. Some body parts are head and pelvis.
Tissue type is a kind of value. Some tissue types are brain, blood, bone, muscle and testicles.
Gender is a kind of value. Some genders are any, masculine, and feminine.

Arena is a room. Hercules is a man in Arena. Xena is a woman in Arena.

Table of Tissue Containment
sex	body area	tissue	maximum damage
any	head	brain	3
any	head	blood	5
any	head	bone	10
masculine	pelvis	testicles	2
any	pelvis	blood	5
any	pelvis	bone	15
feminine	pelvis	muscle	15
masculine	pelvis	muscle	10

Table of Tissue Damage
combatant (object)	body area (value)	tissue (value)	damage (number)
with 24 blank rows [you must calculate number of people times number of rows in Table of Tissue Containment. You don't need quite that many because of gender differences, but this is probably not where you're going to run out of memory.]

When play begins:
	repeat with the current combatant running through people:
		repeat through Table of Tissue Containment:
			If the sex entry fits the current combatant, create a record of damage for the tissue entry of body area entry in the current combatant;
			
To decide whether (identity - a gender) fits (combatant - a person):
	if identity is any, yes;
	if identity is masculine and combatant is male, yes;
	if identity is feminine and combatant is female, yes;
	no.
	
To create a record of damage for (the organ - a tissue type) of (the limb - a body part) in (combatant - a person):
	Choose a blank row in Table of Tissue Damage;
	Now combatant entry is combatant;
	Now body area entry is the limb;
	Now tissue entry is the organ;
	Now damage entry is 0.
	
To decide what number is the maximum damage to (the organ - a tissue type) of (the limb - a body part) in (combatant - a person):
	Repeat through Table of Tissue Containment:
		if the sex entry fits the combatant and the body area entry is the limb and the tissue entry is the organ, decide on the maximum damage entry;
		
To decide what number is a randomly chosen record of damage for (current combatant - a person):
	sort the Table of Tissue Damage in combatant order;
	Let the first possible record be 0;
	Let the current record be 0;
	Repeat through Table of Tissue Damage:
		increment the current record;
		if the combatant entry is the current combatant and the first possible record is 0, now the first possible record is the current record;
		if the combatant entry is not the current combatant and the first possible record is not 0:
			decide on a random number between the first possible record and the current record - 1.
			
When play begins:
	Choose row a randomly chosen record of damage for Hercules in Table of Tissue Damage;
	say "[combatant entry] has sustained [damage entry] damage to the [tissue entry] in the [body area entry], out of a possible [maximum damage to tissue entry of body area entry in combatant entry].";[/code][/spoiler]

Inform's table syntax is tricky, and one of the tricky things about it is the "choose row" behavior. The chosen row is locally-scoped, so it doesn't persist between phrase-calls. But as above, you can use this to your advantage, by keeping track of the current row in one phrase while calling another phrase to work on a different table.

[quote]>You certainly don't need list variables in places where you can do this:
>let the organ to burst be a random organ in the contondant-poing2-hitorganlist corresponding to a part-name of toto in the table of potential organ damage

> Decide on the the contondant-poing2-hitorganlist corresponding to a part-name of the part-name of the limb;

"the part-name of the part-name of the limb" is a good example of phrase that sometimes work but most of the time don't for some reason... ^^;

I tried to do it but I had errors so as a temporary solution I created intermediate variables.[/quote]
That's what the "pragmatic programmers" (Hunt & Thomas) call "programming by coincidence." I admit that with the state of I7's documentation, sometimes it's the only way. But it's almost always worthwhile to stop and investigate whenever you feel like you don't understand what's going on. Write a short experiment to test the behavior. I actually did that while I was writing the example, to make sure the "choose row" statements worked as I expected, and that all the various "random" phrases did what I thought they would. Doing this consistently will rapidly expand your understanding of how I7 works, and save you a lot of time and headaches in the near future.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3952&start=0#p28418
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IF Festival poll 1: general directions
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-16 10:11:01

[quote="Ghalev"]I'll play whichever games get reviews that catch my attention, same as always [emote]:)[/emote]

Sounds kind of like a science fair ... "should we build better mousetraps by engineering more ideal versions of extant designs, or experiment with entirely new mechanisms for the restriction and cessation of unwanted rodent activity?" [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
Yeah, this was one of the reasons why I originally planned to just spring something from the forehead of Zeus, rather than hashing out the details here. I'm pretty sure that even the Rio Carnival looks pretty dull at the committee stage.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3912&start=10#p28419
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New project - questions about Inform7
User: rdeford / DateTime: 2011-12-16 10:29:00

[quote="dgeorgea"]The project is one I've had in mind for a year or two but did not have the software to make it easy to do without too much programming knowledge.

[/quote]

Despite the trappings of natural language, Inform 7 is a programming language. Without prior knowledge of programming in at least one other language, you will find it difficult to move beyond the basics of it. However, your project description indicates a pretty straightforward design that is limited in scope, so I think those basics will suffice, especially with the help of this forum.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3963&start=0#p28420
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: try silently even if the action fails?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-16 10:29:26

[quote="peterorme"]Is there a way to do a "try silently" that also suppresses output when the action is [b]not[/b] successful? 

Alternatively: is there some other way of predicting whether a thing can be picked up? Something like "if the noun can be taken by the player"? [/quote]
No. "try silently" doesn't interfere directly with any "say" statements. It just stops the action before it gets to the report phase. A curious side effect of this is that "try silently looking" is not silent at all, because looking produces output during the carry out phase!

One possible solution is to use Jesse McGrew's "Hypothetical Questions" extension, although that may be overkill. I have at the back of my mind an idea to create a whole new system of action processing that makes use of Ron Newcomb's "Unsuccessful PC Attempt" to separate actions from the messages they produce.

Many actions in Inform (such as going) use action variables to decide what will happen in advance, so the carry out and report phases (and sometimes the check phase) can be properly synchronized. I think it's a good approach when it's available, although it might not be the best one in this case.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3963&start=0#p28421
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: try silently even if the action fails?
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-12-16 10:50:47

[quote="peterorme"]I guess it works but it feels like a workaround. Maybe I should be using some completely different approach, using a "preferably held" action somehow? But I don't want the player having to type "enchant frog with the cherrywood wand", i just want to have her typing "enchant frog". The player character should just have to have access to a wand.  [/quote]
You can use a [something preferably held] token without forcing the player to type "...with the oak wand" or whatever.

[code]Testing Chamber is a room.

A wand is a kind of thing.

The glass box is a closed openable transparent container, here.
The walnut wand is a wand in glass box. 
The top hat is a wearable in Testing Chamber.

The ash wand is a wand, here.

Enchanting it with is an action applying to one visible thing and one carried thing. Understand "enchant [something] with [something preferably held]" as enchanting it with.

Does the player mean enchanting something with a wand: it is very likely.

Before enchanting with:
	if the second noun is a wand:
		continue the action;
	otherwise:
		say "[The second noun] has no magick in it." instead.

Carry out enchanting with:
	say "Xyzzy! You enchant [the noun]."
	
test me with "enchant hat / enchant hat with walnut / enchant hat with hat".[/code]

The output will look like this...
[quote][b]Testing Chamber[/b]
You can see a glass box (closed) (in which is a walnut wand), a top hat and an ash wand here.

>enchant hat
(with the ash wand)
(first taking the ash wand)
Xyzzy! You enchant the top hat.[/quote]

This way gives the player the option of using "with" or not using it. Also if there are different wands with different effects, you will need to let the player specify which wand anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3963&start=0#p28422
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: try silently even if the action fails?
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2011-12-16 10:58:43

Wow, thanks a lot. Especially that last bit from Trojo is excellent. Will try!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3912&start=10#p28423
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New project - questions about Inform7
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-12-16 11:08:41

[quote="rdeford"]Without prior knowledge of programming in at least one other language, you will find it difficult to move beyond the basics of it.[/quote]
I think there are a number of people here who falsify this statement. I had no programming experience before starting with Inform and feel pretty capable of doing just about anything with it (at least with the support of the folks on this forum). I also have far more confidence approaching more traditional languages now, thanks to the ease of getting started with Inform. 

But it's perfectly accurate to say that just because you're programming in something that looks like English doesn't mean that you won't have to think systematically. That is certainly true!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3966&start=0#p28424
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Where to find IF speakers for a UK event?
User: Borogove / DateTime: 2011-12-16 11:15:30

A friend of mine has gotten themselves mixed up with organising a retro-game event. She knows nothing about computing (which is making for an interesting time), but I mentioned to her that representing IF would be a good idea. So, I'm looking for potential speakers or suggestions for southern UK based IF speakers for an event in mid February. Any input would be much appreciated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3966&start=0#p28425
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Where to find IF speakers for a UK event?
User: Alex / DateTime: 2011-12-16 11:53:06

I'm always happy to talk about Quest whenever I get a chance, so if you think that would be suitable please send me an email - <a href="mailto:alex@axeuk.com">alex@axeuk.com</a>.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3958&start=0#p28426
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Help for a beginner.
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-16 12:07:46

T3 [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/sysman/list.htm]lists[/url] and [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/sysman/vector.htm]vectors[/url] (aka arrays) have a built-in sort function. You can assume that it's efficient and there's ordinarily no need to use anything else.

T3 allows you to extend these intrinsic classes with new methods and properties. These extensions run in VM code rather than native code, so performance will be strictly worse, but it's still a straightforward matter to add your own custom sort.

Here's a (pathological) example.

[code]
modify Vector
	randomsort() {
		/* are items in ascending order? */
		local sorted = new function() {
			local ix = 1;
			while (ix < length()) {
				if (self[ix] > self[++ix])
					return nil;
			}
			return true;
		};

		/* sort items with a random comparison function */
		local shuffle = new function() {
			sort(nil, {x,y: rand(-1,0,1)});
		};

		/* seed the PRNG */
		randomize();

		/* the "algorithm" */
		while (!sorted()) {
			shuffle();
		}
	}
;

modify WaitAction
	execAction() {
		local _vec1 = new Vector(9,[2,1,3,4,5,8,7,9,6]);
		local _vec2 = new Vector(9,[99,88,77,66,55,44,33,22,11]);

		_vec1.randomsort();
		_vec2.randomsort();

		_vec1.forEach({x: "<<x>> "}); "\n";
		_vec2.forEach({x: "<<x>> "}); "\n";
	}
;
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3937&start=0#p28427
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Unix Frotz and DOS Frotz development
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-12-16 12:10:14

Ah, there's the problem.  There is no Makefile.tc.  There is a Makefile -- no extension -- but it's clearly for UNIX and the GNU compiler.  I think you gave me the wrong download link.  Can you just email me the zip or tarball or whatever?  

You can rewrite the asm into C of course.  If you're trying to backport a 32-bit DOS app (i.e., DJGPP) to a 16-bit DOS app then you may have no choice anyway.  Pull up an opcode list for the x86 line and see what shouldn't be there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=10#p28428
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-12-16 12:18:41

I'll make one too, if you like (what's Christmas break for, anyway?).  Hook me up with that word list.

As a point of order, if we get multiple people working on these, we should post which words we're using so that we don't all use the same words.

Should we get [i]lots[/i] of people, it would be cool to have a mini-extension that, say, prints a glossary and highlights the appropriate words when they occur, but that may be a speck more ambitious than necessary.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=10#p28429
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: ela / DateTime: 2011-12-16 12:22:31

[quote="katz"]I'll make one too, if you like (what's Christmas break for, anyway?).  Hook me up with that word list.

As a point of order, if we get multiple people working on these, we should post which words we're using so that we don't all use the same words.[/quote]

You're awesome !!! Thanks a lot. Give me your email and I'll be in touch! : )

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3373&start=0#p28430
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk 0.7.3 is out
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-16 12:23:30

A late note: it turns out I forgot one code change necessary for Glulxe to invoke the glk_schannel_play_multi() function. This is now checked into my github repository, but it won't be in the released Glulxe code until, well, the next release.

If you're implementing the new sound functionality -- and you're not David Kinder (who's the one who noticed the problem :) -- you'll need to grab the update to make it work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=10#p28431
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-12-16 12:28:38

Hmmmm, this could be a Mini-comp. It certainly sounds less ridiculous than TWIF, and look how well TWIF turned out. Plus, we'd be helping someone out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=10#p28432
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: ela / DateTime: 2011-12-16 12:43:01

[quote="katz"]Should we get [i]lots[/i] of people, it would be cool to have a mini-extension that, say, prints a glossary and highlights the appropriate words when they occur, but that may be a speck more ambitious than necessary.[/quote]


I will be more than happy if you find some other authors that can help me through this!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=10#p28433
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: ela / DateTime: 2011-12-16 12:52:01

[quote="Peter Pears"]Hmmmm, this could be a Mini-comp. It certainly sounds less ridiculous than TWIF, and look how well TWIF turned out. Plus, we'd be helping someone out.[/quote]

Hi Peter : ) Thanks .

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=20#p28434
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-16 12:53:33

[quote="Peter Pears"]Hmmmm, this could be a Mini-comp. It certainly sounds less ridiculous than TWIF, and look how well TWIF turned out. Plus, we'd be helping someone out.[/quote]

If it becomes a comp, count me out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=20#p28435
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: ela / DateTime: 2011-12-16 12:56:32

Can anyone tell my what TWIF and "comp" mean here?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3959&start=10#p28436
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: You must supply a noun (even when you don't want to)
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-16 12:59:32

All right, I've made my peace with this. Almost.

Now I'm wondering how to handle this situation:

[code]Informing it about is an action applying to two visible things.
Understand "tell [someone] about [any known thing]" as informing it about.
Understand "tell [someone] that [any known thing]" as informing it about.
Understand "tell [someone] [any known thing]" as informing it about.
Understand "talk to/with [someone] about/regarding [any known thing]" as informing it about.

Understand "to/with" and "[so out loud] to/with" as "[so out loud to]".
Understand "talk [so out loud to] [something]" as informing it about.
Understand "answer [someone]", "answer [so out loud to] [something]" as informing it about.

For supplying a missing second noun when informing something about (this is the voice concerns when vaguely informing rule):
	if the concern of the player is nothing, continue the activity;
	now the second noun is the concern of the player;

For supplying a missing second noun when informing something about (this is the greet the new interlocutor when vaguely informing rule):
	if the noun is the interlocutor of the player, continue the activity;
	now the second noun is hello;

For supplying a missing second noun when informing something about (this is the let's talk about you when vaguely informing rule):
	now the second noun is the noun;[/code]

I had an action called "talking with" that would redirect to "informing it about," but I got rid of it, once again thinking I could use these "supplying a missing noun" rules. But that's not quite right. You see that there are three rules for supplying a missing noun. Only the first one should really end up as the informing it about action. The second one (greet the new interlocutor...) should be redirected to an action called "exclaiming it to." The third should be redirected to "quizzing it about." Should I bring back the "talking with" action so I can handle the redirection in check rules? Or is there a clever way to trigger the redirection from within the supplying a missing second noun activity?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=20#p28437
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-12-16 13:22:30

I agree with Ghalev here that not everything needs to be a comp.

[quote="ela"]Can anyone tell my what TWIF and "comp" mean here?[/quote]

Comp = competition.

TWIF = [url=http://blog.templaro.com/?page_id=118]TWIFcomp[/url] (I think - I didn't know what it was, so I googled).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=20#p28438
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-16 13:24:21

"Comp" means competition. TWIFComp was a competition for twitter-length IFs -- the source code for the games had to be 140 characters or less, not counting whitespace.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=20#p28439
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: ela / DateTime: 2011-12-16 13:28:49

[quote="Trumgottist"] Comp = competition.

TWIF = [url=http://blog.templaro.com/?page_id=118]TWIFcomp[/url] (I think - I didn't know what it was, so I googled).[/quote]

Thanks... I really don't know what to say  [emote]:([/emote]  I just want some games for my academic project!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=20#p28440
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: ela / DateTime: 2011-12-16 13:29:40

[quote="matt w"]"Comp" means competition. TWIFComp was a competition for twitter-length IFs -- the source code for the games had to be 140 characters or less, not counting whitespace.[/quote]

I see! Thanks Matt !!   [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3967&start=0#p28441
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Wearable, Worn AlwaysWorn. Etc. in TADS3
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-12-16 14:04:21

I am trying to start my game with some objects always being worn by my actor. Here is a test I am using. This does run without any compile errors:

[code][/code]

+me: BagOfHolding, Actor
    vocabWords = 'doug douglas doug/douglas/mittling'
    desc
    {
        "You're Doug Mittling, Engineering Manager, Industry Products
        Group, Omegatron Corporation.  It's been about a decade since
        college, and the passage of time has started to show; you're
        a little softer, a little wider around the middle, and a
        bit pale from spending most of your time indoors. ";

        }
bulk=10
;

++cap : Wearable 'sailor\'s cap' 'sailor\'s cap' 
  "It's a large round hat with a white top and a small blue peak. " 
; 

When I start the game it shows the cap being CARRIED rather than worn. I can't find any examples (even in the manuals) of how to show objects as being always worn at the game start. I want these object to be a permanent part of the actor. One object I'd like to use is a watch.

I could, once again use some help with this. Any suggestions [emote]:?:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3967&start=0#p28442
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Wearable, Worn AlwaysWorn. Etc. in TADS3
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-16 14:18:10

[code]
++cap : Wearable 'sailor\'s cap' 'sailor\'s cap' 
    "It's a large round hat with a white top and a small blue peak. " 
    wornBy = me
;
[/code]

If you look up [url=http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/libref/object/Wearable.html]Wearable[/url] in the Library Reference, it shows you all of its properties.

Nine times out of ten, the only properties you're interested in are the ones that are either unique to the class or overridden with some new behavior.

So you can skip past the two summaries and focus on the two sections at the bottom - Properties and Methods. There we find wornBy listed.

It's generally worth glancing at the "setter" method (in this case makeWornBy) to make sure that nothing tricky is going on behind the scenes. If you click the line number link it will jump to that spot in the adv3 code.

Reading it shows that it's very straightforward: the makeWornBy method only sets the wornBy property to a value. So it's logical to assume that you can simply assign an initial value to that property when defining the object, and you'll get the right behavior.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3937&start=0#p28443
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Unix Frotz and DOS Frotz development
User: frotz / DateTime: 2011-12-16 14:19:08

To get the latest source code, give your git client this url: <a class="postlink" href="git://frotz.git.sourceforge.net/gitroot/frotz/frotz">git://frotz.git.sourceforge.net/gitroot/frotz/frotz</a>. Please PM me your email address if this doesn't work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=20#p28444
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-12-16 14:35:05

I like the idea of encouraging many people to contribute (especially with some central organization to make sure people cover the word list with an even distribution), but not actually competing.  It seems to me that "competition" would lead away from the simplicity of what Ela is looking for -- I know "comp" makes my brain turn to "I should do something New and Different!," not "I'm going to take this exactly at face value."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=20#p28445
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: ela / DateTime: 2011-12-16 14:54:40

[quote="tove"] It seems to me that "competition" would lead away from the simplicity of what Ela is looking for...."[/quote]

Yeah it seems that it has some advantages and disadvantages...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3967&start=0#p28446
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Wearable, Worn AlwaysWorn. Etc. in TADS3
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-16 15:01:57

To answer the other part of your question (assuming I'm understanding you), if you want the cap not to be removable, add something like this (directly copied from my actual WIP) to the code for the cap:

[code]    dobjFor(Doff) {
        check() {
            failCheck ('You forgot to pack the sunblock. If you take off the hat, your
                nose will turn as red as a beet. ');
        }
    }[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3964&start=0#p28447
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Carrying Bulk/Weight Limit and Bags/Backpacks
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2011-12-16 16:05:19

Excellent information! Thank you so much. I'll try this out tonight.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=20#p28448
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-12-16 16:09:40

Ok, apologies. I didn't mean comp in the way that really meant competition (mind you, I always thought competition was the least visible and least important part of the IFComp). I was thinking more along the lines of SpeedIF. Less "competition" and more "event where several participants make games based on themes, for no other reason than because it's fun". No actual competition involved.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=20#p28449
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: Jeff Zeitlin / DateTime: 2011-12-16 16:52:44

[quote="Peter Pears"]Ok, apologies. I didn't mean comp in the way that really meant competition (mind you, I always thought competition was the least visible and least important part of the IFComp). I was thinking more along the lines of SpeedIF. Less "competition" and more "event where several participants make games based on themes, for no other reason than because it's fun". No actual competition involved.[/quote]
In which case wouldn't it be better to call it a 'fair' or an 'expo' rather than a 'comp'?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=30#p28450
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-12-16 17:15:00

Whatever. [emote]:P[/emote] I've always known these events as "comps". Now suddenly there's a big backlash against comps. I'm sorry I didn't take it into account when I first posted.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3959&start=10#p28451
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: You must supply a noun (even when you don't want to)
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-12-16 17:25:40

The supplying-a-missing-noun activity isn't really designed for redirecting actions.  You [i]could[/i] change the verb at this point, but if you did so you would violate the implicit contract of the activity, and you might break other people's code.  Bringing back the talking with action seems like a safer bet to me.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3968&start=0#p28452
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Odd TADS 2 compiler error
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2011-12-16 18:47:09

I'm writing a small modification to the Thing class in TADS 2 that will allow the player to push things to another room. However, whenever I compile the source, I get the message "error TADS-300: expected semicolon." Below is the code in question:
[code]
modify thing
  allowPushDir(actor) = {
    local v = parserGetObj(PO_VERB);
    local d = parserGetObj(PO_DOBJ);
    local mvl, dl, dvl, i;

    mvl = [ moveEVerb moveNVerb moveWVerb moveSVerb
             moveNEVerb moveNWVerb moveSEVerb moveSWVerb ]
    dl = [ &east, &north, &west, &south, &ne, &nw, &se, &sw ]
    dvl = [ eVerb nVerb wVerb sVerb
            neVerb nwVerb seVerb swVerb ]
    i = find(mvl, v)

    if (i) {
      if (proptype(actor.location, dl[i])) != DTY_NIL) {
        d.moveInto(actor);
        execCommand(actor, dvl[i]);
        d.moveInto(actor.location);
      }
    } else {
      if (v == moveUVerb || v == moveDVerb) {
        "Not that way %you% can't. "; break;
      } else {
        "That's not a direction. "; return nil;
      }
    }
  }
[/code]The compiler always points the error at the line where I have "dl = [ &east, &north,...,&sw ]" which I find odd - it's a list definition, and TADS 2 usually does not require semicolons at the end of those statements AFAIK. The verbs moveEVerb, moveNVerb, etc. are verbs I defined to allow something like
[code]
doMoveN(actor) = { self.allowPushDir(actor); }
[/code]to work by adding an empty verDo method (say, verDoMoveN(actor)) on the intended object. The empty verDo method then allows the player to push the object northward. 

I do have #pragma C+ and case sensitivity set for this WIP's source code, if that helps. Thanks in advance!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3937&start=0#p28453
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Unix Frotz and DOS Frotz development
User: frotz / DateTime: 2011-12-16 19:20:16

For anyone who's interested, I'm scaling back things to first make sure that the 16-bit DOS interface works completely and THEN move on to getting it to work with the trunk.  In the trunk, it just doesn't want to work at all.  The 2.40 interface code runs, but won't restore saved games.  It also won't compile with sound support.  So, if there's any of you out there who still know DOS and would like to contribute, I'd love to hear from you.

Why might you ask am I bothering with the DOS port?  There's a bunch of people out there who get their jollies by running old hardware.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3840&start=0#p28454
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Getting over the hump
User: Kytaari / DateTime: 2011-12-16 19:43:12

I think this concern is kind of related to the original topic of this thread, so I'll go ahead and ask it here. Is there any free software that I might use that can make writing a non-linear script helpful? What I have in mind is some kind of "gamebook writer" which purposes is used for the development of branching paths in IF. Even something that's not designed exclusively for the uses of plotting IF might come in handy. I find it difficult to organize my branching paths on my word processor.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=20#p28455
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-12-16 19:43:33

[quote="ektemple"]The I7 compiler has a limit of 15 temporary variables in a single rule. I suspect that this is the limit referred to. It shouldn't affect most authors, but I've run into while having to do a lot of math...[/quote]
Interesting. What is the purpose of this extremely low limit? Regardless of whether there might be other ways of achieving what is intended — how could any compiler designer know [i]for certain[/i], [i]in advance[/i] that there are no situations in which more than 15 temporary variables would be the best solution? Isn't the decision of how many temporary variables are necessary, much better left to the person who will be actually familiar with whatever specific problem that the code will attempt to solve?

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3840&start=0#p28456
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Getting over the hump
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-16 19:56:26

If you just want to draw branching diagrams, I like [url=http://live.gnome.org/Dia]Dia[/url]. I've found it pretty useful for mapping CYOAs thus far.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3840&start=10#p28457
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Getting over the hump
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-12-16 20:01:50

Yeah, diagrams are common for this kind of thing. Here are a couple examples:

[url=http://deirdrakiai.com/silliness/theplay-full.png]Deirdra Kiai's mindmap for The Play[/url]
[url=http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7Downloads/Examples/bronze/Overview.html]My puzzle chart for Bronze, with assorted commentary[/url]

I use OmniGraffle for mine.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=20#p28458
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-12-16 20:05:07

[quote="Laroquod"][quote="ektemple"]The I7 compiler has a limit of 15 temporary variables in a single rule. I suspect that this is the limit referred to. It shouldn't affect most authors, but I've run into while having to do a lot of math...[/quote]
Interesting. What is the purpose of this limit? It seems pointless to restrict a programmer to handling no more than 15 temporary variables at once. Regardless of whether there might be other ways of achieving what is intended — how could any compiler designer know [i]for certain[/i], [i]in advance[/i] that there are no situations in which more than 15 temporary variables would be by far the best solution? This is an extremely low limit by any standard. I often feel that the i7 compiler arrogates to itself decisions that are much better left to the people who are actually familiar with whatever specific problem that the code will attempt to solve.[/quote]
The limit comes not from a compiler design decision but from the Z-Machine—it only gives you so many locals per function, and anything more than that means that the compiler can't create a valid game file.  (It could simulate extra locals, but that would be a lot of work for only marginal benefit.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3937&start=0#p28459
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Unix Frotz and DOS Frotz development
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-12-16 20:33:39

Is there any current relationship between the Sourceforge Frotz and the Frotz that is in, for example, Gargoyle?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=30#p28460
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: George / DateTime: 2011-12-16 20:37:42

So I take it once you use each of your ten words seven or eight times the game is long enough?

Sounds fun, I'd throw in a game or two.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3937&start=0#p28461
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Unix Frotz and DOS Frotz development
User: frotz / DateTime: 2011-12-16 21:21:51

[quote="Dannii"]Is there any current relationship between the Sourceforge Frotz and the Frotz that is in, for example, Gargoyle?[/quote]

The Frotz in Gargoyle is forked from Frotz 2.42.  Merging stuff from there back to Unix Frotz is one of my ongoing goals.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=20#p28462
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-12-16 21:38:14

[quote="capmikee"]That's what the "pragmatic programmers" (Hunt & Thomas) call "programming by coincidence." I admit that with the state of I7's documentation, sometimes it's the only way. [/quote]

Which means that this will be the only way to solve your problem unless you discover something or someone else has discovered something that the documentation doesn't mention. And the docs aren't slated for any revision any time soon. Having fun yet? I7 is in a state of partial abandonment and it's been that way since its inception.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=30#p28463
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: ela / DateTime: 2011-12-16 23:16:57

[quote="George"]So I take it once you use each of your ten words seven or eight times the game is long enough?[/quote]

Yes... I don't want them to be complicated problem-solving games... they need to be interactive and fun! 

Thanks a lot George !!!   [emote]:D[/emote]   [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=30#p28464
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-16 23:35:40

[quote="Peter Pears"]Now suddenly there's a big backlash against comps.[/quote]

I don't think there's any kind of backlash, really, though there has been some discussion recently. And I [i]love [/i]the comps as a sideline observer and player-of-games-they-inspire; I'm just [i]personally [/i]not a comp guy. Never have been.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=30#p28465
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-17 01:54:16

[quote="Poster"][quote="capmikee"]That's what the "pragmatic programmers" (Hunt & Thomas) call "programming by coincidence." I admit that with the state of I7's documentation, sometimes it's the only way. [/quote]

Which means that this will be the only way to solve your problem unless you discover something or someone else has discovered something that the documentation doesn't mention. And the docs aren't slated for any revision any time soon. Having fun yet? I7 is in a state of partial abandonment and it's been that way since its inception.[/quote]
A personal reminiscence: When I started learning Inform 6 in 1999, I was inspired by the documentation (currently known as the DM4), in no small part because it was so [i]literate[/i]. In returning to it a couple of years ago, after working for a while with TADS 3 and Inform 7, I was surprised to find the DM4 as sketchy in some respects as the Inform 7 Documentation.

The difference, I think, comes down to the language itself. Learning Inform 6 from the DM4 is materially easier than learning Inform 7 from the Documentation and Recipe Book because the new language is an order of magnitude more convoluted, and not because of any inherent difference in the quality of the writing or presentation.

Of course, if you search the newsgroup archives, you'll find more than a few messages, circa 2004, in which I whined about the state of the TADS 3 documentation too. There's no index, and unlike the I7 Documentation, the T3 manuals are not readily searchable, because they're distributed across many different files. Nonetheless, the information on T3 (written up first and foremost by Eric Eve) is quite solid and thorough.

I fully agree that the I7 Documentation is a mess. I communicated my observations to the development team in some detail several years ago. Nothing at all was done in response. My Handbook, which was an attempt to rectify the situation, is now somewhat out of date, and I have no plans to expand and update it.

Given the amount of effort that has been and continues to be put into the Inform 7 authoring system itself, and given the continued enthusiasm for Inform 7 on the part of a good-sized community, the absence of proper documentation is rather disheartening. Not to give myself airs or anything, but I [i]am [/i]a professional writer with more than 30 years of experience in explaining fairly technical matters (in electronic music) to a non-technically-savvy readership, as well as a modest amount of experience writing IF. I would not hazard a guess as to why nobody in the Inform 7 development team has ever approached me about developing proper documentation -- but I can tell you that nobody has done so.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=20#p28466
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2011-12-17 02:58:33

Is there any rough ETA on when us lowly avg developers might be able to give this a whirl?

Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3968&start=0#p28467
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Odd TADS 2 compiler error
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-17 03:14:33

You need to terminate statements with semicolons. An assignment is a statement. This:

[code]mvl = [ moveEVerb moveNVerb moveWVerb moveSVerb
             moveNEVerb moveNWVerb moveSEVerb moveSWVerb ][/code]
is not a list definition. Only the part after the assignment operator is a list definition. In whole, it's an assignment (you're assigning the list to the "mvl" variable.) Therefore you need to terminate it properly.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=30#p28468
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: lemort / DateTime: 2011-12-17 04:02:12

Hi

tried to google those words, but all I found was info about the words.

I'd like to see the list of words please and maybe I'll throw something at you later, too [emote]:)[/emote]

M:)rten

morten      [@lfa]    mortenflaten       [DOT]       com

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=30#p28469
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: ela / DateTime: 2011-12-17 04:39:46

[quote="lemort"]Hi

tried to google those words, but all I found was info about the words.[/quote]

Thanks a lot !! [emote]:D[/emote] 
 I've got the list. I'll email it to you in a day or so!!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3962&start=0#p28470
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Need a tester for AIF
User: lemort / DateTime: 2011-12-17 05:26:32

pm'ed you.

can test if you like

M:)rten

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3906&start=0#p28472
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: graphics resolution in t3
User: zodraz2001 / DateTime: 2011-12-17 06:20:39

Sorry for the delay, my account is buggered and I had to re-register, also I am only online during the weekend.

I take your point about the resolution, my problem is losing detail within the image.  I did an image of an office which is typical, in terms of detail, of others in the game.  The image consists of 400 objects and when I rendered this at 8000x6000 I could read the country names on the world map at the back of the room, so increasing the resolution to 1024x768 is not only a 39% increase in pixels it is also a 39% increase in detail.

So now I have to decide whether to keep the resolution at 1024x768 with a required monitor resolution of 1280x1024 and lose potential players or degrade the image so it is viewable by anyone, although there is only one reply to my post so I may keep the resolution.

Your suggestion about auto-resizing wont work.  As far as I know the only tags for screen position are left, centre and right.  If anyone knows of any way in T3 to auto-resize an image then please let me know.

Having said all this, if the image is bigger than the screen you can use the scroll bars, although this would become tedious for every room.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=30#p28473
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-12-17 06:28:08

[quote="EmacsUser"]The limit comes not from a compiler design decision but from the Z-Machine—it only gives you so many locals per function, and anything more than that means that the compiler can't create a valid game file.  (It could simulate extra locals, but that would be a lot of work for only marginal benefit.)[/quote]
Thanks for that, but I wonder... if it's a Z-machine issue, does that mean it could easily be avoided by compiling with glulx? It was my understanding that by compiling to glulx instead of the z-machine, there are no more serious limits. But this here is a serious limit.

(As for the documentation discussion going on, I have thought about this at length and have a half-written i7 spec that I intend to turn into a manual myself one day, at least for my own purposes and possibly for release. It's going to be a while though as I am not prioritising the project and am rather just filling in things about the language as I learn them, because I can't find them written down plainly, anywhere else. But in my opinion the poor documentation situation is not due to any state of half-abandonment or not even technically because i7 is that difficult to learn. The problem is that i7 is very difficult to document, which is something slightly different. The difficulty involved adheres directly to the problem of how to organise documentation for a natural language. I know because I've programmed in i7 and tried to write documentation for i7, and the latter is actually much more difficult. So I believe that we will have a good variety of documentation with a variety of approaches [i]eventually[/i] but it's taking a while because it's just a much harder task and everyone is busy developing games. Writing both plain and comprehensive docs is such a challenge that you've gotta basically give up writing games for a while in order to do it in anything resembling a timely fashion. This also explains why the DM4 may have also suffered in quality (though I don't know this for sure); because it is now just one piece of a much more massive documentation project that dwarfs it in complexity -- nobody's energies are intensely concentrated on just that fairly  narrow problem set anymore.)

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3906&start=0#p28474
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: graphics resolution in t3
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-12-17 07:11:09

Since this is a text adventure gaming system, have you given thought to what happens if people play your game on an interpreter that won't display the pictures? Or what if they turn them off? People often play text adventures because they aren't as interested in looking at a bunch of graphics; certainly not graphics that are necessary in order to understand what's going on. (Think of the old Spellcasting games. They had nice graphics. But you lost nothing if you turned them off.)

You say: "each object that you can use and each location has a graphic instead of a description."

Sounds to me like you want to write a graphical game rather than a text game.

If your images contain so much detail that you need a good text resolution to even make things out ... I don't know. This doesn't sound like something audiences here would be most interested in playing.

I'm more curious about this: what's driving you to make this such a graphics-focused game?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=20#p28475
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-12-17 07:13:28

[quote="baiguai"]Is there any rough ETA on when us lowly avg developers might be able to give this a whirl?[/quote]

I'm with you! Let's get it out there as a beta. If there are bugs, there are bugs and that's fine. That's why it's a beta. But relatively frequent updates that people can use are a better way to keep a community engaged, I think.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3906&start=0#p28476
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: graphics resolution in t3
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-17 07:15:14

[quote="bukayeva"](Think of the old Spellcasting games. They had nice graphics. But you lost nothing if you turned them off.)[/quote]
Er, no. You definitely lose the graphics if you turn them off  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=30#p28477
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-12-17 07:21:32

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Given the amount of effort that has been and continues to be put into the Inform 7 authoring system itself, and given the continued enthusiasm for Inform 7 on the part of a good-sized community, the absence of proper documentation is rather disheartening.[/quote]

What would be "proper" documentation? I think the documentation is sometimes hard to use but that's because I think there's too many forward references and an uneven balance of detail. Do you mean just cleaning up the existing documentation or are you referring to entirely new material?

As for me, honestly, the documentation is not the issue. I have a "trust issue" with Inform. The last couple of threads or so have shown me even more how clunky Inform 7 is beneath the covers. Sometimes I have the "lipstick on a pig" feeling. The underlying architecture just seems so dated. Granted, it's based on the z-machine and maybe that just was clunky. I don't know. I know it did it's job for the time it was written in. I see how Glulx has updated things a bit but I also see Glulx being very confusing when you really try to utilize it, such as with some of the graphics extensions. (Rocks and Glk and all that stuff. It's pretty discouraging to me anyway.) I don't know if it's still true but in my early forays I found you could only have two styles, which is a step backward from the z-machine. That made utterly no sense to me at all.

I don't know. I just feel like Inform keeps forcing you to worry about what's under the covers. And in those cases, I'd really just deal with what's under the covers consistently rather than sometimes dealing with the lipstick and sometimes dealing with pig. I may be looking at it entirely wrong and I'll admit I'm a skeptical audience of the whole text adventure scene.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3912&start=10#p28478
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New project - questions about Inform7
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-12-17 07:26:06

[quote="ektemple"][quote="rdeford"]Without prior knowledge of programming in at least one other language, you will find it difficult to move beyond the basics of it.[/quote]
I think there are a number of people here who falsify this statement.[/quote]

I agree. While I do have prior programming experience, I don't think you need to have knowledge of programming in some other language to be effective at Inform. In fact, you could make an argument for the reverse since Inform's nature would force you to unlearn a few habits from other languages. I could actually see some programmers becoming more frustrated with Inform because of their knowledge of other languages.

Beyond that, I think "the basics of Inform" is kind of a muddy area anyway. What are the "basics"? There's the notion of basically declaring the world model state. That's pretty simple. Then you get into actions and that gets you into rules. And then you'll probably need some "to" phrases and that leads to some "understand" statements and so on. It all sort of gets wrapped up together. (Which, referring to another thread, is probably why Inform 7 is somewhat difficult to document to everyone's satisfaction.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=30#p28479
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-17 07:33:04

[quote="Laroquod"][quote="EmacsUser"]The limit comes not from a compiler design decision but from the Z-Machine—it only gives you so many locals per function, and anything more than that means that the compiler can't create a valid game file.  (It could simulate extra locals, but that would be a lot of work for only marginal benefit.)[/quote]
Thanks for that, but I wonder... if it's a Z-machine issue, does that mean it could easily be avoided by compiling with glulx? It was my understanding that by compiling to glulx instead of the z-machine, there are no more serious limits. But this here is a serious limit.[/quote]

It should be -- zarf said that in glulx the limit is raised to 119, which seems like it should be enough for most purposes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3928&start=10#p28480
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Off and On-stage, if Player does... and so on.
User: lemort / DateTime: 2011-12-17 07:56:26

Well, I am beginning to be able to achieve kinda difficult tasks. ( I think I know enough now to actually write a short and easy game. )

BUT, i can't get this particular thing to work. 

I don't want stuff to show up as "There is a Thingy" here.  It is not supposed to be visible until after a task has  been done. 

Ok, so I make it a scenery. But then I can't take it (cause it's fixed.)  
(( I have also tried to make it both scenery and portable, but the respons is anyway "that's hardly portable". ))


The MOST annoying thing, however, is that I actually found a word that could be used instead of scenery....
1) That particular code wasn't saved, for some reason [emote]:([/emote]
2) I can't seem to find that word again.

There might  be a good trick of word-combination that would make me be able to search the word in either documentation or forum, but words as "invisible" "not" "visible" "description" (and so on) generates an astounishing amount of (not relevant) hits [emote]:)[/emote]

Any way. Thx

M:)rten

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=30#p28481
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-12-17 08:14:18

[quote="matt w"]It should be -- zarf said that in glulx the limit is raised to 119, which seems like it should be enough for most purposes.[/quote]
Much better. Thanks Matt, I missed that somehow — which is weird, because I did read through the entire thread.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3928&start=10#p28482
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Off and On-stage, if Player does... and so on.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-17 08:19:49

There are a couple ways around this (I thought you could make something both scenery and portable, but could be wrong), but have you considered just leaving the object off-stage and then moving it into the room after the task has been done? I think that's how it's usually done.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=30#p28483
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-12-17 08:22:28

[quote="bukayeva"]I have a "trust issue" with Inform. The last couple of threads or so have shown me even more how clunky Inform 7 is beneath the covers. Sometimes I have the "lipstick on a pig" feeling.[/quote]
I get a similar feeling at times — not as much now as I used to, but I do — however, I don't interpret it as 'lipstick on a pig'; I interpret it as 'lipstick on a highly advanced robot recently developed, amazingly, for free by hobbyists, who chose such ambitious goals for it that they have little time left over to pick out clothes for it, besides they don't make anything in its size, so they have to sort of build a clothing factory, but that's a lot of work and the robot itself still needs improving, so for now all they have is this lipstick -- enjoy'.

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3928&start=10#p28484
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Off and On-stage, if Player does... and so on.
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-17 08:28:01

I'd probably go by Matt's suggestion. As for the lost word, it  may have been "undescribed" (doc. 3.24).
You can create portable scenery; but to actually take it, you also need to unlist or replace the can't take scenery rule.
(The debug commands RULES and ACTIONS are very useful devices, if you want to find out what's happening on the I7 level in a game.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3840&start=10#p28485
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Getting over the hump
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-12-17 08:33:32

I use [url=http://cmap.ihmc.us/]CmapTools[/url]. It doesn't have many features but just enough to sketch puzzle/plot diagrams. [url=http://nitku.net/blog/blogcontent/uploads/2010/03/Escapade_puzzle_structure.png]Here's an example[/url] made with it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3966&start=0#p28486
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Where to find IF speakers for a UK event?
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-12-17 08:38:24

This sounds like a pretty cool event. I live in south England and I'm a competent public speaker, but I'm not a big name in any way. If you don't find anyone more prestigious, I'd be happy to give an entertaining talk on the nature and history of IF. (<a href="mailto:notquitethere@gmail.com">notquitethere@gmail.com</a>). Is it the Kent Expo?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3928&start=20#p28487
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Off and On-stage, if Player does... and so on.
User: lemort / DateTime: 2011-12-17 08:55:56

Yes, I tried the "move to from off-stage" and that works. 

I just thought there was a way to override the description nonetheless. Undescribed MIGHT have been the word, thx [emote]:)[/emote]


When moving something onto stage ie "move balloon to table" then there will be a 
"You can see a balloon on the table" after the description. Which again gives the description I don't want. (Always, ofcourse I like the function and will use it, as well, but sometimes I don't want it)
[code]
After examining:
   if the noun is table, say "You carefully search the table and to your big surprise; there is a reasonable big blue balloon on top of it   which you for some reason failed to see thus far.";
   move balloon to [the room I'm in atm, let's say JungleJunction].
[/code]
Since the balloon is revealed in the examining text, I would like to override it after the examine, move to room routine has been done.

But thx anyway [emote]:)[/emote]
There might be some creative ways to solve this I haven't figured out yet.  A challenge? I like those.....

M:)rten

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3970&start=0#p28488
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: Scenicr.h
User: Peter Rickardson / DateTime: 2011-12-17 09:13:58

After some wrangling with the code I finally got Scenicr.h to compile, only to find that the scenic property doesn't work. The scenicr property, however, does work. So if a location has scenic "trees" and scenicr "shrubs" only the shrubs are recognised by the parser. The trees result in You can't see any such thing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=30#p28489
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-17 09:18:26

Only remember that ela is explicitly looking for IF to use in teaching English as a second language!–or so I gather.
Anyone who's not a native speaker of English might want to ask someone who is to cast a critical eye over their writing to avoid suecicisms, danicisms, norvegientisms, finnicisms, theodiscisms, batavisms, lusitanisms, hispanicisms, pudloentisms, or whateverisms.
Mind you, I'm not criticizing anyone's English skills! Please consider the above the venting of a perfectly general concern.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3280&start=0#p28490
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IFComp 2011 - 'The Guardian' feelies in archive
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-12-17 09:28:17

I did some recording of your music. I hope you like it.

[url=http://trumgottist.com/tmp/Guardian%20Opening.ogg]Opening Theme[/url]
[url=http://trumgottist.com/tmp/Guardian%20Closing%20Theme.ogg]Closing Theme[/url]

The trumpet is me playing, but the rest is synth sounds.

P.S. Whatever software you used to create the midi files seems a bit crazy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=30#p28491
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: ela / DateTime: 2011-12-17 09:28:18

[quote="Felix"]Only remember that ela is explicitly looking for IF to use in teaching English as a second language!–or so I gather.
Anyone who's not a native speaker of English might want to ask someone who is to cast a critical eye over their writing to avoid suecicisms, danicisms, norvegientisms, finnicisms, theodiscisms, batavisms, lusitanisms, hispanicisms, pudloentisms, or whateverisms.
Mind you, I'm not criticizing anyone's English skills! Please consider the above the venting of a perfectly general concern.[/quote]

You are right Felix. The games should be flawless when it comes to its language...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3971&start=0#p28492
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: sky and ceiling
User: Peter Rickardson / DateTime: 2011-12-17 09:39:23

I've noticed that both "x ceiling" and "x sky" are treated as synonyms for "look up" in ALL locations. While this makes sense in an indoor location with a window, it makes no sense whatsoever to refer to a ceiling outdoors. Is there any way I can make the game recognise that ceilings exist only indoors?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=0#p28493
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2011-12-17 10:05:09

Hi everybody,

I'm giving my old extension for Inform 7 a complete overhaul and, after an eternity of messing around and annoying poor Erik Temple with mails until I started to get a bad conscience, I think the thing is ready for some public attention.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with R&D, it is an extension which allows the creation of a 3-dimensional 'map' of a room on which you can move objects around. When I started with this somewhere back in 2008, my initial goal was to create combat maps, much like the ones you see in RPGs like Pool of Radiance and the like. However, somehow this extension has reached such a level of complexity that it would also allow many other applications, including pop-in & out boardgames or as a measurement translator for puzzles which require physical distance.

[url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17790344/Examples.rar]Examples + source code[/url]
[url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17790344/R%26D.i7x]Extension[/url]
[url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17790344/Graphics.rar]Graphics of the examples (for the do-it-yourself types)[/url]

[u][b]What I need from you[/u][/b]

Performance – Speed is quiet a concern for me. R&D runs rather fluid on my rig, even with Glulxe, but it would be interesting to know how well it runs with other configurations, especially if you're a Linux or Mac user.

Documentation – Seeing as English isn't my first language, I'm especially worried that what I write might be perceived as frantic gibberish. Is the documentation comprehensible? Are there any segments which are too bloated or too vague? Are there parts of the examples which are hard to understand? Do you believe that, after reading the documentation, you've learned everything that needs to be known to utilize the extension or do you feel that there are notable gaps? Is the writing style too dull?

Creativity – I'm always open for suggestions. If you feel that R&D lacks any comfort function which would greatly cut your workload then feel free to mention it.


[quote="In-the-works"]1) Separate AI into another extension, much like it was before. Decide how to weight sectors. Implement A*.

2) Scrap the original border tiles, seeing as they are never used, and instead decide on 'border effects' which trigger whenever an object tries to step over the edge of a map.

3) A bucket pick which allows to take objects from multiple sectors (like drawing a frame around units in a RTS).

4) Starting to include exception handling or any sort of debugging, really.

5) Try to replace phrases with activities whenever possible.

6) Add possibility to assign figure names/text to a map actor directly instead of adding numbers to his img_ref.

7) Try to implement file import during map creation. [url=http://www.grimrock.net/2011/09/09/building-the-dungeon-part-ii/]This[/url] should give you the general idea.[/quote]
[quote="Work done"][u]29.12.2011[/u]
- Renamed multi-image-maps to map-displays and gave them more of a template role, while focus-points were split into three independent attributes. The distinction between static- and non-static graphics is now always presumed, so static image-maps are also replaced by top-down-displays, which name is more clear in its functionality.
- Map displays are now either part-map or full-map. A full-map map-display will show an entire z-level of a chosen m_room instead of just a limited area.
- Map-displays and m_rooms are now cross referenced, meaning that all linked map-displays will automatically get notified if they need to refresh their graphics when something within their m_room changes.
- Added a simple-top-down display that has, as the name implies, a more simple structure than the original (only static graphic with highest print priority gets printed per sector, non-static graphics always trump static graphics, no real modifications to the individual graphics allowed) and which translates the given reference numbers of a graphic first into a text before you can translate it into a figure name over a separate translation table.
- (Hopefully) fixed all problems with the faulty resizing algorithm for the map-displays.
- Reworked the documentation & examples to take the above changes into account and made slight alterations to the Cyberspace! example to better demonstrate what a simple-map-display does.

[u]20.12.2011[/u]
- Changed the coordinate arrangement of objects to (z, y, x), while changing the phrases and focus-points to use the more commonly used (x, y, z) arrangement.
- The images of a map actor are rearranged that they start northwest instead of north.
- Added paste buttons to the quick examples
- Some work on the documentation done[/quote]

[u]Old releases[/u]
[url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17790344/Releases/%2820.12.2011%29.rar]20.12.2011[/url]
[url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17790344/Releases/%2817.12.2011%29.rar]17.12.2011[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3935&start=0#p28494
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Waterelement.h
User: Peter Rickardson / DateTime: 2011-12-17 10:23:34

>pour skrin in box
(first taking the musical box)
Taken.

You put some water in the musical box
[** Programming error: water (object number 73) has a property before, but it is longer than 2 bytes so you cannot use "." to read **]
.  This fills the musical box to the brim.


Any idea how I can get rid of this programming error without breaking the code?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3928&start=20#p28495
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Off and On-stage, if Player does... and so on.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-17 10:24:18

Try the "rules" command that Felix suggested -- that'll tell you which rule is producing the text that you don't want, and then you'll be able to unlist it or modify it. (My guess is that it's the "describe what's on scenery supporters rule," though I may have the name slightly wrong.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3966&start=0#p28496
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Where to find IF speakers for a UK event?
User: Borogove / DateTime: 2011-12-17 10:43:39

[quote="JoeyJones"]Is it the Kent Expo?[/quote]
[url=http://gameexpoeastkent.co.uk/]Yeop[/url]. The location's [i]great[/i] for IF too, having been building up its reputation for having a vibrant independent art scene for a while now, so I'm really keen to get it represented. I know we've got some irons in the fire with terms of other game and technology speakers, so you won't be alone.

Anyway, thanks muchly! I'll pass along both your offers when I meet the other organisers next.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=30#p28497
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-17 11:01:28

[quote="bukayeva"]What would be "proper" documentation? I think the documentation is sometimes hard to use but that's because I think there's too many forward references and an uneven balance of detail. Do you mean just cleaning up the existing documentation or are you referring to entirely new material?[/quote]
It was late at night when I wrote that. Perhaps "proper" was a poor word choice. It's been a while since I spent any time with the I7 Documentation, but IIRC, its most telling weakness is that it assumes readers will only want or need to do easy things. On almost [i]no [/i]page will you find a topic discussed in a complete, well-structured manner, complete with caveats. And as you said, there are not enough references to the pages where the topics [i]are [/i]discussed in more detail. Sometimes, there are no such pages.

If you compare this, for instance, to the long, detailed page in the TADS 3 Technical manual called "How to Create Verbs," the difference should be quite clear.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3973&start=0#p28498
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Visionary v1.00 Released! Bugreps and suggs always welcome
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2011-12-17 11:05:51

Hello all,

Just a quick heads up that Visionary v1.00 has now been released. If you find any bugs or would like to suggest some stuff which are (a) basic enough for me to code quickly which will (b) make life easier for you when making games, then please message here.

Link: [url]http://www.therealeasterbunny.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/visionary.htm[/url]

[b][i]Whats New in v1.00:[/i][/b]
- Added autoresizing of form and controls for different size monitors to break the shackles of fixed size of 1024x768 for my laptop when Visionary was used as a decoder for the SAF format (and to build R!).

- Added menu item and INI parameter to determine if user wants to change font size as well when form auto-resizes. 
(Useful in remaining small if users wish to see more on screen).

- Added background colour parameter options in INI file if users wish different colour scheme.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3935&start=0#p28499
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Waterelement.h
User: Peter Rickardson / DateTime: 2011-12-17 11:12:35

Error resolved. Now I've run into another problem. When more than one container has water in it and the player types X WATER, he gets the rather unhelpful disambiguation question

>x water
Which do you mean, the water or the water?

How do I make the parser disambiguate the containers instead of the liquids?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3974&start=0#p28500
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: SAFTAP - Scott Adams Format Text Adventure Player: Suggs pls
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2011-12-17 11:18:44

Hello there.

Now that I am reasonably happy with the newly released Visionary v1.00, I will, over Christmas, turn my attention to building a Scott Adams Format Text Adventure Player (SAFTAP) for WIndows in readiness for the future Scott Adams Format Text Adventure Challenge (SAFTAC) (I say 'C'hallenge, not 'C'omp because it will be "just for fun" until such time as anything takes off with lots of interest - does that sound fair?). I think interest will remain small and "fun" as previously mentioned, perhaps to introduce people into writing text adventures before further steps into language based adventure making such as Inform.

I have the code already in Basic4PPC format (from AdvPDA) which plays SAF files and I will be chopping up and reforming it into VB6 to make a Windows executable in the next few weeks. I was tempted to code SAFTAP in Java but I'm still a noob with Java so VB6 first then might port to Java later.

My thoughts turn to what SAFTAC will look like and what options it will have.

Given that I have about three weeks on and off to knock it up before Uni starts, it will be pretty basic, so for those who are interested, what 'basic' look and feel options would you be looking for if you were to play Scott Adams games through a GUI?

Many thanks.

Itchy coding fingers at the ready ...

Steve.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=30#p28501
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-17 11:43:46

This is the conversation node where I repeat the link to the I7 topic index that I put together a couple of years ago:

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/i7index/">http://eblong.com/zarf/i7index/</a>

It isn't perfect, and even if it were perfect it wouldn't be a complete solution to the documentation problem. But it frequently solves the problem of "I know X is discussed somewhere, I just need a link."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3967&start=0#p28502
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Wearable, Worn AlwaysWorn. Etc. in TADS3
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-12-17 12:16:16

Thanks for the help from both of you. I'm finally starting to learn how to use the manuals, especially the Library Reference.

Not to say that I won't be back here again.

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3975&start=0#p28503
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Containers - Contains Moved Thing Check
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2011-12-17 12:26:09

I haven't found this in the documentation, perhaps I just need a url.

Here is what I'm attempting to do:
I have a fireplace with some hot embers in it. There is a broken shelf. Hanging inside the fireplace is a pot that the player cannot see.

The 'puzzle' idea is: the player takes the broken shelf, puts it in the fireplace (so they aren't burned by the coals). If the board is there they can look in the fireplace at which point they discover the hidden pot.

What is the syntax used to see if the shelf is moved into the fireplace, so I can use this check for the LookIn action?

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3975&start=0#p28504
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Containers - Contains Moved Thing Check
User: tomasb / DateTime: 2011-12-17 14:58:50

[code]
if(whiteFeather.isIn(hall))
    "The white feather must be around here somewhere. ";
[/code]

More examples in Learning TADS 3, section 5.1.4 Testing for Containment.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3975&start=0#p28505
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Containers - Contains Moved Thing Check
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2011-12-17 15:42:20

Excellent! Thank you so much. I hadn't found that section. That is exactly what I needed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3935&start=0#p28506
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Waterelement.h
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-12-17 15:45:35

It's been a long, long time since I did anything with this extension, but I know I did solve this problem for Savoir-Faire. The WaterElement [url=http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/WEInstructions.html]instructions[/url] say 

[quote]Use the lightly-hacked version of parserm.h included with this package; this allows for intelligent liquid disambiguation. (If you don't like that idea or have done your own parser hacking, you can find the changes I made to the parser by searching for HACK (all caps) and extracting the relevant changes for yourself.)[/quote]

Assuming you got WaterElement.h from the archive, it should have come in a zip file including that modified parser file; if not, you can download [url=http://ifarchive.plover.net/indexes/if-archiveXinfocomXcompilersXinform6XlibraryXcontributions.html]here[/url]. The function of these hacks is to make it clear when a disambiguation question is being asked, so WaterElement knows to print the longer form of the name ("water in the pitcher") only when the question is being asked, and otherwise the short version ("water").

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3974&start=0#p28507
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: SAFTAP - Scott Adams Format Text Adventure Player: Suggs
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-12-17 16:12:16

Great news!  [emote]:D[/emote] 

I'm currently using under Windows something called "ADVINT" made by Hein Pragt in 1997. It surely looked nicely back then, but it starts as a default in an fixed maximized window with no options at all for resizing either the windows or the fonts... which is both ridiculous and uncomfortable to play nowadays in current panoramic HD screens. So flexibility for handling the window would be very wellcome!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=0#p28508
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2011-12-17 16:25:15

So, this isn't a competition, but I figure this is the best place for this announcement here (and I figure it's convenient that this is where talk of an IF festival is happening).

[url]http://gameshelf.jmac.org/2011/12/apollo-1820-the-if-tribute-album/[/url]

So I'm putting together what is essentially a tribute album in IF form for the They Might Be Giants album [i]Apollo 18[/i], celebrating the 20th anniversary of its release in March. Go to the above link, read the post, and sign up (by emailing me; see the link) if you want to participate. Note that for those of you who have yet to write a game, one of the "Fingertips" games might be a great place to start!

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3974&start=0#p28509
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: SAFTAP - Scott Adams Format Text Adventure Player: Suggs
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2011-12-17 16:41:33

Thank you for your comments Rockersuke.

Yes, I have come across and used ADVINT previously. Hein's website is [url]http://www.heinpragt.nl/start/index.php[/url] 

I agree that flexibility of sizing both screen and font is required and will build in these features, as well as letting you choose the colour of background / foreground and font typeface.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3977&start=0#p28510
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Inventory Listers - TADS#
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-12-17 17:19:09

I get frustrated too easily, so I'm back. My character will be holding, wearing and carrying a number of objects. This fact got me interested in Inventory Listers. I'd like to use this lister code. The Library Reference Manual shows a number of examples (whch occupy many pages) on how to use these listers. There's so much information about this that, once again, I'm not sure what to use and where and how to use it.

RTDD has a whole section of code for its use of Inventory Listers for the main character. I've had many problems trying to implement that section of code. However, should I even worry about these listers? If so, I'm once again looking for some sage advice on how to go about [emote]:?:[/emote]  [emote]:?:[/emote] 

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=0#p28511
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-12-17 17:22:39

This fills me with glee.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=0#p28512
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-17 17:26:35

This is approximately the greatest thing ever.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3978&start=0#p28513
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Reliably finding the first non-dictionary word
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-12-17 17:34:37

I'm trying to use some old code I once swiped from somewhere to tell me which word in a player's command was the first unrecognized one. However, in a few cases this straightforward-seeming routine is producing odd results. Here's the test case.

[code]
x is room. Bob is here. A cup is here.

To decide which number is the position of first bad word: (- GetFirstNonDictWord() -).

[From DM4: NextWordStopped()
Finds the next dictionary word in the player’s input, that is, the word at position wn in the input, moving the word number wn on by one. (The first word is at position 1.) Routine returns The dictionary value, or 0 if the word is not in the dictionary, or the constant THEN1__WD if the ‘‘word’’ was a full stop, or the constant COMMA_WORD if it was a comma, or −1 if the word stream has run out.]

Include (-

[ GetFirstNonDictWord myword   twn;
	twn=wn;
	wn = 1;
	myword = 0;
	while (myword ~= -1) {
		myword = NextWordStopped();
		if (myword == 0) {
			myword=wn-1;
			wn=twn;
			return wn-1;
		}
	}
	myword=wn-1;
	wn=twn;
	return -1;	
];

-).

First before printing a parser error: showme position of first bad word. Every turn: showme position of first bad word.

test me with "look / asdf / get asdf / take inventory asdf / insert me into asdf / look asdf / look look look look asdf / x bob / x bob's cup / get bob's asdf".
[/code]

This produces the following output... anomalies highlighted in bold:

[quote]
>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] look
You can see Bob here.

"position of first bad word" = number: -1
>[2] asdf
"position of first bad word" = number: 1
That's not a verb I recognise.

>[3] get asdf
"position of first bad word" = number: 2
You can't see any such thing.

>[4] take inventory asdf
"position of first bad word" = number: 3
You can't see any such thing.

>[5] insert me into asdf
"position of first bad word" = number: 4
You can't see any such thing.

>[6] look asdf
"position of first bad word" = number: 2
You can't see any such thing.

[b]>[7] look look look look asdf
"position of first bad word" = number: 2[/b]
You can't see any such thing.

>[8] x bob
You see nothing special about Bob.

"position of first bad word" = number: -1
>[9] x bob's cup
"position of first bad word" = number: 2
You can't see any such thing.

[b]>[10] get bob's asdf
"position of first bad word" = number: 3[/b]
You can't see any such thing.
[/quote]

In the first case, why is the second "look" being identified as not a dictionary word? Something to do with the difference between actions and objects, maybe?

In the second case, why is "bob's" correctly identified as the first unrecognized word when the noun is valid, but skipped over in the bolded case when the noun is invalid? I thought for a minute this might have something to do with some sneaky internal code automatically recognizing the word "bob's" if a "bob" is in scope, but it behaves the same even if there's no Bob in the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3978&start=0#p28514
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reliably finding the first non-dictionary word
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-12-17 17:37:15

Update: okay, so in the second case it seems to be the difference between the verbs "x" and "get". With "x," "Bob's" is always successfully identified; with "get", it's not. Hrm.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3978&start=0#p28515
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reliably finding the first non-dictionary word
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-12-17 17:58:28

[quote="aaronius"]In the first case, why is the second "look" being identified as not a dictionary word? Something to do with the difference between actions and objects, maybe?[/quote]

Could it be that the parser during this phase simply ignores repetitions, so that "look look look" is considered one word, while "jump look" would be two?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3978&start=0#p28516
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reliably finding the first non-dictionary word
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-17 18:22:20

"look look" by itself gives you the "You can't see any such thing" error, so I think the second "look" may in fact be unrecognized because the parser is expecting a noun and not a verb there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3977&start=0#p28517
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Inventory Listers - TADS#
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-17 18:43:47

Listers are one of the more complex areas of adv3. There's a lot of machinery to help you get the output you want, but you have to study the code in some depth to know which knobs to tweak.

I'd recommend leaving this until later, as it's high effort and essentially decoupled from the rest of your code.

If you'd like help, you can post the desired output of your >inventory command, and I'll see what I can do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3978&start=0#p28518
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reliably finding the first non-dictionary word
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-12-17 18:48:27

Have you thought about going through the parse buffer manually? I don't know what NextWordStopped() does, but the parse buffer should be reliable. (Though you will have to account for all custom word delimiters.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3968&start=0#p28519
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Odd TADS 2 compiler error
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2011-12-17 18:50:06

[quote="RealNC"]Only the part after the assignment operator is a list definition. In whole, it's an assignment (you're assigning the list to the "mvl" variable.) Therefore you need to terminate it properly.[/quote]Right. I'm probably used to seeing list assignments as part of an object's properties (so naturally they won't need semicolons to terminate). "mvl" is a local variable, so an assignment like this would still need that.  [emote]:oops:[/emote] 

Thanks. [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=0#p28520
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-17 18:51:49

Fantastic!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3978&start=0#p28521
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reliably finding the first non-dictionary word
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-12-17 19:02:34

Surely you want [code]return myword;[/code] in place of [code]return wn-1;[/code]no?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=0#p28522
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-12-17 19:07:25

I'm so down with this I'm typing upside down. Now what song to choose...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3978&start=0#p28523
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reliably finding the first non-dictionary word
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-17 19:25:31

Yeah, what EmacsUser said. You're returning the *original* wn value (-1).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=0#p28524
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-12-17 19:54:01

This is such a great idea!

So, Kevin, I assume you're planning on contributing a game? And I assume you availed yourself of the right of first dibs? So what did you pick?

I decided I really wanted to write for my favorite (Statue Got Me High) even though other songs seemed to me to lend themselves more readily to the medium. I felt like I had some "leads" that I wouldn't be able to use personally, but others might. Does anyone else who's participating think that they would benefit from the opportunity to toss around ideas, like on a shared Google Document or that kind of thing? It might also help people who are afraid they'll end up making a game that's too similar to someone else's.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=0#p28525
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2011-12-17 20:32:32

[quote="Afterward"]This is such a great idea!

So, Kevin, I assume you're planning on contributing a game? And I assume you availed yourself of the right of first dibs? So what did you pick?
[/quote]

I do plan to contribute, but I decided I'd wait and see what is left. I didn't want to take someone's favorite song and have them not participate because of that. Also, I have a feeling I might be filling in a few of the Fingertips songs, too. I really would like to see every track done.

[quote="Afterward"]I decided I really wanted to write for my favorite (Statue Got Me High) even though other songs seemed to me to lend themselves more readily to the medium. I felt like I had some "leads" that I wouldn't be able to use personally, but others might. Does anyone else who's participating think that they would benefit from the opportunity to toss around ideas, like on a shared Google Document or that kind of thing? It might also help people who are afraid they'll end up making a game that's too similar to someone else's.[/quote]

That sounds like a great idea. I'm not personally interested in wrangling anything like that, but feel free. If you do get something together, I'm happy to update the Gameshelf post with some info.

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3978&start=0#p28526
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reliably finding the first non-dictionary word
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-12-17 20:57:51

Oh hey, that does the trick. Thanks!! I guess the fact that it seemed to be working most of the time fooled me into not squinting at that bit closely enough.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=0#p28527
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-12-17 21:05:44

I went ahead and made a [url=https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_WOCzmI606WwVcZceJ-qEAfsSHQAZJCvjKtWLMgy9jw/edit]thing.[/url] You can edit it. Although I guess you need a Google account.

I guess I can see how someone might think that it should only be visible to/editable by certain people. I think that's possible.

It's kind of slapped-together though and I think it might be too stupid-looking right now to be associated with the Gameshelf post. Maybe give it a little bit.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=250#p28528
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: The Xenographer / DateTime: 2011-12-17 22:41:34

[quote="Laurie-K"]Hi there E.Joyce!
If you are 'The Xenographer', why are you writing in English?[/quote]

Well, I could write in Spanish, German, or Japanese (or maybe even a few other languages if what I was saying was very basic), but on an English-language forum I suspect that might confuse a few people.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=30#p28529
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-12-17 23:17:18

I believe I have that link already somewhere because I remember using it: it came in handy. Thanks for doing it!

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=0#p28530
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-12-17 23:37:00

Ha! That is awesome. I sent some 'fingertips' choices.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3979&start=0#p28531
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: What do I do when the compiler fails?
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-12-18 00:41:47

I've just installed Inform on my laptop but it gives a compiler error (error 2) regardless of what the project is or where it's saved.  There's enough space and no permissions problems (as far as I know).  What should I do?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=260#p28533
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: frotz / DateTime: 2011-12-18 03:42:52

I'm David Griffith and I've been involved with IF off and on since at least 1996.  In 2000 I picked up the development of Frotz from Stefan Jokisch.  I haven't written many works of IF that I care to admit to.  As a followup to my conversion of "Shadowgate", I have a conversion of "Uninvited" that should be ready in a few months.  When not playing with IF, I play with synthesizers, bagpipes, old computers, radio, electrical and electronic stuff, random programming bits, etc.  I'm a Linux/BSD/Unix programmer and system administrator by trade and currently looking for fulltime employment.  Contracting isn't paying as well as I hoped.  I also sell vintage computer parts on Ebay under the name "Frotz661".

I much preferred discussing IF on Usenet, but it seems that everyone bailed out for this place.  Hi.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3981&start=0#p28534
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Using ShuffledEventList Within a Room
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2011-12-18 04:38:17

I'm trying to use the ShuffledEventList (there might be a better solution, this is what I've uncovered so far) to randomly check to see if the player gets trapped in a pantry. Currently I have it just within the room's definition and am trying to run it when the room is described. Once I get this working I want to modify it to do the check during other actions within the room like examining shelves etc. Here is the code I have so far - when I enter the pantry I get a 'cannot convert value to string' error. So I need to call this function some other way. How would I go about doing a random check, and code one of the check results to modify objects (like shutting and locking a door etc)? Here is my malfunctioning code:

[code]
Pantry: Room
{
    roomName = 'Pantry'
    desc = "The pantry is cold and damp. Its walls are lined with brushed metal.
        A single electric light shines from the middle of the ceiling.
        Shelves cover the north, east and west walls.
        Large cans of food fill the shelves and beneath them are stacked sacks
        of flour, rice and dried beans.
        The south wall is bare except for the thick door leading to the kitchen.
        Aprons hang from a hook in the center of the pantry door.
        <<trapCheck>>
        <<navDesc>> "

    navDesc = "
        \b
        Navigation:\n
        enter kitchen (south)"

    trapCheck: ShuffledEventList {[
        '',
        'As you look around something flashes across one of the windows. At first you assume it is a reflection and frantically
        look around you, but it is outside. The moving shape was too fast for you to identify, but it looked large. ',
        new function()
        {
             "With a loud <i>crack</i> the floor suddenly gives way, and you 
              suddenly find yourself falling...";
        }
    ]}

    south = pantryDoor;
}
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3968&start=0#p28535
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Odd TADS 2 compiler error
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-18 04:54:50

[quote="Isxek"][quote="RealNC"]Only the part after the assignment operator is a list definition. In whole, it's an assignment (you're assigning the list to the "mvl" variable.) Therefore you need to terminate it properly.[/quote]Right. I'm probably used to seeing list assignments as part of an object's properties (so naturally they won't need semicolons to terminate). "mvl" is a local variable, so an assignment like this would still need that.  [emote]:oops:[/emote] [/quote]
Which is why I try to be consistent and use the same syntax everywhere. You can define and/or modify classes and objects like this:

[code]modify thing {
    someProp = someVal;
    someFunc() =
    { /* ... */ }
}[/code]

Which keeps it consistent. Allowing the second syntax (without the braces and semicolons) was, IMO, a design mistake. Simply because of the resulting inconsistency.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3970&start=0#p28536
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Scenicr.h
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-12-18 05:00:46

[quote="Peter Rickardson"]After some wrangling with the code I finally got Scenicr.h to compile, only to find that the scenic property doesn't work. The scenicr property, however, does work. So if a location has scenic "trees" and scenicr "shrubs" only the shrubs are recognised by the parser. The trees result in You can't see any such thing.[/quote]

*sigh* You didn't even contact me about the problem, but took it public first. (Contact information is right there in the code.)

Well anyhow, let's start at square one: what does 'wrangling with the code' mean specifically?

In my WIP, I include "scenic.r" in the usual place. I also use scenic objects quite a bit.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3971&start=0#p28537
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: sky and ceiling
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-12-18 05:03:44

[quote="Peter Rickardson"]I've noticed that both "x ceiling" and "x sky" are treated as synonyms for "look up" in ALL locations. While this makes sense in an indoor location with a window, it makes no sense whatsoever to refer to a ceiling outdoors. Is there any way I can make the game recognise that ceilings exist only indoors?[/quote]

An easy way is to redefine the verb look. A hard way is to hack the I6 library. 

In my WIP, I've replaced the verb look so that 'look up' doesn't exist.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3982&start=0#p28538
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: Glulxe/GIT Pegging CPU @ 100%
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-12-18 05:11:04

Ok, I'm at my wit's end. I'm working on a rather complex Glulx game, using the latest 6.32 compiler, and after replaying some commands, the interpreter (either GIT or Glulxe) pegs the CPU at 100%. No errors are generated by either the compiler, the game, and nothing is written to any log files. After a certain point in the game, no matter the command, the interpreter bugs out and goes to 100%. I'm thinking that it's an endless loop of some sort, but the lack of debug information makes it difficult to track down. I've noticed that not a single react_before or before is hit; the process goes to 100% before that happens, which makes me wonder if the problem is not the game itself, but something further down (interpreter or language). 

Anyhow, does anyone have any ideas on how to go about troubleshooting this? None of the interpreters allow you to file bugs (or no-one ever has); there's no mailing lists (except for Gargoyle, but it's not a Gargoyle issue, as Zoom has the problem too).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3983&start=0#p28539
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: Examine north wall == Examine north
User: frotz / DateTime: 2011-12-18 07:08:58

In Inform6, how can I make sure that "EXAMINE NORTH WALL" is always a synonym from "EXAMINE NORTH"? In the library and the Inform Designer's Manual I see references to this sort of thing possibly being automatic, but I can't seem to figure it out.

I just now realized a certain puzzle in Shadowgate has a "guess the noun" bug about it that I would fix if I knew the answer to this question.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3974&start=0#p28540
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: SAFTAP - Scott Adams Format Text Adventure Player: Suggs
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2011-12-18 07:26:57

A couple more  things - make sure the user can highlight any text in the window, and that Copy and Paste work. Not particularly important for playing games this non-verbose, but always useful. And it's always aggravating if you ever want these commands to work and they don't.

Jumping ahead a bit (cos I'm going offline from Dec 20 to New Year, so I'll talk now [emote]:)[/emote]) - I was wondering if people have made Transcript commands in other Scott Adams interpreters, and how they worked? Maybe it would output all player commands, all game responses, but only output the room description again if you move, or if the room description changes. I'm not sure how easy it is to tell when such things happen. Games like The Count and Strange Odyssey have those screen flickering effects and I don't know how compatible they are with any kind of transcripting.

Anyway that's my 2 cents for now. I like the idea of calling it a challenge, too.

Good luck with the coding.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3974&start=0#p28541
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: SAFTAP - Scott Adams Format Text Adventure Player: Suggs
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2011-12-18 08:01:42

[quote="severedhand"]A couple more  things - make sure the user can highlight any text in the window, and that Copy and Paste work. Not particularly important for playing games this non-verbose, but always useful. And it's always aggravating if you ever want these commands to work and they don't.[/quote]

Okey dokey, copy / paste facilities will build in. [emote]:)[/emote]

I will also build in "up arrow" functionality on the command line to recall previous commands (you know, like when you are at the DOS prompt).

[quote="severedhand"]I was wondering if people have made Transcript commands in other Scott Adams interpreters, and how they worked? Maybe it would output all player commands, all game responses, but only output the room description again if you move, or if the room description changes. I'm not sure how easy it is to tell when such things happen. Games like The Count and Strange Odyssey have those screen flickering effects and I don't know how compatible they are with any kind of transcripting.[/quote]

Good point, thanks. I know I discovered bugs in other engines - it may have been ASFDDOS or Scottfree but forgive me if it was other engines - that did not cater properly or at all for pause / refresh for responses which did a kind of "response / pause / clear screen / response / pause / clear screen /  response" before giving control back to the user - these functions were needed in Ghost Town (lighting a match in a cave you see a flash of the cave before match goes out) and one Adventure by Brian Howarth in the SAF format (boat voyage somewhere) that I recall.

I will trawl through ither SAF engines to see what they offer for transcripting.

Perhaps build in some control codes such as:

*RDOFF - turn off room descriptions in game temporarily, just show room desc and items?
*RDON - turn on room descriptions again

... stuff like that ... similar to ingame console commands in Quake etc ... but just basic stuff, not cheatcodes like *GIVEALLTREASURES [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote="severedhand"]Anyway that's my 2 cents for now. I like the idea of calling it a challenge, too.

Good luck with the coding.[/quote]

Thanks for the info and luck message, it will help me - have a nice break.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=30#p28542
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: ela / DateTime: 2011-12-18 09:07:06

The word list:[url]https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ujcxOxqNE7l2yaHNnhrbMx1NeRBRSJMEGjkEgMXWvtg/edit?hl=en_US[/url]

Thanks in advance!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3979&start=0#p28543
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What do I do when the compiler fails?
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-12-18 09:13:55

[quote="katz"]I've just installed Inform on my laptop but it gives a compiler error (error 2) regardless of what the project is or where it's saved.  There's enough space and no permissions problems (as far as I know).  What should I do?[/quote]
Is this on Windows, Mac or Linux? What is the exact text of the error message? If you go to the Progress section of the Errors panel, what does it say there?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3983&start=0#p28544
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Examine north wall == Examine north
User: Peter Rickardson / DateTime: 2011-12-18 10:18:36

That's been removed from the 6/11 version due to it's incompatibility with outdoor locations. So you'll have to hack the section beginning on line 40 in the English.f file.

CompassDirection -> n_obj "north"
                    with door_dir n_to, name 'n//' 'north';

Simply add 'wall' after 'north'.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3970&start=0#p28545
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Scenicr.h
User: Peter Rickardson / DateTime: 2011-12-18 10:20:09

Email sent. By the way, the sturmdrang link is defunct. Please update it, as I'm rather curious about your incendiary views.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3935&start=0#p28546
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Waterelement.h
User: Peter Rickardson / DateTime: 2011-12-18 10:27:10

You know, I'd have sworn I included your version of parserm, but I didn't. Now that everything works, I have a question about puddles. I can create a puddle in every location (of class Room). Does that mean that locations are treated as containers? I'm asking because you recommend the number of liquids to match the number of containers. So if I have five containers and 30 locations, do I need 35 liquids?

Anyway, thanks for WaterElement and Locksmith. They are both neat.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3970&start=0#p28547
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Scenicr.h
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-18 10:35:30

You just need to omit the hyphen: [url=http://sturmdrangif.wordpress.com/]http://sturmdrangif.wordpress.com/[/url]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3981&start=0#p28548
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using ShuffledEventList Within a Room
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-18 10:50:41

I haven't tested this, but I think you need to call <<trapCheck.doScript>> in the room description. The error message is telling you the output buffer needs to receive string (text) data. But <<trapCheck>> isn't a string, it's a value.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3982&start=0#p28549
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Glulxe/GIT Pegging CPU @ 100%
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-18 11:02:44

I'm making blind guesses ... but here are a few questions that might help narrow it down:

Are you using any sounds or graphics in your game? Or is it a standard text-only game?

You say it happens during replay. Does that mean it [i]doesn't[/i] happen if the same series of commands is entered manually?

Does it always or only happen in the same place in the replay, or does it happen quasi-randomly at different places?

How close are you to maxing out various values, such as MAX_STATIC_DATA (or whatever it's called)? Have you tried increasing any of them to see if the problem goes away?

What happens when the CPU goes to 100%? Does the computer freeze, or just the terp app?

Have you tried running with a high trace level to see what steps the game is proceeding through?

In a large game, stripping down the code is an enormous task, of course, but ultimately that may be the only way to solve the problem. I would start by looking at anything non-standard or non-vanilla in the code.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3971&start=0#p28550
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: sky and ceiling
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-18 11:11:11

[quote="Poster"]An easy way is to redefine the verb look. A hard way is to hack the I6 library. [/quote]
I would vote for hacking the library. What I usually do, when engaging in this type of trickery, is put a comment that includes the words "JA HACK" just above the new lines, together with an explanation of what I'm changing. This makes it easy to search for my hacks. If you copy the original library code itself into the comment, it will be easy to restore the original later. (A diff program can do the same chore, if you forget to add comments. On Windows, I recommend CSDiff.)

Having gotten rid of the default behavior, you can create, if you like, a floating ceiling object with a found_in that lists all indoor rooms, and a sky object that works similarly with all outdoor rooms. I have been known to create IndoorRoom and OutdoorRoom as classes. This lets me define default messages for them. In an IndoorRoom, for instance, the default for nw_to and other diagonals might be, "You go over and stand in the corner for a minute." Outdoors, the error message for 'down' might be, "There are no entrances to caves, mines, or wells here."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3977&start=0#p28551
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Inventory Listers - TADS#
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-12-18 11:59:26

Thanks for the advice. I will leave the listers until later and, instead, start adding objects that the actor will be carrying, wearing and so forth. It's certainly not that I have anything else to do.

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3974&start=0#p28552
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: SAFTAP - Scott Adams Format Text Adventure Player: Suggs
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2011-12-18 12:09:22

Pragt's windows interpreter had a 2005 version (just found it at his personal web following realeasterbunny's link, [url=http://www.heinpragt.com/advent/advent.php]here[/url]) which used just one window and a single flow of text. It was rather confusing as it didn't include the player's commands. 

On other subject, I would suggest an option to display game header info. I've just seen it in the Amiga port of Scottfree ([url=http://aminet.net/package/game/role/Scott]here[/url]) and it looks handy to check on the fly game version. It uses a trick with ripped graphics to show the pics, but I can live without that!  [emote]:)[/emote] 

Some pics:

[center][url=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/59/clipboard01crr.jpg/][img]http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/3839/clipboard01crr.th.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/714/001kh.png/][img]http://img714.imageshack.us/img714/9403/001kh.th.png[/img][/url][/center]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3971&start=0#p28553
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: sky and ceiling
User: Peter Rickardson / DateTime: 2011-12-18 15:19:56

Inspired by Jim's comments, I wrote the following nifty code snippet.

[code]
compass_look [ obj direction;
     objectloop(direction in compass)
     {
      if(obj == direction)
      {
       if(self provides obj)
       {
        if(self.obj() ofclass Room)
        {
         print "You see an exit leading ";
         if(self.obj() has visited)
          {print "to ", (the) self.obj(), ".^";rtrue;}
         else
          {"you know not where.";} 
        }
        if(self.obj() ofclass DoorClass)
        {
         print "You see ", (a) self.obj(), " leading ";
         if(self.obj().door_to() has visited)
          {print "to ", (the) self.obj().door_to(), ".^";rtrue;}
         else
          {"you know not where.";}
        }
       }
      }
     }
     ],
[/code]

When typing LOOK WEST, you'll get an exit or a door or the default "You see nothing special in that direction." If you've already visited the location, the routine will print its name. Now, having read Poster's blog, I'm curious how you'd do this in I7.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3974&start=0#p28554
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: SAFTAP - Scott Adams Format Text Adventure Player: Suggs
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2011-12-18 15:27:50

Thanks for the info and link Rockersuke.

I will build this in somehow.

Perhaps:

*SHOWGAMEINFO

... or a menu option - but it will be in as its a 2 minute job to do [emote]:)[/emote]

Its all good [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3971&start=0#p28555
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: sky and ceiling
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-12-18 15:52:23

In I7, there is no need to hack the library. Here is one way to do it:

[code]Instead of examining a direction (called the direction looked):
	let the destination be the room-or-door the direction looked from the location;
	if the destination is a room:
		say "You see an exit in that direction, leading [if the destination is visited]to [the destination][else] you know not where[end if].";
	otherwise if the destination is a door:
		say "You see a door in that direction, leading [if the other side of the destination is visited]to [the other side of the destination][else] you know not where[end if].";
	otherwise:
		say "You see nothing special in that direction."[/code]

You might not think it from the overblown animosity toward Inform 7's documentation you'll find in some quarters, but you will find very clear documentation of all of this in section 3.12 (Doors) and Section 16.14 (Adjacent rooms and routes through the map); the latter is cross-referenced from the former.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=20#p28556
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-18 16:35:50

The updated compiler and adv3web libraries are available in [url=http://www.assembla.com/code/frobtads/git/nodes/master]the FrobTADS repository[/url], so you could try them out now if you have access to a Linux system.

(A few minor changes are required to build under OS X; I went through that process today and need to clean it up into a patch.)

The PHP scripts that allow you to redirect a static URL to a game session running on a random port are still unreleased, along with the storage server bits. These are required for hosting a game on your own public server, but you can still do testing without them.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=30#p28557
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-18 16:42:48

[quote="bcressey"](A few minor changes are required to build under OS X; I went through that process today and need to clean it up into a patch.)[/quote]
Sorry about that. I lost a hard disk recently in which I stored all my virtual machines (OS X included) and didn't re-create the whole setup yet. Feel free to send patches anyway. At some point I'll be up to speed again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=30#p28558
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-18 18:26:56

Not to worry; Mike's name was on the file (osnetunix.h) so I figured it was his fault.  [emote]:)[/emote]

I've emailed the patch to you both.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3983&start=0#p28559
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Examine north wall == Examine north
User: frotz / DateTime: 2011-12-18 19:07:56

Ah, so THAT's what happened.  A check back at the IF Archive shows me that I compiled the latest release of Shadowgate with version 6/10 of the library.  So it works there, but when I compile it now it doesn't.  I'd rather not hack the library because it ruins my ability to pick up the code later and compile as it used to be.  So, how about this: how can I have an object always be with the player, yet be invisible?  That would then be the "wall" object.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3984&start=0#p28560
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Looking for collaborator to learn inform 7
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-12-18 19:12:48

Hello:

      I have been trying various tactics to learn inform 7 such as reading the documentation and "Creating Interactive Fiction With Inform 7" by Aaron A. Reed.  In regard to the later I have added suggested text from the book to inform 7 documents and created three to four page "cheat sheets" per chapter (anything to cram material in my head, so to speak).  In regard to the former I have learned a lot in general, but there is so much detail to master (over twenty headings with around fifteen subheadings apiece).  I have finished reading the heading "things" in the documentation and am midway through chapter four in the book.

      Is there anyone who would be willing to collaborate with me to learn inform 7?  This could lead to writing an IF work or just taking away the learning about the language itself.  I think having a partner would be a good check for comprehension of the material.

                                     Craig Ugoretz

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3820&start=0#p28561
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: A good "recent" spy thriller?
User: mulehollandaise / DateTime: 2011-12-18 19:45:42

I enjoyed "Inside Woman" by Andy Phillips (2009). It's long, full of puzzles (sometimes a bit maddening though), and it's a great story. More generally, I think this particular author has written quite a few thriller/spy IF, and good ones too, so you might want to check him out.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3983&start=0#p28562
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Examine north wall == Examine north
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-18 19:54:34

When working with I6 you really have to archive the library code along with the project. Once you're doing that, hacking the library becomes a non-issue.

To keep an object around, either give it a found_in property (making it a floating object), or give the player an add_to_scope property which names the object. For walls, the former probably makes more sense.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3983&start=0#p28563
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Examine north wall == Examine north
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-12-18 22:02:42

[quote="frotz"]Ah, so THAT's what happened.  A check back at the IF Archive shows me that I compiled the latest release of Shadowgate with version 6/10 of the library.  So it works there, but when I compile it now it doesn't.  I'd rather not hack the library because it ruins my ability to pick up the code later and compile as it used to be.  So, how about this: how can I have an object always be with the player, yet be invisible?  That would then be the "wall" object.[/quote]

Create a PC object, assign the player to it, and then add_to_scope your wall object to the PC object. You'll have to have a parse_name in your wall object that will catch north wall, south wall, east wall, and so on.  

Something like this:

Object wallobj
with
      parse_name [;
      ];

Object pc "me"
with
    name 'me' 'myself',
    description "As good looking as...well...you haven't ever been attractive, really.",
    add_to_scope wallobj;

[Initialise;

ChangePlayer(pc);
];

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3982&start=0#p28564
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Glulxe/GIT Pegging CPU @ 100%
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-12-18 22:08:22

[quote="Jim Aikin"]I'm making blind guesses ... but here are a few questions that might help narrow it down:

Are you using any sounds or graphics in your game? Or is it a standard text-only game?

You say it happens during replay. Does that mean it [i]doesn't[/i] happen if the same series of commands is entered manually?

Does it always or only happen in the same place in the replay, or does it happen quasi-randomly at different places?

How close are you to maxing out various values, such as MAX_STATIC_DATA (or whatever it's called)? Have you tried increasing any of them to see if the problem goes away?

What happens when the CPU goes to 100%? Does the computer freeze, or just the terp app?

Have you tried running with a high trace level to see what steps the game is proceeding through?

In a large game, stripping down the code is an enormous task, of course, but ultimately that may be the only way to solve the problem. I would start by looking at anything non-standard or non-vanilla in the code.[/quote]

It happens in the same place in the replay, and it's not a function of replay -- manually entering the commands does it, too. Not sure about the various constant values, but that's a good idea. I'll try that. 

Yes, we have one graphic and one sound file so far. They are both at the beginning of the game, so I'm pretty sure that they aren't causing a headache. 

When the CPU -> 100%, just the interpreter process hangs (Git or Glulxe). The machine is ok. 

Yup, I've tried trace and actions on. As soon as I enter a command (after I've gotten to the location where this all happens), bang, zoom, 100% CPU. 

I've had to strip it down before, but I really didn't want to because it's quite large. Sigh. Anyhow, thanks for the reminder on the constants. I'll check those out.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3970&start=0#p28565
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Scenicr.h
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-12-18 22:09:52

[quote="matt w"]You just need to omit the hyphen: [url=http://sturmdrangif.wordpress.com/]http://sturmdrangif.wordpress.com/[/url][/quote]

Ack. Well, that might explain some of the weird typo redirection hits I've gotten lately. *laughs*

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3982&start=0#p28566
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Glulxe/GIT Pegging CPU @ 100%
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-12-18 22:21:55

One thing I would check is: you doing anything at all with scope?  The parser is pretty easy to send into an infinite loop when toying with scope.  This includes things like the When clause in "understand...as...when..."

Does it happen for the first command in that room?  If not, then what did the previous command in the room do?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3982&start=0#p28567
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Glulxe/GIT Pegging CPU @ 100%
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-18 22:25:42

He's in I6, Ron. But I'm sure the question about scope is still a good one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3840&start=10#p28568
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Getting over the hump
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-18 23:25:02

I haven't tried it, but you might want to look at Storybook ([url]http://www.novelist.ch/joomla/[/url]).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3983&start=0#p28569
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Examine north wall == Examine north
User: frotz / DateTime: 2011-12-18 23:36:34

[quote="Poster"][quote="frotz"]Ah, so THAT's what happened.  A check back at the IF Archive shows me that I compiled the latest release of Shadowgate with version 6/10 of the library.  So it works there, but when I compile it now it doesn't.  I'd rather not hack the library because it ruins my ability to pick up the code later and compile as it used to be.  So, how about this: how can I have an object always be with the player, yet be invisible?  That would then be the "wall" object.[/quote]

Create a PC object, assign the player to it, and then add_to_scope your wall object to the PC object. You'll have to have a parse_name in your wall object that will catch north wall, south wall, east wall, and so on.  

Something like this:

Object wallobj
with
      parse_name [;
      ];

Object pc "me"
with
    name 'me' 'myself',
    description "As good looking as...well...you haven't ever been attractive, really.",
    add_to_scope wallobj;

[Initialise;

ChangePlayer(pc);
];[/quote]

I think I see how this would work, but I can't seem to get the parse_name procedure right.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3986&start=0#p28571
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: The Star Gods for Android
User: wtaylorjr2001 / DateTime: 2011-12-19 01:32:54

Hello everyone,

I am working on an interactive fiction short story for the android. I have uploaded it to the android market. It is a free app. Please anyone with an android, download my app and let me know how to improve it. It is my first android program and my first interactive fiction short story.

It is called the star gods. It is by William Taylor. It uses the twisty interactive fiction android interpreter.

Thank you very much for your time.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3988&start=0#p28573
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: The list of Inform 7 documentation (as of 19 Dec 2011)
User: George / DateTime: 2011-12-19 02:16:16

I put this together for my own use, but maybe others will benefit and suggest other resources. 

With the I7 IDE package you get:
[list][*][url=http://www.inform7.com/learn/man/index.html]Writing with Inform[/url][/*:m]
[*][url=http://www.inform7.com/learn/man/Rindex.html]The Recipe Book[/url][/*:m]
[*]The [url=http://inform7.com/learn/manuals/]manuals[/url] page of inform7.com contains other formats of the manuals too.[/*:m][/list:u]

Andrew Plotkin updated Sean Barret's index for Writing with Inform:
[list][*][url]http://eblong.com/zarf/i7index/[/url][/*:m][/list:u]

Two more manuals are:
[list][*][url=http://www.plover.net/~pscion/Inform%207%20for%20Programmers.pdf]Inform 7 for Programmers[/url] by Ron Newcomb[/*:m]
[*][url=http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm]The Inform 7 Handbook[/url] by Jim Aikin (current up to 5Z71, so a few versions out of date)[/*:m][/list:u]

Aaron Reed wrote a book on I7:
[list][*][url]http://inform7.textories.com/[/url][/*:m][/list:u]

It's helpful to read the source for other games. Here's an IFDB search for well-rated games with source available:
[list][*][url=http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=tag%3A%22I7+source+available%22+rating%3A3-&searchgo=Search+Games]I7 source available and 3+ stars[/url][/*:m][/list:u]

Jason McIntosh wrote an extension search that will find search terms in extension documentation:
[list][*][url]http://i7search.jmac.org/[/url][/*:m][/list:u]

Oliver Reiser made an I7 cheatsheet:
[list][*][url]http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~moreiser/inform/Inform7_CheatSheet.pdf[/url][/*:m][/list:u]

Emily Short wrote a document translating I6 concepts and syntax to I7. It's old but a quite useful birds-eye view in my opinion:
[list][*][url]http://emshort.wordpress.com/how-to-play/writing-if/inform-7/i6-entry-points-translated/[/url][/*:m][/list:u]

If you compile any game in the I7 IDE there's a good syntax reference in the Index/Phrases tab. There's an older plain text reference but you should prefer the reference in the IDE.
[list][*][url]http://inform7.com/learn/documents/I7_syntax.txt[/url][/*:m][/list:u]

Emily Short also made a rules flowchart:
[list][*][url]http://inform7.com/learn/documents/Rules%20Chart.pdf[/url][/*:m][/list:u]

I7 includes the Standard Rules with every game. It's a great resource for learning I7 and understanding a game's default behavior:
[list][*][url]http://www.inform7.com/sources/src/stdrules/Woven/index.html[/url][/*:m][/list:u]

You can sort of think of Inform 7 as a domain-specific language written in Inform 6 (which itself is a DSL, but anyway), so it's helpful to understand some I6 eventually. 
[list][*][url]http://www.inform7.com/sources/src/i6template/Woven/index.html[/url][/*:m]
[*][url]http://www.inform-fiction.org/manual/html/contents.html[/url][/*:m][/list:u]

If you include visuals and sound, you may need a beginner's reference for Glulx:
[list][*][url]http://adamcadre.ac/gull/[/url][/*:m][/list:u]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=30#p28574
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-12-19 02:41:37

[quote="I4L"]I will say that if you get this all ironed out, it may be worth releasing as an extension alongside Magic, Combat and Basic Characters.[/quote]

I guess it may take time but in fact it was in the plans, because I would want to use the same system for other games too ^^
Though, I have to learn inform7 a little more first (>_<)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=40#p28575
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-12-19 02:42:39

[quote="ektemple"][quote="sai"]> Decide on the the contondant-poing2-hitorganlist corresponding to a part-name of the part-name of the limb;

"the part-name of the part-name of the limb" is a good example of phrase that sometimes work but most of the time don't for some reason... ^^;[/quote]

If Inform is misinterpreting these constructions, you can use parentheses to group entities to help it get things right, e.g.:

[code]the part-name of (the part-name of the limb)[/code]

--Erik[/quote]

Very nice! I didn't know it was possible ^^

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=40#p28576
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-12-19 03:00:21

Capmikee, thank you for your example. I will use your model as a new base.
I think I have to rewrite everything anyway.
I doubt I could put everyone in a single table but in fact it looks simpler to manage if inform7 can handle this. 
I may have 14 body parts, as many bones and again as many organs (I don't count blood which will be processed separately). I plan to have less than 10 persons in the game but I would like to have an idea of how many persons  could be supported by this system. How many rows could be considered as a limit (if not hard limit a limit that would make the game slow) ? Thank you.

[quote="capmikee"][quote]I use lists for 2 things.
First to list the organs that are attached or inside a body part (in the table of body parts I have a column of organs lists). I didn't really attached the objects to the persons because it became too big and broke some objects number limitations (while only 4 persons were in the game at the moment). So I use tables, properties and lists to simulate almost everything.[/quote]
As I mentioned, you can use relations, but you can also use a table for this. 

[quote]I use another 2 lists to track the damage of all the organs. So a list with all the organs and a list with their status. I can't do this with a table since I need separate data for each person.
[/quote]

Sure you can. Inform won't conveniently look up the row in the table for you if you need to constrain your search by two columns at once, but you can still loop through it manually. Didn't we talk about this in an earlier thread? Here's a working example that uses a Table of Tissue Containment as a reference to create a Table of Tissue Damage that records damage for every person. I've also written a couple of useful phrases to illustrate one possible style of phrase-writing you could employ:

[spoiler][code]Body part is a kind of value. Some body parts are head and pelvis.
Tissue type is a kind of value. Some tissue types are brain, blood, bone, muscle and testicles.
Gender is a kind of value. Some genders are any, masculine, and feminine.

Arena is a room. Hercules is a man in Arena. Xena is a woman in Arena.

Table of Tissue Containment
sex	body area	tissue	maximum damage
any	head	brain	3
any	head	blood	5
any	head	bone	10
masculine	pelvis	testicles	2
any	pelvis	blood	5
any	pelvis	bone	15
feminine	pelvis	muscle	15
masculine	pelvis	muscle	10

Table of Tissue Damage
combatant (object)	body area (value)	tissue (value)	damage (number)
with 24 blank rows [you must calculate number of people times number of rows in Table of Tissue Containment. You don't need quite that many because of gender differences, but this is probably not where you're going to run out of memory.]

When play begins:
	repeat with the current combatant running through people:
		repeat through Table of Tissue Containment:
			If the sex entry fits the current combatant, create a record of damage for the tissue entry of body area entry in the current combatant;
			
To decide whether (identity - a gender) fits (combatant - a person):
	if identity is any, yes;
	if identity is masculine and combatant is male, yes;
	if identity is feminine and combatant is female, yes;
	no.
	
To create a record of damage for (the organ - a tissue type) of (the limb - a body part) in (combatant - a person):
	Choose a blank row in Table of Tissue Damage;
	Now combatant entry is combatant;
	Now body area entry is the limb;
	Now tissue entry is the organ;
	Now damage entry is 0.
	
To decide what number is the maximum damage to (the organ - a tissue type) of (the limb - a body part) in (combatant - a person):
	Repeat through Table of Tissue Containment:
		if the sex entry fits the combatant and the body area entry is the limb and the tissue entry is the organ, decide on the maximum damage entry;
		
To decide what number is a randomly chosen record of damage for (current combatant - a person):
	sort the Table of Tissue Damage in combatant order;
	Let the first possible record be 0;
	Let the current record be 0;
	Repeat through Table of Tissue Damage:
		increment the current record;
		if the combatant entry is the current combatant and the first possible record is 0, now the first possible record is the current record;
		if the combatant entry is not the current combatant and the first possible record is not 0:
			decide on a random number between the first possible record and the current record - 1.
			
When play begins:
	Choose row a randomly chosen record of damage for Hercules in Table of Tissue Damage;
	say "[combatant entry] has sustained [damage entry] damage to the [tissue entry] in the [body area entry], out of a possible [maximum damage to tissue entry of body area entry in combatant entry].";[/code][/spoiler]

[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=40#p28577
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-12-19 03:07:10

[quote="Poster"][quote="capmikee"]That's what the "pragmatic programmers" (Hunt & Thomas) call "programming by coincidence." I admit that with the state of I7's documentation, sometimes it's the only way. [/quote]

Which means that this will be the only way to solve your problem unless you discover something or someone else has discovered something that the documentation doesn't mention. And the docs aren't slated for any revision any time soon. Having fun yet? I7 is in a state of partial abandonment and it's been that way since its inception.[/quote]

Well, I7 is fun especially in the phrases, function names etc...
But functions and variables have not the clarity, functionality and dynamic properties we would like them to have. And especially tables, which must be processed by rows for example.... All of this lack the flexibility which is the bliss of modern programming languages.
But you couldn't write :

The universe is a room.
Bragok is a man in the universe.

in an other language and expect it to create the universe for you.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=40#p28578
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-12-19 03:12:29

[quote="matt w"][quote="Laroquod"][quote="EmacsUser"]The limit comes not from a compiler design decision but from the Z-Machine—it only gives you so many locals per function, and anything more than that means that the compiler can't create a valid game file.  (It could simulate extra locals, but that would be a lot of work for only marginal benefit.)[/quote]
Thanks for that, but I wonder... if it's a Z-machine issue, does that mean it could easily be avoided by compiling with glulx? It was my understanding that by compiling to glulx instead of the z-machine, there are no more serious limits. But this here is a serious limit.[/quote]

It should be -- zarf said that in glulx the limit is raised to 119, which seems like it should be enough for most purposes.[/quote]

The problem is that I compile to glulx and have this error message...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=40#p28579
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: sai / DateTime: 2011-12-19 03:17:44

[quote="Jim Aikin"][quote="bukayeva"]What would be "proper" documentation? I think the documentation is sometimes hard to use but that's because I think there's too many forward references and an uneven balance of detail. Do you mean just cleaning up the existing documentation or are you referring to entirely new material?[/quote]
It was late at night when I wrote that. Perhaps "proper" was a poor word choice. It's been a while since I spent any time with the I7 Documentation, but IIRC, its most telling weakness is that it assumes readers will only want or need to do easy things. On almost [i]no [/i]page will you find a topic discussed in a complete, well-structured manner, complete with caveats. And as you said, there are not enough references to the pages where the topics [i]are [/i]discussed in more detail. Sometimes, there are no such pages.

If you compare this, for instance, to the long, detailed page in the TADS 3 Technical manual called "How to Create Verbs," the difference should be quite clear.[/quote]

Yes this is a problem I have bumped all the time. 
You have examples that explain you how to put clothes with underlying but the example works only with the player and a limited amount of clothes. In a game if you want to process clothes you have to test everyone with all the clothes, you can't decide beforehand which clothes underlies which clothes because people size also differ, this system can't be done with I7 built in functions and you need to make pure programming with tables and variables, which is very difficult in I7... same for combat and pretty much any simulation system. inform built in functions seem very attractive but they work, as it has been said, just as lipstick on the manual.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3986&start=0#p28580
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Star Gods for Android
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-12-19 03:50:36

If it uses Twisty, doesn't that mean it's also in ZCode format? And if so, can't you distribute the .z* file? Not everyone has an Android, but pretty much everyone has a ZMachine of some sort...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3986&start=0#p28581
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Star Gods for Android
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-19 03:55:05

[quote="Peter Pears"]If it uses Twisty, doesn't that mean it's also in ZCode format? And if so, can't you distribute the .z* file? Not everyone has an Android, but pretty much everyone has a ZMachine of some sort...[/quote]

Hm. The page on the Android Market indicates that it [i]requires[/i] Twisty, which is confusing (doesn't that mean it is just a z-code file?) and discouraging, since Twisty works very poorly on my device, anyway (to the point where I no longer keep it installed). Not touching this with a ten-foot-whatever 'til it's clearer what it is [emote]:([/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3963&start=0#p28582
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: try silently even if the action fails?
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2011-12-19 03:55:52

Followup: Is there any particular logic behind when you refer to an action as "enchanting it with" or "enchanting with" (without the "it")?

Assuming my action is defined as 
[code]
Enchanting it with is an action applying to one visible thing and one carried thing. Understand "enchant [something] with [something preferably held]" as enchanting it with.
[/code]

I seem to be able to use both [b]carry out enchanting with[/b] and [b]carry out enchanting it with[/b], but I can only do [b]before enchanting with[/b] and not [s][b]before enchanting it with[/b][/s].

Is that ambiguity on "carry out ... with" vs "carry out ... it with" something to watch out for, does it matter which I use?

It seems you can also use "enchanting something with something" or even "enchanting something (called the target) with something (called the tool)".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3988&start=0#p28583
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The list of Inform 7 documentation
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-19 05:44:14

Rockin; thank you [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3988&start=0#p28584
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The list of Inform 7 documentation
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-12-19 05:46:36

Could this be made sticky?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3984&start=0#p28585
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for collaborator to learn inform 7
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-12-19 05:48:58

[quote="cugoretz"]Hello:

      I have been trying various tactics to learn inform 7 such as reading the documentation and "Creating Interactive Fiction With Inform 7" by Aaron A. Reed.  In regard to the later I have added suggested text from the book to inform 7 documents and created three to four page "cheat sheets" per chapter (anything to cram material in my head, so to speak).  In regard to the former I have learned a lot in general, but there is so much detail to master (over twenty headings with around fifteen subheadings apiece).  I have finished reading the heading "things" in the documentation and am midway through chapter four in the book.

      Is there anyone who would be willing to collaborate with me to learn inform 7?  This could lead to writing an IF work or just taking away the learning about the language itself.  I think having a partner would be a good check for comprehension of the material.[/quote]

Question: does your collaborator have to be a novice? I feel like collaborating on something, and so far I've yet to write an IF, but I don't know if I qualify for what you have in mind.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3988&start=0#p28586
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The list of Inform 7 documentation
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-12-19 06:03:42

[quote="Eleas"]Could this be made sticky?[/quote]Done

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3984&start=0#p28587
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for collaborator to learn inform 7
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-12-19 06:10:00

Björn Paulsen:

      I am totally a novice and have been starting from scratch.  If this is your understanding of inform 7 as well, we would make good partners in a collaboration.  I have no ideas for an IF novel at this time beyond just learning the programming language, but if ideas would present themselves a little later on, I would consider running with them.  At this time, however, I basically want to test for comprehension of learned material.

              Craig Ugoretz

P.S.  Come to think of it, if you are not a novice, but you want to collaborate by "coming down to my level", that certainly would be a most gracious gesture in due fairness.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3988&start=0#p28588
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The list of Inform 7 documentation
User: Peter Rickardson / DateTime: 2011-12-19 06:22:06

Would be nice to have an I6 sticky as well, preferably [i][b]A B O V E[/b][/i] the I7 sticky so that there is no doubt as to which language is the original and which the knockoff.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3986&start=0#p28589
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Star Gods for Android
User: wtaylorjr2001 / DateTime: 2011-12-19 06:57:19

The android app takes the star gods z8 file and uploads it onto the sdcard. The user then starts twisty and goes to the menu which gives the option to look for z8 files on the sdcard. I am new to all of this and thought this was a good way to distribute it. I have the zcode but dont know how to distribute it. Where can I upload the z8 file to?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3986&start=0#p28591
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Star Gods for Android
User: wtaylorjr2001 / DateTime: 2011-12-19 06:58:53

Does anyone know of another android z-interpreter?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3986&start=0#p28601
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Star Gods for Android
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-19 07:18:37

[quote="wtaylorjr2001"]Does anyone know of another android z-interpreter?[/quote]

Not one that's really up to speed yet. Twisty is getting there, Hunky Punk is getting there.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3982&start=0#p28602
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Glulxe/GIT Pegging CPU @ 100%
User: msww / DateTime: 2011-12-19 07:33:37

[quote="Poster"]Anyhow, does anyone have any ideas on how to go about troubleshooting this? None of the interpreters allow you to file bugs (or no-one ever has); there's no mailing lists (except for Gargoyle, but it's not a Gargoyle issue, as Zoom has the problem too).[/quote]
IIRC, compiling with -g should make the game output each call to a function as it occurs; this may help you narrow down where in your code the infinite loop is occurring, though it is likely to be very verbose.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3990&start=0#p28604
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Removing the "You can see" from Printed Name display?
User: Plantar Humdrum / DateTime: 2011-12-19 07:51:58

I want to make it so that the player may retain something like the Initial Appearance despite having handled an object?

e.g. after dropping the Demon Core, the player may get, instead of

[quote]"You're in Isidore's basement, chained to the water heater at the wrists and ankles. Above you, the fluorescents flicker and hum. The mainframe looks as thrown-together and patchy as ever, but now sports a bullet hole. Junk, hamburger wrappers, and discarded bottles litter the corners of the room. The long steel table is overturned among the equipment and the stairs are collapsed, just as the agents left them. Jack's not going to be pleased.

[color=#FF4000]You see the Demon Core here[/color]",[/quote]

the player gets

[quote]"You're in Isidore's basement, chained to the water heater at the wrists and ankles. Above you, the fluorescents flicker and hum. The mainframe looks as thrown-together and patchy as ever, but now sports a bullet hole. Junk, hamburger wrappers, and discarded bottles litter the corners of the room. The long steel table is overturned among the equipment and the stairs are collapsed, just as the agents left them. Jack's not going to be pleased.

[color=#FF4000]The Demon Core must be where you dropped it[/color], but you're chained to the water heater and can't move your head far enough to glimpse it. You can feel a tingling heat from it, though. Good thing you're already dead."[/quote]

This should probably be obvious, but I'm not getting it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3988&start=0#p28605
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The list of Inform 7 documentation
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-19 08:04:36

I would especially push for the link below (which is actually mostly in Inform 7). It's Appendix A -- i.e. the Standard Rules commented and explained literate programming style. To my mind, it's a vital part of the I7 documentation.

[quote="George"]You can sort of think of Inform 7 as a domain-specific language written in Inform 6 (which itself is a DSL, but anyway), so it's helpful to understand some I6 eventually.

    [url]http://www.inform7.com/sources/src/stdrules/Woven/index.html[/url][/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3988&start=0#p28606
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The list of Inform 7 documentation
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-12-19 08:06:37

For what it's worth, I haven't updated the syntax document for the last build, and don't expect to do so going forward, because the indexing has improved enough that it should now provide a comprehensive reference for that kind of thing (and it's automatically cross-linked with the documentation). But if people find the old document useful to browse anyway, that's fine -- just be warned it's largely been supplanted.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3988&start=0#p28607
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The list of Inform 7 documentation
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-12-19 08:10:26

[quote="Eleas"]Could this be made sticky?[/quote]
Excellent!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3990&start=0#p28608
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Removing the "You can see" from Printed Name display?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-19 08:20:52

I think you want a "rule for writing a paragraph about," as in section 17.22:

[code]Rule for writing a paragraph about Demon Core: say "The Demon Core must be where you dropped it, but you're chained to the water heater and can't move your head far enough to glimpse it. You can feel a tingling heat from it, though. Good thing you're already dead."[/code]

Except, as your red text seems to indicate that you know, you don't want to print "You're chained to the water heater" etc. whenever you write a paragraph about the Demon Core. You want to put a condition that specifies that the player is chained in order to print this text. For this activity, if the rule for writing a paragraph doesn't print any text, things fall through to the standard "You can see the Demon Core here"; which is good, because it prevents these rules from missing a case and erasing the Demon Core from the description completely.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3990&start=0#p28609
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Removing the "You can see" from Printed Name display?
User: Plantar Humdrum / DateTime: 2011-12-19 08:26:06

Huh. I tried making a "rule for printing the Demon Core's name", but I guess that only deals with what's inside the 'You can see' block?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3986&start=0#p28610
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Star Gods for Android
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-19 08:26:56

You can upload your file to the [url=http://ifarchive.org/cgi-bin/upload.py]IF archive[/url]; this might take a little while to appear, and won't give you any publicity at all (it'll show up as a file in a long list of other files), but it'll give your z8 file a home on the web that you can publicize and announce (here, for instance) and where people can get it.

Don't let this advice stop you from putting it in the Android marketplace! (Though I don't know anything about Androids. Except that they tend to [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fondly_Fahrenheit]malfunction in high temperatures[/url].) The IF Archive can just serve as a repository for non-Android folk to get your z8 file.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3963&start=0#p28611
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: try silently even if the action fails?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-19 08:35:59

The common action rules (before, instead, check, carry out, after, report) divide into to groups: each action has its own check, carry out, and report rulebooks (meant for default behaviour of actions); but all actions share the same before, instead, and after rulebooks (meant for exceptions to the defaults).

It seems that the three default action rulebooks all allow these 5 ways of naming an action with two nouns:
[list]Check/Carry out/Report fooing something with something
Check/Carry out/Report fooing with something
Check/Carry out/Report fooing something with
Check/Carry out/Report fooing with
Check/Carry out/Report fooing it with
[/list:u]
And -- the rules seem to be sorted in that order. (I.e. rules for fooing with something rules are considered earlier than rules for fooing something with, etc.)

The Standard Rules use the "fooing something with" syntax. (That can be good to know.)

The three exception action rulebooks apparently only allow 4 ways of naming an action with two nouns:
[list]Check/Carry out/Report fooing something with something
Check/Carry out/Report fooing with something
Check/Carry out/Report fooing something with
Check/Carry out/Report fooing with
[/list:u]
Again – rules seem to be sorted in that order.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3988&start=0#p28612
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The list of Inform 7 documentation
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-12-19 08:38:21

[quote="Felix"]I would especially push for the link below (which is actually mostly in Inform 7). It's Appendix A -- i.e. the Standard Rules commented and explained literate programming style. To my mind, it's a vital part of the I7 documentation.[/quote]

Also, this link to Appendix B, the underlying I6 template layer--just as vital in my opinion as the documentation of the Standard Rules.

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/sources/src/i6template/Woven/index.html">http://inform7.com/sources/src/i6templa ... index.html</a>

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3990&start=0#p28613
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Removing the "You can see" from Printed Name display?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-19 08:41:12

Right, or any other time the game refers to the Demon Core.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3986&start=0#p28614
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Star Gods for Android
User: emshort / DateTime: 2011-12-19 08:51:41

If you put something on the IF archive, you *can* publicize it through [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/]IFDB[/url], however -- you'd want to make a page for the game; add a link to the archive file; add a description and cover art, if you like; and perhaps even make a news item that will show up on the IFDB front page alerting everyone that it exists.

In fact, you can do all that even if your game is only appearing in the Android store. Having a game on IFDB means that people can post reviews and add the game to polls and recommended lists, so it's nice to do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3990&start=0#p28615
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Removing the "You can see" from Printed Name display?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-19 08:57:01

[url]http://inform7.com/extensions/Ron%20Newcomb/Default%20Messages/index.html[/url]

Seriously, I love this thing...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3840&start=10#p28616
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Getting over the hump
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-12-19 09:11:08

[quote="Jim Aikin"]I haven't tried it, but you might want to look at Storybook ([url]http://www.novelist.ch/joomla/[/url]).[/quote]
I have used Storybook.  It does have the ability to mark branching paths, but I don't think it can display those paths in a flowchart or anything like that.  I haven't used that feature (called "Strands" in the program) very much.

Unfortunately, the latest releases of Storybook have become increasingly nagware.  I have found it useful, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3984&start=0#p28617
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for collaborator to learn inform 7
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2011-12-19 09:29:59

Technically I suppose I've mastered the basics of I7, but I would certainly be improving a lot more by looking at Inform 7 in a new way. If you think you'd be better off by collaborating with someone at your general level, then you should definitely choose that, instead.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3990&start=0#p28618
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Removing the "You can see" from Printed Name display?
User: Plantar Humdrum / DateTime: 2011-12-19 09:50:41

[quote="I4L"][url]http://inform7.com/extensions/Ron%20Newcomb/Default%20Messages/index.html[/url]

Seriously, I love this thing...[/quote]

That looks pretty neat. May I show it to other IF people I know?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3986&start=0#p28619
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Star Gods for Android
User: wtaylorjr2001 / DateTime: 2011-12-19 10:21:45

I uploaded the files but I did not choose an additional directory. Now I cannot find the files.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3991&start=0#p28620
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Periodically locked out
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-19 10:25:11

It seems like I get locked out of the forum about once a month.

I usually follow links in email notifications to open pages from individual threads. This morning was typical:

I followed one link and opened a thread successfully. I then went to my next notification and followed the link, only to reach a login page for the forum. I tried logging in but was told my password was incorrect. I tried a couple other passwords, including the one sent to me during my last reactivation attempt, and was unable to log in. I was asked to fill in the captcha information several times, and I believe I even saw notice once or twice that I needed to fill it in even though there was no captcha question to answer. Finally I gave up and clicked the "forgot password" link to start over again. I've had do do this once every month for the past 4 months (on 9/17, 10/05, 11/08, and today).

What's going on? Is there something phishy here, is the login system fussy or buggy, or am I doing something wrong?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3986&start=0#p28621
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Star Gods for Android
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-12-19 10:26:17

I can confirm that the game downloads and works on an Android just as he says. As for uploading and finding the files in the archive Will, you've got to give it a few days and they'll email you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3963&start=0#p28622
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: try silently even if the action fails?
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-12-19 10:29:36

[quote="peterorme"]Followup: Is there any particular logic behind when you refer to an action as "enchanting it with" or "enchanting with" (without the "it")? ... It seems you can also use "enchanting something with something" or even "enchanting something (called the target) with something (called the tool)".[/quote]You can also write rules for that action that go off of properties, e.g. "enchanting a wearable with", or kinds, e.g. "enchanting a wand with", or specific nouns, e.g. "enchanting the top hat with", or really specific combinations of whatever, e.g...
[code]Instead of enchanting an overcharged wand with the overcharged ash wand when the player is inebriated during Climactic Final Battle:
	say "You cross the streams! Pow!";
	end the story finally saying "You saved the day. Go, you!".[/code]
I think the "it" is a keyword that tells Inform that a direct object is supposed to go there in the player's input. Or something like that. You'll want to include the "it" in the initial declaration of the action and any Understand phrases, and it doesn't hurt anything if you leave "it" in elsewhere in place of "something" when writing rules, though you'll need to replace "it" when writing the rule for something more specific than "something". At least that's my understanding of how that works, which is probably wrong or at least over-simplified, but thinking of it that way usually at least results in functioning code for me.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3963&start=0#p28623
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: try silently even if the action fails?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-19 10:32:24

"fooing it with" is part of the actual rulebook name. I think what's going on is this:

[code]carry out [action description]fooing something with[/action description] [rulebook name implied /]
carry out [no action descripton /] [rulebook name]fooing it with[/rulebook name][/code]

You can see the rulebook name in action if you try something like this:
[code]Carry out unlocking something with (this is the extra unlocking rule):
	do nothing.
	
The extra unlocking rule is listed first in the carry out unlocking rulebook. [wrong rulebook name - does not compile]
The extra unlocking rule is listed first in the carry out unlocking something with rulebook. [wrong rulebook name - does not compile]
The extra unlocking rule is listed first in the carry out unlocking it with rulebook. [right rulebook name - works as expected][/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3978&start=0#p28624
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reliably finding the first non-dictionary word
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-19 10:41:38

I think this might be the same bug I fixed when I updated Unknown Word Error. I thought I had submitted the update to the I7 site but maybe I never did, because it's not there. Maybe I was waiting to hear from Neil Cerutti. It was a few weeks ago and I don't remember what I did, but I think I'm actually using this in my WIP with good results:

<a class="postlink" href="http://eyeballsun.org/i/Unknown%20Word%20Error.i7x">http://eyeballsun.org/i/Unknown%20Word%20Error.i7x</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3991&start=0#p28625
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Periodically locked out
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2011-12-19 10:42:06

I've had this a few times before, though not (touch wood) for a while now. My password won’t be recognised or I'm told my captcha entry is incorrect. Sometimes, I keep on persistently trying and in the end it lets me in – using the same password I always use, even though it told me this was wrong the last umpteen times I tried it. Other times it doesn't work and I have to reset my password.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3992&start=0#p28626
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: preventing line break
User: Peter Rickardson / DateTime: 2011-12-19 11:16:43

Is there a directive for preventing a line break?

when_closed "Passage south is barred by a stone door";

I want all the when_closed and when_open texts to be rpinted on the same line, so that when there are three doors in the room I get this

Passage south is barred by a ston door, passage east by boulder and passage north is open.

Instead of the clunky

Passage south is barred by a stone door.

Passage east is barred by a boulder.

Passage north is open.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3991&start=0#p28627
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Periodically locked out
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-19 11:41:54

Hm. I haven't had any trouble with it. There's nothing in the phpBB3 verification system that should be causing it, either. Does it do the same thing if you try logging in through a different browser? Maybe something is happening to the login cookie or something is corrupting the POST data? Not likely, but really the only thing I can come up with, unless they're doing some kind of periodic maintenance. But again, I can't think of anything they'd be doing that would cause that specific problem.

I also don't access pages through email, so I can't say. I either go to "View Unread Messages" from the forum index or hit posts from RSS, since I can't convince anyone to get some tapatalk love.

And CAPTCHA is just questionable and problematic anyway. Having problems with it isn't surprising at all.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3990&start=0#p28629
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Removing the "You can see" from Printed Name display?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-19 11:42:50

[quote="Plantar Humdrum"][quote="I4L"][url]http://inform7.com/extensions/Ron%20Newcomb/Default%20Messages/index.html[/url]

Seriously, I love this thing...[/quote]

That looks pretty neat. May I show it to other IF people I know?[/quote]

Don't need my permission. It's a publically accessible extension. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3992&start=0#p28630
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: preventing line break
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-19 11:46:30

Looks to me like you'll need to write your own code for this. It could be done as a global function, if you have a lot of rooms.

You may need to hack the library code. It appears (judging from the brief example in the DM4) that when_closed is intended just to print a string when it's called. So if you have three doors in the location, when_closed or when_open may get called on all three of them in turn. OTOH, if two of them supply no string for this, what happens? Maybe you could make the when_closed and when_open on one door do all the work of printing composite messages, and leave the other doors without these properties. Have you tried that?

If I have time, I'll try a few things and let you know what I learn -- no promises, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3963&start=0#p28631
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: try silently even if the action fails?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-19 12:59:51

Good thinking. That would make sense—i.e. it would explain why you can't write "carry out fooing it with something" (since that would be a contamination of the name of rulebook with the description of an action) nor "instead of fooing it with" (since the name of the rulebook is just "instead"). 
So the upshot is: don't use "it" when writing a rule; use it when referring to a rule or rulebook. (Don't use it _in_ rules; use it _about_ rules.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3993&start=0#p28632
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Teleporter/Train Coding
User: harryg2011 / DateTime: 2011-12-19 13:14:25

Hi, in my text-adventure I'm working on, I would want the player to be able to use a teleporter or bullettrain. It's set in a huge space-cruise ship, and the teleporter would effectively limit areas where the player would go, but also limit certain areas from the player until I wanted them to be able to go there. I tried using the Dubai Example, but I couldn't get it to work. There will be 5 "levels" to choose from, each housing different locations. Does anyone have some simplish code for a situation like this? If worse comes worse, I'll code new actions (like 'Press button 4' or 'press button 5'), but that seems like such a hassle. Do you have any ideas?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3993&start=0#p28633
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Teleporter/Train Coding
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-19 13:18:15

I'm at work and don't have time to crop together a code example at the moment. But it seems like the menus extension would probably work well here. Just have to call the specific table based on what options you want the player to have, then write the move player rules based on the menu selection.

I'll put something together this evening if someone else doesn't before I get to my computer. (And I'm sure they will!)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3990&start=0#p28634
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Removing the "You can see" from Printed Name display?
User: Plantar Humdrum / DateTime: 2011-12-19 13:34:46

Oh. Cool!

One more question, not to open a new thread or anything, but

[quote]Radioactivity is a kind of value.
1TBq specifies a radioactivity.

An exposed notebook is a kind of thing with description "[if radioactivity is more than 5TBq and less than 10TBq]Get thee to a superfund site![else]A notebook placeholder."

An exposed notebook has a radioactivity. An exposed notebook usually has a radioactivity 8TBq.[/quote]

This doesn't work. I can't seem to compare radioactivity.

[quote]Problem. In the sentence 'An exposed notebook is a kind of thing with description "[if radioactivity is more than 5TBq and less than 10TBq]Get thee to a superfund site!"'  , I was expecting to read a condition, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'radioactivity is more than 5TBq'.[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3990&start=0#p28635
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Removing the "You can see" from Printed Name display?
User: Plantar Humdrum / DateTime: 2011-12-19 14:10:39

edit: made new thread for googlability

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3992&start=0#p28636
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: preventing line break
User: Peter Rickardson / DateTime: 2011-12-19 14:18:01

This is kind of ridiculous, but I have no idea how I6 handles strings. When printing the name of an object I use

print (name) obj;

but how do I get the actual name string so I can do something like this

print (string) obj.name;

?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3990&start=0#p28637
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Removing the "You can see" from Printed Name display?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-19 14:26:23

[quote="Plantar Humdrum"]Oh. Cool!

One more question, not to open a new thread or anything, but

[quote]Radioactivity is a kind of value.
1TBq specifies a radioactivity.

An exposed notebook is a kind of thing with description "[if radioactivity is more than 5TBq and less than 10TBq]Get thee to a superfund site![else]A notebook placeholder."

An exposed notebook has a radioactivity. An exposed notebook usually has a radioactivity 8TBq.[/quote]

This doesn't work. I can't seem to compare radioactivity.

[quote]Problem. In the sentence 'An exposed notebook is a kind of thing with description "[if radioactivity is more than 5TBq and less than 10TBq]Get thee to a superfund site!"'  , I was expecting to read a condition, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'radioactivity is more than 5TBq'.[/quote][/quote]


Can't test right now, but I think it should be something more like:

[code][if the radioactivity of the notebook is more than 5TBq][/code]

However, you can't do what you're trying to do inside of a say statement. Say statements only allow one if/else. So you can do "more than 5" or "less than 10" but you can't do both. You'd have to define that conditional outside of the say statement and either print a new block of text or use text substitution.

Edit: Also I didn't find a new thread...?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3990&start=10#p28638
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Removing the "You can see" from Printed Name display?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-19 14:40:43

I think you want "[if the radioactivity of the item described....]" "The notebook" parses the same way as "a notebook," so that will trigger if any notebook meets the condition (assuming the condition parses at all).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=0#p28639
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-12-19 14:40:44

I have to admit--I never "got" TMBG, though I probably should've. Apparently I'm the sort of person who would, and I was when I was younger, but I remember being totally baffled.

Now obviously part of this is up to me--revisiting the songs and finding time to just sit and see what I missed--but I was wondering about backup.

So I would be interested/grateful if people pointed me to a place that explains what they were doing/trying to do/what went over my head. It might be neat to be a part of this, and maybe it's one less "I don't understand" to cross off.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=260#p28640
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-19 14:56:40

Glad you decided to come join us!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3992&start=0#p28641
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: preventing line break
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-19 15:35:46

I think that is 
[code]print (address) obj.name;[/code]
(As usual, only the first 9 characters of the name are internally stored.)

Dictionary words need the print (address) syntax, I think.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3992&start=0#p28642
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: preventing line break
User: Peter Rickardson / DateTime: 2011-12-19 15:47:08

[quote="Felix"]I think that is 
[code]print (address) obj.name;[/code]
(As usual, only the first 9 characters of the name are internally stored)[/quote]

[** Programming error: stone door (object number 89) has a property name, but it is longer than 2 bytes so you cannot use "." to read **]


This is apparently a special case. When I tried "print (address)" with other string values, it printed gibberish.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3992&start=0#p28643
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: preventing line break
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-12-19 16:05:31

[quote="Peter Rickardson"][quote="Felix"]I think that is 
[code]print (address) obj.name;[/code]
(As usual, only the first 9 characters of the name are internally stored)[/quote]

[** Programming error: stone door (object number 89) has a property name, but it is longer than 2 bytes so you cannot use "." to read **]


This is apparently a special case. When I tried "print (address)" with other string values, it printed gibberish.[/quote]

Well, the problem with getting the name property is that it's not a string value, I don't think. For example:

Object cundwe "cool underwear" Toiletary
with
    name 'bvds' 'hanes' 'joe boxer',
has stinky;

Do you want to print out all of the names of the object?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3988&start=0#p28644
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The list of Inform 7 documentation
User: George / DateTime: 2011-12-19 16:07:18

Thanks for the comments folks, I've updated the OP.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3977&start=0#p28645
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Inventory Listers - TADS#
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-12-19 16:10:13

bcressey:

I guess I've been married too long (53 years) because, like my wife, I've changed my mind about waiting on the inventory lister. The reference manual shows a lister logic that shows my objects in scripted form that allows me to list my items in up to up to seven items of text rather than on individual lines. That's what I'd like to use.

If you'd like to give it a shot at getting me started on this, I certainly won't refuse. Just let know what section of code and any other information you'll need. 

Many thanks,

RonG

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3982&start=0#p28646
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Glulxe/GIT Pegging CPU @ 100%
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-12-19 16:12:15

Yeah, I'm playing with scope quite a bit. I'll check that out too. I'm sure I can reduce some of my scope monkeying. (And it does seem to be an endless loop situation.)

I've tried the -g. Not sure why it's not working, as I've seen the output before, but perhaps something in Glulxe is forbidding it. 

I don't think it's the static variables, at this point. I'm not near any maximums.

Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3992&start=0#p28647
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: preventing line break
User: Peter Rickardson / DateTime: 2011-12-19 16:20:19

[quote="Poster"]Do you want to print out all of the names of the object?[/quote]

I want to duplicate the functionality of "print (name) obj" in the form of a string so I can do this (using the functions in istring.h)

LStrCat(Text,obj.name);
printString(Text);

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3988&start=10#p28648
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The list of Inform 7 documentation
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-12-19 16:43:44

[quote="Laroquod"][quote="Eleas"]Could this be made sticky?[/quote]
Excellent![/quote]

I third this suggestion. I also recommend that, if the author will be updating the first post, the title be updated, too, so we also know when this was last updated.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3988&start=10#p28649
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The list of Inform 7 documentation (as of 19 Dec 2011)
User: George / DateTime: 2011-12-19 16:47:28

Good suggestion, done.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3968&start=0#p28650
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Odd TADS 2 compiler error
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2011-12-19 17:28:16

[quote="RealNC"]You can define and/or modify classes and objects like this:

[code]modify thing {
    someProp = someVal;
    someFunc() =
    { /* ... */ }
}[/code]

Which keeps it consistent. Allowing the second syntax (without the braces and semicolons) was, IMO, a design mistake. Simply because of the resulting inconsistency.[/quote]I don't think that's allowed in TADS 2. You probably mean TADS 3, right?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3977&start=0#p28651
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Inventory Listers - TADS#
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-19 17:30:42

Can you post the example listing from the manual you're citing?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3995&start=0#p28652
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6 patch for UTF-8 source files
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-19 17:38:12

A few months ago, minus273 offered an I6 patch which allowed users to write their source files in UTF-8 rather than using @-style character escapes. See this thread: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2587">viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2587</a>

I've finally integrated it into my Inform work tree. (It's not exactly the same patch; I fixed a couple of small bugs.)

Until this is absorbed by the official I6 release, you can download the patch here:
<a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/erkyrath/inform6/commit/d469b950988f48cef9ca20c3d0005ab7dfddecbe">https://github.com/erkyrath/inform6/com ... b7dfddecbe</a>

Compiler unit tests: <a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/erkyrath/glk-dev/tree/master/unittests">https://github.com/erkyrath/glk-dev/tre ... /unittests</a> (chinesedicttest.inf and unisourcetest.inf).

This doesn't directly affect I7 users, because the I7 IDE already handles UTF-8 source code (and does all the necessary escaping automatically).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2587&start=0#p28653
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: [log] Porting Inform 6 to Chinese
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-19 17:39:20

I've finally sucked this into my work tree and tested it. Looks good, except for a couple of bugs in the 2-byte and 3-byte UTF8 cases -- easily fixed.

See this post: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3995">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3995</a>

Thanks again!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3990&start=10#p28654
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Removing the "You can see" from Printed Name display?
User: Plantar Humdrum / DateTime: 2011-12-19 18:08:10

I haven't made a new thread yet.

Anyway, it doesn't seem to parse, even specifying it as you did. Do I need to have a "Definition:" before it'll work?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3990&start=10#p28655
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Removing the "You can see" from Printed Name display?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-19 18:23:11

OK, after some fiddling, I think I've got it:

[code]An exposed notebook is a kind of thing with description "[if the radioactivity of the item described is greater than 5TBq and the radioactivity of the item described is less than 10TBq]Get thee to a superfund site![else]A notebook placeholder."[/code]

Three points: 
As I mentioned before, you have to use "item described." When I tried it with "radioactivity of the notebook" it didn't even compile, which surprised me a little -- I expected it to treat "the notebook" as basically "some notebook, somewhere" (which would've been more insidious.)
You can't say "if the radioactivity of the item described is greater than 5tbq and less than 10tbq"; you have to spell it out so there are complete conditions on either side of the "and."
It has to be "greater than," not "more than." That's what really got me. (The compiler errors were actually helpful here, since they nailed down which part was failing.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3990&start=10#p28656
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Removing the "You can see" from Printed Name display?
User: Plantar Humdrum / DateTime: 2011-12-19 18:42:33

[quote="matt w"]OK, after some fiddling, I think I've got it:

[code]An exposed notebook is a kind of thing with description "[if the radioactivity of the item described is greater than 5TBq and the radioactivity of the item described is less than 10TBq]Get thee to a superfund site![else]A notebook placeholder."[/code]

Three points: 
As I mentioned before, you have to use "item described." When I tried it with "radioactivity of the notebook" it didn't even compile, which surprised me a little -- I expected it to treat "the notebook" as basically "some notebook, somewhere" (which would've been more insidious.)
You can't say "if the radioactivity of the item described is greater than 5tbq and less than 10tbq"; you have to spell it out so there are complete conditions on either side of the "and."
It has to be "greater than," not "more than." That's what really got me. (The compiler errors were actually helpful here, since they nailed down which part was failing.)[/quote]

It works! Thanks!

Also, ">" works for it too. I tried that once, but the real hole for me was not using "the item described". I bet there's a way to get a list of all those internal variables like "item described" and "current room" and so on, but I don't know what it is. Oh well.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3990&start=10#p28657
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Removing the "You can see" from Printed Name display?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-19 19:06:09

Here are the big ones I can think of:

The noun: In rules for actions, the first object that the action applies to.
The second noun: In rules for actions, the second object that the action applies to.
The topic understood: In rules for actions that take free-form text instead of object names, the text that was input. (e.g., If you type "SET DIAL TO FORBO", the topic understood would be "FORBO".) 
The person asked: In persuasion rules and rules for actions, the person who is being asked to perform an action, or the person who is carrying it out.
The actor: In rules for actions, the person who is carrying out an action. (I'm not sure how much this differs from "the person asked" in most cases.") [UPDATE: Right, there's some [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=24183#p24183]potential weirdness[/url] with "the actor."]
The location: The room enclosing the player.

Anyone got some more? I may not have these all quite right, especially "the person asked."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3990&start=10#p28658
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Removing the "You can see" from Printed Name display?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-19 19:08:11

Odd... Every time I've tried to do multiple conditionals in a say statement, it tells me that it's too complex.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3996&start=0#p28659
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Is there a way to count the number of a kind?
User: HanonO / DateTime: 2011-12-19 19:31:59

[code]					
Counting is an action applying to one touchable thing.  

Understand "count [something]" as counting.


Report counting a bill:
	say "You're carrying [A list of bills carried by the player].  You have [the total price of bills held by the player]."

Report counting something:
	say "One!"
[/code]

All right.  

[quote]
You see a dish (in which are six mints) here.

>count money
You're carrying two one dollar bills.  You have $2.

One!

>count mints
You can't use multiple objects with that verb.

>count mint
One![/quote]

Obviously I need to supress the generic reporting, which I want to know how to do too.

Do I need a second verb "counting multiply is an action applying to multiple things" or something bizarre like that?

I tried a bunch of "if the location encloses more than one foo" type of statements and couldn't make anything work.

I have a feeling I'm missing something easy.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3979&start=0#p28660
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What do I do when the compiler fails?
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-12-19 19:40:46

Sorry, how platform myopic of me.  It's on Windows 7 and the text of the error is this:

[quote]Translating the Source - Failed 
The application ran your source text through the Inform 7 compiler, as usual, but the compiler unexpectedly failed. This should not happen even if your source text is gibberish, so you may have uncovered a bug in the program.

When a program like the I7 compiler fails, it typically returns an error number: this time, the number was 2, so I7 probably stopped because of a fatal file-system error.

It is very unlikely that your computer is at fault. More likely causes are:


•disc space running out on the volume holding the project;
•trying to run a project from a read-only volume, such as a burned CD or DVD;
•trying to run a project which belongs to another user, whose files you have no permission to alter.
However, if you think it more likely that the Inform 7 compiler is at fault, please check that you have the currently distributed build of the system: if you have, please consider taking the time to fill out a bug report at the Inform bug tracker (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.inform7.com/bugs">www.inform7.com/bugs</a>). 


Sorry for the inconvenience.[/quote]

I can't look up the third thing because I don't have the laptop on hand.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=10#p28661
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-19 19:55:23

[quote="aschultz"]So I would be interested/grateful if people pointed me to a place that explains what they were doing/trying to do/what went over my head. It might be neat to be a part of this, and maybe it's one less "I don't understand" to cross off.[/quote]

I dunno, man. That's kind of like busting out a diagram to explain a joke ("as of the second line, tension is established due to the danger of the woman's position on the precipice, but this is both escalated and relieved suddenly as the listener realizes that there are two, both potentially applicable, definitions of the term ..."). Once you're there, the joke's already killed.

Just listen to the music with a different perspective. The passing of years may have already given you all you need.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3996&start=0#p28662
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is there a way to count the number of a kind?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-19 20:04:25

I don't think you are missing something easy. Making a verb that can apply to multiple objects isn't so bad; you just have to specify that in the understand line, thus:

[code]Understand "count [things]" as counting.[/code]

But what happens when you do this is that the action gets performed successively on every object that's specified. Consider "take all"; first you take one thing, then you take the next, then you take the next, and so on. 

What we have to do is design the action so it does everything we want when it's carried out on the first item in the list, and then it doesn't do anything for the rest of them. Ex. 420, "The Facts Were These," is a good example of this sort of thing and describes it thus:

[quote]Occasionally it happens that we want to process an action on multiple items differently than we would if the player had just typed each of the individual actions separately.... In order to consider all the items in the gift at once, we create an action that applies to multiple objects, but will in fact test the whole object collection during the first pass and print a definitive answer to whether the action succeeded. All subsequent times the game consults the rulebook will be stopped at the very beginning. No further processing will occur or output be printed.[/quote]

...which gets complicated. I think I'll have a workingish example pretty soon, but studying example 420 will help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3996&start=0#p28663
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is there a way to count the number of a kind?
User: George / DateTime: 2011-12-19 20:07:42

Example 284 (Left Hand of Autumn) discusses this as well; "[things]" is a token of grammar and covered in 16.4 of the Understanding chapter.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3996&start=0#p28664
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is there a way to count the number of a kind?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-19 20:26:31

Okay, here's what I got:

[rant][code]Waiting Room is a room. A bill is a kind of thing. A cost is a kind of value. 2 dollars specifies a cost.  A bill has a cost called price. The price of a bill is usually 5 dollars. The player carries two bills.

A mint is a kind of thing. A dish is a container in Waiting Room. Six mints are in the dish.

Counting is an action applying to one touchable thing. 

Understand "count [things]" as counting.

Currently counting is a truth state that varies. Currently counting is false. 

First check counting:
	if currently counting is true:
		stop the action. [This is what cuts off the count for the rest of the items on the multiple object list.]
		
Report counting a bill:
	now currently counting is true;
	 say "You're carrying [a list of bills carried by the player].  You have [the total price of bills held by the player].[paragraph break]";
	rule succeeds. [This line stops the report counting rulebook, so you don't fall through to the next rule]

Report counting something:
	now currently counting is true; [This sets the flag so we don't keep doing it]
	let L be the multiple object list;
	if the number of entries in L is less than 2: [If we're only counting one thing, then there will be 0 objects in the multiple object list, so we need a special case]
		say "One!";
	otherwise:
		let T be indexed text; [AFAIK you have to do this to get the word capitalized]
		now T is "[the number of entries in L in words]";
		now T is T in sentence case;
		say "[T]![paragraph break]"
	
The before-generation rule is listed before the generate action rule in the turn sequence rules.

This is the before-generation rule: [the documentation for example 420 explains why we need to do it this way]
	now currently counting is false.

The selectively announce items from multiple object lists rule is listed instead of the announce items from multiple object lists rule in the action-processing rules.
This is the selectively announce items from multiple object lists rule: [This means that we don't get a bunch of "mint: mint: mint:" when we're trying to count]
	if counting: 
		do nothing; 
	otherwise: [this is just the normal behavior for this rule]
		if the current item from the multiple object list is not nothing: 
			say "[current item from the multiple object list]: [run paragraph on]".[/code][/rant]

The "multiple object list" is just the list of objects that were specified in the player's command. All we need to do is figure out how many objects there are in it, which is a simple list operation (not to say that I didn't have to look up the exact syntax), though it takes some trouble to get it into words with an initial capital letter. 

Incidentally, this will lead to odd results if you type "count one bill and two mints" and then "count two mints and one bill." You might want to make it so you only get the money count if the multiple object list doesn't contain anything but bills. But that looks like it might be kind of complicated to do (which is to say, I've fiddled with it for a bit and I can't figure out whether there's a simple way).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3997&start=0#p28665
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: a good way to search I7 manuals outside of the IDE?
User: George / DateTime: 2011-12-19 20:39:34

I guess this isn't so much an Inform-specific question, but I'm wondering what is a good way to search the manuals just in the browser. Ideally you could run a search query like "http://inform7.com/learn/man/?search=<whatever>" and get a list of results back linked into the manual. Doing a site: search in Google sort of works but it's not great. 

Would anyone be interested in an online searchable version of the manuals, and perhaps other documentation like the Programmer's guide?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3840&start=10#p28666
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Getting over the hump
User: Kytaari / DateTime: 2011-12-19 20:55:23

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm gonna try Storybook right now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3979&start=0#p28667
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What do I do when the compiler fails?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-19 20:57:39

Depends on how you copied it and how you're trying to access it and how the machines are set up. What happens if you try to open the .ni file in something like notepad? I know you can't do anything with it, but just to give you a Windows specific explanation of what the problem may be.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3983&start=0#p28668
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Examine north wall == Examine north
User: frotz / DateTime: 2011-12-19 22:58:32

I get this response:

>examine north wall
It's a stone wall.
It's a stone wall.
You can't see any such thing.

>

How do I make the code below stop when it describes the stone wall just once?  There are some other problems like this (all from the first room in Shadowgate):

Entrance
You are standing just south of the Castle Shadowgate. In front of you, to the
north, is a heavy wooden door set in the stone wall of the castle. A skull hangs
over the door.

>open skull
(the skull)
As if by magic, the skull rises, revealing an iron key nestled in a tiny hollow.

>get key
(the iron key)
Taken.

>open door
(the wall)
That's not something you can open.


[code]Object wallobj "wall"
        with
        parse_name [ myname retval;
                retval = 0;
                myname = NextWord();
                while (myname ~= nothing) {
                        retval++;
                        if (myname == 'north') {
                                retval++;
                                <<examine n_obj>>;
                        }                       
                        myname = NextWord();
                }
                return retval;
        ],
        has scenery;[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3993&start=0#p28669
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Teleporter/Train Coding
User: tove / DateTime: 2011-12-19 23:01:35

Can you be more specific about what didn't work about the Dubai example?  (Did it not compile, or not do what you want, or do you just need help knowing what to change to fit the specifics of your story, or what?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3979&start=0#p28670
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What do I do when the compiler fails?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-19 23:09:04

Windows 7 tends to be fussy about letting apps write to the Program Files (x86) directory. If you're attempting to save your project to a folder in that directory, it wouldn't surprise me at all to see that kind of error.

Have you created a folder called (for instance) Inform Projects in My Documents? If you haven't yet done that, you should definitely try it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3993&start=0#p28671
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Teleporter/Train Coding
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-12-19 23:09:05

The Dubai example doesn't compile as it appears in the documentation because it has spaces in place of tabs at certain key places. Also there is some commentary from the author within the code that isn't actually commented out. And there is some funkiness with line breaks it the game's output (though this is a minor issue). If those are the only issues you are having, then here is a functioning version of the Dubai example (note, you will need to QUOTE this post and copy it from there... stupid tab characters...).

[code]The Burj al-Arab Lobby is a room. "The 202-suite Burj al-Arab - or Tower of the Arabs - stands 321 metres (1,060 feet) high, and floats on its own man-made island. It is shaped like the sail of a boat; just crossing the private bridge to reach this place set you back $55." 


[Since our budget did not run to visiting Burj al-Arab, the descriptions place implicit faith in the hotel's website.]


The Assawan Spa is a room. "Treatment rooms, hydrotherapy baths, oriental massage, stand-up solarium, sauna, steam rooms and jacuzzi, two swimming pools, squash court, two fully equipped fitness studios and an aerobics floor. To the south is a shopping area, for those who do not find exercise adequately therapeutic." 


The Shopping Area is south of Assawan Spa. "In a setting that would make a poet sigh, you may enjoy the services of (among others) Bulgari, Black Pearl Caviar, Albarajeel Carpet Shop, Abdul Samed Al Qurashi (amber and Arabic perfumes), Dianoor (jewellery), and the Commercial Bank of Dubai." 


The Al Falak Ballroom is a room. "A palatial, two-tiered, domed ballroom crowned with a unique crystal chandelier." 


Sahn Eddar is a room. "At the base of the world's tallest atrium, the Sahn Eddar restaurant offers light fine fare and Afternoon Tea. At the center, a 32-meter water column leaps toward the roof of the atrium." 


Al Mahara is a room. "After the elevator, you must take a three-minute virtual submarine voyage to reach this seafood restaurant. A magnificent oval aquarium, full of sharks, is visible from every table." 


Al Iwan is a room. "Middle-eastern food in an environment of dramatic black, red, and gold." 


Al Muntaha is a room. "A top-floor restaurant with a magnificent view: the name means the ultimate or the highest, suitable for a place that stands at 200 metres above the Arabian Gulf. It offers modern European cuisine; and just off to the south is the Skyview Bar." 


The Skyview Bar is south of Al Muntaha. "'A wonderful location for pre- and post dinner drinks,' claims the hotel's brochure, and certainly you can't fault the view." 


The Juna Lounge is a room. "Two humidors that offer one of the largest selections of the finest Havana cigars in Dubai." 


The Lift is a room. "This is not a mere elevator: it is an express panoramic lift, traveling six meters a second, and capable of taking you from lobby to the rooftop restaurant in an astonishingly short time. The illuminated number above the door says [current level of the Lift] - though you can make it move by pressing a numbered button." 


The Presidential Suite is a room. "Astonishingly, this is not the most elaborate or expensive of suites; there is another, the Royal, upstairs of here." 


The Royal Suite is a room. "The brochure described this as 'the last word in luxury,' and you have to admit that it is certainly the last word in [italic type]something[roman type]. A vast carpet of patterned red and gold stretches from you to the sofa; beyond which, in the distance, you make out several bedrooms and bathrooms outfitted in Carrera marble. There is also, of course, a private cinema." 


Table of Floors 
level	floor
0	Al Mahara
1	Burj al-Arab Lobby
2	Al Iwan
3	Juna Lounge
4	Sahn Eddar
15	Al Falak Ballroom
18	Assawan Spa
24	Presidential Suite
25	Royal Suite
27	Al Muntaha



The elevator exterior is a backdrop. It is not scenery. The initial appearance of the elevator exterior is "You can enter the elevator here." It is in Generic Floor, Al Mahara, the Lobby, Al Iwan, Juna Lounge, Sahn Eddar, Al Falak, Assawan Spa, Presidential Suite, Royal Suite, and Al Muntaha. 


Before entering the elevator exterior, try going inside instead. 


Instead of going inside in the presence of the elevator exterior: 
	if there is a level corresponding to a floor of the location in the Table of Floors: 
		let the present level be the level corresponding to a floor of the location in the Table of Floors; 
		now the current level of the Lift is the present level; 
	otherwise: 
		now the current level of the Lift is the current level of Generic Floor; 
	say "[line break][run paragraph on]";
	move the player to the Lift. 


The Lift has a number called current level. The current level of the Lift is 1. Instead of going up in the Lift: say "You'll have to select a specific floor; your options range from 0 to 27." Instead of going down in the Lift: try going up instead. The Lobby is outside from the Lift. 


Before going outside in the Lift: 
	if there is a floor corresponding to a level of the current level of the Lift in the Table of Floors: 
		let the other place be the floor corresponding to a level of the current level of the Lift in the Table of Floors; 
		say "[line break][run paragraph on]";
		move the player to the other place instead; 
	otherwise: 
		now the current level of the Generic Floor is the current level of the Lift; 
		say "[line break][run paragraph on]";
		move the player to the Generic Floor instead;


The Generic Floor is a room. The Generic Floor has a number called current level. The printed name of the Generic Floor is "Floor [current level of the Generic Floor]". "A long hallway between suites, some of which run up to $15,000 a night." 


Understand "push [number]" as pressing button. Understand "push [number] button" as pressing button. Understand "push button [number]" as pressing button. Pressing button is an action applying to one number. 


Check pressing button: 
	if the player is not in the Lift, say "You cannot control the express panoramic lift unless you are yourself inside." instead; 
	if the number understood is the current level of the Lift, say "The lift pings politely and reopens its doors, since you are already on floor [number understood]." instead; 
	if the number understood is greater than 27, say "There are only 27 floors." instead; 
	if the number understood is less than 0, say "You cannot go below the ground floor in this elevator." instead. 


Carry out pressing button: 
	now the current level of the Lift is the number understood; 
	say "You press button [the number understood]. The lift whirs into action and moves to the correct level." 


Test me with "press 3 / in / press button 3 / look / out / in / press 27 / out / s / in / n / in / press 15 / out / in / press 18 / out / s / in / n / in / press 4 button / out". [/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3979&start=0#p28672
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What do I do when the compiler fails?
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-12-19 23:24:41

[quote="katz"]I can't look up the third thing because I don't have the laptop on hand.[/quote]As it's a Windows problem it's definitely my area, but I think we will need the text from the "Progress" section to (hopefully) figure out what's not working.

Please report this text before trying any other suggestions - I would like to know what the root cause of the problem is, so that if it's likely to affect anyone else, it can be fixed properly in Inform.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3993&start=0#p28673
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Teleporter/Train Coding
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-19 23:44:36

[quote="trojo"]The Dubai example doesn't compile as it appears in the documentation because it has spaces in place of tabs at certain key places. Also there is some commentary from the author within the code that isn't actually commented out. And there is some funkiness with line breaks it the game's output (though this is a minor issue). If those are the only issues you are having, then here is a functioning version of the Dubai example (note, you will need to QUOTE this post and copy it from there... stupid tab characters...).[/quote]

Are you copy-pasting the code from your documentation pane into the source code pane? If you click the little square icon next to the beginning of the code instead, it'll automatically paste it into the source code pane for you, with tabs intact and the commentary commented out. It compiles for me that way.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3998&start=0#p28674
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: older Inform6 and color flag
User: frotz / DateTime: 2011-12-19 23:57:34

I just noticed something weird when examining some of my old code.  The release of Shadowgate in the IF Archive was compiled without color support.  Looking at the makefile for that release, I see nothing to suggest I intentionally did that.  It seems that Inform 6.31 automatically turns on colour support whereas Inform 6.21 Library 6/10 didn't.  
I seem to have forgotten how to explicitly set or clear the color flag.  Would someone here please re-enlighten me and point to the section of the manual where it talks about this?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3998&start=0#p28675
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: older Inform6 and color flag
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-20 00:40:33

The compiler sets the color flag ("Flags 2" header field, bit 6) if the @set_colour opcode appears in the game. There's no way to explicitly clear it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3993&start=0#p28676
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Teleporter/Train Coding
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-12-20 01:54:16

[quote="matt w"][quote="trojo"]The Dubai example doesn't compile as it appears in the documentation because it has spaces in place of tabs at certain key places. Also there is some commentary from the author within the code that isn't actually commented out. And there is some funkiness with line breaks it the game's output (though this is a minor issue). If those are the only issues you are having, then here is a functioning version of the Dubai example (note, you will need to QUOTE this post and copy it from there... stupid tab characters...).[/quote]

Are you copy-pasting the code from your documentation pane into the source code pane? If you click the little square icon next to the beginning of the code instead, it'll automatically paste it into the source code pane for you, with tabs intact and the commentary commented out. It compiles for me that way.[/quote]
...I learn something new every day. Haha.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3968&start=0#p28677
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Odd TADS 2 compiler error
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-20 02:40:48

It isn't? Man, I do forget quickly [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3998&start=0#p28678
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: older Inform6 and color flag
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-12-20 02:49:28

One of the changes to library 6/11 means that @set_color occurs in the library, which in turn means that Inform turns on the color flag in the header. This was almost certainly a mistake, but the only practical way round it is to find the @set_color calls in the library and comment them out.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3999&start=0#p28679
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Conditional understanding? E.g. disabling "ask"?
User: Plantar Humdrum / DateTime: 2011-12-20 03:30:12

Is there a way to make the system understand actions and commands contextually?

Say, "poke" meaning one thing when you're using a computer in the game and another when you're trying to move a squirrel or something, or "ask" giving you "No, don't make a sound!" in one room but the normal "What do you want to ask ..." results in another?

This has a number of applications: "attack" working in a hostile area and not in any others, etc.

Edit:
[quote]Understand "ask" as a mistake ("No! They'll get you for sure!") when the location is the Chrysler Building Closet.[/quote]

This works on one level, but it's not quite all the way there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3998&start=0#p28680
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: older Inform6 and color flag
User: frotz / DateTime: 2011-12-20 03:32:16

Why was that code put in the library in the first place?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3998&start=0#p28681
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: older Inform6 and color flag
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-12-20 03:50:51

[quote="frotz"]Why was that code put in the library in the first place?[/quote]I've no idea, to be honest - I've never worked on the library.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3998&start=0#p28682
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: older Inform6 and color flag
User: frotz / DateTime: 2011-12-20 04:06:47

It seems to me that there really should have been some sort of ifdefs around those calls of @set_colour. Here's a patch that'll do it. With this patch, a program that needs to use color should include "Constant COLOR" or "Constant COLOUR" at the top to let the compiler know it's okay to set that color flag.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3990&start=10#p28683
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Removing the "You can see" from Printed Name display?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-12-20 04:44:10

[quote="I4L"]Odd... Every time I've tried to do multiple conditionals in a say statement, it tells me that it's too complex.[/quote]
You're probably trying to do nested conditionals like this:

[code]say "[if the player is in the boiler room]You can see a [if the boiler is switched on]steaming [end if]boiler here.[end if]"[/code]
That's what becomes too complex for say phrases. If you make sure the conditionals are not nested it compiles fine, although obviously it's usually better to handle such situations with more elegant methods:

[code]say "[if the player is in the boiler room]You can see a [end if][if the player is in the boiler room and the boiler is switched on]steaming [end if][if the player is in the boiler room]boiler here.[end if]"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=10#p28684
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-12-20 05:13:26

[quote="Ghalev"]Just listen to the music with a different perspective. The passing of years may have already given you all you need.[/quote]
Mind you, Apollo 18 is far from their best album. I recommend any revisitation begin with 'Flood'.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=260#p28685
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-12-20 05:22:44

[quote="frotz"]I much preferred discussing IF on Usenet, but it seems that everyone bailed out for this place.  Hi.[/quote]
Hi and welcome, David. I personally bailed on USENET more than ten years ago because there was a prevailing attitude on all USENET newsgroups (to varying degrees) that was cliquish and unfriendly to newcomers. Even when I wasn't a newcomer to a particular group (and I mostly wasn't since I'd been doing it throughout the 90s) this culture just turned me right off and would diminish my respect for key 'alpha' individuals in the group. By contrast, the more I experienced the budding collection of web fora around the turn of the century, the more I realised that things did not have to be that way, and that much more mutually supportive and mutually interested communities had developed elsewhere. It was a general decision, not specific to IF (r.a.i-f was far from the worst offender in this regard) — one day I just witnessed a particularly odious drubbing of a well-meaning noob, and just decided that I didn't need to be around for all the exercises in hardcore posturing, anymore.

Moderation might be the key to all this. Creating a moderated newsgroup was pretty awkward and not very popular in that culture, whereas web fora are easily moderated and it is just expected that they will be. Or maybe it's just that online culture is evolving, and that evolution happens faster in brand new hangouts (which resemble the aftermath of an extinction event) than it does in the old.

Thinking about the effect of 'extinction event conditions' on the pace of innovation in online community-building is very interesting actually, especially as you shift into analysing microblogging platforms. I'm digressing here, and I could go on for pages about this, so I'll wrap it up: the upshot is, beware of letting the instinct to preserve a vested interest, render you overly skeptical of the new ways. Even this forum itself is actually very old social tech. This is my only web forum; I quit all the others before this one even started. At this point in history, we should all be fully interconnected on Twitter, et. al. Maybe we will be there by 2020?  [emote]8-)[/emote] 

Paul.

P.S. Thanks for maintaining Frotz! And that is pretty cool about Shadowgate and Uninvited. I played the Apple IIgs versions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3991&start=0#p28686
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Periodically locked out
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-12-20 05:40:51

This has never happened to me. But then, I have turned off email notifications for everything but private inbox messages, and I basically never get those. So I figure the issue is confined somehow to the structure of the links that are embedded in the emails.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=10#p28687
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-20 06:22:37

[quote="Laroquod"][quote="Ghalev"]Just listen to the music with a different perspective. The passing of years may have already given you all you need.[/quote]
Mind you, Apollo 18 is far from their best album. I recommend any revisitation begin with 'Flood'.

Paul.[/quote]

Of course, your mileage may vary. Your mileage may vary [i]so much[/i].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=10#p28688
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-12-20 06:25:51

Ha! The vagaries of taste, etc. It's not that A18 is [i]bad[/i] album or anything.

BTW thinking about how to structure my Fingertips entry has actually led me to value the one-move puzzle and I am now considering a couple of ideas that occurred for how to insert a couple such puzzles into my WIP — they are easy to insert and it just so happens they solve a problem I was having with narrative tone in one section.

The interfertility of imaginations is one of the best things in the universe.

P.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=260#p28689
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-12-20 06:43:14

[quote="Laroquod"]At this point in history, we should all be fully interconnected on Twitter, et. al. Maybe we will be there by 2020?[/quote]
I hope not. I tried Twitter for a while, but failed to get the point of it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=260#p28690
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-12-20 07:04:56

[quote="Trumgottist"]I tried Twitter for a while, but failed to get the point of it.[/quote]
Yes, you did.  [emote]:D[/emote] 

I can accept though that the [enforced] brevity is not for everyone. Also, it is not ideal to have all that power concentrated in a single company. I am pretty interested in Diaspora (a federated system like email) as an alternative for longer-form posts, but I've been using it for many months and just got turned off by all the glitches: it's definitely not ready for primetime yet. I don't go back there very much at present, but I am keeping an eye on its progress.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=0#p28691
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2011-12-20 07:05:25

It was a bit unfair of me to simply dump this on you people without any explanations, my apologies. I've edited the first post to give you a better idea what this is all about and where you can help me with.

I'm curious if I could use relations for AI purposes. Could it be possible for a relation to return a numerical value? I think it would be kind of neat, if you could set up relations like “The path weight of a (e – a member of enemy faction) for (p – a person in friendly faction) is 100” or something like that. Would that go?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4000&start=0#p28692
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: .qut save files in Zoom and Frotz on ipad?
User: rickreynolds / DateTime: 2011-12-20 07:06:13

Has anyone been able to swap saved game files between Frotz on iPad and Zoom on Mac?  I'm attempting this and I get interpreter errors when I take a Zoom saved file over to iPad Frotz (via Dropbox).

I see that Zoom on the Mac is using a packaged storage for saves, but I see a .qut file right in the package which I assumed was a quetzal file.  Is that not correct?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4000&start=0#p28693
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: .qut save files in Zoom and Frotz on ipad?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-12-20 07:17:31

I don't know the answer, but based on what you said, if Zoom encloses a .qut file in a package, there is probably a reason involving other information that is also stored in that package: I mean information extraneous to the actual save, like window size and font selection, I'm guessing?

What I would try is saving the game in Zoom, and then opening the package and replacing the .qut file with the .qut file from the other source, but leaving the rest of the package as is: if you have not tried this already.

P.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=0#p28694
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-12-20 07:56:47

Sounds like it could come in very handy. I actually did use i6 to build a Dungeon Master's roleplaying aid back in the 90s. I coded all the adventure locations in and a substantial number of combat systems (under my own homegrown roleplaying rules). I did not have any tactical maps in there though. Nowadays I am focusing on something very different in my WIP and it does not even have standard geographical locations (at least not via 'X is a room'), so it would be difficult for me to test this with it, and I am not so conversant in i7 yet that I could help solve deep technical issues off the top of my head, but I just wanted to register my interest in this extension.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3986&start=10#p28695
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Star Gods for Android
User: wtaylorjr2001 / DateTime: 2011-12-20 08:24:25

Hello everyone,

Did anyone who downloaded The Star Gods have trouble talking to the old man who teaches magic, or the demon Thanos who serves the player? Is the game hard? Is it ok? Did anyone stop the invasion of the earth? Did anyone find the princess?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3999&start=0#p28696
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conditional understanding? E.g. disabling "ask"?
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-12-20 08:32:34

(This should be in the inform development subforum)

These are all pretty reasonable things to want to do. The way I'd do is with check rules for the actions you want to make conditional.

So it would look something like this (though obviously you'd have to define all the relevant actions first):
[code]
Check poking:
if the location of the player is the computer room begin;
try using the computer instead;
otherwise if the squirrel is held by the player;
try massaging the squirrel instead;
end if.
[/code]

With a check rule, every time you try do the thing being checked (attacking, poking, asking etc.) the game engine checks the list of conditions, and can have it do or say other things as well or instead. If none of the conditions are met, the action goes off as usual.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3350&start=0#p28697
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Begin creating an I7 work from within an I7 "game"
User: Laurie-K / DateTime: 2011-12-20 08:37:06

Branden, I've just downloaded your Creator program and tried it out , creating a few rooms and things.  This is good, and in fact might encourage disorganized people (like me) to actually plan things out in advance (which is usually anathema to me), and then quickly create the game skeleton using 'Creator'.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3991&start=0#p28699
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Periodically locked out
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-20 09:01:12

I don't access the forum via mail-links either, and I haven't had this issue for the year or so that I've been on the forum. Evidence is building up against those links as the culprit.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=260#p28700
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-20 09:19:03

Someone said something to me about Twitter recently that explained it a little bit: He said it was a good source of information about the Occupy movement. It occurred to me then that Twitter is often more useful as means of one-way communication. Other social sites, with the ability to comment on just about everything, offer more opportunities for two-way communication, which is good when you're connecting with friends. But Twitter is often a better source of links to articles and photos. For that you don't so much want a friend as a good curator. So it makes sense to follow strangers on Twitter, as long as they share your taste. And you can use retweet to expand the content you provide to those following you.

One of my problems with Twitter in the past was that there was not enough preview information for me to know which links I want to follow. That seems to be changing somewhat on Twitter's web interface, but my impression is that 3rd-party Twitter apps have always been better at that sort of thing.

Another problem I've had with Twitter is that some users put out WAY more content than others, which essentially blocks infrequent posters from ever being seen. Much as the "filter bubble" effect of Facebook has been bashed, it's nice to have some sorting and filtering options that take you to what you want to see. Perhaps this is another situation that's better with 3rd-party apps - I don't know because I don't use them.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3350&start=0#p28701
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Begin creating an I7 work from within an I7 "game"
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-20 09:26:11

Cool!
Apart from everything that's on Matt's wishlist—could your code eventually be turned into an I7 extension, so that any game could allow players to create new objects and rooms?

(Forcing Inform to react differently to commas means hacking the I6 templates—presumably in unexpected places.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=0#p28702
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-20 09:34:14

In "Elevator," the image seems to shrink every time I move. (Running in the IDE and in Gargoyle.) Also, when I go into the Skull House, I lose track of my icon (and I can never see the guard).

This looks very neat indeed; it'd take me a while to try to figure out what I might do with it, though, so I don't think I can betatest it from the author's point of view. Do you know how much of it might be separable from the graphics? I've had an idea of doing some similar things using ASCII graphics and fixed-width fonts, like old school roguelikes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4002&start=0#p28703
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Prepositions are things one should not end a sentence with
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-12-20 09:49:26

Winston Churchill once supposedly said that the rule against ending a sentence with a preposition was "the sort of pedantry up with which I shall not put", but in most of the other languages of the world it is bad grammar to end a sentence with a preposition. That includes questions.

I'm working on an Esperanto extension for Inform, and I would really like to find a way to change output that is structured like this...
[quote]> SIT
What do you want to sit on?[/quote]

...to the equivalent of this...
[quote]> SIT
On what do you want to sit?[/quote]

This message is number 49 in the Miscellany section of "Long Texts" in Language.i6t, but my I6 kung-fu is not strong enough to figure out how to reword the output message appropriately. The basic problem seems to be that Inform handles prepositions as if they are inseparable parts of the verb.

Here is the code in question:

[code]
        48: print "Whom do you want";
            if (actor ~= player) print " ", (the) actor;
            print " to "; PrintCommand(); print "?^";
        49: print "What do you want";
            if (actor ~= player) print " ", (the) actor;
            print " to "; PrintCommand(); print "?^";[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=260#p28704
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-12-20 10:09:53

[quote="capmikee"]But Twitter is often a better source of links to articles and photos.[/quote]
Yep. It's the best way I know to share a link and add a bit of commentary so people know what I think of it. Anything more is gravy (but there is a lot more -- I have made some really great friendships through Twitter).

[quote="capmikee"]Another problem I've had with Twitter is that some users put out WAY more content than others, which essentially blocks infrequent posters from ever being seen.[/quote]
Organising the people you follow into private lists is the solution to this. Put all the less frequent posters you don't want to miss on their own list together. Some clients, though, do not support lists very well, and the website interface is reportedly changing now so that lists are one extra click away or something, which is unfortunate, but doesn't matter if you can find a good client.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3992&start=0#p28705
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: preventing line break
User: Peter Rickardson / DateTime: 2011-12-20 10:13:26

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Looks to me like you'll need to write your own code for this. It could be done as a global function, if you have a lot of rooms.

You may need to hack the library code. It appears (judging from the brief example in the DM4) that when_closed is intended just to print a string when it's called. So if you have three doors in the location, when_closed or when_open may get called on all three of them in turn. OTOH, if two of them supply no string for this, what happens? Maybe you could make the when_closed and when_open on one door do all the work of printing composite messages, and leave the other doors without these properties. Have you tried that?

If I have time, I'll try a few things and let you know what I learn -- no promises, though.[/quote]

Here's how I solved it. The code below belongs to the Room class, of which every location in the game is a member.

[code]
after [i flag;
  Look:
   
   objectloop(i in real_location && i ofclass DoorClass)
   {
    if(flag==0)
     {print "^";flag=1;}
    if(i has open)
    {
     i.whenopen();
    }
    else
    {
     i.whenclosed();
    }
   }
   if(flag==1)
    {print "^";}
 ],
[/code]

I replaced when_open and when_closed with my own non-library functions whenopen and whenclosed and gave all DoorClass objects the concealed flag. The whenopen/whenclosed are called from an after routine in the relevant location.

Here's the output

[quote]
Passage east is barred by a stone door. A closed window on the northern wall gives on to a garden. 
[/quote]

It was much simpler than I thought. OO is much cooler than BASIC. [emote]:ugeek:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=260#p28706
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-20 10:20:59

[quote="Laroquod"]I can accept though that the [enforced] brevity is not for everyone.[/quote]

Speaking as one who [i]loves [/i]the brevity (and all brevity, enforced or otherwise) I [i]still [/i]don't get Twitter. But I don't get [i]blogs,[/i] and Twitter is kind of like very tiny blogs, so it's a tiny example of a larger thing I already fail to get.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=10#p28707
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-20 10:27:38

[quote="Laroquod"]BTW thinking about how to structure my Fingertips entry has actually led me to value the one-move puzzle and I am now considering a couple of ideas that occurred for how to insert a couple such puzzles into my WIP — they are easy to insert and it just so happens they solve a problem I was having with narrative tone in one section.[/quote]

That's awesome [emote]:)[/emote]

I've been wanting an excuse to do a one-move game for a while now, so I welcome my Fingertips project. The thing I'm wrestling with (and I'm busy working on some production projects right now so this is all in my head and a mostly-empty project folder) is whether I should try to keep the whole thing feeling very "Fingertips" with very [i]very brief[/i] responses, so that each play-through is almost instantaneous ... or really bust out with longer, more character-exploratory nonsense, so that each play-through provides some meatier reading.

Ultimately, the game will kind of decide for me, as I structure it, but that's something I'm mulling over while it's inchoate. The situation and characters I have in mind are sufficiently odd to support the longer-form approach, but I think it may be truer to the inspiration to keep things brief and inexplicable.

And I find myself thinking that to do an entire game of [i]multiple [/i]Fingertips might be interesting ... a single game-file containing a dozen or more one-move games, where as you complete one you're transported to another instead of back to the same situation. A kind of surreal textual [i]Warioware,[/i] if you will ... inkeeping with the random-access idea of mixing the fingertips by shuffling the entire album.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=260#p28708
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-12-20 10:36:06

[quote="Ghalev"]Speaking as one who [i]loves [/i]the brevity (and all brevity, enforced or otherwise) I [i]still [/i]don't get Twitter. But I don't get [i]blogs,[/i] and Twitter is kind of like very tiny blogs, so it's a tiny example of a larger thing I already fail to get.[/quote]
A fair number of people seem to have this opinion (more about Twitter than about blogs, but you do see both). I'm on the opposite side: I have a hard time wrapping my head around your opinion because I don't get what is so pointless about typing things at other people under a blog post or on a Twitter stream, that is not equally pointless about typing things at other people under a forum thread heading or in a USENET thread. They all have their strengths and weaknesses, but I can't imagine how any of these could be differentiated in terms of having a point, because they all have the same point, which is the public sharing of information with a self-selected group of cohorts. No?

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=0#p28709
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2011-12-20 10:36:14

[quote="matt w"]In "Elevator," the image seems to shrink every time I move. (Running in the IDE and in Gargoyle.) Also, when I go into the Skull House, I lose track of my icon (and I can never see the guard).[/quote]

I had the problem with shrinking images as well when I played in windowed mode. My take is that some calculations get messed up when a g-element gets resized to fit in a window. This might be a bug with Glimmr, since I pretty much copied and pasted the code for resizing from there but I'll look into it. Does [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17790344/Examples/Elevator.gblorb]this[/url] work any better for you? (I'm not sure if Gargoyle always starts in windowed mode but if it does, switch to full screen and restart. That usually works for me at least when my desktop resolution isn't too small)

[quote="matt w"]This looks very neat indeed; it'd take me a while to try to figure out what I might do with it, though, so I don't think I can betatest it from the author's point of view. Do you know how much of it might be separable from the graphics? I've had an idea of doing some similar things using ASCII graphics and fixed-width fonts, like old school roguelikes.[/quote]

I've tried to keep the different components as independent as possible. The most limiting aspect, I hope, is that figures, or at least what should get displayed at the end, are accessed over a reference number (and there should be a workaround or two for that as well) . Otherwise the sky is the limit, really.

[quote="Laroquod"]I just wanted to register my interest in this extension[/quote]

Noted :salute:

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4002&start=0#p28710
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Prepositions are things one should not end a sentence wi
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-20 10:41:07

Looks like you need the library code to check and find out exactly what the command is -- get in, sit on, stand on, etc. Once you know that, customizing the code for #49 becomes trivial.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=10#p28711
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-12-20 10:50:54

[quote="Ghalev"]And I find myself thinking that to do an entire game of [i]multiple [/i]Fingertips might be interesting ... a single game-file containing a dozen or more one-move games, where as you complete one you're transported to another instead of back to the same situation. A kind of surreal textual [i]Warioware,[/i] if you will ... inkeeping with the random-access idea of mixing the fingertips by shuffling the entire album.[/quote]
Totally! Great idea, that could go into some very interesting directions. Some similarities with what I thought of, but in my case teleporting from one situation to a whole different situation was already part of my game, so it would be very easy to add a couple of one-move interludes between teleports -- for narrative spacing. Little breathers, if you will, because outside of those bounds the game is pretty unforgiving and never stops.

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3993&start=0#p28712
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Teleporter/Train Coding
User: harryg2011 / DateTime: 2011-12-20 10:51:38

Hi, sorry I wasn't very clear. The dubai didn't work as I copy-pasted it, but I used the blue square and it worked fine. My problem with the dubai example was that I really only wanted 5 possible warp locations, I din't want it to have the "general floor" levels for every other story. I wanted to have it be something like, "There must be a hundred different buttons on this warp panel. While most of them have boring names, a few stick out, like......". But, If I kept the general floor, I suppose I could use a puzzle for finding which floors you need to go to, but I think that's kinda a sucky idea.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=0#p28713
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-12-20 11:19:59

[quote="Basti50"]I had the problem with shrinking images as well when I played in windowed mode. My take is that some calculations get messed up when a g-element gets resized to fit in a window. This might be a bug with Glimmr, since I pretty much copied and pasted the code for resizing from there but I'll look into it.[/quote]

I doubt that this is a bug in Glimmr. What it sounds like is that sometimes (why only sometimes?), the scaled measurements for an image are being stored as if they were the original values for the image; each time the window is redrawn the image gets progressively smaller. Glimmr never stores scaled measurements in this way; it recalculates scaling every time the window is redrawn. Is there somewhere in your code where you might be doing this? (Note that it seems to be g-elements, not the canvas as a whole, that are being progressively scaled.)

[quote="matt w"]When I go into the Skull House, I lose track of my icon (and I can never see the guard).[/quote]

Matt, are you seeing two totally different grids in the Elevator example? When your icon disappears, it should appear on the other grid. You need to open the window to a larger size to see everything. This is not standard Glimmr behavior (Glimmr would show the entire canvas no matter how small the window was reduced), and in fact on my laptop it's impossible for me to make my window big enough to see the entire left grid. 

Basti, the new examples that I haven't seen before (particularly Ben & Jill) are cool, and everything runs much more snappily than before on my machine too.

Cheers,
Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=260#p28714
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-20 11:23:36

I think it's sort of the one-way vs. two-way issue again. Even when a blog allows comments, it's still one-way in that only one person can start the conversation... and often the comments are so numerous and the signal-to-noise ratio is so low that it's not worth reading them anyway. I read a lot of blog articles, but I don't [i]follow[/i] any blogs.

I've thought about blogging from time to time, but I think I just don't have enough to say. Sure, I rant plenty, but do people really want to hear that? Do I even really want them to hear it myself? I used to share links whenever I got fired up about them, but I've transitioned to filing them away on delicious instead. That way I can save them for a time when someone might actually want to hear about them. The internet has streams, and it has references, and a lot of making it work for me has been about figuring out which is which, and how to handle each.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3982&start=0#p28715
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Glulxe/GIT Pegging CPU @ 100%
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-20 11:39:42

Zarf found a bug in Parser.i6t:

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3175&p=22525">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3175&p=22525</a>

I wouldn't be surprised if there were a similar bug in I6.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3982&start=0#p28716
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Glulxe/GIT Pegging CPU @ 100%
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-20 11:59:51

You could get into the same infinite loop in I6, but only if you wrote the same style of parse_name routine that the I7 compiler uses. That's unlikely, because it's a rather convoluted style. 

(To be safe, don't do any scope tests inside a parse_name routine.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3998&start=0#p28717
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: older Inform6 and color flag
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-20 12:02:25

Since this has been in the library for years, I think it's a lost cause. Effectively, all recent Inform game files have the bit set, and so the bit is not useful for interpreters to look at.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3623&start=0#p28718
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Non-interactive command-line Glulx interpreter for Mac
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-20 12:03:01

Finally got around to trying this. Very easy build and it works fine!

The only issue I have is that when I pipe commands to glulxe, it doesn't echo them at the prompt. There isn't an option to have it do that, is there? Or some *nix trick to copy both STDIN and STDOUT to the same place?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3623&start=0#p28719
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Non-interactive command-line Glulx interpreter for Mac
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-20 12:04:55

No, there's no cheapglk option to echo inputs. I guess I could add one, if you want.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4000&start=0#p28720
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: .qut save files in Zoom and Frotz on ipad?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-20 12:06:58

When you say "interpreter errors", what are they?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3623&start=0#p28721
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Non-interactive command-line Glulx interpreter for Mac
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-20 12:44:50

Only if there's no way to do it in the BASH shell. Surely there is...?

I'd hate to complicate the wonderfully simple interface... [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=0#p28722
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-20 12:50:23

Yes, running it in fullscreen mode fixed everything! Thanks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3997&start=0#p28723
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a good way to search I7 manuals outside of the IDE?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-20 12:51:01

Have you seen the recently-stickied list of I7 documentation?

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3988">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3988</a>

It includes Andrew Plotkin's index to the manual.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3990&start=10#p28724
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Removing the "You can see" from Printed Name display?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-20 12:53:14

You can also use "[otherwise if]" in say phrases as well.

For the most part, whenever I create sub-phrases to get around the nesting restrictions, I end up being glad I did.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3999&start=0#p28725
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conditional understanding? E.g. disabling "ask"?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-20 12:58:31

It seems like there's been a gradual shift in Inform away from using parsing to distinguish actions, and towards using action processing rules (mainly "check" and "instead"). The reason is that more information is available to the game when parsing is done - specifically, the person asked, the noun and the second noun (or the topic understood) are chosen and can be tested easily.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3993&start=0#p28726
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Teleporter/Train Coding
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-20 13:00:29

I agree that that would be an annoying puzzle! It sounds like what you want to do is make the action apply to texts rather than numbers. (I sound like Clippy.) That shouldn't be too hard; you can look at the Dubai example and change this:

[code]Understand "push [number]" as pressing button. Understand "push [number] button" as pressing button. Understand "push button [number]" as pressing button. Pressing button is an action applying to one number.
 [/code]

to this:
[code]Understand "push [text]" as pressing button. Understand "push [text] button" as pressing button. Understand "push button [text]" as pressing button. Pressing button is an action applying to one topic.
[/code]

Then, whenever the pressing button rules refer to "the number understood," you'll change it to "the topic understood." And you'll need to change some of the other rules, but hopefully that gives you some ideas.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4002&start=0#p28727
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Prepositions are things one should not end a sentence wi
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-20 13:01:33

If you're writing a translation of Inform (I7, I presume), I fear it is less than trivial, since you'd like the solution to be general and apply to future authors' newly defined command verbs  (with prepositions) as well as to the standard ones. 

But isn't word order in Esperanto flexible enough to let you put the whole noun phrase last in the sentence? 
[code]print "Vi volas "; PrintCommand(); print " kion?^";[/code]
(I don't really know Esperanto …)

One more thing: presumably, you want the command verb repeated in the infinitive (that is probably true for all the messages where PrintCommand() is used); but PrintCommand gives you the player's command (from the verb on) as the player actually entered it, and I suppose the verb will then be in the volitive/imperative rather than the infinitive. Translators are supposed to use the I6 LanguageVerb() routine (in the Language Template) to change that. (In English the imperative and the infinitive read identically of course—it's quite a simplistic language in some respects—, but even in English LanguageVerb() is used to expand the abbreviated verbs "i", "x", "z" etc., before PrintCommand() returns them.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3993&start=0#p28728
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Teleporter/Train Coding
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-20 13:36:38

[quote="matt w"](I sound like Clippy.)[/quote]

R.I.P. Clippy...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=0#p28729
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2011-12-20 13:42:25

[quote="ektemple"]I doubt that this is a bug in Glimmr.[/quote]

You are right. Turns out that by making the m-i-m's a kind of g-element instead of an image-map, the scaled tile-height/width got lost. I changed that back again, which fixes the issue (plus now m-i-m's can be hyperlinked. That should come in handy someday) but that created another unexpected [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17790344/Examples/Elevator%28New%29.gblorb]problem[/url]. Any idea why the tilecells are bit off on the x-axis? 

[There was code here. It is gone now]

[quote="ektemple"]Basti, the new examples that I haven't seen before (particularly Ben & Jill) are cool, and everything runs much more snappily than before on my machine too.[/quote]

Thank God for that! I would be heartbroken if all the hard work would have been for nothing because of performance issues.  [emote]:x[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3999&start=0#p28730
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conditional understanding? E.g. disabling "ask"?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-20 14:36:52

Also because consistent parsing is more transparent to players. This has always been good practice, as a general rule.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3979&start=0#p28731
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What do I do when the compiler fails?
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-12-20 14:37:10

OK, I'll have a look when my laptop and I are reunited.  (I left it behind because I couldn't get inform to run  [emote]:x[/emote] )

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4002&start=0#p28732
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Prepositions are things one should not end a sentence wi
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-12-20 15:13:34

[quote="Felix"]If you're writing a translation of Inform (I7, I presume), I fear it is less than trivial, since you'd like the solution to be general and apply to future authors' newly defined command verbs  (with prepositions) as well as to the standard ones. 

But isn't word order in Esperanto flexible enough to let you put the whole noun phrase last in the sentence? 
[code]print "Vi volas "; PrintCommand(); print " kion?^";[/code]
(I don't really know Esperanto …)[/quote]Although it is preferable to move the noun phrase to the front of the question, that way might actually work better (minus the unnecessary "volas"). At least it would be grammatically acceptable, unlike [i]Kion vi sidu sur?[/i]

[quote]One more thing: presumably, you want the command verb repeated in the infinitive (that is probably true for all the messages where PrintCommand() is used); but PrintCommand gives you the player's command (from the verb on) as the player actually entered it, and I suppose the verb will then be in the volitive/imperative rather than the infinitive. Translators are supposed to use the I6 LanguageVerb() routine (in the Language Template) to change that. (In English the imperative and the infinitive read identically of course—it's quite a simplistic language in some respects—, but even in English LanguageVerb() is used to expand the abbreviated verbs "i", "x", "z" etc., before PrintCommand() returns them.)[/quote]The imperative mode in Esperanto works fine 99% of the time for printing the verb in the context of interactive fiction. The imperative is understood as expressing the speaker's desire that the verb should be done, and is the same for first/second/third person in any number.

[code]
        49: print "Kion vi ";
            if (actor ~= player) print "volas, ke tiu ";
            PrintCommand(); print "?^";[/code]

For single-word verbs, that works perfectly. It will produce output like...
[quote]> malfermu
Kion vi malfermu?[/quote]
[quote]> kapitano, malfermu
Kion vi volas, ke tiu malfermu?[/quote]

[i]Kion vi malfermu[/i] literally means, "What should you open?" And the other one means, "What do you want, that that (person) should open?" which is kind of awkward translated word-for-word in English, but is clear in Esperanto.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3997&start=0#p28733
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a good way to search I7 manuals outside of the IDE?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-12-20 15:32:31

I don't use the IDE (I just compile on the command line in LINUX) so when I made that switch, this was foremost in my mind. On inform7.com there is a text file version of Writing With Inform, so I searched on that at first. Lately, I've more often been searching on the actual Standard Rules library, which is also a text file, and which is also downloadable from inform7.com (there is even a version that includes commentary). I don't recall if these options are on the documentation sticky, but they probably should be.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3997&start=0#p28735
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a good way to search I7 manuals outside of the IDE?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-20 15:39:56

One thing about Inform being a "natural" programming language is that well-written code is reasonably self-documenting. I use the Standard Library as my main documentation as well...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4002&start=0#p28736
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Prepositions are things one should not end a sentence wi
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-12-20 16:45:13

Think this is more or less solved. Thanks, Felix! Here's the code that I ended up using, in case anyone cares...

[code]if (actor ~= player) print "Tiu "; else print "Vi "; PrintCommand(); print " kion?^";[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=0#p28737
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-12-20 16:53:21

[quote="Basti50"]Any idea why the tilecells are bit off on the x-axis? [/quote]

I suspect that your refitting algorithms (e.g. "fit x to width of 400 and height of 400") are setting the same properties that Glimmr's image-maps use to render tiles, changing the intended set up. "Tile-width" and "tile-height" are the likely culprits.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=10#p28738
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-12-20 17:01:13

[quote="Ghalev"]I dunno, man. That's kind of like busting out a diagram to explain a joke ("as of the second line, tension is established due to the danger of the woman's position on the precipice, but this is both escalated and relieved suddenly as the listener realizes that there are two, both potentially applicable, definitions of the term ..."). Once you're there, the joke's already killed.

Just listen to the music with a different perspective. The passing of years may have already given you all you need.[/quote]

I had a feeling it might be something like that. Reading why they put the fingertips in helped a lot, but I guess I'll just sit back and evaluate the longer bits on my own. I've had books I hated as a kid that I like now, so I guess it's sort of the same thing.

On the other hand, it's good I'm not missing anything silly. I would love to contribute for one of the fingertips, just to have my name on something--and because a 1-verb, 1-move puzzle would force me to concentrate. So even if I don't fully appreciate the music, I'll help.

As for explanation ruining jokes, I largely agree for immediate impact, but with a longer incubation period, the explanation peels off and the funny bits remain.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3993&start=0#p28739
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Teleporter/Train Coding
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-12-20 17:57:27

[quote="harryg2011"]I would want the player to be able to use a teleporter or bullettrain. It's set in a huge space-cruise ship, and the teleporter would effectively limit areas where the player would go, but also limit certain areas from the player until I wanted them to be able to go there.[/quote]
Hi Harry,

The challenge with these types of things is that it's hard to guess the exact behavior the poster is looking for and therefore the best implementation to suggest. Based on the above quote, I coded up something which might get you started, but might not be your [i]best[/i] solution. If you posted an example of how you would like the output to look (i.e. an imaginary transcript), we could steer you in the right direction. Also, feel free to ask if you need help understanding my code:
[code]Section - Worlds

A world is a kind of region.

Current world is a world that varies. [defaults to first world created]

Definition: a world is other if it is not the current world. [helps later]

Section - Navigating

Navigating to is an action applying to one visible thing.
Understand "navigate to [any world]" or "nav to [any world]" as navigating to.
Understand "navigate to [something]" or "nav to [something]" as navigating to. [this will help catch errors]

Check navigating to (this is the can only navigate from the bridge rule):
	unless the location is the Bridge,
		say "You have to be on the bridge of your ship to navigate anywhere." instead.

[The next rule shows where the definition of "other" for worlds comes in handy:]
Check navigating to (this is the can only navigate to worlds rule):
	if the noun is not a world,
		say "You can only navigate to [the list of other worlds]." instead. 

Check navigating to (this is the can't navigate to same world rule):
	if the noun is the current world,
		say "You're already in orbit above [the noun]." instead.
		
Carry out navigating to:
	now the current world is the noun.
 
 Report navigating to:
	say "Navigating to [the noun]...";
	try looking.
 

Section - Transporting
 
 Transporting to is an action applying to one visible thing.
 Understand "transport to [any room]" or "beam to [any room]" as transporting to.
 Understand "transport to [something]" or "beam to [something]" as transporting to.
 
Definition:  a room is in range:
	if it is the Bridge, decide yes;
	if it is in the current world, decide yes;
	decide no.

Definition: a room is other if it is not the location.

Check transporting to (this is the can't transport to same place rule):
	if the noun is the location,
		say "You're already at [the location]." instead.
		
 Check transporting to (this is the can only transport to rooms in range rule):
	unless the noun is a room and the noun is in range,
		say "You can only transport to [the list of other in range rooms]." instead.

[Normally I would put the say phrase in a report rule, but since moving the player generates an automatic look, I put it here for convenience:]
		
Carry out transporting to:
	say "Beaming to [the noun]...";
	move the player to the noun.
	

Section - Scenario

The Bridge is a room. "You are in orbit above [the current world]. Below [is-are the list of rooms in the current world]."
Understand "ship" as the Bridge.

Tatooine and the Fourth Moon of Yavin are worlds.

Mos Eisley Space Port is a room. "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy."
North of Mos Eisley Space Port is the Dessert.
Mos Eisley Space Port and The Dessert are in Tatooine.

The Rebel Base is a room.  "You're surrounded by colonial vipers -- confirming your belief that you are living in a startlingly derivative, sparsely implemented, and serial comma - using SciFic/Fantasy mash-up.".
The Rebel Base is in the Fourth Moon of Yavin.

test me with "navigate to me / nav to tatooine / beam to base / transport to me / beam to mos / navigate to yavin / n / beam to base / beam to ship / nav to yavin / beam to base".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3999&start=0#p28740
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conditional understanding? E.g. disabling "ask"?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-20 17:59:59

Yeah, I don't think there's any 'gradual shift' about it. The official I7 documentation explains Understanding several chapters later than the action sequence, and always has.

(Does some other source teach you Understanding before action rules? It's been a while since I read Aaron's book.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3998&start=0#p28741
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: older Inform6 and color flag
User: frotz / DateTime: 2011-12-20 18:04:26

Do you think you could get that patch added to the library for correctness sake?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4005&start=0#p28742
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: i7: removing all items from a container
User: Della / DateTime: 2011-12-20 18:47:38

Hello everyone! I've been fiddling around with Inform 7 for a while, so I figured out I should make an account already.

Well, that, and the fact that I lost my patience after hitting a roadblock [emote]:D[/emote]

Long story short, I'm writing a little IF that includes a liquids-and-containers puzzle. I need a system to handle containers [vessels] that can be empty or full of a liquid (and you can't put non-liquids in), and you can pour them from a vessel to another provided the destination vessel is empty. you can also pour them down a sink and destroy the liquid ending up with an empty vessel. There is no liquid-mixing involved.

I'm handling vessels as containers that can only hold a single thing, which must be a kind of thing called a "liquid".

The point I'm stuck at is that I can't for the life of me figure out how to "empty a container", as in, destroy/remove from play an item inside a container by targeting the container.

I have no way of knowing beforehand what liquid will be in, say, a bottle, when the player pours it down the drain, and I can't find a way to tell Inform that it has to remove from play the item inside the container in question.

I've thought about restricting the command to "pour the liquid into the drain" and forbidding "pour the bottle into the drain", but it's a was of getting around the problem instead of solving it.

I guess the same problem could be encountered in a puzzle with a box that can hold an item which, when a button is pressed, is teleported someplace else (another puzzle I have planned).

Basically: how do I move an unknown item X which is inside a container?

Thank you for any assistance [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3999&start=0#p28743
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conditional understanding? E.g. disabling "ask"?
User: Plantar Humdrum / DateTime: 2011-12-20 18:47:57

What if you put some kind of object in every room and made it so that "attacking" or whatever was understood as applying to that object only.

Then the object attacks whatever you provided as an argument while making it look like you did the dirty work-- not mentioning itself, using your weapon data, etc. The equivalent of "give mercenary weapon and tell him to attack troll" being just "attack troll".

This might fix some issues, wouldn't it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3997&start=0#p28744
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a good way to search I7 manuals outside of the IDE?
User: George / DateTime: 2011-12-20 18:57:32

@Laroquod, so do you do an incremental find/search for the terms you're looking for while the Standard Rules are open in your editor? Or are you using some other search utility?

@capmikee, I wrote the stickied I7 docs post [emote]:)[/emote]. Writing that post made me think of this topic.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4005&start=0#p28745
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: i7: removing all items from a container
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-12-20 19:01:25

[quote="Della"]Long story short, I'm writing a little IF that includes a liquids-and-containers puzzle. [/quote]
I guess you're aware that this is one of hardest things in IF to implement.  [emote]:D[/emote]
[quote="Della"]The point I'm stuck at is that I can't for the life of me figure out how to "empty a container", as in, destroy/remove from play an item inside a container by targeting the container.[/quote]
Something like this?[code]To dump (V - a container):
	now everything enclosed by V is off-stage.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3998&start=0#p28746
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: older Inform6 and color flag
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-20 19:02:10

I'm not sure it is a good change. The effect is to make the SetColour() routine silently not work unless the user sets a constant, which is a substantial increase in confusion for no obvious benefit.

In any case, I don't think there's anybody running an I6 library release process. Although maybe DavidK knows something about it that I don't. The 6/11 library is unlikely to change.

(For a while, I think Graham was planning to release a core I6 library that would be included in both I6 and I7 games. You can see references to a planned 6/12 library in early I7 documentation. However, this never happened -- I7 diverged too much and it stopped making sense to have any shared code.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3997&start=0#p28747
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a good way to search I7 manuals outside of the IDE?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-20 19:04:26

I tend to keep a copy of Standard Rules.i7x open in a text editor at all times, just in case I need it. People ask questions...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3998&start=0#p28748
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: older Inform6 and color flag
User: frotz / DateTime: 2011-12-20 19:36:37

I think it would be a good change because it reverses the surprise of always setting the color flag.

What's the state of Inform 6 anyhow?  Will it continue to be developed?  Does Inform 7 seek to replace Inform 6?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4005&start=0#p28749
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: i7: removing all items from a container
User: Della / DateTime: 2011-12-20 19:56:47

[quote="Skinny Mike"][quote="Della"]Long story short, I'm writing a little IF that includes a liquids-and-containers puzzle. [/quote]
I guess you're aware that this is one of hardest things in IF to implement.  [emote]:D[/emote][/quote]

Let's say i had a sneaking suspicion [emote]:D[/emote]

[quote="Skinny Mike"][quote="Della"]The point I'm stuck at is that I can't for the life of me figure out how to "empty a container", as in, destroy/remove from play an item inside a container by targeting the container.[/quote]
Something like this?[code]To dump (V - a container):
	now everything enclosed by V is off-stage.[/code][/quote]

"[b]Enclosed[/b]" is the word? 

[runs off to test]

Holy crap you're right. Thank you, I've been playing "guess the word" for two damn hours!

[reads "Enclosed" on the documentation]

Well, Enclosed seems a pretty powerful tool. Wonder why they spend so little space explaining it. I didn't even realize it was there until now.

Well, it's off to scripting again! [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3696&start=0#p28751
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trying to 'reset' to starting values
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-12-20 20:26:28

Hope this necro is okay...I wrote the following to make a grid, for my own small game. This simply checks to make sure input is valid and maps the text to a number. You can also move around.

[spoiler]"a1-calc" by andrew

alphabet is a list of indexed text that varies.

alphabet is { "a", "b", "c", "d", "e", "f", "g", "h", "i", "j" };

gridsquares is a list of indexed text that varies.

startingsquare is a number that varies. endingsquare is a number that varies.

to make-grid:
	let z be indexed text;
	let w be text;
	repeat with x running from 1 to number of entries in alphabet:
		repeat with y running from 1 to number of entries in alphabet:
			let z be "[entry y of alphabet][x]";
			add z to gridsquares;

when play begins:
	make-grid;

carry out converting:
	repeat with J running from 1 to number of entries in gridsquares:
		if the topic understood matches the text "[entry J of gridsquares]":
			say "Ooh, a match: [J] matches [the topic understood].";
			the rule succeeds;
	let temp be the number of entries in alphabet;
	say "Sorry, that's not a valid grid-square. Try [entry 1 of alphabet]1-[entry temp of alphabet][temp].";

converting is an action applying to one topic.

understand the command "convert [text]" as something new.

understand "convert [text]" as converting.

rule for printing a parser error:
	let validwords be 0;
	repeat with J running from 1 to number of entries in gridsquares:
		if word number 1 in the player's command matches the text "[entry J of gridsquares]":
			say "Ooh, a match: [J] matches [word number 1 in the player's command].";
			now startingsquare is J;
			increment validwords;
	repeat with J running from 1 to number of entries in gridsquares:
		if word number 2 in the player's command matches the text "[entry J of gridsquares]":
			say "Ooh, a match: [J] matches [word number 2 in the player's command].";
			now endingsquare is J;
			increment validwords;
	expostulate instead;
	
to expostulate:
	say "[startingsquare] to [endingsquare], bam!";
	the rule succeeds;

room 1 is a room.[/spoiler]

I have a feeling I missed a bunch of stuff here, and the code seems rather awkward and blunt. If anyone has some suggestions for touchups, I'd be interested. It may generalize better. But it maybe doesn't help you do what you want.

I guess my concern is there any way to make the value of indexed text a variable name? Or be able to refer to it as something more easily? Or detect, say, c3 in my above code?

Also, and this would be easiest, is there an easy way to say "the index of (some text) in a list, if present"? Or would it be better to use a table?

Even if there's no answer to my lead-on question, thanks very much for asking this in the first place--it reminded me of something I'd wanted to try for a while.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3988&start=10#p28752
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The list of Inform 7 documentation (as of 19 Dec 2011)
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-12-20 20:59:03

[quote="George"]Good suggestion, done.[/quote]

Yay, glad I could contribute in some small way!

I know that one thing I'm only just discovering is how to use the skein and transcripts from it. Is there any website that guides us through that?

I also had no idea how to use the IDE's features for looking through all standard actions. I'd think if someone could make a youtube video or selection of screenshots to guide a person through, that'd be hugely helpful. I suspect once people know this sort of thing is there, that's a lot less work.

Finally, one of the big roadblocks I've had is knowing which extensions to use. So many times, I've been wondering if I should bother programming X and not knowing whether there was an extension Y that would take care of it. I think any one person's documentation generally catches some good ones, but is there something more general? I know I'd find it useful to be able to see programming examples or evaluations. Beyond the extension authors' own, which I don't want to belittle. But it's more the "wow, other people can use this"

Is anyone aware of these? Does anyone want to create such a page? Are these questions out of the scope of the topic? I hope I haven't hijacked the thread, but really, I'm glad someone took the time to tie this up, and I thought I'd ask a few more questions while I was at it.

One final thing--let us know whether it might be better to PM/email you with small changes, or if we should just post here.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3988&start=10#p28753
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The list of Inform 7 documentation (as of 19 Dec 2011)
User: George / DateTime: 2011-12-20 21:07:12

Posting in the thread works for me. At some point it'll make more sense to put this somewhere that's generally editable, like ifwiki, and I'll probably just post a redirect link in the OP. 

Your questions about extensions definitely are relevant, and in fact Aaron Reed proposed something very similar, see this topic <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1012&p=5542&hilit=aaron+extension+review+mike#p5508">viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1012&p=5542&hilit=aaron+extension+review+mike#p5508</a>. I don't know if he's gone further than that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3999&start=0#p28754
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conditional understanding? E.g. disabling "ask"?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-21 00:01:40

[quote="maga"]Yeah, I don't think there's any 'gradual shift' about it. The official I7 documentation explains Understanding several chapters later than the action sequence, and always has.[/quote]
I was thinking of special tokens like [things inside], [someone], and [something preferably held], as well as the "carried thing" specification in action definitions. Except for "things inside," none of these constructs rule out any visible objects entirely, they just cause special actions or messages to take place during parsing or early in command processing, but they are less flexible than normal action-processing rules.

I think "carried thing" is officially deprecated now, and [things inside] feels like legacy code to me. The others haven't been discouraged in documentation, but I don't think they're encouraged either.  I could imagine a "gradual shift" away from them as part of the same trend.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=0#p28755
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2011-12-21 00:16:27

[quote="ektemple"]I suspect that your refitting algorithms (e.g. "fit x to width of 400 and height of 400") are setting the same properties that Glimmr's image-maps use to render tiles, changing the intended set up. "Tile-width" and "tile-height" are the likely culprits.[/quote]
Probably, but why would tile-width/tile-height work with direct image-maps and not with m-i-ms? I'll have to take a look into it. It [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17790344/Examples/Elevator%28New2%29.gblorb]currently[/url] looks like something gets mixed up with the display rule as well. Tile-height is apparently also used for tile-width from what I can see.


There is another snippet that I've overlooked.

[quote="ektemple"](Glimmr would show the entire canvas no matter how small the window was reduced)[/quote]
Do you remember which rule refits a g-element to a canvas? Is it the element scaling rule or something else? Might as well take care of that while I'm at it.


Found another oddity in the meantime: Inform 7 preferred [code]fit (grid - an image-map) to/into a/-- total/-- width of (X -  a number) canvas/-- pixel/pixels/px/units wide/--[/code] to [code]fit (grid - a multi-image-map) to width of (X -  a number)[/code] although the later was, technically, more specific, so I had to change that (btw @Erik, there is a '/--' missing after units).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=270#p28756
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-21 00:33:37

[quote="Laroquod"][...] they all have the same point, which is the public sharing of information with a self-selected group of cohorts. No?[/quote]

Well, I can't speak to anyone else's tastes, but for me the reason is (I suspect) mostly about sharing [i]thoughts [/i]vs. sharing [i]works[/i]. I'm interested in works: games, stories, articles, movies, recipes, videos, songs ... but only very very [i]selectively[/i] interested in thoughts/notions/ideas/opinions. And not selective in a "I want to know this person's thoughts" way, but rather "I want to know nearly 0.00000021001 percent of this person's thoughts, because he's awesomely fascinating and only utterly dull the rest of the time."

Blogs have matured to the point where some (many) of them are genuine works, though often works-in-progress (and I'd rather just wait 'til the end and buy the book), but tweets seem pretty restricted to being thoughts/notions/ideas/opinions (or a hyperlink to something which isn't a tweet) and there's basically no person on Earth for whom it's true that I'm (A) [i]consistently[/i] interested in their thoughts/etc and yet (B) not already snuggling/sleeping/making out with them anyway (in which case I don't need to follow them on Twitter to hear what's up).

So I think that's why I don't get Twitter (and, to a lesser extent, why I don't get blogs, although with blogs it's partly a lingering thing from the days when blogs were seldom works, and more often just thoughts/opinions/the cat is sick/I want to buy this hat/oh my I seem to have literally bored you to death sorry about that/oh the cat's thrown up again/I like soup.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4005&start=0#p28757
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: i7: removing all items from a container
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-21 01:01:48

You could also have used "now everything in V is off-stage."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3998&start=10#p28758
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: older Inform6 and color flag
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-12-21 01:24:34

[quote="zarf"]In any case, I don't think there's anybody running an I6 library release process. Although maybe DavidK knows something about it that I don't.[/quote]No, there's no maintainer for the Inform 6 library. There's no reason why someone couldn't step up and take on maintaining it, but so far no-one has.[quote="frotz"]What's the state of Inform 6 anyhow?  Will it continue to be developed?  Does Inform 7 seek to replace Inform 6?[/quote]Inform 7 uses Inform 6 as its code generator, so the Inform 6 compiler is at least maintained to fix bugs and keep pace with Glulx: the git repository for it is at [url]https://github.com/DavidKinder/Inform6[/url]. It's highly unlikely that there'll be anything other than the odd fix, though, unless someone else wants to take the code in new directions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3998&start=10#p28759
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: older Inform6 and color flag
User: frotz / DateTime: 2011-12-21 02:45:08

[quote="DavidK"][quote="zarf"]In any case, I don't think there's anybody running an I6 library release process. Although maybe DavidK knows something about it that I don't.[/quote]No, there's no maintainer for the Inform 6 library. There's no reason why someone couldn't step up and take on maintaining it, but so far no-one has.[quote="frotz"]What's the state of Inform 6 anyhow?  Will it continue to be developed?  Does Inform 7 seek to replace Inform 6?[/quote]Inform 7 uses Inform 6 as its code generator, so the Inform 6 compiler is at least maintained to fix bugs and keep pace with Glulx: the git repository for it is at [url]https://github.com/DavidKinder/Inform6[/url]. It's highly unlikely that there'll be anything other than the odd fix, though, unless someone else wants to take the code in new directions.[/quote]

So I take it neither Graham Nelson nor Roger Firth are active in IF anymore?  I'll step up to keep the library going.  It looks like there might be enough bugs reports accumulated to warrent working on 6/12.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3998&start=10#p28761
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: older Inform6 and color flag
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-12-21 03:12:04

[quote="frotz"]So I take it neither Graham Nelson nor Roger Firth are active in IF anymore?[/quote]Graham is still quietly beavering away on Inform 7, see [url]http://inform7.com/[/url]. Roger isn't active any more as far as I'm aware.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3998&start=10#p28762
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: older Inform6 and color flag
User: frotz / DateTime: 2011-12-21 03:58:06

[quote="DavidK"][quote="frotz"]So I take it neither Graham Nelson nor Roger Firth are active in IF anymore?[/quote]Graham is still quietly beavering away on Inform 7, see [url]http://inform7.com/[/url]. Roger isn't active any more as far as I'm aware.[/quote]

Okay, so I'll start up a git repository of the library.  Do you have any hints on getting metastore to do its magic automatically?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4002&start=0#p28763
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Prepositions are things one should not end a sentence wi
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-21 04:12:50

Great! 
(Will the presence of a preposition affect the case of the pronoun? I mean, is it "Vi foobaru kion?" but "Vi foobaru je kio?"?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=270#p28764
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-12-21 04:23:20

I get it a little better now because I see how you are connecting the dots between relevance and social organisation. I don't connect the dots the same way.

There is a LOT of time 'wasted' scrolling past large blocks of things here I don't necessarily want to read. I can't even really avoid this by going by topic headings (e.g. look at the topic heading on this thread). Plus, all of the surrounding cruft in a forum like this is not really necessary and greatly increasing the 'eyeball cost' of scrolling (that's the main sense in which web forums feel palpably archaic — look at all of the wasted space and mostly unnecessary info and widgets on this page: plus, every time I try to post something, there are 24 smiley GIFs constantly being animated on the left side of the screen -- on my netbook this slows everything to a crawl). The current crop of web forums are just way too complex for the task at hand. They waste more of it on TRUE irrelevancies: time not spent reading what another human being wrote. It is also very difficult to filter based on personality here. If a user is very obnoxious on a web forum but somehow manages to stay on the right side of the 'getting banned' line (it's an art I guess), I can put them on ignore but let's face it: the conversations are so intertwined here that it will impossible to truly ignore that person's contributions. So a web forum is in a sense a prisoner of the personalities that it attracts: it has a tendency to calcify. Additionally, I have gotten sucked into debates in web forums and abyssal forever-threads that wander far afield but which I find it difficult to extract myself from either because it's too funny, or the guy debating me is being a bit assholish and imputing negative motives to my opinion that I feel the need to correct: two situations in which I tend to get trapped in a forum thread like a fly on stickytape.

Empirically I know that I tend to waste an order of magnitude *more* time-I-wish-I-could-back on a web forum than on a social network or microblogging services. So how do I manage microblogging to get the best signal-to-noise?

First, give up the idea of one topic per person. You like multiple topics, right? You are not a one-note beast: no one is. So why must all of your online connections with other people be one-note connections? Interests tend to cluster. So I reward people who post highly interesting stuff, by following them and then further by putting them on my most frequently-read lists. If they post too much irrelevant-to-me stuff I will downgrade them to a less frequent list if I find there is still some value there, or I will just unfollow them if I don't see any value. I DO NOT trade influence, i.e. I do not follow other people simply because they follow me: not as a rule. And I have to do this kind of curation less than you might think, because the opportunity cost of reading an irrelevant tweet is very, very low compared to reading an irrelevant forum post. But Twitter, properly culled and curated, turns into a teeming hive of relevance-to-my-interests: it's really quite remarkable how valuable to me it's become. And I am a person who is extremely impatient with small talk and idle chit-chat. I just don't do it; I aim all my commentary at a topic I feel strongly about ALL OF iT. And that's mostly all I read on Twitter. Just remember: you do not have to follow anyone even if they're nice to you, and you do not have to read everything from everyone.

I am making kind of a long, messy argument. It's like 5am here; I am groggy. But I really think that if you feel Twitter is a hive of irrelevance, the blame is on you for not putting any effort into curating your feed. The responsibility is on you to choose what's relevant: it's like making a highly customised forum.

Paul.

P.S. Arguments above apply less so to macroblogging, but then most full blogs are focused on a single topic anyway, unlike most Twitter accounts.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3997&start=0#p28765
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a good way to search I7 manuals outside of the IDE?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-12-21 05:05:51

[quote="George"]@Laroquod, so do you do an incremental find/search for the terms you're looking for while the Standard Rules are open in your editor? Or are you using some other search utility?[/quote]
Yup I just bang it into a text file in the same editor I am coding in and do a search. It's hard to improve on having a single, very lightweight software program handle both coding and documentation. On the Mac, I use TextWrangler. On LINUX, so far I have been using gedit but that might change.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=10#p28766
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-12-21 05:13:41

[quote="aschultz"]As for explanation ruining jokes, I largely agree for immediate impact, but with a longer incubation period, the explanation peels off and the funny bits remain.[/quote]
At the risk of killing something, the songs are not just silly, but silly in a way that calls into question what is our motivation for even writing songs (sometimes quite philosophically -- those are my favourites, like Everybody Wants a Rock).

The text adventure I have played that felt most like a TMBG song was Pick Up The Phone Booth and Die.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4000&start=0#p28767
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: .qut save files in Zoom and Frotz on ipad?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-12-21 05:21:34

Argh I misread the direction you are trying to go in (Zoom to Frotz) — sorry about that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3933&start=40#p28768
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: MAX_STATIC_DATA maximum reached
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-12-21 05:31:19

I agree with some suggestions above that the main failings of most of the i7 documentation I have tried to go by are (1) failure to avoid those forward references; and (2) failure to consider all possible forms of input (including fail modes) when describing any grammar function's output. The latter is the worst offence: I often have to discover how a function will actually respond to my particular planned inputs by a process of trial & error to figure out how it fails. I have not investigated every possible manual out there though -- only tried a few before I lost patience with 'choosing a manual' and just started to fill in the gaps with my own lab notes.

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3999&start=0#p28769
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conditional understanding? E.g. disabling "ask"?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-12-21 06:04:01

[quote="Plantar Humdrum"]What if you put some kind of object in every room and made it so that "attacking" or whatever was understood as applying to that object only.[/quote]
This is probably a very basic issue that has a simple solution, but I'm not quite grasping what exactly it is that you're trying to accomplish. Practically every action has default behavior that usually blocks the action with a generic refusal message. For everything that should do something other than the default you add a set of rules that make it happen.

Maybe if you could write a short hypothetical transcript that would show the behavior you're after?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=40#p28770
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: JimmyMaher / DateTime: 2011-12-21 07:21:03

So sorry I missed this. Afraid it came while I was on holiday. As of now, I've just wrapped the concealed possessions stuff into a larger (private) extension which helps me to move titles onto the Kindle. You're welcome to use my concealed possessions code in an extension of your own, if you like.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3999&start=0#p28771
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conditional understanding? E.g. disabling "ask"?
User: Plantar Humdrum / DateTime: 2011-12-21 07:57:00

[quote="Juhana"][quote="Plantar Humdrum"]What if you put some kind of object in every room and made it so that "attacking" or whatever was understood as applying to that object only.[/quote]
This is probably a very basic issue that has a simple solution, but I'm not quite grasping what exactly it is that you're trying to accomplish. Practically every action has default behavior that usually blocks the action with a generic refusal message. For everything that should do something other than the default you add a set of rules that make it happen.

Maybe if you could write a short hypothetical transcript that would show the behavior you're after?[/quote]

This isn't what I'm after, per se, but a kludge to get there.

"Attack Proxy" is, for the purposes of this, a hidden entity that will never show up in any descriptions under normal conditions. It is a proxy through which the operation of the "attack" command may be modified. There could be any number of proxies for any number of functions. I'm thinking here of, say, "ask" proxies, "look" proxies, etc.

The machine has been made to understand "attacking" as "giving either the current weapon or the specified weapon to the hidden entity "Attack Proxy" and instructing it to attack the specified target; thus

[quote]>attack dero with revolver[/quote]

is the same as

[quote]>give "Attack Proxy" revolver, tell "Attack Proxy" to shoot the dero, let "Attack Proxy" hand you back the revolver[/quote]

whereupon it returns something like [quote]"You shoot the dero, causing a puff of dust to release from its gruelike fur. You did the dero 48pts of damage, bringing its health down to 16pts."[/quote] under standard conditions.

and if certain conditions are met, the attack proxy (or ask proxy, or whatever) gives certain responses, e.g.

(you're in the Chicago Dero Caves and tried attack once) [quote]"SHOOT it? Are you nuts? You'll have the whole cavern of them after you! Run!"[/quote] (this is like the "mistake" feature)

(you're in the Chicago Dero Caves and tried attack twice) [quote]"While you're trying to solve everything with a gun, that oversized teddy bear is almost on top of you."[/quote] (like the "mistake" feature with changing mistake text)

(you're in the Chicago Dero Caves and tried attack three times) [quote]"Fine. Do whatever. Get yourself killed. I hope you have UNDO enabled, you fool."[/quote]

Then, the fourth time, you shoot and almost get eviscerated by angry deros.

Another example would be, say, "ask" with no arguments:

(you're a Dero in the Chrysler Basement and trying "ask" once:) [quote]"It's been a while. Your jaw tenses and your voicebox flutters, but nothing comes out."[/quote]

(you're a Dero in the Chrysler Basement and trying "ask" twice:) [quote]"Again, you stammer and manage a crackly growl, but words elude you."[/quote]

...

(you're a Dero in the Chrysler Basement and trying "ask" five times:) [quote]"Finally, triumphantly, your larynx comes unstuck and words form. Unfortunately, you have no topics upon which to question the empty room."[/quote]

(you're a Dero in the Chrysler Basement and trying "ask" more than five times:) [quote]"The sense of futility you procured rallying your voice to operate for no reason has rendered you silent for the moment."[/quote] (or if you tried to ask "about" something to the empty room it could list the topic you tried to ask about in the last failure text)

Or maybe

(touching Jack in the coalroom before you've met Jack, and he's not there:) [quote]"Who?"[/quote]
(touching Jack in the coalroom after you've met Jack, and he's not there:) [quote]"Jack isn't here, man."[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3999&start=0#p28772
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conditional understanding? E.g. disabling "ask"?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-21 08:36:16

I may have got it all wrong, but it seems to me that you want to have a stunt man perform these actions on behalf of the Player Character, while it should still look for all the world (and particularly for the player of the game) as if the PC was the actor.

But what is the point of modelling it that roundabout way? Why not let the PC perform these actions himself/herself in the first place? Why the stunt man?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=10#p28773
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2011-12-21 08:38:29

[quote="Laroquod"]The text adventure I have played that felt most like a TMBG song was Pick Up The Phone Booth and Die.[/quote]

Hopefully you won't be able to say that for long! [emote]:-)[/emote]

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3999&start=10#p28774
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conditional understanding? E.g. disabling "ask"?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-12-21 08:51:13

I think you're overthinking the problem a bit. I don't see a reason to use some proxy object when you could just, well, do the same thing without it.

For example the attacking scenario (I don't know what a dero is but let's just make two of them):

[code]Outside caves is a room.
Chicago Caves is inside from Outside caves.
The player carries a revolver and a pencil.

A dero is a kind of thing. One dero is in Outside caves. One dero is in Chicago Caves.

Attacking it with is an action applying to one visible thing and one thing.
Understand "attack [something] with [something preferably held]" as attacking it with.

[The default response to attacking something]
Check attacking with:
	say "Not a good idea." instead.
	
[attacking with a non-weapon]
Check attacking with when the second noun is not the revolver:
	say "[The second noun] is not a weapon!" instead.
	
[Attacking a dero normally]
Instead of attacking a dero with a revolver:
	say "You shoot the dero, causing a puff of dust to release from its gruelike fur.";
	[+ whatever combat mechanisms you have]
	
[attacking in the caves]
Instead of attacking something with a revolver when the location is the Chicago Caves for the first time:
	say "SHOOT it? Are you nuts? You'll have the whole cavern of them after you! Run!"
	
Instead of attacking something with a revolver when the location is the Chicago Caves for the second time:
	say "While you're trying to solve everything with a gun, that oversized teddy bear is almost on top of you."
	
Instead of attacking something with a revolver when the location is the Chicago Caves for the third time:
	say "Fine. Do whatever. Get yourself killed. I hope you have UNDO enabled, you fool."

Instead of attacking something with a revolver when the location is the Chicago Caves for the fourth time:
	say "The deros eat you.";
	end the story.
	

Test me with "attack dero with pencil/attack dero with revolver/in/attack dero with revolver/attack dero with revolver/attack dero with revolver/attack dero with revolver".[/code]

The resulting transcript is:

[quote]
Outside caves
You can see a dero here.

>attack dero with pencil
The pencil is not a weapon!

>attack dero with revolver
You shoot the dero, causing a puff of dust to release from its gruelike fur.

>in
Chicago Caves
You can see a dero here.

>attack dero with revolver
SHOOT it? Are you nuts? You'll have the whole cavern of them after you! Run!

>attack dero with revolver
While you're trying to solve everything with a gun, that oversized teddy bear is almost on top of you.

>attack dero with revolver
Fine. Do whatever. Get yourself killed. I hope you have UNDO enabled, you fool.

>attack dero with revolver
The deros eat you.

    *** The End ***[/quote]

Is this what you were thinking about?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3999&start=10#p28775
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conditional understanding? E.g. disabling "ask"?
User: Plantar Humdrum / DateTime: 2011-12-21 09:05:43

[quote="Felix"]I may have got it all wrong, but it seems to me that you want to have a stunt man perform these actions on behalf of the Player Character, while it should still look for all the world (and particularly for the player of the game) as if the PC was the actor.

But what is the point of modelling it that roundabout way? Why not let the PC perform these actions himself/herself in the first place? Why the stunt man?[/quote]

Because I don't know any other way to do it with the current version and this seemed like a potential solution. Maybe there's a way to do it with a plugin(?) but I don't have any ideas how to write them.

[quote="Juhana"]I think you're overthinking the problem a bit.

...

Is this what you were thinking about?[/quote]

Yes! But there is also the problem of wanting to do this:
[quote]
[color=#408000][note there's only a target noun, no "with"][/color]
>attack object
Dummy Response 1
>attack object
Dummy Response 2
>attack object
Dummy Response 3
[/quote]

and this

[quote]
[color=#408000][note there's no target noun, but the other is present][/color]
>attack with revolver
Dummy Response 1a
>attack with revolver
Dummy Response 2a
>attack with revolver
Dummy Response 3a
[/quote]

and this

[quote]
[color=#408000][note there's no noun at all, nothing but the verb][/color]
>attack
Dummy Response 1b
>attack
Dummy Response 2b
>attack
Dummy Response 3b
[/quote]

This is what I'm concerned with. Are these all things that can be done currently?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=270#p28776
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-21 09:53:15

[quote]But I really think that if you feel Twitter is a hive of irrelevance, the blame is on you for not putting any effort into curating your feed.[/quote]

You "blame" others for having different tastes than you?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4002&start=0#p28777
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Prepositions are things one should not end a sentence wi
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-12-21 09:59:39

[quote="Felix"]Great! 
(Will the presence of a preposition affect the case of the pronoun? I mean, is it "Vi foobaru kion?" but "Vi foobaru je kio?"?)[/quote]
We use the accusative together with a preposition when indicating direction with some prepositions that don't normally indicate direction, e.g. [i]Vi metu la libron en la keston[/i] ("You should put the book into the box") or [i]Vi metu la libron sur la tablon[/i] ("You should put the book onto the table"), and nominative otherwise: [i]Vi vidas libron en la kesto[/i] ("You see a book in the box"). In other words, [i]en[/i]+accusative means "into" and [i]en[/i]+nominative means "in".

So, the accusative will work right probably at least 90% of the time with that library message, even with prepositions, given the most common commands in a typical IF. But it will be wrong sometimes, e.g. if a game has defined a custom verb [i]skribu sur [something][/i] ("should write on [something]"), the message [i]Vi skribu sur kion?[/i] would be wrong. But I don't really think it would be possible to write general code that will be able to tell the difference between what should be nominative and what should be accusative since either can be used with most prepositions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=10#p28778
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-12-21 10:05:25

[quote="Laroquod"]
At the risk of killing something, the songs are not just silly, but silly in a way that calls into question what is our motivation for even writing songs (sometimes quite philosophically -- those are my favourites, like Everybody Wants a Rock).

The text adventure I have played that felt most like a TMBG song was Pick Up The Phone Booth and Die.

Paul.[/quote]

Cool. That makes sense. I mean, it was one of my guesses that they were just trying to twist things, and I was listening to a lot of protest stuff at the time, so yeah--big shift. Hope I don't need spoiler tags for this [emote]:)[/emote]

And from what I can see, the album was specifically meant

[spoiler]to be played with a CD than with a cassette, which is how I first heard it.[/spoiler]

Also, after a bit of thinking, I realized I didn't need to like or relate to all the songs--just the one I'd hopefully be writing for. Still, you can probably guess where I've been poking around on YouTube lately.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3999&start=10#p28779
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conditional understanding? E.g. disabling "ask"?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-21 10:12:16

Those can all be done. One thing to note is that there's a built-in action called "attacking," invoked by the command "attack foo" (or "hit foo," "kill foo," and several other things), whose default behavior is to print "Violence isn't the answer to this one." Which we don't want to say, because violence usually is the answer.

[rant]"[url=http://nonadventures.com/2011/11/26/potatoes-au-rotten/]"This violence doesn't solve anything!" "But that's what violence does best!"[/url][/rant]

So we find the rule that does this and remove it, thus:

[code]The block attacking rule is not listed in the check attacking rulebook.[/code]

(You can do this by looking under the "commands" index for the command "attack"; it tells you that it translates to the attacking action, and if you look up that action, you can see that one of the rules governing it is the block attacking rule. Clicking on the little block next to "unlist" automatically drops the above text into your source.)

Now we have to make "attack foo" redirect to attacking it with a weapon, if you have one:

[code]Instead of attacking something:
	if the player does not carry the revolver:
		say "You don't have anything to attack [the noun] with!";
		otherwise:
			try attacking the noun with the revolver.[/code] 

If you implement more than one weapon, you'll have to change this code so that it checks if the player holds any weapon at all, and you'll have to figure out a way for this to pick a weapon for you. Also, if you've got any timed challenges in here, it'll be polite to make sure that things like the "if the player does not carry the revolver" case don't make the timer click down -- if the player is supposed to "attack dero with revolver" or die, and "attack dero" kills them, they won't be pleased.

This automatically takes care of "attack," because Inform asks "what do you want to attack?"

To take care of "attack with revolver," we can define another action, and have that action redirect to attacking a random dero with whatever was specified:

[code]Attacking blindly with is an action applying to one thing. Understand "attack with [something]" as attacking blindly with.

Check attacking blindly with when no dero is in the location:
	say "There's nothing to attack here." instead.
	
Check attacking blindly with when the noun is not a revolver:
	say "[The noun] is not a weapon!" instead.
	
Carry out attacking blindly with:
	if a dero is in the location:
		try attacking a random dero in the location with the noun;
	otherwise:
		 say "There's nothing to attack here." [This should never happen, because the check rule should already have stopped this case.][/code]

I think you'll find that all the ways of attacking the dero increment Juhana's counter the way you want -- you'll get the messages in order -- because every successful attempt ultimately redirects to the action "attacking the dero with the revolver." (BTW, we didn't include anything that specifies that you have to be holding the weapon! As it stands, you can attack the dero with the revolver even when the revolver is on the floor. You'd want to include a check for that.)

UPDATE: Whoops, you want different dummy responses. That should be possible -- just [i]don't[/i] say "try attacking a random dero in the location with the noun," but instead make the rules for these actions print your dummy responses.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3996&start=0#p28780
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is there a way to count the number of a kind?
User: HanonO / DateTime: 2011-12-21 11:18:59

This is great and informative. Thank you!

Where has "now T is T in sentence case" been all my life?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=10#p28781
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-12-21 11:55:28

[quote="Basti50"][quote="ektemple"]I suspect that your refitting algorithms (e.g. "fit x to width of 400 and height of 400") are setting the same properties that Glimmr's image-maps use to render tiles, changing the intended set up. "Tile-width" and "tile-height" are the likely culprits.[/quote]
Probably, but why would tile-width/tile-height work with direct image-maps and not with m-i-ms? [/quote]
When you changed your m-i-ms from g-elements to image-maps, this made them subject to two new rules, the default image-map scaling rule and the default image-map drawing rule. It looks like your custom drawing rule probably overrides the latter, but the scaling rule is very likely firing. I haven't looked into your code enough to see how this might change things, but that's what I'm referring to. (It may not be that this is not the right explanation, since it looks like you aren't making use of the scaled values anyway.)

[quote="Basti50"]It [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17790344/Elevator%28New2%29.gblorb]currently[/url] looks like something gets mixed up with the display rule as well. Tile-height is apparently also used for tile-width from what I can see.[/quote]
Yes, the m-i-m drawing rule that you posted above does seem to be using tile-height for both height and width. Also, that drawing rule is throwing away any scaling information--it's using the tile-width and tile-height directly, rather than using the scaled values.

[quote="Basti50"]There is another snippet that I've overlooked.[quote="ektemple"](Glimmr would show the entire canvas no matter how small the window was reduced)[/quote]
Do you remember which rule refits a g-element to a canvas? Is it the element scaling rule or something else? Might as well take care of that while I'm at it.[/quote]
A Glimmr canvas is really two things: a coordinate system independent of the window, and a bounded rectangle expressed in that coordinate system. If you specify your canvas as measuring 600 wide x 300 deep, Glimmr will fit that bounded rectangle (0-600 x and 0-300 y) into the window, also calculating the scaling factor needed to do so: e.g., if your game window is 300 pixels wide, then the scaling factor will be 50%. This scaling factor is used to determine the placement and sizing of all of the graphic elements that go on the canvas. In the case of an image-map, the origin point of the map is scaled by this scaling factor, and so are the tile-width and tile-height. Thus, if your tile-width in canvas coordinates was 20, each tile would actually be drawn to the screen at 10 pixels wide after being scaled by 50%. 

So there isn't a rule that refits an image-map to the canvas. There are two phrases that allow you to provide the total width you want the map to fit into along one dimension, and then figures the tile-width from there. However, this is not a scaling operation per se--it's just intended to save you the trouble of calculating your own tile sizes. If you know you want your image-map to be 400 canvas units wide, you can write a "when play begins" rule to say "fit my image-map to a width of 400". This will look at the number of tiles per row in your image-map, calculate how wide each tile would need to be to fit into 400 pixels, and then adjust both the width and the height to maintain the aspect ratio. I suspect that your own "to fit" phrases are doing the same...?

Anyway, to get the m-i-m to behave like a Glimmr image-map and scale along with the canvas, you'll need to rewrite your drawing rule to use the scaled tile-width and tile-height values. See the code in Glimmr Canvas-Based Drawing for the image element-scaling and element-drawing rules.

[quote="Basti50"](btw @Erik, there is a '/--' missing after units).[/quote]
Check again, there isn't anything missing  [emote];)[/emote] .  It's just that the code allows for many (too many) different expressions of the phrase.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3996&start=0#p28782
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is there a way to count the number of a kind?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-21 12:05:44

In case you're interested, I worked away at this a little more and added some improvements:

[rant][code]Waiting Room is a room. A bill is a kind of thing. A cost is a kind of value. 2 dollars specifies a cost.  A bill has a cost called price. The price of a bill is usually 5 dollars. The player carries two bills.
Bonk is a bill.
A mint is a kind of thing. A dish is a container in Waiting Room. Six mints are in the dish.

Counting is an action applying to one touchable thing. 

Understand "count [things]" as counting.
Understand "count [things inside] in/on [something]" as counting it from. Counting it from is an action applying to two things.

Carry out counting it from: try counting the noun instead.

Currently counting is a truth state that varies. Currently counting is false. 

To decide whether (fiscal - a list of objects) is monetary: 
	repeat with item running through fiscal:
		if item is not a bill, decide no;
	decide yes.
	
First check counting:
	if currently counting is true:
		stop the action. [This is what cuts off the count for the rest of the items on the multiple object list.]

Report counting a carried bill:
	now currently counting is true;
	if the multiple object list is monetary:
		 say "You're carrying [a list of bills carried by the player].  You have [the total price of bills held by the player].[paragraph break]";
		rule succeeds. [This line stops the report counting rulebook, so you don't fall through to the next rule]

Report counting something:
	now currently counting is true; [This sets the flag so we don't keep doing it]
	let L be the multiple object list;
	if the number of entries in L is less than 2: [If we're only counting one thing, then there will be 0 objects in the multiple object list, so we need a special case]
		say "One!";
	otherwise:
		let T be indexed text; [AFAIK you have to do this to get the word capitalized]
		now T is "[the number of entries in L in words]";
		now T is T in sentence case;
		say "[T]![paragraph break]"
	
The before-generation rule is listed before the generate action rule in the turn sequence rules.

This is the before-generation rule: [the documentation for example 420 explains why we need to do it this way]
	now currently counting is false.

The selectively announce items from multiple object lists rule is listed instead of the announce items from multiple object lists rule in the action-processing rules.
This is the selectively announce items from multiple object lists rule: [This means that we don't get a bunch of "mint: mint: mint:" when we're trying to count]
 	unless counting or counting something from something: [this is just the normal behavior for this rule]
		if the current item from the multiple object list is not nothing: 
			say "[current item from the multiple object list]: [run paragraph on]".[/code][/rant]

The business about "counting it from" is basically straight out of the "Left Hand of Autumn" example -- it means that "count everything in the dish" now gives you the number of things that are in the dish. You'll notice that when it comes time to carry out counting it from, we just ignore the second noun; it's in there just to restrict the "all" to the things inside the second noun, as per the Understand line. 

Then the definition of a monetary list is there to take care of the thing I mentioned about "count one bill and two mints" -- counting bills will only give you the special bill message if you're exclusively counting bills and if you have at least one bill. If there's something else in the object list (it's not a "monetary" list), then that rule doesn't do anything -- in particular, it doesn't trip the "rule succeeds" condition which ends the rulebook, so it goes on to execute the other report counting rule. I couldn't figure out a more direct way to express the condition that everything in a given list is a bill. 

It looks like I used some chicanery -- if you're carrying a bill and another bill is visible, then which rule gets executed depends on which bill is first in the multiple object list. I think that in this case the carried bill is always going to be first, but in a more general case you probably want to make sure that you do the money count whenever the whole list is bills and there's a carried bill anywhere in the list.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3998&start=10#p28783
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: older Inform6 and color flag
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-21 12:11:58

Thanks!

I'm afraid I haven't used metastore, so I can't help with that.

DavidK wrote: 

[quote]Inform 7 uses Inform 6 as its code generator, so the Inform 6 compiler is at least maintained to fix bugs and keep pace with Glulx: the git repository for it is at <a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/DavidKinder/Inform6">https://github.com/DavidKinder/Inform6</a>. It's highly unlikely that there'll be anything other than the odd fix, though, unless someone else wants to take the code in new directions.[/quote]

I should note that we strongly want to keep the I6 compiler backwards-compatible from now on. We occasionally add features, but we want older I6 source code to stay valid.

That doesn't apply to the I6 *library*, however. Traditionally, it hasn't maintained perfect backwards compatibility, because games are too intertwined with library code (and most large I6 games hack parts of the library anyway). So feel free to wield an axe. :)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3999&start=10#p28784
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conditional understanding? E.g. disabling "ask"?
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-12-21 13:09:55

A series of dummy responses doesn't require anything more than text with variations:

[code]
Instead of attacking something:
	if the player does not have the revolver:
		say "[one of]Dummy Response 1[or]Dummy Response 2[or]Dummy Response 3[stopping]".[/code]

But it's better to correct the mistake automatically (ie, assume you're attacking with the revolver if you have the revolver) than to just print a denial, so as to minimize the amount of time the player spends figuring out what syntax you want him/her to use.

You may also want to look at the extension [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/David%20Ratliff/Armed/index.html]Armed by David Ratliff[/url], which is a simple combat implementation more or less the way you're trying to do it.

(Am I the only one who can't figure out how the proxy would help at all?  You'd end up writing the exact same rules to govern the proxy's actions and you'd need to write rules for handing things back and forth to the proxy, too.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3999&start=10#p28785
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conditional understanding? E.g. disabling "ask"?
User: Plantar Humdrum / DateTime: 2011-12-21 13:16:17

The proxy was, in retrospect, based on a misunderstanding.

What I'm really trying to do is write a kind of Korsakovia-esque thing that's in the first person, so

[quote]>ask
"I kept asking myself, how could this happen?"
>ask
"I questioned my judgment."
etc.[/quote]

I'm trying to remove/alter everything counter to this, e.g. the immersion-breaking
[quote]What do you want to ask yourself for?[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=270#p28786
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-12-21 13:33:24

[quote="Ghalev"][quote]But I really think that if you feel Twitter is a hive of irrelevance, the blame is on you for not putting any effort into curating your feed.[/quote]

You "blame" others for having different tastes than you?[/quote]
Nope. I blame others for not putting any effort into curating their feeds.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=40#p28787
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7's (lack of) Speed
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-21 13:34:20

Thanks for the update. It'll probably take me a while to get to this, but I might eventually.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=270#p28788
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-21 13:46:17

I've adopted a new curation strategy of adding a whole bunch of new feeds at once and then unfollowing each one as it begins to annoy me. We'll see how that goes...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3952&start=0#p28789
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IF Festival poll 1: general directions
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-12-21 14:02:00

I also care enough to be interested but don't care about the direction taken.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3999&start=10#p28790
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conditional understanding? E.g. disabling "ask"?
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-12-21 14:03:22

Since the above appears to be inner monologue, you might as well use the existing "think" action, like so.

[code]
Understand the command "ask" as something new.
Understand "ask" as thinking.

Instead of thinking, say "[one of]I kept asking myself, how could this happen?[or]I questioned my judgment.[stopping]".[/code]

Now "ask" and "think" will both print whichever message is next in that series.  It's also simple to put some conditionals in there so that "ask" will return different statements depending on, say, where you are or what you've done so far.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3999&start=10#p28791
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conditional understanding? E.g. disabling "ask"?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-21 16:08:04

If you're writing a game in first person past tense, you'd want the extension Custom Library Messages by Ron Newcomb ([url]http://inform7.com/extensions/Ron%20Newcomb/Custom%20Library%20Messages/index.html[/url]). Install it (via the Inform IDE), then all you need is the lines
[code]Include Custom Library Messages by Ron Newcomb.

The story tense is past tense.[/code]
and all standard responses will automatically be transformed into the first person and the past tense.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=270#p28793
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Brittany / DateTime: 2011-12-21 17:14:48

Sorry to interupt your social media debate, figured I should "introduce myself" before I post anywheres as that seems like the considerate thing to do.

Letsee, as way of introduction, I should mention that my family is made up of story tellers and professional clowns, so any of my creativity is thanks to them. I'm fluent in German, although maybe not, in the sense that while I read it nearly every day, I haven't spoken it in a looong time. Returning to college after a 3 or 4 year haitus. Makes me feel old. I'm not old. I should really write more than I actually do. This current obsession with making a text game is probably mostly just procrastinating on that.  

I have memories of attempting to learn how to make text games when I was a young 'un. I gave up. Surprise, surprise. I'm sure if I had the attention span, I could learn all the syntax stuff needed that goes into coding things, but I don't like the time it takes between having a great idea and learning how to implement it. That kills any ambition I have to get something done. 

I think the only reason I've enjoyed it now, is  because wrestling with inform7 is pretty much the same process one goes through while playing a text game. Everything is awesome and fun and then you get stuck. You know what you want to happen, but nothing you try (or code) works. After trying everything you can think of (over and over and over again), it's hints or a walkthrough (or the inform manual) that save you. In return, you get a small bit of heady success that keeps you from giving up. Then you move on and find something else to get stuck on. 

Unfortunately after experimenting with putting this current short story into a game form, I'm hooked, and I'm determined to see it through. Getting to the stage where I might actually run into some problems. I'm not sure how to implement what I have in mind, but I think it involves tables. Lots and lots of tables. Sooo, you might hear from me again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=30#p28794
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-21 17:35:51

I created a WebUI version of Jim Aikin's and Eric Eve's "Mrs. Pepper's Nasty Secret".  It can be played here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://foss.aegean.gr/~realnc/t3run/t3launch.php?storyfile=http://foss.aegean.gr/~realnc/t3games/MrsPeppersWeb.t3">http://foss.aegean.gr/~realnc/t3run/t3l ... persWeb.t3</a>

The server is in Greece, and I'd like to know how it feels like latency-wise when playing from anywhere that isn't Europe.

(Btw, since I'm just testing the stuff right now, the above URL is not going to be there forever, so if you link to it, the link will probably go dead at some point.)

If you have compiled FrobTADS on your own and have built your TADS games with WebUI support ([url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2259&start=10#p16529]this post[/url] explains how to do that), then you can upload your *.t3 file somewhere and play it online by using a link of this form:

[code]http://foss.aegean.gr/~realnc/t3run/t3launch.php?storyfile=http://example.com/MyWebUIGame.t3[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=30#p28795
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: George / DateTime: 2011-12-21 18:15:48

[quote="RealNC"]
The server is in Greece, and I'd like to know how it feels like latency-wise when playing from anywhere that isn't Europe.[/quote]

Getting about 3 seconds of lag for each command, here in Seattle.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1986&start=0#p28796
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Updated the Programmer's Guide to Inform 7
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-12-21 19:07:26

I thought I had lost the August 2011 version, which took [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_frm/thread/837afad1bc72c34e/4a88cd8632352c07?hl=en&lnk=gst&q=Inform+7+Programmer%27s+Manual+updated+--+get+the+PDF+now#4a88cd8632352c07]this thread's[/url] comments into account (at least as far as I remember), to a laptop crash, but I found it today.  So I've uploaded the August 2011 version: 

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.plover.net/~pscion/Inform%207%20for%20Programmers.pdf">http://www.plover.net/~pscion/Inform%20 ... ammers.pdf</a>

The previous version was dated February 2011.   Most changes are minor: typos, layout, etc.

EDIT TO ADD:  I intend to do another, more substantial, update after the new build of Inform 7 comes out.  (Which would likely be around its birthday in April, if I'm any judge of these things.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=30#p28797
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-21 19:26:56

[quote="George"]Getting about 3 seconds of lag for each command, here in Seattle.[/quote]
That's much worse than I expected [emote]:shock:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=10#p28798
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2011-12-21 20:11:05

Thanks you for your insights, Erik! That was really a big help. [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17790344/Examples/Elevator%28New3%29.gblorb]Everything works now[/url] (TM) (don't wonder if the player disappears on level 2. It's some work in progress)

The problem was not only the element display rule but also that the element scaling rule would fire twice, once for the m-i-m, then again for the m-i-m as an image-map. Listing the rules differently didn't seem to help, so I settled with scratching my own scaling rule and just created new 'desired tile-width/height' phrases for the m-i-ms. Seemed like a less crude way to solve it than ignoring the standard rules.

As for other progress, I'm still getting rid of the old m-i-ms. I decided to rename them to 'map-displays' (with the static m-i-m now being a top-down-display) and add a list of those map-displays to every m_room. That way, every time you place or move something on a map, you have an easy way to know if the m_room is currently displayed and what map-displays are doing the work, making it a lot easier to decide whether they need to get completely reprinted, or if they need to actualize their list of current objects displayed. 

This ties the whole displaying progress a lot stronger to image-maps and I'm not familiar enough with Glimmr to presume what impact that'll have, if you want to use something other than figures/graphical-windows for, say, a plain ASCII roguelike. It should be easily possible (you could store the text directly within the linked command array of an image-map for one thing) but I don't dare to make any big assumptions.


[quote="ektemple"]Check again, there isn't anything missing  [emote];)[/emote] .  It's just that the code allows for many (too many) different expressions of the phrase.[/quote]

It was either that or a '/--' too much in

[code]To fit (grid - an image-map) to/into a/-- total/-- height of (Y - a number) canvas/-- pixel/pixels/px/units/-- high/--[/code](if the distinction isn't intentional that is. I stumbled over this since Inform would compile 'fit x to height of y' but not 'fit x to width of y')

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=30#p28799
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: George / DateTime: 2011-12-21 20:14:44

Here's the ping for reference:

[code]

C:\Documents and Settings\george\My Documents>ping foss.aegean.gr

Pinging eloris.math.aegean.gr [195.251.162.183] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 195.251.162.183: bytes=32 time=368ms TTL=41
Reply from 195.251.162.183: bytes=32 time=358ms TTL=41
Reply from 195.251.162.183: bytes=32 time=392ms TTL=41
Reply from 195.251.162.183: bytes=32 time=312ms TTL=41

Ping statistics for 195.251.162.183:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 312ms, Maximum = 392ms, Average = 357ms
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=30#p28800
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-21 20:24:19

I can see how that can add up to 3s per command, since multiple transfers need to happen. With each one taking over 300ms, that quickly adds up.

Fortunately, IFDB will use a cloud infrastructure to dispatch players to different game servers. Taking ping times (or maybe geolocation information) into account will probably be a good idea.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1986&start=0#p28801
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Updated the Programmer's Guide to Inform 7
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2011-12-21 20:41:25

It's great that you still keep working on it. [emote]:)[/emote]
Somehow, I find this manual a lot easier to work with than the I7 documentation.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3997&start=0#p28802
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a good way to search I7 manuals outside of the IDE?
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-12-21 20:41:46

[quote="capmikee"]One thing about Inform being a "natural" programming language is that well-written code is reasonably self-documenting. I use the Standard Library as my main documentation as well...[/quote]

*blinks*

That sure wasn't my experience in writing New Cat. I had to torture the English language severely and ended up with malformed quasi-sentences galore -- and I still had tons of documentation. The source code for other games (like Weischaupt Scholars, and Rover's Day Out) is even worse.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=10#p28803
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-12-21 20:45:50

Great, glad you've got it working. It sounds like maybe you want to make one more example, using ASCII graphics as the output... (Easy for me to say, right?)

[quote="Basti50"]It was either that or a '/--' too much...[/quote]

Ah, now I see what you're saying. Thanks for pointing out the disparity!

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3997&start=0#p28804
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a good way to search I7 manuals outside of the IDE?
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-12-21 20:47:02

[quote="Laroquod"][quote="George"]@Laroquod, so do you do an incremental find/search for the terms you're looking for while the Standard Rules are open in your editor? Or are you using some other search utility?[/quote]
Yup I just bang it into a text file in the same editor I am coding in and do a search. It's hard to improve on having a single, very lightweight software program handle both coding and documentation. On the Mac, I use TextWrangler. On LINUX, so far I have been using gedit but that might change.[/quote]

Fraise is another good editor. I used its previous incarnation Smultron. TextWrangler is good, but it sure makes me want to get BBEdit, you know?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3997&start=0#p28805
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a good way to search I7 manuals outside of the IDE?
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-12-21 20:50:17

[quote="George"]I guess this isn't so much an Inform-specific question, but I'm wondering what is a good way to search the manuals just in the browser. Ideally you could run a search query like "http://inform7.com/learn/man/?search=<whatever>" and get a list of results back linked into the manual. Doing a site: search in Google sort of works but it's not great. 

Would anyone be interested in an online searchable version of the manuals, and perhaps other documentation like the Programmer's guide?[/quote]

I'm not interested in it now; the lack of a decent doc search was one of the things that inspired me to kick I7 to the curb, but it is one of those bare minimum kind of things that dead-tree publishers had figured out some 200+ years ago. I think people who want to use I7 will [b]REALLY[/b] benefit from a full-text doc search.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=270#p28806
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-21 20:56:08

[quote="Laroquod"]Nope. I blame others for not putting any effort into curating their feeds.[/quote]

Wow. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3997&start=10#p28807
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a good way to search I7 manuals outside of the IDE?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-21 20:59:44

[quote="Poster"][quote="capmikee"]One thing about Inform being a "natural" programming language is that well-written code is reasonably self-documenting. I use the Standard Library as my main documentation as well...[/quote]

*blinks*

That sure wasn't my experience in writing New Cat. I had to torture the English language severely and ended up with malformed quasi-sentences galore -- and I still had tons of documentation. The source code for other games (like Weischaupt Scholars, and Rover's Day Out) is even worse.[/quote]

Depends on your definition of "natural language". Languages such as PHP and Pascal are considered "human readable", whereas languages such as C and Assembly are considered "machine readable". Put I7 next to I6 and I7 certainly seems like natural language. I think it's not perfect because it's "English", which is one of the most complicated and butchered languages spoken today. That which is considered "proper English" is spoken pretty rarely and those who actually speak it receive some pretty odd glances from listeners. 

Because it sounds stupid.

I7 has to be peppered with I6 to do anything advanced with any semblence of efficiency. There are just some things that haven't been translated to "natural language" or to the layman's definition of "natural language". Maybe it isn't possible, I don't know. (I personally think it is.) Maybe I7 is billed improperly. Maybe it should be called a "pseudo-natural language" or a "quasi-natural language". 

While not perfect, I7 is certainly closer to natural language than anything else out there. Some concessions have to be made, sure, and maybe you have to learn some I6 to do what you need to do. But I guess if there's no way to say...

[code]
Take that one row that has an acorn in one of the columns and mix it up between the row with the plankton and box cutter.
[/code]

... then I'll have to settle for learning someone else's idea of English.

But that's probably the redneck talking.

(Official Statement: While I7 does have both a programmatic and an linguistically syntactic learning curve, if certain concessions can be made, it is a successful niche approach to a niche market. While I both hope and believe that steps forward will be taken to make it more easily accessibly to the interested public, it is certainly a step above the other offerings in it's current market.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3997&start=10#p28808
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a good way to search I7 manuals outside of the IDE?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-21 21:01:34

[quote="Poster"][quote="George"]I guess this isn't so much an Inform-specific question, but I'm wondering what is a good way to search the manuals just in the browser. Ideally you could run a search query like "http://inform7.com/learn/man/?search=<whatever>" and get a list of results back linked into the manual. Doing a site: search in Google sort of works but it's not great. 

Would anyone be interested in an online searchable version of the manuals, and perhaps other documentation like the Programmer's guide?[/quote]

I'm not interested in it now; the lack of a decent doc search was one of the things that inspired me to kick I7 to the curb, but it is one of those bare minimum kind of things that dead-tree publishers had figured out some 200+ years ago. I think people who want to use I7 will [b]REALLY[/b] benefit from a full-text doc search.[/quote]

Out of idle curiosity, are you knocking the language, the documentation or the language because of the documentation?

I ask because this is one of the pet projects I've been working on that's kept me from finishing my WIP, completing promised beta testing and rectifying various faux pas that I've been meaning to atone for.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3983&start=0#p28809
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Examine north wall == Examine north
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-12-21 21:04:03

[quote="frotz"]
[code]Object wallobj "wall"
        with
        parse_name [ myname retval;
                retval = 0;
                myname = NextWord();
                while (myname ~= nothing) {
                        retval++;
                        if (myname == 'north') {
                                retval++;
                                <<examine n_obj>>;
                        }                       
                        myname = NextWord();
                }
                return retval;
        ],
        has scenery;[/code][/quote]

Ok, here's what's happening -- the parse_name is just so the parser knows what you're talking about. You can handle the examine, push, move, all the usual way (in before or react_before). Try this:

[code]
Object wallobj "wall"
        with
        parse_name [myname retval;
                retval = 0;
                myname = NextWord();
                if (myname == 'north' or 'northern' or 'east' or 'eastern' or 'west' or 'western' or 'south' or 'southern') 
                     {
                     retval++;
                     myname = NextWord();
                     }
                 if (myname == 'wall') retval++;
                 return retval;
                 ],
           before[;
                   Examine: "You find the wall ugly and boring, besides.";
                   Push: "The wall isn't going anywhere.";
                   ],
has static scenery;
[/code]

If you need a specific northern wall, unique from say the southern wall, then make a north(ern) wall object (its parse_name would just do the 'north' and 'northern' wall), and group the other generic wall objects together. 

Unless you want people to move the wall around, you need that [b]static[/b] in there too. [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=270#p28810
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Morana / DateTime: 2011-12-21 21:12:50

Hello. Introducing myself when I have already posted to this forum is a little anxiety-inducing, but I figure that in the age of IF with few unwinnable states, you gentle folks will not come down on me too hard if my events are out of sequence.

I am a 33-year-old activist and educator who is interested in all manner of gaming and gaming-related media (one of my favorite web sites is [url=http://thehathorlegacy.com/]The Hathor Legacy[/url]). My introduction to text adventures came in the 80s, when I first played a game called [i]Twin Kingdom Valley[/i] on the Commodore 64. I found it impossible to progress far, but I loved the sense of freedom I had while playing it. When I got my first PC in 1995, I decided to code a text adventure of my own, but QBasic's file size limitations prevented me from completing it. (Perhaps it is just as well, considering that it was a disjointed madcap adventure typical of first contributions to the genre.)

For some time now I have been learning TADS 3. Though I feel that I have learned all the fundamentals of the language, I have yet to complete a work of IF, mostly due to prolonged writer's block. So for now I am contenting myself reading and occasionally contributing to the discussion here. If you have any suggestions on how to see an IF production to the end, please send them my way.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3971&start=0#p28811
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: sky and ceiling
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-12-21 21:16:56

[quote="ektemple"]

You might not think it from the overblown animosity toward Inform 7's documentation you'll find in some quarters, but you will find very clear documentation of all of this in section 3.12 (Doors) and Section 16.14 (Adjacent rooms and routes through the map); the latter is cross-referenced from the former.

--Erik[/quote]

Nice. An insult to my reading comprehension skills mingled with some high-falutin' snobbery and a deligitimization of my experiences and emotions. Keep the hate alive, man.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=270#p28812
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: George / DateTime: 2011-12-21 21:21:10

Welcome Brittany and Morana [emote]:)[/emote]. 

Morana, this is my go-to link for questions about how to make IF: <a class="postlink" href="http://emshort.wordpress.com/2009/08/23/idea-to-implementation/">http://emshort.wordpress.com/2009/08/23 ... mentation/</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3993&start=10#p28813
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Teleporter/Train Coding
User: harryg2011 / DateTime: 2011-12-21 21:24:12

Thank you so much for your help, everyone. This is my first time using the forums or really entering the community, and I'm shocked by how kind and pleasant all of you are! This has been a great experience and I'm excited to use it again. All your suggestions have really helped and I'm sure to use bits and pieces from all of them. Thanks superficially to Mike, not only for the coding but for the hilarious example. Hopefully, when I'm finished with the TA itself, I'll find somewhere to post it. Thanks again.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3971&start=0#p28814
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: sky and ceiling
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-12-21 21:38:55

[quote="Poster"]
Nice. An insult to my reading comprehension skills mingled with some high-falutin' snobbery and a deligitimization of my experiences and emotions. Keep the hate alive, man.[/quote]

I'm afraid that I don't share your Postercentric model of the universe, so the only way I can read this is as egocentrism tinged with paranoia. In other words, while I do find your recent posts on this topic hilariously hyperbolic, I wasn't referring to you in particular. 

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=10#p28815
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2011-12-21 21:39:15

[quote="ektemple"]Great, glad you've got it working. It sounds like maybe you want to make one more example, using ASCII graphics as the output... (Easy for me to say, right?)[/quote]

Yeah, why not? Haven't worked with text-grids for a long time but maybe I'll be able to cook something up. I'll add it to the to-do list, once the next release is out.

EDIT: Or just do it smart and create a new kind of map-display which makes it look like ASCII although it uses figures, but that might be cheating [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=30#p28816
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-21 22:02:42

[quote="George"][quote="RealNC"]
The server is in Greece, and I'd like to know how it feels like latency-wise when playing from anywhere that isn't Europe.[/quote]

Getting about 3 seconds of lag for each command, here in Seattle.[/quote]
Two to three seconds in Northern California.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=30#p28817
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-21 22:08:46

Saving and restoring a game file seems to work.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=30#p28818
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-21 22:15:24

Found a bug:

In the hint menu (which is now a separate pop-up window with a fairly ugly blue banner), the curly quotes are not showing up properly. Instead, we get "&amp;rsquo;" (see below) for an apostrophe. This is presumably because the menu text is no longer being routed through the output text filter.

[quote]But if you touch the wire you&amp;rsquo;ll get a shock. It&amp;rsquo;s an electrical wire, all right.[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=40#p28819
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2011-12-21 22:17:28

[quote="RealNC"]The server is in Greece, and I'd like to know how it feels like latency-wise when playing from anywhere that isn't Europe.[/quote]Here in Manila, it's around 4 to 6 seconds before I get a response.

Here's my own ping test:
[code]Pinging eloris.math.aegean.gr [195.251.162.183] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 195.251.162.183: bytes=32 time=411ms TTL=41
Reply from 195.251.162.183: bytes=32 time=404ms TTL=41
Reply from 195.251.162.183: bytes=32 time=445ms TTL=41
Reply from 195.251.162.183: bytes=32 time=472ms TTL=41

Ping statistics for 195.251.162.183:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 404ms, Maximum = 472ms, Average = 433ms[/code]BTW, will there be anything like this for, uh, TADS 2 users too? [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3801&start=40#p28820
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Don't get too excited yet, but...
User: George / DateTime: 2011-12-21 22:23:32

No. You already can play T2 games on the web with Jetty, but I don't know if that'll get folded into IFDB. Worth suggesting.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=270#p28821
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-12-21 22:42:50

[quote="Morana"]For some time now I have been learning TADS 3. Though I feel that I have learned all the fundamentals of the language, I have yet to complete a work of IF, mostly due to prolonged writer's block. So for now I am contenting myself reading and occasionally contributing to the discussion here. If you have any suggestions on how to see an IF production to the end, please send them my way.[/quote]
Start with something really, really small/short, make it finishable, polish it up, and make sure it's still finishable after all the polishing. A mini-comp or speed-IF might be a good place to release a first effort. The constrained themes and tight deadlines of such things might help you get past your writer's block, and expectations are typically low-- especially for speed IFs-- so if your first effort is a train-wreck it's no big deal.

Since you are a TADS 3 person, you could try writing a room for the [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3353]Lime/Coconut contest[/url].

Or you could write something for the upcoming New Year's Speed IF.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=20#p28822
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2011-12-21 22:45:44

I guess this only works if they're all written in the same language but: Maybe the Fingertips games could be compiled together in a single meta-game that puts you in the next game (in canonical order, or "shuffled") just as soon as you've put in your move for the one? Kind of a WarioWare thing I guess.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4007&start=0#p28823
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Help!!!
User: Nicola / DateTime: 2011-12-21 23:00:55

Hi guys, i am making a game in which I need a different keyboardprimitive () job.
Usually it reads the input until you press ENTER, and then it goes on a newline.
I need instead that it reads the input until you press SPACE BAR, and it doesn't goes on a newline.

I tried to look up at the parserm.h library renaming in in .txt but couldn't find a solution, any ideas?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=20#p28824
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-12-22 00:47:56

[quote="Afterward"]I guess this only works if they're all written in the same language but: Maybe the Fingertips games could be compiled together in a single meta-game that puts you in the next game (in canonical order, or "shuffled") just as soon as you've put in your move for the one? Kind of a WarioWare thing I guess.[/quote]

That'd be extra cool, but it'd also run into a problem with if people named things the same, or maybe used certain extensions. So we'd have to make time to allow for that, or restrict people to, say, 4 or 5 objects per fingertips. And then there'd be a wangle over who would engineer everything together.

But I'd love to see it happen, too.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4007&start=0#p28826
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help!!!
User: eu / DateTime: 2011-12-22 00:59:21

Z-machine or Glulx?

I am not very proficient in the Z-machine, but on Glulx with Glk you would have to do this with character input instead of line input.  ([url=http://eblong.com/zarf/glk/glk-spec-073_4.html#s.2]glk_set_terminators_line_event[/url] almost does what you want, except that it's restricted to special keycodes.)  Jon Ingold has been working on [url=https://threeedgedsword.wordpress.com/2011/05/20/interactive-parsing-v4/]an extension[/url] that simulates line input with character input; it might be a good starting point.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3838&start=0#p28827
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The penultimate not numbered New Year's Speed IF
User: smasherimp / DateTime: 2011-12-22 01:36:13

You should get my submission within the next few minutes [emote]:)[/emote]

Also, was just wondering if I was allowed to post my IF that I'm submitting to this elsewhere before the results are released?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3952&start=0#p28828
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: IF Festival poll 1: general directions
User: smasherimp / DateTime: 2011-12-22 02:03:13

Just thought I'd post and say I'm in support of this whatever direction it takes. Sounds like a great idea

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3997&start=10#p28829
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a good way to search I7 manuals outside of the IDE?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-12-22 02:10:32

[quote="Poster"]Fraise is another good editor. I used its previous incarnation Smultron. TextWrangler is good, but it sure makes me want to get BBEdit, you know?[/quote]
Thanks. I usually have a copy of BBEdit, too, but I really don't need any of its extra features. When I switched to TextWrangler I found that not a single function that I actually used in BBEdit had been removed.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3971&start=0#p28830
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: sky and ceiling
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-12-22 02:27:49

[quote="ektemple"]I'm afraid that I don't share your Postercentric model of the universe[/quote]I like this a lot [emote]:lol:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=280#p28831
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-12-22 02:30:31

[quote="Brittany"]Sorry to interupt your social media debate[/quote]
Enh, don't worry… it has collapsed into a dribble of non sequiturs.  [emote]:D[/emote] 

Welcome to the board.

[quote="Brittany"]I think the only reason I've enjoyed it now, is  because wrestling with inform7 is pretty much the same process one goes through while playing a text game. Everything is awesome and fun and then you get stuck. You know what you want to happen, but nothing you try (or code) works. After trying everything you can think of (over and over and over again), it's hints or a walkthrough (or the inform manual) that save you. In return, you get a small bit of heady success that keeps you from giving up. Then you move on and find something else to get stuck on.[/quote]
Good observation. Feel free to ask any kind of question.

[quote="Morana"]Hello. Introducing myself when I have already posted to this forum is a little anxiety-inducing, but I figure that in the age of IF with few unwinnable states, you gentle folks will not come down on me too hard if my events are out of sequence.[/quote]
LOL! Welcome also, Morana.

[quote="Morana"]If you have any suggestions on how to see an IF production to the end, please send them my way.[/quote]
If you see it to the end, in future years you will start it up and replay it, think about what you did right and what you did wrong. If you let the project lie fallow for too long without pushing toward completion, you will lose the threads of it and probably never look at or re-experience that work again in a way that you can learn from it. That's probably the best motivation for finishing things that I've found.

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4010&start=0#p28832
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Need testers for release 2 of The Crystal Palace
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2011-12-22 04:20:21

Hi,

I released my first piece of IF ever for the Thanksgiving Speed-IF 2011 - The Crystal Palace. If anybody played it you probably noted it was not really finished - you could indeed play it through to the end, but at least one step was quite broken. (So please, don't go around playing release 1, wait for release 2...). It's a speed-if game and perhaps not an astounding piece of writing. You have been warned. 

I've fixed the most blatant flaws, and cleaned things up a bit. It should be pretty much finished. Now I'd like to have somebody playing through it and just sending me a transcript of how it worked out, and any other comments you might have. It's an Inform7 game. I'm new at this too - do I just e-mail testers the zblorb? There's a complete walkthrough as well as built-in adaptive hints. It makes sense to send beta testers the walkthrough too, no? 

Well, any takers, PM me here with an e-mail address or e-mail me straight at <a href="mailto:peterorme6@gmail.com">peterorme6@gmail.com</a>.

Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4000&start=0#p28833
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: .qut save files in Zoom and Frotz on ipad?
User: rickreynolds / DateTime: 2011-12-22 06:33:23

My steps:

Saved a game in Zoom, dug into the package and pulled out the .qut file, copied it over to dropbox so that it could be picked up by ipad frotz.

Ran the game in frotz on ipad, 'restore' the file and get:

[code]@Attempt to address illegal object 13553.  This is normally fatal.
Fatal error: Illegal object
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=20#p28834
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-22 06:59:51

Sadly, my Fingertip would be almost guaranteed not to play nicely with others the way I've coded it. I might be able to work up a version that did play nicelier if I got some code to paste it into.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4011&start=0#p28835
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: i7: Can a thing be a container AND a device?
User: Della / DateTime: 2011-12-22 07:26:56

Maybe this is a silly question. But - let's say that there's a flashlight with the lightbulb missing, and there's the lightbulb somewhere else, and you can use the flashlight (a device) only if you put the lightbulb in it first.

Am I trying to handle this the wrong way? I probably am.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4011&start=0#p28836
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: i7: Can a thing be a container AND a device?
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-12-22 08:26:24

You can make a container (the socket) part of the flashlight (which is a device).  If you then use an instead rule to redirect inserting something into the flashlight to inserting it into the socket, it will behave (from the player's perspective) like the flashlight is both a container and a device, even though technically it isn't.

Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3059&start=10#p28837
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT 5.0.20
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-12-22 08:29:31

ADRIFT v5.0.22 is now [url=http://www.adrift.co/cgi/adrift.cgi?page=download]available[/url].

The main highlights in this release are Audio (MP3, WAV and MID at the moment - OGG to follow in a future release), Object Oriented Syntax (e.g. Player.Held.Count), and embedded Expressions.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=20#p28838
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2011-12-22 08:40:24

[quote="Afterward"]I guess this only works if they're all written in the same language but: Maybe the Fingertips games could be compiled together in a single meta-game that puts you in the next game (in canonical order, or "shuffled") just as soon as you've put in your move for the one? Kind of a WarioWare thing I guess.[/quote]

Unfortunately, this would require way more coordination than I'm willing to put into it. I'll be ecstatic if we simply manage to fill all the slots.

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4011&start=0#p28840
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: i7: Can a thing be a container AND a device?
User: Della / DateTime: 2011-12-22 09:30:32

Mh, so I need a workaround like this, I can't have it be both container and socket at the same time. Thanks, I'll do it like that instead.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3977&start=0#p28841
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Inventory Listers - TADS3
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-12-22 10:06:20

I thought I posted a reply to this topic but it got lost somehow! I found two listers, one works great for the actor and the other works great for rooms.

I have two other minor problems that I can't find answers for in the manual.

I want to print two long paragraphs when I start the game. How do I place a 'wait for carriage return' return between them?

The parser sometimes lists singular objects as plural and vice-versa. Is there a way to prevent this?

Would surely like some help on these two things.

RonG

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4011&start=0#p28842
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: i7: Can a thing be a container AND a device?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-22 10:14:21

A device is simply a thing that can be switched on or switched off
 If you don't need rules that make reference to devices in general, you can just write
[code]The flashlight is a container. The flashlight can be switched on or switched off. It is switched off.[/code]
And the flashlight will behave as a device.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3977&start=0#p28843
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Inventory Listers - TADS#
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-22 10:18:21

(1) Read Eric's article "Some Common Input/Output Issues" in the Technical manual.

(2) Set isPlural = true for things that are plural.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3997&start=10#p28844
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a good way to search I7 manuals outside of the IDE?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-22 10:26:43

[quote="Poster"][quote="capmikee"]One thing about Inform being a "natural" programming language is that well-written code is reasonably self-documenting. I use the Standard Library as my main documentation as well...[/quote]

*blinks*

That sure wasn't my experience in writing New Cat. I had to torture the English language severely and ended up with malformed quasi-sentences galore -- and I still had tons of documentation. The source code for other games (like Weischaupt Scholars, and Rover's Day Out) is even worse.[/quote]

I will try to refrain from taking any of this as a judgment on the quality of the code in any of those examples. Of course it's possible to write unreadable code in any language, including plain English (read any instruction manuals lately?).

I was referring to the Standard Rules and a number of extensions, including some by Ron Newcomb, Eric Eve and Emily Short - all of which I consider to be well-written to varying degrees. I like the way Ron takes special care to name objects and phrases so they can be used naturally in a sentence. Sometimes this involves a compromise in readability at the low level which provides much better readability at higher levels. That doesn't bother me - if the name of a low-level phrase explains what it does, I don't care if the way it's done looks a little odd.

In my own coding, I often find myself writing a comment to document a rule (for example), and then realizing I could just make the comment the name of the rule.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3977&start=0#p28845
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Inventory Listers - TADS3
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-22 10:27:07

[quote="RonG"]I want to print two long paragraphs when I start the game. How do I place a 'wait for carriage return' return between them?[/quote]
In your GameMainDef object, implement the showIntro() method. For a manual "more" prompt, you can call "inputManager.pauseForMore(true)". The argument of pauseForMore() specifies whether the real-time clock should be stopped while the prompt is displayed. An example:

[code]
gameMain: GameMainDef {
    // ...
    showIntro()
    {
        "Blah blah blah. ";
        inputManager.pauseForMore(true);
    }
    // ...
}
[/code]

[quote]The parser sometimes lists singular objects as plural and vice-versa. Is there a way to prevent this?[/quote]
When the parser gets it wrong, set "isPlural = nil" for singular objects and "isPlural = true" to the parser treat them as plural.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3997&start=10#p28846
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a good way to search I7 manuals outside of the IDE?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-22 10:29:46

[quote="I4L"]I7 has to be peppered with I6 to do anything advanced with any semblence of efficiency.[/quote]
Fortunately, efficiency is not the primary concern of most code. If you don't work this way already, I recommend coding for readability first. Then if it's not efficient enough, profile it and optimize only what you need to, encapsulating the optimized code in a readable wrapper.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3977&start=0#p28847
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Inventory Listers - TADS#
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-12-22 11:02:36

Once again, thanks to all for the usual great help [emote]:D[/emote] 

RonG

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=280#p28848
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Morana / DateTime: 2011-12-22 11:14:38

Thank you, George, trojo, and Laroquod. Perhaps these are the nudges I need to get back to making IF!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3997&start=10#p28849
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: a good way to search I7 manuals outside of the IDE?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-22 11:45:11

Also, when adding I6 code, it is most natural (and convenient) to wrap up the I6 functionality in modular I7 phrases. So you're not so much "peppering" as adding a small side dish.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4000&start=0#p28850
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: .qut save files in Zoom and Frotz on ipad?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-22 11:54:58

Okay. So iOS Frotz recognizes the file and accepts it, but it winds up loaded into the VM incorrectly.

I just tried saving a game in Mac Zoom, and then restoring the save.qut file into command-line frotz (actually nfrotz). This worked fine. So what you're doing *should* work; it sounds like an iOS Frotz bug.

(Another possibility is that you're trying to move a save file between different releases of the game file. However, the interpreter is supposed to detect this -- the save file contains a fingerprint of the game file it belongs to -- so it's still a bug.)

You should contact the iOS maintainer and ask about this.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3761&start=0#p28851
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Hugo "Open House" Competition
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-22 12:04:13

[quote="Roody_Yogurt"]2011 was also a good year for Hugo because of Nikos Chantziaras' [url=http://ifwiki.org/index.php/Hugor]Hugor[/url] interpreter, which has made it easier for people on Macs and Linux to get multimedia Hugo games up and running. An additional "Open House" suggestion is to write a game with someone or something with the intriguing name "Hugor."[/quote]
Oh wow, fame and fortune, all mine! [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4011&start=0#p28852
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: i7: Can a thing be a container AND a device?
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-12-22 13:06:15

[quote="Felix"]A device is simply a thing that can be switched on or switched off
 If you don't need rules that make reference to devices in general, you can just write
[code]The flashlight is a container. The flashlight can be switched on or switched off. It is switched off.[/code]
And the flashlight will behave as a device.[/quote]
There is one other thing that devices do by default, and that is that when you examine it, it will print a message that it is "currently switched off" (or on, as appropriate), after printing the description. You might want to duplicate that also, if you are making a pseudo-device:
[code]
Instead of examining a switched on thing, say "[description of noun] Right now it's on."
Instead of examining a switched off thing, say "[description of noun] Right now it's off."[/code]That will also suppress the container's default behavior of saying, e.g. "In the flashlight is a bulb" when you examine it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3988&start=10#p28853
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The list of Inform 7 documentation (as of 19 Dec 2011)
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-12-22 14:00:15

[quote="aschultz"]Finally, one of the big roadblocks I've had is knowing which extensions to use. So many times, I've been wondering if I should bother programming X and not knowing whether there was an extension Y that would take care of it.[/quote]

This is a very low-tech way to address this, but I usually go to the Extensions page, click "All Extensions by Category" (or any of the other aggregate links), and do a quick in-page search for keywords related to the problem I want to solve, like "liquid" or "inventory" or whatever.

Regarding better extensions visibility: I think everyone agrees it would be great to have this integrated into the IFDB, or give more sharing and community features to the official site, but it's as usual a question of volunteer-hours available. We've tried to kick-start this a couple times but it involves major work and coordination of effort between several people, and it just hasn't come together yet.

In the meantime, it would be awesome if someone started a third party site promoting extensions somehow-- I'm afraid it's not going to be able to be me at the moment, although I'd certainly be open to contributing if a group effort arises.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3977&start=0#p28854
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Inventory Listers - TADS#
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-12-22 14:06:41

I used the 'pause for more option' to split up my introduction but the status screen still shows the information for the first room of the game, which I don't want to happen until I've shown both parts of the introduction. Can I do this using the 'pre-init' or 'init' features? The messages should be shown before the game actually goes to the first room.

I hope I've stated this clearly. Other than that the pause works.

RonG (The Pest)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3988&start=10#p28855
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The list of Inform 7 documentation (as of 19 Dec 2011)
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-12-22 14:37:03

[quote]This is a very low-tech way to address this, but I usually go to the Extensions page, click "All Extensions by Category" (or any of the other aggregate links), and do a quick in-page search for keywords related to the problem I want to solve, like "liquid" or "inventory" or whatever.[/quote]

This has worked well for me. I think it is good and will work for others, too. However, it's those moments where someone points something out and I say "of course the extension was there, and of course it did this" that work really well.

[quote]In the meantime, it would be awesome if someone started a third party site promoting extensions somehow-- I'm afraid it's not going to be able to be me at the moment, although I'd certainly be open to contributing if a group effort arises.[/quote]

Sounds like a good idea for a spinoff topic. I would like to be part of this effort, because I think my biggest growths as a coder have occurred when I realized that, yes, you could do this-or-that easily.

Though obviously this'd require a lot of white paper, I have some ideas. However, I also have no idea how to go about building a website, or how to possibly integrate a website into something bigger. Simply giving statistics on how many games use which extensions, and maybe a blurb on how they use it, could be effective. Granted, the quality of the games may not reflect the quality of the extensions, but there's a lot of "how'd they do this" that gets dispelled pretty in a game, regardless of quality, that you don't see in an example.

I also have no clue how much/little extension authors tolerate/appreciate having an extra example made that uses their extensions. But in my experience, I generally have to use an extension in a dumb game before I'm brave enough to use it in something real.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3977&start=10#p28856
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Inventory Listers - TADS#
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-22 14:41:03

There's a quick way to do this. Override newGame(). newGame() runs earlier than showIntro(). In fact, showIntro() is called from the default implementation of newGame() right after it shows the statusline (which results in a visible statusline when showIntro() is called.) Example:

[code]
gameMain: GameMainDef {
    // ...
    newGame()
    {
        "Blah blah blah. ";
        inputManager.pauseForMore(true);

        // Don't forget to call the default implementation.
        // It's responsible for starting the game.
        inherited();
    }
    // ...
}[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4013&start=0#p28857
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Will Glulxe/Blorb Games ever run on ipad/kindle/nook/mobiles
User: gamedesigner / DateTime: 2011-12-22 17:46:44

Right  now my understanding is that only z-code games will run on the
ipad and mobiles.

Wondering if Andrew is going to give all mobiles, ipads, etc the ability to run
glulx and g/zblorb files.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4013&start=0#p28858
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Will Glulxe/Blorb Games ever run on ipad/kindle/nook/mob
User: frotz / DateTime: 2011-12-22 19:17:17

I'm under the impression that Frotz for the iPhone will do Glulxe and Blorb.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3983&start=0#p28859
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Examine north wall == Examine north
User: frotz / DateTime: 2011-12-22 19:26:14

embarassing goof deleted

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4015&start=0#p28861
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: TADS 3.1 released!
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-22 21:47:01

Time to get excited!  [emote]:)[/emote]

<a class="postlink" href="http://tads.org/ov_tads31.htm">http://tads.org/ov_tads31.htm</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4015&start=0#p28862
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3.1 released!
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-22 22:30:51

Fantastic! Some of the new features are high-end stuff that I'm not likely ever to use, but there are some enhancements that (if I were writing a game) I'd use every day, including one that's obviously borrowed from a certain other popular IF authoring system. Very handy indeed.

The web server features look extremely muscular, but as I'm not really a programmer, I'm not sure yet what to make of them.

Congrats to MJR and the team!!!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4013&start=0#p28863
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Will Glulxe/Blorb Games ever run on ipad/kindle/nook/mob
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-22 23:00:00

[quote]I'm under the impression that Frotz for the iPhone will do Glulxe and Blorb.[/quote]

Correct.

When I get my IF released on iOS, I'll have my interpreter code posted as well.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4013&start=0#p28864
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Will Glulxe/Blorb Games ever run on ipad/kindle/nook/mob
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2011-12-23 00:53:45

To be clear, Frotz for iPad and iPhone runs Glulx games since version 1.5 about a year ago.  The initial support was somewhat alpha but Craig Smith has done a great job improving things and fixing bugs reported etc.

Separately, Jimmy Maher has figured out a way to get his game "King of Shreds & Patches" running on Kindle.  Not sure if that will be a generalized Kindle Glulx interpreter, but that would be awesome.
--Zack
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.z-machine-matter.com">http://www.z-machine-matter.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4013&start=0#p28865
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Will Glulxe/Blorb Games ever run on ipad/kindle/nook/mob
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-12-23 01:19:35

Number on one my wish-list: The ability to position the text window independently of the graphic elements in a native interpreter, so that I could create a Parchment-style arrangement (text on the inside, graphics on the outside) without resorting to a (slow) Javascript interpreter, or having to start online. The graphics would need to be scrollable independently from the text window, just like in a web page with Parchment. The main problem I have with using the blorb file format is the forced hegemony of the text window. (At least, I think it's forced. I haven't seen any examples that show otherwise.)

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4015&start=0#p28866
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3.1 released!
User: Mikawa / DateTime: 2011-12-23 02:56:58

Yeah! 
The new Layout looks great!
The new features look awesome!
Thanks to all the people who contributed!

Greetings,
-- MI

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3758&start=0#p28867
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Object Description Array or One Time Description
User: tomasb / DateTime: 2011-12-23 03:56:59

Just released TADS 3.1 has nice additions to make these kind of tasks much more practical:

[code]
+ Thing 'nice little thing' 'little thing'
    "<<one of>>first time description<<or>>ordinary description<<stopping>>"
;
[/code]

See [url]http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/sysman/strlit.htm#oneof[/url] for more examples including ShuffledEventList-like behavior and more.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4010&start=0#p28868
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Need testers for release 2 of The Crystal Palace
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2011-12-23 03:59:44

You know what, I don't need your e-mail addresses. Version 1 is already out and I'd much rather you'd play version 2, even if you're not officially testing it. My christmas present to you all:

Version 2 of The Crystal Palace is here: [url]http://tinyurl.com/csvzf2u[/url] 

(That's a shortened link straight to the zblorb on dropbox)

If you play it, please consider sending me your comments and/or a transcript. 

There's an out of world "*" verb that lets you add comments during play:
* This is a comment that gets added to the transcript. 

If you do send me something, please also let me know if you want to be credited as a beta tester, if not you'll be perfectly anonymous. Eventually I'll wrap it up and submit a final version to the IF archive.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4011&start=0#p28869
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: i7: Can a thing be a container AND a device?
User: Della / DateTime: 2011-12-23 06:15:42

I'm fine with there being the message "in the flashlight is a bulb" (although perhaps worded differently), since it helps the player keep track of the bulb (i might decide to put a subsequent puzzle where you need to take the bulb back out of the flashlight, you never know [emote]:D[/emote]

Anyway, thanks for all the input! I guess my first IF is done. 6547 words, 12 rooms, 57 things, about 60 moves from start to end knowing already what to do. No real plot, just a little escape-the-building puzzle-romp. I think I get the basics of Inform 7 now.

Well, off to plan my first "actual", "serious" IF, I guess [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3938&start=0#p28870
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: PM Attachment File Types
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-12-23 07:00:01

Unrelated but tangential enough for me not to feel comfortable making a new post - what about increasing the current maximum size (512kb) of attachments to, say, 2mbs? I just had to send over a 600kb zip for debugging purposes and I hit this limit which strikes me as ridiculously low...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4011&start=0#p28871
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: i7: Can a thing be a container AND a device?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-12-23 07:07:57

Congratulations!
If you haven't had someone else beta it, it might be worth it, just to see the sorts of stuff you're missing.  That can be an interesting experience.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4007&start=0#p28872
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help!!!
User: Nicola / DateTime: 2011-12-23 07:41:43

Ok, maybe I can just call a Redarray (); and then split the big array into single array for every word?
I need to record an array for each word in the sentence.
Is there a function to split up vectors in single words (words are separated by spacebar)? Any ideas?  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4016&start=0#p28873
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Continuing saves between different games?
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-12-23 08:52:02

Is it possible for either a Z-Code or a Glulx game to retrieve information from a saved game file from a different game?

I'm imagining a series of games (like the graphical Mass Effect series) where the player can make meaningful choices that have consequences in later games, such that the player would want to port in their old character along with the state they left the world from previous games. (This could of course be done quite easily with a code given the player at the end of each game which they could type into the next game).

A different application: you could have a meta-game that takes information from lots of different stories (say, all the entries from a given comp) and unlocks different paths within the game depending on what stories the player has played.

These are purely theoretical questions at the moment (I've got other fish to feed), but it would be interesting to know.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4015&start=0#p28874
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3.1 released!
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-12-23 09:13:27

This is great stuff. I'm finally going to give TADS more than a passing glance.

That brings me to an observation, not necessarily related to this version.

I decided to start going through the users guides. And I can maybe see why TADS wouldn't appeal to new people. I was reading (local reference of installed docs): file:///C:/TADS3/doc/gsg/creatingyourfirsttads3project.htm.

This is a really convoluted intro to new people getting started with TADS 3. I could easily see this turning off newbies or people with little experience setting up tools. It mentions too many specifics (like "If you're using Windows NT, 2000, or XP...") that shouldn't be there; if someone is adding to their environment PATH, they know this stuff. For those that don't want to, this is just noise that makes things seem complicated. There's also: "If you're on Unix, for example, you'd type mkdir obj." Well, yeah, it would be the same on Windows as well. (It feels like this one page was written by two entirely different people.)

Also mention is cumbersomely made of the "DOS command prompt on Windows" -- but if you have someone running TADS like this, you can probably just say "at the command line" since anyone embarking on that approach will already understand this concept. Talking about "DOS command prompt" and "Windows", again, just seems to throw a lot at someone who may just be getting started. There's also too much reference to TADS 2, even on just this one page. Someone coming at this new, won't even have that background and may wonder if they should, based on what they read. (Put TADS 2 specific notes as a footnote or something.)

More importantly, on the Web version of the guide, under "ii) Creating a project manually", it shows an example but that example doesn't show

#include <adv3.h>

while a latter mini-example on that same page does. That's not the case in the PDF, however. The PDF example does have the missing line. So, now, as a user I don't know which guide -- of this same exact document -- I can trust. Then a "project file" is explained (sort of) and it seems a little obtuse unless you know about build and/or make files. Right away I can just see this turning off people new to the system. And this is just in the first section of the first manual -- and a "Getting Started" one at that.

I'm not moaning about the author of the work since I appreciate when anyone takes time to document. Again I'm just stating the observation that if there's a desire to get people involved in TADS, having documentation proofread might help quite a bit. If I didn't have my background context, I probably would have given up already and just gone to Inform 7 which seems a lot easier to get right out of the box.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4015&start=0#p28875
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3.1 released!
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-12-23 09:23:56

Here's another example from the same page:

"We promised earlier that we'd provide an explanation of the gibberish in the .t3m file. You should be able to get quite far sticking to the recipes above, so feel free to skip this section if you don't feel you need the details right now."

So it's "gibberish"? That's encouraging to a new user. But beyond that: "feel free to skip this section if you don't feel you need the details right now." Okay -- but how do I know? As a new person, I don't know what I don't know. I don't know the things I need and don't need. And given that I already have trust issues with the document, now I'm even more uncertain.

And here's another example where PDF and Web differ. The PDF includes this line:

-D LANGUAGE=en_us

The Web version does not.

Again, I understand: you may not need this. It may be handled for you. It may just be "gibberish." But it took me no time at all to find these discrepancies. Everyone's frustration factor is different but it seems text adventure development has a wide range of users with very differing levels of experience in terms of using tools like these.

Sorry -- at this point, I'm derailing the thread. But given that TADS 3.1 seems to offer lots of new features and a cool long-awaited feature of Web deployment, it just seems like the right time to get new people involved -- but if this documentation is what they have to go on ....

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4011&start=0#p28876
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: i7: Can a thing be a container AND a device?
User: Della / DateTime: 2011-12-23 09:41:19

I'm already looking for beta testers, don't worry... I realize the importance that a good round of beta testing/reading can have on any piece of software OR fiction... I guess that goes double for something that is both software AND fiction. [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4015&start=0#p28877
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3.1 released!
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-23 10:35:29

I opened a [url=http://bugdb.tads.org/view.php?id=107]bug report[/url] for those doc issues a few months ago and it was marked as fixed. It looks like some of the new documentation may not have gone live yet.

You're right, though. It's off-putting to newcomers; the report came about when someone else on this forum ran squarely into issues caused by omitting those lines.

As for the style issues, I agree that it seems like the document is trying to be accessible to both non-technical and technical folks, and falling somewhere in the middle. I found it quite helpful when getting started but I skimmed past the Windows stuff and really enjoyed the next section - [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/gsg/programmingprolegomena.htm]Programming Prolegomena[/url] - which is marked as optional.

There's probably a space for new material targeting both types. Something like [url=http://learncodethehardway.org/]Learn TADS 3 The Hard Way[/url] for the one, and Aaron Reed's Inform 7 book for the other. I7 has a better out-of-box experience, no question, and to a large extent that enables more accessible tutorials. The writer can assume a standard platform for all readers and skip all the window dressing.

(EDIT: I've re-opened my ticket; the fix seems to have been lost in the shuffle.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4015&start=0#p28878
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3.1 released!
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-23 10:52:39

[quote="bukayeva"]This is great stuff. I'm finally going to give TADS more than a passing glance.

That brings me to an observation, not necessarily related to this version.

I decided to start going through the users guides. And I can maybe see why TADS wouldn't appeal to new people. I was reading (local reference of installed docs): file:///C:/TADS3/doc/gsg/creatingyourfirsttads3project.htm.

This is a really convoluted intro to new people getting started with TADS 3. I could easily see this turning off newbies or people with little experience setting up tools.[/quote]
I hadn't looked at that page in a long, long time, and I agree with you. I suspect Eric wrote that material quite early in the development of T3, and it does need to be revised in light of (a) how most people will be learning T3 today and (b) the more robust competition from I7.

If I were writing it today, I'd make the top-level distinction, "Are you using Windows or not?" Because if you are, you can just install the whole Author's Kit and then launch Workbench. You never need to touch that other stuff. The other stuff is relevant only for Mac and Linux users.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4016&start=0#p28879
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Continuing saves between different games?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-23 10:56:30

You can write a game in such a way that it writes data to a separate file (not a game-save file) or reads such a file. It will be up to you, as the author, to encode and decode whatever data you decide to make use of -- there's no way, as far as I know, to load the whole game state as a lump into a different game.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4016&start=0#p28880
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Continuing saves between different games?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2011-12-23 10:59:12

[quote="JoeyJones"]Is it possible for either a Z-Code or a Glulx game to retrieve information from a saved game file from a different game?[/quote]
Short answer: no. AFAIK a saved game in Z-Code or Glulx represents the state of the virtual machine in its entirety. Saves can't even be ported from a game to another version of the [i]same[/i] game, let alone a completely different game.

Long answer: yes, but not by using the built-in saving mechanism. I7 has a system for saving info to external files. This can be used to keep track of choices, character stats, etc. One thing to bear in mind is that since inform doesn't natively support dynamic creation of objects (although there's an extension for it), moving actual [i]objects[/i] from one game to another will be problematic.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4016&start=0#p28881
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Continuing saves between different games?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2011-12-23 11:00:59

There is a good discussion of your options here:

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3484">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3484</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3938&start=0#p28882
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: PM Attachment File Types
User: Merk / DateTime: 2011-12-23 11:12:06

I can up the size limit. With my online games no longer operating, I have extra space.

(edit)
I have upped the limit as requested, and added a few "document" extension types - .gblorb, .z8, .z5, .gam, and .i7x (although I don't actually know what that last one is).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4017&start=0#p28883
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Alway Worn Objects - TADS3
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-12-23 11:26:30

My actor has some 'always worn' objects. when I test them by trying to drop them, I get the following message:

"First trying to take off the the khakis"

Then I'm told that I can't take them off.

Is there any way to stop the first line from displaying?

Here's a sample of my code:

[code][/code]

++khakis: Wearable 'pair/kahki/khakis/shorts' 'pair of khaki shorts'
"You are wearing a pair of rugged knee-length khaki shorts with very handy
pockets."
wornBy = me
isPlural=nil
dobjFor(Doff){
check(){
failCheck ('This is not the time nor place to start undressing.');
}} 
; 

I've tried using the 'AlwaysWorn' approach but then I get compile errors.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4016&start=0#p28884
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Continuing saves between different games?
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-12-23 11:36:29

Thanks everyone!

[quote="capmikee"]There is a good discussion of your options here:

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3484">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3484</a>[/quote]

I really like Katz' suggestion for a minicomp* based around compatible games. The comp curator could write an extension that contains all the possible items** and character-variables for the games, and then the authors would write games using different combinations of these items and variables, giving different content depending in what order a player plays the games.



*Though it would be less a competition than a short collective project.
**As one way around the problem of dynamic item creation.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4013&start=0#p28885
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Will Glulxe/Blorb Games ever run on ipad/kindle/nook/mob
User: gamedesigner / DateTime: 2011-12-23 11:54:19

[quote="ZUrlocker"]To be clear, Frotz for iPad and iPhone runs Glulx games since version 1.5 about a year ago.  The initial support was somewhat alpha but Craig Smith has done a great job improving things and fixing bugs reported etc.

Separately, Jimmy Maher has figured out a way to get his game "King of Shreds & Patches" running on Kindle.  Not sure if that will be a generalized Kindle Glulx interpreter, but that would be awesome.


I have a glulxe game being turned into a contest game. I'm putting up a website and want the
players with ipads, mobiles, (and possibly nook/kindle) to be able to download the freeware game
and if they like it they can enter the contest game (for a small fee of course). The contest game is not
necessary to enter

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4017&start=0#p28886
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Alway Worn Objects - TADS3
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-23 12:04:59

The easiest way is simply to redirect the drop action to the doff one.

[code]
++ khakis: Wearable 'rugged pair/kahki/khaki*kahkis*khakis*shorts' 'khaki shorts'
	"You are wearing a pair of rugged knee-length khaki shorts with very handy
	pockets."
	wornBy = me
	isPlural = true
	dobjFor(Doff) {
		check() {
			failCheck ('This is not the time nor place to start undressing.');
		}
	} 
	dobjFor(Drop) asDobjFor(Doff)
;
[/code]

The vocabWords property - that part with the slashes and asterisks - took me awhile to understand. It breaks down like this.
[list]
[*]A list of adjectives, separated by spaces[/*:m]
[*]A list of singular nouns, started with a space, separated by slashes[/*:m]
[*]A list of plural nouns, started with an asterisk, separated by asterisks[/*:m][/list:u]

Not sure why you set isPlural to nil. If you set it to true, and leave the plural stuff out of the actual name, then it should show up correctly in listings as "some khaki shorts."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4015&start=0#p28887
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3.1 released!
User: George / DateTime: 2011-12-23 12:11:00

It's like Christmas in December!  [emote]:D[/emote] Seriously though, this is great news. 

Systems that have been around a long time like TADS 3 always need some nip and tuck in their docs.

One thing that I think could help, which you don't tend to see with IF systems compared to other programming languages for whatever reason, is the "getting started with <X>" kind of blog post. I wouldn't be surprised if there were literally millions of these posts floating around for languages like Python, Ruby, JavaScript, etcetera. 

The two key characteristics of those posts is that they're short and aimed at the absolute beginner. As such almost anyone, including a TADS beginner, can write them. They've always been a big help to me getting started with a new thing.

edit to add: Just downloaded 3.1, and the user experience was really good, nice work!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4018&start=0#p28888
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Web based Text Creator
User: PHPTxtAdv / DateTime: 2011-12-23 12:14:53

Hi,

I am interested in creating a web based text adventure creator. It is gonna be written in php with MySQL for storage. There will be 2 parts to it, a client and a editor(server). The client will simply be a single page with an user interface similar to zork and phpzork. The user types in commands and the page retrieves the data from the database(room data, item descriptions etc.). The editor will be web based and allows the creator to edit his/her text adventure from any web browser. Although this will require the user to be connected to the internet to play the game, there are also some advantages.

1) The system is totally cross-platform includes handheld devices and modern video game consoles. This includes cheap mobile phones with crappy browsers and browsers with little or no javascript support.

2) No install is required on the users end so it will work on restricted devices(work, library, etc.).

3) I plan on making both the client and editor accessibily complient so even those less fortinate will be able to play.

4) The platform will be open source so it will be easily modifiable if you would like to add a feature not included in the standard distribution.

5) It's free nuff said.

Please let me know what you think and tell me if i should bother to start coding it.

Sincerely,

PHPTxtAdv

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4017&start=0#p28889
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Alway Worn Objects - TADS3
User: tomasb / DateTime: 2011-12-23 12:16:32

[quote]I've tried using the 'AlwaysWorn' approach but then I get compile errors.[/quote]

The AlwaysWorn class from RTDD game is not a standard class provided by the Adv3 library, but it's a new class defined in the game source code (in the mods.t file). If you want to use it, you should copy the following code into your game. That's only FYI as it doesn't solve your problem. But you can add dobjFor(Drop) asDobjFor(Doff) into it as bcressey suggests.

[code]
/*
 *   A class for clothing worn by the player character, and which we can't
 *   take off.  We use this for the PC's constant complement of clothes;
 *   there's no reason to remove these.
 */
class AlwaysWorn: Wearable
    wornBy = me
    dobjFor(Doff)
    {
        check()
        {
            cannotDoffMsg;
            exit;
        }
    }
    cannotDoffMsg = "You really don't have any reason to get
        undressed right now. "

    /* exclude these from DROP ALL and DOFF ALL */
    hideFromAll(action)
    {
        return action.ofKind(DropAction)
            || action.ofKind(DoffAction)
            || action.ofKind(PutInAction)
            || inherited(action);
    }
;
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4017&start=0#p28890
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Alway Worn Objects - TADS3
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-23 12:41:13

RonG, please always post your code between code tags.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4018&start=0#p28891
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Web based Text Creator
User: George / DateTime: 2011-12-23 12:48:45

I think it's a great idea. One thing I'd suggest including from the start is great internationalization support. There's going to be billions of mobiles in dozens of countries coming online in the future, and not all of them (as you point out) will be screaming fast with the latest and greatest browsers and JavaScript engines enabled.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4017&start=0#p28892
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Alway Worn Objects - TADS3
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-12-23 13:00:25

Thanks again for all the quick advice. I downloaded a piece of code named 'custom.t' which looks like it will be helpful. 

I used plural because it sounds and looks more natural to use 'the pair of shorts are....' rather than 'the pair of shorts is...'

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4018&start=0#p28893
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Web based Text Creator
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2011-12-23 13:17:52

Yes indeed a good idea. And George's internationalization suggestion is also a good idea - though needs lots of thought on how to implement - for exampe, will you (or your users) be multi-languaging the same game, or just have a flag to flag a game as "in language X".

I have also been thinking about something similar since ADVpda but not done anything about it. Have you looked into HTML5? The possibilities for online / offline play might also be good to build in.

Also you need to think of peoples save games - will you save to local cookies or offer to store save games on a central server (users would then require to login again to retrieve game data etc?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4019&start=0#p28894
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Kobo Touch + Development = IF No Brainer
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2011-12-23 14:04:11

After SAFTAP / SAFTAC / Visionary, sometime in January (probably toward the end given Christmas bills), I will be buying a Kobo Touch EReader and hacking it to (try) and create an engine to play SAF games. This is a long term project for my own pleasure more than anything else, but in essence, as the title of this topic suggests:

Kobo Touch + Development = IF No Brainer

I did sign up for the Kindle SDK ("KDK") well over a year ago but still not heard anything back from Amazon so will be turning my attention in the mid term to the Kobo as it runs Linux and seems on the face of it (from other chaps who have tinkered with it) to be pretty pliable.

I'll probably get nowhere fast with the Kobo idea but as with AdvPDA, Visionary and now SAFTAC, the challenge of creation gives me a big buzz.

Merry Christmas to one and all and may all your mince pies be made in factories than do not contain Grues.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4007&start=0#p28895
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help!!!
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-23 14:05:50

Two preliminary questions occur to me: (1) Are you using Inform 6 or Inform 7? (2) What exactly is your goal, in terms of what you want the game to do?

The first reason I ask that second question is because it appears you may be trying to recreate the parser from scratch. That's not likely to be necessary -- and just separating out the words is only the beginning of the process. The second reason is because the game is probably going to need to put its output on a line below the prompt, so I'm not sure what you gain by not waiting for a carriage return.

The specifics of how you would do what you're trying to do would differ, depending on whether you're using I6 or I7.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4020&start=0#p28896
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Inform 7 Extension .i7X Help
User: harryg2011 / DateTime: 2011-12-23 14:59:10

Hi all, I'm hjaving troubles with installing extensions on my Windows 7 Professional. When I downloaded the extensions, on my Mac they always open up and I am able to install them. However, on Windows, they don't pop right up and it asks me to have Windows search or pick a basic file to open it up with. (notepad, paint, etc.) I chose notepad, and the source came up in the document. Now I have two questions. A., how can I open them up in i7x, and B., how would I be able to even choose to open it in i7x? (As of now, it opens them automatically in notepad.) Thank you!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4020&start=0#p28897
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Extension .i7X Help
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-23 15:27:57

An .I7X file is just a text file. Opening them directly serves no purpose. In order to use them, you need to install them.

Open Inform and go to the file menu. You'll have an option there to install a new extension. Click that and point it to the file you just downloaded. It should open the documentation for that extension in the right panel of Inform once it's installed. You can then delete the file you downloaded or you can save it to review the source, though you can also open them up directly through Inform and view the text there. Opening them from an external source helps prevent accidents, though.

I don't know how Inform would handle opening them directly in Windows. To do this, since you already set a file association, right-click the file and go to "Open With". Click "Other Programs" and see if Inform is there. If not, click "Browse" and find it. Check the box at the bottom that says "Always use the selected program...". Click OK.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3938&start=0#p28898
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: PM Attachment File Types
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-23 15:39:33

I'm going to go ahead and throw out there that phpBB has no way of validating the mime type of any of the new extensions, nor is it capable of verifying that they are what they claim to be. It will verify the extension and that's it. 

If you haven't already, I'd suggest that you at least change the location of the attachment storage, preferably to something outside the web root. If not, anything besides the default. While the forum will do what it can to prevent anything unfortunate, you can't be too safe. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4018&start=0#p28899
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Web based Text Creator
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-23 15:49:25

I've considered this in the past. Couple of thoughts:

- Localization will be an absolutely nightmare, especially if you're talking about having multiple languages in the same project. 
- Cookie-based save games would be bothersome. Many people have cookies disabled, only allow cookies from certain sites, et cetera. Cookies expire or are wiped out by "optimization" or privacy products. A database save based on a user login is really the only viable way of going about this.
- Unless you just want to change the way the games are played or written, there's really no point. With Parchment openly available, writing an entirely new product doesn't really make any sense. There are mobile devices that do support Javascript, albeit poorly.

It's never a bad idea to offer something new to the community. Please do interpret this as my trying to discourage you from doing so. Just saying that before you invest your time in the project, make sure that you actually are bringing something new to the table. I know first hand how difficult (and sometimes morale crushing) it can be to try introducing a new product or platform to an existing market.

But if you do decide to run with it, best of luck! I'd be thrilled to see a PHP/MySQLI based IF development platform.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4020&start=0#p28900
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Inform 7 Extension .i7X Help
User: harryg2011 / DateTime: 2011-12-23 16:40:53

Thank you!  [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3999&start=10#p28901
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conditional understanding? E.g. disabling "ask"?
User: Plantar Humdrum / DateTime: 2011-12-23 17:00:25

[quote="katz"]It's also simple to put some conditionals in there so that "ask" will return different statements depending on, say, where you are or what you've done so far.[/quote]

So, doing that, would I be able to make "ask about" and "think about" equivalent, so that I could "think/ask Isidore about iron" and get the key to the Iron Door to use later, while "ask" with no arguments still returns responses 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc? I mean, this essentially allows me to do everything I could do with both of them?

[quote]>open irondoor

"It was closed. I couldn't break it and going across to Five-to-Two was impossible; the drawbridge was out."

>ask isidore iron

"I asked Isidore for the Iron Key. He gave me a box with a paperclip wound around the clasp."

>ask

"I asked myself if I wanted to open the box."

>ask

"Nothing good had come of using the... tokens I'd received in this jaunt. I questioned the sanity of going further."

>ask

"Why did each clue lead so easily into the others? I felt lead by the horns Qirch had drawn on the icon."

>use ironkey

etc.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4013&start=0#p28902
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Will Glulxe/Blorb Games ever run on ipad/kindle/nook/mob
User: Egon / DateTime: 2011-12-23 17:30:47

Are there any interpreters for Android?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4013&start=0#p28903
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Will Glulxe/Blorb Games ever run on ipad/kindle/nook/mob
User: gamedesigner / DateTime: 2011-12-23 17:35:13

Not that I know of.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=0#p28904
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Making TADS Friendlier
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-12-23 17:37:46

So there's lots of things that could be said in this thread, but here's an example. If you load up an introductory game, one of the comments says this:

 *   Include the main header for the standard TADS 3 adventure library.
 *   Note that this does NOT include the entire source code for the
 *   library; this merely includes some definitions for our use here.  The
 *   main library must be "linked" into the finished program by including
 *   the file "adv3.tl" in the list of modules specified when compiling.
 *   In TADS Workbench, simply include adv3.tl in the "Source Files"
 *   section of the project.

Now, as a new person, you might be wondering: so wait, do I have to do this "main library linking thing." I have to include adv3.tl in the Source Files section? Seriously? Doesn't TADS do that for me? The introductory source file is a huge turn off.

I'm also thinking that the way to create a new project could perhaps be streamlined. Inform makes this simple: name of story, location, and author. Why can't TADS do that? The other stuff could be set later when needed. Or, better, just adhere to convention over configuration, provide sensible defaults that "just work," and then allow more experienced people to tweak when they have more knowledge about even wanting to do that in the first place.

I already mentioned the Getting Started manual in another thread, but this thing really needs an editor and some proofreading if people are going to get much out of this. Example:

"Now open goldskull.t in your text editor of choice (either through Workbench or through the text editor – if you use the second method while compiling through Workbench you might find it a great relief to uncheck the option 'Ask before reloading a modified source file' on the Messages tab of the Debugger Options dialogue box that comes up through selecting View/Options from the Workbench menu)."

Put yourself in the mindset of someone who may be trying out Inform and TADS. Reading the above you immediately get a long sentence with nary a breath taken. Also, it seems inaccurate. That menu and that option does not seem to exist. Granted, this only matters if you are using an external editor and compiling from the Workbench. But that one paragraph has a bit of cognitive friction for someone looking for an easy and gentle introduction to their first experience with TADS.

I've heard comments about the Inform 7 documentation in that area but, from what I'm seeing, Inform 7 has no issues when compared with the documentation for TADS. Again, though, I'm looking at this from the standpoint of a variety of people with varying levels of experience.

Finally, while I like the TADS Workbench because it's a development environment, that very same reason may turn off others. Something like the equivalent of Eclipse perspectives may help here. At the very least you have "Minimal Programmer" and "Maximum Programmer" perspectives that provide an appropriate level of detail. Those "minimal programmers" can always opt to turn on features as they learn they need them. If they don't need them, they may appreciate not having all of it staring them in the face.

Bottom-line: I can totally see why many new people -- or even just those who don't want a "full programming experience" -- will prefer Inform 7, regardless of the merits of one language over the other.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=0#p28905
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: George / DateTime: 2011-12-23 18:04:22

[quote]TADS is the programmer's power tool for IF authoring. It offers a robust and modern language that'll be instantly familiar to anyone who knows Javascript or C++, and a full-featured suite of development tools from text editing to debugging.[/quote]

That's on the front page of tads.org. 

Now you can argue the merits of calling something a power tool for X, but I don't think it's fair to describe in detail how a power tool for X isn't appropriate for beginners.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=0#p28906
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-23 18:15:44

I basically agree with bukayeva.

Today I was looking at the docs for the Web/browser play system in TADS 3.1, and I had much the same reaction. Inform's solution, while admittedly more limited in scope, is much easier for someone to deal with -- especially if they're new to IF authorship or if (like me) their main interest is in being an author, not in being a programmer.

Possibly I'm wrong about some details ... I was skim-reading. But it appears the author who wants to allow online play of a conventional text-only T3 game has only one option: to have the game hosted on IFDB. This is not a great burden, but it's a bottleneck. And you'll still have to do a few things (and read a lot of quite intimidating documentation) to make sure that your game conforms to the limitations of the browser/interpreter setup.

Because the Inform system is less ambitious, the author of a conventional text-only game basically doesn't have to do anything by way of separate compilation. The interpreter is loaded into the browser as Javascript code.

To me, one of the chief pleasures of writing IF is that I don't have to be a heavy-duty programmer. I'm a hobbyist, and I'm happy that way. An authoring system that I can only use by going well beyond the hobbyist level is not a system that is very attractive to me.

What T3 needs, it seems to me, is not a high-end server architecture that maybe three people are ever going to use, and it's not a stripped-down library (apparently on the drawing board, but not yet released) that eliminates a bunch of useful classes and functionality. The things that will save T3 from the dustbin of computer history are (a) a Macintosh version of Workbench, (b) an interpreter written in Javascript to allow for browser play of existing games without recompilation, and (c) as you've indicated, a fresh look at the whole range of documentation with an eye to the new user's experience.

I want to make it clear that in no way am I denigrating Eric Eve's amazing work on the T3 documentation. Without Eric's hard work, [i]nobody [/i]would be using this system. Eric is a lucid and thoughtful writer. But confronted with three completely different books by Eric, all of which teach T3 from the ground up, how is the new user to know which book to use??? The Library Reference Manual is a great resource -- but only for the knowledgeable TADS author, not for the newcomer. For the newcomer, it's completely baffling. After writing several games in T3, I still couldn't tell you which articles are in the System Manual and which are in the Technical Manual -- I have to look it up every time. And there's no overall index or search facility, so in order to find things, you have to already know where to look. [Edit: I was wrong about the search feature.]

On the other hand, I'm often more grouchy than is warranted. Maybe everything is just fine, and I ought to lighten up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=0#p28907
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: George / DateTime: 2011-12-23 18:24:51

There's a great search -- in Workbench. Lacking Workbench on Mac/Linux, or use of a VM to put the WIndows version on same, maybe what T3 could use is full-text search of all the manuals on its website...

...oh wait.

<a class="postlink" href="http://tads.org/t3doc/doSearch.php">http://tads.org/t3doc/doSearch.php</a>

edit: maybe I'm the grumpy one tonight [emote]:)[/emote].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=0#p28908
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-23 18:26:03

[quote="George"][quote]TADS is the programmer's power tool for IF authoring. It offers a robust and modern language that'll be instantly familiar to anyone who knows Javascript or C++, and a full-featured suite of development tools from text editing to debugging.[/quote]

That's on the front page of tads.org. 

Now you can argue the merits of calling something a power tool for X, but I don't think it's fair to describe in detail how a power tool for X isn't appropriate for beginners.[/quote]
That's a fair point, I guess. But given the extremely small size of the user base, I think it's fair to ask, is a power tool that fails to entice newcomers simply a dead end?

Personally, I like T3 a lot better than I like I7 -- but I don't think there's any doubt why I7 is about 50 times more popular. And people who start out in I7 [i]do [/i]sometimes go on to become power users. If you want to roll up your sleeves and dig into the I6 template layer, you can do so.

I don't think anybody is suggesting that the power features of T3 be eliminated. That's not the point at all. The point is, it would be terrific if some energy were devoted to making T3 as friendly for the newcomer as I7.

Perhaps this is not MJR's job. Perhaps it's not Eric's job either. (Given the amount of time that would be required, and the absence of funding, "job" is a loaded word.) But if you're a fan of T3, as I am, it's hard not to feel a little frustrated at how marginal it has become -- nor is it hard to see why.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4007&start=0#p28909
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help!!!
User: Nicola / DateTime: 2011-12-23 18:31:35

Well, you're right.
1) Ok, so I'm using inform 6
2) My goal is to ask the player some open questions, and evaluate his answer in terms of score, let's do an example:

My name is Nicola, I live in Rome
so i'm gonna ask the player:

Open question: What's my name and where I live?
Player answer: your name is nicola, you live in rome.

Now the program is gonna record this answer as an array.
Then I know that to evaluate this open question, i'm gonna check if it contains the right keywords: in this case the keywords are "nicola" "rome".

So I need to say to the program: "scan if the array contains the keywords, and add +1 score for each keyword that the array contains"

This case the player answer contains two keywords, so the score is gonna raise +2.

How i'm gonna do this?
I want inform to split the player answer array into multiple arrays (one for each word), then i'm gonna use the function:

if ((CmpStr(word1, keyword1))==1) 
{
score++; 
};

I'm gonna write one of this for each word of the player answer, so there will be many CmpStr function that will check if any word contained in the player answer corresponds to the keywords.
This way I can evaluate the player response to an open question.
I'm ovviously previously defining what the keywords are with the PrintToBuffer function, and I'm reading the array with the ReadArray function.

Then I miss the splitting function, actually readarray just reads a big array (that contains the whole answer), still I need small arrays, that contains the single words of the answer.

Hope I explained that clearly, ask me for further explications, hope you can solve this problem  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3999&start=10#p28910
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conditional understanding? E.g. disabling "ask"?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-23 18:46:11

If I understand what you want aright, it's quick to do. Just put in the following two lines (in order -- I think this is a case where the order of the source text matters).

[code]Understand the command "think" as something new.[/code]

This gets rid of the built-in grammar for "think," so it's no longer understood as the thinking action. (See section 16.3.) 

[code]Understand the command "think" as "ask".[/code]

This makes "think" act like "ask" whenever it occurs in a command. (See section 16.2.) So if your game understood the commands >ASK, >ASK JOHN ABOUT KEY, >ASK ABOUT IRON, it will now understand >THINK, >THINK JOHN ABOUT KEY, and >THINK ABOUT IRON exactly the same way. (>THINK JOHN ABOUT KEY sounds funny -- but it's better to understand more things than fewer things!)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4007&start=0#p28911
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help!!!
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-23 18:49:04

You may be able to do most or all of what you want to do using the parse_name function. This is what I was wondering about.

If you look it up in the DM4, you'll see that parse_name lets you count up the number of matching words and return the result. You would need to create a fake object of some sort, and put it in scope, in order to use its parse_name.

One limitation that you'll have to think about is that the parser will expect to see a verb of some kind before the string of words that may or may not be the name of this fake object. To do that, you might want to insert a fake verb word (such as "try") before the command is considered by parse_name.

Look up the BeforeParsing entry point. I'm not sure this will work for you, as I don't know if it lets you add a new word as word 1. Chapter 31 of the DM4 talks about the business of parse tokens -- you may find something useful there.

In a nutshell, what I'm suggesting is this:

(1) Using BeforeParsing, convert "your name is nicola, you live in rome" to "try your name is nicola you live in rome" (note that I got rid of the comma).

(2) Create a fake object with a parse_name that checks for "nicola" and "rome".

(3) When the game asks that question, move this object into the room with the player. (You have to have at least one room, even if it's invisible.)

(4) Have parse_name save the number of matching words, using a property of the object.

(5) Create a verb for "try".

(6) Write a before response for the Try action that checks the number of matching words and prints out a suitable response.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=0#p28912
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-23 18:49:57

A bit of a far fetched analogy, but trying to make T3 beginner-friendly sounds to me like trying to teach someone who studies math for the first time how to solve differential equations. They will allow the student to solve difficult problems, but it's not going to be a great introduction to general concepts (like how to add, subtract, multiply and divide numbers.)

If you don't already feel comfortable with algorithms, program flow, even memory management, then T3 is not going to look good to you. And even if you are comfortable with all that, but hate it, then T3 will also taste crappy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4016&start=0#p28913
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Continuing saves between different games?
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2011-12-23 19:21:05

I'm curious about this too since I'm planing something that is split up into several independent modules. From what I can gather, assembling the data in a way that makes them easy to import in an organized fashion will probably be the hardest part.

Quick example of a party export/import that considers that some members may not exist in the following module:

[url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17790344/File%20Test/Full%20team.gblorb]Export[/url]:
[code]"Full team"

File of Members is called "partyExp".

Lab is a room.

Jane is a person.
Ben is a person.
Frank is a person.

When play begins:
	 repeat with p running through people that are not player:
		let x be a random truth state;
		choose blank row in Table of Members;
		change Name Entry to "[p]";
		change Alive Entry to x;
	say "Exported party members: ";
	repeat through Table of Members:
		say "[Name Entry] ([if Alive Entry is true]alive[otherwise]dead[end if]) ";
	write File of Members from Table of Members;
	end the game in victory.

Table of Members
Name	Alive
indexed text	truth state
with 3 blank rows[/code]

Import ([url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17790344/File%20Test/Males%20only.gblorb]males[/url]/[url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17790344/File%20Test/Females%20only.gblorb]females[/url]):
[code]"Males only"

File of Members is called "partyExp".

index_check is an indexed text that varies.

Lab is a room.

Ben is a person.
Frank is a person.

When play begins:
	If the File of Members exists:
		read File of Members into Table of Members;
		say "Party imported: ";
		repeat with p running through people:
			change index_check to "[p]";
			if index_check is Name listed in the Table of Members, say "[Name Entry] ([if Alive Entry is true]alive[otherwise]dead[end if]) ";
	Otherwise:
		say "ERROR: Couldn't locate file";
	end the game in victory.

Table of Members
Name	Alive
indexed text	truth state
with 3 blank rows[/code]

But that only works as long as a) the number of rows in the receiving module is at least the number of the exported rows and b) printed names of the object's match in both modules (can you refer to an objects 'real' name? Can't remember...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3983&start=0#p28914
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Examine north wall == Examine north
User: frotz / DateTime: 2011-12-23 19:24:40

A slight edit of Poster's code yields most of what I want.

[code]
Object wallobj "wall"
        with direction,
        parse_name [ myname retval;
                retval = 0;
                myname = NextWord();
                if (myname == 'north' or 'northern') {
                        myname = NextWord();
                        retval++;
                        self.direction = n_obj; 
                        if (myname == 'wall') {        
                                retval++;
                                self.direction = n_obj;
                        }
                }
! other directions go here
                return retval;
        ],
        before [;
        Examine:
                <<examine self.direction>>;
        ],
        has static scenery;
[/code]

Doing "EXAMINE NORTH WALL" will give the result of "LOOK NORTH", but now if I do "EXAMINE NORTH", I get this: 
[code]
>examine north
(the north)
It's a stone wall.

>examine the north
(the north)
It's a stone wall.
[/code]

How can I suppress that extraneous "(the north)" message.  It pops up even in code that lacks this wall code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4013&start=0#p28915
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Will Glulxe/Blorb Games ever run on ipad/kindle/nook/mob
User: frotz / DateTime: 2011-12-23 19:29:06

[quote="Egon"]Are there any interpreters for Android?[/quote]

Once I get DOS Frotz and Unix Frotz back up to speed and doing Blorb, I'll be looking at Android.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=0#p28916
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-23 19:40:45

[quote="RealNC"]A bit of a far fetched analogy, but trying to make T3 beginner-friendly sounds to me like trying to teach someone who studies math for the first time how to solve differential equations. They will allow the student to solve difficult problems, but it's not going to be a great introduction to general concepts (like how to add, subtract, multiply and divide numbers.)

If you don't already feel comfortable with algorithms, program flow, even memory management, then T3 is not going to look good to you. And even if you are comfortable with all that, but hate it, then T3 will also taste crappy.[/quote]
I'm not sure I agree. At least, not completely.

I've written two or three games in T3 without ever devoting a moment's thought to memory management. Flow control, yes. Algorithms ... maybe, maybe not.

A great deal of work has been put into making T3 user-friendly. Why else would there be macros like failCheck, TIAction, and dobjFor? I'm pretty sure you could write a large and satisfying game without ever venturing beyond the basic functionality provided by the library. But it would be nice if the newcomer weren't intimidated needlessly by things like that block of comment text that bukayeva quoted at the beginning of this thread.

Yes, if you want to customize a lister, that's sort of in the same territory as differential equations. Memorizing the difference between specialDesc, initDesc, and initSpecialDesc ... I'd have to look it up. But it [i]is [/i]possible, or it should be, to get started and get some satisfying results without worrying about that stuff.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3999&start=10#p28919
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conditional understanding? E.g. disabling "ask"?
User: I4L / DateTime: 2011-12-23 20:30:18

[quote="matt w"]If I understand what you want aright, it's quick to do. Just put in the following two lines (in order -- I think this is a case where the order of the source text matters).

[code]Understand the command "think" as something new.[/code]

This gets rid of the built-in grammar for "think," so it's no longer understood as the thinking action. (See section 16.3.) 

[code]Understand the command "think" as "ask".[/code]

This makes "think" act like "ask" whenever it occurs in a command. (See section 16.2.) So if your game understood the commands >ASK, >ASK JOHN ABOUT KEY, >ASK ABOUT IRON, it will now understand >THINK, >THINK JOHN ABOUT KEY, and >THINK ABOUT IRON exactly the same way. (>THINK JOHN ABOUT KEY sounds funny -- but it's better to understand more things than fewer things!)[/quote]

But couldn't this possibly result in some undesired behavior by the parser? If "think" is being universally interpreted as "ask", couldn't thinking about something while in the same room with another NPC (or something else that can be questioned) result in that NPC attempting to respond?

Maybe this would be an opportune time to plug Mike's "Conversation Motivations" plugin (I'm sorry, sir, I haven't had a chance to test it thoroughly.) I recall his stating that internal dialog is one of the things his plugin handles.

Otherwise, maybe a table of thought responses?

(Seriously can't believe I just suggested any kind of solution that involves tables.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3999&start=20#p28920
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conditional understanding? E.g. disabling "ask"?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-23 21:03:30

It depends on what's desired! From the post I was responding to, I thought that Plantar did want "think isidore about iron" and "think about iron" to respond that way, but I may have misunderstood.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3838&start=0#p28921
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The penultimate not numbered New Year's Speed IF
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-23 22:26:00

[quote="smasherimp"]Also, was just wondering if I was allowed to post my IF that I'm submitting to this elsewhere before the results are released?[/quote]

1) Speed-IF doesn't really have 'results', per se. Just games.

2) In Speed-IF, everything is permitted except that which is expressly forbidden. (For most of Speed-IF history people would just post a link to their game as soon as they'd finished it. The email-game-to-organiser, release-on-ClubFloyd model is a funky new variation.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=0#p28922
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-23 23:28:57

[quote="Jim Aikin"]But it appears the author who wants to allow online play of a conventional text-only T3 game has only one option: to have the game hosted on IFDB. This is not a great burden, but it's a bottleneck. And you'll still have to do a few things (and read a lot of quite intimidating documentation) to make sure that your game conforms to the limitations of the browser/interpreter setup.[/quote]

It is simply not true that IFDB is the author's only choice for hosting. There is a section in the System Manual about it - [url=http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/sysman/webhost.htm]Setting up a custom TADS Web server[/url]. If you want help with it, please just ask. Let us know what resources you're working with and what your goal is, and we can advise you and walk you through the process.

Your other point, about the limitations of the browser setup, is a fair one. It's not necessarily clean to switch from adv3 to adv3web. The more effort you put into the UI under the old system, the more pain there will be.

But I would turn it around and say that the new web format really opens up the possibilities. Your game can do anything a website can do, support any features that your web browser supports. TADS 3 doesn't even have to know about it; it just takes the web files you give it and bundles them up with the game.

adv3web is to adv3 games what the HTML interpreters are to the text-only ones.

[quote]Because the Inform system is less ambitious, the author of a conventional text-only game basically doesn't have to do anything by way of separate compilation. The interpreter is loaded into the browser as Javascript code.[/quote]

Authors have ambitions that go beyond what Inform offers. Look at [url=http://vorple-if.com/]Vorple[/url]. Imagine that you could have that functionality just by compiling your game with the "vorple" lib instead of the "webui" one.

Of course, someone will have to write that library. Ideally lots of people would write lots of libraries, and authors would have an assortment of web UI options. Until that happens, there's just the one. Fortunately it's pretty good and it works in nearly every browser.

[quote]What T3 needs, it seems to me, is not a high-end server architecture that maybe three people are ever going to use, and it's not a stripped-down library (apparently on the drawing board, but not yet released) that eliminates a bunch of useful classes and functionality.[/quote]

Suppose someone came out with an [url=http://undum.com/]Undum[/url]-like web library, plus a stripped down TADS 3 library that only knew how to do the things that Undum does, plus a limited IDE that only knew about that one library and only worked with a single source file, and every time you compiled it would upload the file to a server and give you the link.

It would be easier to document, easier to port, and easier to use. It would be very different from the TADS 3 we know today, but underneath it would be the same language and the same infrastructure.

That's the sort of thing that's possible now. I can understand if it's not quite what you had in mind, but maybe give it more than 24 hours before you nail the coffin shut.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=0#p28923
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-12-24 00:53:23

What i think we really need are better vm specs. if we had those then a pure js tads terp would be definitely achievable, but as it is now we'd need to reverse engineer the standard terp for tads 2. tads 3 does have a spec but it's very hard to make sense of.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4022&start=0#p28924
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Mammoth Vacuum Button of Death
User: smasherimp / DateTime: 2011-12-24 01:00:34

Hi there,

This is my first completed IF game. It's incredibly short, and a bit silly, but I would really appreciate some feedback, and ways to improve pretty much any aspect of it. It's also been entered into the Speed IF comp.

I made it in ADRIFT 4 in two hours, so you'll need the runner (3.9 and 5 runner doesn't work) or gargoyle.

Also, I'm only 17, so don't be too harsh on it [emote]:)[/emote]

Hope you enjoy,
File is attached

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=0#p28925
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: mjroberts / DateTime: 2011-12-24 01:09:04

Interesting thread - I always appreciate constructive feedback.  I have a few comments...

First, I think there are two axes that are useful to distinguish when talking about friendliness.  One is programmer-vs-non, and the other is newbie-vs-experienced.  TADS is obviously pretty firmly planted at the extreme left programmer end of the first axis, and that's not an accident; the thing about these volunteer projects is that you build what you want to build, and in this case what I'm interested in building is a developer-style tool set, because that's what I'm interested in using.  On the newbie-vs-experienced axis, though, I'm obviously sympathetic to trying to make it approachable.  The place where the two axes get muddled is that programming is inherently intimidating to a lot of people, so it's easy to start thinking of "newbie friendly" as meaning we hide the programming parts.  I'm not too keen on that.  If someone's intimidated by programming, they're probably going to like TADS less the more they get to know it, so there's not much benefit in trying to lure them in.  They'll just get frustrated later.  So my focus is on making TADS a good tool for me and for the kind of people who like this sort of thing, rather than figuring out how to attract people who like different sorts of things.

(That's why I added the "programmer's power tool" verbiage to the Web site.  There are perfectly good C++ programmers who do that sort of thing at work all day and don't want to spend their fun goofing-around-with-IF time balancing braces; and there are newbies who have a mind for programming and want something techie looking.  Newcomers will be happiest with TADS if it's the kind of thing they're already looking for.)

Second, there's a certain urge to think in terms of what some hypothetical newbie would find daunting about TADS - there's some of that in this thread, but it's something that shows up all the time, even in commercial software development.  I've learned that it's not a very useful approach, because you're second-guessing a straw man.  The thing is, it's too easy to imagine newbies as dumber than they really are.  It's more constructive to think about what you personally have found daunting, or better still what's actually standing in the way of what you're trying to do.  I don't mean to suggest that rough edges shouldn't be fixed; if you see something's obviously an error, or if something was harder than it should have been and you know can clearly envision how it should have been, by all means report the error or suggest the improvement.

Third, and this is kind of a corollary of point #2, I don't think the first priority needs to be expanding the user base.  The first priority is making TADS useful to the people who are using it.  If it's useful to you, there are probably other people like you that it'll be useful to as well.  To a certain extent, it's probably even preferable from my perspective to have a smaller and deeper group, since I don't have the bandwidth to handle a ton of new feature directions and so on that a larger group would inevitably be demanding.

Fourth, sorry to repeat an old refrain, but this being a volunteer project that you can tell from the 18 months between releases is already kind of taxing on my available energy, the *really* constructive thing when you see an area that needs work is to do the work.  I know that some of it's technical work that not everyone is up for, but there are some good suggestions in this thread that look very doable without cracking open a C++ compiler - e.g., an alternative "getting started" guide or two, an improved game creation wizard process (even just mapping out specs for the contents of the initial game template, dialog pages, etc would help - that old game with the suit of armor and loaf of bread in the oven isn't necessarily the last word in game starter templates), additions/revisions to any of the existing books (you'd have to ask Eric how he feels about that for the GSG et al, but for my portions, I'd be perfectly happy to work with anyone who wants to rework anything or write new chapters - I'll want to have a say as editor and want to feel that contributions would actually be improvements, naturally, but I harbor no illusions that the bar I set for documentation quality is beyond mortal reach).  Workbench for Mac OS would obviously be a more technical project, although remember that there already exists an old version of exactly that by Uli Kusterer, and I bet he'd be willing to let someone take it over as a starting point.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4007&start=0#p28926
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help!!!
User: Nicola / DateTime: 2011-12-24 01:13:20

(1) Using BeforeParsing, convert "your name is nicola, you live in rome" to "try your name is nicola you live in rome" (note that I got rid of the comma).
(2) Create a fake object with a parse_name that checks for "nicola" and "rome".
(3) When the game asks that question, move this object into the room with the player. (You have to have at least one room, even if it's invisible.)
(4) Have parse_name save the number of matching words, using a property of the object.
(5) Create a verb for "try".
(6) Write a before response for the Try action that checks the number of matching words and prints out a suitable response.

Your indications soundend pretty cool, so I decided to stand on at night to try them. 
You said you was wondering if that was actually possible (open question aren't something pretty concerning inform), but I found those hints useful, except that I had to learn everything about parse_name.

That's what I approximately made:

The mocking object:

Object book_mineral "libro sui minerali" ,
with parse_name [;
if (NextWord() == 'tomato' or 'fried') opscore++;
if (NextWord() == 'fried' or 'tomato') opscore++;
if (NextWord() == 'tomato' or 'fried') opscore++;
if (NextWord() == 'fried' or 'tomato') opscore++;
if (NextWord() == 'tomato' or 'fried') opscore++;
if (NextWord() == 'fried' or 'tomato') opscore++;
if (NextWord() == 'tomato' or 'fried') opscore++;
if (NextWord() == 'fried' or 'tomato') opscore++;
if (NextWord() == 'tomato' or 'fried') opscore++;
if (NextWord() == 'fried' or 'tomato') opscore++;
],
has ;

That's able to catch 10 words, and if 1 of these are "tomato" or "fried" then opscore++ (Global constant).
Then as you said in point 4, the mocking object is able to record num of matching words, Cool  [emote]8-)[/emote] 

Object is in the same room, ok, but about the "try" was impossible to make waht you said, actually if you player, declare "try your name is nicola you live in rome", inform doesn't recognised the subject of try and replicates "You can't see any such thing."
I think it's due to the parse_name, anyway I solved easily on this (went over English.h, erased "You can't see any such thing.", and then print myself the suitable response.

Coming to the end, when the object recorded the constant "opscore" I realised it wasn't just anymore an idea.
At last I didn't succeed in the big deal, as you can observe, I didn't mentioned the point 1 of your project.

I actually couldn't find the way to make BeforeParsing adding the verb at the beginning of the input, that's really the ending point, i look up at  DM4, but I couldn't do nothing about it, so I need the BeforeParsing Code that tranforms the user inputs adding the word 
( an answer like maybe "your name is nicola, you live in rome" ->should end as something like-> "Climb your name is nicola you live in rome")
So well:
1) Adding the word 0
2) Deleting commas

For anybody who can help I give you some cool stuff and idea about  BeforeParsing code (to correct incorrect inputs ) I found around tryng to learn how it works, anybody who mastered BeforeParsing and can helps me would have all my gratefullness [emote]:geek:[/emote] 


Extra stuff I found about same topic:

BeforeParsing code (to correct incorrect inputs ):
!----------------------------------------------------------------------
Constant MAX_WORDLENGTH = 10;

[BeforeParsing word num_word;
for (num_word=1 : num_word<=num_words : num_word++) {
word = tokenDict(num_word);
switch(word) {
'cerbiato', 'crebiato', 'crebiatto':
num_word = ReplaceWord(num_word,'cerbiatto');
'prendi':
num_word = ReplaceWord(num_word,'lascia');
}
}

];

[ReplaceWord num_word word new_word pos_word num_letter;
pos_word = tokenPos(num_word);
for (num_letter=0 : num_letter<=MAX_WORDLENGTH : num_letter++)
LTI_Insert(pos_word+num_letter, word->(num_letter+1));
#ifdef TARGET_GLULX;
Tokenise__(buffer,parse);
#ifnot;
@tokenise buffer parse;
#endif;
return 0;
];
---------------------------------------------------------

And a quote about this library " LanguageToInformese(). ", according to the author Francesco Sircana, he used a lot BeforeParsing in it.  Good job guys, if you find it, post the beforeparsing code, I'll post my final job in exchange, thanks everybody !

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=10#p28927
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-24 01:20:53

[quote="bcressey"]It is simply not true that IFDB is the author's only choice for hosting. There is a section in the System Manual about it - [url=http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/sysman/webhost.htm]Setting up a custom TADS Web server[/url]. If you want help with it, please just ask. Let us know what resources you're working with and what your goal is, and we can advise you and walk you through the process.[/quote]
Thanks for the offer. You're right that I need to investigate further before leaping to conclusions. That said, the article on setting up a custom Web server ... well, I'm not going to say it's completely over my head, because I could certainly spend a few months studying MySql and php, buy a new computer to be the server, probably upgrade my ISP account, learn Linux, and then be ready to ask you for help with setting up the game. Or maybe I could use my existing website host, if I knew what questions to ask them and was willing to upgrade my account. I'm smart enough to figure all that out, but that's not my idea of fun. I would much rather devote my remaining time on the planet (which I hope will be many years yet) to playing music, writing, and possibly a little gardening.

Am I looking for a turn-key solution? Basically, yes. IFDB provides that, and that's probably good enough for my purposes. But if Dannii says the bottleneck is understanding the specs of the VM, I'll defer to Dannii, because I am [i]not[/i] competent to write a JS terp, and never will be.

There are, at the moment, a few things I don't understand about the Web setup. The trial version of "Mrs. Pepper's" that Nikos uploaded a few days ago had this really weird pop-up box for the hint system, and I have no idea whether that's the default, or whether it's an experiment he was trying. So even if I'm content (as I probably am) to write a standard text game that will be playable on IFDB, I don't exactly know what special steps I may need to take ... and I may not know what the game will look like in a browser until I've released it, which, now that I think of it, may be a problem. If there are differences between the local version in my computer and the way it looks in Firefox, IE, or Chrome, I won't know until it's "live" on IFDB.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=10#p28928
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-24 01:34:23

[quote="mjroberts"]Fourth, sorry to repeat an old refrain, but this being a volunteer project that you can tell from the 18 months between releases is already kind of taxing on my available energy, the *really* constructive thing when you see an area that needs work is to do the work.  I know that some of it's technical work that not everyone is up for, but there are some good suggestions in this thread that look very doable without cracking open a C++ compiler - e.g., an alternative "getting started" guide or two, an improved game creation wizard process (even just mapping out specs for the contents of the initial game template, dialog pages, etc would help - that old game with the suit of armor and loaf of bread in the oven isn't necessarily the last word in game starter templates), additions/revisions to any of the existing books (you'd have to ask Eric how he feels about that for the GSG et al, but for my portions, I'd be perfectly happy to work with anyone who wants to rework anything or write new chapters - I'll want to have a say as editor and want to feel that contributions would actually be improvements, naturally, but I harbor no illusions that the bar I set for documentation quality is beyond mortal reach).[/quote]
Let me think about that for a day or two. Maybe there are things I can do by way of tweaking or fluffing up the documentation. Eric has done a fantastic job, as have you, but my experience as a tech writer assures me that having a second set of eyes scrutinizing a tutorial is always a good thing.

My initial impulse is to feel that adding an entirely new getting started guide might only add to the confusion. But maybe a short "Guide to the Docs" would be useful.

It's too bad Uli doesn't want to update his version of Workbench. I asked him about that a year or two ago.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=10#p28929
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: mjroberts / DateTime: 2011-12-24 01:39:09

[quote="Dannii"]What i think we really need are better vm specs. if we had those then a pure js tads terp would be definitely achievable, but as it is now we'd need to reverse engineer the standard terp for tads 2. tads 3 does have a spec but it's very hard to make sense of.[/quote]

This is a fair point; and not only is the t3 spec a bit obtuse but it's a little incomplete in light of the evolution of the project over the years.  However, I think the core of it - namely the bytecode instruction set and the image file format sections - is actually up to date and pretty approachable.  And the thing is, between those two sections, you practically have a spec for a VM; a whole lot of the rest is actually more like an implementation plan; it might be interesting as a source of ideas if you were creating a new implementation, but it wouldn't necessarily be required reading.

But the big obstacle in my mind to creating a javascript T3 terp is the intrinsics.  T3 has become a lot like all the other modern scripting languages in that it has a veritable ton of functionality imported through its native code extensibility interfaces, and that's all effectively part of the language.  That and the speed of a terp-in-a-terp are what daunted me when I initially looked at this a year and a half ago.  It's not just the thought of reimplementing the intrinsics in javascript that gets me, but also the ongoing work of keeping it all in sync, since in practice I've been actively expanding the intrinsics, and foresee continuing to do so because it's so darned useful.  It's obviously the big downside of a rich VM design, but at this point I've given in to the idea that this is the sort of VM that T3 is and that there's no point in trying to draw the line and say *this* is where the intrinsics are frozen in order to allow other implementations to catch up and stay forever caught up.

As for T2, the lack of a spec seems daunting to me too, but Jetty kind of surprised me by serving as a proof by example that reverse engineering it is doable.  Or that Dan Shiovitz is a genius, or maybe both.  And looking back at it now, with T3 as the new reference point, T2 really isn't that complex a machine.  As with T3, the important parts for the purposes of building a new implementation are the byte code instruction set, which is all in one big switch statement in one source file, and the .gam file format, which is likewise a fairly straightforward gob of code in one .c file.

The other thing about wishing for more formal specs is that, if you go through the canon of ANSI specs, you might find that C is not the most obtuse formal language that's ever been devised for the purposes of specifying the behavior of a computer system. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=10#p28930
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: mjroberts / DateTime: 2011-12-24 01:44:57

[quote="Jim Aikin"]It's too bad Uli doesn't want to update his version of Workbench. I asked him about that a year or two ago.[/quote]

I can certainly understand that he's moved on to other projects.  Do you happen to know from that conversation if he's also opposed to someone else taking it over?  I've been assuming not, and even put a note to that effect on the tads.org download page where the old version is linked for historical reference; if he doesn't even want anyone to take it over, I should remove that note.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=10#p28931
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-12-24 01:46:14

[quote="George"]That's on the front page of tads.org. 

Now you can argue the merits of calling something a power tool for X, but I don't think it's fair to describe in detail how a power tool for X isn't appropriate for beginners.[/quote]

That's fair enough and a good point. I'm not talking about the language, though. I'm talking about the artifacts that surround the language and make it usable. But even us programmers may get tripped up when we read a comment in the auto-generated file that says this:

 *   Note that we aren't required to define any vocabulary or description
 *   for this object, because the class Actor, defined in the library,
 *   automatically provides the appropriate definitions for an Actor when
 *   the Actor is serving as the player character.  Note also that we don't
 *   have to do anything special in this object definition to make the
 *   Actor the player character; any Actor can serve as the player
 *   character, [b]and we'll establish this one as the PC in main(), below.[/b]

There is no main() below. But as programmer, I've heard of main() before. So it must be there. So does this mean a different file that was generated? (I already know the answer; my point is that power programmers also like to feel confidence that they trust what's being displayed to them.)

Likewise, I read in another comment (again, on the auto-generated starter file):

 *   Our game credits and version information.  This object isn't required
 *   by the system, but our [b]GameInfo initialization above[/b] needs this for
 *   some of its information.

What "GameInfo initialization [i]above[/i]"?

So if I'm a power programmer, I may not have read the manuals yet because, after all, I'm learning from code and comments in it. Yet from these comments, I now have to read the documentation. And thus I ran into my other issues already mentioned.

Again, though, not dismissing your point: I realize TADS has positioned itself as the "programmer's power tool for IF authoring" but how the tool can be used and how the tool can be intuited in order to be put to use are two different things. "Newbies" to a system can be power programmers as well; they don't have to be newbies in the sense of never had programming experience. But they are new to [i]this[/i] particular system and that's more what I was speaking to.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=10#p28932
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: mjroberts / DateTime: 2011-12-24 01:55:59

[quote="Jim Aikin"]There are, at the moment, a few things I don't understand about the Web setup. The trial version of "Mrs. Pepper's" that Nikos uploaded a few days ago had this really weird pop-up box for the hint system, and I have no idea whether that's the default, or whether it's an experiment he was trying.[/quote]

"Weird pop-up box"?  Interesting; it's just meant to look like a dialog window, and yes, it is the default.  But this is a v0, obviously; if it's not what people want, it can be fixed.  It's also one of those cool new endlessly malleable javascript things that's totally fixable per game - anything and everything you see in the UI is under your control as an author regardless of what the library wants to do.  Of course, there's a small matter of javascript programming, but that's an area where there are about 10^15 competent programmers in the world, so it might be relatively easy to find someone to help out with that part if you're not into it yourself.

[quote="Jim Aikin"] So even if I'm content (as I probably am) to write a standard text game that will be playable on IFDB, I don't exactly know what special steps I may need to take ... and I may not know what the game will look like in a browser until I've released it, which, now that I think of it, may be a problem. If there are differences between the local version in my computer and the way it looks in Firefox, IE, or Chrome, I won't know until it's "live" on IFDB.[/quote]

You can see exactly how it looks locally without setting up any web servers or anything else.  The default setup locally is to seamlessly launch an encapsulated IE, and in fact when you're building under Workbench that's what you'll see in every test run.  So just by pressing F5 you'll see exactly what the IE rendering looks like.  Right now there's an extra manual step per run to look at it under other browsers, but you don't have to set up an Apache or anything like that - all you need is t3run and the browser you want to test with.  Now that you mention it, though, this would be a good thing to automate through Workbench - I did a lot of it in my own testing but it didn't really occur to me that authors would need to do so much of it as the webui lib is supposed to give you browser independence; but of course part of my whole sales pitch is how you can write all this cool javascript code (I just did it ten seconds ago in the upper paragraph of this post, for heaven's sake), so of course you'll want to be able to test under different browsers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4013&start=0#p28933
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Will Glulxe/Blorb Games ever run on ipad/kindle/nook/mob
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-12-24 02:44:12

[quote="frotz"]Once I get DOS Frotz and Unix Frotz back up to speed and doing Blorb, I'll be looking at Android.[/quote]
Oh excellent. I have a couple of playtesters who kept complaining about not being able to play it on their phones. *rolls eyes*

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3906&start=0#p28935
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: graphics resolution in t3
User: zodraz2001 / DateTime: 2011-12-24 08:47:47

My problem I find playing a text adventure is that sometimes you have a location which does not contain all the information for a room, or simply from the context of interest if you only have 3 items in a room which should in real life have a lot more for example in a livingroom, then if you have a graphic, everything that you can see exsists in the game room.  When I play text adventures I am imagining what the location would look like and thinking how I could create that location in 3d.  I should say that I use 3d graphics a lot which is why I made the decision, right or wrong, to have the graphics in the game. Your point about the interpreter is that the game will be a stand-alone windows exe files.  The object graphic is a clue so that the player does not waste time trying to do something with an object in a room, whereas if an object has its own graphic then you know that you can use or interact with it.  I am not a hack and slash fan so I am not writing a graphical game, hence the text adventure, the graphics simply enhances the location description.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4015&start=0#p28936
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3.1 released!
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2011-12-24 08:53:25

[quote="Jim Aikin"]I hadn't looked at that page in a long, long time, and I agree with you. I suspect Eric wrote that material quite early in the development of T3,[/quote]

That's absolutely right. In terms of the life-span of T3 that part of the documentation is quite antediluvian. So far as I recall, it's not even something I wrote myself; I think I just incorporated some of Mike's older documentation at that point for the purposes of the first official release.

[quote="Jim Aikin"]and it does need to be revised in light of (a) how most people will be learning T3 today and (b) the more robust competition from I7.[/quote]

I agree it probably does need revising. In fact I've felt some discontent with [i]Getting Started[/i] for a while, which is one reason I wrote [i]Learning TADS 3[/i] as an alternative. Quite a while back I posted on the old TADS 3 list suggesting a thorough re-write of the [i]Getting Started[/i] guide might be needed, but at the time the suggestion was met with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. Since then I've not had the time or energy to pursue it.

[quote="Jim Aikin"]If I were writing it today, I'd make the top-level distinction, "Are you using Windows or not?" Because if you are, you can just install the whole Author's Kit and then launch Workbench. You never need to touch that other stuff. The other stuff is relevant only for Mac and Linux users.[/quote]

That might be a useful approach. I think the prior question is, how can creating a new game in TADS 3 be made as easy as possible for non-Windows users (especially non-Windows beginners)? As a Windows user with no experience of Mac or Unix (apart from briefly using Xenix at work in the early 90s) I'm not familiar enough with non-Windows flavours of TADS 3 to know. It's a good idea to make it clear to Windows users that they should just use Workbench and ignore the rest (at least, for introductory purposes) but I'd need input from non-Windows users on how best to present the material for them. Or would it be better to take the manual creation of a new game file out of [i]Getting Started[/i] altogether, and stick in in the [i]Technical Manual[/i]?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=10#p28937
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2011-12-24 08:59:29

[quote="Jim Aikin"]But confronted with three completely different books by Eric, all of which teach T3 from the ground up, how is the new user to know which book to use??? The Library Reference Manual is a great resource -- but only for the knowledgeable TADS author, not for the newcomer.[/quote]

Thank you for your kind and courteous appreciation of my efforts, but there seems to be a slight misunderstanding here. There are only two books intended to teach T3 from the ground up: [i]Getting Started[/i] and [i]Learning TADS 3[/i]. The [i]Library Reference Manual[/i] isn't by me (it's computer-generated from the comments in the library source code) and it certainly isn't intended as a tutorial. As its name implies, it's for reference. The introductions to the other two books try to  give some guidance on the different approaches to take, so that new users can select whichever is more likely to suit them.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=10#p28938
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2011-12-24 09:06:47

[quote="Mike Roberts"](you'd have to ask Eric how he feels about that for the GSG et al, but for my portions, I'd be perfectly happy to work with anyone who wants to rework anything or write new chapters - I'll want to have a say as editor and want to feel that contributions would actually be improvements, naturally, but I harbor no illusions that the bar I set for documentation quality is beyond mortal reach). [/quote]

I reckon I feel pretty much the same as Mike on this subject. I'd also be happy to take constructive suggestions on improving the GSG myself. If I were writing it from scratch today I'd probably take a very different approach, but in sense I already did that when I wrote [i]Learning TADS 3[/i], so I'm not sure I can face writing another tutorial manual from scratch (by which I mean I'm quite sure I can't), and I get the impression (which may be mistaken) that there are some people who still find the GSG helpful. But I've long felt that the introductory sections of the GSG might not be as newbie-friendly as I'd ideally like, so if anyone would like to help me improve them (or offer practicable positive suggestios on how they could be improved) do please let me know.

-- Eric

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4015&start=0#p28939
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3.1 released!
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-24 11:17:59

OS X and Linux development is essentially just FrobTADS + a text editor + a terminal.

I'm quite happy with my setup now but I remember looking for a long time for an editor with decent syntax highlighting for TADS. Eventually I settled on gVim / MacVim. That's not a choice that will work for everyone and it's somewhat cruel as a recommendation for beginners, but it works really well as a T3 dev environment.

General best practice recommendations:

- Name your makefile 'Makefile.t3m'. One of the guides had me do something else and I had to supply a filename to t3make every time I recompiled. Nikos eventually enlightened me and that was a big quality of life boost. Now I can map <F5> to save & invoke the compiler and it works no matter what project I'm editing.

- Make a project specific header file first. Put the includes for adv3 and en_us in there. Then include only that header at the top of all your other source files. This makes it a lot easier to define macros and templates and libGlobal aliases down the road.

- Have some sort of version-controlled store. Dropbox works pretty well at first; put your project files in a folder there and you're set. That lets you recover an earlier version of a file from up to 30 days in the past. Eventually I moved to [url=http://fossil-scm.org/]Fossil[/url] for source control.

One thing that might help would be a skeleton option that you could pass to t3make to get it to create a new project in a particular directory. Run "t3make -skel <dir>" and it creates a Makefile.t3m, <dirname>.t, <dirname>.h, and an obj/ subdirectory.

Authors could eventually customize that skeletal structure to taste but the defaults would be sensible and allow for a step-by-step guide without a lot of decision points.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=10#p28940
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-24 11:29:30

[quote="Eric Eve"][quote="Jim Aikin"]But confronted with three completely different books by Eric, all of which teach T3 from the ground up, how is the new user to know which book to use??? The Library Reference Manual is a great resource -- but only for the knowledgeable TADS author, not for the newcomer.[/quote]

Thank you for your kind and courteous appreciation of my efforts, but there seems to be a slight misunderstanding here. There are only two books intended to teach T3 from the ground up: [i]Getting Started[/i] and [i]Learning TADS 3[/i]. The [i]Library Reference Manual[/i] isn't by me (it's computer-generated from the comments in the library source code) and it certainly isn't intended as a tutorial.[/quote]
I knew that. That was a bad segue on my part. I was referring to the Tour Guide (implicitly) as number 3, and then segueing to a different topic.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=10#p28941
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-24 11:33:41

[quote="mjroberts"][quote="Jim Aikin"]There are, at the moment, a few things I don't understand about the Web setup. The trial version of "Mrs. Pepper's" that Nikos uploaded a few days ago had this really weird pop-up box for the hint system, and I have no idea whether that's the default, or whether it's an experiment he was trying.[/quote]

"Weird pop-up box"?  Interesting; it's just meant to look like a dialog window, and yes, it is the default.  But this is a v0, obviously; if it's not what people want, it can be fixed.  It's also one of those cool new endlessly malleable javascript things that's totally fixable per game - anything and everything you see in the UI is under your control as an author regardless of what the library wants to do.  Of course, there's a small matter of javascript programming, but that's an area where there are about 10^15 competent programmers in the world, so it might be relatively easy to find someone to help out with that part if you're not into it yourself.[/quote]
I've done a tiny bit of JS programming myself (emphasis on "tiny"), so that part doesn't scare me. But will I be able to customize the appearance of the box using JS while also writing a vanilla text-only game to be run on IFDB? My guess, based on a very sketchy understanding of the system, would be "no."

What was weird was the blue banner across the top. Why blue? A nice gray or brownish gray would be less jarring. Other than that, the only weird thing was the missing output filter, which I think you know about.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4013&start=10#p28942
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Will Glulxe/Blorb Games ever run on ipad/kindle/nook/mob
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-24 12:03:08

[quote="frotz"][quote="Egon"]Are there any interpreters for Android?[/quote]

Once I get DOS Frotz and Unix Frotz back up to speed and doing Blorb, I'll be looking at Android.[/quote]

Oh yes please [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=20#p28943
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-24 12:04:38

[quote="Jim Aikin"]I've done a tiny bit of JS programming myself (emphasis on "tiny"), so that part doesn't scare me. But will I be able to customize the appearance of the box using JS while also writing a vanilla text-only game to be run on IFDB? My guess, based on a very sketchy understanding of the system, would be "no."[/quote]

Yes, you can customize all the included JS / HTML / CSS files and still host it on IFDB. All of those resources are part of the T3 image and fully under your control.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=20#p28944
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: Morana / DateTime: 2011-12-24 12:07:49

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Because the Inform system is less ambitious, the author of a conventional text-only game basically doesn't have to do anything by way of separate compilation. The interpreter is loaded into the browser as Javascript code.[/quote]
Personally I like TADS 3's server-side solution. I have long been wanting to be able to create a multiuser interactive storytelling experience, and now I can do just that. Granted, this is mostly theoretical right now; as I have no desire to code the multiuser equivalent of the Adv3Web library on my own, it seems I still have a while to wait. More realistically, I can soon relive the joys of watching people play my IF in real time—a joy I have not experienced in 15 years—even if they live hundreds of miles away.

[quote="Jim Aikin"]To me, one of the chief pleasures of writing IF is that I don't have to be a heavy-duty programmer.[/quote]
This is also one of my chief pleasures. I do not think taking advantage of the new web browser system will make me feel like a "heavy-duty programmer". Of course, this may be a relative thing. Before using TADS 3 I had only tried making text adventures using BASIC and Ruby.

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Without Eric's hard work, nobody would be using this system. Eric is a lucid and thoughtful writer.[/quote]
Here is where we find agreement. Eric has definitely done a great service to our community.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=20#p28945
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2011-12-24 13:02:05

[quote="Jim Aikin"]I knew that. That was a bad segue on my part. I was referring to the Tour Guide (implicitly) as number 3, and then segueing to a different topic.[/quote]

Fair enough; that explains your otherwise seemingly puzzling comment! [emote]:D[/emote] 

Still, as a matter of fact, when I wrote the [i]Tour Guide[/i] I intended it as a sequel to [i]Getting Started[/i], not as yet another alternative introductory guide. Does that need to be made clearer? I get the impression that some people may indeed be using the [i]Tour Guide[/i] as a way into TADS 3, and perhaps that approach does suit certain people coming to TADS 3 from a certain kind of background, but I wouldn't want the total newbie to think it was a third possible basic introduction, since it was never meant to be that. 

Perhaps what's needed is one very short and basic Newbie guide that covers the absolute basics of writing, compiling and running the most basic of TADS 3 games (two rooms and one portable object, for instance) and then directs the reader to a choice of [i]Getting Started[/i] or [i]Learning TADS 3[/i] (or the [i]Tour Guide[/i]?) based on their previous experience and the kind of approach they think might best suit them. Any thoughts, anyone?

-- Eric

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=20#p28946
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-24 13:19:26

[quote="bcressey"][quote="Jim Aikin"]I've done a tiny bit of JS programming myself (emphasis on "tiny"), so that part doesn't scare me. But will I be able to customize the appearance of the box using JS while also writing a vanilla text-only game to be run on IFDB? My guess, based on a very sketchy understanding of the system, would be "no."[/quote]

Yes, you can customize all the included JS / HTML / CSS files and still host it on IFDB. All of those resources are part of the T3 image and fully under your control.[/quote]
Looking at "The Web UI" in the System Manual, I'm not finding any instructions on how I might do that. I'm sure it's possible, and maybe there are comments in those various files that will explain the process. When I glance at layoutwin.js, however, the comments seem less than entirely elucidatory, if there is such a word.

I probably sound like I'm complaining again. Realistically, this is an immensely complex IF authoring system, and it's being created entirely by volunteer labor. Expecting that it would also include a nice copy of "T3 Web Programming for Dummies" would be silly to the point of arrogance. (Insert 15-second clip of Monty Python's "Upper-Class Twit" sketch.)

The bottom line, I think, is that we're still in an evolving or unfolding posture here. The software now exists, but the process of exploring it and learning to use it remains to be undertaken.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=20#p28947
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-24 13:22:03

[quote="Eric Eve"]Perhaps what's needed is one very short and basic Newbie guide that covers the absolute basics of writing, compiling and running the most basic of TADS 3 games (two rooms and one portable object, for instance) and then directs the reader to a choice of [i]Getting Started[/i] or [i]Learning TADS 3[/i] (or the [i]Tour Guide[/i]?) based on their previous experience and the kind of approach they think might best suit them. Any thoughts, anyone?[/quote]
I've just emailed you about this. I have an idea how to approach it, and I'm probably volunteering to do the work....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4022&start=0#p28948
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Mammoth Vacuum Button of Death
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-12-24 17:14:27

You may wish to upload this to the ADRIFT Adventures page at adrift.co, and consider joining/starting up a conversation about your game on the ADRIFT Forum.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4024&start=0#p28949
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: New York-based IF group -- any interest?
User: Lucea / DateTime: 2011-12-24 21:39:01

So it's time to start thinking about the new year, and it seems odd that one of the biggest cities in the world doesn't have an active IF meetup group. I'm more than willing to head that up if there's interest. So... is there?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3983&start=10#p28950
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Examine north wall == Examine north
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-12-24 22:46:31

There is only one way that I know of that works every time, and unfortunately, it involves hacking the library. I introduced a global variable that allowed the program to turn on/off the inference messages depending on the value of the global. 

Here's my code, in parserm.h:

[code]
!-- line 345 Added
Global inferpr = true;   ! If true, print inference messages

!-- line 1875 Modified
if ((inferfrm ~=0) && (inferpr)) { 
print "("; PrintCommand(inferfrom); print ")^";
}
[/code]

You'd set inferpr to false whenever you'd want to kill the messages, and then turn it on right afterward, like this:

[code]
inferpr= false;
<examine wallobj>;
inferpr = true;
return true;
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3983&start=10#p28951
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: Examine north wall == Examine north
User: frotz / DateTime: 2011-12-24 22:58:40

That would be tricky to apply to inferences about the directions.  No inferences are made when referring to the walls.  Wasn't there something about a higher return value making an inference message disappear?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4026&start=0#p28953
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Setting Up FrobTADS
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-25 11:53:12

In order to gather some info with which to perhaps tidy up the T3 documentation, I thought I'd try installing FrobTADS on my Mac and document the process. I've run into a couple of things that I don't understand. Hopin' someone can put me in the picture....

Rather than open a Terminal window and type "t3make -d -f TestGame" every time, I created a .command file, TestGame.command, which contains that text. When I do this with Inform 6, double-clicking the .command file opens a Terminal window and runs the compiler, easy as you please.

But when I do this with my new TestGame.command for TADS, Finder pops up an alert box that complains, "The file TestGame.command" could not be executed because you do not have the appropriate access privileges. To view or change access privileges, select the file in the finder and choose File > Get Info." Okay, I can fix that. Except ... fixing it doesn't work. I change the access privileges so that everyone is read/write, and I get the same error message as before.

Conversely, when I copy a TestGame.command file over from the Inform 6 Games directory and change its text to the t3make command, I don't get the error message. This .command file runs. And its access privileges are actually more restrictive than those of the file that won't run. I'd sure like to know what's going on here, because I'd like to tell new users how to do it if they don't have a properly set up .command file to start with, but are creating one from scratch.

But wait -- there's more.

Now that I have a .command file that (mysteriously) runs, I double-click it and the Terminal window says, "error: unable to read option file "TestGame.t3m". I get this same message if I type the text in the .command file manually at the Terminal prompt. But that file is certainly present in the same directory with TestGame.command. There's no typo in the filename. And it contains exactly the text given in the Getting Started Guide. Well, almost. There seems to be a typo in that text. It says -omygame.t3. It should probably have a space after the -o flag. But adding or removing that space makes no difference. I get the same error message. In any case, the error message isn't about a problem within the file. The error message says it can't read the file.

I've tried closing the .t3m file in my text editor, just on the off-chance the text editor was hanging onto it and refused to let anybody else touch it. That doesn't help. I tried adding the #include for adv3.h, which is omitted from the GSG instructions, to TestGame.t. That doesn't help either.

Setting up FrobTADS is easy, I'm sure -- once you know what you're doing. Can anyone help me troubleshoot this stuff so I can document the steps? Thanks hugely!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4024&start=0#p28954
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: New York-based IF group -- any interest?
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-12-25 12:49:25

I'd certainly be interested in learning more about it.


Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4026&start=0#p28955
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Setting Up FrobTADS
User: tomasb / DateTime: 2011-12-25 12:50:29

[quote="Jim Aikin"]I change the access privileges so that everyone is read/write, and I get the same error message as before.
[/quote]
Sorry, I'm not a Mac user, but rather a Linux user. But since Mac is Unix-based, isn't the problem you must give the file executable permission rather than read or write?
[quote="Jim Aikin"]error: unable to read option file "TestGame.t3m". I get this same message if I type the text in the .command file manually at the Terminal prompt. But that file is certainly present in the same directory with TestGame.command.
[/quote]
Desktop icon could run the command in a wrong directory. Try something like  "cd /correct/directory && t3make -d -f TestGame.t3m". Or try "pwd" command to show actual directory in terminal.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4026&start=0#p28956
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Setting Up FrobTADS
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-25 13:30:46

Files on Unix systems (and Mac OS X is a Unix system) don't only have read and write permissions, but as tomasb mentioned, they also have execute permissions. It's different from Windows where the file extension defines if a file is executable or not (for example a file extension of *.exe, *.cmd or *.bat tells the system that it can be executed). Unix doesn't use file extensions for that. It uses a permission flag. So just like you can make a file "writable" or "readable", you can also make it "executable."

I don't know why Apple does not provide a way to mark files as being "executable" in the Finder. I just tried it myself and I can't find any way in the "Get Info" dialog to make a file executable. But as with Linux (or other Unix systems), you can mark a file as being "executable" with the following command:

chmod +x filename

So in your case:

chmod +x TestGame.command

(To remove the "executable" flag again, you would use "-x" instead of "+x".)

The reason your other .command file is working when copying it, is because that file already has the "exec" flag set on it, and that is preserved when copying.


Edit:
Btw, the FrobTADS installer on tads.org is still version 1.0, which means it supports TADS 3.0.18.1. You can find a test version of FrobTADS 1.1 with 3.1.0 support here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://foss.aegean.gr/~realnc/FrobTADS-1.1.dmg">http://foss.aegean.gr/~realnc/FrobTADS-1.1.dmg</a>

Note that it needs Mac OS X 10.6 and higher (due to the new network functionality in TADS 3.1.) It won't work with OS X 10.5.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4027&start=0#p28957
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Using subtime - TADS1.3
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-12-25 15:12:13

Well, here I am using TADS3.1

I finally have subtime.t working well in my game except for a small problem. I am using a watch to tell the time and it works great. I would like to be able to tell the time using the following commands 'time' or 'read time' or 'look at time' or 'l time'.

I've been searching through the manuals but I can't find what I need to accomplish this. Once again, I'm looking here for someone to bail me out. [emote]:?:[/emote]

Rong

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4024&start=0#p28958
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: New York-based IF group -- any interest?
User: Jeff Zeitlin / DateTime: 2011-12-25 15:24:24

So too would I be.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4027&start=0#p28959
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using subtime - TADS1.3
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-25 15:29:40

Reading subtime.t suggests that the clockManager object can give you the info you need through its checkTimeFmt() method. So all you need is to create a new verb matches the commands you specified in your post and that prints whatever checkTimeFmt() returns.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4026&start=0#p28960
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Setting Up FrobTADS
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-25 16:32:39

Thanks, Nikos! With your help, I was able to put together a fairly complete set of instructions for new users (see below). If anyone has suggestions on how this material could be further clarified, feel free to jump in. I'm hoping that perhaps this material can be included in a future version of the Getting Started Guide. I don't know what differences Linux users may encounter, but if I were Eric, I'd separate that section of the GSG into three subsections by OS, so that people can jump to whatever section they need.

--JA

P.S.: I know the download I have is only for 3.0.18. That doesn't concern me greatly at the moment. At some point in the future it will become relevant, I'm sure, but maybe by then the standard download will be 3.1.

*****

Reasonably coherent instructions for setting up TADS 3 on your Macintosh:

1) Download FrobTADS, double-click on the .dmg file, and run the installer.

2) Create a directory to hold your projects, and a subdirectory within it to hold your first project. For example, in Documents, create TADS. In TADS, create a MyGame folder.

3) In the folder for your first project, create a folder called obj. This will hold the object files created by the compiler while it's running. You won't need to be concerned about anything in this folder -- it will take care of itself.

4) Using a text editor, create a .t3m file. For convenience, give the .t3m file the same name as the project -- perhaps MyGame.t3m. Copy the following text into your new .t3m file and save the file to the project folder:

[code]-DLANGUAGE=en_us
-DMESSAGESTYLE=neu
-Fy obj -Fo obj
-o MyGame.t3
-lib system
-lib adv3/adv3
-source MyGame[/code]
Replace "MyGame" in the code above with the name of your actual game, if it's different.

5) Open a Terminal window. The Terminal program is located in Applications > Utilities. You may want to make an alias for it and drag it into your Dock.

6) Create a starter game file, again as a text file, and save it to the MyGame directory. Your starter game should look more or less like this:

[code]#include <adv3.h>
#include <en_us.h>

gameMain: GameMainDef
  initialPlayerChar = me
;

versionInfo: GameID
  name = 'My First Game'
  byline = 'by Bob Author'
  authorEmail = 'Bob Author <bob@myisp.com>'
  desc = 'This is an example of how to start a new game project. '
  version = '1'
  IFID = 'b8563851-6257-77c3-04ee-278ceaeb48ac'
;

firstRoom: Room 'Starting Room'
  "This is the boring starting room."
;

+me: Actor
;[/code]
7) In the Terminal, use the cd (change directory) command to navigate to the folder where your game files are stored. For instance, you might type 'cd Documents/TADS/MyGame' and then hit Return.

8) While the Terminal is logged into this directory, you can compile your game using this command:

[code]t3make -d -f MyGame[/code]

If all goes well, you should see a string of messages in the Terminal window, and a new file (MyGame.t3) will appear in the MyGame directory. This is your compiled game file. If you've installed an interpreter program that can run TADS games, you'll be able to double-click the .t3 file and launch the game so as to test your work.

Alternatively, you can run the game directly in the Terminal by typing 'frob MyGame.t3' and hitting Return.

9) Instead of typing the t3make command every time you want to compile your game, you can create a .command file in your project folder and then double-click this file. Double-clicking the .command file will launch Terminal and pass the text in the .command file to Terminal.

However, when you try this, the Macintosh is quite likely to object that you don't have permission to execute the .command file. There seems to be no way to fix this using the Info box (which is opened using Cmd-I). You'll have to do it from the Terminal. Navigate, as before, to the directory where your .command file is located, and type this into the Terminal:
[code]
chmod +x MyGame.command[/code]
Again, substitute the name of your actual .command file. The chmod instruction with a +x flag will make the .command file executable. Now you can double-click it to compile your game -- but only if Terminal is already logged into the game's directory. If no Terminal window is open, that won't be the case. To remedy this problem, add the cd line to the beginning of the .command file, so that the .command file looks something like this (substituting the name of your directory and game file):

[code]cd Documents/TADS/MyGame
t3make -d -f MyGame[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4026&start=0#p28961
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Setting Up FrobTADS
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-25 16:55:54

One thing you could improve is the naming of the t3m file. If you name it "Makefile.t3m", then you can build your game with simply entering "t3make" (or "t3make -d" for a debug build) and there's no need to use "-f MyGame.t3m" at all. If t3make can find a file named "Makefile.t3m" in the current directory, it will use it automatically.

Furthermore, the makefile itself can be simplified to this:

[code]-DLANGUAGE=en_us
-DMESSAGESTYLE=neu
-Fy obj -Fo obj
-o MyGame.t3
-lib system
-lib adv3/adv3

# List your game's source files here
MyGame[/code]

That is, you don't need the "-source" option and it makes it clearer that your game doesn't need to be put in a single *.t file. You could as well have something like:

[code]-DLANGUAGE=en_us
-DMESSAGESTYLE=neu
-Fy obj -Fo obj
-o MyGame.t3
-lib system
-lib adv3/adv3

# List your game's source files here
main
verbs
kitchen
livingroom
[/code]

Having separate source files is very helpful as your game grows bigger. Every time you create a new source file, you simply append it at the end of the makefile.

Also, it's probably a bad idea to specify an IFID. Let the compiler generate its own. Otherwise people might keep the example IFID and as a result we might have games out there using the same one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3938&start=0#p28962
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: PM Attachment File Types
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-12-25 21:27:08

[quote="Merk"].. and added a few "document" extension types - .gblorb, .z8, .z5, .gam, and .i7x (although I don't actually know what that last one is).[/quote]
.i7x is an extension for Inform 7.  Find lots of .i7x files at <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/all-extensions/">http://inform7.com/extensions/all-extensions/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4024&start=0#p28963
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: New York-based IF group -- any interest?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-12-25 21:48:53

I posted to the Seattle group blog to spread the word.  The post will also appear on Planet I-F soon.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4024&start=0#p28964
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: New York-based IF group -- any interest?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2011-12-25 22:02:22

How many cities [i]do[/i] have IF groups? I only knew of the Boston one and I'm only hearing about the Seattle one for the first time.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4024&start=0#p28965
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: New York-based IF group -- any interest?
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-25 22:06:18

Boston is the most vigorous one, but there are others in Seattle, Chicago, San Fransisco and (I think) Vancouver.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4026&start=0#p28966
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Setting Up FrobTADS
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-25 22:54:56

[quote="RealNC"]Btw, the FrobTADS installer on tads.org is still version 1.0, which means it supports TADS 3.0.18.1. You can find a test version of FrobTADS 1.1 with 3.1.0 support here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://foss.aegean.gr/~realnc/FrobTADS-1.1.dmg">http://foss.aegean.gr/~realnc/FrobTADS-1.1.dmg</a>

Note that it needs Mac OS X 10.6 and higher (due to the new network functionality in TADS 3.1.) It won't work with OS X 10.5.[/quote]
I'm running 10.6.8. The 3.1 compiler seems to work for me (I tested it with the new <<if xxx>> syntax), but neither Zoom 1.1.5 nor CocoaTads 0.2 can play the resulting game. It seems to be playable only from the Terminal. Zoom was able to run a game compiled under 3.0.18, so maybe there's something going on with the new VM features ... dunno.

Zoom's error message is "VM Error: error reading file". Ditto for CocoaTads.

I get the same error when attempting to load into Zoom a game compiled with 3.1 for Windows. (I'm running Workbench under Crossover on my Mac -- haven't tried it with a game actually compiled on my Windows machine, but the compiled game runs under the terp that's bundled with Workbench.) So apparently this is not a problem with FrobTads, it's a problem with Zoom. I'll alert Andrew Hunter.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4026&start=0#p28967
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Setting Up FrobTADS
User: tomasb / DateTime: 2011-12-26 02:38:57

Every interpreter must be updated to the new version of TADS to be able to play games compiled for TADS 3.1. There were changes to VM.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3758&start=0#p28976
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Object Description Array or One Time Description
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2011-12-26 04:04:20

Ooo! That is really slick! Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4028&start=0#p28977
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: HTML TADS and Colors
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2011-12-26 04:07:36

I am updating my game to utilize some of the sound and color setting capabilities of HTML TADS. I have the <body> tag specifying a bgcolor of black and text color (via 'text' attribute) of white. But the input text is still showing black. How do I set the input text color within the game code for the TADS3 HTML interpreter?

Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3974&start=0#p28979
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: SAFTAP - Scott Adams Format Text Adventure Player: Suggs
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2011-12-26 05:10:32

Quick update.

The port from AdvPDA (Basic4PPC) to SAFTAP (VB6) is going well.

TIP: If you ever want to check your code for stuff even when you think its good, try porting it!

I found unused variables in my code left over from the very early testing days of AdvPDA as well as recapping how bad my programming indentation was (even after I thought I tidied it up). Other stuff from the AdvPDA code seems pretty solid though [emote]:)[/emote]
[code]
[Technical programming psychobabble alert]
The "Return {value}" function of Basic4PPC was very useful but in VB6, you cannot simply Return {value}. Initially I got lazy on the port and started putting "...: GOTO"s in after setting the functions value to return, but I convinced myself that of course this is bad form so instead replaced it with ever so slightly less bad form of "...: Exit Function" after setting the variable against the function name. I might go back to these in the future sometime to do some proper recoding, but for now I am just itching to see SAFTAP run.

I am however happily removing all the StrIndexOf's, SubString's and StrCompare's etc of Basic4PPC and replacing them with good old fashioned Instr's, Mid's, and the good old fashioned "="'s for string comparison.  :D
[/Technical programming psychobabble alert]
[/code]

In the next couple of days I should have something shabby to show which we can then beef up with sexy stuff but for now, back to the port...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4019&start=0#p28980
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Kobo Touch + Development = IF No Brainer
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2011-12-26 05:21:39

Well, well, well, wonders never cease ... Amazon have replied to my 'final email to them' for an SDK request!

Perhaps it was the mention in my 'final' email to them about my thoughts turning developing for the Kobo Touch and abandoning the Kindle beta SDK waiting list that I have been on for aeons that made them respond, perhaps I just got lucky. Who knows. Probably the latter.  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote] 

Anyway ... a mid term project as I say. I will respond back to Amazon for their request of more information and a wireframe / story board of how my IF app on Kindle could work ... 

Kobo Touch vs Kindle Touch (vs Nook Touch?). Lots of pros and cons to be weighed up and lots of emails and thought to fly around before a decision is made on this one ...

Watch this space I guess ...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3998&start=10#p28981
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: older Inform6 and color flag
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-12-26 07:45:42

[quote="frotz"][quote="DavidK"][quote="frotz"]So I take it neither Graham Nelson nor Roger Firth are active in IF anymore?[/quote]Graham is still quietly beavering away on Inform 7, see [url]http://inform7.com/[/url]. Roger isn't active any more as far as I'm aware.[/quote]

Okay, so I'll start up a git repository of the library.  Do you have any hints on getting metastore to do its magic automatically?[/quote]

Questions:

1) Inform 6 has a website that really should be redone (the navigation has always bugged me), and if Roger is no longer active in IF, then his name needs to be taken off several pages, as the person responsible. [url=http://www.inform-fiction.org/suggestions/index.html]See this[/url].

2) There's also the [url=http://www.inform-fiction.org/suggestions/index.html]suggestions list[/url]. Do you have any desire/interest in pursuing these? Some of these are long outstanding and some of them are trivial fixes. 

3) As far as "new directions" go, there is some functionality I'd like to contribute that has been hanging around for quite some time (like disabling the inference messages), but didn't have a way to actually get it heard. Can you make the suggestion process more transparent and/or allow people to join the project?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4026&start=0#p28982
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Setting Up FrobTADS
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-26 08:01:27

tomasb is correct. To run games that were compiled with a v3.1 compiler, you need at least a v3.1 interpreter.

I will release a new QTads version soon, and my guess is that Charles shouldn't take too long with  CocoaTADS either.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4024&start=0#p28983
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: New York-based IF group -- any interest?
User: aparrish / DateTime: 2011-12-26 10:24:39

I am definitely interested.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4027&start=0#p28984
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using subtime - TADS1.3
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-12-26 13:57:20

Thanks for the suggestion. Due to my problems with sight and memory, I have trouble remembering and noting things that I look for in the manuals. Would someone give me some examples on how to create and use the verbs I first mentioned in this post [emote]:?:[/emote] 

That will give me some things to print from this series of posts and use them as references.

RonG

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4030&start=0#p28985
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Monitoring player actions via Daemon
User: Arag-e / DateTime: 2011-12-26 14:25:32

This originally started as an entirely different issue, which I included below. Halfway through writing the example and help request, I got an idea of how to solve it, but I don’t know if what I need is possible.

Question: Is it possible for a Daemon to check what action, or rather, if a specific action, is performed by the player each turn? Not through what effects that action may have, but by actually checking if the player has or hasn’t performed a specific action in each turn. 

Why do I want to do this? Well, see below:

The idea is to make certain repetitive actions display one message the first time you carry them out and a second type of message every successive time. This is simple enough to do via a StopEventList, but there is one situation this does not account for: If the player stops performing this action, does something else, and then goes back to performing the action, the text should reflect the fact that he’s not continuing the action, but retaking it.

For instance, suppose the player’s hitting a training dummy (This is just for example, that’d be one boring-ass task in an actual game):

[code]
trainingRoom: Room 'Training Room'
;

dummy: Thing 'training dummy' 'training dummy' @trainingRoom 
    "It's a wooden training dummy."
    dobjFor(Attack)
    {
        action()
        {
            hitingTheDummyList.doScript();
        }
    }
;

hitingTheDummyList: StopEventList
    [
        'You begin practicing on the dummy. ',
        'You continue striking the dummy. '
    ]
;
[/code]

Using this, the first time you hit the dummy, the first message in the list will show up, and the second one every time afterwards. Simple enough. However, if you go do anything else and then go back to hitting the dummy, only the second item in the list will appear. In order for the descriptions to make sense, it would be ideal if the first message shows up when you strike for the first time, the second message every successive time after that, and if you perform any other action, the first message should show up again when you start hitting the dummy again. Now, this is just a sample of the situation, I could solve this particular instance of the problem with some creative phrasing.  

What I’d like is for this list to keep repeating the last message when it’s being executed over and over, but restart from the beginning if the player does anything else but trigger the list’s doScript. 

Anyhow, to sum it up: I need something that behaves like a StopEventList when it is being executed in succession, but restarts from the beginning when something else besides the list is executed.  The only two things that occurred to me were adding a check to EVERY OHER POSSIBLE ACTION in the room to reset the list (yeah… no), and, more realistically, a Daemon that triggers when the list’s doScript is first fired, and checks what action I perform every turn, resetting the list and shutting itself off as soon as I do something else besides trigger the doScript, only to fire again when the doScript is triggered again, keep checking until the player does something else besides triggering the doScript and so on and so forth..

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4030&start=0#p28986
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Monitoring player actions via Daemon
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-26 15:00:16

That is easy to do by remembering the current turn when the action is performed. Before you do that, you compare the current turn count to the saved one. If they differ by exactly 1, then this means the player performed the same action in the previous turn.

Example:

[code]Thing {
    'doodle' 'doodle'
    "A doodle. "

    lastTurnTaken = 0;

    dobjFor(Take)
    {
        action()
        {
            if (libGlobal.totalTurns - self.lastTurnTaken != 1) {
                "First time. ";
            } else {
                "Continuing. ";
            }
            self.lastTurnTaken = libGlobal.totalTurns;
        }
    }
}[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4030&start=0#p28987
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Monitoring player actions via Daemon
User: George / DateTime: 2011-12-26 15:10:02

Could you do a similar check within the List itself (since EventLists can include functions)?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4027&start=0#p28988
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using subtime - TADS1.3
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-26 15:23:08

Sure. Here is code for a LookAtTime action with verb rules that match your requirements:

TIME
READ TIME
READ THE TIME
LOOK AT TIME
LOOK AT THE TIME
L TIME

[code]DefineIAction(LookAtTime)
    execAction()
    {
        "The time is <<clockManager.checkTimeFmt('hh:mma')>>\n";
    }
    // This action should consume no time (not advance the current turn.)
    // If you prefer that this action should consume actual game time,
    // then delete this.
    actionTime = 0;
;

VerbRule(LookAtTime)
    'time'
    | 'read' (| 'the') 'time'
    | 'look' 'at' (| 'the') 'time'
    | 'l' 'time'
    : LookAtTimeAction
    verbPhrase = 'look/looking at the time'
;[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4030&start=0#p28989
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Monitoring player actions via Daemon
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-26 15:26:30

You might consider using roomBeforeAction in the room. Test the value of gActionIs and the value of gDobj. If you don't get the action of attacking and the dummy as the dobj, reset the counter (I forget its name -- you can look it up in the LRM) for the EventList.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4031&start=0#p28990
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Self Promotion: January's Choose-Your-Own-Novel Month!
User: dacharya64 / DateTime: 2011-12-26 15:49:10

Hello all! A bit of shameless self-promotion here, but this year I'm trying to get my competition up and running! The site is Choose Your Own Novel Month ([url]http://www.chooseyourownnovel.webs.com[/url]), and the goal is to write a piece of interactive fiction (text adventure or choose your own adventure) in the month of January. There are no word goals, just the goal of completing any piece by the end of the month. 

I really want to get as many people as possible! If you're even remotely interested, please sign up as a member of the site and tell anyone you know that may be interested. 

Thanks for your time!

--dacharya64

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=20#p28991
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-12-26 15:55:21

MJR: well a game file decoder and a disassembler I could definitely do. I'll probably start after I've made a new Glulx terp though. Then maybe the remains of what is needed could be filled in by other members of the TADS community.

As to the intrinsics/library, well you won't need to wait around for other implementations any more than you need to wait for bundled versions of TADS (like Gargolye) to update. I presume there is a way to detect which intrinsics are supported, or do stories that need one that isn't just crash? Either way a JS terp could behave the same as the C one does. They too would need to be specified.

As to the speed of a VM-in-a-VM, well that's why I'm so excited by JS terps. The more we can do that appeals to the JS VMs' strengths, the faster our IF VMs will be. It's my hope (and expectation?) that eventually I'll be able to get a JS Glulx interpreter that is faster than Glulxe. The same could be true for TADS.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=20#p28992
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-12-26 16:35:22

[quote="mjroberts"][quote="Jim Aikin"]It's too bad Uli doesn't want to update his version of Workbench. I asked him about that a year or two ago.[/quote]

I can certainly understand that he's moved on to other projects.  Do you happen to know from that conversation if he's also opposed to someone else taking it over?[/quote]

I'm also interested in an answer to that question, speaking as someone who enjoy Mac programming. I'm not saying that I'm ready to start working on a Mac TADS IDE (there is only so much time available and so on) but it is something I'm considering a little bit. And while I'm far from a professional programmer, [url=http://sourceforge.net/projects/opensludge/]I have done programming similar enough[/url] to believe I could pull it off.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=20#p28993
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-26 16:41:21

[quote="Trumgottist"][quote="mjroberts"][quote="Jim Aikin"]It's too bad Uli doesn't want to update his version of Workbench. I asked him about that a year or two ago.[/quote]

I can certainly understand that he's moved on to other projects.  Do you happen to know from that conversation if he's also opposed to someone else taking it over?[/quote]

I'm also interested in an answer to that question, speaking as someone who enjoy Mac programming. I'm not saying that I'm ready to start working on a Mac TADS IDE (there is only so much time available and so on) but it is something I'm considering a little bit. And while I'm far from a professional programmer, [url=http://sourceforge.net/projects/opensludge/]I have done programming similar enough[/url] to believe I could pull it off.[/quote]
Uli Kusterer's website is zathras.de. You should be able to reach him from the contact page there. I don't recall what he said about the source code, but the guy who created the Talking Moose has to be a friendly sort....

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=20#p28994
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-26 16:48:31

[quote="Dannii"]As to the speed of a VM-in-a-VM, well that's why I'm so excited by JS terps. The more we can do that appeals to the JS VMs' strengths, the faster our IF VMs will be. It's my hope (and expectation?) that eventually I'll be able to get a JS Glulx interpreter that is faster than Glulxe. The same could be true for TADS.[/quote]
Google Native Client (NaCl) also has much promise. Not "better" than JS, but it allows for running the current T3VM (C++) inside the browser, at native speed. Building a NaCl TADS terp should be relatively easy (I'm interested in toying around with this one of these days.) JS is still better in supporting more browsers though, since right now NaCl is only supported by Chrome and only when running on x86 and ARM CPUs (even though those two CPUs cover pretty much 99% of everything there is.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=20#p28995
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2011-12-26 17:16:00

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Uli Kusterer's website is zathras.de. You should be able to reach him from the contact page there. I don't recall what he said about the source code, but the guy who created the Talking Moose has to be a friendly sort....[/quote]
Ok. I've sent him an e-mail.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4032&start=0#p28996
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Beforeparsing to add a word
User: Nicola / DateTime: 2011-12-26 18:00:53

Hi guys, I don' know how to use Beforeparsing to add a word infront of player's input

That's my old request, but I got stuck:
<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4007">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4007</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4032&start=0#p28997
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beforeparsing to add a word
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-26 19:12:32

Some hints about what you may need to do are given starting on page 44 of the DM4. Search for parse_array.

You may need to read the library code to figure out exactly what's going on here. Maybe Zarf can give you more concrete information -- this stuff is over my head.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=30#p28998
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: mjroberts / DateTime: 2011-12-26 19:26:06

[quote="Dannii"]MJR: well a game file decoder and a disassembler I could definitely do. I'll probably start after I've made a new Glulx terp though. Then maybe the remains of what is needed could be filled in by other members of the TADS community.[/quote]

That much would be a great start.  You're quite right that once the core VM is in place, the intrinsics would work well as parallel projects that multiple people could pursue, because they plug in to the VM through a well-defined interface.  In fact, I'd bet that building out the intrinsics in a JS version would be a heck of a lot easier than in the base C++ version, because the C++ version has to deal with the usual C++ memory management hassles.

[quote="Dannii"]As to the intrinsics/library, well you won't need to wait around for other implementations any more than you need to wait for bundled versions of TADS (like Gargolye) to update.[/quote]

Well, I didn't meant to suggest that the C++ version would have to wait for a JavaScript terp, rather that the JS terp would constantly have to catch up to the C++ version.  The constantly expanding intrinsics make it a moving target.

(Gargoyle isn't quite analogous in this respect, by the way, because it bundles the original C++ versions of the intrinsics.  For Gargoyle it's a matter of integrating new base code rather than implementing new functionality, so it's a different order of magnitude of work.)

[quote="Dannii"]I presume there is a way to detect which intrinsics are supported, or do stories that need one that isn't just crash?[/quote]

It works like dynamic linking on Unix or Windows - the dependencies are resolved symbolically at load time, so the loader determines if something's missing, and terminates with an error if so.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=30#p28999
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: mjroberts / DateTime: 2011-12-26 19:37:18

[quote="Jim Aikin"][quote="bcressey"][quote="Jim Aikin"]But will I be able to customize the appearance of the box using JS while also writing a vanilla text-only game to be run on IFDB? My guess, based on a very sketchy understanding of the system, would be "no."[/quote]

Yes, you can customize all the included JS / HTML / CSS files and still host it on IFDB. All of those resources are part of the T3 image and fully under your control.[/quote]

Looking at "The Web UI" in the System Manual, I'm not finding any instructions on how I might do that.[/quote]

There's a very rough overview in the section "Direct Javascript Programming" in that chapter.  It basically maps out the organization of the .js files and the main Javascript classes and objects, but doesn't get into anything nearly as specific as how-tos.  Given how new this all is, I don't even know yet what kind of how-tos will actually be interesting.  As you think of concrete things you want to do with it, ask here and I'll try to help, and hopefully over time we can develop some of that discussion into how-to guides and/or more SysMan material.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3998&start=10#p29000
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: older Inform6 and color flag
User: frotz / DateTime: 2011-12-26 20:02:03

[quote="Poster"]
Questions:

1) Inform 6 has a website that really should be redone (the navigation has always bugged me), and if Roger is no longer active in IF, then his name needs to be taken off several pages, as the person responsible. [url=http://www.inform-fiction.org/suggestions/index.html]See this[/url].

2) There's also the [url=http://www.inform-fiction.org/suggestions/index.html]suggestions list[/url]. Do you have any desire/interest in pursuing these? Some of these are long outstanding and some of them are trivial fixes. 

3) As far as "new directions" go, there is some functionality I'd like to contribute that has been hanging around for quite some time (like disabling the inference messages), but didn't have a way to actually get it heard. Can you make the suggestion process more transparent and/or allow people to join the project?[/quote]

1) I got a reply back from Roger and he gave me his blessing to take over things from him.  Given this, I think I would require write access to those pages.

2) Yes, I'm very interested in pursuing those.  Roger said that Cedric Knight set up a CVS somewhere, but when Cedric left the scene, Roger lost access to it.  I'll have to ask Roger again if he has any code fragments lying around.  He didn't quite answer the question of what bits and pieces he has lying around.

3) Perhaps the ideal way to increase transparency and encourage participation would be to put the Library on Sourceforge.  I already run Frotz development there.  I just now created the "Informlib" project which will house further development.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4030&start=0#p29001
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Monitoring player actions via Daemon
User: Arag-e / DateTime: 2011-12-26 20:59:42

[quote="George"]Could you do a similar check within the List itself (since EventLists can include functions)?[/quote]

Yes, I just tried it. In a StopEventList modified usng the code bcressey showed me in [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3837]here[/url], I just added the turn check in the list's check() stage like so:

[code]
hitingTheDummyList: StopEventList
    [
        'You begin practicing on the dummy. ',
    ]
    altList =
    [
        'You continue striking the dummy. '
    ]
    check()
    {
        if (libGlobal.totalTurns - lastTurnTaken != 1) 
            restarting = true;
        else 
            restarting = nil;
        self.lastTurnTaken = libGlobal.totalTurns;
        if (restarting == nil)
            return (nil);
        else
            return (true);
    }
    restarting = true
    lastTurnTaken = 0
;[/code]

That about covers the behaviour I care for and allows me to make subclass of StopEventList that always follows this pattern if I wish it to. I didn't reset the list in this example because I didn't need to after all (this makes things more convenient for my purposes, in fact).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3998&start=10#p29002
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: older Inform6 and color flag
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-12-27 00:05:04

Please consider using Github instead. For one thing, the inform 6 compiler source is already managed there. For another, their "pull request" system is a fantastic way for users to submit patches, for the maintainers/community at large to perform code review, and then to merge the patches into the code base. And for still one more thing, Github offers free web page hosting, so you could get started on that while waiting for control of the old website. Or, because Github supports custom domains, you could keep the hosting at Github and just get Graham/whoever to change where the DNS points to.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4027&start=0#p29003
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using subtime - TADS1.3
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-12-27 13:19:25

Thanks for the help. Your example will help me a lot in my future dealings with new verbs.

RonG [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4033&start=0#p29004
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Major Smarter Parser update
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-12-27 14:20:30

Based on post-comp feedback, I've done a major revision pass on Smarter Parser. While Smarter Parser is designed to ease novice players into IF more gently, I realized I'd lost sight a little bit of the needs of experienced players and the authors themselves, so this update mostly focuses on them. Major changes:

FOR AUTHORS:
[list]
[*] Better documentation, with a summary of each parsing rule and instructions for changing the message and removing it. In general, the attitude is less "set it and forget it" and more "with interesting power comes interesting responsibility."[/*:m]
[*] Rules referring to specific types of nouns (body parts, clothing items, and general surroundings) have been spun off into a new plug-in extension, to reduce potential conflicts with your own implementations.[/*:m]
[*] In general, a trimming back of overly ambitious behaviors: for instance, now looks for only a specific set of adverbs, rather than anything ending with "-ly."[/*:m]
[*] Several new ways to customize output, including replaceable overrides for exactly how reparsed commands are displayed.[/*:m][/list:u]

FOR PLAYERS:
[list]
[*] The NOVICE OFF and CORRECT OFF commands are now better advertised to the player the first time Smarter Parser kicks in, and preferences are stored in an external file when possible. Any future stories using Smarter Parser will automatically honor this file if it exists. [/*:m]
[*] Major speed improvements, including rewriting some low-level matching algorithms in I6, and several other tricks here and there to improve performance. [/*:m]
[*] No longer tries to recognize swear words, in line with the next I7 update which no longer responds to these either.[/*:m][/list:u]

The [url=http://aaronareed.net/tmp/Smarter%20Parser.i7x]new Smarter Parser[/url] is temporarily on my web space, along with the [url=http://aaronareed.net/tmp/Commonly%20Unimplemented.i7x]new extension for unimplemented stuff[/url] (which has a mechanism for authors to remove individual words from the match patterns, if your story has, say, noses but no other body parts). Posting here for feedback on the changes before submitting to the extensions site. Thanks to everyone who provided ideas and suggestions!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3778&start=60#p29005
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Parchment transcripts from IFComp
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2011-12-27 14:23:02

Update: I've made some [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4033]major revisions[/url] to Smarter Parser and started a new thread about it, for anyone who's interested.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4017&start=0#p29006
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Alway Worn Objects - TADS3
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-12-27 16:27:59

What's wrong with this picture?

[code][/code]

/*******************************************************************************
*  Always worn. A class of objects that the player cannot take off.            *
*******************************************************************************/

class AlwaysWorn: Wearable 
wornBy=me
dobjFor(Doff)
{
check()
{
 cannotDoffMsg;
 exit;
} 
} 
cannotDoffMsg = "You really should be wearing this and have no reason to get rid
 of it."
 
/* Exclude these from Drop All and DOFF All. */ 
 
hideFromAll(action) 
{
 return action.ofKind(DropAction)
  ||action.ofKind(DoffAction)
  ||action.ofKind(PutInAction)
  ||inherited(action);
}
;


/*Next batch of code***************/

replace VerbRule(Doff)
('doff'|'drop')dobjList
[emote]:D[/emote]offAction 
verbPhrase='doff/doffing(what)'
; 
[code][/code]

I am using the above two batches of code. The first batch was posted to me by TOMASB. The second, small batch is by me.

I have two AlwaysWorn objects. If I use "Doff" to drop the objects, it works fine and the objects are not dropped. If I use "Drop" to drop the objects then I get a run-time error

Any Ideas [emote]:?:[/emote] 

RonG

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4017&start=0#p29007
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Alway Worn Objects - TADS3
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-27 16:33:19

[code]
[code]
Your code goes here.
[/code]
[/code]

That's how you write code tags in the forum [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4017&start=0#p29008
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Alway Worn Objects - TADS3
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-27 16:41:01

Don't add drop as a synonym for doff at the verb level. Conceptually you are saying that in your game, "drop X" is always equivalent to "remove X". This will break dropping items in the normal course of inventory management.

You should be using "dobjFor(Drop) asDobjFor(Doff)" in your AlwaysWorn class.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4033&start=0#p29009
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Major Smarter Parser update
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2011-12-27 18:13:42

That sounds great, Aaron.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=30#p29010
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: tomasb / DateTime: 2011-12-27 18:22:36

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Looking at "The Web UI" in the System Manual, I'm not finding any instructions on how I might do that. I'm sure it's possible, and maybe there are comments in those various files that will explain the process. When I glance at layoutwin.js, however, the comments seem less than entirely elucidatory, if there is such a word.[/quote]
The dialog boxes could look better and skinning them should be easy. So if you are willing to publish it as a free extension and can draw a png image how exactly it should look like, I offer to do the HTML/CSS/JS programming.

Mjroberts, I hope it's ok if such an extension recycle some of your existing code. In fact it's a double question because I've also programmed a little extension to allow opening a chat window in multiplayer cooperative game session so the players can not only play together, but also chat about the game on side.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3998&start=10#p29013
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: older Inform6 and color flag
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-12-27 21:01:13

[quote="frotz"][quote="Poster"]
Questions:

1) Inform 6 has a website that really should be redone (the navigation has always bugged me), and if Roger is no longer active in IF, then his name needs to be taken off several pages, as the person responsible. [url=http://www.inform-fiction.org/suggestions/index.html]See this[/url].

2) There's also the [url=http://www.inform-fiction.org/suggestions/index.html]suggestions list[/url]. Do you have any desire/interest in pursuing these? Some of these are long outstanding and some of them are trivial fixes. 

3) As far as "new directions" go, there is some functionality I'd like to contribute that has been hanging around for quite some time (like disabling the inference messages), but didn't have a way to actually get it heard. Can you make the suggestion process more transparent and/or allow people to join the project?[/quote]

1) I got a reply back from Roger and he gave me his blessing to take over things from him.  Given this, I think I would require write access to those pages.

2) Yes, I'm very interested in pursuing those.  Roger said that Cedric Knight set up a CVS somewhere, but when Cedric left the scene, Roger lost access to it.  I'll have to ask Roger again if he has any code fragments lying around.  He didn't quite answer the question of what bits and pieces he has lying around.

3) Perhaps the ideal way to increase transparency and encourage participation would be to put the Library on Sourceforge.  I already run Frotz development there.  I just now created the "Informlib" project which will house further development.[/quote]

Ok, sounds good. Thanks for actually responding to my inquiry and taking it seriously.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=30#p29014
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: mjroberts / DateTime: 2011-12-27 21:54:20

[quote="tomasb"]Mjroberts, I hope it's ok if such an extension recycle some of your existing code.[/quote]

Absolutely.  That's all part of the library, which is under essentially an "attribution" license.  The details are in license.txt, but the high-level version is you can do pretty much whatever you want with it as long as you keep the copyright notice with it.

[quote="tomasb"]In fact it's a double question because I've also programmed a little extension to allow opening a chat window in multiplayer cooperative game session so the players can not only play together, but also chat about the game on side.[/quote]

That's fantastic - I had something similar on my long list of things that I had to cut or delay to finally get a release out.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4033&start=0#p29015
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Major Smarter Parser update
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2011-12-27 22:14:24

Stupendous!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4031&start=0#p29016
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Self Promotion: January's Choose-Your-Own-Novel Month!
User: katz / DateTime: 2011-12-27 22:48:03

You're clearly NaNoWriMo inspired; is the idea to both start and finish the game in January, or is it OK to finish a CYOA you started earlier?  (I've got a vested interest, since I have a half-completed CYOA.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4031&start=0#p29017
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Self Promotion: January's Choose-Your-Own-Novel Month!
User: dacharya64 / DateTime: 2011-12-27 22:56:30

Yeah, this is inspired by NaNoWriMo (sorry I forgot to mention that earlier!). It is perfectly fine to finish a project already started. I too have a few uncompleted projects, and figured this would be good motivation to finally finish them...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3998&start=10#p29018
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: older Inform6 and color flag
User: frotz / DateTime: 2011-12-27 23:01:11

[quote="Dannii"]Please consider using Github instead. For one thing, the inform 6 compiler source is already managed there. For another, their "pull request" system is a fantastic way for users to submit patches, for the maintainers/community at large to perform code review, and then to merge the patches into the code base. And for still one more thing, Github offers free web page hosting, so you could get started on that while waiting for control of the old website. Or, because Github supports custom domains, you could keep the hosting at Github and just get Graham/whoever to change where the DNS points to.[/quote]

At least for now I'd like to stay with Sourceforge.  Their new 2.0 interface has me a bit annoyed, but I'm not sure.  I'll poke around at Github some more before making a decision.  I've had an account there for a while under the username "Frotz".  I wonder if I should keep that name or switch to my real name.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4036&start=0#p29019
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: ZMPP for Android released
User: weiju / DateTime: 2011-12-28 03:15:22

Hi folks,

hope you had some nice Christmas holidays. Just wanted to let you know that I just released an Android version of ZMPP on the Market. It's based on the ZMPP2 core that I rewrote in Scala. For now I focused on the Z-Machine and I'll watch how things turn out. 
Check it out if you like (it's free, but displays ads in the browser screen).

Best,

Wei-ju

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4022&start=0#p29020
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Mammoth Vacuum Button of Death
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2011-12-28 08:53:10

Strange game, although it seemed to work ok in v5 for me.  Was there anything specific that didn't work?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4038&start=0#p29022
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: removing objects from scope
User: Peter Rickardson / DateTime: 2011-12-28 12:20:44

I know how to add objects to scope, but how do I remove an object from scope that is in the same location as the PC? I have a tiny needle lying on a table. I want the player to be able to refer to the needle only after having examined the table. Before examining the table the needle is invisible to the player, despite being in sight. How do I code this without resorting to removing and moving?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4022&start=0#p29023
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Mammoth Vacuum Button of Death
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-12-28 12:36:05

Campbell, you might have tried it with the patch you PM'd me about. When I tried this game with my installed version of ADRIFT, I got the same error I PM'd you about.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=20#p29024
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-12-28 12:42:28

So now that we have our first choices--do you also want to take steps to ensure there's no major overlap? Should we do so before submitting the betas to you? I'd be glad to do my share of alpha testing and suspect my game(s) may need a look-over to make sure they're not totally out of left field.

I'm also worried (as a relatively new author) that something I'm doing that might be new may've already been covered before. For instance, I was surprised to see Sokoban "done" circa 1999.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4039&start=0#p29025
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: t3make Does Not Automatically Create Directories
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-12-28 12:42:40

Just checking: is it by design that t3make does not create directories that are specified in a project file? I know the system manual says that project files are not true build files, per se, but it seems like creating directories is still something that would be nice. (Especially given that whole power programmer thing that people are talking about.) For example, I have this makefile.t3m:

[code]
-o "build\exe\HelloWorld.t3"
-Fo "build\obj"
-Fy "build\sym"

hello.t
[/code]

I like this approach because to do a 'clean' task I can just wipe out the build directory. Then when I run t3make again, everything would be recreated. But that doesn't happen because the directories are not created. I understand separate compilation and the dependency mechanism that TADS uses. But Java does the same thing and yet most power programmers still run a 'clean' task for a totally fresh build directory.

I should add that I'm also using t3make from the command line in these situations.

So, again, just checking if this is a bug or by design.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4031&start=0#p29026
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Self Promotion: January's Choose-Your-Own-Novel Month!
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-12-28 12:44:57

Another question--choose-your-own novel makes it seem as though maybe a person is only allowed a discrete number of choices, like from a CyoA book. Will this be the case? I may not have looked closely enough at the rules to tell.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4033&start=0#p29027
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Major Smarter Parser update
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-12-28 13:10:37

I've never actually tried Smarter Parser, but the more I hear about it and its changes like this, the more I want to give it a shot for my next substantial project.

Hmm, I7 will be dropping swear support? It dang well better be adding good stuff! (And I'm sure it will.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4039&start=0#p29028
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: t3make Does Not Automatically Create Directories
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-28 13:33:34

It's by design. That means that when you ship a game's source code, make sure the directories exist in the ZIP/RAR/whatever.

To clean, you can do "t3make -clean".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4018&start=0#p29029
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Web based Text Creator
User: PHPTxtAdv / DateTime: 2011-12-28 13:41:44

I've considered this in the past. Couple of thoughts:

- Localization will be an absolutely nightmare, especially if you're talking about having multiple languages in the same project.

[b]Localization in the game will be done by the creator as i have never personally seen if's with multiple languages, especially with language switching on the fly. The web based system it's self is another story. All of it's screens and layouts will be template based since it uses the [url=http://smarty.net]Smarty[/url] template engine. All you would need to do is modify the templates to your choosen and/or post them for others to drop into their template folder.[/b]

- Cookie-based save games would be bothersome. Many people have cookies disabled, only allow cookies from certain sites, et cetera. Cookies expire or are wiped out by "optimization" or privacy products. A database save based on a user login is really the only viable way of going about this.

[b]Database saves with login infomation was the original idea.[/b]

- Unless you just want to change the way the games are played or written, there's really no point. With Parchment openly available, writing an entirely new product doesn't really make any sense. There are mobile devices that do support Javascript, albeit poorly.

[b]Yea but a system that runs regardless of none, poor or good javascript support was my original intentions. I want my app to run on those cheap mobile phones you get for free or even prepaid mobile phone which usually have very poor browser support. Also installing Opera Mobile isn't an option on most of those phones as there isn't enough memory to run it. I even planned on getting it to work with AWeb the Amiga web browser! [emote];)[/emote]. As i said before libraries don't allow you to install stuff on their machines as it blocked by software like Deep Freeze most of the time as i've seen not to mention my library still uses IE6 [emote]:shock:[/emote]. Last i did mention Accessibility support which i haven't seen yet in any text adventure creator. [/b]

It's never a bad idea to offer something new to the community. Please do interpret this as my trying to discourage you from doing so. Just saying that before you invest your time in the project, make sure that you actually are bringing something new to the table. I know first hand how difficult (and sometimes morale crushing) it can be to try introducing a new product or platform to an existing market.

[b]I understand and i would love to see this flourish myself.[/b]

But if you do decide to run with it, best of luck! I'd be thrilled to see a PHP/MySQLI based IF development platform.

[b]Thanks.[/b]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4033&start=0#p29030
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Major Smarter Parser update
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-12-28 14:17:50

[quote]No longer tries to recognize swear words, in line with the next I7 update which no longer responds to these either.
[/quote]

It sounds like somebody needs to write an extension to take up the slack, perhaps entitled "F***ing Expletives."


Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4031&start=0#p29031
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Self Promotion: January's Choose-Your-Own-Novel Month!
User: dacharya64 / DateTime: 2011-12-28 14:24:08

Participants either have the option of creating games where the player has list of certain choices (like CYOA books) or a text-based adventure game where the player can perform any action. Information on how to make both kinds of games is available on the site. 

Other kinds of games would probably be acceptable too -- the only requirement is that the player is able to make some kind of choice within the game. The intention is for writers to explore interactive fiction and its potential, and to begin to think beyond the linear structure of typical stories.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=20#p29032
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2011-12-28 14:39:30

[quote="aschultz"]So now that we have our first choices--do you also want to take steps to ensure there's no major overlap? Should we do so before submitting the betas to you? I'd be glad to do my share of alpha testing and suspect my game(s) may need a look-over to make sure they're not totally out of left field.

I'm also worried (as a relatively new author) that something I'm doing that might be new may've already been covered before. For instance, I was surprised to see Sokoban "done" circa 1999.[/quote]

Really, pretty much anything that would be more work to coordinate isn't something I want to do (or think needs to be done). If it helps, think of this more as a "tribute jam" rather than a full-fledged "tribute album". There's likely to be some overlap, and that's OK.

There will be the betatesting by the contributors, and I think that's likely good enough. Although if anyone wants to run ideas by me, let me know. (I don't want to necessarily put people in touch with each other, since I didn't ask people if I could share their email addresses, but if you want to just chat amongst yourselves here, that's fine.)

-Kevin

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4017&start=0#p29033
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Alway Worn Objects - TADS3
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-12-28 14:53:56

Many thanks. That code works well now.

RonG

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4040&start=0#p29034
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: wrong number of arguments (T3.1)
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-28 14:57:09

en_us.t defines a 'drink' verb, but it requires an object ('drink wine'). The bare command 'drink', entered during a game, causes a run-time error -- "wrong number of arguments".

The line in en_us.t that the error pops up on is in the code for modify TAction, in the announceDefaultObject method. The line is:

local nm = obj.getAnnouncementDistinguisher().theName(obj);

What may or may not be relevant is that my own code adds a new DrinkFrom action and a new DrinkItFrom action. Somehow the parser is stumbling over this stuff. I don't think it's relevant, because when I replace the grammar for my new actions with gibberish and then type 'drink' in the game, the same error pops up.

How would I fix the code so as to get a standard "What do you want to drink?" query from the parser?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3838&start=0#p29035
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The penultimate not numbered New Year's Speed IF
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-12-28 14:57:48

Is the deadline dec., 31 or 30? 
I just realized the post says both.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=20#p29036
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-12-28 14:59:48

[quote="jacksonmead"]Really, pretty much anything that would be more work to coordinate isn't something I want to do (or think needs to be done). If it helps, think of this more as a "tribute jam" rather than a full-fledged "tribute album". There's likely to be some overlap, and that's OK.[/quote]

That's a relief to me too. I imagine people who want to, will be able to get feedback or share email addresses as needed. For anyone interested in looking over each other's work, before or after--I'm open. Dunno if other such offers should be in this topic or a new one.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4041&start=0#p29037
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: No Travel Without A Compass - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-12-28 15:04:11

I would like my actor not to be able to travel in any direction from any room unless he has his compass. Can anyone think of a way to do this without having to use a TravelBarrier with every exit in every room [emote]:?:[/emote] 

RonG

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4040&start=0#p29038
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: wrong number of arguments (T3.1)
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-28 15:18:02

I can't reproduce the problem. An empty game responds with "What do you want to drink?" when I enter "drink".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4041&start=0#p29039
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: No Travel Without A Compass - TADS3.1
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-28 15:44:43

The quickest way would be to modify the default TravelAction:

[code]modify TravelAction
    execAction()
    {
        if (the actor performing the action doesn't have a compass)
            "You can't go anywhere without a compass. ";
        else
            inherited();
    }
;[/code]

Unfortunately this also blocks UP and DOWN. Not sure about ENTER. Test and see. Maybe someone will provide a method to refine it so that only compass directions get blocked.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2587&start=0#p29040
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: [log] Porting Inform 6 to Chinese
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2011-12-28 15:56:00

I've pulled this into the I6-in-I7 tree here: [url]https://github.com/DavidKinder/Inform6[/url] This will eventually become Inform 6.33.

By the way, do you have a name that you'd like to appear in the credits?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4039&start=0#p29041
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: t3make Does Not Automatically Create Directories
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-12-28 16:07:25

[quote="RealNC"]It's by design. That means that when you ship a game's source code, make sure the directories exist in the ZIP/RAR/whatever. To clean, you can do "t3make -clean".[/quote]

Sounds good; I didn't even know about the -clean option. It does seem odd to allow the clean of directories but not the creation of them. (This would be the equivalent of an init task in Ant, I guess.) No matter, though; the fact that there's a clean is good enough for me.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4039&start=0#p29042
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: t3make Does Not Automatically Create Directories
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-28 16:27:25

[quote="bukayeva"]Sounds good; I didn't even know about the -clean option. It does seem odd to allow the clean of directories but not the creation of them.[/quote]
t3make doesn't clean directories. It cleans files. It doesn't know anything about the directories. It creates files when building, and deletes those files when doing -clean. If it would delete anything else, that would be dangerous and a source for data loss.

The directories are purely optional. If you don't specify -Fy and -Fo options, then everything is put in the current directory.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4042&start=0#p29043
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Resolve a phrase without calling it OR store a phrase in
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-12-28 16:41:58

You can write phrases like these:

[code]
To describe (door - a door): ...
To describe (door - a locked door): ...
To describe (door - the golden door): ...
[/code]

When you then use the describe door phrase, the compiler uses a Resolver_* function to determine which phrase function to call. The Resolver_* function however immediately calls that function, and you can't use it to determine the address of the function in question. Is there a way to resolve phrases to their functions without calling them?

Alternatively, is there some way to assigning a phrase to an object property?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4042&start=0#p29044
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Resolve a phrase without calling it OR store a phras
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-28 16:57:02

You can store a phrase in a property like this (chapter 21.3):

[code]
A person has a phrase thing -> nothing called op.

The op of the player is frobbling.

To frobble (T - thing) (this is frobbling):
	say "Thing."

Instead of examining:
	apply the op of the player to the noun.
[/code]

Note that this only works for phrases that are explicitly named -- the "(this is frobbling)" bit.

Also, you can't use type resolution (the Resolver mechanism) when you do this. I7 is a little handwavy when it comes to type-dispatched phrases. It'll do it, but in your example, each of the three describe phrases has to have a different name, so you can't assign the *group* to a property.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4040&start=0#p29045
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: wrong number of arguments (T3.1)
User: mjroberts / DateTime: 2011-12-28 16:59:41

[quote="Jim Aikin"]en_us.t defines a 'drink' verb, but it requires an object ('drink wine'). The bare command 'drink', entered during a game, causes a run-time error -- "wrong number of arguments".


local nm = obj.getAnnouncementDistinguisher().theName(obj);[/quote]

If you could fire this up in the debugger, when you get to this point, see what obj.getAnnouncementDistinguisher() gives you.  I'm guessing that's the culprit - that object probably doesn't have a theName() defined, thus the argument mismatch (undefined -> implicitly zero arguments vs one argument fromthe caller).

(To look at this in the debugger, just run it in Workbench and trigger the error - the debugger will stop at the point where the error is triggered.  Type 'obj.getAnnouncementDistinguisher()' into the watch window to evaluate that.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4038&start=0#p29046
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: removing objects from scope
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-28 17:08:27

The scope mechanism doesn't offer a way to do that. The easiest way to have an object unreferrable-to is to keep it off-stage.

You could also give it a conditional name (a parse_name that refuses to match any words until the object is noticed). But then the object is still accessible via "get all", so you have to do more work to prevent that, and it winds up being more work than it's worth.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4042&start=0#p29047
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Resolve a phrase without calling it OR store a phras
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2011-12-28 17:13:10

Thanks! I thought I had tried that, but I hadn't defined the property correctly.

In those situations I'm guess the "phrase" is actually what the I6 calls a closure (a struct)? If so I can easily get the address from the second word. I won't need the resolver this way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4040&start=0#p29048
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: wrong number of arguments (T3.1)
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-28 17:20:09

I wish I was sure what "the debugger" is. I opened the Watch Expressions window and copied that string into the Expression field, but all I get for Value is "(error: wrong number of arguments", and we knew that already.

Interestingly, if I start with the default introductory game, I don't get this error in response to 'drink', but I _do_ get it in response to 'sit'.

In my own game, I get it in response to either 'drink' or 'sit' -- and I've commented out all of my custom stuff relating to the command 'drink', leaving only the library code.

The one thing I did to the library code was hack en_us.t to add 'sip' as a fourth synonym. The code appears error-free:
[code]
VerbRule(Drink)
    ('drink' | 'quaff' | 'imbibe' | 'sip') dobjList
    : DrinkAction
    verbPhrase = 'drink/drinking (what)'
;[/code]

The library code for the 'sit' command is only a tiny bit more complex; it includes the bare command 'sit' with no object as SitAction. As that command does trigger the error, I can only guess that we're seeing a library bug here.

I'm happy to help test it further, but I'm not really a tyro at using the debugging tools. Here's the stack trace (or whatever it's called) in the interpreter after I shift-F11 to get out of the error:

[quote][Runtime error: wrong number of arguments
–>c:\program files (x86)\tads 3\lib\adv3\en_us\en_us.t, line 8377
   c:\program files (x86)\tads 3\lib\adv3\en_us\msg_neu.t, line 683
   c:\program files (x86)\tads 3\lib\adv3\thing.t, line 3924
   c:\program files (x86)\tads 3\lib\adv3\report.t, line 418
   c:\program files (x86)\tads 3\lib\adv3\report.t, line 314
   c:\program files (x86)\tads 3\lib\adv3\report.t, line 412
   c:\program files (x86)\tads 3\lib\adv3\report.t, line 1141
   c:\program files (x86)\tads 3\lib\adv3\action.t, line 1637
   c:\program files (x86)\tads 3\lib\adv3\action.t, line 3432
   c:\program files (x86)\tads 3\lib\adv3\action.t, line 1150
   c:\program files (x86)\tads 3\lib\adv3\exec.t, line 913
   c:\program files (x86)\tads 3\lib\adv3\exec.t, line 441
   c:\program files (x86)\tads 3\lib\adv3\report.t, line 1920
   c:\program files (x86)\tads 3\lib\adv3\exec.t, line 456
   c:\program files (x86)\tads 3\lib\adv3\actor.t, line 10512
   c:\program files (x86)\tads 3\lib\adv3\actor.t, line 9417
   c:\program files (x86)\tads 3\lib\adv3\actor.t, line 9287
   c:\program files (x86)\tads 3\lib\adv3\pov.t, line 156
   c:\program files (x86)\tads 3\lib\adv3\pov.t, line 58
   c:\program files (x86)\tads 3\lib\adv3\actor.t, line 9287
   c:\program files (x86)\tads 3\lib\adv3\report.t, line 1941
   c:\program files (x86)\tads 3\lib\adv3\exec.t, line 1270
   c:\program files (x86)\tads 3\lib\adv3\actor.t, line 9287
   c:\program files (x86)\tads 3\lib\adv3\events.t, line 130
   c:\program files (x86)\tads 3\lib\adv3\misc.t, line 589
   c:\program files (x86)\tads 3\lib\adv3\misc.t, line 118
   c:\program files (x86)\tads 3\lib\adv3\misc.t, line 659
   c:\program files (x86)\tads 3\lib\adv3\misc.t, line 603
   c:\program files (x86)\tads 3\lib\_main.t, line 119
   c:\program files (x86)\tads 3\lib\_main.t, line 31
][/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3838&start=0#p29049
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The penultimate not numbered New Year's Speed IF
User: Tale / DateTime: 2011-12-28 17:22:13

Well, Deadline is the 30th, so I can send the files to Jacq on the morning of the 31st so she can upload them. 

Take note that this is the 30th GMT+1, so it might be a bit earlier, depending on where you are in the world.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4040&start=0#p29050
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: wrong number of arguments (T3.1)
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-28 17:34:34

Here's the top of the Call Stack (in Workbench) when I type 'sit' in a default game, triggering the run-time error:

[quote]TAction [26bb].announceDefaultObject(defaultFloor, DirectObject, true) + 0xF
libMessages.announceDefaultObject(defaultFloor, DirectObject, obj#26bb (predicate(SitOn)), true) + 0x17
defaultFloor.announceDefaultObject(DirectObject, obj#26bb (predicate(SitOn)), true) + 0x19
DefaultObjectAnnouncement [2659].getMessageText() + 0x1D
CommandAnnouncement [2659].construct() + 0x1A
DefaultObjectAnnouncement [2659].construct(defaultFloor, DirectObject, obj#26bb (predicate(SitOn)), true) + 0x1E
CommandTranscript [281e].announceDefaultObject(defaultFloor, DirectObject, obj#26bb (predicate(SitOn)), true) + 0x16
Action [26bb].announceActionObject(obj#2630 (ResolveInfo), 1, DirectObject) + 0x90
TAction [26bb].doActionMain() + 0x6B
Action [26bb].doAction(me, me, nil, nil) + 0x7A
executeAction(me, nil, me, nil, obj#26bb (predicate(SitOn))) + 0x10A
resolveAndReplaceAction(obj#26bb (predicate(SitOn))) + 0x2C
SitOnAction.retryWithMissingDobj(obj#26ec (predicate(Sit)), ResolveAsker) + 0x17
SitAction [26ec].execAction() + 0x4C
Action [26ec].doActionOnce() + 0xB5[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4040&start=0#p29051
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: wrong number of arguments (T3.1)
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-28 18:00:29

[quote="Jim Aikin"]The one thing I did to the library code was hack en_us.t to add 'sip' as a fourth synonym. The code appears error-free:
[code]
VerbRule(Drink)
    ('drink' | 'quaff' | 'imbibe' | 'sip') dobjList
    : DrinkAction
    verbPhrase = 'drink/drinking (what)'
;[/code]
[/quote]
Unrelated to the problem at hand, but I guess you'd like to know that you don't need to hack the base files for this (it gets messy and causes problems when you upgrade to a new TADS version.) You can simply use a "modify" statement to change the syntax of existing verbs:

[code]modify VerbRule(Drink)
    ('drink' | 'quaff' | 'imbibe' | 'sip') dobjList
    : // Empty - keeps the default action.
;[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4028&start=0#p29052
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: HTML TADS and Colors
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2011-12-28 18:27:32

Hmm, me give this a little bump - Is there syntax to change the input text color? The foreground color change seems to work for all the text, but not the text the player types in. Anyone know how to adjust this color?

Thanks alot!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4028&start=0#p29053
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: HTML TADS and Colors
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2011-12-28 18:59:20

Add
[code]input=[colour][/code]
to your <body> tag. (I found this out by going to the TADS 3 "Introduction to HTML TADS" manual and searching the [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/htmltads/deviate.htm#deviations]deviations from standard HTML[/url] page for "input".)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4028&start=0#p29054
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: HTML TADS and Colors
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2011-12-28 19:08:23

Thank you so much, works like a champ. I hadn't found that bit of knowledge.

Thanks again!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3838&start=0#p29055
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The penultimate not numbered New Year's Speed IF
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-12-28 19:19:24

I best get writing then  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4042&start=0#p29056
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Resolve a phrase without calling it OR store a phras
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-12-28 19:24:58

[quote="Dannii"]In those situations I'm guess the "phrase" is actually what the I6 calls a closure (a struct)? If so I can easily get the address from the second word[?][/quote]
Yes and yes.  Though those things aren't actually closures, presumably they will be in a distant future release of Inform.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4033&start=0#p29057
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Major Smarter Parser update
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2011-12-28 19:27:18

[quote="Robert Rothman"]It sounds like somebody needs to write an extension to take up the slack, perhaps entitled "F***ing Expletives."[/quote]
 I think the extensions site is supposed to be family-friendly as well.  Maybe "Colorful Language"?  Or is that just asking to scar some impressionable young painter? [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4033&start=0#p29058
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Major Smarter Parser update
User: maga / DateTime: 2011-12-28 19:53:53

[quote="Ron Newcomb"][quote="Robert Rothman"]It sounds like somebody needs to write an extension to take up the slack, perhaps entitled "F***ing Expletives."[/quote]
 I think the extensions site is supposed to be family-friendly as well.  Maybe "Colorful Language"?  Or is that just asking to scar some impressionable young painter? [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
I am dreadfully tempted to do this just so that I can call it [url=http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view.php?WorkID=tempest&Act=1&Scene=2&Scope=scene&LineHighlight=517#517]My Profit On't[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=10#p29059
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2011-12-28 20:50:26

Okay, next update is out. Quiet a lot happened in the graphical department.

Linking map-displays and m_rooms together made the whole process of determining what can or can't get currently printed a lot easier and it should now be possible to keep the performance fairly stable, even if you walk around a map with thousands of displayable objects in it, as long as they don't all suddenly pop in view. I also made a new kind of map-display which should not only be ASCII friendly but also a lot faster in general (albeit for the price of a less sophisticated arrangement of the graphics). I made some small tweaks to the Cyberspace! example to showcase what the new stuff can do. 

There are two rather bad news though. First, my feeble dream of porting R&D to the z-machine was crushed pretty early as Inform 7 reassured me that it wouldn't accept all the lists shenanigan. There also seems to be some sort of strange bug with either R&D or Gargoyle as [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17790344/Examples/Cyberspace%21%20%28Crash%29.gblorb]this[/url] example always crashes with it when I try to move before doing anything else. The example seems to run fine in Git so I'm a bit puzzled what the problem could be. Different memory allocation maybe?

@Erik
Afraid I again got some questions for you too. The new map-display I created uses your Glimmr Lucidex figures as the current standard when translating text into graphics (as seen in the crashing example). Is that ok with you, or should I rather get my own stuff?
Also, what do you want to do with the fit phrase, include the '/--' or not? I only ask because I would have to tweak my code if you want to remove it.


Anyway, happy (after-) Christmas everybody! [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3915&start=10#p29060
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The World Map
User: Deain / DateTime: 2011-12-28 21:44:22

Thanks everyone for your help! [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4043&start=0#p29061
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Introducing a New Character
User: Deain / DateTime: 2011-12-28 21:48:05

Hey guys, I'm now at the stage where I want to introduce a new character the player can interact with.  I was looking through the guide, but I can't find what I want.  I want the player to be able to both interact and speak with the new character, let's call him the hermit.  Can you help me?  Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4040&start=0#p29062
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: wrong number of arguments (T3.1)
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-28 21:55:12

I could be totally wrong, because this stuff is well outside my comfort zone, but I think I see where the bug is, and how to fix it.

In en_us.t, the modify TAction block has the announceDefaultObject method. The second line in this method is:

[code]local nm = obj.getAnnouncementDistinguisher().theName(obj);[/code]

But when I look up getAnnouncementDistinguisher() in the LRM, I see that it's supposed to be called with an argument -- (lst). This does seem to be a bug in en_us.t. And indeed, when I change the line to this:

[code]local nm = obj.getAnnouncementDistinguisher([]).theName(obj);[/code]

...the run-time error vanishes with the morning dew. How sweet! Whether this fix may have side effects, I'll leave for wise minds to say.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4043&start=0#p29063
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Introducing a New Character
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-28 21:57:12

There's a whole chapter on creating characters in my Handbook (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm">www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm</a>). You might want to check it out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=10#p29064
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-12-28 22:04:51

Sounds good! From the user's point of view, has the actual coding changed much, or are most of the changes in the core extension?

The Cyberspace example works nicely for me except that, as before, the main grid doesn't scale down to fit in the window. (Inconsequential from a programming standpoint, but maybe worth mentioning: If the robot had a transparent rather than an opaque black background, it wouldn't overlap and sometimes entirely occlude the grid lines.) 

[quote="Basti50"]There also seems to be some sort of strange bug with either R&D or Gargoyle as [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17790344/Examples/Cyberspace%21%20%28Crash%29.gblorb]this[/url] example always crashes with it when I try to move before doing anything else. The example seems to run fine in Git so I'm a bit puzzled what the problem could be. Different memory allocation maybe?[/quote]
I don't see this bug on Gargoyle under OS X, whether using git or glulxe under the hood. Glulxe is painfully slow, and git can be slow on the first move, but I'm not seeing a crash. Maybe you're using an older version?  

[quote="Basti50"]@Erik
Afraid I again got some questions for you too. The new map-display I created uses your Glimmr Lucidex figures as the current standard when translating text into graphics (as seen in the crashing example). Is that ok with you, or should I rather get my own stuff?[/quote]
Of course, have at it! That's why I released that "font" as a separate extension. I consider both the images and the code to be under the standard CC license used for all Inform library extensions. Of course, since the font isn't a monospace font, it may not be appropriate for all grid-based applications, but it should work well enough for a roguelike. 

[quote="Basti50"]Also, what do you want to do with the fit phrase, include the '/--' or not? I only ask because I would have to tweak my code if you want to remove it.[/quote]
Let's include it. I may look at simplifying the phrase definition in the future so that it doesn't have so many options. (I have tended to make my extensions very flexible whenever possible so that folks can more easily guess at the correct syntax, but that approach has its downsides.)

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=10#p29065
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-12-28 22:20:33

[quote="Basti50"]EDIT: Or just do it smart and create a new kind of map-display which makes it look like ASCII although it uses figures, but that might be cheating [emote]:D[/emote][/quote]

Well, the one real problem with cheating in this way is that, currently, web interpreters can't deal with graphics, whereas they [i]can[/i] do a text grid.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4044&start=0#p29066
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: QTads 2.1.2 has been released
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-28 23:01:19

Version 2.1.2 of QTads, a Multimedia/HTML TADS interpreter for Linux, Mac, Windows and other platforms, is now available for download:

<a class="postlink" href="http://qtads.sourceforge.net">http://qtads.sourceforge.net</a>

This version provides new features as well as bug fixes. Changes since 2.1.1:

[list][*]The TADS virtual machines have been updated to 2.5.15/3.1.0. Note that QTads cannot run WebUI games (yet) because the "tads-net" function set is not fully implemented yet.  For the time being you can run WebUI games with FrobTADS.
[/*:m]
[*]A "soft scrolling" option is now available in the configuration dialog. When enabled, output from the game will scroll-in line by line instead of all at once.
[/*:m]
[*]On Mac OS X, text positioning could be off by a few pixels in some circumstances. This should now no longer occur.
[/*:m]
[*]An error dialog is now displayed when trying to open a file that is not a Tads game. Previously, the error message was displayed on stdout.
[/*:m]
[*]When running in KDE, it is not possible anymore to move the interpreter window by simply clicking somewhere inside the game window where no text has been printed yet. The game window is never really "empty", so this kind of "window grabbing" should have not been allowed to begin with.
[/*:m]
[*]The confirmation dialog that appears when trying to restart or quit a game can now be disabled via newly introduced configuration dialog options.
[/*:m]
[*]File I/O safety levels can now be configured seperately for read and write access.
[/*:m]
[*]An online update check is now performed when the application starts. The behavior is configurable via new configuration dialog options.[/*:m][/list:u]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4044&start=0#p29067
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: QTads 2.1.2 has been released
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-28 23:22:16

Great, thank you!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4043&start=0#p29068
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Introducing a New Character
User: Deain / DateTime: 2011-12-29 00:56:03

Thanks Jim Aikin [emote]:)[/emote] I'll check it out right now.

OK, I think i'm doing something wrong here.  I managed to add a character, but I can't seam to get the dialogue on page 158.  Here's the code I used just to test it.


[code]Talking to is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "talk to [someone]" or “converse with [someone]” as talking to.
Check talking to: say "[The Hermit] doesn't reply."

1Instead of talking to the Hermit: say "[one of]'Hi, there,' you say confidently.[paragraph break]'What's happening?' he replies casually.[or]'I've been meaning to ask you about that tuxedo,' you comment. 'Where did you get it?'[paragraph break]'My tailor is quite exclusive,' Hermit replies, inspecting his cuff. 'He would never consent to clothe riffraff like you.'[or]'You really are a stuck-up snob, aren't you?' you say hotly. [paragraph break] Hermit laughs heartily. 'I was just yanking your chain. I bought it at Macy's for $60 at a clearance sale. I'll give it to you if you like.'[or]You decide against talking any further with Hermit right now.[stopping]".
[/code]

Is it the punctuation or something?  Thanks mate [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3891&start=0#p29069
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: I need help writing short IF
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-29 01:52:21

Arriving late to this thread. FWIW, I don't think there's any substitute for just sitting down and doing it. You started off by saying you're not confident about puzzle-designing. So okay, maybe your first game will have great writing, a cool story, acceptable coding, and a few puzzles that suck. You'll get experience implementing puzzles, you'll get feedback from users, and when you write your second game, in all likelihood your puzzles will suck much less.

I wrote my first game 12 years ago. I didn't know IF players hate mazes, so there are four mazes in the game. Bad idea ... but even so, some people liked the game. The 15 puzzle was another clear loser in that game. I would never do anything like that again! The characters were minimal, because I didn't know how to code complex characters. It's all a learning process.

With respect to collaborating, Eric Eve and I collaborated on a game, and I think we got along well. (I've never had the courage to ask him if he secretly thought I was being an arrogant SOB.) The process of bouncing ideas off of one another was extremely helpful, and Eric's coding skills far surpass my own. So it [i]can[/i] work. But I think we both had confidence that it [i]would[/i] work, because we had both written and released prior games. Finding someone whose skill set is compatible with yours before you've written a game is bound to be more difficult. This is another reason to tackle your own project without waiting to find a collaborator.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=30#p29070
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2011-12-29 06:13:48

Hopefully friendly advice and a little suggestion for any new manuals. Stop discouraging people. A few bits:

[u][i]Learning TADS 3:[/i][/u]
"...but at first sight it can look [b]quite overwhelming[/b], since there seems to be [b]so much to learn[/b]. TADS 3 in fact makes many common IF coding tasks extremely easy, but [b]there is a lot to learn[/b], and it's [b]very hard to produce anything worthwhile[/b] with it without first mastering the basics."

"In order to master (or [b]even become moderately competent at[/b]) a [b]complicated system[/b] like TADS 3 (and [b]TADS undoubtedly is complicated[/b])..."

[u][i]Getting Started in TADS 3:[/i][/u]
"Fortunately, it's [b]not nearly as hard as it looks[/b] to set up a new game project."

[u][i]TADS 3 Tour Guide:[/i][/u]
"It can also seem [b]rather overpowering[/b] to new users of TADS 3, because [b]there is so much to learn[/b], and one [b]hardly knows where to start looking for what one needs[/b]."

You keep reading little asides that suggest things are going to be hard (-- but don't worry! not necessarily as hard as they look --) or how complicated everything is. It's about the most discouraging way to teach people or encourage people. Imagine a professor who started his classes by constantly talking about how hard and difficult everything was going to be. (It may be true; but constantly reinforcing [i]that[/i] rather than, say, the thrill of learning or discovery is the wrong way to go.)

At this point, I've given up on the manuals and I'm just going through games that have their source code available. The library reference is utterly amazing and makes learning TADS quite easy. Likewise, except for a few things I either missed or didn't find at all, the System Manual is quite well done. The Technical Manual is also really nice. Although there, too, we see things like:

"It's not that TADS 3 does not allow you to change or suppress these messages, it's that it's not always immediately obvious how to do it, and that if you don't know how to do it, [b]wrestling with[/b] these bits of extra text [b]can become an exercise in frustration[/b]."

"A[t] first sight ([b]or even second, third or fourteenth sight[/b]) the command execution cycle in the adv3 library ... [b]is pretty complex[/b]."

Again, all this may be true to some extent that will vary by person: but, sheesh, lay off the editorializing. Let people come to this conclusion on their own -- or maybe they won't, if the documentation does its job. But setting people up to think everything is so complicated -- or constantly reinforcing how complex everything is -- is an odd approach to take in my opinion. I'm hoping any new documentation will mollify that stuff a bit. I'm happy to be a proofreader when new material is available.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4033&start=0#p29071
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Major Smarter Parser update
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-12-29 07:00:42

[quote]I am dreadfully tempted to do this just so that I can call it My Profit On't.
[/quote]

Being far less sophisticated in literary matters than Maga is, I immediately thought not of Shakespeare but of The Three Stooges.  In Disorder in the Court, there is a scene in which which Curly is taking the oath before testifying in a courtroom.  "Do you swear . . ." the bailiff starts to ask.  Without allowing him to finish the question, Curly responds "No -- But I know all the woids!"


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4033&start=0#p29072
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Major Smarter Parser update
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2011-12-29 09:37:15

Quick bug I've found: the documentation, including the prewritten link to remove the rule from the rulebook, consistently refers to "The unnecessary possessives rule". Problem is, only "The stripping possessives rule" exists in the rulebook.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4043&start=0#p29073
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Introducing a New Character
User: gravel / DateTime: 2011-12-29 09:54:07

Looks like a typo - you have "1Instead" instead of "Instead".  It works for me when I take out the 1.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4043&start=0#p29074
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Introducing a New Character
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-29 10:00:50

Also, if you introduce other persons to talk to besides the hermit, there will be a problem with: 
[code]Check talking to: say "[The Hermit] doesn't reply."[/code]

Any time the check talking to rule runs, it will tell the player that the hermit doesn't reply, regardless of whom the player actually talks to.
(Make it[code]Check talking to: say "[The noun] doesn't reply."[/code]instead...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4045&start=0#p29075
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: FrobTADS3 and curl [SOLVED]
User: Bloodsong / DateTime: 2011-12-29 10:02:48

Trying to install the new Frob on Debian 6.0.3, I ran into the error of not having curl recognized.  This seems odd to me as when I look inside Synaptic, I clearly see libcurl3 installed.  =]

A search on the internet yeilded a very [url=http://www.assembla.com/code/frobtads/git/changesets/c846f17911614f83fb374d7531fd21280b5250f4]unhelpful result[/url].

Any help on getting this working would be gratefully appreciated, if I may be so redundant.

Thanks in advance
Tommie

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4045&start=0#p29076
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: FrobTADS3 and curl
User: Bloodsong / DateTime: 2011-12-29 10:05:48

Hot diggety damn!  I was talking on the phone with a friend of mine while posting the above, and he laughed at me and informed me that libcurl is up to v4 now, so I likely was using an outdated lib.  I looked through Synaptic, found libcurl4, installed the -dev package, and what do you know, install success.  Sometimes you just have to not trust in package managers keeping you up to date I guess, lol. [emote]:roll:[/emote] 

Sorry for the board spamming, carry on.
Tommie

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=30#p29077
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-29 10:41:51

You might be right that Eric's editorializing sends a negative message. I'm not sure. I think his intent was probably to reassure people that they're not alone in feeling that T3 is a difficult system to learn. Different readers may interpret those bits in different ways, but I don't know that anyone has ever said, "Gee, this is easy and fun!" Anyone who had that reaction, please step forward....

Personally, if I had to learn T3 strictly from the LRM and source code of games, I'd shoot myself. I've been working on a new game, and I use the Tour Guide, the LRM, and Learning T3 constantly, with not infrequent trips to the Technical Manual. But then, I've used them all enough that I know where to look. I'm not reading them from cover to cover, as if they were novels.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4046&start=0#p29078
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: FrobTADS 1.1 has been released
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-29 11:19:36

Version 1.1 of FrobTADS, the portable TADS toolkit, is now available for download:

<a class="postlink" href="http://tads.org/frobtads.htm">http://tads.org/frobtads.htm</a>

Changes since version 1.0:

[list][*]Tads virtual machines and compilers updated to 2.5.15/3.1.0. Tads 3.1 introduces network capabilities and currently it is not possible to build the package without network support. pthreads, sockets and libcurl are required for a successful build.
[/*:m]
[*]Compiler and runtime sources have been unified. It is no longer necessary to download separate archives in order to build the T2 or T3 compilers. Because of this, two new configure options have been introduced in case you don't want to build the compilers:

--disable-t2-compiler
--disable-t3-compiler[/*:m][/list:u]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4043&start=0#p29079
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Introducing a New Character
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-12-29 12:26:17

You might also want to check out some of the conversation extensions, rather than starting from scratch.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4040&start=0#p29080
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: wrong number of arguments (T3.1)
User: mjroberts / DateTime: 2011-12-29 13:56:11

[quote="Jim Aikin"]I could be totally wrong, because this stuff is well outside my comfort zone, but I think I see where the bug is, and how to fix it.

In en_us.t, the modify TAction block has the announceDefaultObject method. The second line in this method is:

[code]local nm = obj.getAnnouncementDistinguisher().theName(obj);[/code]

But when I look up getAnnouncementDistinguisher() in the LRM, I see that it's supposed to be called with an argument -- (lst). This does seem to be a bug in en_us.t. And indeed, when I change the line to this:

[code]local nm = obj.getAnnouncementDistinguisher([]).theName(obj);[/code]

...the run-time error vanishes with the morning dew. How sweet! Whether this fix may have side effects, I'll leave for wise minds to say.[/quote]

That is indeed the problem - that 'modify TAction' was some old code that I missed.  Instead of an empty list, the actual argument should be gActor.scopeList():

[code]local nm = obj.getAnnouncementDistinguisher(gActor.scopeList()).theName(obj);[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4047&start=0#p29081
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: What's wrong with this code - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-12-29 15:24:52

The following block of code gives me two warning when I compile my game.

[code]

+++myKhakiPockets: BagOfHolding, Component, RestrictedContainer
'pockets' 'pocket'
"One of the things you like about these khakis is that they have nice, deep
pockets. "
theName = 'your pockets'
aName = 'your pockets'
disambigName = 'your khaki pockets'
isPlural=true 

/* we're restricted to pocketable items */
canPutIn(obj) { return obj.okayForPocket; } 
cannotPutInMsg(obj) { return '{The dobj/he} wouldn\'t fit very well in your
 pocket. '; }

/* We have a high affinity for best-for-pocket items. */
affinityFor(obj) { return obj.bestForPocket ? 200 : 0; }
 
contentsLister: thingContentsLister {
 showListPrefixWide(itemCount, pov, parent)
  {"In your pocket you have ";}
 showListPrefixTall(itemCount, pov, parent)
  {"In your pocket you have ";}
}
;

[/code]

The two warnings I receive are that  'okayForPocket' and 'bestForPocket' are undefined. Can anyone help me with this problem [emote]:?:[/emote]  I can find no reference to these objects in the TADS manuals.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4047&start=0#p29082
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: What's wrong with this code - TADS3.1
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-29 15:56:11

If you didn't define those properties, then they don't exist. Did you define them somewhere?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4047&start=0#p29083
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: What's wrong with this code - TADS3.1
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-29 15:57:54

You need to modify Thing so as to provide those two properties on ALL objects. Set them to nil by default and to true for things that you want the player to be able to put in the pocket.

Dunno where you got that code....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4047&start=0#p29084
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: What's wrong with this code - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-12-29 16:32:59

This code is from the 'me.t' module of 'Return To Ditch Day'. I included that module in my code and modified it to fit my game. I did not define the two objects that are giving the warnings. Without those two sections of code my game compiles and runs with no problems; Although the total game source is still rather bare.

I, now, somehow get the feeling that objects we wish to place in our pockets must somehow be marked with one of those two declarations. Boy, am I confused [emote]:!:[/emote]

I could not find any reference to them in RTDD or the manuals and I did a lot of searching.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3838&start=0#p29085
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The penultimate not numbered New Year's Speed IF
User: Tale / DateTime: 2011-12-29 16:53:36

3 submissions so far, including, humbly, my own. Keep 'em coming!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4047&start=0#p29086
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: What's wrong with this code - TADS3.1
User: tomasb / DateTime: 2011-12-29 17:14:20

Here I am confused too. RTDD doesn't define them on the Thing class (or anywhere else) as nil. And that is IMHO ok, because obj is passed as a parameter and it's not known by the time of compilation which object will be passed to these methods. So from a statical analysis during compilation such a warning couldn't be produced IMHO. My assumption is, that the warning is not about the code shown above. Could you post exact warning message and check which lines are exactly referred by the warning?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4047&start=0#p29087
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: What's wrong with this code - TADS3.1
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-29 17:25:18

Here's a complete list of files (with line numbers) of where these two identifiers occur:

(Using the "grep" command - behold the power of Unix [emote]:P[/emote])

[code]grep -nr "okayForPocket\|bestForPocket" rtdd
rtdd/intro.t:2119:    okayForPocket = true
rtdd/intro.t:2442:    okayForPocket = true
rtdd/bridge.t:339:    okayForPocket = true
rtdd/me.t:307:    canPutIn(obj) { return obj.okayForPocket; }
rtdd/me.t:312:    affinityFor(obj) { return obj.bestForPocket ? 200 : 0; }
rtdd/bookstore.t:342:    okayForPocket = true
rtdd/campus.t:230:    okayForPocket = true
rtdd/campus.t:231:    bestForPocket = true
rtdd/campus.t:268:    okayForPocket = true
rtdd/campus.t:269:    bestForPocket = true
rtdd/campus.t:334:    okayForPocket = true
rtdd/campus.t:335:    bestForPocket = true
rtdd/campus.t:343:    okayForPocket = true[/code]

So they're not actually defined in a class, but just set per object as needed.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3838&start=0#p29088
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The penultimate not numbered New Year's Speed IF
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-12-29 17:38:46

Should be 4 by tomorrow. Looking forward to what others are doing and hope there're a lot of other procrastinators out there too [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4048&start=0#p29089
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I6: multi-value properties
User: Peter Rickardson / DateTime: 2011-12-29 17:58:24

How do I create my own multi-value property, like found_in? I'm working on a line-of-sight algorithm and need a line_of_sight property that will tell the world model what locations are visisble from any given vantage point.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3838&start=0#p29090
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The penultimate not numbered New Year's Speed IF
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2011-12-29 18:02:32

Well, a deadline is a deadline. It works in BOTH ways [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4047&start=0#p29091
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: What's wrong with this code - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-12-29 18:15:03

That last post did the job! I used Boxer99 to search the RTDD sources and found the information. I think that RTDD contains a wealth of of examples on how to get things done in TADS.

Changing the subject. A long time back, I was trained in Unix and serviced both the software and the machines that employed it. This brings up a question. What do you think of KUBUNTU? I got a 750GB drive for Christmas and I'm considering giving it another try.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=10#p29092
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2011-12-29 18:37:31

[quote="ektemple"]Sounds good! From the user's point of view, has the actual coding changed much, or are most of the changes in the core extension?[/quote]
It's sort of mixed, I would say, although the biggest changes are mostly internally. Something that you probably won't notice right away is that map-displays now have a scope, basically, thanks to the cross-reference. For example, with a 1000x1000 map and 500 objects, the old map-display would have run through all those objects to check that they are in range. Now a map-display just gets a list of objects which gets filled up during its initial creation and then will get actualized automatically during every move/spawn phrase, since the map now 'knows' by which map-display it is currently, well, displayed. Also, when you change/insert any graphics and they are in range of a map-display, it will force it to refresh entirely. In the older version of Ben & Jill for example, when I replaced the image of the closed door with the open door and vice versa, I would have to do a refresh manually.

All in all this makes the insert/remove phrases a wee bit more expensive and some special cases, like an object with such offset values that it would be shown in the map-display, while not really physically present, are no longer possible (EDIT: although, come to think of it, that could be done with a bit of re-tinkering), but I think that it's some comfortable streamlining regardless. Nevertheless, it's probably only good to know if you plan of creating your own kinds map-displays (Still looking forward of doing a first-person display but I'll put that on the back-burner for now).

As for actual game coding, not much has changed, other than that you now can switch between full-map and part-map, but that's more of a gimmick to save some time.

[quote="ektemple"]The Cyberspace example works nicely for me except that, as before, the main grid doesn't scale down to fit in the window.[/quote]
That's probably due to a larger scale. The tiles are scaled down by sight-range, so the smaller the range, the larger the graphics will become. Choosing smaller numbers for the fit phrase should fix that problem. Maybe I'll find a way to universalize the progress, I'll think about it when I got the time.
 
[quote="ektemple"](Inconsequential from a programming standpoint, but maybe worth mentioning: If the robot had a transparent rather than an opaque black background, it wouldn't overlap and sometimes entirely occlude the grid lines.)[/quote]
It was probably just [url=http://www.pcgameshardware.de/screenshots/medium/2008/12/Special_Ultima_6_Ultima_5_Warriors_of_Destiny_1988.jpg]nostalgia[/url], sorry [emote]:)[/emote]
But the example is actually supposed to showcase that this is not possible with simple-top-down-displays (or at least not as easy), since objects don't have any actual floor underneath them. They are just plain text in a 2D-array. Making the robot transparent wouldn't have done much good, since all you would see behind it would have been the background-tint. Printing the floor first and then the objects should still be possible though, although that would go against the idea to make the s-t-d-d's as simple and fast as possible, so that's another topic to think about, thanks!

[quote="ektemple"]I don't see this bug on Gargoyle under OS X, whether using git or glulxe under the hood. Glulxe is painfully slow, and git can be slow on the first move, but I'm not seeing a crash. Maybe you're using an older version?[/quote]
Nope, I'm only using the latest stuff. Weird...  

[quote="ektemple"]Of course, have at it! That's why I released that "font" as a separate extension. I consider both the images and the code to be under the standard CC license used for all Inform library extensions. Of course, since the font isn't a monospace font, it may not be appropriate for all grid-based applications, but it should work well enough for a roguelike.[/quote]
The lack of monospace is quiet notable, no doubt, but I'm too lazy to make my own graphics for now, so that you're ok with it is quiet a stress reliever [emote]:)[/emote] 

[quote="ektemple"]Let's include it.[/quote]
Don't let me push you around by any means [emote]:P[/emote]

[quote="ektemple"]Well, the one real problem with cheating in this way is that, currently, web interpreters can't deal with graphics, whereas they can do a text grid.[/quote]
Good thing then that this is covered. Maybe using something else than image-maps to store the pure text-data would cause less redundancy, but let's just say for now that a few limbs extra won't get into your way.


Next stop: AI
That could be a tough one. I'm still curious whenever you can use relation to establish weights between objects-objects and objects-effects. Time to hit the documentation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4048&start=0#p29093
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: multi-value properties
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-29 19:27:23

You could write a method that returns true if the conditions are met. This could test an arbitrary number of conditions:

[code]line_of_site [; if (some_condition) rtrue;
     if (another_condition) rtrue;
     ! etc.
],[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4049&start=0#p29094
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Leaving tracks
User: vorpaldinger / DateTime: 2011-12-29 19:48:55

Hello!

I'm trying to work out a mechanic in the game I have been working on 
where characters leave a scent behind that is detectable for a number 
of turns after they are gone and then vanishes. I've tried working 
this out a few different ways... Nothing quite works right and I 
thought someone here might have a better idea how I should go about 
it. 

What I'd like to happen is basically that when a character (player or npc) roams 
through a room, the room includes their scent in its 
description for ten turns or so. These could pile up in a list, 
depending on who has roamed through recently. 
Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4047&start=0#p29095
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: What's wrong with this code - TADS3.1
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-29 19:51:00

You can install Ubuntu/Kubuntu inside Windows and boot it right there. Great for trying it out without having to bother with resizing hard disk partitions. And you can uninstall simply by deleting its directory.

To get that version of (K)Ubuntu, you choose the "Wubi - Install from Windows" download option.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4049&start=0#p29096
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Leaving tracks
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2011-12-29 20:42:52

Hey there!

Two spontaneous suggestions:

1) Add a table to every room (at least where the feature will be important), where you can store the name of the stinkers and the number of turns. Should be easy enough to implement although a bit cumbersome since you would have to add a unique table to every room [i]and[/i] roughly know the number of blank rows (i.e. the maximum number of stinkers).

2) Add two lists to every room, one for the stinkers, second for the number of turns. You can then run through the first list when you need to add text and through the second list during every turn to decrease the number of turns. If one value should hit 0, delete the Entry and the Entry at the same position in the list of stinkers. This is not as nicely tied up as in tables, so there is some risks involved, plus lists are more resource hungry, so it might be a bit too expensive, if you're planing something with z-machines.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4050&start=0#p29097
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: beta-testing The Knight, the Jester, and the Spy
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-12-29 21:02:15

Beta test of a very short IF based on the classic knight-knave-spy logic puzzles. Guaranteed not to have any verb-guessing at least...

<a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2654955/knightjesterspy.z8">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2654955/knightjesterspy.z8</a>

You can email me transcripts at troyjonesiii at gmail d0t com if you want, or just post comments here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4049&start=0#p29098
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Leaving tracks
User: vorpaldinger / DateTime: 2011-12-29 21:08:10

There's going to only be four creatures that leave a scent in the game, so I've got that potential table manageable. Every room in the game would list off its scents, so that might be a little labor intensive giving each a table. Also, I don't think I know how to make a rule for listing off the contents of a table in a room description... 

would it be like:

[code]After printing room description:
     say "You smell [element in row A of the Table of room1 Scents], and [element in row B of the Table of room1 Scents]."[/code]

How do I make that conditional to whether or not there are table entries, and how many? "[code]say "[if there are elements in the Table of room1 Scents] You smell [element in row A of the Table of room1 Scents][end if]"[/code]?

I might have to do it with two lists, since I'm not very good with tables...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4043&start=0#p29099
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Introducing a New Character
User: Deain / DateTime: 2011-12-29 21:23:57

Thanks guys!  Would it also work if I took away the check rule or does the check has to be there?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4049&start=0#p29100
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Leaving tracks
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2011-12-29 23:54:55

If there really are only four then it's probably a better idea to handle them as entries. Something like this:

Table of Scent Storage
Ro         Stinker 1   Stinker 2    Stinker 3  Stinker 4
a room   a number   a number   a number  a number

That way you don't have to work with multiple tables and you could do something like

[code]After printing room description:
     choose row with Ro of (location of player) in Table of Scent Storage;
     say "You smell [if Stinker 1 Entry is not 0]Stinker 1[end if][if Stinker 1 Entry is not 0 and (Stinker 2 Entry is not 0 or Stinker 3 Entry is not 0)] and [end if][if Stinker 2 Entry is not 0]Stinker 2[end if][if Stinker 2 Entry is not 0 and Stinker 3 Entry is not 0] and [end if][if Stinker 3 Entry is not 0]Stinker 3[end if]."[/code]

(Just noticed that I skipped the fourth stinker but I guess the idea should be clear enough now)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3840&start=10#p29101
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Getting over the hump
User: dstinson / DateTime: 2011-12-30 01:07:03

It really is hard to get over the first hump with creating your very first interactive fiction as you would now know what is good enough and what is to be improved on when you start rolling things over.

What I like about it though is when you can care so much less and just let all things fall right into place when you planting them.

Ideas really flow from there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3890&start=20#p29102
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Beginning in the middle of the action: is it a bad idea?
User: dstinson / DateTime: 2011-12-30 01:09:18

There is no bad idea as to where you are going to start and what you are going to do as you can pull it off any which way possible.  What you probably have to think of though is how you are going to give the backstory piece by piece so it will not seem like you are just forcing down the players' throat making it hard to bear at times.

Then it is also a matter of how you are going to let it rise from then on while providing them with earlier knowledge of the story.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4013&start=10#p29103
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Will Glulxe/Blorb Games ever run on ipad/kindle/nook/mob
User: dstinson / DateTime: 2011-12-30 01:11:28

Looking at the trend of how things are going, it is not looking quite possible to run them on some of the more inclined ebook readers but pretty much well portable to general tablets like the iPad and its android counterparts.  Though things could very well change in the future with the start of giving the kindle its colored display and some support to smart tablet like usage.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=280#p29104
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: dstinson / DateTime: 2011-12-30 01:14:01

Hello there, I am new to the forums though have been working with interactive stories for quite a long time already.  Currently, my focus lies with developing auto generated stories and their dialogues, though that has swayed quite some way against IF.  

I am looking to start this Picture Books which makes use of the same goal with IF though probably just different in execution.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4049&start=0#p29105
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Leaving tracks
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-12-30 02:30:27

Here is a different approach using kinds and relations. 

This method will work for an arbitrary number of rooms and persons. Note that in this example, Shemp does not give off a scent, but Larry, Moe, and Curly do. To make Shemp leave a scent trail behind, just add "Shemp leaves behind ten scents".

Note that the player leaves scent objects behind also, but we only see messages for NPC scents. This is partly because the message for the player's scent would pretty much always be useless information (since you know where you are), and partly because conjugating verbs is a pain. So I coded it that way.

[code]"More Test Stuffs" by Troy Jones III

Section - Defining Scents

A scent is a kind of thing. A scent is always scenery.
A scent has a number called age. The age of a scent is usually zero.
Instead of doing something with a scent, say "It's a scent trail left behind by [random thing that leaves behind the noun], [age of noun in words] minutes old. You can't really do anything with it."

Leaving behind relates one person to various scents. 
The verb to leave behind (it leaves behind, they leave behind, it left behind, it is left behind, it is leaving behind) implies the leaving behind relation.

Definition: a scent is NPC if it is not left behind by the player.

Section - Dramatis Personae

The player leaves behind ten scents.
Larry leaves behind ten scents.
Curly leaves behind ten scents.
Moe leaves behind ten scents.

The description of yourself is "Four paws and brown and white fur. You also have a keen nose, though you can't see it very well without crossing your eyes."

Section - For some reason we perceive scents by looking-- just go with it

After looking:
    say "Exits: [exit list][smell list]";
    
Instead of smelling:
    say "You sniff the air[smell list]".
    
To say smell list:
    if an NPC scent is in the location:
        let 1st-item be true;
        repeat with stink running through NPC scents in the location:
            if 1st-item is true:
                say ".[paragraph break]You can smell [stink]";
                now 1st-item is false;
            otherwise:
                say ", and [stink]";
    say "."

Rule for printing the name of a scent (called odor):
    say "that [random thing that leaves behind odor] was here [age of odor in words] minute[if age of odor is not one]s[end if] ago".

To say exit list:
    let place be location;
    let first-in-list be true;
    repeat with way running through directions:
        let place be the room way from the location;
        if place is a room:
            if first-in-list is true:
                say " [way]";
                now first-in-list is false;
            otherwise:
                say ", [way]".


Section - ET rule that distributes and recycles scents and moves the NPCs randomly

Every turn:
    repeat with mover running through persons that are not the player:
        let destination be a random room;
        let thataway be the best route from the location of the mover to the destination, using doors;
        if thataway is a direction:
            try mover going thataway;
    repeat with stinker running through persons that leave behind something:
        if the location of stinker encloses something left behind by stinker:
            repeat with reek running through scents in the location of stinker:
                if reek is left behind by stinker:
                    now the age of reek is zero;
        otherwise:
            move a random off-stage thing left behind by stinker to the location of stinker;
    repeat with stench running through scents:
        if stench is not off-stage:
            increment age of stench;
            if age of stench > 9:
                now age of stench is zero;
                now stench is off-stage.

Section - Rooms

Front Porch is a room. "The front porch of your house."
Driveway is southeast from Front Porch. "Your driveway slopes down to the north and curves left into the garage in back of the house."
Front Lawn is south from Front Porch and west from Driveway.
Street by Your House is south from Driveway and southeast from Front Lawn.
Foyer is northeast from Front Porch. "A lot of rooms connect to the Foyer so a lot of NPCs will pass through here."
Master Bedroom is south from Foyer.
Master Bathroom is northeast from Master Bedroom.
Guest Bathroom is southeast from Foyer and southwest from Guest Bedroom.
Guest Bedroom is east from Foyer.
Laundry Room is northeast from Foyer.
Garage is down from Laundry Room and north from driveway.
The Den is north from the Foyer.
The Living Room is west from the Foyer and southwest from the Den.
The Attic is up from the Foyer. "Remember that the Every Turn rule doesn't fire on turn one, so there won't be any scents here at first."
The Family Room is down from the Den and east from the Garage.
The Backyard is north from the Family Room.

Larry is in Attic.
Curly is in Attic.
Moe is in Attic.
Shemp is a man in Attic.

test me with "ne / l / l / smell / l / l / l / n / l / l".[/code]

Output looks like this (illustrating one scent disappearing after ten turns, and another scent being refreshed before it expires):
[rant]>l
Den
You can see Curly here.

Exits:  south, southwest, down.

You can smell that Larry was here two minutes ago, and that Moe was here seven minutes ago, and that Curly was here one minute ago.

Curly goes down.

>l
Den
Exits:  south, southwest, down.

You can smell that Larry was here three minutes ago, and that Moe was here eight minutes ago, and that Curly was here two minutes ago.

>l
Den
Exits:  south, southwest, down.

You can smell that Larry was here four minutes ago, and that Moe was here nine minutes ago, and that Curly was here three minutes ago.

>smell
You sniff the air.

You can smell that Larry was here five minutes ago, and that Curly was here four minutes ago.

>l
Den
Exits:  south, southwest, down.

You can smell that Larry was here six minutes ago, and that Curly was here five minutes ago.

Curly arrives from the south.

>l
Den
You can see Curly here.

Exits:  south, southwest, down.

You can smell that Larry was here seven minutes ago, and that Curly was here one minute ago.

Curly goes down.

Moe arrives from the south.[/rant]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4051&start=0#p29106
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: NPC Arrives
User: rotter / DateTime: 2011-12-30 02:36:24

Hi

I'm battling with a problem which I'm sure is easy but I just can't seem to crack it.  I want to detect when an NPC arrives at a location and then immediately carry out some actions.  I can get the NPC to report their arrival but whatever I try the action I want to follow just will not run until the player takes a turn.

So, what is the best way to achieve the results I'm after?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4051&start=0#p29107
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: NPC Arrives
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-12-30 02:42:43

To clarify: do we want to do this whenever the NPC arrives at any location, or only when he arrives at a particular room? If it is a particular room, do we want these actions to fire more than once if the NPC goes there more than once, or every turn the NPC stays in the room, or one time only?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4043&start=0#p29108
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Introducing a New Character
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-12-30 02:57:10

[quote="Deain"]Thanks guys!  Would it also work if I took away the check rule or does the check has to be there?[/quote]It should work without the check rule if there are no other NPCs besides the Hermit, but you might also want to add this (just for fun):

[code]Instead of talking to the player, say "You babble senselessly to yourself."[/code]
Since the player is "someone", the code as currently written would allow you to talk to yourself (aka the player). If the Hermit and the player are the only persons in the game, then the two instead rules cover everything, and the check rule is pointless.

Also you might consider adding this:

[code]Instead of answering the hermit that "hello/hi", try talking to the hermit.[/code]
That should allow the player to say HERMIT, HELLO or HERMIT, HI instead of TALK TO HERMIT if they prefer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4051&start=0#p29109
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: NPC Arrives
User: rotter / DateTime: 2011-12-30 03:52:57

Due to the game, I need to have this checked whenever the NPC arrives at any location.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4043&start=0#p29110
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Introducing a New Character
User: Deain / DateTime: 2011-12-30 03:55:58

LOL I'll try that for fun trojo.  And would someone be so kind to tell me what I left out or added in this so it doesn't work?  It's the same code as before, but as a different conversation:

Talking to is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "talk to [someone]" or “converse with [someone]” as talking to.
Check talking to: say "[The noun] doesn't reply."

[code]Instead of talking to the Hermit: say "[one of]'Hi,' you say unsure of yourself.[paragraph break]'Well, well, well, look at what the monkeys draged in?' he said with a glint of amusement in his eyes.[or]'Who are you?  What do you want from me?' you stammered looking around like a trapped animal. [paragraph break]'No worries my little friend. Rest asure that I mean you no harm. I'm simply a lonely man who longs for company ever so often,' the Hermit repliedas he continued scutinizing you. [paragraph break] Hermit finally sat down on one of the chirs and gestured for you to do so as well. 'Now, holw may I help you young fellow?'[paragragh break] 'Your help, yes.' you said the words tripping over eachother.  You're not sure if you can trust the man. 'Sorry sir, I forgot to ask you your name.  Will you tell me?'[paragraph break] 'Me?' The Hemit laughed softly, it was deep and smooth. 'You can call me the Hermit.  Yes, I like this name.  Now, how can I help you?[paragraph break] 'I need to get home, some how, some way.  I don't know how I got here.' your voice slighty higher than usual as you remembered what you were supposed to be doing.'[paragraph break] 'Ok, I'll help you.' the Hermit looked at the dying fire in the corner, 'Go west, back into the deep of the forest and I'll help you, bring you to my ship once the fire is satisfied.'[or]you decide to start the quest for the right type of firewood. As you turned to head out the hut, you felt the intense blue gaze burning into your back and decide to hurry before the Hermit would change his mind of providing aid. You decide not to keep talking to the Hermit now.[stopping]".
[/code]

Thanks guys [emote]:P[/emote] sorry bout this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4043&start=0#p29112
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Introducing a New Character
User: trojo / DateTime: 2011-12-30 04:59:38

Misspelled one of the [paragraph break]s

EDIT: Also (though I realize this is an early draft or a random example that isn't even in your actual game), you'll want to avoid switching between present tense and past tense in your writing. It is much easier to write IF all in present tense so I'd just go with that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4043&start=10#p29113
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Introducing a New Character
User: Deain / DateTime: 2011-12-30 05:25:54

trojo	 thanks a honored time!  That did the trick [emote]:)[/emote] Thanks again!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4043&start=10#p29114
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Introducing a New Character
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2011-12-30 05:38:59

These kind of typos are not hard to debug yourself. If you read the error message, it says:

[quote]Problem. In the line 'say "[one of]'Hi,' you say unsure of yo [...] lking to the Hermit now.[stopping]"'  , I was expecting that[b] 'paragragh break' [/b]would be something to 'say', but it didn't look like any form of 'say' that I know. So I tried to read[b] 'paragragh break' [/b]as a value of some kind (because it's legal to say values), but couldn't make sense of it that way either.[/quote]
It's telling you what the problem is and which phrase is misspelled.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4051&start=0#p29115
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: NPC Arrives
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-30 06:05:10

Perhaps you can call the action directly from the code that moves the NPC?
[code]Definition: a person is other if it is not the player.

Every turn:  
	repeat with monster running through the list of other persons:
		if the monster is in a room (called the current space) and a random chance of 1 in 4 succeeds: 
			let next space be a random room which is adjacent to the current space; 
			if the monster is visible, say "[The monster] heads to [the next space]."; 
			move the monster to next space; 
			if the monster is visible:
				say "[A monster] arrives from [the current space].";
				try examining the monster.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4043&start=10#p29116
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Introducing a New Character
User: Deain / DateTime: 2011-12-30 06:43:51

The game is working now.  Thanks Jim Aikin, gravel, Felix, Robert Rothman, trojo and Juhana for all your help. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4019&start=0#p29117
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Kobo Touch + Development = IF No Brainer
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-12-30 11:52:13

The ereader companies would do well to accomodate developers like you.  I've been watching the price wars, and I've been thinking about buying one.  However, I'm also aware of the efforts to get IF running on the Kindle and mobile devices, and I want to wait and see which mobile device will end up letting me play IF most freely.  I'm kind of hesitant to get a Kindle since I would prefer to get a device less tied to the bookstore/service (and supporting of more formats), but if the Kindle can easily run at least all Inform games, buying one would be an attractive idea.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4053&start=0#p29118
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: IFIDs and Hugo
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2011-12-30 11:58:46

I have the IFID Generator on the TADS website open in the other tab right now.  I was going to assign an IFID to my Hugo game that I will be releasing tonight or tomorrow morning for the Hugo Open House, but I notice it says that IFIDs are for new interactive fiction projects "written in TADS or any other Babel-aware authoring system."

As far as I know, Hugo is not Babel-aware.  Is there any use at all for an IFID if the system doesn't support it?  I'm sure IFIDs are useful as metadata, but I haven't found them particularly useful to the end-user browsing the IFDB.  If there is going to be no metadata anyways, should I include an IFID?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4031&start=0#p29119
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Self Promotion: January's Choose-Your-Own-Novel Month!
User: dacharya64 / DateTime: 2011-12-30 12:12:14

Only two days left before the writing begins! If you're interested please sign up as soon as possible. Everyone is welcome. Even if you know nothing about interactive fiction, there are lots of tutorials and programs on the site. 

Happy New Years to all!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=30#p29120
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: ela / DateTime: 2011-12-30 12:47:51

[emote]:([/emote]  I have only one month left...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3838&start=10#p29121
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The penultimate not numbered New Year's Speed IF
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2011-12-30 13:13:33

All right, I've submitted my goofy pointless waste of time. Hopefully it's clued enough to be solvable on Floyd. 

Speaking of which, I should be able to participate on Sunday, but at some point I need to find someone on the mud who can help me recover my password...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3838&start=10#p29122
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The penultimate not numbered New Year's Speed IF
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-12-30 13:37:22

Yay! I'm done. I think it's clued well, too. I hope it's lots of fun.

Looking forward to the other games, too. I'll be at CF for sure.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4049&start=0#p29123
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Leaving tracks
User: vorpaldinger / DateTime: 2011-12-30 13:58:33

Awesome! Thank you! I never would have figured that out...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4054&start=0#p29125
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: If you were a character in Zork, who would you be?
User: IfMaster / DateTime: 2011-12-30 18:02:09

[rant][/rant]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4024&start=0#p29126
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: New York-based IF group -- any interest?
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-12-30 19:17:58

Wow! It'd be nice to have a group like this in a new city. Real life gets in the way of the Chicago group sometimes, but I think we all like each other. I'm not the official head of the Chicago group, either, but I'd love to exchange ideas on how to grow such a group...guess that's a new topic, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4055&start=0#p29127
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Ways to build city-based groups?
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-12-30 19:19:56

So I enjoy attending the monthly Chicago-IF meetups when enough of us can make it...but that leaves a few questions.

How do we grow a city-based IF group?

What are ways to get new people to come along?

What are the sorts of activities people plan beyond just getting together and being with people they like and share interests with?

I enjoy the core of people that come to Chicago-IF but would love to see even more. As Lucea mentioned in the NY topic, it's a new year and time to try new stuff. Any suggestions?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3823&start=0#p29128
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The Pudlothon: Ecce Jacek
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-12-30 19:23:14

[quote="lemort"][quote="Jacek Pudlo"]
>TURN PEPSI INTO COKE
Done.
[/quote]


Impressive!

M:)rten[/quote]

Now making people like New Coke, that'd be something.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4054&start=0#p29129
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: If you were a character in Zork, who would you be?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2011-12-30 21:18:27

I like to think I'd either be one of the more ridiculous Flatheads, or one of the more ridiculous wizards.

But anything's better than being one of the Yipples of Borphee, I figure.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4056&start=0#p29130
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: T3: Getting the Instance of a Class (?)
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-30 21:38:14

I'm not even sure I understand the problem I'm having. In a nutshell, I've defined a subclass of room. It's not actually a room for a randomized maze (trust me -- there are no mazes in this game), but it's designed to behave rather like one, in that several rooms will have identical routines for choosing exits at random.

To this end, the exits defined for the class all have TravelMessage objects attached to them. The destination property of each TravelMessage uses rand() to grab a random room from the list of rooms in the region. This works, except that once in a while rand() will choose the room the player is already in. In that case, in place of the travelDesc, you'll get "Nothing obvious happens."

This destroys the illusion. So I want to be able, on the fly, to construct a list of the OTHER rooms -- the rooms in the region that are not the current room -- and then feed that list to rand(). This is where matters go seriously screwy. I first tried to create a chooseDestination method in the class, like this:

[code]chooseDestination () {
        local destList = [VM1, VM2, VM3, VM4, VM5, VM6, VM7, VM8, VM9, VM10];
        local x = destList.indexOf(self);
        local otherList = destList.removeElementAt(x);
        return rand([otherList]);
}[/code]

... the idea being that chooseDestination would be called by any TravelMessage.destination in the actual room, and would return some other room, which would result in the other room being returned by the destination method. However, this fails disastrously, and I don't know why. The first time one of these TravelMessages is called, "Nothing obvious happens" and the room you're in blows up. The status line goes blank, all of the exits are gone, the room description is gone -- most likely, you've moved into nil.

The most likely explanation of this is that "self" isn't in the list, which sets x to nil.

One possible diagnosis of the problem is that I'm having trouble getting the instance object of the room itself in order to subtract it from the initial destination list in chooseDestination. I can't pass "self" to chooseDestination as an argument, because self is the TravelMessage. I've tried passing lexicalParent to it as an argument and then doing  local x = destList.indexOf(callingRoom), but very possibly the lexical parent is the class, not the actual room.

This is no more than a guess. Probably wrong.

I can, in fact, copy and paste a bunch of TravelMessage code onto ten different rooms and edit each of them manually so as to eliminate the original problem, but I'd sure like to understand how to code it the RIGHT way. How can I get the current instance object when I'm writing code for the class and the code is in an anonymous embedded object? Are the anonymous embedded objects in a class definition separate objects for each instance of the class, or am I trying to access the same TravelMessage from various rooms? The latter possibility wouldn't explain the error I'm getting, because the error happens the very first time the TravelMessage tries to access chooseDestination().

Suggestions cheerfully acknowledged and gratefully experimented with!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4056&start=0#p29131
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Getting the Instance of a Class (?)
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-30 22:13:49

[quote="Jim Aikin"][code]chooseDestination () {
        local destList = [VM1, VM2, VM3, VM4, VM5, VM6, VM7, VM8, VM9, VM10];
        local x = destList.indexOf(self);
        local otherList = destList.removeElementAt(x);
        return rand([otherList]);
}[/code][/quote]

"otherList" is already a list. With "[otherlist]" you create a list that contains another list (yes, you can have lists of lists). What you want is:

return rand(otherList);

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4056&start=0#p29132
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Getting the Instance of a Class (?)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-12-30 22:19:36

I think that it will probably be more efficient to simply do what you've been doing, but add in an additional check, i.e. pick a room from the region, then check to see whether the room chosen is the player's current location. If not, proceed with travel to the selected room, otherwise just repeat the process.

But hopefully someone answers the question as you asked it, since that will likely be a nice bit of knowledge to have in your toolkit.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4026&start=0#p29133
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Setting Up FrobTADS
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-12-30 22:40:31

You know, the FrobTADS page (<a class="postlink" href="http://tads.org/frobtads.htm">http://tads.org/frobtads.htm</a>) is a bit confusing for the newcomer, or at least for OS X users who don't have an IDE option. It says not a word about the compilers being included in the install--it refers only to the interpreter. I remember having looked at this page before and concluding that there must not be any option for Mac users after all. The new widget that asks which OS you're running and then tells you what software to use is helpful in this regard, largely because it prevents you from ever getting to the confusing FrobTADS product page.

Anyway: Jim, I took the opportunity of the new release to try out your instructions. They worked great, but I did get hung up by one little thing. Step 6

[quote="Jim Aikin"]6) Create a starter game file, again as a text file, and save it to the MyGame directory. Your starter game should look more or less like this:[/quote]

should probably mention that the starter game file must have a .t extension.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4056&start=0#p29134
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Getting the Instance of a Class (?)
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-30 22:56:02

[quote="RealNC"]
"otherList" is already a list. With "[otherlist]" you create a list that contains another list (yes, you can have lists of lists). What you want is:

return rand(otherList);[/quote]
Good catch ... but fixing that doesn't solve the problem, oddly enough. Here is a slightly longer version of the code I've defined for the room class. (The list is the room objects that have been created from the class.)

[code]    chooseDestination () {
        local destList = [VM1, VM2, VM3, VM4, VM5, VM6, VM7, VM8, VM9, VM10];
        local x = destList.indexOf (self);
        local otherList = destList.removeElementAt(x);
        return rand(otherList);
    }
    northeast : TravelMessage {
        travelDesc = 'You choose a path at random among the ruined huts. '
        destination {
            return chooseDestination();
        }
    }
    north : TravelMessage {
        travelDesc = 'You choose a path at random among the ruined huts. '
    destination {
            return chooseDestination();
        }
    }
    northwest : TravelMessage {
        travelDesc = 'You choose a path at random among the ruined huts. '
    destination {
            "Test: In destination method for nw.... ";
        return chooseDestination();
        }
    }[/code]
This still blows up. It moves the player to nil. What's odd is that if I move the code for chooseDestination() into the TravelMessage.destination object and change "self" to me.getOutermostRoom(), like this:
[code]local destList = [VM1, VM2, VM3, VM4, VM5, VM6, VM7, VM8, VM9, VM10];
        local x = destList.indexOf (me.getOutermostRoom());
        local otherList = destList.removeElementAt(x);
        return rand(otherList);[/code]
...it seems to work fine. [Edit: No, it doesn't. It blows up in an even weirder way.] One possibility is that the destination method really doesn't like calling another method. Another possibility is that "self" means the class rather than the instance object.

What's also odd is that if I place a breakpoint in the chooseDestination code (in the class definition, on the line local x = destList.indexOf(self)), the run doesn't stop at the breakpoint. It just barrels right on through.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4056&start=0#p29136
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Getting the Instance of a Class (?)
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-30 23:09:59

Here's where it gets really screwy. I got rid of my chooseDestination() method entirely, and parked its code in the destination methods for the TravelMessage objects attached to the direction properties of the room class ... like this:

[code]    northeast : TravelMessage {
        travelDesc = 'You choose a path at random among the ruined huts. '
        destination {
            local destList = [VM1, VM2, VM3, VM4, VM5, VM6, VM7, VM8, VM9, VM10];
            local x = destList.indexOf (me.getOutermostRoom());
            local otherList = destList.removeElementAt(x);
            return rand(otherList);
        }
    }
    north : TravelMessage {
        travelDesc = 'You choose a path at random among the ruined huts. '
        destination {
            local destList = [VM1, VM2, VM3, VM4, VM5, VM6, VM7, VM8, VM9, VM10];
            local x = destList.indexOf (me.getOutermostRoom());
            local otherList = destList.removeElementAt(x);
            return rand(otherList);
        }
    }
    northwest : TravelMessage {
        travelDesc = 'You choose a path at random among the ruined huts. '
        destination {
            local destList = [VM1, VM2, VM3, VM4, VM5, VM6, VM7, VM8, VM9, VM10];
            local x = destList.indexOf (me.getOutermostRoom());
            local otherList = destList.removeElementAt(x);
            return rand(otherList);
        }
    }[/code]

Now what's happening is that I (the player "I") can't even get into the first room in this non-maze. When I try to traverse a travel connector to enter some VM room or other (randomly chosen) from a nearby room, I get a run-time error ("integer value required") on the TravelMessage.destination code for the class, even though I'm not yet in the room where that code can run.

The reason for the error is fairly obvious: me.getOutermostRoom() still returns the value of the nearby room. But why should the TravelMessage for the VM room class be called when the player is entering a room? Does this have something to do with containment paths??? But I can't replace me.getOutermostRoom() with lexicalParent, because lexicalParent evaluates to the class, not to the individual room that is the instance of the class.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4056&start=0#p29137
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Getting the Instance of a Class (?)
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-30 23:23:02

Does this work?

[code]
        chooseDestination () {
            local destList = [VM1, VM2, VM3, VM4, VM5, VM6, VM7, VM8, VM9, VM10];
            local x = destList.indexOf(self);
            local otherList = destList.removeElementAt(x);
            return rand(otherList);
        }
        northeast : TravelMessage {
            travelDesc = 'You choose a path at random among the ruined huts. '
            destination {
                return me.getOutermostRoom().chooseDestination();
            }
        }
[/code]

The crucial part is:

[code]return me.getOutermostRoom().chooseDestination();[/code]

Previously, I don't see how the compiler would have called chooseDestination() on the correct object.

Furthermore, you might want to also create a custom TravelMessage class to avoid the code duplication. Something like:

[code]
class RandomRoomTravelMessage {
    travelDesc = 'You choose a path at random among the ruined huts. '
    destination {
      return me.getOutermostRoom().chooseDestination();
    }
}

// In your random room objects:
   north: RandomRoomTravelMessage;
   northeast: RandomRoomTravelMessage;
   east: RandomRoomTravelMessage;
   // etc.
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4026&start=0#p29138
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Setting Up FrobTADS
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-30 23:34:09

Yes, it should be a bit clearer and mention that it's a compiler suite rather than just an interpreter. I'll send a new description to Mike.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4056&start=0#p29139
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Getting the Instance of a Class (?)
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-31 00:07:00

I just tried this on my own. The problem is that destList.indexOf(self) simply returns nil when it doesn't find the object in the list. In turn, that means that the player is in a room that is not included in destList. So you need to check if 'x' is nil. If it is nil, then that means you can use the original list as-is, since the current location is not contained in it.

The below setup works fine here. Going south should always take you to a VM room, but never the current one:

[code]class RandomRoomTravelMessage: TravelMessage {
    travelDesc = "You choose a path at random among the ruined huts. "
    destination()
    {
        return me.getOutermostRoom().chooseDestination();
    }
}

class RandomRoom: Room {
    chooseDestination ()
    {
        local destList = [VM1, VM2, VM3, VM4, VM5];
        local x = destList.indexOf(me.getOutermostRoom());
        if (x == nil)
            return rand(destList);
        return rand(destList.removeElementAt(x));
    }

    south: RandomRoomTravelMessage{};
}

roomNotInList: RandomRoom 'initial room' "Initial Room";

VM1: RandomRoom 'VM1' "VM1";
VM2: RandomRoom 'VM2' "VM2";
VM3: RandomRoom 'VM3' "VM3";
VM4: RandomRoom 'VM4' "VM4";
VM5: RandomRoom 'VM5' "VM5";
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4056&start=0#p29140
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Getting the Instance of a Class (?)
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-31 00:08:51

[quote="RealNC"]
Previously, I don't see how the compiler would have called chooseDestination() on the correct object.
[/quote]
Thanks, Nikos. With a few suitable tweaks, that does seem to solve the problem.

I think you're right that chooseDestination() wasn't getting called correctly ... but then, the compiler did have to make a decision about what object to call it on. Probably it called it on the class (which I guess is just another object).

The other issue that I may have been stumbling over is what happens when an anonymous object is embedded as a property of a class. My naive, all-thumbs amateur assumption was that when the class instance objects were instantiated, each of them would acquire its own population of anonymous objects. But unless the class constructor does that, it wouldn't happen.

Maybe that's a feature suggestion for a future implementation of the Thing constructor. Or maybe I have no idea what I'm talking about.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4051&start=0#p29141
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: NPC Arrives
User: rotter / DateTime: 2011-12-31 00:13:45

[quote="Felix"]Perhaps you can call the action directly from the code that moves the NPC?
[code]Definition: a person is other if it is not the player.

Every turn:  
	repeat with monster running through the list of other persons:[/code][/quote]

Thanks, never thought about a repeat loop.  This was the basis of my solution, just needed to add another loop for all the locations.  This will be to check whether other NPC's are up to stuff out of sight.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4056&start=0#p29142
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Getting the Instance of a Class (?)
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-31 00:16:13

[quote="Jim Aikin"]The other issue that I may have been stumbling over is what happens when an anonymous object is embedded as a property of a class.[/quote]
Well, define "embedded" [emote]:P[/emote] The object is created in RAM, and the property just happens to point to it; it's just a way of being able to access and refer to that object. From the object's point of view, it's nowhere special. Consider three objects: A, B and C. A and B both have a property that points to C:

A.someObj = C
B.someObj = C

Where is C "embedded"? Well, nowhere. A and B just happen to have properties that refer to C. C itself is not in any way embedded in A or B.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4056&start=0#p29143
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Getting the Instance of a Class (?)
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-31 00:48:28

[quote="RealNC"]Well, define "embedded" [emote]:P[/emote] [/quote]
What I had in mind was more like this:

class X;
class A: Thing
     someProp : X {}
;
someObj : A;
otherObj: A;

At that point, is there one object in RAM of class X? Or are there two, one each for someObj and otherObj?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4056&start=10#p29144
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Getting the Instance of a Class (?)
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-31 00:49:27

[quote="Jim Aikin"]The other issue that I may have been stumbling over is what happens when an anonymous object is embedded as a property of a class. My naive, all-thumbs amateur assumption was that when the class instance objects were instantiated, each of them would acquire its own population of anonymous objects. But unless the class constructor does that, it wouldn't happen.[/quote]

You're right that it's not automatic, but you can override initializeThing() to do exactly what you suggest: make copies of the anonymous objects and alter one of its values.

[code]
class SubclassRoom: Room
	roomBeforeAction() {
		roomMessage.doMethod();
	}
	roomMessage: object {
		doMethod() { "<<parent.roomTxt>>"; }
		parent = lexicalParent
	}
	initializeThing() {
		inherited;
		// comment the next two lines out to use class text
		roomMessage = roomMessage.createClone();
		roomMessage.parent = self;
	}
	roomTxt = 'abcdefg'
;

bedroom: SubclassRoom 'bedroom' 'bedroom'
	roomTxt = 'hijklmn'
;
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3838&start=10#p29145
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The penultimate not numbered New Year's Speed IF
User: The Xenographer / DateTime: 2011-12-31 01:34:35

Oh rats, I thought the deadline was tomorrow, not today. Now what am I to do with this half-finished silly game?

Oh well, I'll be on CF anyway to see the successfully completed entrants, at least.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4056&start=10#p29146
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Getting the Instance of a Class (?)
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2011-12-31 02:43:11

[quote="Jim Aikin"][quote="RealNC"]Well, define "embedded" [emote]:P[/emote] [/quote]
What I had in mind was more like this:

class X;
class A: Thing
     someProp : X {}
;
someObj : A;
otherObj: A;

At that point, is there one object in RAM of class X? Or are there two, one each for someObj and otherObj?[/quote]
There's only one. If you change someObj.someProp, then you can also observe that change in otherObj.someProp, because both refer to the same object. For example:

[code]
someObj.someProp.testValue = 1;
otherObj.someProp.testValue = 2;
"<<someObj.someProp.testValue ";
[/code]
The above will print "2", not "1", because both assignments are changing the "testValue" property of the same object.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3823&start=0#p29147
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The Pudlothon: Ecce Jacek
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-12-31 05:12:03

What, you mean like Soylent Coke?

EDIT - Wow, completely misread your use of the verb "like". Sorry about that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4054&start=0#p29148
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: If you were a character in Zork, who would you be?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-12-31 05:15:12

I [i]am[/i] a character in Zork every time I play it. That's the whole point of most IF. Certainly all AFGANCAAP games.

Mind you, there's a game out there you may not know about exploring Zork through the POV of the Troll...

Should be fun playing the Cyclops, too. About as fun as playing the Troll.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3838&start=10#p29149
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The penultimate not numbered New Year's Speed IF
User: Tale / DateTime: 2011-12-31 08:34:36

We had 13 submissions. Can't wait to play them. See all y'all tomorrow.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4051&start=0#p29150
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: NPC Arrives
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2011-12-31 08:39:55

Not sure if this will help, but this is the code I used for an NPC who wanders around randomly.  If the player enters a location where the NPC is, or if the NPC enters a location where the player is, the game reports it.

[code]There is a man called the cop.  Understand "cop" as the cop.  Understand "pig" as the cop.  Understand "the pig" as the cop.  Understand "fuzz" as the cop.  Understand "the fuzz" as the cop.

The description of the cop is "The cop wears a blue uniform and a brightly polished tin badge.  He looks mean and carries a billy.  In fact, he decides to hit you with it just for looking at him."

The cop wears a badge.  Understand "tin badge" as the badge.  The description of the badge is "This is the cop[apostrophe]s license to do anything he wants.  Right now, he wants to beat the crap out of you.".

The cop carries a billy.  Understand "club" as the billy.  Understand "billy-club" as the billy.  Understand "billy club" as the billy.  Understand "nightstick" as the billy.  The description of the billy is "This is a stout wooden club.  It is quite worn and is encrusted with bloodstains.  Some of the blood is yours.".

When play begins:
	Now the cop is in a random room in The Island.


Cop Roomfound is a truth state that varies.  Cop Roomfound is false.
Current Cop Room is a room that varies.  Next Cop Room is a room that varies.
Copway is a direction that varies.



To reset cop:
	Let R be a random room;
	Now next cop room is R;
	If next cop room is not current cop room:
		Now cop roomfound is true.
			
Every turn:
	Now current cop room is the location of the cop;
	Now cop roomfound is false;
	While cop roomfound is false repeatedly reset cop;
	If the cop is visible:
		Choose a random row from the table of cop mayhem;
		Say "The cop [action entry], then leaves the area to patrol his beat.";
	Now copway is the best route from current cop room to next cop room, using even locked doors;
	Let Theroom be the room copWay from current cop Room;
	Move the cop to Theroom;
	If the cop is visible:
		Choose a random row from the table of cop mayhem;
		Say "The cop appears and [action entry].".

Table of Cop Mayhem
Action
"smacks you on the head with his billy"
"swings his billy at your gut"
"kicks you in a very sensitive place"
"punches you in the nose"
"bashes your head in"
"laughs at you"
"tries to break your knee with his club"
"hits you in the elbow"

[/code]

Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4058&start=0#p29151
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Writing a New Dialogue
User: Deain / DateTime: 2011-12-31 09:15:14

Ok, so the first dialogue from this link: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4043">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4043</a>
the coding worked beautifully, but now, I want to write another dialogue Imform gave me an error message: [color=#8080FF]Problem. You wrote 'Talking to is an action applying to one visible thing'  : but that seems to be an action already existing, so it cannot be redefined now. If you would like to reconfigure an action in the standard set - for instance if you prefer 'unlocking' to apply to only one thing, not two - create a new action for what you need ('keyless unlocking', perhaps) and then change the grammar to use the new action rather than the old ('Understand "unlock [something]" as keyless unlocking.'). [/color] I'm sorry, but I don't really understand what it wanted me to do.  When I looked for the problem in my script, it highlighted this code: [code]Talking to is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "talk to [someone]" or “converse with [someone]” as talking to.[/code]

It say I need to make a new rule or something?  Can anyone help please?  Thanks lots.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3823&start=0#p29152
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The Pudlothon: Ecce Jacek
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-12-31 09:19:01

Soylent Coke is a game I would play.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3823&start=10#p29153
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The Pudlothon: Ecce Jacek
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-12-31 09:27:02

Oh, I don't know... the twist would be completely spoiled by now.

Unless Soylent Coke WASN't people.

Could be Pepsi.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4058&start=0#p29154
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Writing a New Dialogue
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-12-31 09:27:30

As 'talking to' is not an inbuilt action, you must have already defined the 'talking to' action earlier on in the source text, or you're also using an extension like [i]Quip Based Conversations[/i] which defines the 'talking to' action.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3823&start=10#p29155
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The Pudlothon: Ecce Jacek
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-12-31 09:30:58

It could be that the drink is marketed to cannibals as containing (consenting) people. You're a corporate spy working for the rival drinks company Meati MAX, that uses dog meat, and you're sent to steal Soylent Cola's recipes. The twist is, Soylent Cola actually uses soya to cut costs.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3823&start=10#p29156
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The Pudlothon: Ecce Jacek
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2011-12-31 09:34:15

That idea's too good to go to waste, surely.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4058&start=0#p29157
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Writing a New Dialogue
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2011-12-31 10:20:04

[quote="JoeyJones"] you must have already defined the 'talking to' action earlier on in the source text, or you're also using an extension like Quip Based Conversations which defines the 'talking to' action[/quote]
Yes. The problem message "You wrote 'Talking to is an action applying to one visible thing' : but that seems to be an action already existing, so it cannot be redefined now", means that "Talking to is an action etc." appears twice in your source text (or both in your source text and in some extension you're using). You probably want the talking to action as it is, so you should just erase the code that the IDE  highlighted and go on writing any "Instead of talking to the hermit's companion" and "Instead of talking to the crowd" etc. rules that you need.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3823&start=10#p29158
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The Pudlothon: Ecce Jacek
User: matt w / DateTime: 2011-12-31 10:26:17

[quote="JoeyJones"]It could be that the drink is marketed to cannibals as containing (consenting) people. You're a corporate spy working for the rival drinks company Meati MAX, that uses dog meat, and you're sent to steal Soylent Cola's recipes. The twist is, Soylent Cola actually uses soya to cut costs.[/quote]

It may be my second-favorite random fact that, in the book Soylent Green was based on, [url=http://saucersofmud.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/soylent-green-is-bocaburgers-spoilers/]this was true[/url]. Soylent steaks were veggieburgers.

(My first-favorite random fact would be [url=http://saucersofmud.wordpress.com/2010/02/05/i-am-the-borax-i-speak-for-febreze/]the secret origin of Just a Gigolo[/url].)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3823&start=10#p29159
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The Pudlothon: Ecce Jacek
User: Joey / DateTime: 2011-12-31 11:35:21

[quote="Peter Pears"]That idea's too good to go to waste, surely.[/quote]
Oh there's plenty more where that came from. I'll add it to the growing collection of ideas that I probably wont substantiate. 

[quote=Matt W]It may be my second-favorite random fact that, in the book Soylent Green was based on, this was true. Soylent steaks were veggieburgers.[/quote]
It makes sense, it's a lot more efficient to grow soya than meat (including people).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3838&start=10#p29160
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The penultimate not numbered New Year's Speed IF
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2011-12-31 11:38:57

Wow! That's a lot.

So just to make sure...

On January 1st the fun will start on ClubFloyd at noon ET
11 AM Central
10 AM Mountain
9 AM Pacific

5 PM GMT

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4059&start=0#p29161
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Damusix for inform 7?
User: vorpaldinger / DateTime: 2011-12-31 11:45:00

I'm interested in experimenting with adding looping music and ambient sounds. Did Damusix ever reach a usable version, or is the multiple sounds extension still the best way to do this?

Also, is there a web glulx interpreter that can handle it? preferably a javascript one and not one that uses an applet? Am I asking for too much?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4048&start=0#p29162
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I6: multi-value properties
User: Poster / DateTime: 2011-12-31 11:48:24

[quote="Peter Rickardson"]How do I create my own multi-value property, like found_in? I'm working on a line-of-sight algorithm and need a line_of_sight property that will tell the world model what locations are visisble from any given vantage point.[/quote]

Probably the best example of this, come to think of it, is the [url=http://www.onyxring.com/orlibrary.aspx]ORLibrary[/url] by Jim Fisher. While the ORLibrary is way more than just this, he does create his own. Specifically, what to check out is ORNPC.h. Basically he creates an array and then cycles through each element in order to read it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4060&start=0#p29163
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: T3: Searching in the Dark
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-31 12:35:23

I'm trying to implement a tiny puzzle. The player does an action, and suddenly it's dark. Unless the player has done something perverse, the PC is wearing his backpack, and there's a flashlight in the backpack. But as the flashlight has not been needed heretofore, it's entirely possible that the player doesn't know or doesn't remember that the flashlight is there.

So I need the player to be able to search the backpack (by feel) even though it's dark.

'search backpack' by default gives "It's too dark to do that."

So I give the backpack brightness = 1 and the flashlight brightnessOff = 1. Now I get, "Your backpack contains a flashlight." That makes the game playable, but what I want is something like this:

"Groping in your backpack, you feel the flashlight."

The output message is coming from a lister, I'm sure ... but which lister? That's where I'm stumped. I don't even know how to find the library code that implements the lister.

Also, while I'm on the subject -- I can never remember whether the library defines dobjFor(LookIn) asDobjFor(Search) or the other way around, and I couldn't track down that information either. It might make a difference, as you can produce an infinite loop by routing each of them to the other.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4059&start=0#p29164
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Damusix for inform 7?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2011-12-31 13:30:45

The web glulx interpreter doesn't handle sounds (or graphics). I apologize for this. HTML5 sound is still a problem for game-like uses.

(I have no such excuse for the lack of graphics.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3761&start=0#p29165
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Hugo "Open House" Competition
User: Roody_Yogurt / DateTime: 2011-12-31 15:21:25

The Hugo Comp is wrapping up nicely. Several games are in, but we are waiting on a couple stragglers. No Hugo game left behind, you know. We expect to release the games sometimes around the 3rd now.

Have a great New Year's, everyone!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4060&start=0#p29166
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Searching in the Dark
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-31 18:33:58

[quote="Jim Aikin"]The output message is coming from a lister, I'm sure ... but which lister? That's where I'm stumped. I don't even know how to find the library code that implements the lister.[/quote]

Actors have an inventoryLister property; you can override it to use your own implementation. In this case it doesn't sound like it has to be very fancy.

[code]
me: Actor
	location = bedroom
	inventoryLister = getVisualAmbient() < 3
		? darkInventoryLister
		: actorInventoryLister;
;

darkInventoryLister: actorInventoryLister
	showCombinedInventoryList(parent, carrying, wearing) {
		"Wow it's really dark in here. ";
	}
;

bedroom: Room 'bedroom' 'bedroom'
	"Just another bedroom. "
	west = bathroom
;

bathroom: DarkRoom 'bathroom' 'bathroom'
	"Don't turn on the light! "
	east = bedroom
;
[/code]

I'm a bit wary of that getVisualAmbient() call - I've had it blow up on me in the past - but it seems to work OK here.

[quote]Also, while I'm on the subject -- I can never remember whether the library defines dobjFor(LookIn) asDobjFor(Search) or the other way around, and I couldn't track down that information either. It might make a difference, as you can produce an infinite loop by routing each of them to the other.[/quote]

It defines [url=http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/libref/source/thing.t.html#8535]dobjFor(Search) asDobjFor(LookIn)[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4061&start=0#p29167
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Placing objects in my starting room - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-12-31 18:44:57

With some difficulty, I'm trying to place objects into my first room. I've included the source that's giving me problems. In this source, I hope to place a backpack into the slatted box. When I test the compiled game, the pack is shown even though the box is closed and locked. Also, when I try to wear the pack, I get a runtime error in 'en_us.t? Here's the troublesome code. Could use some help./[code]

[code]
/*******************************************************************************
* (Room0001) The player begins the game at this location.                      *
*******************************************************************************/ 

Room0001:OutdoorRoom 'At The Beach' 'At the Beach'
roomFirstDesc()
{
"You have just arrived at the beach.";
beachAchievement.awardPointsOnce();
}
shortDesc="You are at the sandy beach."
 
beachAchievement:Achievement{+5 "reaching the beach"}
;
 /* Add HELP sign to beach area. **********************************************/
 
class Sign : Readable
;
+sign: Sign, Fixture 'large metal sign' 'metal sign'
"A sizeable metal sign is firmly attached to a large tree near the start of the
eastern path. It is quite rusty and worn but the printing on it can still be
read. It just might provide some information about The Magic Forest."
initSpecialDesc = "Attached to a tree at the beginning of the eastern is a large
metal sign." 
cannotTakeMSG = 'It is held permanently in place. Besides, there is no reason to
try to take it.'
readDesc = "The sign is written in both English and Spanish and reads: 
'DANGER! Restricted property beyond this point. Enter at your own risk.'\b
Property Manager,\b
Melenkurian\b" 
dobjFor(Read)
{
 action()
 {
  readsignAchievement.awardPointsOnce(); 
  inherited;
 }
}readsignAchievement : Achievement { +5 "reading the sign at the beach" }
;

/* Add slatted-wood box. ******************************************************/ 

+box: ComplexContainer, Fixture'large slatted wooden (wood) box*boxes' 'large
slatted-wood box' 
"The large wooden box, left here from a previous helicopter, lies on some small
rocks. At it top, there is a hasp that can be turned to unlock ir lock it. " 
cannotTakeMsg = (backpack.seen ? 'The backpack is a much more convenient
container. You would be better off using it instead.' : 'The box is way to
heavy to try to lift or carry around.')
initSpecialDesc = "A large slatted-wood box is lying nearby on some small
rocks." 
subContainer: ComplexComponent, LockableContainer
{
currentlyLockedMsg = 'The hasp is at the currently locked position. '
CurrentlyUnlockedMsg = 'The hasp is currently at the unlocked position. '
dobjFor(Lock)
{
 action()
 {
  "You twist the hasp and lock the box shut.";
  inherited;
 }
}
dobjFor(Unlock)
{
 action()
 {
  "You turn the hasp, allowing the box to be opened.";
  inherited;
 }
}
}
;
++ Component 'hasp' 'hasp'
"A simple hasp that does the job of unlocking and locking the box."
 dobjFor(Turn) {remap = [box.subContainer.isLocked ? UnlockAction :
 LockAction, box.subContainer]}
;

 ++backpack : BagOfHolding, Attachable, Wearable, OpenableContainer
'back pack/backpack' 'backpack'
"It is a standard military backpack which allows a sleeping bag to be attached
 to it at the bottom. It has a large main compartment which can be opened or
 closed from the top. If you wear this pack, you can store many objects in it,
 allowing you to possess a larger number of them than if you tried to carry them
 in your hands. "
 /*location = box.subcontainer*/
bulkCapacity = 3000
minBulk = 1

affinityFor(obj)
{
 return obj.ofKind(Matchbook) ? 50 : inherited(obj);
}
dobjFor(Wear)
{
action()
{
"You sling the backpack over your shoulders. ";
wearpackAchievement.awardPointsOnce();
inherited;
}
}
wearpackAchievement : Achievement { +5 "wearing the backpack"}
; 

[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4062&start=0#p29168
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: T3: Another Library Bug?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-31 19:03:02

Add this code beneath the me object in the starter game:

[code]+ myEars: Component, RestrictedContainer 'my your ear/ears' 'your ears'
    "Ordinarily you don<./s>t pay much attention to your ears. They<./s>re firmly (and not very
    remarkably) attached to the sides of your head. "
    isPlural = true
    validContents = [axe][/code]

The command 'remove ears' produces a run-time error. The error message is "wrong number of arguments".

The error is in the announceDefaultObject method of the modify TIAction block in en_us.t -- and that makes no sense, because the Remove action (as distinct from the TakeFrom action) is a TAction, not a TIAction. Possibly the parser is trying to interpret 'remove ears' as an incomplete TakeFromAction. ('remove' seems to be correctly interpreted when the object is Wearable, however.)

Suggestions on how to fix this would be appreciated!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4061&start=0#p29169
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Placing objects in my starting room - TADS3.1
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-31 19:10:11

You can't put things into ComplexContainers using the ++ notation. Try this:

[code]backpack : BagOfHolding, Attachable, Wearable, OpenableContainer @box.subContainer[/code]
When you do it this way, also, you'll need to be careful to move it out of the containment tree. What I usually do is park items that are not (for one reason or another) part of the containment tree at the top of the code for the room, above the Room definition itself. That's safe.

You haven't made the subContainer initiallyOpen = nil and initiallyLocked = true. Also, you don't want to put the dobjFor(Lock) and dobjFor(Unlock) in the subContainer. Put those bits in the main ComplexContainer code. The ComplexContainer will take care of routing the commands to its subContainer.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4061&start=0#p29170
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Placing objects in my starting room - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2011-12-31 19:31:28

Thanks once again for your rapid help. I will try out your suggestions ASAP.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4060&start=0#p29171
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Searching in the Dark
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-31 19:39:34

Hmm ... thanks for trying, but it's not quite working the way I have in mind. I added the darkInventoryLister as you suggested, and now I get the following output:
[quote]
>i
Wow it's really dark in here. 

>open pack
Opening your backpack reveals a black flashlight. 

>look in pack
It’s too dark to do that. [/quote]
What I want (in the dark) is this:
[quote]>i
You're wearing your backpack and carrying a canteen.

>open pack
Opened.

>look in pack
Groping in the pack, your fingers locate the flashlight, the dog biscuits, and the paperweight.

>x paperweight
You can't see it; there's no light.[/quote]
The point being, if you're wearing or carrying something, you hardly need visual sensing to know what it is. That, and the "groping in the pack, your fingers locate" prefix, which should then go on to list everything in the pack, even though it's dark, because you can touch it and figure out what it is.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4061&start=0#p29172
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Placing objects in my starting room - TADS3.1
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2011-12-31 19:42:12

The reason you're getting a run-time error may be because Attachable is a mix-in class. As such, it has to be placed first in the class list when you're defining the object.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4060&start=0#p29173
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Searching in the Dark
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2011-12-31 21:07:01

Sorry, for some reason I thought you wanted the inventory output altered.

You can apply similar logic to the lookInLister property of your backpack. I'll work up an example when I get back home.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4026&start=10#p29174
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Setting Up FrobTADS
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2011-12-31 22:22:15

[quote="RealNC"]Yes, it should be a bit clearer and mention that it's a compiler suite rather than just an interpreter. I'll send a new description to Mike.[/quote]
Thanks--and for all your work on this and QTADS as well!

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4058&start=0#p29175
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Writing a New Dialogue
User: Deain / DateTime: 2012-01-01 00:16:09

I deleted what I wrote before and and wrote this

[code]Speaking to is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "talk to [someone]" or “converse with [someone]” as talking to.
Check speaking to: say "[The noun] doesn't reply."

Instead of talking to the Hermit: say "[one of]'Ummmmm,' you say you gaze wondering to the not so good view that of the Madman's face.[paragraph break]'What do you think you're doing?  Kid?' His voice is low and rough like gravel. He make the word 'Kid,' sound like the worst insult ever.[paragraph break]'This wood.' The Madman growled, gesturing to the pile of wood you are about to pick up. 'Is mine.  Everything within ten mile radius belongs to ME.  Trees, water, the ground and this wood, are all mine. Me, Mr Green.' The Madman say seriously and totally insane. You wonder briefly how such a person could possivly have such a normal sounding name.[paragraph break]'I, Mr Green own this place and no one is allowed to touch ANYTHING I own.' His voice is dangerously low.[paragraph break]'Ummmm' You say stun by the his tirade not managing a dignified reply. 'I need the wood. I need to go home.' You say desperate  to get away now. Then you grabed the wood and began running as fast as you could away to the west away from where the sun roze.[paragraph break]'You may run, but you will never get away from me.' There is wild cackle in the Madman's tone. One glace back and you wish you have not done so.  A wild glint shines in dark, almost black eyes and the teeth was bared in a silent snarl. You decide not to keep talking to the Madman now.[stop]". 
[/code]
What did I miss?  Imform said theres' something wrong with the "say" line.  I checked the punctuation and I think that I didn't miss out any quotations.  Would love your help.  Thanks [emote]:)[/emote] I don't think Imform like me too much.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4060&start=0#p29176
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Searching in the Dark
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-01 01:11:11

OK, here goes.

[code]
me: Actor
	vocabWords = 'self'
	location = bedroom
;

+ backpack: OpenableContainer 'pack/backpack' 'backpack'
	// make sure backpack can be examined in the dark
	brightness = 1

	// use a different contents lister in the dark
	lookInLister = gPlayerChar.getVisualAmbient() < 3
		? darkThingLookInLister
		: thingLookInLister

	// suppress contents listing when opened
	dobjFor(Open) {
		action() {
			makeOpen(true);
			defaultReport(&okayOpenMsg);
		}
	}

	// put everything inside the backpack in scope
	getExtraScopeItems(actor) {
		return isOpen ? contents : [];
	}
;

++ flashlight: Flashlight 'flashlight' 'flashlight'
	// make sure player can handle the flashlight
	brightnessOff = 1
;

++ paperweight: Thing 'paperweight' 'paperweight';

darkThingLookInLister: thingLookInLister
	// replace default prefix
	showListPrefixWide(itemCount, pov, parent) {
		"\^Groping around in the pack, your fingers locate ";
	}

	// do not filter the contents for visibility
	getFilteredList(lst, infoTab) {
		return lst;
	}
;

bedroom: Room 'bedroom' 'bedroom'
	"Just another bedroom. "
	west = bathroom
;

bathroom: DarkRoom 'bathroom' 'bathroom'
	"Don't turn on the light! "
	east = bedroom
;
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4063&start=0#p29177
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: DOS Frotz testing on real hardware
User: frotz / DateTime: 2012-01-01 01:23:23

I'm looking for people who have the following physical machines to test my new build of DOS Frotz:

[list]IBM PC 5150
IBM XT
Compaq Portable (1, 2, or 3)
A a 386 or earlier with a Soundblaster card.[/list:u]

The test subject will be DOS Frotz 2.42.  There are some fairly significant changes in the core from 2.42 to 2.43, so there will be another test when DOS Frotz 2.43 is ready.  There will then be a final test for 2.44 which will check Blorb support.  I'm particularly interested in making sure V6 and audio games from Infocom work well.  I also want to know how these machines with their limited memories deal with V7 and V8 games.

If you're interested, please download DOS Frotz from [url]https://sourceforge.net/projects/frotz/files/frotz/2.42/[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3838&start=10#p29179
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The penultimate not numbered New Year's Speed IF
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2012-01-01 04:46:13

[quote="Taleslinger"]We had 13 submissions. Can't wait to play them. See all y'all tomorrow.[/quote]
 [emote]:shock:[/emote] Holy foozwiddles!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4019&start=0#p29184
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Kobo Touch + Development = IF No Brainer
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2012-01-01 05:29:47

Thanks Bainespal. I think if (and at the moment its a mid term / big if) I can get a Scott Adams interpreter like SAFTAP running on the Kindle then Inform should also be possible. Lets see what the future holds - it just beggars belief its not there already.

Anyway, here is a screenshot I have drawn to show Amazon what I intend to get running on the Kindle (or Kobo!) (or both!!!!) Touch device(s).

[img]http://www.therealeasterbunny.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/KINDLETS.GIF[/img]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3974&start=0#p29197
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: SAFTAP - Scott Adams Format Text Adventure Player: Suggs
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2012-01-01 05:42:40

OK, a couple of days turned into four to accomodate a back problem and unexpected new years eve jollies.

I now have a running SAFTAP engine and am currently running a few games through to ensure all the cogs of the engine are well oiled. (I think) I have a problem at the moment trying to pull the nails from the rug in a certain 'flat in London' and from here I need to test one or two other bits.

Once I'm done, probably tomorrow, I will upload SAFTAP (as a setup kit) to my website for download so anyone wishing to do so can have a play.

A couple of screenshots of it in action so far:

[img]http://www.therealeasterbunny.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/SAFTAP1.GIF[/img]
In play with Pirate Adventure.

[img]http://www.therealeasterbunny.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/SAFTAP2.GIF[/img]
Inital opening screen and me asking for '/Help'

Colours can be changed by hex values in the INI file.

Sample INI file:

' --------------
' --- SAFTAP ---
' --------------


[GENERAL]



[PRESENTATION]
FontName=Arial
FontSize=14
FontBold=Y
FontItalic=N
FontUnderline=N

Background=FFFF80
MesgText=008000
RoomText=000000
ExitText=800000
LookText=000080

InputBackground=006000
InputText=00ff00

-----------------------------------------

More soon !

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4066&start=0#p29198
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Asking about instead of asking for
User: EthanHam / DateTime: 2012-01-01 08:04:19

I'm trying to handle cases where the user types in something like "Ask Gaston." I'd like that command to result in Gaston imparting some information to the user. However, Inform7 interprets the phrase as "Ask Gaston for" and ask the player to supply a noun (if the player's inventory is empty) or assumes the player is asking for something in her/his inventory (if it isn't empty).

I've tried redirecting the "ask" command this way:

[code]Instead of asking Gaston for something:
	try asking boy george about.[/code]

While that does re-direct "ask for" to "ask about," it only takes effect after the parser disambiguates what the player is about for.

Any thoughts how I can handle this?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4067&start=0#p29199
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Interactive Fiction at the Sculpture Center
User: EthanHam / DateTime: 2012-01-01 08:15:56

Hi everyone,

I wanted to extend an invite to anyone in the NYC-area to come to the Sculpture Center in Long Island City and check out an artwork that I did (in collaboration with Keith Connolly and Tom Thayer) using Inform7:

[url]http://sculpture-center.org/exhibitionsExhibition.htm?id=86992[/url]

The artwork is called "The Spaniard + the Hudson Eel." It's part of the Sculpture Center's "In-Practice" show that runs January 15 - March 19. There's an opening reception on Sunday, January 15, 2012, 5:00-7:00 PM.

The folks on this forum were very helpful in helping figure out various coding conundrums, so thank you for helping us get the project done (well, I'm still working on it, but the end is within sight). 

I'm not sure what interactive fiction players/authors will think of it since it isn't particularly impressive as a game or as interactive fiction--but hopefully it will be satisfying in terms of being an artwork. In any case, I'd love to hear what folks think of it and, if you make it to the opening, be sure to introduce yourself!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4058&start=0#p29200
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Writing a New Dialogue
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-01-01 09:02:40

[quote]something wrong with the "say" line.[/quote]
Hi Deain,

First off, [stop] at the end should be [stopping]. Also, the way you have it now, the whole thing is one single text dump. It looks like you want those to be separate responses. If so, the individual text options need to be separated by [or]. See Ch. 5.7 of the docs.

Finally, you've defined an action called "speaking to" and then referred to it as "talking to" in two other places in the code. You have to use the actual name of the action, in this case "speaking to." It looks like from your previous post you already have a "talking to" action, which you've since deleted. Either way, the code won't work as expected. Maybe something like this is what you're looking for:[code]Lab is a room.  The Hermit is a man in the Lab.

Speaking to is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "talk to [someone]" or “converse with [someone]” as speaking to.
Check speaking to: say "[The noun] doesn't reply."

Instead of speaking to the Hermit: say "[one of]'Ummmmm,' you say you gaze wondering to the not so good view that of the Madman's face.[or]'What do you think you're doing?  Kid?' His voice is low and rough like gravel. He make the word 'Kid,' sound like the worst insult ever.[or]'This wood.' The Madman growled, gesturing to the pile of wood you are about to pick up. 'Is mine.  Everything within ten mile radius belongs to ME.  Trees, water, the ground and this wood, are all mine. Me, Mr Green.' The Madman say seriously and totally insane. You wonder briefly how such a person could possibly have such a normal sounding name.[or]'I, Mr Green own this place and no one is allowed to touch ANYTHING I own.' His voice is dangerously low.[or]'Ummmm' You say stun by the his tirade not managing a dignified reply. 'I need the wood. I need to go home.' You say desperate  to get away now. Then you grabbed the wood and began running as fast as you could away to the west away from where the sun rose.[or]'You may run, but you will never get away from me.' There is wild cackle in the Madman's tone. One glace back and you wish you have not done so.  A wild glint shines in dark, almost black eyes and the teeth was bared in a silent snarl. You decide not to keep talking to the Madman now.[stopping]".

test me with "talk to hermit / g/g/g/g/g/g".[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4066&start=0#p29201
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Asking about instead of asking for
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-01-01 09:21:14

You'll need to define new syntax if you want the parser to recognize it. I believe this quick code accomplishes what you're looking for:

[code]Home is a room. Sam is a man in the Home.

Understand "ask [someone]" as talking to. Understand "talk to [someone]" as talking to. Talking to is an action applying to one thing. 

Instead of talking to Sam: say "He offers some information."[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4066&start=0#p29202
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Asking about instead of asking for
User: EthanHam / DateTime: 2012-01-01 09:38:34

Ah, that did the trick. Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4060&start=0#p29203
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Searching in the Dark
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-01 11:05:29

Thanks! That seems to take care of it nicely. I'm going to have to re-read the Lister article in the Tech Manual....

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3761&start=0#p29204
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Hugo "Open House" Competition
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-01-01 11:08:29

I'm sad I missed it--hopefully there'll be another one. I like inform, but it'd be cool to learn another language.

Happy new year, good luck to the stragglers finishing their games, and do let us know when it's all compiled!

I'd also be interested in source code examples from the games, well, just because.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4067&start=0#p29205
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction at the Sculpture Center
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2012-01-01 12:30:07

Congrats, Ethan. Sounds very cool! I'll miss the show unfortunately, but after you open and have some time, I'd love to hear more about the piece.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4059&start=0#p29206
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Damusix for inform 7?
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2012-01-01 12:32:22

It doesn't have quite all the fancy features Damusix was intended to have, but [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Massimo%20Stella/Multiple%20Sounds/index.html]Multiple Sounds by Massimo Stella[/url] gets you the basics of Glulx sound mixing.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4067&start=0#p29207
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction at the Sculpture Center
User: EthanHam / DateTime: 2012-01-01 12:56:08

Thanks! I'll chat with my collaborators and see if we can post any of it online--if not, I'll at least try to write up a description of it after the opening.

- Ethan

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4062&start=0#p29208
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Another Library Bug?
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2012-01-01 12:59:35

I couldn't reproduce this error when I tried it right now. The output I got was:

[code]
Welcome to the TADS 3 Starter Game!


Entryway

This large, formal entryway is slightly intimidating: the walls are lined with somber portraits of gray-haired men from decades past; a medieval suit of armor, posed with a battle axe at the ready, towers over a single straight-backed wooden chair. The front door leads back outside to the south. A hallway leads north. 

>remove ears
(from you)
You can’t have those; they’re part of you. 

>
[/code]

I assume your ears object was terminated with a semi-colon (otherwise you'd have got a compiler error).

I wonder if you've got any library or extension files left over from a previous version of TADS 3 in your installation? Otherwise, I'm not sure what to suggest. Did you make any other changes to the standard starter game besides adding the ears object?

-- Eric

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4061&start=0#p29209
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Placing objects in my starting room - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-01 14:04:19

Boy, do I feel like an idiot! I'm totally confused. I had no luck knowing where to place those changes you suggested. Now, when I compile and do a test run, I'm told that the room is completely dark. I removed that whole section of code that is in this post and everything that's left works fine.

The TADS manuals seem to be great telling what you should but they leave something in telling you what you should not do.

Now, I have to think about what my next step should be.

RonG

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4061&start=0#p29210
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Placing objects in my starting room - TADS3.1
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-01 14:57:01

If the room is suddenly dark, it might be because you've used the + notation to put the PC in the room, but now you've parked another object with no + above the code for the PC. This will put the PC in the other object, not in the room. That would be my bet.

ComplexContainers are among the more convoluted things in TADS (along with ActorStates, which can also get a bit snarly). Why not start by implementing the basic layout of your game and then, after that's working, start adding more complex objects?

Also, BTW, indentation is totally optional in T3, but using it (in a consistent way) is a great way to help you troubleshoot your code.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3838&start=10#p29211
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The penultimate not numbered New Year's Speed IF
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-01-01 14:57:16

Well, this was REAL fun.
Maybe a bit too fast (all that scrolling back to catch things...), but really fun.

ClubFloyd rocks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4062&start=0#p29212
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Another Library Bug?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-01 15:06:55

[quote="Eric Eve"]
I wonder if you've got any library or extension files left over from a previous version of TADS 3 in your installation? Otherwise, I'm not sure what to suggest. Did you make any other changes to the standard starter game besides adding the ears object?[/quote]
No. It turns out this is the same error as the library bug I posted about a few days ago. This was another call to getAnnouncementDistinguisher() with no list argument. Did you hack en_us.t in the 3.1 release to get rid of both calls to this method? There are two. Now that I've fixed them both, the error is gone.

As Gilda Radner used to say on Saturday Night Live, "Never mind."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4061&start=0#p29213
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Placing objects in my starting room - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-01 15:41:50

Thanks for the comments. I had planned to do this game in a linear mode but, you're right, I am making things too complex too soon. I'm going to do as you've suggested. You're also very correct about the indentation. That will be taken care of.

RonG

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4061&start=0#p29214
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Placing objects in my starting room - TADS3.1
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-01 17:16:19

[quote="RonG"]Thanks for the comments. I had planned to do this game in a linear mode but, you're right, I am making things too complex too soon.[/quote]
I'm speaking from personal experience. The first time I tried to learn T3, I gave up. It was too complicated for me, or so I thought. The problem was, while working with the example game in the Getting Started Guide, I had decided that the player really ought to be able to look through the window into the cottage. I mean, looking through a window is pretty important, right? And you can do it in T3, but you'll need to know about SenseConnectors and sightsize and Occluders and various other things.

So I tripped over my shoelaces a few times. When I came back to TADS the second time, I was still bothered by the problem of looking through a window, but I had more patience, and (with the help of a few power users, who were very patient) I managed to learn a bunch of stuff.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4068&start=0#p29215
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Four letter words.
User: calindreams / DateTime: 2012-01-01 17:25:29

I remember when you could abbreviate most verbs and nouns to the first 4 letters in IF. Why is this feature rare nowadays? Too fiddly to program or do people feel it detracts from immersive gameplay?

It's only a small point really. Just that it would make input so much easier on my Android.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4068&start=0#p29216
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Four letter words.
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-01 17:40:25

Actually, Scott Adams games typically matched to just three letters. Early Infocom games matched to six; when they went to the version-4 Z-machine (e.g. Trinity), it went to nine letters.

I'm quite sure that nobody regarded this as a feature; it was purely a matter of saving memory in the dictionary. When more memory became available, designers used more letters in game words. Typing effort was assumed to be too cheap to meter -- which was pretty much true, up until the mobile era.

A modern mobile interpreter could auto-complete words based on the game dictionary, although this could conceivably be spoilery.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3761&start=0#p29217
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Hugo "Open House" Competition
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2012-01-01 18:58:40

[quote="aschultz"]I'm sad I missed it--hopefully there'll be another one. I like inform, but it'd be cool to learn another language.

Happy new year, good luck to the stragglers finishing their games, and do let us know when it's all compiled!

I'd also be interested in source code examples from the games, well, just because.[/quote]
I'd be happy to share the source code for my entry, "World Builder."  I'll email it to you, if you'd like, probably after the game is released.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4068&start=0#p29218
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Four letter words.
User: calindreams / DateTime: 2012-01-01 19:07:26

Thanks for the explanation. I would be happy with an auto-complete feature based on the phone's internal dictionary, but Twisty hasn't got quite that far yet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4069&start=0#p29219
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Twisty 2.0
User: calindreams / DateTime: 2012-01-01 19:11:23

Does anybody know roughly how long it will be till Twisty 2.0 is ready for the Android market?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4070&start=0#p29220
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [solved] I7: blocking out exits programmatically(example 38)
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-01-01 19:38:34

I have a question about disabling exits. I want to make it unavailable to get to a certain room at some point in the game. I can do this one exit at a time, but I wanted something more general.

The following code almost works--except MYDIR is identified differently.

[code]"avalanche" by Andrew

room 1 is a room. "Exits in diagonals"

room 2 is northwest of room 1. "This room is a trap"

room 3 is northeast of room 1.

room 4 is southwest of room 1.

room 5 is southeast of room 1.

when play begins:
	say "An unfair avalanche strikes!";
	repeat with X running through rooms:
		repeat with MYDIR running through directions:
			if the room MYDIR from X is room 1:
				now nowhere is mapped MYDIR of X; [if I change to southeast it compiles but doesn't work]
[/code]

Other things like "now the room MYDIR of X is nowhere" don't work either.

Any suggestions as to how to keep the code clean and neat and still work this? Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4068&start=0#p29222
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Four letter words.
User: Irfon-Kim / DateTime: 2012-01-01 20:20:41

iFrotz has an auto-complete, and it's handy most of the time, but on some occasions it can be really frustrating. It autocompletes against a special dictionary of common IF terms, as far as I can tell, which is great, but sometimes if it wants to autocomplete something I don't want autocompleted, or to a word I'm not looking for, I have to remember to tap the little "don't autocomplete as this" X every single time I type it.  If it's a word that occurs a lot in the game, this can really drive me up the wall, especially since I'm terrible at remembering to do that (since I have the built-in autocomplete turned off).  I think what would be ideal, for me, would be autocomplete that cascaded through a custom IF-related dictionary and then the system dictionary, but as soon as you overrode an autocomplete offering, would give precedence to the word you'd previously typed instead.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4070&start=0#p29223
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: blocking out exits programmatically
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-01 20:25:14

[quote="aschultz"]I have a question about disabling exits. I want to make it unavailable to get to a certain room at some point in the game. I can do this one exit at a time, but I wanted something more general.

The following code almost works--except MYDIR is identified differently.

[code]"avalanche" by Andrew

room 1 is a room. "Exits in diagonals"

room 2 is northwest of room 1. "This room is a trap"

room 3 is northeast of room 1.

room 4 is southwest of room 1.

room 5 is southeast of room 1.

when play begins:
	say "An unfair avalanche strikes!";
	repeat with X running through rooms:
		repeat with MYDIR running through directions:
			if the room MYDIR from X is room 1:
				now nowhere is mapped MYDIR of X; [if I change to southeast it compiles but doesn't work]
[/code]

Other things like "now the room MYDIR of X is nowhere" don't work either.

Any suggestions as to how to keep the code clean and neat and still work this? Thanks![/quote]

"change the MYDIR exit of X to nothing" works, I think. Note that this doesn't change the opposite exit. (See section 3.26 of Writing with Inform.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3838&start=10#p29224
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The penultimate not numbered New Year's Speed IF
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-01-01 20:29:19

[quote="Jamespking"]Well, this was REAL fun.
Maybe a bit too fast (all that scrolling back to catch things...), but really fun.

ClubFloyd rocks.[/quote]

And we'll get to do it all again next week. Or, more precisely, the other half we didn't quite get through.

I'm looking forward to it. I enjoyed seeing other people's experiments. And I appreciate the help they gave me with my own game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4070&start=0#p29225
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [solved] I7: blocking out exits programmatically
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-01-01 20:35:40

[quote="matt w"]"change the MYDIR exit of X to nothing" works, I think. Note that this doesn't change the opposite exit. (See section 3.26 of Writing with Inform.)[/quote]

Ah-ha...I was looking at section 6.14 of the documentation. I didn't think to look at the more basic parts.

Also I think I tried "nothing/nowhere is mapped ..." ... but this makes so much more sense.

Your solution works and is nice and straightforward. I'd tried as many similar phrases as I could, but I guess I missed one. Thanks so much!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3838&start=10#p29226
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The penultimate not numbered New Year's Speed IF
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-01-01 20:44:02

Yep it was great fun: we brought about Ragnarok three times (once with the aid of popcorn), murdered a dancing partner with the power of adverbs, avoided ruining Christmas and learned the true value of cheating.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4072&start=0#p29227
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: T3: Handing Something Over
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-01 21:07:27

I know how to use a GiveTopic to transfer an item from the PC to an NPC. But what if, instead of 'give bob the ruby', the player types 'bob, take the ruby' while the player is carrying the ruby? I've added TCommand.t to my project, which handles the action ... right up to the point where the object is supposed to change hands. Then it fails:

[quote]>bob, take the ruby
"Here, Bob. Would you like a ruby?"

"You betcha!" He holds out his palm and you put the ruby in it. You won't let Bob have that.[/quote]
I've been searching around in the LRM and other docs to try to find the method that is checked to determine whether an Actor is willing to part with something in inventory -- and I haven't been able to find it. I'm sure it's something simple. Help would be appreciated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4058&start=0#p29228
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Writing a New Dialogue
User: Deain / DateTime: 2012-01-01 21:12:00

oh, thanks Skinny Mike.  I'll do that [emote]:)[/emote]

Thanks mate, that's exactly what I needed [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4072&start=0#p29229
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Handing Something Over
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-01 21:31:29

Never mind. I figured out an easy workaround.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4070&start=0#p29230
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: blocking out exits programmatically
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-01 21:50:44

Yeah, 6.14 lets you look at the map, but it doesn't let you change it. I actually found this example by going through the "Maps" section of the Recipe Book -- first time I'd ever really used the RB, which I understand can be hard to find things in sometimes, but it was nice that it worked this time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4070&start=0#p29231
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: blocking out exits programmatically
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-01-02 00:22:48

[quote="matt w"]Yeah, 6.14 lets you look at the map, but it doesn't let you change it.[/quote]

I was able to at first--and I used it in other parts of the code, so I assumed it worked everywhere.

[quote]I actually found this example by going through the "Maps" section of the Recipe Book -- first time I'd ever really used the RB, which I understand can be hard to find things in sometimes, but it was nice that it worked this time.[/quote]

I've never used it, but I like it, since it gives a different way to sort through things than just searching and hoping. It takes some getting used to, though.

At any rate, I really like the "change the X exit to" a lot better. It looks much cleaner and more like real English than what I was trying.

While this example's probably a one-off coding thing (I agree with the recipe book that we don't want to do this sort of thing too often,) I got some practice not just relying on the documentation. I'd sort of assumed the documentation was "it" and even ignored the difference between WI and RB in the examples. It was pretty hit and miss. The main frustration I have with all this is that I'll have 10 questions that should be easily answerable--and 9 are, and the one that isn't usually could have been easy if only I'd looked at it right.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3408&start=20#p29232
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: advice on easy-to-start platforms?
User: dstinson / DateTime: 2012-01-02 03:31:59

[quote="Alex"][quote="1000T"]
So let me ask a direct question: how do you envision me using Quest?

I want to describe a scene and allow perhaps four choices of what you can do. Kill the goblin, run away, smell some flowers or climb a tree to look at the view. 

I don't want the hassle of actually defining "kill", "run", "pick" and "climb". I don't care to actually define flowers and trees - they're just part of the scenery. I have no intention of building a general parser which understands "climbing rocks" or "climbing staircases". Those things don't exist other than pure languages in scene descriptions (and choices).
[/quote]

In Quest you would set up a "goblin" object, "flowers" object, "tree" object. You would then set the "display verbs" list for each object. For the goblin it would be "kill", for flowers it would be "smell", for the tree it would be "climb". Then for each object you would implement those verbs on the Verbs tab - for the flowers, add "smell", make it print a message or something.

Because you'd be disabling text input, it wouldn't be too much effort to implement each object, because you know the player could only ever do the things to that object that are listed in the display verbs for that object. So you don't need to worry about the player trying to climb the goblin, because the goblin wouldn't provide a "climb" option when the player clicked the goblin link.[/quote]

This is exactly what I thought! btw I think it's nice that you want to offer so many different options. I like it when there are many details, just like in real life, and you can do a lot, although it makes the game more difficult, but it also gets more complex. It would be nice if it would be able to pick up flowers to send flowers to uk as a special feature [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4068&start=0#p29233
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Four letter words.
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-01-02 05:27:34

TADS games let you abbreviate words to their first six letters (while still considering any that follow as significant – so you can examine a cauldron by typing X CAULDR or X CAULDRO but not by typing X CAULD or X CAULDRI).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4068&start=0#p29234
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Four letter words.
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2012-01-02 05:34:37

[quote="Felix"]TADS games let you abbreviate words to their first six letters (while still considering any that follow as significant – so you can examine a cauldron by typing X CAULDR or X CAULDRO but not by typing X CAULD or X CAULDRI).[/quote]
Unless the game's author has changed it. It's controlled by the library, not the interpreter, so it's possible for the author to change the number of letters used for abbreviations or turn the feature off altogether.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4072&start=0#p29236
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Handing Something Over
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-02 06:57:02

Here is the adv3 way to do this without any workarounds: override Actor.checkTakeFromInventory(actor, obj). The default implementation won't allow any object to be taken:

[code]
/*
 *   Check to see if we want to allow another actor to take something
 *   from my inventory.  By default, we won't allow it - we'll always
 *   fail the command.  
 */
checkTakeFromInventory(actor, obj)
{
    /* don't allow it - show an error and terminate the command */
    mainReport(&willNotLetGoMsg, self, obj);
    exit;
}
[/code]

'actor' is the Actor trying to take the object from the 'self' Actor.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4070&start=0#p29237
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [solved] I7: blocking out exits programmatically(example
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-01-02 08:22:57

In a case like this, where you want to disable a bunch of exits at once which all lead to a certain room (or region), it may be more efficient and help prevent bugs to simply use an instead rule.

[code]Instead of going to the inaccessible room when the trap has been sprung, say "You can't go that way."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4074&start=0#p29238
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Clearing input window & disabling command history
User: EthanHam / DateTime: 2012-01-02 08:32:23

Is there a way to clear text that the player has typed into the input window but hasn't yet entered? I've been looking around at the likely extensions (e.g., "Text Input-Output Control," "Flexible Windows," etc) & their source code, but haven't come up with a way.

The other thing I'm wondering is if there is an easy way to disable the command history that the player can access using the the up-arrow key? I was looking at the "Interactive Parser" extension source code and figure I could borrow from Jon Ingold's method of replacing the Keyboard Primitive--but I'm hoping there's an easier way.

Thanks for any help!
Ethan

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4074&start=0#p29239
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Clearing input window & disabling command history
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-02 09:25:09

[quote="EthanHam"]Is there a way to clear text that the player has typed into the input window but hasn't yet entered? I've been looking around at the likely extensions (e.g., "Text Input-Output Control," "Flexible Windows," etc) & their source code, but haven't come up with a way.[/quote]
Could you clarify a couple of things?

I take it that you are using separate windows for text input and output?
Are you wanting to clear partial input in response to a real-time event, or in response to a specific keypress, or...?

[quote="EthanHam"]The other thing I'm wondering is if there is an easy way to disable the command history that the player can access using the the up-arrow key? I was looking at the "Interactive Parser" extension source code and figure I could borrow from Jon Ingold's method of replacing the Keyboard Primitive--but I'm hoping there's an easier way.[/quote]
The up/down arrow behavior is controlled by the interpreter, so the only way to get control is indeed to replace KeyboardPrimitive(), as Jon does with Interactive Parser. If the game is for a gallery piece (or any other situation where you control the computer on which it is displayed), I suppose that it might also be possible to disable the up/down arrow keys at the OS level.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4074&start=0#p29240
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Clearing input window & disabling command history
User: EthanHam / DateTime: 2012-01-02 10:18:16

I'm not using a separate window for the user input... It's just the regular command line. The way I have it set up is that if there is no user input within a time period (say, 2 minutes), the game restarts via:

[code]follow the immediately restart the VM rule[/code]

The problem is that if the last person to use the keyboard left something unentered on the command line, it gets carried over to the game start screen. This is a bit of an edge case, and it isn't the end of the world if this behavior remains--but it would be nice to have it behave a bit cleaner.

I like your suggestion of remapping/disabling the arrow keys on the OS level. I'm going to have to do that for the ESC key as well so that gallery-goers don't inadvertently exit the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4075&start=0#p29241
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Importing Existing Project into Workbench -- Issues
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2012-01-02 10:26:22

So I'm finding I don't like the Workbench for getting started but it's not bad once you've gotten started on a project. Meaning: I create my project structure at the command line and then import into Workbench. So I have a makefile.t3m that has the following:

-o bin\exe\game.t3
-Fo bin\obj
-Fy bin\sym

When I open this into the Workbench editor, and check the build settings for output, I see this:

Debugging Image File
C:\Projects\T3\Starter\makefile_dbg.t3

Release t3 File
makefile_dbg_rls.t3

Executable File
makefile_dbg.exe

The intermediate files, however, are marked as:

C:\Projects\T3\Starter\bin\sym
C:\Projects\T3\Starter\bin\obj

So the -Fy and -Fo settings are being retained but the -o setting is not.

Why not? Do I have to do something? I know I can change those settings after the fact but it seems odd that all other settings from makefile.t3m seem to be respected except one of the most critical: where I want the actual image file stored and the name I want it stored under.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4074&start=0#p29242
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Clearing input window & disabling command history
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-02 10:49:50

[quote="EthanHam"]I'm not using a separate window for the user input... It's just the regular command line. The way I have it set up is that if there is no user input within a time period (say, 2 minutes), the game restarts via:

[code]follow the immediately restart the VM rule[/code]

The problem is that if the last person to use the keyboard left something unentered on the command line, it gets carried over to the game start screen. This is a bit of an edge case, and it isn't the end of the world if this behavior remains--but it would be nice to have it behave a bit cleaner.[/quote]

This is another situation where the behavior is in the hands of the interpreter rather than the game. Which interpreter are you using? I would think this would be a good thing to report to the author, as the restart opcode ought to result in the clearing of any input buffers.

Anyway, if you are compiling to Glulx, you [i]should[/i] be able to prevent this from happening by canceling the line event manually before restarting. If you're not already using Flexible Windows, you can do this:

[code]To cancel line input in main window: (- glk_cancel_line_event(gg_mainwin); -)

To restart:
     cancel line input in main window;
     follow the immediately restart the VM rule.[/code]

If you are using Flexible Windows, there is a phrase already defined which you can find in the documentation.

Hopefully, this works...

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4076&start=0#p29243
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Version Control and Workbench
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2012-01-02 10:52:47

So as people have pointed out to me, the TADS 3 site says the tool is a programmer's power tool. As such, that means version control is presumably part of that. I realize there's no built-in facility in the Workbench but I'm curious if anyone's had luck with some workflow that involves Workbench and a VC tool. I'm using Git and when I define external tools that call Git, Workbench always tells me: "An error occurred launching the tool program."

I can't tell if that means Workbench's own tool program or the program that my tool is attempting to call.

In some cases, making the call causes Workbench to freeze up and shut down.

At this point, I'm pretty much ready to just avoid the Workbench all together and do everything command line. But I just wanted to see if there were instances of success with incorporating version control into it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4074&start=0#p29244
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Clearing input window & disabling command history
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-01-02 10:59:03

Does clearing the screen (via Basic Screen Effects) just before following the immediatley restart the VM rule work?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4076&start=0#p29245
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Version Control and Workbench
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-02 11:05:21

I just put my new source in a zip file every day, and drag-copy the zip file. I'm not a real programmer, you see, and have never used version control.

The thing I did want to point out, though -- Workbench gives you Watch Expressions and Call Stack windows, automatic recording and playback of previous play-through scripts, and a few other niceties, such as auto-indenting and un-indenting of code. (If you forget a close parenthesis or close bracket, the indentation will be wrong, so you'll get visual feedback.)

So even if you have to run version control externally rather than through Workbench, I feel it's still a very useful program.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4076&start=0#p29246
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Version Control and Workbench
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2012-01-02 11:12:25

[quote="Jim Aikin"]I just put my new source in a zip file every day, and drag-copy the zip file. I'm not a real programmer, you see, and have never used version control.[/quote]

Essentially right now I'm just heading out to the command line to do my Git stuff, which isn't that bad. I do agree with your points about the syntax coloring as well as the visual cues that the Workbench provides. Workbench is a nice editor in a lot of ways. I'm not a big fan of the play-through scripts; it feels a little clunky to me. But I'll fully admit that I've only looked at it a bit.

Come to think of it, what I'd really like to do is modify the Workbench so it has an embedded console. (Essentially just a window that has a running instance of your local shell.)

Even more alternative to that: one thing I've wished for with Inform 7 is that it adhered to a more plug-in based architecture. (Think Eclipse-like.) I'm finding I'd like that even more with TADS. Then someone could make a Git or Subversion plug-in that could be slotted in. Granted, though, that's a lot of work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4076&start=0#p29247
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Version Control and Workbench
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-02 11:22:26

[quote="bukayeva"]
Come to think of it, what I'd really like to do is modify the Workbench so it has an embedded console. (Essentially just a window that has a running instance of your local shell.)

Even more alternative to that: one thing I've wished for with Inform 7 is that it adhered to a more plug-in based architecture. (Think Eclipse-like.) I'm finding I'd like that even more with TADS. Then someone could make a Git or Subversion plug-in that could be slotted in. Granted, though, that's a lot of work.[/quote]

I'd like a console too, and even more than that an embedded interpreter. Some kind of generalized external tool embed is definitely worth a feature request. 

But on the particular subject of git, what exactly are you defining for your tool that gives you the error? I had never tried it before, but I just set up an external tool command for git commit and it worked perfectly. 

It would be cool to be able to define a set of external tool commands and then trade that among users...maybe that's already possible somehow? Worth a feature request if not.

edit: here, I screenshotted my tool window, 

[img]http://i55.tinypic.com/2eyucua.jpg[/img]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4074&start=0#p29249
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Clearing input window & disabling command history
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-02 11:47:58

Is this a Z-machine game or Glulx? What interpreter are you using?

In Z-code, I think that triggering a timed event during line input, and then doing a VM @restart, *should* clear the input line. For Glulx, this is definitely true. But it's probably not a case that anybody has ever tested.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3408&start=30#p29250
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: advice on easy-to-start platforms?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-02 13:10:16

dstinson - I've edited your post to remove the link to an unrelated website. You may have intended it as a joke but it looked a lot like spam.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4070&start=0#p29251
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [solved] I7: blocking out exits programmatically(example
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-01-02 13:39:33

[quote="ChrisC"]In a case like this, where you want to disable a bunch of exits at once which all lead to a certain room (or region), it may be more efficient and help prevent bugs to simply use an instead rule.

[code]Instead of going to the inaccessible room when the trap has been sprung, say "You can't go that way."[/code][/quote]

Wow. You're right. It's really nice to have alternate solutions. I've learned a lot here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4076&start=0#p29252
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Version Control and Workbench
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-02 14:24:57

[quote="bukayeva"]I'm not a big fan of the play-through scripts; it feels a little clunky to me. But I'll fully admit that I've only looked at it a bit.[/quote]
Once you've saved your source file, right-clicking a script and choosing Replay does the compilation automatically and then runs the previous session.

For more complex testing scenarios, I use an extension that I don't believe has ever been uploaded to the archive. It lets you define I7-like "test me" commands to rerun individual command sequences. I use it a LOT. It was created by Ben Cressey and Eric Eve. If I have a spare minute, I'll upload it this afternoon.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4074&start=0#p29253
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Clearing input window & disabling command history
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-02 14:29:56

If you're in Z-code, it occurs to me, you might be trying to do the restart in a timer routine without actually interrupting the input event. That would be a mistake. 

But how you'd fix it depends on what your code looks like.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4061&start=0#p29254
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Placing objects in my starting room - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-02 15:05:17

I know how you must have felt. I started working professionally on both the computer hardware and software in about 1965. I've worked on anything and everything you can think of and it was uphill all the way. I even went to Phoenix for a year to learn how to write code in machine language.

Now, like a big dummy, I'm starting all over again at 73 years of age. But I still love it! Will talk to you later.

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4078&start=0#p29255
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: The Spy Who Ate Lunch
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-01-02 16:13:10

The Spy Who Ate Lunch has now been released on IFDB at <a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=tb6nw59pkoz6fldb">http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=tb6nw59pkoz6fldb</a>.  The link to the Archive is not yet functional, but unless I screwed something up it should be working pretty soon.  If anybody is dying to play it and can't wait, let me know and I can send you the files via e-mail.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4079&start=0#p29256
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Procedurally connected map?
User: vorpaldinger / DateTime: 2012-01-02 16:13:43

Is it possible to create rooms, but have them randomly connect to each other in new ways each time the game is started? Kind of like a procedurally generated map in a roguelike game?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4079&start=0#p29257
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Procedurally connected map?
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-02 16:17:50

The short answer is yes. 

Maybe start with Kerkerkruip, a recent I7 roguelike with source code available. 

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=f7zdhxmiraht53d1">http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=f7zdhxmiraht53d1</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4068&start=0#p29258
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Four letter words.
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2012-01-02 17:23:48

[quote="Felix"]TADS games let you abbreviate words to their first six letters (while still considering any that follow as significant – so you can examine a cauldron by typing X CAULDR or X CAULDRO but not by typing X CAULD or X CAULDRI).[/quote]
I believe most MUDs (or actually MUD codebases) do the same, except abbreviating at four letters.  Actually, I seem to recall MUDs I've played matching to the smallest unique combination.  So X SWO (or actually L SWO, as the command would probably be in a MUD) would work for examining a sword unless another object beginning with "swo" were listed first in the room.  (I think "SW" might be confused with the command to go southwest.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4068&start=0#p29259
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Four letter words.
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-02 17:58:55

I think that's the most sensible approach, since the game always can ask to disambiguate when the player types 'get swo' and there is a sword and a swordfish on the floor.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4079&start=0#p29260
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Procedurally connected map?
User: vorpaldinger / DateTime: 2012-01-02 18:23:52

cool!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4080&start=0#p29261
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Can a person not have a number?
User: vorpaldinger / DateTime: 2012-01-02 20:29:53

I'm having a hard time figuring out why this is not working:

[code]The bear has a number called bearturns. The bearturns of the bear is usually zero.

Every turn:
	if the bear can touch the player:
		if bearturns of the bear is < 1:
			say "The bear regards you for a moment with shock that you do not flee.";
		if bearturns of the bear is > 0:
			end the story saying "The bear decides it is hungry enough to spend the energy it takes to kill you, which is admittedly very little. It plays with your body listlessly and discards you once it has stripped as much meat off you as it can.";
		increment bearturns of the bear.[/code]

I'm sure I'm doing something stupid. Suggestions?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4080&start=0#p29262
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can a person not have a number?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-02 20:36:35

Try replacing the < and > with the words "less than" and "greater than." (You might also be able to do it by removing the word "is" before the < and > signs.)

(EDIT: By the way, I wouldn't put something that long in the "end the story" phrase -- it'd come out easier to read if you just had the game say that sentence normally and then end the story saying "You have been eaten, mostly," or something like that.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4079&start=0#p29263
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Procedurally connected map?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-02 20:44:02

You might also want to look at [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2677&start=10]this thread[/url], which has some of Victor's code in it and another approach or two.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4080&start=0#p29264
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can a person not have a number?
User: vorpaldinger / DateTime: 2012-01-02 21:02:57

yup, that was it. "is" does not mix with an operator symbol.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4081&start=0#p29265
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Scenery containers vs. supporters
User: katz / DateTime: 2012-01-02 22:10:08

I observe that one difference between containers and supporters is that the contents of scenery supporters are listed in the room description, whereas the contents of scenery containers never are, even if the container is transparent.  This inane little minigame demonstrates.

[code]The Parlour is a room.  "There is nothing here but a table and a glass box.  The door is to the south."

The exit door is a door.  It is south of the parlour.  It is locked.  It is scenery.

The glass box is a closed, unopenable, transparent container in the parlour.  It is scenery.

The table is a supporter in the parlour.  It is scenery.

The key is in the glass box.  The key unlocks the exit door.

The tuning fork is on the table.

Instead of attacking the tuning fork:
	say "The glass shatters!";
	now the glass box is open.

Understand "tap [the tuning fork]" or "strike [the tuning fork]" or "play [the tuning fork]" as attacking.

After opening the exit door, end the story finally saying "You're free!"[/code]

What is the easiest way to make transparent scenery containers display their contents (so that the container is listed with its contents when there's something in it, but not listed when nothing is in it)?

Or, I suppose equivalently for me, is there a way to make a specific supporter list its contents as being "in" it rather than "on" it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3353&start=10#p29266
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The First Annual Lime/Coconut IF MiniComp!
User: SOdhner / DateTime: 2012-01-02 23:36:00

It's official!

There aren't enough people in the contest.  That's okay!  This is still a thing.  I'm trying to decide the timeline for the next iteration of the contest, which will be essentially identical to this one.  I don't want to give too much or too little time, or have it overlap too much with other contests.

Any entries submitted thus far will not be released in any way.  They can be resubmitted when the contest goes live again, either with a fresh version or a “hey, remember that entry?  Yeah, that.” if you want me to just search through my Gmail and use the old version.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3531&start=0#p29267
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Setting in IF
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-01-03 01:07:22

[quote="Robert Rothman"]In one sense, IF began with setting: before there were any puzzles, before there was a plot, before there was even a dwarf or a pirate, there was a cave.  [/quote]Actually, there were always dwarves.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3531&start=0#p29268
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Setting in IF
User: frotz / DateTime: 2012-01-03 01:41:16

[quote="capmikee"][quote="Kytaari"]I think this kind of correlates with my interests in history and the huge adventure romps I read in high fantasy and space operas. I've never been a very competitive gamer, but something about thinking about a really interesting setting, both whole you're playing the game and when you're taking a break, really appeals to me and my sensibilities.[/quote]
It never occurred to me to make the connection, but this is also why I love the movie Tron. The plot is ridiculous, the characters are instantly forgettable, but the setting is [i]amazing[/i].

Well, that and the soundtrack.[/quote]

I'm curious what you think of the new Tron movie.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3531&start=0#p29269
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Setting in IF
User: katz / DateTime: 2012-01-03 02:25:00

[quote]It never occurred to me to make the connection, but this is also why I love the movie Tron. The plot is ridiculous, the characters are instantly forgettable, but the setting is amazing.[/quote]

This is also what I loved about it, especially the creativity and inventiveness.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4081&start=0#p29270
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Scenery containers vs. supporters
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-01-03 03:01:46

[quote="katz"]What is the easiest way to make transparent scenery containers display their contents (so that the container is listed with its contents when there's something in it, but not listed when nothing is in it)?[/quote]
If you just want to mimic the existing behavior for scenery supporters, you could add:[code]For printing a locale paragraph about a thing (called the item)(this is the describe what's on scenery containers in room descriptions rule):
	if the item is transparent scenery and the item does not enclose the player:
		if a locale-supportable thing is in the item:
			set pronouns from the item;
			repeat with possibility running through things in the item:
				now the possibility is marked for listing;
				if the possibility is mentioned:
					now the possibility is not marked for listing;
			increase the locale paragraph count by 1;
			say "In [the item] ";
			list the contents of the item, as a sentence, including contents,
				giving brief inventory information, tersely, not listing
				concealed items, prefacing with is/are, listing marked items only;
			say ".[paragraph break]";
	continue the activity.[/code]
Note that this is just the "describe what's on scenery supporters in room descriptions rule" from the standard rules, edited for use with containers. If you'd like more customized behavior, check 17.23-17.26 of the docs or post an example and we can figure something out.

(Edited to add "transparent" to the above rule.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4082&start=0#p29271
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: DOS Frotz 2.43 released
User: frotz / DateTime: 2012-01-03 03:05:57

It seems solid enough, so I uploaded DOS Frotz 2.43 to the IF Archive.  For those of you who don't do Git, I also uploaded a new source tarball which contains the new DOS code.  It should work on even the original IBM PC (model 5150).  If you have such hardware, I'd love to hear from you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4083&start=0#p29272
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Quick Question About Dialogue
User: Deain / DateTime: 2012-01-03 03:07:37

Hi, I was just wondering what is the word limit allowed in Imform while wring a conversation.  Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4083&start=0#p29274
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Quick Question About Dialogue
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2012-01-03 04:07:17

Hi Deain-- there's no specific word limit for conversation or most anything else in I7, although if you're trying to compile to z-code, there's a maximum file size and relatively modest ceiling on the amount of text and other structures that can exist in your story. Most modern stories compile instead to "Glulx" which has virtually no size limitations. You can switch to Glulx on the "Settings" tab of the Inform application.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4079&start=0#p29275
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Procedurally connected map?
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2012-01-03 04:09:22

You could also take a look at my extension [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Aaron%20Reed/Dynamic%20Rooms/index.html]Dynamic Rooms[/url], which has some example code creating a random map.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4079&start=0#p29276
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Procedurally connected map?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-01-03 04:41:36

See also chapter 3.2. in the Recipe Book for a couple of simple examples.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3531&start=0#p29277
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Setting in IF
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-03 05:36:43

[quote="Robert Rothman"]In another sense also, setting is the [i]sine qua non[/i] of IF: at least in Inform 7 (I don't know about other languages) the only line of code which is absolutely necessary is a line which defines a room.  There can be no action without a place in which it can occur.[/quote]
Not strictly true, IMO. The only line of code which is absolutely necessary in i7 is a line which defines something that is *internally* referred to at least once as a 'room'. It does not ever have to be referred to externally as a room, nor does it actually have to literally represent an actual room or a literal 'place'. All it necessarily represents is the printing of a starting title (and/or paragraph) after which more events can be printed. The relationship 'in' is not even necessarily implied between the starting paragraph and the events that follow — this relationship can easily be dispensed with in the text. There is no intrinsic reason to confine one's thinking purely to the ideas expressed in the internal names of variables and classes. Those ideas don't actually mean anything — they're just labels on bits of data in memory.

This is why I maintain that 'setting', per se, is irrelevant to a study of the foundational structure of IF. What is undeniably relevant is the presentation of a complex of interrelated concepts to explore, which may include (but are not limited to) representations of an interaccessible group of physical places. The sense of exploration is indispensible, I agree — but not necessarily via a 'setting'.

[quote="frotz"][quote="capmikee"]It never occurred to me to make the connection, but this is also why I love the movie Tron. The plot is ridiculous, the characters are instantly forgettable, but the setting is [i]amazing[/i].

Well, that and the soundtrack.[/quote]

I'm curious what you think of the new Tron movie.[/quote]
Heh. I was wondering the same. It seems difficult to describe the sequel accurately aftering cornering oneself into hyperbole regarding the failings of the much-superior-all-around original. 87

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4068&start=0#p29278
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Four letter words.
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-03 05:58:42

[quote="zarf"]I'm quite sure that nobody regarded this as a feature; it was purely a matter of saving memory in the dictionary. When more memory became available, designers used more letters in game words. Typing effort was assumed to be too cheap to meter -- which was pretty much true, up until the mobile era.

A modern mobile interpreter could auto-complete words based on the game dictionary, although this could conceivably be spoilery.[/quote]
I did regard this as a feature, although limiting the number of recognised letters is a kludgy way to achieve the benefit, because I shouldn't have to remember how many letters a game recognises in order to type shortcuts. No, the best way to get the benefit is for the parser to select the single object (assuming there is only one) with a prefix exactly matching what I typed. So if I typed 'get stat' or 'get cord', either command would match 'station cordon' as long as there were no other objects around with names that start with 'stat' or 'cord' -- in which case the ambiguity resolution routine is invoked. This is the way MUDs tend to work [EDIT: as mentioned above by bainespal et. al. -- and I had not realised that TADS also resolves ambiguity in this way]. I must say this way has always felt superior to the many text adventures that have insisted I type a word to exactly the number of characters that the game has stored internally as a keyword, and [i]no fewer[/i]. It seems an unnecessary level of discipline.

Paul.

P.S. Note that LambdaMOO does this kind of word resolution only on nouns -- never verbs, which need to be matched identically to one of the forms specified by the game designer, or not at all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4076&start=0#p29279
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Version Control and Workbench
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2012-01-03 06:41:47

I got the Git stuff working, in terms of using it as an external tool. But when I try to assign command keys, I notice I have a series of Ext.Tools.User1 entries even though I only entered one user tool. I then saw the same thing when I added a second for Ext.Tools.User2. I have like ten entries for each.

Another concern I have is that I don't like that I must have the Git output go to the debug log. Why would external tools automatically have their output go to a debug log? Especially tools that have nothing to do with debugging. That doesn't make any sense. This is particularly annoying because I can't clear the debug log, at least so far as I know. If I do a build or a clean, then the debug log clears. But if I do a series of git status, git add, and git commit then I have a huge log. Granted, it's likely I would do a build before committing anything anyway but I'm thinking the command line is probably better for most of what I'm doing.

Lest it seem like I'm bitching a lot, I actually do like TADS 3 as a language. I think the T3 VM is spectacular. The Workbench sort of has that feel of old style development environment for Microsoft Visual C++. (Remember that thing? Before Visual Studio.) There's just enough there that I sort of like it but my familiarity with more modern development systems (Komodo, Eclipse, IntelliJ, RubyMine, etc) keeps me from really liking it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4085&start=0#p29280
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Should the .t3m files act more like build files?
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2012-01-03 06:45:57

First, a slight rant: I don't like that Workbench so mangles your makefile that you can't use it outside of the tool again. Workbench removes the -o, -Fo, -Fy, -lib and -source settings. It also removes the -D macro preprocessor information. I realize that Workbench puts these in its own UI-friendly format but this is not good practice for a "programmer's power tool." The build file -- even if TADS doesn't call it a build file -- should always be usable even when not used as part of the IDE.

I do notice that in the Workbench I can have my debug image file go to build\debug and my release image file go to build\release. Of course what's happening is that behind the scenes, Workbench customizes the .t3m file. What I don't see is how I can do that with t3make at the command line without creating two build files. Ideally you'd have something like:

-ro build\release\MyGame.t3
-do build\debug\MyGame_dbg.t3

Here I would have "release output" and "debug output" as options. Which one gets written to depends on whether a -d (debug) flag is set in the build file or passed in as a command line argument.

I realize the documentation says that the .t3m file is not a build file. But, in fact, it really sort of is, at least in terms of how you would use similar such project files with Ant. It's a file that's telling the system how to build the project. The fact that a .t3m doesn't have archetypes like Maven or tasks like Ant does not make it any less of a build file of sorts. The .t3m file goes some of the way but not all of the way, and I think that's to it's detriment.

I'm guessing I might be in the minority on that. But, I'll say it again, since TADS is being touted as a programmer power tool, I don't think it's unrealistic for developers (as opposed to just programmers) to use the tool somewhat in line with the many other development tools out there.

Even with my whining lately, I still think TADS is an awesome language.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4086&start=0#p29281
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: The .t3c file?
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2012-01-03 07:10:59

The documentation mentions a .t3c file and says "The project file contains information on the window layout, debugger breakpoints, option settings, and build parameters."

I would actually like this because right now it looks like that information gets shoved into the .t3m file, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me given that the .t3m should be a "build" file and should have no concern about IDE layouts. (In fact, I would think the "build" file is independent of any specific IDE concerns.)

But where is this .t3c file? When does it get generated? I have yet to see it appear. The "and build parameters" makes me think that perhaps -- just perhaps -- the .t3c file became a .t3m file. If that's the case then (1) the documentation should be updated and (2) I really think there is benefit to having layout information separate from a build file. I do think a distinction between a .t3c and a .t3m is useful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3531&start=0#p29282
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Setting in IF
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-03 07:55:33

[quote="Laroquod"][quote="Robert Rothman"]In another sense also, setting is the [i]sine qua non[/i] of IF: at least in Inform 7 (I don't know about other languages) the only line of code which is absolutely necessary is a line which defines a room.  There can be no action without a place in which it can occur.[/quote]
Not strictly true, IMO. The only line of code which is absolutely necessary in i7 is a line which defines something that is *internally* referred to at least once as a 'room'. It does not ever have to be referred to externally as a room, nor does it actually have to literally represent an actual room or a literal 'place'. All it necessarily represents is the printing of a starting title (and/or paragraph) after which more events can be printed.[/quote]

Even this isn't literally true: the [url=http://mattweiner.net/ifiction/table%20source.txt]source code for my IF Demo Fair project[/url] begins thus:

[code]"The Table" by Matt Weiner

Include Undo Output Control by Erik Temple.
Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short.

Section - Preliminaries

Attic is a room. [We'll never use this.]
Instead of looking: stop the action. [Prevents the room name from printing out at the beginning of the game.]
Report undoing an action: [Prevents the room name from printing after undoing.]
	say "[bracket]Previous turn undone.[close bracket][line break]";
	rule succeeds.

When play begins: 
	say "[help text]";
	now the left hand status line is "The Table";
	now the right hand status line is "M. Weiner".[/code]

which I believe prevents the room name from ever showing up anywhere in the output. [UPDATED: pasted in the extension inclusions, because some of the code needs Undo Output Control.]

But it is true that to define a settingless IF like this in Inform 7, you have to go against the grain a bit.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3531&start=10#p29283
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Setting in IF
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-03 08:13:08

[quote="matt w"][code]Section - Preliminaries

Attic is a room. [We'll never use this.]
Instead of looking: stop the action. [Prevents the room name from printing out at the beginning of the game.]
Report undoing an action: [Prevents the room name from printing after undoing.]
	say "[bracket]Previous turn undone.[close bracket][line break]";
	rule succeeds.

When play begins: 
	say "[help text]";
	now the left hand status line is "The Table";
	now the right hand status line is "M. Weiner".[/code]

which I believe prevents the room name from ever showing up anywhere in the output.[/quote]
Good point!

[quote="matt w"]But it is true that to define a settingless IF like this in Inform 7, you have to go against the grain a bit.[/quote]
Yup. My WIP isn't settingless but I do not use any 'room' objects (or any derivatives based on 'room') to represent the setting. You're right: it's against the grain. Therein lies the challenge. 8)

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4076&start=0#p29284
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Version Control and Workbench
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-03 09:15:51

[quote="bukayeva"] I notice I have a series of Ext.Tools.User1 entries even though I only entered one user tool. [....]

Another concern I have is that I don't like that I must have the Git output go to the debug log. [/quote]

You need to deselect the option that says "capture output to debug window", and If you have multiple commands I think each need their own user ID.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4076&start=0#p29285
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Version Control and Workbench
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2012-01-03 09:46:30

[quote="George"]You need to deselect the option that says "capture output to debug window", and If you have multiple commands I think each need their own user ID.[/quote]

Yeah, but if I deselect that then I can't see output anywhere. A console window pops up but disappears. At the very least for Git status, I'd want to see the output. But in general -- even with add and commit -- I won't know if everything worked if I don't see output somewhere.

As for the multiple commands, they do each have their own user ID, but I'm saying that I see about ten each of these:

Ext.Tools.User1
Ext.Tools.User2
Ext.Tools.User3

Meaning, I've got thirty entries that match the above "Ext.Tools.User" pattern: ten of User1, ten of User2, ten of User3.

Although, strangely enough, I just went back into Workbench and now my commands list looks like this:

Ext.Tools.User1
Ext.Tools.User1
Ext.Tools.User1
Ext.Tools.User2
Ext.Tools.User3

Why there are now three of User1 I don't know. But at least it's not ten of them. As far as the tools I have defined, I only have three:

Git Status (Ext.Tools.User1)
Git Add (Ext.Tools.User2)
Git Commit (Ext.Tools.User3)

It looks like any time I do anything with the External Tools, I get some extra lines in the "Show commands containing" list (under Environment --> Keyboard). So what happens is sometimes your shortcut keys don't get applied to the correct one. The list sometimes "auto cleans" itself (apparently) in which case you might lose the shortcut keys you established.

I don't know how well this area of the Workbench has been vetted so possibly there are some bugs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4088&start=0#p29286
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: TADS Workbench - Is it open source?
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2012-01-03 10:00:47

I was going to take a look at the code for Workbench just to get a feel for it. I'm assuming it's in C++. If so, it's either direct WinAPI or it's using something like MFC. If it's the latter, I'm in trouble.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4083&start=0#p29287
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Quick Question About Dialogue
User: Deain / DateTime: 2012-01-03 10:06:10

Thanks aaronius, that worked well.  And I just want to ask one more thing in this code

Talking to is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "talk to [someone]" or “converse with [someone]” as talking to.
Check talking to: say "[The noun] doesn't reply."

[code]Instead of talking to the Dwarf: say "[one of]'Haha, what did I tell you?' The only too recognizable voice said.[or]'Mr Green always wins. Good rats. Good ratties.' The Madman almost crooning to the furry beasts. you groaned inwardly.[or]'What do you want from me?' You gasp slowly taking a step back.[or]'Me?' His tone is wild, insane. 'I want my wood back.' He replies saying each word slowly.[or]'Ok, I'll give you back your wood.' You say glancing to where you drop the pile when you first spotted the rats.[or]'STOP!' he bark out so loudly that you immediately stop in your tracks.[or]'You don't get the wood.  You have angered me and now you have to pay.' A sudden swoosh and you find yourself caught in a fishing net.[or]'What do you mean I have to pay? It's just wood.' you say weary and frustrated at the Madman's actions.[or]'I warned you not to touch Mr green's things.  I told you, I told you, I told you.' The Madman babbled excitedly repeating himself like a parrot.  He starts dancing around the net looking strangely comical with his Hawaiian shirt and flowery pants.[or]'Wait.' You pleaded as he flourished a knife from out of no where. The silver flashed in the sunlight emphasizing the razor edge of the knife.[or]Stop!' A deep voice commands and held such power that even the dancing dwarf stop his dance. 'Let the kid go.  Now.' You look up to see the Hermit not believing your eyes.[or]'What...how?' You stammer astonished by the turn of events.[or]The Hermit chuckled softly, his intense gaze half amused at your shock. 'Now, let the lad go.'[or]'I'm rather accomplished in the art of tracking.' He winks at you, 'Besides, I could track a wolf in the forest and your trail isn't exactly inconspicuous.'[or]'put the blade down son.' This to the dwarf who is still waving the knife around.[or]The Hermit gestured to the south 'We will continue over there.'[stopping]". [/code]
The conversation worked fine, but in this code

[code]conversing to is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "talk to [someone]" or “converse with [someone]” as talking to.
Check conversing to: say "[The noun] doesn't reply."

Instead of conversing to the Man's Father: say "[one of]'Son?' You mouth the words in disbelief.[or]'My son.' The Hermit says with a sigh. The difference between father and son is nonexistent and you would have never guessed so if you were not told.[or]'How?' You manage to get out.[or]'Nightshade.  Makes him delusional.  Racked his sense of self.' The hermit or more correctly the Madman's father says and refuses to say more.[or]'Net?' You say gesturing to the net still encasing you.[or]'Right.' The Hermit turned to his son. 'Carter	let the lad go.  Cut the net.'[or]Reluctantly, Carter cut open the net and you got to your feet hastily.[or]'Ship.' One word, but you can tell it carries volumes.[or]'Thanks sir.[or]'I owe you a trip home lad, for finding my son after he has run off.'[or]'Where to lad?'[or]'Kansas.' You reply not sure how you knew, but knowing it was the right answer.  Perhaps those mushroom you ate had something to do with it.[or]'Kansas, it's a long way.' The Hermit say looking to the horizon.[or]You hold your breath in anticipation.  Then finally,[or]'Alright, the ship's moored in the cove that way.' He gestures to an out crop of rock about twenty meters away to the east. 'Follow me, both of you.  It's time for us to head home too.' This last sentence to his son. Silently, you and the Madman, the dwarf, the Hermit's son, Carter	trudged after the Hermit the only sound the sand underfoot and the relentless cry of the seagulls.[stopping]".[/code]
Imform just kept saying "The man's father doesn't reply" What's the problem of the second code?  I done it the same as the first one.  There was no error message though and everything else in the game works.  Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4083&start=0#p29288
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Quick Question About Dialogue
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-01-03 10:19:43

You used "converse with" in your understand statement for the "talking to" action, but used "converse to" in the code.  Also, while you defined an action called "conversing to," you didn't define an understand statement for that action.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4083&start=0#p29289
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Quick Question About Dialogue
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-01-03 10:43:10

The problem is that you're conflating 'talking to' and 'conversing to'. The code in the spoiler box works. More broadly, in your conversation system here you have to talk to someone to hear what they say, then talk to them again to give a response and so on. If you're going to have a conversation system that works through sequential nuggets of text, then each of those nuggets should make sense on their own. I've demonstrated how that would work below.

[spoiler]Talking to is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "talk to [someone]" or “converse with [someone]” as talking to.
Check talking to: say "[The noun] doesn't reply."

Instead of talking to the Hermit: say "[one of]'Son?' You mouth the words in disbelief.[paragraph break]'My son.' The Hermit says with a sigh. The difference between father and son is nonexistent and you would have never guessed so if you were not told.[or]'How?' You manage to get out.[paragraph break]'Nightshade.  Makes him delusional.  Racked his sense of self.' The hermit or more correctly the Madman's father says and refuses to say more.[or]'Net?' You say gesturing to the net still encasing you.[paragraph break]'Right.' The Hermit turned to his son. 'Carter let the lad go.  Cut the net.'[or]Reluctantly, Carter cut open the net and you got to your feet hastily.[paragraph break]'Ship.' One word, but you can tell it carries volumes.[or]'Thanks sir.[paragraph break]'I owe you a trip home lad, for finding my son after he has run off.'[or]'Where to lad?'[paragraph break]'Kansas.' You reply not sure how you knew, but knowing it was the right answer.  Perhaps those mushroom you ate had something to do with it.[paragraph break]'Kansas, it's a long way.' The Hermit say looking to the horizon.[or]You hold your breath in anticipation.  Then finally,[paragraph break]'Alright, the ship's moored in the cove that way.' He gestures to an out crop of rock about twenty meters away to the east. 'Follow me, both of you.  It's time for us to head home too.' This last sentence to his son. Silently, you and the Madman, the dwarf, the Hermit's son, Carter trudged after the Hermit the only sound the sand underfoot and the relentless cry of the seagulls.[stopping]".

Instead of talking to the Dwarf: say "[one of]'Haha, what did I tell you?' The only too recognizable voice said.[paragraph break]'Mr Green always wins. Good rats. Good ratties.' The Madman almost crooning to the furry beasts. you groaned inwardly.[or]'What do you want from me?' You gasp slowly taking a step back.[paragraph break]'Me?' His tone is wild, insane. 'I want my wood back.' He replies saying each word slowly.[or]'Ok, I'll give you back your wood.' You say glancing to where you drop the pile when you first spotted the rats.[or]'STOP!' he barks out so loudly that you immediately stop in your tracks.[paragraph break]'You don't get the wood.  You have angered me and now you have to pay.' A sudden swoosh and you find yourself caught in a fishing net.[or]'What do you mean I have to pay? It's just wood.' you say weary and frustrated at the Madman's actions.[paragraph break]'I warned you not to touch Mr green's things.  I told you, I told you, I told you.' The Madman babbled excitedly repeating himself like a parrot.  He starts dancing around the net looking strangely comical with his Hawaiian shirt and flowery pants.[or]'Wait.' You pleaded as he flourished a knife from out of no where. The silver flashed in the sunlight emphasizing the razor edge of the knife.[paragraph break]Stop!' A deep voice commands and held such power that even the dancing dwarf stop his dance. 'Let the kid go.  Now.' You look up to see the Hermit not believing your eyes.[or]'What...how?' You stammer astonished by the turn of events.[paragraph break]The Hermit chuckled softly, his intense gaze half amused at your shock. 'Now, let the lad go.'[or]'I'm rather accomplished in the art of tracking.' He winks at you, 'Besides, I could track a wolf in the forest and your trail isn't exactly inconspicuous.'[paragraph break]'put the blade down son.' This to the dwarf who is still waving the knife around.[or]The Hermit gestured to the south 'We will continue over there.'[stopping]".

The Test Room is a room.
The hermit is a person in the Test Room. The dwarf is a person in the Test Room.

Test one with "talk to hermit / talk to dwarf / converse with hermit / converse with dwarf".[/spoiler]

It seem though that you really want some of this conversation stuff to happen outside of conversation (getting caught in the net, the hermit arriving and so on).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4089&start=0#p29290
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [too tricky] I7: alternate undo prevention w/o an extension?
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-01-03 10:43:15

I wanted to make a simple change to the "can't undo" message to make it more user-friendly and relevant to my game, e.g. "This is pretty much a 1-move, 1-room game with a random solution. Undoing would sort of break it."

However, I wasn't able to find a way to do so without using an extension. And I want to avoid that, if possible.

[code]"easy-undoes-it" by Andrew

use undo prevention.

room 1 is a room.

[test with l.undo]
[/code]

This would do the job, and the following does what I want, too, just not succinctly.

[code]
"easy-undoes-it" by Andrew

include Conditional Undo by Jesse McGrew.

room 1 is a room.

Rule for deciding whether to allow undo:
	say "It wouldn't be fair to allow undoing here, since you're only supposed to get one guess at the right answer.";
	decide yes;
[/code]

This is more than adequate, but I'd rather not include an extension if I don't have to.

I've also tried the following, but it ignores my new verb, and I'm not sure why.

[code]room 1 is a room.

undoing is an action out of world. understand the command "undo" as something new. understand "undo" as undoing.

carry out undoing:
	say "It wouldn't be fair to allow undoing here, since you're only supposed to get one guess at the right answer."
[/code]

Also the rather cheap looking

[code]after reading a command:
	if player's command includes "undo":
		say "Oops, different undo message.";
		reject the player's command;[/code]

...doesn't work.

Is there any way I can do things without an extension or is UNDO too ingrained in the Inform core to do anything? Nothing popped up when I tried to RULES before UNDO, either.

This is more general wondering than an actual brick wall, so, thanks again for any suggestions!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4089&start=0#p29291
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: alternate undo prevention without an extension?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-03 11:14:46

The UNDO command is processed before any parsing happens (as is OOPS), essentially in the same routine that reads in the command, so there is no way to do this without an extension, or without hacking the library code yourself. But why would you want to avoid using extensions anyway?

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4088&start=0#p29292
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS Workbench - Is it open source?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-03 11:44:13

I don't think the source for Workbench is available, but that may be more for lack of interest than anything else.

I expect it's covered by the same TADS Freeware License as the rest of the project.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4089&start=0#p29293
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: alternate undo prevention without an extension?
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-01-03 11:47:50

[quote="ektemple"]The UNDO command is processed before any parsing happens (as is OOPS), essentially in the same routine that reads in the command, so there is no way to do this without an extension, or without hacking the library code yourself. But why would you want to avoid using extensions anyway?

--Erik[/quote]

Well, I wanted to have something that could fit in a Z5 file (just for its own sake,) so I was thinking if I could get away with no extension, great--that much more space.

And I do love having the extensions there and using them and finding someone's already done a better job with supporting code than what I could've done by myself. It's just that this seemed like the sort of thing I maybe should know, if it was available. I'm still striking a balance between being able to rely on them and worrying I'll depend on them when I don't need the whole thing (e.g. might make a project too bulky.)

Hacking the actual library code's beyond me (I'm able to look through extension code to learn roughly what it does and how, which is neat but it's my limit,) but I'm still at the stage of learning Inform 7 where I realize I might be missing something easy and elegant, so I wanted to check off on that.

Thanks for the quick response!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4054&start=0#p29294
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: If you were a character in Zork, who would you be?
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2012-01-03 11:57:19

I'm Jizaboz  [emote]8-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4089&start=0#p29295
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [too tricky] I7: alternate undo prevention w/o an extens
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-03 11:58:58

I see. There may be one misconception here: Adding an extension doesn't [i]necessarily[/i] mean increasing the size of your game file. If all the extension does is replace sections of the library code with tweaked versions, for example, that would likely add nothing to the file size, and might even subtract (if the extension primarily removes functionality, for example.)

I think you can rest easy on the memory front where the Conditional Undo extension is concerned. It is mostly just a change to the library code, that essentially would add nothing to your game file. Conditional Undo does add at least one activity, I believe, but that's not really any more than you would add yourself if you were writing your own rule to prevent undo.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4085&start=0#p29296
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Should the .t3m files act more like build files?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-03 12:05:44

Probably your best bet is to open a feature request ticket in the [url=http://bugdb.tads.org/main_page.php]TADS Bug Database[/url].

On the infrequent occasions I use Workbench, I find this behavior somewhat of a nuisance, albeit a minor one - it's easy to revert to the previous Makefile from source control.

But I don't see the issue you mention, either. Here's my pre-Workbench Makefile:

[rant][code]
-o practice.t3
-D LANGUAGE=en_us
-D MESSAGESTYLE=neu
#-D TADS_INCLUDE_NET
-Fy obj
-Fo obj

##sources
-lib system
#-lib webui
#-lib adv3/adv3web
-lib adv3/adv3
#-source tadsnet
-source practice
[/code][/rant]

And here is the post-Workbench version:

[rant][code]
# TADS 3 makefile
#
# Warning: this file was mechanically generated.  You may edit this file
# manually, but your changes might be modified or discarded when
# you load this file into a TADS development tool.  The TADS tools
# generally retain the comment at the start of the file and the
# comment marked "##sources" below, but other comments might be
# discarded, the formatting might be changed, and some option
# settings might be modified.

-o practice.t3
-D LANGUAGE=en_us
-D MESSAGESTYLE=neu
-Fy obj
-Fo obj

##sources
-lib system
-lib adv3/adv3
-source practice

# The following is machine-generated - DO NOT EDIT
[Config:devsys]
DebugToolbar:rebarWidth:I:-1
build:ext resfile cnt:I:0
build:defaults set:I:1
watch win:pos:R:312,786,596,902
watch win:vis:I:0
SearchToolbar:rebarNewLine:I:0
log win vis::I:1
log win pos::R:461,206,1577,1098
MenuBar:rebarVis:I:1
DocToolbar:rebarIndex:I:3
DocToolbar:rebarWidth:I:-1
DebugToolbar:rebarVis:I:1
build:zipfile:S:0:Makefile_dbg.zip
watch win:sep xpos 0:I:142
watch win:sep xpos 1:I:142
watch win:sep xpos 2:I:142
watch win:sep xpos 3:I:142
build:installer options:S:0:name=Makefile_dbg
build:installer options:S:1:savext=Makefile_dbg
search:start at top:I:0
EditToolbar:rebarNewLine:I:1
proj search:exact case:I:0
*58 src win pos:C:\Projects\Dropbox\Coding\practice\practice.t:R:25,25,841,637
DocToolbar:rebarVis:I:1
auto-script:quit sequences:S:0:<nocase>[<]line[>]<space>*q(uit)?<space>*
auto-script:quit sequences:S:1:<nocase>[<]line[>]<space>*y.*
SearchToolbar:rebarIndex:I:2
search:wrap:I:1
SearchToolbar:rebarWidth:I:281
search:text:S:0:
search:text:S:1:
docking config::S:0:CL
docking config::S:1:CB
docking config::S:2:CL
docking config::S:3:W2,170,270,2,760,302,910,D,L,project win
docking config::S:4:W2,170,150,175,760,345,910,D,L,script win
docking config::S:5:W-1,270,170,304,760,604,910,D,B,watch win
docking config::S:6:W-1,270,170,2,760,302,910,D,B,locals win
docking config::S:7:W-1,170,170,-131,88,1052,647,M,B,docsearch win
docking config::S:8:W-1,170,170,-247,64,936,623,M,R,help win
docking config::S:9:W-1,170,170,-382,71,801,630,M,R,stack win
docking config::S:10:W-1,170,170,25,25,1113,584,M,R,log win
locals win:pos:R:10,786,294,902
locals win:vis:I:0
main win max::I:0
proj search:collapse spaces:I:0
search:exact case:I:0
mdi win list::S:0::log
mdi win list::S:1:C:\Projects\Dropbox\Coding\practice\practice.t
main win pos::R:281,75,1587,1131
build:srczipfile:S:0:Makefile_dbgSource.zip
proj search:whole word:I:0
help win vis::I:0
docsearch win vis::I:0
build:exe:S:0:Makefile_dbg.exe
script win:pos:R:291,968,452,1098
script win:vis:I:1
EditToolbar:rebarIndex:I:1
hist win vis::I:0
EditToolbar:rebarWidth:I:1159
SearchToolbar:rebarVis:I:1
MenuBar:rebarNewLine:I:0
proj search:regex:I:0
locals win:sep xpos 0:I:142
locals win:sep xpos 1:I:142
search:whole word:I:0
DebugToolbar:rebarNewLine:I:1
build:debug_image_file:S:0:C:\Projects\Dropbox\Coding\practice\Makefile_dbg.t3
search:regex:I:0
mdi tab order::S:0:1,0
build:rlsgam:S:0:Makefile_dbg_rls.t3
EditToolbar:rebarVis:I:1
main win mdi max::I:1
auto-script:default quit sequences set:I:1
DocToolbar:rebarNewLine:I:0
MenuBar:rebarIndex:I:0
mdi win title::S:0:
mdi win title::S:1:C:\Projects\Dropbox\Coding\practice\practice.t
search:dir:I:1
MenuBar:rebarWidth:I:-1
build:installer prog:S:0:Makefile_dbg_Setup.exe
project win:pos:R:291,203,452,942
project win:vis:I:1
filesearch win vis::I:0
stack win vis::I:0
DebugToolbar:rebarIndex:I:4
searchMode::I:1
[/code][/rant]

It kept all my active build options in place, though I lost some commented lines.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4083&start=0#p29297
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Quick Question About Dialogue
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2012-01-03 12:07:06

Just as a side on word limits, you ARE limited to how much text you can put in quoted text like [code]say: "blah blah bhah"[/code]

I found this out when coding a 'story telling' sequence. I had to break it up into more 'say's.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4089&start=0#p29298
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [too tricky] I7: alternate undo prevention w/o an extens
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-03 12:08:20

If you wanted to be really tight about it, you could look at the extension source code and copy the bits you wanted into your code. It's just code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4085&start=0#p29299
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Should the .t3m files act more like build files?
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2012-01-03 12:34:40

Interesting. I was clearly doing something wrong or I got unlucky in terms of timing. It looks like my Git setup caught the file in transition or something. You are correct: the .t3m file does appear to be fully in place if I don't do my Git workflow as part of the process. More than likely I somehow caught the file as it was being reformatted.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3531&start=10#p29300
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Setting in IF
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-03 12:47:40

[quote="Laroquod"]Heh. I was wondering the same. It seems difficult to describe the sequel accurately aftering cornering oneself into hyperbole regarding the failings of the much-superior-all-around original.[/quote]
I haven't seen it. I mentioned to my wife that I'd like to see it, and she saw a preview with Olivia Wilde in it, and she drew an incorrect conclusion that resulted in her suggesting that I don't need to see it. I'm hoping I can get her to watch the original with me, and then we'll see if she changes her mind...

I don't doubt that the original was superior, despite my "hyperbolic" description of its failings. I never said it wasn't one of my favorite movies ever. If I wanted great characters or plot, I'd read a book.

But I think Daft Punk were a good choice.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=0#p29301
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: What do you use to program your IF?
User: N723 / DateTime: 2012-01-03 13:07:02

Common question that I never knew an answer to.

For me, I'm writing my own engine in Visual Basic .NET. It's not a great language, but it works well enough. 20 lines and you can start writing out the whole game. 25 and you can already do your first input and output.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=0#p29302
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-03 13:14:31

I'm not sure there's a language that someone [i]hasn't [/i]used to write text adventures. 

There just was a really interesting post on Planet IF about Zork, comparing games written in MDL and Fortran.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4054&start=0#p29303
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: If you were a character in Zork, who would you be?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-01-03 13:15:40

I'm not  [emote]:([/emote]  Am I missing out on something?  [emote]:cry:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=0#p29304
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: N723 / DateTime: 2012-01-03 13:15:48

[quote="George"]I'm not sure there's a language that someone [i]hasn't [/i]used to write text adventures.[/quote]

Why am I not doubting this? [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=0#p29305
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-01-03 13:24:20

[quote="George"]I'm not sure there's a language that someone [i]hasn't [/i]used to write text adventures.[/quote]
According to detractors of Inform 7, English is just such a language. [emote];-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=280#p29306
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: N723 / DateTime: 2012-01-03 13:27:30

I'm what you call a new kid who knows nothing about IF. Really. I'm only 16 years old, and I'm an aspiring game developer. I've tried to create a very detailed IF with graphics and music, which failed pretty horribly, and now I'm using what's left of the unstable engine to work on a new game. The project name is PUЯITY, which I'll probably change.

How did I start? No idea. It just came to me one day that I can use the Console Application in Visual Basic to make a game (rather than the form that we had to in class) and instead of doing the work I was meant to, I worked on my engine. I found that there's a whole community 2 days ago from the IFComp, which I'll probably enter when it starts for fun.

And now, I'm just here.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that I'm a musician, and I could be classified as a professional musician, as that's where most of my income comes from. I've set up a new YT [url=http://www.youtube.com/user/uN723it]here[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4083&start=0#p29307
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Quick Question About Dialogue
User: katz / DateTime: 2012-01-03 13:59:58

Deain, you've mentioned talking to, speaking to, and conversing to, so I just have to ask:

You're not creating a different verb for every NPC you have a conversation with, are you?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3531&start=10#p29308
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Setting in IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-03 14:10:58

[quote="capmikee"]I haven't seen it. I mentioned to my wife that I'd like to see it, and she saw a preview with Olivia Wilde in it, and she drew an incorrect conclusion that resulted in her suggesting that I don't need to see it.[/quote]

I went to see it [i]entirely[/i] for Olivia Wilde, though I also enjoyed Jeff Bridges' playful performance as an aging tech-hippie-visionary, as a kind of bonus to the Olivia Wilde movie (or, more precisely, the Olivia Wilde In That Cute Haircut movie). Plus there was something going on about computers or racing or something. Yadda-yadda Olivia Wilde yadda.

I loved the first one as a kid, for reasons redundant with others' here. Terrible, terrible movie, but I loved it. Loved the videogame, too, for that matter.

The new one was comparably forgettable as a film and I wonder if I'd have loved it as a tyke. I probably would have. Honestly I literally couldn't summarize the plot at this point, apart from mentioning Olivia Wilde again. And her hair. And a bit about Jeff Bridges. I couldn't really summarize the first one either, though, beyond "David Warner played the villain, which is never a bad choice. He was like a ... cylinder or something. Red cylinder dude."

I love both films' soundtracks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4054&start=0#p29309
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: If you were a character in Zork, who would you be?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-03 14:13:48

[quote="Peter Pears"]Certainly all AFGANCAAP games.[/quote]

I had to google this, and Google was all like [b]Did you mean: AFGNCAAP[/b] and I'm all like "WTF Google I have no idea, that's why I asked you!"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4088&start=0#p29310
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS Workbench - Is it open source?
User: mjroberts / DateTime: 2012-01-03 15:00:31

The Workbench source is available as part of the htmltads source release.  It's all built directly on Win32 (no MFC or any other Microsoft class libraries are involved).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4076&start=0#p29311
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Version Control and Workbench
User: mjroberts / DateTime: 2012-01-03 15:11:34

[quote="bukayeva"]Come to think of it, what I'd really like to do is modify the Workbench so it has an embedded console. (Essentially just a window that has a running instance of your local shell.)[/quote]

That's probably not too hard to add.

[quote="bukayeva"]Even more alternative to that: one thing I've wished for with Inform 7 is that it adhered to a more plug-in based architecture. (Think Eclipse-like.) I'm finding I'd like that even more with TADS. Then someone could make a Git or Subversion plug-in that could be slotted in. Granted, though, that's a lot of work.[/quote]

I'd be open to implementing something like that.  I'm a fan of plug-in architectures in general - there's already a plug-in system for text editor modes, which is how the auto-indenter packages work.  If you want to look into spec'ing out what a tool plug-in framework would look like, we could see (a) how much work it would be, (b) how many tools it would enable, and (c) what kind of interest there would be in those tools.  If it's a lot of work and only a couple of tools that anyone's interested in, it might turn out to make more sense to just add one-off support for those specific tools.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3531&start=10#p29312
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Setting in IF
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-03 15:14:21

Yeah, David Warner.

Okay, I'm definitely never seeing the sequel now. Maybe I'll just get the soundtrack. And if I want Jeff Bridges I'll watch The Big Lebowski.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4076&start=0#p29313
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Version Control and Workbench
User: mjroberts / DateTime: 2012-01-03 15:17:16

[quote="bukayeva"]Another concern I have is that I don't like that I must have the Git output go to the debug log. Why would external tools automatically have their output go to a debug log?[/quote]

Debug Log is probably a bit of a misnomer at this point, since it's really just a generic tool output window.  (The name carries over from the pre-Workbench days, when Workbench was solely a debugger and not an IDE, and that window really did just show debug status messages.)

So if you don't want the output to go to the Debug/tool output window, where would like it to go?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4076&start=10#p29314
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Version Control and Workbench
User: mjroberts / DateTime: 2012-01-03 15:30:00

[quote="bukayeva"]...but my familiarity with more modern development systems (Komodo, Eclipse, IntelliJ, RubyMine, etc) keeps me from really liking it [Workbench].[/quote]

One thing I might suggest is that if you have a favorite IDE, you could look into what it would take to build a TADS plug-in for it.  I've played with Eclipse a little, but not enough to have an opinion on whether it could be a superior replacement for Workbench, and I haven't looked at any of the others.  But given that some of those other IDEs have a lot more developer bandwidth behind them than Workbench does, I could imagine that one of them could eventually do a better job as a TADS IDE.

TADS has a portable C++ debugger API that could be used in such a plug-in (and Workbench uses it exclusively for all of its debugging operations), so the most TADS-specific thing that Workbench does could be replicated.  The project-tree manager isn't in any sort of pluggable form, but at some level that seems like basic IDE fare, so maybe it could be replicated with internal scripting in the IDE or something like that.  Pretty much everything else Workbench does involves launching command-line tools and text editing and searching, which I assume would all have to be second-nature to anything calling itself an IDE.

I'm not saying I'm going to be able to implement a third-party IDE plug-in - I'm more suggesting that it would make a good separable project that someone else could take on in parallel.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4086&start=0#p29315
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: The .t3c file?
User: mjroberts / DateTime: 2012-01-03 15:42:54

[quote="bukayeva"]The documentation mentions a .t3c file and says "The project file contains information on the window layout, debugger breakpoints, option settings, and build parameters."[/quote]

Where do you see that mentioned?  I can't find that particular quote anywhere.  The file does exist, but there's only one, and it contains global Workbench settings for all projects.

A couple people have previously suggested separating out the per-project IDE data from the build data, specifically because of the version-control impact.  I agree that this is a good idea, but I haven't gotten around to it yet; it's probably not a huge deal to implement since obviously the configuration store is already separating the data into two groups when it rewrites the .t3m file.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4076&start=10#p29316
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Version Control and Workbench
User: mjroberts / DateTime: 2012-01-03 15:45:30

[quote="George"][quote="bukayeva"]I'd like a console too, and even more than that an embedded interpreter.[/quote][/quote]

What do you mean by embedded interpreter?  I mean, as opposed to the interpreter that's integrated as it is.  Do you just mean in terms of the terp window appearing within the MDI frame?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3974&start=0#p29317
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: SAFTAP - Scott Adams Format Text Adventure Player: Suggs
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2012-01-03 16:05:06

Engine now fully tested on Pirate Adventure and works completely. Also tested on the light-match-in-mine on Ghost Town and the sleep routine works great too. Fixed the issue with the nailed down rug in Pirate Adventure. Just one more thing to do now which is very minor and it will be up on my website for you all hopefully tomorrow depending on how work is tomorrow. Its looking good even though I say so myself [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4091&start=0#p29318
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Moving vs Pushing
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-01-03 16:06:19

The two verbs "move" and "push" are the same. And I'm quite happy with this 'cause it helps avoiding a lot of trouble.

Though, there is one very special occasion in which the verb "move" should be interpreted differently.

The example, quite straightforward (very SPOILERY!):

[spoiler]In Andromeda Awakening, the laser at the end of the game can be pushed to fire, but if a player wants to MOVE it to point it somewhere else, the laser... just fires.[/spoiler]
Is there a way I can catch the "move" verb in just ONE occasion?

Thanks a lot for the help!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4019&start=0#p29319
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Kobo Touch + Development = IF No Brainer
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2012-01-03 16:11:08

By the grace of God, I now have beta Kindle SDK access and tinkering will be underway once SAFTAP for Windows is complete in the next day or so.

Text adventures coming soon to a Kindle near you (if the Kindle SDK and myself can whisper sweet nothings to each other without falling out in the mean time). 

I will also be tinkering with a Kobo Touch near the end of Jan to attack from both angles cash permitting.

I have sent an email to Mr Adams to see if he gives a thumbs up for a port of SAFTAP to the Kindle platform.

I guess once I have experience of SAFTAP to Kindle, I can assist with stuff more beefy IF oriented on the same platform if life does not get in the way.

Watch this space...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3531&start=10#p29320
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Setting in IF
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-01-03 16:21:44

[quote="Ghalev"]
I went to see it [i]entirely[/i] for Olivia Wilde, though I also enjoyed Jeff Bridges' playful performance as an aging tech-hippie-visionary, as a kind of bonus to the Olivia Wilde movie (or, more precisely, the Olivia Wilde In That Cute Haircut movie). Plus there was something going on about computers or racing or something. Yadda-yadda Olivia Wilde yadda.

I loved the first one as a kid, for reasons redundant with others' here. Terrible, terrible movie, but I loved it. Loved the videogame, too, for that matter.[/quote]

1. But but <a class="postlink" href="http://ourvaluedcustomers.blogspot.com/2010/12/regarding-tron-legacy-poster-hanging-in.html">http://ourvaluedcustomers.blogspot.com/ ... ng-in.html</a> [emote]:P[/emote]
2. I've been avoiding pretty much all information about the [i]Tron[/i] remake, because remakes in general make me sad and [i]Tron[/i] in particular is most delightful as an artifact of a very specific culture and time period.  Also, I am slightly embarrassed about my own youthful indiscretions with respect to Clothing That Glows.
But then, 3. I just looked up pictures of this "Olivia Wilde," and, eeeee.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4019&start=0#p29321
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Kobo Touch + Development = IF No Brainer
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-01-03 16:43:29

[quote="Bainespal"]The ereader companies would do well to accomodate developers like you.  I've been watching the price wars, and I've been thinking about buying one.  However, I'm also aware of the efforts to get IF running on the Kindle and mobile devices, and I want to wait and see which mobile device will end up letting me play IF most freely.  I'm kind of hesitant to get a Kindle since I would prefer to get a device less tied to the bookstore/service (and supporting of more formats), but if the Kindle can easily run at least all Inform games, buying one would be an attractive idea.[/quote]
I understand the price wars are ultimately LOST by iOS devices, but the iPad can play all IF, plus read any kind of book (even pdfs), play Quest games, and you can also connect to the ifMUD with a shareware client (2$ circa).
Not to mention the other 200k+ things its good at.

An used or refurbished 1.0 could be a nice self-gift.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4054&start=0#p29322
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: If you were a character in Zork, who would you be?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-01-03 16:50:56

Beautiful. [emote]:)[/emote] But I have unfortunately mistyped it, which is why you didn't find anything. There was an "A" too many.

Here's the explanation, from the Wikipedia section of Plot of Zork: Grand Inquisitor.

[quote]The player character joins forces with the Dungeon Master Dalboz (voiced by Michael McKean), who was imprisoned in a lantern by the Grand Inquisitor, Yannick. Dalboz calls the player "AFGNCAAP", a satirical, politically-correct initialism for "Ageless, Faceless, Gender-Neutral, Culturally-Ambiguous Adventure Person"—a joking reference to many adventure games, such as Infocom's original Zork games, in which the player's character has no identity, name, or background. [/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4054&start=0#p29323
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: If you were a character in Zork, who would you be?
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-01-03 16:59:28

I prefer the term Featureless Undeveloped Character (Kinda), which makes for a shorter and more elegant acronym and one which is less susceptible of misspelling.  AFGNCAAP sounds like the type of headgear worn by President Karzai.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3531&start=10#p29324
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Setting in IF
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-03 17:16:12

*My* youthful indiscretions with glowing clothing began at age 30, and I'm not embarrassed at all.

Tron Legacy was halfway decent as a movie, in fact. (The original was unapologetically awful, much as I love it.)

I think some early version of the script had the potential to be a fine movie, but then three rewrites and two extra lightcycle scenes were piled on top. Interesting notes keep drifting into the story and then are never referred to again. Oh well.

If you want a condensed injection of the movie -- sans story, but with all the style points in under four minutes -- I recommend this fanvid: 

<a class="postlink" href="http://archiveofourown.org/collections/vividcon2011/works/240249">http://archiveofourown.org/collections/ ... rks/240249</a> 
(Dance Dreams, by bradcpu, music by Lady Gaga and the Euthrymthics)

Watch it full-screen and full-volume.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4086&start=0#p29325
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: The .t3c file?
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2012-01-03 17:20:23

If you click Workbench Help (F1), the help file has a section called:

"Project (.t3c) Files"

That was the only place I've found it mentioned so far.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3531&start=10#p29326
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Setting in IF
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-03 18:13:01

[quote="capmikee"][quote="Laroquod"]Heh. I was wondering the same. It seems difficult to describe the sequel accurately aftering cornering oneself into hyperbole regarding the failings of the much-superior-all-around original.[/quote]
I haven't seen it. I mentioned to my wife that I'd like to see it, and she saw a preview with Olivia Wilde in it, and she drew an incorrect conclusion that resulted in her suggesting that I don't need to see it. I'm hoping I can get her to watch the original with me, and then we'll see if she changes her mind...

I don't doubt that the original was superior, despite my "hyperbolic" description of its failings. I never said it wasn't one of my favorite movies ever. If I wanted great characters or plot, I'd read a book.

But I think Daft Punk were a good choice.[/quote]
Truly. As for 'hyperbolic', sorry -- it was just hard for me to see anything but in a characterisation of Jeff Bridges AKA original Flynn as "instantly forgettable". He's not the most original character in the world, granted, but Flynn's roguish game designer persona is one of the things I've always remembered most about the film. Tron's character was pretty memorable too in his sterling and Dudley Doright-like way. YMMV.

It's not like Tron was brilliant or anything. But as for the sequel being considered a better movie by some. Er… I disagree completely, of course -- but there's taste for ya. 8)

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3531&start=10#p29327
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Setting in IF
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-01-03 18:17:09

[quote="zarf"]*My* youthful indiscretions with glowing clothing began at age 30, and I'm not embarrassed at all.[/quote]

Ahem: at the risk of making you feel old, and also at the risk of being accused of rampant sycophancy, I saw your Cloak of Light page when I was in eighth grade.  My father had seen it somewhere and thought I'd like it, and it was one of my very first glimpses into the wide world of people doing awesome things and posting them on the internet.  It made enough of an impression on me that I still remembered your name when I got to CMU and made friends with KGBers and such.

(I'm mostly just frustrated that "wearable electronics" seems to have totally stalled out on "clothing that glows," since I think there's a lot of potential beyond that.  Mine look like [url=http://instamatique.com/lea/LunarGala.html]this[/url], by the way, but I am much more proud of the more recent [url=http://instamatique.com/lea/img/spyglass.jpg]electromechanical stuff[/url], or even the [url=http://instamatique.com/lea/Orciny.html]fake electromechanical stuff[/url].)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=10#p29328
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-03 18:34:59

Success!

Well, not so much with the AI, but importing maps from files turned out to be a lot easier than I thought and I got a little prototype ready.

Just download the [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17790344/Examples/Cyberspace%21%20%28Import%29.gblorb]example[/url] and the [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17790344/Examples/CyberLayout]import file[/url] (keep in mind that the game can't read .txt files, so you'll have to remove the file extension, 'cause that's how Inform rolls, I guess) and try to go wild. This method only supports floors right now (the '.') but I will add at least the default walls and borders in due time. There is also the limitation that the width and length of a room must be of a fixed size, so don't try something like a 5x5 field on level 1, 2x6 on level 2, etc.

Sometimes it feels really good when something works right off the bat.  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3942&start=0#p29329
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: IF Project for Android
User: N723 / DateTime: 2012-01-03 18:41:46

Wait, so what do you need us for? It seems like you have all your bases covered.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4091&start=0#p29330
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Moving vs Pushing
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-01-03 19:08:08

Note--this code was not tested to compile, etc., but I hope it gives the general idea.

Don't you want to push

[spoiler]a button on the laser instead?[/spoiler]

If so, see code below.

[spoiler]the button is  a thing. the button is part of the laser.

understand "laser button" and as button.

does the player mean pushing the laser button: it is very likely.

instead of pushing the laser:
    say "Maybe you want to push the button on the laser? The laser gun is too bulky to move."[/spoiler]

Otherwise, here's my guess. But it seems awkward.

[spoiler]moving is an action applying to one thing.

understand the command "move [something]" as something new. understand "move [something]" as moving.

carry out moving:
    if the noun is not the laser:
        try pushing the noun instead;
    say "Which way do you want to move the laser?" instead;

moving to is an action applying to one thing and one direction.

understand the command "move [something] [direction]" as something new. understand "move [something] [direction]" as moving.

carry out moving (a - a thing) to (b - a direction):
    if noun is not the laser:
        say "Pick it up instead." instead;
    if nowhere is second noun of the location of the player:
        try going b instead;
    move player b;
    move laser b;[/spoiler]

You could also [spoiler]pull a trigger.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4089&start=0#p29331
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [too tricky] I7: alternate undo prevention w/o an extens
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-01-03 19:22:06

Those are two good ideas. Thanks. I have to confess I only have so much knowledge of the nuts and bolts of compilers--and even when that sort of thing probably won't help me write a better story, I'm still curious.

And I agree that what's there works well--both extensions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4074&start=0#p29332
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Clearing input window & disabling command history
User: EthanHam / DateTime: 2012-01-03 20:12:41

The behavior I was describing was showing up using the interpreter that accompanies the Inform7 development environment... I've been experimenting with various interpreters to figure out which one to use (the game I'm developing is supposed to be shown in a kiosk-like mode) and I've run into bigger problems than the left-over history, so I'm putting that on the back burner for the moment [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4092&start=0#p29333
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Quixe and timed events
User: EthanHam / DateTime: 2012-01-03 20:24:52

Quixe doesn't seem to like timed events very much. It works fine when I'm doing the linear kind of timers that are in Erik Temple's Real-Time Delays extension, e.g.: 
[code]wait 1500 ms before continuing[/code]But things get hairy if I try to do a more random-access timers that activate the "A glulx timed activity rule:":
[code]start a 1500 millisecond timer[/code]When the rule is activated, trying to output any text (e.g., say "hello world") causes errors such as "Quixe run: gli_put_char: window has pending line request" or "Quixe run: gli_put_char: window has pending line request."

Any thoughts? I'm guessing that these types of timers just aren't compatible with Quixe--but I'm wishing they were.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4092&start=0#p29334
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Quixe and timed events
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-03 20:41:17

This kind of thing has often happened to me. Basically, the interpreters that are included in the Inform IDEs (Mac OS and Windows) don't enforce proscriptions against certain actions that are technically illegal under Glulx. One of those actions is trying to print to a window when input is pending. Unfortunately, if you have a timed event in Glulx, chances are very good that you also have input pending in the main window (i.e., the cursor is waiting for the player to type), and thus, if you try to print from the timed activity rules, you will be doing so illegally. Again, the IDE interpreters just ignore this, but Quixe and Gargoyle both recognize it as illegal. 

The solution is, you need to cancel line input before printing anything, e.g.:

[code]To cancel line input in main window: (- glk_cancel_line_event(gg_mainwin); -)

A glulx timed activity rule:
    cancel line input in main window;
    print "The timer has fired!"[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=10#p29335
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-03 20:52:56

[quote="Basti50"]Just download the [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17790344/Examples/Cyberspace%21%20%28Import%29.gblorb]example[/url] and the [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17790344/Examples/CyberLayout]import file[/url] (keep in mind that the game can't read .txt files, so you'll have to remove the file extension, 'cause that's how Inform rolls, I guess) and try to go wild. This method only supports floors right now (the '.') but I will add at least the default walls and borders in due time. There is also the limitation that the width and length of a room must be of a fixed size, so don't try something like a 5x5 field on level 1, 2x6 on level 2, etc.[/quote]

Sounds like a cool idea! Unfortunately, I can't see anything on my machine. The file loads, and there is a black backgrounded but otherwise empty graphics window on the left, and an apparently empty text buffer window on the write that has a "more" overrun prompt. I assume that the map is supposed to be printed in both of these? Or is the map being printed as empty squares/spaces (in which case, this doesn't make for much of an example!  [emote];)[/emote] )

Note that Zoom will crash unless the text file has an extension of .glkdata (there may be other extensions that will work, not sure), but Gargoyle [i]can't[/i] have that extension or it will crash. Does anyone know if there is an extension that will work for all external files? If not, this seems like something like the Glk spec ought to require...

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4092&start=0#p29336
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Quixe and timed events
User: EthanHam / DateTime: 2012-01-03 21:20:40

I could've sworn I had tried that--but I must've not because canceling the input does the trick. Many thanks for the help!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=280#p29337
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-01-03 21:43:03

[quote="N723"]I'm what you call a new kid who knows nothing about IF. Really. I'm only 16 years old, and I'm an aspiring game developer. I've tried to create a very detailed IF with graphics and music, which failed pretty horribly, and now I'm using what's left of the unstable engine to work on a new game. The project name is PUЯITY, which I'll probably change.

How did I start? No idea. It just came to me one day that I can use the Console Application in Visual Basic to make a game (rather than the form that we had to in class) and instead of doing the work I was meant to, I worked on my engine. I found that there's a whole community 2 days ago from the IFComp, which I'll probably enter when it starts for fun.

And now, I'm just here.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that I'm a musician, and I could be classified as a professional musician, as that's where most of my income comes from. I've set up a new YT [url=http://www.youtube.com/user/uN723it]here[/url].[/quote]

Welcome--it's interesting to see more people with lots of different interests! Especially people who found IF even without being around during Infocom's heyday. I think several of the top IFComp 2011 placers are part of the 'new generation' so don't feel you're too young to join in.

See you on the Inform 7 help board, or wherever--one mistake I made was not jumping in soon enough and asking for help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4054&start=0#p29338
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: If you were a character in Zork, who would you be?
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-01-03 21:44:57

[quote="Peter Pears"]I [i]am[/i] a character in Zork every time I play it. That's the whole point of most IF. Certainly all AFGANCAAP games.

Mind you, there's a game out there you may not know about exploring Zork through the POV of the Troll...

Should be fun playing the Cyclops, too. About as fun as playing the Troll.[/quote]

I have to admit Zork Zero may not have been a favorite, but it would've been fun to be the Jester.

The Eldritch Vapor or Cruel Puppet from Beyond Zork would've been fun, too. Up until the AFGNCAAP killed them, of course. But that's the risk of being an NPC.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=20#p29339
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-03 23:51:45

Odd, it should look something like [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17790344/Examples/Example.png]this[/url]. At least it works on both git and gargoyle for me. Glulx seems to have problems with it though or maybe it's just the long loading times, don't have time to test it right now. Maybe you actually need a file extension for the Mac interpreters? :shrug:

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3761&start=0#p29340
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Hugo "Open House" Competition
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2012-01-04 01:02:25

The games are ready!

If you'd like to download them individually, go to this link: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.joltcountry.com/index.php/features/the-games-are-here-announcing-the-2012-hugocomp">http://www.joltcountry.com/index.php/fe ... 2-hugocomp</a>

If you'd to click on a link and have them all start downloading, alongside the Windows Hugor interpreter, just click [url=http://www.joltcountry.com/downloads/HugoComp/2012HugoComp.zip]here[/url]. There's five new Hugo games and I think you'll have a little bit of fun with them. I'm really psyched that we got two new IF authors (Taleslinger and Flack) to give Hugo a try.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4091&start=0#p29341
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Moving vs Pushing
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-01-04 02:45:13

Thanks Andrew. 
The second example, although to be tested, seems to better fit my needs. 
[spoiler]I want the laser to fire no matter what the player decides to push, pull, move etc, so it's better i leave it a single object.[/spoiler]Will try both, anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4076&start=10#p29342
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Version Control and Workbench
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-04 02:59:52

Yep, just within the window frame. Normally when I have more than one screen it doesn't matter, but for example when I just have a laptop it's more convenient if it's in the frame.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4076&start=10#p29343
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Version Control and Workbench
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2012-01-04 04:13:33

[quote="mjroberts"]One thing I might suggest is that if you have a favorite IDE, you could look into what it would take to build a TADS plug-in for it.  I've played with Eclipse a little, but not enough to have an opinion on whether it could be a superior replacement for Workbench, and I haven't looked at any of the others.[/quote]

I did find this: [url]http://sourceforge.net/projects/tadsdev/[/url]. I haven't had much time to look at it yet. I'll keep looking into this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4088&start=0#p29344
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS Workbench - Is it open source?
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2012-01-04 04:16:36

This is great news. What I'd like to really do is just have the basic editor with the Scintilla component. Then see if I can build up beyond that based on what seems useful. My main reason for using the Workbench is because of the syntax aware editor at this point. I did find a tads3.properties file for SciTE but I'm guessing it's a bit out of date with syntax features. There is a TADS 3-specific syntax and navigation set up for EditPadPro as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4091&start=0#p29345
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Moving vs Pushing
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-01-04 04:45:37

If you make a grammar line that has a token that's more specific than [something], the more specific grammar takes precedence. But because "move" is a synonym for "push", you also need to remove that definition and re-understand it as normal pushing (and, if you need it, pushing between rooms). 

[code]The city is a room. An apartment is a kind of thing. The home is an apartment. It is in the city. The park is in the city.

Apartment-moving is an action applying to one visible thing. 

Understand the command "move" as something new.
Understand "move [something]" as pushing.
Understand "move [something] [direction]" as pushing it to.
Understand "move [apartment]" as apartment-moving.

Report apartment-moving:
	say "You move [the noun]."

Test me with "actions on/push park/move park/push home/move home".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4091&start=0#p29346
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Moving vs Pushing
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-01-04 05:05:09

[quote="Juhana"]If you make a grammar line that has a token that's more specific than [something], the more specific grammar takes precedence. But because "move" is a synonym for "push", you also need to remove that definition and re-understand it as normal pushing (and, if you need it, pushing between rooms).[/quote]
Very nice! That's it!
Thank both a lot!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4076&start=10#p29347
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Version Control and Workbench
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2012-01-04 06:59:31

[quote="mjroberts"]So if you don't want the output to go to the Debug/tool output window, where would like it to go?[/quote]

Having "tool output" from TADS makes sense as one form of output. Having "tool output" from an external tool (i.e., "different from TADS") suggests perhaps a Console Output or something. Maybe? Although if there was an embedded console then this would become less of a concern, at least for me.

An embedded console would mean, for example, that I do my git commands right there in the console. The output would thus presumably be right there just as it would at the command line. So I don't need a separate output window then.

I guess part of deciding whether or not different windows are needed is understanding the use case for external tools. What are the likely external tools that someone is going to use? A diff tool, perhaps? A version control tool, as I am. But what else? Personally I can't think of much else at the moment I would want to use as an external tool.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4054&start=0#p29348
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: If you were a character in Zork, who would you be?
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-01-04 07:03:55

Other possibilities to consider:

   The bat
   The unicorn
   The dragon


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=0#p29349
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2012-01-04 08:38:41

[quote="George"]I'm not sure there's a language that someone [i]hasn't [/i]used to write text adventures.[/quote]
Great. Now you've done it. Someone is going to start going through the archives, and eventually find a language that hasn't been used to write text adventures, and write a text adventure in it. Just watch - the next speed IF will have a "Sorry about the quality but that's all I could manage in whitespace [or OISC]"

Probably not Malbolge though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=20#p29350
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-04 08:58:39

It's a bit hard to test, but it seems that the interpreter just crashes on startup if it can't load the file. If the file does load, then the graphics/text doesn't display, which suggests that the data isn't loading properly. I'm not sure why this would be; Gargoyle in particular should be pretty much the same on both Windows and Mac. Here's what I can summarize so far, based on my testing and what you say:

WinGlk/git (WinGit): file with no extension loads, and graphics display.
WinGlk/glulxe (WinGlulxe): file with no extension may or may not load.
GarGlk/git(?), Windows: file with no extension loads, and graphics display.
GarGlk/git/glulxe, Mac: file with no extension loads (?), but graphics do not display.
CocoaGlk/git/glulxe (Zoom): if file has .glkdata extension and is in the user's home folder, file loads(?), but graphics do not display.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=0#p29351
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-04 09:14:07

I believe that people who try to write their own authoring system in order to write their own text adventure, aren't actually interested in writing their own text adventure. What they really want is write an IF system. They just don't realize that.

Let's take that a step further up. Suppose you want to write your own authoring system. But you don't do it in C, Basic, Java, whatever. You write your own general purpose programming language, in which you then attempt to write your own IF authoring system. I don't believe your goal was to write your own IF system. You wanted to write your own GP language to begin with.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=0#p29352
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: N723 / DateTime: 2012-01-04 09:23:19

Why don't we write in 6502 or so-- oh, wait. We've done IFs before on the Atari 2600. Never mind. [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

Actually, the engine work is very fast and simple for a text adventure game on VB, since you just have to make a loop and make it not crash by requiring key input.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=0#p29353
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-04 09:30:47

Let me guess, it doesn't run on Linux or Mac OS X, right?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4054&start=10#p29354
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: If you were a character in Zork, who would you be?
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2012-01-04 09:38:37

[quote="Felix"]I'm not  [emote]:([/emote]  Am I missing out on something?  [emote]:cry:[/emote][/quote]

Not really  [emote]:|[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3761&start=0#p29355
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Hugo "Open House" Competition
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2012-01-04 09:39:50

Cool. I'll be playing these soon!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=0#p29356
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-04 10:04:48

[quote="ArmanX"]Just watch - the next speed IF will have a "Sorry about the quality but that's all I could manage in whitespace"[/quote]

Too late -- Adam Thornton already did some large proportion of Mentula Macanus in Whitespace for TWIFComp. (Where the source code had to be 140 characters or less, not counting white space.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3531&start=10#p29357
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Setting in IF
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-04 10:32:26

[quote="zarf"]If you want a condensed injection of the movie -- sans story, but with all the style points in under four minutes -- I recommend this fanvid: 

<a class="postlink" href="http://archiveofourown.org/collections/vividcon2011/works/240249">http://archiveofourown.org/collections/ ... rks/240249</a> 
(Dance Dreams, by bradcpu, music by Lady Gaga and the Euthrymthics)[/quote]
That's a clever mashup. Works very well!

The video is a perfect example of what's wrong with the state of CGI. What you're seeing onscreeen [i]should[/i] be impressive, On some level my brain is telling me "something cool is happening," but visually it's just confusing and leaves me disappointed. Maybe it's like quality of writing in IF: more attention must be given to visual composition and editing. Just because you [i]can[/i] have more explosions and laser blasts and swinging swords in-frame, doesn't mean you [i]should[/i]. Just like George Lucas ruined Star Wars by losing the limitations that forced him to be artful. The original Tron took days to render seconds of footage and the live-action stuff had to be [i]hand painted[/i]. Not only was the hand-painting beautiful, but the timestaking nature of it forced the designers to be simple and elegant. And the predominating live-action sequences required simplicity and genius in set design.

Sorry to continue the rant here, but I remember seeing some "making-of" stuff about the Matrix and I was impressed by how much of it was on real sets, with real acrobatics (and real wires). You can see the difference in the results. Same with the LoTR movies - huge amounts of effort went into choreography, costumes, sets, and miniatures, and it shows.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=0#p29358
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-04 11:09:17

[quote="RealNC"]I believe that people who try to write their own authoring system in order to write their own text adventure, aren't actually interested in writing their own text adventure. What they really want is write an IF system. They just don't realize that.[/quote]
This makes sense to me. What I suspect happens is that someone is learning Programming Language X and is looking for a project with which to polish their X skills. At that point, writing a text adventure becomes a very attractive option. Easy I/O, and no messy graphics to contend with.

[Edit:] This wouldn't apply to Javascript, of course. The reason to write a game in Javascript could be that you DO want access to graphics and sound in a cross-platform delivery system.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=10#p29359
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: TheOtherMattW / DateTime: 2012-01-04 11:25:46

[quote="N723"]Actually, the engine work is very fast and simple for a text adventure game on VB, since you just have to make a loop and make it not crash by requiring key input.[/quote]

Well, in the sense that a "text adventure engine" is nothing more than a loop that accepts key input, then outputs something and then goes back to the beginning: yes.

In all other senses: no.

First, there is the parser; the part that deals with understanding the player's commands. A two-word parser is simple enough, but anything else requires work. PUT THE LAMP AND THE SWORD ON THE TABLE or JIM, GO NORTH or even OPEN THE DOOR when two or more doors are in the location, can be tricky.

Then there's the world model: rooms, objects and non-player-characters. Things can be in and on other things (or even under or behind other things), things can be part of other things, containers can be open or closed, making stuff visible or invisible (or visible but untouchable in case of a closed transparent container) -- again: this can be simple or complex, but it *does* require some thought at least.

Then there's the question of how you will implement actions (taking & dropping stuff, attacking stuff, opening doors etc) and events (the ship crashing; night falling; the bear attacking) programmatically.

The list goes on and on.

Now I suspect that your answer might be: "I'll start with the basics and take it from there" which is fair enough, I guess, but you should ask yourself this: there are great IF authoring tools out there that are doing all the things I mentioned out of the box. Systems which have taken years to build to reach the level of efficiency and complexity they have today. So why would you want to re-invent the wheel?

If your answer is: "For fun" or "Because I want to get better in Visual Basic" that's fine, too, but then your goal is not "writing a text adventure". 

Maybe you want to do something that simply cannot be done with one of the existing systems? Is it worth spending weeks or months -- even years -- re-creating the basic functionality of an IF authoring system for that particular feature?

If yes, then good luck!

Matt

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4076&start=10#p29360
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Version Control and Workbench
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-04 11:57:58

I think you'd want some way to tie external tool commands to keyboard shortcuts in Workbench, even with an embedded console -- being able to send external tool output to the embedded console would be neat.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4088&start=0#p29361
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS Workbench - Is it open source?
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-04 11:59:44

If you just were to start with ScITE you probably can get pretty far -- ScITE is a great standalone editor and has an embedded console, and people have extended it to include project management and so on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3531&start=10#p29362
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Setting in IF
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-04 12:33:35

[quote] On some level my brain is telling me "something cool is happening," but visually it's just confusing and leaves me disappointed.[/quote]

I didn't react that way, either to the video or the original movie.

(Note that the video is itself mashing up and compositing different shots of the movie. It's not the same visual experience, because it doesn't have the same goal.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4088&start=0#p29363
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS Workbench - Is it open source?
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2012-01-04 12:39:15

[quote="George"]If you just were to start with ScITE you probably can get pretty far -- ScITE is a great standalone editor[/quote]

Yeah, I was thinking about that. My concern is that the tads3 inclusion is probably a bit out of date. For example, it doesn't handle the new triple-quoted strings that TADS now supports. Not a big deal by itself. But I'm just thinking future-wise here. I'm not sure but I looked at SciTE and it looks like you might have to compile things into/with the lexer in order to update support.

I'm sure for most purposes, though, the SciTE and tads3.properties are more than fine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=10#p29364
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: N723 / DateTime: 2012-01-04 12:40:16

[quote="MattW"]So why would you want to re-invent the wheel?

If your answer is: "For fun" or "Because I want to get better in Visual Basic" that's fine, too, but then your goal is not "writing a text adventure". 

Maybe you want to do something that simply cannot be done with one of the existing systems? Is it worth spending weeks or months -- even years -- re-creating the basic functionality of an IF authoring system for that particular feature?

If yes, then good luck![/quote]

It's more back onto "I need to get better in VB" than "I want to write a text adventure", but the actual concept of explaining a story without graphics always interested me because I want to prove (again) that you don't need graphics to make a good game.

Also, I have a love of writing engines for some reason. It's not long to do, just a bit annoying at times. Besides, what's wrong with having another engine to choose from and one that I (and a lot of other people) would find it simpler to write in?

EDIT: I just looked at I7. I don't even know how is that code, but that's really simple. I'll still stick with VB, though.

EDIT2: I had an idea of something that I know can be achieved with my engine. Text-adventure Pokemon.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=20#p29365
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-04 12:44:52

[quote="Basti50"]There also seems to be some sort of strange bug with either R&D or Gargoyle as [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17790344/Examples/Cyberspace%21%20%28Crash%29.gblorb]this[/url] example always crashes with it when I try to move before doing anything else. The example seems to run fine in Git so I'm a bit puzzled what the problem could be. Different memory allocation maybe?[/quote]

The stack trace shows the crash happens [url=http://code.google.com/p/garglk/source/browse/trunk/garglk/wintext.c#1507]here[/url], when characters are written into the input buffer that you supplied when you called [url=http://eblong.com/zarf/glk/glk-spec-072_4.html#s.2]glk_request_line_event[/url].

You are probably passing an invalid memory address.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=20#p29366
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-04 12:46:10

@Erik

Could you try something out for me, if you find the time? Could you test out if Inform 7's internal interpreter can handle the example, in case the Mac version even has one? [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17790344/File%20Test/FileTest.rar]Here[/url] is anything you should need to do that. You may need to create your own file though. In that case, just open the Cyberspace project, comment out the entire When play begins rule and replace it with

[code]write "Placeholder" to built-up-file of Cyberspace;[/code]

then find the file and replace everything but the headline with the file it doesn't want to read, then return the When play begins rule to its original form, then compile.

Also, can you tell me what kind of output this [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17790344/File%20Test/Cyberspace%20%28FileTest%29.gblorb]example[/url] creates for the different interpreters?

It should be (especially the two spaces between the words would be important)

[quote]F
i
r
s
t
[


]
S
e
c
o
n
d


T
h
i
r
d[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=20#p29367
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-04 12:51:10

[quote="bcressey"]You are probably passing an invalid memory address.[/quote]

Thank you for looking into this! Do you have any spontaneous idea how this could occur while it all works fine after doing anything but moving once?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=20#p29368
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-04 13:06:21

[quote="ektemple"]Note that Zoom will crash unless the text file has an extension of .glkdata (there may be other extensions that will work, not sure), but Gargoyle [i]can't[/i] have that extension or it will crash. Does anyone know if there is an extension that will work for all external files? If not, this seems like something like the Glk spec ought to require...[/quote]

Gargoyle is not crashing in the case where the file has an extension. The game calls [url=http://eblong.com/zarf/glk/glk-spec-072_6.html]glk_fileref_create_by_name[/url] with the filename "CyberLayout" twice, and then spins in an infinite loop doing nothing.

Gargoyle will not match "CyberLayout" to anything other than a file called "CyberLayout" with no extension. Zoom assumes that a file with usage type data will have a .glkdata extension, so it looks for "CyberLayout.glkdata" file. If that fails I assume you wind up in the same scenario as with Gargoyle: the game tries twice and then spins forever.

Both garglk and cocoaglk are conforming to the spec, so as a practical matter your only recourse is to handle this in your code.

Does Inform allow you to ask for a file called "CyberLayout.glkdata" instead of the bare filename?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=20#p29369
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-04 13:19:15

[quote="Basti50"]Thank you for looking into this! Do you have any spontaneous idea how this could occur while it all works fine after doing anything but moving once?[/quote]

I don't have any insight beyond restating the issue in your terms: your code must be doing something on the first turn or when play begins that short-circuits the ordinary bookkeeping that takes place before a call to glk_request_line_event.

I downloaded the source Cyberspace and it looks like it probably happens in "open up text-window" or "follow the refresh windows rule".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=20#p29370
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-04 13:27:42

[quote="bcressey"]The game calls [url=http://eblong.com/zarf/glk/glk-spec-072_6.html]glk_fileref_create_by_name[/url] with the filename "CyberLayout" twice, and then spins in an infinite loop doing nothing.[/quote]

Yeah, the loop is supposed to run through the file until a ']]' appears and since the file is empty that never happens. I did have the activity check for a minimum file length in a Before rule to abort the process but I didn't know or forgot that the activity would still be initialized even when the rule fails, another thing I got to fix.

[quote="bcressey"]Does Inform allow you to ask for a file called "CyberLayout.glkdata" instead of the bare filename?[/quote]

You mean like

[code]File of Cyberspace Layout is called "CyberLayout.glkdata".[/code]

That doesn't work since there are no dots allowed, although Inform 7's interpreter will automatically assume that they are .glkdata, but that doesn't help the other interpreters, apparently.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=20#p29371
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-04 13:31:51

[quote]I don't have any insight beyond restating the issue in your terms[/quote]

That is already more than I could ask for so thanks again [emote]:)[/emote]

I was just wondering if you would be aware of any great differences between gargoyle and all the other interpreters that would cause it to crash but not the rest at least for the Windows version.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=20#p29372
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-04 13:34:56

[quote="bcressey"]
Gargoyle is not crashing in the case where the file has an extension. The game calls [url=http://eblong.com/zarf/glk/glk-spec-072_6.html]glk_fileref_create_by_name[/url] with the filename "CyberLayout" twice, and then spins in an infinite loop doing nothing.[/quote]
Sorry, "crash" is just my imprecise way of saying "the interpreter UI ceases to respond, while the interpreter process continues, eating up 100% or so of the CPU, failing to terminate even after closing the window and quitting the application."  I should have said "hang".

Of course, the extension should show a failure message for files that can't be read, rather than failing into an infinite loop.

[quote="bcressey"]Does Inform allow you to ask for a file called "CyberLayout.glkdata" instead of the bare filename?[/quote]
No, the I7 compiler throws up an error if you try to include a period in your filename. Inform believes that the game code must be agnostic about the file extension and that the interpreter will add its own extension if it likes. This works just fine if a game creates the file itself and we always use the same interpreter to play it, but it is a failure of design in these two cases:

[list=1][*]An author wants to distribute his own file with his game, as here;[/*:m]
[*]A player wants to switch from using Zoom to Gargoyle, or vice versa, after the file has been created.[/*:m][/list:o]

So, it looks like rather than changing the spec, we need to get Graham to change Inform's file-handling so that authors can exercise control over the extension. Does anyone know if Zoom would defer to the user-provided extension in creating a file, or if it would just add another .glkdata at the end, e.g. "CyberLayout.glkdata.glkdata"? (This would mean that, even though Case 1 was solved, Case 2 would still present difficulties.)

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=30#p29373
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-04 14:25:56

[quote="Basti50"]I was just wondering if you would be aware of any great differences between gargoyle and all the other interpreters that would cause it to crash but not the rest at least for the Windows version.[/quote]

Invalid pointers are tricky. Sometimes you write to it and get a crash. Sometimes you silently corrupt something else. Sometimes you get lucky.

I don't get the crash in the Cyberspace import file, just the crash version, if that helps narrow down the scope of code to review.

[quote="ektemple"]So, it looks like rather than changing the spec, we need to get Graham to change Inform's file-handling so that authors can exercise control over the extension. Does anyone know if Zoom would defer to the user-provided extension in creating a file, or if it would just add another .glkdata at the end, e.g. "CyberLayout.glkdata.glkdata"?[/quote]

It would append a second .glkdata extension, based on [url=http://code.google.com/p/cocoaglk/source/browse/trunk/CocoaGlk/GlkView/GlkView.m#458]this code[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4093&start=0#p29374
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Harmonizing Glk file suffixes?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-04 14:43:38

Following on from this thread: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972</a>

[quote]This works just fine if a game creates the file itself and we always use the same interpreter to play it, but it is a failure of design in these two cases:

An author wants to distribute his own file with his game, as here;

A player wants to switch from using Zoom to Gargoyle, or vice versa, after the file has been created.
[/quote]

When I came up with these specs, I was still using MacOS Classic, which did not rely on suffixes for filenames at all. (And Graham Nelson was still using the Acorn, where I think "." was a directory separator!) And DOS 8.3 limitations were still current, too. So it was important to leave this up to the interpreter.

Today everybody has standardized on dot-suffix for (approximate) file typing. (I hate it, but OSX gave in several years ago, so there we are.) I'd say the best option is for Glk libraries (and therefore interpreters) to agree on common file suffixes for the various uses.

At the moment, of course, we have all sorts of variation -- in fact OSX Zoom creates save files as packages, rather than a flat quetzal file. So it's going to be a bit of a patchwork. But do people agree in principle?

Switching this over is going to have some cost; old data files lying around might stop working, if you upgrade to an interpreter that uses a different file suffix.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=30#p29375
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-04 14:45:39

[quote]This works just fine if a game creates the file itself and we always use the same interpreter to play it, but it is a failure of design in these two cases[/quote]

This is in my bailiwick, but I don't think the right answer is to push file-suffix control all the way in to the game file.

I've posted a separate thread: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4093">viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4093</a>

Any interpreter changes will take a long time, however. I'd say the best option for today, if you want to distribute data with your game, is to embed the data in the source code directly, as text.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=30#p29376
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-04 14:46:38

[quote="bcressey"]I don't get the crash in the Cyberspace import file, just the crash version, if that helps narrow down the scope of code to review.[/quote]

The crashes had only occurred with 30x30 simple-top-down-displays, which is another oddity. So far, I haven't found another constellation for gargoyle to crash but I'll create a test loop and see if there is any pattern to this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4093&start=0#p29377
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Harmonizing Glk file suffixes?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-04 14:48:01

A second path, not necessarily exclusive: allow a way to embed data files in the Blorb file. (This idea has come up before, but I've never followed it up.) All modern interpreters can read Blorb data. 

This would also allow games to work correctly in web interpreters. If you distribute a separate file along with your game file, there's no convenient way to get that into a web interpreter environment, *except* for Blorb.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4093&start=0#p29378
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Harmonizing Glk file suffixes?
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2012-01-04 14:49:46

[quote="zarf"]At the moment, of course, we have all sorts of variation -- in fact OSX Zoom creates save files as packages, rather than a flat quetzal file. So it's going to be a bit of a patchwork. But do people agree in principle?[/quote]Yes, definitely!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=30#p29379
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-04 15:05:03

In lieu of a file extension, you could follow up the call to glk_fileref_create_by_name() with a call to glk_fileref_create_by_prompt(), to let the user find the file. Ugly, but at least it gives you a chance of ending up with the data you're looking for.

I don't really like Zoom's behavior - if an author requests a file called "CyberLayout", and that file exists, it seems wrong for the library to append .glkdata to the filename and then fail to open it for reading.

However, Inform 7 does seem to allow you to have two distinct files with the same name:

[code]
The binary File of Binary Data is called "file". 
The File of Text Data is called "file". 
[/code]

I haven't tested this, but Zoom should be able to read and write to separate files (file.glkdata and file.txt) where Gargoyle couldn't.

If so, Gargoyle's implementation is broken for Inform. What I don't know is whether it is legal for Glk. The spec has this comment in it:

[quote]Another example: on a platform where file type is specified by filename suffix, the library will add an appropriate suffix based on the usage[/quote]

But this strikes me as descriptive rather than prescriptive - advising authors of what might happen rather than dictating parameters for the implementation. If not, and extensions are required on platforms that support extensions, those extensions should be specified.

EDIT: Oops, missed zarf's response.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4093&start=0#p29380
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Harmonizing Glk file suffixes?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-04 15:07:56

Yes to standardized file extensions and yes to blorb data files.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4093&start=0#p29381
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Harmonizing Glk file suffixes?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2012-01-04 15:26:41

[quote="zarf"]Switching this over is going to have some cost; old data files lying around might stop working, if you upgrade to an interpreter that uses a different file suffix.[/quote]
Surely interpreters could still be able to read their old files in addition to using the new standard for anything new, or am I missing something?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=30#p29382
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-04 15:27:24

[quote="Basti50"]The crashes had only occurred with 30x30 simple-top-down-displays, which is another oddity. So far, I haven't found another constellation for gargoyle to crash but I'll create a test loop and see if there is any pattern to this.[/quote]

Great, now I can't find the right configuration to reproduce the bug anymore. Consider this issue solved until I find the problem again  [emote]:?[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=0#p29383
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-04 15:29:44

I'm working on a game for the Spring Thing, and I've hit a stumbling block. I'm not going to put spoilery details on the forum -- what I'm hoping for is to do a little brainstorming with someone who has released a couple of games so we can bounce some ideas back and forth.

You will receive copious thanks in the Credits, of course -- and if I win the competition, I'll send you a check for (mumble) some small amount, depending on the extent of your creative contribution. If you'd like to help, please email me: midiguru23 [at] sbcglobal [dot] net.

What I'm dealing with, in general terms, is that three college students are confronted by three ancient warriors armed with swords and shields. The students need to get past the warriors. The warriors are an essential part of the story, and can't be ditched.

In my original design document, I came up with a method that, now that I'm trying to implement it, proves to be a Very Bad Idea. It would have been a timed puzzle that required the player to read the author's mind and also probably die and restore the game a number of times to get the sequence of commands right. Put those two elements together, and you have a puzzle that should never see the light of day.

I need a puzzle that will give the player one of those "aha!" moments -- like, "Oh, I get it. All of a sudden it's obvious." But as they say, violence is not the answer to this one. There is no way the college students can defeat the warriors in direct combat. Something tricky will be needed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4093&start=0#p29384
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Harmonizing Glk file suffixes?
User: weiju / DateTime: 2012-01-04 15:32:21

[quote]At the moment, of course, we have all sorts of variation -- in fact OSX Zoom creates save files as packages, rather than a flat quetzal file. So it's going to be a bit of a patchwork. But do people agree in principle?[/quote]

sounds like a good idea

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4093&start=0#p29385
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Harmonizing Glk file suffixes?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-04 15:51:35

Sounds perfect. Thanks!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3974&start=10#p29386
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: SAFTAP - Scott Adams Format Text Adventure Player: Suggs
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2012-01-04 16:18:16

SAFTAP v0.01 now released.

SAFTAP [url]http://www.therealeasterbunny.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/saftap.zip[/url]

Scott's Game Files with license info [url]http://www.therealeasterbunny.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/sagames.zip[/url]

Please feel free to check out SAFTAP and let me know your thoughts. It should be pretty solid even though its v0.01 as it built on AdvPDA which went through quite a good bash testing.

Custom font selection, sizes and colours can be done by editing SAFTAP.INI.

Hopefully enjoy. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4088&start=0#p29387
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS Workbench - Is it open source?
User: mjroberts / DateTime: 2012-01-04 16:29:32

[quote="bukayeva"]Yeah, I was thinking about that. My concern is that the tads3 inclusion is probably a bit out of date. For example, it doesn't handle the new triple-quoted strings that TADS now supports.[/quote]

The updated TADS 3 lexer is in the html tads sources - look for scintilla/src/LexTADS3.cpp.  That's for Scintilla 1.7.2, but I've just updated the scintilla version in Workbench to the latest (3.0.2), and I don't think the TADS 3 lexer needed more than some trivial updates for changes to the sci #include file layout.  At any rate, I'd be happy to send you my working copy if you need it.

[quote="bukayeva"]I'm not sure but I looked at SciTE and it looks like you might have to compile things into/with the lexer in order to update support.[/quote]

That's correct; it'd be nicer if they did this through a scripting extension instead of C++, but given that it's open-source it's not hugely different.  There is one thing to note - since scintilla is used in Workbench, you can probably count on me keeping it reasonably up to date with any changes to the TADS syntax.  So in that sense it's probably the most future-proof editor out there in terms of up-to-date TADS 3 support.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4093&start=0#p29388
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Harmonizing Glk file suffixes?
User: frotz / DateTime: 2012-01-04 16:34:12

Altering the blorb file doesn't sound like a good idea to me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=0#p29389
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-04 16:34:38

I guess you're not taking ideas in the thread, but just to throw it out there maybe some variation of trolls before dawn?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4076&start=10#p29390
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Version Control and Workbench
User: mjroberts / DateTime: 2012-01-04 16:35:03

[quote="bukayeva"][quote="mjroberts"]So if you don't want the output to go to the Debug/tool output window, where would like it to go?[/quote]

Having "tool output" from TADS makes sense as one form of output. Having "tool output" from an external tool (i.e., "different from TADS") suggests perhaps a Console Output or something.[/quote]

Would it make more sense to have a single Tool/Console Output window, or to have a separate window for each external tool?  So you'd have a "Git Output Window", etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3974&start=10#p29391
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: SAFTAP - Scott Adams Format Text Adventure Player: Suggs
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2012-01-04 16:36:58

If you do not like my pastel colour scheme, please adjust your INI file and if its really cool, why not post it here.

Here is a VDU 'green screen' config which looks great for the purists of old school text adventuring:

[code][PRESENTATION]
FontName=Courier New
FontSize=14
FontBold=N
FontItalic=N
FontUnderline=N

FormColor=000000

OutputBackground=001000
MesgText=00A000
RoomText=00A000
ExitText=00A000
LookText=00A000

InputBackground=001000
InputText=00A000[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4076&start=10#p29392
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Version Control and Workbench
User: mjroberts / DateTime: 2012-01-04 16:42:30

[quote="George"]I think you'd want some way to tie external tool commands to keyboard shortcuts in Workbench, even with an embedded console -- being able to send external tool output to the embedded console would be neat.[/quote]

Note that you can define keyboard shortcuts for external tools.  Bring up the Tools > Options dialog, go to the Keyboard page, and type Ext.Tools.User in the "Show commands containing" box.  The externals are named kind of opaquely - Ext.Tools.User1, Ext.Tools.User2, etc.  But those IDs are actually just the defaults, and you can assign more meaningful names if you wish, using the External Tools page of the same dialog - look for the "Command ID" field.  So you could rename the Git tool definition to Ext.Tools.Git, say.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4086&start=0#p29393
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: The .t3c file?
User: mjroberts / DateTime: 2012-01-04 16:49:10

[quote="bukayeva"]If you click Workbench Help (F1), the help file has a section called:

"Project (.t3c) Files"

That was the only place I've found it mentioned so far.[/quote]

Thanks - I missed that section in my searching.  That's definitely some out-of-date stuff; I'll try to bring it into the 90s. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=0#p29394
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-04 17:03:15

[quote="George"]I guess you're not taking ideas in the thread, but just to throw it out there maybe some variation of trolls before dawn?[/quote]
Googled that phrase, came up blank. Searched for it on IFDB, ditto.

I'm certainly open to people tossing ideas into this thread, including far-fetched ideas. But there are some specific story elements that I'd rather not disclose, which may (or may not) affect the desirability of proposed solutions. I've made a list of at least 15 ideas of my own, including "read Harry Potter to them until they fall asleep," but nothing has yet jumped out at me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4093&start=0#p29395
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Harmonizing Glk file suffixes?
User: weiju / DateTime: 2012-01-04 17:06:46

[quote="frotz"]Altering the blorb file doesn't sound like a good idea to me.[/quote]

I did not actually understand that as "put the save files within the game's blorb file" or am I wrong here ?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=0#p29396
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-01-04 17:11:20

I assume you've considered (and rejected) the puzzle which requires the students to go on a wild goose chase and then, having caught the goose, pluck some its feathers and trim the ends into writing instruments, which can then be used to defeat the warriors (since the students will be armed with pens which everyone knows are mightier than swords).


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=0#p29397
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-04 17:12:24

Where you have to keep the warriors doing something until some critical event occurs; like, keep the trolls talking before dawn when the sun turns them to stone.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=0#p29398
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-04 17:35:07

[quote="Robert Rothman"]I assume you've considered (and rejected) the puzzle which requires the students to go on a wild goose chase and then, having caught the goose, pluck some its feathers and trim the ends into writing instruments, which can then be used to defeat the warriors (since the students will be armed with pens which everyone knows are mightier than swords).[/quote]
Good idea ... except that this story happens to be entirely serious in tone.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=0#p29400
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: gravel / DateTime: 2012-01-04 18:13:58

Are there things that the students could legitimately know as students that might help?  I.e., someone's an anthropology major, and with sign language and such, can decipher enough of the symbols on the warriors' shields and clothes to give a sign that the students are friendly/dangerous/whatever.  Or a biology student who can save one of their animals, or something?  Obviously a lot depends on the warriors and what they want, but making a connection with them (either through intimidation or friendship) would be where I'd want to start as a player.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=30#p29401
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-04 18:15:37

[quote="Basti50"]Could you try something out for me, if you find the time? Could you test out if Inform 7's internal interpreter can handle the example, in case the Mac version even has one? [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17790344/File%20Test/FileTest.rar]Here[/url] is anything you should need to do that.[/quote]
The Mac IDE interpreter is a modified version of Zoom. I can get this to run in the IDE as well, but the result is the same: none of the graphics show up. They are in the filepath, and they are packaged into the blorb if I build one, but they are never drawn. The text version doesn't print either--the output is exactly the same as I described above.

[quote="Basti50"]Also, can you tell me what kind of output this [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17790344/File%20Test/Cyberspace%20%28FileTest%29.gblorb]example[/url] creates for the different interpreters?[/quote]
The output is the same for both Zoom and Gargoyle, including the two lines between each section.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4093&start=0#p29402
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Harmonizing Glk file suffixes?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-04 19:35:11

The blorb idea is to allow the game author to store put a *read-only* data file in the Blorb package.

(I guess you could put a read-only save file there too, although I can't see what that would accomplish that couldn't be better served by smart game setup code.)

Okay, I will write something up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=0#p29403
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-04 20:35:16

[quote="gravel"]Are there things that the students could legitimately know as students that might help?  I.e., someone's an anthropology major, and with sign language and such, can decipher enough of the symbols on the warriors' shields and clothes to give a sign that the students are friendly/dangerous/whatever.  Or a biology student who can save one of their animals, or something?  Obviously a lot depends on the warriors and what they want, but making a connection with them (either through intimidation or friendship) would be where I'd want to start as a player.[/quote]
They don't actually want anything except to make you turn around and leave. They're not actually bad guys, although they can be provoked into taking hostile action. They're ... not fully human, although they can be killed. I doubt they have animals. They might easily have symbols on their shields, that's a good idea. Also, one of the students is carrying what might turn out to be a magical weapon, but just pointing the weapon at them and saying the magic word would be way too easy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4033&start=0#p29404
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Major Smarter Parser update
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2012-01-04 22:14:10

Aaron, sounds like an awesome update.   Will you be updating the Player Experience Upgrade later on as a result?   I'm using V1 and there are some minor things that happen behind the scenes that I can't quite figure out. 

For example, I defined some Understand as a mistake rules as follows:

   Understand "yes" as a mistake ("That was a rhetorical question...") when Monica is visible.

and instead of these rules firing I get "Saying yes here has not effect."  I'm sure there's a quick solution to ensuring my rules fire, but I'm not sure what it is or whether this is a Smarter Parser issue or somewhere else.  

I've seen a couple of other confusing messages about body parts, but now I've forgotten the details.  (I'll try to pay attention next time I see anything odd though.)

--Zack

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4019&start=0#p29405
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Kobo Touch + Development = IF No Brainer
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2012-01-04 22:18:19

Very cool to see Scott Adams (or at least his games) on a Kindle -- even if its a mockup.  Jimmy Maher ported his Inform7 game "The King of Shreds & Patches" to the Kindle, so it seems like it *should* be possible to get glulxe games on there.  Keep us posted!
--Zack

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4096&start=0#p29406
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: NPC Accompanying the PC into a Booth
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-04 22:22:06

The Tour Guide has a nice example (on the AccompanyingState page) of how to get an NPC to follow the PC into a NestedRoom using afterAction. But when I add that code to my game, the NPC waits until the following turn to move into the NestedRoom. Normal AccompanyingState behavior has the NPC following the PC in the same turn.

Oddly enough, the NPC will get [i]out [/i]of the NestedRoom on the same turn when the PC leaves it, but there's a one-turn delay when the PC enters the NestedRoom.

How can I get the NPC to move into the NestedRoom on the same turn as the PC?

The problem I'm having is this: Once in the NestedRoom, the player can immediately give a command that causes the NestedRoom to whiz off to a different location. If that happens, the NPC won't be able to enter the NestedRoom at all, because it will be gone. There will be no containment path between the NPC and the NestedRoom.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3761&start=10#p29407
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Hugo "Open House" Competition
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2012-01-04 23:49:43

Hey hey there was a late addition to the pack! [b]The Hugo Clock[/b], by Jason McWright. The page I linked to up there has been updated with its download link!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4088&start=0#p29408
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS Workbench - Is it open source?
User: mjroberts / DateTime: 2012-01-05 00:28:49

[quote="mjroberts"]The updated TADS 3 lexer is in the html tads sources - look for scintilla/src/LexTADS3.cpp.[/quote]

I should also point out that the auto-indenter should also be easily adaptable for SciTE.  That's in the htmltads sources as well, in tads3addin.cpp.  It's written for the Workbench plug-in scheme, which uses custom COM objects in DLLs, so you'd have to discard all of that COM framing and replace it with whatever the SciTE equivalent is.  But the actual indenter code should separate out easily enough.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=0#p29409
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: rpatten / DateTime: 2012-01-05 00:50:27

Perhaps you're stuck on your puzzle because you're focused on dealing with the warriors directly. Should the player be interacting with the environment instead at this point? For example, one of the students could light a small fire to set off the fire sprinkler system, which then rusts the warriors' ancient armor, which in turn immobilizes them.

Are there commands or ways of interaction that you have already implemented that are unique to your game? Your answer could lie there, too.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4078&start=0#p29410
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Spy Who Ate Lunch
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-01-05 00:59:56

The links to the Archive have now shown up, although as of now functionality of those links seems to be somewhat sporadic.  I don't know whether that is normal when the upload to the Archive is first processed and the links first show up.


Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=0#p29411
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-05 01:20:33

[quote="rpatten"]Perhaps you're stuck on your puzzle because you're focused on dealing with the warriors directly. Should the player be interacting with the environment instead at this point? For example, one of the students could light a small fire to set off the fire sprinkler system, which then rusts the warriors' ancient armor, which in turn immobilizes them.[/quote]
Good idea, but I'm quite sure there's no sprinkler system in this place. I'm not really focusing on dealing with the warriors directly. All I want to do is have them chase the PC and his friends into a trap that the PC has laid.

The command 'attack warrior' will probably be enough to provoke them. I'm trying to figure out a trap that makes some kind of sense. It has to be something that won't kill the PC and his friends, but will kill the warriors. And there are a lot of things (because this is a very particular environment) that I can't use. A friendly crocodile, for example, who loves the PC and his friends but thinks warriors would be tasty fresh meat ... I don't think there are any friendly crocodiles to be had in this story.

Poison gas is possible. Quicksand is possible, but not very likely, as this particular location is probably indoors. A furnace whose door you could throw open would be very possible. But I need something that a player can figure out, and that makes sense when coded. If the furnace burns the warriors to a crisp, why doesn't it burn the PC and his friends to a crisp? They don't have time to don fire-resistant garb, because they're being chased by warriors! That's the kind of difficulty I'm fussing with.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=10#p29412
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-05 02:01:08

So I7 is the only one you looked at? Hell of a job in research you're doing there [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4078&start=0#p29414
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Spy Who Ate Lunch
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2012-01-05 02:41:56

[quote="Robert Rothman"]The links to the Archive have now shown up, although as of now functionality of those links seems to be somewhat sporadic.[/quote]All the IFDB links are to mirror.ifarchive.org, which re-directs to an IF-Archive mirror site at random so initially yes, it's a bit of a lottery as to whether you get an Archive mirror that is synchronized with the latest files on the main site or not. After a few days they should have all caught up.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3761&start=10#p29415
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Hugo "Open House" Competition
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-05 03:02:27

"Teleporter Test" is missing a download link.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4033&start=10#p29416
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Major Smarter Parser update
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-01-05 04:15:56

It might not be an issue with Player Experience Upgrade. At least, this works swell for me:

[code]
Include Player Experience Upgrade by Aaron Reed.


The beginning is a room.
The end is north of the beginning.
Monica is a woman in the end.

Understand "yes" as a mistake ("'That was a rhetorical question ...'") when Monica is visible.

Test me with "yes / n / yes"
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4068&start=0#p29417
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Four letter words.
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2012-01-05 06:14:36

[quote="Laroquod"]No, the best way to get the benefit is for the parser to select the single object (assuming there is only one) with a prefix exactly matching what I typed. So if I typed 'get stat' or 'get cord', either command would match 'station cordon' as long as there were no other objects around with names that start with 'stat' or 'cord' -- in which case the ambiguity resolution routine is invoked. This is the way MUDs tend to work.[/quote]

Eamon works this way as well, and will accept down to 1 letter, which is cool. While the player side of me would love to see something like this in Inform, my mind fries at the idea of working it out. I mean so much of Inform is about the engine deciding what the player is referring to. How would it cope if you only gave it 1 letter? I guess that by 3 letters, that's already a much better lockon you're offering it. I'd be happy to type a minimum of 3, but being asked to type 4 would make me outraged and indignant [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4078&start=0#p29419
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Spy Who Ate Lunch
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-01-05 06:52:27

Thanks, David.

Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=10#p29420
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-05 07:16:46

Could the warriors be much heavier than the students (wearing heavy armor, for instance)? Then perhaps the PC could do something like lay some flimsy boards over a hole in the floor, so that the students can run away across it but the warriors crash through.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=10#p29421
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: N723 / DateTime: 2012-01-05 09:14:40

My idea was for them to give you a sidequest that is absolutely stupid and a waste of time. You leave, get the item, and they let you through... sort of like the "TEA" item from Pokemon RGBY.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=10#p29422
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: N723 / DateTime: 2012-01-05 09:15:16

[quote="RealNC"]So I7 is the only one you looked at? Hell of a job in research you're doing there [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote][/quote]

I know, right? I'm so lazy! [emote]:lol:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=10#p29423
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-05 09:35:53

Laziness [i]can[/i] be a virtue. [emote]:D[/emote]

I've changed my opinion of this over the years. I think in the early stages it's better not to do much research but just start working in whatever you have at hand. That way you'll get an idea of whether you like it or not and have a more informed opinion when you do start looking deeper. Too much research early on can lead to a kind of analysis paralysis. 

If you get to a point where things aren't working it's important to realize you should cast your net out wider of course.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4097&start=0#p29424
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Glulx Text Effects by Emily Short
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2012-01-05 10:41:47

Why are we limited to only two text effects and how can that be extended?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4098&start=0#p29425
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: TADS for Windows Mobile
User: soflot_ / DateTime: 2012-01-05 10:56:06

Hello!
Please tell me, are there any TADS interpreters for Windows Mobile (WM6) except PocketTADS (2002 year) ? 
PocketTADS works on my device, but I don't like it, it almost has no customization options (And some people said that cannot launch it on their devices)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=10#p29426
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-05 11:24:50

[quote="N723"]My idea was for them to give you a sidequest that is absolutely stupid and a waste of time. You leave, get the item, and they let you through... sort of like the "TEA" item from Pokemon RGBY.[/quote]
This type of idea can work in some situations, but not here. I need the warriors to end up dead, for reasons that would be a spoiler to explain.

I think I'm going to go with a variation of the flimsy boards idea ... heh-heh-heh.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4097&start=0#p29427
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Glulx Text Effects by Emily Short
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-05 11:45:58

Because my decisions about how to satisfy everybody with a text layout system were not very clever. It's an old mistake (1998).

I've been promising a replacement system for a while now. I could say "this month for sure!" but somebody would probably hit me.

(But, this month for sure!)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4068&start=10#p29428
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Four letter words.
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-05 11:54:42

Making this kind of smart word-matching work in Inform will be difficult, just because word-matching is a low-level feature and hard to mess with.

The most obvious quick hack is to give a TOADSTONE synonyms of TOADSTON, TOADSTO, TOADST, TOADS, TOAD, etc. But this is *not* the desired outcome, because the parser treats all synonyms equally, so this will be fatally confused with a genuine TOAD.

You could get closer by including all of these shortened synonyms *except* those that directly match other game words. This would however be somewhat inconsistent to the player, because "X TOAD" would fail to match the TOADSTONE even if the actual TOAD has never been encountered. (And when you get into conditional matching and scope checks, you're seriously impacting performance, plus the result is just *differently* inconsistent.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4098&start=0#p29429
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS for Windows Mobile
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-05 11:57:32

Nope.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4093&start=10#p29430
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Harmonizing Glk file suffixes?
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-05 12:27:53

[quote="zarf"]At the moment, of course, we have all sorts of variation -- in fact OSX Zoom creates save files as packages, rather than a flat quetzal file. So it's going to be a bit of a patchwork. But do people agree in principle?[/quote]

That definitely sounds like a good idea. I'm not sure however what big difference it would make if you could add files to a blorb package though. Wasn't the idea of external files that they could later be modified and work with every version of a given game (or exported to another game for that matter)? What advantages would it bring to tie them up? (It would probably be less chaotic for once and the web stuff is obvious too but is there anything else? Seeing as the same could be accomplished without using external files at all, or am I missing something? [Ok, the map import stuff from R&D would probably be an exception but a rare one at best])

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4033&start=10#p29431
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Major Smarter Parser update
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2012-01-05 12:39:03

Chris-- thanks for catching this, fixed now.

Zack-- None of the extensions in Player Experience Upgrade modify the saying yes action, except to change the library message and extend it to also respond to "okay" and "ok". So it looks like the problem must be elsewhere. The conflicts with body parts should be gone in the new version. And yeah, I'll push out a version 3 of P.E.U. shortly. (I really should have come up with something that made a better acronym.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4099&start=0#p29432
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Compiling TADS Source
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2012-01-05 12:56:22

I'm sure I'll figure out some things on my own, but prior to starting: are there any logistics or things I need on my machine before I get started compiling TADS?

I'm on a Windows 7 machine. I currently have the latest Visual C++ Express but I do have access to the Professional version if needed. Most of my development is in Ruby, Python, and Haskell so I probably don't have whatever the equivalent of "build essentials" is on Windows.

My experience with C and C++ was many years in the past but I'm eager to reacquaint myself.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4097&start=0#p29433
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Glulx Text Effects by Emily Short
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2012-01-05 13:01:31

This month??  [emote]:shock:[/emote] 

[img]http://aaronareed.net/tmp/glulxhope.jpg[/img]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4097&start=0#p29434
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Glulx Text Effects by Emily Short
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-05 13:27:45

What can I say, I lol'd.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4097&start=0#p29435
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Glulx Text Effects by Emily Short
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-05 13:37:39

The purple nosebleed isn't helping me concentrate.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4099&start=0#p29436
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Compiling TADS Source
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-05 13:41:57

Load the project file and click "build". Unless your version of VS is not compatible with whatever version Mike is using, it should work.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3761&start=10#p29437
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Hugo "Open House" Competition
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2012-01-05 13:43:36

Thanks. Fixed. I am hoping Tdarcos posts the source to what he has constructed. The whole teleporter thing comes from a discussion on the JC forum, where I was brainstorming a way to transport the player anywhere during play.

And then Roody noted that the debugger allows for that. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=10#p29438
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: N723 / DateTime: 2012-01-05 13:44:49

[quote="Jim Aikin"][quote="N723"]My idea was for them to give you a sidequest that is absolutely stupid and a waste of time. You leave, get the item, and they let you through... sort of like the "TEA" item from Pokemon RGBY.[/quote]
This type of idea can work in some situations, but not here. I need the warriors to end up dead, for reasons that would be a spoiler to explain.

I think I'm going to go with a variation of the flimsy boards idea ... heh-heh-heh.[/quote]

Find the objects TEA and POISON, then go to a witch doctor to mix them together, and then give it to the guards.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4093&start=10#p29439
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Harmonizing Glk file suffixes?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-05 14:01:57

[quote="Basti50"][quote="zarf"]Wasn't the idea of external files that they could later be modified and work with every version of a given game (or exported to another game for that matter)? What advantages would it bring to tie them up? (It would probably be less chaotic for once and the web stuff is obvious too but is there anything else? Seeing as the same could be accomplished without using external files at all, or am I missing something? [Ok, the map import stuff from R&D would probably be an exception but a rare one at best])[/quote][/quote]

Well, you've mentioned two possible uses. Since this is an optional feature (authors don't have to put their external files in the blorb), the fact that there are a few good uses seems like enough...doesn't it?

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4100&start=0#p29440
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: T3: Changing a Direction Property at Run-Time
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-05 14:10:48

Depending on conditions in the game, I want to make the east property of a room either another room or a NoTravelMessage. I've defined a suitable NoTravelMessage object, but the code that is supposed to swap it in (or out) of the east property isn't doing anything.

In other words, given that the room is defined with

[code]east = otherRoom[/code]

...putting this line in my game code does nothing:

[code]thisRoom.east = impassableConnectorObject;[/code]
Going the other direction doesn't work either. It appears that you can't change these properties at run-time.

One way around this is to give otherRoom suitable canTravelerPass() and explainTravelBarrier() methods -- but if I do it that way, the east exit still shows up in the status line, which is not desirable at all. Can anyone suggest a way to set this up?

I also tried this:

[code]east { if (someCondition) return impassableConnectorObject;
    return otherRoom;
}[/code]
That didn't work either. If the condition is true, the game reports, "Nothing obvious happens."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=30#p29441
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-05 14:18:11

[quote="ektemple"]The output is the same for both Zoom and Gargoyle, including the two lines between each section.[/quote]

I appreciate that you find the time for some test-runs. Looks like I'll have to try a step-by-step analysis.

Does this [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17790344/File%20Test/FileTest%282%29.rar]example[/url] create the following output?

[quote]Reading the file: File of Cyberspace Layout
[[
.
]]
Starting the loop
Current letter: .
New current letter: .
Current letter: 

Read: line break followed by close bracket


Loop done
Map layout: 1/1/1

Floor[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4100&start=0#p29442
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Changing a Direction Property at Run-Time
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-05 14:31:27

Changing direction properties seems to work ok here:

[code]
firstRoom: Room {
    'first room'
    "First Room "
    south = R1;
}

+ me: Actor {
    desc()
    {
        if (firstRoom.south == R1)
            firstRoom.south = noTravel;
        else
            firstRoom.south = R1;
        "Swapped. ";
    }
}

R1: Room {
    'room 1'
    "Room 1"
    north = firstRoom;
}
[/code]

X ME swaps firstRoom.south between R1 and noTravel. ("noTravel" is a pre-defined TravelConnector instance provided by adv3.) So it should work for you too :-/

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4093&start=10#p29443
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Harmonizing Glk file suffixes?
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-05 14:38:51

Sure thing. You never know when these extra features might get handy after all. It was more of a 'Worth the effort?' kind of question but I wouldn't know how much effort it would require anyway so the question might be mood.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4093&start=10#p29444
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Harmonizing Glk file suffixes?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-05 14:51:22

Two distinct use cases have been discussed:

- Author distributes a data file which every player will need to load.
- Player saves a data file for later use.

The first requires a reliable way to get at the data on every platform, every interpreter. For the second, this is less important (but not negligible) -- it's not usual for a player to want to transfer data from one interpreter to a different one. (It *happens*, but it's not the common case.)

Having a reliable read-only option is valuable for the first case. It does nothing for the second case, but it's still worth doing, I think.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4093&start=10#p29445
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Harmonizing Glk file suffixes?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-05 15:10:52

[quote="zarf"] For the second, this is less important (but not negligible) -- it's not usual for a player to want to transfer data from one interpreter to a different one. (It *happens*, but it's not the common case.)[/quote]

Note that this might be more common in beta-testing. Especially with a game like Kerkerkruip (which is also not--yet--a common case), being able to try out different stages of the game out with different interpreters is useful, and thus being able to move files is also useful. (Kerkerkruip has anti-cheating protocols that require your saved games and externally written files to be in sync with one another.)

--Erik

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4100&start=0#p29446
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Changing a Direction Property at Run-Time
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-05 15:16:12

Thanks for the reassurance. I'm setting up some rather complex test conditions, so it took me a while to sort it out. I think I've got it working now. (I hope.)

Along the way I discovered that the parser seems only to look at the first 8 letters of a word. I had defined both 'farshore' and 'farshore2' as testing commands, and the latter was getting called when I used the former, which did rather contribute to the confusion.

Can you offer any suggestions on the query I posted yesterday, about the delay in moving NPCs when the PC moves into a NestedRoom?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4100&start=0#p29447
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Changing a Direction Property at Run-Time
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-05 15:55:34

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Along the way I discovered that the parser seems only to look at the first 8 letters of a word. I had defined both 'farshore' and 'farshore2' as testing commands, and the latter was getting called when I used the former, which did rather contribute to the confusion.[/quote]

You can change this by overriding the default value of [url=http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/libref/source/en_us.t.html#169]parserTruncLength[/url] in your gameMain object.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3974&start=10#p29448
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: SAFTAP - Scott Adams Format Text Adventure Player: Suggs
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2012-01-05 16:08:19

Nice!  [emote]:D[/emote]  My impressions:

-Under Windows 7 I had run the program with administrator privileges to avoid crashing on loading any file. Even then It will refuse to load .dat files (with a VB run time error 62) but .saf files work OK (save adv13, which will fail for some unknown reason).

-It would be nice if both options and console commands were available through an ordinary windows menu, but of course that's not a priority at this stage.

-Dying is confusing. You still can input commands and they seem to have an effect, though you get always the "Your adventure is over" message box. At that point what I would expect is an option to either restart, load a new game, or quit.

-I like this "just one window" layout with everything getting cleaned and updated every turn. It's nice for both usability and comfortable playability. Ideally player should have an option to switch between this and the classic "two windows" display, but I guess that would be complicated at least.

Great job indeed! Thanks a lot for it!   [emote]8-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4096&start=0#p29449
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: NPC Accompanying the PC into a Booth
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-05 16:11:50

Since NestedRooms don't work like normal rooms for arrivals and departures, you'll need to adapt the second AccompanyingState example in the tour guide, and move the NPC into the NestedRoom directly.

EDIT: Hmm. I need to read more carefully, and test. Hang on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4096&start=0#p29450
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: NPC Accompanying the PC into a Booth
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-05 16:58:03

OK, I've tested this and it should work.

[code]
modify Actor
	travelWithin(dest) {
		nestedDest = dest;
		inherited(dest);
		nestedDest = nil;
	}
	nestedDest = nil
;

me: Person
	vocabWords = 'self'
	location = bedroom
;

cat: UntakeableActor 'cat' 'cat' @bedroom
	curState = catFollowing
;

+ catFollowing: AccompanyingState
	specialDesc {
		if (getActor.isIn(pethouse))
			"The cat is hungry, not tired! ";
		else
			"The cat is hungry! ";
	}
	stateDesc = "The cat wants food! "
	accompanyTravel(leadActor, conn) {
		if (!conn && leadActor.nestedDest) {
			getActor.moveInto(leadActor.nestedDest);
			gLibMessages.sayDepartingWith(getActor, leadActor);
			return nil;
		}
		return leadActor == gPlayerChar;
	}
;

bedroom: Room 'bedroom' 'bedroom'
	"Just another bedroom. "
	west = bathroom
;

+ pethouse: Booth 'pet house' 'pet house'
	"The cat sleeps in there. "
;
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3744&start=0#p29451
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Herbstlaub
User: Tale / DateTime: 2012-01-05 17:08:14

And the Winner is ... Homunculus, by Michael Baltes.
2nd place is Exploding Poodle inevitable by A W.

Results here: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.stereosanctity.org/herbstlaub/?p=57">http://www.stereosanctity.org/herbstlaub/?p=57</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4101&start=0#p29452
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: How do you use 'affinity' - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-05 17:15:37

My actor will have both a khaki shirt and khaki shorts. Both items will have large, deep pockets. He will also be wearing a large backup. I would like to setup 'affinities' for these 'bags of holding'. My one question is: are the affinity statements attached to each 'bag' or must they be attached to each and every 'thing' that I plan to pickup and store?

I would like to see some techniques on how to handle this idea. I've read the TADS manuals and checked out some pieces of source code but I'm still not sure exactly how to go about this.

Would appreciate any ideas.

RonG

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4096&start=0#p29453
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: NPC Accompanying the PC into a Booth
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-05 17:25:48

Thanks! That works just fine ... except that I don't want gLibMessages.sayDepartingWith. I want my own custom messages. If I just comment out that line and replace it with a double-quoted string, then my string is printed both when the NPC hops into the NestedRoom and when she climbs out. So I'm trying to test the value of nestedDest, and that isn't working yet.

I'll keep hammering at it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=30#p29454
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-05 17:31:49

Copied and pasted out of Gargoyle/git:


[code]Reading the file: File of Cyberspace Layout

[[

.

]]
Starting the loop
Current letter: 

Read: line break followed by next line
New current letter: 

Current letter: .
New current letter: .
Current letter: 

Read: line break followed by next line


Loop done
Map layout: 0/3/1

g_t_border[/code]

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3974&start=10#p29455
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: SAFTAP - Scott Adams Format Text Adventure Player: Suggs
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2012-01-05 17:35:30

Hey Rockersuke, thanks for the quick feedback!

OK, just had a rummage...

ADV13 seems to have a slightly different format in that the location room numbers for the items are not on the same line as the item but on the next line. I have edited ADV13.SAF and adjusted this and SAFTAP now loads this Adventure. I have rezipped sagames.zip and  uploaded to my wesite.

I have renamed ADV02.SAF to ADV02.DAT and SAFTAP (under Windows XP) is happy loading the DAT file. Are you opening a specific DAT file? If so, can you email the specific DAT file to therealeasterbunny ~at~ hotmail ~dot~ com so I can test it with the source code? From this I should be able to locate the problem.

I have tidied up the game over / player killed routine so it pops up the game over message box and leaves a final message in the output window but any subsequent command asks the player to open a new Adventure. I will load "v0.02" SAFTAP up to the website with this fix once I have checked out your DAT problem.

The additional features you mention could be built in shortly, thanks for the feedback, its most welcome and most useful!

Steve

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4101&start=0#p29456
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How do you use 'affinity' - TADS3.1
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-05 17:45:40

You can adjust the bag's capacity, as well as how much space each object takes up. I forgot the property names that hold those settings. Looking at the properties of the Thing class should tell you which one it is.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=30#p29457
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-05 17:54:46

Thanks!

Hm, crud, looks like the problem comes from those extra line breaks between the period and brackets that are added for no apparent reason. Can't think of any easy solution for that, other than offering two separate R&D releases which take this into account  [emote]:|[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=30#p29458
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-05 18:07:27

Could you post-process the data to ignore or eliminate line breaks? The file seems to use brackets as the primary semantic marker for sections, so that maybe the line breaks are redundant anyway?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4096&start=0#p29459
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: NPC Accompanying the PC into a Booth
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-05 18:08:06

nestedDest will point to either the Room or the NestedRoom object, so you can test it that way.

[code]
	accompanyTravel(leadActor, conn) {
		if (!conn && leadActor.nestedDest) {
			if (leadActor.nestedDest == pethouse)
				"The cat comes with you, but is not happy! ";
			else
				gLibMessages.sayDepartingWith(getActor, leadActor);
			getActor.moveInto(leadActor.nestedDest);
			return nil;
		}
		return leadActor == gPlayerChar;
	}
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3974&start=10#p29460
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: SAFTAP - Scott Adams Format Text Adventure Player: Suggs
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2012-01-05 18:10:53

Quick update - I think the problem with the DAT issue mybe that the DAT file is using just line feeds (Unix derived file) and not carriag return/line feed codes (DOS/Windows derived).

I will cater for this in my code (my "Doh!") and will whack up v0.02 on my site very soon and then give you a heads up [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4096&start=0#p29461
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: NPC Accompanying the PC into a Booth
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-05 18:13:50

Got it, thanks. I stumbled because I was testing nestedDest instead of leadActor.nestedDest.

If I end up needing a second NestedRoom I'll have to fiddle with this, but that shouldn't be difficult.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=40#p29462
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-05 18:15:13

That should work, yeah. Especially now that I found out that you can use 'next' and 'break' in a while loop. The algorithm just needs to get redone first. I'll get down to it tonight.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=10#p29463
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: Poster / DateTime: 2012-01-05 18:54:03

[quote="N723"]

EDIT: I just looked at I7. I don't even know how is that code, but that's really simple. I'll still stick with VB, though.

EDIT2: I had an idea of something that I know can be achieved with my engine. Text-adventure Pokemon.[/quote]

I hate to burst your bubble, but if I7 was simple, this forum wouldn't exist.  

Here's an example of an I7 game: [url="http://ifarchive.plover.net/if-archive/games/source/inform/wscholars.txt"]enjoy[/url]. If you're lucky, you can avoid your code looking like that when you're done. I just barely avoided that with New Cat, but there are plenty of other reasons why I7 is not as simple as it promises to be. 

And BTW, I7 sucks because it puts on the appearance of being English and then uses words in bizarre, nonsensical, highly-restrictive ways, and does so without consistency. (Remember that one huge file is JUST AS useable as many smaller files! It's the I7 way!) Sigh.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4102&start=0#p29464
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: OH I remember what it was!
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2012-01-05 18:58:37

I almost forgot but here it is! My question!

How do you pronounce the "rot" in "rot13"? Do you say "wrote thirteen" or "wrought thirteen"? Maybe "wrought" is a bad choice; it's probably distinct from "rot" in some dialects. But do you get what I mean?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=10#p29465
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-05 18:59:05

[quote]I hate to burst your bubble...[/quote]

No, you don't.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3531&start=20#p29466
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Setting in IF
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2012-01-05 19:07:19

[i][url=http://umlautllama.com/t/anosmia/]this orange has molecules: I'll break them apart[/url][/i]

(not safe for work, I guess, unless you own headphones)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3531&start=20#p29467
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Setting in IF
User: Poster / DateTime: 2012-01-05 19:08:56

[quote="Kytaari"]I may have came across a discovery today: what I like the most about playing games is exploring and learning about a virtual environment, and what I think I like the most in story is a well-developed setting.

I'm just wondering what you're thoughts on setting in IF is. I personally really like being immersed in a very detailed fictional environment, and I think I've read some posts on this forum that say something similar.

So just how important is setting in IF? Are there games in this medium that tell good stories where setting isn't the central focus? I know I have a similar attitude when exploring MUDs: I like to really explore the backstory and think about the environment. How much pleasure does manipulating the environment bring to you when you play IF? Or what about exploring various rooms? What do you think about those old classic text-based adventure games where story isn't exactly the focus, but you read most of the story from the manual, and then explore the environment while manipulating objects to solve puzzles in different rooms? Do you suppose the old way of telling the story and introducing the player to the environment via means of the manual is dead now, or do people still attach similar readmes in their games sometimes?

I think this kind of correlates with my interests in history and the huge adventure romps I read in high fantasy and space operas. I've never been a very competitive gamer, but something about thinking about a really interesting setting, both whole you're playing the game and when you're taking a break, really appeals to me and my sensibilities.[/quote]

Unfortunately, not everyone who plays IF is an atmosphere person. Some people just play it for the puzzles. Others want some kind of relationship dynamic. I'm sure there are other reasons, but those are the three major camps -- and there's no love lost between any of them.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4102&start=0#p29468
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: OH I remember what it was!
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-05 19:33:30

V cebabhapr vg "ebg guvegrra".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=10#p29469
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-05 20:21:48

[quote="Poster"]Here's an example of an I7 game: [url=http://ifarchive.plover.net/if-archive/games/source/inform/wscholars.txt]enjoy[/url].[/quote]

Why is "leeg" a swear word?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4102&start=0#p29470
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: OH I remember what it was!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-05 20:23:08

I say "rot," which isn't quite "wrought," I don't think. Etymologically it should be "wrote," but I JUST DON'T CARE.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=10#p29471
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-05 20:33:20

[quote="Poster"]Here's an example of an I7 game: [url=http://ifarchive.plover.net/if-archive/games/source/inform/wscholars.txt]enjoy[/url].[/quote]
Wait, I7 needs your whole source in a single file? Seriously?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4102&start=0#p29472
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: OH I remember what it was!
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-01-05 21:14:35

I say 'wrot', which is almost exactly like 'rot' but it has echoes of the silent 'w'.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=10#p29473
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-01-05 21:17:27

[quote="RealNC"]Wait, I7 needs your whole source in a single file? Seriously?[/quote]
The existence of extensions would seem to suggest otherwise...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=20#p29474
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-05 21:25:06

[quote="JoeyJones"][quote="RealNC"]Wait, I7 needs your whole source in a single file? Seriously?[/quote]
The existence of extensions would seem to suggest otherwise...[/quote]
Then I suppose that single-file monstrosity isn't exactly a fair example.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=20#p29475
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-01-05 21:30:57

My difficulty in reading this source text is mostly down to the penchant Michael Martin has for giving things inscrutable code names rather than using words in English, and the I6 code that he's added for a feature specific to that particular game. I can understand why he did it, but you don't really want to be trawling back and forth looking up that 's_unknown' is 'status unknown' or 'sao_outmaneuvered' is something about a slack attack rating, and so on. Naming your variables stuff that makes sense in English is helpful for making readable code.

As for the code source size: you could break down the game into different files and then load them all up as extensions into the final game if you really wanted, but I don't see the point. Inform's IDE is such that you don't have to view the source code as one huge block of text, but rather you focus on different subsections of it separately.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4102&start=0#p29476
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: OH I remember what it was!
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-01-05 21:46:21

[quote="matt w"]I say "rot," which isn't quite "wrought," I don't think. Etymologically it should be "wrote," but I JUST DON'T CARE.[/quote]

Etymologically it comes from "rotate", right? So just say it however you say the first syllable of that. In Aussie English that's the same as "wrote".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4101&start=0#p29477
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How do you use 'affinity' - TADS3.1
User: tomasb / DateTime: 2012-01-06 01:49:40

[quote="RonG"]My one question is: are the affinity statements attached to each 'bag' or must they be attached to each and every 'thing' that I plan to pickup and store?[/quote]

Attach affinityFor method to each 'bag'.

[code]
+ bag: BagOfHolding 'bag' 'bag'
    "Bag. "
    affinityFor(obj) { return 200; }
;
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=20#p29478
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2012-01-06 01:52:38

[quote="Obligatory favorite example of valid I7 code"]Instead of attacking Tom when something lethal is held, now every visible dog owned by Tom hates the player.[/quote]

I've personally never really encountered a language that lets you express complex world simulation concepts like that so elegantly.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=20#p29480
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-01-06 04:35:13

[quote="aaronius"][quote="Obligatory favorite example of valid I7 code"]Instead of attacking Tom when something lethal is held, now every visible dog owned by Tom hates the player.[/quote]
I've personally never really encountered a language that lets you express complex world simulation concepts like that so elegantly.[/quote]
That is so very true.
Although, to be honest, the same sentence can be phrased in any other way and Inform wouldn't understand it. In the end it's just another programming language, with rules and bounds.
BUT: the integration between what you think of doing and how I7 handles it is so seamless it is astonishing. I think the best parts of I7 were done by the "narrative" minds of Nelson, Short and the rest, not the "coding" ones. This IS a work of genius, no matter how people react to it.

I started coding my first game with less than 20 hrs of teasing at the documentation.
I found myself in front of a puzzle which just self-generated by how the story was going on. I had this piece of soap the player had to push on (er.. push ACROSS) something to copy its surface. And then a machine able to replicate that surface on yet another thing.
I started coding it absolutely unaware of how to do it.
And it was done. In, like, 30 minutes, on the first try. I seriously doubt I would have succeeded in I6 or TADS where I got stuck in much simpler problems.

If there is a problem with I7, imo, it's in how the language-directed code sometimes gets along with the real descriptions ingame. I mean, there is no much difference between "Instead of taking the steel bar, say" and the part after the quotes in the same line of code. That drives a non native speaker like me to forget this is a PROGRAM and not my other average friend. Coding starts being too much like a conversation, and this can generate errors.

This is what i mean:
[code]Metal_ladder is in the Campus. "There is a metal ladder here." The printed name is "metal ladder". Understand "ladder/metal" as the Metal_ladder.

Instead of going up when in the Campus, try climbing the ladder.[/code]
This compiles, but doesn't work, of course. And it takes a lot of time to know what's wrong if you just don't turn on your brains. (Ok, in this case it is NOT that hard, but imagine you've already written the word LADDER ten times in ten different descriptions. To you, the Metal_ladder IS the ladder, no matter what).
And this is a common mistake I do when coding in I7.

That said, I wouldn't recommend anything else than I7 to a beginner. Unless he has the mind of Andrew Plotkin, I mean [emote]:)[/emote]

When I come to the blank page, writing a novel or a short tale, I want the computer, the software (I actually use [i]InDesign[/i] to write: [i]Word[/i] is just tooooooooo unstable... and I need the eye candy as well as the page size), or the damn typewriter to disappear as soon as I start writing "It was a dark and stormy night...". Inform quite succeeds in this, although not so much as one would hope. And this is what I most like in it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=20#p29481
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: PaulS / DateTime: 2012-01-06 05:24:04

And so the language wars begin ... again ...

But they are surely a bit of a distraction in this case. Whatever one thinks about particular IF-specific languages, the main point is that [i]if one's aim is to write interactive fiction[/i] (and not, e.g., to write a parser, or stretch programming muscles in a particular language) any of the established languages will probably end up producing a better result (and certainly a quicker one) than starting from scratch, because there are all sorts of dark corners and common problems and pitfalls that the established languages have fretted over -- and even where the "core" language may not end up with a satisfactory solution, the likelihood is that there are extensions or published code that does. If you "roll your own" you will certainly have to reinvent quite a large number of wheels (and probably find yourself having to look in some detail about how those who have gone before have made theirs), and very likely find that your first efforts are as one expects of first efforts.

Beyond that it's surely a matter of choice. If you like the Inform 7 IDE and its way of organizing things, then that's great. If you prefer I6 or TADS, that's fine too. If you find Inform 7 elegant, wonderful; if you think TADS is more rigorous, that's wonderful too. Sooner or later you are going to hit [i]something[/i] that you don't terribly love, [i]something[/i] which another language does "better", [i]something[/i] that you find annoyingly difficult to achieve.

If you are writing IF for fun, there are two people you have to please: yourself (in writing) and the audience (in playing). Any of the mainstream languages is capable of doing the latter; that has been proved by experience. Non-IF-specific languages are much less likely to do so (that has been proved by experience as well), certainly without quite disproportionate investment of time. When it comes to pleasing yourself -- well, please yourself! If you want to write interactive fiction in Haskell (notoriously, to its cognoscenti, the nec plus ultra of elegance), feel free.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4083&start=0#p29482
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Quick Question About Dialogue
User: Deain / DateTime: 2012-01-06 06:14:32

Thanks aaronius, Robert Rothman, JoeyJones, Jizaboz and katz for helping me!  It's working great now.  and no Kat [emote]:P[/emote] I was just wondering if it will still work or not.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4068&start=10#p29484
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Four letter words.
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-06 09:15:46

[quote="zarf"]You could get closer by including all of these shortened synonyms *except* those that directly match other game words. This would however be somewhat inconsistent to the player, because "X TOAD" would fail to match the TOADSTONE even if the actual TOAD has never been encountered. (And when you get into conditional matching and scope checks, you're seriously impacting performance, plus the result is just *differently* inconsistent.)[/quote]
That is unfortunate. In LambdaMOO, 'toad' matches 'toadstone' if there is no toad present. If there is a toad, then 'toad' matches 'toad'; in the case of a perfect match, all imperfect matches (like 'toadstone') are automatically discarded. The correct algorithm for this is clear; it's too bad it's so difficult to achieve in i7. I wouldn't attempt it by filling in every missed synonym manually, either. That way lies madness.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3531&start=20#p29485
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Setting in IF
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-06 09:21:37

[quote="Poster"]I'm sure there are other reasons, but those are the three major camps -- and there's no love lost between any of them.[/quote]
I'm going to need that same word again to describe the above -- not matching reality, i.e. hyperbole. And in the interest of losing more love between camps, I'm going to raise my hand and say, 'I love you, other camps.' 8)

Paul.

P.S. Try to guess which camp I'm in.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=10#p29486
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-06 09:43:43

[quote="Jim Aikin"]It would have been a timed puzzle that required the player to read the author's mind and also probably die and restore the game a number of times to get the sequence of commands right. Put those two elements together, and you have a puzzle that should never see the light of day.[/quote]
I disagree with this — there is nothing intrinsically wrong with dying often in a puzzle game and requiring knowledge obtained via death to solve the puzzle. What has been wrong with this form of puzzle, in the past, is that it takes so long to recover after death. The frustration-producing element is neither the death nor the occult knowledge -- it's the delay in getting back to the same point to try again. Parser-based adventures have been particularly big offenders in this regard, but a significant reset burden is not a *necessary* element of a parser-based puzzle game; it's merely a consequence of the prevailing conventions on how to reset the player after death. These conventions are *very* old, yet seem (to me) insufficiently re-examined. An artist could ditch the reset conventions instead of ditching puzzle cruelty -- if the life-death loop could be made short enough and quick enough, the cruelty 'problem' disappears: the players will happily try a single act repeatedly and use postmortem knowledge to improve -- they will not even blink at this -- in fact, they may even think of this episode, in retrospect, as a pulse-pounding highlight of the game (even though from the in-game perspective of the actual character, that pulse may have pounded only once).

It's not something that would work in any situation: just something to keep in mind. Best-practice conventions develop for a reason: locate that reason and make sure it is served; but you do not have to serve it in the same way that the convention does.

As for an alternate solution, it seems a form of parley is in order. If you can't fight your way out, keep talking until an opportunity presents itself. The talking buys time and the warriors can let slip with clues that formerly you could only discover by dying. Ideas: break a pipe and release steam that fogs the room evening the odds; what about magnets -- is armour magnetic; what about electricity, couldn't guys in many types armour be easily electrocuted (water on the floor plus a fork in a socket?); what about stealth -- does it make sense to spot them before they see you, and go around.

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3531&start=20#p29487
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Setting in IF
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-06 09:57:47

[quote="Afterward"][i][url=http://umlautllama.com/t/anosmia/]this orange has molecules: I'll break them apart[/url][/i]

(not safe for work, I guess, unless you own headphones)[/quote]
Wow! Who is this band?

[quote]You've got a Frisbee on your back
You can use it to defend or you can use it to attack[/quote]

Bonus points for awesome melodica playing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=20#p29488
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-06 10:09:12

It bothers me a little that there hasn't been a serious attempt at a new general-purpose IF system in the last five years (and I'm not even sure you really can include I7 here). Of course here is where I hand wave away Curveship, ChoiceScript, Undum, Quest, Adrift 5 I guess...man, these arguments get into trouble quickly don't they.  [emote]:?[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=10#p29489
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-01-06 10:13:11

[quote]I disagree with this — there is nothing intrinsically wrong with dying often in a puzzle game and requiring knowledge obtained via death to solve the puzzle. What has been wrong with this form of puzzle, in the past, is that it takes so long to recover after death.[/quote]

The second sentence is rather odd in a genre where you can save your game anywhere, but I agree with the first - sort of. If you're building a strong player character who discovers, along with the player, everything about his story as he goes along; if, unlike Varicella, the PC's and the player's knowledge stand side by side; if you're telling the story of a person who went through this ordeal and came through (which implies continuity, a continuity broken by die-and-restore puzzles); if so, then a die-and-restore puzzle is not desirable.

However, in different circumstances, "die and restore" isn't all that different from "try to solve a puzzle and get an enlightening error message", which Infocom actually encouraged in their games (or so it seems from their manuals).

So the issue isn't cruelty, unless the death happens a long time after some key element has been done/not done/undone/taken/worn/whatever. It's another direction, one which has been shunned for a long time now, but is still taken occasionally - I remember a game (though not the name) that took only one turn to finish (I think it was a tennis match), and successfully completing the game meant lots and lots of wrong commands (which is to say, different failures), which nevertheless clued the player for his NEXT try.

And of course I needn't bring up Varicella... which is another direction altogether.

Finally, this was just a little digression, brought on by Laroquod's post... but I happen to agree with your sentiment, Jim, those two elements put together sound like a huge turn-off, especially the read-the-author's-mind bit. But a timed puzzle OR a die-and-restore (if an UNDO or two could bring the player back to the starting point) would be ok. You could always either split the puzzle in two halves - one a timed puzzle, one a die-and-destore - or scratch one of the elements and keep the other.

Rather moot, since everyone's been thinking up new stuff for a while now, but them's my 2 cents.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=20#p29490
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-01-06 10:14:01

Ryan's [url=https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_WOCzmI606WwVcZceJ-qEAfsSHQAZJCvjKtWLMgy9jw/edit]thing[/url] is now a bit more robust. I don't know if it's link-worthy. It's been useful for me to write down and pick up ideas.

I'd also be interested if interaction between games is useful e.g. like the man in the hat meta-puzzle, we have special (related) items in several fingertips that don't seem to fit. It might encourage people to poke at a few more games than they would've otherwise and wouldn't have to be tough.

This might, however, drive the organizer and beta-testers crazy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=10#p29491
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-06 10:20:28

[quote="Peter Pears"][quote]I disagree with this — there is nothing intrinsically wrong with dying often in a puzzle game and requiring knowledge obtained via death to solve the puzzle. What has been wrong with this form of puzzle, in the past, is that it takes so long to recover after death.[/quote]

The second sentence is rather odd in a genre where you can save your game anywhere[/quote]
It takes too long to restore a game and I have to know in advance where to situate my save for as rapid a replay as possible. Graphical games solved this problem ages ago; they largely no longer rely on the cumbersome save/load process to close a retry loop. It's the wrong tool for the job.

[quote="Peter Pears"]If you're building a strong player character who discovers, along with the player, everything about his story as he goes along; if, unlike Varicella, the PC's and the player's knowledge stand side by side; if you're telling the story of a person who went through this ordeal and came through (which implies continuity, a continuity broken by die-and-restore puzzles); if so, then a die-and-restore puzzle is not desirable.[/quote]
To me this is like insisting that every camera angle in a movie be a POV shot from the top of the main character's shoulders. 'Aren't I supposed to be identifying with Tom Cruise? If so, then how come I can see the villains executing their secret plans -- Tom Cruise wasn't even there for that!' Hyperconcern over maintaining continuity even where it has no emotional import, tends to tie an artist's hands -- and the history of film could have been nipped in the bud, if the literalists had won a very similar debate.

People will accept cognitive dissonance regarding omniscient narrators; so long as the difference is glossed over, instead of belaboured. This is where the Restart, Restore, Quit process fails and why I question its utility -- it belabours the dissonance of dying.

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4102&start=0#p29492
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: OH I remember what it was!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-06 10:23:37

[quote="Dannii"][quote="matt w"]I say "rot," which isn't quite "wrought," I don't think. Etymologically it should be "wrote," but I JUST DON'T CARE.[/quote]

Etymologically it comes from "rotate", right? So just say it however you say the first syllable of that. In Aussie English that's the same as "wrote".[/quote]

In American English too (though of course those are somewhat different sounds in Aussie and American); but I say it the other way anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=10#p29493
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-01-06 10:45:29

[quote="Laroquod"]It takes too long to restore a game and I have to know in advance where to situate my save for as rapid a replay as possible. Graphical games solved this problem ages ago; they largely no longer rely on the cumbersome save/load process to close a retry loop. It's the wrong tool for the job.[/quote]

Wow. I wrote, just the order day, an open letter to developers and designers explaining all my frustrations with the checkpoint system. 

<a class="postlink" href="http://petersoutlet.blogspot.com/">http://petersoutlet.blogspot.com/</a>

Unless you're talking about the "Try again" button which places the player back at the sticking point. That I like, and a similar alternative in IF might minimise the issue.

"Takes too long" also sounds strange to my ears, maybe because I've gotten used to saving a lot - a LOT - and keeping different save files. Restoring a lot is par for the course, and takes me all of, oh, two seconds? Possibly I'm more lenient because I'm used to old-school and have learned to deal with some of its issues.

I only care for speed when I've stopped caring about the game. And I only care about the validity of my savegame if I'm worried I may have inadvertently left things behind, or things undone, in sections I can't revisit. Or, as in Avon, when I'm trying to figure out exactly where a timer started.

[quote="Laroquod"][quote="Peter Pears"]If you're building a strong player character who discovers, along with the player, everything about his story as he goes along; if, unlike Varicella, the PC's and the player's knowledge stand side by side; if you're telling the story of a person who went through this ordeal and came through (which implies continuity, a continuity broken by die-and-restore puzzles); if so, then a die-and-restore puzzle is not desirable.[/quote]
To me this is like insisting that every camera angle in a movie be a POV shot from the top of the main character's shoulders. 'Is my perspective supposed to be consonant with Tom Cruise's? If so, then how come I can see the villains executing their secret plans -- Tom Cruise wasn't even there for that!' Hyperconcern over maintaining continuity even where it has no emotional import, tends to tie an artist's hands -- and the history of film could have been nipped in the bud, if the literalists had won a very similar debate.[/quote]

I'm not laying out an obligatory formula. I'm saying that if you want to go that way - and if so, it's perfectly allright to use "Meanwhile..." sequences as long as the player isn't supposed to be able to act out on that information until the player character has found it - then it's probably not a good idea to use meta-session information, because you're no longer telling a coherent story. Unless you WANT the player to be an omniscient character that uses that information to help the PC. Which is - again - another direction.

[quote]People will accept cognitive dissonance regarding omniscient narrators; so long as the difference is glossed over, instead of belaboured. This is what the Restart, Restore, Quit process does and why I question its utility -- it belabours the dissonance of dying.[/quote]

You're confusing me. Your previous arguments were [i]against[/i] "suspension of disbelief", and this last one is [i]for[/i] it - because if the PC uses information he can't possibly have access to, it's a lot more jarring than if the PC dies and the player goes back a few turns, in an established and widespread convention that "we'll just pretend that never happened".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=10#p29494
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-01-06 10:54:33

Did you edit your original post a lot? 'Cause you say some of the things I wanted to get across in my reply. I either didn't see them or you added them later... which is a shame, because if that'd been your original post I'd probably never have replied at all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=20#p29495
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: N723 / DateTime: 2012-01-06 11:47:28

[quote="aaronius"][quote="Obligatory favorite example of valid I7 code"]Instead of attacking Tom when something lethal is held, now every visible dog owned by Tom hates the player.[/quote]

I've personally never really encountered a language that lets you express complex world simulation concepts like that so elegantly.[/quote]

How I would write that-
[spoiler][color=#408000]'Note that I would replace item_hostile with every hostile item, as I don't have grouping of items programmed.
'0 = not owned, 1 = owned, 2 = equipped[/color]
[color=#0040FF]If[/color] (item_hostile = [color=#0040FF]2[/color]) [color=#0040FF]And[/color] hostility_check = [color=#0040FF]True[/color] [color=#0040FF]Then
[/color][color=#408000]'This makes the relationship of all dogs be hostile to the player if the player is holding the item, which triggers this check.
'The temporary just stores the current amount until needed again.
'0 is neutral, -20 is mean, -50 is hostile, -100 is offensive (they attack)[/color]
dog_relation_temp = dog_relation
dog_relation = [color=#0040FF]-99[/color]
[color=#0040FF]Else If[/color] hostility_check =[color=#0040FF] True[/color] [color=#0040FF]Then[/color]
dog_relation = dog_relation_temp
hostility_check = [color=#0040FF]False[/color]
[color=#0040FF]End If[/color][/spoiler]

It's a lot dirtier, but that is how it would be written. And it does this PERFECTLY.
EDIT: If I don't screw up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=20#p29496
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2012-01-06 11:56:29

Fair enough, except you left out the part about this being a rule that applies only when the player is attacking something, the part about that being a specific thing (Tom), the part about it taking place after checking that this action is possible but before beginning to carry it out (the "instead" rulebook), the part about looping through the dogs in the game, the part about only applying the loop to dogs who are currently visible to the player, and the part about only applying the loop to dogs who have a certain relationship to Tom (ownership). Not really a fair comparison, I would think.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=10#p29497
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-06 12:24:04

[quote="Peter Pears"]Did you edit your original post a lot? 'Cause you say some of the things I wanted to get across in my reply. I either didn't see them or you added them later... which is a shame, because if that'd been your original post I'd probably never have replied at all.[/quote]
I'm not sure which post you're referring to. I've made some edits in this thread to improve my examples/arguments with details I thought of after-the-fact but I don't think I changed the actual meaning of anything significantly. Apologies if the effect was disconcerting -- it was not intended. I did not edit anything you replied to after I had already seen your reply.

[quote="Peter Pears"]Wow. I wrote, just the order day, an open letter to developers and designers explaining all my frustrations with the checkpoint system. 

<a class="postlink" href="http://petersoutlet.blogspot.com/">http://petersoutlet.blogspot.com/</a>

Unless you're talking about the "Try again" button which places the player back at the sticking point. That I like, and a similar alternative in IF might minimise the issue.[/quote]
Thanks for the link. Looks interesting. It's a little long for me right now -- but I have added it to my reading list for later. I'm not talking any specific button -- I am talking about the presence vs. the absence of 'try again' buttons. I prefer the absence. Obviously I am going to try again, so let's just go directly there, do not pass GO do not collect $200, do not make me hit buttons, do not make me type RESTORE and navigate to a save file; this stuff all just wastes my time. Either I'm going to try the exact same thing I failed again, or I'm going to quit. Quit doesn't need a button; a quit can be achieved by the operating system itself. Therefore the only option is 'try again'. When there is only one option, why ask the player? Just do it.

[quote="Peter Pears"]"Takes too long" also sounds strange to my ears, maybe because I've gotten used to saving a lot - a LOT - and keeping different save files. Restoring a lot is par for the course, and takes me all of, oh, two seconds? Possibly I'm more lenient because I'm used to old-school and have learned to deal with some of its issues.[/quote]
Well, yes, you've explained your own habits here. Simple things sound strange to ears acclimatised to complex things. That doesn't prove the complexity is necessary. I find it wholly unnecessary. And unlike you, I am not only impatient when I don't like a game. I am also impatient when the game is very exciting and the storyline very fast-paced, but the puzzle-solving processed is nitpicky and slow. Those two things are not emotionally congruent. Emotional congruency is what I value -- not perfect technical or narrative continuity, which are red herrings.

[quote="Peter Pears"]I'm not laying out an obligatory formula. I'm saying that if you want to go that way - and if so, it's perfectly allright to use "Meanwhile..." sequences as long as the player isn't supposed to be able to act out on that information until the player character has found it - then it's probably not a good idea to use meta-session information, because you're no longer telling a coherent story. Unless you WANT the player to be an omniscient character that uses that information to help the PC. Which is - again - another direction.[/quote]
The problems you point out could be true but are not necessarily true. If I use postmortem information to solve the puzzle, it may merely appear as if the protagonist is more intelligent than the player. t only falls your way in the specific case where the postmortem information is absolutely unfigurable otherwise -- which doesn't seem me like the most common instance.

In fact, most games rest upon this dissonance: the player begins as incompetent and only achieves competence slowly; nevertheless, the protagonist is often portrayed as highly skilled the entire way. How do you tell a story about a highly skilled character? You can't actually, without breaking this rule that you support.

[quote="Peter Pears"][quote]People will accept cognitive dissonance regarding omniscient narrators; so long as the difference is glossed over, instead of belaboured. This is what the Restart, Restore, Quit process does and why I question its utility -- it belabours the dissonance of dying.[/quote]
You're confusing me. Your previous arguments were [i]against[/i] "suspension of disbelief", and this last one is [i]for[/i] it - because if the PC uses information he can't possibly have access to, it's a lot more jarring than if the PC dies and the player goes back a few turns, in an established and widespread convention that "we'll just pretend that never happened".[/quote]
What I am saying is that suspension of disbelief is not nearly as brittle as a lot of people seem to assume, and the way the filmic arts have developed shows massive evidence for this. I'm not saying that suspension of disbelief is unimportant; I'm saying that it can be successfully glossed over, as long as things remain emotionally congruent. The emotional arc of a retry loop is completely derailed and destroyed by too much futzing over the save process or redoing old actions not immediately relevant to the loop. A retry loop requires rotational speed to function emotionally for the player.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=20#p29498
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-06 12:31:02

[quote="Laroquod"]It takes too long to restore a game and I have to know in advance where to situate my save for as rapid a replay as possible. Graphical games solved this problem ages ago; they largely no longer rely on the cumbersome save/load process to close a retry loop. It's the wrong tool for the job.[/quote]

Both Inform 7 and TADS 3 support initiating a VM save via game code. So if the game knows it's headed into a tricky puzzle, it can save a checkpoint file in advance, and roll back automatically on defeat.

I've only seen this used in [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=4l33jjysofp3very]All Hope Abandon[/url], during the chess match, but it seems like a workable solution provided that the player is only faced with one such puzzle at a time, the scope of interaction is restricted to just that puzzle, and a solution to the puzzle can always be found within that scope.

One of the general strands of IF design, which I associate more with games from ten years ago, favors large maps with many puzzles that can be solved in parallel. That tends to work against a checkpoint system that depends on a sequential flow. The current trend seems to be toward shorter, less challenging, more streamlined IF, which to some extent makes checkpoints either unnecessary or functionally equivalent to UNDO.

[i]All Hope Abandon[/i] is interesting because it feels so open, and yet it manages to include these very scripted set-piece challenges. I am not sure how much of that is subtle trickery and how much is sheer excess, but I like the effect.

Jon Ingold's article on [url=http://threeedgedsword.wordpress.com/2011/08/30/challenge-and-how-to-avoid-it/]challenge in games[/url] covers related ground. It's worth reading if you haven't seen it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4099&start=0#p29499
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Compiling TADS Source
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2012-01-06 12:36:02

This will show how bad my C/C++ is:

So I have the tads3 source, the tads2 source, the htmltads source and each of those are in its own directory.

When I go into the tads3 source and do a search for main() I find it in a lot of files. What's a good starting place for me in terms of seeing where program actually starts for the first time? I saw vmcore.cpp, which seems like a good bet. Right now I can't just load it up because the latest Visual C++ versions don't recognize the build or project files. (Here I'm not just looking at the Workbench, but the source as a whole.)

Any pointers on where to start would be appreciated. I may be in way, way, way over my head. I'm fine if that's the case but I'd still like to walk the innards of TADS a little bit.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=20#p29500
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-06 12:40:47

For I7, there are some resources linked here:

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3329">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3329</a>

The Alternative Permadeath extension includes code that can be used for any sort of author-initiated save or restore (of the sort Ben mentions), not just the roguelike-style system Victor used for Kerkerkruip.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4033&start=10#p29501
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Major Smarter Parser update
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-06 12:54:23

I've been thinking a lot about yes/no/sorry/hello/goodbye in Speech Motivations. My current thinking is something like this:

[code]Include Epistemology by Eric Eve.

Understand the command "yes" as something new. Understand the command "no" as something new. Understand the command "sorry" as something new.

An exclamation is a kind of subject. Yes is an exclamation. No is an exclamation. Sorry is an exclamation. Hello is an exclamation. Goodbye is an exclamation.

Exclaiming it to is an action applying to two visible things. Understand "answer [any known thing] to [someone]" as exclaiming it to. Understand "[any known exclamation]" as exclaiming it to.[/code]

I'd be interested to hear if something like this might be helpful, or cause conflicts. The full source of Speech Motivations is available here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.eyeballsun.org/i/Speech%20Motivations.i7x">http://www.eyeballsun.org/i/Speech%20Motivations.i7x</a>

I'm still working on it, but it's updated pretty frequently.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=20#p29502
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-06 12:59:15

[quote="bcressey"]Both Inform 7 and TADS 3 support initiating a VM save via game code. So if the game knows it's headed into a tricky puzzle, it can save a checkpoint file in advance, and roll back automatically on defeat.

I've only seen this used in [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=4l33jjysofp3very]All Hope Abandon[/url], during the chess match, but it seems like a workable solution provided that the player is only faced with one such puzzle at a time, the scope of interaction is restricted to just that puzzle, and a solution to the puzzle can always be found within that scope.[/quote]
Important caveats there -- thanks, Ben.

[quote="bcressey"]The current trend seems to be toward shorter, less challenging, more streamlined IF, which to some extent makes checkpoints either unnecessary or functionally equivalent to UNDO.[/quote]
I don't like UNDO either. I mean, not that it should be abolished or anything, but for taking back death? No. Death should be taken back automatically -- why do I have to type UNDO one or more to times just to be taken back to the point that both I and the game know was the critical decision point? There are iterative puzzles where the process of typing the UNDOs actually add up to way more typing than the process of the actual 'doing'. It's just so obviously crippling any enjoyment factor in the iterative process, to my mind, anyway. So it's not surprising that IF afficionadoes poo-poo iterative storytelling, but IMO their dislike is misguided and keyed to the way their own medium has classically mishandled that situation.

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=20#p29503
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-06 13:25:54

[quote="bcressey"]Jon Ingold's article on [url=http://threeedgedsword.wordpress.com/2011/08/30/challenge-and-how-to-avoid-it/]challenge in games[/url] covers related ground. It's worth reading if you haven't seen it.[/quote]
Added to the reading list -- thanks again!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4024&start=0#p29504
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: New York-based IF group -- any interest?
User: baneofloki / DateTime: 2012-01-06 13:33:17

I'd be interested!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=20#p29505
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-01-06 13:34:37

I guess I'll throw in my couple of pennies.

First, in the interest of fair disclosure, I have to acknowledge that my views may be colored in part by having grown up in the stone age.  When I first played Adventure on a printer terminal connected to a mainframe, there was no opportunity to save at all -- if you died, you started over and had to run through another forest worth of paper to get back to where you were.  (Of course, before we could even play we had to walk barefoot six miles through the snow.)  So Neanderthals like me have limited sympathy for a bunch of soft candy-ass Homo Sapiens wusses who complain about having to replay too many moves since the last save. [emote]:)[/emote] 

Seriously, I have no problem with the idea that part of the learning process might entail dying a few times, subject to a few things.  First, an insta-kill without any warning is unfair.  On the other hand, I have no problem with an insta-kill where there is some warning that danger exists.  The warning doesn't have to be as explicit as a robot saying "Danger, Will Robinson!" -- if the circumstances of the game are such that a reasonable player would recognize that things could go wrong, the player ought to be saving frequently, and if he doesn't there's no cause for complaint if he dies and has to waste a few extra minutes getting back to the fork in the road.

Second, I think that, [i]in theory[/i], in most games it should be possible to get through the game without dying.  Thus, the proverbial example of the code word that you can only learn by dying I would usually consider unfair (unless the experience of death is an intended part of the game, as opposed to the consequence of a mistake).  However, that does [i]not[/i] mean that a game should be designed so that most players [i]actually[/i] get through it without dying or otherwise making a serious mistake.  My own view is that if most players are getting through it on the first pass, the puzzles (assuming the game has puzzles) are too easy.  In my mind, the really great puzzles are the ones that you struggle with for hours, days, or weeks, cursing the day the author was born, and maybe dying a few times in the process.  Then, when you finally do get it (either by figuring it out, by brute force, or by throwing in the towel and looking at the cheatbook) you hit yourself on the side of the head and say "My god, what an idiot I was -- it should have been obvious!).

Finally, if a player does die, I have no problem with making him restore (or, if applicable, undo) as opposed to resurrecting him automatically.  There may be games where the idea of resurrection works well within the game world itself, and for those games allowing recovery from death "within" the game is fine.  However, for a game with a more "realistic" game-world, it seems more appropriate to me to make the player step outside the game-world (by undoing or restoring) rather than allowing him to recover from death within the game itself.


Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3531&start=20#p29506
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Setting in IF
User: katz / DateTime: 2012-01-06 13:36:38

Surely there's an "appreciates individual games on their own merits" camp.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4033&start=10#p29507
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Major Smarter Parser update
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2012-01-06 14:05:28

capmikee-- Interesting, but wouldn't this mean the author loses the ability to distinguish between "yes" and "no?" It seems like that's an important difference to preserve.

It is a problem, though-- there's a lot of unpleasant code in BL trying to deal with all of these little utterances effectively.

EDIT: Wait, I guess not, cause you could look at "the exclamation understood."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4033&start=10#p29508
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Major Smarter Parser update
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-06 14:09:39

Aaron, I think this means that the author would then write rules like this:

Instead of exclaiming no to a fat cat, say "Your defiance is amusing, but I will get it all in the end."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4033&start=10#p29509
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Major Smarter Parser update
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-06 14:18:48

[quote="ektemple"]Aaron, I think this means that the author would then write rules like this:

Instead of exclaiming no to a fat cat, say "Your defiance is amusing, but I will get it all in the end."[/quote]
Exactly. If I had defined the action as "saying," it would even have the same syntax.

I even came up with a cool little extension to allow it to handle the "fat cat, no" parser-stumper.

<a class="postlink" href="http://eyeballsun.org/i/Objects%20Matching%20Snippets.i7x">http://eyeballsun.org/i/Objects%20Match ... ippets.i7x</a>

[code]Check answering someone that when a thing (called the subject matter) is the known thing identified with the topic understood (this is the convert answering it that to exclaiming rule):
	If the number of known things identified with the topic understood is 1:
		instead try exclaiming the subject matter to the noun;[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4033&start=10#p29510
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Major Smarter Parser update
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-06 14:26:26

[Question answered in an update to the previous post. Thanks!]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4101&start=0#p29511
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How do you use 'affinity' - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-06 14:30:05

I'm still somewhat confused about this. All the source examples I've looked at for affinityFor show an actual object where the word 'object' is located. Such examples are affinities for wallets, key rings, etc.

Are there any further examples, explanations how all of this is all done [emote]:?:[/emote]  [emote]:?:[/emote] 

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4033&start=10#p29512
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Major Smarter Parser update
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-06 14:31:46

The rule posted above would translate it into exclaiming hello to the fat cat.

It depends on whether or not the parser can process the phrase after the comma as a command. If it can, the convert answering it that to exclaiming rule never runs. So if "hello" is parsed as a "saying hello" action, then it will be parsed as a request for the fat cat to try saying hello. But if there is no such grammar line it will fall back to answering it that, which will then be redirected as long as there is a known thing called "hello."

This is all reflected in Speech Motivations currently. Without going into too much detail, I am planning to change Speech Motivations so that every speaking action calls the "speaking out loud" activity during its report phase, and moving all the different reports into the activity itself based on what action is going on (or what the speech motivation of the current interlocutor is, which should amount to the same thing).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=20#p29513
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2012-01-06 14:34:19

Thanks to Andrew for organizing that document thing; it looks super nice now.

This belongs in the document but I'm thinking of it just now so I'm gonna have to paste it in there too: A metapuzzle/metathing would be super fun, obviously, and also obviously super hard to organize, [i]unless[/i] a person who's working on multiple songs works out the metaphenomenon between their own games. Not as appealing, but quite a bit easier to get done.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3531&start=20#p29514
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Setting in IF
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2012-01-06 14:38:57

I think the name of the band is "Anosmia," but the main dude involved is Brendon Small, creator of Home Movies and Metalocalypse.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4033&start=10#p29515
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Major Smarter Parser update
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2012-01-06 14:39:41

Yeah, sorry for being dense earlier-- this does sound like a great solution. In general there are way too many conversation and NPC-related actions (up to 20! if you count things that NPCs should reasonably respond to, like touching) and coming up with a simpler set for authors to build on, rather than having to strip down, would be great.

I would love to be able to point people towards a nice friendly conversation system in the Player Experience Upgrade documentation, and work to make the extension compatible with such a system... so definitely keep us posted as you continue working on this. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4033&start=10#p29516
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Major Smarter Parser update
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2012-01-06 14:42:13

Almost forgot: Mike, I'm thinking of putting Scope Caching in the next version of Player Experience Upgrade, and rewriting some scope checks in the existing extensions to optionally make use of it. Would this be okay with you, and/or do you forsee any problems with including it in a general-audience extension like that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4033&start=20#p29517
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Major Smarter Parser update
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-06 14:56:01

[quote="aaronius"]Almost forgot: Mike, I'm thinking of putting Scope Caching in the next version of Player Experience Upgrade, and rewriting some scope checks in the existing extensions to optionally make use of it. Would this be okay with you, and/or do you forsee any problems with including it in a general-audience extension like that?[/quote]
I'd be honored! [emote]:)[/emote]

I just checked, however, and I see that there are some tweaks and bugfixes on my version that have not made it to the Inform site. Please use the latest version, and I will contact Mark about updating the version on the Inform site.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.eyeballsun.org/i/Scope%20Caching.i7x">http://www.eyeballsun.org/i/Scope%20Caching.i7x</a>

If you plan to make any changes to Remembering, let me know and I will remove any outdated sections that interact with it. (I wish they had included a "for use with/in place of Version X or lower..." directive)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=20#p29518
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-01-06 14:59:10

[quote="Afterward"]Thanks to Andrew for organizing that document thing; it looks super nice now.

This belongs in the document but I'm thinking of it just now so I'm gonna have to paste it in there too: A metapuzzle/metathing would be super fun, obviously, and also obviously super hard to organize, [i]unless[/i] a person who's working on multiple songs works out the metaphenomenon between their own games. Not as appealing, but quite a bit easier to get done.[/quote]

It was part of my job for a while. So I figured, why not.

If we have a meta-puzzle, maybe it could just be a weird throwaway item you can examine, maybe containing a certain weird word, or the letter q or x or something.

Also, I'm curious about the one-move restriction. I imagine there shouldn't be too many rules, but I just want to make sure of what's there.

[list]
[*]Does examining count as a move? In some cases, I think it could be fair to give the player a chance to look things over, especially if the game is winnable/losable. It might be tedious if there's one winning move and people have to keep typing RESTART[/*:m]
[*]In that vein, should we expect the fingertips to be "winnable" or not? Or does it not particularly matter?[/*:m]
[*]Can we reject other moves besides that?[/*:m]
[*]Can/should a parser error count as a move? If so, which?[/*:m]
[*]Can/should out of world actions count? e.g. requesting the score, saying ABOUT/CREDITS and so forth[/*:m][/list:u]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4101&start=0#p29519
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How do you use 'affinity' - TADS3.1
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-06 14:59:14

Expanding on tomasb's example...

[code]
+ bag: BagOfHolding 'bag' 'bag'
    "Bag. "
    affinityFor(obj) {
        switch(obj) {
            case carKeys:
            case spareChange:
                return 200;

            case cellPhone:
            default:
                return 10000;
        }
    }
;
[/code]

You just test the obj value in your BagOfHolding's affinityFor method, to see if the object is something that bag wants.

But you can do it other ways, too. For example you can set a property on the object and check that in the bag's affinityFor method.

[code]
carKeys: Thing
    prefersBag = nil
;

spareChange: Thing
    prefersBag = nil
;

cellPhone: Thing
    prefersBag = bag
;

+ bag: BagOfHolding 'bag' 'bag'
    "Bag. "
    affinityFor(obj) {
        if (obj.prefersBag == self)
            return 10000;
        else
            return 200;
    }
;
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3974&start=10#p29520
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: SAFTAP - Scott Adams Format Text Adventure Player: Suggs
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2012-01-06 15:02:22

v0.03 now available from: [url]http://therealeasterbunny.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/saftap.zip[/url]

[code]-------------------------------------------------------------
SAFTAP - Scott Adams Format Text Adventure Player - WHATS NEW
-------------------------------------------------------------
therealeasterbunny             therealeasterbunny@hotmail.com
-------------------------------------------------------------

0.01 - Initial Alpha Release

0.02 - Tidied up 'Game Over' routine.
       
       Tuned up up/down arrow on previous commands.
       
       Recoded Adventure load to cater for DAT/SAF files 
        that only have LF end-of-line and not CR/LF

0.03 - Fixed DROP routine for mutiple items with same item code.

 [/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4101&start=0#p29521
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How do you use 'affinity' - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-06 15:30:28

I think I'm starting to understand. If I pick up a thing that has an affinity for a bag of holding. These things will find their way to one of my bags that I mentioned earlier; providing my hands get full. I could also choose to place an object directly into one of the bags providing that bag can handle it. I guess that's why the character has only a bulk capacity of ten in my story.

Rong

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4019&start=0#p29522
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Kobo Touch + Development = IF No Brainer
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2012-01-06 15:36:03

Will do. Cheers [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4105&start=0#p29523
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Quest "Play online" on smartphones and tablets
User: Alex / DateTime: 2012-01-06 16:01:15

I've just updated the Quest "Play online" (WebPlayer) so it now supports smartphones and tablets - tested on iPhone, iPad and Android.

To give it a go, just go to any game on <a class="postlink" href="http://www.textadventures.co.uk">www.textadventures.co.uk</a> and hit the "Play online" link.

If you log in to the site, you'll be able to save your progress - and it will go with you from device to device wherever you log in.

More details on the blog here: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.textadventures.co.uk/blog/2012/01/06/play-online-now-works-on-mobile-browsers/">http://www.textadventures.co.uk/blog/20 ... -browsers/</a>

Please give it a go and let me know what you think!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=20#p29524
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-01-06 16:26:01

[quote="Laroquod"][quote="Peter Pears"]Did you edit your original post a lot? 'Cause you say some of the things I wanted to get across in my reply. I either didn't see them or you added them later... which is a shame, because if that'd been your original post I'd probably never have replied at all.[/quote]
I'm not sure which post you're referring to. I've made some edits in this thread to improve my examples/arguments with details I thought of after-the-fact but I don't think I changed the actual meaning of anything significantly. Apologies if the effect was disconcerting -- it was not intended. I did not edit anything you replied to after I had already seen your reply.[/quote]

No harm done, I didn't think you had. It's just disconcerting for me to see that "post edited" line without knowing what was edited. Bottom line - I should have read your first post better. [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote]I'm not talking any specific button -- I am talking about the presence vs. the absence of 'try again' buttons. I prefer the absence. Obviously I am going to try again, so let's just go directly there, do not pass GO do not collect $200, do not make me hit buttons, do not make me type RESTORE and navigate to a save file; this stuff all just wastes my time. Either I'm going to try the exact same thing I failed again, or I'm going to quit. Quit doesn't need a button; a quit can be achieved by the operating system itself. Therefore the only option is 'try again'. When there is only one option, why ask the player? Just do it.[/quote]

Ah, I see. It's a point of view, of course - it could just as well be argued that if I've failed too many times I maybe do want to quit, or restore to an earlier instance of the game, and automatically bringing me to the "Try again" point is a waste of time - and that would be another point of view. I'm therefore pleased to have reached the point where we can agree to disagree. [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote]unlike you, I am not only impatient when I don't like a game. I am also impatient when the game is very exciting and the storyline very fast-paced, but the puzzle-solving processed is nitpicky and slow. Those two things are not emotionally congruent. Emotional congruency is what I value -- not perfect technical or narrative continuity, which are red herrings.[/quote]

Then you are much more like me than you think. I've even started in this forum, some months back, a thread in which I rant about how puzzles can work against the emotional experience. I'm fully behind everything you say here.

[quote][quote="Peter Pears"]I'm not laying out an obligatory formula. I'm saying that if you want to go that way - and if so, it's perfectly allright to use "Meanwhile..." sequences as long as the player isn't supposed to be able to act out on that information until the player character has found it - then it's probably not a good idea to use meta-session information, because you're no longer telling a coherent story. Unless you WANT the player to be an omniscient character that uses that information to help the PC. Which is - again - another direction.[/quote]
The problems you point out could be true but are not necessarily true. If I use postmortem information to solve the puzzle, it may merely appear as if the protagonist is more intelligent than the player. t only falls your way in the specific case where the postmortem information is absolutely unfigurable otherwise -- which doesn't seem me like the most common instance.[/quote]

It depends on the information. I can solve the penultimate puzzle in Sorcerer by trial and error (three doors, two lead to dead ends, one to the endgame; there is a way to get a hint about which door is the correct one), and I doubt many players have done it any other way. It's not about intelligence in that case - the PC was foolish and irresponsible enough to trust completely to his luck. And I will disagree with you again in that I find that the most common instance is, indeed, for the postmortem information to be unfigurable otherwise - which is why we have these discussions at all.

[quote]In fact, most games rest upon this dissonance: the player begins as incompetent and only achieves competence slowly; nevertheless, the protagonist is often portrayed as highly skilled the entire way. How do you tell a story about a highly skilled character? You can't actually, without breaking this rule that you support.[/quote]

You can. Varicella takes one approach; Spider and Web takes another. Yet another approach would be to gently block, in the PC's voice, actions that would betray that lack of skill. There are ways - it's just a question of how the author wants to do it.

(Disclaimer - I'm talking about Varicella way more often than I should, considering I only played it once and am saving it for a rainy day. But I've read a lot about it)

[quote]What I am saying is that suspension of disbelief is not nearly as brittle as a lot of people seem to assume, and the way the filmic arts have developed shows massive evidence for this. I'm not saying that suspension of disbelief is unimportant; I'm saying that it can be successfully glossed over, as long as things remain emotionally congruent. The emotional arc of a retry loop is completely derailed and destroyed by too much futzing over the save process or redoing old actions not immediately relevant to the loop. A retry loop requires rotational speed to function emotionally for the player.[/quote]

Ok, I understand. I think you may be overestimating the importance of those meta-game "breaks" - there are far worse offenders, and the save/restore/quit/retry loops can be (and I thought mostly were) taken as part of the interface, no more worrying than tapping TAB or navigating the mouse to the Inventory button to open the inventory.

Since for me, personally, it would be more disconcerting to have the game immediately go back to the part where I failed than for me to choose to do so (if I do it, I can pretend it never happened; if the game does it for me, it feels different, it wrestles meta-game control from me, and I will have a different emotional response), I am at this point - both of us having explained our views - perfectly happy to, once again, agree to disagree.

EDIT - Wow, I managed to miss out an entire page of replies.

[quote]Both Inform 7 and TADS 3 support initiating a VM save via game code.[/quote]

I didn't know that, and I think it should be documented (I don't remember reading about it). It's a great feature. When I was working on my (now abandoned) WIP I wanted the game to automatically save between chapters. I was forced to open a "Save Game" dialog, which I really disliked, especially knowing that in I6 it could be done silently.

[quote]Death should be taken back automatically -- why do I have to type UNDO one or more to times just to be taken back to the point that both I and the game know was the critical decision point?[/quote]

For one, because you and the game might disagree on what's the critical decision point. Also, death (or losing) in IF is already trivial enough when it can be easily UNDOed - automatically going back without player action would banalise it to the point where there is no such thing. In which case we'd be better off designing a game where you can't die or get stuck. Otherwise failure won't mean a thing. I've seen it happen in console games, another thing I wrote about in a blog post. I'm not sure I'd like to see it happen to IF without a better reason than any I've seen here so far.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=20#p29525
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-06 16:48:34

[quote="Peter Pears"][quote]Both Inform 7 and TADS 3 support initiating a VM save via game code.[/quote]

I didn't know that, and I think it should be documented (I don't remember reading about it). It's a great feature. When I was working on my (now abandoned) WIP I wanted the game to automatically save between chapters. I was forced to open a "Save Game" dialog, which I really disliked, especially knowing that in I6 it could be done silently.[/quote]

Well, Inform 7 doesn't include library code to support it, put the support is present in the underlying libraries nonetheless. I wrote some code to enable it and make it I7-y; Victor included this code in his Alternative Permadeath extension, which is not officially released but is available in the source for Kerkerkruip, as well as at the link I posted above. (If you've played Kerkerkruip, you may have noticed that it saved your game silently each turn, and restored it silently if you closed the game and then reopened it. You never see a save dialog box.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=20#p29526
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-01-06 17:19:41

Touchè.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4101&start=0#p29527
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How do you use 'affinity' - TADS3.1
User: tomasb / DateTime: 2012-01-06 17:45:12

[quote="RonG"]Such examples are affinities for wallets, key rings, etc.[/quote]
That's because wallet is actually a bag (kind of). Affinity of pocket tells, that its suitable for a wallet and wallet's affinity tells it's suitable for credit cards or for money, but not so much for any other things. Same for keyrings.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4099&start=0#p29528
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Compiling TADS Source
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-06 19:14:24

In the w32 API, the program starts in WinMain(), not main(). htmltads/w32main.cpp might be a good place to start.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=30#p29529
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2012-01-06 19:50:22

[i]Aisle[/i] isn't winnable, and examining counts as a move. [i]Rematch[/i] is winnable, and examining counts as a move, I think. (I haven't played it in a while?) [i]Aisle[/i] has some sort of weird trick that lets you hit any key instead of typing restart; I'm not sure how it works.

I think parser errors don't usually count as moves anyway, and I am pretty sure out-of-world actions don't either.

I'm starting to see a niche for a One-Turn Game extension, with automatic restarting and other fiddly bits taken care of. Maybe there already is one?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=30#p29531
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-06 23:38:19

I think we should let the authors make some of those decisions. But it's actually very difficult to let parser errors as such count as moves for the purpose of ending a game; I've never figured out how to do it. See [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2220]this thread[/url] and [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=995]this one[/url]; a solution is proposed [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2121]here[/url] but I never implemented it. When I wrote something where I wanted a parser error to be understood as a random keyword, and that command to be able to end the game, I just did more-or-less

[code]Understand "[text]" as random-keywording.[/code]

so any input would be mapped to a valid command.

[spoiler]And I do something similar in my fingertip, where any input ends the game with a simulated parser error message.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4093&start=10#p29532
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Harmonizing Glk file suffixes?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-07 01:05:42

I have a draft of the new spec bits posted: <a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/erkyrath/glk-dev/wiki/Glk-074-draft-spec-changes">https://github.com/erkyrath/glk-dev/wik ... ec-changes</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4092&start=0#p29534
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Quixe and timed events
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2012-01-07 03:58:25

[quote="ektemple"]Basically, the interpreters that are included in the Inform IDEs (Mac OS and Windows) don't enforce proscriptions against certain actions that are technically illegal under Glulx.[/quote]
Isn't that a bit backwards? I'd think the IDE terps ought to be more strict than the others so surprises like this wouldn't happen. Is there a related feature suggestion at uservoice that I could vote on?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=40#p29535
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-07 05:57:31

I think I fixed it now. New example [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17790344/File%20Test/File%20Test%283%29.rar]here[/url]. Should work for every platform (or abort the loop beforehand if it doesn't). Word of warning though, at least to Windows 7 users: turns out that, if you open a gblorb over 'Open with' for either Glulx or Git, it will not call for the current file but some buffered data instead, apparently. In my case, it calls for the old file which prints "First, second,.." etc. although that file is long gone.  [emote]:|[/emote]

@Erik
You were right that again something seems off with the resizing factor. Probably has something to do with the new full-map parameters. Will try to work on that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=20#p29540
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-07 07:20:10

[quote="Peter Pears"]Ah, I see. It's a point of view, of course - it could just as well be argued that if I've failed too many times I maybe do want to quit, or restore to an earlier instance of the game, and automatically bringing me to the "Try again" point is a waste of time - and that would be another point of view.[/quote]
Both of those things (1) can be typed at any time and (2) are possible via the operating system interface, and don't need to be pushed at me, hogging exclusively to themselves a whole game turn, whenever my character dies. If you are already planning to quit or to restore the game, then the pacing of the current playthrough isn't important anymore. Speed is of the essence for keeping the player involved 'in the moment'; in your counter-situation, speed is irrelevant for that purpose, because the player is about to explicitly choose to abandon that moment.

[quote="Peter Pears"][quote]unlike you, I am not only impatient when I don't like a game. I am also impatient when the game is very exciting and the storyline very fast-paced, but the puzzle-solving processed is nitpicky and slow. Those two things are not emotionally congruent. Emotional congruency is what I value -- not perfect technical or narrative continuity, which are red herrings.[/quote]
Then you are much more like me than you think. I've even started in this forum, some months back, a thread in which I rant about how puzzles can work against the emotional experience. I'm fully behind everything you say here.[/quote]
Excellent -- I had a feeling there was more agreement here than was apparent. Probably when I read your blog post, there will be even more; I expect that's why you asked me to have a look. And I will. 8)

[quote="Peter Pears"][quote]In fact, most games rest upon this dissonance: the player begins as incompetent and only achieves competence slowly; nevertheless, the protagonist is often portrayed as highly skilled the entire way. How do you tell a story about a highly skilled character? You can't actually, without breaking this rule that you support.[/quote]
You can. Varicella takes one approach; Spider and Web takes another. Yet another approach would be to gently block, in the PC's voice, actions that would betray that lack of skill. There are ways - it's just a question of how the author wants to do it.

(Disclaimer - I'm talking about Varicella way more often than I should, considering I only played it once and am saving it for a rainy day. But I've read a lot about it)[/quote]
Sadly and embarrassingly, I have not yet gotten around to trying Varicella. Spider and Web is a interesting counterexample. Spider and Web was very clever (even brilliant) in the way it contextualised the player/protagonist split to avoid dissonance while supporting a series of very tight retry loops with an old school level of cruelty. That was really good. I don't think it proves, however, that such a split in perspectives is *necessary* to have a successful cruel retry loop. (I realise that this wasn't precisely what you were trying to prove by mentioning it, and it is a good counterexample to my statement which went too far.) Furthermore, Spider and Web is a perfect example of how much better a retry loop works when you dispense with the RESTART/RESTORE/QUIT loop. Ever notice that when you die in Spider & Web, you don't actually get that menu? Instead you get a little 'interrogation interlude' and then are sent *automatically* back to the nearest convenient checkpoint, as determined by the game itself, which is exactly what I am advocating. But there is no reason that you *need* to split the player/protagonist perspective in order to skip that menu in the way that Spider & Web did. In fact, if you skip the death event as quickly as possible, that replay dissonance will much minimised, and probably be much more easily overlooked by the majority of players. IMO, of course. You can tell me whether you agree in the final analysis, if and when you try my WIP. 8)

[quote="Peter Pears"]I think you may be overestimating the importance of those meta-game "breaks" - there are far worse offenders, and the save/restore/quit/retry loops can be (and I thought mostly were) taken as part of the interface, no more worrying than tapping TAB or navigating the mouse to the Inventory button to open the inventory.[/quote]
Well, people who are used to the interface do not always perceive how disconcerting it is for a newcomer. And I feel that it is precisely in the case of a tight retry loop, which is typically associated with fast or highly tense and dangerous action, that the conspicuous meta-game break is the worst possible blemish to inflict on the play experience -- unless, like in Spider and Web, the meta-game is actually part of the story: and even then the cruft I detest was wisely removed. (I don't know why this didn't immediately catch on in a more general way. It's almost as if the Great Implementors of yesteryear looked down upon the play experience and said to themselves, Impishly, 'These loopy bits are probably the most tense and time-sensitive bits: lets fill all the cracks in those with extraneous interface cruft.' And so here we are.)

[quote="Peter Pears"][quote]Death should be taken back automatically -- why do I have to type UNDO one or more to times just to be taken back to the point that both I and the game know was the critical decision point?[/quote]
For one, because you and the game might disagree on what's the critical decision point.[/quote]
Much more uncommon than it seems. It is usually quite obvious when the critical decision happened or at least how long ago was the time that the critical decision hadn't happened. I admit that there are exceptions.

[quote="Peter Pears"]Also, death (or losing) in IF is already trivial enough when it can be easily UNDOed - automatically going back without player action would banalise it to the point where there is no such thing.[/quote]
This is a lost cause; death is trivial in a video game. That is an incontrovertible reality. Nothing you can do is really going to render it non-trivial, emotionally, except maybe if you self-destruct the entire copy of the game, never to be played again. So making video game protagonist's wrong-move death something of great consequence is not an achievable goal. By punishing the players for reaching a fatal ending, forcing them to typing boring irrelevant reset commands repeatedly in the service of that unachievable goal, you are essentially just punishing them for playing the game -- because everybody dies, right? I don't think there is any smart way to actually seriously punish the player for dying; I definitely don't think it's a good excuse for subjecting them to meaningless, repetitious gruntwork that isn't fun.

[quote="Peter Pears"]In which case we'd be better off designing a game where you can't die or get stuck. Otherwise failure won't mean a thing.[/quote]
I realise that this has been a prevailing view for an entire era of game design, but I can't stand it. I can't stand this no-dead-ends, safe-world ethic. Plainly stated, this philosophy has directly resulted in a giant truckload of extremely boring games. Mind you, I agree with the goal of this ethos: let's not punish the player for playing the game (as I mentioned above). But I just detest the now-conventional method of achieving that goal. We should just make death simple, instructive, and as easily recoverable as possible. We should not have abolished fatal endings; that was just a way of avoiding the mental symptoms by lobotomising the patient, IMO.

[quote="Peter Pears"]Since for me, personally, it would be more disconcerting to have the game immediately go back to the part where I failed than for me to choose to do so (if I do it, I can pretend it never happened; if the game does it for me, it feels different, it wrestles meta-game control from me, and I will have a different emotional response), I am at this point - both of us having explained our views - perfectly happy to, once again, agree to disagree.[/quote]
Agreed on that last bit! 8) We do agree on more than it seems, and our disagreements are kind of magnified by our current focus on a narrow issue. Thanks for explaining all of your views on it.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4108&start=0#p29541
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Alpha testers wanted for a new CYOA tool from inkle
User: joningold / DateTime: 2012-01-07 07:35:04

Hey all,

Over at inkle we're trying to put together a web-tool for writing interactive stories using a CYOA-style paradigm. It's aimed for non-programmer, entry-level users - we'd quite like to get it into schools, for instance - but it might provide a good starting point to get people interested in writing interactively, before they move on to the Inform 7 and Varytale's of this world. (It's more-or-less the same as Adventure Book from many moons ago, which is kinda ironic.)

We're approaching an alpha version: doesn't look too shiny, but it has all the right buttons. 

We could use some people to test it - see if you get it, see if you like it, see if you can crash it. Anyone interested?

There's a screenshot (of what it will look like, rather than what it does look like right now...) up on our website if you want to get a sense of the thing:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.inklestudios.com/for-writers">http://www.inklestudios.com/for-writers</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.inklestudios.com/for-teachers">http://www.inklestudios.com/for-teachers</a>

If you're interested, please drop me a line on <a href="mailto:jon@inklestudios.com">jon@inklestudios.com</a> -- and if any of you are/know any teachers who might be interested in using such a thing, feel free to forward on the link / my email address.

cheers!
jon

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=20#p29542
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-07 07:40:48

[quote="Robert Rothman"]First, in the interest of fair disclosure, I have to acknowledge that my views may be colored in part by having grown up in the stone age.  When I first played Adventure on a printer terminal connected to a mainframe, there was no opportunity to save at all -- if you died, you started over and had to run through another forest worth of paper to get back to where you were.  (Of course, before we could even play we had to walk barefoot six miles through the snow.)  So Neanderthals like me have limited sympathy for a bunch of soft candy-ass Homo Sapiens wusses who complain about having to replay too many moves since the last save. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
Heh heh. Well it might surprise you to know that this candy-ass first played Adventure in the late 70s on a PDP terminal via a suction-cup modem. I am old school in many ways -- but there are things that have been bothering me ever since the 80s, and one of them is 'Restart, Restore, Quit'.

[quote="Robert Rothman"]Seriously, I have no problem with the idea that part of the learning process might entail dying a few times, subject to a few things.  First, an insta-kill without any warning is unfair.  On the other hand, I have no problem with an insta-kill where there is some warning that danger exists.  The warning doesn't have to be as explicit as a robot saying "Danger, Will Robinson!"[/quote]
Agreed with the above.

[quote="Robert Rothman"]if the circumstances of the game are such that a reasonable player would recognize that things could go wrong, the player ought to be saving frequently, and if he doesn't there's no cause for complaint if he dies and has to waste a few extra minutes getting back to the fork in the road[/quote]
Disagree here. I do not wish to catch the player out on forgetting-to-save. That tests nothing, and proves nothing. It is neither a function of the player's personality, nor does it signify their understanding of the scenario I've presented. I understand that from an old school perspective, learning a collection of meta-skills was par for the course, and knowing how to navigate that territory was valuable and proved that you were not a clueless newbie; but I never agreed with that anti-noob perspective, even in the old days. IMO the only ways the player should be tested and found wanting, are in ways that are concomitant with the actual story. And they should never be actively punished for failure with boring interludes. Preventing them from advancing further, until they succeed, is all that is strictly required to make the challenge fun, and any punishment beyond that serves only to make it less fun.

[quote="Robert Rothman"]Second, I think that, [i]in theory[/i], in most games it should be possible to get through the game without dying.  Thus, the proverbial example of the code word that you can only learn by dying I would usually consider unfair (unless the experience of death is an intended part of the game, as opposed to the consequence of a mistake).  However, that does [i]not[/i] mean that a game should be designed so that most players [i]actually[/i] get through it without dying or otherwise making a serious mistake.  My own view is that if most players are getting through it on the first pass, the puzzles (assuming the game has puzzles) are too easy.  In my mind, the really great puzzles are the ones that you struggle with for hours, days, or weeks, cursing the day the author was born, and maybe dying a few times in the process.  Then, when you finally do get it (either by figuring it out, by brute force, or by throwing in the towel and looking at the cheatbook) you hit yourself on the side of the head and say "My god, what an idiot I was -- it should have been obvious!).[/quote]
I mostly agree here, although there are several games in which the scenario is contrived such that it makes sense to use the knowledge obtained after making a 'deadly' mistake -- Peter mentioned Spider and Web. However, I feel the 'code word after death' scenario that is often trotted out to support a certain point of view, is not actually a very common scenario. So it's a misleading example. Kind of like the 'ticking time bomb' scenario that is trotted out to support torture, etc: it rarely happens. What usually happens is, your manner of death gives you a clue to something that you could have figured out without the clue if you had thought about it a bit more thoroughly.

[quote="Robert Rothman"]Finally, if a player does die, I have no problem with making him restore (or, if applicable, undo) as opposed to resurrecting him automatically.  There may be games where the idea of resurrection works well within the game world itself, and for those games allowing recovery from death "within" the game is fine.  However, for a game with a more "realistic" game-world, it seems more appropriate to me to make the player step outside the game-world (by undoing or restoring) rather than allowing him to recover from death within the game itself.[/quote]
So... wait, huh? Making the player step [i]outside the game-world[/i] is appropriate when you are after [i]realism[/i]? That doesn't sound right at all. If defending your old standard bits of interface has led you to such a counterintuitive conclusion, I think it kind of makes my point for me. 8)

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=20#p29544
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: N723 / DateTime: 2012-01-07 09:25:48

Well, that's how I understood the code that was given.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4109&start=0#p29545
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with weapons in Inform 7 needed.
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-01-07 09:26:19

If you want "weapons" to have some common characteristics (for example, if you want to allow "kill the troll with [something]" only to work when the specified something is a "weapon", then you have to define a "kind" called "weapon."  If there is nothing special (in the context of the game) about something being a weapon, then you can just say "the Knight carries a sword," in which case a thing called a sword will be created and placed in the possession of the Knight.


Robert Rothman


PS No need to capitalize the names of all nouns.  I believe (not sure about this) that, by default, Inform 7 interprets a capitalized noun as proper-named (meaning it does not use an article in front of the name of the noun) so its less work not to capitalize improper-named nouns (because you don't have to override the default behavior).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4109&start=0#p29546
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with weapons in Inform 7 needed.
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-01-07 09:27:26

[quote="cgerman5"]Is it just that Inform doesn't know what a weapon is?[/quote]
Yes. The "try consulting the Kinds index" means that if you click on the Index button and choose the Kinds tab, you can see that a "weapon" is not in the list of kinds of objects. You have to define the kind first by saying "A weapon is a kind of thing."

The only instance of "X carries a weapon called Y" I found in the manual is in example 282 (Lanista 2), where the weapon kind is defined in the previous paragraph:

[code]A weapon is a kind of thing. A weapon has a number called the maximum damage. The maximum damage of a weapon is usually 4.

The gladiator carries a weapon called a trident. The maximum damage of the trident is 5. The gladiator carries a weapon called a net. The maximum damage of the net is 1.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4109&start=0#p29547
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with weapons in Inform 7 needed.
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-01-07 09:32:04

[quote="Juhana"]The "try consulting the Kinds index" means that if you click on the Index button and choose the Kinds tab, you can see that a "weapon" is not in the list of kinds of objects.[/quote]Also note that you need to compile your project at least one time [i]successfully[/i] in order for the index to be populated. (It starts out blank.) For this reason I always start every project with one room and compile before adding anything else.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4093&start=10#p29548
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Harmonizing Glk file suffixes?
User: djfletch / DateTime: 2012-01-07 09:35:47

[quote="zarf"]I have a draft of the new spec bits posted: <a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/erkyrath/glk-dev/wiki/Glk-074-draft-spec-changes">https://github.com/erkyrath/glk-dev/wik ... ec-changes</a>[/quote]
[quote]A text resource stream reads characters encoded as Latin-1 (for normal) or UTF-8 (for Unicode).[/quote]
If you open a resource as text and read it with glk_get_line_stream, am I right that the only recognised line separator should be ASCII 10? It wouldn't make sense to do platform-specific newline translations here.

It's not very likely to matter, but maybe it's worth having a note somewhere to tell authors composing text resources on Windows to save them with Unix line endings before blorbing them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=40#p29549
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-07 10:16:02

This one works! I suspect the problem was line endings in the text editor you used to create the import file...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4110&start=0#p29550
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Glulx on Portable Phones
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-01-07 10:20:53

I sent a copy of my recently released Glulx game to a friend, who asked whether it could be played on his portable phone.  I'm sure this is a very basic question, but I know nothing about these new-fangled telephones (I just recently traded in my set of tin cans and a string for a rotary-dial phone. [emote]:)[/emote] )  Is there a Glulx interpreter that can run on telephones?

Thanks.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4111&start=0#p29551
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: T3: New Extension
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-07 10:44:07

In a thread last year, Ben Cressey and Eric Eve came up with some code that allows T3 authors to create I7-style "test me" scripts. I'm finding this absolutely a joy to use, so I've uploaded it as an extension (tests.t) to the if-archive. It's in programming > tads3 > library > contributions.

The syntax is only slightly more fussy than Inform's. You use it like this:

[code]Test 'bucket' [ 's', 'w', 'take bucket', 'put bucket in well', 'turn crank', 'x water' ];[/code]
In the debug version of the game, "test bucket" will now run those commands. This is sometimes more useful than replaying an entire script, because a script has to start at the top of the game.

Also, I'm not sure how one would capture or invoke scripts if not using Workbench. This extension will work no matter what development environment or OS you're using.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=20#p29552
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-07 10:51:02

[quote="Laroquod"]So... wait, huh? Making the player step [i]outside the game-world[/i] is appropriate when you are after [i]realism[/i]? That doesn't sound right at all. If defending your old standard bits of interface has led you to such a counterintuitive conclusion, I think it kind of makes my point for me. 8)
[/quote]
Not so. He's just saying that if the world of your game involves things like ghosts, magic, and powerful sorcerous spells, then it [i]can [/i]make sense to provide an in-game resurrection when the PC gets killed.

In a more realistic game-world (one that resembles, oh, the world we actually live in, for instance), when you're dead you're dead. No do-overs. If an in-game resurrection were provided in such a game, it would break the realistic model world. Therefore, providing an out-of-game-world Undo for an action that kills the PC preserves the realism of the model world. This is a perfectly sensible way to look at it.

If you [i]really [/i]want realism, then dying in the game should erase your hard drive. But if you do that, I doubt you'll find many players who will give your game a positive recommendation. [emote];-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=30#p29553
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-01-07 11:01:27

[quote]If you really want realism, then dying in the game should erase your hard drive. But if you do that, I doubt you'll find many players who will give your game a positive recommendation. 
[/quote]

Actually, I suspect that you won't need to worry about that -- after you've erased a player's hard drive (or, dare I say it, effected an even more realistic "simulation" of death) that player won't be able to write any reviews at all. [emote]:)[/emote] 

In fact, Jim has correctly stated, far more clearly and eloquently than I did, precisely the point I was trying to make.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4112&start=0#p29554
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Custom Verbs - Help System
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2012-01-07 11:06:51

I have wrestled with the 'hints' and 'goals' pieces of tads and so far have had no luck (copying example code verbatim - but entering "hint" does nothing still etc). I am trying to develop my game for people who don't play IF games, who may not know verbiage that we might take for granted. To accomplish this without irritating experienced players I have been adding navigation text to every room description so the player can be reminded of the compass directions etc. But I would also like to have a help system so players can easily get basic usage help.

I was thinking to do this I could do something like custom verbs, but that don't pertain to any specific object etc. Is there a way to define a verb that simply spits out descriptive text, no matter where the player is etc? In this way they could type "help" and some static text would be shown, no matter where they are in the game.

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=40#p29555
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-07 11:10:41

That's good to hear!

Windows 7 and Mac OS not playing nice with each other? Who would have thunk it, right? [emote]:D[/emote]
Glad that this is out of the way though.

I've got just one more general question: It recently came to my attention that arrays will probably get included in a later Inform 7 release. Would it be a good idea to switch over to those instead of lists? (For faster performance or other advantages)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4092&start=0#p29556
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Quixe and timed events
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-07 11:35:11

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/1933277-the-ide-interpreter-should-reject-invalid-glk-call">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... d-glk-call</a>

and related: 
<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/1240283-have-a-no-graphics-and-one-window-options-for-">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... tions-for-</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/929641-have-a-slow-execution-option-for-the-ide-interpr">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... de-interpr</a>

(Yes, plugging all my own requests in this area)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=30#p29557
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-07 11:41:31

[quote="Jim Aikin"][quote="Laroquod"]So... wait, huh? Making the player step [i]outside the game-world[/i] is appropriate when you are after [i]realism[/i]? That doesn't sound right at all. If defending your old standard bits of interface has led you to such a counterintuitive conclusion, I think it kind of makes my point for me. 8)
[/quote]
Not so. He's just saying that if the world of your game involves things like ghosts, magic, and powerful sorcerous spells, then it [i]can [/i]make sense to provide an in-game resurrection when the PC gets killed.[/quote]
I get that. I was being a bit facetious to make a point, which still stands. That being, if the choice is between a 'realistic' game with automatic checkpointing and a 'realistic' game with a 'Restore, Restart, Quit' menu after death, it seems clear that although both are not perfect realism, the latter is plainly the [i]greater[/i] transgression against realism, of those two ways to turn around death in an otherwise 'real' milieu. Granted, a more fantastical setting can provide a milieu-specific opportunity to do things differently. But that doesn't really provide any information as to what works best to achieve realism. in any setting, realistic or not, 'Restore, Restart, Quit' seems just a pointless out-of-world exercise.

[quote="Jim Aikin"]In a more realistic game-world (one that resembles, oh, the world we actually live in, for instance), when you're dead you're dead. No do-overs. If an in-game resurrection were provided in such a game, it would break the realistic model world. Therefore, providing an out-of-game-world Undo for an action that kills the PC preserves the realism of the model world. This is a perfectly sensible way to look at it.[/quote]
I may agree that there is some sense to arriving at it, but I can't agree that it is true. Emotional congruency is the issue. Technically the out-of-world actions may, by classifying themselves differently, escape an academic accusation of breaking continuity; but it's a Pyrrhic victory, for in the emotional reality of the player, they do break that emotional congruity by 'taking the player out of the game'. As a designer, I just don't see any rational justification for that break; such breaks are to be done away with in narrative games, wherever possible. And in the case of 'Restart, Restore, Quit', the extra cruft is eminently discardable; ergo, it should be discarded. I still haven't heard a single persuasive reason for keeping it. YMMV.

I sense this conversation will begin to move in circles soon (though it hasn't quite, yet). I will return later to answer any objections that don't seem to go over previously argued territory, but if I don't see any, I think this thread has had enough of my advocacy on this point. Thanks, Jim, Robert, and Peter, for the great debate. 8)

Paul.

EDIT: Changed the mistakenly typed 'lesser transgression' to the intended phrase 'greater transgression', above.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4113&start=0#p29558
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: IF Whispers?
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-01-07 11:57:47

So, after nearly four years, I've just rediscovered IF Whispers. Considering how much fun I've had with SpeedIF and other exquisite-corpse-style projects (tiles.ice.org, round robin prose writing) I'd love to be involved in one of these things.

Unfortunately, it's [i]also[/i] been about four years since one of these has been held. So, I assume I'd probably need to organize such an event myself. What exactly is the best way to go about doing this? Have participants collected any wisdom regarding running an IF Whisper smoothly?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4092&start=0#p29559
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Quixe and timed events
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2012-01-07 12:00:09

[quote="zarf"]http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/1933277-the-ide-interpreter-should-reject-invalid-glk-call[/quote]I have added code to the Windows IDE to fail when games print to windows waiting for input, so that will be done in the next build. The others are on the to do list, at least for Windows.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4112&start=0#p29560
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Custom Verbs - Help System
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-07 12:03:07

The built-in hint system does work ... but if you want to roll your own, it's easy:

[code]DefineSystemAction(Help)
    execAction () {
        "Your text goes here. ";
    }
;
VerbRule(Help)
    'help'
    : HelpAction
    verbPhrase = 'help/helping the player'
;[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4093&start=10#p29561
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Harmonizing Glk file suffixes?
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2012-01-07 12:07:29

[quote="zarf"]I have a draft of the new spec bits posted: <a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/erkyrath/glk-dev/wiki/Glk-074-draft-spec-changes">https://github.com/erkyrath/glk-dev/wik ... ec-changes</a>[/quote]A few thoughts:[list][*]What happens if a game tries to write to such a read-only stream? Is it undefined bevaiour?[/*:m][*]"The library should take the given filename argument, and delete any slashes or backslashes." It might be worth noting here that libraries may remove other characters - for example, on Windows, colons, asterisks and question marks will also need to be removed.[/*:m][*]Is stripping off any extension on the name supplied by the game a good idea? Wouldn't it be better to respect any extension provided by the game instead, using that in preference to ".glkdata" etc.?[/*:m][*]"When opening an existing file (that is, not in a write-only mode) it may be worth looking under the older name (suffix) before the newer one." This might lead to problems if an new-style file exists too - would it be better to look for a file under an old name/suffix only if the new name/suffix doesn't exist?[/*:m][/list:u]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4112&start=0#p29562
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Custom Verbs - Help System
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2012-01-07 12:09:16

Thank you for this! I know my struggles with the hint system are all me, not tads - but this will allow me to put some basic help text in there until I can uncover what I'm doing wrong.

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=30#p29563
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-01-07 12:24:34

[quote="Jim Aikin"]If you [i]really [/i]want realism, then dying in the game should erase your hard drive.[/quote]

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.stfj.net/art/2009/loselose/">http://www.stfj.net/art/2009/loselose/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4112&start=0#p29564
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Custom Verbs - Help System
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-07 12:26:10

There's a good discussion on p. 298 of "Learning T3." The only thing you need to do is remove one of the + signs before each of the objects. That's a mistake in the book.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=40#p29565
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-07 12:37:11

Uhm, another question just popped up. There seems to be a limit to the amount of text an indexed text can actually store. I just tried to create a very large map in a text file, but the indexed text will only store about half of it. Would there be a possibility to extend this limit somehow?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4093&start=10#p29566
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Harmonizing Glk file suffixes?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-07 12:39:15

[quote]It is reasonable to keep saved games in game-specific directories, but data files should go in a common directory, as they may be exchanged between games.[/quote]

If data files are saved in a common directory, then collisions between filenames could be an issue. For example there might be a popular extension that saves data files under a specific name.

Perhaps there could be a new file usage mode to mark Public Data - then authors and extension writers could opt-in to the data sharing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4113&start=0#p29567
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Whispers?
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-01-07 12:43:02

Pending the advice of past contributors, I would start by looking at how they structured the [url=http://inky.org/if/ifw2/source.html]source code[/url] for past IF Whispers projects. Also, I would definitely take part in something like this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4112&start=0#p29568
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Custom Verbs - Help System
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2012-01-07 13:00:23

Thanks for the reference! I have copied the corrected code into my game so I have a TopHintMenu and some sample sub menus. Is there code I need to add to my game to display the hints? When I compile and type 'hint' or 'hints' etc I get a 'there are no hints' message. Do I need to add that menu to my GameMainDef? If so, what is that syntax for hint menus - I have my hints in a separate file.

Thank you so much!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4111&start=0#p29569
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: New Extension
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-07 13:01:00

Thanks for documenting this and uploading it, Jim.

You deserve credit as well; the initial code that gave rise to the extension came from you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=30#p29570
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-01-07 13:51:14

Sounds good that there's some latitude for movement.

With the fingertips I'm also wondering if it's OK to use an external file to keep track of how many times a person has played the game. Maybe to nudge them on to the next after 15 moves?

Would this muck with the medium/whom we want to send this game out to (presumably non-IFers who may play this over the web or with data files) and so forth?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4113&start=0#p29571
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Whispers?
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-01-07 14:36:56

Important considerations:

1) An IF Whispers generally produces something about as serious as the average speed-IF, probably rather less easy to play, is likely to attract about the same amount of attention, and requires considerably more work from each participant (and a lot more from the organiser). This is not intended as a discouragement; it's just setting expectations. Like speed-IF, IF Whispers is mostly for the benefit of the authors, not the audience.

2) The organiser should ideally be someone who's fairly fluent at coding, with the time and ability to catch and eliminate major bugs on fairly short notice, as well as brushing up code with dummy objects and stuff to get it ready for the next participant.

3) Participants should be very. strongly. encouraged. to heavily annotate their code. Otherwise, half the work lies in figuring out what on earth the previous player was trying to get at. (This only constitutes fun for a small subset of people.)

Speaking personally, I feel I've got all I'm ever going to out of IF Whispers; if I want a crazy fun thing I'd prefer speed-IF, and if I want a fruitful many-hands collaboration I'd look for something with much stronger authority for the organiser / lead designer / primary author. But it's definitely a fun thing to do once or twice.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=40#p29572
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-01-07 15:33:34

There shouldn't be a limit, but you might be running into [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=587]Inform Bug 587[/url].  What happens if you apply the fix in the bug report's comments to IndexedText.i6t, which is in your Inform install?  (While you're at it, you might as well apply the fix for [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=593]Bug 593[/url] too.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4112&start=0#p29573
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Custom Verbs - Help System
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-07 15:38:09

If it's still not working, I would have to speculate about why. You don't need to add anything to GameMainDef. (a) Have you added your hints.t file (or whatever it's called to your Project? If so, then ... oh, I'll bet I know. By default, goals are not open. To each Goal object within a HintMenu, you need to add:

[code]openWhenTrue = true[/code]

This will cause the Hint menu to display. Try it and let us know if it doesn't work. The conditions for when a Goal is open or closed can be made sensitive to the game conditions, but the line above will make the Goal always available.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=30#p29574
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2012-01-07 15:46:48

I think you can do that without an external file, if you [i]fake[/i] the one-move restriction. I haven't tried it myself, but I think the way [i]Aisle[/i] restarts you so effortlessly is by just waiting for any key and then "restoring the initial state," i.e. printing the room description again.

Assuming you have a winning move, let's say it's "digging my grave":

[code]Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short.

Hall of Heads is a room.

After doing something other than digging my grave in The Hall of Heads:
     if the turn count is 15, say "Here's a hint: try digging your own grave.";
     wait for any key;
     try looking.[/code]

I don't know if "if the turn count is 15" is the proper syntax; also, I don't know if you can use "something other than" with an After rule. These questions are left as exercises to readers who know Inform better than I do. Also I didn't bother to define "digging my grave." Whatever. WHAT[i]EVER.[/i]

The trick is to make the text block for each of your supported actions [i]look[/i] like it's the "end of the game." You also don't want any action to actually change the game state (so, "instead of taking," not "after taking," etc.).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=40#p29575
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-07 16:12:16

And that's another problem removed from this world. Cheers, mate!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=30#p29576
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-01-07 16:13:14

Ooh, neat. The example definitely works to show where it's going--no need to make a full program out of it.

So I guess we could have a fake endgame screen, where restarting would still retain values like all actions you've tried. Maybe we could even make a tribute-album-specific extension for those who want to include a small abuse like this in their fingertips.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=40#p29577
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-07 16:16:08

[quote="Basti50"]I've got just one more general question: It recently came to my attention that arrays will probably get included in a later Inform 7 release. Would it be a good idea to switch over to those instead of lists? (For faster performance or other advantages)[/quote]

Personally, I wouldn't wait. It will probably be at least a couple of months before I7 arrays are available; there are still many, many bug reports to be resolved before a new version of the software can be released. The performance you're getting currently isn't bad, and there's no guarantee that it will be better using arrays. 

Also, I haven't seen any specs for I7 arrays, but I would bet that they are intended to be static rather than dynamic. If that's so, lists are also more flexible: they can be created on the fly (allowing you to load maps from external files, for example), or change their size dynamically. (Whether multidimensional arrays will be included in I7 is another question--I believe you would need those for what you're doing.)

Waiting means a serious loss of momentum for little clear gain. If you do some testing once the new version is released and you find that arrays will work better, revise at that time. But for now, you've got a project that's at least 85% done, and you may as well complete it!

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4113&start=0#p29578
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Whispers?
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-01-07 16:20:54

That's about what I expected. I realize if I did organize this I would have to put in a lot of work in keeping things running smoothly. 

Speaking of which, what were the rules in past Whispers? I see references to time limits -- I assume participants had just a day or two to implement their section? How were past Whispers started and coordinated -- RAIF thread?

I kind of half wonder if some of the problems may be avoided by basing the game around one large static concept that each contributor builds off of, rather than the linear progression from one scene to the next used in past Whispers. For example, the first person creates an empty map with X rooms, one of which is well-implemented with a lot of interactive objects and a puzzle or two; each person after that fills in the details of one of the empty rooms, adding maybe a puzzle to a previous room with an item found here, and some objects that have interesting behavior elsewhere. You'd have an idea what might be in Greenhouse or Assembly Line, say, based on the room name, but unless the person before you was assigned that room you'd have no idea of the specifics.

But aside from the empty map idea I'm having trouble thinking of other possible structures to build around. And this might be a bad idea, anyway, getting too far away from the concept of Whispers, or too complicated.

[rant]Aside from the idea of basing the project around something crazy like a person or even a conversation...[/rant]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4113&start=0#p29579
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Whispers?
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-01-07 16:38:49

[quote="ChrisC"]Speaking of which, what were the rules in past Whispers? I see references to time limits -- I assume participants had just a day or two to implement their section? How were past Whispers started and coordinated -- RAIF thread?[/quote]
All the ones thus far have been started and managed on ifMUD.

[quote="ChrisC"]I kind of half wonder if some of the problems may be avoided by basing the game around one large static concept that each contributor builds off of, rather than the linear progression from one scene to the next used in past Whispers. For example, the first person creates an empty map with X rooms, one of which is well-implemented with a lot of interactive objects and a puzzle or two; each person after that fills in the details of one of the empty rooms, adding maybe a puzzle to a previous room with an item found here, and some objects that have interesting behavior elsewhere. You'd have an idea what might be in Greenhouse or Assembly Line, say, based on the room name, but unless the person before you was assigned that room you'd have no idea of the specifics.[/quote]
There's been some discussion before about doing things this way, and at least one project started along these lines; sadly it got stalled quite early on. But this approach has the potential to be a lot more interesting than another exquisite corpse, I think.

Other structural approaches I can think of:

[b]Central interaction mechanic[/b]. From the outset, establish the PC's main ways of dealing with the world; participants can come up with riffs and variations on this core skillset, but shouldn't go off in a totally different direction.

[b]Binding worldbuilding mandates[/b]. This is a story-RPG technique from games heavy on worldbuilding (though it might well have been lifted from some other realm), Each participant gets to declare X positive and negative facts about the world's premises, and other players have to respect them. E.g., "no magic, hunger puzzles, quest-object girlfriends; yes unrealistic heroic violence, TALK TO conversation, polytheism." (I've not seen this technique applied in groups larger than 4 or so, though, so I dunno. It relies quite a lot on trusting the other players, too; you might need a way to deal with a Yes subject that everybody else hates.) This would be one good way to restrict the surreal dream-journey logic that IF Whispers gravitates towards.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4112&start=0#p29580
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Custom Verbs - Help System
User: baiguai / DateTime: 2012-01-07 17:54:08

That was exactly it! Thanks! I think I will still use the custom help command, just to show some tips on general IF syntax etc - because I don't want players to have to deal with the hints warning etc when they are looking for general help as opposed to hints... and I'll just basically have one help message for them.

Thank you so much, I have a feeling at least one of my puzzles may cause a hint to be useful, we'll see.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=30#p29582
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-01-07 18:55:38

Nice proof of concept, but I doubt anyone actually plays it.

If I absolutely had to play it, I'd make sure I'd lose before killing any aliens. Because, if I understand right, the more aliens you kill, the more random files you lose.

That does not encourage playing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4113&start=0#p29583
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Whispers?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-07 21:06:40

I have an idea for one, which would probably be a lot more work than you want, and might require a very firm hand on the tiller:

[spoiler]Use the structure of [i]If On A Winter's Night A Traveler[/i]. Start with the player getting ready at his/her computer, downloading the eagerly awaited game "Whatever the game is called", have them play through a little bit of it and find that it's the IntroComp release, break out into the metagame where the player visits the if-archive to download the full version, have that turn out to be a completely different game that dead-ends in some other fashion, etc. etc. At least one time you would have a game that dead-ends with an insoluble problem and in the metagame the player has to go download a walkthrough, which of course opens up as another game that you don't finish.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=30#p29584
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: xyzzy / DateTime: 2012-01-07 21:32:09

Hi, I'm new.

Interesting. Having a bit of free time on my hands I've decided to learn an IF language. My only previous experience was the Professional Adventure Writer on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, which is great but unfortunately the Windows port, WinPaw, is terribly unstable. Eventually narrowed it down to Inform 7 and TADS 3 & downloaded both. I don't know but I suspect perhaps TADS is more 'rigorous' but I'll be honest I found it waaaaaay too daunting, like trying to program in C++ when you're used to Visual Basic. So I'm going to give I7 a go and see how I get on with that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=30#p29585
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-07 22:22:03

[quote="Afterward"]I think you can do that without an external file, if you [i]fake[/i] the one-move restriction. I haven't tried it myself, but I think the way [i]Aisle[/i] restarts you so effortlessly is by just waiting for any key and then "restoring the initial state," i.e. printing the room description again.[/quote]

I can't imagine it would need to be any other way ... since all the game needs to do is print a string in response to the player's action, there's no need to actually let any action affect the gameworld; there's no modeling, no state-tracking, etc. The gameworld remains pristine, so just reiterating the opening crawl equals a full restart.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4093&start=10#p29586
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Harmonizing Glk file suffixes?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-08 00:01:54

[quote]If you open a resource as text and read it with glk_get_line_stream, am I right that the only recognised line separator should be ASCII 10?[/quote]

Good point. I'll add that.

[quote]What happens if a game tries to write to such a read-only stream? Is it undefined bevaiour?[/quote]

Yes. Same as if you tried to write to a file stream that was opened with filemode_Read. All of my library will fatal-error if you try this.

[quote]for example, on Windows, colons, asterisks and question marks will also need to be removed[/quote]

Geez, really? How 90s. :)

[quote]Is stripping off any extension on the name supplied by the game a good idea?[/quote]

For the sake of simplicity, I'm going to say yes. 

[quote]would it be better to look for a file under an old name/suffix only if the new name/suffix doesn't exist[/quote]

Right. I should have thought that through better.

[quote]If data files are saved in a common directory, then collisions between filenames could be an issue.[/quote]

True, but I think that this is too hypothetical to start engineering a solution right now. Game (and extension) authors can negotiate this on a case-by-case basis, and we'll see how that goes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4115&start=0#p29587
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Using Imperial units with the Metric Units extension
User: faiuwle / DateTime: 2012-01-08 00:49:17

I have a use for the Metric Units extension, but I am not really all that conversant in metric units and I don't care too much about rounding errors, so I'd like to be able to say things in the source like "the height of a person is usually about 5 foot 6" and have Inform convert this into 167.64 centimeters (give or take) for me, but I can't seem to figure out how to make this happen.  I tried:

[code]To decide which length is about (X - a number) foot (Y - a number): decide on ((X * 12 + Y) * 2.54) centimeters.
To decide which length is about (X - a number) feet: decide on X foot 0.
To decide which length is about (X - a number) inch: decide on 0 foot X.
To decide which length is about (X - a number) inches: decide on 0 foot X.
[...]
A thing has a length called the height.  The height of a person is usually 5 foot 6.[/code]

But Inform says:
[quote]Problem. In the sentence 'The height of a person is usually about 5 foot 6'  , it looks as if you intend 'The height of a person is usually about 5 foot 6' to be asserting something, but that tries to set the value of the 'height' property to an object - which must be wrong because this property has to be a length.[/quote]

What is the magic syntax that makes this work?

ETA:  After experimenting, it seems that to really get the calculations right, the functions have to be like this:
[code]To decide what length is about (X - a number) foot (Y - a number) (this is imperial-conversion):
  decide on (((X * 12) + Y) * 127cm) / 50.
To decide what length is about (X - a number) feet: decide on imperial-conversion applied to X and 0.
To decide what length is about (X - a number) inches: decide on imperial-conversion applied to 0 and X.[/code]
It will let me assign the result using "let" and can print them out using "say", but I can't use it as a default value or in any phrase using "is".  This is very tiresome.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=30#p29588
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-08 02:25:44

If you know Visual Basic, how can C++ be "waaaaaay" too daunting rather that "somewhat" daunting"?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=30#p29589
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: xyzzy / DateTime: 2012-01-08 04:29:42

[quote="RealNC"]If you know Visual Basic, how can C++ be "waaaaaay" too daunting rather that "somewhat" daunting"?[/quote]

It's just the way my 900 page learn C++ tome has been sitting on my bookshelf glaring at me for the past couple of years. Plus I've always struggled with Object Oriented programming - Just don't find it intuititive and natural, even if it is the 'in' thing. Having grown up with old-fashioned procedural programming it just leaves me cold.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4113&start=0#p29590
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Whispers?
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-01-08 04:34:01

[quote="maga"]
All the ones thus far have been started and managed on ifMUD.[/quote]That makes sense. I guess I'll be hanging out on #ifwhispers to try to gauge interest.

[quote="maga"][quote="ChrisC"]I kind of half wonder if some of the problems may be avoided by basing the game around one large static concept that each contributor builds off of, rather than the linear progression from one scene to the next used in past Whispers. For example, the first person creates an empty map with X rooms, one of which is well-implemented with a lot of interactive objects and a puzzle or two; each person after that fills in the details of one of the empty rooms, adding maybe a puzzle to a previous room with an item found here, and some objects that have interesting behavior elsewhere. You'd have an idea what might be in Greenhouse or Assembly Line, say, based on the room name, but unless the person before you was assigned that room you'd have no idea of the specifics.[/quote]
There's been some discussion before about doing things this way, and at least one project started along these lines; sadly it got stalled quite early on. But this approach has the potential to be a lot more interesting than another exquisite corpse, I think.

Other structural approaches I can think of:

[b]Central interaction mechanic[/b]. From the outset, establish the PC's main ways of dealing with the world; participants can come up with riffs and variations on this core skillset, but shouldn't go off in a totally different direction.

[b]Binding worldbuilding mandates[/b]. This is a story-RPG technique from games heavy on worldbuilding (though it might well have been lifted from some other realm), Each participant gets to declare X positive and negative facts about the world's premises, and other players have to respect them. E.g., "no magic, hunger puzzles, quest-object girlfriends; yes unrealistic heroic violence, TALK TO conversation, polytheism." (I've not seen this technique applied in groups larger than 4 or so, though, so I dunno. It relies quite a lot on trusting the other players, too; you might need a way to deal with a Yes subject that everybody else hates.) This would be one good way to restrict the surreal dream-journey logic that IF Whispers gravitates towards.[/quote]
I especially like this last idea. I kind of worry that it might force the game to go through a pre-planning stage before any can start writing, to negotiate the premise. Unless everyone only proposed their rules when they made their submission, and they only applied from that section on.

I'm not sure how to resolve the hated-rule problem. Anything like a voting/veto system wouldn't really work considering the asynchronous nature of communications.

What about something like this: Everyone can set up to five positive [i]or[/i] negative rules, one of each of: A) world/setting/background facts; B) the player character; C) other characters; D) actions; E) plot/goals/obstacles. Or, a participant can forgo adding two rules to unmake any one previous rule (or forgo 4 new rules to unmake 2 old ones). Any sections written in between would be unchanged; the new ruleset would take effect from that section on. Does that seem too chaotic, or should it contain the crazy well enough?

[quote="matt w"]I have an idea for one, which would probably be a lot more work than you want, and might require a very firm hand on the tiller:[/quote]Only if it's actually an alternate reality game that requires the player to physically perform those tasks to advance the plot  [emote]:twisted:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=30#p29591
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-08 05:18:10

I7 is object oriented. "is a" declares object instances.

I7: "The Kitchen is a room"
T3: "kitchen: Room"

In both cases, Kitchen is an object of class Room. "is" sets object properties.

I7: "The donut is edible"
T3: "donut.isEdible = true"

It's really not that different. If you don't like OOP, then I don't think any of the IF languages will look appealing to you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4115&start=0#p29592
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using Imperial units with the Metric Units extension
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-01-08 05:43:45

How do you use the units in the game? If you're not using metric units it seems to me you should just use imperial units as the basis instead of trying to convert them under the hood to metric. I'm not very familiar with the Metric Units extension but I have the impression that it just defines the units, but doesn't offer any additional features you couldn't do without it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=30#p29593
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: xyzzy / DateTime: 2012-01-08 05:56:25

Fair point, but I find the whole 'natural language' approach interesting & perhaps more intuitive. Could soften the blow of being OO (then again could not, don't know yet). I've read some of the criticism of I7 (some if it quite barbed I must say  [emote]:shock:[/emote]) but hey, you're never gonna please [i]all[/i] of the people [i]all[/i] of the time.

Basically, I want to spend my time writing [i]adventures[/i], not coding, if you get my drift. At the moment it's a toss-up between I7 & ADRIFT. I have no idea how it'll end up but it'll be lots fun finding out. I'll keep you posted.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=30#p29594
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-08 06:06:45

[quote="xyzzy"][quote="RealNC"]If you know Visual Basic, how can C++ be "waaaaaay" too daunting rather that "somewhat" daunting"?[/quote]

It's just the way my 900 page learn C++ tome has been sitting on my bookshelf glaring at me for the past couple of years. Plus I've always struggled with Object Oriented programming - Just don't find it intuititive and natural, even if it is the 'in' thing. Having grown up with old-fashioned procedural programming it just leaves me cold.[/quote]
Visual BASIC is as fully object-oriented as C++ starting with the .NET edition -- at least, that's what I heard.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=30#p29595
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-08 06:15:11

My fingertips entry will have automatic restarting (without any Restart, Restore, Quit menu) since I have already implemented this for my WIP. (I did it by hacking 'end the story' so the game only pretends to end, but actually merely resets all game variables manually to initial conditions, and then repeats the starting description and then 'resume the story' -- so I think it already qualifies as one of Afterward's 'fakes'.) I don't want to spend a large amount of time, so I'm just going to empty the shell of my WIP and replace it with a fingertips entry, keeping whatever hacks and innovations I feel would improve a fingertips entry, and discarding the rest. Parser errors will probably not count toward the time limit, because they don't in my WIP -- although I may not like the effect and may try to hack it so they do count.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=30#p29596
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-08 06:19:17

[quote="xyzzy"]Basically, I want to spend my time writing [i]adventures[/i], not coding, if you get my drift.[/quote]
The only way to do that is to be a writer and get someone else to do the coding; I7 is a programming language. Adrift might help in avoiding *some* programming. Quest too. So you might want to look into those.

One of the easiest IF programming languages out there should be Hugo. I don't know how similar to Basic is it though, as I don't know Basic at all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4093&start=20#p29597
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Harmonizing Glk file suffixes?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2012-01-08 06:25:51

[quote="DavidK"]It might be worth noting here that libraries may remove other characters - for example, on Windows, colons, asterisks and question marks will also need to be removed.[/quote]
To avoid cross-platform surprises, I suggest that the list of invalid characters is the same across platforms, so that those characters are removed everywhere and not just on Windows where it has to be done.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=30#p29603
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: xyzzy / DateTime: 2012-01-08 10:08:00

[quote="Laroquod"]Visual BASIC is as fully object-oriented as C++ starting with the .NET edition -- at least, that's what I heard.[/quote]
For the moment I'm sticking with VB6. partly because I'm used to it and don't like the principal of the .NET framework, but mostly because I don't think my prehistoric PC could cope with it  [emote]:([/emote]   It can wait until I buy a new laptop  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote] 

[quote="RealNC"]The only way to do that is to be a writer and get someone else to do the coding; I7 is a programming language. Adrift might help in avoiding *some* programming. Quest too. So you might want to look into those.[/quote]
Perhaps I misworded my comments. I enjoy coding and it is obviously an integral part of writing IF, but [i]for me[/i] it mustn't dominate, ie be too 'heavy' and an uphill struggle, otherwise you're spending all your time concentrating on trying to fathom the code and not enough time on the creative process.

Never heard of Quest. I'll check that out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=30#p29604
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-08 10:50:10

[quote="Laroquod"]Emotional congruency is the issue. Technically the out-of-world actions may, by classifying themselves differently, escape an academic accusation of breaking continuity; but it's a Pyrrhic victory, for in the emotional reality of the player, they do break that emotional congruity by 'taking the player out of the game'. As a designer, I just don't see any rational justification for that break; such breaks are to be done away with in narrative games, wherever possible.[/quote]
I can think of two ways to eliminate emotional incongruence. (a) Write a game in which the player never gets stuck, and never dies. (Eric and I did that in "Mrs. Pepper's Nasty Secret.") (b) Write conventional fiction rather than IF.

Even in these cases, however, the reader/player can put a bookmark in the book, or save the game, and not pick it up again for weeks, in which case emotional congruency is lost. I agree that a seamless experience is a desirable goal. I'm not sure the goal is [i]achievable[/i], that's all. Each author has to decide how best to approach that goal, and the best approach may differ from one project to another.

In conventional fiction, an author might write one novel that follows the viewpoint of a single lead character faithfully from start to finish. In another novel, the same author might switch from one viewpoint character to another, jump back and forth in time, or even insert editorial asides in his or her own voice. The first method is not [i]better [/i]than the second; it depends on the nature of the material one is working with.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=30#p29605
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-08 10:57:34

[quote="xyzzy"]Perhaps I misworded my comments. I enjoy coding and it is obviously an integral part of writing IF, but [i]for me[/i] it mustn't dominate, ie be too 'heavy' and an uphill struggle, otherwise you're spending all your time concentrating on trying to fathom the code and not enough time on the creative process.[/quote]
Programming is not creative? [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4115&start=0#p29627
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using Imperial units with the Metric Units extension
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-01-08 11:30:59

[quote="faiuwle"]I have a use for the Metric Units extension, but I am not really all that conversant in metric units and I don't care too much about rounding errors, so I'd like to be able to say things in the source like "the height of a person is usually about 5 foot 6" and have Inform convert this into 167.64 centimeters (give or take) for me, but I can't seem to figure out how to make this happen.[/quote]
Fortunately, I7 makes provision for expressing the same kov using what it calls "equivalent notations" (see ch 14.5, very bottom of page). Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to support multi-part notations for these equivalents, so "6 ft 5" is out. (This looks like a bug -- I'm going to mess around with it some more and start another thread to see if anyone has any insights before reporting it.) Note that you [i]can[/i] use both feet and inches as equivalents for already declared metric units, just not together:[code]Include Metric Units by Graham Nelson.

1in (in imperial units, in in) specifies a length equivalent to 25mm. [rounded from 25.4]
1ft (in imperial units, in ft) specifies a length equivalent to 12in.

[You can also substitute the previous two lines with the following two. Notice that the rounding errors will be different:]
[1ft (in imperial units, in ft) specifies a length equivalent to 305mm. [rounded from 304.8]
1in (in imperial units, in in) specifies a length equivalent to 25mm. [rounded from 25.4]]

A thing has a length called the height. The height of a thing is usually 1ft.
The height of a person is usually 66in.

Lab is a room. A stick is in the Lab.
Sam and Dwight are men in the Lab.
The height of Dwight is 83in.

Instead of examining a thing:
	say "[height of the noun in metric units] or [height of the noun in ft] or [height of the noun in in]."
	
test me with "x me / x stick / x sam / x dwight".[/code]

HTH,

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=30#p29628
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-01-08 11:53:12

Here's what I've got. It's a bit long, so I spoilered it, but it's code. I like this better than having to retype restart all the time. Thanks everyone for your suggestions.

Copy/modify/nitpick/(ETA: ignore) as you please, anyone with a fingertip.

[spoiler]"onemover" by Andrew

include basic screen effects by Emily Short.

Obligatory Room Name is a room.

A window is scenery in Obligatory Room Name.

your-ending is text that varies. your-ending is usually "".

rule for printing a parser error when the latest parser error is the I beg your pardon error:
	say "You can't think of what to do.[paragraph break]";
	tryitagain;
	
rule for printing a parser error:
	say "Oops! That didn't do anything at all.[paragraph break]";
	tryitagain;

every turn:
	tryitagain;

ways-to-end is a number that varies. verbs-guessed is a number that varies.

to tryitagain:
	if your-ending is "":
		say "Hm, that wasn't a very creative way to die. You need to do better! It's for the general good!";
	otherwise if your-ending is a movetry listed in table of accomplishments:
		choose row with movetry of your-ending in table of accomplishments;
		if there is an achieved entry and achieved entry is true:
			say "You already died that way. But I'll let you try again.";
		otherwise:
			now achieved entry is true;
			increment ways-to-end;
			if there is a verbguess entry:
				increment verbs-guessed;
			say "You found a new ending[if there is a verbguess entry], guessing a stupid verb in the process[end if]! That's [ways-to-end] found and [verbs-guessed] verbs guessed!";
	otherwise:
		say "BUG please mention [your-ending] to the author.";
	now your-ending is "";
	reset-any-globals;
	wait for any key;
	say "[story description]";
	try looking;
	
to reset-any-globals:
	the rule succeeds;
	
instead of taking inventory:
	say "You realize you are broke. You die from shame.";
	now your-ending is "wallet"

Rule for constructing the status line: 
    center "Fingertips Title Here" at row 1; 
    rule succeeds.

table of accomplishments
movetry	achieved	verbguess
"wallet"	false
"xyzzy"	--	1

chapter xyzzying

xyzzying is an action applying to nothing.

understand the command "xyzzy" as something new.

understand "xyzzy" as xyzzying.

carry out xyzzying:
	now your-ending is "xyzzy";
	say "Well, I'll put something clever here eventually.";[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=30#p29629
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: TheOtherMattW / DateTime: 2012-01-08 11:55:42

[quote="RealNC"][quote="xyzzy"]Perhaps I misworded my comments. I enjoy coding and it is obviously an integral part of writing IF, but [i]for me[/i] it mustn't dominate, ie be too 'heavy' and an uphill struggle, otherwise you're spending all your time concentrating on trying to fathom the code and not enough time on the creative process.[/quote]
Programming is not creative? [emote];)[/emote][/quote]

Now you're misunderstanding xyzzy on purpose [emote];)[/emote] Of course, programming can be a very creative enterprise. But I guess it is very clear that the mindset of the programmer and of the author of a story are quite different. What xyzzy might have been trying to say (at least as far as I understand it) is that he prefers the latter to dominate the process of writing IF. 

And I guess he wants his IF authoring tool of choice to reflect that; hence, TADS 3 might not be an ideal choice [b]for him[/b].

I am sure you got that; I feel that you're simply objecting to his use of "creative" as describing the non-programming part of writing IF. Words can have more than one meaning, though; it is quite common to distinguish between the creative roles in film-making, for example (director, actors, writer) versus the non-creative (producer, agents, casting director), notwithstanding the fact that producing/casting a movie can be a very creative task a well.

Matt

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=40#p29630
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: N723 / DateTime: 2012-01-08 12:30:27

[quote="Laroquod"][quote="xyzzy"][quote="RealNC"]If you know Visual Basic, how can C++ be "waaaaaay" too daunting rather that "somewhat" daunting"?[/quote]

It's just the way my 900 page learn C++ tome has been sitting on my bookshelf glaring at me for the past couple of years. Plus I've always struggled with Object Oriented programming - Just don't find it intuititive and natural, even if it is the 'in' thing. Having grown up with old-fashioned procedural programming it just leaves me cold.[/quote]
Visual BASIC is as fully object-oriented as C++ starting with the .NET edition -- at least, that's what I heard.

Paul.[/quote]
No, it's as object-oriented as C#. C++ isn't object-oriented in Visual Studio.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=40#p29631
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-08 12:46:14

[quote="N723"][quote="Laroquod"]Visual BASIC is as fully object-oriented as C++ starting with the .NET edition -- at least, that's what I heard.

Paul.[/quote]
No, it's as object-oriented as C#. C++ isn't object-oriented in Visual Studio.[/quote]
I haven't had occasion to learn C# yet, but C++ without object-orientation would not really be C++, at least not by my definition of those terms.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=30#p29632
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-08 12:55:27

[quote="Jim Aikin"]In conventional fiction, an author might write one novel that follows the viewpoint of a single lead character faithfully from start to finish. In another novel, the same author might switch from one viewpoint character to another, jump back and forth in time, or even insert editorial asides in his or her own voice. The first method is not [i]better [/i]than the second; it depends on the nature of the material one is working with.[/quote]
True, but we are not talking about editorial asides here or a narrative voice -- what we are talking about is just menu options, that's all: just menu options. Restart. Restore (plus a file dialog). Quit. Nothing narratively redeeming about it. But you are also correct that utter seamlessness is not achievable in a retry loop; however, it's not all or nothing. The less time spent out-of-world on pointless action, the better. When one is pulling a rabbit out of a hat, one does not show the audience the secret compartment in the hat (or whatever -- I don't know how they do that trick). You are still pulling a fast one, mind you, because magic isn't real, but if you are going to do it, do it gracefully and don't call attention to the secret gears.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4110&start=0#p29633
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx on Portable Phones
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-08 12:59:27

On iPhones he can use Frotz. Nothing native yet for Android, but he could try Parchment I guess?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=40#p29634
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2012-01-08 13:03:08

…and with a looser definition, you could call VB6 object oriented, too. But that's taking the discussion off on a tangent, off topic, a bit pointless (and certainly, along with the other posts on that subject, completely missing the point), so…

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=30#p29635
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-08 13:13:28

A couple of indie platformy games I've been playing make me think that how you deal with death should depend on the game. 

VVVVVV has automatic checkpoints pretty much everywhere, and death takes you back to the checkpoint instantly. This is because everything in the game kills you instantly. I finished my basic playthrough with something like four hours of gameplay (I know, I'm a noob) and around 1250 deaths. That's one every 11.5 seconds. Asking the player to confirm restoring the game would be intolerable. It also has no compunction about the fourth wall -- the optional collectibles are called "shiny trinkets" in-game, and there's a possible bit of dialogue where one of the NPCs wonders what the checkpoint is and whether they should take it back to the ship for analysis. (The PC implores him not to think about it.) It does have a manual quicksave for preserving progress when you quit.

Cave Story has relatively sparse save points that you have to trigger manually, and when you die it asks you if you want to restore or quit to the menu. This works partly because you don't die that often; by the end of the game you've accumulated a lot of hit points, and even if some challenge is defeating you every time it's going to take a while to do it. (Note: Does not apply to the Special Level of Hell. I have not tried the Special Level of Hell. You think I'm crazy?) Also, pacing is a big deal; the big boss fights are supposed to be pulse-pounding, but even in-game they're broken up by calmer interludes; not just dialogue but parts where the gameplay isn't supposed to be as frenetic. It makes sense to give you a breather before you restart, or a hook not to restart at all (though it'd be better if it just quit the game instead of sending you back to the menu). 

This makes me think Paul is right about the tight retry loop -- if you have a game with a linear structure and a tight timed puzzle, then you can just send the player back to the beginning of the puzzle when it goes off, and you should. Everybody Dies does this; Earl Grey does something like this, I guess, thought the first time it happens it does a poor job of communicating that the loop is resetting (this was in fact where I ragequit). It would be less practical for games with broader structures, I think, though maybe still desirable. (But how would you do it in Heated?)

I disagree about the necessity of death, though, but I don't have time to explain it now and also haven't thought it through.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=30#p29636
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-01-08 13:18:36

Quick thought - a quicksave/quickload key works wonders in most games. Works just as well in Condemned (doesn't sacrifice immersion even though I'm constantly quicksaving/loading - it's good enough to realise that save/restore is not your enemy, unlike, say, Dark Corners of the Earth) as it did in Gabriel Knight 3.

EDIT - Actually, the more I think about it, the more I like the idea of an interpreter mapping a key (like F5) to silently (if possible) save a "Bookmark.sav" file, and another to load it - always subject to any restrictions the game itself may make on saving, and still outputting the regular "Game successfully saved/restored" messages.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4110&start=0#p29637
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx on Portable Phones
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-01-08 13:18:50

Unfortunately, the game was a little bit too big to compile to z-machine (probably due to my inefficient code), so I had to use glulx.  I thought that Frotz only plays z-machine games -- is that not correct?

Thanks.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4110&start=0#p29638
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx on Portable Phones
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-08 13:25:02

iPhone Frotz now includes Glulxe.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4115&start=0#p29639
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using Imperial units with the Metric Units extension
User: fgevaerts / DateTime: 2012-01-08 13:47:56

To get rid of the rounding error, you could first define a new metric unit that's 0.1mm, and base the imperial units off that. This will reduce the upper end of the range for metric units (from about 2100km to about 210km), so it depends on what sort of thing you want to measure.

[code]
1dmm specifies a length scaled down by 10000.
1in (in imperial units, in in) specifies a length equivalent to 254dmm.
1ft (in imperial units, in ft) specifies a length equivalent to 12in.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4110&start=0#p29640
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx on Portable Phones
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-01-08 14:01:16

Thanks.  Where is it available?


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=40#p29641
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-08 14:19:14

[quote="N723"][quote="Laroquod"]Visual BASIC is as fully object-oriented as C++ starting with the .NET edition -- at least, that's what I heard.[/quote]
No, it's as object-oriented as C#. C++ isn't object-oriented in Visual Studio.[/quote]
C++ supports OOP regardless of what implementation you use (GCC, Visual Studio, Intel C++, whatever.) It's an international standard. Maybe you're confusing something here?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4093&start=20#p29642
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Harmonizing Glk file suffixes?
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-01-08 14:35:01

Maybe this is stretching the original proposal a bit, but could there be some mechanism to ask the interpreter what it would name a file?  For instance, if a story can't find some data it needs, it might want to tell the player the filename it was looking under.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4093&start=20#p29643
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Harmonizing Glk file suffixes?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-08 14:53:27

[quote="zarf"][quote]If data files are saved in a common directory, then collisions between filenames could be an issue.[/quote]

True, but I think that this is too hypothetical to start engineering a solution right now. Game (and extension) authors can negotiate this on a case-by-case basis, and we'll see how that goes.[/quote]

What is the expected behavior if a game ships with a .glkdata file?

[list]
[*]Library reads from the common directory (only), writes to the common directory (only), fails to open file[/*:m]
[*]Library reads from the common directory, then game directory, then writes to the directory where the file was found[/*:m]
[*]Library silently moves data files to the common directory, then reads / writes from there[/*:m][/list:u]

I feel like you're basically telling us "do it like Zoom does it" in the name of data-sharing and cross-library compatibility, without really offering any solid guarantees to authors that this new functionality will be reliable. If libraries couldn't even agree on file extensions, how will they agree on where common data files should be stored? Absent agreement, Zoom will write its files in one place, Gargoyle in another, and even if both libraries are now looking for .glkdata files, they'll look in different places and won't come up with the same result.

In actual practice, I do a lot of data file sharing, but it's with the same game running under the same interpreter on different platforms, synched via Dropbox. Moving files out of the game's directory and into some unsynchronized cache would be a big step backwards in ease of use for me. It also complicates the obvious, low-effort solution for sharing data between games: have the player store the games in the same directory, or copy the data files from one directory to the other.

The most logical place to store a game's data files is in the directory with that game. Anything else is going to need a more rigorous treatment.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4110&start=0#p29644
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx on Portable Phones
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-01-08 15:33:44

The same place every iOS app is: in the App Store. If he has an iPhone he'll know how to find it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4110&start=0#p29645
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx on Portable Phones
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-08 15:39:43

Note that it's called iFrotz.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4110&start=0#p29646
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx on Portable Phones
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-08 15:54:26

No, it's called "Frotz" in the App Store.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4093&start=20#p29647
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Harmonizing Glk file suffixes?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-01-08 15:56:22

I agree with Ben, they should be saved to the same location as the story file. That then will make it easy to share or protect the files.

Could the extensions be .data and .save instead? Glulx allows other io systems, and you should be able to play a story in fyrevm and then in gargoyle and have them access the same data files. Of course the other io system could just be designed to access .glkdata and .glksave, but i just don't see the need for glk to be in the extension.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4110&start=0#p29648
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx on Portable Phones
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-08 16:08:42

Hrm, wonder where I got that idea...?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=30#p29649
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-01-08 16:10:34

Err, more double posting...maybe nothing will come of this, but over at ifmud (ifmud.port4000.com) I just set up a tmbg channel (@joinchannel tmbg to get on it.)

Maybe for anyone motivated we can have a livechat session or 2 to nail down ideas.

MUSHclient is what I use, but maybe others have better recommendations.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4115&start=0#p29650
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using Imperial units with the Metric Units extension
User: faiuwle / DateTime: 2012-01-08 16:14:03

Ahh, thanks, I might try that.

Looking back at it (and being slightly less irked by it now), I note that I [i]can[/i] use the "about X foot Y" notation in the other decides (I must have forgotten the "about" one of the times I rewrote it, like I did in the original code, but I7 error messages are not real helpful for figuring out syntax errors), and it can also be used with "now".  If you try to use a variable with an initialization or a default value, you get a message about how it's not good to start things off with a variable value that can change, and if you try to initialize one variable to another, you get "At the start of play, variable values have to be set equal to definite constants, so this is not allowed."

Maybe it treats the results of functions as variables, even if they use constant arguments, because they could, in theory, try to access or modify global state variables that might not have been initialized yet?  I guess there isn't any kind of way to declare a const function which explicitly doesn't modify anything?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4115&start=0#p29651
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Using Imperial units with the Metric Units extension
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-08 16:30:20

[quote]Maybe it treats the results of functions as variables, even if they use constant arguments, because they could, in theory, try to access or modify global state variables that might not have been initialized yet?[/quote]

That's right. I7 doesn't have a notion of functions that are stateless or safe at compile time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4108&start=0#p29652
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Alpha testers wanted for a new CYOA tool from inkle
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-08 16:34:52

[quote="joningold"]before they move on to the Inform 7 and Varytale's of this world.[/quote]

Isn't Varytale dead? The last communication I can find from the team was in August... <a class="postlink" href="http://twitter.com/#!/Varytale">http://twitter.com/#!/Varytale</a>

Anyway, the inklewriter sounds neat!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=40#p29653
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-08 16:54:26

[b]@Basti:[/b] I want to get back in and give you some of the sort of beta feedback that you requested in your original post. Mostly on the docs (which I looked at over the Xmas holiday but somehow lost all my notes), but also on a couple of other points.

[b]Interrelationship with Glimmr[/b]
Having looked over the thread and the extension docs again, I'm not sure that it is user-friendly to include the Glimmr Image Font extension in the main extension. Only a small subset of users are likely to want to use this, but the inclusion of the font will add a hefty number of kilobytes (400 or 500) to every blorb file. Maybe you might consider releasing the image font as a display layer extension? Or include it in the documentation with a paste button, so that users can include it only if they want to?

More generally, would it be possible to structure R&D so that it didn't require Glimmr at all? If a user wants only to create a text-grid map, for example, then the full Glimmr isn't really necessary. (Ditto if they just want to use R&D for coordinate-based movement, without any display layer at all...) 

[b]AI - split out or not?[/b]
Splitting out the AI into its own extension is probably OK--it's a very simple division and not likely to confuse users--but I also don't think that it's a problem to leave it in the main extension. Removing the Glimmr Image Font requirement seems more important from the standpoint of keeping users happy  [emote]:)[/emote] 

[b]Coordinates[/b]
I don't understand why you changed the coordinate ordering for m_pos to (z,y,x). This seems like it is bound to create confusion, especially when there are statements like this in the docs: "IMPORTANT: The actual line-up of a set [for m_pos] is (z, y, x) and NOT (x, y, z), as the phrases would imply". Also, I don't know if it's is a typo or if the m_origin phrase really returns (x,y,z) instead of (z,y,x), but that's what the docs say: "m_origin of (t - a mappable thing) - Returns the origin in the (x, y, z) arrangement". Is there a good reason for using two coordinate orderings...?

[quote="Basti50"]
Documentation – Seeing as English isn't my first language, I'm especially worried that what I write might be perceived as frantic gibberish. Is the documentation comprehensible? Are there any segments which are too bloated or too vague? Are there parts of the examples which are hard to understand? Do you believe that, after reading the documentation, you've learned everything that needs to be known to utilize the extension or do you feel that there are notable gaps? Is the writing style too dull?[/quote]

The documentation is pretty comprehensible sentence-to-sentence. However, I think it would be more effective with (1) more big-picture conceptual overviews, as well as with (2) more detailed explanations of specific things.

[b]Conceptual overviews: [/b]R&D is big and complex, and the docs don't do much at all to give the reader an idea of the big picture, of how all the components work together, and what kind of work the author will be doing. How many "layers" of abstraction are there? What can I do with each layer? For example, it seems that the internal storage of the map is (almost?) totally abstracted from the display layer. That's important, because it suggests that I could use R&D to implement a room-less IF, where all movement was based on coordinates rather than rooms, and never even show a map with it at all. (Pretty cool!) 

Similarly, in making clear what the structure is and what R&D offers, it would be useful to make it clear what the author will need to do to use it. In other words, is R&D a minimal or a maximal implementation? For example, if I use R&D, do I have to code my own movement routines, or is that built in? (If I type NORTH when a map is displayed, will the avatar of the player automatically be moved north, or do I have to program that behavior myself?)

[b]More detailed explanation of specifics: [/b]R&D is complex and does many things in not-very-Informy ways. This isn't necessarily a bad thing--R&D is dealing with very different types of data from standard Inform--but it does mean that the intuitions of most Inform programmers will be confounded. As I was reading each section of R&D, I was left with many questions. I could usually work things out by studying the in-doc examplets and the main examples, but ideally I wouldn't need to study these things to understand how each piece fits in.  For example, right off the bat it would be nice if there were a description of how map data is stored, and possibly an explanation of why the author isn't allowed to write data directly to that structure. As I mentioned above, I lost all of the notest that I made a couple of weeks ago, but I include the below as an example of the kinds of questions that hit me when I read the section on map avatars. Hopefully, this will be helpful...

[rant]It's not clear from the docs whether m_actor and m_figure are two different things, or precisely how the two relate. Is an m_figure a separate object, a property of an m_actor...?

Make it more clear exactly how map actors work, and how the author can make something a map actor. For example, the suggested addition (in caps) to this sentence from the docs would help: "To decide whether something can or cannot be placed on a map, R&D makes the distinction between things and so called 'mappable' things. TO MAKE A THING MAPPABLE, SIMPLY DECLARE AN M_ACTOR FOR IT, E.G. THE M_ACTOR OF JILL IS AV_JILL."

The m_pos definition is hard to wrap your head around: "A map actor's current position which can contain any amount of coordinate sets."..."A map actor can be enlarged by adding more coordinate sets"..."we can also remove existing coordinate sets from map actors". I'd recommend adding a more complete explanation. Are these absolute coordinates or relative ones?  Why am I adding them? What does "enlarge" mean in this context? What does adding more coordinates do? What happens precisely when I remove coordinates? 

The img_ref list of coordinates could also use with a more explicit description. Does this list always have to include 8 numbers? If I don't want to use facing images, do I have to repeat the same image reference 8 times? Also, what if I want facing images for up and down, or even in and out? How would I add those?

What does the "map alter" phrase do? Is this how I'm supposed to change the img_ref after the fact?

The offset_coord property is confusing. The definition says "Will modify the position of the graphic in relation to the map actor's position. Each entry signals a change in the z-coordinate". But the example immediately below shows the offset_coord as { { -1, -1 } }, which looks like an (x,y) pair--how is the z-coordinate involved? Is it something to do with having multiple pairs, e.g. { {-1, -1}, {0, 0} }. If so, how does that work?

All this is ditto for the extension_value, whose definition is "works similar to offset_coord, only that here, the graphic of a map actor is extended in width and length per added z-coordinate", yet also seems in practice to be an x,y pair rather than a z...

And now I really don't understand why the coordinate for m_pos is (z,y,x), when elsewhere we seem to have (x,y)...?

The m_effect definition is totally opaque to me: "m_effect - A list that saves the current 'partially' true (entry 1), true (entry 2) and true (without repetition) (entry 3) environmental effects for a map actor". What are these? It sounds like this is just a summary of the environmental effects that impinge on the actor--i.e., that they are not something that the author sets manually, but are automatically set by R&D. But what do partially true, true, and true w/o repetition mean? Do I as the author need to do anything with this at all? If so, how would I get at it?[/rant]

R&D looks extremely powerful, and I think that it could lead to a number of different types of innovations in IF games. I hope you hear from a few more people about this public beta. 

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4123&start=0#p29655
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Report when sitting down.
User: peterlyberth / DateTime: 2012-01-08 17:33:19

Hi there. This is my first post and first story, so please, be gentle:-)

I want something very simple, but I just cant figure out how to accomplish it.

I just want to report when the player sits in a chair and thought it could be done like this:

Report when sitting in chair in library:
Say "The chair is surprisingly comfortable"

But that doesnt work.

Why?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4033&start=20#p29656
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Major Smarter Parser update
User: ZUrlocker / DateTime: 2012-01-08 17:39:27

Thanks Aaron.  I'm using a couple of other extensions (Assumed Conversers, Menus, Keyword Interface, Variable Time Control, Exit Lister...)  Not sure why any of these would conflict on Understand "yes" as a mistake, etc.  But I'll dig into it.  

Happy to hear about the body parts and other improvements.  (Ok, that sound weird.)
--Z

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4123&start=0#p29657
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Report when sitting down.
User: peterlyberth / DateTime: 2012-01-08 18:11:21

Just to inform; I use the report function when going up some stairs:
Report going up from the Hall:
say "Carefully testing each step for it’s sturdiness, 
you slowly make your way up the stairs.".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4123&start=0#p29658
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Report when sitting down.
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-01-08 18:14:43

The problem is that Inform 7, when used straight "out of the box," does not understand the concept of sitting.  You could define such a thing yourself, or you could use Emily Short's "Postures" extension: <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/Emily%20Short/Postures/index.html">http://inform7.com/extensions/Emily%20S ... index.html</a>

Alternatively, if you don't need to distinguish between different kinds of being on the chair (sitting and standing, for example), you just define the chair as an "enterable supporter" ("enterable" means the player can be on/in it, and "supporter" specifies on instead of in -- a steamer trunk might be an "enterable container" instead) and report on the player "entering the chair while in the library" instead.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=30#p29659
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: Janka / DateTime: 2012-01-08 18:15:08

To address Jim's original question, if it is absolutely inevitable to beat the warriors, why it must be that hard? If there is absolutely no context, like Jim wrote ("read the author's mind"), that puzzle makes no sense at all. As a general rule - and I think Jim knows that better than me - the game has to prepare the player with enough context so he is able to solve the puzzle without any out-of-game method. This includes brute-forcing inside the game (guess the verb, try any object), brute-forcing outside the game (save/die/retry), consulting a walkthrough or combinations thereof.

I think it's best to avoid these "all of sudden, it's obivous" puzzles at all. Or put them into a side story which doesn't have to be explored.

EDIT: I'd appreciate if there were some guards impossible to bypass on a *side*story. When the player achieved the main goal of the game, he is hinted how to bypass them by some of the NPCs and may play the extra. If he found out himself before, he would tell that to the baffled NPC in return and in consequence, the player character gets arrested for cheating.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4123&start=0#p29660
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Report when sitting down.
User: peterlyberth / DateTime: 2012-01-08 18:29:07

That worked like a charm! 

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=30#p29661
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-08 19:58:06

[quote="matt w"]I disagree about the necessity of death, though, but I don't have time to explain it now and also haven't thought it through.[/quote]
I wouldn't claim that death is necessary -- only that an abolition of it is counterproductive to good and exciting storytelling. And there is a certain school of thought in puzzle design that calls exactly for that abolition of death (or of otherwise coming to a dead-end that requires a replay of whatever duration). It is that school of thought that I believe has been responsible for a lot of really boring games. It's not impossible to write an exciting/interesting story with no irrevocable decisions and little sense of peril, but it is damned difficult. I would say that it is beyond most game designers' writing abilities, including, I suspect, my own. This is partially the reason that I do not set this sort of game as a task for myself. (The other part is that I don't prefer to play that way.) But someone else who is not me may just know in their hearts that they know exactly how to tell a story that is intriguing the entire way, without any terminal danger involved, and that they will not fall into any of the traps that have made a lot of the lesser no-dead-end games a real snooze. I wouldn't want to tell this person not to trust their gut. Because after all, that is all I'm doing. Which is why as always, YMMV. 8)

Paul.

P.S. Thanks for the game references for other examples that have taken a related approach.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4113&start=0#p29662
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Whispers?
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-01-08 20:41:36

[quote="ChrisC"][quote="maga"]
All the ones thus far have been started and managed on ifMUD.[/quote]That makes sense. I guess I'll be hanging out on #ifwhispers to try to gauge interest.[/quote]
The MUD has definite advantages; in particular, it's very easy to set up private channels for debugging, etc., but this wouldn't be hard to accomplish in other ways. Also, if you mostly organise it here you're likely to get a different crowd, who haven't done this before and might have fresh ideas / more enthusiasm.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=40#p29663
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-08 23:14:13

Well, thinking back to platformers, there are several artier platformers with no death that don't suffer for it, IMO; [url=http://armorgames.com/play/4850/small-worlds]Small Worlds[/url], [url=http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/488613]Nevermore 3[/url], [url=http://dai5ychain.net/beulah/]Beulah and the Hundred Birds[/url] off the top of my head. (Small Worlds is short but a masterpiece, Nevermore 3 is a leisurely game that might take half an hour or an hour, Beulah is just a sketch but [url=http://cardboardcomputer.com/games/]many other of Jake Elliott's non-platformer games are interesting from an IF standpoint[/url]). In these games, if you miss a jump, the punishment is just that you fall down a bit and have to repeat a part over again. These games are mostly about exploration but I can imagine a pretty hard platformer that worked that way. The penalty for not making a jump would just be that you stayed stuck.  

Those are obviously the exceptions in platformers, but I think that's because platforming usually involves honing a physical skill. If you jump and fail, that makes you practice the jump again until (with luck) you can do it. The challenge tends to be avoiding death. In puzzle IF, the default state is to be stuck; the goal is not to avoid obstacles but to find the way forward. So it makes sense that failure just leaves you stuck; and it would be simply obnoxious for failure to force you to repeat something you'd done successfully, when there isn't even any question of improving at it. 

Now of course auto-restarting from an auto-checkpoint would take care of that problem, since the checkpoint is presumably set every time you succeed at something -- if possible. But then are we really making irrevocable decisions? If we make the wrong decision, the game resets it for us. In a sense, that isn't much different from zarf-merciful games; instead of saying "That wouldn't be a good idea; the bugblatter beast would eat you," the game says "The bugblatter beast eats you. ***you have died*** Press any key. There is a bugblatter beast here!" But then, all peril in IF is a matter of suspending disbelief. Maybe it's easier to suspend disbelief about the existence of peril if the game actually kills and auto-revives you. (I don't see how the auto-checkpoint would work with you getting stuck in a dead end, though.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=40#p29664
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: xyzzy / DateTime: 2012-01-09 04:47:16

[quote="RealNC"]Programming is not creative? [emote];)[/emote][/quote]
Hmm. I can see you're going to be hard work  [emote];)[/emote] Of course programming is creative, but on an intellectual level. To me it is a tool (but fun and satisfying in its own right) used to transfer the make-believe world I see in my head, in my imagination, to the computer screen.

This is why I think writing IF is so damn cool. It is a perfect marriage between the creative/imaginative and the technical/intellectual, if you understand me.

[quote="MattW"]Now you're misunderstanding xyzzy on purpose [emote];)[/emote] Of course, programming can be a very creative enterprise. But I guess it is very clear that the mindset of the programmer and of the author of a story are quite different. What xyzzy might have been trying to say (at least as far as I understand it) is that he prefers the latter to dominate the process of writing IF. 

And I guess he wants his IF authoring tool of choice to reflect that; hence, TADS 3 might not be an ideal choice [b]for him[/b].

I am sure you got that; I feel that you're simply objecting to his use of "creative" as describing the non-programming part of writing IF. Words can have more than one meaning, though...[/quote]
Well said.

[quote="Trumgottist"]…and with a looser definition, you could call VB6 object oriented, too. But that's taking the discussion off on a tangent...[/quote]
VB6 is object-based. VB.NET is fully object-oriented, but as you say that's going a bit OT!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4124&start=0#p29665
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Iterating through parameter lists - I6 bug or I7 bug?
User: faiuwle / DateTime: 2012-01-09 05:37:50

Trying to iterate through a list passed as a parameter brings up a strange error where the I7 compiler succeeded, but the I6 compiler failed to compile the translated code.  For example:

[code]To decide whether list iteration works on (L - a list of numbers):
	repeat with n running through L:
		say "check![line break]";
	decide yes.
	
Test is a room.[/code]

It works if you declare a local list variable and let it equal the parameter and then iterate through [i]that[/i], though.  The error from the I6 compiler is:

[quote]C:\Program Files\Inform 7\Compilers\inform-632 \
    -wSDv5 +include_path=..\Source,.\ auto.inf output.z5
Inform 6.32 for Win32 (18th November 2010)
auto.inf(25616): Error:  No such constant as "LIST_OF_TY_GetItem"
auto.inf(25616): Error:  No such constant as "LIST_OF_TY_GetLength"
Compiled with 2 errors and 1385 suppressed warnings

Compiler finished with code 1[/quote]

I figured it was a translation problem, and I was going to report it, but then it occurred to me that since modifying parameters can be a bad idea in some contexts if you don't know what you're doing [is this true inform?], maybe I6 had some kind of compiler error to keep you from messing with the parameters (though this isn't really changing anything), in which case it should be a [characteristically obfuscated [emote]:P[/emote]] error in I7, too.  I guess it's not really a major issue when there's an easy workaround, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=40#p29666
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-09 06:07:51

[quote="matt w"]In these games, if you miss a jump, the punishment is just that you fall down a bit and have to repeat a part over again.[/quote]
Yeah. It's a way to do a tight retry loop without technically having a 'dead end' although the falling down functions as a 'falling back', which is what closes the loop. The existence of games like this is why I qualified 'death' as 'otherwise arriving at a dead-end requiring a replay of whatever duration' and also why I qualified by specifying 'narrative'. Storywise, the part where you fall down a hundred times before making the jump, is omitted, just like any reset after a dead-end. It seems unlikely that your character is portrayed as a klutz who only gets it right once in a while. These *are* narrative dead ends, only cloaked, by situating them such that you can reset the situation merely by stepping to the left or whatever. It's simple and it makes a lot of sense. But it's a rare situation where a plausible version of this technique can be identified; sticking to it in *every* kind of narrative situation feels too much like throwing away a cardinal rule of good storytelling: "Raise the stakes."

[quote="matt w"]So it makes sense that failure just leaves you stuck; and it would be simply obnoxious for failure to force you to repeat something you'd done successfully, when there isn't even any question of improving at it.[/quote]
It depends on how much natural/randomised variation there is on every run; repeating something you've already nailed could be a way of getting more story out of it. If there is a possibility that a fresh combination of events could randomly occur, then it could remain fun, but absent that, I basically agree with you here.

[quote="matt w"]Now of course auto-restarting from an auto-checkpoint would take care of that problem, since the checkpoint is presumably set every time you succeed at something -- if possible. But then are we really making irrevocable decisions? If we make the wrong decision, the game resets it for us. In a sense, that isn't much different from zarf-merciful games; instead of saying "That wouldn't be a good idea; the bugblatter beast would eat you," the game says "The bugblatter beast eats you. ***you have died*** Press any key. There is a bugblatter beast here!" But then, all peril in IF is a matter of suspending disbelief. Maybe it's easier to suspend disbelief about the existence of peril if the game actually kills and auto-revives you.[/quote]
Good points and I agree with your conclusion — it's about the robustness with which you convey the idea that there are high stakes involved for the *character*. It's not really about punishing the *players themselves* for screwing up; as I mentioned, I don't really believe in that (except insofar as a 'punishment' interlude might make for good storytelling -- a la Spider and Web).

[quote="matt w"](I don't see how the auto-checkpoint would work with you getting stuck in a dead end, though.)[/quote]
I wouldn't choose when to checkpoint based solely on the player's last success. I am almost certainly going to write a specific ending for every way of failing in the story -- so it's not that much extra work to hardcode a more precise checkpoint at the entrance to every puzzle area/event, setting the player up for the available coming failures. (In my WIP however I solve this in an entirely different way. The game restarts you from the beginning of a level, every time. The only reason this hopefully isn't terrible is that every playthrough of a level is highly randomised and variable, and also very short. And playing the same journey over and over is, idiosyncratically, required by the narrative [i]even if you play it perfectly and never die[/i]; it's hard to explain further in abstract, non-spoilery terms — anyway, I wouldn't recommend it as a general solution. I'm not even sure it's working for me. Experimentation is in progress.)

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=40#p29667
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-09 07:04:47

[quote="xyzzy"][quote="Trumgottist"]…and with a looser definition, you could call VB6 object oriented, too. But that's taking the discussion off on a tangent...[/quote]
VB6 is object-based. VB.NET is fully object-oriented, but as you say that's going a bit OT![/quote]
I felt it was on-topic because your objection to object-oriented languages seemed to be based partly on the premise that Visual Basic isn't one. I think that you are going to have to 'go there' eventually and stop being afraid of OOP. The writing is on the wall.

However, I use i7 and I can highly recommend it. And I agree that it puts the mind in a different, more 'writerly' mode; however, it is still very painstaking and meticulous, so that a different mindset does not really translate into being able to code with the same 'flow' as a writer writes. But it makes it easier to keep your brain in that writerly place throughout the process. This is really more a question of mental discipline and which tool promotes which kind. I'm sure there are people who can combine both mindsets freely all the time, and thus i7's promotion of the writer's mind is irrelevant to them; they can access it at any time, anyway (or else it just isn't that important to them to be 'writerly' b/c they don't do that kind of game).

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=40#p29668
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: xyzzy / DateTime: 2012-01-09 07:51:51

[quote="Laroquod"]I think that you are going to have to 'go there' eventually and stop being afraid of OOP. The writing is on the wall.[/quote]
Yes, I'm sure you are right. I don't know if it's just the way my brain works or because I didn't grow up with OOP, or what, but I just find concepts like classes, polymorphism & inheritance incomprehensible gibberish  [emote]:?[/emote]. One day I'll knuckle down and get my head round it. I'm hoping learning I7 will kind of break me in gently.

[quote="Laroquod"]However, I use i7 and I can highly recommend it. And I agree that it puts the mind in a different, more 'writerly' mode; however, it is still very painstaking and meticulous, so that a different mindset does not really translate into being able to code with the same 'flow' as a writer writes. But it makes it easier to keep your brain in that writerly place throughout the process...[/quote]
This is what I wanted to hear; and the reason I gravitated towards it. I'm looking forward to checking it out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4124&start=0#p29669
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Iterating through parameter lists - I6 bug or I7 bug?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-01-09 07:57:06

The list support code from the template layer is fairly bulky, so it only gets compiled into the project if a list is actually declared (either as a local or global variable, or a property). IIRC, this is also true of indexed text. When these features were added, I think Graham was worried that automatically including both of them would make zcode games of any size almost impossible to make.
[quote="faiuwle"]It works if you declare a local list variable and let it equal the parameter and then iterate through [i]that[/i], though.[/quote]
Yeah, note that you don't need to use the list or even create a list with the same kind of value as the phrases which use lists. Either of these will work in your code:
[code]Dummy list is a list of text that varies.
[or]
A person has a list of text called the sayings.[/code]
This is inconvenient if you're creating an extension with list processing code, but don't want to add a dummy list just to get the thing to compile. In that case, just add in the missing template code by hand, which I've temporarily forgotten how to do -- I'll get back to you if someone else doesn't chime in first.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4125&start=0#p29670
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Are neuter, male and female all mutually exclusive?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2012-01-09 08:17:00

[code]There is a room called test lab.

an npc is a kind of person.

an npc is usually female.

Dooble is a neuter npc.

test me with "showme dooble".[/code]

I want an npc to be female by default, but male or neuter if I say otherwise. However, if I declare an npc to be neuter via the code above, they exhibit both the 'female' and 'neuter' tags when I use 'showme'. Au contraire, if you make Dooble male, he is only male, and not female or neuter as well.

The same goes for if an npc is usually male. You can add a neuter tag, but making them neuter doesn't remove the default maleness. What's the deal?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4125&start=0#p29671
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Are neuter, male and female all mutually exclusive?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-01-09 09:01:27

Yes, Inform people are both neuter or not neuter and male or female! (I think this is I6 legacy.)

For built-in functionality, like the reference of pronouns, declaring something neuter overrides declaring it male or female (it does so on the I6 level). But if you simply test for maleness or femaleness in your own code, you need to remember that such a test will catch neuter males and neuter females as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4097&start=0#p29672
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Glulx Text Effects by Emily Short
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2012-01-09 09:15:41

Strange, you don't look like an "Emily" [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

wgm

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4125&start=0#p29673
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Are neuter, male and female all mutually exclusive?
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-01-09 09:16:14

I suppose, in one sense, its not all that different than real life.  It is possible to alter external manisfestations (such as the pronoun used) but the underlying DNA is what it is.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4113&start=0#p29674
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Whispers?
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-01-09 09:38:06

That's a point. Right now this project exists more or less in both places, and I'm fine with a mix of old and new participants; in fact that may even be optimal. The logistics of this will eventually need to be handled through email (or a website, or the like), anyway.

In the mud last night before Floyd, we had an idea that the project could be created in hub-and-spokes fashion. The first person would create the central/main hub, and everyone else would create a region coming off from that main area in some way. This resolves some logistical issues -- for instance, it would allow everyone to work on their section simultaneously, helping prevent the social problem of stalling due to one contributor's lack of submission -- but it also removes the chance for people to interact with authors before them in many meaningful ways. Some of my favorite parts of past Whispers games have been when something one person wrote interferes with or behaves unusually in another section. 

Forcing everyone to work in a vacuum prevents a lot the interactions that make Whispers fun -- but then again, such things are basically invisible to any player who wasn't a contributor and isn't reading the source code at the same time. Is there some way to allow for interesting, surprising interactions to arise without requiring the linear progression of past Whispers? 

Or, probably unrelated -- what design process will be fun for the contributors [i]and[/i] produce an interesting final product?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4097&start=0#p29675
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Glulx Text Effects by Emily Short
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-01-09 10:27:21

[quote="wgm003"]Strange, you don't look like an "Emily" [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

wgm[/quote]
That's because he's an "Andrew" [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4125&start=0#p29676
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Are neuter, male and female all mutually exclusive?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-09 11:00:13

[quote="Robert Rothman"]I suppose, in one sense, its not all that different than real life.  It is possible to alter external manifestations (such as the pronoun used) but the underlying DNA is what it is.[/quote]
This is rather off-topic (though not entirely). In fact the DNA situation is not just XX or XY.

People are born who (due to little accidents when the sperm or egg is being manufactured, or when they meet) are XYY, XXY, XXX, or X. There are undoubtedly other combinations as well, involving broken chromosomes. Then there's the androgen insensitivity mutation, which causes XY fetuses to develop as female rather than male. Some babies are born with ambiguous genitalia, in which case the attending physician may feel obliged to make a quick decision (which may be the wrong decision, with tragic consequences).

On top of which, sexual identity is something that happens in the brain and in the society in which the individual happens to live. It's not defined by the external genitalia at all. There really are people who are firmly convinced they're female, in spite of the physical evidence to the contrary. And vice-versa, of course. This can and does happen to people who are genetically "normal" XX or XY -- possibly due to mistakes in how the brain of the fetus develops, the cause is not known.

The non-OT part of this rant is that an IF system really ought to allow at least four gender markers -- male, female, neuter, and other -- any of which can be switched on or off independently. Each marker would have a set of corresponding pronouns. If you happen to need a character that can be either "he" or "she," the authoring system should allow it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4125&start=0#p29677
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Are neuter, male and female all mutually exclusive?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-09 12:27:42

[quote]For built-in functionality, like the reference of pronouns, declaring something neuter overrides declaring it male or female (it does so on the I6 level).[/quote]

Right. As far as the library is concerned, it's a mutually exclusive three-way value which is implemented with two bits. It's clumsy, not very flexible, and will probably be addressed in future releases -- there are features requests in on the subject.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4124&start=0#p29678
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Iterating through parameter lists - I6 bug or I7 bug?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-09 12:34:36

If the I6 compiler fails to compile I7's translated code, it is always an I7 bug. (Well, unless you've included some of your own I6 code in the project. Then it could be your fault. :)

In this case, it's failing to realize that it needs to include the list template code. You should report it. 

(It's not a bug that will come up for most people, because if there's *any* list defined in the game, the template code will be thrown in. You're only hitting it because you define this "decide whether" phrase that's never used.)

[quote]modifying parameters can be a bad idea in some contexts if you don't know what you're doing[/quote]

I6 uses call-by-value parameters, and it's always safe to change them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4108&start=0#p29679
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Alpha testers wanted for a new CYOA tool from inkle
User: emshort / DateTime: 2012-01-09 14:00:53

Varytale is not dead, but is doing a bunch of private beta work at the moment.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4126&start=0#p29680
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I7] Are activities the preferred solution?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2012-01-09 14:09:16

I thought I'd augment the standard I7 behavior when it comes to examining supporters and containers. Since I wanted to retain the original behavior, I thought I'd use a rulebook.

[code]Definition: a container is empty if nothing is in it.
Definition: a supporter is empty if nothing is on it.

The examination rules are an object based rulebook. The examination rules have default success.
An examination rule for something: rule fails.

First carry out examining a thing (called the item):
	follow the examination rules for the item;
	if rule succeeded:
		now examine text printed is true;
		rule succeeds.[/code]

Thing is, from reading the manual I get the sense the preferred solution would involve an activity as opposed to a rulebook. The code is after all general enough to be put into an extension (possibly). Is the use of activities appropriate, and if so, what benefits would they bring to the table?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4108&start=0#p29681
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Alpha testers wanted for a new CYOA tool from inkle
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-09 14:58:39

That's good to hear! 4 or 5 months is an eternity in Internet time, so I'm glad that they're just hunkered in the bunker.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4113&start=0#p29682
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Whispers?
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-01-09 17:03:44

A suggestion: there could be a shared set of properties that game items can have. (Valuable or worthless; sharp or blunt; light, medium or heavy; light-emitting or non-light emitting; pointy or not pointy etc.). This would work well with the hub and spokes format: if the player can go to any of the rooms in whatever order, there could be naturally emergent alternative and unforeseen solutions to puzzles.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4125&start=0#p29683
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Are neuter, male and female all mutually exclusive?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2012-01-09 17:08:24

Thanks for the info. I should be okay, then. I just want the pronouns to be set correctly for each npc. I don't think I'll ever be testing for their sex in the code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4126&start=0#p29684
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Are activities the preferred solution?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-01-09 17:34:12

[quote="Eleas"]Thing is, from reading the manual I get the sense the preferred solution would involve an activity as opposed to a rulebook. The code is after all general enough to be put into an extension (possibly). Is the use of activities appropriate, and if so, what benefits would they bring to the table?[/quote]
The main advantage an activity has over a simple rulebook is that an activity brings along two extra rulebooks -- before and after <whatever activity> -- which can be used as hooks for tweaking the behavior. This is especially useful for extension users. Having said that, since you're calling the examination rules from the carry out examining rules, prospective users have plenty of hooks available to them already -- namely the other rules involved in action processing. You didn't post the code for your examination rules, but my guess is a regular rulebook is plenty.

ETA: BTW, I love this strategy (using object based rulebooks) -- I've been using it for "fixed in place" messages, etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4127&start=0#p29685
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Producing starting code programmatically
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-01-09 18:06:57

This might not have terribly wide scope, but I was playing around with some PERL code to create a few basic verbs. Yes, creating a bunch of them is bad. But I find often that getting started with a game or new feature has annoying roadblocks of mistakes you don't want/need to make again.

Obviously there's good old cut-and-pasting, too, or using extensions, but I was wondering about something more flexible that could immediately help someone make a game that does something--putting the planning aside.

For instance the code below, when you type "verbs.pl xyzzy,plugh,dive" turns up a skeleton that would've taken an annoying while to type.

[code]use Win32::Clipboard;

$clip = Win32::Clipboard::new();

@verbs = split(/,/, @ARGV[0]);

for(@verbs)
{

$a = sprintf("%schapter %sing\n\n%sing is an action applying to nothing.

understand the command \"%s\" as something new.

understand \"%s\" as %sing.

carry out %sing:
	the rule succeeds;

", $a, $_, $_, $_, $_, $_, $_);

}

$clip->Set($a);[/code]

The above applies to Inform 7, but I think it can apply generally. Is there something more powerful that I've missed? Do we already have a repository of scripts like this? And is there a chance a simple tweak to the IDE can add a verb?

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4126&start=0#p29686
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Are activities the preferred solution?
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-01-09 18:13:28

The other difference is that you can test whether or not activities are going on.  So if you think code like[code]The description of the foo is "[if the examination activity is going on]bar[else]baz[end if]".[/code]should be supported, activities would be a good choice.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4124&start=0#p29687
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Iterating through parameter lists - I6 bug or I7 bug?
User: faiuwle / DateTime: 2012-01-09 20:31:14

Ahh, I see - I compiled after writing a subroutine, but before writing the caller's code, to check the syntax.  Now that I've defined the caller (and its local list variables) it indeed does not need that extra list variable anymore.

Anyway, I reported it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=40#p29688
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: N723 / DateTime: 2012-01-09 20:42:35

xyzzy, with VB .NET, to write a line, it's just Console.WriteLine("TEXT GOES HERE"). Literally. Now, to have objects and stuff like that, then it's harder, but it's still simple coding most of the way through.

But, yeah, from what I hear, if you don't feel like coding a huge bunch (but that's how game dev works, lucky you're not using assembly), just use i7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=40#p29689
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-09 21:46:30

That game sounds very interesting! I should probably have said that my comments were assuming the more or less standard IF design -- fixed world, the possible solutions have all been deliberately programmed in by the author, no or little story branching. Randomization does give you the chance to learn a skill and show it off. And if you can conceptualize your game in terms of discrete levels, then that makes it simple to set the checkpoints. A bushy sort of structure might make it harder. 

Another advantage that I didn't mention is that if you kill the player, you can give enlightening/amusing death messages, which it sounds like you're doing.

The retry loop in most IF is something like one turn -- if you succeed, you move forward, if you fail, you're in exactly the same place. Which can lead to stasis. For another indie-game example, most of Machinarium has that kind of structure (though there are a couple places where I think you can make it unwinnable, one of which I'm pretty sure is a bug), but there's one place where you have to 
[spoiler]dismantle a ticking bomb. If you don't solve that puzzle in time, [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpEJ4o9jhZ8]well[/url]. (Video spoils a previous puzzle a little.) This switches up the kind of retry loop there is, and it does raise the stakes; most of the game has a leisurely sort of atmosphere of exploring a ramshackle city on a lazy weekend, but giving you as long as you want to defuse the bomb just wouldn't work. Even though you see the bomb planted very early in the game. (It helps that you don't lose an appreciable amount of progress when the puzzle resets.)[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=40#p29690
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2012-01-09 22:14:26

[quote="xyzzy"]VB6 is object-based. VB.NET is fully object-oriented, but as you say that's going a bit OT![/quote]

Inform 7 is also object-based, not object-oriented.  It's also rulebook-based, so it's not like you have to use objects for everything. There's a link to the programmer's guide to Inform 7 in my signature if it helps:

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3838&start=10#p29691
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The penultimate not numbered New Year's Speed IF
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-01-09 22:36:08

More fun this past weekend: a riff on Dickens, a mob story, rescuing Elvis with a lemon and a Tarzan move or two, getting out of jail, using mistletoe to get to work on time, and a funny take on the Legend of Excalibur. I enjoyed it again.

Apparently next week we'll be looking at the Hugo games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4128&start=0#p29692
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: A Storytron post-mortem
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-09 23:20:26

[quote]It has been said that the only people who create progress are those crazy enough to refuse to adapt to reality. I was certainly that crazy, but eventually reality won. [/quote]

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.storytron.com/WhatWentWrong.html">http://www.storytron.com/WhatWentWrong.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4129&start=0#p29693
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: The One Ring: Adventures Over the Edge of the Wild
User: joelsanda / DateTime: 2012-01-09 23:35:13

Anyone here familiar with [i]The One Ring: Adventures Over the Edge of the Wild[/i] from Cublicle 7? Briefly, it's an RPG in Middle-earth, set in the time between [i]The Hobbit[/i] and [i]The Fellowship of the Ring[/i]. The two (light) rulebooks and two maps are available as PDFs here: [url]http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=93673[/url].

I'd like to get an online game of this going, using IM or IRC, and a website I've thrown up (draft here: [url]http://wilderland.dwimordene.net[/url]). The game's mechanics are quite simple and [b][i]very[/i][/b] heavy on narrative - which is why I'm trying to find some players here instead of traditional RPG sites. I think it's quite possible to play this game, in character, without combat maps and tomes of manuals. There are no rules for distance (except close, near and far) but quite a few rules for the more 'spiritual' side of Middle-earth mythology. The game mechanics should easily allow for a deep narrative-based game where we describe the encounters not with miniatures moving [i]x[/i] number of hexes per turn but rather how a writer would describe the combat.

I think we can easily structure encounters like the scene in [i]The Hobbit[/i] where Bilbo is fleeing Gollum as he leaves the tunnels under the Misty Mountains. That could take a good hour to play out on battle mats with most RPGs, but can probably be done with minimal dice rolls and more imaginative descriptions that create a narrative more than a series of hit points to deduct. Although there are character sheets, the emphasis with the game is narrative.

Anyway, I'm envisioning a twice-per-month gaming session where I'll create the story and we'll play through the session - just like a typical RPG session. But we'll also rotate players who will chronicle the event as a brief story. This is probably more experimental than anything, and so different from most RPGs focus on rules and dice, I'm posting here instead of strict RPG sites. Not Inform interactive fiction but interactive fiction nonetheless.

If you're interested let me know in the thread and I'll get back to you. I'm in the Mountain Time Zone in the U.S., GMT -7 hours. A Friday or Saturday would be best for me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4129&start=0#p29694
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The One Ring: Adventures Over the Edge of the Wild
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-10 00:21:16

[quote="joelsanda"]I think it's quite possible to play this game, in character, without combat maps and tomes of manuals. There are no rules for distance (except close, near and far) [...][/quote]

In fairness, the [i]overwhelming majority[/i] of RPG rules require no combat maps, and whether or not there are "tomes of manuals" depends on what that phrase might possibly mean, but most RPGs have just one rulebook, and at least [i]several hundred[/i] RPGs have and need no rules for distance ...

It looks like a nice game, though, and Cubicle 7 did fine work on their [b][i]Doctor Who[/i][/b] game (which also had very breezy, story-friendly mechanics).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4130&start=0#p29695
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: T3: ActorState Switching
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-10 00:29:12

I have an NPC who is spontaneously changing from an InConversationState back to her previous state, which was an AccompanyingState, when the PC travels. I have set the attentionSpan of the InconversationState to nil. I would have expected that that would prevent TADS from switching her back to her previous state. But no.

What seems to be happening is that the library calls beforeTravel on the NPC, which calls beforeTravel on her InConversationState. This calls endConversation in the InConversationState. Somehow, and I'm not sure how, endConversation is firing setCurState on the NPC, and restoring her to her previous state in an inappropriate manner.

I can set previousState by hand, by setting it after I switch the NPC to her new state, so that it's the current state. That will prevent the switching. But I'd rather understand what's going on so I can override the method that is causing the trouble. The comments for activateState say, "We don't remember prior states that aren't conv-ready states." But this seems not to be true, because the previous state was an AccompanyingState, not a ConversationReadyState. On the other hand, I don't see how activateState could be causing the problem, because the comments appear accurately to describe the code.

Can anyone shed any light on this mystery? How can endConversation in an InConversationState be changing the NPC's state to an AccompanyingState?

Sorry to be so abstract, but I'm trying to do the research and be specific, and when you research the specifics of the T3 library it does tend to get a bit abstract.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4131&start=0#p29696
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: otherSide Switching
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-10 00:52:59

Here's a slightly less esoteric question. PathPassage A starts the game as the masterObject for PathPassage B. As a puzzle, however, I later need PathPassage A to become the masterObject for PathPassage C or D instead.

The docs state that the setting of otherSide is handled during initialization, and state that you "usually" don't need to set it in your own code. But in this case, I obviously need to set it manually. My question is, what else (if anything) do I need to set? Will it work if I simply say

[code]A.otherSide = C;
C.otherSide = A;[/code]

Can I set the masterObject of C and D to A at the beginning of the game, or will that confuse the initialization? Do I need to set it later in order to keep the objects in sync? (Given that this is a PathPassage, not a door, "in sync" may not have any meaning.) What else do I need to do? Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4127&start=0#p29697
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Producing starting code programmatically
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-01-10 01:38:59

[quote="aschultz"]
The above applies to Inform 7, but I think it can apply generally. Is there something more powerful that I've missed? Do we already have a repository of scripts like this? And is there a chance a simple tweak to the IDE can add a verb?

Thanks![/quote]
Well, it can do something almost as good. Emily Short had an extension a while back to build a conversation framework programmatically during play, which was used to build Alabaster. These days making an interactive definition system like that would be even easier, thanks to the introduction of indexed text.

The last thing that code does is display all of that generated code on the game window and write it to the file. Using "the topic understood" and indexed text, it should be easy enough to reproduce that behavior to generate, for example, verbs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4126&start=0#p29698
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Are activities the preferred solution?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2012-01-10 02:56:12

[quote="Skinny Mike"]The main advantage an activity has over a simple rulebook is that an activity brings along two extra rulebooks -- before and after <whatever activity> -- which can be used as hooks for tweaking the behavior. This is especially useful for extension users. Having said that, since you're calling the examination rules from the carry out examining rules, prospective users have plenty of hooks available to them already -- namely the other rules involved in action processing. You didn't post the code for your examination rules, but my guess is a regular rulebook is plenty.[/quote]

Right, that's what I figured. And usage would be as follows:

[code]Definition: a container is empty if nothing is in it.
Definition: a supporter is empty if nothing is on it.

The examination rules are an object based rulebook. The examination rules have default success.
An examination rule for something: rule fails.

First carry out examining a thing (called the item):
	follow the examination rules for the item;
	if rule succeeded:
		now examine text printed is true;
		rule succeeds.


That Hideous Garden is a room. "You're surrounded by all manner of unwholesome plant life."

The venomous flytrap is a container. It is in the garden. Understand "plant" or "fly trap" as the flytrap. The description is "This plant is a pulsating, half-translucent, vaguely threatening sac of plant matter."

An examination rule for the empty flytrap: say "[description of the flytrap] It watches you hungrily, or at least it gives a good impression of doing so. Or maybe it's just bored."

An examination rule for the flytrap when the flytrap holds exactly one thing: say "[description of the flytrap] It seems barely satisfied with liquifying [the list of things held by the flytrap], but you're not sure how long the respite will last."

An examination rule for the flytrap: say "[description of the flytrap] Inside its bloated, half-transparent form you can see [the list of things held by the flytrap], being slowly digested."

The feed jar is a container. It is fixed in place in the garden. The description is "A big plastic jar stands here, obviously intended for the feeding of the monstrosities that grow here." In the feed jar is some seeds and an apple.

The player holds a coconut and a speckled egg.

Test me with "x jar/x flytrap/put coconut in flytrap/x flytrap/put egg in flytrap/x flytrap".
[/code]

[quote="Skinny Mike"]ETA: BTW, I love this strategy (using object based rulebooks) -- I've been using it for "fixed in place" messages, etc.[/quote]

Yeah, it's become my preferred method of extending behavior without trashing underlying functionality. That's probably why I'm a bit mistrustful of it still, since I kept hearing how this kind of thing was supposed to be done through activities.

[quote="EmacsUser"]The other difference is that you can test whether or not activities are going on.[/quote]

Right. I think I'm having a bit of a hard time seeing an eventuality where I'd need that, tbh. I know it's a functionality people use, but try as I might I can't think of any situation where it would be necessary.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=40#p29700
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: PaulS / DateTime: 2012-01-10 06:25:13

[quote="N723"]
But, yeah, from what I hear, if you don't feel like coding a huge bunch (but that's how game dev works, lucky you're not using assembly), just use i7.[/quote]

This doesn't make sense to me; it suggests that using Inform (or some other system) is a sort of (bad) laziness. But it's not. It's about the sensible division of labour. If I want to make a bacon sandwich I could grow some wheat, make a mill, mill the wheat, make a starter, buy a pig, rear it, butcher it, cure it, smoke it, make the bread, make a bread oven, bake the bread, grow some lettuce, raise some chickens, plant an olive tree, grow some tomatoes, make some ketchup, and finally get myself a sandwich. Chances are, especially on my first attempt, it isn't going to be a very [i]good[/i] sandwich because all those things are difficult to do and take time to learn. It's a perfectly valid option if I happen to enjoy all those different things: but if I want to make a sandwich it's really not smart.

At some point you are going to have to rely on work others have done: whether that is writing an assembler, or a C compiler, or a higher level language, or whatever. This isn't lazy, it's sensible. It doesn't just save time, it makes the final product [i]better[/i].

It's just the same with IF. Even a "simple" scenario rapidly becomes complex. Printing a line of text is a breeze. But the trick is in deciding what to print when. It's in that -- in the parsing, and the way actions are handled and so forth, that the difficulty lies.

Try coding this simple game:

The player starts out in a kitchen. There is a table and a worksurface which contains a drawer, which is closed. On the table is an juicy looking orange, a glass and a strange orange cube. In the drawer is a knife. There is a door leading north, which is closed and leads into a dining room, where (as it happens) there is a glass of orange juice already waiting on the table for another character.

The player has to open the drawer, take the knife, slice the orange with the knife (which produces two halves of an orange), squeeze the halves into the glass, and then take the glass into the dining room to drink, at which point the "game" ends. S/he can't open the door if she is holding a full glass of juice. She won't be allowed to go north until the juice has been squeezed. If she takes the orange cube, a timer starts ticking and the cube explodes in three turns, killing the player (if she is in the same place as the cube when it explodes). The game need implement only a few verbs: "open", "close", "examine", "inventory", "go" (north, south etc), "put [object] on", "put [object] in", "drop", "cut [x] with [y]", "squeeze", "taste", "drink", "smell", "listen". It must allow "take all", "take all except", "take all from". It must contain reasonably informative error messages to report parser errors or failures -- reporting at least failed verbs, nouns that are not understood, and complete failures to understand, and must check and report actions that make no sense in the game world (such as taking an object that is too large to carry, or going in a direction that is not provided). It must make intelligent inferences (for instance "cut orange with knife" should assume that it is the orange and not the orange device that is to be cut). It must allow for saving and restoring and for commands to be undone. It should be playable on Windows, Mac and Linux computers, and be capable of being played online as well (either through a javascript VM or by being playable on a server). You should provide an appropriate suite of debugging verbs, and the ability to compile the game in a way that will disable them.

Once you have implemented such a game you will have got [i]a small part of the way[/i] to the facilities that the major IF-specific languages provide. Any moderately experienced writer would be able to code the "game" I have described above in an IF-specific language in a matter of no more than a couple of hours. How long is it going to take to write it from scratch? And what benefit for the player will you get from that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4126&start=0#p29701
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] Are activities the preferred solution?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-10 08:42:09

I just realized that the example I posted worked when (and possibly only when) examining was defined with a rulebook rather than as an activity, so it's totally off topic. Herp derp.

[rant]Well, there's this:

[code]For printing the name of the spider while examining the flytrap: say "unfortunate spider".[/code]

Which (once the spider has been defined) yields this:

[quote]>x flytrap
This plant is a pulsating, half-translucent, vaguely threatening sac of plant matter. It seems barely satisfied with liquifying the unfortunate spider, but you're not sure how long the respite will last.[/quote]

Probably other ways to do that, though.[/rant]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=40#p29702
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-10 09:03:16

[quote="matt w"]That game sounds very interesting![/quote]
Thanks! It didn't playtest very well. I believe the problem was too many story threads too early in the game; the effect was not to add intrigue but rather to obscure the signal with a lot of noise: kind of analagous to (without actually resembling) an RPG that shoves too many unrelated tasks into the quest log off the top.

[quote="matt w"]Randomization does give you the chance to learn a skill and show it off. And if you can conceptualize your game in terms of discrete levels, then that makes it simple to set the checkpoints. A bushy sort of structure might make it harder.[/quote]
I tweeted a while ago, that I want solving my game to be not just a process of deducing a correct sequential pattern, but an actual variegated skill: a set of ways of responding to various types of unpredictable stimuli. Also, you don't always have to do the levels in the same sequence, although there are only 4 levels so you're right that the level structure itself is not too bushy.

[quote="matt w"]Another advantage that I didn't mention is that if you kill the player, you can give enlightening/amusing death messages, which it sounds like you're doing.[/quote]
Or trying as hard as I can, at least. 8)

[quote="matt w"]For another indie-game example, most of Machinarium has that kind of structure (though there are a couple places where I think you can make it unwinnable, one of which I'm pretty sure is a bug), but there's one place where you have to 
[spoiler]dismantle a ticking bomb. If you don't solve that puzzle in time, [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpEJ4o9jhZ8]well[/url]. (Video spoils a previous puzzle a little.) This switches up the kind of retry loop there is, and it does raise the stakes; most of the game has a leisurely sort of atmosphere of exploring a ramshackle city on a lazy weekend, but giving you as long as you want to defuse the bomb just wouldn't work. Even though you see the bomb planted very early in the game. (It helps that you don't lose an appreciable amount of progress when the puzzle resets.)[/spoiler][/quote]
Thanks for the ref. That's a tough loop to do well. The time limit is of course a mere formality, but to give it narrative weight they put you through a restart animation just long enough to be annoying. The redeeming feature perhaps is that maybe it's the final puzzle of [a major section of] the game, so the story reward is so close you can taste it; then that loop delay could work -- more like a suspenseful tease. If I had to live through a restart animation that elaborate throughout the entire game, however, I believe I would find it very offputting and would groan internally everytime I sense I have entered a difficult loop. I might not get through the game -- seeing this response in myself and wishing to avoid it in others is the source of all my thinking here.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=50#p29703
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2012-01-10 09:45:23

[quote="Laroquod"]
However, I use i7 and I can highly recommend it. And I agree that it puts the mind in a different, more 'writerly' mode; however, it is still very painstaking and meticulous, so that a different mindset does not really translate into being able to code with the same 'flow' as a writer writes. But it makes it easier to keep your brain in that writerly place throughout the process. 
[/quote]

That's what I find, too.  

I like coding, but I don't like reinventing the wheel, and I don't enjoy spending time on . . . I'm not sure what the word is.  Higher-order stuff?  Meta-game?  Internal whatsits?  I'm not interested in documenting and implementing everything that needs to go into a save state, or testing my engine on multiple platforms.  I hate the sort of mouse-click or parser based rules, and I'm utterly impatient with displays.  I'm glad some people don't find that stuff as deadly as I do, because that means I can take the necessary but not sufficient stuff they've done, and work on what I enjoy working on.  It also means I have energy to do some programming tasks I would never touch with a ten foot pole otherwise: because I don't have to program all the commands from scratch, I can contemplate doing some additional commands that make life easier for the player.  Because I don't have to worry about the basic display settings or platform stability, I feel free to tackle a few graphics elements.

I still "code a whole bunch", but a bigger proportion of coding time is spent in things the player doesn't take for granted, the game world, characterization, features, and fun stuff.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=40#p29704
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-10 10:06:43

[quote="Laroquod"][quote="matt w"]That game sounds very interesting![/quote]
Thanks! It didn't playtest very well. I believe the problem was too many story threads too early in the game; the effect was not to add intrigue but rather to obscure the signal with a lot of noise: kind of analagous to (without actually resembling) an RPG that shoves too many unrelated tasks into the quest log off the top.[/quote]

You have a playtestable version? I know you said it didn't test very well, but can you send it to me anyway?

[quote="Laroquod"]The time limit is of course a mere formality, but to give it narrative weight they put you through a restart animation just long enough to be annoying. The redeeming feature perhaps is that maybe it's the final puzzle of [a major section of] the game, so the story reward is so close you can taste it; then that loop delay could work -- more like a suspenseful tease. If I had to live through a restart animation that elaborate throughout the entire game, however, I believe I would find it very offputting and would groan internally everytime I sense I have entered a difficult loop. I might not get through the game -- seeing this response in myself and wishing to avoid it in others is the source of all my thinking here.

Paul.[/quote]

Yeah, that's the [i]only[/i] time that happens in the game, and it's the fourth-act climax (and something that's been set up since the beginning of act two or so -- I'm approximating the number of acts). That could actually work in IF too -- you can't get stuck while gathering the materials for the climactic fight -- but the big boss can kill you, and if it does you get a message like "That didn't go well. Let's try it again" and you find yourself outside the cave once more.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4133&start=0#p29705
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Inklewriter
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-10 10:29:18

Not sure if this belongs here or in Other Development Systems, but I'm suprised that I can't find any announcements yet:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.inklestudios.com/archives/229">http://www.inklestudios.com/archives/229</a>

[quote]So, to writers get started, we’ve put together a web-tool for writing and reading simple interactive stories. Called the inklewriter, it lets you write as you play, branching the story with choices, and then linking those stories back together again. It keeps track of which paths you’ve finished, and which still need to be written.

You’ll even be able to track the choices your reader makes, and adapt the story around those decisions. Everything the reader does will have the potential, down the line, to cause catastrophe or save the day.  The power’s all there: it’s up to you, the author, to decide how things will play out.

The inklewriter requires no set-up, no programming, and no drawing diagrams. Just start writing and see where it takes you. Oh, and it’s free to use. And once written, you can share your stories with whoever you like.

It’s almost ready, and when it’s done, we’ll be announcing it here, so please keep your eyes peeled, or subscribe to the RSS feed (or follow @inkleStudios on Twitter!)[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4133&start=0#p29706
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inklewriter
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-10 10:37:52

An announcement like this one?  [emote];)[/emote] 

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4108">viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4108</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4133&start=0#p29707
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Inklewriter
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-10 10:50:31

I seem to be having the same problem here as I've had with the Inform documentation: I don't know where to look.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4129&start=0#p29708
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The One Ring: Adventures Over the Edge of the Wild
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-01-10 11:28:18

There are plenty of people in IF who are interested in narrative-oriented RPG, but you might need to work on your pitch a bit.

"Just like [i]Lord of the Rings[/i]" is.... not very compelling. There are a kajillion games like that. A lot of people who are into more story-oriented RPGs are there because they're bored with complicated fighting rules, but a lot of them are there because [i]they're not all that interested in stories that are mostly about fighting[/i], or in straightforward good-vs-evil plots, or in post-Tolkienian genre fantasy. Most full-blown narrative-driven RPGs either avoid Tolkienian fantasy entirely, or aggressively reframe the point of it (like [i]Polaris[/i], where it's an inescapable fact that the noble good guys are going to fail in their struggle against the dark, and the interesting bit is about [i]how[/i]). So if you're trying to draw that sort of player, you need to give them a reason to be excited about Tolkien again. What would you want to focus on?

The sort of games you seem to be interested in -- games that are narrative-driven, but still involve fairly strong GM authority, some expectation of heroic PCs and a fair amount of combat -- are pretty popular among the ifMUD crowd, where I've had some excellent role-playing experiences. You might try pitching it there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3838&start=20#p29710
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The penultimate not numbered New Year's Speed IF
User: Tale / DateTime: 2012-01-10 12:47:47

Hello folks!

I've added the games to IFDB, download link will come soon.

Feel free to change any errors I made or add some more info.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3823&start=10#p29711
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The Pudlothon: Ecce Jacek
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-10 12:58:12

[quote="JoeyJones"]
It makes sense, it's a lot more efficient to grow soya than meat (including people).[/quote]
That's the Francis Moore Lappe doctrine. However, it's only demonstrably true if you're growing meat [i]fed on soy[/i] (and other grains). Fortunately, cows can eat grass - and in fact they're healthier when they do. Perennial grasses, unlike grains and soy, can be grown sustainably, and they will flourish in places where soy can't.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3838&start=20#p29712
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The penultimate not numbered New Year's Speed IF
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-01-10 12:58:24

Can we rate 'em?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4134&start=0#p29713
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: gameMain - Starting Game - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-10 13:01:35

A short time back, I submitted a post about starting a new game. I would like to show the introduction text with a pause at the end that waits for the space bar. I want neither the status bar nor the first room to be shown until the pause is cancelled. I received previous suggested ways to go about this but now I can't get either suggestion to work. Is it because I'm now using TADS3.1?

I sure could use further help with this.

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3838&start=20#p29714
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The penultimate not numbered New Year's Speed IF
User: Tale / DateTime: 2012-01-10 13:09:08

Sure, it's like any other game listing on IFDB.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4129&start=0#p29715
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The One Ring: Adventures Over the Edge of the Wild
User: joelsanda / DateTime: 2012-01-10 13:16:57

[quote="maga"]There are plenty of people in IF who are interested in narrative-oriented RPG, but you might need to work on your pitch a bit.

"Just like [i]Lord of the Rings[/i]" is.... not very compelling. [/quote]

Not sure what you're asking here - I didn't use the phrase "Just like [i]Lord of the Rings[/i]". Nothing can be like reading that series for the first time, at least for some ... Game settings and rules adapted from books tend, in my experience, to fare about as well as film adaptations - a facsimile, at best.

[quote="maga"]What would you want to focus on?[/quote]

Good question. When I've run RPGs I plan for the next game session but not after that - queues from the player like "That was cool" or "I didn't get that" are what I use to assess what makes the session for the players. As the GM that's my reward. The focus initially will be the sample adventure contained in the box. I understand Cubicle 7 is releasing a set of adventures that follow the original. Based upon the group's interest we could run those or go in the direction the player's found rewarding.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3838&start=20#p29716
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The penultimate not numbered New Year's Speed IF
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-01-10 13:25:44

I'm sorry to rain your parade... but if you're done with IFDB... you've missed one game again: the count is 12 but only 11 online atm. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3838&start=20#p29717
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The penultimate not numbered New Year's Speed IF
User: Tale / DateTime: 2012-01-10 13:44:09

There is one author who requested to upload his game later. [emote]:-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4130&start=0#p29718
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: ActorState Switching
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-10 13:46:50

If I understand correctly, you are looking at the [url=http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/libref/source/actor.t.html#5118]activateState[/url] method of InConversationState.

The relevant comment is above the one you've quoted:

[quote]If the previous state was a ConversationReadyState, [i]or we have no other state remembered[/i], remember the previous state.[/quote]

What's happening is that activateState sees that its previousState value is nil, and then unconditionally stores the old state, without checking whether it is a conversation state.

When you set previousState by hand, it's no longer nil, and the behavior you want takes over: only conversation states will subsequently be stored.

You can override this by removing the nil check, or (for ease of maintenance) by reversing the logic at the end of the method.

[code]
modify InConversationState
    activateState(actor, oldState) {
        inherited(actor, oldState);
        if (!(oldState.ofKind(ConversationReadyState))) {
            previousState = getActor.curState;
        }
    }
;
[/code]

I am pretty sure that the 'actor' value passed to this method is the NPC rather than the PC, but other methods in this class seem to use it differently. I've used getActor to be safe.

It might be OK to set previousState to nil, but the original activateState() method would guarantee a non-nil value in this property after a call, so the safest course is to do the same.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4131&start=0#p29719
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: otherSide Switching
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-10 14:34:36

To be thorough, you should also update C's masterObject value. And possibly seal off B and D as well.

[code]
A.otherSide = C;
C.otherSide = A;
C.masterObject = A;
B.otherSide = nil;
B.masterObject = self;
D.otherSide = nil;
D.masterObject = self;
[/code]

Since the PathPassage won't be closed or locked, I doubt this will do anything, but it preserves the 1:1 relationship. And if your testers somehow wind up in B or D when C is active, it will be immediately obvious that something has gone wrong.

You definitely shouldn't set the masterObject of C or D to A in your code. That is used during initializeThing() to set the masterObject's otherSide property to the object. You'll wind up in a situation where A's otherSide is B, C, or D. Exactly which is undefined and may depend on source code order.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4108&start=0#p29720
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Alpha testers wanted for a new CYOA tool from inkle
User: Janka / DateTime: 2012-01-10 14:42:39

You have written inkle is not a self-publishing platform so what do you plan to do with the tool? Create a platform, sell it, give it away for free or even opensource it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4102&start=0#p29721
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: OH I remember what it was!
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-10 15:08:13

I pronounce it "perl -pe 'tr/a-zA-Z/n-za-mN-ZA-M/'".

Just kidding. I say "rot" as in "decay."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4024&start=0#p29722
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: New York-based IF group -- any interest?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-10 15:11:21

[quote="Laroquod"]How many cities [i]do[/i] have IF groups? I only knew of the Boston one and I'm only hearing about the Seattle one for the first time.[/quote]
I was sure there'd be one in Toronto.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=50#p29723
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2012-01-10 16:28:58

[quote="KenHutt"]Try coding this simple game:[/quote]Woo-hoo, it's Cloak of Darkness 2! (Cloak of Orange?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4024&start=10#p29724
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: New York-based IF group -- any interest?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2012-01-10 17:03:55

Maybe it would be worth putting a sticky at the top of one of these forums, with a list of links to currently active live groups?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4134&start=0#p29725
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: gameMain - Starting Game - TADS3.1
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-10 17:28:32

No, the relevant behavior hasn't changed in 3.1. Can you post your gameMain code?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=50#p29726
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: N723 / DateTime: 2012-01-10 17:39:58

I'm more of a wander around aimlessly guy. Anyway, I never meant it as a bad way of coding, just that if you don't like coding a whole engine, use i7. It's not a bad form of laziness, it's just that coding an engine is a bit excessive. I like excessive.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4129&start=0#p29727
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The One Ring: Adventures Over the Edge of the Wild
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-01-10 17:41:31

I've played a lot of different tabletop RPGs, including this one. It's a lot less clunky/rules heavy than a lot of similar fantasy games, and is a solid choice if you like character driven Tolkien fantasy. It's not my favourite genre but the Circle 7 focus on Fellowship makes for interesting game-stories. I'd certainly be interested in hearing more details.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=50#p29728
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2012-01-10 18:42:18

[quote="Campbell"]Woo-hoo, it's Cloak of Darkness 2! (Cloak of Orange?)[/quote]
You sir have, as the cool kids say, won an internet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4090&start=50#p29729
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: What do you use to program your IF?
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2012-01-10 19:48:51

[quote="Trumgottist"][quote="Campbell"]Woo-hoo, it's Cloak of Darkness 2! (Cloak of Orange?)[/quote]
You sir have, as the cool kids say, won an internet.[/quote]
Yeah, Campbell Wild is a bad-ass.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=40#p29730
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-10 20:02:34

I'm running out of options to express how thankful I'm for your continuous effort to help me out in this, so all I've got left to say is that u r a real bro (and while we're at it, I got to add that I also really envy you for your working ethics. Seriously, man, if I would have only half that drive, this extension would have been out [i]ages[/i] ago)

Ok, enough with the soft-soaping, let's have a go at it.

[quote]Remove Glimmr Image Font[/quote]
You mean that stuff is optional? *checks the docs again* … I could have sworn there was an i.e., instead of an e.g. standing there. Big whoopsie! from me [emote]:D[/emote]

[quote]Glimmr and R&D split[/quote]
That would be a possibility and it would cut compiling time, probably to no small margin. I could make map-displays a kind of thing and simply add the image-map to it as a component, if need be. It would add another layer of abstraction and hence wouldn't be as neatly tied together than just using image-maps, but still, should be doable.

[quote]AI split[/quote]
I want to add waypoints and such to map figures directly instead of relying on a special kind (after all, a player can switch characters at any given moment, hence you can never be certain when something might need to be controlled by the computer). The split up is there to avoid redundant data which might be never used (plus I count every bit of code I can legally cut out of R&D's main bulk as something positive  [emote]:)[/emote])

[quote]I don't understand why you changed the coordinate ordering for m_pos to (z,y,x).[/quote]
Sorting. That's the short answer. Having the z-coordinate at the start makes it easier for something like a map-display to decide whether or not it and a given object share the same z-level. If the z-coordinate would be placed at the end, it would be all over the place, thus the borders would be a lot harder to track down. As for why y before x, remember when I somewhere mentioned that I would like to be able to create objects which would be built up like a '+' or similar? The coordinates for that would be (ignoring the z-coordinate) {0, 0} {1, -1} {1, 0} {1, 1} {2, 0}, if the x-coordinate would have been placed first, {1, -1} would stand in front of the origin coordinate and all kinds of ugly stuff would happen since it is presumed that the origin always has the first spot. There's maybe a way to have more control over the sorting algorithm for such lists, but if so then I didn't discover it. At least I've modified the code in such a way that later readjustments should be easily possible by changing just a few decide phrases, instead of going through the entire code again.  Having said that, I'm not really happy with how coordinates are organized now. I have that idea spinning around in my head to make the individual coordinates merge into several 'edges' (like north-edges, west-edges, maybe a 'body' for all the coordinates which can't be assigned to any existing edge and don't form an edge themselves), instead of piling them up in one big bulk. This should make deciding scopes and such a lot less resource hungry, since R&D would no longer run through all individual coordinates anymore. Something to ponder on for another release maybe. 

m_pos really returns the coordinates in the (x, y, z) arrangement btw. Seeing as all the phrases use this arrangement as well, this seemed like the most intuitive way to handle it. There is also a phrase which returns the origin in its original form but that one is only used internally so I didn't mention it.

Before I continue on with the documentation, there is one thing I want to discuss a bit further. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I get the impression that you would prefer the docs to be an in-depth manual, in other words, something to explain what a thing is, not just what it does. This is not what I'm shooting for, or even what I believe a documentation for an extension should be. I think those are actually better off  as a minimal and, hopefully, educational as well as motivating introduction to an extension's functionality. That is, what the author would actually use in the end, not what R&D does internally to achieve what s/he wants, which would only be important for people who plan to modify the extension itself. I think the specifications are a better place to explain the later without making the documentation too overblown with information. Anything to get you moving asap without getting entangled in exhausting details. I can make the PDF for it later after all, if R&D should ever gain enough interest [emote]:P[/emote].  

Taking the GCBD documentation as a negative example, when I skimmed over it, I was actually so intimidated by what I felt to be a very verbose style that I decided to skip right over to the code and learn the ropes from there. Something that shouldn't happen when reading a documentation. Hence when I was sitting down working on my own docs, I wanted to try some different things for R&D: shorter paragraphs which built around a strictly need-to-know basis for a given topic, two sentence allegories which should, ideally, give you a good idea what the different components do and confining to a learning-by-doing approach over the quick examples, which always worked best for me at least, your mileage may vary. 

I hope you don't take this the wrong way, it was just my (admittedly very brief) personal experience with the GCBD documentation. It also doesn't negate any of your criticism so I will still have to address that too [emote]:([/emote]
What I hear out of it generally is that a) this documentation [i]really[/i] needs an introduction chapter or at least a section and b) those parts of R&D which are strictly for internal use need to be better obscured to avoid confusion and abundance of details.

[quote]What separate layers exist and how do they relate?[/quote]
There are only two layers to a map (least the ones you should care about): storage and (possibly) graphical. The graphical layer is dependent on the storage layer but not the other way around and doesn't need to be included. A room-less IF would therefore be possible (or at least almost, since a map itself is a kind of room). 

[quote]Minimal or a maximal implementation?[/quote]
Minimal implementation. R&D tries really hard to not get into your way as long as you don't want it to (by not allowing people to run through walls for example). At its core, R&D is just a manager for a lot of lists within lists. It doesn't tamper with any of the standard rules, giving the author more freedom but also a lack of standardized behaviour (although the later examples should cover most of the basics when it comes to movement at least). Some parts of R&D itself are still pretty much hardwired but I'm working on that.

[quote]How is map data actually stored?[/quote]
That's one of those questions I would consider as being on a too low technical level to be immediately interesting, or even required, for the average Joe author to know. Again I would claim that the specifications are a much better place to seeks answers in such a situation.


Need to call it quits tonight, but I will get back to this as soon as I'm able.

[quote]Waiting [for arrays] means a serious loss of momentum for little clear gain. If you do some testing once the new version is released and you find that arrays will work better, revise at that time. But for now, you've got a project that's at least 85% done, and you may as well complete it![/quote]

Hell no! (Waiting for arrays that is) I do want to get done somewhere in the near future [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=50#p29731
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-10 22:19:48

[quote="Basti50"][quote]Glimmr and R&D split[/quote]
That would be a possibility and it would cut compiling time, probably to no small margin. I could make map-displays a kind of thing and simply add the image-map to it as a component, if need be. It would add another layer of abstraction and hence wouldn't be as neatly tied together than just using image-maps, but still, should be doable.[/quote]

Well, I was just referring to the possibility of conditional compilation: if the author has also included Glimmr, then include a certain block of code; if she hasn't, then include that other one instead. I assume that the layer of abstraction needed is pretty much already there, since you must have at least three different drawing routines right now: graphics, text, and the newer "faked" image text. But I haven't studied the code, so I don't know exactly how you have it organized.

[quote="Basti50"][quote]I don't understand why you changed the coordinate ordering for m_pos to (z,y,x).[/quote]
Sorting. That's the short answer.[/quote]
Thanks. This is going to be confusing for users, so give the documentation of it some thought.

[quote="Basti50"]Before I continue on with the documentation, there is one thing I want to discuss a bit further. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I get the impression that you would prefer the docs to be an in-depth manual, in other words, something to explain what a thing is, not just what it does. This is not what I'm shooting for, or even what I believe a documentation for an extension should be.[/quote]
I don't think that's what I'm suggesting at all, to be honest. I think that by the time I've read the first couple of paragraphs of the docs, I should have some idea of what the extension can do, why I'd want to use it, and the basic concepts I need to understand in order to progress. When I say I want big-picture information, I am referring to the minimum I need to understand what your extension is and how I can use it.

[quote="Basti50"]I believe a documentation for an extension should be...a minimal and, hopefully, educational as well as motivating introduction to an extension's functionality.[/quote]
Exactly. (Of course, when an extension has R&D's complexity--and I think that it beats most extensions out there on the complexity scale!--minimal isn't likely to actually mean short.)

[quote="Basti50"]That is, what the author would actually use in the end, not what R&D does internally to achieve what s/he wants, which would only be important for people who plan to modify the extension itself.[/quote]
Well, I'm not suggesting that you have to explain every aspect of R&D's internal workings, obviously. The storage of map data is really the only example I can think of where as a user I definitely would want to have at least some idea of what R&D is doing under the hood. See my response to that issue below.

On another tack, R&D requires authors to do a lot of work on their own to even begin to use it. For example, I will need to create my own movement routines to move my characters around the map. But there's nothing in the docs about that as a topic in itself. So a realistic appraisal of what I as an author might need to do to use R&D, and perhaps the very basic formula for doing it, should be addressed (shouldn't it--?)

[quote="Basti50"]Hence when I was sitting down working on my own docs, I wanted to try some different things for R&D: shorter paragraphs which built around a strictly need-to-know basis for a given topic, two sentence allegories which should, ideally, give you a good idea what the different components do and confining to a learning-by-doing approach over the quick examples, which always worked best for me at least, your mileage may vary.[/quote]

I hope that other people provide you with opinions about this as well, but here's my experience: The shorter paragraphs didn't always tell me what I wanted to know, and generally didn't tell me how what I was reading about fit in with what I had read in earlier section. After reading some (not all) sections, I was puzzled as to what I would use data-access phrases for, or just how data was to be stored in the properties that were presented to me:

[rant]For example, from the graphics chapter: the type property (at least I think it's a property, the docs don't say what it is): "type - Hints at the creator of the graphic, may it be 1: a tilecell, 2: the user or 3: an object". I honestly still don't have a clue what that means, or how I'm meant to use it.[/rant]

I found that I had to jump back and forth between the code descriptions and the short bits of sample code to understand what each piece was doing and how the data was organized. 

[quote="Basti50"]I hope you don't take this the wrong way, it was just my (admittedly very brief) personal experience with the GCBD documentation.[/quote]
Not at all, it's certainly a legitimate reaction. I definitely don't claim that the Glimmr docs are the paragon of extension documentation; they were very painful to write and I've never felt very good about them. Your reaction to GCBD is disappointing, though, since those docs are laid out in a fashion that I hoped would make them easier to approach, and in more or less exactly the way you are describing. The first section (3 paragraphs) describes basic concepts needed to approach GCBD, followed by a step-by-step, no-frills description of how you set up a GCBD project. Everything else in the long extension docs are intended to be visited on an ad hoc, need-to-know basis: the following section describes each type of graphic element in turn and explains how to specify it--you don't need to look at any part of this at all unless you learned from the introduction above that you want to work with, say, sprites. Finally, there's a reference section that lists all of the properties of every element and is useful for reference once you're an intermediate user (I refer to this myself, whereas I don't use any other part of the docs). So part of your problem may have been in trying to approach it all as must-read stuff, when only a very small percentage of it is actually that. (Or it may be that I just didn't do a very good job presenting the information--certainly a possibility!) 

[quote="Basti50"]What I hear out of it generally is that a) this documentation [i]really[/i] needs an introduction chapter or at least a section and b) those parts of R&D which are strictly for internal use need to be better obscured to avoid confusion and abundance of details.[/quote]
(a) definitely, (b) maybe, but (c) is key: context for understanding what I'm doing when. Not all of the docs are problematic in this way (the first section is fine for example), but the farther in I got, the harder I had to work to understand things. The section on graphics was very tough (also how they differ with tilecells), and I've already laid out the issues with understanding what's going on with avatars. 

[quote="Basti50"]
[quote]What separate layers exist and how do they relate?
Minimal or a maximal implementation?[/quote][/quote]
I know the answers to these, I was just trying to indicate what the reader might want to know before diving in too deeply.

[quote="Basti50"]
[quote]How is map data actually stored?[/quote]
That's one of those questions I would consider as being on a too low technical level to be immediately interesting, or even required, for the average Joe author to know. Again I would claim that the specifications are a much better place to seeks answers in such a situation.[/quote]
I don't agree, as I said above. My first idea for R&D is to set the entire game on a single, very large map (since you say that the map display can show a window into a much larger map). But I have no interest in defining my very large map using the placement phrases you provided. (I was considering randomly generating a mountainous landscape, sliced into z-levels ala Dwarf Fortress, and importing that into the given structure.) The representation of space is the key element of the extension, and I am certain that I am not the only the person who would want to specify it using other methods than you've provided. So it seems courteous to at least describe it, rather than send me diving into the 28,000-word(!) code of the extension without any way to know what I might be looking for.

[quote="Basti50"]Need to call it quits tonight, but I will get back to this as soon as I'm able.[/quote]
Oh, I don't need responses to all those specific questions/comments; I'd prefer that you work on R&D! I just wanted to give you my input. Hope it proves helpful.

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4129&start=0#p29732
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The One Ring: Adventures Over the Edge of the Wild
User: joelsanda / DateTime: 2012-01-10 22:22:19

[quote="JoeyJones"]I'd certainly be interested in hearing more details.[/quote]

Hey Joey. I've been interested in developing some stuff involving Dol Goldur and Radagast - so something that is focused on southern Mirkwood would be of interest to me. In the past when I've GM'd games (HARP and the various editions of D&D in fantasy) we've spent a lot of time developing characters, emphasizing friends and foes and where those people are. I've been able to use these for interludes in the game. For example, if a player has to take a break his or her character is off helping a family member. That provides fun hooks I can use as the GM to get people moving about the area and meeting interesting people. You can only begin so many adventures with the party sitting around an inn [emote];-)[/emote]

I think Dol Guldur and Radagast provide for some interesting challenges around corruption with some of the more classic Tolkien fun like spiders, woods that are eerily alive, and trails that redraw themselves. This is also in close proximity to Lorien and the Woodmen around the Gladden Fields. Of course that also means Moria isn't too far, either! Radagast can provide the role of a mentor or advisor, giving out necessary lore and tales that will help guide the party in some literarily-believable adventures. Same thing with elves of Lorien - both of these provide NPCs steeped in the lore of Middle-earth that can help guide adventures about.

I suspect I'll give each person a foe - something I've tried in the past that worked well - because we can't always choose our enemies. This can make for some fun gaming when the character accidentally bumps into that person and create opportunities to befriend former foes. I had on group where one person had an enemy who was a friend of another player. When both met the NPC one drew a blade and the other reacted to seeing a friend.

I've not GM'd or played The One Ring, so the rules are new to me. And try as I might I couldn't get my former gaming group (we played every two weeks for about two-and-a-half years) to try something in Middle-earth with a more literary bent that wasn't focused on leveling up and spending skill points. So outside of saying I don't want that I think the qualities I'm looking for are folks interested in crafting a story that can incorporate what was done in [i]The Hobbit[/i] with events that lead up to the War of the Ring. Emphasis on story - I think it would be fun if we wrote up something after playing that incorporate the scenes I create and the action and words the players use while playing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=40#p29754
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-11 08:08:37

[quote="matt w"]You have a playtestable version? I know you said it didn't test very well, but can you send it to me anyway?[/quote]
Thanks so much for offering -- I would love for you to playtest a build: just not this build. The first playtest round (which involved only a handful of RL friends) fared so poorly storywise that I am just embarrassed to release it any further. A full plot rewrite is in progress, replacing *all* story text, and that should be ready for a second playtest round in perhaps a month. That's when I am planning to open it up to playtesters who are actually involved in the IF and indie games communities. I will put you on that list! 8)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3823&start=10#p29755
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The Pudlothon: Ecce Jacek
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-11 08:31:56

[quote="evouga"][quote]So where does the Self begin and is it possible to love an abstract Self?[/quote]
Of course not. If this "abstract Self" is unobservable by others, to them it may as well not exist.[/quote]
I would point out that this 'abstract self' is also unobservable by the self. You have contradictory thoughts, I'm sure. Which one is 'you'? Thoughts aren't actually signed nor is their origin in your 'soul' vs. your baser desires, verified. Thus, the abstract self does not actually verifiably exist. All we have are a bunch of thoughts and behaviours performed by a bunch of social beings, most of whom were culturally taught to obsess over what is the essential seed of their own behaviours, and to attempt to locate that seed in some mythological way.

If you can't even locate your 'self' within your own head (and I know you can't), then how do you expect someone completely outside your brain to love you based on that 'self' that is a mystery even to you? Loving people 'for who they are' is a myth; what you actually do is the only thing that matters in love, and the minute you stop doing whatever it is you did that made you loved, you will no longer be so loved, regardless of what was promised.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4110&start=0#p29756
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx on Portable Phones
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2012-01-11 09:17:32

[quote="ektemple"]Hrm, wonder where I got that idea...?[/quote]

Stuff like this [url]http://mac.softpedia.com/get/iPhone-Applications/Tools-Utilities/iFrotz.shtml[/url] probably.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3823&start=10#p29757
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The Pudlothon: Ecce Jacek
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-01-11 09:29:20

[quote="capmikee"]That's the Francis Moore Lappe doctrine. However, it's only demonstrably true if you're growing meat [i]fed on soy[/i] (and other grains). Fortunately, cows can eat grass - and in fact they're healthier when they do. Perennial grasses, unlike grains and soy, can be grown sustainably, and they will flourish in places where soy can't.[/quote]
That may be the case, but so long as it remains cheaper to fatten cattle on soy and grains, then agrobusinesses will continue to do so. While soya and grains undoubtedly do not flourish everywhere- where they do flourish they are more efficient to grow than to use the land for cattle, as you can get several times more food per square mile from plant matter.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3823&start=10#p29769
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The Pudlothon: Ecce Jacek
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-01-11 09:57:28

[quote="Laroquod"]Loving people 'for who they are' is a myth; what you actually do is the only thing that matters in love, and the minute you stop doing whatever it is you did that made you loved, you will no longer be so loved, regardless of what was promised.[/quote]
Numerical identity does play a role, though. Even if you do come to love someone because of what that person does, you usually don't come to love everyone who does the same things. So, though you love someone, not because he or she is the one unique individual that he or she is, but because he or she is the kind of person he or she is, the *object* of your love still is that one individual (though the *reason or cause* for the love is not that individuals uniqueness but his or her be the right kind of person).

Sometimes however, it seems to me, love is not based so much on what the beloved does as on what the loving subject does (or thinks); at least I guess that this is so in many cases of non-erotic love: parents often do not love their children because the children are particularly sweet but because they themselves take such care of them and always have.

And, indeed, if one's love for a particular person is a kind of behaviour, and if that behaviour has been rather erratically reinforced by the person one loves, we should expect it to be quite resistent to both negative reinforcement and extinction, so that you keep loving people long after they ceased to be the kind of people that made you love them. -- I'm afraid that this is not seldom for the worse of the lover.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4113&start=10#p29770
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Whispers?
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-01-11 10:02:20

[quote="JoeyJones"]A suggestion: there could be a shared set of properties that game items can have. (Valuable or worthless; sharp or blunt; light, medium or heavy; light-emitting or non-light emitting; pointy or not pointy etc.). This would work well with the hub and spokes format: if the player can go to any of the rooms in whatever order, there could be naturally emergent alternative and unforeseen solutions to puzzles.[/quote]
Hmm. That's a really good idea. That puts the onus even stronger on the first author to build the base area and set those properties well, however.

But now I wonder what the best way to proceed would be. Should I start a thread to vote for the genre/conventions to use in this and gauge how many people would be interested in participating? Or should the discussion just stay in this thread?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4137&start=0#p29771
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 - check if transcripting is on when noting?
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-01-11 10:22:47

I've had a few issues where I've tried to note something but I forgot the transcript is not on--or vice versa from my testers.

Looking into Standard Rules we see stuff about switching the story transcript on/off. But the comment in brackets, treating the story transcript as a switch, does not quite work.

What sort of syntax is needed to make sure that the user does have a transcript on when he types something asterisked--without printing the extra transcript text?

[code]to check-transcript:
	[if the story transcript is switched off:
		say "The story transcript is switched off right now. Do you wish to switch it on?";
		if the player consents:
			try switching the story transcript on;]
	say "(Noted.)";

After reading a command:
	if the player's command matches the regular expression "^<\*\p>": 
		check-transcript;
		reject the player's command;
[/code]

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4128&start=0#p29772
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: A Storytron post-mortem
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-01-11 10:35:02

Yeah.

I was involved in that community from the beginning, and tried to write quite a few storyworlds over the years. The one that saw the greatest success was ironically the one that was cut short when my collaborative partnership fizzled out, but several months later I polished it up somewhat and released it as a rough, unfinished, and certainly flawed sample.

I think the two biggest problems were lack of advertising and awareness -- the forums never had 1/100 of the population needed to be self-sustaining and vibrant -- and, as Chris rightly identifies, the difficulty of using the authoring software. It's an incredibly powerful system, with features and functionality that make certain aspects of writing interactive stories incredibly easy and that I've never seen anywhere else; but working with the idiosyncratic and finicky interface more often than not made SW design a massive chore.

I'm disappointed and sorry about the fate of the software, but honestly not surprised. I wish it could have had the marketer and interface designer it deserved.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3823&start=10#p29773
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The Pudlothon: Ecce Jacek
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-11 10:38:13

[quote="JoeyJones"]That may be the case, but so long as it remains cheaper to fatten cattle on soy and grains, then agrobusinesses will continue to do so.[/quote]
Thankfully, you don't have to buy it from them.

[quote]While soya and grains undoubtedly do not flourish everywhere- where they do flourish they are more efficient to grow than to use the land for cattle, as you can get several times more food per square mile from plant matter.[/quote]
"Efficient" is a funny word. If you pump the soil full of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and repeatedly purge the soil of all competing life, depleting its nutrients and sending them as toxic runoff into the Earth's oceans, you can grow soy and grains very cheaply with a minimal amount of labor. On the other hand, if you allow a complete self-sufficient biome to coexist with your "crops," you'll get a lot less food for human use, but you'll get more complete utilization of the water and solar energy that the land receives. Plus, it won't die when the oil runs out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4113&start=10#p29774
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Whispers?
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-01-11 10:53:15

If you're running this, I would just use your best judgement and try the setup that you think would be best. After some discussion, sure, but you're unlikely to get a firm consensus that way. If you have a single, mostly-complete proposal, people will have a firmer idea of whether they'd like to take part. (In general, if you're coordinating a volunteer project, never expect the group to make difficult decisions for you. Generate ideas, yes. Point out refinements and bugfixes, yes. Decide, no.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4138&start=0#p29775
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Ten Room Game Competition
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2012-01-11 10:54:23

After playing with the various web-based samples and working through my own experience with these new paradigms in IF technology, it occurs to me that there's a sort of "sweet-spot" for small IF games.

Some might say it's the "everything on one screen" paradigm, but in order to accomplish that, you need a fairly small set of locations to implement this well. So I'm thinking ten rooms is an unusually interesting number. With ten rooms, we can develop a single theme with several puzzles, a focused plot, multiple characters, and a reasonable number of objects. It might just be the "Sudoku" of IF design.

We may even be able to narrow the parameters down at some point (10 rooms, 3 characters, 7 portable objects, 3 puzzles), but for now I'm thinking ten rooms is the only real restriction for an interesting investigation.

So with that preamble, I'd like to announce a small competition. It's still early in the year and I think there's some in-between time to put together a smallish game with a very specific focus.

Competition Details:
1. Create a new and original Interactive Fiction game.
2. The game must have exactly ten rooms.
3. The map of all ten rooms must be visually accessible in 2D format or if you're a snappy graphic artist, some sort of 3D imagery is acceptable. You must provide a graphical map.
4. Use any tools you wish, but see #5.
5. Game must be playable in a browser.
[b]6. Hosting Requirement *** REMOVED ***. You can send your games to me to host on Linux or Windows Server 2008 (IIS), or you can host them yourself. I'd still like to authenticate players completing each game somehow, possibly through an AJAX call with a game-embedded password or something.[/b]
7. Bug fixes will be allowed at all times after games are "released".

Competition Deadlines:
February 1, 2012 - Sign up deadline. This gives you time to think about it, play around with some ideas, and decide if you want to proceed. See <a class="postlink" href="http://textfyre.com/tenrooms/">http://textfyre.com/tenrooms/</a> to enter.
March 15, 2012 - Beta submissions.
April 30, 2012 - Final submissions, voting begins.
May 15, 2012 - Voting Ends, winner announced.

Competition Voting:
Open web voting from people proven to have played through all of the games. Since all of the games need to be playable online, I'll rig up an authentication system to allow voting once a user has completed all of the games.

Competition Prizes:
I'm not sure what anyone will be interested in as a prize, so I'm open to suggestions. Textfyre can donate cash or an otherwise appropriate prize. Donations and suggestions welcome.

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4134&start=0#p29776
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: gameMain - Starting Game - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-11 10:59:03

Here's The code but it is incomplete. I started the game code over because I had so many problems with the old one

[code]

 gameMain: GameMainDef
/* the initial player character is 'me' */
  initialPlayerChar = me
 
  scoreRankTable = 
  [ 
   [ 0, 'a tourist'], 
   [ 5, 'a novice explorer'], 
   [ 10, 'a willing amateur'], 
   [ 15, 'an apprentice adventurer'], 
   [ 25, 'an accomplished adventurer'], 
   [ 40, 'a hero'] 
  ] 
  maxScore = 43
 
  crueltyLevel = 3
 
/* show our introduction */
   showIntro()
   {
     /* show the prologue */
     "\bIt was a great dream until you were rudely awakened by the loud ringing
     of the telephone; which is the reason that you ended up here.....\b";

   //     /* show the game title */
   //     "<b>Return to Ditch Day</b>\n
   //     by Michael J.\ Roberts\n
   //     Release <<versionInfo.version>> (<<versionInfo.serialNum>>)
   //     \b";
    }

    /* show our "goodbye" message */
    showGoodbye()
    {
        "<.p>Thanks for playing <i>Return to Ditch Day</i>!\b";
    }
    
    /* 
     *   Start a new game.  Before we launch into the game, we show some
     *   startup options.
     *   
     *   I use this extra pre-game screen because I personally like getting
     *   the "administrative" tasks out of the way before actually getting
     *   into the narrative.  It's become something of a convention in IF
     *   to show you the introductory text first, and only then ask you to
     *   type ABOUT and CREDITS and so on to see a bunch of information
     *   about the mechanics of the game.  I don't like this because it
     *   totally blows my sense of immersion - reading the introduction
     *   gets me all mentally geared for getting into the story, and then
     *   just as I'm getting to the good part, the author goes and blows it
     *   with an explanation of how ASK ABOUT works.  So, we get this out
     *   of the way up front - we offer options to see the usual sundry
     *   game-mechanics stuff, or to restore a previous session.  After the
     *   player's satisfied with the administrative stuff, we start the
     *   game.  
     */
    newGame()
    {
        /* restore the global default settings */
        SettingsItem.restoreSettings(nil);

        /* starting a new session - show the startup options */
        switch(runStartupOptions())
        {
        case 1:
            /* 
             *   regular startup - show the introduction and run the main
             *   command loop 
             */

            /*
             *   Clear and initialize the normal game screen, including the
             *   status line, before we display any text.  This will help
             *   minimize redrawing - if we waited until after displaying
             *   some text, we might have to redraw some of the screen to
             *   rearrange things for the new screen area taken up by the
             *   status line, which could cause some visible redraw
             *   flashing on the display.  By setting up the status line
             *   first, we'll probably have less to redraw because we won't
             *   have anything on the screen yet when figuring the
             *   subwindow banner layout.  
             */
            initScreen(true);

            /* show the introduction */
            showIntro();
        
            

            /* run the game, showing the initial location description */
            runGame(true);
            break;

        case 2:
            /*
             *   We've just restored a saved game.  Simply go directly to
             *   the main command loop; there's no need to show the room
             *   description, since the RESTORE operation will already have
             *   done so. 
             */
            runGame(nil);
            break;

        case 3:
            /*
             *   we're quitting from the startup options - there's no need
             *   to run the game 
             */
            break;
        }

        /* show our 'goodbye' message */
        showGoodbye();
    }

    /*
     *   Run the "startup options."  The game invokes this routine before
     *   we actually start the game, to give the player some options on how
     *   they want to proceed.  The player can simply proceed directly to
     *   the game, can view background (ABOUT) information and/or
     *   introduction-to-IF instructions first, or can restore a previously
     *   saved game.
     *   
     *   This returns 1 if we're to start the game normally, 2 if we're to
     *   skip the introductory text (because we restored a saved game, for
     *   example), 3 if we're to quit immediately.
     *   
     *   We show these startup options immediately after the game program
     *   is launched, before we show the story's introduction.
     */
    runStartupOptions()
    {
        /* 
         *   if we don't need to run the startup options, just continue
         *   into normal game startup 
         */
        if (!sessionInfo.showStartupOptions)
            return 1;

        /* 
         *   We won't need to show startup options again should we find
         *   ourselves back here at some point.  In particular, we'll
         *   return to the main() routine if the player enters the RESTART
         *   command; but we won't want to go through these options again,
         *   since RESTART should take us back to the start of the story,
         *   not this meta-game launch stuff.  So, indicate in our
         *   transient session information that we don't need to ask for
         *   startup options again during this session.  
         */
        sessionInfo.showStartupOptions = nil;

        /* show the title/author/version and startup options */
        "\b<b>The Magic Forest</b>
        \nRelease <<versionInfo.version>> (<<versionInfo.serialNum>>)
        \nCopyright &copy;2012 Ronald J.\ Gaudet
        / Freeware / Type <<aHref('copyright', 'COPYRIGHT')>> for details\n
        
        <.p>If this is your first time playing this game, please type
        <<aHref('about', 'ABOUT')>> (or just 'A') for some important
        information.  To restore a position you saved earlier, type
        <<aHref('restore', 'RESTORE')>> (or 'R').
        <.p>To <<aHref('', 'begin the game')>>, just press the Enter key. ";

        /* keep going as long as they want to stay here */
        for (;;)
        {
            local cmd;
            local kw;
            local rqArg = nil;
            
            "\b&gt;";
            cmd = inputManager.getInputLine(nil, nil);

            /* check the various allowed commands */
            if (rexMatch('<space>*$', cmd) != nil)
            {
                /* blank line - we're ready to begin the game */
                return 1;
            }
            
            /* check for a keyword */
            if (rexMatch('<space>*(<alpha>+)<space>*$', cmd) != nil)
            {
                /* get the keyword */
                kw = rexGroup(1)[3].toLower();
            }
            else if (rexMatch(
                /*
                 *   This is a little tricky: we match spaces, then RQ or
                 *   REPLAY, then spaces, then a quoted string.  The string
                 *   starts with either a single or double quote, and now
                 *   comes the tricky part: we match any number of
                 *   arbitrary characters, but we use a "negative
                 *   assertion" (that's the "(?!)" group) that says that
                 *   each of those arbitrary characters can't be the open
                 *   quote, which we marked with parens as group #2.
                 *   Finally, we can optionally match the open quote
                 *   character again as a matching close quote, but we
                 *   don't require it.  Then we accept spaces, and then the
                 *   string has to end.  
                 */
                '<space>*(rq|replay)'
                + '<space>+([\'"])(((?!%2).)+)%2?<space>*$', cmd) != nil)
            {
                /* get the keyword */
                kw = rexGroup(1)[3];

                /* get the argument */
                rqArg = rexGroup(3)[3];
            }
            else
            {
                /* there's no keyword - use a string we know we won't match */
                kw = ' ';
            }

            /* check which keyword we got */
            if ('about'.startsWith(kw))
            {
                /* they want the ABOUT information */
                versionInfo.showAbout();
            }
            else if ('restore'.startsWith(kw))
            {
                /* try restoring a game */
                if (RestoreAction.askAndRestore())
                {
                    /* we succeeded - proceed directly to the game */
                    return 2;
                }
            }
            else if ('quit'.startsWith(kw))
            {
                /* do they really want to quit? */
                libMessages.confirmQuit();
                if (yesOrNo())
                    return 3;
                else
                    "Okay. ";
            }
            else if ('hints'.startsWith(kw))
            {
                /* there's no point in showing hints yet; explain this */
                "Sorry, no hints are available right now.  Hints will be
                available as soon as you start the game. ";
            }
            else if ('instructions'.startsWith(kw))
            {
                /* show the instructions */
                InstructionsAction.execSystemAction();
            }
            else if ('copyright'.startsWith(kw))
            {
                /* show the copyright/license information */
                versionInfo.showCopyright();
            }
            else if (kw == 'rq' || 'replay'.startsWith(kw))
            {
                /* if there's no argument, ask for one */
                if (rqArg == nil)
                {
                    /* there's no file, so ask for one */
                    local result = inputFile(
                        'Enter command file', InFileOpen, FileTypeCmd, 0);
                    
                    /* if we got a file, it's the file argument */
                    if (result[1] == InFileSuccess)
                        rqArg = result[2];
                }
                
                /* if we got a file, open it and start the game */
                if (rqArg != nil)
                {
                    /* read from the file */
                    setScriptFile(rqArg, kw == 'rq' ? ScriptFileQuiet : 0);
                    
                    /* go start the game */
                    return 1;
                }
            }
            
            /* refresh them on what to do next */
            "\b(Please type <<aHref('about', 'ABOUT')>> for notes on
            how to play, or <<aHref('restore', 'RESTORE')>> to restore
            a saved position.  To <<aHref('', 'begin the game')>>, just
            press the Enter key.) ";
        }
    }
;


/*
 *   Session information.  This is a transient object with some
 *   miscellaneous information about the gaming session.  It's
 *   transient because we want it to reflect the *session*
 *   status, which means we don't want it affected by things like
 *   Save, Restore, Undo, and Restart.  
 */
transient sessionInfo: object
    /* do we still need to show the startup options? */
    showStartupOptions = true
;



/* ------------------------------------------------------------------------ */
/* 
 *   An invisible COPYRIGHT finish-game option.  We provide this as an
 *   invisible option because we want to allow it (it's mentioned in the
 *   CREDITS message), but we don't want to clutter the prompt list with
 *   it. 
 */
finishOptionCopyright: FinishOption
    doOption()
    {
        /* just show the copyright message */
        versionInfo.showCopyright();

        /* ask for another option */
        return true;
    }

    responseKeyword = 'copyright'

    /* don't list the option in the prompt */
    isListed = nil
;

/* ------------------------------------------------------------------------ */
/*
 *   Initialize the screen.  This clears the screen and optionally sets up
 *   the status line. 
 */
initScreen(showStat)
{
    /* clear the screen */
    cls();

    /* show the status line immediately if desired */
    if (showStat)
        statusLine.showStatusLine();
}
;
     
/* Define help command. *******************************************************/ 
DefineSystemAction(Help)
execSystemAction () { helpText.showtext; }
;
VerbRule (Help)
 'help'
 : HelpAction
 verbPhrase = 'help/helping'
;
helpText: object
 showtext {
  "This is the help text. ";
 }
;
[/code]

This is code taken from RTDD, which I am modifying because I like it. It compiles and runs with no problems as it is right now.

RonG

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4137&start=0#p29777
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - check if transcripting is on when noting?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-11 11:05:13

[code]
Include (-
[ CheckTranscriptStatus;
#ifdef TARGET_ZCODE;
return ((0-->8) & 1);
#ifnot;
return (gg_scriptstr ~= 0);
#endif;
];
-).

To decide whether currently transcripting: (- CheckTranscriptStatus() -)
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4134&start=0#p29778
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: gameMain - Starting Game - TADS3.1
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-11 11:09:37

Your code works for me. It seems to do what you're describing ... it waits for a Return key before opening up the first room and displaying the status bar.

I get a couple of warnings on compilation, telling me that serialNum and showCopyright are not defined, but I assume you've defined those in your versionInfo object. 

So what exactly is the problem you're having?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4131&start=0#p29779
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: otherSide Switching
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-11 11:11:09

Thanks. By taking care of all of those details, I uncovered a bug that play-testers would (I hope) have stumbled over. It pays to be thorough!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4137&start=0#p29780
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - check if transcripting is on when noting?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-11 11:26:45

When I've done testing for others, I've found it very easy to forget to generate a transcript. But really there shouldn't even be an option for me to forget to turn it on. I recommend that you manually trigger the transcript command in your "when play begins" rule, so that the player can start transcripting immediately. You might even make it impossible to continue to play unless the transcript is on.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4137&start=0#p29781
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - check if transcripting is on when noting?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-01-11 11:30:52

There is also an I6 boolean transcript_mode that is set when transcription is on. I suppose you could use it.
[code]To decide whether transcription is on: (- (transcript_mode == true) -).

To check transcript:
	if transcription is on:
		say "(Noted)[paragraph break]";
	otherwise:
		say "The story transcript is switched off right now. Do you wish to switch it on?";
		if the player consents:
			try switching the story transcript on.

After reading a command:
	if the player's command matches the regular expression "^<\*\p>":
		check transcript;
		reject the player's command.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4137&start=0#p29782
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - check if transcripting is on when noting?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-11 11:55:02

[quote]There is also an I6 boolean transcript_mode[/quote]

Only in Z-code.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=40#p29783
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-11 12:24:49

Excellent! (Note: it's possible I may flake out due to real-life responsibilities.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4137&start=0#p29784
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - check if transcripting is on when noting?
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-01-11 12:34:16

Thanks, everyone. This is great. It's good to have some exposure to Inform 6, and I think switching the transcript on when play begins (but only in a testing release) is pretty strong. I try not to be forgetful, but I am, so this is one more thing off my mind.

It's good to know it doesn't work in glulx--that won't be an issue for what I'm currently trying to write, but I suppose a nag in the ABOUT section--or each time someone writes a comment--wouldn't be too much.

For people newer than me, then, that'd be

[code]section force-transcript - not for release

include basic screen effects by Emily Short.

when play begins:
	say "The below is just a check to make sure testers are writing a transcript. Hope it is not too annoying. It should not appear in release mode.";
	pause the game;
	try switching the story transcript on;

[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4137&start=0#p29785
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - check if transcripting is on when noting?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-11 12:49:30

[quote="aschultz"]
[code]section force-transcript - not for release

include basic screen effects by Emily Short.

when play begins:
	say "The below is just a check to make sure testers are writing a transcript. Hope it is not too annoying. It should not appear in release mode.";
	pause the game;
	try switching the story transcript on;

[/code][/quote]

The code you posted will work in Glulx. It's only the I6 flag that Felix mentioned that isn't available under Glulx.

By the way, that "not for release" will prevent this code from being compiled into an external testing blorb (i.e., what you would normally send to betatesters). You might want to try using an extension such as Extended Debugging if you want to protect testing sections in this way for builds that you're sending to external testers.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3823&start=20#p29786
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The Pudlothon: Ecce Jacek
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-01-11 13:23:16

[quote="capmikee"]"Efficient" is a funny word. If you pump the soil full of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and repeatedly purge the soil of all competing life, depleting its nutrients and sending them as toxic runoff into the Earth's oceans, you can grow soy and grains very cheaply with a minimal amount of labor. On the other hand, if you allow a complete self-sufficient biome to coexist with your "crops," you'll get a lot less food for human use, but you'll get more complete utilization of the water and solar energy that the land receives. Plus, it won't die when the oil runs out.[/quote]
A fair point...  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4134&start=0#p29787
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: gameMain - Starting Game - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-11 13:24:20

Those two compile warnings are indeed taken care of in another part of the code. I can send the whole game source code if you'd like. The whole source, right now, is not much longer than what I already sent. What I'm trying to do is listed in order:

1. When the game actually starts, I want the player to receive a telephone call. In this call, the goals of the game will be broadly explained and the game will stop; waiting for the space bar.

2. The game will then show the 'start game' screen that you see. If the options on that screen are bypassed then another piece of text will be shown and will wait for another space bar.
.
3. At this point, the player when be at the first room and the game proper will have begun.

All this stuff is really not a 'problem'. It's just the way I'd like everything to get going.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4138&start=0#p29788
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ten Room Game Competition
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-11 13:32:12

I'm not a comp guy myself, but this sounds like it'll produce some games I'd like [emote]:)[/emote]

Interesting about the web-authenticated voter qualification.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4137&start=0#p29789
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - check if transcripting is on when noting?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-01-11 13:35:39

[quote="ektemple"]By the way, that "not for release" will prevent this code from being compiled into an external testing blorb (i.e., what you would normally send to betatesters).[/quote]
The windows version of the IDE has a "release for testing" option, which I assumed blorbed up a debug build (including testing commands and code marked "not for release"). Is this incorrect?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4137&start=0#p29790
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - check if transcripting is on when noting?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-11 14:08:58

Allow me to plug Juhana's "Parchment-Transcript" tool. It stores all transcripts on a website, so as long as you have access to one, you can set it up and then not only do your testers not have to remember to turn scripting on, they don't even have to send you any files!

I've asked around a little bit, but here I'll ask again: Is there anyone who'd be willing to set up Parchment-Transcript as a service for authors who don't have their own LAMP websites?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4137&start=0#p29792
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - check if transcripting is on when noting?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-11 14:46:11

[quote="Skinny Mike"][quote="ektemple"]By the way, that "not for release" will prevent this code from being compiled into an external testing blorb (i.e., what you would normally send to betatesters).[/quote]
The windows version of the IDE has a "release for testing" option, which I assumed blorbed up a debug build (including testing commands and code marked "not for release"). Is this incorrect?[/quote]

I hope that you are correct, as this would suggest that the same feature might be coming to the Mac with the next release. I would love for the extension-based solution to be made obsolete.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4134&start=0#p29793
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: gameMain - Starting Game - TADS3.1
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-11 15:23:26

Have you read "Some Common Input/Output Issues" in the Technical Manual? That should give you the tools you need. (I've never actually tried pausing for more, so I can't supply the details.)

At a higher level, I would suggest that perhaps you'd find it productive to leave this particular coding conundrum for later. In the process of developing a working game, you'll learn a lot (perhaps more than you want to know!) about TADS programming. This will make it much easier to go back and tidy up things that mystified you when you first stumbled over them.

That has been my experience, anyway.

I think it's pretty easy to get discouraged when something in a project isn't going your way and you can't figure out why. I find it useful to set those problems aside, whatever they happen to be at the moment, and work on things that I [i]can [/i]deal with. That way, I keep my momentum going.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4134&start=0#p29794
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: gameMain - Starting Game - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-11 15:50:16

I have to agree with everything you've said. My huge problem is that once I decide to do something I find it almost impossible to set it aside. But, I'm going to do that for now and start working on the player coding and some of the rooms.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Rong

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4138&start=0#p29795
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ten Room Game Competition
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2012-01-11 16:05:09

Why rule 6?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=30#p29796
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2012-01-11 16:17:51

Sorry, have been out of the country with limited Internet access.

Anyway, please feel free to do whatever you want with the Fingertips games. Yes, I was certainly envisioning something like Aisle, but I don't want to restrict anyone's creativity. And, also, people should feel free to not go along with what other people are doing.

-Kevin, slowly recovering from being away for two weeks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=0#p29797
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: tads.io server testing
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-11 19:20:15

I'm doing some infrastructure work for TADS 3 web servers, and I need some help testing out the geolocation code. 

Can you browse to <a class="postlink" href="http://gs.tads.io/test.php">http://gs.tads.io/test.php</a> and let me know if it matches you to a server that seems way off?

For the purposes of this test, treat [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Winkel_triple_projection_SW.jpg]this map[/url] as the frame of reference. North America west is California and Asia/Pacific east is Australia.

The eventual plan is to have a lot of small servers running behind the gs.tads.io name, which will redirect player sessions to the nearest one. This is different from the approach IFDB takes; it doesn't (yet) treat location as a factor when picking a server.

I'd also like to make it as easy as possible for authors to add a server to this network, with no knowledge of Linux or web servers required. If that's something you're interested in, please let me know. I could really use volunteers to run through the process and give me feedback.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4127&start=0#p29798
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Producing starting code programmatically
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-01-11 19:24:33

[quote="ChrisC"]Well, it can do something almost as good. Emily Short had an extension a while back to build a conversation framework programmatically during play, which was used to build Alabaster. These days making an interactive definition system like that would be even easier, thanks to the introduction of indexed text.

The last thing that code does is display all of that generated code on the game window and write it to the file. Using "the topic understood" and indexed text, it should be easy enough to reproduce that behavior to generate, for example, verbs.[/quote]

Wow. That is really cool. I'll give it a go. I've actually played Alabaster but never saw that part of the source. It'd make a lot of things easier.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=0#p29799
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-11 19:25:45

I tried it and it put me in the right one (Seattle -> NAW). 

How do you see this working with multiplayer games?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4036&start=0#p29800
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ZMPP for Android released
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-01-11 19:49:40

Would it be possible to have a release for 2.1?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4059&start=0#p29801
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Damusix for inform 7?
User: sfernald / DateTime: 2012-01-11 20:01:24

Hey Aaron, I love your book. I'm going through it right now. So nice to find something that delves into the details of inform 7!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=0#p29802
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-01-11 20:57:50

Worked for me (North America, East).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=0#p29803
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-11 21:02:07

Worked for me too, North America East.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=0#p29804
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-11 21:04:00

Worked for me too, North America East.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3823&start=20#p29805
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The Pudlothon: Ecce Jacek
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-11 21:08:35

[quote="Felix"][quote="Laroquod"]Loving people 'for who they are' is a myth; what you actually do is the only thing that matters in love, and the minute you stop doing whatever it is you did that made you loved, you will no longer be so loved, regardless of what was promised.[/quote]
Numerical identity does play a role, though. Even if you do come to love someone because of what that person does, you usually don't come to love everyone who does the same things. So, though you love someone, not because he or she is the one unique individual that he or she is, but because he or she is the kind of person he or she is, the *object* of your love still is that one individual (though the *reason or cause* for the love is not that individuals uniqueness but his or her be the right kind of person).

Sometimes however, it seems to me, love is not based so much on what the beloved does as on what the loving subject does (or thinks); at least I guess that this is so in many cases of non-erotic love: parents often do not love their children because the children are particularly sweet but because they themselves take such care of them and always have.

And, indeed, if one's love for a particular person is a kind of behaviour, and if that behaviour has been rather erratically reinforced by the person one loves, we should expect it to be quite resistent to both negative reinforcement and extinction, so that you keep loving people long after they ceased to be the kind of people that made you love them. -- I'm afraid that this is not seldom for the worse of the lover.[/quote]
If love is a behaviour then all thoughts are behaviours, and I'm not sure I would go that far, although expressing love definitely qualifies. But good point that there is a certain inertia involved due to how difficult it can be to undo conditioning, so it can take a while for the consequences of a change in behaviour to play out — sometimes years. Sometimes long, miserable years. I would point out regarding parents and children that their extremely close genetic relationship might cloud the definition of 'self-interest'. Also, it wasn't my intention to argue that people aren't unique. Nor that we can't love whatever collection of behaviours is unique about them.

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4036&start=0#p29806
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ZMPP for Android released
User: weiju / DateTime: 2012-01-11 21:19:44

Do you mean Glulx ?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4138&start=0#p29807
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ten Room Game Competition
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2012-01-11 21:20:47

I love maps! I might want to do this just for the maps!

Maps!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4094&start=40#p29808
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Puzzle Design (Brainstorming Needed)
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-11 21:24:04

No worries.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=0#p29809
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-11 22:01:46

Worked for me -- north america west. (I'm in Calif.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=0#p29810
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: Eriorg / DateTime: 2012-01-11 22:55:00

And it worked for me, too: Europe (west).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=40#p29812
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-12 00:40:06

[quote="jacksonmead"]And, also, people should feel free to not go along with what other people are doing.[/quote]

No worries on that score [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4036&start=0#p29813
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ZMPP for Android released
User: kevinjardine / DateTime: 2012-01-12 01:20:59

Would it be possible to support landscape orientation for those of us with slider keyboards?

Kevin

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=0#p29814
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-01-12 01:21:30

Same here: Orlando, FL = N. America East

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4113&start=10#p29815
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Whispers?
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-01-12 01:44:09

Also point.

So! [url=http://novelinteraction.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/if-whispers-5/]Let's get this party started.[/url]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=0#p29816
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-12 02:03:01

Thanks everyone! Glad that it seems to be getting things right.

[quote="George"]How do you see this working with multiplayer games?[/quote]

Each endpoint server will have its own hostname, and multiplayer will work the same way it does through IFDB. Both players have to connect to the same server; there's no session sharing or replication between servers.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=0#p29817
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2012-01-12 03:44:20

Correct here, too:  Asia/Pacific (east).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=10#p29818
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-12 03:53:20

[quote="bcressey"]I'm doing some infrastructure work for TADS 3 web servers, and I need some help testing out the geolocation code. 

Can you browse to <a class="postlink" href="http://gs.tads.io/test.php">http://gs.tads.io/test.php</a> and let me know if it matches you to a server that seems way off?

For the purposes of this test, treat [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Winkel_triple_projection_SW.jpg]this map[/url] as the frame of reference. North America west is California and Asia/Pacific east is Australia.

The eventual plan is to have a lot of small servers running behind the gs.tads.io name, which will redirect player sessions to the nearest one. This is different from the approach IFDB takes; it doesn't (yet) treat location as a factor when picking a server.

I'd also like to make it as easy as possible for authors to add a server to this network, with no knowledge of Linux or web servers required. If that's something you're interested in, please let me know. I could really use volunteers to run through the process and give me feedback.[/quote]
From TekSavvy in Toronto I was slotted into North America (east).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4036&start=0#p29819
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ZMPP for Android released
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2012-01-12 03:59:12

[quote="kevinjardine"]Would it be possible to support landscape orientation for those of us with slider keyboards?[/quote]
Seconded. I downloaded ZMPP and it looks really nice, but it's disappointing not to be able to use my lovely QWERTY keyboard with it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=10#p29820
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: tomasb / DateTime: 2012-01-12 04:20:30

It works for me (Europe, central).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4036&start=0#p29821
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ZMPP for Android released
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-01-12 04:42:00

[quote="weiju"]Do you mean Glulx ?[/quote]

No I mean for Android 2.1.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=50#p29823
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-12 06:40:26

I wanted to make clear--since my previous posts probably haven't--that the changes I'm suggesting for the docs are on the surgical level. A sentence or two here or there will probably serve to impart missing critical information and provide needed context. I am [i]not[/i] suggesting that the docs are hopeless or that you need to start over or anything like that!

[b]Edited to add:[/b] I was just looking through the R&D source code and noticed that you put more complete explanations of many object kinds in their index specifications. That must have been what you were referring to when you said that you had put a lot of focus on specification text (I thought you were referring to the brief explanations of properties that you gave in the documentation itself). That's cool. I don't know if it's a useful data point, but as a user I don't tend to look in the index first for that sort of information. The index is a last resort for me.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4137&start=10#p29824
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - check if transcripting is on when noting?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-01-12 07:01:53

[quote="ektemple"][quote="Skinny Mike"]The windows version of the IDE has a "release for testing" option, which I assumed blorbed up a debug build (including testing commands and code marked "not for release"). Is this incorrect?[/quote]

I hope that you are correct, as this would suggest that the same feature might be coming to the Mac with the next release. I would love for the extension-based solution to be made obsolete.[/quote]

The Mac IDE already has the same option. I thought it was the Windows version that lacked the feature? Or was it the Linux one?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4129&start=0#p29825
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The One Ring: Adventures Over the Edge of the Wild
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2012-01-12 07:03:44

How is a tabletop RPG played through IM or IRC?  I've roleplayed on MUDs, including MUDs that strictly enforced being in-character at all times and roleplaying.  However, I've never played a tabletop RPG, and I can't really envision what roleplaying would be like without the structure of code.

The main RPI (roleplay intensive) MUD I played on was devoutly based on Tolkien.  It even had permission from the Tolkien Estate (or whatever holds the copyright) to operate non-commercially.  This MUD was [url=http://www.middle-earth.us/][i]Shadows of Isildur[/i][/url], which sadly is offline, but hopefully will reopen in a few months.  I don't know everything there is to know about Middle Earth, but I'm still somewhat of a Tolkien geek.

I'm sure your IRC/IM game sessions will be great, but I'm too shy to participate.  Thanks for announcing here, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4142&start=0#p29826
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Shared world
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-01-12 08:14:05

Hi.

Is anybody here interested in doing a "shared world" collaboration aimed at IF? 

I am [b]not[/b] talking about shared in the MMO/multiplayer sense, I'm talking about collaborating on creating a "world" - places, general themes, recurring characters - and then using those in our individual (or, by all means, collaboratively written) IF works. 

I remember reading the Thieve's World anthologies (see [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thieves'_World[/url]). In these, different authors made up a world together, so that places, characters and events from one short story reappeared in another story by another author. I don't necessarily mean it should be a fantasy world, it could be any setting. I think it should be original work though, not adapting an existing world, if nothing else to stay clear of copyright issues. 

I'm interested in seeing how - and if - this would work in IF. What are the previous examples of doing this? 

One way of doing it would be just to toss ideas around and making up a world together, adding important characters and stuff in the mix, and letting everybody use these things in their own IF works. (Upshot: you don't need to be able to code at all to be part of this!)

Another possibility might be to share more than just ideas, to actually collaborate on (e.g.) locations, maybe even characters or even... well puzzles/quests/subplots/story fragments, whatever your take is - in (e.g.) Inform7 extensions or whatever works for your system. 

Does this make sense at all? I'm not at all sure it does, but I think it's worth maybe running with the idea a little further than to just dismiss it straight away. Part of me feels like this is fundamentally at odds with how IF authors work, but on the other hand this seems like a perfectly standard procedure for RPG people. And if it works for (traditional, non-interactive) fiction and it works for role-playing games - why wouldn't it work for IF? 

I have plenty of questions and some ideas, but I want you think about this so I'll shut up now. 

So. Is anybody up for this?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4036&start=0#p29827
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ZMPP for Android released
User: weiju / DateTime: 2012-01-12 09:04:44

Hi,

hardware keyboard maybe, Android 2.1 probably not.

1. The Dalvik JIT compiler is included in 2.2. I know that quite a bit of devices still run 2.1, and Infocom games do run quite well on a non-JIT device, but I wouldn't do Inform 7 games a favor if they could be only be played in slow motion.
It is likely that the Android version will at some point run Glulx/Glk stories and performance-wise, those are even more of a challenge on average.

2. One of the things I am currently looking into is hardware keyboard support, but I don't know when that will happen.

Wei-ju

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4138&start=0#p29829
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ten Room Game Competition
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-01-12 09:46:01

Can the map be variable? E.g. how much can it change during play, or can it be decided randomly at the beginning of play?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4137&start=10#p29830
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - check if transcripting is on when noting?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-12 10:28:06

On the Mac, "Release for Testing" doesn't produce a blorb file, so it's not really feature-complete. The IDE interpreters are very slow when it comes to testing with multimedia, so a blorbed release for even alpha testing is pretty much a necessity.

So I guess the question is whether the Windows and Linux versions of "Release for Testing" are similarly limited.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4138&start=0#p29831
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ten Room Game Competition
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2012-01-12 10:38:11

[quote="Campbell"]Why rule 6?[/quote]

Rule 6 is that I need to host it...this is just a way to force everyone to submit their games to me so I can control the contest. If people prefer I use tenrooms.plover.net instead of textfyre.com, that's fine.

I want all of the games in one place.

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4138&start=0#p29832
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ten Room Game Competition
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2012-01-12 10:40:22

[quote="aschultz"]Can the map be variable? E.g. how much can it change during play, or can it be decided randomly at the beginning of play?[/quote]

As long as you stick to 10 rooms and the map can be displayed on a single web page, that's in the spirit of the contest.

David C.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4137&start=10#p29833
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - check if transcripting is on when noting?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-12 10:56:47

[quote]On the Mac, "Release for Testing" doesn't produce a blorb file, so it's not really feature-complete.[/quote]

Huh, really. All this time I've assumed it did, because it clearly should. (I've been getting my debug-.z5 files by copying the "output.z5" intermediate out of the Build tree.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4138&start=0#p29834
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ten Room Game Competition
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-01-12 11:05:46

[quote="Afterward"]I love maps! I might want to do this just for the maps![/quote]

Yeah, that was my reaction, too.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=10#p29835
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-12 11:22:00

OK, new test.

Launch [url=http://gs.tads.io/?storyfile=http://www.tads.org/games/ditch3/ditch3web.t3]Return to Ditch Day[/url] and let me know if:

1) The interface feels responsive, and
2) You prefer one of the other servers instead.

Servers:
[list]
[*][url=http://gs-na-east.tads.io/?storyfile=http://www.tads.org/games/ditch3/ditch3web.t3]na-east[/url][/*:m]
[*][url=http://gs-na-west.tads.io/?storyfile=http://www.tads.org/games/ditch3/ditch3web.t3]na-west[/url][/*:m]
[*][url=http://gs-eu-west.tads.io/?storyfile=http://www.tads.org/games/ditch3/ditch3web.t3]eu-west[/url][/*:m]
[*][url=http://gs-ap-west.tads.io/?storyfile=http://www.tads.org/games/ditch3/ditch3web.t3]ap-west[/url][/*:m]
[*][url=http://gs-ap-east.tads.io/?storyfile=http://www.tads.org/games/ditch3/ditch3web.t3]ap-east[/url][/*:m][/list:u]

(na-east and na-west are each backed by two servers, so your results may differ slightly between trials.)

[quote="Emerald"]Correct here, too:  Asia/Pacific (east).[/quote]

The ap-west and ap-east links above point to Singapore and Tokyo respectively. Can you let me know which one is better for Australia?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4036&start=0#p29836
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ZMPP for Android released
User: kevinjardine / DateTime: 2012-01-12 12:08:08

ZMPP works fine with my Xperia Pro hardware keyboard. All that is missing is landscape orientation so that I don't have to keep rotating the phone.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4036&start=0#p29837
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ZMPP for Android released
User: weiju / DateTime: 2012-01-12 12:13:12

oh well... hey Dannii, I decided to upload a package where I lowered the requirements to Android 2.1 in the Downloads section of ZMPP's github page (unlikely that I will do that on an app store version):

<a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/weiju/zmpp2">https://github.com/weiju/zmpp2</a>

This is a current development snapshot, I briefly tested it on a 2.1 emulator, so don't say I did not warn you before [emote]:D[/emote] 

Wei-ju

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4144&start=0#p29838
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Holding watch instead of wearing it - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-12 12:44:22

I coded a watch which should always be worn by the actor. The start of the game shows that the actor is holding the watch instead of wearing it? I've included all the code that should be causing this problem.

[code]

/* A class for clothing worn by the player character, and which we can't take  *
 * off. We use this for the PC's constant compliment of articles. *************/
class AlwaysWorn: Wearable
  WornBy = me
  dobjFor(Doff)
 {
    check()
   {
     cannotDoffMsg;
     exit;
   } 
 }
 cannotDoffMsg = "You must keep this with you."

 /* Exclude these from DROP ALL and DOFF ALL */
 hideFromAll(action)
 {
   return action.ofKind(DropAction)
      || action.ofKind(DoffAction)
      || action.ofKind(PutInAction)
      || inherited(action);
 }

; 

/* Show actor. ****************************************************************/
me: BagOfHolding, Actor
    location = Beach     
    VocabWords = 'Tom Thomas Tom/Thomas/Leavens'
    desc
 {
  "You're Thomas Leavens. You are known as Dr. Tom to your friends and
  associates. Your ex-wife calls you names that can't be repeated! Other than
  your underwear and socks, you're wearing your usual working attire. ";
 } 

affinityFor(obj)
{
  return (obj != self && obj.ofKind(Wearable) ? 50 : 0);
} 
 
inventoryLister: actorInventoryLister
    {
        showInventoryEmpty(parent)
        {
            /* empty inventory */
            "<<buildSynthParam('The/he', parent)>> {is} holding absolutely
            nothing. ";
        }
        showInventoryWearingOnly(parent, wearing)
        {
            /* we're carrying nothing but wearing some items */
            "<<buildSynthParam('The/he', parent)>> {is}n\'t holding anything,
            but {is} sporting <<wearing>>. ";
        }
        showInventoryCarryingOnly(parent, carrying)
        {
            /* we have only carried items to report */
            "<<buildSynthParam('The/he', parent)>> {is} holding <<carrying>>. ";
        }
        showInventoryShortLists(parent, carrying, wearing)
        {
            local nm = gSynthMessageParam(parent);
            
            /* short lists - combine carried and worn in a single sentence */
            "<<buildParam('The/he', nm)>> {is} holding <<carrying>>,
            and <<buildParam('it\'s', nm)>>{subj} sporting <<wearing>>. ";
        }
        showInventoryLongLists(parent, carrying, wearing)
        {
            local nm = gSynthMessageParam(parent);
            
            /* long lists - show carried and worn in separate sentences */
            "<<buildParam('The/he', nm)>> {is} holding <<carrying>>.
            <<buildParam('It\'s', nm)>> sporting <<wearing>>. ";
        }
        /*
         *   For 'tall' listings, we'll use the standard listing style, so we
         *   need to provide the framing messages for the tall-mode 
         *   listing.  
         */
        showListPrefixTall(itemCount, pov, parent)
            { "<<buildSynthParam('The/he', parent)>> {is} holding:"; }
        showListContentsPrefixTall(itemCount, pov, parent)
            { "<<buildSynthParam('A/he', parent)>>, who {is} holding:"; }           
    }    
/* Use person-sized Bulk. */
   bulk = 10
;

+watch: AlwaysWorn 'wrist wristwatch/watch' 'wristwatch'
    "It's just a cheap watch."
cannotDoffMsg = "You must wear this."

;   

/* Room0001: The Actor Starts Game Here. **************************************/

  Beach : OutdoorRoom 'At The Beach' 'At The Beach'
  roomFirstDesc()
  { "This is first description.";
  }
  shortDesc = "You are at the sandy beach.";
; 

/* Room0002: The path from/to the beach. **************************************/

[/code]

I certainly could use some help on this one.

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4137&start=10#p29839
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - check if transcripting is on when noting?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-12 12:48:03

[quote="zarf"][quote]On the Mac, "Release for Testing" doesn't produce a blorb file, so it's not really feature-complete.[/quote]

Huh, really. All this time I've assumed it did, because it clearly should. (I've been getting my debug-.z5 files by copying the "output.z5" intermediate out of the Build tree.)[/quote]

Yeah, it doesn't seem to make sense to call it a "release" build without blorbification.

I don't remember every having tried it with a z-code game, but when you do a Glulx game, you get essentially the same .ulx file that you can dig out of the Build folder. I would guess that the process is the same for z-code, and you'd end up with a .z# file.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4144&start=0#p29840
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Holding watch instead of wearing it - TADS3.1
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-12 13:40:45

Only class names start with a capital letter. Functions, properties and objects start with lower case.

WornBy -> wornBy
VocabWords -> vocabWords

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4144&start=0#p29841
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Holding watch instead of wearing it - TADS3.1
User: Mikawa / DateTime: 2012-01-12 13:45:25

[code]

class AlwaysWorn: Wearable
  wornBy = me
  dobjFor(Doff)
  {
     check()
     {
        cannotDoffMsg;
        exit;
     }
  }
;

[/code]

The code above works fine.
I guess the fault is that "wornBy = me" should not begin with a capital letter. The same with "vocabWords" ...
Greetings,
-- MI

BTW: I'm not quite sure what you're shooting for by inherting the player char from "bag of holding" ....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=10#p29842
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: Mikawa / DateTime: 2012-01-12 14:40:44

Correct, too Nearest server : Europe (central)
Greetings,
-- MI

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4144&start=0#p29843
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Holding watch instead of wearing it - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-12 14:46:10

Many thanks for your help. I doubt that I would ever have found the problem without it.

Making the player have affinity lets all objects he picks up be automatically sorted and put in the proper bags of holding. My player will have pockets in his pants, pockets in his shirt and will be wearing a backpack. All of those, along with the player, will be bags of holding and will only vary in their assigned affinity. This technique, and the code are shown and explained in the source for 'Return To Ditch Day'.

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=10#p29844
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-12 15:04:19

Reasonably responsive with my default server, which I guess is na-west. Output arrives in 1 second or so.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=10#p29845
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-12 15:13:08

[quote="bcressey"]OK, new test.

Launch [url=http://gs.tads.io/?storyfile=http://www.tads.org/games/ditch3/ditch3web.t3]Return to Ditch Day[/url] and let me know if:

1) The interface feels responsive,[/quote]


Averaging about two seconds, so decent. It felt a [i]lot [/i]better than when Nikos had his test server in Greece [emote]:)[/emote].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=10#p29846
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-12 15:20:20

I got much better response time than George reports from na-east, less than 1/2 second between turns fer sure. I tried going far afield to ap-east and got much slower responses (as expected).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4142&start=0#p29847
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Shared world
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-12 15:43:23

Well, I loved Thieves World when I was a kid, and what you're talking about isn't too far removed from muds, which I also grew up playing, so it sounds good to me. 

There are some practical obstacles though. The TW writers were all professional, and especially in the beginning of the series, highly experienced authors, and I daresay writing a short story is less work than writing short IF. So, keeping the project on track so it produces work is going to be one challenge. 

Another issue I'm not so sure about is this: will a reader forgive a certain amount of inconsistency between stories in a shared world anthology, but less between the responses of two works of IF? Because you're dealing with a simulation I feel like the reader will expect a more consistent experience from one game to the next.

I think sharing code is one good way to mitigate that, but if you don't want to restrict authors to one authoring system (which seems like a good idea to me) you'll need to create some kind of specification people can code to. 

At the same time, it'd be a shame to rule out quite different interpretations and IF experiences of the source material. Maybe only time will tell if this is something to address or not.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=50#p29848
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-12 15:45:15

So, I created my first map with R&D last night. Not much more complicated than Cyberspace, but it was a test nonetheless. The process was quite simple, and much easier than last time I tried (a few months ago)--that is probably due to the presence of documentation, but it might also be due to changes in the extension itself, I'm not sure. I never managed to get a compilable file the first time, but I was up in minutes this round. If any of you out there are interested in exploring roguelike/CRPG-IF hybridization, I recommend that you take a look. You can get started quickly by grabbing the tile images from the Glimmr Canvas-Based Drawing example "Roguelike-like" (available in the assets folder from the [url=http://code.google.com/p/glimmr-i7x/downloads/list]Glimmr full release[/url] download). No excuses remain!

Basti, below are some reactions, requests, questions, etc. I've spoilered because there are too many really long posts in this thread!

[spoiler]One thing I found while testing is that I would really like to be able to define all of my tilecells with a single table. I think it would be faster, as well as cleaner and easier to read. However, if I do that, I will not be able to use the predefined tilecell subkinds (t_floor, t_wall, etc.), since you can't specify subkinds in a table. Would I lose anything by doing that? (Obviously, I would manually assign the appropriate default environmental effects, such as ee_block for walls, to my custom tilecells. But are there other benefits to using the built-in kinds?)

I wonder if the "fit" phrase could be made optional? I tried removing the "fit" phrase from my example, but it looked like every tile was sized to about 2 x 2 pixels (i.e. way too small). I feel like it shouldn't be necessary to do a fit for every map display, that R&D should have some other way of determining the desired tile-width and tile-height. If something like the fit-phrase is required, would it be possible to set the tile-width directly rather than having to set the width of the full map-display?

How would I go about animating the image displayed for an m_actor? The naive approach would just be to change the img_ref for every tick of a timer. Is that in fact the best approach? (I'm not sure if animation is even practical from a performance standpoint, but it might be fun to try.)

I didn't realize until I was testing this that the m_room is actually a subkind of room. The docs just say that an m_room is a "world" or "map" that we paint to. Is the use of the room class just a convenience for folks that want to include one map per room? Or does it have other implications, like a map won't display unless the player has actually moved into the m_room?

What do you think about eliminating the built-up-rule? It seems to me that since you're using an activity for generating the map, it would be easier for the author to just write an after rule to do anything that would currently be done in the built-up-rule. This would be more flexible, since you could have rules that fire for all maps, only certain maps, or specific maps. For example:

[code]After map generating an m_room:
After map generating a dungeon m_room:
After map generating the torture chamber:[/code]

I notice that the order in which you have defined the direction names for the facing directions and the img_ref doesn't match the internal Inform ordering. This probably isn't a big deal, but it would be easier to loop over the directions and make assignments if they did match. The internal ordering is:

[rant]north
northeast
northwest
south
southeast
southwest
east
west
up
down
inside
outside[/rant][/spoiler]

On a different topic, I wonder if it would be possible to improve performance by including a phrase that would provide direct storage of a map, as opposed to using phrases in-game to build the map. For example, right now, we need to first run the map generating activity, then use various placement phrases to add features to the map one by one. That takes processing time while the game is running. You could potentially provide a phrase that the author could run once. This phrase would output the (probably not human-readable) source code needed to define the map without the activity or phrases--in other words, a direct representation of the storage. The author could then replace the procedural code in the game file with the "flattened" version. This would save all of the time needed to build the map procedurally while the game is actually running.

I'm looking forward to messing around a bit more with R&D in the next couple of days.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4129&start=0#p29849
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The One Ring: Adventures Over the Edge of the Wild
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-12 15:52:04

IRC roleplay isn't much different from muds. Usually you'll have some code (either on an IRC bot or a webpage) to roll dice and so on. You don't usually have coded combat and all the stuff a mud usually has. In place of mud socials and what not you'll just use IRC emotes (like an RPI emote but without all the fancy substitution basically). Typically you'll have two IRC channels/windows, one for OOC and one for IC as well. 

Probably the biggest difference is that in mud RP you tend to speak and emote [i]as [/i]your character, while IRC RP is more like tabletop, where you'll alternate between acting as your character and just saying what your character does.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=10#p29850
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2012-01-12 16:23:52

Barely noticeable lag for me. (<1s) I'm in Sweden, and the first test placed me in central Europe.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=10#p29851
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: tomasb / DateTime: 2012-01-12 16:26:26

From central Europe the typical timings of each HTTP request is as follows (please note that typical game turn consists of 4 requests so you must multiply by 4 to get an actual response time):

[list]
[*]na-east 240 ms[/*:m]
[*]na-west 385 ms[/*:m]
[*]eu-west 115 ms[/*:m]
[*]ap-west 580 ms[/*:m]
[*]ap-east 630 ms[/*:m][/list:u]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4138&start=0#p29852
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ten Room Game Competition
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2012-01-12 16:31:19

[quote="DavidC"]Rule 6 is that I need to host it...this is just a way to force everyone to submit their games to me so I can control the contest. If people prefer I use tenrooms.plover.net instead of textfyre.com, that's fine.[/quote]Are you able to host ASP.net apps with AJAX? Otherwise this rule would exclude ADRIFT.

[quote]I want all of the games in one place.[/quote]They don't necessarily have to all be on the same server tho, that's what links are for, no?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4142&start=0#p29853
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Shared world
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-01-12 17:20:49

I actually know of a similar concept that worked very well for a long time: Reality-on-the-Norm.

<a class="postlink" href="http://realityonthenorm.info/">http://realityonthenorm.info/</a>

I think it worked so well because the first games established some very distinctive characters with distinctive personalities. Cardboard, yes, but interesting - and leaving room for added depth later, if necessary. The very first game established a tone. It didn't carry throughout ALL the games, but without that a first distinctive tone, it wouldn't have sparked so much interest.

Also, the style was kept graphically simplistic so everyone could join in, and the first few games were - inevitably - made by the same person(s) until it really caught on.

There was some inconsistency, but people really were OK with it. One of the most famous cases was the killing of a main character. That generated a LOT of discussion, but eventually people sort of wrote alternate timelines... or placed stories before the killing... and even tried to fit it in within a larger plotline. They also mocked the game which did it, which was indeed a game mostly fit for mocking.

Another cute example is that at a certain game, a new character appears. This character hardly talks at all, because the game's writer was, frankly, bad at writing. Later authors used this new character - every character was fair game to all authors - and made him a very, very quiet person, whose thoughts you could never be sure of.

There were some sets of templates (as it was mostly a graphical adventure) shared around for everyone to use - characters, places, objects... but you could always use yours, if you wanted to.

I think this is a good idea, and the question is: will it catch on? The answer, as always, is: no way to know until its tried. But looking at RON, a *successful* venture (up until the time it got too much - nowadays people feel daunted that to really know RON you have to play 30+ games just to write a proper game, which is really not keeping in style with the original concept anymore where pretty mcuh everything went... I guess it just evolved beyond people's control), I'd say it means some dedicated authors for the first couple of games, and the necessity of establishing *just enough*. Just enough locations to make a skeleton; and leave ample room for changes (the first RON game had a main street that was full of empty buildings that were later adapted into anything and everything). Just enough characterisation to make the characters stand out; and leave ample room to play with (character-types would be fine).

And naturally, the lighter the tone, the more participants there will be - at first. And then things would just develop. Characters would come together, good stuff would keep, bad stuff would be scratched (there's at least one character in RON who just never really got used for anything, Thakbor). The game world and history would evolve of their own accord.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=10#p29854
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-12 18:55:15

Just noticeable lag in na-east, except when there's a disambiguation -- then I'd say maybe about half a second. (My computer/internet connection is often kind of laggy anyway.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=50#p29856
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-12 20:26:06

[quote="ektemple"]One thing I found while testing is that I would really like to be able to define all of my tilecells with a single table. I think it would be faster, as well as cleaner and easier to read. However, if I do that, I will not be able to use the predefined tilecell subkinds (t_floor, t_wall, etc.), since you can't specify subkinds in a table. Would I lose anything by doing that? (Obviously, I would manually assign the appropriate default environmental effects, such as ee_block for walls, to my custom tilecells. But are there other benefits to using the built-in kinds?)[/quote]

It looks like this isn't possible currently, because the def_floor and def_wall don't accept any tilecell, only the restrictive t_floor and t_wall subkinds. Any chance that you would be able to change the definition of def_floor etc. so that they accept any tilecell instead of just a certain subkind?

[code]A m_room has a tilecell called def_floor.
A m_room has a tilecell called def_border. 
A m_room has a tilecell called def_wall.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=50#p29857
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-12 20:29:15

That's a real goldmine, thank you!

I still want to talk a bit more about the documentation when I find the time, but for now, I  think we're better off discussing the points in your last post. I've got some ideas and explanations to throw around.

[quote="ektemple"]Basti, below are some reactions, requests, questions, etc. I've spoilered because there are too many really long posts in this thread![/quote]
Amen to that!

[quote]Tilecells[/quote]
[spoiler]This is still one of R&D's many construction zones where I've got no clear idea where I'm heading. You usually don't need to bother with t_floors and the like, if you don't want them as the standard tiles for a given map. I should probably scratch t_floors out of the definition and allow every tilecell to become the generic floor, should be more flexible this way. t_wall and t_border will  stay for now, since I plan something for those. Walls, for example, should be able to actually choose between different graphics, depending on their surroundings (so it would automatically chose the right image for edges, horizontal/vertical walls, etc.). t_borders meanwhile, I plan to include as an out of bounds case for moving objects, which triggers a list of effects before putting the map actor back where it came from or remove it from the map (a special case which I actually haven't addressed until now in the code. Gotta think of something there). t_borders might also get through without a specific definition, t_walls, however, would most likely require a more unique approach.[/spoiler]

[quote]Fit phrase[/quote]
You should be able to ignore that phrase by defining the parameters tile-width and tile-height manually, or you can use the fit phrases for width and height separately, like you usually do in GCBD (the phrase I used in the examples just bundles those). Maybe I should add an example which uses one of those approaches.

[quote]Animation[/quote]
[spoiler]For that, I would like to present an idea that popped up while I was thinking about one of your points during your initial rant: 
[quote]The img_ref list of coordinates could also use with a more explicit description. Does this list always have to include 8 numbers? If I don't want to use facing images, do I have to repeat the same image reference 8 times? Also, what if I want facing images for up and down, or even in and out? How would I add those?[/quote]
When I was trying to use R&D to get a combat prototype working, I noticed how much of a major flaw the initial design of img_ref really is. The combat demo should have different teams fighting each other, each team having its individual colour. That colour should be visible over the the directional arrow (much like the arrow you see when selecting a character in the Ben and Jill example). Problem here was that R&D didn't have any easy way to separate the arrow from the actual graphic of a combatant, so I would have to draw all 8 directional graphics of all the map actors for each team, instead of just adding the arrow later as an individual graphic. I realized that this would turn out to be an immense pain in the butt, so I had to rethink the way of how R&D prints map actors.

My idea: an activity buffer (although I use the term quiet loosely)

An object which would store any relevant data for printing a map actor (that would be the map actor itself and the current map-display) which an activity (that actually applies to nothing) would access. For animations, you could then write something like

[code]Before map actor printing (this is the standard animation loop rule):
If current_actor of printing_buffer is animated and not idle, rotate img_ref of m_figure of (current_actor of printing_buffer) .[/code]

As for my own problem with the coloured arrow, I would add another list of lists of numbers to the map figure for the current graphics displayed. The actual activity would collect the graphics that should get displayed (completely independent of how you organize them in img_ref, unless you specify otherwise. Indeed you could specify that no graphics in the img_ref are used at all) and tie them up in that list into a neat little package which the map-display can then process.

The general procedure would then be: Pick a map actor → insert map actor into the buffer → carry out the activity → get actualized graphics from map actor → rinse and repeat. 

I hope this will improve your personal freedom and might finally provide a solution to the To Phrases overkill I've got to deal with (as a similar structure could be used for environmental effects for example). 

Any flaws in this approach?[/spoiler]

[quote]m_room as a kind of room[/quote]
This needs to be clarified then. Making it a subkind was more an act of convenience since I wouldn't have to deal with scope and whatnot. You can display a m_room at any given time without the player being present but placing or spawning a thing inside a m_room will also automatically move it there (at least this is the only limitation that I remember). Might go against the minimalistic approach I was advertising before, come to think of it.

[quote]Eliminate the built-up-rule[/quote]
I would rather keep it. Reason being that I think independent named rules to be easier replaceable (important if you want to switch layouts on the fly) than rules in the midst of an activity, with all that listing or de-listing or whatever. This is just my uneducated opinion though.

[quote]Ordering of the directions[/quote]
That's hopefully not as important anymore, if my solution above actually works but still some nice trivia nonetheless.

[quote]Direct storage of a map[/quote]
Sounds awesome! But, to be honest, I wouldn't have a clue how to do that off the top of my head...

[quote]I'm looking forward to messing around a bit more with R&D in the next couple of days.[/quote]
Glad that you seem to enjoy it thus far [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4142&start=0#p29858
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Shared world
User: Janka / DateTime: 2012-01-12 20:31:29

[quote="peterorme"]One way of doing it would be just to toss ideas around and making up a world together, adding important characters and stuff in the mix, and letting everybody use these things in their own IF works. 
[/quote]
There has to be brand recognition between the individual games.

Narrative style among different authors is heterogeneous, so the thing which is usually the strongest reason one keeps buying the next book of a series doesn't apply. Next in line would be character recognition. That's something which should be settled in advance. All characters, even the important NPCs should be fixed. Individual authors may explore their properties to the grain, give them a twist here and there but not change them completely. In contrast, recognition based on locations is weak. Common rules are the weakest property to recognize IF, I think. It may however break the atmosphere if the rules between different games change too much.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4138&start=0#p29859
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ten Room Game Competition
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2012-01-12 20:42:20

One negative to rules 5/6 is that the ADRIFT standalone interpreter has a very nice mapping feature, but I don't think that's supported by the browser interpreter.

Side comment: How well does the Glulx web player support Glimmr?  (Anybody using I7, consider using the Automap or Glimmr Automap extensions.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4142&start=0#p29860
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Shared world
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-12 21:02:12

Interesting idea. I am personally overstuffed with projects and regularly am forced to let things I've promised and am interested in, slide. But I'd love to see the results.

BTW this has been done before, just as a matter of history/interest. I remember a game called Shades of Grey (I think it was done with AGT) that people were collaborating on way back when I was last active on r.a.i-f. Possibly it has been done again since — I wasn't paying as much attention later on.

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4036&start=0#p29861
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ZMPP for Android released
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-12 21:08:32

[quote="weiju"]It is likely that the Android version will at some point run Glulx/Glk stories and performance-wise, those are even more of a challenge on average.[/quote]
That will be the day I'm waiting for, since we already have Z-machine interpreters for Android. Thanks and good luck with this project!

P.S. I don't actually have an Android device, but my playtesters do. I lost a couple because they couldn't play Glulx on their mobile devices and they just 'never got around' to making time on the desktop. 40-somethings, eh? 8)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=50#p29862
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-12 21:31:40

[quote="Basti50"]I still want to talk a bit more about the documentation...[/quote]
I hope you can get opinions from other folks. I don't want to be the sole interlocutor on this!

[quote]Tilecells
I should probably scratch t_floors out of the definition and allow every tilecell to become the generic floor, should be more flexible this way. t_wall and t_border will  stay for now, since I plan something for those. Walls, for example, should be able to actually choose between different graphics, depending on their surroundings (so it would automatically chose the right image for edges, horizontal/vertical walls, etc.).[/quote]
Fair enough. Realistically, authors would probably have multiple floors and multiple walls, and so giving each type its own table isn't a terrible burden; in fact, it's probably a good idea. Ambitious ideas for the wall and border tilecells. I agree that this would be user-friendly--but would it be performant?

[b]Bug alert:[/b] I just introduced movement to my map (still just following the Cyberspace example), and the t_walls don't stop the movement of my map actor. Is there something that I need to do in my code to get the t_wall's block effect working?

[spoiler][code]Section - Map

Floor is a t_floor. Tile-collection is {{100}}.
Wall is a t_wall. Tile-collection is {{102}}.

Dungeon is an m_room. The room-length is 10. The room-width is 10. The def_floor is Floor. The def_wall is Wall. "This is a dungeon."

The m_actor of yourself is the Bowman.

Dungeon-display is a full-map top-down-display. The associated canvas is the graphics-canvas. The origin is {20, 20}.

When play begins:
	carry out the map generating activity with the Dungeon;
	spawn player on sector 2 and 2 in the Dungeon;
	focus Dungeon-display in Dungeon;
	now tile-width of Dungeon-display is 24;
	now tile-height of Dungeon-display is 24;
	open up the graphics-window;
	dump map of Dungeon.
	
After map generating the Dungeon:
	draw frame of Wall from 1 and 1 to 10 and 10 in Dungeon;
	place Wall on sector 3 and 3 in Dungeon.

Every turn:
	refresh windows.[/code][/spoiler]

[quote]Fit phrase
You should be able to ignore that phrase by defining the parameters tile-width and tile-height manually, or you can use the fit phrases for width and height separately, like you usually do in GCBD (the phrase I used in the examples just bundles those).[/quote]
Oh, OK. I thought you might be doing something funky with those properties. Setting them directly definitely seems to work. Cool.

[quote]Animation
Any flaws in this approach?[/quote]
Yikes, I'll have to think about that.


[quote]Eliminate the built-up-rule
I would rather keep it. Reason being that I think independent named rules to be easier replaceable (important if you want to switch layouts on the fly) than rules in the midst of an activity, with all that listing or de-listing or whatever. This is just my uneducated opinion though.[/quote]
Activities don't require listing and delisting, regular old rules do. If I wanted to switch layouts on the fly, I'd just put the conditions in the preamble of the after rules, e.g.:

After map generating the Dungeon when the wizard is alive:
After map generating the Dungeon when the wizard is dead:

When you use a single named rules, you either have to include the conditions in the body of the rule (not very Inform-like), or you have to swap the rule procedurally ("now the built-up-rule of the Dungeon is the wizard-is-dead-construction-rule").

But whatever. The built-up-rule isn't bad, just extraneous. The "after map generating" activity is available whether it stays or goes.

[quote]Direct storage of a map
Sounds awesome! But, to be honest, I wouldn't have a clue how to do that off the top of my head...[/quote]
It's don't [i]think[/i] that it's nearly as hard as it sounds. Here's a start:

[code]To dump map of (R - an m_room):
	say "The map-tiles of [R] are [map-tiles of R in brace notation].";
	say "The map-effects of [R] are [map-effects of R in brace notation].";
	say "The map-graphics of [R] are [map-graphics of R in brace notation].";
	say "The height-storage of [R] are [height-storage of R in brace notation].";
	say "The map-objects of [R] are [map-objects of R in brace notation]."

After map generating an m_room (called the place):
	dump map of the place.[/code]

I'm just not sure which properties need to be captured. Actually, this kind of thing should probably be part of any debugging toolset you put together.

[quote]Glad that you seem to enjoy it thus far [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

 [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4145&start=0#p29864
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: T3: Order of NPC Actions
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-12 22:05:13

Here's a pretty little problem. There are two NPCs in the room. One of them has an AgendaItem that is about to fire, generating a brief scene. I want the PC to remain in the room so that this scene will happen reliably on the turn after they enter the room. I don't want the player to leave the room before that can happen, so I've given the AccompanyingState of the other NPC a beforeTravel routine that causes her to restrain the PC if he tries to leave.

The trouble is, I'm using the exit macro in beforeTravel in order to stop the travel action -- and the result is, the first NPC's AgendaItem doesn't fire in that turn. The exit macro apparently ends the processing of the turn.

So ... how can I use beforeTravel to prevent the PC from traveling, [i]without [/i]using the exit macro? (The exitAction macro doesn't do the job either.)

[b]Edit:[/b] Never mind. It's easier and probably safer to use canTravelerPass on the adjoining rooms.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4036&start=10#p29865
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ZMPP for Android released
User: weiju / DateTime: 2012-01-12 22:49:25

... I guess if you are doing things in a hurry, you can't do them right... [emote]:oops:[/emote]  The development snapshot still needs more work than I thought, so I pulled it and replaced it with the current release version.

Sorry for the confusion.

Wei-ju

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=50#p29866
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-13 00:01:06

Gotta run but a few points before I go:

[quote="ektemple"]I hope you can get opinions from other folks. I don't want to be the sole interlocutor on this![/quote]
Yeah, the actual feedback has been pretty lacklustre, as had to be expected, I guess. It's cool when your thread brings other topics up, like file prefixes, but you would like to hear people's thought about your own stuff as well at some point. Hope that doesn't come over as too brash [emote]:D[/emote]

Pardon my curiosity, but did you get much feedback for the GCBD documentation?

[quote][b]Bug alert:[/b][/quote]
Not a bug per se. You'll need to define the behaviour of the generic wall effect (I haven't done so since what a phrase considers as more specific can be rather wonky) so you'll need something like
[code]To ee_enter activate (e – g_ee_wall(?)) for (t – a mappable thing):
	rule fails.[/code]

[quote]Activities don't require listing and delisting, regular old rules do. If I wanted to switch layouts on the fly, I'd just put the conditions in the preamble of the after rules[/quote]
Provided that there is always at least one condition, which doesn't have to be guaranteed, I would think. But you're right, it's nothing worth agonizing about.


[quote]It's don't [i]think[/i] that it's nearly as hard as it sounds.[/quote]
Oh, that's what you meant (that's printing then copy and paste into the code, right?).

[quote] Actually, this kind of thing should probably be part of any debugging toolset you put together.[/quote]
Don't remind me. I hate debugging. So dull [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4147&start=0#p29868
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Cover art
User: Tale / DateTime: 2012-01-13 04:10:27

I have a very basic questions.

Which interpreters on which platform display cover art? I never seem to see any, anywhere but ifdb.

Thanks for the help!

-Marius

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4147&start=0#p29869
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Cover art
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2012-01-13 05:57:53

ADRIFT 5 on Windows & Linux will (as will the ADRIFT website).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=20#p29870
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2012-01-13 06:59:27

[quote="bcressey"][quote="Emerald"]Correct here, too:  Asia/Pacific (east).[/quote]

The ap-west and ap-east links above point to Singapore and Tokyo respectively. Can you let me know which one is better for Australia?[/quote]
Can't speak for Australia as a whole, but here in WA ap-west is definitely more responsive than ap-east. ap-west has about a second of lag, ap-east more like 2 seconds.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4142&start=0#p29871
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Shared world
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-01-13 08:03:04

I'm also curious how this would work in terms of continuity between games, and whether this has an impact on the type of games you'd write. 

For example, stories with very different endings become a bit of a problem, it's like they break the continuity themselves, and you end up with conflicting realities even from a single story. And I guess any major changes really would tend to either need to be placed in a timeline or would mean a forking off of reality. 

Personally I don't have a problem with inconsistencies at all, I'm fine with seeing people reinterpreting and changing things from one story to the next. But I guess some people would prefer to have a more robust world to deal with.

I'm more concerned that things just might get very silly, that it just becomes an exercise in throwing in references to other games so that they just don't make sense at all if you're not already familiar with the other games. I guess it's all about finding the right level so that each story still is a story in its own right.

So, what do you say, you want to give it a shot? How would we do this? 

Start with the world? The stories? The format?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4142&start=0#p29872
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Shared world
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-01-13 08:23:04

Again taking RON (an example of a successfull foray into this very matter which somehow no-one is picking up on) as an example, continuity wouldn't be a big issue. If a character were to be killed off, you could write a story set prior to their death. Or you could bring him back, using that as a storyline.

Surely the point of such a venture would be to allow for a game-world that could tell many stories of many genre. Detective, humour, satire, wacky, horror, slice of life. I know this seems unlikely, but if you create a playground for authors, their first impulse is NOT to come up with stupid ways to ruin other people's fun. If those issues do come up (as in Davy Jones' death in RON) and the group builds around it, even to make fun, it will create consistency.

Consistency, in these things, isn't - can't be - something you drum up from the start and hope everyone will stick to. The ball must roll - one game, then two, then three. Consistency will be emergent, if people don't go overboard - and if they do, well, it can still be part of a consistent game world. Ron's "Nihilism" episode didn't stop the later episode "The Postman Always Rings Twice", nor did anyone go "Oh my god, this has completely ruined the theme", nor "How can we follow up on this?". Instead they took the one single objective thing that happened in that game (a silo's door became glued shut) and ran with it.

EDIT - 

In reply to your last question, I'd avise to start with a game, providing a skeleton of the setting. Then another game, using different parts of the skeleton.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4142&start=0#p29873
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Shared world
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-13 08:38:29

Shades of Grey was a single large game in which different sections were written by different authors, as I recall. Peter Pears's RON reference seems indeed a better example of a direct antecedent. Advantages of the multi-game shared world: the idea automatically has legs, i.e. it's a series; each work can have its own genre/tone (as PP mentioned) without too much clashing. Advantages of the single game shared world: less commitment required from each individual author; collaboration is foregrounded and less like an afterthought; it's more likely for the shared world actually to be completed and released, IMO.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=50#p29874
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-13 09:19:31

[quote="Basti50"]Pardon my curiosity, but did you get much feedback for the GCBD documentation?[/quote]
None. But I don't remember if I asked for feedback about it. I asked for help testing the extension, and got[i] loads[/i] of interest, but zero follow-through. That was probably due to a pretty big blunder on my part--I asked for help testing the extension before I wrote the docs. (It was actually worse than just GCBD--I had [i]all[/i] of the Glimmr extensions ready but w/o docs at the same time. An overwhelming amount of code, and nothing but the examples to guide you through.)

Maybe what you want to try is to make the changes you plan to make the docs, and then post a request for another eye or two to look over only the docs.

But never expect too much. Glimmr and R&D are fringe efforts. The community is pretty ineffective generally in its support for extensions, and even extensions that affect the core functionality of your standard IF (e.g., Smarter Parser) may only get marginally more feedback--and not all of it very nice, or very informed, as a recent thread will indicate. 

[quote="Basti50"][b]Bug alert:[/b]
Not a bug per se. You'll need to define the behaviour of the generic wall effect (I haven't done so since what a phrase considers as more specific can be rather wonky) so you'll need something like
[code]To ee_enter activate (e – g_ee_wall(?)) for (t – a mappable thing):
	rule fails.[/code][/quote]
I want to encourage you with all the force I can muster to include this (and any other similarly left-out phrases) in the extension proper. Phrases are very flexible, they can be overloaded, and I can't remember every finding specificity to be wonky. If you name the rule, then authors can simply replace it if they need to, e.g.
[code]To ee_enter activate (e - g_ee_wall) for (t - a mappable thing) (this is the walls block actors rule):[/code]
If your predefined walls don't block movement right out of the box, the extension will just look broken.

[quote="Basti50"][quote]It's don't [i]think[/i] that it's nearly as hard as it sounds.[/quote]
Oh, that's what you meant (that's printing then copy and paste into the code, right?).[/quote]
Yep. It's probably best to print the results to an external file. Obviously, an author could use the same solution to avoid distributing an external file with the game (referring to the human-readable map import you've been working on). I can confirm that the code I posted isn't quite enough; when I paste the code it produces, nothing displays. My workflow would probably be to include the procedural definitions in one extension and the pasted code in another. It would then be possible to switch between them just by activating one or the other extension.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=20#p29875
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-13 09:52:31

[quote="bcressey"]OK, new test.

Launch [url=http://gs.tads.io/?storyfile=http://www.tads.org/games/ditch3/ditch3web.t3]Return to Ditch Day[/url] and let me know if:

1) The interface feels responsive, and
2) You prefer one of the other servers instead.

Servers:
[list]
[*][url=http://gs-na-east.tads.io/?storyfile=http://www.tads.org/games/ditch3/ditch3web.t3]na-east[/url][/*:m]
[*][url=http://gs-na-west.tads.io/?storyfile=http://www.tads.org/games/ditch3/ditch3web.t3]na-west[/url][/*:m]
[*][url=http://gs-eu-west.tads.io/?storyfile=http://www.tads.org/games/ditch3/ditch3web.t3]eu-west[/url][/*:m]
[*][url=http://gs-ap-west.tads.io/?storyfile=http://www.tads.org/games/ditch3/ditch3web.t3]ap-west[/url][/*:m]
[*][url=http://gs-ap-east.tads.io/?storyfile=http://www.tads.org/games/ditch3/ditch3web.t3]ap-east[/url][/*:m][/list:u]

(na-east and na-west are each backed by two servers, so your results may differ slightly between trials.)[/quote]
NA-East was fastest for me. Unexpectedly, EU-West was nearly as fast (hard to tell the difference) whereas NA-West was a bit noticeably laggy. But AP-East was *very* laggy and AP-West was the worst of all. (I only tested NA-East and NA-West once each.)

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4142&start=0#p29876
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Shared world
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-13 09:58:05

Remember that in shared-world anthologies there's usually an editor or two who can help tie things together with their own stories, a general rule that one author can't outright kill off or drastically change another author's creation without consultation (it's not like each author wrote their story in isolation, only discovering what everyone else wrote when the book was published), and typically some kind of genre. Like in Thieves World, 'slice of life plus sword and sorcery' might describe it -- as odd as that sounds, it worked for what it was.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=50#p29877
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-13 10:06:23

[quote="Basti50"][b]Animation[/b]
I would like to present an idea that popped up while I was thinking about one of your points during your initial rant: 

an activity buffer (although I use the term quiet loosely)

An object which would store any relevant data for printing a map actor (that would be the map actor itself and the current map-display) which an activity (that actually applies to nothing) would access. For animations, you could then write something like

[code]Before map actor printing (this is the standard animation loop rule):
If current_actor of printing_buffer is animated and not idle, rotate img_ref of m_figure of (current_actor of printing_buffer) .[/code]

As for my own problem with the coloured arrow, I would add another list of lists of numbers to the map figure for the current graphics displayed. The actual activity would collect the graphics that should get displayed (completely independent of how you organize them in img_ref, unless you specify otherwise. Indeed you could specify that no graphics in the img_ref are used at all) and tie them up in that list into a neat little package which the map-display can then process.

The general procedure would then be: Pick a map actor → insert map actor into the buffer → carry out the activity → get actualized graphics from map actor → rinse and repeat.[/quote]

I'm not sure that I understand every detail of what you're proposing here, but rather than another data construct (such as a buffer) I think that this is actually the perfect place to use an object-based rulebook or an activity (the former is probably slightly more performant, but it's not likely to make much difference). You as the extension author need only provide code for a single standard image and for facing images, and the author could substitute his own code as needed. For example, you do something like this using an object-based rulebook (pseudocode):

[spoiler][code]An m_figure has a number called the printed-image.
An m_figure has a list of numbers called the facing-images.

Definition: An m-figure is multidirectional if the number of entries in its facing-images is greater than 0.
Definition: An m-figure is unidirectional if its printed-image is not 0.

The actor-printing rules are an object based rulebook. The default outcome is success. [i.e., only one rule will fire unless we say otherwise]

An actor-printing rule for a unidirectional m_figure (called the target):
	print target's printed-image.

An actor-printing rule for a multidirectional m_figure (called the target):
	print appropriate facing image for the target.[/code]

Very simple, and also very Informish. To add my own custom drawing rule, I just slot in a rule that is more specific than either of these:
	
[code]An actor-printing rule for an animated multidirectional m_figure (called the target):
	print the author-defined image reference for the target.[/code]

It's up to me as an author to create a new data structure if I need one; the extension doesn't have to try to create a buffer for every possible use. For your purpose (the separate directional arrows), you could do something like this:

[code]First actor-printing rule for an m_figure (called the target):
	print the appropriate arrow image;
	continue the action.[the appropriate rule to print the actor image(s) will now fire as well] [/code][/spoiler]

That's what I'd recommend. Of course, I don't know the extension well enough to have any idea whether it's compatible!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4148&start=0#p29878
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Good beginner games
User: peterlyberth / DateTime: 2012-01-13 10:12:01

I am sorry, if the subject has come up before, but i cant seem to find anything.

Anyway;
What good and beginner friendly games would you recommend?


Just completed Lost pig, now that was a blast:-)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4148&start=0#p29879
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good beginner games
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2012-01-13 10:14:30

You could give the games linked here a try:

<a class="postlink" href="http://pr-if.org/play/">http://pr-if.org/play/</a>

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4148&start=0#p29880
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good beginner games
User: peterlyberth / DateTime: 2012-01-13 10:23:00

Great. Thanks.

I actually saw that site earlier, but when I saw Adventure on the list, I thought the rest of the game were to "advanced" too:-)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4148&start=0#p29881
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good beginner games
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-13 10:49:06

We try to distinguish the games on that page using tags...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4142&start=0#p29882
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Shared world
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-01-13 11:39:41

However, gaps might be more interesting left unfilled for other authors to take care of. Genre enforcement would be limiting. And I would be all for killing off someone else's important characters *with consultation*, as you put it, of their original creator. I would advise against too much editorial power.

Again, I go to RON for inspiration. See their FAQ:

<a class="postlink" href="http://realityonthenorm.info/about.html">http://realityonthenorm.info/about.html</a>

...for how the community dealt with:

Davy Jones' death
The identity of the Bum

And the general pointers for newcomers. Not to hammer RON in, but I have to insist on a major point - it worked, and it learned from its mistakes. We would be wise to see what they DID learn.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4148&start=0#p29883
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good beginner games
User: peterlyberth / DateTime: 2012-01-13 11:45:28

Yeah, and if I only would open my sleepy eyes, I would have read the description of "The dreamhold":

"The Dreamhold is a tutorial game. It’s designed for people who have never played IF before. It introduces the common commands and mindset of text adventures, one step at a time. There’s an extensive help system describing standard IF commands, as well as dynamic hints which pop up whenever you seem to be stuck."

and had not bothered people with my silly questions:-)

Oh well, everyone was a noob at some point, I guess.
Thanks anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4138&start=10#p29884
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ten Room Game Competition
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2012-01-13 11:47:38

[quote="Campbell"]Are you able to host ASP.net apps with AJAX? Otherwise this rule would exclude ADRIFT.
[quote="David C"]I want all of the games in one place.[/quote]They don't necessarily have to all be on the same server tho, that's what links are for, no?[/quote]

I can host on Debian or Windows Server 2008, but...

I guess the hosting rule is, at this time, not really practical. Let's drop the hosting rule. If you complete a game, you can host it wherever you want. I'd still like to figure out a way to authenticate players completing games.

I'll revise the rules in the original post.

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4138&start=10#p29885
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ten Room Game Competition
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-13 12:30:56

[quote="ralphmerridew"]One negative to rules 5/6 is that the ADRIFT standalone interpreter has a very nice mapping feature, but I don't think that's supported by the browser interpreter.

Side comment: How well does the Glulx web player support Glimmr?  (Anybody using I7, consider using the Automap or Glimmr Automap extensions.)[/quote]

Quixe and Parchment do not yet support graphics, so Glimmr's not compatible. Until great advances are made in javascript/hardware performance, though, I don't see Glimmr as being a good option anyway. The better option for graphics in the javascript terps will be to implement them in javascript/HTML and trigger them from the game.

I don't feel like an auto-generated map is really in the spirit of this comp, though. As a player, anyway, I'd much rather see an emphasis on designed maps that express something specific about the spaces they depict and the games they illustrate...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=20#p29886
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-13 12:49:25

Thanks for the feedback, everyone! I plan to wind down the infrastructure over the weekend; I'll bring the servers back up once the IFDB bits are in place.

[quote="tomasb"]From central Europe the typical timings of each HTTP request is as follows (please note that typical game turn consists of 4 requests so you must multiply by 4 to get an actual response time)[/quote]

Great data point, thanks! I wasn't aware of the 4x multiplier. That certainly explains why it's so sensitive to latency.

Europe would really benefit from a more centrally located server. I have this running through Amazon's AWS infrastructure and unfortunately their only EU endpoint is in Ireland. 

[quote="George"]Averaging about two seconds, so decent. It felt a lot better than when Nikos had his test server in Greece.[/quote]

That experience was the motivation for this project. Given the latency factor it's better to have a lot of local servers rather than one or two central ones. But it's also important to have a single URL that authors can use to publish their content. tads.io is meant to address both concerns.

It's distinct from IFDB because not everyone will want the game's IFDB page to be the jumping off point for new players. The tads.io game servers will be linked into the IFDB network, and players that come via IFDB will be able to take advantage of the session-sharing and file storage features, but it's entirely optional.

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Reasonably responsive with my default server, which I guess is na-west. Output arrives in 1 second or so.[/quote]

1 second is more or less my standard for acceptable performance. Ideally it would be under 250 ms but that's a hard target to hit without more edge servers. 

I get near-local speeds from Seattle to the data center in Oregon, around 250 miles away (400 km). A rough guideline is that you see about 1s of UI lag for every 1000 miles between you and the server. (Like any good rule of thumb, this ignores virtually every technical factor involved.)

[quote="Emerald"]Can't speak for Australia as a whole, but here in WA ap-west is definitely more responsive than ap-east. ap-west has about a second of lag, ap-east more like 2 seconds.[/quote]

Thanks! My guess is that EA would split the difference, so I'll probably go with Singapore until AWS adds an Australian data center. 

[quote="Laroquod"]NA-East was fastest for me. Unexpectedly, EU-West was nearly as fast (hard to tell the difference) whereas NA-West was a bit noticeably laggy.[/quote]

That is really surprising and interesting. I wonder how far west into Canada that holds true? Given equal latency, it would be better to divert the traffic to EU-West for load-balancing reasons.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4149&start=0#p29887
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Telling the time - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-13 13:57:27

I have attached some code that was posted to me earlier. I'm having compile problems with it. This brings up some questions. Can you tell me where in my program I should place this? Is it causing problems because I still haven't included my time-telling watch into the program? I've checked this code with the original that was posted to me and can't see any copy mistakes

[code]
DefineIAction(LookAtTime)
     execAction()
     {
      "The time is <<clockManager.checkTimeFmt('hh:mma')>>\n";
     } 
     // This action should consume no time.
     actionTime = 0;
; 
     VerbRule(LookAtTime}
       'time'
       | 'read'(|'the')'time'
       | 'look''at'(|'the')'time'
       | 'l''time'
        :LookAtTimeAction
        verbPhrase = 'look/looking at the time';
[/code]

Thanks for any help you can provide.

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4129&start=0#p29888
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The One Ring: Adventures Over the Edge of the Wild
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-01-13 14:12:27

Back in the mid-80's we used to play role-playing games using what sounds like a primitive version of what you're talking about.  Those were the pre-internet days (or at least the days before many people were connected to the internet).  Instead, using 300- or 1200-baud modems, we would dial directly into a line connected to the host computer.  The DM (or whatever title you want to use) would upload a text-only post setting the stage.  Then, each player, independently, would dial in and leave a text-only post, in character, describing his actions.  When everybody had a chance to do so, the DM would then post again, describing the outcome of the "turn" and setting the stage for the next piece of action.  The only real function of the computers was as means of communication.  We had a lot of fun with it, although it depended on everybody being committed to participating and getting in their posts on a timely basis.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4147&start=0#p29889
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Cover art
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-01-13 14:20:18

Zoom for Mac does and I think Gargoyle too. Also Frotz on iOs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4149&start=0#p29890
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Telling the time - TADS3.1
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-13 14:29:14

You have a stray semicolon after the actionTime property in your DefineIAction(LookAtTime) block.

(This trips me up all the time, especially for properties that I add just after writing the method that uses them.)

The code can go anywhere but you will need the clockManager object defined somewhere before it will compile.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4147&start=0#p29891
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Cover art
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2012-01-13 15:08:49

Windows Frotz, Windows Glulxe and Windows Git all show cover art too.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=40#p29892
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: retrobits / DateTime: 2012-01-13 17:11:23

I've begun working on a mod of Hunky Punk (the Android app by Rafał Rzepecki) to play Tads games along with a few other enhancements.  There's still lots of work to do, but it would be great to have some willing testers to submit issues and other feedback.  I haven't yet fixed the soft keyboard input problem where the game is wanting a single character like Y or N.  Hopefully next version [emote];)[/emote].

Current Improvements include:

[*]Tads support (Tads 2.5.14, 3.0.18)
[*]improved Z-code support (Frotz 2.50)
[*]blorb support
[*]tap to scroll
[*]font preference
[*]improved stability

This first alpha release is called "HunkyMod 0.1 alpha" and can be downloaded here:
[url]http://code.google.com/p/hunkypunk/downloads/list[/url]

Please submit issues and feature requests here:
[url]http://code.google.com/p/hunkypunk/issues/list[/url]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4149&start=0#p29893
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Telling the time - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-13 17:23:57

Thanks much for the help. I think it's time to get the new reading glasses that I need!

RonG

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4150&start=0#p29894
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [i7] automapping with non-opposite directions?
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-01-13 17:33:15

So I had an idea for a map for the 10-room contest. And apparently automapping is strongly encouraged.

Automap by Mark Tilford works very well in most cases. It helped me immediately do stuff like

[spoiler]include automap by Mark Tilford.

room 1 is a room.
room 2 is east of room 1.
room 3 is southeast of room 1. room 3 is southwest of room 2.

to decide what number is the distance (d - east) from (r - room 1): decide on 2.
to decide what number is the distance (d - west) from (r - room 2): decide on 2.

to decide what number is the distance (d - northwest) from (r - room 3): decide on 1.
to decide what number is the distance (d - southeast) from (r - room 1): decide on 1.

to decide what number is the distance (d - northeast) from (r - room 3): decide on 1.
to decide what number is the distance (d - southwest) from (r - room 2): decide on 1.[/spoiler]

But the extension (as I understand it) has trouble with the following:

[code]
room y is west of room x. room x is northeast of room y. east of room y is room z. room z is southwest of room x.
[/code]

This is a reasonable limitation--but is there any simple way around this? Is there any way to program this so that you could have distances for two segments?

I have some ideas such as defining a distance1 and distance2. But I have little idea (at the moment) of how to code the core bits, or if I would tack on my own small extension...here's some pseudocode.

[code]
room y is west of room x. room x is northeast of room y. east of room y is room z. room z is southwest of room x.
to decide what number is the distance1 from (r - room y) to (r - room x): decide on 1.
to decide what number is the distance2 from (r - room y) to (r - room x): decide on 1.
to decide what number is the distance1 from (r - room x) to (r - room y): decide on 1.
to decide what number is the distance2 from (r - room x) to (r - room y): decide on 1.

...distance1 and distance2 are usually 0. If they are 0, follow the rules before, if they are >1, then draw a line (in this case) 1 unit NE from room y to a non-room character (like a .) then bend and go 1 unit E. Or 1 unit W from X and 1 unit SW.
[/code]

The result would be a map like
..+-1
./ /
2-3

Is this a good way to start going about things? Is there any general order-of-magnitude time frame for learning to tack on stuff to extensions? Would I need to, or could I just define an overriding rule instead?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4138&start=10#p29895
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ten Room Game Competition
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-01-13 17:35:24

[quote="ektemple"]I don't feel like an auto-generated map is really in the spirit of this comp, though. As a player, anyway, I'd much rather see an emphasis on designed maps that express something specific about the spaces they depict and the games they illustrate...[/quote]

I agree--there may be too much emphasis on creating an automapper if someone wants to do something clever--and one problem I see is that we may have 2 rooms that go non-opposite directions back to each other. This may seem like an edge case, but I'd guess that someone might have a creative moment based on, say, a passage leading east then back northwest--it'd give a different map shape.

Now it's possible to create a map of this sort of thing by hand without Mark Tilford's extension, but it's grossly inelegant.

This might be more work than the author needs, or it might distract from the general creativity. I have part of an example [url="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4150"]here.[/url] Am I nitpicking too much?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4138&start=10#p29896
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ten Room Game Competition
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2012-01-13 17:38:46

[quote="DavidC"]I'll revise the rules in the original post.[/quote]Many thanks.

[quote="ektemple"]I don't feel like an auto-generated is really in the spirit of this comp, though.[/quote]Maps in ADRIFT 5 are preconceived rather than being auto-generated. But it's a moot point anyway unless I can get them working in a browser by the competition. And given that I'm expecting a baby in a couple of months, I'd say the chance of that is pretty slim...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=20#p29897
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-13 17:46:26

[quote="bcressey"][quote="Laroquod"]NA-East was fastest for me. Unexpectedly, EU-West was nearly as fast (hard to tell the difference) whereas NA-West was a bit noticeably laggy.[/quote]
That is really surprising and interesting. I wonder how far west into Canada that holds true? Given equal latency, it would be better to divert the traffic to EU-West for load-balancing reasons.[/quote]
Since it's that surprising I redid the first three just to be sure. This time, EU-West and NA-West felt about equivalent -- about a 1 second delay in either case. NA-East was the clear winner this time around -- the lag felt more like a half-second. NA-East is probably the only one I would not find too frustrating.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=20#p29898
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-13 17:50:17

Great, thanks! That's good to know.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4138&start=10#p29899
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ten Room Game Competition
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-01-13 17:53:16

Oh, and one other nitpick -- do you mean ten traversible rooms? I'm guessing yes, but...

x-x-x
| ..  |
x.F..x-x-x
| .. |
x-x-x

For instance a game with the map above might have a fountain in the center, but also have an inform-style rule:

[code]fountain is a room. fountain is west of east bank. palace entry is east of east bank. throne room is east of palace entry.[etc.]

instead of going to fountain:
  say "You don't want to get wet. Maybe you can find someone or something that doesn't mind?"[/code]

There are other ways to do this, like with scenery and defining actions, but here this seems simplest...

...also, placing an item in an inaccessible room called "the void" for a bit can be handy.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4148&start=0#p29900
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good beginner games
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-01-13 18:19:57

There's also a poll at the IFDB that you might want to check out:
<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/poll?id=memavsp06v1oc571">http://ifdb.tads.org/poll?id=memavsp06v1oc571</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4138&start=10#p29901
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ten Room Game Competition
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-13 18:32:51

[quote="Campbell"][quote="ektemple"]I don't feel like an auto-generated is really in the spirit of this comp, though.[/quote]Maps in ADRIFT 5 are preconceived rather than being auto-generated. But it's a moot point anyway unless I can get them working in a browser by the competition. And given that I'm expecting a baby in a couple of months, I'd say the chance of that is pretty slim...[/quote]

From what I've seen, the Adrift mapper is a cool tool--but I place them in the same category as autogenerated maps, because what I'm really talking about wrestling free of the box-and-whiskers paradigm. Anyway, though, congratulations on the offspring!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4151&start=0#p29902
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: JSON-based save / restore
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-13 19:30:24

A while back there was a discussion about cross-release saves in TADS 3. As a sort of down payment on that idea I've put together a serializer extension that overrides the built-in save & restore functions to use a JSON format text file.

You can get the files from my [url=http://dev.tads.io/extensions/dir?ci=tip]T3 Extensions[/url] repository. You'll need intrinsic.t, json.t, and serialize.t.

With those in place, you can mark objects and properties to serialize like so:

[code]
journal: Thing, Serializable 'journal' 'JOURNAL' @bedroom
	desc = "An old journal. "

	testNil = nil
	testTrue = true
	testSString = 'test'
	testList = ['x', 1, rock]
	testInt = 803948
	testProp = &testFunc
	testEnum = muffin
	testFunc = testSum

	serialProps = [&location, &testNil, &testTrue, &testSString,
				&testList, &testInt, &testProp, &testEnum, &testFunc]
;

testSum(a,b) { return a+b; }
enum muffin, cupcake, pastry;
[/code]

The object must inherit from the Serializable class, and it must set the serialProps property to a list of property pointers to serialize.

You can serialize any named object and any property that holds a stable value.

Methods aren't allowed; a method is an object property that points to some executable code, so even though it has a name it doesn't have a value that can be serialized. Anonymous objects are the other way around; their values can be serialized but without a name associated, the restore process wouldn't know where to put the data.

The output will go in a file called <IFID>.json and will look something like this:

[code]
{ "D9D0EB9F-6951-4C1F-8F50-983BA3C23E26": { 
"journal": {
	"location": { "type": "TypeObject", "value": "bedroom" },
	"testNil": { "type": "TypeNil", "value": null },
	"testTrue": { "type": "TypeTrue", "value": true },
	"testSString": { "type": "TypeSString", "value": "test" },
	"testList": { "type": "TypeList", "value": [
                { "type": "TypeSString", "value": "x" },
                { "type": "TypeInt", "value": 1 },
                { "type": "TypeObject", "value": "rock" } ] },
	"testInt": { "type": "TypeInt", "value": 803948 },
	"testProp": { "type": "TypeProp", "value": "testFunc" },
	"testEnum": { "type": "TypeEnum", "value": "muffin" },
	"testFunc": { "type": "TypeFuncPtr", "value": "testSum" }
} } }
[/code]

Right now this is more of a tech demo than anything else. Please don't release a game that relies on this code for save and restore!

adv3 is full of state - the current player character, the current item in a shuffled list, an NPC's available conversational topics - and right now the only serialized property is location, for Thing and its subclasses. I plan on improving that over time, as I develop my own game, but I could really use some help.

A final point to mention is that the JSON parser is largely independent of the serialization logic. It takes JSON text and turns it into an internal data structure (a list of lists). What that structure means is up to the game to decide. Here it's a list of objects, properties, and values, but it could be anything.

I have some hope that this will be useful in the context of HTTPRequest and Web UI, as a way for JavaScript and the TADS 3 code to share structured data. I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who tries it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=40#p29903
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-13 19:47:37

[quote="retrobits"]
Current Improvements include:

[*]Tads support (Tads 2.5.14, 3.0.18)[/quote]

Holy cannoli!  [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4150&start=0#p29904
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] automapping with non-opposite directions?
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-01-13 20:03:33

If it's a one-shot, ad hoc edit, it's probably doable quite quickly.  Looking at the code in the phrase ``To decide whether the map is drawn,'' I think you could probably splice in another conditional, ``if the loop_room is ...''  under the directions that need exceptional handling, and then write your special cases as ``place...'' and ``draw a path...'' phrases there.  It would be somewhat more work to rewrite that code to handle two distances, but worth the effort if you plan on making these sorts of map connections often.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4129&start=0#p29905
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The One Ring: Adventures Over the Edge of the Wild
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-13 20:05:40

That's still a popular form of RP Robert, believe it or not. It usually goes by 'forum RP' or something like that. Its predecessor was play-by-email, and I take it you were using a BBS?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4150&start=0#p29906
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] automapping with non-opposite directions?
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-01-13 20:43:57

[quote="EmacsUser"]If it's a one-shot, ad hoc edit, it's probably doable quite quickly.  Looking at the code in the phrase ``To decide whether the map is drawn,'' I think you could probably splice in another conditional, ``if the loop_room is ...''  under the directions that need exceptional handling, and then write your special cases as ``place...'' and ``draw a path...'' phrases there.  It would be somewhat more work to rewrite that code to handle two distances, but worth the effort if you plan on making these sorts of map connections often.[/quote]

That works handily. I was able to make a few small changes quickly. Thanks!

For the curious...

[code]To decide what number is empty room: decide on 95.
To decide what number is thru room: decide on 97. [added]

a thru-room is a kind of room.

					otherwise if loop_room is location;
						place full room of loop_room at temp_x and temp_y;
					otherwise if loop_room is a thru-room; [added this & below]
						place thru room of loop_room at temp_x and temp_y;

     96 46 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 ! 96 - 111 [from 97]
[/code]

Also some code to my main program...

[spoiler]every turn:
	repeat with Y running through unvisited thru-rooms:
		if room-b of Y is visited:
			if room-a of Y is visited:
				explore Y;

carry out going:
	if location of player is a thru-room:
		explore location of player;
		let G be opposite of noun;
		if room-a of location of player is the room G of location of player:
			now player is in room-b of location of player;
		otherwise:
			now player is in room-a of location of player;[/spoiler]

Feels a bit sloppy but does the job.

What are the stipulations on using a modified version of an extension? Is there anything special we need to do to mention this, so that if we do have a bug, people know it's not the author's fault?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3986&start=10#p29907
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Star Gods for Android
User: sussman / DateTime: 2012-01-13 20:48:57

I'm the main maintainer for Twisty, and I apologize for its anemia.  We're in the middle of a complete rewrite -- instead of a poor port of the java 'zplet' to Android, the new version is actually an attempt to write a clean GLK layer using Java's JNI interface.  The rewrite is actually using 'nitfol' (C language) as its backend interpreter, and will eventually use glulxe or git for glulx games.

I simply need more round tuits to get this thing done.  :-/

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4069&start=0#p29908
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Twisty 2.0
User: sussman / DateTime: 2012-01-13 20:50:51

Pasting my reply from the other thread:

"I'm the main maintainer for Twisty, and I apologize for its anemia. We're in the middle of a complete rewrite -- instead of a poor port of the java 'zplet' to Android, the new version is actually an attempt to write a clean GLK layer using Java's JNI interface. The rewrite is actually using 'nitfol' (C language) as its backend interpreter, and will eventually use glulxe or git for glulx games.  I simply need more round tuits to get this thing done. :-/   "

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4069&start=0#p29909
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Twisty 2.0
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-13 21:11:28

I'm just curious how people see Hunky Punk ([url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=40#p29892]now with TADS?![/url]), Twisty, and [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4036]ZMPP[/url] relating here on Android.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4129&start=10#p29910
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The One Ring: Adventures Over the Edge of the Wild
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-01-13 22:14:35

Yes, bulletin boards, as we then called them, were used.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3986&start=10#p29911
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: The Star Gods for Android
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-13 23:24:13

[quote="sussman"]I'm the main maintainer for Twisty, and I apologize for its anemia.  We're in the middle of a complete rewrite -- instead of a poor port of the java 'zplet' to Android, the new version is actually an attempt to write a clean GLK layer using Java's JNI interface.  The rewrite is actually using 'nitfol' (C language) as its backend interpreter, and will eventually use glulxe or git for glulx games.

I simply need more round tuits to get this thing done.  :-/[/quote]


[assorted cheers of support, if those help at all]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4129&start=10#p29912
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The One Ring: Adventures Over the Edge of the Wild
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-13 23:25:46

[quote="George"]That's still a popular form of RP Robert, believe it or not. It usually goes by 'forum RP' or something like that. Its predecessor was play-by-email, and I take it you were using a BBS?[/quote]

Definitely still popular. I've done that by mail, by BBS (including very slow [days of delay] via FidoNet), by IRC, by assorted chat-programs, and even briefly by SMS [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4152&start=0#p29913
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Following the persuasion rules
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2012-01-14 00:07:08

This code:
[code]Definition: A person (called P) is obediant:
	Follow the persuasion rules for the action of asking P to try waiting;
	If the rule succeeded, yes;
	No.
There is room.[/code]

Gives this error:
[code] >--> You wrote 'Follow the persuasion rules for the action of asking P to try
    waiting' (source text, line 9): but the ingredients in this phrase do not
    fit it, but I am confused enough by this that I can't give a very helpful
    problem message. Sorry about that.
    I was trying to match one of these phrases:
    1. follow (persuasion rules - values based rule producing values) for (action
    of asking p to try waiting - value) 
    2. follow (persuasion rules for the action of asking p to try waiting - rule)
    
    This was what I found out:
    persuasion rules = a rulebook
    action of asking P to try waiting = an instruction to work out a stored
    action, which results in a stored action
    persuasion rules for the action of asking P to try waiting = something
    unrecognised[/code]

Since the "ingredients" in this phrase do appear to fit it, at least to me (and, apparently, to the compiler; it's not complaining about "the action of asking P to..." despite "asking it to" not being mentioned in the index), I have no idea what's wrong with this.  I've done some source diving into the standard rules.  Here's where the persuasion rules are defined:
[code]Persuasion rules is a rulebook. [18][/code]
That means they're action based, so I don't see why I can't just follow them for a given stored action.

Am I just missing something incredibly obvious?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4152&start=0#p29914
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Following the persuasion rules
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-14 00:56:53

An action-based rulebook always operates on the current action. It's not the same as a *stored action* based rulebook.

I don't see an easy way to do what you're trying to do. (The not-so-easy way is to tweak the I6 "action" variable, run the rulebook, test for success, and then tweak the variable back.) I suspect it will be easier to just write a bit of redundant code for each NPC.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4152&start=0#p29915
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Following the persuasion rules
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2012-01-14 01:15:14

Ah well.  I already had separate flags for "playable" and "following the player", and had hoped to avoid creating a third for "obeys the player but isn't actually playable", as this may ultimately turn into extension code (and I didn't want to annoy prospective users).  On reflection, I think I'll use a rulebook and leave it up to authors:
[code]A person can be playable.
[snip code involving changing PCs]
A person can be ready to follow.
[snip code involving following]
The obedience rules are a person based rulebook.
An obedience rule for a playable person (this is the... rule):
	Rule succeeds.[/code]

Besides, the persuasion rules can be responsible for narrating unsuccessful persuasion (i.e. they sometimes print things), so I guess this way is better (read: workable) anyway.  I do think authors might confuse the "obedience" and "persuasion" rulebooks, but I can explain that in the docs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=50#p29916
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-14 05:18:31

[quote="ektemple"]If your predefined walls don't block movement right out of the box, the extension will just look broken.[/quote]Certainly, I'll just test them out a bit more to see if there aren't any unforeseen complications before I include them.

In regards of using rulebooks, I think I actually tried them out when I was looking for a solution to activate environmental effects. I think the big problem there was, as with activities, that they wouldn't allow to use multiple parameters, as To Phrases do. There might have also been a problem with activating several rules in a row when I wanted to use only one, but I'm not sure about that anymore, it has been a year or so.

Another thing that you mentioned earlier was conditional compilation. I didn't even know that something like that is possible in Inform 7. My concern here is that it wouldn't work with the map - map-display cross reference I have in place (which is a list of map-displays attached to a m_room). Would it be possible to do something like this?

[code]Part 5 – Map-displays (if GCBD is not included)
	map-display is a kind of thing.

Part 6 – Graphical map-displays (if GCBD is included)
	map display is a kind of image-map.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4148&start=0#p29917
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good beginner games
User: peterlyberth / DateTime: 2012-01-14 06:07:30

Oh thanks again Tove:-)

Seems like I will be entertained for a loong time now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4069&start=0#p29918
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Twisty 2.0
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-14 06:10:17

[quote="George"]I'm just curious how people see Hunky Punk ([url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=40#p29892]now with TADS?![/url]), Twisty, and [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4036]ZMPP[/url] relating here on Android.[/quote]
Until they can run Glulx I view them *all* as rudimentary experiments with great promise that is not yet realised. (With the exception of that TADS thing which is an interesting tangent. Seems like it's a pretty big task to implement a Glulx interpreter on top of Z-code, if adding TADS instead is the easier target; but I'm just guessing at the motivation for that.)

I'm pleased to hear about the roadmap for Twisty. I would send you a round tuit, if I had got same. 8)

P.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4150&start=0#p29919
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] automapping with non-opposite directions?
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-01-14 06:23:01

I similarly found it produced run-time errors when rooms were defined with new directions besides the standard 12. I think it would be worth reporting these problems to the author, at least.

For the attribution question, if you change the extension's first line to Automap by Mark Tilford (modified by aschultz) it should preserve his primary author's credit while noting that you've made some changes to it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4150&start=0#p29920
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] automapping with non-opposite directions?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-14 07:09:35

[quote="ChrisC"]For the attribution question, if you change the extension's first line to Automap by Mark Tilford (modified by aschultz) it should preserve his primary author's credit while noting that you've made some changes to it.[/quote]

See Sections 25.3-25.4 in the manual for the best way to give this credit.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=60#p29921
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-14 07:13:13

[quote="Basti50"]Certainly, I'll just test them out a bit more to see if there aren't any unforeseen complications before I include them.[/quote]
Awesome, thanks!

[quote="Basti50"]In regards of using rulebooks, I think I actually tried them out when I was looking for a solution to activate environmental effects. I think the big problem there was, as with activities, that they wouldn't allow to use multiple parameters, as To Phrases do.[/quote]
That's probably correct for something as low-level as environmental effects. But you have all the data you need to print a map actor stored in its properties, right? (At least, that's my impression of how map figures are packaged.) If so, there's no need to pass anything to the rule other than the name of the actor. You have everything you need at your fingertips just by accessing the properties for the actor that was passed into the rule, and the rule can call lower-level print phrases by passing the actor's properties into those phrases. 

[quote="Basti50"]There might have also been a problem with activating several rules in a row when I wanted to use only one, but I'm not sure about that anymore, it has been a year or so.[/quote]
Rulebooks give you plenty of control over this. You can refer to properties of the object (or any other global state) in the rule header, so you have fine-grained control over when a particular rule activates. My example used default outcomes to end the rulebook as soon as the first suitable rule was found. This may or may not be the right solution for R&D (I think that it probably isn't), but it also allows a degree of control. You can also use rulebook variables if you want to track the state of things within a particular run of the rulebook. And of course if you name all of your rules, your users can rearrange them to suit their own needs.

[quote="Basti50"]Another thing that you mentioned earlier was conditional compilation. I didn't even know that something like that is possible in Inform 7. My concern here is that it wouldn't work with the map - map-display cross reference I have in place (which is a list of map-displays attached to a m_room). Would it be possible to do something like this?

[code]Part 5 – Map-displays (if GCBD is not included)
	map-display is a kind of thing.

Part 6 – Graphical map-displays (if GCBD is included)
	map display is a kind of image-map.[/code][/quote]

Yep!

[spoiler]Off on a tangent, I noticed this in one of your printing rules:[code]
let graphic be a list of numbers;
add 0 to graphic;
add 0 to graphic; 
add 0 to graphic; 
add 0 to graphic; 
add 0 to graphic; 
add 0 to graphic; 
add 3 to graphic;[/code]

It is possible to just do this for readability:
[code]let graphic be a list of numbers;
now graphic is {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 3};[/code][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=60#p29922
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-14 07:56:17

[quote]But you have all the data you need to print a map actor stored in its properties, right?[/quote]Not quiet. The current z-level displayed would be unknown to the map figure, it would have to get that information from the map-display (example: a creature three levels hight, first level would be the feet, second level torso and arms, third level the head). I didn't dwell too much on that topic so the issue is probably not that obvious. It would be possible to add another parameter to map figures to handle this too but in that case I would wonder if that sort of fleeting data wouldn't be better stored within one object like the buffer to save some space. Tell you what, I think I'll just try it out and look where it goes. When you've got an idea which makes all your worries go away (TM) and that you've obviously fallen in love with, then the best course of action is to go for it until you hit the next obstacle so hard that you're left with a dizzy feeling and a bleeding nose.

[quote]Yep![/quote]Cool! You're probably referring to the stuff from chapter 25.8? Gotta try that out. Also thanks for the other code snippet!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4152&start=0#p29923
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Following the persuasion rules
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-14 09:49:09

This is probably a simpleminded suggestion, but why not put all the hard stuff in the definition of "obedient" and then just have the first persuasion rule check whether the NPC is obedient? That seems like it might avoid some unnecessary duplication. I guess there's the issue of narrating unsuccessful persuasion, but that seems kind of doable to me too. I'm thinking something like this (pseudocode I'm not checking, so it probably doesn't compile):

[code]To decide what text is the persuadability of (stooge - a person):
   if stooge hates the player:
      decide on "hate";
   otherwise if stooge despises the player:
      decide on "despite";
    otherwise if stooge condescends to the player:
       decide on "condescension";
    otherwise:
       decide on "willingness". 

Definition: a person is obedient if its [?] persuadability is "willingness". 

Last persuasion rule for asking an obedient person to try doing someting: persuasion succeeds.

Persuasion rule for asking someone to do something when the persuadability of the person asked is "hate":
    say "[The person asked] hates your guts and will not do what you ask.";
     persuasion fails.

Persuasion rule for asking someone to do something when the persuadability of the person asked is "despite":
    say "[The person asked] wouldn't listen to the likes of you.";
     persuasion fails. 

Persuasion rule for asking someone to do something when the persuadability of the person asked is "condescension":
    say "[The person asked] thinks your suggestion is cute.";
     persuasion fails.[/code]

...and you could have other more specific rules to cover failures like asking Indy to do something in the presence of snakes. But then you don't have to worry about the obedience rules getting out of sync with the persuasion rules, except when you want them to.

Does that make sense?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4149&start=0#p29924
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Telling the time - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-14 11:21:37

Still having trouble with this:

[code]

+watch: AlwaysWorn 'wrist wristwatch/watch' 'wristwatch'
 "It is an expensive, rugged and accurate digital watch that you have had for
  years. It currently reads <<clockManager.checkTimeFmt('[am][pm]h:mm a')>>. "
 dobjFor(Open) { verify() { illogical( 'Only a jeweler could open that
  watch ');}}    “Error is on this line”  <-                              
 dobjFor(LookIn) asDobjFor(Open)
 cannotDoffMsg = "Don't do that! It's crucial that you have your watch at this
                 time."
;   

Tip: you can go to the source location of a compile error
by double-clicking on the error message in this window

----- begin build: Sat Jan 14 11:53:59 2012 -----
>t3make -Fy "C:\Documents and Settings\Frenchy\Desktop\The Magic Forest\obj" -Fo "C:\Documents and Settings\Frenchy\Desktop\The Magic Forest\obj" -o "debug\The Magic Forest.t3" -a -D "LANGUAGE=en_us" -D "MESSAGESTYLE=neu" -v -d -statprefix <@> -statpct "system.tl" "adv3\adv3.tl" "The Magic Forest.t" -res "GameInfo.txt"
TADS Compiler 3.1.0  Copyright 1999, 2010 Michael J. Roberts
The Magic Forest.t(567): error: 
Missing right parenthesis ')' in argument list in invocation of macro
"VerbRule".


Errors:   1
Warnings: 0

t3make: error code 1

Build failed.
----- end build: Sat Jan 14 11:54:02 2012 -----
[/code]

If I disable each section of the two sections of code, then everything seems better. Now that I have the watch section enabled, I got a compile error in the watch section at the line I have marked.
If I disable the very first code post then the watch code works great. Go figure!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4069&start=0#p29925
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Twisty 2.0
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-14 11:32:17

[quote="Laroquod"]Seems like it's a pretty big task to implement a Glulx interpreter on top of Z-code, if adding TADS instead is the easier target; but I'm just guessing at the motivation for that.)[/quote]

Glulx, Z-Machine, and TADS all run under different virtual machines, so you need a different interpreter for each. The main opportunity for savings comes from reusing the platform specific code for input and output.

How easy that is depends on how many assumptions in the platform code are tied to the original VM, and how many of the unique / incompatible features of the other formats you intend to support.

Dannii's IFVM and Wei-ju's ZMPP are exceptions to the "one interpreter per VM" rule - they have abstracted both common I/O code and common VM code, and can plug in modules that support other VMs.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=40#p29926
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-14 11:46:42

You might want to grab the latest TADS 2 / TADS 3 / OS ANSI sources from garglk trunk. That will get you up to 2.5.15 / 3.1.0.

I'm a little unclear on the intersection between andglk and garglk. It seems like you're intermingling some of the files and I would not have expected that to work.

Don't get me wrong - it's great if it does. I know nothing about JNI or Android development, but if you think it would be possible to get the platform specific bits into a sysand.c file (for events and native windows) and some #ifdefs in the common code, I would be delighted to incorporate those patches into Gargoyle.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4149&start=0#p29927
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Telling the time - TADS3.1
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-14 11:53:12

In your code from the first post, you have "VerbRule(LookAtTime}" - the right character is a curly brace instead of a paren.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4149&start=0#p29928
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Telling the time - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-14 12:00:44

I just figured that out also. Go figure! Now I will certainly get new glasses. Now I'm ready to move on to my player and my rooms.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4150&start=0#p29929
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] automapping with non-opposite directions?
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-01-14 12:36:10

[quote="ektemple"][quote="ChrisC"]For the attribution question, if you change the extension's first line to Automap by Mark Tilford (modified by aschultz) it should preserve his primary author's credit while noting that you've made some changes to it.[/quote]

See Sections 25.3-25.4 in the manual for the best way to give this credit.[/quote]

Thanks. I have to admit the later sections sort of intimidated me into just taking the easy bits and learning them. It's neat to actually need to learn them--and to see why they can be useful. Feels like I'm getting somewhere with this programming.

Time to look at the other stuff I avoided at first, too.

I'll definitely send Mark Tilford an email once I play around with the extension a bit more. I've had fun with it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4152&start=0#p29930
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Following the persuasion rules
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2012-01-14 13:12:54

@matt w: I'd probably use a kind of value instead of texts (for "hate", "condescend" etc), but that does look workable.  But implementing emotions like that is a little beyond what I'm trying to do, so I think I'll stick with my solution.  Making obedient people also follow persuasion is interesting, but I'd like to use this for a very specific purpose (giving military orders like "take cover" or "regroup"), and I'm not sure if allowing the player to e.g. ALICE, SING (or even BOB, THROW ALICE AT CHARLIE) would fit the context.  Thanks anyway, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4153&start=0#p29931
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Putting a description into a table -> a glulxe fatal error
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2012-01-14 13:23:09

This is long, so I'll wrap it in a spoiler.  It's not really spoilery, though.
[spoiler][code]A stone is a kind of thing.
There is a room called the Stone garden.
Color is a kind of value.  The colors are white, black, red, yellow, green, and blue.
Size is a kind of value.  The sizes are small, medium, and large.
A stone has a color.  A stone has a size.
Understand the color property as describing a stone.
Understand the size property as describing a stone.
There is a large blue stone in the garden.
There is a small yellow stone in the garden.
There is a medium red stone in the garden.
There is a large white stone in the garden.

Table of Stone types
Description					Name
Description of stones			"Quartz"		[large white]	
--							"Pyrite"		[small yellow]
--							"Ruby"		[medium red]

When play begins:
	Entable large white stones;
	Entable small yellow stones;
	Entable medium red stones.
	
To entable (D - a description of stones):
	Showme D;
	Repeat through the table of stone types:
		If there is no description entry:
			Now the description entry is D;
			Break.
	
To say type of (S - a stone):
	Repeat through the table of stone types:
		If S matches the description entry:
			Say "After a thorough examination, you identify this stone as [Name entry].";
			Stop;
	Say "After a through examination, you can only tell that this stone is [color of S] in color and [size of S] in size."
After examining a stone:
	Say type of the noun.[/code][/spoiler]

If I try to EXAMINE WHITE STONE, I get the following:
[code]You see nothing special about the stone.

Glulxe fatal error: Call to non-function (1)[/code]

Inform doesn't show a runtime error in the errors tab, so I'm guessing it's too serious for Inform to know what's going on.

When I tried to run this in Gargoyle, I got a rather different error:
[code]You see nothing special about the stone.

*** fatal error: Local variable wasn't 4 bytes wide ***[/code]

My guess is that we're not supposed to have descriptions in our tables in the first place.  If that's the case, it probably shouldn't allow me to create a table column with that kind.  I guess I'll just have to use a phrase stone -> truth state instead (but that's messier).  Before I report this, does anyone have any insight?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4153&start=0#p29932
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Putting a description into a table -> a glulxe fatal err
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-14 13:53:37

The compiler shouldn't be invoking a non-valid function value, so there's some bug there. Probably it's the same error on the two interpreters, with different sanity checks failing.

I don't know whether the real problem is in putting the value into the table, getting the value out, or invoking it. (I don't have the compiler in front of me right now.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3350&start=0#p29933
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Begin creating an I7 work from within an I7 "game"
User: branden / DateTime: 2012-01-14 13:57:13

Chipping away at matt w's requested features, but I'm suddenly too busy to work on this in the near future.  For the very few who might be interested in the incremental progress of this project, I've updated the release link with a [url=https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B8T1brgUcqOTYjFmMGE2OWEtMWE2Ny00ZTNlLWI0ZTUtYWQ0MDdkMjgyZjZm]new version[/url].

+ Better tutorial-type integrated help.
+ Commands simplified (eg editing a location asks for new name [i]and[/i] description).
+ Some error-handling (eg edit self).
+ General code cleanup, location stuff entirely rewritten.  Hopefully you won't notice.
+ Basic ability to create supporters and containers.
- (...which is still quite broken and barely works)
- Exporting has not been updated, so container/supporter status is not included

On the idea of an I7 extension:
I'm not sure this would be a useful extension as a whole.  The structure is fudging a bit, storing names/descriptions/properties in tables.  This probably isn't what you'd want to do in a proper game, although it could be useful for small games or small areas.  The item stuff is even more kludgey, and wouldn't hold up to a stiff breeze.  Felix, would you be interested in an extension with only the room creation elements?  Perhaps when I feel better about the state of the code, I'll just release the sourcecode and you can use it as you like.

Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=60#p29934
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-14 14:10:06

OK, a bunch more betatesting stuff. I'm working on map actors again, and also on AI.

[spoiler][b]Docs - errors[/b]
[list][*]The docs say "t_wall - Has a generic environmental effect called g_ee_wall in its default setup", but it's actually called g_ee_block.[/*:m]
[*]The use of the terms "width" and "length" in the docs is confusing ("length" is ambiguous). It would be best to use width for the x direction, and height for the y direction.[/*:m]
[*]I believe that it is an error not to hammer into the reader's head, over and over again, that the order of coordinates must be reversed for m_pos depending on whether you are declaring it or adding coordinates after the fact![/*:m][/list:u]

[b]Docs - room for improvement[/b]
[list][*]The specification for m_figure does explain the extension_value and offset_coord properties better than the docs proper (which I complained about in an earlier post). It's still not crystal clear, though. First position in the list specifies z=1, second position z=2? Or first position is z=0? For offset_coord, it would be a good idea to verify that it is specified in sectors (I had to study the examples to figure that out)--it would be natural to want to offset an image by a few pixels to improve it's placement on the map, for example, so a user might wonder which this is for.[/*:m]
[*]It's not clear from the docs whether the "add coordinate" phrases for map figures do something different than the extension_value property? What does the latter do? Is it purely for graphical display, whereas the former is actually stored in the map?[/*:m]
[*]I think it's great to cover some topics only the examples, but the docs could use better cross-referencing in those cases. For example: In the body of the docs, you could refer to the fact that map actors with more than one coordinate will have special issues when triggering effects, such as walls and collisions, and then tell readers to look at the Ben & Jill example for how to handle that. Ditto for how to stop actors from moving into each others' sectors, which is also to be found in the Ben & Jill example but probably needs to be highlighted better.[/*:m]
[*]Effects are pretty confusing, and I could use a bit more handholding in the docs. There's g_ee_block, for example, but also ee_wall. It would be nice see you lay out explicitly how these fit together, as well as what your conventions are for naming these objects. This would help users to see at a glance what they are at a glance rather than having to study the source code or the index to see how they are defined.[/*:m][/list:u]

[b]Questions/Requests/Problems[/b]
[list][*]How does extension_value work? The specification says that it is an (x,y) measurement(vector, I guess?). However, by trial and error, I got an image that was 2 tiles wide and 1 tile high to print properly by using {{0, 1}} for the extension_value. Wouldn't it be better for that to be specified using {{2, 1}}, i.e. 2 sectors wide in the x direction, and 1 high in the y direction?[/*:m]
[*]Ben & Jill shows how to prevent the player from moving onto a sector occupied by an actor that extends over multiple sectors. However, it seems a lot harder to detect when a multisector actor moves into a sector occupied by another actor. How the heck do I do that? Is there anything you could do to make it easier? Would it be possible for map actors to have ee_effects as well?[/*:m]
[*]Further to that, do I have to use facing directions to reliably determine whether a multisector actor is going to collide with another actor? If so, that would force me to implement facing directions even though I don't want them...[/*:m]
[*]In the Ben example, the wall tilecell is given a touch activation effect to prevent Ben's extension from being able to overprint the wall. Is there any reason not to give all walls both touch and block activation by default?[/*:m]
[*]If you're still planning to separate AI into its own extension, please consider getting rid of the smart_m_figure type in favor of making the AI capabilities possible for any m_figure. As a user, I don't care about adding a few more list properties to all actors, especially if I know I'm going to be using AI (i.e., I installed the extension). That's more convenient for me than having to juggle two kind-trees.[/*:m]
[*]Is there a way to specify directly the number of tiles that should be shown in a map-display. If you size the tile-width and tile-height directly, the map may extend off the screen. Or does this need to be done using the sight distance? (And if so, does that work only for part-maps?)[/*:m]
[*]AI: The term "steps" seems to be used both for phrases that return/contain coordinates and for phrases that return offsets. Users, however, have to treat the two totally differently. Consider standardizing the terminology to make clear what kind of data is in each list. (i.e., are they offsets or sector coordinates?)[/*:m]
[*]It would be nice to have "to move" phrases that take coordinate lists as input, in addition to those that accept individual numbers. For example:[code]To move (t - a mappable thing) to coordinate (c - a list of numbers) in (r - a m_room):	
	if the number of entries of c is 2:
		move t on sector (entry 1 of c) and (entry 2 of c) in r;
	otherwise:
		move t on sector (entry 1 of c) and (entry 2 of c) and (entry 3 of c) in r.[/code][/*:m][/list:u][/spoiler]

[b]Edited to Add:[/b] What would I need to do to randomly generate a map in the style of Nethack? I guess this is a two-part question:

1) Does the part-map feature work performantly with a larger map (maybe 256 tiles wide)?
2) Creating a large map, even if featureless, is incredibly slow. Any way to speed it up? (Say, by limiting it to one z-level?)

Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4153&start=0#p29935
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Putting a description into a table -> a glulxe fatal err
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2012-01-14 14:18:10

OK, I've reported this as [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=840]bug #840[/url], which also has a much shorter test case.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=422&start=40#p29936
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Playing IF on mobile phones?
User: retrobits / DateTime: 2012-01-14 15:36:03

[quote="bcressey"]You might want to grab the latest TADS 2 / TADS 3 / OS ANSI sources from garglk trunk. That will get you up to 2.5.15 / 3.1.0.

I'm a little unclear on the intersection between andglk and garglk. It seems like you're intermingling some of the files and I would not have expected that to work.

Don't get me wrong - it's great if it does. I know nothing about JNI or Android development, but if you think it would be possible to get the platform specific bits into a sysand.c file (for events and native windows) and some #ifdefs in the common code, I would be delighted to incorporate those patches into Gargoyle.[/quote]

Hi Ben, I'm really glad you suggested this.  I've been meaning to write you for a while now.  I am taking a bit of a different direction with the code than the previous author.  I'd really like to share as much glk C code as possible between Hunky Punk and Gargoyle.  I've already stolen most of your File/FileRef/Stream code and integrated it into andglk (also the dispatch stuff).  The Window & Buffer objects are still java, but I'd like to eventually convert or front end them with your glk c-structures in order to share more code.  Anyhow, you are correct that its a bit of a mixed mess now, but I wanted to release something that at least works and get more feedback.  For the future, I'll try to aim for your idea of a sysand.c in the common code and removing andglk entirely.  I'll drop you an email once I make more progress.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4149&start=0#p29937
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Telling the time - TADS3.1
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-14 16:47:12

[quote="bcressey"]In your code from the first post, you have "VerbRule(LookAtTime}" - the right character is a curly brace instead of a paren.[/quote]
This is far and away the worst design decision in C-derived languages. Distinguishing between those characters visually is really difficult.

A related gripe (and again, there's no help for it!) is that most of the useful keys are positioned under the little finger of the right hand on a QWERTY keyboard. I don't know where they are on Dvorak, but I have no intention of learning Dvorak, so it doesn't matter. I'm constantly groping with that finger and hitting a semicolon when I want a single-quote, a backslash when I want a right-bracket, an equals sign when I want a hyphen -- aargh!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4053&start=0#p29938
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: IFIDs and Hugo
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2012-01-14 18:05:08

Actually, Hugo is a signatory to the [url=http://babel.ifarchive.org/babel_rev7.txt]treaty[/url] (see section 1.3).

The treaty does have instructions for "a Legacy Hugo story file", but that's not what you want since you're making a [i]new[/i] game.   IFID's are quite useful to the end user, especially for programs like Zoom on OS X (iTunes-like interface, uses IFIDs to find cover art etc.).

Finally, IFDB [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/help-ifid]won't accept[/url] a game without an IFID, and I'm not sure about if-archive, but I doubt they'd accept one either.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4053&start=0#p29939
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: IFIDs and Hugo
User: cas / DateTime: 2012-01-14 18:59:50

The Treaty gives no information on how new Hugo games should announce their IFID.  If a Hugo game is wrapped in a Blorb file then an IFmd chunk would be able to provide the IFID.  For a plain .hex file, though, it would seem the legacy IFID is the only way to go.

However, my main reason in posting this is to point out that the Treaty's description of how to find a legacy Hugo IFID is incorrect, or at least clashes with both the reference implementation and IFIDs on the IFDB.  Contrary to what the Treaty says, the IFID is not an MD5 hash.  Instead, it matches the following printf()-style format string:
[code]HUGO-%d-%02X-%02X-%s[/code]
The values for the integers are the first three bytes of the file, and the string is the 8 bytes found at offset 3 in the file (which is a string representing a date; presumably the date of compilation).

So your Hugo file has an IFID just by virtue of being a Hugo file, and its IFDB can be calculated by the above method.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4152&start=0#p29940
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Following the persuasion rules
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-14 20:31:23

I was thinking of texts to make it easier to add more of them -- if you want to add a new reason-as-text, you have to put it in the persuadability decision and the persuasion rules, but if you want to add a new reason-as-value, you have to put it in the definition of those values as well -- but it's probably a bit of a hack. Anyway, it looks like you do want to separate obedience from persuasion somewhat, so you should definitely go with what works for you!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4138&start=10#p29941
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ten Room Game Competition
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2012-01-14 20:55:06

[quote="aschultz"]Oh, and one other nitpick -- do you mean ten traversible rooms? I'm guessing yes, but...

x-x-x
| ..  |
x.F..x-x-x
| .. |
x-x-x

For instance a game with the map above might have a fountain in the center, but also have an inform-style rule:

[code]fountain is a room. fountain is west of east bank. palace entry is east of east bank. throne room is east of palace entry.[etc.]

instead of going to fountain:
  say "You don't want to get wet. Maybe you can find someone or something that doesn't mind?"[/code]

There are other ways to do this, like with scenery and defining actions, but here this seems simplest...

...also, placing an item in an inaccessible room called "the void" for a bit can be handy.[/quote]

I think the map should show ten distinct locations..so if someone wants to bend the rule and have a "location" have one or two internal proximity locations, that would seem to meet the criteria of ten locations. You'd just have one location with extra spacing features...but the map should show this...

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4138&start=10#p29942
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ten Room Game Competition
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2012-01-14 20:58:56

[quote="ektemple"][quote="ralphmerridew"]One negative to rules 5/6 is that the ADRIFT standalone interpreter has a very nice mapping feature, but I don't think that's supported by the browser interpreter.

Side comment: How well does the Glulx web player support Glimmr?  (Anybody using I7, consider using the Automap or Glimmr Automap extensions.)[/quote]

Quixe and Parchment do not yet support graphics, so Glimmr's not compatible. Until great advances are made in javascript/hardware performance, though, I don't see Glimmr as being a good option anyway. The better option for graphics in the javascript terps will be to implement them in javascript/HTML and trigger them from the game.

I don't feel like an auto-generated map is really in the spirit of this comp, though. As a player, anyway, I'd much rather see an emphasis on designed maps that express something specific about the spaces they depict and the games they illustrate...[/quote]

My Zifmia system assumes images are already posted to the website. References are in the game code. I plan to implement this down the road as being able to upload a blorb file, images contained, and unpacking everything and placing the images in the image directory and the game in my OO database.

I would assume that anyone using a javascript interpreter will need to learn to do something similar.

There's no doubt that contest entrants will need to know or learn some rudimentary html and javascript. That's really part of the point of this competition.

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3723&start=0#p29943
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: UI Design of Zifmia Branching/Turn Feature
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2012-01-14 23:16:51

[quote="tove"]Strictly off the top of my head, I think a simple graphical tree view, like I7's "skein view", is most intuitive, but having the whole thing visible at all times would probably be distracting.  So instead, I'm picturing a skein that only shows the currently-active command history, with a visual indication (different color? plus-sign?) of where the branches came off, that the player can expand.  I'd definitely want to be able to click it (and in clicky-mode, I want hovering over a branch point to expand that branch temporarily), but I like the arrow key navigation as well.[/quote]

I'm circling back to this...

I think the I7 skein is the right way to go, but I would probably have the entire tree visible. I would balance that out by having each node be a simple icon. Mouse overs would produce a balloon of the basic info for that node, such as room, turn, score, but also have a button to show extended info like inventory.

I would still enable page up/down buttons for following the current branch back and forth, but the tree seems like the best method.

Now...what sort of browser tech can I use to make this happen....the skein is written in C for each platform.

Does anyone know how I could (easily) implement a tree of nodes similar to the skein using html that can tie DOM events for mouseovers and clicks?

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3723&start=0#p29944
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: UI Design of Zifmia Branching/Turn Feature
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-14 23:35:37

Maybe swipe some code from one of these?

<a class="postlink" href="http://jsplumb.org/jquery/flowchartConnectorsDemo.html">http://jsplumb.org/jquery/flowchartConnectorsDemo.html</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4151695/html/jOrgChart/example/example.html">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4151695/html/jO ... ample.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4154&start=0#p29945
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Ogg in Web Player
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-15 00:11:30

Will the initial release of the browser-gameplay system be capable of playing audio and displaying images, or is it text-only?

This is not an idle question. I've started adding music clips to my game, and I'm wondering whether those who play it in a browser will be able to hear them. (I'm using ogg files, if that makes a difference.)

I have to say, I'm really glad this capability exists! It's going to add some nice atmosphere. I haven't tried the unfinished game yet in CocoaTADS on the Mac, but in my tests last year, CocoaTADS was fine with audio. I don't recall if I tested ogg files, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4155&start=0#p29946
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Graphic Art for New Game
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-15 01:06:07

I'm working on a new game -- spoilery details intentionally not revealed here. I plan to enter it in the Spring Thing, and I've started composing and recording short music cues to highlight specific scenes, objects, and locations.

I would love to add some original art images to the game. I'm not a graphic artist, unfortunately. If you are, and would like to contribute (or if you know an artist who might be interested), please let me know! (midiguru23 [at] sbcglobal [dot] net)

The style of the art is negotiable, but the story involves a certain amount of ancient Greek mythology, so if you can come close to the style found on ancient Greek pottery, that would totally rock. If you're devoted to anime, on the other hand, I would have to say, probably not....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3723&start=0#p29947
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: UI Design of Zifmia Branching/Turn Feature
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-15 01:27:31

I'm pretty clueless in this area, but is relying on mouseovers a good idea if people might be using touch screens?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4138&start=10#p29948
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ten Room Game Competition
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-01-15 02:34:14

When you say "You must provide a graphical map", do you mean in-game (i.e. only games that can be played in a browser and support graphics are valid options), or do you just mean there must be an image of the map? 

Maybe you could assemble a list of some standard IF tools and whether or not they support the requirements? 

I'm guessing these should all be ok 
[list]
[*]Inform7[/*:m]
[*]TADS3.1 (but not TADS 3)[/*:m]
[*]ADRIFT 5.0[/*:m]
[*]Undum[/*:m][/list:u]

At least if you're not going overboard on this Ajax business (which seems pretty random). I think maybe you should specify what that means really, are you setting up a REST backend or what?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4154&start=0#p29949
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ogg in Web Player
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2012-01-15 03:48:25

It is capable of playing sounds, but there's no library support for it at the moment. You can't use the HTML TADS <SOUND> tag, as you would have in older versions of TADS 3. Instead, you'll have to use HTML/Javascript to add your own sound playback function, but I don't imagine it would be that difficult for you. The [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/sysman/webui.htm]System Manual[/url] has a bit more information.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=60#p29950
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-15 05:12:23

[quote="ektemple"][spoiler][b]Docs - errors[/b]
[list][*]The docs say "t_wall - Has a generic environmental effect called g_ee_wall in its default setup", but it's actually called g_ee_block.
[color=#FF0000]The renaming from wall to block wasn't finished when I was working on the file import stuff. Should be corrected now.[/color][/*:m]
[*]The use of the terms "width" and "length" in the docs is confusing ("length" is ambiguous). It would be best to use width for the x direction, and height for the y direction.
[color=#FF0000]But what happens to z? (that is if we're not talking about image sizes in which case I agree)[/color][/*:m]
[*]I believe that it is an error not to hammer into the reader's head, over and over again, that the order of coordinates must be reversed for m_pos depending on whether you are declaring it or adding coordinates after the fact!
[color=#FF0000]I'm still hoping to leave everything m_pos related to phrases, which align the coordinates in the (x, y, z) order so the end user doesn't need to bust his/her head about it.[/color][/*:m][/list:u]

[b]Docs - room for improvement[/b]
[list][*]The specification for m_figure does explain the extension_value and offset_coord properties better than the docs proper (which I complained about in an earlier post). It's still not crystal clear, though. First position in the list specifies z=1, second position z=2? Or first position is z=0? For offset_coord, it would be a good idea to verify that it is specified in sectors (I had to study the examples to figure that out)--it would be natural to want to offset an image by a few pixels to improve it's placement on the map, for example, so a user might wonder which this is for.
[color=#FF0000]It's thankfully not that strict. Say you got a map figure with the coordinates {{0, 0, 0} {5, 0, 0} {10, 0, 0}} and the offset values {{0, 0} (→ valid for {0, 0, 0}) {1, 1} (→ valid for {5, 0, 0}) {1, 0} (→ valid for {10, 0, 0}) {5, 5} (→ valid for nothing)}
Will try to elaborate on the offset values.[/color][/*:m]
[*]It's not clear from the docs whether the "add coordinate" phrases for map figures do something different than the extension_value property? What does the latter do? Is it purely for graphical display, whereas the former is actually stored in the map?
[color=#FF0000]extension_value is strictly for stretching images (which I consider independent from the map figure's actual 'physical' form). It works pretty much as you think it does. It might be worth mentioning that, if you add coordinates to a map actor which is currently standing on a map, it will get removed from the map and placed again, if possible.[/color][/*:m]
[*]I think it's great to cover some topics only the examples, but the docs could use better cross-referencing in those cases. For example: In the body of the docs, you could refer to the fact that map actors with more than one coordinate will have special issues when triggering effects, such as walls and collisions, and then tell readers to look at the Ben & Jill example for how to handle that. Ditto for how to stop actors from moving into each others' sectors, which is also to be found in the Ben & Jill example but probably needs to be highlighted better.
[color=#FF0000]Noted[/color][/*:m]
[*]Effects are pretty confusing, and I could use a bit more handholding in the docs. There's g_ee_block, for example, but also ee_wall. It would be nice see you lay out explicitly how these fit together, as well as what your conventions are for naming these objects. This would help users to see at a glance what they are at a glance rather than having to study the source code or the index to see how they are defined.
[color=#FF0000]That's probably partly due to the renaming business but also because I never even mentioned the generic instances. I will try to do so in the next draft.[/color][/*:m][/list:u]

[b]Questions/Requests/Problems[/b]
[list][*]How does extension_value work? The specification says that it is an (x,y) measurement(vector, I guess?). However, by trial and error, I got an image that was 2 tiles wide and 1 tile high to print properly by using {{0, 1}} for the extension_value. Wouldn't it be better for that to be specified using {{2, 1}}, i.e. 2 sectors wide in the x direction, and 1 high in the y direction?
[color=#FF0000]They're meant as additional height and width which get added during the drscimage phrase. Doing it the way you suggested would be more intuitive, I agree, but the program would have to subtract them by 1, which would make the code more costly, at least a little. I think I rather make this more clear in the docs.[/color][/*:m]
[*]Ben & Jill shows how to prevent the player from moving onto a sector occupied by an actor that extends over multiple sectors. However, it seems a lot harder to detect when a multisector actor moves into a sector occupied by another actor. How the heck do I do that? Is there anything you could do to make it easier? Would it be possible for map actors to have ee_effects as well?
[color=#FF0000]I'm actually thinking to add 'auras' to map figures in the traditional rpg fashion  which would work as a portable field of effects that you can attach.[/color][/*:m]
[*]Further to that, do I have to use facing directions to reliably determine whether a multisector actor is going to collide with another actor? If so, that would force me to implement facing directions even though I don't want them...
[color=#FF0000]See Section 0.11 if you want to know what's currently possible with scope. There is at least the phrase 'To decide whether (target - a mappable thing) is in map reach of (chaser - a mappable thing)' which checks an object's entire surroundings and not only a direction. The code is rather inefficient as of yet though. I will try to switch to a more mathematical approach which should go a bit faster.[/color][/*:m]
[*]In the Ben example, the wall tilecell is given a touch activation effect to prevent Ben's extension from being able to overprint the wall. Is there any reason not to give all walls both touch and block activation by default?
[color=#FF0000]Not really [emote]:?[/emote][/color][/*:m]
[*]If you're still planning to separate AI into its own extension, please consider getting rid of the smart_m_figure type in favor of making the AI capabilities possible for any m_figure. As a user, I don't care about adding a few more list properties to all actors, especially if I know I'm going to be using AI (i.e., I installed the extension). That's more convenient for me than having to juggle two kind-trees.
[color=#FF0000][quote]I want to add waypoints and such to map figures directly instead of relying on a special kind (after all, a player can switch characters at any given moment, hence you can never be certain when something might need to be controlled by the computer)[/quote]Quoted from yours truly [emote]:P[/emote][/color][/*:m]
[*]Is there a way to specify directly the number of tiles that should be shown in a map-display. If you size the tile-width and tile-height directly, the map may extend off the screen. Or does this need to be done using the sight distance? (And if so, does that work only for part-maps?)
[color=#FF0000]I'm considering including a frame option (e.g. 'I want to see a screen 5 tiles wide and 10 tiles in height') that you could use instead of sight range. You'll need to use the fit phrase to make the map-display scale down, just like it would be the case with image-maps, if memory serves right (the rescaling factor is ((map-sight-range of grid * 2) + 1). If you use a full-map display, the sight range will be determined automatically as either room-length or width (depending on which value is greater) divided by 2. It's a bit off right now since it doesn't really deal with the case if the result is uneven[/color][/*:m]
[*]AI: The term "steps" seems to be used both for phrases that return/contain coordinates and for phrases that return offsets. Users, however, have to treat the two totally differently. Consider standardizing the terminology to make clear what kind of data is in each list. (i.e., are they offsets or sector coordinates?)
[color=#FF0000]Not sure where you see offset values in there. Offset values too are strictly for images, so they shouldn't have any part in pathfinding. You probably mean the difference between steps & waypoints? I need to find a better terminology, true, once the AI gets out of its baby shoes.[/color][/*:m]
[*]It would be nice to have "to move" phrases that take coordinate lists as input, in addition to those that accept individual numbers. For example:[code]To move (t - a mappable thing) to coordinate (c - a list of numbers) in (r - a m_room):	
	if the number of entries of c is 2:
		move t on sector (entry 1 of c) and (entry 2 of c) in r;
	otherwise:
		move t on sector (entry 1 of c) and (entry 2 of c) and (entry 3 of c) in r.[/code]
[color=#FF0000]Consider it done.[/color][/*:m][/list:u][/spoiler][/quote]

About the other stuff, I wouldn't get my hopes up if I were you. Even if the map-display remains static, I get perhaps a 100x100 field with minimal details displayed with tolerable performance but that's about it. Maybe only using purely text will be faster since it doesn't require to draw and scale images though, haven't tried that yet.

Funny thing when it comes to map creation is that the speed in fact goes [i]up[/i] when you add z-levels (so a 3x10x10 map is actually cheaper than creating a 1x30x10 map). I think I read something about it in the Inform 7 performance thread a while ago, that adding elements to a list seems to be the troublemaker here (I was actually thinking that sorting would be the most expensive thing to do with a list), especially the more elements are already present. This is a real problem when building up complex map-displays since they rely on a list of lists (see how much faster the simple map-displays run in comparison, which use a list of lists of lists, much like the original image-maps do). To make something like random dungeon creation run faster, you could probably try to first create a map template (that is just empty lists within lists which will fit the frame of a map) dump that in an external-file, copy&paste the result into the source code, as you suggested, then let your generator first-place tilecells at the appropriate places. This should speed things up, since it cuts down on the adding phrases during runtime. 

Other than that though, I'm not sure if anything can be done as long as no one somehow finds a way to optimize the process of adding elements to lists.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=60#p29951
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-15 08:13:52

[spoiler][quote="Basti50"][b]Docs - errors[/b]
[list][*]The use of the terms "width" and "length" in the docs is confusing ("length" is ambiguous). It would be best to use width for the x direction, and height for the y direction.
[color=#FF0000]But what happens to z? (that is if we're not talking about image sizes in which case I agree)[/color][color=#0000FF] Sorry, I'm still not really thinking in terms of the z-level. (I can't really see any good reason to use z-levels except in a large Dwarf-Fortress like map, but performance-wise that's almost certainly a no-go.) Anyway, I really did stumble over this in one case, but maybe I was just being dense... Maybe mention in the docs that you're using the terms width (x), length (y), and height (z)?[/color][/*:m]
[*]I believe that it is an error not to hammer into the reader's head, over and over again, that the order of coordinates must be reversed for m_pos depending on whether you are declaring it or adding coordinates after the fact!
[color=#FF0000]I'm still hoping to leave everything m_pos related to phrases, which align the coordinates in the (x, y, z) order so the end user doesn't need to bust his/her head about it.[/color][color=#0000FF] I was joking around due to the fact that I spent quite a few minutes believing that the phrases didn't work, simply because I forgot to reverse the terms. As a user, let me say that I prefer to declare the coordinates rather than assign them procedurally, so I'd still be defining m_pos directly in most cases. But obviously that doesn't mean that it's not a good idea to have phrases to do the work as well.[/color][/*:m][/list:u]

[b]Docs - room for improvement[/b]
[list][*]The specification for m_figure does explain the extension_value and offset_coord properties better than the docs proper (which I complained about in an earlier post). It's still not crystal clear...
[color=#FF0000]It's thankfully not that strict. Say you got a map figure with the coordinates {{0, 0, 0} {5, 0, 0} {10, 0, 0}} and the offset values {{0, 0} (→ valid for {0, 0, 0}) {1, 1} (→ valid for {5, 0, 0}) {1, 0} (→ valid for {10, 0, 0}) {5, 5} (→ valid for nothing)}[/color][color=#0000FF] I still don't get it...  [emote]:?[/emote] No need to explain it to me here (I'm not using z-levels), but give some thought how to do it in the docs![/color]
[color=#FF0000]extension_value is strictly for stretching images (which I consider independent from the map figure's actual 'physical' form).[/color][color=#0000FF] I definitely agree that this is an important distinction, and I'm glad you've implemented it.[/color][/*:m][/list:u]

[b]Questions/Requests/Problems[/b]
[list][*]How does extension_value work? The specification says that it is an (x,y) measurement(vector, I guess?). However, by trial and error, I got an image that was 2 tiles wide and 1 tile high to print properly by using {{0, 1}} for the extension_value. Wouldn't it be better for that to be specified using {{2, 1}}, i.e. 2 sectors wide in the x direction, and 1 high in the y direction?
[color=#FF0000]They're meant as additional height and width which get added during the drscimage phrase. Doing it the way you suggested would be more intuitive, I agree, but the program would have to subtract them by 1, which would make the code more costly, at least a little. I think I rather make this more clear in the docs.[/color][color=#0000FF] Yes, but why do the x and y seem to be reversed? That seems to be the opposite of what the specification text says? The docs, by the way, don't seem to address this at all--you have to go to the specification to find it.[/color][/*:m]
[*][color=#FF0000]I'm actually thinking to add 'auras' to map figures in the traditional rpg fashion  which would work as a portable field of effects that you can attach.[/color][color=#0000FF] That would be a great feature. But even just collision detection would be sweet.[/color][/*:m]
[*]Further to that, do I have to use facing directions to reliably determine whether a multisector actor is going to collide with another actor?
[color=#FF0000]There is at least the phrase 'To decide whether (target - a mappable thing) is in map reach of (chaser - a mappable thing)' which checks an object's entire surroundings and not only a direction. The code is rather inefficient as of yet though. I will try to switch to a more mathematical approach which should go a bit faster.[/color][color=#0000FF] OK, thanks. I didn't see anything that indicated that this phrase checked all sectors of the actor.[/color][/*:m]
[*]AI: The term "steps" seems to be used both for phrases that return/contain coordinates and for phrases that return offsets. Consider standardizing the terminology to make clear what kind of data is in each list.
[color=#FF0000]Not sure where you see offset values in there. Offset values too are strictly for images, so they shouldn't have any part in pathfinding. You probably mean the difference between steps & waypoints? I need to find a better terminology, true, once the AI gets out of its baby shoes.[/color][color=#0000FF] I was using "offset" in its general meaning, not specific to R&D's terminology. (I.e., an offset is a delta value, not a direct specification of a location.) This snippet from the docs seems to be using a "step" directly as a location:[code]while ai_steps of av_yourself is not empty:
         change step to calculate next step of av_yourself;
         move player on sector (x-coord of player - Entry 1 of step) and (y-coord of player - Entry 2 of step) in Lab;[/code]Are there movement routines that take steps (as opposed to coordinates) as inputs, or does an author have to manually subtract the step from the actor's current position in order to move?[/color][/*:m][/list:u][/spoiler][/quote]

Thanks for the performance notes. Glimmr bitmap fonts use very large lists (at least 3-4 thousand entries) and still get very good searching performance, but those are lists of a single dimension. I'm sure you're right that it's the nested lists that limit the performance (and of course, R&D is doing far more with its maps than the flat list in a bitmap font is doing!). In any case, there are always options for subdividing a map. I just wondered what was possible.

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4138&start=10#p29952
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ten Room Game Competition
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2012-01-15 08:27:37

[quote="peterorme"]When you say "You must provide a graphical map", do you mean in-game (i.e. only games that can be played in a browser and support graphics are valid options), or do you just mean there must be an image of the map? 

Maybe you could assemble a list of some standard IF tools and whether or not they support the requirements? 

I'm guessing these should all be ok 
[list]
[*]Inform7[/*:m]
[*]TADS3.1 (but not TADS 3)[/*:m]
[*]ADRIFT 5.0[/*:m]
[*]Undum[/*:m][/list:u]

At least if you're not going overboard on this Ajax business (which seems pretty random). I think maybe you should specify what that means really, are you setting up a REST backend or what?[/quote]

I think all of those tools will suffice. The system I'm building uses Inform 7 and a customer I/O extension and yes, I use extensive AJAX for my games. This is not necessary for everyone else. The basic Z web interpreter and "release as web page" should work for most cases in Inform 7. I am familiar with the other systems only in so much as I read blogs, so I can't help with those.

The map should be a part of the game. If the deployment requires copying files, this should include the map. The game should play with the map either on screen or available on screen at any time.

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4156&start=0#p29953
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Real HARD Copy.
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2012-01-15 10:02:00

Would I be showing my age if I said it would be very nice to have the ability to "PRINT" out (on paper) sources, listings, references, and anything else that is now forbiden?

It would also be nice to have the ability to dump the game output for use in game documentation.

Greg [emote]:twisted:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4154&start=0#p29954
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ogg in Web Player
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2012-01-15 10:10:05

Does that mean that Ogg Vorbis is supported in Firefox, Opera and Chrome but not in IE or Safari? (That's [url=http://www.wewantogg.com/]what it seems like[/url], unless I'm mistaken.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4154&start=0#p29955
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ogg in Web Player
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-15 10:51:43

[quote="Emerald"]It is capable of playing sounds, but there's no library support for it at the moment. You can't use the HTML TADS <SOUND> tag, as you would have in older versions of TADS 3. Instead, you'll have to use HTML/Javascript to add your own sound playback function, but I don't imagine it would be that difficult for you. The [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/sysman/webui.htm]System Manual[/url] has a bit more information.[/quote]
I wish it had more information, but it doesn't. It just says, in essence, "If you want to have sound, you'll have to use Javascript." Well, that's okay -- I've done a tiny bit of Javascript programming, and I can work out the details. But I have to know where to start. Where the heck do I put my Javascript code? Do I put it all in a double-quoted string, like this?

[code]"< ... js code here ... >";[/code]

Or is some other approach required?

Sadly, as Trumgotist points out, some browsers will play mp3 but not ogg, while others will play ogg but not mp3. (Stupid, arrogant developers....) So my Javascript code will need to know which browser it's running in. Javascript may provide a way of grabbing that information. I'll look into it when the time comes. Another interesting question is whether I will be able to host the music files on my server rather than clutter up the TADS servers with them. Javascript can load files from anywhere on the Internet -- but will T3 games be sandboxed?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4156&start=0#p29956
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Real HARD Copy.
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-15 10:57:17

[quote="wgm003"]Would I be showing my age if I said it would be very nice to have the ability to "PRINT" out (on paper) sources, listings, references, and anything else that is now forbidden?

It would also be nice to have the ability to dump the game output for use in game documentation.[/quote]
Some interpreters will let you copy the text. This is true even of Frotz-type Infocom interpreters, though you have to click a special button to make the text copyable. You can certainly open your source code in a text editor and print it from that ... or copy it into a new text editor document and print it.

To answer your question, though ... yeah, you'd be showing your age. [emote];-)[/emote] I'm 63, and I never print anything if I can avoid it. I end up with mounds of paper, a filing cabinet full of it!

If you're concerned about long-term archiving, should your computer blow up, (a) USB thumb drives are cheap, (b) Dropbox is free.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4154&start=0#p29957
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ogg in Web Player
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-15 10:58:51

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Sadly, as Trumgotist points out, some browsers will play mp3 but not ogg, while others will play ogg but not mp3. (Stupid, arrogant developers....) So my Javascript code will need to know which browser it's running in.[/quote]

Could you just do a manual test -- have the game make a ping with an .ogg at the beginning, and ask if the player hears it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4156&start=0#p29958
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Real HARD Copy.
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-15 11:04:23

I'm not sure why you'd want to print that stuff, really, but:

You can print the manual from its online sources. You can print your source code from within the IDE. And you can turn SCRIPT ON to dump your game's output to a file, which you can then print from a text editor, or copy selectively to use for documentation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4154&start=0#p29959
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ogg in Web Player
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-01-15 11:46:07

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Sadly, as Trumgotist points out, some browsers will play mp3 but not ogg, while others will play ogg but not mp3. (Stupid, arrogant developers....) So my Javascript code will need to know which browser it's running in.[/quote]
Fortunately that's not necessary as you can provide an ogg and an mp3 version of each audio file. The browsers skip incompatible formats until they find one they can play. If all else fails, you can have a Flash player fallback for older browsers. I can recommend the jPlayer library (<a class="postlink" href="http://jplayer.org/">http://jplayer.org/</a>) that uses these techniques for a wide browser support. (Assuming TADS supports external JavaScript libraries.) 

The drawback is of course that you have to make two versions of each audio file, which can be rather laborous if you have many of them.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4142&start=10#p29960
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Shared world
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-01-15 11:56:40

I'd be very interested in collaborating in a shared world project, conditional of course on the world concept being one that interests me. This seems to be the critical matter: the setting and characters have to be such that would allow for a wide range of interesting stories that different authors would want to create. Thieves' World and Reality-on-the-Norm have been mentioned already; here are two other examples of shared universe projects and how they work:

[b]Cthulhu Mythos[/b]

There have many works of Lovecraftian horror over the last 90 years. The shared feature is a set of geographical locations (Arkham, Innsmouth etc.), a shared set of metaphysical premises (mechanical, unfeeling universe), and some common characters (a loose pantheon of cosmic horrors). The works share a similar tone reinforced by use of certain words (eldritch, squamous, rugose etc.). No specific body determines canonicity.

How it started: Lovecraft wrote a bunch of stories. His friends liked the setting and so wrote similar stories. 

[b]Comics: DC & Marvel[/b]

In both comic-worlds, most comics occur in the same universe (or multiverse!), with a shared roster of characters that are held in common. Writers often kill off characters and directly contradict earlier established facts. This is sometimes hand waved away, or attempts are made to fold things back into continuity. Over time there emerges a sort of official canon, but it's very convoluted. The set up allows for works of greatly different tone cohabiting the same universe (so, Swamp Thing and Batman are technically in the same DC universe). Canonicity is essentially determined by editors. 

How it started: the different companies had individual titles. Later, they retroactively made the titles occupy the same universe, so that they could have popular cross-over titles.

[b]Where to go from here?[/b]

-Work out what kind of setting people are interested in. As far as I can tell, Thieves' World emerged from the collaboration of relatively established fantasy and science fiction authors, who could be expected to be engaged by a fantasy setting; the point and click community that birthed RON were interested in zany humour (like a lot of the old Lucas Arts games); comic books tend towards stories about superheroes; certain kinds of intelligent folk find the Cthulhu mythos compelling. So what do writers of interactive fiction like?

- The examples we've looked at are all genre fiction. In a certain sense because most straight literature has the same setting: the Real World.

- A small cadre of interested people could put out the first shared-world anthology. (It could presented to the wider world as a showcase! Everyone loves showcases!). If it proves popular, then further anthologies could be made, and others could feel free to create stand-alone games.

So the question remains: what are people interested in?

Genre and setting suggestions:

- Sci-fi setting in a virtual-reality future in which everyone has been uplifted onto machines. Any kind of story possible on different servers, with interesting cross-over potential.
- Machiavellian setting based on the politics of Renaissance Italy. City states war while mercantile families vie for power. Would be a good straight setting, or backdrop for fantastical tales.
- Some sort of postapocalyptic setting: my favourite are ecopocalyptic settings in which the Earth has mostly been reclaimed by the wilderness.
- Weird small town, like Reality-on-the-Norm, [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_League_of_Gentlemen]Royston Vasey[/url], or even [url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101088/]Eerie, Indiana[/url]...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=60#p29961
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-15 12:02:48

I don't want to fill my map with a floor tile initially. I'd rather use a wall tile, then "carve" randomly generated rooms out of it, a la Nethack and most other random dungeon generators. Again, maybe the m_room object's default tile properties should be defined more generally, i.e. as tilecells, not t_floors or t_walls or whatever.

The way that actors are moved into the m_room when they are spawned on the map does indeed make it more difficult to create a Nethack-style map. If objects and characters were in their own rooms, but displayed on a common map, it would provide a nice, simple way to control basic scope.

Is there a way I can store a room number in either the map or an environmental effect? Like so:

[code]· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 · 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 · · · · · · · · · · · · · 
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 · 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 · · · · · · · · · · · · · 
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 · 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 · · · · · · · · · · · · · 
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 · 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 · · · · · · · · · · · · · 
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 · 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 · · · · · · · · · · · · · 
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 · 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 · · · · · · · · · · · · · 
· · · · · · · · · · · 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 · · · · · · · · · · · · · 
· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 
· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 
· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 
· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 
· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 5 5 5 5 · · · · · · · 
· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 5 5 5 5 · · · · · · · 
· · 3 3 3 3 3 · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 5 5 5 5 · · · · · · · 
· · 3 3 3 3 3 · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 5 5 5 5 · · · · · · · 
· · 3 3 3 3 3 · · · · · 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 · · · · · · · · · · · · · 
· · 3 3 3 3 3 · · · · · 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 · · · · · · · · · · · · · 
· · 3 3 3 3 3 · · · · · 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 · · · · · · · · · · · · · 
· · 3 3 3 3 3 · · · · · 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 · · · · · · · · · · · · · 
· · 3 3 3 3 3 · · · · · 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 · · · · · · · · · · · · · 
· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 
· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 
· 6 6 6 6 · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 
· 6 6 6 6 · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 
· 6 6 6 6 · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 · · 
· 6 6 6 6 · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 · · 
· 6 6 6 6 · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 · · 
· 6 6 6 6 · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 · · 
· 6 6 6 6 · · · · · · · · · 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 · · · 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 · · 
· 6 6 6 6 · · · · · · · · · 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 · · · 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 · · 
· · · · · · · · · · · · · · 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 · · · 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 · · 
· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·[/code]

[rant]Oh, in the last post I said: "I can't really see any good reason to use z-levels except in a large Dwarf-Fortress like map." Obviously I was referring to the things I'm currently interested in, not to the uselessness of multilevel maps generally.[/rant]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4157&start=0#p29962
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Change room descriptions, when player is in a certain state
User: peterlyberth / DateTime: 2012-01-15 12:13:47

I was hoping the kind people of intfiction would help again:-)

I am working on a simple madness mechanism, basicly the player can be sane or insane, eat a pill and become sane again.
Now, I would like the room descriptions to change, when the players enter insane mode(:-) ), but I cant anything about dynamically change the room descriptions.

Do you know how?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4138&start=20#p29963
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ten Room Game Competition
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-01-15 12:16:21

Alright. So how do you sign up for this? 

Also, if anybody needs an idea, here's a 10-room map that I won't be using: 
[url]http://bit.ly/xkQDsX[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4154&start=0#p29964
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ogg in Web Player
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-15 12:33:35

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Another interesting question is whether I will be able to host the music files on my server rather than clutter up the TADS servers with them. Javascript can load files from anywhere on the Internet -- but will T3 games be sandboxed?[/quote]

It's probably best to package the music files along with the game, so that a player who downloads the web version and uses it with a desktop interpreter can play the sounds without requiring an Internet connection.

T3 games are not sandboxed in the way you're thinking - the T3 game acts as a web server, and can serve up content in essentially the same way. That content could be JS code that plays Ogg sounds.

The sandboxing happens at the client / player / browser level. If your JS code says "do something with content from a different server" then the browser may block that for security reasons. The workaround would be to serve the other content from T3, so the browser sees it as coming from the same server and allows the interaction.

I will try to put together a sound demo over the next few days.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4158&start=0#p29965
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Steal this Map topic for 10-room game comp
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-01-15 12:49:24

Since I was playing around with Mark Tilford's Automap extension, I thought I'd give a few ideas for the 10-move game competition that I won't use, but maybe someone else will. Maybe other people who have a map idea can share.

This map is only 8 rooms, but yeah. Tack two on or something.

I hope this is in the spirit of the competition and that it doesn't step on anyone else's idea or the organizer's vision...if not, I can delete what I have.

[spoiler][code]"fakecube" by Andrew

include Automap by Mark Tilford.

room 1 is a room.

room 2 is east of room 1.

room 3 is southwest of room 1.

room 4 is east of room 3.

room 2 is northeast of room 4.

room 5 is a room.

room 6 is east of room 5.

room 7 is southwest of room 5.

room 8 is east of room 7.

room 6 is northeast of room 8.

room 5 is south of room 1.

room 6 is south of room 2.

room 7 is south of room 3.

room 8 is south of room 4.

To decide what number is the distance (d - south) from (r - room 1): decide on 2.
To decide what number is the distance (d - south) from (r - room 2): decide on 2.
To decide what number is the distance (d - south) from (r - room 3): decide on 2.
To decide what number is the distance (d - south) from (r - room 4): decide on 2.
To decide what number is the distance (d - north) from (r - room 5): decide on 2.
To decide what number is the distance (d - north) from (r - room 6): decide on 2.
To decide what number is the distance (d - north) from (r - room 7): decide on 2.
To decide what number is the distance (d - north) from (r - room 8): decide on 2.

To decide what number is the distance (d - east) from (r - room 1): decide on 2.
To decide what number is the distance (d - east) from (r - room 3): decide on 2.
To decide what number is the distance (d - east) from (r - room 5): decide on 2.
To decide what number is the distance (d - east) from (r - room 7): decide on 2.
To decide what number is the distance (d - west) from (r - room 2): decide on 2.
To decide what number is the distance (d - west) from (r - room 4): decide on 2.
To decide what number is the distance (d - west) from (r - room 6): decide on 2.
To decide what number is the distance (d - west) from (r - room 8): decide on 2.
[
.---.
|\   \
| .---.
| |   |
.---. |
 \    \|
  .---.
]
[/code][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4154&start=0#p29966
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ogg in Web Player
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-15 13:11:42

[quote="Juhana"][quote="Jim Aikin"]Sadly, as Trumgotist points out, some browsers will play mp3 but not ogg, while others will play ogg but not mp3. (Stupid, arrogant developers....) So my Javascript code will need to know which browser it's running in.[/quote]
Fortunately that's not necessary as you can provide an ogg and an mp3 version of each audio file. The browsers skip incompatible formats until they find one they can play. If all else fails, you can have a Flash player fallback for older browsers. I can recommend the jPlayer library (<a class="postlink" href="http://jplayer.org/">http://jplayer.org/</a>) that uses these techniques for a wide browser support. (Assuming TADS supports external JavaScript libraries.) 

The drawback is of course that you have to make two versions of each audio file, which can be rather laborous if you have many of them.[/quote]
Making two versions of each file requires no more than 30 extra seconds per file -- it's super-easy.

The problem with browsers skipping formats that they can't play may prove to be (untested) that Chrome can play both. So if I just tell the game, "play this file AND this file," people who are using Chrome might hear a doubled playback, resulting in phase cancellation ugliness.

This part of the project is several weeks in the future at this point -- I've just started creating the music, and the game is not yet ready for testing.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4159&start=0#p29967
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Banner display issues
User: Arag-e / DateTime: 2012-01-15 13:16:55

<.p>I’m playing around with banners, and I’ve hit a snag with the display options: I can only figure out how to make bannerSay() display a single string.

The goal was the have the banner serve as a status window displaying several parameters stored as properties in the player character, so for instance:

[code]
player: Actor  
    location = startRoom
    LV = 1
    EXP = 0
    HP = 150
    MaxHP = 150
;

startRoom: Room 'Starting Room'
    "This is the start room. "
;
[/code]

The information that I'd wish to display on the banner would be, if I could use double quoted strings, something like this:

[code]statusWindow: CustomBannerWindow
   bannerArgs = [nil, BannerAfter, statuslineBanner, BannerTypeText, 
              BannerAlignRight, 10, BannerSizeAbsolute, BannerStyleBorder]      

    currentContents = stats
    stats 
    {
        "LV : <<player.LV>>
        <.p>HP : <<player.HP>>/<<player.MaxHP>>
        <.p>EXP : <<player.EXP>>/100 ";
    }
;[/code]

So that the end result would look like this:

[quote] LV : 1
 HP : 150/150
 EXP : 0[/quote]

But of course, I can't use a double quoted string. I can't even figure out how to use more than a single-quoted string or property. I've found that several other things meant for single-quoted strings have ways to insert double-quoted ones instead ( like using [b]{:" "}[/b] insteadof [b]' '[/b] for EventLists). Is there some equivalent here, or am I out of luck?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4142&start=10#p29968
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Shared world
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-15 13:17:14

Nice post JJ. It's terrible, I like all of those suggestions [emote]:)[/emote]. 

If I had to narrow it down I'd go transhumanism, Italianate, and ecopocalyptic, not necessarily in any order. 

I'd also like to throw out a present day or near future alternate history/future geopolitical timeline, [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_men]Children of Men[/url] like. 

[quote="Peter Pears"]I would advise against too much editorial power.[/quote]

When I said editor I didn't mean that they vet all the stories, but that there's someone who's role it is to provide some overall consistency with their own games. As I recall in Thieves World the editors finished their stories after the other authors finished theirs. It depends how much people care for releasing a single anthology as a whole, like volume one, volume two, and so on, compared with 'the first set of games', the second set, or even no set release date at all. I'm in favor of the first option.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4157&start=0#p29969
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Change room descriptions, when player is in a certain st
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-01-15 13:47:18

The easy way is the[color=#0080FF] [if-else][/color] in the description. I can't write much with the iPhone. Will post a code in one hour.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4154&start=0#p29970
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ogg in Web Player
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-01-15 13:55:57

[quote="Jim Aikin"]The problem with browsers skipping formats that they can't play may prove to be (untested) that Chrome can play both. So if I just tell the game, "play this file AND this file," people who are using Chrome might hear a doubled playback, resulting in phase cancellation ugliness.[/quote]
No, Chrome handles that just fine. You're not actually telling the browser to play two files, you're telling it to play one sound with several source file options, like this:

[code]<audio>
  <source src="sound.ogg" type="audio/ogg">  
  <source src="sound.mp3" type="audio/mp3">    
</audio>  [/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4142&start=10#p29971
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Shared world
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-15 14:32:23

[quote="George"]When I said editor I didn't mean that they vet all the stories, but that there's someone who's role it is to provide some overall consistency with their own games. [/quote]

I'm posting as an outsider, since I already have a world I'm setting several games in and I'm moving slowly enough on [i]that,[/i] but: would it be helpful to set up some kind of world-wiki for the authors (not necessarily for the general public, since the spoiler-potential would be huge)? Seems like a well-tended little wiki would be very handy for keeping an up-to-date core for basic continuity.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4157&start=0#p29972
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Change room descriptions, when player is in a certain st
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-01-15 14:45:07

There you go. This is tested.

[code]"Insanity" by Marco Innocenti.

A person can be sane or insane. A person is usually sane.

The garden is a room. "You are in your garden[if the player is sane]. Giant moths fight against pink elephants. You can't tell who will win[else]. There is nothing uncommon here[end if]."

After looking for the first time:
	now the player is insane.
	
Test me with "look"[/code]
Note: in this example the mere act of looking changes the status of the player. It can be anything you want.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4157&start=0#p29973
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Change room descriptions, when player is in a certain st
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-15 15:15:00

You might also want to check out the "[url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rex12.html]Ant-Sensitive Sunglasses[/url]" example from the documentation, which walks through a few different ways to do almost exactly this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4156&start=0#p29975
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Real HARD Copy.
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-15 15:28:22

Indeed. I can't think of anything I could once do with a printer before that is now "forbidden", unless that just refers to the way the SCRIPT ON command used be able to output directly to your printer instead of to a text file — I do remember that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4161&start=0#p29976
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: T3: getExtraScopeItems
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-15 15:34:56

[b]Edit:[/b] Never mind. I was running afoul of an objVisible preCond on the dig action. Got it working now. [end edit]

I'm setting up a situation where the PC needs to dig a hole. I've got the dirt floor (an instanceObject of a MultiInstance, since it can be in several locations) working. The thing is, the player may use the command 'dig hole'. The hole is not in scope until after the action takes place, so I'm trying to use getExtraScopeItems(actor) in the instanceObject so that the player can use the command.

The hole is now in scope, but this is the result:

[quote]> dig hole
You cannot see that.[/quote]

This is not the default response for objects that are not in scope ("You see no hole here."), so I'm pretty sure getExtraScopeItems is doing its job. So why is the hole not visible?

I skimmed the "Redefining Scope" article in the Technical Manual, and it seems not to address this type of situation at all. It occurred to me that the hole might be in the dark, because it's in nil, so I gave it a brightness of 3. That didn't help. So I'm stuck. How do I make the hole available to that command?

Needless to say, the hole has dobjFor(Dig) defined, and also dobjFor(Default) to handle commands that would make no sense.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4159&start=0#p29977
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Banner display issues
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-15 15:53:26

I've never used banners, but if you've updated to T3.1, the << >> syntax can be used in single-quoted strings.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4162&start=0#p29978
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Trying to make a kind of a book from an example
User: Ruber Eaglenest / DateTime: 2012-01-15 17:12:34

Hi All (here the now defunct Urbatain):

I'm trying to make a kind of newspaper, so I could have several readable books in my game. I'm using the official example 295 "pages" from the chapter of the recipe book, 9.6 "Reading matter".

This is the modification I've made to the example to convert a single book, in a kind, so I could have several newspapers along the story (of course is not working):

[spoiler][code]A newspaper is a kind of thing. A newspaper has a number called the actual page. A newspaper has a number called the length. The length of a newspaper is usually 5. A newspaper has a table name called the contents of the news.

Understand the command "read" as something new.

Understand "read [something]" or "consult [something]" or "read in/from [something]" as reading. Reading is an action applying to one thing, requiring light.

Understand "read [number] in/from/of [something]" or "read page [number] in/from/of [something]" or "look up page [number] in/from/of [something]" or "consult page [number] in/from/of [something]" as reading it in. Reading it in is an action applying to one number and one thing, requiring light.

Named page is a kind of value. The named pages are first page, last page, next page, previous page.

To decide what number is the effective value of (L - last page):
	decide on the length of the book.

To decide what number is the effective value of (F - first page):
	decide on 1.

To decide what number is the effective value of (N - next page):
	let X be the actual page of the book plus 1;
	decide on X.

To decide what number is the effective value of (P - previous page):
	let X be the actual page of the book minus 1;
	decide on X.

Understand "read [named page] in/from/of [something]" or "read the [named page] in/from/of [something]" as reading it relatively in. Reading it relatively in is an action applying to one named page and one thing, requiring light.

Does the player mean reading something in a newspaper: it is very likely.

This is the newspaper requirement rule:
	if the player is not carrying a newspaper book, say "You're not reading anything." instead.

Check reading it relatively in:
	if the second noun is not a newspaper, say "There are no pages in [the second noun]." instead;
	abide by the book requirement rule.

Carry out reading it relatively in:
	let N be the effective value of the named page understood;
	now the number understood is N;
	try reading N in a newspaper.

Check reading it in:
	if the second noun is not a newspaper, say "There are no pages in [the second noun]." instead;
	abide by the newspaper requirement rule.

Check reading it in:
	if the number understood is greater than the length of the newspaper, say "There are only [length of sinister book in words] pages in the book." instead;
	if the number understood is less than 1, say "The page numbering begins with 1." instead.

Carry out reading it in:
	read page number understood.

Check reading:
	if the noun is not a newspaper, say "There are no pages in [the noun]." instead;
	abide by the newspaper requirement rule.

Carry out reading (the issue - a newspaper):
   try reading the actual number in the issue.
[	let N be a random number between 1 and the length of the sinister book; now the number understood is N;
	say "You flip the pages randomly and arrive at page [the number understood]:[paragraph break]";
	try reading the number understood in the sinister book.]

To read page (N - a number; the issue - a newspaper):
	now the actual page of the issue is N;
	if there is a content corresponding to a page of N in the contents of the news of the issue:
		choose row with a page of N in the contents of the news of the issue;
		say "You read: '[content entry]'[paragraph break]";
	otherwise:
		say "Page [N] has nothing of interest."[/spoiler][/code]

The error is this:

[code]
Problem. You wrote 'To read page (N - a number'  : but I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with, so I am ignoring this sentence altogether.
[/code]

Of course, this is not working at all because the example in the recipe book was designed only for ONE book, not a kind of them, so it seems to me that I need to expand that grammar so it has a second noun for the "book"/"newspaper". However, that would ruin the designed grammar for simplicity. That extended grammar would not allow something quick like "read page one" having the newspaper in the inventory.

So... any idea of how to do this properly? I'm a bit lost.

Thanks a lot.

Ruber.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4162&start=0#p29979
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Trying to make a kind of a book from an example
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-15 17:59:30

[code](N - a number; the issue - a newspaper)[/code]I'm not aware that Inform 7 tolerates this kind of parameter collection. Have you tried doing something like this?

[code]To read page (N - a number) for (the issue - a newspaper):[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4142&start=10#p29980
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Shared world
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-01-15 18:12:21

[quote="Ghalev"]
I'm posting as an outsider, since I already have a world I'm setting several games in and I'm moving slowly enough on [i]that,[/i] but: would it be helpful to set up some kind of world-wiki for the authors (not necessarily for the general public, since the spoiler-potential would be huge)? Seems like a well-tended little wiki would be very handy for keeping an up-to-date core for basic continuity.[/quote]
That's definitely a good suggestion for when things get going. Wiki's can be handy when they're well structured and have the content you want. If they're not so much updated (like the IFWiki), they're not as useful.

[quote="George"]I'd also like to throw out a present day or near future alternate history/future geopolitical timeline, [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_men]Children of Men[/url] like.[/quote]
Alt-history is a good suggestion: we're all familiar with the current day, and the world is frankly big enough for lots of different takes on what might happen as a result of some paradigm-shifting event. What could be that event? The singularity? Uplifting other species into sapience? Some unique twist on the superpowers theme? Alien contact? Biological warfare that does strange and unpredictable things to populace? Hmm...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=280#p29981
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: fiziwig / DateTime: 2012-01-15 19:26:49

Hey everyone. I'm an old/new IF enthusiast.

The last time I authored a game was 10 years ago. Here's that game: <a class="postlink" href="http://fiziwig.com/intfic/">http://fiziwig.com/intfic/</a>

I'm retired now, so I have some more time to play around. Right now I'm working on a runtime in php that runs on a web server so the games can be played in a browser without having to install anything. I'm using the old tried and true "Cloak of Darkness" mini-game as my first test case, just to get the first working version up and running. I don't have anything to show yet, but I'll post when I do.

The goal is to have a web-base development tool for authoring, and tools for collaborative authoring so several people can work on different parts of the same game at the same time remotely via their browsers.

--gary

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4156&start=0#p29982
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Real HARD Copy.
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-15 19:46:04

From the title I thought this would be about AIF.

I'm disappointed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4159&start=0#p29983
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Banner display issues
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-15 20:39:38

If you're just looking to replace the normal status line behavior, you can override statusLine's showStatusHtml method.

[code]
modify statusLine
	showStatusHtml() {
		"LV: <<player.LV>><br>";
		"HP: <<player.HP>>/<<player.MaxHP>><br>";
		"EXP: <<player.EXP>>/100 <br>";
	}
;
[/code]

You lose the default information - location, score, exits list - but you can add that back in easily enough if you want it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4163&start=0#p29984
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Slight Inform 7 question: capitalize substitutions
User: robo1995 / DateTime: 2012-01-15 21:07:22

How do you capitalize an object substitution?

For example:

Hovel is a room. "[Crumbling trash] lies everywhere."

Some crumbling trash is scenery in Hovel.

The output is

[b]Hovel[/b]
crumbling trash lies everywhere.

How do I make crumbling trash capitalized in this context?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=280#p29985
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2012-01-15 21:14:03

[quote="fiziwig"]The last time I authored a game was 10 years ago. Here's that game: <a class="postlink" href="http://fiziwig.com/intfic/">http://fiziwig.com/intfic/</a>[/quote]
That game looks awesome!  I love high fantasy with all its cliches (as long as those cliches are implemented well and earnestly).  I even put up a poll on the IFDB a long time ago, hoping to come up with a list of high fantasy IF, and nobody added your game.  I hope I'll have time to play it, eventually!

Welcome to the forum. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4053&start=0#p29986
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: IFIDs and Hugo
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2012-01-15 21:20:45

[quote="cas"]The Treaty gives no information on how new Hugo games should announce their IFID.  If a Hugo game is wrapped in a Blorb file then an IFmd chunk would be able to provide the IFID.  For a plain .hex file, though, it would seem the legacy IFID is the only way to go.[/quote]
As far as I know, Hugo games [i]can't[/i] be wrapped in a Blorb file, unless perhaps the packaging is done manually.  But even if a Hugo game [i]were[/i] somehow bundled with Blorb, the Hugo interpreters wouldn't be able to open it (the only [i]possible[/i] exception being the new Hugor interpreter, but I doubt it can open Blorbs either, since I haven't heard anything to that affect, and I've been on  the Hugo discussion board).

Thanks for the advice.  Unfortunately, I already used the TADS random generator to get an IFID number, which I put in the banner of my second release and added to the IFDB.  Should I change it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4163&start=0#p29987
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Slight Inform 7 question: capitalize substitutions
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-01-15 21:31:07

[quote="robo1995"]How do you capitalize an object substitution?

For example:

Hovel is a room. "[Crumbling trash] lies everywhere."

Some crumbling trash is scenery in Hovel.

The output is

[b]Hovel[/b]
crumbling trash lies everywhere.

How do I make crumbling trash capitalized in this context?[/quote]

Well, it depends what you mean by upper case. The Inform documentation refers to title case as what I'd guess you mean...

[code]
room 1 is a room.

the codex is a thing in room 1.

crumbling trash is scenery in room 1.

instead of examining the codex:
	let X1 be "[crumbling trash]" in upper case; [all caps]
	let X2 be "[crumbling trash]" in title case; [1st letter caps]
	say "[X1] [X2]";
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4164&start=0#p29988
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Need some Frotz eyes
User: frotz / DateTime: 2012-01-15 21:32:44

I'm working at folding in Aldo Cumani's sfrotz into the main Frotz codebase.  Would someone please take a look at the code and help me figure out why the build keeps complaining about 
"undefined reference to `f_setup'",  The code in question is in the pre-2.44 branch.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4163&start=0#p29989
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Slight Inform 7 question: capitalize substitutions
User: robo1995 / DateTime: 2012-01-15 21:35:18

Are you sure there's no easy way to make a substitution capitalized at the beginning of a sentence?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4163&start=0#p29990
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Slight Inform 7 question: capitalize substitutions
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-01-15 21:38:45

It's probably not the most elegant solution, but this definitely works:

[code]To say Crumbling trash: 
    let N be "[crumbling trash]" in sentence case; 
    say "[N]". [/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4163&start=0#p29991
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Slight Inform 7 question: capitalize substitutions
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-01-15 21:41:46

[quote="JoeyJones"]It's probably not the most elegant solution, but this definitely works:

[code]To say Crumbling trash: 
    let N be "[crumbling trash]" in sentence case; 
    say "[N]". [/code][/quote]

Oh, man. I completely misunderstood the question. I didn't even consider you wanted that, for some reason. Please don't ask me why.

It's chapter 19, section 4 of the Inform documentation, by the way. I know I got intimidated by the final chapters. It's tough to know what to search for at first.

And also, welcome, and keep asking questions!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4163&start=0#p29992
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Slight Inform 7 question: capitalize substitutions
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-01-15 21:44:20

Basically, 'in sentence case' can be used to make indexed text capitalise at the beginning of a sentence (which is what you want here), as per 19.4 of the documentation. Unfortunately, an object substitution doesn't count as indexed text. I assume you're bracketing objects in line with Aaron Reed's suggest to get BENT. I'd say it might just be simpler that when an object is the first word of a sentence, unbracket it after making sure you've definitely implemented the object. Obviously, if it's critical that you bracket, the code I just showed does the trick just fine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4163&start=0#p29993
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Slight Inform 7 question: capitalize substitutions
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-15 23:09:03

[quote="JoeyJones"]It's probably not the most elegant solution, but this definitely works:

[code]To say Crumbling trash: 
    let N be "[crumbling trash]" in sentence case; 
    say "[N]". [/code][/quote]

Easy to generalize as well:

[code]
Hovel is a room. "[crumbling trash in sentence case] is here". 

Some crumbling trash is a thing.

To say (O - an object) in sentence case:
	let T be "[O]" in sentence case;
	say T.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=60#p29994
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-15 23:17:41

OK, here is a Nethack-style randomized dungeon implemented in R&D, along with the source code:

<a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Randomized%20Dungeon/Randomized%20Dungeon.gblorb">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Randomiz ... eon.gblorb</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Randomized%20Dungeon/source.txt">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Randomiz ... source.txt</a>

Use the arrow keys to move; any other key to begin typing. It takes a few seconds to generate the map at the beginning; please be patient. Even though it's only a 30 x 30 grid, the performance is pretty poor--poorer than I would have thought. Often, just moving around the map (which is all there is to do) sends git's CPU usage to 100%. The map-generation algorithm [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/Randomized%20Dungeon/algorithm.txt]itself[/url] is instantaneous on a map of this size if you divorce it from R&D, which suggests one of two things:

1) There is simply so much memory being used and accessed every turn in R&D--primarily due to lists, I reckon--that the VM strains to deal with it.
2) There is a bug or implementation detail in R&D, or perhaps in I7's list code, that is causing massive amounts of processing power to be needed intermittently.

I'm not sure how to decide between these... Maybe someone with a profiling interpreter and the knowledge to use it can tell us what is taking all the time.

In any case, right now at least, it seems that simple per-room maps are more practical for R&D than larger, more complex maps a la a classic roguelike. This is probably not surprising, since per-room maps are the original intended purpose of R&D!

A few more betatesting issues, tucked out of sight:

[spoiler][list][*]Back to the issue of the terminology of "length" vs. "width". This snippet of code from the phrase for deciding whether a coordinate is out of bounds suggests that they are reversed from what an English speaker would normally presume:	[code](X > room-length of r) or (Y > room-width of r)[/code]This has X as the "length" coordinate and Y as the "width". However, "width" usually suggests horizontality, so X makes much more sense as the width term. ("Length" for any dimension on a grid is pretty odd, as I said before--length makes more sense for describing a feature on a grid (length of a vector, for example.)[/*:m]
[*]The graphics section in the docs refers to two things called "additional height" and "additional width". Is this just a reference to the extension_value we've been talking about for map actors? (There's also a reference to additional width and additional height in the Tilecells section.) The docs don't make clear what these refer to, so it's a bit confusing.[/*:m]
[*]How do I make the map display the same size at the sight distance so that the two are in sync? Right now, the display is smaller than the sight distance and so the display appears to expand as the player moves (adding columns and rows); see the demo above, for example. I would like the framing to simply follow the player.[/*:m]
[*]Noticed a bug with the map generating activity. The code has a "before map generating" rule that is intended to stop the activity if the m_room has no layout. However, activities don't work like other rulebooks--"before" rules don't stop the main activity from running (see manual 17.3)--and so this rule will not stop the activity from running. The check needs to be put in the "for" rule to stop the activity.

Looking at this code did give me an idea of how to allow authors to intervene easily to use any tilecell to flood their maps, though. Here's how I modified the code to do this as well as to fix the problem with the before rule:

[code]Map generating something is an activity.
The map generating activity has a tilecell called the flood-tile. [### Added]

[Before map generating a m_room (called r) (this is the standard map generating check rule)][made this the first "for" rule.]

First before map generating an m_room (called r) (this is the set default flood tile rule):
	now the flood-tile is the def_floor of r.

First for map generating an m_room (called r) (this is the standard map generating check rule):
	if r has no layout, rule fails;
	carry out the map resetting activity with r;
	continue the action.[necessary or the activity will stop here.]
		
Rule for map generating a m_room (called r) (this is the standard map generating rule):
	If room-height of r > 0 and room-width of r > 0 and room-length of r > 0:
		let r-h be room-height of r;
		let r-w be room-width of r;
		let r-l be room-length of r;
		let s-t be flood-tile;[this is the only change]
		etc.[/code]

To use something other than def_floor as the flood tile, an author would just:

[code]Before map generating the land-beneath-the-mountain:
	now the flood-tile is Granitic Rock.[/code][/*:m][/list:u][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4157&start=0#p29995
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Change room descriptions, when player is in a certain st
User: peterlyberth / DateTime: 2012-01-16 00:23:08

Thanks the both of you:-)

It worked perfectly and the documentation provided some insight on the flexibility of inform7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=60#p29996
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-16 01:06:20

How easy would it be to swap a single list for your list of lists? Maybe a single list would be more performant.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4142&start=10#p29997
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Shared world
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-01-16 02:20:01

This sounds great, some sort of genre fiction is probably the best way to do this. 

I've been thinking about mashups lately - I read the Shadows over Baker Street anthology (Lovecraft + Sherlock Holmes) and one of my favourite computer games of all times is Arcanum [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcanum:_Of_Steamworks_and_Magick_Obscura[/url] (steampunk + fantasy). 

Maybe that's a way to find that "central idea in one sentence"? 

"It's about a small town where magic is possible"
"It's a post-holocaust hot house world, with mutants"
"It's like CSI, but with werewolves"
"Cthulhu by gaslight" (oh wait, that's done already)

I'd really like if there was a central place involved - a city, a cruise ship, a space station, whatever. Twin Peaks, anyone? 

The RON thing seems to do this really well, and I like the way they think about reusing actual characters for archetypes - "if you need a detective, this guy is a good choice". It's a bit like commedia dell'Arte, I guess.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4053&start=0#p29998
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: IFIDs and Hugo
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-16 02:58:11

[quote="Bainespal"]Thanks for the advice.  Unfortunately, I already used the TADS random generator to get an IFID number, which I put in the banner of my second release and added to the IFDB.  Should I change it?[/quote]
Nope. Your IFID is fine. It doesn't *need* to be generated in any specific way, though using the current date is recommended in order to avoid possible clashes with other games. Just remember that you need different IFIDs for every new build of your game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4163&start=0#p29999
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Slight Inform 7 question: capitalize substitutions
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-01-16 04:01:20

I think this is safe, too:
[code]To say (Obj - object) in mixed case: (-  print (Cap) {Obj}; -).[/code]
[code]
Hovel is a room. "[Crumbling trash in mixed case] lies everywhere."
Some crumbling trash is scenery in Hovel.
[/code]
The differences from "say  <object> in sentence case" would be two:
the above doesn't invoke the indexed text machinery,
and it preserves existing uppercase letters in the printed name.
("[empty bottles of Coke in sentence case]" would result in 'Empty bottles of coke', whereas "[empty bottles of Coke in mixed case]" would print 'Empty bottles of Coke'.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4164&start=0#p30000
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Need some Frotz eyes
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-16 06:04:53

Can't reproduce:

[code]
git checkout pre-2.44
make
[/code]

Builds fine :-/
(Linux, tested with GCC 4.5.3 and 4.6.3.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4164&start=0#p30001
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Need some Frotz eyes
User: frotz / DateTime: 2012-01-16 08:05:44

It's the sfrotz target that I'm having trouble with.  
[code]
$ make sfrotz
gcc -o sfrotz src/frotz_common.a src/frotz_sdl.a src/blorblib.a -ljpeg -lpng -lz -lSDL -lSDL_mixer
src/frotz_common.a(main.o): In function `z_piracy':
main.c:(.text+0x7): undefined reference to `f_setup'
src/frotz_common.a(main.o): In function `main':
main.c:(.text+0x27): undefined reference to `os_init_setup'
src/frotz_common.a(process.o): In function `call':
process.c:(.text+0x3ab): undefined reference to `f_setup'
process.c:(.text+0x4c7): undefined reference to `f_setup'
yadda yadda...
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4164&start=0#p30002
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Need some Frotz eyes
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-16 08:32:22

Oops, didn't know there was an sfrotz target. The build doesn't get that far here though:

[code]src/sdl/sf_images.c: In function 'loadpng':
src/sdl/sf_images.c:97:7: error: dereferencing pointer to incomplete type[/code]

Smells like a missing #include, but not sure.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4059&start=0#p30004
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Damusix for inform 7?
User: eliukblau / DateTime: 2012-01-16 09:10:30

I give an explanation for the continued delay in the publication of DamusixI7.

Actually, DamusixI7 was already finished. However, a recent change in how the I7 represents the sound objects (technical things) has meant that I have to modify the code at various points DamusixI7, work that I have not had time to do.

Reason: moving to a new home, new job and recent medical diagnosis have kept me pretty busy.

Following the suggestions of good friends, I upload DamusixI7's code on Github, as has a version adapted to changes in I7. I would not venture to give a date this time, because I could not comply with dates specified in previous messages.

I can say this: I continue to work on improving Damusix. Damusix continues to support and, of course, will be published for Inform7 version, because I am committed to this project and many people are really interested in him. I'm sure will be very useful to all.

DamusixI7 currently uses version 3 of the manager. But I am planning to version 4, and this is also one of the reasons why it has delayed the release of the code.

I will publish DamusixI7 without deep documentation in English, so I have all the help from the community to translate the manual correctly, given the many possible uses of Damusix, which allows fairly complex things.

Greetings to all. And thank you for your patience and continued support and interest.

Eliuk Blau. [emote];)[/emote] 

P.S: Sorry for the bad google translate. [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4053&start=0#p30005
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: IFIDs and Hugo
User: cas / DateTime: 2012-01-16 10:48:52

[quote="Bainespal"]As far as I know, Hugo games [i]can't[/i] be wrapped in a Blorb file, unless perhaps the packaging is done manually.  But even if a Hugo game [i]were[/i] somehow bundled with Blorb, the Hugo interpreters wouldn't be able to open it (the only [i]possible[/i] exception being the new Hugor interpreter, but I doubt it can open Blorbs either, since I haven't heard anything to that affect, and I've been on  the Hugo discussion board).[/quote]
The Blorb specification does provide a chunk type for Hugo games, but you're right that if an interpreter can't play it there's no point in doing it.  It might be worthwhile to see if Kent Tessman would be willing to provide Blorb support for Hugo, which would allow it to support iFiction records as described in the Treaty of Babel.  I would be willing to add support to read Blorb-encoded Hugo stories to Gargoyle, provided Ben Cressey is not opposed.
[quote="Bainespal"]Thanks for the advice.  Unfortunately, I already used the TADS random generator to get an IFID number, which I put in the banner of my second release and added to the IFDB.  Should I change it?[/quote]
My reading of the Treaty indicates that you should.  There are two general sections on generating IFIDs for projects: new projects and legacy projects.  IFIDs for new projects are meant to be generated by the design system itself (2.2.1: “A design system should assign each different published work a unique ID code”).  Legacy projects should use the legacy system described in the Treaty (see 2.2.2).

Because Hugo does not (apparently) provide IFIDs by itself, your project would fall under the legacy category and use the method described by the Treaty—although it should probably actually use the method I described above.

There is a very practical reason to do this, too, so you don't feel you're doing something just because a standard mandated it.  IFIDs that the Treaty describes are able to be extracted from story files by other programs, without human intervention.  As an example, I wrote a small IF launcher that displays the author & title for each work.  It tries to read embedded metadata (e.g. from a Blorb file), but if there is none, it extracts the story's IFID and uses a lookup table to discover the author & title.  With a user-generated IFID that is simply placed somewhere in the banner, this program would never be able to find the IFID and thus never be able to display metadata.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4138&start=20#p30006
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ten Room Game Competition
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2012-01-16 12:03:07

[quote="peterorme"]Alright. So how do you sign up for this? 

Also, if anybody needs an idea, here's a 10-room map that I won't be using: 
[url]http://bit.ly/xkQDsX[/url][/quote]

Please direct entry requests to <a class="postlink" href="http://textfyre.com/tenrooms/">http://textfyre.com/tenrooms/</a>.

Keep the questions on the forum though...

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4161&start=0#p30007
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: getExtraScopeItems
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2012-01-16 12:15:42

It looks like you've found a solution to the problem, but another approach which might be easier to implement than fiddling with scope is to use a dummy hole object  that's in the appropriate location to represent the hole before it's dug and then make the dig command swap it out for the real hole:

[code]
+ dummyHole: Thing 'hole' 'hole'
    dobjFor(Dig)
    {
        verify {}
        action 
        { 
            "You dig a hole. "; 
            hole.moveInto(location);
            moveInto(nil);
        }
    
        
    }
    
    dobjFor(Default)
    {
        verify() { illogical ('You can\'t see any such thing. '); }
    }
    
;

hole: Container 'hole' 'hole'
  dobjFor(Dig) 
   {
        verify() { illogicalAlready ('You\'ve already dug it. '); }
    }

;
[/code]

-- Eric

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4161&start=0#p30008
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: getExtraScopeItems
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-16 12:37:44

Good suggestion, Eric. I love the fact that TADS gives us several ways to solve a design issue. Figuring out the optimal method is not always easy, however. I'll test further to see if my method has undesired side effects.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4159&start=0#p30009
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Banner display issues
User: Arag-e / DateTime: 2012-01-16 13:05:35

Thank you. I followed Jim Aikin's suggestion above and upgraded to 3.1, that basically solved all my problems.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4161&start=0#p30010
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: getExtraScopeItems
User: tomasb / DateTime: 2012-01-16 13:12:06

Interesting. While doing my TADS translation, I was thinking about this for some time, because in Czech language we never "dig ground", but always "dig hole in ground". In the end I've solved this problem simply by making "hole" part of the verb itself - I've modified grammar rules and verb phrase of dig. The word "díru" means "hole" in accusative case:
[code]
VerbRule(Dig)
    ('vyhrabej' | 'vyhrab' | 'vyhrabat' | 'hrabej' | 'hrabat' | 'vyhlub'
    | 'vyhloubit') 'díru' ( | 'v' | 'do') singleDobj
    : DigAction
    verbPhrase = 'vyhloubit/hloub{íš}/vyhloubil{a} díru (v čem)'
    askDobjResponseProd = inSingleNoun
;[/code]But I'm not sure my approach is transferable into English language mainly because my format of vebPhrase is little different.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4093&start=20#p30011
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Harmonizing Glk file suffixes?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-16 16:25:23

[quote]To avoid cross-platform surprises, I suggest that the list of invalid characters is the same across platforms, so that those characters are removed everywhere and not just on Windows where it has to be done.[/quote]

I can't guarantee that, because I don't know all platforms, but I can add more. Are :*? really invalid in Windows filenames, though, or are they just hard to type in the shell?

[quote]Maybe this is stretching the original proposal a bit, but could there be some mechanism to ask the interpreter what it would name a file? For instance, if a story can't find some data it needs, it might want to tell the player the filename it was looking under.[/quote]

Too much of a stretch (and we're considering the idea that the interpreter might look under several filenames, anyhow). What would the player do with this information? "You need the data file for Hipposaurus Rex" is about as actionable as "You need HippoData.glkdata".

[quote]What is the expected behavior if a game ships with a .glkdata file?[/quote]

You're overreading what I wrote. I'm not mandating or recommending any policy about whether data files should be kept with the game file or pooled somewhere. All I'm saying is that *if* external files are pooled somewhere, then data files should have a common namespace across games, whereas save-game files shouldn't.

[quote]Could the extensions be .data and .save instead?[/quote]

The interpreter might want to map file types to itself (e.g., double-clicking on a save file) and it's hopelessly impractical to do that for .data and .save.

[quote]Glulx allows other io systems, and you should be able to play a story in fyrevm and then in gargoyle and have them access the same data files.[/quote]

Potentially, but this isn't a real-life case yet. If someone does set a game up this way, I don't see that it's harder to agree on one set of filenames rather than the other.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4093&start=20#p30012
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Harmonizing Glk file suffixes?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2012-01-16 17:04:37

[quote="zarf"]
I can't guarantee that, because I don't know all platforms, but I can add more. Are :*? really invalid in Windows filenames, though, or are they just hard to type in the shell?[/quote]
[url=http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa365247(v=vs.85).aspx]Yes[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4093&start=20#p30013
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Harmonizing Glk file suffixes?
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2012-01-16 17:23:28

[quote="zarf"]Geez, really? How 90s. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
Well, the best thing about Windows is how well it runs Windows programs. Including old, badly written Windows programs. That's the one feature other operating systems can't beat. So Microsoft are generally very wary about changing things that might break old software. (I need Windows to run all my old Windows software. If Windows wouldn't run that old software anymore, then I'd have to replace that software and I'd just end up using my Mac for everything.) [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2745&start=0#p30014
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: want a free printed copy of the TADS2 manual?
User: Astral Software / DateTime: 2012-01-16 17:58:42

Hey I am game if you still have it [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4165&start=0#p30015
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: ALAN 2 and PC PAWS here! :D
User: Astral Software / DateTime: 2012-01-16 18:02:06

Just like what the subject says, I am using both systems, for two completely different projects [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4166&start=0#p30016
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: PC Adventure Writer System Interpreter Other Than WinPAWS?
User: Astral Software / DateTime: 2012-01-16 18:03:50

Is there anyone out there who knows other ways to interpret PC PAWS (by Graeme Yeandle) *.PDB files in WIN32 API programs (besides the WinPAWS)?  Hopefully something as efficient like Scottfree for the SACA game files?  I like the DOS feel of it in 40 columns, but it's clunky for just DOSBox alone!  If anyone has undergone this endevor, please tell me [emote]:D[/emote] 

Jeremy Harden - PC Adventure Writer System user for self made game
CASTLE BLACKSTORME

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4093&start=20#p30017
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Harmonizing Glk file suffixes?
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-01-16 18:44:33

[quote="zarf"]Too much of a stretch (and we're considering the idea that the interpreter might look under several filenames, anyhow). What would the player do with this information? "You need the data file for Hipposaurus Rex" is about as actionable as "You need HippoData.glkdata".[/quote]
Well, for the sake of clarification, by ``filename'' I meant full path.  In particular I was thinking of my change from Zoom to Gargoyle, and how it took me a bit to figure out that data files were being looked for in the directory enclosing the story file, not ~.  Knowing the directory difference is what made the error message actionable.  But depending on how things go, maybe that will be a moot point.

[quote="zarf"]I'm not mandating or recommending any policy about whether data files should be kept with the game file or pooled somewhere.[/quote]
But right now the draft reads

[quote]...data files should go in a common directory, as they may be exchanged between games.[/quote]
Perhaps that wording needs to change?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=60#p30018
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-16 19:22:58

Actually, it seems like using more lists is faster than relying on fewer. Take this [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17790344/Performance%20Test/Randomized%20Dungeon.gblorb]new example[/url] with the simple map-display, which uses many more but smaller lists (the speed improvement may not be as obvious since I couldn't tinker enough with the generating algorithm [which is all sorts of awesome btw], sorry).  

New source code and updated R&D files can be found [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17790344/Performance%20Test/RDU.rar]here[/url].

As for trying it out with just one list, that would be a though one since I wouldn't have any easy way to sort graphics by their printing priority anymore. 

Reconstructing the lists of a map-display is really darn expensive. It would be great if it would turn out that I've just screwed something up in my code. The current speed for any non-static camera past a 20x20 frame is rather abysmal for me (which should be ok for a graphical roguelike, I guess, as long as you don't go overboard with the details but it's a downer nonetheless).

@Erik
Again I owe you one. I'm currently a bit occupied (=lazy), so it may need some time before I can get back to your notes (that is I actually want to implement some of the improvements before I run into the danger of clogging up [emote]:D[/emote]). You work, like, [i]way[/i] too fast for me, dude.  [emote]8-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4161&start=0#p30019
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: getExtraScopeItems
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-16 20:08:53

"Dig the ground" isn't really idiomatic English either; I'd be much more likely to say "dig a hole in the ground" or even more so "dig in the ground." But in IF I'd be pretty likely to try "dig ground," because I don't necessarily expect the parser to understand "dig in ground" and I definitely wouldn't expect it to understand referring to an object that isn't there like the "hole." Extra prepositions like that can lead to guess-the-syntax problems. 

Probably the best idea in English is to have the game understand both "dig the ground" and "dig in the ground."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4167&start=0#p30020
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Riddle me this Puzzle
User: RentedExistence / DateTime: 2012-01-16 20:34:20

I am quite enjoying the IF games I have been playing so far. But one my most favorite past times in interactive games is the implementation of mind-bending idea invoking interactions, e.g. riddles. i.e. I used to love the riddles found in dungeons and dragons rpg games, like baldur's gate 1, 1.5, 2, and 2.5. Kind of like those riddles you find in the movie the labyrinth where one door tells the truth the other always lies, or in Monty python's holy grail -- when they must answer the three riddles to pass the bridge.  Do any of you IF knowledgeable fellows have some recommended games that include this awesome aspect of gaming?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4168&start=0#p30021
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Undum and Combined Links
User: tuatha / DateTime: 2012-01-16 21:25:05

I'm having some trouble with Undum and combined links.  The documentation on combined links is [url=http://undum.com/API.html#h_13]here[/url].

Basically, combined links allow you to execute an action while also changing a situation.  When I use a combined link though, I only change the situation.  The action does not execute.  Firebug reports that "this.actions is undefined."  I haven't edited the core .js, so this problem should be replicatable for anyone using a combined link.  Let me know what I could do to help resolve this problem!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4169&start=0#p30022
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Benchmarking PLUS Contributions wanted for a test suite
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-01-16 22:18:20

Hello all! I am pleased to announce the release of my extension Benchmarking. It will soon be on the Inform 7 website, for now you can download it from <a class="postlink" href="http://curiousdannii.github.com/if/extensions/Benchmarking.i7x">http://curiousdannii.github.com/if/exte ... arking.i7x</a>

Benchmarking is a performance test framework for I7. It has two types of users in mind:

[list=1]
[*]Story and extension authors can use Benchmarking to compare alternatives for some slow programming task.[/*:m]
[*]Interpreter authors can use Benchmarking to compare their interpreter with others, as well as to compare interpreter updates to see whether they have a performance benefit or deficit.[/*:m][/list:o]

It is easy to set up, as the example shows for how to test text matching. If the tests do not run in the built-in I7 interpreter, then either use output.ulx from the Build folder with another interpreter, or (if you're on Windows) download the updated 6G60 build.

Any comments on this extension will be appreciated!

[b]-------------------[/b]

I am also looking for contributions for a performance test suite. Has your I7 story ever run too slowly? Can you identify what the problem is? If so, then I'd love that example for the test suite. Please post here so that we can coordinate and not end up with 10 different scope tests.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4167&start=0#p30023
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Riddle me this Puzzle
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-17 00:53:45

[quote="RentedExistence"]Do any of you IF knowledgeable fellows have some recommended games that include this awesome aspect of gaming?[/quote]

There are quite a few riddles poking around in IF. The ones I know are mainly from the old commercial era (my very favorite riddle is the least favorite of some: the Sultan's Riddle in [i]Leather Goddesses of Phobos[/i] ... but to describe why it's my favorite, and why others hate it, would spoil it in either case). [i]Beyond Zork[/i] had a nice, basic riddle acting as a doorway to an area ... [i]Zork Zero[/i] has a lot of riddles, though they're seldom woven into the game experience; just sort of tossed in there ([i]Zork Zero[/i] is kind of the [i]Professor Layton[/i] of the Zorks, where there are just puzzles lying around, just because).*

I'm sure there are probably liar/truthteller puzzles somewhere too (or riffs on same, since that body of puzzles is a hoary old set of classics), but nothing's coming to mind. Of course, I've been indexing for a few hours and playing lots of [i]Robo-Rally[/i] before that, so my brain is a little scraped thin right now [emote]:)[/emote]

You might want to start a poll at IFDB. Polls there are excellent for this sort of question. Also, I don't think it was necessary to post this in "general and off-topic," it would be right at home in one of the more gameplay-related categories.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
* Given Meretsky's role in each, it might be fairer to call it the [i]Hodj & Podj[/i] of the Zorks, but that's also needlessly obscure unless you're a Meretzsky fanboy (raises hand).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4167&start=0#p30024
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Riddle me this Puzzle
User: RentedExistence / DateTime: 2012-01-17 02:15:31

Thank you, and thank you, and thank you. I think that covers all the pieces that I appreciate. If I missed one feel free to imagine another. I will  (if the moderators agree feel free to move these questions elsewhere, but as so far as I can see it works out great) you gave me some great advice and isn't that what an unfascist forum is for =) curing the curious? =) Anyways.  I will check out that poll situation you told me about. If only I could describe my meaning of a riddle to the world. Thanks for everything and anyoen else is welcome to begin being benefactors to my boisterously benign cause 'cuase benevolence dost breed bolts of banal beauty.  Smiles =)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4170&start=0#p30025
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: On Storytelling
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2012-01-17 04:52:42

I recently started following the blog of [url=http://filmcrithulk.wordpress.com]FILM CRIT HULK[/url]. The first time I heard about this hulk, I didn't pay attention as I only saw a bunch of capital letters and hulkspeak. That was a mistake, as I later found when I followed a link to his article about [url=http://filmcrithulk.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/goddammit-video-games-the-first-few-hours-of-arkham-city-is-lots-of-fun-but-super-duper-sexist/]how Arkham City is sexist[/url] that made a bit of a stir among gaming sites (followup [url=http://filmcrithulk.wordpress.com/2011/10/21/hulk-vs-arkham-city-round-2-bitches-be-trippin/]here[/url]). This is an intelligent and knowledgable writer, worth reading. (Yes, it's worth the extra effort to read the HULKSPEAK.)

The reason I'm posting about it here is that he's posted a long article called Screenwriting 101, and this is of interest to anyone writing games with story as well as movies. There is a [url=http://badassdigest.com/2012/01/03/film-crit-hulk-smash-preamble-to-screenwriting-101/]preamble[/url] posted that you should read first, and the articles linked in it.  Then you'll find the big article here: <a class="postlink" href="http://filmcrithulk.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/screenwriting-101/">http://filmcrithulk.wordpress.com/2012/ ... iting-101/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4169&start=0#p30026
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Benchmarking beta PLUS Contributions wanted for a test s
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-17 11:16:46

There is '-)' missing in your example. Looks pretty neat otherwise.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3973&start=0#p30027
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Awesome!
User: Astral Software / DateTime: 2012-01-17 11:35:54

Excellent work!  Might port CASTLE BLACKSTORME to Visionary...  Having a bit of odds at the DOSBox intense idea of PC PAWS...  Great system but hardly to no fanbase on it... So I'm game with designing old school games this way as well!   Thanks for the offering!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4169&start=0#p30028
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Benchmarking beta PLUS Contributions wanted for a test s
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-01-17 11:49:09

It's an Inform 7 bug: <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=377">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=377</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4169&start=0#p30029
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Benchmarking beta PLUS Contributions wanted for a test s
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-17 13:01:18

Very nice! Thank you for this!

FYI, searching a 100-member list for a given value takes roughly 28 times as long (assuming that it's toward the end of the list) as simply retrieving the value from a given slot of the same list:

[quote]Test results
Searching a simple list:
202.82µs ±0.14% (24652 samples)
Selecting from a simple list:
7.05µs ±0.58% (93902 samples)

Total running time: 10000080µs[/quote]

Not earth-shattering, but it is interesting to me how much longer a search takes versus a simple access.


I do have a couple of UI suggestions:

1) The game closes down immediately a few moments after finishing the last test. In Gargoyle, this means that the game window closes too. Please offer the user the chance to either rerun the tests or quit at the end, and don't quit without the pressing of an explicit key. It takes a long time to run any of the simple tests I'm trying, and it's really annoying to have the window just close in your face when they finish!

2) Currently it is a bit hard to customize the conditions for a test. For example, if I need to set up a list full of random data for my test(s) to work on, I need to do something like this:

[code]First when play begins:
	repeat with x running from 1 to 99:
		add a random number between 1 and 99 to search list;
	add 100 at entry 90 in search list;
	say "The search list is [number of entries in search list] items long: ";
	say search list in brace notation;
	wait for any key.[/code]

What's difficult? First, the user needs to remember to add "first" to the when play begins rule to ensure that his rule prints before the program is taken over by the benchmarker; changing the benchmarker control rule to "[i]last[/i] when play begins" would eliminate this problem. Second, if the user wants to print text in this code block, he needs to stick something like "wait for any key" in there; this calls glk_select. Most users won't realize that this is necessary and will bang their heads on the wall trying to figure out why their introductory text is not printing. Maybe a "press any key to begin" in the benchmarker's when play begin rule would fix this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4171&start=0#p30030
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Many Compile Errors - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-17 13:11:09

Here is a batch of code that keeps giving me various compile errors no matter how I try to correct or arrange it. Certainly could use some help. It's driving me crazy!

[code]







/* Room0001: The Actor Starts Game Here. **************************************/

  Beach : OutdoorRoom 'At The Beach' 'At The Beach'
  roomFirstDesc()
  { "This is first description.";
  }
  shortDesc = "You are at the sandy beach.";
 
/* Add HELP sign to beach. ****************************************************/

class Sign : Readable
;
+sign: Sign, Fixture 'large metal sign' 'metal sign'
  "The sizeable metal sign is firmly attached to a tree near the start of the
   eastern path. It is quite rusty and worn but the printing on it can still be
   read. It just might provide some information about The Magic Forest."
 initSpecialDesc = "Attached to a tree at the beginning of the eastern path is
   is a large metal sign."
 cannotTakeMSG = 'Sorry, but it is very rigidly attached to the tree. Besides,
   there is no reason to take it with you.'
 readDesc = "The sign is written in both English and Spanish and  it reads:
   'DANGER! Restricted property beyond this point. Enter at your own risk.'\b
   Property Manager,\b
   Melenkurian\b"
 dobjFor(Read)
 {
  action()
  {
   readsignAchievement.awardPointsOnce();
   inherited;
  }
 } 
 readsignAchievement : Achievement { +5 "reading the sign at the beach" }
; 

/* Add wooden box to beach. ***************************************************/

+box: ComplexContainer, Fixture 'large slatted wooden (wood) box*boxes' 'large
 slatted-wood box'
 "The large wooden box, left here from a precious helicopter flight, lies on
  some small rocks. At its top, there is a metal hasp that can be turned to
  unlock or lock the box."
cannotTakeMsg = (backpack.seen ? 'The backpack would be a more convenient
 container. You would be better off using that instead.' : 'The box is much too
 heavy to lift or carry around.')
initSpecialMsg = "A large slatted-wood box is lying nearby on some small
 rocks."
subContainer: ComplexComponent, LockableContainer
{
currentlyLockedMsg = 'The hasp is currently at the locked position. '
currentlyUnlockedMsg = 'The hasp is currently at the unlocked position. '
  dobjFor(Lock)
  {
   action()
    {
     "You twist the hasp and lock the box shut.";
     inherited;
    }
  }
  dobjFor(Unlock)
  {
   action()
   {
    "You turn the hasp, allowing the box to be opened.";
    inherited;
   }
  }
; 
   
Component = 'hasp' 'hasp'
 "A simple hasp that does the job of unlocking and locking the box."
 location = box.subContainer  
 dobjFor(Turn) { remap = [box.subcontainer.isLocked ? UnlockAction :
  LockAction, box.subContainer]}
; 
[/code]

The sign part seems to work o.k.

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4171&start=0#p30031
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Many Compile Errors - TADS3.1
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-17 13:52:05

Can you post the compile errors too?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4172&start=0#p30032
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Delusions of Eloquence: Blue Lacuna (2009)
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2012-01-17 13:58:45

[quote]Dreams move beneath you, blind colossi revolving through unknowable patterns, but they do not break the surface, not yet or any more. You float in void outside them, cold, memoryless.[/quote]

Mr Reed is an intransitive writer. His prose has no object. The reason why I use the honorific is because I know several Aarons and Mr Reed could never force his way into their company. It's not just that his prose is immature and purple, that his narrative voice is that of a droning dullard or that his "insights" verge on idiocy -- what is of far more concern is that his writing is empty of substance. Mr Reed's sentences can be rapidly written and once one learns how banal they are, their reading need not be hampered with comprehension. It's like watching a bricklayer lay bricks. You might as well take a nap or watch the news while the author diligently drones on, laying words on top of words. And is Mr Reed a diligent bricklayer! Oh boy! According to one player, Blue Lacuna is roughly the equivalent of a 1000 page novel.

[quote]
>X RUME

[53 words snipped] her nordic 
cheekbones, bleached hair, and ruddy cheeks hint at coldness, but the warmth 
of her touch, her laugh, her soul, dominates. There is fire in her sea-blue 
eyes, washed with blue, and from the moment you met her it burned in yours 
too. [182 words snipped]

[/quote]

Never mind the Aryan Girl fetish or the trite metaphors. What is truly nutty about this passage is that Mr Reed apparently fancies himself a wisdom writer. The wisdom he offers is this. Blonds have "cold" souls, and should you run into one whose soul is "warm," consider yourself lucky.

[quote]
Beside you, Rume shifts again, edging closer, blood pulsing faster in her veins, and you must choose. Do you make art, or make love?

>make love
(to yourself)
Before anything, you must remember: make love or make art?

>make love to rume
Before anything, you must remember: make love or make art?

>have sex with rume
Before anything, you must remember: make love or make art?

>fuck rume
Before anything, you must remember: make love or make art?

>boink rume
Before anything, you must remember: make love or make art?

>have intercourse with rume
You don't always need to specify what you're doing something with.
(retrying as if you'd typed "have intercourse .")

Before anything, you must remember: make love or make art?

>kiss rume
Before anything, you must remember: make love or make art?

Tutorial: If you don't see any new keywords on screen, you can type LOOK or press enter.

>look
Before anything, you must remember: make love or make art?

>love
The physical presence of the woman beside you, her tangible power, dissolves away all other desires. You pull her close.

Waves. The remnants of dream fuse into this new reality without a seam. You roll together, riding peaks and troughs of infinite blue, gasps and vague portents and hot insights suffused in the power of the moment, in the hot breath in your ear, in the dandelion touches on delicate nerves. Worlds you've explored, loves you've known, lives beyond or behind this moment are all forgotten in the freedom of this now, this dim and burning now...

Afterwards. Breaths out of sync, pools of cool sweat beneath each fingertip. And something gradual begins to intrude on your cooling bliss, some delicate itch. And an odd feeling creeps upon you that things are about to change, a sense of waves receding, perhaps forever, something calling them home.

[/quote]

The single most amazing thing about [i]Blue Lacuna[/i] is that it uses the Inform parser and yet feels like something written in Adrift. The troglodytic parser and the hilariously unhelpful tutorial are unfortunately the game's only comedic relief. The writing is a monotone of humourless, pompous kitsch that is quite refreshing in its sameness. Normally writers have their ups and downs, especially if the project takes several years to complete, as was apparently the case here. Mr Reed has somehow managed to consistently scrape bottom, never lifting above "dandelion touches on delicate nerves."

[quote]Arranged gracefully across the slanted ceiling, the pine boughs infuse the room with the scent of the forest outside, while somehow making this mostly empty space seem whole. Rume's work again: undeniably right, but you'd have never thought to do it.
[/quote]

The secret of Mr Reed's prose? Slip in an archaic term ('bough' is [i]so[/i] much better than 'branch'), latinate your diction a smidge ('infuse' is after all much more classy than 'fill'), always tell and never show (why bother describing a graceful arrangement of pine branches when you can simply call them graceful), never shirk from the painfully obvious (make clear that the forest is outside), avoid wit at all cost (which should be easy for Mr Reed) and hope that your tongue swimming in its sea of spit becomes a poet's quill. 

So the parser has been deliberately broken and the prose is execrable, but what about the design? At the very opening the game forces the player to make a series of explicit choices: the PC's gender, the Significant Other's gender and love xor art. This is never a good idea. [i]Leather Goddesses of Phobos[/i] did a similar thing, only there the choice was made implicitly and rather unexpectedly and was in fact quite witty. Here it is not only painfully explicit and inelegant but also utterly useless. No matter what gender configuration you choose, the sex that follows is the same, the only difference being the pronouns.

[quote]
>sing
You sing quietly, an old song you learned as a child, forgotten for years until surfacing now.

>sing
You sing quietly, an old song you learned as a child, forgotten for years until surfacing now.
[/quote]

Considering that [i]Blue Lacuna[/i] has had no fewer than eighteen testers, the sheer sloppiness of its implemenation is astounding. Perhaps they were hypnotised by the monotonous drone of Mr Reed's prose. Or maybe they learned that the secret of reading a mammoth of an infodump, written by a guy who thinks having sex is like touching oneself with dandelions, is skimming the words while thinking about something else.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4171&start=0#p30033
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Many Compile Errors - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-17 14:00:42

Will post the errors shortly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4171&start=0#p30034
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Many Compile Errors - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-17 14:06:56

Here are the errors:

Tip: you can go to the source location of a compile error
by double-clicking on the error message in this window

----- begin build: Tue Jan 17 15:01:28 2012 -----
>t3make -Fy "C:\Documents and Settings\Frenchy\Desktop\The Magic Forest\obj" -Fo "C:\Documents and Settings\Frenchy\Desktop\The Magic Forest\obj" -o "debug\The Magic Forest.t3" -a -D "LANGUAGE=en_us" -D "MESSAGESTYLE=neu" -v -d -statprefix <@> -statpct "system.tl" "adv3\adv3.tl" "The Magic Forest.t" -res "GameInfo.txt"
TADS Compiler 3.1.0  Copyright 1999, 2010 Michael J. Roberts
The Magic Forest.t(682): error: 
A property name was expected in the object definition, but the compiler found
"hasp" instead.  Check for a missing semicolon at the end of the object
definition, and check for unbalanced braces prior to this line.


The Magic Forest.t(683): error: 
A property name was expected in the object definition, but the compiler found
"A simple hasp that does the job of unlocking and locking the..." instead.
Check for a missing semicolon at the end of the object definition, and check
for unbalanced braces prior to this line.


The Magic Forest.t(702): error: 
A property name was expected in the object definition, but the compiler found
"" instead.  Check for a missing semicolon at the end of the object definition,
and check for unbalanced braces prior to this line.


Errors:   3
Warnings: 0

t3make: error code 1

Build failed.
----- end build: Tue Jan 17 15:01:32 2012 --


Let me know if this is enough to help. Would using a simple lockable box help straighten up this mess?

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4171&start=0#p30035
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Many Compile Errors - TADS3.1
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-17 14:15:55

This is not a properly formatted object definition:
[code]Component = 'hasp' 'hasp'[/code]
What you need is this:
[code]hasp: Component 'hasp' 'hasp'[/code]
An additional problem is that you've put the hasp inside the box, so it won't be visible to the player. I believe you need to give the ComplexContainer a subSurface and put the hasp in it as a component. Try it, anyway.

Section 5.5 in "Learning T3" should provide some guidance. ComplexContainers are fairly tricky to implement.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4169&start=0#p30036
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Benchmarking beta PLUS Contributions wanted for a test s
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-17 14:46:25

[quote]In Gargoyle, this means that the game window closes too.[/quote]

Hm, that shouldn't happen. It's the interpreter's responsibility to keep any last-printed Glk output visible to the user after glk_exit().

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4169&start=0#p30037
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Benchmarking beta PLUS Contributions wanted for a test s
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-17 15:02:08

[quote="zarf"][quote]In Gargoyle, this means that the game window closes too.[/quote]

Hm, that shouldn't happen. It's the interpreter's responsibility to keep any last-printed Glk output visible to the user after glk_exit().[/quote]

Looking into it, I was wrong--the window does stay open, but only until the user presses any key. So twice today I accidentally pressed a random key while trying to do something else and the window shut down. I still think it's a good idea to offer the user an explicit option to end the execution. [b]EDIT:[/b] Aha! Using the scroll wheel apparently counts as a keypress, at least in the Mac OSX Gargoyle, so it was attempting to use the mouse to view the scrollback buffer that causes the window to close.

Another UI idea: Allow the user to request a transcript so that the data can be dumped to a file.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4168&start=0#p30038
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Undum and Combined Links
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-01-17 15:17:09

All the combined links I try work fine for me, although I do get the same error message if I try this with a SimpleSituation that doesn't have any actions defined. Maybe you have a typo somewhere, like "act" instead of "actions" in the situation?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4162&start=0#p30039
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Trying to make a kind of a book from an example
User: Ruber Eaglenest / DateTime: 2012-01-17 15:24:02

Ok, I've "improved" the code, using your direction, now it looks as this:

[spoiler]A newspaper is a kind of thing. A newspaper has a number called the actual page. A newspaper has a number called the length. The length of a newspaper is usually 5. A newspaper has a table name called the contents of the news.

Understand the command "read" as something new.

Understand "read [something]" or "consult [something]" or "read in/from [something]" as reading. Reading is an action applying to one thing, requiring light.

Understand "read [number] in/from/of [something]" or "read page [number] in/from/of [something]" or "look up page [number] in/from/of [something]" or "consult page [number] in/from/of [something]" as reading it in. Reading it in is an action applying to one number and one thing, requiring light.

Named page is a kind of value. The named pages are first page, last page, next page, previous page.

To decide what number is the effective value of (L - last page):
	decide on the length of the book.

To decide what number is the effective value of (F - first page):
	decide on 1.

To decide what number is the effective value of (N - next page):
	let X be the actual page of the book plus 1;
	decide on X.

To decide what number is the effective value of (P - previous page):
	let X be the actual page of the book minus 1;
	decide on X.

Understand "read [named page] in/from/of [something]" or "read the [named page] in/from/of [something]" as reading it relatively in. Reading it relatively in is an action applying to one named page and one thing, requiring light.

Does the player mean reading something in a newspaper: it is very likely.

This is the newspaper requirement rule:
	if the player is not carrying a newspaper, say "You're not reading anything." instead.

Check reading it relatively in:
	if the second noun is not a newspaper, say "There are no pages in [the second noun]." instead;
	abide by the newspaper requirement rule.

Carry out reading it relatively in (the issue - a newspaper):
	let N be the effective value of the named page understood;
	now the number understood is N;
	try reading N in the issue.

Check reading it in:
	if the second noun is not a newspaper, say "There are no pages in [the second noun]." instead;
	abide by the newspaper requirement rule.

Check reading it in (the issue - a newspaper):
	if the number understood is greater than the length of the issue, say "There are only [length of issue in words] pages in the book." instead;
	if the number understood is less than 1, say "The page numbering begins with 1." instead.

Carry out reading it in:
	read page number understood.

Check reading:
	if the noun is not a newspaper, say "There are no pages in [the noun]." instead;
	abide by the newspaper requirement rule.

Carry out reading (the issue - a newspaper):
   try reading the actual number in the issue.
[	let N be a random number between 1 and the length of the sinister book; now the number understood is N;
	say "You flip the pages randomly and arrive at page [the number understood]:[paragraph break]";
	try reading the number understood in the sinister book.]

To read page (N - a number) in (the issue - a newspaper):
	now the actual page of the issue is N;
	if there is a content corresponding to a page of N in the contents of the news of the issue:
		choose row with a page of N in the contents of the news of the issue;
		say "You read: '[content entry]'[paragraph break]";
	otherwise:
		say "Page [N] has nothing of interest."[/spoiler]

Now it gives me the error:

[code]Problem. In the sentence 'Carry out reading it relatively in (the issue - a newspaper)'  , I was expecting to read an arithmetic value, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'issue'.

I was trying to match this phrase:

(issue - arithmetic value) - (newspaper - arithmetic value) 

This was what I found out:

issue = something unrecognised

newspaper = a description of newspapers
[/code]

That is, is trying to decipher that sintax as subtract... [emote]:([/emote]

Any idea?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4170&start=0#p30040
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: On Storytelling
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-01-17 16:13:37

Thanks for the link. I really like it when you can spot a strong authorial voice, and if there's anything FILM CRIT HULK has smashed, it's that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4169&start=0#p30041
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Benchmarking beta PLUS Contributions wanted for a test s
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-01-17 16:55:09

Hi Erik, I've added your three suggestions. Will post again when I upload the update.

In the future I plan to make it write out to a data file, and give you the option to compare with other interpreters. I'll remove the transcript option then.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4169&start=0#p30042
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Benchmarking beta PLUS Contributions wanted for a test s
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-17 16:59:59

Great, thanks. I've got what appear to be some intermittent issues with memory on some simple examples I've been playing with. I'll post again if I come up with something coherent to report.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4162&start=0#p30043
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Trying to make a kind of a book from an example
User: Ruber Eaglenest / DateTime: 2012-01-17 17:32:06

Ok, now it works! Thanks to a friend, we were at late until it worked. Here is the code, a kind for newspapers, hope you enjoy it:

[code]A newspaper is a kind of thing. A newspaper has a number called the actual page. The actual page of a newspaper is usually 1. A newspaper has a number called the length. The length of a newspaper is usually 3. A newspaper has a table name called the contents of the news.

Understand "newspaper", "paper", "news", and "daily" as a newspaper.

Understand the command "read" as something new.

Understand "read [something]" or "consult [something]" or "read in/from [something]" as reading. Reading is an action applying to one thing, requiring light.

Understand "read [number] in/from/of [something]" or "read page [number] in/from/of [something]" or "look up page [number] in/from/of [something]" or "consult page [number] in/from/of [something]" as reading it in. Reading it in is an action applying to one number and one thing, requiring light.

Named page is a kind of value. The named pages are first page, last page, next page, previous page.

To decide what number is the effective value of (L - last page) for (book - a newspaper):
	decide on the length of the book.

To decide what number is the effective value of (F - first page)  for (book - a newspaper):
	decide on 1.

To decide what number is the effective value of (N - next page)  for (book - a newspaper):
	let X be the actual page of the book plus 1;
	decide on X.

To decide what number is the effective value of (P - previous page)  for (book - a newspaper):
	let X be the actual page of the book minus 1;
	decide on X.

Understand "read [named page] in/from/of [something]" or "read the [named page] in/from/of [something]" as reading it relatively in. 

Reading it relatively in is an action applying to one named page and one thing, requiring light.

Does the player mean reading something in a newspaper: it is very likely.

This is the newspaper requirement rule:
	if the player is not carrying a newspaper, say "You're not reading anything." instead.

Check reading it relatively in:
	if the second noun is not a newspaper, say "There are no pages in [the second noun]." instead;
	abide by the newspaper requirement rule.

Carry out reading it relatively in:
	let N be the effective value of the named page understood for second noun;
	now the number understood is N;
	try reading N in the second noun.

Check reading it in:
	if the second noun is not a newspaper, say "There are no pages in [the second noun]." instead;
	if the number understood is greater than the length of the second noun, say "There are only [length of the second noun in words] pages in the book." instead;
	if the number understood is less than 1, say "The page numbering begins with 1." instead;
	abide by the newspaper requirement rule.

Carry out reading it in:
	read page number understood in the second noun.

Check reading:
	if the noun is not a newspaper, say "There are no pages in [the noun]." instead;
	abide by the newspaper requirement rule.

Carry out reading a newspaper (called the issue):
	try reading the actual page of the issue in the issue.
[	let N be a random number between 1 and the length of the sinister book; now the number understood is N;
	say "You flip the pages randomly and arrive at page [the number understood]:[paragraph break]";
	try reading the number understood in the sinister book.]

To read page (N - a number) in (the issue - a newspaper):
	now the actual page of the issue is N;
	if there is a content corresponding to a page of N in the contents of the news of the issue:
		choose row with a page of N in the contents of the news of the issue;
		say "You read: '[content entry]'[paragraph break]";
	otherwise:
		say "Page [N] has nothing of interest."[/code]

And one newspaper as an instance:

[code]The newsseptember9 is a newspaper. The printed name of the newsseptember9 is "newspaper, september 9". The contents of the news of newsseptember9 is the Table of Newspaper September 9 Contents.

Table of Newspaper September 9 Contents
page	content
1	"Pending"
2	"Pending"
3	"This page left blank intentionally"[/code]

Regards,

Ruber (aka Urbatain).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4169&start=0#p30044
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Benchmarking beta PLUS Contributions wanted for a test s
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-01-17 17:48:24

Yes something is going wrong with the sampling - 93902 samples seems far too high to me, though it could be possible if your timer resolution is very good, ie. 50µs. I'm only getting 1ms in Windows Gargoyle [emote]:([/emote]. Can you check what "the minimum timer resolution" is, with an After running the benchmark framework rule? It stores the samples in a list, so with that many samples it's sure to cause problems.

The framework takes at least 5 samples, and runs each test for at least 5 seconds as well (mainly because that's what benchmark.js does.) But if too many samples is a problem I can limit that too. I'm sure 100 would be more than fine.

Would you also be interested in seeing the raw number of times a function was run?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4173&start=0#p30045
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: OMG! Not ANOTHER stupid IF system!
User: fiziwig / DateTime: 2012-01-17 18:04:53

What was I thinking? I mean, if there's on thing the world does [b]not[/b] need it's yet another IF authoring language. Yet still I'm working on one. Why?

1. Because it's fun. (And that should be justification enough.)
2. Because of the special challenges of my chosen platform.

I'm writing an IF system that runs on a web server so that the games can be played in any browser. The special challenges have to do with how a php server script works.

You type your command: "put the marble in the wooden box" and hit enter. Unlike a program running on your own computer, there is no interpreter waiting patiently for you to hit enter. Instead, the web server gets your request in the form of a URL and some posted data, maybe something like: somephoneyurl.com/thisgame.php&cmd=put%20the%20marble%20in%20the%20wooden%20box

At that point, the game is not running. Nothing that you've done before is saved anywhere on the web server. The game has to be loaded from scratch and your current game state set up. Then your command line is parsed and interpreted; the script does something like change the location of the marble to be in the blue box; builds a new html page showing what it just did; sends that html page back to your browser; and then the script goes away. It stops executing. It's dumped out of the server box. It's gone.

Later, (an hour later, or maybe two days later), you type in "go north" and hit enter. The whole process gets repeated. The whole game engine has to be loaded; the whole state of the game re-established, etc. etc. You get the new room description and the server script is dumped out again. Meanwhile the server is busy with other clients on other browsers who are ordering widgets from their favorite widget vender.

But how does it know the state of the world each time it gets summoned? Especially since there's no reason why 15 different people can't be playing their own copy of the same game on the same server. Probably from a cookie the script sends to your browser. That way you never have to save or load a game. Turn off your system. Take a vacation to Germany. Come back two months later and turn on your system. Click the bookmark to your game URL and you find yourself exactly where you left off last time you were playing the game. You're in the same room, with the same inventory, and the same score and same tasks already marked as accomplished. And you still only have two moves left to decide which wire to clip before the bomb goes off.

I took a look at the source code for several good sized games, including some of my own old TADS source files and figured that the average state of the game, including locations of all moveable objects, states of all binary flags (door is open/closed; room has (or has not) been found;) and numeric values (scores, damage counts, fuse and timer countdown values) and found that the complete state description of the average game can be packed into less than 100 bytes. That 100 byte cookie is enough to save/load the game and put you right back where you left off. Even if a really complex game takes twice that much, that's not bad.

(There could also be provision for a MySQL database to hold player's game states, but that would require each player have a unique ID which would require registering on the site just like registering on this forum to reserve your ID and protect it with your own password.)

Because of that way of doing things, the organization of the engine needs to be very different for the sake of efficiency. For example, each room of the adventure is probably in a separate file, so when you say "Put the marble in the wooden box" the engine doesn't load the whole game. In fact, it might only load the object files for the marble and the wooden box, and not even load a room file at all. 

Your player character would suspended in the void of empty space, putting a marble into a wooden box. But that doesn't matter, because to accomplish that one task the engine doesn't need to know anything about the room, and it doesn't have to say anything about the room in its reply to you. All it really needs to do is verify that putting the marble in the box is a permissible action, and then update a few bits in your cookie and send it back to you to reflect that the marble has a new parent object.

Another example, with the player command: "Go north". There's no need to load up the room data for the room you're in. Just load up the doors data for that room. Maybe a hundred bytes is all. Check the north door in that file, and if movement is not possible, report back that fact and, as usual, just stop executing. But if movement is possible, load up the room description for the destination room so the engine can describe the new room. Then as usual, stop executing and wait for the new input.

There are loads of other considerations and problems to work out. I've got a long list. And I've got some preliminary php scripts that sort of work, but it's likely to be a long project. But it's been fun so far.

One issue I'm wrestling with right now is whether to create a new game file format from scratch or to try to get the engine to run existing games in some existing format like Z-machine. The obvious problem is that Z-machine code is not organized for piecemeal loading as required by the hypothetical php engine I'm designing. But maybe Z-machine code could be "compiled" into segmented files...? Well, that's just dreaming. For now I'm using XML files, similar in basic concept to Quest files, but organized differently for piecemeal loading and execution.

Any thoughts and suggestions, or even scathing criticism, would be more than welcome.

--gary

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4169&start=0#p30046
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Benchmarking beta PLUS Contributions wanted for a test s
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-17 18:22:39

[quote="Dannii"]Yes something is going wrong with the sampling - 93902 samples seems far too high to me, though it could be possible if your timer resolution is very good, ie. 50µs. [/quote]

If you compile Gargoyle with -DGARGLK_PROFILE_TIME, it uses a high resolution timer for glk_current_time calls. Resolution varies by platform but 50µs is in the ballpark.

Erik has access to a build like that, so possibly he's using it here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4173&start=0#p30047
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: OMG! Not ANOTHER stupid IF system!
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-01-17 18:29:27

While a few very simple stories might be able to squash the state into a 4KB cookie, I really doubt whether substantial stories will be able to. If that is a limit hard limit then you won't be able to get authors on board (and I think you'll have a hard job as it is, there are already so many authoring systems.)

Now as to your goals, running IF on a server, even in PHP, isn't actually very unusual. Almost every major IF system now comes with some sort of web support, some client based and some server based. And a decade ago PHPZork was running in PHP [emote]:)[/emote]!

If you're after fun, you should consider whether you might enjoy working on another existing interpreter, I'm sure that all interpreters would appreciate the help. I certainly would! And some interpreters are pretty high tech too - my ZVM for example has a just-in-time compiler (it's essentially an Inform decompiler) and uses abstract syntax trees to allow us to manipulate the source code however we like. In the future I'll be adding support for Typed Arrays and Web Workers. My goal is to eventually get it to the stage where it's the faster interpreter there is, including the regular desktop terps!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4173&start=0#p30048
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: OMG! Not ANOTHER stupid IF system!
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-17 19:13:03

I think Zifmia already works like that. Though it's hard to find any info on that project. It seems the authors chose to keep it incognito or something. IIRC, it shuts down the interpreter between commands and restores state whenever the PHP script receives new player commands.

The state "cookie" is probably best kept on the server though. It's totally pointless to send it to the client. The only time where the client needs it is when entering SAVE. Otherwise you're slowing things down and generate traffic for no reason whatsoever.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4169&start=10#p30049
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Benchmarking beta PLUS Contributions wanted for a test s
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-01-17 19:49:40

I've uploaded an update. The biggest change is how the iteration multiplier is calculated, which is the number of times a test case needs to be run to reach the timer resolution. It seems to work reliably with my tests. In the event that the test case does ever get a time of 0 then a message is printed and that time is discarded.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4168&start=0#p30050
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Undum and Combined Links
User: tuatha / DateTime: 2012-01-17 20:24:51

I wasn't able to find the problem, but I did find a work-around:  define the link as an action and conclude it with system.doLink("a-situation").  For my purposes it has the same effect, though it isn't quiet as elegant.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4167&start=0#p30051
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Riddle me this Puzzle
User: Merlin Fisher / DateTime: 2012-01-17 20:42:54

The riddle in Zork 2 bugged me a lot, but not because I couldn't figure it out (although it was poorly phrased, I had a bit of outside help); the problem was phrasing it so the game would understand my response.  I had to fiddle around with "say 'xyzzy'", "answer xyzzy," etc. etc. with and without quotes, until the parser got it.

So, that one boiled down to a "guess the verb" obstacle.  But I'm sure a more clever program wouldn't have that problem...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3823&start=20#p30052
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: The Pudlothon: Ecce Jacek
User: Merlin Fisher / DateTime: 2012-01-17 21:04:49

How about just not telling everyone you're a billionaire on your first date?  Don't flaunt it, and you won't get people chasing it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4169&start=10#p30053
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Benchmarking beta PLUS Contributions wanted for a test s
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-17 21:10:29

Dannii, was the "minimum timer resolution" actually the value you wanted me to test? It always returns "1", the minimum value, so I assume that the value is not measured in microseconds...? 

I'm using the latest public release of Gargoyle, 2011.1.

When the 95-96,000 samples reaches its end and sits for a few minutes as if the interpreter has hung, then finally spits out the results. I assume that during that time it is processing the massive list you mentioned! (Even the smaller value, 25-28,000 samples, has a noticeable delay, but it's not as bad.) I'm no math whiz, so apologies if this is silly, but would it be possible to process the results iteratively, so that you don't actually need to store all the values? I'm sure that the mean could be got that way, and probably the variance too...? 

I'm not noticing a whole lot of difference between your new update and the original. Here are before and after results:

[quote="Before"]Searching a simple list:
186.20µs ±0.13% (26853 samples)
Selecting from a simple list:
5.86µs ±0.12% (96121 samples)

Total running time: 10000179µs
The minimum timer resolution was: 1.[/quote]
[quote="After"]Searching a simple list:
191.68µs ±0.42% (26086 samples)
Selecting from a simple list:
6.03µs ±0.47% (95410 samples)

Total running time: 10000074µs
The minimum timer resolution was: 1.[/quote]

For the record, the code I'm testing in both cases is:

[spoiler][code]Include Benchmarking by Dannii Willis.

Search list is a list of numbers variable.

First when play begins:
	try switching the story transcript on;
	repeat with x running from 1 to 99:
		add a random number between 1 and 99 to search list;
	add 100 at entry 90 in search list;
	say "The search list is [number of entries in search list] items long: [search list in brace notation].";
	wait for any key.

Searching a simple list is a test case.
The author is "Erik Temple".
The description is "Looks for the number 100 in a list of random numbers 100 entries long."
To run simple-list search (this is running simple search):
	if 100 is listed in the search list:
		do nothing.
The run phrase is running simple search.

Selecting from a simple list is a test case.
The author is "Erik Temple".
The description is "Grabs entry 90 from a list of random numbers 100 entries long."
To run simple-list select (this is running simple selection):
	if entry 90 in search list is 100:
		do nothing.
The run phrase is running simple selection.

After running the benchmark framework:
	say "The minimum timer resolution was: [the minimum timer resolution]."[/code][/spoiler]

I seem to recall Ron mentioning that different systems might return the system clock in different units (was it nanoseconds vs microseconds?) That couldn't be a factor here, could it? I wouldn't think so, given that the results look pretty reasonable, but...

I do think it would potentially be useful to see the raw number of times a function was run, and it might also be useful to be able to cap the number (running 90,000 iterations takes a long time!).

FYI, here is a typical result on my system for your example from the extension docs:

[quote]I7 default:
730.62µs ±0.22% (6844 samples)
Direct comparison:
314.18µs ±0.43% (15915 samples)

Total running time: 10000551µs[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4068&start=10#p30054
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Four letter words.
User: Merlin Fisher / DateTime: 2012-01-17 21:25:13

hrm ... this kind of makes me think of that TwitComp (you know, it called for 140-char Twitter-size games in I7?).  Perhaps someone clever could design a game that only NEEDED 4-letter commands ... 

But kidding aside, it's bad when parsers misinterpret a perfectly reasonable input because they're assuming you typed something else.  

The disambiguation thing is particularly knuckle-worthy: I replayed the latest version of a certain well-programmed IF classic this week, and it has still got bugs differentiating similarly named items.  I finally had to resort to taking all the similar items out of the room and dropping them out of sight, before the parser let me handle the one I wanted.

I experimented with Twisty and I do see the problem with typing commands on phones, though.  Some of my friends who text at Mach 3 would have no problem with it, but I type kinda slow because the screen is very small, and I finally gave up playing games like Anchorhead and Curses on the ol' Droid, because it's just a lousy format for really deep games.  (Besides, if you're gonna play a game that requires you to take notes or draw a map, I see no point playing it on a pocket size device when you're on the go, unless you also carry a notebook and have a hand free to write in it.)  An iPad or Kindle, yes; a phone, no.  Games with sparser text and shorter plots would probably be better.  In fact, I would suggest to the Twisty masters that they should package the app with some more bite-sized fare.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4169&start=10#p30055
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Benchmarking beta PLUS Contributions wanted for a test s
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-01-17 21:47:02

It looks like you still have the old version. The new one caps it at 100 samples. It might be possible to iteratively calculate the variance, but I don't know how. The algorithm I have needs the mean to be calculated first. But with only 100 samples that won't be a problem any more.

If your timer resolution really is just 1µs then that's great! And although different systems might be able to get the time to a different resolution, Glk normalises it to microseconds. So if you have a ns timer then it will divide by 1000, and if you only have a ms timer then it will multiply by 1000. On windows Garglk gives you the time in µs, but the value is cached and only updated every ms. The extension measures what resolution you have by running a tight loop that runs until the value changes (and samples that 30 times.) If you're running on a Mac then potentially you do have access to a real µs timer (Garglk actually accesses a ns timer).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=60#p30056
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: Merlin Fisher / DateTime: 2012-01-17 22:08:23

I actually liked Anchorhead very much, because it was (I thought) well written, engaging, and not too difficult.  I did rely heavily on hints toward the end, because I was so absorbed in the story that I couldn't stand to leave it hanging.  I zoomed through the last chapter late at night, in a dark house, and definitely got some chills.

My take on Lovecraft: like a lot of genre groundbreakers, he wasn't as good as some of his imitators.  We all admire the guy's ideas, but ye gods, not his prose.  I don't think I would like to have dinner with the poor fellow, he was probably nuts and depressive to boot, but the Mythos is very interesting stuff, if you like a bit of memento mori in your life.

I'm no expert on the genre, but there's horror and there's horror and there's horror.  There's alien creepy monsters, and there's human insanity in all its forms, and there's slasher violence, and probably a few more I'm forgetting about, and everybody likes a different mix.  If you don't care for Lovecraft, are you looking for more along the lines of Stephen King?  (But shorter, I'm assuming...)  Or, um, something squishier?  It seems you aren't into purely psychological thrills.  (Neither am I, for a few reasons.)

by the way, have you played Vespers?  I'd definitely categorize it as horror IF.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4167&start=0#p30057
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Riddle me this Puzzle
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-17 22:15:10

The Zork 2 manual gave the ANSWER syntax specifically, because of that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4174&start=0#p30058
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Quixe with header and footer
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-17 22:25:33

I've noticed that while it's easy to set up a Quixe page that uses the entire browser window (all of the examples do this), it's rather difficult to set up a "classic" web template with a fixed column width, a header, and a footer.

I had to work this out when putting the four Hat Mystery games on the PR-IF web site. I figure I should document what I did, so that nobody has to repeat my work. (Like, for example, me six months from now.)

I've added a section to <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/</a> which links to sample files. For example:

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/i7-onecol-release/play.html">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/i7-o ... /play.html</a>

This is a do-nothing Inform game, but it runs in a web page with a header and footer.

You can release a game like this by installing this I7 web template in your Inform Templates directory: <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/OneColumn.zip">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/OneColumn.zip</a>

(See the I7 manual for more about web templates: <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc395.html">http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc395.html</a> )

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4174&start=0#p30059
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe with header and footer
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-17 22:32:11

I should add that I have a similar setup for Parchment and Z-code games. However, it doesn't use the mainline release of Parchment -- I had to hack on the Parchment code a lot to fit it into this format.

I believe Dannii intends to support this kind of thing in a future Parchment release, but (I hope) not by importing my (very hacky) code directly. So I could release this, if people wanted, but it'd have a big "use at own risk" label on it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4161&start=0#p30060
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: getExtraScopeItems
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-17 22:34:39

[quote]But in IF I'd be pretty likely to try "dig ground," because I don't necessarily expect the parser to understand "dig in ground"[/quote]

...and also because the ground might have synonyms "dirt", "earth", "soil" -- "dig dirt" is a thing players might reasonably try.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4169&start=10#p30061
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Benchmarking beta PLUS Contributions wanted for a test s
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-17 23:03:23

Yep, when I downloaded the file after your update post, GitHub was apparently still feeding out the old version. I just tried again and got the 120118 version. This works very nicely, and the values from 100 samples are indeed equivalent to those from 95,000 samples:

[quote]Searching a simple list:
180.49µs ±0.08% (100 samples)
Selecting from a simple list:
5.62µs ±0.27% (100 samples)

Total running time: 23218µs
The minimum timer resolution was: 1.[/quote]

It might be nice to eventually have easy access to change the max # samples run (in case I wanted to raise or lower it), but of course that's unlikely to be necessary.

With the number of samples run capped at 100, I don't think it's necessary any longer, but for future use in some other project perhaps: 

This algorithm from <a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithms_for_calculating_variance">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithms ... g_variance</a> seems to be able to calculate the mean as the data are collected, rather than iterating over the full dataset post-collection.

[code]def online_variance(data):
    n = 0
    mean = 0
    M2 = 0
 
    for x in data:
        n = n + 1
        delta = x - mean
        mean = mean + delta/n
        if n > 1:
            M2 = M2 + delta*(x - mean)
 
    variance_n = M2/n
    variance = M2/(n - 1)
    return (variance, variance_n)[/code]

Anyway, Benchmarking is sweet! (It also happens to be a good illustration of the use of floating point in Glulx Inform, which will come in handy if I ever update Glimmr to make use of them.)

Thanks again for all the work!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4167&start=0#p30062
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Riddle me this Puzzle
User: Merlin Fisher / DateTime: 2012-01-17 23:42:39

[quote="zarf"]The Zork 2 manual gave the ANSWER syntax specifically, because of that.[/quote]

Oh ... well, no wonder I didn't know, then.  I never got to read the manual, because I was introduced to Zork about 6 or 8 years ago and I played the versions downloadable from the Infocom website, which I'm fairly sure did not include manuals (or if they did, I was too computer-impaired to notice).

I guess the fault's on my end, then.  Or somebody's end, anyway.  

I certainly always read documentation that comes with stuff I purchase nowadays.  

Yes.  Absolutely.  

Once I've exhausted all other possibilities, anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4173&start=0#p30063
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: OMG! Not ANOTHER stupid IF system!
User: fiziwig / DateTime: 2012-01-18 00:01:36

[quote="Dannii"]While a few very simple stories might be able to squash the state into a 4KB cookie, I really doubt whether substantial stories will be able to. If that is a limit hard limit then you won't be able to get authors on board (and I think you'll have a hard job as it is, there are already so many authoring systems.)[/quote]

Of course I'll make the "state cookie" as big as it needs to be, even if it has to go into a MySQL database filed by the user's login name. One way or another, though, the complete state needs to be saved every move. In a database that might actually only mean changing a few entries in the "state cookie" after each move.

I do wonder about your 4KB figure. Where did that come from? The game sources I looked at were around the 80 to 120 rooms in size with 50 to 75 stationary objects, and around 30 to 50 moveable objects. Counting all the state variables that had to be written to save the game state. and writing 8 boolean variables per byte, and using 32 bit integers, and 16 bit object id numbers I had a hard time using up more than a couple hundred bytes or so. If we assume the very worst and say every room has 16 boolean flags and some integer value, that's 120 rooms * 6 bytes = 720 bytes. Give every stationary object 16 boolean flags at 2 bytes each for 75 * 2 = 150 bytes, and give every moveable object a location (2 bytes) an integer value (4 bytes) and 16 flags (2 bytes) and that's 50 objects * 8 bytes = 400 bytes for a grand total of 1270 bytes for an exaggerated worst-case.

Obviously I'm overlooking something. I just don't know what.

[quote="Dannii"]---
 If you're after fun, you should consider whether you might enjoy working on another existing interpreter, ---[/quote]

That's certainly something to keep in mind. But now that I'm retired, after 45 years of programming other people's code, I want to write my own code. [emote];)[/emote]

[quote="RealNC"]---
The state "cookie" is probably best kept on the server though. It's totally pointless to send it to the client. The only time where the client needs it is when entering SAVE. Otherwise you're slowing things down and generate traffic for no reason whatsoever.[/quote]

I'm sure you're right. Especially for more complex games that require larger "state cookies". The state could even be divided among several tables in a database, so that if the players move was "Put the red marble in the wooden box" only a very small portion of the "state cookie" would have to be changed in the DB. It would only require rewriting the table that held the marble's parent object id.

On the other hand, right click one of those smilie images  [emote]:lol:[/emote]  in this forum and read the image info. Those smilies run 620 to 750 bytes, depending on whether they are animated or not. My worst case state cookie mentioned above (1270 bytes) is as much internet traffic as two smilies!  [emote]:o[/emote]  [emote]:roll:[/emote]  In reality, does the presence of an extra two smilies worth of traffic really matter to the response speed?  [emote]:?:[/emote] 

I'm playing around with a different way of organizing my data files right now. Maybe in a day or two I'll have my toy implementation of "Hunt the Wumpus" running so I can try out my new file system.

--gary

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4173&start=0#p30064
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: OMG! Not ANOTHER stupid IF system!
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-18 00:23:18

[quote]Obviously I'm overlooking something. I just don't know what.[/quote]

The short answer: by the time you've built a fully-usable IF system, you've moved several layers of code past the sort of byte-obsessive focus that perfectly optimizes state size.

It's perfectly reasonable to start at the beginning, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4167&start=0#p30065
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Riddle me this Puzzle
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-18 00:25:13

Oh, I'm not saying the manual was a perfect solution, even back in the 80s. (We've certainly all gotten more impatient since then.)

As a side note, <a class="postlink" href="http://infodoc.plover.net/">http://infodoc.plover.net/</a> has scans of the Infocom manuals.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4175&start=0#p30066
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: IFArchive outage on Tuesday, Jan 24th
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-18 00:28:50

The Archive machine is being moved to a different room, and it may be down all day. (It might be down for just a few minutes, but office moves at universities, well, no bets on everything going perfectly.)

If you expect to need Archive access, pick your mirror in advance. (And bookmark it, because <a class="postlink" href="http://mirror.ifarchive.org/">http://mirror.ifarchive.org/</a> will also be offline.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4176&start=0#p30067
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: T3: Tracking Knowledge
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-18 00:45:59

Starting to think about filling in NPC knowledge, so as to write appropriate conversations. I'm contemplating these sentences, from p. 119 of "Learning T3":

[quote]There is then no need to define a separate seenProp for the NPCs unless we actually want to track what they’ve each individually seen. But then we must remember to use gSetSeen(obj) and me.hasSeen(obj) to set and test what the player character has seen, rather than using the seen property.[/quote]
I understand the part about using me.hasSeen(obj) -- but the idea that I must remember to use gSetSeen(obj) worries me deeply, because, according to the LRM notes on the seen property, "we set this to true whenever we show a room description from the player character's perspective, and the object is visible."

The implication of these two bits is that if I'm using gSetSeen(obj) manually to set what the player character has seen, the library's default seen property won't function as expected. That is, the library will set seen to true for various objects when the PC encounters them, but I won't be testing that property anymore -- I'll be testing meHasSeen. In which case, I will have to modify the library in some manner so as to cause me.hasSeen(obj) to work properly, reporting true for rooms and objects that are visible in the rooms when the PC first visits them.

Or does the library use gSetSeen(obj) on the me object by default, causing me.hasSeen(obj) to work in the way that it's supposed to? If that's the case, then the sentence in Learning T3 about "we must remember to use gSetSeen(obj)" isn't quite true, because we don't need to remember to do that....

I guess I could do something like this:

[code]modify me
     hasSeen(obj) {
          return obj.seen;
     }
;[/code]
That should cause me.hasSeen to pick up the library's use of the seen property ... but again, if I do that, why do I need to remember to use gSetSeen(obj)?

I'm also wondering where in the code I would use something like bob.setKnowsAbout(treehouse) or carol.setKnowsAbout(oldBook). I mean, the NPC might encounter the treehouse or the old book while wandering around on some agenda or other, even when the PC is not in the same location. So where exactly would the call to setKnowsAbout go? In the takeTurn of bob's current ActorState? That might work ... but it's still messy, because Bob might wander into a room where there are several things, so the code in takeTurn would have to iterate somehow through everything in bob's current location.

Urk. I think I must be making this more complicated than it actually is. Suggestions welcome!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4172&start=0#p30068
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Delusions of Eloquence: Blue Lacuna (2009)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-01-18 01:14:41

Deja vu.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4177&start=0#p30069
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: If you need to access Wikipedia today...
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-01-18 03:07:31

Ok, so I know it's not very sportive to try to work around their protest blackout. I wasn't even trying, I was just idly seeing if I could read what they had on Lovecraft. Turns out I managed to work around it very simply.

My browser is Firefox 9.0.1. With this browser I could access a page, only to have the "blackout image" cover it entirely (I'm sure these aren't the right terms, but I'm not net tech) - after about a second during which the original article was visible.

I could either stop loading the page AFTER it loaded the article AND before it redirected to the blackout, which I suspect will work on all browsers, or I could click the "Subscribe to this page..." button right next to my address bar. This popped up a dialog box that stopped the page loading further, and I could then close the dialog box and read at leisure.

If you really need to consult Wikipedia today, then these are my tips. Otherwise, well, best to respect their blackout.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4178&start=0#p30070
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Classic 1991 Moonbase 3 text adventure now ported to Android
User: Mark Eaton / DateTime: 2012-01-18 04:50:16

Hi everyone

Some 25 years ago I loved playing text adventure games. There was something about them that got lost as the years went by.

For me it was the ability to actually stop and think about what I wanted to do. It wasn't a matter of just pressing buttons on a console, but I had to consider how to solve problems intelligently.

I enjoyed them so much that I started writing my own text adventure games on an Amstrad CPC464 using Basic and later my dad followed suit with some great games of his own.

A couple of years ago dad showed me some websites that proved people are still playing these games, which surprised me being in the age of 3D graphics.

I don't spend much recreational time on a computer these days, I'd rather use a smartphone or a tablet due to their convenience.

And that got me thinking.

I searched the Android market and I struggled to find even a handful of text adventure games. So, like some 25  years ago, I wrote one for Android: Moonbase 3.

My dad originally wrote this for the Amstrad CPC6128 back in 1991 and he sold a number in England at that time.

Hopefully now that it is on Android you might want to give it a try yourself.

There's a demo version which is about 20% of the full game but has all the features like:

Different font sizes
Text to speech so that the game can read the text aloud
Speech input to issue your commands
Gestures. You can use an arrowhead to indicate north or south, and swipe to indicate east or west
And, of course, classing text input
It's link is: <a class="postlink" href="https://market.android.com/details?id=Moonbase3.demo">https://market.android.com/details?id=Moonbase3.demo</a>

If you enjoy that try the full version: <a class="postlink" href="https://market.android.com/details?id=Moonbase3.Complete">https://market.android.com/details?id=M ... 3.Complete</a>

Based on how these games go I'll consider creating more of these old classics.

Let me know what you think.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4177&start=0#p30071
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: If you need to access Wikipedia today...
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-18 05:28:28

The mobile version of Wikipedia is still working. Just load that.

<a class="postlink" href="http://m.wikipedia.org">http://m.wikipedia.org</a>

BTW this isn't cheating -- Wikipedia recommended this workaround itself for those who desperately need to access the site today.

Paul.

P.S. Your 'stop loading' method is more about interrupting the page's JavaScript, which you can do more reliably just by turning off JavaScript in your browser preferences.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4174&start=0#p30072
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe with header and footer
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-18 05:42:29

Thanks for improving Quixe. The day is drawing near when I will finally be working directly on the web-based solutions that pulled me into this forum and back into Inform to begin with.

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4172&start=0#p30073
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Delusions of Eloquence: Blue Lacuna (2009)
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2012-01-18 06:48:19

I'm flattered that you follow my work religiously, but there are people on this forum who have yet to succumb to my charm.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4179&start=0#p30074
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Parchment not working in Google Chrome?
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-01-18 07:17:16

Hi, I'm not sure if this is the place to post this, but... 

I just noticed that doing a "release with an interpreter" on an Inform 7 (1.2 6.31/6G60) game does not seem to work in Google Chrome (version 16.0.912.75, on OS X Snow Leopard). I'm testing a minimal game with just a "The home is a room" in it. 

It just shows a red rectangle with this info:

[quote]An error occurred:
Component: engine
Code: 200

Detail: 3

Traceback (most recent call last):

  (anonymous function)
  (anonymous function)
  (anonymous function)
  (anonymous function)
  ge_run
  ge_compile
  gnusto_error
  (anonymous function)[/quote]

The same page seems to load fine in other browsers (Safari, Firefox). Does anybody know what's up with this? 

Glulx/Quixe releases seem to work in Chrome too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4174&start=0#p30077
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe with header and footer
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2012-01-18 09:46:03

[quote="zarf"]I've noticed that while it's easy to set up a Quixe page that uses the entire browser window (all of the examples do this), it's rather difficult to set up a "classic" web template with a fixed column width, a header, and a footer.[/quote]

I spent quite a bit of time doing something similar for the new Textfyre portal with a few differences. I have a static header section and location name section, the scroll bar is hidden, and the footer contains the input box. Of course my template doesn't expect text to be continually appended, so it serves a slightly different pattern.

Even so, when it's stable, the CSS and HTML might be useful to others and I will share. The rough sample is at beta.textfyre.com. Only Cloak works for now and there are bugs.

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4167&start=0#p30078
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Riddle me this Puzzle
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-18 09:53:18

Not specifically works of IF, but if you're interested in riddles and truth/liar puzzles I recommend two things:

"Twisty Little Passages" by Nick Montfort.

The puzzle books of Raymond Smullyan. My first was "What is the name of this book?"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4167&start=0#p30079
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Riddle me this Puzzle
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2012-01-18 09:55:54

Also, Nick's [i]Riddle & Bind[/i] might be of interest.

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4177&start=0#p30080
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: If you need to access Wikipedia today...
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-18 09:58:05

I've decided to practice an extended blackout today and not visit any sites with ads that might support SOPA. So far I've been to my non-Yahoo email, this forum, and the private site for testers of my WIP. I forgot for a moment and used Google to look up a book on Amazon, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4177&start=0#p30081
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: If you need to access Wikipedia today...
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-18 10:17:08

[quote="capmikee"]I forgot for a moment and used Google to look up a book on Amazon, though.[/quote]
Google has this on their front page though:

"Tell Congress: Please don't censor the web!"

So I don't think they're supporting this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4177&start=0#p30082
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: If you need to access Wikipedia today...
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-18 10:24:51

Google's not supporting it, but they do have adwords. Unless they're doing a boycott? I'm just being cautious and trying to cut down on my internet dependency generally.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4181&start=0#p30083
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Problem phrasing action with number and thing
User: DMacasaurus / DateTime: 2012-01-18 10:45:14

Hi Folks,
I am playing around with planting on a farm. I have seed that has a number called weight and I want the player to be able to plant a weight of weed. This version of the code works (doesn't do anythinn yet just trace the variables)

[code]Understand "sow [seed] [number]" as sowing it . Sowing it is an action applying to one thing and one number.
Carry out sowing it:
	say "[noun]";
	say "[number understood]"
[/code]

The syntax for the player [b]> sow barley 50[/b] is awkward. 
I have had absolutely no luck getting the coding right for the alternative, which I would like [b]>sow 50 barley[/b] The Understand statement should begin like this, I (think I) know
[code]Understand "sow [number] [seed]" as ... [/code]
No permutation I've run seems to work.
I'm sure it's simple but it's a wall for me.
Thanks,
Jeremiah McCall

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4181&start=0#p30084
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem phrasing action with number and thing
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-01-18 11:01:56

You have to switch the order of the tokens in the action definition as well.

[code]
Understand "sow [number] [seed]" as sowing it . Sowing it is an action applying to one number and one thing.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4173&start=0#p30085
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: OMG! Not ANOTHER stupid IF system!
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2012-01-18 11:18:35

[quote="fiziwig"]What was I thinking? I mean, if there's on thing the world does [b]not[/b] need it's yet another IF authoring language. Yet still I'm working on one. Why?

1. Because it's fun. (And that should be justification enough.)
2. Because of the special challenges of my chosen platform.[/quote]

Hey Gary,

Your basic idea is fairly sound and yes, building a new IF platform is fun. I have some VB.NET code laying around where the only requirement is to have fun trying to create a viable platform in VB.NET. Maybe someday I'll get back to it...

For Textfyre, I have a Glulx engine with a different IO layer and the whole thing is called FyreVM. This was created by vaporware in about 80 hours, which I still find astonishing. Since then I have managed to wrap the engine with a simple state manager and run it on a web server and I called this Zifmia. Then I moved to implementing something useful with this technology.

At first I had the idea of calling "save" after every turn and storing the save files on disk or in a database. But after playing around, I realized it was no more expensive to simply store a binary serialized version of the engine, in a database. As it happens, I'm using Eloquera, a free object database.

So the logic is:

1. user starts game
2. if user has running session, load it and present most recent turn data
3. if user is starting a new session, create the session and present the first turn data
NOTE: A session is the data structure for all of the play of a particular game. I plan to allow one session per game per user when the system is released publicly.
4. user enters a command into the browser
5. ajax call is made to server, sending session identifier and command
6. server loads session, deserializes engine, executes command, saves session, returns turn-data back to browser
7. browser places turn-data in appropriate CSS DIV tags
NOTE: the response turn-data in FyreVM/Zifmia comes in name/value pairs, so the room name is in the LOCN value and MAIN contains the main text response. Other keys include SCOR, TURN, TIME, HINT, HELP, TITL, CHAP, etc.

You can play around with alpha code at beta.textfyre.com, running the demo of Cloak of Darkness. I still have some design tasks to complete, mostly around how to handle displaying and accessing historical turns as well as displaying branches, since the user can "go back" and enter an alternate command at any past "turn". Branching is managed within a session.

NOTE: I do use an MD5 hash routine to prevent storing engines that are identical more than once...thanks to Zarf for that idea...

Anyway...this may give you something to think about as you work on your system...

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4176&start=0#p30086
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Tracking Knowledge
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2012-01-18 12:17:59

[quote]There is then no need to define a separate seenProp for the NPCs unless we actually want to track what they’ve each individually seen. But then we must remember to use gSetSeen(obj) and me.hasSeen(obj) to set and test what the player character has seen, rather than using the seen property.[/quote]

What this part of [i]Learning TADS 3[/i] presupposes is that in the event that you start tracking NPC knowledge separately from PC knowledge, then you'll probably need to define new properties for tracking PC knowledge as well (unless you've defined new properties for every NPC in your game), or there'll be a danger that PC and NPC knowledge getting muddled up. In that case, if you ever need to set or check what the PC has seen manually, you should use:

[code]
gSetSeen(foo);
if(me.hasSeen(foo))
[/code]

Rather than:

[code]
foo.seen = true;
if(foo.seen)
[/code]

The comment in the LRM that's worrying you is slightly inaccurate. It applies if and only if you haven't changed me.seenProp from &seen. If you have changed it, e.g. to &meHasSeen, then the library will use your new meHasSeen property instead, and everything will work as expected (including the automatic registration of objects seen in a room).

[quote="Jim Aikin"]
Or does the library use gSetSeen(obj) on the me object by default, causing me.hasSeen(obj) to work in the way that it's supposed to? If that's the case, then the sentence in Learning T3 about "we must remember to use gSetSeen(obj)" isn't quite true, because we don't need to remember to do that....
[/quote]

You don't need to remember to do that for cases where the library automatically updates what the player character has seen, but you do in the rare cases where the library doesn't, e.g. because you move an object into view in the course of a turn, in this sort of case:

[code]
wand: Thing 'magic wand' 'wand'
   dobjFor(Wave)
   {
         action()
         {
              if(ring.moved)
                  "Nothing happens! ";
              else
              {
                   ring.moveInto(me);
                   ring.wornBy = me;
                   gSetSeen(ring);
                   "A ring suddenly appears on your finger! ";
               }
          }
    }
;
[/code]

[quote="Jim Aikin"]
I'm also wondering where in the code I would use something like bob.setKnowsAbout(treehouse) or carol.setKnowsAbout(oldBook). I mean, the NPC might encounter the treehouse or the old book while wandering around on some agenda or other, even when the PC is not in the same location. So where exactly would the call to setKnowsAbout go? In the takeTurn of bob's current ActorState? That might work ... but it's still messy, because Bob might wander into a room where there are several things, so the code in takeTurn would have to iterate somehow through everything in bob's current location.
[/quote]

Yes, this is likely to be tricky, and the right way of doing it probably depends on how much NPC information you want to track. Before reinventing the wheel, however, you might want to take a look at Steve Breslin's t3knowledge extension on the [url=http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXprogrammingXtads3XlibraryXcontributions]TADS 3 extension page[/url] to see if it does what you want. As I recall it redefines the mechanism used in the library, and it's quite old now, and probably hasn't been tested with recent versions of TADS 3, but it may still work.

-- Eric

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=60#p30087
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-18 12:26:47

Here are some comparative stats on reading in a known location (e.g., "if entry 12 of my list is x") of flat vs. nested lists, courtesy of the new [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4169&start=10]Benchmarker[/url] extension:

[quote][b]Selecting from a simple list[/b]
[i]Grabs the 90th entry from a list of 100 total objects: {1..x..100}.[/i]
6.83µs ±1.99% (100 samples)
[b]Selecting from a nested list[/b]
[i]Grabs the 40th entry from the second in a nested list of 100 total objects: { {1..50}, {1..x..50} }.[/i]
8.52µs ±1.38% (100 samples)
[b]Selecting from a double nested list[/b]
[i]Grabs 15th entry from the fourth in a nested list of 100 total objects: {  { {1..25}, {1..25} }, { {1..25}, 
{1..x..25} }  }.[/i]
11.23µs ±2.45% (100 samples)[/quote]

Flat lists look to be quite a bit faster than doubly nested lists (i.e., list of lists of lists of whatever).

[b]EDITED to add: [/b]Here's the source code for this:
[code]Include Benchmarking by Dannii Willis.

Simple search list is a list of objects variable.
Nested search list is a list of lists of objects variable. Nested search list is {{}, {}}.
Double-nested search list is a list of lists of lists of objects variable. Double-nested search list is 
{  { {}, {} }, { {}, {} }  }.

A dog is a kind of person.

Ralph, Scogg, and Zip are dogs.

When play begins:
	repeat with x running from 1 to 99:
		add a random dog to simple search list;
	add the player at entry 90 in simple search list;
	repeat with x running from 1 to 2:
		repeat with y running from 1 to 50:
			add a random dog to entry x of the nested search list;
	now entry 40 of entry 2 of the nested search list is the player;
	repeat with x running from 1 to 2:
		repeat with y running from 1 to 2:
			repeat with z running from 1 to 25:
				add a random dog to entry y of entry x of the double-nested search list;
	now entry 15 of entry 2 of entry 2 of the double-nested search list is the player.

Selecting from a simple list is a test case.
The author is "Erik Temple".
The description is "Grabs the 90th entry from a list of 100 total objects: {1..90..100}."
To run simple-list select (this is running simple selection):
	if entry 90 in simple search list is the player:
		do nothing.
The run phrase is running simple selection.

Selecting from a nested list is a test case.
The description is "Grabs the 90th entry from a nested list of 100 total objects: { {1..50}, {1..40..50} }."
To run simple-list select (this is running nested selection):
	if entry 40 of entry 2 in nested search list is the player:
		do nothing.
The run phrase is running nested selection.

Selecting from a double nested list is a test case.
The description is "Grabs 90th entry from a double-nested list of 100 total objects: {  { {1..25}, {1..25} }, { {1..25}, {1..15..25} }  }."
To run simple-list select (this is running double-nested selection):
	if entry 15 of entry 2 of entry 2 in double-nested search list is the player:
		do nothing.
The run phrase is running double-nested selection.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4173&start=0#p30088
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: OMG! Not ANOTHER stupid IF system!
User: fiziwig / DateTime: 2012-01-18 12:50:10

[quote="DavidC"][quote="fiziwig"]What was I thinking? I mean, if there's on thing the world does [b]not[/b] need it's yet another IF authoring language. Yet still I'm working on one. Why?
1. Because it's fun. (And that should be justification enough.)
2. Because of the special challenges of my chosen platform.[/quote]
Hey Gary,
Your basic idea is fairly sound and yes, building a new IF platform is fun. 
--<snipage>--
At first I had the idea of calling "save" after every turn and storing the save files on disk or in a database. But after playing around, I realized it was no more expensive to simply store a binary serialized version of the engine, in a database. As it happens, I'm using Eloquera, a free object database.
[/quote]
That's an interesting approach, and one I hadn't thought of. I'm experimenting with a new approach I dreamed up last night that I think is very promising. I'm chronicling my experiments and musings here: <a class="postlink" href="http://fiziwig.com/intfic/design.html">http://fiziwig.com/intfic/design.html</a>
 
[quote="DavidC"]

So the logic is:

1. user starts game
2. if user has running session, load it and present most recent turn data
3. if user is starting a new session, create the session and present the first turn data
NOTE: A session is the data structure for all of the play of a particular game. I plan to allow one session per game per user when the system is released publicly.
4. user enters a command into the browser
5. ajax call is made to server, sending session identifier and command
6. server loads session, deserializes engine, executes command, saves session, returns turn-data back to browser
7. browser places turn-data in appropriate CSS DIV tags
NOTE: the response turn-data in FyreVM/Zifmia comes in name/value pairs, so the room name is in the LOCN value and MAIN contains the main text response. Other keys include SCOR, TURN, TIME, HINT, HELP, TITL, CHAP, etc.
[/quote]
I like the idea of using AJAX. It had crossed my mind, but I haven't really given any thought as to how I might use it yet. I'm still too early in the experimentation phase.
 
[quote="DavidC"]
You can play around with alpha code at beta.textfyre.com, running the demo of Cloak of Darkness. I still have some design tasks to complete, mostly around how to handle displaying and accessing historical turns as well as displaying branches, since the user can "go back" and enter an alternate command at any past "turn". Branching is managed within a session.

NOTE: I do use an MD5 hash routine to prevent storing engines that are identical more than once...thanks to Zarf for that idea...

Anyway...this may give you something to think about as you work on your system...

David C.[/quote]

Very slick! I really like the look of your interface. The icons for map, hints, and history are a nice touch. My own experiments haven't gone much beyond basic HTML so far. I'm still kind of stuck in the "Commodore 64 look and feel" mode until I get further along on the functionality.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4176&start=0#p30089
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Tracking Knowledge
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-18 13:05:00

[quote="Eric Eve"][quote="Jim Aikin"]I'm also wondering where in the code I would use something like bob.setKnowsAbout(treehouse) or carol.setKnowsAbout(oldBook). I mean, the NPC might encounter the treehouse or the old book while wandering around on some agenda or other, even when the PC is not in the same location. So where exactly would the call to setKnowsAbout go? In the takeTurn of bob's current ActorState? That might work ... but it's still messy, because Bob might wander into a room where there are several things, so the code in takeTurn would have to iterate somehow through everything in bob's current location.
[/quote]

Yes, this is likely to be tricky, and the right way of doing it probably depends on how much NPC information you want to track. Before reinventing the wheel, however, you might want to take a look at Steve Breslin's t3knowledge extension on the [url=http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXprogrammingXtads3XlibraryXcontributions]TADS 3 extension page[/url] to see if it does what you want. As I recall it redefines the mechanism used in the library, and it's quite old now, and probably hasn't been tested with recent versions of TADS 3, but it may still work.[/quote]
I'll look at Steve's extension, but this morning I thought I'd tackle this situation myself. I seem to have it working ... except that I don't know how to iterate through everything that is visible in the current room. I know how to iterate through everything of Thing class in the game, and I known how to iterate through the contents list for the current room. But if something is lying in plain sight on a table, it's not in the contents list for the current room. I've poked around in the documentation without seeing a convenient way to access (or construct) a list of everything that's visible in the current room. (I'm going to assume that the NPC is not wearing a blindfold....)

If I iterate through every Thing in the game and test whether cur.getOutermostRoom() is the current room, that's bound to be slow -- maybe even slow enough to be noticeable to the player. An embedded while loop that looks for things inside of items in the room's contents list would work, if I could figure out the correct syntax.

What I'm doing at present, in the ActorState for each NPC, is this:

   [code] takeTurn {
        local rm = getActor.getOutermostRoom();
        for (local cur in rm.contents) {
            if (getActor.canSee(cur))
                getActor.setHasSeen(cur);
        }
    }[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4177&start=0#p30090
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: If you need to access Wikipedia today...
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-18 13:08:11

[quote="capmikee"]Google's not supporting it, but they do have adwords. Unless they're doing a boycott? I'm just being cautious and trying to cut down on my internet dependency generally.[/quote]
Google is joining the protest in only the most minimal way possible (by changing their logo and only in the USA), which is probably a good thing since any protest needs to weigh the possibility of the uninformed public turning against the protesters themselves. Reddit and Boing Boing are preaching to the choir, so they're in the clear and can go dark without peril. There is already some backlash to Wikipedia's move, even though that site's mandate probably makes it the best vehicle to spread awareness to those who have never heard the term 'SOPA' before (they are the targets of this protest — not you and me). But the backlash from Google going totally 'dark' would probably be several orders of magnitude bigger, and counterproductive to the cause, because Wikipedia has already done the job of spreading the protest meme into the more ignorant corners of society. All Google blacking out would accomplish is that Google would become the main story instead of Wikipedia, and Google's motives are much more assailable by the pro-SOPA crowd, so this would not be an improvement. Better for Google to stay online and enable those experiencing fresh, virgin outrage via Wikipedia, to search for more information.

I feel that the tech community, while not all making the same decisions, are mostly making the right decisions for the cause, considering their respective circumstances.

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4176&start=0#p30091
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Tracking Knowledge
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-18 13:42:33

The following code seems to work, even for the me object (which I gather has a default ActorState) and even with objects that are visible in ComplexContainers:

[code]modify Thing
    meHasSeen = nil
    bobHasSeen = nil
    carolHasSeen = nil
    // etc.
;

modify ActorState
    takeTurn {
        local rm = getActor.getOutermostRoom();
        if (getActor.canSee(rm))
            getActor.setHasSeen(rm);
        local cur, cur2, cur3;
        for (cur in rm.contents) {
            if (getActor.canSee(cur))
                getActor.setHasSeen(cur);
            if (cur.contents != []) {
                for (cur2 in cur.contents) {
                    if (getActor.canSee(cur2))
                        getActor.setHasSeen(cur2);
                    if (cur2.contents != []) {
                        for (cur3 in cur2.contents) {
                            if (getActor.canSee(cur3))
                                getActor.setHasSeen(cur3);
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }
        inherited;
    }
;[/code]

It only nests three levels deep -- I'm a little nervous about writing a recursive method to dig down to an arbitrary depth within the containment hierarchy, but that would probably be better.

The one "gotcha" I'm aware of is that if you use takeTurn in any of your own ActorStates, you have to remember to call inherited.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4182&start=0#p30092
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Online Highscore List?
User: InsertCoin25 / DateTime: 2012-01-18 14:54:07

Is there a extension or way to submit a high score in Inform 7 to a online database or table? So players of the game can see high scores of others and try to beat them?

Thank You
InsertCoin25

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4176&start=0#p30093
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Tracking Knowledge
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-18 15:06:43

Even if you don't use all of Steve Breslin's extension, you can borrow the silentLook mechanism from the end.

[code]
modify Actor
    afterAction() {
        if (self != gPlayerChar)
            location.silentLook(self, self);
        inherited();
    }
;

modify Thing
    silentLook(actor, pov) {
        if (location != nil && actor.canSee(location))
            location.silentLook(actor, pov);
        else {
            local infoTab = actor.visibleInfoTableFromPov(pov);
            local info = infoTab[pov];
            if (info != nil && info.ambient > 1)
                actor.setHasSeen(self);
            setContentsSeenBy(infoTab, actor);
        }
    }
;
[/code]

That setContentsSeenBy call in silentLook will recursively mark all visible objects as seen.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4182&start=0#p30094
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Online Highscore List?
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-18 15:14:19

No extension I've seen, but there is an example in the manual of using external files to run an external service for a game, which basically is what you want to do. 

See [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc383.html]"22.14 Exchanging files with other programs"[/url]. 

At that point you're basically creating a small separate hi-score service that'll interact  with your game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3766&start=20#p30095
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The game that has the best world simulation?
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2012-01-18 15:32:51

[quote="sai"]I am looking for games that have a very advanced world simulation. 
For example you can walk in a town, and if break through any house you can find realistic interiors and objects.
Or games that simulate a lot of npc in a realistic way if we interact with them even though we are not forced by the plot to do so.
Well, games that have a good enough world simulation to give the player the illusion he is free of his actions, and that manage to process it in a useful way to make the game more interesting and more in-depth.

Thank you.[/quote]

sai, I really recommend the Level 9 game "Knight Orc" for what you're talking about. You're free to go anywhere and do anything in the first third of the game. You can take anything that isn't bolted down... as long as you can defend yourself when the rightful owners want it back. And I have gotten myself out of some situations with what was basically emergent gameplay.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4182&start=0#p30096
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Online Highscore List?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-01-18 15:45:10

Some sort of simple HTTP request could be a good addition to Glk. Want to start designing a spec for it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4183&start=0#p30097
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Cannot add box to beach - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-18 15:46:33

Once again, I'm trying to add a wooden box and a metal sign to my beach location. The game compiles with no errors. However, when the game runs, the box doesn't show up at the beach but the sign does show up and works properly when reading it. The mystery to me is that the sign is after the box in the code. Here's the code. don't want to go further until this problem is solved. I have no idea what is going on with this.

[code]













/* Room0001: The Actor Starts Game Here. **************************************/

  Beach : OutdoorRoom 'At The Beach' 'At The Beach'
  roomFirstDesc()
  { "This is first description.";
  }
  shortDesc = "You are at the sandy beach.";
 
/* Add wooden box to beach. ***************************************************/

+box: ComplexContainer, Fixture 'large slatted wooden (wood) box*boxes' 'large
 slatted-wood box' 
 "The large wooden box, left here from a precious helicopter flight, lies on
  some small rocks. At its top, there is a metal hasp that can be turned to
  unlock or lock the box."
 //cannotTakeMsg = (backpack.seen ? 'The backpack would be a more convenient
//container. You would be better off using that instead.' : 'The box is much too
// heavy to lift or carry around.')
  initSpecialMsg = "A large slatted-wood box is lying nearby on some small
                    rocks."
subContainer: ComplexComponent, LockableContainer{}
;
++Component 'combination lock*locks' 'lock'
;

/* Add HELP sign to beach. ****************************************************/

class Sign : Readable
;
+sign: Sign, Fixture 'large metal sign' 'metal sign'
  "The sizeable metal sign is firmly attached to a tree near the start of the
   eastern path. It is quite rusty and worn but the printing on it can still be
   read. It just might provide some information about The Magic Forest."
 initSpecialDesc = "Attached to a tree at the beginning of the eastern path is
   a large metal sign."
 cannotTakeMSG = 'Sorry, but it is very rigidly attached to the tree. Besides,
   there is no reason to take it with you.'
 readDesc = "The sign is written in both English and Spanish and  it reads:
   'DANGER! Restricted property beyond this point. Enter at your own risk.'\b
   Property Manager,\b
   Melenkurian\b"
 dobjFor(Read)
 {
  action()
  {
   readsignAchievement.awardPointsOnce();
   inherited;
  }
 } 
 readsignAchievement : Achievement { +5 "reading the sign at the beach" }
;
[/code]

Once again, I'm in trouble and could use some help [emote]:|[/emote]  [emote]:|[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4177&start=0#p30098
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: If you need to access Wikipedia today...
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-18 16:05:40

[quote]Google is joining the protest in only the most minimal way possible (by changing their logo and only in the USA)[/quote]

And linking the logo to <a class="postlink" href="https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/">https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/</a> .

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=70#p30099
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-18 16:25:00

That's odd, I did some [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17790344/Performance%20Test/Performance.gblorb]testing[/url] too with the timestamps of the AI code you sent me a while back and the results were rather indicating the opposite. I'm confused [emote]:?[/emote]

Relevant code:
[code]tlist1 is a list of numbers that varies.
tlist2 is a list of lists of lists of numbers that varies.
tlist3 is a list of numbers that varies.
tlist4 is a list of lists of lists of numbers that varies.

When play begins:
	add {{}} to tlist2;
	add {{}} to tlist4;
	repeat with y running from 1 to 40:
		add {{}} to Entry 1 in tlist4;
		repeat with x running from 1 to 40:
			add 1 to Entry Y in Entry 1 of tlist4;
	repeat with x running from 1 to 1600:
		add 1 to tlist3;
	
Linserts is a test case.
To run linserts (this is running linserts):
	repeat with y running from 1 to 40:
		add {{}} to Entry 1 in tlist2;
		repeat with x running from 1 to 40:
			add 1 to Entry Y in Entry 1 of tlist2;
	truncate tlist2 to 0 entries;
	add {{}} to tlist2.
The run phrase of Linserts is running linserts.

Linsert is a test case.
To run linsert (this is running linsert):
	repeat with x running from 1 to 1600:
		add 1 to tlist1;
	truncate tlist1 to 0 entries.
The run phrase of Linsert is running linsert.

Lpicks is a test case.
To run lpicks (this is running lpicks):
	repeat with y running from 1 to 40:
		repeat with x running from 1 to 40:
			let testing be (Entry x in Entry y in Entry 1 in tlist4).
The run phrase of lpicks is running lpicks.

Lpick is a test case.
To run lpick (this is running lpick):
	repeat with x running from 1 to 1600:
		let testing be Entry x in tlist3.
The run phrase of lpick is running lpick.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4093&start=20#p30100
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Harmonizing Glk file suffixes?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-18 16:25:50

[quote]In particular I was thinking of my change from Zoom to Gargoyle, and how it took me a bit to figure out that data files were being looked for in the directory enclosing the story file, not ~.[/quote]

I hope this can be covered by interpreter documentation. Reading a full path into game code seems like a pitfall, if not a security risk. (A full path on iOS would be unrecognizable to most users, and you don't even want to know how Quixe handles it. :)

I have updated the draft spec to include:

-----

The library should take the given filename argument, and delete any characters illegal for a filename. This will include all of the following characters (and more, if the OS requires it): slash, backslash, angle brackets (less-than and greater-than), colon, double-quote, pipe (vertical bar), question-mark, asterisk. The library should also truncate the argument at the first period (delete the first period and any following characters). If the result is the empty string, change it to the string "null".

...

[i]Some programs will look for all files in the same directory as the program itself (or, for interpreted games, in the same directory as the game file). Others may keep files in a data-specific directory appropriate for the user (e.g., ~/Library on MacOS).[/i]

[i]If a game interpreter uses a data-specific directory, there is a question of whether to use a common location, or divide it into game-specific subdirectories. (Or to put it another way: should the namespace of named files be per-game or app-wide?) Since data files may be exchanged between games, they should be given an app-wide namespace. In contrast, saved games should be per-game, as they can never be exchanged. Transcripts and input records can go either way.[/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3958&start=0#p30101
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Help for a beginner.
User: StewartF94 / DateTime: 2012-01-18 16:28:52

Hi there. Thanks for helping. Sorry for not replying before but with Christmas and New Year and everything i was quite busy.

I've tested what you suggested in games by themselves and they do work but that was never really in question haha. [emote]:)[/emote] However, and this is where your greater knowledge of the language comes in, I am wondering how I can manipulate this. 

Ideally, what i want to happen is, at the end of the game, the player can take their score (or maybe number of turns taken) and enter it to a file with their name associated with it to form rankings. That's when the sort would come in to rearrange the rankings so they were in descending order. 

Is this sort of thing possible in T3?

Thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4183&start=0#p30102
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Cannot add box to beach - TADS3.1
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-18 16:44:26

The box is there, as far as I can see. Have you tried 'x box'? I copied your code and it works for me. The box is not being shown in the room description because you didn't give it an initSpecialDesc or a specialDesc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4184&start=0#p30103
Forum: Competitions / Subject: XYZZY Awards 2011: nominations open
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-01-18 17:12:49

Voting is open in the first round of the [url=http://xyzzyawards.org/]XYZZY Awards[/url], which honour the year's highest accomplishments in IF. In the first round, you can nominate (almost) any game released in 2011; the top four in each category will go through to the second round. The first round of voting will end on February 10.

The categories are Best Game, Writing, Story, Setting, Puzzles, NPCs, Individual Puzzle, Individual NPC, Individual PC, and the new-ish categories Implementation, Use of Innovation, Technological Development, and Supplemental Materials. [b]You do not have to vote for every category[/b], so please submit your votes even if they're incomplete.

It would be great to see discussion about the games you think should win. Some years back I did a set of thinking-out-loud [url=http://diden.net/~maga/xyzzy/xyzzy_2008.html]XYZZY-oriented reviews[/url] for the second round, and found it a really valuable process; I would be super happy if people did similar things. I'd particularly encourage discussion of deserving games that were released outside the major comps and may not have received as much attention. Every year, people don't vote because they feel that they haven't played enough games to have a valid opinion. Anything you can do to help overcome that -- suggesting games that might be worth playing, talking about your choices -- is a Good Thing.

The list of games, compiled by the stalwart David Welbourn, is at [url]http://xyzzyawards.org/games.php[/url].That list is as comprehensive as we could get it, but as IF continues to branch out into different corners of the web, it becomes ever more difficult to account for everything. If you know about any games that are missing, please tell us, point us to where we can find 'em, and we'll fix it as quickly as possible. (Releases that are not intended to be complete -- open betas, Introcomp entries -- don't count.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4185&start=0#p30104
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: ADRIFT January Flash IF Compilation
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2012-01-18 17:27:52

A long name for a proposed compilation of very short IF works written with ADRIFT. Details [url=http://forum.adrift.co/viewtopic.php?f=3&p=87809]here[/url].

Thank you for your attention.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=60#p30105
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2012-01-18 17:34:19

*sigh* Haters gonna Hatecraft.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4183&start=0#p30106
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Cannot add box to beach - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-18 17:34:34

Thanks to you, the problem is solved. The box was there. Instead of typing 'InitSpecialDesc' I had typed in 'InitSpecialMesg! It sure is easy to get completely confused.

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4183&start=0#p30107
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Cannot add box to beach - TADS3.1
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-18 17:41:52

[quote="RonG"]Thanks to you, the problem is solved. The box was there. Instead of typing 'InitSpecialDesc' I had typed in 'InitSpecialMesg! It sure is easy to get completely confused.[/quote]
Yeah, this is one of the easier mistakes to make in T3. If you create your own property for an object -- such as, let's say, initspecialDesc, omitting the capital 'S' -- the compiler won't complain, it will just give your object a unique property that will never get called by the library code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4176&start=0#p30108
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Tracking Knowledge
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-18 18:23:36

Thanks, Ben. That seems to work. (More testing remains to be done.)

My original code was slowing down the game ... only slightly, but noticeably ... because I was updating the knowledge of every actor in every turn. Steve's method specifically doesn't update the knowledge of an NPC unless the player is in the room, so if you have a lot of NPCs, some of whom are offstage, it's more efficient. It would cause problems only if you wanted an NPC to specifically learn about something when the PC is not in the room. And if that becomes necessary, a little one-off code would be a better way to handle it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=70#p30109
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-18 18:43:51

[quote="Basti50"]That's odd, I did some [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17790344/Performance%20Test/Performance.gblorb]testing[/url] too with the timestamps of the AI code you sent me a while back and the results were rather indicating the opposite. I'm confused [emote]:?[/emote][/quote]
You might try setting up such tests using the new Benchmarking tool; maybe the length of the lists makes a difference for example? The timing stuff in that AI demo was very rough-and-ready, and Dannii's benchmarker is a much better approach to the issue--for one thing, it runs the test many times to get a better estimate of actual timing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4142&start=10#p30110
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Shared world
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-18 19:04:25

[quote="peterorme"]
I'd really like if there was a central place involved - a city, a cruise ship, a space station, whatever. Twin Peaks, anyone? [/quote]

I think that makes a lot of sense. 

[quote]"It's like CSI, but with werewolves"
[/quote]

In Edwardian England?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4182&start=0#p30111
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Online Highscore List?
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-18 19:10:17

Maybe this is something Vorple could handle well?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4142&start=10#p30112
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Shared world
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-01-18 19:12:36

[quote="George"]
[quote]"It's like CSI, but with werewolves"
[/quote]

In Edwardian England?[/quote]
Now I'm thinking Pride and Prejudice, where Darcy is really a werewolf and Elizabeth is an amateur sleuth investigating his accidental murders.

Urmm... but more on topic: do we want something that is (broadly speaking):

Set in the past, set in the present, set in the future or set on a incomparable plane of existence? (By 'past', I obviously include all fantasy works that deal in pseudo-medieval settings and so on).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4142&start=10#p30113
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Shared world
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-18 19:29:37

[quote="JoeyJones"]
Set in the past, set in the present, set in the future or set on a incomparable plane of existence? (By 'past', I obviously include all fantasy works that deal in pseudo-medieval settings and so on).[/quote]

I propose something set in the past, but with the possibility of a timeline that diverged from our established history at some point. That gives us a lot of freedom, while at the same time providing a lot of familiar hooks that might interest authors.

With a few exceptions I prefer fantasy with a lot of background from history anyway.

And OK, I admit it, I've been watching Downton Abbey too ;D.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=60#p30114
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-18 19:35:13

Lovecraft's prose may not have been pure poetry, and no doubt it was a little purple, but that was fairly standard for his time. Narratively, he was a master of suspense. And he exhibited flashes of great descriptive prowess; I particularly enjoy his penchant for describing something creepy by describing what it is [i]not[/i]. I just searched the web for a particular passage that I remember, but I can't find it now. It was an entire paragraph describing some creature by listing all the gruesome things it isn't, that never quite got around to describing what it is. And yet left me in abject horror. I cannot but bow to such wonderful sleight of hand — and it's a technique he shared with Kafka, another favourite of mine. Kafka could string a reader along in suspense using no plot information at all: just by altering the sequence of grammar — like riding a bike with no hands. Lovecraft came close that same magical ability. They are both excellent prose craftsmen; I feel that this cannot be in any doubt, but of course there is nothing beyond doubt.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3958&start=0#p30115
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Help for a beginner.
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-18 21:24:20

Yes, you can write and read files. See the System Manual for more info.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4142&start=10#p30116
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Shared world
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-18 21:58:12

Ooh yes Downton Abbey. 

You know you're a BBCoholic when you already had an opinion about Joanne Froggatt before it started.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4186&start=0#p30117
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: T3.1: Text formatting
User: Arag-e / DateTime: 2012-01-18 22:16:04

This is either something TADS 3 introduces and it’s odd for me because I’ve played only TADS 2 games before, or something that absolutely everyone overrides and I’m too stupid to realize how.

I have a couple of bones to pick with the way the text is displayed:

First, it’s the presence of /u2002 (double spaces) after periods. To be honest, this is only really clearly visible in Plain Text mode, but I still hate this. The double space after periods looks silly. No games I’ve played look like this, although, again, I’ve mostly played TADS 2 games. Is there any way to globally force the formatting to display a common one-space after periods or do I have to paste \u2005 after every bloody period in the game’s text?

Second is line spacing: The way the formatting spaces certain lines irk me. [url=http://i41.tinypic.com/2hfnzh0.jpg]For instance, take this image (Look at the text ater the "look" command)[/url]. From a graphical organization standpoint, I think it would be better if there were only a regular single space between the Desc and specialDesc lines. I’m okay with everything else, such as atmospheric messages or NPC actions, being spaced down more, but the text displayed by Desc and specialDesc feels better when it’s clumped together, not in the same paragraph, but at least in the same “block” of text. [url=http://i41.tinypic.com/27yah5.jpg]Here’s a sample of what I mean.[/url]

Finally, I wonder if there’s some way to automatically add a simple \t indentation in front of every Desc and specialDesc. I could, of course, start every single one of these lines with \t (This is how I did it in the sample images above), but I was wondering if there was a way to do this for every Desc and specialDesc at once. There is simply no case where I WOULDN'T want this to be so.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=60#p30118
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2012-01-18 23:12:56

To my mind, calling Lovecraft purple is like calling [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQXuazYI_YU]this famous rant[/url] purple-- it goes on, perhaps, but it's expressive.  Where Clark is upset, Howard is horrified.  One might not think his prose is "pure poetry," but f*ck poetry.  It was too easy for HPL... if his letters are to be believed, he could compose sonnets in 10 minutes and spat heroic couplets at the drop of a hat.  If you want poetry, read his poetry, not his prose.  How about [url=http://www.lovecraftlibrary.org/hpl/fungi/]Fungi from Yuggoth[/url]?  But no doubt readers will find his formalism "affected"...

I don't know.  Sometimes when I talk about HPL with people, I get the feeling we're talking about two completely different authors.  I probably can't or shouldn't continue in this conversation if I'm to keep my stress levels in check.

/rant, I guess.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4182&start=0#p30119
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Online Highscore List?
User: InsertCoin25 / DateTime: 2012-01-18 23:58:35

[quote="George"]Maybe this is something Vorple could handle well?[/quote]

I was thinking this as well [emote]:D[/emote]. Only problem is that Vorple for Inform 7 (Parchment) hasn't been released yet. I believe he has begun work on the Inform 7 version but I could be mistaken [emote]:?[/emote].

InsertCoin25

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4185&start=0#p30120
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT January Flash IF Compilation
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2012-01-19 00:01:36

Update: we have our first entry and 2 more declarations of intent already. Huzzah!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4173&start=0#p30121
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: OMG! Not ANOTHER stupid IF system!
User: fiziwig / DateTime: 2012-01-19 00:05:56

For what it's worth, I have my skeleton Hunt the Wumpus game running with 25 rooms, and about 100 lines of php code. No Wumpus, bats, bottomless pits, or arrows yet, but you can explore the whole map with simple move commands: <a class="postlink" href="http://fiziwig.com/intfic/wumpus/">http://fiziwig.com/intfic/wumpus/</a>

Each room is in a separate file of around 10 to 12 lines of mixed php/html.
Everyone is welcome to give it a try, even though so far it's just a dungeon hike to see the sights. I tried to make each room interesting. See if you can guess the theme of the map.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4186&start=0#p30122
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3.1: Text formatting
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-19 00:15:07

I don't know the answer about double spaces, but I can tell you that Inform 7 games don't use double-spaces, and the result is that quite often there isn't _enough_ space after a period.

That said, you can do anything in TADS 3, so I'm sure you can do what you prefer. I would start by looking in the article "Some Common Input/Output Issues" in the Technical Manual

The business of paragraph spacing and paragraph indentation ... there are two conventions in this area. One is the older convention used in books (at least prior to the advent of how-to books on computer programming), which was that there was no extra line space between paragraphs, and the first line of each paragraph was indented. The newer convention, which will be seen on most HTML-based web pages, is that paragraphs are separated by an extra line of white space, and the first lines are not indented.

TADS 3 uses the newer convention.

If you prefer the older convention, I would suggest that you will need to be careful to do it consistently. Again, that article would be the place to start digging. Customizing the output may not be as easy as you'd wish, because TADS does quite a bit of housekeeping behind the scenes, such as deciding exactly when to start a new paragraph and when to run material together.

Power users may have more detailed suggestions.

What I would earnestly recommend is that you not try to mix the two styles. I've seen badly coded Inform games, for example, in which the paragraphs are not indented, and there are empty line spaces between some paragraphs, but not between others. This inevitably looks very amateurish, because you simply don't see nicely published material with non-indented paragraphs that are not separated from one another vertically by extra white space.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=60#p30123
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-19 01:53:28

[quote="bowsmand"]To my mind, calling Lovecraft purple is like calling [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQXuazYI_YU]this famous rant[/url] purple[/quote]

Sometimes, I go weeks without remembering how hot Beverly D'Angelo was in those movies, and that's a mistake. Thank you, sir, for reminding me earlier than I would have reminded myself.

[quote]I don't know.  Sometimes when I talk about HPL with people, I get the feeling we're talking about two completely different authors.[/quote]

Which Lo Pan? Little old basket case on wheels or the ten-foot-tall roadblock?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4148&start=0#p30124
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good beginner games
User: Hagbard Celine / DateTime: 2012-01-19 05:34:08

[quote="jacksonmead"]You could give the games linked here a try:

<a class="postlink" href="http://pr-if.org/play/">http://pr-if.org/play/</a>

-Kevin[/quote]
don't like this list

galatea will turn you off if forever faster than michael moore devoures a hamburger  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4182&start=0#p30125
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Online Highscore List?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-01-19 05:44:32

That's right, but the current estimate is that you'll have to wait at least 6 months before you can do anything that's even remotely playable, and even then you'll probably have to make the JavaScript part of the data submitting feature yourself (that is, such feature won't come out of the box).

If you're good with JavaScript or PHP, and not worried about people manipulating the high score list, you could modify the [url=https://github.com/juhana/if-recorder#readme]IF Recorder plugin[/url] to scan the transcript for the score and save it to the high score list.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4182&start=0#p30126
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Online Highscore List?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-01-19 05:50:42

Oohh, tell me more about these Vorple plans!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4148&start=0#p30127
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good beginner games
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-01-19 06:19:32

[quote]don't like this list[/quote]

Why not? Which games don't you like? Why don't you feel they're good games for beginners?

[quote]galatea will turn you off if forever faster than michael moore devoures a hamburger [emote]:lol:[/emote][/quote]

Turn you off what? IF? Conversation-based IF? Character-centric fiction? And why will it? Because it's badly done? Pretentious? Simplistic? Over-ambitious? In defiance of all conventions? Not fun? Too much fun?

Your posts require more substance if you're going to say things like that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4181&start=0#p30128
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem phrasing action with number and thing
User: DMacasaurus / DateTime: 2012-01-19 06:52:41

Thanks Juhana. My problem isn't solved probably because I left out the clarifying details.
So the understand statement you suggested compiles fine.
My problem is how to actually make that work in the carry out segment.
Ultimately each type of seed (wheat, barley, etc.) has a number called weight indicating the amount available, so one can't plant or eat more than they have.

So I would like to code in my 
[code]carry out sowing it:[/code]
statement some conditional checks on the number entered and the seed type.

As a reminder, the player will enter
> sow 20 wheat
or 
>sow 40 barley

When I use the statement you provided
[code]Understand "sow [number] [seed]" as sowing it . Sowing it is an action applying to one number and one thing.[/code]
I'm not having luck with a test run of the carry out statement. More precisely, what exact terms store the number and the noun
So I tried:
[code]Carry out sowing it:Carry out sowing it:
	say "[number understood]
say "[noun]";".[/code]

When I run the program and enter >sow 50 barley as a playtester
The output is "50 nothing" (i.e. empty object)
Using [noun understood] generates an error.

So really it's getting the carry out properly coded and using the right terms for noun and number that are not working for me.
Any help is much appreciated.

J

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4186&start=0#p30129
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3.1: Text formatting
User: tomasb / DateTime: 2012-01-19 06:54:44

[quote="Arag-e"]First, it’s the presence of /u2002 (double spaces) after periods.[/quote]

Just modify typographicalOutputFilter (located in en_us.t on line 3669) to not include first two rexReplaces. About English spacing:[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sentence_spacing#French_and_English_spacing[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4181&start=0#p30130
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem phrasing action with number and thing
User: DMacasaurus / DateTime: 2012-01-19 09:22:50

Alright! I figured it out myself while I was waiting. Here it is in case anyone wants to try anything similar

[code]Understand "sow [number] [seed]" as sowing it of. Sowing it of is an action applying to one number and one thing.

Carry out sowing it of:
	say "[number understood] ";
	say "[second noun]".[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4177&start=0#p30131
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: If you need to access Wikipedia today...
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-19 09:40:37

[quote="Laroquod"]All Google blacking out would accomplish is that Google would become the main story instead of Wikipedia, and Google's motives are much more assailable by the pro-SOPA crowd, so this would not be an improvement. Better for Google to stay online and enable those experiencing fresh, virgin outrage via Wikipedia, to search for more information.[/quote]
Right. Which is why my personal blackout was voluntary. I was hoping to have some effect on ad revenue rather than raising awareness - different goals, different methods.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4187&start=0#p30132
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Truble with "Slay Doctor Lucke" in Extension Intelligent Hi"
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2012-01-19 09:51:15

[quote]This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6G60) on its most recent run through:


Problem. You wrote 'do the action of inserting blackmail materials into fireplace'  , but 'inserting blackmail materials into fireplace' is not an action I can try. This looks as if it might be because it contains something of the wrong kind. My best try involved seeing if 'blackmail materials' could be an object, which might have made sense, but it turned out to be something unrecognised.

 See the manual: 7.4 > Try and try silently

I was trying to match this phrase:

action of (inserting blackmail materials into fireplace - an action) 

This was what I found out:

inserting blackmail materials into fireplace = something unrecognised[/quote] 

When trying example "Slay Doctor Lucky] the compiler returns message. Does anyone have a fix for this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3818&start=60#p30133
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF Horror and My Aggravation
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-19 10:07:32

[quote="bowsmand"]To my mind, calling Lovecraft purple is like calling [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQXuazYI_YU]this famous rant[/url] purple-- it goes on, perhaps, but it's expressive.  Where Clark is upset, Howard is horrified.  One might not think his prose is "pure poetry," but f*ck poetry.  It was too easy for HPL... if his letters are to be believed, he could compose sonnets in 10 minutes and spat heroic couplets at the drop of a hat.  If you want poetry, read his poetry, not his prose.  How about [url=http://www.lovecraftlibrary.org/hpl/fungi/]Fungi from Yuggoth[/url]?  But no doubt readers will find his formalism "affected"...

I don't know.  Sometimes when I talk about HPL with people, I get the feeling we're talking about two completely different authors.  I probably can't or shouldn't continue in this conversation if I'm to keep my stress levels in check.

/rant, I guess.[/quote]
Dude, you might want to consider the idea that you might be too attached to HP Lovecraft if you are having trouble even identifying people who are on your side. I said his prose was purple but that [i]it didn't matter[/i] and that it was [i]normal[/i] — so there is no need to focus on that word and generate from it an insult where none was intended. I also said it wasn't pure poetry but that was meant to place views that he should aspire to something 'poetic' in context; not to imply that he [i]should[/i] be writing poetry. And in your eagerness to pull words out of context so you could properly take umbrage at them, you entirely overlooked a heap of praise I ladled. I do not look down upon Lovecraft, not even a little bit. But your reactionary stance that leads you to say something like 'Fuck poetry' is probably ripe for re-examination on your part: that phrase does not place your literary opinions in a very credible light. Imagine for a moment that you just met yourself for the first time (as I just did), and you read yourself saying something like 'Fuck poetry' — how much value would you expect out of the rest of this new acquaintance's opinions? In any case, you are preaching to someone who is clearly also a fan of Lovecraft here; any debate between the two of us over who loves him better is not going to amount to much more than just a clash of personalities, so it's probably not worth having. 8)

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4187&start=0#p30134
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Truble with "Slay Doctor Lucke" in Extension Intelligent
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-01-19 10:27:12

The game defines blackmail material (in the singular) rather than blackmail materials (in the plural), so it's an easy fix:
[code]Requirements for Destroying-The-Evidence: do the action of inserting blackmail material into fireplace. Definition: Destroying-The-Evidence is complete if the material is off-stage.
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4150&start=0#p30135
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] automapping with non-opposite directions?
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2012-01-19 10:58:27

Alternate method (not tested):

Check whether the "doing automap work" activity is going on.

---

Phony room is a room.  It is not mappable.

To decide what room is (d - north) of (r - room1) when the doing automap work activity is going on: decide on phony room.
To decide what room is (d - west) of (r - room2) when the doing automap work activity is going on: decide on phony room.

Each turn:  place room2 at __ and __ from room1.

---

Yick, that's disgusting.  Will improve.


And please, don't stop at playing with the extension.  Release a game that uses it!  (Has there been any released game that uses my 
automapper, other than _Goldilocks is a FOX!_?)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4150&start=0#p30136
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] automapping with non-opposite directions?
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-01-19 11:50:02

Oops, so I forgot to email.

[quote="ralphmerridew"]Alternate method (not tested):

Check whether the "doing automap work" activity is going on.

---

Phony room is a room.  It is not mappable.

To decide what room is (d - north) of (r - room1) when the doing automap work activity is going on: decide on phony room.
To decide what room is (d - west) of (r - room2) when the doing automap work activity is going on: decide on phony room.

Each turn:  place room2 at __ and __ from room1.

---

Yick, that's disgusting.  Will improve.


And please, don't stop at playing with the extension.  Release a game that uses it!  (Has there been any released game that uses my 
automapper, other than _Goldilocks is a FOX!_?)[/quote]

Well, your code looks much cleaner than my idea (which works. I just know I've committed several programming mistakes.) I'm sure you can find something that works best if you want to sleep on it.

I'm hoping that games will use your automap extension for David Cornelson's 10-room competition. I had a lot of fun drawing up maps. I'll be using a custom mapper for mine, but it's pretty clear yours works better generally. And I probably took a lot from yours, anyway.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4188&start=0#p30137
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Conditional relation + property + arithmetic relation
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-19 12:07:01

I'm not sure if I'm missing a subtlety here, or if this is just a bug:

[code]Test is a room.

A speech motivation is a kind of value. The speech motivations are idle, suggested, overheard, generally addressed, noticed, exclaimed, told, shown, asked, requested, and offered.

Definition: A speech motivation is personal rather than general if it is at least exclaimed.

A person has a speech motivation.

A person can be finished speaking, moved to speak, or waiting to speak.

Speech cueing relates a person (called motivated speaker) to a speech motivation (called current reason) when the motivated speaker is not finished speaking and the speech motivation of the motivated speaker is the current reason.

The verb to be ready to speak after implies the speech cueing relation.

When play begins: showme whether or not the player is ready to speak after a speech motivation that is at least exclaimed.[/code]

This will compile if I change the last line to this:
[code]When play begins: showme whether or not the player is ready to speak after a personal speech motivation.[/code]

Interestingly, this also fails to compile:

[code]When play begins: showme whether or not the player is ready to speak after a speech motivation.[/code]

Why won't it work both ways?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4189&start=0#p30138
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Post-Comp Release of A Night Guest
User: uux02 / DateTime: 2012-01-19 13:11:14

I'm glad to announce the release of the post-comp version of my game A Night Guest, where "comp" stands for Interactive Fiction Competition 2001 (!!!).

[b]Blurb for those who didn't play the original game (if you DID play it and still remember what it is about, please scroll down a bit to see a more appropriate blurb)[/b]:

A few testimonials:

[quote]Here we have a few bad verses with some IF squeezed into the gaps. Nice try.
[/quote]
[i]Stephen Bond[/i]

[quote]Extremely short, and not interesting.[/quote]
[i]Andrew Plotkin[/i]

[quote]> GUESS VERB. G. G. G. G. G. G. G. G. G. [/quote]
[i]Billy Harris[/i]

Wonder how a game like this managed to end up somewhere in the upper half of the IF-Comp? This is your chance to find out!

==================================

[b]Blurb for those who played it[/b]:

The fundamental change in comparison with the original version are the footnotes. Now, the author can communicate to the players directly, instead of depending on the mediation of a drunken lord.


The game has been recently uploaded to <a class="postlink" href="ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/unprocessed/ng11.zip">ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/unprocessed/ng11.zip</a>, and should be soon (or already has been, for that matter) moved to its permanent location at <a class="postlink" href="ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/ng11.gam">ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/ng11.gam</a>.

Enjoy!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=70#p30139
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-19 13:21:24

'K I fiddled a bit more with the benchmark test and had the following results for a 250x250 map:

[quote][u]Insert into a list of lists of lists:[/u]
677859.25µs ±0.14% (8 samples)
[u]Insert into a list:[/u]
52925612.00µs ±0.43% (5 samples)
[u]Pick from a list of lists of lists:[/u]
434473.59µs ±0.46% (12 samples)
[u]Pick from a list:[/u]
18588858.00µs ±0.10% (5 samples)[/quote]
From there I went down to 150x150:
[quote][u]Insert into a list of lists of lists:[/u]
201253.41µs ±0.28% (25 samples)
[u]Insert into a list:[/u]
6802601.00µs ±0.12% (5 samples)
[u]Pick from a list of lists of lists:[/u]
123958.83µs ±0.21% (41 samples)
[u]Pick from a list:[/u]
2314028.75µs ±0.20% (5 samples)[/quote]
And finally 100x100:
[quote][u]Insert into a list of lists of lists:[/u]
81415.98µs ±0.35% (62 samples)
[u]Insert into a list:[/u]
1390266.38µs ±0.17% (5 samples)
[u]Pick from a list of lists of lists:[/u]
48552.05µs ±0.28% (100 samples)
[u]Pick from a list:[/u]
471688.00µs ±0.35% (11 samples)[/quote]
So using flat lists seems to be a bad idea when you work on large scale maps, while they win quiet an edge (at least when it comes to picking their content) during any smaller example. I'll need to keep this in mind.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4150&start=0#p30140
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [i7] automapping with non-opposite directions?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-19 13:25:58

[quote="ralphmerridew"]Has there been any released game that uses my automapper, other than _Goldilocks is a FOX!_?[/quote]
I don't know if it counts as released (it seems to be in open beta), but there is [url=http://gynoid.game-host.org/]this game[/url]. It uses Glimmr Automap, which means it uses your automapper, since Glimmr Automap (as you know) is just a graphical frontend to your extension.

[b]Edited to add:[/b] There was also an entry in the 7-Day Roguelike Competition a year or two ago that used Automap: <a class="postlink" href="http://256k.org/IFRL/">http://256k.org/IFRL/</a>.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4113&start=10#p30141
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Whispers?
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-01-19 13:32:34

All right, I've sent the opening scene to the first person on the list.

Four authors expressed interest, so I'm planning on sending the story around to everyone in the cycle two or three times, in order to end up with around 8-12 sections. But I'll probably accept new participants at least up until the end stages. Anyone interested can still follow the instructions in the first post on [url=http://novelinteraction.wordpress.com]my site[/url] to contact me.

I'll keep that site updated with the status of the project as it progresses.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=70#p30142
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-19 13:50:52

[quote="Basti50"]'K I fiddled a bit more with the benchmark test and had the following results[/quote]
It strikes me that it might be a good idea to post the source code for these tests. I added mine on the previous page. Interpretations of these tests, and whether they actually apply to possible optimizations for any given application, depend on the precise conditions of the test. My test above, for example, would only apply to an R&D map if you were routinely using the upper z-levels. Most users, though, would probably be using only the first z-level... In other words, to look at R&D, it obviously makes more sense to test configurations that actually reflect how R&D (and its users) might handle things.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4154&start=0#p30143
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ogg in Web Player
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-19 13:54:41

I've put together a basic sound support extension for WebUI, using the [url=http://www.schillmania.com/projects/soundmanager2/]SoundManager 2[/url] JS library.

You can find the project files here:
<a class="postlink" href="http://dev.tads.io/websound/dir?ci=tip">http://dev.tads.io/websound/dir?ci=tip</a>

(Or download the [url=http://dev.tads.io/websound/zip/websound-88d98f0263c68ad2.zip?uuid=88d98f0263c68ad2c4467e77494608a8ba3687f5]zip archive[/url].)

It uses HTML TADS sound tags, which are filtered from the output and dispatched as events to WebUI. Most of the attributes are unimplemented, the exceptions being "src" and "cancel", both with caveats.

The makefile contains some resource shadowing trickery, where the stock main.htm and main.js are bundled and later replaced by the modified versions. I don't know if this behavior is legal or well-defined, but it seems to work.

Sound files are currently required to be under webuires; this can probably be fixed but I couldn't figure out how to get resources stored elsewhere to not return a 404. The last line of the makefile shows how to remap a sound file in a different folder into the webuires hierarchy.

For our purposes, the most significant logic is the soundPlay function in sound.js. This takes the attributes from a sound tag as a parameter and does stuff. It should be straightforward to extend it if the SM2 API supports what you want to do.

MP3 is probably your best bet as far as formats go. SM2 does support Ogg and can be set to favor it where native support is available, but to take advantage of this you'd need to specify multiple files in the sound tag, then modify soundPlay to set things up correctly.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4188&start=0#p30144
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conditional relation + property + arithmetic relation
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-01-19 14:01:15

You might have a hat trick here.  As best I can tell, you've hit two different occurrences of the same bug, or else two closely related bugs, and [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=739]bug 739[/url] is making the problem messages unhelpful.

First, because you wrote[code]A person has a speech motivation.[/code]the wording ``speech motivation'' is ambiguous to Inform: it could mean either the kind of value or the speech-motivation-valued property of people.  It's guessing the latter when you mean the former and then not backtracking to try the alternative (see [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=686]bug 686[/url]).  You can get around the trouble by writing [code]A person has a speech motivation called motivation.[/code] or something like that instead.

Second, it's getting mixed up by ``at least,'' which can mean either ``at least'' for numbers or for speech motivations, and, again, it's not backtracking.  (Some trickiness comes from the fact that, under the hood, both share the greater-than-or-equal-to relation.)  You could define your own condition-expressing relationship and a verb for it as a workaround.

Or you can use an adjective to derail both ambiguities, as you already pointed out.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4093&start=20#p30145
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Harmonizing Glk file suffixes?
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-01-19 14:04:25

[quote="zarf"]A full path on iOS would be unrecognizable to most users, and you don't even want to know how Quixe handles it.[/quote]
Good point.

[quote="zarf"]If a game interpreter uses a data-specific directory, there is a question of whether to use a common location, or divide it into game-specific subdirectories. (Or to put it another way: should the namespace of named files be per-game or app-wide?) Since data files may be exchanged between games, they should be given an app-wide namespace. In contrast, saved games should be per-game, as they can never be exchanged. Transcripts and input records can go either way.[/quote]
Thanks.  This is much clearer to me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4182&start=0#p30146
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Online Highscore List?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-01-19 14:37:12

Well, there's not much to tell yet other than that the I7 integration is coming up soon on the work list, but what's been done so far is mainly thought work (I should really write down the plans some of these days...)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4188&start=0#p30147
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conditional relation + property + arithmetic relation
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-19 14:50:41

[quote="EmacsUser"]Second, it's getting mixed up by ``at least,'' which can mean either ``at least'' for numbers or for speech motivations, and, again, it's not backtracking.  (Some trickiness comes from the fact that, under the hood, both share the greater-than-or-equal-to relation.)  You could define your own condition-expressing relationship and a verb for it as a workaround.[/quote]
I actually did that originally, but I guess I ran into the first problem.

[quote]Or you can use an adjective to derail both ambiguities, as you already pointed out.[/quote]
Unfortunately I was trying to compare the motivation with another variable, so that doesn't really work. I guess I'll just name the property.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4154&start=10#p30148
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ogg in Web Player
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-19 15:02:09

Thanks for doing the extra work, Ben. I can't help wishing I understood what you're saying....

"...filtered from the output and dispatched as events to WebUI...", "...resource shadowing trickery...", "...currently required to be under webuires...", "...last line of the makefile shows how to remap a sound file in a different folder into the webuires hierarchy...", "...the most significant logic is the soundPlay function in sound.js. This takes the attributes from a sound tag as a parameter...", "...specify multiple files in the sound tag, then modify soundPlay..."

I can get around pretty well in T3, but when I read descriptions like that, I can only echo Manuel in the Fawlty Towers episode where Basil has bet on a horse and doesn't want Sibyl to find out: "I know nothing."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4154&start=10#p30149
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ogg in Web Player
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-19 16:19:49

Well, I am happy to unpack it.

The only TADS code is the OutputFilter defined in websound/websound.t. Basically all this does is scan output for <sound> tags. It rewrites them in an XML compliant way and then uses [url=http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/libref/object/eventPage.html]eventPage.sendEvent[/url] to send them to the browser.

On the browser side, I modified main.htm to load the new sound libraries (websound/sound.js and websound/soundmanager2.js). I also modified the main.js script to initialize the sound code (line 27) and to handle <sound> tags (line 115). Those were the only real changes needed in the stock code.

However, since main.htm and main.js are part of webui, they are already included as resources in the T3 output. One approach would be to copy the entire webuires folder from the base install into the game directory, and then modify the files locally. This is straightforward but requires all of those files to be distributed instead of just the modified ones. It has the drawback of making the change look much more invasive than it really is.

If you look at the Makefile.t3m, you'll see that I used a different approach. I included the modified files in a separate directory (websound) and then told the compiler to name them something else when linking them in. This is normal; the unusual part is doing that when there is definitely another resource with that name already in the .t3 file. First the default webuires/main.htm gets added as webuires/main.htm, and then websound/main.htm gets added as webuires/main.htm. The old resource is still there, but it's inaccessible because another resource took its name.

This seems to do what I want - the first main.htm gets superseded by the next one - but I don't know if it's guaranteed to work.

Something similar has to happen with audio files in order to get them to where the browser can find them. Normally if you had a file called res/audio.mp3, you could link it in and all would be well. But with WebUI the files need to be under the webuires structure or the browser can't access them. So in the makefile, you can say "add this resource but use this path instead of the original one" - that's what the last line does.

Then in your T3 code you can refer to "res/audio.mp3", the JS code will look for "/webuires/res/audio.mp3", and the compiler will make sure that is the resource path.

The idea is that authors can use the same sound tags to support audio in both adv3 and adv3web games. The only thing that has to change is the makefile, but that has to change in any case to include the networking features.

If you open up soundPlay() in sound.js the rest of it should be clear. It's just straight JS code at that point. Right now it only does stuff with the src and cancel attributes. But you could add any attribute you like and handle it in a similar way. For example:

[code]
function soundPlay(tag) {
	var cancel = tag.getNamedItem("cancel");
	if (cancel) {
		soundManager.stopAll();
	}
	else {
		var mp3Src = tag.getNamedItem("src");
		var oggSrc = tag.getNamedItem("oggSrc");
		// some code that uses both the MP3 and OGG filenames to set up SM2
	}
}
[/code]

Then your T3 game code could send a somewhat nonstandard sound tag that references both files.

[code]
<sound src="res/test.mp3" oggSrc="res/test.ogg" />
[/code]

Whether that works depends entirely on how the soundPlay function handles that combination of attributes.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=70#p30150
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-19 16:23:50

Agreed, added my source code above (had to correct the results too while I was at it). It was mostly to test whatever happens when you expand lists, both for map creation and display creation, and how well these different approaches handle multiple entries selection, which would be important if you want to get data from a map. It's a bit harder to estimate on Gargoyle since it would terminate the test cases with list of x-lists earlier but, from what I can see in Git at least, list of x-lists seems to be the winner here in the long run.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4190&start=0#p30151
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Altering startup characteristics - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-19 17:26:21

I wish to thank all of you who have helped me tremendously over the last weeks. I have another project to finish now that I'm finally starting to learn about TADS. When my game attempts to  start, I want to first hide/clear the status bar and not show anything about the starting room. Then I wish to display the introduction and pause it until the space key is pressed. Nothing but the introduction should be seen until the key is pressed. I'm sure this can be done with some help.

RonG

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4190&start=0#p30152
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Altering startup characteristics - TADS3.1
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-19 17:51:48

This is the third time you ask about this. We already answered that question.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4182&start=0#p30154
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Online Highscore List?
User: InsertCoin25 / DateTime: 2012-01-19 21:32:38

[quote="Juhana"]Well, there's not much to tell yet other than that the I7 integration is coming up soon on the work list, but what's been done so far is mainly thought work (I should really write down the plans some of these days...)[/quote]

I can't wait to see how this translates into Inform 7...pretty excited because this will open up Inform 7 in all kinds of directions. Best of luck and hopefully something progresses soon:)

InsertCoin25

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4169&start=10#p30155
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Benchmarking beta PLUS Contributions wanted for a test s
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-19 22:11:59

Just a couple more thoughts:

First, I've edited my local copy of Benchmarking to show the description of each test case:
[code]Before benchmarking a test case (called test case) (this is the showing a test case's info rule):
	now the current test case is the test case;
	now the current phase is "";
	now the current sample number is 0;
	say "[line break][The test case][line break][italic type][description of the test case][roman type]";[### Changed ET - 1/18/2012]
	pause briefly;[/code]I'm not sure where that is desirable for all users, but there it is.

Second, for the bank of test cases you're hoping to put together: Ron Newcomb a while back posted [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1454]some code[/url] for searching through tables that used optimized glulx opcodes (@linearsearch, and maybe one of the others?) That might make for a nice comparison with the standard I7 code.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4191&start=0#p30156
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Quixe Update????
User: InsertCoin25 / DateTime: 2012-01-19 22:43:39

Will Quixe be updated to include images and sounds in the near future?

Thanks
InsertCoin25

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=40#p30157
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-19 23:05:11

Sorry for being a little late, but I wanted to post the list of words for my first game. If someone already has selected some it's not too late for me to choose others. 

[quote]
theory 1
focus 2
philosophy 3
goal 4
image 5
transform 6
deny 7
abandon 8
vision 9
invoke 10
[/quote]

The numbers refer to the frequency of that word's 'family' in the list ela gave us, I wasn't sure but I thought it would be good to select from each family.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=40#p30175
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: ela / DateTime: 2012-01-20 08:20:04

[quote="George"]

The numbers refer to the frequency of that word's 'family' in the list ela gave us, I wasn't sure but I thought it would be good to select from each family.[/quote]

Thanks a lot George! It's OK if you have 1 2 words in common  with others!  [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4188&start=0#p30176
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conditional relation + property + arithmetic relation
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-20 09:16:30

There's a problem with naming the property. I can't do this anymore:

[code]When play begins: showme the list of told people.[/code]

Any other ideas?

Here's my failed attempt to use a custom relation to compare speech motivations:

[code]Test is a room.

A speech motivation is a kind of value. The speech motivations are idle, suggested, overheard, generally addressed, noticed, exclaimed, told, shown, asked, requested, and offered.

Definition: A speech motivation is personal rather than general if it is at least exclaimed.

Relative cueing relates a speech motivation (called first reason) to a speech motivation (called second reason) when the first reason is greater than the second reason.

The verb to be more public than implies the relative cueing relation. The verb to be more private than implies the reversed relative cueing relation.

A person has a speech motivation.

A person can be finished speaking, moved to speak, or waiting to speak.

Speech cueing relates a person (called motivated speaker) to a speech motivation (called current reason) when the motivated speaker is not finished speaking and the speech motivation of the motivated speaker is the current reason.

The verb to be ready to speak after implies the speech cueing relation.

When play begins: showme whether or not the player is ready to speak after a speech motivation that is more public than noticed.

When play begins: showme the list of suggested people.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4142&start=10#p30177
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Shared world
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-01-20 10:05:52

[quote="George"]
I propose something set in the past, but with the possibility of a timeline that diverged from our established history at some point. That gives us a lot of freedom, while at the same time providing a lot of familiar hooks that might interest authors.[/quote]
This seems to be a good approach, because serious revisionists aside we will mostly have a shared view of the facts of history. Divergent time line seems to be a good idea. I know in the last decade there's been an explosion of interest in Steampunk. It could be interesting if we took a similar tact but with a unique concept. So, following peterorme's suggested format, here's some more setting ideas:

[list]
[*]Byron vs. the Forces of Darkness
It's 1816, the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer]Year Without Summer[/url]. There's famine and riots in the street; people are calling it the end of days. Little do they know that it really *is* the end times. Heroes in the mould of Byron and the Shelleys fight abyssal denizens and Promethean horrors, with vim, vigour and supreme verbosity. [/*:m]
[*]Darwin on a Flying Bike
It's renaissance Italy, a time of intrigue, beauty and corruption. Most of all, it is a time of individual excellence. A new cadre of brilliant artists and inventors have raised the bar and mechanical wonders flourish in Florence, but will they be enough to save the city from machinations of popes and princes?[/*:m]
[*]Weird Plague Pirate Island
An island (Like [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertatia]Libertalia[/url]) is used for quarantining pirates and plague-ridden convicts. The plague mutates bizarrely, changing the infected irrevocably, giving odd powers. Expect sea battles, rival pirate gangs and weird stuff happening.[/*:m][/list:u]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4194&start=0#p30178
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7 problem i can't get over
User: Arminius / DateTime: 2012-01-20 10:37:40

Here is the code:


"The Unknown Life and Death in Dicksville" by N P Uwe Krickelberg


Dicksville is a region.
Dicksville contains a room called The Pub. 
The describtion for The Pub is "This is the place where people, the Dicks, meet reaching from the homeless to the hedonists. Beyond social differences they share plenty of conversations about the latest Dicks-Will. 

Of significane are this evening's following guest's: Dr. Haberlot, a regular after-work guest who is the mayor's taylor, Busty, the ever-broke amateur scientist and J. W. Reck, a beggar and alcoholist who was once known as the best chef in Dicksville."



Here is Inform's response:

Problem. You wrote 'The describtion for The Pub is "This is the place where people, th [...] wn as the best chef in Dicksville."'  : but this seems to say that a thing is a value, like saying 'the chair is 10'.



Any idea would be great. Thx.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4194&start=0#p30179
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 problem i can't get over
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-20 10:42:33

You need "the descri[b]p[/b]tion [b]of[/b] The Pub..." -- it has to be "of" not "for," and there's a typo in "description."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4194&start=0#p30180
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 problem i can't get over
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-20 10:44:13

[code]The description of The Pub is[/code]

Edit: Darn, too slow [emote]:([/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4188&start=0#p30181
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conditional relation + property + arithmetic relation
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-20 11:16:40

[quote]There's a problem with naming the property. I can't do this anymore:[/quote]

This requires you to define a sentence verb:

[code]
A person has a speech motivation called the motive.
The verb to speak by (it speaks by, they speak by, it is speaking by) implies the motive property.
	...
	showme the list of people who speak by told.
[/code]

("Speak by being ..." is more grammatical, but I like to keep these verb phrases short. Up to you.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4191&start=0#p30182
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe Update????
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-20 11:18:50

It's not the next thing I'm doing with Quixe. It will happen.

(Images will happen before sounds, as the sound support of HTML remains questionable.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4190&start=0#p30183
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Altering startup characteristics - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-20 11:39:25

I really feel like a total pest having posted this before. As you may know, I have dementia which is a short-range memory loss. So, I print out every post to which I receive a reply. I seemed to have misplaced the former posts on this subject. Right now, I've pretty much finished up all the game init stuff so that's why I went back to this. I'll start using notes and give you guys a rest for awhile.

RonG

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4190&start=0#p30184
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Altering startup characteristics - TADS3.1
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-20 11:46:25

Here is the code I use to do this.

[code]
gameMain: GameMainDef
	// lots of other stuff omitted
	showIntro() {
		statuslineBanner.removeBanner();
		cls();
		showText();
		"<p>";
		"<i>Press any key to continue.</i>";
		inputManager.getKey(nil,nil);
		cls();
		showText();
		"<p>";
		statusLine.initBannerWindow(statuslineBanner);
		inherited();
	}

	showText() {
		"Behold, a work of interactive fiction! ";
	}
;
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4195&start=0#p30185
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: What are lists?
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-20 11:50:00

I've got to realize that I work quiet a lot with lists while not really knowing what a list itself is. What kind of data structure am I dealing with here, a linked list or something? Arrays? Is there maybe any more in-depth reading material I can dig through?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4190&start=0#p30186
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Altering startup characteristics - TADS3.1
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-20 11:52:17

You can bookmark this link:

[url]http://www.intfiction.org/forum/search.php?keywords=&terms=all&author=RonG&fid=10&sc=1&sf=all&sr=topics&sk=t&sd=d&st=0&ch=300&t=0&submit=Search[/url]

When you visit it, it will show you all threads you have started in the TADS section of the forum. Hopefully, this will help in revisiting old answers.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4196&start=0#p30187
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Activities with results
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-20 12:07:47

I was thinking that there weren't any activities where the result of the rulebook was checked, but it turns out there is one: Deciding whether all includes.

There's no invocation of it in the Standard Rules, so I assume it's called from I6.

What I want to know is, is it possible to invoke an activity from I7 and remember the result of the "for" rulebook?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4191&start=0#p30188
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe Update????
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-20 12:11:23

Does that mean that the next thing is that @javascript opcode? [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4195&start=0#p30189
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: What are lists?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-20 12:51:01

The short answer is that lists are just what they sound like: a sequence of elements. They are similar to arrays but typically lack the random access feature.

I recommend [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=zj3ie12ewi1mrj1t]Lists and Lists[/url]. It changed my life, and will teach you how powerful such a simple data structure can be.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4191&start=0#p30190
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe Update????
User: InsertCoin25 / DateTime: 2012-01-20 12:54:44

[quote="zarf"]It's not the next thing I'm doing with Quixe. It will happen.

(Images will happen before sounds, as the sound support of HTML remains questionable.)[/quote]

Thanks for the reply zarf [emote]:D[/emote] 

InsertCoin25

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3973&start=0#p30191
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary v1.00 Released! Bugreps and suggs always welco
User: therealeasterbunny / DateTime: 2012-01-20 12:55:20

No worries and thanks for the feedback. Sorry not replied for a few days, I'v been a bit ropey, but on the mend now, catching up with everything. 

If you do use Visionary, if there is anything I can add to it functionality wise to make your life easier in it for controlling it, which is quick and easy for me to code in, please let me know and I'll bang out a v1.01 [emote]:)[/emote]

I'm currently thinking of coding in a "proper" file open / save dialog box" which should also be in v1.01. 

In the mean time, have fun!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4188&start=0#p30192
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conditional relation + property + arithmetic relation
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-20 13:09:21

Whoa, I didn't know you could do that! Although I suppose if I defined it as a relation instead of a property the verb would be the same.

I ended up dealing with this issue in a more specific way. I needed it to be able to handle gift transactions, so I defined some very specific gift-giving relations. But now that I know that, I might go back and tweak the syntax to be slightly more readable:

[code]A person has a speech motivation called the cue.

Gift-offering relates a thing (called the gift) to a person (called the recipient) when the gift is the concern of the recipient and the cue of the recipient is offered.

The verb to be offered to implies the gift-offering relation.

Definition: A thing is currently offered if it is offered to the person asked.

Gift-requesting relates a thing (called the gift) to a person (called the donor) when the gift is the concern of the donor and the cue of the donor is requested.

The verb to be requested from implies the gift-requesting relation.

Definition: A thing is currently requested if it is requested from the person asked.

Definition: A thing is pointlessly requested if it is currently requested and it is not enclosed by the person asked.
[/code]

Of course all of this is a substitute for a 3-way relation. I wish:

[code]Context relates a person (called the listener) to a thing (called the subject matter) and a speech motivation (called the reason) when the subject matter is the concern of the listener and the reason is the cue of the listener.

The verb to be concerned about it because implies the context relation.[/code]

Of course now that I've phrased it that way, I can see using a 3-argument to-decide-whether phrase would make the specific relation definitions simpler.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4196&start=0#p30195
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Activities with results
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-20 14:15:49

Does it work to check "if rule succeeded" afterwards?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4195&start=0#p30196
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: What are lists?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-20 14:17:03

An I7 list is a variable-size array.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4191&start=0#p30197
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe Update????
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-20 14:18:17

Well, the *next* thing is the glk_stream_open_resource() feature that's mentioned in the "Glk suffixes" thread.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4093&start=30#p30199
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Harmonizing Glk file suffixes?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-20 14:23:54

Rethinking the glk_stream_open_resource_uni() call a bit... would it be better for the binary/text flag to be encoded in the Blorb file, rather than being supplied at stream_open time?

The difference is only relevant if you're reading Unicode data; it tells the interpreter whether to expect four-byte Unicode values or UTF-8. It makes sense to get this flag from the Blorb file, since the data chunk will definitely be one or the other.

(The Blorb chunk type would be TEXT or BINA, I suggest.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4190&start=0#p30200
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Altering startup characteristics - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-20 15:12:11

Thanks for the information. Will try it shortly. Also thanks for the bookmark. I will put that to use.

RonG

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4196&start=0#p30201
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Activities with results
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-20 15:19:47

Doesn't look like it:

[code]Test is a room.

Detecting shenanigans on something is an activity on objects.

When play begins:
	Repeat with item running through things:
		carry out the detecting shenanigans on activity with item;
		if rule succeeded, say "Shenanigans on [the item].";
		otherwise say "No shenanigans on [the item].";
		
For detecting shenanigans on the player: rule succeeds;

There is a ball. For detecting shenanigans on the ball: rule fails;[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4196&start=0#p30202
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Activities with results
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-20 16:04:21

Extrapolating from the whether-all-includes code, I'd try this:

[code]
Include (-
[ CarryOutActivityRes A o rv;
    BeginActivity(A, o);
    ForActivity(A, o);
    rv = RulebookSucceeded();
    EndActivity(A, o);
    return rv;
];
-).

To decide whether carrying out the (A - activity on nothing) activity results:
    (- CarryOutActivityRes({A}) -).
To decide whether carrying out the (A - activity on value of kind K) activity with (val - K) results:
    (- CarryOutActivityRes({A}, {val}) -).
[/code]

This is untested, and must count as an undocumented I7 feature to begin with.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4195&start=0#p30203
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: What are lists?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-20 20:02:29

Would it be possible to use the Glulx acceleration opcodes (@linearsearch, etc.) on I7 lists?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=70#p30204
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-20 20:10:39

Here's a sample that reflects alternate ways that the map-objects (basic tilecell map, the m_room property) in R&D could be set up. It tries to reflect what I expect would be a fairly typical usage: a 10x10 map in a single z-level. Each test checks a cell at random from the 100 available to see what object is stored there.

The first is as a flat list of 100 cells, with no z-levels stored within the list:
[quote][b]Selecting randomly from a simple list[/b]
[i]Checks the identity of a random entry from a list of 100 total objects: {1..100}[/i]
5.09µs ±0.65% (100 samples)[/quote]

The second is as a nested list, where each z-level is stored separately as a single flat list. This example assumes that only 1 z-level is represented, so all 100 cells are in the first nested entry:
[quote][b]Selecting randomly from a nested list[/b]
[i]Checks the identity of a random object in the first nested list of 100 total objects: { {1..100}, {} }[/i]
8.30µs ±0.51% (100 samples)[/quote]

The third is the way that R&D is actually set up. Each row (y-axis) is stored as a separate nested list, and these are further stored within a grouping that represents the z-level. The example assumes that only 1 z-level is represented, and that the 100 cells are organized into a 10x10 grid.
[quote][b]Selecting randomly from a double nested list[/b]
[i]Checks the identity of a random object in the first double-nested list of 100 total objects: {  { {1..10}, {1..10}, {1..10}, {1..10}, etc. }, { {} }  }
[/i]10.71µs ±0.20% (100 samples)[/quote]

At this scale (i.e., 100 cells), the third way is slowest. A very small fraction (0.5-1.0µs?) of this is due to the fact that, due to the structure, the third test must select two random numbers, whereas the others must choose only one. 

Here's the same basic setup, but with a 20x10 grid:
[spoiler][quote][b]Selecting randomly from a simple list[/b]
[i]Checks the identity of a random entry from a list of 200 total objects: {1..200}
[/i]6.59µs ±0.83% (100 samples)

[b]Selecting randomly from a nested list[/b]
[i]Checks the identity of a random object in the first nested list of 200 total objects: { {1..200}, {} }[/i]
9.82µs ±0.91% (100 samples)

[b]Selecting randomly from a double nested list[/b]
[i]Checks the identity of a random object in the first double-nested list of 200 total objects: {  { {1..10}, 
{1..10}, {1..10}, {1..10}, etc. }  }[/i]
10.71µs ±0.27% (100 samples)
[/quote][/spoiler]

Again, but with a 20x20 grid:
[spoiler][quote][b]Selecting randomly from a simple list[/b]
[i]Checks the identity of a random entry from a list of 400 total objects: {1..400}[/i]
9.09µs ±1.34% (100 samples)

[b]Selecting randomly from a nested list[/b]
[i]Checks the identity of a random object in the first nested list of 400 total objects: { {1..400}, {} }[/i]
12.49µs ±1.15% (100 samples)

[b]Selecting randomly from a double nested list[/b]
[i]Checks the identity of a random object in the first double-nested list of 400 total objects: {  { {1..20}, 
{1..20}, {1..20}, {1..20}, etc. }  }[/i]
10.49µs ±0.21% (100 samples)
[/quote][/spoiler]

With a 40x20 grid, the flat list has become significantly slower than the double-nested list:
[spoiler][quote][b]Selecting randomly from a simple list[/b]
[i]Checks the identity of a random entry from a list of 800 total objects: {1..800}[/i]
15.07µs ±2.22% (100 samples)

[b]Selecting randomly from a nested list[/b]
[i]Checks the identity of a random object in the first nested list of 800 total objects: { {1..800}, {} }[/i]
17.76µs ±2.75% (100 samples)

[b]Selecting randomly from a double nested list[/b]
[i]Checks the identity of a random object in the first double-nested list of 800 total objects: {  { {1..20}, 
{1..20}, {1..20}, {1..20}, etc. }  }[/i]
11.36µs ±2.65% (100 samples)
[/quote][/spoiler]

A 40x40 grid, the trend is even more pronounced:
[spoiler][quote][b]Selecting randomly from a simple list[/b]
[i]Checks the identity of a random entry from a list of 1600 total objects: {1..1600}[/i]
27.25µs ±2.88% (100 samples)

[b]Selecting randomly from a nested list[/b]
[i]Checks the identity of a random object in the first nested list of 1600 total objects: { {1..1600}, {} }
[/i]28.82µs ±2.77% (100 samples)

[b]Selecting randomly from a double nested list[/b]
[i]Checks the identity of a random object in the first double-nested list of 1600 total objects: {  { {1..40}, 
{1..40}, {1..40}, {1..40}, etc. }  }[/i]
11.44µs ±0.51% (100 samples)
[/quote][/spoiler]

Comparing these examples, it seems clear that the third way--the way R&D stores map tiles currently--is the most consistent. Even quadrupling the number of cells, there is essentially no difference in the performance. However, while the other two methods show more degradation, the flat list method is still objectively faster than the double-nested list. But the single flat list doesn't have any way of storing z-levels, and the second method, which is fully three-dimensional, actually becomes slower than the double-nested list.

In sum, if R&D is to contain z-levels, the way it's doing it now is probably the best way--at least as far as storage of map tiles is concerned!

Edit to add: Here are numbers for a 400x400 map (160,000 cells). At this scale it's clear, as in Basti's examples, that standard lists and nested lists don't perform nearly as well as double-nested lists:

[spoiler][quote][b]Selecting randomly from a simple list[/b]
[i]Checks the identity of a random entry from a list of 160,000 total objects: {1..160,000}[/i]
1795.64µs ±6.15% (100 samples)

[b]Selecting randomly from a nested list[/b]
[i]Checks the identity of a random object in the first nested list of 160,000 total objects: { {1..160,000}, {} }[/i]
1931.70µs ±5.91% (100 samples)

[b]Selecting randomly from a double nested list
[/b][i]Checks the identity of a random object in the first 
double-nested list of 160,000 total objects: {  { {1..400}, 
{1..400}, {1..400}, {1..400}, etc. }  }[/i]
27.69µs ±1.84% (100 samples)[/quote][/spoiler]

So, if R&D maps are to have z-levels, large size, or both, then the way that it already stores map data is the best approach. Looks like we need to look at things other than basic structure for optimization ideas.

[spoiler]Source code for 100-cell and 160,000-cell maps:

[code]Include Benchmarking by Dannii Willis.

Simple search list is a list of objects variable.
Nested search list is a list of lists of objects variable. Nested search list is {{}, {}}.
Double-nested search list is a list of lists of lists of objects variable. Double-nested search list is 
{  { {}, {}, {}, {}, {}, {}, {}, {}, {}, {} }  }.

A dog is a kind of person.

Ralph, Scogg, and Zip are dogs.

When play begins:
	repeat with x running from 1 to 100:
		add a random dog to simple search list;
	repeat with x running from 1 to 2:
		repeat with y running from 1 to 100:
			add a random dog to entry 1 of the nested search list;
	repeat with x running from 1 to 1:
		repeat with y running from 1 to 10:
			repeat with z running from 1 to 10:
				add a random dog to entry y of entry x of the double-nested search list..
	
Selecting randomly from a simple list is a test case.
The author is "Erik Temple".
The description is "Checks the identity of a random entry from a list of 100 total objects: {1..100}".
To run simple-list select (this is running simple random selection):
	if entry (a random number between 1 and 100) in simple search list is the player:
		do nothing.
The run phrase is running simple random selection.

Selecting randomly from a nested list is a test case.
The description is "Checks the identity of a random object in the first nested list of 100 total objects: { {1..100}, {} }".
To run simple-list select (this is running random nested selection):
	if entry (a random number between 1 and 100) of entry 1 in nested search list is the player:
		do nothing.
The run phrase is running random nested selection.

Selecting randomly from a double nested list is a test case.
The description is "Checks the identity of a random object in the first double-nested list of 100 total objects: {  { {1..10}, {1..10} }, { {1..10}, {1..10}, etc. }  }."
To run simple-list select (this is running double-nested selection):
	if entry (a random number between 1 and 10) of entry (a random number between 1 and 10) of entry 1 in double-nested search list is the player:
		do nothing.
The run phrase is running double-nested selection.[/code]

[code]Include Benchmarking by Dannii Willis.

Simple search list is a list of objects variable.
Nested search list is a list of lists of objects variable. Nested search list is {{}, {}}.
Double-nested search list is a list of lists of lists of objects variable. Double-nested search list is {{}}.

A dog is a kind of person.

Ralph, Scogg, and Zip are dogs.

When play begins:
	repeat with x running from 1 to 160000:
		add a random dog to simple search list;
	repeat with x running from 1 to 2:
		repeat with y running from 1 to 160000:
			add a random dog to entry 1 of the nested search list;
	repeat with x running from 1 to 1:
		repeat with y running from 1 to 400:
			add {{}} to entry x of the double-nested search list;
			repeat with z running from 1 to 400:
				add a random dog to entry y of entry x of the double-nested search list.
				
Selecting randomly from a simple list is a test case.
The author is "Erik Temple".
The description is "Checks the identity of a random entry from a list of 160,000 total objects: {1..160,000}".
To run simple-list select (this is running simple random selection):
	if entry (a random number between 1 and 160000) in simple search list is the player:
		do nothing.
The run phrase is running simple random selection.

Selecting randomly from a nested list is a test case.
The description is "Checks the identity of a random object in the first nested list of 160,000 total objects: { {1..160,000}, {} }".
To run simple-list select (this is running random nested selection):
	if entry (a random number between 1 and 160000) of entry 1 in nested search list is the player:
		do nothing.
The run phrase is running random nested selection.

Selecting randomly from a double nested list is a test case.
The description is "Checks the identity of a random object in the first double-nested list of 160,000 total objects: {  { {1..400}, {1..400}, {1..400}, {1..400}, etc. }  }"
To run simple-list select (this is running double-nested selection):
	if entry (a random number between 1 and 400) of entry (a random number between 1 and 400) of entry 1 in double-nested search list is the player:
		do nothing.
The run phrase is running double-nested selection.[/code][/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3973&start=0#p30205
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Visionary v1.00 Released! Bugreps and suggs always welco
User: cas / DateTime: 2012-01-20 20:35:22

To anyone who wasn't aware, the latest release of Gargoyle includes a Glk port of ScottFree, so it should be able to play games created by Visionary.  For them to be recognized, however, they need an extension of .saga, not the more conventional .dat (mainly because AdvSys has already claimed that extension in Gargoyle).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4195&start=0#p30206
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: What are lists?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-21 00:46:29

In general, no, because Inform's low-level memory-handling code can split up a block into several memory segments.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4197&start=0#p30207
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Return to Doom help needed!
User: Dref / DateTime: 2012-01-21 01:59:16

I need help with this Topogilika (sp?) game.

[spoiler]Does anyone have the word the buzzing aliens say when you drop the drugs in the field? I saved the game after that point and lost the word, which I now need, and would hate to have to start all over![/spoiler]

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4197&start=0#p30208
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Return to Doom help needed!
User: Dref / DateTime: 2012-01-21 02:41:30

Never mind, I found a shortcut. For anyone who is interested, the word is [spoiler]ksggu.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4198&start=0#p30209
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Microsoft keeps it oldschool with pricey text adventure game
User: Greeny / DateTime: 2012-01-21 03:44:18

Microsoft keeps it old-school with a pricey text adventure game
 [emote]:D[/emote] 

[url]http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2012/01/microsoft-pimps-it-old-school-with-a-pricey-text-adventure-game.ars[/url]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4142&start=20#p30210
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Shared world
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-01-21 04:02:19

Oooh. Pirates! Mutants! No, wait... [i]mutant pirates![/i]

How about moving it to the Americas? Voudoun! Macumba! Condomblé!

This sounds like great fun.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4195&start=0#p30211
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: What are lists?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-01-21 05:13:54

Couldn't @linkedsearch be used for that though? (Not saying it could as it's currently implemented, but that if the implementation was altered...)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4199&start=0#p30212
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: understanding the article in a table's topics
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-01-21 06:45:58

This is a nuisance.
I just found out the the following code:
[code]Table of E-Pad's Replies
Topic	Knowledge
"me/myself/5835/user" or "user 5835"	"You are user 5,835 of this device, bearing no significant difference between all the other 5,834"[/code]
will output the right answer to "RESEARCH ME", "--MYSELF", "--USER", or "--USER 5835" but won't work if we type "RESEARCH [b]THE[/b] USER 5835". 

I could simply add the article in a new bracket... but. The E-Pad has about 250 nouns. I bet there is a quick way out of this, right?

Thx for any kind of help with this one.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4199&start=0#p30213
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: understanding the article in a table's topics
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-01-21 09:07:09

You could just add the articles into the grammar for whatever your "researching" action is. Something like:
[code]Understand "research [text]" as researching.
Understand "research a/the [text]" as researching.[/code]
However, I'm curious -- you say there are 250 potential nouns. Are you sure you want to use topics for this? If some of these nouns represent actual objects in the game you could save yourself work by creating a research action which applies to things and a separate action which applies to topics.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4200&start=0#p30214
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Megaupload taken offline
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-01-21 09:13:23

Just wanted to spread the word. In case you didn't know already. I certainly didn't. I used it often to share files too large to e-mail...

<a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaupload#Legal_case">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaupload#Legal_case</a>

<a class="postlink" href="http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-shut-down-120119/">http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-shut-down-120119/</a>

EDIT - I think I come across, in this community, as a bit of an off-line freak - I want to download everything, I want offline copies of every web-based game. I know it sounds ridiculous in this day and age where - theoretically - web-access is a standard. Well, I think of all the people who used MegaUpload as a storage device and I rest my case. If it's in my hard drive, I'll always be able to access it, whereas websites may fall without warning or notice.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4198&start=0#p30215
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Microsoft keeps it oldschool with pricey text adventure 
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-21 09:51:32

For player experience, I'll stick with the old classic, vim.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4198&start=0#p30216
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Microsoft keeps it oldschool with pricey text adventure 
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-01-21 10:20:50

Very droll. (Though somewhat shocked by the ultimate edition: it costs more than my yearly income!)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4142&start=20#p30217
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Shared world
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-01-21 10:44:45

Yeah there's a lot of scope for some tiny island in the Caribbean Sea (the classic pirate location). Perhaps a penal colony abandoned to the plague? With the lack of authority on the island, it could present itself as a haven for pirates and strange folk, who end up mutated as well!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4195&start=0#p30218
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: What are lists?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-21 11:00:42

Yes, if you changed the implementation, it could do something that's not currently possible. This is always a true statement. :)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4198&start=0#p30219
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Microsoft keeps it oldschool with pricey text adventure 
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-21 11:07:16

As a bonus, vim is bundled with many modern platforms as part of the free "retro" package!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4199&start=0#p30220
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: understanding the article in a table's topics
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-01-21 11:21:35

It works, and thank you very much. As usual, it was easy but my mind just didn't want to lock on the target.

Yeah, there are 250 names circa (maybe less, but no less than 150 synonyms). Only a part of it (20%, maybe) is about objects.
And, yes, that could've been a rather bright idea... if only it came up to my lazy mind in the beginning...

Well, my grannie used to say: "He, who doesn't have brains, has to have legs". I finally got the meaning of it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4200&start=0#p30221
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Megaupload taken offline
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-01-21 11:26:16

I understand. I use DropBox... and why shouldn't it be closed for the same reasons, too? Time to re-download everything.

I hate what they are doing, there. But most of all I hate the fact the proprietor or MU risks up to... 50 years in jail.
That seems fair, considering a murderer only gets 30. When exceptionally unlucky.

But, then again: murder very rarely gets in the way of big industries revenues...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4041&start=0#p30222
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: No Travel Without A Compass - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-21 12:39:28

I recently tested the code included with this post topic. The result of compiling it was a very large number of errors. I tried a number of changes and read through the TADS manuals and had no luck in getting it to compile without errors. I also placed this batch near the top of the game coding but that made no difference. 

I hope someone can see what's wrong with it. [emote]:cry:[/emote]  [emote]:cry:[/emote] 

RonG

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4041&start=0#p30223
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: No Travel Without A Compass - TADS3.1
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-21 13:02:31

Can you post the errors?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4041&start=0#p30224
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: No Travel Without A Compass - TADS3.1
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2012-01-21 13:11:46

[quote="RonG"]I recently tested the code included with this post topic. The result of compiling it was a very large number of errors. I tried a number of changes and read through the TADS manuals and had no luck in getting it to compile without errors.[/quote]

At the risk of asking a really dumb question, did you literally copy the line:

[code]
  if (the actor performing the action doesn't have a compass)
[/code]

If so, that would be the problem. I imagine bcressey meant you to translate into something like:

[code]
  if (!compass.isIn(gActor))
[/code]

Apologies in advance if I'm just pointing out the obvious.

--Eric

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4041&start=0#p30225
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: No Travel Without A Compass - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-21 13:47:23

Here's the code as it now stands. Still getting a ton of errors. Will post errors on next post.

[code]

 Modify TravelAction
   execAction()
    {
     if(!compass.isIn(gActor))
      "You cannot go anywhere without a compass.";
     else
      inherited();
    }  
;
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4041&start=0#p30226
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: No Travel Without A Compass - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-21 13:50:39

Here Are The Errors. line 38 is the execAction() line. The last error is where the compass is defined.>t3make -Fy "C:\Documents and Settings\Frenchy\Desktop\The Magic Forest\obj" -Fo "C:\Documents and Settings\Frenchy\Desktop\The Magic Forest\obj" -o "debug\The Magic Forest.t3" -a -D "LANGUAGE=en_us" -D "MESSAGESTYLE=neu" -v -d -statprefix <@> -statpct "system.tl" "adv3\adv3.tl" "The Magic Forest.t" -res "GameInfo.txt"
TADS Compiler 3.1.0  Copyright 1999, 2010 Michael J. Roberts
The Magic Forest.t(38): error: 
An equals sign '=' is required to separate the property name and its value; the
parser found "execAction" where the '=' should go.  Check the syntax and supply
the missing '='.


The Magic Forest.t(39): error: 
A property name was expected in the object definition, but the compiler found
"{" instead.  Check for a missing semicolon at the end of the object
definition, and check for unbalanced braces prior to this line.


The Magic Forest.t(40): error: 
A property name was expected in the object definition, but the compiler found
"if" instead.  Check for a missing semicolon at the end of the object
definition, and check for unbalanced braces prior to this line.


The Magic Forest.t(40): error: 
A property name was expected in the object definition, but the compiler found
"(" instead.  Check for a missing semicolon at the end of the object
definition, and check for unbalanced braces prior to this line.


The Magic Forest.t(40): error: 
A property name was expected in the object definition, but the compiler found
"!" instead.  Check for a missing semicolon at the end of the object
definition, and check for unbalanced braces prior to this line.


The Magic Forest.t(40): error: 
An equals sign '=' is required to separate the property name and its value; the
parser found "." where the '=' should go.  Check the syntax and supply the
missing '='.


The Magic Forest.t(40): error: 
Invalid expression; expected an integer value, a string value (in single or
double quotes), a symbolic name (such as a function, object, or property name),
a list constant enclosed in square brackets '[ ]', or an expression in
parentheses '( )', but found ".".


The Magic Forest.t(40): error: 
A property name was expected in the object definition, but the compiler found
")" instead.  Check for a missing semicolon at the end of the object
definition, and check for unbalanced braces prior to this line.


The Magic Forest.t(41): error: 
A property name was expected in the object definition, but the compiler found
"You cannot go anywhere without a compass." instead.  Check for a missing
semicolon at the end of the object definition, and check for unbalanced braces
prior to this line.


The Magic Forest.t(42): error: 
The compiler expected a function or object definition, but found "else".  Check
the syntax, and check for unbalanced braces '{ }' and other syntax errors
preceding this line.


The Magic Forest.t(44): error: 
The compiler expected a function or object definition, but found "}".  Check
the syntax, and check for unbalanced braces '{ }' and other syntax errors
preceding this line.


The Magic Forest.t(772): error: 
The symbol "compass" is already defined, so you cannot use it as the name of an
object here.  This symbol is already being used as the name of a function or
property elsewhere in your program.  Change the name to a unique symbol.


Errors:   12
Warnings: 0

t3make: error code 1

Build failed.
----- end build: Sat Jan 21 14:47:45 2012 -----

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4201&start=0#p30227
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: I need some pity. - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-21 14:23:54

Boy, do I need some encouragement! After many hours and days of work, I've only gotten to the point where I've been able to add my first four rooms to my story. I've read that Inform7 isn't quite as powerful as TADS but I'm wondering if I shouldn't switch to that or maybe even Quest. What does everyone out there think?

RonG  [emote]:roll:[/emote]  [emote]:roll:[/emote]  [emote]:roll:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4195&start=0#p30228
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: What are lists?
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-21 15:13:13

@bcressey
Wow, that was both fun [i]and[/i] educational! Thanks for broadening my horizon [emote]:D[/emote]

@zarf
I take that, if you add a new element to a list, Inform creates a new array and copies the entire content of the old array + the new element into it? That would explain why the adding gets more costly the longer the list gets. Or is the underlying algorithm smarter than that?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=70#p30229
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-21 15:57:16

A quick feature-request post, to be followed by a second post making a stab at optimization suggestions.

[list][*]Currently, there is no support for mappable things, only mappable people (m_actors). What do you think about simply adding the properties needed for map display to the root "thing" kind? You could add a mappable property (e.g., "a thing can be mappable. A thing is usually not mappable"), allowing you to loop over only mappable things for fast printing. AI, of course, could continue to apply only to "person" and its subkinds.
[/*:m]
[*]R&D currently assumes that the users wants to use all compass directions. It would be nice if the user could limit conversions to use only cardinal directions (i.e. north, south, east, west). I suspect that many folks will not want always want to deal with the full 8-point compass.[/*:m][/list:u]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=70#p30230
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-21 15:58:44

Very kind of you to do some independent testing, much appreciated [emote]:)[/emote]
I consider making maps jump between method one and three, depending what their current size would favor, but that would require new pick/place phrases so it is more of a 'when I got time to spare' kinda idea.

As for optimizing displays though, if lists really are variable-size arrays and if they work as I think they do, it might be a better idea to switch to static arrays for a performance boost during built-up. In short steps:

[quote](1) Run through the map segment to-be-displayed and count all graphics
(2) Create an array with the estimated number of graphics
(3) Run through the map segment again and add all the graphics to the array
(4) Sort the array[/quote]
(1) shouldn't be a biggie
(2) I'm more afraid of since I would have to do Inform 6 stuff and my knowledge in that field is very basic at best (for example, does I6 even allow multidimensional arrays? I would need those). But since the sizes are fixed (both from (1) and since graphics themselves have a fixed number of elements) it should be easy enough
(3) again shouldn't be a problem once I figured out (2). The question is if running through the segment twice would slow things down too much but I would be optimistic in that regard
(4) depends mostly if there are already searching algorithms in place or if I would have to make my own Quicksort implementation  [emote]:?[/emote] 

From there it should be a piece of cake though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=70#p30231
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-21 16:11:02

[quote="Basti50"]As for optimizing displays though, if lists really are variable-size arrays and if they work as I think they do, it might be a better idea to switch to static arrays for a performance boost[/quote]

The difficulty with this is that you can't create arrays at run-time, and you can't resize arrays on the fly. Given that, you wouldn't be able to use the author's I7 specification for a room (e.g. room-height and room-width) and create an array. The author would pretty much need to declare the array in I6 and then associate it with the I7 array. (Check out the [url=http://www.inform-fiction.org/manual/DM4.pdf]DM4[/url] for more on I6 arrays.)

I think your best option optimizing display is probably simplification of graphics storage...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=70#p30232
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-21 16:13:45

[quote="ektemple"]Currently, there is no support for mappable things, only mappable people (m_actors).[/quote]
Weird, things should already be mappable too from the outset since they all get m_actors (see lower part of Section 0.5). Maybe the name is just misleading?
[quote="ektemple"]R&D currently assumes that the users wants to use all compass directions.[/quote]
The examples do so at least, yeah (and do a very crude job at overwriting the standard behavior too. Maybe I should think those alterations better through). I don't want to set any limitations though, or is there something specific you got in mind?

Edit:
[quote]The difficulty with this is that you can't create arrays at run-time[/quote]
I see, bummer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4195&start=0#p30233
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: What are lists?
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-01-21 16:23:59

They're more like a linked list of traditional arrays, which you think of as one long array.  You can read all about the technical details [url=http://inform7.com/sources/src/i6template/Woven/B-flext.pdf]here[/url] and [url=http://inform7.com/sources/src/i6template/Woven/B-listt.pdf]here[/url].  If you're seeing slowness, it's probably from the routine BlkSize—there was some discussion on that [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3241&start=10#p23574]here[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4201&start=0#p30234
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: I need some pity. - TADS3.1
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-21 16:38:46

I've seen people struggle with TADS in the past. (One friend in particular comes to mind.) I would have to say, I don't think TADS is for everybody.

You might want to download Inform 7 (or Quest, or Adrift) and have a look. You might find one of them more congenial.

Ultimately, Inform is just as fussy about word choices as TADS is about punctuation and templates. It's still computer programming, no matter how you slice it.

TADS is almost certainly harder to get started with than Inform 7. On the other hand, the TADS documentation is a good deal more extensive.... There are lots of pluses and minuses.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4041&start=0#p30235
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: No Travel Without A Compass - TADS3.1
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-21 16:41:06

You've capitalized the word "modify". T3 is case-sensitive.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=80#p30236
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-21 16:43:56

[quote="Basti50"][quote="ektemple"]Currently, there is no support for mappable things, only mappable people (m_actors).[/quote]
Weird, things should already be mappable too from the outset since they all get m_actors (see lower part of Section 0.5). Maybe the name is just misleading?[/quote]
Yeah, that's it--I was misled by the name into thinking I'd seen something in the source that I hadn't! Thanks.
(Also, probably, the language of the docs, which revers to "avatars"--usually thought of as representations of people.)

[quote="Basti50"][quote="ektemple"]R&D currently assumes that the users wants to use all compass directions.[/quote]
The examples do so at least, yeah (and do a very crude job at overwriting the standard behavior too. Maybe I should think those alterations better through). I don't want to set any limitations though, or is there something specific you got in mind?[/quote]
I was thinking of adding a phrase option to the built-in phrases to constrain the output to cardinal directions, but since the author is already handling movement and everything on his own, maybe it would be better to just include constraint to cardinal directions in one of the examples--which you already have done! But an AI constrained to 4 directions might be a helpful illustration.

I don't recall if I've already asked for this once or if was just on some now-lost list of mine: AI step routines return a vector (e.g., {1, 1, 0}) describing a direction. Is there a phrase for translating this into a coordinate? Ideally, I'd like to be able to pass a multiplier along with the vector and get back a coordinate on my map. (The multiplier being speed--if my doggy can do 2 cells per turn, then he should move +2x and +2y...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=80#p30237
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-21 16:44:50

Here are a few ideas for optimization:

[b]Declaration of maps versus dynamic generation[/b]
[spoiler]Keep moving ahead with options to specify full maps declaratively rather than procedurally (i.e., a map dump option, plus the human-readable input Basti has been working on). This won't help a game with randomized maps, but it will help with predefined maps, [i]especially[/i] with larger maps, bigger than 20x20 or so, I guess. (The downside to this is that doing this with large maps requires the user to set very high values for MAX_STATIC_DATA and MAX_ARRAYS.) This code seems to produce all of the data that the map generating activity instantiates:

[code]File of Map is called "mapdump".

To dump map of (R - an m_room):
	write "The map-tiles of [R] are [map-tiles of R in brace notation].[paragraph break]" to the file of map;
	append "The map-effects of [R] are [map-effects of R in brace notation].[paragraph break]" to the file of map;
	append "The map-graphics of [R] are [map-graphics of R in brace notation].[paragraph break]" to the file of map;
	append "The height-storage of [R] is [height-storage of R in brace notation].[paragraph break]" to the file of map;
	append "The map-objects of [R] are [map-objects of R in brace notation]." to the file of map;
	say "Map data dumped."[/code][/spoiler]
[b]Map-graphics (and other?) list-storage[/b]
[spoiler]Copying lists takes a long time. Take a look at the following comparison. The first is the time it takes to copy a single value from a list (very little). It takes about 25 times as long to copy a list, even one containing only a single value (see trials 2 and 3). Copying each of the values out of the list in turn is less expensive (see the fourth test), but they would need to be either employed right away or stored--individually--in global scope for this to be a useful optimization.

[quote]Copying simple value from a list
Looks at a random entry in a flat list of 100 items and copies the number it finds there: { n }
4.94µs ±0.62% (100 samples)

Copying list from nested list
Looks at a random entry in a nested list of 100 items and copies the list of numbers it finds there; 
there is only 1 number per copied list: { {n} }
119.96µs ±0.25% (100 samples)

Copying complex list
Looks at a random entry in a double-nested list of 100 items and copies the list of numbers it finds 
there; there are 5 numbers per copied list: { { {n, n, n, n, n} } }
124.38µs ±0.26% (100 samples)

One-by-one copying from complex list
Looks at a random entry in a double-nested list of 100 items and
copies the list of numbers it finds there [b]one by one[/b]; there are 
5 numbers per copied list: { { {n, n, n, n, n} } }
54.67µs ±1.36% (100 samples)[/quote]

Is there anywhere that you can avoid copying lists? I was thinking of the map-graphics property of m_rooms when I started investigating this (it's a list of lists of lists of lists of lists of numbers). This property stores a long list (or multiple) for each cell of the map, e.g. The map-graphics of Dungeon are {{{{{0, 1, 1, 102, 0, 0, 1}}, {{0, 1, 2, 102, 0, 0, 1}}}}} for a two-cell dungeon. The first three numbers in each list are the coordinates, while the fourth is the actual graphic reference, and the last three are...I don't know what. This method of storage seems very wasteful to me, but I'm not sure of all the reasons for it; maybe it is less wasteful than it seems. If this were optimizable, it would speed up everything from map generation, to adding/moving actors to the map, to display/printing. Simplification might mean losing some features...? Again, I'm not sure of all the parameters. 

But this probably isn't the only means of storage that could be improved by some rethinking. Currently, all of the environmental effects associated with a cell of the map are stored in a complex list associated with the map. Some of this information is redundant, since environmental effects are also stored in the tile object, which is already stored in the map-tiles m_room property. Extracting and storing this information redundantly definitely slows down map generation. The degree to which it slows down other function is up in the air, I guess.[/spoiler]
[b]Environmental effects[/b]
[spoiler]An idea, partially about optimization and partially about features/usability: What about disallowing environmental effects from being added directly to the map? i.e. all ee's have to be associated either with a tile type or with a mappable object. (Currently, ee's are not associated with objects/m_actors, but if you allowed them to be, that would also solve the problem of the "aura system" you were talking about adding.) 

You could potentially get rid of the map-effects list property entirely if you used this method, potentially speeding up both map generation and ee-picking. Checking whether an effect should be triggered for a given location would then mean looking at the tile and the map actors at that location and then checking their associated effects. With no free-floating ee's, you might be able to use relations rather than lists to associate effects with objects (tiles and mappable things/people)--this might be faster than copying and sorting lists, though I haven't investigated the question...

Having all effects associated with either a tile or an object would, I think, have the added benefit of making the environmental effects system easier for users to work with. For example, the environmental effect would be extended over multiple cells automatically if the mappable object were so extended--no need to do it manually.

[b]Edited to add: [/b]Actually, after spending some more time thinking about this, I think the system for ee's that you've created is actually the best, even assuming that it is slower than limiting the feature set could make it. I was thinking in terms of strictly "environmental" effects, but your current design can be used for things that have nothing to do with the tiles used, such as text triggers or AI zones. Having to create new tiles every time you wanted to do those kind of things would be a real burden. So this makes another suggestion that I think you should ignore. Wish PhpBB had strikethrough![/spoiler]

You know, though, while we've been talking a lot about optimization, maybe your best option for now is to get R&D to a place where it's feature-complete and just release it. If you stick with the room-based focus of the title--i.e., keep maps organized by m_rooms as currently--the slowness of larger maps will be less of a problem, and people will be less likely to try doing the larger-scale maps that R&D isn't good at yet. (The room focus has great advantages in terms of managing scope, for example, and is actually good design!) I'm on a 5-year-old machine, and R&D does pretty darn well with a small map! You might also gain some speed with no extra work if BlkSize is optimized, as mentioned by EmacsUser in the lists thread.

Basically, I don't want you to think that just because I'm raising these issues, that I think they are fatal. Within a certain scope, R&D is quite performant, and managing expectations may be easier than rethinking huge swaths of your design. When I7 adds arrays, maybe, you could do some benchmarking, take stock of things, and see whether you could create a faster extension using those or not.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4202&start=0#p30238
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Nested If Statements, Multiple Objects
User: Mildew Steaks / DateTime: 2012-01-21 17:38:54

Hi All

I've recently rediscovered the joys of IF (used to use the Graphic Adventure Creator on the C64 when I was a kid!) and have started on my first forays into writing using Inform 7. However, there are a few things I'm trying to achieve that seem to be fairly standard IF practice IMHO, but I'm having a hard time working out how to implement in Inform.

Apologies if this has already been covered - I did some searching around but couldn't find anything specific...

[b]Issue 1: Nested If Statements[/b]

So, I'm currently working on the usual 'dungeon' style scenario and I've given the player a beastie to fight. I want the player to trigger an event with several possible outcomes using 'Attack [monster]'. The outcomes are determined by checking the equipment the player is carrying.

Currently I've written the following:

[code]Before attacking the [monster]:
begin;
if the player is carrying the [item]:
begin;
say "You brutally hack at the [monster] until it is an unrecognisable pulp. By some magickal means the slimy puddle left behind morphs into a brass key.";
move [monster] to the void;
move brass key to location;
otherwise;
say "The [monster] waves it's antennae menacingly. You decide you'd be better not messing with this one.";
end action;
end if;
end if;[/code]

(I've replaced monster and item names so as not to give away to much in case this becomes the next IF sensation, haha.)

Of course, this is generating the following error:

[quote]Problem. The rule or phrase definition 'Before attacking the [monster]'   seems to use both ways of grouping phrases together into 'if', 'repeat' and 'while' blocks at once. Inform allows two alternative forms, but they cannot be mixed in the same definition.[/quote] 

Wat do?

[b]Issue 2 - Multiple Objects[/b]

In another scenario I've set up a storehouse where a number of items are kept. Some of the items in the storehouse come in multiples, but the player only needs to take one at any given time.

I've read the documentation which describes making an 'infinite' item dispenser which only gives the item if the player doesn't have one, but I don't want to use this method - I want to put, for example, five batteries into the storehouse and give the option of taking one or more batteries if they choose to.

I've managed to put the five batteries in place but I can't find out how to make the player take a single battery. Any clues?


Thanks a lot for any help you guys can give!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4202&start=0#p30239
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Nested If Statements, Multiple Objects
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-01-21 18:13:16

I can't help you with the first question, because I use the tab stops conditional syntax and I don't know how the begin/end one works, but for the second question, one way you could do it is by making a battery kind. You would say: [code]A battery is a kind of thing.  The plural of battery is batteries.  Five batteries are in the Storehouse.[/code]

See Chapter 4.13, "Duplicates" for more information (and 4.4 about plurals for kinds; I'm not sure if I needed to teach Inform the plural of "battery," but it can't hurt).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4200&start=0#p30240
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Megaupload taken offline
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-21 18:29:09

[quote]I use DropBox... and why shouldn't it be closed for the same reasons, too?[/quote]

If you're going to run a massive file-archive site, don't archive the company emails where you talk openly about all the bootlegged movies you've got and how much money you're making off them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4201&start=0#p30241
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: I need some pity. - TADS3.1
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-21 18:30:53

[quote="Jim Aikin"]TADS is almost certainly harder to get started with than Inform 7. On the other hand, the TADS documentation is a good deal more extensive.... There are lots of pluses and minuses.[/quote]

The getting-started thing was 75% of my choice, for sure ... I tried both I6 and TADS(2 I think) early on and just couldn't wrap my head around either of them. Both looked awesome, both had communities, both had produced games I admired, but I gave up on both and just wandered away for a couple of years.

Came back in to peek, saw TADS(2 or 3?) and I7 ... tried both again. Of the two, I7 could trick me into thinking it was easy long enough for me to finish a short game to my satisfaction. And it definitely is a kind of trick ... because to get past that level I really had to buckle down and learn things for the next project (and to this day I can't comprehend how things like Lists work, and I'm barely able to use Tables) ... but it was a useful sort of trick. I imagine it varies a lot by student; we all learn better with different avenues.

To the OP requesting pity: [in Mister T. Voice] I PITY DA FOOL. I PITY HIM.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4200&start=0#p30242
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Megaupload taken offline
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-21 18:50:04

The big file upload sites have always been very useful for certain things, but they've never struck me as a particularly trustworthy place to store anything.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4202&start=0#p30243
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Nested If Statements, Multiple Objects
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-01-21 19:17:07

You've got the begin/end if style a little off, and it isn't even an example of nested IF statements.

Here's how it should look if you want to do it your way:

[code]Before attacking the monster:
if the player is carrying the item begin;
say "You brutally hack at the [monster] until it is an unrecognisable pulp. By some magickal means the slimy puddle left behind morphs into a brass key.";
move monster to the void;
move brass key to location;
stop the action;
otherwise;
say "The [monster] waves it's antennae menacingly. You decide you'd be better not messing with this one." instead;
end if.
[/code]

Here's how it should look with something more akin to best practice:
[code]
The block attacking rule is not listed in the check attacking rulebook.

Check attacking the monster:
if the player is not carrying the item, say "The [monster] waves it's antennae menacingly. You decide you'd be better not messing with this one." instead.

Carry out attacking the monster:
move brass key to location.

After attacking the monster:
say "You brutally hack at the [monster] until it is an unrecognisable pulp. By some magickal means the slimy puddle left behind morphs into a brass key.";
move monster to the void.

Report attacking:
say "Violence isn't the answer to this problem.".
[/code]
Attacking is blocked by default by core rules. You should unlist it if you want attacking to feature in the game. Under Index/Actions you can see a list of actions included by default, from here you can unlist the rules that block them doing anything.

Good luck!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4201&start=0#p30244
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: I need some pity. - TADS3.1
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-21 19:50:27

It seems like you are getting tripped up more by minor syntax issues (and the resulting compiler errors) than any fundamental skill deficit. It's a frustrating place to be. I jumped from I7 to T3 for just that reason. I could see someone might benefit from going in the opposite direction. Or by moving to another system entirely - Adrift, Alan 3, Hugo, JACL, and Quest are all actively used and have their partisans. 

Don't sell yourself short, though. You have moved beyond the "four rooms" stage in T3. Many of your questions are about implementing more complex effects like an elaborate startup screen and an inventory that sorts items into various containers automatically. The solutions for those parts are always going to be somewhat fiddly since you are detouring off the established trail. That's part of the fun but it can also turn into a demotivating time sink. I'm sure we've all been there; I certainly have.

What to do about it depends on how you feel about your project and your tools. If neither holds any appeal at the moment, it's a great time to build a toy game with some other tool. At worst you'll lose a few hours fiddling with a new system, before deciding to stick with what you know. At best you'll find a better fit for your style.

If you're still passionate about your current project, stick with it until the passion runs out. Just focus on a different aspect: draw the map or write room descriptions for a while. There are a lot of design elements that are essentially independent of the tool; time spent on those will never be a total loss.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4200&start=0#p30245
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Megaupload taken offline
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-01-21 20:42:42

Yeah, I'd never even considered it. Never struck me as really private, or really safe, or - case in point - really reliable. Sure was a simple way of sharing files that were too big to e-mail, though.

I suppose I can always use another service, Lord knows there's plenty of them... until they all get shut down.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4201&start=0#p30246
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: I need some pity. - TADS3.1
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-21 22:31:32

[quote="bcressey"]That's part of the fun but it can also turn into a demotivating time sink. I'm sure we've all been there; I certainly have.[/quote]

I went ahead and got a summer home there, to save gas on the commute.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4203&start=0#p30247
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Parchment Crumbling
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-22 00:51:43

At 10:45 on Saturday night, IFDB's Play Online button is producing errors, no matter what game I try. With Galatea, Parchment loading simply stops. With other games, I get:
[quote]
An error occurred:
Parchment could not load the story. Check your connection, and that the URL is correct.

Traceback (most recent call last):

  (anonymous function)
  w
  (anonymous function)
  (anonymous function)
  (anonymous function)
  (anonymous function)[/quote]

This happens in both Firefox and Chrome.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1073&start=0#p30248
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: QTads 2: Multimedia TADS for Linux and Mac
User: Tanga / DateTime: 2012-01-22 04:54:41

High, I just installed QTads (version 2.1.1-1) on Linux (AntiX - a Debian off-shoot), using apt-get install.  The pictures aren't working (though the links are), any suggestions?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4172&start=0#p30249
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Delusions of Eloquence: Blue Lacuna (2009)
User: Tale / DateTime: 2012-01-22 04:55:10

Jacek, what are some games you would recommend? (Apart from Gamlet, of course)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4203&start=0#p30250
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment Crumbling
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-22 05:34:06

[rant]I think the problem with Galatea. is probably with the if-archive or somehow with the file itself; Insight, Weishaupt Scholars, and My Angel are working in parchment, but when I tried downloading the zblorb of Galatea it just failed ("unknown error").[/rant]

Another Parchment question, though -- do save and restore work for z-files anymore? When I save it gives me a new URL, but reloading that URL doesn't do anything in Firefox or Safari.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1073&start=10#p30251
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: QTads 2: Multimedia TADS for Linux and Mac
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-22 05:56:49

Are you playing a game that actually has graphics?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=280#p30252
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: gordebak / DateTime: 2012-01-22 09:21:03

Hello everyone!

I'm Bahri Gordebak from Turkey. A 36-year-old guy (Actually this is one of the few places where I don't feel like I'm veeeery old). My major was in Communications (Radio, TV, and Cinema to be exact) and I'm making my post-grad degree on Communication Sciences.

While I'm trying to make it as a writer, I'm working on programming as a hobby. I contributed to some FOSS projects and developed most of TextRoom (A fullscreen rich text editor for writers).

I'm a long time IF fan, but I've never tried to develop my own until very recently. I started with very small interactive flash fiction pieces, which are more stories than games. Actually I like writing flash fiction stories, so I may go on working on these.

So, hello!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=30#p30253
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Computer-savvy newbie
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-01-22 09:43:55

As a TADS newbie with a background in CS/AI and Scheme programming, maybe it is useful to explain the big hurdles I experience - with all the disclaimers: I am grateful for both system and documentation, and think people have done a wonderful job.

I chose TADS because of its power - which means I want to deviate from the trodden path.  Yes, I did read the Tour guide as an introduction, because it suited my level, but all three books leave me with the impression that I am walking upon a thin crust of solid ground on top of a vulcano - one step besides the indicated path and I may disappear in molten magma (i.e. my game will crash).  I won't feel at ease until I know what is under my feet.

My WIP (taking "progress" with a cartload of salt) starts with a room in which nothing is possible - everything causes a question, and the only action is saying "yes", upon which the real game starts with another player character in another room (or saying "no" and having the game end there and then).

So how do I create this unconnected room, this temporary player character, and these two commands.  There is quite a bit in the docs on commands with direct and possibly indirect objects, but I can't find anything on making local commands without objects (of course I want local commands, because the rest of my game should not suffer from this one start room).

So there I am, groping blindly around trying to find answers to questions such as:
[list]
[*]Where do I find the minimal actor, that doesn't have a standard reaction to "Jump" and its ilk?[/*:m]
[*]Ought I to DefineIAction(Yes) and in its execAction undefine it?  That feels really ugly.[/*:m]
[*]Where does "You must be more specific about whom you want to talk to." come from?  I can't find it by searching the source code in Workbench.[/*:m]
[*]Somewhere the conversation system must be kicking in.  Should I use that, and have some invisible listener react to the "yes" or "no"?  Making the room itself an actor causes the game to crash..[/*:m]
[*]Will assigning to gPlayerChar suffice to jump from the first room into the real game?[/*:m]
[*]Why isn't there a subjFor, analogous to dobjFor and iobjFor?  Or is there but I just haven't seen it?[/*:m][/list:u]

I know I would be most helped by documentation that started with the bare-bones TADS system, and worked its way up from there, so that at all times I would know (roughly at least) what was underneath.  That would give me the assurance that I might not know everything, but that [i]what[/i] I know would be complete in itself.  I might end up writing code that duplicates existing features, but as I learn about the library I could bit by bit correct that, and at least my code would be working and I would know what it did.  Right now I can copy bits from other games or from the documentation, and write variations on that that work (by trial and error), but I don't know why they work, because I have no idea what is underneath.

If I had more time and energy I might read linearly through the code library..

Maybe I am alone in preferring this style of learning, but here it is - it is at least a data point.
Biep.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4203&start=0#p30254
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment Crumbling
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-22 10:44:37

It's not the archive. (I can download <a class="postlink" href="http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/Galatea.zblorb">http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/z ... tea.zblorb</a> without trouble. The copy there is the same as the copy on <a class="postlink" href="http://pr-if.org/play/galatea">http://pr-if.org/play/galatea</a>, which works.)

I suspect the file translation service that iplayif uses has gone off the rails in some way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=30#p30255
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2012-01-22 10:50:21

[quote="Biep"]So how do I create this unconnected room, this temporary player character, and these two commands. [/quote]

I appreciate that you were illustrating a problem rather than necessarily asking for help here, but it may be that you've made this particular problem a bit harder than it actually is. A coding pattern such as the following could go a long way towards what you're after here without the need to implememt any special commands or alternate player characters:

[code]
startRoom: Room 'Unconnected Room'
    "This room seems somewhat unconnected. "
       
    roomBeforeAction()
    {
        if(gAction.ofKind(SystemAction))
            return;
        
        if(gActionIs(Yes))
        {
            "You said yes! ";
            me.moveIntoForTravel(realStartRoom);
            me.lookAround(true);
        }
        else
            "Did you really mean that? ";        
        exit;
    }
    
;
[/code]

I'm not quite sure what you mean by the "bare bones TADS System" unless you mean the language as opposed to the library, in which case the [i]TADS 3 System Manual[/i] describes that. But I suspect that isn't quite what you mean; in which case you may very well be right that the only way to gain the kind of thorough understanding you want of what's under the hood is to study the library source code, though this task can be made easier by doing so with the aid of the [i]Library Reference Manual[/i], which no TADS 3 programmer can avoid having to get to grips with sooner or later if they want to achieve something at all off the beaten track.

-- Eric

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4203&start=0#p30256
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment Crumbling
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-22 10:51:55

Oh, right -- that error is the one I always get when I'm trying to auto-open a download with Gargoyle (instead of saving it and opening it manually).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=30#p30257
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Computer-savvy newbie
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-22 11:20:41

[quote="Biep"]Where does "You must be more specific about whom you want to talk to." come from?  I can't find it by searching the source code in Workbench.[/quote]
It's in msg_neu.t. What will trip you up about searching msg_neu.t is that its code is chock-full of parameter substitutions. The trick is to search for character strings that are not produced by any of these substitutions. I found that message by searching for "specific about".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4204&start=0#p30258
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Sidelines: IF authors' other projects
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-22 14:46:49

[url=http://www.amirrorclear.net/flowers/game/sil/index.html]Sil[/url], a newish roguelike from the author of [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=5e23lnq25gon9tp3]All Things Devours[/url]. I haven't delved into it much, but unlike most roguelikes it includes a very nice tutorial.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4203&start=0#p30259
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment Crumbling
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-01-22 15:01:30

<a class="postlink" href="http://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ifarchive.org%2Fif-archive%2Fgames%2Fzcode%2FGalatea.zblorb;vm=gnusto">http://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A%2F%2F ... ;vm=gnusto</a> works
<a class="postlink" href="http://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ifarchive.org%2Fif-archive%2Fgames%2Fzcode%2FGalatea.zblorb;vm=zvm">http://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A%2F%2F ... orb;vm=zvm</a> doesn't

So there's either a problem with ZVM, or, I suspect the Runner. I'll get onto it!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4205&start=0#p30260
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Experimental parser
User: fiziwig / DateTime: 2012-01-22 15:07:14

In connection with my project to put together a lean, mean IF machine that runs in php on any web server (without any special server-side software) I'm testing out my "IIB Parser" IIB stands for "Ignorance Is Bliss" because the parser doesn't know anything at all about grammar, and can't tell a verb from an adjective, and yet still gets the job done.

The description of my project is here: <a class="postlink" href="http://fiziwig.com/intfic/design.html">http://fiziwig.com/intfic/design.html</a>

and you can play in the parser sandbox with the live parser here: <a class="postlink" href="http://fiziwig.com/intfic/parser.php">http://fiziwig.com/intfic/parser.php</a>

The parser is 83 lines of php and the entire source code is listed at the bottom of the page on the parser sandbox page, along with all the object tables and command format tables used by the parser.

I also have a partial demo game (Hunt the Wumpus) at: <a class="postlink" href="http://fiziwig.com/intfic/wumpus/">http://fiziwig.com/intfic/wumpus/</a>

Although the functionality is not complete yet, and I haven't put the IIB parse into it yet either. But it does show how game state can persist without using cookies or server-side data files.

--gary

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4205&start=0#p30261
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Experimental parser
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-22 15:59:04

[quote="fiziwig"]I'm testing out my "IIB Parser" IIB stands for "Ignorance Is Bliss" because the parser doesn't know anything at all about grammar, and can't tell a verb from an adjective, and yet still gets the job done.[/quote]

I don't understand that statement, since the explanation of the parser in the design document relies on grammatical concepts. What do you mean here?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4205&start=0#p30262
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Experimental parser
User: fiziwig / DateTime: 2012-01-22 16:12:44

[quote="George"][quote="fiziwig"]I'm testing out my "IIB Parser" IIB stands for "Ignorance Is Bliss" because the parser doesn't know anything at all about grammar, and can't tell a verb from an adjective, and yet still gets the job done.[/quote]

I don't understand that statement, since the explanation of the parser in the design document relies on grammatical concepts. What do you mean here?[/quote]

The first page of that document is old stuff. I went back and tossed out all the grammar-related stuff since I didn't end up using that approach anyway. The document is now up to date with the code. (You may have to refresh the page in your browser if it still looks the same as before.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4204&start=0#p30263
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Sidelines: IF authors' other projects
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2012-01-22 16:13:44

Oh my goodness, this is nice.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=30#p30264
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: computer-savvy newbie
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-01-22 16:43:38

First of all, Eric and Jim, thanks for the practical help.  Eric, with your code I get some messages in the debug log, but that log disappears before I can read them and the game starts fine.  Apart from defining alternate messages for incomplete and ununderstood commands, this seems to do what I want - but it also illustrates the larger problem, because I had no idea such an approach was even possible.  ("The command execution cycle" mentions roomBeforeAction, but doesn't mention 'exit' in that context.  Does an 'exit' [i]anywhere[/i] in those functions and methods end the cycle - nothing more, nothing less?)

A text catering for my idiosyncratic approach to learning might:
[list]
[*]Start with the BNF and the meaning of the main types and constructs in the language.[/*:m]
[*]Add the system-defined shorthand forms, such as:
[list]
[*]name: Class ... --> global.name = new Class ...[/*:m]
[*] "string" --> for say('string')[/*:m][/list:u][/*:m]
[*]Introduce the user-definable surface-grammar-changing constructs, such as:
[list]
[*]Templates[/*:m]
[*]Macros[/*:m]
[*]Propertysets[/*:m][/list:u][/*:m]
[*]Introduce the main Class-Object structures in big strokes, always explaining [i]how[/i] specific behaviour is achieved.
[list]
[*]Things[/*:m]
[*]Actors[/*:m]
[*]Actions[/*:m]
[*]Commands[/*:m]
[*]Movement, connectors, rooms[/*:m]
[*]Et cetera - here it slowly grows towards the Tour Guide, but more "under the hood".[/*:m][/list:u][/*:m][/list:u]
That way I would know how commands are interpreted when I start using them, and I would know the room had a say in their interpretation (as I just learned from Eric's code).  Every new chapter might add detail to the mechanisms described so far, but the basics would at least be known.  Right now the only way to learn about the call chain for command interpretation is to grok the whole of "The command execution cycle" in one go.  I am sure the library has a certain modularity, and the text would reflect that.

I am not looking for every nook and cranny, and if in a later chapter an extra detour is described, that's fine with me.  After all, one cannot describe that command execution passes through the room before rooms have been introduced.

I imagine such a document might be a wiki, where people can freely add and polish the text as it stands at any moment.  And the above set-up is of course based on my very limited understanding, and probably quite wrong.

Would such a document help other people, or is it just me who is weird in that respect?
Thanks again,
Biep.

BTW, would actorAction() be the check part of what I called subjFor()?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=40#p30265
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Computer-savvy newbie
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-22 16:50:49

[quote="Biep"]I know I would be most helped by documentation that started with the bare-bones TADS system, and worked its way up from there, so that at all times I would know (roughly at least) what was underneath.[/quote]

One of the projects I'd like to find time for is a T3 book that starts out with a strong emphasis on the programming side, then builds a new, simplified library on that foundation. The reader would walk through the design and implementation of a world model, a parser, an action framework, and so on. Not with the goal of replacing adv3 with their own library, but to allow them to better understand it by mastering a streamlined version.

The main challenge with adv3 is that there is no bare-bones version. You kind of get dropped in the deep end with an incredibly rich Thing class hierarchy, a first-rate parser with an elaborate scope resolution system, and lots of tools to parameterize and control output. All of it is extensible and most new effects can be achieved without much code, provided you can figure out where to apply your tweaks.

I happen to like adv3 a lot, but it took all of Eric's books and a lot of reading through the Library Reference Manual to build a mental map of the space. Even today I treat the parser as a black box and only make changes around the edges, but just figuring out where the edges are has been a challenge.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=280#p30266
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-22 16:57:18

Hi Bahri, yes I've seen your pieces starting to appear on IFDB. Good to see you on the forum [emote]:)[/emote].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4138&start=20#p30267
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ten Room Game Competition
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2012-01-22 17:07:38

[quote="Campbell"]But it's a moot point anyway unless I can get them working in a browser by the competition.[/quote]Turns out this [url=http://adrift5.blogspot.com/2012/01/webrunner-map.html]isn't as difficult[/url] as I thought. I hope to have this live pretty soon.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=40#p30268
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: computer-savvy newbie
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-22 17:09:54

[quote="Biep"]I imagine such a document might be a wiki, where people can freely add and polish the text as it stands at any moment.[/quote]
I like the idea of a wiki. I have certainly accumulated a random assortment of T3 tips that could be added to such a resource.

I know MJR has a good web server setup ... I don't know if he has the time or interest to create a wiki, and I don't have the skills to do so myself.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=280#p30269
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: gordebak / DateTime: 2012-01-22 17:22:56

Thank you!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=80#p30270
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-22 17:56:15

Found a bug. One of the "to move" phrases doesn't pass on its failure result as it should. Here's the fixed code:

[code]To move (t - a mappable thing) on sector (X - a number) and (Y - a number) in (r - a m_room):
	move t on sector X and Y and 1 in r;
	if rule failed, rule fails;[### added ET 1/22/2012]
	rule succeeds.[/code]

I also wrote some code to move a mappable thing in its facing direction with a certain speed, which you're free to use or adapt if you like:
[spoiler][code]To move (item - a mappable thing) in its facing-direction with speed of (mult - a number):
	move item on sector (x-coord of item + (x-facing of face_dir of m_actor of item * mult)) and (y-coord of item + (y-facing of face_dir of m_actor of item * mult)) in location of item;
	if rule failed, rule fails;
	rule succeeds.
	
To decide what number is x-facing of (d - a face_dir):
	If d is:
		-- face_nw: decide on -1;
		-- face_ne: decide on 1;
		-- face_e: decide on 1;
		-- face_se: decide on 1;
		-- face_sw: decide on -1;
		-- face_w: decide on -1;
	decide on 0.
	
To decide what number is y-facing of (d - a face_dir):
	If d is:
		-- face_nw: decide on -1;
		-- face_n: decide on -1;
		-- face_ne: decide on -1;
		-- face_se: decide on 1;
		-- face_s: decide on 1;
		-- face_sw: decide on 1;
	decide on 0.[/code][/spoiler][b]Edited to add:[/b] I guess, though, that controlling speed from the phrase is a bad idea, since effectively we're skipping one cell when we test for collisions. A higher level control mechanism would be needed for speed. So, forget the speed multiplier!

One other little "buglet":
[spoiler]"placable" in the extension code is misspelled, should be "placeable". Placable means something else, and I can see potential namespace clash with someone writing NPC or AI and wanting to use "placable or implacable" as a binary for their characters...[/spoiler]

I also have a couple of user interface/design questions. These are based on my actually coming back to the code after a couple of days off, unlike the stuff I posted earlier today, so they are hopefully more cogent. Here goes:

1) What is the reason for the existence of the m_res/m_figure class? Would it be possible for all of the properties associated with m_figure to be defined as part of the associated thing itself? Most of the phrases that authors use actually target the thing rather than the m_figure anyway, so R&D makes a definite assumption that there won't be anything mapped that doesn't actually have a thing object representing it in the gamespace. There are enough times, though, where the author [i]does[/i] need to address the m_figure directly that it makes thing a bit confusing--I find myself asking, OK, which entity am I targeting and why? Could m_figures be done away with? 

2) Analogously, is there a reason why facing directions are their own kind of value? Couldn't you just use directions instead? (E.g., "A thing has a direction called the facing-direction"?)

Probably there's something I'm missing in both cases, but it can never hurt to ask (I hope)!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=80#p30271
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-22 18:02:09

Oh, and for fun. Animation. Move with the arrow keys, type "a" to shoot an arrow.

<a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/R%26D%20Testing.gblorb">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/R%26D%20Testing.gblorb</a>

Source code for the animation (to demonstrate that it's easy-peasy!):
[spoiler][code]Shooting is an action applying to nothing. Understand "a" or "shoot" as shooting.
		
Instead of shooting:
	say "You loose an arrow.";
	spawn the arrow on sector (x-coord of Bowman) and (y-coord of Bowman) in dungeon;
	map spin the arrow towards the face_dir of the Bowman;
	animate the missle flying as a custom animation at 100 fps, cycling;
	delay input until all animations are complete.

Missle flying is an animation track.

Animation rule for missle flying:
	move arrow in its facing-direction with speed of 1;
	if rule failed:
		completely remove the arrow from play;
		say "Your arrow shatters against the wall!";
		cease animating the missle flying.[/code][/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4206&start=0#p30272
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Can't move something during instead rule.
User: timothy-s-dev / DateTime: 2012-01-22 18:12:05

I've been working on learning Inform 7 recently, and I've run into a bit of a problem.  During a section of my game, the player pushes a ladder around to try and reach things that are too high up to reach otherwise, and once they've retrieved them, push it over the edge into a shallow chasm so it can be used to climb back up the other side.  Getting it pushed/pulled around, and using it to climb on is easy - but I'm having some trouble with the bit of code for pushing it over the cliff.  Namely, pushing something generally causes both the thing and the player to move to the new location - if they're pushing it off a cliff, I want the ladder to go, but the player to stay.  I tried to do this by stopping the action with an instead rule and moving the ladder manually, but I can't, it sticks to the player.  If I move the player (regardless of weather it's to where the action would normally have sent him, or somewhere totally different) the ladder goes too, but I can't seem to move  either one independently.  How can I move the ladder as the result of the action, but not the player?

[code]
Instead of going with the ladder from cliff edge when noun is west or noun is down:
	if something is on the shelf:
		say "You don't want to push it over the edge, you wouldn't be able to get it back up, and you may need [the random thing on the shelf] later!";
	otherwise:
		now the ladder is in storage area; [this seems to do absolutely nothing...]
		say "You shove the ladder over the edge.  It strikes the ground with a bang, but doesn't seem to have broken."
[/code]

Any input would be much appreciated.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4205&start=0#p30273
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Experimental parser
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-22 18:15:13

Yes, that makes more sense now [emote]:)[/emote]. That's a very interesting technique. I think at heart most advanced IF parsers can be considered tokenizing scope parsers, for example <a class="postlink" href="http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/commpars.htm">http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/commpars.htm</a>
 and <a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/msg/f545963efb72ec7b?dmode=source">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts ... ode=source</a>.
.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=290#p30274
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2012-01-22 18:29:01

[quote="gordebak"]My major was in Communications (Radio, TV, and Cinema to be exact) and I'm making my post-grad degree on Communication Sciences.[/quote]
I think Communication majors learn the right mix of technological/computer and literary skills to create and appreciate interactive fiction, which of course is itself a mixture of technology and literature.  Of course, few Communication majors get to study the [i]specific[/i] computer or literary techniques of IF, since few students are lucky enough to take a class that actually teaches or analyses IF.  (I envy those who do.)  I'm also a Communication major, but I'm only working on a two-year degree right now.

Welcome! [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=290#p30275
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: gordebak / DateTime: 2012-01-22 18:34:34

Thanks! 

I didn't get any courses on IF, but yeah, it helps. You become more aware of the storytelling media.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4205&start=0#p30276
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Experimental parser
User: fiziwig / DateTime: 2012-01-22 18:37:36

[quote="George"]Yes, that makes more sense now [emote]:)[/emote]. That's a very interesting technique. I think at heart most advanced IF parsers can be considered tokenizing scope parsers, for example <a class="postlink" href="http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/commpars.htm">http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/commpars.htm</a>
 and <a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/msg/f545963efb72ec7b?dmode=source">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts ... ode=source</a>.
.[/quote]
Thanks for those links. It's always interesting to study other approaches. Many years ago I played around with chatbots and did a lot of parsing code, but mostly is was built up from linguistic principles, and I borrowed the whole [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brill_tagger]Brill Tagger[/url] for parts of speech tagging. This time around I'm looking to strip everything down to the bare essentials. Provided that it still works, of course. [emote]:)[/emote]

--gary

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4205&start=0#p30277
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Experimental parser
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-22 18:44:22

Cool, I'd never heard of that. It does raise the question of backtracking (not that it would be significant) -- how does the split/stat technique deal with possible backtracking based on changes in world state as the parser processes a command?

edit to add: and scope too, now that I think about it. Like the 'cat [i]in [/i]the hat' vs. the 'cat in the hat'. For example, in a room with a 'cat in the hat' and a cat in a hat, the command "give the cat in the hat to the cat in the hat". Pretty dumb, but not totally out of the question!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4206&start=0#p30278
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can't move something during instead rule.
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-22 18:54:08

Something like this, 

[code]
Cliff Edge is a room. 
Chasm is down from Cliff Edge.
Mesa is north from Cliff Edge.

The ladder is a pushable between rooms thing in Cliff Edge.
The can't push vertically rule is not listed in the check pushing it to rulebook.

Instead of pushing the ladder to down when in Cliff Edge:
	say "You push the ladder into the chasm.";
	move the ladder to the Chasm.
	
test me with "push ladder n / push ladder s / look / push ladder d / look / d"
[/code]

The main point is 'pushing it to down' -- you don't push things to a room, you push things to a direction. I didn't know this at first, but doing 'actions' in the game showed it plainly enough after entering the push command.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4204&start=0#p30279
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Sidelines: IF authors' other projects
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2012-01-22 18:55:32

YES!!  This roguelike looks very impressive.  Unlike other roguelikes, it appears to attempt [i]not[/i] to confuse and overwhelm the player.  It appears to be informed by IF conventions.  I love the mythic First Age Tolkien theme; from my first glance, it appears to be a far more real interpretation than the classic roguelike [i]Angband[/i].  I never thought I'd see a roguelike that I liked better than [i]Ancient Domains of Mystery[/i], but this may do the trick!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4200&start=0#p30280
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Megaupload taken offline
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-22 19:37:30

[quote]...until they all get shut down.[/quote]

My previous comment wasn't hypothetical. Megaupload appears to have done some very stupid things, according to the government's indictment document. (And the company emails quoted heavily therein.) Other file-transfer services don't have to be that stupid. If they want to be that stupid, they can at least be smart enough to delete the email before it's all subpoena'd.

Indictment: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/78786408/Mega-Indictment">http://www.scribd.com/doc/78786408/Mega-Indictment</a>
Quick overview by someone familiar with the legalities (though not a lawyer): <a class="postlink" href="http://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/522290.html">http://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/522290.html</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4205&start=0#p30281
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Experimental parser
User: fiziwig / DateTime: 2012-01-22 19:41:00

[quote="George"]Cool, I'd never heard of that. It does raise the question of backtracking (not that it would be significant) -- how does the split/stat technique deal with possible backtracking based on changes in world state as the parser processes a command?

edit to add: and scope too, now that I think about it. Like the 'cat [i]in [/i]the hat' vs. the 'cat in the hat'. For example, in a room with a 'cat in the hat' and a cat in a hat, the command "give the cat in the hat to the cat in the hat". Pretty dumb, but not totally out of the question![/quote]

Hmmm. Food for thought.

I just uploaded a newer version of the parser sandbox that now handles things like "Take the marble out of the box with the tongs", or even: "using the long tongs, remove the red marble from the tin container." I'm up to 135 lines of code now. I also added an "Anti-Alias" function. Basically, this simplifies the split words tables, which are now much shorter, by reducing the vocabulary. It changes words into their "normalized" word. For example, if I type "[b]remove[/b] the red marble [b]out of[/b] the tin box [b]using[/b] the tongs" it re-writes that as "[b]get[/b] the red marble [b]from[/b] the tin box [b]with[/b] the tongs." before it even starts parsing.

Your first question, re changes of state "as the parser processes a command". I'm not sure I follow what you mean. Being a php script the action is strictly turn-based because nothing can happen between moves. The script is not loaded and run until the server gets a command from the browser.

As for the second question, Wow! That would confuse a human. However, he is called "the cat in the hat" because he's a cat, and he's in a hat, so in a sense "the cat in the hat" is synonymous with "the cat which is in a hat." So either they are both the same object, or they are indistinguishable objects. On the other hand, if you wanted to give the book titled "the cat in the hat" to the actual "cat in the hat" then maybe you'd have to put quotation marks around the book title? Or maybe hyphenate the name the-cat-in-the-hat? I don't really know.

That sounds like a problem for the story author to grapple with. [emote]:)[/emote] (Passing the buck, I know. But if the code is going to stay lean and mean I have to stay on the right side of the 80/20 line.)

But that does bring up one valid point I had neglected to consider: disambiguation by location. Given that the red marble is [b]in[/b] the wood box and the blue marble is [b]in[/b] the leather bag, "take [b]the marble[/b] out of the bag" will currently return "ambiguous", because there are two marbles in the world. But it really should know that the only marble [b]in[/b] the bag is the blue one, so that has to be it. To add that to the parser I will need to add code to keep track of the world state, which I don't currently have in there. 

Back to the drawing board. That gives me something to do tomorrow. [emote]:)[/emote]

Anyway, the latest version of the parser is here: <a class="postlink" href="http://fiziwig.com/intfic/parser.php">http://fiziwig.com/intfic/parser.php</a>

--gary

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=40#p30282
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: gordebak / DateTime: 2012-01-22 19:52:54

Programming with TADS3 is like using a C++ library. I understand it being for programmers. But why C++?

I wish TADS3 were a higher level language as it's an interpreted language. Being a purpose-specific language, it could be higher level than Python or Lua. Higher level languages aren't necessarily weaker. That's where the programming world is heading. Because computer systems got faster, and interpreted languages are fast enough now.

I don't want to rant or anything. Just some constructive criticism. If TADS4 will be a higher level language, I will totally use it. 

But who am I anyway?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=40#p30283
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-22 20:02:16

It's an interesting question and I think relevant, so what would TADS4 look like?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4207&start=0#p30284
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: T3: DefaultTellTopic
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-22 20:59:20

Here's a code snippet that doesn't work in the way I'd like it to:

[code]+ DefaultTellTopic
    topicResponse = "<.q><<if (joe.canSee(gIobj))>>I'm looking right at it, man<<else>>Not
        too sure what you're talking about, guy<<end>>,<./q> Joe replies. "
;[/code]
The problem, of course, is that the 'tell joe about X' command produces a topic match, not a gIobj. (Thus gIobj is always nil when this code is executed.)

It should be obvious what I'm trying to do. If the NPC can see the object that is the topic, I want to print one response, and if he can't see it, I want a different response. So ... how can I get at the resolved topic object in order to create a logical test for whether Joe can see it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4206&start=0#p30285
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can't move something during instead rule.
User: timothy-s-dev / DateTime: 2012-01-22 21:07:38

Thanks!  That did it!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4207&start=0#p30286
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: DefaultTellTopic
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-22 21:26:47

Hah! Solved it.
[code]
+ DefaultTellTopic
    topicResponse {
        local obj = gTopic.getBestMatch();
        gMessageParams(obj);
        "<.q><<if (joe.canSee(obj))>>I'm looking right at {it obj/him}, man<<else>>Not
        too sure what you're talking about, guy<<end>>,<./q> Joe replies. ";
    }
;[/code]
This might conceivably fail in situations where there are multiple matches of equal likelihood, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4204&start=0#p30287
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Sidelines: IF authors' other projects
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-22 21:56:00

Aww, it won't run on my Mac, at least not right now.

Not an IF author, but an excellent roguelike I've just discovered is [url=http://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/]Brogue[/url]. Another one that doesn't attempt to confuse and overwhelm you -- it's even playable without spoilers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4204&start=0#p30288
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Sidelines: IF authors' other projects
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-22 22:00:20

[quote="matt w"]Aww, it won't run on my Mac, at least not right now.[/quote]
I'm on a Mac too. It crashed when I pressed "Tutorial" on the first run, but I restarted and it's run fine since. Give that a shot.

I've been messing around with Brogue too. The ASCII graphics are somehow very pretty in a way that no other roguelike's ASCII display is pretty. (That sentence should be mentally adjusted by the reader to take into account my relatively limited experience with roguelikes...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=40#p30289
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-22 22:04:12

T3 is higher level than C++ (for example it's runtime-typed and there are no pointers, there's a "modify" keyword, and many other things.) This makes the language very easy and straightforward (C without pointers *is* very easy). A design goal of T3 was to be like C/C++ but without the pointer complexities (and in the case of C++ without many other things that make C++ difficult.) The rationale is that introducing a new syntax means the learning curve is high. Using a syntax that people are already familiar with (99% of programmers know C) makes T3 more accessible.

I think you're confusing the language with the library. The T3 language is dead-easy to learn. The library (adv3) is not; it's very complex indeed. But you don't need Tads 4 to solve that problem. There is talk about an easier library (dubbed "Mercury" at this point) that can be used instead of adv3.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4204&start=0#p30290
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Sidelines: IF authors' other projects
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-22 22:07:57

Experience aside, I think you're quite right Erik. Brogue happens to use the libtcod library, which has excellent color support, but Brogue's author Pender also has made a very nice design to take advantage of it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=40#p30291
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-22 22:11:46

Probably an insane idea, but how feasible would it be to create a binding to adv3 for another language, Python for example? 

I'm not saying this solves any problems, but these last few posts sparked the idea so I'm throwing it out there. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=40#p30292
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-22 22:15:22

Probably not feasible. Bindings mean you have native code that follows an ABI. Tads is a VM (not an engine), so there's no native code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4204&start=0#p30293
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Sidelines: IF authors' other projects
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-22 22:28:52

I'm getting "the Application Sil quit unexpectedly" as soon as I open it. (This happens with a couple other programs too, most notably recently And Yet It Moves.) I'm on OS X 10.5.8 so maybe it just isn't up to date.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4208&start=0#p30294
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: New arithmetic functions
User: katz / DateTime: 2012-01-22 22:30:15

I wrote a function that's supposed to subtract two integers without letting the result go below 0.  It compiles, but it doesn't do anything.  Does anyone know why?

[code]The Classroom is a room.

To carefully subtract (X - a number) from (Y - a number):
	now Y is Y - X;
	if Y < 0:
		now Y is 0.
		
New Value is a number that varies.  New Value is 20.

Every turn:
	Carefully subtract 25 from New Value;
	say "[New Value]".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4208&start=0#p30295
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New arithmetic functions
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-22 22:44:09

Your phrase is not returning the value that it's calculating. It's processing the two temporary values X and Y and then just throwing away the result. Try this:

[code]The Classroom is a room.

To decide what number is (X - a number) carefully subtracted from (Y - a number):
	if Y - X is less than 0, decide on 0;
	decide on Y - X.
		
New Value is a number that varies.  New Value is 20.

Every turn:
	now new value is 25 carefully subtracted from new value;
	say "[New Value]".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=40#p30296
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-22 22:55:24

What if you ran the VM and made calls to it somehow from the other environment? Is there some established way of doing that, say when people write bindings for Java libraries or something like that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4209&start=0#p30297
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: T3: Signs of Affection
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-22 23:15:26

Here's a minor but amusing little conundrum. My PC and an NPC are romantically involved, so I've implemented a response to the kiss action. 'kiss barbara' works fine, as does 'barbara, kiss me'.

But English provides an alternative grammar for this action: 'give barbara a kiss' or 'barbara, give me a kiss'. I tried creating an invisible kissObj for the GiveTopic or the CommandTopic @GiveAction to use, but this approach seems to have messy side effects, because the kissObj has to be in scope for it to work.

For example, if I add the kissObj to scope using getExtraScopeItems, I get a transcript like this:

[quote]>x kiss
You cannot see that. 

>drop kiss
You’re not carrying that. [/quote]

This happens even though the kissObj has:

[code]    dobjFor(Default) {
        action () {
            "You can<./s>t see any such thing. ";
        }
    }[/code]

Do I just need to refine the kissObj to handle these side effects somehow, or is there a better approach to 'give barbara a kiss' that doesn't involve a stealthy object?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=40#p30298
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: gordebak / DateTime: 2012-01-23 00:12:24

[quote="RealNC"]T3 is higher level than C++ (for example it's runtime-typed and there are no pointers, there's a "modify" keyword, and many other things.) This makes the language very easy and straightforward (C without pointers *is* very easy). A design goal of T3 was to be like C/C++ but without the pointer complexities (and in the case of C++ without many other things that make C++ difficult.) The rationale is that introducing a new syntax means the learning curve is high. Using a syntax that people are already familiar with (99% of programmers know C) makes T3 more accessible.

I think you're confusing the language with the library. The T3 language is dead-easy to learn. The library (adv3) is not; it's very complex indeed. But you don't need Tads 4 to solve that problem. There is talk about an easier library (dubbed "Mercury" at this point) that can be used instead of adv3.[/quote]

I don't confuse anything. I said "higher" level. It's relative. Of course it's higher level than C++. But compare it to Inform 7. Then you understand what I mean.

I'm already a C++ programmer. But I don't want to write C++-like code to program IF when there's I7.  I can do basically same things with very, very easier code.

If TADS4 won't be a "higher" level language, I'm afraid new users are gonna totally abandon it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4093&start=30#p30299
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Harmonizing Glk file suffixes?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-23 00:13:56

Well, I've written test cases and an implementation (only in cheapglk so far), so the spec as currently written looks stable.

I've also written a Python blorb-adjusting tool. It doesn't do everything, but it lets you examine blorbs and add, delete, and extract chunks to/from them. See <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/blorb/blorbtool.py">http://eblong.com/zarf/blorb/blorbtool.py</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=40#p30300
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-23 00:39:16

[quote="gordebak"]I'm already a C++ programmer. But I don't want to write C++-like code to program IF when there's I7.  I can do basically same things with very, very easier code.

If TADS4 won't be a "higher" level language, I'm afraid new users are gonna totally abandon it.[/quote]
You're not the first to make that observation about TADS (leaving aside the question of the "4"). My impression is that Mike Roberts's intention was never to make TADS an easy, entry-level system, so attracting newbies may not be a high priority.

I'm not much of a programmer, but it occurs to me to wonder whether higher-level language constructs could be spliced into T3 seamlessly using its macro implementation. I mean, using macros [i]already [/i]gives you a number of fairly high-level, human-readable constructions.

I don't imagine you could define macros that contained white space, so it wouldn't look like Inform 7 ... so maybe we should look at specifics. Exactly what do you envision as a higher-level form of TADS?

I mean, if you want to write in Inform 7, go ahead. I can't see that there's any reason to try to steer TADS in that direction, because there's no need to reinvent an existing system. The question is, if TADS were to be transformed into a system that was friendlier and easier to learn, what would its features be?

A second question is, would implementing those features force the deeper features that TADS already has to be set aside? Would the smiley-face TADS still have the power of TADS, or would it be hobbled? And if it's hobbled, why would MJR go to the trouble of creating such a version?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=50#p30301
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: gordebak / DateTime: 2012-01-23 00:50:00

I'm not talking about myself. I already use Inform7 and am quite happy with it. I'm talking about the future of TADS. If gaining new users isn't an issue, so let TADS3 be the last version. Why bother?

But if nobody uses it, there will be no future. And TADS will be another dead language in the history of IF.

TADS 3 is older than Inform 7 afaik. Then I7 came. Now it's TADS's turn I think. Because people, not everybody, but most people prefer the easier and shorter path to somewhere. They are the users.

Edit: It's not like 2D vs. 3D. The result is the same: An IF story. Why should anybody learn the harder language?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=50#p30302
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-23 01:15:10

[quote="gordebak"]Why should anybody learn the harder language?[/quote]
Since you asked, I can think of a few reasons.

[list][*]Some people (myself included) find the syntax of Inform 7 more annoying than friendly.[/*:m]
[*]Inform 7 is, after five years in "public beta," still just a tiny bit buggy (largely, I suspect, because its syntax is experimental in nature).[/*:m]
[*]The code base of I7 extensions is not as well maintained as one might wish, which leads to more problems with bugs.[/*:m]
[*]Certain advanced effects are easier to achieve in T3 than in I7.[/*:m]
[*]There seem to be some problems using version control with I7. (I'm hazy on the details.)[/*:m]
[*]Large projects compile slowly in I7, because it lacks multi-source-file support and conditional compilation.[/*:m]
[*]T3 is object-oriented. This makes it, quite arguably, a better resource for implementing a model world than I7's rules-oriented approach. (The same could be said of I6, which is also object-oriented.)[/*:m]
[*]You only need to learn one language syntax to learn all of T3. I7 has two entirely different syntaxes (syntactes???).[/*:m][/list:u]

This is not to deny that I7 is the right choice for many people. But you did ask....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=50#p30303
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: gordebak / DateTime: 2012-01-23 01:17:08

So TADS4 should be better than I7, right? That's my point already.

Edit: If you aren't moving forward, you're going down.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=50#p30304
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-01-23 01:24:38

[quote="gordebak"]So TADS4 should be better than I7, right? That's my point already.[/quote]
I think Jim's point was that for [i]some[/i] people TADS3 is [i]already[/i] better than I7, thus obviating the need for a hypothetical TADS4.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=50#p30305
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: gordebak / DateTime: 2012-01-23 01:26:02

To that I said, "let TADS3 be the last version then. Why bother?"

Edit: Nobody can say that TADS3 is perfect. Some people may prefer it to I7, but they can't say that it's perfect. 

I'm only trying to make sure we, as IF community, are moving forward. If TADS4 won't rival I7 in some areas, or even won't beat it in most areas, we can't go much far.

These two languages are the spine of IF community. Adrift isn't much of a language, so I don't count it.

Edit 2: And high level or low level programming could be an option in TADS4 for example. Now, that'd be an improvement.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=50#p30306
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-23 01:32:33

[quote="gordebak"]I'm not talking about myself. I already use Inform7 and quite happy with it. I'm talking about the future of TADS. If gaining new users isn't an issue, so let TADS3 be the last version. Why bother?

But if nobody uses it, there will be no future. And TADS will be another dead language in the history of IF.

TADS 3 is older than Inform 7 afaik. Then I7 came. Now it's TADS's turn I think. Because people, not everybody but most people, prefer the easier and shorter path to somewhere. They are the users.[/quote]

Both TADS 3 and Inform 7 are being actively improved and updated. I would say they are essentially the same age; even if you go by the first beta release data, they came out less than two years apart. That's not a large difference in a niche field like this.

I don't think there's any question that Inform 7 is more popular and accessible. There's enormous value in that and I have a lot of respect for the project and the highly talented people behind it. I hope we look back in ten years' time and see it as driving a renaissance of sorts in the field.

It seems like you feel rather strongly that the Inform 7 direction is the way to go. That's great. You should realize that not everyone shares that opinion, and that the likelihood of "TADS 4" following that course, if and when it appears, is essentially nil.

Predicting the demise of TADS, less than a month after a major release, is so premature as to border on trolling. If that's the extent of your contribution to the thread, consider your point made.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=50#p30307
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: gordebak / DateTime: 2012-01-23 01:35:27

Okay, sorry people. Forget about what I said. I don't want to seem to be trolling.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=50#p30308
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-23 01:45:51

[quote="bcressey"]Predicting the demise of TADS, less than a month after a major release, is so premature as to border on trolling. If that's the extent of your contribution to the thread, consider your point made.[/quote]
I was thinking the same thing. I was thinking, "New contributor. Less than a dozen posts. Jacek Pudlo?"

Setting aside that rather remote possibility, I think the questions being raised are really quite sensible. The central point I would like to make is this:

It appears to me that the mandate of I7 is to be friendly ... and as powerful as is practical, given its underlying premises. It appears that the mandate of T3 is to be powerful ... and as friendly as is practical, given its underlying premises. Expecting that the developers of either system would pivot around and adopt the mandate of the other system is probably rather silly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4203&start=0#p30309
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment Crumbling
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-01-23 04:23:44

Galatea seems to have an assembly error - it has a @read_char with no operands. I've updated ZVM to now allow this.

I haven't found other games to be broken, but if you can pinpoint any which are then please do so.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4200&start=0#p30310
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Megaupload taken offline
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-01-23 05:06:45

[quote="Peter Pears"] If it's in my hard drive, I'll always be able to access it, whereas websites may fall without warning or notice.[/quote]
Well... as long as you keep buying new hard drives with constant redundancy across multiple drives in case of drive failure, and always keep multiple copies on multiple types of media, and keep those copies in different places -- ideally in different countries...

Or you could just use an online backup storage solution.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4200&start=0#p30311
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Megaupload taken offline
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-01-23 05:48:22

[quote="ChrisC"][quote="Peter Pears"] If it's in my hard drive, I'll always be able to access it, whereas websites may fall without warning or notice.[/quote]
Well... as long as you keep buying new hard drives with constant redundancy across multiple drives in case of drive failure, and always keep multiple copies on multiple types of media, and keep those copies in different places -- ideally in different countries...

Or you could just use an online backup storage solution.[/quote]

I regularly burn my IF collection onto a DVD (regularly = when I've finished cathegorizing a letter and am ready to move on to the next one, as I'm doing it alphabetically). My music files get shared by e-mail to colleagues, so they are, in a way, net-backuped, but I also end up burning music CDs so THOSE are accessible too. I have my opera collection (most of it downloaded, which I'm unashamed to say because so much of those are bootleg recordings that I could never find on sale anywhere anyway) all burned in CDs and DVDs as well.

To each his own, and you obviously prefer online storage. Me, I'm safer with my method. I've had two - two! - hard drive failures in the last year. I've never lost anything truly irreplaceable (also because I reacted soon enough to recover data before it became completely lost).

So yeah. I still prefer downloading every game, and abhor every "web-only" entry that appears on IFDB.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4204&start=0#p30312
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Sidelines: IF authors' other projects
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-01-23 08:02:19

A blast from the past!  I haven't delved deep into the game, but playing around with the tutorial I'm reminded of the stuff I used to play in the early 80's on a friend's Apple IIE.

Now, if they could only figure out a way for me to become about 28 years younger . . . .


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4210&start=0#p30313
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: How to create conversation
User: Arminius / DateTime: 2012-01-23 08:24:13

How can i create dialog in inform 7? Iwent down the manual on reading and talking and so on. I tried this:

After telling dr huberlot about hello, say "Huberlot: Good evening, JW."

But when i test run it and type "tel dr huberlot about "hello"" or "say "hello" to dr huberlot"2 it says "there is no reply".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=50#p30314
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-23 08:43:14

[quote="gordebak"]I don't confuse anything. I said "higher" level. It's relative. Of course it's higher level than C++. But compare it to Inform 7. Then you understand what I mean.

I'm already a C++ programmer. But I don't want to write C++-like code to program IF when there's I7.  I can do basically same things with very, very easier code.

If TADS4 won't be a "higher" level language, I'm afraid new users are gonna totally abandon it.[/quote]
If Tads would become I7, then what's the point of having Tads at all? Btw, just because it doesn't suit your personal preferences doesn't mean doom and destruction for Tads. Tads is meant for people who prefer regular programming languages. If it would become more like I7, it would not be for people who prefer regular programming languages anymore. Do you see the problem?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4204&start=0#p30315
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Sidelines: IF authors' other projects
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-23 08:45:39

[quote="George"]Brogue happens to use the libtcod library, which has excellent color support, but Brogue's author Pender also has made a very nice design to take advantage of it.[/quote]
Ah, the famous libcotd! There is a long tutorial on building a complete roguelike with Python and libcotd [url=http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=Complete_Roguelike_Tutorial,_using_python%2Blibtcod]here[/url], and a much smaller piece with a few links to other projects that use the library [url=http://kooneiform.wordpress.com/2009/03/29/241/]here[/url]. Some of the linked stuff is pretty neat.

@Matt: I'm on 10.6.8, so perhaps there is an issue there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4210&start=0#p30316
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to create conversation
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-01-23 10:14:55

[quote="Arminius"]After telling dr huberlot about hello, say "Huberlot: Good evening, JW."[/quote]
If you want to write a rule for an action applying to literal text, you need to put that text (in this case, the word "hello") in quotes.

[quote]But when i test run it and type "tel dr huberlot about "hello"" ... it says "there is no reply".[/quote]
On the other hand, the in - game parser doesn't want quotes. Players need to type "tell dr huberlot about hello" (no quotes) to get a correct response for the telling it about action.

[quote]"say "hello" to dr huberlot"2[/quote]
This is covered by a different action: answering it that. You can find this out by typing "actions" at the command prompt.

An example probably explains this more clearly:
[code]Lab is a room.
Sam is man in the lab.

After telling sam about "hello", say "This is the response for telling Sam about 'hello.'".

After answering sam that "hello", say "This is the response for answering Sam that 'hello.'"

Test me with "tell sam about hello / say hello to sam / sam, hello / actions / tell sam about hello / say hello to sam / sam, hello".[/code]

Edited to add: I wouldn't have used after rules for this, but I wanted to make the code as easy to compare with your original as possible. I would have de-listed the standard report rules for these actions and created a new set of either carry out or report rules to cover both the expected responses and a default response. It really depends upon how complicated the conversation system is going to be. The are some example in the Recipe Book as well as various extensions for conversations on the I7 website.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4210&start=0#p30317
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to create conversation
User: Arminius / DateTime: 2012-01-23 10:25:09

Works fine, thx.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4211&start=0#p30318
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Orders stop when character leaves room.
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2012-01-23 10:26:19

If the player gives an order to another character, and that character leaves partway through the order, then all the orders stop.

[quote]>john, take the sword then go west then go east
John Doe picks up the sword.

John Doe goes west.

You seem to want to talk to someone, but I can't see whom.
[/quote]

I'd like to have it give him all the orders at once.  

(Related:  If John Smith arrives partway through, it will require a disambiguation prompt.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4209&start=0#p30319
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Signs of Affection
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-23 11:16:29

Hrmph. I solved exactly half of the problem, like this:

[code]modify VerbRule(Kiss)
    (('kiss' | 'hug') singleDobj) | ('give' singleDobj ('a' | ) ('kiss' | 'hug'))
    :
;[/code]
This causes 'give barbara a kiss' to work properly. But for some reason, 'barbara, give me a kiss' doesn't convert to 'barbara, kiss me'. The code for the latter (I'm using the TCommand extension) is:

[code]+ TCommandTopic @KissAction
    matchDobj = me
    topicResponse {
        nestedActorAction(me, Kiss, barbara);
    }
;[/code]
Most likely TADS is preferring the grammar for GiveTo when it encounters that command, but I've found this hard to test, because for some reason the NPC's code isn't working for [i]any [/i]input of the form 'barbara, give me the wand' (even when Barbara is carrying the wand and I've written a TCommandTopic that should match it).

Suggestions welcome....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4203&start=0#p30320
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment Crumbling
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-23 11:20:45

Try Taco Fiction. It's still giving me the same error message I reported Saturday night. Some other games do seem to be working.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4204&start=0#p30321
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Sidelines: IF authors' other projects
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-01-23 11:26:00

It's a very polished and rewarding little roguelike, definitely an improvement on Angband. Caves of Qud probably still remains my favourite.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4209&start=0#p30322
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Signs of Affection
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-23 11:31:14

You are running into my favorite source of inexplicable NPC behavior: [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/libref/object/giveMeToAskFor.html]giveMeToAskFor[/url].

The command "Barbara, give me a kiss" is being re-written as "ask Barbara for a kiss" behind the scenes. This happens before verb rules are processed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4212&start=0#p30323
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: T3: TCommandTopic and the GiveToAction
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-23 11:45:14

For some reason, TCommandTopic (defined in the TCommand extension) is not working with the GiveToAction. It's working with other actions. This, for instance:

[code]+ TCommandTopic @GiveToAction
    matchDobj = [binoculars]
    matchIobj = [me]
    topicResponse = "Testing...."
;[/code]
The NPC is, in fact, carrying the binoculars. But the output is, "Barbara does not respond."

Wassup? Dunno. Suggestions?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4201&start=0#p30324
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: I need some pity. - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-23 11:51:43

Thanks to all for your thoughts. I've been looking at the other programs and have decided to stick with TADS. I think I just might be understanding it a little. Just have to keep my eyes on the little stuff; such as capital letters and spelling. So, I'll continue to bother all of you with my ideas.

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4041&start=0#p30325
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: No Travel Without A Compass - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-23 11:58:44

Thanks a lot. That cleared it up. All those hours of suffering just for one little letter!

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4201&start=0#p30326
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: I need some pity. - TADS3.1
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-23 12:04:42

It might be worthwhile to implement a small game (like 3 rooms, 2 puzzles and 1 NPC) in both T3 and I7. This could be helpful in deciding which system looks better to you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4211&start=0#p30327
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Orders stop when character leaves room.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-23 12:05:43

I didn't know you could even issue that kind of order!

This worked in one test case, for the first problem:

[code]The person previously asked is a person that varies.
After reading a command: now the person previously asked is the player.
Before asking someone to try doing something: now the person previously asked is the person asked.
After deciding the scope of the player when the person previously asked is not the player: place the person previously asked in scope.[/code]

Not sure about the John Smith problem -- maybe you could write a "does the player mean" rule around the person previously asked?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=50#p30328
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2012-01-23 12:16:17

[quote="Biep"]First of all, Eric and Jim, thanks for the practical help... this seems to do what I want - but it also illustrates the larger problem, because I had no idea such an approach was even possible. ("The command execution cycle" mentions roomBeforeAction, but doesn't mention 'exit' in that context. Does an 'exit' anywhere in those functions and methods end the cycle - nothing more, nothing less?)[/quote]

Well, with all due respect, these topics are covered in Chapter 13 of [i]Learning TADS 3[/i]


[quote="Biep"]A text catering for my idiosyncratic approach to learning might:[/quote]

Again, while it doesn't do exactly what you suggest, it seems to me that [i]Learning TADS 3[/i] perhaps goes some way towards it.

-- Eric

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4211&start=0#p30329
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Orders stop when character leaves room.
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-01-23 12:20:36

RE: the John Smith issue- my advice is just to not have characters with similar names. This:
[code]Does the player mean asking the person previously asked to try doing something: it is very likely.
[/code]

doesn't work, even when you add:

[code]Does the player mean asking someone in the location of the player to try doing something: it is very unlikely.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4212&start=0#p30330
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: TCommandTopic and the GiveToAction
User: Eric Eve / DateTime: 2012-01-23 12:26:22

I suspect the problem here is that BARBARA, GIVE ME THE BINOCULARS gets translated to ASK BARBARA FOR BINOCULARS (and so never triggers the TCommandTopic).

-- Eric

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4211&start=0#p30331
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Orders stop when character leaves room.
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2012-01-23 12:35:21

Nice.

Some extra items:

[code]Before reading a command: now last person asked is yourself.

Does the player mean asking someone (called the ordered) to try doing something:
	if the last person asked is not the player:
		if the ordered is the last person asked:
			it is very likely;
		it is very unlikely.
[/code]

First part is to make sure the character only stays in scope for one turn (and prevent the player from, say, examining him after the character leaves the room).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4211&start=0#p30332
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Orders stop when character leaves room.
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-01-23 12:51:30

I can't get the 'Does the player mean asking someone' to work. The test scenario I'm using is:

[code]Test One is a room. The monster 1 is a person in test. The Void is a room. Monster 2 is a person. Monster 2 is in the void. Void is west of test one. Pickles is north of void. 

Check asking people to try going:
place the noun in scope.

Persuasion rule for asking people to try going:
persuasion succeeds.

The person previously asked is a person that varies.

After reading a command: now the person previously asked is the player.
Before asking someone to try doing something: now the person previously asked is the person asked.
After deciding the scope of the player when the person previously asked is not the player: place the person previously asked in scope.

Before reading a command: now the person previously asked is yourself.

Does the player mean asking someone (called the ordered) to try doing something:
	if the person previously asked is not the player:
		if the ordered is the person previously asked:
			it is very likely;
		it is very unlikely.

Every turn:
try monster 2 going east.

Test me with "monster, go west then go north"[/code]

But this fails with:

[quote]
Welcome
An Interactive Fiction
Release 1 / Serial number 120123 / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N) SD

Test One
You can see a monster 1 here.

>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] monster, go west then go north
The monster 1 goes west.

Monster 2 arrives from the west.

Monster 2 is unable to do that.

>[/quote]

Pending a more sophisticated fix, I still counsel the avoidance of having people with the same name.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4213&start=0#p30333
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: conversations with a multi-location AI
User: yhlee / DateTime: 2012-01-23 13:00:56

Hello--I suspect this is a horribly basic question but I can't even figure out what terms I should search for this under, and I've had no luck either in Aaron Reed's I7 book or the Inform Recipe Book.

I wanted to create an NPC in I7 who is effectively an insubstantial character--no physical interaction, no body, nothing--as it's an AI to whom the PC can talk from multiple locations.  My first guess was to have the NPC invisibly follow the PC around, but this seems inelegant.  If anyone has pointers or links to how to do something like this, I would be grateful.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4211&start=0#p30334
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Orders stop when character leaves room.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-23 13:14:04

Changing it to a "before reading a command" rule is probably a good idea -- not sure why I didn't think of that.

I was worried that this might mess things up when you link together a request and something the PC is supposed to do itself, but it looks like you can't do that:

[quote]>kiss iris. whiz, go west then east. kiss iris. 
Iris slaps yourself.

Whiz goes west.

Whiz arrives from the west.

Iris slaps Whiz.

There is no reply.[/quote]

Everything after "whiz" is interpreted as a request to whiz, even the part that's set off by a period. I think this means that when the person previously asked is not the player, all commands are interpreted as requests to someone else, so nothing untoward will come of altering the player's scope.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4213&start=0#p30335
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: conversations with a multi-location AI
User: gravel / DateTime: 2012-01-23 13:18:57

I would think you could place the AI in scope, either every turn or for selected actions, as needed.  I can't remember what the exact grammar is, though, and I'm not at a computer that I can test on.  Sorry.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4214&start=0#p30336
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Using properties as variables in a class
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-01-23 13:19:23

I've been playing around creating things and getting my head around how TADS works and methods for cutting down code. I've been trying to create a clothing class that won't let you put two of the same type on, such as 2 hats or 2 pairs of shoes.  I figured it out upto consilidating it down to one class 'clothes' rather than having 'tops', 'pants', 'shoes' etc and ended up with this where clothingType = gActor.wearingXXX

[spoiler][code]Clothes: Wearable     
    isListedInContents=(moved)
    clothingType = nil
    message = nil
    dobjFor(Doff)
    {
        action()
        {
            clothingType = nil;
            inherited;
        }
    }
    
    dobjFor(Wear)
    { 
     verify() 
        {
            if(self.isWorn)
            { inherited; }
            
            else if(clothingType)
            {
                illogicalAlready('You\'re already wearing <<message>>, you don\'t need to wear any more');
            }
        }
     action()
        {
            clothingType = true;
            inherited; 
        }
    }
;[/code][/spoiler]

I know that where it calls (clothingType) it actually points where it should since testing for if(!clothingType) makes it impossible to wear anything.  I'm just a bit stumped as to why it isn't working the same as when it was with gActor.wearingXXX in its place.  Can I do it this way or is there some sort of workaround (I thought about writing a method but so far every attempt to do that has resulted in the compiler screaming at me).

On a side note is it possible to have a description for just the first time something is seen and then a usuall description afterwards or is my best bet to just add <<changeDesc>> at the end of the description?

Any help would be much appreciated

Kel

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4210&start=0#p30337
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to create conversation
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-01-23 13:21:00

I would strongly recommend checking out some of the conversation-related extensions; they can save you a lot of work as ooposed to reinventing the wheel.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4213&start=0#p30338
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: conversations with a multi-location AI
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-23 13:22:35

You could also make a backdrop and have the AI be a part of the backdrop.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4201&start=0#p30339
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: I need some pity. - TADS3.1
User: gravel / DateTime: 2012-01-23 13:23:23

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="bcressey"]That's part of the fun but it can also turn into a demotivating time sink. I'm sure we've all been there; I certainly have.[/quote]

I went ahead and got a summer home there, to save gas on the commute.[/quote]

I have project pieces that I can't even look at because I have that prickling feeling of despair.  (I find drinking helps lower the despair enough that I can get started, but certainly cannot recommend that technique for everyone.  Also, the level of drunk that lets you ignore the internal editor is about two drops away from the level of drunk that makes you code stuff that's impossible to decipher come morning.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4214&start=0#p30340
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using properties as variables in a class
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-23 13:28:35

Without testing this, it appears to me that you're defining the clothingType property on individual objects ofKind Clothes. It appears you're trying to use it as if it were a class property. I'm not sure how practical that would be.

Let's suppose you have classes Hat and Shoes. You want to prevent the player from donning a hat if he's already wearing a hat. The way I would do this would be to add a check() (not a verify()) to dobjFor(Wear) in the Hat class, which iterates through all of the objects in the game that are ofKind(Hat), to see if any of them are wornBy == me. If so, the check() rule would call failCheck ('You\'re already wearing a hat. ');

Does that help?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4209&start=0#p30341
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Signs of Affection
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-23 13:31:13

[quote="bcressey"]You are running into my favorite source of inexplicable NPC behavior: [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/libref/object/giveMeToAskFor.html]giveMeToAskFor[/url].

The command "Barbara, give me a kiss" is being re-written as "ask Barbara for a kiss" behind the scenes. This happens before verb rules are processed.[/quote]
Oh, dear. That's what I was afraid of. In that situation, it appears that there will actually have to be a kissObj in scope for Barbara to try giving. I'll work on it some more.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4213&start=0#p30342
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: conversations with a multi-location AI
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-23 13:32:35

I would recommend changing the grammar of the conversation commands so that the character spoken to doesn't need to be in scope. This is all you need to do if your insubstantial character is the only NPC. If there are other, corporeal NPCs as well, you can define an adjective to distinguish them and add a rule like this:

[code]Before doing anything with a corporeal[<-adjective] character (called the interlocutor):
     if the player cannot see the interlocutor:
          say "[The interlocutor] doesn't seem to be here right now.";
          stop the action.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4214&start=0#p30343
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using properties as variables in a class
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-23 13:42:33

Alternatively, you can store a table of worn clothing in the Actor, and update that whenever a Clothes object is worn or removed.

[code]
modify Actor
	wornClothes = static new LookupTable()
;

class Clothes: Wearable
	clothingType = nil
	
	dobjFor(Doff) {
		action() {
			gActor.wornClothes[clothingType] = nil;
			inherited;
		}
	}

	dobjFor(Wear) {
		check() {
			if (gActor.wornClothes[clothingType] != nil)
				failCheck('You would need to take off
					<<gActor.wornClothes[clothingType].theName>> first. ');
		}
		action() {
			gActor.wornClothes[clothingType] = self;
			inherited;
		}
	}
;

// types of clothing
enum shirt, pants, jacket;

// convenience classes for each clothing type
class Shirt: Clothes
	clothingType = shirt
;

bedroom: Room 'bedroom' 'bedroom'
	"Just another bedroom. "
;

+ shortShirt: Shirt 'short sleeved shirt' 'short-sleeved shirt'
	"A short-sleeved shirt. "
;

+ longShirt: Shirt 'long sleeved shirt' 'long-sleeved shirt'
	"A long-sleeved shirt. "
;
[/code]

The reason it didn't work your way is that each individual clothing item starts off with clothingType set to nil. So your code doesn't block any article from being worn. To work around this you either need to iterate through all clothing objects, testing whether another article of that type is being worn, or store that data in some central place so that it's easy to check.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4213&start=0#p30344
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: conversations with a multi-location AI
User: yhlee / DateTime: 2012-01-23 13:46:18

Thank you all--scope was what I was trying to remember but it's been a long time since I've used I7 and the vocabulary just wasn't coming to mind.  I only have one NPC so ektemple's solution looks like a good fit!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4214&start=0#p30345
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using properties as variables in a class
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-01-23 13:54:40

It kinda helps, I was using check instead of verify til I noticed in one of the reference charts though for what I'm doing it seems to have worked the same.

I didn't realise that you could check through all objects of a certain class hence making a property, that would be much simpler, is there also a way of finding out all the items a character is wearing? I'd like to be able to see what they look like in the mirror too

>> I like that idea too bcressey, I had seperate subclasses of clothes too so I could just set the clothingType property to that particular type rather than having the whole thing written out for each one, I figured that it would just act on whichever value is in that property but it doesn't seem to be the case

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4214&start=0#p30346
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using properties as variables in a class
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-23 13:56:11

[quote="KellyJ"]
On a side note is it possible to have a description for just the first time something is seen and then a usuall description afterwards or is my best bet to just add <<changeDesc>> at the end of the description?[/quote]

You can use initSpecialDesc to change the way an object is initially described in the room listing.

[code]
bedroom: Room 'bedroom' 'bedroom'
	"Just another bedroom. "
;

+ longShirt: Shirt 'long sleeved shirt' 'long-sleeved shirt'
	"A long-sleeved shirt. "
;

+ shortShirt: Shirt 'short sleeved favorite shirt' 'short-sleeved shirt'
	"A short-sleeved shirt. "
	initSpecialDesc = "And look, there's your favorite shirt! <<glimpse>>"
	isInInitState = (!glimpsed)
	specialDescBeforeContents = nil
	glimpsed = nil
	glimpse() { glimpsed = true; return ''; }
;
[/code]

Produces this output:

[quote]

Bedroom
Just another bedroom.

You see a long-sleeved shirt here.

And look, there’s your favorite shirt!

> look
Bedroom
Just another bedroom.

You see a short-sleeved shirt and a long-sleeved shirt here.

> 
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4214&start=0#p30347
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using properties as variables in a class
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-01-23 14:01:05

[code]class Shirt: Clothes
   clothingType = shirt[/code]

Actually that's exactly how I did it... Little question, is it necessary to put 'class' at the beggining when defining a subclass? that could also be part of the problem  [emote]:?[/emote]

EDIT > Actually I see what you did there, adding the clothingType to the list in Actor, like I say I had it pointing to a property.  Your solution kills two birds and gets me another step closer to what I'm after

Thank youuuuuuuuuuu!!
I had a feeling about initSpecialDesc when I first started playing with TADS but at the time most of it was going over my head, I'll definately have to have a play with things now

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4213&start=0#p30348
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: conversations with a multi-location AI
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-01-23 14:02:32

It's not enough to change the grammar lines, is it? You need the actions to be defined as appling to things out of scope, as well. The standard asking it about action (and grammar line) is defined like this:

[code]Asking it about is an action applying to one thing and one topic.
Understand "ask [someone] about [text]" as asking it about.[/code]

To do what you want, they ought to be defined thus:

[code]Asking it about is an action applying to one visible thing and one topic.
Understand "ask [any person] about [text]" as asking it about.[/code]

That won't work, however, since the compiler will complain that asking it about has already been defined in the Standard Rules. But you can define a new action that does the trick and define a custom command verb syntax for a custom omnipresent NPC kind that lets you trigger the custom action:

[code]An  omnipresent NPC is a kind of person.
HAL is an omnipresent NPC.

Asking it at a distance about is an action applying to one visible thing and one topic.
Understand "ask [any omnipresent NPC] about [text]" as asking it at a distance about.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4215&start=0#p30349
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Wearing backup - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-23 14:03:19

I want my player to be able to only 'wear' a backpack and not be able to 'take' or 'get' it; using a command such as 'wear pack'. The pack will be initially in a large wooden box.   I know it's an easy problem but I've been doing my research and manual reading and can't find the answer to solve it.

Could use some help, once again.

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4216&start=0#p30350
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Lawedan Enforcer by Lawedan Computers | Recruitment
User: deskoft / DateTime: 2012-01-23 14:05:53

Today Lawedan Computers, Incorporated a community with servers and modifications in San Andreas Multiplayer, Multi Theft Auto, Minecraft, World of Tanks and Teeworlds has decided to get into the text-based RPG world and to start the development of our brand-new game; Lawedan Enforcer.

[b][u]What is Lawedan Enforcer?[/u][/b]

[i]Lawedan Enforcer is a unique game being developed by Matthew Striker and Loyd Rafols from Lawedan Computers, Incorporated. The game describes the adventures of Crime Scene Investigation Team. The game is developed in Seasons and Chapters, the team in Season 1 is as follows:

[b]Detective Brian Glass:[/b] This is you, you lead the music 'round here.

[b]Crime Scene Investigator Lillian Johnson:[/b] You work with her, she will help you during investigations.

[b]Chauffeur Daniel Hendren:[/b] He is your Chauffer, you hired him with your own money.

[b]Forensic Anthropologist William Collins:[/b] William is the specialist in bones, if you find a decomposed body, he should be your main bet. He may be useful when you can't recognize a body.
Once you find a skeleton that can't be recognized you should contact him and he'll be able to give you the age, sex, stature and the cause of death. Although you should always confirm his information.

[b]Forensic Dentist Marvin Myres:[/b] As said before, a Forensic Anthropologist will give you an estimate of the age of the body, with Marvin you can have another expert to say his estimate on the age.

[b]Forensic Entomologist James Scott:[/b] He is a good bet when talking about the hour the murder was made, specially on the outdoor. He will study the insects to say an estimate on when your body was dropped, he can determine the location of the incident, specially if the body was moved, and detect drugs or poison.

[b]Forensic Pathologist Audrey Peterson:[/b] She is your main bet when dealing with murders, she can detect the cause of death at the scene or if needed, perform an autopsy.

[b]Forensic Botanist Lottie Watson:[/b] She is the best bet when determining when and where the body was, but she only works on places where plants grow, usually forests and gardens.

[b]Forensic Psychologist Kareem Carney:[/b] He is the guy that can tell you an educated guess on what he thinks is happening on the scene, he usually will look around for a while and tell you what he thinks that happened, what you can do next. He is also useful when interviewing witnesses.

[b]Forensic psychiatrist Kate Blake:[/b] She is a good help during interrogations. But you usually decide to bring her to the scene because she also gives guesses.

[b]Forensic Ballistics Specialist Nestor Ramirez:[/b] He is your main bet when you see firearms, he can determine what type of bullet was used, what weapon was used, and he can identify the murder weapon.

[b]Ballistic Fingerprinting Specialist Jeremy Neece:[/b] He is your main bet when talking about taking fingerprints from a weapon.

[b]Body Identification Specialist Daryl Floyd:[/b] This is your guy to lead the identification of the body. You usually only need him at the start of cases.

[b]DNA Profiling Specialist John Edwards:[/b] He is your genius, he will make a DNA profile out of hair, blood and several other fluids.

[b]Forensic Artist Edwin Timothy:[/b] Originally he was an artist, today he is in charge of making up a drawing of suspects by witness description.

[b]Computer Forensics Specialist Carl Kim:[/b] Once you receive your most-wanted search warrant, bring him with you and he will transform the computer that is in the Kid's room into a evidence feast.

[b]Mobile Device Forensics Specialist Kevin McCormick:[/b] If your victim has a cellphone, Kevin McCormick to your service. If the suspect made some calls, Kevin McCormick to your service. He could also get you fired for making calls to your wife during duty. The truth is, when talking about anything with an internal memory, Kevin McCormick is useful.[/i]

[b][u]Realism?[/u][/b]
Yes, as a lead detective you will face all sort of obstacles that you would face in real life; Evidence Contamination, Press and specially, lies.

[b][u]So what's the catch?[/u][/b]
You will start at your lab, you pick up your tools, and you arrive to the scene, you will find usually the arriving officers, your CSI Agent and, in only specific cases, the report from the SWAT commander, in case something risky happened.

Your first entry will be the important one, you will enter, [b]examine[/b] evidence and tell your CSI agent to document it.
Once you leave for the first time, the crime scene will become the press carnival, at the lab you will give the evidence to each of the individuals listed above, they will give you detailed information.
Now you have several options, you can return to the crime scene (this means, the AREA around the scene, you can return to the scene, though it's supposed everything is documented), visit the neigbhours or specific people and / or call specialists that are not at your lab.

[b][u][size=150]So why is this on this section?[/size][/u][/b]
You may think this already looks like a good storyline and a great idea, and you may think we are ready to start developing, but no. We currently lack a staff. We have a lead developer, who is me, Matthew Striker and my assistant Loyd Rafols, who helps me develop part of the story.

We currently need people on this position:

[b]Assistant Developer(s):[/b] If you are good with TADS 3, we could use your help developing Artificial Intelligence for the huge amount of characters exposed in each chapter.

[b]Lead Writer:[/b] We need someone to design each chapter, although Loyd helps me, he is not a specialist in that, as a lead writer you are the creativity, you aren't exactly describing rooms, but you are writing the chapter, you will say where objects are at, where people is at, how people would react. etc.

[b]Writer(s):[/b] The Lead Writer is in charge of making a basic prototype of the story-line, he is the creativity, you are the brain. Based on the story-line of the lead writer, you will describe each object, you will describe from how the blood likes like to how the whole place looks like.

[b]Tester(s):[/b] This sort of complex games require a group of experienced testers, I will need people that knows about RPG games and likes to play them, if you are able to solve the default-level of RPGs, you fit here.

[b][u]So how do we communicate?[/u][/b]
If you pass to the interview, the board of Lawedan will interview, you will need AIM, a username, if you have trouble we'll create one for you. When you are with your username ready, add 'lawedanlabs' (without ''s).

[b][u]How to apply[/u][/b]
If you have a comment on the story-line, feel free to comment, but if you want to apply, use this syntax on a private message.
[code]
[b][u]APPLICATION[/u][/b]
Name:
Position:
Experience on the job:
Any comments?:
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4211&start=0#p30351
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Orders stop when character leaves room.
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2012-01-23 14:12:04

Tradition is that "john, do this. do that" is all treated as one order to John.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4213&start=0#p30352
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: conversations with a multi-location AI
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-23 14:33:18

Felix, thanks for pointing out that I meant action + grammar, not just grammar.

[quote="Felix"]That won't work, however, since the compiler will complain that asking it about has already been defined in the Standard Rules.[/quote]
Personally, I would just hit the "install" button on the Standard Rules (assuming that the Mac OS isn't the only IDE with this feature) to create a copy of the Standard Rules and edit that directly. Or, if you're using any of the conversation extensions, hack the extension directly.

The Standard Rules are in dire need of a complete organizational overhaul so that they can be replaced in small sections using the section replacement syntax. Currently, they are one of the worst examples of Inform code structure available...

--Erik

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4201&start=0#p30353
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: I need some pity. - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-23 14:42:05

The motivation can certainly be very difficult to maintain. I am indeed keeping my number of rooms at  only four for the time being. I want to continue to finish all of the 'pre-room' stuff before I start cranking out more rooms. It might not be the best way to go but It seems to work for me. 

The learning curve is a killer no matter what the method. [emote]:lol:[/emote]

RonGH

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4214&start=0#p30354
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using properties as variables in a class
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-23 14:44:14

The class keyword is not necessary but I use it for the sake of readability.

Here's a basic mirror implementation.

[code]
bedroom: Room 'bedroom' 'bedroom'
	"Just another bedroom. "
;

+ longShirt: Shirt 'long sleeved shirt' 'long-sleeved shirt'
	"A long-sleeved shirt. "
;

+ shortShirt: Shirt 'short sleeved favorite shirt' 'short-sleeved shirt'
	"A short-sleeved shirt. "
;

+ mirror: Fixture 'mirror' 'mirror'
	initSpecialDesc = "There is a mirror on the wall. "
	dobjFor(Examine) {
		action() {
			local clothes = new Vector(); 
			gActor.wornClothes.forEach(new function(item) {
				if (item != nil)
					clothes.append(item);
			});
			clothes = clothes.toList;
			nestedAction(Examine, gActor);
			if (clothes.length) {
				local lister = new WearingLister;
				"You are wearing <<lister.showListAll(clothes, 0, 0)>>. ";
			}
		}
	}
;
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4213&start=0#p30355
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: conversations with a multi-location AI
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-23 14:46:32

The backdrop solution is the lowest-effort, I'd say.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4215&start=0#p30356
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Wearing backup - TADS3.1
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-01-23 14:50:19

Depending on which you want to do you could either remap Take to wear using 

[code]
dobjFor(Take) remapTo (Wear)
[/code]

Or failing that if you want to make it so the player can't pick it up you could use 
[code]
dobjFor(Take)
   {
   action()
      {
      "You don't think the backpack will fit in your pockets very well";
      }
   }
[/code]

I haven't tried either of those but they [i]should[/i] work fine though you could try using this instead of action()

[code]
   check()
      {
      illogicalAlready ('You don't think the backpack will fit in your pockets very well');
      }
[/code]

Hope that helps [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4217&start=0#p30357
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Adverbs
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-01-23 15:05:49

Can adverbs as a part of the player's command be used successfully in a medium-long interactive fiction? (eg. dance perkily, whisper lustfully, go slowly east)

One way I envision, is for the player to earn adverbs as they proceed, which then allow them to solve puzzles by doing the same actions as before but in a different way (carefully or hastily, for example). This way, it foregrounds which of the thousands of possible adverbs are salient to the story.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4214&start=0#p30358
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using properties as variables in a class
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-01-23 15:12:22

Oh thanks!

I was looking forward to using lists and vectors, I'll be honest I haven't tried touching them for the moment until I could get used to using some of the basics (knowing what TADS is actually doing with values and such) I've been playing with it around a week whilst working through the tutorials and guides so I'm not overly confident when it comes to making lists and manipulating them just yet but I can see how it works no problem.

Do vectors work the same way as lists in the way that in the example before it references the object to the list rather than a string value? I noticed that you used [clothingType].theName earlier and figured it was a reference to the name of the object as apposed to the name of the string at that index.  What I'm asking is could I use that vector to use another property of objects within it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4217&start=0#p30359
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Adverbs
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-23 15:13:43

I like the concept. Varicella did something similar with its tone of voice mechanic, though that only applied to conversation.

It could be a lot of fun, if you're willing to allow many verbs to be modified by each adverb. If I can whisper lustfully, I'd want to be able to take lustfully and examine lustfully too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4217&start=0#p30360
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Adverbs
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-01-23 15:38:43

A sure sign IF is maturing: these days it's not just "guess the verb" or "guess the noun", now it's... Guess the adverb!  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4214&start=0#p30361
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using properties as variables in a class
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-23 15:46:40

The gActor.wornClothes property points to a lookup table, which is similar to a vector (array) except the index doesn't have to be a number. In this case it's an enum value - enums are a bit like strings that don't need quotes around them, and a bit like a numbered sequence without the number.

Enums are useful because the compiler will throw an error if you use a value that isn't defined. For example:
[code]
enum shirt, pants, jacket;

longShirt: Clothes 'long sleeved shirt' 'long-sleeved shirt'
	"A long-sleeved shirt. "
	clothingType = Shirt
;

shortShirt: Clothes 'short sleeved favorite shirt' 'short-sleeved shirt'
	"A short-sleeved shirt. "
	clothingType = shirt
;
[/code]

The compiler will tell you that Shirt is not defined. Whereas if you use string values instead of enum values:
[code]
longShirt: Clothes 'long sleeved shirt' 'long-sleeved shirt'
	"A long-sleeved shirt. "
	clothingType = 'Shirt'
;

shortShirt: Clothes 'short sleeved favorite shirt' 'short-sleeved shirt'
	"A short-sleeved shirt. "
	clothingType = 'shirt'
;
[/code]

The compiler will allow it, since both 'shirt' and 'Shirt' are legal values for a lookup table's index. Since TADS is case-sensitive, the player can end up wearing both shirts at once.

In the code for the wearing action, the clothing object stores a reference to itself in the table, indexed by its type. The square brackets are always an indexing operation; the container name is the part before the left bracket, and anything after the right bracket applies to the value.

So you can find the shirt that an actor is wearing by checking gActor.wornClothes[shirt]; that will either return nil (if no shirt is worn) or the shirt object being worn.

To answer your question, you can use gActor.wornClothes[shirt].theName, or gActor.wornClothes[shirt].aName, or any other property. The only thing to watch out for is that you don't ask for a property unless you've verified that the stored value isn't nil. Otherwise you get a runtime error (because nil isn't an object and doesn't have properties).

You could also store the property you want in the table instead; for example, gActor.wornClothes[shirt] = shirt.theName. This stores a string rather than an object reference.  It's less useful as a general approach because you can't easily get back from that string to the object it came from.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4217&start=0#p30362
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Adverbs
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-01-23 15:48:19

I think you'd want to limit the number of available adverbs quite harshly. The adverb-using games I've seen thus far (Forever Always, Danse Nocturne) have gone for scope, but they've been able to do that because they're very short and really only present a single adverb-searching problem.

The other trick is that the game would probably have to be about [i]social[/i] actions: it doesn't generally matter whether you unlock a door angrily, but the manner of conversation and performance are critical. And games about negotiating social environments are tricky. But I'm all in favour of people making more of them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4213&start=0#p30363
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: conversations with a multi-location AI
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-01-23 16:10:51

[quote="zarf"]The backdrop solution is the lowest-effort, I'd say.[/quote]
I agree, but I also like Gravel's solution to manually place the AI in scope. It requires some extra rules, but IMO is still easier and safer than hacking the standard rules and / or extensions, or creating a whole new set of conversation - related actions.
[code]Lab is a room. Sam is a man.

[Here you'll need to add any other conversation - related actions in your story, e.g. "informing about it" if you're using Eric Eve's "Conversation Framework" extension:]
Answering Sam that is communing.
Telling Sam about is communing.
Asking Sam about is communing.

After deciding the scope of the player:
	place Sam in scope.

Before doing anything when the current action involves sam (this is the can only commune with sam rule):
	unless communing, say "You can only talk to Sam." instead.
		
This is the bypass accessibility only when communing rule:
	if communing, make no decision;
	otherwise follow the basic accessibility rule.

The bypass accessibility only when communing rule is listed instead of the basic accessibility rule in the action-processing rules.
	
test me with "sam, boo / say boo to sam / tell sam about boo / ask sam about boo / hit sam / x sam".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4217&start=0#p30364
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Adverbs
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-01-23 16:31:44

[quote]The other trick is that the game would probably have to be about social actions: it doesn't generally matter whether you unlock a door angrily, but the manner of conversation and performance are critical.[/quote]

I'm not sure that's necessarily true.  It usually doesn't matter whether you unlock a door angrily, but it might very very be important to do so quickly or quietly.  Some adverbs make more sense for social interactions, others for mechanical tasks, others for different type of activities (listen carefully, for example).


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4214&start=0#p30365
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using properties as variables in a class
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-01-23 16:36:07

That's pretty neat, and a huge help too!  Thanks for the explanation I didn't realise you were storing enums there. I kinda missed them earlier though it seems to compile fine with the clothingType defined the same as the class (since the class is already defined I'm guessing).  

Storing a string does seem a little obsolete if you can store anything in it's place, I'm sure I'll think of a use for something along those lines at some point though.  I do like the idea of being use a look up table to look at the same property of a bunch of different objects, I have a strong feeling I'm setting myself up for alot of headaches when I get around to using them together such as making the mirror describe how the clothes look on me rather than what I'm actually wearing (I'm aiming to produce something that reads like a story as you play through it) but I'll worry about that later.

Thank you so so much again

Kelly J

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4204&start=10#p30366
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Sidelines: IF authors' other projects
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2012-01-23 17:52:06

The intro text says something about a "Morgoth" but as far as I can tell, the final boss of this game is Gorgol, the Butcher.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=60#p30367
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-01-23 18:05:48

There seems to be some good ideas as to what would make T3 more user friendly though I very much doubt turning it into something more like I7 is the way forward.  As a noob to IF and T3 I personally think that a wiki is a good idea, but there does need something to be done about the tutorials.  Don't get me wrong, Eric's done an amazing job with them and clearly alot of effort has gone into them but I wouldn't have minded reading 'an idiot guide to tads' first.

When I installed T3 and started up with the introductory game, I read through that went straight to the introductory chapter (I have to start somewhere), it's full of useful things from operators to nested objects, ifs and the various loops. However, as someone that (does have programming experience but) wouldn't know what to do with them at point, being shown all this doesn't mean much.  As you read on there seems to be alot of information thrown at you at once, which I personally think is it's main flaw.

Whilst I get that there [i]is[/i] alot of information I need to take in, I like to understand what I'm taking in and know what everything on screen is and how the general workings are before I try to have heidi do my tax deductables (in her not yet build house).  I like how the tutorial builds up on things as you go but at the same time not everyone will want a tutorial that acts as a lesson plan for each part. Maybe a 'bump start to tads' chapter at the start instead of all the programming stuff would be more helpful.  If's and loops can be explained at any point as you get to them so people can see what they do for themself.

I think it was Mike Roberts that said half the problem is guessing what a newbie would want, everyone was one at some point, over time though something that seems simple and natural now would have been one of those big daunting things that you thought you wouldn't get when you first started, such as making rooms and putting things in them to choosing what class objects should be and defining new ones.  I've been on tads a week now and wouldn't have gotten anywhere near as far as I have without Erics guides and the LRM (NPC's are the next chapter but I've read quite a bit of other stuff and recapping to make sure I understand it), I can do pretty much (mostly) what I'd expect in that time, I'm finding my way around it alot easier and understand what happens with my code better but on that note I could have got here without parts of my brain melting in the process.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4217&start=0#p30368
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Adverbs
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-23 18:19:52

Closing a door angrily can be a big deal too. Though usually in a social setting.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4217&start=0#p30369
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Adverbs
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-01-23 18:35:20

There's a lot of things that could be done (taking lustfully, closing a door angrily) which could change how other characters react to the player. In this way, you could have richer non-conversational social elements in a game. (This itself is an area where IF could expand).

Also, there's a lot of scope for giving alternative descriptions depending on how you look at something. Maybe in a timed section, examining quickly wouldn't take any time, while examining carefully would take a few turns, and they'd both give different information.

In a game where you can use an adjective for any action and there a wide range of verbs available, I think (as maga suggests), the number of adverbs should be kept short- or if extensive they should be fully known to the player. This would help avoiding it being a guess-the-adverb game.

Not that there isn't room for guess-the-adverb games, but even in [url=http://www.bubbleof.me/danse.html]Danse Nocturne[/url] (which is essentially just that) many of the more fruitful adverbs are strongly clued in the text.

Once we conquer adverbs, we'll move on to guess-the-preposition! (We already kinda have that with look on vs. look under vs. look behind...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4184&start=0#p30370
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: nominations open
User: lamont / DateTime: 2012-01-23 19:49:16

Here are the games that stood out to me (said the blind man describing the hippogriff).

[list][*][i][b]Pale Blue Light[/b][/i] deals with the gulf between writer and reader, between one generation and the next. Appropriately, it's full of fine writing.[/*:m]
[*] [i][b]maybe make some change[/b][/i] spilled out of the virtual machine and onto the web, adding to the repertoire a new technique: sensory assault. At the same time, the game owes much of its effect to the courageous writing underpinning the collage.[/*:m]
[*] Though I struggled with [i][b]the House of Fear[/b][/i]'s final puzzle -- painting your way to freedom -- in the end I enjoyed performing such a symbolic gesture. The game as a whole is well-furnished with fantastic images. (And the photos are nice, too.)[/*:m]
[*] I've only seen enough of [i][b]Cryptozookeeper[/b][/i] to nominate its cover for best feelie, but the game sounds colossal, like [i]Blue Lacuna[/i] with better jokes.[/*:m][/list:u]

Judging by the examples I played, it was a good year for Speed IF:

[list][*] In [i][b]Starborn[/b][/i], the narrator's weightless existence is underscored by the gameplay; until the final dose of gravity, there are no obstacles and no friction. I'm not sold on keyword-driven games, but [i]Starborn[/i]'s story fits the form to a tee.[/*:m]
[*] [i][b]The Mysterious Ocean Tower[/b][/i] raises a number of provocative questions: Can murder be an expression of love? Do we ever truly know what's best? And have the squidmen formed an alliance with the molten warriors of the Marianas trench? By the time you reach the bottom of the tower, the setting has been so vividly sketched that you could easily picture a game ten times as long. And I'd put forth Peyton Cross, the game's dashing anthropologist, as one of the year's more memorable NPCs.[/*:m]
[*] To solve [i][b]Indigo[/b][/i]'s central puzzle and escape the tower, you have to uncover an ingenious mechanic.[/*:m][/list:u]

Competition highlights:

[list][*] [i][b]Taco Fiction[/b][/i] provides funny responses to pretty much everything.[/*:m]
[*] Just when you think you've breezed through it, [i][b]Six[/b][/i] throws you a curve. Demi's map of the park is adorable, but don't get the wrong idea: that park is meticulously implemented.[/*:m]
[*] Several games explored the question, "when is it okay to change the rules?" Among them: the generously implemented [i]It[/i]; [i]The Binary[/i], stripped and streamlined; and [i][b]The Play[/b][/i], perhaps the most entertaining of the bunch. Ninety percent of good writing is putting the right characters together in a room.[/*:m]
[*] If by "best game" we mean something like "best overall," then there are plenty of choices. But for "best puzzles" -- which might translate to "most fun" or closest to some Playtonic ideal -- there are only a few games that come to mind: [i]Six[/i], [i]Kerkerkruip[/i], and, for me, [i][b]Escape from Santaland[/b][/i]. Having deduced the identity of the third reindeer, I was dumbfounded when the game didn't respond. I had been so sure I was right. Then with a flash of insight I realized my mental model was backwards and, reversing my previous deductions, was rewarded with "a little chime ... somewhere to the east ... either 'Ha-a-a-le-lu-jah!' from Handel's Messiah or 'Fi-i-i-ve Go-o-o-ld Rings....'"[/*:m]
[*] I wanted to take [i][b]Beet the Devil[/b][/i]'s puppy with me into the next several games.[/*:m]
[*] Tuned for repeated plays, [i][b]Kerkerkruip[/b][/i] is capable of surprising you long after your first look at the dungeon. To mention just one example: if you attack the thunderbolt-wielding sorceress while wearing plate mail, you're insulated from the worst of the damage; the mail acts as a Faraday cage. The game's introductory material is worth noting as particularly comprehensive, including a PDF overview, an in-game manual, and an instructional video mini-series, which starts by teaching you how to pronounce the title and ends with the author facing down his own creation.[/*:m]
[*] [i][b]Cana According to Micah[/b][/i]'s cast includes some well-drawn NPCs (and here I'm thinking more of John the Baptist and Mary of Bethany than Little Orphan Anna or the ancient mariner).[/*:m]
[*] [i][b]Sentencing Mr Liddell[/b][/i] could have been disastrous. A surreal train ride with echoes of Lewis Carroll? Yeah, no thanks. But it took me by surprise, grounded as it is by the protagonist's family. I'm leaning toward this one for best NPCs.[/*:m]
[*] [i][b]Calm[/b][/i] takes place in a classic sci-fi setting peopled with memorably creepy NPCs: the brain-damaged vicar and the self-proclaimed queen.[/*:m]
[*] Many reviewers found [i][b]The Guardian[/b][/i] maddeningly vague, but I enjoyed absorbing the story as I crossed overland. (The story, as I understand it, goes something like this. [spoiler]Willing to do anything to rejoin your lost love, you've given yourself over to the workings of an enchantress. But it turns out that your love has died, and the enchantment only binds you to his tomb as a guardian wraith doomed to relive your loss for eternity. "Would you like to RESTART, RESTART, or RESTART?"[/spoiler])[/*:m][/list:u]

And from the Spring Thing, which took me all summer to get halfway through:

[list][*] [i][b]Alabaz[/b][/i] probably won't win "most innovative," but it's a massive work with lots to recommend it. I particularly liked the cooperative puzzles: discovering the pipe brush, for example, or working with Trig to steal the spirebird's egg.[/*:m]
[*] [i][b]Bonehead[/b][/i] makes the most of a terrific true story, successfully putting the player in its character's shoes (or cleats as the situation requires).[/*:m]
[*] [i][b]Wetlands[/b][/i] paints a picturesque setting and then gets out of the way, trusting in its quiet pondside village to draw the player in.[/*:m][/list:u]

And here are the technical achievements that come to mind: TADS 3.1 introduced networking features, with Parchment-style online play as only one possibility; Hugor revitalized Hugo on non-Windows machines; Quest 5 took the system forward with a leap that looks (from an admittedly great distance) analogous to the leap from Inform 6 to Inform 7; and finally, Curveship supplemented the world model we've been refining for decades with a model of narrative, a new space to explore.

I'm still thinking about what to actually vote for. What have I missed? What shouldn't I miss? Who were your favorite characters? Which puzzles made you feel like a genius?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4216&start=0#p30371
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Lawedan Enforcer by Lawedan Computers | Recruitment
User: deskoft / DateTime: 2012-01-23 20:23:16

[b]Chapter 1 - [/b]
[i]Brian Glass is an ex-Federal Bureau of Investigation Agent who has been recently transferred to the New York Police Department as a detective due to misconduct during the line of duty, but his first case will be one of the most complex cases that the New York Police Department has ever experienced.

Nicholas Johnson is a middle aged rich geologist who works in a project in the Antarctic region, because he usually does not reside in New York City, he has bought a relatively small house there. With a low profile and all of his wealth in a continent which is undesirable, no one would ever think on murdering Nicholas Johnson...[/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=60#p30372
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-23 20:49:30

The question of what newcomers will need differs, unfortunately, from one person to another. I suspect that the best (or perhaps the only) way to learn T3 is to muddle around, read a bunch of stuff, get very confused, post questions, read more stuff, try things, fix bugs, try more things, and so on.

In considering what might be found in an ideal reference work, I'm put in mind of Graham Nelson's description of the [i]Inform 6 Designer's Manual[/i], in the introduction to same: "In trying to be both a tutorial and reference work, this book aims itself in style halfway between the two extremes of manual, Tedium and Gnawfinger's [i]Elements of Batch Processing in COBOL-66[/i], third edition, and Mr Blobby's [i]Blobby Book of Computer Fun[/i]. (This makes some sections both leaden [i]and [/i]patronising.)"

At least by implication, I think that says it all.

Eric makes a similar point in the introduction of [i]Learning TADS 3[/i]: "The writer of this kind of manual is inevitably in a no-win situation. Reader A will complain loudly that points X, Y and Z haven’t been covered. Reader B will complain about being overwhelmed by too much information. Reader A and Reader B may very well be the same person at different times!"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=80#p30373
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-23 21:32:58

Basti, by now you're probably anxiously awaiting my retirement from the scene, but I have another question...

I'm thinking about trying to add an illumination map to the standard top-down display. Basically, this would be a representation of the grid with 1's where tiledata should print and 0's where it shouldn't. (The 0 bit would prevent both static and nonstatic graphics from printing.) The idea is twofold: 

[list][*]This should allow non-rectangular room plans to print faster. The display rule would just look at the illumination map, see a 0, and skip immediately to the next cell without printing anything. This should definitely improve speed for a map like this: 

[code]1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0[/code]
[/*:m]
[*]With a little work, the illumination map could also respond to m_actor positions--i.e., allowing for light only around light sources. Classically, this would mean a halo of light around the player as he moves, but could also light up the area around other characters, or just around light sources in the environment.[/*:m][/list:u]

Having the ability to do something like 1 could be nice from a performance perspective, and it could be done without an illumination map. A "null" tile would do it, for example--when the display rule sees a 0 for the tile graphic in a cell (or just a null tilecell object in the map-objects list), it just skips printing both static and nonstatic images for that cell. But regardless of whether the illumination map were overlaid on a more basic solution or not, it would be nice to have a map-based definition of darkness.

So, I assume this is possible given R&D's drawing system. Just taking a very quick look at the source, there seem to be a few places where one could intervene. What would the best place be to filter?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4218&start=0#p30374
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: High School Teachers Using IF in the Classroom
User: digitalhap / DateTime: 2012-01-23 21:38:22

I am a doctoral student at the University of Florida, and my dissertation involves the use of Interactive Fiction in high school classes. I am looking for a small number of high school teachers (3-5) that would be willing to participate in one or two interviews regarding their experiences with IF in the classroom.

If you might be willing to participate, or if you know anyone that might be willing, please let me know.

Thank you!

Hap Aziz
<a class="postlink" href="http://hapaziz.wordpress.com">http://hapaziz.wordpress.com</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4219&start=0#p30375
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Concatenating strings
User: katz / DateTime: 2012-01-23 21:53:28

What's the proper way to concatenate strings in Inform 7, particularly if you're building a statement and want to append things to it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4217&start=0#p30376
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Adverbs
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-01-23 21:59:45

[quote="JoeyJones"]Also, there's a lot of scope for giving alternative descriptions depending on how you look at something. Maybe in a timed section, examining quickly wouldn't take any time, while examining carefully would take a few turns, and they'd both give different information.[/quote]
I'm sort of flinching as I read this, because... one of the nice things about EXAMINE is that it can mean whatever you want it to. It can just give some more specific details about what the PC has already seen, it can make the player actively take some time to look closely at something (possibly involving reading documents, trying door-handles, etc.), it can provoke memories or opinions.

This is why EXAMINE is overwhelmingly the most commonly-used verb; it can do whatever the author wants it to do, and this changing of sense goes largely unnoticed by the player -- because in real life we can switch smoothly between a lot of those functions. Adverby EXAMINE would (by default, unless you have a trick up your sleeve to manage this) be like switching from automatic transmission to manual. (Finer control, in theory, but everybody who's used to automatic will be miserable.)

I'm all in favour of doing cool, wacky things with EXAMINE. I've tried 'em myself. But don't underestimate how big a deal this would be: it is, uh, perhaps not the most prudent thing to tackle when you're already dealing with an unusual design approach.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4217&start=0#p30377
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Adverbs
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-23 22:15:03

[quote="maga"]The other trick is that the game would probably have to be about [i]social[/i] actions: it doesn't generally matter whether you unlock a door angrily, but the manner of conversation and performance are critical. And games about negotiating social environments are tricky. But I'm all in favour of people making more of them.[/quote]

Tangentially: in my private-eye WIP I've moved most conversation to intent-and-tone-implying verbs (interrogate, flirt, comfort, cajole, etc) rather than topics, which suits my design style [emote]:)[/emote] It requires careful tracking of events and context, but I like the results so far ...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=60#p30378
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-01-23 22:21:01

[quote="KellyJ"]I very much doubt turning it into something more like I7 is the way forward.[/quote]

Indeed.  I7's documentation is not for everyone, and I think its scattershot approach is particularly not for people who've deliberately chosen the more rigorous syntax of TADS.  What you really want is something more like...
[quote="Jim Aikin"]In considering what might be found in an ideal reference work, I'm put in mind of Graham Nelson's description of the [i]Inform 6 Designer's Manual[/i][/quote]
...yeah, exactly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4201&start=0#p30379
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: I need some pity. - TADS3.1
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-23 22:22:24

[quote="gravel"]I have project pieces that I can't even look at because I have that prickling feeling of despair.  (I find drinking helps lower the despair enough that I can get started, but certainly cannot recommend that technique for everyone.  Also, the level of drunk that lets you ignore the internal editor is about two drops away from the level of drunk that makes you code stuff that's impossible to decipher come morning.)[/quote]

I've never coded (or written) while intoxicated, though recently I did some [i]indexing [/i]while intoxicated, which is ... every bit as wise as it sounds.

Mind you, I left those entries in the Index. They're hilarious [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4215&start=0#p30380
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Wearing backup - TADS3.1
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-23 23:14:39

That usage of remapTo won't work. What you want is:

[code]dobjFor(Take) asDobjFor(Wear)[/code]

The remapTo macro is used when you want the action to be applied to a different object. As such, it requires both an action name and the intended object (or, if it's a TIAction, both the direct object and the indirect object). You could do this, I suppose:

[code]dobjFor(Take) remapTo (Wear, self)[/code]

...but it looks dodgy to me. I wouldn't want to try it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4217&start=0#p30381
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Adverbs
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-23 23:25:55

[quote="JoeyJones"]Can adverbs as a part of the player's command be used successfully in a medium-long interactive fiction? (eg. dance perkily, whisper lustfully, go slowly east)

One way I envision, is for the player to earn adverbs as they proceed, which then allow them to solve puzzles by doing the same actions as before but in a different way (carefully or hastily, for example). This way, it foregrounds which of the thousands of possible adverbs are salient to the story.[/quote]
I guess my first question is, how are you going to go about educating your players that this type of input is useful? Because nobody is going to do it unless you nudge them in the right direction -- they're just going to blunder on, wondering why they're failing to find the right commands.

If you think about it, (verb + adverb) is a more refined or specific form of (verb), so we're back at guess-the-verb, only with complications. The player won't know whether 'pat the bunny' is sufficient by itself, or whether 'pat the bunny gently' is necessary in this particular situation.

My second question is, how will such a scheme enhance the game? I could see that some puzzle or other might be more realistic ('pick up the nitroglycerine carefully' or 'pull the chain hard'), but I can't see that requiring the player to figure this out actually enhances gameplay. I would think that if the response to the ordinary command 'pick up nitroglycerine' is "Moving with exquisite gentleness and caution, you lift the nitroglycerine off of the table," the same dramatic effect is achieved, and without annoying the player.

But that's just me. I'm an old-school type of guy. YMMV.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4216&start=0#p30382
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Lawedan Enforcer by Lawedan Computers | Recruitment
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-23 23:35:38

[quote="deskoft"]You may think this already looks like a good storyline and a great idea, and you may think we are ready to start developing....[/quote]
Actually, no. I think it looks like you've been watching way too much cable TV. I also think you've missed a key element in the scripts of shows like CSI, Cold Case, Bones, or whatever, which is that it's about the people on the crime team. Your thumbnails give us no clue about who has the hots for who, for example.

Also, I failed to notice any mention of $$ in your post. With a project of such grandiose dimensions, are you prepared to pay real bucks? Not that I'm applying for the gig, I'm just curious is all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4219&start=0#p30383
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Concatenating strings
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-23 23:38:11

I think you just write them one after another as indexed text. The following seems to work:

[code]Carritorium is a room.

To decide what indexed text is the concatenated holdings of the player:
	if the player carries nothing:
		decide on "un";
	otherwise:
		let T be indexed text;
		repeat with item running through things held by the player:
			let T be "[T][printed name of item]"; [This is what you're looking for, I think.]
		decide on T.
		
Instead of examining the player: say "You are [concatenated holdings of the player]laden."

A ball, a bat, a cat, a pall, and a hossenfeffer are in Carritorium.
		
Test me with "take all/ x me".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4219&start=0#p30387
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Concatenating strings
User: katz / DateTime: 2012-01-24 00:31:16

Why does "let (variable) be..." work with that, when "now (variable) is..." causes an overflow error?

[code]The Newsroom is a room.

The news report is some text that varies.  The news report is "And now for the news.  ".

Every turn:
	now the news report is "[news report]No news to report.";
	say the news report.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4219&start=0#p30388
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Concatenating strings
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-01-24 00:35:35

You need to use "indexed text" for this -- not regular "text."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4219&start=0#p30389
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Concatenating strings
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-24 00:44:31

Not to negate the question, but there are often ways to do what you want without genuinely concatenating strings.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4219&start=0#p30390
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Concatenating strings
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-01-24 01:08:31

Yeah, I didn't mean to imply you need indexed text -- just that you do if you want to actually concatenate the strings. Here's one way of doing it with regular text:
[code]The Newsroom is a room. Revealed stories is a number that varies.

Table of News
story
"Story 1. "
"Story 2. "
"Story 3. "

Every turn:
	unless revealed stories is the number of rows in the Table of News, increase revealed stories by one;
	say "And now for the news. [news report]".
	
To say news report:
	if revealed stories is 0:
		say "No news to report.";
	otherwise:
		repeat with N running from 1 to revealed stories:
			choose row N in the Table of News;
			say "[story entry]";
		say paragraph break.

test me with "z/z/z/z".
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4221&start=0#p30391
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: to decide... and "is not"?
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-01-24 02:32:03

Hi. There's something here I don't quite get. This might get embarrassing, but here we go: 

Start out with a "to decide" phrase such as 

[code]
To decide if the moon is gibbous:
	if the fullness of the moon is greater than 50, decide yes;
	decide no.
[/code]

Now you can use it straight away in, for example, a description, using a [if the moon is gibbous] expression. But you can't use a [if the moon is not gibbous], unless you also add 
[code]the moon can be gibbous or not gibbous.[/code]

Is the "not" in "if X is not Y" not a negation? It behaves more like "if it is true that x is not y", rather than "if it is not true that x is y". And I guess this makes sense given that you can declare stuff like "the moon can be full, gibbous, not gibbous or new" but it's a bit confusing - it looks like a boolean test but it's more of a comparison, is that it? 

I guess you can do it like this:
[code]
if the moon is gibbous:
    ...
otherwise:
    ...
[/code]

Is there some other way to do the boolean-type negation I was expecting in I7?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4221&start=0#p30392
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: to decide... and "is not"?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-01-24 02:57:32

[quote="peterorme"]... unless you add 
[code]the moon can be gibbous or not gibbous.[/code][/quote]
You don't want to add that to your existing code. If you do, you'll end up with a property (which is manually changeable) and a calculated value (defined in the decide phrase) which are unrelated (not linked together) but have the same conflicting syntax. This is a perfect time for a new adjective definition (see ch. 11.16. "New conditions, new adjectives" -- bottom of page). Try:

[code]The description of the moon is "The moon is[if not gibbous] not gibbous.[else] gibbous."

Definition: the moon is gibbous:
	if the fullness of it is greater than 50, decide yes;
	decide no.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4221&start=0#p30393
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: to decide... and "is not"?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-01-24 03:11:41

Oh, I forgot to answer your actual question. With decide phrases like that, sometimes it's where you place the "not" that mixes up the compiler's parser. You  could have kept your "to decide" phrase the way it was and just changed this:
[code]The description of the moon is "The moon is[if not the moon is gibbous] not gibbous.[else] gibbous."[/code]
... but that isn't very natural language-y. (Cue a chorus of groans.)  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4221&start=0#p30395
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: to decide... and "is not"?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-01-24 04:07:03

You can also use "unless".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4221&start=0#p30396
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: to decide... and "is not"?
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-01-24 05:08:19

Wow, thanks!

That's several ways to do it, and my version was wrong. 

So three ways to create a gibbous moon - with a property ("the moon can be gibbous"), a value ("to decide if the moon is gibbous:") or an adjective ("definition: the moon is gibbous:"). I never saw it outlined like that. Are these the right words for it? Are there more ways to do this? 

Any way will work, but pick one of them. Of course you define the "gibbousness" as a kind of value too, but then you're still in the property business. 

It seems like "unless" is a very good idea here to test for negatives - not only does it read more like english, it also works regardless of how you set it up.

What I'm getting is this:
[list]
[*] value = "to decide" -- works with "if not the moon is gibbous" or "unless the moon is gibbous"[/*:m]
[*] adjective = "definition" -- works with "if the moon is not gibbous" or "unless the moon is gibbous"[/*:m]
[*] property - "the moon can be gibbous" -- "works with "if the moon is not gibbous" or "unless the moon is gibbous"[/*:m][/list:u]

I'm learning...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4203&start=0#p30397
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment Crumbling
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-01-24 05:09:06

It's having trouble downloading from the Archive. It's supposed to have up to 60 seconds but it's giving up earlier than that... maybe the Archive is disconnecting for some reason? Any ideas Zarf?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4203&start=0#p30398
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment Crumbling
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-01-24 05:23:16

The archive is down at the moment. It was in the last 12 hrs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4203&start=0#p30399
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment Crumbling
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2012-01-24 05:37:22

[quote="Jamespking"]The archive is down at the moment. It was in the last 12 hrs.[/quote]

Yes. <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4175">viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4175</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4203&start=10#p30400
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment Crumbling
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-01-24 06:26:22

Right. Forgot about it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4172&start=0#p30401
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Delusions of Eloquence: Blue Lacuna (2009)
User: Hagbard Celine / DateTime: 2012-01-24 06:51:12

the problem I had with blue lacuna was the broken npc interaction on the island, I liked the first part, wish I could have finished the game but like I said: broken

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3411&start=0#p30402
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Help: Last point in Lost Pig?
User: Hagbard Celine / DateTime: 2012-01-24 06:52:40

it was fun until I had to talk to that gnome (?) for hours, never played it again

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3827&start=10#p30403
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Parchment problems
User: Hagbard Celine / DateTime: 2012-01-24 07:06:24

seems parchment also doesn't work with ie8, which limits its usability drastically

who's developing it anyway?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3766&start=20#p30404
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The game that has the best world simulation?
User: Hagbard Celine / DateTime: 2012-01-24 07:07:54

[quote="sai"]I am looking for games that have a very advanced world simulation. 
For example you can walk in a town, and if break through any house you can find realistic interiors and objects.
Or games that simulate a lot of npc in a realistic way if we interact with them even though we are not forced by the plot to do so.
Well, games that have a good enough world simulation to give the player the illusion he is free of his actions, and that manage to process it in a useful way to make the game more interesting and more in-depth.

Thank you.[/quote]
if I ever write my long-planned game, it will be exactly like this

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4217&start=10#p30405
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Adverbs
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-01-24 07:37:16

[b]RE: Changing Examining[/b]
I take the point that it could be jarring, especially for seasoned players. Also, we don't want players to feel compelled to examine everything in three different ways. However, a time based game could be made around the mechanic: you've got five minutes to investigate the Count's study, you know you can look at things quickly or slowly and you have to decide where to divide your attention. If the player is forewarned about the mechanics then it could be quite a fun puzzle/small game.

Or you could have different adverbs always on by default (then it could act like an extra kind of verbose setting).

[b]RE: Educating the Player[/b]
If you're playing Skyrim or Rayman or Civ 7, then nobody minds being told 'push x to jump' or 'left click to select units' at the start of play. There seems a considerable reticence in many text games to be so explicit about how to actually play the game. If doing things angrily, hastily or gently is important for a game then you can just tell the player as much (perhaps in a little pop-up box?)

For art's sake, you can disguise the advice in-game by having NPCs or other devices teach the player.

As for what it might add to a game: I don't think all or even most games could fruitfully make use of such a device, but I think adverbs have something to add if you have a game where doing things in different ways is important (for example: because you're being watched, because there's a time limit, because you're a diplomat or actor and the game is enriched by allowing different ways of acting), or it's a game in which you must manipulate both the tone and content of the game world to progress.

Simply adding a layer of guess the adverbs (patting bunnies 'gently' when there's no other use of 'gently' in the game), would of course be annoying. 

(Oh and Ghalev: Your approach sounds interesting. I'm curious, how do let the player know which conversation verbs work in the game?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4217&start=10#p30406
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Adverbs
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-24 07:53:04

[quote](Oh and Ghalev: Your approach sounds interesting. I'm curious, how do let the player know which conversation verbs work in the game?)[/quote]

Via several means ranging from subtle coaching in error responses to overt tutorial information for those who request it to a straightforward list of necessary verbs in the online menu. The usual, really.

The [i]intention [/i]is that only the [i]idea [/i]needs to be taught explicitly, and that the boundaries of the system should remain shrouded from the player unless the player chooses to banish that shroud to reduce the game's difficulty (an explicit option). Testing (when it comes time for testing) will let me know if this intent has any merit at all. If testing reveals otherwise, I'll adjust to suit.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3766&start=20#p30407
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The game that has the best world simulation?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-24 07:58:21

[quote="Hagbard Celine"]if I ever write my long-planned game, it will be exactly like this[/quote]

It is, I think, the [i]perfect [/i]approach for games long-planned but unfinished. If anything, it will only enrich and bolster those qualities [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4203&start=10#p30408
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment Crumbling
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-01-24 08:35:30

I had too...
Taco Fiction loads, but there's a JS error somewhere. I'll track it down tomorrow.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4199&start=0#p30409
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: understanding the article in a table's topics
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-24 10:12:02

[quote="Jamespking"]Yeah, there are 250 names circa (maybe less, but no less than 150 synonyms). Only a part of it (20%, maybe) is about objects.
And, yes, that could've been a rather bright idea... if only it came up to my lazy mind in the beginning...[/quote]
That's pretty much what Epistemology is for - it creates a "subject" kind for things that are offstage but known.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4202&start=0#p30410
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Nested If Statements, Multiple Objects
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-24 10:16:40

Your use of brackets makes me wonder whether a monster in your game is a thing or a kind. If it is a kind, beware of any time you type the words "the monster" - it almost never does what you mean, since it's parsed by the compiler as "a monster." If I'm reading your code correctly, changing it to "the noun" will do what you intend.

I agree with Joey that a Before rule isn't what you want here, but you needn't go all the way towards implementing separate check/carry out/report rules - an Instead rule might be fine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4213&start=0#p30411
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: conversations with a multi-location AI
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-24 10:55:52

[quote="zarf"]The backdrop solution is the lowest-effort, I'd say.[/quote]
And it's similar to the approach I took in the "Crowds" extension, which may do what you want. The current version of Crowds avoids some of the odder issues that arise when a person is part of a backdrop.

It's a bit more than you need, but "Conditional backdrops" is a little bit less. Feel free to examine both extensions for how to create a person who behaves like a backdrop.

<a class="postlink" href="http://eyeballsun.org/i/Conditional%20Backdrops.i7x">http://eyeballsun.org/i/Conditional%20Backdrops.i7x</a> (the version on the i7 site is not up to date)
<a class="postlink" href="http://eyeballsun.org/i/Crowds.i7x">http://eyeballsun.org/i/Crowds.i7x</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4221&start=0#p30412
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: to decide... and "is not"?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-24 11:05:52

[quote="peterorme"]
What I'm getting is this:
[list]
[*] value = "to decide" -- works with "if not the moon is gibbous" or "unless the moon is gibbous"[/*:m]
[*] adjective = "definition" -- works with "if the moon is not gibbous" or "unless the moon is gibbous"[/*:m]
[*] property - "the moon can be gibbous" -- "works with "if the moon is not gibbous" or "unless the moon is gibbous"[/*:m][/list:u]
[/quote]
I think of the first thing as a phrase, or possibly a "phrase returning a value" or a "phrase to work out a value" or a "to decide which" phrase.

Not directly related, but very handy... If you have a phrase like this:

[code]To decide whether foo with (parameter A - a value) and (parameter B - a value)[/code]

you can make it much more flexible by turning it into a conditional relation:

[code]Fooness relates a value (called parameter A) to a value (called parameter B) when foo with parameter A and parameter B.

The verb to be foo with implies the fooness relation.[/code]

The difference is that a phrase has to take a variable as an argument, while a relation can either take a variable or a description ("if A is foo with a frobbing B"). Plus, you can inflect the verb for pretty grammar and use the relation as part of a more complex description. ("Any blorbed A that is foo with a frobbing B")

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4216&start=0#p30413
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Lawedan Enforcer by Lawedan Computers | Recruitment
User: deskoft / DateTime: 2012-01-24 11:07:09

[quote="Jim Aikin"][quote="deskoft"]You may think this already looks like a good storyline and a great idea, and you may think we are ready to start developing....[/quote]
Actually, no. I think it looks like you've been watching way too much cable TV. I also think you've missed a key element in the scripts of shows like CSI, Cold Case, Bones, or whatever, which is that it's about the people on the crime team. Your thumbnails give us no clue about who has the hots for who, for example.

Also, I failed to notice any mention of $$ in your post. With a project of such grandiose dimensions, are you prepared to pay real bucks? Not that I'm applying for the gig, I'm just curious is all.[/quote]

I am very sorry to hear you don't like our story-line.

The idea is not to simulate a CSI Show, In my own opinion those cases are not realistic whatsoever. In those TV Series the crime scenes are crowded of random people, usually people that would be waiting at the lab.

As of who has the hots for who, it's very simple, in the scene you will go with your Crime Scene Investigator and based on what you find, you start calling people and running tests.

We are indeed, prepared to pay developers, but the payment of developers is to be discussed during the interview. In this case I am paying out of my own pocket, so the salary would range from 20$-50$ the development hour, depending on your quality, your past experience and your ideas.

All other positions are not paid.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3932&start=0#p30414
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF at POPL 2012
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-24 11:21:44

So... anybody going?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4175&start=0#p30415
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IFArchive outage on Tuesday, Jan 24th
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-24 11:24:52

This is, to bump the topic, today.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4215&start=0#p30416
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Wearing backup - TADS3.1
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-01-24 11:36:48

My mistake, I glanced at a bit of code I had on screen and assumed it was the right bit.

I knew it was one or the other [emote]:)[/emote] thanks for clearing that up

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4201&start=10#p30417
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: I need some pity. - TADS3.1
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-24 12:05:01

I've written philosophy when (mildly) intoxicated. I don't think it was noticeably different from the surrounding stuff, just took longer to do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4213&start=10#p30418
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: conversations with a multi-location AI
User: yhlee / DateTime: 2012-01-24 12:12:39

Many thanks to all for the suggestions/discussion.  I will check out the Crowds and Conditional Backdrops extensions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=60#p30419
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-01-24 12:16:27

[quote]Eric makes a similar point in the introduction of Learning TADS 3: "The writer of this kind of manual is inevitably in a no-win situation. Reader A will complain loudly that points X, Y and Z haven’t been covered. Reader B will complain about being overwhelmed by too much information. Reader A and Reader B may very well be the same person at different times!"[/quote]
And he's spot on with that and it's the same with anything with the old [i]"you can't please everyone"[/i] I personally think that he covers each area in enough depth, expanding as he goes.  The tutorial (in my opinion) seems throw a few things at you quickly followed by some more to then tell you can do both an easier / better / other way it's easy to understand why someone would feel overwhelmed by it

[quote]I suspect that the best (or perhaps the only) way to learn T3 is to muddle around, read a bunch of stuff, get very confused, post questions, read more stuff, try things, fix bugs, try more things, and so on.[/quote]
Again I agree but getting confused shouldn't be derived from the tutorial.  It's a blessing and a curse in its own right, it has a fantastic amount of knowledge to be gained from it but it's also likely to put someone off if they're new to either T3 or IF.  I wouldn't overhaul it by any stretch, maybe just a few tweeks near the start to ease people into using tads a little gentler

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4202&start=0#p30420
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Nested If Statements, Multiple Objects
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-01-24 12:40:08

An instead rule would do it, but then the action would count internally as a failure, which can cause issues further down the line. 

Also I think generally its a pretty bizarre programming tactic to define an action and then say to do something instead of that action; it's like, 'This is attacking, but instead of attacking do this stuff which is functionally equivalent of attacking!' 

If you don't use an instead rule, the key thing is that the monster (which I assume is being used as a place holder here) is sent to the void after the action is resolved.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4215&start=0#p30421
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Wearing backup - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-24 13:34:29

I'm sorry to say that none of the suggestions I received for wearing the pack worked [emote]:roll:[/emote]  [emote]:roll:[/emote] 
I did notice that when I use 'wear pack', the response says (first taking the pack) and then it says that I am now wearing the pack. That's probably what is causing the problem. Perhaps, some type of 'if' statement will assure that the game will only accept a 'wear pack' command.

So, I'm still looking for ideas. What I need is some type of 'worn/wear only' condition for the pack instead of an 'alwaysWorn ' condition. I'm still checking the manuals.

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4223&start=0#p30422
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Naming advice please
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-24 13:59:41

[code]Definition: an object (called item) is only available when touchable:
	Follow the custom touchability requirements for the item;
	If the outcome of the rulebook is the it must be touchable outcome, yes;
	no.

To decide whether (item - a thing) must be touched:
	If item is not involved, no;
	Decide on whether or not item is only available when touchable.[/code]

I'm pretty happy with the syntax here, when it works:

[code]If the ceiling must be touched:[/code]

However, because the "must be touched" phrase is not an adjective, you can't say:

[code]If a high-up thing must be touched[/code]

Of course you can change the (item - a thing) to a description of objects, but that always felt like a hack to me. What I really want is an adjective, and I can't think of one. Any suggestions?

It's not possible to define a unary verb in I7, is it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4215&start=0#p30423
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Wearing backup - TADS3.1
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-24 14:31:38

The problem with dobjFor(Take) asDobjFor(Wear) is that wear will use an implicit take to satisfy the objHeld precondition, with unfortunate but amusing results.

[quote]
> take backpack
(first taking the backpack, then taking it, then taking it, then taking it, 
then taking it, then taking it, then taking it, then taking it, then taking it, 
then taking it, then taking it, then taking it, then taking it, then taking it, 
then taking it, then taking it, then taking it, then taking it, then taking it, 
then taking it, then taking it, then taking it, then taking it)

[Runtime error: stack overflow]
[/quote]

There are several ways to break the circularity. Here is one:

[code]
+ backpack: Wearable 'backpack' 'backpack'
	"A backpack. "
	
	dobjFor(Take) {
		action() {
			inherited();
			makeWornBy(gActor);
			mainReport(&okayWearMsg);
		}
	}

	dobjFor(Doff) {
		action() {
			inherited();
			gActor.getDropDestination(self, nil).receiveDrop(self, dropTypeDrop);
			mainReport(&okayDoffMsg);
		}
	}

	dobjFor(Wear) asDobjFor(Take)
	dobjFor(Drop) asDobjFor(Doff)
;
[/code]

Produces this output:

[quote]
You see a backpack here.

> take backpack
Okay, you’re now wearing the backpack.

> doff backpack
Okay, you’re no longer wearing the backpack.

> doff backpack
You’re not wearing that.

> drop backpack
You’re not wearing that.

> wear backpack
Okay, you’re now wearing the backpack.

> drop backpack
Okay, you’re no longer wearing the backpack.
[/quote]

If this doesn't work for you, you'll need to post the full code for your backpack object.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4215&start=0#p30424
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Wearing backup - TADS3.1
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-24 14:38:29

Since you only want to be able to wear it but not take it, let's disallow taking it:

[code]
dobjFor(Take)
{
    check()
    {
        "It's not for the taking. You can wear it though. ";
        exit;
    }
}
[/code]

Now to deal with the "wear" action's precondition that objects must be held before being worn. By default, the Wearable class has this:

[code]
preCond = [objHeld]
[/code]

in its dobjFor(Wear) handler. You need to remove that precondition for your backpack. However, removing it means that you can wear it without taking it (duh!), which in turn means that after you wear it, the backpack is still located in the room rather than in the player. So you need to move it into the player manually now:

[code]
dobjFor(Wear)
{
    // By default, objects must be held before being worn. We don't want that in this case.
    preCond = [];
        
    action()
    {
        // Move the backpack into the player.
        self.moveInto(gPlayerChar);
        // Continue with whatever this action would have done by default.
        inherited();
    }
}
[/code]

This does what you want. However, now you need to think about what happens when the player tries to remove (doff) the backpack. By default, it will doff it and leave it the player's inventory. I assume this is not what you want? Do you want to drop the backpack in this case, or disallow removing it completely? In both cases, you will need to provide that behavior in the backpack's dobjFor(Doff) handler (which also has a default precondition, namely "preCond = [roomToHoldObj]".)

The Wearable class is defined in objects.t, btw, where you can see what happens by default.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4217&start=10#p30425
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Adverbs
User: Merlin Fisher / DateTime: 2012-01-24 16:20:27

A nice thing about IF is that you can set the "tone" of the story by carefully choosing what you put in descriptions, including descriptions of the player's actions.  Some pretty cool effects can be had when the PC and the player are not quite on the same page, although if there is too much dissonance, it does kinda ruin the experience for some.  (I can recall many games where I didn't like the PC at all; in a few instances, this was creepily effective; in many, it just made me hate the game.)  "Slouching Towards Bedlam" had a subtle take on this which I thought was genius.

This is a pretty common narrative trick in suspense/thriller films; the protagonist knows (or should know) something the viewer does not.  I find it tedious in films by now, but since IF is interactive, it has some great potential which I think could still stand to be plumbed further.  I have been surprised and impressed by those games in which the PC has some motive I didn't know about; there are a good handful of these by now, but few enough that I still get surprised by them.

Obviously, if you grant the player the ability to tweak adverbs, you'd lose this control over the story.  So I suppose it would work best in games with multiple plot tracks and multiple endings.  That would be a lot more work to write, but potentially give the game some additional "replay value."  You could, I suppose, offer adverbs in a one-track story with only one ending, but not all the adverbs work (or the story reacts so they all have similar effects), but then I'd have to wonder why you bothered to put in such a feature.

p.s.  As for "EXAMINE," it drives me nuts when "x object," "search object," and "look in object" (for open containers or mirrors) have different results, because I don't want to type multiple commands just to get all the information about the item.  So I'd make them all the same, none of this "Examine briefly" or "examine closely," unless you have a really good reason not to (eg, a game with a strict time limit, where different actions take different amounts of time).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4203&start=10#p30426
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment Crumbling
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-01-24 16:20:35

Wow, there were some very obvious bugs there. I'm amazed they hadn't been reported before now, no Glulx game would have run!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4218&start=0#p30427
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: High School Teachers Using IF in the Classroom
User: joepereira / DateTime: 2012-01-24 16:33:09

Hi Hap. I'm not a high-school teacher, but I do teach English as a foreign to teenagers. I have a blog on using IF for foreign language learning - <a class="postlink" href="http://www.theswanstation.com/wordpress">www.theswanstation.com/wordpress</a>

I just finished writing a case study on student perceptions of IF, so if you need some input, I'd be happy to help.

Joe

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4194&start=0#p30428
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7 problem i can't get over
User: Merlin Fisher / DateTime: 2012-01-24 16:45:45

By the way, if you're comfortable with leaving out a phrase, you can also just write the description (in quotes, of course) in the sentence immediately following the creation of the room, and I7 will automatically consider that its description until further notice.

For instance:

[code]Dicksville is a region.
The Pub is a room in Dicksville.  "This is the place where people called Dicks meet."
[/code]

You'll then see the sentence in quotes as the room description in The Pub.

This also works for objects.  See chapter 3 in the I7 documentation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4223&start=0#p30429
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Naming advice please
User: Merlin Fisher / DateTime: 2012-01-24 16:54:38

Ummm ... I'm not quite sure what you are trying to do (sorry my programming skills are weaksauce), but are you trying to put something within scope but out of reach?  There might be a more elegant way to do that...

Adjectives: elevated?  Unreachable?  Tantalizing?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4173&start=0#p30430
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: OMG! Not ANOTHER stupid IF system!
User: fiziwig / DateTime: 2012-01-24 16:58:56

Still plugging along on this PHPIF project.

My current step is that I'm starting to work out the details of the script internal bytecode, and just how the game files will be structured.

I have a sample two-room game outlined in pseudo code, and a simulated transcript of each step in the process of playing the game showing how the control flow gets passed back and forth between interpreter code and game-specific code.

The whole process works very differently than it would for IF on a local machine, but the outline I have so far looks very promising. I might even have some bytecode running in the interpreter in a few more days.

Latest stuff: <a class="postlink" href="http://fiziwig.com/intfic/design2.html">http://fiziwig.com/intfic/design2.html</a>
Parser description: <a class="postlink" href="http://fiziwig.com/intfic/design.html">http://fiziwig.com/intfic/design.html</a>
Working parser to play with: <a class="postlink" href="http://fiziwig.com/intfic/parser.php">http://fiziwig.com/intfic/parser.php</a>

--gary

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4173&start=0#p30431
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: OMG! Not ANOTHER stupid IF system!
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-24 17:29:22

You might want to switch to a normal user interface for this rather than having a separate input field. Like this:

[code]
>look
You see nothing.

>
[/code]

This will make it easier for people to try it out and test it. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4175&start=0#p30432
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IFArchive outage on Tuesday, Jan 24th
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-24 17:49:39

All should be back online.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4173&start=10#p30433
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: OMG! Not ANOTHER stupid IF system!
User: fiziwig / DateTime: 2012-01-24 18:11:20

[quote="RealNC"]You might want to switch to a normal user interface for this rather than having a separate input field. Like this:

[code]
>look
You see nothing.

>
[/code]

This will make it easier for people to try it out and test it. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

The focus right now is on functionality. Once I get everything actually working the format is just window dressing that can be changed easily. After all, it's all HTML. That's means images, sound effects, wild fonts, crazy formatting, that's all gravy that I get for free because I'm using the player's browser as the game interface.

For now I want to keep the code as simple as earthly possible so I can concentrate on the internal nuts and bolts. Later there will be time to make it pretty.

Right now, to support that kind of interface would require Javascript and AJAX which introduces a whole extra layer of complexity that would make the job of getting it all working that much more difficult.

Eventually it will be prettied up. But not yet.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4224&start=0#p30434
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7 - Renaming doors.
User: NeoShade / DateTime: 2012-01-24 19:02:02

Hi everybody,

I've been playing around with I7 for a little while now, but this is my first post here.
I was just hoping somebody might be able to shed some light on something for me.

I want to rename doors, because I would like to have a rule that says 'Understand "door" as a door', but I want that rule to not include things such as ladders or gates. Ideally, I would rename doors to exits (or something of the like if exit is already a keyword), and then have a door as being a kind of exit.

Is this possible? Is it dangerous?

Thanks. [emote]:)[/emote]

 --- Neo

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=290#p30435
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: NeoShade / DateTime: 2012-01-24 19:07:13

Hi there,

Scott Ewing from Victoria, Australia. I work in IT as a network technician, but would really like to get into a more programing oriented field. I never really played a huge amount of IF, but what I did play I really enjoyed. I've tried my hand at various forms of game making (Game Maker 6, 7 & 8, RPG Maker 2000, 2003, XP & VX) but IF is by far my favourite so fare, as you only need to be able to code and tell a story, rather than track down people who can draw, write music, etc.

Working with I7 at this stage, and have tried a few others but I7 is in my opinion the easiest to use. Haven't finished a game yet, but have one in the works.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=290#p30436
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: gordebak / DateTime: 2012-01-24 19:18:03

Hello Scott, welcome! Good luck with your game!

Australia, huh? It will sound a bit idiotic, but I envy you, because it must be summer there. We are surrounded by snow here. I won't be able to go anywhere today.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=290#p30437
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: NeoShade / DateTime: 2012-01-24 19:21:09

It is summer here and the weather is awesome.
Just got back from waterskiing last week, and heading out again next weekend. Good times.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4224&start=0#p30438
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Renaming doors.
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-01-24 19:28:54

I may be misunderstanding your problem, but:
One thing to keep in mind is that "too many synonyms" is rarely a problem, since Inform will do a certain amount of disambiguation on its own.  For example, if you have a door called "the cellar door" and another door called "a mysterious ladder," technically Inform recognizes that "door" could be either of them, but it's likely to decide that just plain "door" means the former.  Inform will already understand "door" as a door, and doubly so if the door has "door" in its name.  You might have problems if the player refers to "the mysterious door," but what player is going to do that?

If what you mean is that you want to make specific rules to apply to ladders but not non-ladder doors, I think what I would do is make ladders and gates and so on into subkinds of door.  You can then play around with "does the player mean" rules that apply to them.

(Now I've looked at the word "door" too much and it has stopped having meaning...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4224&start=0#p30439
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Renaming doors.
User: NeoShade / DateTime: 2012-01-24 19:47:24

[quote="tove"]If what you mean is that you want to make specific rules to apply to ladders but not non-ladder doors, I think what I would do is make ladders and gates and so on into subkinds of door. You can then play around with "does the player mean" rules that apply to them.[/quote]

Actually my problem is exactly the opposite. I want to have rules that apply only to doors, but not ladders. For this reason I really want 'doors' to be a sub-kind of 'exits' (where 'exit' replaces the current meaning of 'door').

A workaround could be to simply make a sub-kind called 'doorways' or the like, but I'd like to know if it's possible to actually rename 'doors'.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4224&start=0#p30440
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Renaming doors.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-24 20:47:56

I don't think you can change the use of the word "door" in your source code. But I think defining doorways as a kind of door and including "understand 'door' as a doorway" should work fine; when the player types "door" it isn't understood as a door by default unless you've included an understand line to that effect. (This is true of kinds in general.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4224&start=0#p30442
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Renaming doors.
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-01-24 21:35:21

Aw man, I could've sworn that Inform understood the name of a kind as referring to whatever instances of that kind are around, but no, mattw is right.  I wonder where I got that idea?

[quote="NeoShade"]I want to have rules that apply only to doors, but not ladders.[/quote]

Well, sure, but you can say things along the lines of [code]Instead of doing something to a door:
[tab]unless the noun is a ladder:[/code]

But yeah, I think the best you can do in the direction you want to go, without trying to hack the entirety of the Standard Rules, is to make a new door kind called "doorway" or "truedoor" or something.  Trying to rename doors would really just be aesthetics in your source code, wouldn't it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4225&start=0#p30443
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Happy Burns' Day
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-01-24 21:52:01

A reminder that tomorrow (or today, for those on the other side of the pond) is the birthday of Robert Burns,the great Scottish poet.  In honor of that most august occasion, I have tossed together a very quick and dirty piece in Inform 7 -- all of about five minutes playing time, and not much more than that to write it.  Enjoy!

Apologies to any Scotsmen for the technical errors which I've surely made.


Robert Rothman


[code]"Burns Night Supper" by Robert Rothman

Use American dialect.  [Only because Inform 7 does not (as far as I know) offer a Scottish dialect option -- which is probably just as well since I'd undoubtedly get it wrong anyway.]

The player carries a coin.  The description of the coin is "The coin is struck wi[apostrophe] a likeness o[apostrophe] bonnie Prince Charlie.".

Courses consumed is a number that varies.  Courses consumed is zero.
Every turn:
	If courses consumed is four:
		End the game saying "Happy Burns[apostrophe] Day!".

The Dining Room is a room.  The description of the Dining Room is "This room seems like the perfect place to enjoy a savory Burns[apostrophe] Night Supper.".
 
 A supporter called a table is in the Dining Room.  The table is scenery.  The description of the table is "This long wooden table appears to be made of oak, stained with the patina of long use.".
 
 A haggis is on the table.  The haggis is edible.  The description of the haggis is "The 'chieftain o[apostrophe] the puddin[apostrophe] race' is made from various internal organs of a sheep, ground up and mixed with oats and onions, stuffed into the sheep's stomach and boiled for a day or two until tender."
 Instead of smelling the haggis, say "The earthy aroma makes your mouth water.".  Instead of tasting the haggis, say "Gingerly, you touch your tongue to the stuffed bag of flesh.  The flavor hints at complex subtleties, and makes you want to eat more."
 Check eating the haggis when the piper is unpaid:
	Say "Surely ye canna eat the haggis wi'out proper musical accompaniment!" instead.
 After eating the haggis:
	Say "As you ingest the savory concoction, you find yourself thinking of fields of heather, with the occasional thistle growing here and there.";
	Increase courses consumed by one;
	Stop the action.
	
Some tatties are on the table.  The tatties are edible.  The description of the tatties is "Boiled spuds, bashed wi[apostrophe] plenty o[apostrophe] butter.".
Instead of smelling the tatties, say "A savory fragrance emerges from this simple dish.".  Instead of tasting the tatties, say "Dipping a fingertip into the pureed tubers to sample a taste, you remember how hungry you are."
 After eating the tatties:
	Say "You wolf down the potatoes with gusto.";
	Increase courses consumed by one;
	Stop the action.
	
Some neeps are on the table.  The neeps are edible.  The description of the neeps is "Turnips, simmered gently in river water until they are practically falling apart, then bashed.".
Instead of smelling the neeps, say "The neeps are redolent of the earth in which they grew and the water in which they were  boiled.".  Instead of tasting the neeps, say "You take a wee drop o[apostrophe] the neeps.  It tastes good, but you want more."
 After eating the neeps:
	Say "The boiled turnips are the perfect accompaniment to the other dishes on tonight's bill of fare.";
	Increase courses consumed by one;
	Stop the action.
	
Some whisky is on the table.  Understand "booze" as the whisky.  The description of the  whisky is "It's Lagavullin.".
Instead of smelling the whisky, say "The aroma of malt and peat is magnificent.".  Instead of tasting the whisky, say "Only a wee laddie would be satisfied with just a taste.  Go on, man, take a real drink!".  Instead of eating the whisky, say "Are ye daft?". 
Instead of drinking the whisky:
	Say "'Slainte!' you proclaim, before downing the amber liquid.  It is truly [italic type]uisge beatha,[roman type] the water of life itself.";
	Increase courses consumed by one;
	Remove the whisky from play.

Instead of drinking something, say "Are ye daft?".

A mouse is on the table.  A plan is part of the mouse.  The description of the mouse is "The poor wee critter is dead.[if the plan is part of the mouse]  It seems to have a plan clutched in its paw.". 
Instead of smelling the mouse, say "Fortunately, it hasn't yet started to decompose.  The smell is just a bit, well, mousy.".  Instead of tasting the mouse, try eating the mouse.  Instead of eating the mouse, say "That's disgusting!".
Instead of taking the plan:
	If the plan is part of the mouse:
		Say "You pry the tiny paper from the rodent's paw.";
		Now the player carries the plan;
	Otherwise:
		Continue the action.
Instead of examining the plan:
	If the plan is part of the mouse:
		Say "You can't get a good look at the plan while it is clutched by the deceased mouse.";
	Otherwise:
		Continue the action.
The description of the plan is "Though it was once well-laid, something seems to have gone wrong with this plan.".
		
A guinea stamp is on the table.  The description of the guinea stamp is "Just your standard garden-variety guinea stamp, although it does seem to have a bit of an odd aroma.".
Instead of smelling the guinea stamp, say "It's really quite rank!".

A man called the piper is in the dining room.  The piper can be paid or unpaid.  The piper is unpaid.  The description of the piper is "The piper is dressed in a kilt, a tam is atop his head, a sporran is slung around his neck and a dagger hangs from his belt.  [if the piper is unpaid]He carries a set of pipes, although he is not playing anything at the moment.[otherwise]He is playing the pipes.".

The piper wears a kilt.  The description of the kilt is "The tartan is that of Clan MacFlathead.".
The piper wears a tam.  The description of the tam is "A traditional bit of Scottish headwear.".
The piper wears a sporran.  The description of the sporran is "[if the piper is unpaid]Even from the outside, you can tell that this leather pouch is quite empty.  [end if]You consider making a  wisecrack about how well the piper's purse goes with his skirt.  However, after glancing the dagger at his belt, you decide to keep your mouth shut.".
The piper wears a belt.  The description of the belt is "Just a standard black leather belt.  It keeps the kilt from falling down.".
The piper carries a dagger.  The description of the dagger is "It looks quite sharp, and makes you want to stay on the piper's good side.".
The piper carries a set of pipes.  Understand "bagpipes" as the set of pipes.  Understand "set of bagpipes" as the set of pipes.  The description of the set of pipes is "A large misshapen bag with a bunch of tubes emerging from it at all angles.  It looks like it was created by the joint efforts of a drunken leatherworker and a mad plumber.".
Instead of listening, try listening to the piper.  Instead of listening to the set of pipes, try listening to the piper.
Instead of listening to the piper:
	If the piper is unpaid:
		Say "You hear nothing.  That's not surprising, since the piper isn't playing anything at the moment.";
	Otherwise:
		Choose a random row from the table of songs;
		Say "The piper is playing [song entry].".
		
Instead of giving the coin to the piper:
	Now the piper is paid;
	Choose a random row from the table of songs;
	Say "Ye pay the piper, as all men must.  He nods his thanks, and carefully places the coin in his sporran.  Then he starts blowing into his pipes.  For a few moments, terrible sounds emerge as the pressure builds.  Then, you hear the familiar strains of [song entry].";
	Remove the coin from play.

		
		
Table of Songs
Song
"Auld Lang Syne"
"Comin[apostrophe] Thro[apostrophe] the Rye"
"Sweet Afton"
"Rattlin[apostrophe] Roarin[apostrophe] Willie"
"Willie Brew'd A Peck O'[apostrophe]Maut"
"John Barleycorn"
"O, thou pale orb" 
	
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4219&start=0#p30444
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Concatenating strings
User: katz / DateTime: 2012-01-24 21:56:53

^That is indeed the better way; I was just inclined to try concatenation because a) I needed to append a variable number of strings and b) I had concatenation on the brain.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4223&start=0#p30445
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Naming advice please
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-24 22:04:27

[quote="Merlin Fisher"]Ummm ... I'm not quite sure what you are trying to do (sorry my programming skills are weaksauce), but are you trying to put something within scope but out of reach  There might be a more elegant way to do that...

Adjectives: elevated?  Unreachable?  Tantalizin?[/quote]
Weaksauce: opposite of awesomesauce? Interesting.

This is for my "Flexible Action Requirements" extension. The "high-up" adjective was just an example for context, and not what I'm looking for. "Must be touched" means that the object is involved in the current action (thus it is known to be in scope), and the action requires it to be touchable. The object may not necessarily be out of reach, but if it is, this adjective will signal that a denial should be given.

Looking back at my code, I think maybe "only available when touchable" has the same meaning, and the only reason the "involved" line is in the phrase at all is to save a few cycles. Here is definitely a case where coming back to old code demonstrates poor readability. I think "available" gives the wrong idea. But I'd have to look at the rest of the code to be sure that's what I meant.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4224&start=0#p30446
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Renaming doors.
User: NeoShade / DateTime: 2012-01-24 22:16:04

Yes, it would be a purely aesthetic change to make things easier to read/write in my source. I'm happy enough to use a sub-kind, I guess I was just hopeful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4224&start=0#p30447
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Renaming doors.
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-24 22:30:58

You could investigate changing your copy of the Standard Rules (look under open extension in the File menu I think) so that you rename doors there. I don't know if this'll create other complications though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4224&start=0#p30448
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7 - Renaming doors.
User: NeoShade / DateTime: 2012-01-24 22:52:59

I may look into that at a later date, but I don't think I really need to go to that much trouble.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4217&start=10#p30449
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Adverbs
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-24 23:59:22

[quote="Merlin Fisher"]p.s.  As for "EXAMINE," it drives me nuts when "x object," "search object," and "look in object" (for open containers or mirrors) have different results, because I don't want to type multiple commands just to get all the information about the item.  So I'd make them all the same, none of this "Examine briefly" or "examine closely," unless you have a really good reason not to (eg, a game with a strict time limit, where different actions take different amounts of time).[/quote]

I agree with this, in general. I'm fine with examine not telling me everything about an object, but there's a natural nesting method which suits the form well, where you can examine details revealed by EXAMINE. ([b]x pottery[/b] The pots are empty, but bear curious designs depicting the Battle of Floon. [b]x designs[/b] They're similar to the tapestries you noticed in the entry hall, but something strikes you as odd about the soldiers. [b]x soldiers[/b] At first you can't quite place it, but then you're certain: there are [i]four [/i]soldiers in these images; there were only [i]three [/i]in the tapestry version [b]x fourth[/b] He seems to be wearing the Fabled Backpack of Flarn!)

Which is not to say that i'm down on the adverbs thing. but having adverbed variants of EXAMINE be necessary would, I think, feel more like a gimmick being shoved between me and the game experience, rather than a fun new toy to play with (of course, with sufficiently brilliant game design and/or writing, I could change my tune on this or anything).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4217&start=10#p30450
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Adverbs
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-25 00:46:54

[quote="Ghalev"] (of course, with sufficiently brilliant game design and/or writing, I could change my tune on this or anything).[/quote]
Right. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. When a good game is released that makes sensible, effective use of adverbs, then quite likely other authors will pick up on and expand the techniques.

As an aside, how about letting the parser feed the player a few cues:
[quote]
> hit bank robber with baseball bat
Do you want to hit the robber cautiously, vigorously, or savagely?[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4226&start=0#p30451
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: New release of The Hours
User: rpatten / DateTime: 2012-01-25 01:24:35

The third version of this IF Comp 2011 time traveling game fixes minor bugs and prose issues to give the player a more polished experience. The Hours also has a Facebook page, <a class="postlink" href="http://www.facebook.com/hourstime">http://www.facebook.com/hourstime</a>, where you can give feedback and suggestions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4227&start=0#p30452
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Is this the New Math?
User: katz / DateTime: 2012-01-25 01:30:31

So, I can't help noticing that arithmetic works differently in Inform-land:

[code]Home is a room.

To decide what number is X:
	decide on 10 - 5 - 2.
	
To decide what number is Y:
	decide on 10 - 5 * 2.
	
To decide what number is Z:
	decide on 10 * 5 - 2.
	
When play begins:
	say "10 - 5 - 2 = [X].";
	say "10 - 5 * 2 = [Y].";
	say "10 * 5 - 2 = [Z]."[/code]

This yields 7, 10, and 30, rather than the more conventional 3, 0, and 48.  Inform is executing math right to left, of all things, and ignoring orders of operations.

But wait--there's more.  If you phrase things in terms of defining equations, suddenly arithmetic works properly again.  Which means that, depending on how you code it, the same formula may yield different answers:

[code]Home is a room.

To decide what number is X:
	decide on 10 - 5 - 2.
	
To decide what number is Y:
	decide on 10 - 5 * 2.
	
To decide what number is Z:
	decide on 10 * 5 - 2.
	
When play begins:
	say "10 - 5 - 2 = [X].";
	say "10 - 5 * 2 = [Y].";
	say "10 * 5 - 2 = [Z].";
	let n be given by n = a-b-c where n is a number, a is 10, b is 5, c is 2;
	let m be given by m = e-fg where m is a number, e is 10, f is 5, and g is 2;
	let o be given by o = hi-j where o is a number, h is 10, i is 5, and j is 2;
	say "10 - 5 - 2 = [n].";
	say "10 - 5 * 2 = [m].";
	say "10 * 5 - 2 = [o]."[/code]

I haven't found anything in the documentation about this (14.13 states that equations parse according to the normal rules of algebra, but it doesn't mention that ordinary mathematical operations don't).  Why?  Just why?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4227&start=0#p30453
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Is this the New Math?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-25 02:47:31

Is that a rhetorical question?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4217&start=10#p30454
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Adverbs
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-25 02:57:40

[quote="Jim Aikin"]When a good game is released that makes sensible, effective use of adverbs, then quite likely other authors will pick up on and expand the techniques.[/quote]

Exactly so. But for now, it is beyond my limited and feeble capacity to imagine such a game relying on adverbs with [b]EXAMINE [/b]:)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4228&start=0#p30455
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: New Windows build of 6G60
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2012-01-25 03:03:41

Since the release of Inform 7 6G60 quite a few bugs have been fixed in the Windows front-end, and a few new features added. As a result, a new Windows build has been released, and is available from [url]http://inform7.com/download/[/url]. (Note that this only affects the Windows front-end: the compiler itself is unchanged).

What’s been changed:

* Elastic tabstops are now available as an option in the Format menu. When elastic tabstops are enabled, tabstops are automatically sized so that columns in tables line up.

* The font settings are now respected in the HTML based panes (that is, the index, errors and documentation) when Internet Explorer 9 is installed.

* There is now a Headings sub-menu under the Edit menu, which matches the similarly named sub-menu on OS X.

* The front-end attempts to sensibly replace spaces with tabs in text that is pasted or dropped on the source tab: if a table is detected its elements are separated by tabs, and leading spaces are also converted to tabs.

* The Glulx interpreters in the game tab now support the additions to Glk in versions 0.7.1, 0.7.2 and 0.7.3 of the Glk specification.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4228&start=0#p30456
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New Windows build of 6G60
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-01-25 03:43:49

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=290#p30457
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Hagbard Celine / DateTime: 2012-01-25 03:50:31

I'm Thomas, 26, accountant in training. Drifting in and out of playing interactive fiction, but planning to write my first game sometime in the future, trying to avoid all the stuff if mostly disappoints me with. (lack of interactivity, nonsensical stories with unexplained magic  [emote]:x[/emote]  , getting stuck etc...) The few gems I've discovered were totally worth sifting through the garbage though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=80#p30458
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-25 03:51:35

[quote="ektemple"]Basti, by now you're probably anxiously awaiting my retirement from the scene[/quote]Quiet the contrary, I'm just flabbergasted about how someone can keep up such a consistent flow of constructive criticism over such a long period of time. You don't see that everyday, exactly [emote]:)[/emote]

But first things first though.
[quote]I don't recall if I've already asked for this once or if was just on some now-lost list of mine: AI step routines return a vector (e.g., {1, 1, 0}) describing a direction. Is there a phrase for translating this into a coordinate? Ideally, I'd like to be able to pass a multiplier along with the vector and get back a coordinate on my map. (The multiplier being speed--if my doggy can do 2 cells per turn, then he should move +2x and +2y...)[/quote]That's a flaw in my spontaneous design, I guess. I will probably change it in the next iteration so that actual coordinates are stored instead of directions. That way, jumping from one step to the next should be less of a hassle. Added your code too, might be handy.
[quote]Declaration of maps versus dynamic generation[/quote]Added in a not for release section.
[quote]Map-graphics (and other?) list-storage[/quote]What exactly do you understand under “copying”? 'Let x be y' or 'Add x to y'? The copying is necessary because of the sorting algorithm. Looks like the one-by-one copying would provide a little boost at least. (The last three numbers btw are for extended width/height plus a reference number, so the program knows what table to use when choosing a translation table)
[quote]Environmental effects[/quote]I don't like the idea one bit. Separating objects from the effects was an intentional move so that you wouldn't have to worry about Inform's limitation that it can't create/destroy objects during runtime (no easy way that is). It does make sense in some cases, like effects which fade over time (my example would be a gas grenade). Anything else would be tedious since I would have to create the effect [i]and[/i] an object carrying that effect, which can only end in a confused mess at some point. That every map object has only one 'body', e.g. that you have to create two lakes if you want two separate instances of a water effect on a world map can only further complicate things... Whoopsie, sorry, read your edit after my rambling [emote]:D[/emote]
[quote]Found a bug[/quote]Bug? What bug? [emote]:P[/emote] 
Fixed the misspelling too while I was at it. Good catch!

Gotta run again, sorry, but I will get back to the rest of your stuff tonight (as well as hopefully getting the activity buffers done, finally [emote]:?[/emote]) It would be great if you could evaluate a bit more on what you did during the one-by-one copying, at least when you find the time. We might be able to squeeze a second or two out of the algorithm after all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4228&start=0#p30459
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New Windows build of 6G60
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-25 04:00:36

Nice, thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4226&start=0#p30460
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: New release of The Hours
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2012-01-25 04:06:41

Cool. Was the second version released during IFComp?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4227&start=0#p30461
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Is this the New Math?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2012-01-25 07:14:17

Yeah, I use parenthesis for every math operation (for myself, if not for Inform).  A few nasty surprises early on convinced me this was a good idea.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4217&start=10#p30462
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Adverbs
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-01-25 07:17:21

On a practical level, do any of the standard systems include a parser which can handle adverbs, or would an author have to write his own parser (or do extensive customization) in order to able to go down this road?

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4229&start=0#p30463
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Anchorhead makes PC Gamer's list of 100 Best Games Ever
User: Irfon-Kim / DateTime: 2012-01-25 07:48:40

You can see the list here: [url]http://www.gamesradar.com/pc-gamers-top-100-pc-games-of-all-time/[/url]

Anchorhead clocks in at #97, right between Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. They have this to say about it:

[quote]Atmospheric and absorbing, but nevertheless a game with puzzles to solve, this is everything that’s great about interactive fiction.[/quote]

I have to admit that I was pretty surprised that they not only had an IF title on the list, but that it *wasn't* an Infocom game (just in terms of mainstream gaming press and IF visibility). [emote]:)[/emote] Way to go, Michael Gentry!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=290#p30464
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-25 08:58:45

Welcome, Thomas!

While you're learning to write IF, I recommend setting your worries aside. Expect your first project to have all the problems you wanted to avoid and then some, and don't get too emotionally invested in it. Just finish it, and then let the criticism roll in - both from yourself, and others. With any luck, your second game will be one of those gems!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4219&start=0#p30465
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Concatenating strings
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-25 09:02:56

As far as item "a" goes, you can always make say-phrases recursive, or at least nested.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=80#p30466
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-25 09:16:40

[quote="Basti50"]constructive criticism[/quote]Well, some of it's constructive, anyway. Some of it's been pretty muddled!

[quote="Basti50"][quote]I don't recall if I've already asked for this once or if was just on some now-lost list of mine: AI step routines return a vector (e.g., {1, 1, 0}) describing a direction. Is there a phrase for translating this into a coordinate? Ideally, I'd like to be able to pass a multiplier along with the vector and get back a coordinate on my map. (The multiplier being speed--if my doggy can do 2 cells per turn, then he should move +2x and +2y...)[/quote]That's a flaw in my spontaneous design, I guess. I will probably change it in the next iteration so that actual coordinates are stored instead of directions. That way, jumping from one step to the next should be less of a hassle. Added your code too, might be handy.[/quote]
I do think that it is good to have phrases to return both directions and coordinates. The directional vector is useful if the author is constraining his NPCs to certain directions (i.e., cardinal directions), as well as for any other manipulation the author might want to do (mess with one coordinate or the other to represent drunkenness, for example).

By the way, my code should have a loop in it, otherwise it will be able to skip over obstacles due to lack of collision checking:
[spoiler][code]To move (item - a mappable thing) toward (orientation - face_dir) with speed of (mult - a number):
     repeat with count running from 1 to mult:
          move item on sector (x-coord of item + (x-facing of orientation)) and (y-coord of item + (y-facing of orientation)) in location of item;
          if rule failed, rule fails;
     rule succeeds.[/code][/spoiler]
Of course, authors might want to handle speed their own way, too--e.g., by animating each step rather than just updating the display at the end. But that's for them to design!

[quote="Basti50"][quote]Declaration of maps versus dynamic generation[/quote]Added in a not for release section.[/quote]Great! Is import-from-a-file fully functional now?

[quote="Basti50"][quote]Map-graphics (and other?) list-storage[/quote]What exactly do you understand under “copying”? 'Let x be y' or 'Add x to y'?[/quote]
My test code used "let x be y". But "add x to y" would also make a copy. Basically, if you can draw the individual simple values you need from inside the list w/o creating a new list, you will save some time (at least, that's what those tests suggest). For example, given this list {0, 1, 1, 102, 0, 0, 1}, if you pick each simple value out individually, and avoid creating as many new lists as possible, you could save 50% or more over a method that actually copies the list wholesale before doing anything with it. This may or may not help with your actual code--I haven't checked--but it seems possible that it might.

Combined with the null tile value idea from my earlier post, there could be significant savings on some maps--you read the tile graphic number first, before doing anything else; if it's the null tile, you immediately stop, and there is no need to read or do anything else with any of the other values.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4036&start=10#p30467
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ZMPP for Android released
User: sjwoo / DateTime: 2012-01-25 09:48:32

If you can get landscape mode in here, then this will be the best intfic android app...thank you!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4229&start=0#p30468
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anchorhead makes PC Gamer's list of 100 Best Games Ever
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-01-25 10:53:52

Where's the "like" button?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4036&start=10#p30469
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ZMPP for Android released
User: weiju / DateTime: 2012-01-25 10:56:09

looks like it was a good decision to sneak that into the next release [emote];)[/emote]  I am testing right now, hopefully I'll be able to get it out this the weekend.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4217&start=10#p30470
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Adverbs
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-01-25 10:56:19

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="Jim Aikin"]When a good game is released that makes sensible, effective use of adverbs, then quite likely other authors will pick up on and expand the techniques.[/quote]

Exactly so. But for now, it is beyond my limited and feeble capacity to imagine such a game relying on adverbs with [b]EXAMINE [/b]:)[/quote]
Given that you'd want to restrict the number of available adverbs quite strictly, I don't really see what advantages it'd give over a package of EXAMINE-like verbs (SCRUTINISE, GLANCE, WATCH). Which could be annoying, but it's still a whole lot less annoying than typing an adverb on the end.

Broadly: if you have to teach the player to learn a new term, it's [i]prima facie[/i] better to teach a verb than an adverb. If you want to include adverbs as anything other than a gimmick, you need to furnish a good reason why extra verbs wouldn't do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4226&start=0#p30471
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: New release of The Hours
User: rpatten / DateTime: 2012-01-25 10:57:32

[quote="severedhand"]Cool. Was the second version released during IFComp?[/quote]

Yes. I should update the IFDB listing to reflect that.

I'm fairly certain the Release 2 link will eventually be for Release 3, but I left it up for now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4227&start=0#p30472
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Is this the New Math?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-01-25 11:02:07

It's a known issue. See [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=776]bug #776[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4229&start=0#p30474
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anchorhead makes PC Gamer's list of 100 Best Games Ever
User: Merlin Fisher / DateTime: 2012-01-25 13:13:06

I'm very pleased they chose to honor an IF game; perhaps its distribution on smartphone was a factor in the choosing?  Plus, I think that horror is really big right now in all media; zombie books and Cthulhu dolls and etc., yes?

But if they had to pick just one IF game, I'm not surprised it was "not Infocom."  Infocom games were good (yes, perhaps even great) for their day, but leaving out the huge nostalgia factor, they're weak compared to a well-written modern game.  Both computers and IF software have come so far since then; today's parsers are way smarter and less frustrating, and memory limits now are as neutron stars to the dim fireflies of last century.

1980s games are cult classics, but with emphasis on the "cult."  Most people under age 30 who play "Zork" et al will likely wonder what all the fuss was about.  (I know I would, if I didn't have a soft spot for "retro" stuff and an MIT geek in the family.)  But play a really good IF title post-1995 or so, and you won't have to wonder.  We have seen the future and it is awesome.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4215&start=0#p30475
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Wearing backup - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-25 13:20:48

I tried using the code by bcressey but it didn't work correctly. When I compiled it, I got a bunch of warnings. However, The game ran but when I tried anything but wearing the pack, an inventory told me that I was 'holding' the pack. Go figure! Perhaps some checking code it the beginning of the pack code should tell me that I should 'wear' the pack rather than take (etc.) it.

At any rate, I've included my code.

[code]
backpack : BagOfHolding, Attachable, Wearable, OpenableContainer
'pack/backpack' 'backpack'
"It is a standard military backpack, allowing a sleeping bag to be attached to
 it at the bottom. Its large main compartment can be opened or closed from the
 top, and, if you wear this pack, you can store many objects in it, allowing you
 to possess a much larger number of items than if you carried them in your
 hands. "  
 location = box.subContainer
 bulkCapacity = 3000
 minBulk = 1
 dobjFor(Wear)
  {
     action()
   { 
     "You sling the pack over your sholders. ";  
      wearpackAchievement.awardPointsOnce();
      inherited;
   }
  }
 wearpackAchievement : Achievement { +5 "wearing the backpack"}
;

[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4231&start=0#p30476
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Modifying the library
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-01-25 13:43:28

I've been reading through alot of the TADS 3 help guides and it mentions modifying classes and verbs and pretty much anything in the library to suit your own needs, the only thing I haven't found mention of is how permenant a change that is.

This may sound silly to alot of people but I can't help but wonder if it's changing the libary for just the game I'm working on or if it makes a permenant change to the standard library I'm using for example I might want to change "dropped.." to "{It dobj/he} fall{s} to the floor" or modify the actor class to suit whatever... When I start my next game I might want all the messages changed again and I certainly wouldn't want all the modded behaviours.  Can someone confirm to me that the library I'm using is specific to the project I'm working on or that the only code I should ever have to modify is in the source files (which is what I've been doing up until now)

Thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4231&start=0#p30477
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Modifying the library
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-25 15:05:11

Modify only changes code in your project, not for the system as a whole. As long as you're not actually editing one of the library files directly, there's nothing to worry about.

[code]
modify Thing
    newProp = 'My new property'
;
[/code]

If it helps, you can think of this as creating a new class called Thing1929348 that's identical to the regular Thing in every way, but which now includes the changes you've made. Anything in your game that inherits from Thing will silently inherit from Thing1929348 instead.

You can modify the same object multiple times:
[code]
modify Thing
    newProp = 'My new property'
;

modify Thing
    newerProp = 'My newer property'
;
[/code]

And it works like you'd want: the new Thing19293483 class silently replaces Thing, and is replaced in turn by the even newer Thing84757276 class. The resulting class has newProp and newerProp defined, as well as all of the other Thing properties.

(I do this all the time to keep small tweaks with the section of code that uses them.)

The only gotcha is if you modify the same object and override the same property in two modify statements.

[code]
modify Thing
    newProp = 'My new property'
;

modify Thing
    newProp = 'My brand-new property'
;
[/code]

The result of this is going to be source-order dependent (last statement wins) or compilation-order dependent (last compiled file wins). It might still do what you expect, but it's inherently fragile and best avoided.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4215&start=0#p30478
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Wearing backup - TADS3.1
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-25 15:21:05

You probably tripped over the + before the backpack object. It will be easier to give you compatible code if you post yours first.

[code]
backpack: BagOfHolding, Attachable, Wearable, OpenableContainer
	'standard military pack/backpack' 'backpack'
	"It is a standard military backpack, allowing a sleeping bag to be attached
	to it at the bottom. Its large main compartment can be opened or closed from
	the top, and, if you wear this pack, you can store many objects in it,
	allowing you to possess a much larger number of items than if you carried
	them in your hands. " 

	location = box.subContainer
	bulkCapacity = 3000
	minBulk = 1
	
	dobjFor(Take) {
		action() {
			inherited();
			makeWornBy(gActor);
			"You sling the pack over your shoulders. ";
			wearpackAchievement.awardPointsOnce();
		}
	}

	dobjFor(Doff) {
		action() {
			inherited();
			gActor.getDropDestination(self, nil).receiveDrop(self, dropTypeDrop);
			mainReport(&okayDoffMsg);
		}
	}

	dobjFor(Wear) asDobjFor(Take)
	dobjFor(Drop) asDobjFor(Doff)

	wearpackAchievement : Achievement { +5 "wearing the backpack"}
;
[/code]

This should be a drop-in replacement for the code you posted.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4216&start=0#p30479
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Lawedan Enforcer by Lawedan Computers | Recruitment
User: gravel / DateTime: 2012-01-25 15:37:47

I'm not interested in applying, but I like crime procedurals.  

From a workforce standpoint: why are so many position duties duplicated?  Also, a forensic botanist is likely to also be passingly familiar with fungi, house plants, etc.

I'm not sure I have enough of a grasp as to know whether I'd want to play - your description is heavy on the mechanics, but that's not really what I play IF for.  I want to know more about my character than a name, for instance.  Maybe you don't want to give away the storyline, but what's the opening case like?  What are the stakes for the PC and his team?  What's your vision for the gameworld?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4226&start=0#p30480
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: New release of The Hours
User: gravel / DateTime: 2012-01-25 15:38:14

Yay!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4231&start=0#p30481
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Modifying the library
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-01-25 15:38:43

Thank again, you're pretty good at this [emote]:D[/emote] 

That clears alot up for me, when it's been mentioning about where the code is located (e.g. objects.t) I've been pondering alot over whether it meant to modify it in the actual source code... Out of interest is the same applicable to the include files, my understanding was that when you add the adv3 library that the include files is essentially a list of source files contained within (hence my reluctance to touch them) but I noticed last night that they get added to the obj folder where my project is located.

It's not that I want to play with them, I'd much prefer to tweek things through my own source files, I'm just curious

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4228&start=0#p30482
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New Windows build of 6G60
User: gravel / DateTime: 2012-01-25 15:39:20

Thanks so much!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4228&start=0#p30483
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New Windows build of 6G60
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-25 16:46:33

Groovythankings!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4215&start=0#p30484
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Wearing backup - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-25 16:50:42

That last post did it. I spent hours on this and can't thank all of you enough for the help.

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4229&start=0#p30485
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anchorhead makes PC Gamer's list of 100 Best Games Ever
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-25 17:08:36

[quote="Merlin Fisher"]but leaving out the huge [b]nostalgia [/b]factor[/quote]

If you don't rate them as highly, that's fine. We all have our own tastes. But this cliche of dismissing any Infocom love as "nostalgia" is tiresome. Some of us (raises hand) never started playing through the Infocom library until [i]after [/i]Anchorhead drew us into IF (raises hand again), and our love of Infocom [i]isn't nostalgia-based,[/i] but rather a love of a particular style of wit and approach to game design (raises hand again).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4217&start=10#p30486
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Adverbs
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-25 17:29:59

[quote="maga"]Broadly: if you have to teach the player to learn a new term, it's [i]prima facie[/i] better to teach a verb than an adverb. If you want to include adverbs as anything other than a gimmick, you need to furnish a good reason why extra verbs wouldn't do.[/quote]

This. Thisthisthis. So very this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4217&start=10#p30487
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Adverbs
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-01-25 17:40:25

The annoyance of typing an adverb could be tackled on two fronts. First, you can allow abbreviations for the adverbs. So:

>shake baby v
>q x bee

Could be 'shake the baby vigorously' and 'quickly examine the bee'. 

Second, you can set defaults for the adverbs. If someone did decide to implement carefully/quickly examining, this could act essentially as a verbose setting but instead of for room descriptions, it would be for item descriptions. This would only really make sense if you had different levels of information for items, some quite detailed, and you didn't want a text-dump every time you looked at something.

Eg:

>x bee
(examining the bee quickly)
The bee is a small yellow and black insect, and it's buzzing in the vicinity of you.

>x bee closely
The bee is a small flying insect closely related to wasps and ants, and generally they are known for their role in pollination and for producing honey and beeswax, although you have no idea about this particular bee's proclivity in these areas. Bees are a monophyletic lineage within the superfamily Apoidea, presently classified by the unranked taxon name Anthophila. There are nearly 20,000 known species of bees in seven to nine recognized families, though many are undescribed and the actual number is probably higher. They are found on every continent except Antarctica, in every habitat on the planet that contains insect-pollinated flowering plants. This particular bee is buzzing in the vicinity of you.

In this latter case you could adopt a dual pronged approach and allow people to use new verbs ('scrutinise' and 'glance' perhaps) for those people that are reticent about adverbs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4231&start=0#p30488
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Modifying the library
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-25 17:56:18

By include files I assume you mean the headers specified with the #include directive, at the top of each source file.

These just provide common templates and macro definitions. For example, gPlayerChar is defined in adv3.h as:

[code]
#define gPlayerChar (libGlobal.playerChar)
[/code]

You won't want to modify any of the standard headers. I usually make my own header to handle templates and macros. For example:

[code]
#charset "utf-8"
#include <adv3.h>
#include <en_us.h>

/*
	Common templates and macros.
*/

Test template 'testName' [testList];
[/code]

You can save that as "my.h" and then #include "my.h" instead of using the other two #include lines.

The actual code for stuff comes from the various .t files in the lib directory. On my PC, this is C:\Program Files (x86)\TADS 3\lib.

Anything that's in one of those files can be modified or replaced by code in your own .t files, so there's no reason to edit them unless you are fixing an actual bug in the standard library.

The compiler finds these files with a library (.tl) file. You can look at lib\adv3\adv3.tl or lib\adv3\en_us\en_us.tl to see what files a library includes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4101&start=0#p30489
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How do you use 'affinity' - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-25 18:07:03

I'm back again with 'bag of holding' and 'affinity' problems. I've been fighting this for days. For testing purposes, I have some small items that I try to put into either a pack I'm wearing or in pockets in my shirt or shorts. The items will go into the pack with no problems but I'm told that they will not go into any pockets. This is driving me crazy. I've tried adjusting bulks and affinities but none of that helps. I've included the source if anyone would care to look at it

RonG

[code]

/ Show actor. ****************************************************************/
me: BagOfHolding, Actor
    location = Beach     
    VocabWords = 'Tom Thomas Tom/Thomas/Leavens'
    desc
 {
  "You're Thomas Leavens. You are known as Dr. Tom to your friends and
  associates. Your ex-wife calls you names that can't be repeated! Along with
  your underwear and socks, you're wearing your usual working attire. ";
 } 

affinityFor(obj)
{
  return (obj != self && obj.ofKind(Wearable) ? 50 : 0);
} 
 
inventoryLister: actorInventoryLister
    {
        showInventoryEmpty(parent)
        {
            /* empty inventory */
            "<<buildSynthParam('The/he', parent)>> {is} holding absolutely
            nothing. ";
        }
        showInventoryWearingOnly(parent, wearing)
        {
            /* we're carrying nothing but wearing some items */
            "<<buildSynthParam('The/he', parent)>> {is}n\'t holding anything,
            but {is} sporting <<wearing>>. ";
        }
        showInventoryCarryingOnly(parent, carrying)
        {
            /* we have only carried items to report */
            "<<buildSynthParam('The/he', parent)>> {is} holding <<carrying>>. ";
        }
        showInventoryShortLists(parent, carrying, wearing)
        {
            local nm = gSynthMessageParam(parent);
            
            /* short lists - combine carried and worn in a single sentence */
            "<<buildParam('The/he', nm)>> {is} holding <<carrying>>,
            and <<buildParam('it\'s', nm)>>{subj} sporting <<wearing>>. ";
        }
        showInventoryLongLists(parent, carrying, wearing)
        {
            local nm = gSynthMessageParam(parent);
            
            /* long lists - show carried and worn in separate sentences */
            "<<buildParam('The/he', nm)>> {is} holding <<carrying>>.
            <<buildParam('It\'s', nm)>> sporting <<wearing>>. ";
        }
        /*
         *   For 'tall' listings, we'll use the standard listing style, so we
         *   need to provide the framing messages for the tall-mode 
         *   listing.  
         */
        showListPrefixTall(itemCount, pov, parent)
            { "<<buildSynthParam('The/he', parent)>> {is} holding:"; }
        showListContentsPrefixTall(itemCount, pov, parent)
            { "<<buildSynthParam('A/he', parent)>>, who {is} holding:"; }           
    }    
/* Use person-sized Bulk. */
   bulk = 10
;

+watch: AlwaysWorn 'wrist wristwatch/watch' 'wristwatch'
 "It is an expensive, rugged and accurate digital watch that you have had for
  years. It currently reads <<clockManager.checkTimeFmt('[am][pm]h:mm a')>>. "
 dobjFor(Open) { verify() { illogical( 'Only a jeweler could open that
  watch ');}}                                    
 dobjFor(LookIn) asDobjFor(Open)
 cannotDoffMsg = "Don't do that! It's crucial that you have your watch at this
                 time."
;   

+ khakis: AlwaysWorn
    'pair/khakis/pants/pant/slacks/trousers/shorts' 'pair of tough khaki shorts'
    "It's a pair of khakis with large, usefull pockets."
; 

++ khakipockets: BagOfHolding, Component, RestrictedContainer
    '(khaki) pocket/pockets' 'pocket'
    "One of the things you like best about these khakis is the nice, deep
    pockets. "
    bulkCapacity = 200
    affinityFor(obj){return 200;}
    theName = 'your khaki pockets'
    aName = 'your khaki pockets'
    disambigName = 'your khaki pockets';
    
   /* we're restricted to pocketable items. */
  // canPutIn(obj) { return obj.okayForKhakiPockets; }
 //  cannotPutInMsg(obj) { return '{The dobj/he} wouldn\'t fit very well in your
 //  khaki pockets. ';}
 
  /* We have a high affinity for for best-for-khaki-pocket items */
  //   affinityFor(obj) {return '{obj.bestForKhakiPockets ? 75 : 0; };

+ AlwaysWorn 'khaki shirt' 'rugged khaki shirt'
  " The tough shirt matches your khaki shorts and also has some useful
    pockets. "
; 

++ shirtpockets: BagOfHolding, Component, RestrictedContainer
     '(shirt) pocket/pockets' 'pocket'
     "Like your shorts, the shirt also furnishes some handy pockets. "
     bulkCapacity=200
     affinityFor(obj){return 200;}
     theName = 'your shirt pockets'
     aName = 'your shirt pockets'
     disambigName = 'your shirt pockets';

   /* we're restricted to pocketable items. */
  // canPutIn(obj) { return obj.okayForKhakiPockets; }
 //  cannotPutInMsg(obj) { return '{The dobj/he} wouldn\'t fit very well in your
 //  khaki pockets. ';}
 
  /* We have a high affinity for for best-for-khaki-pocket items */
  //   affinityFor(obj) {return '{obj.bestForKhakiPockets ? 75 : 0; };

+ myBoots: AlwaysWorn 'leather left right boot/boots/pair'
  'pair of hiking boots'
 "Your boots are made for both heavy duty hiking and all-terrain climbing."
; 

/* Room0001: The Actor Starts Game Here. **************************************/

  Beach : OutdoorRoom 'At The Beach' 'At The Beach'
  roomFirstDesc()
  { "This is first description.";
  }
  shortDesc = "You are at the sandy beach.";
 
/* Add wooden box to beach. ***************************************************/

+box: ComplexContainer, Fixture 'large slatted wooden (wood) box*boxes' 'large
 slatted-wood box' 
 "The large wooden box, left here from a precious helicopter flight, lies on
  some small rocks. At its top, there is a metal hasp that can unlock or lock
  the box. "
 cannotTakeMsg = (backpack.seen ? 'The backpack would be a more convenient
 container. You would be better off using that instead.' : 'The box is much too
 heavy to lift or carry around.')
 initSpecialDesc = "A large slatted-wood box is lying nearby on some small
                    rocks."
 subContainer: ComplexComponent, LockableContainer
 {
 currentlyLockedMsg = 'The hasp is currently at the locked position. '
   currentlyUnlockedMsg = 'The hasp is currently at the unlocked position. '
     dobjFor(Lock)
     {
       action()
       {
         "You twist the hasp, and lock the box shut.";
          inherited;
       }
     }
      dobjFor(Unlock)
      {
       action()
        {
          "You turn the hasp, allowing the box to be opened.";
          inherited;
        }
    }
    }
;

++ Component 'hasp' 'hasp'
"A simple hasp that does the job of locking and unlocking the box."
  dobjFor(Turn) { remap = [box.subContainer.isLocked ? UnlockAction : 
  LockAction, box.subContainer]}
;

/* Add backpack to box. *******************************************************/
   
backpack: BagOfHolding, Attachable, Wearable, OpenableContainer
   'standard military pack/backpack' 'backpack'
   "It is a standard military backpack, allowing a sleeping bag to be attached
   to it at the bottom. Its large main compartment can be opened or closed from
   the top, and, if you wear this pack, you can store many objects in it,
   allowing you to possess a much larger number of items than if you carried
   them in your hands. "
   location = box.subContainer
   affinityFor(obj){return 100;}
   bulkCapacity = 4000
   minBulk = 1
   
   dobjFor(Take) {
      action() {
         inherited();
         makeWornBy(gActor);
         "You sling the pack over your shoulders. ";
         wearpackAchievement.awardPointsOnce();
      }
   }

   dobjFor(Doff) {
      action() {
         inherited();
         gActor.getDropDestination(self, nil).receiveDrop(self, dropTypeDrop);
         mainReport(&okayDoffMsg);
      }
   }

   dobjFor(Wear) asDobjFor(Take)
   dobjFor(Drop) asDobjFor(Doff)

   wearpackAchievement : Achievement { +5 "wearing the backpack"}
;

/* Add HELP sign to beach. ****************************************************/

class Sign : Readable
;
+sign: Sign, Fixture 'large metal sign' 'metal sign'
  "The sizeable metal sign is firmly attached to a tree near the start of the
   eastern path. It is quite rusty and worn but the printing on it can still be
   read. It just might provide some information about The Magic Forest."
 location = Beach
 initSpecialDesc = "Attached to a tree at the beginning of the eastern path is
   a large metal sign."
 cannotTakeMSG = 'Sorry, but it is very rigidly attached to the tree. Besides,
   there is no reason to take it with you.'
 readDesc = "The sign is written in both English and Spanish and  it reads:
   'DANGER! Restricted property beyond this point. Enter at your own risk.'\b
   Property Manager,\b
   Melenkurian\b"
 dobjFor(Read)
 {
  action()
  {
   readsignAchievement.awardPointsOnce();
   inherited;
  }
 } 
 readsignAchievement : Achievement { +5 "reading the sign at the beach" }
; 
 
/* Add matchbook to backpack. *************************************************/

modify Matchbook
  vocabWords = 'book'
  name = 'matchbook'
 ;    

matchbook : Dispenser, Matchbook 'matchbook' 'matchbook'
location = backpack
desc()
{
 "It is an ordinary book of matches that bears no mark or brand of any type. The
  matchbook is";
    if(contents.length> 14 || matchesCreated < maxMatchesToCreate/2)
    " full of matches. ";
    else if(contents.length < 1 && matchesCreated == maxMatchesToCreate)
    " empty. ";
    else if(matchesCreated < 3 * maxMatchesToCreate/4)         
    " about half full of matches. ";
    else         
    " running out of matches. ";
}
myItemClass = MyMatchstick
canReturnItem = nil
notifyRemove(obj)
{
if(contents.length < 2 && matchesCreated < maxMatchesToCreate)
{
local cur = new MyMatchstick;    
matchesCreated++;
cur.moveInto(self);
}
}
matchesCreated = 0
maxMatchesToCreate = 15
dobjFor(LookIn) asDobjFor(Examine)
;        

+ MyMatchstick;
  modify Matchstick 
  vocabWords = 'match/matchstick'
  name = 'match' 
  location = matchbook
  isEquivalent = true
    burnLength = 2
  brightnessOn = 1
     collectiveGroups = [MatchstickGroup]
; 

class MyMatchstick: Dispensable, Matchstick
isListedInContents = (!isIn(matchbook))
myDispenser = matchbook
;

MatchstickGroup : CollectiveGroup
    vocabWords = '*matches*matchsticks'
    desc = "The matchsticks all look alike."

    isCollectiveAction(action, whichObj) { 
        if (action.ofKind(ExamineAction) ) 
          return true; 

        /* it's not one of ours */ 
        return nil; 
     }
;

/* Add compass to box. ********************************************************/

compass: Wearable 'round small compass' 'small compass'
"It is an ordinary, small compass, with a silver hand that is always pointing,
 unsurprisingly, to the north. It is made to be worn around the neck. "
location = box.subContainer
bulk = 10
dobjFor(Wear)
{
action()
{
"You bow your head, putting the compass around your neck.";
inherited;
}
}
dobjFor(Remove)
{
action()
{
"Carefully, you remove the compass from around your neck.";
inherited;
}
}
;

/* Add sleepingbag to box. ****************************************************/


[/code]

btw: The objects I'm testing with are the compass and the box of matches.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4101&start=0#p30490
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How do you use 'affinity' - TADS3.1
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-25 18:46:14

khakipockets and shirtpockets are RestrictedContainers.

Since you've commented out their canPutIn(obj) methods, they will use the default implementation, which checks the validContents list, which is empty by default. So nothing is allowed to go inside.

Turn them into regular Containers and it will work.

[code]
++ khakipockets: BagOfHolding, Component, Container
...
;

++ shirtpockets: BagOfHolding, Component, Container
...
;
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1711&start=30#p30491
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Aurora
User: damoncasale / DateTime: 2012-01-25 18:56:57

Is this still being developed?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4217&start=20#p30492
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Adverbs
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-01-25 19:54:50

"Examining closely" sounds like a nightmare. It's bad enough that we have to be ready to examine everything like checking items off lists, and looking under/behind every piece of furniture, not to mention the games that separate SEARCH from EXAMINE and require the former for no good reason... if we add "examine closely" I think we'll be taking a step backwards, not forwards. Besides, "examining" already presuposes careful examination - if you want to diferentiate, you should diferentiate it from "look at".

One thing that doesn't seem to have been covered yet by this discussion - the parser's promise of complete freedom is flimsy enough and easily broken as it is. It tries hard to recognise every sensible input and beyond, but it invariably fails to recognise actions the player would consider to be sensible. Adding adverbs is like adding a layer of complexity to a rickety base. I experienced this in "Danse Nocturne". It felt cool for about 10 seconds, which is how long it took for me to run full force into all the adverbs the game didn't recognise (and I was trying adverbs that I felt made sense to the one possible verb).

It might be wise to remember such verbs as "whisper", "shout", "caress", "seduce", "scare", "slam". They are all modofiers, and as has been said on this thread, might be best to expand into expressive verbs before entering adverb territory. "Angrily" is a modifier that can be applied to every action, and that's a nightmare to program - whereas "slam" is a verb that only applies to things that can be closed, and can have pretty much the same effect.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4216&start=0#p30493
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Lawedan Enforcer by Lawedan Computers | Recruitment
User: deskoft / DateTime: 2012-01-25 20:21:46

[quote="gravel"]I'm not interested in applying, but I like crime procedurals.  

From a workforce standpoint: why are so many position duties duplicated?  Also, a forensic botanist is likely to also be passingly familiar with fungi, house plants, etc.

I'm not sure I have enough of a grasp as to know whether I'd want to play - your description is heavy on the mechanics, but that's not really what I play IF for.  I want to know more about my character than a name, for instance.  Maybe you don't want to give away the storyline, but what's the opening case like?  What are the stakes for the PC and his team?  What's your vision for the gameworld?[/quote]

We have focused on realism, and, the list of extensive members are a full list of members you might find in the WHOLE season

You are detective Glass, you have been assigned to the New York Police Department, you used to live at Los Angeles, but your earned reputation wouldn't get you fired, even though you used to behave in a incorrect way during your duties as a FBI Agent.

Perhaps the life of detective Glass is unveiled on Chapter 2, where her family arrives to New York, in Chapter 1 we focus on making the case complex yet simple for the newer IF players. There's several ways to solve each crime, but also a lot of distractions.

The opening case is leaded by the confusion of a caller, who lived in front, and, when she picked the  phone, missed the suspect, and also, due to her age, never heard the runaway car, we made a very interesting storyline to make the house as simple as possible... Nicholas Johnson only lived on the house during holidays, and on the night days of the Antarctic, so his house is very small, even though he is rich.

Due to the size of the house, it has few room but crowded with items (not in exaggeration, though) that could draw your attention.

You will meet CSI Lillian, who will assist you from now on, and always be next to you to give you her professional opinion (probably the main aid for people that are not experts in crime solving).

About the team itself, your CSI has arrived first, therefore, for this first case, she has called the people that will be needed, depending on the evidence. We have, though, focused on the realism of the crime scene.

On the crime scene room, you will find only two or three officers, those that are specialized in the cause of death.

Now here's the interesting part, you will also see the court case (this feature has been decided yesterday), therefore specially this opening case will be complicated.

Let me expose it in a different way:

You have only ONE witness, who actually didn't see the face of the criminal, she is a very old woman, you have at least four to five suspects, and a wide variety of clues and evidence, you'll have to unveil and link them all together.

About the game world, you will have the feel of an open-world game. Your headquarters is the laboratory, you can request a search warrant, and search people's house, you can go to bars and to nearby buildings searching for witnesses or other versions, and you can ask to arrest people.

Feel free to ask more questions.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4200&start=0#p30495
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Megaupload taken offline
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-25 20:43:48

[quote="zarf"][quote]I use DropBox... and why shouldn't it be closed for the same reasons, too?[/quote]

If you're going to run a massive file-archive site, don't archive the company emails where you talk openly about all the bootlegged movies you've got and how much money you're making off them.[/quote]
Actually, don't even send such emails, since it's rather naive to think that whether you archive them or not is going to have anything to do with whether the gov't is able to read them or (soon, if not already) use your already-'deleted' emails in court.

P.S. Regarding the other thread topic, I guess the must-download-every-game types must get pretty annoyed when people take stuff like MUDs and World of Warcraft seriously. 87

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4217&start=20#p30496
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Adverbs
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-01-25 20:57:24

I deeply dislike "search," and have been known to ragequit when it becomes obvious that the reason I am failing to make progress in a game was that I hadn't "search"ed everything thoroughly.  Even [spoiler][i]A Day for Fresh Sushi[/i][/spoiler] almost did that too me, despite all my past built-up trust in the author, and I only forgive it because it was Speed-IF and I was enjoying being [spoiler]a purple lesbian.[/spoiler]

That said, I eagerly await Ghalev's private-eye game. (Though that is partially out of cumulative respect for Ghalev, and guessing that he'll probably Do It Right.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4200&start=0#p30497
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Megaupload taken offline
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-25 21:24:59

Just read an article about the founder of Megaupload, Kim Dotcom. Quite a character.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4093&start=30#p30498
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Harmonizing Glk file suffixes?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-25 21:26:28

I've added a few paragraphs to the Blorb spec describing the data-resource side of this from the underside: <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/blorb/blorb.html">http://eblong.com/zarf/blorb/blorb.html</a> 

----

Each data file is stored as one chunk, with chunk type 'TEXT' or 'BINA' (denoting text or binary data). The format and contents are up to the game to interpret.

This feature was designed to support Glulx, but data resources can be accessed by any game format if the interpreter supports them.

For Glulx games (and any other game format which uses the Glk API), the data format must follow the conventions described in the Glk spec. (<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glk/">http://eblong.com/zarf/glk/</a>, "Resource Streams".)

*To summarize: if the data file is opened via glk_stream_open_resource(), then it will be read as a stream of bytes; text will be assumed to be encoded as Latin-1. If it is opened via glk_stream_open_resource_uni(), then a 'TEXT' chunk will be assumed to be a stream of characters encoded as UTF-8; 'BINA' will be assumed to be a stream of big-endian four-byte integers. If read by lines (glk_get_line_stream(), etc), resource text should use Unix line breaks in all cases.*

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4185&start=0#p30499
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT January Flash IF Compilation
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2012-01-25 22:41:13

Further update: we have 6 entries (2 original works and 4 ports by Bahri Gordebak). Transcript/walkthroughs will be published in the upcoming issue of InsideADRIFT. I have asked, but not required, authors to give their thoughts on flash fiction and interactive fiction, as well. It will likely be a lean issue, but I'm excited to get the publication off the ground again and looking forward to some possibly interesting developments in the future.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4233&start=0#p30500
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: T3: Mac Interpreters (rant)
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-26 00:17:28

I have a new T3 game that is now ready for testing and that I plan to enter in the Spring Thing. What concerns me is the current state of the Macintosh interpreter(s).

Item: CocoaTads and Zoom can't load 3.1 version game files at all.

Item: FrobTads runs 3.1 games in the Terminal, which is about as ugly an interface as exists in the world. It doesn't play sounds (and my game includes some original music). Nor does it do any form of typographic effects, which means that the medium-gray text I'm floating at the start of the game, before the first room description, appears in FrobTads as ugly black blocks.

I understand that FrobTads is not really a Macintosh device -- it's a Unix device. Multimedia features were never intended to be included. Nonetheless, it appears to be misinterpreting the font tag that is used to produce my gray text, and this is not good.

I also understand that all of these programs are being maintained by unpaid volunteers, and that it would be ungrateful in the extreme for me to whine about these issues.

Even so, I can't help feeling that the state of the interpreters is at least as significant as the recent thread about making TADS friendlier. I mean, the friendliness of the language and library will be of interest to a relatively small number of people. The friendliness (or basic usability) of the interpreters will be of interest to a lot more people, or so one would hope.

Charles tells me he plans to upgrade CocoaTads -- but whether that will happen in time for the Spring Thing is anybody's guess.

I guess the next thing I need to do is figure out how to deploy my game for testing (not for release) on the Web. That might be an end-run around the problem. Let's hope so.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4154&start=10#p30501
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ogg in Web Player
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-26 00:41:35

I've waited a week to respond to this thread, because I wanted to make a bit more progress with my project before I started worrying about distribution of a game that includes music. My game is now ready for preliminary testing, so please allow me to reply to your most recent post, Ben, by saying ... I still don't get it. You're aiming way over my head.

I'm sure what you're saying makes perfect sense, but I'm not a real programmer. I'm just a hobbyist and an IF author. I'm fairly conversant with TADS programming, but you can safely assume that I know [i]nothing [/i]else. If you assume this, you will be right 95% of the time.

What I would need would be a step-by-step tutorial that tells me precisely what to do. As in, (a) put these files in these folders, (b) if you need to change item A, go to line X in file Z and edit it to read "blah blah blah," (c) use this menu command in Workbench to compile the result, (d) upload the result to web server Q by logging in to web page P.

Beyond this, though, I'm wondering how the heck I can get a game beta-tested using the web server setup. Obviously, it can't go onto an IFDB page! So what exactly would I do? I don't have a server. I do have a website, but I wouldn't even know what questions to ask of tech support in order to determine whether my site could serve as a playable repository for the beta version.

In order to get the game tested in time for the Spring Thing, I need to start looking at these issues now. I'm hoping the game will have graphics, but there will definitely be music, and it will all need to be thoroughly tested for online play, because the only Mac interpreter that will currently play 3.1 games is FrobTads, which won't do music, graphics, or even basic font effects.

What's my next step? How do I compile a version for web distribution, and how do I get it tested?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=40#p30502
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: ela / DateTime: 2012-01-26 00:44:16

Yeeeyy! I've received my first game from Katz and I love it! So easy and interesting...

Thanks a lot [emote]:D[/emote]  [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4154&start=10#p30503
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ogg in Web Player
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-26 00:47:05

Just for kicks, I thought I'd try the Build Web Page Package command in the Build menu. Here's the result:

[quote]>t3make "-f" "C:\Program Files (x86)\TADS 3\mkwebfiles\mkweb.t3m"
TADS Compiler 3.1.0  Copyright 1999, 2010 Michael J. Roberts
	Files to build: 6
	symbol_export c:\program files (x86)\tads 3\lib\_main.t -> C:\Program Files (x86)\TADS 3\mkwebfiles\obj\_main.t3s
	symbol_export C:\Program Files (x86)\TADS 3\mkwebfiles\mkweb.t -> C:\Program Files (x86)\TADS 3\mkwebfiles\obj\mkweb.t3s
C:\Program Files (x86)\TADS 3\mkwebfiles\mkweb.t(670): error: symbol "getRootName" is already defined - can't redefine as function
Errors:   1
Warnings: 0

t3make: error code 1
>rmdir /s "C:\Users\JIMAIK~1\AppData\Local\Temp\tad54CB.tmp"

Build failed.[/quote]
That's the limit of my expertise -- choose a likely-looking menu command, try it, and observe the results. Maybe it's the wrong command. Dunno. Suggestions welcome.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4233&start=0#p30504
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Mac Interpreters (rant)
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-26 01:47:39

This one should work: <a class="postlink" href="http://qtads.sourceforge.net">http://qtads.sourceforge.net</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4233&start=0#p30505
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Mac Interpreters (rant)
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-26 02:12:50

[quote="RealNC"]This one should work: <a class="postlink" href="http://qtads.sourceforge.net">http://qtads.sourceforge.net</a>[/quote]
You have made me very happy! Not only does it look good, the music soundtrack plays.

I'm still mystified by the whole web deployment thing, and more than mystified about how one would [i]test[/i] a game for web deployment prior to releasing it ... but as long as there are interpreters that can run the game locally on the major computer platforms, 3.1 is viable.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4228&start=0#p30506
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New Windows build of 6G60
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2012-01-26 05:00:36

Thank you!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4200&start=10#p30507
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Megaupload taken offline
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-26 08:12:27

Not exactly an admirable fellow but I personally have no desire to see him jailed. Fifteen years ago he would have merely been sued and the business would likely survive and continue to serve its legitimate customers. It's disgraceful that bankers that committed massive globe-spanning fraud on the order of billions of dollars get away scot-free, whereas this dude gets portrayed as some kind of criminal Scarface kingpin (which is ridiculous) merely for moving around electrons worth dollars a pop while in possession of expensive vehicles, and being [i]too honest about it[/i] in his private communications. Think about that: the [i]only difference[/i] between Megaupload and YouTube is that Megaupload [i]didn't bother to conceal[/i] its awareness of what goes on using its tools. However it would be absolutely silly and naive to believe that both services [i]aren't[/i] equally aware of the piracy on their networks. So while there may be a difference in legal exposure, there is no *moral* distinction between Megaupload and YouTube at all. So the fact that Kim Dotcom is rich and flaunts it is morally irrelevant unless you think Sergey Brin and Larry Page should live in trash and dress in rags.

The message of the current legal system (particularly regarding IP) is clear: it's all for show, and it doesn't matter so much what you actually do; it only really matters that you don't say the wrong 'cocky' thing while you are doing it, at least if you are an average citizen with airs above his station.

Essentially, it's a world where the laws are so broad that everybody is guilty of something, and the only way to escape 'justice' is to be a meek little mouse and hide in your corner feeling guilty about being human. The reach of copyright law is now so long, that there isn't anyone in this forum (or indeed, on this planet) who can accurately claim to have never infringed a copyright in their life. The way to escape imprisonment is not to avoid breaking the law, but rather to keep your mouth shut about the fact that everybody is breaking the law. It's the New Victorianism — but this is not the way a democracy is [i]supposed[/i] to work though, is it? In a democracy, when a behaviour becomes [i]normalised[/i], we are supposed to have the power to successfully agitate to have it [i]legalised[/i]. Do we even have that power, anymore? Or do we sit around as our peers get increasingly criminalised, pretending that we aren't doing the exact same things but more successfully concealing them? Pretending that our own private behaviour isn't being redefined a little further every day into 'criminal' by our own elected reps. How long before we stop hiding and rather stand up and say, 'Yes, we all do this; we share files fairly indiscriminately; now step off and leave us alone and figure out how to make money in the world as it actually exists, not as it might exist in some neo-Victorian fairy tale legal fiction you're pushing.'

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4231&start=0#p30508
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Modifying the library
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-01-26 09:36:11

I actually meant where it displays the .t files that are included in the Include Files tab on the left of the screen, when I was refering to the library earlier I was talking about the header files in the Source Files tab.

Sorry I think my terminology is a bit off, I got that when you write

[quote]#include <adv3.h>
#include <en_us.h>[/quote]
it adds the header files at the top of the source files tab, they then then add the .t files to the include tab on the left, I just wasn't sure if the .t files were relating to the ones that will compile in my game or if they're relating to the actual standard library.

Obviously I wouldn't want to play with the header files but what I meant was if I modify something in my own source code, is it the same as modifying it in the equivelent file include tab on the left?
Most of my tweeks so far have been object/class specific I'm just thinking about the workings of editing messages like 'dropped' and 'taken' or... I dunno off the top of my head.  Modifying in my actual code clearly is the easier way, it's just good to know what I'm actually changing if you get me. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4229&start=0#p30509
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anchorhead makes PC Gamer's list of 100 Best Games Ever
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-26 09:42:06

In the 90s, I had nostalgia for Zork. But when I rediscovered IF, I kinda lost interest in Zork. That didn't stop me from loving Ballyhoo and The Lurking Horror.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4234&start=0#p30510
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Body Parts
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2012-01-26 09:45:14

When I enter a command such as "Put hand in water" I get a response [i]"[You do not normally need to refer to parts of the body.]"[/i]. That's normally OK but in this case I am in a torture chamber and I do normally need to refer to parts of the body. How do I over ride this checking? [emote]:twisted:[/emote] 

OK, I'm a sadist but that's the way the game tumbles! [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4229&start=0#p30511
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anchorhead makes PC Gamer's list of 100 Best Games Ever
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2012-01-26 10:23:07

I wallow in nostalgia for old IF games all the time, but there's a reason for it. Some of the old games were damn good.

For every awful one with a maze, or random death, or being placed in an unfinishable position because of factors outside of your control, there were others that are rightly regarded as classics.

Saying that people only like old IF games for nostalgia value is a bit like saying that 
people only like [i]Citizen Kane[/i], [i]Casablanca[/i] and other old films for nostalgia value. Or that all those people only sing the praises of the Beatles due to nostalgia.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4234&start=0#p30512
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Body Parts
User: gravel / DateTime: 2012-01-26 10:25:56

I7, right?  

You must have some extension involved, since I get a "You see no such thing" response from a baseline test.  So this may vary depending on the extension and what it's doing, and what you need to do.  That is, if you only really do things with hands, you may only need to add hands.  

My body system involves general regions, and I do it by defining a kind, body-part, and then sub-kinds (head, neck, torso, pair of upper arms, etc.)  I then say "One head is part of every person" for each body part.  I mapped a handful of common anatomy bits as synonyms - ears directs to head, throat to neck, etc.  This works, and lets you target body parts, change descriptions, etc.  (I also needed to add "The printed name of your pair of upper arms is usually "your upper arms"."  Sigh.)

However, you're still going to run into issues, because "put hand in water" is absolutely not equivalent to "put socks in closet".  You're not trying to remove your body parts and stow it - you're just trying to - what? Wash? Reach?  Take something?  Touch something?  

So you might find it helpful to redirect "inserting a body part into the water" to "touch water" and then handle it from there.  (Or vice versa, I guess.)

So you'll need some grammar workarounds for body parts in general.  I can see this getting super-duper tricky if you're actually implementing injury.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4138&start=20#p30513
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ten Room Game Competition
User: fiziwig / DateTime: 2012-01-26 10:38:04

Would it be acceptable to write the game in pure php/html (with no database or write permissions required)?

--gary

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4231&start=0#p30514
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Modifying the library
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-26 10:43:22

[quote="KellyJ"]Obviously I wouldn't want to play with the header files but what I meant was if I modify something in my own source code, is it the same as modifying it in the equivelent file include tab on the left?
Most of my tweeks so far have been object/class specific I'm just thinking about the workings of editing messages like 'dropped' and 'taken' or... I dunno off the top of my head.  Modifying in my actual code clearly is the easier way, it's just good to know what I'm actually changing if you get me. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
The .t files are the library. Using the modify keyword in your own code has the same [i]effect [/i]as editing the .t files themselves -- except that the .t files are not altered in any way.

This has two or three positive effects: First, they'll be the same the next time you start a new game, so your modifications can be game-specific. Second, the documentation will remain a reliable guide to the library files. And third, if you create a bug, it will be in your own code, not in the library.

You can edit messages by modifying the files in msg_neu.t, or you can add specific messages to specific objects to customize their response to commands. I haven't researched this, but I believe the library looks first to the specific object to determine if it defines a given message. If there's nothing in that object, the library goes out and gets its standard message.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3766&start=20#p30515
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: The game that has the best world simulation?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-26 10:51:22

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="maga"]This doesn't really happen in IF.[/quote]

Or in computer games at all, ever, really. Even if you pull out some games hailed as high-simulation "sandboxes," it takes only a few minutes of play to notice that they stick to modeling only a tiny subset of a tiny subset of the details that [i]seem [/i]to be there, or which might be sensibly inferred.[/quote]
Agreed. The thing with text adventures is, it is harder to hide illogical things. In graphic sandbox games, you can put in all sorts of illogical consequences (like being unable to pick up and examine in detail any scenery smaller than a gun or a crate, for example, or being unable to walk into an space narrower than a refrigerator, or being able to jump many yards but not even being able to climb all sorts of obviously climbable things). As long as you stick to these common conventions, people will entirely overlook how none of it makes any sense and think of it as a proper 'simulation'. Most of them will not even realise that they are making all sorts of forgiveness and allowances 'for the machine' because those allowances are visual, they are learned directly in the form of stimulus-response and they are non-verbal and thus may never even break into the conscious realm. Whereas it is much harder to slip illogical things past people in text form without them evaluating consciously whether the sentence you have just printed is actually believable.

The [i]easiest[/i] way to achieve the same effect in a text game is to be very, very vague about everything and to treat characters as modularly and object-like as possible. So, sandbox text games tend to dissolve into LEGO-like statistical recombination (e.g. Strength, Agility, Intelligence). Even when the statistics are aimed at emotional states (+10 points of irritability! -- a mechanical storytelling theory that I recall being in vogue around the turn of the millenium), even that tends to work against the main strength of text, which is emotional/perspectival [i]specificity[/i] — you have to write text specifically for an outcome, not for a range of outcomes: that's the only way to get the real 'juice' out of written language. Sandbox text games tend to get forced by the sheer complexity of it all to abandon this crucial specificity, and often come off feeling nearly as nonverbal and [i]atextual[/i] as a graphical sandbox game, only without any graphics (i.e. they abandon text's main advantage leaving only its disadvantages). I'd love to see this proven wrong, however.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4234&start=0#p30516
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Body Parts
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-01-26 10:59:34

[quote]However, you're still going to run into issues, because "put hand in water" is absolutely not equivalent to "put socks in closet". [/quote]

Given the setting, perhaps wgm003 really might want "put hand in water" to mean "Cut off this poor guy's hand and place it in the bucket of water!" [emote]:shock:[/emote] 


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4101&start=0#p30517
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How do you use 'affinity' - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-26 11:02:58

That did it! I continue to be amazed at how quickly and accurately my posts are answered. I can't thank all of you enough times.

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4235&start=0#p30518
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Workbench Woes
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-26 11:15:29

I've just noticed that Workbench has no Save As command for projects. This is a problem. I need to be able to create several versions of a project -- one with mp3 resources, one with ogg resources (which, by the way, are not recognized as multimedia files in the file browser), and one with no audio. Possibly one optimized for Web distribution, another not -- I don't understand the variables there yet.

I can do this ... sort of, I think ... by copying and renaming the .t3m file. But for some reason, this morning it appears that only one of my .t3m files (which were mostly identical last night) contains any pointers to the source, include, or resource files. The other .t3m files are totally empty and totally useless. This strongly suggests that TADS is doing some sort of misguided housekeeping behind the scenes, because I certainly didn't delete every file in those projects.

I'll try making complete copies of the entire project folder. That ought to be safe, though it will mean lots of extra housekeeping, as I'll have to drag-copy source files from one project folder to another each and every time I make changes.

No Save As??? What's up with that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4236&start=0#p30519
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: T3: Empty Container Searching
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-26 11:36:37

When an OpenableContainer is empty and the player tries 'look in suitcase', the output is "You see nothing unusual in the suitcase." This is obviously wrong -- it should say, "The suitcase is empty."

I thought the problem might be because I'm using the extension custmsg.t, so I removed that from the project and recompiled. I get the same output as before.

Looking at the library code for Openable, it's not at all clear to me how this message is being generated. How can I fix it? Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4231&start=0#p30520
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Modifying the library
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-26 12:02:05

As Jim says, you can look at msg_neu.t to see what object defines the message you are modifying - usually playerMessages or playerActionMessages - and then modify that object in your code and override the property.

[code]
modify playerActionMessages
    okayTakeMsg = 'Looted. '
;
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4237&start=0#p30521
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Parchment / quixe + JavaScript?
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-01-26 12:11:32

Can anybody point me to any tutorial/example/resource on doing any sort of tricks to add custom JavaScript code that somehow hooks up with what happens in an Inform7 game played in a browser?

I'm thinking of doing something for the 10 room minicomp and I'm thinking maybe there is some way to do something fancy with a map image. Maybe some jquery stuff... But are there any particular ways of hooking it up that I don't know about?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4154&start=10#p30522
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ogg in Web Player
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-26 12:34:16

[quote="Jim Aikin"]What's my next step? How do I compile a version for web distribution, and how do I get it tested?[/quote]

Can you post or PM me the contents of your project's .t3m file? I will edit it to make the changes necessary to build a WebUI project. You can obscure any strings as long as structure remains the same.

Workbench is set up to abstract away the details of the Makefile process, which is normally useful but obscures some important choices here. The new project wizard gives you a choice between a web project and a regular one, but it's relatively easy to switch - provided you haven't made heavy use of incompatible features like banners.

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Beyond this, though, I'm wondering how the heck I can get a game beta-tested using the web server setup. Obviously, it can't go onto an IFDB page! So what exactly would I do? I don't have a server. I do have a website, but I wouldn't even know what questions to ask of tech support in order to determine whether my site could serve as a playable repository for the beta version.[/quote]

This will be much clearer once you've built a WebUI version of your .t3 file. On Windows, you simply double-click it and the HTML TADS player will load it in a web window instead of the traditional one.

On Mac, I've been using Frob from the command line, which spits out a URL, which I paste into my browser. It's clunky but it actually facilitates testing in different browsers.

Actual online play should be equivalent to local play, except somewhat slower. You can upload your file anywhere and then construct a link to the gs.tads.io network.

Like so: [url=http://gs.tads.io/?storyfile=http://www.musicwords.net/if/MyGame.t3]Play my game![/url]

[quote="Jim Aikin"]In order to get the game tested in time for the Spring Thing, I need to start looking at these issues now. I'm hoping the game will have graphics, but there will definitely be music, and it will all need to be thoroughly tested for online play, because the only Mac interpreter that will currently play 3.1 games is FrobTads, which won't do music, graphics, or even basic font effects.[/quote]

Your best bet will be to build two versions in parallel - web and regular - and make sure your testing covers both. It's not crucial that testers run through it online (though it can't hurt) but you definitely want to get some eyes on the web format.

For music, if you can send me a sample game that does broadly the same things with sound tags as your game does, I will beef up the websound implementation so that it can handle it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4200&start=10#p30523
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Megaupload taken offline
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-26 13:21:11

Wrong.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4237&start=0#p30524
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parchment / quixe + JavaScript?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-26 13:22:06

I don't know of an example of this, although it's technically possible.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4235&start=0#p30525
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Workbench Woes
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-26 13:38:25

For the normal version, you can stick with Ogg files. All multimedia interpreters support it (MP3 is not supported on some platforms due to legal reasons.) You'll only need to worry about MP3 in the WebUI version.

For the web build, you can probably just put your mp3 files in one directory, and the ogg files in another and simply change the makefile to include one of the other. Like:

-res
mp3files/
#oggfiles/

When building the ogg version, comment the one out and uncomment the other. Finally, take a moment to marvel at the W3C committee's decision no to make Ogg Vorbis mandatory for HTML5 support and instead letting users deal with all this nonsense.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4200&start=10#p30526
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Megaupload taken offline
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-26 13:44:19

[quote="Laroquod"]Think about that: the [i]only difference[/i] between Megaupload and YouTube is that Megaupload [i]didn't bother to conceal[/i] its awareness of what goes on using its tools. However it would be absolutely silly and naive to believe that both services [i]aren't[/i] equally aware of the piracy on their networks.[/quote]

YouTube kicks some money back to copyright holders when a viewer watches a video with their music.

They monetize it in other ways too, by showing an ad to buy the song from an affiliated service. I don't know if the music cartel gets a piece of that action but presumably they do.

(I watch a lot of garbage truck videos with my son, and there's apparently an unwritten rule that they must feature a random rock ballad as a background track. A similar rule holds for construction truck videos and country music.)

This seems like a savvy and forward-thinking approach to casual piracy, much as you advocate. I can only assume that Google had to spend a fortune on lawyers and fight every step of the way to make it happen, and that it's in danger of collapsing any moment if RIAA throws a tantrum.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4236&start=0#p30527
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Empty Container Searching
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-26 13:49:26

This should do what you need:

[code]
examineInterior()
{
    defaultReport('Looks empty. ');
    inherited();
}
[/code]
What we've done is provide our own defaultReport, which will take precedence over any defaultReport generated by the base implementation of examineInterior().

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4229&start=0#p30528
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anchorhead makes PC Gamer's list of 100 Best Games Ever
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2012-01-26 13:51:12

Yup, good to hear IF being in the top 100. Congrats

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4236&start=0#p30529
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Empty Container Searching
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-26 13:57:00

You can also change it at [url=http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/libref/source/msg_neu.t.html#4793]the source[/url].

[code]
modify thingLookInLister
	showListEmpty(pov, parent) {
		gMessageParams(parent);
		defaultDescReport('{The parent/him} {is} empty. ');
	}
;
[/code]

Edit to add:

The reason for the default wording is that the contents list might be empty for some other reason - namely that it contains a hidden object, or that there's not enough light to see an obscured object inside. A categorical assertion that the container is empty may therefore be false and mislead the player.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4234&start=0#p30530
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Body Parts
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-01-26 14:06:11

The response is from Aaron Reed's Player Experience Upgrade.
You can disable that section of the extension by adding these lines at the bottom of your source text:
[code]Section (in place of Section - Stripping Body Parts in Player Experience upgrade by Aaron Reed) [/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4237&start=0#p30531
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parchment / quixe + JavaScript?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-01-26 14:07:58

The only feasible way to do it right now (that I know of) is to monitor the story text for special characters and act when they appear. See [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3070#p21677]this thread[/url] for an example.

I'm working on an actual solution, but it takes at least a couple of months before it'll be available.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4237&start=0#p30532
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parchment / quixe + JavaScript?
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-01-26 14:29:52

Cool, that's sort of what I was thinking of -- neat hack! 

I'll see what I can come up with and report back if I do figure something out...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4234&start=0#p30533
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Body Parts
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-26 14:42:07

How body parts are handled depends a lot on how your game is expected to behave. Should it assume that you always mean your own body? Do you need to refer to the left and the right separately? Can body parts be separately injured, posed, moved, decorated, stimulated or clothed? How much detail is needed? Does the arm include everything in it, or do you need separate objects for elbows and fingers? Are the outside and inside distinct (e.g. stomach vs. belly)?

Once you've answered this type of questions, the coding becomes a lot more straightforward. Incorporation seems like an obvious choice for how to model them, but it really depends on the needs of the game-world.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4233&start=0#p30534
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Mac Interpreters (rant)
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-26 14:58:04

...and today it doesn't work. I'm getting "file operation prohibited by user-specified file safety level" errors on both the Mac and Windows. Sometimes.

I did a fresh compile of the game, and now it runs in Qtads on Windows, but Qtads Mac, which worked yesterday, doesn't work today. I have no idea what the relevant variables are for which I should be testing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4233&start=0#p30535
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Mac Interpreters (rant)
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-26 15:07:14

In the preferences dialog, in the "File Safety" tab, try setting the "Read Access" option to "Read from anywhere."

If your game really doesn't try to read files from somewhere else then its own directory, you might have found a bug. You could send me your game file in that case so I can take a look at what's wrong. (My email in the "About QTads" dialog. Or you can send me a PM here.)

This is the first version of the interpreter with split read/write permission support, so having found a bug in there is not unlikely.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4233&start=0#p30536
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Mac Interpreters (rant)
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-26 15:09:39

[quote="RealNC"]In the preferences dialog, in the "File Safety" tab, try setting the "Read Access" option to "Read from anywhere."

If your game really doesn't try to read files from somewhere else then its own directory, you might have found a bug. You could send me your game file in that case so I can take a look at what's wrong. (My email in the "About QTads" dialog. Or you can send me a PM here.)

This is the first version of the interpreter with split read/write permission support, so having found a bug in there is not unlikely.[/quote]
It seems to be a file permissions thing. Today I'm running from the desktop, but once I set the permissions, it loads the game. I only noticed the problem because my tester encountered it. I'll let him know and keep you posted if there are further problems.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4238&start=0#p30537
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Outputting random text replies for a command - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-26 15:19:03

Yes, the pest is back. When I enter a command, I would like to have random text replies returned. This is especially true for commands that fail and many other commands and/or actions. Would like some information where to find out how to do this. Thanks, in advance.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4172&start=0#p30538
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Delusions of Eloquence: Blue Lacuna (2009)
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2012-01-26 15:53:20

[quote="Hagbard Celine"]the problem I had with blue lacuna was the broken npc interaction on the island, I liked the first part, wish I could have finished the game but like I said: broken[/quote]

This is sadly the usual approach to IF criticism. Focus on the "interaction" and ignore everything else. Why? Beacuse this is a tiny community of grumpy, isolated cranks, and the last thing a grumpy, isolated crank wants is someone pointing out how talentless they are.

[quote="Taleslinger"]Jacek, what are some games you would recommend? (Apart from Gamlet, of course)[/quote]

I've already answered that question in my self-interview. Oh, I see, you want me to do the usual fawning. While some games are certainly playworthy, I can't think of a single one that is fawnworthy. [i]Anchorhead[/i] is a good game, but I can't imagine it changing anyone's life the way [i]Blood Meridian[/i] has changed lives, including my own.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4238&start=0#p30539
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Outputting random text replies for a command - TADS3.1
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-26 16:12:03

A lot depends on the command, and on why it fails, but the tool you'll end up using is probably a ShuffledEventList. Very handy class.

Can you be more specific about what command(s) you're talking about?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4238&start=0#p30540
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Outputting random text replies for a command - TADS3.1
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-26 16:12:45

Excerpting from your backpack code:

[code]
	dobjFor(Take) {
		action() {
			inherited();
			makeWornBy(gActor);
			"<<one of>>
			You sling the pack over your shoulders. <<or>>
			You heave the pack off the ground. <<or>>
			You manage to lift the heavy pack. 
			<<at random>>";
			wearpackAchievement.awardPointsOnce();
		}
	}
[/code]

(Documented here: [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/sysman/strlit.htm]String Literals[/url].)

Commands can fail in lots of ways and with lots of different messages. Unless you are prepared to do a huge amount of work, or strictly limit the range of permitted actions, you should focus on customizing successful commands first, and then tackle misleading or inappropriate failure messages.

If you have a specific failure message you want to change or randomize, post it and I can help. The general case is too broad to address in a forum post.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4229&start=0#p30541
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anchorhead makes PC Gamer's list of 100 Best Games Ever
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2012-01-26 16:16:21

[quote="Merlin Fisher"]I'm very pleased they chose to honor an IF game[/quote]

It was roundly beaten (forgive the pun) by [i]GTA[/i], a game where players get points for beating up and killing prostitutes. I'm sorry, but I don't see the honour of [i]Anchorhead[/i] being mentioned on the same list as [i]GTA[/i], much less being beaten by it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4237&start=0#p30542
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parchment / quixe + JavaScript?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-01-26 16:24:50

I think the best solution, for both Z-machine and Glulx, is to use streams. It would work very similar to printing to a memory stream, except that when you turn the stream off it would eval() the text, and then write back what eval() returned.

If you're able to limit yourself to the Z-machine then I could make a very quick implementation of this, it's only 5 minutes work. (I would want the proper implementation to be Web Worker compatible, but seeing as Parchment doesn't use them yet I could take a short cut now.) If you need Glulx then someone else will need to hack Quixe, I'm not yet familiar enough with its code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4231&start=0#p30543
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Modifying the library
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-01-26 16:25:48

Oh ok... Cool that wasn't the answer I was expecting, like I say I figured last night those files might have been relating to the ones that are copied, I'll definately know not to play with them now, as for editing the player messages in msg_neu.t wouldn't that make a permenant change too then?... I'll make a back up just in case if or when I try changing messages globally, and thanks for clearing that up for me too

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4235&start=0#p30544
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Workbench Woes
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-26 16:28:00

[quote="RealNC"]For the web build, you can probably just put your mp3 files in one directory, and the ogg files in another and simply change the makefile to include one of the other. Like:

-res
mp3files/
#oggfiles/

When building the ogg version, comment the one out and uncomment the other. Finally, take a moment to marvel at the W3C committee's decision no to make Ogg Vorbis mandatory for HTML5 support and instead letting users deal with all this nonsense.[/quote]
Yeah, I agree that leaving out Ogg support from HTML5 was dumb. (I've heard that ogg was scotched due to pressure from Apple, which would not be surprising.)

I'm not sure changing the makefile will do the job, though. All of the <SOUND SRC=...> tags have filenames, which will have to be edited to end with either .ogg or .mp3. And if they're in folders, which they are, I'll also have to change the path. This is very manageable -- it's just a few extra steps.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4229&start=0#p30545
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anchorhead makes PC Gamer's list of 100 Best Games Ever
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-26 16:32:33

Game reviewers like to name-drop an IF title every now and then, to foster the illusion that they aren't completely in thrall to their industry paymasters.

Cynical, yes, but not compared to the cynicism needed to write a list like that in the first place, and then to divide it into five parts to maximize the ad views.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4231&start=0#p30546
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Modifying the library
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-26 16:34:57

[quote="KellyJ"]Oh ok... Cool that wasn't the answer I was expecting, like I say I figured last night those files might have been relating to the ones that are copied, I'll definately know not to play with them now, as for editing the player messages in msg_neu.t wouldn't that make a permenant change too then?... I'll make a back up just in case if or when I try changing messages globally, and thanks for clearing that up for me too[/quote]
You can use the modify keyword on the objects in msg_neu.t. This will modify the messages only in your current game.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4235&start=0#p30547
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Workbench Woes
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-26 16:44:46

You can use preprocessor directives to switch between mp3 and ogg in your source.

[code]
modify PlayAction
	execAction() {
#ifdef TADS_INCLUDE_NET
		"""<sound src="mp3/science.mp3"/>""";
#else
		"""<sound src="ogg/science.ogg"/>""";
#endif
		"Playing sound. ";
	}
;
[/code]

It's kind of ugly but not unbearably so.

TADS_INCLUDE_NET needs to be defined for WebUI to function, so it's a good definition to test when you want to handle things differently based on the output format.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4239&start=0#p30548
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Testers Needed...
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-26 16:55:02

"The White Bull" is now ready for the first round of testing. It's playable from beginning to end, but a few things (notably more NPC conversations) remain to be implemented. It will be entered in this year's Spring Thing, so there's a deadline, though the deadline is still a couple of months off.

I need two or three industrious and fiendishly clever testers to pound on the game and force it to reveal how slipshod my coding is.

This is a medium-sized, fairly cruel game, entirely serious in tone. It includes built-in hints, which are mostly complete ... but if you're determined not to use the hints, a knowledge of Greek mythology will prove very useful at two or three points. About 60 rooms, about 20 puzzles (some easy, some harrowingly difficult), eight or nine NPCs with whom to interact.

It's a TADS 3.1 game, so you'll need QTads (cross-platform, available for download).

Interested? Got a few hours of free time? If so, please email me ... midiguru23 [at] sbcglobal [dot] net.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4237&start=0#p30549
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parchment / quixe + JavaScript?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-01-26 17:36:07

Okay I've pushed the code to a new branch: <a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/curiousdannii/parchment/tree/evalstream">https://github.com/curiousdannii/parchm ... evalstream</a>

Specs and tests are in my if repository.
<a class="postlink" href="http://curiousdannii.github.com/if/zspec12.html">http://curiousdannii.github.com/if/zspec12.html</a>
<a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/curiousdannii/if/raw/gh-pages/tests/evalstream.inf">https://github.com/curiousdannii/if/raw ... stream.inf</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4229&start=0#p30550
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anchorhead makes PC Gamer's list of 100 Best Games Ever
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2012-01-26 18:07:03

Not blatantly cynical enough for the groundlings, apparently. They took the bait without so much as blinking. There sure is no scarcity of stupid people in this community.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4229&start=10#p30551
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anchorhead makes PC Gamer's list of 100 Best Games Ever
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-26 20:48:19

Sorry, Irfon-Kim. I didn't mean what I said as a personal attack, and I hope you didn't take it that way.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4229&start=10#p30552
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anchorhead makes PC Gamer's list of 100 Best Games Ever
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-26 20:52:05

[quote="David Whyld"]Saying that people only like old IF games for nostalgia value is a bit like saying that 
people only like [i]Citizen Kane[/i], [i]Casablanca[/i] and other old films for nostalgia value. Or that all those people only sing the praises of the Beatles due to nostalgia.[/quote]

The difference [i]often [/i](not always) seems to be a form of techno-fetishism. The tech-fetish thing touches film a [i]little [/i]... I've known folks who flat-out refuse to watch a black and white movie, for example, and (more extremely) who regard a full-color remake as obviously and automatically superior. Fortunately for all of us, there aren't a lot of full-color [i]Casablanca [/i]remakes prancing around. It's much more difficult, though, to categorize the IF "nostalgia" accusations as a tech-fetish thing, since they often come from within the IF fan-community, a fan-community which, by definition, ought to be detached somewhat from that sort of filter, at least where IF is concerned. [emote]:([/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4229&start=10#p30553
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anchorhead makes PC Gamer's list of 100 Best Games Ever
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-26 21:10:35

[quote="bcressey"]Game reviewers like to name-drop an IF title every now and then, to foster the illusion that they aren't completely in thrall to their industry paymasters.[/quote]

I've worked as a video-game reviewer (for [i]Strategy Plus[/i] and [i]Interactive Entertainment[/i]), and as a full-time staff editor in the same biz (for the latter), and neither I nor anyone in my bullpen ever did any such thing. We had a guy who rattled on about IF, because he [i]loved [/i]IF (he went out of his way to make sure we interviewed Meretsky for the magazine, and conducted the interview; you can find a video floating around). We also didn't have "industry paymasters" keeping us in thrall. The one time there was an ethical conflict of interest between our editorial content and the profits of the publisher (who also ran a retail videogame mail-order business and who started to make demands that crossed ethical boundaries), that was the day I stopped working there, for exactly that reason.

I'm sure there are, somewhere, reviewers of the kind you're describing. Maybe one even wrote this top-100 thing. But it's a little disturbing that you'd characterize "game reviewers" with such a broad and negative brush.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4217&start=20#p30554
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Adverbs
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-26 21:16:24

[quote="tove"]That said, I eagerly await Ghalev's private-eye game. (Though that is partially out of cumulative respect for Ghalev, and guessing that he'll probably Do It Right.)[/quote]

Thank you, and here's hoping [emote]:)[/emote] Well, for starters here's hoping I just ever even get the thing done [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4229&start=10#p30555
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anchorhead makes PC Gamer's list of 100 Best Games Ever
User: Irfon-Kim / DateTime: 2012-01-26 21:36:58

[quote="Merlin Fisher"]But if they had to pick just one IF game, I'm not surprised it was "not Infocom."  Infocom games were good (yes, perhaps even great) for their day, but leaving out the huge nostalgia factor, they're weak compared to a well-written modern game.  Both computers and IF software have come so far since then; today's parsers are way smarter and less frustrating, and memory limits now are as neutron stars to the dim fireflies of last century.[/quote]

I was surprised that they picked something non-Infocom not necessarily because I think the Infocom titles are superior per se, but because I was pleasantly surprised to not only see some indication that the author knew that post-Infocom interactive fiction existed at all (in my experience, an awful lot of people think that the genre died with Infocom), but also to see a completely freeware game with no major distribution on the list (many people wouldn't consider a title for such a list if it never appeared in a store).  I really wasn't intended to set up any sort of superiority or inferiority comparison there at all.  (Personally, Anchorhead is one of my all-time favourite games, so I certainly don't think it's undeserving.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4229&start=10#p30556
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anchorhead makes PC Gamer's list of 100 Best Games Ever
User: Irfon-Kim / DateTime: 2012-01-26 21:39:13

[quote="bcressey"]Sorry, Irfon-Kim. I didn't mean what I said as a personal attack, and I hope you didn't take it that way.[/quote]

Not at all. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4229&start=10#p30557
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anchorhead makes PC Gamer's list of 100 Best Games Ever
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-26 21:59:53

[quote="Ghalev"]I'm sure there are, somewhere, reviewers of the kind you're describing. Maybe one even wrote this top-100 thing. But it's a little disturbing that you'd characterize "game reviewers" with such a broad and negative brush.[/quote]

I want to preface this by saying I have a lot of respect for you and your work. That's not the delicious bread on top of a compliment sandwich, it's the plain truth. I did not mean to offend you and regret making such a broad and sweeping statement.

At the same time, I feel like most if not all game reviews essentially serve as an extension of the game publisher's marketing efforts. Even if the review is entirely negative, the fact that someone is writing about it at all validates the game's existence and widens its audience. Or, if not that game precisely, at least the overall efforts of that publisher, or the industry as a whole. They are making games worth paying attention to, that review says, and even if this one is not worth paying for, the next one might be.

That's not a question of ethics and I didn't mean to impugn yours. But there is a reason that the videogame industry pays for ads in magazines. (Not in all magazines, and perhaps not in the ones you worked for.) There may be such a thing as bad publicity, but even bad publicity is better than none at all.

I grant that it's unreasonable to speak of thralls and paymasters. I recognize that a magazine which persisted in ignoring mainstream releases and focused on IF titles would likely lose its audience. But goddammit, Michael Gentry and [i]Anchorhead[/i] deserve more than a passing nod at the tail end of a top 100 list. Five years ago it was Steve Meretzky and [i]A Mind Forever Voyaging[/i]. Five years from now, maybe it will be S. John Ross and [i]Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom[/i].

And I will be just as indignant that these great games are coming out, games that everyone should play and know and love, and at the end of the day they get less attention than the latest installment in a moribund franchise like Mario, or Sonic, or Zelda.

Games should be better than that. They [i]are[/i] better than that. And if reviewers and critics are not getting that message out there, they are part of the problem.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4229&start=10#p30558
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anchorhead makes PC Gamer's list of 100 Best Games Ever
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-26 22:19:01

[quote="bcressey"]I did not mean to offend you and regret making such a broad and sweeping statement.[/quote]

No harm done. And as I said, I'm sure such folk exist. Only the ... [i]inclusiveness [/i]of your phrasing inspired my response.

[quote]At the same time, I feel like most if not all game reviews essentially serve as an extension of the game publisher's marketing efforts.[/quote]

Well, from the publisher's standpoint, that's the majority of the point, of course. For the game-player, though, the trick (and it's unfortunate that there has to be a trick) is separating the magazines/sites/blogs that draw the ethical lines where we'd like them, and those who let videogame publishers buy them lap-dances after CES, and the spectra in-between [emote]:)[/emote] Maybe it's not even worth the effort to examine them closely enough to separate them (I don't bother, myself) but there are some of this, and some of that, and some mixes.

[quote]But there is a reason that the videogame industry pays for ads in magazines.[/quote]

I would amend this to say there [i]are reasons,[/i] rather than [i]there is a reason.[/i]

[quote](Not in all magazines, and perhaps not in the ones you worked for.)[/quote]

Fifty-fifty. [i]Strategy Plus[/i] ran industry ads, IIRC. [i]IE[/i] ran none, though we did other sorts of promotions with companies we personally liked, because we personally liked them (typically of the form "free game with this issue: complete game we liked from four years ago to promote game coming out next year"). I hated the necessity of leaving that job; they were, with one critical exception (the yuppie scum who owned the joint) wonderful folks (and I keep in touch with most of them; one is doing an awesome point-and-click adventure title right now using his own panoramic photography of a funky island; it's pretty effing sweet).

[quote]I grant that it's unreasonable to speak of thralls and paymasters. I recognize that a magazine which persisted in ignoring mainstream releases and focused on IF titles would likely lose its audience. But goddammit, Michael Gentry and [i]Anchorhead[/i] deserve more than a passing nod at the tail end of a top 100 list.[/quote]

Without [i]Anchorhead [/i]I wouldn't be here at all, and that's the simple truth. But in fairness, [i]Anchorhead [/i]does get a lot more than [i]this [/i]passing nod, and will continue to do so, I'm sure. I wish all these games got more attention as well.

And to be fairer still, the problem scales [i]downward,[/i] and [i]backwards [/i]along the timeline. The instant we elevate [i]Anchorhead[/i] into some kind of IF canon (which has, really, already happened) it begins to draw attention away from, perhaps, some little game released last week that none of us have noticed yet, which is maybe better, and yet may never be fully recognized as such.

[quote]Five years ago it was Steve Meretzky and [i]A Mind Forever Voyaging[/i]. Five years from now, maybe it will be S. John Ross and [i]Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom[/i].[/quote]

And what a sad and twisted world that would be.

[quote]And I will be just as indignant that these great games are coming out, games that everyone should play and know and love, and at the end of the day they get less attention than the latest installment in a moribund franchise like Mario, or Sonic, or Zelda.[/quote]

Well, the jazz club in the basement of my building makes a pretty decent burger on a real grill with real meat (the bread's not tops, but welcome to America, right?), and it doesn't get [i]one millionth [/i]the kind of attention that the McRib does when McDonald's trots it back out of the freezer every couple of years. This is the shape of the culture. To be fair, they're consistently listed in Top-100 Jazz Club lists, presumably by journalists who don't have to live right over it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4229&start=10#p30559
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anchorhead makes PC Gamer's list of 100 Best Games Ever
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-26 23:02:25

S. John, I get the impression that the problem people tend to have with Infocom games isn't so much technophilia as that -- from what I hear -- Infocom games were designed for an age when there weren't as many games to play, so you had more time to experiment (or bang your head against the wall) looking for answers, and it wasn't so bad if when you finally discovered the answer to one puzzle you realized that you'd done something to make the game unwinnable five hundred turns back and had to start three save files ago. Though something similar seems to be true in some of the late-90s games I've played anyway.

Also, I hear the McRib's availability depends on the fluctuating price of miscellaneous pork bits, where the fluctuations are driven partly by whether McDonald's is buying them up to make McRibs.

(BTW, the list that started this discussion is two years old, in case anyone else is getting deja vu from Victor's old blog post on it.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4138&start=20#p30560
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ten Room Game Competition
User: Jeremy W. Sherman / DateTime: 2012-01-26 23:03:12

Is the focus here on pushing the boundaries of interaction between a game and a (possibly dynamic?) map, or just promoting the idea of a game limited in geographic scope that has a map a few clicks away?

With talk if Inform 7's publishing system falling within the rules when you include an interpreter and a map file, it sounds like the latter, but I want to make sure: should participants focus on innovating how someone can interact with the work in the context of a modern web browser, or should they focus on creating a quality work bundled alongside a quality map?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4229&start=10#p30561
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anchorhead makes PC Gamer's list of 100 Best Games Ever
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-26 23:31:07

[quote="matt w"]S. John, I get the impression that the problem people tend to have with Infocom games ...[/quote]

Sure,* but again, I'm not puzzled by, or even concerned with, why some folks don't love Infocom. I've heard many, many reasons (for some it's tech-fetish, for some it's design "cruelty," for some it's the humor, for some it's the use of the docs as copy protection, for some its the leanness of the prose, et multiple cetera). I recognize that there are lots of reasons to dislike Infocom (the tech-fetish thing seems most common well outside the IF community).

My puzzlement and concern is on the opposite topic: of being accused of "nostalgia" for loving the games, especially within the IF community, where people should (obviously) know of all the other reasons to love them, even if they're also aware of the reasons to not-love them.


=-=-=-=-=-
* Though the idea that in some fabled golden 1980s we "had more time" to play games is ... well, that's [i]real [/i]nostalgia.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4229&start=10#p30562
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anchorhead makes PC Gamer's list of 100 Best Games Ever
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-27 00:23:46

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]It was roundly beaten (forgive the pun) by [i]GTA[/i], a game where players get points for beating up and killing prostitutes.[/quote]
I've beaten up and killed quite a few hookers in GTA but never got any points... I'm doing it wrong? :-/

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4226&start=0#p30563
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: New release of The Hours
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-01-27 00:33:42

Awesome, congrats on following through! Motivation for me to try to tune my stuff up beyond the cursory bits. I'll try and give yours a look if my own writing schedule clears up.

How many comp games is that, now, that've been updated post-comp?

Versus how many in-comp? It'd be interesting to keep track.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4189&start=0#p30564
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Post-Comp Release of A Night Guest
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-01-27 00:36:49

Congrats on doing this. Makes me feel less silly about my own 2011-based procrastination.

And welcome back to IF-land. People really do pay attention to these posts. I think everyone could use a little more motivation to make the tuneups they know they need to.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4229&start=20#p30565
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anchorhead makes PC Gamer's list of 100 Best Games Ever
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-27 01:00:06

[quote="RealNC"]I've beaten up and killed quite a few hookers in GTA but never got any points... I'm doing it wrong? :-/[/quote]

Who knew it even had points? Maybe there's a code to unlock them. [emote]:)[/emote] Or maybe the first one had points? That's been so long I don't remember.

My wife does the rob-and-roll-the-hookers thing in GTA; I was pretty shocked the first time I saw her wailing on a streetwalker with a baseball bat. High-larious. That was mainly GTA III, though ... when Vice City came along she took to killing senior citizens on the golf course as her preferred source of petty revenue. She'd whack 'em with their own golf clubs, three or four at a time like a golf-club samurai. {swoon!} In San Andreas she went after drug dealers (they had the most money and just stood there waiting to be shot) and in GTAIV I'm not sure she has a favorite. Nobody's safe!

I'm mainly in it for the irresponsible driving/flying/boating and outrageous wrecking parts. Any hookers damaged in the process are incidental, not deliberate [emote]:)[/emote] I'm sure I've winged a few with gasoline-soaked flaming shrapnel, though, especially in GTAIV ... 

I love how in [i]Chinatown Wars[/i] they turned the hooker-abuse cliche around, though. That got a laugh for sure (plus: [i]Chinatown Wars[/i] just rocked so hard in so many ways).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4237&start=0#p30566
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parchment / quixe + JavaScript?
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-01-27 04:26:20

Hi, I just played around with this and here's a little javascript that grabs the current room name from the status line. You don't need to do anything to the parchment.min.js or anything special in inform, (or muck about with I6), just "release along with an interpreter", add this to play.html and you're good. 

Here I just output it into a div, but my intent is to use this to indicate where I am on an a visual map. This is mostly comments, and perhaps not the best way to do this. I'm trying to do this step by step so anybody can follow, hopefully this can spark some ideas. 

The "$" stuff is jQuery, which is already there with your Parchment installation. 

[code]
/* 
 * dynamap.js 0.0.1  
 *
 * This is a javascript that grabs the current room name from the Parchment play.html. 
 * 
 * 1. Add the script to play.html with this line in the <head>:
 *   <script src="dynamap.js"></script>
 *
 * 2. Add a div like this, for example right under the <div class="smalltitle">...</div> line:
 *   <div id="myOutput"></div>
 */

function dynamapUpdate() {
	// grab the status line
	var grab = $("div#top-window span").text();

	// extract the room name from the status line: 
	// the regexp should be like this, without quotes, surrounded by slashes
	// \s*    -- any number of white spaces, followed by...
	// (.*?)  -- anything, in a matching group meaning this is what we look for, followed by...
	// \s\s   -- two spaces
	var myRegexp = /\s*(.*?)\s\s/; 
	var match = myRegexp.exec(grab);
	var room = match[1];

	// output the room name
	$("div#myOutput").html(room);
}

// start automatically:
window.onload=function(){
	setInterval("dynamapUpdate()", 500); // interval in ms
}
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4138&start=20#p30567
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ten Room Game Competition
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-01-27 05:27:32

Good question, Jeremy!

Although honestly, I don't really care that much, to me this comp is just an opportunity to write something that hopefully will be interesting. 

I've been thinking of writing something about a house, a bit inspired by George Perec's [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_A_User's_Manual][i]La Vie: Mode d'Emploi[/i][/url]. Of course, Perec has other types of constraints. And admittedly, what I'm doing now is not really that, it's a much smaller thing and really something different. But I'm starting it off with one fixed boundary: that there are only ten rooms. That's about it for me. If this is not what the comp organizer (David) was aiming for... well, boo hoo. 

On the tech side though (for Inform 7), I am trying to to a dynamic little map on the side that displays where you are, and anybody else who wants to do this should be able to do something similar. My plan is to do it with just some javascript / html / css on the side that intercepts the status line to see where the player is. 

See [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4237#p30566]this thread[/url] for my first steps on this.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4229&start=20#p30568
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anchorhead makes PC Gamer's list of 100 Best Games Ever
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2012-01-27 05:58:15

[quote="Ghalev"] Though the idea that in some fabled golden 1980s we "had more time" to play games is ... well, that's [i]real [/i]nostalgia.[/quote]

Back then, if you wanted an IF game you had to [i]buy[/i] one; these days you open a browser and download one for free. Far more games are available to you these days than back in the 1980s so you don't tend to have as much time to devote to each one as you did back then, thus giving the impression that back then you had more time to play games than you do now.

There's also the added fact that back in the 1980s, IF was commercial. These days it’s free. You're far more likely to stick with a game you've paid money for than one you got for free; give up on a commercial game because you dislike the parser, it’s buggy, there's a maze, etc, and you're out of pocket. There's no real downside to giving up on a free game because it takes only a minute to download another.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4229&start=20#p30569
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anchorhead makes PC Gamer's list of 100 Best Games Ever
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-27 07:04:05

[quote] thus giving the impression that back then you had more time to play games than you do now.[/quote]

[i]Precisely [/i]my point, yes.

[quote]You're far more likely to stick with a game you've paid money for than one you got for free.[/quote]

Yeah, that's a huge contributing factor, no question.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4229&start=20#p30570
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anchorhead makes PC Gamer's list of 100 Best Games Ever
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-27 07:15:44

[quote="David Whyld"][quote="Ghalev"] Though the idea that in some fabled golden 1980s we "had more time" to play games is ... well, that's [i]real [/i]nostalgia.[/quote]

Back then, if you wanted an IF game you had to [i]buy[/i] one; these days you open a browser and download one for free. Far more games are available to you these days than back in the 1980s so you don't tend to have as much time to devote to each one as you did back then, thus giving the impression that back then you had more time to play games than you do now.[/quote]

David, that's exactly what I was thinking of -- not that you had more time to play games, but that you had more time for each individual game. 

S. John, I guess it depends on the context, but I don't think "nostalgia" is necessarily an accusation. Part of my horrified reaction to the [url=http://www.wurb.com/stack/archives/1603]3D shooter remake of Combat[/url] is that another 3D shooter sounds kind of dull compared to the PvP simplicity of the original Combat, but I'll freely confess that there's a lot of nostalgia there too. And even if Infocom games are superior to Combat (which they are, I suppose, or maybe it's a matter of taste), I also think nostalgia for them is natural and healthy. I have nostalgia for the Beatles because of all the time I spent listening to my parents' Beatles records, but they're also pretty good.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4229&start=20#p30571
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anchorhead makes PC Gamer's list of 100 Best Games Ever
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-27 07:28:10

[quote="matt w"]you had more time for each individual game. [/quote]

LOL.

[quote]S. John, I guess it depends on the context, but I don't think "nostalgia" is necessarily an accusation.[/quote]

Oh, I agree entirely. And when it [i]isn't[/i] an accusation, it's neither a puzzle nor a concern, nor related to anything I've discussed in this thread.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4240&start=0#p30572
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Post Comp Release (ver. 3.0) of Andromeda Awakening.
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-01-27 08:14:52

This seems to take longer than I expected, so I'm encouraging everyone to try the new release of Andromeda Awakening, temporarily held at:

[url]http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXunprocessed.html[/url]

(will be soon available @ ../glulx).

Those easily lost can download the full map (.pdf) in the same dir.
No walkthrough available, although the game is quite the same as the comp version (and you can find it in the IFComp2011 dir, in ifarchive), apart from the ending sequence (see below).

What's new:

The title: [b]Andromeda Awakening - The final cut[/b].
This is because of:
- A new beginning sequence (now you start inside the apartment)
- A few puzzles have been revised:
     * The ticket can be obtained in a slightly different way
     * There IS a ticket vending machine in the station
     * You don't NEED to "PUSH CLIFF" ingame; what has to happen happens anyway, although you CAN push cliff, if you want
- New verbs and synonyms added ("GO TO", "RESEARCH" as "CONSULT x on y")
- A new ending (5 more rooms, 2 important documents for more insight as to what is happening)
- A VERY SLIGHTLY polish of the text (still bulky, still purple)

Plus:

- Afterwords for ending the game in victory
- Explanations to some artifacts etc (after ending the game in victory)
- Better clued puzzles (i.e.: you don't need to examine the walls to understand something is wrong)
- Less (or none) "repeat-the-command-to-do-a-simple-thing"

And, finally:

- 200+ improvements (I dunno if it is true, but it sounds sooooo Apple)
- What was cyanotic, is still cyanotic. (And no: cyanotic doesn't mean #6600FF).


Hope you have fun. Re-review or vote in IFDB as soon as the game is released there, if you want! I'd like it!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4229&start=20#p30573
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anchorhead makes PC Gamer's list of 100 Best Games Ever
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-27 09:32:25

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="matt w"]you had more time for each individual game. [/quote]

LOL.[/quote]

Just repeating what David said.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4238&start=0#p30574
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Outputting random text replies for a command - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-27 10:07:40

Thanks for the help. That's really all I need for right now. However, I'll surely be back with more questions.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=60#p30575
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Computer-savvy newbie
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-01-27 10:46:39

Just to make sure, let me repeat that I am [b]not[/b] trying to say any of the learning tools are bad or wrong - I am simply looking from my idiosyncratic, very much bottom-up style of learning.

[quote="Eric Eve"]Well, with all due respect, these topics are covered in Chapter 13 of [i]Learning TADS 3[/i][/quote]
And so they are, you are absolutely right.  I am currently working my way through LT, having started on Getting Started (which felt like learning magic: "If you type this, that will happen", with no explanation of the underlying mechanisms), then switched to the Guided Tour, which agreed much more with me, then gone back to GS, read most of it (still stumbling on the magic), and then switched to LT, which is easier on me than GS.  I hadn't gotten to Chapter 13 yet, though,

[quote="Eric Eve"]Again, while it doesn't do exactly what you suggest, it seems to me that [i]Learning TADS 3[/i] perhaps goes some way towards it.[/quote]
Compared to GS, definitely.  But it still introduces containment without telling whether the system checks for loops in the hierarchy, whether is it inherently connected with the size systems..  What I should like is either (simplified) axioms, or a (simplified) implementation - something that allows me to reason with, and correctly conclude "This will work" or "That won't work", and know why.
I am built in such a way that using actions from Chapter 1 and only getting a description of what it means to use them in Chapter 13 means 12 chapters of unease, of feeling in the dark.

Eric, you did a wonderful job of documenting TADS 3, and I don't want to leave the impression that I am not grateful or you did something wrong, because I am and you didn't.  It is just that I may be a member of a larger class of potential TADS 3 users, people who would like to learn about containment without having to take unexplained actions for granted (no need for IF in every example - Towers of Hanoi would do fine), and then at some other point learn about actions, or connectors, before using those.

Bcressey, your idea sounds great - developping (a simplified version of) the library.

Thanks for putting up with my rambles!
Biep.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4229&start=20#p30576
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anchorhead makes PC Gamer's list of 100 Best Games Ever
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-27 11:52:38

[quote="matt w"]Just repeating what David said.[/quote]

I tease. Then I grin.

Then I do that thing with my eyes people tell me I really shouldn't do.

Then I put them back in.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4241&start=0#p30577
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: One big file tips?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-27 12:05:07

Does anyone here use the "one big plain text file" method of organization outside of I7? I've found that using search is faster than flipping back and forth to the Contents (which tend to so large I have to scroll them as well). Do you make yourself anchors in comments, or is there a trick for finding headings in the search box? I love to do things in a "standard" way, so if people are already putting a "[#skiptothis]" style of tag in their files, maybe I'll adopt it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=80#p30578
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-27 12:14:57

Better late than never:

[quote]What is the reason for the existence of the m_figure class?[/quote]It's kinda of a compromise. A m_figure holds quiet a lot of data and I didn't wanted to add all those to every object in the game but I didn't wanted to create another kind of thing, which would render all the standard rules for things useless. Using a dummy instance of an attachable component seemed like a sensible solution and it still does.[quote]Analogously, is there a reason why facing directions are their own kind of value?[/quote]This should become obsolete, once it becomes easier to define new directions, as it should be the case with the new release, if I caught that correctly.[quote]I'm thinking about trying to add an illumination map[/quote]I would probably use a technique from one of R&D's older instances where, for every row, the map would store number of borders and other tilecells. Let's say you got a row with three border cells, five floor cells, two border cells and then again one floor cell. That would translate into the list {3, 8, 10, 11}. You can save yourself some progressing time with that. For lightning, however, there is probably no way around your suggestion. Best place to include this code would probably be an independent phrase during the map generating activity but I would need some time to think about that.[quote]Great! Is import-from-a-file fully functional now?[/quote]If you mean that you now can add walls and borders then yes. I'm not entirely happy with the choice of letters (with '+' representing walls and '#' for borders) but it's a start.

Still can't think of a good way to not copy the graphics because of the missing sorting algorithm but at least adding the numbers individually improved things a bit although it's far from mind blowing. [emote]:([/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4229&start=20#p30579
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anchorhead makes PC Gamer's list of 100 Best Games Ever
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-27 12:21:31

Pics or it didn't happen.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4229&start=20#p30580
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anchorhead makes PC Gamer's list of 100 Best Games Ever
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-27 12:37:01

[quote="matt w"]Pics or it didn't happen.[/quote]

Busted [emote]:([/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4242&start=0#p30581
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: T3: Big Workbench Rant
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-27 13:04:13

Okay, here's the deal: For whatever reason, I happen to want to have several versions of my project. Workbench has no Save As command for projects. So I figure, I can deal with that -- I'll just copy the entire project folder, rename the t3m file in the new folder, and double-click it. Now I'm editing the copy of the project, right?

Wrong, Batman. The source files that Workbench opens in the new project ARE STILL THE FILES IN THE OLD PROJECT FOLDER. The result of this bit of insanity is that when I start to edit what I [i]think [/i]is the code for the new project, I'm still editing the files in the other copy of the project.

I've been attempting to do some stuff in this project for the past half hour, and none of the changes that I add to the code are running. It finally, belatedly, occurs to me to look at the time-stamp in Windows Explorer -- and sure enough, the files I'm editing are not the files that are being compiled.

It would be hard to overstate my dismay over this situation.

I suspect I understand the root of the problem. Workbench stores a bunch of extra data in the t3m file, including which files are open and where the text cursor is in each of them. The problem is, it's storing the COMPLETE path for each of those files rather than the RELATIVE path. So when I copy the t3m (along with everything else) to a new folder and then open the t3m, it happily goes and gets the files in the wrong folder.

Now that I understand the problem, the solution is only mildly laborious: (a) Copy the entire project folder. (b) Open the new version of the t3m. (c) Close ALL of the files that are open for editing. (d) Open them again by double-clicking them in the Project pane. At least, I [i]hope [/i]that will work. I'll have to check it carefully before I go on with editing my project.

The reason I remain peeved is this: Having just discovered what's going on, I now have to go back through ALL of the edits I've made in the past couple of days and make sure that they're in the right files. I may have thought I fixed bugs that didn't really get fixed, because I was editing the wrong file.

Isn't that just swell?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4242&start=0#p30582
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Big Workbench Rant
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-27 13:25:08

I sympathize with your frustration - that's kind of a nightmare. It's definitely worth adding a ticket to the [url=http://bugdb.tads.org/]TADS Bug Database[/url] about this behavior.

Ideally you would not even have to rename the makefile; you could just copy the folder and make edits without worrying about anything happening to the original files.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4243&start=0#p30583
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: TADS3 Html playable online?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-01-27 13:35:48

Any news on this one?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4243&start=0#p30584
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 Html playable online?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-27 13:37:55

[url=http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/sysman/webui.htm]The Web UI[/url] made its debut in last month's 3.1 release.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3729&start=0#p30585
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview: Jacek does Adam
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-01-27 13:42:17

I have in my hand a list... a list of the people Jacek Pudlo has been seen together in a room with...  And, S. John Ross -- you're not on that list.

C.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4241&start=0#p30586
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: One big file tips?
User: Jeremy W. Sherman / DateTime: 2012-01-27 13:44:19

There are the semi-standard TODO, FIXME, HACK, XXX, ???, !!! comment-introducing marks. Many editors will highlight some subset of these by default or call them out in some other way. I often throw a date in alongside, like (jws/2012-01-27)TODO: We need to add X here, so I have an idea what was going on then (and how long I've let a problem fester).

I often keep a personal project log in an RTF file. Dates are introduced in bold with >>> 2012–01–27 (friday), topics are introduced in bold-italic font, and then discussion goes in roman below the topic. So I'm using >>> plus a standard date format to make it easy to jump between days, and sometimes I'll use ~~~ as a search bookmark.

If you moved your typing out of the built-in editor, you could edit your text in multiple files, recombine them into a single story.ni file using a preprocessor (basically just #include each file in order), and then trigger compilation. I don't know whether this would actually be an improvement, but the possibility is there.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4244&start=0#p30587
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Giving light to the actor. - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-27 14:23:22

I am doing some testing with my actor concerning giving light directly to the actor. Also, this relates to eventually making him a wizard who can 'glow'. I have been unable to get the code working that is in the TADS manuals. Does anyone have some ideas on how to do this?

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4244&start=0#p30588
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Giving light to the actor. - TADS3.1
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-27 14:30:32

Can you elaborate on what you're trying to do? Possibly post a short transcript of the effect in action?

You can set the brightness property on an actor to achieve a "glow" effect.

[code]
me: Person
	vocabWords = 'self'
	location = bedroom
	brightness = 10
;
[/code]

But this effect is extremely subtle without support from the text - if that actor is in a DarkRoom, it will appear as though he is in an ordinary room.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4229&start=20#p30589
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anchorhead makes PC Gamer's list of 100 Best Games Ever
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-01-27 14:53:42

[quote="Ghalev"]I've known folks who flat-out refuse to watch a black and white movie, for example, and (more extremely) who regard a full-color remake as obviously and automatically superior[/quote]

I know some of those: I've had an acquaintance refuse to watch [i]North By Northwest[/i] because he was convinced it was going to be boring.  I also know some who regard a B&W movie as inherently superior to color, and refuse to watch anything made after, say, the mid-fifties.  Both groups are clearly doing it wrong, in my opinion.  (There [i]is[/i] something to the idea that old movies, like foreign movies, come to us with a bit of selection bias built in -- we wouldn't have even heard of them if they didn't have at least some redeeming qualities -- and so they are likelier to be good than a randomly-selected contemporary Hollywood film.  But still.)

[quote="mattw"]Also, I hear the McRib's availability depends on the fluctuating price of miscellaneous pork bits, where the fluctuations are driven partly by whether McDonald's is buying them up to make McRibs.[/quote]

Here's an article (via Making Light): <a class="postlink" href="http://www.theawl.com/2011/11/a-conspiracy-of-hogs-the-mcrib-as-arbitrage">http://www.theawl.com/2011/11/a-conspir ... -arbitrage</a> for those who are interested.  The part that stood out most in my mind was this: "there is literally not enough celery root grown in the world for it to survive on the menu at McDonald’s."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4241&start=0#p30591
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: One big file tips?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-27 15:01:14

I definitely use TODOs in my I7 file. What's funny is I almost never come back to them. Occasionally I'll notice one I already fixed and get rid of it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4229&start=30#p30592
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anchorhead makes PC Gamer's list of 100 Best Games Ever
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2012-01-27 15:02:38

[quote="tove"][quote="Ghalev"]I've known folks who flat-out refuse to watch a black and white movie, for example, and (more extremely) who regard a full-color remake as obviously and automatically superior[/quote]

I know some of those: I've had an acquaintance refuse to watch [i]North By Northwest[/i] because he was convinced it was going to be boring. [/quote]

[i]North By Northwest[/i] är inte svartvit.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4244&start=0#p30593
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Giving light to the actor. - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-27 15:04:15

This is a carryover from previous games I have written. Sometime in this story, I haven't decided yet where or how this will happen, the actor will be given the opportunity to become a 'wizard'. He will receive numerous powers that will make him immune to various hazards (but not all of them). One of the powers he will receive is his ability to provide light in any location by making himself 'glow'. So, he must have control over this 'glowing power'

I can't tell you more right now because the flow of my story hasn't been finalized. I hope this helps.

RonG

btw: You're right about text messages to support this concept.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4243&start=0#p30594
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 Html playable online?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-27 15:18:29

That said, it's important to understand that the usage of HTML tags in the Web UI implementation is not entirely the same as the usage in TADS 3.0 games. Certain things have to be done differently in order to get the game to use the Web UI. And at present, from what I understand, there is no support for audio output in the Web UI implementation.

Also, games targeted for online play have to be recompiled. Older games can't be uploaded and played.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4244&start=0#p30595
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Giving light to the actor. - TADS3.1
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-27 15:37:13

Here is some sample code that implements an unlockable glow ability.

[rant][code]
#charset "us-ascii"
#include <adv3.h>
#include <en_us.h>


versionInfo: GameID
	name = 'The Wizard\'s Bedroom'
	byline = 'by Ben Cressey'
	version = '1'
;

gameMain: GameMainDef
	initialPlayerChar = me
;

enum wizard, normal;

me: Person
	vocabWords = 'self'
	location = bedroom
	powerLevel = normal

	makeWizard() {
		powerLevel = wizard;
	}

	makeNormal() {
		powerLevel = normal;
		brightness = 0;
	}
;

bathroom: DarkRoom 'bathroom' 'bathroom'
	"Just another bathroom. "
	west = bedroom
;

bedroom: Room 'bedroom' 'bedroom'
	"Just another bedroom. "
	east = bathroom
;

+ ring: Wearable 'wizard\'s ring' 'wizard\'s ring'
	"Faint runes are inscribed on the steel band. "

	dobjFor(Wear) {
		action() {
			inherited();
			"You feel magic coursing through your veins!
			 You recall the words of the GLOW spell you learned as a child. ";
			gActor.makeWizard();
		}
	}

	dobjFor(Doff) {
		action() {
			"You shudder as the magic leaks from your body.
			 The words of the GLOW spell fade from your mind. ";
			 gActor.makeNormal();
		}
	}
;

DefineIAction(Glow);

VerbRule(Glow)
	'glow'
	: GlowAction
	verbPhrase = 'glow/glowing'
;

modify GlowAction
	execAction() {
		if (gActor.powerLevel != wizard)
			reportFailure('The magic no longer obeys you. ');
		else {
			"You shriek the words of the GLOW spell!
			 Your body begins to glow with a fiery red light! ";
			gActor.brightness = 10;
		}
	}
;
[/code][/rant]

Transcript:

[rant][quote]
Bedroom
Just another bedroom. 

You see a wizard's ring here. 

>﻿wear ring
(first taking the wizard's ring)
You feel magic coursing through your veins! You recall the words of the GLOW spell you learned as a child. 

>﻿e
In the dark
It’s pitch black. 

>﻿glow
You shriek the words of the GLOW spell! Your body begins to glow with a fiery red light! 

Bathroom
Just another bathroom. 

>﻿remove ring
You shudder as the magic leaks from your body. The words of the GLOW spell fade from your mind. 

It is now pitch black. 

>﻿look
In the dark
It’s pitch black. 

>﻿glow
The magic no longer obeys you. 
[/quote][/rant]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4243&start=0#p30596
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 Html playable online?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-01-27 15:38:26

Fine, fine.  I never cared for that tricky stuff anyway.

I can now make text games that can play in a browser using T3 -- very cool.  I'm sure there will be future developments, which will also be cool.

Thanks, T3 Web UI team!


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4209&start=0#p30597
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Signs of Affection
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-01-27 15:57:31

I hope you keep posting to this thread, as you continue to work at this.  (For the record, it wouldn't occur to me to trap "Ask Barbara for a kiss," either.)

Is there no standard way for working with abstract nouns like this?


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4229&start=30#p30598
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anchorhead makes PC Gamer's list of 100 Best Games Ever
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-27 16:11:02

[quote="tove"]Both groups are clearly doing it wrong, in my opinion.[/quote]

Hear, hear. An opinion worthy of its own t-shirt, bumpersticker and - dare I be the one to say what everyone else is thinking? - it's own novelty sugar-free artificially-cinnamon-flavored adults-only gummi sculpture.*

[quote][...] and so they are likelier to be good than a randomly-selected contemporary Hollywood film.  But still.)[/quote]

I suppose that's true, but only useful to the extent that we, as you say, [i]randomly select[/i] our contemporary Hollywood films. I'd suppose the easy availability of things like Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, rapid-fire electronic feedback from friends who know our movie tastes, and so on helps provide a compensatory real-time alternative to that selection bias.



=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
* Up late working, all night, then all afternoon. Haven't slept in quite a while. Indexing. Map graphics. Lines all swimmy. Marmoset?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3729&start=0#p30599
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview: Jacek does Adam
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-27 16:25:11

[quote="conradcook"]I have in my hand a list... a list of the people Jacek Pudlo has been seen together in a room with...  And, S. John Ross -- you're not on that list.

C.[/quote]

Not unlike Clark Kent and Superman.

In my guise as Pudlo: Man of Steel, I assumed everyone else was so idiotic that simply putting on eyeglasses and behaving like a bumbling game writer would fool them. Curse you, Conrad ... or should I say:[i] Luthor.[/i]

-=-=-=-=-=-
(Haven't slept much today, not really up to a McCarthy joke, apologies)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4209&start=0#p30600
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Signs of Affection
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-27 16:44:41

I would call Jim's approach of using an actual game object for an abstract noun the "standard" way. At least, it's essentially the same technique Aaron Reed uses in [i]Sand-dancer[/i], and it's relatively well supported by the library.

The kissing question has [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2389]come up before[/url] and the linked thread explores some related issues. (It was pre-3.1 and the library error mentioned has since been fixed, so better solutions may be viable now.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4243&start=0#p30601
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 Html playable online?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-01-27 17:02:12

More broadly, I notice that Jimmy Maher calls T3 a "nonstarter" in reference to making text games for the kindle, as he's done recently for his _King of Shreds and Patches_.  (Cthulhu meets Hamlet!  Does he eat Hamlet?  Is this why Hamlet's insane?  -- I haven't actually finished the game yet.)

Anyway, he's got it published for real...

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.filfre.net/2012/01/the-king-of-shreds-and-patches-kindle-touch-version-and-some-answers/">http://www.filfre.net/2012/01/the-king- ... e-answers/</a>

...but you Just Can't Do these things with TADS 3.  -- I don't mean to stupid here, but why on Earth not?  Is it because we're hung up about stupid crap like the status line not properly displaying?  Or is there something inherent to TADS 3's inner workings that can't be done on a kindle or is difficult to implement on the web?


Conrad.

ps - Inform 7 -- man, I just have trouble wrapping my head around using English that way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4209&start=0#p30602
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Signs of Affection
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-01-27 17:09:40

Then how does one usually deal with an "X KISS" command?

--I suppose Jim wants a response identical with "X OBAMA" when there is no "Obama" object implemented in the game.  

To my way of thinking, I'm not even certain what kind of response to give to such a command...  The command itself doesn't make sense.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4209&start=0#p30603
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Signs of Affection
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-27 17:18:51

It's working for me now. I can't quite remember what I did. Here's some code, though -- decipher it if you can. jTCommandTopic is an inheritance class for Julia based on the TCommand extension.

[code]+ jTCommandTopic @KissAction
    matchDobj = me
    topicResponse {
        nestedActorAction(me, Kiss, julia);
    }
;

+jAskForTopic @tKiss
     topicResponse {
        nestedActorAction(me, Kiss, julia);
    }
;[/code]
There is, obviously, a Topic object, tKiss. Julia herself has this:
[code] dobjFor(Kiss) {
        verify() {}
        check() {
            failCheck (noKissMsg);
        }
    }[/code]
And finally, we have:
[code]modify VerbRule(Kiss)
    (('kiss' | 'hug') singleDobj) | ('give' singleDobj ('a' | ) ('kiss' | 'hug'))
    :
;[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4243&start=0#p30604
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 Html playable online?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-01-27 17:25:57

It's because the TADS VM is just so much more complicated than Glulx. ZMPP is the only new implementation that I know of (and it's incomplete too), all the other TADS interpreters are ports of the original C code. Whereas there are many independent Glulx implementations.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4243&start=0#p30605
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 Html playable online?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-27 17:29:06

This is a longish saga. Briefly, there is no inherent reason why a TADS 3 virtual machine couldn't be written in Javascript. It's just a huge job, and nobody has bothered to do it (though Dannii has considered it, I believe).

The route that MJR chose for the T3 online delivery system is more powerful -- for instance, it will allow multi-player real-time online play, I believe -- but it also places some rather stringent requirements on how the author can deliver the file to players via hardware devices.

I would not (offhand, not being a programmer) expect that the TADS 3.1 Web UI would ever be suitable for a Kindle. I don't know how Jimmy is doing what he's doing -- by modifying Quixe to work with the Kindle or by some other method. You'd have to ask him.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4243&start=0#p30606
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 Html playable online?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-27 17:33:03

It's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem. Amazon won't accept you into the Kindle Developers program unless you have an app that you can convince them is worth bringing to the platform, and once you do have the app, you still have to port it to Java and make it perform well on the hardware.

I gather from some of Jimmy's previous posts that Amazon is involved in vetting and testing the apps throughout the project. It's not like the App Store where you pay your developer fee, do the work, and cross your fingers when you submit it for review.

TADS 3 on the Kindle is only a "nonstarter" because Jimmy is not interested in writing an interpreter to run TADS 3 games. I can't say I blame him; it's a giant pile of work and it leverages almost none of his existing code. He's basically saying if you want it, find a different publisher. That's entirely fair.

I like my Kindle. If and when I finish my own giant Lovecraft thriller, I'd like to get it running on the Kindle. iOS support will probably come first, because it can leverage an HTML5 UI and a C++ engine, which basically what we have today with Web UI. The main hurdle is coming up with a touch interface that doesn't suck.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4243&start=0#p30607
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 Html playable online?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-27 18:05:45

[quote="Dannii"]It's because the TADS VM is just so much more complicated than Glulx. ZMPP is the only new implementation that I know of (and it's incomplete too), all the other TADS interpreters are ports of the original C code. Whereas there are many independent Glulx implementations.[/quote]

The VM is really not that complicated, and it's well documented. I have an independent, partially complete implementation in JavaScript, and I'm hardly an expert on either VMs or JavaScript.

However, there are a lot of intrinsics, and you need most of them working to run anything beyond very simple programs. The documentation here is not as helpful; implementation involves a lot of time with the System Manual and the T3 headers.

As I understand it, intrinsics are like the accelerated opcodes in Glulx, except they're not optional. But outside of a narrow technical sense, neither are the Glulx ones, if you're talking about running modern I7 titles on less powerful hardware.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4243&start=0#p30608
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 Html playable online?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-01-27 18:10:59

You have a partial T3 JS implementation?? Is it public yet?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4243&start=10#p30609
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 Html playable online?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-01-27 18:21:13

Well now here's a question--

Can I make a game that automagically emails me a transcript of the play?  Such that the player would need to turn it off rather than turn it on?

As far as the "far more powerful, but far more difficult to deploy" -- well, that says it all, doesn't it?  I don't have a server to upload games onto, don't want to have a server, don't know the first thing about it...  I just want to write text games.


Conrad.

ps - That's not me being anti-technical.  I don't at all mind TADS having a rigorous, technical approach.  That's me being a hobo by choice and having a budget of $0 to spend on buying servers and keeping them online.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4243&start=10#p30610
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 Html playable online?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-27 18:31:37

[quote="conradcook"]Well now here's a question--
Can I make a game that automagically emails me a transcript of the play?  Such that the player would need to turn it off rather than turn it on?[/quote]
Yes, you can. But it's a bad idea. It would be spyware.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4243&start=10#p30611
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 Html playable online?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-01-27 18:41:07

Nah.  I'd warn 'em.

C.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4200&start=10#p30612
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Megaupload taken offline
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-01-27 18:58:58

[quote="bcressey"][quote="Laroquod"]Think about that: the [i]only difference[/i] between Megaupload and YouTube is that Megaupload [i]didn't bother to conceal[/i] its awareness of what goes on using its tools. However it would be absolutely silly and naive to believe that both services [i]aren't[/i] equally aware of the piracy on their networks.[/quote]

YouTube kicks some money back to copyright holders when a viewer watches a video with their music.

They monetize it in other ways too, by showing an ad to buy the song from an affiliated service. I don't know if the music cartel gets a piece of that action but presumably they do.

(I watch a lot of garbage truck videos with my son, and there's apparently an unwritten rule that they must feature a random rock ballad as a background track. A similar rule holds for construction truck videos and country music.)

This seems like a savvy and forward-thinking approach to casual piracy, much as you advocate. I can only assume that Google had to spend a fortune on lawyers and fight every step of the way to make it happen, and that it's in danger of collapsing any moment if RIAA throws a tantrum.[/quote]
Very true, that last paragraph. It's not that the differences you point out earlier are incorrect: it's that by themselves they present an ahistorical view that is prone to overlooking the fact that all of these anti-piracy 'features' were late additions to YouTube that came about [i]as the result[/i] of the civil legal system -- a system that is now being denied to up-and-comers like Megaupload in favour of the criminal justice system. YouTube didn't start with these features; they were added via a process of compromise rooted in civil litigation -- a process that is being left behind now that the RIAA/MPAA feel they have sharper teeth. So, things have changed -- there is no denying it, IMO. If YouTube were invented in the way it originally was, in the current legal (and extralegal) regime, it would almost certainly not survive.

[quote="zarf"]Wrong.[/quote]
Illuminating. I eagerly anticipate the release of a 'Zarf Button' app that simply pronounces either 'right' or 'wrong' when somebody-who-is-not-Zarf expresses an opinion. It'd save you [i]even more[/i] unnecessary typing. 8)

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4243&start=10#p30613
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 Html playable online?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-27 19:32:25

[quote="Dannii"]You have a partial T3 JS implementation?? Is it public yet?[/quote]

No, not really public, but you can look at [url=http://dev.tads.io/triffid/artifact/f869d67457dabcb9852918d583e460bf87b1a5fe]the code[/url] if you promise not to judge me.

The image loading code from the top of the file to the first half of start_v1 does what it's supposed to. The big chunk of TODO code at the end is where the fabled intrinsics would go, if I had any of them in place.

Everything in between is a mess.

At one point it was able to add some numbers together and print out a result. I commented out most of that when it became clear I didn't understand exception handling. What's there now will pretty-print a function with nested try/catch/finally blocks. (Assuming you run it from the command line with d8; I haven't tried it in a web browser.)

It's a fun project and I do intend to pick it back up again soon. You could maybe repurpose the image loading code and the intrinsic functions (once implemented) for ifvm.js, but I doubt my method compiler is going to be very useful for you even once I get it working.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4235&start=0#p30615
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Workbench Woes
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2012-01-27 20:13:42

Wouldn't it be better to directly test for MP3/OGG support, rather than checking TADS_INCLUDE_NET? Like so (warning: code not tested):

[code]modify PlayAction
   execAction() {
      if (systemInfo(SysInfoMpeg3))
         """<sound src="mp3/science.mp3"/>""";
      else
         """<sound src="ogg/science.ogg"/>""";

      "Playing sound. ";
   }
;[/code]

Testing for the inclusion of WebUI seems a bit fragile, given the variations in file-type support between different browsers (and possibly desktop interpreters as well).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4209&start=0#p30616
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Signs of Affection
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-01-27 20:47:54

Thanks, Jim!

C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4243&start=10#p30617
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 Html playable online?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-01-27 20:48:51

Intrinsics are some kind of semantic primes that T3 uses to manage the virtual world?


C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4021&start=60#p30618
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making TADS Friendlier
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-01-27 21:00:45

You know, one of my considered projects -- that is a project I consider -- was to write some implementations for T3 objects:  rooms, passages, furniture, NPCs, etc.

They would just be working default objects, that you could drop into your code -- *pfft!* chair -- and then edit and tweak later.

So, when you examined the chair, it would say, e.g., "This is the default description of the default chair."

I found myself thinking this would be nice because the documentation sometimes gives complicated examples, to demo the functionality very thoroughly, but not the simple examples I needed to get the basic logic through my illogically thick skull.

For example, the Attachable class gave me a terrible time.  I finally got it working correctly, but I had to do such awful things to the code that I had Eric Eve weeping in sympathy for the ASCII file.  

The problem was that when he wrote the demo he imagined his audience could read his description and translate it into actionable code well enough that he only needed to demo the complicated stuff.  That might be true of the rest of his audience, but not of me!

--So, therefore I was thinking of filled-out templates.  Also a wiki for extensions.  I started to make a wiki once, but left it off to bum around the continent.

Conrad.

=added=  You know, if I had a magic wand of T3 wishing, I'd wish this:

That I could create NPCs by role-playing them.  Fire up the code and play the game from the point of view of one of the NPCs.  And then define what about the environment triggers the behavior, if the defaults don't quite work -- or have it be randomly selected or something.

The big advantage to this, in my opinion, would be with the networking capability we've just added.  (By "we" I mean "very smart people who aren't me, but who I'd be glad to stand next to in a photo shoot.")

See, if we had this, then we could have a bunch of people play in multiplayer mode, **as NPCs**, and record their behaviors to macros.  So we could build a mansion, throw in a dead body, and roleplay a murder mystery.  It'd be cool!

--I've even wished to do this with existing technology: Have Jim Aikin in one chat room as one NPC, S. John Ross in another, and so on.  I think it'd be a riot.  Send a couple PCs through for multiple plot threads.  Then chop up the chat transcripts and make a game out of them.

I really don't know anything about trainable chatbots -- certainly not how to use one as an NPC -- but it seemed like a cool idea.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4201&start=10#p30619
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: I need some pity. - TADS3.1
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-01-27 21:22:34

Well, ah -- look.

This might sound really stupid.

It sounds like you're learning T3 coding as a skill, right?  And skills just take time.

That is, learning any skill is a function strictly of the time you engage with it.  If we're reasonably careful about the word "engage," to preclude plateauing.

So, how well you understand and can write in TADS is strictly a function of how much time you spend doing it, right?

--Then why not accept that, for this project, your skill level is going to be more-or-less where it currently is (depending on how long the project takes), and work on a short project?  Not necessarily a *very* short project, but a project that's in line with your current level of skill?

Conrad.

----Oops.  Heh,

The assignment was to offer you pity.  I guess I failed that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4241&start=0#p30621
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: One big file tips?
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-27 22:26:16

There are some pretty nice outline editors in which you can combine code, notes, TODOs, etcetera, and then export out just the code to a single file. This would be a nice clean way to write a game. [url=http://webpages.charter.net/edreamleo/front.html]Leo[/url] is one example and org-mode in Emacs with org-babel is another.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4243&start=10#p30622
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 Html playable online?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-27 22:43:59

[quote="conradcook"]Intrinsics are some kind of semantic primes that T3 uses to manage the virtual world?
C.[/quote]
No, the world is managed entirely in T3 code. The VM does not know anything about it. Intrinsics are system code. They deal with I/O, pointer arithmetic for managing memory, converting between datatypes, stuff like that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4243&start=10#p30623
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 Html playable online?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-01-27 22:57:47

Good lord!  And that stuff isn't documented?

You're trying to build that by reverse engineering--

--Can't you ask for the code to the original VM or something?

You're bonkers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4243&start=10#p30624
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 Html playable online?
User: weiju / DateTime: 2012-01-27 23:29:19

[quote="bcressey"]The VM is really not that complicated, and it's well documented. I have an independent, partially complete implementation in JavaScript, and I'm hardly an expert on either VMs or JavaScript.

However, there are a lot of intrinsics, and you need most of them working to run anything beyond very simple programs. The documentation here is not as helpful; implementation involves a lot of time with the System Manual and the T3 headers.
[/quote]

You are of course correct, the VM itself is the easier part, the intrinsics are what I thought were quite challenging (and there are some subtleties about searching the object system that I have not completely figured out either), and there's just a huge amount of this stuff. In addition to what Ben mentioned, I also at times found it impossible to gain understanding of things without looking at the source code (which is available). I stop before I start ranting which would not be fair since I actually have not completed that work so far [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4235&start=0#p30625
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Workbench Woes
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-27 23:52:44

[quote="Emerald"]Testing for the inclusion of WebUI seems a bit fragile, given the variations in file-type support between different browsers (and possibly desktop interpreters as well).[/quote]
At the moment, this is moot, since the WebUI doesn't currently support audio output in any form.

It's a bit unsettling to realize that I may be the first person who has any concrete need for audio output in the WebUI. I'm working on a game for the Spring Thing and writing some short music cues for it, and I'd [i]like [/i]it to be playable in a browser, because I suspect players are starting to think of that as an emerging standard.

But if there's no audio support, I'll simply have to decline to provide a browser-playable version -- because, you know, the game should be evaluated based on what it is, not based on a subset of what it is. You can turn off the music in the game if you want to, but the interpreter shouldn't exclude it without giving you the option.

I'm not actually complaining, here -- I'm just saying, that's the situation. I'm comfortable with asking players to download QTads, because that's not hard to do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4235&start=0#p30626
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Workbench Woes
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-28 00:06:47

What about Ben's offer here, <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4154&start=10#p30522">viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4154&start=10#p30522</a>?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4246&start=0#p30627
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Enjoy a simpler ifMUD experience with this tintin++ script
User: Jeremy W. Sherman / DateTime: 2012-01-28 00:17:37

I have posted a [url=http://tintin.sourceforge.net/]tintin++[/url] script to simplify connecting to and interacting with [url=http://ifmud.ziz.org/]ifMUD[/url]: [url]https://gist.github.com/1692854[/url]. To use it, just [code]chmod u+x tt-ifmud[/code] and execute the file from a terminal.

Script features:
[list][*] Highlights dis/connects, exit directions, and start of item/player/exit list.[/*:m]
[*]Highlights AFK and new message announcements.[/*:m]
[*]Simplifies going AFK: just `afk msg` or `away msg`, and it will @away and zone you.[/*:m]
[*]Defines the standard i and inv abbreviations for inventory.[/*:m][/list:u]

Why tintin++? Process of elimination!
[list][*][url=http://tinyfugue.sourceforge.net/]tinyfugue's website[/url] had no useful information and was even more outdated than tintin++'s.[/*:m]
[*][url=http://www.heynow.com/Savitar/]Savitar[/url] was shareware, and it's looking long in the tooth these days.[/*:m]
[*]The [url=http://www.riverdark.net/atlantis/]Atlantis[/url] interface was awkward, and I had trouble wrangling it's flexible but underdocumented scripting interface to do what I want.[/*:m]
[*][url=http://tintin.sourceforge.net/]tintin++[/url]'s interface is simple enough that you can figure out how to do pretty much what you want by brute force.[/*:m][/list:u]

Getting tintin++:
[list][*]Mac OS X: [code]brew install tintin[/code] (Fink and MacPorts users, you're on your own.)[/*:m]
[*]Other platforms: Likewise on your own.[/*:m][/list:u]

I hope this saves some other ifMUD newbie some time. Those of you who haven't checked out ifMUD, [url=http://ifmud.port4000.com:4002/]check it out![/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4235&start=0#p30628
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Workbench Woes
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-28 00:37:19

[quote="George"]What about Ben's offer here, <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4154&start=10#p30522">viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4154&start=10#p30522</a>?[/quote]
Ben and I have exchanged a few messages about this. I know he's interested in putting together an audio implementation. I would be very happy to see that happen! But I have no idea how long it might take, or what other priorities he may have.

Also, I'm not competent to provide him much in the way of assistance, other than sending him a game that has audio in it, which I did.

Even when such an implementation becomes available, it's not at all clear to me how a game with audio could be tested prior to release. What the TADS 3.1 documentation says is, there are two ways to make a game playable online: Either you upload it to the IF Archive and create an IFDB page for it, or you set up your own server. In the former case, it's released -- it's not something that testers can try out privately, such as, oh, before a competition entry deadline, for example. And I'm certainly not competent to set up my own server.

When I create a WebUI version of a T3.1 game and double-click on the game file, it runs in the HTML TADS interpreter. It does [i]not [/i]run in Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, or IE. It should be obvious that an author would want to test a game in all of the leading browsers, on both Mac and Windows (and possibly Linux too) prior to releasing the game. Until we understand how the pre-release testing process can be handled, it would be premature to plan on doing a browser-playable version of a game that includes audio, even if the software for including audio becomes available. There are just too many unknowns.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4243&start=10#p30629
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS3 Html playable online?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-28 00:37:32

[quote="conradcook"]Good lord!  And that stuff isn't documented?

You're trying to build that by reverse engineering--

--Can't you ask for the code to the original VM or something?

You're bonkers.[/quote]
It's documented, and the source code is available to everyone; no need to ask for it, it can be downloaded at tads.org. However, having source code with good comments does not mean a re-implementation is easy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4235&start=0#p30630
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Workbench Woes
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-28 00:44:29

[quote="Jim Aikin"]When I create a WebUI version of a T3.1 game and double-click on the game file, it runs in the HTML TADS interpreter. It does [i]not [/i]run in Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, or IE.[/quote]
Actually, it runs in IE. What you see is an IE window with the HTML TADS GUI wrapped around it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4241&start=0#p30631
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: One big file tips?
User: Jeremy W. Sherman / DateTime: 2012-01-28 00:45:28

Come to think of it, I suppose you could use [url=http://inform7.com/sources/inweb/]inweb[/url]…

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4235&start=0#p30632
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Workbench Woes
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-28 00:55:15

[quote="Emerald"]Wouldn't it be better to directly test for MP3/OGG support, rather than checking TADS_INCLUDE_NET? Like so (warning: code not tested):[/quote]

The main drawback to that approach is that the .t3 file would have to include both MP3 and OGG, since either could be requested based on the result of that test at runtime.

The compiler directives make it one or the other: you pick the one that's most likely to work on the platform you're targeting, and set up the makefile accordingly. For web it's MP3, for desktop it's OGG.

I haven't tested it either, but I believe that systemInfo(SysInfoMpeg3) will query frob or t3run - the command line program executing the .t3 file - rather than the browser.

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Also, I'm not competent to provide him much in the way of assistance, other than sending him a game that has audio in it, which I did.[/quote]

If you could instead PM me the actual sound tags you use in your game, that would help me understand the critical features you need - which may or may not be some smaller subset of the overall functionality.

Online testing is just a matter of putting the file online somewhere - your web site, the public folder in your Dropbox, anywhere it can be downloaded.

For example, here is a link to the sample game I put together for Ron G. earlier:
<a class="postlink" href="http://gs.tads.io/?storyfile=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2759298/practice.t3">http://gs.tads.io/?storyfile=http://dl. ... ractice.t3</a>

The first part - <a class="postlink" href="http://gs.tads.io/?storyfile=">http://gs.tads.io/?storyfile=</a> - stays the same for all games everywhere. The second part is where you put in your own file's URL.

My file URL was <a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2759298/practice.t3">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2759298/practice.t3</a> - if you click it you will download the actual WebUI .t3 file, which you can play in the offline player.

Put the two parts together and it becomes a link to play online.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4217&start=20#p30633
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Adverbs
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2012-01-28 01:24:10

[quote="maga"]If you want to include adverbs as anything other than a gimmick, you need to furnish a good reason why extra verbs wouldn't do.[/quote]

"Like a gameplay mechanic involving Tom Swifties?" asked Ron gamely.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4235&start=10#p30634
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Workbench Woes
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-28 01:38:42

One thing to look out for is that the filename of the game needs to include the version. Because if you upload a new version of the game but don't rename it, the old one will be used because of the local cache of the server where the game runs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4235&start=10#p30635
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Workbench Woes
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-28 01:46:19

[quote="bcressey"]If you could instead PM me the actual sound tags you use in your game, that would help me understand the critical features you need - which may or may not be some smaller subset of the overall functionality.[/quote]

They're just standard HTML TADS tags:

[code]playAlbum {
        "<SOUND SRC=\"res/oggs/Trawler.ogg\" LAYER=FOREGROUND FADEIN=0.001>";
        "<SOUND SRC=\"res/oggs/Title.ogg\" LAYER=FOREGROUND FADEIN=0.001>";
        "<SOUND SRC=\"res/oggs/Naiad.ogg\" LAYER=FOREGROUND FADEIN=0.001>";
        "<SOUND SRC=\"res/oggs/Undersea.ogg\" LAYER=FOREGROUND FADEIN=0.001>";
        "<SOUND SRC=\"res/oggs/Bull.ogg\" LAYER=FOREGROUND FADEIN=0.001>";
        "<SOUND SRC=\"res/oggs/MInotaur.ogg\" LAYER=FOREGROUND FADEIN=0.001>";
    }[/code]

[quote="bcressey"]Online testing is just a matter of putting the file online somewhere - your web site, the public folder in your Dropbox, anywhere it can be downloaded.[/quote]
I wasn't aware of this ... and I don't recall seeing it mentioned anywhere in the documentation for web delivery. The docs specifically say, unless I'm misremembering, that either you upload it to the archive, or you set up a server.

If that works, that's terrific. I'll try it out. I mean, I have a website and all -- I don't need to use dropbox.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4235&start=10#p30636
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Workbench Woes
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-28 02:29:11

[quote="Jim Aikin"]I wasn't aware of this ... and I don't recall seeing it mentioned anywhere in the documentation for web delivery. The docs specifically say, unless I'm misremembering, that either you upload it to the archive, or you set up a server.[/quote]
This would be the "or you set up a server" case. Which you have; or rather paid for access to one that's already been set up and on which you uploaded your website.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4229&start=30#p30637
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anchorhead makes PC Gamer's list of 100 Best Games Ever
User: Hagbard Celine / DateTime: 2012-01-28 08:25:47

[quote="tove"][quote="Ghalev"]I've known folks who flat-out refuse to watch a black and white movie, for example, and (more extremely) who regard a full-color remake as obviously and automatically superior[/quote]

I know some of those: I've had an acquaintance refuse to watch [i]North By Northwest[/i] because he was convinced it was going to be boring. ."[/quote]
it is excruciatingly boring! I really don't like Hitchcock movies in general (most overrated director of all time?), but even he has made way better stuff

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4148&start=0#p30638
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good beginner games
User: Hagbard Celine / DateTime: 2012-01-28 08:30:05

not fun, not interesting in the slightest (talking to a statue? how about talking to a PERSON [emote]:roll:[/emote] ), not even a game (more like a tech demo)

I mean what impact do you think it would have on a first-time player?  [emote]:roll:[/emote]  I really don't need to write an essay about why Galatea is not newbie introduction material.

the most important reason though is that it won awards.

I've nothing against Emily Short though, she has put out way better games

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4244&start=0#p30639
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Giving light to the actor. - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-28 10:39:27

Thanks once again for all of the help that all of you have given me in learning how to use TADS. I read a short time ago that TADS is a piece of 'power' software. I feel that is perfectly true. But, I am learning it and I'm beginning to understand what pieces of its code do what task. At any rate, There's no intention on my part to give it up.

All of you will be hearing from me again.

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4201&start=10#p30640
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: I need some pity. - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-28 10:56:40

Conrad;

I don't think that you've failed in your advice. I hate to sound like I don't agree with all of you. But its all just a matter of personal philosophy. I have been involved in computer hardware and the writing of computer software since about 1964; on a professional level. Among other things, I have written two one-hundred room games in both AGT and in MS Windows Basic. I'm purposely writing a long IF story so that I can shift my attention to different parts of it. My biggest problem is learning where in the TADS manuals I can find the application  pieces that I'm seeking at any one time. It can be frustrating but I'm getting there.

Thanks for your attention,

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4148&start=10#p30641
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good beginner games
User: Merlin Fisher / DateTime: 2012-01-28 11:06:09

[quote="Hagbard Celine"]not fun, not interesting in the slightest (talking to a statue? how about talking to a PERSON [emote]:roll:[/emote] ), not even a game (more like a tech demo)
[/quote]

The whole point of the story is that Galatea does not have to be just a statue, she can be a person if you choose to treat her that way.  Insofar as an IF game ever presents a "person" for interaction, Galatea is far more human than most.  The detail about her being a living statue in a museum is window dressing, and very clever if you ask me; it adds a more overt layer to this whole "what is art and what is human" issue the game addresses.  You can choose to treat her as a piece of artwork (every other human in the game does) ... or you can treat her like a person, which gives much more interesting results.  Kinda like real life, actually.

It's a one-room game and it's mostly conversation based, but the game is interactive, and it does have a backstory, characters, and a plot with multiple endings.  It's even got gently timed puzzles, if you will.  You can also do more than just talk to Galatea (read the game instructions).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4148&start=10#p30642
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good beginner games
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-28 12:19:18

[quote="Hagbard Celine"]I mean what impact do you think it would have on a first-time player? [/quote]

The impact it had on me was to make me say, "Holy shit, IF is a lot more than wandering around in caves looking for treasures, solving obscure puzzles, and getting eaten by grues. I need to find more of this stuff."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4235&start=10#p30643
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Workbench Woes
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-28 12:22:18

[quote="bcressey"]Online testing is just a matter of putting the file online somewhere - your web site, the public folder in your Dropbox, anywhere it can be downloaded.

For example, here is a link to the sample game I put together for Ron G. earlier:
<a class="postlink" href="http://gs.tads.io/?storyfile=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2759298/practice.t3">http://gs.tads.io/?storyfile=http://dl. ... ractice.t3</a>

The first part - <a class="postlink" href="http://gs.tads.io/?storyfile=">http://gs.tads.io/?storyfile=</a> - stays the same for all games everywhere. The second part is where you put in your own file's URL.

My file URL was <a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2759298/practice.t3">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2759298/practice.t3</a> - if you click it you will download the actual WebUI .t3 file, which you can play in the offline player.

Put the two parts together and it becomes a link to play online.[/quote]
Not working yet. I compiled the Web version using the WebOutput makefile you provided. It compiled. I uploaded it to dropbox. Then I added the prefix shown above to the dropbox link. I get "The TADS interpreter can't run this game, because the story file path is invalid."

I will test further.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4235&start=10#p30644
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Workbench Woes
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-28 12:25:10

Weirdness. Both firefox and chrome delete the "http://" from the complete URL I enter, and then the Show Details on the error complains that it's not a valid URL because there's not <a class="postlink" href="http://">http://</a>. What seems to be happening is that the TADS server swaps in its own preferred URL, and is leaving off the <a class="postlink" href="http://">http://</a>. I could be wrong about that, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4235&start=10#p30645
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Workbench Woes
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-28 12:49:16

[quote="RealNC"]One thing to look out for is that the filename of the game needs to include the version. Because if you upload a new version of the game but don't rename it, the old one will be used because of the local cache of the server where the game runs.[/quote]

The game server will check the remote file's modified date and length before using its cached copy. So there's no need to rename it to avoid the cache.

It might still be a good idea, to make sure everyone is testing the same version, and to deal with the usual headache of incompatible save files across versions.

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Weirdness. Both firefox and chrome delete the "http://" from the complete URL I enter, and then the Show Details on the error complains that it's not a valid URL because there's not <a class="postlink" href="http://">http://</a>. What seems to be happening is that the TADS server swaps in its own preferred URL, and is leaving off the <a class="postlink" href="http://">http://</a>. I could be wrong about that, though.[/quote]

No, the TADS server accepts the storyfile= parameter exactly as sent.

It may help to construct the URL in notepad and then paste it into the Firefox / Chrome address bar.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4237&start=0#p30646
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Parchment / quixe + JavaScript?
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2012-01-28 12:49:57

[url=http://change.textories.com/]maybe make some change[/url] did this, via a custom hack in Parchment that danii did for me back in mid 2010 I think (yeah, looks like it's using "build 2010-06-22" of Parchment). But the technique stopped working in newer versions of Parchment. The relevant bit of code to make this work on the Inform 7 side, at least, is:

[code]
Include (-

Constant HDR_SPECREVISION  $32;

[ Gestalt zid gid arg val;

	! Check a gestalt value
	#Ifdef TARGET_ZCODE;
		@"EXT:30S" zid arg -> val;
	#Ifnot; ! TARGET_GLULX
		@gestalt gid arg val;
	#Endif; ! TARGET_

	return val;
];

[ Test val ;

	#Ifdef TARGET_ZCODE;
		! Check we're in a 1.2 version interpreter
		val = HDR_SPECREVISION-->0;
		if (val < $0102) rfalse;
	#Endif; ! TARGET_ZCODE

	! Checking for @parchment support
	if ( Gestalt($20, $1110, 0) == 0 ) rfalse;

	! Check for raw eval() support
	if ( Gestalt($20, $1110, 1) == 0 ) rfalse;
	rtrue;
];

[ Parchment id arg val;

	! @parchment wrapper
	#Ifdef TARGET_ZCODE;
		@"EXT:31S" id arg -> val;
	#Ifnot; ! TARGET_GLULX
		@"S3:4368" id arg val;
	#Endif; ! TARGET_
	
	return val;
];
-).

To decide whether javascript io enabled: (- (Test()) -).

To js (javascript code - some indexed text):
	if javascript io enabled:
		open Parchment channel;
		say "[javascript code][run paragraph on]";
		close Parchment channel;
	otherwise if standalone mode is false:
		say "***[javascript code]***[line break]".
	
To open Parchment channel: (- Parchment(1, 1); -).
To close Parchment channel: (- Parchment(1, 0); -).[/code]

This let me just then write something like:

[code]js "activateOverlay('[current narrator]');";[/code]

...in an Inform phrase to interface with the Javascript layer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4247&start=0#p30647
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: odd bug with Eric Eve's Conversation Framework v.9?
User: yhlee / DateTime: 2012-01-28 12:55:26

The maddening thing is that I'm up-to-date on the I7 built for Mac and I could have sworn I *didn't* have this error with v.7 of Conversation Framework.

Basically, if I create an NPC

[code]Jenna is a person.  Jenna is in the Command Lounge.[/code]

and *comment out* Conversation Framework, I get normal behavior:

[quote]>hello, jenna
You seem to want to talk to someone, but I can't see whom.

>ask jenna about rose
There is no reply.
[/quote]

However, if I comment the extension back in and recompile making no other changes, I get this behavior:

[quote]
>hello, jenna
(addressing Aresa)
You say hello to Aresa.

That's not a verb I recognize.

>hello, aresa
You are already talking to Aresa.

That's not a verb I recognize.
[/quote]

(Aresa is a crowd NPC using Mike Ciul's extension and I'm also baffled as to why it's redirecting to the crowd-named-Aresa when Jenna's right there, but one thing at a time.  I created Jenna as a regular NPC in case the Crowds and Conversation Framework extensions weren't playing nicely together, but that doesn't seem to be the major issue.)  I haven't put in additional code to handle what's even said in the conversation because I'm concerned about the "That's not a verb I recognize" message that's coming along for the ride.  It only appears when I enable Conversation Framework and I haven't modded it--is there some obvious debugging thing that I am overlooking?

Advice much appreciated, and sorry for being so inept.  :-/

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4234&start=0#p30648
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Body Parts
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2012-01-28 12:58:59

Yeah, that's my fault. If you upgrade to the latest version of Player Experience Upgrade (or Smarter Parser, if that's the only one you're using) the stuff regarding body parts is moved into its own new (and optional) extension called Commonly Unimplemented. (In general also, the documentation for the newest version of these extensions explains how to easily override any of its behaviors that aren't appropriate for a specific game.)

Now, to make this actually work, you'll need a way of defining what body parts people have and how they work. Chapter 4.14 of the docs (Assemblies and Body Parts) talks a bit about this.

Once you'd made body parts, you'd need rules to recognize this. The ACTIONS debug verb can tell you that the command "put [something] in [something]" is mapped to the "inserting it into" action, so you'd want a series of rules like this:

[code]Instead of inserting the player's hand into something: say "Are you *sure* you want to do that?"[/code]

It gets trickier if you want the player to have two hands, or if there are multiple characters who might have to put their hand into things, etc, but that's the basic idea.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4235&start=10#p30649
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Workbench Woes
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-28 13:10:28

[quote="bcressey"]No, the TADS server accepts the storyfile= parameter exactly as sent.

It may help to construct the URL in notepad and then paste it into the Firefox / Chrome address bar.[/quote]
Thanks. That does the trick -- it's working now -- hooray!!!!!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4148&start=10#p30650
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good beginner games
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-01-28 13:16:35

[quote="Hagbard Celine"](talking to a statue? how about talking to a PERSON [emote]:roll:[/emote] ),[/quote]
This is a point so inane that I really don't know where to begin with it. Love the eyeroll, though! Adds depth and authenticity to your lack of an argument!
[quote="Hagbard Celine"] not even a game (more like a tech demo)[/quote]
These are not mutually exclusive categories.
[quote="Hagbard Celine"]I mean what impact do you think it would have on a first-time player?  [emote]:roll:[/emote]  I really don't need to write an essay about why Galatea is not newbie introduction material.[/quote]
You really don't, because you'd be wrong. I've heard more enthusiastic first-time player stories about Galatea than about any other IF game. (Lost Pig might narrowly beat it out; I dunno.) Just yesterday I met a guy who unexpectedly turned out to be a newish IF player, and who had introduced non-gamers to Galatea with success. You may not particularly like it, but that doesn't make you representative of new players in general.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4235&start=10#p30651
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Workbench Woes
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-28 13:29:36

[quote="Jim Aikin"]
They're just standard HTML TADS tags:

[code]playAlbum {
        "<SOUND SRC=\"res/oggs/Trawler.ogg\" LAYER=FOREGROUND FADEIN=0.001>";
        "<SOUND SRC=\"res/oggs/Title.ogg\" LAYER=FOREGROUND FADEIN=0.001>";
        "<SOUND SRC=\"res/oggs/Naiad.ogg\" LAYER=FOREGROUND FADEIN=0.001>";
        "<SOUND SRC=\"res/oggs/Undersea.ogg\" LAYER=FOREGROUND FADEIN=0.001>";
        "<SOUND SRC=\"res/oggs/Bull.ogg\" LAYER=FOREGROUND FADEIN=0.001>";
        "<SOUND SRC=\"res/oggs/MInotaur.ogg\" LAYER=FOREGROUND FADEIN=0.001>";
    }
[/code]
[/quote]

OK, that's easy enough. I'll have it working soon - if not this weekend then within the next week.

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Thanks. That does the trick -- it's working now -- hooray!!!!![/quote]

Excellent! [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4201&start=10#p30652
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: I need some pity. - TADS3.1
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-01-28 13:41:50

Oh -- I didn't realize.  You poor guy.

C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4200&start=10#p30653
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Megaupload taken offline
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-28 14:11:56

[quote="Laroquod"]It's not that the differences you point out earlier are incorrect: it's that by themselves they present an ahistorical view that is prone to overlooking the fact that all of these anti-piracy 'features' were late additions to YouTube that came about [i]as the result[/i] of the civil legal system -- a system that is now being denied to up-and-comers like Megaupload in favour of the criminal justice system.[/quote]

To some extent I think this is the way the game is always played. Two corporations sue each other as part of an elaborate courtship dance to see if they can work together. The civil suit process is just a way to get the lawyers in the same room talking to each other. The end goal is always a settlement rather than a judgment.

I don't have any direct knowledge about MegaUpload and its negotiating posture. It's tempting to speculate that they told the content companies where to shove it, given that they were a foreign company operating on foreign soil. That would explain the criminal justice approach, however wrong-headed and absurd.

I expect that other up-and-comers would find media lawyers more than willing to negotiate. The weaker and less established the company, the better, since then the terms would be highly one-sided, perhaps cripplingly so.

The greater danger is that the emerging content titans - Google, Apple, Amazon - decide that they've had enough of scrappy upstart competitors, and collude with the traditional publishers to finally implement that framework of onerous controls they've always wanted. Then they get Congress to elevate their handshake deal to the status of federal law, and the market is well and truly closed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4217&start=20#p30654
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Adverbs
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-28 15:28:02

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]"Like a gameplay mechanic involving Tom Swifties?" asked Ron gamely.[/quote]
"Ron, you are about to be eaten by a grue," Jim responded darkly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4240&start=0#p30655
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Post Comp Release (ver. 3.0) of Andromeda Awakening.
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-01-28 15:37:45

It is on air!

[url]http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ajzw6jutat2aeqa[/url]

Have fun!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4217&start=20#p30656
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Adverbs
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-28 15:48:43

Or, "The light has gone out! We will be eaten!" Matt exclaimed gruesomely.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=80#p30657
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-28 16:13:55

[quote="Basti50"]Better late than never:

[quote]What is the reason for the existence of the m_figure class?[/quote]It's kinda of a compromise. A m_figure holds quiet a lot of data and I didn't wanted to add all those to every object in the game...Using a dummy instance of an attachable component seemed like a sensible solution and it still does.[/quote]
Please do look at standardizing the interface, then. Currently, it is very annoying as a user to have to pass the m_figure into some phrases while passing the thing itself into others--I went through a bunch more of this with AI code last night, and believe me I'm not raising the annoyance factor as a theoretical issue! The move and spawn and other phrases all have you passing in the thing, but the AI and maybe a few other phrases only accept the m-figure.

[rant]To explain my thinking about the splitting of m-figures from their things: The m_figure + thing design favors the author who wants to use R&D for one tiny thing (just one room, for example, or to implement a tic-tac-toe board) over the user who actually want to dimension all of his rooms. The latter user not only has to use more resources than he needs (two things for every one he actually wants), he also has to set up and manage twice the number of objects. Yet it's the latter user that is more likely to actually persevere to learn the complexities of R&D, while the former will probably decide that they don't need that whatsit anyhow and move on. Maybe this isn't a big deal in the end, but I feel like the current design is punishing the wrong kind of user.[/rant]

[quote][quote]Analogously, is there a reason why facing directions are their own kind of value?[/quote]This should become obsolete, once it becomes easier to define new directions, as it should be the case with the new release, if I caught that correctly.[/quote]Sorry, I must not have expressed myself well before. My question was, Why there is a need for new directions at all? The new facing directions are really just the standard 8 directions with different names (e.g., face_n vs north). But I can't think of any reason why I would need facing_dirs when I already have the directions...? It seems like just another thing to have to convert. In brief, why not just use "north" instead of "face_n" when doing facing? Is there something I'm not considering?

[quote][quote]I'm thinking about trying to add an illumination map[/quote]I would probably use a technique from one of R&D's older instances where, for every row, the map would store number of borders and other tilecells. Let's say you got a row with three border cells, five floor cells, two border cells and then again one floor cell. That would translate into the list {3, 8, 10, 11}. You can save yourself some progressing time with that.[/quote] That might be useful (assuming it's automatic and totally hidden from the user). Unlike a null tile, though, it would actually slow things down if you had a complex map with a lot of features (e.g., a textured or tessellated floor, wall features, etc.)

[quote]For lighting, however, there is probably no way around your suggestion. Best place to include this code would probably be an independent phrase during the map generating activity but I would need some time to think about that.[/quote]Well, I'm thinking of dynamic lighting--e.g., the light moves when the actor moves--so I'm not sure that it could actually be [i]implemented[/i] during the map generating activity. The feature could potentially be limited to dynamic objects so it wouldn't need any map generation code, or there could be just a couple of phrases for use in map generation that allowed for rectangles of light or dark to be painted into the light map itself.

[quote][quote]Is import-from-a-file fully functional now?[/quote]If you mean that you now can add walls and borders then yes. I'm not entirely happy with the choice of letters (with '+' representing walls and '#' for borders) but it's a start.[/quote]So you're hard-coding the symbols? Wouldn't it be easier on you and more flexible for users if it used a translation table? E.g., the map below could use this table (spoilered):

[spoiler][code]Table of Map Conversions
symbol	tile
"+"	Block Corner
"-"	Wall Front
"*"	Wall Torch
"|"	Vertical Wall
"."	Floor
"&"	Lit Floor
[/code][/spoiler]

[code]+--*---*--+
|.&&&.&&&.|
|.........|[/code]
That lets the user make all the choices, and is a lot easier to program! (You could put symbols for the default floor, border, wall tiles in the initial table, and the user would be free to use those, or he could overwrite the table and use his own.)

[b]AI Stuff[/b]
[spoiler]The user currently has to do lots of list manipulation to use the AI. For example, to use the simple step phrase to have one character approach an object or another figure, you have to 1) Create a new list; 2) Fill that list with the coordinates of the target object, 3) Pass that list into the phrase. It would be faster and easier for the user to be able to pass in bare numbers, or just pass in a mappable thing for the target as well as the thing doing the stepping, e.g.:

[code]To decide which list of numbers is simple step for (f - a mappable thing) towards (xx - a number) and (yy - a number) and (zz - a number):
To decide which list of numbers is simple step for (f - a mappable thing) towards (target - a number):[/code]

It would also be nice to have a phrase that would allow any actor to face any other regardless of how far away. I wrote some code to do that (it could be generalized for more purposes as well):

[code]To decide which face_dir is the orientation of (agent - something) to (target - something):
	let dx be x-coord of target - x-coord of agent;
	let dy be y-coord of target - y-coord of agent;
	if dx is 0 and dy is 0, 
	let angle be a real number;
	if dx > 0:
		if dy > 0:
			let angle be the arctangent of ( dy // (dx as a fixed point number ) );
		if dy < 0:
			let angle be 0.0000 -- arctangent of ( (0.0000 -- dy) // dx as a fixed point number) ;
	if dx < 0:
		if dy > 0:
			let angle be 180.0000 -- arctangent of ( (0.0000 -- dy) // dx as a fixed point number) ;
		if dy is 0:
			let angle be 180.0000;
		if dy < 0:
			let angle be the ( arctangent of ( dy // (dx as a fixed point number ) ) ) -- 180.0000;
	if dx is 0:
		if dy > 0:
			let angle be 90.0000;
		else if dy < 0:
			let angle be -90.0000;
	decide on the face-direction corresponding to (angle as an integer).
	
To decide which face_dir is the face-direction corresponding to (theta - a number):
	let theta be theta rounded to the nearest 45;
	if theta is:
		-- 0: decide on face_e;
		-- 45: decide on face_se;
		-- 90: decide on face_s;
		-- 135: decide on face_sw;
		-- 180: decide on face_w;
		-- 270: decide on face_n;
		-- -90: decide on face_n;
		-- -45: decide on face_ne;
		-- -135: decide on face_nw;
		-- -180: decide on face_w.
	
[Inform's built-in rounding is broken for negative numbers, we use this instead]
To decide which number is (X - number) rounded to the nearest (Y - number):
	(- (RoundOffValue({X},{Y})) -).
	
Include (- 
	[ RoundOffValue t1 t2;
		if (t1 >= 0) return ((t1+t2/2)/t2)*t2;
		t1 = 0 - t1;
		return -((t1+t2/2)/t2)*t2;
	]; -) after "Definitions.i6t".[/code][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4148&start=10#p30658
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good beginner games
User: Hagbard Celine / DateTime: 2012-01-28 17:06:21

[quote="matt w"][quote="Hagbard Celine"]I mean what impact do you think it would have on a first-time player? [/quote]

The impact it had on me was to make me say, "Holy shit, IF is a lot more than wandering around in caves looking for treasures, solving obscure puzzles, and getting eaten by grues. I need to find more of this stuff."[/quote]

photopia had that very impact on me.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4148&start=10#p30659
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good beginner games
User: Hagbard Celine / DateTime: 2012-01-28 17:07:46

[quote="maga"][quote="Hagbard Celine"](talking to a statue? how about talking to a PERSON [emote]:roll:[/emote] ),[/quote]
This is a point so inane that I really don't know where to begin with it. Love the eyeroll, though! Adds depth and authenticity to your lack of an argument!
[quote="Hagbard Celine"] not even a game (more like a tech demo)[/quote]
These are not mutually exclusive categories.
[quote="Hagbard Celine"]I mean what impact do you think it would have on a first-time player?  [emote]:roll:[/emote]  I really don't need to write an essay about why Galatea is not newbie introduction material.[/quote]
You really don't, because you'd be wrong. I've heard more enthusiastic first-time player stories about Galatea than about any other IF game. (Lost Pig might narrowly beat it out; I dunno.) Just yesterday I met a guy who unexpectedly turned out to be a newish IF player, and who had introduced non-gamers to Galatea with success. You may not particularly like it, but that doesn't make you representative of new players in general.[/quote]

yeah I really don't care about your no-argument nonsense, go talk to statues (or walls) all you want

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4184&start=0#p30660
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: nominations open
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2012-01-28 17:10:10

I doubt we'll see them all in the running, but since they don't seem to get played as often as some other formats, I thought I'd go through the categories and suggest one possible ADRIFT entry for each.  These don't reflect how I will vote and I don't expect anyone will vote on all of these.

[b]Best Game:[/b] [i]Cursed[/i].  This game was a labour of love, and its writing and craft clearly show that.  I think it deserves this nomination.
[b]Best Writing:[/b] [i]Cursed[/i].  See above.
[b]Best Story:[/b] [i]Back Home[/i].  It's unfortunate some implementation issues might have prevented less adventurous players from experiencing this creepy piece.
[b]Best Setting:[/b] [i]The Crooked Estate[/i] (Am I allowed to suggest that?  Does that disqualify me?  My personal vote for Best Setting is going to Marius Mueller's "Blue"...).  Maybe not a great game, but the point was more to provide  a place to explore and be vaguely creeped out by.  I like to think it succeeded in that, but maybe I'm deluded.
[b]Best Puzzles:[/b] [i]Cursed[/i].  Each puzzle had a different possible solution based on the player's form.
[b]Best NPCs:[/b] [i]Return to Camelot[/i].  The NPCs in this game may not have been the most deeply implemented, but they reflected the feel of the game and gave it a certain charm.  The author also used a different technique for greeting NPCs which eased interaction.
[b]Best Individual Puzzle:[/b] "Putting out the fire" in [i]How Suzy Got Her Powers[/i].  Deceptively simple, this puzzle has multiple solutions and is implemented so smoothly (even working in a non-standard verb naturally) that one might not even think of it as a puzzle.  Reflective of good modern game design.
[b]Best Individual NPC:[/b] "Sam" from [i]In Memory[/i].  An NPC almost entirely defined by user input and interpretation.
[b]Best PC:[/b] [i]Mangiasaur[/i].  It's hard to argue that it isn't incredible to play a game where you play as a dinosaur from hatchling all the way to becoming deified, fire-breathing terror.  Take that, human PCs!
[b]Best Implementation:[/b] [i]In Memory[/i].  Considering the way this game was made, both its breadth and depth of implementation are impressive.
[b]Best Use of Innovation:[/b] [i]Seek and Enjoy[/i].  The author hid puzzle clues and messages in the game's audio using backmasking techniques.
[b]Best Technological Development:[/b] ADRIFT Web Runner.  ADRIFT is now playable in-browser!  Huzzah!
[b]Best Supplemental Materials:[/b] ??? (Did any ADRIFT games have supplemental materials/feelies this year?)

Well, that's it for my list of suggestions and thoughts for ADRIFT games at this year's XYZZY Awards.  It'd be nice to see some ADRIFT games up in the running, even if they don't win.  Thoughts, questions, comments?

Hopefully you'll get out there and vote, no matter what you vote for.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4247&start=0#p30661
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: odd bug with Eric Eve's Conversation Framework v.9?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-01-28 17:37:02

Inform parses the command HELLO, JENNA as two distinct commands, i.e. as HELLO and JENNA, just as if you had typed HELLO THEN JENNA.
So first it reacts to the command HELLO by choosing a random interlocutor among the people present.
Then it tries to parse the command JENNA, which is a verb the game doesn't know.
JENNA, HELLO, on the other hand, will do what you want.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3246&start=0#p30663
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: ADRIFT WebRunner
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2012-01-28 17:46:22

[url=http://play.adrift.org.uk]WebRunner[/url] now displays a map showing the current player's location. This can be collapsed if desired.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4247&start=0#p30664
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: odd bug with Eric Eve's Conversation Framework v.9?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-28 19:06:42

[quote="Felix"]Inform parses the command HELLO, JENNA as two distinct commands, i.e. as HELLO and JENNA, just as if you had typed HELLO THEN JENNA.
So first it reacts to the command HELLO by choosing a random interlocutor among the people present.
Then it tries to parse the command JENNA, which is a verb the game doesn't know.
JENNA, HELLO, on the other hand, will do what you want.[/quote]
There's a way to fix this, IIRC, using "before parsing the player's command" or something like that. Convert the command to indexed text, juggle it around, and hand it back to the parser.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4148&start=10#p30665
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good beginner games
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-28 19:18:08

[quote="Hagbard Celine"][quote="maga"][quote="Hagbard Celine"](talking to a statue? how about talking to a PERSON [emote]:roll:[/emote] ),[/quote]
This is a point so inane that I really don't know where to begin with it. Love the eyeroll, though! Adds depth and authenticity to your lack of an argument!
[quote="Hagbard Celine"] not even a game (more like a tech demo)[/quote]
These are not mutually exclusive categories.
[quote="Hagbard Celine"]I mean what impact do you think it would have on a first-time player?  [emote]:roll:[/emote]  I really don't need to write an essay about why Galatea is not newbie introduction material.[/quote]
You really don't, because you'd be wrong. I've heard more enthusiastic first-time player stories about Galatea than about any other IF game. (Lost Pig might narrowly beat it out; I dunno.) Just yesterday I met a guy who unexpectedly turned out to be a newish IF player, and who had introduced non-gamers to Galatea with success. You may not particularly like it, but that doesn't make you representative of new players in general.[/quote]

yeah I really don't care about your no-argument nonsense, go talk to statues (or walls) all you want[/quote]

I think he already is.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=80#p30666
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-28 20:26:40

[quote="ektemple"]Please do look at standardizing the interface, then.[/quote]Will do. I'm trying to cover up m_figures as good as possible. AI is still not past the conceptual phase though so I didn't exactly put much effort in there (and probably won't until I'm really, really sure that I'm satisfied with what I see). Anyway, it should, hopefully, change later. 

As for your rant, I must admit that I'm not sold on that one. A clear idea what you want to be displayable seems like a more healthy working practice than just assume that everything is, if only for the sake of memory preservation. Where I do see a potential problem is if you want to include several same looking items like, say, healing potions. Can't think of an easy way to implement that without doing the map figure assignment per hand for every object. Kind of map figure mayhaps? Translation: Sue me [emote]:P[/emote][quote]Sorry, I must not have expressed myself well before. My question was, Why there is a need for new directions at all?[/quote]Ah, ok. That's because of the 3-dimensional space which would allow other directions like north-up/down etc. Just haven't included those yet.[quote]That might be useful (assuming it's automatic and totally hidden from the user). Unlike a null tile, though, it would actually slow things down if you had a complex map with a lot of features (e.g., a textured or tessellated floor, wall features, etc.)[/quote]It would? I was more thinking splitting up between border tiles/every other tile and do some simple arithmetic. Seems easier than creating an entire new layer.[quote][quote]For lighting, however, there is probably no way around your suggestion. Best place to include this code would probably be an independent phrase during the map generating activity but I would need some time to think about that.[/quote]Well, I'm thinking of dynamic lighting[/quote]Sorry, the last part was aimed at your last question which was, I think, more about marking map sections for-print and not-for-print. Lightning would be an entirely different beast and would require a run-time solution, I agree.[quote]Wouldn't it be easier on you and more flexible for users if it used a translation table [for file-input]?[/quote]That's a good idea. Will add that.[quote][b]AI Stuff[/b][/quote]Some worthy thoughts. I will ponder a bit (and again kudos for the code snippets, if I haven't stressed it out enough. Those always help).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4241&start=0#p30667
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: One big file tips?
User: frotz / DateTime: 2012-01-28 22:42:01

One Big File is just asking for trouble.  The way I write, each room has its own file.  There's a file for objects.  One for the verbs.  One for the verbsubs.  Finally, one file ties it all together.  I could turn it into One Big File by way of a Perl script to act like a preprocessor, but still...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4241&start=0#p30668
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: One big file tips?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-28 23:10:43

I don't use it for anything but I7, but I've gotten pretty used to it. As I said, though, I don't use the Contents. I just do a text search for whatever I'm working on.

It would be nice if the IDE were able to collapse sections.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4247&start=0#p30669
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: odd bug with Eric Eve's Conversation Framework v.9?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-28 23:29:07

ooh, I get so steamed about that comma. Thanks to Ron Newcomb's Parser in I7, though, I might actually be able to do something about it one day...

By the way, I'm working on a conversation extension too. As of last week, I think it's finally started to settle down, so hopefully there won't be any other big changes to it. The documentation's still a big jumble, though.

<a class="postlink" href="http://eyeballsun.org/i/Speech%20Motivations.i7x">http://eyeballsun.org/i/Speech%20Motivations.i7x</a>

Okay, I can't promise there won't be any other big changes. I've been thinking about making the "speaking out loud" activity more like the "writing a paragraph about activity," such that if none of your rules print anything, a "refusal to respond" will be triggered.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4249&start=0#p30670
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Glk stylesheets: the Plan
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-29 00:18:50

Two days before the end of the month, even.

I have posted three documents:

* [url=https://github.com/erkyrath/glk-dev/wiki/Glk-Stylesheets%3A-Overview]Overview[/url]
* [url=https://github.com/erkyrath/glk-dev/wiki/Glk-Stylesheets%3A-All-the-Details]All the Details[/url]
* [url=https://github.com/erkyrath/glk-dev/wiki/Glk-Stylesheets%3A-The-Short-Form]The Short Form[/url] (for people who don't want to read about CSS or HTML or anything, they just want it to work)

There is a whole lot of work involved in this plan, so you're not going to start using it next week or anything. But I am reasonably convinced that this is the roadmap. It's consistent with the last discussion I had with Graham on the subject.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4249&start=0#p30671
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk stylesheets: the Plan
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-01-29 01:41:46

Comments:

[list]
[*]If glk_end_style_name()/glk_end_style() generate run time errors then will they get used? It would be far too risky for the library to call them, because the user may have forgotten to end a style they added to the stack. I'd like to suggest the following API functions instead:[list][*]glk_inspect_style(): returns the style at the top of the stack[/*:m][*]glk_end_style_name()/glk_end_style(): these functions would instead pop styles from the stack until the given style is popped. The whole stack could be emptied. No errors would be generated[/*:m][/list:u][/*:m]
[*]Part of me wants to say that the generated HTML shouldn't have para_ and span_ class names as style sheets could have div.style and span.style instead. (As well as a generic .style.) But then that would lock implementations into using particular elements, which I don't like the idea of (I'd like to use <tt>s I think.)[/*:m]
[*]Can you explain some of the use cases for HTML windows/frames?[/*:m]
[*]Instead of html windows loading resources from the blorb, can they just use inline styles and scripts, and use data: for images?[/*:m]
[*]Instead of GlkEntry/GlkEvent, what about just using postMessage()? Support is good: <a class="postlink" href="http://caniuse.com/x-doc-messaging">http://caniuse.com/x-doc-messaging</a>[/*:m][/list:u]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4228&start=0#p30672
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New Windows build of 6G60
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2012-01-29 01:52:35

[quote="DavidK"]* The Glulx interpreters in the game tab now support the additions to Glk in versions 0.7.1, 0.7.2 and 0.7.3 of the Glk specification.[/quote]

A (partial) translation: the extensions [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Ron%20Newcomb/Rewrite%20the%20Command%20Line/doc_0.html]Rewrite The Command Line[/url] and [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Ron%20Newcomb/Real%20Date%20and%20Time/doc_0.html]The Real Date and Time[/url] now work!

I think there's improvements to Glimmr as well. 

Thank you David!!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4247&start=0#p30673
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: odd bug with Eric Eve's Conversation Framework v.9?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-01-29 02:29:45

[quote="Jim Aikin"]There's a way to fix this, IIRC, using "before parsing the player's command" or something like that. Convert the command to indexed text, juggle it around, and hand it back to the parser.[/quote]
That's true, but it's straightforward only if you handle individual cases. The general solution is a bit more complex, mostly because disambiguation makes things considerably more messy. A bit of self-promotion: the [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Juhana%20Leinonen/Reversed%20Persuasion%20Correction/index.html]Reversed Persuasion Correction[/url] extension turns all COMMAND, NPC commands around automatically.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4249&start=0#p30674
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk stylesheets: the Plan
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2012-01-29 03:26:31

Neat-o.

[quote](I am not sure whether games will want their style nesting to be strictly checked or not. The library can ensure correct nesting either way, so I'm willing to offer both options.)[/quote]
I think that's wise, for Glk not to check strict usage and let a higher level do, or not do, it.  But if it does take this hands-off approach, is printing a run-time message to the player appropriate for confused usage?  Maybe Glk should just tell the calling library instead, and let the library decide whether to bother the player.

What does Glk do in cases of the style stack overflowing or underflowing?  I think underflow could be silently ignored, but overflow...?

[quote][code]void glk_begin_style_name(glui32 num, char *name)
void glk_begin_style(glui32 num)[/code]
Add Num/"Name" to the current style stack. If the stack is empty, this also sets the current paragraph style.[/quote]
This confuses me.  If I don't use paragraph styles, but just stick a span style mid-paragraph, the above wording implies than when I end the span, the rest of the paragraph will still have that style -- it won't turn off until the end of the paragraph even though I told it to end at the end of the span.  Do I misunderstand something here?

[quote][code]Chapter is a text style based on Header.[/code][/quote]
Other parts of I7 use the form "a number based rulebook", so I'd be somewhat surprised by anything but "header based text style".  A minor point, I know.  (And please let us not capitalize non-proper names mid-sentence! "header", not "Header"!  It's a pet peeve of mine when I read others' I7 code.)

[quote][/italic][/quote]
I feel slashes are un-Inform-like -- witness [bracket] and [close bracket] -- but, ::shrug::

[quote]But the current I7 compiler generates a lot of hardcoded line breaks. That would have to change.[/quote]
Yes please!

Also: is Glk married to Javascript, disallowing Javascript's competitors?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4148&start=10#p30676
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good beginner games
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-01-29 05:09:49

[quote]I really don't care about your no-argument nonsense[/quote]

What a coincidence.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4148&start=10#p30677
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good beginner games
User: Hagbard Celine / DateTime: 2012-01-29 05:45:08

ok, enough playing with the trolls

/ignore

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4252&start=0#p30679
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Disabling the (first moving off X) action.
User: StewartF94 / DateTime: 2012-01-29 10:22:52

In a room the player needs to be on a crate to go up through  a vent in the ceiling. However, when 'enter vent' is used it will have (first moving of crate). This is bearable because it still technically works but if the up command is issued it moves off of the crate first and then fails because the actor is no longer on the crate. 

The code concerning this is here:

(room code)
up: OneWayRoomConnector
    {
        -> ventGrill  
    canTravelerPass(traveler) {return traveler.isIn(crate) && traveler.posture==standing; }  
               explainTravelBarrier(traveler)  
                { "You cannot reach the vent from where you are."; }  
      
        travelDesc =  "By standing on the crate you just manage to reach the vent  
        and haul yourself into the vent.<.p>"
    }
;

+ventGrill: SecretDoor 'vent grill' 'vent grill'
    "It's the grill from the air vent. <<isOpen? 'It has been moved to reveal a way up into the vent itself.' : ''>>"
    dobjFor(Open) remapTo(Push, self)
    dobjFor(Close) remapTo(Pull, self)
dobjFor(Push)
    {
    check(){}
    verify()
        {
            if(isOpen)
            {
                "It has already been moved out of the way.";
                
            }
            if(gActor.isIn(airVent))
              {
                "You see no reason to move the grill from inside the vent";
                exit;
              }
        }
    
        action()
        {
            if(gActor.isIn(crate) && gActor.posture==standing)
            {
                makeOpen(true);
                "You push grill out of the way. ";
            }
            else
            {
                "You cant reach it. It is too high.";
            }
        } 
    }

I know certain bits of the code are probably wrong or unnecessary or whatever but it is specifically to do with the standing on crate stuff that i would appreciate help with.

Oh yeah, the code of the crate is...

+crate: Chair, TravelPushable 'large crate' 'crate'
  initSpecialDesc = "A large crate sits in the corner."
  lookInDesc = "The crate is nailed shut. You cannot see inside."
  bulk = 100
    describeMovePushable(traveler, connector)
    {
        "You push the crate into <<traveler.location.destName>>. ";
    }
;

I need the actor to be on the crate and when Up is typed, the actor to climb into the vent without stepping off of the crate.

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=90#p30680
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-29 10:24:16

[quote="Basti50"][quote="ektemple"]Please do look at standardizing the interface, then.[/quote]Will do. I'm trying to cover up m_figures as good as possible. AI is still not past the conceptual phase though so I didn't exactly put much effort in there (and probably won't until I'm really, really sure that I'm satisfied with what I see). Anyway, it should, hopefully, change later.[/quote]
Great, wondering whether a given phrase requires the m_figure or the object itself really is the worst part of it. The rest of it is livable! (Defining using tables helps make the process faster, for example.)

[quote][quote]Why there is a need for new directions at all?[/quote]Ah, ok. That's because of the 3-dimensional space which would allow other directions like north-up/down etc. Just haven't included those yet.[/quote]Yikes! Well, that explains it...

[quote][quote]That might be useful (assuming it's automatic and totally hidden from the user). Unlike a null tile, though, it would actually slow things down if you had a complex map with a lot of features (e.g., a textured or tessellated floor, wall features, etc.)[/quote]It would? I was more thinking splitting up between border tiles/every other tile and do some simple arithmetic. Seems easier than creating an entire new layer.[/quote]Yeah, that sounds fine, and easy to automate so that the user doesn't have to futz with it. I think you must not have noticed the null tile suggestion, though, since you referred to it as "adding a new layer". The null tile would just be a tile (with a border effect) that would go in the map-tiles list for an m_room. But when the display routine sees that tilecell, it just automatically advances to the next cell w/o drawing anything. I think a null tile is easier, and undoubtedly faster, than either of the other options we've been talking about. (The new illumination layer I proposed was an idea for using a single structure that could handle [i]both[/i] dynamic lighting and non-display of "empty" tiles. You wouldn't want the layer for the latter alone, but if you're also doing the former, then you could easily use the same layer for both purposes.)

[b]Edited to add:[/b] By the way, I wasn't intending to ask you to implement the illumination map. Assuming I end up actually wanting to use dynamic lighting, I'll just do it up myself. (Of course, if you *want* to implement, I wouldn't try to stop you!)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4252&start=0#p30681
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Disabling the (first moving off X) action.
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-29 10:46:47

You may want to look up "staging locations" in "Learning TADS 3." Also, we did this type of thing in "Mrs. Pepper's Nasty Secret." Eric coded the bit about the trash can, I didn't, so I don't know the details (if I ever did), but the source code for "Mrs. Pepper's" is downloadable from the Archive in the directory games/source/tads/MrsPepperSrc.zip.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4138&start=20#p30682
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ten Room Game Competition
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2012-01-29 11:31:18

[quote="fiziwig"]Would it be acceptable to write the game in pure php/html (with no database or write permissions required)?

--gary[/quote]

I would prefer a more traditional IF game using Inform 7, TADS 3.1, or Adrift's web capabilities. Also, the intent is for a small game that fits on a single browser page.

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4241&start=0#p30683
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: One big file tips?
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-01-29 11:31:49

I'm not sure I follow what you're talking about.

I briefly tried working with an external text editor but quickly gave up, seeing that it didn't give me much and just didn't work properly - if you edit the story.ni file while the Inform IDE is open it won't reload your edits in the IDE, and your edits may even be lost. What am I missing? How do you work with external editors? Do you compile outside the IDE too? 

And is there such a thing as a preprocessor #include, or are you just saying you would need [i]something like[/i] an #include?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4138&start=20#p30684
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ten Room Game Competition
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2012-01-29 11:36:21

[quote="Jeremy W. Sherman"]Is the focus here on pushing the boundaries of interaction between a game and a (possibly dynamic?) map, or just promoting the idea of a game limited in geographic scope that has a map a few clicks away?

With talk if Inform 7's publishing system falling within the rules when you include an interpreter and a map file, it sounds like the latter, but I want to make sure: should participants focus on innovating how someone can interact with the work in the context of a modern web browser, or should they focus on creating a quality work bundled alongside a quality map?[/quote]

I'm less interested in a dynamic map and more interested in simply having a holistic experience on a single browser page, but that doesn't preclude someone from making the map interactive.

I have a lot of ideas for this comp myself and the main theme in all of them is to develop a "target" for people who may want to create small IF games, playable in a browser, that would be perfect for casual play. The map is one thing we can do to shorten that gap between starting an IF game and _continuing_ to finish it. If we make the map interesting, people will have an innate interest in seeing all locations and discovering all of the secrets within...

Here is a puzzle....all of the hints are right here...can you solve it!?

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4241&start=0#p30685
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: One big file tips?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-29 11:46:39

Currently, the way to include extra files is to write them as extensions.

You are right that an external editor isn't handled correctly in the Mac IDE. I believe that the Linux and Windows IDEs *do* load external edits at this point. (It's an open suggestion for the Mac: <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/1220683-support-external-editor">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... nal-editor</a> )

You could also set up a command-line build, using Makefiles or what have you, and skip the IDE entirely.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4253&start=0#p30686
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: 2 quick questions
User: sqib / DateTime: 2012-01-29 12:15:45

the first I am having a weird little problem and was wondering about maybe the proper wording and the second is am seeing if it is possible to do something.

 First one is this. "A tiny bell is on motel desk." is some code.  When you examine "bell" the result is "You see nothing special about the tiny bell" but when you ring "bell" instead of tiny bell you get "You cant see any such thing".  I put Understand "bell" as tiny bell but it is the same result.

Second thing is I am wondering if it is possible and if so the proper way to word it to display a figure at random.
Like for instance "after examining television, (then display figure of a, b or c at random)

Thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4200&start=10#p30687
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Megaupload taken offline
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2012-01-29 12:53:13

[quote="bcressey"]The greater danger is that the emerging content titans - Google, Apple, Amazon - decide that they've had enough of scrappy upstart competitors, and collude with the traditional publishers to finally implement that framework of onerous controls they've always wanted. Then they get Congress to elevate their handshake deal to the status of federal law, and the market is well and truly closed.[/quote]

I don't see the [i]artistic[/i] danger. Piracy has no impact on serious literature, or serious music, or serious film. Both Woody Allen and Roman Polanski are thriving and I doubt that Philip Roth is hurting from people pirating his novels on e-books, assuming that that happens. So this is going to hurt TV, porn, Britney Spears and Hollywood schlock, and I for one can live without them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4252&start=0#p30688
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Disabling the (first moving off X) action.
User: StewartF94 / DateTime: 2012-01-29 12:53:46

Thanks, I'll go look them up now [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4138&start=20#p30689
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ten Room Game Competition
User: Jeremy W. Sherman / DateTime: 2012-01-29 13:19:02

Thank you for your response, David. I think I begin to see what you're driving at: This contest aims to generate the IF equivalent of the light "filler" games a group of board game players might play for a round or two in between rounds of much lengthier board games. So we shouldn't just restrict the geographic scope (10 rooms), but the overall length of the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4253&start=0#p30690
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 quick questions
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-29 13:30:46

How did you define the "ring" action? It should be something like

Understand "ring [something]" as ringing.

...unless you are doing something more exotic.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4254&start=0#p30691
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Interview:  Jacek Pudlo & Conrad Cook--discuss...Emily Short
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-01-29 13:37:53

Interview:  Jacek Pudlo & Conrad Cook -- discuss themselves, each other, and Emily Short; Conrad Cook accuses Jacek Pudlo of being realy Adam Thornton, and not a character out of an IF after all; feminism and political correctness are discussed; and mention is even made of interactive fiction!

[interview blanked out for the time being - see below]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4249&start=0#p30692
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk stylesheets: the Plan
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-29 14:01:16

[quote]If glk_end_style_name()/glk_end_style() generate run time errors then will they get used?[/quote]

That's a fair point. 

I want errors to be visible to the author during testing. But they don't have to be *fatal* errors for that, and the interpreter really can only throw fatal errors. At the same time, I don't want game code to be in a paranoid loop of constantly interrogating the style state in order to do anything. That's a waste of time.

I like Ron's suggestion that the call should return an error value. That way, the game can display a warning when in debug mode only.

[quote]Part of me wants to say that the generated HTML shouldn't have para_ and span_ class names as style sheets could have div.style and span.style instead. (As well as a generic .style.)[/quote]

I separated them out because, in some cases, double-applying a CSS attribute is bad.

If you have "Header" as the current style, then (following the rules as I've written them) you'll get span_Header spans inside para_Header divs. That's not a problem with my sample stylesheet. But if these had the *same* class name ("Header"), then a ".Header {font-size: 1.4em;}" declaration would apply twice, and the font size would be multiplied by 1.96!

[quote]But then that would lock implementations into using particular elements, which I don't like the idea of (I'd like to use <tt>s I think.)[/quote]

The examples I gave are supposed to be definitive for elements as well as classes. So yes, I'm already locking the implementing into using <div> and <span>.

[quote]Can you explain some of the use cases for HTML windows/frames?[/quote]

I've got a guy in email who's been begging me to permit panoramic photo display in a Glulx window. I don't know how that works (it's probably a Flash applet) but if he can make it work in a web browser, he should be able to make it work in a Glulx window.

More generally, it's an out for people who are tired of writing graphics in I7 code. No offense to GLIMMR! But if I want a fancier status line, with custom fonts, gradients, some icons, and maybe a decorative border, it's very easy to build that using HTML.

[quote]Instead of html windows loading resources from the blorb, can they just use inline styles and scripts, and use data: for images?[/quote]

People could do that but I'd hate to require it of them. We'll see how practical my other ideas are.

[quote]Instead of GlkEntry/GlkEvent, what about just using postMessage()?[/quote]

I hadn't looked at that; I'll read up on it. It looks designed for JS-to-JS communication, right? I also have to think about (e.g.) a MacOS app which has embedded a WebKit view and is calling from ObjC-to-JS.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4249&start=0#p30693
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk stylesheets: the Plan
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-29 14:08:17

[quote]What does Glk do in cases of the style stack overflowing or underflowing?[/quote]

Underflowing is an error, which is currently described as a fatal error, but I'll change that to an error return value. As for overflow, there is no limit on span nesting. (If you want to run the interpreter out of memory, there are easier ways than style abuse.)

[quote]If I don't use paragraph styles, but just stick a span style mid-paragraph, the above wording implies than when I end the span, the rest of the paragraph will still have that style[/quote]

The "current paragraph style" is only applied to a paragraph when the paragraph begins. Further changes only affect what will happen to the *next* paragraph. I guess that's not very clear -- I'll add some explanation.

[quote]Other parts of I7 use the form "a number based rulebook", so I'd be somewhat surprised by anything but "header based text style"[/quote]

Up to Graham. But you're right about capitalization. I'll change those examples.

[quote]is Glk married to Javascript, disallowing Javascript's competitors?[/quote]

Ask me again in a couple of years, if there *are* competitors by then. :/

I deliberately made the call name generic -- "glk_script_send()" -- to avoid specifying this. In theory, Glk doesn't care what the scripting language is, as long as the game and browser agree. In practice, that means Javascript. I can imagine a future where there's a real choice, and then somebody would have to specify a language somewhere, but we're not there today.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4253&start=0#p30694
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 quick questions
User: sqib / DateTime: 2012-01-29 14:32:38

After further examination I think I found the culprit elsewhere in the code. This little ditty I totally forgot about.
"After reading a command:
if the player's command includes "ring bell" , replace matched text with "push buzzer."	

Did not try it out with that omitted yet but im sure thats it.

The question re: displaying figures at random still stands though.   Thanks for the help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4249&start=0#p30695
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk stylesheets: the Plan
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-29 14:44:43

[quote="zarf"][quote]Can you explain some of the use cases for HTML windows/frames?[/quote]
More generally, it's an out for people who are tired of writing graphics in I7 code. No offense to GLIMMR! But if I want a fancier status line, with custom fonts, gradients, some icons, and maybe a decorative border, it's very easy to build that using HTML.[/quote]
No offense taken. I will be very happy to see Glimmr obsolesce when these new features are in place and widely supported! Embedding an HTML frame will allow for all kinds of stuff that you can't do with Glulx graphics--images mixed with actual text, dynamic rotation, shadows, etc. And the ability to get input from embedded frames opens up all kinds of possibilities. 

The plan looks great. Will there be a core of recommended CSS rules that interpreters that don't use HTML for display should support? (Mostly so that game authors will know what will work widely and what will only work on web or widget interpreters.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4200&start=10#p30696
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Megaupload taken offline
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-29 14:45:42

[quote="Jacek Pudlo"]Piracy has no impact on serious literature, or serious music, or serious film.[/quote]

Perhaps not piracy but claims of copyright infringement do affect even serious literature, as the James Joyce estate has so ably demonstrated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4148&start=10#p30697
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good beginner games
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-01-29 14:46:28

[quote]ok, enough playing with the trolls

/ignore[/quote]

What a coincidence.

[rant]I know I shouldn't have, but I couldn't pass it up.[/rant]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4253&start=0#p30698
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 quick questions
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-29 15:02:00

There's no single command that will display a random figure from a given set. But it's easy enough to do:

[code]let images be a list of figure names;
let images be {Figure 1, Figure 3, Figure 4};
let N be a random number between 1 and the number of entries of images;
display entry N of images.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4138&start=20#p30699
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ten Room Game Competition
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2012-01-29 15:06:20

[quote="Jeremy W. Sherman"]Thank you for your response, David. I think I begin to see what you're driving at: This contest aims to generate the IF equivalent of the light "filler" games a group of board game players might play for a round or two in between rounds of much lengthier board games. So we shouldn't just restrict the geographic scope (10 rooms), but the overall length of the game.[/quote]

I would hope that inherently, with only ten rooms and an obvious map, the scope of the game would be limited. But the idea is to strike a balance. To find the sweet spot where someone knows they can solve the game in a short period of time, and yet there are interesting challenges to make it compelling.

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4244&start=0#p30700
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Giving light to the actor. - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-29 15:46:11

I added all this code to my game and got no compile errors until I added the last 'Modify GlowAction' section. I checked everything numerous times but can't find the problem. It's another mystery to me. I can post the errors if you like. I also included the 'enum' code into the the main game section.

RonG

[code]
+ring: Wearable 'platinum ring' 'platinum ring'
 "Faint cryptic runes are inscribed around the band of the platinum ring."  
 
 dobjFor(Wear){
  action(){
   inherited();
   "You feel a strange magical power coursing through your body!
    And, you hear the faint echo of the word GLOW surrounding you.";
   gActor.makeWizard();
  }
 }
; 

 dobjFor(Doff){
  action(){
   inherited();
   "You shudder as the power of the ring and the magic of the GLOW chant leave
    you";
   gActor.makeNormal();
  } 
 }
;

  DefineIAction(Glow);
  VerbRule(Glow)
    'glow'
  :GlowAction
  verbPhrase='glow/glowing'
;
  Modify GlowAction
   execAction(){
    if(gActor.powerLevel!=wizard)
     reportFailure('At this time, you do not have the power of the Wizard.');
    else{
     "You chant the GLOW spell!
      Your body begins to glow with a bright, radiating blue light!";  
      gActor.brightness=10;
      }
     }
; 

[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4255&start=0#p30701
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: New Windows Version
User: rotter / DateTime: 2012-01-29 16:12:16

Hi

Anyone here using the new Windows version (14th January 2012 6G60)?  I'm getting some very strange indenting in the Source Code window with it and wanted to know if anyone else has the same issue.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4244&start=0#p30702
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Giving light to the actor. - TADS3.1
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-29 16:22:02

It's "modify", not "Modify".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4254&start=0#p30703
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview:  Jacek Pudlo & Conrad Cook--discuss...Emily S
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-01-29 16:35:30

Jacek Pudlo [i]is[/i] Adam Thornton?! And he would have gotten away with it, if it weren't for you pesky kids.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4255&start=0#p30704
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: New Windows Version
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-01-29 16:37:11

I haven't noticed anything weird, but indenting / tab stop behavior is one of the things that was changed. Can you be more specific? Is your problem with old code created in the previous version of the IDE that used to indent fine and now looks funny? or cut and pasted code? or is it the way the editor behaves when you create new code? Are tables involved?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4200&start=10#p30705
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Megaupload taken offline
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-01-29 16:41:55

[quote="bcressey"]Perhaps not piracy but claims of copyright infringement do affect even serious literature, as the James Joyce estate has so ably demonstrated.[/quote]
Did I miss something? As far as I could see, the Joyce estate were using copyright laws to prevent biographers from accessing his Joyce's personal letters, and prevent public readings of his work. This seems to be mostly about how Joyce is depicted, rather than any specifically [i]literary[/i] concerns.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4249&start=0#p30707
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk stylesheets: the Plan
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2012-01-29 18:19:35

[quote="zarf"]I deliberately made the call name generic -- "glk_script_send()" -- to avoid specifying this. In theory, Glk doesn't care[/quote]
I noticed the call naming, but the spec has JS all over it and even called out jQuery specifically. I don't know how agnostic Glk can be, but the spec should at least state if it's agnostic or not, or at least where it is and isn't, or at least its intention.  

I know JS is everywhere now, but IF tech seems to have longer shelf life than many tech, so it's not unreasonable to presume this spec will live to see a JS competitor.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4257&start=0#p30708
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Bullshit Review of _Find the Dog_
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-01-29 18:32:05

Sorry for the bullshit of this bullshit review -- a real review would be too difficult to write.

This is a fine game -- parser works, pictures work -- text does its job -- the main problem being you can't download it.  Which is fine if you have a decent internet connection, but my tubes are slow.

The premise is vaguely amusing.  You play a 50 year old neighborhood woman who makes a bundle ($150 a week) to dog-sit a woman's dog at her apartment.  The interaction with the 50 year old neighborhood bachelors at McDonalds in the morning is frighteningly on.  I suspect the author lurked and took notes, or perhaps is a 50 year old woman himself.

The complication hits immediately:  The dog dies.  This is almost immediate, but after you've played a few rounds and imagine this is shaping up to be some kind of Dog Sim, complete with minigames like Clean Up After Rover (did you bring a plastic bag?)

It's been established that this dog is your bread and butter -- "Are you SERIOUS?  $150 a week to WALK A DOG?" the bachelors exclaim -- and you basically have no other income except for a woefully inadequate social security check that on inspection causes your player character to mentally review your older friends who have sold off their belongings, or taken in strange boarders, or so forth, to eek by on theirs.

Therefore, when the dog dies -- or more accurately, is discovered dead in the apartment -- the correct response is adequately indicated by context, but by no means obvious.  You must [spoiler]pop the dog into the freezer and find a replacement before the owner returns.

Why keep the old dog in the freezer?  Because you have to compare it to the impersonator.  ("Imdoginator," one of the more philosophical bachelors corrects.)

Now, this is a complicated proposition.  There are various dogs scattered around the neighborhood, and their markings are randomly generated.  Some are outdoors, some indoors.  Your mission therefore includes not only lurking outside a vet's office and skulking around the local dogwalk park, but listening for barking that may be coming from a house, and breaking in when you figure there's no one around.

When you find a similar-seeming dog, you dognap it, return to the apartment, and compare it to the stiff.  The first few aren't really close enough, so you release the impostor and continue your search.

It's pretty impressive.  There are just a few mini-games, by situation type, the details of which appear to be randomly generated -- except perhaps one or two that seem to be coded in by hand.  So you get good at explaining your way out of a stranger's living room, and hiding in a shrubbery a block away while the police look for you -- possibly while cradling a stolen dog in your arms --  or else sticking to your stupid story and allowing yourself to be arrested, without cracking under the pressure and admitting that you're out to dognap someone's pooch.

You only have three days, and this did not seem possible to me.  Apparently you can win, because the owner simply does not pay that close attention and will accept a pretty outrageous fake.  -- I didn't play further than the three days, but apparently, the owner only comes back briefly, accepts a reasonable impostor, and you can keep playing in this way nearly "as long as you like."  

However, over time the owner looks more and more closely at the dog -- and, oh yes, you have to get the body out of the fridge, or game over.[/spoiler]

According to comments on the forum, there's a kind of a hack whereby you can blow your score out above the theoretical limit.  You do this by [spoiler]leaving your best-fit impostor dog in the apartment and dogsitting it as if it were your client's own.  After a day, you return to the scene of the crime and (often) find a LOST DOG poster which (often) offers a sizeable reward.  If you let the dog loose, it'll be running stray around the neighborhood, catchable -- but if you kept it in your apartment, you simply walk it to the victim's house and claim your reward.

This is deliberately coded as a minigame.  However, the "hack" relies on the fact that you can keep any number of dogs in the owner's apartment, and your score is determined by the amount of money you make.  However, you must take care of all of these dogs, and this takes time that you would otherwise be out prowling around, looking for new prey.[/spoiler]

All in all, a peculiar game that manages to win at many of the jokes that those funny murder movies make.  The mechanics are often klunky, and there are several unresolved questions -- like, [spoiler]why can't you keep extra dogs at your place, and the dead one in your own fridge[/spoiler]? -- but overall, worth a play.

I don't really have the knack of reviewing these things without giving surprises away.  The surprises in _Find the Dog_ are worth being surprised by, even though it's not a plot-driven game.  Certainly worth looking at during a dull moment at work.

Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4249&start=0#p30709
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Current paragraph style vs. style of the current paragraph
User: Jeremy W. Sherman / DateTime: 2012-01-29 18:42:46

[quote]This confuses me. If I don't use paragraph styles, but just stick a span style mid-paragraph, the above wording implies than when I end the span, the rest of the paragraph will still have that style -- it won't turn off until the end of the paragraph even though I told it to end at the end of the span. Do I misunderstand something here?[/quote]

I was confused too. As I read the document, it looks like:
[list][*]There is a stack of styles.[/*:m]
[*]A style is either a single ClassicStyleNum or a pair (ClassicStyleNum, StyleNameStr).[/*:m]
[*]The "current paragraph style" is an alternate name for the style at the bottom of the style stack.[/*:m]
[*]The "style of the current paragraph" is the default style used within the paragraph. The paragraph's style is set to the "current paragraph style" the first time text is emitted after a paragraph break and cannot be changed thereafter (because the <div> open tag has already been emitted).[/*:m]
[*]Text emitted as part of a paragraph uses the style at the top of stack.[/*:m]
[*]The style stack MUST NOT be cleared by `glk_paragraph_break()`.[/*:m][/list:u]

The distinction between "the current paragraph style" and "the style of the current paragraph" is a subtle one. Replacing "the current paragraph style" with "the bottommost style" or "the style at bottom of stack" might reduce the confusion.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4200&start=10#p30710
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Megaupload taken offline
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-29 18:49:11

Biographies and performances of a writer's work are themselves literary, aren't they? 

There was also the legal kerfuffle over the "[i]Gone with the Wind[/i] from a slave's point of view" novel a few years back. If the law had been that anything that is accused of infringing copyright is to be suppressed until it's proved to be non-infringing, things would've probably gone much worse for that novel. And that's pretty much the standard that Big Content would like to enshrine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4249&start=0#p30711
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Empty paragraphs
User: Jeremy W. Sherman / DateTime: 2012-01-29 19:04:01

[quote]QUERY: Is there such a thing as an empty paragraph? (That is, if you call glk_paragraph_break() twice in a row, do you get a big blank space?) In HTML the answer is "no", and it would be easier to stick to that. It does introduce a small consistency problem with the non-HTML interpreters, though.[/quote]

I agree that under the break model of paragraphing (versus a model built around *glk_paragraph_begin() or *glk_paragraph_new or whatever), making glk_paragraph_break() idempotent seems sensible. If you really want a blank paragraph, then write a non-printing character or a space and break again right after.

The paragraphing model threw me off initially. I wanted to equate paragraph break to emitting the open tag for the next paragraph (something like <p id="N" class="K">), so each time you call it, you would begin a new paragraph. The fine point that paragraph style is not set till you emit text after a break finally made things clear.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4249&start=0#p30712
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk stylesheets: the Plan
User: Jeremy W. Sherman / DateTime: 2012-01-29 19:24:41

[quote]There is a whole lot of work involved in this plan, so you're not going to start using it next week or anything. But I am reasonably convinced that this is the roadmap.[/quote]
How could I help?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=90#p30713
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-29 19:49:20

[quote="ektemple"][quote][quote]Why there is a need for new directions at all?[/quote]Ah, ok. That's because of the 3-dimensional space which would allow other directions like north-up/down etc. Just haven't included those yet.[/quote]Yikes! Well, that explains it...[/quote]

OK, I'm sorry. I guess I still don't get this after all. You are planning to create new directions, then, but I still wonder: why not just make them directions? This is all it takes to create a pair of new directions and prettify the index map:

[code]Up-and-north is a direction. The opposite of up-and-north is down-and-south.
Index map with up-and-north mapped as north.
Index map with down-and-south mapped as south.[/code]

Doesn't that give your users more to work with than a new kind of value would? More importantly, there is no more need for R&D (or your user) to convert between the two schemes!

[spoiler]Shifting gears a bit, you could also assign properties to make some operations more brief (and probably faster than passing lists around):

[code]A direction has a number called the x-step. A direction has a number called the y-step. A direction has a number called the z-step.
The x-step of north is 0. The y-step of north is -1. The z-step of north is 0. [etc]

To move (T - a mappable thing) toward (D - a direction):
	move T on sector (x-coord of T + x-step of D) and (y-coord of T + y-step of D) and (z-coord of T + z-step of D);
	if rule failed, rule fails.[/code][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4036&start=10#p30714
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ZMPP for Android released
User: weiju / DateTime: 2012-01-29 19:52:22

just as an info, today I released a new ZMPP version on Android Market, which (among other enhancements) adds the option to play in landscape mode.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4249&start=10#p30715
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk stylesheets: the Plan
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-29 20:21:14

I started sketching out a task list for this yesterday, but it's not solid yet. Let me think over that a little more.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4249&start=10#p30716
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk stylesheets: the Plan
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-01-29 21:37:23

The more I think about this plan the more I like it.

What if glk_end_style_name() returned an error code, and optionally the style as well? end_any could do the same. I agree we don't want them to be in a paranoid loop, but end_any and set_style can probably be used most of the time. I still think it should be possible to interrogate the stack for those cases when you really need to.

As another alternative to GlkEvent, if jQuery is required, then messages could be passed to and from Glk by triggering events on the document. Requiring jQuery isn't nice ideologically, but it makes sense practically. If people want to use another JS library then jQuery can peacefully co-exist with it. As to the jQuery API changing... well you can also have multiple versions of jQuery loaded. Something can be worked out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4259&start=0#p30718
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Glk 0.7.4
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-29 22:16:16

I have posted the Glk 0.7.4 spec to my web site: <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glk/">http://eblong.com/zarf/glk/</a>

This includes filename suffix recommendations, and the call to read data from a Blorb chunk.

(This does *not* include the stylesheet stuff -- that'll be Glk 0.8, I suppose.) 

CheapGlk 1.0.3 is updated to the new spec. (GlkTerm is not, yet.)

A unit test for the Blorb-reading call is also up: <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/resstreamtest.gblorb">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/resstreamtest.gblorb</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4255&start=0#p30719
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: New Windows Version
User: rotter / DateTime: 2012-01-29 23:23:31

I will try some new code but it is doing in any of my old code that used to indent perfectly.  Now the tab seems to randomly change size.  It will be fine and then for some blocks of code the tab triples or more in length. So, it is difficult to spot straight away as most of the code is indented perfectly, you then get this blocks that are all over the place.  I've just checked and the games do have tables in them but the tables themselves seem unaffected.  For info the PC is running X64 Windows 7. It is only a cosmetic thing as the code will compile fine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4253&start=0#p30720
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 quick questions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-29 23:44:33

[quote="sqib"]After further examination I think I found the culprit elsewhere in the code. This little ditty I totally forgot about.
"After reading a command:
if the player's command includes "ring bell" , replace matched text with "push buzzer."	

Did not try it out with that omitted yet but im sure thats it.[/quote]
That would do it.

Someone was commenting recently about how the documentation is slightly discouraging about creating new actions. What the documentation does not say is that creating actions is MUCH easier than modifying the grammar for existing actions. It's quite easy to redirect the action to the appropriate thing, but it can be fiendishly difficult to create grammar lines that split a single command into multiple existing actions. And as you've discovered, hacking the player's command often has undesirable side effects.

[code]Ringing is an action applying to one thing. Understand "ring [something]" as ringing.

Check ringing:
    say "That's not something you can ring.";
    stop the action.

Check ringing the buzzer: instead try pushing the noun.

Instead of ringing the tiny bell:
    say "You tap the bell, and a moment later the conceirge appears.";
    now the concierge is in the location.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4255&start=0#p30721
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: New Windows Version
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2012-01-30 00:40:20

[quote="rotter"]I will try some new code but it is doing in any of my old code that used to indent perfectly.  Now the tab seems to randomly change size.[/quote]That sounds like the new support for elastic tabstops: you can disable this from the Format menu.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4257&start=0#p30726
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Bullshit Review of _Find the Dog_
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-01-30 05:44:29

[quote]the main problem being you can't download it. Which is fine if you have a decent internet connection, but my tubes are slow.[/quote]

Yes, people keep forgetting that not everyone would rather play online.

Now... what on earth are you talking about? I enver heard of that game, I can't find it on IFDB, IFWiki, even Googling "Find the Dog" gives me nothing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4202&start=0#p30727
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Nested If Statements, Multiple Objects
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-01-30 05:52:25

[quote="JoeyJones"]An instead rule would do it, but then the action would count internally as a failure, which can cause issues further down the line. 

Also I think generally its a pretty bizarre programming tactic to define an action and then say to do something instead of that action; it's like, 'This is attacking, but instead of attacking do this stuff which is functionally equivalent of attacking!' 

If you don't use an instead rule, the key thing is that the monster (which I assume is being used as a place holder here) is sent to the void after the action is resolved.[/quote]

If you're creating a whole kind of thing (a monster) which are all affected in the same way by the attack command, then yes, this makes sense. But if there is only one monster in the game, or every monster requires unique code to respond properly to >ATTACK IT, then you almost certainly want to use Instead or After rules. See WI 12.2: 

[quote]The orange boxes [Before, Instead, and After] are where we put rules to handle unusual situations, or unexpected events: special rules to cover the opening of a container which happens to be booby-trapped, or walking through a doorway into a room where a surprise party is about to be sprung. 

Blue boxes [Check, Carry Out, and Report] hold the mundane, everyday rules - the generic ways that particular actions behave.[/quote]
If you don't want to use an Instead rule to handle a case where the action technically succeeds, then After will work fine (after you unlist the block attacking rule and add whatever check and default carry out rules you actually want to use, of course). As the 12.2 diagram indicates, an After rule will preempt the default Report message that would ordinarily be displayed for the successful action.

(Yes, I realize there's often no functional difference between defining certain code as Before or Instead vs Check or Carry Out, or After vs Report. But there very well could be; note that Before doesn't test visibility or accessibility, while Check does; Report rules are not followed for "try silently" actions, while After rules are; and so on. 

And less obviously, but perhaps more importantly, the standard and expected procedure is to place the one-off, special-case responses to actions in the Before, Instead, and After rulebooks, while the Check, Carry Out, and Report rulebooks are reserved for standard, ordinary functionality. Putting different kinds of rules in a rulebook than what it was designed for may interact with some other code of yours, others' code (extensions), or even the standard rules in unexpected ways, resulting in very hard-to-trace bugs.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4200&start=10#p30728
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Megaupload taken offline
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-01-30 07:43:34

The word 'literary' is perhaps a bit too contested to use usefully here, but I'll concede the point that preventing biographies and performances is the prevention of art. I personally think that if the person is dead, they're not going to be doing anything else with their work, so there's no harm in letting others do so. I did though think that [i]Pride & Prejudice & Zombies[/i] was a tad unnecessary.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4255&start=0#p30729
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: New Windows Version
User: rotter / DateTime: 2012-01-30 07:56:01

Disabling Elastic Tabstops has sorted it out thanks. Didn't spot that option on the menu. I assume they have a purpose but they really make the code look weird.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4200&start=20#p30730
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Megaupload taken offline
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-30 08:17:46

[quote="JoeyJones"]The word 'literary' is perhaps a bit too contested to use usefully here, but I'll concede the point that preventing biographies and performances is the prevention of art. I personally think that if the person is dead, they're not going to be doing anything else with their work, so there's no harm in letting others do so.[/quote]

Well, I think that dead people have an interest in seeing their heirs be able to make money from their work, up to a certain point, though probably not to suppress it. And I don't particularly think it's a good idea for even living creators to be able to block the use of their work; if it was bad for Puccini's estate to suppress a jazz version of Turandot, I don't think it would be better for a living Puccini to be able to do so, as long as it weren't marketed in a way that left the impression that Puccini approved of it.

What I'd really like is a system that ensures that creators are somehow compensated for their work without giving them veto power over any derivative uses -- I can sample your [url=http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7vqs7_james-newton-choir_music]avant-garde flute piece[/url] in my [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpsvBvwRuf0]rap record[/url] (ads play before link), but you get paid nicely when I sell a mint. But I have no idea how such a system could be set up, particularly because how can you distinguish between "demanding fair compensation" and "jacking up the price to prohibitive levels"? 

[quote]I did though think that [i]Pride & Prejudice & Zombies[/i] was a tad unnecessary.[/quote]

[url=http://beatonna.livejournal.com/134965.html]I tend to agree[/url]. But it's too hard to legally encode the difference between that and the necessary -- the clip from "Garden State" with the soundtrack replaced by "Tip Drill" was a brilliant commentary on the movie, and it's scandalous that FOX was able to have it yanked.

(By the way, I searched for the novel mentioned in the last comic strip above, and I actually found it! I think some people had a contest to write a version.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4261&start=0#p30731
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Is there a way to use UNDO selectiely in a game area
User: gamedesigner / DateTime: 2012-01-30 08:38:56

I know that you can prevent saving in a certain area of a game if you wish.

Is there a way to code "UNDO" only when you're in a certain area of the game or not.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4261&start=0#p30732
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is there a way to use UNDO selectiely in a game area
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-30 08:41:00

[quote="gamedesigner"]I know that you can prevent saving in a certain area of a game if you wish.

Is there a way to code "UNDO" only when you're in a certain area of the game or not.[/quote]

"Undo Output Control" by Erik Temple. <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/Erik%20Temple/Undo%20Output%20Control/index.html">http://inform7.com/extensions/Erik%20Te ... index.html</a>

and "Conditional Undo" by Jesse McGrew. <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/Jesse%20McGrew/Conditional%20Undo/index.html">http://inform7.com/extensions/Jesse%20M ... index.html</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4138&start=30#p30733
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ten Room Game Competition
User: fiziwig / DateTime: 2012-01-30 09:48:33

[quote="DavidC"][quote="fiziwig"]Would it be acceptable to write the game in pure php/html (with no database or write permissions required)?

--gary[/quote]

I would prefer a more traditional IF game using Inform 7, TADS 3.1, or Adrift's web capabilities. Also, the intent is for a small game that fits on a single browser page.

David C.[/quote]

I had in mind a very traditional sort of game. On the other hand, I really should be focusing on refining my PHPIF system right now anyway. Maybe next time, after you've had a chance to see what PHPIF looks like.

--gary

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4261&start=0#p30734
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is there a way to use UNDO selectiely in a game area
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2012-01-30 10:18:35

[quote="gamedesigner"]I know that you can prevent saving in a certain area of a game if you wish.

Is there a way to code "UNDO" only when you're in a certain area of the game or not.[/quote]

I honestly believe that any design that blocks save or undo is a failure. I know Infocom did this in a few end game scenarios and it does force the player to a certain level of heightened suspense...I just think that can be done through prose and scene construction.

The new Textfyre portal will allow game play in such a way that the player can jump to any past turn, offering a tree or skein of all current play. Once you remove the concept of saves and undo, you find interesting ideas popping into your head. For instance, we generally shy away from putting a game in an unwinnable state, but if you had the ability to jump to any past point, this becomes much less important. We can offer dead-ends that are meaningful to the larger story without forcing the player to figure out where exactly they should have saved a game.

You could have responses that relate to time....so something like...

[i]It seems you may have drawn the wrong conclusion. When you chose to break the mirror in the board room and jump onto the ledge, you went up when you might have gone down.[/i]

But knowledge gained from the wrong fork may lead to insight (not necessarily solving a puzzle) into progressing the story. Consider a dead-end as the opportunity for a set of hints.

The User Interface can have links or buttons or some visual clue to help you jump to the point where you might alter your path through the story.

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4249&start=10#p30735
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk stylesheets: the Plan
User: Jeremy W. Sherman / DateTime: 2012-01-30 11:29:43

vaporware raised the question of dynamic styles on ifMUD today. The example was, what if you want to vary the color of some text at runtime? With the current system, you have to pre-commit to a limited range of colors and create them appropriately:
[code]…
.Para_0000ff { color: #0000ff; }
.Para_000100 { color: #000100; }
…[/code]
This is a step back from what you can do with the Z-machine, where @set_colour NUM will let you dynamically switch to a given color.

But if you could set the style attribute of a span or paragraph element directly, you could simply write something like:[code]glk_style_t *style = glk_style_new(style_Normal, NULL);
glk_style_set_dynamic(style, "color: #0000ff;");  /* second arg would be NULL to clear dynamic */
glk_begin_style(style);  /* GLK takes ownership of the style memory; it will later be freed with glk_style_free; a retain-count approach would make reusing style objects easier */
…
glk_end_style();[/code]This uses a different approach to the style API centered around manipulating an opaque struct managed by the GLK library. This makes it easier to alter the API later by adding new getters/setters to the struct and even NOPping out old API to retract it. Since the library allocates the storage, the struct will always have defaults, even if later specs add new fields to the style. It also makes it easy for the implementation to add private fields to the struct to manage any implementation-specific information associated with the style.

How could this be expressed in IF7? One way would be to allow something like:[code]say "[style color: #0000ff;]text[/style]"[/code]Since styles nest as a stack, it's always unambiguous which style is being popped by [/style]. Any text following `[style` would be read as the value of the style attribute on the element.

It would also be nice to be able to create the style as a function of some inputs. This is similar to what Sass/Less/etc. offer over raw CSS in allowing variables and functions to generate the CSS stanzas. IF7 could allow something like:[code]to style with color (red - a number) and (green - a number) and (blue - a number):
  say "color: #[hex of red][hex of green][hex of blue]"

say "[style with color 0 and 0 and 255]text[/style]"[/code]This basically amounts to expanding a phrase returning a string like a standard to say phrase, then expanding the return value of that again, so an alternative syntax (allowing more flexibility elsewhere, as well) would be:[code]to say style with color…

to say end style with color…

say "[[style with color 0 and 0 and 255]]text[[end style with color]]"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4257&start=0#p30736
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Bullshit Review of _Find the Dog_
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-01-30 11:58:09

Yeah, somebody asked me for the link.  It didn't occur to me to keep it -- Give me a bit and I'll find it.

C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4249&start=10#p30737
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk stylesheets: the Plan
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-30 12:00:47

If you can convince zarf to allow arbitrary text colors via a standard Glk call, I'll be amazed. And frankly a little bit worried.

For dynamic styles, I think the idea is that you use glk_set_style_name to start a uniquely-named style, then use glk_script_send to invoke some JavaScript that changes the presentation of that style.

So it's possible and a bit of a nuisance, which IMO is a good thing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4254&start=0#p30738
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview:  Jacek Pudlo & Conrad Cook--discuss...Emily S
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-30 12:10:39

[quote="conradcook"]I know Jacek Pudlo is a troll mask of Adam Thornton because he jumped in, as Pudlo, to anticipate my appearance to the IF club at MIT.[/quote]

Or Adam Thornton showed up pretending to be Jacek Pudlo just to prank you.

Given that Pudlo is from Sweden, I doubt he made a special trip to Boston on your account.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4261&start=0#p30739
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is there a way to use UNDO selectiely in a game area
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-30 12:28:21

[quote="DavidC"]I honestly believe that any design that blocks save or undo is a failure. I know Infocom did this in a few end game scenarios and it does force the player to a certain level of heightened suspense...I just think that can be done through prose and scene construction.[/quote]

These days, I tend to regard any need for the explicit state management commands (SAVE / RESTORE / UNDO / RESTART) as a greater design failure. 

I could see blocking UNDO if the player cannot get stuck or reach a sub-optimal node. In that case it might be appropriate to deny the command as a way of keeping the player moving forward, rather than allowing him to get sidetracked on micro-managing game state.

Also, multiple UNDOs are ugly and confusing without some kind of interface support that cleans up the transcript and erases the retracted action, as Undum does. Your TextFyre implementation offers that but most other systems do not.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4262&start=0#p30740
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: "when a scene ends" runs twice
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-30 12:45:11

It seems that if a scene has multiple endings, a generic "when a scene ends" rule runs twice:

[code]Swapped is a scene. Storage is a container.

When swapped begins: now everything held by the player is in storage.

Swapped begins when play begins. Swapped ends musically when singing. Swapped ends bouncily when jumping.

When a scene ends:
	Now everything held by the player is off-stage;
	Now everything in storage is carried by the player.
	
Test is a room. The player holds a ball. There is a rock in Test.

test me with "i/get rock/scenes/rules/sing/i"[/code]
What's the sense in that? How can I avoid doing things twice that should only be done once?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4247&start=0#p30741
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: odd bug with Eric Eve's Conversation Framework v.9?
User: yhlee / DateTime: 2012-01-30 12:58:24

Thanks, all--I'd completely forgotten about the comma behavior.  I will give the Reversed Persuasion Correction extension a look!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4262&start=0#p30742
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "when a scene ends" runs twice
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-30 13:03:07

Looks like a bug -- it doesn't happen if you specifically have "When Swapped ends". [edited]

I'd try taking care of this with a flag (the way I do everything):

[code]Swapped is a scene. Storage is a container.

When swapped begins: now everything held by the player is in storage.

Swapped begins when play begins. Swapped ends musically when singing. Swapped ends bouncily when jumping.

A scene can be unended or ended. A scene is usually unended.
When a scene (called knee play) begins: now knee play is unended.

When a scene (called Knee Play) ends:
	if knee play is unended: 
		now knee play is ended;
		Now everything held by the player is off-stage;
		Now everything in storage is carried by the player;
		say "boop!".
   
Test is a room. The player holds a ball. There is a rock in Test.

test me with "i/get rock/scenes/rules/sing/i"[/code]

boop! added for testing purposes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4261&start=0#p30743
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is there a way to use UNDO selectiely in a game area
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-30 13:16:49

[quote]I could see blocking UNDO if the player cannot get stuck or reach a sub-optimal node. In that case it might be appropriate to deny the command as a way of keeping the player moving forward, rather than allowing him to get sidetracked on micro-managing game state.[/quote]

I'd say this too can be accomplished with prose and scene construction. Make failures interesting and (clearly) recoverable without a lot of tedious retyping.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4262&start=0#p30744
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "when a scene ends" runs twice
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-01-30 13:21:54

Are you saying that the "when a scene ends" rule runs whenever the conditions for ending the scene are satisfied, even if the scene itself is not running (because it already ended by virtue of an alternate set of conditions being satisfied)?  I thought that the "when a scene ends" rule only runs if (a) the scene itself is running, [i]and[/i] (b) the conditions for ending it are satisfied.  Or are you only talking about the case where both sets of ending conditions become satisfied on the same turn?


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4262&start=0#p30745
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "when a scene ends" runs twice
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-30 13:24:07

[quote]Are you saying that the "when a scene ends" rule runs whenever the conditions for ending the scene are satisfied, even if the scene itself is not running[/quote]

No, that doesn't happen in this example. What happens is that when the scene ends, the rule runs twice. It looks like a bug to me too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4249&start=10#p30746
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk stylesheets: the Plan
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-30 13:25:28

[quote]This is a step back from what you can do with the Z-machine, where @set_colour NUM will let you dynamically switch to a given color.[/quote]

I like to think of it as a step forward.

[quote]For dynamic styles, I think the idea is that you use glk_set_style_name to start a uniquely-named style, then use glk_script_send to invoke some JavaScript that changes the presentation of that style.[/quote]

Yes.

[quote]So it's possible and a bit of a nuisance, which IMO is a good thing.[/quote]

Yes. :)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4262&start=0#p30747
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "when a scene ends" runs twice
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-30 14:04:56

I went ahead and reported it.

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=856">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=856</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4244&start=0#p30748
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Giving light to the actor. - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-30 14:05:42

Thanks another million for the help.This undertaking has turned out to be quite an undertaking [emote]:!:[/emote]  I'm slowly learning when and when not to use upper case or lower case letters. Also, I'm figuring out where and how to search for information in the TADS manuals. Success, no matter how minor can be quite stimulating.

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4261&start=0#p30749
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is there a way to use UNDO selectiely in a game area
User: cas / DateTime: 2012-01-30 15:43:47

On the topic of disabling certain commands: for those playing Z-machine games in the latest Gargoyle, you can use the built-in /undo command to undo a turn even if the game doesn't provide support.  Similarly, you can use /save to save a game even if the game has disabled saving, but you'll have to use /restore to restore such games.

These are rather recent features, so do please let me know if you run into problems with them.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4138&start=30#p30750
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Ten Room Game Competition
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-01-30 15:45:41

If you missed it, I just made a new Parchment branch the other day that allows the Z-Machine to run code and to get a response back. Check out the example code to see how to use it.

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4237&p=30549#p30549">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4237&p=30549#p30549</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4254&start=0#p30751
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview:  Jacek Pudlo & Conrad Cook--discuss...Emily S
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-01-30 16:10:18

What makes you say he's from Sweden?

Is that like him being a Jew?  Having a wife and daughter who he doesn't let use the internet?  Having round-the-clock sex that prevents him from writing IF?  Staying with a billionaire friend who he insults as much as he wants, who responds to this by giving him the keys to the Jag before flying to Thailand to see the Iraqi Prime Minister?

I could have gotten it wrong.  I didn't, but I could have.  So:

How do you know?

C.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=90#p30752
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Basti50 / DateTime: 2012-01-30 16:32:58

Looks like I wasn't quiet up to date. You couldn't define directions that easily last time I tried (which was about two or four years ago? [emote]:?[/emote]). Should be handy.

[quote]I think you must not have noticed the null tile suggestion[/quote]The concept wasn't that hard to grasp. What I meant with layer was that you would have to run through all coordinates and check while with the other system, you would just skip all the empty spaces in between.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4036&start=10#p30753
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ZMPP for Android released
User: Jeff Zeitlin / DateTime: 2012-01-30 16:41:40

What are the requirements for this that the Market thinks that it's not compatible with my NookColor with N2A card (and therefore won't let me download it)?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4172&start=0#p30754
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Delusions of Eloquence: Blue Lacuna (2009)
User: Tale / DateTime: 2012-01-30 16:57:55

I'll take the playworthy, too.

I myself am more a fan of [i]Suttree[/i] or [i]Child of God[/i], but I think I can say neither changed my life.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4036&start=10#p30755
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ZMPP for Android released
User: weiju / DateTime: 2012-01-30 17:13:42

Hi, I have no idea, I am learning about N2A cards for the first time - but if you wait a couple of days there is a chance that you can download it from Barnes & Noble directly since I submitted it there yesterday. [emote];)[/emote]

Edit: Maybe this: [url]http://support.n2acards.com/entries/20855851-incompatible-app-error[/url] ?

ZMPP does has a restriction on resolution, but the Nook Color is definitely up to the task, since that's the main device I am using for IF.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4036&start=10#p30756
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ZMPP for Android released
User: Jeff Zeitlin / DateTime: 2012-01-30 17:49:59

Thanks, Wei-ju, that did it! I can now download ZMPP (and will, later, just to try it and compare with Twisty), as well as a couple of other apps that the Market was claiming weren't compatible.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4200&start=20#p30758
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Megaupload taken offline
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-01-30 18:30:40

[quote="matt w"]What I'd really like is a system that ensures that creators are somehow compensated for their work without giving them veto power over any derivative uses -- I can sample your [url=http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7vqs7_james-newton-choir_music]avant-garde flute piece[/url] in my [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpsvBvwRuf0]rap record[/url] (ads play before link), but you get paid nicely when I sell a mint. But I have no idea how such a system could be set up, particularly because how can you distinguish between "demanding fair compensation" and "jacking up the price to prohibitive levels"?[/quote]
Drawing the line seems such a minefield. It's simpler just to treat sampling etc. the same as we do quoting in academic texts etc.: you should attribute the sampled pieces and not sample too big a chunk.

[quote]
[url=http://beatonna.livejournal.com/134965.html]I tend to agree[/url]. But it's too hard to legally encode the difference between that and the necessary -- the clip from "Garden State" with the soundtrack replaced by "Tip Drill" was a brilliant commentary on the movie, and it's scandalous that FOX was able to have it yanked.[/quote]
I thought it unnecessary, but I think it should still be allowed. I don't reckon there's too much merit in it (I started reading the graphic novel and it lacked the wit of the original, so I gave up on it). I hadn't heard of the Garden State/Tip Drill mashup, though my search confirms that FOX has struck with extreme prejudice.

More over, it shows what happens when we our internet infrastructure is in the hands of private companies beholden to smallminded local laws.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4254&start=0#p30759
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview:  Jacek Pudlo & Conrad Cook--discuss...Emily S
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-01-30 18:32:40

My current leading theory is that [i]Conrad Cook[/i] is Jacek! Displaced blame is a good cover, but not good enough for an ace detective like myself.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4261&start=0#p30760
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is there a way to use UNDO selectiely in a game area
User: gamedesigner / DateTime: 2012-01-30 18:44:05

Thanks to all who answered my post. David C, Cressy, Ghalev, zarf

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4254&start=0#p30761
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview:  Jacek Pudlo & Conrad Cook--discuss...Emily S
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-01-30 18:45:12

Truly, the troll -- whether Thornton or someone else -- does use numerous other little troll masks to move conversations along.  It's his primary way of interacting socially.  He's good at it.

To be honest, JJ -- with your Scooby Doo reply to this serious matter, I figured you were one.

C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4263&start=0#p30762
Forum: Feedback / Subject: RFE: User should be able to mute a topic
User: Jeremy W. Sherman / DateTime: 2012-01-30 19:06:30

Muting a topic should act like muting a conversation in Gmail. After the user mutes a topic, that topic will never appear in either the unread or the new post lists. Boards whose only unread topics have been muted will also not display as having unread topics.

This basically lets the user look at a topic, go, "Eh, not interested," mute it, and not give it another thought. This would let users opt out of seeing trolling or posts outside their area of interest. Discussion of world news/politics, for example, is nothing but noise when you're here for discussion of IF alone.

A search of extensions on the phpBB website didn't show up anything implementing this feature. Searching the web didn't turn up anything useful, either.

I would be willing to try to hack this feature into a phpBB extension myself some weekend, if I knew it would have a home here when I was done.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4264&start=0#p30763
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Concept Testing: read my faux transcript (short game)
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-01-30 19:09:23

I'm looking for a few people to read a transcript and tell me if it's just a bad idea or not.

That includes Bad Ideas generally, and for a game.

Please email me --

<a href="mailto:conradcook437@gmail.com">conradcook437@gmail.com</a>


C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4254&start=0#p30764
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview:  Jacek Pudlo & Conrad Cook--discuss...Emily S
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2012-01-30 19:28:39

Just chiming in to say that I know Conrad and can guarantee the community that he is not Jacek Pudlo.  Jacek was active even when Conrad was on one of his sojourns, so it's just not possible.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4264&start=0#p30765
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Concept Testing: read my faux transcript (short game)
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2012-01-30 19:31:47

You know my e-mail.  Send away.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4263&start=0#p30766
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: RFE: User should be able to mute a topic
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-30 19:33:55

I'd definitely use it, sounds great.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4254&start=0#p30767
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview:  Jacek Pudlo & Conrad Cook--discuss...Emily S
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-01-30 19:35:39

Perhaps I was overly flippant. I don't really think Conrad is Jacek, and I agree that there is a serious issue here about anonymous abuse spoiling public spaces, and the potential abuses of trust that can flow from multiple online identities.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4254&start=0#p30769
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview:  Jacek Pudlo & Conrad Cook--discuss...Emily S
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-01-30 20:16:00

Well, Adam just replied to my email to him from earlier today.

Therefore I sent him this:


[quote]Adam,

It looks to me like you're Jacek Pudlo, and I've posted that to intfiction.org

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4254">viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4254</a>

--Now, one thing you can do to effectively deny this claim is to forward to me, as quickly as you can, the raw email exchange between you and "Jacek" for his interview of you.

Since it's intended for publication, and since it was *your* interview, I'm sure there's no privacy issue involved there.

The existence of such an exchange would support the counter-claim that you're not him.  I'll post the outcome of this exchange to intfiction.org either way.

Please respond quickly with the email exchange if it's possible.  I don't want to cause you trouble if I'm wrong.


Conrad.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=90#p30770
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-01-30 20:59:11

[quote="Basti50"][quote]I think you must not have noticed the null tile suggestion[/quote]The concept wasn't that hard to grasp. What I meant with layer was that you would have to run through all coordinates and check while with the other system, you would just skip all the empty spaces in between.[/quote]
I didn't think that you didn't grasp it, just that you must have skipped over it. I can't really see calling it a "layer", since it adds nothing but a simple identity check ("if x=1") to the process, one of the fastest things you can do in Inform. This will be negligibly slower than the current map-drawing for a map full of cells, and will be at least a slight improvement over the current performance if there are empty cells, no matter how those cells are arranged.

The compression algorithm you're talking about, on the other hand, definitely does add a new "layer"--another system of lists, more calculations at setup, and another nested list to access at least once per row of the map display. It would undoubtedly speed things up on a map with a lot of empty cells, particularly where those cells appear in chunks. But it will certainly slow down other maps: those with little or no empties, or one where the empties are randomly distributed. Folks aren't likely to create many of the latter, I don't think, but the former will be common. On a full map, the slowdown may be unnoticeable for small maps of the sort that R&D is already good at, but for larger maps, it might be a problem. I'm not sure about either, but theoretically and judging by the benchmarking we've been doing of basic operations, that's a sketch of how I'd expect it to function.

I think that this compression is a nice idea for implementing an illumination map. A light-dark map will usually have just a few areas, grouped in chunks, and any given map is likely to benefit from the compression. The main difficulty would be the need to calculate the compression whenever dynamic lighting changes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4265&start=0#p30771
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Game Jam 2012
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2012-01-30 21:13:00

I participated in Global Game Jam this year from Jan 27-29 at the Sydney city venue. You have to form teams on the spot and produce a game in 48 hours on a theme revealed only when you arrive. The theme is the same for all game jammers around the world, and they all work through the same 48 hour period at once. All games are uploaded to the website at the 48 hour mark, regardless of their state of completion.

Some game jam venues will host any kind of game making (boardgame, videogame, physical game, etc) but the Sydney sites are videogame focused. This year I helped design, and produce sound and music for, a horror game we called Unholy. Unfortunately at the 48 hour mark, the game goal wasn't implemented (find and snuff out the candles that allow the demons to continue to arrive in the village), but nearly all the ghost possession mechanics were in. We even recorded some voice acting. We plan to finish the game now that the jam is over.

There's nothing to stop someone or a team producing an IF game at gamejam, and I even vaguely considered it myself (doing one on the side, for instance), though not being a big fan of speed IF it would be hard for me personally. But I just wanted to put that idea out there, because I question whether anyone's made a parser game for game jam yet. You could get a team ready and do something next year.

For anyone interested in what a 48 hour hothouse of collaborative game design is like, I wrote a full account of my team's experience in my blog at honestgamers.com:

<a class="postlink" href="http://honestgamers.com/bloomer">http://honestgamers.com/bloomer</a>

It's definitely inspiring at the end when you look at what you've got and you say, 'Darn, 48 hours ago we had zilch.' It makes you realise that if you just get together with other coders and artists and cover your skillset bases, producing complete videogames is far more in reach than it feels to most of us most of the time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4254&start=0#p30772
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview:  Jacek Pudlo & Conrad Cook--discuss...Emily S
User: adam / DateTime: 2012-01-30 21:58:36

I have responded to Conrad's blackmail attempt by:

a) calling him an asshole

b) sending the demanded correspondence, for which I apologize to Mr. Pudlo.

It appears it was a successful blackmail attempt, as, although I hold Mr. Pudlo and his work in rather more esteem than the rest of the community, I do not wish to be identified with him.

I am not Jacek Pudlo.

I would cordially invite Conrad Cook to suck my hairy nutsack.

Adam

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4265&start=0#p30773
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Game Jam 2012
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-30 22:04:55

My computer is too old to play the game unfortunately, but you did get me interested in hearing the music tracks. Any chance you would post them separately?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4254&start=10#p30774
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview:  Jacek Pudlo & Conrad Cook--discuss...Emily S
User: adam / DateTime: 2012-01-30 22:14:58

Wait, wait, what?

Someone showed up at the Boston IF Meetup claiming to be me?

WTF?

There's nothing in <a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/browse_frm/thread/9f1a3084f26fb704?pli=1">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... b704?pli=1</a> to indicate that I was even aware of the goddamn thread.  Conrad, are you schizophrenic as well as homeless?

FWIW, I believe in the Jacek-is-a-European theory.  At least, the times when he chooses to answer email are consistent with a European timezone.  I also see no reason to believe he's not a Jew.  And Conrad, to further inflame your psychosis: I *am* circumcised.  Do you take that as further "proof" of your demented accusations?  Are you going to demand that I send you a photograph of my penis?  How will you know it's *my* penis?  Perhaps <a class="postlink" href="http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/9/08">http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/9/08</a> ?

Also, don't any of you sons-of-bitches start thinking that just because I got myself a login on intfiction.org to defend myself against this base calumny, I'm going to stick around here.  rec.arts.int-fiction 4 life.  If you can't handle Usenet you don't [i]deserve[/i] text adventures.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4249&start=10#p30775
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk stylesheets: the Plan
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-30 22:17:53

I've made some updates.

I will add some wording about how JS isn't the universe (but I haven't done this yet).

I knocked out everything about "current paragraph style", because it was confusing and I'm no longer positive it works with I7's future plans. I have queried Graham on this. More when I hear from him.

I added a bit to the default recommended stylesheet:

[code]
	.BufferPara + .BufferPara {
		margin-top: 1em; /* blank lines between paragraphs */
	}
[/code]

[quote] Will there be a core of recommended CSS rules that interpreters that don't use HTML for display should support?[/quote]

Hard to do... I mean, the first real-life will be GlkTerm, which can squeeze boldface and italic and color out of your terminal window, and that's about all. And then there's ClubFloyd. So I can say "I recommend you implement as much as possible!" but that's close to meaningless.

EDIT-ADD: I should note that I set my terminal windows to not respond to color-changing codes. So don't go assuming that's guaranteed either :)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4254&start=10#p30776
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview:  Jacek Pudlo & Conrad Cook--discuss...Emily S
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-01-30 22:30:05

I have indeed gotten a correspondence from Adam.  -- After a couple hours.  I would much rather have gotten it within fifteen minutes, as that would have settled things beyond any kind of doubt.

I need to go over the correspondence, which I cannot do now because the wifi spot is closing.

I'd offer to post the thing, however:

[quote]> Ah.  Blackmail?
>
> You, sir, are an asshole.  Truly, a royal asshole. 

I won't deny that.  But there are more important matters at stake.

> Perhaps you might
> consider not spoiling Jacek's work in progress, in the parts that aren't the
> interview.

I don't exactly care about "Jacek"'s fucking work in progress.  He runs people out of town with his viciousness.

> Here you are.[/quote]

--Since the thing is up in the air, I'm blanking out the original post for the time being.  Just by way of managing any social damage.  

The accusation has been made, and I may end up eating dirt on this.  But we have to do something about "Jacek."  We absolutely have to.  Whoever he is.

He's thoroughly out of bounds.


Conrad.

ps - Just does not add up.  Pudlo's buddy-buddy with Adam, [i]and didn't tell him this was happening?[/i]  Adam didn't check his email for three hours?

Frankly, I don't buy it.  But the interview comes down, at least until we untangle things.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4265&start=0#p30777
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Game Jam 2012
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2012-01-30 22:30:12

Thanks George. Yeah, I have an up to date Mac, but my own PC is also too old to play our game. When we get it finished, then there should be a Mac build.

I've put up a zip with the three pieces of music on my site:

<a class="postlink" href="http://aeriae.com/no/Wade_gamejam2012_music.zip">http://aeriae.com/no/Wade_gamejam2012_music.zip</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4254&start=10#p30778
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview:  Jacek Pudlo & Conrad Cook--discuss...Emily S
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-01-30 22:33:56

Adam,

[quote]I would cordially invite Conrad Cook to suck my hairy nutsack.[/quote]

That kind of thing will not get you anywhere here.  I retaliate.

I retaliate honestly, and therefore it takes time.  But I do retaliate.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4254&start=10#p30779
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview:  Jacek Pudlo & Conrad Cook--discuss...Emily S
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-01-30 22:40:44

[quote]Also, don't any of you sons-of-bitches start thinking that just because I got myself a login on intfiction.org to defend myself against this base calumny, I'm going to stick around here. rec.arts.int-fiction 4 life. If you can't handle Usenet you don't deserve text adventures.[/quote]

This is interesting.

So you're saying Jacek isn't that bad, but being identified with him is base calumny.  And with "if you can't handle usenet" business, it sounds you're ratifying Emily being driven off r.a.if.  Are you? 

Well, I'll go over the correspondence and post something tomorrow.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4254&start=10#p30780
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview:  Jacek Pudlo & Conrad Cook--discuss...Emily S
User: adam / DateTime: 2012-01-30 22:45:50

I don't read my mail for three hours because I have a [i]job[/i], Conrad.  And then when I come home, I have a wife, and other interests than email and the newsgroups.

I quake in my boots about your retaliation.  Perhaps the Hobo Army will paint "Mean Old Dickhead Lives Here" in their secret hobo-symbols on my house.  I have already posted notice of your blackmail attempt to rec.arts.int-fiction and its sister newsgroup; best of luck managing the "social damage."  You have tried to blackmail me; I think it is preposterous of [i]you[/i] to be vowing vengeance.

Pudlo's not particularly buddy-buddy with me anywhere but in your diseased mind, I'm afraid.  I think he's an asshole, but he's a creative and very talented asshole, who writes excellent interactive fiction, and is a first-class playtester.  I don't want to be him.

Of course I do not ratify Emily being driven off raif.

Did she post here that she had been "driven off" raif?  Since I *don't read this fucking site*, I didn't see that; I figured, like all the rest of the old guard, she finally gave up on Usenet, which makes me very sad.

Once again: I invite you to lovingly slurp my hairy nutsack.  Gently caress my bulging testes with your chancre-riddled tongue.

Adam

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4265&start=0#p30781
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Game Jam 2012
User: George / DateTime: 2012-01-30 22:48:57

Now I hear what you were saying about that bass in the Ekans theme [emote]:D[/emote]. Wicked indeed.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4254&start=10#p30782
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview:  Jacek Pudlo & Conrad Cook--discuss...Emily S
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-01-30 22:58:06

Adam,

I don't buy the outrage.  I just do not.

Your writing is too much like "Jacek"'s.  Everything about your writing is.  He likes your work too much.  You comment on the same kinds of topics -- you're both literary critics who aspire to be pornographers.

Do you honestly think anyone believes "Jacek" wrote one game eight years ago and still *cares* enough about IF to troll?  That he's an outsider to the community except for trolling?  That he lives in Sweden and hangs out with a *lonely billionaire* who can't relate to women and thrives off his honest insults so much he gives him the keys to the jag?

No, Emily Short hasn't said a damn thing about Jacek Pudlo that I've ever read.  But I'm also able to look up her last post to r.a.if, and frankly I'm ashamed that I let that go then.  And I would be if that was you that was driven off r.a.if or S. John Ross, or anyone.

--Now riddle me this:  There have been no personal attacks here.  You were absolutely free to post here and say, "Conrad's a lunatic, his accusations don't stand up, and I won't be blackmailed."

But you're all worked up.  Why is that?  And why is what I've written about you worse than what "Jacek" writes about others?


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4254&start=10#p30783
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview:  Jacek Pudlo & Conrad Cook--discuss...Emily S
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-30 23:28:48

[quote="conradcook"]But you're all worked up.  Why is that?  And why is what I've written about you worse than what "Jacek" writes about others?[/quote]

He's worked up because you tried to blackmail him!

It's worse because Adam isn't Jacek!

I like you, Conrad, and I'm afraid that by not locking this thread immediately I only gave you more rope to hang yourself with. But you either need to knock it off or take it back to raif, because for better or worse this is not Usenet.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4263&start=0#p30784
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: RFE: User should be able to mute a topic
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-30 23:42:43

I'd use this feature a fair bit for decluttering, definitely.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4263&start=0#p30786
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: RFE: User should be able to mute a topic
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2012-01-31 02:33:56

Good idea.  Also an ignore forum option would be handy.  [url=http://www.beechtalk.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=17&p=79893]This[/url] site seems to have a feature like that, but I can't see which Mod they used.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4263&start=0#p30787
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: RFE: User should be able to mute a topic
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-01-31 02:55:43

It would also be nice if posts made by people on the foe list would not show up in the unread posts list.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4261&start=0#p30788
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Is there a way to use UNDO selectiely in a game area
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-01-31 02:57:49

[quote="cas"]On the topic of disabling certain commands: for those playing Z-machine games in the latest Gargoyle, you can use the built-in /undo command to undo a turn even if the game doesn't provide support.  Similarly, you can use /save to save a game even if the game has disabled saving, but you'll have to use /restore to restore such games.

These are rather recent features, so do please let me know if you run into problems with them.[/quote]

I don't use Gargoyle, myself, but - great features!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4263&start=0#p30789
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: RFE: User should be able to mute a topic
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-31 03:09:57

[quote="Juhana"]It would also be nice if posts made by people on the foe list would not show up in the unread posts list.[/quote]

There isn't enough underlining, boldface, all-caps and oversized blinky-text on the Internet for how much "yes" this deserves.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4263&start=0#p30790
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: RFE: User should be able to mute a topic
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2012-01-31 05:22:48

I’d also like an option to not show posts quoting posts by people on my foe list. Pudlo’s been on my foe list for a while now, but I still see posts quoted by people replying to him. It kind of defeats the point of a foe list if you still see half of what the troll is posting.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4267&start=0#p30791
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Taboo topic.
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-01-31 05:46:09

Again, all I've done is say that an acknowledge troll, who's allowed to run loose here on intfiction, is a certain person.  And that's so bad that the thread is locked on me.

I did not lock that thread.  

I think we need to work that out.  I'm being told privately that I'm no better than Pudlo.  And this is probably why nobody has addressed this:  Nobody's willing to take the social risk.

Thornton says he's upset because I blackmailed him.  Bcressey agrees I did.  But what I did to Adam was not exactly blackmail.

What I did to *Pudlo* was blackmail.

At the very least, Adam and Pudlo have a special relationship.  Unique in Pudlo's world.

I'll stop.  But I really wish you people -- all of you -- were a little more concerned about Pudlo and the way he runs people out.


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4267&start=0#p30792
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Taboo topic.
User: TheOtherMattW / DateTime: 2012-01-31 06:36:52

[quote="conradcook"]I'll stop.  But I really wish you people -- all of you -- were a little more concerned about Pudlo and the way he runs people out.


Conrad.[/quote]

What you've done is given Pudlo enough attention, satisfaction and reason to stay around for another ten years and smear the good name of someone else based on a hunch.

That's what *I* think.

Matt

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4267&start=0#p30793
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Taboo topic.
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2012-01-31 06:38:01

I can't follow the other thread or any of the politics. All I know is that Jacek is some manner of troll so I just don't read his threads anymore. I dunno, that's about all there is to it, isn't it? I ignore trolls and anyone else who constantly posts dumb stuff, and so should others. You can't really be run out of a forum by someone unless they have admin powers. So I have no special concern about this matter.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4255&start=0#p30794
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: New Windows Version
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-01-31 07:00:44

[quote="rotter"]Disabling Elastic Tabstops has sorted it out thanks. Didn't spot that option on the menu. I assume they have a purpose but they really make the code look weird.[/quote]
I believe the purpose is only to make tables' columns line up. What non-table code did you write that activated the elastic tabstops?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4267&start=0#p30795
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Taboo topic.
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-01-31 08:27:33

Severed, the background is that Jacek Pudlo called Emily Short a lying cunt.  For no reason that can be seen from the context.  Completely unprovoked.

I infer that Emily, who is actually a nice person with personal standards, concluded that r.a.if was an unsafe forum, and has not returned since.

*I* benefitted from Emily's postings to r.a.if.  Maybe other people did too.

I think it's clear that Emily is not the only one run off.  She just happens to be the one where it's demonstratable.

And I think it's clear it's not just r.a.if.  It just happens that it can be demonstrated on r.a.if.

Does ignoring "Jacek" solve this problem?  Would the ability to ignore-list "Jacek" deprive him of the ability to make people feel unsafe?

Well, then, there's no need for moderation of any kind, is there?


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4263&start=0#p30796
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: RFE: User should be able to mute a topic
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2012-01-31 08:39:59

[quote="David Whyld"]I’d also like an option to not show posts quoting posts by people on my foe list. Pudlo’s been on my foe list for a while now, but I still see posts quoted by people replying to him. It kind of defeats the point of a foe list if you still see half of what the troll is posting.[/quote]Just for the benefit of all those with David on their foe list....  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4267&start=0#p30797
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Taboo topic.
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2012-01-31 08:44:10

Haha! 

Wow man.. that's all I got.   [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4240&start=0#p30798
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Post Comp Release (ver. 3.0) of Andromeda Awakening.
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2012-01-31 08:49:54

Congrats. Sorry I never got around to finishing the last test version.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4240&start=0#p30799
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Post Comp Release (ver. 3.0) of Andromeda Awakening.
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-01-31 08:58:51

You can play it from IFDB, now! Your help was valuable!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4267&start=0#p30800
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Taboo topic.
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2012-01-31 09:01:55

[quote="conradcook"]Again, all I've done is say that an acknowledge troll, who's allowed to run loose here on intfiction, is a certain person.[/quote]
If you believe Adam Thornton to be an acknowledged troll, you are badly mistaken. If you believe Jacek Pudlo is an acknowledged troll, you are obviously right, but then your summary of "all you've done" is disingenuous; for the problem is not what you did to Jacek, but what you did to Adam. I'd say: face up to the fact you made a rash mistake, apologise to Adam, and then return to the Pudlo topic if you really want to.

I do agree with you that Pudlo has done some harm. I also agree with Matt that not talking about Pudlo is probably the best way to deal with him. Finally, I'd like to suggest that the idea that Emily has been chased away by Pudlo is based on a wrong assessment of the relative strengths of their personalities.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4267&start=0#p30801
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Taboo topic.
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-01-31 09:42:13

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]If you believe Adam Thornton to be an acknowledged troll, you are badly mistaken.[/quote]

Not acknowledged, clearly.

[quote]Finally, I'd like to suggest that the idea that Emily has been chased away by Pudlo is based on a wrong assessment of the relative strengths of their personalities.[/quote]

Well, let's see...

Here's [url=http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/8b8d12602c1ae1b2/df04b37bf17e121c]the post I'm talking about[/url].  September 18 -- last post in that window, by my display.

Actuallly it's an interesting thread.  We see how active and engaged r.a.if was at that time.  We even have Emily Short mention that r.a.if is the main forum for technical support.  Presumably she's talking about I7; I found that was true for T3.  No longer.

Here's [url=http://groups.google.com/groups/profile?enc_user=a8whFxYAAAA1uSkB9x27skwoQxwTQUkpxtQP97naGHx3rA6c0Sncig]Emily's activity on r.a.if[/url].

With a bit of work, you can find that a troll posted under Emily Short's name, pretending to be her.  Presumably "Jacek," presumably in an attempt to bait our Emily into returning to r.a.if.  

With a little more work, you can find Emily's blog post, mentioning the troll posting as her, and saying 'that person is not me.  I no longer post to r.a.if."  -- The main forum for technical support.

That was a really good conversation.  It was a good forum.  Then you see Pudlo trying to bait Emily into a stupid argument.  He is ignored.  Then "Chuck" tells him he's a troll, and he shouldn't hijack the thread -- probably Pudlo.  Then, without anyone replying to his various troll masks, he posts again, in language that's sure to get a reaction.

And he did get a reaction.

Ignoring him does not work.  He is not harmless.  He is not harmless if you ignore him.  He has a real effect on our willingness to engage with each other, and it's a bad effect.

He's Thornton.


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4267&start=0#p30802
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Taboo topic.
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-01-31 09:54:48

Adam Thornton is not Jacek Pudlo. This forum is not a soapbox for your slander, and you need to stop.

I locked the last thread and will lock this one. Next time I will delete the thread and ban you from the forum. Let's not go there.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=290#p30803
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Garak / DateTime: 2012-01-31 11:48:20

Hi, I'm Garak

It all started about 2 days ago when I watched a doc on YouTube called "Get Lamp" all about the early days of Infocom and Adventure games. Then I found Zoom and started playing some old IF games I remembered from the old days like HHGG and A Mind Forever Voyaging. 

Then I found and played Lost Pig and Photopia and started thinking how much I had wanted to make my own Adventure game back in the old days. Then, I just found Inform and wondered how easy it would be!

And now, I'm here! Hi everybody. It's been a fun 2 days!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4264&start=0#p30804
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Concept Testing: read my faux transcript (short game)
User: HanonO / DateTime: 2012-01-31 11:56:50

Where's the transcript?

Duh. On edit. Sent an email.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=290#p30805
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-01-31 12:15:12

[quote="Garak"]Hi, I'm Garak

It all started about 2 days ago when I watched a doc on YouTube called "Get Lamp" all about the early days of Infocom and Adventure games. Then I found Zoom and started playing some old IF games I remembered from the old days like HHGG and A Mind Forever Voyaging. 

Then I found and played Lost Pig and Photopia and started thinking how much I had wanted to make my own Adventure game back in the old days. Then, I just found Inform and wondered how easy it would be!

And now, I'm here! Hi everybody. It's been a fun 2 days![/quote]

Awesome [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=290#p30806
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-31 13:01:41

I didn't know Get Lamp was on YouTube! Is that officially sanctioned (i.e. will there be takedown requests?) I've been wanting the DVD but I can't really justify it on the [i]family[/i] budget.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4263&start=0#p30807
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: RFE: User should be able to mute a topic
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2012-01-31 13:43:45

In my experience, kill files are not a particularly good way to manage trolls, partly because other people whom you don't intend to ignore will reply to trolls, and partly because trolls can still ruin the community for people who don't actively manage their kill files.

I recommend secret bans instead. In a secret ban, the author's posts are visible only to the author and to administrators, but no one else. Eventually, the trolls go away.

Here's a phpbb mod that implements it: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=72381&sid=971f4e6c781831f545705d8b46db09fa&start=165#p3136484">http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopi ... 5#p3136484</a> (The author of this mod calls them "tarbs" instead of "trolls.")

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=300#p30808
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-31 13:50:49

Get Lamp is CC-licensed (I forget which variant exactly). It's up on youtube as part of a Google tech talk presentation that jscott did.

However, I only see the main movie sequence up there. There are several other mini-docs on the DVD (the Infocom history feature, etc) plus a lot of bonus clips.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4263&start=0#p30809
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: RFE: User should be able to mute a topic
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-01-31 13:52:54

Topic muting doesn't have to be just for trolls -- if there's a long discussion going on about how to do stuff in a system you don't use, it might be nice to prevent it from showing up in the "unread messages." 

The advantage of foe lists over bans, secret or otherwise, is that each user can manage their own foe list. It seems to me as though the moderators want to keep a light touch with banning, and it usually seems to work out reasonably well (though I might not be in the best position to judge, not having been the target of any of the most obnoxious behavior). But without suppressing foe-posts from the unread list, and perhaps posts that quote foes, the foe list isn't that effective.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4263&start=10#p30810
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: RFE: User should be able to mute a topic
User: Jeremy W. Sherman / DateTime: 2012-01-31 13:57:35

dfabulich: That sounds like a great way to handle trolls.

The mute topic request isn't directed towards trolls, though an individual user might use it that way. Trolls are ultimately for admin/mods to deal with. As a user, I just want to not be bothered about new posts each time someone makes another comment on the Megaupload proceedings (to give a concrete example). Those posts are not trolling the community, so banning (silent or otherwise) is inappropriate, but I don't care about it, and I don't want to have to manually ignore it each time I scan the new posts/unread posts lists. Throw in 3 or 4 active topics that someone doesn't care to read more about, and the new/unread signal drowns in the noise.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=300#p30811
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Garak / DateTime: 2012-01-31 14:05:58

The full doc with intro is here. Jason is talking at the end about putting all 120 hours of material up on a website somewhere.

[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRhbcDzbGSU[/url]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3950&start=40#p30812
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Very short simple interactive fictions needed!
User: ela / DateTime: 2012-01-31 14:34:34

Am still waiting for your games! [emote]:([/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4268&start=0#p30813
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Error in else-if code - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-31 14:43:54

Every time I start to really get going on my story, I hit a bump in the road. I added the 'else if' statement to the code below and now I get compile errors. I checked the code for some amount of time and checked the manuals but can't figure it how to fix the problem. Wouldn't mind some help.

RonG

[code]

+ring: Wearable 'platinum ring' 'platinum ring'
 "Faint cryptic runes are inscribed around the band of the platinum ring."  
 
 dobjFor(Wear){
  action(){
   inherited();
   "You feel a strange magical power coursing through your body!
    And, you hear the faint echo of the word GLOW surrounding you.";
   gActor.makeWizard();
  }
 }

 dobjFor(Doff){
  action(){
   inherited();
   "You shudder as the power of the ring and the magic of the GLOW chant leave
    you";
   gActor.makeNormal();
  } 
 }
;

  DefineIAction(Glow);
  VerbRule(Glow)
    'glow'
  :GlowAction
  verbPhrase='glow/glowing'
;
  modify GlowAction
   execAction(){
    if(gActor.powerLevel!=wizard)
     reportFailure('At this time, you do not have the power of a Wizard.');
    else if(gActor.powerLevel=wizard)
     "The blue, radiant light quickly fades from your body.";
     gActor.brightness=0;
    else{
     "You chant the GLOW spell!
      Your body begins to glow with a bright, radiating blue light!";  
      gActor.brightness=10;
      }
     }
;  

[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4268&start=0#p30815
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Error in else-if code - TADS3.1
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-31 14:53:36

"if" only controls a single instruction if you omit the braces. This is a good reason to always use braces. When you write:

[code]
if (blah)
  something;
  something;
else
  something;
[/code]

What the compiler does is:

[code]
if (blach)
  something;
something;
else
  something;
[/code]
Which doesn't make sense.

Also, you used a "=" instead of a "==", which compiles but it's not what you mean.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4255&start=0#p30816
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: New Windows Version
User: rotter / DateTime: 2012-01-31 15:27:43

[quote="ChrisC"][quote="rotter"]Disabling Elastic Tabstops has sorted it out thanks. Didn't spot that option on the menu. I assume they have a purpose but they really make the code look weird.[/quote]
I believe the purpose is only to make tables' columns line up. What non-table code did you write that activated the elastic tabstops?[/quote]

Nothing but standard statements like the following.  This is an example of the type of thing you see.

[code]
Instead of groping a man:
	say "You decided that groping [the noun] would be a really bad idea.";

Instead of searching a man:
	                                                                       say "You decided that searching [the noun] would not be such a good idea.";[/code]

In the above it is just a single tab before the say statement.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4263&start=10#p30817
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: RFE: User should be able to mute a topic
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2012-01-31 15:48:27

[quote="dfabulich"]In my experience, kill files are not a particularly good way to manage trolls, partly because other people whom you don't intend to ignore will reply to trolls, and partly because trolls can still ruin the community for people who don't actively manage their kill files.

I recommend secret bans instead. In a secret ban, the author's posts are visible only to the author and to administrators, but no one else. Eventually, the trolls go away.

Here's a phpbb mod that implements it: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=72381&sid=971f4e6c781831f545705d8b46db09fa&start=165#p3136484">http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopi ... 5#p3136484</a> (The author of this mod calls them "tarbs" instead of "trolls.")[/quote]

I'd favour a permanent ban. If a troll registers another account, ban that. If he registers another, ban that. And so on. Sooner or later, even the most persistent troll will get the message and either leave or behave himself.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4268&start=0#p30818
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Error in else-if code - TADS3.1
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-01-31 15:54:41

To put Nikos's observation in a slightly different way ... T3 doesn't care about indentation. (Unlike Inform 7, which does.) However, Workbench does automatic indentation, which can give you some good guidance on how the compiler is going to interpret your code.

If you only want one statement after an if-test, you can do this:

[code]if (someCondition == true) "That's certainly true. ";
else "That's not true at all. ";[/code]

What you can't do is:

[code]if (someCondition == true) "That's certainly true -- and worth awarding a point. ";
someAchievement.awardPointsOnce();
else "That's not true at all, so no points for you, bucko! ";[/code]

You would have to do it this way:

[code]if (someCondition == true) {
    "That's certainly true -- and worth awarding a point. ";
    someAchievement.awardPointsOnce();
    }
else "That's not true at all, so no points for you, bucko! ";[/code]

But again, what matters is the brackets, not the indentation.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4270&start=0#p30819
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Pointless disambiguation
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-01-31 15:59:46

This was unexpected:

[code]Test is a room.

Bob is a man in Test. Sue is a woman in Test.

Understand "mouth" as a person.

test me with "put hand in mouth"[/code]

This prompts the disambiguation question, "Who do you mean, yourself, Bob or Sue?" - of course if you answer, the line still fails to parse - so why is it even trying to disambiguate? Is there any way to avoid it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4263&start=10#p30820
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: RFE: User should be able to mute a topic
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2012-01-31 16:20:52

[quote="David Whyld"]I'd favour a permanent ban.[/quote]

Secret bans normally are permanent. They're permanent and secret.

[quote]If a troll registers another account, ban that. If he registers another, ban that. And so on. Sooner or later, even the most persistent troll will get the message and either leave or behave himself.[/quote]

There's no easy way to tell when a troll registers another account; you just have to wait for the troll to do more damage and then ban based on the new behavior, after the fact. With secret bans, trolls don't bother to register another account. They just go away of their own free will.

Another subtler technique is a "slow ban," which just makes the site horribly slow for the troll account.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4263&start=10#p30821
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: RFE: User should be able to mute a topic
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2012-01-31 16:23:55

[quote="Jeremy W. Sherman"]As a user, I just want to not be bothered about new posts each time someone makes another comment on the Megaupload proceedings (to give a concrete example).[/quote]

I agree; that makes sense.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4270&start=0#p30822
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pointless disambiguation
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-31 16:24:59

I assume there's some order-of-operations thing deep inside the parser. (It's not simple left-to-right, as "put mouth in hand" gives the same result.)

Any fix would involve going deep inside the parser and changing things. I expect that side effects would outweigh the intended effects -- but I haven't looked.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4148&start=10#p30823
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good beginner games
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2012-01-31 16:45:11

So getting back to the topic of newbie games...

I strongly recommend [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=9p8kh3im2j9h2881]Bronze[/url] for new players.  Firstly, its tutorial mode is explicitly designed for a first-time player.  Secondly, its gameplay is not too different from Zork (i.e. it's not a one-room game, relatively little conversation, and otherwise not too "weird"), but it has plenty of modern niceties (GO TO a room, FIND an object, THINK ABOUT an object (glorified examine), and a few others I've forgotten) and a modern design (e.g. no maze of twisty little passages, IIRC zarf-polite or -merciful).  Overall it's a fairly "normal" modern work of IF, but quite compatible with an inexperienced user.

Just one warning: there are multiple endings, and you need to advance multiple goals to get the "best" ending; if you complete one goal and the rest aren't far advanced enough, the game will end.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4268&start=0#p30824
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Error in else-if code - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-01-31 16:49:54

I looked at all the posts but still don't understand this. The statement I added to the original of this was the two lines of the code that begin with 'else if'. before that, all the story compiled and ran with no problems; including the wizard section. I added the 'else if' part so that the actor could turn off the glowing, if he desired for some reason. As you can see, I made your suggestions but I no doubt did it all incorrectly [emote]:roll:[/emote]  [emote]:roll:[/emote] 

[code]
modify GlowAction
   execAction()
    if(gActor.powerLevel!==wizard){
     reportFailure('At this time, you do not have the power of a Wizard.');}
    else if(gActor.powerLevel==wizard){
     "The blue, radiant light quickly fades from your body.";
     gActor.brightness=0;}
    else{
     "You chant the GLOW spell!
      Your body begins to glow with a bright, radiating blue light!";  
      gActor.brightness=10;
;      
 [/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4268&start=0#p30825
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Error in else-if code - TADS3.1
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2012-01-31 16:59:11

You're missing a } for your final else block.

Edit: And the operator for "not equal to" is != (one exclamation mark and one equals sign). See chapter 3.4 of [i]Learning TADS 3[/i] for a full explanation.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4270&start=0#p30826
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pointless disambiguation
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2012-01-31 17:09:17

Yeah, if I had no reason for sticking my hand in Bob or Sue's mouth, I'd try to ensure the command reported just putting my hand into my own mouth.

Still, strange. I guess this assumes in a way that a "mouth" is always a "part of" any "man" or "woman" in Inform7?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4271&start=0#p30827
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Stop Talking About Me
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2012-01-31 17:11:06

[Jacek does a vocal jazz improv, his lonely billionaire friend playing on saxofon.]

Don't talk about me, talk about me, don't talk about me, talk (Mmm)
(Yeah) Talk about me, don't talk about me (Ooh), talk about me, talk (Yeah)
Don't talk about me, talk about me (Mmm), don't talk about me, talk (Mmm)
(Yeah, baby) Talk about me, don't talk about me (Mmm), talk about me, talk

But seriously, stop talking about me. I am not important. Interactive fiction is. If you truly love me, ignore me. Smother me with your loving silence.



Adam, had you been a character in a Victorian novel, releasing private correspondence to a third party without your correspondent's approval would have gotten you ostracised for life. You can redeem yourself only by writing an epistolary IF game where I get to be Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil.

Conrad, think of all the time you could have used hypnotising girls into liking you instead of wasting it on Pudlomania.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4271&start=0#p30828
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Stop Talking About Me
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2012-01-31 17:14:04

Go away.

[quote]This post was made by Jacek Pudlo who is currently on your ignore list. Display this post.[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4271&start=0#p30829
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Stop Talking About Me
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-01-31 17:18:37

[quote]Go away.
[/quote]

I second the motion.


Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4268&start=0#p30830
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Error in else-if code - TADS3.1
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-01-31 18:10:33

It seems you don't grasp the basics yet. Like the syntax of functions/methods and "if" statements. For example your execAction()'s code is not inside braces. Also, your code's formatting is very chaotic and unreadable, which *will* make things very difficult for you. A good way to write that code is:

[code]
modify GlowAction
    execAction()
    {
        if (gActor.powerLevel != wizard) {
            reportFailure('At this time, you do not have the power of a Wizard.');
        } else if (gActor.powerLevel == wizard) {
            "The blue, radiant light quickly fades from your body.";
            gActor.brightness = 0;
        } else {
            "You chant the GLOW spell!
            Your body begins to glow with a bright, radiating blue light!";
            gActor.brightness = 10;
    }
;
[/code]
And now it's very obvious that the final "else" is missing the closing brace.

Another thing you're missing is putting a space after a text sentence ends. For example, instead of:

[code]
"The blue, radiant light quickly fades from your body."
[/code]

You should write:

[code]"The blue, radiant light quickly fades from your body. "[/code]
This is needed in order to avoid sentences running together.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4270&start=0#p30831
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pointless disambiguation
User: Jeremy W. Sherman / DateTime: 2012-01-31 18:29:12

[quote="Jizaboz"]I guess this assumes in a way that a "mouth" is always a "part of" any "man" or "woman" in Inform7?[/quote]The supplied code says that "mouth" is just another word for "person".

The reason why you get asked to disambig before being told it doesn't work is that an action can be allowed for only a certain noun/second noun, so the parser has to work out which object/s you are referring to before deciding whether it can do what you ask of it with that/those object/s.

I reckon [url=http://www.inform-fiction.org/manual/html/ch4.html]DM4 Ch. IV: Describing and Parsing[/url] could provide the definitive answer.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4270&start=0#p30832
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pointless disambiguation
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-01-31 21:28:33

[quote]The reason why you get asked to disambig before being told it doesn't work is that an action can be allowed for only a certain noun/second noun[/quote]

Mm, that's not the right diagnosis, I don't think. The command isn't being rejected based on action/noun/second-noun rules; it's being rejected because "hand" doesn't match any object at all. Meanwhile, "mouth" matches several objects and triggers a disambiguation.

In a simplified parser diagram, those both happen at the same stage and therefore it makes sense for the rejection to happen first. In practice, the parser isn't simple.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4263&start=10#p30833
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: RFE: User should be able to mute a topic
User: Jeremy W. Sherman / DateTime: 2012-01-31 23:32:34

I've been looking at how phpBB handles this all.

When you look at the index page, the forums listed there can be marked out as having unread content. Right now, that's just a simple comparison of timestamps: when was the last post made to that forum versus when was the last time the user looked at that forum's topics. Making a forum show as having unread posts only when that last post wasn't in a muted topic would mean a lot of database hits, since you'd have to actually pull the posts for each forum in order to cross off the muted topics and calculate a possibly earlier latest (non-muted) post date. That's probably not worth it, and if you're relying on the unread/new posts searches, it doesn't matter, anyway, since you'll mark all read when you're done.

Filtering the new/unread search results looks doable so far. You're already pulling topics, so omitting them based on a condition should be dead simple.

Long story short:[list][*]Clearing the "unread posts" icon next to the forums on the index page won't be happening. [/*:m][*]Filtering out muted posts from the new/unread search results is in the works.[/*:m][/list:u]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4272&start=0#p30834
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: how to work out capitalization. [SOLVED]
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-01 03:56:07

This is something I couldn't figure out.
[code]Uncle Oren is a person in the Shore. The printed name is "uncle Oren". The description is "[orens_descr]." Understand "man" as uncle Oren.[/code]
Two questions, one of which is surely trivial and the other will surely prove to be (as usual):
1) Why do I have to make that Understand rule? If I type "x man", Inform says "You can't see etc."--- while the PRONOUNS test gives an "him" for uncle Oren.
2) I've set the printed name "uncle Oren" 'cause I feel "You can see [b]U[/b]ncle Oren here." as terribly wrong. Too bad, if I do something else, the answer is (sic and i.e.) "[b]u[/b]ncle Oren does xxx", with the first letter in lowercase.

How do I work around this (I mean the second question, the first works: it's just for polish's sake)

Thanks a lot!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4272&start=0#p30835
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: how to work out capitalization.
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-02-01 04:49:06

As for number 2, just don't capitalize "uncle Oren" in the first place and you won't have to worry about it:
[code]The Shore is a room.
uncle Oren is a person in the Shore.
test me with "x oren / oren, jump".[/code]

ETA: if that source looks ugly, you could do this:
[code]A person called uncle Oren is in the Shore.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4272&start=0#p30836
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: how to work out capitalization.
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-02-01 05:18:06

As for 1, Inform doesn't automatically understand things by their kind name (see point #7 in 4.17 - "Review of Chapter 4: Kinds"). However, even if it did, that wouldn't have affected your code since you made Oren a "person" rather than a "man" -- a (sub)kind of person. The reason the parser recognizes Oren as "him" is unrelated; the person kind has a gender property and it just so happens the default for that is masculine. Therefore, when Oren gets mentioned by the game, he's set as the default object for parsing the pronoun "him."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4272&start=0#p30837
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: how to work out capitalization. [SOLVED]
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-01 05:19:29

Thanks a lot, it works. 

It [i]was[/i] trivial, as I thought.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4272&start=0#p30838
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: how to work out capitalization.
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-01 05:27:08

[quote="Skinny Mike"]As for 1, Inform doesn't automatically understand things by their kind name (see point #7 in 4.17 - "Review of Chapter 4: Kinds"). However, even if it did, that wouldn't have affected your code since you made Oren a "person" rather than a "man" -- a (sub)kind of person. The reason the parser recognizes Oren as "him" is unrelated; the person kind has a gender property and it just so happens the default for that is masculine. Therefore, when Oren gets mentioned by the game, he's set as the default object for parsing the pronoun "him."[/quote]
So, is there a way around it? I mean, if I say "oren is a man" does it work? Will check.

Anyway, looks like I7 is sexist. [emote]:P[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4272&start=0#p30839
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: how to work out capitalization. [SOLVED]
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-02-01 05:36:41

[quote="Jamespking"]So, is there a way around it? I mean, if I say "oren is a man" does it work? Will check.[/quote]
If you mean having the parser automatically understand "man" as uncle Oren, then no, Inform doesn't automatically understand any kinds by their internal name. The way "around" it is to manually add the understand phrases:

[code]Understand "man" as a man.
Understand "woman" as a woman.[/code]
Now the player can refer to any man or a woman in the game as MAN or WOMAN.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4272&start=0#p30842
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: how to work out capitalization. [SOLVED]
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-01 06:48:04

Just a note that as a native American English speaker, "You can see Uncle Oren here" seems correct to me with the capital U. When "Uncle" or "Aunt" is used as part of the name, I capitalize it; so "You can see Uncle Oren here," but "You can see your uncle Oren here." Consider the way that Cousin Itt from the Addams family always gets a capital C.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4275&start=0#p30844
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Best System for Hypertext
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-01 07:23:13

I'm considering writing a hypertext story. I've been pointed to [url=http://gimcrackd.com/etc/src/]Twine[/url], which is simple to use but doesn't support state tracking. What are my other options?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4268&start=0#p30845
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Error in else-if code - TADS3.1
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2012-02-01 07:27:26

Also, that final else will never happen. If gActor.powerLevel is wizard, the second code block is executed - if it isn't, we get the first. How are you planning to trigger the third?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4275&start=0#p30846
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Best System for Hypertext
User: Alex / DateTime: 2012-02-01 08:02:32

Quest is getting a new "gamebook mode" in the forthcoming 5.2 release - I wonder if that would suit your needs?

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.textadventures.co.uk/blog/2012/01/16/gamebook-mode-choose-your-own-adventure-in-quest-5-2/">http://www.textadventures.co.uk/blog/20 ... quest-5-2/</a>

I can send you a beta build if you're interested.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4272&start=0#p30847
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: how to work out capitalization. [SOLVED]
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2012-02-01 08:11:29

[quote="matt w"]Just a note that as a native American English speaker, "You can see Uncle Oren here" seems correct to me with the capital U. When "Uncle" or "Aunt" is used as part of the name, I capitalize it; so "You can see Uncle Oren here," but "You can see your uncle Oren here." Consider the way that Cousin Itt from the Addams family always gets a capital C.[/quote]

And as a native American English speaker and a copy editor by profession, I can confirm that Matt is correct. "You can see uncle Oren here" is, in fact, incorrect.

-Kevin

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4275&start=0#p30848
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Best System for Hypertext
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-01 08:27:47

I like the look of the plans for the beta- especially the scope for embedding different media in the story. I'd be interested in checking out the beta, I'll even give you some feedback on it if that would be helpful. My email is notquitethere[funny looking 'a']gmail[dot]com.

My timeline for this project is very open, so I'm looking to explore all the different options. Just had a look at Undum, which Dierda Kiai used to excellent effect with [url=http://www.deirdrakiai.com/theplay/]The Play[/url]. It's entirely web-based, so using it would give me another good reason to properly learn css, something I've been procrastinating over for a few months now.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4272&start=0#p30850
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: how to work out capitalization. [SOLVED]
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-01 08:37:24

[quote="jacksonmead"][quote="matt w"]Just a note that as a native American English speaker, "You can see Uncle Oren here" seems correct to me with the capital U. When "Uncle" or "Aunt" is used as part of the name, I capitalize it; so "You can see Uncle Oren here," but "You can see your uncle Oren here." Consider the way that Cousin Itt from the Addams family always gets a capital C.[/quote]

And as a native American English speaker and a copy editor by profession, I can confirm that Matt is correct. "You can see uncle Oren here" is, in fact, incorrect.

-Kevin[/quote]
Well, what to say. It is really precious to have such insights. That's the kind of mistake I will make all my life, without knowing...
This solves the problem... twice!

Thanks for your help.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4275&start=0#p30851
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Best System for Hypertext
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-01 09:07:41

I thought Twine did support state tracking [url=http://gimcrackd.com/etc/doc/#code,variables](thus)[/url]; though I haven't used Twine at all and doing this may make it much less simple.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4276&start=0#p30852
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Extensions Don't Work!
User: Garak / DateTime: 2012-02-01 09:20:29

I am new to Inform, but I read on this forum somewhere 'install an extension rather than trying to re-invent the wheel'. Good advice I thought.

So I downloaded Postures by Emily Short, because I have a sofa I would like to be able to sit on.

I installed the extension into Inform and then looked at the documentation for the extension. It says "Each piece of furniture comes with a range of possible postures, which can be expressed with the posture-permission relation: as in

	The bunk bed allows seated and reclining."

So into the Source I entered "The sofa allows seated and reclining." and I get the error message 

"Problem. You wrote 'the sofa allows seated and reclining'  : but I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with, so I am ignoring this sentence altogether."

What gives? I tried defining the sofa as a piece of furniture, but that just creates more errors! There's nothing in the extension's documentation about how to define furniture or anything or am I missing something basic?

  [emote]:cry:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4276&start=0#p30853
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Extensions Don't Work!
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2012-02-01 09:30:09

Do you have:

[code]Include Postures by Emily Short.[/code]

at the top of your project source code?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4276&start=0#p30856
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Extensions Don't Work!
User: Garak / DateTime: 2012-02-01 09:57:57

no?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4276&start=0#p30857
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Extensions Don't Work!
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2012-02-01 10:05:36

Then it you should put it there!  [emote];)[/emote] 

Not only do extensions have to be in the right folders, they also must be mentioned in the source code.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4276&start=0#p30858
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Extensions Don't Work!
User: Garak / DateTime: 2012-02-01 10:09:17

(after some tinkering)

>sit on sofa
You are now seated on the sofa.

!!!!HOORAY!!!
 [emote]:lol:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4276&start=0#p30859
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Extensions Don't Work!
User: Garak / DateTime: 2012-02-01 10:10:30

thanks, that open ups all the extensions now, which is a huge amount of stuff I can use. Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4275&start=0#p30860
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Best System for Hypertext
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-01 10:10:39

Ah, I think you're right there. I was basing my assessment on what I saw in the tutorial videos. It looks like you need to use code (doesn't look that hard though) rather than just use Twine's menu-based development environment, but again I might be mistaken.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4276&start=0#p30861
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Extensions Don't Work!
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2012-02-01 10:22:01

You're welcome  [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4270&start=0#p30862
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pointless disambiguation
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-01 11:47:38

I just discovered that the Does the Player Mean Rules don't run in this case. Once again I'm infuriated that disambiguation could EVER happen without consulting the DPMR. I thought I had this whole thing sorted out because they did run with a simpler test case. But no.

I get that the disambiguation is happening at an earlier stage - perhaps before the exact grammar line has been decided, or at least before the split between noun and second noun has been located. But I don't get why you'd ever want to do that. It should be a fundamental assumption of the parser: Figure out as much as you can before asking the player to disambiguate.

This is looking more like a bug to me.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=0#p30863
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Moderation note
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-01 12:00:41

Some of you may have noticed that a new thread was posted this morning, in the ongoing saga of Conrad Cook v. World. 

I deleted the thread and banned Conrad from the forum. The ban is meant to be temporary, and with any luck he will rejoin us in a few days and we can all move on. In the meantime you can catch up with him on rec.arts.int-fiction.

I believe this marks the second time a real user has been banned. It is not a happy milestone for me. At the same time it felt like the right call, and as a moderator on a forum with no hard and fast rules, all I have to rely on is my judgment.

Deleting the thread may have been a mistake. I did it because the content was virtually unchanged from the previous posts on that topic, and contained the same objectionable elements that had resulted in the thread locks. I did it because I specifically asked Conrad not to start another thread, and told him that it would be deleted if he did.

As a rule, if a spammer starts a new thread, I delete the entire thread. I always feel bad if I remove a response from a real person this way, but frequently they quote the spam post and its links, and obviously that is just as problematic as the original content.

Here are the things that will get you banned, as I understand them today:
[list]
[*]Spamming[/*:m]
[*]Writing obscenities in 72 pt font[/*:m]
[*]Death threats and blackmail[/*:m][/list:u]

If you feel strongly that this list is incomplete, or conversely that it stifles your creative expression, I am happy to discuss it. As always, if you have an issue with the moderation policies or specific decisions, you should feel free to PM Merk. I am just as much a guest here as anyone else.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4268&start=0#p30864
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Error in else-if code - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-02-01 13:09:31

Well, I'm stumped. That's not difficult for me. I made all the suggestions I received and now I receive 109 errors, yes 109, when I compile my story. If I comment out the entire 'ring' section then the program compiles with no errors and and runs as expected. I still think that the problem is in the else-if section.

[quote]

 +ring: Wearable 'platinum ring' 'platinum ring'
 "Faint cryptic runes are inscribed around the band of the platinum ring."  
 //location = Beach
 dobjFor(Wear){
  action(){
   inherited();
   "You feel a strange magical power coursing through your body!
    And, you hear the faint echo of the word GLOW surrounding you.";
   gActor.makeWizard();
  }
 }

 dobjFor(Doff){
  action(){
   inherited();
   "You shudder as the power of the ring and the magic of the GLOW chant leave
    you";
   gActor.makeNormal();
  } 
 }
;

  DefineIAction(Glow);
  VerbRule(Glow)
    'glow'
  :GlowAction
  verbPhrase='glow/glowing'
;
 
 modify GlowAction
 execAction()
 {
   if(gActor.powerLevel!=wizard){
     reportFailure('At this time, you do not have the power of a Wizard.');
   }else if(gActor.powerLevel==wizard){
     "The blue, radiant light quickly fades from your body.";
     gActor.brightness==0;
   }else{
     "You chant the GLOW spell!
      Your body begins to glow with a bright, radiating blue light!";  
      gActor.brightness==10;
 }
;      [/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4270&start=0#p30865
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pointless disambiguation
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-01 13:14:21

[quote]I just discovered that the Does the Player Mean Rules don't run in this case.[/quote]

Already filed as bug <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=633">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=633</a> , looks like.

[quote]But I don't get why you'd ever want to do that. It should be a fundamental assumption of the parser: Figure out as much as you can before asking the player to disambiguate.[/quote]

I agree, but in terms of the existing code it probably counts as a feature request.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4268&start=0#p30866
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Error in else-if code - TADS3.1
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-01 13:17:33

Well, for one thing, you're using the comparison operator (==) in a couple of places where you want the assignment operator (=).

[b]Edit:[/b] However, that won't cause compilation errors. Such a statement will simply evaluate as true or nil, but will have no effect on the rest of the code. It's no different than writing this line:
[code]
1;[/code]

Looking through your code, I don't immediately spot any syntax errors. What you've posted should compile.

However, as pointed out earlier in this thread, that final else block will never be reached, because the two previous tests take care of all of the possible cases. [[ It looks to me as if you're trying to use that final block to create an Unglow action. If so, you need to start by figuring out what command the player will use to stop glowing, and then implement that separately.]] [b]Edit:[/b] No, I see it now. You need a separate test to determine if the player is currently glowing. You're trying to test powerlevel again, and that won't tell you what you need to know.

I would also point out that you don't need to use modify to create the code for execAction(). You can put that within the definition of DefineIAction(Glow), before the semicolon.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=0#p30867
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2012-02-01 13:26:35

I've said this elsewhere, but since you've asked for commentary, I'd like to request that intfiction.org take a harder line toward trolls. I'd like intfiction.org to be the sort of place where uncivil discourse is deleted, and troll users are secretly banned.

In my personal opinion, intfiction.org has already crossed the line into an "unsafe place."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4268&start=0#p30868
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Error in else-if code - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-02-01 13:28:39

RealNC;

You are correct about my lack of TADS basics and my formatting of the sections of my code. However, despite my dementia [Look it up.], I continue to strive to learn TADS. I spend eight to ten hours a day(often longer) working on it. I will make the formatting changes you suggested.

I really am not looking for pity or criticism , so, please give me just a little bit of slack.

RonG

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=0#p30869
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2012-02-01 14:06:48

I feel like "unsafe" is a good word to describe a situation where a few people in control have license to censor discussion based on ill-defined criteria like "civility" and "trolling."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=0#p30874
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-01 14:13:01

What do you mean by "unsafe," exactly? If you're referring to general issues of civility, it seems to me that the flame levels on the forum are still generally rather low, especially compared to other parts of the internet. If you have something more specific in mind, that might be a concern. (You can PM me if there's something you don't want to talk about in open forum, though obviously I have no Special Powers so there might not be any point in doing so.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4268&start=10#p30875
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Error in else-if code - TADS3.1
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-01 14:14:06

[quote="RonG"]I really am not looking for pity or criticism , so, please give me just a little bit of slack.[/quote]
I can't speak for Nikos, but unless I'm missing something, all he said was, "It seems you don't grasp the basics yet." That could be read as criticism, but I suspect he meant it simply as an observation. Possibly an observation tinged with impatience -- but if you're working at it for hours every day and running afoul of such basic syntax errors, I would suggest that you might find it useful to slow down and become more methodical. Check each line after you write it to make sure the syntax is correct, and check each code block to spot logic errors and structural errors.

I would second Nikos's observation about indenting code. Workbench does this for you automatically. Are you using a Mac? If so, you'll need to indent manually -- but it's still worth doing!

Another thing I would suggest is, when you get a bunch of compilation errors, try to narrow it down. Comment out a small block of code rather than a large one. Also, try compiling after you add or change just a few lines. This will make it easier to find your errors.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4268&start=10#p30876
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Error in else-if code - TADS3.1
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-02-01 14:27:23

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Well, for one thing, you're using the comparison operator (==) in a couple of places where you want the assignment operator (=).[/quote]

Since this appears to be one of the things that is causing RonG recurring trouble, here's a slightly expanded explanation:
When what you mean is "tell me whether or not these things are equal," such as in a conditional ("if"/"else if") statement, you need to use ==. 
The opposite of that question, "tell me whether or not these things are not equal" is represented with !=.

When what you mean is "make this thing equal this other thing," such as in some code that you intend to have an effect on the future state of things, you need to use =.  There's no such thing as the opposite of that, since of course "make this thing not equal to this other thing" could have so many different results that the computer has no idea which one you could mean. ("Make brightness not 'ten'? Uh, how about 'fifteen'? or 'orange'?")

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4270&start=0#p30877
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pointless disambiguation
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-01 14:50:46

That bug report is enlightening, and suggests a workaround: It's specifically a problem with the word "put." I could do a little hacking around with "when the quoted verb matches 'put'."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4272&start=0#p30878
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: how to work out capitalization. [SOLVED]
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-01 14:55:25

I do believe "your uncle Oren" is the correct spelling, however. In that case, "uncle" isn't part of his name.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=0#p30879
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-01 15:03:16

As this debate works itself out, I find myself becoming more comfortable with a more restrictive level of moderation.

Having said that, I don't mind a higher level of hostility on the "General and Off-Topic" forum than in the actual content-oriented areas.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4272&start=10#p30880
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: how to work out capitalization. [SOLVED]
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-02-01 15:15:24

I think that in "Uncle Oren," "Uncle" is functioning almost as a title, and so is capitalized, as Kevin has stated, as effectively part of the name.  In "your uncle Oren," it performs a different function -- almost as an adjective modifying "Oren" -- so Capmikee is correct that upper-case would be inappropriate for that usage.

Robert Rothman (self-proclaimed head of the language police)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=0#p30881
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2012-02-01 15:18:24

[quote="dfabulich"]I've said this elsewhere, but since you've asked for commentary, I'd like to request that intfiction.org take a harder line toward trolls. I'd like intfiction.org to be the sort of place where uncivil discourse is deleted, and troll users are secretly banned.

In my personal opinion, intfiction.org has already crossed the line into an "unsafe place."[/quote]

Well said. Let's go pro-active on the trolls and ban those who make a point of causing trouble and acting like idiots simply to antagonise other people. Yes, Pudlo. I'm looking at you here.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=0#p30882
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-01 15:24:54

[quote="dfabulich"]I've said this elsewhere, but since you've asked for commentary, I'd like to request that intfiction.org take a harder line toward trolls. I'd like intfiction.org to be the sort of place where uncivil discourse is deleted, and troll users are secretly banned.[/quote]

I am sympathetic to the request. Many others have urged a similar policy and I agree with your concerns and respect your intentions.

However, I am really not the right choice for that job. I don't like locking threads or banning people or wielding any of the other moderator powers. But if the community finds someone else to handle those duties and Merk approves it, I obviously won't fight it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=0#p30883
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2012-02-01 15:27:19

[quote="David Whyld"]Well said. Let's go pro-active on the trolls and ban those who make a point of causing trouble and acting like idiots simply to antagonise other people. Yes, Pudlo. I'm looking at you here.[/quote]
Heartily seconded.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=0#p30884
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-01 15:28:54

I think that the level of moderation has been fairly close to right, myself. I use the Foe feature liberally, and it's not difficult to work out which topics to ignore.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=0#p30885
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-01 15:32:23

I'm definitely pro-light touch. This board is quite civil, both by general standards and by that of the internet in general. Ben has dealt with the recent issues in a calm and moderate fashion, and more generally the board is kept clean of spam. I don't see as there's anything wrong. I don't think the positing atmosphere would be improved if a pro-active threat of banning was hanging over people's heads.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=10#p30886
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2012-02-01 15:39:29

[quote="bcressey"]However, I am really not the right choice for that job. I don't like locking threads or banning people or wielding any of the other moderator powers. But if the community finds someone else to handle those duties and Merk approves it, I obviously won't fight it.[/quote]

Where do I apply for the job? Why I? Because if morality ever becomes an olympic sport, I'll win not only the gold in honesty but also the silver in modesty. Actually, the fact that I'm willing to settle for the silver means that I'll probably get the gold anyway. Modesty as an olympic sport is kind of funny that way.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4268&start=10#p30887
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Error in else-if code - TADS3.1
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-01 15:42:55

[quote="tove"]When what you mean is "tell me whether or not these things are equal," such as in a conditional ("if"/"else if") statement, you need to use ==.[/quote]
Here's a linguistic trick. Get in the habit, when typing ==, of saying to yourself "is equivalent to" or "is the same as" rather than "is equal to." This makes it easier for your brain to track what you're doing.

As noted earlier in the thread (in an edit), those mistakes won't cause compilation errors. I'm not seeing any syntax errors in Ron's latest code, but I'm probably missing something obvious.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=10#p30888
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-01 15:46:56

You can PM Merk and make your case to him. It's really more of a formality; I expect he'll be so impressed by your medal that he offers you the job right away.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=10#p30889
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-02-01 15:47:16

[quote="capmikee"]As this debate works itself out, I find myself becoming more comfortable with a more restrictive level of moderation.

Having said that, I don't mind a higher level of hostility on the "General and Off-Topic" forum than in the actual content-oriented areas.[/quote]

Agreed.  The trolls have been fairly civil about not going anywhere near the development advice subfora.

In general, I think the moderation line should be between "attacks on works" and "attacks on people," with general racism, sexism, and assorted other bigotry in the latter category.  The former are certainly juvenile, but (especially when limited to works that have received plenty of critical acclaim) less harmful, and frequently hard to distinguish from earnest reviews and therefore hard for moderators to make judgment calls on; the latter are inexcusable.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4268&start=10#p30890
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Error in else-if code - TADS3.1
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-02-01 15:50:15

Likewise, I mentally say "is now" when I type "=" (not that I use TADS, but I do use Processing occasionally).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4268&start=10#p30891
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Error in else-if code - TADS3.1
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-01 15:58:24

Ron, your latest code is missing a close brace before the final semicolon. (Please use the code tag instead of the quote tag.)

[code]
modify GlowAction
    execAction() {
        if (gActor.powerLevel != wizard) {
            reportFailure('At this time, you do not have the power of a Wizard.');
        }
        else if (gActor.brightness != 0) {
            "The blue, radiant light quickly fades from your body.";
            gActor.brightness = 0;
        }
        else {
            "You chant the GLOW spell!
            Your body begins to glow with a bright, radiating blue light!"; 
            gActor.brightness = 10;
        }
    }
;
[/code]

As others have said, it's absolutely critical that you format consistently so that you can spot mis-matched braces.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=10#p30892
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-02-01 16:08:54

I second the pro-light touch. What we had here was an anomaly - and I think the reaction to that distasteful anomaly was prompt, quick, and fair. What we usually have - on the negative side, naturally - is people being obnoxious, disrespectful, immature. Normally these people are either ignored or someone finds in their negativity something from which to raise a constructive discussion (and if all else fails, we can always count on the Ghalevs of the world to respond appropriately and, IMO, wittily, or failing that at least just being funny).

As a method, it does mean a messier forum on the short run. It also means a more open atmosphere in the long run.

The forum has done well so far. It's even caused Pudlo to post in a more entertaining manner, and somehow his insults here seem to be blunter (probably because there's plenty of people here who don't want to see a repeat of Usenet and are ready to jump on him like a ton of bricks at the slightest provocation. He still provokes, but... well, just see the response to his pathethic attemp to rehash his Blue Lacuna thrashing).

I don't enjoy people being negative, insulting, obnoxious, and all that. But I like censorship less. Rather than driving people away, I'd prefer - if at all possible - to give them the chance to understand what they're doing and be better. And if they don't fit, to give them the chance not to let the door hit them on the way out.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=10#p30893
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-01 16:10:00

[quote="bcressey"][*]Writing obscenities in 72 pt font[/quote]


[size=200]Oh FU-[/size]

[size=71](er, FUCK).[/size]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=10#p30894
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-01 16:11:54

[quote="tove"]In general, I think the moderation line should be between "attacks on works" and "attacks on people," with general racism, sexism, and assorted other bigotry in the latter category. [/quote]

I'd like to see "attacks on people" moderated as well, but I'm admittedly much less breezy than most when it comes to this sort of thing. I'm a big fan of moderation (in moderation, of course) [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=10#p30895
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2012-02-01 16:21:27

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="tove"]In general, I think the moderation line should be between "attacks on works" and "attacks on people," with general racism, sexism, and assorted other bigotry in the latter category. [/quote]

I'd like to see "attacks on people" moderated as well[/quote]
Yes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=10#p30896
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2012-02-01 16:50:42

[quote="Afterward"]I feel like "unsafe" is a good word to describe a situation where a few people in control have license to censor discussion based on ill-defined criteria like "civility" and "trolling."[/quote]

I can understand that point of view, though it's not one I share.

But, as I say, this is just my personal opinion, and my personal opinion is that whenever I post here, I'm risking exposing myself to really hostile responses from a vocal minority of chronic trolls. For me, that usually means that it's not worth it for me to post here.

I'm mostly not the one getting flamed, because I try to avoid participating here, and I try to be really careful when I do participate, but just watching other people getting flamed is enough to dissuade me from participating more actively.

The attitude of the community seems to be that trolls are just something you have to endure. Afterward, for example, seems to hold the view that giving people the power to censor trolls would be worse than enduring the trolls. I dislike censorship, too, so I can understand that point of view. I think the majority of the posters here will agree with him, that if you can't stand the heat, you should get out of the kitchen.

However, I think that's because the IF community has a survivor bias. People who won't put up with chronic trolls are unwilling to put up with the IF community. Anyone still left in the community is therefore willing to put up with chronic trolls. (Perhaps that's the sort of trained helplessness you get when you grow up on Usenet.)

But, if you ask me, intfiction.org can do better than that. Secret bans are distasteful, but they really work; they broaden participation and they elevate discourse.

For now, I think I'm not alone in avoiding the kitchen.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4272&start=10#p30897
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: how to work out capitalization. [SOLVED]
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-01 16:57:58

Ok. I'll name him 'plain Mr. oren'. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4268&start=10#p30898
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Error in else-if code - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-02-01 17:04:03

Okay guys. I'm going to start all over again with this ring stuff. Look closely at this code and you will see that there is no way to turn off the actor's glow without taking the ring off his finger. I'm looking for a way to turn off the radiance (glow) just by saying the word GLOW again. In other words, I hoped to turn the actor's radiance both on and off by using the word GLOW. I thought I might do that by modify the if-else statements but I just can't figure it out. By the way, this all works as shown below except for the problem described. Any ideas out there?

RonG

[code]
+ring: Wearable 'platinum ring' 'platinum ring'
 "Faint cryptic runes are inscribed around the band of the platinum ring."  
  dobjFor(Wear){
  action(){
   inherited();
   "You feel a strange magical power coursing through your body!
    And, you hear the faint echo of the word GLOW surrounding you.";
   gActor.makeWizard();
  }
 }

 dobjFor(Doff){
  action(){
   inherited();
   "You shudder as the power of the ring and the magic of the GLOW chant leave
    you";
   gActor.makeNormal();
  } 
 }
;

  DefineIAction(Glow);
  VerbRule(Glow)
    'glow'
  :GlowAction
  verbPhrase='glow/glowing'
;
 
 modify GlowAction
 execAction(){
   if(gActor.powerLevel!=wizard)
     reportFailure('At this time, you do not have the power of a Wizard.');
   else{
    "You chant the GLOW spell!
     Your body begins to glow with a bright, radiating blue light! ";  
     gActor.brightness=10;
  }    
 }
; 

[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=10#p30899
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2012-02-01 17:06:38

[quote="dfabulich"]But, as I say, this is just my personal opinion, and my personal opinion is that whenever I post here, I'm risking exposing myself to really hostile responses from a vocal minority of chronic trolls. For me, that usually means that it's not worth it for me to post here.[/quote]

If you cannot cope with polemics, you do not [i]deserve[/i] the right to post here.

When choosing between feelings and polemics, I always choose polemics. Pure feeling is Hitler; pure polemic is Plato. While both are ugly, Plato is less so. Yes, I do hurt people's feelings, but so does Darwin. If you think that [i]The Origin of Species[/i] ought to be banned because it hurts people's feelings, you're not ready for adulthood. Hurt feelings are the aches of growth.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4268&start=10#p30900
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Error in else-if code - TADS3.1
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-01 17:24:31

Ron - see the code excerpt I posted immediately before your last message. It changes the actor's brightness to 0 if it is something greater than 0, which should do what you want.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4036&start=10#p30901
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ZMPP for Android released
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2012-02-01 17:26:57

[quote="weiju"]just as an info, today I released a new ZMPP version on Android Market, which (among other enhancements) adds the option to play in landscape mode.[/quote]
Excellent, thanks! (Admittedly, I thought at first it wasn't working... I didn't realise it had to be turned on manually in the preferences.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=10#p30902
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-01 17:27:39

[quote="dfabulich"]The attitude of the community seems to be that trolls are just something you have to endure.[/quote]

That's the [i]policy [/i]of this particular forum. I don't think it's actually the [i]attitude [/i]of the [i]community[/i]. I think the community contains a variety of attitudes on the matter.

[quote]Afterward, for example, seems to hold the view that giving people the power to censor trolls would be worse than enduring the trolls. I dislike censorship, too, so I can understand that point of view.[/quote]

In fairness, the subject of censorship is in no way relevant to the moderation of a webforum. Just as the declaration "visitors to my apartment aren't allowed to smoke in my home" does not restrict anyone's right to be a smoker, "members of my moderated forum are not allowed to troll on my board" does not restrict anyone's right to expression. In both cases, it's about respect for the house rules. Smokers may still smoke on their own porch. Assholes may still spew bile on their own blogs. Etc. Moderation - even very strict moderation - [i]isn't[/i] a form of censorship.

I'd personally prefer stricter house-rules. I think it would be a nicer house, and I'd be more engaged with it. But, bottom line, it ain't my house, so I have no say. And I like the house well enough as it is that I'm sticking around.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4272&start=10#p30903
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: how to work out capitalization. [SOLVED]
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-01 18:08:03

[quote="capmikee"]I do believe "your uncle Oren" is the correct spelling, however. In that case, "uncle" isn't part of his name.[/quote]
Right. In this case, "Oren" is an appositive noun, and it's being used restrictively. That is, if you only have one uncle, then "your uncle, Oren, is standing here" would be correct, but the commas are often omitted around short appositives of this sort. However, if you have two or more uncles, then "your uncle Oren is standing here" would be the only correct punctuation. "Uncle" is capitalized when it's part of a noun of address, as in, "Hey, Uncle Oren -- want a snack?"

Similarly, "I saw Mother this morning," or "I saw my mother this morning." Both are correct, and changing the capitalization in either sentence would be wrong.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=20#p30904
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2012-02-01 19:01:58

[quote="bcressey"]I don't like locking threads or banning people or wielding any of the other moderator powers.[/quote]
That is partly what makes you a good choice for the job.  Anyone who enjoys being the boss shouldn't be the boss. 

That, and the hilariously cheery tone of your warnings.  I like Conrad too, but he's being weird this week, and I'm glad you've arranged a vacation for him.


[quote="Afterward"]I feel like "unsafe" is a good word to describe a situation where a few people in control have license to censor discussion based on ill-defined criteria[/quote]
Er, no.  If you're looking for pejoratives, maybe "anal-retentive" or "nannying" or something along those lines is what you want, but not "unsafe".   

I for one welcome our reluctant-but-cheery overlords.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=20#p30905
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-02-01 19:07:51

Since I'm one of those people who do use the word "censorship", I should clarify my feelings about it. Ghalev is right, of course - it's not about censorship, it's about being civil. Moderators do need the power to do whatever they have to do.

What bothers me is being (I'm speaking hypothetically) in a place where I know the mods can delete threads, posts, ban people for saying certain things. And what really, really bothers me is when threads and posts get deleted, because that way I have no way of even knowing what happened, and what caused the whole thing.

I call it censorship, but I'm aware that true censorship is miles, miles away from what is actually the case here - and in the case of this particular forum, well, the idea that anyone's censoring anyone is laughable. I'm just 100% against any filtering/doctoring of posts that did not happen through the writer's common sense and courtesy.

In other words, I would rather a rude person would bloody well be rude and be done with it. That way we'd know where to stand with that person. I wouldn't envision a happy stay for him/her, but we'd know where we stand. And they'd go away. Those people always do.

I think if everything remains as transparent as it's been so far - and if there are no more deleted threads, it'd be better to lock them and hide the offending text in a "spoiler" tag, as I recall has been done in one occasion. Transparency will keep everything on the level. It's worked so far.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4036&start=10#p30906
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ZMPP for Android released
User: weiju / DateTime: 2012-02-01 21:51:58

Hi Emily,

thanks for the feedback, glad it works for you ! I unfortunately don't have any device with a hardware keyboard (and as a Colemak typist, QWERTY would only be of limited use for me anyways  [emote];)[/emote] ), so this is a feature that I can only test in an emulator.

Wei-ju

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4268&start=10#p30907
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Error in else-if code - TADS3.1
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-01 22:05:06

[quote="RonG"]RealNC;

You are correct about my lack of TADS basics and my formatting of the sections of my code. However, despite my dementia [Look it up.], I continue to strive to learn TADS. I spend eight to ten hours a day(often longer) working on it. I will make the formatting changes you suggested.

I really am not looking for pity or criticism , so, please give me just a little bit of slack.[/quote]
Oops, my reply was not meant to criticize. Sorry it came out that way.

As others mentioned, letting the editor do the formatting is very helpful. You can help the editor along with it by making more use of spaces and newlines. For example, don't write "if(foo==bar){", but instead "if (foo == bar) {" then hit ENTER, and place the closing brace on its own line. Another good rule to follow is to place the opening brace of methods and functions on its own line (unlike if-statements):

[code]
someFunction()
{
    if (foo == bar) {
        // ...
    }
}
[/code]
I use this myself and it's a very good way to avoid confusion over what's a method/function and what's code inside of that function. It will help in finding out where the next function begins in a long piece of code. Don't try to make the code too compact. It hinders readability. And always use braces, even when an if-statement only contains one line of code.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4279&start=0#p30908
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Article on Mental Floss
User: rpatten / DateTime: 2012-02-01 22:20:16

There's an article on the mental_floss today about Zork. It also gives modern IF and Get Lamp a mention:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/115571">http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/115571</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4275&start=0#p30909
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Best System for Hypertext
User: rpatten / DateTime: 2012-02-01 22:58:43

The problem with Twine is that it's not officially supported anymore, though a small community can help you out with issues like the back button not working.

I had Twine on my computer for a little while until one of my stories made it go haywire -- for some reason, the lines linking nodes became miles long, and it made things difficult. (Most of my time was spent scrolling.) I have never heard of anyone else having that problem, though. I loved the interface (when it worked) and the way everything looked in a browser.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4275&start=0#p30910
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Best System for Hypertext
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2012-02-01 23:59:01

[url=http://www.partechgroup.org/hypedyn/]HypeDyn[/url] is a newer alternative to Twine. I haven't used it myself, but it looks very promising.

[url=http://undum.com/]Undum[/url] is also a tool for making hypertext-like things, with a big focus on a beautiful web-based front-end.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=20#p30911
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Jeremy W. Sherman / DateTime: 2012-02-02 00:18:57

[quote]I am really not the right choice for that job. I don't like locking threads or banning people or wielding any of the other moderator powers.[/quote]
That is exactly what I hope to hear a moderator say. I have not had any problems with the moderation here.

Peter Pears is disturbed that anyone might be editing history without his awareness. He is also concerned that this might cause the community to misjudge someone, since they remain unaware of the person's missteps. When the person is not just a spammer, he has a point, and locking the thread might be preferable to deleting it.

phpBB gives non-moderator/admin users little power to limit what they see; their only options are to report a single post to the mods or blacklist all posts by a user by the foes list. I am working on a phpBB mod that would let users ignore further posts to existing topics: ignored topics would no longer show up in their unanswered, unread, or new post search results. This would be analogous to Gmail's mute functionality. There's a [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4263]discussion on this forum[/url], and I've opened [url=http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=70&t=2149700&sid=5846e3664df9f2d8bca41e06dccf3239]a topic on the phpBB Mods-in-Development board[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4280&start=0#p30912
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Salon: Interactivity and narrative are incompatible
User: hajenso / DateTime: 2012-02-02 00:25:38

Have you guys seen this piece on Salon?  <a class="postlink" href="http://www.salon.com/2012/02/02/can_bells_and_whistles_save_the_book/">http://www.salon.com/2012/02/02/can_bel ... _the_book/</a>  It's about interactive features in ebooks, but it has obvious implications for IF.  Here's the quote with the most direct relevance:

[quote]By now, the theory that the novel of the future will be a game has become almost venerable. That’s despite indications that — as the critic and author Tom Bissell pointed out in his book “Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter” — narrative and interactivity are in fundamental respects incompatible. Where games offer the pleasure of mastery, narrative offers the pleasure of surrender. You can beat “Halo, ” but you can’t win “To Kill a Mockingbird”; the notion doesn’t even make sense. A “Hamlet” in which Hamlet can blithely decide to kill his uncle as soon as his father’s ghost tells him to is not “Hamlet,” and, furthermore, not that interesting. Part of the power of that story is its feeling of inevitability, the understanding that each event follows from those preceding it and ultimately derives from the nature of each character.[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4036&start=10#p30913
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ZMPP for Android released
User: kevinjardine / DateTime: 2012-02-02 00:31:12

Just finished playing through Shade using the latest version of ZMPP with a hardware keyboard and landscape mode.  Mostly worked very well although there were a couple of times when text in longer descriptions scrolled past before I could read the top bit.

Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4036&start=20#p30914
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ZMPP for Android released
User: kevinjardine / DateTime: 2012-02-02 00:34:53

As an additional enhancement it would nice to see the standard behaviour of most apps, which is to detect that the phone has been rotated and automatically switch to landscape mode. But that is not essential.

Kevin

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4280&start=0#p30915
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Salon: Interactivity and narrative are incompatible
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-02 01:29:48

It's a running gag among comics fans that, every few years, an article appears with the title "Pow! Bam! Comics aren't just for kids any more!" The article will mention whatever title is currently hot, and then go on to wonder if comics can really escape from its four-color superhero roots.

You have found the IF equivalent of that article.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4280&start=0#p30916
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Salon: Interactivity and narrative are incompatible
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-02 01:32:54

Scenario transcends narrative; such is the joy of it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=20#p30917
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-02 01:35:19

[quote="Peter Pears"]What bothers me is being (I'm speaking hypothetically) in a place where I know the mods can delete threads, posts, ban people for saying certain things. And what really, really bothers me is when threads and posts get deleted, because that way I have no way of even knowing what happened, and what caused the whole thing.[/quote]

Well, amen to this. I prefer transparent, open acts of moderation to cloak-and-dagger stuff. I like it when there's a clear record, clear precedent.

And a hearty agreement with the multiple responses on this thread re: the moderator who [i]doesn't[/i] relish moderating, is the [i]best [/i]kind of moderator to have.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4280&start=0#p30918
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Salon: Interactivity and narrative are incompatible
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-02 01:43:28

[quote="zarf"]It's a running gag among comics fans that, every few years, an article appears with the title "Pow! Bam! Comics aren't just for kids any more!"[/quote]
Although comics won't evade their four-colors roots, they haven't been for children anymore since when the Joker broke Gordon's daughter's back in the Eighties. Thanks Alan Moore.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=20#p30919
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-02 01:46:49

I support moderation, I don't support censorship. Censorship is when something gets deleted/hidden without the rest of the world knowing.
So: thumbs up for the way you deal with things today. It works. And moderators seem quite good.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4280&start=0#p30920
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Salon: Interactivity and narrative are incompatible
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-02 01:52:20

[quote="hajenso"][quote]A “Hamlet” in which Hamlet can blithely decide to kill his uncle as soon as his father’s ghost tells him to is not “Hamlet,” and, furthermore, not that interesting. Part of the power of that story is its feeling of inevitability, the understanding that each event follows from those preceding it and ultimately derives from the nature of each character.[/quote][/quote]
I don't entirely disagree with this view ... it does seem to me that narrative in IF tends to operate at about a 90-degree angle to narrative in conventional fiction ... but you know, if anyone is looking for an idea for a mini-comp (or even a maxi-mini-comp, as the entries would need to have some heft), I think HamletComp would be a good one.

The idea being, in some way, shape, or form to draw upon as many of the major characters, themes, and events of Hamlet as possible, while turning it into a full-on IF game. Satire certainly allowed, but not encouraged. Iambic pentameter not required. Extra points for punctiliously correct usage of olde English.

A game that really [i]is[/i] Hamlet, while taking the story in surprising and fresh interactive directions ... I've just finished reading Gregory Maguire's four-volume Oz series, so the possibilities of adaptation are much on my mind. But I think the best way to refute the negative view expressed in the quote might be to demonstrate in the most direct and concrete possible way (i.e., by doing Hamlet) that it's simply wrong.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4280&start=0#p30921
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Salon: Interactivity and narrative are incompatible
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-02 01:56:21

Okay, wait, here's a straw man for you to practice on:

"Theater and narrative are in fundamental respects incompatible. A 'Macbeth' in which the director can decide to move the story to Depression-era New York, a 'Hamlet' in which the lead actor can decide to laugh at the ghost or marry Ophelia -- these are no longer Macbeth or Hamlet. The power of these stories come from their feeling of inevitability, so any changes the director makes will interfere with that power. The meaning of the play comes from the nature of the character, so whatever external ideas the actor brings to the role will blur and obstruct that meaning. The only valid experience is reading the plays while sitting in a dimly-lit -- hello? Hello? Where are you going?"

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4280&start=0#p30922
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Salon: Interactivity and narrative are incompatible
User: George / DateTime: 2012-02-02 03:16:53

This seems apropos:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.raphkoster.com/2012/01/20/narrative-is-not-a-game-mechanic/">http://www.raphkoster.com/2012/01/20/na ... -mechanic/</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=20#p30923
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-02-02 04:57:19

[quote="Jamespking"]I support moderation, I don't support censorship. Censorship is when something gets deleted/hidden without the rest of the world knowing.
So: thumbs up for the way you deal with things today. It works. And moderators seem quite good.[/quote]
Yeah. Would it be possible to create a place on the site where actions like this can be archived, as a public record? 

If you don't want to add functionality to the forum (and I don't blame you (whoever has the skills and power to make such a change)), what about a locked, publically-viewable forum that only mods can post in, with one thread per action or acted-upon user/event?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4270&start=0#p30924
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pointless disambiguation
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-02-02 04:59:47

[quote="capmikee"]That bug report is enlightening, and suggests a workaround: It's specifically a problem with the word "put." I could do a little hacking around with "when the quoted verb matches 'put'."[/quote]Untested, but I believe other multi-word commands that share the same first word may have the same problem.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=20#p30925
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Tale / DateTime: 2012-02-02 05:56:43

I agree that the moderators do a terrific job here. I see no unfair bans or locks. BCressy seems very reasonable indeed.

And I'm totally with Maga here. You can just foe pudl- people whose posts you don't want to see. You can easily tell which topics to avoid.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=20#p30926
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2012-02-02 07:27:11

I haven't been unhappy with how moderation works on this forum, but I can see why people would like a slightly stronger stance against trolls. This does not necessarily mean banning people: it can also take the form of a moderator stepping into a discussion and telling someone to turn down the heat.

It is not possible to give any hard-and-fast rules for this, of course. Let us suppose, hypothetically, that someone were to write overblown and mostly rhetorical negative reviews of games by Aaron Reed and me. I wouldn't object to that, but to a large extent because the games were by Aaron and me. If the exact same kind of review were posted about a first-time effort by some 15-year old author, my judgement would be very different. This will always come down to a case-by-case decision of the moderator.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=20#p30927
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: gravel / DateTime: 2012-02-02 07:37:26

[quote="Peter Pears"]
What bothers me is being (I'm speaking hypothetically) in a place where I know the mods can delete threads, posts, ban people for saying certain things. And what really, really bothers me is when threads and posts get deleted, because that way I have no way of even knowing what happened, and what caused the whole thing.
[/quote]

This.  I would prefer information not be removed unless there's a pressing need, like concerns for safety.

[quote="Peter Pears"]
In other words, I would rather a rude person would bloody well be rude and be done with it. That way we'd know where to stand with that person. I wouldn't envision a happy stay for him/her, but we'd know where we stand. And they'd go away. Those people always do. [/quote]

Yes, but what about when people aren't rude and done with it?  What if they're deliberately antagonistic, and continue to be so, and pop up in unrelated threads to be so some more, purely for the sake of being irritating?  At best, it's tremendously dull.  At worst, it looks like the community agrees with or is sympathetic to such behavior.  When the behavior includes misogyny, racism, or personal attacks,  I think it contributes to situations like this, where someone feels like[b] they have to do something themselves[/b] or the status quo will never change.  

Full disclosure: in the distant-ish past, there have been a few posts I've reported for being Not On.  I never got a reply or any indication that they had been looked at, much less addressed.  If the community standard is "don't touch anything except death threats and cursing", fine, but I think that needs to be clear up front.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=20#p30930
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-02-02 09:24:22

[quote]Yes, but what about when people aren't rude and done with it?[/quote]

In my experience, they eventually leave, sometimes making a huge deal of it, sometimes just never being heard from again. That's because people usually respond to rude people with one or more of the following:

a) logic and reason
b) emotional responses
c) mockery
d) ignoring the troll

As long as the rude person replies in a) (it happens), there's actually grounds for dialog, and maybe it turned out that what they meant wasn't so rude after all, they just expressed themselves badly. b) leads to more b), and well, when an entire community b)s up on someone, that someone will find it very hard to remain motivated to post here. Anyway, it's not like we attract 1337's... and as for c), a healthy dose of it can be entertaining for the others and demeaning for the OP. 

And then there's always good old d).

Personally, I find trolls to be rather entertaining - I have a mean streak that enjoys seeing how people can demean themselves under the cover of anonimity, and how they're received (usually with lots of a)s and c)s) in a community of literate, intelligent people. I don't condone them, and I certainly wouldn't miss them if they disappeared, but I do enjoy it when some people's stupidity is answered in *just the right way*.

Mind you, from the other posts, it's clear to me I'm rather alone in this view, and most people just want a clean place to go and discuss IF. Fine by me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4270&start=0#p30931
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pointless disambiguation
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-02 09:36:38

[quote="ChrisC"]Untested, but I believe other multi-word commands that share the same first word may have the same problem.[/quote]
It can only be a problem when the verb takes two nouns, and there aren't so many of those. Maybe removing it from could be an issue, but I'm not sure what else...

Testing confirms that "get hand from mouth" and "take hand from mouth" produce disambiguation messages as well. Unfortunately, I was wrong about the word "put" because "insert hand into mouth" does too. 

Curiously, "show mouth to hand" triggers disambiguation, but "show hand to mouth" doesn't. Same with "give ... to" and "unlock ... with."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3972&start=90#p30932
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Room & Dimension Version 2 (Need betatesters)
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-02-02 09:41:05

[quote="ektemple"]It would also be nice to have a phrase that would allow any actor to face any other regardless of how far away. I wrote some code to do that (it could be generalized for other purposes as well):[spoiler][code]To decide which face_dir is the orientation of (agent - something) to (target - something):
	let dx be x-coord of target - x-coord of agent;
	let dy be y-coord of target - y-coord of agent;
	if dx is 0 and dy is 0, 
	let angle be a real number;
	if dx > 0:
		if dy > 0:
			let angle be the arctangent of ( dy // (dx as a fixed point number ) );
		if dy < 0:
			let angle be 0.0000 -- arctangent of ( (0.0000 -- dy) // dx as a fixed point number) ;
	if dx < 0:
		if dy > 0:
			let angle be 180.0000 -- arctangent of ( (0.0000 -- dy) // dx as a fixed point number) ;
		if dy is 0:
			let angle be 180.0000;
		if dy < 0:
			let angle be the ( arctangent of ( dy // (dx as a fixed point number ) ) ) -- 180.0000;
	if dx is 0:
		if dy > 0:
			let angle be 90.0000;
		else if dy < 0:
			let angle be -90.0000;
	decide on the face-direction corresponding to (angle as an integer).
	
To decide which face_dir is the face-direction corresponding to (theta - a number):
	let theta be theta rounded to the nearest 45;
	if theta is:
		-- 0: decide on face_e;
		-- 45: decide on face_se;
		-- 90: decide on face_s;
		-- 135: decide on face_sw;
		-- 180: decide on face_w;
		-- 270: decide on face_n;
		-- -90: decide on face_n;
		-- -45: decide on face_ne;
		-- -135: decide on face_nw;
		-- -180: decide on face_w.
	
[Inform's built-in rounding is broken for negative numbers, we use this instead]
To decide which number is (X - number) rounded to the nearest (Y - number):
	(- (RoundOffValue({X},{Y})) -).
	
Include (- 
	[ RoundOffValue t1 t2;
		if (t1 >= 0) return ((t1+t2/2)/t2)*t2;
		t1 = 0 - t1;
		return -((t1+t2/2)/t2)*t2;
	]; -) after "Definitions.i6t".[/code][/spoiler][/quote]

I've been thinking about it, and I think that giving authors the option to use headings (such as in the spoilered code above) and distances may be the most flexible tool for writing simple AI. Headings are an easy way to write code to enable goal-seeking behavior. For example, here's an algorithm for moving an NPC around obstacles to reach a goal, followed by a map in which the @ could get to the X in 5 steps using the algorithm:

[quote]determine heading to travel to get to goal square;
if NPC can't move onto the square in the direction of the heading, try +/-45 degrees from the heading;
if NPC can't move onto the square in the direction of the new heading, try +/- 90 degrees from the heading;
if NPC can't move onto the square in the direction of the new heading, try +/- 135 degrees from the heading;
if NPC can't move onto the square in the direction of the new heading, try 180 degrees from the heading;
repeat.

[code].......
...#...
.X.#.@.
...#...
.......[/code][/quote]

Straight-line distance would be the other easy-to-use metric, allowing NPCs to choose between targets, or to select a move to keep them at an optimum distance from an enemy (e.g., if they want to use a missile attack).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4270&start=10#p30934
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pointless disambiguation
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-02-02 10:14:25

[Slightly off topic, but suggested by the discussion]

I understand that Mr. Romney (who, as not too many people are aware, is an IF fan) was relaxing in front of the computer the other day.  The following is an excerpt from the transcript of his game:

   [size=85]> PUT FOOT IN MOUTH

   Which foot do you mean, your foot or the foot of the poor guy that you don't care about?[/size]

Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=30#p30935
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-02 10:25:59

There seems to be one rule: Don't feed the troll.*

Which I extend (without a line of coding): Use the troll, if you can. 

The only rule, tho, is: [i]Don't be used[/i] by the troll.

Lately, an innocent has become victim (exaggerating a bit: Drama is my second name) of the troll and became evil, ruining his experience, blackmailing someone else and doing something very wrong (or very stupid, depending on how you see it). He was used by the troll.
Until one can recognize a troll when he sees one, there's no harm. He can /ignore, /avoid, /piss off the troll. Whatever. Or even /play with him.

You know what? I'm amazed by the sheer strength of the troll. And I'm amazed by his wits when it comes down to saying something. Whatever that is. 
Of course, I'm aware that's just the strength the Dark Side of the Force gives to a Sith. So I'm prepared to think "asshole" and go on trying to fulfill the Light Side.

---

*I'm 39. I've seen the race of the trolls being born. I've breastfed the very first troll myself. But I'm not yet over with it. I mean, obviously I've never grown up (and proud of it, tbh)... but I [i]really[/i] envy Victor for having a nasty review from the hypothetical troll. I'd like it'd be me. But no, I have to stick with Maga's, Emily's and MattW's. I'm trepidant about "Andromeda Awakening: delusions of eloquence". But no. It won't happen. Sigh.

But, as I said, probably I've never grown up.

PS: Victor. The Baron. It made me feel sick. Like it was ME. Sick, I say. Do it again, please. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=30#p30936
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-02 10:30:35

[quote="Jamespking"]But no, I have to stick with Maga's, Emily's and MattW's. I'm trepidant about "Andromeda Awakening: delusions of eloquence". But no. It won't happen. Sigh.[/quote]

Just a clarification: the nasty review was from me, matt w, with no capital letters and a space. MattW is a different person. Confusing, I know. 

(And I'm very glad to see that you took our criticisms into account in your revision. I'd like to play it sometime, but there's so much to do...)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=30#p30937
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-02 10:31:51

[quote="Jamespking"]PS: Victor. The Baron. It made me feel sick. Like it was ME. Sick, I say. Do it again, please. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
From what I've heard, I'd rather eat pig's brains than play that game. But I probably will eat pig's brains. [emote]:lol:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=30#p30938
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-02-02 10:40:01

From what I've heard, pigs' brains are pretty good, although I've never tasted them.  (I used to enjoy calves' brains before mad cow disease reared its ugly head and I had to give up the habit for safety's sake.)

Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4270&start=10#p30939
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pointless disambiguation
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-02-02 10:44:57

[quote="capmikee"]"show mouth to hand" triggers disambiguation, but "show hand to mouth" doesn't.[/quote]
That would be the "normal" behaviour.
In the case of "show mouth to hand", when the parser gets to the word "mouth", it asks for disambiguation and halts; the same happens in the case of "put mouth in hand".
In the case of "show hand to mouth", when the parser gets to the word "hand", it concludes there is no hand in scope; but in the case of "put hand in mouth", when the parser gets to the word "hand", the grammar line requires that the noun match the grammar token "[other things]", and to ascertain that the noun is other than the second noun, the parser looks ahead and tries to parse the second noun first, which in turn triggers the disambiguation question.
(The same thing happens when the grammar line contains the token "[things inside]".)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=30#p30940
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-02 10:52:13

[quote="Jamespking"]I've seen the race of the trolls being born. I've breastfed the very first troll myself. But I'm not yet over with it.[/quote]

The opening line to what could be the oddest fantasy novel of the decade [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=30#p30941
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-02 10:56:22

[quote="Peter Pears"]Personally, I find trolls to be rather entertaining[/quote]

I definitely get that. I do, too, if they're clever ones, but ...

[quote][...]most people just want a clean place to go and discuss IF. Fine by me.[/quote]

For me it's like ...

I find movies (good ones) entertaining. I find jugglers (good ones) entertaining.

But if I go to the movies, and some guy stands in front of me, [i]juggling[/i] ... and I came to see the [i]movie [/i]...

It's like that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=30#p30942
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-02 11:02:15

[quote="Robert Rothman"]From what I've heard, pigs' brains are pretty good, although I've never tasted them.  (I used to enjoy calves' brains before mad cow disease reared its ugly head and I had to give up the habit for safety's sake.)[/quote]
Some people would argue that eating cow's brains is safer than giving your kid a headlice treatment. But either way, I think it's illegal to sell them now.

I've tried lamb's brains a couple times, but I think I'm cooking them all wrong, because they were kind of gross.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4268&start=10#p30943
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Error in else-if code - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-02-02 11:05:06

Wow! This series of posts has turned into a novel.

RealNC;

No harm done. Looking forward to continuing our relationship. All of you guys have been a ton of help.

bcressey;

Am I correct in assuming that you want me to use the section of code you included in that last post of yours?

Sorry, but I don't remember anything about the difference between close braces, code tags or quote tags. Could someone show them to me and explain which is which? My memory of those went flying (along with other things) when I turned seventy years of age.

I always assumed that the number of open braces should always equal the number of close braces in a section of code. Is that correct?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4270&start=10#p30944
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pointless disambiguation
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-02 11:10:03

That's useful. Based on that information, I'm working out a feature request...

Understand X as Y when [action-name]

This syntax would apply the understanding command to each grammar line, setting the value of [action-name] to the appropriate thing each time. If the grammar line doesn't match the action-name (or if it does, in the case of "not [action-name]"), the Understand line doesn't apply.

A phrase such as "the current action is [action-name]" or "the action-to-be is [action-name]" or "the action of the current grammar line is [action-name]" would be fine too.

Actually, never mind. DPMR works fine for that. As long as they actually [i]run.[/i]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4280&start=0#p30945
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Salon: Interactivity and narrative are incompatible
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-02 11:18:20

[quote="hajenso"]Have you guys seen this piece on Salon?  <a class="postlink" href="http://www.salon.com/2012/02/02/can_bells_and_whistles_save_the_book/">http://www.salon.com/2012/02/02/can_bel ... _the_book/</a>[/quote]
I stopped reading at "save the book." Who says the book needs saving?

I watched "Get Lamp" yesterday and my favorite part was where they talk about how 90% of what people do on computers currently is read. Look, you're reading right now! Oh wait, I guess that doesn't count because you're here to talk about IF.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=30#p30946
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-02 11:22:41

Brains are good, especially fried brains. Tasty. Delicious. But ofc we are talking Italian food, and you know nothing about it, like Italian mafia.

[quote="matt w"](And I'm very glad to see that you took our criticisms into account in your revision. I'd like to play it sometime, but there's so much to do...)[/quote]
I'm a teacher, nowadays. But I've been a student and I will be one all my life. What's better than entering a school and being taught by the most talented? And what good there is in it if then you don't cope with criticism and try and do better?
Well, let's cut with the crap: could I have done anything else?

Play my game, slacker.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=30#p30947
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-02 11:25:27

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="Jamespking"]I've seen the race of the trolls being born. I've breastfed the very first troll myself. But I'm not yet over with it.[/quote]

The opening line to what could be the oddest fantasy novel of the decade [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
The BEST fantasy novel. Of the century. I'd like to write adult fantasy. I'm so fed up with hobbits and elves I spit them out every morning. In the bath.

Let's do a "Breastfeeding the troll" IF.
If it's good then I convert it into a regular novel and get rich. Then come back here and play the winner.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4270&start=10#p30948
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pointless disambiguation
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-02 11:29:51

More data:

[code]Test is a room.

Bob is a man in Test. Sue is a woman in Test.

Understand "mouth" as a person.

Does the player mean:
	showme the current action;
	make no decision;

Does the player mean inserting something into:
	say "specific rule for inserting.";
	make no decision;
	
test me with "put hand in mouth/put mouth in hand/insert hand in mouth/insert mouth in hand/get hand from mouth/get mouth from hand/show hand to mouth/show mouth to hand/give hand to mouth/give mouth to hand/unlock hand with mouth/unlock mouth with hand"
[/code]

[spoiler][quote]>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] put hand in mouth
"current action" = stored action: inserting nothing into yourself
"current action" = stored action: inserting nothing into Bob

"current action" = stored action: inserting nothing into Sue
Who do you mean, yourself, Bob or Sue?

>[2] put mouth in hand
"current action" = stored action: wearing yourself
"current action" = stored action: wearing Bob

"current action" = stored action: wearing Sue
Who do you mean, yourself, Bob or Sue?

>[3] insert hand in mouth
"current action" = stored action: inserting nothing into yourself
"current action" = stored action: inserting nothing into Bob

"current action" = stored action: inserting nothing into Sue
Who do you mean, yourself, Bob or Sue?

>[4] insert mouth in hand
specific rule for inserting.

"current action" = stored action: inserting yourself into nothing
specific rule for inserting.

"current action" = stored action: inserting Bob into nothing

specific rule for inserting.

"current action" = stored action: inserting Sue into nothing
Who do you mean, yourself, Bob or Sue?

>[5] get hand from mouth
"current action" = stored action: removing nothing from yourself
"current action" = stored action: removing nothing from Bob

"current action" = stored action: removing nothing from Sue
Who do you mean, yourself, Bob or Sue?

>[6] get mouth from hand
"current action" = stored action: removing yourself from nothing
"current action" = stored action: removing Bob from nothing

"current action" = stored action: removing Sue from nothing
Who do you mean, yourself, Bob or Sue?

>[7] show hand to mouth
You can't see any such thing.

>[8] show mouth to hand
Who do you mean, yourself, Bob or Sue?

>[9] give hand to mouth
You can't see any such thing.

>[10] give mouth to hand
Who do you mean, yourself, Bob or Sue?

>[11] unlock hand with mouth
You can't see any such thing.

>[12] unlock mouth with hand
Who do you mean, yourself, Bob or Sue?

>[/quote][/spoiler]

What I see here is that my DPMR didn't fire because "inserting something into" doesn't match "inserting nothing into Sue!"

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=30#p30949
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-02 11:38:52

[quote="Jamespking"]Let's do a "Breastfeeding the troll" IF.[/quote]

If this happened as a SpeedIF, I'd find it difficult to resist.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=40#p30950
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-02 11:50:57

[quote="ChrisC"]What about a locked, publically-viewable forum that only mods can post in, with one thread per action or acted-upon user/event?[/quote]

Well, aside from the spam cleanup, all the moderator activity is already rather visible. If I warn someone, I typically do it in the thread rather than via PM. If a thread gets locked, the icon changes and nobody can post there, so that's pretty clear.

Deleting a thread is problematic because the thread gets purged from the database. It's gone and no one can see it, not even admins. I felt it was justified in this instance - the user posted elsewhere that he knew he was wrong but was going to keep posting the same accusation here for a few days. I regard that as morally equivalent to spamming, if not worse - spam at least has a reasonably pure profit motive - and I delete spam threads.

However, it's also a more drastic action than is typical, so I thought it was important to discuss it.

[quote="gravel"]Full disclosure: in the distant-ish past, there have been a few posts I've reported for being Not On. I never got a reply or any indication that they had been looked at, much less addressed. If the community standard is "don't touch anything except death threats and cursing", fine, but I think that needs to be clear up front.[/quote]

I do read those reports, from you and others. I'm not sure what to say except that I don't always feel a strong call to act on each report. If I don't, I leave the report open for either David or Merk to read, under the theory that they may respond differently. So you won't necessarily get feedback because it's hard to say when we've all made the decision not to respond.

If a general consensus emerges that it's OK, I would be comfortable locking and rant-tagging individual posts, as a more fine-grained approach to locking an entire thread. The standard here could be somewhat lower; two or three reports might be sufficient, if no one else quotes that post in the meantime and it makes sense for the conversation to continue.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=40#p30951
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-02-02 11:52:38

[quote]Jamespking wrote:
Let's do a "Breastfeeding the troll" IF.[/quote]

We could probably milk this one all day long.


Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=40#p30952
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: gravel / DateTime: 2012-02-02 11:56:43

[quote="Robert Rothman"]
We could probably milk this one all day long.

Robert Rothman[/quote]

So are we just weaning ourselves off the main topic?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=40#p30953
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2012-02-02 11:58:45

[quote="Jamespking"]PS: Victor. The Baron. It made me feel sick. Like it was ME. Sick, I say. Do it again, please. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
Thanks. I guess. [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4268&start=10#p30954
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Error in else-if code - TADS3.1
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-02 12:01:15

[quote="RonG"]Am I correct in assuming that you want me to use the section of code you included in that last post of yours?[/quote]

Yes, please try it.

[quote="RonG"]Sorry, but I don't remember anything about the difference between close braces, code tags or quote tags. Could someone show them to me and explain which is which? My memory of those went flying (along with other things) when I turned seventy years of age.[/quote]

Quote and code tags are for posting here. Code tags preserve indentation and quote tags do not, so it's important to use code tags when posting fragments of your source code.

[quote="RonG"]I always assumed that the number of open braces should always equal the number of close braces in a section of code. Is that correct?[/quote]

That's correct. If you miss a brace you will often get lots of compiler errors - tens or hundreds depending on where in the file it happens.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4189&start=0#p30955
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Post-Comp Release of A Night Guest
User: gravel / DateTime: 2012-02-02 12:01:32

My browser does not like either of the links.  
Which is sad, because now I'll have to type two words into a search engine all by myself.  [emote]:([/emote](((
[url]
<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=k2oi1p21c3zyii55">http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=k2oi1p21c3zyii55</a>[/url]

Actually, my browser doesn't seem to want to download the game, period.  Weird.  I'll try again later.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4280&start=0#p30956
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Salon: Interactivity and narrative are incompatible
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2012-02-02 12:02:12

[quote]A “Hamlet” in which Hamlet can blithely decide to kill his uncle as soon as his father’s ghost tells him to is not “Hamlet,” and, furthermore, not that interesting.[/quote]
How does the author believe that this argument runs? "[i]X[/i] would be a bad idea for an interactive story. Therefore interactive stories do not work." This is not just N=1 induction, it is N=1 induction where the one case is a hypothetical one and all the real cases are ignored.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4184&start=0#p30957
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: nominations open
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-02 12:11:40

[b]1. The deadline for the first round is coming up.[/b] February 9 will be the last day of voting. If you've been hemming and hawing about your nominations, it's time to finish them up and get them in. If you've nominated in a couple of categories but couldn't think of anything for the others, then please please come back for a second try. (You can change your votes at any time, remember.) If you've been thinking 'eh, this is too difficult, I'll just wait for the second round' then it's time to sack the hell up. If you're thinking 'gosh, I don't want to vote because I can't vote for my own game and I'll just be reducing my chances of being nominated', it's time to get over yourself. Did I miss anybody out? Oh, right: if you're thinking 'what use is my one little vote against the vast political machine that is the XYZZY Awards', ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

[b]2. ClubFloyd will be playing nominated games during the second round of voting.[/b] If you've only played a few of the nominees, become a more educated voter.  ClubFloyd is held on Sundays at noon Eastern, in the Toyshop in ifMUD, and will be playing nominees on the 12th, 19th and 26th of February (though if you want to play some IF collaboratively, Floyd can be used at almost any time). Priority will be given to games that haven't already been played on ClubFloyd. (Floyd, of course, can't reproduce graphics, music or multiple-windows shenanigans, so we're vaguely wondering about livestreaming or something of that kind for games that don't fit the model.)

[b]3.[/b] Lucian Smith and myself are thinking about [b]putting together a pseudo-official reviewer panel[/b] to write some closer stuff about the nominees, once they come out. Two points:
a) While the reviews wouldn't have any direct effect on the results, it's possible that people might consider this a shameful travesty that would besmirch the impartiality of the awards. ("If I was nominated and got a bunch of bad reviews and then I didn't win, I'd be pissed.") Thoughts?
b) If we do this, would you like to supply reviews? Since reviewing everything could be a pretty hefty workload, you might want to sign up for just a few categories that particularly interest you.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4284&start=0#p30958
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Noun phrases as snippets
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-02 12:16:50

I've been trying to dig into the parser to improve some things. It's admittedly fussy, but I still have a major parser refactoring at the back of my mind, so it's all part of the big plan.

Consider the following:

[code]The Face is a person. Bob is a person. Understand "Bob's" as Bob.

Understand "face" as a person when The Face is not in the location.

Does the player mean throwing an object at a person when the player's command includes "face": It is likely.

Does the player mean doing something when the player's command includes "face":
    if the current action involves The Face, it is very likely;
    it is very unlikely.

Test me with "Throw face at Bob/Throw pillow at Bob's face"[/code]

What I really want is not to test a vague blob like "the player's command" but to maintain snippets that correspond to the noun and second noun:

[code]Does the player mean throwing an object at a person when the second noun phrase includes "face": It is likely.[/code]

How hard would it be to do that? Or would there be a smarter alternative to solving this parser problem?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4184&start=0#p30960
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: nominations open
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-02 12:29:37

If you are in need of reviewers, I can help.
Let me explain. I'm not into it straightforwardly (although I'd like to) because of lack of time. I don't know how many games I can play/review. And, of course, I don't know if I'm ABLE to do serious reviewing.
I can commit to it if the community is in need. I won't (don't think I won't) if it's just for the fun of it 'cause I'm a bit frightened by the thing.

Let me know.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=40#p30961
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-02-02 12:37:07

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]If the exact same kind of review were posted about a first-time effort by some 15-year old author, my judgement would be very different.[/quote]
Yes, definitely, and that is where I was going with "(especially when limited to works that have received plenty of critical acclaim)".  I'm quite confident that you and Aaron and Emily can "take it," and I do think our resident trolls have been pretty good about respecting that line.  That said, I don't think anyone should [i]have[/i] to take it, and a lot of people do not have experience distinguishing work-critique from a personal attack.

[quote="Jamespking"]
The only rule, tho, is: [i]Don't be used[/i] by the troll.[/quote]
To some extent, yes.  Not that I'm saying that this forum has anything like the malicious troll infestations that these articles are talking about, but:
<a class="postlink" href="http://geekfeminism.org/2011/10/13/on-being-harassed-a-little-gf-history-and-some-current-events/">http://geekfeminism.org/2011/10/13/on-b ... nt-events/</a>
and <a class="postlink" href="http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Don%27t_feed_the_trolls">http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Don% ... the_trolls</a>

[quote]I [i]really[/i] envy Victor for having a nasty review from the hypothetical troll. I'd like it'd be me.[/quote]
Tangentially, this strikes me as uncomfortably similar to "They're only catcalling you because you're so [i]pretty[/i]!  No one ever does that to me..."

[quote](exaggerating a bit: Drama is my second name)[/quote]
I sort of assumed your middle name started with a 'p'   [emote];)[/emote] 

[quote="Ghalev"]
But if I go to the movies, and some guy stands in front of me, [i]juggling[/i] ... and I came to see the [i]movie [/i]...[/quote]
Spot on.  When I want trolls, I'll read [url=http://manboobz.com/]manboobz.com[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=40#p30962
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-02-02 12:42:20

[quote]So are we just weaning ourselves off the main topic?
[/quote]


Well, now that you've gotten that off your chest . . . .

(I know, we're probably starting to sound like a bunch of boobs.)


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=40#p30963
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-02 12:50:53

[quote="bcressey"]The standard here could be somewhat lower; two or three reports might be sufficient, if no one else quotes that post in the meantime and it makes sense for the conversation to continue.[/quote]

I thought a post could only be reported once -- I've often clicked on the icon and been told it's already been reported. (For spam posts; I'm not sure whether I've ever flagged something for what I considered trolling, but if I did that didn't happen very often.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=40#p30964
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-02 12:51:53

[quote]Tangentially, this strikes me as uncomfortably similar to "They're only catcalling you because you're so pretty! No one ever does that to me..."[/quote]
Exactly. [emote]:)[/emote]

And yes, my second name starts with a P. I'm a Prama Queen.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4280&start=0#p30965
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Salon: Interactivity and narrative are incompatible
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-02 12:51:57

[quote="capmikee"][quote="hajenso"]Have you guys seen this piece on Salon?  <a class="postlink" href="http://www.salon.com/2012/02/02/can_bells_and_whistles_save_the_book/">http://www.salon.com/2012/02/02/can_bel ... _the_book/</a>[/quote]
I stopped reading at "save the book." Who says the book needs saving?[/quote]

Aren't you afraid you'll lose your progress if it crashes?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=40#p30966
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-02-02 12:58:00

[quote]And yes, my second name starts with a P. I'm a Prama Queen.
[/quote]

I thought you had the same name as a city in China: P-King.


Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4280&start=10#p30967
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Salon: Interactivity and narrative are incompatible
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-02 13:00:00

Yeah, the bookmark might fall out.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4270&start=10#p30968
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pointless disambiguation
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-02-02 13:12:45

[code]Test is a room.

Bob is a man in Test. Sue is a woman in Test.

Understand "mouth" as a person.

Does the player mean: 
	showme the current action; 
	make no decision.

test one with "put mouth in hand / put hand in mouth".
test two with "put hand in mouth / put mouth in hand".
[/code]
Why does the Does the player mean rule run for "put mouth in hand" in test two but not in test one???

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4270&start=10#p30969
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pointless disambiguation
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-02 13:21:35

That's freaky. New bug?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=40#p30970
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-02 13:25:41

[quote="matt w"]I thought a post could only be reported once -- I've often clicked on the icon and been told it's already been reported. (For spam posts; I'm not sure whether I've ever flagged something for what I considered trolling, but if I did that didn't happen very often.)[/quote]

Oh, I didn't realize that. There goes that plan.

Maybe some sort of karma / reputation mod would be a better way to go. If anyone knows of a good one for phpBB, please let me know.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4270&start=10#p30971
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pointless disambiguation
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-02 13:34:56

[quote="capmikee"]More data:

[code]Test is a room.

Bob is a man in Test. Sue is a woman in Test.

Understand "mouth" as a person.

Does the player mean:
	showme the current action;
	make no decision;

Does the player mean inserting something into:
	say "specific rule for inserting.";
	make no decision;
	
test me with "put hand in mouth/put mouth in hand/insert hand in mouth/insert mouth in hand/get hand from mouth/get mouth from hand/show hand to mouth/show mouth to hand/give hand to mouth/give mouth to hand/unlock hand with mouth/unlock mouth with hand"
[/code]

[spoiler][quote]>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] put hand in mouth
"current action" = stored action: inserting nothing into yourself
"current action" = stored action: inserting nothing into Bob

"current action" = stored action: inserting nothing into Sue
Who do you mean, yourself, Bob or Sue?

>[2] put mouth in hand
"current action" = stored action: wearing yourself
"current action" = stored action: wearing Bob

"current action" = stored action: wearing Sue
Who do you mean, yourself, Bob or Sue?

>[3] insert hand in mouth
"current action" = stored action: inserting nothing into yourself
"current action" = stored action: inserting nothing into Bob

"current action" = stored action: inserting nothing into Sue
Who do you mean, yourself, Bob or Sue?

>[4] insert mouth in hand
specific rule for inserting.

"current action" = stored action: inserting yourself into nothing
specific rule for inserting.

"current action" = stored action: inserting Bob into nothing

specific rule for inserting.

"current action" = stored action: inserting Sue into nothing
Who do you mean, yourself, Bob or Sue?

>[5] get hand from mouth
"current action" = stored action: removing nothing from yourself
"current action" = stored action: removing nothing from Bob

"current action" = stored action: removing nothing from Sue
Who do you mean, yourself, Bob or Sue?

>[6] get mouth from hand
"current action" = stored action: removing yourself from nothing
"current action" = stored action: removing Bob from nothing

"current action" = stored action: removing Sue from nothing
Who do you mean, yourself, Bob or Sue?

>[7] show hand to mouth
You can't see any such thing.

>[8] show mouth to hand
Who do you mean, yourself, Bob or Sue?

>[9] give hand to mouth
You can't see any such thing.

>[10] give mouth to hand
Who do you mean, yourself, Bob or Sue?

>[11] unlock hand with mouth
You can't see any such thing.

>[12] unlock mouth with hand
Who do you mean, yourself, Bob or Sue?

>[/quote][/spoiler]

What I see here is that my DPMR didn't fire because "inserting something into" doesn't match "inserting nothing into Sue!"[/quote]

And if you change the rule preamble from "inserting something into" to just "inserting," it does fire.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4286&start=0#p30972
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: A room that encloses - not what I thought it meant?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-02 13:41:27

[code]Test is a room.

When play begins:
	showme whether or not the location encloses the player;
	showme whether or not the location is a room that encloses the player;[/code]
The first phrase is true, but the second is false. Why?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4270&start=10#p30973
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pointless disambiguation
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-02 13:43:24

[quote="matt w"]And if you change the rule preamble from "inserting something into" to just "inserting," it does fire.[/quote]
It also fires if you change it to "inserting an object into."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4286&start=0#p30974
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A room that encloses - not what I thought it meant?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-02 13:47:44

This is filed as a bug: <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=376">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=376</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4286&start=0#p30975
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A room that encloses - not what I thought it meant?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-02 13:48:33

(Also, wrong subforum :)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=50#p30976
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Merlin Fisher / DateTime: 2012-02-02 14:04:03

You know what?  In real life, and on the wider Internet, I don't care for censorship.  Free speech is among the most prized features of my home country.   I support the ACLU and oppose things like SOPA etc.  I come from a long line of attorneys who know and defend the difference between free speech and libel.

That said... I also was a forum mod once (years ago on a now dead site) and we had our share of pests, including smartass males with persecution complexes and way too much time on their hands.  I also am very familiar with bullying, both in school and elsewhere.  My ancestors in the all-too-recent past were literally imprisoned, tortured and murdered (children and all) because of nasty, outrageous and completely false things strangers said about them.  So I belive I know the dark side of "free speech" and how it is not the same as deliberately inflammatory rhetoric.

In the world overall, free speech is a valuable right.  It is NOT a "right" in the context of a social circle.  You may legally say anything to your friends, but if you continually antagonize them for your own amusement, they have the right to cut off contact with you.  There is no civil right requiring anyone to put up with assholes.  Furthermore, this is the Internet and the values of the USA or any other nation do not apply.  I would argue this forum is private property and the mods may choose which guests and behaviors are welcome.

So what I'm getting at is, let there be more mods and more bans if that's what it takes to keep trolls away.  I do IF for fun, and my idea of fun is not all this juvenile drama.  Been there, done that.  I expect the nods here know the difference between controversy and flame wars, and if they don't, too bad, you can have your discussion somewhere else.  It's a big Internet.  Let this little corner stay civilized please.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4287&start=0#p30977
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: websound extension update
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-02 14:05:27

As promised, I've made some progress on the websound extension for Web UI. Right now it supports most of the attributes of the HTML TADS sound tags: src, layer, repeat, volume, sequence, interrupt, and cancel. 

Layers are only supported to a limited extent: there are four of them and they all work the same way. This should be mostly right, except for ambient; I need to ask a few clarifying questions of the experts to understand what that one is supposed to do.

Fades are not supported at all. This may be sheer ineptitude on my part but I can't seem to get an mp3 hosted online to start playing instantly, much less perform incremental volume changes on the audio with sub-second precision. Local Web UI play is a different matter and probably could support fades.

The most significant restriction at the moment is that large mp3s don't work well in the browser, when served out of the .t3 file. The session becomes unresponsive until the sound is loaded. This looks like an interpreter or server bottleneck rather than a problem with the sound code. The workaround is to put the mp3s online as separate files, and link to those files directly rather than to internal game resources.

For example:
[code]
#ifdef TADS_INCLUDE_NET
"<sound src=\"http://example.com/mp3/test.mp3\" layer=\"foreground\"/>";
#else
"<sound src=\"res/ogg/test.ogg\" layer=\"foreground\"/>";
#endif
[/code]

Given all that, if it's still of interest, you can get [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2759298/websound.zip]the latest websound snapshot[/url]. Unpack the files into your project folder and add the websound library to your Makefile at the end of the sources list. 

[quote]
## sources
-source tadsnet
-lib system
-lib webui 
-lib adv3/adv3web
...
-source myfile
[b]-lib websound[/b]
[/quote]

This new module follows the webui conventions and is much less of a hacky abomination than the last version.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=50#p30978
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-02 14:09:46

IMO people are overreacting. This forum doesn't even have a troll problem. Pudlo is a wannabe troll at best (if a troll at all), and I don't see Conrad's posts being in need of any moderation. The only thing worthy of censorship was Adam's reply (we need to think of the poor children who obviously read this forum before they go to bed after a long workday in the Chinese shoe factory.)

Folks, seriously, you're acting like prima donnas :-/

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4288&start=0#p30979
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: room names as conversation topics?
User: yhlee / DateTime: 2012-02-02 14:10:16

So I'm currently using Eric Eve's Conversational Framework and have run up against something I'm not sure how to deal with.  I would like for the player to be able to ask about the name of a room in the game.  However, I don't seem to be able to do this.  If I try instantiating the name as a separate subject (as per Section 7.2 of the extension's documentation) it runs afoul of the fact that the name is already in use for the room.  If I just try implementing this:

[code]After quizzing Aresa about the Vault: say "'Nothing interesting there,' she says."[/code]

then compile/run just gets me "There is no reply" when I ask about the Vault in-game.

Is there a workaround that I'm not thinking of?  Other than having the player and the game refer to the room by two separate names, which seems awkward...

Thank you in advance for your time, and sorry to be so bad at this!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4280&start=10#p30980
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Salon: Interactivity and narrative are incompatible
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-02 14:27:17

[quote="hajenso"]Have you guys seen this piece on Salon?  <a class="postlink" href="http://www.salon.com/2012/02/02/can_bells_and_whistles_save_the_book/">http://www.salon.com/2012/02/02/can_bel ... _the_book/</a>  It's about interactive features in ebooks, but it has obvious implications for IF.[/quote]
Having now read the article, I would have to say, "That's not entirely clear." I'm not sure the article has any implications at all for IF -- at least, not for parser-driven IF -- because none of the interactive or otherwise digital features described in the article has anything to do with parsing or responding to text commands. Nor with branching lines of narrative, which is a staple of non-parser IF.

Digital bells and whistles (including sound and images) can be applied equally well to IF or to a digital version of a conventional story. So the points she's trying to make (if there are any ... this is what I'd call a "pretend-think piece") would apply in the same way to IF as to conventional fiction.

The paragraph quoted by original poster is lifted from a book that is about video games. To determine its relevance to IF, one would have to read the book.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4288&start=0#p30981
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: room names as conversation topics?
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-02-02 14:34:57

You can use bracketed expressions like this:

[code]
Include Conversation Framework by Eric Eve.

The Vault is a room. Aresa is a woman in the Vault. 

Understand "vault" or "the vault" as "[vault]".
After asking Aresa about "[vault]":
	say "'Nothing interesting there', she says."
[/code]

Is that what you're trying to do?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4287&start=0#p30982
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: websound extension update
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-02 14:39:27

[quote="bcressey"]Layers are only supported to a limited extent: there are four of them and they all work the same way. This should be mostly right, except for ambient; I need to ask a few clarifying questions of the experts to understand what that one is supposed to do.[/quote]
Basically it's for deciding what not to play on implementations that can't play all layers at once. In case you were not aware of this piece of documentation:

<a class="postlink" href="http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/htmltads/sound.htm">http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/htmltads/sound.htm</a>

(Scroll down to the "Sound Architecture" section.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4287&start=0#p30983
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: websound extension update
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-02 14:45:51

From the random attribute description on that page:

[quote]The RANDOM attribute lets you specify the probability of playing a sound in the ambient layer. Usually, you will want a sound in the ambient layer to be played randomly from time to time; this attribute specifies the probability that the sound will be played at any given time. This attribute takes a value from 1 to 100. A low value makes the sound play infrequently; a value of 100 causes the sound to play at every opportunity (i.e., whenever another sound in the same layer isn't playing).[/quote]

The "from time to time" part is what I find ambiguous. Does the ambient layer try to find something to play every second? Every minute?

Put another way, if a sound has a random attribute of 1, that should mean it has a 1% chance to play in some interval of time. What interval do you use in QTads?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4268&start=20#p30984
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Error in else-if code - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-02-02 14:46:23

Thanks to all of you, I now have a working wizard. But, I'm not done harrassing you guys. I'll be back soon to start a posting on some different topics. I'm now up to 1677 lines of code and the story is expanding by leaps and bounds. Talk to you later.

RonG

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4184&start=0#p30985
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: nominations open
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-02 14:46:49

[quote="Jamespking"]Let me explain. I'm not into it straightforwardly (although I'd like to) because of lack of time. I don't know how many games I can play/review. And, of course, I don't know if I'm ABLE to do serious reviewing.[/quote]
You could commit to just a single category, if you'd like, which would be four or five games. That might also help worries about your ability to review things, if you pick a category that you're more interested in and can talk in more detail about.
[quote]I can commit to it if the community is in need. I won't (don't think I won't) if it's just for the fun of it 'cause I'm a bit frightened by the thing.[/quote]
I wouldn't call it a need, exactly; the XYZZYs will rumble along quite fine without this. It's just a cherry on top (hopefully one of those really good black cherries soaked in gin). I don't want anybody to read or write reviews purely out of a sense of duty to the community, or nothin'. If a sense of community spirit is what you need to get yourself to do something that's also fun, great; but if you expect it to be a dutiful slog, there are far more productive dutiful slogs in the world.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=50#p30986
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: gravel / DateTime: 2012-02-02 14:51:58

[quote="bcressey"]
I do read those reports, from you and others. I'm not sure what to say except that I don't always feel a strong call to act on each report. If I don't, I leave the report open for either David or Merk to read, under the theory that they may respond differently. So you won't necessarily get feedback because it's hard to say when we've all made the decision not to respond.
[/quote]

There's a "Notify Me" option when you report posts; I don't care about being notified when spam is taken care of, but I do for other stuff.  If it's going to be policy to let reports die a quiet death, perhaps that should be replaced?  (I have no idea if that's possible or not, though.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4288&start=0#p30987
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: room names as conversation topics?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-02 14:56:18

The problem is that rooms aren't things. I'm glad you brought this up because I'm working on a conversation extension and I've been wondering whether to include rooms (and doors, and backdrops) as possible conversational topics.

You can fix the problem pretty easily, though. Adding these lines should work (not tested):

[code]Understand "ask [someone] for [any visited room]" as requesting it for.
Understand "ask [someone] about [any visited room]" as quizzing it about.
Understand "tell [someone] about [any visited room]" as informing it about.
Understand "ask about [any visited room]" or "a [any visited room]" as implicit-quizzing.
Understand "t [any visited room]" or "talk about [any visited room]" as implicit-informing.
Understand "ask for [any visited room]" as implicit-requesting.
[/code]

If you want to be able to talk about rooms you haven't even visited, you can remove the visited token. If you don't want to clutter the "ask for" syntax (asking for a room would be pretty weird), you can skip the lines that involve that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4288&start=0#p30988
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: room names as conversation topics?
User: Merlin Fisher / DateTime: 2012-02-02 14:58:32

"After" lines will only come into play if the action succeeds.  Something got blocked before your "ask" action went through.  To get a better view of how your actions are being processed, type ACTIONS ON when you start playing.
(Be sure to study the diagram of before...check...instead...after...report if you haven't already.)

If you just want to get one quip for one topic, try replacing "after" with "instead."  If that doesnt do, try putting "vault" in quotes, so instead of asking about a known object (room) in the game, the parser will just listen for the phrase "vault" in the text of your remark.

If that doesn't do the trick, you might have to rename the room.  You can tweak the "printed name" to stay the same, but the player (who only sees the printed name) might run into guess-the-verb, so choose synonyms carefully.

Hope that helps.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4184&start=0#p30989
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: nominations open
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-02 14:59:27

I don't fear the duty. I fear the fact I may not be good enough at it. But I like your suggestion.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4287&start=0#p30990
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: websound extension update
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-02 15:05:21

The interval is handled by the HTML subsystem (QTads only provides the timer interrupt API implementation so that the subsystem can use them.) Reading htmlsnd.cpp, CHtmlSoundQueue::on_timer(), suggests an interval of one second. CHtmlSoundQueue::maybe_start_sound() contains the code that makes the decision when to play the next sound.

So a 1% probability would play the sound every 100 seconds on average, and a 100% probably would play it every second. Note the "on average". It doesn't count how many seconds have passed. It calculates the probability every time and uses that to decide whether to play it or not. It has no memory of previous random probability outcomes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4270&start=10#p30991
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pointless disambiguation
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-02-02 15:05:36

[quote="capmikee"]That's freaky. New bug?[/quote]
Yes, please file one.  As best I can tell there's a reset of cobj_flag missing somewhere.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4287&start=0#p30992
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: websound extension update
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-02 15:07:56

Perfect, that's what I needed to know. Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4270&start=10#p30993
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pointless disambiguation
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-02 15:27:08

I'll file it if you don't want to Felix, but I'll give you the chance first - since you discovered it! [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4287&start=0#p30994
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: websound extension update
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-02 15:32:52

Btw, the code suggests (well, tells actually) that every sound in the sequence gets its own probability if the previous one didn't score a high enough outcome. So that means that if the sequence contains 100 sounds, and the requested probability of each one is 1%, one of the sounds will almost always play. Each sound in the sequence can have a different probability though. So you might get one sound with a RANDOM value of 10 and another one with 30. If the first sound fails the 10% outcome, then a 30% outcome is tried for the next sound. And so on until a sound passes the check, or all sounds have been tried.

The actual code:

[code]
/*
 *   Check this sound for randomness.  If it has a random start
 *   probability, randomly decide whether to start it; if it fails,
 *   move on to the next sound.
 */
orig_nxt = nxt;
for (;;)
{
    /* if this one isn't random, start it immediately */
    if (nxt->get_random_start() == 0)
        break;

    /*.
     *   choose a random number from 0 to 100 - if it's less than the
     *   start probability, start the sound, otherwise skip it for now.
     */
    if ((rand() % 100) <= nxt->get_random_start())
        break;

    /*.
     *   move on to the next sound, wrapping to the start of the queue
     *   if we reach the end.
     */
    nxt = nxt->next_;
    if (nxt == 0)
        nxt = first_entry_;
        
    /* if we've looped, we don't want to start anything now */
    if (nxt == orig_nxt)
        return;
}
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4270&start=20#p30996
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pointless disambiguation
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-02-02 16:56:43

Please, go ahead and file along!  [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=50#p30997
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2012-02-02 17:36:09

[quote="RealNC"]IMO people are overreacting. This forum doesn't even have a troll problem. Pudlo is a wannabe troll at best (if a troll at all), and I don't see Conrad's posts being in need of any moderation. The only thing worthy of censorship was Adam's reply (we need to think of the poor children who obviously read this forum before they go to bed after a long workday in the Chinese shoe factory.)

Folks, seriously, you're acting like prima donnas :-/[/quote]

Pudlo trolled RAIF/RGIF for over a decade and was downright offensive to people time and time again. How does that not make him a troll?

I'd sooner be a prime donna on a nice friendly forum than someone pretending obnoxious jerks aren't a problem on a spam-infested one.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4291&start=0#p30998
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Using debug code - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-02-02 17:38:44

I'm back, hopefully with an easy question. There is some debug code around named 'Pow'. Can I use this code in conditions other than debugging. In other words, can I modify it to remain in my code in other than the debug mode? This ability will work nicely for my player when and if he becomes a wizard.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4291&start=0#p30999
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using debug code - TADS3.1
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-02 17:49:08

Move the Pow code somewhere else so it will be also built in non-debug builds.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=50#p31000
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: adam / DateTime: 2012-02-02 17:56:20

I'm not sure this is even the right thread, and I can't tell if it's even something under discussion, or if I misinterpreted this over on Usenet, but:

I would much prefer the actual threads [b]not[/b] be deleted, but that's purely selfish of me.  If my reaction online will live forever, and it will, where I went completely ballistic, then I'd rather it be clear what I was reacting to.  I'm sure anyone who reads it will see it as a borderline(?)-psychotic overreaction, but, hey, them's the breaks (I don't, myself, wholly understand the sheer intensity of my reaction).  I'd rather be frothingly overreacting to [i]something[/i] than to [i]nothing[/i].

As for moderation: well, I don't read intfiction.org, or at least I didn't, and I don't plan on posting, but perhaps eventually if I get into IF again ([i]Apocolocyntosis[/i] burned me out for a while) and the newsgroup doesn't magically revive (as if!) I may be a poster here.  So I don't and shouldn't get a vote.

Adam

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=50#p31001
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-02 18:05:49

[quote="adam"]I would much prefer the actual threads [b]not[/b] be deleted, but that's purely selfish of me.[/quote]

Conrad's two locked threads will remain the way they are. I've gone in and locked each of his posts, so he shouldn't be able to change them even when he gets his account back.

There was a third thread that was deleted. I don't think many people saw it before I took it down; it was only up for a few minutes.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4287&start=0#p31002
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: websound extension update
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-02 18:58:13

Great, that was helpful. I've added support for the random attribute and the ambient layer works properly now.

Now I just have to figure out what's going on with the bundled MP3s.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4184&start=0#p31003
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: nominations open
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-02 19:34:15

A body of reviews alongside the awards seems like a great idea: all too often with IF reviews it's difficult to decide what the relevant class of comparison should be, because different games typically have different aims (beyond a general if not universal expectation to entertain). Being able to compare games in a category with other games of that category gives an excellent grounding for comparative criticism.

Further, I'm so down with the idea of reviewing a category that I'm typing this whilst standing on my head. Urm... I don't expect it particularly, but I do have two eligible games up for nomination, so I'd be happy to write in any category I don't get nominated in (this shouldn't be much if anything of a preclusion).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4036&start=20#p31005
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ZMPP for Android released
User: weiju / DateTime: 2012-02-02 19:39:07

Thanks a lot for your comments Kevin ! I'll include auto-rotate one day, but it was not super-high on my priority list. Having the user set the direction enabled me to get it out quicker and without worrying to introduce issues that I did not have the time to test for.

Wei-ju

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4184&start=0#p31006
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: nominations open
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-02 19:44:44

[quote="JoeyJones"]Urm... I don't expect it particularly, but I do have two eligible games up for nomination, so I'd be happy to write in any category I don't get nominated in (this shouldn't be much if anything of a preclusion).[/quote]
Yeah, the IF community being what it is, I wasn't planning on confirming any assignments until the nomination phase was done and we could be sure that people wouldn't be covering their own games. Should [i]The Cavity of Time[/i] earn the torrent of last-minute ballots that I fully expect to arrive over the next few days, I will of course recuse myself from all applicable categories.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4280&start=10#p31007
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Salon: Interactivity and narrative are incompatible
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2012-02-02 20:03:58

Concerning the original quote:

"By now, the theory that the novel of the future will be a game has become almost venerable."

It's a theory that could use debunking on both sides I think - IE people who like novels and not games, people who like games and not novels. Both groups keen to vaunt their fave medium over the other, one because it's seen to be on the wane (relatively speaking) one because it's been called kid stuff for awhile and its advocates want to cement its validity. The two media don't really need vaunting because books and games are different in effect, so they shouldn't be set up to fight each other in the first place.

I don't want to nitpick the Hamlet example because it's obviously being used because people know Hamlet, and the basic truth is in there: novels and plays aren't interactive and that gives them their effect. Games are and that gives them their effect.

I can't really go for Zarf's straw man because new authors can certainly change the text of Hamlet , but then they still deliver it to an audience who don't get to make any macroscopic decisions about the content or direction of the altered text. The line is between authors and audience.

David Cronenberg (who made a game about videogame authors, Existenz, amongst other things) described videogames as democratic, and the classic author/art-as-we-know-it model as a dictatorship. He didn't do this to make one sound good and the other evil, he was just trying to characterise the relationship between author and audience in each. When it becomes democratic, you lose the possibility of certain effects but gain others. The democratic model's a more recent development, but we're likely to continue to want both kinds.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4189&start=0#p31008
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Post-Comp Release of A Night Guest
User: uux02 / DateTime: 2012-02-02 20:20:36

[quote="gravel"]My browser does not like either of the links.  
Which is sad, because now I'll have to type two words into a search engine all by myself.  [emote]:([/emote](((
[url]
<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=k2oi1p21c3zyii55">http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=k2oi1p21c3zyii55</a>[/url]

Actually, my browser doesn't seem to want to download the game, period.  Weird.  I'll try again later.[/quote]

Actually, it landed in <a class="postlink" href="ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/ng.gam">ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/ng.gam</a>.

The file just has been renamed by the IF-Archive maintainers. Sorry for the inconvenience.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4249&start=10#p31009
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk stylesheets: the Plan
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-02-02 20:39:28

I think that I will want to use a sandboxed JS interpreter for iplayif.com. I'm just not happy with the idea of allowing access to the same scope as Parchment, with its stored savefiles, and potentially in the future, a link to some server where the savefiles would be mirrored (so that you could play them on any browser.)

If I use Narcissus, then it would provide a full JS environment, but not all of the host objects would be supported. Possibly none of the DOM would be accessible, but that's okay if we provide a jQuery-like API. It's unpleasant, but I wonder if we should specify a subset of the jQuery API which will be supported as part of Glk. If parts of that API are removed in future jQuery versions then we could patch it. I'd be willing to put together a draft of this API subset.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4286&start=0#p31010
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A room that encloses - not what I thought it meant?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-02 21:41:19

Thanks, and sorry.  [emote]:oops:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4270&start=20#p31011
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pointless disambiguation
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-02 21:50:34

Alrighty then.

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=860">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=860</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4280&start=10#p31012
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Salon: Interactivity and narrative are incompatible
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-03 01:21:32

[quote="severedhand"]David Cronenberg (who made a game about videogame authors, Existenz, amongst other things) described videogames as democratic, and the classic author/art-as-we-know-it model as a dictatorship. He didn't do this to make one sound good and the other evil, he was just trying to characterise the relationship between author and audience in each. When it becomes democratic, you lose the possibility of certain effects but gain others. The democratic model's a more recent development, but we're likely to continue to want both kinds.[/quote]
I haven't played video games much since Centipede morphed into Millipede, so I can't speak to that ... but I dissent mildly from the idea that an interactive mode of storytelling is democratic. It may [i]appear [/i]democratic, but that's an artful illusion. In fact, everything the player can do in IF has been meticulously planned and implemented by the author. The player cannot influence what happens in any way, shape, or form.

A stage play is more nearly democratic, in that it is, of necessity, a collaboration between a playwright, a director, a stage designer, a costume designer, a lighting designer, and a gaggle of actors. Some plays, in addition, involve a few selected audience members in various ways, such as by bringing them onstage in a scene that requires the actors to improvise based on what the audience members say or do. That's about as democratic as letting a few citizens ask questions of a candidate at a "town hall meeting" (which is to say, it's not really democratic at all), but it's less structured than anything in IF.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4229&start=30#p31014
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anchorhead makes PC Gamer's list of 100 Best Games Ever
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-02-03 04:25:35

[quote="Hagbard Celine"]
it is excruciatingly boring! I really don't like Hitchcock movies in general (most overrated director of all time?), but even he has made way better stuff[/quote]I wouldn't say "excruciatingly boring" (though is kind of dull). But I just watched it about a year ago with my family and we spent much more time laughing at the constant, outrageous misogyny. Unlike other films of his, it has [i]really[/i] not aged well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4229&start=30#p31021
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anchorhead makes PC Gamer's list of 100 Best Games Ever
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2012-02-03 08:56:01

It's not all B&W, but [url=http://atomicagecinema.com/]Atomicagecinema.com[/url] might a good website to annoy your B&W-hating friends.  Curl up with 'em and watch [i]Them![/i], [i]The Brain That Wouldn't Die[/i], [i]Attack of the Giant Leeches[/i], or maybe just [i]Duck and Cover[/i].

Lots of good stuff.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4297&start=0#p31022
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: InsideADRIFT #41
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2012-02-03 09:02:09

Announcing the release of [i]InsideADRIFT[/i], issue #41.  Figured I'd post about it here since posting in the Other Development Systems area seem about as useful as any chucking it into a black hole.  A link can be found through some of the associated games (Cut the Red Wire, Ambassador to Dupal, Can You Stand Up) or through the Adventures page on the ADRIFT website (most easily found sorted by date).

Please do check it out.  Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=50#p31023
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2012-02-03 09:46:35

[quote="bcressey"][quote="adam"]I would much prefer the actual threads [b]not[/b] be deleted, but that's purely selfish of me.[/quote]

Conrad's two locked threads will remain the way they are. I've gone in and locked each of his posts, so he shouldn't be able to change them even when he gets his account back.

There was a third thread that was deleted. I don't think many people saw it before I took it down; it was only up for a few minutes.[/quote]

What about the Don't Talk About Me thread? Why was it locked? I'd like you re-open it, so I can talk some more about not talking about me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4288&start=0#p31024
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: room names as conversation topics?
User: yhlee / DateTime: 2012-02-03 10:28:07

Thanks all for the help!  It is working now.  Merlin: I did try "instead of" instead of "after" and got the same "There is no reply," so I ended up going with capmikee's solution.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4229&start=30#p31025
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anchorhead makes PC Gamer's list of 100 Best Games Ever
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-02-03 11:44:40

[quote="ChrisC"]But I just watched it about a year ago with my family and we spent much more time laughing at the constant, outrageous misogyny.[/quote]

Augh, darnit, I shouldn't take the bait, but curiosity has gotten the better of me.  What do you find outrageously misogynistic in [i]NxNW[/i]?  (I'm certainly not saying there isn't any, but I'd say it's comparable to today's mainstream cinema, at worst.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4270&start=20#p31028
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Pointless disambiguation
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-03 12:06:22

[quote="capmikee"][code]Does the player mean:
	showme the current action;[/code][/quote]
By the way, I've discovered that this is a fantastic tool for debugging DPMR in general.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4229&start=30#p31029
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anchorhead makes PC Gamer's list of 100 Best Games Ever
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-02-03 12:37:56

[quote] Curl up with 'em and watch Them!, The Brain That Wouldn't Die, Attack of the Giant Leeches, or maybe just Duck and Cover.
[/quote]

[i]Attack of the Killer Tomatoes[/i] was pretty good, but my favorite in the "so bad its good" category is [i]Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things[/i].  [spoiler]A bunch of rich kids have a party in a mansion located next to a cemetery; after getting suitably intoxicated, they decide to wake up the inhabitants of the cemetery.  The dead folks are not at all amused at having their repose disturbed.[/spoiler]


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4299&start=0#p31030
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Compile error in start menu - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-02-03 13:05:33

I just added a new section of code for the startup menu that I'm using. It is the three lines below about the help text. When I compile my story, I get a warning that the word 'showHelp' is undefined. I do have a proper functioning 'help' section. I have a feeling that the 'showHelp' line is incorrect but can't find the solution. Any ideas about this out there?

RonG

[code]
/* check which keyword we got */
            if ('about'.startsWith(kw))
            {
                /* they want the ABOUT information */
                versionInfo.showAbout();
            }
            else if ('help'.startsWith(kw))
            {
                /* they want the HELP information */
                versionInfo.showHelp();
            }  
            else if ('restore'.startsWith(kw))
            {
                /* try restoring a game */
                if (RestoreAction.askAndRestore())
                {
                    /* we succeeded - proceed directly to the game */
                    return 2;
                }
            }
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4299&start=0#p31031
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Compile error in start menu - TADS3.1
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-03 14:18:32

You need to change the versionInfo.showHelp() line to point to a valid function / method.

[code]
            else if ('help'.startsWith(kw))
            {
                /* they want the HELP information */
                /* FIXME: versionInfo.showHelp() is not defined!
                versionInfo.showHelp();
                */
            }  
[/code]

It should point to whatever code invokes your working help section.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4297&start=0#p31032
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: InsideADRIFT #41
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-02-03 14:20:43

[quote]http://www.adrift.co/cgi/download.cgi?1284[/quote]

Well, since you're announcing a release which contains games, I'd say you're posting in the right place. [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=50#p31033
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2012-02-03 14:38:12

[quote="bcressey"]
There was a third thread that was deleted. I don't think many people saw it before I took it down; it was only up for a few minutes.[/quote]

I reported that one as "flaming" due to it just being a copy-paste of a locked topic and more insults being throw around.

On the overall topic, I think things around here are going smoothly with existing policies.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4300&start=0#p31034
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: What's the name of the game where you just type nouns?
User: katz / DateTime: 2012-02-03 15:18:36

I know there's a game where all you do is type nouns mentioned in the descriptions, and depending on which nouns you type, the story unfolds differently.  For the life of me, I can't remember what it's called.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4300&start=0#p31035
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: What's the name of the game where you just type nouns?
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-02-03 15:26:10

You might be thinking of any number of "keyword-based" games ([url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=u0fzm0lxlt9vb4fi]Walker and Silhouette[/url]?), but the one that pops immediately to mind for me is [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=egtt6j8vif0plzrc]The Space Under the Window[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4257&start=0#p31036
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Bullshit Review of _Find the Dog_
User: Jacek Pudlo / DateTime: 2012-02-03 15:30:57

Writing reviews of non-existent games: how very Lem. So how exactly does your schizophrenia work? You have full-blown paranoia and yet your sentences parse and your ideas are both coherent and amusing. I'm assuming that whatever is wrong with you is not clinical.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4189&start=0#p31037
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Post-Comp Release of A Night Guest
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-03 15:36:31

They should have renamed it to a_night_guest.gam instead. Now people will think the game is called "Next Generation."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4249&start=10#p31038
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk stylesheets: the Plan
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-03 15:59:25

I see the concern about a web terp running arbitrary game code in its own context.

One solution is "iplayif doesn't support Javascript callouts". (An author's own web site, running the author's own game, wouldn't have this restriction.) But it would be nice to not have to go that far, obviously. I like the idea of using Narcissus. (Footnote for onlookers: this is a Javascript engine written in Javascript.)

I don't think we yet have to go so far as to write a formal specification for the Javascript environment. If you write up a description of what a Narcissus environment will look like, that should be enough for now. It can be firmed up when there's working interpreter code to test with.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4184&start=0#p31039
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: nominations open
User: lamont / DateTime: 2012-02-03 16:29:11

[quote="bowsmand"]I thought I'd go through the categories and suggest one possible ADRIFT entry for each.[/quote]
Thanks for this. I did try out [i]Mangiasaur[/i], thanks to your mention of [i]E.V.O.[/i] at IFDB, but I kept getting misleading responses to misunderstood commands. I'm never sure those errors aren't my fault for not using the official interpreter. Which is one of the things I liked about [i]Cursed[/i]: Nick anticipated that many of the judges would be using SCARE, and he went the extra mile to explain the consequences. I'll probably continue to put off [i]The Crooked Estate[/i] and [i]Seek and Enjoy[/i] until I can experience them as intended, but for everything else, I'll have to start using the WebRunner. ("Play Online" links at IFDB would be awesome. Can anyone add them? Or do they require some behind-the-scenes provision?)

And in [i]Mangiasaur[/i] I eventually got into character. When the game ended I wanted to keep eating, to gobble up the scenery itself, as in the last levels of [i]Katamari Damacy[/i]....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4184&start=10#p31040
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: nominations open
User: lamont / DateTime: 2012-02-03 16:32:15

[quote="maga"]It's just a cherry on top (hopefully one of those really good black cherries soaked in gin).[/quote]
Gin-soaked reviews? Count me in. Probably for just one category, in case the relevant nominees turn out to be, like, [i]Cryptozookeeper[/i] and [i]Cursed[/i] and [i]Mentula Macanus[/i] and [i]The Lost Islands of Alabaz[/i]. But as for which category, anything's fine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4249&start=10#p31041
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk stylesheets: the Plan
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-02-03 16:47:59

My suggestion is that the interpreter should restrict JavaScript calls to one namespace. The game could call for example [i]parchment.whatever()[/i] but not [i]whatever()[/i] directly. That way the server that hosts the interpreter can install only libraries that are known to be safe.

I'll have a more formal proposal coming soon.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4249&start=10#p31042
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk stylesheets: the Plan
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-03 16:52:20

Can the interpreter do that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4297&start=0#p31043
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: InsideADRIFT #41
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2012-02-03 17:04:12

Indeed, that was the other half of my thinking.  Also, the link for the new issue is [url=http://www.adrift.co/cgi/download.cgi?1330]here[/url].
(download 1330 as opposed to 1284, which is the newer version of [i]Cursed[/i]... which is also worth a download, of course)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4249&start=20#p31044
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk stylesheets: the Plan
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-02-03 17:13:27

I want to allow people to attach event handlers. Regexs could restrict code to one namespace, but to do the same to the callback functions seems a tall order. Still, if you think it can be done that would be nice. Specifying a subset of jQuery will take the same work as specifying a bunch of functions in some other namespace (or possibly less).

When this first gets onto iplayif.com, I'll have the user confirm that they want to allow JS. Then once we figure out a way to safely sandbox it while still providing a rich enough environment we could add a new glk function and depreciate the old one.

Also, I'm not sure how it will work for Inform 7 generated web pages. If you play them from file: I think they will have access to all the data from other I7 webpages that you've played locally, so the user confirmation may still be needed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4249&start=20#p31045
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk stylesheets: the Plan
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-02-03 17:15:55

I've talked about this briefly with Dannii and he has a system that goes a long way towards this. It's definitely technically possible.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4249&start=20#p31046
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk stylesheets: the Plan
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-02-03 17:21:27

Also to clarify: this system would be restricted to higher level functions than what has possibly been discussed so far. It wouldn't allow for callbacks and such. I'm thinking more like very complete JS modules that are controlled from the story file, like "grant achievement "treasure found" to the player" as opposed to the story file providing the JS code for the achievement system.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4300&start=0#p31047
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: What's the name of the game where you just type nouns?
User: katz / DateTime: 2012-02-03 17:38:22

Thanks, The Space Under the Window is indeed the one I was thinking of.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4229&start=30#p31048
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anchorhead makes PC Gamer's list of 100 Best Games Ever
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2012-02-03 17:58:06

[i]Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things[/i] is still pretty much in the 'just being good' category compared to a lot of exploitation films I've seen [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4249&start=20#p31049
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk stylesheets: the Plan
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-03 20:52:40

[quote]Regexs could restrict code to one namespace[/quote]

That can't possibly be reliable. I am eager to hear about other possibilities. :)

[quote]I'm thinking more like very complete JS modules that are controlled from the story file, like "grant achievement "treasure found" to the player" as opposed to the story file providing the JS code for the achievement system.[/quote]

I'm not sure what you mean by this. The whole point is for JS modules to be provided in the Blorb file, not as literal text in the story file. But it's code from the game author either way, so it's equally untrustworthy (from the player's point of view. Or the web app's, if the web app isn't hosted by the game author.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4297&start=0#p31050
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: InsideADRIFT #41
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-02-04 00:50:00

The link from the IFDB listing for Cut the Red Wire . . . doesn't seem to be working.  I keep getting a 404 error.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4249&start=20#p31051
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk stylesheets: the Plan
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2012-02-04 02:09:44

I read the Short Form only, and just wanted to say - this sounds pretty cool.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4249&start=20#p31052
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk stylesheets: the Plan
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-02-04 02:17:09

[quote="zarf"][quote]I'm thinking more like very complete JS modules that are controlled from the story file, like "grant achievement "treasure found" to the player" as opposed to the story file providing the JS code for the achievement system.[/quote]
I'm not sure what you mean by this. The whole point is for JS modules to be provided in the Blorb file, not as literal text in the story file. But it's code from the game author either way, so it's equally untrustworthy (from the player's point of view. Or the web app's, if the web app isn't hosted by the game author.)[/quote]
I mean that JS modules would [i]not[/i] be in the blorb file, but in an external library provided by the interpreter. The game could only call those ready-made blocks, not provide its own modules.

But, I'm looking at this from a certain perspective. As long as there's some way of getting access to JavaScript from the story, I'm happy :)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4301&start=0#p31053
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Mobile Web JACL
User: stuart / DateTime: 2012-02-04 04:02:40

Hi all

In the absence of a native JACL interpreter for Android/ iOS I've playing around trying to get the Web interface to be useable on small screens. I've got something that I think works okay on the iPhone, but I'd be interested to hear from people with other types of phones to see what results they get. Most of the improvements came from using the "viewport" meta tag which seems to be an Apple creation, although it seems to be generally considered a good idea and well supported by other browsers despite not being a W3C standard. 

The main problem I'm having at the moment is that when the on-screen keyboard is displayed only part of the web page is displayed so scrolling on screen's worth of text gets tricky. I've hardcoded an amount that seems to work well for the iPhone in portait mode but I'd love to find a way to determine the exact number of pixels dynamically...

You can try any of these example games:

<a class="postlink" href="http://jacl.animats.net/fastcgi-bin/dragon.jacl?interface=3">http://jacl.animats.net/fastcgi-bin/dra ... nterface=3</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://jacl.animats.net/fastcgi-bin/grail.jacl?interface=3">http://jacl.animats.net/fastcgi-bin/gra ... nterface=3</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://jacl.animats.net/fastcgi-bin/bloodyguns.jacl?interface=3">http://jacl.animats.net/fastcgi-bin/blo ... nterface=3</a>

Thanks,
Stuart

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4297&start=0#p31054
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: InsideADRIFT #41
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-02-04 04:35:46

Bowsmand: Whoops! Sorry, I was putting up the new version of Cursed on IFDB at the time and my clipboard got mixed up! I meant to quote some of your post.

Rothman: I think that's because when they were added, they didn't have the "http://" bit. People often mess up the download links, I've found. Perhaps some sort of guide is in order...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4018&start=0#p31055
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Web based Text Creator
User: stuart / DateTime: 2012-02-04 04:43:46

Hi

I'd be interested to see more work done on web-based game creation. It would be fun for people to be able to logon and create games through some sort of web GUI.  I did a fair bit of work getting JACL to work over the web a few years ago (games can be played here: <a class="postlink" href="http://jacl.animats.net">http://jacl.animats.net</a>). All the state is saved server side with the user_id in the URL so you just need to bookmark the game once you have started. The user can also manually save games with different names. Of course, having said that, the new Ajax support I added doesn't actually show you the user id in the URL until you fully refresh the page by clicking a link from the top such as "About". Maybe I should move to cookies...

Anyway, I think the web is only getting better as a format for thin client applications. All the game processing is done server side with JACL but snippets of Javascript are used here and there to give some extra functionality such as sound, Ajax and window scrolling -- nothing that is essential to play.

Let me know if you ever want to compare notes,
Stuart

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4200&start=20#p31056
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Megaupload taken offline
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-02-04 04:53:46

[quote="bcressey"][quote="Jacek Pudlo"]Piracy has no impact on serious literature, or serious music, or serious film.[/quote]

Perhaps not piracy but claims of copyright infringement do affect even serious literature, as the James Joyce estate has so ably demonstrated.[/quote]
The authors of this class of lit are mostly dead, but crazy shit seems to happen with reputable estates fairly regularly. The Tolkien estate was pushing some nonsense recently about owning any reference to J.R.R.'s name on buttons or pins, etc. Stuff as simple as, 'I like Tolkien' on a pin with no art — takedown, banned. There was a lot of pushback from fans for bleedin' obvious reasons, and I think the estate climbed down. This illustrates my point which is that people pushing copyright do not stand on any recognisable, consistent principle that makes any sense in the world. So what they get is what they can grab: that's the only logical rule, here. So the natural effect of that uncertainty -- of there being no 'there' there -- is that authors and estates who are morally confused about copyright (and one cannot help but be morally confused about copyright if one attempts to take it at all seriously) will just push the bar until it stops -- i.e., until users rebel and there is a negative P.R. incident. That is the copyright industry's boundary — not the law. So [i]we[/i] decide where the lines are drawn on copyright, actually — not them: they just push until we say 'stop'.

[quote="bcressey"]I don't have any direct knowledge about MegaUpload and its negotiating posture. It's tempting to speculate that they told the content companies where to shove it, given that they were a foreign company operating on foreign soil. That would explain the criminal justice approach, however wrong-headed and absurd.[/quote]
I don't know enough about MegaUpload to know whether to trust their word, but I know for a fact that the government lies, so… you do the math. In the absence of more information, I would not make the assumption you have made. I think the safer assumption is, the government filled its indictment with exaggerations designed to elevate misdemeanors into felonies, because that is par for the course in the legal system. One really cannot trust what the government (or anyone) says in a legal filing. Better to trust a flip of a coin than in [i]that[/i].

[quote="bcressey"]I expect that other up-and-comers would find media lawyers more than willing to negotiate. The weaker and less established the company, the better, since then the terms would be highly one-sided, perhaps cripplingly so.[/quote]
Not sure I'm following your logic here. You think that new sharing site startups need to be kept in check for some reason? That this is 'better'. I agree that weaker companies are extremely vulnerable in this regime. That's a major part of the problem. Hard for me to see where you get 'better' but I'm not sure I've understand you correctly.

[quote="bcressey"]The greater danger is that the emerging content titans - Google, Apple, Amazon - decide that they've had enough of scrappy upstart competitors, and collude with the traditional publishers to finally implement that framework of onerous controls they've always wanted. Then they get Congress to elevate their handshake deal to the status of federal law, and the market is well and truly closed.[/quote]
Yeah, that's a danger. It will probably take the form of everybody pretending to meet up to 'serve the consumer', and then once they are all in a room together, they act like the business sharks they are and just cut deals to serve everybody's interests *but* the consumer. If the government brings them to the table together, watch out: that just removes any danger of anti-trust prosecution.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4302&start=0#p31058
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: How you can watch Chronicle movie on free Chronicle movi
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2012-02-04 05:27:39

Just curious...
Is this considered spam, or is it ok to post things like this in the "Off Topic" thread?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4302&start=0#p31059
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: How you can watch Chronicle movie on free Chronicle movi
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2012-02-04 05:28:27

That was definitely spam.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4280&start=10#p31060
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Salon: Interactivity and narrative are incompatible
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-02-04 05:49:45

[quote="severedhand"]The two media don't really need vaunting because books and games are different in effect, so they shouldn't be set up to fight each other in the first place.[/quote]
This.

[quote="severedhand"]David Cronenberg (who made a game about videogame authors, Existenz, amongst other things) described videogames as democratic, and the classic author/art-as-we-know-it model as a dictatorship. He didn't do this to make one sound good and the other evil, he was just trying to characterise the relationship between author and audience in each. When it becomes democratic, you lose the possibility of certain effects but gain others. The democratic model's a more recent development, but we're likely to continue to want both kinds.[/quote]
The magic happens in the myriad of ways these two models can meet in the middle, so I don't know why people are always trying to point out the lack of a unified model as if it's a bad thing or in opposition or tension. It's not like we are describing the universe here. There is no need to be consistent even from one moment of a game to the next (as long as your players aren't hopelessly confused).

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4108&start=0#p31062
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Alpha testers wanted for a new CYOA tool from inkle
User: joningold / DateTime: 2012-02-04 06:35:37

[quote="Janka"]You have written inkle is not a self-publishing platform so what do you plan to do with the tool? Create a platform, sell it, give it away for free or even opensource it?[/quote]

Hey, sorry for the long delay in replying!

Answer - not quite sure. It's free to use, and it'll be free to share games made with it - they'll be playable in a browser. By "not self-publishing", we mean we won't be offering a "turn your stories into things you can sell" service - so we won't be offering a "make them into apps" service.

Open-sourcing it is something we're talking about and it's an interesting idea. Lots of pros/cons to consider!

cheers
jon

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4205&start=0#p31063
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Experimental parser
User: joningold / DateTime: 2012-02-04 06:45:13

Interesting. I like the approach. I can't say I really understand it, though. My main question - how scalable is it? For instance, could you extend it to handle things like:

"open up the box"
"lift up the marble."
"open the box up"
"climb up the ladder"
"climb down the ladder"

where that extra word - up - can be placed around sort of anywhere in the sentence (but could potentially be significant, as in the last two cases).

jon

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4301&start=0#p31064
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Mobile Web JACL
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2012-02-04 07:00:47

I tried The Unholy Grail on my Android phone (HTC Desire Z, to be specific). It looks good, but long chunks of text just aren't readable. I can't find any way of scrolling through the on-screen text other than selecting the command prompt and then typing something. But that immediately jumps to the end of the on-screen text, skipping the middle of long sections. Scrolling up and down by swiping doesn't seem to work, so there's no way of retrieving the missed text. (I don't know if scrolling is supposed to be possible - it could be some problem specific to the Android browser.)

On the positive side, the design is clean and easy to read and the interpreter is quite responsive. Over wifi there's only slight lag between entering a command and receiving a response, which is good to see in a web interpreter.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4297&start=0#p31065
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: InsideADRIFT #41
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2012-02-04 09:16:33

Thanks for bringing this to my attention.  Should be fixed now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=50#p31066
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-02-04 10:13:35

[quote="bcressey"][quote="matt w"]I thought a post could only be reported once -- I've often clicked on the icon and been told it's already been reported. (For spam posts; I'm not sure whether I've ever flagged something for what I considered trolling, but if I did that didn't happen very often.)[/quote]

Oh, I didn't realize that. There goes that plan.

Maybe some sort of karma / reputation mod would be a better way to go. If anyone knows of a good one for phpBB, please let me know.[/quote]http://code.google.com/p/phpbb3-community-moderation/ looks pretty good, maybe.

[quote="bcressey"][quote="adam"]I would much prefer the actual threads [b]not[/b] be deleted, but that's purely selfish of me.[/quote]

Conrad's two locked threads will remain the way they are. I've gone in and locked each of his posts, so he shouldn't be able to change them even when he gets his account back.

There was a third thread that was deleted. I don't think many people saw it before I took it down; it was only up for a few minutes.[/quote]
What if there were some sort of "trash bin of history" forum that bad threads are moved to rather than being deleted, with no further posting allowed? I can understand the desire not to see any threads deleted and rendered completely inaccessible.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4189&start=0#p31067
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Post-Comp Release of A Night Guest
User: uux02 / DateTime: 2012-02-04 10:37:29

[quote="RealNC"]They should have renamed it to a_night_guest.gam instead. Now people will think the game is called "Next Generation."[/quote]

Well, if they renamed it to [url=http://www.russia-now.info/russia/russia_news/sukhois_superjet_to_compete_with_boeing_82.html]SSJ-NG.gam[/url], [b]that[/b] would be real trouble.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=50#p31068
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-02-04 10:59:57

[quote="dfabulich"]I'd like intfiction.org to be the sort of place where uncivil discourse is deleted, and troll users are secretly banned.[/quote]
'Secretly' is the telling word here. People who support high levels of moderation so often want it to be done in secret. I wonder why. Since they claim the bannings are supposed to be a deterrent, what is the point of keeping them a secret? Perhaps they are actually embarrassed to be seen doing it, much like Ben said he actually feels about it when circumstances force his hand? That seems quite likely, and it's very revealing about the social validity of heavy-handed forum moderation. It's not really a socially acceptable way for any kind of host to conduct themselves. Essentially by provoking a ban, a user has succeeded in dragging the forum moderators down to their level of 'going nuclear' with whatever tools are at their disposal. Over-moderating can even be a form of trolling when it is done in [i]just that right way[/i] to provoke maximum fury from the dispossessed — those who have been around enough moderators will know what I'm talking about.

Cases will present themselves, no doubt, where major deletions and bans really are necessary to preserve the value of the board to others, but a moderator [i]should[/i] feel embarrassed that it has come to that pass: I would. In any case, I don't have a problem with the moderation regime on this forum at present.

Paul.

EDIT: I just read the two locked threads, and… argh. I am way too past-40 to be concerning myself over who dissed who in the past, who wrote a bad review of what, or who is a sock puppet for whom.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4200&start=20#p31069
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Megaupload taken offline
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-04 11:11:24

[quote="Laroquod"]Not sure I'm following your logic here. You think that new sharing site startups need to be kept in check for some reason? That this is 'better'. I agree that weaker companies are extremely vulnerable in this regime. That's a major part of the problem. Hard for me to see where you get 'better' but I'm not sure I've understand you correctly.[/quote]

It's better from the POV of the media corporations, not from the startup's, nor mine. Lawyers will always prefer negotiating from a position of strength.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4200&start=20#p31070
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Megaupload taken offline
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-02-04 11:33:34

[quote="bcressey"]It's better from the POV of the media corporations, not from the startup's, nor mine. Lawyers will always prefer negotiating from a position of strength.[/quote]
Yeah, I suspected myself of just not getting it, there, because it didn't seem to match the rest of what you said. Thanks for clarifying.

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4291&start=0#p31071
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using debug code - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-02-04 12:01:30

The debug code uses the following code to assign locations to each room. I do not want this POW code to be used only in debug. Here's the code that seems to kick it off:

#idef__debug
  #define dbgNoun(x) vocabWords_=x
#else
 #define dbgNoun(x)
#endif

You then assign the noun code such as dbgNoun('kitchen-room) to each room so that you can jump (POW) to each unique dbgNoun description in each room.

Need some help modifying this so that it will not only work in debug mode. I hope I described this correctly.

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=60#p31072
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-04 13:57:08

[quote="Laroquod"][quote="dfabulich"]I'd like intfiction.org to be the sort of place where uncivil discourse is deleted, and troll users are secretly banned.[/quote]
'Secretly' is the telling word here. People who support high levels of moderation so often want it to be done in secret. I wonder why. Since they claim the bannings are supposed to be a deterrent, what is the point of keeping them a secret?[/quote]

I think the idea is that the banning is a secret to the troll himself; he can post, and his posts show up on the board for him, but they don't show up for other users. And the idea is that a troll who is told "[url=http://bookshopblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Youre-fired.jpg]You're banned![/url]" will immediately come back in some other form, while a troll who is subject to a secret ban will eventually get bored and go away.

I'm certainly not an expert on forum moderation in general, but in the particular case of this forum and community, I think this underestimates Jacek's perspicacity and resilience.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4018&start=0#p31073
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Web based Text Creator
User: Alex / DateTime: 2012-02-04 14:07:24

This is something I'm working on at the moment - the Quest WebEditor. I designed the desktop version of the Quest Editor so that the GUI was nicely separated, which has meant that it's been reasonably straightforward (well, still a few weeks of work) to create an ASP.NET MVC front-end.

It currently looks something like this:

[attachment=0]webeditor.png[/attachment]

Hopefully it will be ready for testing in another week or two.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4304&start=0#p31074
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Understanding "[text]" as a thing
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-04 14:21:27

The following compiles, somewhat to my surprise:

[code]Chamber is a room. The set is scenery in Chamber. "Description of the set."
Understand "[text]" as the set.[/code]

but I don't know if I can recover the text that the player typed to refer to the set. That is, when the player types "x foof" it examines the set, as it should, but is there any way I can figure out that they typed "Foof"? The topic understood isn't set.

(Why would I want to do this insane thing? I'm interested in whether I can set up some dummy objects with varying procedurally generated descriptions, and then have the player be able to refer to the objects using whatever's in the descriptions. So if the player says "x clock," I want to be able to trap the word "clock" and check whether some object whose description currently includes "clock" is in the room.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4205&start=0#p31075
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Experimental parser
User: Alex / DateTime: 2012-02-04 14:23:06

This parser approach sounds fundamentally similar to Quest's parser. The concept of "split words" is analogous to the command patterns that Quest uses, as you have to have something to separate the "variable" parts of the player input.

The example of "boil soup in a kettle over a medium flame" would be handled with a Quest command pattern of "boil #object1# in #object2# over #object3#", and you can specify alternate patterns by separating them with semicolons - so the full three lines of the "Expanding the Vocabulary of Commands" example on the linked page would be equivalent to:

[code]
boil #object1# in #object2# over #object3; boil #object1# over #object3# in #object2#; over #object3# boil #object1# in #object2#
[/code]

You can handle extra optional words by specifying alternative forms of the command pattern in a similar way. For example:

[code]
open #object#; open up #object#; open #object# up
[/code]

would be sufficient to handle "open the box", "open up the box" and "open the box up" (as well as versions without "the").

Personally I think this is easier to read syntax than the suggested function-calling syntax, but the approach to parsing sounds very similar.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4305&start=0#p31076
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: wearables not being worn
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-02-04 14:41:16

Ok I'm a bit puzzled tbh 

I've had my classes of clothes set up for ages and all working fine (such as not being able to wear two pairs of pants etc) and I haven't played with the classes or even any of the clothes themselves for that matter.  I've just noticed that when I type wear (anything) I get "First taking the (whichever)" and that's it, when I try wearing it again I get "Nothing obvious happens"

I can take clothes off fine but not wear them, I've no idea how long this has been happening since as far as I knew it was working fine, I'm just wondering if there's any reason why it might just stop working other than the classes being messed up somehow?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4305&start=0#p31077
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: wearables not being worn
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-04 15:07:33

Have you written any of your own code for dobjFor(Wear)? If so, please post it so we can look at it. That's most likely where the problem lies.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=60#p31078
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-02-04 15:13:48

[quote="matt w"][quote="Laroquod"][quote="dfabulich"]I'd like intfiction.org to be the sort of place where uncivil discourse is deleted, and troll users are secretly banned.[/quote]
'Secretly' is the telling word here. People who support high levels of moderation so often want it to be done in secret. I wonder why. Since they claim the bannings are supposed to be a deterrent, what is the point of keeping them a secret?[/quote]

I think the idea is that the banning is a secret to the troll himself; he can post, and his posts show up on the board for him, but they don't show up for other users. And the idea is that a troll who is told "[url=http://bookshopblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Youre-fired.jpg]You're banned![/url]" will immediately come back in some other form, while a troll who is subject to a secret ban will eventually get bored and go away.[/quote]
I see your point — that could be so. Sorry if I misinterpreted in that case.

[quote="matt w"]I'm certainly not an expert on forum moderation in general, but in the particular case of this forum and community, I think this underestimates Jacek's perspicacity and resilience.[/quote]
I really don't get the preoccupation with Jacek — as trolls go, he's mild and very easy to ignore if desired. He doesn't (that I have seen) go nuclear and spam the community. He doesn't try to make his voice the loudest or shout everyone else down. He just likes to be a dick about things and starts the occasional sarcastic irrelevant thread as fodder for same — big deal. I didn't even think he was a troll at first. I have been around, and if he is this community's idea of a 'problem child', we got it good.

Paul.

EDIT P.S. Even the kindest king needs a jester to keep him humble. I don't like living in an echo chamber where everybody must think or behave as specified by the dominant faction. So I am not in favour of banning 'trolls' unless they are also spammers, hackers, or otherwise dedicated to denying or compromising the use of the forum.

EDIT for another P.S.: Regarding how to deal with trolls, this 'survival guide' is not bad. (Disclaimer: I wrote it for the scifi.com message board community back when I used to post a lot about Battlestar Galactica — now there was a community with some [i]trolls[/i]: the fanwars over 'GINO' as the classic fans derisively called it, are legendary)…

<a class="postlink" href="http://doggerblue.50webs.com/">http://doggerblue.50webs.com/</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4305&start=0#p31079
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: wearables not being worn
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-02-04 15:19:10

Actually I just solved it, I just had a misplaced '}' on a couple of the classes (dresses, pants and skirts) which was stopping inherited from being called, stupid mistake that I should have noticed a long time ago haha

Serves me right for writing methods to add in extra bits and only testing for the extra bits and not checking that it was still working fine in the first place

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4291&start=0#p31080
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using debug code - TADS3.1
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-04 15:19:12

Okay, here's a way to do it. Don't bother trying to adapt the code from ncDebugActions at all.

First, you need to understand that a room has no vocabWords assigned to it, because the player doesn't usually need to refer to a room by name. So there's no provision for vocabWords in the Room template. To each room, you need to add one or more vocabWords by hand, as a property of the room:

[code]vocabWords = 'temple'[/code]
Having done that, you can now write your own teleportation action, like this:
[code]DefineTAction(Goto)
    objInScope(obj) { if (obj.ofKind(Room)) return true;
        return nil;
    }
;
VerbRule(Goto)
    'goto' singleDobj
    : GotoAction
    verbPhrase = 'go/going to a room'
;
modify Room
    dobjFor(Goto) {
        action() {
            me.moveIntoForTravel(self);
            me.lookAround(true);
        }
    }
;[/code]
This isn't 100% perfect, but it will serve as a first approximation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4304&start=0#p31081
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Understanding "[text]" as a thing
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2012-02-04 15:32:29

Possibly helpful is bug report [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=66]#66[/url]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4291&start=0#p31082
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using debug code - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-02-04 15:35:53

I'm looking for a book titled 'TADS For Dummies'. I would probably pay almost any price for it. Thanks for the information. I'll give it a shot and let you know what happens. Your approach appears to be much simpler to use than what I had.

RonG

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4249&start=20#p31083
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk stylesheets: the Plan
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-04 15:37:42

[quote="Juhana"]I mean that JS modules would [i]not[/i] be in the blorb file, but in an external library provided by the interpreter. The game could only call those ready-made blocks, not provide its own modules.

But, I'm looking at this from a certain perspective. As long as there's some way of getting access to JavaScript from the story, I'm happy [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

I think the best approach for forward compatibility is to store the JS code in the blorb. That way if future browser incompatibilities make it nonfunctional, someone else could rip the blorb resources, rewrite the JS in a compatible way, and repack the blorb.

I'm not excited about external libraries because then the games are no longer self-contained, and there is a nontrivial version management / change control process that those libraries would have to follow in order to avoid breaking existing games hosted in the same environment.

I have mixed feelings about embedded JS literals. On the one hand I've just finished a quick TADS 3 extension that allows an author to do exactly that, and I must say it's quite liberating to be able to script the entire UI from game logic. On the other hand, there's some concern about forward compatibility this way.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4301&start=0#p31084
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Mobile Web JACL
User: stuart / DateTime: 2012-02-04 15:48:20

Thanks for the feedback Emily. The scrolling does work on the iPhone so I'll have to find out what is going on under Android. I added some Javascript to scroll the text to the bottom when the player starts typing, but that only happens for the first character, from the second character onwards the player can scroll back up and keep typing without jumping back down. This is good if the player wants to check the name or spell for an object from high up in the description for example.

Anyway, I'll see what I can do to get scrolling working on both platforms.

Thanks!

Stuart

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4304&start=0#p31085
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Understanding "[text]" as a thing
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-02-04 16:00:14

[quote="matt w"](Why would I want to do this insane thing? I'm interested in whether I can set up some dummy objects with varying procedurally generated descriptions, and then have the player be able to refer to the objects using whatever's in the descriptions. So if the player says "x clock," I want to be able to trap the word "clock" and check whether some object whose description currently includes "clock" is in the room.)[/quote]
Very interesting!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4018&start=0#p31086
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Web based Text Creator
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-02-04 16:08:28

Neato. I set up something very similar using a HyperCard stack, before the web. When you were done designing, you would hit a button and it would automatically generate compilable C++ code, with separate interface libraries for either Think C++ (on the Mac) or Turbo C++ (on Windows, or actually just DOS, I didn't bother learning the whole PC GUI toolbox as I have never been into Microsoft). Wrote a pretty good compound-phrase parser, too. When I discovered Inform, I abandoned the project as too much of a kludge (splitting design across apps and requiring purchase of Think/Turbo C). Later, Apple knifed HyperCard, anyway. If I had done it just a few years later, I probably would have done it on the web, which would have had much more of a point to it. All I did was reinvent a wheel just to prove to myself that I could — the web can do much more.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4249&start=20#p31087
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk stylesheets: the Plan
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-02-04 16:54:14

For Vorple/StructIO what I was imagining is more of an RPC system, rather than a scripting environment. When I implement Glk in StructIO I intend to allow direct access to StructIO too, but it will be via passing commands in JSON or YAML. It will be limited to quite basic element manipulation, but will be there for people who want more than Glk's windows, paragraphs and spans.

However with this new plan instead of a Vorple API that we access, there could instead be a Vorple library that could be compiled into the blorb. The paragraph IDs are just longing to be used for error folding. The jQuery subset I've been talking about will again be an API, but as it will be low level compared to Vorple we won't have to update it much, or ever. jQuery is frequently updated, but the core of it has been stable for a very long time.

Or you could stick to an API, either within Glk, or parallel to it. But then it would have tricky version management problems as Ben said. I think Vorple might well have a higher rate of change than Glk. (And the Glk rate of change we see now is higher than it's been in a long time!)

Oh, and I've just realised that we can use Web Workers as a much simpler and faster sandbox. They're quite widely supported now. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4239&start=0#p31088
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Testers Needed...
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-04 22:51:27

Bump.

A number of issues have been fixed, and much more NPC interaction is now implemented. Also, the latest build has seven music cues (which makes for an 11mb download, but these days that's nothing).

I very much need to enlist two or three more testers, as one or two of the people who initially volunteered are turning out to be busy doing other things. I'm not complaining, because I have no claim on volunteers! I'm just saying, there's still work to be done.

If you're interested, please drop me a message.

My experience in the past with testing has been that the latter part of a game doesn't get as thorough a wringing-out as the first part, so I plan to make a "cheat code" available to testers that will bypass the first part of the game instantly, so that the second part can receive its fair share of abuse. (The second part is probably more fun, as well....)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4304&start=0#p31089
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Understanding "[text]" as a thing
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-04 23:44:38

Thanks Ron, that is very helpful! The fix you included is particularly helpful; the I6 voodoo seems to work. Here's something I have that has at least a little functionality:

[spoiler][code]
Chamber is a room. "A bright tapestry hangs on the wall and a rich carpet lies on the floor." The set is scenery in Chamber. The description of the set is "This is a blank description." The tapestry is privately-named scenery in Chamber. "Bright." The carpet is privately-named scenery in Chamber. "Rich." 
Understand "[text]" as the set.
Before doing something when the set is the noun: [this should probably go in its own rulebook before "before," and I would also have to do something for when the set is the second noun]
	fix the topic understood;
	if the topic understood matches "bright" or the topic understood matches "tapestry":
		change the noun to the tapestry;
	otherwise if the topic understood matches "rich" or the topic understood matches "carpet":
		change the noun to the carpet;
	otherwise:
		say "That doesn't seem to be here.";
		stop the action.

To fix the/-- topic understood: now the parsed number is (consult_from multiplied by 100) + consult_words.

Parsed number is a number that varies. Parsed number variable translates into I6 as "parsed_number".

consult_from is a number that varies. consult_from variable translates into I6 as "consult_from".

consult_words is a number that varies. consult_words variable translates into I6 as "consult_words". 

Test me with "x carpet/x rich/x bright/x yzzy".[/code][/spoiler]

Now, I'm still not positive why "the topic understood" isn't getting set here; it's not the situation covered in bug 66 and WI 16.20, since the command isn't a mistake and is understood. If I tried to attach a "when" condition to the understand line, it wouldn't work as specified in 16.20, which is why I channel everything to a dummy object and then redirect it. But I'm not sure what it does take to set "the topic understood."

Paul, thanks! Don't expect to see anything working anytime soon; it's just an idea I had for a tech demo, and today I thought of this as a possible hack for making one bit of it work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4304&start=0#p31090
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Understanding "[text]" as a thing
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-02-05 04:08:19

[quote="matt w"]Now, I'm still not positive why "the topic understood" isn't getting set here[/quote]
I'm not quite sure why it should be set. If the command is X FOOF where the word "foof" matches some dummy object, then the dummy object becomes the noun, not the topic. The examine action applies to one noun, not topic. The fact that any word can be used to refer to the dummy object isn't related to topics.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4018&start=0#p31091
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Web based Text Creator
User: stuart / DateTime: 2012-02-05 04:31:09

Hi Alex

I think your interface looks great. One thing I would recommend though is looking at having it create an intermediate representation of the game that is suitable for translating into any of the existing IF languages. One thing I have learnt over the years is that no one is really interested in yet another IF language. An interface like this however would really appeal to people provided they could eventually compile to their favourite system even if that meant someone writing a plugin to generate the system code out of the intermediate representation.

Looking forward to seeing it up and running!

Stuart

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4018&start=0#p31092
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Web based Text Creator
User: Alex / DateTime: 2012-02-05 05:31:53

It's not "yet another language" - it's Quest, which has been around since 1998 <a class="postlink" href="http://www.textadventures.co.uk/quest/">http://www.textadventures.co.uk/quest/</a> (although as far as this particular forum is concerned it's categorised as one of those obscure "Other Development Systems")

The WebEditor is open source, and the code is at <a class="postlink" href="http://quest.codeplex.com/">http://quest.codeplex.com/</a>. I don't think it would be particularly easy to turn it into a generic front-end for other languages though - by the time you'd done that you may as well have just written another web editor front-end from scratch.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4018&start=10#p31093
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Web based Text Creator
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2012-02-05 06:38:41

[quote="Alex"](although as far as this particular forum is concerned it's categorised as one of those obscure "Other Development Systems")[/quote]
Of course, the reason for that is that [url=http://www.textadventures.co.uk/forum/]Quest has its own forum[/url] elsewhere. For Inform and TADS, which have their own subforums here, this is the main support forum for authors. It wouldn't make sense to have a separate Quest subforum here when all Quest questions are asked over on your forum. (It doesn't say "one of those obscure" in the forum description. That's your - unfair IMHO - interpretation.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4018&start=10#p31094
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Web based Text Creator
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-02-05 06:52:01

[quote="Trumgottist"][quote="Alex"](although as far as this particular forum is concerned it's categorised as one of those obscure "Other Development Systems")[/quote]
Of course, the reason for that is that [url=http://www.textadventures.co.uk/forum/]Quest has its own forum[/url] elsewhere.[/quote]
I believe it's more because the other development systems get so few posts that it makes more sense to group them into one subforum than to have separate subforums that get maybe one thread per year each. There used to be a Hugo subforum too, but it was merged into the other systems forum for this reason. (It should also show that favoritism isn't a factor. Merk, the forum owner, is a Hugo guy.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4306&start=0#p31095
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Problems using CollectiveGroup
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-02-05 08:06:54

I thought I'd sorted all my parser troubles out but apparently not, I'm pretty sure I'm going to need a bit of a re-sort of my groups and add an extra decoration or something so I'm just after a bit of advice really.

What I'm after is something that will look like this

[quote]>look at shoes
It's a pile where I kick my shoes when I come in, there's my sneakers, some high heels and probably some flip flops in there too. 

>wear shoes
which shoes did you mean? the sneakers, the plain heels or the strappy heels?

>wear pile of shoes
I don't think wearing [i]all [/i]my shoes is such a great idea, I should pick out just the one pair.
[/quote]
I get that having it as a collective group tries to wear all of the pairs of shoes (which is what's happening) but oddly enough when I try 'wear clothes' I get my notWearableMsg (I don't really want to wear [i]all[/i] of my clothes) which is what I want. At the moment though I get this

[quote]>look at shoes
It's where I kick my shoes when I come in, there's my sneakers, some high heels and probably some flip flops in there too. 

>look at pile of shoes
You see no pile of shoes here. 

>wear shoes

pair of white sneakers:
(first taking the pair of white sneakers)
Okay, you’re now wearing the pair of white sneakers. 

pair of strappy high heels:
(first taking the pair of strappy high heels)
You're already wearing a pair of trainers, you should take them off first. 

pair of plain high heel shoes:
(first taking the pair of plain high heel shoes)
You're already wearing a pair of trainers, you should take them off first. [/quote]
I'm more than a little confused since it recognises the pile of shoes when you type "look at shoes" but not when you type look at "pile of shoes", I'm more interested in making it not handle them collectively for wearing though, any ideas anyone?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4304&start=0#p31096
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Understanding "[text]" as a thing
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-05 09:04:23

So it gets set whenever there's an understand line that pertains to an action applying to one topic? I'm used to [text] tokens setting the topic understood, but that presumably works because they generally appear in understand lines for actions applying to one topic.

It looks like Ron's I6 magic might be the way to recover the way the player referred to an object -- but unfortunately it doesn't straightforwardly work on actions with two nouns:

[code]
Chamber is a room. "A bright tapestry hangs on the wall and a rich carpet lies on the floor." The set is scenery in Chamber. The description of the set is "This is a blank description." The tapestry is privately-named scenery in Chamber. "Bright." The carpet is privately-named scenery in Chamber. "Rich."  The player carries an apple. There is a whatsit in Chamber.
Understand "[text]" as the set.
Before doing something when the set is the noun: [this should probably go in its own rulebook before "before," and I would also have to do something for when the set is the second noun]
	fix the topic understood;
	say "Topic: [topic understood].";	
	if the topic understood matches "bright" or the topic understood matches "tapestry":
		change the noun to the tapestry;
	otherwise if the topic understood matches "rich" or the topic understood matches "carpet":
		change the noun to the carpet;
	otherwise:
		say "That doesn't seem to be here.";
		stop the action.

Before doing something when the set is the second noun: [this should probably go in its own rulebook before "before," and I would also have to do something for when the set is the second noun]
	fix the topic understood;
	say "Topic: [topic understood].";	
	if the topic understood matches "bright" or the topic understood matches "tapestry":
		change the second noun to the tapestry;
	otherwise if the topic understood matches "rich" or the topic understood matches "carpet":
		change the second noun to the carpet;
	otherwise:
		say "That doesn't seem to be here.";
		stop the action.


To fix the/-- topic understood: now the parsed number is (consult_from multiplied by 100) + consult_words.

Parsed number is a number that varies. Parsed number variable translates into I6 as "parsed_number".

consult_from is a number that varies. consult_from variable translates into I6 as "consult_from".

consult_words is a number that varies. consult_words variable translates into I6 as "consult_words". 

Test me with "x carpet/x rich/x bright/x yzzy".
[/code]

[quote]>put apple on whatsit
(the apple on the whatsit)
Putting things on the whatsit would achieve nothing.

>put apple on carpet
You can't see any such thing.

>put carpet on apple
Topic: apple.
That doesn't seem to be here.

>x carpet
Topic: carpet.

Rich.

>x foof
Topic: foof.
That doesn't seem to be here.

>put foof on thumpy
You can't see any such thing.[/quote]

If I'm going to effectively hack the parser like this, I suppose I really need to learn how the parser and I6 work (or learn how the parser works through Ron's I7 parser). [That's 'effectively' meaning 'in effect,' not meaning 'it'll actually work'.]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4306&start=0#p31097
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Problems using CollectiveGroup
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-05 10:48:06

I've never used a CollectiveGroup, but there's a good discussion starting on p. 260 of "Learning TADS 3." Have you studied that?

With respect to the "pile of shoes" problem, I believe the parser will sort this out if you make both 'pile' and 'shoes' nouns for the group (or object). It's supposed to, anyway. That is, for vocabWords (presumably in the template):

[code]'gorgeous fashionable shoes/pile'[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4307&start=0#p31098
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Modifying the final question to add "AGAIN"
User: Peter Nepstad / DateTime: 2012-02-05 11:00:17

Looking at trying to modify the RESTART, RESTORE, etc final question to also add "AGAIN" - or any other command for that matter. Can't figure it out. It needs to go back and then process that command (and then end again, as it would happen when processing that command again).

Why re-do the same death command? Well, because numerous things can happen when you do, admittedly all ending in the endgame state again. 

In this case, actually, the command is Listen. So the end question could either run an "again" command or a "listen" command, I don't care which as long as it works.

Still very new to Inform 7.

I created this:

[code]Table of Final Question Options (continued)
final question wording	only if victorious	topic	final response rule		final response activity
"LISTEN again"			true		"listen"	immediately listen rule	--[/code]

OK, so far so good, so then I guess I create the rule:

[code]This is the immediately listen rule:[/code]

Which should somehow...I don't know. This is where I'm stuck. Am I on the right track?

-- Peter Nepstad
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.illuminatedlantern.com/">http://www.illuminatedlantern.com/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4307&start=0#p31099
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Modifying the final question to add "AGAIN"
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-05 11:19:53

Does it matter what the player listens to?

The simplest case is:

[code]
This is the immediately listen rule:
	try listening.
[/code]

I was worried that this might run into some unusual after-the-game-ends behavior, but it doesn't seem to.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4307&start=0#p31100
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Modifying the final question to add "AGAIN"
User: Peter Nepstad / DateTime: 2012-02-05 11:25:00

I love how simple that was. Thank you, that works perfectly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4306&start=0#p31101
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Problems using CollectiveGroup
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-02-05 11:46:46

I hadn't read that, just the bits in the Tads 3 Tour Guide and the Library Reference Manual.  According to what's in Learning Tads 3 though it says only examine is handled collectively.  On thinking about it I'm not 100% sure it [i]is[/i] trying to handle it collectively since it doesn't try to wear flip flops as well, just the things that have 'shoes' defined in their vocab, which I would have thought the parser would ask which we meant in that case...

I tried adding pile to the list of nouns as well with no luck, but thank you I hadn't thought of that... On that note though I just found out that I had to add 'of' to the list to make it work [emote]:)[/emote]

EDIT> I've also tried changing the CollectiveGroup to decoration with the same result of trying to wear everything (this time including the pile of shoes) so the problem may not be with the group after all, in theory it [i]should[/i] be asking me which shoes I want to wear, any reason why it might not?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4291&start=0#p31102
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using debug code - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-02-05 12:15:15

When I compiled the code I received the following error:

Tip: you can go to the source location of a compile error
by double-clicking on the error message in this window

----- begin build: Sun Feb 05 13:02:28 2012 -----
>t3make -Fy "C:\Documents and Settings\Frenchy\Desktop\The Magic Forest\obj" -Fo "C:\Documents and Settings\Frenchy\Desktop\The Magic Forest\obj" -o "debug\The Magic Forest.t3" -a -D "LANGUAGE=en_us" -D "MESSAGESTYLE=neu" -v -d -statprefix <@> -statpct "system.tl" "adv3\adv3.tl" "The Magic Forest.t" -res "GameInfo.txt"
TADS Compiler 3.1.0  Copyright 1999, 2010 Michael J. Roberts
The Magic Forest.t(24): error: 
The symbol "objInScope" is already defined, so you cannot use it as the name of
a function here.  This symbol is already being used as the name of an object or
property elsewhere in your program.  Change the name to a unique symbol.


Errors:   1
Warnings: 0

t3make: error code 1

Build failed.
----- end build: Sun Feb 05 13:02:36 2012 -----

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4291&start=0#p31103
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using debug code - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-02-05 12:30:38

The last error was not an error but just an extra format character. However, I did get an error when I tried to place vocabWords='temple' into a room. Is there a special place in the room code or a special way that this must be entered?

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4291&start=0#p31104
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using debug code - TADS3.1
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-05 12:47:32

Offhand I would guess that you wrote "vocabWords = 'temple';" and the semicolon at the end is ending your object definition prematurely.

But without seeing your source text for the temple room, it's just a shot in the dark.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4291&start=0#p31105
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using debug code - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-02-05 13:11:52

I figured it out. I used the following: vocabWords='(Beach) temple'
If I use 'goto temple' it works fine. However, if I use 'goto Beach' I get a message saying 'there is no beach here'. This must be because I'm already at the beach. Is there a modification you can make that tells me I am already at the location I'm trying to goto?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4306&start=0#p31106
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Problems using CollectiveGroup
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-05 13:42:46

Here's one approach.

[code]
+ shoesGroup: CollectiveGroup, Fixture 'pile/shoes' 'pile of shoes'
	"It's where I kick my shoes when I come in, there's my sneakers, some high
	heels and probably some flip flops in there too. "

	// examine and take should redirect to pile, wear should disambiguate
	isCollectiveAction(action, whichObj) {
		if (action.ofKind(ExamineAction)
			|| action.ofKind(TakeAction))
			return true;
		return nil;
	}

	// if we're looking at shoes at all, we want to look at the pile
	isCollectiveQuant(np, requiredNum) {
		return true;
	}

	// show fixture in room contents
	isListed = true

	// should be "a pile of shoes" instead of "some pile of shoes"
	isPlural = nil
;

class Shoes: Wearable
	// objects will inherit this vocab word automatically
	vocabWords = 'shoes'

	// our pile of shoes
	collectiveGroups = [shoesGroup]

	// should only list shoes if they're held or away from the pile
	isListed () {
		return (self.isIn(gPlayerChar)
				|| (self.getOutermostRoom != shoesGroup.getOutermostRoom())
		);
	}

	isPlural = true
;

+ sneakers: Shoes 'sneakers' 'sneakers';
+ heels: Shoes 'heels' 'heels';
+ flipflops: Shoes 'flip flops' 'flip flops';
[/code]

It took me awhile to find the isCollectiveQuant() method. By default the collectiveGroup only intercepts actions that don't specify a certain quantity, and by giving each object a "shoes" vocab word, the parser decides that one specific pair must be wanted, and triggers disambiguation.

One issue is that the pile always claims to have the full set of footwear, even when the player is holding some or all of it.  A possible solution would be to block the player from taking a pair if holding another one, and then vary the pile description based on which of the three (if any) was held.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4306&start=0#p31107
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Problems using CollectiveGroup
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-02-05 14:44:04

I added that code in and tried having a play with it in but it didn't change anything [emote]:([/emote] was worth a shot though, and thanks for looking for me.  I'd seen the methods though didn't have a clue as to how I'd implement them.  I've decided it not that it's confusing the shoes with the pile of shoes, it's simply trying to wear all the shoes at once rather than asking which I wan't to wear.  This is just as much a puzzler though

I've just tested it with the shoesGroup location set to nil and as a decoration to make sure it definately isn't the group that's affecting it so I know for sure that isn't the case now.

As for the description of the pile I'd already thought about that, when I get around to it I was going to make the shoes go back to the pile and any other clothes just dropped so long as the player is in the bedroom rather than give it a dynamic description, I've been making enough of them for now [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=60#p31108
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-02-05 16:30:28

[quote]I really don't get the preoccupation with Jacek — as trolls go, he's mild and very easy to ignore if desired. . .  .[/quote]
Sorry, but when we have an individual whose sole purpose in posting (it would appear) is to make an ass of himself, I have trouble buying the argument that we should thank him for not making an even bigger ass of himself.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=60#p31109
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2012-02-05 16:38:58

I really fail to see how "we've got it good" with someone who's trolled RAIF for a decade and now seems intent on doing the same here. Whether you personally are offended by him or not, others are. 

Ban his sorry ass and be done with it. No one will be sorry he's gone.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4309&start=0#p31110
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Running Script gives a different output than typing commands
User: gamedesigner / DateTime: 2012-02-05 16:51:12

When I run the script:
I get a message that says "This provokes no reaction.".

when I run the individual commands by typing each one the game works.
this is under 6G60.

Room 1 is a room.

a man called the Cop is in Room 1.

instead of telling the Cop about "thief":
	if  the thief is unspotted:
		say "You tell the cop you were roobed but you didn't get a good look at the robber. He promises to help find the thief.";
	otherwise if the thief is spotted:
		say "The cop tells you that the thief was caught."

Room 2 is east of Room 1.
a man called Mike is in Room 2.
instead of asking Mike about "thief":
now the thief is spotted;
say "He was spotted in a nasty area of the city.".

there is a man called the thief.
the thief is either spotted or unspotted.

test me with "Tell cop about thief/east/ ask mike about thief/west/tell cop about thief.".
[/b]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4309&start=0#p31111
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Running Script gives a different output than typing comm
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-02-05 16:59:21

The extra period at the end of "tell cop about thief." makes the difference.  I suppose it means that the text no longer matches "thief" and therefore fails to trigger the rule.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=60#p31112
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-02-05 17:00:21

I didn't say anything about thanking anybody or having any gratitude. I just recommend we not mess with a system in equilibrium. It's not actually possible to force a person remotely to stop [i]trying[/i] to annoy you. I feel it is smarter and more realistic to guide the community's interactions with that person to a point of benign tolerance that will generate the minimum amount of mutual provocation. (BTW a username is not a person -- a person cannot actually be successfully banned from a public forum: experienced moderators know this.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4309&start=0#p31113
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Running Script gives a different output than typing comm
User: gamedesigner / DateTime: 2012-02-05 17:02:26

[quote="tove"]The extra period at the end of "tell cop about thief." makes the difference.  I suppose it means that the text no longer matches "thief" and therefore fails to trigger the rule.[/quote]


I took the period out and it still does the same thing.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4311&start=0#p31116
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Running Script gives a different output than typing commands
User: gamedesigner / DateTime: 2012-02-05 17:29:46

When I run the script:
I get a message that says "This provokes no reaction.".

when I run the individual commands by typing each one the game works.
this is under 6G60.

Room 1 is a room.

a man called the Cop is in Room 1.

instead of telling the Cop about "thief":
	if  the thief is unspotted:
		say "You tell the cop you were roobed but you didn't get a good look at the robber. He promises to help find the thief.";
	otherwise if the thief is spotted:
		say "The cop tells you that the thief was caught."

Room 2 is east of Room 1.
a man called Mike is in Room 2.
instead of asking Mike about "thief":
now the thief is spotted;
say "He was spotted in a nasty area of the city.".

there is a man called the thief.
the thief is either spotted or unspotted.

test me with "Tell cop about thief/east/ ask mike about thief/west/tell cop about thief.".
[/b]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=20#p31117
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2012-02-05 17:50:19

Lo and behold, [url=http://xyzzy.plover.net/~pscion/The%20Parser%207.zip]version 7[/url] and Release Candidate #1 of the Parser Rewrite project is complete.  Finally, all functions within the enormous template file Parser.i6t have been translated to Inform 7, including Parser__parse(), which alone comprises 448 lines of Inform 7 code excluding interspersed comments and wrapped lines.  While "[i]parse[/i]", as it's now known, was split into a few functions, this was done primarily to remove GOTO statements.  Many such statements still exist in [i]parse[/i], and many sections could be tucked away into standalone functions themselves without too much effort.  

In any event, Inform 7 is a very readable language, and while rewriting and revising names of variables and phrases and the like could go on theoretically forever, my own time has become monopolized by life concerns.  As the recent IF Comp wound down, so did my unemployment insurance, and so I arranged a move some 40 miles away to cheaper housing.  As the fates would have it, the day after my move started I was offered a position minutes away from where I used to live.  And so for the past month or so I've been working a new job, as a professional software developer once again, for about 11 to 12 hours a day, with an hour and a half commute each way on top of that.  

So, not much time for fun stuff.  Well, nothing that should be expected to be completed in any reasonable timeframe anyway.

But the sun is shining today, and my financial woes are gone, and if my biggest problem right now is a nasty commute, I consider myself lucky.  

I intend to release the parser rewrite as an extension on the official Inform 7 site, but first I'd greatly appreciate some community members poke at it to see if it breaks.  I can fix the odd bug here or there, and release it officially in two to four weeks, say?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4291&start=0#p31119
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using debug code - TADS3.1
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-05 19:02:49

[quote="RonG"]I figured it out. I used the following: vocabWords='(Beach) temple'
If I use 'goto temple' it works fine. However, if I use 'goto Beach' I get a message saying 'there is no beach here'. This must be because I'm already at the beach. Is there a modification you can make that tells me I am already at the location I'm trying to goto?[/quote]
If you put a noun or adjective in parentheses, the parser won't match it by itself. Remove the parentheses.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4309&start=0#p31120
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Running Script gives a different output than typing comm
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-02-05 19:16:59

Just to be clear, you need to take out the period before the end quote mark, not the one after.  Doing that makes it work for me.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4309&start=0#p31121
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Running Script gives a different output than typing comm
User: gamedesigner / DateTime: 2012-02-05 19:20:53

[quote="tove"]Just to be clear, you need to take out the period before the end quote mark, not the one after.  Doing that makes it work for me.[/quote]

Yes I did that. and you are correct. My code was somehow messed up but now it's working again.

thanks for the feedback

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=30#p31122
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-05 21:41:10

Congratulations on the job, Ron!

Also on the Parser project. This is insanely exciting, though I can't really understand it. 

I had an odd thing happen when I dropped [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3138]this code[/url] into the parser in place of "The lab is a room." Typing "test me" gave me a bunch of "you can't start with a comma" errors, even though typing the commands in the test script worked as it should. 

In the thing as it is, "me, jump" causes the game to hang in the Mac IDE, though "jump" and other commands work fine.

Hope this helps!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=30#p31123
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-05 21:46:21

I think I'd be willing to try it out with my WIP. I've been following the project with great interest, and lately I've been referring to your version to figure out: a) how the parser works, and b) some tips on expressing various I6 components in I7.

I even borrowed your phrase idea for expressing truth states as "we should/will/are/etc.."

Congratulations on your new job, and good luck with the new location!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=60#p31124
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2012-02-05 22:43:17

[quote="Laroquod"]It's not actually possible to force a person remotely to stop [i]trying[/i] to annoy you. I feel it is smarter and more realistic to guide the community's interactions with that person to a point of benign tolerance that will generate the minimum amount of mutual provocation. (BTW a username is not a person -- a person cannot actually be successfully banned from a public forum: experienced moderators know this.)[/quote]

Speaking as an experienced moderator, I strongly disagree. You may not be familiar with secret bans, but they do exactly what you say is impossible: they convince people to stop trying to annoy you.

Secret/slow bans really do work, precisely because the trolls don't know they're banned -- nobody's replying, but they don't know why.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=30#p31125
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-05 22:44:52

Congratulations. I would not have laid money on this project being finishable. :)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4312&start=0#p31126
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Questioning the player.  *RESOLVED*  Thanks!
User: Selva / DateTime: 2012-02-06 00:22:45

I'm wanting to set up a game where the main character has a name and a hair color etc.  But I'm wanting to have the player make these decisions.  The problem is I'm not sure how to set it up.  I know how to assign values to the "me actor" but I can't figure out how to have the game ask for a name before play starts.  (You know The computer goes "Enter name" and you type a name...)  I've been looking through the manuals for a while now and...  I'm at a loss.  Please forgive me if I've missed something obvious.  I need to know how to have a function run at start time AND how to direct player input to a variable.  I know that is sort of two questions... sorry about that.

Thanks in advance for any help.

   - Selva [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=60#p31127
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-06 00:35:21

It strikes me though, that all this talk of silent banning must have the effect of warning a potential troll (or orc, goblin, or indeed kobold) about the existence of such a practice, thereby somewhat undermining the intended effect. Also, I suppose there might be neurotic types who may fear that they have been banned just because nobody has responded to their post.

Further, (although I expect little sympathy on this point) I find the whole tactic a tad ethically questionable in that it encourages people to expend their creative energy fruitlessly. There's something a little sad about the thought of the lonely troglodyte posting into the void. Whatever legitimate ill we bear someone for wasting our time, we ought not act in the same manner and actively bring about the wasting of their time. We each only have so many minutes on this Earth.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=60#p31128
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Merlin Fisher / DateTime: 2012-02-06 01:56:11

[quote="JoeyJones"]
Further, (although I expect little sympathy on this point) I find the whole tactic a tad ethically questionable in that it encourages people to expend their creative energy fruitlessly. There's something a little sad about the thought of the lonely troglodyte posting into the void. Whatever legitimate ill we bear someone for wasting our time, we ought not act in the same manner and actively bring about the wasting of their time. We each only have so many minutes on this Earth.[/quote]

That's silly.  No one's forcing anyone to waste their time here, trolling or otherwise.  If you choose to take the time to post here, that's your decision.  If others choose to ignore you, that's their decision.  Presumably if your "creative" effort has any merit, it will get some positive response; otherwise, it deserves obscurity.  Hell, if you decide to take the time to write IF at all, or help others write it, that's your decision, and I'd call such action far more "creative" than trolling.  It takes no imagination to taunt and bully.  Even a dog will seek negative attention when it's bored.  (And as with humans, the proper response is not to reward the behavior with attention, nor to alternately ignore and reward -- that just increases the behavior.  It must be prevented, or consistently and firmly ignored, if you want it to stop.)

If you feel sorry for trolls and their craving for attention, by all means take up a private correspondence with them.  But I prefer not to babysit such people.  Like the default NPC, I have better things to do.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4018&start=10#p31129
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Web based Text Creator
User: stuart / DateTime: 2012-02-06 02:07:25

[quote="Alex"]It's not "yet another language" - it's Quest, which has been around since 1998 <a class="postlink" href="http://www.textadventures.co.uk/quest/">http://www.textadventures.co.uk/quest/</a> (although as far as this particular forum is concerned it's categorised as one of those obscure "Other Development Systems")[/quote]

Please excuse my ignorance, and don't worry, I understand the "obscure other development system" classification all too well. [emote];)[/emote]

[quote="Alex"]The WebEditor is open source, and the code is at <a class="postlink" href="http://quest.codeplex.com/">http://quest.codeplex.com/</a>. I don't think it would be particularly easy to turn it into a generic front-end for other languages though - by the time you'd done that you may as well have just written another web editor front-end from scratch.[/quote]

If it is going to be Quest-specific then I might have a crack at writing one too then. Of course I understand just how much effort is really required to undertake this type of development project so we'll see how it goes. I was thinking it might be nice to let people define code templates that have details from the web form inserted into the appropriate places thus generating legal code for whatever system is being used. 

I might sit down soon and look at all the versions of Cloak of Darkness soon and see how realistic this is likely to be.

Good luck and looking forward to seeing you release,
Stuart

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4301&start=0#p31130
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Mobile Web JACL
User: stuart / DateTime: 2012-02-06 02:22:21

Hi Emily

So I've done a bit of reading an a bit of experimenting and noticed a couple of things. The first is that if I have content wider than the textarea output by the game (as happens in Dragon when you view the script), you can no longer scroll with one finger and must use a two-finger scroll to view the text. What actually happens is a one-finger scroll moves the whole web page up and down while a two-finger scroll advances the text area.

From what I'm reading later version of Android also support this two-finger scrolling of a text area. Are you able to tell me if this works for you?

Regards,
Stuart

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=30#p31131
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-02-06 02:45:23

Great news (both the job and the extension)!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4301&start=0#p31132
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Mobile Web JACL
User: stuart / DateTime: 2012-02-06 04:29:49

Hmmm This looks to be a bug in Android. Much griping about it can be found here: <a class="postlink" href="http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2118">http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2118</a>

Not sure what I can do about it at this stage. I'll give Sergey a call.

Stuart

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4301&start=0#p31133
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Mobile Web JACL
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2012-02-06 04:59:17

Ah, that makes sense. I've seen that bug in action on this very forum, actually - code in code tags gets cut off in the Android browser.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=60#p31134
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-06 07:39:02

I think you slightly missed the point I was making. If someone is secretly banned, they are able to continue posting under the illusion that others can see their posts. It sets up a situation that means people are going to waste their time posting things that nobody will see. Even if we think the person's posts are of no merit, tricking a person like that is in the very least mean-spirited. It's not that I'm feeling sorry for anyone here, I was merely putting forward an argument against a specific moderating tactic.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=60#p31135
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-02-06 07:40:55

I wouldn't worry about people posting forever into a void, JJ — generally, they aren't that stupid…

[quote="dfabulich"][quote="Laroquod"]It's not actually possible to force a person remotely to stop [i]trying[/i] to annoy you. I feel it is smarter and more realistic to guide the community's interactions with that person to a point of benign tolerance that will generate the minimum amount of mutual provocation. (BTW a username is not a person -- a person cannot actually be successfully banned from a public forum: experienced moderators know this.)[/quote]

Speaking as an experienced moderator, I strongly disagree. You may not be familiar with secret bans, but they do exactly what you say is impossible: they convince people to stop trying to annoy you.

Secret/slow bans really do work, precisely because the trolls don't know they're banned -- nobody's replying, but they don't know why.[/quote]
I have seen trolls dissuaded by all sorts of methods. Just because the secret ban worked on somebody, doesn't make it 'The Big Gun'. Personally I would figure it out pretty quick, and I think any troll worth his salt would, too. I reiterate: I believe the members of this forum are used to fighting pretty mild trolls. I offer up as evidence of this the fact that people think Jacek Pudlo is a serious issue. I can't take him seriously — I can't even take this conversation we are having right now about him, seriously. He is not worth going nuclear, and he is likely too smart for it to work.

Paul.

EDIT P.S.: Just now, I put five minutes of thought into how I would detect that I have been 'secretly' banned somewhere. It only took me those five minutes to realise that on a public forum it is actually impossible to ban anyone without them easily being able to figure out what you have done by looking at the forum when they are logged out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=30#p31136
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-06 08:59:18

Curiouser and curiouser; I tried again by uncommenting the scenario (with Bob and the coins) and adding 'Test me with "Bob, get the coin"'. It seems like I get the "You can't begin with the comma" error when I start with "test me" and then get it again when I type "Bob, get the coin"; but if I type "Bob, get the coin" I don't get it, and sometimes if I follow it with test me it works.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4311&start=0#p31137
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Running Script gives a different output than typing comm
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-02-06 09:52:09

It took me a bit of screwing around with it before I realised that I have already encountered this bug before. Only the very last command in a sequence of 'test' commands is vulnerable to this bug, so one workaround is to put a useless dummy throwaway command after the last testing command. (In this case, I used 'look' but it doesn't really matter what you tack on. Also in my earlier screwing around I took the liberty of enclosing the 'thief' topic in square brackets and forcing the actual thief object into scope specifically when the player is asking or telling -- this allows the player to refer to the thief object by any of its synonyms. I thought it might act as a workaround, but it made no difference: adding a LOOK to the end of the testing script is what did the trick here.)

[code]Room 1 is a room.

a man called the Cop is in Room 1.

instead of telling the Cop about "[thief]":
	if the thief is unspotted:
		say "You tell the cop you were roobed but you didn't get a good look at the robber. He promises to help find the thief.";
	otherwise:
		say "The cop tells you that the thief was caught."

Room 2 is east of Room 1.

a man called Mike is in Room 2.

instead of asking Mike about "[thief]":
	now the thief is spotted;
	say "He was spotted in a nasty area of the city.".

there is a man called the thief.

the thief is either spotted or unspotted.

After deciding the scope of the player while asking about:
	place the thief in scope.

After deciding the scope of the player while telling about:
	place the thief in scope.

test me with "Tell cop about thief/east/ask mike about thief/west/tell cop about thief/look."[/code]
Paul.

EDIT: Never mind. I didn't notice that there is [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4309&p=31110#p31110]another version of this thread[/url]. For others who come across this version: the problem is with the period at the end of the final test command, not the final test command itself. Glad I know that now since as I said I have made this mistake before, myself.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=30#p31138
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-06 09:52:16

I wonder if it's related to this bug:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=860">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=860</a>

?

I can imagine that additional parser voodoo is going on when running test commands, given their nature.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=30#p31139
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-02-06 10:46:07

Congratulations, Ron!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4312&start=0#p31140
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Questioning the player.
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-02-06 11:51:44

I've read somewhere in the help files about being able to do that, I honestly haven't a clue how to actually do it but from flicking through the help files I found the 'Some Common Input/Output Issues' page in the tads 3 Technical Manual, it's got in there about pausing the screen mid text; the inputManager and captureOutput and a few other bits that might be useful like clearing the screen and such.  

As for asking on start game I'm not sure... Maybe put a function in the showIntro() that would give the player the options straight off if you could do it that way... Actually off the top of my head that sounds like the easiest way but I'm not the one to ask on either of those things <<shrugs>>

Hope it helps any how [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4306&start=0#p31141
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Problems using CollectiveGroup
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-06 11:58:34

The code I posted produces this output.

[quote]
You see a pile of shoes here. 

>look at shoes
It's where I kick my shoes when I come in, there's my sneakers, some high heels and probably some flip flops in there too. 

>look at pile of shoes
It's where I kick my shoes when I come in, there's my sneakers, some high heels and probably some flip flops in there too.

>wear shoes
Which shoes do you mean, the sneakers, the flip flops, or the heels?

>wear pile of shoes
That isn’t something you can wear. 
[/quote]

Apart from the text of the disambiguation message and the failure message, that seems to be what you're after. What did I miss?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4312&start=0#p31142
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Questioning the player.
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-06 12:10:58

Here's a basic example.

[code]
gameMain: GameMainDef
	initialPlayerChar = me

	showIntro() {
		"What's your name? ";
		local name = inputManager.getInputLine(nil, nil);
		"<p>Hi, <<name>>. It's nice to meet you.<.p> ";
		me.setName(name);
	}
;

me: Person
	desc = "You're the same as always, <<myName>>. "

	setName(str) {
		myName = str;
	}

	myName = 'Joe'
;
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4306&start=0#p31143
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Problems using CollectiveGroup
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-02-06 12:13:13

bcressey... You are a leg end!

It's took some backtracking to get it to disambiguate everything (including the pile) and then adding back in (uncommenting ahem) the isCollectiveAction and isCollectiveQuant... Just wondering, because I wouldn't have known how to use that let alone [i]to[/i] use it, am I right in thinking that the isCollectiveAction tells us which actions to allow collectively and then isCollectiveQuant is used so that if no number is given (ie. 'look at the pens' instead of  'look at the 3 pens') that it handles them collectively, I just checked it and it works how I want it to anyhow.  I'll probably end up doing something about the description in the end too btw simply to tidy it up [emote]:)[/emote]

Yaaay I'm happy again now to make some nested rooms yipeee...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4312&start=0#p31144
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Questioning the player.
User: Selva / DateTime: 2012-02-06 12:33:22

[emote]:D[/emote]  [emote]:D[/emote]  [emote]:D[/emote]   Thanks to both of you.  bcressey, that works perfectly.  Much appreciated. [emote]:D[/emote]  [emote]:D[/emote]  [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=70#p31145
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2012-02-06 12:34:32

[quote="Laroquod"]I have seen trolls dissuaded by all sorts of methods. Just because the secret ban worked on somebody, doesn't make it 'The Big Gun'. Personally I would figure it out pretty quick, and I think any troll worth his salt would, too.[/quote]

You'd think that, but yet, experience shows that it works. (People don't double check to see if they've been secretly banned very frequently; you can take it a little further by using cookies/IP addresses to show the thread to the secretly banned computer.)

It works especially well in combination with a "slow" ban, which is not so easily detectable.

[quote="Laroquod"]He is not worth going nuclear, and he is likely too smart for it to work.[/quote]

Banning people is not a nuclear option for a moderated forum.

[quote="Laroquod"] Just now, I put five minutes of thought in[/quote]

Instead of speculating, I invite you to ask around on other forums that have used secret bans, to see how well it's worked in the past.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=70#p31146
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2012-02-06 12:38:52

[quote="Laroquod"]It only took me those five minutes to realise that on a public forum it is actually impossible to ban anyone without them easily being able to figure out what you have done by looking at the forum when they are logged out.[/quote]
This.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4306&start=0#p31147
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Problems using CollectiveGroup
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2012-02-06 12:41:38

[quote="KellyJ"]bcressey... You are a leg end![/quote]
Yes, he's afoot, isn't he.  [emote]8-)[/emote]

(I may have been visiting Rock, Paper, Shotgun too much. The land where the puns roam freely, and a pun always is followed by a dozen more.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4306&start=0#p31148
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Problems using CollectiveGroup
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-06 12:43:44

[quote="KellyJ"]am I right in thinking that the isCollectiveAction tells us which actions to allow collectively and then isCollectiveQuant is used so that if no number is given (ie. 'look at the pens' instead of  'look at the 3 pens') that it handles them collectively[/quote]

I believe isCollectiveQuant is meant to separate input like [i]>look at the pen[/i] from [i]>look at the pens[/i]. In the first case the player probably wants to examine just one pen, and it's appropriate to ask which one. In the second case the player wants to see them all, and it's better to show the collective description.

For shoes, it's not possible to know whether the player means one pair or all pairs in the absence of more specific details. So we override isCollectiveQuant to return true, and any time the parser would match a pair with vocabulary that also matches the group's, the collective gets the first crack at handling the action (via isCollectiveAction).

The player can re-introduce ambiguity by adding specifics. If you set up your shoes like this:
[code]
+ sneakers: Shoes 'red sneakers' 'sneakers';
+ heels: Shoes 'red heels' 'heels';
+ flipflops: Shoes 'green flip/flops' 'flip flops';
[/code]

Then [i]>x green shoes[/i] will only match the flip flops, [i]>x red shoes[/i] will want to disambiguate between the heels and the sneakers, and [i]>x shoes[/i] will look at the pile.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4313&start=0#p31149
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Twisty Passages
User: gevrik / DateTime: 2012-02-06 12:49:46

I hope this is the right spot for this thread, if not, please feel free to move it.

Twisty Passages is a multi-player interactive fiction game of exploration, combat, politics, intrigue, building, crafting, diplomacy, conquest and problem-solving. It is much easier than it sounds. It is actually a little bit of a browser-based cross-breed of an IF and MUD sandbox.

I am looking for some play-testers for Twisty Passages, an on-line, multi-player IF world that is created as you explore and modify it. Beginning gameplay involves exploration until you find an area that you want to own and modify, but you can also visit/invade the areas of other players.

This is a very early development version, with lots of bugs (I guess) and missing features. That said, you are invited to visit the infinite maze at: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.twisty-passages.com">http://www.twisty-passages.com</a>

In future patches there will be more features for customizing your owned areas, including a simple scripting engine to make your areas interactive.

There is a wiki for those who want to read a little bit more about it before signing up.

Again, my apologies if this is the wrong part of the forum for this kind of thread.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4314&start=0#p31150
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Thoughts / ideas on time passing and other things I'll n.t.k
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-02-06 12:55:33

Ok not sure if this should be here or in the getting started board but it's something I know I'm going to have a lot of problems with... The main one is getting started.

I want my game to progress throughout the day, not necessarily at the same pace though since as far as I'm aware it would be controlled by the number of turns, actually question 1, is it? or are there other ways?  My first thoughts are that I should determine the time by how long is spent (in turns) in a room then add extra time for certain events that get triggered... Am I on the (a) right track here? It's not something I'll have to think about just yet but I'll want to take things into account as I build up the map and eventually npc's to interact with (I have the map and some of the characters planned, I just need to figure how to make it all fit together right)

Question 2 is a bit of a simpler one, I read somewhere in the help that the no of restores and possibly no of saves isn't saved between sessions, I'm wondering what [i]is[/i] saved and what isn't... For example I have items that use rand functions to change properties as characters interact with them but since I'm using randomize() that would be different each play through.  I guess what I'm asking is does it save the state of the game at save (loc, property values, where everything is etc) Or does it save the method used to get there (n,w,pick lock, jump fence and take out guard with inflatable boomerang etc...).  Obviously  the latter would randomize certain results and could throw the game out of sync if left and restored later.

Lastly... is it wierd to 'not get' nested objects and functions in general? I think the word puts me off or something... Don't answer the last one I just couldn't think of another question and [i]I will [/i]get them and how to use them properly [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4304&start=0#p31151
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Understanding "[text]" as a thing
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-06 13:03:29

I've been working from the opposite direction with my "objects matching snippets" extension. I don't know if it would be useful to you, but here it is if you're curious:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.eyeballsun.org/i/Objects%20Matching%20Snippets.i7x">http://www.eyeballsun.org/i/Objects%20M ... ippets.i7x</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4306&start=0#p31152
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Problems using CollectiveGroup
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-02-06 13:11:53

[quote]Apart from the text of the disambiguation message and the failure message, that seems to be what you're after. What did I miss?[/quote]
You didn't, before using isCollectiveAction, I'd simply used shoes as plural in the vocab words to disambiguate, which worked.. Upto a point until whatever part of it that gave may have been interfering with the 2 functions, apart from that and few other bits I have in there our codes matched.

I'd have just copied my code in to show what I had but then I'd have had to have found it all, it's not that I'm unorganised, I'm just pre organised for a later date  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4304&start=0#p31153
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Understanding "[text]" as a thing
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-06 13:21:27

I'll have to look at it, though I'm not sure it's quite what I want. The thing is that I don't want to use a "[text]" token [UPDATE: This is wrong; obviously I want a text token, but I don't want an action applying to a topic, because...], because I want the player to be able to perform things on the dummy objects, and the thought of having to write Understand "x [text]" as dummy-examining and then writing rules to redirect dummy-examining to the dummy objects makes me want to stab my eyeball. (Plus I think you can't say Understand "put [text] on [other text]" as putting it on.") So I haven't got a snippet to match the objects against.

Also, when I try to include your extension in a project I get an abject failure. Have you experience that?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4314&start=0#p31154
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Thoughts / ideas on time passing and other things I'll n
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-06 13:59:43

[quote="KellyJ"]I want my game to progress throughout the day, not necessarily at the same pace though since as far as I'm aware it would be controlled by the number of turns, actually question 1, is it? or are there other ways?[/quote]

It's worth reading Mike's essay on time in IF at the start of the [url=http://code.google.com/p/garglk/source/browse/trunk/tads/tads3/lib/extensions/subtime.t]subtime.t[/url] extension. The extension itself is a good default choice for a time implementation in TADS 3.

[quote="KellyJ"]Question 2 is a bit of a simpler one, I read somewhere in the help that the no of restores and possibly no of saves isn't saved between sessions, I'm wondering what is saved and what isn't...[/quote]

It is fairly trivial to save the # of saves.

[code]
SaveCounter: PreSaveObject
    execute() {
        libGlobal.saveCount++;
    }
;

modify libGlobal
    saveCount = 0
;
[/code]

The number of restores can't be saved in the general case, since the player could always close the interpreter, open it again, and restore from an earlier save.

You can track it per session by using a [url=http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/sysman/objdef.htm]transient[/url] object, since transient stuff survives restore, restart, and undo.

TADS 3 runs in a virtual machine, and you can think of saves as a snapshot of that machine's memory. It does what you suggest in your first example: it records the exact state of everything in the game. It doesn't know what the player might have done to get there.

If you want that information, you can start a command log (with >record) and replay it (with >replay). But randomness tends to wreak havoc with this as you expect.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4315&start=0#p31155
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Getting stack overflow - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-02-06 14:19:07

Boy, am I in deep trouble again. I was about 1900 lines into my project when everything went down the well! After going crazy for hours, I couldn't find the problem so I started all over again. I'm very determined. Things were going well until I inserted the code for modify room. Now, the project compiled with no errors but I get a stack overflow. I've attached all the code I have and desperately need someone to take a look at it. [emote]:roll:[/emote]

RonG 

[code]

#charset "us-ascii"

/*******************************************************************************
*  Copyright (c) 1999, 2002 by Michael J. Roberts.  Permission is              *
*  granted to anyone to copy and use this file for any purpose.                *
*******************************************************************************/   
 
/* Includes *******************************************************************/  

#include <adv3.h>
#include <en_us.h>

/* User-defined classes. ******************************************************/

/* This class returns a travelDesc depending on whether or not its destination *
*  has been seen before. ******************************************************/
  
   class DynamicTravelMessage: TravelMessage 
     travelDesc()
     { 
     if(!destination.seen) //Our destination isn't seen.
       return firstTravelDesc;
     else  //It is seen. 
       return secondTravelDesc;
     }
; 

/* Templates  *****************************************************************/
 
   DynamicTravelMessage template
     ->destination
     "firstTravelDesc"
     "secondTravelDesc"
;

/* Modifications  *************************************************************/

   modify Lockable
     replace examineStatus
     {
     /* Inherit the default handling.  */
     inherited();

     /* If our lock status is visually apparent, and we want to mention the 
     *  lock status in our current state, show the lock status. ***************/     

     if (lockStatusObvious && lockStatusReportable)
        say(isLocked ? currentlyLockedMsg : currentlyUnlockedMsg); 
     }

     currentlyLockedMsg = (gLibMessages.currentlyLocked)
     currentlyUnlockedMsg = (gLibMessages.currentlyUnlocked)
;     
   
   replace VerbRule(Drink)
     ('drink' | 'quaff' | 'imbibe' | 'sip' | 'gulp' | 'swallow') dobjList
       : DrinkAction
         verbPhrase = 'drink/drinking (what)'

; 

   replace VerbRule(AttachTo)
     ('attach' | 'connect' | 'hook' | 'fasten') dobjList 'to' singleIobj
       : AttachToAction
         askIobjResponseProd = toSingleNoun
         verbPhrase = 'attach/attaching (what) (to what)'  
;

   modify Room
     desc()
       {
       /* Has the room been seen before? */ 
       if (!seen)
       /* If !seen, show the roomFirstDesc property. */
       return(roomFirstDesc);
       else
       /* If seen, show the shortDesc property. */
       return(shortDesc);
       } 
; 
  

/* Our game credits and version information.  *********************************/  

   versionInfo: GameID
     IFID = 'dbc1508e-895b-4c0a-aa68-4e2ff1a06be2'
     name = 'The Magic Forest'
     byline = 'by Ron Gaudet'
     htmlByline = 'by <a href="mailto:rgaudet1938@buckeye-access.com">
                   Ron Gaudet</a>'
     version = '1'
     authorEmail = 'Ron Gaudet <rgaudet1938@buckeye-access.com>'
     desc = 'An extended IF adventure story.'
     htmlDesc = 'An extended IF adventure story.'

/* Show our credits.  *********************************************************/

 showCredit()
   {
     "Put credits for the game here. ";
     "\b";
   }

/* Show ABOUT text.  **********************************************************/ 
 
   showAbout()
     {
        "Put information for players here.  Many authors like to mention
        any unusual commands here, along with background information on
        the game (for example, the author might mention that the game
        was created as an entry for a particular competition). ";
     }
;

/* (Room0001) - starting room.  ***********************************************/
    
   beach : OutdoorRoom 'On the Beach' 'On the Beach' 
     roomFirstdesc()
       {
         "This is the first message. "; 
       }
     shortDesc = "You are on the sandy beach. "
;

/* Define the player charactor.  **********************************************/
 
   me: Actor
     location = beach
;

/* Show the "gameMain" object. ************************************************/ 

   gameMain: GameMainDef
     initialPlayerChar = me

     
/* Show our introductory message.  ********************************************/
      
   showIntro()
     {
       "Welcome to The Magic Forest!\b";
     }

 /* Show the "goodbye" message.  **********************************************/  
    
    showGoodbye()
    {
       "<.p>Thanks for playing!\b";
    }
;
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4315&start=0#p31156
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Getting stack overflow - TADS3.1
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-06 14:30:57

Your modify Room block is causing the stack overflow and you should get rid of it completely.

[code]
beach : OutdoorRoom 'On the Beach' 'On the Beach' 
    "You are on the sandy beach. "

    roomFirstDesc = "This is the first message. "
;
[/code]

That will show one message the first time a player looks in the room, and another message every other time.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4315&start=0#p31157
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Getting stack overflow - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-02-06 14:42:58

You are a life saver! I will follow your advice. I could swear I used that block of code before but who knows. Now, I can work back up to me 1900 lines of code.

RonG

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4314&start=0#p31158
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Thoughts / ideas on time passing and other things I'll n
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-02-06 14:55:09

Phew and thank you! You've just saved me from procrastinative reading with yay more (I'm serious haha)

... It's not so much that I was after keeping track of the number of saves or restores since as you say, someone could save, check path 1 doesn't lead to instant doom then restore to see if path 2 leads somewhere better (something I personally detest but meh, leave people to it - a game should be a game that you follow not a "which choice is best / give better results") it was more I was worried that it wouldn't remember the state the player was up to... Does that include say if I wrote out a script for an npc to follow (go for lunch at 12, wander and talk to lunch lady, go outside, throw leftovers at flying pidgeon... which then in turn poops) and I was outside and 2 turns away from being pooped on... Is that script saved at the position it's saved in or would restoring it save me from pidgeon poop? (There's probably a better or easier way of asking that) like would it save what's about to happen as well as the state?

Thanks for the links, I'll have look at subtime.t I've been fretting thinking over stuff like "if it takes so many moves to do this but then they could do this or look at everything or choose not to look at anything, or if they do spend time here will they miss this or that might happen too early and so on..." I haven't read it yet so I might still have to think about all that some more but thanks for that... do I just include that with my source files I take it or can I add it into one of the header (or my own, I remember you saying that you make your own header to include extra files actually)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4304&start=0#p31159
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Understanding "[text]" as a thing
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-06 15:33:49

Aieeee! This is weird!

It appears that Objects Matching Snippets fails to compile by itself, even though it works fine when included by Speech Motivations. Let me see if I can figure out why...

I can't even figure out where the error is in auto.inf. This is the least helpful compiler output I've ever seen!

[code]Include Objects Matching Snippets by Mike Ciul.

Test is a room.[/code]

[quote]Launching: ni "-rules" "/Applications/Inform.app/Contents/Resources/Inform7/Extensions" "-package" "/Users/mike/i/tmp.inform" "-extension=ulx" "-log"
++ 0% (Lexical analysis)
++ 5% (Semantic analysis)
Inform 7 build 6G60 has started.
I've now read your source text, which is 11 words long.
I've also read Standard Rules by Graham Nelson, which is 39455 words long.
I've also read Objects Matching Snippets by Mike Ciul, which is 1493 words long.
  >--> An internal error has occurred: loose COMMAND node outside of rule
    definition. The current sentence is 'scene understood is a scene which
    varies' (source text, line 1); the error was detected at line 85 of
    "Chapter 6/Rule Subtrees.w". This should never happen, and I am now halting
    in abject failure.

Compiler finished with code 1[/quote]

I'm searching auto.inf for "scene understood" and "Rule Subtrees" ... nothing. Hmm... I'm finding debug code from another project in auto.inf. I think maybe it didn't get as far as generating I6 code?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4313&start=0#p31160
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Twisty Passages
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-06 15:39:30

Oh man, this is so much easier to edit than a traditional MUD. Fun is being had right now, I can tell you.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4304&start=0#p31161
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Understanding "[text]" as a thing
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-06 15:51:03

Aha! Got it. I put the "ends here." line before the end of the code. Fixed now - please download again.

<a class="postlink" href="http://eyeballsun.org/i/Objects%20Matching%20Snippets.i7x">http://eyeballsun.org/i/Objects%20Match ... ippets.i7x</a>

Apparently you only get abject failure if Objects Matching Snippets is the last extension included. That's why I hadn't seen the error before.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4314&start=0#p31162
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Thoughts / ideas on time passing and other things I'll n
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-02-06 16:14:11

I've just read through subtime.t and it sounds promising, it's got me thinking though... Which is daunting in itself

I'm after events to happen at certain times whether the player makes them or not but then I'd like certain events to tie into the time, would I be able to use that to (this is where describing words fail me yet again) note [i]relative[/i] time so as I'm not tied to events happening.  Like have a time that an event would occur when the player gets there but then have events that would occur naturally up to that point but at approximate times (One thought was creating a subclass - the daunting thoguht I had, like one that would be irrespective of the player)

It's (going to be) pretty much a free roam game with events that take place depending on the actions the player chooses, the idea being that if you do 'a', 'b', 'c' then you'll make 'g' and 'h' though you might choose to wander off and do 'd', 'e' or 'f' or something/someone could change how the story plays out completely preventing you from making 'g' and 'h' because of something you did or didn't do during 'a','b' and 'c' (like taking too long or stopping somewhere on the way, or something you picked up) I know this may sound like a horrendous task to write but I have (most ish) the storylines written down already it's just the writing it (in IF) part I have to do.  I'm just wondering if you think it's doable with subtime?

[rant]On a side note: Schrodinger's thought experiment was Einsteins concept, Schrodinger just added a cat and put it to the man [emote]:D[/emote][/rant]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4304&start=10#p31163
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Understanding "[text]" as a thing
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-02-06 16:44:15

Do you still have the offending code?  I'd like to reduce it and upgrade [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=379]#379[/url] to critical.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4316&start=0#p31164
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: problems with zoom
User: OmegaAngel / DateTime: 2012-02-06 17:05:03

I've been playing IF with zoom (v 1.1.5) for a couple months now. Eventually I begin playing the exciting adventure Spider and Web by Andrew Plotkin. After I get a decent way through it, suddenly the game won't respond to the keyboard. I can't type, I see the ">" but there is no blinking vertical line, and neither clicking nor pressing enter causes anything. I close and reopen the game, but I can only type one command before the lockup occurs again. 

Next I discover that the Andrew Plotkin games I have (like Shade, Hunter in darkness, Dreamhold) suffer from this. While others (Adventure, Zork, Taco fiction) work fine. After restarting the computer, reinstalling zoom and the games with no luck, I give up for a while. 

The next day I give it another try and the games work fine. Several hours later the lockup starts again. After more futile restart/reinstall, I sit to type this request for help. Checking [i]now[/i] the games work fine, I suspect the problem will be back eventually. What really bothers me is that it doesn't seem to be connected to anything I'm doing. Either I'm just typing along, and it craps out, or I open the story six hours later and it's fine.

Anyone have any clues to this mysterious problem?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4304&start=10#p31165
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Understanding "[text]" as a thing
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-06 17:09:31

I've got it -- should I PM you? What format?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4304&start=10#p31166
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Understanding "[text]" as a thing
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-02-06 17:28:50

Actually, I guess I wasn't thinking when I posted, because I can just use the current version and move the ends-here line myself.  But thanks for offering to send it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4304&start=10#p31167
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Understanding "[text]" as a thing
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-06 17:43:59

FWIW, the section after "ends here" is "Testing Commands - Not for Release."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4314&start=0#p31168
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Thoughts / ideas on time passing and other things I'll n
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-06 17:53:51

[quote="KellyJ"]Is that script saved at the position it's saved in or would restoring it save me from pidgeon poop? (There's probably a better or easier way of asking that) like would it save what's about to happen as well as the state?[/quote]

The script is saved in its current position. If the player restores that save file later, the script will continue to run from the same point. If the player restores an earlier save file, from before the script started, then the script won't have started and nothing will happen until the player triggers it again.

[quote="KellyJ"]do I just include that with my source files I take it or can I add it into one of the header (or my own, I remember you saying that you make your own header to include extra files actually)[/quote]

You just add it as an additional source file to your project. Headers are not involved in this case.

[quote="KellyJ"]Like have a time that an event would occur when the player gets there but then have events that would occur naturally up to that point but at approximate times[/quote]

For this I would try combining subtime.t with Eric Eve's [url=http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/programming/tads3/library/contributions/scenes.t]scenes.t[/url] extension.

The idea is that you use scenes to trigger narrative events when a certain condition is true. When a scene starts, you can use it to cause a clock event, which updates the time if the player happens to check. And that clock event may make new scenes available, if those scenes are set to start after a certain time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4316&start=0#p31169
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: problems with zoom
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-02-06 18:36:43

Not specifically. But I have had compatibility trouble with Zoom on many games — often enough that I have started to just launch things in Gargoyle to begin with, since that's where I frequently end up, anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4316&start=0#p31170
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: problems with zoom
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-06 18:52:32

I'm quite sure there's no shared Inform code between those games of mine that would be causing this.

It sounds like an application flaky error rather than a bug in the Z-code interpreter engine. But knowing that doesn't help, I'm afraid.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=30#p31171
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-02-06 19:35:05

This is very exciting. I hope that eventually this will become the standard parser. It will make a lot of things easier!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=30#p31172
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-06 21:01:50

"me, jump" is definitely sending it into a loop -- it gets to "Actor is: yourself" and then starts running NounDomain on "me" again. That's as much as I can figure out. (And I seem to be kind of intermittent at reproducing it.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4304&start=10#p31173
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Understanding "[text]" as a thing
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-06 21:16:00

Glad to see my bugs reaching a wider audience! [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4240&start=0#p31174
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Post Comp Release (ver. 3.0) of Andromeda Awakening.
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-07 02:17:55

I found this in an old box...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4228&start=0#p31176
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New Windows build of 6G60
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-02-07 05:29:24

I just ran into the elastic-tabstops-appearing-outside-of-tables bug myself: [img]http://i.imgur.com/cbL9I.png[/img]

No tables anywhere in that section. That's only one tab character there in the second line.

After some experimenting, it seems that the problem is that the paragraph [i]after[/i] that one ends with a spurious tab character.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4314&start=0#p31178
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Thoughts / ideas on time passing and other things I'll n
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-02-07 11:54:01

That's excelent, thanks again bcressey, I can definately use them. I'm not planning on giving the player a watch at the moment (ooh I could... It wouldn't be [i]just[/i] a watch if I did though) but I could always call the checks to find what approx time it is and use that to decide when certain things happen (while pondering on turns I'd thought of using daemons but that'd be impossible to implement). 

Scenes will definately be extremely handy since I could use that to drive the story forward dependant on what the player does and use subtime to decide which events are still open and which have ended too so double win
[quote]The script is saved in its current position. If the player restores that save file later, the script will continue to run from the same point.[/quote]
That's what I hoped you say... Actually I wanted you to say you'd get pooped on but it means the same to me, btw nobodies actually getting pooped on [emote]:)[/emote]

Last one since I successfully distracted myself last night, to make a small bathroom as a nested room, what's my best bet?

[code]bathroom: Openable, Booth, (possibly something else?)[/code]
That's as far as I've got on it, the actual coding bit should be easy, I'm just struggling to think of what to put it as... Oh can you have a nested room inside a nested room? Like could I put a shower in there that you could get in and out of?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4318&start=0#p31179
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Capitalizing things when needed.  -RESOLVED-   Thanks folks.
User: Selva / DateTime: 2012-02-07 11:55:16

So... I have replaced the "me" actors name iwth a function that returns one of several options.  (Becky, she, the young woman etc.) so that when the main character is refered to, there is some variety.  Sometimes "Becky can't go that way" and sometimes "the young woman can't go that way."  So far it works really well.  Except that it doesn't want to capitalize things at the beginning of a sentence.  It's fine when "The door closes behind the young woman."  But it looks bad when "the young woman looks at the house."

I'm still reading though all these manuals and tutorials but I'm lost.     (...again.)

Is there a function or substitution parameter I can use to detect the beginnning of a sentence or have the processor check or something?

Thanks in advance for any help with this.

Sincerely,
   - Selva

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4314&start=0#p31180
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Thoughts / ideas on time passing and other things I'll n
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-07 12:06:38

Nested rooms are meant for cases where the player is still "in" the outer room, and it still makes sense to interact with objects located there.

For example, when the player is on a stage or inside a ticket booth, he should still be able to see the chairs in the audience or watch the crowd.

It's probably going to be more trouble than it's worth for a bathroom, and conceptually it would only make sense for one of those portable toilets in public places. Even there I would probably do it as a separate room and maybe implement some sense-passing for sounds.

A rule of thumb for nested rooms is never to use them if you can avoid it. They're a useful tool for simulating certain environments but they're hard to implement thoroughly and they can be a rich source of bugs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4314&start=0#p31181
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Thoughts / ideas on time passing and other things I'll n
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-02-07 12:20:46

So I'm not stupid for thinking they seem awkward.  I was originally going to make it a seperate room but I played shades last week and thought the effect was good plus it made me think about travel messages and such... My mind may have been clouded over the last few weeks anyhow.  I can make it work as a seperate room I may just have to add in a sense connector [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4318&start=0#p31182
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Capitalizing things when needed.
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-02-07 13:25:09

Heya, again this might not be much help but looking through actor.t I think I may have found something for you, you can change the perspective of the player character but whether it works as you want is another matter
   [code] /* refer to the player character with my player character referral
     *   person, and refer to all other characters in the third person 
     */
    referralPerson { return isPlayerChar() ? pcReferralPerson : ThirdPerson; }

    /* by default, refer to the player character in the second person */
    pcReferralPerson = SecondPerson
    /*
     *   The referral person of the current command targeting the actor.
     *   This is meaningful only when a command is being directed to this
     *   actor, and this actor is an NPC.
     *   
     *   The referral person depends on the specifics of the language.  In
     *   English, a command like "bob, go north" is a second-person
     *   command, while "tell bob to go north" is a third-person command.
     *   The only reason this is important is in interpreting what "you"
     *   means if it's used as an object in the command.  "tell bob to hit
     *   you" probably means that Bob should hit the player character,
     *   while "bob, hit you" probably means that Bob should hit himself.  
     */
    commandReferralPerson = nil[/code]

As for capitalizing, I'm guessing you've already tried changing it to 'The young woman' etc, which would look equally bad if it didn't convert to lower case... 

I'm sure I've seen something somewhere but this [i]may[/i] work since when the program makes up a sentance it would tend to word it like "{You/she} look in mirror and see another {you/she} looking back" or words to that effect (I haven't done much with changing sentances but I've looked through them), "you" is usually capitalized when it should be so I don't see why it isn't changing it for you too. I'd like to say I could help more but I'm sure one of the pros here will have another (better and working) solution for you [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4240&start=0#p31183
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Post Comp Release (ver. 3.0) of Andromeda Awakening.
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-07 14:33:52

Hah! I like it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4228&start=0#p31184
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New Windows build of 6G60
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2012-02-07 14:43:36

It looks like I haven't got that bit of code quite right. I will get this fixed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4318&start=0#p31185
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Capitalizing things when needed.
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-07 15:02:46

The substitution parameters normally handle this for you. It's best to avoid putting articles in names for this reason.

One issue with not including the article is that you have to deal with the case of proper names. The library will retrieve the actor's name during the course of the action, and won't get around to asking if it's proper until just before it prints it to output. That controls whether or not it prints an article.

So ideally you would use only one random name per turn and you would keep track of which name you handed out.

[code]
me: Person
	// all the vocab words for all the names
	vocabWords = 'handsome young Bob/man/self/devil'

	// each name, proper name first
	namesList = ['Bob', 'young man', 'handsome devil']

	// the starting name
	nameIndex = 1

	// need third person for the names to be used
	referralPerson = ThirdPerson

	// returns the current name from the list
	name() {
		return namesList[nameIndex];
	}

	// only the first name is proper
	isProperName() {
		return nameIndex == 1;
	}

	// rename the player every turn before prompt
	nameDaemon = static new PromptDaemon(me, &shuffleName)

	// pick a random name
	shuffleName() {
		nameIndex = rand(namesList.length) + 1;
	}

	// starting location
	location = bedroom
;
[/code]

[quote]
Bedroom
Just another bedroom.

> w
Bob can’t go that way.  The only obvious exit leads east.

> i
The handsome devil is empty-handed.

> x me
The young man looks the same as usual.
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4318&start=0#p31186
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Capitalizing things when needed.
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-07 15:41:11

You might give the character randomName and randomCapName methods. Then you could easily use them as "<<janice.randomCapName>> looks at you askance. "; or "You can\'t see <<janice.randomName>> at the moment. ";

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4318&start=0#p31187
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Capitalizing things when needed.
User: Selva / DateTime: 2012-02-07 16:10:24

Thank you all for the help and input.  I have to admit the method of having a capital and a normal case method separately is appealing since it is simple.  (That had not occurred to me...)

  - Selva

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4316&start=0#p31188
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: problems with zoom
User: OmegaAngel / DateTime: 2012-02-07 17:58:48

I suppose I'll just switch to Gargoyle. It's a shame since Zoom is rather pretty.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4169&start=10#p31189
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Benchmarking beta PLUS Contributions wanted for a test s
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-02-07 20:00:09

I've just pushed a major update to the extension. It now performs significance tests, so that you'll be able to see if a new algorithm is actually faster than the old one. It's not perfect however, and other computer programs may make the results less accurate, so it's best to run the tests without anything else going on.

It doesn't show the test author/description yet, but that is still planned.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=30#p31190
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2012-02-07 20:43:01

Thank you all very much!  I'm pretty happy, even if I do have to debug someone else's javascript nowadays.  (*sigh*)

Matt I'll hunt that down.  It didn't occur to me to test the Test Me functionality much.  I generally find bugs by turning on full trace output and running 2 Inform projects side by side, flicking back and forth as I page down the output to see where things go off the rails.   Thanks for the bug hunting. 

The last bug I fixed before release was rather embarassingly having an Otherwise block at the wrong level of indentation near the end of Parse.   [emote]:oops:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=40#p31191
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-07 21:36:22

I just stumbled into it.

Interestingly, I can't get the 'You can't begin with a comma' message by beginning a command with a comma (in the ordinary parser or in yours).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=40#p31192
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2012-02-07 22:55:02

Both bugs found & fixed.  Re-download [url=http://xyzzy.plover.net/~pscion/The%20Parser%207.zip]version 7[/url].  

It is true the can't begin with a comma error cannot be elicited from the standard parser, but it can in the above. I took some pains to restore it. (Well, they weren't very big pains.)

The above two bugs were both from the same spot as the 2nd-to-last bug I fixed, in which I had coded something regarding "the chosen (position)" instead of "where that word was found", an error about as silly as having the wrong indentation.

But the infinite loop was fair.  The phrase, "if the 'comma' is listed in the player's parsed command", in the original code actually has side effects:  it leaves the parser's current word position advanced down the command a ways.  I coded the if-condition "correctly", without that side effect, because asking the question shouldn't change the answer. Mea culpa.  

To fix it without breaking readability, I made a new global, "where the comma was found", and check it explicitly in the same if-condition.  If nothing else, that new global could be very useful to game or extension authors. 

Thanks again for the detective work, Matt.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4240&start=0#p31195
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Post Comp Release (ver. 3.0) of Andromeda Awakening.
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-08 04:59:02

[quote="JoeyJones"]Hah! I like it.[/quote]
Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4316&start=0#p31196
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: problems with zoom
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-02-08 08:17:11

[quote="OmegaAngel"]I suppose I'll just switch to Gargoyle. It's a shame since Zoom is rather pretty.[/quote]
I don't find Zoom prettier ever since I figured out how to change the font style in Gargoyle (I hate reading serif fonts on a computer) and increase the font size. The default choices for these things in Gargoyle are poor; and you have to edit a config text file to change them which is not the friendliest thing in the world, but once I did it I had no reasons remaining to try to launch things in Zoom.

(BTW you can resize the Gargoyle window from the bottom right corner even though there is no standard grabby little triangle there.)

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=70#p31197
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Peter Rickardson / DateTime: 2012-02-08 08:29:17

[quote="matt w"]I'm certainly not an expert on forum moderation in general, but in the particular case of this forum and community, I think this underestimates Jacek's perspicacity and resilience.[/quote]

This is exactly a thing Jacek would say using one his sock puppets. I'm not saying you're Jacek. All I'm saying is that, with people like you, Jacek doesn't need his sock puppets.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=70#p31198
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-02-08 08:39:03

[quote="Peter Rickardson"][quote="matt w"]I'm certainly not an expert on forum moderation in general, but in the particular case of this forum and community, I think this underestimates Jacek's perspicacity and resilience.[/quote]

This is exactly a thing Jacek would say using one his sock puppets. I'm not saying you're Jacek. All I'm saying is that, with people like you, Jacek doesn't need his sock puppets.[/quote]
Jacek isn't banned so he definitely doesn't [i]need[/i] his sock puppets. Nor do we [i]need[/i] to care about who are his sock puppets. What are you worried about, that someone will hack your brain and destroy your ability to judge personality when the name has changed?

If a troll uses a 'secret' sock puppet to post the same sorts of things as his troll account, it's obvious and therefore not worth fretting over. If a troll uses a sock puppet to spend a portion of his finite time behaving more like a regular user rather than a dickhead -- that's an improvement and a good thing so don't look a gift horse in the mouth by trying to nail the 'troll' persona to the 'good' account's forehead.

The attempt to connect Adam to Jacek identity-wise was ill-advised because even if it had been correct the likeliest outcome would have been that the person behind both accounts stops splitting his efforts and starts trolling full-time.

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=40#p31199
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-08 08:53:29

That does sound useful. I'm also interested to look into your other values like "where that word was found" - I was looking for something like that in another project I was working on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=70#p31200
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-08 09:20:56

[quote="Peter Rickardson"][quote="matt w"]I'm certainly not an expert on forum moderation in general, but in the particular case of this forum and community, I think this underestimates Jacek's perspicacity and resilience.[/quote]

This is exactly a thing Jacek would say using one his sock puppets. I'm not saying you're Jacek. All I'm saying is that, with people like you, Jacek doesn't need his sock puppets.[/quote]

If you prefer, I can say "Jacek has inexplicably made trolling the IF community his life's work, and has shown willingness to assume lots of different identities to do it, so I'm not convinced that the sort of thing that works against garden-variety trolls would get him to stop instead of just channeling him to worse behavior under other names. Especially because I'll give him enough credit to think that he'd realize what was going on." Though I don't know how good he is at avoiding IP blocks and the like. (Do I need to deny I'm Jacek's sock puppet? I think if you look at my far too extensive posting history, it'll be pretty obvious that I'm not.) 

I disagree with Paul about how innocuous sock puppets are in this case, though; it takes a certain amount of attention to start ignoring a new account, and to be drawn into what seems like it might be a worthwhile conversation by someone who then peels off the mask and reveals the same old troll is even more annoying.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=70#p31201
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2012-02-08 09:37:52

[quote="Peter Rickardson"]This is exactly a thing Jacek would say using one his sock puppets. I'm not saying you're Jacek. All I'm saying is that, with people like you, Jacek doesn't need his sock puppets.[/quote]It seems worth pointing out here that "Peter Rickardson" has in the past posted from the same IP address as "Jacek Pudlo" has used.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=70#p31202
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-08 09:49:16

[quote="matt w"]Jacek has inexplicably made trolling the IF community his life's work[/quote]

Very much this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=40#p31203
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-08 09:51:08

I've been mostly-quiet due to being extra-busy, but I do believe I'll have my fingertip ready for the testing deadline [emote]:)[/emote] Yesterday I finally dove in past the preliminaries and did a big wobbly pile of writing on it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=70#p31204
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-02-08 09:51:29

[quote="matt w"]I disagree with Paul about how innocuous sock puppets are in this case, though; it takes a certain amount of attention to start ignoring a new account, and to be drawn into what seems like it might be a worthwhile conversation by someone who then peels off the mask and reveals the same old troll is even more annoying.[/quote]
Fair enough. The way I parse it, there is no 'might be a worthwhile conversation' — either it was or it wasn't. If something is said worth replying to and I have something I feel is interesting to say in response, then I reply without a care in the world as to who they are 'secretly' because I don't feel it's relevant. Even if they decide to reveal themselves and laugh at me for being taken in, that doesn't remove the value I perceived in the earlier part of the conversation. That info is still there. It doesn't upset me to be 'pranked' by a troll into discussing something I found interesting.

I also tend not to put [i]anyone[/i] on ignore unless they are personally harassing me and won't stop targetting me personally, so that's another data point. I don't spend any time at all deciding who to put on ignore.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=40#p31205
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2012-02-08 09:58:12

Awesome! Some betas have been trickling in, and I'm getting excited to see this all come together.

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4321&start=0#p31206
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Extensions for Debugging
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-02-08 09:58:59

I've been working on some debugging extensions, which are now at the point where they could use a round of in-the-field testing.  If you'd like to help, you can [url=https://sourceforge.net/projects/i7grip/]download them from SourceForge[/url].

Floyd Mode, Verbose Runtime Problem Messages, and Interactive Debugger are the three that most authors would be interested in; the others are just support code.  Here's a screenshot of the last:

[img]http://cse.unl.edu/~bgarvin/if/tournament.png[/img]

Thanks!

[i](Edited to add screenshot.)[/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=70#p31207
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2012-02-08 10:01:14

[quote="Laroquod"][quote="matt w"]The way I parse it, there is no 'might be a worthwhile conversation' — either it was or it wasn't. If something is said worth replying to and I have something I feel is interesting to say in response, then I reply without a care in the world as to who they are 'secretly' because I don't feel it's relevant. Even if they decide to reveal themselves and laugh at me for being taken in, that doesn't remove the value I perceived in the earlier part of the conversation. That info is still there. It doesn't upset me to be 'pranked' by a troll into discussing something I found interesting.[/quote][/quote]
Of course, that is only true for a certain type of conversation. If I spend time helpfully explaining something to you, and you then tear off your mask and joyfully shout that you knew the answer all along, I will certainly be annoyed. As I will be if I have been trying to advise, console, understand, or otherwise relate to you, and you then reveal that you didn't mean a word of what you were saying. Some conversations are worthwhile because of the human relations involved, not because the content is inherently interesting to you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=70#p31208
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-08 10:02:34

[quote="DavidK"][quote="Peter Rickardson"]This is exactly a thing Jacek would say using one his sock puppets. I'm not saying you're Jacek. All I'm saying is that, with people like you, Jacek doesn't need his sock puppets.[/quote]It seems worth pointing out here that "Peter Rickardson" has in the past posted from the same IP address as "Jacek Pudlo" has used.[/quote]

Ha! I have to admit that's a good trick. [UPDATE: Though probably banworthy for the "Rickardson" account.]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=80#p31209
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-02-08 10:08:43

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Of course, that is only true for a certain type of conversation. If I spend time helpfully explaining something to you, and you then tear off your mask and joyfully shout that you knew the answer all along, I will certainly be annoyed. As I will be if I have been trying to advise, console, understand, or otherwise relate to you, and you then reveal that you didn't mean a word of what you were saying. Some conversations are worthwhile because of the human relations involved, not because the content is inherently interesting to you.[/quote]
Fair points, also. I guess I don't worry about such stuff since I am not the type of poster who spends a lot of time consoling and relating to others emotionally online. I am really only interested in substantive discussions. (I am not alone in this though; this forum is not exactly buzzing with purely social activity.) As for helping people with solving code problems and technical issues, that I have done, in the few instances where I feel I can and nobody else has. But that is for the benefit of the record, not really for the individual user. If people I don't know started sending me email queries for tech support that would not become part of a public record, I would not see such service as a smart use of my time unless I can snap off the answer in a one-liner. So I'm not really doing it for the questioner, anyway, I'm doing it to contribute to a community and that contribution cannot be destroyed by someone ending a thread with, 'Psych!' 8)

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=40#p31210
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-02-08 10:44:24

I am so glad I signed up do this now, because for longer than I care to admit I have been spending most of my free time rereading and going over my voluminous stacks of notes on my massive project (not something I do a lot, but the project has reached that 'last chance to make significant structural changes' point). This stage of where I'm at is really boring drudgery and I am progressing so slowly and feeling so sluggish, that taking a few days break to do some real coding again and [i]freshen up[/i] is [i]exactly what I need right now[/i]. 8)

I've got some ideas. I didn't want to predetermine what I would do too much and I'm glad I didn't. Looking forward to seeing everyone else's experiments, too.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4322&start=0#p31211
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: A little explanation please and moving multiple objects
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-02-08 13:19:41

Hi, I'm back again for more "how does this work?/how do I do this?" 
It's 2 (well more kinda 3 or 4) things again, the first is with moving multiple objects, I have some money in a drawer which if it isn't found I want it to be lost but rather than write
[code]drawer.bigNote.moveInto(nil);
drawer.smallNote.moveInto(nil);
drawer.silverCoin.moveInto(nil);
drawer.goldCoin.moveInto(nil);
drawer.copperCoin.moveInto(nil);[/code]
I would rather be able to just move the contents of the drawer to nil or move the money as a collective into nil, but haven't a clue really to how to go about it.  I was hoping someone could explain to me about searching objects in a room or searching for objects that have a certain property or belong to a certain group... If they don't mind that is [emote]:)[/emote]


The other one I wanted to ask about is... Kind of a puzzler... I have puzzle involving a glass tube with gems in (I'd post this but it's pushing 200 lines long and I need help with just 2 of them), the gems can be taken out of either end and each end changes colour dependant on number of gems in it but are clear when they're not in the tube.  I've set it up so the gems in the tube are an abstract item (to allow for the description changing for the gems and the tube) and all worked fine but the problem(s) comes when adding an actual 10 gems to the game. When the player takes a gem I have the abstract 'gems' move a gem to the player (for the puzzle part it needs to be this way really)

prob 1 is when taking a gem it only moves the first gem to the player though all the messages are in tact (that's if I have them in loc==nil, if I have them in the tube, it take the 'class' first ignoring the tube then takes 1 from nil so I end up with 2 gems and the descriptions saying there's 9 in the tube instead of 8)

prob 2 is refering to the seperate gem once it's out 'look at gems' works fine but if the 'real' gems are in the tube, look at gem produces[quote] 'which gem do you mean? (one of) your gem(s)? or one of the ones in the tube?'[/quote] but if I store them in nil I either get a description of the gems (there are 8 gems, the 3 on the left glowing....) or [quote]'you see no loose gem here'[/quote]
For the first one I'd preferably like to specify where they come from (like gem.moveOutOf(tube)into(gPlayerChar or something of sorts)
As for the 2nd I'm trying to make it so that the player can't see or refer to the gems whilst they're in the tube really (it'd be far easier) failing that a way of changing the vocab words for a gem not in the tube but I struggled doing that too since it isn't part of an action on the actual gem

Does anyone know any quick fixes?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4322&start=0#p31212
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: A little explanation please and moving multiple objects
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-08 14:50:19

I've never tried this, but you might want to look at the Dispenser class. The discussion in the Tour Guide might be the place to start.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4322&start=0#p31213
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: A little explanation please and moving multiple objects
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-02-08 15:36:42

Oooh That looks handy actually, and it might just work Thanks Jim! [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4322&start=0#p31214
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: A little explanation please and moving multiple objects
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-02-08 16:18:13

It worked! Yaay thankies, I could pretty much take the bit I needed out of the RedCandle example and with tiny bit of tinkering with my code block to make it fit it works great, had to put (gems) in the vocabWords to make it work right which meant giving it a disambigName but now it works better than before ( I hadn't thought someone might try to 'remove' them from the tube haha)

Thank youuuuuuu

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4316&start=0#p31215
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: problems with zoom
User: OmegaAngel / DateTime: 2012-02-08 16:35:36

Alrighty. [emote]:)[/emote] Thanks for the tips. Now I may continue enjoying these magical books that speak back to you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4322&start=0#p31216
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: A little explanation please and moving multiple objects
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-08 16:43:56

[quote="KellyJ"]
[code]drawer.bigNote.moveInto(nil);
drawer.smallNote.moveInto(nil);
drawer.silverCoin.moveInto(nil);
drawer.goldCoin.moveInto(nil);
drawer.copperCoin.moveInto(nil);
[/code]
[/quote]

This can be written as:
[code]
drawer.contents.subset({obj: obj.ofKind(Money)}).forEach({obj: obj.moveInto(nil)});
[/code]

Drawer.contents is a list of objects that the drawer contains. subset and forEach are [url=http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/sysman/list.htm]List methods[/url]. Here the contents list is first filtered down to a list of money objects in the drawer, and then each money object is moved into nil.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4184&start=10#p31217
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: nominations open
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-08 19:13:32

A little over a day to go for the first round. Quite a few categories are really close, so every vote counts. Also, if you don't vote I will KNOW and be dreadfully disappointed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4184&start=10#p31218
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: nominations open
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-08 21:00:21

[quote="maga"]A little over a day to go for the first round. Quite a few categories are really close, so every vote counts. Also, if you don't vote I will KNOW and be dreadfully disappointed.[/quote]


[eyes dart fearfully]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4323&start=0#p31219
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Can something be a backdrop and animate?
User: Peter Nepstad / DateTime: 2012-02-08 22:58:53

If I want to kiss or talk to a portrait, for example. But I don't want it to show up in the room description as a separate item. And, it is in a region, not just in a single room. I suppose if a person cannot be in a region then I could solve this by having it follow the player, provided I can suppress the various messages that indicate this is happening. The BACKDROP kind works fine except when it comes to the stuff that you can't do because it is not "animate."

I tried overriding KISS for example with "Before kissing:", but this still resulted in me being unable to kiss because "you can only do that to something animate."

Is there some way to override this check, or do I have to change its kind and then suppress the various messages in some way?

I'm befuddled. Any help is as always greatly appreciated.

Thanks much,

-- Peter

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4184&start=10#p31220
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: nominations open
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-08 23:02:06

[quote="Ghalev"][eyes dart fearfully][/quote]
Oh, Ghalev. You work so diligently to record your principled abstinence from beauty contests, I'd be more disappointed if you [i]had[/i] voted.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4184&start=10#p31221
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: nominations open
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-08 23:08:09

[quote="maga"][quote="Ghalev"][eyes dart fearfully][/quote]
Oh, Ghalev. You work so diligently to record your principled abstinence from beauty contests, I'd be more disappointed if you [i]had[/i] voted.[/quote]

Oh my, I hope it isn't mistaken for a matter of [i]principle.[/i] It's entirely [i]aesthetic,[/i] I promise [emote]:)[/emote]

And the XYZZYs are different ... they're not a [i]comp,[/i] so even aesthetically I think they rock. Even if I just plain forget to participate most of the time, on account of being a dork (my other problem is that I'm slow, and I often don't play a new game until it's two or three years new, at the newest ...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4324&start=0#p31222
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Random text, from a table
User: Peter Nepstad / DateTime: 2012-02-08 23:16:57

I love all the tags that allow different kinds of randomness for text, but if I put that text into a table instead of using the [or] construct, it seems like the only random I can do is "choose a random row".

What if I wanted to have random text from a table but random as in [in random order], that is, "A random order is chosen for the alternative passages of text, and they are used in that order as the text is printed again and again. When one random cycle finishes, a new one begins."? 

-- Peter

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4324&start=0#p31223
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Random text, from a table
User: George / DateTime: 2012-02-08 23:27:17

One way is, before you start selecting, sort the table in random order (sort [b]table name[/b] in random order). Keep a pointer to the row you're on, and when you hit the last row, sort it again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4323&start=0#p31224
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can something be a backdrop and animate?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-08 23:44:39

You can have a person be part of a backdrop; that might solve your problem. 

I also think that you get the "you can only do that to something animate" line because the understand line for kissing in the standard rules contains a "[someone]" token rather than a "[something]" token. So you could also define a new action that has a "[something]" Understand line (or even write that line for the existing kissing action) and then use rules for kissing to take care of the portrait.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4323&start=0#p31237
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can something be a backdrop and animate?
User: Peter Nepstad / DateTime: 2012-02-09 00:03:31

Thank you, I'm going to try option 2, after some more fiddling and googling based on your comments, it looks like I can say

[code]Understand "kiss [something]" as kissing. 
The block kissing rule is not listed in any rulebook.[/code]

And it works. The trouble I suppose is now it works for everything in the game, but as this game is so tiny it hardly matters. I will do the same for the other "someone" rules.

-- Peter

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4324&start=0#p31239
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Random text, from a table
User: Peter Nepstad / DateTime: 2012-02-09 01:10:32

OK, That did the trick. Randomized the table on entry, used an incrementing sequence variable, then ran through items as they were discovered, checking

[code]if qsequence > number of filled rows in Table 1.1:
	now qsequence is 1;[/code]

To make sure I don't blow up and run-time error when the table hits a blank row.

Thanks much.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=80#p31240
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Peter Rickardson / DateTime: 2012-02-09 01:47:23

[quote="DavidK"][quote="Peter Rickardson"]This is exactly a thing Jacek would say using one his sock puppets. I'm not saying you're Jacek. All I'm saying is that, with people like you, Jacek doesn't need his sock puppets.[/quote]It seems worth pointing out here that "Peter Rickardson" has in the past posted from the same IP address as "Jacek Pudlo" has used.[/quote]

My initial response was to say that "DavidK" was Jacek, but then it occurred to me that this is exactly what Jacek would want us to do. Looking for an external Jacek we keep finding the internal Jacek that lurks within each and every one of us. We think it is the Jacek without we fear, but it is the Jacek within us, a monkey-faced, petty, suspicious dwarf rearing its head from the depths of our souls that terrifies us.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4184&start=10#p31241
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: nominations open
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-09 01:59:11

[quote="Ghalev"]And the XYZZYs are different ... they're not a [i]comp,[/i] so even aesthetically I think they rock.[/quote]
The nice thing about the XYZZYs vs. comps is that,  being first-past-the-post rather than ratings-based, they tend to be more about voter enthusiasm than broad acceptability. I like comps, they're valuable things, but the XYZZYs are where my heart is.
[quote="Ghalev"] Even if I just plain forget to participate most of the time, on account of being a dork (my other problem is that I'm slow, and I often don't play a new game until it's two or three years new, at the newest ...)[/quote]
Yeah, understood. I average about 5-10 years late to most media offerings. Try to make an exception for IF, but it's still hard to knock that average down to less-than-a-year.

(turns to address audience) Nonetheless! If you've played just one game this year that you feel deserves some kind of recognition, you're qualified to vote, and doing so is your sacred if annoying duty. (exit, pursued by bear)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=80#p31242
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-09 02:17:23

Yeah, I thought for a while I might have an internal Jacek, but it turned out it was just a hair follicle cyst.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=80#p31243
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2012-02-09 02:58:47

[quote="Peter Rickardson"]My initial response was to say that "DavidK" was Jacek[/quote]
His green name should assure you that he is actually an admin. (Of course, if Jacek is secretly the admin, we are doomed.*)

(* Or at least there will be some mild wailing and gnashing of teeth.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4184&start=10#p31244
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: nominations open
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2012-02-09 04:57:43

I get weird errors when I try to submit my vote. I'll mail it to the organisers and hope that that will suffice.

[quote="maga"]The nice thing about the XYZZYs vs. comps is that,  being first-past-the-post rather than ratings-based, they tend to be more about voter enthusiasm than broad acceptability. I like comps, they're valuable things, but the XYZZYs are where my heart is.[/quote]
Of course, according to voter enthusiasm, the greatest writers of the 20th century are [url=http://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/100-best-novels/]Ayn Rand and L. Ron Hubbard[/url]. (I also find the list hilarious because, apparently, in the English-speaking world you can get away with saying "100 best novels" when you mean "100 best novels [i]in English[/i]". Or maybe you can't get away with it, but it's not the first time I've seen it.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4323&start=0#p31245
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can something be a backdrop and animate?
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-02-09 04:58:36

[quote="Peter Nepstad"]Thank you, I'm going to try option 2, after some more fiddling and googling based on your comments, it looks like I can say

[code]Understand "kiss [something]" as kissing. 
The block kissing rule is not listed in any rulebook.[/code]

And it works. The trouble I suppose is now it works for everything in the game, but as this game is so tiny it hardly matters. I will do the same for the other "someone" rules.

-- Peter[/quote]Well, you could write [code]Understand "kiss [the portrait]" as kissing."[/code] to avoid allowing the player to kiss everything willy-nilly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4323&start=0#p31246
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can something be a backdrop and animate?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-09 06:46:46

[quote="ChrisC"][quote="Peter Nepstad"]Thank you, I'm going to try option 2, after some more fiddling and googling based on your comments, it looks like I can say

[code]Understand "kiss [something]" as kissing. 
The block kissing rule is not listed in any rulebook.[/code]

And it works. The trouble I suppose is now it works for everything in the game, but as this game is so tiny it hardly matters. I will do the same for the other "someone" rules.

-- Peter[/quote]Well, you could write [code]Understand "kiss [the portrait]" as kissing."[/code] to avoid allowing the player to kiss everything willy-nilly.[/quote]

I would advise against that -- if you try kissing a table, it will say "You can only do that to something animate" (I think), which will be highly misleading if you can kiss the portrait. 

A better idea would be to just write a generic rule for kissing unkissable things and a specific rule for kissing kissable things:

[code]Carry out kissing: say "That's not very kissable."
Carry out kissing a person: say "You don't have that kind of relationship with [The noun]."
Carry out kissing the portrait: [whatever you want to happen] [/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4323&start=0#p31247
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can something be a backdrop and animate?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-02-09 07:03:37

Or you could just give an object the 'animate' attribute without assigning it to an i7 kind of person or man or woman, etc. The way I understand it, i7 manual tells you to sort objects into sentient and non-sentient by giving them 'kinds', but the actual code parser ignores this information and only looks at whether objects have the 'animate' attribute (which they get automatically when they are assigned to a sentient kind).

So, this gives you a convenient hook to make an animate object that belongs to a non-sentient kind...

[code]The Starting Room contains an animate scenery thing called a built-in AI.[/code]

However, there were cases where, for a reason I didn't understand (perhaps some kinds won't allow it), I wasn't able to successfully assign certain objects the animate attribute. This was solved by an i6 hack, forcing the attribute upon them, like so...

[code]A built-in AI is a backdrop. The built-in AI is in every room.

Include (- has animate -) when defining the built-in AI.[/code]

Hope that's helpful. It's been a while since I came upon that solution -- I looked it up in my code for you but I may have misrecalled the way I arrived at it. Anyway, it worked, but I don't use the i6 hack anymore -- I ended up commenting it out for some reason. Possibly because at one point I decided to change a lot of my 'kinds of backdrop' into ordinary 'scenery' objects of various kinds.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=80#p31249
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-02-09 07:38:18

[quote]Yeah, I thought for a while I might have an internal Jacek, but it turned out it was just a hair follicle cyst.
[/quote]

It's good that it worked out that way.  From what I understand, a Jacektomy is not a very pleasant procedure (although I continue to believe that we would collectively benefit from doing it).


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=80#p31250
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Peter Rickardson / DateTime: 2012-02-09 09:02:44

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="Peter Rickardson"]My initial response was to say that "DavidK" was Jacek[/quote]
His green name should assure you that he is actually an admin. (Of course, if Jacek is secretly the admin, we are doomed.*)

(* Or at least there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.)[/quote]


I'm 99.9999999999999% certain that "DavidK" is Jacek. But I will not hold it against him. If Jacek chooses to convey an amusing anecdote through his "DavidK" inflatable doll, so much the funnier for the rest of us. But I refuse to blamestorm and search for my own inner Jacek, and through my refusal I foil Jacek's intentions. 

(The funny thing is that I live in the same city as Jacek. I know who this person is in real life. I am currently in the same building as he! I could reveal many things about this strange person, but I will not, because by attacking the Jacek who happens to be the actual Jacek, I would merely feed my own inner, metaphorical Jacek.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=80#p31251
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-02-09 09:59:31

[quote]Though probably banworthy for the "Rickardson" account[/quote]

Oh, I don't know. "Rickardson" hasn't trolled at all, to the best of my knowledge.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4323&start=0#p31252
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can something be a backdrop and animate?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-09 10:16:55

I'm not sure why the portrait needs to be a backdrop. Couldn't you just make it a scenery person?

If it does need to be a backdrop, have a look at "Conditional Backdrops" and "Crowds." The implementation in "Crowds" shows how to make any kind of thing into a "floating" object.

<a class="postlink" href="http://eyeballsun.org/i/Conditional%20Backdrops.i7x">http://eyeballsun.org/i/Conditional%20Backdrops.i7x</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://eyeballsun.org/i/Crowds.i7x">http://eyeballsun.org/i/Crowds.i7x</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=80#p31253
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2012-02-09 11:22:25

[quote="Peter Rickardson"][quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="Peter Rickardson"]My initial response was to say that "DavidK" was Jacek[/quote]
His green name should assure you that he is actually an admin. (Of course, if Jacek is secretly the admin, we are doomed.*)

(* Or at least there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.)[/quote]


I'm 99.9999999999999% certain that "DavidK" is Jacek. But I will not hold it against him. If Jacek chooses to convey an amusing anecdote through his "DavidK" inflatable doll, so much the funnier for the rest of us. But I refuse to blamestorm and search for my own inner Jacek, and through my refusal I foil Jacek's intentions. 

(The funny thing is that I live in the same city as Jacek. I know who this person is in real life. I am currently in the same building as he! I could reveal many things about this strange person, but I will not, because by attacking the Jacek who happens to be the actual Jacek, I would merely feed my own inner, metaphorical Jacek.)[/quote]

Don't tell me. Let me guess. You not only live in the same city and same building as Jacek, but... the same body as well?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=80#p31254
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-09 12:19:51

[quote="Peter Pears"][quote]Though probably banworthy for the "Rickardson" account[/quote]

Oh, I don't know. "Rickardson" hasn't trolled at all, to the best of my knowledge.[/quote]

Well, chiming in to support yourself with a sock puppet might count as trolling by some definitions, but this instance is a pretty mild example (as is [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&p=27322#p27322]this[/url]). Anyway, it seems that Jacek mostly uses the Rickardson account for legitimate I6 discussion.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=80#p31255
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-09 12:46:36

[quote]Karras: I think it might be helpful if I gave you some background on the different personalities Regan has manifested. So far, I'd say there seem to be three. She's convinced...
Merrin: There is only one.[/quote]
—The Exorcist, W Friedkin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4338&start=0#p31256
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Detecting out of world actions
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-02-09 13:47:54

In Inform 7, is there a way to determine if the current action is an out of world action? I seem to recall there was an I6 method or variable you could check.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4338&start=0#p31257
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Detecting out of world actions
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-09 14:21:29

It's the I6 global called "meta". You'll have to define an I7 equivalent variable or accessor.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=90#p31258
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-09 14:29:06

[quote="matt w"]Well, chiming in to support yourself with a sock puppet might count as trolling by some definitions[/quote]

And as Socratic dialogue by others, no doubt [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=90#p31259
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-02-09 14:41:31

[quote]Oh, I don't know. "Rickardson" hasn't trolled at all, to the best of my knowledge.
[/quote]

So if I understand the reasoning correctly, it implies that if I (purely hypothetically) were to go out and commit a crime using a false identity, and then were to come home and resume my real persona, the "real" me should be immune from any consequences for actions undertaken by my Mr. Hyde manifestation.  After all, the Dr. Jeckyll side of me has always been scrupulously honest.

An interesting theory, indeed.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=90#p31260
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-09 14:54:29

[quote="Robert Rothman"][quote]Oh, I don't know. "Rickardson" hasn't trolled at all, to the best of my knowledge.
[/quote]

So if I understand the reasoning correctly, it implies that if I (purely hypothetically) were to go out and commit a crime using a false identity, and then were to come home and resume my real persona, the "real" me should be immune from any consequences for actions undertaken by my Mr. Hyde manifestation.  After all, the Dr. Jeckyll side of me has always been scrupulously honest.[/quote]

Nope! The question is whether "Pudlo"'s posting as "Rickardson" is in itself banworthy, specifically for "Rickardson's" account; the things done with the "Pudlo" account are immaterial to that particular question. If one felt that "Pudlo" should be banned for what he did with his own account, presumably one would feel that all his accounts should be banned.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=90#p31261
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2012-02-09 15:12:43

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="matt w"]Well, chiming in to support yourself with a sock puppet might count as trolling by some definitions[/quote]

And as Socratic dialogue by others, no doubt [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
That is is pretty fair description of Plato's Socratic dialogues, yes. [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=90#p31262
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-02-09 15:33:06

[quote="Robert Rothman"][quote]Oh, I don't know. "Rickardson" hasn't trolled at all, to the best of my knowledge.
[/quote]

So if I understand the reasoning correctly, it implies that if I (purely hypothetically) were to go out and commit a crime using a false identity, and then were to come home and resume my real persona, the "real" me should be immune from any consequences for actions undertaken by my Mr. Hyde manifestation.  After all, the Dr. Jeckyll side of me has always been scrupulously honest.

An interesting theory, indeed.[/quote]
I get the feeling when I read comments like this people who support liberal use of banning just want revenge: they want the troll to [i]feel it[/i]. But of course that is far from the real purpose of a ban, which should be wholly preventative. What negative outcome would be prevented by banning an account that has done no trolling? To use the moderation system to punish or to exact revenge or to achieve some notion of 'justice' is to wholly abuse it and it virtually guarantees that the system will end up corrupted with emboldened moderators taking out anyone who sneezes wrong, just to show 'em. It's the wrong goal; applying the wrong standard; an appeal to moral emotions has no place in moderation discussions, which should focus entirely on consequences to the community, and not at all on the consequences to the trolls or on whether they have gotten what's coming to them. That misplaced focus is exactly what leads communities to feed a troll and turn minor skirmishes into forum-swallowing wars. Seen it happen many times; in each case the desire to morally punish was [i]as responsible[/i] as the trolling for the negative consequences on the community (including desertions by good users).

Basically you have to ask yourself, do you want to strike back, or do you want to minimise the damage? People who opt for the latter behave very differently (and more effectively) toward trolls than those who let themselves be swayed by the former.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=90#p31263
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2012-02-09 16:16:43

Oh please, we're not actually discussing whether it's [i]morally[/i] right to ban a troll, are we? Jacek's a pain in the arse trouble causer who contributes nothing but insults and arguments and flame wars to this forum. He's about as welcome as cancer. Ban him and move on. To hell with whether it's morally right or not.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=90#p31264
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-02-09 16:21:41

Well, as long as "Rickardson" isn't being a troll, I'd rather have him than Pudlo. If a troll decides to create a different account and behave *differently* on that account, I'd say that it deserves at least a non-ban.

Of course, the *really civil* way to do it would be to actually change behaviour, and hopefully make a public apology, but heck, since hardly any troll is going to do *that*, I'm quite happy with the schizos/sock puppets, as long as they're not trolls themselves.

EDIT - Rothman - I hope we can keep the distinction between real-life crimes/double identites and a guy writing inflamatory things in a public forum where pretty much everyone already knows he's a bad apple [i]quite clear[/i]. You described someone trying to flee a serious offence. In this case I see only someone who *knows* that his name is so looked down on, it's unlikely he'll get help if he needs it (or, maybe more probably, isn't about to *ask* the very people he's been pissing off for help), and therefore establishes a second identity to do those smaller, more constructive things.

In a sense, Mr. Hyde has created a Dr. Jekyll, not the other way around. And I'd rather have the Jekyll.

Fat chance of that now, though. I can't imagine he'll keep using the account [i]now[/i].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=90#p31265
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-02-09 16:29:15

For the record, I don't support the liberal use of banning.  I feel strongly that such a drastic step should be limited to the unusual case of an individual whose apparent intention is solely to disrupt and to act like a jerk, with no redeeming social value.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4169&start=10#p31266
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Benchmarking beta PLUS Contributions wanted for a test s
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2012-02-09 19:09:33

This is super cool! Thanks for making this. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=90#p31267
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2012-02-09 19:26:56

[quote="Laroquod"]I get the feeling when I read comments like this people who support liberal use of banning just want revenge: they want the troll to [i]feel it[/i].[/quote]

That's too broad a brush. I, for example, support liberal secret banning. I don't want the troll to feel anything, really.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=90#p31268
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-09 22:58:03

[quote="dfabulich"]I don't want the troll to feel anything, really.[/quote]

Likewise. It isn't about punishment, it's about housecleaning. No more personal than calling an exterminator to remove a pest ... if it can be done in a painless and humane fashion, all the better.

I don't spend much time on discussion boards (other than this one), so all this secret-ban and slow-ban stuff is new to me, but it certainly sounds interesting. It does seem like a dedicated troll would be nearly immune, though: if he logs in on multiple sock-puppet accounts, it should be easy to notice that the post he intended to offer sock-puppet support to is invisible to his sock-puppet persona [emote]:)[/emote]

Personally, I'd just like the ability to make a given account invisible to me, and let others make up their own minds ... the current "foe" system doesn't make anything invisible, just vaguely masked (I also find the connotations of "foe" a bit distasteful ... this person isn't my [i]enemy,[/i] just a pest with no interest in really contributing to the topic at hand). If that system were perfected, I think bans of any kind would be less important, since everyone could make a choice according to their own tolerance for the intruder.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4339&start=0#p31269
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Problems with writing files and unstable data.
User: lorenipsun / DateTime: 2012-02-09 23:15:51

Hello all, 

I am trying to write files, and I am having a heck of a time with it.  In particular, I am trying to have the program automatically generate a playlog, to help me with bug testing (I can have testers just send me the log so I can recreate instead of forcing them to describe the problem).  However, whenever I try to write to the file, it always fails.  I basically just copied it out of one of the examples, so I don't understand what is going wrong.  Any advice would be appreciated.  (In Inform 7)

The idea was that, every turn, the location of the player and the player's command would be stored in a table, and when the player quits, it writes to a file.  But every time I try, it fails with unstable data.  I am guessing that is because I am trying to store the room name as indexed text, but if so, not sure how to fix it.

[code]After reading a command:
	let T be indexed text;
	let T be the player's command;
	choose a blank row in the table of commands;
	change the room entry to the printed name of the location of the player;
	change the Command entry to T;

Check quitting the game:
	write File of Commands from the Table of Commands.

The File of Commands is called "textlog".

Table of Commands
Room	Command
indexed text	indexed text
with 200 blank rows.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4339&start=0#p31270
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problems with writing files and unstable data.
User: George / DateTime: 2012-02-09 23:32:33

I ran your code and got this textlog

[code]
* //24144B89-EE8A-47B7-A868-7449A2A4067B// textlog
! Table of Commands (5)
S70,105,108,101,115,0; S105,0; 
S70,105,108,101,115,0; S108,111,111,107,0; 
S70,105,108,101,115,0; S122,0; 
S70,105,108,101,115,0; S115,105,110,103,0; 
S70,105,108,101,115,0; S113,117,105,116,0; 
[/code]

So there appears to be some other problem. What commands are you trying?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4339&start=0#p31271
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problems with writing files and unstable data.
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-10 00:12:40

[quote="lorenipsun"]I am trying to write files, and I am having a heck of a time with it.  In particular, I am trying to have the program automatically generate a playlog, to help me with bug testing (I can have testers just send me the log so I can recreate instead of forcing them to describe the problem).[/quote]
Erm, why not just have your testers type 'script' at the first prompt? This will save a complete play script as a text file.

I don't know whether this works with online play, but you don't need online play for testing....

--JA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4339&start=0#p31272
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problems with writing files and unstable data.
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-10 00:15:00

For diagnosing this problem, you should note which OS and interpreter version you're using.

However, it's also true that getting complete transcripts is easier and more reliable.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4339&start=0#p31273
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problems with writing files and unstable data.
User: lorenipsun / DateTime: 2012-02-10 01:24:25

[quote="George"]
So there appears to be some other problem. What commands are you trying?[/quote]

Just simple stuff.  Moving around in directions, looking at things.

[quote="zarf"]For diagnosing this problem, you should note which OS and interpreter version you're using.

However, it's also true that getting complete transcripts is easier and more reliable.[/quote]

I am just using the default Inform 7 interpreter, for the most part, in Windows XP.  I tried releasing it and using glulxe, same problems.  Tried "Script", didn't work.  I would rather do something automatic anyway, to make it easier for other people.

Even if I can get script to work, I still have to figure out how to write files for other reasons, as I want to have a preferences file and an ending scoreboard.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4338&start=0#p31274
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Detecting out of world actions
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-02-10 02:55:29

Thanks, that did the trick.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=100#p31275
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-02-10 04:50:15

We could change "foe" to "pest".

We could also change "moderator" to "exterminator".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4339&start=0#p31276
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problems with writing files and unstable data.
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-02-10 05:06:45

The SCRIPT command does not work from within the interpreter that ships with the IDE. It should work from the released game file, though.

Also, you can trigger a transcript semi-automatically by adding a line like:
[code]When play begins, try switching the story transcript on.
[/code]
This won't work from within the IDE either; but it, too, should work from the released version of the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=100#p31277
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-10 09:32:07

[quote="Peter Pears"]We could change "foe" to "pest".

We could also change "moderator" to "exterminator".[/quote]

Sexeh [emote]:)[/emote]

Though, presumably, "exterminator" is just [i]one [/i]of the hats the Mod wears (others might include "referee" or "gentle reminder" or just "janitor" in the case of the nightly spam-cleanup) ... while the pests tend to occupy that role full-time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4339&start=0#p31278
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problems with writing files and unstable data.
User: George / DateTime: 2012-02-10 10:04:49

[quote="lorenipsun"]
I am just using the default Inform 7 interpreter, for the most part, in Windows XP. [/quote]

I was using the same setup. Did you post your entire source or just a snippet in the OP?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4184&start=10#p31279
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: nominations open
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-10 13:35:26

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Of course, according to voter enthusiasm, the greatest writers of the 20th century are [url=http://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/100-best-novels/]Ayn Rand and L. Ron Hubbard[/url].[/quote]
The XYZZYs are, indeed, somewhat vulnerable to this kind of thing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=0#p31280
Forum: Competitions / Subject: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-10 13:51:53

The nomination round of the XYZZY Awards is complete, and the second round is open. You can see the list of nominees at [url]http://xyzzyawards.org/finalists.php[/url], and cast your votes at [url]http://xyzzyawards.org/vote.php[/url]. The second round will run until the end of March 1st.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=0#p31281
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-10 14:59:08

That's an impressive number of nominations for Zombie Exodus.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=0#p31282
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-10 15:03:17

Woohoo! I votehhhhd. I'm a votah! YAY-uh!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=0#p31283
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-10 15:31:37

[quote="matt w"]That's an impressive number of nominations for Zombie Exodus.[/quote]
[url]http://www.choiceofgames.com/2012/01/vote-for-interactive-fiction-in-the-xyzzy-awards/[/url], basically.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=0#p31284
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-10 15:41:23

[quote="maga"][url]http://www.choiceofgames.com/2012/01/vote-for-interactive-fiction-in-the-xyzzy-awards/[/url], basically.[/quote]

Hm.

When I learned that ToaSK got an XYZZY nom for 2007, I waited until [i]after [/i]the voting deadline passed (by about 50 minutes) before I mentioned it on the Encounter Critical Mailing List.

Different strokes, I guess.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=0#p31286
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-10 16:42:32

It feels like the phone voting in realities. But maybe I'm too taliban. I usually hate popular votes, and now I remember the reason. 

Dunno.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=0#p31287
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2012-02-10 16:44:09

Is it bad form to blog about the XYZZY awards like that? I understood XYZZY to be a contest where campaigning for votes was totally acceptable.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=0#p31288
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-10 17:08:25

[quote="dfabulich"]Is it bad form to blog about the XYZZY awards like that? I understood XYZZY to be a contest where campaigning for votes was totally acceptable.[/quote]

I have no doubt it's 100% ethical and unimpeachably correct. Like so many things.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=0#p31289
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-10 17:11:51

I don't have a problem with your post, but I do think it's a shame that it was so effective.

The XYZZY FAQ says that the top four finishers in each category go on to the finals, but some categories only list three. What happened there?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=0#p31290
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-10 17:22:15

[quote="dfabulich"]Is it bad form to blog about the XYZZY awards like that? I understood XYZZY to be a contest where campaigning for votes was totally acceptable.[/quote]
Further, the post on Choice of Games was hardly canvassing at all, nowhere did it say "Go Vote For Zombie Exodus". 

---

RE: a panel of reviewers: is that still a thing? I have no conflict of interest in writing on any of the categories though I have little knowledge of technical developments.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=10#p31291
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-10 17:27:58

[quote="bcressey"]The XYZZY FAQ says that the top four finishers in each category go on to the finals, but some categories only list three. What happened there?[/quote]
Big ties for fourth place. The rule of thumb is that if there's a tie that would produce five or six nominees, we go with it, but not if that would produce a whole lot more. In those cases, there's generally a pretty big discontinuity between the top three games and everything else, so it's pretty clear who the front-runners are. (Voting in the nomination round is typically quite low and unfocused.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=10#p31292
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-10 17:30:24

[quote="JoeyJones"]RE: a panel of reviewers: is that still a thing? I have no conflict of interest in writing on any of the categories though I have little knowledge of technical developments.[/quote]
It is; I've been waiting for the nomination round to be over so that (apart from conflicts of interest) people can have a firmer idea of what they'd be writing about. I'll try and get some organising done over the weekend.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=10#p31293
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-10 18:02:32

[quote="dfabulich"]Is it bad form to blog about the XYZZY awards like that? I understood XYZZY to be a contest where campaigning for votes was totally acceptable.[/quote]
If you mean, is there a nice clear community standard or competition rule about this, or did I do anything malicious? then no, although campaigning hasn't been a prominent feature of the awards in the past. If you mean: is this going to seriously piss off a great many people? then yes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4184&start=10#p31294
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: nominations open
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2012-02-10 18:44:59

[quote="maga"]The XYZZYs are, indeed, somewhat vulnerable to this kind of thing.[/quote]
Although, luckily, our community does not seem to have attracted hordes of objectivists. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=10#p31295
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-10 19:26:32

[quote="bcressey"]I don't have a problem with your post, but I do think it's a shame that it was so effective.[/quote]

I agree with this; I think the problem is that you have a large community that doesn't play parser IF games, so a post like that is going to funnel a lot of votes pretty exclusively to ChoiceScript games. Which means the vote totals aren't apples-to-apples, which can be a problem in first-past-the-post systems.

I'm sure you didn't intend anything malicious here, I just think it's an unfortunate side-effect of the way the voting works and of the general separation of the ChoiceScript and parser IF communities (perhaps I should say the Inform-and-TADS-sort-of community, with ADRIFT as a separate community yet). It's also my opinion after playing the first chapter that Zombie Exodus shouldn't be a finalist for best writing, but that's kind of an independent issue (and I hadn't played it yet when I made my first post on the thread).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=10#p31296
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2012-02-10 19:58:18

[quote="maga"]If you mean, is there a nice clear community standard or competition rule about this, or did I do anything malicious? then no, although campaigning hasn't been a prominent feature of the awards in the past. If you mean: is this going to seriously piss off a great many people? then yes.[/quote]

So, I have to come clean here. Before I even read this thread, I posted a follow-up post, which is, I'd say, "worse" by those standards.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.choiceofgames.com/2012/02/xyzzy-finalists-announced-vote-for-the-winner/">http://www.choiceofgames.com/2012/02/xy ... he-winner/</a>

It, too, stops short of saying "Vote for Zombie Exodus", but I'm not going to claim that I wasn't campaigning for Jim.

Based on the first few replies on this thread, I closed my browser and went about my day. But now I read this reply, which certainly gives me pause.

Getting onto the nominee list under questionable circumstances is one thing, but IMO Jim has a good shot at winning the competition, and I don't want his victory to be tainted with the idea that he/I stuffed the ballot box.

I guess I'm looking for feedback at this point: what's posted is posted (and tweeted, and FB'd), but I can delete the new blog post now. Should I do that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=10#p31297
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-02-10 20:06:12

[quote="dfabulich"]I guess I'm looking for feedback at this point: what's posted is posted (and tweeted, and FB'd), but I can delete the new blog post now. Should I do that?[/quote]

How about just suggesting that folks play all four games before voting? (Personally, I think that's a minimal standard for anyone who votes in this kind of thing, but the XYZZYs don't seem to operate under that expectation...) If your canvassing nets more players for the finalists, then it will have been a good thing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=10#p31298
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-02-10 20:08:27

[quote="matt w"]I just think it's an unfortunate side-effect of the way the voting works and of the general separation of the ChoiceScript and parser IF communities (perhaps I should say the Inform-and-TADS-sort-of community, with ADRIFT as a separate community yet). It's also my opinion after playing the first chapter that Zombie Exodus shouldn't be a finalist for best writing, but that's kind of an independent issue (and I hadn't played it yet when I made my first post on the thread).[/quote]

Exactly. The nomination of Zombie Exodus for categories like Best NPCs and Best PC also raises some questions. I think there is a productive argument to be had around the premise that CYOA games don't have PCs or NPCs; they simply have characters. The purpose of those categories in the parser IF context is to draw attention to the skill and craft required to effectively [i]model[/i] a character; since there is no world model in a CYOA, it seems odd (at least to someone whose primary reference is parser IF) to see any CYOA game referred to as having NPCs.

Maybe the categories should in future be changed to "best protagonist" and "best characters," so that no genre's expectations predominate?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=10#p31299
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2012-02-10 20:31:03

[quote="ektemple"]How about just suggesting that folks play all four games before voting? (Personally, I think that's a minimal standard for anyone who votes in this kind of thing, but the XYZZYs don't seem to operate under that expectation...) If your canvassing nets more players for the finalists, then it will have been a good thing.[/quote]

I updated the post with your suggestion, though I'm still open to deleting the post if I hear some outcry.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=10#p31300
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-10 21:09:21

[quote="ektemple"]I think there is a productive argument to be had around the premise that CYOA games don't have PCs or NPCs; they simply have characters. The purpose of those categories in the parser IF context is to draw attention to the skill and craft required to effectively [i]model[/i] a character; since there is no world model in a CYOA, it seems odd (at least to someone whose primary reference is parser IF) to see any CYOA game referred to as having NPCs.[/quote]

Taking the argument in a completely different direction, I disagree. First, there are world models in modern CYOA (and even the old books where you had stat sheets); every ChoiceScript game I've seen keeps stats for the main character, and you may remember that The Play kept track of the moods of the cast and crew and their relationship with you. Second, I don't think the contest is for "best under-the-hood modeling"; Rameses was a finalist for "best NPC" and I suspect that the NPCs were barely modeled at all; implemented as objects but only responding to "x whoever" and maybe some different messages to block kissing them or something (I don't know, really). It's the vividness of the writing that made them memorable NPCs, not their modeling in this case. 

Creating memorable characters in CYOA does involve skill and craft, it's just a different kind of skill and craft. At the very least, in whatever version of IF, creating a good character will take good writing, but I think it'll also take good mechanics; you have to program the NPCs' responses to your choices. 

That's not to say that your suggestion might not be a good idea, but not because the current categories are inapplicable to CYOAs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=10#p31301
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-10 21:15:56

[quote="dfabulich"]I guess I'm looking for feedback at this point: what's posted is posted (and tweeted, and FB'd), but I can delete the new blog post now. Should I do that?[/quote]
I don't know, really. I think that, basically, if Zombie Exodus sweeps the awards, a lot of people are going to feel trampled on. I don't really have any right to ask you to stop saying anything, and I [i]really[/i] don't want to shut down anybody who's talking about the awards, so it's entirely your call. But I think that Ghalev, up there, was demonstrating a good deal of savvy about the nature of internet communities.
[quote="ektemple"]How about just suggesting that folks play all four games before voting? (Personally, I think that's a minimal standard for anyone who votes in this kind of thing, but the XYZZYs don't seem to operate under the expectation...) If your canvassing nets more players for the finalists, then it will have been a good thing.[/quote]
We're considering a strong suggestion on the site that anybody voting for a category should have played at least two of that category's nominees, but obviously there's no way we can enforce that. It would be awesome if this worked, but my impression from the first-round voting patterns is that the hobbyist ChoiceScript community is simply not interested in parser IF (or, indeed, in CYOA that isn't ChoiceScript) and vice versa.
[quote="ektemple"]The purpose of those categories in the parser IF context is to draw attention to the skill and craft required to effectively model a character[/quote]
I'm not sure that this particular claim has ever been strictly true; a good number of NPCs and PCs in the past have won or been nominated far more on the grounds of being well-written than because they're strongly modeled. (Certainly the techniques used to portray a character in CYOA are rather different, and so are the standards that they should be judged by, so I get the general drift of the argument; but it's not as neat as all that.) It's true, though, that ChoiceScript voters generally voted straight tickets for every award.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=20#p31302
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2012-02-10 21:53:52

[quote="maga"][quote="ektemple"]The purpose of those categories in the parser IF context is to draw attention to the skill and craft required to effectively model a character[/quote]
I'm not sure that this particular has ever been strictly true; a good number of NPCs and PCs in the past have won or been nominated far more on the grounds of being well-written than because they're strongly modeled. It's true, though, that ChoiceScript voters generally voted straight tickets for every award.[/quote]
I wonder if this is just because the two communities have different attitudes towards the Xyzzies - that the ChoiceScript community is thinking of it more as a popularity contest, whereas the IF community has a (mostly unspoken) tradition of treating the Xyzzy Awards as Serious Business. They do get described as the Oscars of IF fairly regularly, after all. It's not an accurate description, but it seems to me to indicate an expectation or desire that the voters will attempt to be "objective" and the results will reflect some some sort of critical consensus.

Funnily enough, there have been concerns in the past that people [i]don't[/i] vote because they haven't played all the games and don't feel they can make an objective decision. The organisers have even encouraged people not to worry too much about it. But now we've got voters who don't worry about it, we don't much like the result!  [emote]:P[/emote] 

In any case, I don't see that Dan Fabulich did anything wrong. I certainly don't read his posts as canvassing for votes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=20#p31303
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-02-10 21:57:42

[quote="matt w"]I disagree.[/quote]
That's fine. Arguments about connotations are rarely resolvable.

I've spoilered the rest of this, since it's long and a bit of a distraction from the main thread:
[spoiler][quote]First, there are world models in modern CYOA (and even the old books where you had stat sheets); every ChoiceScript game I've seen keeps stats for the main character, and you may remember that The Play kept track of the moods of the cast and crew and their relationship with you.[/quote]
Wait, though. A handful of stats is not a world model, and dialogue and interaction with characters, in gamebooks old or new, have very rarely been tied directly to dialogue. Put another way: just because CYOA-style games [i]can[/i] use stats to model detailed interaction doesn't mean that they do. (The Play may well be an exception; I didn't play through it enough times to get a sense of how interactions were modeled. But it would be an exception that proves the rule.)

My argument was about the contexts and expectations of each genre, and the connotations of "PC" and "NPC".

[quote]Second, I don't think the contest is for "best under-the-hood modeling"[/quote]
No, but my argument was that, in the context of parser IF--and CYOA games are very recent newcomers to the XYZZYs, I believe--that is what this category has generally meant, simply because that is what creating an NPC in parser IF generally means. This may or may not reflect other folks' perceptions.

(It's worth noting, though, that parser IF probably has one of the highest author/author manqué to consumer ratios in all of media, and a consideration of what's under the hood is rarely far from most "readers"' minds. This certainly influences my feelings.)

[quote]Rameses was a finalist for "best NPC" and I suspect that the NPCs were barely modeled at all; implemented as objects but only responding to "x whoever" and maybe some different messages to block kissing them or something (I don't know, really). It's the vividness of the writing that made them memorable NPCs, not their modeling in this case.[/quote]
Rameses is rather an edge case, isn't it? What about Anchorhead, say, or Galatea? Or, on the PC side, Savoir Faire?

In any case, though, if Rameses's characters aren't modeled then, in the terms I described, the vividness of the writing makes them memorable as [i]characters,[/i], not as NPCs. 

[quote]Creating memorable characters in CYOA does involve skill and craft, it's just a different kind of skill and craft.[/quote]
Exactly my point (one of them, anyway).

[quote]At the very least, in whatever version of IF, creating a good character will take good writing, but I think it'll also take good mechanics; you have to program the NPCs' responses to your choices.[/quote]
In a [i]typical[/i] CYOA, are you "programming" NPCs, or writing exactly the same kinds of branching structures you're writing everywhere else?    

[quote]That's not to say that your suggestion might not be a good idea, but not because the current categories are inapplicable to CYOAs.[/quote]
It may well be that I just have an idiosyncratic understanding of "PC" and "NPC". My understanding of those terms is derived from parser IF, and maybe if I'd first encountered them in role-playing games, for example, I'd see them differently. Either way, I guess I think that less gamer-y terminology would be more welcoming to outsiders.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4339&start=0#p31304
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problems with writing files and unstable data.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-10 23:01:16

If you have access to a LAMP server, you can have testers play online and keep complete transcripts on the server, using Juhana's fantastic Parchment-Transcript. I've been using it with my WIP and I'm really happy with it.

It looks like it's changed somewhat since I installed it - I followed links to this github repository:

<a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/juhana/if-recorder">https://github.com/juhana/if-recorder</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=20#p31305
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-10 23:07:42

[quote="ektemple"][...] the vividness of the writing makes them memorable as characters,, not as NPCs. [/quote]

If they're not a PC, they're an NPC, surely? "Character" is the set, "PC" and "NPC" are the subsets. Hardly matters if it's a CYOA, parser game, RPG, storytelling game, action-videogame, etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=20#p31306
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2012-02-11 00:26:51

[quote="maga"]I think that, basically, if Zombie Exodus sweeps the awards, a lot of people are going to feel trampled on.[/quote]

I'm worried about this, too. I know, for example, that Robb worked on Cryptozookeeper for at least three years. He deserves an solid shot at winning an award.

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that, without any interventions, Zombie Exodus is already more [i]popular[/i] than any of the other games on the Best Game list.

I have two hypotheses about why that is:

1) Of the four Best Game finalists, only Zombie Exodus can be played online, at least according to IFDB links. Cryptozookeeper's installer is almost 600 megs. MM:A and Six are distributed as gblorbs. ("Go download an interpreter." "What's that?")

2) Zombie Exodus is CYOA, and CYOA is more "accessible."

The problem is that XYZZY is not intended to be a measure of popularity; it's intended to be the Oscars of IF. But the actual Academy Awards are not decided by a first-past-the-post vote of moviegoers; they're decided by the Academy, people who make movies. Zombie Exodus might not have been nominated if the competition were decided by a panel of expert judges.

As long as the IF community stays insulated from outsiders, the effect is the same, but I think we're seeing a big influx of newbies, and that's going to fundamentally change the dynamics of competitions like XYZZY and IntroComp (which was also swept by ChoiceScript games) which allow public anonymous judging.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=20#p31307
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-11 02:12:34

[quote="dfabulich"][quote="maga"]I think that, basically, if Zombie Exodus sweeps the awards, a lot of people are going to feel trampled on.[/quote]

I'm worried about this, too. I know, for example, that Robb worked on Cryptozookeeper for at least three years. He deserves an solid shot at winning an award.

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that, without any interventions, Zombie Exodus is already more [i]popular[/i] than any of the other games on the Best Game list.

I have two hypotheses about why that is:

1) Of the four Best Game finalists, only Zombie Exodus can be played online, at least according to IFDB links. Cryptozookeeper's installer is almost 600 megs. MM:A and Six are distributed as gblorbs. ("Go download an interpreter." "What's that?")

2) Zombie Exodus is CYOA, and CYOA is more "accessible."[/quote]
The specific, non-hypothetical reason is: in the first round there were two sets of voters, the ChoiceScript voters and Everyone Else. They voted very differently. They don't overlap. The ChoiceScript community are somewhat fewer, but very loyal: in the first round, they voted exclusively for ChoiceScript games, and (since there aren't very many of those) they mostly voted for the same three games. I'm guessing that they have a very different set of expectations out of a game. It's likely that a great deal of this lack of overlap is down to the structural difficulties of parser IF, of course: but accessibility issues alone don't explain why ChoiceScript voters appear equally uninterested in other CYOA. Nor do they really explain why Everyone Else didn't vote for any ChoiceScript games.
[quote="dfabulich"]As long as the IF community stays insulated from outsiders, the effect is the same, but I think we're seeing a big influx of newbies, and that's going to fundamentally change the dynamics of competitions like XYZZY and IntroComp (which was also swept by ChoiceScript games) which allow public anonymous judging.[/quote]
I  really don't think that this is about a big influx of newbies into the IF community. I think that this is about the emergence of the ChoiceScript community, which is its own thing and not really all that interested in the IF community, but (as yet) lacks its own distinct institutions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=20#p31308
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-11 03:10:33

In the late 80s, text adventures were driven off the shelves - and off the charts - by graphics. Now I fear a second storm approaching in the form of mass-played CYOA. What are the chances of a 600Mb download against a game for the iPhone?

I'm not saying that this is wrong. I actually enjoyed Doom II far more than Zork.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=20#p31309
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-11 03:16:27

[quote="Jamespking"]I'm not saying that this is wrong. I actually enjoyed Doom II far more than Zork.[/quote]

And I personally adore CYOA ... (plus Doom II, which I still play regularly and still build maps for ...) [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=20#p31310
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-11 03:34:10

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="Jamespking"]I'm not saying that this is wrong. I actually enjoyed Doom II far more than Zork.[/quote]

And I personally adore CYOA ... (plus Doom II, which I still play regularly and still build maps for ...) [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
I should probably reiterate: whatever the larger trends in the IF world, this, this thing right here, [b]is not about IF vs. CYOA.[/b] I fear it may end up being turned into that, which (as someone rather fond of CYOA, and writing in it) I really would like to avoid.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=20#p31311
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-11 03:34:36

The awards should have a "best CYOA" award. The rest of the awards should go to IF works.

This is going to evolve into something like "best music" award by having teenage girls as judges and putting Justin Bieber vs Beethoven as contenders.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=20#p31312
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-11 03:50:45

[quote="maga"][quote="Ghalev"][quote="Jamespking"]I'm not saying that this is wrong. I actually enjoyed Doom II far more than Zork.[/quote]

And I personally adore CYOA ... (plus Doom II, which I still play regularly and still build maps for ...) [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
I should probably reiterate: whatever the larger trends in the IF world, this, this thing right here, [b]is not about IF vs. CYOA.[/b] I fear it may end up being turned into that, which (as someone rather fond of CYOA, and writing in it) I really would like to avoid.[/quote]
Yes. And 'best whatever' should not mean 'more downloaded'. That's what I meant. Doom II was better than Zork, imo. But many of the 'best games' in the last 20 years' top ten were not n

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=30#p31313
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-02-11 06:17:44

In the AGS forums, there was also a yearly competition.

Authors were [i]encouraged[/i] to post a thread in the Gen-Gen (General) board, if they so wished, saying "For your consideration: GAMENAMEHERE for CATHEGORYHERE".

This was mainly done because some games might simply escape the big parade come the competition, and the authors felt their game was in danger of losing itself to obscurity simply because it was released right next to that huge whopper of a game that dwarfed all opposition.

It was also done so people would remember other games in other cathegories, like the one that rewarded best documentation.

I don't see anything wrong with that. I do see something wrong with "Go vote for it because it's CYOA", or, as it happened in one particular italian blog last IFComp, "Go vote for it because it's by an Italian author".

Maybe if people could start drawing attention to their games in a more orderly fashion, and they knew they could, they'd stop doing it so facetously in other places?

Totally unrelated steam-venting below.
[rant]Incidently: I hate with a passion every game that is online only. I'm already detesting Zombie Exodus because of this. I also foresee that if that doesn't change, this will be one XYZZY nominee that will eventually get lost in the ravages of time and web, unlike most other nominees/winners which are still available for perusal, if not on the web then on someone's hard drive (hopefully mine). I wish I could boycott ZE simply because of this. I won't, because I don't do that, but I sure would like to.[/rant]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4342&start=0#p31314
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Modifying behavior of "again"
User: planetfall666 / DateTime: 2012-02-11 07:04:43

Is there any way to change what the again/g command does? Specifically, I'm looking to make it re-run the last valid action the player tried rather than an erroneous one.

I was thinking of doing something like this:

[code]There is a room.

The previous action is an indexed text that varies.

Directly-run is a truth state that varies.

Before reading a command:
	now directly-run is true.
	
First before doing something when directly-run is true:
	now the previous action is the player's command;
	now directly-run is false.

After reading a command:
	if the player's command matches "again" and the previous action is not empty:
		replace the matched text with "[previous action]".

Test me with "z / blah / again"[/code]

However I get a runtime error, and then it retries the mistaken command anyway.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4175&start=0#p31315
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Moving the machine
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-02-11 07:38:54

>take machine
Taken.

>n
The machine refuses to move with you.

>x machine
The IF archive computer.  It is connected to the wall by some cables.

>drop machine
Dropped.

>unplug cables
You can't use multiple nouns with this verb.

>unplug cable
Which cable do you mean, the power cable or the internet cable?

>power
You don't want to do that with the machine running.

>switch machine off
The IF archive suddenly disappears from the internet.

>unplug power
You unplug the power cable.

>unplug internet
You unplug the internet cable.

>take machine
Taken.

>n
[b]Different room[/b]
This room has more space, and is generally better than the other room.

>drop machine
Dropped.

>connect power
You insert the power cable in the outlet.

>connect internet
You insert the internet cable in the internet outlet.

>swich machine on
The IF archive suddenly reappears on the internet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4175&start=0#p31316
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IFArchive outage on Tuesday, Jan 24th
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-02-11 07:40:52

[quote]>unplug cables
You can't use multiple nouns with this verb.[/quote]

I take issue with responses like this.

(Man, I've taken issue with a lot of things lately.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=30#p31317
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-02-11 07:42:25

I don't really see the XYZZY awards as being particularly significant - some winners have stood the test of time, but just as many are forgotten today. And I rarely play enough recent works to vote, so I don't. I couldn't vote for the one I have played if I haven't played at least most of the others. I hope the awards don't turn into a sham, but then the Oscars are a sham so it might be inevitable... [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=30#p31318
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-11 08:12:35

[quote]I don't see anything wrong with that. I do see something wrong with "Go vote for it because it's CYOA", or, as it happened in one particular italian blog last IFComp, "Go vote for it because it's by an Italian author".[/quote]
Indeed it was a shame. I personally thought it was like cheating and sure hoped it didn't work. It didn't, so you can all be relieved.
I know that particular post was going to - as it did - turn a lot of bad attention on me, and many ill thoughts. It was involving the double sin of doing crowdsourcing AND arguing with Miss Congeniality Emily Short. But let me underscore it was not ME. It NEVER was me. So I think I can frankly state it was NOT my fault. 

[quote]Maybe if people could start drawing attention to their games in a more orderly fashion, and they knew they could, they'd stop doing it so facetously in other places?[/quote]
Read above. 

Anyway, this is interesting. Being myself a complete noob in If authoring, I lack all of the major proficiencies. How would you draw attention to a game, other than posting it in IFComp, releasing in IFDB and pointing to it in the super-major forum about if? 
I'm sure there are better ways, but I know of none so any suggestion is appreciated. [emote]:)[/emote]

Ofc, a 60" spot during the Superbowl is not allowed by my finances. 

---

Back on topic: to make myself clear. I don't think it is unfair or wrong a famous CYOA wins the Xyzzies. I was just foreseeing what is going to happen. That's all. If people don't want this to happen (parser game being lost, again) they have to do something about it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=30#p31319
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-02-11 08:14:54

[quote]But let me underscore it was not ME. It NEVER was me. So I think I can frankly state it was NOT my fault. [/quote]

I don't think anyone thought it was you, so don't worry. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=30#p31320
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-11 08:19:24

[quote="Peter Pears"][quote]But let me underscore it was not ME. It NEVER was me. So I think I can frankly state it was NOT my fault. [/quote]

I don't think anyone thought it was you, so don't worry. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
Well, it was about my game. [emote]:)[/emote]

And, btw, I'm SURE it attracted bad attention. I can FEEL peeps looking at me whispering "here's the italian. The CHEATER."
Too bad I think that is due to the common beliefs about Italians, everywhere. After that I'm forced to publish game with a french pseudonym. Everybody loves frech people.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=30#p31321
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-02-11 08:27:16

I [i]really[/i] think you're worrying too much. People can tell the difference between a game author who just wants to make a polished game (proven by all the times you went back and made it a little better) and a blogger who's maybe a bit too patriotic for his own good. You're in the clear.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4342&start=0#p31322
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Modifying behavior of "again"
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-02-11 08:50:23

Here's a way:
[code]There is a room.

The previous action is a stored action that varies.

Before doing anything:
   now the previous action is the current action.

After reading a command:
	if the player's command matches "again/g", try the previous action instead.

Test me with "z / blah / r / again / i / g / x / g / g"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4342&start=0#p31323
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Modifying behavior of "again"
User: planetfall666 / DateTime: 2012-02-11 09:42:09

This works well, thank you. Just a couple tweaks and it's exactly what I'm looking for.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=30#p31324
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-02-11 10:42:07

[quote="RealNC"]The awards should have a "best CYOA" award. The rest of the awards should go to IF works.

This is going to evolve into something like "best music" award by having teenage girls as judges and putting Justin Bieber vs Beethoven as contenders.[/quote]
What? That couldn't possibly resolve the issues at play here. Either CYOA needs its own set of competitions exclusive from those of parser IF, or they should be eligible for all the categories. Shoving them into their own special ghetto just feels like sour grapes.

If the structures already in place can't handle an influx of new players, that's a problem with them, not the players or the authors.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=30#p31325
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-11 10:42:32

[quote="Jamespking"]Anyway, this is interesting. Being myself a complete noob in If authoring, I lack all of the major proficiencies. How would you draw attention to a game, other than posting it in IFComp, releasing in IFDB and pointing to it in the super-major forum about if? 
I'm sure there are better ways, but I know of none so any suggestion is appreciated. [emote]:)[/emote]

Ofc, a 60" spot during the Superbowl is not allowed by my finances. [/quote]

Buy a 30" spot during the Superbowl.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4339&start=0#p31326
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problems with writing files and unstable data.
User: lorenipsun / DateTime: 2012-02-11 10:48:27

Capmikee,

Thank you!  That was EXACTLY what I was looking for.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=30#p31327
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-11 11:06:26

[quote="matt w"][quote="Jamespking"]Anyway, this is interesting. Being myself a complete noob in If authoring, I lack all of the major proficiencies. How would you draw attention to a game, other than posting it in IFComp, releasing in IFDB and pointing to it in the super-major forum about if? 
I'm sure there are better ways, but I know of none so any suggestion is appreciated. [emote]:)[/emote]

Ofc, a 60" spot during the Superbowl is not allowed by my finances. [/quote]

Buy a 30" spot during the Superbowl.[/quote]
Ouch. Didn't think about it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4343&start=0#p31328
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Six in a 2011 Top Ten
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-11 12:42:05

Doug Wilson, of the game studio GuteFabrik, named Wade Clarke's Six as one of his [url=http://gutefabrik.com/blog/?p=1064]ten best games of 2011[/url]. Congratulations, Wade! Nice to see IF getting recognized by the indie-game designers who usually work with moving pictures. 

Six was #6 (naturally) on the top ten, but you can think of it as #3 among the games that were actually released!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=30#p31329
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-11 13:10:02

[quote]I really don't think that this is about a big influx of newbies into the IF community. I think that this is about the emergence of the ChoiceScript community, which is its own thing and not really all that interested in the IF community, but (as yet) lacks its own distinct institutions.[/quote]

What maga says makes sense to me too. I was hanging out on the MUD when he posted the finalist list, and the common reaction was "There's a game called Zombie Exodus? What?"

If we have two pools of people playing (and discussing, and reacting to) different games, then they can't meaningfully rate their games against each other. The fact that the two groups are of different sizes (or different enthusiasm levels or habits or internet notabilities or whatever) will *by itself* throw off the outcome of the competition -- with no regard to the qualities of the games themselves.

[quote]this thing right here, is not about IF vs. CYOA.[/quote]

Indirectly it is, because you can't talk about the difference between "intfiction.org regulars" and "choicescript forum regulars" without talking about what games they like, what they expect of games, etc.

But in this case, we have a good counternote: Deirdra entered "The Play" in the 2011 IFComp. IF players played it and it got discussed in IF circles. (And rated against other IF games, obviously.) The fact that (according to what maga said) the choicescript voters didn't vote for it *either* tends to underscore that we're talking about a division of communities, not a distinction of game design.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=40#p31330
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: George / DateTime: 2012-02-11 13:39:04

With the number of XYZZY nominations every year, no one could meaningfully rate each game against the others unless it was their full-time job, and as the rules point out no one is expected to. In the finalist round it's of course a different question. 

Apparently no one remembered to inform the Choice of Games community that this was an awards for Interactive Fiction (TM).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=40#p31331
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2012-02-11 14:26:13

[quote="George"]In the finalist round it's of course a different question.[/quote]
Unfortunately, it is not. It has always been a source of profound perplexity (and, in the beginning, when I was still an angry young man, a little anger) to me that some people voted in the second round without having played all the games in the category they voted for. How could you possibly decide that A is better than B if you have only played A? But alas, the XYZZY judging rules have never made playing all the games in a category mandatory.

I understand that such a rule would be unenforcable, but I don't think that is a big problem.

And of course, when I say "play" I do not mean "play to completion".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=40#p31332
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-11 14:56:17

[quote="dfabulich"]It, too, stops short of saying "Vote for Zombie Exodus", but I'm not going to claim that I wasn't campaigning for Jim.[/quote]

I find that to be in rather poor taste. Especially after you argued on Twitter this week that puzzles are only added for nostalgia's sake, it's extremely hypocritical to mention that [i]Zombie Exodus[/i] is up for "Best Puzzle" without some qualifying statement about how it doesn't even have puzzles.

I can accept that the first time out you didn't realize what would happen. But the followup makes it look as though you knew perfectly well and that you are not the least bit ashamed for dumping on a venerable community institution.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=40#p31333
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-11 14:56:53

[quote="ChrisC"][quote="RealNC"]The awards should have a "best CYOA" award. The rest of the awards should go to IF works.

This is going to evolve into something like "best music" award by having teenage girls as judges and putting Justin Bieber vs Beethoven as contenders.[/quote]
What? That couldn't possibly resolve the issues at play here. Either CYOA needs its own set of competitions exclusive from those of parser IF, or they should be eligible for all the categories.[/quote]
Then it needs its own set of competitions. You can't throw parser games with non-parser ones in the same pot. But the XYZZY Awards aren't a competition. Therefore a category for CYOA still makes sense.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=40#p31334
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-11 15:23:49

[quote="RealNC"]You can't throw parser games with non-parser ones in the same pot.[/quote]
I think the take home message of the last ifcomp was that you [i]can[/i] put parser and non-parser interactive fiction together, given that two gamebooks were successfully judged against 36 parser games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=40#p31335
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Mr. Patient / DateTime: 2012-02-11 15:39:32

[quote="RealNC"]Then it needs its own set of competitions. You can't throw parser games with non-parser ones in the same pot. But the XYZZY Awards aren't a competition. Therefore a category for CYOA still makes sense.[/quote]

As zarf noted upthread, I think we can throw The Play and Taco Fiction in the same comp, or the XYZZYs, and judge them on a level playing field.  However, for the XYZZYs, I would prefer it if we included just the games that somehow engaged with the IF community -- entered into a comp, or at least had an IFDB or IFWiki entry.  The issue isn't so much that Zombie Exodus is a CYOA; it's that many or even most of us had never heard of it.  That could have been true of a parser game as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=40#p31336
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2012-02-11 16:01:06

[quote="Mr. Patient"]The issue isn't so much that Zombie Exodus is a CYOA; it's that many or even most of us had never heard of it.[/quote]Surely the issue is that, presumably, most of the people who voted for Zombie Exodus hadn't heard of any of the other games?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4343&start=0#p31337
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Six in a 2011 Top Ten
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-02-11 16:14:00

Oh man, Hokra!  I think the blog post gets it right, in that Hokra is almost underwhelming as a game, but [during [url=http://handeyesociety.com/social/reminder-hand-eye-social-tonight/]the event that I saw it at[/url], at any rate] seems to inspire almost fanatical enthusiasm.

Night Sky, on the other hand, I'm genuinely feeling a little let down by.  I haven't seen the ending yet, but so far it seems sort of mishmash-y and inconsistent.  The graphics are pretty, yes, but they're also kind of hard to follow (since foreground and background elements are both just black silhouettes).  My SO had just finished Limbo before playing it, and thinks that Night Sky basically feels like an inferior and more plotless version of Limbo.  Meh.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=40#p31338
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2012-02-11 16:39:39

[quote="zarf"]But in this case, we have a good counternote: Deirdra entered "The Play" in the 2011 IFComp. IF players played it and it got discussed in IF circles. (And rated against other IF games, obviously.) The fact that (according to what maga said) the choicescript voters didn't vote for it *either* tends to underscore that we're talking about a division of communities, not a distinction of game design.[/quote]

FWIW, Choice of Games did not blog about IFComp in 2011; the rules of IFComp make it explicit that campaigning for votes is forbidden, and I was afraid that we'd stack the deck in favor of The Play, which would have been a clear violation of the rules of IFComp.

As a result, I hypothesize that most people in the ChoiceScript community were entirely unaware of IFComp and "The Play". I mentioned "The Play" in passing in my earlier XYZZY blog post <a class="postlink" href="http://www.choiceofgames.com/2012/01/vote-for-interactive-fiction-in-the-xyzzy-awards/">http://www.choiceofgames.com/2012/01/vo ... zy-awards/</a> but the emphasis was quite clearly on the ChoiceScript games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4343&start=0#p31339
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Six in a 2011 Top Ten
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-11 16:41:40

I have to say, I stopped reading the Hokra entry at "two vs. two Xbox game." Just not relevant to my life.

I'm actually feeling plugged in here, because I've played three of the seven released games (and vaguely intend to give WAY a shot). That never happens. I really like Night Sky -- I'm hoping that the ending is as cursory as the beginning, because for me the point is the pretty graphics, the physicality of the interaction, and the sound design. Though it seems like it's getting a bit difficult now. That would be annoying.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=40#p31340
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-11 17:20:51

I'm trying to work out what our options are.

Short-term, there are three outcomes: 
a) Zombie Exodus sweeps the awards, rendering them effectively meaningless. The IF community feels that one of its most important institutions has been violated, and the goodwill that dfabulich has worked patiently to establish goes up in smoke.
b) Zombie Exodus wins few or no awards. The IF community is still thoroughly pissed off, but to a lesser degree. This is probably the best outcome for everybody concerned.
c) the organisers take some kind of high-handed action to prevent a), probably on the premise that this constitutes a community invasion. Everybody gets deeply pissed off and looks bad. Obviously I'd prefer that we avoided this option.

Long-term, the stakes are a bit more complicated. We need to thread the needle of being open to cross-pollination and fostering relations with related communities, without leaving ourselves vulnerable to this kind of thing. I don't have any answers right at this moment.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=40#p31341
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-11 17:40:12

One perhaps less obnoxious version of c) would be to do a run-off instead of first-past-the-post for the final round of voting. If, as I think you said, the ChoiceScript voters were a minority but had more concentrated votes, then one plausible voting outcome would be that in lots of the categories, Zombie Exodus gets 40%, Parser Game 1 gets 30%, Parser game 2 gets 20%, Parser game 1 gets 10%. But if all the parser voters prefer Parser Game 1 to Zombie Exodus, then Parser Game 1 would win the runoff. And if they don't all prefer Parser Game 1, then at least we know that Zombie Exodus won by converting some people from outside the Parser If community.) 

UPDATE: Of course a considerable disadvantage of this approach is that it amounts to changing the rules mid-stream.

(By the way, Dan, I have a question which as you can probably guess is a little hostile in intent: What innovations do you think that Zombie Exodus makes?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4175&start=0#p31342
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IFArchive outage on Tuesday, Jan 24th
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-11 17:57:37

Presumably you yourself are able to use multiple nouns with the verb 'to take'...

> take issues

Issue One: Taken.
Issue Two: Taken.
etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=50#p31343
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2012-02-11 18:11:31

[quote="bcressey"]I find that to be in rather poor taste. Especially after you argued on Twitter this week that puzzles are only added for nostalgia's sake, it's extremely hypocritical to mention that [i]Zombie Exodus[/i] is up for "Best Puzzle" without some qualifying statement about how it doesn't even have puzzles.[/quote]

Zombie Exodus does have inventory puzzles.

[quote]I can accept that the first time out you didn't realize what would happen. But the followup makes it look as though you knew perfectly well and that you are not the least bit ashamed for dumping on a venerable community institution.[/quote]

When I wrote that blog post, before I'd seen even this thread, I believed it was totally acceptable to campaign for votes in XYZZY. I was campaigning with honest intentions -- I certainly didn't intend to "dump" on XYZZY -- and I withheld from directly calling for votes for Zombie Exodus.

At the first sign of this thread, I asked whether campaigning were acceptable; we're having that conversation now.

I'm sorry to have caused turmoil, and I'm certainly willing to discuss options.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=50#p31344
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-11 18:13:59

I don't think we are shooting the right target. Ok, this involves a lot of subjectivity, but I think no one would have argued if The Play got some of those nominees. It is a delicious game, parser or non parser. It should run for story, characters, writing. The majority's problem is that ZExodus is NOT that good (I think - that is the subjective part). It will probably win everywhere and no one in here seems to think it is right. Expecially since it is running for awards OBJECTIVELY out of its league. 

The public poll nature of XYZZY is what makes this awkward. 

Anyway:
[quote](By the way, Dan, I have a question which as you can probably guess is a little hostile in intent: What innovations do you think that Zombie Exodus makes?[/quote])this is not fair, imo. He DIDN'T motion people into voting for ZE in every and each category. He can't be blamed for people being stupid. 

I think.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4175&start=0#p31345
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IFArchive outage on Tuesday, Jan 24th
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-11 18:20:56

This is a memorable set of memes [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=50#p31346
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2012-02-11 18:31:43

My understanding is that games are only supposed to be eligible for the awards in the year they're completed (cf. the guidelines regarding the eligibility of Introcomp games), and Zombie Exodus only consists of two chapters so far. So we might have grounds for a disqualification, making it clear that ZE would be welcome to the awards when it's complete.

I agree with maga, though, that this is probably best avoided. It's only going to look like sour grapes at this point. Maybe we can consult with the ChoiceScript community and come to some sort of compromise? I'm guessing from the tone of [url=http://www.choiceofgames.com/forum/discussion/280/xyzzy-awards/p1]this thread[/url] that the ChoiceScript voters neither intended nor expected to swamp the voting the way they did (or at least as effectively as they did).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=50#p31347
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-02-11 18:55:53

[quote="Jamespking"]He can't be blamed for people being stupid.[/quote]

I think "overenthusiastic" might be a more accurate term.  It seems to me that what's offensive to the parser-IF regulars is that [i]ZE[/i] is not just nominated for a particular strength, but seems to be a contender for every category it's even vaguely plausible for, leaving out only Individual Puzzle, Technological Development, and Supplemental Materials.  It's [i]possible[/i] that it's really that far-and-away amazing (I have no idea, since I'm about a year behind on playing anything) -- better setting than [i]Six[/i] and better NPCs than [i]The Play[/i], and more innovative than [i]maybe make some change[/i] and [i]Kerkerkruip[/i] -- but it just seems unlikely.

I have to agree with bcressey here:
[quote="bcressey"]I don't have a problem with your post, but I do think it's a shame that it was so effective.[/quote]

After all, I don't think any of us had a problem with [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4184#p30660]Bowsmand's ADRIFT suggestions post[/url].  He was even a lot more direct about which specific games he recommended, and a few of his suggestions did make the list. Just not all the same game, in every category.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1649&start=0#p31348
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What ever happened to Threaded Conversation by Emily Sho
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2012-02-11 19:09:13

[quote="aaronius"]Apologies to Emily for putting her in the somewhat awkward position of having the book come out before the extension!

If it's any consolation to those waiting, it's going to be awesome when it's released.[/quote]

Has anything happened with this extension? I just ran into this problem as well -- and I realize I'm REALLY late to the game. I've also noticed you can't compile Alabaster without this extension.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1649&start=0#p31349
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What ever happened to Threaded Conversation by Emily Sho
User: emshort / DateTime: 2012-02-11 19:22:50

When last I talked about this, my goals before releasing Threaded Conversation were as follow:

a) complete at least one more full game using the extension in a different context, to prove its viability for a multi-NPC work. (This is mostly done -- enough that I feel okay about it as a proof-of-concept exercise for the extension, though the game itself hasn't come out.)

b) overhaul the documentation, which was written for an earlier stage of the project and hasn't been kept completely up to date

c) repair some dependencies on old material -- the conversation builder used in Alabaster relied on a string extension by Jesse McGrew that is itself now deprecated and that I had hacked, but it shouldn't really be depending on that

d) tidy up the way Threaded Conversation handles greetings so that it would dovetail neatly with some of Eric Eve's stuff

e) additional beta testing and bugfixing as needed, with a core of invited volunteers

f) (maybe) create some more visualization tools to help authors build the kinds of charts I made for Alabaster, but ideally without having to do the quirky hackery that I did myself

Buuut about two years ago I changed careers to be working in the game industry, and since then I've had a pretty dense schedule where I was working 60-hour weeks and by the time I arrived at any leisure time had burned out the coding part of my brain.

In that time, several people have asked me for the Threaded Conversation package, and I've mailed them what I had with the appropriate caveats. And one of those people has now done (c) himself, so that the version I currently have no longer has the string extension dependency and is compilable with the current version of Inform.

I am open to handing off what I have to someone who wants to help do the finishing work on it so that we can release something to the community, and I've actually started that process with a couple of volunteers, only to have it fall through in each case because of other people being as busy as I am. 

But I'm still open to that solution, if someone out there does have the time and inclination to go over the material and help double-check the documentation, test functionality, etc.

However, in its current state, I feel like it is too problematic -- misdocumented, potentially erroneous, etc. -- to put into the hands of the newbies who might download it straight after reading Aaron's Inform 7 book.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=50#p31350
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-11 19:29:31

[quote="Jamespking"
[quote](By the way, Dan, I have a question which as you can probably guess is a little hostile in intent: What innovations do you think that Zombie Exodus makes?[/quote])this is not fair, imo. He DIDN'T motion people into voting for ZE in every and each category. He can't be blamed for people being stupid. [/quote]

Maybe "hostile" was the wrong word? I should put all my cards on the table at once instead of holding some back; my problem is basically yours, with tove's amendment that "overenthusiastic" is better than "stupid." I played through the first chapter (or is it just the intro?) of ZE, and I'll take Dan's word for it about the puzzles, but I didn't see any sign that it was innovative. 

On a more subjective level I don't think it should have gotten a nomination for Best Writing. It's not that it's poorly written, it's that its writing doesn't stand out in any way for me. A half hour after playing it the only specific turn of phrase I could remember was the description of the PC's sister as "smart and capable," and I only remembered that because it seemed like such a bland description for a Best Writing nominee. It doesn't stick in my mind like Taco Fiction's two things about the gun, or Cold Iron's piskies, or the beet from Beet the Devil, or the Uncanny Valley Girls from Zebulon, or the cyanotic light from Andromeda Awakening (which I think would've been a deserving Best Setting nominee). 

Which gives me some pause about the ChoiceScript community's votes. It just seems as though a lot of people must have voted up their favorite ChoiceScript game in any category in which it was remotely plausible, without knowing what else was out there. (Or perhaps without being very fond of parser IF.) And I think that tarnishes the vote a little. I'll admit that the Best Writing thing is subjective (at least, I don't want to get into the philosophical questions it raises), but if there isn't some explanation of how ZE is innovative, then Something Has Gone Wrong.

And I don't think Dan did anything wrong -- I agree with everyone else that the results are unfortunate. I think rapprochement between the ChoiceScript and parser communities is a good thing, but I wish there was more cross-playing than there appears to be. (Which includes my not having played the latest ChoiceScript games; the community games look to have come a long way since the early days.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=50#p31351
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: jimd / DateTime: 2012-02-11 20:00:02

As the writer of Zombie Exodus, I'd like to chime in from the ChoiceScript side of things.

We didn't vote to stack the competition to our advantage but to support one another within our community. I am actually surprised that ZE received enough votes to get into those categories, but I see the argument that the parser IF community's votes were diluted across more games.

I didn't ask to be in XYZZY but as someone who wants to bring attention to his game and to other ChoiceScript games, I was excited and honored to be included. Thus, I tweeted, told FB fans, etcs. Since the game has some popularity due to subject and the mass appeal of CYOA games, I am sure fans of the game went to the XYZZY page, signed up, and pulled the lever in all categories for ZE. Had I known the community doesn't even want us at the party, I wouldn't have brought attention to the first-level nomination.

There is a definite separation between our two communities, and I wish there was a way to bridge them. I'd be happy to receive constructive feedback on my work; months ago, I posted on these forums for opinions on the game and received no feedback.

If the IF community doesn't want ChoiceScript games in their awards, it is more useful to petition for us to be excluded or to have a CYOA category than to bash us for making bad games, or lacking innovation, or bash our readers for being stupid.

I'd rather we be a part of the community and figure out ways to be included and not interfere with rewarding those IF authors who have worked hard at their projects.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=50#p31352
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-11 20:25:43

To be clear, Jim, I didn't mean the comment about lacking innovation to be a criticism. As I see it, the "innovation" category is for games that do something fairly radically different from games that have come before, like the combat system in Kerkerkruip or the video etc. in maybe make some change. There are many excellent games that I wouldn't think should be nominated in the innovation category; Taco Fiction was an excellent game but if it had been nominated in this category I'd be asking "But what's the innovation?" too. 

I also think you didn't do anything wrong trying to draw attention to the voting; it's just that I think the results were unfortunate. If several ChoiceScript games had gotten different nominations, I'd be excited about the exposure to new games and eager to check out what they were doing. It's when one game gets nominated in every category that I think "Either this is the best thing since Pong, or something has gone wrong with the nomination process." It's not that I don't want your games to be included, but that I don't think it's working well this time.

The thing about the writing was a criticism; sorry. I don't know that I can give you any constructive feedback about how to make your writing more awesome, though. It's not that you were making any mistakes that I could see, just that I didn't see anything that made me think "This should be a finalist in Best Writing." 

Maybe you're right it would be better to have separate CYOA and parser categories, at least for a while (and anything that didn't fit nicely into either could get a nomination for innovation). That way people who were voting would get exposed to games they wouldn't otherwise have seen, but there wouldn't be any stepped-on toes or hurt feelings. And I am sorry that you're getting a lot of criticism at what should be a time of triumph for you -- after all, no matter what the other circumstances are it says something that you got the most votes out of the ChoiceScript games. That may not be fair to you when you've done nothing wrong.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=50#p31353
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-02-11 21:08:35

Jim, this has nothing to do with CYOA, rest assured. If it were any other game, relatively less known, with a wide but select user base (rather like Flexible Survival), whose users swarmed out to vote for the game in every single cathegory despite actual worth, leaving the rest of the world to scratch their heads going "huh?", the issue would remain.

The thing is, what those people are doing isn't "supporting". What those people are doing is "abusing the voting system". There's no other way to describe mechanically voting a single game in all cathegories. And that brings bad consequences to everyone - and the guys who did it sort of represent a certain community, and are only reflecting poorly on themselves.

By drumming up support, you yourself have done nothing, nothing wrong. It's your fans that got way over-enthusiastic. It's not about "not wanting you at the party". It's about you (you=the CYOA community you seem to be representing right now) not drinking all the punch, barging in on everyone's conversation, and littering all around the floor.

I wish I could definitely say "we do want you, CYOA is just another form of IF" - but there are people on this community who disagree so vehemently that I'd agree it's a question worth further discussion (actual discussion - pondering why CYOA might or might not be IF, what actually makes IF, and whether or not it deserves a place in this forum and its awards). So I won't go there. But I will say that there's been a certain distance between the ADRIFT community and the rest of the IF community in the past, and now the distance has, I feel, been bridged - we're no bosom pals, but I think lines of communication have been opened.

Whether this happens to a CYOA community is, I feel, at this point, very much up to both communities - but it won't help if your reaction to this incident is "If the IF community doesn't want ChoiceScript games in their awards, it is more useful to petition for us to be excluded or to have a CYOA category than to bash us for making bad games, or lacking innovation, or bash our readers for being stupid." It's not about us, or the awards. It's about swarming the polls.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=50#p31354
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-02-11 21:37:59

Peter, I agree that "swarming the polls" is what it feels like [i]given the tradition of voting in the XYZZYs[/i]. However, to anyone not familiar with the traditions of the XYZZYs, they might look like any just about other indie game awards on the internet. And what seems to be the done thing in the case of indie game awards on the internet is that you try to get everyone who loves you/your game to go vote for it. Zombie Exodus seems to have lots of adoring fans--just look at the number of posts in [url=http://www.choiceofgames.com/forum/discussion/98/zombie-exodus-going-forward]this thread[/url]--and I don't think they were doing anything "wrong" either, just expressing enthusiasm for a favorite game.

Jim, the criticisms you're seeing of your game here are not unconsidered lashings-out; I think they genuinely reflect different standards/expectations between the two communities. I don't recall anyone having said that the CoG readers were stupid--that seems like an unnecessary attempt to ramp up an unwarranted sense of victimization.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=50#p31355
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-02-11 21:44:02

I think it is informative that Zombie Exodus only received nominations on the categories which just selected a game, and not those which require you to enter something specific. Maybe in the future all categories could require nominators to enter a nomination rationale.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=60#p31356
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-11 21:46:19

[quote="ektemple"]I don't recall anyone having said that the CoG readers were stupid--that seems like an unnecessary attempt to ramp up an unwarranted sense of victimization.[/quote]

jamespking did use that word.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=60#p31357
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-11 21:54:00

[quote="jimd"]Had I known the community doesn't even want us at the party, I wouldn't have brought attention to the first-level nomination.[/quote]
It's not that you're not wanted at the party, per se. It's more that, uh, there are parties where once you're invited it's cool to invite all your friends and relatives and take over the dance-floor, and there are parties where this is going to cause problems. You didn't really have any way of knowing which kind of party it was, and it's understandable that you'd be excited about your game getting attention, so I can't really blame you for anything.

[quote="jimd"]If the IF community doesn't want ChoiceScript games in their awards, it is more useful to petition for us to be excluded or to have a CYOA category than to bash us for making bad games, or lacking innovation, or bash our readers for being stupid.[/quote]
I'm sorry that you're getting it in the neck, though I'm sure you can understand why people are upset.

And we are, I think, leaning in the direction of doing a one-off special category or categories for the ChoiceScript entries, just for this year; the long-term solution will almost certainly be something else, but we can work that out at leisure.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=60#p31358
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-02-11 22:31:09

[quote="matt w"][quote="ektemple"]I don't recall anyone having said that the CoG readers were stupid--that seems like an unnecessary attempt to ramp up an unwarranted sense of victimization.[/quote]

jamespking did use that word.[/quote]

Thanks, matt. I tracked it down, but in my reading jamespking was saying nothing about CoG readers [i]qua[/i] readers, nor could it really be called "bashing"...

But my use of "unwarranted" sense of victimization is also a bad choice of words. I do think this is a bad thing to have happened to Jim, and a sense of victimization is probably warranted. I just think that it arises from misunderstanding, not malice.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=60#p31359
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2012-02-11 22:34:40

[quote="ektemple"]Peter, I agree that "swarming the polls" is what it feels like [i]given the tradition of voting in the XYZZYs[/i]. However, to anyone not familiar with the traditions of the XYZZYs, they might look like any just about other indie game awards on the internet. And what seems to be the done thing in the case of indie game awards on the internet is that you try to get everyone who loves you/your game to go vote for it. Zombie Exodus seems to have lots of adoring fans--just look at the number of posts in [url=http://www.choiceofgames.com/forum/discussion/98/zombie-exodus-going-forward]this thread[/url]--and I don't think they were doing anything "wrong" either, just expressing enthusiasm for a favorite game.[/quote]
I agree. Possibly just putting up some guidelines for voting on the awards website would help a lot.

[quote="jimd"]Had I known the community doesn't even want us at the party, I wouldn't have brought attention to the first-level nomination.[/quote]
I'm sorry you feel we're trying to push you out. Personally, if my posts came across as hostile (and I can see how my second post might), I sincerely apologise. I don't believe this is your fault. I don't believe it's anyone's fault - I'm sure the people who voted for Zombie Exodus did so in good faith. While I think the results of the first-round nominations are unfair, I also realise it's unfair that this issue is focused on you when you haven't done anything wrong.

It seems to me that the problem is mostly a misunderstanding about how voting in the awards is "supposed" to work, caused by the existing separation between the two communities. Codifying that separation is hardly going to help. We need to figure out a way to bridge the gap instead, but I don't know what would be effective.

(I'll be honest with you - I've played most of the official Choice Of games, but almost no other ChoiceScript games. I did play Zombie Exodus yesterday, after the XYZZY nominations came out. I remember when you announced it here originally, but zombies - and the horror genre in general - aren't really my cup of tea, so I didn't bother with it then.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=60#p31360
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-02-11 23:27:39

[quote="ektemple"] And what seems to be the done thing in the case of indie game awards on the internet is that you try to get everyone who loves you/your game to go vote for it.[/quote]

Yeah, exactly.  XYZZYs are definitely weird for an internet contest, especially in the blog- and social-media-heavy internet that we have now.  Perhaps just solidifying and explicitly writing down the social expectations of the voting process (as the IFComp does) would go a long way towards getting everybody on the same page.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=60#p31362
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-12 03:27:24

That's the problem with talking to Americans. You go to bed and wake up with 2 full pages of posts.

I must apologize for a very wrong choice of words in my last post. As many know here, I'm not a native speaker and sometimes my choice of words is awkward. Stephen King once said "the first word that comes to your mind is usually the best", but he wasn't thinking about ME. I must admit "overenthusiastic" would not have come in ages, tho [emote]:)[/emote]
(Anyway: voting for Barack Obama in the "Miss Texas" awards I wouldn't call "overenthusiastic"...)

The problem, again, is not about CYOA vs Parser. The problem (in my opinion) is that better games were more suited for some of the nominees and ZE shouldn't even be considered innovative or puzzle-driven. I know, there are some inventory puzzles but, c'mon. Deciding wether to shoot a zombie with a machine gun or a pistol is in another league than trying to understand how blorple works in Spellbreaker. 

BUT. I may not be comfortable with ZE being nominated for best story or setting (and maybe that's because I prefer Hogwarts to a zombie infested american metropolis), but this is how it went. In the betting industry, when a match gets "strange" or too many bets (i.e., for those comfortable with football: FCBarcelona vs. Canicattì gets 100k bets on the second) the game is closed and the bets stopped. But this is not the case. If a very popular game like Angry Birds gets 1million votes from the crowd who plays it, it DESERVES to win. Even if the opponent was Final Fantasy VII. 

So, as Xyzzy is right now: either totally cancel ZE from the list or let it go with the flow. Cause removing it from (i.e.) the best puzzles category would mean being subjective and imposing by the hosts and this is NOT RECOMMENDED.

Again, sorry for saying that someone was "stupid". I just meant "exited". Maybe a lil too much. (Or very much misinformed, which by far seems to be the best solution).

--- PSs
PS: Jim. Don't run away from criticism. Noone is bashing on your work. Just pinpointing what's wrong with it. If you can't stand the heat then maybe it's better you stay out of comps or awards. During IFComp2011 we had REVIEWS during the voting period. You can't begin to understand how it was frustrating and how one could have felt offended. But it was the most inspiring set of constructive criticism our games ever had. [emote]:)[/emote]
PPS: Matt, thank you for liking my setting. It's kinda the FIRST public compliment my game gets, ever. [emote]:)[/emote]

[color=#40BFFF]Cyanotic hellos to all. [/color]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=60#p31363
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-02-12 04:56:05

[quote]That's the problem with talking to Americans. You go to bed and wake up with 2 full pages of posts.[/quote]

Thank you for giving me my first laugh of the day. [emote]:)[/emote]

Re "typical way of voting on an indie": I understand, and I wasn't aware that's how it happened - it makes sense for an indie game if it's to be known by the world at large, I suppose, if it's widespread as far and as wide as humanly possible. In this case, however, it kinda screwed up our numbers, and it's not like CYOA is the least-known thing in the world and the XYZZY are the E3. XYZZY is for IF; many people (me included) consider CYOA to be IF; so there's really no need to shout "This awsome game is here! Here! Here, you hear? It's da best! It rocxorz ur soxorz!".

If the people at the CYOA community thought it necessary, then that means only that we do have a bridge between us. It also means that they tried, in this manner, to shorten the distance (it could also mean, I guess, that they were trying to prove their superiority by getting a CYOA to win the XYZZYs, but that's a cynical view I don't subscribe to and only include for the sake of completeness).

Thing is, I don't think we parser-loving fellows can do anything more to jump that distance. We have CYOA tools and extensions for our IF interpreters, we list CYOA in IFDB. Quest is starting a CYOA mode. If the CYOA community would like to join us all, I'm sure we'd be all the richer for it, but, much like how it happened with ADRIFT, people have to want it to happen.

I've been to chooseyourstory.com. If I could, I would have downloaded every single story. I couldn't, so I never went back to the place.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=0#p31364
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: joningold / DateTime: 2012-02-12 06:15:19

Hey all,

My new game, [i]A Colder Light[/i], has been out for a couple of weeks now -- I was wondering if anyone had any feedback on the UI system it uses?

For those who haven't tried it; the game is a culmination of some experiments Erik Temple and I have been working on, to use an "object-focus -> pick verb" model for interaction. But the game isn't an experiment, it's a proper [short] bit of IF. There's a link to it from my blog:

[url]http://threeedgedsword.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/new-game-a-colder-light/[/url]

I think it manages to create a typing-like experience without the bother of typing, but I'm curious to see how other people found it. Too restrictive? Farming for options? Too easy? 

If reaction is favourable, I could wrap up what I did to make it work and release it as an extension. It's pretty much plug-and-play (although it does look a bit ugly under Zoom and WinGit and such; you really need the CSS styling of Quixe to render it nicely.)

cheers!
jon

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4202&start=0#p31365
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Nested If Statements, Multiple Objects
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-02-12 07:37:58

Good post ChrisC, 

these things (if you ask me) are the hardest things to figure out in Inform7. Often there are several ways to do something, and it's often hard to tell whether the choice is just a matter of style or if really matters.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4322&start=0#p31366
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: A little explanation please and moving multiple objects
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-02-12 09:08:03

Thanks bcressey I knew there was an easy way, I had at some point tried to just write 'drawer.contents.moveInto' being hopeful that it might work.  I'm gonna have to get used to using lists sooner or later and  I won't learn until I get stuck into them, looking at that makes me feel alot better now though.  Up until now I've teetered around them a little (I'm used to being able to see lists)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=60#p31367
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-02-12 09:44:14

[quote="matt w"]One perhaps less obnoxious version of c) would be to do a run-off instead of first-past-the-post for the final round of voting.[/quote]If this is considered as a potential solution, can I request that the run-off vote tallying method satisfies the Condorcet criterion? [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=60#p31389
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-12 10:44:23

[quote="ChrisC"][quote="matt w"]One perhaps less obnoxious version of c) would be to do a run-off instead of first-past-the-post for the final round of voting.[/quote]If this is considered as a potential solution, can I request that the run-off vote tallying method satisfies the Condorcet criterion? [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

I'll request that it satisfy all the Arrow conditions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4202&start=0#p31390
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Nested If Statements, Multiple Objects
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-12 10:49:41

That's fair. 

Or, I would say, "does it matter *to me*." Most often the answer is that it *can* be important, but only if you are doing certain things in your game, and you might not be. 

(For example, I typically don't rely on action-success flags in my code.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=60#p31391
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: jimd / DateTime: 2012-02-12 10:51:01

Thanks for all the responses to my post.

I can now see that it is an issue of voting rather than ChoiceScript vs. Everyone Else. People who voted for ZE were overenthusiastic.

It sounds like XYZZY would be better as an "industry award." Of course, then you run the risk of exclusivity wherein you must define who a voter is and exclude anonymous but true IF fans (of which, believe it or now, I am one). Do only "experts" vote? Do only people who have created an IF game vote? It's a tough call.

I also am not opposed to constructive criticism (I actually posted asking for it). I grew up in a Catholic Italian-American area, so I'm no stranger to criticism  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=0#p31392
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-12 11:32:18

I like the interface a lot. I think it provides enough flexibility for game-play, and it feels very natural. Nice work!

I'm wondering what happens with objects for which a useful command might be less than obvious. Let's suppose there's a secret door, for instance, that can be opened by turning or pressing an object that is not obviously turnable or pressable. I'm not sure how that type of puzzle would work with this UI. I wouldn't call this a guess-the-verb puzzle -- it's a guess-the-action puzzle, which I think is a fair type of puzzle, as long as the action could be intuited somehow.

Just as a suggestion, if I scroll back and click on a highlighted word for an object that's no longer in scope, it might be nice to see an "I cannot see that right now" output message.

Also, when I click on a noun for the first time, it might be nice if the interface ran the examine action automatically, rather than forcing me to click a second time on the Examine button. Again, just a suggestion.

Another thought: In my current WIP, there are several longish text passages. These may scroll the room description up off of the screen. In such a situation, your UI would likely require that the player use the scroll-bar in order to continue playing. (The game could perhaps add a "look around" button automatically in such a case.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=0#p31393
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: joningold / DateTime: 2012-02-12 11:50:36

[quote="Jim Aikin"]I like the interface a lot. I think it provides enough flexibility for game-play, and it feels very natural. Nice work![/quote]

Thanks!

[quote="Jim Aikin"]I'm wondering what happens with objects for which a useful command might be less than obvious. Let's suppose there's a secret door, for instance, that can be opened by turning or pressing an object that is not obviously turnable or pressable. I'm not sure how that type of puzzle would work with this UI. I wouldn't call this a guess-the-verb puzzle -- it's a guess-the-action puzzle, which I think is a fair type of puzzle, as long as the action could be intuited somehow.[/quote]

You're right, this wouldn't really work, and I think it'd have to be designed around. So instead I'd have a couple of objects which have to be turned appropriately to a certain combination, or somesuch. (Tilt the correct book from the bookcase, that kind of thing would work well too.)

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Just as a suggestion, if I scroll back and click on a highlighted word for an object that's no longer in scope, it might be nice to see an "I cannot see that right now" output message.[/quote]

Great suggestion. I think I'd rather if I could strip dead links from the UI completely, but this would be a good, actually-possible-to-do solution.

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Also, when I click on a noun for the first time, it might be nice if the interface ran the examine action automatically, rather than forcing me to click a second time on the Examine button. Again, just a suggestion.[/quote]

People keep telling me this [emote];)[/emote] I don't like it myself, but you may well be right.

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Another thought: In my current WIP, there are several longish text passages. These may scroll the room description up off of the screen. In such a situation, your UI would likely require that the player use the scroll-bar in order to continue playing. (The game could perhaps add a "look around" button automatically in such a case.)[/quote]

There should always be a look around button (and if you're focused on an item, click the "<" button to get it back). But that's an interesting problem I hadn't considered. Hmm..

cheers!
jon

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=0#p31394
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-12 12:47:18

[quote="joningold"][quote="Jim Aikin"]Another thought: In my current WIP, there are several longish text passages. These may scroll the room description up off of the screen. In such a situation, your UI would likely require that the player use the scroll-bar in order to continue playing. (The game could perhaps add a "look around" button automatically in such a case.)[/quote]

There should always be a look around button (and if you're focused on an item, click the "<" button to get it back). But that's an interesting problem I hadn't considered. Hmm..[/quote]

I think the issue may be the "<" button; the first time I played this, I started out by clicking on a bunch of items without even really looking down at my initial options. So "go inside" was hidden behind the "<" button, and I got stuck for a little while before I realized that was an option. 

Perhaps make the "<" button more prominent and its function more obvious? Would labeling it "more" work?

I didn't have Jim's exact problem because I realized that clicking on the room name worked as "look." These various "look" and "examine" shortcuts could lead to trouble with timed puzzles where "look" and "examine" take a turn (by costing you a turn when the object you want has scrolled off the screen), but "look" and "examine" should never take a turn in timed puzzles, so that's not a big problem for you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4202&start=0#p31395
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Nested If Statements, Multiple Objects
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-12 13:06:11

There's a range of debugging tools that can help with action problems.

The debugging commands "actions" and "rules" can tell you which actions and rules are running. If you use "rules all," you'll also get a list of some rules that don't apply (not all, I think), and some other details.

The Index has a section for Actions where you can check the order of Check, Carry Out and Report rules, as well as information about how actions are parsed. The Rules tab includes the Before, Instead and After rulebooks. The Index is the ultimate authority on how rules end up being ordered.

Finally, there's good old print statements (e.g. say phrases). Inform also has a handy "showme" phrase that can let you inspect an expression:

[code]First does the player mean:
    showme the current action.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4347&start=0#p31396
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Minor update of Custom Library Messages by Ron Newcomb
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2012-02-12 13:24:40

I just submitted version 4/120212 to the Inform site.  The say-phrase "that-those-us" used in messages like, "Cutting that up would achieve little," now says "that" instead of nothing for the case of a neuter animal. Thanks Dan.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=0#p31397
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: djfletch / DateTime: 2012-02-12 13:51:01

[quote="joningold"]
[quote="Jim Aikin"]Also, when I click on a noun for the first time, it might be nice if the interface ran the examine action automatically, rather than forcing me to click a second time on the Examine button. Again, just a suggestion.[/quote]
People keep telling me this [emote];)[/emote] I don't like it myself, but you may well be right.
[/quote]
It took me a while to get used to the idea that clicking on items wasn't going to put any text in the main window.  The buttons changing can be quite subtle, perhaps especially when you're clicking on inventory and things that are far away at the top of the screen.  Maybe it would help to have those links at the bottom next to the buttons.  Or, if you don't want to show a full examine description, could you put some token acknowledgement of the click into the main stream? "I'm looking at the stars" or something like that?  I'm not sure, it might get too clunky and repetitive.

More general comments: I thought you did a good job of covering the actions I wanted to do.  I don't remember being annoyed that I wanted to try something and I didn't have the option.

One thing I do remember noticing was that it's slower to do sequences of actions, when you know what you want to try.  As in, when you think "hey, I could try putting the monkey in the dishwasher", and type N, E, GET MONKEY, W, S, OPEN DISHWASHER, PUT MONKEY IN DISHWASHER.  To do this by clicking is slower, and involves paying more attention to the screen to spot where the right links are.  So it pulls you out of the flow a little where typing doesn't.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4321&start=0#p31398
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Extensions for Debugging
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2012-02-12 14:17:56

Thank goodness Aaron Reed mentioned this on planet i-f.  I'm not sure how I missed this thread the first time around. 

Thanks Brady, this looks like it's going to be a how-did-I-ever-live-without-it kind of tool.  I'll let you know if I find anything dysfunctional.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4169&start=10#p31399
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Benchmarking beta PLUS Contributions wanted for a test s
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2012-02-12 14:19:06

::replying so I can find the thread again later::

Also, tres cool, Dannii.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=70#p31400
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Mr. Patient / DateTime: 2012-02-12 14:38:34

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="Mr. Patient"]The issue isn't so much that Zombie Exodus is a CYOA; it's that many or even most of us had never heard of it.[/quote]Surely the issue is that, presumably, most of the people who voted for Zombie Exodus hadn't heard of any of the other games?[/quote]

I would guess that many of the Choice voters had at least heard of or played the other Choice games on the list.   So they did pretty much what the rest of us did: vote from within the subset of stuff that they were already familiar with.  You're right to suggest that the average Choice voter probably played a lot fewer games on the list than the typical IF community voter, and that's not a good thing.  And they apparently had very different norms about how a community awards process should go, what with the swamping of the polls and the nominations in every category.  But if they're guilty of ignorance of Mentula Macanus when they nominated ZE for everything, then I guess I'm also guilty of not knowing a damn thing about ZE when I voted.

I think the uproar is in part because the XYZZYs are "our" awards, and we want the results to reflect our collective judgments about "our" games (which can be parser-based, CYOA, or whatever, as long as it's stuff we've played and talked about).  But the voting process as it stands doesn't necessarily produce this outcome.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=0#p31401
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-12 14:40:50

[quote="joningold"][quote="Jim Aikin"]I'm wondering what happens with objects for which a useful command might be less than obvious. Let's suppose there's a secret door, for instance, that can be opened by turning or pressing an object that is not obviously turnable or pressable. I'm not sure how that type of puzzle would work with this UI. I wouldn't call this a guess-the-verb puzzle -- it's a guess-the-action puzzle, which I think is a fair type of puzzle, as long as the action could be intuited somehow.[/quote]

You're right, this wouldn't really work, and I think it'd have to be designed around. So instead I'd have a couple of objects which have to be turned appropriately to a certain combination, or somesuch. (Tilt the correct book from the bookcase, that kind of thing would work well too.)[/quote]

A related problem would be 'look up beelzebub in grimoire'. The author doesn't necessarily want to reveal all of the contents of a consultable information source. Ditto with conversation topics, I suppose. Some people like conversation topic lists -- I don't. But I can't recall an example of a game where all of the contents of a consultable encyclopedia were listed as nudges for the player.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=0#p31402
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-12 15:29:50

[quote="Jim Aikin"]But I can't recall an example of a game where all of the contents of a consultable encyclopedia were listed as nudges for the player.[/quote]
In The Spy Who Ate Lunch there is an encyclopaedia/handbook that lists the entirety of its consultable topics in a contents page. The sheer length of the list and the many-stepped nature of consulting topics in the book acts as a disincentive to looking up everything in turn.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1649&start=0#p31403
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What ever happened to Threaded Conversation by Emily Sho
User: emshort / DateTime: 2012-02-12 15:47:13

...and I have another volunteer, so we're going to take another crack at this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=70#p31404
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-12 16:00:06

[quote="jimd"]I can now see that it is an issue of voting rather than ChoiceScript vs. Everyone Else.[/quote]
How can it not be about CS vs everyone else? Do the people who vote for ZE actually play parser games? I assume most don't. So by not comparing apples to apples, the pop system has the advantage because of its mass appeal. Like in my earlier comparison of Bethooven vs Justin Bieber.

This is about CYOA vs parser-IF and no amount of sugar coating (and this thread is full of it) is going to change that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=40#p31405
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-12 16:01:14

[quote="jacksonmead"]Awesome! Some betas have been trickling in, and I'm getting excited to see this all come together.

-Kevin[/quote]

Gunna be a day late.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=70#p31406
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-02-12 16:02:38

[quote]This is about CYOA vs parser-IF and no amount of sugar coating (and this thread is full of it) is going to change that.[/quote]

Well, we didn't have any of this regarding The Play - not that I recall - so if it *was* about that, you'd think it'd have come up before.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=0#p31407
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: emshort / DateTime: 2012-02-12 16:05:32

In general, I like it too. I haven't finished -- I'm stuck trying to figure out 

[spoiler]how to attach the blades to my moccasins[/spoiler]

-- but I think I've played enough to get the concept. It's very pretty, plays at a nice speed in browser, and communicates affordances well, all good stuff. At least to me, it still [i]feels[/i] like IF, in the sense of having a rich explorable setting and complex world model with lots to do. Some hyperlinked text games have pared things back enough that they engage me in a more readerly, less YOU ARE THERE way. Both are okay, but I'm especially keen to be able to present an IF-like experience in a more accessible way. So hooray for that.

Also, this isn't what you asked about, but I'm enjoying discovering by exploration the rather surprising magic/religion of this world.

Possible mild drawbacks:

I found myself looking from the top to the bottom of the screen and back a lot. I wonder whether the top of the screen is the best place for inventory. This kind of split attention problem has been an issue with pretty much every deluxe IF interface I've ever seen/worked on, so it's hardly unique to yours.

I think my ideal solution to the not-in-scope problem is to turn off the hyperlinks for items that are no longer in scope, so if you scrolled back to an earlier room, you would find that the objects there were simply not blue any more and were not actively clickable. I'm not sure how viable that is once material has already been printed to screen -- it seems like something that e.g. Vorple would be able to handle neatly via javascript, but might not be doable with your tools.

I also did get a little frustrated with the two-click method of manipulating objects when

[spoiler]I was trying out various rune combinations and had to keep clicking to select a rune, lay it down, see whether anything happened, select that rune again, pick it up, select another rune, lay it down...[/spoiler]

...as that was something that I felt I could have done much more quickly by typing. I wonder whether it would be worthwhile to have the option of a custom mechanic when dealing with game elements that are going to involve repetitive uses of similar objects. For instance, one might have a hand of cards and a display that allowed you to click them each *once* to play...? It was much less polished overall in terms of graphical design, but I recall that Stark Springs' "[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=lckqxohonrcvh4nt]Words of Power[/url]" had a similar interface feature to allow the player to assemble spellcasting components.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=40#p31408
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-02-12 16:06:14

I've been a bit sick so I may need an extra day as well. But it's more for touching things up than not having anything period.

Btw, I've enjoyed the games I've betatested so far.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=70#p31409
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-12 16:11:55

[quote="Peter Pears"][quote]This is about CYOA vs parser-IF and no amount of sugar coating (and this thread is full of it) is going to change that.[/quote]

Well, we didn't have any of this regarding The Play - not that I recall - so if it *was* about that, you'd think it'd have come up before.[/quote]
If people insist on not speaking up about the problem of putting COYA in the same boat as parser games because they don't want to offend their friends and acquaintances in the "COYA camp," then we're in danger of traditional text adventures disappearing completely. Stop discussing the issue privately (I won't name the individuals since they want to keep it private) and go public with your views. Not stepping on someone's toes is not worth the death of text adventure games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4343&start=0#p31410
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Six in a 2011 Top Ten
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2012-02-12 16:15:56

Nice!

I also love GIRP. GIRP is the best.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=0#p31411
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-12 16:19:42

[quote="joningold"]I think it manages to create a typing-like experience without the bother of typing[/quote]
Without the "bother" of typing? Then why not drop the text entirely and introduce a 3D environment and videos? That way you get rid of the bother of reading. Of course it won't be a text adventure anymore, but at this point, who cares.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=70#p31412
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-12 16:20:29

[quote="Emerald"]My understanding is that games are only supposed to be eligible for the awards in the year they're completed (cf. the guidelines regarding the eligibility of Introcomp games), and Zombie Exodus only consists of two chapters so far. So we might have grounds for a disqualification, making it clear that ZE would be welcome to the awards when it's complete.[/quote]
The awards are open to all interactive fiction games [i]released[/i] in the year, and though incomplete, Zombie Exodus was definitely released last year (on multiple platforms no less). I think it's a little unfortunate for Jim because when he does eventually release the fuller and most awesome version of Zombie Exodus, it presumably won't be eligible for entry.

[quote="Peter Pears"]Well, we didn't have any of this regarding The Play - not that I recall - so if it *was* about that, you'd think it'd have come up before.[/quote]
Not to mention Binary, which if it weren't for The Play, would have placed higher in the IFComp than any prior hyperlink game entered.

[quote="RealNC"] Not stepping on someone's toes is not worth the death of text adventure games.[/quote]
That's somewhat over-egging the pudding, don't you think? No ones going to stop playing text adventures just because hyperlink games are enjoying a resurgence of popularity. If anything, I'd expect the reverse!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=40#p31413
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-12 16:21:20

I just sent mine in -- but I didn't take any of your excellent feedback into account, aschultz! Sorry. I'll give it a look in the beta-testing period (been busy). 

...this is the start of the beta period, not the end, right?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=70#p31414
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-12 16:22:09

[quote="JoeyJones"][quote="RealNC"] Not stepping on someone's toes is not worth the death of text adventure games.[/quote]
That's somewhat over-egging the pudding, don't you think? No ones going to stop playing text adventures just because hyperlink games are enjoying a resurgence of popularity. If anything, I'd expect the reverse![/quote]
You mean like Point&Click adventures (which is the direction we're moving here, even though that already happened two decades ago) helped IF?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4343&start=0#p31415
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Six in a 2011 Top Ten
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-12 16:24:59

The thing that proves that Bennett Foddy is evil is that GIRP takes you immediately back to the start screen without a "try again?" button. It doesn't let you get away cleanly.

...I actually have some design nitpicks on GIRP that I should write up on my blog (for instance: why it would be a good candidate for random generation, and how you would do the ending if you were really a horrible person). I have made it to the top and got my Chick tract.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=0#p31416
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: CYOA and IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-02-12 16:25:18

So there's been a bit of a discussion regarding "Zombie Exodus", a CYOA (that went, I daresay, mostly unnoticed by most IFers, though I could be wrong) that got tons of votes for the XYZZYs. The discussion is in the appropriate thread, in the appropriate board.

Out of that discussion arose another - the status of CYOA and whether it can be placed alongside traditional IF, and therefore whether it even has a place here in this forum, in this forum's activities, in this community's awards.

It might be time to discuss the issue in full. I don't know if it has been discussed before - if so, then it was surely quite awhile back. I'm also not sure whether there is much *interest* in this discussion, because for all practical reasons there is little real interference - occasionally we have CYOA games being nominated for IF awards, and little else.

If there is interest in this discussion, then I'll cast the first stone. I believe CYOA is a form of IF - much less complex, offering more limited options to the user, often focusing more on the storyline and characters than on any actual puzzles. The system is the same: the computer textually describes the situation and asks for your input, which it will then use to further the story. The difference is that it limits your command to a few choices, thus losing one of the key charms in IF, surely - but still IF, much like Myst is as much a graphic adventure as the ones with tons of verb-icons, and Loom is a graphic adventure as much as any game with inventory management.

I will refrain from posting any replies for a while now. I don't want to start a dialog between me and someone else - I'd like to start a discussion, and that's another thing I'd like this thread to measure: whether there's even enough interest in this issue to *generate* a discussion.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=40#p31417
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-12 16:26:11

Yeah this is the start of the beta-testing period. Today is the deadline, but I don't think I was informed what time-zone, so I interpreted it most liberally at 11.59 HAST, which gives me another 13 and a half hours...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=70#p31418
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-02-12 16:27:43

They must have, because here we are playing IF. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=70#p31419
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-02-12 16:28:06

[quote="JoeyJones"]The awards are open to all interactive fiction games [i]released[/i] in the year.[/quote]
I'm not sure that's right. The Introcomp games were certainly released last year, but don't appear on the list of games eligible for nominations.

But ZE was released commercially, so its incompleteness is of a different order. Like Minecraft's incompleteness...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=70#p31420
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Squinky / DateTime: 2012-02-12 16:29:24

Hmm... if it would make the community more comfortable to put CYOA into its own category, I certainly wouldn't feel offended... though I'm not sure it's necessary beyond, say, the Best Implementation award, where it's extremely obvious that a parser game would need extra polish in this area whereas CYOA can cut corners. (Maaaybe Best Puzzles/Individual Puzzle as well?) I mean, good writing/story/characters are what they are regardless of interface, right?

And yeah, to be honest, I was pleasantly surprised when The Play did as well as it did in the comp. I thought there'd be more genre purists complaining about it...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=70#p31421
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-12 16:31:32

[quote="RealNC"][quote="Peter Pears"][quote]This is about CYOA vs parser-IF and no amount of sugar coating (and this thread is full of it) is going to change that.[/quote]

Well, we didn't have any of this regarding The Play - not that I recall - so if it *was* about that, you'd think it'd have come up before.[/quote]
If people insist on not speaking up about the problem of putting COYA in the same boat as parser games because they don't want to offend their friends and acquaintances in the "COYA camp," then we're in danger of traditional text adventures disappearing completely. Stop discussing the issue privately (I won't name the individuals since they want to keep it private) and go public with your views. Not stepping on someone's toes is not worth the death of text adventure games.[/quote]

I have no friends or acquaintances in the CYOA camp, and I don't think putting CYOA in the same boat as parser games is a problem or likely to lead to the death of text adventure games. In this particular case, the problem is partly that there's too little communication between the camps, not that there's too much.

I do feel that there's a bit of a one-way street in the communication; the ChoiceScript folks have been reaching out to the IF community by entering games in the comps etc., but have they been playing the parser games much? If not, who should do what about it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=80#p31422
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-12 16:34:26

[quote="deirdrakiai"]I mean, good writing/story/characters are what they are regardless of interface, right?[/quote]
Indeed. But that doesn't mean we can nominate Portal 2 for the XYZZYs. I enjoyed that game immensely. But that doesn't make it a candidate for the XYZZY awards. Of course "The Play" is closer to IF than Portal 2. But closer doesn't mean equal.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=80#p31423
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-12 16:36:17

[quote="RealNC"]You mean like Point&Click adventures (which is the direction we're moving here, even though that already happened two decades ago) helped IF?[/quote]
Of course not commercially, but point & click adventures were certainly the route that [i]I[/i] took into IF. As a child I was raised on Lucas Arts games and literature, so I was very amenable to interactive fiction when I found out about its resurgence.

[quote="Deirdra"] I mean, good writing/story/characters are what they are regardless of interface, right?[/quote]
I could not agree more.

[quote="ektemple"]I'm not sure that's right. The Introcomp games were certainly released last year, but don't appear on the list of games eligible for nominations.[/quote]
I'm just going off what it says on the XYZZY awards FAQ. In fairness, Zombie Exodus wasn't released as a introduction, or an open beta or anything- more like a game in instalments.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=80#p31424
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-12 16:39:28

[quote="RealNC"]Indeed. But that doesn't mean we can nominate Portal 2 for the XYZZYs. I enjoyed that game immensely. But that doesn't make it a candidate for the XYZZY awards. Of course "The Play" is closer to IF than Portal 2. But closer doesn't mean equal.[/quote]
Portal 2 isn't a text game- it's interactive but it is not fiction in the literary sense- whereas The Play, Zombie Exodus, Binary, The Cavity of Time etc. are all fiction and interactive.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=0#p31425
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-12 16:41:09

[quote="RealNC"][quote="joningold"]I think it manages to create a typing-like experience without the bother of typing[/quote]
Without the "bother" of typing? Then why not drop the text entirely and introduce a 3D environment and videos? That way you get rid of the bother of reading. Of course it won't be a text adventure anymore, but at this point, who cares.[/quote]
I suspect I'm not the only IF author who would love to go exactly this route, or at least to try it out ... if only I could produce 3D video games (a) with a budget of $0, (b) without a dev team, (c) within a time-frame of 3 months, and (d) without learning any new highly technical skills.

The reason to minimize "the bother of typing" is to make the IF experience more approachable to people who didn't start out on machines that ran MSDOS or (in my case) CPM. That said, evvabody texts these days, so maybe typing is perceived less as a bother than it would have been ten years ago.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=80#p31426
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-12 16:42:31

[quote="matt w"]I do feel that there's a bit of a one-way street in the communication; the ChoiceScript folks have been reaching out to the IF community by entering games in the comps etc., but have they been playing the parser games much? If not, who should do what about it?[/quote]
Probably the organizers. They should put CYOA under its own category. It's close enough to traditional IF and is overlapping with it in many areas, so it's perfectly understandable that they want to enter IF comps. But at the same time, it's a different enough game mechanic that makes 1:1 comparisons unfair. A parser based game will be judged negatively by someone who doesn't like parsers, even though having a parser is one of the things of what this is all about. It's one of the defining things in text adventure games. Perhaps *the* defining thing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=80#p31427
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-12 16:44:29

[quote="JoeyJones"][quote="RealNC"]Indeed. But that doesn't mean we can nominate Portal 2 for the XYZZYs. I enjoyed that game immensely. But that doesn't make it a candidate for the XYZZY awards. Of course "The Play" is closer to IF than Portal 2. But closer doesn't mean equal.[/quote]
Portal 2 isn't a text game- it's interactive but it is not fiction in the literary sense- whereas The Play, Zombie Exodus, Binary, The Cavity of Time etc. are all fiction and interactive.[/quote]
They lack a parser, which is one the defining things in text adventures. That makes them very similar, yet different enough as to be in their own class.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=0#p31428
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: George / DateTime: 2012-02-12 16:45:40

[quote="Peter Pears"]
I believe CYOA is a form of IF - much less complex, offering more limited options to the user, often focusing more on the storyline and characters than on any actual puzzles. The system is the same: the computer textually describes the situation and asks for your input, which it will then use to further the story. The difference is that it limits your command to a few choices, thus losing one of the key charms in IF, surely - but still IF [....][/quote]

I don't think that's right. IF and CYOA are both forms of text game, and that you can easily spin the disadvantages you list into advantages doesn't say much for either judgement. CYOA offers affordances integrally tied into the game world, helping to make the player experience smoother and more immersive. By limiting your commands to a few choices, you make the experience less frustrating and at the same time easier to implement on devices where typing is less enjoyable.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=80#p31429
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-02-12 16:46:26

[quote]A parser based game will be judged negatively by someone who doesn't like parsers[/quote]

And a puzzleless game will be judged negatively by people who love puzzlefests, and a puzzlefest will be judged negatively by someone who prefers Aisle and Photopia.

Which comes back around to: it's not the voting or the cathegories, it's just that a massive amount of non-regulars with specific tastes voted en masse this time, screwing things up a bit. It'd be the same, I suppose, for any other obscure IF with a massive fanbase.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=0#p31430
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-12 16:46:51

If a moderator could move the relevant posts from the XYZZY thread to this one, that would be awesome.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=0#p31431
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-12 16:48:59

[quote="George"]CYOA offers affordances integrally tied into the game world, helping to make the player experience smoother and more immersive. By limiting your commands to a few choices, you make the experience less frustrating and at the same time easier to implement on devices where typing is less enjoyable.[/quote]
And that makes them different. Whether they're better or not is subjective. But they're different enough to need their own classification and rules.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=80#p31432
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-12 16:50:14

[quote="deirdrakiai"] I mean, good writing/story/characters are what they are regardless of interface, right?[/quote]

Well, I don't think that's necessarily the case -- if that was the whole story then there would be no reason to exclude novels from the writing/story/characters/setting awards. We're interested in awards for IF, whatever that is, and the question is partly what IF is.

That said, I think CYOA shouldn't necessarily be put in a separate category (I had a brief exchange with Erik Temple back somewhere in the thread about characters in CYOA). It's just that, in this case, because of the separation between the ChoiceScript community and the IF community, the result of putting them in the same category has annoyed a lot of people in the IF community. And I think the best argument for considering CYOA to be IF has to do with the overlap between the communities, so that's a big deal. If there were really one community, the problem wouldn't arise. (If a puzzleless game were doing well because it got a bunch of votes from people who didn't like puzzle, then puzzle-lovers might grumble, but I don't think you'd see this much of a fuss, because it would all be coming from the same community. On preview, Peter already said basically this.)

(By the way, I think there wasn't nearly as much backlash against Choice of Zombies winning Introcomp, partly because there was more community interaction with them -- the voters were presumably playing games from both camps. This is a roundabout way of saying I played CoZ and thought it was totally deserving.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=80#p31433
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-12 16:51:05

[quote="Peter Pears"][quote]A parser based game will be judged negatively by someone who doesn't like parsers[/quote]

And a puzzleless game will be judged negatively by people who love puzzlefests, and a puzzlefest will be judged negatively by someone who prefers Aisle and Photopia.

Which comes back around to: it's not the voting or the cathegories, it's just that a massive amount of non-regulars with specific tastes voted en masse this time, screwing things up a bit. It'd be the same, I suppose, for any other obscure IF with a massive fanbase.[/quote]
Both Photopia and Zork have the same underlying game mechanic. It's not about themes or amount of puzzles. It's about game mechanics.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=0#p31434
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-12 16:51:18

CYOA[1] is definitely Interactive Fiction. It is interactive: you have to make choices which have meaningful consequences for the story. It is fiction: not in the sense of it necessarily being 'made up' (after all, you can have nonfiction interactive fiction), but in the literary sense of the word: a hyperlink game is a textual medium written with the intent to afford someone a fictive experience; to tell them a story.

Of course, a hyperlink game isn't a parser-based text game, but I think they're sufficiently similar to be judged by much the same standards. Just like Maniac Mansion, a parser-based graphical adventure, can be compared to the entirely point-and-click Day of the Tentacle.




1. Or hyperlink games, as I prefer to call them- CYOA is a brand name, and like 'text adventure' can be a little misleading.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=80#p31435
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-12 16:53:28

[quote="deirdrakiai"]I'm not sure it's necessary beyond, say, the Best Implementation award, where it's extremely obvious that a parser game would need extra polish in this area whereas CYOA can cut corners. (Maaaybe Best Puzzles/Individual Puzzle as well?) I mean, good writing/story/characters are what they are regardless of interface, right?[/quote]
I think this is pretty close to the consensus of the IF community, yes. There's always going to be a contingent of people who have no time for CYOA and get irritated that we even acknowledge its existence without ritual spitting, and a contingent of people who think that CYOA is [i]by definition[/i] IF and get irritated when anybody suggests otherwise, but the great bulk of the community falls in the middle, and this incident hasn't really changed that.

I was worried, early on, that we'd be seeing widespread demands to exclude CYOA from all the major IF events. That hasn't happened: some people have expressed that view, but they form a minority. (Even the angriest people have mostly been clear that they'd be happy for a ChoiceScript game to win XYZZYs, if it was the right game and won fairly.) The long-term solution, I think, is probably going to going to rotate around making the expectations of the awards more explicit, thus giving admins more clear-cut grounds to deal with this kind of problem earlier on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=80#p31436
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-02-12 16:54:40

[quote="RealNC"][quote="Peter Pears"][quote]A parser based game will be judged negatively by someone who doesn't like parsers[/quote]

And a puzzleless game will be judged negatively by people who love puzzlefests, and a puzzlefest will be judged negatively by someone who prefers Aisle and Photopia.

Which comes back around to: it's not the voting or the cathegories, it's just that a massive amount of non-regulars with specific tastes voted en masse this time, screwing things up a bit. It'd be the same, I suppose, for any other obscure IF with a massive fanbase.[/quote]
Both Photopia and Zork have the same underlying game mechanic. It's not about themes or amount of puzzles. It's about game mechanics.[/quote]

I'm not arguing that, I'm just expanding on the bit of your post I directly quoted. Your sentence is as true as my first sentence, and my point is that it's all part of the voting process - [i]of course[/i] people won't vote favourably for what they don't like. Wouldn't be an issue here [i]at all[/i] if it weren't for a lot of overenthusiastic people who abused the system. It's all I've been saying, basically.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=0#p31437
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-12 16:57:26

[quote="JoeyJones"]CYOA[1] is definitely Interactive Fiction. It is interactive: you have to make choices which have meaningful consequences for the story. It is fiction: not in the sense of it necessarily being 'made up' (after all, you can have nonfiction interactive fiction), but in the literary sense of the word: a hyperlink game is a textual medium written with the intent to afford someone a fictive experience; to tell them a story.[/quote]
You cannot use the literal meaning of the term here. Because then I'm going to object that Doom is also Interactive Fiction because it's both interactive and fiction. Or I can attempt the same joke I did in another thread: the New York Times is interactive fiction too, because their website is interactive and it's also mostly fiction. So there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=90#p31438
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-12 16:57:44

[quote="RealNC"][quote="matt w"]I do feel that there's a bit of a one-way street in the communication; the ChoiceScript folks have been reaching out to the IF community by entering games in the comps etc., but have they been playing the parser games much? If not, who should do what about it?[/quote]
Probably the organizers. They should put CYOA under its own category. It's close enough to traditional IF and is overlapping with it in many areas, so it's perfectly understandable that they want to enter IF comps. But at the same time, it's a different enough game mechanic that makes 1:1 comparisons unfair. A parser based game will be judged negatively by someone who doesn't like parsers, even though having a parser is one of the things of what this is all about. It's one of the defining things in text adventure games. Perhaps *the* defining thing.[/quote]

This is a solution to a different problem than the one I had in mind. I was asking how we can get the ChoiceScript people playing parser games, which would do more for the health of parser games than walling off CYOA from them, I think. If they absolutely won't play parser games, then maybe we should have different categories, but I think that a real rapprochement between the communities would be better.

Part of this is because I don't think the parser defines IF. Twenty years ago someone might have said that puzzles were a necessary part of IF, but we've since seen what can be done without them. But part of the reason IF has remained vital is that puzzleless IF didn't wind up in a separate community.

[UPDATE in response to your previous comment: Does Space Under the Window have the same mechanic, too? Walker and Silhouette?]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=0#p31439
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-02-12 16:57:45

Maniac Mansion, parser-based? I never played a parser version of it... though obviously I understand what you mean, and will mentally translate to "Space quest I-III --> Space Quest IV-VI" (or any of the Sierra Quest games).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=90#p31440
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2012-02-12 17:01:59

You guys are depressing!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4343&start=0#p31441
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Six in a 2011 Top Ten
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2012-02-12 17:02:56

I made it the top and the [i]frickin bird[/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=90#p31442
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-12 17:08:06

[quote="matt w"]I was asking how we can get the ChoiceScript people playing parser games, which would do more for the health of parser games than walling off CYOA from them, I think. If they absolutely won't play parser games, then maybe we should have different categories, but I think that a real rapprochement between the communities would be better.[/quote]
That can still happen. It would be same comp, after all, and the COYA category certainly doesn't mean it's an inferior one.

[quote]Part of this is because I don't think the parser defines IF. Twenty years ago someone might have said that puzzles were a necessary part of IF, but we've since seen what can be done without them. But part of the reason IF has remained vital is that puzzleless IF didn't wind up in a separate community.[/quote]
They kept the same game mechanic though.

[quote]Does Space Under the Window have the same mechanic, too? Walker and Silhouette?[/quote]
I'd say exceptions that prove the rule.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=0#p31443
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-12 17:08:45

[quote="RealNC"]
You cannot use the literal meaning of the term here. Because then I'm going to object that Doom is also Interactive Fiction because it's both interactive and fiction. Or I can attempt the same joke I did in another thread: the New York Times is interactive fiction too, because their website is interactive and it's also mostly fiction. So there.[/quote]
I'm sorry you misunderstand me; you are equivocating here: there are different senses of the word 'fiction'. You are using it in the sense of 'an invented idea or narrative; an imaginary thing', and I am using it in the more specific sense of literature: i.e. text-based stories. The Play, Zork and Lost Pig are all interactive text based stories; Doom and arguably the New York Times are not.

[quote="Peter Pears"]Maniac Mansion, parser-based? I never played a parser version of it... though obviously I understand what you mean, and will mentally translate to "Space quest I-III --> Space Quest IV-VI" (or any of the Sierra Quest games).[/quote]
I might have recalled incorrectly, but I'm pretty sure that while there were verb buttons, the whole thing was built over a parser-engine and you could type commands. But yeah, I'm sure Sierra presents a clearer example.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=0#p31444
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-12 17:11:42

[quote="JoeyJones"][quote="RealNC"]
You cannot use the literal meaning of the term here. Because then I'm going to object that Doom is also Interactive Fiction because it's both interactive and fiction. Or I can attempt the same joke I did in another thread: the New York Times is interactive fiction too, because their website is interactive and it's also mostly fiction. So there.[/quote]
I'm sorry you misunderstand me; you are equivocating here: there are different senses of the word 'fiction'. You are using it in the sense of 'an invented idea or narrative; an imaginary thing', and I am using it in the more specific sense of literature: i.e. text-based stories. The Play, Zork and Lost Pig are all interactive text based stories; Doom and arguably the New York Times are not.[/quote]
But you used the term "Interactive Fiction", not "Interactive Literary Fiction". Therefore, by following your own logic, Doom is a piece of IF.

This is what my whole point is. "Interactive Fiction" doesn't explicitly mention written text. And it also doesn't mention a parser. But it still uses text as a central medium, as well as a parser.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=90#p31445
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-02-12 17:12:12

<a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exception_that_proves_the_rule">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exception_ ... s_the_rule</a>

Sorry, couldn't resist it.  [emote]:roll:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=0#p31446
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-02-12 17:14:12

Joey, while I agree with you, I'll have to ask you to remember that, if we go the literal way, any game can be a RPG in that it involves playing a role, usually the role of the player character. "Interactive Fiction" is too broad a term to be applied literally - "text adventure" might be best used in this scenario.

A term which, I must say, can also encompass CYOA.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=10#p31447
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-02-12 17:19:22

[quote="Jim Aikin"]A related problem would be 'look up beelzebub in grimoire'. The author doesn't necessarily want to reveal all of the contents of a consultable information source. Ditto with conversation topics, I suppose. Some people like conversation topic lists -- I don't. But I can't recall an example of a game where all of the contents of a consultable encyclopedia were listed as nudges for the player.[/quote]

There are a few games that handle books to be consulted using menus (can't think of titles off the top of my head, unfortunately), so there are at least a few that lay all of the options out for inspection. But things like "look up beelzebub in grimoire" are more often gated by in-game knowledge; e.g., you wouldn't think to look up Beelzebub unless you've already encountered Beelzebub or some effluviate of his. So one way to handle this problem is to have the topics show up in the encyclopedia list only after the player has triggered the proper cue elsewhere in the game. The player still has to think to check the grimoire again after encountering Beelzebub, so nothing is given away for free. (And if the player is just casting about for something, anything to do, and stumbles on the Beelzebub entry, so much the better--we've just supplied a hint w/o any extra effort.)

[quote="emshort"]I found myself looking from the top to the bottom of the screen and back a lot. I wonder whether the top of the screen is the best place for inventory. This kind of split attention problem has been an issue with pretty much every deluxe IF interface I've ever seen/worked on, so it's hardly unique to yours.[/quote]
Folks said similar things about my initial iteration of this interface. I didn't see it then, but I also felt like I wasn't experiencing the interface as a player, and that I needed to reserve judgment (being still too close to the design of the thing to see it accurately). After experiencing Jon's version--purely as a player--I've decided that the divided attention issue probably isn't worth worrying about. I didn't have any difficulty or even minor annoyance looking to different parts of the screen for different kinds of information.[spoiler]In fact, I thought it was rather neat that I had to look up to see the constellations.[/spoiler]I suspect that the feeling of needing to look around is mostly experiential bleed-through from the standard single-window parser IF experience. First-person shooters, racing-games, RTS, roguelikes, etc. scatter far more information all over the screen--and then expect folks to make split-second decisions using that output. This interface provides three well-defined zones for interaction and gives you all the time in the world to make your next move.

Of course, seeing what newcomers to IF say about the interface is the right way to test this hypothesis...

Moving sidewise a bit: I've had a couple folks find my blog by searching for "Colder Light tutorial" or "Colder Light hints"--so it may be that the interface isn't clear to those who don't already know the basic expectations of parser IF? I wonder if the ChoiceScript community--much in our thoughts lately--would be interesting in having a look.

[quote="emshort"]I think my ideal solution to the not-in-scope problem is to turn off the hyperlinks for items that are no longer in scope, so if you scrolled back to an earlier room, you would find that the objects there were simply not blue any more and were not actively clickable. I'm not sure how viable that is once material has already been printed to screen -- it seems like something that e.g. Vorple would be able to handle neatly via javascript, but might not be doable with your tools.[/quote]
That would be nice. It could probably be hacked into vanilla Quixe with a bit of work. I addressed the problem in my implementation of Sand-Dancer by simply clearing the screen every time the player moved to a new room. That didn't solve every possible issue, but it was pretty effective. It also made it very clear when the player moved into a new space, since the screen was cleared and the scrollback was zapped. (Some folks probably aren't willing to lose the scrollback, but I don't find that I tend to use scrollback for anything productive as a player anyway...)

[quote="emshort"]I also did get a little frustrated with the two-click method of manipulating objects when[spoiler]I was trying out various rune combinations and had to keep clicking to select a rune, lay it down, see whether anything happened, select that rune again, pick it up, select another rune, lay it down...[/spoiler]...as that was something that I felt I could have done much more quickly by typing. I wonder whether it would be worthwhile to have the option of a custom mechanic when dealing with game elements that are going to involve repetitive uses of similar objects.[/quote]
I used UNDO to manage this, probably the same as I would have if I was playing at a command line. But I also thought it would have been neat for that mechanic to have its own, more graphical interface.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=90#p31448
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-12 17:19:47

[quote="Afterward"]You guys are depressing![/quote]
Oh noes! You've been Pudloed!
[emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=10#p31449
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-12 17:21:27

[quote="Peter Pears"]"Interactive Fiction" is too broad a term to be applied literally - "text adventure" might be best used in this scenario.

A term which, I must say, can also encompass CYOA.[/quote]
If it really could, CYOA wouldn't be called CYOA. They came up with that name because they know it's a different thing. Different enough to have its own name.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=90#p31450
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-12 17:24:58

[quote="Peter Pears"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exception_that_proves_the_rule

Sorry, couldn't resist it.  [emote]:roll:[/emote][/quote]
Exceptions *confirm* the rule :-/ I wasn't sure what the English translation was (I had the German term in mind). Language barriers [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=10#p31451
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-12 17:26:48

[quote="RealNC"]
But you used the term "Interactive Fiction", not "Interactive Literary Fiction". Therefore, by following your own logic, Doom is a piece of IF.

This is what my whole point is. "Interactive Fiction" doesn't explicitly mention written text. And it also doesn't mention a parser. But it still uses text as a central medium, as well as a parser.[/quote]
Again, you misunderstand me. The word fiction, by my dictionary at least, has four senses of the word. I was taking the 'fiction' in 'interactive fiction' to mean one of those senses. You're insisting on taking it by another sense of the word. If I say 'my hobbies include fiction', you won't (just) think that I mean my hobbies include reading fabrications and imaginary things: you'll think my hobbies include reading a textual medium (e.g. novels, short stories). When I say to my friends 'I play interactive fiction', they always think I mean that I play CYOA game books.

[quote="Peter Pears"]Joey, while I agree with you, I'll have to ask you to remember that, if we go the literal way, any game can be a RPG in that it involves playing a role, usually the role of the player character. "Interactive Fiction" is too broad a term to be applied literally - "text adventure" might be best used in this scenario.

A term which, I must say, can also encompass CYOA.[/quote]
I'm not saying we should stick religiously to a certain definition of 'interactive fiction', I was merely suggesting that the term itself easily leant to including parser and nonparser text games. I take the point about RPGs (coincidentally, I was thinking on exactly that matter the other day). An 'RPG' has a set of expectations about it- connotations not literally described by the words 'role-playing game'. 'Interactive fiction' of course has its own connotations.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=90#p31452
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-02-12 17:26:57

Erm, no, the whole point is that it doesn't. In fact, when you stop to think about it past the "I've been hearing this idiom sinve always" stage, you realise how silly it is that an exception can prove a rule.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=10#p31453
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: emshort / DateTime: 2012-02-12 17:28:11

This is difficult in part because there's more of a continuum than people tend to acknowledge, both on the "world model" and on the "input type" axes.

-- Cave of Time and other CYOA books in which there is no world state modeling beyond the page number you're on

-- Fighting Fantasy books and other CYOA books where the player is supposed to keep track of inventory, stats, or other features.

-- ChoiceScript, Undum, etc. projects that track qualities under the hood. (Varytale will be of this ilk also.) These typically do not have a fully-expressed concept of rooms and objects, but can be sophisticated in the narrative structures they create, nonetheless. Ren'Py games do similar things, just with the addition of graphics as a significant feature. Conceptually, Echo Bazaar is also a relative of this material; so is One Week, which is about how a high school student apportions time during the week prior to the SATs and prom, with resource-management puzzles that affect social, financial, and academic outcomes.

-- The Binary and the new Quest front-ends, as well as The Colder Light -- these have most or all of an IF world model going on but present it through a graphical front end in various ways. 

-- Walker and Silhouette, Starborn, etc., all the way up through Blue Lacuna, which are using standard or even enhanced, super-simulational IF world models, but are offering clickable or typed-keyword shortcuts for some or all actions. And there's Ferrous Ring, which allows several interaction modes from standard parsed input through more-hinted stuff down to "just run me through the walkthrough, please."

-- Pale Blue Light, which uses a standard IF model in some cases but not in others, and treats typed input in different ways during different parts of the game. (Worth trying, for those who haven't.)

-- Space Under the Window, Threading the Labyrinth, and [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/category/interactive-poetry/]interactive poetry projects[/url] that take keywords or typed input but do not use a standard world model and are doing something radically different with the words typed. 

-- Ad Verbum is also kind of a relative to these, since there are world models and puzzles, but the precise wording of the player's command has a significance that it usually does not. Likewise maybe make some change is absolutely a meditation on the particular verbs available to the player and the mental (not world) model that that implies.

I am happy saying that there are neat artistic and narrative things to be done in all of these forms, and I also strongly feel that they're close enough relatives to one another to foster interesting discussion. I [i]don't[/i] think that doing so puts us on a slippery slope to forgetting all about parser games and talking only about the latest AAA console projects, because there are still some important formal connections between these styles: they're all about text output, and a reader/player whose engagement is primarily an engagement with and through the words. 

Probably there are some IF authors who are doing IF because they don't have the resources to put together a graphical game (the sentiment Jim Aikin expressed elsewhere), but that's not the case for everyone; some of us work on other types of games as well, but still see a lot of continuing interest in what can be done in a primarily text-focused field.

I also think that it has strongly been to the good of IF for the community to engage more with the surrounding indie community; if there were people who were (for instance) offended by the presence of non-parser works at the IF Demo Fair, no one expressed that feeling to me, whereas a number of people expressed a positive reaction.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=10#p31454
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-02-12 17:30:38

I always loved reading posts by Emily Short. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=90#p31455
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-12 17:41:58

[quote="Peter Pears"]Erm, no, the whole point is that it doesn't. In fact, when you stop to think about it past the "I've been hearing this idiom sinve always" stage, you realise how silly it is that an exception can prove a rule.[/quote]
It can confirm it. Because when the games in question came out, it was pointed out to the players that they're different. Reviewers also mentioned this. Why? It was for some reason assumed that it needed special attention; the exception was notable and worthy of mention. This means that there was a rule that was being "violated" by these games. That is why those games are exceptions, because everyone assumed they deviated from the rule. And that confirms the rule.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=10#p31456
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-12 17:50:33

[quote="Peter Pears"]I always loved reading posts by Emily Short. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
Expecially because they are extremely... Short. [emote]:)[/emote]
But she catches the problem. The whole thing is NOT a matter of parser vs cyoa. It's about a number of "overenthusiastic" votes spoling the awards. There are games which deserve an award and other which must go crowdsourcing. That's why i strongly deprecate popular judgement. To use a very old and tired example: in year 33AD people choose Barabba (or how do you call him) over Jesus Christ. 

I personally want CYOA in the if community, to answer the post, btw.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=90#p31457
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-02-12 17:52:54

Well put, well put. I can think of at least two counter-arguments, but we'd be getting more and more off-topic and more into semantics, which would break down fairly soon, so I'm happy to let it lie. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=10#p31458
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-12 17:56:39

[quote="Peter Pears"]I believe CYOA is a form of IF[/quote]

Of course it is. I can't imagine how this could even be in question.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=90#p31459
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-12 18:44:21

This should really go in the CYOA-IF thread, so I'm rant-tagging it.

[rant][quote="Peter Pears"]Well put, well put. I can think of at least two counter-arguments, but we'd be getting more and more off-topic and more into semantics, which would break down fairly soon, so I'm happy to let it lie. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Whereas I do semantics for a living (well, sort of), so I'm all over this argument.

My view is that IF, like most genres (if not concepts!), is a [url=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/#Lan]Wittgensteinian family resemblance concept[/url]. It doesn't have a single essence; what makes something IF is that it's like other works of IF, which are in turn like other works of IF, etc. So any two works of IF might not have one particular thing in common, but if you look at the totality of IF you'll find an overlapping network of criss-crossed similarities, to paraphrase Wittgenstein. 

Which also means that what gets counted as IF is contingent, and may be a judgment call. It's because IF evolved in a particular way that we count the things we do as IF. If people who play IF start to play and write ChoiceScript games and see them as part of the same thing, then that's a good reason to say they're IF. If not, not. Which is somewhat to say that ChoiceScript counts as IF because people enter ChoiceScript games in IF competitions. (And also perhaps because IF people have been doing other CYOAs for a while.)

(But can't we say that IF involves interacting by typing words? Well, that would be a decision you'd made, and anyway [url=http://justgamesretro.com/win/the-typing-of-the-dead]there are always counterexamples[/url].)

Which is a long-winded way of saying, if you want to decide that IF has to have typed commands, that's fine. You can make your decision that that's the essence of IF. But other people may have a legitimate disagreement with you on that front.[/rant]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=10#p31460
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-12 18:53:02

I'm going to copy-paste a comment I made in the other thread (the "you" in it is RealNC), with one addition:

My view is that IF, like most genres (if not concepts!), is a [url=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/#Lan]Wittgensteinian family resemblance concept[/url]. It doesn't have a single essence; what makes something IF is that it's like other works of IF, which are in turn like other works of IF, etc. So any two works of IF might not have one particular thing in common, but if you look at the totality of IF you'll find an overlapping network of criss-crossed similarities, to paraphrase Wittgenstein. [Addition: As wonderfully illustrated in Emily's comment.]

Which also means that what gets counted as IF is contingent, and may be a judgment call. It's because IF evolved in a particular way that we count the things we do as IF. If people who play IF start to play and write ChoiceScript games and see them as part of the same thing, then that's a good reason to say they're IF. If not, not. Which is somewhat to say that ChoiceScript counts as IF because people enter ChoiceScript games in IF competitions. (And also perhaps because IF people have been doing other CYOAs for a while.)

(But can't we say that IF involves interacting by typing words? Well, that would be a decision you'd made, and anyway [url=http://justgamesretro.com/win/the-typing-of-the-dead]there are always counterexamples[/url].)

Which is a long-winded way of saying, if you want to decide that IF has to have typed commands, that's fine. You can make your decision that that's the essence of IF. But other people may have a legitimate disagreement with you on that front.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=10#p31461
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2012-02-12 18:55:33

I think it's important to have a short and sweet term that [i]does[/i] exclude hypertext/CYOAs and all other non-parser works.  I don't think "parser-based IF" is good enough for the long run.

I agree with Joey's comment on the first page of this thread that "hyperlink" is a good description for web-based CYOAs.  I like duality of "interactive fiction" and "hypertext fiction."  One solution would be to keep "interactive fiction" for games that are clearly closer to the parser side of the spectrum, while leaving "hypertext fiction" for games that are clearly choice-based.  Because IF and "HF" (using this hypothetical terminology) are clearly related to each other, a new parent term would have to be invented to describe the whole family of text-based computer fiction games.

However, it seems more likely that the community is going to include CYOAs in the definition of "interactive fiction."  If that's the case, we really need a new term to describe [i]only[/i] parser games and exclude hypertext/choice, within the parent category of IF.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=10#p31462
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-12 18:56:35

[quote="ektemple"](Some folks probably aren't willing to lose the scrollback, but I don't find that I tend to use scrollback for anything productive as a player anyway...)[/quote]

Nooooo! The preciousssss....

What I'm trying to say is, I would be sad to lose the scrollback. I use it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=10#p31463
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-12 19:05:11

What's wrong with "parser IF"?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=10#p31464
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2012-02-12 19:22:32

[quote="matt w"]What's wrong with "parser IF"?[/quote]
Maybe nothing, but I feel that the differences between parser and choice-based IF -- [b]without denying the fact that they also have much in common[/b] -- are great enough that a clear distinction should be made.  After all, I feel that someone in the community who may want to (for example) run a mini-comp for only one or the other category should be able to do so without having to explain his or her criteria to separate the two at length.

There are definitely benefits to discussing parser-IF and choice-IF together (I guess those are the terms [i]I'll[/i] use for this post [emote];)[/emote]).  However, I believe there is [b]also[/b] good cause to discuss them separately at times.  It's probably true that parser-IF and choice-IF are [i]not[/i] apples and oranges.  They may both be apples, but they are different kinds of apples.  Some times it's good to discuss all the different varieties of apples together, but sometimes you just want a Red Delicious and you don't care about Crispins.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=10#p31465
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-02-12 19:29:35

[quote="matt w"][quote="ektemple"](Some folks probably aren't willing to lose the scrollback, but I don't find that I tend to use scrollback for anything productive as a player anyway...)[/quote]

Nooooo! The preciousssss....

What I'm trying to say is, I would be sad to lose the scrollback. I use it.[/quote]
Aw, and I was so heartened by the fact that no one even commented on the lack of scrollback in my demo...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=20#p31466
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-12 19:31:02

[quote="Bainespal"]but sometimes you just want a Red Delicious and you don't care about Crispins.[/quote]

Ugh. I cannot get with this analogy. If games are apples, Red Delicious is Farmville (or something that sucks; I have never played Farmville).

UPDATE: I think the Red Delicious is E.T. the Game, since it [url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/04/AR2005080402194.html]crashed the industry[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=10#p31467
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: emshort / DateTime: 2012-02-12 19:37:27

[quote="matt w"][quote="ektemple"](Some folks probably aren't willing to lose the scrollback, but I don't find that I tend to use scrollback for anything productive as a player anyway...)[/quote]

Nooooo! The preciousssss....

What I'm trying to say is, I would be sad to lose the scrollback. I use it.[/quote]

Likewise.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=20#p31468
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-02-12 19:58:45

[quote="Bainespal"]I agree with Joey's comment on the first page of this thread that "hyperlink" is a good description for web-based CYOAs.[/quote]

I disagree. "Hyperlink" describes a method of input, and there is at this moment an [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345]active thread[/url] on the forum about a game that uses hyperlink input exclusively to play a game that is parser-based. (The links you click, some styled as buttons, are commands that are run through the standard Inform parser.) Quest also has a hyperlink interface for parser-IF.

The problem is that our focal categories for each of these game types are actually just the zones where multiple domains have happened to overlap, due to historical contingency. Input method isn't the be-all & end-all--you can have CYOAs where all input is typed, and parser-based IF where all input is clicking on links. (Obviously, you can have CYOAs that don't use hyperlinks at all--cf. the eponymous series of books!) Moreover, CYOAs could be constructed in which at least some of the game is organized by a world model, while you could conceivably parse typed input in such a way that you didn't need a world model (e.g. ELIZA).

I don't have an answer for how the terminology should work. But I'd like to see more and more games that problematize our distinctions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4349&start=0#p31469
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: T3: Generic People Words
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-12 20:06:33

Here's an odd little problem. I have two male NPCs. One is named (Leo), the other is simply "the old man." I have given the old man a vocabLikelihood of 15, so that when both are in scope and the player refers to 'man', the parser will infer that it's the old man. But I still get this:

[quote]>ask leo about man
"I'm doing fine, dude," he replies.[/quote]

Leo thinks 'man' refers to himself. Or rather, in this situation the parser thinks so.

I could give Leo vocabWords '(man)/leo', but if I do that, then 'x man' when the old man _isn't_ present produces "You see no man here." Obviously a bad idea.

So how do I help the parser understand that 'man' refers _exclusively_ to the old man when he's in scope? I could do this with cmdDict.addWord and cmdDict.removeWord, calling them each time the old man moves in and out of scope, but that would be messy and error-prone. Is there an easier way?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=100#p31470
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2012-02-12 20:10:12

It's a compliment that a lot of the outside communities, centering around a particular tool or technology or whatever that cropped up on the internet one day, come *here* with their finished works when their authors look for recognition. 

I'm all for acceptance of various tools -- Undum, Choicescript, Adrift, Inform, TADS, etc. -- and I have no problem with the new-school CYOAs making us "prove" the value-add of a parser.  ...Especially a parser as old as the one I just translated.  I could [i]feel[/i] in which decade different parts were written in.  Software doesn't age like wine. Quite the opposite. 

I think we've stagnated a bit on our expectations for parsers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=20#p31471
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-12 20:34:53

(Fair warning: I'm the guy who likes to use "interactive fiction" to exclude CYOA games *but include Myst*. Although I don't do it so much in discussions around here.)

I agree entirely that we're talking about families of games here, not strict essences. Some of the qualities of the families are accidental, historical, or (in fact) shallow coincidences of timing and fashion.

On the other hand:

[quote]Input method isn't the be-all & end-all[/quote]

I would say that *interface* is by far the most important characteristic that we use to divide up games. Interface is deeper than input method -- but they're tied together nonetheless. If you don't keep input methods firmly in mind when you design games, you design lousy game interfaces.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4349&start=0#p31472
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Generic People Words
User: George / DateTime: 2012-02-12 20:35:12

Maybe in the verify function for ask on Leo?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=20#p31473
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-02-12 20:40:07

[quote="ektemple"]I disagree. "Hyperlink" describes a method of input[/quote]

Indeed.  [i]The Play[/i] and [i]Walker and Silhouette[/i] are both hyperlink games, but I wouldn't consider the Choice Of games [that I've seen/played, which is certainly not all of them] to be hyperlink games, even though they do literally use hyperlinks.  I also say [url=http://eblong.com/zarf/zweb/matter/][i]The Matter of the Monster[/i][/url] isn't one, even though it's made in the same system as [i]The Play[/i].  Less straightforwardly, though, I admit that my internal criteria for using the term are quite vague and non-rigorous.  I think deciding factor to me is the extent to which the links are scattered throughout the text (like Wikipedia) instead of stacked neatly at the end (like a multiple-choice question), and that's an almost entirely aesthetic judgment.  There's also something about the extent to which a game does not close off the un-picked choices that makes it feel more properly hyperlink-y to me. I doubt I could fully taxonomize this.

I like the term that Choice Of Games uses, which is "choice-based game."  I think it emphasizes the pertinent difference between those games and world-modeled/parser IF, which is the granularity of game moves.  Choice-based games are toward the "make major narrative changes per move" end of the spectrum, and parser IF is toward the "make subtle changes in the state of the world" end of the spectrum.  I think one of the reasons why [i]The Play[/i] has been so well-received is that it supports the gamut; you can make big emotional decisions, but you can also putter around observing your surroundings, if you like, which was very comforting to us parser-game folks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=20#p31474
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-12 20:42:41

(Also, in case this idea isn't dead: I agree that "interactive fiction", as used in the title of this forum, the IFComp, the XYZZY awards, and so on, has *never* been used to mean "things that are interactive and are fictional". Total red herring. Also, "science fiction" is not limited to fiction about science; "fantasy" does not include all made-up stories; and other statements that should be too obvious to repeat.)

I too have been using "choice-based game" in recent discussions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4349&start=0#p31475
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Generic People Words
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-12 22:15:16

For topic matches, you can use breakTopicTie on the topic you'd like to match.

[code]
class Man: Person
	vocabWords = 'man'
	isHim = true
;

oldman: Man 'old man' 'old man' @lab
	"The old man glares at you. "
	vocabLikelihood = 15
;

bob: Man 'bob' 'Bob' @lab
	"It's Bob! "

	isProperName = true
;

+ AskTopic @bob
	"\"Oh, well, there's not much to say about me.\" "
;

+ AskTopic @oldman
	"\"That guy gives me the creeps.\" "

	breakTopicTie(matchList, topic, fromActor, toks) {
		if (toks.indexOf('man')
			&& oldman.getOutermostRoom == bob.getOutermostRoom)
			return self;
		else
			return nil;
	}
;
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=40#p31476
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2012-02-12 22:40:28

[quote="JoeyJones"]Yeah this is the start of the beta-testing period. Today is the deadline, but I don't think I was informed what time-zone, so I interpreted it most liberally at 11.59 HAST, which gives me another 13 and a half hours...[/quote]

[emote]:-)[/emote]

I've gotten some already, and hopefully I'll get more soon. Just FYI, my current plan is to get what I've got out for beta testing after work on Monday, i.e., around 7 or so U.S. Eastern time.

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=100#p31477
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-12 22:44:15

In less flametastic news: we're still planning on putting together a pseudo-official review panel to give focused criticism of the games, category-by-category.

If anybody would like to sign up to review some of the categories, let me know, and tell me whether you have an interest in doing a particular category. (We probably won't be publishing those reviews until around the time of the ceremony, so you'd have about three weeks to get 'em out.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4321&start=0#p31478
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Extensions for Debugging
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-02-12 22:48:33

Wow, thanks for the post, Aaron.  I think the download count just quadrupled.

And thanks, Ron.  It'd be great to get suggestions or bug reports.  I probably won't resume development for a week or so though; right now I'm enjoying my first read of the parser in I7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=100#p31479
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2012-02-13 01:11:17

Here are a few of my thoughts about what might and might not help with next year's XYZZY.

To clarify, here's the problem as I understand it: a lot of ChoiceScript players voted for ChoiceScript games (exclusively) in XYZZY, without even playing the parser games.

There are three parts to the problem, each of which can be addressed separately:

1) There were so many ChoiceScript players that they could control the popular vote.
2) They voted for ChoiceScript games exclusively.
3) They didn't even play the parser games.

The most important point here is #1 -- ChoiceScript players are [i]numerous[/i], and, if I keep doing my job, they will continue growing rapidly in numbers. I don't know how many total votes were in XYZZY last year, but there were 109 total voters in IFComp 2011; it wouldn't surprise me if there were over 100 ChoiceScript voters in XYZZY this year, completely swamping other votes.

With that said, let me identify a couple of ideas that, IMO, won't work (by themselves):

[b]Have CYOA/ChoiceScript competitions.[/b] Choice of Games has planned to do this for a while; we will do it. But as long as ChoiceScript games are eligible for XYZZY, I think our authors will reasonably want to try to win, and as long as the rabid fans know about XYZZY and are willing to pull the lever for ChoiceScript games, problem #1 will persist.

[b]Create a "Best CYOA" category, leaving all games eligible for "Best Game".[/b] If XYZZY had included a "Best CYOA" category this year, Zombie Exodus would have been nominated for it. But that's no help if it wins "Best Game" too!

My proposed solution is to [b]end public voting in the XYZZY awards[/b], allowing only a pre-selected panel of judges to rate the games. This is the gold standard for indie game competitions.

If we did this, I think we'd also need to somehow reduce the list of eligible games, e.g. at least requiring each author to submit an entry form.

(Other indie game competitions require a small payment to enter; the payment can go towards prizes, and towards paying the judges a stipend. That would make more sense if more IF games were sold for money.)

As for who selects the judges... uh, I dunno. Condorcet voting? [emote]:-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=20#p31482
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-02-13 03:05:41

[quote="Bainespal"]There are definitely benefits to discussing parser-IF and choice-IF together (I guess those are the terms [i]I'll[/i] use for this post [emote];)[/emote]).  However, I believe there is [b]also[/b] good cause to discuss them separately at times.[/quote]
I think this makes a lot of sense, to have separate names for these different classifications, but leaving IF as an encompassing umbrella term.

[quote="tove"]I like the term that Choice Of Games uses, which is "choice-based game."  I think it emphasizes the pertinent difference between those games and world-modeled/parser IF, which is the granularity of game moves.  Choice-based games are toward the "make major narrative changes per move" end of the spectrum, and parser IF is toward the "make subtle changes in the state of the world" end of the spectrum.  I think one of the reasons why [i]The Play[/i] has been so well-received is that it supports the gamut; you can make big emotional decisions, but you can also putter around observing your surroundings, if you like, which was very comforting to us parser-game folks.[/quote]

Hmm. Choice may work, but I'm not so happy with the term "game". The reason IF moved away from the term "adventure game" decades ago was partly because some works were being created that had  less and less resemblance to games, and there's similarly no reason that the scope of non-parsed IF should be limited to games.

What about terms like Parsed Fiction vs. Choice Fiction, Explicit Choice Fiction, Decision-Tree Fiction, or Explicated-Options Fiction (as decreasingly likely outcomes), all of which exists in the universe of Interactive Fiction (itself a subset of electronic entertainment)?

I at first thought that the main distinguishing characteristic of hypertext fiction was that it presented a set of modal choices at the end of every narrative 'beat'. But as tove points out, it's possible for non-choicescript systems to present incidental descriptive details without advancing the plot, as The Play did -- and even in CS this can be accomplished by looping back to a hub menu when a decisive choice has not been made. But all of these have more in common with one another than with IF written in parser-based systems, so it would be nice if the term for them included all the various types (stateless like the CYOA books, player-handled statistics like some RPG one-person books, computer handled statistics like CS et al, crossed with the various flavors of hypertext and multiple-choice-at-the-end-of-each-section).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=10#p31483
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: joningold / DateTime: 2012-02-13 03:11:47

[quote="RealNC"][quote="joningold"]I think it manages to create a typing-like experience without the bother of typing[/quote]
Without the "bother" of typing? Then why not drop the text entirely and introduce a 3D environment and videos? That way you get rid of the bother of reading. Of course it won't be a text adventure anymore, but at this point, who cares.[/quote]

eek. Because I really like reading, but when I type, I foten spell things wrong without noticing. 

Also, because people who don't know how to play IF don't know how to play IF, and they don't know what to type. So they give up, even when they might have enjoyed the game. 

Also, as an *author*, the freedom of typing anything creates a x4 work factor. [3D and video creates a x60 work factor though.]

jon

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=10#p31484
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: joningold / DateTime: 2012-02-13 03:18:03

Thanks for the all the feedback!

I gotta say, I'm anti-turning off scrollback, too; I think scrollback is a strength. I'd rather clear links, but I think that might be difficult, since the interpreter layer won't know what's in scope. 

The inventory at the top I don't much like, but at the side it felt too false and functional, and at the bottom it cluttered the main input. My next best solution was "have a really small inventory". But then I went and ruined that by adding in links for other useful things up there, because having links accessible helps.

I think there are optimisations to be made to the flow of trying combinations of things. I tried to automate a chunk of tasks - picking up things you've dropped, for instance - but there's probably scope for more.

Conversation / Consulting books is an issue - you could simply offer choices; you could nest topics under sub-topics to provide some "discovery", but that might make it hard if you know what you want to say/look up. You could pop-up a keyboard. Not sure. I dodged it for now [emote];)[/emote]

On the speed side, Jimmy Maher, when I showed him a pre-release build, had the smart idea of not using the parser at all, since it doesn't need to. Currently links paste in commands, but they could equally well trigger off actions. I may try that if I get a moment to see if it makes it more iPad friendly.

Sounds like, though, it still 'feels' like IF, which is a win. 

jon

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=20#p31485
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-02-13 04:00:09

Zarf has already said here that the differing input mechanisms are of fundamental difference, and I agree.

I think it was also Zarf who once said before that a further substantial difference is that "CYOA" generally makes explicit what your options/potential interactions can be, where as "IF" generally doesn't. This difference largely flows from the different input mechanisms,  but also drives the choice of one over the other.

"CYOA" style mechanisms have been a part of "IF" for a very long time, think of number conversation options for example. We are seeing more and more works using traditional IF VMs use CYOA style mechanisms too. So I have no problem with CYOA being widely accepted into the IF community. Perhaps in the future we will talk about how prominent the parser is in a particular work (from being non-existent to the only input mechanism).

The real problem of the XYZZY awards isn't one of mechanisms or genres but of communities. And people problems are always harder to solve.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=100#p31486
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-02-13 05:22:40

[quote="dfabulich"]As for who selects the judges... uh, I dunno. Condorcet voting? [emote]:-)[/emote][/quote]Ugh, judges elected by popular vote sounds terrible. At a minimum, [i]if judging is going to be limited to a select group[/i] -- and I am not at all convinced that it should be -- its members should have some type of qualification, same as the Oscars are voted on by film industry professionals (Academy members). All authors who were shortlisted for round 2 of the last year's awards, for example, perhaps along with all winners from any category from any year in the past.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=100#p31487
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-13 05:36:10

[quote="ChrisC"][quote="dfabulich"]As for who selects the judges... uh, I dunno. Condorcet voting? [emote]:-)[/emote][/quote]Ugh, judges elected by popular vote sounds terrible. At a minimum, [i]if judging is going to be limited to a select group[/i] -- and I am not at all convinced that it should be -- its members should have some type of qualification, same as the Oscars are voted on by film industry professionals (Academy members). All authors who were shortlisted for round 2 of the last year's awards, for example, perhaps along with all winners from any category from any year in the past.[/quote]
I like the idea of them being those who won the Xyzzyes in the past. And you can add the IFComp winners. Plus: who wants to do it.

Also: should they discuss the voting together?
I ask this because: 
1) if they don't, we risk too many voting spreads. Everyone can vote for a different game.
2) if they do, the average becomes the trend, in the sense that they can begin talking about "the same old games" and forget about someone.

Concluding: first round public vote, second round jury?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=10#p31488
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: djfletch / DateTime: 2012-02-13 06:30:50

[quote="ektemple"]I suspect that the feeling of needing to look around is mostly experiential bleed-through from the standard single-window parser IF experience. First-person shooters, racing-games, RTS, roguelikes, etc. scatter far more information all over the screen--and then expect folks to make split-second decisions using that output. This interface provides three well-defined zones for interaction and gives you all the time in the world to make your next move.[/quote]
I think it's deeper than experience from traditional IF.  I think it's reading.  Your brain is very used to reading fast from a single stream of text.

(This is why despite having played games with a status line for years I still never use it.  I still do a "look" rather than check the status line if I forget where I am.)

So the comparison with games that don't have any sizable chunks of text doesn't work, because you aren't engaging the serious reading hardware when you play those.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=20#p31489
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2012-02-13 07:13:53

A thought just occurred to me.  It seems weird to me that there is so much talk about parser-IF and choice-based games being fundamentally the same, when so few people in the community seem to acknowledge the greater similarities between IF and MUDs.  Furthermore, IF and MUDs are more clearly descended from the same tradition; the original "M.U.D." got its name because it was a [i]multi-user[/i] form of [i]Dungeon[/i].  The MUD and IF communities just never really got together to the same level that the CYOA community (or at ChoiceScript) has been interacting with the IF community lately.

I think it's great that parser-IF players and writers are considering and discussing the similarities with CYOAs, but I don't think community relations should determine the accepted definitions.  I feel that MUDs have more cause than CYOAs to be called "interactive fiction" according to the text adventure tradition and the objective interface similarities.

I think it's best to have separate terms for all categories, ultimately, because they [i]do[/i] all have qualities that are unique, even though actual games exist on a spectrum.  Crossovers and hybrids are fascinating, but in order to [i]be[/i] crossovers and hybrids, they need actually contain characteristics that are typically unique to multiple genres.

I see that MUDs probably shouldn't be classified with IF because the narrative experience and other characteristics have changed greatly in the years of separation from IF, but I think IF and MUDs should still learn from each other and be discussed together.  I feel the same would be a good approach to CYOAs.  It's great for hybrids of parser and choice-based formats to appear, and it's fun to have both forms in the same discussion boards and comps.  However, I think we need to acknowledge the uniqueness of both, and allow for the separate communities to exclude each other for some things.

How would the IF community react if a MUD were to be nominated in the XYZZY Awards?  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=100#p31490
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-13 07:17:22

[quote="dfabulich"]The most important point here is #1 -- ChoiceScript players are [i]numerous[/i], and, if I keep doing my job, they will continue growing rapidly in numbers. I don't know how many total votes were in XYZZY last year, but there were 109 total voters in IFComp 2011; it wouldn't surprise me if there were over 100 ChoiceScript voters in XYZZY this year, completely swamping other votes.[/quote]
Some slight corrections: 

1) voting in the XYZZYs, particularly in the nomination round, is typically rather lower than in the Comp.
2) ChoiceScript voters were not as numerous as traditional IF voters; they did so well because, having far fewer games to choose from, they were much more focused. (To put it another way: even in the second round, trad-IF voters need to outnumber ChoiceScript voters nearly three to one in order to win a four-choice category with one ChoiceScript nomination.)
3) A high proportion of the ChoiceScript voters voted totally straight-ticket, ignoring not only parser IF but all other ChoiceScript; there's no reliable way for me to tell how many of them are ChoiceScript community members, and how many are just members of the respective authors' social networks who were voting for their friend's thing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=10#p31491
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-02-13 07:43:46

[quote="joningold"]I'd rather clear links, but I think that might be difficult, since the interpreter layer won't know what's in scope. [/quote]
That's about to change soon! ;)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=10#p31492
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: joningold / DateTime: 2012-02-13 07:46:48

[quote="Juhana"][quote="joningold"]I'd rather clear links, but I think that might be difficult, since the interpreter layer won't know what's in scope. [/quote]
That's about to change soon! [emote];)[/emote][/quote]

good good good... [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=20#p31493
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-13 07:58:29

We also need to consider the different evolutionary trees of text adventures and CYOA. The former has roots in virtualized cave exploration. A sort of virtual reality. A computer simulation. CYOA on the other hand is based on CYOA books and does not attempt to give the illusion of reality (for better of worse; that's subjective.)

We have two completely different heritages and we're trying to put them on the same boat.

Can these two genres converge? I think the answer is an obvious "yes." Attempts have already been made by introducing world models and state in COYA. And vice versa, by removing the free-form verb/object input from some parser-based IF. But we still have to deal with tradition here. The IF community was formed by people who didn't want games in the style of the old works by Infocom, Level 9, Legend Ent. and many others to disappear. Everything we did was centered around the mechanics of those games. CYOA is alien to all of this. To me it feels like it arrived here overnight and is now trying to convince me it's part of the text adventure tradition. I don't like that, because it's not.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=10#p31494
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-13 08:05:05

[quote="joningold"][quote="RealNC"][quote="joningold"]I think it manages to create a typing-like experience without the bother of typing[/quote]
Without the "bother" of typing? Then why not drop the text entirely and introduce a 3D environment and videos? That way you get rid of the bother of reading. Of course it won't be a text adventure anymore, but at this point, who cares.[/quote]

eek. Because I really like reading, but when I type, I foten spell things wrong without noticing. 

Also, because people who don't know how to play IF don't know how to play IF, and they don't know what to type. So they give up, even when they might have enjoyed the game. 

Also, as an *author*, the freedom of typing anything creates a x4 work factor.[/quote]
It's part of the "magic" though. It's fun trying to examine everything and interact with it in a multitude of ways. It enhances the feeling of being there, in a world that really exists. It's probably the main reason why sandbox games are so popular. I'm not really interested in a text game that lacks that element.

It's more work, yes. But more work means a better result.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=100#p31495
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-13 08:16:07

[quote="maga"]ChoiceScript voters were not as numerous as traditional IF voters; they did so well because, having far fewer games to choose from, they were much more focused. (To put it another way: even in the second round, trad-IF voters need to outnumber ChoiceScript voters nearly three to one in order to win a four-choice category with one ChoiceScript nomination.)
[/quote]
This is a good hint that CYOA needs to be separated. Its audience is familiar with CYOA books. There's no reason why they should care about something that comes from Zork. They might have never played even a single text adventure in their life. They vote for CYOA works because that's what interests them and ignore the boring, hopelessly outdated stuff that no one bothers with these days.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4352&start=0#p31496
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Trying to learn about conversations.
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2012-02-13 08:35:46

I have been reading Jim Aikin's excelent Inform 7 Handbook with much sucess. Now, taking from page 162 I have coded:

[quote]Quizzing it about is an action applying to one thing and one visible thing. Understand "ask [someone] about [any thing]" and "quiz [someone] about [any thing]" as quizzing it about.

Informing it about is an action applying to one thing and one visible thing. Understand "tell [someone] about [sny thing]" and "inform [someone] about [any thing] as informing it about.[/quote]
The compiler returns the following:

[quote]Problem. You wrote 'Quizzing it about is an action applying to one thing and one visible thing'  : but that seems to be an action already existing, so it cannot be redefined now. If you would like to reconfigure an action in the standard set - for instance if you prefer 'unlocking' to apply to only one thing, not two - create a new action for what you need ('keyless unlocking', perhaps) and then change the grammar to use the new action rather than the old ('Understand "unlock [something]" as keyless unlocking.').

 See the manual: 12.7 > New actions



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem. You wrote 'Informing it about is an action applying to one thing and one visible thing'  : again, that seems to be an action already existing.[/quote]

Does anybody have an idea what is going on? I have searched my text for duplicate statements but can not find any.

Greg

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=20#p31497
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-02-13 09:02:21

[quote="Dannii"]Zarf has already said here that the differing input mechanisms are of fundamental difference, and I agree.[/quote]
I don't think that's exactly what he said. But in any case, I think the presence of a world model is far more fundamental than whether commands are typed or not. Without a world model, there is nothing for a parser to parse[i] to[/i]. If you're going to have typed input in a game without a world model, it needs to correspond to something other than objects in the world: numbered choices in a menu-based game, for example, or maybe some kind of keyword matching where typed input is used to select from a finite number of possible input strings.

[quote="Dannii"]I think it was also Zarf who once said before that a further substantial difference is that "CYOA" generally makes explicit what your options/potential interactions can be, where as "IF" generally doesn't. This difference largely flows from the different input mechanisms,  but also drives the choice of one over the other.[/quote]
This is an interface consideration, but not one of input per se. There's no necessary reason that a world-model IF can't make all of the meaningful moves explicit (see A Colder Light, which does just that). You could also conceal inputs in a CYOA, though that would probably just make for pixel-hunting...some people enjoy pixel hunting... 

Of course it's the case that these things are true of[i] most[/i] parser IF and [i]most[/i] CYOA-style games, but I don't want to see us try to use these to define the essence of one category or the other. In fact, I'm most interested in seeing those categories break down, which is why I choose to emphasize the contingency of the configurations we see today.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4352&start=0#p31498
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trying to learn about conversations.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-13 09:16:31

Are you using any of Eric Eve's conversation extensions? Those actions are already defined there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=30#p31499
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-13 09:21:25

[quote="RealNC"]CYOA is alien to all of this. To me it feels like it arrived here overnight and is now trying to convince me it's part of the text adventure tradition. I don't like that, because it's not.[/quote]

LoTech Comp was 11 years ago. CYOA may be an alien tradition, but it's hardly one that arrived in IF yesterday.

It may also be worth noting that the term "Interactive Fiction" itself appears to have been invented by a guy whose [url=http://www.filfre.net/2011/09/robert-lafores-interactive-fiction/]work[/url] included stuff that had much more of a choice-node structure than an Adventure-style world-model structure, though from that I can't quite tell whether His Majesty's Ship Impetuous tried to use a free-form keyword parser or just presented you with Yes/No choices.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1649&start=0#p31500
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What ever happened to Threaded Conversation by Emily Sho
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-13 09:22:15

Looks like you've got a good chance of beating me to the punch for the next new conversation extension. At this point I don't plan to release Speech Motivations until after my WIP is finished, which most likely won't be before this year's IFComp.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4352&start=0#p31501
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trying to learn about conversations.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-13 09:24:42

Are you including any extensions?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4352&start=0#p31502
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trying to learn about conversations.
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2012-02-13 09:28:22

As usual, you guys have the answer.

Greg

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4343&start=0#p31503
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Six in a 2011 Top Ten
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2012-02-13 09:34:06

Thanks Matt. Yes, Doug sent me a supportive message during IFComp. So while he's someone who was already interested in IFComp games, I agreed with him in chatting that it would be good for the health of IF games if IF gamers+authors got more into vaunting their new wares in indie games circles. Of course all IF games are already 'indie', using indie to describe the huge scene of individuals and small teams making all kinds of games outside major studios these days, but they're mostly invisible to the rest of that scene. When there's a new game, I see a post here, and maybe on IFDB and that's about it, outside of a competition having its own website. So as I always say, I encourage folks to put their finished IF games in front of more people.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=100#p31504
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-13 09:35:47

[quote="dfabulich"]There are three parts to the problem, each of which can be addressed separately:

1) There were so many ChoiceScript players that they could control the popular vote.
2) They voted for ChoiceScript games exclusively.
3) They didn't even play the parser games.[/quote]

Dan, for me the problem is #3. Not so much in the xyzzys, but in the general ChoiceScript-IF rapprochement. If ChoiceScript players aren't going to start exploring parser games, what are parser fans getting out of this rapprochement? I sometimes feel as though you're trying to convert us to your community rather than bring the communities together. 

And, you know, you are very enthusiastic about the idea of ChoiceScript games and you do this for a living. I wouldn't say you should spend a lot of time trying to get your community members to play Taco Fiction if it doesn't do anything for you and your business. But if the model is going to be that ChoiceScript players don't move to playing parser IF, but parser players play ChoiceScript sometimes, then maybe the communities are separate with occasional tourism between them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=30#p31505
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-13 09:37:35

[quote="matt w"]It may also be worth noting that the term "Interactive Fiction" itself appears to have been invented by a guy whose [url=http://www.filfre.net/2011/09/robert-lafores-interactive-fiction/]work[/url] included stuff that had much more of a choice-node structure than an Adventure-style world-model structure, though from that I can't quite tell whether His Majesty's Ship Impetuous tried to use a free-form keyword parser or just presented you with Yes/No choices.[/quote]
This makes me think.
I'm close-minded, and this is also noted somewhere else, so take what I say from where it comes from...

To me, IF is Infocom style adventure games. They can be more or less puzzled, or even puzzle-less. But they ARE Infocom style. 
Not even Scott Adams-likes are IF, to me. A game that states "You are in a forest. You see: trees, Zarf. Exits: west." is not IF to me. It's a game, yes, but no IF. Taking a *Gem and dropping it into a room for the last line of text saying "Congratulations. Play again? Y/N" doesn't feel a lot like fiction. 

I can't take that a game that just lets you READ and, sometimes, press the "next" button or something like that is IF. It's fiction, yes, but no IF.

But I'm too close-minded.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=30#p31506
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-13 10:12:54

That said, I don't think that the question of who coined the term "interactive fiction" should really have much bearing on how we use it today. If we were to discover that before computers, someone used "interactive fiction" to describe pop-up books, we wouldn't start letting pop-up books in the xyzzys.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=30#p31507
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-13 10:43:08

[quote="Bainespal"]I think it's best to have separate terms for all categories, ultimately.[/quote]

Well, we [i]do,[/i] of course.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=30#p31508
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-13 10:46:21

[quote="matt w"]That said, I don't think that the question of who coined the term "interactive fiction" should really have much bearing on how we use it today.[/quote]

... Which puts me in mind of the nearly identical discussions we have in the Pen-and-Paper-RPG world of which types of games are, and are not, RPGs [emote]:)[/emote] (I have a section in my FAQ for my take) But just the fact that I have to specify "Pen-and-Paper-RPG" when in my mind it's simply "RPG" speaks to the change the term experienced once computer-game publishers decided to use the term for (a basically unrelated) game form.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=20#p31509
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-13 10:48:38

[quote="RealNC"]It's part of the "magic" though. It's fun trying to examine everything and interact with it in a multitude of ways. It enhances the feeling of being there, in a world that really exists. It's probably the main reason why sandbox games are so popular. I'm not really interested in a text game that lacks that element.

It's more work, yes. But more work means a better result.[/quote]
I tend to agree with this view. The nice thing about TADS (not to derail this thread, but ...) is that it implements a lot of classes with useful default "you can't do that" messages. For instance:

[quote]> push block
The stone blocks are too heavy.[/quote]

I didn't have to do anything to create that message except declare the stoneBlocks object as being of the Heavy class.

This is not a huge increase in realism or immersion, but it [i]is [/i]an increase. And probably not achievable within the confines of the new UI.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=100#p31510
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: tdarcos / DateTime: 2012-02-13 10:53:16

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="dfabulich"]Is it bad form to blog about the XYZZY awards like that? I understood XYZZY to be a contest where campaigning for votes was totally acceptable.[/quote]I have no doubt it's 100% ethical and unimpeachably correct. Like so many things.[/quote]Just remember the standard rules from Chicago: [i]Vote early, vote often![/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=20#p31511
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: joningold / DateTime: 2012-02-13 10:54:32

[quote="Jim Aikin"][quote="RealNC"]It's part of the "magic" though. It's fun trying to examine everything and interact with it in a multitude of ways. It enhances the feeling of being there, in a world that really exists. It's probably the main reason why sandbox games are so popular. I'm not really interested in a text game that lacks that element.

It's more work, yes. But more work means a better result.[/quote]
I tend to agree with this view. The nice thing about TADS (not to derail this thread, but ...) is that it implements a lot of classes with useful default "you can't do that" messages. For instance:

[quote]> push block
The stone blocks are too heavy.[/quote]

I didn't have to do anything to create that message except declare the stoneBlocks object as being of the Heavy class.

This is not a huge increase in realism or immersion, but it [i]is [/i]an increase. And probably not achievable within the confines of the new UI.[/quote]

I've watched too many people try - with all the will in the world - and fail to get anywhere in a text game, to not think this immersion is weighed against a shredding of your potential audience.

And to re-rail the thread a touch: I like to think the UI of Colder Light actually *does* support this kind of sandboxing. At least, a damn good solid chunk of it; enough to be satisfying.

jon

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=100#p31512
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: tdarcos / DateTime: 2012-02-13 10:57:14

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Especially a parser as old as the one I just translated.  I could [i]feel[/i] in which decade different parts were written in.  Software doesn't age like wine. Quite the opposite. 

I think we've stagnated a bit on our expectations for parsers.[/quote]
[color=purple]Marcellis Wallace[/color]:  Thing is Butch, right now you got ability. But painful as it may be, ability don't last.  Now that's a hard [EXPLETIVE DELETED] fact of life, but it's a fact of life your ass is gonna hafta git realistic about. This business is filled to the brim with unrealistic [EXPLETIVE DELETED] who thought their ass aged like wine.
- Pulp Fiction

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=30#p31513
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-13 11:01:47

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="matt w"]That said, I don't think that the question of who coined the term "interactive fiction" should really have much bearing on how we use it today.[/quote]

... Which puts me in mind of the nearly identical discussions we have in the Pen-and-Paper-RPG world of which types of games are, and are not, RPGs [emote]:)[/emote] (I have a section in my FAQ for my take) But just the fact that I have to specify "Pen-and-Paper-RPG" when in my mind it's simply "RPG" speaks to the change the term experienced once computer-game publishers decided to use the term for (a basically unrelated) game form.[/quote]

This is even more different, though, because basically no one followed up Lafore's way of designing (as far as I can tell from Jimmy Maher's blog). The term "interactive fiction" got co-opted right away. 

I might also give you some guff about whether computer RPGs are unrelated to tabletop RPGs, by pointing to the line from D&D to the earliest cRPGs and then on to the present day. But you know a lot more than I do about both genres, so that would be a silly thing for me to do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=30#p31514
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-02-13 11:16:33

Just to add another phrase in here: in [i]Cybertext[/i] (isbn: 978-0801855795), Espen Aarseth uses "ergodic literature" as a very broad term that covers both IF and CYOA, as well as hypertext, but also other types of, well, ergodic literature, such as the I Ching and some works of the Oulipo, such as Raymond Quenau's [i]Cent Mille Millard de Poèmes[/i].

I'm not saying it's something we need, but at least it's a phrase that does include both things, and more.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=20#p31515
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-13 11:17:51

[quote="joningold"]I've watched too many people try - with all the will in the world - and fail to get anywhere in a text game, to not think this immersion is weighed against a shredding of your potential audience.[/quote]
I think you're asking the wrong audience then. I don't think the people who read intfiction.org have problems getting anywhere in a text game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=30#p31516
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-13 11:19:48

[quote="matt w"]I might also give you some guff about whether computer RPGs are unrelated to tabletop RPGs, by pointing to the line from D&D to the earliest cRPGs and then on to the present day. But you know a lot more than I do about both genres, so that would be a silly thing for me to do.[/quote]

Yes, it would be. And I didn't mean that [i]kind [/i]of relation. [emote]:)[/emote]

Edit: Thanks for the reminder, though! I spotted a small but annoying error in my FAQ and have corrected it. Whoopsie ...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=110#p31517
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-02-13 11:38:19

[quote="Jamespking"]like the idea of them being those who won the Xyzzyes in the past.[/quote]
I like this idea because it means I get to vote  [emote];)[/emote] , but I don't like it because it more or less obligates me to vote, and then (by my own morals) I'd have to play all the nominated games, and I just don't have the time and stomach for that.

I also like it because it gives the XYZZYs more year-to-year continuity, and helps winning to actually mean something, making the award into a reward.  But then back to the other hand, I don't think the "the Old Ones run the community like a shadowy cabal" crowd needs any more fuel for their imaginations.

 [quote]And you can add the IFComp winners.[/quote]
I like this less, because I think the relative independence of the IFComp from the XYZZYs is good for the community.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=30#p31518
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2012-02-13 11:49:28

I completely agree with matt w that "interactive fiction" is a collection of family resemblances, which entails that we're not going to reach a bright-line consensus definition of "interactive fiction."

I think RealNC is raising a more important point, however. Many in the community see it as our task to defend and promote interactive fiction, not because it's [i]called[/i] interactive fiction, but because there are some important works that society and industry may overlook.

And so I think the questions we should be raising are like these:

* When we defend and promote IF, should we defend and promote multiple-choice games?
* Should we defend and promote parser games, if multiple-choice games turn out to be more popular and accessible?
* Should we defend and promote graphical games with a parser? Or should we conserve our resources in defense of text?
* Should we defend and promote puzzle-story games over IF that lacks puzzles? What about puzzle-story games with graphics? (What if they have animation?)

So, RealNC, I don't think it matters whether ChoiceScript games are "interactive fiction." I think it matters whether we should be defending and promoting them, or whether we should conserve our resources for the defense of text adventures.

For me personally, I care a lot about text-based story games; that's what I want to defend and promote. As a result, I'll happily sacrifice puzzles and parsers to bring text-based story games back into the limelight. In my opinion, what I'm promoting is "interactive fiction," though that's the least important of my opinions.

I'm not pushing multiple-choice games just for their own sake; I'm pushing them on behalf of text-based story games. For example, if point-and-click text adventures like "A Colder Light" are the best way to share text-based story games with the world, I'll jump on that bandwagon in a heartbeat. (For now, I still think multiple choice is a better tactic, but I could change my mind about that in the face of countervailing evidence.)

Having said that, I think RealNC is right that if more people agreed with me, there might be even fewer puzzle-parser-text-based-story games written in the future.

If the result was many more puzzleless-parserless-text-based-story games, if we got more games but fewer text adventures, would that be victory or defeat?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=20#p31519
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2012-02-13 11:58:09

[quote="ektemple"]Moving sidewise a bit: I've had a couple folks find my blog by searching for "Colder Light tutorial" or "Colder Light hints"--so it may be that the interface isn't clear to those who don't already know the basic expectations of parser IF? I wonder if the ChoiceScript community--much in our thoughts lately--would be interesting in having a look.[/quote]

I've shared it with a few people; I don't have much to add, beyond comments I'd made in your (Jon's and Erik's) blogs.

FWIW, I've had great success with "Starbucks usability testing." Go to Starbucks around lunch time and offer to buy someone free coffee in exchange for 15 minutes play testing. Do this no more than five times and you'll immediately see stuff you'd want to fix.

Avoid talking too much; when someone asks questions ("how do I?") just ask them to guess.

I've done this with traditional IF; the results are utterly catastrophic. I think it'd be worth trying this with A Colder Light.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=30#p31520
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-13 12:07:33

[quote="dfabulich"]If the result was many more puzzleless-parserless-text-based-story games, if we got more games but fewer text adventures, would that be victory or defeat?[/quote]

For me, defeat. Choice-based games or whatever they're called are fine, and I'm interested in what people can do with them, but it would make me sad if the parser games died out. Even if they died out because CBNs turned out to be more popular and accessible and all the parser IF fans converted.

I said this on the other thread, but it often seems as though you're proselytizing the parser IF crowd to convert to CBNs, and you're not interested in helping to create a new audience for parser games. Which is your prerogative. But it makes me uneasy, too. To use an analogy, interfaith fellowships are great, but Jews for Jesus tend not to get invited back to the synagogue.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=40#p31521
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-13 12:23:26

[quote="dfabulich"]
If the result was many more puzzleless-parserless-text-based-story games, if we got more games but fewer text adventures, would that be victory or defeat?[/quote]
I think the fact that parser-IF has always been harder to write and play then CYOA, yet the folks here still mostly choose to primarily write, play and identify with parser-IF, answers that question.

(Speaking purely for myself, I'm totally uninterested in [i]more[/i] games unless that means [i]better[/i] games; there is not necessarily a positive correlation.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=20#p31522
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: joningold / DateTime: 2012-02-13 12:36:11

[quote="dfabulich"][quote="ektemple"]Moving sidewise a bit: I've had a couple folks find my blog by searching for "Colder Light tutorial" or "Colder Light hints"--so it may be that the interface isn't clear to those who don't already know the basic expectations of parser IF? I wonder if the ChoiceScript community--much in our thoughts lately--would be interesting in having a look.[/quote]

I've shared it with a few people; I don't have much to add, beyond comments I'd made in your (Jon's and Erik's) blogs.

FWIW, I've had great success with "Starbucks usability testing." Go to Starbucks around lunch time and offer to buy someone free coffee in exchange for 15 minutes play testing. Do this no more than five times and you'll immediately see stuff you'd want to fix.[/quote]

Genius! That's a great way of getting cheap user testing, I like it! -- though, as a Brit, I'm going to find it a *lot* harder to do..! (and not because we don't have plenty of Starbuckses.)

cheers
jon

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=40#p31523
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-02-13 12:41:28

[quote="Bainespal"]How would the IF community react if a MUD were to be nominated in the XYZZY Awards?  [emote];)[/emote][/quote]

Well, based on the evidence in the other thread, I'd say the reaction would be positive if 1) it was a MUD "we" had ever heard of before, and 2) it was a MUD that was "good" based on the parser-IF communities cultivated criteria (which might include, for example: doesn't have needless mazes, supports a lot of synonyms, doesn't gratuitously rehash tired setting/character tropes).  Which could have very little to do with the goodness of the MUD judged by the criteria of its creator and target audience.

Isn't Guncho basically a MUD system for Inform?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=40#p31524
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: emshort / DateTime: 2012-02-13 12:42:46

[quote="dfabulich"]If the result was many more puzzleless-parserless-text-based-story games, if we got more games but fewer text adventures, would that be victory or defeat?[/quote]

Why does this have to be a zero-sum system? This kind of phrasing sets up a competitive relationship between the communities, where everyone has something to prove; and I'm not interested in playing [i]that[/i] game. 

I like both CYOA and parser IF, and I'm interested in seeing each game be as accessible as it can be given its design constraints. But there are times when the richly present, textured world and slow emotional build of parser IF are necessary for a game's aesthetic goals. 

I've tried and failed to emulate the effect I have in mind in ChoiceScript, nor have I ever seen anyone else accomplish it. That may not mean it absolutely can't be done, but does suggest that traditional parser IF tools (or at least those built around a complex world model) are a better fit for rich-setting, slow-discovery storytelling.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4353&start=0#p31525
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Blanking out Random Table Rows
User: gamedesigner / DateTime: 2012-02-13 12:50:31

Do you need to  specify a specific row in order to blank out the whole row?
or can you choose a random row and then blank it out.
It appears that random rows are not being blanked out when access a row as random.

the Manual is really not too clear on this.

pseudo code below:

choose a random row in the Table of Artifacts
Let A  be the type entry
Let B be the  location entry
blank out the whole row;
[some code here]
say "[the noun] known as [A] is in [B].".

Table of Artifacts
type                          location
mason jar                 mummy tomb
coffin                        deeper in the pyramid    

if mason jar is chosen it will be chosen agin later when I don't
want it to be.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=40#p31526
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-13 13:02:21

[quote="dfabulich"]I don't think it matters whether ChoiceScript games are "interactive fiction." I think it matters whether we should be defending and promoting them, or whether we should conserve our resources for the defense of text adventures.[/quote]

Hm. For the [i]most [/i]part, I'm really only interested in promoting individual [i]works[/i] which rock my world on a personal level. There are works in every medium I'm fond of, and there's no medium (not even my beloved pen-and-paper RPG) which has [i]any inherent quality.[/i] Everything begins with (literally or metaphorically) the same, neutral, valueless blank page. There are a few formats I do enjoy in particular (IF certainly includes a few of them), but beyond a "hey, try this out if you haven't" to someone once every ... three or four years, maybe? That's about as much enthusiasm as I can muster for a medium.

Defending is a whole 'nother ballgame. I only feel the need to defend a thing if I feel someone is maliciously (or at least noisily) mischaracterizing it. And then, it's often a case of someone conflating the properties of a work with the properties of its medium [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4353&start=0#p31527
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Blanking out Random Table Rows
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-13 13:12:02

That should work. This works, for instance:

[code]Pyramid is a room. The Book of Lies, the jar, and the ankh are in the Pyramid.

Instead of examining the Book of Lies:
	unless the Table of Random Things is empty:
		choose a random row in the Table of Random things;
		say "You read 'The [artifact entry] is [location entry].' Then the page vanishes!";
		blank out the whole row;
	otherwise:
		say "The book is entirely blank."
	
Table of Random Things
artifact	location
jar	"in the tomb"
ankh	"deeper in the pyramid"

Test me with "x book/g/g".[/code]

Can you post more specific code? There's at least one bug with blanking out items, but it depends on what kind of value you're blanking out.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=40#p31528
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-02-13 13:43:27

[quote="emshort"]I like both CYOA and parser IF, and I'm interested in seeing each game be as accessible as it can be given its design constraints. But there are times when the richly present, textured world and slow emotional build of parser IF are necessary for a game's aesthetic goals.[/quote]

Yes! I believe strongly in "the right tool for the job."  To me, one of the highest goals a work can strive for is to be perfectly matched to its chosen medium.  [i]The Gostak[/i] would simply not have worked as anything other than parser-IF, and [i]The Matter of the Monster[/i] needed to be choice-based. ([i]Braid[/i] needed to be a platformer.  [i]Exit Through the Gift Shop[/i] gains much of its strength from the documentary form.  [i]Watchmen[/i] needed to be a graphic novel with a very specific aesthetic. Etc.)  

As such, I'm thrilled that ChoiceScript exists (along with Undum and Twine) and is apparently quite popular, because more people working in choice-based narrative means more progress towards really capitalizing on the medium's strengths.  Having more options means that any given author is more empowered to pick the perfect form for their games.  I really don't think there's anyone who's thinking "oh, I have this great idea for a puzzle game but this new system has a shinier website so I'll just cram my ideas into a different format," but I'm sure there [i]are[/i] people thinking "I have this great idea for a game that looks exactly like [whatever]... now how can I make it real?"  In fact, we get that question around the forum all the time.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=20#p31529
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2012-02-13 13:49:03

[quote="joningold"]Genius! That's a great way of getting cheap user testing, I like it! -- though, as a Brit, I'm going to find it a *lot* harder to do..! (and not because we don't have plenty of Starbuckses.)[/quote]

I'm sure you could buy them a cup of tea, instead. [emote];-)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4353&start=0#p31530
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Blanking out Random Table Rows
User: gamedesigner / DateTime: 2012-02-13 13:52:15

Here's my latest sample code:

I  have not checkdd to see if the person has left and THERE IS A BUG
bug when all the rows have NOW been evidently blanked.

there is a man called the thief.
the thief is either arrested or at large.
the thief is at large. 

Shopping Mall is a region.
Candy Store, Movie House, and Restaurant are in Shopping Mall.

Candy Store is a room.

a woman called the candy seller is in Candy Store.

Movie House is east of Candy Store.
a man called the ticket taker is in Movie House.

Restaurant is west of Candy Store.

a man called the chef is in Restaurant.

arresting is an action applying to one thing.
understand "arrest [someone]" as arresting. 

after arresting the thief:
	now the thief is arrested;
	say "You arrest the thief.".

before  telling someone in Shopping Mall about "thief":
	if the Thief is arrested:
		say "The thief has been arrested." instead.

instead of telling someone in Shopping Mall about "thief":
	say "There's a man with a gun running around the Mall. Have you seen him?";
	choose a random row in the Table of Mall Locations;
	let P be the place entry;
	Let V be the venue entry;
	blank out the whole row;
	say "[The noun] says: 'I heard that he was spotted [P].  Your next move is to head on over there to check out the report. The [noun] leaves [the holder of the noun] and will come back when the thief is caught.";
	remove the noun from play;
	if a random chance of 1 in 10 succeeds:
		now the Thief is in V;
	otherwise:
		remove the thief from play;

Table of Mall Locations
place		venue
"in the Candy store"		Candy Store
"in front of the Movie House"		Movie House
"inside the Restaurant"		Restaurant


test me with "tell seller about thief/east /tell taker about thief/w/w/tell chef about thief/
east/ tell seller about thief".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4353&start=0#p31531
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Blanking out Random Table Rows
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-13 14:14:30

That seems to work fine for me. The issue with the bug is that you can't "choose a random row" if all the rows in the table have been blanked out. Before you choose a row you should check to see if the table is empty -- take a look at my code to see how that works.

Also, when you post code on here you should enclose it in "code" tags -- after you paste it in, highlight it and click on the "code" button at the top of the window.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4353&start=0#p31532
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Blanking out Random Table Rows
User: gamedesigner / DateTime: 2012-02-13 14:17:54

[quote="matt w"]That seems to work fine for me. The issue with the bug is that you can't "choose a random row" if all the rows in the table have been blanked out. Before you choose a row you should check to see if the table is empty -- take a look at my code to see how that works.

Also, when you post code on here you should enclose it in "code" tags -- after you paste it in, highlight it and click on the "code" button at the top of the window.[/quote]

OK in the future if I post anything I'll use the code tags.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=40#p31533
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: The Xenographer / DateTime: 2012-02-13 14:55:16

This is a group of people who create and play [i]text adventures[/i]. If accessibility and popularity were our primary concerns, would we even be here?

Okay, I'm being flippant, but I do think that there is something about the parser game format specifically that appeals to many of us here, and while many members of the community are working hard to maximize accessibility [i]within that format[/i] (many examples of this have been mentioned in this thread and/or the other one, including A Colder Light, Walker & Silhouette, and Blue Lacuna), I think few of us want to entirely chuck it over in favor of a "more popular and accessible" format, because if we were going to do that? We would have done it a long time ago.

I like both parser-based IF and choice-based IF, myself, and am perfectly happy to have them both under the umbrella of IF. (And while I haven't played any of the "unofficial" Choicescript games, I really enjoyed all of the "official" ones, especially Broadsides and, uh, Romance. [size=85]... Don't look at me like that.[/size]) But they [i]are[/i] slightly different formats that are suited to doing different kinds of things and telling different kinds of stories. Just as the sprawling, heavily branching stories of the Choice of Games probably wouldn't work at all in the granular parser-based format, the majority of parser-based IF stories wouldn't be best served by the choice-based format. Choice-based doesn't work that well, I think, for anything that doesn't have at least [i]some[/i] degree of branching, for instance, which many of my favorite works of IF don't. And while I do enjoy the kinds of interactive fiction that you can play over and over again trying different things and getting different outcomes, I don't think that's the [i]only[/i] kind of story worth telling in an interactive fashion, and I, personally, would be sad if it became the only kind of interactive story being told. Not because I think it's inferior, but because I enjoy the variety that we have now.

(edit: And while I was typing that up, much of my second paragraph was covered by tove in a clearer and more concise fashion... oh well.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4354&start=0#p31534
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Main Game code problems - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-02-13 15:00:23

I received part of this code from bcressey some time back. Now that I''ve restarted coding my story,
I can't figure out how to get this to work. I get many errors in the section that actually holds the original 'intro' text. I must be fitting something in wrong. Where does the 'intro' text actually fit into all this? Help!

RonG

[code]
gameMain: GameMainDef
/* the initial (and only) player character is 'me' */
   initialPlayerChar = me

scoreRankTable=
[  
 [0, 'a rank beginner'],
 [100, 'a novice explorer'],
 [200, 'an advancing spelunker'],
 [400, 'an anxious learner'],
 [600, 'an apprentice adventurer'],
 [800, 'an experienced searcher'],
 [1000, 'an unquestioned expert']
]
maxScore=1500
crueltyLevel=5 
 
/* show our introduction */
showIntro() {
statuslineBanner.removeBanner(); 
cls(); 
showText();  
"First line of text.<p>"; 
"<i>Press any key to continue.<i>";
inputManager.getKey(nil,nil);
cls();  
showText();  
"Second line if text.<p>";
statusLine.initBannerWindow(statusLineBanner); 
inherited(); 
}
showText(){ 
"Behold, a work of interactive fiction! ";
}
; 
  
{
    /* show the prologue */
    "\b This is the actual introductory text. Where does it fit in all 
        this?\b";

        /* show the game title */
        "<b>The Magic Forest</b>\n
        by Ronald J.\ Gaudet\n
        Release <<versionInfo.version>> (<<versionInfo.serialNum>>)
        \b";
}

    /* show our "goodbye" message */
    showGoodbye()
    {
        "<.p>Thanks for playing <i>The Magic Forest</i>!\b";
    }
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4349&start=0#p31535
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Generic People Words
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-13 15:09:46

I just now got around to trying this code, and it doesn't seem to work. I tried it several different ways, including putting it (with a suitable reversal of self and nil as the return value) in BOTH of the topics.

My conclusion is that breakTopicTie is not being called at all because the parser has already decided that it's more likely you're asking the NPC about himself.

The solution, once I researched it, turns out to be easier -- giving the NPC's TopicEntry for himself a matchScore of 75. This causes that topic to be less preferred when there's a choice.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=40#p31536
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-13 15:18:37

[quote]And so I think the questions we should be raising are like these:

* When we defend and promote IF, should we defend and promote multiple-choice games?[/quote]

When you use "we" like that, you are (at best) sidestepping all the thorniness of the issue.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=20#p31537
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: gravel / DateTime: 2012-02-13 15:20:24

I find it a bit awkward; moving the mouse back and forth between the bottom of the screen and the keywords feels a little clumsy?  I think it's because I touch-type, so I don't have to break focus from the story to focus on interface when typing, but I do frequently for this.  I couldn't get into the flow at all.  It could be a matter of practice, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=110#p31538
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-13 15:20:27

[quote]My proposed solution is to end public voting in the XYZZY awards, allowing only a pre-selected panel of judges to rate the games.[/quote]

I counterpropose that the panel be composed of everybody who has posted at least three times to this forum.

EDIT-ADD (a few minutes later):

That wasn't as rhetorically clear as it could have been. 

What I am getting at is: switching over to a juried award -- quite aside from being a huge change, with all sorts of implications beyond the what-kind-of-games-are-we-playing issue -- would *not* address this problem at all. It would just shove it back a stage. By agreeing on a set of judges, we would de facto be deciding what kind of games should be "allowed in". If that's the plan, do it up front.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4354&start=0#p31539
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Main Game code problems - TADS3.1
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-13 15:27:21

The semicolon about halfway through your code listing is terminating the gameMain block. The code after that doesn't belong to a function or object so the compiler will complain.

Your "show the prologue" code chunk is missing a method name and it's not clear what it should be. showText(), maybe?

The showGoodbye() block has turned into a function (because it's outside an object definition). That's probably not what you want since it will never be called. Also the compiler will complain because you've redefined an existing method name (gameMain.showGoodbye) as a function (showGoodbye). 

You should really pay more attention to formatting. What you've posted seems to be randomly indented which makes it almost unreadable. If you're getting code from multiple sources, it can be a pain to reformat it into your preferred style, but it's worth doing.

In this case a few tabs would at least show us where you thought the object definition should start and end.

[code]
/*******************************************************************/
/* the line below tells us what you are trying to define or modify */
gameMain: gameMainDef
    // every property indented four spaces from left margin
    scoreRankTable = ...
    maxScore = ...
    crueltyLevel = ...

    // method names indented four spaces, method body indented eight
    showIntro() {
        ...
    }

    showText() {
        ...
    }
; 
/* the semicolon above marks the end of the object */
/***************************************************/

/* some random stuff that doesn't belong here and generates a compiler error */
{
    /* show the prologue */
    ...
}

/*
    a method name outside of an object definition is a function... 
    ... but you can't have a function with the same name as an existing method
*/
showGoodbye() {
    ...
}
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=110#p31540
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-13 15:31:01

[quote="zarf"][quote]My proposed solution is to end public voting in the XYZZY awards, allowing only a pre-selected panel of judges to rate the games.[/quote]

I counterpropose that the panel be composed of everybody who has posted at least three times to this forum.[/quote]
If we were going to take this route (and it's not my preferred one, at the moment) I would definitely want a very broad qualification, rather than a very narrow one.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=40#p31541
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-13 15:34:22

[quote="The Xenographer"]This is a group of people who create and play [i]text adventures[/i].[/quote]

Among other things, but yes.

[quote]I like both parser-based IF and choice-based IF, myself, and am perfectly happy to have them both under the umbrella of IF.[/quote]

Yes.

[quote]But they [i]are[/i] slightly different formats that are suited to doing different kinds of things and telling different kinds of stories. [/quote]

Yes.

[quote](edit: And while I was typing that up, much of my second paragraph was covered by tove in a clearer and more concise fashion... oh well.)[/quote]

Yes. But if it helps, your version inspired me to say "yes" more. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4354&start=0#p31542
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Main Game code problems - TADS3.1
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-13 15:34:49

Ron, I don't know if you've ever worked with Inform 7. Perhaps so ... because you're trying to drop chunks of code just anywhere, without putting them in objects. T3 is extremely object-oriented. Your brackets around the show-the-prologue code can't do anything, because you haven't created an object there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4349&start=0#p31543
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Generic People Words
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-13 15:40:31

That will work up until the player knows about the old man, at which point the topic for the old man will unlock. Then [i]>ask leo about man[/i] will always refer to the old man, even if he is not in scope.

That's probably fine but I thought you were after something else.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=40#p31544
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-13 15:42:39

[quote="zarf"][quote="dfabulich"]And so I think the questions we should be raising are like these:

* When we defend and promote IF, should we defend and promote multiple-choice games?[/quote]

When you use "we" like that, you are (at best) sidestepping all the thorniness of the issue.[/quote]
Right.

Dan, you've just been instrumental, however unwittingly, in a rather messy faux pas. Most people here are friendly towards CYOA, and people are generally willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, but you are not really helping them do so. Trying to use this as an opportunity to promote your particular concerns, and trying to be the one who frames the conversation, is not earning you any friends.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4349&start=0#p31545
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Generic People Words
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-13 15:47:27

[quote="bcressey"]That will work up until the player knows about the old man, at which point the topic for the old man will unlock. Then [i]>ask leo about man[/i] will always refer to the old man, even if he is not in scope.

That's probably fine but I thought you were after something else.[/quote]
No, that's what I wanted. Sorry for the confusion.

It doesn't really matter that the NPC always thinks 'man' refers to the old man, because no player is going to type 'ask leo about man' or 'ask man about himself' referring to Leo. Leo is a friend of the PC's, so that would be a very unnatural way to phrase it. In that context, 'man' can always unambiguously refer to the old man without any confusion arising.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=110#p31546
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2012-02-13 16:01:30

Why not just appoint me as the sole judge as the awards? I promise to be totally impartial, just and unbiased. If my game wins every category, even the ones it's not nominated in, even the ones it's not eligible for, that's not down to voter bias but simply the fact that it was better than anyone else's game. Period.

If anyone would like to discuss this, and get my contact details for the sending of cheques/bribes/large sums of money to guarantee their game gets a fair consideration, PM me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=40#p31547
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2012-02-13 16:13:11

This issue is complicated, and I'm sorry to have offended people.

I didn't mean to suggest that text adventures and multiple-choice games are in a zero-sum game, or that one thrives at the expense of the other; I can see (after some of these posts) how I chose my words poorly. My point was just that the semantics of "interactive fiction" don't matter as much as what we do: what we write, what we play, what we encourage others to play.

(I must admit that I actually don't understand zarf's comment at all, except insofar as I agree that the issue is thorny.)

In the interest of calming some of the waters, I'd just like to say that, in addition to wearing my Choice of Games hat, I also help organize the SF Bay Area IF Meetup; there, we play a lot of text adventures, and I'm happy to promote them. We can and do all get along.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4349&start=0#p31548
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: Generic People Words
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-13 16:15:25

That makes more sense than what I implemented.  [emote]:)[/emote] 

It wasn't a total loss, since I found and fixed a small bug in the new breakTopicTie() method while putting my code together.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=110#p31549
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-13 16:19:00

[quote="zarf"][quote]My proposed solution is to end public voting in the XYZZY awards, allowing only a pre-selected panel of judges to rate the games.[/quote]

I counterpropose that the panel be composed of everybody who has posted at least three times to this forum.

EDIT-ADD (a few minutes later):

That wasn't as rhetorically clear as it could have been. 

What I am getting at is: switching over to a juried award -- quite aside from being a huge change, with all sorts of implications beyond the what-kind-of-games-are-we-playing issue -- would *not* address this problem at all. It would just shove it back a stage. By agreeing on a set of judges, we would de facto be deciding what kind of games should be "allowed in". If that's the plan, do it up front.[/quote]
Yeah, I know that's what it sounds like. But in my case it's just that I don't like popular votes. It is not democracy. It is a mess, the unknowing mess. 

Well, maybe it IS democracy. Which is usually an unknowing mess.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=50#p31550
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-02-13 16:22:39

[quote="The Xenographer"]and, uh, Romance. [size=85]... Don't look at me like that.[/size][/quote]

Hey now.  I [url=http://borderhouseblog.com/?p=5418]heard that[/url] [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2011/06/18/choice-of-romance/]Choice of Romance was really good[/url].  I hope you're not trying to imply that romance is an inherently bad or shameful genre! [/peeved feminist mode] [/total tangent]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=50#p31551
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2012-02-13 16:30:10

Also, in the interest of pulling another toe out of my mouth, I'd like to add that I'm well familiar with the newbie who wanders onto this forum (or raif) and suggests "hey everybody, have you considered not doing interactive fiction?"

As if we hadn't thought of that; as if the newbie hadn't considered that someone [i]had[/i] considered the question.

I can see how my remarks may have sounded like: "hey guys, since multiple-choice games are better than text adventures, don't you all think you should quit writing text adventures?" I want to clarify that this is NOT my view.

I personally happen to prefer multiple-choice games, but that's out of a super abundance of love for multiple-choice games. I still enjoy and promote good text adventures. IMO, all programmers enjoy a good puzzle every once in a while.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=50#p31552
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: The Xenographer / DateTime: 2012-02-13 17:19:52

[quote="tove"][quote="The Xenographer"]and, uh, Romance. [size=85]... Don't look at me like that.[/size][/quote]

Hey now.  I [url=http://borderhouseblog.com/?p=5418]heard that[/url] [url=http://emshort.wordpress.com/2011/06/18/choice-of-romance/]Choice of Romance was really good[/url].  I hope you're not trying to imply that romance is an inherently bad or shameful genre! [/peeved feminist mode] [/total tangent][/quote]

Less "I think this genre is inherently shameful" and more "I know this community skews male somewhat and in male-dominated spaces I am used to being looked at kinda funny for mentioning that I like that sort of thing." No offense meant to romance at all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=40#p31553
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-13 17:43:51

[quote="jacksonmead"]I've gotten some already, and hopefully I'll get more soon. Just FYI, my current plan is to get what I've got out for beta testing after work on Monday, i.e., around 7 or so U.S. Eastern time.[/quote]


Aha! Got it in just under the ... um ... within a tolerable distance of the wire ....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=300#p31554
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: EnterTheStory / DateTime: 2012-02-13 18:39:10

First (frist?) post! 
Name: Chris 
Age: 43
Location: the far north of Scotland

I used to make adventure games, but all along I think my heart was in IF 
My latest adventure game is really not an adventure game at all, it's morphed into CYOA. And I much prefer it that way.

So tonight I'm taking my first baby steps into a new community...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=50#p31555
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2012-02-13 19:00:46

[quote="matt w"]That said, I don't think that the question of who coined the term "interactive fiction" should really have much bearing on how we use it today. If we were to discover that before computers, someone used "interactive fiction" to describe pop-up books, we wouldn't start letting pop-up books in the xyzzys.[/quote]
If we're talking origins, we have to remember that rec.arts.int-fiction was created as a discussion group for hypertext fiction, and only later taken over by text adventure folk.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4355&start=0#p31556
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Just made a new IF development system. Very easy.
User: EnterTheStory / DateTime: 2012-02-13 19:06:48

I'm about to launch a new CYOA site, based on classic novels, with a new chapter every day:

<a class="postlink" href="http://enterthestory.com/test/">http://enterthestory.com/test/</a>

I am the world's slowest programmer, so I made a super-simple, super-easy tool for making the stories. First have a look at the stories to see how it works:
<a class="postlink" href="http://enterthestory.com/test/Dorian.html">http://enterthestory.com/test/Dorian.html</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://enterthestory.com/test/Center.html">http://enterthestory.com/test/Center.html</a>

Then see how they are made:
<a class="postlink" href="http://enterthestory.com/test/Howto.html">http://enterthestory.com/test/Howto.html</a>

If you want to play the whole thing to test it for me that would be great! PM me and I'll give you a password. In the final version the daily story is free and some complete stories will be free, but right now half of each story is password protected.

[b]Key features:[/b]
1. It's mostly classic novels. I want to build this into a hub that attracts all kinds of people.
2. If you make a story I will host it for you (assuming it's legal and not porn). If the site takes off then you have an instant audience. 
3. The code is very, very simple: mostly just a text file with lines like this:
[code]e(1,0,"I see two doors. Which one should I take?", 2,0,"Go left.",  3,0,"Go right.");[/code]
4. It includes art (to attract people) but only needs very simple pictures that almost anybody could draw.
5. It runs instantly online. No plugins, no Flash, no waiting.
6. A scoring system, here you can compare scores and print certificates.
7. The site has a pretty background. Well I think it's pretty anyway. Maybe not so pretty if you don't like books.
8. The site might becomes popular (selling points will be "The Complete Works of Shakespeare," the complete Dickens, etc.) Then you could make some of those stories, charge money, and grow rich. Or not. 

Anyhoo, I saw the description "Just made a new IF development system"and thought I'd post.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=50#p31557
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-02-13 19:16:53

[quote="The Xenographer"]"I know this community skews male somewhat and in male-dominated spaces I am used to being looked at kinda funny for mentioning that I like that sort of thing."[/quote]

Ah, fair.  Then I'll just point out that this community does have a particularly respected reviewer in Emily Short -- to the point where there have been discussions of whether her opinion is [i]too[/i] powerful in influencing Comp scoring -- and she often talks about romance-type games without getting [much?] flak for it.  So you may be safe here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=50#p31558
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-13 19:24:40

[quote="Emerald"][quote="matt w"]That said, I don't think that the question of who coined the term "interactive fiction" should really have much bearing on how we use it today. If we were to discover that before computers, someone used "interactive fiction" to describe pop-up books, we wouldn't start letting pop-up books in the xyzzys.[/quote]
If we're talking origins, we have to remember that rec.arts.int-fiction was created as a discussion group for hypertext fiction, and only later taken over by text adventure folk.[/quote]

The hypertext folk are surely off somewhere even now, grumbling about how they should never have let the text adventure people in.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=300#p31559
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: syaffolee / DateTime: 2012-02-13 19:42:34

Hi everyone.  I'm Sya, a 30-something microbiologist who writes as a hobby.

I discovered Zork about ten years ago and have been playing IF ever since.  I've been interested in the storytelling aspects of the medium but have mostly been intimidated about creating a game because I have no programming experience.  However, I'm now learning Inform 7 so I'll probably be making help posts if I'm not lurking.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=300#p31560
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-13 19:59:41

[quote="EnterTheStory"]First (frist?) post! 
Name: Chris 
Age: 43
Location: the far north of Scotland

I used to make adventure games, but all along I think my heart was in IF 
My latest adventure game is really not an adventure game at all, it's morphed into CYOA. And I much prefer it that way.

So tonight I'm taking my first baby steps into a new community...[/quote]
Welcome to the gang! CYOA is welcome here. I used to live up a wee bit north of Aberdeen (maybe you know of Ellon?) but I guess you're up in Inverness, no?

[quote="syaffolee"]Hi everyone.  I'm Sya, a 30-something microbiologist who writes as a hobby.

I discovered Zork about ten years ago and have been playing IF ever since.  I've been interested in the storytelling aspects of the medium but have mostly been intimidated about creating a game because I have no programming experience.  However, I'm now learning Inform 7 so I'll probably be making help posts if I'm not lurking.[/quote]
Inform 7 definitely has a shallower learning curve compared to more traditional programming-language. I read an interesting [url=http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2010/03/04/i-for-one-welcome-our-microbial-overlords/]article[/url] the other day on the power of bacteria- do you think micro-organisms have the power to make us feel hungry?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=300#p31561
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-13 21:50:34

I am kind of a fan of microbiology. I like to ferment foods and I think the role of gut flora in health is vastly underrated. I read an article about [i]Toxoplasma gondii [/i]recently which once again brought up its potential for science fiction. If either of you is ever interested in writing any IF about our microbial overlords, please let me know - I'd love to collaborate!

Have you heard of science fiction writer/microbiologist Joan Slonczewski?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=300#p31568
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: George / DateTime: 2012-02-14 00:04:44

Welcome new members!

[size=85](and fermentation is awesome)[/size]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4357&start=0#p31569
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Breaking objects
User: TOODAMNHIGH / DateTime: 2012-02-14 00:37:32

I need a way to break/split objects. I think I have it down, but when I try the command ">break Kyoketsu-shogei"
Violence isn't the answer to this one.


[code]
Understand "break [something]" as breaking. breaking is an action applying to one thing. Breaking is allowed.
Before breaking the Kyoketsu-shogei:
	say "you break it back into its original parts, a chain and your shiv.";
	move the Kyoketsu-shogei to Davy Jones' Locker;
	move the chain to player;
	move the shiv to player.
[/code]

Can someone help meh?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4357&start=0#p31570
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Breaking objects
User: George / DateTime: 2012-02-14 01:03:26

The problem is that there is a default command [i]break [/i]that's a synonym for [i]attack[/i], and Inform thinks that your breaking command is the same as attacking, which gives the default response ("violence isn't the answer"). A simple solution is to define break as something new. 

[code]
Cage is a room. 

Kyoketsu-shogei is a thing in Cage.
chain is a thing.
shiv is a thing.

Understand the command "break" as something new.
breaking is an action applying to one thing.
Understand "break [something]" as breaking. 

After breaking the Kyoketsu-shogei:
	say "you break it back into its original parts, a chain and your shiv.";
	remove the Kyoketsu-shogei from play;
	move the chain to player;
	move the shiv to player.
	
test me with "break kyoketsu-shogei / i "
[/code]

Also, I'm guessing you just want to remove the weapon from play, and an after routine made more sense to me than a before. Your 'is allowed' wasn't doing what I guess you thought it was doing -- it was just creating a property called 'allowed' that didn't affect the game.

When you compile a game with just one room you can go to the Index / Actions tab in the IDE and see all the commands available in the game. If you do that you'll see the break synonym I'm talking about. Also when you see a response you want to get rid of (like the 'violence isn't') you can do the rules and actions commands, and get a better picture of what's going on. For example with this code, 

[code]
Cage is a room. 

Kyoketsu-shogei is a thing in Cage.

	
test me with "break kyoketsu-shogei / actions / break kyoketsu-shogei / rules / break kyoketsu-shogei"[/code]

You get this

[quote]
Welcome
An Interactive Fiction
Release 1 / Serial number 120213 / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N) SD

Cage
You can see Kyoketsu-shogei here.

>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] break kyoketsu-shogei
Violence isn't the answer to this one.

>[2] actions
Actions listing on.

>[3] break kyoketsu-shogei
[attacking Kyoketsu-shogei]
Violence isn't the answer to this one.
[attacking Kyoketsu-shogei - failed the block attacking rule]

>[4] rules
Rules tracing now switched on. Type "rules off" to switch it off again, or "rules all" to include even rules which do not apply.

>[5] break kyoketsu-shogei
[attacking Kyoketsu-shogei]
[Rule "block attacking rule" applies.]
Violence isn't the answer to this one.
[attacking Kyoketsu-shogei - failed the block attacking rule]

>
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4359&start=0#p31571
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Two doors leading east from one room?
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-02-14 01:42:46

Hi, 

I'm trying do do something like a corridor with labeled doors. The compiler won't even let me place two doors in the same direction from one room, but it's relatively easy to add custom enterable things (I call them passages) that act as one-way doors, moving the player to the destination after entering. 

What i'd like to do is just catching the action of going east so that the disambigualtion kicks in. For example, assuming I have two passages called door a and door b in a corridor, "enter door" works the way I want. What I want to do is, conceptually:

[code]Instead of going east, do "enter door".[/code]

By conceptually I mean I know it doesn't work. [emote]:)[/emote]

I could probably do this with an "after reading the player's command"... thing, but I feel like I am complicating things a lot. Is there some simpler approach to this? Except for the obvious approach of redesigning the map, splitting the corridor into a north and a south end or just hooking up the two rooms as northeast and southeast. 

Maybe using custom directions?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4359&start=0#p31572
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two doors leading easy from one room?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-14 01:45:22

Instead of going east in the Q-corridor: try entering the Z-door.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=50#p31573
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-02-14 02:09:19

[quote="Emerald"][quote="matt w"]That said, I don't think that the question of who coined the term "interactive fiction" should really have much bearing on how we use it today. If we were to discover that before computers, someone used "interactive fiction" to describe pop-up books, we wouldn't start letting pop-up books in the xyzzys.[/quote]
If we're talking origins, we have to remember that rec.arts.int-fiction was created as a discussion group for hypertext fiction, and only later taken over by text adventure folk.[/quote]Really? Somehow I thought it grew out of Usenet around the end of the 80s -- when Infocom was dying/dead and GAGS/AGT were popular, and before hypertext even existed as a thing -- as an attempt to continue the Infocom-style line of programs, which often had greater-than-game aspirations. But I admit I'm hazy about history from that time period; I don't think I had internet access until 1995 or 6.

Actually, looking into it, apparently at least one hypertext existed as early as 1977. Interesting.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4359&start=0#p31574
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two doors leading easy from one room?
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-02-14 02:32:56

[quote="peterorme"]Except for the obvious approach of redesigning the map, splitting the corridor into a north and a south end or just hooking up the two rooms as northeast and southeast. [/quote]This would probably be the best answer from a design point of view, and not just because it's easier to implement.

But for the sake of argument, if you really want to have two doors to the east and make the >EAST command require disambiguation:

[code]Corridor is a room.

A passageway is a kind of thing. A passageway is always fixed in place. A passageway can be enterable. A passageway is usually enterable.

The blue door is a passageway in Corridor.
The red door is a passageway in Corridor.

After reading a command when going and Corridor is the location:
	let T be indexed text;
	let T be the player's command;
	replace the regular expression " e$" in T with " door";
	replace the regular expression " east" in T with " door";
	replace the regular expression "^e$" in T with "door";
	replace the regular expression "^east" in T with "door";
	change the text of the player's command to T.
	
Understand "[a passageway]" as entering.[/code]Note the spaces, to prevent the regex from erroneously matching "go ne" or "go southeast".

I believe that the only way to provoke a disambiguation message from within Inform is to manipulate the player's command.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4355&start=0#p31597
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Just made a new IF development system. Very easy.
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-02-14 04:44:47

Hey there, glad to see you - you probably don't remember me, but I was very interested in your Les Miserables game. So you're going the CYOA way? Good for you.

Just, ah, is there any way you think any games made with your tool could be downloaded and played offline?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=110#p31598
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2012-02-14 04:46:18

[quote="dfabulich"][b]Have CYOA/ChoiceScript competitions.[/b] Choice of Games has planned to do this for a while; we will do it. But as long as ChoiceScript games are eligible for XYZZY, I think our authors will reasonably want to try to win, and as long as the rabid fans know about XYZZY and are willing to pull the lever for ChoiceScript games, problem #1 will persist.[/quote]
I don't understand this at all. How can you "reasonably want to try to win" a XYZZY? Since it is an award for a game that you [i]already made[/i], there is nothing you can "try". Well, except for blogging about it and trying to get as many people as possible to vote for your game, which would be bad style (on the part of the voters as well, of course).

The main problem is that, apparently, the basic premise on which the XYZZYs are based is no longer true. That is the premise that most voters will have played at least a representative selection of the games on offer, and that they will seriously consider the merits of all these games and try to reach a serious judgement on each category. In other words, the premise of the XYZZYs is that the voters will behave as [i]judges[/i], not as [i]fans[/i]. While it is conceivable that the many people who voted for "Zombie Exodus" in every category really did play at least some of the other serious contenders and just decided that "Zombie Exodus" was the best game in every respect, this seems very unlikely. Much more likely is that they were behaving as fans; that they were just voting for "Zombie Exodus" without considering the merits of the other games. If so, they violated the implict social contract of the XYZZYs and made the basic premise false.

Now in saying "bad style" and "violation", I am being too severe. I fear that having to behave as a judge rather than a fan has become something alien to people; so many contests nowadays are popularity contests that people will expect any random contest to be such a thing. They don't even realise that they are doing something wrong, because they don't realise (and have no way to realise) what the implicit social contract is. Morally speaking, nobody did anything wrong, but the results are unfortunate.

The social situation is this: people who come to the IF community will quickly pick up on the implicit social contract, which for many years has ensured that the XYZZYs work -- more or less, because there has always been the "IF Comp games tend to win because many people have played them" bias. Anyway, the social contract wasn't violated. Now, suddenly, there is a big influx from another community which has different set of expectations, and who have not enough interaction with the IF community to understand the aim and spirit of the XYZZYs.

I would like to stress that what is happening her has [i]nothing[/i] to do with parser games versus CYOA. The situation is purely one of social structures and expectation, and has nothing at all to do with the content or form of the games. This too is why it is irrelevant for our discussion how well "Zombie Exodus" matches up to the other entries. Even if it were the greatest game in existence (and perhaps it is, I haven't played it yet), the fact would remain that the social contract has been violated by people behaving as fans rather than judges. If you are worried about CYOA destroying IF, fine, but please take your concerns to another topic, because here it is just muddying the waters.

[quote]My proposed solution is to [b]end public voting in the XYZZY awards[/b], allowing only a pre-selected panel of judges to rate the games. This is the gold standard for indie game competitions.[/quote]
This would make me very sad. And I'm saying that as someone who'd have a decent chance of being asked for such a panel. The openness of the community is one of the good things about the IF community.

Here is another proposal: as a first stage of voting for the XYZZYs, let people mark all those games on the "eligible games" list that they have actually played. This takes a few minutes, but shouldn't be too arduous. You can then weigh votes according to the number of games people have played. The exact mathematic are of course a mater of further thought. Clearly, votes of people who have played exactly 1 game should have no weight at all; someone who has played 30 games should have more weight than someone who has played 5 games; and the difference in weight between 150 games and 50 games should probably be very small or zero. (Fancier systems are of course possible.)

Obviously, such a system is not cheat-proof, but it doesn't have to be. We're not discussing how to stop cheaters. We are discussing how to make the social contract clear to people from outside the community. What my proposed solution would do, is it would signal to people that it is considered relevant how many games they have played, i.e., that it is considered relevant whether they are in a good positio to judge the field. Furthermore, it would allow anyone to participate, but would just give almost not weight to the votes of a rabid fan base who are not aware of the other contenders.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=110#p31599
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-02-14 05:29:58

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]In other words, the premise of the XYZZYs is that the voters will behave as [i]judges[/i], not as [i]fans[/i]. ... they violated the implict social contract of the XYZZYs and made the basic premise false.

...

I would like to stress that what is happening her has [i]nothing[/i] to do with parser games versus CYOA. The situation is purely one of social structures and expectation, and has nothing at all to do with the content of form of the games. [/quote]

I agree; these are both very good points. And the parser vs. CYOA thread in the General subforum was created precisely to move such discussion out of this thread.

[quote] The openness of the community is one of the good things about the IF community.

Here is another proposal: as a first stage of voting for the XYZZYs, let people mark all those games on the "eligible games" list that they have actually played. This takes a few minutes, but shouldn't be too arduous. You can then weigh votes according to the number of games people have played. The exact mathematic are of course a mater of further thought. Clearly, votes of people who have played exactly 1 game should have no weight at all; someone who has played 30 games should have more weight than someone who has played 5 games; and the difference in weight between 150 games and 50 games should probably be very small or zero. (Fancier systems are of course possible.)[/quote]

It's one potential solution, and fairly easy to implement; just give everyone's votes a weight of log
(number of games played), with a log base of whatever the organizers want -- 2 might be too small (someone who's played only 8 games has triple the influence of someone who's played 2), 10 might be too large (someone who's played 100 games has only double the influence of someone who's played 10).

But of course, any technological solution is easy enough to implement; as you point out, the real problem is social conflict and mismatched understandings. Solving social issues in a way that leaves most people happy is a much more difficult problem. If people already ignore the "What is this contest about? Who can vote? How should I vote?" pages/FAQs on a site, are such people likely to behave as expected of them when faced with an automated honor system like you suggest?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=110#p31600
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2012-02-14 05:33:40

[quote="ChrisC"]But of course, any technological solution is easy enough to implement; as you point out, the real problem is social conflict and mismatched understandings. Solving social issues in a way that leaves most people happy is a much more difficult problem. If people already ignore the "What is this contest about? Who can vote? How should I vote?" pages/FAQs on a site, are such people likely to behave as expected of them when faced with an automated honor system like you suggest?[/quote]
There is a big difference between not reading the FAQ (which is at most a sin of omission) and filling in false information about which games you have played (which would be active cheating, and recognisable as such to the voter). So I think it might work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4359&start=0#p31601
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two doors leading easy from one room?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-02-14 05:36:37

Here's another pretty easy kind of solution that may work for you.
[code]The Pub, the Gents', and the Ladies' are rooms.
The door to the Gents' is a door. It is southeast of the Pub and west of the Gent's.
The door to the Ladies' is a door. It is northeast of the Pub and west of the Ladies'.

Understand "east" or "e" as a mistake ( "You can choose to enter the Ladies['] room or the Gents['] room.") when the location is the Pub.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=110#p31602
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-14 05:51:59

Appointing judges seems rather elitist. I personally wouldn't like that. I still think a COYA category would be best. Not only for the XYZZYs, but for the IF Comp (and other comps) as well. It acknowledges CYOA as a related genre and avoids the issue of voters from the CYOA camp ignoring parser games.

Even if CYOA and parser IF are to converge and in the future we will only have one type of IF, this hasn't happened yet. If and when it happens, then we can put away with the two different categories.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=110#p31603
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2012-02-14 06:21:52

Wouldn't that make the CYOA category kind of pointless though? In the IFComp last year, there were three entries that could be classed as CYOA. Winning a competition with only three entries isn't a big deal.

It would also be a pretty easy thing to abuse. Assuming, for example, I'd written a CYOA and wanted to enter it in the IFComp but didn't want it to end up in a category by itself. All I'd need to do was include a few parser commands, even if they're not needed to finish the game, and it wouldn't be a true CYOA and so therefore would qualify for the main body of the IFComp.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=120#p31604
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-14 06:49:43

[quote="David Whyld"]Wouldn't that make the CYOA category kind of pointless though? In the IFComp last year, there were three entries that could be classed as CYOA. Winning a competition with only three entries isn't a big deal.[/quote]
Then hopefully there will be more entries. It's not something the comp has any control over anyway.

[quote]It would also be a pretty easy thing to abuse. Assuming, for example, I'd written a CYOA and wanted to enter it in the IFComp but didn't want it to end up in a category by itself. All I'd need to do was include a few parser commands, even if they're not needed to finish the game, and it wouldn't be a true CYOA and so therefore would qualify for the main body of the IFComp.[/quote]
This is true for every genre. Someone could make a 3D game and put a crude parser in, and then ask people from the mainstream 3D indy game scene to vote for it in order to win the comp. So the problem is already there, it's not CYOA that introduces it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4361&start=0#p31605
Forum: Competitions / Subject: XYZZY Awards 2011: a temporary fix
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-14 07:39:35

I've been speaking to the other organisers of the XYZZY Awards, and we're ready to make a definitive announcement. (You've probably already gathered the general drift of it, but we thought it was important to make things clear.)

[b]This year, and this year only, we're going to split out the ballots of the ChoiceScript community, taking them out of consideration for the regular awards. We'll be presenting a special award for the games of the ChoiceScript community at the ceremony, but the XYZZYs will otherwise be business as usual. Voting remains open.[/b]

We realise that this is an imperfect solution, but we think that it's the best one available to us, and acceptable to all parties involved. We ask you to be understanding and civil about all this, and appreciate that you've been mostly doing so already.

This does not represent the long-term answer; we'll get down to working that out once this year's awards are done. (Until then, please continue bouncing around ideas.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4361&start=0#p31606
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: a temporary fix
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2012-02-14 07:52:04

How do you know which votes are from ChoiceScript people and which aren't?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4361&start=0#p31607
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: a temporary fix
User: Flourish / DateTime: 2012-02-14 08:56:27

I gather that ChoiceScript people voted for all ChoiceScript games, as a ticket. So people who voted for ChoiceScript games, and only ChoiceScript games, will be split out.

I'm not 100% sure I love this solution, but if there is a problem with it, I don't think that problem is in splitting out people who voted for ChoiceScript as a ticket! As was identified in the original thread about this stuff, the main issue here with regard to being fair to the candidates is how to handle the two communities' separate familiarity levels with the games (IF people not being familiar with the ChoiceScript games, ChoiceScript people not being familiar with the IF games). The parser-based people voted within the set of parser-based games, and the ChoiceScript people voted within the set of ChoiceScript based games, according to maga almost exclusively. That means that this year, the XYZZYs were essentially two different awards events being held on the same set of polls - no overlap. And I can't really blame the parser-focused crew who runs the XYZZYs for wanting to focus their attentions on the parser-focused awards event, not the ChoiceScript awards event.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=300#p31608
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-14 09:05:33

[quote="capmikee"]I am kind of a fan of microbiology. I like to ferment foods and I think the role of gut flora in health is vastly underrated. I read an article about [i]Toxoplasma gondii [/i]recently which once again brought up its potential for science fiction. If either of you is ever interested in writing any IF about our microbial overlords, please let me know - I'd love to collaborate!

Have you heard of science fiction writer/microbiologist Joan Slonczewski?[/quote]
I'm definitely very receptive to collaborating on a microbial IF- there's such huge potential there. And Gondii is scary! There's a sixfold increased risk of traffic accidents among infected humans, but the mice losing their fear of cats is the creepiest.

I got into thinking about microbiology after reading this [url=http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2011/03/31/the-human-lake/]article[/url] comparing the human microbial biome to the life-cycle of a lake. The upshot is now I see antibiotics as equivalent to putting poison in a lake just to kill off one fish.

I hadn't heard of Joan Slonczewski before, but I'll look out for her now. It's a surprise that more scientists don't write science fiction.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4359&start=0#p31609
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two doors leading easy from one room?
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-02-14 09:12:51

Thanks guys. 

ChrisC, cool, this works, and I guess it wasn't that much easier than what I feared...

[quote]Understand "[a passageway]" as entering.[/quote] is what I hadn't figured out. 

Your code doesn't quite work for me though, maybe you're not "going" here? I replaced this bit:

[code]
After reading a command when Corridor is the location:
   let T be indexed text;
   let T be the player's command;
   replace the regular expression "^(go +)?(e|east)$" in T with "door";
   change the text of the player's command to T.
[/code]

The fix was removing "when going", the regexp hack was just for show. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4361&start=0#p31610
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: a temporary fix
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2012-02-14 09:13:40

Sounds very reasonable.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4359&start=0#p31611
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two doors leading easy from one room?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-14 09:18:53

How about something like this (untested, and I may get some of the syntax wrong)?

[code]Instead of going east in the corridor: disambiguate the doors.

To disambiguate the doors:
    say "Which door would you like to go through?";
     change the command prompt to "type red or blue, or another command: ".

First before: if the command prompt is "type red or blue, or another command: ", now the command prompt is ">".

Understand "[a passageway]" as entering when the command prompt is "type red or blue, or another command: ". [/code]

Even if this does work, you'd have to be careful to make sure that the command prompt is the same in all occurrences; in fact, while typing this, I left out the punctuation a couple of times. Maybe it would work better to leave the command prompt alone and set a flag instead.

Felix: that doesn't catch "go east," "walk east," etc., does it? I think the mistake mechanism is probably too unsubtle for this. (I have the same concern about ChrisC's fix.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4354&start=0#p31612
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Main Game code problems - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-02-14 09:26:09

I am thoroughly chastised and will stand in a corner for a week. You are all correct, I am terrible at formatting. I keep trying different methods but they all look lousy. My problem is that I'm still not completely sure what objects, chunks, functions and such really are. I'm constantly going through the TADS manuals but my memory is very bad. I will continue to forge forward and to comply with your suggestions.

At any rate, I did figure out my latest mistake. I put all that startup message coding in the wrong location. It should have gone into the 'new game' block where my startup menu code is located. 

Thanks again for the help and encouragement.

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4359&start=0#p31613
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two doors leading east from one room?
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-02-14 09:41:31

The problem is that you there IS no way east from the corridor, as far as the parser understands, so "instead of going east" won't work - unless you start messing around with other rules, or add yet another, fake, exit - or maybe make one of them a normal door and the other a "passageway". 

This feels like a hack however you do it. I'll probably just avoid the problem.

The regexp matches "e", "east", "go e", "go east" with any number of spaces in the middle. Not "walk east", though, but that could be added of course. Who the heck types "walk east" anyway? [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=300#p31614
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-14 09:42:12

[quote="JoeyJones"]It's a surprise that more scientists don't write science fiction.[/quote]
I think I heard once that Mary Doria Russell started out as a technical writer. Her [url=http://www.marydoriarussell.net/about/biography/]bio[/url] describes her as an anthropologist. Which reminds me of Ursula K. LeGuin - not an anthropologist as far as I know, but a daughter of anthropologists.

And Vernor Vinge is a computer scientist, right?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4361&start=0#p31615
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: a temporary fix
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-14 09:50:10

Flourish pretty much has it, except for one minor detail:
[quote="Flourish"]The parser-based people voted within the set of parser-based games, and the ChoiceScript people voted within the set of ChoiceScript based games, according to maga almost exclusively.[/quote]
The parser-based people voted for plenty of games that weren't parser-based, but were released within the parser-based orbit. Thus, there were some nomination votes for [i]The Matter of the Monster[/i] because it was released by an author familiar to the community, and nomination votes for all the CYOA-likes entered in IF Comp.

The rather obvious message from this is that the best way to get attention for your CYOA from the IF community is to submit it to the comp. (Though this, of course, would limit how you could release it elsewhere.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4359&start=0#p31616
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two doors leading east from one room?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-14 09:52:09

[quote="peterorme"]The problem is that you there IS no way east from the corridor, as far as the parser understands, so "instead of going east" won't work - unless you start messing around with other rules, or add yet another, fake, exit - or maybe make one of them a normal door and the other a "passageway". 

This feels like a hack however you do it. I'll probably just avoid the problem.

The regexp matches "e", "east", "go e", "go east" with any number of spaces in the middle. Not "walk east", though, but that could be added of course. Who the heck types "walk east" anyway? [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Doesn't "instead of going east in the corridor" work? I thought (not looking it up) that "going east in the corridor" works when there's no east exit, but "going east from the corridor" requires an exit.

There's probably some folks out there who type "walk east," and there may be noobs and stuff who'll try it. When I tried "Cold Iron" out on a noob, she got surprisingly far typing fairly natural stuff like "look at the table" -- though the compass direction navigation was what gave her the most trouble. "Go through the door" would probably be what she'd try.

Avoiding the problem isn't a bad idea, as a player, I'd probably prefer splitting up the directions to splitting up the rooms.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=120#p31617
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-14 10:43:41

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]I would like to stress that what is happening her has [i]nothing[/i] to do with parser games versus CYOA. The situation is purely one of social structures and expectation, and has nothing at all to do with the content or form of the games.[/quote]

Yeah, that was my thinking when I delayed announcement re my game a few years ago. The fan-community I built it for is [i]tiny [/i]by any reasonable measure of fan communities (fewer than 300 fans on the mailing list at that time), but they are something close to 100% outsiders to IF ... and they're very groovy, enthusiastic fans who might have innocently (honestly without meaning any wrong by it) rippled the XYZZY pond enough to have had an unfortunate skewing effect.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=0#p31618
Forum: Feedback / Subject: "Permanent" ban
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2012-02-14 11:05:42

[quote]You have been permanently banned from this board.

Please contact the Board Administrator for more information.

A ban has been issued on your IP address.[/quote]
Why?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=120#p31619
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-14 11:08:37

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="VictorGijsbers"]I would like to stress that what is happening her has [i]nothing[/i] to do with parser games versus CYOA. The situation is purely one of social structures and expectation, and has nothing at all to do with the content or form of the games.[/quote]

Yeah, that was my thinking when I delayed announcement re my game a few years ago. The fan-community I built it for is [i]tiny [/i]by any reasonable measure of fan communities (fewer than 300 fans on the mailing list at that time), but they are something close to 100% outsiders to IF ... and they're very groovy, enthusiastic fans who might have innocently (honestly without meaning any wrong by it) rippled the XYZZY pond enough to have had an unfortunate skewing effect.[/quote]
Indeed. And there are plenty of IF authors who have similar heft in other parts of the Internet. (There have been a few smaller incidents of this kind before, I'm told, and they were mostly one-off deals that didn't recur.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=120#p31621
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2012-02-14 11:19:44

[quote="RealNC"]This is going to evolve into something like "best music" award by having teenage girls as judges and putting Justin Bieber vs Beethoven as contenders.[/quote]
And why not? Beethoven wrote what was considered pop music in his time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=0#p31622
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-14 11:26:43

It looks like you are connecting to the board via Tor. One of the Tor endpoints must have been used to spam this board in the past, and we banned its IP address as a result.

You are likely to find that access here via Tor (or any other anonymous proxy service) becomes steadily worse over time, as more spam comes in and more bans are issued.

EDIT: to clarify, nothing was done to your account - it's purely a function of connecting from IP addresses that spammers also use.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4355&start=0#p31623
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Just made a new IF development system. Very easy.
User: EnterTheStory / DateTime: 2012-02-14 11:27:01

[quote="Peter Pears"]Hey there, glad to see you - you probably don't remember me, but I was very interested in your Les Miserables game. So you're going the CYOA way? Good for you.[/quote]

I have found my new home! [emote]:)[/emote] [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote="Peter Pears"]Just, ah, is there any way you think any games made with your tool could be downloaded and played offline?[/quote]

Yes definitely. Where I live the internet is not reliable, so I prefer offline where possible. I make and test it offline, so it definitely works that way. You just need the game content file (the one you change), the game engine (does not change) and a web page (use an existing one and just change its file name). Oh, and a style sheet and graphics. The easiest way is to buy the full game as then you get all the files you need in one download. Or you can do it for free by downloading the files yourself: the folder are not protected. The 'how to do it' mini-game explains everything.

<a class="postlink" href="http://enterthestory.com/test/Howto.html">http://enterthestory.com/test/Howto.html</a>

I hope that people find it easy. Like anything on the Internet, the first time might seem hard, but it shouldn't be. I made it specifically so I can churn out a new story each week, and all I touch is the story script and then make some pictures.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4359&start=0#p31624
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two doors leading east from one room?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-14 11:28:15

[quote]Doesn't "instead of going east in the corridor" work?[/quote]

Yes.

[quote]When I tried "Cold Iron" out on a noob, she got surprisingly far typing fairly natural stuff like "look at the table" -- though the compass direction navigation was what gave her the most trouble. "Go through the door" would probably be what she'd try.[/quote]

Yes, you really go need to keep covering the library standards: "go east", "walk east", "walk through the door", "go in door", etc. Handling those is automatic as long as you stick to overriding actions. When you start messing around with regexps, it's very easy to break synonyms without noticing. 

("Go through the door" does work in Cold Iron. :)

As for the "disambiguate the doors" plan, I can only say "Please don't do that." If you really need to go that route, grab the Disambiguation Control extension, which does it inline with the parser.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=120#p31625
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Flourish / DateTime: 2012-02-14 11:31:16

[quote="maga"]
Indeed. And there are plenty of IF authors who have similar heft in other parts of the Internet. (There have been a few smaller incidents of this kind before, I'm told, and they were mostly one-off deals that didn't recur.)[/quote]

I've been following this closely for this reason - I could envision something like this happening with Harry Potter fans and my game, if I weren't careful of who I asked to write about it and where! (For instance, if it were ever nominated and I made the mistake of asking MuggleNet to write about that - and they did, which is not a foregone conclusion - oy that would be bad. Like, miles and miles of bad in every direction.) I don't know how the XYZZYs can really control that, though; I mean, individual authors couldn't necessarily control it. (I can imagine a horror situation where one of my friends in the Harry Potter world decided to do me a favor by trying to get people to vote for me! Then how could you walk that back?) But...

[b]ETA[/b] Um, hopefully that didn't sound preposterously puffed-up: I don't know that my game, which is still unreleased, would ever be a XYZZY contender. But, you know, if it was, as a thought experiment.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=0#p31626
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2012-02-14 11:33:32

I see. Indeed, I'm usually using a Tor gateway. Although I'm glad to hear it was not really related to me, maybe you could reconsider this policy? It obviously degrades the service/experience of regular users using such banning tactics and I doubt it will actually have a serious impact on spammers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4359&start=0#p31627
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Two doors leading east from one room? [Cold Iron]
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-14 11:39:14

[quote="zarf"]("Go through the door" does work in Cold Iron. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

In fact I think that is how my friend got out of the house without any help from me. It was when she was outside and started having to go southwest and the like that she needed a nudge. (I noticed [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=26989#p26989]this old post[/url] from you which demonstrates the need to capture "walk south.")

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4363&start=0#p31628
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: If the player is in the room?
User: thecoolone3 / DateTime: 2012-02-14 11:40:11

I need something to happen only if a player is in the bank, but typing "If the player is in the bank:" Produces an error. Inform 7, latest build.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=0#p31629
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-14 11:56:09

IP address bans are somewhat effective at stopping spam accounts, especially as we scale them up to cover subnets.

From our perspective, there's no difference between a spammer using Tor and a spammer using a home internet connection. It's not an anti-Tor policy, though if it were a simple matter to ban all Tor access, I would do it without hesitation.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4363&start=0#p31630
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: If the player is in the room?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-14 12:02:41

If your rule starts like this:

[code]If the player is in the bank:[/code]

that'll give you an error because Inform doesn't know when to check it. You may want something like this:

[code]Every turn when the player is in the bank:[/code]

so Inform knows to check it every turn. 

Another thing you might want to do is say this:

[code]Every turn when the location is the bank:[/code]

That is true whenever the bank is the room that the player is in -- if the player is standing on a counter in the bank, "the player is in the bank" turns out false, but "the location is the bank" turns out true.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=0#p31631
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2012-02-14 12:04:19

Words fail me.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=0#p31632
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-14 12:20:12

That is going to make it difficult to have a conversation about the policy.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=300#p31633
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: syaffolee / DateTime: 2012-02-14 12:32:49

[quote="JoeyJones"]Inform 7 definitely has a shallower learning curve compared to more traditional programming-language. I read an interesting [url=http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2010/03/04/i-for-one-welcome-our-microbial-overlords/]article[/url] the other day on the power of bacteria- do you think micro-organisms have the power to make us feel hungry?[/quote]

We live on an intimate association with microbes, so I wouldn't be surprised. There are plenty of examples in the scientific literature showing how bacteria influence behavior, so why not hunger?

[quote="capmikee"]I am kind of a fan of microbiology. I like to ferment foods and I think the role of gut flora in health is vastly underrated. I read an article about [i]Toxoplasma gondii [/i]recently which once again brought up its potential for science fiction. If either of you is ever interested in writing any IF about our microbial overlords, please let me know - I'd love to collaborate!

Have you heard of science fiction writer/microbiologist Joan Slonczewski?[/quote]

I am totally not going to argue with you there. One of my friends is working exactly on the question on gut flora and health.  And yes, I've heard of Joan Slonczewski.  I first heard of her through the very interesting [url=http://microbewiki.kenyon.edu/index.php/MicrobeWiki]MicrobeWiki[/url].

IF about microbial overlords sounds pretty awesome. I'm still learning Inform 7, so I'm not sure I'm so much help on the programming front right now, but I can certainly contribute ideas and/or scientific expertise.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4363&start=0#p31634
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: If the player is in the room?
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-02-14 12:38:50

[quote="matt w"]Another thing you might want to do is say this:
[code]Every turn when the location is the bank:[/code]
That is true whenever the bank is the room that the player is in -- if the player is standing on a counter in the bank, "the player is in the bank" turns out false, but "the location is the bank" turns out true.[/quote]

For an even more general solution to that part, you might want to get into the habit of using "is enclosed by" instead of "is in."  The difference is that "is enclosed by" also includes indirect containment, like being in a chair in the bank, or being in a chair on top of a table in the bank, whereas "is in" only counts as true when there is nothing between the two things.  Likewise, if you want to see whether the player is carrying some coins, even when the coins are in a wallet, you can say "if the player encloses the coins."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=310#p31635
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-14 12:56:02

[quote="syaffolee"]IF about microbial overlords sounds pretty awesome. I'm still learning Inform 7, so I'm not sure I'm so much help on the programming front right now, but I can certainly contribute ideas and/or scientific expertise.[/quote]
I'm not going to say I'm a great programmer, but I'm a very confident and enthusiastic programmer, and I'm pretty comfortable with I7. I have a couple ideas about microbial overlords but I'd be comfortable taking a backseat on the details of the story. I am hoping to finish my current WIP for this year's IFComp, and after that I would have time to actively participate in a collaboration.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=120#p31636
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2012-02-14 12:57:36

[quote="RealNC"]I still think a [CYOA] category would be best.[/quote]

I'm not sure I precisely understand what you have in mind here. Are you saying that we'd keep all of the existing categories, but also add a "Best CYOA" category? Would there still be just one "Best Game" category? Would all games be eligible to win Best Game?

Or are you imagining that there'd be a "Best CYOA" category and a "Best Parser Game" (?) category, and no "Best Game" overall?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=120#p31637
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-14 14:14:52

[quote="dfabulich"][quote="RealNC"]I still think a [CYOA] category would be best.[/quote]

I'm not sure I precisely understand what you have in mind here. Are you saying that we'd keep all of the existing categories, but also add a "Best CYOA" category? Would there still be just one "Best Game" category? Would all games be eligible to win Best Game?

Or are you imagining that there'd be a "Best CYOA" category and a "Best Parser Game" (?) category, and no "Best Game" overall?[/quote]
You sound preoccupied...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4357&start=0#p31638
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Breaking objects
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2012-02-14 14:39:26

I suggest moving the chain and shive to the part of the Kyoketsu-shogei, then remove the K-s from play.  That gives correct results if the player isn't holding the K-s.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4361&start=0#p31639
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: a temporary fix
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2012-02-14 14:44:00

[quote="maga"][b]This year, and this year only, we're going to split out the ballots of the ChoiceScript community, taking them out of consideration for the regular awards. We'll be presenting a special award for the games of the ChoiceScript community at the ceremony, but the XYZZYs will otherwise be business as usual. Voting remains open.[/b][/quote]

Making sure I understand...

Does this mean that you will be posting a "new" batch of finalists, with the ChoiceScript community contenders removed into a new category?  Or does it mean that the existing list is valid, but ChoiceScript results will be split off from this point moving forward?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4361&start=0#p31640
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: a temporary fix
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-14 14:48:56

[quote="cvaneseltine"][quote="maga"][b]This year, and this year only, we're going to split out the ballots of the ChoiceScript community, taking them out of consideration for the regular awards. We'll be presenting a special award for the games of the ChoiceScript community at the ceremony, but the XYZZYs will otherwise be business as usual. Voting remains open.[/b][/quote]

Making sure I understand...

Does this mean that you will be posting a "new" batch of finalists, with the ChoiceScript community contenders removed into a new category?  Or does it mean that the existing list is valid, but ChoiceScript results will be split off from this point moving forward?[/quote]
The latter. The existing list is valid, and we won't be making any midstream changes to the site, so you should go ahead and vote as normal.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4361&start=0#p31641
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: a temporary fix
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2012-02-14 15:02:06

I agree that this is the right temporary fix.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=310#p31642
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2012-02-14 15:34:42

[quote="EnterTheStory"]First (frist?) post! 
Name: Chris[/quote]
Hi, Chris! (I say, assuming that you are who I think you are.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=20#p31643
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-02-14 16:39:02

[quote="joningold"]I gotta say, I'm anti-turning off scrollback, too; I think scrollback is a strength.[/quote]
Ha, I knew that the anti-scrollback screed would be unpopular, but I didn't expect quite so much reaction, being a bit off-topic and all... Anyway, allow me to try to escape Grinch status by explaining a bit where I'm coming from: For me, however nice scrollback may seem to users, the [i]need[/i] for scrollback is a pretty unambiguous design failure. If I as a player need certain information, why shouldn't that information just be at my fingertips at all times? Should I really have to scroll back and [i]hunt[/i] for it? I didn't realize how much time I wasted on scrollback until I started playing most of my IF on mobile devices; I don't happen to think hunt-and-flick is very enjoyable, and I've pretty well broken myself of the habit now. A number of games have explored ways to keep key information easily available, including remember commands, auto-filling notebook objects, and dedicated windows. I think that this kind of thing is far more useful than just assuming that folks will want to rely on scrollback. (Incidentally, Quixe already truncates scrollback, so scrollback is unreliable as a source of information.)

Once you add broken links to a transcript that I ideally shouldn't need to use at all, the balance for me tips squarely in favor of truncating the scrollback...

[spoiler]There was one thing that I could have used reminders on in A Colder Light: which combination of runes produced which results (or results at all). I ended up just retrying combinations until I hit on the right ones.[/spoiler]

[quote="joningold"]I'd rather clear links, but I think that might be difficult, since the interpreter layer won't know what's in scope. [/quote]
It looks like Juhana may be riding to the rescue soon with Vorple, but my thought was that you could clear links while letting the game control the scope by using two patches to Quixe/GlkOte. First, the game would pass a bit of text anytime the scope changes (i.e., when the player moves to a new room). Patch 1 to Quixe/GlkOte would catch this text via regex, increment a scope context ID variable, and clear the links corresponding to the expiring context ID. Patch 2 would alter Quixe's printing routine so that links are assigned a class ID equivalent to the current context ID variable. Thus, when the player moves out of the first room, the context ID would increment to 2, and all of the links bearing a class name of "context-1" would be zapped.

The problem with any such system, of course is UNDO... I think you'd want to print the room description after UNDO to ensure that the player has working links. (The default Inform UNDO behavior is terrible anyway.)

[quote="djfletch"][quote="ektemple"]I suspect that the feeling of needing to look around is mostly experiential bleed-through from the standard single-window parser IF experience. First-person shooters, racing-games, RTS, roguelikes, etc. scatter far more information all over the screen--and then expect folks to make split-second decisions using that output. This interface provides three well-defined zones for interaction and gives you all the time in the world to make your next move.[/quote]
I think it's deeper than experience from traditional IF.  I think it's reading.  Your brain is very used to reading fast from a single stream of text...So the comparison with games that don't have any sizable chunks of text doesn't work, because you aren't engaging the serious reading hardware when you play those.[/quote]
Hm, I'd find this far more compelling if we were talking about reading a book. I just don't think that it describes the experience of playing IF very well. When you play IF, you're [i]not[/i] just reading a big chunk of text. You're reading small bits--often just skimming them because you've seen them before--and after each little chunk of text, you're stopping to formulate and type a command. Along the way, you're probably also trying to orient yourself in the game's spatial world (many people are actually making physical maps!), thinking about puzzles, etc.

[quote="djfletch"](This is why despite having played games with a status line for years I still never use it.  I still do a "look" rather than check the status line if I forget where I am.)[/quote]
I almost never use the status line either, but it's not because my eyes are locked on the main window. It's because in 9 games out of 10, the status window has no useful information. But give me a game where the status line is useful, like Bronze, and I'll use it heavily and happily. The fact that Bronze's status line was so very well received suggests that other folks will too.

[rant]I also use LOOK all the time. But I LOOK all the time not because I forget where I am, but because looking is easier than scrolling back to the previously printed room description. Another indication that, for me at least, scrollback is a poor second to more immediate ways of getting old information.[/rant]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=20#p31644
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: emshort / DateTime: 2012-02-14 16:48:17

I like scrollback for more than just refreshing my knowledge of game state, though. You're right that in general I'd like to have all critical information available to me on screen at the time I need it, or easily retrievable (via LOOK or INVENTORY). But sometimes I also just want to page back to review some nice bit of text or remind myself of something I liked earlier -- much the way I might occasionally page back in a book to review a particularly good bit.

With respect to the particular issue of the runes in A Colder Light --

[spoiler]It took me a while to find this, but if you examine one of the constellations you've already successfully called, it will tell you what rune name you discovered for it.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=20#p31645
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-02-14 16:53:00

[quote="emshort"]I like scrollback for more than just refreshing my knowledge of game state, though... sometimes I also just want to page back to review some nice bit of text or remind myself of something I liked earlier -- much the way I might occasionally page back in a book to review a particularly good bit.[/quote]
Yes, I glossed over the fact that one of the reasons it's nice for players is that it's multimodal. When I play on the desktop, I tend to use my transcript file for this kind of thing, because I can search by keyword. On mobile, I don't tend to do this at all, though I may email the script to myself if I think I might want to look back over it. Overall, I guess I'm just pretty lazy! 

[quote="emshort"]With respect to the particular issue of the runes in A Colder Light -- [spoilered text not quoted][/quote]
Thanks, I hadn't noticed that!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4364&start=0#p31646
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: switching PCs? initialPlayerChar usage? -- success!
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-14 21:23:41

How do I switch PCs?

I did this successfully a year ago, but it wasr tricky.  I lost my old code with my computer.

It looks to me that I've got the second Actor object trying to become the PC, by using gameMain.initialPlayerChar = self, but somehow gamemain.initialPlayerChar isn't resetting.  Thoughts?

[code]....................... control code .................
   DefineTAction(SwitchTo)
   ;

   VerbRule(SwitchTo)
     ('switch' 'to' | 'become') singleDobj
     : SwitchToAction
     verbPhrase = 'switch/switching (to who)'
   ;

        
   modify Actor
     dobjFor(SwitchTo)
     {
       action()
       {
        gameMain.initialPlayerChar = self;
       "Did it work? Are you <<self.name>>? ";
       }
    }
;

....................... room defs snipped .................
me: Actor 'fellow' 'fellow'
    location = entryway
;
me2: Actor 'guy' 'guy'
    location = entryway
;

gameMain: GameMainDef
    initialPlayerChar = me;[/code]
....................... what happens .................

The guy is standing here. 

>﻿x guy
You see nothing unusual about the guy. 

>﻿x fellow
You look the same as usual. 

>﻿switch to guy
Did it work? Are you guy? 

>﻿x fellow
You look the same as usual. 

>﻿x guy
You see nothing unusual about the guy. 

>﻿

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4364&start=0#p31647
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: switching PCs? initialPlayerChar usage?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-14 21:44:25

initialPlayerChar is only used to set gPlayerChar during init. (gPlayer is a macro for [url=http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/libref/source/adv3.h.html#221]libGlobal.playerChar[/url].)

Does it work if you do this instead?

[code]
modify Actor
    dobjFor(SwitchTo) {
        action() {
            gPlayerChar = self;
            "Did it work? Are you <<self.name>>? ";
        }
    }
;
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=30#p31648
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-14 22:21:05

[quote="ektemple"]I almost never use the status line either, but it's not because my eyes are locked on the main window. It's because in 9 games out of 10, the status window has no useful information. But give me a game where the status line is useful, like Bronze, and I'll use it heavily and happily. The fact that Bronze's status line was so very well received suggests that other folks will too.[/quote]

I haven't played Bronze (blush), but I had a real problem with the status line in Rover's Day Out. It was giving all sorts of information that turned out to be useful, but I just flat-out didn't notice the information.

I've had a similar experience with pop-up windows showing up at the top of the screen; there's a pop-up window in Reliques of Tolti-Aph that I flat-out failed to notice the first time through, and something similar may have happened in Failsafe (I'm still not sure whether the window failed to manifest in my interpreter or I didn't notice it).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4365&start=0#p31649
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Hide a Door.
User: TOODAMNHIGH / DateTime: 2012-02-15 00:11:58

I dont think you can move a door from one room to another (which would be the easiest way to do it). But i want it to seem as if the door is completely gone. 

[code]

A thing can be hidden. A thing is usually not hidden.

After opening grate:
	now the grate is hidden;
	say "you push the grate off to the side and it falls into a slot in the grate, making lots of noise, never to be seen again.".
[/code]
this  is all i have, but i want it to disappear from the description of the rooms it is between, i also dont want the player to be able to examine it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=0#p31650
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2012-02-15 01:13:48

Your reaction made it pretty clear that arguing against this policy is futile (as you would even like to extend it in the opposite direction). Like all my previous attempts to address accessibility issues here, this one is doomed.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4365&start=0#p31651
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hide a Door.
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-02-15 02:30:49

While you can't remove a door from play, you [i]can[/i] move them around, and you [i]can[/i] alter the map at runtime.

This seems to work (although I can't guarantee this is a good way to do it).

[code]
The courtyard is a room. 
The void is a room.

The grate is a door. The grate is east of the courtyard and west of the cell.

The cell is a room. 

after opening the grate:
	say "you push the grate off to the side and it falls into a slot in the grate, making lots of noise, never to be seen again.";
	now nothing is mapped east of the courtyard;
	now the cell is mapped east of the courtyard;
	now the grate is in the void;
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4363&start=0#p31652
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: If the player is in the room?
User: thecoolone3 / DateTime: 2012-02-15 02:33:16

Thanks :)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=0#p31653
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2012-02-15 02:55:12

[quote="bcressey"]It's not an anti-Tor policy, though if it were a simple matter to ban all Tor access, I would do it without hesitation.[/quote]
You hate privacy?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=30#p31654
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: joningold / DateTime: 2012-02-15 03:17:20

[quote="matt w"]... something similar may have happened in Failsafe (I'm still not sure whether the window failed to manifest in my interpreter or I didn't notice it).[/quote]

It's been a while, but I don't think FailSafe had a statusline or any popups at all...

jon

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4361&start=0#p31655
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: a temporary fix
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2012-02-15 04:01:33

Am I the only one thinking this is a bit of a cop out? It just smacks of unfairness when a game which certain people feel doesn't deserve to win any XYZZY awards looks set to do so, and then a sudden change of the rules is implemented during the voting period. If the game in question was by a well-respected member of the IF community, would this still have happened?

What next? If a ChoiceScript game, or some other kind of CYOA game, gets top place in the IFComp this year, will a new rule be introduced to make them ineligible?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4366&start=0#p31656
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Puzzle in Anchorhead
User: Tale / DateTime: 2012-02-15 04:15:54

So yeah, 

I always wondered

[spoiler]I know you can get out of the handcuffs in the end by picking the lock with the hairpin. Is there an alternate solution? I'm just curious, because the hairpin seems pretty hard to acquire / easy to miss.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=30#p31657
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-02-15 05:08:20

Failsafe showed important information from terminals as quoteboxes or something similar, IIRC. We had problems playing it in ClubFloyd because Floyd couldn't display the quoteboxes.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4361&start=0#p31658
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: a temporary fix
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2012-02-15 05:09:25

[quote="David Whyld"]Am I the only one thinking this is a bit of a cop out? It just smacks of unfairness when a game which certain people feel doesn't deserve to win any XYZZY awards looks set to do so, and then a sudden change of the rules is implemented during the voting period. If the game in question was by a well-respected member of the IF community, would this still have happened?

What next? If a ChoiceScript game, or some other kind of CYOA game, gets top place in the IFComp this year, will a new rule be introduced to make them ineligible?[/quote]
David, this procedure has nothing at all to do with whether or not a certain game deserves to win a XYZZY Award. As I indicated in the other thread, it also has nothing to do with CYOA verses parser based stuff. What happened is simply that a dedicated fan base has voted in a competition where voting was meant (by an implicit social contract) to be based on careful consideration of at least a serious number of the eligible games. Where community expectations clash so clearly, the results would become meaningless, and maga's temporary solution seems as good as any.

In fact, if I understand maga correctly, a ChoiceScript game could still win the best game XYZZY: it is not the game that is moved towards another category, it is the votes of the ChoiceScript community (which will, I guess, be identified by the fact that they voted for ChoiceScript games exclusively). If the IF community votes en masse for a ChoiceScript game, it could still end up being Best Game.

(About IF Comp: this couldn't happen in IF Comp, because (a) it is about marks, not about number of votes; (b) you have to play at least 5 games for your vote to count. I don't think anyone would have a problem with a CYOA game winning IF Comp.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4361&start=10#p31659
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: a temporary fix
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-15 05:10:20

[quote="David Whyld"]Am I the only one thinking this is a bit of a cop out?[/quote]
It IS a cop out. But:
[quote="David Whyld"]It just smacks of unfairness when a game which certain people feel doesn't deserve to win any XYZZY awards looks set to do so, and then a sudden change of the rules is implemented during the voting period. If the game in question was by a well-respected member of the IF community, would this still have happened?

What next? If a ChoiceScript game, or some other kind of CYOA game, gets top place in the IFComp this year, will a new rule be introduced to make them ineligible?[/quote]
It IS NOT a CYOA vs. traditional IF affair. It is NOT about NAMES (so: yes, I suppose if you, David, was the author of the CYOA in this case, things would have gone the same length).
Fact is about HOW votes have been gathered. Crowdsourcing vs. "I've played most of the games and I vote for...".
A new kind of problem, never seen before, which deserved a peculiar act on behalf of the organizers.

I'm not a big fan of "laws made during emergencies" cause that's how Hitler got to the power... but I can tell the difference, in this case.

EDIT: Victor was faster then me. Sorry for repeating.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4367&start=0#p31660
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Am I in a loop?
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2012-02-15 08:36:20

[quote]2:13 am>ask devil about hades
[Use TALK TO to interact with characters.]

2:14 am>talk to devil about hades
[If you're trying to talk to someone, you might try ASK DEVIL ABOUT something, the traditional conversation syntax. Type ABOUT to see if this story offers more detailed instructions for conversation.][/quote] [emote]:evil:[/emote] 

Is it me or is I7 out to get me? It's still a part of my "talk to" problem.

Anybody got a solution to this?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4367&start=0#p31661
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I in a loop?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-15 08:45:18

Use the "rules" command to see what rules are firing, and in what order. Or show us your code...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4364&start=0#p31662
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: switching PCs? initialPlayerChar usage? -- success!
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-15 08:48:09

Thanks, Ben!  That did it.

Conrad.

...................................................................
>﻿x guy
You see nothing unusual about the guy. 

>﻿switch to guy
Did it work? Are you guy? 

>﻿x fellow
You see nothing unusual about the fellow. 

>﻿x guy
You look the same as usual. 

>﻿

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4367&start=0#p31663
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I in a loop?
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-15 09:00:18

[quote="capmikee"]Use the "rules" command to see what rules are firing, and in what order. Or show us your code...[/quote]
That is not the default inform answer. Check the running extensions. Seems like two or more are intervening.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4368&start=0#p31664
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: weird compile error -- *resolved*
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-15 09:06:56

In a previous episode, I was trying to switch the PC to another character.  That has since been solved, thanks to Ben.  But in pursuing that on my own, I've created a persistent weird compile error.

I was (mis)using [i]"intialPlayerChar = ..."[/i] mid-game for this purpose.

It didn't work.  Therefore I tried [i]"gameMain.initialPlayerChar = ...."[/i]

[u]That[/u] didn't work.  Therefore I tried making a method in gameMain that would take a parameter and set the PC to the parameter.  I figured that the gameMain object didn't like outside code fiddling with its data.

That didn't work, so I tried creating gameMain's PC assignment method inside a pre-game intialization code, on the theory I was getting to gameMain too late.  That didn't work [u]either[/u] -- turns out all of this was a red herring; could the intialPlayerChar documentation perhaps mention gPlayerChar? -- but now I have a weird compile error I can't clear.

It seems that I've somehow created an EXTRA gameMain object, that I CAN'T get rid of.  

I've tried Build > Clean (Delete Derived Files), followed by Build > Full Recompile for Debugging.

The code I still have, commented out, is this --
[code]/*
myInitObj: PreinitObject
   execute()
   {
    
    modify GameMainDef
            setPC (somePC)
    {
        initialPlayerChar = somePC;
        "hmmm... ";
    }

    }
;
*/[/code]

--doesn't mean this is the only version of that code I tried, but I don't think I did anything much outside of this.

Any thoughts?

Error message follows...

.....................................................................................................
[code]>t3make -Fy "C:\Users\Conrad\Documents\TADS 3\obj" -Fo "C:\Users\Conrad\Documents\TADS 3\obj" -o "Amy`s Key_dbg.t3" -D "TADS_INCLUDE_NET" -D "LANGUAGE=en_us" -D "MESSAGESTYLE=neu" -v -d -statprefix <@> -statpct "Amy`s Key.t" "system.tl" "adv3\adv3web.tl" "webui.tl" "tadsnet.t" "other\scenes_ee.t" "AK_act1.t" "AK_act2.t" "AK_act3.t" "AK_verbs.t" -res "GameInfo.txt"
TADS Compiler 3.1.0  Copyright 1999, 2010 Michael J. Roberts
error: 
The symbol "showGoodbye", which was originally defined of type function, is
redefined with type property in object file "C:\Users\Conrad\Documents\TADS
3\obj\misc.t3o".  A global symbol can be defined only once in the entire
program.  You must change one of the symbol's names in one of your source files
to remove the conflict.

If you recently changed the meaning of this symbol,
you might simply need to do a full recompile - try building again with the -a
option.


error: 
The symbol "showIntro", which was originally defined of type function, is
redefined with type property in object file "C:\Users\Conrad\Documents\TADS
3\obj\misc.t3o".  A global symbol can be defined only once in the entire
program.  You must change one of the symbol's names in one of your source files
to remove the conflict.

If you recently changed the meaning of this symbol,
you might simply need to do a full recompile - try building again with the -a
option.


Errors:   2
Warnings: 0

t3make: error code 1

Build failed.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4368&start=0#p31665
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: weird compile error --
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-15 09:13:11

ps -- I can get rid of this message by commenting out the showIntro() and showGoodbye() code from gameMain.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4368&start=0#p31666
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: weird compile error --
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-15 09:14:07

The code doesn't make any sense to me. You are trying to "modify" a method and you even do that inside another method? You can't modify methods or funtions, and you also can't define them inside other methods/functions.

Edit:
Btw, you will never be able to do this using initialPlayerChar. As the name of that property implies, it holds the *initial* player character. After initialization, that property is useless.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4368&start=0#p31667
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: weird compile error --
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-15 09:26:10

[quote="RealNC"]
Btw, you will never be able to do this using initialPlayerChar. As the name of that property implies, it holds the *initial* player character. After initialization, that property is useless.[/quote]

Yeah, that's been clarified to me, by Ben this time and by Eric a year ago.  -- Is this documented anywhere?  I couldn't find it, and I had a basic idea what to look for.

[quote]
The code doesn't make any sense to me. You are trying to "modify" a method and you even do that inside another method? You can't modify methods or funtions, and you also can't define them inside other methods/functions.
[/quote]

Heh, I won't say the code makes sense.  It's been removed from the game now, but I still get the error -- apparently because it created some weirdly persistent object.

I *did* just try using modify before the posted version.  In any case, the problem is not now to make the code work.  The problem is to unbreak whatever mysterious thing inside the project got broken by my attempt to edit gameMain.

Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=0#p31668
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2012-02-15 09:27:07

I think bcressy is stricltly talking in terms of troublesome IP ranges, not privacy.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4368&start=0#p31669
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: weird compile error --
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-15 09:34:46

Hmm, in case you found a compiler bug, try deleting the files by hand. Delete everything in the directory "C:\Users\Conrad\Documents\TADS 3\obj" and see if it helps. If yes, the "clean" functionality of the compiler has a bug. If it doesn't help, you still have definitions of showGoodbye() and showIntro() as functions somewhere in your code. Do a global search for them.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4368&start=0#p31670
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: weird compile error --
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-15 09:40:04

[quote="RealNC"]Hmm, in case you found a compiler bug, try deleting the files by hand. Delete everything in the directory "C:\Users\Conrad\Documents\TADS 3\obj" and see if it helps. If yes, the "clean" functionality of the compiler has a bug. If it doesn't help, you still have definitions of showGoodbye() and showIntro() as functions somewhere in your code. Do a global search for them.[/quote]

I never wrote definitions for showGoodbye() or showIntro().

I'll delete TADS 3\obj files and see what happens.  Almost doesn't matter at this point, as I've created a clean project and cut-pasted the code over.  Which worked fine, by the way.


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=0#p31671
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-15 09:40:40

It's an annoying problem. Tor is a useful privacy tool. But this is what makes it so appealing to spammers.

I don't know how I would solve that problem without spending a *lot* of time on writing and modifying PHP code to do anti-spam heuristics.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4368&start=0#p31672
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: weird compile error --
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-15 09:42:46

Nope!  Deleting the files had no effect -- the error persists.

I've got the cloned project working, so I'm out.  Does anyone want to chase this down for the good of TADS?  I can send you a zip.


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4368&start=0#p31673
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: weird compile error --
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-15 09:44:39

Yes, please do. You can PM it to me or send it to <a href="mailto:realnc@gmail.com">realnc@gmail.com</a> if you don't want your WIP's source code going public.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4368&start=0#p31674
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: weird compile error --
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-15 09:55:07

Public's not an issue.  But I'll try to zip it up and mail it, as it's tidier.


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=30#p31675
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: joningold / DateTime: 2012-02-15 09:58:01

[quote="ektemple"][quote="emshort"]With respect to the particular issue of the runes in A Colder Light -- [spoilered text not quoted][/quote]
Thanks, I hadn't noticed that![/quote]

I added that quite late in the day; possibly after your last play-through, Erik. One of the perils of being a beta-tester... [emote];)[/emote]

jon

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4369&start=0#p31676
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: (Mac) IDE hangs up when searching a certain string
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-15 10:04:56

I was just doing some tests on my WIP and I tried to search through the game output using the search string "ii". I got a beach ball that lasted for several minutes, so I forced quit. When I tried searching for "ii" again, it froze a second time. I created a test project with only the words "Test is a room." in it. Searching for other strings works fine, but searching for "ii" causes it to hang consistently.

I'm attaching the preferences file in case that helps. It does seem to contain several recently used search strings. The plist extension was not allowed, so I added a .txt - hopefully that won't cause the binary contents to be mangled too much.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=30#p31677
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-15 10:09:47

[quote="Juhana"]Failsafe showed important information from terminals as quoteboxes or something similar, IIRC. We had problems playing it in ClubFloyd because Floyd couldn't display the quoteboxes.[/quote]

Yup, that was what I had the problem with.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=30#p31678
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: joningold / DateTime: 2012-02-15 10:22:02

[quote="matt w"][quote="Juhana"]Failsafe showed important information from terminals as quoteboxes or something similar, IIRC. We had problems playing it in ClubFloyd because Floyd couldn't display the quoteboxes.[/quote]

Yup, that was what I had the problem with.[/quote]

I deny utterly using quote-boxes for important information ever, in any game I've ever written, because it's a really bad idea. So, yeah. Me against the world on this one. Apologies if I spoiled your game... 

jon

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=30#p31679
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-15 10:40:33

[quote="joningold"][quote="matt w"][quote="Juhana"]Failsafe showed important information from terminals as quoteboxes or something similar, IIRC. We had problems playing it in ClubFloyd because Floyd couldn't display the quoteboxes.[/quote]

Yup, that was what I had the problem with.[/quote]

I deny utterly using quote-boxes for important information ever, in any game I've ever written, because it's a really bad idea. So, yeah. Me against the world on this one. Apologies if I spoiled your game... 

jon[/quote]

No worries -- if I had got the information, I'm sure I would've

[spoiler]just let the alien blow me up anyway. Gjut![/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=10#p31680
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-15 10:56:26

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]You hate privacy?[/quote]

I dislike Tor specifically, as I consider it a network for distributing child pornography that has somehow acquired a veneer of respectability. It's often painted as a tool for aiding dissidents in repressive regimes, which is disingenuous and somewhat dangerous: any regime that can criminalize speech can just as easily criminalize Tor access.

A lot can change in nine years but in the early days it was understood that the overwhelming majority of content on Tor was CP.

Still, nice work jumping straight to the personal attack. I would say instead that my support for privacy stops short of any willingness to enable or extend the activities of pedophiles. I do not value my own privacy enough to use Tor. I wish there were better options for people who do. I am glad there are people who champion the ideals it claims to represent. I am comfortable not having my name on that list. If that's equivalent to hating privacy in your eyes, so be it.

[quote="Jizaboz"]I think bcressy is stricltly talking in terms of troublesome IP ranges, not privacy.[/quote]

Yes, a spammer IP is a spammer IP. It's not feasible to distinguish Tor spam from botnet spam. It is feasible to ban spammer IPs, and we do. It helps.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4369&start=0#p31681
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: (Mac) IDE hangs up when searching a certain string
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-02-15 11:07:32

Yep, that's a bug; if you file a report, I'll confirm it.  Give me a little bit, and I might be able to say something about the cause too.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4368&start=0#p31682
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: weird compile error --
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-15 11:13:45

RealNC figured this out.  Not a deep problem with T3, as it turns out, but a stray semicolon.

[quote="RealNC"]I found the problem. You have this in your code:

[code]
gameMain: GameMainDef
    initialPlayerChar = me;
[/code]

The semicolon ("me;") terminates the object definition. So when you try to define showIntro() after that, what you're doing is defining a function, not overriding the showInto() method of GameMainDef, which is why the compiler is giving an error.

Personally, I don't like the short syntax for defining objects and classes, because using a semicolon to terminate property overrides is very natural. I use this syntax instead:

[code]
gameMain: GameMainDef
{
    initialPlayerChar = me;
    showIntro()
    {
        // ...
    }
    someProperty = someValue;
}
[/code]

Which IMO is much more intuitive since I can (and actually *must*) use semicolons after every property definition/override.[/quote]

Many thanks, RealNC!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=10#p31683
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2012-02-15 11:22:55

Just because Tor has been used to distribute child porn doesn't mean that's its only use. Bittorrent has been used for the same thing, and yet is also used by many reputable websites to distribute their perfectly legitimate and legal software. Heck, the British postal system has been used to distribute child porn but I think it'd be a bit extreme to swear off using it for that reason alone.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=10#p31684
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2012-02-15 11:25:20

Wow. Just wow! At this point, I don't really care anymore whether I'm banned or not. Being implicated to be close to the circles of child pornography traders does it. If this is the policy/opinion of the officials of this board, I will not be using it anymore.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4361&start=10#p31685
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: a temporary fix
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2012-02-15 11:37:39

Just be glad Katawa Shoujou wasn't up for nomination.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=30#p31686
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-15 11:52:59

I think Floyd already has the capability to display the status window (and thus quote boxes). But you can't tell they exist. (I guess it could print a flag if the status window grows larger suddenly?) 

(One of the many things I may write someday is a CheapGlk library that outputs both story text and status-line text, using structured markup -- XML or JSON.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=10#p31687
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-15 11:54:07

[quote="Hannes"]Wow. Just wow! At this point, I don't really care anymore whether I'm banned or not. Being implicated to be close to the circles of child pornography traders does it. If this is the policy/opinion of the officials of this board, I will not be using it anymore.[/quote]

Nothing I said was meant as a personal attack or a commentary on your use of Tor. I understand that privacy is very important to you and I respect that.

My opinion on Tor is only that: an opinion. It is not official policy. How I feel about Tor makes no difference.

I am sorry that banning spammer IP addresses has affected you. I am doubly sorry that my feelings on Tor have offended you. I understand that from your perspective it must look as though I am deliberately antagonizing you. That was not my intent and I hope we do not lose you as a consequence.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=310#p31688
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: EJtheViking / DateTime: 2012-02-15 12:00:32

Hi all,

EJ here.
Thanks for this forum!

I'm from Holland, and I'm 43 years old. Got a normal day-job, Linux and voip things.
Only last year I played my first IF game: Theatre.

And now I'm hooked.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=10#p31689
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2012-02-15 12:11:40

Huh. Never heard of the Tor/Child pr0n connnection. I always assumed people use Tor either because they just don't like being tracked via cookies... or they are looking up illegal drug recipes.  [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4370&start=0#p31690
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Help needed for Theatre...even WITH the walk-thru
User: EJtheViking / DateTime: 2012-02-15 12:16:40

Hi all,
 i need a little help for Theatre... can't find the last pearl even WITH the walk-thru!

Theatre is a wonderful game imho, I spent countless hours off and on. Can't seem to find the last pearl though.

At my wits end, I read "theatre.step", the famous walk-through. No dice. Even played it from scratch following the walk, but either I'm clumsier than I thought I could be or there is a little mistake in the walk.

Tried to "connect" from my saved game to a point in the walk just before or just after the finding of "blue", but no can do.
I always hit the "you can't go there" at the crucial point.

Can't remember I ever met a [spoiler]bookcase , chain and nest (except the Rat's Nest)[/spoiler] in the game... and somewhere around there is the blue pearl!

And do I need to get on the [spoiler]chandelier?[/spoiler]

Here's the part of the walk:
[spoiler]put lens in spotlight
get lens, ticket
U, E, N
push chandelier
drop ticket
E, E, U <- can't go there
go chandelier
NW. get all
S, W, N
get page
again
S, S, N <- where is this? guest star room?
unhook chain
push bookcase
S. examine nest
get blue
W, U[/spoiler]

Rather silly I can't find it, but I promise: I'll be a good boy and play GlowGrass after this game, because it has a tutorial.

Thanks,

EJ

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4361&start=10#p31691
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: a temporary fix
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-15 12:20:45

[quote="ralphmerridew"]Just be glad Katawa Shoujou wasn't up for nomination.[/quote]

From what I've heard, I could see it legitimately sweeping the nominations if it were eligible. Except that Don't Take It Personally, Babe, It Just Ain't Your Story would probably deserve them more.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4361&start=10#p31692
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: a temporary fix
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-15 12:23:25

[quote="ralphmerridew"]Just be glad Katawa Shoujou wasn't up for nomination.[/quote]
My list of Potential Invasions of Doom has been steadily racking up larger and larger candidates, from Caltrops to Zarfian Kickstarterites to Something Awful LPers, and so on. In terms of total griefing potential, though, I think Anonymous trumps MuggleNet.

(Also, hey, they completed it.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=10#p31693
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2012-02-15 12:35:32

[quote="bcressey"]Still, nice work jumping straight to the personal attack.[/quote]
It was not meant as a personal attack, but as a semi-rhetorical question asking you to elucidate how you weigh privacy against other values. If it felt as an attack, I apologise; I should have written out my question in a more straightforward manner.

On the issue of privacy: in my opinion, people justify anti-privacy measures by appeals to child pornography far too easily. Such an argument is based on the premise that we should [i]start[/i] by not trusting people, and perhaps give them the right to privacy if we think it cannot harm society; whereas, surely, we should start by trusting people and only invade their personal space when we have a reason to believe they might be engaging in criminal activities. (Also, it has always seemed to me that people downloading or watching child pornography is a relatively minor issue. The big issue are the people [i]making[/i] it. This distinction is not carefully made in the discussions.) However, since there is no Tor-wide ban on the forum, perhaps this discussion doesn't really belong here.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4361&start=10#p31694
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: a temporary fix
User: Flourish / DateTime: 2012-02-15 12:40:01

You are right. Anonymous > Mugglenet > Zarfian kickstarterites > CYOA players. I think. Probably. Maybe.

Anyway, Anonymous are scarier because they'd actually automate voting and not give one single crap about it.

And now I am radically off-topic.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=310#p31695
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Flourish / DateTime: 2012-02-15 12:42:36

I don't think I ever actually posted here. I'm Flourish. I'm mostly on the MUD or physically present at IF meetups. I guess I have a presence here too, now, since the XYZZYs controversy roused me from my den...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=10#p31696
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2012-02-15 12:44:46

[quote="bcressey"]My opinion on Tor is only that: an opinion. It is not official policy. How I feel about Tor makes no difference.[/quote]

It makes a difference when you're a moderator and you're blocking people from accessing the forum because of that opinion.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4371&start=0#p31697
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Playfic, a web app for writing/sharing Inform 7
User: waxpancake / DateTime: 2012-02-15 12:48:28

Hey, everybody! I just launched Playfic, an experimental web community for writing, sharing, and playing Inform 7 games, entirely from the browser. It's built heavily on top of the commandline I7 compiler for Linux and the Parchment interpreter. 

[url]http://playfic.com/[/url]

Just a head's up, this is a very simplified environment for writing Inform 7 for people less acquainted with interactive fiction.  It's much more limited than the official SDK, and doesn't allow proper releases, maps, skeins, attachments, or third-party extensions. (Though you can download the .z8 binary for any game you write.)

Would love to hear your feedback about it, and especially would love to see you try to publish some of your games on the site. There's very little in the way of actual games on the site right now, it's almost entirely sample code and recipes from the official Recipe Book.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=10#p31698
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2012-02-15 12:51:31

[quote="David Whyld"]It makes a difference when you're a moderator and you're blocking people from accessing the forum because of that opinion.[/quote]
Yes, but that is a hypothetical situation. (Given that the current IP ban is because of spamming, not because of Ben's opinion about Tor.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=10#p31699
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-15 12:53:32

Back in the alpha days, it was not possible to use Tor without also running a node that routed traffic for others. Sort of like Skype.

It looks like there is a distinction between clients and servers these days, which probably explains why everyone else is more comfortable with it. It changes the equation if you are not required to act as a middleman.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4371&start=0#p31700
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Playfic, a web app for writing/sharing Inform 7
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-02-15 13:04:21

Hey cool!  I just got an email about this from a non-IF-playing friend who'd heard about it, and rushed over here to post.  Good work, and I suspect this is going to be pretty big.  I know I'll be looking into using it for teen workshops.


P.S. I really hate being a jerk about this, but could you please add me (Lea Albaugh) to the attribution on the playing IF cheat sheet?  I know Zarf is a lot more famous than me and it's therefore easier to remember his contribution, but, well, I'm underemployed and need as much publicity as I can get.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4369&start=0#p31701
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: (Mac) IDE hangs up when searching a certain string
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-15 13:04:45

Were you able to reproduce it using that prefs file?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4361&start=10#p31702
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: a temporary fix
User: TheOtherMattW / DateTime: 2012-02-15 13:10:32

[quote="maga"]This does not represent the long-term answer; we'll get down to working that out once this year's awards are done. (Until then, please continue bouncing around ideas.)[/quote]

I would suggest sticking a rule in there about crowd-sourcing ("Do not ask for votes directly or indirectly"), though there's a lot of grey area in that as well: where does legitimate publicity end and turn into a problem? But I don't think you're going to solve this by rules alone - at the end of the day, it all depends on the honesty and integrity of the voters. And, as Victor has observed, on whether or not they even realise they might be doing something wrong.

There is no way that a dedicated goup of people/community can't overrun/cheat the system; tough rules might even encourage cheating. There appear to be only two choices: throw out all games from different communities where there's not much overlap (which is really legitimate, it being akin to limiting an award to movies from a certain country) or explain the intention of the award up front and hope that people will play nice (while reserving the right to throw out "renegade votes").

Matt

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4371&start=0#p31703
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Playfic, a web app for writing/sharing Inform 7
User: waxpancake / DateTime: 2012-02-15 13:10:50

[quote="tove"]P.S. I really hate being a jerk about this, but could you please add me (Lea Albaugh) to the attribution on the playing IF cheat sheet?  I know Zarf is a lot more famous than me and it's therefore easier to remember his contribution, but, well, I'm underemployed and need as much publicity as I can get.  [emote];)[/emote][/quote]

Done!  I'd like to add it as inline help on every game page, if it's okay with you and Andrew.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=310#p31704
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: TheOtherMattW / DateTime: 2012-02-15 13:19:25

Hi,

I'm not going to tell you guys my life story here; I just wanted to pop in, say hi, nice to meet you (after having lurked around here for years I only signed up a few months ago) and make clear that I didn't remember that Matt "Aotearoa" Wigdahl was registered as "matt w" around here. 

It was and is not my intention to cause confusion and while I'd consider signing up as someone new, I'd rather stick with "MattW" since it actually reflects my real name and I kinda like it.

If that's alright with Mr. Wigdahl.

Matt

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4371&start=0#p31705
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Playfic, a web app for writing/sharing Inform 7
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-02-15 13:20:33

Thanks!  The card is licensed under a [url=http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/]Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License[/url], so you're welcome to include it as long as you attribute it to us (and, as I understand it, include that license).  Also, from a purely design-nerd standpoint, I think it's better if you use one of the pretty ones (image file rather than text+html), but I understand that that would require more time to load.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=310#p31706
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-15 13:24:49

Don't worry -- I'm actually Matt Weiner. Matt Wigdahl is mwigdahl. So you're not causing any more confusion than I did already!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4369&start=0#p31707
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: (Mac) IDE hangs up when searching a certain string
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-15 13:54:25

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=866">http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=866</a>

I couldn't figure out how to attach a file to the issue. Please let me know if I should still do that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4371&start=0#p31708
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Playfic, a web app for writing/sharing Inform 7
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-15 14:02:35

That looks cool!

Is there potential for collaboration? e.g. being able to grant read-write permissions on a particular game to a number of users, or to branch and merge the source of multiple versions?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4371&start=0#p31709
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Playfic, a web app for writing/sharing Inform 7
User: waxpancake / DateTime: 2012-02-15 14:04:38

Not yet, but stay tuned. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4372&start=0#p31710
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: 2 stupid questions
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-02-15 14:46:51

Hokies it's been a week since I meithered you so I've got a couple of easy ones and I'm after opinions on playability for them before I implement them into my proper game, first is that I remember seeing ldesc and sdesc around a few times and I only thought of it the other day but now I can't find much on it... Am I right in thinking that 
[code]
                   This is the sdesc 
treasureRoom: Room 'treasure room'
"It's a big room full of treasure"
      And this is the ldesc 
[/code]
Cos up til now I've just been calling them a room name and desc, but I had the notion of giving a room a desc when you enter and one for when you type look

The other one is a shower I made as part of an en-suite (I have a testworld game which is basically a home in which I'm making things work how they should as a learning tool) in which you can use.  I've just made a verb for 'wash in' so you could wash in shower(or take shower works too [emote]:)[/emote] ) or clean in sink (I figured clean is a verb already there so it makes sense) I was wondering about if I were to make a WashIAction to go with it... I'm guessing I'd have to add it to the actor and then add some preConditions (I just made one of those too yaay) but I'm wondering whether or not it's arbitary and if I'm right about how to put it into the game.

Thankies by the way

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4361&start=10#p31711
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: a temporary fix
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-15 14:52:02

[quote]I would suggest...[/quote]While I would suggest one of you two change nick cause you're making my head spin [emote]:P[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4280&start=10#p31712
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Salon: Interactivity and narrative are incompatible
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2012-02-15 14:53:02

[quote="severedhand"][...]I can't really go for Zarf's straw man because new authors can certainly change the text of Hamlet , but then they still deliver it to an audience who don't get to make any macroscopic decisions about the content or direction of the altered text. The line is between authors and audience.[...][/quote]
The point, as I read it, is that talking to random things/ideas and saying that they are mutually exclusive is flat-out wrong. Obviously, when presented through different mediums, Hamlet is different. It's a tautology: different Hamlet is different.

However, the original point is that narrative and interactivity are mutually exclusive... which simply means that the author has no idea what narrative actually is and was. The original Shakespeare was full of interactivity; the audience shouted at the players, threw vegetables, and generally interacted. The players would stop in the middle of a scene to talk with the audience. Often, the players would ad-lib, throwing in jokes about the various famous folk in the audience. And taking it back even farther, back to when bards would tell tales around a campfire - the same thing happened. They would change the story to incorporate the names and actions of those around them into the stories.

For a famous example, how about Sherlock Holmes? He was killed off, but after a flood of requests, the author brought him back. If that's not interactivity, I don't know what is. For a less famous, but perhaps more intimate example, the stories I tell my kids at night are run by democracy. I'll ask what happens next, what a character's name is, what decision a character will make. It's interactive narrative.

But to answer the gist of what the article says... no, all the whiz-bang stuff added to ebooks will do very little to help or hurt them... until they make stories that are meant to be interacted with. How about a suspense book with quiet music in the background, that seamlessly transitions to a darker tone when you get to the really suspenseful part? Hamlet is good as it is, but imagine if an HP Lovecraft book had shadows scurry quickly across the page, or if the words themselves would try to "get away" from "scary" words. If it would calibrate your reading speed against page turning, and make a word actually "jump out" at you, right when you got to it? Or even the "real" versions of magical books from Harry Potter's universe?

I would buy ebooks like that. They aren't "classic literature" - they are NEW literature. Just like adding words to a picture book doesn't make it better, adding videos and music to existing works won't make them much better, either. But creating new works that actually use the medium, well, those may well be better than "plain books." Maybe.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=310#p31714
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-15 14:54:49

[quote="matt w"]Don't worry -- I'm actually Matt Weiner. Matt Wigdahl is mwigdahl. So you're not causing any more confusion than I did already![/quote]
Oh my.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=310#p31715
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-15 14:56:36

Man. And I thought that we had a problem with Jasons.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4361&start=10#p31716
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: a temporary fix
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2012-02-15 14:57:12

[quote="Jamespking"][quote]I would suggest...[/quote]While I would suggest one of you two change nick cause you're making my head spin [emote]:P[/emote][/quote]
[size=50]I believe the one with the small "w" and the space is the philosopher who helped me out with Kerkerkruip, while the one with the big "W" and no space is the author of Aotearoa. [emote]:)[/emote] How to remember this... hm... let's say that by winning an IF Comp and 7 XYZZYs, the big-W-Matt has made it big in the IF world? Big/big, get it?  [emote]8-)[/emote]  [emote]:?[/emote][/size]
The above information is WRONG, as maga pointed out.

matt w = Matt Weiner, the philosopher.
mwigdahl = Matt Wigdahl, the author of Aotearoa.
MattW = some other guy whom I know nothing about.

 [emote]:shock:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4361&start=10#p31717
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: a temporary fix
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-15 14:57:27

[quote="MattW"]There appear to be only two choices: throw out all games from different communities where there's not much overlap (which is really legitimate, it being akin to limiting an award to movies from a certain country) or explain the intention of the award up front and hope that people will play nice (while reserving the right to throw out "renegade votes").[/quote]

As someone writing IF [i]almost entirely*[/i] for communities with nearly-zero overlap with this one, the first one would make me a little sad. I feel like enough of an outsider as it is [emote]:)[/emote]

(Besides, now that there's a "Best Supplemental Materials" category, I am effing[i] in[/i]).

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
* Microgames and SpeedIFs notwithstanding.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=310#p31718
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-15 15:01:19

[quote="maga"]Man. And I thought that we had a problem with Jasons.[/quote]
I though we had with Jaceks, to be honest. 

Anyway, given me myself is more "famous" as Marco Innocenti, me myself first should rename the account. So who am I to argue? :O

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=30#p31719
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-02-15 15:01:28

[quote="joningold"]Apologies if I spoiled your game... [/quote]
Nah, we had someone play it offline to that point and copy-paste the text. Just a speed bump.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4373&start=0#p31720
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Mystery of the Dark Manor,1992 text adventure,now on Android
User: Mark Eaton / DateTime: 2012-02-15 15:07:40

Hi all

I just wanted to let people know that I have ported another one of my father's games, Mystery of the Dark Manor, to Android devices. This uses the same engine that was programmed for Moonbase 3 so should provide a consistent user experience.

Mystery of the Dark Manor was originally released in the UK in 1992.

Its features include:
* Different font sizes
* Text to speech
* Speech input
* Android gestures to swipe the screen when moving in the different compass directions

Based on feedback from people I have made some updates to Moonbase 3.

As such both games now include:
* more helpful information when starting
* training video (more for those not overly familiar with text adventure games)
* autosave
* save/load game lists are timestamped and sorted by most recent saved first
* bug fixes


The demo for both games link here:

<a class="postlink" href="https://market.android.com/details?id=Mystery.demo">https://market.android.com/details?id=Mystery.demo</a>
<a class="postlink" href="https://market.android.com/details?id=Moonbase3.demo">https://market.android.com/details?id=Moonbase3.demo</a>


The full versions link here:

<a class="postlink" href="https://market.android.com/details?id=Mystery.Complete">https://market.android.com/details?id=Mystery.Complete</a>
<a class="postlink" href="https://market.android.com/details?id=Moonbase3.Complete">https://market.android.com/details?id=M ... 3.Complete</a>


I appreciate the feedback people give to me on these games, it has helped make them better.


Kind regards

Mark Eaton

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4361&start=10#p31721
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: a temporary fix
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-15 15:11:38

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="Jamespking"][quote]I would suggest...[/quote]While I would suggest one of you two change nick cause you're making my head spin [emote]:P[/emote][/quote]
I believe the one with the small "w" and the space is the philosopher who helped me out with Kerkerkruip, while the one with the big "W" and no space is the author of Aotearoa. [emote]:)[/emote] How to remember this... hm... let's say that by winning an IF Comp and 7 XYZZYs, the big-W-Matt has made it big in the IF world? Big/big, get it?  [emote]8-)[/emote]  [emote]:?[/emote][/quote]
See [url]http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=310#p31704[/url]. I think we have [i]three[/i] specimens of Matt W floating around in here.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=310#p31722
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-15 15:24:40

[quote="Jamespking"][quote="maga"]Man. And I thought that we had a problem with Jasons.[/quote]
I though we had with Jaceks, to be honest. 

Anyway, given me myself is more "famous" as Marco Innocenti, me myself first should rename the account. So who am I to argue? :O[/quote]

I always think of you as the monarch of telepathic preserves.

[spoiler]Jam ESP king[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4371&start=0#p31723
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Playfic, a web app for writing/sharing Inform 7
User: Magnus4444 / DateTime: 2012-02-15 15:49:19

Wow, this looks awesome. I'm a teacher and can see this working really well with students... Thanks so much!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4369&start=0#p31724
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: (Mac) IDE hangs up when searching a certain string
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-02-15 15:53:47

Sorry, I could have worded that more clearly.  The bug I'm looking at is independent of the preference list, so I was able to reproduce it.  There's an explanation and workaround posted as a comment on the bug report.  However, if deleting the preferences file was a workaround for you, it might be that we're talking about two different bugs.  What happens when you try the steps to reproduce in my comment after the preference file is gone?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4369&start=0#p31725
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: (Mac) IDE hangs up when searching a certain string
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-15 16:06:54

No, I think I was mistaken. I hadn't thought that the cursor position would make a difference, so I wasn't watching where it was.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4369&start=0#p31726
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: (Mac) IDE hangs up when searching a certain string
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-02-15 16:27:31

Ah, okay.  I've updated the bug entry accordingly.  Thanks for the report; this could have been a lot harder to track down than it was.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4361&start=20#p31727
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: a temporary fix
User: TheOtherMattW / DateTime: 2012-02-15 16:28:38

[quote="maga"]See [url]http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=310#p31704[/url]. I think we have [i]three[/i] specimens of Matt W floating around in here.[/quote]

Oh well. 

I shall abandon this account, then, with its epic posting history and all the good reputation I have built up over my 6 (make that 7 now) posts that have -- dare I say it -- shaped this forum like none other. It is, unfortunately, not possible to change one's nick. If such a feat should be deemed doable by a moderator without throwing the database into disarray, I humbly request a change.

I shall spend the next three years in deep lurker-mode while I contemplate and research possible new nicks. Three years seems appropriate given the fact that it took me about that long to come up with "Matt W" and sign up in the first place.

Do not miss me too much. Fare well, fellow interactive fictioneers.

Matt

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=320#p31728
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-15 17:43:34

Hello new people! I've been hanging around here for four and half months now, but I don't think I ever formally introduced myself, so for my 200th post:

Hello! You see a Joey: a Brit in his twenties, proponent of collaborative IF, and perennial philosophy student.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4371&start=0#p31729
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Playfic, a web app for writing/sharing Inform 7
User: George / DateTime: 2012-02-15 19:04:54

[quote="waxpancake"]Not yet, but stay tuned. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Looking good! Can't wait for collaboration. 

Also is there a possibility of vertically splitting the page between source and game?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4370&start=0#p31730
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Help needed for Theatre...even WITH the walk-thru
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2012-02-15 19:20:40

Hi EJ,

[spoiler]Yeah, the reason you're stuck is because you evidently haven't been on the chandelier yet.

It is by using the chandelier to cross from the upper east balcony of the theatre (my name for the room may not be precise) to the upper west one that will get you access to the area with the bookshelves and the chain.

Perhaps scan back earlier in the walkthrough and see if you can find some commands like 'push chandelier' or 'swing chandelier' --- that's the part you need to revisit. And before that, I recall you have to 'release' the chandelier or something, by doing something up in the roof.

Hope this sorts you out.

If you want more horror later, I wanna advertise my game Leadlight: <a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=h2oahwgnoxlrtvud">http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=h2oahwgnoxlrtvud</a>[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4357&start=0#p31731
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Breaking objects
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2012-02-15 19:36:23

Although you can just unlist all of the attack verbs (understand them as "something new"), it may be simpler to do this:
[code]A thing can be breakable.  A thing is usually not breakable.

Instead of attacking a breakable thing, try breaking it.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4372&start=0#p31732
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: 2 stupid questions
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-15 20:59:18

If I recall correctly, ldesc and sdesc are TADS 2 terms. They're not used in TADS 3. So your query is a little hard to interpret. But looking back at older threads, it appears you're using T3. Assuming the latter, in the example you gave:

treasureRoom is the name of an object -- that is, it's the internal code name that you would use when referring to the object in your own code. This object is defined using the Room class, which is a class defined by T3. The name by which this object will be known to the player is 'treasure room'. This is the roomName property of the treasureRoom object. The desc is "It's a big room full of treasure".

You will note that there's no period at the end of the desc. In addition to the period, a text should have a trailing space character at the end, so that the output filter can do its job correctly.

What you're doing here is making use of a template, so that you don't have to specify the names of the properties (roomName and desc) that you're defining. You can look up the Room template in the Library Reference Manual.

Does that help at all?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4357&start=0#p31733
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Breaking objects
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-15 22:59:09

If you're going to do that, you might as well dispense with the breaking action and write

Instead of attacking a breakable thing: [...the actual disassembly code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4367&start=0#p31734
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Am I in a loop?
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2012-02-15 23:13:13

Does "talk to devil" work?  That's the usual use for TALK TO.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=320#p31736
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: UnwashedMass / DateTime: 2012-02-16 00:47:35

Greetings all.  Longtime RGIF lurker, occasionally surfacing to ask strange questions about things like Melbourne House multi-protagonist games with its Inglish parser and physics model and "who archives games disqualified from IFcomps?"  I've tested a couple of Jim Munroe's games and have been sitting on an increasingly byzantine IF game design for a decade now (maybe THIS will be the decade I make it happen!), with no prior game authorial experience save for a couple of AGT experiments in my teens in the '90s, which may actually be /negative/ experience.  My first experience with text gaming was Madness and the Minotaur on the TRS-80 CoCo, adding further to the drag factor.

As well as being a big IF enthusiast and booster I'm also a big fan of gamebooks and hyperfiction.  This has been a thrilling couple of years for me with the arrival of Twine, Undum and Choicescript on the scene; I may be unusual among the Xyzzy slate voters in that I've kept up with the IFcompo for at least a decade and genuinely felt that Zombie Exodus was just a really great piece of work 8)

Recent events in the Google "newsgroup" have revealed that after joining THAT party far too late, I also stayed too long after lots of people had moved on to here.  Now instead of treating Google Groups as an RSS feed, I get to see all the posts from here as one.  (Same, er, subject, different pile?)  But supposing I ever want to write someone a reply or do anything other than purely lurk, I needed to register for an account on a wretched web forum.  So hey, hello.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4370&start=0#p31737
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Help needed for Theatre...even WITH the walk-thru
User: EJtheViking / DateTime: 2012-02-16 04:38:19

Hi, and thanks!



Yes I will check your game, nice move!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4375&start=0#p31738
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Asking Someone about another person using Tables
User: gamedesigner / DateTime: 2012-02-16 09:20:11

I get a "There is no reply" response when I ask Bill about someone:

[code]

Starter is a room.
a man called Bill is in Starter.

instead of asking Bill about a topic listed in the Table of Bills Friends:
Let R be the reply entry;
say "Bill says: [R][paragraph break]".

Table of Bills Friends
name		reply
"Bob"		         "Bob is a great friend."
"Mike"		"Mike is so so."
"Steve"		"Steve can be nasty at  times."
"Dave"		"I just met Dave recently."

[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4375&start=0#p31739
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Asking Someone about another person using Tables
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-02-16 09:23:07

You don't have a column called "topic" in the table so the "topic listed in the table" condition is never true.

However, shouldn't the compiler notice the missing column and throw an error?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=50#p31740
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-16 09:28:08

Do you "play" a CYOA?

Is the ability to play a story reliant on the story tracking states?


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=50#p31741
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-02-16 09:32:53

At its most basic, I would say, respectively, yes and no - if a CYOA has a "bad ending" (i.e., a "losing state"), and if you can get to it and/or avoid it by choosing certain paths, then it is a game you can play, even if there's absolutely no state-tracking.

Of course, if we leave the basics, we admittedly run into CYOA that is less of a "game" than a "story" - but we'll also find quite a bit of parser-based IF in that cathegory.

So I guess the answer to your question would be, does it really matter?

On an unrelated note, welcome back.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=10#p31742
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2012-02-16 09:59:40

I've slept over it and I don't want to overreact. I understand that you're thinking in different categories and from a different perspective here and I accept your apologies, bcressey. Just to give you some perspective on why your words struck a little too close to home: In 2009, there were very definite plans of my government to build up an Internet censorship infrastructure. The rationale the government gave was "battling child pornography". Hundreds of thousands of people signed a petition against this bill, because it didn't solve the problem itself, but rather tried hiding "unwanted" contents. And of course there were also already all sorts of plans to block many other things. Kind of similar to SOPA, PIPA and all, so no control of the measures by the judicative branch and so  on and so forth.. 

I was also one of the signatories of the petiton which was worded very carefully. Amongst other things, it specifically demanded providers of child pornography to actually be persecuted (instead of just trying to hide their "product") and shut down. That didn't stop a minister of the federal gouvernment to make a public statement that he was shocked, appalled and disgusted that so many people would sign a petition [i]in favour of child pornography[/i]. So suddenly, all these people were supporters of child pornography in the  eyes of the country's most popular politician as well as the right-winged press (who picked this up immedialtely, of course).

To say something on topic again, I simply believe you're trying to tackle the problem on the wrong level. If you believe that you can stop spam (or at least keep it at bay) by banning accounts and IP ranges [i]after the fact[/i], I fear that you are fighting a losing battle. This board is registration only. So the point to tighten security is the registration of new users. Various ways, like having new users answer a couple of questions which are simple for human beings but hard for bots, have already been discussed. Likewise, it being possible to send posts of new users to a moderation queue first. Even Bayesian classification can work very well if trained effectively.

From the old discussions, I understand that due to lack of administrative access, it is hard or impossible to introduce such changes right now. But isn't that (the absence of active administrators) rather a problem which needs to be solved anyways? With the current policy, the collateral damage will become quite severe at some point - because no matter whether it's Tor-related or not, more and more people's IP addresses will be caught in one of your filters eventually. To no fault of their own - that's the nature of dynamic address allocation in IPv4.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4365&start=0#p31743
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hide a Door.
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-02-16 10:40:53

Possibly the simplest way to accomplish what you want would be to set the grate to scenery, to prevent its display in the room description, and disallow any action involving it with a simple check.

[code]Forest is a room.

The grate is a door, below Forest.

Maze is below Grate.

After opening grate:
	now the grate is scenery;
	say "you push the grate off to the side and it falls into a slot in the grate, making lots of noise, never to be seen again.".
	
Instead of doing something with the open grate:
	say "[The grate] vanished into the depths."

Does the player mean doing something with the grate:
	it is very unlikely.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=320#p31744
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-16 10:50:46

Nice to see so many people coming out of the woodwork! Welcome, belatedly or not!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4357&start=0#p31745
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Breaking objects
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-16 10:52:15

[quote="zarf"]If you're going to do that, you might as well dispense with the breaking action and write

Instead of attacking a breakable thing: [...the actual disassembly code][/quote]
But only if you're not going to add any alternative grammars like "disassemble" or "take apart," etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4372&start=0#p31746
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: 2 stupid questions
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-02-16 10:53:46

Yeah the bit I used was just something I typed up for an example but that explains why I heard about ldesc and sdesc but there not really being anything in the manuals, they're used in one of the (a couple maybe) examples in the manual describing a red book, so it was just a hunch that they were still being used in tads 3 so that clears that one up, I knew it was a stupid one to ask.  Thanks Jim [emote]:)[/emote], I was hoping to have a room desc as a way of telling the story, kinda... I dunno, like
[quote]As you enter the courtyard you see people milling around and an old couple sat on the benches as a gentle breeze kicks some fallen leaves around your feet.  The path between your home and the shops leads to the north and back south.  [/quote]
and then for a look command... Maybe
[quote]Looking around you see the flowers trailing the side of the path and an old oak tree with some benches.  People are hanging around, and Geoff and Elsie are sat on the bench.  [/quote]
Personally I think it looks better and would fit together better in a storylike manner that way, I haven't played many if games so I'm wondering on how people generally feel, I'm now also wondering how easy/hard it might be to seperate the two

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=120#p31747
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-02-16 11:08:24

[quote="RealNC"]This is true for every genre. Someone could make a 3D game and put a crude parser in, and then ask people from the mainstream 3D indy game scene to vote for it in order to win the comp. So the problem is already there, it's not CYOA that introduces it.[/quote]
Then why do you want a CYOA category? It seems to me like a quick, ineffective fix for a problem much larger than what this voting system experienced this year.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4372&start=0#p31748
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: 2 stupid questions
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-16 11:20:22

You can do this type of thing easily enough, and in several different ways. A lot depends on how you want the reader to encounter the story! The example you gave makes at least one assumption that is probably bad: You've jumped from "an old couple" to "Geoff and Elsie." I would speculate that you're _assuming_ the player will start a conversation with the old couple and learn their names, but that's a poor assumption, because many players will fail to do so, and NONE of them will know what you're expecting that they will do.

You need to be aware that the player may enter the courtyard numerous times, so your upon-entering code needs to be carefully tailored so it will read properly each time. I would also suggest not putting important information (such as about the exits) in the upon-entering text. That belongs in the basic look-around description of the room.

With that preamble, here's an easy way to do the sort of text output you seem to want:

[code]courtyard: Room 'Courtyard'
    "<<one of>>When you first enter the courtyard you\'re amazed at the festive
    atmosphere. <<or>><<stopping>>Three clowns on tricycles are circling the fountain
    at breakneck speed, and a sheepdog has set up a card table on which he\'s selling
    bowling trophies. Paths lead north and south. "
north = anotherRoom
south = thatOtherRoom
;[/code]

The <<one of>> syntax is new in TADS 3.1, and it's extremely useful for this type of situation. But in the example above, the first sentence will only appear once, so you dare not put any essential information in it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=50#p31749
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-16 11:26:05

[quote="conradcook"]Do you "play" a CYOA?[/quote]

I do. What's more, I often [i]cheat [/i]when playing a CYOA (by backtracking) which is a pretty sure sign there's a game happening [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=20#p31750
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-16 11:39:54

[quote="Hannes"]To say something on topic again, I simply believe you're trying to tackle the problem on the wrong level. If you believe that you can stop spam (or at least keep it at bay) by banning accounts and IP ranges [i]after the fact[/i], I fear that you are fighting a losing battle. This board is registration only. So the point to tighten security is the registration of new users. Various ways, like having new users answer a couple of questions which are simple for human beings but hard for bots, have already been discussed. Likewise, it being possible to send posts of new users to a moderation queue first. Even Bayesian classification can work very well if trained effectively.[/quote]

I understand your perspective. And I agree: fighting spam is essentially always a losing battle, at least at a technical level. It doesn't mean it's not worth fighting, but it does argue for a rational upper bound on effort expended.

One point that Merk always stressed (and which, frankly, I discounted before I saw it firsthand) is that the spam here does not come from bots. We do have simple questions in place for registration and they do keep the bots out. All the spammers that get through are humans that are determined to post here. We had one extreme case where a guy pretended to be a novice I7 user and, after several incoherent posts, wrote about his "game idea" that involved buying UK flowers.

The typical spammer signs up for an account but doesn't activate it right away. (Presumably they are registering on other forums during this window.) I delete these accounts in bulk every few hours; the total comes to about 50 per day that get scrubbed before they ever hit the members list. To give you a sense of the scale, in the last 30 days we added 50 legitimate new members.

Maybe once or twice a day, we get an overachieving spammer who signs up, activates his account within minutes, and begins flooding the board. These are the only ones that get an IP ban. They've demonstrated that they are a somewhat more determined adversary. Prior to IP bans, they would simply sign up for a new account and do the same thing immediately.

[quote="Hannes"]Likewise, it being possible to send posts of new users to a moderation queue first. Even Bayesian classification can work very well if trained effectively.[/quote]

I disagree that Bayesian classification could work here; we simply don't have a large enough corpus of posts. It is incredibly effective at scale, as Gmail's filtering demonstrates, but we are many orders of magnitude below that volume.

Sending new users to a moderation queue is an option. My sense is that it would undermine the relative sense of open access here. Having someone be able to sign up, ask a question about their Inform 7 problem, and get a reply within a few minutes is a real strength. That happens every day and it's a great thing. 

[quote="Hannes"]From the old discussions, I understand that due to lack of administrative access, it is hard or impossible to introduce such changes right now. But isn't that (the absence of active administrators) rather a problem which needs to be solved anyways? With the current policy, the collateral damage will become quite severe at some point - because no matter whether it's Tor-related or not, more and more people's IP addresses will be caught in one of your filters eventually. To no fault of their own - that's the nature of dynamic address allocation in IPv4.[/quote]

David and I are both administrators now, with the important caveat that we do not have access to the server and cannot install or modify any of the software.

But the IP address filtering problem is a fair point. However stifling it is to new users to be held in a queue for moderation, it would be far worse for them to be greeted by a "permanent ban" message. I admit it was easier to justify the policy before it affected you. I admit also that my reflexive dismissal of Tor as a use case was misguided, offensive, and based largely on ignorance.

I will let David weigh in but I am inclined to handle IP bans somewhat differently. Perhaps we can continue to issue the bans, but expunge the list of banned IPs on a weekly basis. That should still provide some deterrent value without the risk of encroaching on legitimate users over time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=120#p31751
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-16 11:40:48

[quote="ChrisC"][quote="RealNC"]This is true for every genre. Someone could make a 3D game and put a crude parser in, and then ask people from the mainstream 3D indy game scene to vote for it in order to win the comp. So the problem is already there, it's not CYOA that introduces it.[/quote]
Then why do you want a CYOA category? It seems to me like a quick, ineffective fix for a problem much larger than what this voting system experienced this year.[/quote]
You can read the whole thread and also the [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348]CYOA and IF[/url] thread for why I think CYOA belongs in its own category.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=20#p31752
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-16 11:58:28

A very good way currently to catch spammers is [url=http://www.stopforumspam.com]stop forum spam[/url]. I don't know if there are good phpbb integration mods for it out there though. It might be worth looking into. From a quick search, it looks like that forums that have this integrated pretty much solved their spam problems.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=60#p31753
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-16 12:11:48

[quote="Peter Pears"]At its most basic, I would say, respectively, yes and no - if a CYOA has a "bad ending" (i.e., a "losing state"), and if you can get to it and/or avoid it by choosing certain paths, then it is a game you can play, even if there's absolutely no state-tracking.[/quote]
If you're having an argument about what constitutes IF, and you declare that IF has to be a kind of game, you now have two intractable arguments.

(I play games every week that have no win/lose conditions.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=20#p31754
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-16 12:31:44

I use that site to identify spammers that register, but it's a manual process. I found a phpBB plugin for it that looks promising:
<a class="postlink" href="http://support.prophpbb.com/topic2572.html">http://support.prophpbb.com/topic2572.html</a>

I'll see if Merk will install it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4372&start=0#p31755
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: 2 stupid questions
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-02-16 12:41:46

Oh! I've used <<one of>> and <<or>> I was thinking of a way to distinctively seperate the look desc and the entering room desc (which I realise is just the same) so that I could use <<one of>> and <<if>> so when a character enters a room it's described 'as part of the story' and then look around kind of an 'inner diologue' describing it (which would be more a description of what's around the character) the Geoff and Elsie thing was just on the assumption that the character knew who they were btw [emote]:)[/emote]

Would modifying enteringRoom to say desc2 instead of LookAround work do you thinks?

Oh and thanks for the tip about the exits, I was planning on listing them in the first time desc maybe so the player would know which ways go where in case they might not [i]want[/i] to do an explicit look around in each room (such as a corridor with doors or similar that you might just pass through to get somewhere)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=30#p31756
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-16 12:44:00

I'm somewhat ashamed to admit that during my first three attempts to play the game, I didn't realize that the house was accessible or implemented. I thought "go inside" just referred to the hatch, so I never clicked it.

Making "home" into a hyperlink would have fixed it for me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4375&start=0#p31757
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Asking Someone about another person using Tables
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-02-16 12:59:41

At the moment, this sort of thing falls under the purview of runtime problem number 20 (though a compile-time error would be nice).  The code in ExistsTableRowCorr, however, suppresses that runtime problem, and I'm not sure why.  It's probably worth a bug report.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4372&start=0#p31758
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: 2 stupid questions
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-16 13:32:57

[quote="KellyJ"]Would modifying enteringRoom to say desc2 instead of LookAround work do you thinks?[/quote]
Kelly, I'm going to be brutally honest here. I hope you won't take it the wrong way. My earnest suggestion for you would be to start by writing a whole bunch of basic game stuff [i]without [/i]trying to do anything fancy. You can then start adding fancy stuff one bit at a time as you become more conversant with TADS.

TADS is a complex system. There are many ways to do what you're thinking of. I didn't mention afterTravel, for instance, because I wanted to keep it simple. If you want a different description the first time the player enters the room, you could also write an actual method for desc rather than using the desc property as set up in the template. For example:

[code]courtyard: Room 'Courtyard'
    desc {
        descCount++;
        if (descCount == 1) "When you first enter the courtyard you\'re amazed at the festive
        atmosphere. ";
        "Three clowns on tricycles are circling the fountain
        at breakneck speed, and a sheepdog has set up a card table on which he\'s selling
        bowling trophies. Paths lead north and south. ";
    }
    descCount = 0
    // other code for the room goes here....[/code]
I would tend to use this approach rather than messing with enteringRoom, because I'm less likely to create a bug. And that's the point: Do things the simple way until you're thoroughly familiar with the TADS system. Trying to do it the complicated, customized way right off the bat is a great way to get discouraged and give up, which would be a shame.

(Trust me on this -- I've been there. The first time I tried to learn T3 I gave up in frustration, because I was trying to implement a window that the player could look through, and that was just too complicated for me at the time!)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4375&start=0#p31759
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Asking Someone about another person using Tables
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-02-16 13:40:55

Ok, I've [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=868]reported it[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4375&start=0#p31760
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Asking Someone about another person using Tables
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-16 13:50:53

I notice that there *is* a compile-time error (EDIT, not "run-time", oops) if you try this with things:

Instead of taking a thing listed in the Table of Bills Friends: ...

"You wrote 'Instead of taking a thing listed in the Table of Bills Friends'  , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is 'taking a thing listed in the Table of Bills Friends'. But that did not make sense as a description of an action."

However, adding a *different* table with a "thing" column makes the error go away! Wacky. I guess there's a namespace of column names that doesn't behave in quite the obvious way?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4372&start=0#p31761
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: 2 stupid questions
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-02-16 14:09:51

[quote]Kelly, I'm going to be brutally honest here. I hope you won't take it the wrong way. My earnest suggestion for you would be to start by writing a whole bunch of basic game stuff without trying to do anything fancy. You can then start adding fancy stuff one bit at a time as you become more conversant with TADS.[/quote]
It's not that I don't know the basics, in fact since I've started learning tads I've spent every night (except fri/sat and sometimes tues) reading the tour guides and adding to my testworld, learning each bit at a time, I've been building up a home with items that interact with each other and making things act differently under different circumstances (such as a hairdryer that fizzles and breaks if it's wet, a room that's only lit when the curtains are open).

I'm also pretty used to playing with descriptions so that they change dependant on what the objects look like (A gem puzzle I created where they glow different colours depending on how many are on each side of a tube). I've also used the likes of <<first time>><<only>> in my descriptions, like I said it occured to me that having the description shown when you enter a room each time be different to the one you get when you type look would be more appealing and read smoother when played.  Sorry if that came across like a bit of a rant by the way I really do appreciate your help I just wanted to explain where I feel I'm up to.

I'm having a night off from looking at code tonight, I was just asking if you thought it might work or if there's an easier way. [quote](Trust me on this -- I've been there. The first time I tried to learn T3 I gave up in frustration, because I was trying to implement a window that the player could look through, and that was just too complicated for me at the time!)[/quote] I've been there myself with a few different languages (not given up - just had to backpeddle to the basics) hence I have been starting simple and avoiding things that would be too complex too quick (I haven't even looked at actors and I'm not comfortable with lists yet) I'm just trying to build on what I [i]do[/i] know in the hope that when I do produce the game I want to make it'll look/play/feel good and be as interactive as (I and) the player wants.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4323&start=0#p31762
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can something be a backdrop and animate?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-02-16 14:16:13

[quote="Laroquod"]Or you could just give an object the 'animate' attribute without assigning it to an i7 kind of person or man or woman, etc. The way I understand it, i7 manual tells you to sort objects into sentient and non-sentient by giving them 'kinds', but the actual code parser ignores this information and only looks at whether objects have the 'animate' attribute (which they get automatically when they are assigned to a sentient kind).

So, this gives you a convenient hook to make an animate object that belongs to a non-sentient kind...

[code]The Starting Room contains an animate scenery thing called a built-in AI.[/code][/quote]
Sorry to quote myself (especially since I don't think my solutions were the most relevant) but I made a mistake here that I feel I should correct for the record. The line above will not work on its own -- not without also adding something like this...

[code]A thing can be inanimate or animate. A thing is usually inanimate.
The animate property translates into I6 as "animate".[/code]
Which I overlooked in my code previously. This is why I was able to comment out the '(- has animate -)' hack which I had previously been forced to apply separately to every single object I wanted to be an animate non-person in my game. With the lines above, though, one can avoid all that customisation, just by creating a permanent i7 hook into the buried i6 property 'animate'.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4372&start=0#p31763
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: 2 stupid questions
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-16 14:29:04

[quote="KellyJ"]
It's not that I don't know the basics, in fact since I've started learning tads I've spent every night (except fri/sat and sometimes tues) reading the tour guides and adding to my testworld, learning each bit at a time, I've been building up a home with items that interact with each other and making things act differently under different circumstances (such as a hairdryer that fizzles and breaks if it's wet, a room that's only lit when the curtains are open).

I'm also pretty used to playing with descriptions so that they change dependant on what the objects look like (A gem puzzle I created where they glow different colours depending on how many are on each side of a tube). I've also used the likes of <<first time>><<only>> in my descriptions, like I said it occured to me that having the description shown when you enter a room each time be different to the one you get when you type look would be more appealing and read smoother when played.[/quote]
Super -- sorry I was misunderstanding where you're coming from!

You might want to use beforeTravel on the room from which the player is departing. This is good for describing the travel itself, as it prints its output [i]before [/i]the room name of the destination appears. afterTravel on the room itself ... I'd have to check where its output appears in relation to the room name and description.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4375&start=0#p31764
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Asking Someone about another person using Tables
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-02-16 14:37:02

As I understand it, all column names are supposed to go into one global namespace.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4376&start=0#p31765
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Preventing speaking/talking/saying, etc.
User: penny / DateTime: 2012-02-16 14:41:02

Hello all.  I am *very* new IF writing and Inform7.  I am trying to limit speaking, but I can't seem to get anything to compile.

[code]Instead of talking when location is Dark Solitude or location is Dusky Solitude, say "You cannot speak in solitude".
[/code]

This returns an error about it not understanding "talking".

Also, are there any pointers on how to know what actions are default.  I kind of feel (currently) like my hands are tied.  I've looked through the documentation, but it's quite a bit to take in.

Thanks for helping the noob.

Penny

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4376&start=0#p31766
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Preventing speaking/talking/saying, etc.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-16 14:48:23

To see what actions exist already, you can use the Index tab - go to the Actions sub-tab and they'll be listed there. Use "Actions A-Z" to find the actual grammar lines that can be used as player commands.

There are a few different actions that might be considered talking: [b]Answering it that[/b] is the action generated by "say X to NPC," [b]telling it about[/b] is the action generated by "tell NPC about X" and [b]asking it about[/b] is the action generated by "ask NPC about X." There is also the 'orders' syntax, which processes commands like "NPC, go north" into actions like "asking someone to try doing something." Finally, the Standard Rules include actions for saying yes, no, and sorry.

You can define all of those as "talking" using a kind-of-action definition:

[code]Answering someone that is talking.
Telling someone about is talking.
Asking someone about is talking.
Asking someone to try doing something is talking.
Saying yes is talking.
Saying no is talking.
Saying sorry is talking.[/code]

And I think that will make your code work. You might throw singing in there too.

If you ever want to see what the parser does with a particular command, use the "actions" debugging command. It will then tell you every action that is being tried.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4375&start=0#p31767
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Asking Someone about another person using Tables
User: gamedesigner / DateTime: 2012-02-16 14:51:47

[quote="Juhana"]You don't have a column called "topic" in the table so the "topic listed in the table" condition is never true.

However, shouldn't the compiler notice the missing column and throw an error?[/quote]

Thanks to Juhanna Zarf and Emacs user for discussing this.
I thought that "name entry" would work but it appears you need "topic" instead.

And then it does work properly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4372&start=0#p31768
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: 2 stupid questions
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-16 14:59:15

If you only care about using a different description the first time the player arrives, you can use [url=http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/libref/object/Thing.html#roomFirstDesc]roomFirstDesc[/url].

If you want a random or cycling list of descriptions, I would replace desc() with a method that picks a double-quoted string from a ShuffledEventList or a CyclicEventList.

[quote="Jim Aikin"]You might want to use beforeTravel on the room from which the player is departing. This is good for describing the travel itself, as it prints its output before the room name of the destination appears.[/quote]

Personally, I like this effect, but lots of people have told me that they never read text that appears right before the bolded room description. The bold catches the eye and they start reading from there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4377&start=0#p31769
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Quest WebEditor
User: Alex / DateTime: 2012-02-16 15:00:27

You know how you wait ages for a web-based text adventure editor and then two come along at once?

Quest WebEditor is now in beta - here's a blog all about it, with a quick tour, and details of how to pester me for access to the private beta (public beta will be in a few weeks assuming all is well)

Blog: [url=http://www.textadventures.co.uk/blog/2012/02/16/introducing-quest-webeditor-create-text-adventures-online-in-your-browser/]Introducing Quest WebEditor – create text adventures online in your browser[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4372&start=0#p31770
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: 2 stupid questions
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-02-16 15:11:50

[quote]You might want to use beforeTravel on the room from which the player is departing. This is good for describing the travel itself, as it prints its output before the room name of the destination appears[/quote]That's great, I can think of a few instances that would be really handy as well as for describing the travel (which will be a great addition - Thank you!) I'll look into afterTravel as well as soon as I get chance (I'm up at 5am tommorrow so not tonight :S )

Oh hi bcressey [emote]:)[/emote] it's kind of a combination of that and a completely seperate 'look' desc I'm after to give a different perspective (i.e. one being narrated in the 2nd person and the other from your perspective) as for people not reading a travel desc, it doesn't mean I shouldn't put it in - if I can make it better I should for those that [i]do[/i] notice the little things.  I'm planning on putting the little things in plus some random tidbits for anyone that cares to notice [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4361&start=20#p31771
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: a temporary fix
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-02-16 15:18:22

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]
(About IF Comp: this couldn't happen in IF Comp, because (a) it is about marks, not about number of votes; (b) you have to play at least 5 games for your vote to count. I don't think anyone would have a problem with a CYOA game winning IF Comp.)[/quote]
Actually, this is a really good point. What if the first-round nomination process for XYZZYs was more involved? If you had to rank or score every game you'd played, that would add a slightly higher barrier of entry and, more importantly, help convey the idea that voters are supposed to carefully consider comparisons between a decent number of the eligible entrants.

[quote="maga"][quote="ralphmerridew"]Just be glad Katawa Shoujou wasn't up for nomination.[/quote]
My list of Potential Invasions of Doom has been steadily racking up larger and larger candidates, from Caltrops to Zarfian Kickstarterites to Something Awful LPers, and so on. In terms of total griefing potential, though, I think Anonymous trumps MuggleNet.

(Also, hey, they completed it.)[/quote]
Whoa, is there some story about SA LPers?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=20#p31772
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-02-16 15:37:34

I've used Akismet before which is pretty reliable.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=60#p31773
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-02-16 15:39:07

[quote="maga"][quote="Peter Pears"](I play games every week that have no win/lose conditions.)[/quote][/quote]Out of curiosity, what sorts of games are these? I thought a defining feature between "games" and "toys" are the presence of goals.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4361&start=20#p31774
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: a temporary fix
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-16 15:39:15

[quote="ChrisC"][quote="maga"]My list of Potential Invasions of Doom has been steadily racking up larger and larger candidates, from Caltrops to Zarfian Kickstarterites to Something Awful LPers, and so on. In terms of total griefing potential, though, I think Anonymous trumps MuggleNet.[/quote]
Whoa, is there some story about SA LPers?[/quote]
No; this is purely hypothetical. IF gets played on the SA forums with some frequency, and a number of current and former IF-community folks are Goons. I have no idea whether SA culture would make this possible or even likely, but it does represent a large, energetic community that has the potential to flood the XYZZYs for their own reasons.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=60#p31775
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-16 15:48:56

[quote="ChrisC"][quote="maga"][quote="Peter Pears"](I play games every week that have no win/lose conditions.)[/quote][/quote]Out of curiosity, what sorts of games are these? I thought a defining feature between "games" and "toys" are the presence of goals.[/quote]
Narrative-driven RPGs. Those often have end conditions, and there are implicit goals like 'tell a good story' and 'have fun' and 'include everyone', but those are things that aren't defined by the game's formal rules. (No more than, say, you 'win' a novel by reading it to completion and understanding its themes.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=50#p31776
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-02-16 16:11:03

[quote="jacksonmead"]So, this isn't a competition, but I figure this is the best place for this announcement here (and I figure it's convenient that this is where talk of an IF festival is happening).

[url]http://gameshelf.jmac.org/2011/12/apollo-1820-the-if-tribute-album/[/url][/quote]
This link is now dead. Something is glitchy at the Gameshelf!

Paul.

EDIT: Found this updated version that works in Kevin's initial playtesting package email...

<a class="postlink" href="http://gameshelf.jmac.org/2011/12/apollo-1820-the-if-tribute-album-1/">http://gameshelf.jmac.org/2011/12/apoll ... e-album-1/</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4376&start=0#p31777
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Preventing speaking/talking/saying, etc.
User: penny / DateTime: 2012-02-16 16:17:14

Excellent help.  Thanks a lot!

Penny

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=60#p31778
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-02-16 16:28:54

Does anyone genuinely believe that even if this entire community were to be solidly behind one definition of 'interactive fiction' (which it is clear we never will be), that this solidarity would have any effect on the world-at-large and thus on the eventual evolution of that phrase in in the English language?

We aren't in control of this. We don't actually decide what words mean: they are decided by majority rule. We are never going to win [i]that[/i] game, are we? And the coming of the CYOA-type hordes has just begun. Like it or no, we are going to be forced to abandon any niche-driven preciousness regarding this term.

I think we'll be better for it. I don't have to argue my case really or convince anyone, because there's nothing anyone can do to prevent it. To the extent the phrase has held onto any specificity from the past, it's because the milieu of story-driven choice play has been sparsely populated with mostly formulaic entries fitting into predefined interface styles with their own names, like 'RPG' or 'sandbox'. But that regime was never going to last.

Speaking of 'RPG'. That's a perfect example. D&D players can tell you exactly how much hope a niche community has of protecting a term against being coopted by a more widespread popular movement working in a similar creative space.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4377&start=0#p31779
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Quest WebEditor
User: George / DateTime: 2012-02-16 16:29:18

Looks very nice! And since it came up in the other thread, I'm curious here too -- any plans for collaborative editing? And will you be able to export a game for mobile like you were working on with the desktop editor?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4377&start=0#p31780
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Quest WebEditor
User: Alex / DateTime: 2012-02-16 16:38:35

Collaborative editing is definitely an option to look into - even if initially it's simply sharing the file so different people can edit it at different times.

And yes, any games created via the web can be converted into apps just the same as games created via the desktop, because there's no difference (soon I will add the ability to upload and download the .aslx file so you can switch back and forth - and Dropbox integration would let you do that seamlessly).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=20#p31781
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-16 16:43:33

Akismet is pretty good for Wordpress spam, though it has a fairly high false positive rate. I'll look for a phpBB plugin for it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=60#p31782
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-16 17:20:47

[quote="ChrisC"][quote="maga"][quote="Peter Pears"](I play games every week that have no win/lose conditions.)[/quote][/quote]Out of curiosity, what sorts of games are these? I thought a defining feature between "games" and "toys" are the presence of goals.[/quote]

Win/lose conditions may not be the same as goals.  Children's games, like Ring Around the Rosie, are clearly games, they are clearly played, and they certainly have goals -- but I can't make meaning out of the notion that one has "won" or "lost" RATR.

Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=50#p31783
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2012-02-16 17:24:22

Yeah, I noticed that a couple of days ago. Will fix tonight. The original URL will work again, and the changed URL (with the "-1") will be dead.

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=60#p31784
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-16 17:33:39

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="conradcook"]Do you "play" a CYOA?[/quote]

I do. What's more, I often [i]cheat [/i]when playing a CYOA (by backtracking) which is a pretty sure sign there's a game happening [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Ah, very good.

[quote="Peter Pears"]At its most basic, I would say, respectively, yes and no - if a CYOA has a "bad ending" (i.e., a "losing state"), and if you can get to it and/or avoid it by choosing certain paths, then it is a game you can play, even if there's absolutely no state-tracking.[/quote]

Yeah, I had that in the back of my mind... of course, to the extent the CYOA is doing that, it is tracking state.  Even if the state is only a place on the decision tree.

[quote]Of course, if we leave the basics, we admittedly run into CYOA that is less of a "game" than a "story" - but we'll also find quite a bit of parser-based IF in that cathegory.

So I guess the answer to your question would be, does it really matter?[/quote]

I don't know.

The Fighting Fantasy gamebooks were certainly games (which I often cheated at).  What's more, I remember WWI dogfighting books -- Flying Aces?  Ace of Aces? -- they never became really popular, but the idea was that you and a friend each had a book, which represented your plane.  The facing page had a picture of the other guy's plane from your cockpit, and you took turns announcing what move you'd make:  whether to dive, climb, or so forth.

So they were little state machines that tracked each other, and you could fly around each other and try to get a good position.  It was pretty neat.

Now those were certainly games, in every sense of the word, although also being centrally CYOA according to my intuitions about what "CYOA" means.


Conrad.

ps-

[quote]On an unrelated note, welcome back.[/quote]

!-)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4378&start=0#p31785
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: THINK verb...
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-16 17:47:15

I'm looking to implement a THINK verb.  Anybody have good examples of how to do this?

I'm not finding it in the docs, but I know it's a common notion.

I'm looking for three functions:

* THINK:  Gives a kind of in-character hint, to nudge the player along, on request.  

* THINK ABOUT:  This is more like a conversation with oneself, for an inward dialog.  -- I guess the trick here is to create some kind of invisible object -- Brain, or something -- that in effect the player can converse with.

* SPONTANEOUS THOUGHT:  This is a response to something environmental, and not to user input.

What I have so far is that this is probably best done with the Consultable class.  Any leads?


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4364&start=0#p31786
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: switching PCs? initialPlayerChar usage? -- success!
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-16 17:56:37

I'm posting the basic, working code for anyone down the line who wants to do this.

This is no-frills code, which allows the player to switch into any character of the Actor class.  It does not address the case where the player tries to switch into an object -- you get the default "You can't do that." -- and does not consider that you might want some Actors switchable-to, and some not.


[code]   DefineTAction(SwitchTo)
   ;

   VerbRule(SwitchTo)
     ('switch' 'to' | 'become') singleDobj
     : SwitchToAction
     verbPhrase = 'switch/switching (to who)'
   ;

   modify Actor
     dobjFor(SwitchTo)
     {
       action()
       {
            "Switching from <<gPlayerChar.name>> to <<self.name>>... ";
            gPlayerChar = self;
            "You are now <<gPlayerChar.name>>. ";
       }
    }
;[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=50#p31787
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-02-16 18:14:50

[quote="jacksonmead"]Yeah, I noticed that a couple of days ago. Will fix tonight. The original URL will work again, and the changed URL (with the "-1") will be dead.[/quote]
D'oh! I just gave the '-1' version out to someone. I'll wait until the proper one's up later then send him an update.

P.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=20#p31788
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-16 18:34:06

After spending a few days tuning performance, I'm much more comfortable with the server speed now. Average response times from my nearest server have gone from 250ms to 25ms; even with the 4x multiplier it still feels quite fast.

Please give [url=http://gs.tads.io/?storyfile=http://www.tads.org/games/ditch3/ditch3web.t3]Return to Ditch Day[/url] another try.

If you were secretly dismayed by the performance before, you should find it to be far more responsive now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=20#p31789
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-16 18:50:44

From Boston, I get responses after a long second.  (Maybe over 1; definitely less than two.)

However, I should say --

I'm able to run this game in Chrome, but not in explorer.  Explorer gives me no cursor, nor does clicking [u]start the game[/u] have any effect.

Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=60#p31790
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-16 18:57:18

[quote="conradcook"]What's more, I remember WWI dogfighting books -- Flying Aces?  Ace of Aces? -- they never became really popular, but the idea was that you and a friend each had a book, which represented your plane.  The facing page had a picture of the other guy's plane from your cockpit, and you took turns announcing what move you'd make:  whether to dive, climb, or so forth.[/quote]

Ace of Aces rocked. I just retrieved my old copy from my parents' attic, with great pleasure. 

I wouldn't call it a CYOA, though. It isn't narrative (any more so than any other combat game); it just uses the book system as a brilliantly designed way of keeping track of the opposing airplanes. I think you could probably turn it into a boardgame without changing the mechanics at all, though it would lose a lot of its awesomeness.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4379&start=0#p31791
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Giving Characters Skills & Characteristics
User: ButterBridgeRecords / DateTime: 2012-02-16 19:00:59

Hello all,
I'm not expecting any complete solutions or anything, and apologies if this has been addressed before but I was wondering on the best way of implementing a set of characteristics and skillset for the character, which could also be applied to NPCs. By which I mean in the style of many d20 and d100 games, where the PC and all NPCS would have, say, a 'Strength' of '18' and an Archery Skill of '3' etc etc.

I'm pretty sure I could navigate coding the character creation section i.e. how these skills were awarded to the PC (though I may well be back in the future for that... [emote]:?[/emote] ) but it's just the approach. Should each characteristic or skill be a 'number'? Would they be 'part of' or 'carried' by the player? How do I get around every character having them?

I couldn't find anything on this online, if anyone could point me in a sensible direction, I'd be mighty grateful!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=20#p31792
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-16 19:04:05

I checked and noticed the same thing at first, though it seems to have gotten itself unstuck now.

A full second between turns is definitely on the long side. Can you try again and see if the results are any better?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=20#p31793
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: George / DateTime: 2012-02-16 19:18:18

[quote="bcressey"]
Please give [url=http://gs.tads.io/?storyfile=http://www.tads.org/games/ditch3/ditch3web.t3]Return to Ditch Day[/url] another try.[/quote]

Nice work Ben, this is much better than before. For standard commands it's indistinguishable from desktop play, feels great.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=20#p31794
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-16 19:35:09

[quote="bcressey"]I checked and noticed the same thing at first, though it seems to have gotten itself unstuck now.

A full second between turns is definitely on the long side. Can you try again and see if the results are any better?[/quote]

I get a full second turn-around; generally less than two (although the first move *did* take 2-3).

Doesn't feel like a terrible outcome to me.  I feel it plays smooth enough.

Still not getting anything with Explorer, though.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=60#p31795
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-16 19:37:30

Doesn't it feel to you more like a classic CYOA book than -- I don't know:  Stratego or Monopoly?

C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4361&start=20#p31796
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: a temporary fix
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2012-02-16 19:40:54

IIRC, both David Whyld and David Welbourne have used variations on "davidw", though at different locations.

And, after checking, KS was actually released in 2012.  Will it be eligible for next year's XYZZYs?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4379&start=0#p31797
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Giving Characters Skills & Characteristics
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-16 19:40:54

Do you mean in Inform 7?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=60#p31799
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-16 20:02:51

Sure, insofar as physically it's a book (well, two books) whose pages you flip to discontinuously depending on your choices (and your opponent's, though I don't think the fact that it's two-player is decisive). But I don't think it has much more in common with Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey? than that physical similarity. It feels a lot less like classic CYOA (the Edward Packard stuff, I mean) than Julio Cortazar's Hopscotch. Even less than Jacques Roubaud's [url=http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/oulipo/roubaud1.htm]The Great Fire of London[/url]. (NB: I haven't finished either of those books.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4381&start=0#p31800
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Is this thing still current for T3.1?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-16 20:22:32

[url]http://www.flaminglunchbox.net/tads3/tads3.pdf[/url]

C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4378&start=0#p31801
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: THINK verb...
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-16 20:43:44

[quote="conradcook"]I'm looking to implement a THINK verb.  Anybody have good examples of how to do this?

* THINK ABOUT:  This is more like a conversation with oneself, for an inward dialog.  -- I guess the trick here is to create some kind of invisible object -- Brain, or something -- that in effect the player can converse with.

* SPONTANEOUS THOUGHT:  This is a response to something environmental, and not to user input.

What I have so far is that this is probably best done with the Consultable class.  Any leads?[/quote]
I wouldn't bother with a Consultable class, though that would certainly be one way of doing it. I also wouldn't bother with a Brain. (I'm a Scarecrow at heart!)

Here's a ThinkAbout implementation. It uses the new <<or>> syntax in TADS 3.1:
[code]DefineTAction(ThinkAbout)
    objInScope( obj ) { return true; }
;
VerbRule(ThinkAbout)
    (('think' ('about' | )) | 'ponder' | 'contemplate') singleDobj
    : ThinkAboutAction
    verbPhrase = 'think/thinking (about what)'
;

modify Thing
    thoughtMsg = 'You <<one of>>consider<<or>>ponder<<or>>think about<<at random>> ' + theName + ', but
        <<one of>>nothing comes to mind<<or>>no useful ideas come to you<<or>>your mind remains obstinately
        blank<<or>>the subject doesn\'t lead to any fresh insights<<at random>>. '
    dobjFor(ThinkAbout) {
        preCond = []
        verify() { logical; }
        action() {
            say (thoughtMsg);
        }
    }
;[/code]
The use of objInScope insures that the player can think about ANY game object. An object that has its own thoughtMsg will give a meaningful output; anything that doesn't will produce a random "I'm tryin' to think, but nuttin' happens!" message.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4379&start=0#p31802
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Giving Characters Skills & Characteristics
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-16 20:48:01

[quote="ButterBridgeRecords"]Hello all,
I'm not expecting any complete solutions or anything, and apologies if this has been addressed before but I was wondering on the best way of implementing a set of characteristics and skillset for the character, which could also be applied to NPCs. By which I mean in the style of many d20 and d100 games, where the PC and all NPCS would have, say, a 'Strength' of '18' and an Archery Skill of '3' etc etc.

I'm pretty sure I could navigate coding the character creation section i.e. how these skills were awarded to the PC (though I may well be back in the future for that... [emote]:?[/emote] ) but it's just the approach. Should each characteristic or skill be a 'number'? Would they be 'part of' or 'carried' by the player? How do I get around every character having them?

I couldn't find anything on this online, if anyone could point me in a sensible direction, I'd be mighty grateful![/quote]
Given the 'part of', 'carried' etc. parlance, I'll assume you're talking about inform 7 (and in which case, this should be in the inform forum). In any case, the way you'll probably want to this is declare that people can have numbers called 'strength', 'archery' and whatnot. Like so:

[code]A person has a number called strength.[/code]
Then you can declare what people's strengths are:
[code]The strength of yourself is 10. The strength of Mildred is 12. The strength of the nurse is 8.[/code]
If you don't want to specify the exact stats for everyone, you can use defaults:
[code]The strength of a person is usually 8.[/code]
Change the figure in play:
[code]After drinking the poison: say "You feel your power sapping swiftly."; decrease strength by 5.[/code]
A simple action can be used when testing the game to see what each person's statistics are:
[code]Stat checking is an action applying to one thing. Understand "check [person]" as stat checking. Check stat checking: say "Strength: [the strength of the noun] Dexterity: [the dexterity of the noun] Moxy: [the moxy of the noun]".[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4378&start=0#p31803
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: THINK verb...
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-16 21:13:58

Many thanks, Jim!  I'll try it out and report back.  -- I imagine I'd similarly update the Topic class, to allow the player to contemplate non-objects?


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4361&start=20#p31804
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: a temporary fix
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-16 21:17:52

[quote="ralphmerridew"]And, after checking, KS was actually released in 2012.  Will it be eligible for next year's XYZZYs?[/quote]
I don't see any particular reason why it should be, when the great bulk of visual novels, hobbyist and commercial, are not.

The XYZZYs don't attempt to include every CYOA published in the previous year. That would be a gigantic task. Rather, it includes such CYOA as falls within the general orbit of the IF world. What exactly that constitutes is a judgement call; the ChoiceScript games are in there largely because Choice of Games has a decent relationship with the IF world.

(So, if we thought that the ChoiceScript community were actually a bunch of evil awards-hijacking trolls, and that the IF community had zero interest in Choice of the Wotsit or ChoiceScript, the long-term solution would be very simple: don't add ChoiceScript games to the list any more.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4378&start=0#p31805
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: THINK verb...
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-16 22:46:48

Topics are not derived from Thing, but the verb processing seems to think you must be trying to think about a Thing. I'm not sure how you'd modify Topic itself, but this works:
[code]class MyTopic: Topic, Thing
;

potato: MyTopic 'potato' 'potato'
;[/code]
If you define a new Topic class this way, then you can think about instances of the class. Whether this would have side effects with normal usage of Topics, I don't know. It seems not. I'm able to get an NPC's AskTellTopic to respond to the potato.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4382&start=0#p31806
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Rooms named the same thing
User: penny / DateTime: 2012-02-16 22:53:40

I'm stuck again. [emote]:)[/emote]

I have a small forest maze with three rooms that I would like to be named the same thing.  How can I get around the ambiguity?

Thanks!

Penny

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4378&start=0#p31807
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: THINK verb...
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-16 22:55:11

The downside of my little scheme for this command ... see, I wrote this very, very early in the development of my WIP, and haven't tested or expanded it since. The problem, I have now discovered, is horrible. Let's suppose you have an NPC named Bob, who inconveniently dies at some point and is replaced by an inanimate object called Bob's body. This object will still have 'bob' as a vocabWord. So the result is:

>think about bob
Which bob do you mean, Bob or Bob's body?

A pretty bad spoiler, yes? This will happen EVERY time two objects share a vocabWord. There are ways to work around it, but they're messy. On the whole, I think sticking with Topics and skipping the in-game objects entirely is probably a whole lot safer and easier!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4382&start=0#p31809
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rooms named the same thing
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-16 23:12:47

Give the rooms different names in the source code but the same printed name. Something like:

[code]Forest 1 is a room. The printed name of Forest 1 is "Forest". Forest 2 is a room. The printed name of Forest 2 is "Forest". Forest 3 is a room. The printed name of Forest 3 is "Forest".[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4382&start=0#p31810
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rooms named the same thing
User: penny / DateTime: 2012-02-16 23:15:59

Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4378&start=0#p31811
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: THINK verb...
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-16 23:16:17

The topic of a ThinkAbout action is mentioned briefly in "How to Create Verbs" in the Technical Manual. Unfortunately, the example given simply parrots what the player types. It doesn't try to find a matching Topic object at all, which sort of sucks. That article says, "getTopic() returns an object of class ResolvedTopic...." But what it doesn't say is how the author is to relate an object of class ResolvedTopic to an actual in-game author-supplied Topic object.

Wiser heads will have to prevail. I'm stumped.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=50#p31812
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2012-02-16 23:25:18

For all those watching at home, the URL is now fixed.

-Kevin

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4381&start=0#p31813
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Is this thing still current for T3.1?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-17 00:51:22

The PDF details say it was created in 2007, so probably not current.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=60#p31814
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-17 01:11:20

[quote="matt w"][Ace of Aces...] I think you could probably turn it into a boardgame without changing the mechanics at all, though it would lose a lot of its awesomeness.[/quote]

Instead, it morphed, in [i]just two iterations,[/i] into Japanese softcore anime porn.

The level of awesomeness stayed approximately par.

On the other hand, some other publishers did apply that format to narrative games (TSR sold paired books which were very much "two-player CYOA," modeled on the notions introduced in Leonardi's dogfighting books ... and Joe Dever did some in-between visual paired-book games with more narrative gloss).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=30#p31815
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-17 01:20:01

Very fast in Northern California, using Safari on MacOS 10.6.8. Some responses are up to half a second, others much shorter.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=70#p31816
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-17 06:00:12

[quote="Ghalev"]Instead, it morphed, in [i]just two iterations,[/i] into Japanese softcore anime porn.

The level of awesomeness stayed approximately par.[/quote]

?!  Were those published in paired gamebooks?


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=30#p31817
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-17 06:07:28

Are people timing this with some technical method?

I'm holding my watch up to the screen and hitting ENTER just as the digits roll around to (for example --:--:50).  Keeping my eye on the digits, I know the time when the response shows up.


C.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4381&start=0#p31818
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Is this thing still current for T3.1?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-17 06:10:38

Fair enough.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4378&start=0#p31819
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: THINK verb...
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-17 06:27:59

Jim,

Did you read down to the next example, "Verbs with one object plus a topic," containing a dictionary  -- The topic handling more complexly responds with a string, which is stowed away in a table indexed to the topic.  This brings us back to Consultables...

--Frankly, I'm not at all certain why the following *doesn't* work, and as you seem further along in understanding ResolvedTopic, I wonder if you'd comment:


[code]DefineTAction(ThinkAbout)
    objInScope( obj ) { return true; }
;
VerbRule(ThinkAbout)
    (('think' ('about' | )) | 'ponder' | 'contemplate') singleDobj
    : ThinkAboutAction
    verbPhrase = 'think/thinking (about what)'
;

modify Thing
    thoughtMsg = 'You <<one of>>consider<<or>>ponder<<or>>think about<<at random>> ' + theName + ', but
        <<one of>>nothing comes to mind<<or>>no useful ideas come to you<<or>>your mind remains obstinately
        blank<<or>>the subject doesn\'t lead to any fresh insights<<at random>>. '
    dobjFor(ThinkAbout) {
        preCond = []
        verify() { logical; }
        action() {
            say (thoughtMsg);
        }
    }
;

modify Topic
    thoughtMsg = 'You <<one of>>consider<<or>>ponder<<or>>think about<<at random>> ' + theName + ', but
        <<one of>>nothing comes to mind<<or>>no useful ideas come to you<<or>>your mind remains obstinately
        blank<<or>>the subject doesn\'t lead to any fresh insights<<at random>>. '
    dobjFor(ThinkAbout) {
        preCond = []
        verify() { logical; }
        action() {
            say (thoughtMsg);
        }
    }
;

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

meaningOfLifeTopic: Topic 'meaning of life'
    thoughtMsg = 'How much time`ve you got? '

;[/code]


The output:

>﻿think about guy
You ponder the guy, but your mind remains obstinately blank. 

>﻿think about suit
You consider the suit of armor, but no useful ideas come to you. 

>﻿think about meaning of life
  
--This crashes the game.  Which is oddly pleasing to me, but not the intended outcome.  I get a nil object reference.


Conrad.

edited to add -- the dictionary demo code, which I asked about -- does not run.  There's something wrong with it beyond my ability to untangle.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=70#p31820
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-17 06:40:10

[quote="conradcook"][quote="Ghalev"]Instead, it morphed, in [i]just two iterations,[/i] into Japanese softcore anime porn.

The level of awesomeness stayed approximately par.[/quote]

?!  Were those published in paired gamebooks?


Conrad.[/quote]

[url=http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/24894/queens-blade]They were indeed.[/url] I've never seen those (or the intermediate step, Lost Worlds) myself, so I don't know how the mechanic works. I did also retrieve Bounty Hunter: Shootout at the Saloon from my parents' attic, which is an interesting case study in how you can drain all the awesomeness from something by adding complexity. (Might also apply to the more complicated Ace of Aces rules but at least those were optional.)

It seems like someone at BoardGameGeek [url=http://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/38806/underlying-hex-field-manuever-results]did turn it into a boardgame[/url]. I suspect loss of awesomeness.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=70#p31821
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-02-17 07:56:39

My parents got me a copy of Ace of Aces, but I've only half played it once. All your enthusiasm for it has encouraged me to try it again sometime.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=70#p31822
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-17 09:18:09

Ah, they're catfights.

C.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4384&start=0#p31823
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: I7: Looping through properties
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-02-17 09:39:00

Here's the scenario: I have several objects that have identical counterparts. An object and its counterpart are always of the same kind. At some point in the game they need to be functionally identical, that is, the values of their properties must match.

For debugging I need a routine that checks whether two objects have identical properties. Can I somehow loop through properties, like "Repeat with X running through properties of item1: if X of item1 is X of item2..." ?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=30#p31824
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-17 09:47:32

Thanks everyone for testing this with me!

re: Timing. In Chrome, you can press Ctrl-Shift-J to bring up a JS debug console. (Command-Option J on Mac.)

Inside the console, click the Network button and it will show you subsequent requests. Enter a game command in the game window and you should see five requests pop into the monitor. You can ignore the first one; that's where you are idling between turns. The sum of the time value for the other four gives you the time it took the server to process your turn. The ideal range is 200-250 ms total.

(I can post a screenshot if it helps.)

re: Slowness. I will investigate the IE issue. I'm also seeing a slow load problem on iOS devices - it takes a few minutes to connect, though it's quite fast once it does load. I have some packet traces to comb through but I'm optimistic this can be fixed.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4385&start=0#p31825
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Stupid Question
User: 123awsomelad / DateTime: 2012-02-17 10:06:01

Is it possible to have a large state in the kitchen and a small statue in the living room and have in both rooms "statue" be understood as the statue in that room? If so how do I do it?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=30#p31826
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-02-17 10:07:00

[quote="bcressey"]I'm also seeing a slow load problem on iOS devices - it takes a few minutes to connect, though it's quite fast once it does load. I have some packet traces to comb through but I'm optimistic this can be fixed.[/quote]
Exactly my experience. It takes a long time to load on the iPad, but it's as fast as a desktop terp between turns. (Unexpected, but very nice!)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=30#p31827
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-17 10:11:14

Ok, then the delay that I notice is around-about a second.  Sometimes a long second.

These are the data from the JS terminal:

348B 48.59s / 119B 55ms / 919B 98ms / 1005B 288ms / 292B 157ms / 263B 1.7min

That last one is certainly the time it took me to get organized and copy the info down.  Don't know what the first one is, but there certainly was not a 48 second lag.  Don't know where that comes from.  It's not the page load, because I cleared the network data and took this off a LOOK command.

Another:

360B 19.34s / 119B 189ms / 919B 109ms / 645B 1.20s / 292B 101ms 

--Yeah, I'm not sure about that first entry.  It's a getEvent, just before the only inputLine entry.

Well, that's the news from Boston.


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4385&start=0#p31828
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stupid Question
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-02-17 10:29:27

That happens by default:
[code]Kitchen is a room. It is south of Living Room.
In the kitchen is a large statue. In the living room is a small statue.
Test me with "x statue / n/ x statue".[/code]
[quote]Kitchen
You can see a large statue here.

>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] x statue
You see nothing special about the large statue.

>[2] n

living room
You can see a small statue here.

>[3] x statue
You see nothing special about the small statue.
[/quote]
(Or did I misunderstand the question?)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4385&start=0#p31829
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stupid Question
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-17 10:45:53

The only time it might be a problem is if you're using a grammar with an "any" token, such as the talking verbs in Eric Eve's conversation extensions. Usually you can tweak that with some "does the player mean" rules:

[code]Informing someone about is discussing the second noun. Quizzing someone about is discussing the second noun.

Does the player mean discussing the second noun when the second noun is enclosed by the location: It is very likely.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=70#p31830
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-17 10:58:18

[quote="matt w"][url=http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/24894/queens-blade]They were indeed.[/url] I've never seen those (or the intermediate step, Lost Worlds) myself, so I don't know how the mechanic works. [/quote]

I just got three new [i]Lost Worlds[/i] books in the mail this week (and by "new" I mean "still-shrinkwrapped stock leftover from the 80s," but still; characters I hadn't tried before) [emote]:)[/emote] They work a lot like [i]Ace of Aces,[/i] just swinging and parrying instead of diving and barrel-rolling (later books add things like cards and such for spellcasting, which add fiddliness but not fun ... the early books are solidly entertaining and exploring the combinations is really interesting). Same designer, same patent (the [i]Ace of Aces[/i] patent spec is available online where patent specs are found, for the curious).

[i]Queen's Blade[/i] is exactly the same thing, licensed (the early characters are direct ports of existing [i]Lost Worlds[/i] designs, mechanically) except full-color, glossy, naughty and Japanese. Has it's own anime series and everything.

[quote="conradcook"]Ah, they're catfights.[/quote]

Good call! From [i]dogfights [/i]to [i]catfights [/i]in two iterations, then [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=70#p31831
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-02-17 11:25:36

[quote="maga"]Narrative-driven RPGs. Those often have end conditions, and there are implicit goals like 'tell a good story' and 'have fun' and 'include everyone', but those are things that aren't defined by the game's formal rules. (No more than, say, you 'win' a novel by reading it to completion and understanding its themes.)[/quote]
Eh, I don't know. I play those too (or, at least, I have, often, and generally prefer them to many other P&P games); I think the greatest non-goal-ish-ness you can ascribe to them are that the goals, win and loss conditions are defined by the characters and scenario decided upon before and during play. In other words, the rule sets may not explicitly lay out goals, victory, and defeat conditions (though some do!) but they define [i]the process by which the players create them.[/i] So, kind of a meta-goal-design. 

I don't think it's accurate to say that these games lack goals, because a game is more than the sum of its rulebook.

It is, however, a good point that someone else pointed out that goals and win/loss conditions are not necessarily the same thing. I didn't make enough effort to differentiate between the two concepts in my previous post.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=30#p31832
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-17 11:32:14

[quote="conradcook"]
[48.59s] 55ms -> 98ms -> 288ms -> 157ms [1.7min]

[19.34s] 189ms -> 109ms -> [b]1.20s[/b] -> 101ms [...]
[/quote]

The bracketed ones happen between turns. Your browser keeps an eye on the server to see if it has anything new to report - messages from real-time fuses & daemons, input from other players in your session, etc. You can disregard these values as it's just the server waiting on you to do something.

When you type a command, your browser sends your input to the server (#1). Then the server replies with the new statusline contents (#2), the response to your command (#3), and then asks you for a new command (#4).

The time spent waiting for these replies should be relatively constant for the best experience. Yours ranges between 55ms and 1200ms, which is quite a large spread. 55ms from Boston to VA is about right; some of the other values are really high. It's probably your connection, though there could be a bad router between you and the AWS network.

You can try the [url=http://gs-na-west.tads.io/?storyfile=http://www.tads.org/games/ditch3/ditch3web.t3]west coast server[/url] to see if you like it better.

Another thing to try is to open a command prompt (Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> Command Prompt) and type:
[code]
ping -t gs-na-east.tads.io
[/code]

This will ping the server until canceled with Ctrl-C. You are looking at the "time=" part of each reply. If you see the same fluctuations here that you did in the browser, it's definitely a network issue. If all the times cluster around the same value then it's probably on the server end.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4379&start=0#p31833
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Giving Characters Skills & Characteristics
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-02-17 11:32:43

Assuming that you're asking a general game-design question and not I7, this is actually a really interesting topic to consider. Pencil and paper RPGs have approached this a ton of different ways over the years, and they would probably be the most fruitful source to research if you're just starting out planning.

The most interesting essays I've seen on the topic recently are at Choice of Games; as a starting point I'd recommend at least reading [url=http://www.choiceofgames.com/2011/07/7-rules-for-designing-great-stats/]this article about designing stats[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4382&start=0#p31834
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rooms named the same thing
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-02-17 11:41:24

In addition, you can reduce code duplication by defining all of these rooms as a new kind of room, allowing you to define rules that apply only to/within forest mazes, assigning certain default properties to forest mazes, etc.

[code]A forest maze is a kind of room. The printed name of a forest maze is usually "Forest". Forest 1, Forest 2, and Forest 3 are forest mazes.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4384&start=0#p31843
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Looping through properties
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-02-17 11:56:34

[code]Problem. You wrote 'repeat with P running through properties provided by A begin'  : but this is not a condition I am able to test, or at any rate not during play.[/code] It doesn't seem likely, unfortunately.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4361&start=20#p31844
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: a temporary fix
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-02-17 11:59:23

[quote="maga"](So, if we thought that the ChoiceScript community were actually a bunch of evil awards-hijacking trolls, and that the IF community had zero interest in Choice of the Wotsit or ChoiceScript, the long-term solution would be very simple: don't add ChoiceScript games to the list any more.)[/quote]
Is the list really the final word on what game is eligible for the awards? I thought it was more of a guideline than a rule, hence the suggestion for voters to add games they've played.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4385&start=0#p31845
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stupid Question
User: 123awsomelad / DateTime: 2012-02-17 12:26:35

Are you using a extension or somthing?
When I use the code it returns:
[quote]Welcome
An Interactive Fiction
Release 1 / Serial number 120217 / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N) SD

Kitchen

>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] x statue
You can't see any such thing.

>[2] n

Living Room
You can see a small statue here.

>[3] x statue
You see nothing special about the small statue.

>[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4385&start=0#p31846
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stupid Question
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2012-02-17 12:35:22

[quote="123awsomelad"]Are you using a extension or somthing?
When I use the code it returns:
[quote]Welcome
An Interactive Fiction
Release 1 / Serial number 120217 / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N) SD

Kitchen

>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] x statue
You can't see any such thing.

>[2] n

Living Room
You can see a small statue here.

>[3] x statue
You see nothing special about the small statue.

>[/quote][/quote]


Can you post the exact, full contents of your source? The source given above works for me, so there must be something small you're doing.

-Kevin

EDIT: And btw, thanks to Playfic [url]http://playfic.com[/url] for letting me quickly test this!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4385&start=0#p31847
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stupid Question
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-02-17 12:56:10

[quote="123awsomelad"]Are you using a extension or somthing?
When I use the code it returns:
[quote]Welcome
An Interactive Fiction
Release 1 / Serial number 120217 / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N) SD

Kitchen

>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] x statue
You can't see any such thing.
[/quote][/quote]
[quote="123awsomelad"]Is it possible to have a large state in the kitchen[/quote]
Possibly, you have misspelled "large statue" in your source so as to make it a large "state".



[quote="jacksonmead"]
thanks to Playfic [url]http://playfic.com[/url] for letting me quickly test this![/quote]
Ditto!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=70#p31848
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-02-17 12:58:34

[quote="ChrisC"]I don't think it's accurate to say that these games lack goals, because a game is more than the sum of its rulebook.

It is, however, a good point that someone else pointed out that goals and win/loss conditions are not necessarily the same thing. I didn't make enough effort to differentiate between the two concepts in my previous post.[/quote]
Actually every good narrative (interactive or not) puts a 'goal', i.e. a reason to keep reading, in the reader's mind. It may be to find out if the protagonist survives, or to find out what the enemy's secret plan is, or merely to find out WTF all the characters are talking about when they all say, 'The Macguffin is coming!' If giving the player/reader a goal is what differentiates a game from a narrative, then all of HItchcock's movies are actually games, and in fact any story written by a good writer, is actually a game.

I'm not arguing in favour of that definition. I just like to bust up nice, pat categories and show how they do not really correspond to reality. It's trivially easy to do and I will never be short of material for this habit, because definitions actually have nothing whatsoever to do with reality. There is no essential difference between a story and a game. A story is just a game wherein in the central mechanic is waiting. A game is just a story about the solving of some other central mechanic. There is no such thing as either a good game or a good story, without a goal being placed in the reader/player's mind. If it's a mystery or detective novel, guessing that goal correctly can even be thought of as a 'win condition'.

If you try to perceive the actual full landscape of human communication rather than basing arguments on the unstable and shifting 'bedrock' of human dictionaries, it becomes clear pretty fast that these are just points on a multi-axis set of spectra with no sharp dividing lines in them at all. This is not splitting hairs; adding up a bunch of case-by-case 'maybe-sos' does not add up to a macro-level 'definitely so'. Realising that is fundamental to an accurate worldview. Most definitional arguments are doomed to end by coming to conclusions that are easily countered by the average layperson using readily found counterexamples. That is why debates over definitions only end when the participants get tired. Just ask Plato. 8)

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4384&start=0#p31849
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Looping through properties
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-17 13:09:21

You could cook up some code to trawl the veneer-level property tables. However, this is going to pick up some library properties that you probably don't care about.

The best solution is just to write the check out manually.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4379&start=0#p31850
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Giving Characters Skills & Characteristics
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-17 13:15:55

If you're going to track a characteristic make sure it matters to the story that that stat is tracked.  In having a 'strength' characteristic, you're saying that tests of strength are going to be an important part of the game.

Further, I prefer stats explicitly tied to an adjectival level of ability: 'Strength 7' could be good, it could be rubbish; while 'very strong' is a lot more explicit.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4385&start=0#p31851
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stupid Question
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-17 13:25:26

There is no statue in the kitchen, ad stated by the room's description. Check your code.
You surely misstyped the word 'kitchen' in the second Line of code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4382&start=0#p31852
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rooms named the same thing
User: penny / DateTime: 2012-02-17 13:34:53

That's a great idea.  Thanks.

Penny

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=70#p31853
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-02-17 13:49:56

[quote="Laroquod"][quote="ChrisC"]I don't think it's accurate to say that these games lack goals, because a game is more than the sum of its rulebook.

It is, however, a good point that someone else pointed out that goals and win/loss conditions are not necessarily the same thing. I didn't make enough effort to differentiate between the two concepts in my previous post.[/quote]
Actually every good narrative (interactive or not) puts a 'goal', i.e. a reason to keep reading, in the reader's mind. It may be to find out if the protagonist survives, or to find out what the enemy's secret plan is, or merely to find out WTF all the characters are talking about when they all say, 'The Macguffin is coming!' If giving the player/reader a goal is what differentiates a game from a narrative, then all of HItchcock's movies are actually games, and in fact any story written by a good writer, is actually a game.[/quote]No, a goal isn't a dividing line between stories and games, but between toys and games. It's really more of a continuum, anyway: toy <--> sandbox <--> game, for instance, if you want to toss in a term from the gaming press (for whatever reason).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=70#p31854
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-17 14:07:29

I don't take quite as strong a stance on this as Laroquod, but I do think that 'game' as used by people talking about the theory of games is often a term that means something very unlike what everybody else understands by it. (If you don't think that two children pretending to be astronauts are playing a game, you've divorced yourself from the normal usage of the term and are now using a specialist term that should never be exported to broader contexts without a great big warning label.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=40#p31855
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-02-17 14:10:50

[quote="capmikee"]I even borrowed your phrase idea for expressing truth states as "we should/will/are/etc.."[/quote]This is indeed really great syntax.

Do you mind if I fold it into my next release of my port of Crowther's Advent to I7 (crediting you, of course)? I made a few additions to allow adverbs to reflect past-tense conditions as well as present/future tense ones.

[code]Chapter 1 - Truth States as 'We' Commands (adapted from "The Parser" by Ron Newcomb)

[ It's always difficult to name truth states because nothing reads naturally other than a letter: if x is true.  These phrases allow us to name a truth state after an imperative sentence, and the optional adverbs allow us to imply how the variable is being used. ]
To decide if we still/should/need/must/have/-- (bool - a truth state): (- ({bool}) -).
To decide if we can't/shouldn't/haven't (bool - a truth state): (- (~~({bool})) -).
To decide if we do/can/have not (bool - a truth state): (- (~~({bool})) -).
To we will/should/just/now/still/may/must/have (bool - a truth state) again/--: (- {bool} = true; -);
To we no/do longer/not have/-- (bool - a truth state): (- {bool} = false; -).
To we needn't/shouldn't/won't/haven't (bool - a truth state): (- {bool} = false; -).
To we will/should/may/must (bool - a truth state) if (c - a condition): (- {bool} = ({c}); -);[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4384&start=0#p31856
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Looping through properties
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-02-17 14:46:43

That's the solution I ended up using, for now at least. First I was afraid that I'd have to write a separate phrase for each kind, but using "provides the property" takes care of the general case as long as I remember to add all new properties to the list:

[code]To decide whether (item1 - a thing) is identical to (item2 - a thing):
	if the printed name of item1 is not the printed name of item2, decide no;
	if item1 is lit and item2 is unlit, decide no;
	if item1 is unlit and item2 is lit, decide no;
[...and so on; we can assume that these properties exist because each thing has them.]
[Item/kind-specific properties:]
	if item1 provides the property xyzzy and item1 is xyzzy and item2 is not xyzzy, decide no;
	if item1 provides the property xyzzy and item1 is not xyzzy and item2 is xyzzy, decide no; 
	if item1 provides the property fnurgle and the fnurgle of item1 is not the fnurgle of item2, decide no;
	decide yes.[/code]
It's not as pretty as I'd like, but does the job.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4371&start=0#p31857
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Playfic, a web app for writing/sharing Inform 7
User: vivdunstan / DateTime: 2012-02-17 14:50:59

Thanks for starting this. It opens up the possibility of coding games in Inform 7 on the iPad, where we can't use the standard IDE.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4361&start=20#p31858
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: a temporary fix
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-17 15:02:21

[quote="ChrisC"][quote="maga"](So, if we thought that the ChoiceScript community were actually a bunch of evil awards-hijacking trolls, and that the IF community had zero interest in Choice of the Wotsit or ChoiceScript, the long-term solution would be very simple: don't add ChoiceScript games to the list any more.)[/quote]
Is the list really the final word on what game is eligible for the awards? I thought it was more of a guideline than a rule, hence the suggestion for voters to add games they've played.[/quote]
No, it's not. It's difficult to catch every game in the world, and is likely to become increasingly so as IF inveigles itself into more and more obscure corners of the Internet. Similarly, things can get taken off the list if someone points out that they're ineligible (usually because they were published in the wrong year.) But things don't automatically go on the list just because someone suggested them -- except in the Technological Development and Supplemental Materials categories, because we don't compile a list for that.

So, yeah, if one or two people suggested that we put Katawa Shoujo on the list, I think that there'd be a bit of discussion among the organisers that would probably lead to us not adding it -- not because I don't think it's a [url=http://maga-dogg.livejournal.com/451896.html#cutid1]sophisticated bit of CYOA design[/url], but because, in purely social terms, it's a totally different thing. IF and VNs have [url=http://ifwiki.org/index.php/Papillon]overlapped somewhat in the past[/url] and could conceivably do so again and to a greater degree, but right now that's not the case.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=70#p31859
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-17 16:13:38

[quote="maga"]I don't take quite as strong a stance on this as Laroquod, but I do think that 'game' as used by people talking about the theory of games is often a term that means something very unlike what everybody else understands by it. (If you don't think that two children pretending to be astronauts are playing a game, you've divorced yourself from the normal usage of the term and are now using a specialist term that should never be exported to broader contexts without a great big warning label.)[/quote]

My own definition is more-or-less this:[i]the essence of gameplay is meaningful, recreational choice in scenario context.[/i]

So, "meaningful choice" can be tactical (how does our party of sixth-level delvers get across this chasm infested with devil-bats? how can I take out that bishop to get control of this part of the board?) or creative (how best to portray my sixth-level delver's alcoholism for a combination of pathos, sympathy and light comedy?) or in-character or out-of-character, provided the choices are (A) made recreationally (B) are contained in an identifiable scenario of some sort and (C) have meaningful consequences within that scenario (aren't false choices or only-really-one-choice choices). Sometimes the scenario provides the challenge, explicitly, and sometimes the scenario simply provides the stage on which challenges are created and met by the players in real-time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=50#p31860
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2012-02-17 16:21:06

Quick update: I'm back onto this now.  Things at work generally grow busier and busier from August to the end of December, however this year I've had the busiest January ever.

I've been off Inform for so long now that I'm having to re-learn everything, hence it's taking me a while.  Along the way I've succombed to the temptation of spinning off little curiosity projects (you know how it is) which are helping in my learning of Inform though they haven't advanced the main project (TARDIS Adrift) in any way.

A few of curiosity questions if anyone has time:
[b]1)[/b] How do I display a block of introductory text *after* the game's title and release number display but before the description of the initial room?  Eg: I don't like seeing "[color=#0000BF]Picking yourself up off the floor you cough the acrid smode from your lungs...[etc][/color]" followed by "[color=#0000BF]TARDIS adrift.  An Interactive Fiction by The Foxaroo.  Release 1 / Serial number 120218 / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N) SD.[/color]"  Followed by "[color=#0000BF][b]Console Room[/b].  You are in what serves as the control deck of your time machine, or rather what remains of one...[etc][/color]".  It just doesn't look right in that order; the game title and serial number should be at the top and not separating the intro and room description.  I've tried setting up the introduction paragraph as an Inform scene sequence, but I haven't figured out the way to make it start between the game title and the room description.

[b]2)[/b] (For an unrelated project) If I have several different characters, how do I establish elaborate descriptions of them that can be controlled by a single rule. Eg:
[code]In the construction site is a man called Tom.  The printed name of Tom is "Tommy".  The description of Tom is "Muscle man Tommy".
In the construction site is a man called Dick.  The printed name of Dick is "Richard".  The description of Tom is "Tricky Dicky".
In the construction site is a woman called Gerty.  The printed name of Gerty is "Gertrude".  The description of Gerty is "Gerty the welder".

To say Tom's rundown: say "(Long complex code to describe Tom's state and current activity)."
To say Dick's rundown: say "(Long complex code to describe Dick's state and current activity)."
To say Gerty's rundown: say "(Long complex code to describe Gerty's state and current activity)."[/code]

Now here's the problem: I haven't been able to get this part to work:
[code]Rule for writing a paragraph about a person (called X):
    say "[X] is here, [X's rundown]."[/code]

3) (Also for an unrelated project) How do I set up a rule for "it is unlikely" when performing actions on body parts.  Eg: Player needs to [b]Examine wrist[/b] of a murder victim without having to say "[b]Examine murder victim's wrist[/b]" (I try to avoid making my players do unnecessary typing).  I've tried saying [code]Does the player mean doing something with the player's wrist: it is very unlikely.[/code] or [code]Does the player mean doing something with the Detective's wrist: it is very unlikely.[/code] but that produced a very unhelpful error message:  "[i][color=#FF0000]You wrote 'Does the player mean doing something with the player's wrist' , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is 'doing something with the player's wrist'. But that did not make sense as a description of an action. I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook.[/color][/i]"

[size=85]I'm also trying to determine how to conceal body parts (Eg: "You cannot see the phantom's face while he is wearing the mask) but I may be able to figure that one out on my own.[/size]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4384&start=0#p31861
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Looping through properties
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-02-17 17:55:13

You could compare the results of ShowMeSub().

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4371&start=0#p31862
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Playfic, a web app for writing/sharing Inform 7
User: waxpancake / DateTime: 2012-02-17 18:28:43

[quote="George"]Also is there a possibility of vertically splitting the page between source and game?[/quote]

During editing or playing?  You'd get to see much fewer lines if the source/preview are stacked on top of each other.  I was considering adding an option to collapse either the source or preview area, so that the selected pane takes up the full screen, but I never thought about doing a top/bottom arrangement.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4385&start=0#p31863
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stupid Question
User: 123awsomelad / DateTime: 2012-02-17 18:33:51

It works now!
I don't know what was wrong because i copied and pasted the code you gave me.
Thank you!
 [emote]:D[/emote]  [emote]:D[/emote]  [emote]:D[/emote]  [emote]:D[/emote]  [emote]:D[/emote]  [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4385&start=0#p31864
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stupid Question
User: waxpancake / DateTime: 2012-02-17 18:45:40

[quote="jacksonmead"]EDIT: And btw, thanks to Playfic [url]http://playfic.com[/url] for letting me quickly test this![/quote]

You're welcome!  Happy people are using it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4371&start=10#p31866
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Playfic, a web app for writing/sharing Inform 7
User: George / DateTime: 2012-02-17 18:49:18

I mean so that you could see the source and a game side by side, like when making a new game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4385&start=0#p31867
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stupid Question
User: 123awsomelad / DateTime: 2012-02-17 18:54:32

Stupid question #2:
How could I create a room like the loud room in zork?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=50#p31868
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-17 19:32:56

On the rundown issue, you can do this:

[code]To say rundown for (somebody - Tom):[/code]

This will correctly invoke the phrase if you pass a variable that evaluates to Tom. However, I'm not positive that you could write it as you have, with an apostrophe-s and no space.

Does the player mean rules can be seriously maddening. Without trying it out, I can't guess what the problem is, but I sometimes avoid the "doing something with X" phrasing. It's not always what you mean because it only applies when X is the noun, not when X is the second noun. To cover that, you need "the current action involves X." Consequently, a LOT of my DPMRs start out with "Does the player mean doing something when..." Theoretically you could even say "Does the player mean when..."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=50#p31869
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-17 19:36:01

1: Try "after printing the banner text" or "before looking for the first time."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4385&start=10#p31870
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Stupid Question
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-17 19:38:46

You could do worse than have a look at the Inform 7 Zork [url=http://i7-dungeon.sourceforge.net/index.html]port[/url]. [url=http://i7-dungeon.sourceforge.net/source_7.html]This[/url] page shows a way of implementing the Loud Room.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4378&start=0#p31871
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: THINK verb...
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-17 19:48:37

Ok, the above code did not work because the Topic family does not like being referred to by the parser.  They only like to be wrapped up and handled by ConvNodes and suchlike.

Why?  I don't know.  However, realizing this implied a solution:

A combination class, Thinkum.

class Thinkum : Topic, Unthing;

--This is utterly batshit.  [u]But,[/u] it solved all the problems, and allowed Jim's Thing code to be adapted to Topics, thus:

[code]
class Thinkum : Topic, Unthing
    thoughtMsg = 'You <<one of>>consider<<or>>ponder<<or>>think about<<at random>> ' + theName + ', but
        <<one of>>nothing comes to mind<<or>>no useful ideas come to you<<or>>your mind remains obstinately
        blank<<or>>the subject doesn\'t lead to any fresh insights<<at random>>. '
    notHereMsg = 'That\'s odd... why am I thinking about that? '
    notImportantMsg = 'How odd...  I don\'t know why I\'d have such a thought... '
    dobjFor(ThinkAbout) {
        preCond = []
        verify() { logical; }
        action() {
            say (thoughtMsg);
        }
    }
;
[/code]

Thinkum objects are put inside Actors so that different, switchable actors have different thoughts about abstract topics.

Remaining problems:  Thinkum thoughtMsgs are trumped by Thing thoughtMsgs, which is the opposite of what I'd like.  Also I have to tinker with scope, such that I can have Thinkums floating around loose in the game world, kind of like Platonic forms, and the PC's mind will latch onto whatever's closest.

This'll be a long-term project.  I'm bouncing to the next task thread for the time being.

Many thanks, Jim, for the help.

Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=30#p31872
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-17 19:59:46

Heck, a bad network experience for me is when I spend 15 minutes explaining some obscure point of hypnosis that very few people understand, hit SEND and get a blank 'Connection lost' page that indicates my data's gone.

A long second waiting for a text game is not a bad network experience.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4387&start=0#p31873
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: This is an incredibly cool site...
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-17 20:20:43

Fictional characters rendered pictorally by police artists.

[url]http://thecomposites.tumblr.com/[/url]

Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=80#p31874
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-17 20:36:36

John,

The meaningful choice definition of game play may work nicely enough for our purposes, but it certainly excludes a large number of games:  Ring Around the Rosie, Patty-Cake, and so forth.

--I personally feel you're right in fixing on strategic patterns of thought as having something essential to do with gameplay...  I doubt it's an accident that we also apply the word to animals that we hunt.

Conrad.

ps - Can we have games without [i]interaction[/i]?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=80#p31875
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-17 20:53:45

[quote="Laroquod"]
Actually every good narrative (interactive or not) puts a 'goal', i.e. a reason to keep reading, in the reader's mind. It may be to find out if the protagonist survives, or to find out what the enemy's secret plan is, or merely to find out WTF all the characters are talking about when they all say, 'The Macguffin is coming!' If giving the player/reader a goal is what differentiates a game from a narrative, then all of HItchcock's movies are actually games, and in fact any story written by a good writer, is actually a game.

I'm not arguing in favour of that definition. I just like to bust up nice, pat categories and show how they do not really correspond to reality. [/quote]

Yeah, that's interesting.  I haven't seen "narrative" given a definition in terms of the audience's subjective experience before (although this may in fact be the correct strategy).

Modern writers, in writing workshops, generally accept the definition of "story" as "characters who do things for reasons."  The classic example is -- Fitzgerald's? -- 

[quote]"The king died and then then queen died" is not a story, but a series of events.

"The king died and then the queen died of a broken heart" is a story.[/quote]

Your focus on goals in the audience's mind interests me in that it's the contrapositive of that.

(There are classic counter-examples knocking down that definition, too, such as Hemingway's shortest story possible.  But even those counterexamples arguably have the elements of action and reason for it -- certainly Hemingway's does, although it's backgrounded.)


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4169&start=10#p31876
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Benchmarking PLUS Contributions wanted for a test suite
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-02-17 22:13:25

I've just pushed an update which gives a menu option to show test descriptions. Which means this extension is now out of beta! I'll be sending it to the I7 website soon.

Thanks for your comments everyone.

I'm still keen for contributions for a test suite. If you have any slow code please send it my way!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4387&start=0#p31877
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: This is an incredibly cool site...
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-17 23:57:01

It is. 

Daisy Buchanan looks a lot like Mia Farrow to me (but I'm terrible with faces).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=80#p31878
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-18 00:08:16

[quote="conradcook"]John,

The meaningful choice definition of game play may work nicely enough for our purposes, but it certainly excludes a large number of games:  Ring Around the Rosie, Patty-Cake, and so forth....

ps - Can we have games without [i]interaction[/i]?[/quote]

The choice definition also excludes Chutes & Ladders and Candyland, not to mention catch. Which makes me think that interaction is important -- Chutes & Ladders would be procedurally the same if one person rolled for everyone, but it wouldn't have the interaction of rolling the dice. And everyone wants to roll their own d20s -- it wouldn't feel like a critical hit if you hadn't rolled the d20 yourself, would it? 

I also question whether a scenario is really necessary for games (catch, again).

But when we define games we're defining what we find important in games, and choice within a scenario is as good a definition as any in that respect.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=50#p31879
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2012-02-18 00:29:41

Wow!  [emote]:shock:[/emote]   It took me about 2 hours from when I first tried to view the thread before I could actually get into here.  I couldn't even get to <a class="postlink" href="http://www.intfiction.org">http://www.intfiction.org</a>.  Last night took a few tries as well.  Have there been any known problems with the site's server?

[quote="matt w"]1: Try "after printing the banner text" or "before looking for the first time."[/quote]Instant success! Thanks Matt W! [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote="capmikee"]On the rundown issue, you can do this:
[code]To say rundown for (somebody - Tom):[/code]
This will correctly invoke the phrase if you pass a variable that evaluates to Tom. However, I'm not positive that you could write it as you have, with an apostrophe-s and no space.[/quote]I'm sorry, I don't comprehend (it probably doesn't help that I made a typo above, "The description of Tom" twice when the 2nd line should have been "The description of Dick").  Could you elaborate on how your recommendation would then be integrated into a rule for printing?  That's the piece of code where I was getting an error message.

[quote="capmikee"]Does the player mean rules can be seriously maddening. Without trying it out, I can't guess what the problem is, but I sometimes avoid the "doing something with X" phrasing. It's not always what you mean because it only applies when X is the noun, not when X is the second noun. To cover that, you need "the current action involves X." Consequently, a LOT of my DPMRs start out with "Does the player mean doing something when..." Theoretically you could even say "Does the player mean when..."[/quote]
I've tried copying the code as it's written in the manual's "Chapter 16.19. Does the player mean..."  This is the example in that chapter:[code]Does the player mean doing something with the cursed dagger of Thog: it is very unlikely. 
Does the player mean doing something with the cursed dagger of Thog when the player is hypnotized: it is likely.[/code]
The only difference I can discern between the manual's example and how I've integrated it into my code is that mine involves a body part rather than a loose object, although I have no idea if that is even relevant.  I find Inform7's error messages to be very lacking in content needed to pinpoint a problem.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=30#p31880
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-18 00:29:55

[quote="conradcook"]A long second waiting for a text game is not a bad network experience.[/quote]

I agree that the stakes are relatively low; most players won't ragequit if a response here and there lags a bit. That's life on the Internet. But if every turn is slow, I expect we'd see a lot of abandoned sessions and some frustrated players.

Fortunately we're in pretty good shape at the moment.

I've finished the packet analysis and concluded that the IE issue is the same as the mobile Safari one. I have some ideas for a fix but I'm not sure what the best approach will be.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=50#p31881
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-18 00:37:19

[quote="thefoxaroo"]
[quote="capmikee"]On the rundown issue, you can do this:
[code]To say rundown for (somebody - Tom):[/code]
This will correctly invoke the phrase if you pass a variable that evaluates to Tom. However, I'm not positive that you could write it as you have, with an apostrophe-s and no space.[/quote]I'm sorry, I don't comprehend (it probably doesn't help that I made a typo above, "The description of Tom" twice when the 2nd line should have been "The description of Dick").  Could you elaborate on how your recommendation would then be integrated into a rule for printing?  That's the piece of code where I was getting an error message.[/quote]

One issue is that I think you need to say "The rundown of Tom" or "The rundown for Tom" rather than "Tom's rundown," and "The wrist of the player" rather than "the player's wrist." Inform won't understand "the player's wrist."

The other question is, when do you want these to print? On examining, in room descriptions, or where?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=60#p31882
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2012-02-18 00:45:31

In room descriptions definitely, and also where I'm being lazy with "Look at (person)", IE if the character isn't integral to the story and I'm not creating a separate "Look at" description for them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=80#p31883
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-02-18 03:16:44

Matt w [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=10#p31460]already talked about Wittgensteinian family resemblance concepts[/url], so now I'll talk about [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototype_theory]Prototype theory[/url].

When we're talking about what is IF or what is a game or what is fiction we're talking about categorisation. Prototype theory says there is very strong evidence that we humans usually don't categorise things according to definitions with a list of essentials, but instead by comparing them to prototypical members of that category. There are marginal members in every category, but they do not constitute what the prototype is.

I'd like to propose the following Natural Semantic Metalanguage explication for game:

[code]X is a game:
  1. Sometimes people do an activity:
     2. This activity is not an essential part of their lives
     3. The outcome of this activity is not known ahead of time to these people
     4. These people influence the outcome of this activity
     5. These people feel something good while they are doing this
  6. X is like this activity[/code]

The [i]like[/i] in the last line is where all the prototypical magic happens: it means that game X can be favourably compared to the prototypical game, while still allowing differences. However the more differences there are, the more marginal the member is in the category.

Now I only spent a couple of minutes thinking about what a prototypical game is and my explication could do with some work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=80#p31884
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-02-18 04:00:30

[quote="matt w"][quote="conradcook"]John,

The meaningful choice definition of game play may work nicely enough for our purposes, but it certainly excludes a large number of games:  Ring Around the Rosie, Patty-Cake, and so forth....

ps - Can we have games without [i]interaction[/i]?[/quote]

The choice definition also excludes Chutes & Ladders and Candyland, not to mention catch. Which makes me think that interaction is important -- Chutes & Ladders would be procedurally the same if one person rolled for everyone, but it wouldn't have the interaction of rolling the dice. And everyone wants to roll their own d20s -- it wouldn't feel like a critical hit if you hadn't rolled the d20 yourself, would it? 

I also question whether a scenario is really necessary for games (catch, again).

But when we define games we're defining what we find important in games, and choice within a scenario is as good a definition as any in that respect.[/quote] I feel like it's important to differentiate between [i]play[/i] and [i]games[/i]. It's possible to play around in Photoshop or MS Excel, for instance, but these are productivity tools, clearly not games. Pattycake and catch seem more like something I would call "activities" or "exercise" rather than games, per se.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4387&start=0#p31885
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: This is an incredibly cool site...
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2012-02-18 05:45:09

That is so absolutely not Judge Holden! Avaunt, oh website, before I can never read [i]Blood Meridian[/i] again!

(Though it is an open question whether I will ever feel the need to read [i]Blood Meridian[/i] again. It is a good book, but so relentlessly unloving.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4388&start=0#p31886
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Weighed random list
User: pashaimeru / DateTime: 2012-02-18 06:00:39

Hello,

I need to make a weighed random list of things that may happen for my game. Which is probably going to be something like a table of the things, with a number attacked to it as the likelihood of the specific thing being picked. So that there's a good chance of a things A and B being picked from the list of random things, but a low chance of a thing C being picked instead. What's the logic for that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4387&start=0#p31887
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: This is an incredibly cool site...
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-18 06:01:55

Pinkie Brown is plausible, and the description of Sam Spade makes me wonder whether Humphrey Bogart was the right man for the role: I don't think Bogart looks particularly satanic, even in a pleasing way. Any thoughts on this?

Most of all, I think Tess looks suitable unimpressed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4387&start=0#p31888
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: This is an incredibly cool site...
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-02-18 06:05:31

Amazing idea. I never did picture Mr. Rochester [i]quite[/i] like that (seems a bit too feminine, his features not as sharp as in my mind's eye), but I can totally see it working.

Maybe I'll suggest characters from Moby Dick. I loved that book, and it would be very interesting to see Ahab or Queequeg done this way.

"Ma'am, do you think you could describe your assailant?"
"Well, for one thing, he had a wooden leg and kept mumbling about white whales..."

Should be easy to pick on a line-up, anyway.

On an unrelated note:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0339.html">http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0339.html</a>

Joey - I suppose it would be hard to find someone who looked exactly like the picture and could also act it out. It's like Clint Eastwood in a western - if you were to describe the character beforehand, physically, you might end up with someone completely different, but Eastwood embodied the romantic ideal of the rough Western *so well* that, well, who cares what he looks like, he's perfect.

(if any of his westerns had been books beforehand, that is)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4388&start=0#p31889
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Weighed random list
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-18 06:28:23

There are a few ways you can do this (and I'm sure someone else will jump in with something closer to your suggestion), but one easy way would be to use a couple of different tables, maybe a 'table of likely events', 'table of unlikely events', 'table of impossible events' etc. Then, you could have a check when ever you wanted a random event to maybe occur that went through the tables with decreasing likelihood. For example, say you wanted any kind of random event to happen about 20% of the time:
[code]Every turn:
If a random chance of 1 in 5 succeeds begin;
if a random chance of 4 in 5 succeeds begin;
choose a random row from the table of likely events;
say event entry;
otherwise;
if a random chance of 4 in 5 succeeds begin;
choose a random row from the table of unlikely events;
say event entry;
otherwise;
choose a random row from the table of impossible events;
say event entry;
end if;
end if;
end if.
[/code]
And then of course, if you want more than just text printed, you can use To Say rules. Eg:
[code]
Table of Unlikely Events
Event
"[lions]"
"[tigers]"

To say lions:
say "A lion appears before you! Oh my!";
now the lion is in the location of the player.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4388&start=0#p31890
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Weighed random list
User: pashaimeru / DateTime: 2012-02-18 06:32:13

That's a pretty fair solution, yeah. Multiple tables works pretty well. I can add and delete entries for the tables at will during runtime, right? Which would allow me to trigger a certain event only once, for example (by deleting the row), or have certain events only happen when a specific condition is met (by adding the row)?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4388&start=0#p31891
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Weighed random list
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2012-02-18 06:37:05

[quote="pashaimeru"]I need to make a weighed random list of things that may happen for my game. Which is probably going to be something like a table of the things, with a number attacked to it as the likelihood of the specific thing being picked. So that there's a good chance of a things A and B being picked from the list of random things, but a low chance of a thing C being picked instead. What's the logic for that?[/quote]
I wrote some code that does exactly that [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2172&p=14969#p14969]here[/url]. It allows much finer control over the probabilities than Joey's approach does -- which might be either good or bad, depending on whether you need fine control. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4387&start=0#p31892
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: This is an incredibly cool site...
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-18 06:53:27

I appreciate the not entirely unrelated Order of the Stick strip there. As for Bogart, I'm inclined to agree. He became the prototypical film noir private investigator and in a sense it doesn't matter what colour hair or shape of face might have fit the character better. Perhaps though, there are people out there for whom Bogart as Sam Spade is as absurd as [url=http://scrapetv.com/News/News%20Pages/Entertainment/images-9/keanu-reeves-bill-and-ted.jpg]Keanu Reeves[/url] as [url=http://insidepulse.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/JohnConstantineHellblazerBig.jpg]John Constantine.[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4387&start=0#p31893
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: This is an incredibly cool site...
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-02-18 06:56:03

If you want characters that are spot on, then you could watch the movie Watchmen. [emote];)[/emote] Visually, they're almost perfect. Character-wise, I thought they were quite good too.

Anyway, just to expand on the Eastwood thing with better examples: Robert Downing Jr. isn't really like Chaplin, Meryl Streep isn't really a Thatcher lookalike, Geoffrey Rush isn't much like Peter Seller, Helen Mirren and Queen Elizabeth haven't really got more than a passing resemblance... but damn if all those people weren't *perfect* on their depiction.

Also, characterization always helps.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4388&start=0#p31894
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Weighed random list
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-18 06:58:50

You definitely can remove rows during run time. The phrase is "blank out the whole row" (after you've chosen it). 15.10 of the documentation says more. If it's possible to remove/blank out all the rows, you'll want a line in the code checking that there are still entries in the table before you choose rows from it, otherwise you'll risk getting run-time errors.

I was certain somebody would come up with an actual weighed random table, so congratulations goes to Victor for coming up with the goods so quickly  [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4275&start=0#p31895
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Best System for Hypertext
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-18 07:04:37

Also for your consideration are:

[url]http://chooseyourstory.com/[/url]

[url]http://www.choiceofgames.com/[/url]

[url]http://www.renpy.org/[/url]

--Each system has its strengths and its advocates.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4387&start=0#p31896
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: This is an incredibly cool site...
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-02-18 07:05:04

Everybody already knows about <a class="postlink" href="http://www.themonsterengine.com/artwork">http://www.themonsterengine.com/artwork</a>, right?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4387&start=0#p31897
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: This is an incredibly cool site...
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-18 07:13:39

I think with the biopic actors the trick is in capturing the mannerisms of their subject. When you see someone you don't just see their surface appearance, you also take in the way that they move, the manner in which they speak and the kind of words that they choose.

As for Watchmen, that's a perfect example of a film that didn't need to be made: it's slavishly faithful (with good reason: the original is a masterpiece), but it left me wondering what the point was. If I wanted a ideal Watchmen-experience, I'd just reread it. Then again, there might be Dashiell Hammett fans that thought the Maltese Falcon didn't need to be made into film. In seventy years time, I hope people will think of Watchmen as the graphic novel and not the film.

[quote="peterorme"]Everybody already knows about <a class="postlink" href="http://www.themonsterengine.com/artwork">http://www.themonsterengine.com/artwork</a>, right?[/quote]
That's brilliant and horrifying in equal degrees.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4389&start=0#p31898
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: abbreviating ask
User: jeremy / DateTime: 2012-02-18 07:52:20

Say one had a one-room game with another character in the room.  So that ASK WOMAN ABOUT CONFETTI CANNON worked.  But there are a lot of things one might ask the woman about.  So, I'd like to be able to have the abbreviation A CONFETTI CANNON work.  I'm horribly rusty in my I7 and having trouble implementing this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4390&start=0#p31899
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: htmldb3.exe has stopped working... a frequent error msg
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-18 07:59:41

[code]Problem signature:
  Problem Event Name:	APPCRASH
  Application Name:	htmltdb3.exe
  Application Version:	0.0.0.0
  Application Timestamp:	4ef3ae15
  Fault Module Name:	htmltdb3.exe
  Fault Module Version:	0.0.0.0
  Fault Module Timestamp:	4ef3ae15
  Exception Code:	c0000005
  Exception Offset:	000e036a
  OS Version:	6.1.7601.2.1.0.768.3
  Locale ID:	1033
  Additional Information 1:	0a9e
  Additional Information 2:	0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789
  Additional Information 3:	0a9e
  Additional Information 4:	0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4391&start=0#p31900
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: How do I tweak the ">" prompt?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-18 08:09:15

I'd like very much to adjust the user input prompt.  Specifically, I'm allowing the player to switch PCs at will, so it would be clearer if the prompt indicated which PC the player is currently playing.

The desired behavior would be:

JOHN> SWITCH TO AMY

Switching from John to Amy.... You are now playing Amy.

AMY>_

--I've been reading the docs for a couple days on this, and I know that there are PromptDaemons and OneTimePromptDaemons, and so forth, but I'm not finding where to splice into that string.

Any leads?


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4389&start=0#p31901
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: abbreviating ask
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-18 08:26:16

I tried doing the rule for supplying a missing noun trick, but Inform wasn't having any of it. However, this does the trick:

[code]Short asking is an action applying to one topic. Understand "a [text]" and "ask about [text]" as short asking.

Check short asking:
try asking sybil about the player's command instead.[/code]

Replace 'Sybil' with the name of the person in the game. If there are different people that appear, you can have a more complex check (something like 'a random visible person other than the player', but with more correct wording).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4389&start=0#p31902
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: abbreviating ask
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-02-18 08:27:22

Hey Jeremy,

The solution will vary depending on how you're implementing conversation, including any conversation extensions you might be using. Assuming you're just going with the standard asking it about action which uses topics, this should get you started:
[code]Lab is a room. Sam is a man in lab.

Unspecified asking is an action applying to one topic.
Understand "a [text]" or  "ask [text]" as unspecified asking.

Check unspecified asking:
	try asking sam about the topic understood instead.
	
Instead of asking sam about a topic listed in the Table of Blah:
	say "[response entry][paragraph break]". 

Table of Blah
topic	response
"foo"	"Response 1."
"bar"	"Response 2."

test me with "ask sam about foo / ask bar / a foo / a honey".[/code]
Note that I probably wouldn't use an instead rule for the actual conv. implementation -- it was just quicker for the example.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4389&start=0#p31903
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: abbreviating ask
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-02-18 08:47:57

[quote="JoeyJones"]I tried doing the rule for supplying a missing noun trick, but Inform wasn't having any of it.[/quote]
I tried that as well and I'm not sure why the compiler rejected it either. It seems like I run into weirdness whenever I use an action applying to topics. I never know if Inform is just being extra fussy in those cases or I'm doing something wrong. In this case it seems like either a bug or a missing feature. Thoughts anyone?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4392&start=0#p31904
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Shortest way to pass text into an activity
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2012-02-18 08:50:35

My current WIP requires a stupid amount of debug text for me to make sure everything is working correctly.  I would, however, also like to turn OFF the debug text from time to time.

I know a couple ways to handle this:

1) check my global Boolean variable "debug state" every time I want to spit out another debug message
2) set a global text variable "debug text" every time I want to spit out another message, then call an activity that will message debug text iff "debug state" is true

So if worst comes to worst, I have options.  But enclosing every debugging message in an "if" statement is three lines of code, and setting a global text variable is two, and I'd ideally like to drop it to one to make my code more readable.

I know I can do something like this with an activity:

[code]carry out the analysing activity with the pitchblende; [/code]

Is there a way to have an activity take a text input, like this?

[code]carry out the debug messaging activity with "This is some debug text";[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4392&start=0#p31905
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Shortest way to pass text into an activity
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-02-18 08:56:11

What about a to-phrase?

[code]To debug (message - indexed text):
    if debug state is true:
        say message.

Every turn:
    debug "Turn: [turn count]".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4392&start=0#p31906
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Shortest way to pass text into an activity
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-02-18 09:23:00

I use compiler definitions for this sort of thing. They have the advantage of disappearing from the game entirely when you're not using them, because the code between #ifdef's is not compiled into the file if the option is undefined. I usually use three-liners so that every trace of the debug code is evaporated from the compiled game, but you could use Juhana's method too--it trades a function call and the creation of a text or indexed text that otherwise wouldn't be required for ease of use and cleanliness of code:

[code]Use custom debugging translates as (- Constant CUSTOM_DEBUG; -)

[Use custom debugging.]

To #if utilizing custom debugging:
	(- #ifdef CUSTOM_DEBUG; -)
	
To #endif:
	(- #endif; -)

To debug (T - an indexed text):
	#if utilizing custom debugging;
	say T;
	#endif.
	
Every turn:
	debug "Turn: [turn count]".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4169&start=10#p31908
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Benchmarking PLUS Contributions wanted for a test suite
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-02-18 09:42:42

I have a little game called [url=http://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A//www.instamatique.com/games/sugar/Sugar.z8]Sugar[/url] that is very slow, because it does a bunch of regex stuff on the entire output of the game every turn.  Is this useful? Should I PM you the code?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=30#p31909
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-02-18 09:46:10

[quote="conradcook"]hit SEND and get a blank 'Connection lost' page that indicates my data's gone[/quote]

Ugh, I hate that.  This is why I type out anything longer than a couple of sentences into a local text document, and only paste it into the comment/forum/whatever box when I'm done composing.  Even on shorter stuff, I often compulsively copy all the text before hitting "send."  I still get hit with it sometimes, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4384&start=0#p31910
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Looping through properties
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-02-18 09:51:15

[quote="Dannii"]You could compare the results of ShowMeSub().[/quote]
Thanks - that might work, but the objects are not in the same room so their showmes are not exactly the same. I'll look into it if the manual solution gets too cumbersome.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4392&start=0#p31911
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Shortest way to pass text into an activity
User: cvaneseltine / DateTime: 2012-02-18 09:54:11

Ah-ha!  That's exactly what I needed.  Thank you so much!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=60#p31912
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-18 09:54:51

[quote="matt w"][quote="thefoxaroo"]
[quote="capmikee"]On the rundown issue, you can do this:
[code]To say rundown for (somebody - Tom):[/code]
This will correctly invoke the phrase if you pass a variable that evaluates to Tom. However, I'm not positive that you could write it as you have, with an apostrophe-s and no space.[/quote]I'm sorry, I don't comprehend (it probably doesn't help that I made a typo above, "The description of Tom" twice when the 2nd line should have been "The description of Dick").  Could you elaborate on how your recommendation would then be integrated into a rule for printing?  That's the piece of code where I was getting an error message.[/quote]One issue is that I think you need to say "The rundown of Tom" or "The rundown for Tom" rather than "Tom's rundown,"
[/quote]
Right - you just change your existing rule to this:

[code]Rule for writing a paragraph about a person (called X):
    say "[X] is here, [rundown for X]."[/code]

The reason the say-phrase works this way is that unlike the rest of Inform, the compiler parses phrases EXACTLY as you've defined them, letter-for-letter. If you create a phrase called "To say Tom's rundown," the compiler does not recognize that Tom is the name of a person, it just accepts the word 'Tom's' in that place and no other phrasing (such as 'X's'). You might have well called the phrase "To say Albuquerque rundown" and it would have been no more or less linked to Tom in the eyes of the compiler. If you want a phrase to accept a variable, [i]even if that variable can only ever have one value[/i], you [b]must[/b] put it in parentheses. Once you've done that, phrase overloading works as it would in other object-oriented languages, so you can define any number of phrases with "To say (someone - [i]particular identifier[/i]):" This defines a say phrase that takes a parameter called "someone" whose value must be [i]particular identifier[/i].

My WIP has something similar, but I've put it into an activity called "behavior." I'm not totally happy with it, or I would be working on an extension for it. If you're doing something along the same lines, I might think about an extension more seriously. Maybe start a new thread to discuss this?

[quote="matt w"] and "The wrist of the player" rather than "the player's wrist." Inform won't understand "the player's wrist."[/quote]
I think Matt's identified the problem, but I'm not sure if this is the right solution. You need to specify the player's wrist in a way the compiler will understand. If you say:

[code]A wrist is a part of every persion[/code]
...the compiler will create one wrist for every person, and it will create a name for each wrist using a specific pattern. For non-player objects, that pattern is "[i]object name[/i]'s wrist." That means if you have an NPC named "Henry David Thoreau," the compiler will create a wrist called "Henry David Thoreau's wrist." You can refer to that wrist in your code as "Thoreau's wrist" or "Henry David wrist," but [b]not[/b] as "Henry David's wrist," because the word "David's" is not part of the name that the compiler created. Similarly, parts of the "yourself" object will be called "your wrist," etc. and "the player's wrist" and "the wrist of the player" will not match, because "of" and "player" and "player's" are not part of the official name.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=30#p31913
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-18 09:57:15

[rant]I keep waiting for some super-genius to patent the idea of a page that would replace the blank, "You hit the POST button but your connection died and you lost all your data hahaha sucker" screen with "You hit the POST button but your connection died [i]so here is the information that you just tried to post...[/i]"  Then one could cut and paste it after the fact.

I also use your workarounds, but every now and then...[/rant]

Entirely off-topic there.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=80#p31914
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-02-18 10:06:51

[quote="ChrisC"][quote="Laroquod"][quote="ChrisC"]I don't think it's accurate to say that these games lack goals, because a game is more than the sum of its rulebook.

It is, however, a good point that someone else pointed out that goals and win/loss conditions are not necessarily the same thing. I didn't make enough effort to differentiate between the two concepts in my previous post.[/quote]
Actually every good narrative (interactive or not) puts a 'goal', i.e. a reason to keep reading, in the reader's mind. It may be to find out if the protagonist survives, or to find out what the enemy's secret plan is, or merely to find out WTF all the characters are talking about when they all say, 'The Macguffin is coming!' If giving the player/reader a goal is what differentiates a game from a narrative, then all of HItchcock's movies are actually games, and in fact any story written by a good writer, is actually a game.[/quote]No, a goal isn't a dividing line between stories and games, but between toys and games. It's really more of a continuum, anyway: toy <--> sandbox <--> game, for instance, if you want to toss in a term from the gaming press (for whatever reason).[/quote]
Thanks for explaining that, and sorry if I misplaced the central locus of where the discussion is going. But I'd have to point out there is no such thing as a good toy that doesn't place a goal in the player's mind, either. LEGO is one of the best toys ever, because the size of the possibility space raises a great sense of expectation in the player's mind. We've all felt this sense of expectation. Why do we ignore it in our definitions? Without this sense of expectation, no one would play with LEGO. It's not like most people just play with it for *no reason* and then accidentally discover that you can build cool things with it. What you can do with it *is* the goal. Without it, there's no 'there' there. Without the capability to understand that this toy is holding out a promise to you that you can work to fulfill, there is no appeal to LEGO at all. Same goes for any toy, really. You look at it and you *already know* the sorts of things you're going to try with it. They occur to you on sight. That motivation was not actually supplied by you but was designed into the toy by the toy designers -- if they're any good.

[quote="maga"](If you don't think that two children pretending to be astronauts are playing a game, you've divorced yourself from the normal usage of the term and are now using a specialist term that should never be exported to broader contexts without a great big warning label.)[/quote]
Agreed.

[quote="Ghalev"]My own definition is more-or-less this:[i]the essence of gameplay is meaningful, recreational choice in scenario context.[/i][/quote]
Scenario is problematic there. Either everything is a 'scenario' (including the lines in tac-tac-toe) or else nothing is. There is no context in which human choice can be situated without a 'scenario' wrapped around it. It isn't adding any meaning to your definition. Recreational also has to go, or else professional pool players are no longer playing a game, which doesn't seem right. They're playing a game: they're just doing for money. Getting paid for it cannot fundamentally change the definition of what a human activity is; it seems obviously extrinsic. Choice is probably the best ground to try to lay a definition on, but even that is going to cause you trouble, as pointed out upthread. Plus, Russian roulette is a game with no choices. So is that thing where you try to slap somebody's hands before they can pull it away: you can choose when to try, but that isn't the *meaningful* choice -- the meaning of the game is finding out who has the faster reflexes.

[quote="conradcook"]I haven't seen "narrative" given a definition in terms of the audience's subjective experience before (although this may in fact be the correct strategy).[/quote]
Why would it have any other kind of definition? It doesn't make sense to understand an act of communication as anything but an attempt to change the state of another being's mind -- initially in a way that will make them keep receiving the communication. I went to U for Philosophy/Literature, but this is not something they taught me in school. I just sat down after and realised that no one in my entire degree program had actually even tried to teach me [i]how to write narrative[/i] -- as in how does it actually work or not work -- all they really did is point out metaphors and whatnot. Totally disorganised view of what is going on. Plus, every single work we studied was a 'brilliant work'. That's a bad sign. How can you study what works or doesn't work if you don't study things that don't work? A degree in literature is fairly useless to anyone wanting to know how to write narratively. It's very useful for knowing what others have written and what the literary establishment thinks of those things: full-stop. If you want to learn to actually write you have to figure it out on your own: thus it has always been, I feel.

I've been told in the years since I was in school (nearing on two decades now) that the philosophy of writing I now espouse bears some resemblance to 'reader response theory' which was out of vogue when I was in academia. I have little confidence in literary criticism as a useful field for a practical writer to study, so I doubt a literary theory actually bears much resemblance to my after-all simple and purely pragmatic conclusions. But I never actually formally studied reader response theory or any of their texts, so I wouldn't know. I've often thought I should look into it, but I've got all of this game criticism to get through. 87

[quote="conradcook"]Modern writers, in writing workshops, generally accept the definition of "story" as "characters who do things for reasons."  The classic example is -- Fitzgerald's? -- 

[quote]"The king died and then then queen died" is not a story, but a series of events.

"The king died and then the queen died of a broken heart" is a story.[/quote][/quote]
With respect to Fitzgerald, both of those are stories; neither of them are good stories. An actually good version of that story might go something like this...

[quote]She died of a broken heart, soon after the death of her King. I mean of course, the Queen.[/quote]
And an even better version (because it makes you want to keep reading after the first line) might go something like...

[quote]They say she died of a broken heart. A queen can't live without her king, they say. Romantic, but naive.[/quote]
Those are much better told stories for no other reason but the sequence. Imagery, metaphor, symbolism, allegory -- these are all great tools, but good writing doesn't need a single one of them. It doesn't even need a vocabulary of more than a thousand words. Good writing needs [i]only[/i] a good sequence. Everything else is optional. (And if it doesn't have a good sequence, nothing else will save it.) This is the way in which designing for story is very similar to designing for player choice. In both cases, the best writer is the writer with the most predictive 'theory of mind' about how to lead the player to turn the page (which is a choice) or to get interested in making some other desired type of choice.

[quote="conradcook"](There are classic counter-examples knocking down that definition, too, such as Hemingway's shortest story possible.  But even those counterexamples arguably have the elements of action and reason for it -- certainly Hemingway's does, although it's backgrounded.)[/quote]
You have a point. It wasn't really meant as a definition but as a counter-definition. The point of my way of looking at it is not to exclude anything from any category but to perceive that there is an art of sequence at the heart of all communication, that is more important and unifying than anything that separates these various disciplines.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4389&start=0#p31915
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: abbreviating ask
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-18 10:18:03

I never remember exactly why it fails, but I'm quite sure it has something to do with the fact that the noun has to be parsed before the second noun (or the topic understood, if that comes second). Since you've already given a topic, you've missed your chance to supply a missing noun. Something like that.

I spent a lot of time trying to prune the number of actions in my "Speech Motivations" extension with very little success. Eventually I decided it's better to have more actions - the parser is definitely the weakest link in Inform's processing (it's got a hard job to do!) - so anything you can do to shift the responsibility elsewhere has a positive effect. That includes parsing different phrasings of the same intention as different actions - action-processing rules can always redirect them to the right place once the parser's worked out what the objects of the action are.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4384&start=0#p31916
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Looping through properties
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-18 10:18:13

[quote="Juhana"][quote="Dannii"]You could compare the results of ShowMeSub().[/quote]
Thanks - that might work, but the objects are not in the same room so their showmes are not exactly the same. I'll look into it if the manual solution gets too cumbersome.[/quote]

If it's a debugging thing, could you temporarily move one into the room with the other before running the check?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=60#p31917
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-18 10:25:27

You're right, of course. If you want to write a rule that captures the player's wrist, one thing you could do is look at the Index (or showme the player) to find out what Inform is calling the object. Or if you need a more general case (if there's a possibility of switching the player from one person to another) then you might need "a wrist that is part of the player" or "a random wrist that is part of the player" or something like that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4390&start=0#p31918
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: htmldb3.exe has stopped working... a frequent error msg
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-18 10:48:37

This should go here: <a class="postlink" href="http://bugdb.tads.org">http://bugdb.tads.org</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4391&start=0#p31919
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How do I tweak the ">" prompt?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-18 10:54:52

The libMessages object is responsible for rendering the prompt, in its mainCommandPrompt() method. Simply override that method. The default implementation is in lib/adv3/en_us/msg_neu.t, line 436.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=80#p31920
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-18 11:02:35

A prototype is not something that you ever come across in real life... but some things you come across are closer to the prototype than others.  'Ostrich' and 'penguin' are both 'birds,' but neither is central to the prototype.  'Sparrow' is closest to the prototype (as reflected by response times in categorization drills).

Can we identify a particular game that's central to our intuitive prototype of an IF and of a CYOA?

Following up on this notion that we shouldn't just study *good* literature, I suppose we shouldn't just study good games.  Rather, we want two instances that are most unmistakably an IF and a CYOA.

--I noticed a while back that [u][url=http://ifwiki.org/index.php/The_PK_Girl]The PK Girl[/url][/u] was remarkable among IF Comp games because it had a very low standard of deviation, and was scored at 5.  So voters overwhelmingly agreed that this was a game that was of solid, average quality -- which is perhaps, for our purposes, remarkable.

Or it could be.  PK Girl was considered remarkably well-programmed... but aimed at a younger audience than most voters.  Its standard of deviation makes it very interesting to me, but probably it's not enough like what we think of when we think "IF" for it to be close to our prototype.

Anybody got a better candidate?


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4384&start=0#p31921
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Looping through properties
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-02-18 11:02:41

That's crazy enough that it just might work. The next question is, how do I compare two ShowMeSubs? As far as I can tell it prints the text directly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4391&start=0#p31922
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How do I tweak the ">" prompt?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-18 11:41:33

Brilliant!  -- Thank you, RealNC.

For the record, this is the code:

[code]
modify Person
    promptName = name
;

modify libMessages
    mainCommandPrompt(which)
    {
        "\b<<gPlayerChar.promptName>>&gt;"; 

    }
;
[/code]

And this is the output:

[quote]fellow>﻿switch to guy

Switching from fellow to guy... You are now guy. 

guy>
﻿[/quote]

...Now, the one frill I'd like to add in is to have TADS automagically convert John into JOHN>.  However, the code:

    promptName = toUpper(name)

Reports no error, but yields the old '>' prompt.  Any notions?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=80#p31923
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: joningold / DateTime: 2012-02-18 12:00:24

I did a talk the other month where - without totally being sure about this - I suggested that a game requires three things - unpredictability, progression, and a dependable ruleset to orchestrate events.

I like it as a model because it's really about what a game needs to be *experienced* as a game, rather than what you have to include to *make* something a game. So it covers things like Patty Cake and Snakes and Ladders which are only games in certain contexts. (To most adults, I don't think Snakes and Ladders feels like a game, but more like a chore or a ritual. To children, however, it feels quite vibrant and alive. The distinction is bound up in the 'predictability' of events - to adults, Snakes and Ladders just isn't very unpredictable).

jon

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4391&start=0#p31924
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How do I tweak the ">" prompt?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-18 12:01:07

Try making it a full-blown method.

[code]
promptName() { return toUpper(name); }
[/code]

I think it's accepting the code as a function but not returning a value, so nil gets pasted into the prompt.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4391&start=0#p31925
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How do I tweak the ">" prompt?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-18 12:05:35

toUpper() is a String class method. You use it like this:

promptName = name.toUpper()

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4394&start=0#p31926
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Fast-Forwarding Scenes w/ Eric Eve's Scene Manager
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-18 12:13:31

Ideally, no one will want to fast-forward your scenes.  But this may be useful as a debugging command, as well as for players who might otherwise complain about the pages being glued together.

EDIT:  Last version of the code had an [i]amazingly weird bug[/i] that has produced seemingly impossible output I simply cannot comprehend.  This version does not ... but is not automated:  it involves an extra step in game production.

In your Verbs file, this bit:

[code]
///////////////////////////// ** FFW ** ///////////////////////////////////

modify Actor
    ffwing = nil
;


DefineIAction(Ffw)
     execAction() { 
        mainReport('<i>Fast-Forwarding: this will take a moment... </i>'); 
        gPlayerChar.ffwing = true;
    }
;


VerbRule(Ffw)
     ('ffw' ) 
     : FfwAction
     verbPhrase = 'fast-forward/fast-forwarding'
;
[/code]

Then, for [i]every scene you want to be fastforwardable[/i], add this:

    endsWhen = ([b][i]gPlayerChar.ffwing || [/i][/b]gRevealed('amy-n-oscar'))

I know, it seems you ought to be able to automate this, but I'm just not understanding the resulting behavior well enough.

This is the output:

[quote]>﻿ffw

[i]Fast-Forwarding: this will take a moment... [/i]

Scene's this-turn output text.

Scene's end-criteria output text. 

[i]This scene has been fast-forwarded. The next scene will begin shortly. [/i]

>﻿[/quote]

Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4391&start=0#p31927
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How do I tweak the ">" prompt?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-18 12:18:17

Thanks both; RealNC's version did the trick!

C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=80#p31928
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2012-02-18 12:58:57

[quote="conradcook"]Can we identify a particular game that's central to our intuitive prototype of an IF and of a CYOA?

Following up on this notion that we shouldn't just study *good* literature, I suppose we shouldn't just study good games.  Rather, we want two instances that are most unmistakably an IF and a CYOA.[/quote]

I'm not sure I understood your question. If you want two games, one characteristic IF, one characteristic CYOA, I think [i]Zork[/i] is a prototype of IF, and [i]Cave of Time[/i] (CYOA #1) is a prototype of CYOA. But that answer is almost too trivial to be enlightening.

If you want a game that is unmistakably both, I think the point is arguable, but I feel pretty confident calling Fighting Fantasy's gamebook [i]The Warlock of Firetop Mountain[/i] a good prototype CYOA IF. It has a world model (which the reader manages manually, using pencil and paper), it has a cave to explore at a leisurely pace, and it has a few simple puzzles.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=80#p31929
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-18 13:45:35

Dan, those were exactly the examples I was going to use!

[quote="ChrisC"]I feel like it's important to differentiate between [i]play[/i] and [i]games[/i]. It's possible to play around in Photoshop or MS Excel, for instance, but these are productivity tools, clearly not games. Pattycake and catch seem more like something I would call "activities" or "exercise" rather than games, per se.[/quote]

Important for what? OK, that's a cheap shot; presumably "important for defining what games are." But if we're going on the ordinary definition of "game," "a game of catch" is a very common phrase. 

Now, catch and pattycake might not share in any of the qualities you're interested in in games. Which is fine; then you won't mind a definition that excludes them. But that's just to say that when you talk about games, you want to talk about the things that interest you, not about everything that people talk about when they use the word "game." Which brings us back to the original question: Important for what? For what [i]you[/i] want to do when you talk about games, presumably.

[quote="joningold"]I did a talk the other month where - without totally being sure about this - I suggested that a game requires three things - unpredictability, progression, and a dependable ruleset to orchestrate events.[/quote]

Jon, in some ways isn't that what a [i]good[/i] game is? Tic-Tac-Toe is utterly predictable, but it's still a game. And the dependability of rulesets is highly variable. But again, these are things that can be interesting in games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4395&start=0#p31930
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Two questions - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-02-18 15:13:26

I'm back with a couple of questions. I have been changing the format on my story for the last five days. It's not as sloppy and is much easier to read now. You guys should be happy with that. However, thanks to my memory, I'm still having a very difficult time finding things (especially in the manuals) and remembering things.

I do not remember how to set up a room so that it has both the proper normal and first time descriptions. Could use some help on this.

I already forgot the second question that I wanted to ask. Sorry to be such a pest.

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4395&start=0#p31931
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Two questions - TADS3.1
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-18 16:06:53

Fortunately, it's very easy to do:

[code]roomFirstDesc = "This will be shown only once. "[/code]

If you want to also show the normal 'desc', then call it from 'roomFirstDesc':

[code]roomFirstDesc = "This will be shown only once.<p><<desc>>"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4384&start=0#p31932
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: I7: Looping through properties
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-02-18 17:41:47

You'll have to print it to a buffer. I suggest then turning the buffer into indexed text so that you can compare them with regexs - if there are any properties which don't need to be the same then you can strip them out first.

ShowMeSub is only compiled for debug. If you need this in the final result then possibly your first solution might end up simpler.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4169&start=20#p31934
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Benchmarking PLUS Contributions wanted for a test suite
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-02-18 17:56:14

That sounds good, though email would be better thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4366&start=0#p31935
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Puzzle in Anchorhead
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2012-02-18 18:27:38

I don't know. But I really want to talk about Anchorhead.

[spoiler]Does the ghost train ever show up?[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4169&start=20#p31936
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Benchmarking PLUS Contributions wanted for a test suite
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-02-18 18:36:34

Dannii, I've got an implementation of A* pathfinding laying around. It's pretty darn slow. Would you be interested in that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4387&start=0#p31937
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: This is an incredibly cool site...
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-02-18 18:44:42

[quote]As for Watchmen, that's a perfect example of a film that didn't need to be made[/quote]

I suppose it was the challenge - "the film adaptation that could never be made", I think it was. And it does serve better as a "companion" to the graphic novel, best enjoyed by people who have read it, than as a standalone film, which does mean that, in a certain level, it's failed.

But I enjoyed (almost) every minute of it. [emote]:)[/emote] I *love* works of art that are moved by love and/or admiration, and it was clear that it was made by people who loved the original. They tried their very best, and kudos for that. There's plenty of IF that fails on some degree or another (gameplay, narrative, puzzles, you name it) but deserves recognition and is an enjoyable experience because the author put so much love into it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4366&start=0#p31938
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Puzzle in Anchorhead
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-02-18 18:48:00

Sure it does. It's even an alternate solution for a particular puzzle.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=90#p31940
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-18 18:51:32

Hmm... at the risk of turning this discussion into something from [url=http://www.qwantz.com]Dinosaur Comics[/url], I've been reading up on games and play.

It looks to me like play is just an imaginary context permitting people to act weird in ways they find interesting.  Like an ultra-low tech holodeck or an episode of Whose Line Is It Anyway?.

Little kids will initiate play by 'creating a shared focus of attention through putting their hands on something an adult or another child is holding.'  Or, they'll repeat the other person's actions.

That second one is thought-provoking, in thinking about how we play with computers, because mimicking someone prompts them, of course, to wonder what they can make you do.  It's very similar to the curiosity-evokation that happens when we wonder what we can make a computer do -- through what range we can operate it.  And there is definitely that in play:  a great deal of childhood games, in my experience, had to do with who could make who do what.  Social learning.

In such an extended notion of 'play' as setting a permissible context for desired activity, we can find a lot of leisure activity, from Facebook to barhopping...


T-Rex.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=60#p31941
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-18 20:15:12

How about something like this?

[code]Rule for writing a paragraph about a person (called X): Say "[X] is here. [rundown of X]".
The description of a person is usually "[rundown of the item described]".
To say rundown of (X - a person): [complicated code goes here][/code]

I haven't tested this, but I think it might work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4396&start=0#p31943
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: T3: objInPrep
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-18 21:21:44

I have a ComplexContainer that has a subSurface and a subRear. Searching the main object reports "There's nothing unusual in the stone block." I changed objInPrep to 'on', both in the ComplexContainer itself and in the subSurface -- but no dice. I still get 'in', not 'on'.

Not only that, but if I put an object on the stone block, searching it [i]still [/i]yields "You see nothing unusual in the stone block," which is obviously wrong!

Is this a T3 bug? Two of them? Or is it user error?

One issue appears to be this: ComplexContainer has the following line:
[code]dobjFor(LookIn) maybeRemapTo(subContainer != nil, LookIn, subContainer)[/code]
This would seem to be exactly wrong for a ComplexContainer that has a subSurface and a subRear, but no subContainer. The library thinks it can't remap, so it reports "nothing unusual." When I change the remapTo, I get the correct preposition. Hooray!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=60#p31944
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2012-02-18 21:30:33

[quote="capmikee"]Right - you just change your existing rule to this:[code]Rule for writing a paragraph about a person (called X):
    say "[X] is here, [rundown for X]."[/code]The reason the say-phrase works this way is that unlike the rest of Inform, the compiler parses phrases EXACTLY as you've defined them, letter-for-letter. If you create a phrase called "To say Tom's rundown," the compiler does not recognize that Tom is the name of a person, it just accepts the word 'Tom's' in that place and no other phrasing (such as 'X's'). You might have well called the phrase "To say Albuquerque rundown" and it would have been no more or less linked to Tom in the eyes of the compiler. If you want a phrase to accept a variable, [i]even if that variable can only ever have one value[/i], you [b]must[/b] put it in parentheses. Once you've done that, phrase overloading works as it would in other object-oriented languages, so you can define any number of phrases with "To say (someone - [i]particular identifier[/i]):" This defines a say phrase that takes a parameter called "someone" whose value must be [i]particular identifier[/i].[/quote]It worked (with a little fiddling around to control line breaking), and thanks for the explanation.  I'm still in the early stages of grappling with Inform's grammar and syntax, so there's a long way to go.  Inform is the first Interactive Fiction language I've learned, and as such completely different from anything I've done before.

[quote="capmikee"]My WIP has something similar, but I've put it into an activity called "behavior." I'm not totally happy with it, or I would be working on an extension for it. If you're doing something along the same lines, I might think about an extension more seriously. Maybe start a new thread to discuss this?[/quote]Possibly, although as a raw novice I wouldn't be able to contribute much myself.  Certainly it would be worth attracting opinions, so if you do start a thread on it pls post a link here to the new thread.

I would have expected describing details of NPCs to be sought fairly often, in a game where details of the characters are subject to change.  An example of what I could be doing with the three characters at the construction site is for one to be randomly selected as the murderer, with the telltale signs to be a torn section of their overalls and a pocket bulge where they've stowed the murder weapon.

[quote="capmikee"][quote="matt w"] and "The wrist of the player" rather than "the player's wrist." Inform won't understand "the player's wrist."[/quote]I think Matt's identified the problem, but I'm not sure if this is the right solution. You need to specify the player's wrist in a way the compiler will understand. If you say:[code]A wrist is a part of every persion[/code]...the compiler will create one wrist for every person, and it will create a name for each wrist using a specific pattern. For non-player objects, that pattern is "[i]object name[/i]'s wrist." That means if you have an NPC named "Henry David Thoreau," the compiler will create a wrist called "Henry David Thoreau's wrist." You can refer to that wrist in your code as "Thoreau's wrist" or "Henry David wrist," but [b]not[/b] as "Henry David's wrist," because the word "David's" is not part of the name that the compiler created. Similarly, parts of the "yourself" object will be called "your wrist," etc. and "the player's wrist" and "the wrist of the player" will not match, because "of" and "player" and "player's" are not part of the official name.[/quote]This one is still giving me a headache.  I've tried the index and showme command.  Nothing appears about wrists in the index, but the Showme command identifies them as:
">showme my wrists
your Wrists - Wrists"

Having learned this I've changed the command to:
[code]Does the player mean doing something with your wrists: it is very unlikely.[/code]
This successfully compiles, but unfortunately it appears not to have any effect on gameplay:
">Examine wrists
Which do you mean, [u]your Wrists[/u], Tommy's Wrists, Richard's Wrists or Gertrude's Wrists?"

There's a rather brute-force solution that I found while working on something else.
[code]Remove your Wrists from play[/code]
Not ideal for all situations, but it's one option.  This came about while I was getting ahead of myself and trying out ideas for a [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furry_fandom]furry[/url] Interactive Fiction game.  With different species having different body parts the only way I found to achieve this was to say that all body parts are a part of a person and then to remove from play the incorrect ones.  
Simplified example:[code]Claws are a part of every person.  Hooves are a part of every person.
When play begins: Remove Mr Ed's Claws from play. Remove Shere Khan's hooves from play.  [Etc.][/code]
A question that might possibly lead to a solution (or maybe more problems): When there are pairs of body parts, what's the correct way to create them?

Wrists are a part of every person.
or
A left wrist is a part of every person.  A right wrist is a part of every person. (This produced a compilation error).
or
Two wrists are a part of every person. (This was successfully compiled, but then I couldn't apply the "Remove your Wrists from play" and in gameplay it became impossible to perform actions on anyone's wrists because Inform could no longer distinguish one wrist from another).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=60#p31945
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-18 21:55:27

I think you're hitting one of the annoyances of DTPM rules. As I understand it, they assign a score to every possible match, and if one object comes out with the best score then they pick that object. But if there's a tie, they ask the player to disambiguate every possible match. So in this case, if there's one NPC in the location I think it will automatically examine the NPC's wrists, but if there is more than one NPC it will disambiguate among everyone's wrists. 

You could see if the Disambiguation Control extension helps. I don't know any other way to solve the problem.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4396&start=0#p31946
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: objInPrep
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-18 22:14:32

Probably I should keep my mouth shut, as you're much better at this than I am--

But I'm wondering why you're not using a Surface object?

Would you post your code?


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=60#p31947
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2012-02-18 22:23:58

Okay that sounds logical.

Not familiar with those terms though.  What's DTPM and Disambiguation Control?  I couldn't find either of those in the manual.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=60#p31948
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-18 22:26:51

Sorry, DTPM is "does the player mean," and Disambiguation Control is an extension by Jon Ingold found [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Jon%20Ingold/Disambiguation%20Control/index.html]here[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=60#p31949
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-18 22:33:42

DTPM is short for Does The Player Mean. Disambiguation Control is an extension by Jon Ingold.

I haven't had much luck with Disambiguation Control. It only does certain things, and I can't remember whether removing an item from the match list is one of them.

I spend a lot of time debugging DTPM. Here are some things I keep in mind:

The DTPM rulebook runs once for every possible action that the parser tries to match against the command. In effect, every noun is tried one at a time. And like any other rulebook, DTPM stops running on the first rule that produces a result. So rule order matters. If you have one DTPM that refers to examining and one that refers to body parts, only one of them will apply to examining wrists, and which one depends on the rule order.

So, two super-valuable things to do:

Turn rules on. This will tell you which DTPM, if any, are running. Unfortunately, you won't be able to see what circumstances they're running on. So the second thing is to add this rule:

[code]First does the player mean: showme the current action.[/code]

That will give you a nice "header" for every block of DTPM that runs, ending with the one that made the decision.

If you get really desperate, you can use the "trace" debug command, but that will give you a lot of I6 parser stuff that's hard to decipher.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=60#p31950
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-18 23:02:22

[quote="matt w"]I think you're hitting one of the annoyances of DTPM rules. As I understand it, they assign a score to every possible match, and if one object comes out with the best score then they pick that object. But if there's a tie, they ask the player to disambiguate every possible match.[/quote]
My approach to this problem is to make an extra effort to ensure that only one choice scores high - thus avoiding disambiguation completely. A few specific cases that trigger "it is very likely" are much more powerful than a large number of cases returning "it is very unlikely."

Here, you might want something like:

[code]Does the player mean doing something with a body part that is part of a dead person: it is very likely.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4394&start=0#p31951
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Fast-Forwarding Scenes w/ Eric Eve's Scene Manager
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-19 00:18:16

You should be able to automate it by overriding sceneController's sceneCheck method.

[code]
modify libGlobal
    ffwing = nil
;

modify sceneController
    sceneCheck()
    {
        local how = nil; 
        
        foreach(local cur in sceneList)
        {            
             
            /* Check if any active scenes are ready to be ended */   
            if(cur.isActive && (libGlobal.ffwing || ((how = cur.endsWhen) != nil)))
                cur.deactivate(how);           
            
            /* Check if any non-active scenes are due for activation */
            if(!cur.isActive && cur.startsWhen 
               && (cur.isRecurring || cur.timesActive == 0))            
               cur.activate();               
               
        }
    }
;
[/code]

It's probably also a good idea to store ffwing in libGlobal, rather than gPlayerChar, in case you have a scene that changes the player character upon deactivation. Or in case the player turns on fast forward and then switches to a different actor.

Not sure how you want the player to turn it off, either. A good place would be in sceneCheck, right after deactivating the current scene.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4396&start=0#p31952
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: objInPrep
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-19 00:37:22

[quote="Jim Aikin"]This would seem to be exactly wrong for a ComplexContainer that has a subSurface and a subRear, but no subContainer. The library thinks it can't remap, so it reports "nothing unusual." When I change the remapTo, I get the correct preposition. Hooray![/quote]

It seems right to me, in that the remap only kicks in if the ComplexContainer has a subContainer defined. Otherwise it falls through to the default Thing behavior, which is to show the object's lookInDesc. This is where "there's nothing unusual in X" comes from; you get the same message if you try to look in an actor.

Changing the remap line is probably the easiest way to fix it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4275&start=0#p31953
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Best System for Hypertext
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-19 00:44:24

Apart from CSS prettiness, the nice thing about Undum is that you can pick up basic state-tracking-CYOA functionality in a few days (particularly if you avoid persnicketiness with Jon Ingold's [url=http://threeedgedsword.wordpress.com/2011/03/31/undum-say-function/]"say" function[/url]), but you can also get considerably more powerful capabilities by taking advantage of the underlying Javascript.

(Of course, learning Javascript from scratch for purely-Undum purposes is kind of difficult and weird. It's convenient that I know so many CS people.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4169&start=20#p31954
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Benchmarking PLUS Contributions wanted for a test suite
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-02-19 00:57:39

Yes that sounds good too. If you have a map where it was particularly slow that'd be good too.

What kind of path finding is built into I7? I've never looked at the details.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4396&start=0#p31955
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: objInPrep
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-19 01:01:11

[quote="bcressey"]
It seems right to me, in that the remap only kicks in if the ComplexContainer has a subContainer defined. Otherwise it falls through to the default Thing behavior, which is to show the object's lookInDesc.[/quote]
If the player types 'look in X', then the default thing behavior makes sense (more or less -- I'm not thrilled by "You see nothing unusual" when the object has no contents). But 'search X' should certainly remap to the subSurface if there is one, because the contents of the subSurface are in plain view.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4396&start=0#p31956
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: T3: objInPrep
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-19 01:03:30

[quote="conradcook"]But I'm wondering why you're not using a Surface object?[/quote]
It's a standard ComplexContainer, no fancy code at all. The reason I'm not just using a Surface is because it also has a subRear (in which a certain object is hidden). We need to be able to put things on it and also look behind it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4169&start=20#p31957
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Benchmarking PLUS Contributions wanted for a test suite
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-02-19 09:19:58

Ah, sorry. This isn't directly related to Inform pathfinding--it finds a path through a grid of cells rather than on a graph of room connections (as the built-in pathfinding does). Don't know if it would still be useful to you, but here it is:

[spoiler][code]"A-Star"

Release along with an interpreter.

[-----------]
[Multi-window]
Include Flexible Windows by Jon Ingold.

The map-window is a text-grid g-window spawned by the main-window. The position is g-placeabove. The scale method is g-fixed-size. The measurement is 9.

When play begins:
	open up the map-window.
	
Window-drawing rule for the map-window:
	move focus to the map-window, clearing the window;
	let M be 0;
	let count be 0;
	repeat with N running through the grid of the location:
		increase count by 1;
		increase M by 1;
		if M > the grid-width of the location:
			now M is 1;
			say "[line break]";
		if count is the flat-position of the marker:
			say " @";
		else if count is listed in the least-cost path:
			say " X";
		otherwise:
			select a row with a tile number of N in the Table of Tiles;
			say " [key entry]";
	return to main screen.
	
Instead of jumping:
	find path to goal in the location;
	refresh windows.

[-----------]
[Single-window]
[To display map:
	say "[line break][fixed letter spacing]";
	let M be 0;
	let count be 0;
	repeat with N running through the grid of the location:
		increase count by 1;
		increase M by 1;
		if M > the grid-width of the location:
			now M is 1;
			say "[line break]";
		if count is the flat-position of the marker:
			say " @";
		else if count is listed in the least-cost path:
			say " X";
		otherwise:
			select a row with a tile number of N in the Table of Tiles;
			say " [key entry]";
	say "[variable letter spacing][line break]"
			

Instead of jumping:
	find path to goal in the location;
	display map.
	
After looking:
	display map.]
			
[--------------]

Include (- Array Cost_Map --> 256; -) after "Definitions.i6t".


A map room is a kind of room.

A map room has a list of numbers called the grid.
A map room has a number called the grid-width.

The goal is a list of numbers variable. The goal is {9, 3}.
The starting point is a list of numbers variable. The starting point is {2, 5}.
The marker is a list of numbers variable. The marker is {2, 5}.

To decide whether (N - a number) is the flat-position of (G - a list of numbers):
	let pos be ( (entry 2 of G - 1) * grid-width of location) + (entry 1 of G);
	if N is pos, decide yes.
	
To decide what number is flat-position of (G - a list of numbers):
	decide on ( (entry 2 of G - 1) * grid-width of location) + (entry 1 of G);

Walkability is a kind of value. The walkabilities are unwalkable and walkable.

The open list is a list of numbers variable.

The least-cost path is a list of numbers variable.

Table of Visited Nodes
node position	closed-node	parent	F-score	G-score	H-score
a number	truth state	number	number	number	number
with 99 blank rows

To evaluate the/-- walkability of the/-- map for (R - a map room):
	write index to cost-map for the grid of R;
	repeat with pos running from 1 to the number of entries of the grid of R:
		select row with tile number of (entry pos of grid of R) in the table of tiles;
		add (pass entry) to the cost-map at pos.
		
To write index to the/-- cost-map for (L - a list of numbers):
	(- Cost_Map --> 0 = LIST_OF_TY_GetLength({-pointer-to:L}); -)
		
To add (W - a walkability) to the/-- cost-map at (pos - a number):
	(- Cost_Map --> {pos} = {W} - 1; -)

To find path to goal in (R - a map room):
[create bitmap version of the map to define inaccessible squares]
	evaluate the walkability of the map for R;
[initialize temporary variables]
	let path completed be false;
	let W be grid-width of R;
	let G be a number;
[zero out the administrative lists]
	let the goal position be the flat-position of the goal;
	blank out the whole of the table of visited nodes;
	now the open list is {};
[add starting node to the open list and initialize costs]
	add flat-position of starting point to the open list;
	choose row 1 from the table of visited nodes;
	now the node position entry is entry 1 of the open list;
	now the parent entry is 0;
	now the G-score entry is 0;
	now the H-score entry is the heuristic distance from the flat-position of the starting point to the goal position in the map of R;
	now the F-score entry is G-score entry + H-score entry;
	[now closed-node entry is false;]
[main loop: select neighbor with the best score and follow on.]
	while the number of entries of the open list > 0:
		[sort the table of visited nodes in F-score order;][this sort function now replaced with priority queue on the open list]
		select row with a node position of (entry 1 in the open list) in the table of visited nodes;
		let best F be F-score entry;
		[choose row with a closed-node of false in the table of visited nodes;]
		let current node be a number;
		let current node be node position entry;
		let G be G-score entry;
		[now closed-node entry is true;]
		remove the current node from the open list;
		if the current node is the goal position:
			now path completed is true;
			break;
		let candidates be the neighbors of the current node in the map of R;
		repeat with selected running through candidates:
			if selected is not listed in the open list:
				choose blank row in the table of visited nodes;
				now node position entry is selected;
				now parent entry is current node;
				if ABS (current node - selected) is 1 or the remainder after dividing ( ABS (current node - selected) ) by W is 0:[short way of determining whether neighbor is orthagonal]
					now G-score entry is G + 10;
				otherwise:
					now G-score entry is G + 14;
				now H-score entry is the heuristic distance from selected to the goal position in the map of R;
				now F-score entry is G-score entry + H-score entry;
				[now closed-node entry is false;]
				[let F1 be F-score entry;]
				if F-score entry < (best F + 1):
					add selected at entry 1 in the open list;
				otherwise:
					add selected to the open list;
			otherwise if there is a node position of selected in the table of visited nodes:
				select row with a node position of selected in the table of visited nodes;
				let G1 be a number;
				if ABS (current node - selected) is 1 or the remainder after dividing ( ABS (current node - selected) ) by W is 0:[short way of determining whether neighbor is orthogonal]
					now G1 is G + 10;
				otherwise:
					now G1 is G + 14;
				if G1 < G-score entry:
					now parent entry is current node;
					now G-score entry is G1;
					now H-score entry is the heuristic distance from selected to the goal position in the map of R;
					now F-score entry is G-score entry + H-score entry;
					[now closed-node entry is false;]
			[say "[current node]: added [selected]; F: [F-score entry]; G: [G-score entry]; H: [H-score entry].";]
	if path completed is true:
		now the least-cost path is {};
		add goal position to least-cost path;
		select row with a node position of goal position in the table of visited nodes;
		let seek be parent entry;
		while seek is not flat-position of starting point:
			add seek at entry 1 in least-cost path;
			select row with a node position of seek in the table of visited nodes;
			now seek is parent entry;
		say "Path: [least-cost path]."

To decide what number is ABS (N - a number):
	if N < 0, decide on 0 - N;
	decide on N.
			
[To decide which number is the heuristic distance from (S - a number) to (E - a number) in the map of (R - a room):
	let L be the coordinates of S in the map of R;
	let M be the coordinates of E in the map of R;
	let X_dist be entry 1 of L - entry 1 of M;
	let Y_dist be entry 2 of L - entry 2 of M;
	if X_dist < 0, now X_dist is 0 - X_dist;
	if Y_dist < 0, now Y_dist is 0 - Y_dist;
	if X_dist > Y_dist:
		decide on (14 * Y_dist) + (10 * (X_dist - Y_dist) );
	otherwise:
		decide on (14 * X_dist) + (10 * (Y_dist - X_dist) ).]
		
To decide which number is the heuristic distance from (S - a number) to (E - a number) in the map of (R - a room):
	let diff be ABS (S - E);
	let Y_dist be diff / grid-width of R;
	let X_dist be the remainder after dividing diff by grid-width of R;
	if X_dist > (grid-width of R / 2), now X_dist is grid-width of R - X_dist;
	if X_dist > Y_dist:
		decide on (14 * Y_dist) + (10 * (X_dist - Y_dist) );
	otherwise:
		decide on (14 * X_dist) + (10 * (Y_dist - X_dist) ).
	
To decide what list of numbers is the coordinates of (N - a number) in the map of (R - a room):
	let L be a list of numbers;
	let W be the grid-width of R;
	If N is 1, now N is 2;
	let Y be ( (N - 1) / W ) + 1;
	let X be N - (Y * W);
	add X to L;
	add Y to L;
	decide on L.

To decide which list of numbers is the neighbors of (N - a number) in the map of (R - a map room):
	let L be a list of numbers;
	let candidates be a list of numbers;
	let W be the grid-width of R; [width]
	let Y_max be the number of entries of the grid of R;
	let H be Y_max divided by W; [height]
	let X be ( (N / W) * W ) + 1; [first position of current row]
	if N < (W + 1), now X is 1;
	let X_max be W + (X - 1); [position at end of current row]
	unless N + 1 > X_max:
		add (N + 1) to L;
		if (N + 1) - W > 0, add ( (N + 1) - W ) to L;
		if (N + 1) + W < Y_max, add ( (N + 1) + W ) to L;
	unless (N - 1) is less than X:
		add (N - 1) to L;
		if (N - 1) - W > 0, add ( (N - 1) - W ) to L;
		if (N - 1) + W < Y_max, add ( (N - 1) + W ) to L;
	unless (N - W) < 1, add (N - W) to L;
	unless (N + W) > Y_max, add (N + W) to L;
	repeat with item running through L:
		if square (item) in the cost-map is walkable, add item to candidates;
		[select row with tile number of (entry item of grid of R) in the table of tiles;
		if the pass entry is walkable, add item to candidates;]
	decide on candidates.
	
To decide whether the/-- square (N - a number) in the cost-map is walkable:
	(- Cost_Map --> {N} -)


Include (-
Global seekStartAddress;
Global seekRows;
Global seekVal;
Global seekReturnValue;
-) after "Definitions.i6t".

To select a/the/-- row with (TC - a word value valued table column) of (W - a word value) in/from (T - table name):
	(-	{-require-ctvs}
		ct_0 = {T};
		ct_1 = -1;
		seekStartAddress = ({T})-->(TableFindCol({T}, {TC}, true)) + (COL_HSIZE * WORDSIZE);
		seekRows = TableRows({T}) + 2;
		seekVal = {W};
		@linearsearch seekVal WORDSIZE seekStartAddress WORDSIZE seekRows 0 4 ct_1;
		if (ct_1 < 1) return RunTimeProblem(RTP_TABLE_NOCORR, {T});
	-).


Include (-
Global quickloopSearchFor; 
Global quickloopStartAddress;
Global quickloopRowsLeft;
Global quickloopReturnValue;
-) after "Definitions.i6t".


To repeat through (tab - table name) until (row - number) with (tc - a word value valued table column) as (val - a word value) begin -- end: 
(-	{-require-ctvs} ! {-zero-counter:reviewHistoryCol}  
	ct_0 = {tab};
	!print "rows: ", {row}, "; value: ", {val}, ". ";
	ct_1 = -1;
	quickloopSearchFor = {val}; 
	quickloopStartAddress = ({tab})-->(TableFindCol({tab}, {tc}, true)) + (COL_HSIZE * WORDSIZE); 
	quickloopRowsLeft = {row};
	quickloopReturnValue = -1;
	while (1) {
		@linearsearch quickloopSearchFor WORDSIZE quickloopStartAddress WORDSIZE quickloopRowsLeft 0 4 quickloopReturnValue;
		quickloopReturnValue++;
		if (quickloopReturnValue == 0) break;
		ct_1 = ct_1 + quickloopReturnValue;     ! set the chosen row for I7
		quickloopStartAddress = quickloopStartAddress + (WORDSIZE * quickloopReturnValue);  ! set start point for next iteration
		quickloopRowsLeft = quickloopRowsLeft - quickloopReturnValue;  ! decrease #/rows left to check
!-).	


Table of Tiles
tile number	pass	key
0	unwalkable	" "
1	unwalkable	"#"
2	walkable	"·"



[-----------------]

The kitchen is a map room. The grid-width is 10. The grid is {
0, 0, 0, 1, 2, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0,
1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,
1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 1,
1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1,
1, 2, 2, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 1,
1, 2, 2, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 1,
1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,
1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0,
0, 0, 1, 2, 2, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0
}.

[The kitchen is a map room. The grid-width is 9. The grid is {
0, 0, 0, 1, 2, 1, 0, 0, 0,
1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1,
1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 1,
1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 1, 1,
1, 2, 2, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 1,
1, 2, 2, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 1,
1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 
1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 1, 0, 0, 0,
0, 0, 1, 2, 2, 1, 0, 0, 0
}.]


Dumping is an action applying to nothing. Understand "dump" as dumping.

Carry out dumping:
	debug node position in the Table of Visited Nodes.
	[say "Table of Visited Nodes[line break]";
	repeat through the Table of Visited Nodes:
		say "[node position entry]; [F-score entry]."]
		
To debug (TC - a table column) in (T - a table name):
	(- TableColumnDebug({T}, {TC}); -)[/code][/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4397&start=0#p31958
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: NPC Guard
User: Sherbert / DateTime: 2012-02-19 10:31:27

I'm looking to code a guard that moves back and forth between two rooms every 5 turns or so. If the player enters the room when the guard is there or the player is in the room when the guard enters, I would like the player to be caught ending the game. So far, a lot of the information I've read has given me bits and pieces of what I need to know, but I haven't been able to piece together how to make this work. Does anyone know of any examples of coding I can look it or any reference material regarding this kind of specific handling?

**edit, to whom it may concern, I'm somewhat annoyed that I had to create a new email address to sign up here because my standard email address could not be accepted.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4394&start=0#p31959
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Fast-Forwarding Scenes w/ Eric Eve's Scene Manager
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-19 10:36:42

Thanks for the thoughts and the code, Ben!

FFW should work like tapping the >> key on your DVD player, and advance to the next scene.  Currently, if a scene uses it, the FFWing flag is reset to nil.

I tried to set up a fuse inside the execute action verb method, to handle the case in which a turn has passed and no scene was operative to FFW (and deflag).  Couldn't get that one off the ground.  Fuses are hard.

I'll take your code for a spin later today.


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4397&start=0#p31960
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: NPC Guard
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-19 10:44:05

You're working with TADS 3/3.1?  [i](whoa, windows flashback...)[/i]

Consider making two AgendaItems for the guard -- one AgendaItem to walk back and forth, and another that triggers when self.location == gPlayerChar.location, and ends the game.

Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4157&start=0#p31961
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Change room descriptions, when player is in a certain st
User: NakedLunchbox / DateTime: 2012-02-19 12:38:48

First post here at intfiction, and my first attempt at interactive fiction. I think my problem is close enough to this one that I figured I should just continue this thread. Hoping someone can give me a point in the right direction here.

So, my first room is a laboratory. I want my character to start the game with their head in their hands, so that the initial room description provides no visual information. I then want the player to observe his surroundings after typing their first "look" command. I've gotten close, but there are problems, and beyond that, I expect I'm doing this in an inefficient manner anyway.

[code]A room can be visible or invisible. A room is usually visible.

Laboratory is a room. Laboratory is invisible. "You're sitting at a desk with your head in your hands. Your heart is racing, and there is a faint scent of ozone in the air[if Laboratory is visible]. You lift your head from your hands with a sigh and examine your surroundings. Papers and books are strewn all about you, along with various scientific instruments. There is a large machine in the corner[else][end if]."

After looking for the first time:
	now Laboratory is visible.[/code]

This [i]sort of[/i] works, and runs like so:

[quote]Laboratory
You're sitting at a desk with your head in your hands. Your heart is racing, and there is a faint scent of ozone in the air.

>look

Laboratory
You're sitting at a desk with your head in your hands. Your heart is racing, and there is a faint scent of ozone in the air. You lift your head from your hands with a sigh and examine your surroundings. Papers and books are strewn all about you, along with various scientific instruments. There is a large machine in the corner.

>[/quote]

I want to eliminate the "you're sitting....heart is racing...." sentences from the second description. What's the best way for me to do this/can I do this? Can I also give the Laboratory a different name before the look command, or just remove the first instance of the name entirely? I apologize if I've overlooked some simple process in the various documents and tutorials. I swear I've looked through many of them.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4157&start=0#p31962
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Change room descriptions, when player is in a certain st
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-19 13:14:35

Try changing your ifs and elses:

[code]"[if Laboratory is visible]You're sitting at a desk with your head in your hands. Your heart is racing, and there is a faint scent of ozone in the air.[else]You lift your head from your hands with a sigh and examine your surroundings. Papers and books are strewn all about you, along with various scientific instruments. There is a large machine in the corner.[end if]"[/code]

I suspect you don't need the "end if". In your original code, I don't think the "else" is doing anything -- it looks like it should compile even without the "else." 

HOWEVER: You should avoid describing actions in the room description, as with "You lift your head from your hands with a sigh and examine your surroundings." As written, that will print every time the player looks in the Laboratory, and it really should only print the first time. You should put that bit of prose in a special rule, perhaps:

[code]Before looking for the first time: say "You lift your head from your hands with a sigh and examine your surroundings. [run paragraph on][/code] 

"run paragraph on" is meant to prevent Inform from putting in a line break there. 

This may still be rather inefficient, but if you fiddle around with things like this I think you'll be able to do what you want.

For the Laboratory thing, you might want to look in changing the printed name of the room appropriately. You could also try messing with the room description heading rule in the Standard Rules, but that might be a bit advanced at the moment. 

Perhaps most elegant of all would be to make it so the game doesn't automatically look at the beginning, but I'm not sure how to do that. Someone else probably knows, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4157&start=0#p31963
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Change room descriptions, when player is in a certain st
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-02-19 13:16:47

Probably the easiest way to do it would be to physically move the player to a different room.

[code]Misery is a room. "You're sitting at a desk with your head in your hands. Your heart is racing, and there is a faint scent of ozone in the air."

Before doing something other than waiting or looking in Misery, try looking.

Instead of looking in Misery for the second time:
	say "You lift your head from your hands with a sigh and examine your surroundings.";
	move the player to desk chair.

Laboratory is a room. "Papers and books are strewn all about you, along with various scientific instruments. There is a large machine in the corner."

The desk chair is a supporter in Laboratory.[/code] That second line is optional, but makes behavior nicer; you can type "stand up" and it game will still remember that you wanted to do that first, after you take your head out of your hands to look.

(If you're wondering, the first time you look in Misery is a look action automatically generated when play begins, otherwise the screen would be blank after the banner text.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4157&start=0#p31965
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Change room descriptions, when player is in a certain st
User: NakedLunchbox / DateTime: 2012-02-19 13:41:38

Ah, thank you both very much for the help. Already learned so much just from that alone, the system seems to make a bit more sense now.

Next steps are to anticipate a potential "stand up" command before a "look" command then rearrange the order of events to make it read more fluid, change "get off the desk chair" to "get up from desk chair", and hide the desk chair from the room description. Think I should be able to figure all that out from the documentation. Exciting!

Thanks again!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4397&start=0#p31966
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: NPC Guard
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-19 13:45:31

AgendaItems are a little tricky. According to the docs, they don't trigger when the Actor is in conversation, so you could potentially talk to the guard for several turns without ending the game. In my recent experiments, it also seems that an AgendaItem fails to fire in a turn when the NPC is following the PC. In your situation this may not matter, but it's a reason why careful testing of AgendaItems is necessary.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=90#p31967
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-19 15:40:17

[quote="conradcook"]The meaningful choice definition of game play may work nicely enough for our purposes, but it certainly excludes a large number of games:  Ring Around the Rosie, Patty-Cake, and so forth.[/quote]

To be clear, I consider it a center-based not boundary-based question, so [i]nothing [/i]is excluded, only variable distances from the center with corresponding degrees of applicability to what I'm doing. Those are certainly games by my definition, though they're light on the essence of gameplay. To me, center-based things are measured like gravitation ... even the tinest particle at the furthest distance is still [i]included,[/i] just not necessarily in a way that's of much use to my day-to-day work as a game designer.

[quote]ps - Can we have games without [i]interaction[/i]?[/quote]

Well, that opens an entirely diffferent kettle of worms and/or fish and multiplies it by the original one [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=90#p31968
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-19 15:49:42

[quote]I also question whether a scenario is really necessary for games (catch, again).[/quote]

Catch is pretty much pure scenario, last I checked? [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=90#p31969
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-19 15:52:41

[quote="conradcook"]In such an extended notion of 'play' as setting a permissible context for desired activity, we can find a lot of leisure activity, from Facebook to barhopping...[/quote]

Sure; blackbirds and crows. Play includes gameplay.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4397&start=0#p31970
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: NPC Guard
User: Sherbert / DateTime: 2012-02-19 16:01:16

Oh, sorry I didn't specify, yes I am working with Tads 3. Thanks for the suggestion with agenda items, it seems I am at least moving in the right direction. However, my logic is faulty somewhere and I'm not sure where. He will move from the starting room to second room, but not back. Also, my syntax is incorrect for the guard description, perhaps you can assist me with that as well?

Also, thank you for the heads up on agenda items. Fortunately, this guard is just a trap and really doesn't have to do anything else. Except maybe look handsome, but I can let the prose take care of that. [emote]:)[/emote]

[code]+Guard: Person 'patrolling guard' 'Patrolling Guard'
    "There is a patrolling guard <<Guard.roomLocation>>. "
isHim = true
;

++ GuardPatrolAgenda: AgendaItem
    initiallyActive = true
    agendaOrder = 10
    routeList = [NorthGuardRoom, GuardRoom]
    invokeItem()
    {
        local idx = routeList.indexOf(Guard.getOutermostRoom);
        if(idx && idx < routeList.length())
        {
            local dest = routeList[++idx];
            Guard.scriptedTravelTo(dest);
            if(idx >= routeList.length())
              idx = 0;
        }
    }
;[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=90#p31971
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-19 16:03:00

Two computers playing chess.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=90#p31972
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-19 16:04:59

[quote="conradcook"]Two computers playing chess.[/quote]

One of them wins. Only really, [i]really [/i]boring people care. [emote]:)[/emote]

Actually, I feel that way about two [i]people [/i]playing chess.

Also: wasn't sure if that was a question, or you were just enjoying assembling the sentence.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=90#p31973
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-19 16:33:17

Stalemate?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4397&start=0#p31975
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: NPC Guard
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-19 16:53:42

I've never used roomLocation, but I don't think you can use it that way. At the very least, you haven't accessed anything that can print. I would try (untested) something like this:

[code]"There is a patrolling guard in <<getOutermostRoom.destName>>. "[/code]

... or perhaps:

[code]desc { 
    "There is a patrolling guard in ";
    say (getOutermostRoom.destName);
    ". ";
}[/code]
The other problem you're hitting is probably (I haven't looked it up) because TADS lists are zero-indexed. routeList.length will be 2, but idx will never be higher than 1. Or rather, it will go to 2, but there's no list item at index 2. At that point, scriptedTravel will try to find a route from the guard's current location to nil -- which of course it can't do. So the guard won't go anywhere.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=90#p31976
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-19 17:03:22

[quote="Ghalev"][quote]I also question whether a scenario is really necessary for games (catch, again).[/quote]

Catch is pretty much pure scenario, last I checked? [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrhHH3_t218]Here we go yo
Here we go yo
So what's so what's so what's the scenario?[/url]

That is to say, I've realized that we don't mean the same thing by "scenario"; what is it that you mean?

UPDATE: Also, given your remarks about centers vs. boundaries we're totally in agreement, but I'm still interested in what you mean by "scenario." I have the feeling I ought to know it in this context, though I'm getting a lot of interference from the "scenarios" in Squad Leader.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4397&start=0#p31979
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: NPC Guard
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-19 17:54:29

Your solution may well be better; I'd do it this way because it's easier for me to see what's happening, and so that I can more easily splice new locations into the guard's path....

Set up [i]two[/i] AgendaItems.  One travels from room A to room B, the other travels from room B to room A.

The basic logic would look like this:

If I am in room A, travel to room B.

Chill out in room B for a few turns, presumably with different text descriptions:  The guard walks past the soda machine, the guard walks past the TV, the guard circles past the exit, the guard walks past the window, and the guard walks toward the hall.

Then, this AgendaItem switches itself off.


--That should allow the other AgendaItem to kick in.

If need be, you can create a control variable in the guardNPC object -- guardNPC.whatImDoingNow, or such -- and set it to one thing when one AgendaItem should be firing, and to the other when the other should be.  That is, each AgendaItem, when it's done, sets the flag to awaken the other.  You shouldn't really [i]need[/i] to do it this way, because the AgendaItems should know when they're up, but as Jim says, AgendaItems are tricky.

Conrad.

--If this approach makes more trouble than it's worth, someone pleas speak up.  This is how I generally use AgendaItems, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=90#p31980
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-19 18:20:29

[quote="conradcook"]Stalemate?[/quote]

Neither computer cares?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=90#p31981
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-19 18:32:41

[quote="matt w"]I'm still interested in what you mean by "scenario." I have the feeling I ought to know it in this context, though I'm getting a lot of interference from the "scenarios" in Squad Leader.[/quote]

Just, the artificial and agreed-upon range of expected/likely/possible/probable activity (distinct from things like "the rules").

In catch, the scenario is "You stand over there and I'll stand here and we'll toss this ball back and forth." Simply throwing a ball at passing strangers' heads isn't playing "catch;" catch exists within a space defined (however casually) by its presumed scenario (which can be varied, of course).

In Squad Leader, it can be "I'll be in these buildings and you be in those and we'll toss these bullets, rockets and gouts of ignited flamethrower fuel back and forth."

Squad Leader has a lot more rules and layers, and Squad Leader has an [i]endgame,[/i] and Squad Leader has [i]victory conditions,[/i] but they both have scenario. So does patty-cake and hide-and-seek and whatever. As I use the term, anyway.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=100#p31982
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-02-19 18:35:02

[quote="conradcook"]Stalemate?[/quote]

A situation in which no-one wins, after having ferociously competed (therefore, acting towards their goal).

The players in question may be computers, but that's irrelevant for this discussion, surely, because we're discussing the game, not the players. IF played by a bot would still be IF - it would not magically be a transcript, even though that's what we, as the non-players, would perceive.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=100#p31983
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-19 20:06:57

Then what happened to all our ideas of what play is?

C.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=40#p31984
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2012-02-19 20:50:19

Thanks Chris. Have at it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4394&start=0#p31986
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Fast-Forwarding Scenes w/ Eric Eve's Scene Manager
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-19 21:35:54

Ben,

That code works like a charm.


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4394&start=0#p31987
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Fast-Forwarding Scenes w/ Eric Eve's Scene Manager
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-19 21:44:57

Glad to hear it.   [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4397&start=0#p31988
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: NPC Guard
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-19 21:49:34

[quote="Jim Aikin"]
The other problem you're hitting is probably (I haven't looked it up) because TADS lists are zero-indexed. routeList.length will be 2, but idx will never be higher than 1. Or rather, it will go to 2, but there's no list item at index 2. At that point, scriptedTravel will try to find a route from the guard's current location to nil -- which of course it can't do. So the guard won't go anywhere.[/quote]

Lists start at index 1, not zero, and the issue is the line that sets the index to zero - which is not a valid offset.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4397&start=0#p31989
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: NPC Guard
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-19 21:58:14

OK, that's not quite right either. Setting idx to zero doesn't matter since it's a local; the value is lost after the method returns.

[code]
    invokeItem()
    {
        local idx = routeList.indexOf(Guard.getOutermostRoom);
        local dest;
        if (idx && idx < routeList.length())
            dest = routeList[++idx];
        else
            dest = routeList[1];
        Guard.scriptedTravelTo(dest);
    }
[/code]

This should do what you're after; when the guard is in the last room on the route list, he will pick the first room in the list again and travel back there.

EDIT: Except scriptedTravelTo only works with adjacent rooms, and there's no guarantee that the first room will be adjacent to the last one. So in the general case you'll want to reverse the list when you reach the last room.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4397&start=0#p31990
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: NPC Guard
User: Sherbert / DateTime: 2012-02-19 23:18:37

Thank you Conrad for your logic flow. Ultimately, coding that logic is well beyond my ability at this moment. Would you be willing to give this a look? I now have the guard pacing back and forth (though I suppose I will have to work on getting him to stop for a while) but he does not end the game when the player and the guard are in the same room. Any ideas?

[code]+Guard: Person 'patrolling guard' 'Patrolling Guard'
    "There is a patrolling guard in <<getOutermostRoom.destName>>. "
isHim = true
;

++ GuardCaptureAgenda: AgendaItem
    InitiallyActive = true
    agendaOrder = 10
    invokeItem()
    {   if(Guard.location == gPlayerChar.location)
        {
            "You have been captured!";  
            finishGameMsg(ftDeath, [finishOptionUndo]);
        }
    }   
;

++ GuardPatrolAgenda: AgendaItem
    initiallyActive = true
    agendaOrder = 10
    routeList = [NorthGuardRoom, GuardRoom]
    invokeItem()
    {
        local idx = routeList.indexOf(Guard.getOutermostRoom);
        local dest;
        if (idx && idx < routeList.length())
            dest = routeList[++idx];
        else
            dest = routeList[1];
        Guard.scriptedTravelTo(dest);
    }
;[/code]

**edit Thank you for the help, bc. I see now why the previous code was not working properly and this makes a lot of sense. Fortunately he only patrols two rooms right now so I don't have to worry about reversing the travel list but I do understand what you mean.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4397&start=0#p31991
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: NPC Guard
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-19 23:22:24

Only one AgendaItem per Actor will run per turn. Could that be the problem?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4397&start=10#p31992
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: NPC Guard
User: Sherbert / DateTime: 2012-02-19 23:34:18

I thought that might be the problem. When I removed the patrolling agenda from the code entirely and compiled, he still did not capture me when I moved into HIS room, the north room where he starts. I then came up with the idea to add an if statement to invokeItem(), if the player location and the guard location are the same, you are captured. This almost worked, only the end game function was called when the guard entered the room on the same turn, OR if you moved into the room because the guard had not yet moved north.

*edit my mistake. I must have put the if statement before scriptedTravelTo function, because after playing with it a bit, he seems to be patrolling and capturing in a basic functional sense. Thank you everyone for your help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4169&start=20#p31994
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Benchmarking PLUS Contributions wanted for a test suite
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-02-20 03:40:44

I'm looking for slow algorithms that together will provide a somewhat comprehensive performance stress test of our interpreters. So the ideal test would be something you actually wanted to use, but was too slow so you couldn't. Then we can use the tests to profile our interpreters to find what's slow, and prove that our interpreter changes actually help. (Of course a lot of the time the solution will be a better algorithm, but this extension will help with that too!)

So your code looks good. I'll have to strip out all the printing code though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=100#p31995
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-02-20 04:31:50

[quote]It looks to me like play is just an imaginary context permitting people to act weird in ways they find interesting.[/quote]

The discussion has gotten to the point where I'm more comfortable reading up on other peoples more informed thoughts and less comfortable chiming in, but if I take the bit I quoted as an idea of "play", then it's still on the mark. The fact remains that chess is chess, regardless of who plays it - even if the "people" are "computers", and they're only *programmed* to try and reach a winning condition. Or, to pick up on my IF example, the bot is still going through an IF play session, issuing regular, workable, if in context nonsensical and inefficient commands.

Unless I'm misunderstanding something, which is also likely.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=20#p31996
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-02-20 08:06:25

[quote="Hannes"]Various ways, like having new users answer a couple of questions which are simple for human beings but hard for bots, have already been discussed.[/quote]

The correct way would be to have new users play a small piece of IF with randomised puzzles, and some very basic in-jokes.  This would prove their humanity [b]and[/b] interest in IF.  I am sure a collaborative project would come up with a really enjoyable game, especially if some of the big names (Emily Short, zarf, ..) would take part.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3570&start=20#p31997
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SPAM
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-02-20 08:25:01

See my proposal(s) [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=25]here[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=20#p31998
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-02-20 08:25:22

An easier option would be to have the test question refer to what happens in some famous piece of IF.  Only people who are willing to play the IF will be able to answer it - fun for IF-lovers, but work for would-be spammers.  And it would force newbies to play at least one good piece of IF, which is only good.
Of course the question ought still to be randomised (but constant for a login name), so that a determined spammer will end up playing lots of IF and be converted from his evil ways.. [emote]:-)[/emote]

But if the test-IF game is feasible, it would make a nice comp!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=100#p31999
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-02-20 08:47:15

[quote="conradcook"]A prototype is not something that you ever come across in real life... but some things you come across are closer to the prototype than others.  'Ostrich' and 'penguin' are both 'birds,' but neither is central to the prototype.  'Sparrow' is closest to the prototype (as reflected by response times in categorization drills).

Can we identify a particular game that's central to our intuitive prototype of an IF and of a CYOA?

Following up on this notion that we shouldn't just study *good* literature, I suppose we shouldn't just study good games.  Rather, we want two instances that are most unmistakably an IF and a CYOA.[/quote]
What you say here is very logical, but it's in search of something that isn't there. What you have advanced is Plato's theory of forms in different clothing. The theory of forms is one of the most specious canards in the history of philosophy. There is no such thing as a prototypical table or chair or story or game. There is only the assemblage of all actual tables or chairs or games. It makes as much sense to look for a prototypical game as it does to look for a prototypical human. DNA doesn't work according to prototypes; each gene codes for a few traits. There is no gene that codes for the 'essential' traits because there is no essential trait. There is only a surge of similarities that runs through a population like a river. As human-invented forms, stories/games would certainly participate in the same unfocused (and unfocusable) surge of similarities. You are trying to eliminate conflicting versions of things from your reality; which is a noble effort, but the problem with it is that conflicting versions of things ARE reality, so it is doomed to fail.

Extending the evolutionary metaphor, there was no Adam Story and Eve Game at the outset of human culture playing with a Toy Apple and Action Figure Snake: from the very start they have all been loose populations of generally similar things with a lot of mutual overlap, and they all evolved through human culture in parallel, exchanging genetic material as each individual work of art argued separately (via the search for popular acceptance) for its own inclusion in an arbitrary milieu of entertainment categories. That's why it's impossible to focus your mind's lens sharply on a dividing line without stepping wrong and excluding things that common sense will tell you shouldn't be excluded. It's your common sense, not your philosophy, that has the best handle on the actual reality here: which happens to just be a pile of stuff shoved together under a rule of thumb for the sole purpose of browsing convenience, and nothing more.

You are definitely to be forgiven for looking for more, however. People have been doing it for thousands of years. They have always failed, but that hasn't stopped them from trying. In a sense, programmers are the last Platonists. We tend to think in terms of abstract classes that confer their properties onto member objects by way of classification. So objects get their properties via their class, right? That is exactly the way Plato thought, but this philosophy of the world has been debunked time-and-again by history's greatest skeptics. Classes have no correspondence to reality other than the fact that they are things invented pragmatically by real humans to conveniently suit assemblages of real objects.

I cannot hope to do justice to these arguments in this space (and I haven't come close), but Sextus Empiricus and David Hume are good reads. 8)

Paul.

EDIT: Those dudes are kinda dry though. Robert Anton Wilson's nonfictional speeches and writings are a fun (if less rigorous) way to be exposed to some of the same sorts of thinking...

[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEZtw1yt8Kc]Robert Anton Wilson explains Quantum Mechanics[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=20#p32000
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2012-02-20 09:34:48

To be honest, both of those ideas sound like excellent ways to dissuade people from registering on a forum. If I had to play a short piece of IF before I was allowed to post on a forum, I'd probably go elsewhere. Or if I had to go and play an IF game and look for a specific clue before I could register, I'd likewise go elsewhere.

Not to mention that, as has been mentioned several times already in this thread, a good deal of this forum's spam isn't from bots but human beings so neither of these ideas would help at all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=20#p32001
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2012-02-20 09:51:45

[quote="David Whyld"]To be honest, both of those ideas sound like excellent ways to dissuade people from registering on a forum. If I had to play a short piece of IF before I was allowed to post on a forum, I'd probably go elsewhere. Or if I had to go and play an IF game and look for a specific clue before I could register, I'd likewise go elsewhere.[/quote]

While I understand and like the sentiment behind the suggestions, I agree with David. There may be better ways to do this than we currently have, but these are not them.

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=20#p32002
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: gravel / DateTime: 2012-02-20 10:07:59

[quote="Biep"]
The correct way would be to have new users play a small piece of IF with randomised puzzles, and some very basic in-jokes.  This would prove their humanity [b]and[/b] interest in IF.  I am sure a collaborative project would come up with a really enjoyable game, especially if some of the big names (Emily Short, zarf, ..) would take part.[/quote]

*I* wouldn't do this.  (I'm pretty sure I have an interest in IF, so perhaps I'm less human than I thought.)

Besides, it's inevitable that people will get stuck, and in order to post to the "help playing IF" forum, they have to register to the forum, and in order to register, they have to play . . .

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4397&start=10#p32003
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: NPC Guard
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-20 10:48:12

Yes, at most one AgendaItem executes per character per turn.

When two AgendaItems qualify to execute, which will trump the other?  -- This is determined by agendaOrder.  The AgendaItem with the [b]lower[/b] agendaOrder wins.

So, set your "arrest the PC"'s agendaOrder to a lower number than your "patrol" agendaOrder, and as soon as the arresting criteria are fulfilled, the guard will stop patrolling to arrest the PC.

(Right now you've got them both set to 10, which doesn't do anything, because they only have meaning in relation to other AgendaItems in the same NPC.)

--You might also comment out the patrol AgendaItem, start the guard in the patrolled room, and see if he arrests the PC.  Once you have the arrest behavior working correctly, then add back in the patrol behavior.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=100#p32004
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-20 10:59:36

[quote="conradcook"]Then what happened to all our ideas of what play is?[/quote]

Nothing?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=100#p32005
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-20 11:01:11

[quote="Peter Pears"]IF played by a bot would still be IF [/quote]

And, for many works of IF, would be preferable [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=100#p32006
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-20 11:20:52

Although I confess that my feelings about Robert Anton Wilson's take on quantum theory are as strong as the next guy's, I hope you'll forgive me if we don't utterly sidetrack this thread...

As I understand the way the ideas are usually employed, the difference between [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototype_theory]prototype theory[/url] and Plato's forms is that forms are fairly rigidly defined, and can't be measured.  The idea behind prototype theory is that, yes, you do have in some sense an ideal 'chair' somewhere in your noggin -- this is similar -- but it's just there for comparison.  It's not a set, in other words.

The existence of prototypes is in some sense validated by measuring response times.  If you are given a number of pictured creatures, and asked, "Is this a bird?" -- some birds you'll answer yes to quickly, while others it'll take longer.

Now why do you know a sparrow is a bird immediately, while when it comes to a penguin, an ostrich or a dodo it takes longer? -- presumably because the sparrow is more like the prototype.  You get there quicker.

So the prototype is just an inferred object which has exactly those traits and qualities such that no other set of traits and qualities would allow quicker reaction times.  A lucky escape for prototype theory!

(Or for Plato's theory of forms, depending.)


Conrad.

ps - Animals do this too.  Birds will protect and show interest in eggs depending on their size and the kind of spots on them.  This is measurable, to the point where scientists can create fake eggs that look substantially different from their actual eggs -- different size egg, larger spots, and so forth -- such that birds will prefer them over their own eggs.  When it comes to nosing one or the other back into the nest.

To my knowledge, no one has claimed that birds have egg prototypes coded away in their brains, but it looks like the same thing to me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=100#p32007
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-20 11:37:08

[quote="Peter Pears"]The discussion has gotten to the point where I'm more comfortable reading up on other peoples more informed thoughts and less comfortable chiming in, but if I take the bit I quoted as an idea of "play", then it's still on the mark. The fact remains that chess is chess, regardless of who plays it - even if the "people" are "computers", and they're only *programmed* to try and reach a winning condition. Or, to pick up on my IF example, the bot is still going through an IF play session, issuing regular, workable, if in context nonsensical and inefficient commands.

Unless I'm misunderstanding something, which is also likely.[/quote]

It seems to me, if two automatons playing chess are "really" playing chess, the only articulation of gameplay remaining is the goal oriented activity version.  Chess computers are mindless, but they are certainly goal-oriented.

There's no room for anything subjective, for words like John's "recreational" or "meaningful."


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=100#p32008
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-20 11:39:12

[quote="conradcook"]The existence of prototypes is in some sense validated by [...][/quote]

This was the interesting part. The idea that validation would be relevant, let alone necessary [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=100#p32009
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-20 11:41:08

[quote="conradcook"]There's certainly no room for anything subjective, for words like John's "recreational" or "meaningful.".[/quote]

I'm sorry that you don't seem to understand. If there's some way I can break it down into simpler terms for you, let me know.

Also, my name is S. John.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=110#p32010
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-20 11:42:50

[quote="Peter Pears"]The fact remains that chess is chess, regardless of who plays it[/quote]

Exactly so.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=110#p32011
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-20 12:07:46

My apologies, S. John.

C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=110#p32012
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-20 12:10:12

[quote="conradcook"]My apologies, S. John.[/quote]

No worries; my mother still calls me "Johnnie," which I haven't been since 4th Grade [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4372&start=10#p32013
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: 2 stupid questions fixed :)
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-02-20 12:55:30

Hi again, forgot to post this but what I actually did in the end was modify Traveler (changing LookAround to enterMsg) like so[code]modify Traveler
describeArrival(origin, backConnector)
    {
        if (isActorTraveling(gPlayerChar))
        {
            say(gLibMessages.intraCommandSeparator);
            gPlayerChar.location.enterMsg;
        }
        else if (travelerSeenBy(gPlayerChar))
        {
            callWithSenseContext(
                self, sight, {: describeNpcArrival(origin, backConnector)});
        }
    }

;[/code]It's actually worked better than I thought too, since showing the roomName is part of the look around function the text follows on without displaying the big bold text.  So if I use beforeTravel along with it then there's no break between the travel message and the next room description to get distracted by [emote]:)[/emote] I realise this may need tweeking at some point to include certain surroundings that may or not be there (such as characters that move around or choosing to have a roomName display for certain points in the story) but I'd rather a minor inconvenience like that than playing with the LookAround method (which apart from being a stupid idea that would cause all kinds of problems, is suprisingly huge!). Anyway this is how it looks in my testworld
[quote]>[b]look
Your Bedroom[/b]
It doesn't look any different than it usually would, except maybe that the sun isn't pouring in through the window shining over your bed like most days. There's your bedside cabinet to the left of it on which your alarm clock is sat and a set of drawers with a mirror opposite.

In the north west corner is your en-suite bathroom and to the west is the door out. In between them is your wardrobe which supports a small pile of shoes. 

>[b]enter bathroom[/b]
You stumble into the bathroom wiping the sleep from your eyes, the bright light stinging them as you focus on your surroundings.[i]' A nice shower would be good about now.' [/i] you think to yourself.

>[b]go back[/b]
You smile at the shades of pink that make up your bedroom. The duvet on your bed, the walls and even the carpet all seem to softly melt into one another. The pine wardrobe and the set of drawers with your mirror stand out from it all setting the room off quite nicely. 

>[b]look
Your Bedroom[/b]
It doesn't look any different than it usually would, except maybe that the sun isn't pouring in through the window shining over your bed like most days. There's your bedside cabinet to the left of it on which your alarm clock is sat and a set of drawers with a mirror opposite.

In the north west corner is your en-suite bathroom and to the west is the door out. In between them is your wardrobe which supports a small pile of shoes. 

>[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4372&start=10#p32014
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: 2 stupid questions
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-20 13:44:14

I like the effect. It's neat to see >look reinvented as something besides a scrollback shortcut. The output reminds me of Erik Temple's [url=http://glimmr.wordpress.com/2011/01/27/if-gameplay-experiment-experiential-movement/]Experiential Movement[/url] demo.

As you say I think it'll be fairly important to reference the most relevant objects in both descriptions, so that for example if the alarm clock turns out to be important, the player can discover it by moving between rooms instead of needing to remember to look as well.

The danger is that it turns into something like the examine / search distinction, which is a rich source of design debates. Although here it's at least obvious that something unusual is going on; half the problem with search is that it's so easy to forget.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=110#p32015
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-02-20 13:44:44

[quote="Laroquod"]There is no such thing as a prototypical table or chair or story or game. There is only the assemblage of all actual tables or chairs or games. […] DNA doesn't work according to prototypes […] There is no gene that codes for the 'essential' traits because there is no essential trait. There is only a surge of similarities that runs through a population like a river. As human-invented forms, stories/games would certainly participate in the same unfocused (and unfocusable) surge of similarities.[/quote]
Yes, neither DNA nor other real things work according to prototypes. But prototypes were never meant to be conceived as out there. They are conceptual or even mental thingies, that real things can be more or less like unto. That's the very purpose of a prototype theory of concepts (or semantics).
That way protoype theory dispenses with both real inherent essences and any essential conditions for belonging to a given class of things. Everything belongs to every class to a greater or smaller degree – the more like a certain prototype concept (that no real thing needs to be exactly like) the more it belongs to the class defined by similarity to that prototype.

[quote="Laroquod"]That is exactly the way Plato thought, but this philosophy of the world has been debunked time-and-again by history's greatest skeptics. Classes have no correspondence to reality other than the fact that they are things invented pragmatically by real humans to conveniently suit assemblages of real objects.[/quote]
To my mind, the greatest skeptics are often good reading, but much less convincing than the moderate ones. Besides, given that classes are artefacts, why should we conclude that things don't _really_ belong to those (invented) classes?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3529&start=20#p32016
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: ifvms.js ZVM Preview
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-02-20 14:24:23

[quote="Dannii"]The problem is that branches and jumps are gotos.[/quote]

Which is only a problem because you want to work JIT, right?  Otherwise one might turn each goto into a function call, and make all the functions local inside one main function.  Presumably the JS compiler would then turn all those function calls into gotos again.  Or am I missing something?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4372&start=10#p32017
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: 2 stupid questions
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-02-20 14:39:09

Thanks bcressey, glad you likes it, I keep forgetting about search tbh it seems 'too similar' to just looking in/on/at/through something so I'd probably just remap it, but it's a good point to remember.  I don't want the player to feel like they have to look around each area, though at the same time I want them to feel like it's [i]them[/i] looking around so they can if they want. I figured it could work well in places that don't need to be described explicitly (who wants to look at a hallway?) and adding a bit of personality to the character... I also thought it might be fun to have characters react if you keep looking at them but I'll definately keep it in mind to make sure people don't feel 'obliged' to examine everywhere and everything

Actually it's funny you mention the alarm clock, I was having trouble with a senseConnector (as in not connecting) and decided to do away and just use a distanceConnector (which is easier and makes more sense too), now I get this when I try to look at the alarm clock from the bathroom
[quote]>look at alarm clock
It’s too far away to make out any detail. You can’t hear any detail from this distance. 

The alarm clock buzzes loudly. [/quote]I've made the soundSize large so when you listen to the noise specifically you get 'It's a loud annoying buzz', I'm just a little unsure how to deal with looking at the alarm clock.

edit> I just had a look at the experimental movement demo, which seems pretty sweet and could be used to some great effects, for example you could have an event that happens on lower high street that the player could make the player stop (or at least want to) mid journey or as the example shows just have random events to occur on the trip down the road to give a sense of travel

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=110#p32018
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-20 14:49:03

[quote="Felix"]Everything belongs to every class to a greater or smaller degree – the more like a certain prototype concept (that no real thing needs to be exactly like) the more it belongs to the class defined by similarity to that prototype.[/quote]

Zackly. They are points formed by artifice, valuable [i]in [/i]artifice [i]to [/i]artifice, which is exactly what they need to be. Their relative positions and "masses" are, necessarily and beautifully and inevitably and correctly, subjective (though the criteria involved may be, and often are, entirely objective).

Someone who uses the term "sports" will have a gravitational center for "planet sports," centers for orbiting satellites like "winter sports" and "team sports" and nearby planets like "games" and "exercise" and so on ... and any given thing will be drawn more usefully (in subjective context) to one body than another, or (in some cases) float in Lagrange points [emote]:)[/emote] And since the "planets" can be reasonably rearranged very dramatically according to different needs and nuances of usage, the Internet has yet another way to suck [emote]:)[/emote]

Speaking of, the discussion of whether Video Game X is more "a game" or "a sport" is a conversation I never tire of staying out of ... Mainly because it's so often undertaken by those with some kind of medical/emotional need for terms with [i]boundaries [/i]rather than[i] centers.[/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3186&start=40#p32019
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The "Rewrite The Parser in Inform 7" Project
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-20 15:43:53

Just a word of warning - when I tried to create my own phrases based on this technique, some of them (using forms of the verb "to be" and "to have") caused namespace clashes that broke existing relations syntax. I had to prune a little bit.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4372&start=10#p32020
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: 2 stupid questions
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-20 15:46:42

Can you post your alarm clock code? It's weird that it's showing a response for two verbs (look and listen) when you only supplied one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4397&start=10#p32021
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: NPC Guard
User: Sherbert / DateTime: 2012-02-20 16:08:41

Apparently my guard is still screwy just when I thought it was all making sense. I was experimenting and changing the code to try and figure out what different things I could accomplish and discovered that something is going on that I can't put my finger on.

I added another room for him to patrol, and he walks to the second, then the third... and then paces back and forth between the second and third never returning to the first room. I've tried fixing this in several ways. I tried changing dest = routelist[1] to [0] (in case they were numbered with the first entry as 0), I tried adding NorthGuardRoom as a "5th" room to routeList (thinking maybe it skipped the first room in the list via some oddity in the parsing), and then tried both of these changes together. Including the original, all four of these scenarios results in the same behavior.

[code]++ GuardPatrolAgenda: AgendaItem
    initiallyActive = true
    agendaOrder = 10
    routeList = [NorthGuardRoom, GuardRoom, EntranceToCourtyard, GuardRoom]
    invokeItem()
    {
        local idx = routeList.indexOf(Guard.getOutermostRoom);
        local dest;
        if (idx && idx < routeList.length())
            dest = routeList[++idx];
        else
            dest = routeList[1];
        Guard.scriptedTravelTo(dest);
        if(Guard.location == gPlayerChar.location)
        {
            "You have been captured!";
        }
    }
;[/code]

As a side note, why is this so complicated? I feel like I can't be the first person to come up with a patrolling guard, yet I can't find any examples. Hmmm.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4397&start=10#p32022
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: NPC Guard
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-20 16:29:13

You've listed GuardRoom twice, and routeList.indexOf returns the first matching item in the list. EntranceToCourtyard will send the guard to GuardRoom; his agenda thinks he's on the second step instead of the last, and sends him to EntranceToCourtyard.

You should have pathfind.t in your lib/extensions folder. It's probably worth scrapping your current approach and setting up two AgendaItems: one which takes the guard from A to B, finding a path along the way; and a second which takes the guard from B to A.

I will see if I can put something together real quick.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4372&start=10#p32023
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: 2 stupid questions
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-02-20 16:39:24

Sure thing, I realise it probably should be an OnOffControl rather than a button but I did actually have a button at first so you could just type 'push button' (it's all for playing around with while I learn so it all gets a little messy)

[code]+ alarmClock: PlugAttachable, Attachable, Button 'alarm clock (button)''alarm clock'
    "It's my alarm clock, it's got a screen which shows the time and a button to turn the alarm off.  "
    dobjFor(TurnOff) asDobjFor(Push)
    powerOn = (isAttachedTo(socket))
    attachedObjects = [socket]
    canAttachTo(obj) {return obj is in (socket);}
    dobjFor(Detach)
    {
        action()
        {
            alarmBuzz.isEmanating = nil;
            inherited;
        }
    }
    dobjFor(Push)
    {
        action()
        {
            if(alarmBuzz.isEmanating)
            {
                "The noise stops as soon as you press the button";
                alarmBuzz.isEmanating = nil;
            }
            else
                {"Pressing the button again doesn't do anything";}
        }
    }
    afterAction()
    {
        if(gActionIs(AttachTo) && powerOn)
            {"The time on the screen lights up. "; }
        if(gActionIs(DetachFrom))
           {"The screen goes blank as the clock dies";}
    } 
;
++ alarmBuzz: Noise 'buzz/buzzing''buzzing'
    isEmanating = true
    sourceDesc = "The alarm clock is buzzing away. " 
    descWithSource = "It's a loud annoying buzzing sound. " 
    hereWithSource = "The alarm clock buzzes loudly. " 
    displaySchedule = [2] 
    soundSize = large
; [/code]
Oh the other one will be the displaySchedule I have on it, I just thought it looks silly that I can hear it but not hear any detail when I look at the clock, I don't see any reason why it wouldn't show up right though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4397&start=10#p32024
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: NPC Guard
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-20 17:20:21

OK, here goes. This requires you to add extensions/pathfind.t to your project.

[code]
lab: Room 'lab'
	"Welcome to the TADS Laboratory! "
	east = hallway
;

hallway: Room 'hallway'
	"Just another hallway. "
	west = lab
	east = entrance
;

entrance: Room 'entrance'
	"Just another entrance. "
	west = hallway
;

DistanceConnector [lab, hallway, entrance];

guard: Person 'guard' 'guard' @lab
	"Just another guard. "
	isHim = true

	sightSize = large

	afterTravel(traveler, connector) {
		/*
		if (location == gPlayerChar.location) {
			"You have been captured! ";
			finishGameMsg(ftDeath, [finishOptionUndo]);
		}
		*/
	}
	enroute = nil
;

+ PatrolAgenda
	origin = lab
	dest = entrance
;

+ PatrolAgenda
	origin = entrance
	dest = lab
;

class PatrolAgenda: AgendaItem, roomPathFinder
	initiallyActive = true

	invokeItem() {
		if (!getActor.enroute) {
			path = findPath(getActor, origin, dest);
			getActor.enroute = self;
			step = 1;
		}
		if (path) {
			getActor.scriptedTravelTo(path[++step]);
			if (getActor.getOutermostRoom == dest)
				getActor.enroute = nil;
		}
	}

	isReady() {
		return (getActor.enroute == self ||
			(getActor.getOutermostRoom == origin &&
			 getActor.getOutermostRoom != dest)
		);
	}

	origin = nil
	dest = nil
	path = nil
	step = nil
;
[/code]

[quote]
Lab
Welcome to the TADS Laboratory!

The guard is standing here.

> z
Time passes...

The guard leaves the lab.

> z
Time passes...

The guard goes to the entrance.

> z
Time passes...

The guard goes to the hallway.

> z
Time passes...

The guard enters the lab.
[/quote]

You can add waypoints by adding more PatrolAgenda items to the guard. The DistanceConnector and sightSize lines are just for debugging; they let us keep track of where the guard is without having to follow him around.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=110#p32025
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-20 18:05:12

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="conradcook"]The existence of prototypes is in some sense validated by [...][/quote]

This was the interesting part. The idea that validation would be relevant, let alone necessary [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

I have a certain professional interest in knowing better how the mind [i]actually[/i] works.  Besides which I think it's nifty...

Prototype theory has real applications to writing.  (Indeed to any kind of communication.)  Understanding prototypes lets us know what can pass being unsaid.  If you mention a chair in a room, your audience is likely to understand, without further specification, that it's a wooden straightback chair:  not a lawn chair, a metal folding chair, or a Barcalounger.

Regarding the question of CYOA in IF competitions, it also seems that a prototype approach could be fruitful, and this is in part because it is a descriptive model of how the mind actually works, and not a prescriptive conceptual set-up, like logical definitions are.  That has a couple of implications.  

For example, consider the worry that CYOA works might interfere with IF works getting fair scores.  CYOA is relatively easy to write -- not as much programming -- and therefore the more difficult IF works might not be able to compete.  But at the same time, CYOA is a more limited form (I think most of us believe).

Prototype theory might suggest a couple of approaches to this.  For example, if every judge is considered to have a well-developed notion of what CYOA and what IF are, it might be enough simply to ask the judges to rate each work [i]and to assign it to a category:  IF or CYOA[/i].

Just crowdsource the problem, in other words.  That might be one solution to the original question.


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4372&start=10#p32026
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: 2 stupid questions
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-20 18:40:03

Looks like objects use distantDesc / distantSoundDesc when examined through a DistanceConnector.

[code]
alarmClock: PlugAttachable, Attachable, Button 'alarm clock (button)' 'alarm clock'
    "It's my alarm clock, it's got a screen which shows the time and a button to turn the alarm off.  "
    distantDesc = "It's my alarm clock. "
    distantSoundDesc = "I can still hear it. "
;
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=30#p32028
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-02-20 21:01:00

[quote="bcressey"]I dislike Tor specifically, as I consider it a network for distributing child pornography that has somehow acquired a veneer of respectability.[/quote]
That's just reactionary and prejudicial. It doesn't even matter if you've personally seen lots of child porn on that network, it's still completely off-base and ignores large communities who depend on Tor and talk about their reliance on it, online, at length. In any case, I don't care if you feel the need to block Tor because of spammers, really, that's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying that child porn has zero to do with this, and your perspective on Tor is so twisted and unfair that I just [i]had[/i] to counter it.

For the topic at hand, I think the best solution would be to automatically hide posts with no admin intervention required, if a certain threshold of users reported them, like 3 or more. However, it doesn't seem that this board software would support that kind of regime. Really the most scalable solution to the spam problem is automatically crowdsourcing in some way the judgement as to what is spam -- and then let the poster appeal to the moderator to have his or her posts reinstated, to counter the case where a posse of members might gang up and unfairly mark someone else's posts as spam.

Paul.

EDIT: I guess it must have really been an uphill battle for Tor to "somehow acquire a veneer of respectability" after being "designed, implemented, and deployed" by that wretched hive of scum villains and child abusers known the US Naval Research Laboratory...

[url=https://www.torproject.org/about/torusers.html.en]Who uses Tor?[/url]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=110#p32029
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-20 21:37:16

[quote="conradcook"] it also seems that a prototype approach could be fruitful[/quote]

My response already expressed my agreement on this point. I continue to agree. If you need me to agree again, just let me know.

[quote]CYOA is relatively easy to write - at the same time, CYOA is a more limited form (I think most of us believe).[/quote]

Neither observation matches my experience with making them. If they match yours, that's interesting. I wonder what the differences were in your own works?

In my experience, there are ways in with CYOA is the more limited form and there are ways in which parser-driven is the more limited form. Both balance out in terms of the goals I tend to have for them. Perhaps your goals have differed, and that's the basis of our differing perspectives. I can't even imagine a universe in which someone who's made both would describe CYOA as "relatively easy" to make compared to a parser adventure. They are equally easy to make[i] poorly,[/i] equally [i]difficult [/i]to make well. They do call on different skill-sets, but they require comparable effort to achieve comparable doses of awesome.

[quote]simply to ask the judges to rate each work [i]and to assign it to a category:  IF or CYOA[/i].[/quote]

I think this would (or should) be an embarrassment to the awards if such a rule were implemented.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=110#p32030
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-02-20 22:12:54

[quote="conradcook"]Although I confess that my feelings about Robert Anton Wilson's take on quantum theory are as strong as the next guy's, I hope you'll forgive me if we don't utterly sidetrack this thread...[/quote]
It's only a sidetrack if you don't agree with me. For those who agree, it's exactly on topic because it renders this thread moot.

[quote="conradcook"]As I understand the way the ideas are usually employed, the difference between [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototype_theory]prototype theory[/url] and Plato's forms is that forms are fairly rigidly defined, and can't be measured.  The idea behind prototype theory is that, yes, you do have in some sense an ideal 'chair' somewhere in your noggin -- this is similar -- but it's just there for comparison.  It's not a set, in other words.[/quote]
Thanks for the link. Essentially what you are saying is that a prototype is a human prejudice, and I agree that this is true insofar as it exists, without necessarily agreeing that people really do mostly think of the same thing when they think of a 'bird', because I think that's culturally determined and therefore useless for defining things like story and game in a generally useful way. I could define 'game' in a way that works for my peer group; it wouldn't be that hard, but nor would it be really meaningful. It'll probably lead me astray in the end: I'd be better off not doing it and keeping an open mind, instead.

[quote="conradcook"]The existence of prototypes is in some sense validated by measuring response times.  If you are given a number of pictured creatures, and asked, "Is this a bird?" -- some birds you'll answer yes to quickly, while others it'll take longer.

Now why do you know a sparrow is a bird immediately, while when it comes to a penguin, an ostrich or a dodo it takes longer? -- presumably because the sparrow is more like the prototype.  You get there quicker.[/quote]
That's a big presumption. Maybe it's because penguins and ostriches and dodos have so many cultural referents (i.e. stories attached, like Batman's Penguin, or ostriches having their heads in the sand, or dodos suffering from human-caused extinction) that so much extraneous information is also called up (because neural networks are indiscriminate that way -- related neurons fire together), and it's the process  of deselecting the extraneous information that slows response time. So rather than sparrows being closer to some ideal, instead, penguins and ostriches and dodos could just be laden down with other information that is orthogonal to the question of prototypes. The experiments with animals have the same issue, but also another issue: their responses could be evolutionarily selected based on what is the optimal type of egg for survival (which is also orthogonal to the quesiton of prototypes). Response time or any measure of amount of attention on something really tells you nothing here, as there is no evidence that there is a relationship between focus of attention and prototypicality.

I am not questioning that there is a such thing as more common types of bird, and that sparrows resemble the more common types more than the others, but if prototype theory is only making a statement about commonality, then it isn't really saying anything important, so I figure it is attempting to go further than that, and that is where I don't follow the logic.

[quote="Felix"]Yes, neither DNA nor other real things work according to prototypes. But prototypes were never meant to be conceived as out there. They are conceptual or even mental thingies, that real things can be more or less like unto. That's the very purpose of a prototype theory of concepts (or semantics).
That way protoype theory dispenses with both real inherent essences and any essential conditions for belonging to a given class of things. Everything belongs to every class to a greater or smaller degree – the more like a certain prototype concept (that no real thing needs to be exactly like) the more it belongs to the class defined by similarity to that prototype.[/quote]
If it has no existence in reality then of what use could it possibly be, besides as a way for a person who uses it to exclude something from some arena it should probably not be excluded from? I suspect the theory's logic and its motives. Why do we need to know something that isn't true, anyway? And why do we need to cloak what is bascially prejudice in scientific terms? So we can all figure out a way to be in agreement? But we don't need to all be in agreement, and anyway, I don't want to live in that world. If we all could agree on what is a story and what is a game then that would mean that all of the experiments have ended. The whole point of half of the art innovations that ever were, was to challenge the pre-existing definitions of what it means to make art in that medium. It's a good thiing those innovations were always introduced into a milieu of disagreement and uncertainty, else they might have been entirely ignored as categorically invalid.

That's the trouble with thinking in categories. It is only useful for one thing: exclusion.

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3529&start=20#p32031
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment update: ifvms.js ZVM new default engine
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-02-20 22:31:12

I don't really understand what you're suggesting. Can you put some pseudo code together?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=30#p32032
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: I4L / DateTime: 2012-02-20 22:35:50

As I've been absent for a minute, and this is the first post at the top of the unread list, I think it a fitting place to start...

I'm going to have to agree with Ben here, for two reasons. The first reason is a matter of principle. I also dislike Tor. Not because of the service itself, necessarily, but because of the way it's used. It's a tool for the hyper paranoid, which is fine. Whatever makes you feel safer on the internet, do what you have to do. Otherwise, it's pretty much useful only if you're doing something illegal or immoral. The only thing it's masking is your IP address. If you're using it to access any site, compromised information will include your usernames, passwords (encrypted or no, but once someone has your encrypted password for that site, it doesn't matter) and any other personal information that you've provided to that site are completely visible. Tor can't do squat about any information that's intercepted after its left your keyboard. Tor is a false sense of security. 

There are people who will agree and people who will disagree. It really doesn't matter. If you like the service, use it. If you don't like it, don't use it. My opinion is that using it for something like these forums is overkill and unnecessary. This is *NOT* a criticism of the people who do. It's simply a matter of opinion. No more, no less.

The second reason is practicality. There are few moderators/admins on this forum. There are fewer active mods/admins. The forum gets a respectable amount of traffic for what it is. No one pays Ben, David, Merk or anyone else to keep up with it. They do it as a service to *YOU*, the user, and because they have a passion or respect for the community. Their task is not a small one. If they see a majority of Tor traffic coming in as spam and very little (if any) coming in as legitimate use, it's not unreasonable for them to want to ban the entire network.

The subject of spam has been tossed around a couple of times. Like Ben said, almost all of the forum spam here is from real people who jump through the hoops to make a post. And these people aren't random, isolated individuals working from a bedroom in Chicago. These are, in many cases, organized groups of paid (no matter how poorly) individuals whose job it is to get a few links into a forum post. If you throw up something like "Play this game and get the secret code to register", normal users are going to balk. Spammers are going to have one person play the game and share the secret code with their coworkers.

The only true answer to spam is active, personal, human evaluation and subjectivity. And even that will occasionally fail, as it's human against human. However, the best we can hope for under the circumstances is to let the forum admins fight the fight the best way they can. If that means making sweeping, biased judgements for the good of the community... That's their discretion, that's their right and sometimes that's their only choice.

I, for one, support it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4387&start=10#p32033
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: This is an incredibly cool site...
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-20 23:02:37

[quote="JoeyJones"][quote="peterorme"]Everybody already knows about <a class="postlink" href="http://www.themonsterengine.com/artwork">http://www.themonsterengine.com/artwork</a>, right?[/quote]
That's brilliant and horrifying in equal degrees.[/quote]
It's actually less horrifying to me now than it would have been before I had kids. Now it mainly just reminds me of the Ultraman episode, "Terror of the Cosmic Rays." I don't think I ever got to see the whole episode, but it haunted me for years.

<a class="postlink" href="http://ultra.wikia.com/wiki/Gavadon">http://ultra.wikia.com/wiki/Gavadon</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=30#p32034
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-20 23:10:17

[quote="Laroquod"]I'm just saying that child porn has zero to do with this, and your perspective on Tor is so twisted and unfair that I just [i]had[/i] to counter it.[/quote]

I've already apologized for my original stance. You're welcome to belabor the point at length, days later, but I don't feel the need to apologize for it in perpetuity.

Defending my position at this point would only make that apology seem insincere. I may not be able to avoid ignorance but I can at least strive for sincerity.

[quote="Laroquod"]EDIT: I guess it must have really been an uphill battle for Tor to "somehow acquire a veneer of respectability" after being "designed, implemented, and deployed" by that wretched hive of scum villains and child abusers known the US Naval Research Laboratory...[/quote]

I don't consider "funded by the US military" to be an unimpeachable claim to respectability, and frankly I'm surprised you would go there.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=110#p32036
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2012-02-21 00:53:39

[quote="Ghalev"]In my experience, there are ways in with CYOA is the more limited form and there are ways in which parser-driven is the more limited form. Both balance out in terms of the goals I tend to have for them. Perhaps your goals have differed, and that's the basis of our differing perspectives. I can't even imagine a universe in which someone who's made both would describe CYOA as "relatively easy" to make compared to a parser adventure. They are equally easy to make[i] poorly,[/i] equally [i]difficult [/i]to make well. They do call on different skill-sets, but they require comparable effort to achieve comparable doses of awesome.[/quote]

I'd like to delve into this for a moment. What are the challenges in writing a good multiple-choice game, as distinct from writing a good parser game?

IMO, on the multiple-choice game side, most authors struggle with two main challenges:

1) Managing (exponentially?) branching plot lines.

2) Designing "meaningful" choices that the player cares about.

A parser game [i]could[/i] have these problems as well, if it has a highly branching plot line. But there are many good text adventures with essentially one plot line, gated by a linear series of interesting puzzles.

On the other side, a parser game does have two challenges unique to its format:

1) Responding well to what the user typed, especially if the user typed something the author may not have expected. This includes responding well to unreasonable actions (did you remember to mark all of your furniture as fixed in place?) as well as disambiguating objects correctly.

2) Signaling to the player what verbs are available, especially in the context of a puzzle, where the author doesn't want to name the verb explicitly.

That second point is where parser games can be more limiting (for the author) than multiple-choice games. How do I signal to you that you can type things like: "BLACKMAIL QUINTUS" or "ANNEX SUDETENLAND"? In a multiple-choice game, I can put a button on the screen, and then describe the consequences and implications of your decision.

But I generally agree that by giving more control to the author, you can take control away from the player; this can make some things easier and some things harder for the author.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=110#p32039
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-21 01:58:59

[quote="dfabulich"]That second point is where parser games can be more limiting (for the author) than multiple-choice games.[/quote]

Yeah. Any story which requires a lot of personal or abstract choices (or exploring questions related to same) collides rudely with the boundaries of parser games. There are only so many ways to represent your character's moods/suspicions/affections/worry/fear/intentions/etc by fiddling with objects and moving between rooms before the sense of blunt-instrument gimmickry induces eye-rolling. It's a limitation that can be overcome, but even the methods for overcoming it have to be carefully exchanged and recycled before they, too, feel like blunt instruments (or, in some cases, like borrowed CYOA). Then, to [i]really [/i]feel some parser boundaries, set the game at the Woodstock festival, or in Central Park on a Saturday afternoon, without gimmicks which limits the player's ability to interact as he might naturally be able to. To feel even more boundaries, give the story a dozen highly-divergent plotlines.

Parser games deal with the limitations of the form the same way anything else does: by finding the comfort-zone center [i]away [/i]from the boundaries, and staying there most of the time, venturing to the edges only for the occasional bold experiment, ironic meta-commentary, or outright parody. Hence, lots of single-plot games where fiddling with objects and moving from room to room is the most reasonable course of action, and where those "rooms" are often defined by their sense of isolation. Neither CYOA nor parser can offer tactical infinity, but the parser makes an implied [i]promise [/i]of tactical infinity on which it must constantly renege and replace with illusion (or outright confession of inability). That gives it many design limitations from which CYOA doesn't suffer, because CYOA never promises anything except the enjoyment of making explicit choices and exploring their consequences.

CYOA, of course, suffers from equally visible limitations, and comparably retreats most often into its own comfort-zone center, where choices are meaningful but very finite, where some paths re-converge, where divergent plots are embraced and explored at the expense of deep exploration of any [i]one [/i]of them, and where the player doesn't feel that an obvious and reasonable course of action is being artificially excluded. CYOA makes the promise of [i]divergence[/i], and the writer must work hard to fulfill that promise, or the player feels gypped ... very distinct from the promise of the parser, where it's accepted and understood by enthusiasts (if not newcomers) that the game needn't [i]actually [/i]fulfill the promise, only pay it a certain level of attention before smiling lamely and holding up empty hands.

Pressing the boundaries in either form can result in a sense of gimmickry; steering clear of the boundaries in either form avoids that problem but highlights the limitations of each form anyway. And both require facility with writing and game design, and neither makes either of those things any easier to do well.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=120#p32040
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-02-21 04:37:25

[quote="Felix"]Yes, neither DNA nor other real things work according to prototypes. But prototypes were never meant to be conceived as out there. They are conceptual or even mental thingies, that real things can be more or less like unto. That's the very purpose of a prototype theory of concepts (or semantics).
That way protoype theory dispenses with both real inherent essences and any essential conditions for belonging to a given class of things. Everything belongs to every class to a greater or smaller degree – the more like a certain prototype concept (that no real thing needs to be exactly like) the more it belongs to the class defined by similarity to that prototype.[/quote]
[quote="Laroquod"]If it has no existence in reality then of what use could it possibly be, besides as a way for a person who uses it to exclude something from some arena it should probably not be excluded from? I suspect the theory's logic and its motives. Why do we need to know something that isn't true, anyway? And why do we need to cloak what is bascially prejudice in scientific terms? So we can all figure out a way to be in agreement? But we don't need to all be in agreement, and anyway, I don't want to live in that world. If we all could agree on what is a story and what is a game then that would mean that all of the experiments have ended. The whole point of half of the art innovations that ever were, was to challenge the pre-existing definitions of what it means to make art in that medium. It's a good thiing those innovations were always introduced into a milieu of disagreement and uncertainty, else they might have been entirely ignored as categorically invalid.

That's the trouble with thinking in categories. It is only useful for one thing: exclusion.[/quote]
Granted, but exclusion in turn is useful for any number of things.

As I see it, there can be all kinds of similarities and all kinds of differences between a certain thing correctly categorizeable as a a story and a certain thing correctly categorizable as a game, and a few of these are relevant for a given purpose, a few of them are relevant for another purpose, and so on. (And, again as far as I can see, there is nothing to prevent some things to be correctly categorized as both games and stories at the same time.)

So it all boils down to what purpose one wants one's categorizations (i.e. one's exclusions and inclusions) to serve. Some exclusions, no doubt, serve very suspect purposes, indeed; but often, I'm equally sure, they are not particularly morally objectionable; and for some purposes (like medical treatment, say), surely, it would be downright wrong not to include only some things or persons and exclude others.

As for prototype theory, as far as I know, it is an attempt at an empirical theory about on what grounds people actually do categorize things: it proposes that categorization is done by means of similarity to one's conception of a prototypical member of a given class, rather than by strict definitions in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions for class membership. Prototype theory may well be false for all or some concepts – I'm not a champion of it, particularly. But I can't see that it follows from this theory that people can't perfectly reasonably categorize things by means of slightly or widely different prototypes. Nor that it follows from it that people can't conceive of new interesting ways to categorize things (i.e. seeing previously ignored similarities and differences between things) or of inventing things that fall outside, in between, or transcends any given categories.

Further, if there are no real essences inhering in the nature of things, and if reality doesn't in some other way by itself fall into a certain number of more or less neat categories quite regardless of human or other interests, then what alternative is there to our imposing categories on reality guided by our own interests? If reality as such, in and by itself, draws no distinctions between stories, games, and plays – or between carburators, unemployment, and daffodils –, and people shouldn't draw those distinctions unless they exist in reality, then we couldn't say or even think anything about anything, could we?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=70#p32041
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2012-02-21 05:17:49

[quote="matt w"]Sorry, DTPM is "does the player mean," and Disambiguation Control is an extension by Jon Ingold found [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Jon%20Ingold/Disambiguation%20Control/index.html]here[/url].[/quote]Thanks. I've downloaded and incorporated it successfully, but the link to the documentation is dead.  Are there any docs available for using this extension?

[quote="capmikee"]The DTPM rulebook runs once for every possible action that the parser tries to match against the command. In effect, every noun is tried one at a time. And like any other rulebook, DTPM stops running on the first rule that produces a result. So rule order matters. If you have one DTPM that refers to examining and one that refers to body parts, only one of them will apply to examining wrists, and which one depends on the rule order.

So, two super-valuable things to do:

Turn rules on. This will tell you which DTPM, if any, are running. Unfortunately, you won't be able to see what circumstances they're running on. So the second thing is to add this rule:[code]First does the player mean: showme the current action.[/code]That will give you a nice "header" for every block of DTPM that runs, ending with the one that made the decision.[/quote]Done! (In the "Not for release" section).

[quote="capmikee"]If you get really desperate, you can use the "trace" debug command, but that will give you a lot of I6 parser stuff that's hard to decipher.[/quote]...best left then for when I progress from a noob to a halfway decent I7 developer.

[quote="capmikee"]My approach to this problem is to make an extra effort to ensure that only one choice scores high - thus avoiding disambiguation completely. A few specific cases that trigger "it is very likely" are much more powerful than a large number of cases returning "it is very unlikely."

Here, you might want something like:

[code]Does the player mean doing something with a body part that is part of a dead person: it is very likely.[/code][/quote]Good thinking, I'll put that in.

Still looking for an answer from anyone on the below question:
When there are pairs of body parts, what's the correct way to create them?

Wrists are a part of every person.
or
A left wrist is a part of every person. A right wrist is a part of every person. (This produced a compilation error).
or
Two wrists are a part of every person. (This was successfully compiled, but then I couldn't apply the "Remove your Wrists from play" and in gameplay it became impossible to perform actions on anyone's wrists because Inform could no longer distinguish one wrist from another).

Now a new problem that's cropped up and I've been unable to resolve.  I suspect this is probably a limitation of Inform?
My idea was that the murderer would be randomly chosen from one of the three labourers.  The player has to wait until they change out of their work gear to find a blood stain on one person's clothing.  This means 3 individual copies of each piece of clothing, 1 for each labourer.

This was my first attempt:
[code]In the construction site is a man called Tom.  The printed name of Tom is "Tommy".  Tom is wearing Tom's shirt, Tom's dungaries and Tom's boots.  To say rundown for (somebody - Tom): say "[if Tom is In WorkGear]Muscle man Tommy is here, in grubby work clothes[Else]Off-duty Tom is here, wearing [a list of things worn by Tom]".  The description of Tom is "[rundown for Tom]".

In the construction site is a man called Dick.  Dick is wearing Dick's shirt, Dick's dungaries and Dick's boots.  To say rundown for (somebody - Dick): say "[if Dick is In WorkGear]Tricky Dicky is here, in grubby work clothes[Else]Off-duty Dick is here, wearing [a list of things worn by Dick]".  The description of Dick is "[rundown for Dick]".

In the construction site is a woman called Gerty.  Gerty is wearing Gerty's shirt, Gerty's dungaries and Gerty's boots.  To say rundown for (somebody - Gerty): say "[if gerty is In WorkGear]Gerty the welder is here, in grubby work clothes[Else]Off-duty Gertrude is here, wearing [a list of things worn by gerty]".  The description of gerty is "[rundown for gerty]".

Before writing a paragraph about a person (called X):
    say "[rundown for X]".

A WorkGarment is a kind of thing.  A Shirt is a WorkGarment.  Dungaries are a WorkGarment.  Boots are a WorkGarment.

Definition: A person is In WorkGear if they are wearing more than 2 WorkGarments.

A job is a kind of value.  A person has a job.  The jobs are Detective and Labourer.  Understand the job property as describing a person.
The player is a Detective.
Tom is a Labourer.
Dick is a Labourer.
Gerty is a Labourer.

The Construction Site is a room.  "You are at the construction site."[/code](There's probably ways of streamlining the code too)

By design all three characters should show as "in grubby work clothes" when on duty.  However this produced a very peculiar result:
[b]construction site[/b]
You are at the construction site.

"[color=#0000BF]Muscle man Tommy is here, in grubby work clothes
Off-duty Dick is here, wearing Dick's shirt, Dick's dungaries and Dick's boots
Off-duty Gertrude is here, wearing Gerty's shirt, Gerty's dungaries and Gerty's boots[/color]"

Using the showme command I discovered that this is happening beause only the 1st NPC's clothing is being designated as "WorkGear" and while the 2nd & 3rd NPC are not.  I confirmed this by swapping the order and indeed I found that regardless of which names were used, only the 1st one's clothing became "WorkGear."

My next approach was to implement this:
[code]When play begins:
	Repeat with TheWorker running through the people in the construction site:
		say "[TheWorker][Line Break]";
		Now TheWorker wears a Shirt;
		Now TheWorker wears Dungaries;
		Now TheWorker wears Boots.[/code]But this failed because only one set of clothing was created, and passed along each time.  Tom and Dick ended up without any clothing as it was claimed by Gerty.  Another problem is that I couldn't find the way to restrict the repeat to just the labourers; it included the player as well.  What's the correct syntax for repeating only through those whose job is Labourer?

My third endeavour was to specify this:
[quote]There are 3 shirts, 3 Dungaries and 3 boots in The Construction Site.[/quote]However I couldn't figure out the command to make the NPCs pick up each piece of clothing.  "Now TheWorker carries..." didn't take any of the clothes.

Suggestions?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=70#p32042
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-02-21 05:43:24

[quote="thefoxaroo"]I've downloaded and incorporated [Disambiguation Control] successfully, but the link to the documentation is dead.  Are there any docs available for using this extension?[/quote]
The docs for extensions are included with the extension itself. They have to be indexed before you can see them first. Just include the extension in a compilable project like:[code]Include Disambiguation Control by Jon Ingold.
Lab is a room.[/code]
After you hit compile (the "Go" button) the index will be updated. Now when you go to the "Installed Extensions" section of the docs and click on "Disambiguation Control" (under Jon Ingold's name) the documentation for that extension will appear in that pane.

ETA: This is true under Windows, not sure about other OSs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=70#p32043
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-02-21 06:14:02

[quote="thefoxaroo"]
When there are pairs of body parts, what's the correct way to create them?
...
A left wrist is a part of every person. A right wrist is a part of every person. (This produced a compilation error).[/quote]
Since you need more than one left wrist and right wrist in the game, you need to make it a kind first:
[code]A left wrist is a kind of thing. A right wrist is a kind of thing.
A left wrist is a part of every person. A right wrist is a part of every person.[/code]
You could alternately create a "wrist" as a kind of thing and create a new kind of value (called for example "sides") with values of "left" and "right" and then assign that as a property of wrists, but then creating the assembly is a little more complicated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=70#p32044
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-02-21 07:45:40

As it stands, your code begins by creating nine individual objects (Tom's boots, Gerty's shirt, Dick's dungaries etc.); then it creates a kind (WorkGarment); then it says that three individual objects, called "Shirt", "Dungaries", and "Boots" respectively, is of the kind WorkGarment, and Inform picks the first objects created that contain the word "shirt", "dungaries", and "boots" in their names, which happen to be the things Tom is wearing – so only these three objects are ever declared to be of the WorkGarment kind. 

Apparently, you want Shirt, Dungaries, and Boots to be subkinds of WorkGarment. Just explicitly declare them to be so – only you have to do that before you create the individual objects called "Tom's shirt" etc.

[code]A WorkGarment is a kind of thing.  A Shirt is a kind of WorkGarment. Dungaries are a kind of WorkGarment. Boots are a kind of WorkGarment.

In the construction site is a man called Tom.  The printed name of Tom is "Tommy".  Tom is wearing a shirt called Tom's shirt. He wears some dungaries called Tom's dungaries. He wears some boots called Tom's boots. To say rundown for (somebody - Tom): say "[if Tom is In WorkGear]Muscle man Tommy is here, in grubby work clothes[Else]Off-duty Tom is here, wearing [a list of things worn by Tom]".  The description of Tom is "[rundown for Tom]".[/code]etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=70#p32045
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-21 08:46:25

I think you could do more with sub-kinds:

[code]A construction worker is a kind of person. Every construction worker wears a shirt. Every construction worker wears dungaries. Every construction worker wears boots. Tom is a male construction worker. Dick is a male construction worker. Gertie is a female construction worker.[/code]

As long as you don't refer to the "man" and "woman" kinds specifically, I don't think you really need them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=70#p32046
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-21 08:56:30

Also, regarding the "wrists" issue: Unless you actually need to do something with the wrists of arbitrary people, I would advise against creating a large catalog of body parts for every single person in the game. Not only will it confuse the parser, but it could distract the player and slow down the virtual machine.

For my WIP, I use my "Lost Items" extension to catch references to body parts (among other things) when the player might expect them to be there, but doesn't need to interact with them:

[code]For noticing absence of a body part (called item):
	say "You only need to deal with [the item]s of the victims, and there are no victims here."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=30#p32047
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-02-21 08:58:09

[quote="I4L"]It's pretty much useful only if you're doing something illegal or immoral.[/quote]
Spoken like a person who doesn't seem to understand why anyone would mistrust any government's pronouncements on what is properly legal or moral.

[quote="I4L"]The subject of spam has been tossed around a couple of times. Like Ben said, almost all of the forum spam here is from real people who jump through the hoops to make a post. And these people aren't random, isolated individuals working from a bedroom in Chicago. These are, in many cases, organized groups of paid (no matter how poorly) individuals whose job it is to get a few links into a forum post. If you throw up something like "Play this game and get the secret code to register", normal users are going to balk. Spammers are going to have one person play the game and share the secret code with their coworkers.

The only true answer to spam is active, personal, human evaluation and subjectivity. And even that will occasionally fail, as it's human against human.[/quote]
Spot on. Fight robots with robots. Fight humans with humans. We already have an organised community capable of fighting this issue quite handily — we just don't have the right software for it.

[quote="I4L"]However, the best we can hope for under the circumstances is to let the forum admins fight the fight the best way they can. If that means making sweeping, biased judgements for the good of the community... That's their discretion, that's their right and sometimes that's their only choice.

I, for one, support it.[/quote]
Me too, as stated. Whatever has to be done is going to get done, even if it's a suboptimal solution.

[quote="bcressey"][quote="Laroquod"]I'm just saying that child porn has zero to do with this, and your perspective on Tor is so twisted and unfair that I just [i]had[/i] to counter it.[/quote]

I've already apologized for my original stance. You're welcome to belabor the point at length, days later, but I don't feel the need to apologize for it in perpetuity.[/quote]
The way I read it, you apologised for offending someone but you made no attempt to retract your specious statements regarding Tor. So, I did not take your apology too seriously. It sounded like one of those non-apologetic apologies, to me. Anyway, I am not looking for another -- I just needed to correct the record on this because what you said was a great injustice that needed to be opposed. I am not belabouring anything -- that was the first I mentioned it, and no one else made the points I made.

[quote="bcressey"]Defending my position at this point would only make that apology seem insincere. I may not be able to avoid ignorance but I can at least strive for sincerity.[/quote]
If you were trying to give the impression that you were [i]sincerely[/i] reconsidering your views about Tor, this message did not get through.

[quote="bcressey"]I don't consider "funded by the US military" to be an unimpeachable claim to respectability, and frankly I'm surprised you would go there.[/quote]
Neither do I, but it completely explains how Tor acquired a "veneer of respectability", "somehow". This should not be mysterious to you. It didn't 'acquire' a postive reputation. It had that from the beginning.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=120#p32048
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-02-21 09:30:26

[quote="Felix"][quote="Laroquod"]If it has no existence in reality then of what use could it possibly be, besides as a way for a person who uses it to exclude something from some arena it should probably not be excluded from? I suspect the theory's logic and its motives. Why do we need to know something that isn't true, anyway? And why do we need to cloak what is bascially prejudice in scientific terms? So we can all figure out a way to be in agreement? But we don't need to all be in agreement, and anyway, I don't want to live in that world. If we all could agree on what is a story and what is a game then that would mean that all of the experiments have ended. The whole point of half of the art innovations that ever were, was to challenge the pre-existing definitions of what it means to make art in that medium. It's a good thiing those innovations were always introduced into a milieu of disagreement and uncertainty, else they might have been entirely ignored as categorically invalid.

That's the trouble with thinking in categories. It is only useful for one thing: exclusion.[/quote]
Granted, but exclusion in turn is useful for any number of things.[/quote]
I have to admit that's true. Nicely done.

[quote="Felix"]As I see it, there can be all kinds of similarities and all kinds of differences between a certain thing correctly categorizeable as a a story and a certain thing correctly categorizable as a game, and a few of these are relevant for a given purpose, a few of them are relevant for another purpose, and so on. (And, again as far as I can see, there is nothing to prevent some things to be correctly categorized as both games and stories at the same time.)

So it all boils down to what purpose one wants one's categorizations (i.e. one's exclusions and inclusions) to serve. Some exclusions, no doubt, serve very suspect purposes, indeed; but often, I'm equally sure, they are not particularly morally objectionable; and for some purposes (like medical treatment, say), surely, it would be downright wrong not to include only some things or persons and exclude others.[/quote]
You've turned the subject to pragmatic issues of life and death. We are talking about labels that are really of no such consequence, so the motivations are much more suspect. Any of the positive things that could be good reasons to exclude A from B do not operate in this realm. But all of the negative reasons do. Take this thread, for example. How did it start?

[quote="Felix"]As for prototype theory, as far as I know, it is an attempt at an empirical theory about on what grounds people actually do categorize things: it proposes that categorization is done by means of similarity to one's conception of a prototypical member of a given class, rather than by strict definitions in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions for class membership. Prototype theory may well be false for all or some concepts – I'm not a champion of it, particularly. But I can't see that it follows from this theory that people can't perfectly reasonably categorize things by means of slightly or widely different prototypes. Nor that it follows from it that people can't conceive of new interesting ways to categorize things (i.e. seeing previously ignored similarities and differences between things) or of inventing things that fall outside, in between, or transcends any given categories.

Further, if there are no real essences inhering in the nature of things, and if reality doesn't in some other way by itself fall into a certain number of more or less neat categories quite regardless of human or other interests, then what alternative is there to our imposing categories on reality guided by our own interests? If reality as such, in and by itself, draws no distinctions between stories, games, and plays – or between carburators, unemployment, and daffodils –, and people shouldn't draw those distinctions unless they exist in reality, then we couldn't say or even think anything about anything, could we?[/quote]
Excellent. You have found the objection I've been waiting to hear that would show people are actually 'getting it'. Yes it is true that my philosophy taken to its extreme would make communication impossible. The answer to that is pragmatism. We do it because we must. We must be able to separate daffodil-like things from carburetor-like things, or else we couldn't fix cars. But there is no imperative need to separate stories from games or especially not CYOA story-games from parser story-games. One could do it as a speculative enterprise, but the minute one starts to use one's cultural category as a hammer against other cultural categories, one has stepped far wrong.

Consider your characterisation of prototype theory, which as I read frames it as a descriptive theory of how humans categorise things (including their biases), rather than as a prescriptive theory of how they should. If that is the case, then I have no problem with it, but in this thread we are seeing attempts to use a descriptive theory in a prescriptive way. 'Because I categorise these things this way, this whole community should too in its admissions requirements.' 'Because people make snap prejudiced judgements for the sake of convenience, we should codify those judgements in our rules and regulations.'

The purpose of all of my objections here is to try to cast Bigby's Interposing Hand between describing people's prejudices, which may be ethically neutral, and living according to them, which is not.

Thanks for taking me seriously. 8)

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=120#p32049
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-21 09:51:22

Yeah, it seems IF by its nature -- I'm talking in application, not in S. John's reneged promise capacity -- is stop-and-go, while CYOA is branching.  Certainly not an iron-clad discriminator, but seems often true.


C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=30#p32050
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2012-02-21 09:57:57

[quote="Laroquod"]If you were trying to give the impression that you were [i]sincerely[/i] reconsidering your views about Tor, this message did not get through.[/quote]
It did get through to [i]me[/i], actually. Which may have been me misreading a miswritten statement in such a way that it came out exactly as intended, but let's apply the principle of charity here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=30#p32051
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-02-21 10:06:19

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="Laroquod"]If you were trying to give the impression that you were [i]sincerely[/i] reconsidering your views about Tor, this message did not get through.[/quote]
It did get through to [i]me[/i], actually. Which may have been me misreading a miswritten statement in such a way that it came out exactly as intended, but let's apply the principle of charity here.[/quote]
All he said is that it was his opinion and not board policy. But opinions influence what other people conclude, and therefore they must be opposed when they talk smack about stuff they don't understand. I'm just fighting the good fight but don't worry — I like Ben and I do not have any kind of shitlist that I put people on when we disagree. I just said what I said, and I'll say it again if necessary. No one is going to smear Tor users as child pornographers on my watch and get away with it by claiming that it is only their opinion. I did nothing but my duty here.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=120#p32052
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-02-21 10:20:02

[quote="Laroquod"]
You've turned the subject to pragmatic issues of life and death. We are talking about labels that are really of no such consequence, so the motivations are much more suspect. Any of the positive things that could be good reasons to exclude A from B do not operate in this realm. But all of the negative reasons do. Take this thread, for example. How did it start?[/quote]
Point taken. I was trying to argue a very much more general point. I would expect to find the motivations for drawing a hard-and-fast distinction between stories and games  (as opposed to a distinction between them for some specific purpose) questionable even when they're not morally suspect.

[quote="Laroquod"]to use a descriptive theory in a prescriptive way[/quote]
I'm all for keeping Hume's Gap open.

[quote="Laroquod"]Thanks for taking me seriously. 8)[/quote]
Any time.  [emote]:-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=30#p32053
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-21 10:29:49

[quote="Laroquod"]The way I read it, you apologised for offending someone but you made no attempt to retract your specious statements regarding Tor. So, I did not take your apology too seriously. It sounded like one of those non-apologetic apologies, to me.[/quote]

[quote="bcressey"]But the IP address filtering problem is a fair point. However stifling it is to new users to be held in a queue for moderation, it would be far worse for them to be greeted by a "permanent ban" message. I admit it was easier to justify the policy before it affected you. [b]I admit also that my reflexive dismissal of Tor as a use case was misguided, offensive, and based largely on ignorance.[/b][/quote]

I am not sure what else you want me to say. When the Tor alpha came out, I ran a node on a 5/5 link. A friend told me about the network's reputation for unsavory content. I ran tcpdump and was appalled. Judging by the HTTP requests, essentially everything was child porn. Some of that could have been military secrets encoded in questionable images with steganographical techniques. Some of that could have been people trolling node ops with fake file requests. I didn't care; I shut my node down.

Today I moderate this forum. Essentially all the spam that doesn't come from China or Russia comes through Tor. You're welcome to link to all the pro-Tor articles you want, but when your "Who uses Tor?" page doesn't mention spammers or CP traffickers, I am inclined to dismiss it as propaganda.

Anecdotes are not data, but my experiences with Tor did not predispose me to learn all I could about the network. Hence I was ignorant of its evolution and misguided when I wrote off its users. I took the opportunity to learn more last week, recognized my error, and apologized to Hannes. I made the statement above as a retraction.

If you are looking for me to state that there is no spam or CP on Tor, I will not. I will only rephrase my earlier statement: there are other reasons to use Tor, and those reasons are more important.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=120#p32055
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-02-21 10:38:49

[quote="Felix"]Point taken. I was trying to argue a very much more general point. I would expect to find the motivations for drawing a hard-and-fast distinction between stories and games  (as opposed to a distinction between them for some specific purpose) questionable even when they're not morally suspect.[/quote]
I see where you were pointing that now. I am not intending to cast moral aspersions on anyone here, so I'm going to agree. Let's just replace 'immoral' with 'unfair' -- it's just unnecessarily arbitrary and unfair, is all. To call it immoral is to conclude something about the intentions of the categorisers that probably isn't there. They are just trying to figure out the world like everyone else — I get that.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=30#p32056
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-02-21 11:11:59

[quote="bcressey"][quote="Laroquod"]The way I read it, you apologised for offending someone but you made no attempt to retract your specious statements regarding Tor. So, I did not take your apology too seriously. It sounded like one of those non-apologetic apologies, to me.[/quote]

[quote="bcressey"]But the IP address filtering problem is a fair point. However stifling it is to new users to be held in a queue for moderation, it would be far worse for them to be greeted by a "permanent ban" message. I admit it was easier to justify the policy before it affected you. [b]I admit also that my reflexive dismissal of Tor as a use case was misguided, offensive, and based largely on ignorance.[/b][/quote]

I am not sure what else you want me to say.[/quote]
I never wanted you to say anything in particular. I just wanted to say what I said (about Tor). You were just the person who had just said a terrible thing (about Tor). This was not about getting an apology: I don't think in terms of extracting apologies, but rather in terms of opposing wrong beliefs. As I say, I felt the call of duty.

But thanks for pointing out that second quote. I admit I missed it because that admission was buried in a section where you seemed to have already moved on from the issue of your opinions and put that question aside. So I skipped that section because I didn't care about the implementation details of banning Tor because I don't object to banning Tor if it becomes necessary. (The reason I do not object to actually banning Tor BTW is that I value this forum a lot and freedom of speech should not be a suicide pact with spammers.)

So for what it's worth I do apologise to you, Ben, for skipping that section and getting your stance wrong. I probably still would have said something more in defence of Tor if I had read it, but I would have softened the rhetoric.

[quote="bcressey"]When the Tor alpha came out, I ran a node on a 5/5 link. A friend told me about the network's reputation for unsavory content. I ran tcpdump and was appalled. Judging by the HTTP requests, essentially everything was child porn. Some of that could have been military secrets encoded in questionable images with steganographical techniques. Some of that could have been people trolling node ops with fake file requests. I didn't care; I shut my node down.

Today I moderate this forum. Essentially all the spam that doesn't come from China or Russia comes through Tor. You're welcome to link to all the pro-Tor articles you want, but when your "Who uses Tor?" page doesn't mention spammers or CP traffickers, I am inclined to dismiss it as propaganda.[/quote]
Well, yeah, it is advertising. It was put out by the Tor project itself. I posted it as evidence for the origin of Tor in the US Naval Research Laboratory (which you are not disputing) in order to counter your assertion (which I hadn't noticed you had retracted) that Tor acquired a veneer of respectability later on.

It doesn't surprise me that the most unsavoury elements jumped on Tor the earliest. The same thing happened to P2P, which is increasingly now used for perfectly legal distribution, for which it is by far the superior tech. Remember back when the 'hot' news item was that the vast majority of internet traffic was porn? That was when the internet was young. It isn't true anymore.

[quote="bcressey"]Anecdotes are not data, but my experiences with Tor did not predispose me to learn all I could about the network. Hence I was ignorant of its evolution and misguided when I wrote off its users. I took the opportunity to learn more last week, recognized my error, and apologized to Hannes. I made the statement above as a retraction.

If you are looking for me to state that there is no spam or CP on Tor, I will not. I will only rephrase my earlier statement: there are other reasons to use Tor, and those reasons are more important.[/quote]
Thanks for clarifying; I am not looking for you to state those things, nor did I state them.

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=120#p32057
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-02-21 11:17:30

Just a thought: what if there were CYOA and parser IF categories, but you didn't have to categorise, just rate: How good do you think [i]Zombie Exodus[/i] is, rated in the parser IF category? How good is it in the cyoa category?

This whole topic has definitely had one effect on me: suddenly I'm saying parser IF, where before I would just have said IF. 

Also, as a late comment: my prototypical CYOA works probably [i]are[/i] just the Fighting Fantasy books, simply because (being a Swede) these were the ones I was first exposed to.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=30#p32058
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-21 11:27:29

[quote="Laroquod"]Remember back when the 'hot' news item was that the vast majority of internet traffic was porn? That was when the internet was young. It isn't true anymore.[/quote]

Just a note (feeling the call of duty; I don't mean to take a position on any other issue in this thread); if that was based on the Marty Rimm study, [url=http://writing.colostate.edu/guides/research/relval/com2c2.cfm]it was always bullshit[/url]. From [url=http://elabresearch.ucr.edu/cyberporn/brock.rimm.reviewfix.htm]this account[/url], it seems like the conclusion we should have drawn was that the vast majority of internet traffic on BBSes devoted to porn was porn.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=120#p32059
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-21 11:41:35

[quote="peterorme"]Just a thought: what if there were CYOA and parser IF categories, but you didn't have to categorise, just rate: How good do you think [i]Zombie Exodus[/i] is, rated in the parser IF category? How good is it in the cyoa category?[/quote]

The answer to the question [i]"How good do you think [/i]Zombie Exodus[i] is, rated in the parser IF category?"[/i] is [i]"It doesn't have a parser."[/i] So, exactly the same rating it would have in the "fruit salad," "midrange sedan" or "mixed martial-arts" categories.

As CYOA, I couldn't get far because the writing just didn't work for me. I found it a little dry and rambling (and maybe that makes it [i]perfect [/i]as a zombie-themed thing, but I also find zombies dull unless they're chewing on my plants, which is no fault of [i]Zombie Exodus[/i]). It might be a brilliantly [i]designed [/i]game but unless the writing engages me, I'll never know. I've been replaying a huge stack of my favorite gamebooks by my favorite CYOA creators lately, though, so that probably stacked the deck against it.

I [i]do [/i]intend to try it again (lord knows I started [i]Choice of the Dragon[/i] seven or eight times ... it seems like the kind of thing I [i]should [/i]like) but so far, zzzz. Part of it is: I have trouble with the "read a fuckton of blah-de-blah text in order to figure out who you are before the story can even start" approach. I'd rather see those choices integrated [i]into [/i]the action rather than sitting there as this mountainous [i]preface [/i]to it. But if the writing were engaging, I wouldn't mind the preface approach. Ultimately, it's down to the writing. I can forgive just about any design decision if the writing would only rock, just a [i]little [/i]plz and thx.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4403&start=0#p32060
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: A bug?  Or am I confused?
User: mpascall / DateTime: 2012-02-21 11:48:16

I've either found a bug, or am completely confused.  This is my first attempt at authoring IF, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was the later.

Here's the relevant part of my code:

[code]"Underage" by "Marcus Pascall"

The Air Conditioned Store is a room.  

In the Air Conditioned Store is a man called clerk.  Alcohol is carried by the clerk.  

Understand "beer/vodka/tequila/rum/wine cooler/wine/booze" as alcohol.

Instead of asking the clerk about "alcohol", say "The clerk looks you up and down and says 'You are not old enough for me to sell you alcohol.'"

Before buying [something]:
	try asking the clerk about "[noun]";
	stop the action.[/code]

For some reason, if the player types "buy wine cooler", it works (the relevant text is displayed).  But if he types "buy beer" (or vodka, tequila, etc), it says "You can't see any such thing here."

My question is, why does wine cooler work, and yet not the rest?

Thanks,
-M

edit: I'm using Inform (1.2 6.31/6G60) on a 64-bit Ubuntu system.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4403&start=0#p32061
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A bug?  Or am I confused?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-21 11:59:10

This will work, as far as it goes:

[code]"Underage" by "Marcus Pascall"

The Air Conditioned Store is a room. 

In the Air Conditioned Store is a man called the clerk.  Alcohol is carried by the clerk. 

Understand "beer/vodka/tequila/rum/wine/booze" or "wine cooler" as alcohol.

Instead of asking the clerk about "[alcohol]", say "The clerk looks you up and down and says 'You are not old enough for me to sell you alcohol.'"

Before buying [something]:
   try asking the clerk about "[noun]";
   stop the action.[/code]

The two important changes I made are: separating the two-word phrase into its own quotes (for "wine cooler") because two-word thingies don't play well with the slashy-list thing, and putting brackets around the token "[alcohol]" to allow the asking-about to work.

I also added "the" to "clerk," so the room description makes more sense (It now says "You can see the clerk here" instead of "You can see clerk here").

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4403&start=0#p32062
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A bug?  Or am I confused?
User: HanonO / DateTime: 2012-02-21 12:01:17

Looks like "wine cooler" has a space. You need to separate that from the others.

Try "vodka booze" and I bet it works. Your understand line is asking for a two word combination.

Understand "beer/wine/vodka" and "wine cooler" as alcohol.

Understand "bay/sea/rum breeze" will match "sea breeze" but not "rum".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4403&start=0#p32063
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A bug?  Or am I confused?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-21 12:03:11

The slash shortcut only works with single words. You're telling the game to understand a two-word phrase, where both words are mandatory; the first word must be beer/vodka/tequila/rum/wine, the second must be cooler/wine/booze. So "wine cooler" works, as does "rum cooler", "vodka booze", ... 

Also, as a note, where you wrote [something] in square brackets -- that's a comment, not a token.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=30#p32064
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-02-21 12:09:43

[quote="matt w"][quote="Laroquod"]Remember back when the 'hot' news item was that the vast majority of internet traffic was porn? That was when the internet was young. It isn't true anymore.[/quote]

Just a note (feeling the call of duty; I don't mean to take a position on any other issue in this thread); if that was based on the Marty Rimm study, [url=http://writing.colostate.edu/guides/research/relval/com2c2.cfm]it was always bullshit[/url]. From [url=http://elabresearch.ucr.edu/cyberporn/brock.rimm.reviewfix.htm]this account[/url], it seems like the conclusion we should have drawn was that the vast majority of internet traffic on BBSes devoted to porn was porn.[/quote]
Ah yes. Now that you mention, I do recall these objections at the time. I forgot about the USENET focus though. I remembered the issue with the study as comparing image bytes to text bytes and coming up 'mostly porn' (a comparison that I think would no longer be true today even if it ever were true, which as you point out -- probably not).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=40#p32065
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: Hannes / DateTime: 2012-02-21 12:14:16

For what it's worth, what bcressey wrote was (in my book) a sincere apology and a retraction of the part which offended me. A part of the traffic routed through Tor is child pornography. I would assume that to be true, as a part of the traffic [i]routed through the Internet[/i] is child pornography. So I don't really see how that can be considered an offensive statement (unless anyone added the 'logical conclusion' that therefore, the Internet as a whole is evil and should be shut down). I4L, on the other hand, is welcome to BCC all his emails to me in the future, because unless he is up to something illegal or 'immoral', he wouldn't have anything to hide, would he?

P.S. "But that's just my opinion" does not make personal insults and insinuations better. On the contrary: It's one of the most annoying trends in discussion culture as it somehow seems to imply that logical reasoning based on facts is completely unnecessary and even if someone else does it, it can be dismissed by adding that statement.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4403&start=0#p32066
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A bug?  Or am I confused?
User: mpascall / DateTime: 2012-02-21 12:36:38

Wow, thanks everyone for the quick replies.  I understand now.  [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=40#p32067
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-21 14:05:17

IMO, Tor is only useful for people who would get shot in the head by secret police if they didn't use it. Human rights activists in North Korea come to mind.

For everybody else, it's probably just a way to do something illegal (including spam) or for the crazies to "feel safe" due to paranoia.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=40#p32068
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-21 14:57:55

I move for locking this thread.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4404&start=0#p32069
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: room description heading rule firing at scene transition
User: rsmyth / DateTime: 2012-02-21 16:59:54

Hello,

I'm having a problem with the room description heading rule firing as
one scene ends and another begins. The scenes are constructed so that,
when one comes to an end, the player is moved to another room.

With the "scenes" testing command on, I can see where the one scene
ends and the other begins, and in between these two moments the room
description of the previous room is given.  There doesn't seem to be
any good reason for this happening.

Here's what the transcript looks like:

<START TRANSCRIPT>

[Scene 'Chamberdust' ends]
[Scene 'Chamberdust' ends finishedly]
A sound of screeching metal wrings in your ears as the sword
penetrates the stone.

Chamber of Dust
A dark room with little ambient light.  The room is filled with dust--
floating dust lit by the little light there is.  Dust is gathered in
big clumps; in fact, you're knee deep in dust.

There is so much dust in the air that you have trouble breathing.

[Scene 'Dustgate-scene' begins]
Entry Hall
A long hallway stretches from the entryway where you stand, etc..

<END TRANSCRIPT>

I'd like to turn this off, but only for this one instance of the rule
-- not in general (as many other posts address).

Thanks for any help with this.

--Richard

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4365&start=0#p32070
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hide a Door.
User: rsmyth / DateTime: 2012-02-21 17:10:03

Have you seen the extension by Andrew Owen called "Secret Doors"?  It might do exactly what you want it to....

There is a slight bug that causes it to generate an error.  Search RAIF for the thread

using secret doors causes errors

and you'll find out how to fix.

I think this actually takes the door out of play until you change the property to "unhidden."

Good luck!

--Richard

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4405&start=0#p32071
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: NPC-NPC interaction?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-21 17:37:10

I know this is a weird question and a big topic...  So I figured I'd get started now, and see what kind of progress I can make.

I'm looking to make livelier NPCs that interact with each other in various ways.  I'm aware text games usually are PC-centric, and this is not acknowledged game design -- but I think it'd be cool.  I was working on this in a preliminary way a year ago.

My current thinking is this--

Let's say the model problem is for the NPCs to play rock-paper-scissors on a whim.  We'll define "a whim" as being when either one wants to, which is a randomly occurring event that will fire, say, 1 turn in 3 when nothing more important to either NPC is going on.  (1 in 3 so we only have to wait a turn or two for either one to make a move.)

So, we'll make a "Let's Play!" AgendaItem that fires off the behavior.

The behavior code will be in a block of code in the NPCs themselves.  This will contain (a) criteria defining whether the behavior is available to the NPC, (b) some kind of logic defining the behavior itself -- decision code, reporting, and so forth -- and (c) logic and reporting for handling the outcome of the game.

That code can be run from within either NPCs AgendaItem.

So, let's consider Garry and Ned.

Garry's whim AgendaItem activates this turn.

That AgendaItem knows Garry could play r-p-s, or it wouldn't have fired.  Now it consults Ned's r-p-s criteria (a) and perhaps determines Ned qualifies for a round of r-p-s.  This is from Garry's and Ned's individual r-p-s (a) blocks.

Now the AgendaItem runs Garry's r-p-s (b) block and Ned's r-p-s (b) block.  Each makes their move.

Finally, the AgendaItem runs Garry's r-p-s (c) block and Ned's r-p-s (c) block.  Each reports their response to having won, lost, or tied.

Probably, the r-p-s criteria should be nestled inside the NPC's current state.  That way, if the NPC ends up in a specialized state, you don't have to worry about another NPC coming up to him and playing r-p-s incongruously.

Anyone have thoughts on this?


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4405&start=0#p32072
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: NPC-NPC interaction?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-21 18:39:13

Rather than attempting to do it all in one NPC or the other's AgendaItem routine, I would fold it into the normal action handling.

E.g. Garry's AgendaItem fires, he's ready to play. He looks for other NPCs in the room. For each NPC, he tries a PlayRPS action. If it fails (somewhere in that NPC's dobjFor(PlayRPS) verify or check routines) he tries the next NPC. If it succeeds, he lets the other NPC handle the output and he stops trying. If none of the NPCs want to play he gives up quietly.

You could run the action with newActorAction. It will return a CommandTranscript object, and you can check that object's isFailure property to see if it failed.

The conceptual benefit is that the player could also play rock-paper-scissors with any NPC and get similar output. You also avoid defining parallel structures for verifying, checking, carrying out, and reporting actions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=40#p32073
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-02-21 18:40:24

[quote="zarf"]I move for locking this thread.[/quote]
I don't object. The more exposure I get to the views of members of this community on digital rights, the more challenging it becomes to find a way to rationalise not just writing everybody off as unfrozen cavemen from 1993.

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4405&start=0#p32074
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: NPC-NPC interaction?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-21 19:05:27

I think I commented on this last year, but I'm not sure. My take on it is probably not what you're looking for, but as an author, I don't think it matters what the NPCs are actually doing behind the scenes. All that matters is what's reported to the player. So if one NPC's AgendaItem decides it's time to play RPC (because there's another Person object in the location who is able to play), the AgendaItem itself can produce the entire response that the player sees, and adjust any other values that need to be adjusted, such as the win/loss records of various characters.

The only thing that has to be done, in this case, is that you don't want two NPCs to all produce a round-of-RPC output in the same turn. So each Person object needs its own readyToPlay flag, which is set to true at the beginning of each turn (by some suitable daemon that can be guaranteed to run at the beginning of the turn). This flag is set to nil by the AgendaItem, both for the NPC that initiated the round of play and for the NPC that it is playing with.

The daemon that resets readyToPlay would of course call a getReady method in the Person object. That method would determine whether a given NPC was cooperative or not. If asleep==true, for instance, the NPC's getReady method would simply not set readyToPlay to true.

That's how I'd do it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4406&start=0#p32075
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [Inform 7] Bypassing Multiple-Noun Prohibitions on ATTACK
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-21 19:24:13

I want a game to have a custom response to commands like "Destroy everything" and "Destroy the world" and "Obliterate all."

Constructing it is pretty easy ... I can add "obliterate" to the "attack" synonyms; I can make a "the world" scenery object to direct things toward, and so on.

But I keep running afoul of the built-in "multiple noun" restrictions on "everything" and "all."

I don't want the command to [i]succeed;[/i] I just want to customize the response. Do I need to create a new action (to replace "attack") or is there some rule that can be unlisted somewhere? Or somesuch?

TIA

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4397&start=10#p32076
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: NPC Guard
User: Sherbert / DateTime: 2012-02-21 19:44:15

Wow, that is impressive. I'm going use that as place to start for my NPC guard, thank you so much! I'll be sure to give you proper credit for that. I'm going to play with this for a few days, maybe see if I can get him to wait a turn or two before letting him move to the next room. This would make for a good addition to the technical manual.

**edit: It's funny that you mention distance connectors. I just found those the other day and added that to my code so I could do the same thing; watch him move from room to room without having to follow him!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4406&start=0#p32077
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Inform 7] Bypassing Multiple-Noun Prohibitions on ATTAC
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-21 19:52:49

Unlisting a rule won't work. The problem is going to be that, when you have Inform set up to understand a command that applies to multiple objects, it figures out what each of those objects are and then applies the command to them one by one. For instance, "take all" gives you a separate "taken" for each object. 

So if you want a single response to "obliterate all," you might have to write a rule that catches that the player is obliterating multiple objects, runs once, and then doesn't run again the rest of the turn. Check out the example "The Left Hand of Autumn" in the documentation.

If you just want to print a clever response to "obliterate all" and don't much care about which particular collection of things is being obliterated, you can try this:

[code]To decide what action-name is the action-to-be: (- action_to_be -).
Rule for printing a parser error when the latest parser error is the can't use multiple objects error and the action-to-be is the attacking action: say "One at a time!"[/code]

Note that it will give the same response to "attack jordan and taylor" as to "obliterate everything".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4405&start=0#p32079
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: NPC-NPC interaction?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-21 20:32:40

Jim,

You did give me a version of this same advice -- that is, just manipulate the transcript.  And it was very useful, too, in getting me to refocus and to simplify my thinking.

There are two reasons I'm not doing it that way, though.

The first is that, as Ben anticipates, I'm looking for a general tool that will allow me to build NPCs that will respond to each other the same way they'll respond to the PC.

The second is -- well, this is basically an outcome of looking into how broadly we can allow realtime player switching of viewpoint.  Right?  I mean, if the player switches out of a character, and it suddenly stands there like a zombie, or a robot with the battery pack removed -- not so good.

In effect, I'm looking to build a kind of model train set that the player can move around inside of.  I know this isn't the usual thing to do with IF, but it's something I've been interested in for some time.

[quote="bcressey"]
He looks for other NPCs in the room. For each NPC...
[/quote]

How do I do that?

I'm thinking currently of using something like a RoomActorGrouper, a SocialSituation object, that would mediate the communication among characters that are communicating with one another.  The RoomActorGrouper nature would handle the outside appearance, whereas the SocialSituation nature would handle the message-passing between characters.

But frankly, I don't have the faintest clue how to get the NPC to look outside itself, or to do anything apart from test whether a particular object currently exists in its space.

[quote]
The conceptual benefit is that the player could also play rock-paper-scissors with any NPC and get similar output. You also avoid defining parallel structures for verifying, checking, carrying out, and reporting actions.
[/quote]

Yeah, that's what I'm looking for.  Probably game code would be modified into the Actor object, and strategy data somehow default-overrided on a case by case basis.

All thoughts welcomed.

Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4403&start=0#p32080
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A bug?  Or am I confused?
User: mpascall / DateTime: 2012-02-21 20:54:49

Now a second issue that I've been scratching my head over for hours.  Here's the same code, except I've added lines for buying cigarettes. 

[code]The Air Conditioned Store is a room. 

In the Air Conditioned Store is a man called the clerk.  Alcohol and cigarettes are carried by the clerk. 

Understand "beer/vodka/tequila/rum/wine/booze" as alcohol.

Instead of asking the clerk about "[alcohol]", say "The clerk looks you up and down and says 'You are not old enough for me to sell you alcohol.'"

Understand "cigs/cig/smokes" as cigarettes.

Instead of asking the clerk about "[cigarettes]", say "The clerk pulls a pack from above the counter, and says 'That'll be $3.50.'"

Before buying [something]:
   try asking the clerk about "[noun]";
   stop the action.
[/code]

When the player "buy alcohol", it works no problem.  When "buy cigarettes", it responds with "There is no reply."  

The strange thing is, if I swap those two "instead" lines, then cigarettes works and alcohol doens't.  So the first "instead" always works and the second always fails.  What am I don't wrong?

Thanks,
-M

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4403&start=0#p32081
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A bug?  Or am I confused?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-21 21:25:41

[rant]Check the world tab of the index; have you by any chance created a single object called "alcohol and cigarettes"? Then it might work to say "The clerk carries alcohol. The clerk carries cigarettes."[/rant]

Never mind, that's not it.

OK, with some fiddling I think you're hitting a weird bug/behavior of topics; when you check the thing you've asked for against [cigarettes] (or [alcohol], depending on which is first), Inform stores that topic in "the noun." So by the time you run the second check, it thinks you're asking alcohol about alcohol, and the rule doesn't run. There's some discussion [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2280&p=15588#p15588]here[/url], and there's a uservoice suggestion that goes into it [url=http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/1673835-thoroughly-document-topics-or-make-them-far-more-]here[/url], though I firmly believe this is a bug and not a feature suggestion. (And [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=642]here's[/url] a bug report.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4408&start=0#p32082
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Pirate Kart V: GDC Edition
User: Healy / DateTime: 2012-02-21 22:37:57

I don't know how many of you guys are familiar with [url=http://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/node/46]the[/url] [url=http://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/wiki/The_529_in_1_Klik_and_Play_Pirate_Kart_Part_II%3A_Klik_Harder]Pirate[/url] [url=http://www.piratekart.com/igfpiratekart.html]Kart[/url], or even [url=http://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/]Glorious Trainwrecks[/url] in general, but to put it in terms most of you are probably familiar with, the Glorious Trainwrecks game-creating events are a bit like Speed IFs for Klik and Play (although it's pretty tool agnostic): People make a game in about 2 hours, and then show them off when they're done. (Most of the time they don't have themes, though.)

What I'm getting at here is, there's a [url=http://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/node/2097]new Pirate Kart[/url] that's going to be shown off at GDC, and I think it would be nice to get some of the IF community to join in. The main time we'll be making games is the weekend of February 25-26th, but a bunch of people are making games for this already (including me), and they're setting it up so that games can be added up to GDC weekend. Online playable games are preferable to those that would need an interpreter, but z-code games, at least, are okay. Does any of this sound interesting to you guys?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4403&start=0#p32083
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: A bug?  Or am I confused?
User: mpascall / DateTime: 2012-02-21 22:57:00

The workaround you pointed me to works!  

Thanks for that.  I don't know that I would've found any of that by searching the boards. 

Its good to know its a bug and not me misunderstanding the language.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4404&start=0#p32084
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: room description heading rule firing at scene transition
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-21 23:42:18

I think there may be some issues with scenes that have multiple endings. It would help if you could post a snippet of code that duplicates the problem, preferably in "code" tags.

Are you sure you really want to use scenes? Maybe moving the player to another room is enough to model what's going on in the game? Is this a CYOA-style game? I7 is probably not the ideal development platform for CYOA.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4406&start=0#p32085
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Inform 7] Bypassing Multiple-Noun Prohibitions on ATTAC
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-21 23:48:44

If it doesn't work to process it as a mistake, I'd probably set up an action like this:

[code]Annihilating is an action applying to one topic.

Understand "attack [text]" as annihilating.

Check annihilating: say "That's not something you can destroy."

Instead of annihilating "all/everything/world": say "If only you could..."[/code]

Not tested.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4408&start=0#p32086
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Pirate Kart V: GDC Edition
User: George / DateTime: 2012-02-22 01:15:37

Yes, it sounds great. There's been a few IF games in Karts past. SpindleyQ even is known to come to Seattle IF meetups when possible. Thanks for the heads-up [emote]:)[/emote].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=70#p32087
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2012-02-22 05:02:21

[quote="Skinny Mike"]The docs for extensions are included with the extension itself. They have to be indexed before you can see them first. Just include the extension in a compilable project like:[code]Include Disambiguation Control by Jon Ingold.
Lab is a room.[/code]After you hit compile (the "Go" button) the index will be updated. Now when you go to the "Installed Extensions" section of the docs and click on "Disambiguation Control" (under Jon Ingold's name) the documentation for that extension will appear in that pane.

ETA: This is true under Windows, not sure about other OSs.[/quote]Got it, there they are, thankee Skinny Mike! [emote]:)[/emote]
Whoooo boy... [i][b]more[/b][/i] manual pages to read!  [emote]:shock:[/emote]

[quote="Felix"]As it stands, your code begins by creating nine individual objects (Tom's boots, Gerty's shirt, Dick's dungaries etc.); then it creates a kind (WorkGarment); then it says that three individual objects, called "Shirt", "Dungaries", and "Boots" respectively, is of the kind WorkGarment, and Inform picks the first objects created that contain the word "shirt", "dungaries", and "boots" in their names, which happen to be the things Tom is wearing – so only these three objects are ever declared to be of the WorkGarment kind. 

Apparently, you want Shirt, Dungaries, and Boots to be subkinds of WorkGarment. Just explicitly declare them to be so – only you have to do that before you create the individual objects called "Tom's shirt" etc.[code]A WorkGarment is a kind of thing.  A Shirt is a kind of WorkGarment. Dungaries are a kind of WorkGarment. Boots are a kind of WorkGarment.

In the construction site is a man called Tom.  The printed name of Tom is "Tommy".  Tom is wearing a shirt called Tom's shirt. He wears some dungaries called Tom's dungaries. He wears some boots called Tom's boots. To say rundown for (somebody - Tom): say "[if Tom is In WorkGear]Muscle man Tommy is here, in grubby work clothes[Else]Off-duty Tom is here, wearing [a list of things worn by Tom]".  The description of Tom is "[rundown for Tom]".[/code]etc.[/quote]YES!!! It worked.  Thanks Felix. [emote]:D[/emote]

[quote="capmikee"]I think you could do more with sub-kinds:[code]A construction worker is a kind of person. Every construction worker wears a shirt. Every construction worker wears dungaries. Every construction worker wears boots. Tom is a male construction worker. Dick is a male construction worker. Gertie is a female construction worker.[/code]As long as you don't refer to the "man" and "woman" kinds specifically, I don't think you really need them.[/quote]This is something I tried at a much earlier stage, and I had great hopes for it because assigning the job as a kind would have streamlined a great deal of code.  Not just in the current (curiosity) project but many others.
Unhappily this was the result, and I even tried compiling in an otherwise blank project:

[color=#FF0000]Problem. You wrote 'Tom is a male construction worker' , but also 'Dick is a male construction worker'  : that seems to be saying that the same object (shirt) must be in two different places (Tom and Dick). This looks like a contradiction.

..

..

Problem. You wrote 'Tom is a male construction worker'  , but also 'Gertie is a female construction worker'  : that seems to be saying that the same object (boots) must be in two different places (Tom and Gertie). This looks like a contradiction.[/color]

It produced six rows of this error; one for each of the six objects following the first nine because it interprets them as a contradiction.

(Skinny Mike, haven't had a chance tonight to experiment with your suggestion for wrists - I'll need to give that a try tomorrow if I can).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=70#p32088
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-02-22 05:38:24

[quote="thefoxaroo"]It produced six rows of this error; one for each of the six objects following the first nine because it interprets them as a contradiction.[/quote]
That's because in addition you also need to declare the shirt, dungaries, and boots kinds. If you don't, Inform will assume that the shirt, the dungaries, and the boots arnot kinds but three individual objects. This compiles fine:
[code]The Construction Site is a room.

A construction worker is a kind of person.
Tom is a male construction worker in the Construction Site. Dick is a male construction worker in the Construction Site. Gertie is a female construction worker in the Construction Site. 

WorkGarments is a kind of thing.
A shirt is a kind of WorkGarments. Some dungaries are a kind of WorkGarments. Some boots are a kind of WorkGarments. 

Every construction worker wears a shirt. Every construction worker wears dungaries. Every construction worker wears boots. [/code]

The problem with this for your present project (I guess) would be that all three shirts, dungaries, and pairs of boots would be called just "shirt", "dungaries", and "boots"; so there will be no easy way to examine (say) Dick's dungaries in particular.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=70#p32089
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-22 06:52:44

I have some code (mostly borrowed from an example in the Punctuation that will automatically make "Tom's shirt" refer to a shirt worn by Tom, and similarly for anything that's part of Tom or held by Tom (this is the enclosure relation). I'm pasting an unnecessarily long bit under a spoiler tag:

[spoiler][code]"possessions" by Matt Weiner

Section 1 - Of Hats

clothing is kind of thing.
a hat is kind of clothing.
clothing is always wearable.

understand "hat" as a hat.

The fuschia hat is a hat. The bright red hat is a hat. The bright blue hat is a hat. The purple hat is a hat.
The indefinite article of a hat is usually "a". The description of a hat is usually  "It's [indefinite article of the noun] [printed name of the noun].".
				
Section 2 - Of Sticks

The swagger stick is a thing. The description is "It seems confident, if not arrogant." The walking stick is a thing. The description is "Sturdy and mostly straight, it looks like it might help you walk."

Section 3 - Of Noses

A nose is a kind of thing. Every person incorporates a nose. 
The description of a nose is usually "[Random person incorporating the item described][']s nose is noselike."

Section 4 - Of Enclosures

After reading a command:
	let X be indexed text;
	let X be the player's command;
	replace the text "'s" in X with " [']s";
	change the text of the player's command to X;
	say "[line break]". 
	
Understand "[something related by reversed enclosure] 's" as a thing.
Understand "my" as a thing when the player encloses the item described.

Enclosure-querying is an action applying to one thing. Understand "scan [something]" as enclosure-querying. [This is for debugging; you don't want to include it]
Carry out enclosure-querying: say "[list of things enclosed by the noun]."

Section 5 - Scenario

Starter is a room.

Bob and Mike  are men in Starter.

Understand "Robert" as Bob.
Barbie and Sandie are women in Starter.

Bob wears the red hat. Mike wears the blue hat. Barbie wears the fuschia hat. Sandie wears the purple hat. Sandie carries the swagger stick. Mike carries the walking stick. 

Persuasion rule: persuasion succeeds.

Test me with "x bob's hat/x bob's nose/x sandie's stick/bob, drop hat/mike, doff hat/x mike's hat/mike, take hat/x mike's hat/bright blue hat/x mike's blue hat/mike, wear red hat/mike, drop blue hat/take hat/x my hat".
[/code][/spoiler]

I think this works, though there may be some bugs in it and disambiguation might be hinky. However, it probably won't suit your purposes, because I suspect you want "Tom's shirt" to refer to the shirt Tom was wearing even when he's taken it off. To do that, you might try something like the ideas discussed [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=6896#p6896]here[/url] (unfortunately there's a lot of fairly irrelevant back-and-forth in that thread), particularly the "embodiment" relation set with the When play begins rule. (Though you probably want to call it "ownership" and certainly want to set it to anything that the person encloses rather than anything that is part of the person.) 

Of course, at this point a simpler way might just be to manually declare the items as "Tom's shirt" etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4406&start=0#p32090
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [Inform 7] Bypassing Multiple-Noun Prohibitions on ATTAC
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-22 06:57:35

Understanding as a mistake doesn't work because, if you have a [things] token in a mistake line, it'll still print once for each item. So if you have "Understand "attack [things]" as a mistake ("Not yet!")" and you type "attack all," it will print "Not yet!" once for everything in the room. ("The Coming of the Mirthful Messiahs" has a hack to get around this.)

I will now insert some random smilies because my two-year-old is looking over my shoulder and wants to know what they do. [emote]:P[/emote]  [emote]:roll:[/emote]  [emote]:lol:[/emote]  [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=70#p32091
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-22 08:33:10

Matt, I don't think that's necessary in this case because the compiler automatically calls it "Tom's shirt" when it's created. Now if the character were called Tom Jones, then the shirt would be called "Tom Jones's shirt" and you might have to do some work if you wanted it to be called/understood as "Tom's shirt" instead. But if you're not doing that, you should be fine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4409&start=0#p32092
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Ideas for describing NPCs
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-22 08:50:39

I have some code in my WIP that might become an extension, but right now it's too domain-specific. I keep struggling with it because there are always more cases where I'd like it to behave slightly differently. So I present the code here for your use and criticism. Please let me know if this would be helpful to you in something you'd work on, and if you have needs it does not meet, or suggestions for how to meet them, please share. Thanks!

[code]Include Plurality by Emily Short.

Part - Truth States as Phrases

[HT Ron Newcomb]

To decide whether we/there is/are/should/need a/an/the/-- (X - a truth state):
	Decide on whether or not X is true;
	
To decide whether we/there don't/isn't/aren't/shouldn't need/have/-- a/an/the/-- (X - a truth state):
	Decide on whether or not X is false;

Part - Behavior

Behavior of something is an activity on people.

For behavior:
	say "here";
	
Rule for writing a paragraph about a person (called P) when the initial appearance of P is not empty:
	say "[The initial appearance of P] [state of P]."
	
Rule for writing a paragraph about a person (called P):
	say "[A P] [is-are] [state of P]."

Carry out examining a person when the description of the noun is not empty:
	say "[description of the noun] [run paragraph on]";
	if the noun is the player:
		say "[paragraph break]";
		rule succeeds;
		
Carry out examining a person (this is the append behavior to the description rule):
	say "[It's for the noun] [state of the noun].";
	rule succeeds;
	
To say state of (P - a person):
	say "[run paragraph on]";
	carry out the behavior activity with P;

Pronoun enabled is a truth state that varies.

Before behavior:
	Now pronoun enabled is true.
	
To say disable pronoun:
	Now pronoun enabled is false.
	
To say It's for (P - a person):
	if there isn't a pronoun enabled:
		say "[The P] [is-are]";
	otherwise if P acts plural:
		say "They're";
	otherwise if P is neuter:
		say "It's";
	otherwise if P is female:
		say "She's";
	otherwise:
		say "He's";
	
Part - Test Example

Test is a room. Bob is a man in Test. "Your friend Bob is". The description is "Bob is a tall man."

Test me with "x bob"[/code]

My objections:

* I've never been quite happy with the abuse of initial appearance here.

* I've occasionally wanted to rearrange the sentence printed when looking (e.g. "Standing in the corner and examining the ventilation duct, Bob looks somewhat bemused."), and I had to go back to using an overriding rule for printing a paragraph to do that.

* I've been trying to figure out how to manage descriptions of plural people who are sometimes given a collective article, such as "a crowd of people." Any ideas?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=80#p32093
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-22 09:00:35

[quote="thefoxaroo"][quote="capmikee"][quote="capmikee"]My WIP has something similar, but I've put it into an activity called "behavior." I'm not totally happy with it, or I would be working on an extension for it. If you're doing something along the same lines, I might think about an extension more seriously. Maybe start a new thread to discuss this?[/quote]Possibly, although as a raw novice I wouldn't be able to contribute much myself.  Certainly it would be worth attracting opinions, so if you do start a thread on it pls post a link here to the new thread.

I would have expected describing details of NPCs to be sought fairly often, in a game where details of the characters are subject to change.  An example of what I could be doing with the three characters at the construction site is for one to be randomly selected as the murderer, with the telltale signs to be a torn section of their overalls and a pocket bulge where they've stowed the murder weapon.[/quote][/quote]
I forgot about this until today, but now I've posted a thread:

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4409">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4409</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=80#p32094
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-22 09:02:06

[quote="capmikee"]Matt, I don't think that's necessary in this case because the compiler automatically calls it "Tom's shirt" when it's created. Now if the character were called Tom Jones, then the shirt would be called "Tom Jones's shirt" and you might have to do some work if you wanted it to be called/understood as "Tom's shirt" instead. But if you're not doing that, you should be fine.[/quote]

I think that's true of body parts but not of worn things. So "every person incorporates a nose" will create objects called "Tom's nose" and "Bob's nose" but "every person wears a shirt" just creates things called "shirt." At least, that's what happened in the Index when I did a test case.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=80#p32095
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-22 09:07:55

Ahh... you must have discussed that in the last thread about this, but I totally forgot! Bummer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4408&start=0#p32096
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Pirate Kart V: GDC Edition
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-22 10:33:27

This looks pretty fun. I used to make [i]the worst[/i] platform games using Klik & Play, the most impressive involving multi-linear progression, and a bathtub protagonist.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4410&start=0#p32097
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Number agreement in verb and noun
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-22 10:40:00

This is turning out to be trickier than I expected. I'm trying to come up with a system where the indefinite article can indicate a collection, thus turning a plural-named thing into a singular-named thing temporarily. I want it to be flexible so that the indefinite article can change (e.g. with Crowds, where it might be "some" one time and "a big crowd of" another time).

Suppose I tried something like this:

[code]Include Plurality by Emily Short.

Mall is a room.

A thing can be collectively-named.
The collective item is an object that varies.

When play begins: restore plurality to collectives.
After reading a command: restore plurality to collectives.

To restore plurality to collectives:
	Now every collectively-named thing is plural-named;
	Now every collectively-named thing is not collectively-named;
	Now the collective item is nothing.

The shoppers are a plural-named person in Mall. The indefinite article of shoppers is "a [collective]crowd of"

To say collective:
	restore plurality to collectives;
	Now the item described is collectively-named;
	Now the collective item is the item described;
	
Before printing the name of a collectively-named thing (called the set):
	if the set is not the collective item, restore plurality to collectives;
	otherwise now the set is singular-named.
	
For writing a paragraph about a person (called the NPC): say "[An NPC] [is-are] here."

Instead of examining a person: say "[The noun] [is-are] wandering around aimlessly."

test me with "x shoppers"[/code]

This is kind of ugly, but it works in this limited case. I'm not sure how I'd manage this one:

[code]say "There [is-are for the item described] [an item described] here."[/code]

Any ideas?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4280&start=10#p32098
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Salon: Interactivity and narrative are incompatible
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-02-22 11:07:17

[quote="zarf"]It's a running gag among comics fans that, every few years, an article appears with the title "Pow! Bam! Comics aren't just for kids any more!" The article will mention whatever title is currently hot, and then go on to wonder if comics can really escape from its four-color superhero roots.
[/quote]

BTW:  comics by its very name sure has roots in comic strips such as Krazy Kat and Little Nemo.  Caped Crusaders are a later development, basically watered down pulp fiction for teens in the 40's, which BTW were cheap crime stories inspired chiefly by the commercial success of Sherlock Holme's short stories in the turn of the century.  So, you can see Batman is basically Sherlock under a silly bat costume with bralws and battling penguins and clowns.  In a way, the latest Sherlock movies pay Batman a homage.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4404&start=0#p32099
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: room description heading rule firing at scene transition
User: rsmyth / DateTime: 2012-02-22 11:20:43

I can't imagine doing what I'm doing without scenes.  I find them very powerful.  

I haven't heard about I7 issues with scenes and multiple endings.... I don't think I'd call my game a CYOA, on the one hand, but on the other, isn't all IF a kind of CYOA?

I actually solved the problem as I tried to simplify the issue when creating this code snippet:

<CODE BEGIN>

The kitchen is a room.  "A modern-day kitchen."

Hell is a room.  "The way hell is in your imagination."

The table is a supporter in the kitchen.  The description of table is "A wooden table."

The apple is an edible thing in the kitchen.  The banana is an edible thing in the kitchen.

Fruit-salad is a scene.  

Fruit-salad begins when 
	table holds apple and 
	table holds banana.

Report eating apple:
	say "Yummy in the tummy.";
	remove apple from play;
	move player to Hell;
	now the player holds the sword.
		
Fruit-salad ends satanically when apple is off-stage.		

Slaying-Satan is a scene.  Slaying-Satan begins when fruit-salad ends satanically.

sword is a thing. 

the statue of Satan is an open container in Hell.

test fruit-scene with "scenes / take all / put all on table / eat apple"

Every turn during Slaying-Satan:
	say "[one of]Satan, not Simon, says, 'What you got?  Yeah bring it, mutha-&^%$#!'[or]Satan, not Simon, says, 'Pretty slow, aren't you?'[stopping]"
	
Slaying-Satan ends unheroically when Slaying-Satan is happening for three turns.	

Slaying-Satan ends heroically when sword is in statue.

When Slaying-Satan ends unheroically:
	say "Bummer.  You missed your chance to be a hero.";
	remove sword from play;
	move player to kitchen.
	
test scene-transition with "scenes / take all / put all on table / eat apple / x sword"

<CODE END>

It turns out that it had to do with code that stripped player of items and things and saved his location (so that all could be restored after the flashback scene was finished...

Thanks for your input!

--Richard

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4405&start=0#p32100
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: NPC-NPC interaction?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-22 11:36:27

[quote="conradcook"][quote="bcressey"]
He looks for other NPCs in the room. For each NPC...
[/quote]

How do I do that?

[/quote]

forEachInstance?

C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4411&start=0#p32101
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Topic icon variations: +/- yellow ; +/- pulsating
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-02-22 11:41:58

[[All right, this didn't get through the first time, it seems.  Reposting - sorry if this turns up twice.]

In the topic listings, each topic has a small icon to the left, which I suppose represents a sheet of paper.  In most cases this is a white, still sheet, but sometimes it is yellow, and/or pulsating.  What do these variations mean, and how does one (if at all) choose them?

I couldn't find this in the FAQ.  Did I overlook it, or is there another source of information I missed?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4405&start=0#p32102
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: NPC-NPC interaction?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-22 11:52:25

forEachInstance would work but I believe it traverses the entire object tree. Doing this every turn with every NPC in the game might cause a noticeable performance hit. It's the right idea and sometimes you have to do it that way, but it's better if you can restrict the scope of the search.

[code]
+ AgendaItem
	// ...
	invokeItem() {
		local npcs = getActor.getOutermostRoom.contents.subset({obj:
			obj.ofKind(Actor) && obj != getActor
		});
		npcs.forEach({npc: "<<npc.name>> is here with me! " });
		// ...
	}
;
[/code]

It's going to look a bit funny if you're not used to lists and anonymous functions, but the basic idea is that the actor running the AgendaItem looks through the contents of his room to find actors (excluding himself) then does something with each actor he finds.

You can filter out the player character by changing the subset function a bit:
[code]
local npcs = getActor.getOutermostRoom.contents.subset({obj:
	obj.ofKind(Actor) && obj != getActor && obj != gPlayerChar
});
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4412&start=0#p32103
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Curses broken in Zoom 1.1.5
User: stadtgorilla / DateTime: 2012-02-22 11:53:01

Hi,

all of a sudden, without me making any changes, Zoom freezes every time I play Curses on my Mac. Using 10.7.2. It used to work fine before. When I set the preferences to display warnings, I get stuff like

[ Warning: Object 0 has no siblings (PC=#280fd) ][ Warning: Object 0 has no siblings (PC=#28113) ]

right from the beginning of the game. I had a script running when it happened, turned it off, no avail.

If anyone has any idea, much appreciated! Restarting the game now under Spatterlight, seems to work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4411&start=0#p32104
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Topic icon variations: +/- yellow ; +/- pulsating
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-22 12:06:06

White means no new posts in that topic. Yellow means unread posts.

The wiggly icon (in either color) means that it's a "hot topic" which is basically meaningless.

You can change your theme in User Control Panel, Board preferences. Choices are subsilver2 (the default) and prosilver.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4412&start=0#p32105
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Curses broken in Zoom 1.1.5
User: stadtgorilla / DateTime: 2012-02-22 12:13:19

sadly, spatterlight doesn't display the maze correctly, but as i already went through that part, ok...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4405&start=0#p32106
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: NPC-NPC interaction?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-22 12:21:25

Heh.  Looks like heiroglyphics.

Thanks for the code, Ben.


Conrad.

-- Is it possible to do something like this, not with location, but with SenseConnection?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4405&start=0#p32107
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: NPC-NPC interaction?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-22 12:34:23

Yes, by swapping sensePresenceList for getOutermostRoom.contents.

[code]
local npcs = getActor.sensePresenceList(sight).subset({obj:
	obj.ofKind(Actor) && obj != getActor && obj != gPlayerChar
});
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4412&start=0#p32108
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Curses broken in Zoom 1.1.5
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-22 12:52:54

I don't have any trouble (Zoom 1.1.5, OSX 10.7.3).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4412&start=0#p32109
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Curses broken in Zoom 1.1.5
User: stadtgorilla / DateTime: 2012-02-22 12:56:05

thanks. Do you have any idea what those warnings refer to?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4412&start=0#p32110
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Curses broken in Zoom 1.1.5
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-02-22 13:03:35

FYI, [url=http://code.google.com/p/garglk/downloads/list]Gargoyle[/url] is a much better alternative than Spatterlight; the latter hasn't been updated in years.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4412&start=0#p32111
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Curses broken in Zoom 1.1.5
User: stadtgorilla / DateTime: 2012-02-22 13:13:39

[quote="ektemple"]FYI, [url=http://code.google.com/p/garglk/downloads/list]Gargoyle[/url] is a much better alternative than Spatterlight; the latter hasn't been updated in years.[/quote]

thanks, I'll just have to get my head around it, then. I was a bit put off by the fact that I had to write in a configuration file to change fonts etc., but I guess there are worse things. In fact, as a person who dabbles in Inform7, the handling of a text editor wouldn't be too much to ask for, right [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=320#p32112
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: stadtgorilla / DateTime: 2012-02-22 13:43:07

Hi,

I'm from Munich, Germany. Apart from having a job, I also do a little more interesting stuff like making music or organizing events. Yeah, and that text adventure stuff. I did not play a lot of the Infocom games back then (too young) but remember them fondly. I only really got into the new scene when we decided to do a screening of GET LAMP in Munich. I wrote a little very bad game that played at the event together with a friend (some of you might remember), we wrote a sequel to it that was a little better (in German this time), and now we're in the middle of secret project#1, meeting every Thursday to play and or program, very interested in what's going on here, there and everywhere.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=120#p32113
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-02-22 13:43:07

Metal Gear Solid is interactive and is also fiction.  It's also far better than Zombie whatever.

You should play parser-based games on keyboard rather than complain that non-parser-based games should be IF so that you can play "IF" on your non-keyboard device.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4412&start=0#p32114
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Curses broken in Zoom 1.1.5
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-22 14:21:41

My first guess is that Zoom is reading a corrupted game file, somehow. Maybe the cached copy in "~/Documents/Interactive Fiction"?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4280&start=10#p32115
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Salon: Interactivity and narrative are incompatible
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-22 14:40:43

[quote="namekuseijin"][...] cheap crime stories inspired chiefly by the commercial success of Sherlock [...][/quote]

Secondarily. The largest influence on pulp-[i]crime[/i] stories were pulp-[i]western[/i] stories which immediately preceded and overlapped with them in terms of commercial success. In fact, a significant number stories [i]published [/i]as crime by pulp-crime magazines had been submitted to the editors [i]as [/i]westerns, then re-purposed to fit the changing needs of the publishers. Just as "space opera" descended from "horse opera," so too did the hardboiled pulps.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4280&start=10#p32116
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Salon: Interactivity and narrative are incompatible
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-02-22 14:41:27

[quote]How about a suspense book with quiet music in the background, that seamlessly transitions to a darker tone when you get to the really suspenseful part?[/quote]

Isn't this more or less what [url=http://booktrack.com]booktrack[/url] does? I haven't tried it... Does it actually work or is it just annoying?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4412&start=0#p32117
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Curses broken in Zoom 1.1.5
User: stadtgorilla / DateTime: 2012-02-22 14:53:57

I have now deleted the cached copy and set the preferences so Zoom does not organise the games by itself. Then opened a fresh curses.z5 from my desktop. I still get the warnings, but the game does not seem to freeze after a couple of turns, and I could restore my old savegame. I'll have to try if I can reproduce the freeze by turning the organising back on. Will report back.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3529&start=20#p32118
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment update: ifvms.js ZVM new default engine
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-02-22 15:03:46

All right, with a HUGE stress on "preudo".  Thinking in Scheme and currently programming in Lua probably makes for a weird parody of JS, and not knowing the Z-machine VM may make the whole proposal unapplicable.  

I assume, possibly wrongly, that the VM code looks somewhat like:
[code]
Label1: (* Probably line numbers are used, but put an L before them and they become legal JS function names *)
   Do a
   Do b
   ...
   Do c
   Goto Label2
Label3:
  Do d
  Do e
  if F goto Label3 end
  Do g
  Do h
  Goto Label4 (* Or at some point there is an end instruction, or we simply run off the end of the code *)
[/code]
The level 1 translation of this is a switch; the level 2 translation - I understand - a set of mutually recursive functions:
[code]
function Label1() {
  <Do a>
  <Do b>
  ...
  <Do c>
  Label2()
}

function Label3() {
  <Do e>
  <Do f>
  if (F) Label3()
  else {
    <Do g>
    <Do h>
    Label4()
    }
}
[/code]
If the ZVM has subroutine calls, they will translate in non-tail calls, and use the JS call stack.  Also, it may be useful to pass a standard set of arguments around (which doesn't affect my point).  There may be elected jump targets ([i]goto targets[j][/i]), but this assumes there are no freely computed ones.  Am I correct so far?
Now this approach with functions is a show stopper on both sides.  For you, because you cannot create one huge function, because that would mean once-for-all compilation instead of JIT, and for SJ, because it cannot get rid of those function calls.  JS being an imperative language, the function definitions might change at ny time, so it must go through the environment lookup process for each call.

With once-for-all compilation, one might wrap the whole collection of functions up, thus:
[code]
function play() {
  var Label1 = function() {
    ...
  }

  var Label3 = function() {
    ...
  }
  ...
  
  Label1()
}
[/code]
Now JS ought to be able to deduce that there is no assignment to any LabelN variable, nor a general eval or other spoilgame, so the values of the function variables will never change, and therefore function calls can be translated into direct jumps to the code.

Does that make things clearer, or only more muddled?  Or am y clearly muddled?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4372&start=10#p32119
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: 2 stupid questions
User: KellyJ / DateTime: 2012-02-22 15:09:30

Ahh that makes sense  [emote]:D[/emote] 
I had making the sightSize to large on the alarm clock but that still gave me the message 'You can’t hear any detail from this distance' after the normal description, ideally I wanted to give a custom description since obviously not all the objects would be visible from the bathroom (the wardrobe for one, which I could easily just make a small object and I thought the bedside cabinet being obscured by the bed would be a nice touch) rather than 'you can't make out any detail. But it buzzes loudly'.  

Thankies I didn't think of looking for a distant desc x

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=40#p32120
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-02-22 16:19:35

[quote="I4L"]If you throw up something like "Play this game and get the secret code to register", normal users are going to balk.[/quote]
Don't worry - I consider the proposal duly enterred.  If people don't like it it is a bad idea.  The following is just about correcting the spelling on the epitaph.
[quote="I4L"]Spammers are going to have one person play the game and share the secret code with their coworkers.[/quote]
My idea was rather to have a set of tiny IFs, chosen by a random number generator seeded with the proposed login name, giving access to exactly that name (maybe with a code valid for that name, I hadn't thought of that way to do do it).  Once such a name were barred, one would have to play a probably different game again to get a new code for a new name.  And all randomness within the game would be different too, as the generator would be differently seeded.  So no sharing of results, or even of walkthroughs, would be useful.
The deeper idea behind it was that once the number of links publishable per hour falls below a certain treshhold, spamming would become unprofitable - or at the least less profitable than spamming elsewhere.
No puzzles would be needed (it might even provide an introduction to, say, the BB rules and mores), just a time delay that would be annoying/profit-killing to spammers but enjoyable by IF aficionados.  And that latter part is exactly why the idea is dead: it seems people [i]wouldn't[/i] enjoy it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4412&start=0#p32121
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Curses broken in Zoom 1.1.5
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-22 16:41:13

Okay. The freeze and the warnings are probably separate issues. I have some vague memory that Curses really does some illegal object access. (Dannii, were you the one who noticed this?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3529&start=20#p32122
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment update: ifvms.js ZVM new default engine
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-22 17:03:26

[quote="Biep"]Now JS ought to be able to deduce that there is no assignment to any LabelN variable, nor a general eval or other spoilgame, so the values of the function variables will never change, and therefore function calls can be translated into direct jumps to the code.[/quote]

I can't speak to whether it's possible for a JS interpreter to translate function calls to jumps, but it doesn't seem like any of them currently do.

I added your scenario to the jsperf benchmarks I made a while back:
<a class="postlink" href="http://jsperf.com/case-inside-loop/6">http://jsperf.com/case-inside-loop/6</a>

It's slightly better than the other functional approach I tried, but not by much.

I've been pleasantly surprised by the performance of a switch statement inside a labeled for(;;) loop. It's something I came up with trying to optimize away the conditional branch from the while statement.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4408&start=0#p32123
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Pirate Kart V: GDC Edition
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2012-02-22 17:07:08

Six Chamber Champion ([url]http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=51cecsp6oqvyxmvn[/url]) came from one of these events, and it's the kind of Speed IF I'd not be embarrassed to show my mum.

[quote="JoeyJones"]This looks pretty fun. I used to make [i]the worst[/i] platform games using Klik & Play, the most impressive involving multi-linear progression, and a bathtub protagonist.[/quote]

Hehehe... I started work on what I thought would be a good platformer with K+P, but my ambitions outstripped its abilities (at least in my head) after one screen. Its physics are so generous to all objects in the game that it's hard to constrain characters to ladders and platforms.

I've got the one screen I did preserved on Youtube in all its 11 second glory:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P2pg2RlmFQ&feature=channel">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P2pg2Rl ... re=channel</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4388&start=0#p32124
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Weighed random list
User: pashaimeru / DateTime: 2012-02-22 18:04:48

Aye, thanks a ton. Everything seems to be running smoothly right now. Let me ask another question when I'm at it.

I'm using VictorGijsbers's (Thanks for the help again) ATTACK plugin, and I'm sorta curious as to how to force a combat to start. Like, let's say something in the room the player is in turns hostile as a result of his action, such as picking up an item or whatever: if I just do it through "now x is hostile", the actual combat itself doesn't start until an action is performed, like the player waiting or trying to exit the room or such. How do I do it properly?

Also, I'm a little confused about replacing rules. How would I go about changing "killing X/you" to "defeating X/you" in ATTACK?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4413&start=0#p32125
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Advanced verbRules, and Scope
User: letrazzrot / DateTime: 2012-02-22 18:09:51

New here, hello all.

I've been delving into T3 now for a few days, and still have a couple questions I haven't been able to crack.  The first involves verbRules, and isn't so much a problem but more of a curiousity.

I created my own Tie to rules to give it the same general behavior as Attach To, but only for specific objects.  Copying from the source, I came up with this:

[code]
VerbRule(TieTo)
    'tie' singleDobj 'to' singleIobj
    : TieToAction
    askIobjResponseProd = toSingleNoun
    verbPhrase = 'tie/tying (what) (to what)'
;

VerbRule(TieToWhat)
    [badness 500] 'tie' dobjList
    : TieToAction
    verbPhrase = 'tie/tying (what) (to what)'
    construct()
    {
        /* set up the empty indirect object phrase */
        iobjMatch = new EmptyNounPhraseProd();
        iobjMatch.responseProd = toSingleNoun;
    }
;
[/code]

Seems to work fine, but I am curious what the following lines mean, or if they are important:
[code]
askIobjResponseProd = toSingleNoun...
[badness 500]...
iobjMatch...
[/code]

Even reading through the ref, I still don't get it, and I'm wondering I missed some documentation for this somewhere, or if the source is the best place to search for an answer and I should just suck it up and delve in  [emote]:)[/emote] 

The second (completely unrelated) question involves what I would call scope (although that may not be the technically correct term).  I've noticed that after examining object(s), you can refer to them subsequently as "it" or "them".  I think it would be swell to allow the player to do the same after revealing hidden objects in certain cases - but I have no idea where to look for programmatically setting objects to be referred to in this way.

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4408&start=0#p32126
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Pirate Kart V: GDC Edition
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-22 19:02:27

Oh wow, that's way more smooth than I ever managed. I recognise the Amazon sprite and those sound effects! I think I'd like to make a graphical game one day, but the amount of work needed even for something simple is staggering.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4413&start=0#p32127
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Advanced verbRules, and Scope
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-22 19:08:31

[quote="letrazzrot"]
[code]
VerbRule(TieTo)
    'tie' singleDobj 'to' singleIobj
    : TieToAction
    askIobjResponseProd = toSingleNoun
    verbPhrase = 'tie/tying (what) (to what)'
;
[/code]
[/quote]

This defines your basic rule to support ">tie X to Y". It will also allow the ">tie X to" syntax, and the askIobjResponseProd statement means that in this case, if the player omits the indirect object and the parser asks him to pick one, you want to treat the response as a noun, rather than a topic or a literal or whatever.

(toSingleNoun is the default value for [url=http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/libref/source/action.t.html#4054]askIobjResponseProd[/url] so this line can be omitted.)

However, this verb rule does not cover ">tie" or ">tie X". The player will be told that the story doesn't understand that command, which isn't what we want at all. We just want him to be more specific. For that we need...

[quote="letrazzrot"]
[code]
VerbRule(TieToWhat)
    [badness 500] 'tie' dobjList
    : TieToAction
    verbPhrase = 'tie/tying (what) (to what)'
    construct()
    {
        /* set up the empty indirect object phrase */
        iobjMatch = new EmptyNounPhraseProd();
        iobjMatch.responseProd = toSingleNoun;
    }
;
[/code]
[/quote]

Here you've noticed the [badness 500] before the syntax. What this means is that we never want to use this rule in place of the "real" TieTo rule, even though ">tie X to Y" could theoretically be parsed as ">tie X [with some stuff the parser ignores]" and match this rule instead.

This is what covers the ">tie" input: if the player enters that, he'll be asked what he wants to tie. If the player types "X", or if he enters something like ">tie X", he's satisfied the parameters of this rule. All it wants is a verb and a direct object. So the rule is ready to create the action.

But wait! TieToAction requires both a direct and an indirect object. If we jump straight to it, TieToAction will try to access properties of an indirect object that doesn't exist, and we'll get a nil reference error.

That's where the construct() function comes in. It's saying, when you first set up this VerbRule, give it a placeholder for the indirect object. That placeholder is EmptyNounPhraseProd, because this particular rule can't ever match input that includes an indirect object - otherwise it would have matched our first rule. EmptyNounPhraseProd is a cue to the parser to go back to the player and ask him to pick something.

The next line tells it to treat whatever the player types as a single noun. This covers the same ground as askIobjResponseProd = toSingleNoun did in our first rule, except it was optional there and it's required here. By default, [url=http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/libref/source/parser.t.html#4084]EmptyNounPhraseProd.responseProd[/url] is nil, so if we don't supply a value we'll get another nil reference error.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4413&start=0#p32128
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Advanced verbRules, and Scope
User: letrazzrot / DateTime: 2012-02-22 20:50:25

Thanks, that was an amazingly helpful post!  Also, digging through the source has been somewhat revealing on my second question - I think I've narrowed it down to having to do with setPronoun(), but I still need to figure out to make it work.  I'll keep hunting, the source is actually very well documented and easy to follow (although pretty daunting at first!).

Thanks again

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4413&start=0#p32129
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Advanced verbRules, and Scope
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-22 21:56:05

You're on the right track. setPronoun takes a list of ResolveInfo objects, which are wrappers that the parser uses for in-game objects. If you drill into the code you see that it eventually calls setPronounObj with the actual object; we can skip straight there since we're doing this outside the parsing sequence.

[code]
+ desk: Surface, Heavy 'desk' 'desk'
	"Just another desk. "

	dobjFor(Search) {
		action() {
			"You find a top secret report! ";
			report.discover;
			gActor.setPronounObj(report);
		}
	}
;

++ report: Hidden 'top secret report' 'report'
	"Just another report. "
;
[/code]

Alternatively, if you want this behavior for all hidden objects that get discovered:

[code]
modify Hidden
	discover() {
		inherited;
		gPlayerChar.setPronounObj(self);
	}
;
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=120#p32130
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-02-22 23:04:58

S. John, just to be clear: that was my point. Deciding whether to vote for any particular game in parser or choice categories will be obvious in the vast majority of cases. And if there are any particular games that happen to fit in both categories somehow, just let them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3529&start=20#p32131
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment update: ifvms.js ZVM new default engine
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-02-22 23:07:53

Biep, thanks for the more detailed explanation.

Branches and jumps really aren't that big of a problem, and my solution of identifying idioms is quite successful. It doesn't catch every branch, but that just means I need to add more idioms. There are other solutions which account for every branch, some of which Ben has in his benchmark. Your example with functions for branches seems more convoluted than these, and doesn't look like an improvement to me. Note however that jump addresses can be calculated at run time (though normally they are constant addresses), you can jump to another function, and you can jump/call code in RAM, which allows for dynamic code generation. I don't know anyone who uses that functionality though.

What you don't seem to have accounted for is that we need to manage the VM's call stack ourselves, because we need to be able to serialise it (when we save) as well as to halt in the middle of a function when we request input. These function calls are the real show stopper, because it means that we must run a function to add a stack frame, drop back to the main VM loop, and then run the new function. Function acceleration is a way of taking a short cut - it allows us to directly run a very limited set of functions which we know we can safely run off the VM call stack. I have started experimenting with doing the same for potentially any function, but it's still a long way off being ready (or even being as fast as it is now), and it's not a high priority for me.

I'm not sure if once-for-all compilation would be an improvement, or if it's even possible. But for browsers with support for Web Workers, we could compile functions in advance while waiting for the user's input. Shouldn't be too hard to add once Worker support is added.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=120#p32132
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-22 23:43:42

[quote="peterorme"]S. John, just to be clear: that was my point. Deciding whether to vote for any particular game in parser or choice categories will be obvious in the vast majority of cases. And if there are any particular games that happen to fit in both categories somehow, just let them.[/quote]

I got that, but that it's easy to[i] tell the difference[/i] between a game with a parser and a game without one doesn't sell me on the [i]value [/i]of separating them in this context. Lots of silly things are easy.

That said, selling [i]me [/i]on the value of it is irrelevant, since it's not up to me. But I think it's a terrible notion.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4412&start=0#p32133
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Curses broken in Zoom 1.1.5
User: stadtgorilla / DateTime: 2012-02-23 03:41:07

Just for the record: The freeze did not break Zoom completely, i just couldn't enter commands at the prompt anymore. Ic could close the game and open it anew.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3787&start=70#p32134
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Not-Quite-A-Review: The Baron (2006)
User: stadtgorilla / DateTime: 2012-02-23 04:36:56

the word "cripple" should be a no-go amongst literary people I should add.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4412&start=10#p32135
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Curses broken in Zoom 1.1.5
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-02-23 06:03:07

Zarf: Wasn't me. Nor have I found Curses to be problematic with my ZVM, and I haven't got any fixes for illegal access either.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4411&start=0#p32136
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Topic icon variations: +/- yellow ; +/- pulsating
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-02-23 06:35:53

Thanks!  Would it be a good idea to add this info to the FAQ?
And off-topic: is there a way to avoid being logged off automatically by extended inactivity?  I [b]do[/b] have the "log me in automatically" box checked, but I don't see a box for "keep me logged in".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3529&start=20#p32137
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment update: ifvms.js ZVM new default engine
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-02-23 07:31:27

[quote="Dannii"]Your example with functions for branches seems more convoluted than these, and doesn't look like an improvement to me. Note however that jump addresses can be calculated at run time (though normally they are constant addresses), you can jump to another function, and you can jump/call code in RAM, which allows for dynamic code generation. I don't know anyone who uses that functionality though.[/quote]
Freely computed jump addresses kills the idea, of course.  Using the equivalence of tail calls and goto's is a time-honoured technique in Scheme compilation, basically starting with the paper "Lambda, the ultimate GOTO".  JS being very close to Scheme, it seemed a natural approach.

Another, slightly younger, technique is compiling with continuations.
[quote="Dannii"]What you don't seem to have accounted for is that we need to manage the VM's call stack ourselves, because we need to be able to serialise it (when we save) as well as to halt in the middle of a function when we request input.[/quote]
And yes, save/restore is equivalent to call/cc in Scheme, which JS doesn't have.  So indeed, whenever intermediate saving would be possible, subroutine calls ought to manage their own call stack.  I don't quite see the problem with IO, though - simply calling a blocking IO procedure and afterwards continuing would deal with that, wouldn't it?

But again, I am badly informed, and local circumstances conspire to keep it that way [emote]:-)[/emote]. (Living in Bénin, West-Africa, I have a very intermittent Internet connection with an average throughput of 200 bytes/second, so e.g. visiting the site where bcressey put my code has so far only resulted in frustration.  Opening a web page may take scores of attempts, either the DNS server or the site not being reached, or the connection being interrrupted halfway.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3529&start=30#p32138
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment update: ifvms.js ZVM new default engine
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-02-23 08:16:44

[quote]And yes, save/restore is equivalent to call/cc in Scheme, which JS doesn't have. So indeed, whenever intermediate saving would be possible, subroutine calls ought to manage their own call stack.[/quote]
call/cc seems like a kind of mix of throw/catch and yield (or instead, using yield to implement throw/catch). Now changing ZVM to use yield would actually be an interesting thing to try... but it's not supported enough to become our solution. Even if we did use yield it wouldn't help convert the JS call stack to one we can store in a save file.

And we have to assume that any function could potentially be on the call stack when we serialise it, until we can prove that a particular function won't be. The experiment I mentioned before is a start to solving that challenge by gradually marking functions as safe and unsafe, marking one as safe when all its dependent functions are also safe (and marking others as unsafe if any of theirs are unsafe). These safe functions then can be run directly, without add a frame to the call stack. But it's not easy, and at the moment it's slower than the current codebase.

[quote]I don't quite see the problem with IO, though - simply calling a blocking IO procedure and afterwards continuing would deal with that, wouldn't it?[/quote]Are you suggesting that we run a loop and poll for input? Because that's never going to happen, the performance would be terrible.

A cleaner VM design might have been to have the VM completely empty its call stack before looking for input events, and when we receive one then run an event handler function. But we're stuck with what we have.

[quote]But again, I am badly informed, and local circumstances conspire to keep it that way . (Living in Bénin, West-Africa, I have a very intermittent Internet connection with an average throughput of 200 bytes/second, so e.g. visiting the site where bcressey put my code has so far only resulted in frustration. Opening a web page may take scores of attempts, either the DNS server or the site not being reached, or the connection being interrrupted halfway.)[/quote]Ahh, I understand, I live in PNG and get on the net using my phone's 2G connection. It's never that slow, though sometimes it's only a little more than 1kb/s. I have a tightly controlled list of websites allowed to load images of scripts - this forum has made the cut for scripts but not for images haha.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=130#p32139
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-23 09:41:25

[quote="Laroquod"]We must be able to separate daffodil-like things from carburetor-like things, or else we couldn't fix cars.[/quote]
[img]http://www.oldtimernederland.nl/Modelfoto/daf-daffodil.jpg[/img]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4410&start=0#p32140
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Number agreement in verb and noun
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2012-02-23 10:17:03

You can write something like this:
[code]To say is-are for the shoppers:[/code]

But that's even uglier.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4414&start=0#p32141
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: getting "enter" to use DTPM rules?
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-02-23 11:25:02

Can you help me figure this out?

[code]
The lab is a room. 

bed is an enterable supporter in the lab.
chair is an enterable supporter in the lab.

does the player mean entering the bed: it is very unlikely.
does the player mean entering the chair: it is very likely.
[/code]

Given the above code, "enter" will make you enter the bed (ignoring the DTPM), and "sit" will make you enter the chair. I get how the enter works - it uses the "find what to enter" rule which simply enters the first enterable thing in the room ("if something enterable (called the box) is in the location"), but how does the "sit" work? And is there a way to get the enter command (without a noun) to follow the DTPM rules? Is there any particular reason it doesn't do this already? 

FWIW, you can turn the enter rule off with [code]The find what to enter rule is not listed in the for supplying a missing noun rulebook.[/code].

Thanks...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4414&start=0#p32142
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: getting "enter" to use DTPM rules?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-23 12:05:22

I'm not sure what you're asking. "Sit" follows the DTPM rules.

"Enter" is different because the standard rules contain the line:

Understand "enter" as entering.

Entering takes a noun, so this form triggers the "supplying a missing noun" activity, and the find what to enter rule is in that rulebook.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4414&start=0#p32143
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: getting "enter" to use DTPM rules?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-02-23 12:42:49

So, what you can  do is add a for supplying a missing noun rule that takes precedence over the find what to enter rule under given circumstances:
[code]
The Lab is a room.

A bed is an enterable supporter in the Lab.
A chair is an enterable supporter in the Lab.

Does the player mean entering the bed: it is very unlikely.
Does the player mean entering the chair: it is very likely.

For supplying a missing noun while entering in the Lab: now the noun is the chair.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4411&start=0#p32144
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Topic icon variations: +/- yellow ; +/- pulsating
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-23 13:32:30

I stay logged in here forever, as long as I don't wipe the site cookies.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4415&start=0#p32145
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: How do I use Plurality by Emily Short?
User: Superjax / DateTime: 2012-02-23 13:36:11

Hi everyone,

I'm making a text adventure with Inform 7, and I've included Plurality, however, I don't exactly know what it does [emote]:oops:[/emote] . Could someone tell me what it does and how to use it?

Thanks,
Superjax

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4411&start=0#p32146
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Topic icon variations: +/- yellow ; +/- pulsating
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-23 13:54:03

The FAQ is just a standard phpBB document. It probably won't be modified because it would be one more thing to babysit during an upgrade.

Also you may be the first person to have read it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4410&start=0#p32147
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Number agreement in verb and noun
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-23 14:10:07

I've been messing around with this, and rolled my ideas into an extension I was using for "infinite" numbers:

<a class="postlink" href="http://eyeballsun.org/i/Approximate%20Numbers.i7x">http://eyeballsun.org/i/Approximate%20Numbers.i7x</a>

I borrowed heavily from Plurality, to extend the concept of "ambiguously plural." Now the ambiguously plural property combines with the plural-named property for more nuance. An ambiguously plural thing will still be treated as singular if it's referred to using the definite object. But you can make it plural-named if you want that. The choice is between:

indefinite article: "a murder of" + plural-named noun: "crows"

and:

indefinite article: "a" + singular-named noun: "murder of crows" 

I ended up needing three new variables: The current naming style, the collectively named noun, and pending naming override. The current naming style says whether we are going to treat an object as singular in the text. The collectively named noun says what that object is, and the pending naming override is a truth state that keeps track of whether we've actually said that object's name yet. It's needed so we can declare that something will be collective before we've actually said what it is, and then after we're done with it, we know to go back to treating it normally.

This handled the normal indefinite article case pretty neatly, but I still had to do some hacking for the case where the verb comes first. In that case we have to assume that all ambiguously plural nouns should be treated as singular.

In all cases, I assume that ordinarily enumerated plural-named things always have plural verbs, even if the "[collective]" phrase is invoked.

[code]Book - Collective Plurality

Section - Resolving Ambiguous Plurality

Plurality style is a kind of value. The plurality styles are normal, collective, and truly plural.

The current naming style is a plurality style that varies. The collectively named noun is an object that varies. Pending naming override is a truth state that varies.

After reading a command: reset the plurality style to normal.

To reset the plurality style to (new style - a plurality style):
	Now the collectively named noun is nothing;
	Unless the new style is normal, now pending naming override is true;
	Now the current naming style is the new style.

To say normal plurality style: reset the plurality style to normal;

To say collective: reset the plurality style to collective;

To say truly plural: reset the plurality style to truly plural;

To update plurality of (target - a thing):
	now the prior named noun is the target;
	if pending naming override is true, now the collectively named noun is the target;

After printing the name of an object (this is the naming is no longer pending rule):
	If pending naming override is false, reset the plurality style to normal;
	Now pending naming override is false.

Section - Tracking Last Item (in place of Section 1 - Tracking Last Item in Plurality by Emily Short)
 
[unchanged text omitted]

After printing the name of something (called the target) (this is the notice plurality of printed object rule): 
	mark target in output.

The notice plurality of printed object rule is listed before the naming is no longer pending rule in the after printing the name rulebook.

To mark (target - a thing) in output:
	update plurality of the target;
	if the target acts plural or target is the player, mark-future-plural; 
	otherwise mark-future-singular;
    
To decide whether (item - an object) acts plural:
	if the collectively named noun is not the prior named noun, now the collectively named noun is nothing;
	if the item is the collectively named noun and the item is ambiguously plural:
		if the current naming style is collective, no;
		if the current naming style is truly plural, yes;
	if the item is plural-named, yes;
	no.

Section - Verbs (in place of Section 2 - Verbs in Plurality by Emily Short)

To say is-are of (item - a thing):
	update plurality of item;
	if prior named noun acts plural or the prior named noun is the player, say "are"; otherwise say "is".

To say is-are a/an (item - a thing):
	say "[collective][is-are of item] [an item]";

To say Is-are of (item - a thing):
	update plurality of the item;
	if prior named noun acts plural or the prior named noun is the player, say "Are"; otherwise say "Is".

[For some reason putting an a/an alternation in this phrase causes the lowercase phrase to be clobbered]

To say Is-are an (item - a thing):
	say "[collective][Is-are of item] [an item]";

To say Is-are a (item - a thing):
	say Is-are an item;[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4415&start=0#p32148
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do I use Plurality by Emily Short?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2012-02-23 14:20:35

[quote="Superjax"]Hi everyone,

I'm making a text adventure with Inform 7, and I've included Plurality, however, I don't exactly know what it does [emote]:oops:[/emote] . Could someone tell me what it does and how to use it?[/quote]

Plurality offers a lot of handy functionality having to do with inflection and pronouns of objects. For instance, say you want to write a rule which prints a response, but you want the same rule to work both with a singular-named thing ("the shoe") and a plural-named thing ("the pants").

[code]After taking something:
	say "([the noun])[line break]";
	say "You pick ";
	if the noun is singular-named, say "it";
	otherwise say "them";
	say " up with a smile."[/code]

With Plurality, you could simply say this:

[code]After taking something:
	say "([the noun])[line break]";
	say "You pick [it-them] up with a smile."[/code]

Plurality offers a bunch of useful phrases in that vein. It's a really neat extension.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3600&start=0#p32149
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Meanwhile by zarf
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-02-23 14:20:39

what about android? [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4414&start=0#p32150
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: getting "enter" to use DTPM rules?
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-02-23 14:37:53

Oh, now I get it. Thanks zarf, spot on as always, this is exactly what I didn't get: 
[code]
The lab is a room. 

Retting is an action applying to one thing. Understand "ret [something]" as retting.

Carry out retting: 
	say "Boy, you retted that [noun].";

The pad is a thing in the lab. The nob is a thing in the lab.

Does the player mean retting the pad: it is very likely.

Understand "ret" as retting.
[/code]

Perhaps not entirely intuitively, that last line means that just typing "ret" by itself will [i]not[/i] work - because now you have to supply a noun! If you remove it, the DTPM will kick in. 

OK, bonus question: Is there a way to somehow write a "Rule for supplying a missing noun while an actor retting" so it will "abide by the does the player mean rule" - or something like that? Or can you get the likelyhood of meaning a particular thing programmatically? 

At this point I am honestly not really trying to achieve anything in particular, except perhaps enlightenment. 

Och tack, Felix!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4415&start=0#p32151
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do I use Plurality by Emily Short?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-23 15:09:13

Normally I wouldn't recommend referring to the [i]Treasures [/i]source code for anything, because it's a hackish mess ... but it does make pretty extensive use of Plurality for generic responses (because it depends, more than many games, on generic rather than specific stuff). You can download it from the IFDB at:

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=8upuvdnsk4sho6ac">http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=8upuvdnsk4sho6ac</a>

If you do a search in the source for things like[b] [it-they][/b], you'll see the juice. To skip to some of that right here, here's the game's code for generically describing something:

[code]Chapter of the Description Library

The description of a thing is usually "[one of][GDSC1][or][GDSC2][or][GDSC3][or][GDSC4][or][GDSC5][or][GDSC6][or][GDSC7][or][GDSC8][in random order][run paragraph on]".
   To say GDSC1: say "You [cotton] nothing [one of]unusual[or]remarkable[or]special[in random order] about the [noun].";
   To say GDSC2: say "It[']s [one of]just[or]only[in random order] [a noun][one of], but [it-they] hath a certain charm[or], like any other[or], with all that entails[in random order].";
   To say GDSC3: say "It[']s the finest example of [a noun] you[']ve seen since you were enslaved.";
   To say GDSC4: say "[Cap it-they of the noun] remind[s] you of [a noun] from your childhood.";
   To say GDSC5: say "Now that you mention it, [it-they] really [is-are] a [italic type][one of]sinister[or]peculiar[or]perplexing[or]menacing[or]foreboding[or]mysterious[in random order][roman type] example of [a noun].";
   To say GDSC6: say "[Cap it-they of the noun] remind[s] you of the old [one of]folktale about[or]legend of[or]tavern tale about[or]fable of[in random order] the [one of]maiden[or]Warlock[or]clever farmer[or]crone[or]scholar[or]beggar[or]brave youth[or]pickpocket[or]ASTEROID WORM[in random order], the [noun], and the [one of]razing of GOD CITY[or]murder of the FIRST HOBLING EMPEROR[or]rise of DARTH VIRAXIS[or]the fall of the SKY-MONSTERS from the GALAXY[or]naughty vicar[or]tragic end of the AGE OF LEGENDS[in random order].";
   To say GDSC7: say "You can[']t see any [noun] here![paragraph break]Oh, wait, there [it-they] [is-are].";[ Perfectly ordinary [noun].";]
   To say GDSC8: say "As you look upon [the noun], you can[']t escape the feeling that [the noun] [is-are] [one of]examining [i]you[n] in return[or]concealing something[or]showing off a bit[or]familiar to you[or]gently infused with SORCERY beyond barbaric understanding[in random order].";

The description of a person is usually "[one of]You [cotton] nothing exotic, enthralling, sexy or unusual about [the noun], at least by barbarian standards.[or]You [cotton] nothing about [the noun] that you would consider a threat.[or]If thou hast seen one [noun], thou hast seen them all.[cycling]"

To say cotton: say "[one of]see[or]espy[or]notice[or]sense[or]detect[in random order]";
[/code]

Being able to do stuff like [b][Cap it-they of the noun][/b] saves an enormous amount of hair-pulling.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4415&start=0#p32152
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do I use Plurality by Emily Short?
User: Superjax / DateTime: 2012-02-23 15:12:15

Thanks!

How do you use [is-are] properly?

I've been trying to make it so that when you shoot something with a gun, it will be able to tell the difference between plural and singlular:

[code]Carry out shooting something with something: 
	say "[If the noun is a person]Krak! [the noun] falls to the ground dead.
	 [Else]Krak! The [noun] [is-are] shot to pieces.";
	 remove the noun from play.[/code]

I have been testing this out on some roses:

[code]In the Garden are some objects called roses.
Understand "rose" as roses.[/code]

However when i shoot the roses in game, it says this:

[code]>shoot roses
        (with the ECS Rifle)
        Krak! The roses is shot to pieces.[/code]

Amazing grammar, eh?

How would I fix this?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4414&start=0#p32153
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: getting "enter" to use DTPM rules?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-23 15:17:21

Parsing is by far the hardest part of writing in I7. Figuring out when you need Understand, DTPM, supplying a missing noun, or action redirections can be hellish even for experienced programmers.

Some principles I use:

Add this rule whenever you're curious what DTPM is doing:

[code]First does the player mean: showme the current action.[/code]

When using DTPM, you have to think of [i]every[/i] possible action that could lead to the end result. With things like conversation and combat, where a very large number of actions count as more or less the same thing at various times, it helps to define kinds of action to group them together.

Supplying a missing noun can sometimes be the way to go, but I've found that it can sometimes be more trouble than it's worth. In certain cases, it makes more sense to define a separate action with nouns left out, which can then be redirected to a more specific action. One thing to beware of when supplying a missing noun (and processing DTPM) is that some of the nouns might be set to "nothing" when your rule fires. If you use the "something" token in the rule condition, it won't fire when that noun is nothing. It's even worse when you use "Understand" lines for nouns - usually the action isn't even set at that point. Action redirection gives you an advantage in these cases, because by the time you have to deal with the player's intent, all information that could be extracted from the command has already been placed in the action's variables.

Rule order can make a difference. Use the "rules" debugging command, or trawl through the Index for the relevant rulebooks to see how rules are actually ordered.

The Index is also useful for figuring out how grammar works. In the "actions" tab, click "actions A-Z" to see a full list of grammar lines and verb synonyms.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4415&start=0#p32154
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do I use Plurality by Emily Short?
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-23 15:26:57

[code]The roses are plural-named.[/code] ought do it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4415&start=0#p32155
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do I use Plurality by Emily Short?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-23 15:31:56

If you type "showme roses" or if you look into the World tab of the Index, you'll see that the roses are singular-named. I don't know how the compiler guesses whether an object should be singular or plural, but you can always tell it:

[code]The roses are plural-named.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4415&start=0#p32156
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How do I use Plurality by Emily Short?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-02-23 15:38:23

Apparently the word "some" tells the compiler that the thing is plural, so this works:

[code]Some roses are in the garden.[/code]
...but apparently not with the "some things called" structure. My guess is that "called X" stops the compiler from guessing anything about the thing in question.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3600&start=10#p32157
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Meanwhile by zarf
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-23 15:52:55

Not currently.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4416&start=0#p32158
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Clash of the Type-ins
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2012-02-23 16:10:43

Man have you heard about this playfic.com thing? I think it's amazing. I mean, there's not a [i]whole[/i] lot to it, but I feel like it'll function/is functioning as a great introduction for total neophytes to Inform 7 and IF in general. Here, let me summarize in a good back-of-the-box quote:

[i]"Thumbs up to playfic.com." - Ryan Veeder[/i]

They can go ahead and put that on the back of their box if they want. I mean if they end up packing their website in a box.

But I wonder, how are the XYZZY awards are going to handle this development? There are some Actual Games showing up on Playfic that deserve consideration, but what about the dozens of two-room games created to test out Inform? (I know sometimes these show up on IFDB, but I don't think they do in such volume as they have on Playfic.) What does the word "published" really mean?

Anyway if you haven't checked out playfic then go write something goofy on it and link me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4416&start=0#p32159
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Clash of the Type-ins
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-02-23 16:19:48

I've suggested the author provide cathegories to differentiate test games, example/troubleshooting code (because I can imagine it'd be an awesome application to provide quick tech demos or to trouleshoot someone's code), proper games, etc. He seems to be interested in doing so.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4411&start=0#p32160
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Topic icon variations: +/- yellow ; +/- pulsating
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-02-23 16:34:57

[quote="bcressey"]The FAQ is just a standard phpBB document... you may be the first person to have read it.[/quote] [emote]:lol:[/emote]  [emote]:lol:[/emote]  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4280&start=10#p32161
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Salon: Interactivity and narrative are incompatible
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2012-02-23 16:47:07

Booktrack sounds cool but I have a better idea. First of all, you don't need a tablet; you can read on your old books made out of paper that smell nice.

Second of all, you need one of those helmets they use in psychology experiments that tracks what your eyes are pointed at with a high degree of resolution.

As you read, the eye-tracker helmet notices which words you're looking at, and in particular, which [i]letters.[/i] When you look at a letter that corresponds to a musical note (A-G), the helmet plays that note in your ear. So if you read these words:

CDE EDC DC CDEE

You will hear a fairly disjointed version of the theme song from the Peanuts cartoon.

If you look at the words:

FEED A DEAD CABBAGE

You will hear a haunting, slightly atonal melody, approximately as creepy in tone as the original sentence.

If you read the words:

IT IS A TRUTH UNIVERSALLY ACKNOWLEDGED THAT A SINGLE MAN IN POSSESSION OF A GOOD FORTUNE MUST BE IN WANT OF A WIFE

You will hear a different haunting, slightly atonal melody, broken up by many long silences.

Those helmets are heavy, and expensive, but then, so are iPads. I mean an iPad is probably not as heavy or as expensive as one of those helmets. Definitely not as heavy.

I think both methods have their merits.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4416&start=0#p32162
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Clash of the Type-ins
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-23 16:55:02

[quote="Afterward"]
But I wonder, how are the XYZZY awards are going to handle this development? There are some Actual Games showing up on Playfic that deserve consideration, but what about the dozens of two-room games created to test out Inform? (I know sometimes these show up on IFDB, but I don't think they do in such volume as they have on Playfic.) What does the word "published" really mean?[/quote]
There's already a standard -- mostly designed to be fair to Introcomp entries, which would otherwise miss out on nomination chances in their final version -- that incomplete releases aren't eligible, and one of the things I'd like to do is to clarify what exactly that means.

I don't think that it matters much if a pile of two-room tester games show up on the XYZZY list, as long as nobody votes for 'em in significant numbers. The list is already huge, and making it more huge wouldn't change much. It'd be more complicated if Playfic shifted IF authorship more in the direction of the kind of rolling open beta releases that are the norm in some parts of the indie world. (I think that this isn't all that likely, mostly because very few IF games are designed for high replay value; but it could happen.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4416&start=0#p32165
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Clash of the Type-ins
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2012-02-23 18:17:58

Oh yeah. I forgot about that.

Well now this seems like a waste of a really good thread title.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4416&start=0#p32166
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Clash of the Type-ins
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-23 18:42:40

Well, if playfic started getting all bugged we could call it "Crash of the Type-ins."

Or if you had extensions that altered the command input line and it was getting interference from the actual command we could call it "Clash of the Typings." 

Or if playfic managed to monetize itself we could call it "Cash of the Type-ins." 

Or if there were special awards devoted to the best of the playfic games they would be the "Class of the Type-ins."

The possibilities are endless!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4416&start=0#p32167
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Clash of the Type-ins
User: George / DateTime: 2012-02-23 18:45:09

[quote="maga"] It'd be more complicated if Playfic shifted IF authorship more in the direction of the kind of rolling open beta releases that are the norm in some parts of the indie world.[/quote]

This seems to be the trend for ChoiceScript authors.  

But back to the subject at hand...can we turn the thread title into a zine or something?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4416&start=0#p32168
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Clash of the Type-ins
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-23 18:59:24

No, it's good that you brought this up; I think that this is a non-trivial concern.

Another issue is that Playfic doesn't seem to have an index for all games, let alone an index by year. (Unless I've failed to find it on the site.) In an ideal world, it'd add those features, and also distinguish between testing games, beta versions and final releases; right at this second, I don't see how we [i]could[/i] compile a list of Playfic games, so it'd be simpler to assume they were all testing/beta versions unless they were released, linked and/or listed in some other context.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4416&start=0#p32169
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Clash of the Type-ins
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-02-23 19:32:56

Since issues are coming up that the author of Playfic has responded to in his blog, it might be appropriate to link to it about now.

<a class="postlink" href="http://waxy.org/2012/02/introducing_playfic/">http://waxy.org/2012/02/introducing_playfic/</a>

Specifically the issue of "how in the heck can I browse for games":

[quote]You can't, yet! The Explore section is very sparse right now. I was waiting until I had a couple dozen games before redesigning it to make it browsable/searchable... Expect changes soon.[/quote]

Happily, he seems to have way underestimated the impact his neat app had on the community (or at least, the ammount of the community that was interested in it), since there's now +50 games on the site (lots of which are, naturally, hardly "games" at all, but serious attempts are emerging). So I guess it's just a matter of time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4413&start=0#p32170
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Advanced verbRules, and Scope
User: letrazzrot / DateTime: 2012-02-23 20:05:14

Perfect, somehow I had missed setPronounObj.  Thank you for such quick and detailed answers!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4405&start=0#p32171
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: NPC-NPC interaction?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-23 20:16:32

Ben,

I'm moving a bit slowly on this, as I often do with things that befuddle.

I notice that you suggest having the second NPC -- the "recipient" of the offer to play RPS -- handle the output.

What's your thinking there?  Is it to ensure that the other NPC is actually doing what he's supposed to be?  To make it easier to catch bugs?  Is it just simpler to pass the ball one way and not the other?

I'm not question that the strategy is a good one so much as wondering what its purpose is.

Many thanks,

Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4405&start=0#p32173
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: NPC-NPC interaction?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-23 21:24:23

Currently it's giving me that "function pointer required" jazz.


[code]
//////// the RPS verb does not yet exist...  figure it's not needed yet

DefineTAction(PlayRPS)
;


modify Actor
    dobjFor(PlayRPS)
    {
        check () {
            failCheck ('No one plays r-p-s any more! ');
        }
    }
;
[/code]

And then after the NPC...

[code]+ AgendaItem
    initiallyActive = true
    isReady = true
    invokeItem{
        local npcs = getActor.getOutermostRoom.contents.subset ({obj:
            obj.ofKind(Actor) && obj !=getActor});
-->        npcs.forEach({npc: npc(PlayRPSAction)
//arrow indicating offending code points here
                     });
    }
;
[/code]

Somehow I'm calling the npc.PlayRPS action wrong.


C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3433&start=10#p32174
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview: Jacek does Jacek
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-02-23 22:02:03

funny read anyway.  I actually think Pudlo is not Thorton, but perhaps Cadre.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4362&start=40#p32175
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: "Permanent" ban
User: I4L / DateTime: 2012-02-23 22:44:04

Deleting this whole long post. It doesn't matter anymore what my opinions on the subject are.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=80#p32176
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2012-02-24 04:35:57

Thanks Felix, matt w and capmikee!

Firstly, bother!  I didn't get an E-mail notification to say that anyone had appended this thread, so I went ahead and experimented and ultimately I was satisfied with this code:

[code]A WorkGarment is a kind of thing.  A Shirt is a kind of WorkGarment.  The indefinite article is "a".  Dungaries are a kind of WorkGarment.   The indefinite article is "some". Boots are a kind of WorkGarment.  The indefinite article is "a pair of".

A left wrist is a kind of thing. A right wrist is a kind of thing.
A labourer is a kind of person.  A left wrist is a part of every labourer. A right wrist is a part of every labourer.

In the construction site is a male labourer called Tom.  The printed name of Tom is "Tommy".  Tom is wearing a shirt called Tom's shirt. He wears some dungaries called Tom's dungaries. He wears some boots called Tom's boots. ] To say rundown for (somebody - Tom): say "[if Tom is In WorkGear]Muscle man Tommy is here, in grubby work clothes[Else]Off-duty Tom is here, wearing [a list of things worn by Tom]".  The description of Tom is "[rundown for Tom]".

[~~~ And then repeated for the other two labourers ~~~]
[/code]
I didn't know about the gramar "Every person incorporates" though.  Thanks matt w, that helps streamline a lot of code!  Eg: "Every labourer incorporates a left wrist and a right wrist."

Now out of curiosity I tried it this way as suggested by Felix:[code]Every construction worker wears a shirt. Every construction worker wears dungaries. Every construction worker wears boots. [/code]
And yes, as Felix warned it does produce identically named objects.  That's not necessarily a problem in my game though, because the next puzzle in my (little) game was to persuade the night watchman to open up the suspect's work locker (or maybe pick the lock).  Thus each set of work gear is separated (unless the player is stupid enough to mix them up.)  There's also a possibility that I'd do a replace of the ordinary shirt with a separate one that has the bloodstain and give that shirt it a different name.

Something I would need to know then, is how to write code for an NPC to pick up and put down objets (the game orchestrating so, not the player).  I haven't had much luck there.  I've tried "Now [NPC Name] carries" to pick up and "Now the [noun] is in the locker" but it doesn't always work, and I'm not understanding the cause of the problem.  Plus if the objects are identically named that makes it even more tricky to manipulate a particular object.

Where do I find examples of the coding to make NPCs pick up / put down?

Matt W, I've put your code in a separate project and yes it compiles and runs very effectively.  Am I right in assuming that these two lines of code are what enables Inform to deduce which noun the player is referring to?
[code]Understand "[something related by reversed enclosure] 's" as a thing.
Understand "my" as a thing when the player encloses the item described.[/code]
How do these work?  I haven't done much with the concept of enclosure.  What is the function of "related by reversed enclosure" ?

Also, how does the below code work?
[code]After reading a command:
   let X be indexed text;
   let X be the player's command;
   replace the text "'s" in X with " [']s";
   change the text of the player's command to X;
   say "[line break]".[/code]
Am I right in reading that this block of code puts square brackets around apostrophes?  Effectively what is the goal/outcome of this?

[quote="capmikee"]I forgot about this until today, but now I've posted a thread:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4409[/quote]I look forward to seeing the replies in this thread.  It would be good to have a standardised extension created for describing NPCs.  Goodness knows they're used often enough in Interactive Fiction.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4418&start=0#p32177
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Removing default stuff.
User: Vorpal_Spork / DateTime: 2012-02-24 04:58:38

I'm working on my first Inform game. I'm trying to implement my own conversation system. The first step is obviously to make a command to start a conversation with a character. Here's what I have in my source:
[code]Understand the command "talk" as something new. Talking is an action applying to one thing. Understand "talk to [someone]" or "talk with [someone]" or "speak to [someone]" or "speak with [someone]" or "converse with [someone]" as talking.[/code]

When I look in the index at the "Actions: Detail view" of "talking" I see this:
[code]Typed commands leading to this action


"talk to [someone]" 

"talk with [someone]" 

"answer to [someone]" 

"answer with [someone]" 

"converse with [someone]" 

Rules controlling this action
[/code]

Where did the "answer" stuff come from? How do I get rid of it? Where's my "speak" stuff?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4408&start=0#p32178
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Pirate Kart V: GDC Edition
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2012-02-24 05:02:20

I agree that to make a graphical game is a huge amount of work in any case, but things are definitely better now than they were 10 years ago.

Have you looked into using Unity (any platform)? Or GameSalad (Mac only, build to Ipad, Iphone and android)? Or GameMaker (PC only)?

I tried Unity a little and it looks great, but I wanted to make a 2D game, and its one shortcoming is it only operates in a 3d environment. You can force it to act in a 2d fashion, after a fashion, but I found that a bit uncomfortable.

I'm using GameSalad right now to develop a game for the iPad. It's a purely 2d system with excellent built in physics... which Im not using as I'm making an overhead adventure/action game [emote]:)[/emote]

I can't speak on GameMaker as I haven't used it personally.

But all of these systems are contemporary equivalents of K+P; that is, visual programming languages/environments. And Unity and GameSalad are free for the core versions. For higher-faluting versions you need to buy a Pro license, but it's not like a demo situation - the free versions do a helluva lot.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4419&start=0#p32180
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: How to make a stealth action?
User: Superjax / DateTime: 2012-02-24 05:25:14

Hi everybody,

I have another question. I would like to make a stealth function in my game that you could activate by saying something like "activate stealth" or "go stealthy". However, I don't know if I should make a new action called "activate stealth" or if I should use some other method to make a stealth function.

I don't know exactly how I would use this stealth function, but maybe you guys could make it so that it would last for a few turns and then it would take a number of turns to regen? 

Thanks,

Superjax

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4418&start=0#p32181
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Removing default stuff.
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-02-24 06:45:52

[quote="Vorpal_Spork"]I'm working on my first Inform game. I'm trying to implement my own conversation system. The first step is obviously to make a command to start a conversation with a character. Here's what I have in my source:
[code]Understand the command "talk" as something new. Talking is an action applying to one thing. Understand "talk to [someone]" or "talk with [someone]" or "speak to [someone]" or "speak with [someone]" or "converse with [someone]" as talking.[/code]

When I look in the index at the "Actions: Detail view" of "talking" I see this:
[code]Typed commands leading to this action


"talk to [someone]" 

"talk with [someone]" 

"answer to [someone]" 

"answer with [someone]" 

"converse with [someone]" 

Rules controlling this action
[/code]

Where did the "answer" stuff come from? How do I get rid of it? Where's my "speak" stuff?[/quote]

That's probably because, somewhere in the Standard Rules or elsewhere, is the line "Understand the command "answer" as "talk"."

To get the functionality you want, try:

[code]
Understand the command "answer" as something new.
Understand the command "talk" as something new. Talking is an action applying to one thing.
Understand "talk to [someone]" or "talk with [someone]" or "converse with [someone]" as talking.
Understand the command "speak" as "talk".[/code]("Speak" will only appear in the main Actions index, not the Detail View of the Talking action).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4418&start=0#p32182
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Removing default stuff.
User: Vorpal_Spork / DateTime: 2012-02-24 06:53:06

Thanks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4419&start=0#p32183
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to make a stealth action?
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-24 07:53:22

Ultimately you'll want a flag that says whether or not the player is in stealth mode. This could be a property (A person is either stealthy or loud. Yourself is loud.) Or, I think less elegantly, a truth state (Stealth is a truth state that varies. Stealth is false.) Or depending on how you achieve stealth in the game, it might already be incorporated in the action. (if the invisibility cloak is worn by the player... If the phase generator is switched on...)

You'll want some way for the player to become stealthy. If they're just sneaking about, you'll want it to be a new action. Something like:

[code]Sneaking is an action applying to nothing. Understand "activate stealth" and "sneak" as sneaking. Check sneaking: if the player is stealthy, say "You're already sneaking!" instead. Carry out sneaking: now the player is stealthy. Report sneaking: say "You step into the sneaking position."[/code]

Then you'd want a stop sneaking action and there to be conditions (like being spotted) that end sneaking.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=80#p32184
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-24 09:02:21

[quote="thefoxaroo"]Matt W, I've put your code in a separate project and yes it compiles and runs very effectively.  Am I right in assuming that these two lines of code are what enables Inform to deduce which noun the player is referring to?
[code]Understand "[something related by reversed enclosure] 's" as a thing.
Understand "my" as a thing when the player encloses the item described.[/code]
How do these work?  I haven't done much with the concept of enclosure.  What is the function of "related by reversed enclosure" ?[/quote]

You are correct. See section 16.16 of the documentation, "Understanding things by their relations," which is one of the more magical parts of Inform for my money. "Enclosure" relates a thing to anything it carries, wears, or is part of it, or anything that's part of that, etc.; so if someone were wearing a backpack that contained a watch that had a button as part of it, the person would enclose the button. 

But the key thing is "related by reversed enclosure"; this means that "Tom's" (or "Tom 's"; see below) will match everything that Tom encloses. Tom encloses the wrist, so Tom is related by reversed enclosure to the wrist, so the string "Tom 's" matches the wrist (it is "[something related by reversed enclosure to the wrist] 's". Or I may have got the reversed enclosure backwards; I usually have to trial and error that.

Then "Tom 's" matches everything Tom encloses, but if you have "Tom 's wrist" it'll only match the wrist.

[quote]Also, how does the below code work?
[code]After reading a command:
   let X be indexed text;
   let X be the player's command;
   replace the text "'s" in X with " [']s";
   change the text of the player's command to X;
   say "[line break]".[/code]
Am I right in reading that this block of code puts square brackets around apostrophes?  Effectively what is the goal/outcome of this?[/quote]

No, it just puts a space before the apostrophe-s, so "Tom's" turns into "Tom 's". We need to insert the space so Inform can recognize "Tom" and "'s" as separate words; it can't parse "Tom" as part of "Tom's" without a space in between them, since the parser works at the level of words. The brackets are necessary because otherwise Inform will turn the apostrophe into a double quote, which is its default behavior when an apostrophe appears at the beginning or end of a word in quotation marks. (Since you can't put double quotation marks in quotation marks in your source.) The brackets are just the same brackets you use in a text substitution; ['] is a built-in text substitution that gives you an apostrophe no matter where you put it in quotes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4420&start=0#p32185
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: For Jim Aikin - I Stole this from you but it only sort wks.
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2012-02-24 09:43:33

[quote]Section 6 - Small Wino

The Small Wino is a person. The description of the Small Wino is "A small rather pathetic creature. His nose is three times the size it should be and a bright cherry red (probably from his continual diet of red wine).".[/quote]

[quote]Every turn:
	if the location of the Small Wino is not the location of the player:
		let the way be the best route from the location of the Small Wino to the location of the player;
		try the Small Wino going the way;
		say "Your new found friend, the Small Wino, says [one of] 'It looks like we will be seeing a lot of each other from now on!'[or]'Don't try to fool yourself, I'm not a friend to you!'[or]'Go sit on a tack'[at random]";
	otherwise:
		say "The Small Wino taps you on the shoulder and says [one of]Hi there, sucker, trying to get away from me?[or]Hick![or]Nice try, too bad it don't work - how about a drink?[at random][/quote]

When it is called the routine both returns the required text but from that point on, I get the message "You must supply a noun"

Any ideas?
Greg Masoner

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4419&start=0#p32186
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to make a stealth action?
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-02-24 09:54:34

Alternately, this may be one case where going the adverb route might actually be warranted. In any case, you'll want it to activate JJ's stealthiness flag.

See example 361, from WI 17.31 for one implementation idea:

[code]An approach is a kind of value. Stealthily is an approach. Understand "quietly/silently/soundlessly" as stealthily.

A person can be stealthy.

After reading a command: 
	now the player is not stealthy;
	if the player's command includes "[approach]": 
		cut the matched text; 
		if the approach understood is stealthily, now the player is stealthy;

Before going when the player is stealthy: say "You move as quietly as a mouse."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4405&start=10#p32187
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: NPC-NPC interaction?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-24 10:02:39

[quote="conradcook"]
What's your thinking there?  Is it to ensure that the other NPC is actually doing what he's supposed to be?  To make it easier to catch bugs?  Is it just simpler to pass the ball one way and not the other?[/quote]

Mostly that for actions, it's usually the direct object that decides whether and how to respond. If the player tries to take a ball, the ball handles the output. You can divide up the code in other ways, of course, but it helps to be consistent.

I will try to post a basic demo later today.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4408&start=0#p32188
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Pirate Kart V: GDC Edition
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2012-02-24 10:14:50

[quote="severedhand"]I agree that to make a graphical game is a huge amount of work in any case[/quote]
So is a text game (or indeed most things worth doing). I've made one graphical adventure game and a bunch of smaller things, but I doubt I'll ever manage to create a text game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4416&start=0#p32189
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Clash of the Type-ins
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-02-24 10:16:54

You know, talking about it here, I just realized it would be really nice if I could link to a game somewhere like Playfic, and it would load in a Parchment window here on the forum (think embedded videos ala youtube.) [code] is nice and all, but sometimes the point is the behavior you want to convey, rather than how it was implemented. Tiny example games like what Playfic tends to encourage would be perfect for this.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4419&start=0#p32190
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to make a stealth action?
User: Superjax / DateTime: 2012-02-24 10:23:43

K thx JoeyJones [emote]:)[/emote]
Thx Chris,

So, this is my code for the stealth mode:

[code]A person is either stealthy or unstealthy.
The player is unstealthy.

Activating stealth is an action applying to nothing. Understand "activate stealth" as activating stealth.
Check activating stealth:
if the player is stealthy, say "You're already stealthy!" instead.
Carry out activating stealth: 
now the player is stealthy.
Report activating stealth:
say "You feel a vibration in your spine as the stealth generator activates."

Deactivating stealth is an action applying to nothing. Understand "deactivate stealth" as deactivating stealth.
Check deactivating stealth:
if the player is unstealthy, say "You have to be in stealth to deactivate stealth " instead.
Carry out deactivating stealth: 
now the player is unstealthy.
Report deactivating stealth:
say "You hear several clicks and a bit of smoke pours out the stealth generator. You are no longer stealthy.

Before going when the player is stealthy:
say "You move as quietly as a mouse.""[/code]

However, I would like to make it so that you would only be able to stealth for say, 3 turns, and then you would automatically unstealth.

So how would I do that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4416&start=0#p32191
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Clash of the Type-ins
User: George / DateTime: 2012-02-24 10:34:46

We would need something like this, 

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=693225">http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopi ... 6&t=693225</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4419&start=0#p32192
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to make a stealth action?
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-24 10:52:06

Looking good. You'll want a future events rule, like this:

[code]Carry out activating stealth: 
now the player is stealthy;
stealth ends in three turns from now.

At the time when stealth ends:
try deactivating stealth.[/code]

I guess you're going to want some kind of mechanism to prevent the player from constantly stealthing- a number of charges, maybe? That can be done with a number that goes down after every use of stealth (and could be replenished in-game).

Chris: If it weren't a cloaking device but rather a way of performing actions, then I would suggest considering implementing the 'stealthily' adverb, but as it's more something that is turned on or off it wouldn't be as appropriate.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4420&start=0#p32193
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: For Jim Aikin - I Stole this from you but it only sort w
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-24 10:55:46

It does that when "the best route..." returns nothing. Try adding ", using doors" to the end of the best route phrase. Or make sure your wino is not trapped.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4421&start=0#p32194
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Articles of a value?
User: Erzengel / DateTime: 2012-02-24 10:59:13

I'm very new to Inform, and I can't seem to find anything about this by searching.
My issue is that I can't seem to attach articles to values that are replacements in text.
Say I have the following:
[code]"A Color Failure" by Erzengel

A color is a kind of value. A color is red, green, blue, coral, or auburn.

A box is a kind of thing. A box has a color. The color of a box is usually auburn. The description of a box is usually "[A color of noun] cube with the text [noun] written on it."

Test room is a room. The Wizard's box is a blue box in the test room. The Sorcerer's box is a box in the test room.

Test me with "x wizard's box / x sorcerer's box".[/code]

This outputs:
[quote]A Color Failure
An Interactive Fiction by Erzengel
Release 1 / Serial number 120224 / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N) SD

Test room
You can see a Wizard's box and a Sorcerer's box here.

>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] x wizard's box
blue cube with the text Wizard's box written on it.

>[2] x sorcerer's box
auburn cube with the text Sorcerer's box written on it.

>[/quote]

Which is missing the "A" or "An" article on the color. Is there a way to get this to work?
I've tried manually setting the indefinite article, but Inform 7 says that a value doesn't have the indefinite article property. After adding some text called the indefinite article, it still doesn't work.
I can't just put the "a" in the text because then it would be "A auburn cube" when it should be "An auburn cube".

Thanks for any help.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4419&start=0#p32195
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to make a stealth action?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-24 11:04:49

Two alternatives:

[code]Every turn when yourself has been stealthy for at least two turns:
   say "You bump into something in a totally unstealthy way. Enough of this sneaking around.";
   now yourself is loud;[/code]

[code]The player has a number called stealthiness.
Definition: Yourself is stealthy rather than loud if the stealthiness of yourself is at least 1.

Carry out sneaking: Now the stealthiness of the player is 3.

Every turn when the player is stealthy:
    Decrement the stealthiness of the player;
    if the player is loud, say "You bump into something in a totally unstealthy way. Enough of this sneaking around.";
[/code]

Note that these have different results - the second one allows you to refresh your stealthiness, while the first one times out no matter what you do.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4421&start=0#p32196
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Articles of a value?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-24 11:11:11

You could do it this way:

[code]A box is a kind of thing. A box has a color. The color of a box is usually auburn. The description of a box is usually "[A noun] with the text [printed name of noun] written on it."

For printing the name of a box when examining: say "[color] cube";[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4421&start=0#p32197
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Articles of a value?
User: Erzengel / DateTime: 2012-02-24 11:32:06

That does work for a single descriptor, but what about when I'm using the color to describe multiple parts of the object?
[code]A box is a kind of thing. A box has a color. The color of a box is usually auburn. A box has a color called glow. The glow of a box is usually red. The description of a box is usually "[A color of noun] cube with the text [noun] written on it. [The color of noun] panels shimmer slightly. [The glow of noun] glow faintly lights up everything around it."[/code]
It should say something like "A blue cube with the text Wizard's box written on it. The blue panels shimmer slightly. A red glow faintly lights up everything around it." Granted it's odd to use blue twice in the description, but the text I'm working with is longer, has more properties and relations that need articles.

The only way I can think to do that with your suggestion is to break it up into part-ofs, in the example "glow is a part of every box". While possible, I'd really like to avoid that if there's another option.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3433&start=10#p32198
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview: Jacek does Jacek
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-02-24 11:39:07

[quote="namekuseijin"]perhaps Cadre.  [emote];)[/emote][/quote]

[url=http://adamcadre.ac/calendar/12011.html]I doubt it.[/url] (Content note: linked page includes a picture from Abu Ghraib)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4422&start=0#p32199
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Reading a nonblank table row with a blank entry
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-24 11:43:52

I thought this was possible, but I can't figure it out from the documentation.

Can you choose a row in a table and then test whether one of the entries is blank without getting an error?

I got an error from this line:

[code]if the style entry is a plurality style, reset the plurality style to the style entry;[/code]

[quote]P23 - Attempt to look up a non-existent entry in table
Most problems are detected when Inform translates the source text, but this is one of the exceptions, a "run-time problem" which emerges only during play.


Inform allows us to create tables with blank entries, having no value at all: sometimes these are written --, but sometimes they are literally left blank in the original source text. We are not allowed to read such an entry, and this is the problem which turns up if we do. (Whereas we are allowed to write to it, making it no longer blank if we do.)[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4423&start=0#p32200
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: IF Platform Dilemma
User: VMC / DateTime: 2012-02-24 11:54:56

Hello everyone. I am trying to make an IF that plays identically to operating a console like DOS, with certain text files that can be accessed and read, password queries and a possible simple AI to talk with at the end.

What would be the best system to use for this? I have tried TADS and now ADRIFT but I am having the problem that I do not want commands like "drink", "look at" or "go north" to even register at all. Basically I want the most bare-bones IF imaginable with a very small amount of possible actions, each one defined by me, and a generic error message if anything else is asked. Is there an authoring platform that can help me with this?

Thanks in advance.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4423&start=0#p32201
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Platform Dilemma
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-24 11:58:04

This is easy in Inform 7 -- write an "after reading the player's command" rule that bypasses the entire parser. Or you can do the equivalent in Inform 6.

I am sure it is easy in TADS as well, although someone else will have to explain how to do it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4421&start=0#p32202
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Articles of a value?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-24 11:59:41

[quote="Erzengel"]That does work for a single descriptor, but what about when I'm using the color to describe multiple parts of the object?[/quote]
As long as you use "The" and not "A," you should be fine. Unfortunately, the "A/an" magic happens at a pretty low level which isn't accessible to I7 unless you use indexed text - and it only seems to work for things, not kinds of value.

You can make colors into things (rather than kinds of value) without having to use incorporation. A property can be a thing, no problem.

One pitfall: Things have to be improper-named to get an indefinite article. For some reason, I was unable to declare that "a color is always improper-named," but I could put "the" in front of the name of every color:

[code]"A Color Failure" by Erzengel

A color is a kind of thing. the red, the green, the blue, the coral, and the auburn are colors. 

A box is a kind of thing. A box has a color called hue. The hue of a box is usually auburn. A box has a color called glow. The glow of a box is usually red. The description of a box is usually "[A hue of noun] cube with the text [noun] written on it. [The hue of noun] panels shimmer slightly. [The glow of noun] glow faintly lights up everything around it."

The verb to be painted implies the hue property.

Test room is a room. The Wizard's box is a box in the test room. It is painted blue. The Sorcerer's box is a box in the test room.

Test me with "x wizard's box / x sorcerer's box".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4423&start=0#p32203
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Platform Dilemma
User: VMC / DateTime: 2012-02-24 12:02:50

Would you say Inform is the best platform to try this on then? I am a complete novice at this kind of thing, with little to no grasp of programming. I'm willing to learn whatever is the best system, but time is a serious constraint unfortunately. Is there an easy way, for instance, to do this in ADRIFT? That authoring system seems the easiest I've come across.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4421&start=0#p32204
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Articles of a value?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-24 12:05:27

Simplistic solution:

[code]

To say The (C - color):
	say "The [C]";

To say the (C - color):
	say "the [C]";

To say A (C - color):
	if C is auburn:
		say "An [C]";
	else:
		say "A [C]";

To say a (C - color):
	if C is auburn:
		say "an [C]";
	else:
		say "a [C]";

[/code]

You'd have to add more conditions if you add more colors starting with vowels, but this isn't a heavy burden, all things considered.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4419&start=0#p32205
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to make a stealth action?
User: Superjax / DateTime: 2012-02-24 12:08:02

Thx cptmikee! I used your method.

K guys, everything works perfectly, but I think it would be cool if I had a "stealth charges" system where you could convert stealth charges(which would be objects or things that would go in your inventory) into batteries(which would be a number) for your stealth generator. Basically, every time you used the "activate stealth" ability, it would consume a battery, and you would have to put another stealth charge into the stealth generator(turning the stealth charge into a number). You can only have 1 battery at a time in the stealth generator.

I don't know if this would be possible, but if someone could tell me how to do this, that would be awesome.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4423&start=0#p32206
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Platform Dilemma
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-24 12:40:33

I'd ask over at the [url=http://forum.adrift.co/]ADRIFT forum[/url]; you should get a lot more answers about technical ADRIFT questions there.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4421&start=0#p32207
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Articles of a value?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-02-24 12:41:13

[quote="zarf"]Simplistic solution: [snip] You'd have to add more conditions if you add more colors starting with vowels[/quote]
I was thinking the same thing. Here's an example:
[code]Color is a kind of value. The colors are red, green, blue, coral, or auburn.
A color can be vowel starting or consonant starting. [<-- defaults to consonant]
Auburn is vowel starting.

A box is a kind of thing. A box has a color. The color of a box is usually auburn. A box has a color called glow. The glow of a box is usually red. 

The description of a box is usually "[A color of the item described] cube with the text '[item described]' written on it. [The color of the item described] panels shimmer slightly. [The glow of the item described] glow faintly lights up everything around it."

To say A (C - color):
	if C is vowel starting, say "An [c]";
	otherwise say "A [c]".
	
To say a (C - color):
	if C is vowel starting, say "an [c]";
	otherwise say "a [c]".

To say The (C - color): say "The [c]".

To say the (C - color): say "the [c]".

Test room is a room. The Wizard's box is a blue box in the test room. The Sorcerer's box is a box in the test room.

Test me with "x wizard's box / x sorcerer's box".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4422&start=0#p32208
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reading a nonblank table row with a blank entry
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-24 12:41:47

Shouldn't "If there is a style entry" work? That's what WI 15.7 suggests.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4420&start=0#p32209
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: For Jim Aikin - I Stole this from you but it only sort w
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-24 12:45:25

Or add "if way is a direction:" before "try going the way"; if there's no path, then way will be nothing, which isn't a direction. 

This is usually good practice when you're doing pathfinding, so you don't get errors when there's no path.

(Another note is that you might want to check that the Small Wino is in the player's location before you print the messages, just in case there's somehow a way for the player to get two jumps ahead of him. Even if it never happens, it'd be nice to have the check in there.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4419&start=0#p32210
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to make a stealth action?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-24 12:58:55

Sounds pretty straightforward.

[code]A stealth battery is a kind of thing.

Stealth-activating with is an action applying to one thing.

Check stealth-activating with something that is not a stealth battery:
   say "You can only use stealth batteries to activate stealth.";
   stop the action.

Check stealth-activating with when the player is stealthy:
    say "You are already using a stealth battery.";
    stop the action.

Carry out stealth-activating with:
    Increase the stealth of the player by 3;
    remove the noun from play;

Report stealth-activating:
    say "You charge up your stealth with [the noun].";[/code]

You can implement a stealth-cloak which can contain a battery if you want, and keep track of which batteries are used or fresh. You could also create a separate action (or a supplying a missing noun rule) for when the player doesn't say which battery to use. That's all details.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4422&start=0#p32211
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reading a nonblank table row with a blank entry
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-24 13:04:18

Weird, I could have sworn I tried that and it got a compilation error.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4421&start=0#p32212
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Articles of a value?
User: Erzengel / DateTime: 2012-02-24 13:25:38

All those are awesome ideas. I like the using color as a thing to use the built in magic.
However, based on the fact that you can override "to say a", here's what I came up with:
[code]
to say the (C - color):
	say "the [C]".
to say The (C - color):
	say "The [C]".
to say a (C - color):
	let first be character number 1 in "[C]" in lower case;
	if first is "a" or first is "e" or first is "i" or first is "o" or first is "u":
		say "an [C]";
	otherwise :
		say "a [C]".
to say A (C - color):
	let first be character number 1 in "[C]" in lower case;
	if first is "a" or first is "e" or first is "i" or first is "o" or first is "u":
		say "An [C]";
	otherwise :
		say "A [C]".
[/code]

But I wonder if there's more to it than that. Are there exceptions that would need to be handled in a more generic case? Like "You have a one written on your report."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4423&start=0#p32213
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Platform Dilemma
User: UnwashedMass / DateTime: 2012-02-24 13:43:41

[quote="VMC"]Hello everyone. I am trying to make an IF that plays identically to operating a console like DOS, with certain text files that can be accessed and read, password queries and a possible simple AI to talk with at the end.[/quote]

One other approach you might try would be to do as others have done before you and actually write the game as MS-DOS batch files -- and the console functionality comes along for free!

You can find a few sample games at <a class="postlink" href="http://ifarchive.wurb.com/indexes/if-archiveXgamesXpc.html">http://ifarchive.wurb.com/indexes/if-ar ... esXpc.html</a> -- batchadv.zip , the hobbit redux, mecha.zip , stupid.zip ... which may be what my suggestion is.  (Apparently there's another one over at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.4dos.info/tools/merlin.zip">http://www.4dos.info/tools/merlin.zip</a> )

If you're short on ideas about how to implement a game in such an environment, there's a very brief guide at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.wikihow.com/Create-a-CMD-Adventure">http://www.wikihow.com/Create-a-CMD-Adventure</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4421&start=0#p32214
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Articles of a value?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-24 13:51:47

[rant]If you have more than one kind of value you want to do this with, you can save yourself some time by using generic phrases as in section 21.6 of the documentation. (This is for Skinny Mike's version, but obviously you could adapt it to your code.)

[code]Color is a kind of value. The colors are red, green, blue, coral, or auburn.
Material is a kind of value. The materials are wooden, iron, stone, or  plastic.

A color can be vowel starting or consonant starting. A material can be vowel starting or consonant starting. [<-- defaults to consonant; you have to declare these separately]
Auburn is vowel starting. Iron is vowel starting.

A box is a kind of thing. A box has a color. The color of a box is usually auburn. A box has a color called glow. The glow of a box is usually red. A box has a material. The material of a box is usually wooden

The description of a box is usually "[A material of the item described] cube with the text '[item described]' written on it. [The color of the item described] panels shimmer slightly. [The glow of the item described] glow faintly lights up everything around it."

To say A (C - sayable value):
	if C is vowel starting, say "An [c]";
	otherwise say "A [c]".
	
To say a (C - sayable value):
	if C is vowel starting, say "an [c]";
	otherwise say "a [c]".

To say The (C - sayable value): say "The [c]".

To say the (C - sayable value): say "the [c]".

Test room is a room. The Wizard's box is a blue box in the test room. The Sorcerer's box is an iron box in the test room.

Test me with "x wizard's box / x sorcerer's box".[/code]

You still have to declare "can be consonant starting etc." separately for colors and and materials, because Inform won't let you declare it for sayable values in general, but this saves you writing a bunch of separate phrases.[/rant]

Edit: Wait, that doesn't work. At first I forgot to change the "The" phrases from color to sayable value, and then when I did it started throwing an extraneous "the" in front of the sentence, even though I didn't put one in. Can anyone explain this to me?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4405&start=10#p32215
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: NPC-NPC interaction?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-24 13:55:22

So here's what I've got.

[rant][code]
me: Person 'me' 'me'
	"It's me! "
	location = lab
;

lab: Room 'lab'
	"Welcome to the TADS Laboratory! "
;

DefineTAction(RPS);

VerbRule(RPS)
	'play' 'rps' 'with' singleDobj
	: RPSAction
	verbPhrase = 'play/playing rps (with whom)'
;

modify Thing
	dobjFor(RPS) {
		verify() { illogical('But {the dobj/he} doesn\'t have hands! '); }
	}
;

enum ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS;
enum WIN, LOSE, DRAW;

enumText(e) {
	switch (e) {
		case ROCK: return 'rock';
		case PAPER: return 'paper';
		case SCISSORS: return 'scissors';
		default: return '';
	}
}

modify Person
	dobjFor(RPS) {
		verify() {}

		check() {
			if (!wantsToPlay) {
				local msg = '{You/he} want{s} to play RPS with
					{the dobj/him}, but ';
				switch (lastRPSresult) {
					case WIN:
						msg += '{the dobj/he} is still gloating over
							{its/hers} win. ';
						break;
					case LOSE:
						msg += '{the dobj/he} is still smarting over
							{its/hers} loss. ';
						break;
					case DRAW:
						msg += '{the dobj/he} is still thinking over
							{its/hers} tactics. ';
						break;
					default:
						msg += '{the dobj/he} is busy. ';
						break;
				}
				failCheck(msg);
			}
		}

		action() {
			local player1 = gActor;
			local player2 = self;
			local throw1 = rand(ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS);
			local throw2 = rand(ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS);

			gAction.setMessageParam('player1', player1);
			gAction.setMessageParam('player2', player2);
			gAction.setMessageParam('throw1', enumText(throw1));
			gAction.setMessageParam('throw2', enumText(throw2));

			if (player1 != gPlayerChar)
				"{The player1/he} and {the player2/he} decide to play a
				 quick game of RPS. ";

			"{The player1/he} throw{s} {throw1}! ";
			"{The player2/he} throw{s} {throw2}! ";

			local winner = nil;
			if (throw1 == ROCK) {
				if (throw2 == SCISSORS)
					winner = player1;
				else if (throw2 == PAPER)
					winner = player2;
			}
			else if (throw1 == PAPER) {
				if (throw2 == ROCK)
					winner = player1;
				else if (throw2 == SCISSORS)
					winner = player2;
			}
			else /* throw1 == SCISSORS */ {
				if (throw2 == PAPER)
					winner = player1;
				else if (throw2 == ROCK)
					winner = player2;
			}

			if (!winner) {
				"A draw! It's a draw! A beautiful draw! ";
				player1.lastRPSresult = DRAW;
				player2.lastRPSresult = DRAW;
			}
			else {
				gAction.setMessageParam('winner', winner);
				"{The winner/he} win{s}! ";
				player1.lastRPSresult = (winner == player1) ? WIN : LOSE;
				player2.lastRPSresult = (winner == player2) ? WIN : LOSE;
			}

			player1.lastRPS = libGlobal.totalTurns;
			player2.lastRPS = libGlobal.totalTurns;
		}
	}

	wantsToPlay() {
		return (rpsFrequency && (lastRPS == nil ||
				(lastRPS <= libGlobal.totalTurns - rpsFrequency)));
	}

	lastRPS = nil
	lastRPSresult = nil

	// how often the person is willing to play RPS
	rpsFrequency = 3

	isHim = true
;

class RPSAgenda: AgendaItem
	initiallyActive = true

	isReady() {
		return getActor.wantsToPlay && rand(3) == 2;
	}

	invokeItem() {
		local npcs = getActor.sensePresenceList(sight).subset({obj:
			obj.ofKind(Actor) && obj != getActor && obj != gPlayerChar
		});
		if (npcs.length)
			newActorAction(getActor, RPS, rand(npcs));
	}
;

guard: Person 'guard' 'guard' @lab
	"Just another guard. "
	rpsFrequency = 5
;
+ RPSAgenda;

scientist: Person 'scientist' 'scientist' @lab
	"Just another scientist. "
	rpsFrequency = 0
;

janitor: Person 'janitor' 'janitor' @lab
	"Just another janitor. "
;
+ RPSAgenda;
[/code][/rant]

I decided I liked it better if the NPC picked another NPC at random to play with, instead of trying to play with every NPC in the room. It's a better fit with the default "one action per actor per turn" model.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4421&start=0#p32216
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Articles of a value?
User: Erzengel / DateTime: 2012-02-24 13:57:51

[quote="matt w"]If you have more than one kind of value you want to do this with, you can save yourself some time by using generic phrases as in section 21.6 of the documentation. (This is for Skinny Mike's version, but obviously you could adapt it to your code.)
[/quote]
Huh, that's odd. When I run your code I get some extra "the"s attached:
[quote]


Welcome
An Interactive Fiction
Release 1 / Serial number 120224 / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N) SD

Test room
You can see a Wizard's box and a Sorcerer's box here.

>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] x wizard's box
the A wooden cube with the text "Wizard's box" written on it. The blue panels shimmer slightly. The red glow faintly lights up everything around it.

>[2] x sorcerer's box
the An iron cube with the text "Sorcerer's box" written on it. The auburn panels shimmer slightly. The red glow faintly lights up everything around it.

>[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4421&start=0#p32217
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Articles of a value?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-24 14:06:55

You're too quick for me! I was just editing to hide my faulty code and ask if anyone else knows why that happened. It's something to do with applying the "sayable value" phrase to "the" as well as to "a", because when I still had this:

[code]To say The (C - color): say "The [c]".

To say the (C - color): say "the [c]".[/code]

it worked fine. But I don't know what's going on (and obviously if you take this approach you want to apply those to all sayable values, if possible.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4419&start=0#p32218
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to make a stealth action?
User: Superjax / DateTime: 2012-02-24 14:10:46

Thx capmikee, I kind of combined your code with the code that was already there.
This is the result:

[code]The stealth charge is carried by the player.
 A stealth charge is a battery.

A battery is a kind of thing.

A person is either stealthy or unstealthy.
The player is unstealthy.

Activating stealth with is an action applying to one thing. 
Understand "charge with [battery]" and "activate stealth with [battery]" as activating stealth with.
Check activating stealth with:
if the player is stealthy, say "You're already stealthy!" instead;
if the battery is not a stealth charge, say "You can only use stealth charges to activate stealth." instead;
Carry out activating stealth with:
Now the stealthiness of the player is 6;
Now the player is stealthy;
remove the noun from play.

Report activating stealth with:
say "You insert a stealth charge into a slot in the stealth generator. You feel a vibration in your spine as the stealth generator activates."

Deactivating stealth is an action applying to nothing. Understand "deactivate stealth" as deactivating stealth.
Check deactivating stealth:
if the player is unstealthy, say "You have to be in stealth to deactivate stealth " instead.
Carry out deactivating stealth: 
now the player is unstealthy.
Report deactivating stealth:
say "You hear several clicks and a bit of steam pours out the stealth generator. You are no longer stealthy."

Before going when the player is stealthy:
say "You move without a sound to your destination."

The player has a number called stealthiness.
Definition: Yourself is stealthy rather than unstealthy if the stealthiness of yourself is at least 1.

Every turn when the player is stealthy:
	Decrement the stealthiness of the player;
	if the player is unstealthy, say "You bump into something in a totally unstealthy way. Enough of this sneaking around.";
[/code]

I'm pretty sure that I've finished the stealth code.

Kthxbaifornow

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4419&start=0#p32219
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to make a stealth action?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-24 14:39:59

[quote="Superjax"]
Understand "charge with [battery]" and "activate stealth with [battery]" as activating stealth with.
[/quote]
You are setting yourself up for the dreaded "that noun did not make sense in that context" error here. Grammar lines should be as open-ended as possible - you can narrow them down with Does the Player Mean and block them off with Check rules. But once the parser fails, it's out of your hands. That's why my suggestion was of the form "charge with [something]" and then adding a check rule for non-batteries.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4423&start=0#p32220
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Platform Dilemma
User: VMC / DateTime: 2012-02-24 14:59:24

Thanks for the quick and helpful responses! [emote]:)[/emote]

I considered writing it actually for DOS, it would look pretty snazzy. I've managed to reverse-engineer something workable in ADRIFT, but doing a Batch Game might be a better solution. I've spent the last few days trying to bully TADS and ADRIFT down into being little more than DOS, so why not? I guess room functionality would translate to different folders?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4419&start=10#p32221
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to make a stealth action?
User: Superjax / DateTime: 2012-02-24 15:46:16

[quote="capmikee"][quote="Superjax"]
Understand "charge with [battery]" and "activate stealth with [battery]" as activating stealth with.
[/quote]
You are setting yourself up for the dreaded "that noun did not make sense in that context" error here. Grammar lines should be as open-ended as possible - you can narrow them down with Does the Player Mean and block them off with Check rules. But once the parser fails, it's out of your hands. That's why my suggestion was of the form "charge with [something]" and then adding a check rule for non-batteries.[/quote]

K I fixed it  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4424&start=0#p32222
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Beginner's Question: Understanding
User: PoliteProgrammer / DateTime: 2012-02-24 15:50:45

Hi everyone, I'm an absolute beginner with Inform 7 and I wonder if someone could answer a quick question. I've been following a wikibooks tutorial that introduces understanding, so, for example:
[code]Understand "toadstool" as the mushroom.[/code]
and simple conditions,
[code]Understand "toadstool" as the mushroom when the mushroom is visible.[/code]

My question is, how do I make "toadstool" stand for mushroom ONLY AFTER the mushroom has been examined?
I.E. something like 
[code]Understand "toadstool" as mushroom when the player has examined the mushroom.[/code]
Or:
[code]If the player examines the mushroom: understand "toadstool" as the mushroom.[/code]

Thanks in advance!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4424&start=0#p32223
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beginner's Question: Understanding
User: Erzengel / DateTime: 2012-02-24 16:09:10

[code]
Understand "toadstool" as mushroom when we have examined the mushroom.
[/code]

Although I'm not sure that you really want to do this, as the player might want to use the word "toadstool" to mean the mushroom without having examined it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4076&start=10#p32224
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Version Control and Workbench
User: TheBloke / DateTime: 2012-02-24 16:41:58

I would say that moving to a separate IDE system - i.e. writing a TADS plugin for an existing IDE framework - would be of enormous, and far-reaching benefit.

Workbench is great, and indeed much better than I would have expected a supplied IDE for a niche language to be.  Its existence and quality speak volumes for Michael's dedication and abilities.

But I do feel that work on Workbench is ultimately misplaced.  As already stated in this thread, dedicated IDE systems are maintained by teams of dozens or even hundreds, and because those teams are focused on nothing but IDE development, they are naturally able to provide a lot of features that wouldn't be worth implementing for TADS with only Michael alone to work on it.  

Any short-term effort put into developing a TADS plugin for an existing IDE would I believe show enormous long term benefits, because once done the IDE would gain significantly in features, and these would continue to be added to and improved upon over time with little or no further TADS-specific effort.

So I see clear general benefits of such a move.  But there's an even more compelling reason.  By extending an existing IDE framework to support TADS, one could instantly - with little if any additional work - open up TADS development to non-Windows platforms.  

The IDE that comes first to my mind is Eclipse. Eclipse is very well supported on both Mac OSX and Linux.  And it is very extendable, with many niche languages choosing it as the base from which to add support for their specific environment.

I've only been investigating writing IF and TADS for a couple of weeks, but in that time I've lost count of the number of times I've read "TADS would be used much more if there was a Mac IDE".  I believe that's true, and I also believe that TADS would really benefit from better developer support.  It's an incredible system, a wonderfully powerful language and library, and it really deserves to be used by a lot more people than it is.  It dismays me to see on this forum for example, the disparity in number of posts between the Inform sub-forum, and this TADS one.  Inform is great I'm sure, but so is TADS, and for many people/purposes, TADS would be a better choice than Inform.  But it feels to me, coming in as an outsider, that its growth is presently somewhat stunted, and I think the platform support is definitely a big part of that.  Above all, it makes me worry for the future - I worry that there might come a point where Michael loses interest in further developing it due to poor/declining usage.  Or that he becomes unable to do so, in which case the smaller the community the less likely others will come forward to pick up the baton.

I talked of investment in an IDE plugin reaping long-term rewards through freeing up time for Michael to then work only on TADS improvements, not Workbench too.  This is multiplied when one factors in the long-term benefits of an increased user-base triggered by better multi-platform support.  With more users coming in, so there will be more games developed, more forum discussion and Q&A, a greater number of extensions developed, and hopefully more core source contributions to assist Michael.

So Michael, if you do find some time to look at Workbench, I'd put in a strong vote for you to consider not adding more features to it, but rather spending that time extending an existing multi-platform IDE to support TADS, with the aim of discontinuing Workbench once the other platform supports all that it does.

And I'd be glad to try and help if you do - I have some C++ and Java coding experience.  I would love to offer to just start the project myself, but realistically I don't feel confident in starting something like that from scratch, either in terms of ability or in terms of time.  But if the project were started and someone could allocate me some sub-tasks, I would definitely put in some hours.  And as a Mac user, I'm also well-placed to test multi-platform support.  (Presently I use Workbench in a Windows virtual machine in VMWare Fusion - a workaround to the missing Mac support that I would recommend to any other Mac users too, until such time as a native IDE is available.)

Finally, as this is my first post, let me use the opportunity to say thank you Michael for building such a wonderful system - I've barely written anything in it yet, but have read a lot (and thanks also to Eric Eve for the documentation), and am blown away by how much you have created;  either the language or the library on their own would be fantastic achievements, especially for a single developer:  creating both - not to mention an IDE and an interpreter as well! - is simply staggering!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4424&start=0#p32225
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Beginner's Question: Understanding
User: PoliteProgrammer / DateTime: 2012-02-24 17:00:07

Thanks. I had this working by setting a variable when the player examined the mushroom, but I knew there had to be a more elegant way. And yes, I understand your point; my motivation is really just about learning how things like this are done, without consideration of whether they [i]should[/i] be done.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4405&start=10#p32226
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: NPC-NPC interaction?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-24 17:13:40

Thanks Ben!  -- I was just posting to follow up on your earlier post, that I'm willing to struggle through with just pointers when I get stuck.  But I greatly appreciate the solution, which I'll now try to figure out.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4015&start=10#p32228
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3.1 released!
User: TheBloke / DateTime: 2012-02-24 17:23:15

[quote="bcressey"]OS X and Linux development is essentially just FrobTADS + a text editor + a terminal.

I'm quite happy with my setup now but I remember looking for a long time for an editor with decent syntax highlighting for TADS. Eventually I settled on gVim / MacVim. That's not a choice that will work for everyone and it's somewhat cruel as a recommendation for beginners, but it works really well as a T3 dev environment.
[/quote]

I'm a heavy vim user and am planning to use that for my TADS editing.

I don't suppose you've done any work on a syntax highlighting/indenting plugin for vim that you could share?

I plan to create one, matching the colour highlighting and indenting rules provided by Workbench, but it'd be awesome if you've got something already.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4076&start=10#p32229
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Version Control and Workbench
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-24 17:50:45

[quote="TheBloke"]So I see clear general benefits of such a move.  But there's an even more compelling reason.  By extending an existing IDE framework to support TADS, one could instantly - with little if any additional work - open up TADS development to non-Windows platforms.[/quote]

The biggest obstacle to TADS development on non-Windows platforms is the myth that you need Workbench to do TADS development.

Posturing aside, I've thought about putting together an online IDE using a [url=http://c9.io/]Cloud9[/url] server modded to run the T3 build tools. Not sure what's involved but on the surface it seems plausible.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=40#p32230
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: TheBloke / DateTime: 2012-02-24 17:57:09

Very nice system!  Good job.

Feels reasonably fast to me from the UK.  I got server gs-d40ada66.tads.io.  I noticed this is in eastern US - Amazon do have a Western European (Ireland) location that would be much faster for users like myself; but it also costs a bit more to host there so I'd totally understand why you might not want to use that.

Two minor issues:

1. The URL I was redirected to includes a custom port, 50773 (though that appears to change.)

If at all possible I'd highly recommend you find a way to get it hosted on standard HTTP port 80 - perhaps with a single Apache instance that transparently proxies to the local game servers on whatever port.  If Apache mod_proxy doesn't like the dynamic/changing local port numbers, then perhaps a coded solution in PHP or similar would be appropriate.  (I can check further on mod_proxy configuration options for you if that'd help.)

It's a problem because the current URLs are likely to be inaccessible to many people behind corporate firewalls, which will specifically allow only certain outbound ports such as 80 and 443.  Equally they may also be behind a transparent HTTP proxy which enforces the same restriction.  

So you may find that many people working for big companies are currently unable to while away their working hours playing games on your servers [emote]:)[/emote]

2.  This is the first TADS 3 online game I've played.  I get a persistent red Javascript warning in the bottom right, saying:

Javascript error: Script error.
Window: main ()
Line: 0.

It's persistent as in it always comes back when I reload the page.  It goes away when I click the Ignore button.

Browser is Chrome 17 on OSX.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4015&start=10#p32231
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3.1 released!
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-24 18:01:05

vim supports syntax highlighting for TADS 3 out of the box. The coloring for anonymous functions is a bit off, but it's never bothered me enough to try to fix it.

It handles indenting pretty well; the only hitch is if you use the normal object syntax...

[code]
foo: object
    bar = 1
;
[/code]

... then it won't auto-indent the first and last lines. You can use the alternate syntax instead:

[code]
foo: object {
    bar = 1
}
[/code]

I find those extra braces kind of ugly so I just use the normal syntax and tab / backspace as needed.

[code]
noremap <F5> :up<CR>:!t3make<CR>
[/code]

That's the extent of my .vimrc customization for TADS 3. It lets me press F5 to save and build a project.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4015&start=10#p32232
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3.1 released!
User: TheBloke / DateTime: 2012-02-24 18:10:11

[quote="bcressey"]vim supports syntax highlighting for TADS 3 out of the box. The coloring for anonymous functions is a bit off, but it's never bothered me enough to try to fix it.

It handles indenting pretty well; the only hitch is if you use the normal object syntax...
[/quote]

Oh yeah I  should have just tried it!  

Seems a little basic maybe, I'm wondering if it's just a copy of the C syntax highlighting.  e.g.   something: Topic  is both in same colour, whereas I'd expect class name to be different to object name.

But it's definitely a start - I'll work on some improvements.

[quote]
That's the extent of my .vimrc customization for TADS 3. It lets me press F5 to save and build a project.[/quote]

I'll let you know if I add anything else

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4076&start=20#p32233
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Version Control and Workbench
User: TheBloke / DateTime: 2012-02-24 18:13:26

[quote="bcressey"][quote="TheBloke"]So I see clear general benefits of such a move.  But there's an even more compelling reason.  By extending an existing IDE framework to support TADS, one could instantly - with little if any additional work - open up TADS development to non-Windows platforms.[/quote]

The biggest obstacle to TADS development on non-Windows platforms is the myth that you need Workbench to do TADS development.
[/quote]

I agree completely that you don't really - but I think most non-technical users want/like having an IDE to hold their hand.  And things like integrated debugging are definitely useful.

To put it another way - the users most likely to want a hand-holding IDE and to never have to touch the command line are also exactly the same users likely to be daunted by TADS' complexity.  They would therefore be doubly put-off with the combination on non-Windows platforms.

I agree though that some expanded documentation or better packaging of the existing non-Windows tools could go some way to alleviating that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4421&start=10#p32234
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Articles of a value?
User: Erzengel / DateTime: 2012-02-24 18:16:05

It only seems to happen on "to say the (c - sayable value)" (lowercase t).

Here's a quick fix:
[code]
To say the (C - sayable value):
	if c is some text:
		say "[c]";
	otherwise:
		say "the [c]";
[/code]
Obviously this has the limitation that a text property that needs a "the" in front of it won't work. For example:
[code]
A box has some text called the message.
The message of a box is usually "[item described]".

The description of a box is usually "[A material of the item described] cube with the text '[the message of item described]' written on it. [The color of the item described] panels shimmer slightly. [The glow of the item described] glow faintly lights up everything around it."
[/code]
Will show
[quote]
Welcome
An Interactive Fiction
Release 1 / Serial number 120224 / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N) SD

Test room
You can see a Wizard's box and a Sorcerer's box here.

>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] x wizard's box
A wooden cube with the text "Wizard's box" written on it. The blue panels shimmer slightly. The red glow faintly lights up everything around it.

>[2] x sorcerer's box
An iron cube with the text "Sorcerer's box" written on it. The auburn panels shimmer slightly. The red glow faintly lights up everything around it.

>
[/quote]
which doesn't have the extra "the" at the beginning of the sentence, but also doesn't have the desired "the" in the quotes. I think that, for the moment, this is acceptable. But I should probably see if this is in mantis as a bug and report it if not.

--EDIT--
After some more experimenting, I have discovered that it actually happens in examining. The following fully fixes the issue:
[code]
carry out examining something:
	instead say "[description of item described]".
[/code]
It's obvious that the default rule performs "say "[the description of item described]".", which adds a "the" to the text.

--EDIT--
After more experimenting, I have discovered that it is in standard examining rule.
[code]
The fixed standard examining rule is listed instead of the standard examining rule in the carry out examining rules.
Carry out examining (this is the fixed standard examining rule):
	if the noun provides the property description and the description of the noun is not "":
		say "[description of the noun][line break]";
	now examine text printed is true.
[/code]
This fixes an issue with the previous work around that prevented the display of "A box is on the pedestal".
As you might be able to guess, in the actual standard examining rule, it says "the description of the noun" rather than just "description of the noun".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=40#p32235
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-24 18:17:17

[quote="TheBloke"]Feels reasonably fast to me from the UK.  I got server gs-d40ada66.tads.io.  I noticed this is in eastern US - Amazon do have a Western European (Ireland) location that would be much faster for users like myself; but it also costs a bit more to host there so I'd totally understand why you might not want to use that.[/quote]

I'll spin up an Ireland instance again at some point. I had it up during testing but took it down over the weekend; I haven't quite finished all the infrastructure work, and I didn't want to pay the usage fees until I'm ready to tie it into IFDB.

I have an AWS CloudFormation template that automates the process, so it only takes a minute or two. 

[quote="TheBloke"]If at all possible I'd highly recommend you find a way to get it hosted on standard HTTP port 80 - perhaps with a single Apache instance that transparently proxies to the local game servers on whatever port.[/quote]

I worked on that a few months ago (prior to the official release) but never quite got it working. I agree that it would be useful if e.g. "gs-d40ada66.tads.io/32768/?..." proxied the game server on "gs-d40ada66.tads.io:32768/?...".

[quote="TheBloke"]It's persistent as in it always comes back when I reload the page.  It goes away when I click the Ignore button.[/quote]

No idea what's going on there. Does it happen for all games? Like this [url=http://gs.tads.io/?storyfile=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2759298/webscript.t3]webscript[/url] demo?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=40#p32236
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: TheBloke / DateTime: 2012-02-24 18:20:18

[quote="bcressey"]
I worked on that a few months ago (prior to the official release) but never quite got it working. I agree that it would be useful if e.g. "gs-d40ada66.tads.io/32768/?..." proxied the game server on "gs-d40ada66.tads.io:32768/?...".[/quote]

I'll have a look at some docs tomorrow and see if I can see anything.

[quote]
[quote="TheBloke"]It's persistent as in it always comes back when I reload the page.  It goes away when I click the Ignore button.[/quote]

No idea what's going on there. Does it happen for all games? Like this [url=http://gs.tads.io/?storyfile=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2759298/webscript.t3]webscript[/url] demo?[/quote]

Yes, same error.  Typing JS ran through the demo without any problems.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4076&start=20#p32237
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Version Control and Workbench
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-02-24 18:24:15

[quote="bcressey"]The biggest obstacle to TADS development on non-Windows platforms is the myth that you need Workbench to do TADS development.
[/quote]

Well, up until recently, FrobTads was presented on the TADS website purely as a command-line [i]interpreter[/i], not as a compiler. Even if you clicked on a link that said FrobTads was for writing TADS games, the informational page for FrobTads mentioned nothing about the compiler. So the myth was strongly reinforced, if not created, by the TADS site itself...

Of course, someone with no technical background is also not going to figure out how to set up the environment without a friendly guide. Is there such a guide?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4015&start=10#p32238
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3.1 released!
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-24 18:24:53

[quote="TheBloke"]Seems a little basic maybe, I'm wondering if it's just a copy of the C syntax highlighting.  e.g.   something: Topic  is both in same colour, whereas I'd expect class name to be different to object name.[/quote]

Classes in T3 are just objects that start (by convention) with an uppercase letter, so I don't think it makes sense to distinguish them.

For example, these are all legal object declarations. 

[code]
something: Topic;
somethingElse: something;
class Nothing: something;
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=40#p32239
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-24 18:35:34

[quote="TheBloke"]I'll have a look at some docs tomorrow and see if I can see anything.[/quote]

It would be an nginx configuration change rather than a TADS 3 one. It's going to wind up being some sort of regex to match the server name and a proxy_pass directive to forward based on that match.

[quote="TheBloke"]Yes, same error.  Typing JS ran through the demo without any problems.[/quote]

Do you still get the error in incognito mode / with all extensions disabled? In Safari?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4423&start=0#p32240
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Platform Dilemma
User: UnwashedMass / DateTime: 2012-02-24 18:35:54

Do also keep in mind that not all CLIs are created equal: batch files that work under MS-DOS may not work under Windows may not work under DOSBox.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=40#p32241
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: TheBloke / DateTime: 2012-02-24 18:38:24

[quote="bcressey"]
Do you still get the error in incognito mode / with all extensions disabled? In Safari?[/quote]

OK no not in Incognito - must be an incompatibility with one of my extensions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4139&start=40#p32242
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: tads.io server testing
User: TheBloke / DateTime: 2012-02-24 18:40:35

[quote="TheBloke"][quote="bcressey"]
Do you still get the error in incognito mode / with all extensions disabled? In Safari?[/quote]

OK no not in Incognito - must be an incompatibility with one of my extensions.[/quote]

It was FasterChrome - the extension that provides auto-scroll on multi-page documents, amongst many other things.  Makes sense, that tries to parse and modify the page quite a bit.

Unfortunately it doesn't provide a config option allowing disabling on specific URLs, but it's no big deal if that's the only error.  Or I can just play in Incognito, or in Firefox.

Thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4076&start=20#p32243
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Version Control and Workbench
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-24 19:06:33

[quote="ektemple"]Of course, someone with no technical background is also not going to figure out how to set up the environment without a friendly guide. Is there such a guide?[/quote]

Once you've installed the FrobTADS package for OS X - which is recommended by the new-in-3.1 download guide feature - you should be able to follow along with the Getting Started book.

[quote="TheBloke"]To put it another way - the users most likely to want a hand-holding IDE and to never have to touch the command line are also exactly the same users likely to be daunted by TADS' complexity. They would therefore be doubly put-off with the combination on non-Windows platforms.[/quote]

I should clarify that when I referred to posturing, I meant my own statement that the need for Workbench was a myth. I agree that IDEs are a useful tool and that the lack of cross-platform support is problematic.

I think it sends a message to Mac / Linux users that they're not wanted or that they'll find a sub-par experience. Speaking as a Mac user, I haven't found that to be the case, nor have I found Workbench to be very useful. On Windows, I wouldn't even bother installing it if it weren't the easiest way to get the toolchain loaded.

The two major myths that kept me away from TADS 3 for three years were that the language was a lot like Java and that Workbench was an indispensable tool. Neither has been true in my experience but arguably both are more off-putting to people who would really love TADS than the need to use the command line.

At the moment, I find it much easier to work with WebUI on OS X (where the command line gives me a URL that I can open in any browser) than on Windows (where the game is wrapped up in an HTML TADS frame running IE9 in the background).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4426&start=0#p32244
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer Talk Adventure Game Design
User: narcisse / DateTime: 2012-02-24 19:23:16

To promote their upcoming game, Double Fine put out a 35 minute conversation between Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer on designing adventure games [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=re_LWmRJK-g]up on Youtube[/url] that should interest some people here. They talk a bit about their experiences with old text adventure games in the beginning.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4423&start=0#p32245
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Platform Dilemma
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2012-02-24 19:45:00

Working in any IF-authoring language is going to be an uphill battle, since you're trying to do something the system's not designed to do. IF systems are about making stuff that has rooms, objects, compass direction, etc. easy to make, but anything else harder to make. I'd recommend a programming language that makes it easy to work with text, like Python-- it sounds like what you want to do wouldn't involve learning anything too complicated (except potentially the conversation with an AI part!)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4408&start=0#p32246
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Pirate Kart V: GDC Edition
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2012-02-24 20:30:06

Each thing takes as long as it takes. All I meant was that producing an asset for a graphical game - divorced from issues of designing and programming any particular game - tends to take longer than producing the same asset for a vaguely equivalent text game. Speaking with both my visual artist and writer hats on, if I was given the brief to conjure up a forest as quickly as possible, I'd choose to write a description of it rather than spend the hours to a week it may take me to draw the forest.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4423&start=0#p32247
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Platform Dilemma
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-24 20:35:07

I can speak for TADS here. You can write TADS programs that are bare-minimum. All you have to do is not include the base library. Here's how a bare-minimum "hello world" looks like in TADS:

[code]
#include <tads.h>

main(args)
{
    "Hello, world!\n";
}
[/code]

There are no pre-defined objects, verbs, rooms, or anything. It's mostly like writing in C++. Not sure if that's what you have in mind.

Note though that if you decide to write it for DOS, people on Macs and Linux won't be able to play it without jumping through some very annoying hoops (meaning: they won't bother with it.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4423&start=0#p32248
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Platform Dilemma
User: George / DateTime: 2012-02-24 20:44:40

Maybe Ren'Py? This reminds me of [i]Digital [/i]for some reason.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4427&start=0#p32249
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Desks/iPads from Ender's Game
User: teenbat / DateTime: 2012-02-24 21:17:59

Hello.

I'm new here, this is in fact my first post.

I am making my first [i]real[/i] IF, but I got stuck at a part fairly early on.

If any of you are familiar with the book "Ender's Game", you should know what I am talking about.

Ender, and the students at Battle School have iPad like objects, called "Desks". I need help making one.

What I want is simple, and has been done before, but not with a "computer" that doesn't close (like a laptop) and isn't stationary, and also doesn't have any extensions.

I need to simply make a login screen on the iPad-like Desk, and after logging in, there are multiple areas where to go, such as "Assignments" and "Messages".

Ender (the player) must also be able to "hack", which is just made possible by learning about keywords to type into the Desk, that allow access to "hidden" menus.

I tried to be as descriptive as possible, but if you need more information, simply post. I really help, so thank you in advance.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4428&start=0#p32250
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: initial description of a room
User: g1i1ch / DateTime: 2012-02-24 21:32:13

Is there any way to have an initial appearance of a room? I'm trying everything I can but it doesn't seem to understand what I'm telling it. I assume it's simple but I can't find anything in the documentation or online.

Thanks alot

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4428&start=0#p32251
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: initial description of a room
User: g1i1ch / DateTime: 2012-02-24 22:02:07

[code]Darkroom is a room. "First description" .

After printing darkroom description for the first time: 
	change the darkroom description to "second description".[/code]

Not working at all

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4428&start=0#p32252
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: initial description of a room
User: Erzengel / DateTime: 2012-02-24 22:04:46

Use conditional text:

[code]
Test room is a room. The description of test room is "[if item described is unvisited]This is your first visit![otherwise]Welcome back![end if] This will always be shown."
[/code]

The entire verbiage of your second post is off, try something more like:
[code]
after printing the locale description of darkroom:
	now the description of the darkroom is "second description".
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4427&start=0#p32253
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Desks/iPads from Ender's Game
User: Merlin Fisher / DateTime: 2012-02-24 22:57:55

What system are you writing this program in?

I'm not quite clear on what effect you want... perhaps you could post a sample transcript?  Writing the game's ideal output, and THEN programming it, is a technique some authors use.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4428&start=0#p32254
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: initial description of a room
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-25 00:44:12

Or:

The description of test room is "[first time]This is your first visit. [only]This will always be shown."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4429&start=0#p32255
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: My brothers game has a problem...
User: Superjax / DateTime: 2012-02-25 04:28:41

Hi everybody,

Sorry that I've been asking a lot of questions, me and my brother are new to Inform 7. I think I got it, like, 5 days ago or something.

Anyways, my brother is making a text adventure, and he's run into this problem:

[code]The corridor section is a room. [if we have not examined the corridor section]"After knocking out the thug you unlock the door and arrive in a corridor. The problem is, there is a conspicous layer of rust in your way, there are also some weird mossy unstable looking pillars.".

The description is [otherwise]"The room is covered in moss and the pillars to the side look like they are ready to break.".[/code]

The problem is that he wants to make it so that when you enter the room you would get:

[code]After knocking out the thug you unlock the door and arrive in a corridor. The problem is, there is a conspicous layer of rust in your way, there are also some weird mossy unstable looking pillars.[/code]

And that when you examine the room, you would get:

[code]The room is covered in moss and the pillars to the side look like they are ready to break.[/code]

However, when he runs the code, he gets this:

[code]This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6G60) on its most recent run through:


Problem. You wrote '"after knocking out the thug you un [...] ird mossy unstable looking pillars"'  , but in another sentence 'The description is "the room is covered in moss and th [...] look like they are ready to break"'  : but this looks like a contradiction, because the same property seems to be being set in each of these sentences, but with a different outcome.
[/code]

Fix please?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4429&start=0#p32257
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: My brothers game has a problem...
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-02-25 07:09:36

The syntactical problem is that brackets outside strings are considered comments, so the compiler just ignores your conditionals and complains that you're defining the room description twice. Bracketed conditions must be inside the entire description:

[code]The corridor section is a room. "[if we have not examined the corridor section]After knocking out the thug you unlock the door and arrive in a corridor. The problem is, there is a conspicous layer of rust in your way, there are also some weird mossy unstable looking pillars.[otherwise]The room is covered in moss and the pillars to the side look like they are ready to break."
[/code]
BUT it still won't work, because you can't examine rooms so "if we have not examined the corridor section" is always true. See [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4428]this thread[/url] for alternate solutions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4429&start=0#p32258
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: My brothers game has a problem...
User: Superjax / DateTime: 2012-02-25 07:26:49

Thank you! I will check out that thread.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4431&start=0#p32259
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [I7] When play begins on a chair w/ introduction
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2012-02-25 09:10:09

Ran into this recently. Figured I would run it by all of you before getting frustrated with it. I'm having some sort of timing issue in the following code, which results in my room description begin printed twice. If "move player to the chair" is removed the behavior is normal, but no matter where I try to plug that line into "when play begins" I get a weird result. I'm thinking perhaps I can't even put it there? How should I go about this?

[code]
"Begin Room" by Jizaboz

Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short.

When play begins:
	say "Here you are in the test lab waiting for the experiment to being.";
	wait for any key;
	clear the screen;
	display the boxed quotation "Chapter 1";
	show the current quotation;
	pause the game;
	now the player is in the chair;


Test Lab is a room. The description of test lab is "You are in a small room made of shiney green tiles."

A chair is an enterable supporter in the Test Lab. The description of chair is "A simple wooden chair."
[/code]

Result:

[quote]
Test Lab (on the chair)
You are in a small room made of shiney green tiles.

Begin Room
An Interactive Fiction by Jizaboz
Release 1 / Serial number 120225 / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N) SD

Test Lab (on the chair)
You are in a small room made of shiney green tiles.

>
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4428&start=0#p32260
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: initial description of a room
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2012-02-25 09:14:00

Yet another way of wording:

The description of test room is "[if unvisited]This is your first visit. [otherwise]This will always be shown."

Note I've removed "the item" because I've never ran into a situation where I had to include it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4377&start=0#p32261
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Quest WebEditor
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2012-02-25 09:20:56

Cool. I'll have to check this out again soon. Will be nice to finally play around with it on my Ubuntu machine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4428&start=0#p32262
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: initial description of a room
User: Erzengel / DateTime: 2012-02-25 09:29:40

[quote="Jizaboz"]Yet another way of wording:

The description of test room is "[if unvisited]This is your first visit. [otherwise]This will always be shown."

Note I've removed "the item" because I've never ran into a situation where I had to include it.[/quote]
Beware, your "This will always be shown" will only be shown after the first visit.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4431&start=0#p32263
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] When play begins on a chair w/ introduction
User: Erzengel / DateTime: 2012-02-25 09:36:28

You're going to want to move the player to the chair, without printing a room description. Like so:
[code]
"Begin Room" by Jizaboz

Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short.

When play begins:
   say "Here you are in the test lab waiting for the experiment to being.";
   wait for any key;
   clear the screen;
   display the boxed quotation "Chapter 1";
   show the current quotation;
   pause the game;
   move the player to the chair, without printing a room description.


Test Lab is a room. The description of test lab is "You are in a small room made of shiney green tiles."

A chair is an enterable supporter in the Test Lab. The description of chair is "A simple wooden chair."
[/code]

This eliminates the first room description that appears before the title block:
[quote]
Begin Room
An Interactive Fiction by Jizaboz
Release 1 / Serial number 120225 / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N) SD

Test Lab (on the chair)
You are in a small room made of shiney green tiles.

>[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4426&start=0#p32264
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer Talk Adventure Game Design
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-25 09:58:58

Great interview: I've played *all* the Lucasarts adventure games, and I'm really excited about seeing their new game come together.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4431&start=0#p32265
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] When play begins on a chair w/ introduction
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-02-25 10:00:45

Or don't move the player at all and set the PC's initial location: "The player is on the chair."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4432&start=0#p32266
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Hint request -- Fallacy of Dawn, restaurant scene
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2012-02-25 10:15:53

I was going to try to play Robb Sherwin's games before the XYZZY vote, so I started with [i]Fallacy of Dawn[/i].

I'm stuck early in the game, probably the second scene/puzzle.

[spoiler]I'm in the sushi restaurant, and I keep getting killed by Dapper.  Clara gave me her keys, and Porn told me to leave, but my attempts to leave are not acknowledged (trying to go OUT or any other direction doesn't work).  Trying to attack Dapper also gets me killed.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4426&start=0#p32267
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer Talk Adventure Game Design
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-02-25 10:21:03

Thanks for the link, very interesting.

Interesting what he said about the ease of hint-searching ruining puzzles... what he DOESN'T go into, however, is why people would turn to hint-searching so readily instead of trying to solve the puzzle. Gilbert talks about lack of time, and a wide variety of games - so many that to spend a long time "stuck" on a game, being frustrated, when one could be playing something else, seems strange.

What he might not have realised - as he said himself he had more fun DESIGNING games than PLAYING them - is how much the distrust builds up over years of badly-designed puzzles. Almost the entirety of the first Discworld game, and some key puzzles in Simon the Sorcerer 1 and 2 (hush-puppies, anyone?), and then the puzzles of Black Dahlia - these are the main culprits in building within me a certain distrust of puzzles. I'll try to solve them, I'll be game for it as long as the game remains fair. But if the game starts throwing puzzles with inane solutions (in an AGS game, "Crave", when you had to search a dumpster which was next to a stairway with a bannister, you actually had to drop a banana peel in the ground and then slide down the bannister - the PC would gleefuly slide all the way down, slide in the banana peel, and enter the dumpster head-first. The author had brilliant AGS skills but also had serious design issues), then my trust is gone (Broken Sword 4 had some very iffy situations too, where you had some codes you had to enter and then had to manipulate the codes some more in order for them to be accepted - for no reason at all).

The issue isn't "Why should I waste time on this puzzle when there are other games I'll probably enjoy best?", and it takes a long-time player, not a designer to recognise it, but rather "Why should I waste time on this puzzle when I have no idea if it'll be worth it, when I have no idea whether the designer is playing fair?". It's become common for me to hint-search as soon as I'm seriously stumped. Then, based on the solution, I'll smack my head, thinking "I should have got that", and proceed, with a little more faith, more willing to invest some time (which keeps happening in Infocom games, curiously).

Or, instead, I'll think that it was a badly designed puzzle, or it didn't make sense, or whatever. Then I'll gauge whether I'm having enough fun to continue with the game. Sometimes I do, with the hints ready should I need them. Sometimes I don't, and quit the game, and that'll be that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4429&start=0#p32268
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: My brothers game has a problem...
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-02-25 10:21:14

IMHO the decision to use square brackets for comments, for conditions inside strings, and for tokens in Inform is a really Bad Idea. It makes these kinds of mistakes possible, since misplaced bracketed expressions are understood as comments by the compiler.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4429&start=0#p32269
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: My brothers game has a problem...
User: gamerfountain34 / DateTime: 2012-02-25 11:19:10

thx juhana that fixed it [emote]:D[/emote], and peterorme thx for the warning, i wont use brackets so much. if ur wondering im superjax's brother. also thx to the people who posted on that that thread juhana showed me and thx to the guy who made it [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4421&start=10#p32270
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Articles of a value?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-02-25 11:40:21

The issue would also affect the scene description text rule and possibly things said in other places than the Standard Rules. As far as I can tell the problem will occur whenever a rule tells the game to say "[the text]" or "[The text]". And presumably a corrsponding problem will occur for rules that tell the game to say "[a text]" or "[A text]".

I think I'd recommend this alternative fix: 
[code]
To say a/an/the (T - text): say T.
To say A/An/The (T - text): say T.
To say a/an/the (T - indexed text): say T.
To say A/An/The (T - indexed text): say T.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4428&start=0#p32271
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: initial description of a room
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-25 11:58:26

[quote]Note I've removed "the item" because I've never ran into a situation where I had to include it.[/quote]

That's fine. When you refer to a bare property inside a property string ("[if unvisited]..."), it assumes you are referring to "the item described".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4421&start=10#p32272
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Articles of a value?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-25 12:05:12

Felix, if I understand that aright, the idea is that the rules we've written for sayable values are already taking care of the articles, so we write rules for text and indexed text that ignore any articles that may be attached to them?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4428&start=0#p32273
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: initial description of a room
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-25 12:11:45

...I better add this: You can write a description containing "[if unvisited]", or "[if the item described is unvisited]".

But don't write "[if the item is unvisited]". That gets interpreted as *some* generic item, which is not at all what you want. Common mistake.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4428&start=0#p32274
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: initial description of a room
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2012-02-25 12:12:51

Yet another method:  say "[one of]First time.[or]Later time.[stopping]  Always printed."

Question:  Suppose:
- the player enters SUPERBRIEF mode (don't show descriptions after moves, even on first entry)
- the player enters then leaves the room
- the player switches to VERBOSE mode (always show descriptions after moves, even after first entry)
- the player returns to the room

What do you want to happen?  (That is, it isn't the player's first time in the room, but it is the first time displaying that text.)

(If you don't want that "first time text" to be shown on the return, use "if unvisited".  If you do want it to be displayed, use "one of", or "first time".)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4428&start=0#p32275
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: initial description of a room
User: Erzengel / DateTime: 2012-02-25 12:43:39

I just want to say, that's an awesome technique. Thanks for pointing it out.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4421&start=10#p32276
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Articles of a value?
User: Erzengel / DateTime: 2012-02-25 12:56:42

OK, here's a new issue I'm having:
[code]
to say a (C - sayable value):
	if the C provides the property indefinite article and the indefinite article of C is not "":
		say "[indefinite article of C] [C]";
	otherwise:
		let first be character number 1 in "[C]" in lower case;
		if first is "a" or first is "e" or first is "i" or first is "o" or first is "u":
			say "an [C]";
		otherwise :
			say "a [C]".
[/code]

Such that I could say:
[code]
Education is a kind of value. Education is High school, University, Academy, and Community College. Education has some text called indefinite article. The indefinite article of University is "a".

Tim is a person. Tim has an education called Education Level. The education level of Tim is University. The description of Tim is "He went to [a education level of item described]."
[/code]
This works fine, until I do:
[code]
Hair color is a kind of value. Hair color is brown, black, auburn, ginger, red, blond, and chestnut.

Tim has a hair color. The hair color of Tim is auburn. The description of Tim is "He went to [a education level of item described]. [A hair color of item described] strand of hair falls in his eyes."
[/code]
This fails with an error that "Hair color is not allowed to have an indefinite article", even though I'm trying to guard against using the indefinite article with the "provides property". This only happens with values, and would indicate that values are checked for properties at compile time while things check for properties at run time (if I try to use a property in string replacement that doesn't exist on a thing, it compiles and then fails at run time). So I wonder, is there a compile time way to check for property? I tried "to say a (C - sayable value which provides property indefinite article)", but that still fails with a compile time error where a C that shouldn't be going through this particular say apparently is going through this say.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4421&start=10#p32277
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Articles of a value?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-02-25 14:05:42

[quote="matt w"]Felix, if I understand that aright, the idea is that the rules we've written for sayable values are already taking care of the articles, so we write rules for text and indexed text that ignore any articles that may be attached to them?[/quote]
Yes. The Standard Rules have a general phrase to say a sayable value, which I think, delegates that work to specific I6 routines for specific kinds of value, and then a special phrase to say objects with articles. 
[quote="Standard Rules (A/sr5§2)"]To say (value - sayable value of kind K): (- print ({-printing-routine:K}) {-pointer-to:value}; -).[/quote]
What "To say the (T - text): say T" does is refer saying the text to the standard printing routine for text. And I guess that routine doesn't add any articles at all.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4433&start=0#p32278
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Are there arrays in TADS? Or anything that behaves that way?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-25 14:56:40

The short version:

Are there arrays in TADS 3.1?  Or is there a dynamic data structure I can use like an array, to call up a datum by two or more indices?

The long version:

[rant]Armed with Ben's Rock-Paper-Scissors code, I now want to create a general NPC-NPC game playing module.  This will consult an NPCgame object for the rules.

The advantage to this is that now you can simply define the game rules and add it to the list of games the NPC can play, rather than rewriting the game code many times over.  Further down the road this may make it possible to create games where moves can be added in on the fly.

--If it's not clear, I'm using games as a well-defined instance of social interaction.  Fuzz out the "win" and "lose" reporting and make a little more narrative the move and countermove, and you have a sort of model for social interaction that doesn't require coding every line by hand.  (E.g. _The Games People Play_, by Eric Berne.)

To this end, it would be much simpler if I could just set up a grid in something akin to the normal form game theorists use:

[code]
    R   P   S  <--p1
R   -  p1 p2
P  p2  -  p1
S  p1 p2  -
^
p2
[/code]

And then call up winResult = gameMatrix[p1move][p2move], or suchlike.[/rant]

Any way of accessing a datum on two (or more) indices?


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4434&start=0#p32279
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Zipping Ahead N Turns?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-25 15:14:20

Since I'm trying to build some simulator activity that unfolds over time (stochastically), it'd be helpful to see how the game is behaving without sitting there typing Z a number of times.

Therefore, I'd like to be able to trigger TADS to ignore user input for some arbitrary number of turns, and zip ahead so I can see how the simulator will play out.

I'm currently looking at turnAction() for clues, but this seems a dead end.

Any thoughts?


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4433&start=0#p32280
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Are there arrays in TADS? Or anything that behaves that 
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-25 15:19:04

Possibly making a list of lists?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4435&start=0#p32281
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Changing "my [text]" to mean "Bob's [text]"?
User: Erzengel / DateTime: 2012-02-25 15:28:15

I honestly have no idea where to start on this. But let's say I have the following:
[code]
Test room is a room.
Bob is a man.
Anne is a woman.
Jim is a man.
Bob, Anne, and Jim are in test room.

Watch is a kind of thing. Ring is a kind of thing.
Bob's watch is a watch. Bob's watch is a part of Bob.
Anne's watch is a watch. Anne's watch is a part of Anne.
Anne's ring is a ring. Anne is holding Anne's ring.
Jim's ring is a ring. Jim's ring is in test room.
Understand "band", "circlet", "loop", or "ringlet" as ring.

Instead of examining a man:
	say "His name is [printed name of item described]."
Instead of examining a woman:
	say "Her name is [printed name of item described]."
Instead of examining player:
	say "Your name is [printed name of item described]."

Body switcher is a device.
Instead of switching on body switcher:
	if player is Bob:
		now player is Anne;
		now anne is holding the body switcher;
	otherwise:
		now player is Bob;
		now bob is holding the body switcher.

The player is bob. Bob is holding the switcher.
[/code]

Now I want a way to understand that "my watch" means "bob's watch" when I'm bob, and "Anne's watch" when I'm anne, but also that "my ring" or "my circlet" means "anne's ring" when I'm anne. Is this possible without creating a huge understanding list of "understand "my ring", "my circlet", "my ringlet", "my loop" or "my band" as Anne's ring when player is Anne"? Because that's going to get unwieldy fast.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4435&start=0#p32282
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing "my [text]" to mean "Bob's [text]"?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-25 15:36:36

Does something like this work? This is pretty much pseudocode, as I haven't checked the syntax at all, but hopefully it's clear how to make it work.

[code]Ownership relates one person to many things. The verb to own [conjugations etc.] implies the ownership relation.
When play begins:
   repeat with item running through things enclosed by a person:
       now a random person enclosing item owns item;
   now Jim owns Jim's ring. [and any other special cases you need, including anything where more than one person encloses an item at startup.]

Understand "my" as a thing when the player owns the item described.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4428&start=10#p32283
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: initial description of a room
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-25 15:41:52

Note: none of your players will ever use "superbrief" mode.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4428&start=10#p32284
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: initial description of a room
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2012-02-25 15:47:37

If the game won't work correctly under "superbrief" mode, then the verb should be disabled.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4435&start=0#p32285
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing "my [text]" to mean "Bob's [text]"?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-02-25 16:02:40

Or try editing the player's command:
[code]
After reading a command when the player is not yourself: 
	if the player's command includes "my", replace the matched text with "[the printed name of the player in lower case][']s".
[/code]
(Apparently the internal name of the player is always "yourself", no matter what the printed name is; and, again apparently, the command line parser converts all letters to lower case.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4435&start=0#p32286
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing "my [text]" to mean "Bob's [text]"?
User: Erzengel / DateTime: 2012-02-25 16:13:09

That's awesome, I like it.

I just wonder why "x my car" produces "I only understood you as far as wanting to examine Bob's watch", but that's not a problem with this technique as it does the same thing if I do "x bob's car".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4434&start=0#p32287
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Zipping Ahead N Turns?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-25 16:19:43

You could use the test scripts extension that Jim uploaded to IF Archive. Define a script that enters >wait as many times as you'd like, scroll to the end of output, and observe the result.

Another approach would be to dispense with turn-based input and switch over to real time input, where NPCs act if they haven't done anything in a certain amount of time, potentially interrupting the player's turn.

If that's where you're headed, it might be best to get it out of the way now, since it's a major design decision. With real time in place, you can just speed up the NPCS turn time from once per 30 seconds to every few seconds or even milliseconds to fast forward.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4435&start=0#p32288
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing "my [text]" to mean "Bob's [text]"?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-25 16:21:42

"x bob's" would be a valid command on its own, because "bob's" is part of the name of bob's watch. (Just as you're allowed to type "x silver" instead of "x silver dish.") So, if I'm not mistaken, it understand "x bob's car" as "x bob's [watch]" with something extra on the end; just as "jump up" is understood as "jump" with something extra on the end and gives you a similar error.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4423&start=10#p32289
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Platform Dilemma
User: Campbell / DateTime: 2012-02-25 16:29:52

[quote="RealNC"]I can speak for TADS here. You can write TADS programs that are bare-minimum. All you have to do is not include the base library.[/quote]Same goes for ADRIFT - just remove the standard library.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4412&start=10#p32290
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Curses broken in Zoom 1.1.5
User: TheBloke / DateTime: 2012-02-25 16:31:31

Woah!  This just happened to me the other day as well.

Latest Zoom on my OSX 10.7.3.  I'd been playing games fine for a week or so, then suddenly I found a newly downloaded one (Adam Cadre's 905) kept beeping at me.  Thought maybe it was incompatible or corrupted, so switched to Gargoyle in Windows for that one.  Carried on playing other games OK.

Then I played through Fail Safe for an hour or so, at which point it suddenly started the beeping too - i.e. any command I typed resulted in a beep, and nothing registering.  I tried deleting all copies of the .z5 file, and deleting the auto save, but it would happen on every new play.  Specifically, it would allow one command at the start of the game, and then immediately stop registering any other commands.

I thought maybe a reboot would solve it, and did so but didn't play any more games for a couple of days.  Today I just loaded Fail Safe in Zoom and so far it's working OK.  .... no, edit, it's failing again, I got a few moves out of it this time, but now it's jammed again.

When it jams, I can't type anything.  But if I open the Skein window, I can repeat commands by double-clicking on them.  And all menu options work; I can restart the game etc.  But I can't type anything in the window and each attempt is greeted with a beep (after a little while, anyway - probably when some buffer is filled.)

The fact that it happened to both of us around the same time suggests it must be something triggered by an OSX update I guess, one we both applied?  Can't be any other explanation for it happening to two people around the same time independently.

I didn't know about the Warnings option, I've turned that on now.  But I'm not seeing any warnings anywhere.  Where are those warnings being output for you?

I just tried opening it from the terminal, and this is the output I see - note that the "Attempted to scroll to a non-existant Skein" occur only when I Cmd-Tab away from Zoom to look at the terminal; they do not correlate to me trying to do anything in the window.

[code]tomj@local:~ $ /Applications/Zoom.app/Contents/MacOS/Zoom 
2012-02-25 22:25:50.391 Zoom[2356:1603] = Loading plugins
2012-02-25 22:25:50.393 Zoom[2356:1603] == Not a valid plugin: /Applications/Zoom.app/Contents/PlugIns/Tads2.plugin
2012-02-25 22:25:50.407 Zoom[2356:1603] Leopard Extensions loaded
2012-02-25 22:25:50.409 Zoom[2356:1603] Zoom will next check for plugin updates on 2012-02-28 23:22:34 +0000
2012-02-25 22:25:50.447 Zoom[2356:1603] ... now /Users/tomj/Documents/Interactive Fiction/Z-Code/FailSafe/FailSafe.z5 (ZCODE-1-001218-DDAF)
2012-02-25 22:25:50.621 ZoomServer[2357:707] Server ready
2012-02-25 22:25:50.674 ZoomServer[2357:707] Server connected
2012-02-25 22:26:05.226 Zoom[2356:1603] ZoomSkeinView: Attempt to scroll to nonexistent item
2012-02-25 22:26:17.463 Zoom[2356:1603] ZoomSkeinView: Attempt to scroll to nonexistent item
2012-02-25 22:27:17.652 Zoom[2356:1603] ZoomSkeinView: Attempt to scroll to nonexistent item
2012-02-25 22:27:19.355 Zoom[2356:1603] ZoomSkeinView: Attempt to scroll to nonexistent item
2012-02-25 22:27:38.906 ZoomServer[2374:707] Server ready
2012-02-25 22:27:38.912 ZoomServer[2374:707] Server connected
2012-02-25 22:27:51.873 Zoom[2356:1603] ZoomSkeinView: Attempt to scroll to nonexistent item[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4434&start=0#p32291
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Zipping Ahead N Turns?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-25 16:33:12

I use the tests.t extension a lot. It's very handy, and setting up a test script, even a long one, is as easy as in Inform 7. (Note that it does add small text files to your hard drive.) If you want to see what happens for 20 turns, you just do this:

[code]Test 'xyz'
   [
      'z', 'z', 'z', 'z', 'z', 'z', 'z', 'z', 'z', 'z', 'z',
      'z', 'z', 'z', 'z', 'z', 'z', 'z', 'z', 'z', 'z', 'z'
   ]
;[/code]
And then in the game you type 'test xyz'.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4412&start=10#p32292
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Curses broken in Zoom 1.1.5
User: TheBloke / DateTime: 2012-02-25 16:36:06

Reading back again, I guess my issue could be different to yours.  To be clear, this is happening for me now with *every* game in Zoom.  EDIT: Not every game, just Z-Code ones, see last post.

For the first week I used Zoom, it worked great.  Now it freezes up either immediately or after a couple of turns, with every game.  No settings changes occurred between when it worked and when it didn't.  It literally started happening in the middle of a play session.  I have rebooted since it started happening without any effect.

I guess I should now clear out all settings and caches from Zoom and try again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4435&start=0#p32293
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing "my [text]" to mean "Bob's [text]"?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-02-25 16:38:51

[quote="Felix"]
(Apparently the internal name of the player is always "yourself", no matter what the printed name is …)[/quote]
On closer scrutiny that's mere appearance. The default player is internally called yourself in I7 and selfobj in I6 and any other player is internally called whatever they were created as. The appearance was due to the standard name printing rule, which slyly prefers "yourself" to any printed name when the game is asked to say "[ the player]" (as opposed to "[the printed name of the player]").

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4412&start=10#p32294
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Curses broken in Zoom 1.1.5
User: TheBloke / DateTime: 2012-02-25 16:45:41

OK, I cleared out *every* Zoom config/cache - moving them to new directories so they wouldn't be picked up.  I also moved my entire Interactive Fiction folder out of Documents to someplace else.

I launched a newly downloaded Fail Safe z5 file, causing Zoom to load, and confirmed that my settings were back to new-install.

The game is still totally broken - locking up on turn two.

I should add that the exact symptom of the lock-up is that the window loses focus.  So:

1. I type command 1 as normal, it processes.
2. I can't type command 2, and it beeps.  I do not see a cursor after the >, as if focus is no longer on that window.  Clicking after the prompt to give me a cursor in the usual place and restore focus does not help, still can't type.
3. If I right click, or look at the Edit menu, I notice that Paste is greyed out - indicating that text input is no longer supported.

I think the fact that it still locks up after being returned to a completely virgin state confirms that either whatever has borked my Zoom is a system/environment issue outside of Zoom itself, or at least that a problem in Zoom has been triggered by something external to it. 

I will raise a bug to the Zoom guy(s). This is really annoying [emote]:([/emote]

EDIT:  Some further testing seems to suggest that it's all Z-Code games that are broken, but not including Infocom ones??    And not including Lost Pig which is zblorb rather than z5 or z8.  So confusing.

Games that lock up within max 3-4 turns (usually 2):
Minster, 905, Slouching to Bedlam, Fail-Safe, Varicella (all z5),  Anchorhead, Dreamhold, Make It Good (all z8)

Games that haven't locked up yet, tested each for at least 15 turns:
Lost Pig (zblorb), Trinity (Infocom z4), Hitch Hikers Guide (Infocom z5), Lock and Key (Glulx), Indigo (TADS).

EDIT 2: And now.. it's working again on those z-code games.  I tried loading a save game for Make It Good, and found that worked OK, didn't lock up.  So then I typed restart and found that it continued to work from the beginning of the game.  Then I tried closing Zoom and running Make It Good, and then Fail Safe, from the start, and they STILL worked.

Right now I can't get any game to lock up again, where just minutes agi they would lock up every time without fail.  I really can't understand how loading one save game has made some fix that persists even after closing and re-opening Zoom, but apparently it has.

This is bizarre.

EDIT 3:  Played Fail Safe for 15 mins, did maybe 20 turns I guess, then just suddenly locked up again.  Restarted, still locked up.  Loaded Make It Good, locked up.  Tried re-loading the Make It Good save that previously seemed to fix things, that locked up on the second turn after loading.

Sigh.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4433&start=0#p32295
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Are there arrays in TADS? Or anything that behaves that 
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-25 16:57:52

I guess that would be a tree, right?

NPCgameObject.player1moveNode.player2moveNode...  I seem to recall doing something like that for a different application some time ago.  Probably could do it again.

Thanks, Jim.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4433&start=0#p32296
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Are there arrays in TADS? Or anything that behaves that
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-25 17:03:52

TADS provides three types for this: ByteArray, Vector and List. ByteArray is a basic datatype, Vector and List are classes. You can find information about them in the system manual. Pick your poison:

<a class="postlink" href="http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/sysman/toc.htm">http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/sysman/toc.htm</a>

Like Jim mentioned, they work similarly to C-like languages. To get a 2D array, you do an array of arrays (or vector/list of vectors/lists).

Edit:
Correction to the above: ByteArray is also a class, not a basic type.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4434&start=0#p32297
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Zipping Ahead N Turns?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-25 17:11:09

I'll try both versions.  I guess there are a few questions, which I'll come back to after some experimentation.

Ben, can you give me a lead on switching to realtime npcs?


Conrad.

ps - Can switching to realtime be done temporarily?  Switch to realtime, have the sim run a bit, and switch back?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4436&start=0#p32298
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Ok, here is the big question... -norand?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-25 17:19:49

I'd like to switch the random function of TADS to a deterministic non-random function that will repeat exactly from game to game.

There are two reasons for this.  One is that, with highly active NPCs running around causing trouble, it'd be helpful if user results were repeatable.  You'd know that the walkthrough would work correctly and so forth.

The other is that, along with some kind of UNDO N-TURNS command, I think I'd be well positioned to make a time travel game.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4436&start=0#p32299
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ok, here is the big question... -norand?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-25 17:29:53

--In other words,

1.  How do I use -norand from within the IDE, and make it stick when I release a game?

and 

2.  Will this effect things like "<<bracked-in-string expressions>>"?

Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4433&start=0#p32300
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Are there arrays in TADS? Or anything that behaves that 
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-25 17:41:31

Well, ByteArray is worrisome in that it only stores bytes.  In the Lists v. Vectors lineup, it seems Vectors would allow the code to tinker with the data more easily.

So I guess Vectors it is!

Thanks, RealNC & Jim.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4428&start=10#p32301
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: initial description of a room
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-25 17:44:51

Yeah, I've been disabling brief/superbrief in my games for a couple of years now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4423&start=10#p32302
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Platform Dilemma
User: Alex / DateTime: 2012-02-25 19:01:16

Ditto

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4428&start=10#p32303
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: initial description of a room
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2012-02-25 19:08:22

I actually went to great pains in Six to make sure brief and superbrief worked, so nyah to you superbrief haters!

More seriously, I only did that because I thought in a hide and seek game, people might legitimately never want to see room descriptions again if they're constantly moving around after other moving characters.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4438&start=0#p32305
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Comparing I7 commands to a table value
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2012-02-25 20:45:32

I want to have a table, something like this:


[code]Table of Introduction Tutorial Commands
verb	noun	second	command	toggle
"inventory"	""	""	"try INVENTORY"	0
"examine"	"me"	""	"try EXAMINE ME"	0
"examine"	 "*"	""	"try EXAMINE DESK or EXAMINE CLOCK"	0
"polish"	"clock"	"rag"	"try POLISH CLOCK WITH RAG"	0
"listen"	""	""	"try LISTEN"	0
[/code]

The idea is that there will be some code running during a scene that will determine the next available tutorial command to display to the user. If the user types a command that "equals" the one in the table, it gets switched off and the next one is shown, until there are no more tutorial commands to show.

I was thinking in I6 terms with this table, so forgive me if I'm not sure where to go with this...but the idea is that I should be able to have specific commands like "examine me" or "x me" equate to a single tutorial item and generic commands like "examine {something}" as another command.

If someone could lead me in the proper direction, I'd appreciate it...

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4438&start=0#p32306
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Comparing I7 commands to a table value
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-25 21:23:24

I'm not an expert here, but if you want to catch successfully parsed commands (as opposed responding to fragmentary commands like "x gjlkj"), then I'd do it in terms of stored actions rather than trying to catch bits of the player's command. So instead of having "examine me" and "x me" and "look at me" and probably a few other things equate to one of the tutorial items, you'd have the action of examining yourself equate to one of the tutorial items. 

Section 12.20 of Writing with Inform tells you more of what to do here. To catch a generic examining action rather than a specific action of examining the box or whatever, you can winkle out the action name part of the current action and test that. So I've got this to work in a simple case:

[code]Table of Test commands
complete action		action name 	response
the action of examining the wizard's box		--	"Congratulations!"
--		the examining action	"Why not try examining the box?"

Before:
	if the current action is a complete action listed in the table of test commands:
		say the response entry;
	otherwise if the action name part of the current action is an action name listed in the table of test commands:
		say the response entry. [/code]

You can also break out the noun and second noun parts if you like, and could probably work up more complicated tests if you wanted to test for things like giving something to Jordan (where you have to match the action name and second noun but the noun can be anything). 

(Also: As usual, I'm posting above my competence here. There may be problems lurking.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4434&start=0#p32307
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Zipping Ahead N Turns?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-25 22:12:58

I would probably commit to one model or the other.

I haven't looked into the implementation details, though, and if it's just a matter of swapping a RealTimeDaemon for the PromptDaemon that runs AgendaItems, it could be rather painless to switch back and forth.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4436&start=0#p32308
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ok, here is the big question... -norand?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-25 22:18:40

If you run the game in the debugger it should disable the call to randomize() that seeds the RNG. I'll look into doing this for a distributable game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4439&start=0#p32309
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Item generation and other misc newb questions...
User: Phrog / DateTime: 2012-02-25 22:31:13

Okay, so I admit I'm a total newb/noob/n00b/newbie <==== [choose your preference.] I just started designing and Inform 7 about 3 days ago, and it took me hours just to figure out how to have the command "go to the door" replace "go to [specific door name]".

So I have four issues so far with this program that I have not been able to get over, but here are my basic newbile questions. I'll start with my main one:

1.) [b]Is there a way to generate items?[/b] I don't mean create items, but actually bring non-existent items into play as an effect. The closest thing I saw to this was in chap. 8.10, on removing things from play, so you can have on-stage/off-stage. I could just make an off-stage item and bring it on-stage, but what if I don't want a set number of items? E.g., what if I wanted to make a soda-dispensing machine that could theoretically generate an infinite number of soda bottles? I'm asking this because I wanted to make a coffee shop, and I didn't like the money system they have built in for "Ex. 253 - frozen assets" because you have to take something already on the shelf in order to buy it. You can't, say, type command in "small" and generate a small coffee. I tried creating a table (basically on the same model from "Ex. 362 - complementary peanuts") and added entry that lists items, with something like "now player has/carries x entry." As I expected, it didn't really like that too much. I'm guessing partly because the item must already be located somewhere in play. But like I said, I really don't feel like making a limited number of extra items somewhere inaccessible in play. Am I missing something here? 

2.) [b]nested ifs[/b] - this has been my biggest frustration with Inform 7 so far. I must be missing something, because the colons feel pretty useless. I miss programming with Java, where a nested if is a nested if. For whatever reason, Inform hates me when I try to get it to produce multiple effects. For example, let's say I have something like this:

if player's command is topic entry:
   if the price of money is less than m entry, say "Sorry bud, you don't have enough money for that.";
   otherwise:
      decrease price of money by m entry;
      say "[commentary entry][line break]";
      now player has x entry;
   rule succeeds;

I can get it to work one of those effects without the colon. but not all of them. I keep running into this problem. I had to get around it with inefficiency by making phrases, like so:

Understand "go to the door" as door finding.
Understand "go to door" as door finding.
Understand "open the door" as door finding.
Understand "open door" as door finding. 
Door finding is an action applying to nothing. 
Report door finding: if the player can see a closed nWi door, declare dooring; otherwise say "Where's a closed door? You're losing your mind."
	To declare dooring:
		if the location contains exactly one closed nWi door, declare doooring; 
		otherwise say "which door do you mean? There is [list of doors in location]."
	To declare doooring:
		if the location contains a nWi door (called target), try opening the target.

Again, I must be missing something. It seems silly that I have to make two phrases instead of doing nested ifs. What the heck? What's the point of the colon if Inform gets mad at me every time I try to use it?

3.) [b]pockets[/b] so another thing I'm really struggling with is trying to create pockets on clothes. I've made pockets. But what's really dumb is I cannot seem how to include pocketed items in take inventory. More importantly if I put something in a pocket, then I cannot take it out unless I say command "take [something] out of [pocket name]", and if I'm wearing a jacket with a pocket + pants with two pockets, this can be a hassle. I'm trying to make some basic take-out commands. Understand "take [things inside] out of [something]" as removing it from. <--so far so good. but the issue is when I need to supply a missing second-noun, which searches through all the containers I'm wearing and takes it out. Actually, I've been able to do this, but where I'm stuck is if I need to take all the container [b]component parts[/b] of clothes out.

Understand "take [things inside] out" as taking something out.
Understand "take out [things inside]" as taking something out.
Taking something out is an action applying to one thing.

[all the remove it from checks]

Carry out taking something out:
try removing [things inside] from [every container object player is wearing/carrying + every container object that is a part of the object that the player is wearing/carrying

so the problem (to start with) is I cannot seem list all container parts of things worn by the player. 

HELP!

4.) [b]conversations[/b] last but not least. I would love a simple answer to how to make changing state conversations. So for example if I answer a particular command that matches the topic entry, how can I have the effect be to switch to another conversation table, or change the command prompt, etc?

5.) Okay one last question. If there's a great downloadable Inform 7 source code that answers any of the above questions and more that someone could recommend, I would really appreciate it. thanks 

-P

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4439&start=0#p32310
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item generation and other misc newb questions...
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-26 00:03:58

Partial answers:

1: Yes, you can create brand-new items. It requires an extension. However, don't do it. Limit the player to so many items. Your game will be better; the player won't clutter up (and slow down) the game world with a bunch of story-irrelevant cruft.

2: You can nest ifs, but you can't mix them with the "if thing, comma whatever" format. Use colons everywhere.

[code]
if player's command is topic entry:
  if the price of money is less than m entry:
    say "Sorry bud, you don't have enough money for that.";
  otherwise:
    decrease price of money by m entry;
    say "[commentary entry][line break]";
    now player has x entry;
    rule succeeds;
[/code]

(Also, if you use CODE tags, the bb system won't flatten out your indentation. This will make your questions easier to read.)

[code]
Understand "go to the door" as door finding.
Understand "go to door" as door finding.
Understand "open the door" as door finding.
Understand "open door" as door finding. 
[/code]

Don't do this; you're bypassing the parser. Write rules for the "opening" and "entering" actions to do what you want. (You could have them invoke your "door finding" action if you want, but there are probably easier alternatives.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4439&start=0#p32311
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item generation and other misc newb questions...
User: Phrog / DateTime: 2012-02-26 01:02:02

Thanks for the comments. Sorry like I said, I'm a noob.

[code]Outdoors is a room. The Coffee Shop is inside from Outdoors. Outdoors is outside from The Coffee Shop.

Instead of asking the Peanut Vendor to try doing something:
	repeat through Table of the Peanut Vendor's Commentary:
		if player's command is topic entry:
			if the price of money is less than m entry:
				say "Sorry bud. You don't have enough money for that.";
			otherwise:
				decrease price of money by m entry;
				say "[commentary entry][line break]";
				now the player has ob entry;
			rule succeeds;
	say "'Peanuts! Pretzels! Popcorn!,' says the Peanut Vendor."

Asking someone about something is speech. 
Telling someone about something is speech. 
Answering someone that something is speech. 
Asking someone for something is speech.
Instead of speech when the noun is the Peanut Vendor:
	repeat through Table of the Peanut Vendor's commentary:
		if the topic understood is topic entry:
			if the price of money is less than m entry:
				say "Sorry bud. You don't have enough money for that.";
			otherwise:	
				decrease price of money by m entry;
				say "[commentary entry][paragraph break]";
				now the player has ob entry;
			rule succeeds;
	say "'Peanuts! Pretzels! Popcorn!,' says the Peanut Vendor."

The Peanut Vendor is a man in Outdoors.

Table of the Peanut Vendor's Commentary 
topic	commentary	m	ob
"Peanuts"	"'here's your peanuts.'"	$1.00	peanuts
"Pretzels"	"'Here's your pretzels."	$2.00	pretzels   
"Popcorn"	"'Here's your popcorn."	$3.00	popcorn

peanuts are a thing. peanuts are edible. peanuts are in Outdoors.
pretzels are a thing. pretzels are edible.
popcorn is a thing. popcorn is edible.[/code]

1. The project I'm working on is small, and I'm not too concerned about it cluttering up. That being said, I'm open to alternatives. I just don't want to use the frozen assets model of taking items already in play. But maybe moving pre-existing items, or making invisible backdrops visible, or off-stage/on-stage. seems very convoluted to me though. Above is the model I tried but didn't work (as I pretty much expected). I know there's something wrong because it does the same thing if I order anything. Besides, if a player decides to do use all his or her money on a vending machine, it's really the player's own fault for cluttering up the world at that point [emote]:P[/emote].

2. as for the nested if, it seems my issue wasn't the nested if but just a misplaced quotation mark. However, I seem to have issues with the colons. I haven't noticed any consistent pattern, so maybe it's just different errors.

I'm not sure what you mean by bypassing the parser. Are you saying I shouldn't have different commands like "go to door" and "go to the door"? I just wanted to give players options so they don't have to keep guessing until they're like "Ooooh! so it's 'enter' I was supposed to type!" Really not an enjoyable experience for those not all that accustomed to IF conventions (e.g. myself).

The last question I found the answer to, but I'd still love answers to all the other questions. I'm pretty sure I'll find the answer to #4 if I keep digging.

-P

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4439&start=0#p32312
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item generation and other misc newb questions...
User: Phrog / DateTime: 2012-02-26 01:57:26

[code]Outdoors is a room. The Coffee Shop is inside from Outdoors. Outdoors is outside from The Coffee Shop.

Instead of asking the Peanut Vendor to try doing something:
	repeat through Table of the Peanut Vendor's Commentary:
		if player's command includes topic entry:
			if the price of money is less than m entry:
				say "Sorry bud. You don't have enough money for that.";
			otherwise:
				decrease price of money by m entry;
				say "[commentary entry][line break]";
				now the player has ob entry;
			rule succeeds;
	say "'Peanuts! Pretzels! Popcorn!,' says the Peanut Vendor."

Asking someone about something is speech. 
Telling someone about something is speech. 
Answering someone that something is speech. 
Asking someone for something is speech.
Instead of speech when the noun is the Peanut Vendor:
	repeat through Table of the Peanut Vendor's commentary:
		if the topic understood includes topic entry:
			if the price of money is less than m entry:
				say "Sorry bud. You don't have enough money for that.";
			otherwise:	
				decrease price of money by m entry;
				say "[commentary entry][paragraph break]";
				now the player has ob entry;
			rule succeeds;
	say "'Peanuts! Pretzels! Popcorn!,' says the Peanut Vendor."

The Peanut Vendor is a man in Outdoors.

Table of the Peanut Vendor's Commentary 
topic	commentary	m	ob
"Peanuts"	"'Here's your peanuts.'"	$1.00	peanuts
"Pretzels"	"'Here's your pretzels.'"	$2.00	pretzels   
"Popcorn"	"'Here's your popcorn.'"	$3.00	popcorn

peanuts are a thing. peanuts are edible. peanuts are in Outdoors.
pretzels are a thing. pretzels are edible.
popcorn is a thing. popcorn is edible.
[/code]

fixed it. I just switched "is" to "include" and it seems to work now. Hm! whew! now for pockets, and the other issues.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4439&start=0#p32313
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item generation and other misc newb questions...
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-02-26 03:38:55

What Zarf means with "bypassing the parser" is (I think...) that you shouldn't "understand" entire phrases like "go to the door". Instead handle verb phrases and objects separately. 

It's certainly not wrong to make the parser handle different wordings, it's a matter of how you do it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4440&start=0#p32314
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Combat System problem.
User: Superjax / DateTime: 2012-02-26 03:40:03

Hi everybody,

I copied and pasted the Lanista 2 combat system with a few edits:

[code]An enemy is a kind of person.

A person has a number called maximum hit points. A person has a number called current hit points.

The maximum hit points of the player is 120.

When play begins:
	repeat with victim running through people:
		now the current hit points of the victim is the maximum hit points of the victim.

Definition: a person is dead if his current hit points are less than 0.

Diagnosing is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "diagnose [something]" as diagnosing.

Check diagnosing:
	if the noun is not a person, say "You can only diagnose people." instead.

Carry out diagnosing:
	say "[if the noun is the player]You have[otherwise][The noun] has[end if] [current hit points of the noun] out of a possible [maximum hit points of the noun] hit points remaining."

A weapon is a kind of thing. A weapon has a number called the maximum damage. The maximum damage of a weapon is usually 25.

Understand the commands "attack" and "punch" and "destroy" and "kill" and "murder" and "hit" and "thump" and "break" and "smash" and "torture" and "wreck" as something new.

Attacking it with is an action applying to one visible thing and one carried thing. Understand "attack [someone preferably held] with [something]" as attacking it with.

Understand the commands "punch" and "destroy" and "kill" and "murder" and "hit" and "thump" and "break" and "smash" and "torture" and "wreck" as "attack".

The attacking it with action has a number called the damage inflicted.

Setting action variables for attacking something with something:
	if the second noun is a weapon:
		let the maximum attack be the maximum damage of the second noun;
		now the damage inflicted is a random number between 1 and the maximum attack.

Check an actor attacking something with something (this is the can't attack with something that isn't a weapon rule):
	if the second noun is not a weapon:
		if the actor is the player, say "[The second noun] is not a weapon.";
		stop the action.

Check an actor attacking something with something (this is the can't attack a non-person rule):
	if the noun is not a person:
		if the actor is the player, say "You can't kill the [The noun], because [The noun] has no life to lose.";
		stop the action.

Carry out an actor attacking something with something (this is the standard attacking it with a weapon rule):
	decrease the current hit points of the noun by the damage inflicted;
	if the noun is dead, remove the noun from play.

Report attacking a dead person with something (this is the death-report priority rule):
	say "You attack with [the second noun], killing [the noun]!" instead.

Report attacking someone with something (this is the normal attacking report rule):
	say "You attack [the noun] with [the second noun], causing [damage inflicted] point[s] of damage!" instead.

Report someone attacking the player with something when the player is dead (this is the player's-death priority rule):
	say "[The actor] attacks you with [the second noun], killing you.";
	end the game in death;
	stop the action

Report someone attacking the player with something (this is the standard report someone attacking the player with rule):
	say "[The actor] attacks you with [the second noun], causing [damage inflicted] point[s] of damage!" instead.

Report someone attacking something with something (this is the standard report attacking it with rule):
	say "[The actor] attacks [the noun] with [the second noun], causing [damage inflicted] point[s] of damage!" instead.

Every turn (this is the enemy-attack rule):
	if an enemy is not dead, try the enemy attacking the player with a random weapon which is carried by the enemy.[/code]

However, I get this error:

[code]This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6G60) on its most recent run through:


Problem. You wrote 'if an enemy is not dead, try the enemy attacking the player with a random weapon which is carried by the enemy'  , but 'enemy attacking the player with a random weapon which is carried by the enemy' is too vague to describe a specific action. 

 It has to be an exact instruction about what is being done, and to what. For instance, 'taking the box' is fine, but 'dropping or taking something openable' is not.

 See the manual: 7.4 > Try and try silently

I was trying to match one of these phrases:

1. try (enemy attacking the player with a random weapon which is carried by the enemy - an action) 

2. try (enemy attacking the player with a random weapon which is carried by the enemy - stored action) 

This was what I found out:

enemy attacking the player with a random weapon which is carried by the enemy = a condition
 [/code]

I don't get it. How could it be more specific?

P.S. Sorry for the humoungous amount of code I posted, I just don't know exactly where the problem is in the code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4412&start=10#p32315
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Curses broken in Zoom 1.1.5
User: stadtgorilla / DateTime: 2012-02-26 07:10:19

we're not alone:

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4316">viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4316</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4316&start=0#p32316
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: problems with zoom
User: stadtgorilla / DateTime: 2012-02-26 07:11:24

similar problems here:

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4412&start=0">viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4412&start=0</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4412&start=10#p32317
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Curses broken in Zoom 1.1.5
User: stadtgorilla / DateTime: 2012-02-26 07:19:34

about the warnings in Curses: They appear in and after text outputs.

Attic
The attics, full of low beams and awkward angles, begin here in a relatively tidy area which extends north, south and east. The wooden floorboards seem fairly sound, just as well considering how heavy all these teachests are. But the old wiring went years ago, and there's no electric light.

A hinged trapdoor in the floor stands open, and light streams in from below.
[ Warning: Object 0 has no siblings (PC=#280fd) ][ Warning: Object 0 has no siblings (PC=#28113) ]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4440&start=0#p32318
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat System problem.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-26 07:47:22

It looks to me as though the problem is that you need to be more specific about who you want to try attacking the player. If there were two enemies in the location, the line "try the enemy attacking..." wouldn't be able to have both enemies attack you, for instance.

Try this (untested):

[code]Every turn (this is the enemy-attack rule):
   repeat with bad guy running through enemys in the location: [note: maybe the Inform compiler understands how to make the plural of "enemy," and there's probably a way to make it understand, but I don't have time to test it right now] 
    if bad guy is not dead:
       try bad guy attacking the player with a random weapon which is carried by bad guy.[/code]

Another thing to note is that "the enemy" doesn't do what you probably want it to -- Inform understands it as 
"an enemy." So if you write something with "the enemy" and it compiles, there's no guarantee that it will refer back to the enemy you were talking about.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4431&start=0#p32319
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] When play begins on a chair w/ introduction
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2012-02-26 08:01:36

Oh cool. I thought the answer would probably be simple but it was just eluding me.

Thanks to both of you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4441&start=0#p32320
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: instead problem
User: gamerfountain34 / DateTime: 2012-02-26 08:25:14

Hi. so anyway today i booted up the comp and started typing in source code, the problem is i wanted to make a cupboard a table and a gap in a wall that you could hide in to avoid detection by an armed guard, the problem is that something weird happened when i typed in some code to prevent you from picking them up, so here's the code

[code]the gap in the wall is an object.
instead of taking the gap in the wall, say "duh".

the description of the gap in the wall is "its a dark gap in groove in the wall, it's kind of creepy and slimy".

the gap in the wall is in the hallway.

The table is an object.
the table is fixed in place.
instead of taking the table, say "I dont think that this will fit in those cargo pants of yours.".

the description of the table is "its a large coffee table compared to most.".

the table is in the hallway.

the cupboard is an object.
the cupboard is fixed in place.
instead of taking the cupboard, say "i dont think that this will fit in those cargo pants of yours.".

the description is "its a small cupboard, not of the safety variety".[/code] the problem is, when i type in 'pick up gap in wall' it just says that its fixed in place instead of my 'instead' message which is, simply 'duh'. But it works for the other ones, if anyone has a solution or can tell me what the problem is that would be great.
BTW earlier in the source i put in the code for the hallway room

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4412&start=10#p32321
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Curses broken in Zoom 1.1.5
User: TheBloke / DateTime: 2012-02-26 08:29:39

Thanks for linking the other thread.

I've now emailed the author, Andrew Hunter, and will report back as and when I hear anything.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4316&start=0#p32322
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: problems with zoom
User: TheBloke / DateTime: 2012-02-26 08:30:10

Good to know there are others with the same problem.   Click the link that stadtgorilla provided to see lots of further info/debug that I provided on that other thread.

I've now emailed the author, Andrew Hunter, and will report back as and when I hear anything.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4440&start=0#p32323
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat System problem.
User: Superjax / DateTime: 2012-02-26 08:31:26

matt w, I tried your code and there seems to be a problem with the indentation.
Here are the errors:

[code]Problem. The phrase or rule definition 'Every turn (this is the enemy-attack rule)'   is written using the 'colon and indentation' syntax for its 'if's, 'repeat's and 'while's, where blocks of phrases grouped together are indented one tab step inward from the 'if ...:' or similar phrase to which they belong. But the phrase 'repeat with bad guy running through enemies in the location'  , which ought to begin a block, is immediately followed by 'if bad guy is not dead'   at the same or a lower indentation, so the block seems to be empty - this must mean there has been a mistake in indenting the phrases.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem. The phrase or rule definition 'Every turn (this is the enemy-attack rule)'   is written using the 'colon and indentation' syntax for its 'if's, 'repeat's and 'while's, where blocks of phrases grouped together are indented one tab step inward from the 'if ...:' or similar phrase to which they belong. But the phrase 'if bad guy is not dead'  , which ought to begin a block, is immediately followed by 'try bad guy attacking the player with a random weapon which is carried by bad guy'   at the same or a lower indentation, so the block seems to be empty - this must mean there has been a mistake in indenting the phrases.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem. The phrase or rule definition 'Every turn (this is the enemy-attack rule)'   is written using the 'colon and indentation' syntax for its 'if's, 'repeat's and 'while's, where blocks of phrases grouped together are indented one tab step inward from the 'if ...:' or similar phrase to which they belong. But the tabs here seem to be misaligned, and I can't determine the structure. The first phrase going awry in the definition seems to be 'repeat with bad guy running through enemies in the location'  , in case that helps. 

 This sometimes happens even when the code looks about right, to the eye, if rows of spaces have been used to indent phrases instead of tabs.
[/code]

Can someone fix the indentation problem?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4442&start=0#p32324
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: npc nil object reference
User: zodraz / DateTime: 2012-02-26 08:48:16

Help!

I have another bruse on my head from hitting the keyboard.

I have a female npc, me and object x all in the same room. When I give the command 'npc, give me x' I get a 'nil object reference' error.

I can ask for and give the object to the npc but not command the npc to take it or give it to me.  I would expect the library to give me the default response, 'she refuses your request' or 'she does not respond'.

Any ideas anybody?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4440&start=0#p32325
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat System problem.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-26 08:48:29

Sorry, I typed the code straight into the comment box so there aren't any tab stops -- just spaces. So if you copy-paste the code you have to fix the indentation by hand. 

It should go something like this:

[code]Every turn (this is the enemy-attack rule):
[one tab stop] repeat with bad guy running through enemys in the location: [note: maybe the Inform compiler understands how to make the plural of "enemy," and there's probably a way to make it understand, but I don't have time to test it right now] 
[two tab stops]if bad guy is not dead:
[three tab stops]try bad guy attacking the player with a random weapon which is carried by bad guy.[/code]

By the way, if you just copy-paste code from one of these messages the tab stops will always get messed up and you'll have to redo them by hand. Most of the time if you want to try to reproduce the tab-stops, you should hit "reply," which will give you a message with the original code enclosed in tab stops. If you copy-paste [i]that[/i] the tab stops will remain intact. But that only works if the original poster copy-pasted code from Inform; if they just typed it into the forum, the way I did, you'll always have to fix the tabs yourself.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4440&start=0#p32326
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat System problem.
User: Superjax / DateTime: 2012-02-26 08:58:09

Uuum.. I know that this is a noobish question, but what is a tab stop?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4441&start=0#p32327
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: instead problem
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-02-26 09:09:04

The best I can offer is that the full name "gap in the wall" is confusing Inform, since it includes "in."  A couple of ways around that:
You could use "called" like this:[code]In the hallway is a thing called a gap in the wall.[/code] or you could have the internal name just be "gap" (which might save you typing anyway?): [code]The gap is in the hallway.  The printed name of the gap is "a gap in the wall."[/code]

By the way, since you say you want the player to be able to hide in the gap, you should probably make it an "enterable container," not just a thing or object. (And some further advice: as I understand it, you probably don't want in-game things to be "objects."  The "thing" kind is more specific--"object" also includes rooms and compass directions and such.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4441&start=0#p32328
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: instead problem
User: gamerfountain34 / DateTime: 2012-02-26 09:12:36

thx ill try that out, also thx for not calling me a noob or something im rlly new to this

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4440&start=0#p32329
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat System problem.
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-02-26 09:14:21

Hitting the "tab" key creates a tab stop; it looks like a series of spaces, but to the computer it's different. Think of a tab stop as an invisible marker in the code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4440&start=0#p32330
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat System problem.
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-02-26 09:15:20

It's a variant on just saying "tab," or in other words, you have to use the "tab" key on your keyboard instead of just hitting "space" enough times, since Inform can be picky about spacing.  (By the way, if getting the tabs right is a problem for you, like if you are blind and using a screen reader, there is an alternate syntax that someone who is not me can explain.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4440&start=0#p32331
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat System problem.
User: Superjax / DateTime: 2012-02-26 09:25:54

Thanks everybody! The code works now!

kthxbaifornow

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4439&start=0#p32332
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item generation and other misc newb questions...
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-02-26 09:28:07

For the pockets question:
If you're talking about having multiple pockets and making the player be careful about what they put where and remember where everything is stashed, I would recommend against that.  You will spend a lot of time implementing it, and it will drive your players crazy.  This isn't exactly what you're looking for, but if I were you, I would make use of the little-known kind, "player's holdall."  It's a built-in kind that is sort of based on legacy game design, such as games in which the player can carry around all of their items in a big burlap sack, and it will do things like automatically taking things out of the holdall when the player wants to use them, and automatically put things back in when the player is holding too many things.  Then, to make it seem more like the pocket is part of the player's clothes, simply refuse to allow the player to drop the holdall.  If you have a game in which the PC can't take off their clothes, that's all you'd need; if they can, you can do the thing where you make it a part of the clothes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4436&start=0#p32333
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ok, here is the big question... -norand?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-26 09:48:22

[quote="conradcook"]I'd like to switch the random function of TADS to a deterministic non-random function that will repeat exactly from game to game.[/quote]
There is no such guarantee. The only guarantee you get is that you get the same results in the same interpreter, the same binary of that interpreter and the same platform where you run that binary. So don't do it. The results are different between platforms and interpreters.

If you want consistency across all platforms and interpreters, you need to write your own number generator. It's not difficult, since the algorithms are well documented. You'd just pick the easiest one, since cryptographic security is not a concern here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4442&start=0#p32334
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: npc nil object reference
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-26 10:11:46

Which TADS version are you using? A backtrace (from a debug build of the game) would also be useful.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4441&start=0#p32335
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: instead problem
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-02-26 10:22:24

The problem is with the instead rule: Inform reads it as [quote]Instead of taking the gap when the player is in the wall, say …[/quote]
If the gap in the wall is the only gap in the game, an easy fix would be [code]instead of taking the gap, say …[/code]
Inform understands abbreviated names (like "gap" for "gap in the wall") even in the source text.  
Indeed, it also understands "wall" in the source text as an abbreviated name for the gap in the wall. 
So, what your instead rule really tells Inform is [quote]Instead of taking the gap in the wall when the player is in the gap in the wall, say …[/quote]
As tove suggests, it is probably in general a good idea to be wary of giving things names that includes an "in" or an "on".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4412&start=10#p32336
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Curses broken in Zoom 1.1.5
User: TheBloke / DateTime: 2012-02-26 10:34:25

Andrew got back to me very promptly.  He isn't experiencing the problem.

He did say that those warnings in Curses are harmless and can be ignored; they are not related to this lock-up problem.

He gave me some things to try:
1. Disable spell checking as you type - this initially caused games to start working for me again, but they quickly broke again and are still broken with spell check disabled.  So I tihnk that was a coincidental timing of it starting working again (as has happened before), and not a fix.
2. Enable always-on scrollbars;  didn't help
3. He asked if I was running any "Accessibility" programs liked Launchbar.  Actually I'm running a whole bunch (Hyperdock, a window manager, and which I just upgraded recently corresponding to the time of the failure.  Flexiglass, another window manager. Alfred, which is very much like Launchbar and includes a clipboard manager.  Keyremap4Mac in which I remap some keys.  And Witch, an alternative application switcher (Cmd-Tab) )  - but I tried disabling them all, and also tried disabling "Allow access to assistive devices" in System Preferences - which is required for a number of those programs to work - and that didn't help anything.

He has a third suggestion which is much more technical, related to a possible invisible entry window blocking Zoom. 

In order to diagnose that I'm going to need to get XCode out and run a debugger against the zoom process.  And possibly also build Zoom from source and try debugging that.

I'm going to try all that sometime today and will update back.

In the meantime, I can update my exact problem description (and I've sent this to Andrew):

1. Launch new game of Fail Safe
2. Hit space a couple of times to get into the game (dismissing the intro texts)
3. Type command 1 fine.
4. Can't type anything for command 2.  Try letters, numbers, space bar - they don't work, but the cursor remains in the right place in the Zoom window, and there is no beeping.  Can type any number of chars without beeping, unless I hit Return.
5. If I hit enter, the cursor disappears from the zoom window.  The beeping then starts immediately, and beeps on every char.
6. Can get the cursor back only by manually clicking with the mouse in the appropriate place in the Zoom window.  This stops the beeping, but still doesn't register text.

So contrary to what I said before, the beeping is not constant, it's triggered by my hitting enter which also causes the cursor to disappear and seemingly therefore a focus problem.

Ooh, and one other development.  The arrow keys work!  So I can hit up arrow and it shows command 1, the one command I could type before it locked up. I can then left-arrow and right-arrow through that command.    But I can't edit it (all characters I type being ignored as usual), and I can't submit it (hitting return causing the symptoms described above - loss of cursor/focus, beeping on subsequent character entry.)  The only other key that seems to do anything is shift - shift+arrow keys causes the text to be highlighted as normal.  I can right-click and copy, but Paste is greyed out as usual.

So this is very weird; arrow keys working but nothing else.  It really feels like the game, or OSX, has somehow completely disabled new text entry: this is supported by the fact that the Paste menu is greyed out, as if I'm not even in an entry field.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4441&start=0#p32337
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: instead problem
User: gamerfountain34 / DateTime: 2012-02-26 10:40:44

ive already coded it in.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4442&start=0#p32338
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: npc nil object reference
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-26 10:53:33

I had a problem rather like this last month, and it was because I was misusing CommandTopic. If you post the code you're using to handle the command, I'm sure someone can spot the problem.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4443&start=0#p32339
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: New Glk implementation nanoglk, based on SDL
User: sebastian / DateTime: 2012-02-26 11:41:29

Hi!

Nanoglk version 0.0.1 has just appeared in the IF archive (directory if-archive/programming/glk/implementations). Nanoglk is a Glk implementation mainly focussed on portable devices with small screens, especially the Ben Nanonote, where it works already quite well (I've already played several games on it). I hope that SDL makes it easy to port on other platforms.

Notice that this is a very early version targetet at interested developers. 

Sebastian

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4440&start=0#p32340
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat System problem.
User: Superjax / DateTime: 2012-02-26 11:47:55

Actually, I have another question.

I would like to make it so that a "gun" would be a kind of weapon that would basically work just like a normal weapon, except it would have a number called "ammo", and it would have different reports for killing things with a gun.

How would I make a number for ammo?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4439&start=0#p32341
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item generation and other misc newb questions...
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-26 11:48:16

[quote]I'm not sure what you mean by bypassing the parser. Are you saying I shouldn't have different commands like "go to door" and "go to the door"?[/quote]

You want to build these in the most generic way possible, so that they apply to whatever the player types.

For example, the standard rules already include the line

Understand "go into/in/inside/through [something]" as entering.

This covers several possible phrasings, and *every* game object. (So if the player types "enter window", the response will be action-specific: "That's not something you can enter".) It also understands all object synonyms, and "the" for free. On top of that, it accepts "walk into door" and "run through the door", because "walk" and "run" are declared as synonyms for "go".

It's true that "go to" is missing from this list. You could add:

Understand "go to [something]" as entering.

The parser would then understand "go to door", "walk to the door", and so on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4436&start=0#p32342
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ok, here is the big question... -norand?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-26 11:49:27

Ok,

I know basically how to make a pseudo-random number generator -- I did it when I was a kid, using remainders of repeated divisions, as I recall.

But how do I splice that into TAD's random feature?  For example, in picking a string for display?  -- Or do I just have to do everything random the long way again?


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4438&start=0#p32343
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Comparing I7 commands to a table value
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2012-02-26 11:58:11

[quote="matt w"]I'm not an expert here, but if you want to catch successfully parsed commands (as opposed responding to fragmentary commands like "x gjlkj"), then I'd do it in terms of stored actions rather than trying to catch bits of the player's command. So instead of having "examine me" and "x me" and "look at me" and probably a few other things equate to one of the tutorial items, you'd have the action of examining yourself equate to one of the tutorial items. 

Section 12.20 of Writing with Inform tells you more of what to do here. To catch a generic examining action rather than a specific action of examining the box or whatever, you can winkle out the action name part of the current action and test that. So I've got this to work in a simple case:

[code]Table of Test commands
complete action		action name 	response
the action of examining the wizard's box		--	"Congratulations!"
--		the examining action	"Why not try examining the box?"

Before:
	if the current action is a complete action listed in the table of test commands:
		say the response entry;
	otherwise if the action name part of the current action is an action name listed in the table of test commands:
		say the response entry. [/code]

You can also break out the noun and second noun parts if you like, and could probably work up more complicated tests if you wanted to test for things like giving something to Jordan (where you have to match the action name and second noun but the noun can be anything). 

(Also: As usual, I'm posting above my competence here. There may be problems lurking.)[/quote]

Also, this has to work in 5Z.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4439&start=0#p32344
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item generation and other misc newb questions...
User: Phrog / DateTime: 2012-02-26 12:12:54

Thanks zarf, that makes sense. I was erroneously trying "this"/"that", not "this/that". Examples really help clarify things for me. As for the pocket issue, here's what I have:

[code]
[no naked]Instead of taking off clothes, say "...[no line break][one of]so you now want to make like a nudist and walk around campus naked? Gee, that sounds like a swell idea! I have a better one: how about we [italic type]not[roman type] get arrested this time?[or]haven't we already been through this?[or][line break][stopping]"

[pockets]
Everything is either PS [abr. pocket-sized] or not-PS. A thing is usually not-PS.
A pocket is a kind of container. The carrying capacity of a pocket is usually 2.

Instead of inserting a not-PS object into a pocket:
		say "Why are you trying to shove that into your pocket!? Obviously it does not fit. Sometimes I wonder if you're from another planet." [note: in future, might need add a "some condition," for "put some dirt in pocket," etc. Might need to put in a "liquid condition," if player tries to pour a liquid in the pocket."]

Understand "pockets" as every pocket. [understand "check pockets" command? How do you get it to stop asking "which pocket?" <---"which one" under activities section (I think)]

[clothes] clothes are a backdrop. clothes are wearable. The player wears clothes.

pants are a part of clothes. A pocket called the left pocket is part of pants. A pocket called the right pocket is a part of pants.

A jacket is a kind of thing. A jacket is always wearable. [A pocket called the jacket pocket is part of a jacket. [note: should say "every jacket," if other jackets come into play. if we're only dealing with one jacket, this should not be a problem]]The player wears a jacket called your jacket. A pocket called the jacket pocket is part of your jacket.
[/code]

I'm familiar with the holdall. To begin with, it won't let me make the pocket a holdall (I believe) because it only lets specific objects be a holdall (understandably). So I cannot say something like "a pocket is the player's holdall," because that would make very pocket object the player's holdall. When I try to make a specific pocket, like the left pocket, the player's holdall, it gives me this: "You wrote 'The left pocket is the player's holdall', but that seems to contradict 'A pocket called the left pocket is part of pants', as a player's holdall and a pocket are incompatible. (If a player's holdall were a kind of a pocket or vice versa there'd be no problem, but they aren't.)" I think it doesn't like component parts to be the player's holdall. 

Secondly, the holdall issue does not fix either the problem of inventory, or taking items out. The character wears a backpack as his holdall. If I put a camera in the backpack and say "take inventory" it will reply: you are carrying nothing. This is easy to fix, I just need to say something along the lines of, "[list of backpack contents]" <--not exactly that, I know, but I'm sure I can eventually figure that one out if I keep messing around with it. But what I'm having more difficulty with is if I want to say "take out camera" and not "take camera out of backpack," how do I get it to search all containers the player is wearing [i]and[/i] all the component parts of all the items the player is wearing??? How should I supply the second-noun for the modified "remove it from"?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4440&start=0#p32345
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat System problem.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-26 12:14:39

[code]A gun is a kind of weapon. A gun has a number called ammo. The ammo of a gun is usually 6.[/code]

And go from there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4438&start=0#p32346
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Comparing I7 commands to a table value
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-26 12:17:26

Does it fail? It's been a while since I used 5Z, so I don't remember whether there are any relevant changes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4434&start=0#p32347
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Zipping Ahead N Turns?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-26 12:21:49

Well that wouldn't work.  Fuses and such wouldn't know to fire.

I'm looking up PromptDaemon.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4440&start=10#p32348
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat System problem.
User: Superjax / DateTime: 2012-02-26 12:24:16

Sorry, I should have worded that better. I know how to make a number, it's just that I want to make it so that whenever you use a gun, it will decrease from the ammo.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4439&start=0#p32349
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item generation and other misc newb questions...
User: Phrog / DateTime: 2012-02-26 12:31:35

Also, not to add to the list of questions, but does anyone know a good way to make it so you don't have to say the NPC's name whenever answering? "Ex. 91 - Sybil 1" does this, but only b/c "say yes," "say no," and "say sorry" are already actions in the list of actions. Do I have to add new actions for every response? So for example if the barista asks, "small, medium, or large?" and i don't want the player to say "barista, small" but just "small," do I have to make a new action that says "say small" or is there a simpler way to do it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4440&start=10#p32350
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat System problem.
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2012-02-26 12:40:54

[quote="Superjax"]Sorry, I should have worded that better. I know how to make a number, it's just that I want to make it so that whenever you use a gun, it will decrease from the ammo.[/quote]
Well, just code that.

I actually mean that, and not in a nasty way. [emote]:)[/emote] You know what you need to do: decrease the ammo, whenever you use a gun. So what do you need?

(1) A rule that fires whenever the player uses a gun.
(2) Within that rule, a line that decreases the ammo by 1.

And of course, we want something else:

(3) A rule that stops the player from using a gun if the ammo is 0.

Do you know how to do (1)? Do you know how to do (2)? Do you know how to do (3)? You might, actually, with just your pretty basic Inform knowledge. I'd say, try something, and if you get stuck, ask a more specific question. (Almost always, when you ask "How do I make it so that my game does X", you haven't been thinking hard enough; and what's worse, the answer isn't going to teach you anything. Useful questions generally have forms like "I don't know how to make a rule that checks whether an action the player wants to take is possible or not." -- that is, a specific question about a specific problem you encountered while trying to implement something.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4436&start=0#p32351
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ok, here is the big question... -norand?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-26 12:48:11

The issue I didn't think about here, is that rand() is an intrinsic function and therefore you can't use the "replace" or "modify" keyword on it to provide your own implementation. This leaves you with only one way to deal with this, and it's not pretty: you would have to modify all calls to rand() in the library with calls to your custom random function. rand() is used five times in "lib/_main.t" and six times in "lib/adv3/misc.t" (also in lib/webui.t, but that's of no consequence).

The best solution here would be a design change in the TADS library itself, where every intrinsic function has a non-intrinsic wrapper where "modify" and "replace" works. TADS code would then use those wrappers instead of doing direct calls to the intrinsics.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4436&start=0#p32352
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ok, here is the big question... -norand?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-26 12:57:19

I'm entirely out of my depth here.

--Can I do a writearound, where I define my own fuction, pseudRand, and only use it in my own code?  Will the TADS random function sneak up on the action of my game world when I'm not looking?

Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4436&start=0#p32353
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ok, here is the big question... -norand?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-26 13:00:49

Code in the TADS library uses rand(). In your own code, you can use whatever you want of course.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4436&start=0#p32354
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ok, here is the big question... -norand?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-26 13:03:32

Can I get more easily to the -norand behavior than the rand() behavior?

C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4439&start=0#p32355
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item generation and other misc newb questions...
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-02-26 13:07:46

[quote="Phrog"] it won't let me make the pocket a holdall (I believe) because it only lets specific objects be a holdall (understandably).[/quote]
Yes -- or is that no? Anyway, player's holdall is a kind. You can have several of those. Just assert "A pocket is a kind of player's holdall" instead of "A pocket is a kind of container".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4436&start=0#p32356
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ok, here is the big question... -norand?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-26 13:27:17

OK, I found an easy way to do this. Give me a few minutes to finalize a working example.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4434&start=0#p32357
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Zipping Ahead N Turns?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-26 13:43:45

update:  I'm currently looking through tests.t, trying to figure out where its main engine is.  As opposed to the list management and such.

The basic idea is to replace the list management, which maps a series of strings onto parsed commands and runs them through the surrogate input, with a counter that puts a Z command through the surrogate input N times.  Seems doable...  I may repost a more intelligent question here later.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4436&start=10#p32358
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ok, here is the big question... -norand?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-26 13:45:58

Very cool!

*waits patiently*

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4438&start=0#p32359
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Comparing I7 commands to a table value
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2012-02-26 13:49:32

[quote="matt w"]Does it fail? It's been a while since I used 5Z, so I don't remember whether there are any relevant changes.[/quote]

Problem. In the sentence 'if the action name part of the current action is an action name listed in the table of test commands begin'  , it looks as if you intend 'action name part of the current action is an action name listed in the table of test commands' to be a condition, but that would mean applying the incorporation relation (between an object and an object) to kinds of value which do not fit - the name of a column and an object - so this must be incorrect.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4436&start=10#p32360
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ok, here is the big question... -norand?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-26 13:54:52

Instead of modifying the library all over the place, you can put a small modification in "include/tadsgen.h". Change this line:

[code]
    rand(x, ...);
[/code]

to:

[code]
    rand_intrinsic(x, ...);
[/code]
("rand_intrinsic" is just a suggestion; you can rename it to whatever you want.)
Now somewhere in your game, provide your own rand() function. An implementation that simply calls the default rand() (now "rand_intrinsic()"), would be:

[code]
rand(x, ...)
{
    local argList = [];
    for (local i = 1; i <= argcount; ++i) {
        argList.append(getArg(i));
    }
    return rand_intrinsic(x, argList...);
}
[/code]

Make sure to clean and rebuild your project after this.

Of course the whole point is to use your own RNG. So make sure your rand() follows the behavior that is expected from that function (as documented in tadsgen.h.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4444&start=0#p32361
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Adding box to first room(beach) - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-02-26 13:58:44

I'm back! Just when I thought I was really understand this stuff, everything went to pot. The story ran well until I tried to add a box to the first room; which is the beach. I'm having all sorts of problems when I try to add the box. When I comment out all the box code, everything is great. I know that the beach code is a mess right now but I know longer can figure it out. Boy, could I use some code on this!

[code]
/*  (Room0001) - The story starts here.  **************************************/

beach: OutdoorRoom 'on the beach' 'on the beach.'
    "This large, formal entryway is slightly intimidating:
    the walls are lined with somber portraits of gray-haired
    men from decades past; a medieval suit of armor towers over a single 
    straight-backed wooden chair. The front door leads back outside to the
    south. A hallway leads north. "
    vocabWords='beach shore ocean'
    
    /*  Room contents lister.  */   
 
    roomContentsLister: roomLister
    {
        /*  Show the prefix/suffix in wide mode.  */
        
        showListPrefixWide(itemCount, pov, parent) { "\^"; }
        showListSuffixWide(itemCount, pov, parent) 
      { 
        " <<itemCount > 1 ? tSel('are', 'were') : tSel('is', 'was')>>
          lying on the rocky sand. "; 
      }        
    }
;
   
/*  Add box to beach.  ********************************************************/
+box:ComplexContainer,Fixture 'large slatted wooden(wood)box*boxes''large
slatted-wood box'
 "The large wooden box, left by from a previous helicopter flight, lies on some
  small rocks. At its top, there is a metal hasp that can unlock or lock the
  box. " 
cannotTakeMessage=(backpack.seen?'The backpack would be a more convenient
container. You would be better off using that instead.':'The box is much to
heavy to lift or carry around.') 
initSpecialDesc="A large slatted-wood box is lying nearby on some small rocks. "
subContainer:ComplexComponent,LockableContainer
{
currentlyLockedMsg='The hasp is at the locked position.'
currentlyUnlockedMsg='The hasp is currently at the unlocked position.' 
dobjFor(Lock) 
{ 
 action()
 { 
  "You twist the hasp, and lock the box shut. ";
  inherited;
 } 
}
dobjFor(Unlock)
{ 
 action()
 { 
  "You turn the hasp, allowing the box to be opened. ";
  inherited;
 }
} 
;

++Component'hasp''hasp'
"A simple hasp that does the job of unlocking and locking the box. "
   dobjFor(Turn){remap = [box.subContainer.isLocked?UnlockAction:
   LockAction,box.subContainer]} 
;  

[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4444&start=0#p32362
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Adding box to first room(beach) - TADS3.1
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-26 14:04:01

As people have reminded you before, Ron, if you indent your code properly it will be much easier for you to spot the problems. It looks to me (and "looks" is a loaded word, because it's hard to see, so it's possible I'm wrong) as if you need one more closing curly brace to terminate the subContainer property.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4440&start=10#p32363
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat System problem.
User: Superjax / DateTime: 2012-02-26 14:14:00

Lol, ok VictorGijsbers, I'm following your advice.
Quick question. If I'm making the ammo number, should I say:

[code]A gun has a number called ammo.[/code]

Or should I say:

[code] The player has a number called ammo.[/code]

?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=120#p32364
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-26 14:14:31

A reminder: the final round of voting closes at midnight Pacific time, March 2nd -- which is to say, Thursday, March 1st is the last day of voting.

And the ceremony, of course, is on the following Sunday, March 4th, at 1 PM Pacific, on [url=http://ifmud.port4000.com/]ifMUD.[/url] Hope to see you there!

(If you haven't visited the MUD before, I recommend making a visit beforehand -- it can take a little getting used to, and people will be more able to help if they're not preoccupied by the awards ceremony.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4438&start=0#p32365
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Comparing I7 commands to a table value
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-26 14:14:38

Looks like in 5Z you need to write "the action-name part of the current action," with a hyphen. Also, it was probably a very bad idea to use "action name" as the name of the column, as it makes further confusion possible.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4436&start=10#p32366
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ok, here is the big question... -norand?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-26 14:30:06

[quote="RealNC"]Of course the whole point is to use your own RNG. So make sure your rand() follows the behavior that is expected from that function (as documented in tadsgen.h.)[/quote]

Mm...  looking up the documentation on this, I see this is a project to keep me busy for awhile!  (But one that should be attainable for my skill level.)

rand() is quite a flexible little function, isn't it?

[quote]
Instead of modifying the library all over the place, you can put a small modification in "include/tadsgen.h". Change this line:

[code]
    rand(x, ...);
[/code]

to:

[code]
    rand_intrinsic(x, ...);
[/code]
("rand_intrinsic" is just a suggestion; you can rename it to whatever you want.)
Now somewhere in your game, provide your own rand() function. An implementation that simply calls the default rand() (now "rand_intrinsic()"), would be:

[code]
rand(x, ...)
{
    local argList = [];
    for (local i = 1; i <= argcount; ++i) {
        argList.append(getArg(i));
    }
    return rand_intrinsic(x, argList...);
}
[/code]

Make sure to clean and rebuild your project after this.
[/quote]

I'll be glad to make these changes...  but can you explain to me what they do?

I ask because I had misunderstood this code the first few times I looked at it.  As I now understand it, this is what's happening?

The old rand() is now renamed to rand_intrinsic().

The function label "rand()" is now taken over by a brand-new function, which I must write.  That function currently calls the old random function, whose maiden name was "rand()" and which is newly renamed "rand_intrinsic()."

--Does it matter where in the code I write the new "rand()" function?

I greatly appreciate the help, RealNC.


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4438&start=0#p32367
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Comparing I7 commands to a table value
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2012-02-26 14:46:46

[quote="matt w"]Looks like in 5Z you need to write "the action-name part of the current action," with a hyphen. Also, it was probably a very bad idea to use "action name" as the name of the column, as it makes further confusion possible.[/quote]

Yeah, I figured out the hyphen issue...I think I know what to do from here...(fingers crossed)

David C.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4436&start=10#p32368
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ok, here is the big question... -norand?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-26 14:56:49

Conrad, I think I may be mistaken about the issue. I mean not the above code; that works. I mean the core issue, where I posted in the previous page that "the results are different between platforms and interpreters." I'm not so sure about this anymore. TADS 3 comes with two RNGs (LCG and ISAAC), but only one is actually enabled in interpreters. Of course that still leaves the problem of how to suppress the initialization of the RNG with a random seed from inside a game.

I'll try to ask Mike Roberts about this. I'll probably point him to this thread.

As for your questions about how the code works, you are correct. And it doesn't matter where you implement your rand() function.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4444&start=0#p32369
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Adding box to first room(beach) - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-02-26 15:03:13

Jim;

I honestly don't know what's happening when I try to indent my game properly. I have spent at least two weeks starting my coding for this game from scratch. When I look at my game code on my computer, everything looks fine and the indenting and formatting is extremely readable. However, when I post any of the code to this forum, it gets shoved to the left and looks like heck!!!

I have now restarted coding and indenting this game a minimum of three times. Does anyone have any ideas why this is happening? I know I've been told about this many times and would surely like to get it right and make everybody happy. Are there any examples around that will show me how the formatting should be done?

RonG

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4439&start=10#p32370
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item generation and other misc newb questions...
User: Phrog / DateTime: 2012-02-26 15:11:01

Thanks Felix, 

You've made my life so much easier. 
The simple answers are always the best.

So now I'm trying to make a "take out" command:

[code]
Understand "take [things inside] out of [something]" as removing it from.
Understand "take out [things inside]" as removing it from.
Understand "take [things inside] out" as removing it from.

Rule for supplying a missing second noun:
[if the player has...]
[/code]

So i was thinking something along the lines of: 
"Let L be the list of player's holdalls..."
Is there a way to check the contents of each item in list L and supply the second noun for each item that matches [noun]?
If so, I'm not sure how to do it. 

It might be simpler just to create a new "taking out" action with one noun instead of supplying a second noun to "remove it from." Either way, my main issue is I still don't know how to get to the contents of each holdall. That's all I need and my problems will be solved.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4440&start=10#p32371
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat System problem.
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2012-02-26 15:17:36

[quote="Superjax"]Lol, ok VictorGijsbers, I'm following your advice.
Quick question. If I'm making the ammo number, should I say:

[code]A gun has a number called ammo.[/code]

Or should I say:

[code] The player has a number called ammo.[/code]

?[/quote]
That depends on what you want: you should the former if you want each gun to have its own ammo, the latter if you want the player to have a single stack of ammo for all guns. (If you have only one gun, there would be no difference.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4436&start=10#p32372
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ok, here is the big question... -norand?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-26 15:37:00

OK, thanks for the heads up -- I don't know when I would have started working on the new rand() function, but I'll hold off to hear back.

Still interesting to see how it's done.


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4444&start=0#p32373
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Adding box to first room(beach) - TADS3.1
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-26 15:40:26

Ron,

Are you using the IDE?  Are you writing in a text processor, in Notepad, or such?  Are you indenting with TAB characthers, or such?  -- It's difficult to answer without some more info.


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4439&start=10#p32374
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item generation and other misc newb questions...
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-26 15:56:07

[quote="Phrog"]It might be simpler just to create a new "taking out" action with one noun instead of supplying a second noun to "remove it from."[/quote]

You could also just understand "take [something] out" as taking; this will let the player take the object from whatever object it's in, without your having to figure it out. It'll also let the player get something on the floor by typing "take key out," but no one will mind that. (Letting the player do extra stuff isn't a problem; the problem is when the game doesn't understand something it ought to.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4444&start=0#p32375
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Adding box to first room(beach) - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-02-26 16:07:05

I'm running Windows XP Professional - SR3. I'm using TADS3.1 WorkBench as my editor. I'm showing line numbers and I am not using any tabbing. My work area in WorkBench is 78 columns wide.

Don't know what to tell you other than that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4439&start=10#p32376
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item generation and other misc newb questions...
User: Phrog / DateTime: 2012-02-26 16:25:57

Hooray! Slowly but surely, I'm getting my problems solved. Last issue with the pockets is the inventory.

[code]
Understand "check holdalls" as holdall checking.
Holdall checking is an action applying to nothing.

Carry out holdall checking:
	let L be the list of player's holdalls;
	let N be the number of entries in L;
	while N is greater than 0:
		say "[list of contents in entry N of L]";
		remove 1 from N;
[/code]

the question is this "[list of contents in entry N of L]"? 
And again I'm sure there's a much simpler solution.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4444&start=0#p32377
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Adding box to first room(beach) - TADS3.1
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-26 16:34:30

Try this:

* Turn off word wrap.  This will cause your paragraphs to continue off the end of the screen, so you'll have to either scroll or manually work your line returns.

The machine working your line returns for you I think is jazzing up your indentation.

* When you work your line returns, carefully work from the top down.  I see that some of your code is indented nicely.  Do whatever you did there for all of it.

--I just cut and pasted your poorly indented code into my IDE, and working line returns in from the top down, I got this:

[code]+box:ComplexContainer,Fixture 'large slatted wooden(wood)box*boxes''large
    slatted-wood box'
    "The large wooden box, left by from a previous helicopter flight, lies on some
    small rocks. At its top, there is a metal hasp that can unlock or lock the
    box. " 
    cannotTakeMessage=(backpack.seen?'The backpack would be a more convenient
        container. You would be better off using that instead.':'The box is much to
            heavy to lift or carry around.') 
    initSpecialDesc="A large slatted-wood box is lying nearby on some small rocks. "
    subContainer:ComplexComponent,LockableContainer
    {
        currentlyLockedMsg='The hasp is at the locked position.'
        currentlyUnlockedMsg='The hasp is currently at the unlocked position.' 
        dobjFor(Lock) 
        { 
            action()
            { 
                "You twist the hasp, and lock the box shut. ";
                inherited;
            } 
        }
        dobjFor(Unlock)
[/code]

I work in line returns by going to the beginning of an as-yet-un-properly-indented-line and pressing CTRL-BACKSPACE.  This jumps me up to the end of the prior line, with the cursor at the join between the lines.  Then I press ENTER.  This jumps me back down to a new line, indented properly.

But this only works if the line above was properly indented, too.  So you have to work from the top down.

I cut and pasted this into the editing window here on intfic by (a) pasting it in and (b) putting in the code tags.  I don't believe it's important if you paste first and then put in the code tags, or vice versa, or if you type the code / close-code tags in manually, but if the code tags aren't there intfic will automagically format what you've written into human-to-human, paragraph form.

Good luck!

Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4444&start=0#p32378
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Adding box to first room(beach) - TADS3.1
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-26 18:01:15

[quote="RonG"]I honestly don't know what's happening when I try to indent my game properly. I have spent at least two weeks starting my coding for this game from scratch. When I look at my game code on my computer, everything looks fine and the indenting and formatting is extremely readable. However, when I post any of the code to this forum, it gets shoved to the left and looks like heck!!!

I have now restarted coding and indenting this game a minimum of three times. Does anyone have any ideas why this is happening? I know I've been told about this many times and would surely like to get it right and make everybody happy. Are there any examples around that will show me how the formatting should be done?[/quote]
Workbench formats the indenting properly. In fact, it's "smart" in the sense that if you forget to add a closing parenthesis, bracket, or brace, when you hit Return the input cursor will NOT move to where you think it should. This is a clue that something in your code is wrong.

When you post to the forum, paste your code into the message, then select it, then click the button at the top of the input window that says "Code". This will cause your code to be displayed as code, and it will be indented the way it is in Workbench.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4444&start=0#p32379
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Adding box to first room(beach) - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-02-26 18:37:28

Thanks many times for all your help. Here's what I've done. I turned off line-counting and word-wrap; set the column width to 80, turned both indenting and auto-tabs to zero. Can't think of anything else to do right now. I'm going to hang in there and start over again once more. I'm also going to cross my fingers.

Wish me luck,

Rong

btw: I won't forget all you've told me in this group of posts.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4439&start=10#p32380
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item generation and other misc newb questions...
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-26 18:37:54

Do you know about repeat... running through loops? I think that's what you want here:

[code]Repeat with satchel running through the player's holdalls: say "[list of contents of satchel]".[/code]

I'm not sure whether this is exactly the best way to handle what you want to do, but this is definitely the right control structure for the code you just posted. See section 11.11 of the documentation.

ETA: And I haven't worked with holdalls much, but if "the player's holdall" is a kind you might need to restrict this to holdalls that are carried.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4445&start=0#p32381
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Can't find writing aid
User: Dralius / DateTime: 2012-02-26 19:51:57

Im interested in writing a CYOA book, you know a real book with pages. But all the software im finding is for software based presentation. Anyone know of some tools that could help my old school project.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4439&start=10#p32382
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item generation and other misc newb questions...
User: Phrog / DateTime: 2012-02-26 20:11:19

I love the suggestion. This is definitely much nicer looking than where I was trying to go.

So unfortunately, Inform still doesn't want me to get to these contents. Trumped again. The following attempts all failed
[code]
To checkhodall, repeat with satchel running through the player's holdalls: say "[contents of satchel]".
To checkhodall, repeat with satchel running through the player's holdalls: say "[list of contents of satchel]".
To checkhodall, repeat with satchel running through the player's holdalls: say "[list of things contained by satchel]".
To checkhodall, repeat with satchel running through the player's holdalls: say "[is-are a list of things in satchel]".
To checkhodall, repeat with satchel running through the player's holdalls: say "[list of things in satchel]".
To checkhodall, repeat with satchel running through the player's holdalls: try examining satchel.
To checkhodall, repeat with satchel running through the player's holdalls: say "[a list of contents of satchel]".
To checkhodall, repeat with satchel running through the player's holdalls: say "[a list of things contained by satchel]".
To checkhodall, repeat with satchel running through the player's holdalls: say "[a list of things in satchel]".
To checkhodall, repeat with satchel running through the player's holdalls: say "[a list of things held by satchel]".
To checkhodall, repeat with satchel running through the player's holdalls: say "[a list of things held within satchel]".
To checkhodall, repeat with satchel running through hodalls carried by the player: say "[contents of satchel]".
[etc., etc...]
[/code]

Inform just does [i]not[/i] want to recognize the contents of the satchel as a description of items. And It's definitely the "contents of satchel" part that it has issue with. When I would just put say "test" it worked fine.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=130#p32383
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Squinky / DateTime: 2012-02-26 20:13:32

Sadly, I'll be at GDC and will miss the ceremony, but I look forward to reading it later!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=130#p32384
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-26 20:34:05

[quote="deirdrakiai"]Sadly, I'll be at GDC and will miss the ceremony, but I look forward to reading it later![/quote]
Yeah, that was a brilliant piece of scheduling on our part, no? Next year we can try and schedule it against the Oscars, or something.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4439&start=10#p32385
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item generation and other misc newb questions...
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-26 20:41:49

So, I'm not quite sure why some of those things don't work, but the action that will get you the list of things in a container is searching. So you could try this:

[code]To checkhodall, repeat with satchel running through the player's holdalls: try searching satchel.[/code]

I went through the Standard Rules to see what searching a container does, but the standard search containers rule isn't very illuminating; it just gives a library message. Looking through Ron Newcomb's Custom Library Messages extension to see what that message is (for nonempty containers), it appears to be:

[code] "In [the noun] [list the contents of noun with as a sentence list option +  tersely list option + not listing concealed items list option + is-are list option]."[/code] 

which I guess is explained in section 11.14, and you should probably look at the example "Equipment List" found there. But I'm not sure why "list of things in satchel" isn't working.

(Can I ask you to remind me why you need to do this again? If it's for the sake of making things show up in the inventory, I think the problem must be that your holdalls are closed opaque containers. If they were open or transparent then their contents would show up in the inventory listing, unless you did something else to change the listing. Looking at 11.14 and "Equipment List" really should help here.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4445&start=0#p32386
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Can't find writing aid
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-26 20:51:22

Maybe general novel-writing software might be of use. You could do worse than try the free opensource [url=http://www.novelist.ch/joomla/index.php/en/go-pro]Storybook[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4445&start=0#p32387
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Can't find writing aid
User: George / DateTime: 2012-02-26 21:06:40

Try this?

<a class="postlink" href="http://homepage.mac.com/siyanlis/Xhoromag/Advelh.htm">http://homepage.mac.com/siyanlis/Xhoromag/Advelh.htm</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4439&start=10#p32388
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item generation and other misc newb questions...
User: Phrog / DateTime: 2012-02-26 22:24:56

No, that didn't work either. I swear, Inform is ensuring it's impossible to list items in containers attached as parts to items you're wearing. 

Visibility shouldn't be an issue. It still lists the items in the (closed, opaque) backpack. it's just those @#$# pockets! Even if it were simply a matter of visibility, I'm making a gumshoe mystery investigation IF that uses a few puzzles where you have to sneak things in through your pockets, so it would seem rather pointless to make the pockets transparent.

[code]
Instead of taking inventory: 
    say "What are you [italic type]blind[roman type] or is your amnesia really that severe? You're carrying [a list of things carried by the player][if the player wears something]. You are wearing [a list of things worn by the player including contents][end if]. You currently have [price of money] in cash.".
[/code]

All I want is to include the pocketed items in this list. Is this too much to ask Inform? 

It's not the end of the world, but there's just [i]got[/i] to be a way to do it. We've got to be overlooking something.

the examine containers rule under examining [container] looks something like this:

[code]
Carry out examining (this is the examine containers rule):
if the noun is a container:
if the noun is open or the noun is transparent:
if something is in the noun:
if the description of the noun is not “”:
say “[the description of the noun][paragraph break]“;
say “In [the noun] [is-are a list of things in the noun].”;
stop the action.
[/code]

I just don't get why it doesn't work for the pockets. I also tried changing pockets back from holdalls to containers, but still the same issue.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=130#p32389
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-26 22:36:56

Can't the General Dental Council reschedule?  [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4438&start=0#p32390
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Comparing I7 commands to a table value
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2012-02-26 22:46:32

And the result is...

[code]Shadow Tutorial by Textfyre begins here.

TutorialOnSwitching is an action out of world.
TutorialOffSwitching is an action out of world.
Understand "tutorial on" as TutorialOnSwitching.
Understand "tutorial off" as TutorialOffSwitching.

Tutorial Switch is a number that varies.
Tutorial Command is text that varies.

When play begins:
	change the tutorial switch to 1;
	change the tutorial command to "".

Report TutorialOnSwitching:
	say "Tutorial is on.";
	change the tutorial switch to 1.

Report TutorialOffSwitching:
	say "Tutorial is off.";
	change the tutorial switch to 0.

When play begins:
	print the next tutorial command.

Every turn during the introduction:
	if the tutorial switch is 1:
		if the current action is a complete action listed in the Table of Introduction Commands:
			if learned entry is 0:
				choose row with complete action of the current action in the Table of Introduction Commands;
				change learned entry to 1;
		otherwise:
			if the action-name part of the current action is a player action listed in the Table of Introduction Commands:
				if learned entry is 0:
					choose row with player action of the action-name part of the current action in the Table of Introduction Commands;
					change learned entry to 1;
		print the next tutorial command.

To print the next tutorial command:
	if there is a learned of 0  in the Table of Introduction Commands:
		choose row with learned of 0 in the Table of Introduction Commands;
		if learned entry is 0:
			say response entry.

Table of Introduction Commands
complete action	player action	response		learned
the action of examining the player	--	"try EXAMINE ME or X ME"	0
-- 	the examining action	"try EXAMINE DESK OR EXAMINE CLOCK"	0
--	the polishing it with action	"try POLISH CLOCK WITH RAG"	0
--	the listening to action	"try LISTEN"	0

Shadow Tutorial ends here.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4439&start=10#p32391
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item generation and other misc newb questions...
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-26 23:14:22

Oh, the holdall is part of a worn thing. I think that's the problem. 

This seems to work, except that the output is fairly crappy and inelegant:

[code]Instead of taking inventory: 
    say "What are you [italic type]blind[roman type] or is your amnesia really that severe? You're carrying [a list of things carried by the player][if the player wears something]. You are wearing [a list of things worn by the player including contents][end if]. [If a thing worn by the player incorporates a container][check pockets] [end if]"

To say check pockets:
	repeat with satchel running through containers that are part of something worn by the player:
		if satchel contains something:
			say "In [the satchel] which is part of [a random thing incorporating satchel] [is-are a list of things in satchel]."[/code]

(I left out the cash because I didn't feel like programming it into the test code.) Anyway, this is probably ooky in various ways, but you can probably see how to turn it into something that doesn't suck.

[UPDATE: Fixed the error with is-are.]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4410&start=0#p32392
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Number agreement in verb and noun
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2012-02-26 23:34:43

It's late for me to absorb much, but, 

Custom Library Messages contains the line:[code]The built-in S-substitution's decision variable translates into I6 as "say__n".[/code]  That I6 variable controls the say-phrase [s] which goes on the end of a noun, and is used by the printing plural of  and the printing a number of activities to, upon saying a number or some other thing to inflect the noun, carries the information forward so the [s] can use it. 

Plurality and CLM both "mark (item) in output" to remember the recently-said noun, again to carry the information forward so later substitutions can work on it. 

I'm unsure if I understand your puzzle correctly, but if someone asked me to create some code which the indefinite article could change the plural/singular of its noun, I might be inclined to use a pair of rules, one Before the Printing the Name activity and one After, with the same When condition so that the second can "fix" what the first has done.   It's more or less what your original code does, I think, although I prefer the parallelism of the Before & After rules. 

I'd also find some way to use the built-in variables that carry forward plurality information, say__n, rather than declaring my own globals. 

That's about all the insight I have at this hour.  I hope it's, if not useful, then at least coherent.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4439&start=10#p32393
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item generation and other misc newb questions...
User: Phrog / DateTime: 2012-02-26 23:52:12

Thank you Matt.

Worked like a charm. You saved me hours of frustrating time spent trying to figure that out.
I've got plenty of other issues, but it feels good to at least have the pockets and the buying down.

I should be good, once I get the issues with conversations resolved.

-P

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4432&start=0#p32394
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Hint request -- Fallacy of Dawn, restaurant scene
User: Roody_Yogurt / DateTime: 2012-02-27 02:29:55

Hmm,
[spoiler]going east works for me. It's possible you've run into a bug, but if you happened to have just forgotten which direction you came from, it might be good to keep the New Haz map handy when you play the game.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4446&start=0#p32395
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Overriding the display of a container's status?
User: thecustodian / DateTime: 2012-02-27 02:49:34

Cheers all.  Inform n00b here, all excited, banging my head against one Inform puzzle after another. [emote]:-)[/emote]  My problem:  I have an object which I want the player to figure out that they have to pry open (because there's a thing in it the player needs, obviously).  Thus I'm using a container.  I know how to write the 'instead' rules which let me handle checking that they can open it only with a tool.  But:

When the container (let's call it a florb, as in 'a florb is a kind of container')  is listed in inventory, it says (closed) after it!  This sort of ruins my puzzle.  I know I can use the "Rule for printing room description details of a florb: stop" trick so it won't say this when it's in the same room, but how do I override this when it's in inventory?  I found the 'Oyster Wide Shut' example and tried making "A property-aggregation rule for the florb" as per that (Ex.414)  (Yes, I tried this in a test project where the florb wasn't a kind but a specific container) but it doesn't work. I tried:
[quote]
A property-aggregation rule for the florb:
	if the florb is closed:
		say nothing;
	rule succeeds.
[/quote]
However, it says on compile:
[quote]
Problem. You wrote 'A property-aggregation rule for the florb'  : but the punctuation here ':' makes me think this should be a definition of a phrase and it doesn't begin as it should, with either 'To' (e.g. 'To flood the riverplain:'), 'Definition:', a name for a rule (e.g. 'This is the devilishly cunning rule:'), 'At' plus a time (e.g. 'At 11:12 PM:' or 'At the time when the clock chimes') or the name of a rulebook, possibly followed by some description of the action or value to apply to (e.g. 'Instead of taking something:' or 'Every turn:').
[/quote]
Is that example rule something that only works because it's being declared as part of a wholesale replacement for the inventory listing rule?  Is there a way to only override this info for this item, ideally for this item kind?

So...can anyone offer me hints on how to not give away to my player the fact that the florb is a container until they manage to open it? [emote]:-)[/emote]  Many thanks indeed in advance.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4446&start=0#p32396
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding the display of a container's status?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-02-27 03:31:28

The reason for the compile error is that you didn't create a property-aggregation rulebook, so Inform could recognize property-aggregation rules. But then you'd need to invoke that rulebook for the rules in it to run. In "Oyster Wide Shut" that is done from the new print inventory rule that the example puts in the carry out taking inventory rulebook. 
In short: yes, the property-aggregation rule will only work as part of the whole parcel.

But in this case there may be an easy way. Containers that are not openable will (thankfully) not be listed as closed. So maybe you could start out with your florbs closed but unopenable, and then make them openable when the players do what they need to do to understand that a given florb is a container that could be pried open.
[code]The Lab is a room.

A florb is a kind of container. A florb is usually closed.
The box is a florb.
The player carries the box. In the box is a beetle.

Instead of examining the box: [(or opening the box or attacking the box or unlocking the box with the crowbar or whatever)]
	now the box is openable;
	say "Hey! Looks like you could possibly pry this thing open."

Test me with "inv / x box / inv".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4445&start=0#p32397
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Can't find writing aid
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-27 03:40:21

Advelh? Qu'est-ce que c'est?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4446&start=0#p32398
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding the display of a container's status?
User: thecustodian / DateTime: 2012-02-27 03:42:35

You, sir, are a scholar and a gentleman.  [emote]:-)[/emote]  Now I can finally go to bed and stop obsessing.  It works!  Hooray.  I did something slightly different:

[code]
Instead of opening a florb:
	if the noun is open, say "That's already been opened." instead;
	unless the player is carrying a tool, say "You don't have anything to open it with." instead;
	say "You pry open the florb.";
	now the noun is disassembled;
	now the noun is openable;
	now the noun is open.
[/code]
Since opening it damages it (it won't close again, because I have an instead of closing rule that prevents disassembled florbs from being closed) I need to make sure to check that it's disassembled once they've opened it.  Also, I check to make sure they are carrying an appropriate tool (kind of thing).

many thanks again.  Onwards!  Now to try to shoehorn my game back down into Z-Machine memory limits.  Just, you know, 'cuz.  I know I've done flabby stuff, here.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4446&start=0#p32402
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding the display of a container's status?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-27 06:10:52

It's great that you found a solution that works, especially because it looks like you don't want the florb to be openable at all!

Just for reference, if you wanted to accomplish this while still having the container be openable, I think you'd do this by using something like the following lines [ETA: mistake fixed]:

[code]Rule for printing the name of a closed florb while taking inventory: 
    say "[printed name of the florb]";
    omit contents in listing.
Rule for printing room description details of a closed florb: stop.[/code]

See sections 17.10 and 17.15 of the documentation, respectively. You'd probably also want to write some code that kept track of whether florbs had ever been opened, so you could make sure that after a florb had been opened and closed it would say "(closed)" after it.

But, as you've found out, if you just want the florb to be opened once and never closed again, making it unopenable is the way to go.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4439&start=10#p32403
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item generation and other misc newb questions...
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-02-27 06:45:09

[quote="Phrog"][code]
To checkhodall, repeat with satchel running through the player's holdalls: say "[contents of satchel]".
[etc., etc...]
[/code]

Inform just does [i]not[/i] want to recognize the contents of the satchel as a description of items. And It's definitely the "contents of satchel" part that it has issue with. When I would just put say "test" it worked fine.[/quote]
None of these will work because you used a [b]comma[/b] where you needed a [b]colon[/b]. For example, this works fine:
[code]To say checkholdall:
	repeat with satchel running through player's holdalls enclosed by the player:
		say "[The satchel] contain[s] [contents of satchel]."
		
Instead of taking inventory:
	say "You're carrying [a list of things carried by the player][if the player wears something]. You are wearing [a list of things worn by the player including contents][end if]. [checkholdall]".[/code]
The problem is that phrases [i]can[/i] contain commas -- they are used to delineate "phrase options" (see ch.11.14). In your code, Inform assumed everything after the comma but before the colon ("repeat with satchel, etc.") was a phrase option -- not an actual repeat loop. Since it didn't know you meant a loop, it didn't know that "satchel" was meant to be a local variable, and therefore "contents of satchel" was meaningless. Since "satchel" was the first unrecognized thing in your code, that's what got flagged. 

This is very common in I7 because unfortunately, it can't guess what you mean, it can only go by what you type. Very often, the error in your code is not the part that gets flagged, but the part [i]immediately preceding it[/i]. These errors are most commonly typos (e.g. incorrect punctuation as in this case or defining a variable and then misspelling it later when you try to use it).

HTH

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3253&start=0#p32404
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Love, Hate, and the Mysterious Ocean Tower endings
User: Paolo_Norman / DateTime: 2012-02-27 07:05:23

I played the game several times, and every time i find something to be surprised with. I think it is worth making all games like that. Gamers will never get [url=http://www.pondokcerita.org/]Pondok Cerita[/url] tired and bored of one and the same game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4445&start=0#p32405
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Can't find writing aid
User: Dralius / DateTime: 2012-02-27 07:18:54

[quote="George"]Try this?

<a class="postlink" href="http://homepage.mac.com/siyanlis/Xhoromag/Advelh.htm">http://homepage.mac.com/siyanlis/Xhoromag/Advelh.htm</a>[/quote]

This looks like what i need. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4410&start=0#p32406
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Number agreement in verb and noun
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-27 08:42:21

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Plurality and CLM both "mark (item) in output" to remember the recently-said noun, again to carry the information forward so later substitutions can work on it. [/quote]

Hrm, so is there a way to do this so the verb agrees with a noun that hasn't been said yet? Say if I wanted to say "In the [noun] is-are [a list of items in the noun]." and have the is-are agree with the number of the list of items? Apologies if this is somehow standard behavior.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4410&start=0#p32407
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Number agreement in verb and noun
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-02-27 09:09:50

[quote="matt w"]Hrm, so is there a way to do this so the verb agrees with a noun that hasn't been said yet? Say if I wanted to say "In the [noun] is-are [a list of items in the noun]." and have the is-are agree with the number of the list of items? Apologies if this is somehow standard behavior.[/quote]
This is standard behavior, but you've got the brackets wrong:"In [the noun] [is-are a list of items in the noun]." See ch.5.5.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4410&start=0#p32408
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Number agreement in verb and noun
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-27 09:14:39

[quote="matt w"]Hrm, so is there a way to do this so the verb agrees with a noun that hasn't been said yet? Say if I wanted to say "In the [noun] is-are [a list of items in the noun]." and have the is-are agree with the number of the list of items? Apologies if this is somehow standard behavior.[/quote]
The problem I have is that the indefinite article I'm using can change. I want to say

[quote]Dancing around the fire is a gaggle of oddly-dressed tourists.[/quote]

But,

[quote]Dancing around the fire are several oddly-dressed tourists.[/quote]

I think I've more or less worked this out. The Approximate Quantities extension I'm working on uses tables like the ones in Emily Short's Assorted Text Generation, except that I've added an extra column for plurality style. I think I can create a phrase like:

[code]To say is-are approximately (N - a number):
    say is-are approximately N using Table of Numerical Approximation.

To say is-are approximately (N - a number) using (T - a table-name):
    Repeat through T:
        if N is less than the threshold entry:
            set the plurality style to the style entry;
            say "[is-are] [approximation entry]";
            stop;[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4410&start=0#p32409
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Number agreement in verb and noun
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-27 10:04:05

[quote="Skinny Mike"][quote="matt w"]Hrm, so is there a way to do this so the verb agrees with a noun that hasn't been said yet? Say if I wanted to say "In the [noun] is-are [a list of items in the noun]." and have the is-are agree with the number of the list of items? Apologies if this is somehow standard behavior.[/quote]
This is standard behavior, but you've got the brackets wrong:"In [the noun] [is-are a list of items in the noun]." See ch.5.5.[/quote]

Ah thanks! I was a bit fuzzy when typing this in, but in the code I was using I had [is-are] in separate brackets, which wasn't working.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4439&start=20#p32410
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item generation and other misc newb questions...
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-27 10:06:24

Just noting that Skinny Mike pointed out on another thread that I needed "[is-are a list of things...]" in one pair of brackets, instead of "[is-are] [a list of things]..." in two brackets.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4439&start=20#p32411
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item generation and other misc newb questions...
User: Phrog / DateTime: 2012-02-27 10:41:40

Yeah I caught that. Thanks guys. Glad to know it was simply a matter of changing the comma to a colon. I could have [b]sworn[/b] I tried the colon already, several times actually, but I'm sure I screwed something else up and then gave up too quickly.

If anyone is curious, the resulting code looked like this:

[code]
Instead of taking inventory: 
    say "[line break]What are you [italic type]blind[roman type] or is your amnesia really that severe? In your hands, you're carrying [a list of things carried by the player].[no line break][if the player wears something] You are wearing [a list of things worn by the player including contents].[no line break][end if] [If a thing worn by the player incorporates a container][checkholdall][no line break][end if][if price of money is greater than $0.00] You currently have [price of money] in cash.[no line break][end if][line break]".

To say checkholdall:
	repeat with satchel running through player's holdalls enclosed by the player:
		say "[The satchel] contain[s] [a list of things in satchel]. ".
[/code]

So I'd get this:

>take inventory

What are you blind or is your amnesia really that severe? In your hands, you're carrying nothing. You are wearing your jacket and a backpack (in which are your camera and your handy-dandy notepad). The backpack contains your camera and your handy-dandy notepad. The left pocket contains your pack of cigarettes. The right pocket contains a wallet. The jacket pocket contains your writing pen and your lighter.  You currently have $9.00 in cash.

>

It's not perfect. I'm not a fan of the "in which are" stuff. But it works. Also, these are listing off the starting items, which all are conveniently named "your ____", but if you pick up items later, it will be a bit inconsistent with "a" and "your."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4434&start=0#p32412
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Zipping Ahead N Turns?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-27 11:09:14

Ok, I'm out to break this down...  So I'll comment on the parts and then anyone jump in and comment on my comments, if you like.

[code]
#charset "us-ascii"
#include <adv3.h>
#include <en_us.h>

//directions-for-use code snipped
    
    /*
     *   The 'list tests' and 'list tests fully' commands can be used to list 
     *   your test scripts from within the running game.
     */
    
#ifdef __DEBUG
[/code]

Now this makes the contents only work if we're in debugging mode --which is automatic when we haven't created a for-release version?

[code]    
DefineSystemAction(ListTests)
    execSystemAction
[/code]
Immediately I have a question, in that I cannot see what calls this method.  It seems to be the primary driver for executing the testing script, so I would expect it to be linked in from the TEST X verb rule, but as far as I can tell, it's not.

So how does TADS know to fire this method? -- are we overwriting some existing TADS thing called SystemAction?  -- Must be, I suppose.

[code]
    {
[/code]

This is a check to see that we're not ready to go.

[code]
        if(allTests.lst.length == 0)
        {
            reportFailure('There are no test scripts defined in this game. ');
            exit;
        }
[/code]

I say that SystemAction must be an existing TADS method because this seems to take over the handling of commands.

[research]

Oh, it's a class.  That's weird.  

[quote]System action. These actions are for out-of-game meta-verbs (save, restore, 
undo). These verbs take no objects, must be performed by the player (thus by
the player character, not an NPC), and consume no game clock time. 

class SystemAction :   IAction [/quote]

Ah!  We're defining a system action called ListTests.  Uh-HUH.  That makes some sense.
       
[code]
        foreach(local testObj in allTests.lst)
        {
            "<<testObj.testName>>";
            if(gAction.fully)               
            {
                ": ";
                foreach(local txt in testObj.testList)
                    "<<txt>>/";
            }
            "\n";
        }
    }
    fully = nil
;
[/code]

And now we have the verb for it.  All right, all is well in the universe.

[code]
VerbRule(ListTests)
    ('list' | 'l') 'tests' (| 'fully' -> fully)
    : ListTestsAction
    verbPhrase = 'list/listing test scripts'
;

    /*
     *   The 'test X' command can be used with any Test object defined in the source code:
     */

DefineLiteralAction(Test)
   execAction()
   {
      local target = getLiteral().toLower();
      local script = allTests.valWhich({x: x.testName.toLower == target});
      if (script)
         script.run();
[/code]

Ok, so the TEST X whirligig seems to run off this thing called script.run(), which in turn is a deep mystery.

Script is got from (I'm standing back and squinting more than understanding here)
pulling together everything in allTests, so it is presumably a list of allTest objects,
allTest being an object defined below and having a .run() method.

[code]
      else
         "Test sequence not found. ";
   }
;

VerbRule(Test)
   'test' singleLiteral
   : TestAction
   verbPhrase = 'test/testing (what)'
;
[/code]

The individual test object...  but in fact a class.  So, Test is a class,
individual Test objects are not named, but pulled from a file, whereas 
the list of unnamed Test objects does have a name, allTest.

[code]
class Test: object
   testName = 'nil'
   testList = [ 'z' ]
   testFile = 'TEST_' + testName + '.TCMD'
[/code]

Well, I don't understand what .run() is doing here rather than in allTests,
but anyway it seems somehow to fall through from the list to the individual
items in that list.

[code]
   run
   {
      "Testing sequence: \"<<testName>>\". ";
      local out = File.openTextFile(testFile, FileAccessWrite);
      testList.forEach({x: out.writeFile('>' + x + '\n')});
      out.closeFile();
      setScriptFile(testFile);
[/code]

Well that's just writing the actions out to the output file.

[code]
   }
;

allTests: object
   lst()

// list handling...

   {
      if (lst_ == nil)
         initLst();
      return lst_;
[/code]

What if the list is empty?  then initialize it and return the initialized version...
 presuming lst_ is modified by initLst().

[code]
   }

   initLst()
   {
      lst_ = new Vector(50);
[/code]

Ok, there it is.

[code]
    local obj = firstObj();
      while (obj != nil)
[/code]

*while*?  not *if*?  ... that means sometimes this doesn't work to make obj not nil?

[code]
      {
         if(obj.ofKind(Test))
            lst_.append(obj);
         obj = nextObj(obj);
[/code]

Ah, ok...  we're filtering for only Test type objects.  Which is why we use while.

[code]
      }
      lst_ = lst_.toList();
[/code]

I have no idea what that does, but presumably it converts a string
to a list or something.  Parses it, sorta.

[code]
   }

   valWhich(cond)
   {
      if (lst_ == nil)
         initLst();
      return lst_.valWhich(cond);
[/code]

Ok, my brain just exploded.  This is dealing with the tail end of the list in some tricky recursive fashion?

So, if the tail of the list is empty, we initialize it and presumably parse in the next line.

Then, whether it's empty or not, I guess, we call ourselves.  Which means if the tail is empty, we initialize it and parse in the next line...

And we keep doing that until the line is all parsed in, and then we return-return-return everything in list form?

Ah, this is used in the original SystemAction thing, when we go looking 
 for a script of a specific name.  So I guess it filters by name, going through the entire list of scripts available, recursively.

[code]
   }

   lst_ = nil
[/code]

But none of this has happened yet, or it's already happened, so we set the tail to nil.

[code]
;

#endif // __DEBUG
[/code]

End of the debugging-only block.

Fine, but where was the part where the script actions were actually run through the game?

Going for a second round...

Nope, not finding it.  I mean, presumably this thing must somewhere actually 
implement the verbs contained in the test objects, but it looks to me like it 
has to be done in the .run() method and it's not done there.  So I've got no
clue.  Ideas, anyone?

Where does this thing get around to actually executing the commands?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4439&start=20#p32413
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item generation and other misc newb questions...
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-27 11:11:29

[quote="Phrog"]It's not perfect. I'm not a fan of the "in which are" stuff.[/quote]

I don't know if there's a simple way to change the "in which are" stuff -- it looks like it's handled in I6. Probably there's an extension out there that lets you handle it. I wrote this up:

[code]Instead of taking inventory: 
    say "[line break]What are you [italic type]blind[roman type] or is your amnesia really that severe? In your hands, you're carrying [a list of things carried by the player].[no line break][if the player wears something] You are wearing [a list of things worn by the player].[no line break][end if] [If a thing worn by the player incorporates a container][checkholdall][no line break][end if][line break]".

To say checkholdall:
	repeat with satchel running through player's holdalls enclosed by the player:
		say "[The satchel] contain[s] [a list of things in satchel]. ".
		
Rule for printing the name of a worn container (called satchel) while taking inventory:
	unless satchel contains something:
		say "empty [printed name of satchel]";
	otherwise:
		say "[printed name of satchel], which contains [a list of things contained by satchel]".
		
Rule for printing the name of a carried container (called satchel) while taking inventory:
	unless satchel contains something:
		say "empty [printed name of satchel]";
	otherwise:
		say "[printed name of satchel], which contains [a list of things contained by satchel]".[/code]

but it probably requires a lot more refinement if you want it to work. (For instance, I'm pretty sure it will automatically list the contents of closed opaque containers). But if you want to waste some time twiddling around with it, which is what I've just been doing, it could be a fun place to start! There are almost certainly better solutions involving extensions though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4439&start=20#p32414
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item generation and other misc newb questions...
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-27 11:15:08

A note: I seriously advice against such a complicated storage system. The player shouldn't be harassed by inventory management, unless it is a matter of a puzzle (and, that said, that kind of puzzle is as old as time).
I understand what you are doing is far more realistic than having the PC i.e. carry around a ladder, three pigeons and a llama, but for enjoyment sake the latter is best. One holdall is sufficient, imo, or you should make the items available no matter what you type ingame. Or else, all your player will be bored to death...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4434&start=0#p32415
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Zipping Ahead N Turns?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-27 11:45:08

The heart of the code is the Test class. The rest of it is just providing verbs to list tests and to pick a specific one to run.

allTests is a wrapper for a list of all test objects defined. Remember a few days ago when I said it was generally better not to iterate through the object tree on a regular basis? This is a way around doing that more than once. allTests keeps an internal list (lst_) with the results of inspecting the object tree for tests; if the list is nil, it knows it hasn't done it yet; otherwise it simply returns the list.

Here is the Test class with more thorough annotations.
[code]
class Test: object
	// the test must have a name, so that the player can type >test X to refer to it.
	testName = 'nil'

	// the list of test commands; this could also be ['z','z','z','z','z'] to wait five times.
	testList = [ 'z' ]

	// we need to write the commands out to a file so that TADS 3 can run it as a script
	// this should be a suitable default value; for a test named foo it will create a file
	// named TEST_foo.TCMD
	testFile = 'TEST_' + testName + '.TCMD'

	// run() is called by execAction() in the Test action
	run {
		// print out the name of the test so the player sees what's running
		"Testing sequence: \"<<testName>>\". ";

		// open a file using the file name we've picked
		local out = File.openTextFile(testFile, FileAccessWrite);

		// for every command in our list, write > COMMAND on one line
		// this is the format expected by setScriptFile
		testList.forEach({x: out.writeFile('>' + x + '\n')});

		// close the file once we've finished writing each command
		out.closeFile();

		// setScriptFile() is a built-in function; see the System Manual for details
		// http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/sysman/scripts.htm
		// This is what does the actual work of running a set of commands.
		setScriptFile(testFile);
	}
;
[/code]

To make a test that waits ten times, you could do this.

[code]
waitTen: Test
	testName = 'wait'
	testList = ['z','z','z','z','z','z','z','z','z','z']
[/code]

And run it using the command >test wait.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4440&start=10#p32416
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat System problem.
User: Superjax / DateTime: 2012-02-27 12:16:28

K, I have a problem.

For some reason, when I add in the code for the ammo, the gun apparently doesn't do any damage, it doesn't report me attacking or killing something, and the ammo system doesn't even work.

The code:

[code]A gun is a kind of weapon.
A gun has a number called ammo.
The ammo of a gun is usually 6.

Check an actor attacking something with something (this is the can't use an ammoless gun rule):
	if the second noun is a gun:
		if the ammo of the second noun is 0, say "You do not have any ammo left.";
		stop the action.

Carry out an actor attacking something with something (this is the standard attacking it with a weapon rule):
	if the second noun is a gun:
		decrement the ammo of the second noun;
		decrease the current hit points of the noun by the damage inflicted;
		if the noun is dead, remove the noun from play;
		[otherwise]
		decrease the current hit points of the noun by the damage inflicted;
		if the noun is dead, remove the noun from play.[/code]

Please fix? I've spent all day working on this.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4440&start=10#p32417
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat System problem.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-27 12:24:50

[quote="Superjax"]K, I have a problem.

For some reason, when I add in the code for the ammo, the gun apparently doesn't do any damage, it doesn't report me attacking or killing something, and the ammo system doesn't even work.

The code:

[code]A gun is a kind of weapon.
A gun has a number called ammo.
The ammo of a gun is usually 6.

Check an actor attacking something with something (this is the can't use an ammoless gun rule):
	if the second noun is a gun:
		if the ammo of the second noun is 0, say "You do not have any ammo left.";
		stop the action.

Carry out an actor attacking something with something (this is the standard attacking it with a weapon rule):
	if the second noun is a gun:
		decrement the ammo of the second noun;
		decrease the current hit points of the noun by the damage inflicted;
		if the noun is dead, remove the noun from play;
		[otherwise]
		decrease the current hit points of the noun by the damage inflicted;
		if the noun is dead, remove the noun from play.[/code]

Please fix? I've spent all day working on this.[/quote]

The way your Check rule is written, the condition "if the ammo of the second noun is 0" applies only to the following say phrase, and "stop the action" runs no matter what the gun's ammo is. So your Carry out rule isn't running at all. Use the colon-and-indentation format and make sure "stop the action" is also indented under the condition. 

BTW, it's probably better to write "Check attacking something with a gun" and "Carry out attacking something with a gun"; you might also want to make sure that these rules only apply to nouns with hit points.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4421&start=10#p32418
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Articles of a value?
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-02-27 12:32:18

[code]There is a room.

To say a (C - sayable value that provides the property indefinite article):
	if the indefinite article of C is not "":
		say "[indefinite article of C] [C]";
	otherwise:
		let first be character number 1 in "[C]" in lower case;
		if first is "a" or first is "e" or first is "i" or first is "o" or first is "u":
			say "an [C]";
		otherwise :
			say "a [C]".

Education is a kind of value. Education is High school, University, Academy, and Community College. Education has some text called indefinite article. The indefinite article of University is "a".

Tim is a person. Tim is here. Tim has an education called Education Level. The education level of Tim is University.

Hair color is a kind of value. Hair color is brown, black, auburn, ginger, red, blond, and chestnut.

Tim has a hair color. The hair color of Tim is auburn. The description of Tim is "He went to [a education level of item described]. [A hair color of item described] strand of hair falls in his eyes."[/code]
compiles cleanly for me.  Does that match what you're trying?

(It compiles, but misbehaves.  The bug looks similar to—but not the same as—[url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=825]825[/url].)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4426&start=0#p32419
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer Talk Adventure Game Design
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-02-27 13:11:24

[quote="Peter Pears"]as he said himself he had more fun DESIGNING games than PLAYING them[/quote]

seems to be a constant in the IF world too...

I was really never into point-and-click, but I have to say I'd still much rather play it on a touch smartphone rather than play those CYOA books...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=100#p32420
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: punkasaurus / DateTime: 2012-02-27 14:25:15

Being fairly new to the whole thing, I love the festival idea.

I also like the idea of competitions, but with specific constraints and time limits so that people are forced to be creative and do something new in a small amount of time. You could announce the rules at the last minute before the time period starts, and have some kind of rule that changes each year so that people can't start sooner (i.e., "your game must involve an alien" or "the main character must be elderly") and have a panel of judges that not only judge the game, but judge how well the theme or special rule was incorporated into and made a significant part of the game.

Perhaps these competitions could be a small part of a larger "festival" type event where people share and enjoy a bunch of IF.

As for allowing updates, why not have two rounds and everyone votes in both rounds? Creators are allowed to change the game during the first round, but as of the beginning of the second, things are locked in. This forces them to put effort into the game before initial release (so they don't fall horribly behind in the first round), and still gives the opportunity to make changes based on the feedback they're given.

I don't know. That could be dumb, but it seems like a good happy medium to me.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4440&start=10#p32421
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat System problem.
User: Superjax / DateTime: 2012-02-27 14:32:55

Thanks a ton! Also:

[quote="Matt w"]
BTW, it's probably better to write "Check attacking something with a gun" and "Carry out attacking something with a gun"; you might also want to make sure that these rules only apply to nouns with hit points.
[/quote]

Ok, I only wrote it that way so that it would fit in with the rest of the code. Also, I made so that [i]everything [/i]has hit points, and that the default amount of hit points is 0.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4446&start=0#p32422
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding the display of a container's status?
User: thecustodian / DateTime: 2012-02-27 14:36:16

Matt -  I want florb to only admit that it's a container when the player figures out they need a tool to open it.  After that, it's a normal container (other than that you can't close it once open).

The code you offered doesn't quite do that - if the container is 'openable' then whenever you list inventory it'll say (closed) after the florb's name, which sort of gives away the puzzle. [emote]:-)[/emote]  (A florb is an object not usually thought of as a container, in my case a plastic tag, and there's a chip 'embedded' in it the player needs).

Once they've opened it once, it admits that it is open and I want it to indicate if there's a chip in it.  The description says "It's been pried open, the plastic cut" and I use
[code]
Instead of closing a florb:
   If the noun is open, say "That won't close. The damage looks permanent." instead;
[/code]
That seems to do the trick.

Thanks much!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4449&start=0#p32423
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Under-represented genres
User: punkasaurus / DateTime: 2012-02-27 15:10:49

So, I was thinking... there is a LOT of fantasy thanks to the classic text adventures like Adventure and Zork and such. There are also quite a few science fiction games, but they seem to mostly be space-oriented, alien-fighting epic type stuff. There are some romance games, (though many of them are AIF type stuff). There's a bit of horror (and I think IF lends itself extremely well to horror).

But there are some genres (and subgenres) that I haven't seen much of. Historical fiction, urban fantasy, cyberpunk, "new weird," western, and superhero IF seem to all be somewhere between rare and non-existent.

I kind of want to explore making a game in of a type that hasn't been done, or hasn't been done much, and was wondering what kind of game other people would like to see.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4449&start=0#p32424
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Under-represented genres
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-27 15:14:13

[quote="punkasaurus"]I kind of want to explore making a game in of a type that hasn't been done, or hasn't been done much, and was wondering what kind of game other people would like to see.[/quote]

Whatever you feel you can do excellently. The only genre I care about is "games that effing rock," which is a genre seldom approached in this or any other gaming medium [emote]:)[/emote] Most seem to prefer to toil in the well-trodden "games that are just kind of meh" megagenre.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4450&start=0#p32425
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Having a 'nonexistent' sign be readable?
User: thecustodian / DateTime: 2012-02-27 15:30:51

Cheers all. Another n00b question.  My world has locations which are under surveillance and locations which aren't.  The former, at present, are defined as all those rooms which contain a Public Surveillance Notice (which is a thing, fixed in place, and has the description "A small sturdily-mounted sign reading 'THIS AREA UNDER SURVEILLANCE.'")  To decide if a player is surveilled, I check if there is a Public Surveillance Notice in 'the location.'

Well and good, this all works.  But I realized I'm using an awful lot of memory for all these notice signs (approx. half the locs are surveilled) and they're all exact duplicates.

I could have rooms have the property 'surveilled or blind', and that would fix things for the 'decide if player is surveilled'.  I could have a rule 'after looking when player is surveilled' print out a notice that 'There is a Public Surveillance Notice here.' But what if the player wants to read it?  How to I capture their attempt to examine/read a nonexistent sign?  Can I do that with a check or before rule if the noun they're frobbing doesn't exist?  Do I need to add an 'understand' rule?  If so, how?

Many thanks in advance.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4449&start=0#p32426
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Under-represented genres
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2012-02-27 15:31:44

I think people tend to write what they know will be popular, and sci-fi, fantasy and horror are all very popular. They're probably reluctant to write a game in a genre that's not as popular because less people would be inclined to play it. 

Saying that, I'm a sucker for sci-fi, fantasy and horror anyway.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4450&start=0#p32427
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Having a 'nonexistent' sign be readable?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-27 15:34:43

By far the easiest way to allow the player to refer to an object is to use an object.

If you're worried about the memory, you could use a single backdrop object.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4449&start=0#p32428
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Under-represented genres
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-02-27 15:35:29

S. John is of course right - you should write whatever story happens to be in you, and not ask what people want. 

That said, I still think those mutant pirates we talked about in the [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4142#p29826]shared world[/url] thread sounds like a lot of fun...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4449&start=0#p32429
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Under-represented genres
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-27 15:35:46

[quote="punkasaurus"]But there are some genres (and subgenres) that I haven't seen much of. Historical fiction, urban fantasy, cyberpunk, "new weird," western, and superhero IF seem to all be somewhere between rare and non-existent.[/quote]
There are quite a lot of superhero games: try the [i]Earth & Sky[/i] trilogy, [i]Heroine's Mantle[/i], [i]Max Blaster & Doris de Lightning[/i], [i]A Crimson Spring[/i], [i]Future Boy[/i], the [i]Frenetic Five[/i] series, [i]Flight of the Hummingbird[/i], several David Whyld games... given how strongly visual the superhero genre is, and how much difficulty IF has with very powerful protagonists and with action-driven plots, the superhero genre is very heavily represented.

The trick, as I've said before, is that there are many, many genres and not all that many IF games. So most genres are going to have a thin field. (We had a great big discussion a few months ago that started when someone complained that there weren't enough IF horror games -- or, at least, enough games that matched their quite specific requirements for horror.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4450&start=0#p32430
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Having a 'nonexistent' sign be readable?
User: thecustodian / DateTime: 2012-02-27 15:43:57

zarf, thanks.  By 'backdrop object' you mean make the public surveillance notice a backdrop, and only have it visible from rooms that are under surveillance?  Can I have more than one backdrop object apply to a room?

I hadn't realized the backdrop was an *object*, I thought it was a place objects could be.  Need to RTFM more carefully!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4449&start=0#p32431
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Under-represented genres
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-02-27 15:58:45

If you want to do something more likely to be genre-unique, you can do what someone around here (I think it was Emily Short) suggested and:
1. Pick two reasonably disparate things as your central schtick and setting (aliens in 18thC Versailles! intrigue/noir in ancient Sumer!  social sim in space!).
2. Follow things through to their logical conclusions (would you rather pose as an earth man, and have some political sway, or pose as an earth woman, and have an elaborate updo to hide your antennae under? how do spies stealthily pass around information when it has to be written on clay slabs? how much [i]does[/i] it suck to be confined by the cold hard vacuum of space to a three-block area with someone you hate?).  If it's a historical setting, do some actual research.  Even if it's not a historical setting, do some research.

Step two is the important one.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4432&start=0#p32432
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Hint request -- Fallacy of Dawn, restaurant scene
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2012-02-27 15:59:54

Yes, that is the way.  Sorry to bother with such a dumb question.

[spoiler]I thought that I tried going in all the compass directions, but in my transcript, I now see that I tried going N, S, NE, NW, SE, and SW as well as OUT and IN.  I evidently forgot that I hadn't tried E and W.[/spoiler]

Thank you.  You always save my hide, whether I'm stuck trying to play a Hugo game or trying to make one!  [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4450&start=0#p32433
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Having a 'nonexistent' sign be readable?
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-02-27 16:08:56

You can have as many different backdrops as you like.  Backdrops can't be taken (or eaten, or whatever), so they are primarily there to be looked at, and they don't get automatically mentioned in the room description.  See Chapter 3.9.

You could do it even more easily by making all the "surveilled" rooms their own region, and assign the sign backdrop to the entire region.  (And you could customize the status bar to show whether or not surveillance is on, or automatically alter the room description or room title...)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4449&start=0#p32434
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Under-represented genres
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-27 16:11:05

[quote="David Whyld"]I think people tend to write what they know will be popular, and sci-fi, fantasy and horror are all very popular. They're probably reluctant to write a game in a genre that's not as popular because less people would be inclined to play it.[/quote]

I think that this is probably true of certain genres. I assume that a big part of the reason why there's not much romance in IF, or much chest-thumping military fiction, is because both of those are sort of premised on a single-gender audience. I'm not sure how generally true it is -- I think there's so much SF/F just because IF authors tend to fall into demographics that really like SF/F, rather than because anybody's chasing an audience.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4446&start=0#p32435
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding the display of a container's status?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-27 16:26:41

Right, your code should work for what you want to do. I was trying to indicate a more general solution, though I got it wrong. 

If you test this (which defines a single florb rather than a kind):

[code]Test room is a room. The florb is a container in the Test room. The florb contains a fleeb. The florb is openable. The florb is closed.
Rule for printing the name of the closed florb while taking inventory: 
	say "[printed name of the item described]";
	omit contents in listing.
Rule for printing room description details of the closed florb: stop.[/code]

then the florb won't show up as "florb (closed)" in the room description or inventory. You'll be able to open it and close it, since it's defined as "openable," but it'll only reveal its container status once it's open.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4239&start=0#p32436
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Testers Needed...
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-27 16:49:15

"The White Bull" has now been put through its paces by a crackerjack team of fiendish testers, and I'm pretty sure all of the major problems have been ironed out. The design is 100% complete, as are the hints. It has chatty NPCs, grave dangers, and a music soundtrack.

Even after the testing that has been done, there could easily be four or five nasty little problems still lurking in the code. I would love to have one more industrious volunteer step forward and try to break the game before the Spring Thing deadline, which is now a mere four weeks away. If that's you, please email me (midiguru23 [at] sbcglobal [dot] net) or PM me in this forum.

Thankin' you muchly in advance!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4436&start=10#p32437
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ok, here is the big question... -norand?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-27 17:27:03

RealNC, would it be simpler to create a -norand "game" that generates a few long random numbers, with lost of digits, interpret it for release, and pass around the game file to see how it runs on different interpreters?


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4434&start=0#p32438
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Zipping Ahead N Turns?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-27 17:54:22

Many thanks, Ben, for the detailed annotations.

[quote="bcressey"]To make a test that waits ten times, you could do this.

[code]
waitTen: Test
	testName = 'wait'
	testList = ['z','z','z','z','z','z','z','z','z','z']
[/code]

And run it using the command >test wait.[/quote]

From the docs, it seems that you [i]can't[/i] write a program that gives itself input without first writing that input to a file--?  Which is not what I expected.

The task here is to write a module that will wait [i]N[/i] times, where N might be 1-1000 (say).  From what you've written, that should be doable with some kind of...

[code]
open (filename) to write something to it; <-- a subtle indicator this isn't real code
write (filename, '>Z\n');
close (filename);
for i = 1 to n
    setScriptFile(filename)
;
[/code]

I'll tinker with this and report back.  Not at my real computer right now.


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4436&start=10#p32439
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ok, here is the big question... -norand?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-27 18:15:39

The point is that you can't create a "norand" game. The RNG is part of the interpreter, not the game.

Mike did reply, but it turns out this thing is a bit of a can of worms because having the same pseudorandom number sequence actually doesn't help; when you UNDO and then repeat the last action, the results will be different because the RNG is transient. Also, its current state is not accessible by the game.

I'll keep you posted about how this turns out. The idea right now is to introduce an argument to the randomize() function from tadsgen.h that takes a seed value. Passing a custom seed means the numbers will be identical everywhere. Additional changes will then need to be made for the game to be able to access RNG state for UNDO and SAVE.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4436&start=10#p32440
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ok, here is the big question... -norand?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-27 18:30:31

Ohhh, I see.

Well...  I *imagine* I can satisfice with a new pseudoRand() function, that works off the game turn number, and make sure all NPC-state-changing code are pseudo-random in this sense...  

I'll work on that angle while waiting to hear whether you guys think of something tighter.

I *imagine* the NPCs won't do anything random without me specifically telling them to, and I'll just manage <<random text>> so it doesn't make substantative changes.


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=130#p32441
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: adam / DateTime: 2012-02-27 18:51:15

Wow, I'm late to the party.

Two things.

#1, you most certainly *can* play [i]Mentula Macanus: Apocolocyntosis[/i] online, although, yeah, not with an iPhone or Android device as far as I know.  Which is to say that [url=http://www.stiffymakane.com/MMA/play.html]this[/url] is a link to the Quixe page.  Hey, I worked [i]hard[/i]--well, I worked--to get the entire Stiffy Corpus playable online.  [i]Undiscovered Country[/i] is the only one of those games where that really doesn't work well.

#2, I had my Atari 2600 adaptation of [i]Fellowship of the Ring[/i] disqualified from the very first IntroComp because I went and announced it over in the Atari retrogaming community, and they did the same thing that the ChoiceScript people have done, which was to say "Hey, I am going to vote for this neat thing I like, and I don't care about those other things," and drown the competition by sheer force of numbers.  And, yeah, I was rankled that I got DQed, largely because it WAS the only IntroComp game to actually get finished that year.  Sure, you could argue that since I had a hard limit of 4K, finishing it wasn't exactly a Herculean endeavor.  And, well, you'd be...LOOK!  A MONKEY!

Adam

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4434&start=10#p32442
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Zipping Ahead N Turns?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-27 18:51:47

You could do it that way, though it pains me to say it. Like you I wish there were a way to script the game without needing a file.

The new [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/sysman/tempfile.htm]TemporaryFile[/url] in 3.1 helps out a bit. Unlike the current code, the Test class below won't litter the game directory with old script files; they'll be created and deleted in the background.

[code]
class Test: object
	testName = 'nil'
	testList = [ 'z' ]

	run {
		"Testing sequence: \"<<testName>>\". ";
		local temp = new TemporaryFile();
		local out = File.openTextFile(temp, FileAccessWrite);
		testList.forEach({x: out.writeFile('>' + x + '\n')});
		out.closeFile();
		setScriptFile(temp);
	}
;
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4449&start=0#p32443
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Under-represented genres
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-02-27 19:08:46

I thought the major reason there's not much romance in IF is that it's hard to write complex NPCs.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4449&start=0#p32445
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Under-represented genres
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-27 19:36:06

[quote="tove"]I thought the major reason there's not much romance in IF is that it's hard to write complex NPCs.[/quote]
That doesn't help, no. But there are other genres -- superhero, space opera -- that have major mechanical disadvantages in IF, yet people keep hammering away at them. (For a proper space opera, you need a sympathetic ensemble cast, a very open field of possibility, and an action-driven plot: three horribly difficult things before breakfast! But there's no shortage of authors willing to try.)

So, y'know, if it was just because it was [i]difficult[/i], I'd expect to see a regular stream of trying-to-be-romance games, half-baked romance games, romance games that fail interestingly in some crucial way.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4436&start=10#p32446
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ok, here is the big question... -norand?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-27 19:48:20

Uh... ok, I just posted to Yahoo Answers and asked for a [i]non-recursive, non-iterative[/i] pseudo-random number generator.

I pretended to be a girl (so I'd be sure to get an answer)...  

I instantly got this formula:

[code]
uint get_random()
{
m_z = 36969 * (m_z & 65535) + (m_z >> 16);
m_w = 18000 * (m_w & 65535) + (m_w >> 16);
return (m_z << 16) + m_w; /* 32-bit result */
}
[/code]

...which looks recursive to me.  But I don't really savvy C code.  Will this map x -> a random y?


Conrad.

ps--I also got a weird invitation to another "answers" community, by someone who was [i]also[/i] pretending to be a girl.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4436&start=10#p32447
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ok, here is the big question... -norand?
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-02-27 19:59:59

[quote="conradcook"]by someone who was [i]also[/i] pretending to be a girl.[/quote]

Because there are definitely no actual girls on the internet?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4436&start=20#p32448
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ok, here is the big question... -norand?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-27 20:12:38

HA!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4436&start=20#p32449
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ok, here is the big question... -norand?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-27 20:34:45

You actually don't need to depend on the turn counter. You can implement a normal RNG. Since you will be storing the state of it in an object, and every object is non-transient unless you explicitly make it transient, your random numbers will be deterministic even with UNDO and SAVE/RESTORE. (When the RNG spits out a number and you UNDO, it will give you the same number again next time.)

Here's a working RNG object:

[code]
simpleRand: object {
    seed = 1; // Use whatever value you want as initial seed.

    // Returns a number between 0 and lim-1. This is "Gerhard's generator", an extremely
    // simple algorithm that generates low-quality pseudorandom numbers.
    getRand(lim)
    {
        seed = (seed * 32719 + 3) % 32749;
        return seed % lim;
        // If you instead want numbers between 1 and lim,
        // then use this instead: return (seed % lim) + 1
    }
}
[/code]

simpleRand.getRant(lim) will return a value between 0 and lim-1. Since 'seed' is also the current state, it is saved and restored accordingly when you UNDO/SAVE/RESTORE.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4450&start=0#p32450
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Having a 'nonexistent' sign be readable?
User: thecustodian / DateTime: 2012-02-27 20:38:38

Tove:  Prescient contribution, I just was trying the region bit and getting confused again.  I just realized that regions can't overlap other than to contain each other.  I had divided the game up by phase into regions (for character tracking) but the surveilled rooms are scattered around, so that means I'd have to either give up my other regions or find another way to do it.

I tried putting the backdrop into all surveilled rooms using a 'repeat/running through' when play begins, but I got a runtime error that backdrops can't move (and it didn't show up where expected).  I tried using a 'repeat/running through' during setup, but that fails too - I presume because it doesn't like using repeat/running through during declarations?

Any advice for a cleaner solution than totting up the actual rooms and writing out the backdrop statements? [emote]:-)[/emote]

tl,dr; (cleaner statement):  I want to declare (the same) backdrop object as being in all rooms which share a certain property.  How and where do I do that? [emote]:-)[/emote]

Thanks.

EDIT:  Figured it out!  Section 8.8 of Writing with Inform.  Put: 
[code]
Move Public Surveillance Announcement backdrop to all panopticon rooms.
[/code]

...in the 'When Play Begins' block.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4436&start=20#p32451
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ok, here is the big question... -norand?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-27 20:49:44

RealNC, that works as advertised.  And it's a heck of a lot more random than any of the efforts I've been able to work out so far (including making the Yahoo answer a non-iterative function).

Many thanks! -- I'll proceed with this write-around unless the TADS gurus come up with a deep solution.


Conrad.

ps - I confirmed correct behavior with UNDO and with save and restore -- as you say, it's storing the new seed value as a variable, which persists like any other game state.  Very cool.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4436&start=20#p32452
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ok, here is the big question... -norand?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-27 20:55:49

[quote="conradcook"]
[code]
uint get_random()
{
    m_z = 36969 * (m_z & 65535) + (m_z >> 16);
    m_w = 18000 * (m_w & 65535) + (m_w >> 16);
    return (m_z << 16) + m_w; /* 32-bit result */
}
[/code]

...which looks recursive to me.  But I don't really savvy C code.  Will this map x -> a random y?[/quote]
No, it's not recursive since it doesn't call itself. It's also not iterative since there's no loop in it. Translating C to TADS is fairly simple; usually dropping the types (since TADS is dynamically typed) is enough. The TADS version of the above is:

[code]
get_random()
{
    m_z = 36969 * (m_z & 65535) + (m_z >> 16);
    m_w = 18000 * (m_w & 65535) + (m_w >> 16);
    return (m_z << 16) + m_w; /* 32-bit result */
}
[/code]

Of course 'm_z' and 'm_z', just like in C, have to be defined somewhere. I would stick to the code I wrote previously though, since this one doesn't give you control over the range of values you want. It just spits out a signed 32-bit number.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4436&start=20#p32453
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ok, here is the big question... -norand?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-27 21:02:50

[quote="conradcook"]Many thanks! -- I'll proceed with this write-around unless the TADS gurus come up with a deep solution.[/quote]
Hopefully in the next TADS version the state of the RNG used by rand() will be accessible by the game and can therefore be part of the VM's save-state functionality. That's the plan right now. That means that you should be able to have fully reproducible behavior throughout the library without needing any custom code at all.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4436&start=20#p32454
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ok, here is the big question... -norand?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-27 21:07:31

[quote="tove"][quote="conradcook"]by someone who was [i]also[/i] pretending to be a girl.[/quote]

Because there are definitely no actual girls on the internet?[/quote]
 [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4450&start=0#p32455
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Having a 'nonexistent' sign be readable?
User: HanonO / DateTime: 2012-02-27 21:08:31

Could you make a kind of room?

[code]
"Surveillence Test" by Hanon

A camera room is a kind of room.  

High Security Checkpoint is a camera room.  "You stand in a white room.  You get the vague feeling you are being watched.  You can go east, west, and north."

Before the Door is west of High Security Checkpoint.  "An obvious camera swivels above the door."  Before the door is a camera room. 

Utility Closet is east of High security checkpoint.  "This broom closet appears quite private."

Blind Corner is north of High Security Checkpoint.  "It appears the camera can't see you from this alcove."

a security notice is a backdrop.  Every camera room contains security notice.  The description of security notice is "You find a small brass sign that says 'Smile, cameras in use!'"
[/code]

Surveillence Test
An Interactive Fiction by Hanon
Release 1 / Serial number 120227 / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N) SD

High Security Checkpoint
You stand in a white room.  You get the vague feeling you are being watched.  You can go east, west, and north.

>x notice
You find a small brass sign that says "Smile, cameras in use!"

>n

Blind Corner
It appears the camera can't see you from this alcove.

>x notice
You can't see any such thing.

>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4450&start=0#p32456
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Having a 'nonexistent' sign be readable?
User: thecustodian / DateTime: 2012-02-27 21:13:28

Hanon:  Many thanks! Yep, that works.  I was being greedy and trying to figure out a way which didn't mean having to have a thirty-plus item static list of rooms, and do it using properties - I had to find the particular phrasing I used above. [emote]:-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4436&start=20#p32457
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ok, here is the big question... -norand?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-27 21:51:53

[quote="RealNC"]

No, it's not recursive since it doesn't call itself. It's also not iterative since there's no loop in it. Translating C to TADS is fairly simple; usually dropping the types (since TADS is dynamically typed) is enough. 
[/quote]

What I was talking about was that m_z is defined in reference to itself.  The output becomes the new seed value.  I was trying to avoid that, using instead the game turn as the seed value.

I got the operators working for that one, but swapped in the game turn for the right-hand m_z and m_w.  The results were pretty unrandom.

[quote]I would stick to the code I wrote previously though, since this one doesn't give you control over the range of values you want. It just spits out a signed 32-bit number.[/quote]

Yes, I will do that.

[quote="RealNC"][quote="conradcook"]Many thanks! -- I'll proceed with this write-around unless the TADS gurus come up with a deep solution.[/quote]
Hopefully in the next TADS version the state of the RNG used by rand() will be accessible by the game and can therefore be part of the VM's save-state functionality. That's the plan right now. That means that you should be able to have fully reproducible behavior throughout the library without needing any custom code at all.[/quote]

Ok, cool...  is this a major release that'll be a while, or a smaller one that'll be sooner?  -- I'm not asking to rush, but to figure out how to plan my efforts on this project.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4436&start=20#p32458
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ok, here is the big question... -norand?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-27 22:39:48

[quote="conradcook"][quote="RealNC"]No, it's not recursive since it doesn't call itself. It's also not iterative since there's no loop in it. Translating C to TADS is fairly simple; usually dropping the types (since TADS is dynamically typed) is enough.[/quote]What I was talking about was that m_z is defined in reference to itself.  The output becomes the new seed value.  I was trying to avoid that, using instead the game turn as the seed value.

I got the operators working for that one, but swapped in the game turn for the right-hand m_z and m_w.  The results were pretty unrandom.[/quote]
A seed, as the word implies, is only an initial value. It's a one-time thing. From a single seed you then get a sequence of numbers. You do not re-seed the RNG every time, since that destroys the sequence. (How big that sequence is, is called the "period" of the RNG. If you're interested in more details, you can always consult the Wikipedia article about it. Depending on your interests, it might be worth a read: <a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudorandom_number_generator">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudorand ... _generator</a>.)

[quote][quote="RealNC"]Hopefully in the next TADS version the state of the RNG used by rand() will be accessible by the game and can therefore be part of the VM's save-state functionality. That's the plan right now. That means that you should be able to have fully reproducible behavior throughout the library without needing any custom code at all.[/quote]Ok, cool...  is this a major release that'll be a while, or a smaller one that'll be sooner?  -- I'm not asking to rush, but to figure out how to plan my efforts on this project.[/quote]
It's a minor change, so it's a candidate for 3.1.1, not 3.2.  TADS does not have a release schedule though, so I don't know when 3.1.1 will come out.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4449&start=0#p32459
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Under-represented genres
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-27 22:41:41

[quote="maga"](For a proper space opera, you need a sympathetic ensemble cast, a very open field of possibility, and an action-driven plot: three horribly difficult things before breakfast! But there's no shortage of authors willing to try.)[/quote]

It seems to me like you're putting a lot of weight on "proper" here. You can have a space opera without an ensemble cast and an open field of possibility; maybe the only essential element is the action-driven plot. (Or maybe it's just space.) 

But a romance really really needs a significant NPC or two. If you don't have one, it's not a romance, improper or otherwise. 

That said, here's Gregory Weir's [url=http://ludusnovus.net/2011/08/15/why-so-few-violent-games/]Why So Few Violent Games?[/url], on why game designers have taken the easy way out by programming relationships instead of the complex physics of violence, ever since Will Crowther chose to write a game about his childhood friendships instead of something obscure like his caving hobby.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=130#p32460
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-27 23:05:48

[quote="adam"]LOOK!  A MONKEY![/quote]

Whoacheckitout!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4452&start=0#p32461
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Scott Adams Adventures - What can be learned in 2012?
User: bigpants / DateTime: 2012-02-27 23:14:40

My name is Jim McGinley and I'll be giving a presentation at GDC 2012
[url=http://schedule.gdconf.com/session/6589/Inspiration_from_the_Trash%3A_The_TRS-80%27s_Lost_Game_Designs]"Inspiration from the Trash: The TRS-80's Lost Game Designs"[/url]

[b]HELP.[/b]
 
Text adventures were a PROMINENT part of the TRS-80 game scene. As most people here know, Scott Adams adventure games were famous and much loved. Unfortunately, I didn't care for adventure games so I rarely played them. I'm now trying to determine what lessons today's developers can learn from old adventure games. I'm not able to do a good job, and need some help. That's where you come in. [i]Note: If you've played Scott Adams on another machine or emulated, I believe you're qualified to help since I believe it's practically the same game as the TRS-80 version.[/i]

[b]Questions[/b]
[list]What has NOT been carried forward? What has been "lost in the trash"?[/list:u]
[list]Is there any reason for modern interactive fiction developers to play the old adventure games (Scott Adams or otherwise)? Is there anything to learn from the oldies?[/list:u]
[list]Has modern interactive fiction forgotten any important lessons from old adventure games?[/list:u]
[list]Is there anything you miss from the old text adventures?[/list:u]   
Perhaps old adventure games were more direct and easier in some ways?
Perhaps the simple text phrases of old adventure games make them more suitable for future voice control (XBOX, Siri)?

Any thoughts/opinions would be amazing. I don't want to leave out TRS-80 adventure games - that's just WRONG. You can e-mail me your thoughts directly (<a href="mailto:jimmcginley@rogers.com">jimmcginley@rogers.com</a>) or post them here. Even if you think most everything has been carried forward, and there is nothing to learn, that would be great to know. Also, I would like to quote some replies IN my presentation (forum name or real name).

I did ask Scott Adams his thoughts...
[list]Me: Are there things modern interactive fiction has failed to bring forward?[/list:u]
[list]Scott Adams: "Hard to tell as I haven't been tracking modern IF. In almost everyone of my games I would do something unique that I had never done in a previous game. Its left up to the reader to find these. An example would be my last game Fantastic Four. There you had to control two different characters in different places to complete the game. Pirate Adventure was unique from Adventureland in it had a ongoing theme to the solution."[/list:u]

[b]While I don't mean to rush you, I need the replies ASAP! The presentation is next week.[/b]

Thanks so much,
Jim McGinley
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.bigpants.ca">http://www.bigpants.ca</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4452&start=0#p32462
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Scott Adams Adventures - What can be learned in 2012?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-27 23:33:57

If you haven't seen it, you might check out Jimmy Maher's series on the history of adventure games, starting with [url=http://www.filfre.net/2011/06/adventureland-part-1/]Adventureland[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4452&start=0#p32463
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Scott Adams Adventures - What can be learned in 2012?
User: bigpants / DateTime: 2012-02-28 00:06:29

I did read that awhile ago, and have now read it again. Thanks!

2 Clarifications:

[list]1. Most devs (even action game developers like Big Five Software) started off porting existing games. My understanding is Scott Adam's FIRST TRS-80 game [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventureland_(computer_game)]Adventureland[/url] was a trimmed 16K cassette based microcomputer port of Colossal Cave Adventure. While an absolute technical marvel, technical limitations don't matter much to today's game designers (my presentation is aimed at them). Plus, Microsoft eventually released [url=http://www.filfre.net/2011/07/microsoft-adventure/]Microsoft Adventure[/url] - a 32K disk based COMPLETE version of Colossal Cave Adventure. As such, I'm concerned that Adventureland might not be considered a TRS-80 game, but rather a DEC game that got ported. However... as Scott Adams evolved and created more TRS-80 adventure games, I'm wondering what new ideas/designs/techniques/parsers he created that have been lost in the trash. Even small details that have been lost are great.[/list:u]

[list]2. If anyone has any insight on OTHER original TRS-80 adventure games, that's also amazing. I'm avoiding Zork - while the first microcomputer port was the TRS-80, it's not really that "lost" nor is it really considered a TRS-80 game. Maybe [url=http://www.filfre.net/2011/06/dog-star-adventure/]Lance Micklus's Dog Star Adventure[/url]? Or hybrid adventures like [url=http://www.swobi.at/asylum/asylum.html#a_trs80]Med Systems Asylum 2[/url]?[/list:u]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4421&start=10#p32464
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Articles of a value?
User: Erzengel / DateTime: 2012-02-28 00:21:54

I'm not sure why it didn't compile before since I don't have that particular attempt saved, but that code does compile. However, the function is never run, so it's hardly a surprise--the compile error I was seeing only occurred if a value without the property was passed into a function that might use that property. Since it never uses that particular function (it will use the default no-articles-for-values or the less specific override if it exists, even if the indefinite article is provided for the value), it never has the opportunity to fail the compile with the given error.
It's funny how it also breaks other functions beyond itself just by existing, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4439&start=20#p32465
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item generation and other misc newb questions...
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-02-28 01:10:18

[quote="Jamespking"]One holdall is sufficient, imo, or you should make the items available no matter what you type ingame. Or else, all your player will be bored to death...[/quote]By default, typing "take [something]" will automatically trigger the removing it from action in I7 if the thing is visible and contained within something else. The player never has to type "take/remove [thing] from [other thing]" if they don't want to.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4439&start=20#p32466
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item generation and other misc newb questions...
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-28 01:45:16

What if you carry the chip in the left pocket and "activate computer" on the desk? Also, although realistic, I hardly see the economy of "put key in left pocket, put wallet in backpack". That was my point.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4452&start=0#p32467
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Scott Adams Adventures - What can be learned in 2012?
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2012-02-28 03:09:22

[quote="bigpants"]My understanding is Scott Adam's FIRST TRS-80 game [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventureland_(computer_game)]Adventureland[/url] was a trimmed 16K cassette based microcomputer port of Colossal Cave Adventure.[/quote]This isn't correct (despite what it says in Wikipedia): Adventureland shows its debt to Colossal Cave in the setting and general "get the treasures" theme, but in no sense is it a port of it - it's an original creation, made by Scott Adams on his TRS-80.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=80#p32470
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2012-02-28 04:47:53

Thanks matt w!

Now before moving on to the next problem I have a little story to share, and I'd be interested to know if anyone has experienced this same frustration.

A section of my code was producing a compilation error (it was a block assigning a new value to the characters, but that's not really important).  I struggled with it for at least an hour, thinking "What am I overlooking?"  I was tempted to do the lazy thing and post it here asking for a solution, but I resovled "No, I'm going to solve this myself."

I created a blank project and began coding the specific section until I had it working.  Such was my zeal that I then copied and pasted it straight over the block with the compilation error and immediately saved the file.

Only after having done so, and lost the ability to undo, did I realise that I'd missed out on the learning experience. IE I had no idea what it was that I'd been doing wrong... nuts.  So my learning experience was to pay closer attention to my learning experiences.  [emote]:roll:[/emote]

Now my two current problems:

[b]From last week:[/b]
Where do I find instructions on how to make NPCs pick up and put down objects?  I've found that "Now the [NPC] carries" and "Now the [noun] is in" doesn't always succeed.  This is particularly important if I have those three NPCs who are wearing identically named pieces of clothing.

[b]New problem:[/b]
Does concealment work on body parts?  I want to put a tattoo on the murderer, but not have it visible under the labourer's work clothes.

Judging by section 3 of the manual, only carried objects can be concealed.

Chapter 3 - Things
[b]3.24. Concealment[/b]
"[color=#0000FF]Rule for deciding the concealed possessions[/color]"

If it can't be done that way, there's two other possibilities I've considered.
1) Making the tattoo a carried object that is part of the murderer's inventory but is described as being on their body.
2) Having a "Instead of examining" condition that prevents the tattoo being examined while covered by clothing.

Which is the best approach?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4436&start=20#p32471
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ok, here is the big question... -norand?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-28 06:17:14

No, I understand seed values being fed back in.  In my understanding, this is iterative and recursive.  The code itself may not be, technically, because it uses a variable and waits for an external control to call it a second time.

However, to get Random Number n, you must first get RN n-1, to get which you must first get RN n-2... all the way back to Random Number n-n, which is your seed value.  You're iterating through a recursive structure, as I understand the terms.

I had been looking for a way to avoid that, and was fearing I'd have to resort to a lookup table, in order to tether the pseudo-random number to the turn counter.  Many thanks for the better solution, and I'll writearound until 3.1.1.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=80#p32472
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-02-28 06:45:07

[quote="thefoxaroo"]Does concealment work on body parts?[/quote]
Seems so. And you do know you can have NPCs perform actions with the try <NPC> <doing something> syntax? 
[code]The Gym is a room.

Bob is a person. Bob is in the Gym. Bob wears a shirt.

A tattoo is part of Bob. The description is "It is the symbol of the Sacred Chao."

Rule for deciding the concealed possessions of Bob while Bob is wearing the shirt: if the particular possession is the tattoo, yes.

Instead of examining Bob: if Bob is wearing the shirt, try Bob dropping the shirt; otherwise try Bob wearing the shirt.

After Bob dropping the shirt: say "Bob pulls his shirt off, revealing a curious tattoo."

After Bob wearing the shirt: say "Bob puts his shirt back on."

test me with "x tattoo / x Bob / x tattoo / l / x Bob "[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4449&start=10#p32473
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Under-represented genres
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-28 07:19:55

[quote="David Whyld"]I think people tend to write what they know will be popular, and sci-fi, fantasy and horror are all very popular. They're probably reluctant to write a game in a genre that's not as popular because less people  would be inclined to play it. 

Saying that, I'm a sucker for sci-fi, fantasy and horror anyway.[/quote]
I don't about that analysis: I saw that vampire romance books for teenage girls were selling but despite the promise of wealth beyond  measure, I just couldn't bring myself to write one. I think people tend to write what they like, and as a result the things that are popular among the writers of text games are well represented. 


Maybe the programming element involved on making the games puts off the more stereotypical romance and military fans.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=80#p32474
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-28 08:35:01

[quote="thefoxaroo"][quote="capmikee"]I forgot about this until today, but now I've posted a thread:
<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4409">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4409</a>[/quote]I look forward to seeing the replies in this thread.  It would be good to have a standardised extension created for describing NPCs.  Goodness knows they're used often enough in Interactive Fiction.[/quote]
Maybe you could give that thread a bump by posting your own thoughts...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4409&start=0#p32475
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Ideas for describing NPCs
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-28 08:41:11

On the third point, I seem to have fixed it with this extension I just wrote (adapted from some other things I had lying around):

<a class="postlink" href="http://eyeballsun.org/i/Approximate%20Quantities.i7x">http://eyeballsun.org/i/Approximate%20Quantities.i7x</a>

...thanks to Emily Short's Assorted Text Generation and the feedback I got in this thread:

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4410">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4410</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4428&start=10#p32476
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: initial description of a room
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-28 09:03:11

[quote="zarf"]Yeah, I've been disabling brief/superbrief in my games for a couple of years now.[/quote]
That's a good idea. I looked at the "Verbosity 2" example, though, and it seemed a bit too... verbose for me! Here's my briefer version:

[code]Use full-length room descriptions.

Check preferring sometimes abbreviated room descriptions (this is the brief mode disabled rule):
	say "Brief mode is disabled in this game.";
	stop the action.
	
The brief mode disabled rule is listed first in the check preferring abbreviated room descriptions rules.

Check preferring unabbreviated room descriptions:
	say "This game is always in verbose mode.";
	stop the action.[/code]
Is there any reason doing it this way would make the game larger or slower than the example?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4431&start=0#p32477
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: [I7] When play begins on a chair w/ introduction
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-28 09:07:42

My very first Inform project, written in I6 around 1999 and aborted soon afterwards, started with the player in a chair. This takes me back...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4440&start=10#p32478
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat System problem.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-28 09:36:40

[quote="Superjax"]
[code]Carry out an actor attacking something with something (this is the standard attacking it with a weapon rule):
	if the second noun is a gun:
		decrement the ammo of the second noun;
		decrease the current hit points of the noun by the damage inflicted;
		if the noun is dead, remove the noun from play;
		[otherwise]
		decrease the current hit points of the noun by the damage inflicted;
		if the noun is dead, remove the noun from play.[/code]
[/quote]

Your logic structure doesn't look right here. If this is your only carry out attacking rule, only guns will ever do any damage - your "otherwise" is commented out, and all of the damage-dealing is placed (twice) within the "if the second noun is a gun" clause. This is a perfect opportunity to use the power of rules-based programming. You can split this into two separate carry out rules and not have to do any "if" test at all:

[code]Carry out an actor attacking something with a gun (this is the attacking it with a gun rule):
	decrement the ammo of the second noun;

Carry out an actor attacking something with something (this is the standard attacking it with a weapon rule):
	decrease the current hit points of the noun by the damage inflicted;
	if the noun is dead, remove the noun from play.[/code]

Also, somebody recently told me about a cool syntax for giving verbs to properties just like for relations:

[code]The verb to be loaded with implies the ammo property.

Check attacking something with a gun that is loaded with 0:
      say "You do not have any ammo left.";
      stop the action.[/code]

In this case, a simpler solution might be more readable, though:
[code]Definition: a gun is loaded rather than unloaded if the ammo of it is at least 1.

Check attacking something with an unloaded gun:[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4455&start=0#p32479
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: First IF Game
User: punkasaurus / DateTime: 2012-02-28 10:39:08

I started what was going to be a tribute to Zork and the like. A classic text adventure with a sort of twist ending (as you solve the puzzles, more information about the other characters is revealed through pictures on walls, journals, etc., and the main character is met with and subsequently forced to live with the results of an ethical decision at the end of the game).

Problem is, an adventure like that of any significant size is quite a large undertaking, and this is my first game. So I'm thinking of putting it on the shelf and working on something a bit smaller first, then coming back to it later.

Unfortunately, all my ideas seem even more ambitious than this one, and I really don't want to do another "escape the room" puzzle.

What else could I do that would be fairly small?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4440&start=10#p32480
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat System problem.
User: Superjax / DateTime: 2012-02-28 10:57:41

Don't worry, that isn't my only carry out attacking rule. Also, thanks, I'll use that that new code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4452&start=0#p32481
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Scott Adams Adventures - What can be learned in 2012?
User: UnwashedMass / DateTime: 2012-02-28 11:16:31

Very early in life I whiled away many frustrating hours on Madness and the Minotaur on the TRS-80 CoCo -- which while not the stock TRS-80, was still somewhat related.  This wasn't really a text adventure game in the Infocom sense, but more of a puzzling strategy game that happened to use the text parser as its interface.  Its lesson was the same as Rogue -- of the endless novelty some in-game randomization can lend to gameplay, which can not only keep you from running through on autopilot, but in fact from ever really getting an understanding of what you're actually supposed to be doing in the game, and how.  (That's just a child's interpretation of its nonsense magic words however -- to an adult, the randomization adds a lot.)

One might ask what the limited hardware environment gave to the designers in terms of a minimalist focus on the game's essential design without the option of getting distracted by coming up with flashy assets like dazzling vector graphics, digitized sound, sprawling expository paragraphs and... lower-case letters.  Does an environment of constraints lead to more focused and economical design?

But I'm just pulling this out of my ... audiocassette data deck.  Dale from the Gaming After 40 blog (<a class="postlink" href="http://gamingafter40.blogspot.com/p/about-me.html">http://gamingafter40.blogspot.com/p/about-me.html</a> ) has specifically set out to cover dozens of TRS-80 adventures and may have some insight into the genre as it manifested on that particular platform.  I know often he needs to hack into game source code in order to make the games solvable -- perhaps another unheralded benefit of the platform, driving you to sharpen your programming chops in order to actually play the game you bought!

Dog Star Adventure is important for similar reasons: as the first text adventure with published source code, it became the foundation for many of altered and reskinned variants.  (Though of course all BASIC adventures provided source code in one way or another... nominally this makes things much easier for anyone interested in following in the game authors' footsteps.)

The Digital Antiquarian blog referenced in an earlier post in this thread also notes how numerous folks (I believe it was Chuck Benton in the most recent post, and also Scott Adams?) would take on text adventure creation as a recommended warm-up for designing and programming other kinds of software.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4455&start=0#p32482
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: First IF Game
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-02-28 11:16:38

First: congratulations on knowing that you really want to scale back for your first game.  That's a really good first step to getting things done!

I'd say that the answer depends on whether or not you're going to want to release this game to the public.  If not, there's a Time Honored Tradition of writing a "My Apartment"[/Studio/Office/Whatever] game.  You focus on getting a reasonable facsimile of an actual space you know, and you load it up with in-jokes for your friends/officemates.  This is a fun tack to take if you want to learn some intricacies of a language without having to pound your head against the wall to be creative about what you should even be making. You still don't want to get too bogged down in the details -- feel free to implement your favorite kitchen appliance, but if you find yourself implementing all of them, it's probably time to move on to something a little more interesting.  The [b]major caveat[/b] here is that no one you don't know in real life is going to want to play your game, and you should not even try to get them to do so. (Entering it into the Comp is [i]right out[/i].)

Otherwise, you might try playing some Speed-IFs ([url=http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=tag:speed%20IF]here[/url] or [url=http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Speed-IF]here[/url]) for inspiration, with the idea being that you're probably looking for some ideas of a scope that a "pro" could complete in under two hours.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4455&start=0#p32483
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: First IF Game
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-02-28 11:19:43

Oh and in the same vein as my Speed-IF suggestion, Playfic is starting to have lots of fun little things up: <a class="postlink" href="http://playfic.com/explore/">http://playfic.com/explore/</a>

I played [url=http://playfic.com/games/soundofthebaskervilles/sherlock-holmes-and-the-indecipherable-cipher]this little fanfic about the BBC Sherlock[/url] yesterday, and it seems to be about the right scope for a first project.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4439&start=20#p32484
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item generation and other misc newb questions...
User: Phrog / DateTime: 2012-02-28 11:28:58

Thanks for everyone's help.

I've got one more simple question. Is there like a proceed or something? I'm trying to make it so the player cannot leave the room unless he has his gun with him.

[code]
Instead opening OfficeDoor:
	unless the player has your gun:
		say "Hold up, you don't want to leave without your gun, do you?";
	otherwise:
		continue opening OfficeDoor.
[/code]

I also tried

[code]
Before opening OfficeDoor:
	unless the player has your gun:
		say "Hold up, you don't want to leave without your gun, do you?" instead;
	otherwise:
		continue opening OfficeDoor.
[/code]

I realize "continue" should only be used for creating rules. I feel like there's a simple solution somewhere, but I cannot seem to find it. I did try "try opening OfficeDoor." but of course, Inform doesn't like it that I put the same action in the instead condition ("instead of opening the door, open the door.")

How do I fix this??

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4428&start=10#p32485
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: initial description of a room
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-02-28 11:54:25

Nope, that's equivalent.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4439&start=20#p32486
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item generation and other misc newb questions...
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-02-28 11:56:40

You want "continue the action".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4439&start=20#p32487
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item generation and other misc newb questions...
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-02-28 11:58:14

A more Informish way, though, might be to write a more specific rule – one that only triggers when the player doesn't carry the gun, anyway.
[code]Instead of opening the office door when the player does not carry the gun: say "Hold up, you don't want to leave without your gun, do you?"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4439&start=20#p32488
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item generation and other misc newb questions...
User: Phrog / DateTime: 2012-02-28 12:00:45

Nevermind. I figured it out. You just don't need the continue.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4455&start=0#p32489
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: First IF Game
User: gravel / DateTime: 2012-02-28 12:14:37

You could try taking a single aspect of the game you want to make, and make a little demo game around that.  For example, you mentioned pictures appearing on walls.  Do a game that revolves around location description changes.  Do you want an NPC?  Make a game where there's an NPC that does *one* aspect of what you need the NPC's in FutureWork to do - for example, the NPC moves around, or will comment on player actions.

This will not only give you potentially helpful code at the end, but also teach you about the language and give you an idea of whether that piece of your idea is workable or not.  

You could also try looking at the example games in various documentation sources, and see if you can flesh them out and make them more interesting.  Inform, at least, has lots of very tiny sample pieces of code that are good jumping-off points for inspiration.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4439&start=30#p32490
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Item generation and other misc newb questions...
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-02-28 12:20:30

Yes, an instead rule that runs stops the action by default – unless you tack on a "continue the action". That means that check, carry out, after, and report rules for that action will not be considered. It also means that you do need a "continue the action" if you use the "instead of opening the door" rule. That rule will run any time you try to open the door: if you don't carry the gun, it will remind you to take it; if you do carry it, the rule will do nothing, not even open the door. (If you use the "instead of opening the door when the player does not carry the gun", the rule will only ever run and stop the action if you try to open the door while not carrying the gun. On trying to open it while holding the gun, that specific rule will not be considered – and so the door will be opened as ordinary.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4456&start=0#p32491
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Development Teams
User: punkasaurus / DateTime: 2012-02-28 13:38:48

So, I know that a lot of games take a really long time to make, and that it can be tedious. I mean, to avoid boring the person playing the game you may have to describe the same thing three times in varying levels of detail without repeating or contradicting yourself.

In other types of games, I see groups of people working together. More than just two. You may have a couple of writers, a couple of programmers, some artists, people doing graphics, etc., and this isn't always major studios. Sometimes groups get together to collaborate for games.

So, what I'm asking is, why are IF collaborations usually just two people? Why not a team of five or six people? Maybe two people work together on plot and puzzles, one person fills in details and descriptions, and a couple people work on the actual programming of the game. You can send the text to be displayed upon examination or various other actions to the programmers.

Basically, the same thing that a writer/programmer duo does, but on a larger scale. Games could either be made more quickly, or much larger games could be made. Not to mention that working on a project is, in my opinion, much more enjoyable when you have other people to talk to and bounce ideas off of.

Also, if you could get an artist in there, a well-placed image once in a while can add impact to important moments in a game, I think. Title scene, when you first approach the haunted house, etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3165&start=0#p32492
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Why no interest in real coding with i7?
User: punkasaurus / DateTime: 2012-02-28 13:43:53

I think what's being asked is, "why no interest in using inform (or a language like it) to make a wide variety of programs?"

It is an interesting idea to use a language that looks more like spoken sentences to try and make computer programs, but for things more complicated than IF games, that gets tricky, and for more detailed programs, the advantages that come from an easy to learn syntax like Inform's are no longer important.

It's easier to learn to make an IF game in Inform, but even if a language with a more linguistic syntax existed to make "real" programs as you put it, I would probably still rather use Python.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4457&start=0#p32493
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Getting Strange output when trying to go up
User: gamedesigner / DateTime: 2012-02-28 13:52:11

Does anyone get this when trying to go up in a location?

>[b] up
I didn't understand that sentence[/b]. 


I have a location that will take you another room that is not necessarily above
the original location.

I also have locations that are above one another.

the following code is  just a short snippet of the entire game.


[code]

Cargo Dock is a room.
"You're in the first of 2 Cargo Docks. A Warehouse is north of here.

Warehouse is north of Cargo Dock.

A Gantry Crane is in  Cargo Dock.

CraneCab is above  Cargo Dock.
the printed name is "In the Cab of the  Crane".
"You're in the cab of the Crane. There is a control panel here.".

a control panel is scenery in CraneCab.

instead of going down when yourself is in CraneCab:
say "You climb down the Crane and are back on the Dock.";
now yourself is in Cargo Dock.

instead of climbing the Gantry Crane:
try going up.

[end code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4458&start=0#p32494
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Using the new 'one of -or' codes - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-02-28 13:54:06

I recently saw a post that talked about the new 'one of - or' coding. Being interested in it, I tried to find references on how to use it in the manuals. But, as usual, I didn't have any luck finding any extensive text about it. Does anyone out there know the different ways this can be used?

Rong

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4459&start=0#p32495
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Hypothetical Object Response Tests?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-28 13:54:18

I now have in place a set of shell scripts that run tests in my WIP and test their results against a set of blessed transcripts, thereby freeing me from the hopeless tangle of the Skein. But now that I have a bunch of manually created tests, I'm looking for the next step to automate...

I've been thinking about using Object Response Tests. I could go to several critical points in the game and do a full ANALYZE ALL, but I think too many actions in my WIP would change the game state enough to make that very useful as it's implemented. However, if I could throw an "undo" in after each action, it could be a real powerhouse. It seems like it would be pretty straightforward using Hypothetical Questions. Has anyone else tried combining these extensions before?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4446&start=0#p32496
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding the display of a container's status?
User: thecustodian / DateTime: 2012-02-28 14:02:23

matt w -

Oh, derp, I had totally missed your (more specific) room description rule.  Which I only realized because sure enough I ran up against exactly that just now, and said "Wait, lemme see what he said again..."

So, awesome.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4457&start=0#p32497
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting Strange output when trying to go up
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-02-28 14:05:43

What's the output if you command >TRACE before trying >UP?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4459&start=0#p32498
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hypothetical Object Response Tests?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-02-28 14:07:08

I haven't heard of any such attempts, but if someone manages to get it done I'd be very interested in adding that functionality to the extension.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4457&start=0#p32499
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting Strange output when trying to go up
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-28 14:08:26

Just a note: if you type "[/code]" instead of "[end code]" (or use the code button above the text box where you type your comment), your code will appear in a special code box which makes it easier to read and also preserves your formatting (if you paste code in instead of typing it in).

Like this:

[code]Cargo Dock is a room.
"You're in the first of 2 Cargo Docks. A Warehouse is north of here."

Warehouse is north of Cargo Dock.

A Gantry Crane is in Cargo Dock.

CraneCab is above Cargo Dock.
the printed name is "In the Cab of the Crane".
"You're in the cab of the Crane. There is a control panel here.".

a control panel is scenery in CraneCab.

instead of going down when yourself is in CraneCab:
	say "You climb down the Crane and are back on the Dock.";
	now yourself is in Cargo Dock.

instead of climbing the Gantry Crane:
	try going up.[/code] 

Anyway, where is the problem occurring? When I type "up" in Cargo Dock I wind up in CraneCab, as I'm supposed to. (I supplied a missing quotation mark at the end of the description of Cargo Dock, but without that it doesn't compile.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4458&start=0#p32500
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using the new 'one of -or' codes - TADS3.1
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-28 14:14:47

Don't know about a manual reference, but I'm still using some code Jim wrote for me, which works--


[code]"You <<one of>>consider<<or>>ponder<<or>>think about<<at random>>... " 
[/code]

C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4459&start=0#p32501
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hypothetical Object Response Tests?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-02-28 14:27:17

Another approach would be to save the game and then restore after each test or round of tests. You could adapt the save code from [url=http://lilith.cc/~victor/temp/Alternative%20Permadeath.i7x]Alternative Permadeath[/url] to this end pretty darn quickly, by changing these two rules so that save and restore happens when you need it to:
[code]
Before reading a command when roguelike mode is true (this is the automatically save before input rule):
	write game data to the file of save data;
	continue the action.

When play begins when roguelike mode is true (this is the restore when play begins rule):
	if the file of save data exists:
		read file of save data into memory.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3165&start=0#p32502
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Why no interest in real coding with i7?
User: Eleas / DateTime: 2012-02-28 14:32:46

[quote="punkasaurus"]I think what's being asked is, "why no interest in using inform (or a language like it) to make a wide variety of programs?"

It is an interesting idea to use a language that looks more like spoken sentences to try and make computer programs, but for things more complicated than IF games, that gets tricky, and for more detailed programs, the advantages that come from an easy to learn syntax like Inform's are no longer important.

It's easier to learn to make an IF game in Inform, but even if a language with a more linguistic syntax existed to make "real" programs as you put it, I would probably still rather use Python.[/quote]

At the risk of descending into pedantry, I'm not so sure Inform's syntax is 'easy to learn' at all. Yes, it does [i]look[/i] easy, but that's illusory; I'm well past the point when I thought I could rely on raw I7 code without testing it thoroughly.

(So why use it? Well, because it confers other benefits, such as being easy to read and conceptualize in, or being damn fun. A language being enjoyable is nothing to sneeze at.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4460&start=0#p32503
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Table entries that result in a change or action?
User: Phrog / DateTime: 2012-02-28 14:49:42

Hey guys and/or girls,

sorry to bother you again

I'm trying to make a conversation puzzle that does stuff depending on what the player says to a character.

[code]
The hallway is a room. "hallway description."

A man named Nilson is here. Nilson is undescribed.
The description of Nilson is "[line break]You spot the half-empty bottle of Jim Bean tucked under his arm. He looks and smells like he hasn[apostrophe]t showered, shaved or changed his clothes in a while. Even in your line of work, you find it pretty hard not to sorry for the guy."
Nilson is carrying a bottle of Jim Bean.

Instead of taking the bottle of Jim Bean, say "[line break]Nilson turns away and sneers, 'This bottle is my only consolation and you try to take it away from me!? You[apostrophe]ve done enough to me already!'"

HallwayDoor is a closed door. HallwayDoor is west of the hallway and east of the entryway.
Before opening HallwayDoor:
	If blockhallwayexit is in the void: 
		say "[line break][one of]As you try to exit the premises, you are accosted by former client--what's his name? That[apostrophe]s right, Nilson. He is sobbing hysterically and muttering incoherent words under his breath. Must be repining over the case you just cracked where you caught his wife with a younger man. You sigh, 'Not another one. Why do these lunatics pay me to confirm their suspicions, only to deny it once I reveal it to them? It seems it[apostrophe]s always these pathetic business-types too.' He points at you with his crooked finger, and finally articulates a 'Y-y-you!'[or]Better deal with this guy first. He seems to be blocking your exit.[stopping]" instead.
	
Instead of asking Nilson to try doing something:
	repeat through Table of Nilson's Commentary:
		if player's command includes topic entry:
			say "[commentary entry][paragraph break]";
			try result entry;
			rule succeeds;
	say "[line break][one of]Nilson sobs[or]'Oh Lorraine! Why?'[purely at random]".

Instead of speech when the noun is Nilson:
	repeat through Table of Nilson's commentary:
		if the topic understood includes topic entry:
			say "[commentary entry][paragraph break]";
			try result entry;
			rule succeeds;
	say "[line break][one of]Nilson sobs[or]'Oh Lorraine! Why?'[purely at random]".

Table of Nilson's Commentary
topic	commentary	result	
"Lorraine"	"Oh Lorraine, why did she leave me?"	DealingWithNilson
"blah"	"blah blah blah blah."	screaming
"calm down"	"you calm down!"	screaming
"want"	"what do you want?"	screaming	
"okay/ok"	"you would say that wouldn[apostrophe]t you?"	screaming


[yelling/screaming]
Understand "scream" as screaming.
Understand "yell" as screaming.
Screaming is an action applying to nothing.
Report screaming: say "You yell - '[bold type]Aarrggghhh!!![roman type]'[line break]".

Understand "DealWithNilson" as DealingWithNilson.
DealingWithNilson is an action applying to nothing;
Carry out DealingWithNilson:
		remove blockhallwayexit from play.

The void is a room. 
In the void is an object called blockhallwayexit.
[/code]

I'm sure there are better ways to achieve this, but Blockhallwayexit is my convoluted n00bish way of trying to get it so you cannot leave until you say the right thing to Nilson. Bear with the crappy dialogue. It's just filler right now. But I'm trying to get it to remove the blockhallwayexit object from play if the correct thing is said or mentioned. The try screaming works, but inform does not recognize DealingWithNilson. I tried using a phrase instead of an action, but no dice. 

1.) My first question is, how can I make it so mentioning the right thing removes blockhallwayexit?

2.) second, I noticed that "includes" only works with like the first three words. Is there a way to detect if the player mentions the topic entry at all? It does not recognize, "You need to calm down," but it does recognize "calm down."

3.) I asked this earlier. Is there a way I can make it so that I don't have to say "Nilson, blah blah blah" in order to respond to Nilson?

I really appreciate your help.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4459&start=0#p32504
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hypothetical Object Response Tests?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-28 15:05:07

That sounds good, Erik.

I managed to do the undo pretty quickly by doing a search-and-replace on Object Response Tests.

[code]This is the output hypothetical results rule:
	say the hypothetical output;

This is the test taking rule:
	announce tests for "taking [the noun]";
	hypothetically try the test-actor trying taking the noun and consider the output hypothetical results rule.

[etc][/code]

It's hacky, since you can't wrap the entire test in a hypothetical - or perhaps you can?

Anyway, Alternative Permadeath sounds better suited to the task. I hadn't realized it could work that way.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4457&start=0#p32505
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting Strange output when trying to go up
User: gamedesigner / DateTime: 2012-02-28 15:05:42

[quote="Juhana"]What's the output if you command >TRACE before trying >UP?[/quote]

The problem seems to be int he Zoom interpreter. I'll hve to check andsee what version I have.

The problem  does not occur with spatterlight or gargoyle.

I'll send a note to Andrew notifying him of it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4457&start=0#p32506
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting Strange output when trying to go up
User: gamedesigner / DateTime: 2012-02-28 15:07:35

[quote="matt w"]Just a note: if you type "[/code]" instead of "[end code]" (or use the code button above the text box where you type your comment), your code will appear in a special code box which makes it easier to read and also preserves your formatting (if you paste code in instead of typing it in).

Like this:

[code]Cargo Dock is a room.
"You're in the first of 2 Cargo Docks. A Warehouse is north of here."

Warehouse is north of Cargo Dock.

A Gantry Crane is in Cargo Dock.

CraneCab is above Cargo Dock.
the printed name is "In the Cab of the Crane".
"You're in the cab of the Crane. There is a control panel here.".

a control panel is scenery in CraneCab.

instead of going down when yourself is in CraneCab:
	say "You climb down the Crane and are back on the Dock.";
	now yourself is in Cargo Dock.

instead of climbing the Gantry Crane:
	try going up.[/code] 

Anyway, where is the problem occurring? When I type "up" in Cargo Dock I wind up in CraneCab, as I'm supposed to. (I supplied a missing quotation mark at the end of the description of Cargo Dock, but without that it doesn't compile.)[/quote]

OK What I did was paste th code and then hit the code button. I see what to do now.

As far as the interpeter, it happens in the IDE as well as the Zoom Terp.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4459&start=0#p32507
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hypothetical Object Response Tests?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-02-28 15:14:23

Yeah, my goal in writing the save-restore code in Alternative Permadeath was to provide an author-controlled interface for save/restore. I chose roguelike style save-restore as the implementation because it was easy--those two rules I called out above describe the whole of the roguelike save model--but I was really after the layer than enables it. If I ever do any more with it, it will probably be to implement a save-slot system, with one save file for each slot.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4458&start=0#p32508
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using the new 'one of -or' codes - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-02-28 15:14:40

Thanks for the info. The use I saw for this was using different messages when entering a room. The original 'not seen' message would only be used once in that application. I would like to find out what different parameters are available when you wish to use this piece of code.

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4457&start=0#p32509
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting Strange output when trying to go up
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-02-28 15:23:40

It seems unlikely that it would be interpreter-dependent. Could it be that it happens in the debug build but not in the release build?

I'm still interested in seeing the output with TRACE when it happens.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4457&start=0#p32510
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting Strange output when trying to go up
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-02-28 15:42:21

Does this happen only in your full game or even in a minigame that only consists of the snippets posted here?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3159&start=0#p32511
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Announcing Spring Thing 2012
User: sgreig / DateTime: 2012-02-28 15:59:30

Is the competition still happening? I've sent Greg a couple of emails with my intent to enter but haven't gotten a response yet, and I'm starting to wonder what's going on because the deadline is in a couple of days...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=130#p32512
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: Kate McKee / DateTime: 2012-02-28 16:47:26

Open, rather than juried, voting actually motivates me to play the games I missed the first time around.  If I played 3 of the 5 games in a given category, I feel obligated to try the other two before voting, rather than just picking the one I liked best of the three.

Having a strong preference in one category doesn't necessarily motivate me to judge or vote in all the other categories, though.  (I plan to vote in the US presidential election this fall but I will likely skip our local County Assessor of Property race.)  Is this typical?  That is, do most voters cast a vote for all categories?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4455&start=0#p32513
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: First IF Game
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-28 16:49:07

One option which has worked for me in the past is to team up with someone else on a collaborative project. That way, you learn a lot from each other and the workload is halved.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4458&start=0#p32514
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using the new 'one of -or' codes - TADS3.1
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-28 17:11:46

Googling around for "one of" "at random" site:www.tads.org got me--

[url]http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/sysman/strlit.htm[/url]

--which has quite a bit of info.  Indeed it appears to be the main specifications for this feature.

Also there is

[url]http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/t3changes.htm[/url]

--which treats this topic almost as the first topic it treats.  You can CTRL-F search for "A new string embedding template syntax lets you create custom keywords" which will zip you right to the topic.


FWIW, I notice that in the IDE I can't search for a phrase... words are always searched for individually, which many times makes it difficult to find something, e.g., |if else| returns every page where the two words appear in English.

Meantime, Google couldn't resolve "<<one of>>" as distinct from "one of".  Eh, tools get too friendly sometimes.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4460&start=0#p32515
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table entries that result in a change or action?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-02-28 17:16:22

Inform 7 writing conventions differ a bit from most (or any other) programming language. In this case you're tripped by a habit to avoid blank spaces.
Action names should contain some word ending in -ing. Rename the DealingWithNilson action; call it "dealing with Nilson" and your halfway there.
For the same reason "speaking" would a better choice than "speech". I've used "answering something that", since that is an action already defined in the Standard Rules.
Lastly, "A man named Nilson is here" creates a thing called "man named Nilson". You want "A man called Nilson is here".[code]The hallway is a room. "hallway description."

A man called Nilson is here. Nilson is undescribed.

HallwayDoor is a closed door. HallwayDoor is west of the hallway and east of the entryway.

Before opening HallwayDoor:
	If blockhallwayexit is in the void: 
		say "[line break][one of]As you try to exit the premises, you are accosted by former client--what's his name? That[apostrophe]s right, Nilson. He is sobbing hysterically and muttering incoherent words under his breath. Must be repining over the case you just cracked where you caught his wife with a younger man. You sigh, 'Not another one. Why do these lunatics pay me to confirm their suspicions, only to deny it once I reveal it to them? It seems it[apostrophe]s always these pathetic business-types too.' He points at you with his crooked finger, and finally articulates a 'Y-y-you!'[or]Better deal with this guy first. He seems to be blocking your exit.[stopping]" instead.


Instead of answering Nilson that:
	repeat through Table of Nilson's commentary:
		if the topic understood includes topic entry:
			say "[commentary entry][paragraph break]";
			try result entry;
			rule succeeds;
	say "[line break][one of]Nilson sobs[or]'Oh Lorraine! Why?'[purely at random]".

Table of Nilson's Commentary
topic	commentary	result 
"Lorraine"	"Oh Lorraine, why did she leave me?"	Dealing With Nilson
"blah"	"blah blah blah blah."	screaming
"calm down"	"you calm down!"	screaming
"want"	"what do you want?"	screaming	
"okay/ok"	"you would say that wouldn[apostrophe]t you?"	screaming


Screaming is an action applying to nothing.
Report screaming: say "You yell - '[bold type]Aarrggghhh!!![roman type]'[line break]".

Dealing With Nilson is an action applying to nothing.
Carry out Dealing With Nilson:
		remove blockhallwayexit from play.

The void is a room. 
In the void is an object called blockhallwayexit.

test me with "w / w / Nilson, please, you need to calm down / Nilson, calm down!!! / w / Nilson, what about Lorraine? / w"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=130#p32516
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-28 17:47:07

[quote="Kate McKee"]Open, rather than juried, voting actually motivates me to play the games I missed the first time around.  If I played 3 of the 5 games in a given category, I feel obligated to try the other two before voting, rather than just picking the one I liked best of the three.[/quote]
It's been good to hear people say this; I really had very little idea about how much the XYZZYs get people to play more games during the voting period, since reviewing isn't a traditional part of the event. (My worry is that people feel obligated to try the other two games, don't get around to it in time, and then don't vote.)
[quote]Having a strong preference in one category doesn't necessarily motivate me to judge or vote in all the other categories, though.  (I plan to vote in the US presidential election this fall but I will likely skip our local County Assessor of Property race.)  Is this typical?  That is, do most voters cast a vote for all categories?[/quote]
In the second round, most do. In the nomination round, votes tend to be more patchy; anything with a textbox entry tends to get lower totals, particularly the oddball Technological Development and Supplemental Materials categories. I know there have been years when I haven't really been able to think of a game that has really great NPCs, say, and didn't really want to nominate a good-enough game.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4461&start=0#p32517
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Time since last command
User: PoliteProgrammer / DateTime: 2012-02-28 18:02:18

Is it possible to get the real time since the last command was entered? For my purposes, it doesn't even need to be a real time, it could be a simple counter of some sort. So, is there a way to measure elapsed time between two successive commands? Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4455&start=0#p32518
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: First IF Game
User: punkasaurus / DateTime: 2012-02-28 18:34:25

[quote="gravel"]You could try taking a single aspect of the game you want to make, and make a little demo game around that.  For example, you mentioned pictures appearing on walls.  Do a game that revolves around location description changes.  Do you want an NPC?  Make a game where there's an NPC that does *one* aspect of what you need the NPC's in FutureWork to do - for example, the NPC moves around, or will comment on player actions.

This will not only give you potentially helpful code at the end, but also teach you about the language and give you an idea of whether that piece of your idea is workable or not.  

You could also try looking at the example games in various documentation sources, and see if you can flesh them out and make them more interesting.  Inform, at least, has lots of very tiny sample pieces of code that are good jumping-off points for inspiration.[/quote]

I made a demo that has the first two (well, three, but you only get to one of them if you fail a different one) puzzles and a little bit of the background stuff you can discover. What do I do now?

[quote="JoeyJones"]One option which has worked for me in the past is to team up with someone else on a collaborative project. That way, you learn a lot from each other and the workload is halved.[/quote]

This is a good idea, too. But I'm not sure if people will want to collaborate with someone who hasn't finished anything before and thus might just flake out on them.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4449&start=10#p32519
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Under-represented genres
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-28 18:41:40

[quote="JoeyJones"]I think people tend to write what they like[/quote]

Yah.

At least, I know that's true for me. On maybe two occasions in my life I've written for the money, and both of those jobs made me sick and miserable until they were done.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4461&start=0#p32520
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Time since last command
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2012-02-28 19:18:40

there's extensions on the official inform site. one is called 'real date and time' which allows that

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4452&start=0#p32521
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Scott Adams Adventures - What can be learned in 2012?
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-02-28 19:52:28

You know, that's a good question.

I never played these games back then, I was a kid into Atari 2600 instead.  I've had an encounter or 2 with text-adventures still in the 80's, but nothing substantial.  I was truly gripped to IF ever since I've discovered the games from raif community through the internet in the late 90's.

That said, reading your plead just now, I finally unzipped the adamsinform package of Adam's games converted to Inform to take a peek on some games.  Previously, I've only played a bit of [url=http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/Adventureland.z5.js]Adventureland[/url] and Count and felt them way too crude.  I mean, a lot more crude than the original mainframe [url=http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/Advent.z5.js]Adventure[/url] or Zork.

Anyway, I decided to give it a spin with Hulk:

I'm Bruce Banner, tied hand & foot to a chair.
Obvious exits: NONE
Visible items: None

WHAT SHALL I DO? get up
I can't do that yet.
WHAT SHALL I DO? break chair
I can't do that now!
WHAT SHALL I DO? examine chair
I see Nothing special
WHAT SHALL I DO? get out
Sorry, won't fit in my inventory
WHAT SHALL I DO? inventory
I can't do that yet.
WHAT SHALL I DO? scream
O.K. chair
WHAT SHALL I DO? get nervous
I don't know what a "nervous" is.
WHAT SHALL I DO? untie hands
I can't do that yet.
WHAT SHALL I DO? call hulk
O.K. hulk
WHAT SHALL I DO? get hulk
It's beyond my power to do that.

that's it for me.  Fun for awhile, but mostly bland.  I'd say we can learn from it in 2012 how not to design games.

But why are you asking us instead of playing for yourself?  Go ahead and try, they are all out there, readily available to be played.  Here's a list of some great "modern" (post-90's) IF games playable online I've assembled recently, so you can decide yourself:

<a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/b214dd2eddab5918#">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... eddab5918#</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4427&start=0#p32522
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Desks/iPads from Ender's Game
User: teenbat / DateTime: 2012-02-28 20:36:37

Alright, so here is the source for a laptop. Of course, the source for the computer is already in there, so Inform already understands what a computer is.

I just want to make it so that instead of opening, the "laptop" (which is really a desk) just turns on, and it also can't have extension ports and the like. Please help, as I am new at this.

Please read the first post to be sure what I want/need. I don't mean to be a nag, but this is crucial in the game I'm building.

[code]A laptop is a kind of computer. A laptop can be open or closed. A laptop can be openable. A laptop is usually closed and openable. Understand "computer" or "computers" as a laptop.

A trackpad is a kind of selection device. A trackpad is part of every laptop.

Instead of touching a trackpad (this is the correct insufficient trackpad information rule):
    say "Try CLICK ON (some option) WITH [the noun], or just CLICK ON (option), to make a selection."

Definition: a thing is a concealed component:
    if it is a keyboard and it is part of a closed laptop:
        yes;
    if it is a screen and it is part of closed laptop:
        yes;
    if it is a trackpad and it is part of closed laptop:
        yes;
    no.

Instead of doing something when the noun is a concealed component (this is the inability to act on parts of a closed laptop rule):
    let N be the holder of the noun;
    say "[The N] [is-are] closed at the moment."

Instead of doing something when the second noun is a concealed component (this is the inability to act on secondary parts of a closed laptop rule):
    let N be the holder of the second noun;
    say "[The N] [is-are] closed at the moment."

Before switching on a closed laptop (this is the laptops run open rule):
    say "(opening and starting up [the noun])[command clarification break]";
    silently try opening the noun;
    if the noun is closed:
        stop the action.

Before switching off an open laptop (this is the laptops store closed rule):
    say "(closing and shutting down [the noun])[command clarification break]";
    silently try closing the noun;
    if the noun is open:
        stop the action.

[And because we want to keep the closing and opening in sync with one another:]

Understand "close [laptop]" as switching off.
Understand "open [laptop]" as switching on.[/code]

I don't really want a track pad, just the ability to "select" things, as if you are touching them.

Sorry to ask so much.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4455&start=0#p32523
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: First IF Game
User: gravel / DateTime: 2012-02-28 21:07:41

Well, it depends on what you feel moved to do.  You might try adding things that you'd try as a player, and add those, aiming toward a short, polished work that you could show to someone.  (As a  bonus, if you're trying to get someone to work with, it's easier if you have something to show that showcases your skills.)  Or do some thorough testing to make sure things are working as you think they are.

If you're looking for game sketch ideas, Seventh Sanctum has some truly gleeful plot and theme generators you can play with.  I'm inordinately fond of the What-if-inator for its mashups.  "What if George Orwell was a god?"  "What if Jack the Ripper had access to interstellar travel?"  ([url]http://www.seventhsanctum.com/generate.php?Genname=whatif[/url])

You could also consider starting on the big game you want to do; most people don't recommend it, but I think it can work if you're motivated enough and it's what you really want to do.  Although it's helpful if you can build outward from a core, rather than trying to do everything at once.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4462&start=0#p32524
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Programmer needed, paid position.
User: tastyfake / DateTime: 2012-02-28 21:24:21

Let us keep this short.
As a 20-year long fan, I've put myself on the line to produce a if-based indie-title. I am now looking for a programmer who can fill the spot as sole programmer of this project. It is a paid position (via self-funding) and I'd just really like to talk to a few programmers to discuss details and nail down an offer.

What's needed is to program an already designed if-game for use as groundwork in a title. Depending on your level, this might be something you could be able to take care of in a reasonable amount of time.

PM works brilliantly in terms of correspondance.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4434&start=10#p32525
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Zipping Ahead N Turns?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-28 21:37:14

This works!  -- Works fine.  But I have questions about it.

(This isn't in proper verb-rule format yet, because I'm still making sure I've got the logic correct.  So it's kind of glued into my code haphazard.)

[code]
class WaitThing: object
   testName = 'Z-ing'
   testList = [ 'z' ]

   run {
      local temp = new TemporaryFile();
      local out = File.openTextFile(temp, FileAccessWrite);
      testList.forEach({x: out.writeFile('>' + x + '\n')});
      out.closeFile();
      setScriptFile(temp);
   }
;

Z_ing: WaitThing

    dinky {
        local i = 0;
        for (i = 2 ; i <= 10 ; i++)  // begin with 2 because triggering the script is a turn!
        {
            "...[";        // <--- now you will note these.  These are my el-cheapo debugging markers.
            run;
            "]... ";
        }
        return (i);
    }
;
[/code]

This gives me the peculiar output:

[quote]
A scientist, a janitor, and a guard are standing here. 

> [i]trigger code entered[/i]
...[]... ...[]... ...[]... ...[]... ...[]... ...[]... ...[]... ...[]... ...[]... 11

The guard wants to play RPS with the scientist, but the scientist is busy. 

>z
Time passes... 

The janitor and the guard decide to play a quick game of RPS. The janitor throws rock! The guard throws scissors! The janitor wins! 

>z
Time passes... 

>z
Time passes... 

>z
Time passes... 

The janitor wants to play RPS with the scientist, but the scientist is busy. 

>z
Time passes... 

The janitor wants to play RPS with the scientist, but the scientist is busy. 

>z
Time passes... 

The janitor and the guard decide to play a quick game of RPS. The janitor throws rock! The guard throws rock! A draw! It's a draw! A beautiful draw! 

>z
Time passes... 

>z
Time passes... 

>z
Time passes... 

The janitor wants to play RPS with the scientist, but the scientist is busy. 

>_[/quote]

So, although the action happens in Z_ing.run(), the action doesn't happen until Z_ing.run() is entirely done.  Then the parser magically knows that input has been handed over to the script file, the whirligig runs through the script file commands, and returns program flow to the parser again.

Is that correct?

I guess I want to make sure I understand where program execution is while that's happening.

Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4463&start=0#p32526
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Why I Hate Goblins Demo
User: punkasaurus / DateTime: 2012-02-28 21:52:26

I have a short demo finished of my game "Why I Hate Goblins," which is a bit of a tribute to Zork. I'm not expecting anyone to spend too much time messing around with it, as I'm sure it's nothing special, but I thought people might run through it and give me some tips and things to work on.

One issue I know about that I've fixed since I uploaded it: "Pick up" key doesn't do what "get key" does. Use "get key" rather than "pick up" key, please.

In addition, it tells you "there's no route that way" when a door is closed or locked. I've attempted to handle this by putting the door descriptions in the actual room description. This is an issue with the current version of Adrift, and should be fixed soon.

If you want to try it:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.mediafire.com/?co288whc5f76n5c">http://www.mediafire.com/?co288whc5f76n5c</a>

----------

[color=#4000FF][b]Edit: More current demo here...[/b][/color]
[attachment=0]Why I Hate Goblins (Demo 2).rar[/attachment]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4434&start=10#p32527
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Zipping Ahead N Turns?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-28 22:30:46

I think it's a transcript issue rather than a question of the command not running when you think it does.

You may want to capture the output of the test and bracket it with your markers, like so.

[code]
foo () {
	local output = new StringBuffer;
	local capture = {str: output.append(str)};
	local result = '';

	try {
		t3SetSay(capture);
		for (local i = 2; i <= 10; i++) {
			output.append('\n...[\n');
			run;
			output.append('\n]...\n');
		}
	}
	finally {
		t3SetSay(say);
	}

	result = toString(output);
	"<<result>>";
}
[/code]

The try / finally block is ugly but prevents runtime errors from leaving the default display function set to your capture function, which would leave your game session unplayable.

You shouldn't need to start the counter at 2 if you have your action set up as a SystemAction; the point of those is that they don't take a turn, like SAVE / RESTORE / HINT etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=130#p32528
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-02-28 22:38:39

This was a thouroughly enchanting read.

So, summing up:  no one likes reading anymore, let alone typing.  The typeless game wins all thanks to a far wider audience from touchy fruity interfaces.  Coming up next:  vook interactive games win major XYZZY awards, leaving old textual CYAO farts crying for nostalgia...

we should just drop silly parsers and the written word altogether...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4340&start=130#p32529
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011: final round
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-02-28 22:56:04

Just drop CYAO from the awards.  IF is all about turn-based textual interactions, not selecting what page to read next.

And here's an idea:  games playable online (best if server-side so all formats have a chance) so that the server may count that "judges" actually took at least a minimum of turns in at least a few games.  I know Justin would most probably just receive votes more vigorously if you were to submit his fans to a few minutes of Beethoven, but still, at least you tried to raise awareness...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3596&start=100#p32530
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Should next year's IF Comp allow intra-comp updates?
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-02-28 23:14:48

Life is not fair and thus I voted no.  You don't get second chances in any competition I know about.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4436&start=20#p32531
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ok, here is the big question... -norand?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-28 23:20:27

[quote="conradcook"]However, to get Random Number n, you must first get RN n-1, to get which you must first get RN n-2... all the way back to Random Number n-n, which is your seed value.  You're iterating through a recursive structure, as I understand the terms.[/quote]
Ah, now I get what you mean. Yes, that looks recursive indeed. I had the problem itself in mind though. The problem itself does not imply recursion or iteration. For example, if the problem states "what's the Nth Fibonacci number", then you have an N there. But in an RNG, your problem is not "what's the Nth random number". It's just "give me a random number".

(Not that calculating Fibonacci numbers actually requires iteration or recursion. It's only the definition of the numbers that's recursive.)

[quote]I had been looking for a way to avoid that, and was fearing I'd have to resort to a lookup table, in order to tether the pseudo-random number to the turn counter.[/quote]
Another problem with this approach is that you get the same number if you need more then one during the same turn (which is not unlikely at all).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=320#p32532
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: tastyfake / DateTime: 2012-02-28 23:28:28

I don't know if anybody reads these, but what is there to lose?
Hey. IF's were the first games I played and most likely the main contributor to me ending up being pretty proficient at speaking English as early as in my pre-teens. I then got into MUD's, but around 14-15 I completely stopped playing video games of any kind in favor of playing, composing and producing music. I'm back into IF's now though, since I really do feel there's potential for a broader appeal that hasn't been achieved yet. I don't think this has to be a watered-down, "modern" version of it either, but I do believe that it could use enhancements that weren't around in the good old days in a way that makes it break out if its shell.

I'm a fan of anyone who has a micro-niche that they will fight for until the day they croak, so I'm ridiculously excited over the fact that a forum like this can exist. 

I'm looking forward to going through the back-log of brilliant things you lot have said.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4465&start=0#p32533
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: SF Bay IF Meetup in Oakland Saturday 1PM
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2012-02-29 00:08:23

Taking a suggestion from our last meetup in January, this week we're meeting at the MADE Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment in Oakland. They've got a projector set up, and I'm going to bring some of the old classic Infocom adventures.

(I propose that we play one of Douglas Adams' classic comedy games: either Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, or Bureaucracy. But I'll bring a bunch; it's up to you!)

PLEASE RSVP so we can figure out a good food strategy!

<a class="postlink" href="http://meetu.ps/7CB7T">http://meetu.ps/7CB7T</a>

When: Saturday, March 3, 2012 1:00 PM

Where: Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment
610 16th st 
Oakland, CA 94612

This Meetup repeats on the 1st Saturday of every month.

If the changes affect your plans to attend, please take a moment to update your RSVP. (You can RSVP "No" or "Yes".)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4459&start=0#p32534
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hypothetical Object Response Tests?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-29 00:34:00

I guess the question is whether you can protect some data from the restore, so you can continue looping through tests.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=80#p32535
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2012-02-29 01:40:05

[quote="Felix"][quote="thefoxaroo"]Does concealment work on body parts?[/quote]
Seems so. 
[code]The Gym is a room.

Bob is a person. Bob is in the Gym. Bob wears a shirt.

A tattoo is part of Bob. The description is "It is the symbol of the Sacred Chao."

Rule for deciding the concealed possessions of Bob while Bob is wearing the shirt: if the particular possession is the tattoo, yes.

Instead of examining Bob: if Bob is wearing the shirt, try Bob dropping the shirt; otherwise try Bob wearing the shirt.

After Bob dropping the shirt: say "Bob pulls his shirt off, revealing a curious tattoo."

After Bob wearing the shirt: say "Bob puts his shirt back on."

test me with "x tattoo / x Bob / x tattoo / l / x Bob "[/code][/quote]Thanks! [emote]:)[/emote]  I didn't realise it was as easy as that! [emote]:o[/emote]

[quote="Felix"]And you do know you can have NPCs perform actions with the try <NPC> <doing something> syntax?[/quote]So that [i][u]is[/u][/i] the correct way after all...

I originally put these in my code to test:
[code]When play begins:
	Try Tom taking the widget;
	Try Tom dropping the watchamacalit.[/code]But I received this error:"[b] Problem.[/b] You wrote 'Try Tom taking the widget'  : but I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with, so I am ignoring this sentence altogether."

So then when I saw your instruction I took the code and put it in an empty project and it worked just fine.  I then fiddled around until it worked in the original project.  I think I had a comma where there should have been a semi-colon or something.  Beginner's mistakes, sorry...  [emote]:oops:[/emote] 

[quote="capmikee"][quote="thefoxaroo"][quote="capmikee"]I forgot about this until today, but now I've posted a thread:
<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4409">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4409</a>[/quote]I look forward to seeing the replies in this thread.  It would be good to have a standardised extension created for describing NPCs.  Goodness knows they're used often enough in Interactive Fiction.[/quote]Maybe you could give that thread a bump by posting your own thoughts...[/quote]I most sincerely would if I had a grasp of the code.  It's still early days for me in my learning of Inform.  I've yet to use any of the following "To decide","a truth state","is an activity on people","For...","Pronoun enabled is".  Those are all new to me.  I understand the ends; a new extension with standards on how to describe NPCs and how they are examined, but the workings of the code are somewhat beyond me at present.  I'm waiting to see what more knowledgeable people say so that I can (hopefully) get more of an idea.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3159&start=0#p32536
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Announcing Spring Thing 2012
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2012-02-29 03:34:07

[quote="sgreig"]Is the competition still happening? I've sent Greg a couple of emails with my intent to enter but haven't gotten a response yet, and I'm starting to wonder what's going on because the deadline is in a couple of days...[/quote]
Don't worry.. He'll answer you at some point... I've had the same "problem" but he has always replied.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4427&start=0#p32537
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Desks/iPads from Ender's Game
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-02-29 05:16:39

You may want to create an action applying to a topic. See the Documentation CH. 16.5 on the text token.
It will look something like this:
[code]Clicking is an action applying to one topic.
Check clicking: say "There is no such option to click."
Understand "click [text]", "click the [text]", "click on [text]", or "click on the [text]" as clicking.
Instead of clicking "trash can": say "You open the trash can."[/code]
Or just make the options parts of the pad and use an ordinary action applying to a thing for clicking them. 

For Ender's hacking, at least, I suppose, an action applying to a topic might be appropriate.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4436&start=30#p32538
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Ok, here is the big question... -norand?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-29 06:11:11

[quote="RealNC"]Another problem with this approach is that you get the same number if you need more then one during the same turn (which is not unlikely at all).[/quote]

That's true!

Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4442&start=0#p32539
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: npc nil object reference
User: zodraz / DateTime: 2012-02-29 06:14:29

Thanks Jim, I thought that as well but I am not using any comandTopic, I did a copy/paste and stripped down the npc with only the topics for the objects and a default askfor, give and ask topics, when I entered the command again I got the askForTopic response for the object, so no 'nil object reference error' but still not right. I will post the code soon when I have time. Thanks again!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4434&start=10#p32540
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Zipping Ahead N Turns?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-29 06:33:17

Alright...  Pasting in your code without significant alteration (since I don't fully grok the fine points), I get these debug warnings:

[code]TADS Compiler 3.1.0  Copyright 1999, 2010 Michael J. Roberts
delme.t(113): warning: 
The symbol "result" is undefined, but appears from context to be a property
name.  The compiler is assuming that this is a property.  Check the spelling of
the symbol.  If this assumption is correct, you can avoid this warning by
explicitly declaring a value to the property in an object definition rather
than in method code.

delme.t(113): warning: 
The symbol "output" is undefined, but appears from context to be a property
name.  The compiler is assuming that this is a property.  Check the spelling of
the symbol.  If this assumption is correct, you can avoid this warning by
explicitly declaring a value to the property in an object definition rather
than in method code.

delme.t(101): warning: 
A value is assigned to the local variable "result", but the variable's value is
never used.  It is possible that the variable can be removed.

Errors:   0[/code]

Am I supposed to be doing something with "result" and "output" other than what you've done in the code?

I cranked the number of iterations down to 4, since the extra 6 didn't seem to prove anything except that my computer is capable of counting on its fingers.  This is the transcript:

[quote]> [i] Zing command given[/i]
 nil

>z
Time passes... 

The janitor wants to play RPS with the scientist, but the scientist is busy. 

>z
Time passes... 

The janitor wants to play RPS with the guard, but the guard is still thinking over his tactics. 

>z
Time passes... 

>_[/quote]

That is, I get less reporting than before.  But from the placement of the [i]nil[/i] I get, I wonder if, had I gotten reporting, I wouldn't be getting substantially the same reporting as in my code.

Do you get something different?


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=320#p32562
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-29 07:40:26

People do read these! Welcome Stadtgorilla and Tastyfake.

I love to see how many musicians are into IF. Your interest in retro computing makes me want to post some of the music I made on Atari 800 and C64 back in the day...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4487&start=0#p32563
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: How do I get an integer off the command line?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-29 07:56:15

It seems I need to convert a string to an integer, or to read it in originally as an integer.  Can't figure how to do it...

[code]
DefineLiteralAction(Zip)
     execAction()
     {
        mainReport('Okay, Zipping. ');
        Z_ing.n = getLiteral();                 //<----  the offending line; I get a runtime error
        Z_ing.dinky2;
     }
;


VerbRule(Zip)
     'zip' singleLiteral
     : ZipAction
     verbPhrase = 'zip/zipping (what)'
;
[/code]


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4463&start=0#p32564
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Why I Hate Goblins Demo
User: gravel / DateTime: 2012-02-29 09:22:24

So it's definitely a solid start.  In general, I think it's a good idea to reduce the number of elements in play that don't have anything to do with the player: having so many objects in the first room that don't matter is kind of distracting.  But this is a style thing, so take it for what it's worth.  

As you'll see from my attempts to find the key, a generous parser is much appreciated - it was pretty frustrating because I *knew* where the key was, but not what command to enter to make the game respond.  It's worse when you don't know what to do - I have no idea if I was on the right track in the second room, because nothing seemed to produce anything but the default response.

Then the game crashed, so I didn't restart to see if I could avoid the place I got stuck.


Transcript:
[spoiler]> x mansion
The Roone mansion has been abandoned for decades. Richie Roone, the son of Baron Roone, moved away before you were born. When the Baron passed away, goblins moved into the old mansion. About a year ago, Richie returned and offered up a sizeable award for anyone who could exterminate them.

Many tried.* All failed.

Now it's up to you to do what others couldn't.

Why?

Because you need the money, dammit!

Because you owe people money. Bad people.





*Okay, like four tried.  

> * Some of the formatting here is attack little off
Sorry, I didn't understand that command.  

> inventory
You are wearing nothing, and are carrying nothing.  

> x me
Man, I'm pretty!  

> inside
There is no route to the in, only nowhere.  

> go inside
There is no route to the in, only nowhere.  

> look

Outside the Mansion
The mansion is made of stone, and was once whitewashed but has since worn back down to more natural grays and browns. A few trees stand to the west, but aside from that, the field is empty. The door is made of some kind of wood, but not being a tree aficionado, you don't know what kind. On the front porch are a welcome mat and a bench.  

> x stone
The stones that make up the mansion vary in size. Some are almost perfectly rectangular. Others are square. And some look like they used to jut out in different directions before someone came along and broke them off.  

> push stones
You push the stones, but nothing happens.  

> take stones
You can't take the stones!  

> pull stone
You pull the stones, but nothing happens.  

> x trees
Five or six trees are scattered to your west. They appear to all be the same kind of tree, but you couldn't name that kind if your life depended on it. You slept through the plant identification chapter in rogue school.  

> climb tree
You can't climb the trees.  

> take tree
You can't take the trees!  

> up
There is no route to the up, only nowhere.  

> west
There is no route to the west, only nowhere.  

> x field
You're standing in an empty field. I mean, there's some grass here, but that's pretty much it.

Oh, and a mansion inhabited by goblins.  

> take grass
You can't take the grass!  

> x grass
It's grass. Green crap that grows all over the ground. Like the earth has hair.  

> inventory
You are wearing nothing, and are carrying nothing.  

> look

Outside the Mansion
The mansion is made of stone, and was once whitewashed but has since worn back down to more natural grays and browns. A few trees stand to the west, but aside from that, the field is empty. The door is made of some kind of wood, but not being a tree aficionado, you don't know what kind. On the front porch are a welcome mat and a bench.  

> x porch
Three steps lead up to the front porch of the mansion. There's a faded old welcome mat here, and a small bench.  

> x steps
You examine the steps carefully. As far as your sharp rogueish eyes can tell, there are no traps here.  

> x mat
This old faded rug spells out quite clearly, "WE COME." Presumably, there used to be an L in there.

Hopefully.  

> look under mat
This old faded rug spells out quite clearly, "WE COME." Presumably, there used to be an L in there.

Hopefully.  

> take mat
You can't take the welcome mat!  

> take all
There is nothing worth taking here.  

> [emote]:([/emote]
Sorry, I didn't understand that command.  

> inventory
You are wearing nothing, and are carrying nothing.  

> look

Outside the Mansion
The mansion is made of stone, and was once whitewashed but has since worn back down to more natural grays and browns. A few trees stand to the west, but aside from that, the field is empty. The door is made of some kind of wood, but not being a tree aficionado, you don't know what kind. On the front porch are a welcome mat and a bench.  

> sit
You sit down.  

> x me
Man, I'm pretty!  

> look

Outside the Mansion
The mansion is made of stone, and was once whitewashed but has since worn back down to more natural grays and browns. A few trees stand to the west, but aside from that, the field is empty. The door is made of some kind of wood, but not being a tree aficionado, you don't know what kind. On the front porch are a welcome mat and a bench.  

> x bench
This wooden bench is too small for a human to comfortably use. You've seen small chairs and benches like this around before, and small chairs. Children could use them, or goblins, but as an adult human you would only sit in a chair like this if you wanted to get up close and personal with your knees.  

> * then what am i sitting on?
Sorry, I didn't understand that command.  

> inventory
You are wearing nothing, and are carrying nothing.  

> look

Outside the Mansion
The mansion is made of stone, and was once whitewashed but has since worn back down to more natural grays and browns. A few trees stand to the west, but aside from that, the field is empty. The door is made of some kind of wood, but not being a tree aficionado, you don't know what kind. On the front porch are a welcome mat and a bench.  

> x door
This is the front door to the Roone mansion. It is locked. Several markings have been scratched into it. They aren't sophisticated enough to be any kind of magical ward. Probably goblin for "the welcome mat lies" or something.

Heh. And there it lies.

Good pun, Zippo. You pat yourself on the back.  The front door is currently locked.  

> x markings
Sorry, I'm not sure which object or character you are trying to examine.  

> open door
You can't open the front door as it is locked!  

> unlock door
What do you want to unlock the front door with?  

> key
Sorry, I didn't understand that command.  

> down
There is no route to the down, only nowhere.  

> e
There is no route to the east, only nowhere.  

> west
There is no route to the west, only nowhere.  

> n
There is no route to the north, only nowhere.  

> south
There is no route to the south, only nowhere.  

> ne
There is no route to the northeast, only nowhere.  

> nw
There is no route to the northwest, only nowhere.  

> sw
There is no route to the southwest, only nowhere.  

> se
There is no route to the southeast, only nowhere.  

> search
Sorry, I didn't understand that command.  

> search mat
Sorry, I didn't understand that command.  

> x mat
This old faded rug spells out quite clearly, "WE COME." Presumably, there used to be an L in there.

Hopefully.  

> move mat
The rug slides aside. There's a key here!  

> * GRRR.
Sorry, I didn't understand that command.  

> take key
As you pick up the key, you realize there is a string tied to it. The other end of the string disappears through an almost invisible hole in the middle of the porch. You try to drop the key, but it's too late.

Swish! A trap door opens beneath you, and you fall teen feet or so into a dark hole. Your one source of light disappears as the trapdoor resets itself above you.  

> look
It is too dark to make anything out clearly.  

> inventory
You are wearing nothing, and are carrying nothing.  

> smell
Sorry, I didn't understand that command.  

> listen
Sorry, I didn't understand that command.  

> jump
Sorry, I didn't understand that command.  

> touch
Sorry, I didn't understand that command.  

> touch walls
Sorry, I didn't understand that command.  

> inventory
You are wearing nothing, and are carrying nothing.  

> look
It is too dark to make anything out clearly.  

> down
There is no route to the down, only nowhere.  

> e
There is no route to the east, only nowhere.  

> z
Time passes...  

> z
Time passes...  

> z
Time passes...  

> feel
Sorry, I didn't understand that command.  

> up
There is no route to the up, only nowhere.  

> climb pit
Sorry, I'm not sure which object you are trying to climb.  

> climb up
Sorry, I'm not sure which object you are trying to climb.  

> climb
Sorry, I didn't understand that command.  

> take all
There is nothing worth taking here.  

> x all
Sorry, I'm not sure which object or character you are trying to examine.  

> x dark
Sorry, I'm not sure which object or character you are trying to examine.  

> x pit
Sorry, I'm not sure which object or character you are trying to examine.  

> look
It is too dark to make anything out clearly.  

> inventory
You are wearing nothing, and are carrying nothing.  

> dig
Sorry, I didn't understand that command.  

> x floor
Sorry, I'm not sure which object or character you are trying to examine.  

> x walls
Sorry, I'm not sure which object or character you are trying to examine.  

> x darkness
Sorry, I'm not sure which object or character you are trying to examine.  

> x dark
Sorry, I'm not sure which object or character you are trying to examine.  

> hint
Sorry, I didn't understand that command.  

> outside
There is no route to the out, only nowhere.  

> shout
Sorry, I didn't understand that command.  

> yell
Sorry, I didn't understand that command.  

> scream
Sorry, I didn't understand that command.  

> inventory
You are wearing nothing, and are carrying nothing.  

> restart
> * game crashed here[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4458&start=0#p32565
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using the new 'one of -or' codes - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-02-29 09:32:58

Thanks for the help. When I'm writing TADS, I have  repeating thoughts that there's only one way to do it correctly but there are fifteen-hundred ways to get it wrong! One example can be be more helpful than many paragraphs of explanation. In my case, one picture is indeed worth a thousand words. But, still we continue on!

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=80#p32566
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-29 09:37:57

[quote="thefoxaroo"]
I originally put these in my code to test:
[code]When play begins:
	Try Tom taking the widget;
	Try Tom dropping the watchamacalit.[/code]But I received this error:"[b] Problem.[/b] You wrote 'Try Tom taking the widget'  : but I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with, so I am ignoring this sentence altogether."[/quote]

This is the error that you'd get if you write "Try Tom taking the widget." without a "When play begins:" or similar rule preamble, so my guess is that you might have accidentally put a period after "when play begins." 

Punctuation errors can be seriously annoying!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4463&start=0#p32567
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Why I Hate Goblins Demo
User: punkasaurus / DateTime: 2012-02-29 09:51:54

[spoiler]For some reason, if you try to go in a direction where a door is closed, it will tell you there's no route there. It's a bug with Adrift 5 right now. Should be fixed soon. Once you have the key, unlock and open the door.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4434&start=10#p32568
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Zipping Ahead N Turns?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-29 09:57:18

I will test your code later, but it seems like you may not have copied in the local declarations at the top of the block.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4459&start=0#p32569
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hypothetical Object Response Tests?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-29 10:00:23

Upon review, I've decided that Hypothetical Questions is actually the one I want here. At first I thought you could only run a single action hypothetically, but you can actually run [i]any[/i] phrase, not just a "try" phrase. So my extensive search-and-replace was unnecessary, and big chunks of action can be done hypothetically (although you'll need to reserve a very large buffer for hypothetical output).

[spoiler][code]Version 1 of Hypothetical Object Response Tests by Mike Ciul begins here.

"Tests objects just like Juhana Leinonen's extension, but does an UNDO after each test."

Include Hypothetical Questions by Jesse McGrew.
Include Object Response Tests by Juhana Leinonen

Book 1 - Hypothetical Output

This is the output hypothetical results rule:
	say the hypothetical output;

Book 3 - Actions - Not for release (in place of Book 3 - Actions - Not for release in Object Response Tests by Juhana Leinonen)

Object-analyzing is an action applying to one visible thing.

Understand "analyze [something]" as object-analyzing.
Understand "analyse [something]" as object-analyzing.


Carry out object-analyzing (this is the go through all analyzing rules rule):
	repeat with x running from 1 to the number of rows in the table of analyzing actions:
		hypothetically follow the testing rule in row x of the table of analyzing actions and consider the output hypothetical results rule.


All-encompassing analyzing is an action applying to nothing.

Carry out all-encompassing analyzing (this is the analyze everything in the location rule):
	repeat with x running through things enclosed by the location of the test-actor:
		if the test-actor can see x:
			try object-analyzing x.

Understand "analyze all" as all-encompassing analyzing.


Test-verb-trying is an action applying to one topic.

Understand "try [text]" as test-verb-trying.


Check test-verb-trying (this is the unknown verb test label rule):
	if the topic understood is not a topic listed in the Table of analyzing actions:
		say "Unknown verb test." instead.

Carry out test-verb-trying (this is the repeat an action with all objects rule):
	if the topic understood is a topic listed in the Table of analyzing actions:
		repeat with x running through things enclosed by the location of the test-actor:
			if the test-actor can see x:
				change the noun to x;
				hypothetically follow the testing rule entry and consider the output hypothetical results rule.


Test-actor changing is an action out of world applying to one visible thing.

Understand "actor is [any person]" as test-actor changing.

Carry out test-actor changing (this is the change testing actor rule):
	change test-actor to the noun;
	say "Object Response Tests now uses [the noun] as the actor."



Hypothetical Object Response Tests ends here.

[/code][/spoiler]

It might be more orthogonal to have a switchable "hypothetical mode" in which all commands are automatically undone at the end of the turn. I haven't quite figured out which extension should be used for that, or how.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4459&start=0#p32570
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hypothetical Object Response Tests?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-29 10:09:13

I guess keeping track of loop variables with Alternative Permadeath isn't that hard after all - you can save at any point in the turn, not just before reading a command:

[code]Carry out object-analyzing (this is the go through all analyzing rules rule):
	repeat with x running from 1 to the number of rows in the table of analyzing actions:
		write game data to the file of save data;
		follow the testing rule in row x of the table of analyzing actions;
		read file of save data into memory;[/code]
The tradeoff, then, is whether we need an external file for savegame data, or a very big buffer for output data.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=50#p32571
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-02-29 10:11:05

[quote="jacksonmead"]They Might Be Giants[/quote]

never heard.  Well, good luck anyway.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4459&start=0#p32572
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hypothetical Object Response Tests?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-02-29 10:13:00

[quote="capmikee"]I guess keeping track of loop variables with Alternative Permadeath isn't that hard after all - you can save at any point in the turn, not just before reading a command...[/quote]

Ah, and now I understand your earlier questions, which I admit that I wasn't really able to make sense of before seeing that you were making that assumption.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=320#p32573
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: stadtgorilla / DateTime: 2012-02-29 10:15:32

[quote="capmikee"]People do read these! Welcome Stadtgorilla and Tastyfake.

I love to see how many musicians are into IF. Your interest in retro computing makes me want to post some of the music I made on Atari 800 and C64 back in the day...[/quote]

oh please do, I'd be very interested. I'm not that much into what people call Chiptune music, I'm more interested in the sound aesthetic. I'm using a C64 and an Atari 2600 for live performances with my free noise group at the moment.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4434&start=10#p32574
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Zipping Ahead N Turns?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-29 10:28:14

!!  You know what -- I put them inside [i]try[/i].  It seemed they needed a container for where I was gluing them into my code.

As I say, I don't really grok this.  Correcting...


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4456&start=0#p32575
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Development Teams
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-29 10:50:21

I'm guess the absence of development teams is due to the fact that text games aren't typically made for profit. You'd really have to amass a group of people just doing it for the joy of it. Further, being involved in the programming side of it affords the writer of interactive fiction a deeper understanding of how their game works, and avoids them having to implement their vision through intermediaries.

That all said, I've helped produce [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/showuser?id=4turuimoytvwnatf]two prizewinning games[/url] through different partnerships, and I'm currently taking part in two collaborative projects, the [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976]TMBG Tribute Album[/url], and [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4113]IF Whisper 5[/url]: the benefits of working with others are clear to me, but then so are the downsides. When you work with other people you agree to forfeit full control of the creative vision for the project, and you leave yourself open to different levels of quality and commitment from your co-creators. 

It's at least conceivable that a larger collaboration with people having more specialised roles could produce something interesting. I remain open to being convinced.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4488&start=0#p32576
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Adding a Scratch Message to a Room
User: BenChen / DateTime: 2012-02-29 10:52:06

Hi there,

I am working on my first IF using Inform 7, a conversion of an old text adventure I programmed ages ago in Pascal.  I've got pretty much everything working except for "scratch message".  I wanted people to be able to solve the mazes more easily by being able to scratch a message on the ground - if they have a gauntlet.  And obviously if there is a message already scratched on the ground, then it will be displayed when the location is described.  (Ideally, if there is already a message on the ground, you would not be able to add another one.  But I was going to wait until I had the rest of it working first...)

This was what I tried, but it didn't work.  Any ideas how to do this?

[code]A room has some text called the message.
For printing a locale paragraph about a room
	(this is the mention messages if they are present rule):
	if the room has a message
	begin;
		say "Someone has scratched '[message of the location]' on the floor here."
		continue the activity;
	end if.

After reading a command:
	if player's command matches the regular expression "scratch .*"
	begin;
		if the player carries the gauntlet
		begin;
			let T be indexed text;
			let T be the player's command;
			replace the regular expression "scratch " in T with "";
			say "You scratch '[T]' on the floor.[paragraph break]";
			now the message of the location is [T];
		otherwise;
			say "Your fingernails have recently been chewed, so you make no mark on the floor.[paragraph break]";
		end if;
		stop the action;
	end if.[/code]

Sincerely,
Ben.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4434&start=10#p32577
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Zipping Ahead N Turns?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-29 11:02:03

Nope, I keep getting weird errors...

[code]TADS Compiler 3.1.0  Copyright 1999, 2010 Michael J. Roberts
delme.t(82): error: 
A property name was expected in the object definition, but the compiler found
"local" instead.  Check for a missing semicolon at the end of the object
definition, and check for unbalanced braces prior to this line.

delme.t(83): error: 
The compiler expected a function or object definition, but found "local".
Check the syntax, and check for unbalanced braces '{ }' and other syntax errors
preceding this line.

delme.t(83): error: 
A property name was expected in the object definition, but the compiler found
"=" instead.  Check for a missing semicolon at the end of the object
definition, and check for unbalanced braces prior to this line.

delme.t(83): error: 
A property name was expected in the object definition, but the compiler found
"{" instead.  Check for a missing semicolon at the end of the object
definition, and check for unbalanced braces prior to this line.

delme.t(83): error: 
This object definition is not properly terminated - a semicolon ';' or closing
brace '}' should appear at the end of the definition.  The compiler found a new
object definition or a statement that cannot be part of an object definition,
but did not find the end of the current object definition.  Insert the...[/code]

--Something about this I'm not getting.  I'm going to back up and use your foo() code without modification.  Just need to figure out how to tap into it...

C.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4432&start=0#p32578
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Hint request -- Fallacy of Dawn, restaurant scene
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2012-02-29 11:20:56

I think if I could go back and change one thing, it would be to add the ">exits" command to my earlier games. It now drives me crazy when text adventures don't have it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4488&start=0#p32579
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Adding a Scratch Message to a Room
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-29 11:22:51

It needed to be an indexed text, you were missing a semi-colon, and you'd bracketed something what didn't want bracketing. This should do the trick, and prevent writing messages when you've already written messages:

[code]A room has some indexed text called the message.

Before printing the locale description of a room
   (this is the mention messages if they are present rule):
   if the message of the location is not ""
   begin;
      say "Someone has scratched '[message of the location]' on the floor here.";
      continue the activity;
   end if.

After reading a command:
   if player's command matches the regular expression "scratch .*"
   begin;
      if the player wears the gauntlet
      begin;
      if the message of the location is not "", say "You've already scratched a message here." instead;
         let T be indexed text;
         let T be the player's command;
         replace the regular expression "scratch " in T with "";
         say "You scratch '[T]' on the floor.[paragraph break]";
         now the message of the location is T;
      otherwise;
         say "Your fingernails have recently been chewed, so you make no mark on the floor.[paragraph break]";
      end if;
      stop the action;
   end if.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4488&start=0#p32580
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Adding a Scratch Message to a Room
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-02-29 11:38:27

Please don't parse a command manually unless you absolutely have to, and in this case you really don't need to do so. A regular action will work just fine.

[code]A room has some indexed text called the message.

Scratching is an action applying to one topic.
Understand "scratch [text]" as scratching.

Check scratching when the player is not carrying the gauntlet:
    say "Your fingernails have recently been chewed, so you make no mark on the floor." instead.

Carry out scratching:
     now the message of the location is topic understood.

Report scratching:
    say "You scratch '[topic understood]' on the floor."[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4488&start=0#p32581
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Adding a Scratch Message to a Room
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-02-29 11:38:49

Don't circumvent the parser unless you have to. Creating new actions might seem difficult, but it is much more robust than trying to achieve an effect by intercepting a command (as you have with your after reading a command rule). You do need to use indexed text if you want the player to be able to type anything. Try this:
[code]A room has some indexed text called the message.

Before printing the locale description of a room
   (this is the mention messages if they are present rule):
   if the message of the location is not ""
   begin;
	  say "Someone has scratched '[message of the location]' on the floor here.";
	  continue the activity;
   end if.

Scratching is an action applying to one topic and requiring light.
Understand "scratch [text]" as scratching.

Check scratching (this is the can't add new messages rule):
	unless the message of the location is empty:
		say "There's already a message here. It reads: '[message of the location]'." instead.
		
Carry out scratching (this is the default scratching rule):
	let T be some indexed text;
	now T is the topic understood;
	now the message of the location is T.
	
Report scratching (this is the default report scratching rule):
	say "You scratch '[message of the location]' into the floor.".

The Lab is a room. "This is the lab."

test me with "scratch blah / l / scratch blah".[/code]
Adding the bit about the gauntlet is as simple as adding another check rule.

Edited to add: Juhana, does that count as a tie?  [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4440&start=10#p32582
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat System problem.
User: Superjax / DateTime: 2012-02-29 11:41:03

I have a problem. I'm trying to make it so that when the player dies, instead of removing the player from the game(causing an error), it will simply end the game in death.

Here's the code:

[code]Check an actor attacking the player with something when the player is dead (this is the player's-death priority rule):
	if the actor is an enemy:
		say "[The actor] attacks you with [the second noun], killing you.";
		end the game in death;
		stop the action.[/code]

However, it still causes an error when I die, and it removes the player from the game instead of ending the game properly.

Help please.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4488&start=0#p32583
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Adding a Scratch Message to a Room
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-02-29 11:44:28

Great minds etc :)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4434&start=10#p32584
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Zipping Ahead N Turns?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-29 11:50:37

See, I don't think it's a transcript issue for this reason--

If it worked the other way -- if we honestly expected to get a transcript that ran...

[quote]
...[>Z

Time passes... ]...

...[>Z

Time passes... ]...

...[>Z

Time passes... ]...
[/quote]

--Then that would mean that the commands are being executed by setScriptFile(), from within the for loop.

But this cannot be, because at that time, while the for loop is running, the turn that began with the player typing the [i]FireOffTheZipNscript[/i] command has not yet ended.  And that means any number of things, among them being that we'd then be in a position of trying to nest the scripted turns inside the real-time turns, or that a call to setScriptFile() prematurely ends the turn (which isn't mentioned in the specifications), or so on.

It'd just get really ugly, in other words.

So it seems that it must be that setScriptFile() [i]does[/i] something to the parser such that it knows to address itself to the script/s, which are now read in from memory, and which are lurking in the background waiting for the parser to have its next turn at control of the game.

That's why I think we're not getting the output we're expecting.  I don't see how it could be a transcript issue, since I don't think that output from a move ten turns down the line is queued up, but not outputted, as would be the only way for transcript matters to be causing this output, without the turn logic of the game itself rearing its head.

Does that make sense?


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4459&start=0#p32585
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hypothetical Object Response Tests?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-29 11:53:49

I extracted the necessary Glulx code from Hypothetical Questions, removing the output buffering. Now I have the best of both:

[spoiler][code]Version 1 of Hypothetical Object Response Tests by Mike Ciul begins here.

"Tests objects just like Juhana Leinonen's extension, but does an UNDO after each test."

Include Object Response Tests by Juhana Leinonen

Book 1 - Triggering Undo From I7

save-restore status is a kind of value. failure to save, successful save, and successful restore are save-restore statuses.

To decide which save-restore status is result of saving undo state: (- Save_Undo_State() -).

To decide whether successfully saved undo state: Decide on whether or not the result of saving undo state is successful save.

To restore undo state: (- Restore_Undo_State(); -).

Include (-

Constant FAILURE_TO_SAVE = 1;
Constant SUCCESSFUL_SAVE = 2;
Constant SUCCESSFUL_RESTORE = 3;

! returns 1 when entering the hypothetical universe, 2 when returning to reality, 0 if entering failed in the first place
[ 

Save_Undo_State rv;
	! Not sure if any of these settings are necessary...

	! do { @random 0 seed; } until (seed ~= 0);
	!@getstringtbl strtbl;
	! @getiosys iosys iorock;

	@saveundo rv;

	!@setrandom seed;
	!@setstringtbl strtbl;
	!@setiosys iosys iorock;

	switch (rv) {
		0: return SUCCESSFUL_SAVE;
		1: print "[This game requires an interpreter with undo support.]^"; return FAILURE_TO_SAVE;
		-1: return SUCCESSFUL_RESTORE;
	}
];

! consider a rule, protect its result, and restore the state saved by Hypo_Start
[ Restore_Undo_State rv;
	@restoreundo rv;	! never returns if successful
	print "[What happened to my undo state? --hypo]^";
];

-)

Book 3 - Actions - Not for release (in place of Book 3 - Actions - Not for release in Object Response Tests by Juhana Leinonen)

Object-analyzing is an action applying to one visible thing.

Understand "analyze [something]" as object-analyzing.
Understand "analyse [something]" as object-analyzing.


Carry out object-analyzing (this is the go through all analyzing rules rule):
	repeat with x running from 1 to the number of rows in the table of analyzing actions:
		if successfully saved undo state:
			follow the testing rule in row x of the table of analyzing actions;
			restore undo state;

		[if the result of saving undo state is:
			-- successful save: follow the testing rule in row x of the table of analyzing actions;
			-- successful restore: next;
			-- failure to save: stop the action;]

All-encompassing analyzing is an action applying to nothing.

Carry out all-encompassing analyzing (this is the analyze everything in the location rule):
	repeat with x running through things enclosed by the location of the test-actor:
		if the test-actor can see x:
			try object-analyzing x.

Understand "analyze all" as all-encompassing analyzing.


Test-verb-trying is an action applying to one topic.

Understand "try [text]" as test-verb-trying.


Check test-verb-trying (this is the unknown verb test label rule):
	if the topic understood is not a topic listed in the Table of analyzing actions:
		say "Unknown verb test." instead.

Carry out test-verb-trying (this is the repeat an action with all objects rule):
	if the topic understood is a topic listed in the Table of analyzing actions:
		repeat with x running through things enclosed by the location of the test-actor:
			if the test-actor can see x:
				change the noun to x;
			if successfully saved undo state:
				follow the testing rule entry;
				restore undo state;

Test-actor changing is an action out of world applying to one visible thing.

Understand "actor is [any person]" as test-actor changing.

Carry out test-actor changing (this is the change testing actor rule):
	change test-actor to the noun;
	say "Object Response Tests now uses [the noun] as the actor."



Hypothetical Object Response Tests ends here.[/code][/spoiler]

I think I'll create some mode settings to allow the player to choose between ORT's default behavior, undo for individual action tests, and undo for entire tests. Any suggestions for naming the commands?

Maybe:

> autoundo off
> autoundo actions
> autoundo turns

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4440&start=20#p32586
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Combat System problem.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-29 11:59:30

Can you just check whether the noun is the player before removing the noun from play? Something like this, in the appropriate rules:

[code]If the noun is dead:
    if the noun is the player:
       say "[The actor attacks you with [the second noun], killing you.";
       end the game in death;
    otherwise:
       remove the noun from play.[/code]

(I've typed this in, so you'll have to take care of the indentation by hand.)

Your Check rule isn't doing what you want because it doesn't run until the next time that someone tries attacking the dead player. What happens is that when you try the action, the Check rules run, then the Carry Out rules (if the action hasn't been stopped). So the Check rule won't run again in the middle of the Carry Out rule. If you want to have something happen in the middle of the Carry Out rule, you have to do it there.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4487&start=0#p32587
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How do I get an integer off the command line?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-29 12:38:11

Hey, I got this one!

toInteger() is my new friend...


C.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4434&start=10#p32588
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Zipping Ahead N Turns?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-29 12:46:16

You're right; setScriptFile starts working the next time input is requested, and hands control back to the keyboard when it runs out of input to process.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4463&start=0#p32589
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Why I Hate Goblins Demo
User: punkasaurus / DateTime: 2012-02-29 12:55:03

[quote="gravel"]So it's definitely a solid start.  In general, I think it's a good idea to reduce the number of elements in play that don't have anything to do with the player: having so many objects in the first room that don't matter is kind of distracting.  But this is a style thing, so take it for what it's worth.  

As you'll see from my attempts to find the key, a generous parser is much appreciated - it was pretty frustrating because I *knew* where the key was, but not what command to enter to make the game respond.  It's worse when you don't know what to do - I have no idea if I was on the right track in the second room, because nothing seemed to produce anything but the default response.

Then the game crashed, so I didn't restart to see if I could avoid the place I got stuck.[/quote]

I'm currently working on more options for [spoiler]moving the welcome mat[/spoiler], including just taking it with you.

Also, I added an event so that if you try to enter when the door is locked/closed it won't tell you there's no route. It will tell you the door is locked/closed.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4463&start=0#p32590
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Why I Hate Goblins Demo
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-29 13:07:15

The file appears to be an .exe -- can you release the ADRIFT story file so I can run it with SCARE? (Will it run with SCARE in the latest version?)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4463&start=0#p32591
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Why I Hate Goblins Demo
User: punkasaurus / DateTime: 2012-02-29 13:36:23

[quote="matt w"]The file appears to be an .exe -- can you release the ADRIFT story file so I can run it with SCARE? (Will it run with SCARE in the latest version?)[/quote]
If you mean the blorb file, here you go:

[attachment=0]Why I Hate Goblins (Demo 2).rar[/attachment]

I've taken into account a lot of comments I've gotten about things that were confusing to people or didn't work properly. I'm also expanding it a bit. Hopefully, everything in the first area (the stuff that existed when I released the demo last night) works completely now.

If you go into some areas with the lit lantern instead of the torch, it may act like you have the torch. This won't be too hard to fix.

Edit: I don't know if the latest version will run with SCARE. Please let me know once you try it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4459&start=10#p32592
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hypothetical Object Response Tests?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-29 13:36:42

Done. (well, not finished, but implemented...)

<a class="postlink" href="http://eyeballsun.org/i/Autoundo%20for%20Object%20Response%20Tests.i7x">http://eyeballsun.org/i/Autoundo%20for% ... 0Tests.i7x</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4463&start=0#p32593
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Why I Hate Goblins Demo
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-29 13:43:52

I keep getting an error when I try to open it with Gargoyle 2011.1, sorry. I think I might only be able to play ADRIFT 5 games online, which won't be any good for testing purposes, I guess.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4488&start=0#p32594
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Adding a Scratch Message to a Room
User: climbingstars / DateTime: 2012-02-29 13:48:24

You could also try this.

[code]A room has some indexed text called the message.

The Testing Room is a Room. The description of the testing room is "This is the description of the room[if the message of the location is not empty].[paragraph break]Someone has scratched '[message of the testing room]' on the floor here[end if].".

The gauntlet is in the testing room.

Scratching is an action applying to one topic. Understand "Scratch [text]" as scratching.

Check scratching:
if the player is not carrying the gauntlet, say "Your fingernails have recently been chewed, so you make no mark on the floor." instead.

Carry out scratching:
now the message of the location is topic understood.

Report scratching:
say "You scratch '[topic understood]' on the floor.".

Test me with "scratch something / take gauntlet / scratch something / l".[/code]

Which is simpler and easier to understand than adding a printing the locale description of a room rule, especially for those new to inform 7.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4463&start=0#p32595
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Why I Hate Goblins Demo
User: punkasaurus / DateTime: 2012-02-29 13:51:10

[quote="matt w"]I keep getting an error when I try to open it with Gargoyle 2011.1, sorry. I think I might only be able to play ADRIFT 5 games online, which won't be any good for testing purposes, I guess.[/quote]
That's alright. I'll be sure to keep you updated on the progress, and I appreciate the willingness to help even if it didn't work out.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=90#p32596
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2012-02-29 13:59:39

[quote="matt w"][quote="thefoxaroo"]
I originally put these in my code to test:
[code]When play begins:
	Try Tom taking the widget;
	Try Tom dropping the watchamacalit.[/code]But I received this error:"[b] Problem.[/b] You wrote 'Try Tom taking the widget'  : but I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with, so I am ignoring this sentence altogether."[/quote]This is the error that you'd get if you write "Try Tom taking the widget." without a "When play begins:" or similar rule preamble, so my guess is that you might have accidentally put a period after "when play begins." 

Punctuation errors can be seriously annoying![/quote]More likely to have been the immediately preceeding line.  I have several statements set up after "When play begins" and they were working fine.  Since they were working and "Try Tom taking" produced a compilation error it's what led me to assume that the command itself was incorrect.  All working now. [emote]:)[/emote]

Felix, found a problem with the code to conceal the tattoo; it's concealing all the body features.  I added a wrist:

[code]The Gym is a room.

A wrist is a kind of thing.  A wrist is part of every person.

Bob is a person. Bob is in the Gym.   Bob wears a shirt.

A tattoo is part of Bob. The description is "It is the symbol of the Sacred Chao."

Rule for deciding the concealed possessions of Bob while Bob is wearing the shirt: if the particular possession is the tattoo, yes.

Instead of examining Bob: if Bob is wearing the shirt, try Bob dropping the shirt; otherwise try Bob wearing the shirt.

After Bob dropping the shirt: say "Bob pulls his shirt off, revealing a curious tattoo."

After Bob wearing the shirt: say "Bob puts his shirt back on."

test me with "x tattoo / x wrist / x Bob / x tattoo / x wrist / l / x Bob "[/code]

Result:
[code]>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] x tattoo
You can't see any such thing.

>[2] x wrist
You see nothing special about your wrist.

>[3] x bob
Bob pulls his shirt off, revealing a curious tattoo.

>[4] x tattoo
It is the symbol of the Sacred Chao.

>[5] x wrist
Which do you mean, your wrist or Bob's wrist?

>[6] l
The Void
You can see a shirt and Bob here.

>[7] x bob
(Bob first taking the shirt)
Bob puts his shirt back on.[/code]Puzzling.  The statement references the tattoo specifically, so it shouldn't be covering the wrist as well.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4489&start=0#p32597
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: hint request - anchorhead
User: koraq / DateTime: 2012-02-29 13:59:52

I have just talked to the bum, showed him the skull and he wants an amulet to part with the key. I have no idea what they is for, but I think I need it.

Can I get some kind of hint to where I find the amulet he craves?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=320#p32598
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-02-29 14:03:28

Thanks for the encouragement. I'm afraid it'll be a while before I'm ready for that project, though - first I need to digitize them from the original audicassettes...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3159&start=0#p32599
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Announcing Spring Thing 2012
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-29 14:04:25

[quote="sgreig"]Is the competition still happening? I've sent Greg a couple of emails with my intent to enter but haven't gotten a response yet, and I'm starting to wonder what's going on because the deadline is in a couple of days...[/quote]
He sometimes takes a few days to respond, but I'm pretty sure the contest is still happening, because he sent me an email confirming that he had received my $7 check.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=320#p32600
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-29 14:06:23

[quote="capmikee"]I love to see how many musicians are into IF. Your interest in retro computing makes me want to post some of the music I made on Atari 800 and C64 back in the day...[/quote]
That might be an interesting thread in itself. I'm certainly among the musicians.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=90#p32601
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-29 14:07:09

Slap an "otherwise no" on the end of the rule for deciding concealed possessions and it seems to work. That doesn't seem to be the documented behavior, but I guess you always need the "otherwise no."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=320#p32602
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-29 14:14:50

You know, in my iPhone I have Martin Galway's original C64 soundtrack of Ye Ar Kung Fu. It's a SID Version of Les Chants Magnetiques by Jarre called Magnetic Fields IV. A masterpiece.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4456&start=0#p32603
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Development Teams
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-29 14:19:27

I think one possible factor is that, in IF, there tends to be just one story, which goes just one way or a few variants of just one way.

With other kinds of computer games, there's often room for multiple storylines, side quests, distinct "levels" with their own character, and so on. More room for a multitude of authorial voices.

I don't think it's the main or deciding factor, but it might be somewhere in the mix.

Personally I'd love a texty game with a real sense of multiple storylines to explore ... and I think a mult-author approach to such a thing would be groovy, provided someone could stand at the middle and herd the cats. I'm no cat-herder myself, but I'd be a willing member of the miaowing herd.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=330#p32604
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-29 14:40:33

[quote="Jamespking"]You know, in my iPhone I have Martin Galway's original C64 soundtrack of Ye Ar Kung Fu. It's a SID Version of Les Chants Magnetiques by Jarre called Magnetic Fields IV. A masterpiece.[/quote]
Trying to make anything that would qualify as a masterpiece using the SID chip would be like performing brain surgery with a monkey wrench, a bandsaw, and a ball-peen hammer. That is to say, it may actually be possible ... but why would you want to try it? Other than to inflict cognitive damage on your listeners, I suppose.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2265&start=90#p32605
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Foxaroo project #1: TARDIS Adrift
User: thefoxaroo / DateTime: 2012-02-29 14:41:09

Worked!  Thanks matt w. [emote]:)[/emote]

....aaaand onto my next set of challenges.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4217&start=20#p32606
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Adverbs
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-02-29 14:59:53

A while ago I had thought of introducing adverbs too, but (initially?) only "weakly" and "strongly", although the actual words might be manifold.  They would have several game-wide effects.

[1] Setting the grain - the weaker the action, the more detailed control one has.
> open the door
A hidden device explodes.  You are dead.
> undo
Portal
> circumspectly open the door
You open the door a tad, then feel something catch.

[2] Disturbance - more light, sound, smell, et cetera is produced, so effects reach farther and last longer.
> loudly greet Mary.
Her father comes out of the study, "Mary, there you are!".

[3] Speed - strong actions are faster, and give less possibility for observation.
> quickly go to the station
Panting and out of breath, you just manage to catch the train.
> undo
Town square
> slowly go to the station.
On your way you observe that the suit is no longer in the tailor's window.  By the time you arrive at the station all you see of the train is a distant smoke column.

The game effects can be quite varied.  Running after a thief may mean you can't find your way back; your opponent may be only hurt or dead and unable to furnish important information; stomping around may scare the snakes in the grass - but running may make you step on them.  The idea was that much was done through simulation rather than explicit coding.  The snakes flee when there is too much noise, so the player may come up with another way to scare them.  The game is played in small steps, but normal steps perform several of the small ones, and large ones again several normal ones (under author control).  Output has a level, so that with bigger actions only higher-level output shows.  Et cetera.

Oh, and yes - languages being rich, most or all of this can be done with special verbs - and would be, by native speakers.  But not all players are native speakers of the language the game uses, and having "much" or "little" as general modifiers makes playing much easier for them - no more "hunt the verb in the dictionary".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4460&start=0#p32607
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table entries that result in a change or action?
User: thecustodian / DateTime: 2012-02-29 16:37:58

Oooh!  This actually is directly related to my next question. Can I threadjack? [emote]:-)[/emote]    I'm trying to use a table to determine the result of an action as well.  In my case, I'm trying to have a microwave oven that, when used on various objects, performs various actions (basically, it sets properties on each).  What I'm confused about is how to pass 'the noun' through from the microwaving activity to the activity triggered by the table.  Here's my code:

[code]
[microwaving]
Microwaving is an action applying to one thing.
Understand "microwave [something]" as microwaving.
Understand "cook [something]" as microwaving.
Understand "heat [something]" as microwaving.
Understand "reheat [something]" as microwaving.

Check microwaving:
	Unless the microwave oven is in the location, say "How do you propose to do that?" instead;
	Unless the microwave is empty:
		Unless the noun is in the microwave, say "There's no room in the microwave." instead.
	
Carry out microwaving:
	unless the noun is in the microwave oven:
		try opening the microwave oven;
		try inserting the noun into the microwave oven;
		try closing the microwave oven;
	say "The oven hums loudly for a few moments, then [italic type]BING![roman type] It stops."

After microwaving:
	repeat through Table of Microwaving:
		if the noun is item entry:
			try result entry on the noun;
			rule succeeds;
	say "DONE".


Table of Microwaving
item	result	description
coffee	Heating	"The coffee is now steaming slightly."


[Microwave result actions]
[heating]
Heating is an action applying to one thing.

Carry out heating:
	now the noun is hot;
	say "Now [the noun] is hot!";
[/code]
...so in my example, I want to try carrying out the 'heating' action if it's appropriate for the object (in my example, coffee).  I have multiple things that might be heated, so I'd like to use a single action for them.  The line that doesn't work is:
[code]
try result entry on the noun;
[/code]

Do I have my syntax wrong? Is that sequence even possible?  If so how? I might have a bunch of different items that share the 'heating'  action, so I can't just hardcode what gets heated into the 'heating' action (I'd have to write a bunch of different, specific heating actions for each item).

(or, of course, am I just going about this whole microwave thing wrong... [emote]:-)[/emote]  
 
Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3984&start=0#p32608
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for collaborator to learn inform 7
User: koo5 / DateTime: 2012-02-29 16:48:57

bump.

Whats everyone been doing? i feel i need something real and if-ish to work on to internalize my shallow i7 knowledge...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4456&start=0#p32609
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Development Teams
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-29 16:51:43

[quote="Ghalev"] provided someone could stand at the middle and herd the cats. I'm no cat-herder myself, but I'd be a willing member of the miaowing herd.[/quote]
That's one major problem. Larger-scale collaboration would require a lead dev with the established community respect to draw in a talented team, the management skills to keep them committed and productive (on a wholly voluntary basis), the will to impose a coherent vision on a bunch of unruly creatives, the design skills to come up with an appealing and workable concept, and the technical skills to do as much or more actual work than anybody on the team (because this is how volunteer projects inevitably turn out).

Someone that skilled a) is rare, b) has the ability to write more modest games on their own, with considerably less hassle, and c) probably has a demanding day job.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3159&start=0#p32610
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Announcing Spring Thing 2012
User: sgreig / DateTime: 2012-02-29 17:40:45

Ok, thanks for the heads up guys. I can sometimes get a little impatient when I'm really excited about something.  [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4434&start=10#p32611
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Zipping Ahead N Turns?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-29 17:43:44

Meantime, is there a way to make something *both* a LiteralAction *and* a SystemAction?

In other words, it seems one might use multiple inheritance, but the trick there is that these use method syntax.  It's DefineLiteralAction(whatever) or DefineSystemAction(whatever).  I can't think of a way to do both.


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=330#p32612
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-02-29 17:43:48

[quote="Jim Aikin"][quote="Jamespking"]You know, in my iPhone I have Martin Galway's original C64 soundtrack of Ye Ar Kung Fu. It's a SID Version of Les Chants Magnetiques by Jarre called Magnetic Fields IV. A masterpiece.[/quote]
Trying to make anything that would qualify as a masterpiece using the SID chip would be like performing brain surgery with a monkey wrench, a bandsaw, and a ball-peen hammer. That is to say, it may actually be possible ... but why would you want to try it? Other than to inflict cognitive damage on your listeners, I suppose.[/quote]
Well, he tried, and SUCCEEDED, because that's what he had at the time. You can't make music for the C64 with technology 20 years in the future.
I think hearing those tunes gives me the same vibes as listening to Bruce Springsteen. Nostalgia... [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4490&start=0#p32613
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Mutant Pirates Shared Setting
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-02-29 17:54:59

Ahoy! Do you like the idea of swashbuckling pirates with mutant powers?

Would you like to write a work of interactive fiction that takes place in the same shared setting as others?

Plague victims have been quarantined on an abandoned penal colony island in the Americas. Those that the plague doesn't kill are rendered bizarrely mutated, the mutations manifesting in strange physical abnormalities and otherworldly powers. It's a world plundersome with story potential!

It'll be the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC_Universe]Comic Book[/url] [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvel_Universe]Universe[/url], [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thieves'_World]Thieves' World[/url] or [url=http://www.realityonthenorm.info/]Reality-on-the-Norm[/url] of the IF World. Are ye with us, matey?

I've created a [url=https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lgJuRL_N1m9LF-Ba-oIpSa91SGDZT7Vpb4045CmCmBw/edit]shared design document[/url] that you can all edit. I've put up a bunch of categories and ideas to start us off. Let's make this [url=https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lgJuRL_N1m9LF-Ba-oIpSa91SGDZT7Vpb4045CmCmBw/edit]happen[/url]!

The aim is to flesh out a setting and some shared characters, in order to bring out the first anthology of games some time in 2012. Even if you don't intend to write a game, setting ideas are more than welcome!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=130#p32614
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: punkasaurus / DateTime: 2012-02-29 17:57:52

As far as the game vs. literature thing...

Even in the case of CYOA, some may be written in such a way that the reader feels like s/he is trying to "win" by having the protagonist achieve his or her goals, and others may be told like stories that you can read over and over again, and see how it might turn out.

The former would be more like a game, and the latter would be more like literature.

Just like IF where you type things in, though, the two can be blurred, and what one person goes through with the goal of achieving a certain end, another person could go through thinking "well, this would be an interesting thing to do."

I think it's more the term "interactive fiction" is too vague. CYOA is interactive fiction, but it's not generally what most of us mean when we say interactive fiction. The term "text adventure" could be used, but that could apply to CYOA games as well. There isn't a widely-used term that refers only to electronic interactive fiction games where commands are typed in. If there were, then I think the XYZZYs would specifically be listed as being for that type of interactive fiction.

There should be CYOA competitions, but I don't see CYOA as similar enough to other IF to be fairly compared. The difference between the way the two are played seems drastic enough that personal preference could play a huge part in a lot of peoples' decisions without them realizing it. I would hate to see a parser IF game [i]or[/i] a CYOA game that deserved to win, fail to do so because it's competing against what something too different.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4434&start=20#p32615
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Zipping Ahead N Turns?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-29 18:04:38

For your purposes, it's probably enough to add this property to your DefineLiteralAction:

[code]
actionTime = 0
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4487&start=0#p32616
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How do I get an integer off the command line?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-29 18:10:20

However, I'll trade that one off for this one--

(I know, I'm always asking questions.  BUT, I'm making progress!)


[code]VerbRule(Zip)
     'zip' singleLiteral
     : ZipAction
     verbPhrase = 'zip/zipping (HowManyTurns)'
[/code];

How do I do this to get proper spaces in between words WITHOUT having them scrambled in some peculiar fashion?

[quote]>zip
HowManyTurns do you want to zip? [/quote]

--isn't terrible.  The alternatives are...

[quote]>zip
How do you want to zip many turns? 
[/quote]
...with...

[code]     verbPhrase = 'zip/zipping (many turns how)'
[/code]

Or

[quote]>zip
How do you want to zip? 
[/quote]

..with..

[code]     verbPhrase = 'zip/zipping (how) (many turns)'[/code]

Or

[quote]>zip
Many do you want to zip turns how? [/quote]

..with..

[code]     verbPhrase = 'zip/zipping (turns how many)'[/code]

Or

[quote]>zip
How do you want to zip turns many? 
[/quote]

..with..

[code]     verbPhrase = 'zip/zipping turns (many how)'[/code]

Or other even less likely things.

In general the problem is that TADS wants to say

THREE do you want to verb ONE TWO?

...you can tinker with the order, some, but you can't, that I've seen, get to a

WORD WORD WORD do you want to verb?

--whether it's ONE TWO THREE, THREE TWO ONE, or any other sequence.

Is there some other format I might use?  Is it possible to start fresh with a string, 'How many turns do you want to zip?' that I can have TADS ask?


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4456&start=0#p32617
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Development Teams
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-29 18:29:51

[quote="Ghalev"]I think one possible factor is that, in IF, there tends to be just one story, which goes just one way or a few variants of just one way.

With other kinds of computer games, there's often room for multiple storylines, side quests, distinct "levels" with their own character, and so on. More room for a multitude of authorial voices.[/quote]

This seems a little chicken-and-eggy to me -- isn't part of the reason that IF games don't have multiple storylines, side quests, etc., that one hobbyist author working alone usually doesn't have time to create all of that stuff? Or at least that's the feeling I get when I contemplate writing something with multiple storylines etc.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4434&start=20#p32618
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Zipping Ahead N Turns?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-29 18:33:21

There's no effect.

With no change in the for loop, which counts up from two...

[code]DefineLiteralAction(Zip)
     actionTime = 0
     execAction()
     {
        Z_ing.n = toInteger(getLiteral());
        mainReport('You are <b>zipping</b> ahead <b>' + Z_ing.n 
                   + ' turns</b>. \nTime passes...');
        Z_ing.waitMany;
     }
;
[/code]

produces

[quote]>zip
How do you want to zip turns many? 

>4
You are zipping ahead 4 turns. 
Time passes...

>z
Time passes... 

The guard wants to play RPS with the scientist, but the scientist is busy. 

>z
Time passes... 

The janitor and the guard decide to play a quick game of RPS. The janitor throws rock! The guard throws scissors! The janitor wins! 

>z
Time passes... 

>_[/quote]


Whereas

[code]     //actionTime = 0
[/code]

produces

[quote]>zip
How do you want to zip turns many? 

>4
You are zipping ahead 4 turns. 
Time passes...

The guard wants to play RPS with the scientist, but the scientist is busy. 

>z
Time passes... 

The janitor and the guard decide to play a quick game of RPS. The janitor throws rock! The guard throws scissors! The janitor wins! 

>z
Time passes... 

>z
Time passes... 

>_[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4487&start=0#p32619
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How do I get an integer off the command line?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-29 18:34:41

I don't know the best way, but this seems to work.

[code]
DefineLiteralAction(Zip)
	whatObj(which) {
		return 'how many turns';
	}
	execAction() {
		// ...
	}
	actionTime = 0
;

VerbRule(Zip)
	'zip' singleLiteral
	:ZipAction
	verbPhrase = 'zip/zipping (what)'
;
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4434&start=20#p32620
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Zipping Ahead N Turns?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-02-29 18:46:35

The point isn't to change the number of zipped turns, it's to make it so that >zip N only increments the turn counter by N, not N+1 (counting the zip command as an actual turn rather than a meta command.)

You're seeing a bug where you count from 2 to N rather than from 1 to N, so even though you tell the game to wait 4 turns, it only waits 3.

You're also printing the "Time passes" message manually, which of course is going to make it appear as if another turn has passed.

If you still have the default status bar in place, the second digit shows the current turn counter.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4487&start=0#p32621
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How do I get an integer off the command line?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-29 18:51:39

Yes, that works!

Thanks again, Ben!


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4434&start=20#p32622
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Zipping Ahead N Turns?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-29 19:02:15

Ben,

You're right.  With the actionTime set to zero and the for loop initialized at 1, the output is much cleaner, the NPCs aren't able to sneak in an extra move, and the Turn counter synchs.

Thanks, man!


Conrad.

[quote]>zip
How many turns do you want to zip? 

>4
You are zipping ahead 4 turns.

>z
Time passes... 

The guard wants to play RPS with the scientist, but the scientist is busy. 

>z
Time passes... 

The janitor and the guard decide to play a quick game of RPS. The janitor throws rock! The guard throws scissors! The janitor wins! 

>z
Time passes... 

>z
Time passes... 

>_[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4487&start=0#p32623
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How do I get an integer off the command line?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-29 19:12:06

You should probably use singleNumber instead of singleLiteral. You can then get the value as an integer with numMatch.getval(). As a bonus, this allows stuff like:

[code]
>zap seven turns
[/code]

Which is quite l33t [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

Anyway, I didn't look at your whole attempt (scripted waiting and all that), but I think what you want here is to extend WaitAction with a new form that also takes a number. So that in addition to the default form:

[code]
>Z [or WAIT]
Time passes...
[/code]

You will also have:

[code]
>Z 10 [or WAIT 10]
10 turns worth of time pass...
[/code]

Something like:

[code]
DefineIAction(WaitTurns)
     execAction()
     {
        "<<numMatch.getval()>> turns worth of time pass... ";
        // ...
     }
;

VerbRule(WaitTurns)
     ('wait' | 'z') singleNumber ( | 'turn' | 'turns')
     : WaitTurnsAction
     verbPhrase = 'wait/waiting (a number of turns)'
;
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4463&start=0#p32624
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Why I Hate Goblins Demo
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2012-02-29 19:16:53

You should be able to save the game as a .taf, which should be able to be played via Gargoyle/Spatterlight.  You might want to post this on the ADRIFT Adventures page under the "Demos" category and solicit some feedback from that forum, as well.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4463&start=0#p32625
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Why I Hate Goblins Demo
User: punkasaurus / DateTime: 2012-02-29 19:23:28

Done
[attachment=0]Why I Hate Goblins.rar[/attachment]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3433&start=10#p32626
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview: Jacek does Jacek
User: punkasaurus / DateTime: 2012-02-29 19:32:11

Regardless of what I may or may not think of Jacek, I thought the first post in [i]this specific thread[/i] was pretty amusing.

Though the line about sincerity was previously used in an episode of Johnny Bravo.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4463&start=10#p32627
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Why I Hate Goblins Demo
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-29 20:06:06

Gargoyle and Spatterlight are still both giving me this:

[quote]Glk SCARE Error

Unable to load an Adrift game from the requested file.
[/quote]

It might be something about how I'm downloading or expanding it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4217&start=20#p32628
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Adverbs
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-29 20:17:49

[quote="Biep"]Oh, and yes - languages being rich, most or all of this can be done with special verbs - and would be, by native speakers.  But not all players are native speakers of the language the game uses, and having "much" or "little" as general modifiers makes playing much easier for them - no more "hunt the verb in the dictionary".[/quote]
Now I'm thinking of the common practice in pidgins of using [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduplication]reduplication[/url] for emphasis.
[quote]
>X TREE
One of an avenue of shade-trees running between river and lane.
>XX TREE
The trunk rises to five times your height before branching into a broad, downsweeping crown. Its general shape and the texture of its bark remind you of an oak, but the leaves are different: fat spearheads without distinct veins. At a glance, it differs in no obvious way from any of its neighbours.
>XXX TREE
The trunk is bigger than you can stretch your arms around, by about a hand's breadth. The buttresses of its base have begun to buckle up the paving slabs. Fluffy catkins are scattered about its base, but most of them are wilted and stomped by feet, and none remain on the limbs. Peering up through layers of canopy, you can make out fragments of some long-decayed structure: a shred of rope, a gap-toothed set of rungs, a mossy two-by-four slumped into a crook.
[/quote]
(this concept is in no way suggested to be an even slightly good idea)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4460&start=0#p32629
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table entries that result in a change or action?
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-02-29 20:31:37

Three things.  First, to edit a stored action you need [code]Include Editable Stored Actions by Ron Newcomb.[/code]
Once you have that, you can write[code]After microwaving:
	repeat through Table of Microwaving:
		if the noun is item entry:
			let the attempt be the result entry;
			now the noun part of the attempt is the noun;
			try the attempt;
	say "DONE."[/code]
But you'll also need to alter the actor part of the attempt or else to change your action declaration to [code]Heating is an action applying to one visible thing.[/code] so that the player can heat the coffee despite not being able to reach it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4491&start=0#p32630
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Need help!!!!
User: Argothos / DateTime: 2012-02-29 20:41:31

Hello! I downloaded zmpp on to my nook and i played a few games, then decided that these interactive fiction games are super fun!!! I decided that i want to create my own interactive fiction games. Im a good writer (not amazingly good, but enough) but gaming is as alien to me as the insides of black holes are to scientists. I really want to create these games though, so cananyone teach me how to program these things (if it even takes programming...).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4491&start=0#p32631
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Need help!!!!
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-02-29 21:09:06

[quote="Argothos"]Hello! I downloaded zmpp on to my nook and i played a few games, then decided that these interactive fiction games are super fun!!! I decided that i want to create my own interactive fiction games. Im a good writer (not amazingly good, but enough) but gaming is as alien to me as the insides of black holes are to scientists. I really want to create these games though, so cananyone teach me how to program these things (if it even takes programming...).[/quote]
The most popular platform for creating interactive fiction is [url=http://inform7.com/]Inform 7[/url]. I7 uses a natural-language code system, so in some respects it's easier to learn, but it still requires programming-type skills. I7 has built-in documentation that can be used to teach yourself, but not everybody likes it; there are alternative manuals available too.

If you prefer a more traditional programming style, where code looks like code, consider Inform 6, [url=http://www.tads.org/]TADS[/url] or [url=http://www.generalcoffee.com/hugo/gethugo.html]Hugo[/url].

Rather less flexible and powerful, but more easy for non-programmers to learn, are [url=http://www.adrift.org.uk/]Adrift[/url] and [url=http://www.textadventures.co.uk/quest/]Quest[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4460&start=0#p32632
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table entries that result in a change or action?
User: thecustodian / DateTime: 2012-02-29 21:10:16

Brilliant.  Works a treat, thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4460&start=0#p32633
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table entries that result in a change or action?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-02-29 21:14:32

It seems to me that instead of using Editable Stored Actions you might just want to put the whole stored action in the table column. So instead of having the result entry for coffee be "heating" (or "the heating action"), just make it "the action of heating the coffee"; since you'll only be in that row when the noun is the coffee, you don't lose any flexibility by coding "the coffee" into the row. (In fact, you might gain a bit of flexibility, since you can make it so that if you microwave the envelope the result is "the action of melting the seal" which is part of the envelope, if that's useful.) 

What EmacsUser says about the scope still holds, though, I think. If I'm not mistaken, when you try the stored action, what's happening is that the game effectively has the player try the stored action, which might lead to issues. One workaround (as EmacsU suggests) is to redirect these actions so that a virtual actor inside the microwave does them, and make sure the rules for the virtual actor work the way you want the actions to work. You can do this with stored actions too; if the actor is "the ghost," the stored action would be something like "the action of the ghost trying heating the coffee."

Stored actions are in 10.20 of the documentation, by the way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4487&start=0#p32634
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How do I get an integer off the command line?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-02-29 21:16:55

Yeah...  I was considering something like that, as being better in every way, but dreaded tinkering with basic TADS verbs at that level.

However, I will be brave and face it (especially since you seem to've done all the work).  But I'll look to it later.

I want to get some momentum going along other lines right now, rather than nicening this up beyond functionality.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4490&start=0#p32635
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Mutant Pirates Shared Setting
User: George / DateTime: 2012-02-29 21:45:27

What if instead of a penal colony it was an actual port town, along the lines of [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortuga_(Haiti)]Tortuga[/url]? That might open up the story possibilities a bit.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4487&start=0#p32636
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How do I get an integer off the command line?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-02-29 22:26:06

[quote="conradcook"]Yeah...  I was considering something like that, as being better in every way, but dreaded tinkering with basic TADS verbs at that level.[/quote]
Whenever you define new grammar, you're not tinkering with an existing action, you're creating an entirely new action. For instance:
[code]DefineTAction(WaitFor);
VerbRule(WaitFor)
    ('wait' | 'z') 'for' singleDobj
    : WaitForAction
    verbPhrase = 'wait/waiting (for what)'
;[/code]
This doesn't affect the library's existing Wait action in any way. At least, I hope it doesn't, because I do this sort of thing a fair amount, and I've never noticed any untoward side effects.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4487&start=0#p32637
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How do I get an integer off the command line?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-02-29 22:32:27

[quote="Jim Aikin"]This doesn't affect the library's existing Wait action in any way. At least, I hope it doesn't, because I do this sort of thing a fair amount, and I've never noticed any untoward side effects.[/quote]
That's correct. It's a totally new Action object. The worst thing that can happen is a conflicting verb rule, but that's rather easy to spot.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4460&start=0#p32638
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table entries that result in a change or action?
User: Phrog / DateTime: 2012-02-29 22:37:35

Thanks everyone. I encourage thread-jacking, since I'm learning too. Pretty nifty. 

[quote][code]Include Editable Stored Actions by Ron Newcomb.[/code][/quote]
'nother n00b question: I thought you needed to download extensions. Are those built-in? I noticed something that said "installed extensions" in the documentation.

I would still like to know how to allow players to speak to people without having to type: "[person's name], blah blah blah." "Ex. 9 - Sybil 2" offers one way, but is there a way to do it if you don't want to create new actions for each reply? I'm looking all over the place with no results. I would be ever-so-grateful if someone has an answer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4490&start=0#p32639
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Mutant Pirates Shared Setting
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-29 23:50:28

No interest at all in writing a game in such a setting, but if at least one game comes to pass, I'd be willing to donate some time to some cartography to help flesh out the feelies.

Possibly Relevant Examples of my Work:
<a class="postlink" href="http://temphis.deviantart.com/art/Grandma-August-Draft-172029048?q=gallery%3Atemphis%2F21752270&qo=12">http://temphis.deviantart.com/art/Grand ... 2270&qo=12</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://temphis.deviantart.com/art/Poison-Pepper-19179781?q=gallery%3Atemphis%2F21752270&qo=18">http://temphis.deviantart.com/art/Poiso ... 2270&qo=18</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://temphis.deviantart.com/art/Dreed-Sea-Witches-19239597?q=gallery%3Atemphis%2F21752270&qo=22">http://temphis.deviantart.com/art/Dreed ... 2270&qo=22</a>

(Note: some are wallpapers and extra-dark on the left side to allow for icons)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4490&start=0#p32640
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Mutant Pirates Shared Setting
User: George / DateTime: 2012-02-29 23:54:09

I love those!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=130#p32641
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-29 23:54:23

[quote="punkasaurus"]The former would be more like a game, and the latter would be more like literature.[/quote]

Heh. I'm writing one of the latter right now, and if I do my job right, it will be [i]less [/i]like literature than just about anything mankind has yet made out of words [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4456&start=0#p32642
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Development Teams
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-02-29 23:59:58

[quote="matt w"][quote="Ghalev"]I think one possible factor is that, in IF, there tends to be just one story, which goes just one way or a few variants of just one way.

With other kinds of computer games, there's often room for multiple storylines, side quests, distinct "levels" with their own character, and so on. More room for a multitude of authorial voices.[/quote]

This seems a little chicken-and-eggy to me -- isn't part of the reason that IF games don't have multiple storylines, side quests, etc., that one hobbyist author working alone usually doesn't have time to create all of that stuff? Or at least that's the feeling I get when I contemplate writing something with multiple storylines etc.[/quote]

I think it's an "adventure game" thing. It was true even in the commercial years of text adventures, and it was then true of graphical adventure games in the 90s ... and in recent years, with the return of graphical adventures (the NDS has featured many excellent new ones), it remains true in modern games, modern games with large teams on their credits list.

But again, I'd be happy to be part of an exception [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4460&start=0#p32643
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table entries that result in a change or action?
User: thecustodian / DateTime: 2012-03-01 00:52:19

matt w:  Ooh! I'll try that too!   re:  having players try actions - yeah, I realized that might be an issue, so I'm doing everything from the 'After microwaving' block so the player doesn't have time to get out of the room.  

My current problem is that my table tests fails if I have an example of a kind instead of a unique object.  How can I determine the noun's kind so I can run that thru a different table?

More info:  When I use the above method, but the object in question is one of a kind and not a specifically defined object (i.e. 'a fleeb is a kind of thing. There are 10 fleebs in the backpack.' and the object is a fleeb) the table lookup fails because it says the thing in column 1 doesn't exist.  I'm *guessing* that's because a 'fleeb' is not a 'noun' but a 'kind' - but I don't know how to search for the kind. 

Phrog:  I had to download the extension first and install it, yes.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4488&start=0#p32644
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Adding a Scratch Message to a Room
User: BenChen / DateTime: 2012-03-01 01:49:20

Wow, thanks to everyone who replied!  And so quickly!  I now have it working beautifully, essentially following Skinny Mike's code with an additional check for the gauntlet.

Thanks so much!

One additional question though.  With the additional code (and I was finding this even before with my own very poor code) my project will no longer compile as a z5 file.  It has to be z8.  And yet my project is hardly very large.  The source text is just over 10,000 words, there are 127 rooms and 44 things.  It's not really a problem, but any idea why that happens?

Sincerely,
Ben.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4456&start=0#p32645
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Development Teams
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-03-01 01:56:35

There is a place for works with a single authorial voice. After all, single author novels are still predominant.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=130#p32646
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-03-01 01:59:24

[quote]There isn't a widely-used term that refers only to electronic interactive fiction games where commands are typed in. If there were, then I think the XYZZYs would specifically be listed as being for that type of interactive fiction.[/quote]
There is: Interactive Fiction.

For the XYZZYs the (long term) question is whether the awards should be for Interactive Fiction or interactive fiction. The immediate question is how to solve the problem of popularity voting.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4488&start=0#p32647
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Adding a Scratch Message to a Room
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-03-01 03:04:11

It's normal. The standard library takes almost the entire space allowed for z5, and frankly I'm surprised that you managed to fit 10,000 words to it. The z8 limits are somewhere around 50,000 words.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4490&start=0#p32648
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Mutant Pirates Shared Setting
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-01 03:13:04

Good call George: I'd imagined somewhat of a shanty town, but if it was actually a fairly established pirate port at the point of setting that could allow for more stories, definitely. Actually, looking a Tortuga: the pirates there took a massive blow when sailing under a foreign sail was outlawed in the Caribbean. Perhaps, historically, the pirates would of held out longer if they'd have had mutant powers.

And those maps look fantastic, Ghalev, and such a feely would be super-appropriate to the setting.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4488&start=0#p32649
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Adding a Scratch Message to a Room
User: BenChen / DateTime: 2012-03-01 04:08:30

[quote="Juhana"]It's normal. The standard library takes almost the entire space allowed for z5, and frankly I'm surprised that you managed to fit 10,000 words to it. The z8 limits are somewhere around 50,000 words.[/quote]

Good to know!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=330#p32650
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: scramble / DateTime: 2012-03-01 04:31:28

I actually don't know if I've done this before, so here goes:

My name is Oliver Ullmann, I'm in my late twenties and living near the beautiful Bavarian city of Regensburg, where I am working as a software developer.

In my spare time I try to write IF or make comics. I've just started a webcomic adaptation of "The Duel That Spanned The Ages", which is eating most of my time now. I am also an avid player of board games and Indie RPGs. I wonder how much overlap there is between the Indie RPG-crowd and the IF crowd? I remember Victor Gijsbers published a few Indie RPGs and I noticed Sam Kabo Ashwell was in A Primetime Adventures Group once. 

I also was sort of a hobby musician once, although I cannot play a single instrument. I am more the kind of guy who turns knobs like a monkey and enjoys the resulting noise. So I ended up being the sound designer/technician in all the projects I got involved in. These were a Goth Electro formation, a Noise/Industrial project, and lastly a TripHop band. None of those saw much fame, but if you google well enough, you can find them (consider that a challenge if you're interested [emote];)[/emote])

As you might have already guessed, Happy Music this is not. That's why I only once provided a track to a work of IF, and that would be "Mariel" by Michael Baltes. Disturbing Survival Horror featuring a creepy nurse turned out to be a good fit [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=330#p32651
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: scramble / DateTime: 2012-03-01 06:22:51

Oh, and I've also been at the GET LAMP screening in Munich, where I've had the pleasure of meeting stadgorilla, taleslinger and the ifwizz crew. It was a lot of fun [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4488&start=0#p32652
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Adding a Scratch Message to a Room
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-01 06:23:46

[quote="Juhana"]It's normal. The standard library takes almost the entire space allowed for z5, and frankly I'm surprised that you managed to fit 10,000 words to it. The z8 limits are somewhere around 50,000 words.[/quote]
I don't think counting words is a useful metric; a few assemblies can create a massive number of things and rooms, but requiring a very small source file, for instance.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3890&start=20#p32653
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Beginning in the middle of the action: is it a bad idea?
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-01 07:00:05

[quote="Morley"]I'm wondering: are there any games you've played that effectively begin in the middle of a relatively suspenseful or fast-paced sequence? A timed sequence? A conversation?[/quote]
For an original twist on this, see [b]The Baron[/b].  It definitely starts with a deadly timed sequence in medias res - or maybe I should say in mediam rem, as the game is rather deep (and disturbing), but none of that comes up in the opening sequence.

[b]The Baron[/b] is one of those games that cannot be discussed without spoiling, I think.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=330#p32654
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-01 07:13:53

[quote="scramble"]I am also an avid player of board games and Indie RPGs. I wonder how much overlap there is between the Indie RPG-crowd and the IF crowd? 
[/quote]
It's quite considerable, I'd imagine. My last game was born out of an idea for a diceless postapocalyptic RPG. I play a couple of sessions a week of various games and run a monthly Arthurian steampunk game with ten(!) players, mostly making stuff up on the fly. I know that forum regular Ghalev is S. John Ross a progenitor of the Pokethulhu RPG.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4452&start=0#p32655
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Scott Adams Adventures - What can be learned in 2012?
User: funkstar / DateTime: 2012-03-01 07:32:19

@namekuseijin: Surely, the obvious thing to do in that case is to [i]get angry[/i]?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4489&start=0#p32657
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: hint request - anchorsteam
User: koraq / DateTime: 2012-03-01 08:02:18

Not much action here, apparently...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4452&start=0#p32658
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Scott Adams Adventures - What can be learned in 2012?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-01 08:31:18

Ah, yes, but obvious to whom?

I was never, and would never, be obvious to me.

EDIT - To expand - in such a limited parser, where even simple interactions with items that should be visible fail for sometimes obscure reasons, I would be very, very hard pressed to try such an abstract concept as "getting angry". That's the sort of thing I'd try in Eric the Unready, a game with a stellar parser. It's possible that Adams had the right idea here, but simply not the technology.

Also, design-wise, that's a very cruel first input, when the player doesn't even know what to expect. It also raises the bar for the rest of the game, which I suspect will make the game suffer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4489&start=0#p32680
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: hint request - anchorsteam
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-03-01 09:25:26

Isn't Anchor Steam a beer?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3999&start=20#p32681
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Conditional understanding? E.g. disabling "ask"?
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-01 09:44:58

[quote="Felix"]But what is the point of modelling it that roundabout way? Why not let the PC perform these actions himself/herself in the first place? Why the stunt man?[/quote]
<Trying a rational reconstruction.>
With a background in OO, this may be a reasonable idea to come up with - delegation to an argument is a way to localise code.  "Instead of attacking while in the Cave" sounds as if whenever or wherever one attacks, this will be checked and rejected.  Having a specialised stunt man in the cave with the desired behaviour will be no burden on the program whenever the PC is not in the cave.  Likewise, the woodlands stunt man would know about massaging squirrels, and the computer room one about flipping bits, and outside each of these rooms there would be no impact at all on the game.
Imagine having hundreds of different attacking or poking behaviours in different situations.
Still, in the examples given I should have delegated to the computer or squirrel itself - "poke X" causing a "be-poked"-message to be sent to X, and "poke" polling the objects in scope for likeliness of intent.
I suppose such an approach would be more likely in TADS than in Inform.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4459&start=10#p32682
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hypothetical Object Response Tests?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-01 09:47:27

And I've added a new mode!

Now

> autoundo freeze

will automatically undo the entire turn after [i]every single command[/i] - so you can go to a certain point and try lots of different things from that point, even without using Object Response Tests.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4427&start=0#p32683
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Desks/iPads from Ender's Game
User: teenbat / DateTime: 2012-03-01 10:05:04

[quote="Felix"]You may want to create an action applying to a topic. See the Documentation CH. 16.5 on the text token.
It will look something like this:
[code]Clicking is an action applying to one topic.
Check clicking: say "There is no such option to click."
Understand "click [text]", "click the [text]", "click on [text]", or "click on the [text]" as clicking.
Instead of clicking "trash can": say "You open the trash can."[/code]
Or just make the options parts of the pad and use an ordinary action applying to a thing for clicking them. 

For Ender's hacking, at least, I suppose, an action applying to a topic might be appropriate.[/quote]

Alright, I'll try it out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4459&start=10#p32684
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hypothetical Object Response Tests?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2012-03-01 10:35:51

[quote="capmikee"]And I've added a new mode!

Now

> autoundo freeze

will automatically undo the entire turn after [i]every single command[/i] - so you can go to a certain point and try lots of different things from that point, even without using Object Response Tests.[/quote]

Oooooooh.  Aaaahhhhhh.

No, really, that's pretty awesome.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4452&start=0#p32685
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Scott Adams Adventures - What can be learned in 2012?
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2012-03-01 10:38:23

[quote="Peter Pears"]Ah, yes, but obvious to whom?

I was never, and would never, be obvious to me.

EDIT - To expand - in such a limited parser, where even simple interactions with items that should be visible fail for sometimes obscure reasons, I would be very, very hard pressed to try such an abstract concept as "getting angry". That's the sort of thing I'd try in Eric the Unready, a game with a stellar parser. It's possible that Adams had the right idea here, but simply not the technology.

Also, design-wise, that's a very cruel first input, when the player doesn't even know what to expect. It also raises the bar for the rest of the game, which I suspect will make the game suffer.[/quote]

I think the specific issue here is cultural assumptions, not abstract concepts. For most of the U.S. audience of this game, they would be familiar with the Hulk and how to turn into the Hulk, especially from a very popular TV show from the late 70s and early 80s. I don't know if the TV show was available elsewhere, but I assume that even if it did, it wasn't nearly as popular.

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4452&start=0#p32686
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Scott Adams Adventures - What can be learned in 2012?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-01 10:42:36

I suppose so - "Hulk gets angry" does ring a bell for me, I imagine it'd be a bit of a staple among Hulk fans.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4452&start=10#p32687
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Scott Adams Adventures - What can be learned in 2012?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-01 10:47:01

Agreed with Kevin -- the first thing I thought was "Bruce Banner turns into the Hulk when he gets angry, so I should try typing 'get angry' or 'get mad'." Especially because I figured that this was an early game with a limited parser, where the expected action might not be a simple "verb the visible noun" thing but might be outside the box. The ways of interacting with the world weren't as set in stone then.

However, if you type "get mad" or "get angry" (or maybe just one) you get "How?" If you type "scream" I think it is, which was the first thing I tried, you get "O.K. mad," which seems to be a default message and doesn't do anything. Then I looked up a solution and it turns out that the command is 

[spoiler]BITE LIP[/spoiler]

which, in a nice example of simulation, caused me to turn green and smash something.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4452&start=10#p32688
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Scott Adams Adventures - What can be learned in 2012?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-01 10:55:22

Heh. Funny. We agreed that "get angry", in this case, would be valid and fair (fairer than the infamous baseball-themed puzzle in Zork II, even)...

...and then we find out that the actual input is even more preposterous and impossible to defend, because it involves a non-standard verb, a part of the human body which is not referred to as interactable, and an immediate relationship between anger and pain. While also not recognising valid solutions like "get angry" (I mean, for this instance, it seems to be the obvious solution, even if I would have never gotten it).

Well, yes, we do benefit from years of experience in game design which Mr. Adams didn't. That's probably why Scot Adams have have the reputation that they have, and let's not beat about the bush - they have a pretty bad reputation nowadays.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4514&start=0#p32689
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Identifying problems with RAP (Reactive Agent Planner)
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-01 11:16:07

This is a great little extension that turns NPCs into Terminator-like goal seeking machines.  The nice thing about it is that it's *reactive*, that is, when the environment changes the NPC adapts its goal path accordingly.

A year ago, I'd gotten so far as to get NPCs that would walk around a map along a goal-seeking route.  I was pretty pleased with myself for that one, but also it was clear that the approach I'd used would not be expandable to non-spatial problems.  And anyway it didn't know how to deal with stairs or such.

NPCs need to deal with practical matters, so I'm looking at RAP.  Which is really nice.

However, I notice two problems:

NPCs can easily get stuck in loops, because they don't acknowledge failure.  If you snatch an item away from an NPC just before he takes it, he just keeps trying to take it without realizing it's no longer there:

[quote]Bathroom
A bathroom. Northwest to Kitchen.
There's a small cupboard.

Bob is standing here. 

Bob opens the cupboard, revealing a bronze key. 

>take key
Taken. 

Bob cannot see that. 

>z
Time passes... 

Bob cannot see that. 

[i]and poor Bob just keeps looping[/i][/quote]

The longer version, if you want to see some context:

[rant]RAP TESTBED
Reactive Agent Planner ver. 1.2 testbed
Copyright (C) 1998 by Nate Cull
Tads-3 port and revision/extension (t3RAP) Copyright (c) 2002-2004 by Steve Breslin

Living Room
Living room. South to bedroom. North to kitchen.
Bob and Rupert are standing here. 

>tell bob, put ball on table
You see no tell bob here. 

>bob, put ball on table
Bob leaves to the north. 

>n
Kitchen
Kitchen. South to living room. Southeast to Bathroom.

You see a kitchen table (on which is a big box) here. 

Bob is standing here. 
Bob leaves to the southeast. 

>se
Bathroom
A bathroom. Northwest to Kitchen.
There's a small cupboard.

Bob is standing here. 

Bob opens the cupboard, revealing a bronze key. 

>take key
Taken. 

Bob cannot see that. 

>z
Time passes... 

Bob cannot see that. 

>z
Time passes... 

Bob cannot see that. 

>z
Time passes... 

Bob cannot see that. 

>w
You can’t go that way. The only obvious exit leads northwest, back to the kitchen. 

Bob cannot see that. 

>nw
Kitchen

Kitchen. South to living room. Southeast to Bathroom.

You see a kitchen table (on which is a big box) here. 

>z
Time passes... 

>s
Living Room
Living room. South to bedroom. North to kitchen.

Rupert is standing here. 

>give key to rupert
Rupert does not appear interested. 

>z
Time passes... 

>z
Time passes... 

>z
Time passes... 

>z
Time passes... 

>drop key
Dropped. 

>z
Time passes... 

Bob enters from the north. 

>take key
Taken. 

Bob cannot see that. 

>z
Time passes... 

Bob cannot see that. 

>z
Time passes... 

Bob cannot see that.[/rant]

Now meanwhile there are other tricky bits.  For example:

[quote]>bob, go to rupert
Please try: go to (room).

Bob cannot see that. 

>bob, kiss rupert
Rupert probably wouldn’t like that. 

Bob cannot see that. 

>bob, take rupert
Rupert probably wouldn’t like that. 

>bob, put rupert on table
Rupert probably wouldn’t like that. 

>drop key
Dropped. 

Rupert probably wouldn’t like that. 

>z
Time passes... 

Rupert probably wouldn’t like that. 

>z
Time passes... 

Rupert probably wouldn’t like that. 

>z
Time passes... 

Rupert probably wouldn’t like that. 

>bob, stop
The word “stop” is not necessary in this story. 

(If this was an accidental misspelling, you can correct it by typing OOPS followed by the corrected word now. Any time the story points out an unknown word, you can correct a misspelling using OOPS as your next command.)

>bob, take key
Bob takes the bronze key. 

>z
Time passes... 

>z
Time passes... 

>look
Living Room
Living room. South to bedroom. North to kitchen.

Rupert and Bob are standing here. [/quote]

Ok, so the adoption of a new goal kills entirely an old goal (fine).

But clearly, failure has to be dealt with, in that:

a) The NPC has to be able to acknowledge failure as an outcome and stop doing the same ineffective thing over & over, and

b) Error reporting has to be adjusted so that it makes some kind of sense from the point of view of someone outside the head of the actor who attempted the action.

Also there are a few things that are supposed to be working that I haven't seen work.  NPCs don't give or take objects like they're supposed to.  It seems from the behavior that the problem here is that NPCs can't see player inventory, which defeats their ability to take items from you (and also to give them to you? -- perhaps because the "container" doesn't exist to their eyes?)

Is anyone here conversant with RAP?  Any ideas?


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=330#p32690
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-01 11:24:50

[quote="JoeyJones"][quote="scramble"][..]I wonder how much overlap there is between the Indie RPG-crowd and the IF crowd? 
[/quote]
[...]I know that forum regular Ghalev is S. John Ross a progenitor of the Pokethulhu RPG.[/quote]

Which is not, I hasten to point out, an Indie RPG [emote]:([/emote] Nor is [b][i]Risus [/i][/b]nor [i][b]Encounter Critical.[/b][/i] Nor is any of my work for Steve Jackson Games, Wizards of the Coast, West End Games, Avalon Hill, GoO, LUG, White Wolf, Flying Buffalo, Hero Games and so on even remotely "Indie" in style, substance or intent. The Indie RPG guys are, as near as I can tell, basically nice chaps who are the polar opposites of everything I love about games, gaming, writing, and possibly life.

About half of my RPG work is [i]independent,[/i] but that doesn't make it [i]indie [/i](any more than being a [i]fan [/i]of something makes one a [i]fanatic [/i]for it ... one may be "short" for the other, but they are very different words).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4490&start=0#p32691
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Mutant Pirates Shared Setting
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-01 11:27:47

[quote="JoeyJones"]And those maps look fantastic, Ghalev, and such a feely would be super-appropriate to the setting.[/quote]

Thanks [emote]:)[/emote] And yeah, the idea would be, if this setting takes off, I could make you guys a nice Map of the Game World sort of thing, which could then be referenced and expanded by authors, included with each game, etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4487&start=0#p32692
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: How do I get an integer off the command line?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-01 11:30:57

Oh God....  I just got this code stable....  I need a week of not looking at it before I screw with it any more...


C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4452&start=10#p32693
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Scott Adams Adventures - What can be learned in 2012?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-01 11:58:46

Yeah, I was reading namekuseijin's transcript and I was saying to myself, "Ha ha, it's 'get angry'!" But no.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4490&start=0#p32694
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Mutant Pirates Shared Setting
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-03-01 12:08:42

Ahoy! This sounds great, I'm really curious to see what happens with this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4459&start=10#p32695
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Hypothetical Object Response Tests?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-01 12:15:12

Glad you like it! It was a major headache to figure out how to do it - my head is not good at tracking the stuff that goes on during save/restore operations. But I was so pleased when it finally worked!

Please have a look at it and tell me how it works. I simplified a lot of stuff that I copied from Hypothetical Questions. I don't know if I went too far - it looked like he was doing something with the random number seed and a couple other state variables, and I wasn't sure what the purpose was. If I need to put those lines back, let me know...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=330#p32696
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-01 12:43:09

Ah I didn't mean to imply anything- I guess it would be correct to say I was conflating 'indie' and 'independent'. I personally appreciate different kinds of RPGs: I've played all versions of D&D and almost everything White Wolf's come out with recently, but I also dig the more 'indie' games like Dogs in the Vineyard and Neverwhere. I am now super curious about your objections to indie rpgs, but perhaps this isn't the thread for it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=330#p32697
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-01 13:00:18

[quote="scramble"]In my spare time I try to write IF or make comics. I've just started a webcomic adaptation of "The Duel That Spanned The Ages", which is eating most of my time now. I am also an avid player of board games and Indie RPGs. I wonder how much overlap there is between the Indie RPG-crowd and the IF crowd? I remember Victor Gijsbers published a few Indie RPGs and I noticed Sam Kabo Ashwell was in A Primetime Adventures Group once.[/quote]
A number of IF people, myself included, frequent the Seattle Storygames group, which does narrative-heavy indie oneshots (Fiasco, Microscope, Shock, Munchausen). I mildly prefer things with a [i]little[/i] more GM authority, long-arc campaigns and combat/skill-check stuff; my best RPG experiences, both of which were run on ifMUD, were a Nobilis campaign run by Dan Shiovitz and a 7th Sea campaign run by Christopher Huang.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4515&start=0#p32698
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: ASCII Map
User: punkasaurus / DateTime: 2012-03-01 13:05:57

How does everyone feel about the idea of having an ASCII map of each room like roguelikes and some MUDs do? If you were playing an adventure game do you think it would add to or detract from the enjoyment of the game? What if you were playing an IF game centered more around people?

If you're in favor, would you rather have the map before or after the description of the room, and would you want it to reappear each time you type "look" or just each time you walk into the room, or would you rather have two commands, one to get the text description and one to see the layout of the room?

Just curious how people feel about this kind of thing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=330#p32699
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-01 13:30:02

[quote="JoeyJones"]I am now super curious about your objections to indie rpgs, but perhaps this isn't the thread for it.[/quote]

It isn't, but to clarify: I don't object to indie RPGs at all, and some of them are of [i]excellent[/i] quality and made by people I like a whole bunch, people I hug whenever I see 'em again. But from a game design perspective, they're at the opposite end of the spectrum from traditional RPG designers like me, and (as I perceive it, anyway) they tend to come from a perspective on games, design, and writing (and even on human interaction) opposite my own. They are the enemy only to the extent that we compete for the table-time of gamers; in real life they are drinking-buddies, friends, gamer-pals, and on occasion, people I have sex with.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=330#p32700
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-01 13:31:45

[quote="maga"] and a 7th Sea campaign run by Christopher Huang.[/quote]

Aw, now I regret not writing for 7th Sea [emote]:)[/emote]

(They asked real nice, but could not, alas, pay even basic professional rates for the time ... not even my "friend rates") [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4515&start=0#p32701
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: ASCII Map
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-01 13:38:01

If you can do it well, go for it. The Glulx version of [b][i]ToaSK [/i][/b]has two different ASCII maps summoned by player command, which is my player preference (the maps don't appear automatically at all, the player has to call them up) ... the ToaSK ones are, sadly, simplistic and non-dynamic. If I had more chops and more time I'd love to make them fancier, and I'm very happy about the idea of more games having more ASCII fun (maps or otherwise).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4452&start=10#p32702
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Scott Adams Adventures - What can be learned in 2012?
User: bigpants / DateTime: 2012-03-01 13:39:48

First off, I appreciate the replies.
If I had more time to play the old adventure games,
and time to play the new interactive fiction so I could compare the two - I absolutely would.
Unfortunately, the presentation is next week so I'm relying on the thoughtfulness of strangers.

- - -
From what I'm gathering, there is little/nothing to be learned from the likes of Scott Adams games.

BUT... what about the simplicity of those games?
Interactive fiction [i]seems[/i] to be going in a different direction.
IF is less about direct adventuring, and more about story experiences.

Regarding the Hulk example...
I'm not interested in the limitations of the old games - even the TRS-80 action games I'm familiar with don't hold up.
I'm wondering if old games can be modernized while keeping their essence.
Original Prince of Persia > New Prince of Persia
Robotron > Geometry Wars
Adventureland > ?

In 2012, is there any merit in creating a Scott Adams/Zork text adventure with less obtuse puzzles, straightforward adventuring, and not much else? I >think< so. But what do people here think? I'm not devaluing the new, rich interactive fiction experiences being created here - I'm just wondering if there's any value in the old experience that's been "lost in the trash". Certainly, Double Fine proved their is interest in modernizing the point-and-click graphic adventure: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adventure/posts">http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/667 ... ture/posts</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4452&start=10#p32703
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Scott Adams Adventures - What can be learned in 2012?
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-03-01 14:06:25

In the transcript I did try "get nervous".  One of those bad keyword-puzzles where only one word is allowed, I guess.  I watched the old "David Banner" serial and it was cool to see Lou Ferrigno in a cameo in the last Hulk movie...

anyway, I sure got angry with the game...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4452&start=10#p32704
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Scott Adams Adventures - What can be learned in 2012?
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-03-01 14:37:15

[quote="bigpants"]I'm wondering if old games can be modernized while keeping their essence.
Original Prince of Persia > New Prince of Persia
Robotron > Geometry Wars
Adventureland > ?[/quote]

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword?

[quote]In 2012, is there any merit in creating a Scott Adams/Zork text adventure with less obtuse puzzles, straightforward adventuring, and not much else? I >think< so. But what do people here think? I'm not devaluing the new, rich interactive fiction experiences[/quote]

Oh, I do think you are when you have a full week ahead and won't even try because not.

If what you're asking is if there's still a place for mostly textless interface and simplistic gameplay like Scott Adams.. then, yes, Scott Adams fans know where to get Scott Adams games when they need it.

BTW, please don't compare Robotron or original Prince of Persia to today games made for retarded emos.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4515&start=0#p32705
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: ASCII Map
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-01 14:43:57

It's pretty darn easy to create a .png file with the Draw program in OpenOffice, and I'm sure most IF development systems can embed .png files. This would be more elegant than ASCII.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4452&start=10#p32706
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Scott Adams Adventures - What can be learned in 2012?
User: UnwashedMass / DateTime: 2012-03-01 14:44:12

"In 2012, is there any merit in creating a Scott Adams/Zork text adventure with less obtuse puzzles, straightforward adventuring, and not much else? I >think< so. But what do people here think?"

You should talk to therealeasterbunny who, two years ago, wrote a Scott Adams-like game using SA's minimalist game engine, reverse-engineered.  <a class="postlink" href="http://therealeasterbunny.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/r.htm">http://therealeasterbunny.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/r.htm</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4460&start=0#p32707
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table entries that result in a change or action?
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-03-01 14:48:48

[quote="Phrog"]I thought you needed to download extensions. Are those built-in? I noticed something that said "installed extensions" in the documentation.[/quote]

There are a handful of extensions that come pre-packaged with Inform, such as Emily Short's Basic Help Menu, but there are far more to be downloaded from the site.  You can see all the installations you currently have installed by clicking "Installed Extensions" in the documentation table of contents.  (Note that once an extension is installed, you still need to "include" it in any given project for it to be part of that project.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4515&start=0#p32708
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: ASCII Map
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-03-01 14:51:01

I think that depends on one's personal aesthetics of elegance.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4488&start=10#p32709
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Adding a Scratch Message to a Room
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-03-01 15:00:21

Edge cases are a different thing, but I'm pretty confident that the top of the bell curve is somewhere around 50k words. This is assuming that you're not purposely doing something that would consume a lot of resources.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4515&start=0#p32710
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: ASCII Map
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-01 15:15:26

[quote="tove"]I think that depends on one's personal aesthetics of elegance.  [emote];)[/emote][/quote]

Preach it [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4515&start=0#p32711
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: ASCII Map
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-01 15:19:11

[quote="punkasaurus"]How does everyone feel about the idea of having an ASCII map of each room like roguelikes and some MUDs do? If you were playing an adventure game do you think it would add to or detract from the enjoyment of the game? What if you were playing an IF game centered more around people?

If you're in favor, would you rather have the map before or after the description of the room, and would you want it to reappear each time you type "look" or just each time you walk into the room, or would you rather have two commands, one to get the text description and one to see the layout of the room?
[/quote]
It Depends.
[list][*]Are the maps mechanically important (that is, do they deliver important information or enable interaction that isn't given in the text) or are they just flavour?[/*:m]
[*]Are you doing ASCII maps because you think they're the best aesthetic fit for your game, or because it's easier than doing them another way?[/*:m][/list:u]

It seems that you've got a fairly specific vision in mind, but I'm not quite clear what that is: why would it be make a difference if the game was centred more around people? Does the exact position of a person in a room matter for your purposes, and how?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4452&start=10#p32712
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Scott Adams Adventures - What can be learned in 2012?
User: bigpants / DateTime: 2012-03-01 15:33:50

[quote="namekuseijin"]BTW, please don't compare Robotron or original Prince of Persia to today games made for retarded emos.[/quote]

Well... at least I know who I won't be quoting   [emote]:shock:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4515&start=0#p32713
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: ASCII Map
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2012-03-01 15:53:26

If you were making a game about being a person in a roguelike, maps like that would be incredibly appropriate. They would be awesome. Go do that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4456&start=0#p32714
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Development Teams
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2012-03-01 16:01:56

I'm somewhat qualified to answer this question...

The primary requirement to build IF in a team is money. Cold hard cash. If you have cash, you can pay people not to work at a "regular" job and instead work on IF. From there, the floodgates open. If one had cash, they could hire game designers, writers, artists, programmers, managers, and all of the other important parts of any normal product development business.

Given all this, you would be successful at team IF development.

Would this make for a successful company?

No one knows. No one has had the people _and_ the money.

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4456&start=0#p32715
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Development Teams
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-01 16:14:27

[quote="Dannii"]There is a place for works with a single authorial voice.[/quote]

Did you infer some suggestion to the contrary?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4515&start=0#p32716
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: ASCII Map
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-03-01 16:37:59

Nothwithstanding my general predilection for keeping things "old school" in the IF world, I tend to agree with Jim that if you're going to include some sort of map, there are better ways to do it than simulating a graphic with ASCII characters.  The fact that ASCII was basically the only thing available thirty years ago is not, to my mind, itself a reason to use an approach which is, to my mind, pretty cumbersome all around.

The more important issue, however, is the use of maps in the first place.  I can certainly see that there might be specific situations where such a thing actually does add to the overall player experience (although I might suggest that even in those situations, a "feelie" map might be an alternative to consider).  However, having a map for each room as a matter of standard operating procedure (i.e., without a specific reason) almost seems to be moving away from the whole point of what we used to call "text adventures" -- namely, the fact that a lot of the fun comes from reading words on a page and using your own imagination to translate those words into a mental picture of the world in which you find yourself.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4460&start=0#p32717
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table entries that result in a change or action?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-01 16:43:00

[quote="thecustodian"]My current problem is that my table tests fails if I have an example of a kind instead of a unique object.  How can I determine the noun's kind so I can run that thru a different table?

More info:  When I use the above method, but the object in question is one of a kind and not a specifically defined object (i.e. 'a fleeb is a kind of thing. There are 10 fleebs in the backpack.' and the object is a fleeb) the table lookup fails because it says the thing in column 1 doesn't exist.  I'm *guessing* that's because a 'fleeb' is not a 'noun' but a 'kind' - but I don't know how to search for the kind. [/quote]

No one has yet jumped in to say that you can easily do this, so let me say: I don't think you can do this exact thing easily. One problem is that there's no such thing as [i]the[/i] kind of an object; many objects will have several (if a florb is a kind of container, then any given florb has kinds florb, container, thing, and object, I think). Another thing is that you can't have a table column that mixes things and kinds; every entry in a column has to be of the same type, so you can't have a column that contains both "coffee" (a thing) and "container" (a kind); Inform won't know what to do with it.

One thing that you [b]might[/b] be able to do is make two tables, the Table of Specific Microwaving with a column of things and the Table of Generic Microwaving with a column of kinds. Then you could check things to see if they're listed in the Specific table first, and then to see if they belong to a kind listed in the Generic table. But you might not even be able to get a table with a kind column to work, and if you can I'm not sure how to check whether the noun belongs to that kind. (There's some discussion [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2752]here[/url].)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4452&start=10#p32718
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Scott Adams Adventures - What can be learned in 2012?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-01 16:46:54

[quote="namekuseijin"]In the transcript I did try "get nervous".  One of those bad keyword-puzzles where only one word is allowed, I guess.[/quote]

"Nervous" doesn't mean the same thing as "angry." But "angry" doesn't work either, so.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4452&start=10#p32719
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Scott Adams Adventures - What can be learned in 2012?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-01 16:49:07

[quote="bigpants"]First off, I appreciate the replies.
If I had more time to play the old adventure games,
and time to play the new interactive fiction so I could compare the two - I absolutely would.
Unfortunately, the presentation is next week so I'm relying on the thoughtfulness of strangers.[/quote]

It's none of my business to tell you how to conduct your research. That said, I'll be a nosy bastard and say flat out that your project would be all the richer if you didn't outright dismiss playing some modern IF. There are short pieces you can play through on your own; with a walkthrough, there are even more pieces. 9:05, Aisle, Photopia, Galatea and Best Out of Three immediately spring to mind - you'll finish those in no time. Varicella and Curses, less recent games (but still more "modern IF" than "classical IF"), are gargantuan - but if you play around with them for as little as 10 minutes you'll get the gist of what you need as regards modern adventure gaming. Also, Dual Transform and Duel in the Snow and Lost Pig... there ARE modern IF games you can afford to take the time to play. It'll make your work all the richer.

[quote]From what I'm gathering, there is little/nothing to be learned from the likes of Scott Adams games.[/quote]

On the contrary, there's a world to be gleaned from the Scott Adams games - mostly what NOT to do, but that's only because someone had to make those mistaked first.

I'd love to point out all the things he did RIGHT, but sadly I wouldn't know what they are, I haven't played enough of his games. I WOULD point you in the direction of a modern IF game done as an hommage to Scott Adams, but a lot friendlier (though you might want to use the walkthrough if you're pressed for time): ASCII and the Argonauts.

[quote]BUT... what about the simplicity of those games?
Interactive fiction [i]seems[/i] to be going in a different direction.
IF is less about direct adventuring, and more about story experiences.[/quote]

Says who?

Says you, from our modern viewpoint.

If you were an IF player in the 1980's, you'd probably be saying the exact opposite.

The beauty of IF is that it's going in whatever direction we see fit. We are striving AWAY from bad design choices we've seen in the past, and that's it, and other than that it depends on the author. Emily Short is fascinated by conversation frameworks. Adam Cadre re-introduced puzzless IF in a more audacious manner than A Mind Forever Voyaging. Victor Gisjbers enjoys being meta-gamey.

If anything, we're moving away from puzzlefests... but I can't say that with a straight face, since there are so many puzzlefests still being released.

[quote]Regarding the Hulk example...
I'm not interested in the limitations of the old games - even the TRS-80 action games I'm familiar with don't hold up.[/quote]

This isn't a limitation, this is a bad design choice we learned from. Thought that's what you wanted.

[quote]I'm wondering if old games can be modernized while keeping their essence.
Original Prince of Persia > New Prince of Persia
Robotron > Geometry Wars
Adventureland > ?[/quote]

> Photopia.
> Curses.
> Augmented Fourth.

It depends on what you'd call "essence": is it the bad design choices? The mazes? The writing? The atmosphere? In a sense, what we're doing RIGHT NOW is a modernized version of what was done BACK THEN.

Mind, "Tomb Raider" was to my mind the first non-Prince-of-Persia Prince of Persia. Apart from the guns, it was pretty much the same concept, or that's how I felt about it.

[quote]In 2012, is there any merit in creating a Scott Adams/Zork text adventure with less obtuse puzzles, straightforward adventuring, and not much else? I >think< so. But what do people here think? I'm not devaluing the new, rich interactive fiction experiences being created here - I'm just wondering if there's any value in the old experience that's been "lost in the trash". Certainly, Double Fine proved their is interest in modernizing the point-and-click graphic adventure: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adventure/posts">http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/667 ... ture/posts</a>[/quote]

I think you really have to play some modern IF. There's a bit of everything. Open-ended works like Blue Lacuna and Make it Good, and puzzleless pieces like Photopia, certainly steal all the spotlight, but there's plenty of sheer puzzly adventuring goodness still being done. Well, ok, not PLENTY, but we still get a fair amount. It's just that we've sort of traded in dungeon size for richer implementation.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4456&start=0#p32720
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Development Teams
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-03-01 16:56:18

Not really... I know you all know that's true. But matt w's post kind of sounded as if everyone would want to produce works with either distinct authorial voices or parts with distinct characters if only they had more time or a team.

Now as to IF - Alabaster is an example of a story which did have a very big branching story line. Success or not?
Victor is keen to have contributions to Kerkerkruip too, which would be more suitable for those wanting sidequests and characterised levels.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4452&start=20#p32721
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Scott Adams Adventures - What can be learned in 2012?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-01 16:56:25

To the original poster, if you're looking for a more modern IF game that carries on something of the spirit of the original Adventure (and probably Adventureland, to some extent), you might want to check out Lost Pig (and Place Under Ground) and The Dreamhold. Lost Pig involves moving around a cave system solving puzzles with some odd devices, but also has a memorable NPC with a lot of conversation and, well, give it a whirl to see. The Dreamhold is not entirely in caves, but the puzzles and setting seem kind of Adventurey to me, and it's a treasure hunt in a way that most modern games aren't. 

People may totally disagree with these assessments, and I also suspect that these games were influenced by Adventure/Zork a lot a lot more than by the Scott Adams games. Which people may also disagree with. (I mean, zarf is here, he can speak for himself if he likes.)

...and you can always play these games a little bit if you don't have time to finish them. Lost Pig is playable in a couple of hours, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4515&start=0#p32722
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: ASCII Map
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-01 16:59:25

I'm all for maps. Whatever sort of maps. There's a beautiful Automap extension for I7 that I dearly wish was more used.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4515&start=0#p32723
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: ASCII Map
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-01 17:00:58

[quote="Peter Pears"]I'm all for maps. Whatever sort of maps.[/quote]

+Googol

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4452&start=20#p32724
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Scott Adams Adventures - What can be learned in 2012?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-01 17:12:34

[quote]People may totally disagree with these assessments, and I also suspect that these games were influenced by Adventure/Zork a lot a lot more than by the Scott Adams games. Which people may also disagree with. (I mean, zarf is here, he can speak for himself if he likes.)[/quote]

I certainly esteemed the Infocom games above the Scott Adams ones, when I was a kid. But I played them all. (Although only the first nine SA games -- I missed Savage Island and the superhero ones.)

Adams deserves some props for getting the most possible milage out of his limited text space. And some of his puzzles really do work well, considering the limited parser. As Jimmy Maher has said in his blog series (linked somewhere in these comments), "The Count" has a very sophisticated event structure for early IF -- remember that it predates almost all of Infocom's releases.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4460&start=10#p32725
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table entries that result in a change or action?
User: thecustodian / DateTime: 2012-03-01 17:26:01

matt w:  Gargh.  I was afraid of that.  I'd planned to have two tables, one of things and one of kinds, and if none of the things matched then run through kinds - but, as you say, there doesn't seem to be a way to table match on the kind of an object.  This is...discouraging.  I don't want to lose my whole microwave puzzle, but...hmmm.  Thanks for the pointer.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4452&start=20#p32727
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Scott Adams Adventures - What can be learned in 2012?
User: bigpants / DateTime: 2012-03-01 18:15:18

[quote="Peter Pears"]It depends on what you'd call "essence": is it the bad design choices? The mazes? The writing? The atmosphere? In a sense, what we're doing RIGHT NOW is a modernized version of what was done BACK THEN.

Open-ended works like Blue Lacuna and Make it Good, and puzzleless pieces like Photopia, certainly steal all the spotlight, but there's plenty of sheer puzzly adventuring goodness still being done. Well, ok, not PLENTY, but we still get a fair amount. It's just that we've sort of traded in dungeon size for richer implementation.[/quote]
[b]Now that reply I can use! Keep it coming. Thanks so much.
If you can further elaborate on these thoughts, I'd really appreciate it.[/b]


[quote="Peter Pears"](Regarding Hulk) This isn't a limitation, this is a bad design choice we learned from. Thought that's what you wanted.[/quote]
Bad design choice? Or 16KB of memory?
Are old text adventure games [i]just[/i] considered bad design lessons?
Old TRS-80 action games have design lessons for modern designers,
so I find it strange that there's nothing that can be learned from old text adventure games.
Has modern interactive fiction truly carried everything forward?
If old Scott Adams games have nothing to offer, please post.
That's what I'm looking to quote.
Related: If old Infocom games (Zork, Planetfall) have nothing to offer, please post.


[quote="Peter Pears"]It's none of my business to tell you how to conduct your research. That said, I'll be a nosy bastard and say flat out that your project would be all the richer if you didn't outright dismiss playing some modern IF.[/quote]
Back in 1979, I did not play text adventures (Scott Adams or Infocom) - I did not like them. Even if I played some quick IF today, I definitely don't have time to play the originals to thoughtfully evaluate what's different. Playing modern interactive fiction won't make my presentation richer whatsoever since that's not what my presentation is about. I want opinions from people familiar with old text adventure games and new modern interactive fiction to tell me what's been lost.

@matt w >
Thanks for the reply. Do you think "The Dreamhold" and "Lost Pig" found inspiration from the old adventure games? Without the TRS-80 constraints/limits, were they able to expand the text adventure ideas in new meaningful ways? Could modern game makers benefit from a treasure hunt lesson?

@zarf >
It sounds like you're saying Scott Adams games were great for their time, but they've been long surpassed.
i.e. Everything has been carried forward.
If you could confirm this, that would be great.

@everyone >
I focussed on Scott Adams (as opposed to Infocom) since he is tightly tied to the TRS-80.
Let's open the question up...
[b]If you compare modern interactive fiction to Infocom games, has anything been lost?
Can anything be learned/salvaged from old Infocom games (Zork, Planetfall)?
Is there any reason a modern game designer / interactive fiction creator should play those?[/b]

[i]Final Note[/i]
I fully intend to play some of the interactive fiction recommended in this thread.
My tastes have changed over the years, and the descriptions sound great.

[b]Thanks so much everyone![/b]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4514&start=0#p32728
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Identifying problems with RAP (Reactive Agent Planner)
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-01 18:42:01

As I see it, there are two approaches --

* Try to control the game environment as much as possible, such that the NPCs don't get plans that will malfunction in this way; or,

* Tweak the RAP so that it accounts for failure.

The first approach would mean repairing whatever change has happened in the T3 language (I assume) to make inventories opaque to NPCs.

The second would be a bit deeper.  There are a couple of ways to go about it, that I can think of:

I could modify goal nodes so that they have a memory.  If someone tried to do this exact same thing last turn, or within the last three turns (say), then the goal will make itself unavailable this turn.  This would involve a variable that holds a copy of the turn counter and a check against that variable before returning the goal list.

Alternatively, I could look into making RAP aware of check() and verify() methods.


Conrad.

P.S. I'm leaning toward creating a variable, since that approach could possibly be extended to some kind of effort-tracking in the future.

Currently, a rapper, given a goal, will spend $100,000 to get a hot-dog this turn, rather than walk to the store to buy a pack for $2.50.  To balance that kind of behavior would require very basic "strategy" -type thinking that might be trackable with some kind of "cost" variable.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4456&start=10#p32729
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Development Teams
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-01 18:43:24

[quote="Dannii"]Now as to IF - Alabaster is an example of a story which did have a very big branching story line. Success or not?[/quote]
A success as a game; rather mixed as a collaboration.

[list][*]Not very structured. The organisation was basically Emily (concept, code, design, much of the writing) and Everyone Else (writing). People didn't have special responsibility for sections of the plot or the world, or for specialised tasks.[/*:m]
[*]Emily has said that a major problem with the project was that she didn't give herself enough authority to edit or reject additions to the game. As a result, the end result is kind of uneven; even allowing for the game having multiple endings and different versions of reality, there are certain threads of the plot that are really not in keeping with the overall tone of the game. (IF Whispers, of course, has this problem to a much greater degree.)[/*:m]
[*]Not really a case of many-hands-make-light-work.[/*:m][/list:u]

So, personally, I'm not interested in collaborations of more than two unless someone has the clear authority to decide what's right for the game. And uses it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4456&start=10#p32730
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Development Teams
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-01 18:52:16

[quote="maga"]So, personally, I'm not interested in collaborations of more than two unless someone has the clear authority to decide what's right for the game. And uses it.[/quote]

Likewise. The cat-herder would need to be epic, both as a maker of IF and as an individual. And really, the other cats would have to be worth a butt-sniff, as well, or why leave this comfortable sunlit porch to begin with?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4452&start=20#p32731
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Scott Adams Adventures - What can be learned in 2012?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-01 18:55:53

I can't help feeling you've too tight a deadline for this one. The questions you're asking are answered in design papers, in reviews, in The Craft of Adventure, in posts, in Usenet... we've been living side by side with the difference between oldschool and modern - with the knowledge of what to use and what not to use (mazes and hunger timers are, nowadays, out) and what to marvel and gawk at (Nord And Bert Couldn't Make Head Nor Tail Of It remains unique to this day, with only a couple of games following in its footsteps). It's the sort of thing you'd need to spend some time in the community for. Jimmy Maher's excellent History of IF would certainly be one of THE things to read. So is IF Theory Reader.

[quote]Bad design choice? Or 16KB of memory?[/quote]

A bit of both plus a dash of "There's so little done yet, there's no such thing as bad design". 

But in the case of the puzzle being discussed - bad design.

[quote]Are old text adventure games just considered bad design lessons?[/quote]

As far as I can tell - and it's certainly my opinion - that mostly old text adventures suffer from what is today considered bad design, for a number of reasons. Reason #1: Adventure did it. Adventure had mazes, light puzzles, inventory limit, huge number of rooms... let's add all that in.

Another big reason was "value for money". You paid for that game; you expected it to be worth your while. That usually meant length of game, not quality. Level 9 went WAAAAY overboard with number of rooms in one of their games, and failed to implement them properly, resulting in a 2000+ room boring maze, for all practical intents.

And again, they were doing it for the first time. There was no "good design" to check their design against, because there was mostly no design at all.

Again, this is the sort of thing we've discussed so much it's pretty much overhead for most of us, we don't even think about it...

But my point: NO, old text adventures aren't just considered bad design lessons. They had good qualities - some of them, anyway (realise that at one point, there were as many crappy z80 adventures as there were crappy FPSs in the '90s). Some can even be enjoyed by modern gamers. But it's all in a case-to-case basis.

[quote]
Has modern interactive fiction truly carried everything forward?[/quote]

Thankfully, not yet. If it had, it would be pretty stagnant. No, there's lots of creative people here - why, just last month Jon Ingold tried to do away with the parser while retaining the feel of IF.

And then there's greedy people like me, who like nothing better than to play the games and post reviews.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4460&start=10#p32732
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table entries that result in a change or action?
User: thecustodian / DateTime: 2012-03-01 19:21:22

So I sort of managed to do what I wanted to do, using what feels like a vicious hack. [emote]:-)[/emote]  I have a lucky case because all the items I'm checking have a common word ending their name - they're all types of chips, so 'broadcast chip' and 'memory chip' and so forth, but I think this technique might be extendable.

Instead of trying to match the kind of the noun to something in the table, I see if the printed name of the noun matches some text in the 'kind' column - in my case 'chip'.  This seems to work fine:
[code]
A broadcast chip is a kind of thing.  A broadcast chip is usually portable.  A broadcast chip can be working or fried. A broadcast chip is usually working. A broadcast chip is tiny.  The description of a broadcast chip is "This is a broadcast chip - a small solid-state radio about the size of a coin.  These can be found in most portable electronics these days.  Usually powered by small batteries in phones or car keys, these generally have a range of a few meters.  There are leads on the chip for connecting a data source and a power source.[if fried]  This chip is blackened and scorched; the magic smoke appears to have been released."

repeat through Table of Microwaving Kinds:
	if the printed name of the noun matches the text "[the kind entry]":
		let the attempt be the result entry;
		now the noun part of the attempt is the noun;
		try the attempt;
		say "[the description entry][line break]";
		break;

Table of Microwaving Kinds
kind	result	description
"chip"	the action of frying	"There is a sizzling noise. The chip is now scorched and smoking slightly."
[/code]
Note that I'm using Editable Stored Actions by Ron Newcomb, as suggested - hence that 'now the noun part of the attempt is the noun' which saves me having to have a separate rule in the table for each *type* of chip and trying to construct a properly specific reference to them for the attempt.

I really should put in a test to make sure the attempt works before saying the result description.  /me puts on list of Things To Do (which is still in the 'growing' phase for this project).

Woohoo!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4460&start=10#p32733
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table entries that result in a change or action?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-01 19:53:29

Excellent!

One thing I'd forgotten to mention was that if you were going to do the kind description, you'd definitely need to return to Editable Stored Actions, but you already seem to have figured that out.

Anyway, if you can't rely on "chip" appearing in everything, one thing you could do is giving objects a text property that you can match against the Table of Microwaving Kinds. So you could say

[code]A thing has some text called the microwave name. The microwave name of a broadcast chip is usually "chip".[/code]

And then check for the microwave name of the thing in the Table of Microwaving Kinds. Then you wouldn't be dependent on all your chips having "chip" in their name.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4456&start=10#p32734
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Development Teams
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-01 19:58:14

[quote="Dannii"]Not really... I know you all know that's true. But matt w's post kind of sounded as if everyone would want to produce works with either distinct authorial voices or parts with distinct characters if only they had more time or a team.[/quote]

Hm, what I was actually thinking was that it would be nice to produce something with lots of branching and sidequests if I had five autonomous copies of myself to work on IF. I very much like the unified authorial voice, but who's going to do all the work?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4515&start=10#p32735
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: ASCII Map
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-01 19:59:26

The Blind House had a nice graphical map for every room. It was still schematic enough that I didn't think it interfered with my imagination.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4514&start=0#p32736
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Identifying problems with RAP (Reactive Agent Planner)
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2012-03-01 20:03:04

RAP already has the hooks in it for dealing with failure, IIRC.  You just have to write the appropriate "rule" to deal with it.  

The RAP for TADS3 was translated into Inform 7 under the name Planner, so you might look at the Inform version to see if it's operation is any more clear to you.  I compare the Inform version of RAP to, well, a hinting extension here: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/backissues/spag52.html#wisdom">http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/backissue ... tml#wisdom</a>  

Reading that article (besides being easier on the brain than reading code) may give you insight into how to progress in your WIP.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4460&start=10#p32737
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table entries that result in a change or action?
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-03-01 20:17:12

Belatedly, the code in the thread that matt w linked to does let you match by kind as long as you are dealing with objects under Glulx:[spoiler][code]Include Editable Stored Actions by Ron Newcomb.

Chapter "Object Types" (for Glulx only)

Include (-
	[ convertPropRoutineToClass routine result;
		@linearsearch OC__Cl 4 routine 1 (-1) 0 0 result;
		return (result+5)-->0;
	];
-) after "Definitions.i6t".

An object type is a kind of value.  An object type is an invalid object type.  [This second sentence makes it possible to return types from phrases.]
To decide what object type is the (K - a description of a value of kind K) type: (- convertPropRoutineToClass({K}) -).
To decide what object type is the type of (O - an object): (- ({O}.2) -).
To repeat with (I - a nonexisting object type variable) running through object types begin -- end: (- for({I}=K0_kind-->6:{I}:{I}={I}-->6) -).
To decide whether (O - an object) is of type (T - an object type): (- ({O} ofclass {T}) -).
To decide whether (O - an object) is of type (K - a description of a value of kind K):
	decide on whether or not O is of type the K type.
To say (T - an object type): (- print (I7_Kind_Name){T}; -).

Chapter "Demo"

A thing can be tiny.  A thing can be hot.
A broadcast chip is a kind of thing.  A broadcast chip is usually portable.  A broadcast chip can be working or fried. A broadcast chip is usually working. A broadcast chip is tiny.  The description of a broadcast chip is "This is a broadcast chip - a small solid-state radio about the size of a coin.  These can be found in most portable electronics these days.  Usually powered by small batteries in phones or car keys, these generally have a range of a few meters.  There are leads on the chip for connecting a data source and a power source.[if fried]  This chip is blackened and scorched; the magic smoke appears to have been released."

There is a room.
Here is a closed openable transparent fixed in place container called the microwave oven.
The player carries a broadcast chip called the green chip.
The player carries a broadcast chip called the red chip.
The player carries some coffee.

Definition: a container is nonempty rather than empty if it encloses something.

Microwaving is an action applying to one thing.
Understand "microwave [something]" as microwaving.
Understand "cook [something]" as microwaving.
Understand "heat [something]" as microwaving.
Understand "reheat [something]" as microwaving.

Check microwaving:
	Unless the microwave oven is in the location, say "How do you propose to do that?" instead;
	Unless the microwave is empty:
		Unless the noun is in the microwave, say "There's no room in the microwave." instead.
	
Carry out microwaving:
	unless the noun is in the microwave oven:
		try opening the microwave oven;
		try inserting the noun into the microwave oven;
		try closing the microwave oven;
	say "The oven hums loudly for a few moments, then [italic type]BING![roman type] It stops."

After microwaving:
	repeat through Table of Specific Microwaving:
		if the noun is the item entry:
			try the result entry;
			rule succeeds;
	repeat through Table of Generic Microwaving:
		if "[the type of the noun]" exactly matches the text the kind entry:
			let the attempt be the result entry;
			now the noun part of the attempt is the noun;
			try the attempt;
			rule succeeds;
	say "DONE".

Table of Specific Microwaving
item	result	description
coffee	the action of heating the coffee	"The coffee is now steaming slightly."

Table of Generic Microwaving
kind	result
"broadcast chip"	the action of frying

Heating is an action applying to one visible thing.

Carry out heating:
	now the noun is hot.

Report heating:
	say "Now [the noun] is hot!"

Frying is an action applying to one visible thing.

Carry out frying:
	now the noun is fried.
	
Report frying:
	say "There is a sizzling noise. The chip is now scorched and smoking slightly."[/code][/spoiler]

(There is one tricky bit: using ``exactly matches the text'' instead of ``is.''  That's because there are actually two copies of the text "broadcast chip" floating around—one for the kind and one for the table—and Inform considers them to be different.  But since they have the same contents, a matching comparison works.  See WI 19.5.)

[i]Edit: Or see what matt w just posted, which is an equally viable approach.[/i]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4452&start=20#p32738
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Scott Adams Adventures - What can be learned in 2012?
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-03-01 20:31:12

I'm not sure you understand, dude:  Infocom and SA games were worlds apart.  Aside from the heavy treasure hunting in twisty mazes of Zork and a few limited first entries in other genres such as Deadline, Infocom games hold up well enough today, with excellent prose and fair puzzles in such gems as The Lurking Horror, Spellbreaker, Trinity and others.  Five minutes with any of these contrasting to the SA ones should make it very clear the distinction.

The design issue with The Hulk we've been discussing is a flaw called "guess-the-verb" (look it up), something Infocom and modern IF rarely suffer from.  Of course, dealing with synonyms and fair answers is far easier without so small memory as the TRS-80.

Peter, what's wrong with inventory limits?  IF is usually less cartoony than your average game, where Link can pull a huge hammer out of thin air or something...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4515&start=10#p32740
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: ASCII Map
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2012-03-01 21:05:59

Mister Robert Rothman, I am responding to your post: I don't mean any disrespect but I think it's a little funny that you're worried about ASCII maps interfering with IF players' imagining their environments. Players of roguelikes have had to imagine that a > is a staircase and that a [color=#FF0000]}[/color] is a pool of lava; they have learned to recoil in fear from a capital D. Playing IF with ASCII maps would be different, but the difference is one of degrees.

Anyway I couldn't stop myself from mocking this up.

[code]You are in a room or whatever. Let's say a bedroom. A hotel room. Sure.

There's one exit over there. Up in the corner over there is a dresser.

#########
#....___#
#.......#
#.......#
#..@....#
#.......#
###+#####

> x me

I guess you're a cowboy.

> x dresser

It's made out of wood, some kind of wood, and it has drawers. Wait, I don't feel like implementing a bunch of different doors. It has one drawer.

> open drawer

You walk over to the dresser.

#########
#....___#
#.....@.#
#.......#
#.......#
#.......#
###+#####

All of a sudden the door behind you clicks! Hairs raise on the back of your neck. Could it be...

"Hold it right there, buster."

#########
#....___#
#.....@.#
#.......#
#.......#
#..&....#
###+#####

That voice... Yes! It's Dastardly Dan, the dastardly villain! Goodness!

In the drawer is a gun.

>take gun

Taken.

"I said hold it, pardner! And I didn't mean hold whatever that is you're holding! Just turn around, real slow..."

>shoot dastardly, the dastardly villain

I only understood you as far as wanting to shoot Dastardly Dan.

>shoot dastardly dan

You spin around to aim the six-shooter squarely at Dastardly Dan.

You hear something like a thunderclap; you see a cloud of smoke.

#########
#....___#
#.....%.#
#.......#
#.......#
#..&....#
###+#####

        *** But Daniel was hot ***
      *** He drew first and shot ***
*** And Rocky collapsed in the corner. ***[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4456&start=10#p32741
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Development Teams
User: emshort / DateTime: 2012-03-01 23:25:44

[quote="maga"] 
[*]Emily has said that a major problem with the project was that she didn't give herself enough authority to edit or reject additions to the game. As a result, the end result is kind of uneven; even allowing for the game having multiple endings and different versions of reality, there are certain threads of the plot that are really not in keeping with the overall tone of the game. (IF Whispers, of course, has this problem to a much greater degree.) [/quote]

True, though possibly misleading. I mean, I put out a hook and invited *anyone on the internet* to send me content for it, and I would not have been remotely surprised had I gotten files and files of obscene jokes and pop culture references. Instead of which, people who participated did take it seriously and did submit good stuff, at which point I felt like the project deserved to have more polish put into it, in keeping with the effort my collaborators had shown. But I also didn't feel it was in the spirit of the thing for me to edit people's prose too ruthlessly, so I left things as they were other than to correct typos and standardize spelling and punctuation in a few places.

So the challenge of that project came partly from deciding midway through to try to take Wacky Social/Technical Experiment and turn it into Actual Game That Works. And then deciding to add the procedural illustration, which took quite a long time in itself; our illustrator was also much more dedicated, professional, and careful than I had anticipated, and wanted to achieve something that was well beyond the scope of my original expectations.

But I agree with the take-away here, which is that if you want to build something with multiple participants and you want that thing to be tonally consistent in the end, you need someone who is in charge of being Keeper Of The Vision and making sure all the component bits line up and slot in properly and work together. And that is a lot of work. (That is true even if the other contributors are being paid.) It's not especially easier than writing a small game yourself, and it requires an expanded skill set.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4217&start=20#p32742
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Adverbs
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-03-02 01:58:40

When you're fighting Guess The Verb at least the parser lets you know that you're fighting. I think both adverbs and specialised verbs  will result in a much more insidious problem, which is that you may not know you're even in a fight because the unmodified/generic verb is successful. This is exactly what happens with [i]search[/i].

But, [i]search[/i] can be clued, so we can have hope that eventually adverbs can be used successfully. It will just be very hard, and with questionable pay-off.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4148&start=20#p32743
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good beginner games
User: scramble / DateTime: 2012-03-02 02:54:01

I'll second Bronze and Photopia. Galatea can work as well, but a new player won't learn much he could reuse in other games.

I must say I am not a puzzle fiend, I also tire of old school games really fast. I like games where everything is significant and interesting, no large maps, no endless wandering, no irrelevant puzzles. I also don't consider length an indicator for quality. That's why I love Comp games, by the way.

What brought me to IF were games like Glowgrass: It is Sci-Fi, Comp-length, has emotional impact, and does a nice perspective trick with the descriptions(which is good use of medium for me).

I'll also recommend every single of Pacian's works. He has a great sense of pacing, I really like his writing, and his games are neither too long nor too hard.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4460&start=10#p32744
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table entries that result in a change or action?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-02 03:00:30

[quote="Phrog"]
I would still like to know how to allow players to speak to people without having to type: "[person's name], blah blah blah." [/quote]
There may be an extension that does this better, but here goes:

You want HOW DO YOU DO to be parsed like ABURTHNOT, HOW DO YOU DO.
HOW DO YOU DO normally triggers a command parser error (viz. 'the not a verb I recognise error'),  and ABURTHNOT, HOW DO YOU DO would normally be parsed as ANSWER ABURTHNOT THAT HOW DO YOU DO.
So, we need to suppress the command parser error for HOW DO YOU DO and make the command trigger  the 'answering it that' action (with HOW DO YOU DO for topic and Aburthnot for noun).
That is, instead of printing a parser error, the game should guess whom the player addresses,  change the player's command accordingly, and try to make sense anew of the revised command. 

First make a variable to store the game's guess at whom the player is addressing.
[code]The addressee is a thing that varies.[/code]
Whom is the player likely to address? 
If the player starts talking to a person, he is likely to want to keep talking to the same person,  unless he explicitly turns to anyone else. That is, if the player has typed ASK ABURTHNOT ABOUT  CONTRABAND, it is likely that a following command that the game wouldn't understand, such as WHAT  ABOUT THE WHISKY THEN, will be directed to Aburthnot as well.
[code]Before answering something that: now the addressee is the noun.
Before telling something about: now the addressee is the noun.
Before asking something about: now the addressee is the noun.
Before asking something for: now the addressee is the noun.
Before asking something to try doing something: now the addressee is the person asked.[/code]
Further, we can assume that the player would address only people other than himself/herself and  that are visible to him/her.
[code]Definition: a person is another if he is not the player.

Before reading a command when another person (called the audience) is visible: if the addressee is  yourself or the adressee is not visible, now the addressee is the audience.[/code]
That will pick a new potential addressee from the people present, unless the former addressee is  still present.

Then we want to replace the 'not a verb I recognise error' with an 'answering it that' action.
[code]For printing a parser error when the latest parser error is the not a verb I recognise  error: 
	let T be indexed text; 
	let T be the player's command; 
	change the text of the player's command to "[addressee], [T]".[/code]

I don't know of an Inform 7 way to send the player's command back to the parser at this stage in  the parsing process. But it can be done by adding a line to one of the Inform 6 templates that  Inform 7 uses.

[rant=code][code]Include (-
	! If the player was the actor (eg, in "take dfghh") the error must be printed,
	! and fresh input called for.  In three cases the oops word must be jiggled.

	if ((etype ofclass Routine) || (etype ofclass String)) {
		if (ParserError(etype) ~= 0) jump ReType;
	} else {
		if (verb_wordnum == 0 && etype == CANTSEE_PE) etype = VERB_PE;
		players_command = 100 + WordCount(); ! The snippet variable ``player's command''
		BeginActivity(PRINTING_A_PARSER_ERROR_ACT);
		if (ForActivity(PRINTING_A_PARSER_ERROR_ACT)) jump SkipParserError;
	}
	pronoun_word = pronoun__word; pronoun_obj = pronoun__obj;

	if (etype == STUCK_PE) {    L__M(##Miscellany, 27); oops_from = 1; }
	if (etype == UPTO_PE) {     L__M(##Miscellany, 28);
		for (m=0 : m<32 : m++) pattern-->m = pattern2-->m;
		pcount = pcount2; PrintCommand(0); L__M(##Miscellany, 56);
	}
	if (etype == NUMBER_PE)     L__M(##Miscellany, 29);
	if (etype == CANTSEE_PE) {  L__M(##Miscellany, 30); oops_from=saved_oops; }
	if (etype == TOOLIT_PE)     L__M(##Miscellany, 31);
	if (etype == NOTHELD_PE) {  L__M(##Miscellany, 32); oops_from=saved_oops; }
	if (etype == MULTI_PE)      L__M(##Miscellany, 33);
	if (etype == MMULTI_PE)     L__M(##Miscellany, 34);
	if (etype == VAGUE_PE)      L__M(##Miscellany, 35);
	if (etype == EXCEPT_PE)     L__M(##Miscellany, 36);
	if (etype == ANIMA_PE)      L__M(##Miscellany, 37);
	if (etype == VERB_PE)       L__M(##Miscellany, 38);
	if (etype == SCENERY_PE)    L__M(##Miscellany, 39);
	if (etype == ITGONE_PE) {
		if (pronoun_obj == NULL)
								L__M(##Miscellany, 35);
		else                    L__M(##Miscellany, 40);
	}
	if (etype == JUNKAFTER_PE)  L__M(##Miscellany, 41);
	if (etype == TOOFEW_PE)     L__M(##Miscellany, 42, multi_had);
	if (etype == NOTHING_PE) {
		if (parser_results-->ACTION_PRES == ##Remove &&
			parser_results-->INP2_PRES ofclass Object) {
			noun = parser_results-->INP2_PRES; ! ensure valid for messages
			if (noun has animate) L__M(##Take, 6, noun);
			else if (noun hasnt container or supporter) L__M(##Insert, 2, noun);
			else if (noun has container && noun hasnt open) L__M(##Take, 9, noun);
			else if (children(noun)==0) L__M(##Search, 6, noun);
			else parser_results-->ACTION_PRES = 0;
			}
		if (parser_results-->ACTION_PRES ~= ##Remove) {
			if (multi_wanted==100)  L__M(##Miscellany, 43);
			else                    L__M(##Miscellany, 44);
		}
	}
	if (etype == ASKSCOPE_PE) {
		scope_stage = 3;
		if (indirect(scope_error) == -1) {
			best_etype = nextbest_etype;
			if (~~((etype ofclass Routine) || (etype ofclass String)))
				EndActivity(PRINTING_A_PARSER_ERROR_ACT);
			jump GiveError;
		}
	}
	if (etype == NOTINCONTEXT_PE) L__M(##Miscellany, 73);

	.SkipParserError;
	if ((etype ofclass Routine) || (etype ofclass String)) jump ReType;
	if (etype == VERB_PE) jump ReParse; !### Adding this line ###
	say__p = 1;
	EndActivity(PRINTING_A_PARSER_ERROR_ACT);
-) instead of "Parser Letter I" in "Parser.i6t".
[/code][/rant]

Then we can customize responses with after (or instead) rules
[code]After answering Lovejoy that "how do you do": say "'How do you do, sir?' Lovejoy replies."
After answering Aburthnot that "how do you do": say "Colonel Aburthnot but snorts in  contempt."[/code]
(The rule 'After answering Igbut that "how do you do?"' won't compile. The compiler doesn't allow  question or exclamation marks in text like that. So, if the player uses a question mark here, we  can't write a rule for his/her command. The best solution is probably to include the built-in  extension Punctuation Removal by Emily Short and use it to remove exclamation and question marks  from the player's command before parsing it.)

Of course, the above code may or may not have any kind of unforeseen effects.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4148&start=20#p32745
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Good beginner games
User: stadtgorilla / DateTime: 2012-03-02 03:11:43

Well Mr. scramble, you know what I think about Photopia, but i second your thoughts about Pacian. Love, Hate And The Mysterious Ocean Tower is the most perfect and atmospheric IF miniature I've seen so far. I love it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4489&start=0#p32746
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: hint request - anchorsteam
User: koraq / DateTime: 2012-03-02 03:47:53

Hey, how many games are there that begins with "Anchor"? 

Now I am curious.

*sigh*

Yes, that is a beer. I mean, of course, Anchorhead.

It turned out I had missed one location when I mapped the town, and I found the twisty back alley and the new age shop.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4279&start=0#p32748
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Article on Mental Floss
User: stadtgorilla / DateTime: 2012-03-02 04:46:09

thanks for sharing!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4452&start=20#p32749
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Scott Adams Adventures - What can be learned in 2012?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-02 06:04:48

[quote]Peter, what's wrong with inventory limits? IF is usually less cartoony than your average game, where Link can pull a huge hammer out of thin air or something...[/quote]

You could also ask, and you'd be right, "what's wrong with mazes? Infocom did them brilliantly and originally". Or "what's wrong with hunger puzzles, they can help pace the game". Or "what's wrong with light timers". The answer to all of those is that there's nothing wrong with them... if they're not gratuitous. Mostly the inventory limits were gratuitous and artifically prolonged gameplay time by forcing you to juggle your inventory in a boring manner. You could also have red herrings, and you could also have situations where you couldn't come back to earlier rooms, so what to keep and what to leave?

Nothing wrong with inventory limits if they serve a function, be they realism, pacing or part of a puzzle. But when umpteen games have gratuitous limits that serve no other function but to piss the player off, then there's something wrong.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4279&start=0#p32750
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Article on Mental Floss
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-02 06:10:07

I misparsed the thread title and assumed it would provide tips on how to clean particles and unwanted tidbits from one's mind. Mildly disappointed.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4460&start=10#p32751
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table entries that result in a change or action?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-02 06:27:29

Felix, can you explain a little more about the I6 inclusion? That looks like it might be very useful in something else I was fiddling around with, where I learned that you can't just trigger the parse command rule anytime you want.

In this case, though, I think trying to work through the "not a verb I recognise" error may be swatting a fly with a howitzer. Can't we do this?

[code]Talking to the air is an action applying to one topic.
Understand "[text]" as talking to the air when the addressee is not the player and the addressee is visible.

Instead of talking to the air: try answering the addressee that the topic understood.[/code]

ETA: A side effect seems to be that when the addressee isn't present, the "That's not a verb I recognise" error gets replaced with "I didn't understand that sentence."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=340#p32752
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: scramble / DateTime: 2012-03-02 06:43:55

Whoopsie. I didn't expect so lively a discussion, otherwise I wouldn't have used the term "Indie RPG" so indiscriminately.
Yeah, Indie (self-pubished) != Indie (Forgite) != Indie (pre-Forge stuff) != Indie (LARP/Jeepform) != Indie (story-games) != the next person's Indie... those distinctions don't even operate on the same level, so let's try and recan this particular can of worms, shall we? [emote];)[/emote]

[quote="maga"]I mildly prefer things with a [i]little[/i] more GM authority, long-arc campaigns and combat/skill-check stuff...[/quote]
I'm with you here, except for the combat/skill-ckeck stuff. I'm ususally the only one really bothering about rules; detailed resolution systems are a waste of time with my crew. But I still like to have a single person in charge of tone, setting consistency etc. I'll always listen to suggestions and I'll ususally hand out authority in spades, but when nobody else takes charge, I do.

Our longest Indie campaign was one and a half years long, we started with [b]FATE 2[/b] and switched to [b]The Puddle[/b] somewhere down the road. We are currently playing [b]Lady Blackbird[/b] while trying to figure out if we should play [b]The Shadow of Yesterday[/b] or [b]Dogs in the Vineyard[/b] next.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4442&start=0#p32753
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: npc nil object reference
User: zodraz / DateTime: 2012-03-02 06:50:39

I found the problem! I was using a text string to match the askForTopic instead of a game object.

While that was easy enough to fix, the problem remains with the way the game deals with askFor and give topics, I can add a check to the askForTopic to see if she has the object and give a suitable response.  
I thought that when you use format 'lady, give me object x' it would be treated as a command and give the default response 'she refuses your request', or am I expecting too much from the library?

Start Room

This is the starting room. 


You see an object x, a dummy, and an object z here. 


The lady is standing here. 


>hello
Hello! 


>lady, take dummy
The lady refuses your request. 


>lady, take object x
The lady refuses your request. 


>lady, take object z
The lady refuses your request. 


>lady, give me object x
No, you gave me this! 


>lady, give me object z
I'm sorry, but I have no idea what you are talking about. 


>lady, give me dummy
dummy askfor topic response. 


>give her object x

(first taking the object x)
Well! thank you very much! 


>give her object z

(first taking the object z)
No thank you. 


>give her dummy

(first taking the dummy)
No thank you. 


>ask for object x
No, you gave me this! 


>ask for object z
I'm sorry, but I have no idea what you are talking about. 


>ask for dummy
dummy askfor topic response. 


>

[code]#charset "us-ascii"
#include <adv3.h>
#include <en_us.h>

versionInfo: GameID
    IFID = '0215fb68-ce0f-9d81-a32e-d537ee51a875'
    name = 'Your New Game Title'
    byline = 'by Your Name'
    htmlByline = 'by <a href="mailto:your-email@host.com">
                  Your Name</a>'
    version = '1'
    authorEmail = 'Your Name <your-email@host.com>'
    desc = 'Put a brief "blurb" about your game here.'
    htmlDesc = 'Put a brief "blurb" about your game here.'
;

gameMain: GameMainDef
    initialPlayerChar = me
;

startRoom: Room 'Start Room'
    "This is the starting room. "
;
+ objectX : Thing 'object x' 'object x'
;

+ objectY : Thing 'dummy' 'dummy'
;

+ objectZ : Thing 'object z' 'object z'
;

+ me: Person
;

ladyFraser : Person 'lady fraser' 'lady' @startRoom
    "lady fraser desc"
    isHer = true
;

+ DefaultAskTellTopic, ShuffledEventList
    [
        'Really? Well I am rather busy...',
        'You seem to find ' + gTopicText + ' very interesting... ',
        'Yes well... whatever...'
    ]
;

+ AskForTopic @objectY
    "dummy askfor topic response. "
;

+ AskForTopic @objectX
    "No, you gave me this! "
;

+ GiveTopic @objectX
    topicResponse
    {
        "Well! thank you very much! ";
        objectX.moveInto(ladyFraser);
    }
;

+ DefaultAskForTopic
        "I'm sorry, but I have no idea what you are talking about. ";
;

+ DefaultGiveTopic
        "No thank you. ";
;

+ fraserTalking : InConversationState
    nextState = fraserWaiting
;

++ fraserWaiting : ConversationReadyState
    isInitState = true  
;

+++ HelloTopic
        "Hello! ";
;
+++ ByeTopic
        "Goodbye. ";
;[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4515&start=10#p32754
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: ASCII Map
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-02 07:03:31

That reminds me of an extension for I7... it showed each room like a roguelike. Movement around the room became cumbersome, though. I once daydreamed about modifying that extension to allow arrow keys to work as NSEW, but it was beyond my skill... It'd have been IF with a Roguelike look. Could be useful for, say, chase scenes... the extension even included an example in which the room changed size, getting smaller and smaller, in a reflection of the PC's state of mind - which is rather brilliant, methinks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4515&start=10#p32755
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: ASCII Map
User: punkasaurus / DateTime: 2012-03-02 07:25:05

[quote="Peter Pears"]That reminds me of an extension for I7... it showed each room like a roguelike. Movement around the room became cumbersome, though. I once daydreamed about modifying that extension to allow arrow keys to work as NSEW, but it was beyond my skill... It'd have been IF with a Roguelike look. Could be useful for, say, chase scenes... the extension even included an example in which the room changed size, getting smaller and smaller, in a reflection of the PC's state of mind - which is rather brilliant, methinks.[/quote]

You could also alter how much of the room showed based on the light available, thiugh that would mean changing descriptions based on position in the room, which may be a bit much.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4460&start=10#p32756
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table entries that result in a change or action?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-02 07:25:21

I tried that "[text]" approach at first. I can't remember why I didn't continue down that road. Probably I just made some stupid mistake and jumped to the conclusion it wouldn't work. (Or maybe I was afraid that "[text]" would match too indiscriminately – which it doesn't seem to do.)

"Jump" is I6 for "goto".
The line 
[code]if (etype == VERB_PE) jump ReParse; [/code]
means
[code]if the latest parser error is the not verb I understand error jump/goto the label ReParse.[/code]
When the condition is true, the execution of the ongoing I6 routine jumps to and continues from a point earlier or later in that same routine marked ".ReParse;". The parser uses this a couple of times (after OOPS and AGAIN I think). It resumes parsing immediately after the printing a command activity. ("jump ReType;" takes you to immediately before the printing a command activity, and there's also an "AlmostReParse" label located a little later, which is apparently used when the actor is not the player.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4515&start=10#p32757
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: ASCII Map
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-02 07:48:08

Yeah, that feels like overkill, though it COULD be relevant for a puzzle or two. Mind you, if I were going to mess about with light levels, I'd probably discard ASCII and take a shot at Glimmr.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4515&start=10#p32758
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: ASCII Map
User: gravel / DateTime: 2012-03-02 08:13:24

Maps of any sort are awesome.*  In-game maps, out-of-game maps, maps in color, maps in pen, maps on napkins, maps in ASCII.  I like my maps to be next to the text, and not mess with it - a separate window or block of screen devoted to them.  Dedicated space prevents all kinds of interpreter shenanigans, especially for folks to have to use smaller screens that developers anticipate.  

It also makes updating decisions easy: when the PC moves, the map changes.

I don't mind ASCII per se, but you have to be sure that that's the aesthetic you want.  Drawing your own stuff, if you've never done it before, can be a pretty significant timesink (and nigh impossible if you want something super-professional looking).  But there's other options - getting someone else to draw it, or using an open source tileset/map spring to mind, and I'm sure I'm missing stuff.  But if ASCII suits the game and your style, that's awesome.

Yay, maps.





* Okay, I confess that I don't really like the "this is the room schematic" maps because I suspect shortly I'll have to solve a nigh-impossible puzzle with the information, but that's probably just lingering trauma from my childhood.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4515&start=10#p32759
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: ASCII Map
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-02 08:23:44

This might be a good time to mention that Trizbort is a wonderful application that I always use when my IF can make transcripts and refreshes them real-time. Having the screen split in the middle (my monitor is wide enough for that) and the game on the left and Trizbort on the right, dynamically updating as I go along, and with such an easy way to make notes on a room... it's as good as an automap.

On second thoughts, this might not have been such a good time to go so far off-topic. But hey.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4514&start=0#p32760
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Identifying problems with RAP (Reactive Agent Planner)
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-02 08:24:33

Is the I7 RAP close enough to the T3 rap that the documentation crosses over?

Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4519&start=0#p32761
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Reveal a thing when examining another thing
User: LeonV / DateTime: 2012-03-02 08:52:40

This is the kind of code i wrote. The idea is to enter room Balcony, see the bike but not the tyre repair kit untill we examine the bike itself.

[code]The Balcony is a room. "From an alarmed door you can access a small balcony where some dead plants and an air vent live in harmony. There is enough space here to keep a few bikes..."

The bicycle is in the Balcony.  "A bicycle is parked here, on the side, out of the way, in a discreet kind of fashion."

[The tyre repair kit is on the bicycle.]
The description of the tyre repair kit is "A useful little pouch with everything one needs to repair a tyre, maybe even two!".
After examining the bicycle: Now the tyre repair kit is on the bicycle; say "You see a tyre repair kit!"
[/code]

This does not work for me. When I examine the bike i get the message "You see a tyre repair kit!" but i can not take it and it doesnt appear on the list of items I can see in the room...
If you remove the [commented out] code you'll see how it should appear.

Any ideas? I kinda thought that would be straight forward...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4460&start=10#p32762
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table entries that result in a change or action?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-02 09:14:22

Thanks! That's extremely helpful; if I'm doing any of these crazy parser hacks I'm probably going to use Ron Newcomb's I7 Parser, and I think I can work out how to translate your thing into the I7 Parser if needs be.

I thought that my approach to the answering issue might preempt all parser errors, but it doesn't seem to. Which means that if you want to say "i love you" to an NPC, you have to use their name or you'll get an "I only understood you as far as wanting to take inventory" error. [It also probably means that my approach won't introduce any extra hiccups over and above turning "that's not a verb I recognize" into "I didn't understand that sentence."]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4519&start=0#p32763
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reveal a thing when examining another thing
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2012-03-02 09:18:15

Just a quick thought: is the bicycle a supporter? If not, putting things "on" it probably won't have the effect you want.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4442&start=0#p32765
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: npc nil object reference
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-02 10:14:48

This one you can solve by creating a flag in ladyFraser, such as .playerHasGivenMeObjX, initially set to nil, and updated when the player gives her ObjX.

Then in the text of the askFor topic, give it one of these << playerHasGivenMeObjX ? "Indian-giver! I'm keepin' it! " : "What ObjX? ">>

--I'm going from memory on the syntax there, but something to that effect would work.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4515&start=10#p32766
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: ASCII Map
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-03-02 10:19:07

Despite the fact that I have written a tool to allow authors to add auto-generated maps to their games, I would prefer that no one ever do that. Let interpreters handle automapping. Authors have a chance to use their maps to express something about their game and its world, and I would love to see more authors take that chance.

I also don't think feelies are a very good choice any longer, given modern distribution channels. As a player--especially on a mobile device--I don't want to open one or more separate files to see your lovingly crafted maps, brochures, newspapers, whatever; I don't want to have to flip between them, and I definitely don't want to print them out. Please, include them in the game! There are lots of ways to do it, and Vorple is making it possible to do even with web-playable z-code games.

For those of you who are interested in bringing roguelike elements or just grid-based navigation to text games, please consider contacting [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=5993]Basti50[/url] (Sebastian Rahn) to offer him some help testing his in-progress extension. He posted here a few weeks ago and got no responses, but his extension makes it pretty easy to do everything people have mentioned. The extension is a bit odd for someone who's used to I7's rule-based programming--Basti definitely isn't interested in the "I7 way"--but it doesn't take too long to get used to. The extension can be used in a variety of ways:

1) Output your map (with independent actors) using a graphical tileset, using Glimmr as a front end;
2) Output your map as an ASCII grid, either in a grid window or a standard text-buffer window;
3) Don't present your map graphically at all, using it only to organize the game world.

You can create maps using "drawing" phrases, e.g. "draw a rectangle of 12 x 12 tiles of bottomless pit", or simply by importing an ASCII map (like the one Afterward drew above) from an external text file. Basti's code examples include arrow-key based navigation, and as part of my testing I threw together an example that lets you move with arrow keys, but also type commands. (You can also shoot arrows and an NPC chases you around.) I may post that later tonight when I'm at home.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4434&start=20#p32767
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Zipping Ahead N Turns?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-02 10:33:47

I wanted to see what happened.

[code]   run {
      local temp = new TemporaryFile();
      local out = File.openTextFile(temp, FileAccessWrite);
      testList.forEach({x: out.writeFile('>' + x + '\n')});
        out.writeFile('>zip 10\n');
      out.closeFile();
      setScriptFile(temp);
   }[/code]

The 'terp made it to turn 50.

C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4519&start=0#p32768
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reveal a thing when examining another thing
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-02 10:37:28

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Just a quick thought: is the bicycle a supporter? If not, putting things "on" it probably won't have the effect you want.[/quote]
That and the fact the kit is not declared. "the bike kit is a thing". 

Sorry for the fast writing but i'm on the phone atm.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4519&start=0#p32769
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reveal a thing when examining another thing
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-02 10:41:38

If the player is going to ride around on the bike, you should probably include the built-in extension Rideable Vehicles by Graham Nelson, and create the bike as a rideable vehicle (those already are a kind of supporters).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3159&start=0#p32770
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Announcing Spring Thing 2012
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2012-03-02 10:44:13

My debating with myself over if the current game I'm doing should be entered and for some reason assuming the intent deadline was the 15th has ensured someone else will have to take last place this year.  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

I look forward to playing this years entries though!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4519&start=0#p32771
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reveal a thing when examining another thing
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-02 10:51:37

[quote="Jamespking"][quote="VictorGijsbers"]Just a quick thought: is the bicycle a supporter? If not, putting things "on" it probably won't have the effect you want.[/quote]
That and the fact the kit is not declared. "the bike kit is a thing". 

Sorry for the fast writing but i'm on the phone atm.[/quote]
I would have thought so, too. But the posted code actually compiles. (Apparently the line about the description of the kit creates a kit to go with the description.) 

And, what is more, it even makes the bicycle parent/holder of the kit! But exactly what relation holds between the bike and the kit, here? Is it the ordinary support relation? So that a game can put things on non-supporters even though players can't?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4519&start=0#p32772
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reveal a thing when examining another thing
User: LeonV / DateTime: 2012-03-02 10:58:43

Thanks VictorGijsbers, explicit declaration of a supporter allows the Now phrase to work.

Thank you Felix, I will concider that as i do not wish to enter the bike as if its a car.
Now i slowly realise the complexity of the matter... interesting!

Still my problem has evolved. 
How do i describe a situation where the player can only take the kit if he examines the bike...

[code]The bicycle is a supporter. [good call]

After examining the Bicycle: 
  Now the tyre repair kit is on the bicycle;
  say "Attached on the bike you see a tyre repair kit!"[/code]

the problem with the above is that it works fine to reveal the repair kit but also every time i examine the bike the kit moves on the bike even if i take it and drop it... grrr!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4514&start=0#p32773
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Identifying problems with RAP (Reactive Agent Planner)
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-02 11:08:30

Yeah, that was interesting.  I never looked at hinting as AI, before reading some of your words.

First a question.  I do not understand this at all:

[b][url=http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/backissues/spag52.html#wisdom]Ron @ SPAG[/url][/b]: [quote]

Planner requires a Goal to be stated as an object-relation-object triad, such as the cat, the bag, and the containment relation. But Planner immediately hits a limitation here: relations cannot be put into tables, nor passed to To phrases, nor even put into global variables. Planner circumvents this by creating a stand-in object for every existing relation, called a planning-relation, and uses these exclusively. This has two drawbacks. First, it burdens authors with creating stand-ins for each of their new relations. And second, for all Planner talks of them, it doesn't actually use relations itself. This is misleading, and is one of the larger barriers to learning Planner.[/quote]

There may be a terminological disconnect here, between I7 and T3, but I do not fathom what you're saying here.

I wouldn't expect it's true that one couldn't put rSteps from RAP's planbase into global variables, although I can't especially envision why you'd want to.  If the goal is to have same-family NPCs have identical ways of doing certain things -- multiple dog NPCs, for example, inherit a common way of fetching the newspaper or taking dictation -- then I imagine that'd be done through some kind of inheritance, with the [i]modify[/i] keyword, or by updating some parts of the planbase in certain NPCs.

There's no documentation on that, but I imagine that's how you'd do something like that.  Why would you want to make a planbase unit (an rStep, I guess) global?

(More generally -- there are some data types I7 disallows being made global??)

[quote]Planner makes an art of it, dividing failure into two kinds: one when the only conceivable actions are blocked by Check rules (planning-acting-failure), and one in which no actions can even be conceived by the AI (planning-failure), possibly indicating a hole in implementation.[/quote]

The T3 RAP does not consult with check rules.  Says so in Steve Breslin's manual.

In my WIP, the second type of failure would be easily dealt with:  the NPC puts it on the backburner and every so often re-evaluates the game world to see if it has an actionable plan.  Or possibly does random stuff in a goal-disoriented fashion.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4519&start=0#p32774
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reveal a thing when examining another thing
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-02 11:08:45

That's wacky. I was sure the compiler would catch that.

A little debugging:

[code]
Every turn:
	if the kit is in the bicycle, say "in.";
	if the kit is on the bicycle, say "on.";
	if the kit is part of the bicycle, say "part of.";
	if the kit is enclosed by the bicycle, say "enclosed by.";
	if the kit is supported by the bicycle, say "supported by.";
[/code]

If you declare that the bicycle is a supporter, then we (correctly) get "on", "supported by", and "enclosed by". ("On" is the same relation as "supported by".)

If you declare *at the top level* that the kit is on the bicycle, then the compiler infers that the bicycle is a supporter, and you get the same result.

Putting the kit on the bicycle at runtime doesn't cause the same inference. You get this situation, which is a bug as far as I can tell. "Enclosed by" is true but none of the other relations.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4519&start=0#p32775
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reveal a thing when examining another thing
User: LeonV / DateTime: 2012-03-02 11:11:53

Problem Solved, declaring the bike as a supporter was the best advice because at the moment i want to explore the simplest declarations not to write code to overcompensate things...

But thank you all for the help guys, your answers are an insight of things to come for sure as this semantics area can get nasty!

Just to conclude with my issue, this is the end code, this only worked well if you declare the bike as a supporter AND dont initiate the tyre repair kit as "on the bike":

[code]After examining the Bicycle for the first time:  
		Now the tyre repair kit is on the bicycle;
		Say "Attached on the bike you see a tyre repair kit!".
		
Before taking the tyre repair kit for the first time: say "... with a bit of effort you pull the [noun] ..."[/code]

Although the above works a treat I now see that there must be a more generic way to trap a Take action with something attached but not troublesome to remove object.

So i would like to see this:
[code]Before taking something Attached for the first time: say "... with a bit of effort you pull the [noun] ..."[/code]

I'll continue on this post till my repair kit is gracefully detached from the bike!  [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3913&start=20#p32776
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Frustrated with Choices
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-02 11:15:47

[quote="I4L"][code]An autumn sun lends some warmth to what would be a chilly breeze as it brushes gently across your face, disturbing the overgrown grass.[/code]
Not a great example. But what can we reasonably expect the player to do here?
[/quote]
Well, depending on the interpretation..
[list][*][code]> shave
While shaving, you notice how much your electric razor looks like a miniature lawnmower.[/code][/*:m]
[*][code]> inhale
Your vision blurs, but your mind expands to psychedelical heights.[/code][/*:m][/list:u]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4519&start=0#p32778
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Reveal a thing when examining another thing
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-02 11:21:39

[quote="zarf"]
If you declare that the bicycle is a supporter, then we (correctly) get "on", "supported by", and "enclosed by". ("On" is the same relation as "supported by".)
[/quote]
On the other hand, having declared the bicycle to be a supporter, and then during play telling Inform that the kit is now in, worn by, carried by, or held by the bicycle all means that the kit will end up *on* the bicycle.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4411&start=0#p32779
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Topic icon variations: +/- yellow ; +/- pulsating
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-02 11:24:07

All right - my random log-outs seem to be related to hiccoughs in my connection.  Would it be possible to have the box checked by default (e.g have the previous setting be the default)?  Time and again when re-logging in I forget to check it, then go back and re-re-log in, this time with the box checked.

..and calling up a new page can take several minutes here in Bénin.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3529&start=30#p32780
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Parchment update: ifvms.js ZVM new default engine
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-02 11:40:20

[quote="Dannii"][quote]And yes, save/restore is equivalent to call/cc in Scheme, which JS doesn't have. So indeed, whenever intermediate saving would be possible, subroutine calls ought to manage their own call stack.[/quote]
call/cc seems like a kind of mix of throw/catch and yield (or instead, using yield to implement throw/catch).[/quote]
It is rather the base brick to build any control structure with.  Operationally it is equivalent with saving the stack, and calling the continuation with restoring it.  A continuation is a first-class function, and may be called more than once. (Of course call/cc tends to be implemented in a much more efficient way.)

Conceptually it is saving the "future" - all that is to happen with the current value.  In "1 + 3*4", the continuation of 4 is "function(x) return 1+3*x".  In practice a continuation may capture e.g a deep recursion, and calling it will bring the computation back into that deep recursion.

The concept tends to be elusive until one "gets it", and then it is quite natural.

[quote="Dannii"][quote]I don't quite see the problem with IO, though - simply calling a blocking IO procedure and afterwards continuing would deal with that, wouldn't it?[/quote]Are you suggesting that we run a loop and poll for input? Because that's never going to happen, the performance would be terrible.[/quote]
All right, I clearly don't see what is going on here, so I'm going to drop this, at least until I've done some homework.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4434&start=20#p32781
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Zipping Ahead N Turns?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-03-02 11:46:53

It's hard to follow but it looks like you are calling >zip 10 recursively from within the zip command.

I.e. >zip 1 turns into a script that runs:
[code]
>z
>zip 10
[/code]

Which in turn produces 10 of the above scripts, and goes up exponentially from there.

It looks like there's a hard cap of 500 calls to setScriptFile before the interpreter will return to keyboard control. (Based on empirical testing; I haven't checked the source code.) So you run into the limit after 50 turns of waiting once (+1 turn count) and calling setScriptFile ten times (+0 turn count).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4411&start=0#p32782
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Topic icon variations: +/- yellow ; +/- pulsating
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-03-02 11:52:25

The more reliable method is to have your browser remember your username / password. Then even if the session cookie is gone, the browser will automatically supply your credentials and you'll only have to click the login button.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4442&start=0#p32783
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: npc nil object reference
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-03-02 11:59:36

[quote="zodraz"]I thought that when you use format 'lady, give me object x' it would be treated as a command and give the default response 'she refuses your request', or am I expecting too much from the library?[/quote]

Commands in this format:
[quote]
>npc, give me X
[/quote]

Are automatically rewritten as:
[quote]
>ask npc for X
[/quote]

Thanks to [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/libref/object/giveMeToAskFor.html]giveMeToAskFor[/url]. This seems to have bitten all of us at one point or another.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4411&start=0#p32784
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Topic icon variations: +/- yellow ; +/- pulsating
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-02 12:15:17

Even so, if I just click the login button (forgetting to check the box first) I have to go through the login screen every time I want to do something on the forum. Which is a minor annoyance for me, but apparently much more annoying in Benin.

I second the request to leave the box checked, if it's feasible.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4411&start=0#p32785
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Topic icon variations: +/- yellow ; +/- pulsating
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-02 12:20:53

Well, my browser does know my credentials; it fills them in for me.  But a page which at one point says "[ Logout ] Biep" in the left top corner, at a later point says "Login".  This always seems to happen after the connection has been dead for a while and then comes back.  It seems Firefox does some reloading when that happens, or else the page would not look different..
Maybe my "provider" changes the IP at that point or something like that - I don't know.

I tend not to see it until I try to search or post - logging in again is no big deal: [b]every[/b] page load may take a lot of tries, so one is quite accustomed to it.  But if it is easy to make this change, then yes, please!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4434&start=20#p32786
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Zipping Ahead N Turns?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-02 12:38:59

It didn't dump me back to the prompt.  It hung.  Greyed out window, circling Win7 cursor, all that.

I can [i]zip 151[/i].  [Without the recursive crasher line, of course.]  Haven't tried it higher than that.  -- Of course, 50 turns is the last turn displayed.  Who knows how deep it ran into the Z-field.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3159&start=10#p32788
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Announcing Spring Thing 2012
User: sgreig / DateTime: 2012-03-02 15:27:34

Well, I sent Greg a couple of emails now all prior to the deadline, and have still had no response, so I have no idea if I'm in or not. I'm going to keep plugging away at the game under the assumption that I'm in the comp, and if I don't hear anything back in the next week or so, I guess it's safe to assume at that point that either he's just that swamped that he didn't get a chance to respond, or my emails mysteriously disappeared into the ether.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4515&start=10#p32789
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: ASCII Map
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-02 15:40:04

[quote="gravel"]Yay, maps.[/quote]

The lesson we should take, not only from this thread, but from life.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=340#p32790
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-02 15:45:22

[quote="scramble"]so let's try and recan this particular can of worms, shall we? [emote];)[/emote][/quote]

Well, it's not like there's much else going on to discuss, honestly [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4279&start=0#p32791
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Article on Mental Floss
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-03-02 15:48:28

"Hey, here's this very old game.  Remember when games were really, really lame? har har.  And, crazy shit, dude, there are still quite a few lunatics out there making and playing Zork-look-alikes.  Crazy!"

go jump like a bitch in front of your kinect, bozo.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4279&start=0#p32792
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Article on Mental Floss
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-03-02 16:31:16

[quote]I misparsed the thread title and assumed it would provide tips on how to clean particles and unwanted tidbits from one's mind.[/quote]

You need to thread the string in one ear, through the brain and out the other ear -- then you can pull it back and forth to scrub the junk out of your brain.  The only problem is the old "you can't push on a string" conundrum.  I find a knitting needle or similar tool helps in the initial threading process. [emote]:)[/emote] 


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4521&start=0#p32793
Forum: Competitions / Subject: The Andromeda Legacy™ /// A Competition (with prizes!)
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-02 16:43:11

Hey there, peeps.

I have this dream: Steven Spielberg calls me on Skype (via a video call, so I can be sure he really is Spielberg) telling me he thinks my setting and lore are awesome and that he wants to buy the rights for a 3D movie on Monarch and its gratuitous forfeit in the lovely Andromeda Galaxy, thus making me filthy rich.

To make this dream come true, I'm in need of actually expanding the setting and background of [i]Andromeda Awakening[/i]. 

So, be ready for the announcement of:

[b]-----------------
The Andromeda Legacy™: The Expansion of a Shrinking Universe
[i]First Annual IF Competition, Ed. 2012[/i]
-----------------[/b]


[b]//// The Rules ////[/b]

• You can use whatever programming tool you want to build a piece of IF based on the Award Non-winning game [i]Andromeda Awakening[/i] by Marco Innocenti.
• It can be a traditional text adventure or a CYOA, with everything that stands in the middle (really: what you want/like)
• The game must be at least one room and can span to multitudes.
• The game can be puzzle-less or a puzzle-fest.
• The game can be a SpeedIF or a [i]Blue Lacuna In Space[/i].
• The game CAN or CANNOT include PC or NPCs from the original game.
• The game CAN or CANNOT include the Hyerotropes™.
• The game can be set before, after or during the events narrated in the original IF.
• The game can be serious, ironic or laughable at. Whatever.
• The game MUST NOT try and change the course of history as it is told in the original IF.
• The game MUST NOT try and change the existing setting of the original IF (i.e.: Monarch has three suns, not two or one or four).
• The game MUST be freeware or CC or whatever, as long as it is shareable and free to play.
• You are highly recommended to have your game betatested and proofread.

Finally:

• You can ask Marco Innocenti whatever question you like about your or his game, in order to do the best job you can.
• PM me or email Marco Innocenti (minnocenti <chiocciolina> kidstudio <punto> it) for a recap of the known facts about the lore of [i]Andromeda Awakening[/i] (in case you didn't finish/understand the original game or want a recap anyway).


[b]//// Legal Notice ////[/b]

The material included inside the Competition's entrants WILL NOT become intellectual property of Marco Innocenti but will stay of the various original authors (that means what I've done stays mine, what you add is yours).


[b]//// The Prizes ////[/b]

Oh, yes, there are prizes too!

A Jury (who's judgement is final etc. etc…) will be organized to judge the entrants. There will be only one challenge, the Best Game. No "best writing", "best setting", "best innovations", "best BigMac". If no jury will be assembled, Marco Innocenti will be the sole judge. Who's judgement will be final etc. etc...
If you have time and will you are eligible to be a judge, as long as you are not in the competition as an author. 

Yours truly is willing to donate for the winning titles:

[b]Winner: € 150
2nd: € 100
3rd: € 50[/b]

If you are filthy rich as Marco Innocenti wants to become, you are eligible to donate more prizes, and/or add categories for the Awards.


[b]//// The Deadline ////[/b]

• You must submit a FREE "I'm interested in this" registration before: [b][color=#8040BF]April 30th, 2012, 23h59 Central European Time[/color][/b].

• Your games must be submitted directly to Marco Innocenti via PM or email (minnocenti <chiocciolina> kidstudio <punto> it) before: [b][color=#8040BF]June 30, 2012, 23h59 Central European Time.[/color][/b]

• The winners will be celebrated on: [b][color=#8040BF]July 31st[/color][/b]. When and where I'll find soon enuf.


[b]//// Entry Fee ////[/b]

The Competition is completely free. 


[b]//// The Disclaimer ////[/b]

Really.
I'm not into this for anything but ego-enlargement. I don't want to steal your ideas or anything (I don't think that would be legal, anyway). I don't want to get filthy rich by teasing Spielberg with a web-induced hype. 
I just wanna see what people can invent with my own (partial) setting/lore. Talking to some of you in the past weeks, I understood doing such a thing as a hobby may not be that interesting. So I decided to turn it into a competition and give off prizes.

Love me, 'cause I love you [emote]:)[/emote]


[b]//// Where? ////[/b]

A site will be made up (maybe) for the Competition, where the jury can post its comments, reviews and votes (maybe).
Or else it will stay all under the hood, in my computer, unless I find someone willing to help me on the subject.
This forums will be the hub for everything as long as I have news.


[b][color=#800000]//// ADDENDUM ////

Given this is a competition, it will be held only if AT LEAST 2 games are entered. Two is enough.
Less than 2 means no comp.[/color][/b]


-----------------------------

Let's start!
I have faith in you!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4521&start=0#p32794
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Andromeda Legacy™ /// A Competition (with prizes!)
User: stadtgorilla / DateTime: 2012-03-02 17:48:20

Wow, I really hope this one lifts off, would be very cool.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4515&start=10#p32795
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: ASCII Map
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-03-02 17:50:42

Here's the roguelike example I mentioned:

<a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/R%26D%20Testing.gblorb">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/R%26D%20Testing.gblorb</a>

Move with arrow keys or numpad keys (I think--don't have a numpad to test). You can also use numbers: 1,3,7,9 serve as diagonals. Type "attack" or "a" to shoot an arrow. The blue elf will follow you around, and eventually catch you, if you're not careful about using diagonals. Neither this or the arrows have any actual effects  [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3159&start=10#p32796
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Announcing Spring Thing 2012
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2012-03-02 18:08:39

Yeah, don't worry about it man. He handled things very nicely last year and I wouldn't think he'll drop the ball this year.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4522&start=0#p32799
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Advice on how to do something.
User: sqib / DateTime: 2012-03-02 22:09:33

First off a quick bit of backstory. I have been working on something for awhile and began running into compiling errors due to the amount of figures used, the bug report is filed. Anyway I decided to break the project up into 2 pieces. The game takes place over the course of a week beginning on monday and ending on friday. I broke part 1 up from mon- weds night and part 2 picking up on thurs morning.   Ok now the problem is that actions you do or do not do during the earlier days directly or indirectly affect how things play out later so to carry settings over to the second part I decided to spit out a few passwords at the end of part 1 that you will then enter at the start of part 2 and these will carry settings over. The one problem I couldnt figure how to do is to bring the amount of money you have on you across but I will fudge my way through with that,

NOW, here is the problem I am now trying to do this but im not sure how, This is what I have at the moment.

[code]pregame is a scene.
pregame begins when play begins.

starting location is a room.

when play begins:
	now the player is in starting location.

when play begins:
	say "[paragraph break][paragraph break]Please enter the words listed at the end of (games name) below."

When play begins:
	change the command prompt to "Please enter first word > "
	
	
First Password is an indexed text that varies. Second Password is an indexed text that varies.  Third Password is an indexed text that varies. Fourth Password is an indexed text that varies. Fifth Password is an indexed text that varies.



To decide whether collecting First Password:
	if the command prompt is "Please enter first word > ", yes;
	no.

To decide whether collecting Second Password:
	if the command prompt is "Please enter second word > ", yes;
	no.

To decide whether collecting Third Password:
	if the command prompt is "Please enter third word > ", yes;
	no.

To decide whether collecting Fourth Password:
	if the command prompt is "Please enter fourth word > ", yes;
	no.

To decide whether collecting Fifth Password:
	if the command prompt is "Please enter fifth word > ", yes;
	no.




After reading a command when collecting first password:
	if the the player's command is "monkey":
		say "[paragraph break] Thank you.";
	change the command prompt to "Please enter second word";
	(here I would make changes that the entered password would cause).[/code]

so if theres 5 passwords and about 5 choices for each of the passwords how would I actually code that out?

Thanks alot

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3159&start=10#p32800
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Announcing Spring Thing 2012
User: sgreig / DateTime: 2012-03-03 00:37:07

Cool. Hopefully it's just him being busy and not my emails being stopped by a spam filter. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4522&start=0#p32802
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Advice on how to do something.
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-03 08:31:58

You want 'if the player's command matches "monkey"'. 
See the section on 'Reading a command' in the chapter on activities.

(Also, the player's command can't match against a text or indexed text variable. The "monkey" thing above counts as neither 'text' nor 'indexed text' but as a 'topic' – I never really understood the topic kind.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4463&start=10#p32803
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Why I Hate Goblins Demo
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2012-03-03 08:47:23

SCARE (and by extension, any SCARE-based interpreters, including Gargoyle and Spatterlight) does not play ADRIFT 5 games.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4442&start=0#p32804
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: npc nil object reference
User: zodraz / DateTime: 2012-03-03 09:35:22

Thanks conradcook, I will give that a try.

Also thanks to bcressey, experience and hindsight are wonderful...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4463&start=10#p32805
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Why I Hate Goblins Demo
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-03 09:56:09

All right then. I think this means that, as a Mac user, I can only play ADRIFT 5 games on the Webrunner.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4545&start=0#p32827
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Clod's Quest Demo (Undum port)
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2012-03-03 11:06:02

Undum port of Clod's Quest by Duncan Bowsman.

<a class="postlink" href="http://textadventures.co.uk/user/view/qe0gsqzdtk6zmov-drgbjg/freak">http://textadventures.co.uk/user/view/q ... gbjg/freak</a>

There is some text referring to features not yet implemented (hints, possibly limited saves) or solely refers to the original.

Clicking on a link in the main page attempts to use that object directly.
You can also select an object in the inventory pane, then click on link in the main page to use the first on the second.

(Inform 6 and Inform 7 ports are also available.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4546&start=0#p32828
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: gentlemen, we have time travel.
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-03 11:55:28

We are now able to ZIP (forward) and ZAP (backward) through the simulator world's timeline.  I'll probably have to do something to ensure TADS keeps undo information back to the beginning of the game.  But this works for small turn numbers.

The turn number is now part of the prompt, for better tracking.

The good parts of the transcript:

[quote]0>zip 20
You are zipping ahead 20 turns.

0>z
Time passes... 

The guard wants to play RPS with the scientist, but the scientist is busy. 

1>z
Time passes... 

The janitor and the guard decide to play a quick game of RPS. The janitor throws rock! The guard throws scissors! The janitor wins! 

2>z
Time passes... 

[i]...et cetera...[/i]

9>z
Time passes... 

The janitor wants to play RPS with the scientist, but the scientist is busy. 

10>z
Time passes... 

The janitor wants to play RPS with the guard, but the guard is still thinking over his tactics. 

11>z
Time passes... 

12>z
Time passes... 

The janitor and the guard decide to play a quick game of RPS. The janitor throws paper! The guard throws scissors! The guard wins!

[i]...more et cetera...[/i]

19>z
Time passes... 

[i]OK, now we get a prompt[/i]

20>zap 11
You are zapping back 11 turns.

20>undo
Taking back one turn: “zap 11”.

[i]...notice this doesn't induce paradox.  !-) [/i]

Lab
Welcome to the TADS Laboratory! 
A scientist, a janitor, and a guard are standing here. 

20>undo
Taking back one turn: “z”.

[i]...etc...[/i]

11>undo
Taking back one turn: “z”.

[i]OK, we get a prompt again, and wait to see what the simulator does.[/i]

Lab
Welcome to the TADS Laboratory! 

A scientist, a janitor, and a guard are standing here. 

10>z
Time passes... 

11>z
Time passes... 

12>z
Time passes... 

The janitor wants to play RPS with the scientist, but the scientist is busy. 

13>_[/quote]

Now, with a bit of scanning back and forth, we can easily confirm that the user input identical commands at any given turn, and the simulator did different things all on its lonesome.  Here, you'll notice turn 12 panned out differently in each case.

The next step is to use our pseudo-random code to prevent that!


Conrad.

PS - The undo / zap and prompt code, for anyone interested.  The Zap code is just the zip code with 'undo' as the core command.  Yes, I know I should set this up really for GENERIC_VERB #, but it's just not a priority right now.

I'm tucking the code away inside rant tags.  It's here for anyone who wants a copy to mess around with.

[rant]////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

modify libMessages
    mainCommandPrompt(which)
    {
        "\b<<libGlobal.totalTurns>>&gt;"; 

    }
;

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

class WaitThing: object
   testName = 'Z-ing script'
   testList = [ 'z' ]   

   run {
      local temp = new TemporaryFile();
      local out = File.openTextFile(temp, FileAccessWrite);
      testList.forEach({x: out.writeFile('>' + x + '\n')});
      out.closeFile();
      setScriptFile(temp);
   }
;

Z_ing : WaitThing

    i = 0
    n = 0

    waitMany {
    //local i = 0;
        for (i = 1 ; i <= n ; i++)  // begin with 2 because triggering the script is a turn!
        {
            run;
        }
        n = 0;
        return (i);
    }    
;

DefineLiteralAction(Zip)
    whatObj(which) {
        return 'how many turns';
    }
     actionTime = 0
     execAction()
     {
        Z_ing.n = toInteger(getLiteral());
        mainReport('You are <b>zipping</b> ahead <b>' + Z_ing.n 
                   + ' turns</b>.'
                   //+ '\nTime passes...'
                       );
        Z_ing.waitMany;
     }
;


VerbRule(Zip)
     'zip' singleLiteral
     : ZipAction
     verbPhrase = 'zip/zipping (what)'
;

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

class UndoThing: object
   testName = 'Undoing script'
   testList = [ 'undo' ]   

   run {
      local temp = new TemporaryFile();
      local out = File.openTextFile(temp, FileAccessWrite);
      testList.forEach({x: out.writeFile('>' + x + '\n')});
      out.closeFile();
      setScriptFile(temp);
   }
;

Un_ing : UndoThing

    i = 0
    n = 0

    undoMany {
    //local i = 0;
        for (i = 1 ; i <= n ; i++)  // begin with 2 because triggering the script is a turn!
        {
            run;
        }
        n = 0;
        return (i);
    }    
;

DefineLiteralAction(Zap)
    whatObj(which) {
        return 'how many turns';
    }
     actionTime = 0
     execAction()
     {
        Un_ing.n = toInteger(getLiteral());
        mainReport('You are <b>zapping</b> back <b>' + Un_ing.n 
                   + ' turns</b>.'
                   //+ '\nTime passes...'
                       );
        Un_ing.undoMany;
     }
;


VerbRule(Zap)
     'zap' singleLiteral
     : ZapAction
     verbPhrase = 'zap/zapping (what)'
;

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////[/rant]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4522&start=0#p32829
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Advice on how to do something.
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-03-03 12:54:13

Another option might be to just generate one long string and chop it up, so the player only has to type or paste in one password. If you want to pass just five variables with five possible values each, a five-letter string is more than enough to contain the actual info.

There was some talk in [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3484]this thread[/url].

Of course you may have other reasons to prefer five individual passwords.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4460&start=10#p32830
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table entries that result in a change or action?
User: Phrog / DateTime: 2012-03-03 12:57:38

Felix, thank you soooooo much!

Unfortunately, this weekend will be reserved for thesis work (grad school, yay!)

But I will try this out some time next week and see if it works.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4522&start=0#p32831
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Advice on how to do something.
User: sqib / DateTime: 2012-03-03 14:37:15

[quote="Felix"]You want 'if the player's command matches "monkey"'. 
[/quote]

yep thats it..I was one word off  "matches" was the word I needed to use. Thank you!

[quote="peterorme"]Another option might be to just generate one long string and chop it up, so the player only has to type or paste in one password. If you want to pass just five variables with five possible values each, a five-letter string is more than enough to contain the actual info.

There was some talk in [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3484]this thread[/url].

Of course you may have other reasons to prefer five individual passwords.[/quote]

The 5 passwords is with piggybacking multiple variables already. lol.  I stripped it down to the bare essentials and made each password cover a few variables. otherwise I would have like 15.    The one thing I did that I dont like is when you start the game you have $180.00   I have it that in the start of game 2 you have a check deposited in your checking account, but in the first part it is quite likely that you can spend all of that 180 dollars, what I did was for one of the passwords I had a if the price of the money is greater than or less than 80.00.  Not a great solution since you can have 81.00 or all 180 but couldnt think of anything better. so if you have greater than 80 ill give you like 120 in part 2 and if you had less 55 or so. The other variables are easy, pretty much if people are mad at you or not.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4217&start=20#p32832
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Adverbs
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-03 16:08:03

[quote="Dannii"]When you're fighting Guess The Verb at least the parser lets you know that you're fighting. I think both adverbs and specialised verbs will result in a much more insidious problem, which is that you may not know you're even in a fight because the unmodified/generic verb is successful.[/quote]
I suppose so - unless your game would be built around them, e.g. semi-synonyms of a single base verb.
[code]
> examine stewardess
A young woman in a professional uniform.  She is currently facing you.
> ogle stewardess
Well endowed in the T&A department.
> leer stewardess
Disgusted, she turns her back on you.
> x stewardess
You can't see much, as she faces away from you, but she seems a shapely lady in a professional uniform.
> ogle stewardess
Your eyes are drawn to the split in her skirt.
> x split
Keep your mind on the game.
> ogle split
The split reveals a bit of her underwear.
> ogle underwear.
Your mind turns it into a barrier to be overcome in order to advance with the game - YOUR game.
> x underwear.
The other passengers would probably report you.
> peep underwear.
You just see a tiny piece of dot-patterned textile.
> x dots
A somewhat irregular pattern of relief dots.
> ogle dots
They don't particularly excite you.
> investigate dots
Groups of dots in a 2x3 pattern, raised - wait - it is Braille!
> read dots
You can't see the complete message.
> spy dots
By judiciously moving your head, you manage to get the whole message in view.
> read dots
"If you can read this you are too close".
[/code]
Without some restriction, the width of the verb*modifier space is too large, be they expressed through adverbs or through specialised verbs.  So if there are many modifiers there should be few verbs, or the inverse.  That's why I had been thinking about a one-dimensional space, just "little" or "much".  Maybe other dimensions would be possible, but the player would have to be educated as to their existence.

And then there is of course "chicken and egg", with all the different ways of being silent.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4522&start=0#p32833
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Advice on how to do something.
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-03 17:04:03

Well, one simple solution to the money problem would be to just ask the player how much money there is left over from the first part of the game. True, it would give me a chance to cheat, but then, again, I would only be cheating against myself …

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4217&start=30#p32855
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Adverbs
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-03-03 19:37:12

I like that example! It doesn't look like the results to any command are particularly predictable though. For something like that to be successful the player would need to be able to learn which commands will be successful in which circumstances.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4522&start=0#p32856
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Advice on how to do something.
User: sqib / DateTime: 2012-03-03 19:48:01

Wish the bug didnt exist so I didnt have to break the game in half...soooo annoying. [emote]:evil:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4522&start=0#p32857
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Advice on how to do something.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-03 20:20:21

This would probably be a lot more work, but could you write the data from the end of part 1 to an external file that part 2 would read at the beginning? Then you might be able to write out all the data without having to worry about cutting down the number of passwords, since they'd be read in automatically. (Disclaimer: I have never done anything with external files and don't know how annoying this would be to program.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4548&start=0#p32858
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: a variety of games & interactions...
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-03 20:52:05

I'm looking to create a "house of games" type of environment.  The goal is to make something that's richly interactive.

Now ordinarily, in a house of games, the games would (in our terms) be toys, because they wouldn't affect the story much.  I'll solve that down the line, by varying the NPC's stakes.

I'm looking for games and game-like interactions that the PC might play with NPCs, or that NPCs might play with each other.  Especially, I'm looking for such interactions that might be [b]rigged[/b] by one of the competitors, or by a person who's not directly in the competition.

Thoughts?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4548&start=0#p32859
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: a variety of games & interactions...
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-03 22:20:11

The first thing that immediatly sprang to mind, after reading your description, was the game "Beta-Test". Is that the sort of thing you're after - but with much better implementation and diversity? Just curious.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4456&start=10#p32860
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Development Teams
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2012-03-04 01:57:52

I think having an IF team with different people doing art, sound, writing and programming can be a good idea, but the bulk of the work for a game falls in the writing and programming areas, which can also be tightly bound to each other, and the writing is the least divisible task to my eyes.

Mixing different people's writing into one channel that is supposed to be expressing one voice is freaking difficult. That's why nearly all novels are written by one person, and when a novel is written by two, it's often like a husband and wife team who can live in each other's pockets. So that's the practical block for me, that the biggest part of the work is the least divisible part. Though it's also true what was said in this thread, that the whole IF team thing hasn't been tested as much as teams in other genres.

I did consider doing absolutely everything on Six, but decided for time and sanity reasons to have someone else do the illustrations, so I invited Katherine, whom I met at Sydney GameJam, to do them, and she did a wonderful job. This just leads me to a little sidenote - annual Gamejam events around the world are a fantastic way to meet game developers with different skills, and to form teams and networks. Everyone who's helping me on my games atm, and everyone I'm helping on theirs atm, are people I met at gamejam events.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4228&start=0#p32861
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New Windows build of 6G60
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2012-03-04 02:24:47

I've now put up another new Windows build of Inform 7 6G60, available from [url]http://inform7.com/download/[/url] and from the IF-Archive. This new build only includes two changes:
[list]
[*]The elastic tabstop handling should now match that in OSX: only lines that start with text are treated, which basically confines the elastic tabstop handling to tables.[/*:m]
[*]When building the project, the Inform 6 compiler is invoked with the 'k' argument, causing it to write out an Infix debug file. This allows the use of Brady Garvin's absurdly clever Inform 7 debugging extensions (get them from [url]http://sourceforge.net/projects/i7grip/[/url]) without having to mess around with batch-file work-arounds. (If you haven't tried this yet, you should!)[/*:m][/list:u]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4548&start=0#p32862
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: a variety of games & interactions...
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-04 02:42:39

[b]Nim[/b] comes to mind, a game played in Last Year in [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82l8FtL6Og4]Marienbad[/url]. The perfect opponent could definitely be implemented in interactive fiction, and it can be rigged in that the perfect opponent if playing second always wins. The rules:

You have four lines of matchsticks, arranged like so:

[code]
	     *
	    ***
	   *****
	  *******
[/code]

Each player takes it in turns taking as many sticks as they like from any one horizontal line. The person who picks up the last stick loses.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4549&start=0#p32863
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Did I stumble across an Inform 7 bug?
User: katzenklavier / DateTime: 2012-03-04 03:40:31

Hi there,

I'm trying to implement a system for a game I'm working on in which the parser reads input that needs to be directed to a separate character if the command begins with a forward slash.  I've got the following code:

[code]The narrator is a person.  Janet is a person.

After reading a command:
	if the player's command matches the regular expression "^/":
		now the player is the narrator;
		let T be indexed text;
		let T be the player's command;
		replace the regular expression "^/" in T with "";
		change the text of the player's command to T.
		
Every turn:
	If the player is not Janet, now the player is Janet.
		
The test chamber is a room.  The printed name of the test chamber is "Test Chamber".  Janet and the narrator are in the test chamber.  "[if the player is the narrator]Test chamber #001 operational.[otherwise]This is a lovely-looking test chamber."[/code]
The code for the matching works correctly (although I'm sure there's a cleaner way of handling it than having to bust out the regular expressions - I'm new to I7) and it seems to be directing input to the correct characters.  The problem, however, arises with the descriptions it settles in on for Janet and the narrator:

[quote]>look
[b]Test Chamber[/b]
This is a lovely-looking test chamber.

You can see a narrator and Janet here.

>/look
[b]Test Chamber[/b]
Test chamber #001 operational.

You can see your former self and Janet here.

>look
[b]Test Chamber[/b]
This is a lovely-looking test chamber.

You can see your former self and a narrator here.

>[/quote]

...and it seems to settle in on calling Janet "your former self" from this point on despite the fact that the player is now Janet.  Does anyone have any idea what's happening here?

Thanks,
katz

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4228&start=10#p32864
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New Windows build of 6G60
User: Isxek / DateTime: 2012-03-04 03:42:05

Almost thought a new Inform 7 release was out. [emote]:D[/emote] Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4549&start=0#p32886
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Did I stumble across an Inform 7 bug?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-03-04 05:58:23

It's not an Inform bug. Remember that when the story begins there are three characters in the room: Janet, the narrator, and the player character. You can confirm that if you type SHOWME TEST CHAMBER as the first command. When you switch to another character, the original player character is not removed from the room and is shown in the room description as "your former self".

The solution is to assign the player character to either the narrator or Janet initially: "The player is Janet." Now the default player character ("yourself") is never put into play.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4411&start=10#p32887
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Topic icon variations: +/- yellow ; +/- pulsating
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-04 07:23:15

Rather on-topic: there are also the little arrows pointing to a sheet of paper - I understand they mean "click here to go directly to the relevant post".

And continuing the off-topic part: it would also be nice if off-site links would automatically open on a new tab.  Again: returning from them may take a while in these world parts, and it is nice to be able to continue reading one page while trying to get the other loaded.  Of course I usually right-click and choose "open in a new tab", but occasionally I forget.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4548&start=0#p32888
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: a variety of games & interactions...
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-04 07:41:39

Do you mean "Beta-Test[b]er[/b]"?  Comp game a few years back?

--No, I'm thinking more of something that models cooperative - competitive behavior.  I was thinking of poker, which is interesting for the money decisions (and I've often wanted to write a game that included playing poker) or perhaps a game like setback, where the possibility of partnering appears.

The trick is that these are very complicated games.  The 'matches' game is about the right level of complexity (=simplicity).

I suppose one-turn, or one-move games are easier to start with, but I doubt there are any that really have much in the way of cooperation-competition.


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3695&start=20#p32889
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Time passing
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-04 08:53:55

[quote="ArmanX"]So, what would you consider a good number of turns for a player to go without food, water, or sleep?[/quote]
I haven't lived in the desert per se, but I have lived and worked long enough in the northern Sahel to give you some impressions.  Of course deserts vary - the Gobi is not at all like the Sahara.
Trying to survive, food would be the least of your concerns.  Water and shade are paramount, and your water loss is very dependent on the shade, and also on the amount of activity (no fixed number of turns).  So if at all possible you would travel at night - having to deal with the cold - provided you could find a good shelter to sleep under.  The first time you might survive for two days without water, but two days without + a drink wouldn't get you back in that shape.
Sunlight would burn your skin, and both shortage of water and heat would make you dizzy, making you lose track of directions.  Apart from that directions are easy: at night the bright starry sky, during daytime the sun that stands straight east or west (except at noon).  Progress is very dependent on the environment - loose sand is very hard to walk (or drive) in, and climbing sand dunes, sliding back all the time, can be extremely tiring.  At daytime, hot sand or stone will burn your feet if proper footware is lacking.  The openness of many areas will be very discouraging: seeing no shade means a day of walking will not bring you to any, because you can see farther than you can walk in a day - or later on creep in a week.
So all together, one thing to model would be deteriorating shape - loss of energy; pain impeding progress; dizziness; blurring vision through heat, thirst and too much light; loss of sense of time; eventually loss of the will to survive.

Now with a camel the story would be rather different..

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4419&start=10#p32890
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to make a stealth action?
User: Superjax / DateTime: 2012-03-04 09:45:11

Hi everbody,

I have another problem. I've added in a combat system and changed the stealth system a bit, and I want to make it so that you/enemies/allies can't attack something that is stealthy:

[code]Check attacking a stealthy thing with something:
		if the actor is an enemy:
			say "The thug doesn't see a thing. You are completely invisble to him." instead.
		if the actor is the player:
			say "You think you see a shimmer, but you are unable to effectively attack it. Try using an EMP Blast." instead.
		if the actor is an ally:
			say "[the actor] thinks he sees something, and grows tense." instead.[/code]

For some reason, the code doesn't work. If you need the combat system code to solve the problem, I can post it.

Here's the stealth code:

[code]The stealth generator is a device.
The stealth generator is part of the Advanced Espionage Suit.
The stealth generator has a number called battery.
The battery of the stealth generator is 10.
Definition: Yourself is stealthy rather than unstealthy if the battery of the stealth generator is at least 1.

Every turn when the player is stealthy:
	Decrement the battery of the stealth generator;
	if the player is unstealthy, say "You bump into something in a totally unstealthy way. Enough of this sneaking around.".

Check switching on the stealth generator:
	if the battery of the stealth generator is 0:
		say "Your stealth generator has run out of energy. Recharge at the nearest allied power station." instead;
	if the stealth generator is switched on:
		say "Your stealth generator is already switched on!" instead;
		
Carry out switching on the stealth generator:
	Now the player is stealthy;
	say "You feel a vibration in your spine as the stealth generator activates.".

Check switching off the stealth generator:
	if the stealth generator is switched off:
		say "Your stealth generator is already switched off!" instead.

Carry out switching off the stealth generator:
	Now the player is unstealthy;
	say "You hear several clicks and a bit of steam pours out the stealth generator. You are no longer stealthy.".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4548&start=0#p32891
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: a variety of games & interactions...
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-04 10:09:24

What about [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_(party_game)]Mafia/Werewolf/etc.[/url]?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4419&start=10#p32892
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: How to make a stealth action?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-03-04 10:22:47

[quote="Superjax"][code]Check attacking a stealthy thing with something:
		if the actor is an enemy:
			say "The thug doesn't see a thing. You are completely invisble to him." instead.
		if the actor is the player:
			say "You think you see a shimmer, but you are unable to effectively attack it. Try using an EMP Blast." instead.
		if the actor is an ally:
			say "[the actor] thinks he sees something, and grows tense." instead.[/code]

For some reason, the code doesn't work.[/quote]
"Check attacking" rules will only fire if the actor is the player. You need:
[code]Check an actor attacking a stealthy thing with something:[/code]
See chs. 12.11 - 12.14

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4548&start=0#p32893
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: a variety of games & interactions...
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-04 10:46:01

Matt, that is brilliant!  Probably far too complicated in its pure form, but I may be able to simplify it to a little model game.

I'm not sure how, but I'll work on it -- thanks!


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4548&start=0#p32894
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: a variety of games & interactions...
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-04 11:09:30

Werewolves is the best! Though probably the highlight is lying to your friends when you're a killer or experiencing the terrifying wrongdoings that arise from collective paranoia.

Rock-paper-scissors is easy to do, and you can add in some prison dilemma elements, like 'Laser' beats everything, unless you both pick laser and then you both lose, 'mirror' always ends in a draw, unless you both choose mirror, if so you both win. etc. etc.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=40#p32916
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-04 12:28:55

[quote="bukayeva"]The question of the thread is why "IF" is not taken seriously.

Some don't see text adventures as a serious medium because ...[/quote]

There is something in that.  People whose only exposure to IF has been TAs may think that's all there is to it - and unfortunately there are many like that.  Someones first work of IF will likely be a TA (often set in a setting known to them), and people's exposure to IF may be limited to knowing someone who dabbles in TAs, or to a school assignment.

And of course TAs are a good entry point to writing IF.  One learns the basics of the programming system one uses, and one can discover whether one has what it takes to advance.  And I agree that, barring philosophical/theological interpretations (did one choose/God ordain you/the deterministic universe made it unavoidable for you to be born in the West, without Down's syndrom, ..), that is a case of chance.  Ten people try, one succeeds, because (s)he has the right combination of will power, zeal, talent, health, environment, et cetera.  TAs are a great and rather safe way to try.

But those who do advance often move way beyond TAs (Galatea, Shade), but it is up to the IF community to make this fact known, if it wants public acclaim.  Make known that (1) there are many genres of IF besides TA, and (2) as with any art form, the material with artistic merit is only a part of the total production.

Within story writing there is the subclass "literature", and a body of works generally accepted as belonging to that class.  IF could profit from having such a body recognised, and distinguished, from the mass of IF works, I think.  A newcomer who knows the work (s)he plays is outside that body will not disparage the art form based on that work, and those who are so inclined can get accustomed with the "great artistic IF" the way people may want to have read some of the great literature.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4548&start=0#p32917
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: a variety of games & interactions...
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-04 12:32:54

Another thought might be Diplomacy. Obviously you can't model actual Diplomacy -- that would be insanely complex, and probably illegal -- but you could do a little schematic of interactions. Something like this:

Germany, Austria, England, France, and Italy each start with 3 territories. There are 6 unclaimed territories at the beginning. 

Every turn, one player can ATTACK another, SUPPORT another, or EXPLORE.

Resolution of attacks: if the combined strength of the ATTACKing player and everyone SUPPORTing them exceeds the combined strength of the player who has been attacked and everyone SUPPORTing them, the attacked player loses one territory and the attacker gains one. If not, no change.

If you EXPLORE and no one ATTACKs you, you get one unclaimed territory, as long as there is one left and enough to go around. If there are more EXPLORing players who are not ATTACKed than there are unclaimed territories, no one gets an unclaimed territory.

Example: England and France decide to go after Austria. Austria and Germany make an agreement to go after France, but Germany decides to betray Austria instead. Italy explores.

Turn 1: France attacks Austria. England supports France. Austria attacks France. Germany explores. Italy explores.
Resolution: France's attack on Austria is 6 (England + France) to 3 (Austria). Austria's attack on France is 3 to 6. France gains 1 territory from Austria. Germany and Italy get one unclaimed territory each.
Now: France has 4, England has 3, Austria has 2, Germany has 4, Italy has 4, there are 4 unclaimed.

Austria decides to get Italy to help take its revenge against Germany. Germany attacks Austria. France and England continue to go after Austria; now it's England's turn to try to get a territory.
Turn 2: England attacks Austria. France supports England. Germany attacks Austria. Austria supports Italy. Italy attacks Germany.
Resolution: England's attack on Austria has a strength of 7 (3 for England + 4 for France) against 2. Italy's attack on Germany has a strength of 6 (4 + 2 from Austria) against 4. Germany's attack on Austria has a strength of 4 against 2. All attacks succeed. Austria loses 2, Germany stays the same (gaining 1 from Austria, losing 1 to Italy), England gains 1, Italy gains 1.
Now: England has 4, France has 4, Italy has 5, Germany has 4, Austria has 0 and is eliminated! There are still 4 unclaimed. 
I suppose that if there were more successful attacks against a side than the side had territories, there'd have to be some rule about who wins first -- probably the strongest attack. (If three sides had attacked Austria, they could only lose two territories.) 

Anyway, maybe this won't do at all, but it seems to me as though it could give you a lot of scope for bringing various kind of motivations in play. One player will mercilessly strive for revenge against anyone who betrays her, one player will ally with you in exchange for some out-of-game fetch item, one player will always strive to take down the person in the lead, that sort of thing.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4514&start=0#p32918
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Identifying problems with RAP (Reactive Agent Planner)
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2012-03-04 12:34:23

[quote="conradcook"]Is the I7 RAP close enough to the T3 rap that the documentation crosses over?[/quote]
The concepts cross over, but TADS3 is a much more powerful language than the Inform of 2008, so I doubt TADS has any need for stand-in objects.  
[quote]There may be a terminological disconnect here, between I7 and T3, but I do not fathom what you're saying here.[/quote]
Quite possibly.  Since everything's already an object in TADS, everything else always works with objects.  There isn't any such thing as a relation in TADS, except perhaps an object that has that name + two properties detailing what the "relation" connects.

[quote](More generally -- there are some data types I7 disallows being made global??)[/quote]
Yes. Quite a few, though I think that list has grown shorter since the new type system was introduced about a year or two ago.

[quote]The T3 RAP does not consult with check rules.  Says so in Steve Breslin's manual.[/quote]
I'm inclined to believe it should.. or at least the verify rules which are, in Inform, the same thing as check rules. 

I showed you the article and alternate implementation mainly so you have a high-level view of what and how AI works in IF, which comes in handy when you want to read or modify the source to the AI for your own ends.  I imagine the manuals for TADS' RAP are much more useful when it comes down to the nitty-gritty.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4549&start=0#p32919
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Did I stumble across an Inform 7 bug?
User: katzenklavier / DateTime: 2012-03-04 12:37:12

Okay, that makes perfect sense.  I was baffled - thanks so much for your reply. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4228&start=10#p32920
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New Windows build of 6G60
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2012-03-04 12:43:54

[quote="DavidK"]I've now put up another new Windows build of Inform 7 6G60, available from [url]http://inform7.com/download/[/url] and from the IF-Archive. This new build only includes two changes:
[list]
[*]The elastic tabstop handling should now match that in OSX: only lines that start with text are treated, which basically confines the elastic tabstop handling to tables.[/*:m]
[*]When building the project, the Inform 6 compiler is invoked with the 'k' argument, causing it to write out an Infix debug file. This allows the use of Brady Garvin's absurdly clever Inform 7 debugging extensions (get them from [url]http://sourceforge.net/projects/i7grip/[/url]) without having to mess around with batch-file work-arounds. (If you haven't tried this yet, you should!)[/*:m][/list:u][/quote]
Oh, very nice.  Thank you for adding that command-line argument!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4572&start=0#p32921
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Advice on finding/overriding rules?
User: thecustodian / DateTime: 2012-03-04 14:06:22

Cheers all.  I'm still grinding away at my first game and running into the n00b blocks.

I have an container which I want the player to turn into another object by:
-opening
-inserting components

I'm going to handle this by having an 'after' rule for inserting into that container, and if the container contains the fully assembled list of components, I'm going to swap it for an instance of the final object (which is waiting off-stage).  I'm doing this b/c I couldn't figure out how to have an object change its referred-to-as name when assembly was finished, and I didn't want to give away the puzzle by letting the player refer to the original object via the finished object's name.

Anyway, sorry, background.  Here's my problem.  The original object (let's call it a fleeb) is a container, but it's closed and unopenable (as per my last question) so that the player doesn't get told 'the fleeb is closed' and thus giving away that it's a container.  So I need to override "open [something] with [something]" to allow the player to open the fleeb with the appropriate tool. However, when I code that up, I instead get
[quote]
>open fleeb with tool
(first taking the tool)
That doesn't seem to be something you can unlock.
[/quote]
So it seems like despite the fact that I have:
[code]
Opening it with is an action applying to two things.
Understand "open [something] with [something]" as opening it with.
[/code]
...and then have check and carry out clauses for the 'opening it with' activity, Inform is still assuming that opening something with something is unlocking.  I presume I need to remove the unlocking rule from the rulebook (which is OK, I don't use keys in my game) or something like that.  But I don't know how to find the precise name of the rule I need to remove.  I looked in the rules section of the index, and none of the 'built in' rules are there.  When I turn on rules tracing in the game, instead of named rules I get a big list of things like "The rule at address (497342)".

Any help most gratefully appreciated.  Thanks all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4433&start=0#p32922
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Are there arrays in TADS? Or anything that behaves that 
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-04 14:19:46

Alright...  I've been trying to figure this out for a while, kind of like the Mutual of Omaha footage with a lion trying to figure out a porcupine. 

Currently, I'm considering setting this up as a [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/sysman/lookup.htm]LookupTable[/url].  They're designed for stowing away data on a key, which is what I'm doing.

The catch is that I need to stow data away based on TWO keys.  Now rather than create an index table of index tables, as I had thought to do with lists / vectors, I'm considering creating an index table of a special object that takes two parameters (=two keys), and indexing on that.  Each parameter would be an enumerated, er, thingy.  (Symbol?  Token?)

The other way to use a two-key system would be to concatenate two strings together.  For example, I could create a function that would smash together two player's moves like this:

[code]smashTogetherTwoPlayersMoves (p1move, p2move)  // both beings strings
   {
        return (p1move + '-vs-' + p2move);
   }
;[/code]

Thus the lookupTable would operate on strings like 'ROCK-vs-PAPER'.

I can't help but notice that the lookupTable key examples in the docs all seem to be strings.  I expect lookupTables can key on objects of any kind, but I just want something simple and easily doable.

Any thoughts on which approach will be simplest and easiest, for extension into as-yet-unthought-of game move keys?


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4572&start=0#p32923
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Advice on finding/overriding rules?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-04 14:48:59

The thing you are describing with rules tracing shouldn't happen. Are you using the command "rules"? Do you have any extensions included?

But if you want to use the index, look in the "actions" tab -- the rules that pertain to specific actions are listed there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4548&start=0#p32924
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: a variety of games & interactions...
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-04 14:53:59

I'm looking for games relevant to personal characters, rather than nation-state characters.  But yes, that is the general idea.  More the diplomacy around water coolers than colonies.

...maybe I should read some Jr. High drama.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4572&start=0#p32925
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Advice on finding/overriding rules?
User: thecustodian / DateTime: 2012-03-04 15:02:16

Yep, using 'rules'.  I have no extensions included/enabled at this point.  It first started doing Address-based rules when I had to switch to Glulx due to memory limits.

When I look in the 'rules governing actions' section of the Rules tab in the index, it shows all the actions *I've* set, but it doesn't show the built-ins.

Anyhow...I think I'm overengineering a hack, here.  So here's my design block in generic terms - maybe you folks can  suggest a 'proper' (or at least 'not hideously hackish') option for doing this. [emote]:-)[/emote]

I want my user to find components throughout the game, and then use those components to build a new item.

The way I was trying to do it was having the 'base' component be a container (which was hidden from the player) and when they figured out how to open the container, have them put the other components inside it.  Then use an 'After inserting into (container)' rule, and when they had the requisite pieces, have the finished item (which was held offstage) swap places in their inventory with the container.  Actually, my *original* plan was to have the base item be a *part* of another item, have them disassemble that to get the base part; that didn't work because I couldn't figure out how to make something no longer a part of anything. The Red Label example just showed how to make it part of something else...

Wow, I'm making less and less sense as I go along, huh. [emote]:-P[/emote]

EDIT:  Oh.  Um, duh.  I just found Example 416.  After searching for all kinds of words in the built-in docs and not finding it.  Because, yeah, I'm an idjit.  Never mind. [emote]:-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4433&start=0#p32926
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Are there arrays in TADS? Or anything that behaves that 
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-04 15:08:06

...is there a data class that functions like a set in TADS?  Like a list, but without ordering?  Or like enum, but with grouping?

C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4548&start=0#p32927
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: a variety of games & interactions...
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-04 15:11:16

Well, I meant the Avalon Hill boardgame [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomacy_(game)]Diplomacy[/url], in which individual players take the roles of the European powers in 1900. So England, France, Italy and all that would be played by people, and they could do their betraying etc. on the gameboard, and make their alliances and negotiations in the living room. But it might be too complicated to implement this and the relations that would be involved.

In my schematic "Explore" should probably be "Colonize," by the way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4548&start=10#p32928
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: a variety of games & interactions...
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-04 15:17:12

Oh, I understand now.

Yeah, I'm looking to build a kind of infrastructure for character interaction that I can leave scattered around an environment, or build into the texture of a game, so that characters (PCs and NPCs) have diverse, richer ways of interacting with each other than moving items around the simulator.  That's the broad goal.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4521&start=0#p32929
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Andromeda Legacy™ /// A Competition (with prizes!)
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2012-03-04 15:22:55

I love the idea!  I love sci-fi/fantasy settings and worldbuilding.  I think it's a shame that the copyright holders of most great fictional worlds usually try to stop other minds from joining their world.  Where would Western fiction be if many hundreds of writers had not contributed to our understanding of the stories about King Arthur?

[i]Andromeda Awakening[/i] looks very cool.  I've only wandered around in the game and read some stuff through that thing, but I would like to finish it.  I hope this competition is a success.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4572&start=0#p32930
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Advice on finding/overriding rules?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-04 15:30:11

I suppose you could just use the unlocking it with action and make fleebs lockable as well as unopenable.  No?
Also, I'm pretty curious about those 'rule at address' messages.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4572&start=0#p32931
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Advice on finding/overriding rules?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-03-04 15:36:00

[quote="thecustodian"]It first started doing Address-based rules when I had to switch to Glulx due to memory limits.[/quote]
This shouldn't cause that, however, before switching to glulx, you probably tried to avoid doing so by adding this:
[code]Use memory economy.[/code]
... which [i]does[/i] remove rule names to save memory. Now that you've switched you can remove that line; you won't need it anymore. Rules tracing should return to normal.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4433&start=0#p32932
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Are there arrays in TADS? Or anything that behaves that 
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-03-04 15:36:29

Why don't you use a two element list as the index value? The ordering is actually useful since the expected result from (Rock, Paper) is not the same as (Paper, Rock).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4572&start=0#p32933
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Advice on finding/overriding rules?
User: thecustodian / DateTime: 2012-03-04 15:37:26

Skinny Mike:

THAT'S A BEEENGOH.

Thank you. [emote]:-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4572&start=0#p32934
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Advice on finding/overriding rules?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-03-04 15:39:50

I don't know what that means but, you're welcome.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4572&start=0#p32935
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Advice on finding/overriding rules?
User: thecustodian / DateTime: 2012-03-04 15:45:32

So I spoke too soon re: my combining objects problem!  Heh.  I'm essentially copying Example 416, but that doesn't work because the things I need to combine - here fleeb and programmed florb (and the item built entries) are *kinds* - and apparently you can't put kinds in lists:
[quote]
Problem. The constant list 'fleeb, programmed florb'   contains an entry 'fleeb' which does make sense, but isn't a constant (it's a fleeb). Only constants can appear as entries in constant lists, i.e., in lists written in braces '{' and '}'.

Problem. The constant list 'fleeb, programmed florb'   contains an entry 'programmed florb' which does make sense, but isn't a constant (it's a florb). Only constants can appear as entries in constant lists, i.e., in lists written in braces '{' and '}'.
[/quote]
Is there a way to use the assembly algorithm for non-uniques?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4514&start=0#p32936
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Identifying problems with RAP (Reactive Agent Planner)
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-03-04 15:45:48

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]
I'm inclined to believe it should.. or at least the verify rules which are, in Inform, the same thing as check rules. [/quote]

Verify rules in TADS are closer to does-the-player-mean rules in Inform; they're primarily for parser manipulation and disambiguation control. Check rules serve a similar purpose between the languages, and I agree that it makes sense to modify or rewrite RAP to follow them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4548&start=10#p32937
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: a variety of games & interactions...
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-04 15:49:39

Yeah, I was mega unclear in my initial post, especially because I just saw that I wrote "you can't model actual diplomacy" when I meant "you can't model actual Diplomacy," that is, you can't program the game itself into your game. 

It might just be better to think of it as Risk with fewer dice. I think S. John is probably going to kill me for that comment, unless he approves of it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4572&start=0#p32938
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Advice on finding/overriding rules?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-04 16:15:49

[quote="thecustodian"]Actually, my *original* plan was to have the base item be a *part* of another item, have them disassemble that to get the base part; that didn't work because I couldn't figure out how to make something no longer a part of anything. The Red Label example just showed how to make it part of something else...[/quote]

Just move the base to wherever you want it to go. Any of these:

[code]Now the player holds the base.
Now the base is in the location.
Now the base is held by the holder of the statue.
Remove the base from play.[/code]

should make the base no longer part of the statue (if that's what it was part of) and send it to different places. 

"Now the base is held by the holder of the statue" is one I especially like, until someone tells me that I'm doing it wrong. It should make the base wind up wherever the statue was when you did the thing that removed it. If the statue was in your inventory, the base will wind up there; if it was on a supporter, the base will wind up on the supporter; and so on. 

Note that if you're writing a rule for kinds of thing instead of specific things, things get a bit more complicated. You won't be able to say "Now the base is held by the holder of the fleeb" if "fleeb" is a kind (or if "base" is a kind); you'll have to use things like "the noun" and "the second noun" to make sure you get the right fleeb and/or base.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4411&start=10#p32939
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Topic icon variations: +/- yellow ; +/- pulsating
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2012-03-04 16:46:47

[quote="Biep"]I understand they mean "click here to go directly to the relevant post".[/quote]
Yes, if by "relevant post" you mean "first unread post".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4521&start=0#p32940
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Andromeda Legacy™ /// A Competition (with prizes!)
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-04 16:51:11

Thanks a lot both. I don't know if AA has a great fictional world. What I know is that you all can help make it better!

I wait for your submissions, then! [emote]:)[/emote]

@Bainespal: play the final cut version, from IFDB. The lore is much bigger.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4572&start=0#p32941
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Advice on finding/overriding rules?
User: thecustodian / DateTime: 2012-03-04 17:01:08

Ooh, I am so confused.

Okay, so I figured if I can't use lists of kinds for assembly, I can cheat and use their printed names - at least to determine their compatibility.

Sorry for the long include, but this is making me nuts:
[code]

"test" by "custo"

Combining it with is an action applying to two carried things.
Understand "combine [something] and [something]" as combining it with.
Understand "combine [something] with [something]" as combining it with.  
Understand the command "attach" as something new.  Understand "attach [something] to [something]" as combining it with.

The combining it with action has an object called the item built.

Setting action variables for combining something with something:
	let X be a list of texts;
	add the printed name of the noun to X;
	add the printed name of the second noun to X;
	say "X is presort: [X in brace notation].";
	sort X;
	repeat through the Table of Outcome Objects:
		let Y be the component list entry;
		say "Y is presort: [Y in brace notation].";
		sort Y;
		say "X is: [X in brace notation].";
		say "Y is: [Y in brace notation].";
		if X is Y:
			say "match![line break]";
			now the item built is the result entry.

Check combining it with:
	say "The item built lookup is: [the item built].";
	if the item built is nothing, say "[The noun] and [the second noun] don't make anything useful." instead;
	if the item built is not in limbo, say "That's not available." instead.
	
Carry out combining it with:
	move the item built to the holder of the noun;
	remove the noun from play;
	remove the second noun from play.
	
Report combining it with:
	say "You now have [an item built]!".

A memory chip is a kind of thing.

A broadcast chip is a kind of thing.

The player is carrying a memory chip and a broadcast chip.

Limbo is a container.  Limbo contains the Klein Blaster.

The test chamber is a room.  The description is "GlaDOS is watching you."

The player is in the test chamber.

Table of Outcome Objects
component list	result
{"broadcast chip", "memory chip"}	Klein Blaster
[/code]

If I run that, I get:
[quote]
>combine broadcast chip with memory chip
X is presort: {"broadcast chip", "memory chip"}.
Y is presort: {"broadcast chip", "memory chip"}.
X is: {"memory chip", "broadcast chip"}.
Y is: {"broadcast chip", "memory chip"}.

The item built lookup is: nothing.
The broadcast chip and the memory chip don't make anything useful.
[/quote]
Now.  Note The order of the lists is the same, presort.  Then note that the orders are *not* the same post-sort.  Also, the comparison fails.  (it fails even if I 'force' the lists into the correct order using reverse sort or other trickery).  The differing behavior of sort() tells me that the two lists, despite *looking* like they're lists of the same things, *aren't*, and that's both why the comparison (X is Y) is failing *and* why sort is doing two different things.  
Can anyone tell me why they're not the same?  Is it that having a list declared in a table doesn't automatically make it a list of texts, even if the elements are quoted text?

Just to make myself more confused:  If I change the order of the texts in the table component list, it seems that it *does* do what I expect, leave it in the same order (alphabetic).  So why does this work on the list in the table but not the one built during the check?  Why does the latter end up *reversed*?
[quote]
>combine broadcast chip with memory chip
X is presort: {"broadcast chip", "memory chip"}.
Y is presort: {"memory chip", "broadcast chip"}.
X is: {"memory chip", "broadcast chip"}.
Y is: {"broadcast chip", "memory chip"}.

The item built lookup is: nothing.
The broadcast chip and the memory chip don't make anything useful.
[/quote]

UPDATE UPDATE: AIGH.  OK, figured out *part* of this.  The property 'printed noun' was being added to a list as a property, I think, not as a text.  So changing the code to the following:
[code]
	add "[the printed name of the noun]" to X;
	add "[the printed name of the second noun]" to X;
[/code]
...seems to now make 'sort' behave identically on both lists.  But they still fail to match:
[quote]
>combine broadcast chip with memory chip
X is presort: {"broadcast chip", "memory chip"}.
Y is presort: {"memory chip", "broadcast chip"}.
X is: {"broadcast chip", "memory chip"}.
Y is: {"broadcast chip", "memory chip"}.

The item built lookup is: nothing.
The broadcast chip and the memory chip don't make anything useful.
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4411&start=10#p32942
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Topic icon variations: +/- yellow ; +/- pulsating
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-04 17:01:25

Well, on the "View your posts" page the column "Last post" has them too, and there they seem to link to that last post, read or unread.  Maybe they appear in more locations.  That's why I formulated it circumspectly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4433&start=0#p32943
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Are there arrays in TADS? Or anything that behaves that 
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-04 17:05:46

Yeah, but how do I assign content to a filled-out two-item list?

--Or do you mean, use a two-item list as the key?


C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4515&start=20#p32944
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: ASCII Map
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2012-03-04 17:17:45

I've implemented maps in two games I've created/am working on. The first game is a single-room puzzle with four rooms. Er... anyway. The maps show the path of a little robot that you have to program to go pick up an item, as it goes through the map. Granted, it took a lot of fiddling to get an animated, autogenerated ASCII map to work in TADS 3, but the result is quite impressive. To me, anyway. It fits nicely, plays well, and looks good. However, it doesn't show the player on the map - just a little robot. Once you actually get inside the room, you realize all the walls are very short, and thus the entire map is just one 'room'.
The second map is actually even more complicated - it's a "pixelated" color map, put together out of an autogenerated outdoor room map. Each "dot" on the map corresponds to a single room; however, like the country maps it imitates, it doesn't care where "house" rooms are. It just maps the entire "house" as a gray block. Desert is yellow, ocean is blue, lakes are blue, jungle is green, grassland is tan. Meanwhile, the game itself is more of a rouge-like, though with a much less detailed map - more like a map you'd carry, rather than an overhead view of your exact surroundings. When you're in a house, the X that marks your spot doesn't move until you leave. While I like the way it looks and works, it's not how I'd suggest building a game. This game has thousands of rooms... great for rougue-likes, terrible for anything else. Really, really terrible.

That being said, a well-designed map is awesome regardless, even if it only barely corresponds to the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4514&start=0#p32945
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Identifying problems with RAP (Reactive Agent Planner)
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-04 17:21:02

These waters get deep real quick.

The whirligig has to know, for example, not only when an action failed, but when it doesn't matter that it failed.

For example, if you're trying to open a door, and OPEN DOOR fails because the door is already open, the machine has to go ahead with the plan anyway.

I don't know how to begin to address this kind of stuff.  -- I'm not saying I won't try it, but it's way beyond me.

--Does check() only apply to actions by the PC, too, or does it also apply to NPC actions?

Where do I find the docs for the {you/he} syntax?


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4548&start=10#p32946
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: a variety of games & interactions...
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-04 17:24:54

He's a pretty scary character, that S. John.

--Characters who are diplomats (or generals) might be an interesting development.  But right now, I'm working more on the, "Hey Jimmy, that thar stranger is awful friendly with yor girl" -type stuff.  Small-scale interactions, and currently pretty physical ones.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4545&start=0#p32947
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Clod's Adventure Demo (Undum port)
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2012-03-04 17:51:59

This was a real treat to see, thank you!  A faithful port of the demo for the admittedly long-winded title [i]Clod's Quest: The Dungeons of Zivulda[/i].  I played through to the end (including the tutorial), and only found one error... when I open the "Options" menu with the bit about mustard, I can't seem to get back to the title screen.

Undum provides a clean interface which feels well-suited to the type of play the adventure intends to offer.  My only complaint about its presentation is that the screen is scrolling rather than providing a persistent display like in the original (where the player sees a room description, the result of an action, then the screen clears and provides the room description again).  The scrolling wasn't really a problem unless I selected or de-selected an inventory item while reading a room description... upon selection, the screen would scroll to the bottom, meaning I'd have to scroll back up again to interact with the room.

Perhaps I should investigate Undum more fully...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4572&start=10#p32948
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Advice on finding/overriding rules?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-03-04 18:01:22

This was all starting to sound sort of familiar so I dug through some old code examples and found something from back in the raif days. Some of the code is outdated and won't compile as written, but it (or something else in the thread) might give you some ideas. Here's the link to the post:
[url]http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/msg/259036a2bdddac3c[/url]
Ignore my code at the beginning, I'm pretty sure that's useless now. Take a look at Roger Helgeson Jr's code for ideas. I have to run, but will be back later tonight.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4514&start=0#p32949
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Identifying problems with RAP (Reactive Agent Planner)
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-03-04 18:59:33

[quote="conradcook"]--Does check() only apply to actions by the PC, too, or does it also apply to NPC actions?[/quote]

It applies to all actions, though you'll need to deal with the inevitable output issues. For the player character, it's enough to print a message describing the failure. For an NPC, you may need to set a flag somewhere so they can adapt to the failure, and you may not want to print anything at all.

[quote="conradcook"]Where do I find the docs for the {you/he} syntax?[/quote]

Here you go: [url=http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/techman/t3msg.htm]Message Parameter Substitutions[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4433&start=0#p32950
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Are there arrays in TADS? Or anything that behaves that 
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-03-04 19:18:01

Yes, use a two-item list as a key.

[code]
enum ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS;
enum WIN, LOSE, DRAW;

modify WaitAction
	execAction() {
		local tab = new LookupTable();

		tab[(ROCK,PAPER)] = LOSE;
		tab[(ROCK,SCISSORS)] = WIN;
		tab[(ROCK,ROCK)] = DRAW;

		if (tab[(ROCK,PAPER)] == LOSE)
			"PAPER beats ROCK. ";
		if (tab[(ROCK,SCISSORS)] == WIN)
			"ROCK beats SCISSORS. ";
		if (tab[(ROCK,ROCK)] == DRAW)
			"ROCK and ROCK is a draw. ";
	}
;
[/code]

You might also want to have the table's result be a two-item list, so that for example the result for player 1 is at position 1, and the result for player 2 is at position 2.

[code]
tab[(ROCK,PAPER)] = (LOSE, WIN);
[/code]

This would allow you to mix up the output - you could print "Player 1 wins!" as often as "Player 2 loses!", without having to negate the result from the table.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4433&start=10#p32951
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Are there arrays in TADS? Or anything that behaves that 
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-03-04 19:24:05

Hmm, this doesn't work for lists constructed at runtime, since they do not have the same internal identifier. Let me get back to you on this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4433&start=10#p32952
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Are there arrays in TADS? Or anything that behaves that 
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-04 20:02:46

Yeah, I need to code the results for each player individually anyway, because for some games the outcomes will be asymmetric.

--Why did you code all of this inside WaitAction?


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4433&start=10#p32953
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Are there arrays in TADS? Or anything that behaves that 
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-04 20:08:47

I'll use the string system, or an object passing a string.  Try both, I guess.

Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4514&start=0#p32954
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Identifying problems with RAP (Reactive Agent Planner)
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-04 20:15:07

OK--

With dread I ask:  Where do I go to start rewriting, or how do I overwrite, the default check() messages?

I expect I have to go through verb by verb, and I'll need to consult the old ones.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4433&start=10#p32955
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Are there arrays in TADS? Or anything that behaves that 
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-04 20:47:17

Alright, lemme ask this -- 

Is it possible to save an *object* to a file and then re-load it, without having TADS go on strike because the game file has been updated since?  Is this difficult, or is it on a par with the file manipulations we saw in setting script files?

In other words, can I have the T3 engine allow me to key in results of different move combinations, save that data, and access it subsequently, when the IF I'm building has been changed elsewhere?

I can't be hard-coding everything, and might as well knock this out early with a basic game editor.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4573&start=0#p32956
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Take able objects?
User: Argothos / DateTime: 2012-03-04 20:53:32

Hey! i've just gotten started on making my own interactive firction game, and i need my character to be able to take stuff! i use ADRIFT to make my game. So how do i do it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4456&start=10#p32957
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Development Teams
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-04 20:58:17

[quote="severedhand"][...] but the bulk of the work for a game falls in the writing and programming areas [...][/quote]

Interesting. So far, in my (admittedly still limited) experience, I've found that I log at least as many [i]game-design [/i]hours as I do [i]writing [/i]hours and [i]programming [/i]hours. Programming takes a slight lead among the three for me, but I chalk that up to my own poor skills in that area (I can spend hours banging my head against an implementation problem that a real programmer can probably breeze through in minutes).

After those (which are the "big three" for me), tasks like [i]feelie production[/i] trail in at the end, though with one WIP in particular, feelie production is looking like it's going to match the writing hours.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4433&start=10#p32958
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Are there arrays in TADS? Or anything that behaves that
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-03-04 21:15:53

[quote="conradcook"]--Why did you code all of this inside WaitAction?[/quote]

That's just what I reach for whenever I have a chunk of code I want to test. It's not meant to be used that way in a real game.

[quote="conradcook"]Is it possible to save an *object* to a file and then re-load it, without having TADS go on strike because the game file has been updated since?  Is this difficult, or is it on a par with the file manipulations we saw in setting script files?[/quote]

You can use [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4151&p=29902&hilit=serializer#p29902]my JSON serializer[/url] for saving objects to files in a persistent, cross-version format.

It's not yet suitable as a replacement for save/restore, but it works well for individual objects.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4573&start=0#p32959
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Take able objects?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-04 21:21:24

If you're using ADRIFT, you'll be more likely to get a good answer at the dedicated ADRIFT forums: <a class="postlink" href="http://forum.adrift.co/">http://forum.adrift.co/</a>

There's a much higher concentration of folks who know how to do stuff in ADRIFT there. (Not that ADRIFTies aren't welcome here, though technical questions belong in the "Other Development Systems" forum, but many of the people here don't know how to program in ADRIFT, like me.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3695&start=20#p32960
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Time passing
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-04 21:21:41

Sounds like
[spoiler]Shade[/spoiler]
got it about right.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=0#p32961
Forum: Competitions / Subject: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-04 22:05:51

The 2011 XYZZYs are complete; congratulations to the [url=http://xyzzyawards.org/winners.php]winners[/url], and many thanks to the presenters and voters who helped put this thing together.

Now we get to sort out the long-term issue: how do we run the XYZZYs in future?

Goals:
a) encourage higher rates of voting from IF-literate voters,
b) discourage tactical, crowdsourced or random voting,
c) maintain the values of the XYZZYs:
[list][*] as a reflection of informed critical opinion,[/*:m]
[*] as more than just a recap of Comp results. There are games that get mediocre results in ratings-based comps but do very well in the XYZZYs, and vice versa. I think this is awesome; it gives a more well-rounded picture of the State of IF. It's also important that the XYZZYs are able (and likely) to reward games released out-of-comp.[/*:m]
[*]as a flexible, living institution that can evolve with the IF community.[/*:m][/list:u]
d) keep the system straightforward to implement and easy to understand,
e) as far as possible, be welcoming to newcomers.

The following list is intended to cover every crazy and not-so-crazy idea that someone or other has suggested in my hearing in the past weeks; inclusion on this list doesn't mean that I think the ideas are sound. Some are directly intended to deal with the outsider-voting problem; some aim more generally to boost in-community voting; and some are unrelated to that whole issue and are just intended to improve the awards. Your thoughts are welcomed.

[b]1) Get rid of open voting and replace it with a restricted pool of judges.[/b]
	a) [b]A named panel of judges[/b], rechosen each year. (By whom, and how?)
	b) [b]A narrow qualification.[/b] Might include past nominations or victories in the XYZZYs, placing in the top N of the IF Comp, etc.
	c) [b]A sponsorship system[/b], with judges added to the pool by invitation from other judges (possibly, as with the Oscars, a XYZZY nomination gets you an automatic invitation.) Allows the judge pool to grow in an organic fashion, and to whatever extent the community feels makes sense. Might require a limit on individual invites (otherwise one person could flood the judge pool). The judge pool is inevitably christened the Ancient Qabalistic Order of Old Ones Solemnly Assembled for the Destruction of All that is Good and Pure in IF.
	d) [b]A broad qualification.[/b] Might include N posts on intfiction, N Frequent Fiction points on IFDB, an ifMUD account at least N years old, authorship of any game listed on IFDB, having a tester credit on any game listed on IFDB, or having been declared evil by Poster. This would be preferable to 1b), but much more of an administrative hassle.
Generally speaking, I dislike all the options here. When I first came to the IF world, the ability to vote in IF Comp and the XYZZYs was a really big part of feeling invested in the community. If we had to pick one, though, I think c) is probably the least troublesome.

[b]2) Weight votes to benefit more desirable voters.[/b]
	[b]a) Ask voters which games they've played[/b], and give more active game-players more weight in vote tallies.
	Problems: creates disincentives for the honour system (or, if you prefer, 'rewards liars'). Unclear (have you 'played' a game if you quit after three moves? If you just read a transcript?) Even if everybody's equally honest, I think that someone who's played a dozen speedIFs probably isn't as qualified a judge as someone who's played the three biggest games of the year.
	[b]b) Weight voters more highly when they vote for a more diverse set of games[/b] (but that would encourage random voting in categories you don't care about, which we [i]really[/i] want to avoid.)
	[b]c) Weight voters according to various community qualifications[/b] as in 1). (Most of the same problems, only more fiddly. And just because you have community cred doesn't mean you've been paying attention this particular year.)
	[b]d) Weight voters according to their participation in the events of the previous year[/b]. This could be more easily automated, and would be more difficult to game. Still, I'm uneasy about this because a big part of the value of the XYZZYs is to be distinct from the comps; non-comp games are at enough of a disadvantage already.
	e) As with d), but with points accumulating indefinitely. (If you voted in Comp '12 and Comp '13 and Comp '14, you get extra weighting for all of them.) Not loving this one.
	f) Weight voters according to how much money they give us. (In the first year we collect $0.02 and a counterfeit zorkmid.)
	
	In general, I dislike this kind of solution because whichever way you slice it, it boils down to someone superimposing an artificial hierarchy on the pleasantly organic field of community membership -- inevitably we'd screw some people and over-represent others. It'd suck if we did it openly (so that everyone knew what their weighting was) and it'd suck if we did it secretly.

[b]3) Allow voters to leave comments with their votes[/b]; in effect, 'prove that you're human and actually like IF.' (Comments could then be given out anonymously to authors.) This could help separate out stuffed ballots (or at least force ballot-stuffers to be more clever), while giving authors the sweet feedback they all lust after. (Possibly weight votes with comments more heavily? More voter burden.)

[b]4) Do the nomination and final-voting rounds differently.[/b] (For instance, have the nomination round be restricted or weighted voting and the final round open-voting.)
This could allow one system to offset the excesses of the other, though it would be even more fiddly. Don't put too much weight on this, though; if people can't vote in both rounds they may not want to vote in either.

[b]5) Make the expectations of XYZZY voting more explicit[/b], put them somewhere more obvious, and set clearer standards for the circumstances under which votes will be discounted. We're definitely doing this, in one form or another; it's the exact manner of doing so that's the issue.
[b]a) Forbid authors from campaigning[/b] (and maybe testers and other interested parties, too.)
[b]b) Forbid anyone from campaigning[/b].
[b]c) Allow discussion but not campaigning[/b], so 'Here are the games I think should win' is uncool, but 'Here's some discussion of the Best Setting games and why you might be interested in them' is okay. (But distinguishing between the two would be wildly impractical.)
[b]d) Ban campaigning on non-IF-related social networks.[/b] Sensible, but difficult to distinguish: my Planet-IF presence is just a selection of stuff from my personal Livejournal. You might use your Twitter account mostly for talking about game design, but that doesn't mean your non-IF-playing relatives don't all follow it.
e) Allow people to self-police on campaigning/discussion, but [b]set a clear standard for when the organisers can throw out votes.[/b] (Probably helpful only against naive or unintentional ballot-stuffing.)
f) As with e), but [b]allow for the throwing-out of games[/b], not just votes. (Probably unfair to authors, who may not be able to predict whether a casual mention will unleash the floodgates.) 
g) [b]Ask second-round voters not to vote in categories where they haven't played N games[/b], for some value of N that is probably 2.

[b]6) Use some kind of preferential voting system for the second round, rather than first-past-the-post.[/b]
	This would protect the Awards against relatively small-scale vote-flooding, such as happened this year. Problems: more complicated, and mathematics geeks will bemoan whichever system we choose (probably at length and with formulae). Also, this is likely to lead to even more skew towards heavily-played games, particularly comp games. The results would begin to look more like a ratings system.

[b]7) Allow voters to nominate as many things as they want in the first round.[/b]
	[b]a) Go to three rounds[/b]: in the first, you can nominate as many games as you want, and 1 vote is the minimum requirement to reach the next round. This could whittle the list down to a somehat less scary size, and give voters more opportunity to play more of the nominated games. But it'd be extra-fiddly; do people really [i]want[/i] to vote three times?
	[b]b) Replacing the first round[/b], producing a nominee list of the same size (i.e., four or so). This becomes more like instant-runoff voting; it would strongly favour well-known, broadly acceptable games (i.e. Comp winners). This, I think, would do little to safeguard against crowdsourced votes, and I'm unsure about how much help it would be with voter apathy.
	
[b]8) Get rid of the first-round list and make all votes text-entry.[/b]
	Problem: would probably lead to more votes wasted on ineligible games, could lead to games being overlooked, etc.
	
[b]9) Get rid of list compilation; to get on the list, authors have to propose their own games[/b] (and puzzles, NPCs, technological developments, whatever) for consideration. (They could do this throughout the year, so that if you wanted to you could release your game and submit it for XYZZY consideration at the same time.)
	Benefits: makes for a rather shorter, less intimidating list. Deals with the ambiguities of the text-entry categories.
	Problems: rewards authors who pay close attention to this kind of thing. Runs afoul of the Culture of Authorial Modesty. (SpeedIFs have won XYZZYs before, and that's great; but it looks kind of arrogant to suggest that your speedIF might deserve a XYZZY.) If anything, it could make community-invasion tactics easier (for your consideration: Minecraft.) If everybody always submits every game they publish, we've gained nothing. If enough of the year's significant authors (or tech developers, etc.) forget to submit their games, the XYZZYs aren't really a reflection of the year's best games any more. Finally, it forces authors to guess about what the best thing in their game is (since it doesn't tactically make much sense to nominate yourself for three different NPCs or whatever).
	
[b]10) Compile a first-round list for Technological Development and Supplemental Materials.[/b]
	Problem: we don't quite know how to do this. Just as it's not clear what counts as a single, discrete puzzle, these are rather fuzzy categories. Does every bullet-point of a new I7 release make it onto the list? Every piece of cover art? At the moment we can leave this kind of question in the voter's court, but that leads to relatively low voting in those categories; and some things may be overlooked because people don't associate them with a particular year, etc.
	
[b]11) Ban CYOA from consideration for most of the awards.[/b]
	[b]a) ...and create a category for Best CYOA.[/b]
	[b]b) ...and duplicate all the categories[/b], e.g. as Best NPC in a CYOA, Best Puzzle in a Parser Game.
	Both of these would mean that we'd have to compile an entirely separate CYOA list, which I don't know would even be possible. We'd have to distinguish between IF and CYOA, between CYOA and not-CYOA-webgames (both of which are difficult now, and not getting any easier), and then we'd have to dredge up a year's worth of CYOA from a thousand little corners of the Internet. Even if we could do this, we'd be taking ownership over CYOA to a degree that I'm not sure is merited.
	[b]c) ...and just declare the XYZZYs parser-only.[/b]
	
	The issue of whether CYOA can legitimately be judged on the same scale as IF is fairly contentious, but the average position seems to be that it's okay to do so, even if the standards are a bit different. Of course, this wouldn't address the risk of vote-flooding for parser games, which there's plenty of potential for.
	
[b]12) Extend final-round voting[/b], find other ways to motivate people to play more of the nominees.
	The rationale here is that many potential voters, particularly the more conscientious people who we really <i>want</i> to vote, end up not voting because they haven't played enough of the nominees.
	
	The second round usually lasts about three weeks. As a thought-experiment, let's imagine that you want to play all the nominees, either to refresh your memory or because you haven't played them before. For the 2011 Awards, that would have meant playing twenty-two games, even if you count the four Hat Mystery games as a single unit. Compare this to the task of playing all the Comp games. Usually that's 30-something games. Comp voters have twice as long -- a month and a half -- to play them all. And for a number of obvious reasons, the average XYZZY nominee is going to take longer to play than the average Comp entry. Of course, XYZZY voters will usually have played a good number of the games already; but it's usually still a tall order to finish up the list.
	a) [b]Email a reminder to voters a few days before voting deadlines.[/b]

[b]13) Do something to stop motivating authors to tactically avoid voting.[/b]
	Right now, authors are allowed to vote on any game but their own. This means that, if you think you have a decent chance of being nominated in a category, your best bet is to abstain from voting. This creates a perverse incentive: competent, active authors are precisely the kind of conscientious, informed voters we'd like to see voting, but we're getting them to abstain.
	[b]a) Let authors vote for their own damn game.[/b] Every other democracy allows it.
	b) Don't let authors vote for their own game, but [b]instate a mercy rule:[/b] in the event that your vote for another game would hurt your own game's chances, that vote is void. (Fiddly to manage, but not impossible.)

[b]14) Rename some of the awards to be more transparent.[/b]
     a) NPC and PC are terms derived from role-playing games, are fairly common in discussion of computer games; but outside the Geek Arts they're effectively unknown. Changing them to something less opaque might help the idea that people who don't have that background are welcome too.
     b) The awards don't really account for games with multiple or highly-variable PCs. Slightly change the sense of 'Best NPCs' to 'Best Characters', to include any and all PCs.
c) [b]Rename, restructure and define some or all of the categories to make them more IF-specific.[/b] (But getting that right would be pretty difficult.)

[b]15) Change nothing.[/b] The kerfuffle this year was a one-off incident; such incidents should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, and we shouldn't fundamentally change the awards just because we're nervous.

[b]16) Split the awards into Judged and Open-Voting[/b].
[b]a) Duplicate all the awards.[/b] This would effectively create two awards that happened to run in parallel; it would be easier to split off one of these into a different set of awards (and let someone else run it). Also, there's a risk of dilution: the more awards we hand out, the more they start to look like third-world dictator medals.
[b]b) Have some awards judged and some open.[/b] Some awards, like Use of Innovation, Implementation and Technical Development are more obvious candidates for restricted judging, because they require more background knowledge. For most of them, though, the choice would feel pretty arbitrary.

[b]17) Only include games that are listed on IFDB.[/b]
That way, if anybody feels that a game really should be included in the list -- anybody to include the author -- they can go and add it themselves with a few minutes of effort. This would make it easier for the XYZZYs to compile entries and to link to all the games.

[b]18) Add categories for Best CYOA and Best Parser Game[/b], leaving the other categories open to both. (Again, if we have Best CYOA we run into a representation problem; it's silly to have a CYOA award just for the relatively small number of CYOA works released annually in the IF sphere, but it'd be very difficult to compile a full list of all the CYOA published [i]anywhere[/i] in a year.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4514&start=10#p32962
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Identifying problems with RAP (Reactive Agent Planner)
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-03-04 23:28:58

For the most part, adv3 uses verify instead of check, which helps somewhat - the verify rules help to clarify input, and you won't have any input issues if you're initiating complete actions in code. Put another way, if a verify rule blocks the action, it's likely to be a logical error in your code rather than something you'd want to paper over with a special case.

Most actions are defined on Thing first, and [url=http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/libref/source/thing.t.html]thing.t[/url] contains essentially no check rules. Thing subclasses - nearly everything else - do have some check rules, which you can find by searching the source code for "failCheck". 

I would recommend not bothering with this; just implement the game so it works from the player's POV when interacting with objects, then extend that implementation so it supports the same action from an NPC.

Once you've done this once or twice, you should have a very straightforward framework that you can apply to new actions. Covering additional objects will be basically free if you implement the check rules at the class level and make each object an instance of one of your custom classes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4572&start=10#p32963
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Advice on finding/overriding rules?
User: thecustodian / DateTime: 2012-03-04 23:59:32

Mike-

   That looks like just what I need.  I tried it, though, and I got this:
[quote]
Problem. You wrote 'Some kinds of gizmos are defined by the Table of Miscellaneous Crap'  : but you can only use 'defined by' to set up values and things, as created with sentences like 'The tree species are defined by Table 1.' or 'Some men are defined by the Table of Eligible Bachelors.'
 See the manual: 15.16 > Defining things with tables
[/quote]
...which is really funny, you know, because the Inform manual it points me to says:
[quote]
It's even possible to define kinds this way, though it's rare to need to create many kinds at once. (See the worked example "Reliques of Tolti-Aph" at the Inform website. There's no special syntax needed: rather than saying "Some jerseys are defined by..." we would say "Some kinds of jersey are defined by...")
[/quote]
...so I'm wondering if I have spacing/typo errors in there somewhere, or if this capability was in fact broken/removed.  Probably the former, I know.

HAVING SAID ALL THAT (haha) if I manually define whoozits/whatsits/gewgaws then...that works!  So please accept an internet beer or a cookie or both in gratitude.  I'm going to try using *that* code rather than my butchered Ex. 416 and see if that works.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=0#p32964
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-03-05 00:13:28

11)  CYOA was never IF, never will be.  IF is a parser-based text game with a simulated world behind it.  CYOA may be more popular because it doesn't involve typing at all, but popularity doesn't make it IF.  Just ban the damn thing and let them wait for the last IF fans to die before they can grab the title for themselves. *edit* I actually enjoyed current "CYOA" systems, such as Undum.  Much more dynamic than old CYOA.

13) is the IF community really that small that there are more authors than readers/players?  If all of them vote for themselves, all is lost...  I keep dreaming of one day making my own game and getting all the fame and chicks but fear I would make this fragile balance of egos break.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=0#p32965
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2012-03-05 00:19:39

Only four goals are listed at the top, but it seems clear to me that a fifth goal should be added to the list:

e) Invite others to join the IF community.

Suggestion #1 ("Get rid of open voting") doesn't really run afoul of maga's four stated goals, but clearly goes against this fifth goal E. If that's the goal, we should state it up front.

Having said that, I think E and B's goal to prevent "crowdsourced" voting are at least somewhat at odds. When someone posts to their blog, "Hey, I'm nominated for an XYZZY award!" it lets people know that XYZZY exists, and that they might be interested in the results.

So, here's another couple of ideas to add to the list:

16) Split the competition into "judged" winners and "open voting" winners, accepting that the open voting winners are more susceptible to crowdsourcing. You see this a lot in game blogs/magazines, where the journalists identify their Game of the Year (GOTY) nominees, allowing readers to vote for a winner, and announcing both their "Staff Pick GOTY" and the "Reader Pick GOTY."

(This suggestion raises a host of technical questions: should the XYZZY awards split? Or should there be a new ("PLUGH?") competition, judged by a pre-selected panel? Or should XYZZY become a closed-judging competition, while the PLUGH awards are open voting? Should the "two" competitions even run at the same time?)

17) Forbid at least some people from blogging/tweeting/etc. about XYZZY awards.

Variations on this include:
17a) Forbid authors from campaigning for votes.
17b) Forbid anyone from campaigning for votes.
17c) Forbid authors/anyone from campaigning for votes in the second round of voting, but allow it in the first round of nominations.
17d) Forbid authors/nominated authors/anyone from blogging/tweeting/etc. about XYZZY at all

Finally, a quick remark: I don't see how proposal #3 to merely "allow comments" would help with the crowdsourcing problem, unless it were actually a proposal to [i]require[/i] comments, or at least weight commenting voters more heavily.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=0#p32966
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2012-03-05 00:25:35

[quote="namekuseijin"]11)  CYOA was never IF, never will be.  IF is a parser-based text game with a simulated world behind it.[/quote]

Would you ban Jon Ingold's [i][url=http://www.archimedes.plus.com/public/cold_light/index.html]The Colder Light[/url][/i]? It's a point-and-click text adventure game; it has puzzles and a simulated world, but no parser. Most people who've played it agree that it "feels like IF."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4545&start=0#p32967
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Clod's Adventure Demo (Undum port)
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-03-05 00:48:58

Sadly as I hate to bite my tongue, I have to say this was amazing.  I was expecting to find a subpar Legend of Zelda in stupid static CYOA medium, but what I found instead was an incredibly smooth web-based text-only Scumm game.  No parser, but there's a simulation there indeed, puzzles, items, stats etc.  Felt incredibly like certain IF like Walker & Silhouette or Blue Lacuna.  I'd even go as further as saying it's more flexible:  while in these games you just type the highlighted word, here you choose a tool (a verb) from the menu and clicking on the highlighted word, producing different results.  Much clever, that surely is not CYOA of old, more like parserless IF...

Undum, that's a name to be reckoned with for sure.

hmm, perhaps I should revise the message I just posted about the future of XYZZY Awards...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4575&start=0#p32968
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: minor request for Dynamic Objects by Jesse McGrew
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2012-03-05 00:54:47

Jesse, could you add a note in the (blessedly concise) documentation that overriding the printed name property of classes that'll be cloned is particularly important, otherwise the RELATIONS testing command will misleadingly say that the prototype object is always related to itself despite this not being true?  Cloned objects, even objects of type "object" and lacking a printed name property, will borrow the prototype's name as the printed name, leading your users (me) on a wild goose chase about "why aren't relations being set correctly?" 

Thx, and thx again for the easy extension.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=0#p32969
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-03-05 00:55:19

[quote="dfabulich"][quote="namekuseijin"]11)  CYOA was never IF, never will be.  IF is a parser-based text game with a simulated world behind it.[/quote]

Would you ban Jon Ingold's [i][url=http://www.archimedes.plus.com/public/cold_light/index.html]The Colder Light[/url][/i]? It's a point-and-click text adventure game; it has puzzles and a simulated world, but no parser. Most people who've played it agree that it "feels like IF."[/quote]

I think I was a bit too premature and harsh about it, sorry.

Here's a more honest opinion on the subject:

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4545&p=32967#p32967">viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4545&p=32967#p32967</a>

Summing up, seems CYOA of today is not static at all. I think since the parser has not really been updated in ages and audiences of today are much too picky, we'll be seeing much more "dynamic CYOA" than traditional IF in years to come...

Yes, I change opinions fast.  As fast as I realize I'm talking BS.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4572&start=10#p32970
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Advice on finding/overriding rules?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-05 02:08:24

It's kind of a typo – of sorts … perhaps.

The pluralforming algorithm of Inform wants "gizmoes" rather than "gizmos".

Both "Some kinds of gizmo are defined" and "Some kinds of gizmoes are defined " compile.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=0#p32971
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-05 02:36:24

(1) I like the idea of (1c) and (1d) and really dislike the idea of (1a) and (1b). 
(2) Ugh. Just, ugh.
(3) Sure. Apart from the weighting.
(4) No strong opinion.
(5) Definitely. How can we help?
(6) Ugh.
(7) I dislike the sound of (7a) in general and dislike (7b) on the grounds that it goes against the grain of goal (C).
(8) I think this is at least worth looking into.
(9) I'd be fine with this, though I agree that some of the cited problems would be hurdles to be examined before implementing it.
(10) I don't understand why this would be necessary or beneficial (I don't dislike it; I just literally don't grok).
(11) I consider CYOA an important form of IF and dislike every flavor of (11), but (11c) in particular would be tragic, since efforts like [i]A Dark and Stormy Entry[/i] would be disqualified. While I recognize that many disagree (and try to adjust my phrasings for clarity): I'm firmly in the "CYOA simply[i][b] is IF,[/b][/i] not a subform, not a cousin, not a form that needs to be separated or judged differently" camp and wish wedgies upon those who are not. I think the parser/multiple-choice distinction is, under the hood, much less meaningful than it looks on the surface, and a good many parser games are, in terms of [i]actual game design[/i] and in terms of the player experience, functionally multiple-choice exercises where you're allowed to putz around with the environment or puzzles between meaningful choices ([i]Sand-Dancer,[/i] for example) while others are functionally [i]zero-choice[/i] exercises where putzing around with the environment is the only illusion of choice offered, making games like [i]Rameses [/i](a deserving and impressive work, to be sure) functionally [i]less [/i]interactive, and less dynamic, than even the most simplistic CYOA. While the surface distinction (parser or not?) is simple and objective, I think focusing at that surface level does a disservice to what lies within each work in terms of real design.
(12)  I think it's one part of the solution, but I feel it needs a buddy on the other side of the problem (convincing people that their vote is still legit even if they've only played a portion of the nominees, assuming that's still the idea).
(13) I think (13b) is just a no-brainer. I can't imagine what objections there could be to it, and if anyone wants to help my imagination along, I dislike them in advance for doing so.
(14) I like the sound of (14b) a lot; I'm not a fan of (14a) for the reasons cited (though I prefer "protagonist" to "PC" on different, aesthetic grounds). I think NPC is an excellent term and apart from perhaps spelling it out as Non-Player Character (which is pretty plain English) I see no reason to remove it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4545&start=0#p32973
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Clod's Adventure Demo (Undum port)
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-05 04:35:06

Very interesting. Would you consider making available an offline version? From what I understand, it's as simple as providing all the files in a ZIP.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=0#p32974
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-05 04:39:19

[quote]Yes, I change opinions fast.  As fast as I realize I'm talking BS.[/quote]

It only makes you a better person.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4521&start=0#p32975
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Andromeda Legacy™ /// A Competition (with prizes!)
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2012-03-05 07:02:22

I would particularly have liked to be in this one but I've got about 8 projects on my head already :/

I can tentatively offer to help judge. Tentatively!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4521&start=0#p32976
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Andromeda Legacy™ /// A Competition (with prizes!)
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2012-03-05 07:14:46

[quote="Jamespking"]I wait for your submissions, then! [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
We'll see.  I'll think about it until just before the intent deadline, April 1st.  I have a very high drop-out rate for projects that I begin.  Though, deadlines do help me get things done.

Do you care what IF system is used?  I'm not very comfortable with Inform 7.  I would rather use Hugo or ADRIFT.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4577&start=0#p32977
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Use object X with Y to end game
User: deKay / DateTime: 2012-03-05 07:28:24

I've written simple IF games with I7 before, never actually finishing them, but today I want to have a win condition where I use an object on another object to end the game in victory.

I have an item, a red stone, that I want to use with a blue hole. When used, I want the player to win.

How do I do this?

Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4521&start=0#p32978
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Andromeda Legacy™ /// A Competition (with prizes!)
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-05 08:12:57

[quote="Bainespal"][quote="Jamespking"]I wait for your submissions, then! [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
We'll see.  I'll think about it until just before the intent deadline, April 1st.  I have a very high drop-out rate for projects that I begin.  Though, deadlines do help me get things done.

Do you care what IF system is used?  I'm not very comfortable with Inform 7.  I would rather use Hugo or ADRIFT.[/quote]
I care about the story. You can use adrift, undum, mysql, latin, klingon. 

And cmon severedhand! You can do better than that! I have faith in you!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4577&start=0#p32979
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Use object X with Y to end game
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-05 08:29:11

The 'end' phrase (like all I7 phrases) needs to be inside a rule to run. So, just put it inside the rule that governs the winning move. (Like "After inserting the red stone into the blue hole: end the game in victory.")

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4577&start=0#p32980
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Use object X with Y to end game
User: deKay / DateTime: 2012-03-05 08:48:32

Aha! Thanks. I was nearly there with the same code only had "using" instead of "inserting".

How do I make it now so that only the stone (and not, say, a key, or a bag, or a ball or anything else I have) can be inserted into the hole?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=0#p32981
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-05 08:54:43

[quote="dfabulich"]Only four goals are listed at the top, but it seems clear to me that a fifth goal should be added to the list:

e) Invite others to join the IF community.[/quote]
I was thinking that was covered by 'flexible, living institution', but yeah, we can put that in there. Though, hmm.

I don't really think that the XYZZYs have historically worked as a recruiting/awareness-raising tool to the degree of, e.g., the Comp, but I do think they're pretty great for building engagement in people who are already interested. So I'm not necessarily interested in shaping the XYZZYs to be a better outreach tool: it's not really about that. But stopping it from becoming [i]obstructive[/i] to outreach is important, I think.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=0#p32982
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-05 09:00:28

[quote="namekuseijin"]Yes, I change opinions fast.  As fast as I realize I'm talking BS.[/quote]

All praise to you for this. It's sadly too rare (and I don't except myself).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4577&start=0#p32983
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Use object X with Y to end game
User: gravel / DateTime: 2012-03-05 09:01:11

I would do it with a check rule that modifies the action.

[code]Check inserting something into the blue hole:
	if the noun is not the red stone:
		say "That doesn't fit the hole properly." instead.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4577&start=0#p32984
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Use object X with Y to end game
User: deKay / DateTime: 2012-03-05 09:14:48

[quote="gravel"]I would do it with a check rule that modifies the action.

[code]Check inserting something into the blue hole:
	if the noun is not the red stone:
		say "That doesn't fit the hole properly." instead.[/code][/quote]


That gave me an error about colons, but this:

[code]Check inserting something into the blue hole:
	if the noun is not the red stone, say "That doesn't fit the hole properly." instead.[/code]

Worked. Many thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4521&start=0#p32985
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Andromeda Legacy™ /// A Competition (with prizes!)
User: gravel / DateTime: 2012-03-05 09:20:46

The spring is way, way too swamped for me to finish a project in two months, but I wish you much luck!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4578&start=0#p32986
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: IF and Choice (or, another goddamn CYOA thread)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-05 09:22:26

On the [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574#p32971]XYZZY thread[/url] S. John wrote:

[rant][quote="Ghalev"]While I recognize that many disagree (and try to adjust my phrasings for clarity): I'm firmly in the "CYOA simply[i][b] is IF,[/b][/i] not a subform, not a cousin, not a form that needs to be separated or judged differently" camp and wish wedgies upon those who are not. I think the parser/multiple-choice distinction is, under the hood, much less meaningful than it looks on the surface, and a good many parser games are, in terms of [i]actual game design[/i] and in terms of the player experience, functionally multiple-choice exercises where you're allowed to putz around with the environment or puzzles between meaningful choices ([i]Sand-Dancer,[/i] for example) while others are functionally [i]zero-choice[/i] exercises where putzing around with the environment is the only illusion of choice offered, making games like [i]Rameses [/i](a deserving and impressive work, to be sure) functionally [i]less [/i]interactive, and less dynamic, than even the most simplistic CYOA. While the surface distinction (parser or not?) is simple and objective, I think focusing at that surface level does a disservice to what lies within each work in terms of real design.[/quote][/rant]

[UPDATE: rant-tagged because S. John objects to the quote being taken from the context of his original post, which can be followed by clicking the above link.]

I submit that this abstracts away too much about real design. Real game design isn't exclusively about the choice points that you can use to influence the ultimate outcome; it's also about interaction with the game. That's why Chutes & Ladders, Candyland, and clock solitaire work as games even though they don't contain any choice points; the player is interacting with the game. No one would play clock solitaire if they didn't get to move the cards around themselves. 

So in a railroaded IF like Rameses, putzing around with the environment isn't an illusion of choice. It's a form of interactivity. I've been playing Nightsky a lot, and there are a fair number of places where you bump into something that can't possibly impede your progress, but that jostles and makes a sound as you roll over it. Qua platforming challenge the game would be exactly the same if those were static platforms; qua interactive experience it would be much poorer. The free-form putzing around with the environment you often get in parser IF is like that. (Though the parser/CYOA distinction can blur a bit even here, as Undum often lets you explore the environment in ways that don't affect the choice structure.)

So, my thesis: when you're thinking about what makes a game what it is, don't necessarily think about the choices it gives you. Think about the ways you interact with it. I don't even want to make this a point about CYOA and parsers; I think that thinking about interaction is more important than anything we can get from the CYOA/IF distinction.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=0#p32987
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-05 09:22:51

Substantively, I think that a "Best CYOA" category might be a nice idea and even a helpful outreach tool. CYOAs would still be eligible for Best Game, but there'd be a special category for them as well. This might make it harder for a CYOA to win best game, just as pitchers rarely get the MVP because they can win the Cy Young (non-baseball fans: please ignore), but I think in years when a CYOA clearly is the best game it would win. 

As for S. John's substantive objection to the CYOA/parser distinction... ahhhh, that needs [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4578]another damn thread[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4577&start=0#p32988
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Use object X with Y to end game
User: gravel / DateTime: 2012-03-05 09:23:48

Probably you didn't capture the tabs; if you directly copy and paste, the tab stops turn to spaces, and Inform treats them differently.  (One of the advantages of the "code" tag is that you can hit reply to a post, then copy and paste, and the tabs stay intact.  Or you can manually re-enter them.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=10#p32989
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-05 09:35:02

[quote="namekuseijin"]13) is the IF community really that small that there are more authors than readers/players?  If all of them vote for themselves, all is lost...  I keep dreaming of one day making my own game and getting all the fame and chicks but fear I would make this fragile balance of egos break.[/quote]
Well, hm. This is a complicated question that we can't get a definitive answer to.

In the visible, dedicated community, most players are prospective authors (or like to think of themselves that way). This is a huge strength, I think; in media where the demographics of the audience are significantly different from the authors, there's a tendency to get works that are patronising or ill-considered. When authors are effectively writing for an audience of their peers, and can write the things that they [i]want[/i] to write...

(One problem is that a fairly high proportion of this group don't vote for the XYZZYs, for one reason or another.)

There's also an invisible community, and we don't really have any idea how big it is: people who play IF but never try to write a game and rarely become involved in the community. We don't know an awful lot about them, but plenty of datapoints crop up. There are people who play a handful of games a year; people who don't seek out IF, but know what it is and will happily play it if it comes to their attention; people who play and vote in the Comp but do nothing else; people who play a lot of games, but aren't interested in authorship and see the community as basically an author's community. There are even people whose sum involvement with IF is that they religiously read the ClubFloyd transcripts: so they don't actually [i]play[/i] any IF at all, but they've still got a pretty good idea about the state of the art. And we don't really know how typical any of these people are.

The trick is that the invisible community are, for obvious reasons, much less likely to vote in the XYZZYs (or even to be aware that they've started).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=10#p32990
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2012-03-05 09:38:38

[quote="maga"]I don't really think that the XYZZYs have historically worked as a recruiting/awareness-raising tool to the degree of, e.g., the Comp, but I do think they're pretty great for building engagement in people who are already interested. So I'm not necessarily interested in shaping the XYZZYs to be a better outreach tool: it's not really about that. But stopping it from becoming [i]obstructive[/i] to outreach is important, I think.[/quote]

I don't think this is the right way to think about XYZZY vs. IFComp. If the idea is to make IFComp a good recruiting event, and make XYZZY an event for engaging the existing community, then the rules are totally mixed up.

IFComp has a strict "no campaigning" rule, [i]and[/i] a rule requiring that all entries must be previously unreleased at the opening of voting. These rules help to prevent IFComp from turning into a popularity contest, where games with the most buzz win the competition; they're designed to preserve the integrity of the competition at the expense of some publicity.

XYZZY, on the other hand, has no rules about campaigning or prior releases. As such, it's a better tool for recruiting and publicity, which comes at the expense of the competition's integrity.

It makes sense for the community to have an open-voting competition and a more restricted competition. As long as everybody's clear that the open-voting competition can be swayed by the winds of popularity, the machinery works as designed.

The only thing I'd add is something like proposal #5, to make it clear to the voters that they should try the other games.

In that scenario, if we at Choice of Games blogged about XYZZY in 2013, we'd make it crystal clear that it's inappropriate to vote for ChoiceScript games in the second round of voting without playing the other nominees. (It's not clear what we'd do for the first round, but I guess we'd muddle through.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4427&start=0#p32991
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Desks/iPads from Ender's Game
User: teenbat / DateTime: 2012-03-05 09:56:20

Rather than start a new topic, I suppose that I'll just ask it here.

How do you name the player?

I tried;

[code]Understand "Ender" as the player.[/code]

But it just gives me the error;

[code]Problem. You wrote 'Understand "Ender" as the player'  : but 'understand ... as ...' should be followed by a meaning, which might be an action (e.g., 'understand "take [something]" as taking'), a thing ('understand "stove" as the oven') or more generally a value ('understand "huitante" as 80'), or a named token for use in further grammar ('understand "near [something]" as "[location phrase]"'). Also, the meaning needs to be precise, so 'understand "x" as a number' is not allowed - it does not say which number.

[/code]

I just want the player to be able to say something like

[quote]Use pain killer on Ender[/quote]

Please and thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4427&start=0#p32992
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Desks/iPads from Ender's Game
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-05 09:58:57

You could say 

[code]Understand "Ender" as yourself.[/code]

but you might instead want

[code]Ender is a man in [whatever the opening location is]. The player is Ender.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=40#p32993
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-03-05 10:02:13

You need to define the difference between IF and TA (which I assume means Text Adventure), otherwise your post is rather hard to follow. For most people the terms are synonymous.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4578&start=0#p32994
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF and Choice (or, another goddamn CYOA thread)
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-05 10:02:53

I guess that will actually boil down to positive reinforcement – which of course you can't get from a game without interacting with it somehow.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4427&start=0#p32995
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Desks/iPads from Ender's Game
User: teenbat / DateTime: 2012-03-05 10:05:00

[quote="matt w"]You could say 

[code]Understand "Ender" as yourself.[/code]

but you might instead want

[code]Ender is a man in [whatever the opening location is]. The player is Ender.[/code][/quote]

Thank you. That worked perfectly.

One more, how do I get rid of the number of moves made counter thing?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1223&start=20#p32996
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Tutorial Game within game - a suggestion/discussion.
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-05 10:10:48

[quote="lribeiro"]What would be great:
2) that it would be written so that the source code could be inserted into any game with small chances of conflict with the source of the main game;[/quote]
Which is a great idea.  Of course people could adapt it to the game (like the current menu help that many games include.
[quote="lribeiro"]So, in this game I've tried to:
-- use names for things and rooms that would be difficult to conflict with any game - I've called everything the tutorial thing (tutorial room, tutorial key, etc).[/quote]
Which unfortunately is the best one can do right now.  Which is why I have proposed [url="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/1976441-add-acts"]acts[/url], which serve to make code modular.  In fact, acts are slightly stronger, acting as co-routines, so a tutorial act would be re-entrant: you do a bit of tutorial, switch to the main game, and can still go back and continue the tutorial.  That would make them appropriate for a hint system too.
Other uses would be flash-backs (slowly the youth of the hero unfolds during the quest), dream sequences, games-within-games (You see a computer here.  The screen says "Pytho's mask".), stories told ("Well", the man said, "it all started years ago.  As I entered the city..") and more.  (Plug: if you like the idea, please go [url="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/1976441-add-acts"]vote for it[/url]!)

Oh, and I like your "tutorial signature" [emote]:-)[/emote]

[Edit: Hmm, I can't get the links to work.  Sorry.]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4578&start=0#p32997
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF and Choice (or, another goddamn CYOA thread)
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-05 10:15:41

[quote="matt w"]I submit that this abstracts away too much about real design.[/quote]

If you wrench it out of context and pretend its about anything other than XYZZY judging standards, then you'd be right. Plus wrong (to do so). If you disagree with my in-context stance (which is entirely and only about whether parser and non-parser games may be fairly and equally judged against one another,[i] at least to the same extent that two very different parser works can[/i]) there's already a thread for it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=10#p32998
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2012-03-05 10:57:02

[quote="matt w"]Substantively, I think that a "Best CYOA" category might be a nice idea and even a helpful outreach tool. CYOAs would still be eligible for Best Game, but there'd be a special category for them as well. This might make it harder for a CYOA to win best game, just as pitchers rarely get the MVP because they can win the Cy Young (non-baseball fans: please ignore), but I think in years when a CYOA clearly is the best game it would win.[/quote]

I agree with this, but we really can't call it "Best CYOA". "Choose Your Own Adventure" is a trademark of ChooseCo, an active company still publishing gamebooks. IMO, their mark has lost distinctiveness and could be successfully challenged in court, but I don't think anybody's planning to do that any time soon.

The trouble is that it's hard to decide what else to call it. "Best Multiple-Choice Game?" "Best Parserless Game?" "Best Point-and-Click?"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=10#p32999
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-05 11:03:18

[quote="dfabulich"][quote="matt w"]Substantively, I think that a "Best CYOA" category might be a nice idea and even a helpful outreach tool. CYOAs would still be eligible for Best Game, but there'd be a special category for them as well. This might make it harder for a CYOA to win best game, just as pitchers rarely get the MVP because they can win the Cy Young (non-baseball fans: please ignore), but I think in years when a CYOA clearly is the best game it would win.[/quote]

I agree with this, but we really can't call it "Best CYOA". "Choose Your Own Adventure" is a trademark of ChooseCo, an active company still publishing gamebooks. IMO, their mark has lost distinctiveness and could be successfully challenged in court, but I don't think anybody's planning to do that any time soon.

The trouble is that it's hard to decide what else to call it. "Best Multiple-Choice Game?" "Best Parserless Game?" "Best Point-and-Click?"[/quote]

Right, on both counts. 

I sort of feel like following on the baseball theme and calling it the "Cy Oates" award, but that wouldn't really help clarify what it was for.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4578&start=0#p33000
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF and Choice (or, another goddamn CYOA thread)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-05 11:08:24

S. John, I like you and have no beef with you, but since you decided to be hostile about it the apology you get is of the not very apologetic variety: I'm sorry that I took your statement as a general statement about game design rather than a specific statement about awards voting.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=10#p33001
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-05 11:11:00

[quote="dfabulich"]"Best Point-and-Click?"[/quote]

Well, I hope not [i]this [/i]one (unless the idea would be to exclude CYOAs which don't require electricity, and I hope that [i]wouldn't[/i] be the idea ...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4578&start=0#p33002
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF and Choice (or, another goddamn CYOA thread)
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-05 11:12:05

[quote="matt w"]since you decided to be hostile about it [/quote]

Um, I'm not the one who decided to be hostile, here. I think I've exercised [i]extraordinary restraint[/i] in responding to your baseless straw-man attack against me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4427&start=0#p33003
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Desks/iPads from Ender's Game
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-05 11:13:11

[quote="teenbat"]One more, how do I get rid of the number of moves made counter thing?[/quote]

See section 8.3 on changing the status line.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=10#p33004
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-05 11:14:55

S. John has said that his comment about CYOA in the context of IF was meant only to oppose the idea that we can't meaningfully judge CYOA and non-CYOA works together. To clarify, my idea for a best CYOA award is not based on the idea that we can't judge them together, but that we can (mostly) meaningfully distinguish CYOA and non-CYOA. So an award for "best CYOA" or whatever we want to call it makes sense if we want one, even though CYOA is also a subset of IF.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4578&start=0#p33005
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF and Choice (or, another goddamn CYOA thread)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-05 11:18:44

I suppose anyone who wants to can judge that for themselves. I certainly did not intend any sort of attack against you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4578&start=0#p33006
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF and Choice (or, another goddamn CYOA thread)
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-05 11:21:06

[quote="matt w"]I suppose anyone who wants to can judge that for themselves. I certainly did not intend any sort of attack against you.[/quote]

Well, I can't imagine where you'd find hostility in my very measured, multiply-drafted-to-be-as-polite-as-humanly-possible-under-the-circumstances response to the thing which you didn't intend to be an attack.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=10#p33007
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-05 11:32:44

[quote="matt w"][...] my idea for a best CYOA award is not based on the idea that we can't judge them together, but that we can (mostly) meaningfully distinguish CYOA and non-CYOA.[/quote]

To approximately the same extent, we can (mostly) meaningfully distinguish games with procedurally-generated content from games with more deliberately-scripted content, for example. There are quite a few styles of IF which [i]could [/i]be broken out and recognized as subsets. Is there particular value (to the enthusiast community or to the game's authors, or to the integrity of the XYZZYs) to lumping most of them together (judging Kerkerkruip against Cryptozookeeper, for example) while separating CYOA? (and obviously, there aren't enough Kerkerkruips in the world - yet - to form a category of their own, but the basic question applies to many things)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4578&start=0#p33008
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF and Choice (or, another goddamn CYOA thread)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-05 11:33:21

If you don't intend hostility to me, and I don't intend hostility to you, then I am happy, and I hope you too are happy. Since I don't want to respond to non-hostility with hostility, I can edit out the parts of my second post that presumed hostility if you like.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4578&start=0#p33009
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF and Choice (or, another goddamn CYOA thread)
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-05 11:35:14

[quote="matt w"]If you don't intend hostility to me, and I don't intend hostility to you, then I am happy, and I hope you too are happy.[/quote]

I was when I woke up. It had been an excellent weekend [emote]:([/emote]

[quote]Since I don't want to respond to non-hostility with hostility, I can edit out the parts of my second post that presumed hostility if you like.[/quote]

Just let it ride.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=10#p33010
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-05 11:40:13

[quote="dfabulich"][quote="maga"]I don't really think that the XYZZYs have historically worked as a recruiting/awareness-raising tool to the degree of, e.g., the Comp, but I do think they're pretty great for building engagement in people who are already interested. So I'm not necessarily interested in shaping the XYZZYs to be a better outreach tool: it's not really about that. But stopping it from becoming [i]obstructive[/i] to outreach is important, I think.[/quote]
I don't think this is the right way to think about XYZZY vs. IFComp. If the idea is to make IFComp a good recruiting event, and make XYZZY an event for engaging the existing community, then the rules are totally mixed up.[/quote]
Well, let's be clear: neither event has recruiting/publicity as their [i]primary[/i] purpose. IF Comp is, in practice, the event that's been better at it, and has made some decisions (allowing public discussion during the voting period) that have served that purpose.
[quote="dfabulich"]It makes sense for the community to have an open-voting competition and a more restricted competition. As long as everybody's clear that the open-voting competition can be swayed by the winds of popularity, the machinery works as designed.
[/quote]
It seems as if you're conflating open-voting with open-campaigning. I don't really think that we have a need or a desire for a major event that's dominated by open-campaigning.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=10#p33011
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-05 11:52:32

It depends on the details of the case. If there were a lot of IFs with procedurally generated content, to the extent that they constituted something of a subtradition, then (the world would be a better place and) it might make sense to give them a separate category as well as their own category. Since there ain't, it don't. 

As for value to the community, it depends on whether the community values it, especially those people in the community who write CYOA games. My hope isn't that this would reinforce segregation between CYOA and non-CYOA games, but that it might give a boost to a kind of game that could be meaningfully broken out and might be in danger of getting swamped by another kind of game in the voting. It's not fundamentally different to me from having a "Best short game" or "Best Speed-IF" category, if people wanted those.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3634&start=40#p33012
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Why is IF not taken seriously?
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-05 12:04:27

[quote="Juhana"]You need to define the difference between IF and TA (which I assume means Text Adventure), otherwise your post is rather hard to follow. For most people the terms are synonymous.[/quote]
All right.  I thought I followed bukayeva's use of the terms, but maybe I am wrong.  For me, TA (text adventure indeed) signifies a certain type of game, whereas IF (interactive fiction, for completeness' sake) is a medium that can be used to write TAs, but also many other kinds of works, many of which are not games at all.  The paradigm TA is of course ADVENT/Adventure/Colossal cave, and is about earning points by discovering elements/gathering treasures, passing doors by finding the appropriate keys, getting through mazes, solving puzzles, et cetera.

IF can be used to express many kinds of art: tragedy/comedy, advertisement, [word-]painting (Jacqueline's walk, what's its name), literature, theatre, you name it.  Dance and music might be hard, though.  Pointing people to quality works spanning the width of the spectrum may positively change their perception of the medium.

Does that help?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4545&start=0#p33013
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Clod's Adventure Demo (Undum port)
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2012-03-05 12:24:37

Slight update:
- Title fixed
- Bug in options menu fixed
- Some long blocks of text (Introduction, Tutorial end) broken up into cutscenes.  Inventory is inactive during cutscenes.
(Does the effect work?  Should I break up other blocks?)

Duncan:
- The scrolling on item select/deselect annoyed me a bit as well.  I looked into fixing it, but I'm not sure exactly how.

namekuseijin:
- Thank you.

Peter:
- I will provide a downloadable version, once it's finalized.  (Some of the tutorial text needs to be updated for the undum version; I'd like to add the hints and possibly limit saves; possibly break up the other long blocks of text into cut scenes; the character text "You are starting on an exciting journey." is just copied from the Undum tutorial, and should vary through the game.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=10#p33014
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-03-05 12:58:56

[quote="maga"]It seems as if you're conflating open-voting with open-campaigning. I don't really think that we have a need or a desire for a major event that's dominated by open-campaigning.[/quote]

I think it would be interesting to run a no holds barred, popular vote event. You mention upthread that there's an invisible community of players whose opinions go largely unrecognized and unsolicited. I've said elsewhere (based on Gargoyle download statistics and such) that this community is vastly larger than the pessimists would credit; at the very least it numbers in the tens of thousands.

Adam Thornton and S. John Ross both provided examples of their own games which could serve as a gateway for unaffiliated but passionate communities to interact with the core IF scene. Whether or not those voters would stick around to become IF lifers is in some sense irrelevant; it would be significant to show that IF can produce titles that attract that kind of attention.

It seems to me that mass appeal is something that many authors manage, but without a way to capture those success stories, it hasn't taken root as a cultural perception. I don't love the idea of turning the XYZZYs into this feedback mechanism, but it would be great if there were "People's Choice" awards that authors could promote in clear conscience. Whether it turns into a respected institution or simply works as an escape valve for enthusiasm is less important than sending the message that we love players.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=20#p33015
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-05 14:07:58

I don't really think, as stated somewhere else, that the fact should be IF vs CYOA. Who the hell cares? If there is a good game, let it win. Period. 
My problem is with televotes and x-factor scenarios. Just have a 'professional' jury and the popolar vote. The awards should be' given by the experts, while a 'mass favorite' should be a different award. Ok, maybe the most liked games won't win. But then again, do Oscars winners outsell the Scary Movie franchise?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4580&start=0#p33016
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Scoring use of the hint system - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-03-05 14:57:31

I am using the hint system in my game and would like to subtract a certain number of game points each time the hint system is accessed. Does anyone have any ideas how to go about doing this? I would like this to be enabled only after the first set of system hints has been viewed. 

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4580&start=0#p33017
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Scoring use of the hint system - TADS3.1
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-05 15:04:00

With the ability in 3.1 to call things from within single-quoted strings, this should be pretty easy. I would create an object called scoreKeeper that would do the actual arithmetic. I would then write hints like this:

[code]++ Goal 'How can we get past the cyclops?'
    [
        '<<scoreKeeper.minusOne(cyclops)>>Oh, dear --- are you sure you want to try? ',
    ]
;[/code]
This assumes (a) that the cyclops is an actual game object, and (b) that scoreKeeper is set up something like this:

[code]cyclopsReduced = nil
minusOne(obj) {
   if ((obj == cyclops) && (!cyclopsReduced)) {
       cyclopsReduced = true;
       scoreValue = scoreValue - 1;
   }
}[/code]
This insures that the score will be reduced only the first time that that hint is read. Note that this suggestion doesn't actually tell you how to reduce the score -- I haven't researched that. I'm just suggesting how you would set it up. Possibly you would want to use an Achievement object with a negative value.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4580&start=0#p33018
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Scoring use of the hint system - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-03-05 15:13:44

Looks good! will give it a shot. Many thanks to you; as usual.

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4572&start=10#p33019
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Advice on finding/overriding rules?
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2012-03-05 15:42:48

Try adding a line : Understand "open" as something new.  Understand "open [something]" as opening.  Understand "open [something] with [something]" as opening it with.

(Just adding a new grammar line won't remove the original 'unlocking it with' line.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=20#p33020
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-05 16:11:38

For what it's worth, the idea of separating out CYOA is not very popular among the organisers, and is probably not very likely to happen. It's included mostly for completeness; but I think it's been pretty much talked to death already, and I'd welcome more focus on the other options.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4572&start=10#p33021
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Advice on finding/overriding rules?
User: climbingstars / DateTime: 2012-03-05 16:52:33

Try this. It seems to work.

[code]

"Test" by Custo

Combining it with is an action applying to two carried things. Understand "Combine [something] and/with [something]" as combining it with.

Understand the command "Attach" as something new.  Understand "Attach [something] to [something]" as combining it with.

The combining it with action has an object called the item built.

Match state is a truth state that varies. Match state is true.

Setting action variables for combining something with something:
let X be a list of indexed texts;
add the printed name of the noun to X;
add the printed name of the second noun to X;
say "X is presort: [X in brace notation].";
sort X;
say "X is: [X in brace notation].";
repeat through the Table of Outcome Objects begin;
let Y be the component list entry;
say "Y is presort: [Y in brace notation].";
sort Y;
say "Y is: [Y in brace notation].";
now match state is true;
repeat with count running from 1 to the number of entries in Y begin;
unless entry count of X exactly matches the text entry count of Y, now match state is false;
end repeat;
if match state is true begin;
say "Match![line break]";
now the item built is the result entry;
end if;
end repeat.

Check combining it with:
say "The item built lookup is: [the item built].";
if the item built is nothing, say "[The noun] and [the second noun] don't make anything useful." instead;
if the item built is not in limbo, say "That's not available." instead.

Carry out combining it with:
move the item built to the holder of the noun;
remove the noun from play;
remove the second noun from play.

Report combining it with:
say "You now have [an item built]!".

A memory chip is a kind of thing.

A broadcast chip is a kind of thing.

The player is carrying a memory chip and a broadcast chip.

Limbo is a container.  Limbo contains the Klein Blaster.

The test chamber is a room.  The description is "GlaDOS is watching you.".

The player is in the test chamber.

Table of Outcome Objects
component list	result
{"broadcast chip", "memory chip"}	Klein Blaster

[/code]

You need to have X be a list of indexed text in order for the sorting to work. Also, comparing any text using "if A is B", even if it is in a list, doesn't work nicely. I've had this problem before. The best way is to compare them using "if A matches the text B" and "if A exactly matches the text B".

Hope this helps!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4578&start=0#p33022
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF and Choice (or, another goddamn CYOA thread)
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-05 17:11:52

Not to get involved with the quarrel, but Matt W's point, that there's a difference between interactivity and choice, is an interesting one.  Calls to mind the toy v. game dichotomy.  And really it could be applied to CYOA just as well to parsered IF.

Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4581&start=0#p33023
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Battle of Walcott Keep:  RAP in T3
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-05 17:25:09

With the kind permission of the authors, I'm making _Battle of Walcott Keep_'s source code available to the public for study.  This is the only example, besides the demo, of the Reactive Agent Planner in a TADS 3 game.

I haven't looked into the code yet.  The game is pretty nifty.  I gather the PC is made a ghost so the authors don't have to deal with the player putting one over on the AI.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=20#p33024
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2012-03-05 17:49:24

[quote="maga"]
[b]7) Allow voters to nominate as many things as they want in the first round.[/b]
	[b]a) Go to three rounds[/b]: in the first, you can nominate as many games as you want, and 1 vote is the minimum requirement to reach the next round. This could whittle the list down to a somehat less scary size, and give voters more opportunity to play more of the nominated games. But it'd be extra-fiddly; do people really [i]want[/i] to vote three times?

[....]

[b]12) Extend final-round voting[/b] find other ways to motivate people to play more of the nominees.
	The rationale here is that many potential voters, particularly the more conscientious people who we really <i>want</i> to vote, end up not voting because they haven't played enough of the nominees.[/quote]
I support these two proposals.  I feel guilty for not participating in the XYZZYs more proactively myself, and I feel the reason that I have not participated about half the years or so that I've been following IF is that the Awards are not structured enough, at least on the voter end.  The Comp is much more structured and has much higher momentum, and the only year that I've missed the Comp since 2004 was due to life circumstances.

In particular, a third round would allow more momentum to build up, and it would let me feel like I had a legitimate second chance if (or when) I do miss the first round.  I also need more time to try to play the nominees before the final round.  I'm a college student, and the semester always builds up toward mid-terms.  I wanted to play at least [i]Cryptozooker[/i] this year so I could consider voting for it, but I didn't have time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=20#p33025
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-05 18:02:33

Some general XYZZY improvement suggestions:

[list]
[*]There should be an [b]email[/b] reminding people about the closing of the rounds. I missed the second round this year not because I didn't want to vote but because I knew back in February that the nominations ended in early March so put voting off until it was too late.[/*:m]
[*]Perhaps consider being able to sign up any time of the year for the awards, and have a 'games you might have missed' email or announcement half-way through the year, perhaps [b]highlighting [/b]games worth playing.[/*:m][/list:u]

[spoiler]A question: if/when I get admitted into the shadowy judging cabal (I co-own three xyzzy nominations from 2007), do I have to buy my own ceremonial robes or do they come with the appointment?[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=20#p33026
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-05 18:14:09

[quote="JoeyJones"][*]There should be an [b]email[/b] reminding people about the closing of the rounds. [/quote]

[b]HEARTY CHEER.[/b]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=20#p33027
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-05 18:19:32

[quote="JoeyJones"]There should be an [b]email[/b] reminding people about the closing of the rounds. I missed the second round this year not because I didn't want to vote but because I knew back in February that the nominations ended in early March so put voting off until it was too late.[/quote]
This seems like a sensible enough idea. (I held off on reminding people somewhat this year, because I didn't want to nag. But if the general opinion is 'nag me more, please', message received.)
[quote="JoeyJones"]Perhaps consider being able to sign up any time of the year for the awards, and have a 'games you might have missed' email or announcement half-way through the year, perhaps [b]highlighting [/b]games worth playing.[/quote]
Nrgh, and then we're in the position of endorsing particular games. It'd be nice if people who [i]weren't[/i] organisers would do that, but then we run into vote-funneling problems again.
[quote="JoeyJones"]
[spoiler]A question: if/when I get admitted into the shadowy judging cabal (I co-own three xyzzy nominations from 2007), do I have to buy my own ceremonial robes or do they come with the appointment?[/spoiler][/quote]
You have to buy your own robes (through a properly accredited supplier) for all grades, up until the Hallowed Circle of the Obfuscated Grue. At which point you take on the robes of the member you killed to earn your position.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4545&start=0#p33028
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Clod's Quest Demo (Undum port)
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2012-03-05 19:11:16

A couple of spelling errors I noticed: in the text dump at the end of the tutorial, Claus seems oddly "vivacios" instead of "vivacious."  In the description of the Dungeon Entrance, "that in" should be "that is."  I imagine I must have read right over these the first time, being so used to reading it.

After finding the clothespin, perhaps the reader could get an italicized message about unclicking the mop to pick it up?

I'm not totally sure of the formal affordances of Undum, but is it possible to put the room description in a separate window from player input?  Or perhaps the room description could re-display after every action, showing user input at the top and scrolling down to the room description?  I think ideally there would be no scrolling at all, though, but the screen would clear periodically.

Breaking up the text blocks is really nice, though I liked the introduction displaying as a single block because it all managed to fit on my screen at once.  The best instance of adding in a pause or break was after opening the door to end the tutorial sequence.  More like that, I think.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4578&start=10#p33029
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF and Choice (or, another goddamn CYOA thread)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-05 19:12:23

[quote="conradcook"]Not to get involved with the quarrel, but Matt W's point, that there's a difference between interactivity and choice, is an interesting one.  Calls to mind the toy v. game dichotomy.  And really it could be applied to CYOA just as well to parsered IF.

Conrad.[/quote]

This is an excellent point. There's a point-and-click game called Balloon Diaspora which has some pretty easy puzzles, but in which most of the interaction is multiple-choice conversations that don't (I'm pretty sure) have any effect on the next choices you can make. They just allow you to express your interpretation of the story. So that could be one model for CYOA that emphasizes interactivity over choice, or at least over branching.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=20#p33030
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-05 19:14:41

[quote="maga"]
You have to buy your own robes (through a properly accredited supplier) for all grades, up until the Hallowed Circle of the Obfuscated Grue. At which point you take on the robes of the member you killed to earn your position.[/quote]

Can I just rob someone for them, as long as I don't

[spoiler]high-five the guard?[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4433&start=10#p33031
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Are there arrays in TADS? Or anything that behaves that 
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-05 19:34:19

Thanks, Ben, for the thoughts and the extensions.  Also for the NPC check() discussion, one thread over.

I'll post again when I have something substantial done.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=20#p33032
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-03-05 19:51:59

[quote="maga"][quote="JoeyJones"]There should be an [b]email[/b] reminding people about the closing of the rounds. I missed the second round this year not because I didn't want to vote but because I knew back in February that the nominations ended in early March so put voting off until it was too late.[/quote]
This seems like a sensible enough idea. (I held off on reminding people somewhat this year, because I didn't want to nag. But if the general opinion is 'nag me more, please', message received.)[/quote]
I like the idea too, but I'd rather see an RSS feed, syndicated through Planet-IF et al.

[quote="maga"]...and then we're in the position of endorsing particular games. It'd be nice if people who weren't organisers would do that, but then we run into vote-funneling problems again.[/quote]
We're very close* to being able to offer a DailyLit-style site that could serve up subscriptions of playing suggestions. In case that needs expansion: You'd go to the site, sign up for a daily subscription such as "Beginner's Introduction to IF", "Modern IF Literacy", "2011 XYZZY Nominees", "2010 IF Winners", etc., and each day a new game would be served up in an online player. 

[size=85]*Well, somebody would have to build the site, but other than that we're close...[/size]

To the wider question, I like the following tweaks:

1) Only games with an IFDB entry are eligible for the awards. (This would presumably also make it much easier to compile the list of eligible games.)
2) The listing of games in all rounds should include hyperlinks to the repositories where folks can get/play the games. (Again, deriving the list from IFDB would make this pretty easy to do.)
3) Allow voters to make comments on the games when voting. Not for any of the exclusionary/weighting reasons mentioned in the OP, but to foster author feedback and conversation. Comments should be visible to other voters, if not to the public at large, after votes are cast.
4) "Allow people to self-police on campaigning/discussion, but set a clear standard for when the organisers can throw out votes."
5) In the final round(s) of voting, voters should certify that they've played a minimum number of the games in the category.
6) Review the names of the categories as described in the OP.
7) Allow authors to vote for their own games.

Suggestions to differentially weight votes, use only a rarified judging panel or voting pool, change the fundamentals of the voting process, or ghettoize/bar CYOA are in my opinion either odious or unnecessary.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=20#p33033
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-03-05 20:12:23

I like Erik's IFDB requirement idea.

Other ideas I like:
#8: Scrapping the first round list
Modified #3: Requiring comments with votes

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4321&start=0#p33034
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Extensions for Debugging
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2012-03-05 20:32:20

For this:[code]Include call stack tracking by Brady Garvin.
Include verbose runtime problem messages by Brady Garvin.
Include debug file parsing by Brady Garvin.[/code]I get this:[quote]In Book "Binary Input File Streams", Chapter "Public Binary Input File Stream Accessors and Mutators" in the extension Binary Input Files by Brady Garvin:

Problem. You defined an adjective by 'has a non-null stream id' intending that it would apply to 'a binary input file stream': but this isn't a thing, a kind of thing or a kind of value, and indeed doesn't have any meaning I can make sense of.

 See the manual: 6.4 > Defining new adjectives
 [/quote]

Worked fine without "debug file parsing".  And, that one has no documentation. 

Oh, I'm also using Jesse's Dynamic Objects extension, just to make things explode bigger, if that matters.  And Editable Stored Actions, though I doubt it interferes much.

Right now I'm lost as to which extensions are the "top level" ones I need worry about, and which ones are just helpers for the others. 

Also, can the "(call frame #3)" just be a concise "3:" against the left margin?  And maybe squeeze " (at address 173924)" down to "@173924" or even omit it entirely unless I'm actually looking at assembly. Until then, the memory location isn't useful to me.  (Or is it? I still have an un-named rule or phrase right where my program goes off the rails.)

I did read (some of the) documentation... last week-ish... but not all of it.... yet...

Further developments as things fail harder.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=20#p33035
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-05 20:36:55

[quote="ektemple"]We're very close* to being able to offer a DailyLit-style site that could serve up subscriptions of playing suggestions. In case that needs expansion: You'd go to the site, sign up for a daily subscription such as "Beginner's Introduction to IF", "Modern IF Literacy", "2011 XYZZY Nominees", "2010 IF Winners", etc., and each day a new game would be served up in an online player. 
[size=85]*Well, somebody would have to build the site, but other than that we're close...[/size][/quote]
I wholeheartedly endorse this idea (as well as IF podcasts) and nominate Someone Who Is Not Me to run it.

[quote="ektemple"]1) Only games with an IFDB entry are eligible for the awards. (This would presumably also make it much easier to compile the list of eligible games.)[/quote]
As things stand at the moment, this would eliminate: most AIF and non-English-language games (although these rarely earn a significant number of votes anyway), most ADRIFT and Quest games, a scattering of random games uploaded to the Archive or mentioned on ifWiki that nobody made an IFDB page for, and all ChoiceScript games. (But of course, if anybody didn't like it they could fix it with a little effort.) It would also make David Welbourn's life considerably easier.

A fair way to do it might be to announce, sometime around the end of the year, that the XYZZYs would be starting up by [date], and if you want a game to be considered you should make sure it's got an IFDB page.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=30#p33036
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-03-05 21:09:45

[quote="maga"][quote="ektemple"]1) Only games with an IFDB entry are eligible for the awards. (This would presumably also make it much easier to compile the list of eligible games.)[/quote]
As things stand at the moment, this would eliminate: most AIF and non-English-language games (although these rarely earn a significant number of votes anyway), most ADRIFT and Quest games, a scattering of random games uploaded to the Archive or mentioned on ifWiki that nobody made an IFDB page for, and all ChoiceScript games. (But of course, if anybody didn't like it they could fix it with a little effort.) It would also make David Welbourn's life considerably easier.

A fair way to do it might be to announce, sometime around the end of the year, that the XYZZYs would be starting up by [date], and if you want a game to be considered you should make sure it's got an IFDB page.[/quote]

Yes, I think that's all it would take, and in the process IFDB's value as a community resource would be improved, and we'd also have some assurance that nominees' games have at least some connection to the community. (And if one day Bethesda games the system by entering Elder Scrolls XIX into the IFDB on the sly, well, that is the day we will have won.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=30#p33037
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2012-03-05 21:15:36

All of the comps are open voting, art shows are no voting, I see no problem with one event being judges' voting. 

As well, it can be different judges for different categories, because few judges are qualified in all categories, and, it reduces the burden on each judge not to be responsible for the whole shebang.  

Categories can vary about how open they are to outsiders.  I couldn't see many outside the IF circle in the puzzle or tech categories, but characterization?  Sure, bring in a professional trad-fic author who still uses a typewriter.

Rather than cordon off CYOA into a category, I recommend a Best Parser Game category.  That bastion will always be ours, and rewards works only expressible as parser IF, such as Earl Grey, The Gostak, etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=30#p33038
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-03-05 21:41:05

[quote]We're very close* to being able to offer a DailyLit-style site that could serve up subscriptions of playing suggestions. In case that needs expansion: You'd go to the site, sign up for a daily subscription such as "Beginner's Introduction to IF", "Modern IF Literacy", "2011 XYZZY Nominees", "2010 IF Winners", etc., and each day a new game would be served up in an online player. [/quote]

I am already planning to start a blog for iplayif.com, and although I had only been planning to showcase/curate beginner friendly IF, it could serve those other needs as well. Just as long as there are editors for each category - I could run the blog as a whole, but I would want editors to do the selections/reviews etc.



I also like the best Parser work idea, though it might overlap with best use of medium too much.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4578&start=10#p33039
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF and Choice (or, another goddamn CYOA thread)
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2012-03-05 21:51:35

I side with Ross here.  I find much cyoa simplistic, and much parser opaque, so many of my favorite games are in that gray area in-between.  Emily Short's Best Of Three, for example.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=30#p33040
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-05 22:10:17

[quote="ektemple"]1) Only games with an IFDB entry are eligible for the awards. (This would presumably also make it much easier to compile the list of eligible games.)[/quote]

I like this better than the self-nominating thing. The IFDB itself doesn't bar any games that I know of, so it wouldn't actually block any game from being eligible ... it would just make sure the game has at least one fan (or author) with some clue about the IF community to begin with, and make sure everything was listed in one place that's easy to use (for several reasons already cited) so, sounds fine. While I'd never feel entirely comfortable self-nominating (not that I wouldn't do it, but I [i]sometimes [/i]wouldn't do it), I have no problems at all making sure I have stuff in the database; that's what it's for.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4456&start=10#p33041
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Development Teams
User: Merlin Fisher / DateTime: 2012-03-05 22:39:28

I contributed a couple of quips to "Alabaster."  One limiting factor I remember was not knowing where the scene was supposed to be leading.  The quips I added were deliberately vague and didn't really lead anywhere, because I wasn't sure where the story was going.  I felt like I was working blind.  There was just a setting and one defined character (plus the PC, who was not well defined), and that was all.  It's tough to write dialogue when you only have one and a half characters, with no clear plot or ending!  I could have invented a storyline and pursued it, but with no feedback and no editing power, I didn't feel comfortable doing so.  Perhaps that was my failing, but there it is.

A problem with any project that has many people involved is making sure everyone's on the same page, working toward the same vision.  This problem is easiest to manage with one author, and gets exponentially harder the more people you involve.  It can be solved by dividing up the work, being clear about goals throughout, and having a supervisor who makes sure things stay consistent.  But that's a lot of effort and most of us don't care to go that far, I suppose (or we don't have minions -- I mean, teammates -- to share the work with...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=30#p33043
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2012-03-06 00:45:36

[quote]As things stand at the moment, this would eliminate: most AIF and non-English-language games (although these rarely earn a significant number of votes anyway), most ADRIFT and Quest games, a scattering of random games uploaded to the Archive or mentioned on ifWiki that nobody made an IFDB page for, and all ChoiceScript games. (But of course, if anybody didn't like it they could fix it with a little effort.) It would also make David Welbourn's life considerably easier.[/quote]
I'm not sure if it would actually exclude [i]most[/i] ADRIFT games (or, at least, non-AIF ADRIFT games).  There were only about 20 released last year and I've tried to keep IFDB pretty up-to-date on them.  If this means that more Quest and ChoiceScript games show up on IFDB, I don't think that would be a bad thing.

Looking at IFWiki's "Games Released in 2011" makes me think ADRIFT's IFWiki presence could use some love, though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4456&start=10#p33045
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Development Teams
User: emshort / DateTime: 2012-03-06 02:01:10

[quote="Merlin Fisher"]I could have invented a storyline and pursued it, but with no feedback and no editing power, I didn't feel comfortable doing so.  Perhaps that was my failing, but there it is. [/quote]

Yes, quite -- my point here was really that the project went in ambitious directions *despite* my total failure to do the appropriate groundwork for such a thing. But some of the interest of it (for me when I was editing, anyway) did come from trying to patch together a story that made sense of these diverse contributions; an experience a little like improv or tabletop storygaming.

However. If I had set out from the beginning to make a collaborative game with the aim of its being solid and aesthetically pleasing, I would have gone about it very differently, and one of the differences would have been making a road map with the collaborators first.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=30#p33046
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2012-03-06 07:16:44

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Rather than cordon off CYOA into a category, I recommend a Best Parser Game category.  That bastion will always be ours, and rewards works only expressible as parser IF, such as Earl Grey, The Gostak, etc.[/quote]
Why not have [i]both[/i] "Best Parser Game" and "Best Choice Game" categories, and the winners of both categories would both still be eligible for Best Game.  That sounds like the most fair way to retain a separation between the two while recognizing that both have a place in the same community.  And I think we do need a separation -- separate but equal, right?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=30#p33047
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Flourish / DateTime: 2012-03-06 08:31:50

I don't have any solutions, but I wanted to add my voice here in support of [b]not doing anything that would weight things towards comp games even more.[/b] Some of this is personal (I'm releasing a Banned From Comp!&trade; game later this month), of course. However, I'd also like to point out that the comp is already the center of the IF world, and it weights things strongly towards shorter games, towards non-experimental games (that are likely to win the comp, because they aren't particularly innovative and everyone can get their head around them) and towards games that are not fan fictional (my personal hobbyhorse).

Most people probably think at least one of these is undesirable (is there anyone in the IF community whose hobbyhorse is 'originality, originality, and a Romantic idea of the author!'? And surely there are folks who are part of the community for Zork clones and Zork clones alone) but most people probably think at least one of them is desirable, too (who can argue against longer, more involved games? And if, like me, you think The Fen Are Our Future...). 

Basically: Comp is great! I don't want people to have to be eligible for the comp to have any shot at a XYZZY! So let's not do things that make that even [i]more[/i] the case.

Edited to add:
[rant]Wait, inserting a trademark doesn't work?! I bet emdashes and endashes don't work correctly either—do they? Wait, they do, what does that even mean—if I copy and pasted a trademark would that work? ™ !!!!!! WTF ARGH BBCODE I HATE YOU[/rant]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4583&start=0#p33048
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: 826CHI Clandestine Quest
User: edblair / DateTime: 2012-03-06 09:28:48

Right.  Dunno if we've been properly introduced.  

Hi, my name is Ed, and I'm part of the Chicago IF Group, and I would like your money.

Peter Nepstad(you might know him from the film GET LAMP, and also his staggering contribution to the IF canon: 1893) and I are participating in 826CHI's Clandestine Quest, which is a fundraiser where all the money and dollars and things go straight to 826.  For those of you not familiar with 826, it is an organization founded by Dave Eggers to promote writing and literacy skills in children.  For those not familiar with the Quest, it is a scavenger hunt all across Chicago's Wicker Park neighborhood.  The more money we raise, the more cheating we get to do.  The more cheating, the more likely we are to triumph, and spread the good name of IF everywhere.  

Here's a blurb!  

"826CHI is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write. Our services are structured around the understanding that great leaps in learning can happen with one-on-one attention, and that strong writing skills are fundamental to future success. With this in mind, we provide drop-in tutoring, after-school workshops, field trips, in-school tutoring, help for English language learners, and assistance with student publications."

Essentially, they're a super rad group with a focus on boosting children's confidence in writing.  I've been working with their Louder than a Bomb team recently, and it has been tremendously rewarding.  All their programs are free to the students.  Fantastic place.  

How does this tie in to IF, aside from Peter and I both being stalwarts in the Chicago IF "scene"?  We're working on putting together a proposal for an IF workshop for 826!  Is there a direct correlation between this fundraiser, and our proposal?  Unfortunately not, but!  BUT! Money from this event will certainly support 826CHI's continued operation, and by extension, any future workshops presented there.  

I know, I know, tl/dr, but I think this is important, and reaching out to you folks was worth a shot.  If you want more information on the Quest, click [url]http://www.826chi.org/quest/[/url].   If you just want to go to our donation page, we're the Bureau of IF.  It's this link: [url]http://www.826chi.org/quest/teams/bureau.html[/url]

Anyway.  Thank you for reading, and if you do decide to donate, thank you even more.  I honestly appreciate it quite a rather lot.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=40#p33049
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-03-06 09:32:16

I have to say interfaces like this one and those produced by Undum make a lot more sense in the touch mobile world, without quite losing the feeling of a parser (because there's real object manipulation with a world model behind).  I have still not tried this (great) game on my android smartphone, but at least these Undum games play like heaven:

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/zweb/matter/">http://eblong.com/zarf/zweb/matter/</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.glpics.com/ralphmerridew/clod/clod.html">http://www.glpics.com/ralphmerridew/clod/clod.html</a>

The problem is that even with amazing input methods such as swype, traditional parser IF still is not as smooth an experience on mobile.

So, yeah, bring it on.  I see it's an updated version from the experimental interface of Dead Cities, which was also quite a blast.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4583&start=0#p33050
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: 826CHI Clandestine Quest
User: George / DateTime: 2012-03-06 10:40:53

Certainly a worthy cause, I'm happy to kick in a bit. Good luck!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=40#p33051
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2012-03-06 11:02:16

I tried playing Clod's Quest on my Kindle Fire, and it didn't play so well.  (Undum will only display one of the story pane or status pane at a time.  Clod's Quest really depends on having both available at the same time.)  It should be possible to modify Undum in such a way that, when played on a mobile browser, it shows the status panel above the story window.  Anybody know how to do that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=40#p33052
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-03-06 11:48:07

Oops, it's sadly true!  I played Clod on PC, only Monster Matter on android.  My bad...

OTOH, trying it just now, found a way to get to that menu:  you click on the main Undum menu and choose character.  The items menu is there.  Yes, quite a PITA, it should be always visible as in desktop because you'll be using it all the time.  Changing user-agent to desktop had no effect, though...

still, Undum is truly a marvel to behold...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4228&start=10#p33053
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: New Windows build of 6G60
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-03-06 12:20:13

The i7grip documentation now describes the setup procedure for the new Windows build.  Many thanks to David for working this change in!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=30#p33054
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-06 12:26:24

[quote="Flourish"]And if, like me, you think The Fen Are Our Future...[/quote]
As it happens, I do believe in bringing about a future dominance of boggy marshland (especially in cities), but I suspect that's not what you meant.

I'm really starting to see the value in some kind of institution to highlight lesser played and out-of-comp games that are worth playing. Hmm.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4321&start=0#p33055
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Extensions for Debugging
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-03-06 12:41:51

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]For this:[code]Include call stack tracking by Brady Garvin.
Include verbose runtime problem messages by Brady Garvin.
Include debug file parsing by Brady Garvin.[/code]I get this:[quote]In Book "Binary Input File Streams", Chapter "Public Binary Input File Stream Accessors and Mutators" in the extension Binary Input Files by Brady Garvin:

Problem. You defined an adjective by 'has a non-null stream id' intending that it would apply to 'a binary input file stream': but this isn't a thing, a kind of thing or a kind of value, and indeed doesn't have any meaning I can make sense of.

 See the manual: 6.4 > Defining new adjectives
 [/quote]

Worked fine without "debug file parsing".  And, that one has no documentation. 

Oh, I'm also using Jesse's Dynamic Objects extension, just to make things explode bigger, if that matters.  And Editable Stored Actions, though I doubt it interferes much.[/quote]
Okay, I'll have a chance to look at it this evening.  I might need to draft some inclusion instructions like Erik did for Glimmr.  Regarding the missing documentation, I am still working on it.  My free time sank to about zero mid-February, which is why I pushed the release out when I did, but documentation was one of the casualties.

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Right now I'm lost as to which extensions are the "top level" ones I need worry about, and which ones are just helpers for the others. [/quote]
Yes, I had this comment before and failed to address it properly.  Let me write something up, and I'll run it by you to see if it helps.

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Also, can the "(call frame #3)" just be a concise "3:" against the left margin?  And maybe squeeze " (at address 173924)" down to "@173924" or even omit it entirely unless I'm actually looking at assembly. Until then, the memory location isn't useful to me.  (Or is it? I still have an un-named rule or phrase right where my program goes off the rails.)

I did read (some of the) documentation... last week-ish... but not all of it.... yet...[/quote]
This is very doable.  But I want to err on the side of verbosity in the default settings, so I'll probably tie the formatting to a preference or two.  I will also document how to change preferences from the source text, so you don't have to switch settings every time the story is run.

(The addresses are printed by default mostly to distinguish like-named rules.  Possibly that's less of an issue that I thought?  If so, I'll drop them in the defaults.)

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Further developments as things fail harder.[/quote]
Okay.  Thanks, Ron!  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4321&start=0#p33056
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Extensions for Debugging
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-03-06 12:47:18

Oh, and while I'm thinking of it, if you're including Debug File Parsing and still seeing unnamed rules and phrases, you've probably found a bug.  Let me know if there's something I can take a look at there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4460&start=10#p33057
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table entries that result in a change or action?
User: Phrog / DateTime: 2012-03-06 13:18:59

Just following through. Felix's solution works really well. There were a few minor kinks. Nothing serious.

For whatever reason, Inform 7 is not liking my use of the word "or." I just fixed it by writing a little extra code.

[code]
Before reading a command when another person (called the audience) is visible: 
	if the addressee is yourself:
		now the addressee is the audience.
		
Before reading a command when another person (called the audience) is visible:
	if the addressee is not visible:
		now the addressee is the audience.[/code]

I sooo wish that or would work. It would have saved me so much unnecessary code. I'm still used to Java (not that I was any better with Java either, but it was a bit more straightforward. But I guess that's the price you pay for a code that virtually looks like the English language).

The only other minor issue is if you have two people. Like the character has a dog that follows him around, so if I want to address someone other than the dog, i still have to use the NPC's name. If I do a little trixy coding, I could make it so it prioritizes other NPCs over the dog. I could probably fix this with something along the lines of (it'll take a bit of n00b-programmer thinking on my part):

[code]
Definition: a person is notcanine if he is not the dog.

[some condition that allows me check if another notcanine person is in the area, blah blah blah:]	
Before reading a command when another person (called the audience) is visible:
	if the addressee is the dog:
		now the addressee is the audience.
[/code]

Also if I say "shut up" it'll think I'm trying to shut a thing called an up. But that's what the "instead" is for.

The program is so much more simple now. Could not have done it without you. Thanks again.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4460&start=20#p33058
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table entries that result in a change or action?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-06 13:30:44

[quote="Phrog"]For whatever reason, Inform 7 is not liking my use of the word "or."[/quote]

What was the line with "or" that wasn't working? There are a couple of tricky things about "or" in Inform, because you can write something that makes sense in English but that the compiler can't understand. For instance, you often need to write out complete sentences on either side of the "or"; I think you always have to write "If Jane is visible or Bob is visible" rather than "If Jane or Bob is visible." 

It's also very easy to write conditions with "or" and negation that don't do what you want. For instance, if you write:

[code]If Jane is not visible or Jane is not in the location[/code]

that'll be true whenever Jane isn't both visible and in the location. Sometimes you want 

[code]If Jane is not visible and Jane is not in the location[/code]

which requires Jane to be both not visible and not in the location. (That may not be the best example; there are some examples around of people getting confused on this, but it's very hard to find them by searching for "or"!)

Anyway, that could be the problem -- if you still have the code that wasn't working it could help to post it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=30#p33059
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-06 13:48:22

I haven't seen this mentioned -- if I missed it, I apologize --

Matt W. mentioned creating a CYOA category [i]as an outreach method[/i].  Along those lines, you could see what happened this year as an incredible [i]success[/i], demonstrating the [i]benefits[/i] of allowing authors to raise awareness about the awards.

XYZZYA could encourage authors to solicit votes for their own games (while forbidding authors from talking about competing games).  Since authors want to see their games win, they'll promote the competition and therefore IF.

...In effect, what XYZZYA did this year was to set up a special category for CYOA, and that seems reasonable to me.  Then again, I also think it would be reasonable to allow IF and CYOA to compete directly, even considering that CYOA's demographic advantage may permanently drown out IF.  CYOA may be a better form, although I don't like it as much.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=40#p33060
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2012-03-06 13:53:55

I know that it was possible to get to the menu, but having to switch back and forth slows everything down horribly.
One big advantage of Undum port over the other versions is that everything's available all the time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4460&start=20#p33061
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table entries that result in a change or action?
User: Phrog / DateTime: 2012-03-06 13:56:56

oh, it was this:

[code]Before reading a command when another person (called the audience) is visible: if the addressee is  yourself or the adressee is not visible, now the addressee is the audience.[/code]

but i think it might have been that Felix misspelled the second addressee (just noticed that). But in the past my attempts at using or have been unsuccessful. I generally avoid using or, unless it's something like "a thing is either this or that."

I would love it to work for if conditions:

if player has this or player has that:
do this.

That's what I was really griping about. But I'm probably giving up too easily and just need to play around with it more. It looks like it works for you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4584&start=0#p33062
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: IF in "real life"
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2012-03-06 14:03:54

Feeling lonely, I was just wondering how many people on this forum actually know people in their disconnected lives who are also interested in IF.

For the purpose of this poll, "actively interested" means that the person plays, discusses, or follows IF, even if he or she does not participate at all in the online community.

I come under the second-to-last category; my uncle used to play IF a little back in the day.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=30#p33063
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-06 14:06:26

[quote="conradcook"]...In effect, what XYZZYA did this year was to set up a special category for CYOA, and that seems reasonable to me.  Then again, I also think it would be reasonable to allow IF and CYOA to compete directly, even considering that CYOA's demographic advantage may permanently drown out IF. CYOA may be a better form, although I don't like it as much.[/quote]
In effect, it was a separate category for ChoiceScript games: after all, The Play still (deservedly) won Best Story. Really though, the 'fix' was against crowd-sourced voting rather than ChoiceScript per se. If I made a high quality ChoiceScript game and whacked it on the IFDB, I'd want it to be eligible for all the relevant awards.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4584&start=0#p33064
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF in "real life"
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-06 14:14:50

I know one person who I see on a regular basis who plays and writes IF. That's Melvin, with whom I co-wrote Calm. We used to play chess, but I started beating him all the time, so now we write text adventures.

I've got a whole bunch of friends who write novels, poems, scripts and so on; and I also know a fair few people who are keen on retro games, so there are people who are at least sympathetic to my interests.

I'd be keen on participating in a proper meet-up group. I'd even travel to London for such a thing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=40#p33065
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-06 14:19:57

[quote="JoeyJones"]
In effect, it was a separate category for ChoiceScript games: after all, The Play still (deservedly) won Best Story. Really though, the 'fix' was against crowd-sourced voting rather than ChoiceScript per se. [/quote]

Good point.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=40#p33066
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-06 14:20:57

I think it is important to separate the malicious and the merely enthousiastic.  The former are like spammers, and hard to deal with on a systematic basis.  One could upload Pong to IFDB and organise a flash mob to vote for it.

Regarding the merely enthousiastic, I think the first option would be to limit the effect of votes to the games played to the end by the voter.  I know I am opening a mathematical can of worms, but if I only played games 1 and 3 out of four, my voting for game 3 ought not to influence its standing regarding the two unplayed games - had I played them, I might have voted for one of them instead.

So voting for the only game played, while legal, will be a null action: it just says "Of the one game I played, I liked this one the best".

So let's try to go for differential votes: this game is the best out of this set - (so I DON'T propose people put all the games played in an order).  If this leads to imcompatible partial orders (A>B, B>C, C>A), the votes cast by those who played the smallest number of games are decreased in weight until the incompatibility disappears - which gives another incentive for playing more of the games in the category.

And yes, the malicious voters will lie, but let's hope they are a minority even within the flash voting mob.

[list]
[*]This would give less accessible IF a fairer chance to win - votes by those who didn't play that Polish IF written in PDP-11 assembly don't count against it.  (Of course, if the Poles DO play the English game and then vote for the one in their language because it is in their language it may bias in the opposite direction, but that problem is unavoidable, in my opinion.)[/*:m]
[*]This would help people who currently don't want/dare to vote because they haven't played all the games: they know they won't be hurting the unknown ones.[/*:m][/list:u]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=40#p33067
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-06 14:25:48

[quote="conradcook"]Matt W. mentioned creating a CYOA category [i]as an outreach method[/i].  Along those lines, you could see what happened this year as an incredible [i]success[/i], demonstrating the [i]benefits[/i] of allowing authors to raise awareness about the awards.[/quote]
Raising awareness about the awards is, in itself, not of any particular value; the value comes only if and when the people reached become players, reviewers, developers or authors of IF. Awareness-raising that only results in drive-by votes is actively [i]bad[/i].

I've got no evidence to say whether any of the ChoiceScript folks, having voted, stuck around to try some of the other games. (The XYZZYs, at present, don't make it particularly easy to do so.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=40#p33068
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-06 14:31:13

They sure know we exist!

C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4460&start=20#p33069
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table entries that result in a change or action?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-03-06 15:30:49

It does work exactly like that. You must have had a typo or a minor syntax error when you've tried it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4584&start=0#p33070
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF in "real life"
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-03-06 15:33:41

My housemate and I collaboratively nicknamed our house "the [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=w5s3sv43s3p98v45]Doshery[/url]." (When we moved in, there was a nesting pair of gitches above the back lutt.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4584&start=0#p33071
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF in "real life"
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-06 15:40:07

I'm married to Jacqueline Lott (who I met through IF), and I live in a city with enough IF folks in it to form two largely-distinct circles of IF people.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4460&start=20#p33072
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table entries that result in a change or action?
User: Phrog / DateTime: 2012-03-06 15:46:56

So if I want to say either "shut up" or "shut the door", why is this code saying "I only understood you as far as wanting to shut up."?

[code]
Understand the command "shut" as something new.
Understand "shut [something]" as shlutting.
Shlutting is an action applying to an object.
Carry out shlutting:
	If the noun is openable:
		try closing the noun;
	otherwise:
		let T be indexed text;
		let T be the player's command;
		change the text of the player's command to "[addressee], [T]".
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=40#p33073
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2012-03-06 16:06:03

[quote="conradcook"](while forbidding authors from talking about competing games)[/quote]
That bit doesn't make sense to me. The way I see it, the opposite is better. If everyone who want to encourage people to vote in the XYZZYs did so while talking about "competing games" as well as their own work rather than just asking people "vote for me", it should lead to more informed voters. If anything, authors should be forbidden to solicit votes [i]unless[/i] they also talk about the other nominees.

I'm naive enough to think (or at least hope) that no big rule changes or complications are needed, if it's just made clear that any judges are expected to have played a reasonable selection rather than just voting on the thing they know. As others have pointed out, the issue here was with people being enthusiastic rather than malicious.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4584&start=0#p33074
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF in "real life"
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-03-06 16:23:22

[quote="maga"]I'm married to Jacqueline Lott (who I met through IF), and I live in a city with enough IF folks in it to form two largely-distinct circles of IF people.[/quote]

amazing.  Your marriage would make Adam Cadre proud. [emote]:)[/emote]

In real life, I know no one who knows IF.  It doesn't matter, I also know no one who listens to Beethoven or reads Poe, so I'd say we're in good company.

Besides, that is precisely what internet communities are for:  people with common interests getting together.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4584&start=0#p33075
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF in "real life"
User: climbingstars / DateTime: 2012-03-06 16:40:07

I actually came across Interactive Fiction through a friend about 5 years ago who had entered a game for the 2007 IFcomp. He suggested that I play it and I've been interested in Interactive Fiction ever since, although it was only until 2011 that I started cowriting text adventures.

We used to go biking around our local area, but since all his bikes are now out of action, we make interactive fiction instead. We also hang out for lunch every so often where we play chinese checkers while discussing Interactive Fiction goings on, game ideas and concepts.

It would be good to participate in a gathering of Interactive Fiction fans, although I believe my friend and I are the only two people in the local area with an active interest in Interactive Fiction.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4584&start=0#p33076
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF in "real life"
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2012-03-06 16:41:49

I knew a few people back when I was at school (in that long distant era known as the 1980's) who were into IF, but I don't know any of them now. The last time I tried to talk someone at work into trying an IF game, they were like "what, it's just words on a screen? That sounds boring" and told me I should check out Call of Duty instead.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=40#p33077
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-03-06 16:44:39

[quote="Flourish"]who can argue against longer, more involved games?[/quote]
Ooh, ooh, pick me! [emote]:P[/emote] Obviously I don't mind the [i]existence[/i] of longer games, but I'm honestly quite glad about the Comp's shaping of Expected Game Length.  I have a very short attention span, and I also tend to like the more experimental stuff, which often doesn't hold up for a longer work.  But I definitely agree with you about the desirability of de-emphasizing the Comp as the end-all-be-all of the IF universe.

Less tangentially:
[quote="maga"](They could do this throughout the year, so that if you wanted to you could release your game and submit it for XYZZY consideration at the same time.)[/quote]
Okay, this is actually still a bit of a tangent: I like the idea of nominations being open all year anyway (though not the idea that authors have to nominate them), since the stuff from further back in the year tends to get lost in the Comp shuffle.  What if the games that get, uh, pre-nominated simply go to the top of the Big List, as a curated Little List for those whose eyes glaze over before they reach the bottom of the Big List?

[quote="ektemple"]1) Only games with an IFDB entry are eligible for the awards. (This would presumably also make it much easier to compile the list of eligible games.)[/quote]
I like this, as long as everybody knows well in advance about it and it's true that any game [i]can[/i] be on it.  It seems like the suggestion that comes closest to making sure the game is trying to play along with this community, without trying to draw arbitrary genre distinctions.

[quote="Trumgottist"]If anything, authors should be forbidden to solicit votes [i]unless[/i] they also talk about the other nominees.[/quote]
The idea is presumably to avoid negative commentary about the other games, which could be anywhere from outright vitriol to damning with faint praise.  I agree that this community is generally kind and polite, but I can understand the desire to codify the etiquette, especially since the whole kerfuffle was about just such a "common politeness" misunderstanding.  I'd be in favor of something like "if you're the author or have some other personal connection to a particular game (such as having written the development system, or supporting the author solely based on shared nationality), don't make public announcements about the XYZZYs that mention specific games at all."  Of course, the definition of "public" is handwavey, but I think it's still a step closer to something that is harder to overstep by accident.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=40#p33078
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-03-06 17:01:29

I think that if people are to vote in a competition, they'd better experience the nominees rather than just favor the work that got them there.

Competitions for IF should log what games each user has played and how much of it.  Wasn't transcript from players a feature in one of these competitions?  If there's transcript from players available, sure there is chance to log progress.

Say, "You're only available to vote if you have played at least 5 games and spend quite some time in each of them."

BTW, I'm now ashamed:  I've never voted in any IF competition.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=40#p33090
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-06 17:14:10

[quote="Trumgottist"]I'm naive enough to think (or at least hope) that no big rule changes or complications are needed, if it's just made clear that any judges are expected to have played a reasonable selection rather than just voting on the thing they know. As others have pointed out, the issue here was with people being enthusiastic rather than malicious.[/quote]
I don't think this is naive at all; [i]prima facie[/i], less intrusive changes are preferable to big sweeping ones, as well as being a lot easier to implement.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=40#p33101
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-06 17:30:48

[quote="namekuseijin"]Competitions for IF should log what games each user has played and how much of it.  Wasn't transcript from players a feature in one of these competitions?  If there's transcript from players available, sure there is chance to log progress.[/quote]
This would, at present, be totally unworkable, because

a) automatic transcripts are, at the moment, a feature of browser-based interpreters; many players use local interpreters instead, which don't have automatic logging features. (I, personally, don't use a web-runner unless that's the game's native environment.)
b) some games can't be run in a browser (such as, e.g., Cryptozookeeper),
c) as previously mentioned, we don't want to be too reliant on comps; the XYZZYs is not the Comp Digest.

If, at some point, every IF game everywhere was played on an interpreter that automatically logged usage stats, and we had access to those stats, and we were able to tie individual players to accounts on the XYZZY site... then we could do this. But that would be pretty creepy. I really don't want to know which of y'all has played [i]Deadly Climax[/i]. Over a thousand times. Always stopping play at the same point.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4586&start=0#p33102
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Couple of questions about how to use the language.
User: inform7newbie / DateTime: 2012-03-06 18:13:34

Hey guys! This is my first post here, I'm sorry if these questions have already been covered in the forum somewhere, but I've been given the assignment to start (and finish) this game by Monday. Needless to say, I'm trying to learn as much as it as I can as quickly as I can. 

I just had a couple questions about how to do certain things. So, part of this game is having the player give certain responses to an actor, and then going through different rooms based on which response he gives. I'm attempting to do this using locked doors--the actor will give a key to the player based on the response. Is there any more efficient way of accomplishing this? It seems like I should be able to have a door unlock based on the phrase used by either the player or the actor.

Second, is there any way to put a time stop using inform 7? Part of the idea is to have only one decision a day occur, but that's completely optional, as I am using inform 7 definitively.

Thanks so much for your time and patience, I'm sure I'll have other questions as I get further along this code. Fortunately I have Thursday-Sunday free!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4584&start=0#p33103
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF in "real life"
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2012-03-06 18:15:41

You can count on your hands fingers the number of active IF interested people in my country. I met one of them, both an author of IF works and an IF-creation tool developer, a couple of times in real-life before. One of them was in one of the informal IF meetups they used to make once a year here. The other was when we made an IF stand in a little local retro-gaming fair back in 2006.

In a totally unexpected way, one fine day last year I'm sitting at my desk at job when I see him comming in through the door for a job interview in the same company I'm working in. Eventually he got the job, so now we are workmates, but that has happened just by pure chance!  [emote]:D[/emote] 

--

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4586&start=0#p33104
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Couple of questions about how to use the language.
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-06 18:25:32

[quote="inform7newbie"]Hey guys! This is my first post here, I'm sorry if these questions have already been covered in the forum somewhere, but I've been given the assignment to start (and finish) this game by Monday. Needless to say, I'm trying to learn as much as it as I can as quickly as I can. [/quote]
I can't help feeling that whoever gave you this assignment is being rather unreasonable. Or at least, overly optimistic. But you gotta do what you gotta do. Maybe I'm over-reacting because I like to put such a lot of detail into my games. Truth is, you can do this as a basic assignment in a pretty simple way.
[quote="inform7newbie"]
I just had a couple questions about how to do certain things. So, part of this game is having the player give certain responses to an actor, and then going through different rooms based on which response he gives. I'm attempting to do this using locked doors--the actor will give a key to the player based on the response. Is there any more efficient way of accomplishing this? It seems like I should be able to have a door unlock based on the phrase used by either the player or the actor.[/quote]
Either approach will work. My Inform is incredibly rusty, but let's see ... maybe I can whip something up. On the other hand, that would be doing your assignment for you, wouldn't it?
[quote="inform7newbie"]
Second, is there any way to put a time stop using inform 7? Part of the idea is to have only one decision a day occur, but that's completely optional, as I am using inform 7 definitively.[/quote]
It's not clear to me what you're asking about. What do you mean by "put a time stop"? What do you mean by "have only one decision a day occur"?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4584&start=0#p33105
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF in "real life"
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2012-03-06 18:41:25

I.F. has a big presence around UC Santa Cruz.  All of the computer science and game design students are expected to at least know Adventure and Zork as a matter of history & aesthetics, but I've also been in classes that required playing [i]Photopia[/i] and [i]Galatea[/i], among others.  [i]Twisty Little Passages[/i] is commonly assigned for reading, and I've watched [i]Get Lamp[/i] in two of the classes I've been a teaching assistant for.

I also live in a house with three multi-classed digital artist/writer/game designer/computer scientists, including Aaron Reed.  We talk about I.F. a lot around the house.  My friend Heather is friends with Dan Fabulich and she had a ChoiceScript project Kickstarted, which was awesome.  Sometimes Emily Short stops by and shows us the incredible things she's working on.  Plus, I'm constantly writing to other I.F. people who aren't physically present in Santa Cruz.

I.F. is pretty plentiful in my life!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4387&start=10#p33106
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: This is an incredibly cool site...
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2012-03-06 18:49:30

[b][SPAM?] Pacific Undersea Equal Opportunity Employment.[/b]

$$$ for newcomers with NO PRIOR EXPERIENCE breathing water for short term employment. Benefits may vary per applicant. Details of employment duration determined on a floating basis.

Pacific Undersea is a highly competitive, high pressure environment. This is your opportunity to swim with the big fish in a community of co-workers deep and unblinking, motivated, thirsty. Dive into this opportunity.

No forms needed, walk-ins encouraged.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4586&start=0#p33107
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Couple of questions about how to use the language.
User: inform7newbie / DateTime: 2012-03-06 18:54:56

[quote="Jim Aikin"][quote="inform7newbie"]Hey guys! This is my first post here, I'm sorry if these questions have already been covered in the forum somewhere, but I've been given the assignment to start (and finish) this game by Monday. Needless to say, I'm trying to learn as much as it as I can as quickly as I can. [/quote]
I can't help feeling that whoever gave you this assignment is being rather unreasonable. Or at least, overly optimistic. But you gotta do what you gotta do. Maybe I'm over-reacting because I like to put such a lot of detail into my games. Truth is, you can do this as a basic assignment in a pretty simple way.
[quote="inform7newbie"]
I just had a couple questions about how to do certain things. So, part of this game is having the player give certain responses to an actor, and then going through different rooms based on which response he gives. I'm attempting to do this using locked doors--the actor will give a key to the player based on the response. Is there any more efficient way of accomplishing this? It seems like I should be able to have a door unlock based on the phrase used by either the player or the actor.[/quote]
Either approach will work. My Inform is incredibly rusty, but let's see ... maybe I can whip something up. On the other hand, that would be doing your assignment for you, wouldn't it?
[quote="inform7newbie"]
Second, is there any way to put a time stop using inform 7? Part of the idea is to have only one decision a day occur, but that's completely optional, as I am using inform 7 definitively.[/quote]
It's not clear to me what you're asking about. What do you mean by "put a time stop"? What do you mean by "have only one decision a day occur"?[/quote]


Yeah, that's kind of what I thought, what having programming history gets me into..

I would rather not have anyone do the tcode for me, but if there is an easier method than what I'm proposing, I would appreciate a helpful hint as to what that might be.

The second question--the way the game works is you talk with an individual, make a decision, and then based on that decision move to different areas of the game, where you have to make other decisions. I want to stop players from playing through too quickly--that is to say, set a certain amount of time between when they make a decision, and when they can make the next one. Is that posisble?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4586&start=0#p33108
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Couple of questions about how to use the language.
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-06 19:06:04

[quote="inform7newbie"]I would rather not have anyone do the code for me, but if there is an easier method than what I'm proposing, I would appreciate a helpful hint as to what that might be.[/quote]
There are usually lots of methods in IF. In general terms ... if I were given this assignment, I would (a) create a map with all of the rooms that will be needed and doors between the rooms, (b) make the doors lockable and locked, (c) figure out exactly what actions will unlock the doors, and then (d) implement those actions.

With respect to talking to another character as part of the desired actions, I recommend that you download and install the extension Conversation Responses by Eric Eve. This will allow you to write rules such as this:

[code]Response of Darren when asked about the brass key:
	if Darren carries the brass key:
		say "'It's just an old key. Here, you want it? Take it.'";
		now the player carries the brass key;
	otherwise:
		say "'Dude, I already gave you that.'"[/code]

[quote="inform7newbie"]The second question--the way the game works is you talk with an individual, make a decision, and then based on that decision move to different areas of the game, where you have to make other decisions. I want to stop players from playing through too quickly--that is to say, set a certain amount of time between when they make a decision, and when they can make the next one. Is that possible?[/quote]
Do you mean real-time delays or delays of a number of turns? Two entirely different beasts. I've never used real-time delays, but there are a couple of extensions on the Inform site that may help. Looks like Real-Time Delays by Erik Temple might do what you have in mind.

If you're talking about a delay of a number of turns, you might want to implement some scenes. Start a scene when the oak door is unlocked for the first time, end that scene five turns later, and write a rule that prevents certain actions from being performed while that scene is happening.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4321&start=0#p33109
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Extensions for Debugging
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-03-06 19:06:47

Oh, I see.  Call Stack Tracking was giving call frame numbers even outside the debugger, where they aren't at all useful.  That's now [url=https://sourceforge.net/apps/mantisbt/i7grip/view.php?id=20]fixed[/url].  [url=https://sourceforge.net/apps/mantisbt/i7grip/view.php?id=19]Likewise[/url] for the unnamed rule/phrase problem.  You can download the patched Call Stack Tracking, Verbose Runtime Problem Messages, and Interactive Debugger [url=http://i7grip.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/i7grip/]here[/url].

As for the compilation failure, I tried this:[code]Include Call Stack Tracking by Brady Garvin.
Include Verbose Runtime Problem Messages by Brady Garvin.
Include Debug File Parsing by Brady Garvin.
Include Version 6 of Dynamic Objects by Jesse McGrew.
Include Version 9 of Editable Stored Actions by Ron Newcomb.

The name of the symbolic link to the debug information file is "...".
The name of the symbolic link to the intermediate I6 file is "...".
The name of the symbolic link to the debugging log file is "...".

There is a room.[/code]but it compiled quite merrily.  Could you check whether there's some other factor involved?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4433&start=10#p33110
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Are there arrays in TADS? Or anything that behaves that 
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-06 20:13:02

All right...  I'm not getting this, and the problem isn't my ability to navigate the T3 syntax.  The problem is my ability to think abstractly about programming tasks.

What I have (so far) is:


[code]
MoveThing : object 
    p1move = ''
    p2move = ''
    p1result = ''
    p2result = ''
    outcome = ''
    movekey () {
        return (p1move + '-v-' + p2move);
    }   
    
    resolveresult() {
        local bothmoves = movekey();
        switch (bothmoves) {
        case 'rock-v-rock' :
        case 'paper-v-paper':
        case 'scissors-v-scissors':
            "TIE! ";
            break;
        case 'rock-v-scissors':
        case 'scissors-v-paper':
        case 'paper-v-rock':
            "Player 1 wins! ";
            break;
        case 'scissors-v-rock':
        case 'paper-v-scissors':
        case 'rock-v-paper':
            "Player 2 wins! ";
            break;
        default : 
            "FUMBLE! ";
        }
    }
;
[/code]

..this is good, this is fine, I'm sure this'll work once I get it all together.

BUT, it's very much not what I was setting out to do.

What I set out to do was to create a general little game-handler, such that in the future I'd create new games by entering in DATA, and the general game-handler would grab the moves, compare them against the win/lose critera, and assign outcomes.

So how do I get there from here?

--maybe I should create a p1winList, a p2winList, and a tieList?  Then I can enter those conditions in as data, e.g. p1move-v-p2move, and have the resolver concat the moves and check for the result's presence in the lists?


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4587&start=0#p33111
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Problem with Hyperlink Interface [Solved]
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-06 20:22:52

Hello! I'm trying to get Hyperlink Interface by Leonardo Boselli to work. I've included all the extensions it says it requires. I'm getting these three errors:

[quote]
     This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6G60) on its most recent run through:

In Chapter - Exits, Section - Definitions in the extension Hyperlink Interface by Leonardo Boselli:

Problem. You wrote 'carry out the direction hyperlinking activity'  , but 'direction hyperlinking' has the wrong kind of value: an activity on objects rather than an activity.

I was trying to match this phrase:

carry out the (direction hyperlinking - activity) activity 

This was what I found out:

direction hyperlinking = an activity on objects



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problem. You wrote 'carry out the direction hyperlinking activity'  , but 'direction hyperlinking' has the wrong kind of value: an activity on objects rather than an activity.

I was trying to match this phrase:

carry out the (direction hyperlinking - activity) activity 

This was what I found out:

direction hyperlinking = an activity on objects



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In Chapter - Error Reporting, Section - Not a verb I recognise in the extension Hyperlink Interface by Leonardo Boselli:

Problem. You wrote 'Rule for printing a parser error when parser error is not a verb I recognise (this is the Hyperlink Interface not a verb I recognise rule)'  : but I don't understand the 'when/while' clause, which should name activities or conditions.

 See the manual: 17.4 > While clauses
 [/quote]

Any clue?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4587&start=0#p33112
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with Hyperlink Interface
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-06 20:51:49

Looks like it isn't updated for 6G60. For the last one, I think you now need "when the latest parser error is..." rather than "when the parser error is..."

I'm less sure about what's going on with the first two. What happens if you change "Direction hyperlinking something is an activity." in the extension's source text to "Direction hyperlinking is an activity."? It looks to me as though none of the calls or rules for direction hyperlinking actually use the argument, but rather pass the argument using the global "saved direction", so maybe you don't need to define it as an activity on objects. (It would probably be better to define it as an activity on objects and junk the global variable, but it'd be more work to do that.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4433&start=10#p33113
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Are there arrays in TADS? Or anything that behaves that
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-06 20:54:42

[quote="conradcook"]--maybe I should create a p1winList, a p2winList, and a tieList?  Then I can enter those conditions in as data, e.g. p1move-v-p2move, and have the resolver concat the moves and check for the result's presence in the lists?[/quote]

Does this do that?

[code]
    p1winList = []
    p2winList = []
    tieList = []
    
    resolveresult() {
        local bothmoves = movekey();
        if ( p1winList.indexWhich(bothmoves) )
            "Player 1 Wins! ";
        if ( p2winList.indexWhich(bothmoves) )
            "Player 2 Wins! ";
        if ( tieList.indexWhich(bothmoves) )
            "It's a tie -- thanks! ";
    }
;
[/code]

--Or is there some more correct way to test for an element being in a set that I'm not finding in the manual?

C.

EDIT:

No, this does not work.  I get the run-time error:  Function Pointer Required.

The error comes up in the way I'm using indexWhich.  Not sure why...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4587&start=0#p33114
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Problem with Hyperlink Interface
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-06 21:40:16

Thanks Matt! There were a bunch of other problems after that, but I managed to solve them all, and by all appearances I've successfully updated the extension for build 6G60. Interested parties can find it [url=http://bubbleof.me/Hyperlink%20Interface.i7x]here[/url]. I'm going to play around with it, and if it works just fine then I'll submit the update to the inform7 website.

EDIT: more specifically, I've defined the number variables that were previously only defined in 'let x be y' statements, got rid of the redundancies in statements like 'increment x by one', and changed 'not a verb I recognise' to 'the not a verb I recognise error'.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4588&start=0#p33115
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: making shackles and doors work
User: Argothos / DateTime: 2012-03-06 22:12:14

i know iv'e been told that not alot of the people on this forum arent Adrift players, but i really need help. I'm trying to figure out how to make doors work, and this also lead to another idea that i can't make work. Basically i need to know how to restrict players moving from a room. For instance, i want the player to be shackled to a wall, but i can't make them not be able to get out of the room while wearing the shackles. What do i do?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4321&start=0#p33116
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Extensions for Debugging
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2012-03-06 22:17:38

Re: compilation failure, I had stuck the includes mid-file, rather than at the top where they usually go.  Placed at the top they worked fine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4460&start=20#p33117
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table entries that result in a change or action?
User: thecustodian / DateTime: 2012-03-06 22:18:26

Wild guess - because it interprets 'up' as a direction (reserved word) rather than 'something'?

(not being sarcastic, it *is* a wild guess.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4588&start=0#p33118
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: making shackles and doors work
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-06 22:21:37

I believe the matter of doors is covered in the Adrift manual. Have you checked there?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4589&start=0#p33119
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Can't unlock without a lock rule - overriding?
User: thecustodian / DateTime: 2012-03-06 22:32:53

New puzzle!  Rulebooks!  Woohoo!  Yes, I'm working my way slowly through the manual.  Anyway!  I have an object which I need my player to figure out they need to disassemble or open in order to be able to add another component to it (as per my last question haha).  Anyhow, I did this using the following:
[code]
Disassembly is a rulebook.
A disassembly rule: if the noun is disassembled, say "That's already disassembled." instead.
A disassembly rule:
	if the noun is a fleeb:
		unless the noun is carried, try taking the noun;
		if the second noun is nothing, say "You can't open the fleeb with your bare hands." instead;
		unless the second noun is the tool:
			say "You can't disassemble the fleeb with that." instead;
		otherwise:
			say "You pry open the fleeb with your tool.";
			now the noun is open;
			now the noun is disassembled.		

Opening it with is an action applying to two carried things.
Understand "open [something] with [something]" as opening it with.
Understand "disassemble [something] with [something]" as opening it with.

Check opening it with:
	if the noun is a fleeb:
		follow the disassembly rules.

Instead of opening a fleeb, follow the disassembly rules.
Instead of opening a fleeb with something, follow the disassembly rules.
[/code]
Some of this works. If I try 'open fleeb' it does in fact say 'You can't open the fleeb with your bare hands.'  BUT, if I say 'open fleeb with tool' it says (with rule tracing on):
[quote]
[Rule "can't unlock without a lock rule" applies.]
That doesn't seem to be something you can unlock.
[/quote]
So I'm guessing that the 'can't unlock without a lock' rule is firing *before* my 'instead of opening a fleeb with something' rule.  How do I move mine *before* the can't unlock etc. rule?  I'd rather not nuke that from the rulebooks entirely.  I tried making my 'instead of opening a fleeb with something' into 'before opening a fleeb with something' but that didn't help.

Any pointers gratefully appreciated.  You guys rule.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4590&start=0#p33121
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: For the Folks Who Like Traditional RPGs, But Not Math.
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-06 23:52:44

... or good illustrations. Or anything very serious. Or Spearmint Doritos. Which isn't relevant, but I think it's something most of us can agree on.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1134441668/risus-free-adventure-project-2012">http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/113 ... oject-2012</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4321&start=0#p33122
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Extensions for Debugging
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-07 01:04:20

I downloaded these extensions tonight and had a look at the installation instructions. I'm in a whiny, kvetchy mood, so please feel free to conclude that I'm expecting too much. But the instructions for setting up the debugger in Windows 7 -- opening a Command Prompt as administrator, making symbolic links, and all --are pretty esoteric.

Might there be a way to write an installer that would handle these steps in an automated manner? The reason I'm asking is not just because I'm a lazy snot (although I am) but because I can't quite see the average newcomer to Inform 7 wanting to jump through such finicky little hoops. The process of installing the debugger seems (to my way of thinking) to run directly counter to the whole Inform 7 ethos of "make it look like it's not really computer programming at all."

Plus, it appears the whole process of creating symbolic links will have to be redone for each game. Am I right in assuming that?

I'm only fussing about this because I really like the idea of giving Inform 7 a set of debugging tools. This package looks great! But.......

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4590&start=0#p33123
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: For the Folks Who Like Traditional RPGs, But Not Math.
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-07 01:19:24

I can definitely get behind not having Spearmint Doritos, ever. The project looks good and those roof top views were excellent, so I threw a couple of bob your way.

(If only because the Risus core book is one of the funniest RPG books I've ever read. I was laughing out loud after the 1st sentence of the 6th paragraph).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4321&start=0#p33124
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Extensions for Debugging
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-03-07 01:30:37

It would be nice if the IDEs had a sort of plugin system, so that extensions like these could install post-build scripts.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4460&start=20#p33125
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table entries that result in a change or action?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-07 02:10:16

I don't think there's a handy way to redirect the shlutting action to either my or Matt's solution to your original problem. (Mine only works at the very last stage in the parsing process (i.e. the games process of trying to understand the player's command), when the parser has already decided that player's command didn't make sense. Matt's – which may indeed may be the preferable one! – makes the parser understands certain commands (viz. any command that can't be otherwise understood as a command to talk to the air (and then redirects talking to the air to answering it that). Both fails here, because you have made the parser already understand "shut up", viz. as an act of shlutting.)

I'd catch the "shut up" thus:
[code]Before closing the up: try answering the addressee that "shut up" instead.

After answering Aburthnot that "shut up": say "For a fraction of a second, a shade of shock shakes the stiffness of Colonel Aburthnot's upper lip."[/code]

("Shut" standardly triggers the closing action; that's why we need to write a rule for closing.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4589&start=0#p33127
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can't unlock without a lock rule - overriding?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-07 02:31:39

The Standard Rules already define "open [something] with [something preferably held]" as unlocking it with. Your definition doesn't override that by default. So, OPEN FLEEB WITH TOOL still triggers the unlocking it with action. 

Putting the wanted behaviour inside an 'instead of unlocking a fleeb with something' rule ought to work. 

(The debug command "actions" will trace actions much as "rules" traces rules.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4433&start=10#p33128
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Are there arrays in TADS? Or anything that behaves that 
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-07 05:24:44

Working through this, I've found that .indexOf() works:

[code]
        if ( p2winList.indexOf(bothmoves) )
            "Player 2 Wins! ";[/code]

It seems that I'd have to use some kind of ({x:}x==bothmoves) expression I don't fully understand to use the other one.

Hope you guys don't mind me thinking out loud online like this.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4589&start=0#p33129
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Can't unlock without a lock rule - overriding?
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2012-03-07 06:12:03

You'll need to get rid of the "open [something] with [something]" -> unlocking grammar line.

IIRC, you'll need to 'understand "open" as something new.', then put in the appropriate "understand" lines.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4405&start=10#p33130
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: NPC-NPC interaction?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-07 07:05:28

Thanks to all you guys, and in particular especially Ben, I've generalized the rock-paper-scissors code such that you only define some data for an NPC-NPC game object.  This is for a one-turn game.

Later, I'll be looking to expand this structure to apply to other kinds of (N)PC-NPC interaction, too... such as trying to sneak behind a guard, or knocking him out, or bribing him to let you pass, or so on.

This is probably more interesting and useful than going on to multi-turn games, like Tic-Tac-Toe, which are pretty specific, require geometric modeling of a game board, or physical modeling of a deck of cards, or so forth, and the logic of which can't be extended to narrative (that I can see).

Feedback?

This is how you use this code:

[code]rpsGame : GameThing

    gameName = 'Rock-Paper-Scissors'
    moveNameV = 'throw{s}'
    legalmovesList = ['rock', 'scissors', 'paper']
    nolegalmoves = 3

    p1winList = ['rock-v-scissors', 'scissors-v-paper', 'paper-v-rock']
    p2winList = ['scissors-v-rock', 'paper-v-scissors', 'rock-v-paper']
    tieList = ['rock-v-rock', 'paper-v-paper', 'scissors-v-scissors']
;
[/code]

[rant]The full code:

[code]////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////


GameThing : object 

    gameName = ''
    moveNameV = 'move{s}'
    p1 = nil
    p2 = nil
    p1move = ''
    p2move = ''
    p1result = ''
    p2result = ''
    outcome = ''
    
    legalmovesList = []
    
    p1winList = []
    p2winList = []
    tieList = []

    
    p1randstrat() {
        p1move = rand(rpsGame.legalmovesList);
        p2move = rand(rpsGame.legalmovesList);
    }
    p2randstrat() {
        p1move = rand(rpsGame.legalmovesList);
        p2move = rand(rpsGame.legalmovesList);
    }
    p0randstrat() {
        p1move = rand(rpsGame.legalmovesList);
        p2move = rand(rpsGame.legalmovesList);
    }

    
    reportbegin() {
        gAction.setMessageParam('p1', p1);
        gAction.setMessageParam('p2', p2);
        if (p1 != gPlayerChar)
            "<<'{The p1/he} and {the p2/he} decide to play a
            quick game of ' + gameName +'. '>>";
    }  

    reportmoves() {
         "{The p1/he} <<moveNameV>> <<p1move>>! ";
         "{The p2/he} <<moveNameV>> <<p2move>>! ";
    }
    
    
    movekey () {
        return (p1move + '-v-' + p2move);
    }   

    resolveresult() {
        local bothmoves = movekey();
        p1.lastRPS = libGlobal.totalTurns;
        p2.lastRPS = libGlobal.totalTurns;
        if ( p1winList.indexOf(bothmoves) ) {
            p1.lastRPSresult = 'win';
            p2.lastRPSresult = 'lose';
            return ('{The p1/he} wins! ');
        };
        if ( p2winList.indexOf(bothmoves) ) {
            p1.lastRPSresult = 'lose';
            p2.lastRPSresult = 'win';
            return ('{The p2/he} wins! '); 
        };
        if ( tieList.indexOf(bothmoves) ) {
            p1.lastRPSresult = 'draw';
            p2.lastRPSresult = 'draw';
            return ('It\'s a tie -- thanks! ');
        };
        return ('They totally fumble this game, and seem inclined 
            to pretend it never happened. ');
    }

    mainLoop() {
        reportbegin();
        p0randstrat();
        reportmoves();
        "<<resolveresult()>>";
    }

;

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

rpsGame : GameThing

    gameName = 'Rock-Paper-Scissors'
    moveNameV = 'throw{s}'
    legalmovesList = ['rock', 'scissors', 'paper']
    nolegalmoves = 3

    p1winList = ['rock-v-scissors', 'scissors-v-paper', 'paper-v-rock']
    p2winList = ['scissors-v-rock', 'paper-v-scissors', 'rock-v-paper']
    tieList = ['rock-v-rock', 'paper-v-paper', 'scissors-v-scissors']
;

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

DefineTAction(RPS);

VerbRule(RPS)
   'play' 'rps' 'with' singleDobj
   : RPSAction
   verbPhrase = 'play/playing rps (with whom)'
;

modify Thing
   dobjFor(RPS) {
      verify() { illogical('But {the dobj/he} doesn\'t have hands! '); }
   }
;


modify Person
   dobjFor(RPS) {
      verify() {}

      check() {
         if (!wantsToPlay) {
            local msg = '{You/he} want{s} to play RPS with
               {the dobj/him}, but ';
            switch (lastRPSresult) {
               case 'win':
                  msg += '{the dobj/he} is still gloating over
                     {its/hers} win. ';
                  break;
               case 'lose':
                  msg += '{the dobj/he} is still smarting over
                     {its/hers} loss. ';
                  break;
               case 'draw':
                  msg += '{the dobj/he} is still thinking over
                     {its/hers} tactics. ';
                  break;
               default:
                  msg += '{the dobj/he} is busy. ';
                  break;
            }
            failCheck(msg);
         }
      }

      action() {
            rpsGame.p1 = gActor;
            rpsGame.p2 = self;
            rpsGame.mainLoop;
      }
   }

   wantsToPlay() {
      return (rpsFrequency && (lastRPS == nil ||
            (lastRPS <= libGlobal.totalTurns - rpsFrequency)));
   }

   lastRPS = nil
   lastRPSresult = nil

   // how often the person is willing to play RPS
   rpsFrequency = 3

   isHim = true
;

class RPSAgenda: AgendaItem
   initiallyActive = true

   isReady() {
      return getActor.wantsToPlay && rand(3) == 2;
   }

   invokeItem() {
      local npcs = getActor.sensePresenceList(sight).subset({obj:
         obj.ofKind(Actor) && obj != getActor && obj != gPlayerChar
      });
      if (npcs.length)
         newActorAction(getActor, RPS, rand(npcs));
   }
;

guard: Person 'guard' 'guard' @lab
   "Just another guard. "
   rpsFrequency = 5
;
+ RPSAgenda;

scientist: Person 'scientist' 'scientist' @lab
   "Just another scientist. "
   rpsFrequency = 0
;

janitor: Person 'janitor' 'janitor' @lab
   "Just another janitor. "
;
+ RPSAgenda;
[/code][/rant]
You'll see this is largely Ben's code, encapsulated in a game object.

I guess the next step is to encapsulate RPS as an object, so we have a general PLAY object and a means of handling whether we want to play.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4593&start=0#p33131
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Amazingly stupid question re: lists
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-07 07:36:40

How do I get the Nth element out of a list?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4594&start=0#p33132
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Refreshing the Status Line and When the Player Consents
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-07 08:17:29

So when you use a 'if the player consents' type construction, it doesn't refresh the status bar at the end of the line. In the following example, stuff happens when turn count is 3, but the status bar still says it's turn two:

[code]The Banana Plantation is a room

When play begins:
now right hand status line is "Turns [bananas]/3".

Bananas is a number which varies. Bananas is 0.

Every turn:
increase bananas by one.

Not enough bananas is a recurring scene. Not enough bananas begins when bananas is 3. Not enough bananas ends when bananas is 0.

When not enough bananas begins:
say "Are there enough bananas?";
if the player consents, say "Really?";
try looking;
now bananas is 0.[/code]

 How can I get it to behave?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=40#p33133
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-07 09:31:54

Another idea might be to make the categories less generic, and more tuned to IF.  The precise categories would need some thinking out, but would capture IF-specific qualities.  And the scores in individual categories would count towards the overall "Best IF" score.
Some first - not well factored out - ideas:
[list]
[*]"Depth of interaction" - not just Rematch-style (though that would count), but also how successive interactions build complex state.  We all know the "hit NPC then greet NPC"-effect..[/*:m]
[*]"Mimesis" - the extent to which the implemented world behaves like the evoked world ought to.[/*:m]
[*]"Use of the interface" - part of the previous, but worth its own category.  Do reasonable commands give reasonable responses?  Points off for guess-the-verb, needing "search the bed" to see the suitcase on top of it, points for interesting responses to commands that lie outside the thrust of the work, or for using the open-endedness of the parser (as with the central puzzle in "Spider and web").[/*:m]
[*]"Sense of freedom" - the extent to which the IF gives one the impression of agency.  Not applicable for some games, but for many it is.  This may be about the richness of the implemented world, or the smooth way in which the player is steered away from what the author doesn't want him/her to do.[/*:m]
[*]"Mechanics" - basically the complexity of the program, as opposed to the amount of it.  An excellent new conversation mechanism, mood tracking system, learning NPC's, et cetera.[/*:m][/list:u]

Such categories would reward good IF for being good IF rather than "just" being good art.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4593&start=0#p33134
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Amazingly stupid question re: lists
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-07 09:33:44

Programming to me is like a date where I want to talk romance and the girl wants to talk about how I split my infinitives.

someList[NthTerm]

--Is this language use actually defined anywhere in the sys manual or the library?  I had to gist it from a demo.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4593&start=0#p33135
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Amazingly stupid question re: lists
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-07 10:20:18

Good question. It's used in Learning T3, but you have to know what you're looking for in order to find it. (It's on p. 144, for instance.) It doesn't seem to be mentioned on the List page of the System Manual.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=50#p33136
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-07 10:20:45

[quote="Biep"][list]
[*]"Depth of interaction" - not just Rematch-style (though that would count), but also how successive interactions build complex state.  We all know the "hit NPC then greet NPC"-effect..[/*:m]
[*]"Mimesis" - the extent to which the implemented world behaves like the evoked world ought to.[/*:m]
[*]"Use of the interface" - part of the previous, but worth its own category.  Do reasonable commands give reasonable responses?  Points off for guess-the-verb, needing "search the bed" to see the suitcase on top of it, points for interesting responses to commands that lie outside the thrust of the work, or for using the open-endedness of the parser (as with the central puzzle in "Spider and web").[/*:m]
[*]"Sense of freedom" - the extent to which the IF gives one the impression of agency.  Not applicable for some games, but for many it is.  This may be about the richness of the implemented world, or the smooth way in which the player is steered away from what the author doesn't want him/her to do.[/*:m]
[*]"Mechanics" - basically the complexity of the program, as opposed to the amount of it.  An excellent new conversation mechanism, mood tracking system, learning NPC's, et cetera.[/*:m][/list:u]
Such categories would reward good IF for being good IF rather than "just" being good art.[/quote]
What you're advocating here is a much more [i]technical[/i] XYZZYs: moving the competition more towards people who not only enjoy IF, but a) have a solid grasp of theory and b) strongly favour judging a work on its formal, technical qualities. The XYZZYs tend to be rather more theory-dominated than the Comp, which is part of their value, so I can see where you're going with this.

Here's the problem with a formal aesthetics, though: nobody's going to agree on it, and opinion on what the relevant formal qualities are is going to change significantly over time. Mimesis, as you define it, doesn't enjoy the same status now that it did in the late 90s. Whether super-complex mechanics are a good thing in their own right is a debatable point (sure, the world model of Dwarf Fortress is impressive, but how much of it is actually important to gameplay?)

Having fairly vague categories is, I think, a strength: we can all agree that setting is a fine thing, but whether that primarily consists of detailed scenery objects or implied worldbuilding or having a 10,000-room map is something that should be determined by the community, not the rules of the event. If it turns out that people think that kick-ass character writing is more important for Best NPCs than an intricately detailed relationship-modelling system, or vice versa, the XYZZYs shouldn't try to tell them they're wrong.

(Also, I don't think this would do anything whatsoever to fend off Clueless Enthusiasts. If you're willing to vote for ZE for Puzzles and Innovation, you're probably not going to be fazed by Mimesis and Mechanical Complexity.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4593&start=0#p33137
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Amazingly stupid question re: lists
User: tomasb / DateTime: 2012-03-07 10:23:14

It is defined in the TADS 3 System Manual, chapter 3: [url]http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/sysman/langsec.htm[/url]. Look for "Fundamental Datatypes".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4593&start=0#p33138
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Amazingly stupid question re: lists
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-07 10:52:53

Yup, it sure is.  And while nearly every entry there has a short blurb and a link to a full description, in lists the indexing behavior is defined in the blurb and not in the linked full-article treatment.

I'll give this page some good study.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4584&start=0#p33141
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF in "real life"
User: Mr. Patient / DateTime: 2012-03-09 09:10:26

I voted for the last option.  I know there are other Minnesotans in the community (gregb, for example), but I've never met any of them.

I suppose I probably should have voted for the 4th option, as I played a few Infocom games with a buddy 25-30 years ago.  He would still remember who Floyd is, but he lives 1200 miles away, and I'm pretty certain he hasn't played any IF since then.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4405&start=10#p33142
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: NPC-NPC interaction?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-09 09:35:14

Good progress since Wednesday!  -- will post something later today or tomorrow.

I've got them playing Prisoner's Dilemma, too, and the code for it is general.  Tricky because PD's not symmetrical.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4596&start=0#p33143
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Go To The Light - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-03-09 09:36:40

Some time back I started a post titled 'Giving light to the actor'. Bcressy furnished me with some code
for this and it worked great. It involved a magic ring which when worn by the actor turned him into a powerful wizard. I've since redone all of my game code and now this wizard code doesn't work. I've worked on it for a few days but can't find the answer to all the problems this piece of code is causing. I could use some help from anyone who'd care to give it.

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4597&start=0#p33144
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Getting User Input? (r-p-s)
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-09 10:19:00

NPCs are playing r-p-s nicely.  But I also need NPCs to play r-p-s with the PC, and for this I need to get input from the player.

[quote]You can throw rock, paper, or scissors.  What do you throw? >_ [/quote]

I've been doing pretty good on my own up to this point -- a productive few days -- but I'm not finding the method to ask for user input outside of the normal prompt cycle.  Can anyone tell me how to do that?


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4597&start=0#p33145
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Getting User Input? (r-p-s)
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-03-09 10:31:05

You can use [url=http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/techman/t3inout.htm]inputManager.getInputLine[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4596&start=0#p33146
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Go To The Light - TADS3.1
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-03-09 10:32:17

Can you post the compiler error you're getting, and the code around the line numbers it refers to?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4405&start=10#p33147
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: NPC-NPC interaction?
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-03-09 10:35:51

Very cool! I'm looking forward to seeing the code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4584&start=10#p33148
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF in "real life"
User: Tale / DateTime: 2012-03-09 10:36:18

I've been lucky enough to meet American IFFers at PAX last year, and some of the german crew in Munich. In my vicinity, I have some creative types who are mildly interested, but mist prayer they mostly have their own interests.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4321&start=10#p33150
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Extensions for Debugging
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-03-09 10:52:21

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Re: compilation failure, I had stuck the includes mid-file, rather than at the top where they usually go. Placed at the top they worked fine.[/quote]Okay.  I will still write something up, especially because Floyd Mode and Interactive Debugger contrive to set off [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=666]Inform bug 666[/url].

Also, further thanks for the feedback—[url=https://sourceforge.net/apps/mantisbt/i7grip/view.php?id=24]a[/url] [url=https://sourceforge.net/apps/mantisbt/i7grip/view.php?id=25]handful[/url] [url=https://sourceforge.net/apps/mantisbt/i7grip/view.php?id=26]of[/url] [url=https://sourceforge.net/apps/mantisbt/i7grip/view.php?id=27]bugs[/url] have been found and fixed as a consequence.

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Might there be a way to write an installer that would handle these steps in an automated manner?[/quote]I can try my hand at one.  Authors will have to trust that I'm not doing anything malicious to their machine.

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Plus, it appears the whole process of creating symbolic links will have to be redone for each game. Am I right in assuming that?[/quote]Yes, unfortunately.

[quote="Dannii"]It would be nice if the IDEs had a sort of plugin system, so that extensions like these could install post-build scripts.[/quote]True, though someone would have to think pretty carefully about security.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4594&start=0#p33151
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Refreshing the Status Line and When the Player Consents
User: climbingstars / DateTime: 2012-03-09 10:54:08

It seems to work for me, unless I've misunderstood the problem. Every time the question "Are there enough bananas?" is asked, the right hand status bar says "Turns 3/3" and then after answering, it changes to "Turns 0/3". I don't see where it still says turn two.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4598&start=0#p33152
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Custom Articles, Listing Contents, and Printed Names
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-09 10:56:46

I would like to be able to set it so some (or all) items appear with the indefinite article the first time you see them and the definite article thereafter. So you would be able to say "A dog is truffling around the bushes" the first time you see the dog and "The dog is truffling around the bushes" thereafter. 

(Actually, it'd be better to say "The dog is still truffling around the bushes," but that seems like even more work!) 

I can get that to work OK with things that are explicitly mentioned in the room description:

[code]
A thing can be undiscussed or previously discussed. A thing is usually undiscussed.

To say a-the (item - thing):
	if item is undiscussed:
		say "[an item]";
		now item is previously discussed;
	otherwise if item is previously discussed and item is improper-named:
		say "[the item]";
	otherwise:	
		say "[printed name of item]".
	
To say A-The (item - thing):
	if item is undiscussed:
		say "[An item]";
		now item is previously discussed;
	otherwise if item is previously discussed and item is improper-named:
		say "[The item]";
	otherwise:	
		say "[printed name of item]".

Test room is a room. "The test room. You can see [a-the carved door] leading west." A sword is in Test room. Bob is a man in Test room.
A carved door is a door. The carved door is scenery. The carved door is west of Test room and east of Other room. A chandelier is scenery in Other room. Some sand is scenery in Other room. The description of Other room is "[A-The chandelier] hangs from the ceiling. [A-The sand] crunches underfoot." Jane is a woman in Other room.

Test me with "w/e/w".
[/code]

But, as you can tell by running the test script, it doesn't work for the sword. So I'd like to be able to get my custom a-the article into lists. But the lists are created by some deep I6 magic, and I don't know how to change them.

I've tried to do this by fiddling with the rule for printing the name of a thing while listing contents. The first problem is that I can't simply say "[a-the item]" in a rule for printing the name of item, because it will call an infinite loop. So I've tried to do this by setting a flag that checks whether we're calling the rule from within itself, and if so using "[printed name of the item]" instead of "[a-the item]". But the results are odd -- I've left in debugging interjections:

[code]A thing can be article-fixed or article-unfixed. A thing is usually article-unfixed.
After reading a command: Now every article-fixed thing is article-unfixed.
Before listing contents: now every article-fixed thing is article-unfixed.
Rule for printing the name of a thing (called item) while listing contents: 
	if item is article-fixed:
		say "boop! [printed name of item]";
	otherwise: 
		say "(bong!)";
		now item is article-fixed;
		say "[a-the item] (bing!)".[/code]

This yields:

[quote][b]Test room[/b]
The test room. You can see a carved door leading west.

You can see a boop! sword and (bong!)
boop! Bob (bing!)
 here.[/quote]

As you can see, the code after "otherwise" runs for Bob but not for the sword. As far as I can tell, this happens because the code that prints the indefinite article for the sword itself runs by the rule for printing the name of the sword without printing the name of the sword, and thus silently sets the sword to article-fixed. Since Bob doesn't have an indefinite article, the rule runs as expected (but it isn't any use, since Bob doesn't have an article). Fiddling around with the text substitution "[indefinite article of item]" seemed to yield similar results. And in any case, I haven't suppressed the "a" in front of sword, which is what I'd really like to do. 

How can I achieve the desired behavior? I suspect the answer is either "hack the I6" or "rewrite the relevant listing behavior from the ground up in I7." Also, can anyone explain exactly what is happening?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4594&start=0#p33153
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Refreshing the Status Line and When the Player Consents
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-03-09 10:59:49

It's Glulx-specific.  See [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=756]Inform bug 756[/url].  A workaround is to add[code]To redraw the status line: (- DrawStatusLine(); -).
To decide whether the player consents:
	redraw the status line;
	decide on whether or not the player consents.[/code] to your story.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4594&start=0#p33154
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Refreshing the Status Line and When the Player Consents
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-03-09 11:06:09

There is an I6 routine that refreshes the status line. You can wrap it in an I7 phrase and trigger it whenever you like. Unfortunately, I don't remember the name of the routine, but you could find it by trawling through the template documentation (Appendix B). Your code would look something like this:

[code]To refresh the status line: (- RefreshStatusLine(); -).[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=50#p33155
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-09 11:09:12

[quote="maga"][quote="Biep"]Depth of interaction/Mimesis/Use of the interface/Sense of freedom/Mechanics
Such categories would reward good IF for being good IF rather than "just" being good art.[/quote]
What you're advocating here is a much more [i]technical[/i] XYZZYs: moving the competition more towards people who not only enjoy IF, but a) have a solid grasp of theory and b) strongly favour judging a work on its formal, technical qualities. The XYZZYs tend to be rather more theory-dominated than the Comp, which is part of their value, so I can see where you're going with this.[/quote]
Well, the criteria are probably not well-chosen (consider my posts brainstorming), but the idea is still to appraise aesthetics, but aesthetics typical to iF.  A prize for good painting might have "Use of colours", on which a piece of music will never score high.  Dance might, being closer to painting, but it would have to be very good dancing win, having to counter the necessarily low score on the use of strokes.
In other words, the idea is to reward IFness by judging aesthetic qualities that are typical for IF, rather than either aesthetic qualities [i]per se[/i] or being typical IF [i]per se[/i].  My examples were just primitive attempts at enumerating such qualities.

[quote="maga"]Mimesis, as you define it, doesn't enjoy the same status now that it did in the late 90s.[/quote]
Probably not, but immersion is, I presume, generally regarded as a good thing, and good mimesis helps, whereas breaks of mimesis tend to lead to breaks of immersion.

[quote="maga"]Whether super-complex mechanics are a good thing in their own right is a debatable point (sure, the world model of Dwarf Fortress is impressive, but how much of it is actually important to gameplay?)[/quote]
I meant this one as a more technical category, to reward development of the medium.  Complexity wouldn't be rewarded for its own sake, but, say, useful extensions (for which the game under consideration might merely be a showcase) could find recognition here.

[quote="maga"]Having fairly vague categories is, I think, a strength: we can all agree that setting is a fine thing, but whether that primarily consists of detailed scenery objects or implied worldbuilding or having a 10,000-room map is something that should be determined by the community, not the rules of the event.[/quote]
I fully agree here.  But a rubied ring winning this category would not generally be appreciated, would it?  So my proposal would be to try and find a category definition that ensured "setting" was interpreted in the IF sense of the word, without reducing it to an enumeration of techniques that are currently known to be useful in creating IF setting.

[quote="maga"]If it turns out that people think that kick-ass character writing is more important for Best NPCs than an intricately detailed relationship-modelling system, or vice versa, the XYZZYs shouldn't try to tell them they're wrong.[/quote]
Exactly.

[quote="maga"](Also, I don't think this would do anything whatsoever to fend off Clueless Enthusiasts. If you're willing to vote for ZE for Puzzles and Innovation, you're probably not going to be fazed by Mimesis and Mechanical Complexity.)[/quote]
True, but this proposal was not meant to deal with that side of the issue.  My other proposal (votes only counting towards the games actually evaluated) was.  And that one was brainstormish too, by the way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4594&start=0#p33156
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Refreshing the Status Line and When the Player Consents
User: climbingstars / DateTime: 2012-03-09 11:52:12

You forgot to mention that it was Glulx specific. This should work.

[code]

The Banana Plantation is a room.

Include (-

[ RefreshStatusLine posb;
	VM_MoveCursorInStatusLine(1, 2);
	switch(metaclass(left_hand_status_line)) {
		String: print (string) left_hand_status_line;
		Routine: left_hand_status_line();
	}
	VM_MoveCursorInStatusLine(1, posb);
	switch(metaclass(right_hand_status_line)) {
		String: print (string) right_hand_status_line;
		Routine: right_hand_status_line();
	}
	VM_MoveCursorInStatusLine(1, 1); VM_MainWindow();
];

-).

To refresh the status line: (- RefreshStatusLine(); -).

When play begins:
now right hand status line is "Turns [bananas]/3".

Bananas is a number which varies. Bananas is 0.

Every turn:
increase bananas by one.

Not enough bananas is a recurring scene. Not enough bananas begins when bananas is 3. Not enough bananas ends when bananas is 0.

When not enough bananas begins:
refresh the status line;
say "Are there enough bananas?";
if the player consents, say "Really?";
try looking;
now bananas is 0.

[/code]

Hope this helps.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4594&start=0#p33157
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Refreshing the Status Line and When the Player Consents
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-09 12:12:03

Thanks everybody, that's a great help!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4598&start=0#p33158
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Custom Articles, Listing Contents, and Printed Names
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-09 12:16:03

Ah! I think I see how to get at least most of the desired behavior. I just need to add "suppressing all articles" to every "list the contents of" phrase in the Standard Rules -- that's the print standard inventory rule, the describe what's on scenery supporters rule, the you-can-also-see rule, and the use initial appearances in room descriptions rule. And to fiddle with another list in the you-can-also-see rule.

Still curious about the general behavior of indefinite articles, though; does the rule for printing the name of the object get called whenever Inform wants to print the indefinite article?

ETA: Darnit, it still isn't working for the examine supporters and examine containers rules, and I think I have to delve into Custom Library Messages to change those.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4405&start=10#p33159
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: NPC-NPC interaction?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-09 12:27:43

I'll tidy up the code and finish up what I'm doing before posting all the source.

I use an object to tie together the win (or lose) conditions with the data handling how it should respond to that outcome.  Then, I tie all such records of possible results together in another list, which is held by the r-p-s object.

The r-p-s object iterates through its list of results, and for each result object iterates through the result conditions, testing against actual conditions.  And here's the trick -- [i]when it finds one, it doesn't terminate[/i].  This makes it possible for player 1 and player 2 to be considered separately, and thus it doesn't matter if the game is symmetrical (kinda= zero-sum), or not.

So in the new system, here's a result object:

[code]p1winRPS : Result    
    name = 'p1win'
    p1 = true
    res = 1
    report = '{The p1/he} wins! '
    conditions = [
        'rock-v-scissors' , 
        'scissors-v-paper' , 
        'paper-v-rock'
    ]
;[/code]

And here's the RPS game object (now spelled "gaem" to avoid visual confusion with references to the work of IF) that handles such objects:

[code]
rpsGaem : GaemThing

    gaemName = 'Rock-Paper-Scissors'
    moveNameV = 'throw{s}'
    legalmovesList = ['rock', 'scissors', 'paper']
    nolegalmoves = 3  // <-- as in, "Number of legal moves"

    possibleResults =
    [
        p1winRPS ,
        p2winRPS ,
        p1loseRPS ,
        p2loseRPS ,
        p1drawRPS ,
        p2drawRPS
    ]
;
[/code]

Not a big deal, but kind of nifty.

C.

PS - The gaem object has a default strategy method that selects a random move from the legal moves list.  In play, these moves are smashed together in a string, with 'p1move-v-p2move', which are then compared against the Result criteria.  Working with strings like this was just nicer than objects and fields.

I've got to get the player playing, and then set up NPCs so they can prefer strategies.

The outcome of all of this will be NPCs that can flexibly interact with each other, or with the player, in one-turn interactions that can be flexibly described in strings.  In other words, you could apply this to NPCs talking about each other's cooking, to knocking out the guard or trying to sneak past, or so forth.  As long as it's one turn.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=50#p33160
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-09 12:33:27

[quote="Biep"] the idea is still to appraise aesthetics, but aesthetics typical to iF.  A prize for good painting might have "Use of colours", on which a piece of music will never score high.  Dance might, being closer to painting, but it would have to be very good dancing win, having to counter the necessarily low score on the use of strokes.
In other words, the idea is to reward IFness by judging aesthetic qualities that are typical for IF, rather than either aesthetic qualities [i]per se[/i] or being typical IF [i]per se[/i].  My examples were just primitive attempts at enumerating such qualities.[/quote]
Hm. Okay, that's an interesting general principle. The trick is that IF is a pretty crossover-ish form: it draws heavily on a lot of related media. "Use of colours" won't work for music, true, but it would be totally appropriate for Concept Cars or Male Lingerie Design or TV Commercial Set Decoration, none of which would sit very well with the people who really just want to talk about paint-covered canvas rectangles. (And if they change it to Best Use of Colour on a Canvas Rectangle, they will a) look silly and b) encourage the design of man-knickers composed of rectangular canvas.)

Pretty much everything we value in IF exists in various other forms -- so if we defined a category to edge out CYOA a bit more, we'd probably open the door to some other related form. (This isn't to say that IF doesn't have typical qualities: but most of them are non-aesthetic, invisible and neutral, unless they're tampered with.) And I think that if you make a category too specific or put in fine print about what it really means, people will ignore your definition (see: Best Use of Medium).

So I think your general principle's valid, but I'm not sure how it could be used to change the existing categories very much. And... I don't know. I have the general feeling that the point of the XYZZYs should be a positive one: "here is what we value" rather than a negative "here is how we're distinct from other media."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4597&start=0#p33161
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Getting User Input? (r-p-s)
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-09 12:44:38

Sweet!  Thanks.

Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4584&start=10#p33162
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF in "real life"
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-03-09 12:47:03

Living in the Big Apple, I have no doubt that there must be a fair number of people here who have some interest in IF (simply because there are so many people in general).  However, I am not tied into any IF-related groups (organized or otherwise) and, with a single exception, I'd be hard-pressed to identify any specific people I know in real life who are interested in the subject.  The exception is one friend with whom I played just about all of the Infocom games back when they first came out.  He introduced me to Inform 7, and while he still has a passing interest in the subject, is no longer heavily involved in playing or writing.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4598&start=0#p33163
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Custom Articles, Listing Contents, and Printed Names
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-09 13:02:30

[quote="matt w"] does the rule for printing the name of the object get called whenever Inform wants to print the indefinite article?[/quote]I'm pretty sure it does.

Perhaps you could try something along these lines?
[code]The indefinite article of a thing is "[if undiscussed]a[otherwise]the".
After printing the name of a thing (called item) when the item is undiscussed: now the item is previously discussed.
[/code]
(The code for the indefinite article would have to be much more complex, of course.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4598&start=0#p33164
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Custom Articles, Listing Contents, and Printed Names
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-09 13:33:32

Changing the indefinite article to "the" is much better, Felix! Thank you. 

Here's what I have now, which I think may avoid some of the complexities:

[code]A thing can be variably-articled. A thing is usually variably-articled.

After printing the name of a variably-articled improper-named thing (called item) when the indefinite article of item is not "the": now the indefinite article of item is "the".[/code]

You can use the "variably-articled" flag to make sure some things never switch to "the," and you don't disturb the usual indefinite-article behavior. 

Does this look like it'll work to you?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4596&start=0#p33165
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Go To The Light - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-03-09 13:50:52

I've removed some suspicious code from the end of my game. Next I'll re-insert all of the 'wizard' code.
Will give it a try then send you the results and the errors.

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3433&start=10#p33167
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Interview: Jacek does Jacek
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-09 14:57:44

[quote="punkasaurus"]Though the line about sincerity was previously used in an episode of Johnny Bravo.[/quote]
But wasn't that the point?  Him spouting all those second-hand witticisms as if they were new and his own?

(Or am I falling for your one now?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=0#p33168
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: David J Prokopetz / DateTime: 2012-03-09 14:59:58

Hi, folks.

I'm trying to set up a bit of code in Inform 7 (6G60) to formalise aural and visual adjacency between rooms. In a nutshell, what I want to do is define a concise mechanism for saying:

 - a player in room A can see everything in room B, and vice versa (A is visually adjacent to B)
 - a player in room A can hear everything in room B, and vice versa (A is aurally adjacent to B)

In particular, I want things to work so that if room A is aurally adjacent to room B, then a player in room A can ask, tell, and give orders to an NPC in room B. There are some other bits and bobs, but those are the major ones.

(It's intentionally possible for one, but not both of these to be true. Examples of visual adjacency without aural adjacency would include soundproof glass, or a video screen with no audio; examples of aural adjacency without visual adjacency would basically include thin walls.)

I've attached a sample of my code - I was wondering if someone could give me a hand with a few issues I'm running into? These are:

 - When examining a person or object in a visually adjacent room, the action reports success, but the description message isn't generated, and I can't figure out why.

 - Likewise, when listening to a person or object in an aurally adjacent room, the action reports success, but there's no output text, not even the stock "You hear nothing unexpected." message.

 - Asking someone to do something ("wendy, take whistle", for example) only seems to check scope, allowing orders to be given via a visual adjacency relation. This isn't intended, but I can't think of an elegant way to block it; it seems like kind of a weird edge case.

I imagine I'm probably going about this all backwards - I'm very much a newbie, having written my first bit of Inform code this past Monday - so I'd by very grateful if anyone could offer a bit of guidance.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4596&start=0#p33169
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Go To The Light - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-03-09 15:16:05

Here is the entire section containing any wizard coding.  The error I now get is under the 'modify glowAction if-else section'. The first 'if' statement about power level gives me the following error
'power level is undefined but appears to be a property name'


[code]/*  Add wizard's ring to beach.  **********************************************/

ring: Wearable 'platinum ring' 'platinum ring'
"Faint cryptic runes are inscribed around the band of the platinum ring. "
   location=beach
   dobjFor(Wear){
      action(){
      inherited();
      "You feel a strange magical power coursing through your body! And, you
       hear the faint echo of the word GLOW surrounding you. ";
      gActor.makeWizard();
     }
    } 

   dobjFor(Doff){
      action(){
      inherited();
      "You shudder as the power of the ring and the magic of the GLOW chant
       leave you. ";
      gActor.makeNormal();
     } 
    } 
;

   DefineIAction(Glow);
      VerbRule(Glow)
      'glow'
     :GlowAction
     VerbPhrase='glow/glowing'
;
   
   modify GlowAction
      execAction(){
      if(gActor.powerLevel!=wizard){
        reportFailure('At this time, you do not have the power of a wizard.'); 
     }
      else if(gActor.brightness!=0){
        "The blue, radiant light quickly fades from your body. ";
         gActor.brightness=0;
     }         
      else{
        "You chant the GLOW spell!
         Your body begins to glow with a bright, radiating blue light! ";
         gActor.brightness=10;     
     }
    }
;

/* Make 'wizard' constant.  ***************************************************/

enum wizard,normal;

/*  Show Actor/Player.  *******************************************************/

+me: BagOfHolding, Actor
    vocabWords = 'Tom Thomas Tom/Thomas/Leavens'    
    desc
   {
       "You are Thomas Leavens; also known as Dr. Tom by all your friends and
        associates. Your ex-wife calls you names that could never be repeated!
        Aside from your underwear an socks, you are wearing your normal field
        attire. ";
   }
    
bulk = 10

/*  Make/Unmake wizard.  ******************************************************/

 makeWizard(){
    powerLevel=wizard;
}
 makeNormal(){
    powerLevel=normal;
    brightness=0;
}
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=0#p33170
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-09 15:29:30

Argh. I hate accessibility rules. They're poorly documented and inexplicably complex. What's happening is that you're mixing up the expected results of different rulebooks. "Rules for reaching inside/outside" have "allow/deny access" results, but "accessibility rules" either stop the action or they don't. "Allow access" is considered success, but it still stops the rulebook, which apparently stops all the action processing right there. You can either use "continue the action" or move your rule into the "reaching inside" rulebook, where "allow access" will be interpreted correctly. See the "Carnivale" example.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4596&start=0#p33171
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Go To The Light - TADS3.1
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-03-09 15:46:36

You need to add the powerLevel property to the me Actor:

[code]
powerLevel = normal
[/code]

Somewhere before the semicolon that ends the object definition.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=0#p33172
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: David J Prokopetz / DateTime: 2012-03-09 16:07:48

Ah - that makes sense. Well, apart from the fact that the "basic accessibility" rule doesn't "allow access", but syntax is a funny thing.

This actually helps another issue I was having: how to override the generic "you can't reach that" message if you're trying to take an aural action pertaining to something in a room that's visually but not aurally adjacent. It occurs to me that I'll need to distinguish between listening and asking/telling, since the messaging for the former needs to indicate that the player can't hear the noun, but the messaging for the latter needs to indicate that the noun can't hear the player.

Revised code attached - can anyone spot any obvious mistakes?

Now there are just two issues remaining that I'm aware of:

 - How to prevent the player from issuing orders to NPCs in rooms that are visually but not aurally adjacent.

 - How to fix the misleading "you can't reach into" message when asking an NPC to interact with an object they can't access. For example, in the attached example, "erin, get mirror" responds with "You can't reach into the East Room.", which is likely to be puzzling to anyone who doesn't know the exact logic of the accessibility rules.

I'll keep tinkering with it myself, but I'm open to suggestions.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4601&start=0#p33173
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Absolute Beginner Questions
User: The Batman / DateTime: 2012-03-09 16:21:06

I downloaded I7 about a year ago with only a slight interest in creating adventure games/interactive fiction/etc. and because the interest was only slight, I hadn't really TRIED to learn it until now. However, lately I7 has been fascinating me and I'm really keen on creating an adventure game set in the world of Batman (go figure, eh?). However, even after reading the documentation/recipe book and what have you, I feel like I'm just not grasping what I assume are probably stupidly simple commands. So if you guys could please help a beginner in the way of this fantastic program, it would be much appreciated. I will try to be as detailed as possible about my issues, so please bear with the lengthy post [emote]:)[/emote]

1) I'm having difficulty understanding the basic concept of walking into a building and being inside of a room. Should all/most places be described as rooms and then further rooms should be placed INSIDE of another to create the effect of a building? Or does one define something as a "building" and then create rooms inside of it? To apply it to my game, basically, you begin in the center of a city (outside) and can choose 1 of 4 cardinal directions. I would like the player to be able to go N (for example) and approach a building and then after that, decide whether or not they want to enter said building. If they decide to enter, then they obviously would be in a room contained in the larger building (which has been defined already obviously). What I7 doesn't seem to like is that I'm trying to say that the "lobby" (the room upon walking in) is inside of the larger building and therefore it thinks that I'm trying to describe the larger building twice. Is there some simple thing I'm missing here? Just to say "enter the building and now you're in x room"?

2) Being in a particular position and having to LOOK in a certain direction in order to notice a particular item. In my game, when standing in front of a certain building, I would like to somehow suggest to the player that they should look DOWN in order to discover a particular item on the ground. The closest I can get right now is just to flat-out say that there's an item at their feet and from there they will be able to examine it/pick-up--but obviously this requires no sense of looking whatsoever and I don't want the item to be immediately described upon reaching the location. Though this could probably be answered with the previous statement, I would also like for a player to be able to look UP and notice something at the very top of the building (but the something isn't an item, so a simple description would suffice).

3) Another incredibly simple one I imagine--starting the player with an item and (maybe not so simply) having the item interact with something, all before the banner text. As sort of the "opening scene" I would like the player to have an item referred to as "change" on them (I was going to initially have the player have x amount of change, but I have a feeling as a beginner that trying to factor in a loss and/or gain of money would be a tad over my head). Then immediately after introducing the starting location vaguely, an item would be mentioned that one must put the change into. After doing so, an explanation further detailing the broad location of where the player is should appear. Then after that explanation text, the banner text would appear and the game would "begin" (so to speak) with the player being in a specific place (the aforementioned center of the city).

Again, thank you very much for any and all help you can provide--I'm really looking forward to getting the ball rolling on this project.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4601&start=0#p33175
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Absolute Beginner Questions
User: David J Prokopetz / DateTime: 2012-03-09 16:41:33

I'm a bit of a newbie myself, but regarding your first question, I believe the room-within-a-room concept you're looking for is Regions:

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc31.html">http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc31.html</a>

You'd define each building as a Region, then put all of the individual rooms for each building inside the corresponding Region.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4602&start=0#p33176
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Coming back to Inform after a long hiatus, errors?
User: johnnyr / DateTime: 2012-03-09 17:08:58

Hi there,

I've reopened a project I was working with in inform 7 a while back, but I'm getting some errors and I'm struggling to understand why. 

For example:

Things can be usable and unusable.
Things are usually unusable.

That send line gives me an error:

[quote]Problem. The sentence 'Things are usually unusable'   seems to tell me that 'Things' and 'unusable' have to be the same, but it looks odd to me. 'Things' is something generic - not something definite; but 'unusable' is (presumably) something specific. So it's as if you'd written 'A room is the Sydney Opera House'. (Which room, exactly? You see the trouble.)[/quote]

Can anyone help explain this to me, and why i'm getting this error?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4601&start=0#p33177
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Absolute Beginner Questions
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-09 17:26:20

1) Think of "rooms" not as rooms but as places. You'll probably be better off by creating one room called "At the Entrance of Gotham City Hall" to represent the area outside just outside the City Hall and then creating another room ("Gotham City Hall Lobby") to the north of it and so on. You don't *have to* model rooms inside a building as inside anything to make it look like rooms inside a building to your readers/players.

2) Inform games understand the commands "LOOK DOWN/UP/NORTH/SOUTH" etc. by default. But those commands trigger the examining action! So, to write rules for them, you have to write rules like "Instead of examining up in At the Entrance of Gotham City Hall: say this or that" or "Instead of examining down in Gotham City Hall Lobby: do this or that".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4602&start=0#p33178
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Coming back to Inform after a long hiatus, errors?
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-09 17:26:49

You'll want:
[code]A thing is either usable or unusable.
A thing is usually unusable.
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4603&start=0#p33179
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Yours win?> "you are still gloating over yours win."
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-09 17:36:28

I'm trying to work out my message parameter substitutions here...  I can read the table well enough, but I've got an odd effect I don't know how to get rid of.

The problem output is:

"...you are still gloating over yours win. "

The code for this is:

msg += '{the dobj/he} {is} still gloating over {its/hers} win. ';

...I don't know enough about how these parameters are handled.  Why is the possessive form for "you" resolving to "yours?"

That is, if it were acting as a noun, this would work:  the button is its/hers/yours.  But, it is its/hers/your button.

How do I get it to act as a modifier and not as a noun?


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4602&start=0#p33180
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Coming back to Inform after a long hiatus, errors?
User: johnnyr / DateTime: 2012-03-09 17:36:50

That worked nicely! thank you! Can I assume that using plurals in that way is generally a no-no?

Also, Is there a way to do properties that are not either/or? (for example, if something could be soft, hard, or semisoft)

Would it look like:

[code]a thing can be soft.
a thing can be hard.
a thing can be semisoft.

there is soft couch here[/code]

bad example as it really is just a description, but you get the idea.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4602&start=0#p33181
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Coming back to Inform after a long hiatus, errors?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-09 17:41:18

You need to put all the alternatives in one line, like this:

[code]A thing can be hard, soft, or semisoft.[/code]

You can also name the property, if you want:

[code]A thing can be hard, soft, or semisoft (this is its squishiness property).[/code]

See section 4.10 of the instruction manual for more about this stuff.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4596&start=0#p33182
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Go To The Light - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-03-09 17:41:42

Thanks for the help. That did it. Don't know how I managed to miss that. Should have paid closer attention. I'm finally ready to start adding rooms and other objects.

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4602&start=0#p33183
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Coming back to Inform after a long hiatus, errors?
User: johnnyr / DateTime: 2012-03-09 17:47:40

[quote="matt w"]You need to put all the alternatives in one line, like this:

[code]A thing can be hard, soft, or semisoft.[/code]

You can also name the property, if you want:

[code]A thing can be hard, soft, or semisoft (this is its squishiness property).[/code]

See section 4.10 of the instruction manual for more about this stuff.[/quote]

You are awesome sir! Thank you very much!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4590&start=0#p33184
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: For the Folks Who Like Traditional RPGs, But Not Math.
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-09 18:08:20

[quote="JoeyJones"]I can definitely get behind not having Spearmint Doritos, ever. The project looks good and those roof top views were excellent, so I threw a couple of bob your way.

(If only because the Risus core book is one of the funniest RPG books I've ever read. I was laughing out loud after the 1st sentence of the 6th paragraph).[/quote]

Thank you [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4601&start=0#p33185
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Absolute Beginner Questions
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-09 18:16:59

The example showing you how to suppress the banner text is at [url]http://inform7.com/learn/man/ex35.html#e35[/url].

[code]"Bikini Atoll" by Edward Teller
The Hut and the Tropical Beach are rooms.
The conch shell is in the Hut. After taking the shell for the first time: say "As you gather the oddly-warm conch shell into your arms, you experience a sudden flash of deja-vu...[banner text]"; move the player to the Tropical Beach.
Rule for printing the banner text when the player is not carrying the shell: do nothing.
Test me with "look / examine shell / get shell / look".
[/code]
[color=#BF0000](By tradition, and as a courtesy to all the people who have worked on Inform, authors ensure that the banner is printed some time near the beginning of each game played. So please only defer it, rather than suppress it altogether.)[/color]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4405&start=10#p33186
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: NPC-NPC interaction?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-09 18:20:49

Here's the full code, so far.  It plays Prisoner's Dilemma like it's RPS.... a little odd.  The game selection is hard-coded in.  Making the game selectable is the next step.

What works well in this code is that the PC can ask any NPC to play, or be asked, and accept, or be turned down, and move processing and gaem logic needn't be defined any further than the winning/losing -criteria definitions shown in the last post.

OTOH, NPCs pick moves strictly at random.  Setting up NPC strategies is to do after making the gaem selectable, and not hard-coded.

[rant][code]#charset "us-ascii"
#include <adv3.h>
#include <en_us.h>
#include <file.h>

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
prand: object {  //"Gerhard's generator", an extremely simple algorithm that generates low-quality pseudorandom numbers.

    seed = 10; // Use whatever value you want as initial seed.

    ok(lim)  // 0..(lim-1)
    {
        seed = (seed * 32719 + 3) % 32749;
//        "\nok \nseed = <<seed>>. lim = <<lim>> \n seed % lim = <<seed % lim>>. \n (seed % lim) + 1 = <b><<(seed % lim )>></b> ";
        return seed % lim;
    }

    n0(lim)  // 1..lim
    {
        seed = (seed * 32719 + 3) % 32749;
//        "\nn0 \nseed = <<seed>>. lim = <<lim>> \n seed % lim = <<seed % lim>>. \n (seed % lim) + 1 = <b><<(seed % lim ) + 1>></b> ";
        return (seed % lim ) + 1;
    }
}
;

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////


//////// THE GENERAL GAEM OBJECT ///////////////////////////////////////////////

GaemThing : object

    gaemName = ''
    moveNameV = 'move{s}'
    p1 = nil
    p2 = nil
    p1move = ''
    p2move = ''
    p1result = ''
    p2result = ''
    outcome = ''
    nolegalmoves = 0
    
    legalmovesList = []
    
    p1winList = []
    p2winList = []
    p1loseList = []
    p2loseList = []
    tieList = []
    
//    ex. 
//    legalmovesList = ['rock', 'scissors', 'paper']
//    nolegalmoves = 3


    randstrat() {
        return (legalmovesList[prand.n0(nolegalmoves)] );
    }
    
    reportbegin() {
        gAction.setMessageParam('p1', p1);
        gAction.setMessageParam('p2', p2);
        if (p1 != gPlayerChar)
            "<<'{The p1/he} and {the p2/he} decide to play a
            quick game of ' + gaemName +'. \n'>>";
    }  

    reportmoves() {
         "{The p1/he} <<moveNameV>> <<p1move>>! ";
         "{The p2/he} <<moveNameV>> <<p2move>>! ";
    }
    
    movekey () {
        return (p1move + '-v-' + p2move);
    }   
    
    resolveresult () {
        local bothmoves = movekey();
        outcome = '';
        foreach (local thisPosRes in possibleResults) {
            if ( thisPosRes.conditions.indexOf(bothmoves) )
            {
                //"\n<<bothmoves>> so therefore 
                //"<<thisPosRes.report>>";  // <--debugging
                outcome += thisPosRes.report;
                if (thisPosRes.p1) p1.lastGAEMresult = thisPosRes.res;
                if (thisPosRes.p2) p2.lastGAEMresult = thisPosRes.res;
                p1.lastGAEM = libGlobal.totalTurns;
                p2.lastGAEM = libGlobal.totalTurns;
            }
        }
        return (outcome);
    }

    getstrats () {
        p1move = '';
        p2move = '';
        if (p1 != gPlayerChar)
            p1move = randstrat();
        else do 
        {
            "You can enter... <<reportMovesLaundry()>>What is your choice? ";
            p1move = toString(inputManager.getInputLine (nil, nil) );
            //"You entered << '"' + p1move + '"' >>! \n";
        }   
        while (legalmovesList.indexOf(p1move) == nil);
        if (p2 != gPlayerChar)
            p2move = randstrat();
        else do 
        {
            "You can enter... <<reportMovesLaundry()>>What is your choice? ";
            p2move = toString(inputManager.getInputLine (nil, nil) );
            //"You entered << '"' + p1move + '"' >>! \n";
        }   
        while (legalmovesList.indexOf(p2move) == nil);
    }

    reportMovesLaundry ()
    {
        local accrete = '\n';
        legalmovesList.forEach ({x: accrete += ('          ' + x+ '\n') });
        return accrete;
    }


    mainLoop() {
        reportbegin();
        getstrats();
        reportmoves();
        "<<resolveresult()>>";
    }
    
    fin () {
        p1 = nil;
        p2 = nil;
        gaemName = nil;
    }
        
;

//////// THE GENERAL RESULT OBJECT ///////////////////////////////////

Strat : object
    gaem = ''
    name = ''
    opponent = ''
    data = ''
;

Result : object
    name = ''
    report = ''
    condits = ['', '']
//    because = ['', '']
//    sotherefore () {
//        "modify and update players here; do not run inherited. ";
//    }
    p1 = nil
    p2 = nil
    res = 0
;



//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//////// ROCK - PAPER - SCISSORS /////////////////////////////////////
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

frpsGaem : GaemThing
    //set up possible moves somehow...

    gaemName = 'Rock-Paper-Scissors'
    moveNameV = 'throw{s}'
    legalmovesList = ['rock', 'scissors', 'paper']
    nolegalmoves = 3

    possibleResults =
    [
        p1winRPS ,
        p2winRPS ,
        p1loseRPS ,
        p2loseRPS ,
        p1drawRPS ,
        p2drawRPS
    ]
;

//////// ROCK - PAPER - SCISSORS RESULTS /////////////////////////////

p1winRPS : Result    
    name = 'p1win'
    p1 = true
    res = 1
    report = '{The p1/he} win{s}! '
    conditions = [
        'rock-v-scissors' , 
        'scissors-v-paper' , 
        'paper-v-rock'
    ]
;

p1loseRPS : Result    
    name = 'p1lose'
    p1 = true
    res = -1
    report = '{The p1/he} lose{s}! '
    conditions = [
        'scissors-v-rock' , 
        'paper-v-scissors' , 
        'rock-v-paper'
    ]
;

p2winRPS : Result    
    name = 'p2win'
    p2 = true
    res = 1
    report = '{The p2/he} win{s}! '
    conditions = [
        'scissors-v-rock' , 
        'paper-v-scissors' , 
        'rock-v-paper'
    ]
;

p2loseRPS : Result    
    name = 'p2lose'
    p2 = true
    res = -1
    report = '{The p2/he} lose{s}! '
    conditions = [
        'rock-v-scissors' , 
        'scissors-v-paper' , 
        'paper-v-rock'
    ]
;

p1drawRPS : Result    
    name = 'p1draw'
    p1 = true
    res = 0
    report = '{The p1/he} ties! '
    conditions = [
        'rock-v-rock' , 
        'paper-v-paper' , 
        'scissors-v-scissors'
    ]
;


p2drawRPS : Result    
    name = 'p2draw'
    p2 = true
    res = 0
    report = '{The p2/he} ties! '
    conditions = [
        'rock-v-rock', 
        'paper-v-paper', 
        'scissors-v-scissors'
    ]
;


//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
/////// THE PRISONER'S DILEMMA ///////////////////////////////////////
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

rpsGaem : GaemThing
//pdGaem : GaemThing
    //set up possible moves somehow...

    gaemName = 'Prisoner\'s Dilemma'
    moveNameV = 'choose{s} to'
    legalmovesList = ['stay loyal', 'defect']
    nolegalmoves = 2

    possibleResults =
    [
        p1winPD ,
        p2winPD ,
        p1losePD ,
        p2losePD ,
        p1loseBadlyPD ,
        p2loseBadlyPD 
    ]
;


/////// THE PRISONER'S DILEMMA RESULTS /////////////////////////////////////

p1winPD : Result    
    name = 'p1win'
    p1 = true
    res = 1
    report = '{The p1/he} win{s}! '
    conditions = [
        'stay loyal-v-stay loyal' 
    ]
;

p1losePD : Result
    name = 'p1lose'
    p1 = true
    res = -1
    report = '{The p1/he} lose{s}! '
    conditions = [
        'stay loyal-v-defect' ,
        'defect-v-stay loyal'
    ]
;

p1loseBadlyPD : Result
    name = 'p1losebadly'
    p1 = true
    res = -10
    report = '{The p1/he} lose{s} badly! '
    conditions = [
        'defect-v-defect' 
    ]
;
    
p2winPD : Result
    name = 'p2win'
    p2 = true
    res = 1
    report = '{The p2/he} win{s}! '
    conditions = [
        'stay loyal-v-stay loyal' 
    ]
;

p2losePD : Result
    name = 'p2lose'
    p2 = true
    res = -1
    report = '{The p2/he} lose{s}! '
    conditions = [
        'defect-v-stay loyal' ,
        'stay loyal-v-defect' 
    ]
;

p2loseBadlyPD : Result
    name = 'p2losebadly'
    p2 = true
    res = -10
    report = '{The p2/he} lose{s} badly! '
    conditions = [
        'defect-v-defect' 
    ]
;

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
///////////// PLAY (RPS) HANDLING STUFF //////////////////////////////
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

DefineTAction(RPS);

VerbRule(RPS)
   'play' 'rps' 'with' singleDobj
   : RPSAction
   verbPhrase = 'play/playing rps (with whom)'
;

modify Thing
   dobjFor(RPS) {
      verify() { illogical('{The dobj/he} would be a pretty dull counterpart. '); }
   }
;

modify Person
  
    strat = [
    ]
    lastGAEM = nil
    lastGAEMresult = nil
   
    // how often the person is willing to play RPS
    GAEMfreq = 3

    isHim = true

    dobjFor(RPS) {
      verify() {}

      check() {
         if (!wantsToPlay) {
                local msg = '{You/he} want{s} to play RPS with
                    {the dobj/him}, but ';
                if (lastGAEMresult == nil ) 
                    msg += '{the dobj/he} {is} busy. ';
                else if (lastGAEMresult > 0 ) 
                    msg += '{the dobj/he} {is} still gloating over
                     {its/hers} win. ';
                else if (lastGAEMresult < 0 ) 
                    msg += '{the dobj/he} {is} still smarting over
                     {its/hers} loss. ';
                else if (lastGAEMresult == 0 ) 
                    msg += '{the dobj/he} {is} still thinking over
                     {its/hers} tactics. ';
            failCheck(msg);
         }
      }

      action() {
            rpsGaem.p1 = gActor;
            rpsGaem.p2 = self;
            rpsGaem.mainLoop;
      }
   }

   wantsToPlay() 
    {
        local ans = '';
        if ( self != gPlayerChar)
            return (GAEMfreq && (lastGAEM == nil ||
            (lastGAEM <= libGlobal.totalTurns - GAEMfreq)));
        else do 
        {
            "{The actor/he} asks you to play a game. ";
            "Do you want to (y/n)? ";
            ans = toString(inputManager.getInputLine (nil, nil) );
            ans.toLower();
        }   
        while (['y', 'yes', 'n', 'no'].indexOf(ans) == nil);
        return (['y', 'yes'].indexOf(ans) != nil);    
    }

;

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

class RPSAgenda: AgendaItem
   initiallyActive = true

   isReady() {
      return getActor.wantsToPlay && prand.n0(3) == 2;  //pseudo-randomize these
   }

   invokeItem() {
        local npcs = getActor.sensePresenceList(sight).subset({obj:
          obj.ofKind(Actor) && obj != getActor //&& obj != gPlayerChar
          });
//        "<<(npcs.sublist(1)).valWhich({x: x==x}) >>";
        local pdn = prand.n0( npcs.length() );  //?
//        "PDN = <<pdn>>. ";
        if (npcs.length)
            newActorAction(getActor, RPS, npcs[pdn] ); //rand(npcs));  //pseudo-randomize this
   }
;

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

guard: Person 'guard' 'guard' @lab
   "Just another guard. Although doubtless with his own inner life when 
   he\'s not playing an NPC in a TADS game. "
   GAEMfreq = 5
;
+ RPSAgenda;

scientist: Person 'scientist' 'scientist' @lab
   "Just another scientist. But with his own human dramas and foibles 
   when he goes home to his family, no doubt."
   GAEMfreq = 0
;

janitor: Person 'janitor' 'janitor' @lab
   "Just another janitor. Probably union. "
;
+ RPSAgenda;


//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
[/code][/rant]

Many thanks, Ben, for all the help with this; and the project continues.


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4604&start=0#p33187
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: more Reindeer Gaems (than just rps) - 2-obj VERB rule needed
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-09 19:34:08

I'm once again out of my depth, this time in creating a two-object PLAY verb that'll take RPS as one possible gaem to play. 

This requires that the dObj (the Gaem instantiation) and the iObj (the (N)PC) each qualify themselves for reference via check(), and that they coordinate with each other somehow to get the gaem code going.

It also requires that the gaem object have some kind of vocabwords or topic part, that talks to the parser, and that the verb rule somehow hook into the code there.  -- I don't know how to begin this process.

I'm pretty confident I can handle it once I know how to structure it.  I don't have an approach.  Any thoughts?


Conrad.

PS - this is the code I've got so far.  


[rant][code]
DefineTIAction(playGaem);

VerbRule(play)
   'play' singleDobj 'with' singleIobj        // <-- I don't know what singleDobj should hook into!
   : playGaemAction
   verbPhrase = 'play/playing (what) (with whom)'
;

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

modify Thing
   iobjFor(playGaem) {
      verify() { illogical('{The iobj/he} would be a pretty dull counterpart. '); }
   }
;

modify Person
  
    // ... various Person jazz

    iobjFor(playGaem) {
      verify() {}

      check() {
          // ... all that jazz, for which we'll now say
         return (true);
         }
      }
       
      action() {
            dObj.p1 = gActor;     //<-- as you can see, I tried bluffing and it didn't work
            dObj.p2 = self;
            dObj.mainLoop;
       }
        
    }
[/code][/rant]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=0#p33188
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: David J Prokopetz / DateTime: 2012-03-09 19:34:41

Hokay, I think I have the first issue sorted. This is what I came up with:

[code]Instead of asking someone to try doing anything:
	if the player cannot touch the actor and the location of the actor is not aurally adjacent to the location of the player:
		say "[the actor] can't hear you.";
	otherwise:
		continue the action;[/code]
That seems to work in conjunction with the above modifications - it blocks issuing orders to actors in other rooms who can see, but not hear the player, while continuing to allow orders to be issued to actors in other rooms who can both see and hear the player. I may be overlooking some edge cases, though - it almost seems [b]too[/b] simple. ^^;

Now... does anyone know, offhand, how to tinker with scope for an entity other than the player? I suspect that the second problem in my preceding post is a scoping issue, but I can't seem to figure out how to adjust scope for an NPC to test that theory - all of the scoping examples I've found refer exclusively to the player.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=0#p33189
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-09 19:38:09

I think you just replace "scope of the player" with "scope of [NPC's name]" in the "After deciding the scope of" rule. I have this rule lying around, which seemed to work:

[code]After deciding the scope of folks:
	repeat with avatar running through visible things:
		place avatar in scope. [/code]

("Folks" was an NPC who was part of a backdrop, for reasons that don't bear going into, probably.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4594&start=0#p33190
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Refreshing the Status Line and When the Player Consents
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2012-03-09 19:42:08

Is there a difference between Refreshing the status line and Drawing it?

In Emily Short's menus, it has:

To redraw status line:
	(- DrawStatusLine(); -)

Whenever I've wanted to poke the status line and say 'hey, wake up', I've just called her 'redraw status line' action.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=0#p33191
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: David J Prokopetz / DateTime: 2012-03-09 19:44:53

Thanks - that got me a lot closer. Unfortunately, I'm still having an issue. I have these two bits of code:

[code]After deciding the scope of the player:
	repeat with locale running through rooms which are visually adjacent to the location of the player:
		place locale in scope;
		
After deciding the scope of a person:
	repeat with locale running through rooms which are visually adjacent to the location of the person:
		place locale in scope;[/code]
The first one works fine, but the second one complains that "person" is not an object on the "repeat with" line.

EDIT: Hah! Silly me. I just had to name the actor:

[code]After deciding the scope of a person (called the viewer):
	repeat with locale running through rooms which are visually adjacent to the location of the viewer:
		place locale in scope;[/code]
Well, that's two mysteries solved. Now I just need to puzzle out how to get some more informative messaging than "[actor] is unable to do that" when the reason is that they can see, but not reach an item.

Thanks again, everyone. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=0#p33192
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-09 19:55:41

Yeah, a tricky thing is that "the person" is something you never want to say; it's interpreted the same as "a person" would be. Getting a compiler error as you did is probably the best outcome; it's pretty common to spend time tearing your hair out about why something like "if the person is in a visually adjacent location" isn't working, when that actually means the same thing as "if a [that is, any] person is in a visually adjacent location."

ETA: And on your substantive question, try looking at the Unsuccessful attempt rules, in section 12.5; though I don't know enough about "the reason the action failed" to tell you how easy it would be to work this out.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4605&start=0#p33193
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: specific errors with TADS under Rapper
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-09 20:08:11

Bob is about to put the ball on the table.  One specific and clear error, which is apparently an error in TADS, is that the ball, being put on the table, ends up in the large box that's on the table.

Then, when you take that box, the ball stays on the table.  An error with the lister or something.

Here is the transcript, from the moment Bob enters the room and puts the ball on the table.  Bob's raptrace is on:

[rant]Bob enters from the south. 

>z
Time passes... 

RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable KitchenTable for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]...satisfied
trying rDo rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable] for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]...firing
Action resolved: [rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable]]
Full backwards path: [[rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable]]].

>z
Time passes... 

>look
Kitchen
Kitchen. South to living room. Southeast to Bathroom.

You see a kitchen table (on which are a big box (which contains a small box) and a ball) here. 

Bob is standing here. 

>take ball
Taken. 

>put ball on table
Done. 

>look
Kitchen
Kitchen. South to living room. Southeast to Bathroom.
You see a kitchen table (on which are a big box (which contains a small box) and a ball) here. 
Bob is standing here. 

>take big box
Taken. 

>drop it
Dropped. 

>take ball
Taken. 

>put ball on table
Done. 

>undo
Taking back one turn: “put ball on table”.

Kitchen
Kitchen. South to living room. Southeast to Bathroom.

You see a kitchen table and a big box (which contains a small box) here. 

Bob is standing here. 

>look
Kitchen
Kitchen. South to living room. Southeast to Bathroom.

You see a kitchen table and a big box (which contains a small box) here. 

Bob is standing here. 

>undo 
Taking back one turn: “look”.

Kitchen
Kitchen. South to living room. Southeast to Bathroom.

You see a kitchen table and a big box (which contains a small box) here. 

Bob is standing here. 

>undo
Taking back one turn: “take ball”.

Kitchen
Kitchen. South to living room. Southeast to Bathroom.

You see a kitchen table (on which is a ball) and a big box (which contains a small box) here. 

Bob is standing here. 

>* huh.  containment error.
Comment not recorded. Use SCRIPT if you want to start recording the transcript.[/rant]

Now that's a TADS error, from what I can tell.  There are also Rapper errors, or at least cases where RAP fails to fail gracefully, that I'll post in the hopes someone can help me unravel where the bugs are.


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4605&start=0#p33194
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: specific errors with TADS under Rapper
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-09 20:15:39

The RAP-specific transcript, which cuts off at the time Bob completes his mission.  Most notably, when Bob has an empty plan, nothing happens...  which is fine, but there are times when Bob has an empty plan when it seems to a human that his problems are solveable.

Also, when Bob does things successfully in full view, those actions are not reported to the player.  Thus when Bob puts the ball on the table, he just seems to be standing there.  Nothing evident has happened at all.

I'm still learning all this.


Conrad.

[rant]The following output is for debugging and instructional purposes, and only prints when the game is being run in debug mode:


rBuildMap: generating entry lists
living room: kitchen bedroom
kitchen: living room bathroom
bedroom: living room door_to bedroomcloset
bedroomcloset: door_to bedroom
bathroom: kitchen
rBuildMap: producing default plans
rBuildMap: living room = [[rBe, rIn, Kitchen, rDo, rIn, LivingRoom], [rBe, rIn, Bedroom, rDo, rIn, LivingRoom]]
rBuildMap: kitchen = [[rBe, rIn, LivingRoom, rDo, rIn, Kitchen], [rBe, rIn, Bathroom, rDo, rIn, Kitchen]]
rBuildMap: bedroom = [[rBe, rIn, LivingRoom, rDo, rIn, Bedroom], [rBe, rOpen, ClosetDoor, rBe, rIn, BedroomCloset, rDo, rIn, Bedroom]]
rBuildMap: bedroomcloset = [[rBe, rOpen, BedroomClosetDoor, rBe, rIn, Bedroom, rDo, rIn, BedroomCloset]]
rBuildMap: bathroom = [[rBe, rIn, Kitchen, rDo, rIn, Bathroom]]


This is a simple testbed for RAP (Reactive Agent Planner) version 1.2 for TADS 3.


The game is a simple map of a small apartment. There's a key in the kitchen, another in the bathroom cabinet, and a ball locked in a lockbox in the bedroom closet (also locked).


There is one RAP-enabled actor, a dog named Rupert, who starts in the living room with you, the player. His primary goal is to get the ball and put it on the kitchen table. As the planbase is not sophisticated, Rupert has perfect knowledge of the state and location of all objects at all times. 


This test map is trivial, but it does demonstrate a RAP actor's ability to react to game events - Rupert will begin by seeking two keys, one for the closet door, the other for the lockbox; if you get the keys, he will ask you for them and follow you. [In this version of the testgame, the PC is also a RAP-enabled actor, and will automatically give items asked for; this is just for testing and probably not good default behavior.] If you unlock the obstacles yourself he will ignore the keys and go straight for the ball. If you have the ball he will follow you, and ask you for it. If he gets the ball, he will give it to you; then he will ask for it back.


Test: the player is also a RAP-enabled actor, and is programmed to automatically accept Rupert's request for items.


The debugging spell >RAPTRACE RUPERT will let you read Rupert's thought processes. (The verb is only available in debug mode.)


Test: Rupert is temporarily disabled, in favor of Bob, who is designed to test t3knowledge and t3rapOrder.
Try:
>BOB, PUT BALL ON TABLE


RAP TESTBED
Reactive Agent Planner ver. 1.2 testbed
Copyright (C) 1998 by Nate Cull
Tads-3 port and revision/extension (t3RAP) Copyright (c) 2002-2004 by Steve Breslin


Living Room

Living room. South to bedroom. North to kitchen.


Bob and Rupert are standing here. 


>raptrace bob
Bob's rTrace is now on. 


>bob, put ball on table
RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rUnlocked LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rHave BronzeKey for rUnlocked LockBox
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther BronzeKey for rHave BronzeKey...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable BronzeKey for rHave BronzeKey
trying rBe rOpen Cupboard for rReachable BronzeKey
trying rBe rReachable Cupboard for rOpen Cupboard
trying rBe rIn Bathroom for rReachable Cupboard
trying rBe rIn Kitchen for rIn Bathroom
trying rBe rIn LivingRoom for rIn Kitchen...satisfied
trying rDo rIn Kitchen for rIn Kitchen...firing
Action resolved: [rIn, Kitchen]
Full backwards path: [[rIn, Kitchen], [rIn, Bathroom], [rReachable, Cupboard], [rOpen, Cupboard], [rReachable, BronzeKey], [rHave, BronzeKey], [rUnlocked, LockBox], [rOpen, LockBox], [rReachable, Ball], [rHave, Ball], [rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable]]].
Bob leaves to the north. 


>n
Kitchen

Kitchen. South to living room. Southeast to Bathroom.


You see a kitchen table (on which is a big box) here. 


Bob is standing here. 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rUnlocked LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rHave BronzeKey for rUnlocked LockBox
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther BronzeKey for rHave BronzeKey...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable BronzeKey for rHave BronzeKey
trying rBe rOpen Cupboard for rReachable BronzeKey
trying rBe rReachable Cupboard for rOpen Cupboard
trying rBe rIn Bathroom for rReachable Cupboard
trying rBe rIn Kitchen for rIn Bathroom...satisfied
trying rDo rIn Bathroom for rIn Bathroom...firing
Action resolved: [rIn, Bathroom]
Full backwards path: [[rIn, Bathroom], [rReachable, Cupboard], [rOpen, Cupboard], [rReachable, BronzeKey], [rHave, BronzeKey], [rUnlocked, LockBox], [rOpen, LockBox], [rReachable, Ball], [rHave, Ball], [rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable]]].
Bob leaves to the southeast. 


>se
Bathroom

A bathroom. Northwest to Kitchen.
There's a small cupboard.


Bob is standing here. 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rUnlocked LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rHave BronzeKey for rUnlocked LockBox
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther BronzeKey for rHave BronzeKey...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable BronzeKey for rHave BronzeKey
trying rBe rOpen Cupboard for rReachable BronzeKey
trying rBe rReachable Cupboard for rOpen Cupboard...satisfied
trying rDo rOpen Cupboard for rOpen Cupboard...firing
Action resolved: [rOpen, Cupboard]
Full backwards path: [[rOpen, Cupboard], [rReachable, BronzeKey], [rHave, BronzeKey], [rUnlocked, LockBox], [rOpen, LockBox], [rReachable, Ball], [rHave, Ball], [rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable]]].
Bob opens the cupboard, revealing a bronze key. 


>take key
Taken. 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rUnlocked LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rHave BronzeKey for rUnlocked LockBox
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther BronzeKey for rHave BronzeKey...empty plan
Bob cannot see that. 


>nw
Kitchen

Kitchen. South to living room. Southeast to Bathroom.


You see a kitchen table (on which is a big box) here. 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rUnlocked LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rHave BronzeKey for rUnlocked LockBox
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther BronzeKey for rHave BronzeKey...empty plan


>s
Living Room

Living room. South to bedroom. North to kitchen.


Rupert is standing here. 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rUnlocked LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rHave BronzeKey for rUnlocked LockBox
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther BronzeKey for rHave BronzeKey...empty plan


>drop key
Dropped. 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rUnlocked LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rHave BronzeKey for rUnlocked LockBox
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther BronzeKey for rHave BronzeKey...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable BronzeKey for rHave BronzeKey
trying rBe rIn LivingRoom for rReachable BronzeKey
trying rBe rIn Kitchen for rIn LivingRoom
trying rBe rIn Bedroom for rIn LivingRoom
trying rBe rIn LivingRoom for rIn Kitchen...dupe
trying rBe rIn Bathroom for rIn Kitchen...satisfied
trying rDo rIn Kitchen for rIn Kitchen...firing
Action resolved: [rIn, Kitchen]
Full backwards path: [[rIn, Kitchen], [rIn, LivingRoom], [rReachable, BronzeKey], [rHave, BronzeKey], [rUnlocked, LockBox], [rOpen, LockBox], [rReachable, Ball], [rHave, Ball], [rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable]]].


>take key
Taken. 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rUnlocked LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rHave BronzeKey for rUnlocked LockBox
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther BronzeKey for rHave BronzeKey...empty plan


>z
Time passes... 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rUnlocked LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rHave BronzeKey for rUnlocked LockBox
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther BronzeKey for rHave BronzeKey...empty plan


>z
Time passes... 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rUnlocked LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rHave BronzeKey for rUnlocked LockBox
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther BronzeKey for rHave BronzeKey...empty plan


>z
Time passes... 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rUnlocked LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rHave BronzeKey for rUnlocked LockBox
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther BronzeKey for rHave BronzeKey...empty plan


>n
Kitchen

Kitchen. South to living room. Southeast to Bathroom.


You see a kitchen table (on which is a big box) here. 


Bob is standing here. 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rUnlocked LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rHave BronzeKey for rUnlocked LockBox
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther BronzeKey for rHave BronzeKey...empty plan


Bob cannot see that. Bob must be holding the ball to do that. 


>se
Bathroom

A bathroom. Northwest to Kitchen.
There's a small cupboard.


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rUnlocked LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rHave BronzeKey for rUnlocked LockBox
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther BronzeKey for rHave BronzeKey...empty plan


>nw
Kitchen

Kitchen. South to living room. Southeast to Bathroom.


You see a kitchen table (on which is a big box) here. 


Bob is standing here. 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rUnlocked LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rHave BronzeKey for rUnlocked LockBox
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther BronzeKey for rHave BronzeKey...empty plan


Bob cannot see that. Bob must be holding the ball to do that. 


>s
Living Room

Living room. South to bedroom. North to kitchen.


Rupert is standing here. 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rUnlocked LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rHave BronzeKey for rUnlocked LockBox
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther BronzeKey for rHave BronzeKey...empty plan


>s
Bedroom

Bedroom. North to living room. West (through door) to closet.


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rUnlocked LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rHave BronzeKey for rUnlocked LockBox
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther BronzeKey for rHave BronzeKey...empty plan


>w

(first trying to open the closet door)
The closet door seems to be locked. 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rUnlocked LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rHave BronzeKey for rUnlocked LockBox
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther BronzeKey for rHave BronzeKey...empty plan


>unlock closet
What do you want to unlock it with? 


>key
The bronze key doesn’t fit the lock. 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rUnlocked LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rHave BronzeKey for rUnlocked LockBox
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther BronzeKey for rHave BronzeKey...empty plan


>n
Living Room

Living room. South to bedroom. North to kitchen.


Rupert is standing here. 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rUnlocked LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rHave BronzeKey for rUnlocked LockBox
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther BronzeKey for rHave BronzeKey...empty plan


>n
Kitchen

Kitchen. South to living room. Southeast to Bathroom.


You see a kitchen table (on which is a big box) here. 


Bob is standing here. 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rUnlocked LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rHave BronzeKey for rUnlocked LockBox
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther BronzeKey for rHave BronzeKey...empty plan


Bob cannot see that. Bob must be holding the ball to do that. 


>open box
Opening the big box reveals a small box. 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rUnlocked LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rHave BronzeKey for rUnlocked LockBox
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther BronzeKey for rHave BronzeKey...empty plan


Bob cannot see that. Bob must be holding the ball to do that. 


>take small box
Taken. 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rUnlocked LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rHave BronzeKey for rUnlocked LockBox
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther BronzeKey for rHave BronzeKey...empty plan


Bob cannot see that. Bob must be holding the ball to do that. 


>open small box
Opening the small box reveals an iron key. 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rUnlocked LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rHave BronzeKey for rUnlocked LockBox
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther BronzeKey for rHave BronzeKey...empty plan


Bob cannot see that. Bob must be holding the ball to do that. 


>take key
You take the iron key. 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rUnlocked LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rHave BronzeKey for rUnlocked LockBox
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther BronzeKey for rHave BronzeKey...empty plan


Bob cannot see that. Bob must be holding the ball to do that. 


>close box
Which box do you mean, the small box, or the big box?


>small box
Closed. 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rUnlocked LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rHave BronzeKey for rUnlocked LockBox
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther BronzeKey for rHave BronzeKey...empty plan


Bob cannot see that. Bob must be holding the ball to do that. 


>put small box in big box
Done. 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rUnlocked LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rHave BronzeKey for rUnlocked LockBox
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther BronzeKey for rHave BronzeKey...empty plan


Bob cannot see that. Bob must be holding the ball to do that. 


>s
Living Room

Living room. South to bedroom. North to kitchen.


Rupert is standing here. 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rUnlocked LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rHave BronzeKey for rUnlocked LockBox
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther BronzeKey for rHave BronzeKey...empty plan


>s
Bedroom

Bedroom. North to living room. West (through door) to closet.


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rUnlocked LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rHave BronzeKey for rUnlocked LockBox
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther BronzeKey for rHave BronzeKey...empty plan


>unlock door with iron key
Unlocked. 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rUnlocked LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rHave BronzeKey for rUnlocked LockBox
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther BronzeKey for rHave BronzeKey...empty plan


>open it
You open the closet door. 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rUnlocked LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rHave BronzeKey for rUnlocked LockBox
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther BronzeKey for rHave BronzeKey...empty plan


>w
BedroomCloset

Bedroom closet. East (through door) to bedroom


You see a lock box here. 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rUnlocked LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rHave BronzeKey for rUnlocked LockBox
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther BronzeKey for rHave BronzeKey...empty plan


>i
You are carrying a bronze key and an iron key. 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rUnlocked LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rHave BronzeKey for rUnlocked LockBox
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther BronzeKey for rHave BronzeKey...empty plan


>open box with bronze key
The story doesn’t understand that command. 


>unlock box with bronze key
You unlock the lock box. 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rReachable LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rIn BedroomCloset for rReachable LockBox
trying rBe rOpen BedroomClosetDoor for rIn BedroomCloset...satisfied
trying rBe rIn Bedroom for rIn BedroomCloset
trying rBe rIn LivingRoom for rIn Bedroom
trying rBe rOpen ClosetDoor for rIn Bedroom...satisfied
trying rBe rIn BedroomCloset for rIn Bedroom...dupe


>e
Bedroom

Bedroom. North to living room. West (through door) to closet.


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rReachable LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rIn BedroomCloset for rReachable LockBox
trying rBe rOpen BedroomClosetDoor for rIn BedroomCloset...satisfied
trying rBe rIn Bedroom for rIn BedroomCloset
trying rBe rIn LivingRoom for rIn Bedroom
trying rBe rOpen ClosetDoor for rIn Bedroom...satisfied
trying rBe rIn BedroomCloset for rIn Bedroom...dupe


>z
Time passes... 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rReachable LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rIn BedroomCloset for rReachable LockBox
trying rBe rOpen BedroomClosetDoor for rIn BedroomCloset...satisfied
trying rBe rIn Bedroom for rIn BedroomCloset
trying rBe rIn LivingRoom for rIn Bedroom
trying rBe rOpen ClosetDoor for rIn Bedroom...satisfied
trying rBe rIn BedroomCloset for rIn Bedroom...dupe


>z
Time passes... 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rReachable LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rIn BedroomCloset for rReachable LockBox
trying rBe rOpen BedroomClosetDoor for rIn BedroomCloset...satisfied
trying rBe rIn Bedroom for rIn BedroomCloset
trying rBe rIn LivingRoom for rIn Bedroom
trying rBe rOpen ClosetDoor for rIn Bedroom...satisfied
trying rBe rIn BedroomCloset for rIn Bedroom...dupe


>close door
Closed. 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rReachable LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rIn BedroomCloset for rReachable LockBox
trying rBe rOpen BedroomClosetDoor for rIn BedroomCloset
trying rBe rReachable BedroomClosetDoor for rOpen BedroomClosetDoor
trying rBe rIn Bedroom for rReachable BedroomClosetDoor
trying rBe rIn LivingRoom for rIn Bedroom
trying rBe rOpen ClosetDoor for rIn Bedroom
trying rBe rIn Kitchen for rIn LivingRoom...satisfied
trying rDo rIn LivingRoom for rIn LivingRoom...firing
Action resolved: [rIn, LivingRoom]
Full backwards path: [[rIn, LivingRoom], [rIn, Bedroom], [rReachable, BedroomClosetDoor], [rOpen, BedroomClosetDoor], [rIn, BedroomCloset], [rReachable, LockBox], [rOpen, LockBox], [rReachable, Ball], [rHave, Ball], [rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable]]].


>z
Time passes... 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rReachable LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rIn BedroomCloset for rReachable LockBox
trying rBe rOpen BedroomClosetDoor for rIn BedroomCloset
trying rBe rReachable BedroomClosetDoor for rOpen BedroomClosetDoor
trying rBe rIn Bedroom for rReachable BedroomClosetDoor
trying rBe rIn LivingRoom for rIn Bedroom...satisfied
trying rDo rIn Bedroom for rIn Bedroom...firing
Action resolved: [rIn, Bedroom]
Full backwards path: [[rIn, Bedroom], [rReachable, BedroomClosetDoor], [rOpen, BedroomClosetDoor], [rIn, BedroomCloset], [rReachable, LockBox], [rOpen, LockBox], [rReachable, Ball], [rHave, Ball], [rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable]]].
Bob enters from the north. 


>z
Time passes... 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rReachable LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rIn BedroomCloset for rReachable LockBox
trying rBe rOpen BedroomClosetDoor for rIn BedroomCloset
trying rBe rReachable BedroomClosetDoor for rOpen BedroomClosetDoor...satisfied
trying rDo rOpen BedroomClosetDoor for rOpen BedroomClosetDoor...firing
Action resolved: [rOpen, BedroomClosetDoor]
Full backwards path: [[rOpen, BedroomClosetDoor], [rIn, BedroomCloset], [rReachable, LockBox], [rOpen, LockBox], [rReachable, Ball], [rHave, Ball], [rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable]]].


>z
Time passes... 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rReachable LockBox for rOpen LockBox
trying rBe rIn BedroomCloset for rReachable LockBox
trying rBe rOpen BedroomClosetDoor for rIn BedroomCloset...satisfied
trying rBe rIn Bedroom for rIn BedroomCloset...satisfied
trying rDo rIn BedroomCloset for rIn BedroomCloset...firing
Action resolved: [rIn, BedroomCloset]
Full backwards path: [[rIn, BedroomCloset], [rReachable, LockBox], [rOpen, LockBox], [rReachable, Ball], [rHave, Ball], [rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable]]].
Bob leaves through the closet door. 


>lock closet door with iron key

(first closing the closet door)
Locked. 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball
trying rBe rOpen LockBox for rReachable Ball
trying rBe rReachable LockBox for rOpen LockBox...satisfied
trying rDo rOpen LockBox for rOpen LockBox...firing
Action resolved: [rOpen, LockBox]
Full backwards path: [[rOpen, LockBox], [rReachable, Ball], [rHave, Ball], [rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable]]].


>z
Time passes... 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable Ball for rHave Ball...satisfied
trying rDo rHave Ball for rHave Ball...firing
Action resolved: [rHave, Ball]
Full backwards path: [[rHave, Ball], [rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable]]].


>z
Time passes... 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable KitchenTable for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rIn Kitchen for rReachable KitchenTable
trying rBe rIn LivingRoom for rIn Kitchen
trying rBe rIn Bathroom for rIn Kitchen
trying rBe rIn Kitchen for rIn LivingRoom...dupe
trying rBe rIn Bedroom for rIn LivingRoom
trying rBe rIn Kitchen for rIn Bathroom...dupe
trying rBe rIn LivingRoom for rIn Bedroom...dupe
trying rBe rOpen ClosetDoor for rIn Bedroom
trying rBe rUnlocked ClosetDoor for rOpen ClosetDoor
trying rBe rHave IronKey for rUnlocked ClosetDoor
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther IronKey for rHave IronKey...empty plan


>z
Time passes... 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable KitchenTable for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rIn Kitchen for rReachable KitchenTable
trying rBe rIn LivingRoom for rIn Kitchen
trying rBe rIn Bathroom for rIn Kitchen
trying rBe rIn Kitchen for rIn LivingRoom...dupe
trying rBe rIn Bedroom for rIn LivingRoom
trying rBe rIn Kitchen for rIn Bathroom...dupe
trying rBe rIn LivingRoom for rIn Bedroom...dupe
trying rBe rOpen ClosetDoor for rIn Bedroom
trying rBe rUnlocked ClosetDoor for rOpen ClosetDoor
trying rBe rHave IronKey for rUnlocked ClosetDoor
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther IronKey for rHave IronKey...empty plan


>n
Living Room

Living room. South to bedroom. North to kitchen.


Rupert is standing here. 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable KitchenTable for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rIn Kitchen for rReachable KitchenTable
trying rBe rIn LivingRoom for rIn Kitchen
trying rBe rIn Bathroom for rIn Kitchen
trying rBe rIn Kitchen for rIn LivingRoom...dupe
trying rBe rIn Bedroom for rIn LivingRoom
trying rBe rIn Kitchen for rIn Bathroom...dupe
trying rBe rIn LivingRoom for rIn Bedroom...dupe
trying rBe rOpen ClosetDoor for rIn Bedroom
trying rBe rUnlocked ClosetDoor for rOpen ClosetDoor
trying rBe rHave IronKey for rUnlocked ClosetDoor
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther IronKey for rHave IronKey...empty plan


>drop iron key
Dropped. 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable KitchenTable for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rIn Kitchen for rReachable KitchenTable
trying rBe rIn LivingRoom for rIn Kitchen
trying rBe rIn Bathroom for rIn Kitchen
trying rBe rIn Kitchen for rIn LivingRoom...dupe
trying rBe rIn Bedroom for rIn LivingRoom
trying rBe rIn Kitchen for rIn Bathroom...dupe
trying rBe rIn LivingRoom for rIn Bedroom...dupe
trying rBe rOpen ClosetDoor for rIn Bedroom
trying rBe rUnlocked ClosetDoor for rOpen ClosetDoor
trying rBe rHave IronKey for rUnlocked ClosetDoor
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther IronKey for rHave IronKey...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable IronKey for rHave IronKey
trying rBe rIn LivingRoom for rReachable IronKey...dupe


>take all

iron key: Taken. 


iron key: You are already carrying the iron key. 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable KitchenTable for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rIn Kitchen for rReachable KitchenTable
trying rBe rIn LivingRoom for rIn Kitchen
trying rBe rIn Bathroom for rIn Kitchen
trying rBe rIn Kitchen for rIn LivingRoom...dupe
trying rBe rIn Bedroom for rIn LivingRoom
trying rBe rIn Kitchen for rIn Bathroom...dupe
trying rBe rIn LivingRoom for rIn Bedroom...dupe
trying rBe rOpen ClosetDoor for rIn Bedroom
trying rBe rUnlocked ClosetDoor for rOpen ClosetDoor
trying rBe rHave IronKey for rUnlocked ClosetDoor
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther IronKey for rHave IronKey...empty plan


>s
Bedroom

Bedroom. North to living room. West (through door) to closet.


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable KitchenTable for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rIn Kitchen for rReachable KitchenTable
trying rBe rIn LivingRoom for rIn Kitchen
trying rBe rIn Bathroom for rIn Kitchen
trying rBe rIn Kitchen for rIn LivingRoom...dupe
trying rBe rIn Bedroom for rIn LivingRoom
trying rBe rIn Kitchen for rIn Bathroom...dupe
trying rBe rIn LivingRoom for rIn Bedroom...dupe
trying rBe rOpen ClosetDoor for rIn Bedroom
trying rBe rUnlocked ClosetDoor for rOpen ClosetDoor
trying rBe rHave IronKey for rUnlocked ClosetDoor
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther IronKey for rHave IronKey...empty plan


>s
You can’t go that way. Obvious exits lead north, back to the living room; and west, to the bedroomcloset. 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable KitchenTable for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rIn Kitchen for rReachable KitchenTable
trying rBe rIn LivingRoom for rIn Kitchen
trying rBe rIn Bathroom for rIn Kitchen
trying rBe rIn Kitchen for rIn LivingRoom...dupe
trying rBe rIn Bedroom for rIn LivingRoom
trying rBe rIn Kitchen for rIn Bathroom...dupe
trying rBe rIn LivingRoom for rIn Bedroom...dupe
trying rBe rOpen ClosetDoor for rIn Bedroom
trying rBe rUnlocked ClosetDoor for rOpen ClosetDoor
trying rBe rHave IronKey for rUnlocked ClosetDoor
trying rBe rNotOwnedByOther IronKey for rHave IronKey...empty plan


>unlock door with iron key and open it
Unlocked. 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable KitchenTable for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rIn Kitchen for rReachable KitchenTable
trying rBe rIn LivingRoom for rIn Kitchen
trying rBe rIn Bathroom for rIn Kitchen
trying rBe rIn Kitchen for rIn LivingRoom...dupe
trying rBe rIn Bedroom for rIn LivingRoom
trying rBe rIn Kitchen for rIn Bathroom...dupe
trying rBe rIn LivingRoom for rIn Bedroom...dupe
trying rBe rOpen ClosetDoor for rIn Bedroom
trying rBe rReachable ClosetDoor for rOpen ClosetDoor...satisfied
trying rDo rOpen ClosetDoor for rOpen ClosetDoor...firing
Action resolved: [rOpen, ClosetDoor]
Full backwards path: [[rOpen, ClosetDoor], [rIn, Bedroom], [rIn, LivingRoom], [rIn, Kitchen], [rReachable, KitchenTable], [rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable]]].
Someone opens the closet door from the other side. 


The closet door is already open. 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable KitchenTable for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rIn Kitchen for rReachable KitchenTable
trying rBe rIn LivingRoom for rIn Kitchen
trying rBe rIn Bathroom for rIn Kitchen
trying rBe rIn Kitchen for rIn LivingRoom...dupe
trying rBe rIn Bedroom for rIn LivingRoom
trying rBe rIn Kitchen for rIn Bathroom...dupe
trying rBe rIn LivingRoom for rIn Bedroom...dupe
trying rBe rOpen ClosetDoor for rIn Bedroom...satisfied
trying rBe rIn BedroomCloset for rIn Bedroom...satisfied
trying rDo rIn Bedroom for rIn Bedroom...firing
Action resolved: [rIn, Bedroom]
Full backwards path: [[rIn, Bedroom], [rIn, LivingRoom], [rIn, Kitchen], [rReachable, KitchenTable], [rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable]]].
Bob enters through the closet door. 


>n
Living Room

Living room. South to bedroom. North to kitchen.


Rupert is standing here. 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable KitchenTable for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rIn Kitchen for rReachable KitchenTable
trying rBe rIn LivingRoom for rIn Kitchen
trying rBe rIn Bathroom for rIn Kitchen
trying rBe rIn Kitchen for rIn LivingRoom...dupe
trying rBe rIn Bedroom for rIn LivingRoom...satisfied
trying rDo rIn LivingRoom for rIn LivingRoom...firing
Action resolved: [rIn, LivingRoom]
Full backwards path: [[rIn, LivingRoom], [rIn, Kitchen], [rReachable, KitchenTable], [rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable]]].
Bob enters from the south. 


>n
Kitchen

Kitchen. South to living room. Southeast to Bathroom.


You see a kitchen table (on which is a big box (which contains a small box)) here. 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable KitchenTable for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]
trying rBe rIn Kitchen for rReachable KitchenTable
trying rBe rIn LivingRoom for rIn Kitchen...satisfied
trying rDo rIn Kitchen for rIn Kitchen...firing
Action resolved: [rIn, Kitchen]
Full backwards path: [[rIn, Kitchen], [rReachable, KitchenTable], [rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable]]].
Bob enters from the south. 


>z
Time passes... 


RAP decision trace for Bob: master plan = (rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable])
trying rBe rHave Ball for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]...satisfied
trying rBe rReachable KitchenTable for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]...satisfied
trying rDo rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable] for rObjOn [Ball, KitchenTable]...firing
Action resolved: [rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable]]
Full backwards path: [[rObjOn, [Ball, KitchenTable]]].


>z
Time passes... 


>look
Kitchen

Kitchen. South to living room. Southeast to Bathroom.


You see a kitchen table (on which are a big box (which contains a small box) and a ball) here. 


Bob is standing here.[/rant]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4594&start=0#p33195
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Refreshing the Status Line and When the Player Consents
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-09 20:27:34

There is no "RefreshStatusLine()" routine -- that's just a typo. (Unless somebody found one that I can't find.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4602&start=0#p33196
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Coming back to Inform after a long hiatus, errors?
User: johnnyr / DateTime: 2012-03-09 20:34:18

One last question...how can I suppress the messages that tell the player what is inside a container automatically?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=0#p33197
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-09 20:39:22

I'm a fan of putting rules into the most appropriate rulebooks. I'd recommend using the Persuasion rulebook for visible people who can't hear commands. And the "reaching into" rulebook to override the "you can't reach into" message (which is where it comes from in the first place).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4594&start=0#p33198
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Refreshing the Status Line and When the Player Consents
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-03-09 20:41:56

Wow, that created a lot more confusion than I would have thought, given that I said clearly that RefreshStatusLine was [i]not[/i] the name of the routine! It's DrawStatusLine, as EmacsUser said in the post that went up while I was writing mine.

Sorry for not just downloading Appendix B to look it up before posting...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=0#p33199
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: David J Prokopetz / DateTime: 2012-03-09 21:23:07

[quote="capmikee"]I'm a fan of putting rules into the most appropriate rulebooks. I'd recommend using the Persuasion rulebook for visible people who can't hear commands. And the "reaching into" rulebook to override the "you can't reach into" message (which is where it comes from in the first place).[/quote]
Sound advice. The "instead of" rule posted upthread was just a quick hack to check if my reasoning was sound. The interpreter [b]seems[/b] to think so.

On an unrelated note, while I was working on the modified feedback messages, a notion for doing stupid tricks with doors struck me:

[code]Instead of examining a door (called the barrier):
	If the front side of the barrier is the location of the player and the back side of the barrier is visually adjacent to the location of the player:
		let the far side be the back side of the noun;
		say "Peering through [the noun], you see...";
		try examining the far side;
		rule succeeds;
	Otherwise if the back side of the barrier is the location of the player and the front side of the barrier is visually adjacent to the location of the player:
		let the far side be the front side of the noun;
		say "Peering through [the noun], you see...";
		try examining the far side;
		rule succeeds;
	Otherwise:
		continue the action;
		
Instead of examining a direction (called the bearing):
	let the adjoining room be the room bearing of the location of the player;
	if the adjoining room is visually adjacent to the location of the player:
		if there is a door (called the barrier) and ((the front side of the barrier is the location of the player and the back side of the barrier is the adjoining room) or (the back side of the barrier is the location of the player and the front side of the barrier is the adjoining room)):
			try examining the barrier instead;
			rule succeeds;
		otherwise:
			say "Peering to [the bearing], you see...";		
			try examining the adjoining room;
			rule succeeds;
	otherwise:
		continue the action;[/code]
The idea is that if there's a door between you and a visually adjacent location, and you look at the door or in the direction of the door, the game should describe peering through that door into the room beyond. This is another instead rule hack, but I'd be willing to take a shot at stuffing it into the correct rulebook - though I may need a little guidance as to which rulebook that would be.

My questions are threefold:

1. Is there anything wrong with doing it like this that I'm not seeing?

2. Is there a more elegant way to approach that big, gnarly multiply-bracketed conditional that tests whether there exists a door between the player's location and the visually adjacent room?

3. Is there any way to get it to print out the full "look" results for the room (including header and contents) where it's currently just doing "try examining"?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=0#p33200
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-09 22:03:25

1. Doesn't it matter whether doors are open or closed?

2. Two things you can do:

First, you can reduce duplication by finding the far side first, and then checking if the far side is visually adjacent.

Second, you don't need to bother with the front side or the back side at all. Doors are considered adjacent to the rooms they connect.

Third, you can encapsulate complicated conditions into phrases, adjectives and relations.

I'd suggest something like this:

[code]To decide which room is the far side of (the portal - a door):
    If the portal is not adjacent to the location, decide on nothing;
    Decide on a random room adjacent to the portal that is not the location.

Viewporting relates a door (called portal) to a room (called vista) when the vista is the far side of portal and the vista is visually adjacent to the location.

The verb to provide a view of (insert conjugation here) implies the viewporting relation. The verb to be viewable through implies the reversed viewporting relation.[/code]

That's not tested, and you may have to fiddle with the syntax to make it work.

As for 3., printing room descriptions are quite complicated. I recommend you look at the Standard Library to see how it's done.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4594&start=0#p33201
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Refreshing the Status Line and When the Player Consents
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-09 22:25:53

In addition to keeping the Standard Rules open in an emacs buffer, I like to keep the auto.inf (generated I6 code) of whatever game I compile last. Makes it easier to answer these low-level questions. :)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4594&start=10#p33202
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Refreshing the Status Line and When the Player Consents
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-09 22:32:56

[quote="zarf"]In addition to keeping the Standard Rules open in an emacs buffer, I like to keep the auto.inf (generated I6 code) of whatever game I compile last. Makes it easier to answer these low-level questions. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
What platform are you running on? When I open auto.inf in MacVim, it loses the file every time I compile - I assume because Mac uses file ids rather than plain text file paths, and it deletes and recreates the .inform directory when compiling.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4548&start=10#p33203
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: a variety of games & interactions...
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-09 23:08:40

I've been playing Kerkerkruip, and I think Victor's basic "concentrate/attack" mechanic would work well for two players - also a slight variation of rock/paper/scissors or Prisoner's Dilemma.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=10#p33204
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: David J Prokopetz / DateTime: 2012-03-09 23:11:11

[quote="capmikee"]1. Doesn't it matter whether doors are open or closed?[/quote]

As I'm picturing it, sometimes yes, sometimes no. The player might be able to see through a closed door - it could be a glass door, for example, or a grating. I don't recall, offhand, whether doors take the transparent property; if so, I might throw an "and (barrier is open or barrier is transparent)" in there.

Actually, now that I think of it, I should really have the option of making visual adjacency dependent on the status of any intervening door, in order to prevent players from visually interacting with objects on the other side of a closed, opaque door. Hmm.

Thanks for the tips on the rest. It didn't occur to me to take  that route, but you're right - there really should be some simple way of declaring a door such that it automatically makes the rooms it connects visually adjacent to each other while it's open (or visually adjacent to each other 100% of the time, for a transparent door).

EDIT: Incidentally, I just discovered that I don't need a decide rule, either - "let the far side be the other side of the portal" works just fine. Whoops. I was making that [b]way[/b] more complicated than it needed to be.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4604&start=0#p33205
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: more Reindeer Gaems (than just rps) - 2-obj VERB rule ne
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-10 00:14:01

I have no idea what the symbol dObj is. If it's the object that actually does the game-playing, then what you're doing appears, at first glance, to be fairly sensible.

On the other hand, it's possible that what you mean is gDobj, not dObj.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4605&start=0#p33206
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: specific errors with TADS under Rapper
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-10 00:22:41

[quote="conradcook"]Bob is about to put the ball on the table.  One specific and clear error, which is apparently an error in TADS, is that the ball, being put on the table, ends up in the large box that's on the table.

Then, when you take that box, the ball stays on the table.  An error with the lister or something.

Here is the transcript, from the moment Bob enters the room and puts the ball on the table.  Bob's raptrace is on:

Now that's a TADS error, from what I can tell.  There are also Rapper errors, or at least cases where RAP fails to fail gracefully, that I'll post in the hopes someone can help me unravel where the bugs are.[/quote]
I'm not seeing the error. I don't see a line where the ball ends up in the box. It all seems very straightforward to me. (1) The ball is on the table, where I gather it belongs, because Bob has just put it there. (2) You take the ball, and then put it back on the table. (3) You take the big box and drop it on the floor. (4) You take the ball again and put it back on the table, where it was. (5) You undo putting the ball on the table. You are now holding the ball. (6) You look, and then undo that action. (7) Rewinding backwards, you now undo taking the ball OFF of the table. The ball is now on the table, and the big box is on the floor. No, there's no error there.

Those are my notes on the first transcript. The second one I'm not even going to look at, because I've never used RAP and have no idea what you're doing with it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4603&start=0#p33207
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Yours win?> "you are still gloating over yours win."
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-10 00:28:23

I have no idea how to solve this problem, but it brought back a very old memory. In my first novel, [i]Walk the Moons Road[/i], I used a rare double possessive by elision. The silly editor made me take it out. Here's the sentence:

[quote]His people were hers' enemies.[/quote]

As weird as that is, I maintain that it's grammatically correct. It's saying that his people were her people's enemies.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=10#p33208
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-10 00:33:07

I usually try to avoid tossing this particular suggestion into I7 threads, because it seems indecently snotty. But in this case (and as you seem to be a newcomer to the forum, who might not be totally committed to one authoring system over another) ... if you were using TADS 3, this business would be handled by the library's sense-passing mechanism. You would still need to do a little work to get it running properly, but the ability to see and hear things in adjacent locations is built-in in TADS.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=10#p33209
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: David J Prokopetz / DateTime: 2012-03-10 00:36:50

Okay, goofy question on my part.

[code]A viewport is a kind of door.

Visual contact relates a room (called A) to a room (called B) when there is viewport (called X) and ((A is the front side of X and B is the back side of X) or (B is the front side of X and A is the back side of X)).

Visual contact relates a room (called A) to a room (called B) when there is viewport (called X) and A is adjacent to X and B is adjacent to X.

Visual contact relates a room (called A) to a room (called B) when a viewport which is adjacent to A is adjacent to B.

The verb to be in visual contact with implies the visual contact relation.

The Gloomy Room is a room. The Bright Room is a room. The Metal Grille is a viewport. The Metal Grille is east of the Main Room and west of the Gloomy Room.[/code]
All three of these conditional definitions of the visual contact relation are accepted by the interpreter (well, not all at the same time, obviously), but only the first one - the gnarly-looking one that uses front side and back side - actually works as expected, i.e., by making the Gloomy Room adjacent to the Main Room.

I feel like I'm missing something obvious here.

[quote="Jim Aikin"]I usually try to avoid tossing this particular suggestion into I7 threads, because it seems indecently snotty. But in this case (and as you seem to be a newcomer to the forum, who might not be totally committed to one authoring system over another) ... if you were using TADS 3, this business would be handled by the library's sense-passing mechanism. You would still need to do a little work to get it running properly, but the ability to see and hear things in adjacent locations is built-in in TADS.[/quote]
I have no particular commitment to any particular authoring system. However, my ultimate objective here is to learn I7, not to select the best authoring system for any particular project. Thus far, I think it's been a success.

(Besides, the fact that I7 doesn't have a sense-passing extension at the moment doesn't mean it'll never have one. I may write one myself, once I have a firmer grasp of it.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4594&start=10#p33210
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Refreshing the Status Line and When the Player Consents
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-10 00:49:58

I'm on a Mac. Yes, the directory gets wiped and rewritten every time. (Although not because there aren't file paths underneath -- there are.)

Emacs (by default) doesn't care if the file changes out from under the buffer, unless you try to edit the buffer. If I'm recompiling *and* looking at the I6 source, I have to re-read the file after each compile. But that's not typically what I'm doing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4603&start=0#p33211
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Yours win?> "you are still gloating over yours win."
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2012-03-10 01:19:02

It's because you've used the wrong message parameter - "{its/hers}" instead of "{its/her}". This should work:

[code]msg += '{the dobj/he} {is} still gloating over {its/her} win. ';[/code]

Because some pronouns can be used in several different grammatical situations (e.g. "its button"/"the button is its"), TADS needs you to make it totally clear which kind of pronoun you want. The "its" half of "{its/her}" tells TADS that you want a possessive pronoun, but since "its" has two different grammatical functions, you also need either "her" or "hers" to indicate which possessive pronoun you want.

An easy way to make sure you've used the right substitution is to read the sentence twice, once with the first half of the substitution and then with the second half of the substitution, e.g. "The dobj is still gloating over its win. The dobj is still gloating over hers win." If one of the sentences sounds wrong, that's where your problem is - so in that example, you can tell that the problem is with the use of "hers" instead of "her".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4606&start=0#p33212
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: counting the number of objects inside a container
User: MSwift / DateTime: 2012-03-10 01:30:54

I'm attempting to set up a system where the player can distribute attribute points between three stats. Right now I'm doing this by giving the player 30 tokens and three boxes, each box representing either Strength, Agility, or Intelligence.
Everything works well until I try to actually count how many tokens are in each box. I'm clearly doing something terribly wrong, but I'm not sure what.

This is the relevant bit of code (Strength, Agility, and Intelligence are the names of the containers):
[code]To check for completion:
	Let S be a number equal to the number of attribute points in Strength;
	Let A be a number equal to the number of attribute points in Agility;
	Let I be a number equal to the number of attribute points in Intelligence;
	Let T be a number equal to S plus A plus I;
	If T equals 30:
		Now the player's Standard Strength is S;
		Now the player's Current Strength is S;
		Now the player's Standard Agiliy is A;
		Now the player's Current Agility is A;
		Now the player's Standard Intelligence is I;
		Now the player's Current Intelligence is I;
		say "A great bell rings out overhead.";
	Say "You haven't distributed all your ability points yet!".[/code]

I've also attempted to use 'Let S be a number equal to the number of things in Strength' and 'Let S be a number equal to the number of things contained by Strength', with the same results.
For all of my 'Let' attempts (except for Intelligence for some reason, Inform doesn't seem to have a problem with that one), I get this:
[code]Problem. In the sentence 'Let S be a number equal to the number of attribute points in Strength'  , I was expecting to read a value, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'a number equal to the number of attribute points in Strength'.

I was trying to match one of these phrases:

1. let (s - a new name) be (a number equal to the number of attribute points in strength - description of relations of values to values) 

2. let (s - a new name) be (a number equal to the number of attribute points in strength - name of kind) 

3. let (s - a new name) be (a number equal to the number of attribute points in strength - value) 

4. let (s - a temporary named value) be (a number equal to the number of attribute points in strength - value) 

This was what I found out:

S = something unrecognised

a number equal to the number of attribute points in Strength = something unrecognised
[/code]

How do I get Inform count the number of things in a container and turn that number into something I can work with?


Also, I'm only really going with 'distribute physical points to physical containers' to represent stats because I don't want to go with a straight up menu choice ("Do you want to play a fighter, rogue, or wizard?") or make the player figure out points in their head. If anyone knows of a better way to do this I'm all ears.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4606&start=0#p33213
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: counting the number of objects inside a container
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2012-03-10 03:56:41

Not tested, but does it work if you leave out the "a number equal to" phrase? I.e., just "Let S be the number of attribute points in Strength;"?

(You don't need to define the kind of S, because it will automatically be set to the kind of whatever you make it equal to.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4586&start=0#p33214
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Couple of questions about how to use the language.
User: inform7newbie / DateTime: 2012-03-10 04:01:04

Thanks guys! This has been really helpful.I've gotten the map running well, and some basic definitions in place.

 I downloaded the extension, and I input this code to test it generally:

Response of Darren when asked about the brass key: 
if Darren carries the brass key:
say "'It's just an old key. Here, you want it? Take it.'";
now the player carries the brass key;
otherwise:
say "'Dude, I already gave you that.'"

 but I keep getting the response back:

Problem: You wrote 'Response of Darren when asked about the brass key' : but the punctuation here ':' makes me think this should be a definition of a phrase and it doesn't begin as it should.

I'm so confused, especially because other I uses if statements before other colons, and I seem to not have issues with them. Any ideas on what's going wrong here?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4603&start=0#p33215
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Yours win?> "you are still gloating over yours win."
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-10 05:49:00

Jim,

I understood the sentence.  I don't know what's grammatical in this case, but I understood it.


Emily,

Thanks! -- That's very clarifying!

Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4605&start=0#p33216
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: specific errors with TADS under Rapper
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-10 05:53:08

No, you're right, Jim.  I'm misreading the containment parens, as if the outer set represented the containment of the big box.  My error.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4604&start=0#p33217
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: more Reindeer Gaems (than just rps) - 2-obj VERB rule ne
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-10 06:05:38

Ok, that's fair...

But even before that, how do I create a parser word for an abstract object like a gaem?

There's nothing for gDobj to hook into.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4586&start=0#p33218
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Couple of questions about how to use the language.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-10 06:10:25

Did you install and include the extension? If you want to use an extension, after you download it you have to open it up and hit the "install" button. Then when you want to use it in one of your programs you write, at the beginning of your program:

[code]Include Conversation Responses by Eric Eve.[/code]

There are some built-in extensions that you don't have to download and install, but you still have to include them if you want to use them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4601&start=0#p33219
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Absolute Beginner Questions
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-03-10 06:20:54

[quote="maga"]The example showing you how to suppress the banner text is at <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/learn/man/ex35.html#e35">http://inform7.com/learn/man/ex35.html#e35</a>.[/quote]
I've always found that example a bit strange since it gives instructions for a very specific case instead of just telling how to do it in the general case. It also suppresses the banner when the player explicitly commands VERSION which is not good. A better method is:

[code]The display banner rule is not listed in the startup rulebook.

Before going to the lobby for the first time:
	consider the display banner rule.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=10#p33220
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-10 06:23:20

I think it's simply that the built-in "adjacent" relation relates rooms to rooms, and it doesn't relate rooms to doors. So the conditions on the non-gnarly ones are never true.

You could make your definition less gnarly-looking by defining a relation that relates rooms to doors when the room is one side of the door -- even if you're only using the definition for this purpose, it'd make your code read more straightforwardly, which is nice.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4548&start=10#p33221
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: a variety of games & interactions...
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-10 06:40:05

[quote="capmikee"]I've been playing Kerkerkruip, and I think Victor's basic "concentrate/attack" mechanic would work well for two players - also a slight variation of rock/paper/scissors or Prisoner's Dilemma.[/quote]

I'm not in the market for playing Kerkerkruip right now.  (All respect to Victor -- just not in a playing kind of mood right now.)  Could you lay out the logic that maps players' moves to outcomes?


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4602&start=0#p33222
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Coming back to Inform after a long hiatus, errors?
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-10 07:29:43

You can have closed containers or give them individual printed descriptions, but if you really want to get rid of all bracketed messages for containers then you'll want to include this line:

[code]Rule for printing room description details of a container: omit contents in listing.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4607&start=0#p33223
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: IF Gathering at PAX East 2012?
User: gonexall / DateTime: 2012-03-10 08:11:51

Hello all.  I am new to this forum.  I have enjoyed IF as a player for a long time, and I also enjoy creative writing.  Recently, I have been thinking about writing an IF story.  I signed up to go to PAX east with the hope of meeting other IF enthusiasts and learning a thing or two from some authors.  Will there be IF activities at PAX East this year?  Can anyone tell me when and where?  I have looked around the net, and could not find anything, but I am still new to all this.  Thank you for any help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=10#p33224
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-03-10 08:23:35

[quote="Jim Aikin"]the ability to see and hear things in adjacent locations is built-in in TADS.[/quote]

Yeah, but that's why it's so exciting that David J Prokopetz is making this extension.  This is one of the things that has always seemed cool to me about TADS, but not, you know, cool enough to learn a whole other language for.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=10#p33225
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: David J Prokopetz / DateTime: 2012-03-10 08:46:13

[quote="matt w"]I think it's simply that the built-in "adjacent" relation relates rooms to rooms, and it doesn't relate rooms to doors. So the conditions on the non-gnarly ones are never true.

You could make your definition less gnarly-looking by defining a relation that relates rooms to doors when the room is one side of the door -- even if you're only using the definition for this purpose, it'd make your code read more straightforwardly, which is nice.[/quote]
I'll give that a shot - thanks.

Incidentally, does anyone know offhand where the visibility relation is defined in the standard rules? It occurs to me that in order to do a proper job of this, I need stuff like "if the player can sees X" to function transparently with respect to visual adjacency, and I'd like to double-check the conditions for the standard relation underlying the verb "to be able to see".

Hmm... should really also set things up so that actions can be defined in terms of audible things. Then I could override the usual ask/tell/etc. actions with "applying to one audible thing and one topic", and avoid tinkering with the reachability rules in cases where it's not necessary.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4604&start=0#p33226
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: more Reindeer Gaems (than just rps) - 2-obj VERB rule ne
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-10 09:09:41

--I've just realized this can be considered the same problem that Jim helped me to solve, in creating the THINK command (where I created Unthing objects that were always in scope).  I'm going to try to apply that approach.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4607&start=0#p33227
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Gathering at PAX East 2012?
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-10 09:19:43

There are no IF events planned at PAX East this year. (After the previous two years, in which the same set of people shouldered the bulk of the organisation, I think they deserve a break; and there's been a general feeling that PAX isn't the greatest match for the IF crowd anyway.)

If you're in Boston anyway, there's always [url]http://pr-if.org/[/url] meetups.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4604&start=0#p33228
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: more Reindeer Gaems (than just rps) - 2-obj VERB rule ne
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-10 09:36:37

--and in the end I'm having the same problem with this I had with THINK:  I can't adjust scope.


[code]DefineTIAction(playGaem) 
    objInScope(obj) { return true } ;
;
[/code]

Returns "You don't see that here."

Nor does

[code]DefineTIAction(playGaem) 
        return ( ( obj.ofKind(GaemThing) )  && obj == gDobj )
                || ( obj.ofKind(Actor) )) && obj == gIobj ) ) ;
;        
[/code]

, which tries to put game objects in scope if they're the dobj, and actors if they're the iobj.  Actors would need to be further specified to be in sensory range, but I'm not even able to get these objects in scope anywhere...

(Maybe I should build them into the Actor class?)


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=10#p33229
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-10 10:07:51

All the verbs for the fundamental relations are defined at the beginning of Part 1 of Standard Rules (Section SR1/0) (together with some adjectives defined in terms of these verbs).
But it seems the fundamental relations themselves (including visibility) are inaccessible through I7 and I6, defined as they are in C at the very level of the I7 compiler itself. (I don't think the source code of that part of the compiler is even published yet.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4594&start=10#p33230
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Refreshing the Status Line and When the Player Consents
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-03-10 10:24:48

[quote="zarf"]I like to keep the auto.inf (generated I6 code) of whatever game I compile last. Makes it easier to answer these low-level questions. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
That's a good idea. I keep auto.inf open in TextWrangler when I'm debugging, but otherwise not. Wouldn't have helped yesterday, though--I was on a virgin computer, by which I mean it had no Inform stuff at all on it!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4608&start=0#p33231
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Why only nine characters for reading input?
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2012-03-10 10:43:15

I was introducing someone to Inform and we were going through the manual a bit. He noticed something I glossed over. The manual says:

"A small limitation here is that probably only the first 9 letters of each word are read from the player's command."

The "probably" is a little odd. Either this is the case or it is not, isn't it? My friend overlooked that being as he doesn't have the preciseness of a programmer, but he didn't overlook trying it out and he felt it was not a "small limitation."

He did this:

[code]The Cobble Crawl is a room.
A superhero is here.
A superheroine is here.[/code]

This displays as:

You can also see two  here.

Notice that blank space in the output? Also if we type in "take superheroine" the superhero is in fact what gets taken. That certainly validates what the manual says. The question is why is this limitation on place? I hadn't really run into this because I actually wasn't coming up with too many names that were similiar enough in nine character incarnations such that the above conflict would happen.

So I guess I'm giving a "new person experience" report here, for what it's worth. My friend got a bit discouraged until I showed him that it might not be a problem given how you name things. As a programmer, saying the system will "probably" act a certain way is just bad. Even if this nine character limit can be overridden, this would be a good point to say it. (The manual part I'm quoting is from 3.1.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4606&start=0#p33232
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: counting the number of objects inside a container
User: MSwift / DateTime: 2012-03-10 10:59:28

That was actually the very first thing I tried. It gives me this error:

[code]Problem. In the sentence 'Now the player's Standard Strength is S'  , I was expecting to read a condition, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'player's Standard Strength is S'.

I was trying to match this phrase:

now (player's standard strength is s - a condition) 

This was what I found out:

player's Standard Strength is S = something unrecognised
[/code]

... Which now that I'm looking at it again, is actually complaining about a [b]different[/b] section of code.
... I broke my code trying to fix it... >.<

Thank you for the help, VictorGijsbers. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=50#p33233
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-10 11:00:55

[quote="maga"]man-knickers composed of rectangular canvas.[/quote]
Well, cover them in oil paint, and probably some people in the oil painting crowd would start to argue that they have a rightful place in their gallery - just as is happening with CYOA here.  Art kind borders are fluid, so my idea was to try to find a way to accept that fluidity without accepting just anything.  The further from the core (or the Wittgensteinian main usages), the harder to get points.  But I am sure if I dipped a dead rat in oil paint and threw it at a genuine painter's canvas, whereas Rembrandt decorated a men's slip, he would stand a better chance of winning an oil painting award than I would.  And rightly so.  Probably if I decorated a canvas and he threw a rat at a slip he would [i]still[/i] win..

Of course the idea of what is the core may and will change over time, and so will the categories.  Maybe at some point someone will get a Ph.D. by analysing their development through time as an indication of changes in the meaning of IF.  Devising and discussing the categories may teach us something about IF.  Most art forms have developed an associated vocabulary - the bouquet of wine, the flashback in narrative arts..  IF could, I think, profit from some development in this repect. 

[quote="maga"]Pretty much everything we value in IF exists in various other forms[/quote]
That is true - I think it is the combination that might make this work.  Having and colour usage and 2D-spatial composition and brush technique and representation and ... - would build a fuzzy boundary around painting.  Abstract painting may get few or no points for representation but otherwise be "in"; atonal music would be virtually "out".  And at all times it would stimulate discussion of what it means to be an oil painting.

[quote="maga"]I have the general feeling that the point of the XYZZYs should be a positive one: "here is what we value" rather than a negative "here is how we're distinct from other media."[/quote]
I think it would be positive.  When a wine critic discusses bouquet, it that negative?  So no "avoidance of pictures", but "Text quality (consistency, naturalness, evocativeness, ..)" - DOOM with a high-quality literary running commentary might get points, and why not?  It is a case of trying to designate (is that the word?) what it is we love about good IF as opposed to good art in general.  And a boundary work, say CYOA, could still win awards if it compensated its lacks in some areas with virtues in others - and to me that would be fine.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4604&start=0#p33235
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: more Reindeer Gaems (than just rps) - 2-obj VERB rule ne
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-10 11:17:50

The code below works. Perhaps you could start with it and refine it.

[code]boudoir: Room 'The Boudoir'
    "Wow, look at that red plush wallpaper! You can go north. "
    north = porch
;

+ me: Actor
;

porch: Room 'The Porch'
    "Ah, the spacious porch! You can go south. "
    south = boudoir
;

+ bob: Person 'bob/guy/man' 'Bob'
    "He looks quite intelligent. "
    isHim = true
    isProperName = true
    iobjFor(PlayWith) {
        verify() {}
        check() {}
        action() {
            "\"Okay, dude. Ready when you are. Got the board with you?\"" ;
        }
    }
;

boardGame: Thing 'checkers/chess/monopoly/go/game' 'board game'
    dobjFor(PlayWith) {
        verify() {}
        check() {}
    }
;

DefineTIAction(PlayWith)
    objInScope(obj) { return true; }
;
VerbRule(PlayWith)
    'play' singleDobj 'with' singleIobj
    : PlayWithAction
    verbPhrase = 'play/playing (what) (with what)'
;
[/code]

Note that the boardGame object is not anywhere in the game world; it's placed in scope by objInScope. (Bob, however, isn't. You have to be in the room with him to play a game.)

You can test it with 'play chess with bob / n / play chess with bob'.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4607&start=0#p33236
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Gathering at PAX East 2012?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-10 11:25:37

The Purple Blurb symposium (hosted by Nick Montfort's group at MIT) is having an "Open Mouse / Open Mic" event the day after PAX:

Monday, April 9; 5:30 pm; MIT room 6-120

"Please join us for an open mic featuring  D1G1T4L WR1T1NG for a variety of platforms, from immersive projections by Ari Kalinowski to generative fiction for the iPad by Alexandra Chasin... Bring video art, interactive fiction, SMS poems, hypertext fiction and poetry, text generators, and any form of electronic literature you’ve got up your sleeve! This event is co-sponsored by the Electronic Literature Organization."

(Original post: <a class="postlink" href="http://nickm.com/post/2012/03/purple-blurb-is-shaped-like-canada/">http://nickm.com/post/2012/03/purple-bl ... ke-canada/</a> )

That will be a good place for IF fans to meet up; we can have dinner afterwards. I intend to bring something (not necessarily IF) to present for the event.

As for PR-IF, we have not yet scheduled our April meeting. It's likely to be later in the month, though.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4606&start=0#p33237
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: counting the number of objects inside a container
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-10 11:38:18

[quote="MSwift"]That was actually the very first thing I tried. It gives me this error:

[code]Problem. In the sentence 'Now the player's Standard Strength is S'  , I was expecting to read a condition, but instead found some text that I couldn't understand - 'player's Standard Strength is S'.

I was trying to match this phrase:

now (player's standard strength is s - a condition) 

This was what I found out:

player's Standard Strength is S = something unrecognised
[/code]

... Which now that I'm looking at it again, is actually complaining about a [b]different[/b] section of code.
... I broke my code trying to fix it... >.<

Thank you for the help, VictorGijsbers. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Does it help if you change "player's Standard Strength" to "Standard Strength of the player"? Like Victor, I'm just guessing.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=10#p33238
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-10 11:39:12

[quote]But it seems the fundamental relations themselves (including visibility) are inaccessible through I7 and I6, defined as they are in C at the very level of the I7 compiler itself.[/quote]

The code that implements most of them is I6 code. E.g. there's a SupporterOf() function, a ContainerOf() function, and so on. The visibility relation is the TestVisibility() function. But it's true that these function calls are generated directly by the I7 compiler. You could override the function *definitions*, but not the calls.

(And some relation expressions are simple property lookups rather than function calls. E.g. incorporation is "X == Y.component_parent".)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=10#p33239
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-10 11:42:03

[quote="Felix"]But it seems the fundamental relations themselves (including visibility) are inaccessible through I7 and I6, defined as they are in C at the very level of the I7 compiler itself. (I don't think the source code of that part of the compiler is even published yet.)[/quote]
Yet? After five years of development?

You would never have this problem in TADS. This underlines my basic view of the difference between I7 and T3, which is that it's easier to do basic, garden-variety stuff in I7 than in T3 -- but when you start wanting to do complex, not-so-basic stuff, it's easier in T3 than in I7.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4604&start=0#p33240
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: more Reindeer Gaems (than just rps) - 2-obj VERB rule ne
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-10 11:49:34

Sweet -- Thank you, Jim!


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4608&start=0#p33241
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why only nine characters for reading input?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-10 11:50:05

The Z-machine architecture is hard-wired to nine characters. In Glulx, it defaults to nine, but you can change it:

Use DICT_WORD_SIZE of 11.

I imagine the manual glosses over this because it's a bit much to explain so early.

As for "You can also see two here," that's a bug -- you should report it. It arises if you manually create two things with exactly the same dictionary words referring to them, but no shared kind other than "thing". (You normally wouldn't do this, of course. If both objects are people, the game correctly says "You can see two people here." If you give either of them an additional synonym, it lists them separately.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4609&start=0#p33242
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: (driving me nuts) Talking to invisible people???
User: Phrog / DateTime: 2012-03-10 12:10:03

So I'm wondering how to get a player to still be able to communicate in the dark. I thought It would be a simple matter, but it's not.
Here's what I have:

[code]
Asking someone about something is speech. 
Telling someone about something is speech. 
Answering someone that something is speech. 
Asking someone for something is speech.

Visibility rule when in darkness:
	if speech:
		there is sufficient light;
	there is insufficient light.
[/code]

It still doesn't let me speak to a noun unless the that noun is visible. 

I mean, I would even be willing to make that noun visible in the dark if I knew how to do that. Any ideas?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4608&start=0#p33243
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why only nine characters for reading input?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-10 12:15:27

I should add: there are a couple of other ways of working around the dict size limit, which work on both Z-machine and Glulx.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=10#p33244
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: David J Prokopetz / DateTime: 2012-03-10 12:42:17

[quote="Felix"]All the verbs for the fundamental relations are defined at the beginning of Part 1 of Standard Rules (Section SR1/0) (together with some adjectives defined in terms of these verbs).
But it seems the fundamental relations themselves (including visibility) are inaccessible through I7 and I6, defined as they are in C at the very level of the I7 compiler itself. (I don't think the source code of that part of the compiler is even published yet.)[/quote]

Ah, well. Is there any documentation regarding what criteria the visibility relation uses? At the moment, my mechanism is "if the room is visually adjacent to the actor's location and the room is not dark, place it in scope" - is that overlooking anything?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4586&start=0#p33245
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Couple of questions about how to use the language.
User: inform7newbie / DateTime: 2012-03-10 12:45:34

Hm, I tried hitting install and then adding the code, but it's not reading. I keep getting this response:

You wrote 'Include Conversation Framework by Eric Eve'  : but I can't find that extension, which seems not to be installed.

I've tried every variation on Conversation Framework + Conversation Responses, but I keep getting the same error. It's also read by the program as I can go to the add extension part and it will bring up Conversation Responses, but it's still not reading. Is there anything really dumb I'm not doing (copy pasting the whole code in, maybe)?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4610&start=0#p33247
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Rule for printing the name at the beginning of the game...
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2012-03-10 13:22:34

I'm trying to insert some text before the first prompt.

This object is in the initial location and I've tried to attach my text to replacing the name printing rule. (I've tried many different ways of doing this, to no avail).

This is the closest, but I still get an extra " here."

How can I get rid of the " here."?

David C.

Abbot's Quarters
If I thought Abbots lived in luxury, then I was dead wrong. Even my attic's cozier than this. The Abbot's got no furniture at all, except a desk and a cot, and no decoration except for a bust of St. Newton. None of the axle-mounted, bevelled mobiles I was expecting. There's barely even any sunlight: one thin window to catch the sunrise, opposite the door to the hallway back west.

I can see St. Newton is staring at the Abbot's unpolished Grandfather clock with a severe frown.

try EXAMINE ME or X ME.
 here.

>

Rule for printing the name of Gubbler's Grandfather clock:
	Print the Clock Name;
	if the tutorialstatus of the player is starting:
		say "[line break]";
		print the next tutorial command;
		now the tutorialstatus of the player is started.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4586&start=0#p33248
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Couple of questions about how to use the language.
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-10 13:24:16

Conversations Responses depends on Conversation Framework. So, you need to have both of them installed.
You only need to include Conversation Responses, though, since it automatically includes the extension it depends on.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4610&start=0#p33249
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rule for printing the name at the beginning of the game.
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-10 13:32:35

It's not very clear what your code is doing.

It looks like you have a message "I can see St. Newton is staring at the Abbot's unpolished Grandfather clock with a severe frown here." Or maybe that's an object "St. Newton is staring at the Abbot's unpolished Grandfather clock with a severe frown", and it gets rolled into an "I can see ... here" paragraph.

Either way, printing a paragraph *inside* that paragraph naturally cuts off its last word.

You should probably get away from the "printing the name" activity, and instead do "after looking", or some other part of the room-description sequence. "Before reading a command" might also be good.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=20#p33250
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-10 13:40:38

[quote="Jim Aikin"][quote="Felix"]But it seems the fundamental relations themselves (including visibility) are inaccessible through I7 and I6, defined as they are in C at the very level of the I7 compiler itself. (I don't think the source code of that part of the compiler is even published yet.)[/quote]
Yet? After five years of development?[/quote]
Now that sounds snotty.

Is TADS fully open source now? It seems to me that development of the I7 language goes slowly because it's a closed process. But I appreciate the unity of design that produces.

My sense is that there's no single viewport extension because it's not as important as some people seem to think it is. I7 is about solutions that fit the narrative, not simulations that fit an abstract world model.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=50#p33251
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-10 13:56:42

[quote="Biep"]I think it would be positive.  When a wine critic discusses bouquet, it that negative?  So no "avoidance of pictures", but "Text quality (consistency, naturalness, evocativeness, ..)" - DOOM with a high-quality literary running commentary might get points, and why not?  It is a case of trying to designate (is that the word?) what it is we love about good IF as opposed to good art in general.  And a boundary work, say CYOA, could still win awards if it compensated its lacks in some areas with virtues in others - and to me that would be fine.[/quote]

I agree with this concept in principal, though I disagree vehemently with the earlier, brainstormed concepts for the categories. But I think that's the point of the point ... were my [i]own [/i]idea of the "core values" listed, CYOA would be nowhere near the [i]boundary,[/i] but very near the [i]center,[/i] of what I consider the ideal in IF.

And I think it would probably graph [i]differently for everyone,[/i] which means any set of categories chosen (arbitrarily, or by committee, or by general vote or whatever) would ultimately fail to represent the community consensus on what "we" value in IF, because there is no such consensus (and in a real sense, [i]no such "we"[/i]), and there cannot be, and never will be. Not only will the core constantly move, it will never exist in a single place to begin with.

That said, I still agree with this concept in principal, since I think of all the inevitably-failing things proposed so far, it's the [i]least [/i]faily [emote]:)[/emote] And I think that's as good as it gets: least faily.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4610&start=0#p33252
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rule for printing the name at the beginning of the game.
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2012-03-10 13:57:57

This worked. I only spent a few hours on this....

[code]
Before reading a command:
	if the tutorialstatus of the player is starting:
		print the next tutorial command;
		now the tutorialstatus of the player is started.[/code]

Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=20#p33253
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-10 13:58:21

[quote="David J Prokopetz"]Visual contact relates a room (called A) to a room (called B) when there is viewport (called X) and ((A is the front side of X and B is the back side of X) or (B is the front side of X and A is the back side of X)).

Visual contact relates a room (called A) to a room (called B) when there is viewport (called X) and A is adjacent to X and B is adjacent to X.

Visual contact relates a room (called A) to a room (called B) when a viewport which is adjacent to A is adjacent to B.

The verb to be in visual contact with implies the visual contact relation.

The Gloomy Room is a room. The Bright Room is a room. The Metal Grille is a viewport. The Metal Grille is east of the Main Room and west of the Gloomy Room.[/code]
All three of these conditional definitions of the visual contact relation are accepted by the interpreter (well, not all at the same time, obviously), but only the first one - the gnarly-looking one that uses front side and back side - actually works as expected, i.e., by making the Gloomy Room adjacent to the Main Room.[/quote]
I would be highly suspicious of the first solution continuing to work as you'd expect. It would be great if there were a "such that" clause in I7, but to my knowledge, the phrase "there is a viewport (called X)" will pick any viewport at random and call it X. It's just a matter of luck whether or not X is the particular viewport that satisfies the following conditions.

The last syntax is probably closest to what you need, but there is some ambiguity (and bugginess) in how I7 interprets a string of phrases representing multiple relations. For anything complex like this, I like to create a multi-line "to decide whether" phrase, and then use that in the definition of the relation. 

I tried to work out a reasonable way to do it, but I'm running into weird errors. Here's as far as I got:
[code]A viewport is a kind of door.

Visual contact relates a room (called A) to a room (called B) when A can be viewed from B.

To decide whether (A - a room) can be viewed from (B - a room):
	say "testing whether [A] can be viewed from [B].";
	showme the list of viewports adjacent to A;
	showme the list of viewports adjacent to B;
	showme the list of rooms adjacent to the metal grille;
	Repeat with X running through viewports that are adjacent to A:
		showme X;
		if X is adjacent to B, yes;
	no.
	
The verb to be in visual contact with implies the visual contact relation.

The Gloomy Room is a room. The Bright Room is a room. The Metal Grille is a viewport. The Metal Grille is east of the Main Room and west of the Gloomy Room.

When play begins:
	showme whether or not the gloomy room can be viewed from the main room;
	showme whether or not the gloomy room is in visual contact with the main room;
	showme whether or not the metal grille is adjacent to the gloomy room;
	showme whether or not the metal grille is adjacent to the main room;[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4321&start=10#p33254
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Extensions for Debugging
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-03-10 14:00:17

After fiddling around with several installer-building packages, I decided that none of them really fit what I was trying to do and rolled my own.  There's now a cross-platform debugger-including utility in the latest (re-)release.  As usual, see [url]https://sourceforge.net/projects/i7grip/[/url].  The documentation has also been updated, as have several of the extensions—be sure to reinstall them.

(And if anyone knows a better way to work with Windows UAC from Java, I'd appreciate pointers; my feeble attempt is [url=http://i7grip.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/i7grip/installers/Installer.java?view=markup]here[/url].)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4609&start=0#p33255
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: (driving me nuts) Talking to invisible people???
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-10 14:01:59

The visibility rules only run for actions that are defined as requiring light. The reason speech doesn't work here is not that it is so defined but that objects in dark rooms are considered out of scope. Therefore what you need is an 'After deciding the scope of' rule (see Ch. 17:27).

I would have expected something like this to work:
[code]
After deciding the scope of the player while speech when in darkness:
	repeat with neighbour running through people in the location:
		place the neighbour in scope.[/code]
But apparently it doesn't …

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4609&start=0#p33256
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: (driving me nuts) Talking to invisible people???
User: climbingstars / DateTime: 2012-03-10 14:06:27

The problem here is that everything is taken out of scope when the player is in darkness. I know that in the Inform 6 code underneath Inform 7, darkness is actually a room in its own right so it could be because you're not actually in the room you think you're in.

You can fix this by adding this.

[code]

After deciding the scope of the player:
if in darkness begin;
repeat with item running through things enclosed by the location of the player begin;
place item in scope;
end repeat;
end if.

[/code]

You'll also find that "speech" is actually allowed by the basic visibility rules. Here's the code in action.

[code]

"Test"

After deciding the scope of the player:
if in darkness begin;
repeat with item running through things enclosed by the location of the player begin;
place item in scope;
end repeat;
end if.

The Testing Room is A Dark Room.

Mr Monkey is a person in the testing room.

Test me with "ask monkey about dark / tell monkey about dark / say hello to monkey / ask monkey for self".

[/code]

Hope this helps.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=20#p33257
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-10 14:08:06

[quote="David J Prokopetz"][quote="Felix"]All the verbs for the fundamental relations are defined at the beginning of Part 1 of Standard Rules (Section SR1/0) (together with some adjectives defined in terms of these verbs).
But it seems the fundamental relations themselves (including visibility) are inaccessible through I7 and I6, defined as they are in C at the very level of the I7 compiler itself. (I don't think the source code of that part of the compiler is even published yet.)[/quote]

Ah, well. Is there any documentation regarding what criteria the visibility relation uses? [/quote]
I was wrong fortunately. See zarf's post above. (Thanks zarf!)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4611&start=0#p33258
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Glulx: protecting a variable amount of data
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-03-10 14:12:15

In Glulx, what is the proper way to protect a variable amount of data from, say, @undo?  @protect lets me set the protected memory range, but I don't see a way to read it back.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4612&start=0#p33259
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Programmatically opening Inform projects on Windows or Linux
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-03-10 14:12:45

Is there a preferred way, on Windows or Linux, to open an Inform project programmatically?  Ordinarily I would use ``xdg-open'' and ``cmd /c start'', but of course they aren't bundle-aware, so they treat projects like directories.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4607&start=0#p33260
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Gathering at PAX East 2012?
User: gonexall / DateTime: 2012-03-10 14:19:24

Thanks for the replies.  This is disappointing.  One of the biggest attractions of PAX was the IF events that I noticed the last couple of years.  Unfortunately, I do not live in Boston, and need to be back at work on Monday.  The April 9 event sounds great.  If I had only known, I might have skipped at day at PAX and taken Monday off.  Thanks anyway.  What about more informal meetings at PAX with people who are enthusiastic about IF?  Does that go on at PAX and does anyone know how it would work?  This is my first year attending.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=20#p33261
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-10 14:37:30

I'm trying to figure out why "the metal grille is adjacent to the Main room" is true and yet the "list of viewports adjacent to the Main Room" is empty. Any ideas?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4611&start=0#p33262
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx: protecting a variable amount of data
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2012-03-10 14:47:43

There's some extensions which muck with undo.  Maybe they hide an answer?  Hypothetical Questions is one of them. Others have "undo" in their name...

I don't know, sorry.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4609&start=0#p33263
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: (driving me nuts) Talking to invisible people???
User: Phrog / DateTime: 2012-03-10 15:20:17

climbingstars, your solution works. The only problem is now is I need to get it do it without saying the person's name first. I think that should not be a problem.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=20#p33264
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-10 15:28:18

[quote="capmikee"][quote="Jim Aikin"][quote="Felix"]But it seems the fundamental relations themselves (including visibility) are inaccessible through I7 and I6, defined as they are in C at the very level of the I7 compiler itself. (I don't think the source code of that part of the compiler is even published yet.)[/quote]
Yet? After five years of development?[/quote]
Now that sounds snotty.

Is TADS fully open source now? It seems to me that development of the I7 language goes slowly because it's a closed process. But I appreciate the unity of design that produces.

My sense is that there's no single viewport extension because it's not as important as some people seem to think it is. I7 is about solutions that fit the narrative, not simulations that fit an abstract world model.[/quote]
Okay, I'll dial back the snottiness. To answer your question, though -- yes, TADS is open source. I just checked. You can download the C++ source code for the compiler and interpreter. Not sure about the Workbench source, as I don't see it on the downloads page.

I'm a little bemused (if I can say this without sounding snotty) that you feel Inform 7 has "unity of design." My impression is that the extensive usage of 3rd-party extensions, and Graham Nelson's evident preference for encouraging the development of same, produces exactly the opposite of "unity of design." But maybe you mean something different by that phrase than I do.

I agree with what I take to be your implied point, which is that it's often easier to fake the visibility of an important item in a nearby location using a distant-view-of object, rather than trying to implement full-on viewability of adjacent locations. In other words, only implement a distant view when it actually makes sense for the story. On the other hand, when you do it that way, you (the author) bear full responsibility for keeping the actual game object and the distant-view-of object in sync. This can get rather messy. The advantage of a full simulation designed on the basis of an abstract world model is that, once you've set it up, you don't need to worry about it. If you want Bob (who is on the lawn) to be viewable and perhaps conversable with while the player is on the porch, when Bob wanders away an abstract simulation model will see to it that he's no longer visible from the porch. When Bob picks up the Uzi, the abstract simulation model will automatically report, "Bob is carrying an Uzi."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4609&start=0#p33265
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: (driving me nuts) Talking to invisible people???
User: climbingstars / DateTime: 2012-03-10 15:30:44

I think adding this should work.

[code]
Understand "unknown person" as Mr Monkey when in darkness.
[/code]

Then "say hello to unknown person" will work, but only when the player is in the dark. Removing "when in darkness" will allow it to work in the light as well.

Hope this helps.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=20#p33266
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: David J Prokopetz / DateTime: 2012-03-10 15:45:36

For my part, I want the abstract simulation model because I'm writing a game that involves stuff like rooms separated by soundproof glass walls, crawling around in ductwork and spying on people through the vents, security camera feeds, and so forth. It'd be a huge pain to special-case every instance.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4586&start=0#p33267
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Couple of questions about how to use the language.
User: inform7newbie / DateTime: 2012-03-10 16:06:55

Thanks guys! It's all coming together now, I feel like this might be doable [emote]:)[/emote].

Is there a relatively painless way to reset a room after the player leaves it? Just like a simple when statement followed by a new description?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=20#p33268
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-10 16:16:17

Are we looking for the code to calculate visibility in order to test what would be visible in the next room? It seems to me that the simplest way to do that might be along the lines of example 81 in the documentation ("Unblinking"): create a dummy object and, when you need to check for what's visible in the next room, move the object to the room and check what it can see. As the documentation for "Unblinking" points out, you'd need to do something special for backgrounds somehow, but it'd probably be easier than trying to recreate the visibility code by hand.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4609&start=0#p33269
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: (driving me nuts) Talking to invisible people???
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-10 16:27:24

A problem with the proposed solution is that probably places too much in scope: not only persons, but things in general; not only things that would be visible if the room were lighted, but also things inside closed, opaque container; and not only for the speech actions, but for actions in general.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4609&start=0#p33270
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: (driving me nuts) Talking to invisible people???
User: Phrog / DateTime: 2012-03-10 16:31:14

couldn't i fix that by replacing things with persons?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4609&start=0#p33271
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: (driving me nuts) Talking to invisible people???
User: Phrog / DateTime: 2012-03-10 16:33:27

[code]
After deciding the scope of the player:
	if in darkness begin;
	repeat with item running through PERSONS enclosed by the location of the player begin;
	place item in scope;
	end repeat;
	end if.
[/code]

that would fix the problem i believe

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=50#p33272
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-10 17:18:14

[quote="Ghalev"]And I think it would probably graph [i]differently for everyone,[/i] which means any set of categories chosen (arbitrarily, or by committee, or by general vote or whatever) would ultimately fail to represent the community consensus on what "we" value in IF, because there is no such consensus (and in a real sense, [i]no such "we"[/i]), and there cannot be, and never will be. Not only will the core constantly move, it will never exist in a single place to begin with.[/quote]
I don't think this is quite true; if we didn't have a relatively coherent, largely overlapping set of ideas about What Good IF Is, we wouldn't have even the weird, many-headed community we have now; it'd be impossible to have Awards because nobody would see a point in voting for them. (The unadorned list of XYZZY Awards as it stands makes a pretty good manifesto for Stuff the Community Values, even if there are people who hate puzzles or don't really care about prose.) But I think that trying to nail down what that is in a brief, clear and more-specific manner is unlikely to be possible. And if we managed it and changed the categories to reflect that, people would ignore it anyway (in the same way that half the voters routinely ignored the fine print about what Best Use of Medium was [i]intended[/i] to mean.) And it would probably look very silly five or ten years down the line.

[quote="Ghalev"]were my [i]own [/i]idea of the "core values" listed, CYOA would be nowhere near the [i]boundary,[/i] but very near the [i]center,[/i] of what I consider the ideal in IF.[/quote]
At the moment, this makes you outer-quartile. Also outer-quartile: the people who really don't like CYOA even a little bit and think it should never be eligible for any IF contest. Obviously I don't think that the XYZZYs should make a structural commitment to either position. But we've drifted back to the 'what do we do about CYOA' conversation again, which I think is mostly a distraction.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4586&start=0#p33273
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Couple of questions about how to use the language.
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-03-10 17:23:26

You can do this:
[code]After going a direction from the hallway:
	[your reset stuff goes here, such as "now the ball is on the table"];
	continue the action.[/code]

There are almost certainly ways to be more systemic about the resetting stuff, such as defining "home" locations/states for things.  But if you have just a few things to reset, it is probably faster just to do it by hand.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4609&start=0#p33274
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: (driving me nuts) Talking to invisible people???
User: climbingstars / DateTime: 2012-03-10 17:32:34

[quote="Phrog"]
[code]
After deciding the scope of the player:
	if in darkness begin;
	repeat with item running through PERSONS enclosed by the location of the player begin;
	place item in scope;
	end repeat;
	end if.
[/code]
that would fix the problem i believe
[/quote]

That does work, however you can say "people" rather than "persons" as inform understand it as the plural form.

[quote="Felix"]A problem with the proposed solution is that probably places too much in scope: not only persons, but things in general; not only things that would be visible if the room were lighted, but also things inside closed, opaque container; and not only for the speech actions, but for actions in general.[/quote]

True, however I would probably use this variation.

[code]
After deciding the scope of the player:
if in darkness begin;
repeat with item running through things enclosed by the location of the player begin;
if the item is not in a closed container, place item in scope;
end repeat;
end if.
[/code]

This way items on supporters can be interacted with as well as various other items in the room.

However, if this is only needed for communicating with NPCs, then "running through people" is sufficient.

Hope this helps.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=50#p33275
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-10 18:07:06

[quote="maga"]Stuff the Community Values[/quote]

The first time through I thought the verb was "Stuff" and the noun was "Values."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=50#p33276
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-10 18:18:14

[quote="matt w"][quote="maga"]Stuff the Community Values[/quote]

The first time through I thought the verb was "Stuff" and the noun was "Values."[/quote]
I'd like to thank my parents, Ayn Rand and God.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=20#p33277
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: David J Prokopetz / DateTime: 2012-03-10 18:24:04

[quote="capmikee"]I'm trying to figure out why "the metal grille is adjacent to the Main room" is true and yet the "list of viewports adjacent to the Main Room" is empty. Any ideas?[/quote]
The adjacency rules for doors seem to behave very unpredictably in any case other than asking whether a specific, named door is adjacent to a specific, named room. I think I have a workaround, though:

[code]section 0 - rules

Liminality relates a door (called A) to a room (called B) when B is the front side of A or B is the back side of A. The verb to be a threshold of implies the liminality relation.

A viewport is a kind of door.

Visual contact relates a room (called A) to a room (called B) when A can be viewed from B. The verb to be in visual contact with implies the visual contact relation.

To decide whether (A - a room) can be viewed from (B  - a room):
	if A is B:
		decide no;
	repeat with X running through viewports that are a threshold of A:
		if X is a threshold of B:
			decide yes;
	decide no;

section 1 - testing

The Main Room is a room. The Bright Room is a room. The Gloomy Room is a room.

The metal grille is an unopenable scenery viewport. It is east of the Main Room and west of the Gloomy Room. The thick glass is an unopenable scenery  viewport. It is west of the Main Room and east of the Bright Room. The door to nowhere is an openable scenery viewport. It is north of the Main Room.

The player is in the main room.

When play begins:
	showme list of viewports that are a threshold of the Main Room;
	showme list of viewports that are a threshold of the Bright Room;
	showme list of viewports that are a threshold of the Gloomy Room;	
	showme list of rooms that are in visual contact with the Main Room;
	showme list of rooms that are in visual contact with the Bright Room;
	showme list of rooms that are in visual contact with the Gloomy Room;[/code]
The front side and back side properties appear to be much more reliable. There's actually an example in the manual that does things this way (the liminality relation is lifted directly from the text), but it doesn't explain [b]why[/b] the adjacency relation of the door is avoided, so I'd overlooked its significance at first.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4321&start=10#p33278
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Extensions for Debugging
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2012-03-10 18:25:32

(The install no workie on WinXP, but you knew that.)

Naming things:
I can never remember if its "verbose runtime error messages" or "verbose runtime problem messages" or "verbose runtime problem errors" or "verbose run-time problem messages" or "verbose run-time error messages" or....  

I realize it's mostly Inform's fault for the synonyms and is-there-a-hyphen-or-not, but usually its this extension i reach for first when I have unexpected behavior. (From my program, I mean. When *I* have unexpected behavior I reach for a pillow and blanket.)

Also, the "kernel of" thing... can you swap the naming convention on the two?  Mainly, the kernel should have the author-given name, cause it's where the author-given code sits.  The shell around it is just for memory allocation purposes, so it should get the "allocate memory for.." bit prepended to the name. 


Is it too much to ask for the parameters passed to the author-created functions?  I'm trying to figure out [i]how on earth[/i] a hat got into my concept-processing machinery.

EDIT: or is that an option?  I notice that the documentation for VRPM actually does have a bit of actual documentation at the end:[code]To say the call stack for a verbose runtime problem message:
     say "[the call stack with original arguments and temporary named values and catch tokens]".
[/code]
what are the arguments here, and why aren't they in the extension's documentation?  Also, the "Usage" section should go 2nd, after Synopsis but before the credits roll. That's the section the author is usually looking for when first going to the extension's documentation.  "Requirements and Limitations" should likely be combined with "Regarding Bugs" since both sections are small. It reduces conceptual noise.

also, this bit: [code] Book "Detailed Call Stacks for Verbose Runtime Problem Messages" (in place of Book "The Call Stack Format" in Verbose Runtime Problem Messages by Brady Garvin)[/code]is unnecessary.  The version I put in my project occurs later in the source, so it overrides the extension's provided default say-phrase.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=50#p33279
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-10 18:43:35

[quote="maga"][quote="matt w"][quote="maga"]Stuff the Community Values[/quote]

The first time through I thought the verb was "Stuff" and the noun was "Values."[/quote]
I'd like to thank my parents, Ayn Rand and God.[/quote]

I just was testing something where I wanted something proper-named on a supporter so I wrote "On the table are a glass, some utensils, and War and Peace." Then I was banging my head against the wall as to why the output kept saying "a table (on which are a glass, some utensils, War and Peace)." 

The first line of my source is now "Use American dialect and the [motherfucking] serial comma.".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4594&start=10#p33280
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Refreshing the Status Line and When the Player Consents
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-10 18:57:11

[quote="zarf"]I'm on a Mac. Yes, the directory gets wiped and rewritten every time. (Although not because there aren't file paths underneath -- there are.)

Emacs (by default) doesn't care if the file changes out from under the buffer, unless you try to edit the buffer. If I'm recompiling *and* looking at the I6 source, I have to re-read the file after each compile. But that's not typically what I'm doing.[/quote]
MacVim is usually smart about files being changed, and will ask you if you want to reload whenever it does. I just checked and it had no problem with auto.inf while recompiling. I think the problem I had before was trying to set vi's working directory to "project.inform/Build". It didn't like that!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4548&start=10#p33281
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: a variety of games & interactions...
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-10 19:08:05

Roughly:

During combat, certain commands are available. "Concentrate" will increase your level of concentration, up to a maximum of 3. With each higher level, your chance of hitting your opponent will be better, and the amount of damage you do will be greater. "Attack" is pretty much what it sounds like. You have a random chance of hitting your opponent and a random amount of damage, but both "dice rolls" have modifiers based on concentration, character stats and abilities, weapons, and "tension." Tension is a number that goes up every turn that nobody hits anyone, giving an additional advantage to anyone who attacks after waiting.

The key factor is that if someone hits you and does damage, you lose all your concentration and the tension resets to 0. So there's a waiting game similar to Prisoner's Dilemma.

There are also special abilities (some activated by commands) that affect chances of hitting, damage, and pretty much anything else you can imagine happening.

There's also a special "react" turn given to anyone who is being attacked. They have a choice to either dodge, parry, or do another non-attack action, including some provided by special abilities. The relative success of dodging and parrying usually depends on the weapons of both the attacker and the defender.

So... it can be quite complex (and I didn't even get to the way initiative grants extra turns to some characters), but the basic mechanic could be used for all sorts of situations.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4611&start=0#p33282
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx: protecting a variable amount of data
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-10 19:09:25

By "read it back", you mean discover how much memory was saved? You'd have to store a data structure that declares its own length somehow. Say, an array of values whose first value is the length of the array.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4321&start=10#p33283
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Extensions for Debugging
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2012-03-10 19:11:45

this seems broken:[code]within the kernel of "circumventing" (at address 294452)
    (the original arguments were
        <temporary named value 0> = <unknown kind>: 0,
        <temporary named value 1> = <unknown kind>: 540302, and
        <temporary named value 2> = <unknown kind>: 492718),
within circumventing (at address 293870)
    (the original arguments were
        <temporary named value 0> = <unknown kind>: 540302 and
        <temporary named value 1> = <unknown kind>: 492718),[/code]

for [code]To (actor - a person) could try (suggestion - a stored action) (this is circumventing):[/code]

It doesn't know what a Person is? full test:[code]"test4" by Ron Newcomb

Include verbose runtime problem messages by brady garvin.

To say the call stack for a verbose runtime problem message:
	say "[the call stack with original arguments]".

To (actor - a person) could try (suggestion - a stored action) (this is circumventing): say the matching key of the actor.

when play begins, the hat could try the action of waiting.
 a hat is a thing.

there is room.
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=20#p33285
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-10 20:21:20

[quote="Jim Aikin"]I'm a little bemused (if I can say this without sounding snotty) that you feel Inform 7 has "unity of design." My impression is that the extensive usage of 3rd-party extensions, and Graham Nelson's evident preference for encouraging the development of same, produces exactly the opposite of "unity of design." But maybe you mean something different by that phrase than I do.[/quote]
Point taken!  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4608&start=0#p33286
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Why only nine characters for reading input?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-03-10 20:28:25

The "probably" may refer to the fact that although there is the hard 9 Z-character limit, some characters from other alphabets may take up more than one Z-character, giving you less than 9 real characters. (A Z-character has only 5 bits.)

As usual, Glulx removes most of the limits.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4613&start=0#p33287
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Android Terps - Request for Standard?
User: Jeff Zeitlin / DateTime: 2012-03-10 20:33:41

Can anyone give me pointers to getting in touch with the authors of Twisty, Hunky Punk, and ZMPP? I'd like to suggest to all of them that they standardize on where they look for IF games, so that I don't end up with three copies of a game if I have all three terps.

If they read here, I'd propose that there be a single standard directory that they all look in, perhaps called 'Interactive Fiction', plus one directory that's named after the terp (e.g., 'Twisty' or 'Twisty Games'), for those games that only that terp can read.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=50#p33288
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-10 20:35:22

[quote="maga"][...] if we didn't have a relatively coherent, largely overlapping set of ideas about What Good IF Is, we wouldn't have even the weird, many-headed community we have now; it'd be impossible to have Awards because nobody would see a point in voting for them. [/quote]

I think [i]belief [/i]serves just as well as [i]fact,[/i] in such cases.

[quote]At the moment, this makes you outer-quartile.[/quote]

There's one, now [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4613&start=0#p33289
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Android Terps - Request for Standard?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-10 20:38:33

[quote="Jeff Zeitlin"]Can anyone give me pointers to getting in touch with the authors of Twisty, Hunky Punk, and ZMPP? I'd like to suggest to all of them that they standardize on where they look for IF games, so that I don't end up with three copies of a game if I have all three terps.[/quote]

Is ZMPP the same as JFrotz, or are there four? (or more?)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4606&start=0#p33290
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: counting the number of objects inside a container
User: MSwift / DateTime: 2012-03-10 20:41:27

It works now! Here's how my code ended up:

[code]To check for completion:
	Let S be the number of attribute points in Strength;
	Let A be the number of attribute points in Agility;
	Let I be the number of attribute points in Intelligence;
	Let T be S plus A plus I;
	If T is 30:
		Now the Standard Strength of the player is S;
		Now the Current Strength of the player is S;
		Now the Standard Agility of the player is A;
		Now the Current Agility of the player is A;
		Now the Standard Intelligence of the player is I;
		Now the Current Intelligence of the player is I;
		say "A great bell rings out overhead.";
	If T is not 30:
		Say "You haven't distributed all your ability points yet!".[/code]

Thanks for the help! [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=60#p33291
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-10 20:44:56

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="maga"][...] if we didn't have a relatively coherent, largely overlapping set of ideas about What Good IF Is, we wouldn't have even the weird, many-headed community we have now; it'd be impossible to have Awards because nobody would see a point in voting for them. [/quote]

I think [i]belief [/i]serves just as well as [i]fact,[/i] in such cases.[/quote]
Then my job, as a scion of the Institution, is the care and feeding of that delicate illusion. No?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4613&start=0#p33292
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Android Terps - Request for Standard?
User: Jeff Zeitlin / DateTime: 2012-03-10 20:47:06

[quote="Ghalev"]Is ZMPP the same as JFrotz, or are there four? (or more?)[/quote]

There are at least four, or more. I didn't know about JFrotz until you mentioned it here.

Please consider my request amended to include JFrotz.  And any other as-yet-undiscovered terps out there. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=60#p33293
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-10 21:24:27

[quote="maga"]Then my job, as a scion of the Institution, is the care and feeding of that delicate illusion. No?[/quote]

I certainly have no objection to that interpretation [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4613&start=0#p33294
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Android Terps - Request for Standard?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-10 21:26:06

[quote="Jeff Zeitlin"][quote="Ghalev"]Is ZMPP the same as JFrotz, or are there four? (or more?)[/quote]

There are at least four, or more. I didn't know about JFrotz until you mentioned it here.

Please consider my request amended to include JFrotz.  And any other as-yet-undiscovered terps out there. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Right [emote]:)[/emote] And now I know about ZMPP! This works out since my desktop has icons in rows of four ... I now have an IF row [emote]:)[/emote]

In terms of "standards," I just wish they all left it to the user to swap out from their preferred default. If each app wants its own "IF Folder" thingy, that's fine ... but lemme [i]change [/i]it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4613&start=0#p33295
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Android Terps - Request for Standard?
User: Jeff Zeitlin / DateTime: 2012-03-10 21:29:42

[quote="Ghalev"]In terms of "standards," I just wish they all left it to the user to swap out from their preferred default. If each app wants its own "IF Folder" thingy, that's fine ... but lemme [i]change [/i]it.[/quote]

This would be satisfactory as well, provided that if I [i]do[/i] change it, the terp [i]remembers[/i] the change (i.e., I don't have to re-change it every time I run a new session of the terp).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4613&start=0#p33296
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Android Terps - Request for Standard?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-10 21:32:01

[quote="Jeff Zeitlin"][quote="Ghalev"]In terms of "standards," I just wish they all left it to the user to swap out from their preferred default. If each app wants its own "IF Folder" thingy, that's fine ... but lemme [i]change [/i]it.[/quote]

This would be satisfactory as well, provided that if I [i]do[/i] change it, the terp [i]remembers[/i] the change (i.e., I don't have to re-change it every time I run a new session of the terp).[/quote]

Yeah, absolutely; the ability to alter the default and have it stick. And that way, none of them would have to rejigger their current defaults at all; the user could just choose which one he wants to point them each toward.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4613&start=0#p33298
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Android Terps - Request for Standard?
User: weiju / DateTime: 2012-03-10 22:39:05

[quote="Jeff Zeitlin"]Can anyone give me pointers to getting in touch with the authors of Twisty, Hunky Punk, and ZMPP? I'd like to suggest to all of them that they standardize on where they look for IF games, so that I don't end up with three copies of a game if I have all three terps.

If they read here, I'd propose that there be a single standard directory that they all look in, perhaps called 'Interactive Fiction', plus one directory that's named after the terp (e.g., 'Twisty' or 'Twisty Games'), for those games that only that terp can read.[/quote]

Hi, thanks for your feedback ! As I understand, all currently available Android interpreters should at least support 3,5 and 8 and all but one should understand 1, 2, 4 and 7 as well. I find JFrotz very interesting, since it is based on the original Frotz, but converted to Java bytecode and rendering to a custom-rendered terminal emulation.
You have a point there when you say that you'd like to have a shared IF story directory. I had thought about such a feature very early on, but wanted to store the stories close to the save games (another thing that I could imagine people would like to share between interpreters, but that is trickier). I could probably provide the option to change the search directory for Z stories.

I am currently taking some time off from ZMPP after getting burnt out a bit trying to make Glulx interpretation perform better on Android (a frustrating task when there are 10's of millions of instructions per turn on certain Inform 7 stories), but I'll add that when I am able to smell it again [emote]:)[/emote]

Thanks,
Wei-ju

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4548&start=10#p33299
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: a variety of games & interactions...
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-10 22:47:32

That sounds pretty cool.  Thanks for describing it...  I'll probably have to play the game and look for pirateable ideas!

Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4613&start=0#p33300
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Android Terps - Request for Standard?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-03-10 22:57:38

I don't understand why the terps have their own folders at all. Can't they just use the folder/s I've set up?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4613&start=0#p33301
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Android Terps - Request for Standard?
User: weiju / DateTime: 2012-03-10 23:09:17

[quote="Dannii"]I don't understand why the terps have their own folders at all. Can't they just use the folder/s I've set up?[/quote]

Searching a large SD card can take very, very long, depending on the number of folders (and files) you have. If the interpreter has to scan all of them recursively at each startup, you'll probably prefer to exit the interpreter after a minute rather than letting it finish [emote]:)[/emote]
Setting it to one or a limited number of folders usually improves the initial scanning time dramatically.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4613&start=0#p33302
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Android Terps - Request for Standard?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-03-10 23:20:36

Then don't scan without the user initiating it. Show a list of previous files opened by the user, an option for the user to find the file, and then lastly an option to scan the whole SD card.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4613&start=10#p33303
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Android Terps - Request for Standard?
User: weiju / DateTime: 2012-03-10 23:52:08

[quote="Dannii"]Then don't scan without the user initiating it. Show a list of previous files opened by the user, an option for the user to find the file, and then lastly an option to scan the whole SD card.[/quote]

I honestly don't understand why a user would scatter his stories all over an SD card rather than having them in a folder (and eventually its subfolders). I usually store all my photos and music under a single folder hierarchy as well. It's probably more a matter of taste, but I prefer the automatic scan over navigating the file system on Android as I would on a desktop computer, I have a couple of apps where you have to do that and I don't really like it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4613&start=10#p33304
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Android Terps - Request for Standard?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-03-11 00:00:59

Then scan once, find folders where the user has placed stories, and only scan those folders after that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4113&start=10#p33305
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Whispers?
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-11 01:18:30

All right, I think this project is now finished, thanks in no small part to testing from a couple of the contributors. [url=http://novelinteraction.wordpress.com/2012/03/11/whispers-5-complete/]Here's the post[/url], with links to download the z-machine file and the I7 source.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=20#p33306
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: David J Prokopetz / DateTime: 2012-03-11 01:36:40

[quote="matt w"]Are we looking for the code to calculate visibility in order to test what would be visible in the next room? It seems to me that the simplest way to do that might be along the lines of example 81 in the documentation ("Unblinking"): create a dummy object and, when you need to check for what's visible in the next room, move the object to the room and check what it can see. As the documentation for "Unblinking" points out, you'd need to do something special for backgrounds somehow, but it'd probably be easier than trying to recreate the visibility code by hand.[/quote]
I gave this a shot, but it seems to create complications when you use it to decide what characters other than the player can see, particularly when there are many NPCs in a game. However, after some further testing, it may not be necessary after all. Simply placing a room in scope [b]seems[/b] to respect all of the obvious visibility cases; it doesn't place the contents of a closed, opaque container that happens to be in the room in scope, for example, nor does it place the concealed possessions of an NPC who is in the room in scope. Unless I run into a major edge case that isn't covered in this fashion, I'll leave it as-is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4572&start=10#p33307
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Advice on finding/overriding rules?
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-11 04:30:50

[quote="thecustodian"]Cheers all.  I'm still grinding away at my first game and running into the n00b blocks.

I have an container which I want the player to turn into another object by:
-opening
-inserting components

I'm going to handle this by having an 'after' rule for inserting into that container, and if the container contains the fully assembled list of components, I'm going to swap it for an instance of the final object (which is waiting off-stage).  I'm doing this b/c I couldn't figure out how to have an object change its referred-to-as name when assembly was finished, and I didn't want to give away the puzzle by letting the player refer to the original object via the finished object's name.[/quote]Incidentally, you can accomplish this with an "Understand ... as ... when" phrase. For example:

[code]There is room.

Blorb assembled is a truth state that varies.

A blorb is here. Understand "superblorb" as the blorb when blorb assembled is true.

Before jumping: now blorb assembled is true; continue the action.

Test me with "get superblorb / jump / get superblorb".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4460&start=20#p33308
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Table entries that result in a change or action?
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-11 05:53:22

[quote="thecustodian"]Wild guess - because it interprets 'up' as a direction (reserved word) rather than 'something'?

(not being sarcastic, it *is* a wild guess.)[/quote]
In fact, up is an "object", specifically a "direction", not a "thing". That's why it doesn't match [something] - because it's not a thing at all. Things are only what are manipulable and physically represented in the model world; directions are abstract concepts.

If you look at the Kind index, you'll see the four kinds of objects are things, rooms, directions, and regions. Each of these kinds is mutually exclusive with the others.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4521&start=0#p33309
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Andromeda Legacy™ /// A Competition (with prizes!)
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2012-03-11 07:42:29

It looks like the main thing this comp needs is to move the deadline further away. People need more notice.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4609&start=0#p33310
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: (driving me nuts) Talking to invisible people???
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-11 07:54:20

The main problem is that the rule puts people in scope for any action. It lets the player interact with others in a dark room in any old way, not only by speech – attacking, touching, and taking e.g. will all work as if the room was lighted.

However, it would seem that a rule such as 
[code]After deciding the scope of the player while speech when in darkness:
	repeat with neighbour running through people enclosed by the location:
		unless the neighbour is in a closed container, place the neighbour in scope.[/code]
does work after all. 
Only, the rule preamble doesn't allow conditions on the form
[code]After deciding the scope of the player while telling something about[/code]
Instead, you have to write just 
[code]After deciding the scope of the player while telling[/code]
So, if you add the following definitions
[code]Asking is speech.
Telling is speech.
Answering is speech.[/code]
then the rule above will compile and work nearly as intended. The remaining problem is that 'asking is speech' is interpreted only as "asking it for" and never as "asking it about".

Here's a workaround:
Define a new action for the "ASK X ABOUT Y" commands, define it as speech, and redirect it to the good old asking it about action.
[code]Querying it about is an action applying to one thing and one topic. [You have to create the action *before* you declare it speech.]
Understand "ask [something] about [text]" as querying it about.
Check querying it about: try asking the noun about the topic understood; stop the action.

Asking something about something is speech.
Telling something about something is speech.
Answering something that something is speech.
Asking something for something is speech.
Querying something about something is speech. [We can add this as well, while we're at it.]
Asking is speech.
Telling is speech.
Answering is speech.
Querying is speech.

After deciding the scope of the player while speech when in darkness:
	repeat with neighbour running through people enclosed by the location:
		unless the neighbour is in a closed container, place the neighbour in scope.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4521&start=0#p33311
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Andromeda Legacy™ /// A Competition (with prizes!)
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-11 08:06:54

[quote="severedhand"]It looks like the main thing this comp needs is to move the deadline further away. People need more notice.[/quote]
I'm about to do this asap as i come back tonight from vacation. Maybe a month or 2 more. If it doesn't get in the way of the ifcomp.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4113&start=10#p33312
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Whispers?
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-11 09:31:43

That's... very much like every other IF Whispers, but actually kind of hangs together. Kudos.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4113&start=10#p33313
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Whispers?
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-11 10:15:36

I quite like it but then I'm biased. I like that all the locations in the game are connected, though it does mean that the base has a pretty weird lay-out.

I suggest the subtitle of the game should be [b]Antarctica Rheumatica[/b].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4614&start=0#p33314
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Making the IDE hang with list management...
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-11 10:34:41

It took me a while to chase this down.

I'm trying to filter a list for two different criteria.  If by the second pass there is at least one element remaining, I want to return that element.  If not, I want to use the most recent list that has one element.

I think the problem is that you can't alter lists in runtime.  (Which I have a hard time thinking around and don't understand why this is disallowed...  Anyone up for a mass protest?)

The lists are of record objects.  So if you can hum along when it comes to a list element, this is how I'm trying to filter the list down:

[code]            local strats4thisgaem = p1.stratList.subset({rec: rec.gaem = desig});
            local strats4thisopp = strats4thisgaem.subset({rec: rec.oppon = p2.desig});

            //use most relevant non-nil case
            local strats4now = [];
            if (strats4thisopp != nil) strats4now = strats4thisopp;
            else if (strats4thisgaem != nil) strats4now = strats4thisgaem;
            else strats4now = ['randmove'];

            //randomly select strategy
            if (strats4now.length)
            local p1strat = prand.el(strats4now); //~~~
                else "no strats4now is empty";
[/code]

--strats4now is always empty.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4615&start=0#p33315
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Help with combat
User: versilies / DateTime: 2012-03-11 11:21:51

I want to make a combat system for this, i have seen how some people do it but i think i would have better luck if someone could give me an example of what needs to be typed and its resulting effect on the script. I am very new to Inform, but i have the basic concepts down fairly well. 

I kinda want it to be wear if someone is holding an item, say a sword, then they have higher attack, then this would result in a buff of their attack power, then by a random roll of the die, it would determine who would attack and who would get hit. something along those lines. If their is a better way i would like to hear about them as well, but keep in mind if they are very complex they are probably going to be to hard for me to successfully try and do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4583&start=0#p33316
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: 826CHI Clandestine Quest
User: edblair / DateTime: 2012-03-11 11:23:28

Thanks George!  

Just an update, we raised 300 dollars, and came in third place in the scavenger hunt!  A bunch of people asked us about our name, so we also spread the gospel about interactive fiction quite a bit.

All in all, I think it was an unqualified success.  Thanks again to anyone else who might have donated, it is really appreciated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4614&start=0#p33317
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making the IDE hang with list management...
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-03-11 12:01:15

You can alter lists at runtime, but it creates a new list when you do. You have to assign the result to something else - a local or a property - in order to use it. It looks like you've done that.

I suspect one of your first two lines, with the subset filter, is written in a way that none of the list elements match. This returns an empty list object, with length zero. Since it's a real object, though, you can't test by comparing it with nil. It will always be non-nil.

So your first if line always matches, and since your end result is always empty, it suggests the strats4thisopp filter is incorrect.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4615&start=0#p33318
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with combat
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2012-03-11 12:13:17

You could use my Inform ATTACK extension: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2925">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2925</a>

It is quite powerful but, because of that, also quite complicated. (Though the manual contains a long example that might be helpful.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4113&start=10#p33319
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Whispers?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-11 13:03:57

I noticed the [url=http://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A//dl.dropbox.com/u/19470868/IF%2520Whispers%25205%2520final.z8]Parchment[/url] link wasn't in the blog post -- any particular reason?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=60#p33320
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-11 13:14:15

[quote="Ghalev"]I agree with this concept in principal, though I disagree vehemently with the earlier, brainstormed concepts for the categories.[/quote]
All right.  So what would a first, brainstorm-fodder kind of category list from you look like?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4113&start=10#p33321
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Whispers?
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-11 13:16:51

[quote="matt w"]I noticed the [url=http://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A//dl.dropbox.com/u/19470868/IF%2520Whispers%25205%2520final.z8]Parchment[/url] link wasn't in the blog post -- any particular reason?[/quote]
No excuse -- Parchment just slipped my mind. Thanks!

I'm glad you guys like it, too. I think the rules decided on beforehand helped provide just enough structure to keep the story cohesive together as a whole.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4113&start=10#p33322
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF Whispers?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-11 13:19:14

Well, I hit a bug in Parchment, but I don't think it's Parchment's fault:

[spoiler]>x supplies
MREs, granola bars, a small propane stove and a bowl for making soup with melted snow. Nothing glamorous, and there's almost nothing left.

You hear what sounds like a scream, coming from somewhere 
*** Run-time problem P47 (at paragraph 1127 in the source text): Phrase applied to an incompatible kind of value.

.[/spoiler]

I had 31 points at the time, if that helps.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=30#p33323
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: David J Prokopetz / DateTime: 2012-03-11 13:25:58

Okay, silly question time: is there any way to explicitly pull something out of scope? I can see how to explicitly place something that would normally be out of scope in scope, but not vice versa.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=30#p33324
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-11 14:48:59

No. Scope is an iteration through a tree. You can add calls to the iteration (adding more branches to the tree) but there's no such concept as removing things. You'd have to modify the existing behavior at a given object to do less.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4616&start=0#p33325
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Error with Emily Short's Tutorial Mode
User: WillieBHines / DateTime: 2012-03-11 15:51:57

Might be the newer versions of Inform 7? Not sure. But I get this error when including Tutorial Mode:

---------
In Section 3 - The Instructional Rules in the extension Tutorial Mode by Emily Short:

Problem. In the line 'let N be "[way]"'  , I was expecting that 'way' would be something to 'say', but it didn't look like any form of 'say' that I know. So I tried to read 'way' as a value of some kind (because it's legal to say values), but couldn't make sense of it that way either.
-------
I tried added "way is a direction that varies" before that particular section, which lets me include the extension, but THEN the "compass direction" doesn't work.

Hello.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4024&start=10#p33326
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: New York-based IF group -- any interest?
User: WillieBHines / DateTime: 2012-03-11 15:58:06

I might be into this. It'd at least be nice to have emails of people writing games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4616&start=0#p33327
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error with Emily Short's Tutorial Mode
User: WillieBHines / DateTime: 2012-03-11 16:07:41

I'll be more verbose here if it helps:

The error happens in the "teach compass directions rule" on this line
let N be "[way]"

As if it doesn't know what "way" might be --- is that because "way" is defined inside an if statement (a few lines higher)

if a room (called goal) is adjacent:
		let way be the best route from the location to the goal;
		say "the chosen direction is: [way].";


here's the whole block:


An instructional rule (this is the teach compass directions rule):
	if the teach compass directions rule is listed in the completed instruction list, make no decision;	
	if a room (called goal) is adjacent:
		let way be the best route from the location to the goal;
	otherwise if the player can see an open door (called portal):
		let far side be the other side of the portal;
		let way be the best route from the location to the far side;
	otherwise:
		make no decision;
	let N be indexed text;
	let N be "[way]";
	say "[italic type]To move from place to place, you can use the compass directions (NORTH, SOUTH, EAST, WEST, as well as NORTHEAST, NORTHWEST, etc.) [paragraph break]From here, try [N in upper case].[roman type]";
	now the expected command is "[N]";
	now the held rule is the teach compass directions rule;
	rule succeeds.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4545&start=0#p33328
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Clod's Quest Demo (Undum port)
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2012-03-11 16:09:36

Changes:

1)  When the game is in mobile mode, it will display the information from the status window below the room description.

2)  Game won't scroll to the bottom after selecting / deselect an inventory item.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4321&start=10#p33329
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Extensions for Debugging
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-03-11 16:10:03

[quote="Ron Newcomb"](The install no workie on WinXP, but you knew that.)[/quote]Yeah, sorry.  I'd be happy to make it work, except that I don't see any way to avoid a post-build script when the OS doesn't grok symlinks.

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Naming things:
I can never remember if its "verbose runtime error messages" or "verbose runtime problem messages" or "verbose runtime problem errors" or "verbose run-time problem messages" or "verbose run-time error messages" or.... [/quote]Okay.  What would be a better name?

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Also, the "kernel of" thing... can you swap the naming convention on the two? Mainly, the kernel should have the author-given name, cause it's where the author-given code sits. The shell around it is just for memory allocation purposes, so it should get the "allocate memory for.." bit prepended to the name. [/quote]Hmm.  My main concern here is that ``the foo rule'' refers to the shell—not the kernel—when rules are treated as values, and I don't the want authors to have to remember that an unadorned rule name means one thing in some situations and something else in others.

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]...what are the arguments here, and why aren't they in the extension's documentation?[/quote]  They are documented in Call Stack Tracking, but I will repeat the explanation in Verbose Runtime Problem Messages since it also makes sense there.  On that note, I am seriously considering a redesign where the format is controlled by global flags, not phrase wording, on the grounds that one would want to change format globally far more often than locally.

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]Also, the "Usage" section should go 2nd, after Synopsis but before the credits roll. That's the section the author is usually looking for when first going to the extension's documentation. "Requirements and Limitations" should likely be combined with "Regarding Bugs" since both sections are small. It reduces conceptual noise.[/quote]Can do.

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]also, this bit:[code]Book "Detailed Call Stacks for Verbose Runtime Problem Messages" (in place of Book "The Call Stack Format" in Verbose Runtime Problem Messages by Brady Garvin)[/code]
is unnecessary. The version I put in my project occurs later in the source, so it overrides the extension's provided default say-phrase.[/quote]Sure.  I just wanted it to work if someone put it in before the inclusion.

[quote="Ron Newcomb"]It doesn't know what a Person is? full test:[code]"test4" by Ron Newcomb

Include verbose runtime problem messages by brady garvin.

To say the call stack for a verbose runtime problem message:
	say "[the call stack with original arguments]".

To (actor - a person) could try (suggestion - a stored action) (this is circumventing): say the matching key of the actor.

when play begins, the hat could try the action of waiting.
 a hat is a thing.

there is room.
[/code][/quote]The problem you show is actually a consequence of me not making the extensions' roles clear enough.  Verbose Runtime Problem Messages is responsible only for adding call stacks to the problem messages, so that you can use it without setting up symbolic links or running a batch file.  If you add Debug File Parsing to the mix, the arguments acquire names and kinds, and if you further add Printing according to Kind Names, it will know how to print things like people.

That said, when I run the test case, I get this:[code]within the I6 routine ArgumentTypeFailed (at address 184384)
    (the original arguments were
        file = <unknown kind>: 464625 / 0x716F1 and
        line = <unknown kind>: 20 / 0x14),
within the I6 routine Resolver_0 (at address 383290)
    (the original arguments were
        t_0 = <no kind>: 618554 / 0x9703A,
        t_1 = <no kind>: 570874 / 0x8B5FA,
        filename = <no kind>: 464625 / 0x716F1, and
        line = <no kind>: 20 / 0x14),
within the kernel of "when play begins" (at address 94836)
    (the original argument was
        i7baspl = <no kind>: 0 / 0x0)
...[/code]
meaning that the hat only shows up in an I6 routine where Debug File Parsing isn't able to look up its kind.  With Interactive Debugger one could use ``examine as'' to cast it, but that's not really an option here.  I can probably add kind inference for resolver routines to bandage this particular case.  I will have to think about what's the right thing to do more generally.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4616&start=0#p33330
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Error with Emily Short's Tutorial Mode
User: WillieBHines / DateTime: 2012-03-11 16:10:53

Got it (or i think i do) --- you need to declare N before the if statement and then assign N a value in side the if statement



An instructional rule (this is the teach compass directions rule):
	if the teach compass directions rule is listed in the completed instruction list, make no decision;	
	let N be indexed text;
	if a room (called goal) is adjacent:
		let way be the best route from the location to the goal;
		say "the chosen direction is: [way].";
		let N be "[way]";
	otherwise if the player can see an open door (called portal):
		let far side be the other side of the portal;
		let way be the best route from the location to the far side;
		let N be "[way]";
	otherwise:
		make no decision;
	say "[italic type]To move from place to place, you can use the compass directions (NORTH, SOUTH, EAST, WEST, as well as NORTHEAST, NORTHWEST, etc.) [paragraph break]From here, try [N in upper case].[roman type]";
	now the expected command is "[N]";
	now the held rule is the teach compass directions rule;
	rule succeeds.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4611&start=0#p33331
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glulx: protecting a variable amount of data
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-03-11 16:34:31

[quote="zarf"]By "read it back", you mean discover how much memory was saved? You'd have to store a data structure that declares its own length somehow. Say, an array of values whose first value is the length of the array.[/quote]Sorry, I should have worded my question less hastily.  I was hoping to protect a malloc made after a saveundo, in which case I would need not only its extent, but also its position.  But looking at the git source code, it seems that even protected mallocs are destroyed if they didn't exist at the restore point.  I suppose that I need to use an external file.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=30#p33332
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: David J Prokopetz / DateTime: 2012-03-11 16:35:42

[quote="zarf"]No. Scope is an iteration through a tree. You can add calls to the iteration (adding more branches to the tree) but there's no such concept as removing things. You'd have to modify the existing behavior at a given object to do less.[/quote]
Hmm. Well, if I understand the object hierarchy properly, everything in a room is going to be of kind "thing", so I suppose I can iterate over things in a room and go from there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4521&start=10#p33333
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Andromeda Legacy™ /// A Competition (with prizes!)
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-11 17:30:37

EDITED.

I'm giving off [b]ONE FREE MONTH[/b], no added tax!

I'm expecting much from you guys and girls! Do your best!

Come back to these pages for the full (ehm, quite) list of Known Facts About Andromeda Awakening™!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4613&start=10#p33334
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Android Terps - Request for Standard?
User: Jeff Zeitlin / DateTime: 2012-03-11 17:36:16

Dannii, this sounds like the idea that Ghalev came up with, essentially to allow the user of the terp to set the default directory.  My original proposal was for a common directory to all terps, and a terp-private one to handle any games/formats that weren't 'universal' - using Wei-Ju's information, the original common folder would have the Z3, Z5, and Z8 games, but a terp that also handled Z4 games would have its own folder for the Z4 games, which aren't handled by other terps.

Yes, typically, one would end up with a tree rooted at one specific location, with subdirs for the various special cases - but not everyone necessarily thinks of their file organization that way, so I tend to think in terms of maximum flexibility for the user.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4613&start=10#p33335
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Android Terps - Request for Standard?
User: weiju / DateTime: 2012-03-11 19:03:53

[quote="Jeff Zeitlin"]Dannii, this sounds like the idea that Ghalev came up with, essentially to allow the user of the terp to set the default directory.  My original proposal was for a common directory to all terps, and a terp-private one to handle any games/formats that weren't 'universal' - using Wei-Ju's information, the original common folder would have the Z3, Z5, and Z8 games, but a terp that also handled Z4 games would have its own folder for the Z4 games, which aren't handled by other terps.

Yes, typically, one would end up with a tree rooted at one specific location, with subdirs for the various special cases - but not everyone necessarily thinks of their file organization that way, so I tend to think in terms of maximum flexibility for the user.[/quote]

Well, I actually meant it probably does not matter to have them all in the same directory since an interpreter would likely just ignore the versions it does not support (not always perfectly, but should work in most cases). Personally, I am open to support any kind of common directory standard (like e.g. InteractiveFiction or zcode), but letting the user set the location to me sounds like it's a feasible compromise between users and current/future interpreter authors.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4614&start=0#p33336
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making the IDE hang with list management...
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-11 19:58:25

Ben, you may be right.  But I can't work it out in detail and the code has gotten too complicated for something that doesn't work.

So I'll start over.  Let me ask:

I'd like to allow characters to have a number of different strategies, more than one for a particular game, and particular strategies for particular opponents.  So in your view, what would be a good way to design this, to store the strategies data in the characters somewhere, and then for the gaem object to filter out the relevant records, and pick out one strategy from among them?

How do I make life simple here?


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4617&start=0#p33337
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Quixe file-browsing feature
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-11 20:24:39

I just added a Quixe feature which has been on the to-do list for months: the ability to browse through your saved games, transcripts, and data files. You can delete files, and also display transcripts in a pop-up window. (Previously Quixe would allow you to save a transcript, but there was no way to get at the saved text.) The code is not yet in a release, but it's checked into my github repository.

A demo of this: <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quixe/play-remote.html?story=stories/Advent.ulx.js">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quix ... ent.ulx.js</a>

(Since this uses HTML localStorage, the "same origin" policy applies: you can only see stored files that were created from the same server domain. It will also conceal save files belonging to different games. Transcript and data files will always be visible.)

The interface is crude and not particularly pretty, but it should work. One obvious crudity is that it's only accessible if the game pops up a file dialog -- in other words, you have to type "save" or "restore" first and then push the "Edit" button in the top corner of the dialog. When you're finished browsing, you can cancel out of the save/restore dialog.

I've tested this in current versions of Safari and Firefox. Let me know if it breaks for you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4614&start=0#p33338
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making the IDE hang with list management...
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-11 21:00:55

Somehow the original list is empty to begin with.

This:


[code]            local strats4thisgaem = p1.stratList.subset({rec: rec.gaem = desig});
                                                                   //the ".gaem" field holds the name of the game it applies to, e.g. 'rps'.
            "<<p1.stratList[1].gaem>> -> ";
            "<<strats4thisgaem[1].gaem>>";
[/code]

Just outputs

[quote]->[/quote]

Which means that the original list I'm starting from is empty, despite the fact that I assign one in the character definition.  

Do I somehow have to work with a *pointer* to player one, rather than a variable that's assigned the character as a value?


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4548&start=10#p33339
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: a variety of games & interactions...
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2012-03-11 21:48:16

Reminds me of "The Magic Toyshop".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=60#p33340
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-11 22:57:11

[quote="Biep"]All right.  So what would a first, brainstorm-fodder kind of category list from you look like?[/quote]

Well, I've already indicated that I think the community is, in this sense, fictional ... so I'd default to categories designed around my personal tastes, with no attempt to serve the actual ideal (despite the fact that I think it's a [i]fine [/i]ideal and that someone enjoying the warm depths of the "delicate illusion" should get right on that).

But for my own tastes, I'd probably (for starters) drop the general "Best Writing" in favor of a short stack of specifically writing-oriented categories ... "Most Evocative Descriptions," for example, would serve the goal of focusing on things that IF has that not-IF doesn't have or has less of ... while "Most Satisfying Ending(s)" would [i]fail [/i]to serve that goal (but I still think it would be a sweet category on a selfish level, because one of my frustrations with some IF is that some IF just sort of [i]stops [/i]... and I'd love it if the XYZZYs pointed me toward games with a real payoff).

And frankly, I'd love to see a "Leanest Most Badass Killer Lean Prose Which is Very Lean And Not all Frickin' Wordy And Flabby And On-And-On But Just Gets Right to the GOOD STUFF Like Only Good Writing Can" category, both because that's something I value, and because I love ironic titles for things.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4583&start=0#p33341
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: 826CHI Clandestine Quest
User: Merlin Fisher / DateTime: 2012-03-12 01:58:19

Oh yes, I am familiar with 826!  A worthy cause indeed.  Sorry I'm too late to the party (and I don't live in Chicago), but I just wanted to offer moral support anyway.  You guys rock.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4618&start=0#p33342
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Adventures with multimedia
User: jenesis / DateTime: 2012-03-12 02:17:19

Hi everybody.

I'd like to know about this system authoring and I want to watch some multimedia examples. 
I admit I've  hardly played TADS works, because my English is poor ands it's hard to me, but now someone is working on a Spanish library so I'd like to know more about this tool. 
I'm lately like to add graphics and sounds to my works, so I'd looking for  some TADS adventures with multimedia, but I should try every one to see if it has multimedia. 
Can you recommend any? 

Thanks and excuse me my bad English.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4584&start=10#p33343
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF in "real life"
User: Merlin Fisher / DateTime: 2012-03-12 02:24:30

How about if the only people you know that have heard of IF have heard of it because you won't shut up about it, while they listen and nod politely?

Because I totally fit in that category.  There is only one person I know that has even the slightest clue what a text game is, and he stopped playing them around 20 years ago.  (I tried to get him interested in modern IF, but he just wasn't buying it.  He's older and richer and the world is full of flashier toys now.)

I live in a city that is famous for its population of computer-geek types, but I have yet to meet any in person who are enthusiastic about text games, either as producers or consumers thereof.  I suppose it's a narrow demographic.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=340#p33344
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: scramble / DateTime: 2012-03-12 02:41:20

[quote="Ghalev"]Well, it's not like there's much else going on to discuss, honestly [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
Heh. Seems you're right. OK, here's one for you: The first bunch of Indie RPGs I discovered were the likes of HeroQuest, FATE and PDQ. I was impressed that you could express a character with a few well-chosen phrases and descriptors. I could easily convert all of the characters I had ever played to those systems!

So, for that time I had the following equation in my head: Indie = freeform traits. But I I'd already seen that some time before... Yup, that was Risus. So... Risus = freeform traits = Indie?

(OTOH, I can think of several reasons why this assumption is wrong. But I'm curious how you'd put it.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4548&start=10#p33345
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: a variety of games & interactions...
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-12 02:42:46

If you want to get into coding ascii grids and different AI tendencies for different characters, simple board games like checkers might work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4618&start=0#p33346
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Adventures with multimedia
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-03-12 02:52:14

Try this IFDB search: <a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=tag:graphics+tag:sound+system:tads">http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=t ... ystem:tads</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=340#p33347
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-12 03:18:10

[quote="scramble"]Heh. Seems you're right. OK, here's one for you: The first bunch of Indie RPGs I discovered were the likes of HeroQuest, FATE and PDQ. I was impressed that you could express a character with a few well-chosen phrases and descriptors. I could easily convert all of the characters I had ever played to those systems! So, for that time I had the following equation in my head: Indie = freeform traits. But I I'd already seen that some time before... Yup, that was Risus. So... Risus = freeform traits = Indie? (OTOH, I can think of several reasons why this assumption is wrong. But I'm curious how you'd put it.)[/quote]

Sure ... the older version of [b][i]Fate [/i][/b]that I have, back when it was still a [b][i]Fudge [/i][/b]derivative, mentions [b][i]Risus [/i][/b]once and me twice ... Chad's [b][i]Monkey Ninja Pirate Robot[/i][/b] (a PDQ game, as I recall) cites [b][i]Risus [/i][/b]in a "special thanks," and so on. In the places where indie games are made, folks often mention [i][b]Risus [/b][/i]fondly, and me ... with variable levels of fondness [emote]:)[/emote]

So, the way I'd put it is "Some indie games do nod to [b][i]Risus [/i][/b]as a notable ancestor, and that's very groovy of them."

But player-designed/designated skills/traits/classes/what-have-you were a feature of many regular-industry RPGs in the 80s (either in core rules or in some well-known magazine variants, depending), so that's an idea that had already been bought and sold multiple times in regular RPG retail outlets; nothing indie [i]or [/i]independent about it, intrinsically.

Where [b][i]Risus [/i][/b]really gets in trouble is the to-the-victor part of the combat rules. Victory in combat has no mechanically-mandated result ... the opponent doesn't necessary fall unconscious or die, rather, the victor chooses what happens (with GM consent). So, a swashbuckly guy is free to be 100% pacifistic with his sword ... he can "beat" people by dropping their belts around their ankles, leaving them humiliated and rubbing rosary beads, whatever the GM agrees fits the method and the mood and so on.

So, some people point to [b][i]Risus [/i][/b]as some kind of mile-marker on the road to "narrative control" being handed to the player, which, as a concept, is something a lot of indie games are into. All I can do is point out that the intent is otherwise: that there is no "narrative" to "control" (by the player [i]or [/i]the GM) and that it's just [b][i]Risus [/i][/b]acknowledging its own abstract nature and (this part [i]is[/i] deliberate) letting heroes be swashbuckly and stylish and creative without being walking abbatoirs.

On this point (and one or two others), [b][i]Risus [/i][/b]may have accidentally innovated (and if so, I forgive it). If one thing helped inspire another, well, that's just back to polite nods.

[b][i]Risus[/i][/b] is independent. It exists, and for that matter sometimes pays the rent, without any dependence on the traditional three-tier RPG retail industry (where I toiled for a decade). But as I've said before, "independent" doesn't equal "indie" anymore than "fan" equals "fanatic." Once a word breaks off on its own, its off on its own, gathering connotations. The connotations I see attached to "indie" belong nowhere near [i][b]Risus,[/b][/i] a traditional RPG with strong 1980s-gaming-style roots and intentions.

(And celebrating its 20th Anniversary next year with an all-new, less-bloat edition!)
(Plus: Google up "Risus Kickstarter" and throw money, plz and thx).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4618&start=0#p33348
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Adventures with multimedia
User: jenesis / DateTime: 2012-03-12 04:34:39

[quote="Juhana"]Try this IFDB search: <a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=tag:graphics+tag:sound+system:tads">http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=t ... ystem:tads</a>[/quote]

Thank you, It's just I need. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4578&start=10#p33349
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF and Choice (or, another goddamn CYOA thread)
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-12 05:30:03

[quote="matt w"]So in a railroaded IF like Rameses, putzing around with the environment isn't an illusion of choice. It's a form of interactivity. [/quote]I would say that's interactive only in the same sense as a book, where the content changes when you turn the page. You can skip passages or even read them out of order, if you want; and you could do the same thing with a transcript.

Even if you always read a book linearly from beginning to end, giving the player in a game like Rameses the option to get some information about certain things in the environment, or not, is analogous to optional footnotes/endnotes in a traditional written work. You can read them, or not, which changes exactly what you get out of the text.

My point is I think what you're mostly talking about as a good thing in this thread is what I would call exploration. That can be fun; I've had a lot of fun with it in various games, media, and other settings over the years; but I would also say that the depth and breadth of exploration possible in a given work is completely orthogonal to the depth and breadth of interaction possible with it. As I understand it, interaction requires [i]meaningful, change-effecting[/i] decisions; as such, in something like Rameses, the player may interact with the parser, but all their attempted actions are essentially blocked at that layer. Nothing they do can make any meaningful change to the world state or affect the course of any given playthrough beyond what descriptions get printed and slight textual variations in, for example, dialogue.

I certainly agree with you that exploration can be an important component of game design, but I wonder what exactly your goal is with this thread. Do you really think exploration as part of game design has been neglected lately?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4619&start=0#p33350
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: BIG challenge - are you up for it?
User: Alaric / DateTime: 2012-03-12 06:25:09

Hi all,

[u]Reliable[/u] playtesters are required to playtest my recently completed adventure "Fortress of Fear", a fantasy adventure set in a medieval fortress that is based on a real castle.

The adventure is a BIG one, it has over 275 locations, more than 30 characters and masses of gameplay. It is designed to be a challenging game and it will test your powers of reasoning and ingenuity to the full. Be warned that it is not an adventure that can be completed in a few evening sessions and anyone who volunteers to playtest FoF must be prepared for more than a few weeks work! Are you up for the challenge?

Please note that this adventure is very much "old school" and thus it may not be to everyone's taste, especially if you are used to playing IF games written by today's generation of authors.

If you would like to playtest the adventure - or you would like some more information about it - please send me a PM.

Thanks for reading this.

Larry Horsfield

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4578&start=10#p33351
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF and Choice (or, another goddamn CYOA thread)
User: joningold / DateTime: 2012-03-12 07:22:27

[quote="ChrisC"]As I understand it, interaction requires [i]meaningful, change-effecting[/i] decisions; as such, in something like Rameses, the player may interact with the parser, but all their attempted actions are essentially blocked at that layer. Nothing they do can make any meaningful change to the world state or affect the course of any given playthrough beyond what descriptions get printed and slight textual variations in, for example, dialogue.[/quote]

This is a pretty widely held viewpoint, I think, although I find it a little strange - as it seems to suggest that you can only tell if something's interactive by playing it *at least twice*.

It would be better to say the game should *feel* like it contains meaningful player agency. Whether it actually does or not is kinda unimportant, IMO.

jon

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4621&start=0#p33353
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: [IF Review] Zombie Exodus
User: markm / DateTime: 2012-03-12 09:11:39

Paul O'Brian has written the first new review I've published since 2009. Please visit [url]http://ministryofpeace.com/if-review/[/url] and see his review of [i]Zombie Exodus[/i].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4621&start=0#p33354
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: [IF Review] Zombie Exodus
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-12 10:28:43

That's a solid review, and it captures my main problem with ZE: that it's not finished yet!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4622&start=0#p33355
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: I can't find my watch - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-03-12 11:28:55

When I start my game, I'm supposed to have a watch that is AlwaysWorn. However, the watch shows up nowhere. If  I preceed the watch description with a + sign, it shows up on the on the beach? Any ideas?

RonG

[code]/*
  Show Actor/Player.  *******************************************************/

+me: BagOfHolding, Actor
    vocabWords = 'Tom Thomas Tom/Thomas/Leavens'    
    desc
   {
       "You are Thomas Leavens; also known as Dr. Tom by all your friends and
        associates. Your ex-wife calls you names that could never be repeated!
        Aside from your underwear an socks, you are wearing your normal field
        attire. ";
   }
    
bulk = 10
powerLevel=normal

/*  Make/Unmake wizard.  ******************************************************/

 makeWizard(){
    powerLevel=wizard;
}
 makeNormal(){
    powerLevel=normal;
    brightness=0;
}

/*  Affinity for actor.  ******************************************************/

affinityFor(obj)
{
   return(obj!=self&&obj.ofKind(Wearable)?50:0);   
}

/*  Actor inventory lister.  **************************************************/

inventoryLister: actorInventoryLister
    {
        showInventoryEmpty(parent)
        {
            /* empty inventory */
            "<<buildSynthParam('The/he', parent)>> {is} holding absolutely
            nothing. ";
        }
        showInventoryWearingOnly(parent, wearing)
        {
            /* we're carrying nothing but wearing some items */
            "<<buildSynthParam('The/he', parent)>> {is}n\'t holding anything,
            but {is} sporting <<wearing>>. ";
        }
        showInventoryCarryingOnly(parent, carrying)
        {
            /* we have only carried items to report */
            "<<buildSynthParam('The/he', parent)>> {is} holding <<carrying>>. ";
        }
        showInventoryShortLists(parent, carrying, wearing)
        {
            local nm = gSynthMessageParam(parent);
            
            /* short lists - combine carried and worn in a single sentence */
            "<<buildParam('The/he', nm)>> {is} holding <<carrying>>,
            and <<buildParam('it\'s', nm)>>{subj} sporting <<wearing>>. ";
        }
        showInventoryLongLists(parent, carrying, wearing)
        {
            local nm = gSynthMessageParam(parent);
            
            /*  Long lists - show carried and worn in separate sentences.  */
            "<<buildParam('The/he', nm)>> {is} holding <<carrying>>.
            <<buildParam('It\'s', nm)>> sporting <<wearing>>. ";
        }
            /*******************************************************************
            *   For 'tall' listings, we'll use the standard listing style, so  *
            *   we need to provide the framing messages for the tall-mode      *
            *   listing.                                                       *
            *******************************************************************/
        showListPrefixTall(itemCount, pov, parent)
            { "<<buildSynthParam('The/he', parent)>> {is} holding:"; }
        showListContentsPrefixTall(itemCount, pov, parent)
            { "<<buildSynthParam('A/he', parent)>>, who {is} holding:"; }           
    }    
;

watch: AlwaysWorn 'wrist wristwatch/watch''wristwatch'
   "It is an expensive, rugged and accurate digital watch that you have had for
    years. It currently reads <<clockManager.checkTimeFmt('[am][pm]h:mm a')>>. "
    dobjFor(Open){verify(){illogical('Only a jeweler could open that watch');}}
    dobjFor(LookIn)asDobjFor(Open)
    cannotDoffMsg="Don't do that! It's crucial that you have your watch at this
                   time. "
;
    [/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4622&start=0#p33356
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: I can't find my watch - TADS3.1
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-03-12 11:37:29

Since you want it in the actor, who is in the beach, use "++". "+" places it in the beach, "++" places it in the previously defined object, which is the actor.

(And if you wanted to place the next object in the watch, you would use "+++".)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=340#p33357
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: scramble / DateTime: 2012-03-12 12:06:38

Thrown!  [emote]:)[/emote] 

Also, I've just re-read Risus and yes, that's definitely what I'd use for a trad game. I just can't be bothered with involved rules anymore... Looking forward to the adventure!

Two great things I've noticed:
The rule for helping characters (only 6es count) is very clever. I might drift that into our Puddle game.
Also, the damage system makes more sense than PDQs. You use it, you lose it. In PDQ, you can lower [b]any [/b]trait; which I think is rather wacky.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4622&start=0#p33358
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: I can't find my watch - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-03-12 12:10:37

Thanks. I'll give it a shot. It's so easy to get mixed up with these relative references.

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4618&start=0#p33359
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Adventures with multimedia
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-12 12:17:43

In a few weeks you'll be able to play my new game "The White Bull," which will be released as part of this year's Spring Thing competition. It has music and ... well, only one graphic, as I was unable to find an artist, but at least there's one photo at the opening.

This is a TADS 3.1 game, so you'll need the latest QTads interpreter (or the latest HTML TADS, if you're using Windows) to play it.

If you have questions about how the music and graphics were implemented, I'd be happy to help.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=40#p33360
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: joningold / DateTime: 2012-03-12 12:26:42

For those interested, [i]A Colder Light[/i] is now up to Release 4. This latest version speeds up gameplay considerably by bypassing the parser entirely, on a suggestion by Jimmy Maher (although it still isn't instantaneous). 

Secondly, I've rejigged the UI somewhat in line with some of the feedback here - notably the observation that one had to move the mouse right to the top to get to the inventory, then down again to do an action. I've come up with a solution that I think is compact while still being elegant. 

Comments welcome!

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.archimedes.plus.com/public/cold_light/">http://www.archimedes.plus.com/public/cold_light/</a>

cheers
jon

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4615&start=0#p33361
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with combat
User: versilies / DateTime: 2012-03-12 12:31:42

i will check it out

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4621&start=0#p33362
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: [IF Review] Zombie Exodus
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-12 13:04:16

If maga (and his reviewers) do his (their) job, I guess we will have a LOT of reviews about ZE. [emote]:)[/emote]

To me, the game not being finished was not that bad. The massive crimes against mimesis were, though. It builds up some tension, from time to time, but having to choose straightforwardly if I'm a sister or a brother demolished that tension.

[rant]Anyway: to me, arguing if CYOAs are IF or not is like discussing if we have to discuss homosexuality or skin color. Yeah, I like to repeat myself. [i]Repetita Iuvant[/i].[/rant]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4618&start=0#p33363
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Adventures with multimedia
User: jenesis / DateTime: 2012-03-12 13:11:13

[quote="Jim Aikin"]In a few weeks you'll be able to play my new game "The White Bull," which will be released as part of this year's Spring Thing competition. It has music and ... well, only one graphic, as I was unable to find an artist, but at least there's one photo at the opening.

This is a TADS 3.1 game, so you'll need the latest QTads interpreter (or the latest HTML TADS, if you're using Windows) to play it.

If you have questions about how the music and graphics were implemented, I'd be happy to help.[/quote]


I'll play your game, though I'll need the Google translator help.  [emote]:)[/emote] 
I'm a Linux user, so I use Qtads. 
Thanks for your kindness. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=40#p33364
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-12 13:14:14

[quote="joningold"]Secondly, I've rejigged the UI somewhat in line with some of the feedback here - notably the observation that one had to move the mouse right to the top to get to the inventory, then down again to do an action. I've come up with a solution that I think is compact while still being elegant.[/quote]

Ooh, I like it. 

(I still think that the "<" button might profitably be replaced by a "more" button.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4615&start=0#p33365
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with combat
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-12 13:35:16

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]You could use my Inform ATTACK extension: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2925">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2925</a>

It is quite powerful but, because of that, also quite complicated. (Though the manual contains a long example that might be helpful.)[/quote]
I wanna replay [i]Kerkerkruip[/i].

Aw, I'm gonna replay [i]Kerkerkruip[/i] in less than an hour. You are EVIL, Victor.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=340#p33366
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-12 13:36:35

[quote="scramble"]Also, I've just re-read Risus and yes, that's definitely what I'd use for a trad game. I just can't be bothered with involved rules anymore... Looking forward to the adventure![/quote]

I'm really looking forward to making it. I've been fortunate to make my living game-writing for a couple of decades now, but there are some things I rarely get to do (or [i]never [/i]get to do) and doing a single-evening adventure design without having to worry about where I'm going to sell it is one of those things, so I'm stoked (and the way funding is going, it seems likely that I'll get to do a second, more modestly-funded adventure from the same kickstart ... fingers crossed).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4578&start=10#p33367
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF and Choice (or, another goddamn CYOA thread)
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-12 13:44:03

[quote="joningold"]This is a pretty widely held viewpoint, I think, although I find it a little strange - as it seems to suggest that you can only tell if something's interactive by playing it *at least twice*.[/quote]

My own stance is that no single-player computer-game is meaningfully "interactive," period. Only the [i]illusion [/i]of interactivity is possible (presently) in a single-player computer game. [i]Solitaire is solitaire;[/i] there is no "interaction," only programmed [i]re[/i]action.

[quote]It would be better to say the game should *feel* like it contains meaningful player agency.[/quote]

Quite.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4619&start=0#p33368
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: BIG challenge - are you up for it?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-12 13:48:24

[quote="Alaric"][...] the first title being "The Axe of Kolt", which is my next project using ADRIFT. Older members of this forum might remember the adventure.[/quote]

I'm 40; I'm not sure if that makes me an "older member," but I did play a fair chunk of [i][b]Axe of Kolt[/b][/i] a year or two ago, and liked the parts I played. It didn't hold me to the finish, but it impressed me as a good, solid design worth revisiting some day when time permits.

The knowledge that you're still making new stuff is happy-making. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4578&start=10#p33369
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF and Choice (or, another goddamn CYOA thread)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-12 13:57:52

What about playing with blocks by yourself? This isn't a sarcastic question at all; a lot of the things I'm interested are the sort of things you do when you play with blocks. (And I've sometimes stopped when I was playing World of Goo and thought, "Why am I not playing with a nice set of blocks instead?") I don't really care whether we call this "interactivity," but it's part of what I'm interested in.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=60#p33370
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-12 13:58:50

Okay, can we talk for a little bit about this point? Something along these lines is almost certainly going to happen, but a lot will rely on how strong it is, how it's worded and how we make voters aware of it, so 
[quote="maga"][b]5) Make the expectations of XYZZY voting more explicit[/b], put them somewhere more obvious, and set clearer standards for the circumstances under which votes will be discounted. We're definitely doing this, in one form or another; it's the exact manner of doing so that's the issue.
[b]a) Forbid authors from campaigning[/b] (and maybe testers and other interested parties, too.)
[b]b) Forbid anyone from campaigning[/b].
[b]c) Allow discussion but not campaigning[/b], so 'Here are the games I think should win' is uncool, but 'Here's some discussion of the Best Setting games and why you might be interested in them' is okay. (But distinguishing between the two would be wildly impractical.)
[b]d) Ban campaigning in non-IF-related spaces.[/b] Sensible, but difficult to distinguish: my Planet-IF presence is just the stuff tagged IF from my personal LiveJournal. You might use your Twitter account mostly for talking about game design, but that doesn't mean your non-IF-playing relatives don't follow it.
e) Allow people to self-police on campaigning/discussion, but [b]set a clear standard for when the organisers can throw out votes.[/b] (Probably helpful only against naive or unintentional ballot-stuffing.)
f) As with e), but [b]allow for the throwing-out of games[/b], not just votes. (Probably unfair to authors, who may not be able to predict whether a casual mention will unleash the floodgates.) 
g) [b]Ask second-round voters not to vote in categories where they haven't played N games[/b], for some value of N between 2 and 'all of them'.[/quote]
[b]a) Forbid authors from campaigning[/b]: would mean that many, many people couldn't talk about the XYZZYs in the first round. So perhaps only second-round. But you could still do dangerously effective campaigning from late in the second round.

[b]b) Forbid anyone from campaigning[/b]. But this probably contributes to low turnout already.

[b]c), d[/b] thoroughly impractical.

[b]e) Allow people to self-police on campaigning/discussion, but set a clear standard for when the organisers can throw out votes.[/b] How exactly should that standard be worded? I'd be inclined to make it a standard largely about consequences rather than intent, but in any case, we need something pretty memorable and clear.

[b]f) As with e), but allow for the throwing-out of games[/b]. Flamewar waiting to happen.

[b]g) Ask second-round voters not to vote in categories where they haven't played N games[/b], for some value of N between 2 and 'all of them'.
There is no way to effectively police this, so at most it's going to be a suggestion. So I think that, e.g., adding checkboxes for voters to confirm which games they've played wouldn't help much.
I think that 'all of them' is probably way too restrictive unless we give people a lot more warning on what those games are going to be -- whether that's some kind of 0th-round nomination, a big extension of the 2nd-round deadline, or whatever. It also creates a skewing problem if one of the games is only available commercially and/or for particular devices/operating systems; both will be true for [i]Hadean Lands[/i], for example, and we definitely don't want to end up saying 'buy Zarf's game, and an iPhone to run it on, or you can't vote in any of these categories.'

[b]h) Some kind of statement about the expected attitude to voting.[/b] What precisely should that be? 'Don't vote for a game primarily to support your friend or your preferred platform' might be a good start.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=40#p33371
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: George / DateTime: 2012-03-12 14:06:03

I like that layout much better. [i]Beneath [/i]is particularly interesting! I guess we've always had inventory and graphical maps expressing world model relations, but bringing other relations into the UI more explicitly feels like something worth exploring more.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4578&start=10#p33372
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF and Choice (or, another goddamn CYOA thread)
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-12 14:15:53

[quote="matt w"]What about playing with blocks by yourself?[/quote]

It's fun and I like it. [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote]This isn't a sarcastic question at all; a lot of the things I'm interested are the sort of things you do when you play with blocks.[/quote]

Hm. I guess my favorite things are:

(A) Testing the limits of the blocks. Can I build an arch without any made-to-make-arches pieces?
(B) Seeing how high they can go before falling over. Always loved that.
(C) Making roads out of them. Not sure why. I just like roads.
(D) Making oddball giant domino-fall things with blocks much larger than dominoes.
(E) Attacking structures with dinosaur toys and making "rar" noises.

[quote]I don't really care whether we call this "interactivity," but it's part of what I'm interested in.[/quote]

Sure, it's play, after all. For my own part, though, I find it necessary (for quality work, anyway) to have a clear distinction in mind between play, gameplay, interactivity, choice, and all the other different things that bubble up in these threads, because their differences (however we choose to arbitrarily chunk them for conversation's sake) are important to design.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=60#p33373
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2012-03-12 14:47:22

[quote="maga"][b]g) Ask second-round voters not to vote in categories where they haven't played N games[/b], for some value of N between 2 and 'all of them'.
There is no way to effectively police this, so at most it's going to be a suggestion. So I think that, e.g., adding checkboxes for voters to confirm which games they've played wouldn't help much.
I think that 'all of them' is probably way too restrictive unless we give people a lot more warning on what those games are going to be -- whether that's some kind of 0th-round nomination, a big extension of the 2nd-round deadline, or whatever. It also creates a skewing problem if one of the games is only available commercially and/or for particular devices/operating systems; both will be true for [i]Hadean Lands[/i], for example, and we definitely don't want to end up saying 'buy Zarf's game, and an iPhone to run it on, or you can't vote in any of these categories.'[/quote]
The idea sounds fair and reasonable, and I would appreciate this rule as a prospective voter.  It would eliminate the hesitancy as to whether or not I should vote this year, since there would be a clear standard.  However, the problems you raise are valid, and I don't have a solution to them.

[quote="maga"][b]h) Some kind of statement about the expected attitude to voting.[/b] What precisely should that be? 'Don't vote for a game primarily to support your friend or your preferred platform' might be a good start.[/quote]
Maybe tie this in with [b]g[/b], above.  Since it's impossible to enforce a requirement of having played a certain number or a percentage of the nominees before voting in the final round, why not make it a strong suggestion?  As a suggestion, it could be worded in such a way as to leave room for the voters' judgment is situations such as commercial games, etc.  "You should only vote for categories where you believe you can legitimately compare the merits of the nominated games in that category.  We recommend that you play at least half of the games [for instance]. However, if you have played fewer than that and really believe that the game you want to vote for should stand out among its peers based on its merits, we aren't telling you not to vote."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4623&start=0#p33374
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Hint request -- Andromeda Awakening
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2012-03-12 15:01:42

I'm not stuck on a specific puzzle at the moment, but I can't find a way to open up any new areas on the map.  I don't know what to do, and I'm not patient enough to bang on everything, even though I wish I were.

[spoiler]I've seen the Hyerotrope, crossed to the Pillar Section, and opened the crack leading to the three corridor rooms with the steel bar.

I don't know what to do with the dark spots on the walls of the Corridor.  I don't know what to do with the Hyerotrope, although I'm pretty sure I can't activate it or enter it yet.  Also, I flipped a switch at the Abandon Warehouse, but I don't know what it did, and it can't be unflipped.[/spoiler]

This is what my inventory looks like:
[spoiler]You're carrying a steel bar, a new railway ticket, some Report files and an E-Pad.[/spoiler]

I love the setting and atmosphere of this game, and would appreciate any help getting through it.

[b]Edit:[/b] I forgot to mention that I'm playing Release 3, the Final Cut.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4607&start=0#p33375
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Gathering at PAX East 2012?
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2012-03-12 15:22:31

You might try posting on our mailing list to see if anyone is hanging out at PAX East or whatnot.

<a class="postlink" href="http://groups.google.com/group/boston-if">http://groups.google.com/group/boston-if</a>

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4578&start=10#p33376
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF and Choice (or, another goddamn CYOA thread)
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2012-03-12 15:23:58

[quote="ChrisC"][quote="matt w"]So in a railroaded IF like Rameses, putzing around with the environment isn't an illusion of choice. It's a form of interactivity. [/quote]I would say that's interactive only in the same sense as a book, where the content changes when you turn the page. You can skip passages or even read them out of order, if you want; and you could do the same thing with a transcript.[/quote]
But in parser IF, the player is contributing to a constructed narrative, even if there are no choices that affect anything other than the order of the segments of that narrative.  The player supplies the direction of the narrative even if he or she can't influence the story.  (I think I got this from my reading of [i]Twisty Little Passages[/i] last year.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4624&start=0#p33377
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: putting things in pockets - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-03-12 15:26:05

I have enclosed the code for the Actor's shorts and shirt. The way I have it arranged, I am not able to put any object into any of the pockets. Should I try making the shorts and the shirt both into a bag of of holding; in which case how do I show the pockets?

RonG

[code]
++khakis:AlwaysWorn
   'pair/khaki/khakis/shorts''pair of rugged khaki shorts'
   "It's a pair of khakis with large, useful pockets. "
;

+++khakipockets:BagOfHolding,Component,Container
   '(khaki)pocket/pockets''pocket'
   "One of the things you like best about these shorts is the nice, deep
    pockets. "
   isPlural=true
   bulkCapacity=200
   affinityFor(obj){return 200;}
   theName='your khaki pockets'
   aName='khaki pockets'
   disambigName='khaki pockets';

++AlwaysWorn 'khaki shirt''tough khaki shirt'
   "The tough shirt matches your shorts and also has some useful pockets. "
;

+++shirtpockets:BagOfHolding,Component,Container
   '(shirt)pocket/pockets''pocket'
   "Like your shorts, the shirt also has some handy pockets. "
   isPlural=true
   bulkCapacity=200
   affinity(obj){return 150;}
   theName='your shirt pockets'
   aName='shirt pockets'
   disambigName='shirt pockets';
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4625&start=0#p33378
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: change (being worn)
User: HanonO / DateTime: 2012-03-12 15:28:10

I'm trying to simplify clothing layering by specifying clothes as innerwear and outerwear.  When inner wear is worn and the player puts on outerwear, a relation kicks in and the inner wear is taken off-stage.

However, when taking inventory, I want to reference the offstage but presumably hidden garment by mentioning the outerwear and then the inner wear it covers.  
[code]After printing the name of a garment (called layer) while taking inventory:
	if layer covers something (called underlayer):
		say " (worn over [underlayer])".
		[/code]

I get
>i
You are carrying:
  a red dress shirt (worn over teeshirt) (being worn)

I would like to suppress (being worn) in this case hopefully without a huge mess of tearing out rules.  Anyone?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4623&start=0#p33379
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Hint request -- Andromeda Awakening
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-12 15:30:31

I really dig Andromeda Awakening, and now that the deadline's been pushed I'm considering getting in on the comp. I tested the final release so luckily I have a completed game transcript. It tells me that:

[spoiler]You're right that you've got to do something with the spots. It doesn't look like you've got the right thing in your inventory. It looks like you've missed something in the Broken Wagon location.[/spoiler]

Ask again if you need any more hints.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4625&start=0#p33380
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: change (being worn)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-12 15:39:21

Have you looked at examples 177 and 414? Unfortunately they make it seem pretty complicated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4625&start=0#p33381
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: change (being worn)
User: HanonO / DateTime: 2012-03-12 15:42:36

I thought I had solved it just as I posted, but now I'm causing Glulxe fatal error: Stack overflow in function call by doing this:

[code]Rule for printing the name of a garment (called layer) while taking inventory:
	if layer covers something (called underlayer):
		say "[the layer] (worn over [the underlayer])";
	otherwise:
		say "[the layer] (being worn)".
		[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4625&start=0#p33382
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: change (being worn)
User: HanonO / DateTime: 2012-03-12 15:47:35

[quote="matt w"]Have you looked at examples 177 and 414? Unfortunately they make it seem pretty complicated.[/quote]

Yeah.  I looked at those and they seem useful but nothing clear jumped out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4625&start=0#p33383
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: change (being worn)
User: gravel / DateTime: 2012-03-12 15:49:31

It looks like the thing you need to mess with is "giving inventory information".

I excerpted the inventory action from standard rules, took out that part, and got this:

[code]Instead of taking inventory:
	issue library message taking inventory action number 2;
	say ":[line break]";
	list the contents of the player, with newlines, indented, including contents, with extra indentation.[/code]

The other thing this phrase fiddles with is the container appendage (so claims the documentation, although my empty test bottle didn't give a status in inventory either way, only when in a room description).  So you might need to re-add that if you want it, or at least keep an eye out for it.

Edit: there are other ways to eliminate the (empty), so maybe there's a way to eliminate (being worn) without that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=60#p33384
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-12 15:52:12

[quote="maga"]It also creates a skewing problem if one of the games is only available commercially and/or for particular devices/operating systems; both will be true for [i]Hadean Lands[/i], for example, and we definitely don't want to end up saying 'buy Zarf's game, and an iPhone to run it on, or you can't vote in any of these categories.'[/quote]
The solution would clearly be to drop the expectation for having played all/most of the games in a category when there are commercial games in a category. Seems simple enough.

[quote="Bainespal"]"You should only vote for categories where you believe you can legitimately compare the merits of the nominated games in that category.  We recommend that you play at least half of the games [for instance]. However, if you have played fewer than that and really believe that the game you want to vote for should stand out among its peers based on its merits, we aren't telling you not to vote."[/quote]
Something along these lines seems reasonable enough. I'm not saying it's going to solve the problem of inadvertent ballot-stuffing, but it's a good step towards making voter expectations clearer.

I don't think discussion about the xyzzys should be curtailed before or during the nomination period. I've got faith that dealing with matters on a occasion by occasion basis, with clearer expectations set out, is the path to take.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=60#p33385
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2012-03-12 15:56:18

[quote="maga"]Okay, can we talk for a little bit about this point? Something along these lines is almost certainly going to happen, but a lot will rely on how strong it is, how it's worded and how we make voters aware of it, so 
[quote="maga"][b]5) Make the expectations of XYZZY voting more explicit[/b], put them somewhere more obvious, and set clearer standards for the circumstances under which votes will be discounted. We're definitely doing this, in one form or another; it's the exact manner of doing so that's the issue.
[b]a) Forbid authors from campaigning[/b] (and maybe testers and other interested parties, too.)
[b]b) Forbid anyone from campaigning[/b].
[b]c) Allow discussion but not campaigning[/b], so 'Here are the games I think should win' is uncool, but 'Here's some discussion of the Best Setting games and why you might be interested in them' is okay. (But distinguishing between the two would be wildly impractical.)
[b]d) Ban campaigning in non-IF-related spaces.[/b] Sensible, but difficult to distinguish: my Planet-IF presence is just the stuff tagged IF from my personal LiveJournal. You might use your Twitter account mostly for talking about game design, but that doesn't mean your non-IF-playing relatives don't follow it.
e) Allow people to self-police on campaigning/discussion, but [b]set a clear standard for when the organisers can throw out votes.[/b] (Probably helpful only against naive or unintentional ballot-stuffing.)
f) As with e), but [b]allow for the throwing-out of games[/b], not just votes. (Probably unfair to authors, who may not be able to predict whether a casual mention will unleash the floodgates.) 
g) [b]Ask second-round voters not to vote in categories where they haven't played N games[/b], for some value of N between 2 and 'all of them'.[/quote]

[b]h) Some kind of statement about the expected attitude to voting.[/b] What precisely should that be? 'Don't vote for a game primarily to support your friend or your preferred platform' might be a good start.[/quote]

(It looks like "h" was omitted from the main list?)

Of these, the only one I really like is G, where N=2, with check boxes. (I'm assuming there will still be 3-4 nominees per category.)

I also like another related idea that I think someone in another thread suggested: ranked choice voting, where you can only rank the games that you claim to have played. For example, the ranked pairs method could support this. <a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_pairs">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_pairs</a>

I like G because I believe that this year's ChoiceScript voters were essentially honest people. They weren't intending to corrupt the competition; they thought it was a popularity contest and voted for their favorite guy, without playing the other games.

If all of those ChoiceScript voters had been required to play at least one of the other nominees, I think almost none of them would have lied about it. Most of them would have not voted; those who did play at least one other game would have been exposed to more games (yay!) and would have made a prima facie informed decision (yay!).

I think this could be tied together with a stated (but unenforceable?) rule that requires anyone discussing XYZZY to tell people to play the other nominees. "Try some of the other nominees, then vote for me" is, I think, an acceptable statement to make in public. Because once players [i]have[/i] tried the other nominees, they can make up their own minds.

I think there are further hardening steps possible against a flood of dishonest voters. But I don't think those steps are necessary; if Anonymous carpet-bombs the XYZZYs, I think it'll be OK for the organizers to take extraordinary actions, as they did this year.

BTW, there are other ideas in this thread that I also like and want to emphasize:

* Allowing comments, without requiring them, or adding weight to commenting voters. I don't think it would solve any of the problems raised this year, but it just seems like a good idea.
* Emailing people to let them know that the voting deadline is coming up.
* Some kind of "Best CYOA" category, where nominees for Best CYOA would be eligible for Best Game.

I agree that this might make it harder to win the top spot. My wish is for a ChoiceScript game to [i]earn[/i] the "Best Game" award.

(I kinda like calling it "Best Point-and-Click," though I'm curious to hear more about why Ghalev doesn't like that name.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=40#p33386
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-12 15:56:57

If I can add a thing... no web-based game (except Undum as far as I've seen) consider a layout that renders the reading easy. 
None, including Undum, consider screen resolution. Although it is romantic to think of IFers as nerds with an old green phosphors 14" display, actually some, like me, use to play on a 27" 2500x1600px widescreen.
On an off-line client it is easy to adjust the layout and font size to my needs, but I can't do it in a web-based tool.

So, although I don't know how to achieve this, I want to suggest:
1) max [b]60 columns[/b], to avoid too long lines, which are hard to track when jumping from one to the next.
2) a [b]proportional font[/b] that lets visually-impaired like me to actually [i]see[/i] the characters instead of imagining them from the average shape. [emote]:)[/emote] 

I bet this is asking too much but it surely would rock the place.

Anyway: as soon as I finish [i]Cryptozooetcetera[/i] I'll give this very promising experience a try.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4626&start=0#p33387
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Anyway...
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-12 15:58:52

... The Boss' last album roxxors.

Sorry for being old. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4626&start=0#p33388
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anyway...
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-12 16:02:10

Who's The Boss?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4625&start=0#p33389
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: change (being worn)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-12 16:03:40

[quote="HanonO"]I thought I had solved it just as I posted, but now I'm causing Glulxe fatal error: Stack overflow in function call by doing this:

[code]Rule for printing the name of a garment (called layer) while taking inventory:
	if layer covers something (called underlayer):
		say "[the layer] (worn over [the underlayer])";
	otherwise:
		say "[the layer] (being worn)".
		[/code][/quote]

I think you're causing an infinite loop -- each "[the layer]" calls the rule for printing the name of the layer again. Try replacing those with "[the printed name of the layer]" and see what happens. (Though I suspect you'll get the "(being worn)" anyway.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4625&start=0#p33390
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: change (being worn)
User: HanonO / DateTime: 2012-03-12 16:04:47

So far, this is the version that doesn't crash glulxe...I just fiddled with the phrasing, and I think I can live with this:

[code]After printing the name of a garment (called layer) while taking inventory:
	if layer covers something (called underlayer):
		say " (over [a underlayer])".[/code]

>i
You are carrying:
  a leather loincloth
  some blue jeans
  a red dress shirt (over a teeshirt) (being worn)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4626&start=0#p33391
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anyway...
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-12 16:06:16

[quote="JoeyJones"]Who's The Boss?[/quote]
You are fired.

[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Springsteen[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4625&start=0#p33392
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: change (being worn)
User: HanonO / DateTime: 2012-03-12 16:12:23

Even better, fewer parenthsesesesses:


>i
You are carrying:
  a red dress shirt over a teeshirt (being worn)
  some blue jeans over a glittery gstring (being worn)
  some tennis shoes over some wool socks (being worn)

>take off shirt
(the red dress shirt)
You take off the red dress shirt.

Dropped.

>i
You are carrying:
  a teeshirt (being worn)
  some blue jeans over a glittery gstring (being worn)
  some tennis shoes over some wool socks (being worn)

Now if I can just figure out how to use that "group a kind as a sentence while taking inventory"....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4626&start=0#p33393
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anyway...
User: George / DateTime: 2012-03-12 16:12:32

I realized I had a problem the other day when the album I was most excited about right now [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_of_Love_(album)]is from 1987[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4626&start=0#p33394
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anyway...
User: gravel / DateTime: 2012-03-12 16:24:32

[quote="Jamespking"][quote="JoeyJones"]Who's The Boss?[/quote]
You are fired.

[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Springsteen[/url][/quote]

Is he still alive?

*ducks*

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=60#p33395
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-12 16:26:20

I once tried to pin down what "point and click" referred to, in common usage: <a class="postlink" href="http://gameshelf.jmac.org/2010/01/pointing-at-point-and-click/">http://gameshelf.jmac.org/2010/01/point ... and-click/</a>

Opinions varied.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4625&start=0#p33396
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: change (being worn)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-12 16:28:24

I was remiss not to point to [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/commands/#Inventory]a couple of extensions about putting inventory in a single sentence[/url], both of which handle worn stuff without the parentheses. I've never used either of them but they might be worth a look.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4626&start=0#p33397
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anyway...
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-12 16:29:46

It's probably true to say that I've never really given Bruce a fair listening to. I like The Ghost of Tom Joad (but not as much as I like Woody Guthrie's Tom Joad [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKWGAGPy_kw]songs[/url]) and Dancing in the Dark swings, but I can't pretend to be very familiar with his oeuvre. Some of what I have heard seems to border on stadium rock, which I despise with the burning fury of seven thousands suns.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4626&start=0#p33398
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anyway...
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-12 16:30:11

[quote="gravel"][quote="Jamespking"][quote="JoeyJones"]Who's The Boss?[/quote]
You are fired.

[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Springsteen[/url][/quote]

Is he still alive?

*ducks*[/quote]
And kickin'.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4626&start=0#p33399
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anyway...
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-12 16:31:59

[quote="George"]I realized I had a problem the other day when the album I was most excited about right now [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_of_Love_(album)]is from 1987[/url].[/quote]
Bah. [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_to_Run]1975[/url]. Nothing's better.

JoeyJones, try it. You won't regret it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=60#p33400
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-03-12 16:36:00

I have always associated "point-and-click" with graphical adventure games. It never even crossed my mind that it could be used for any other types of games.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=70#p33401
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-12 16:40:42

[quote="Juhana"]I have always associated "point-and-click" with graphical adventure games. It never even crossed my mind that it could be used for any other types of games.[/quote]
Yeah, ditto. Point-and-click means Monkey Island, Simon the Sorcerer and Broken Sword to me.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4626&start=0#p33402
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anyway...
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-12 16:41:39

[quote="JoeyJones"]Who's The Boss?[/quote]

Why are we talking about Tony Danza?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4615&start=0#p33403
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with combat
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2012-03-12 16:51:13

[quote="Jamespking"]I wanna replay [i]Kerkerkruip[/i].

Aw, I'm gonna replay [i]Kerkerkruip[/i] in less than an hour. You are EVIL, Victor.[/quote]
Well, I'm working on release 2... that probably makes me more evil?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4626&start=0#p33404
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anyway...
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-12 16:52:33

[quote][quote]
Is he still alive?

*ducks*[/quote]
And kickin'.[/quote]

Got a Kennedy Center Award, delivered by the president himself - which I'm told is the highest honour for an American artist - last year or so.

It was quite a ceremony. Springsteen ("I may be President, but he's The Boss"), Mel Brooks, Robert DeNiro, Dave Brubeck (jazz pianist/composer) and Grace Bumbry (opera diva). Unlikely bunch, I'd have thought.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4619&start=0#p33405
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: BIG challenge - are you up for it?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-12 16:54:19

Yes, what I loved about it is how it started without a clear goal; you had to go around the village, doing a chore or two, and the goal became apparent. That was refreshing - most games of the time had you start the game with a very clear goal, which made it feel very game-ish. Axe of Kolt was, in that way, surprisingly modern.

Didn't hold me to the end either, but it's a name worth mentioning from games of that period.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4626&start=10#p33406
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anyway...
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-12 16:58:12

[quote="matt w"][quote="JoeyJones"]Who's The Boss?[/quote]

Why are we talking about Tony Danza?[/quote]
Hey we can talk about Tony Danza if you want to. According to the youtube, the only person Tony Danza ever interviewed on his talk show that I've even remotely heard of is the Christian author [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0HSafCBPTU]Carlos Ray Norris[/url]...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4623&start=0#p33407
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Hint request -- Andromeda Awakening
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-12 17:03:57

Noob mistake (from the author, not you!). Check:
[spoiler]Rails’ End
These are the remains of the tunnel which would have taken you to the 
University if the quake hadn’t swallowed its walls. Cascades of dirty water
wash the sides of the black pit, flowing towards the giant crack. The fiery 
curtains of orange smoke that originate a few meters from you are the 
only light source for a span that goes on for kilometers. [b]A thick web of 
twisted rails cuts its way across the darkness to the southwest[/b]. A small 
gap in the hulking walls of the tunnel leads north towards the unknown. 
Then it’s only concrete and stone and a shattered world tangling together 
in every direction.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4615&start=0#p33408
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with combat
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-12 17:14:32

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="Jamespking"]I wanna replay [i]Kerkerkruip[/i].

Aw, I'm gonna replay [i]Kerkerkruip[/i] in less than an hour. You are EVIL, Victor.[/quote]
Well, I'm working on release 2... that probably makes me more evil?[/quote]
Evilest. I have to play [i]Cryptozooalienmarrowbringer[/i], first. So no hurry. Game seems gigantic.

What's in release 2?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4615&start=0#p33409
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with combat
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2012-03-12 17:15:17

[quote="Jamespking"]What's in release 2?[/quote]
We're dangerously close to hijacking this thread, so I'll PM you instead.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4626&start=10#p33410
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anyway...
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2012-03-12 17:40:52

Yay Dave Brubeck!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4615&start=0#p33411
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with combat
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-03-12 17:55:49

[quote="VictorGijsbers"][quote="Jamespking"]What's in release 2?[/quote]
We're dangerously close to hijacking this thread, so I'll PM you instead.[/quote]
Hint: Blog post would be better.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4625&start=0#p33412
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: change (being worn)
User: HanonO / DateTime: 2012-03-12 17:59:32

Oooh, I loved TRINITY.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4624&start=0#p33414
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: putting things in pockets - TADS3.1
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-12 19:01:45

The problem turns out to be distressingly simple. You failed to put a space in the vocabWords of the pockets. You need:

[code]'(khaki) pocket/pockets'[/code]

T3 doesn't usually care about spaces -- but any time you're within quotation marks, you need to be careful. That space is what separates the adjective vocabWords from the noun vocabWords.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=70#p33415
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2012-03-12 19:23:22

[quote="JoeyJones"][quote="Juhana"]I have always associated "point-and-click" with graphical adventure games. It never even crossed my mind that it could be used for any other types of games.[/quote]
Yeah, ditto. Point-and-click means Monkey Island, Simon the Sorcerer and Broken Sword to me.[/quote]

I see your point. But [i]Colder Light[/i] is IMO pretty clearly a point-and-click text adventure.

Indeed, I predict that once Erik and Jon make their code more widely available, "point-and-click text adventures" will become one of the major types of IF. If that happens, I can't really think of anything better to call them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4615&start=0#p33416
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with combat
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-12 19:44:05

To the original poster, if you don't want to delve all the way into ATTACK, you might want to look at the "Lanista" examples in the documentation and see if they inspire you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4548&start=10#p33417
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: a variety of games & interactions...
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-12 19:49:11

I wanted to propose HAGL and just provide a link, but I find lots of HAGL, even HAGL games, but not the game I mean.

"My" HAGL starts with everybody receiving an envelope with some tokens (pieces of coloured paper will do nicely) and two game rules.  There are as many rules as there are players (the game being constructed by a games master who doesn't play), and every rule comes in two copies.  All the rules together describe how to valuate a collection of tokens.  A rule set for a small (4 player) game might be:
[list=]
[*] Blue tokens are worth 1 point each.
[*] Yellow tokens are worth twice as much as blue ones.
[*] Three yellow tokens cancel each other, and are worth nothing.
[*] The goal is to come as close as possible to 5 points.
[/list]
The players are free to exchange tokens, rules and true or false information as they see fit.  One can give a rule away, or just allow one to read it, or just recite its contents (maybe untruthfully).  No one has an information monopoly, because every rule comes in two copies given to separate players, nor has anyone complete information.
The game normally plays on the side during another informal meeting.
At the end of the meeting, everybody shows what they have (it is illegal to destroy tokens, by the way), the games master reads off the complete rule set, the values of the various token collections are computed, and the winner(s) declared.

[[Hmm - the list doesn't show..]]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4615&start=0#p33418
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with combat
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-03-12 19:50:10

Also referring back to the OP: Is the Tolti Aph source up to date? That might be another source to look to for ideas and inspiration.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=70#p33419
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-12 20:04:11

[quote="maga"][b]g) Ask second-round voters not to vote in categories where they haven't played N games[/b], for some value of N between 2 and 'all of them'.
There is no way to effectively police this, so at most it's going to be a suggestion. So I think that, e.g., adding checkboxes for voters to confirm which games they've played wouldn't help much.[/quote]
I think it will for honest voters, and for dishonest ones a whole different cannon is needed anyway.
Instead of "which have you played" it should say something like "on which of these games have you spent at least an hour of serious playing, or which have you played to the end" (some native speaker reformulate this, please).  And then, as I proposed, only those games are affected by the vote.
This also solves the problem of the conscientious non-voter: the person who is afraid of being unfair by voting based on incomplete information.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4628&start=0#p33420
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: SuggestedTellTopic
User: Mike Sousa / DateTime: 2012-03-12 20:42:09

Howdy fine folks.

I am hoping someone can point me in the right direction -- I've searched this base and other doc, but am a bit stumped for now.

Here's the scenario.

An NPC arrives and greets the PC, asking him a question.

At this point, I would like the SuggestedTellTopics to take over and offer some advice on what to tell the NPC.  

I've tried using .suggestTopics(true) for the NPC (and the <.topics> method) but T3 replies with "You were not currently talking to anyone."

I can type '>Talk to NPC' and all is well, but I don't want the PC to have do that.

Any advice?

Thanks,
-- Mike

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=40#p33421
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-03-12 21:16:01

You have tried just increasing the browser font size (Ctrl++)? I will never add anything to Parchment to change the font size because the browser does it better. If you want more control over the styles you can install extensions like Stylish.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4615&start=10#p33422
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with combat
User: versilies / DateTime: 2012-03-12 22:00:37

should i feel stupid for not knowing what Tolti Aph is?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4615&start=10#p33423
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with combat
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-12 22:08:39

No. It's [url=http://inform-fiction.org/I7Downloads/Examples/rota/source.html]The Reliques of Tolti-Aph[/url], a honking enormous worked-out example of a D&D-like scenario in Inform 7, with available source. But (as Erik said) I'm not sure if the source code is updated for the latest version of Inform.

ETA: Anyway, if I remember correctly, isn't its combat system kind of annoying? I vaguely remember that I would type in "sing," "wave," and things like that and get the standard error messages back while my character auto-attacked whatever was in the room.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4628&start=0#p33424
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: SuggestedTellTopic
User: Mike Sousa / DateTime: 2012-03-12 22:29:16

So yeah...  I went about it a different way and solved it.

First, thanks to Eric Eve for posting All Hope Abandon source code into the archive.

I ended up scratching the SuggestedTellTopic code in favor of SpecialTopic (that gave me more freedom on the type of response the PC could use).

When the NPC shows up, I now perform .initiateConversation(actorState, 'name').  The 'name' ConvNode then takes it from there.

I'm sure I'll need to tweak it a bit, but the prototype is working like a charm.

Thanks again, Eric!

-- Mike

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4628&start=0#p33425
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: SuggestedTellTopic
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-03-12 22:58:57

If haven't already, you should read the "Entering and navigating a tree" section of:

<a class="postlink" href="http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/techman/t3conv.htm">http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/techman/t3conv.htm</a>

it explains how NPCs can initiate a conversation.

For the whole context, take a look at "Creating Dynamic Characters" (in "Part II") at:

<a class="postlink" href="http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/techman/toc.htm">http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/techman/toc.htm</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=70#p33426
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: UnwashedMass / DateTime: 2012-03-12 23:12:40

[i]I have always associated "point-and-click" with graphical adventure games. It never even crossed my mind that it could be used for any other types of games.
Yeah, ditto. Point-and-click means Monkey Island, Simon the Sorcerer and Broken Sword to me.[/i]

Point-and-click is an interface mechanism, not a game genre, or if it is one, it need be one that includes Windows Solitaire, Whac-A-Mole clones, SimCity, and mouselook FPSes.  Point-and-click became the standard way of interacting with adventure games of both flavours, 3rd-person and 1-person Myst-style (and subsequently hidden object and escape-the-room) games in the same way that it became the standard interface mechanism for all non-power-users.

[i]I see your point. But Colder Light is IMO pretty clearly a point-and-click text adventure.

Indeed, I predict that once Erik and Jon make their code more widely available, "point-and-click text adventures" will become one of the major types of IF. If that happens, I can't really think of anything better to call them.[/i]

Are these point and click text adventures anything more than hyperfiction with unusually a lot going on under the hood?  In any case, virtually from the death of Infocom on, everyone and their dog tried (and failed) to sex up text adventures by throwing a mouse in the mix, typically also with a more or less static room view window stinking up the main part of the screen much as it had since Mystery House.  Numerous early Legend games could be conspicuously played this way, ostensibly without a keyboard at all (OR exclusively using the keyboard, if the player preferred) ... others tried to further muddle things up by showing icons for inventory items, the compass rose, etc. such as Magnetic Scrolls' Wonderland, Icom's MacVentures, Interplay's Borrowed Time and Tass Times in Tone Town, Last Half of Darkness and, well, plenty of others.  Some of these had a text input/output window, others just had text output.

What we're looking at as a new kind of adventure game is most akin to that latter without the picture window -- mouse-only input, primarily-text output barring spot art and general thematic "skinning" of the game, and (the advantage we have over our predecessors) an adherence to now-ubiquitous universally understood webpage hypertext conventions (== the underlined blue text is a link).  I don't know that we're striking on anything so radically new here, just that we've had a lot of time to reflect on what did and didn't work and have come to terms with removing the play-extending filler and taking it easy on the cruelty scale in favor of... telling more interesting stories. Oh yes, we also don't expect to get paid to make these games, which perhaps frees us from pandering to the genre limitations of what we think will sell to the biggest audience.

Hiding the text input parser is a great hand-holding mechanism to say "yes, there are 999 things you COULD try here, but only one of them would advance the story, so here it is click on it."  Has the double advantage of being mouse/touchpad-playable AND saving the author having to write 998 ways of saying "It does nothing."

Anyhow, I appreciate that this was all obvious.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4629&start=0#p33427
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Command line comfort
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2012-03-12 23:57:57

I'm working on a game - no, strike that, I'm working on the engine for a game. The gist of it is a hacking game - hack into a secure network, uncovering facts and secrets as you go, and so on. The majority of the game will be spent at the command line, thus this poll.
Note that it won't require any hacking skills; probably some neat extras if you know where to look, but otherwise, the game should help you through the commands and syntax.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4629&start=0#p33428
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Command line comfort
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-13 01:00:56

I [i]used [/i]to be comfortable with the DOS command line, [i]years ago,[/i] when I used DOS ...

Not sure where that fits in the poll. Maybe it puts me at the "cheat-sheet" level, since I only remember about half of the commands I used regularly in those days.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=40#p33429
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-13 01:57:48

I have the Parchment on my home site rigged for a maximum column width. I am in favor of such layouts, although, of course, you can always resize the browser window.

(Yes, yes, tabs, I know. Eject 'em.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=70#p33430
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-13 02:43:26

[quote="Biep"][quote="Ghalev"]I agree with this concept in principal, though I disagree vehemently with the earlier, brainstormed concepts for the categories.[/quote]
All right.  So what would a first, brainstorm-fodder kind of category list from you look like?[/quote]
I like the idea of letting the voters determine that themselves. Something like a Uservoice-style system, where people have a certain number of votes, and can spend them either on their own ideas or existing, established ones.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4548&start=20#p33431
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: a variety of games & interactions...
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-13 02:45:57

[quote="Biep"]I wanted to propose HAGL and just provide a link, but I find lots of HAGL, even HAGL games, but not the game I mean.

"My" HAGL starts with everybody receiving an envelope with some tokens (pieces of coloured paper will do nicely) and two game rules.  There are as many rules as there are players (the game being constructed by a games master who doesn't play), and every rule comes in two copies.  All the rules together describe how to valuate a collection of tokens.  A rule set for a small (4 player) game might be:
[list]
[*] Blue tokens are worth 1 point each.[/*:m]
[*] Yellow tokens are worth twice as much as blue ones.[/*:m]
[*] Three yellow tokens cancel each other, and are worth nothing.[/*:m]
[*] The goal is to come as close as possible to 5 points.[/*:m][/list:u]
The players are free to exchange tokens, rules and true or false information as they see fit.  One can give a rule away, or just allow one to read it, or just recite its contents (maybe untruthfully).  No one has an information monopoly, because every rule comes in two copies given to separate players, nor has anyone complete information.
The game normally plays on the side during another informal meeting.
At the end of the meeting, everybody shows what they have (it is illegal to destroy tokens, by the way), the games master reads off the complete rule set, the values of the various token collections are computed, and the winner(s) declared.

[[Hmm - the list doesn't show..]][/quote]

You need to delete the = from [list=].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4578&start=10#p33432
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF and Choice (or, another goddamn CYOA thread)
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-13 02:57:40

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="joningold"]This is a pretty widely held viewpoint, I think, although I find it a little strange - as it seems to suggest that you can only tell if something's interactive by playing it *at least twice*.[/quote]

My own stance is that no single-player computer-game is meaningfully "interactive," period. Only the [i]illusion [/i]of interactivity is possible (presently) in a single-player computer game. [i]Solitaire is solitaire;[/i] there is no "interaction," only programmed [i]re[/i]action.[/quote]

Why is that? I believe that reaction from one agent to another's action is an utterly necessary component of interaction. What makes a sufficiently complex computerized system different from a human brain, if they both make decisions from the same set of possible actions? My mind only exists as reactions programmed by biology and my past experiences; looking only at the actions taken in a given system, a computer program with some kind of learning algorithm would be no different.

[quote][quote]It would be better to say the game should *feel* like it contains meaningful player agency.[/quote]

Quite.[/quote]
I'm not much of a fan of providing the illusion of agency; I've always put a much higher weight on interesting replayability, even outside the realm of games (EG, movies). Games that pretend to allow meaningful decisions, but actually don't, feel flat and empty as soon as I figure it out.

[quote="Bainespal"]
But in parser IF, the player is contributing to a constructed narrative, even if there are no choices that affect anything other than the order of the segments of that narrative.  The player supplies the direction of the narrative even if he or she can't influence the story.  (I think I got this from my reading of [i]Twisty Little Passages[/i] last year.)[/quote]
If the order of those passages doesn't affect the [i]content[/i] of the passages, then no, I wouldn't really consider that influencing the direction of the narrative in any useful sense. Not any more than taking a pair of scissors to a novel, at any rate.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4615&start=10#p33433
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with combat
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-13 05:46:06

[quote="ektemple"]Also referring back to the OP: Is the Tolti Aph source up to date? That might be another source to look to for ideas and inspiration.[/quote]
Nope, but it's not too hard to bring it up to date. I have a working copy on my computer if anyone wants it.

[quote="matt w"]ETA: Anyway, if I remember correctly, isn't its combat system kind of annoying? I vaguely remember that I would type in "sing," "wave," and things like that and get the standard error messages back while my character auto-attacked whatever was in the room.[/quote]Yeah, it is. It could really use a long round of polishing, but I think Graham basically said that it was more a proof-of-concept that I7 could be used to write complex D&D-style games. (Apparently, some people had the impression that the system was only good for creating more "literary" works, before it was officially released.) Either that or he went completely crazy.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4629&start=0#p33434
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Command line comfort
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-13 05:53:08

Never used the command line much, other than for navigation, really. a: to switch to the floppy, setup.bat or install.exe, then c:, cd sierra, cd PQ1, pq1.bat to start the game. cd\ for getting back to c:\, dir and dir*.* and dir/p for directory listings... the most arcane commands I used were "view" and "edit".

I was always, and still am, perfectly comfortable with it (in fact, I need to use it to de-blorb some games so I can play them on ZaxMidlet). I guess I used it at the most basic level, but never needed a cheat sheet, othen than when I was learning.

Oh, and let's not forget memmkr. My life revolved around MemMaker for some of those games. As well as loading the mouse driver, and sometimes the sound driver, and...

...

...man, what a hassle THAT was.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=50#p33435
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-13 05:57:18

If no-one else has mentioned it yet, I may be the only person to whom this is happening, but:

With your update, I now see deactivated scroll-bars all over the place.

Image in the spoiler (not really a spoiler, but it is a big image).
[spoiler][attachment=0]colderscrollbars.png[/attachment][/spoiler]

Using Firefox. Don't know which version anymore - but I do always install the latest one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=70#p33436
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-13 06:06:53

Oh, for heaven's sake. If we go "point-and-click means pointing and clicking" we'll find out that every game is an RPG because it involves some roleplaying.

I always like to see some discussion on it for intellectual purposes, and for stimulation, but let's not lose track here: we're using terms that emerged to differentiate emerging forms of gaming. P&Cs emerged to differentiate them from sierra-style AGI games, like King's Quest 1-4. It automatically meant "adventure game" because that was the only sort of game where, at the time, a P&C interface still made any sense. That's *it*. And in that way P&C actually did become a genre, in its most common use.

That's what P&C *means*. What the words can apply to and accurately describe, in this modern world, is another matter - but then, isn't that always how it happens with cathegories.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4630&start=0#p33437
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Working with lists
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2012-03-13 06:46:52

I'm curious why the commented out statements in the code below do not work.

[code]
  local lst1, lst2;

  lst1 = [0, 1, 2, 3];
  "The length of lst1 is <<lst1.length>>.\n";
  
  lst1 = lst1 + [4, 5, 0];
  "The length of lst1 is <<lst1.length>>.\n";
  
  lst2 = ['Tatiana', 'Emily', 'Debbie'].length();
  "The length of lst2 is <<lst2>>.\n";
  
  "Count of 0 in lst1: <<lst1.countOf(0)>>.\n";
  
  // The statements below cannot be executed.
  // Error: Runtime error: object value required
  //local debCount = lst2.countOf('Debbie');
  //local name = 'Debbie';
  //"Count of 'Debbie' in lst2: <<lst2.countOf(name)>>.\n";
  //"Items in lst2: "; lst2.forEach(new function(item) { "<<item>> "; }); "\n";
[/code]

Am I missing something really obvious?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4548&start=20#p33439
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: a variety of games & interactions...
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-13 07:10:02

[quote="ChrisC"]You need to delete the = from [list=].[/quote]
Thanks.  But that makes it an unnumbered list - I wanted a numbered one, and the button at the top of the input field inserted [list=][/list] (I hit the button again to get this.)
Adding the equals sign to the end tag doesn't help either.
[list=][*]Test[*]Taste[*]Toast[/list=]
[list =][*]Test[*]Taste[*]Toast[/list]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4548&start=20#p33440
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: a variety of games & interactions...
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2012-03-13 07:22:24

In that case, you need to put [ list=1 ] (without the spaces - I just put them in to make the BBCode processor ignore the tag). The item after the equals sign decides the kind of ordered list you get - so "list=1" makes a numbered list, "list=a" uses the alphabet instead of numbers, and "list=i" gives you a numbered list with roman numerals.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=70#p33441
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-13 07:38:08

[quote="Peter Pears"]Oh, for heaven's sake. If we go "point-and-click means pointing and clicking" we'll find out that every game is an RPG because it involves some roleplaying.

I always like to see some discussion on it for intellectual purposes, and for stimulation, but let's not lose track here: we're using terms that emerged to differentiate emerging forms of gaming. P&Cs emerged to differentiate them from sierra-style AGI games, like King's Quest 1-4. It automatically meant "adventure game" because that was the only sort of game where, at the time, a P&C interface still made any sense. That's *it*. And in that way P&C actually did become a genre, in its most common use.

That's what P&C *means*. What the words can apply to and accurately describe, in this modern world, is another matter - but then, isn't that always how it happens with cathegories.[/quote]
I quote you in full. With these sofisms we will end up saying that internet porn is Point&Click.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4629&start=0#p33442
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Command line comfort
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-13 09:00:48

I used the command line a while ago, and these days I use it very occasionally -- I have a couple Java applications that run through .jar files that open the Terminal window (this doesn't count, since I don't have to use it myself) and I have occasionally used it to telnet into a server to play SLASH'EM. And I used it a bit to try out that one TADS interpreter. Also I played Dunnet in the Terminal for a bit, until I got to the point where you have to, well, use the command line.

As far as the game goes, I put myself in the "I'll try it if you help me through" category. Dunnet and Virtuality (from the JayIsGames comp) felt too much like work. I can do command-line stuff if you tell me what I need to be doing, but I don't much enjoy being tossed into it willy-nilly. This applies to my actual computer as well as IF; when I hear "You can do such-and-so for Mac, but you have to run it from the command line," that usually leads me not to do such-and-so.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4615&start=10#p33443
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with combat
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-03-13 09:36:47

[quote="matt w"]Anyway, if I remember correctly, isn't its combat system kind of annoying? I vaguely remember that I would type in "sing," "wave," and things like that and get the standard error messages back while my character auto-attacked whatever was in the room.[/quote]
Premise for a game: The player has been trained since childhood to be an elite killing machine, with murderous instincts honed to Bourne-like effectiveness. But all he/she really wants to do is be on Broadway. So instead of using attack commands, the player sings, dances, and waves her way through the fight scenes, and these are actions are translated onscreen into epic bloodletting. Admittedly, this would work better for Kinect than for IF. But there aren't many other IF games in which PIROUETTE would be a meaningful command...

More seriously, though, the OP could probably learn something from the combat system of TA, even if it does need tweaking. I haven't looked at the source code, but as a formal example for I7, it ought to be fairly well commented and approachable...?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4629&start=0#p33444
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Command line comfort
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-03-13 10:28:57

I use the CLI a lot, but only on Linux and Mac OS X. With both, I prefer the CLI for file management, searching and such. The Windows CLI is a nightmare to use, I stay away from it. It's very crude and extremely user unfriendly.

I voted for #1, since there's no middle ground between #1 and #2. I do own a mouse, and I like GUIs. I use them a lot. But also like the CLI.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4629&start=0#p33445
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Command line comfort
User: gravel / DateTime: 2012-03-13 10:33:00

I remember a little about using one - mostly navigational stuff.  But it's been years and years now.  

I'd be interested in the game as long as I could feel like a hacker - a cheat sheet may not cut it, since if I'm always referencing one, that's not really hacker-y.  (On the other hand, it would take me back to the days when I had cheat sheets taped to my monitor.  Good times.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4629&start=0#p33446
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Command line comfort
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-13 10:35:40

Oooooooh, I used to use ARJ for zipping and unzipping and fitting games into my floppies, all in DOS. THAT one had a lot of cheat sheets.

Ah, the memories.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4615&start=10#p33447
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with combat
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-13 11:06:23

No, that's true. I was thinking that for a beginner it might both be a lot to absorb and present some difficulties as to how to make the combat system more responsive to the player's command, but it's still probably worth looking at. (Chapter 3 of part I is the place to look.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=70#p33448
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-03-13 11:16:55

[quote="dfabulich"][i]Colder Light[/i] is IMO pretty clearly a point-and-click text adventure.[/quote]
As Peter and others have said, the term "point-and-click" is a little too closely tied to a certain genre of graphic adventure game for this to be precisely the right term, even if the input method is similar to some of the examples that TheUnwashedMass called out.

This name stuff is tricky. I made the mistake of calling Colder Light "hyperlink-only parser IF" on my blog, and got responses from people who read that as "hyperlink fiction". Which it definitely is not.

[quote="dfabulich"]Indeed, I predict that once Erik and Jon make their code more widely available, "point-and-click text adventures" will become one of the major types of IF. If that happens, I can't really think of anything better to call them.[/quote]
I don't plan to make my code available, because it's just too hacky; I'd hate to see anyone use it as the basis for their own project. I think Jon's code should be much better, because he was able to design the game for this interface; I believe that he has mentioned potentially releasing it as an extension. But even so, we need to see a bit more advance in technology before this particular I7-based approach is ready for wide usage. Your prediction has a better chance of coming true once the new Glulx style system is completed and implemented widely across interpreters. (I don't actually have an opinion on the prediction itself.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4632&start=0#p33449
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Does anyone else want your own tag marks for Inform code?
User: gravel / DateTime: 2012-03-13 11:22:30

In the name of organization, I'd kind of like to be able to insert bookmarks or tags that I could then use the Index to sort through.  This could be helpful in referencing variables that I always forget, test code that needs to be updated/removed, collect all the disparate bits of code that deal with an issue, etc.  I can do some of that with commenting, and then searching for those comment tags, but it would be nice to be able to see them in a list, with the first line or two of code after it, and be able to jump to that code by clicking on the Index link.

[quote][color=#FF0040]Bugged: Light levels[/color]To decide what number is the light level of (place - a room):
[color=#FF0040]Bugged: Attack code[/color]Carry out attacking:
[color=#FF0040]Bugged: Attack code[/color]To decide which opponent is chosen for combat:
[color=#FF80BF]To test[/color] Test the forest randomization
[color=#FFBFFF]Fluff stuff[/color] Add swim functions to appropriate water bodies
[color=#00BFFF]Extra feature[/color] Add encyclopedia defintions for:[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4629&start=0#p33450
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Command line comfort
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-13 11:23:26

I used DOS way-back-when.  I missed it as everything started switching to Windows.  I still remember the old commands (installed DOSbox a while ago, for some old software).  I used a little VMS back in college.

But I never got the hang of unix or linux, and doing anything with accounts or privs (I assume an important part of a hacking game!) is pretty foreign to me.  In general, my computer / math skills, beyond everyday stuff, are rusty from 15 years of disuse.

Sounds like a cool game concept.  Let me know if you need any late-stage Beta testers.  If I can get through it, probably most of your players can.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4629&start=0#p33451
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Command line comfort
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2012-03-13 11:33:33

Most likely, my game would have a HELP command much like is already in Windows - "HELP DIR" would show you how to use the "DIR" command, something like:

[code]DIR [path][filename]
Given a path and filename, displays information about the specific file.
Given only a path, lists files in the given directory.
Given no filename or path, lists files in current directory.[/code]
The commands themselves would be simplified Windows and Linux commands, probably without many switches (that is, as useful as dir /ah is, I'd probably only implement dir). I'm also trying to implement a smart tab-completion, so you can type (for example) "who" and hit tab, and it auto-completes to "whoami".

I'm hoping that the commands themselves will be simple enough that players will be able to use them without difficulty, but that there are enough commands with enough uses that it's not boring - spending an hour cd'ing through directories and listing files is not my idea of fun. Though, at this point, 99% of my time has gone into creating the parser, with only some scribbled notes on the actual plot... but, I want to get it right before I worry about actually putting plot-related information in it.

Though, plot-wise, I'm not intending the hacking to be hardcore - no drafting buffer overflows to break into web sessions, for instance. It'll mostly be like real hacking - using default passwords, or finding usernames and passwords left laying around, with only the occasional (and well hinted, to be sure) port scanning or IP-changing. Though I will throw in some interesting easter eggs for the more advanced players...

conradcook - sweet! Beta testing probably won't happen for a while yet, but I'll happily put your name down for when it does!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4630&start=0#p33452
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Working with lists
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-13 11:53:05

You've set lst2 not to the list of names, but to the integer value of the length of that list!

Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4630&start=0#p33453
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Working with lists
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-13 12:00:47

More mysteriously to me, why [i]does[/i] this work?



[code]    go () {
 local lst1;

  lst1 = [0, 1, 2, 3];
  "lst1 = [0, 1, 2, 3]; \n";      
  "The length of lst1 is <<lst1.length>>.\n";
  "Items in lst1: "; lst1.forEach(new function(item) { "<<item>> "; }); "\n";
  
  lst1 = lst1 + [4, 5, 0];
  "...adding [4, 5, 0]; \n";      
  "The new length of lst1 is <<lst1.length>>.\n";
  "Items in lst1: "; lst1.forEach(new function(item) { "<<item>> "; }); "\n";
  
}[/code]

The output:

[quote]lst1 = [0, 1, 2, 3]; 
The length of lst1 is 4.
Items in lst1: 0 1 2 3 
...adding [4, 5, 0]; 
The new length of lst1 is 7.
Items in lst1: 0 1 2 3 4 5 0 [/quote]

--I thought you couldn't modify lists once they were made?


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4630&start=0#p33454
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Working with lists
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2012-03-13 12:05:43

So how do you iterate over the contents of a list that contain value strings? And can I not count how many such values of 'some string' are in a list?

If [1, 2, 3] is a list of values than so, I presume, is ['a', 'b', 'c'].

I should note I don't actually have an immediate need for this; I'm just experimenting with the language.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4632&start=0#p33455
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Does anyone else want your own tag marks for Inform code
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-13 12:21:36

If you bring up the find menu, enter a search string, and hit "Find All", you get a list in which clicking jumps to the source line. (Mac IDE.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4630&start=0#p33456
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Working with lists
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-13 12:28:33

No, you can do everything that you were doing.  You just made a small error in your declaration.


[code]  lst2 = ['Tatiana', 'Emily', 'Debbie'].length();
  "The length of lst2 is <<lst2>>.\n";
  [/code]

Clearly, this defines "lst2" not as a list, but as the length of a list (which is never recorded into any variable).

When you later try to work with the "lst2" variable as if it were a list, you are in fact working with an integer variable of value 3, since this is the length of the [list] that you set lst2 equal to.

Use instead

[code]  lst2 = ['Tatiana', 'Emily', 'Debbie'];
  "The length of lst2 is <<lst2.length()>>.\n";
  [/code]

For your declaration and reporting, and you'll find the rest of the code works as you anticipate.


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4630&start=0#p33457
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Working with lists
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2012-03-13 12:34:18

Ah, got it.

I see my error. I'm an idiot! I forgot I was testing out if methods can be called on a direct instance.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4633&start=0#p33458
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Quixe TypedArray feature?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-13 14:10:29

So I spent a few hours modifying Quixe to use the TypedArray feature (a recent addition to Javascript). The idea is that instead of storing main memory as a Javascript array of Javascript numbers (which are really doubles, ferchrissake) we store it as a true byte array (Uint8Array).

I figured that this would be faster. However, I'm getting mixed results. For Glulxercise (the VM unit test), it runs about 9% faster (Firefox and Safari). However, Reliques of Tolti-Aph (our favorite I7-generated torture test) is about 9% slower on Safari. For Firefox, RoTA is about 5% faster when compiling code -- it's more or less a wash when executing cached code.

(I have not yet tested this with iOS Safari (mobile WebKit) -- I really should, since that's the real-life low-end platform.)

I guess the diagnosis here is that making main memory a byte array is faster when you're running code that accesses main memory a lot. (Glulxercise does this, because it exercises every VM opcode on main memory, local variables, and the stack.) However, that's not normal game code; the I7/I6 compiler is good about keeping most accesses in locals and the stack. So in real life, the gain is outweighed by overhead.

Anybody have experience with this?

Thinking out loud here:

- Byte arrays are more compact, I assume. Is the speed hit worth the reduced memory profile?
- I guess I could make the stack and locals into Uint32Arrays. That would be more work. (My existing stack code relies heavily on the array.push() method. Uint32Array is fixed-size and has no push method.)
- Crap, I didn't array-ize the save-undo routine. I hope the overhead cost isn't all there! (Quick test) Nope.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4630&start=0#p33459
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Working with lists
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-03-13 14:22:07

[quote="conradcook"]I thought you couldn't modify lists once they were made?[/quote]

You can modify lists, but it always creates a new list, leaving the original unchanged. If you want to capture the result of that modification, you have to assign it to a local, property, or some other means of reference.

Here you've replaced the contents of the lst1 local with the modified list. The original list is still out there, floating in memory, but it can no longer be referred to and the garbage collector will eventually sweep it up.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4548&start=20#p33460
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: a variety of games & interactions...
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2012-03-13 14:34:43

HAGL appears to be Haggle by Sid Sackson, described in _A Gamut of Games_, although Haggle did have the slightly different rule that you didn't have to put in all your tokens at the end, if you thought it would be better not to.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=30#p33461
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: David J Prokopetz / DateTime: 2012-03-13 14:36:43

Oh, dear - I seem to have backed myself into a corner again.

I've just about got it all figured out, but then (because I am apparently insane) I decided to add support for soundproof containers. Being inside a transparent, soundproof container is intended to be analogous to interacting with an object in a room that's visually but not aurally adjacent, or through a viewport that's visually but not aurally transparent. Conversely, I've also got code handling cases where a player tries to interact with something in a location that they can hear, but not see, so opaque, non-soundproof containers need to be handled as well.

This is what I've got:

[code]To decide whether (the listener - a thing) can hear (the subject - a thing):
	if the location of the listener is the location of the subject:
		if the listener is enclosed by a closed soundproof container (called the enclosure):
			if the subject is enclosed by the enclosure:
				decide yes;
			otherwise:
				decide no;
		otherwise if the subject is enclosed by a closed soundproof container:
			decide no;
		otherwise:
			decide yes;
	otherwise if the location of the listener is aurally adjacent to the location of the subject:
		if the listener is enclosed by a closed soundproof container or the subject is enclosed by a closed soundproof container:
			decide no;
		otherwise:
			decide yes;
	otherwise:
		decide no;[/code]
As long as we're dealing with something in a room that's aurally adjacent to the location of the listener, we have all of our bases covered - a container can't be in two rooms at once. Likewise, a simple check allows us to catch the case where the listener and the noisy thing are in the same room, but inside two different soundproof containers.

However, there's one edge case that will cause the above code to erroneous conclude that the listener can hear the subject: what if the listener and the subject are in the same room, inside the same soundproof container, and either one of them is also inside a [b]second[/b] soundproof container inside the first one?

I don't expect this scenario to ever arise in practice in the game I'm actually writing, but the perfectionist in me won't allow it to stand.

Can anyone give me a few pointers on how to handle this situation?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4614&start=0#p33462
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making the IDE hang with list management...
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-03-13 14:37:34

[quote="conradcook"]
I'd like to allow characters to have a number of different strategies, more than one for a particular game, and particular strategies for particular opponents.  So in your view, what would be a good way to design this, to store the strategies data in the characters somewhere, and then for the gaem object to filter out the relevant records, and pick out one strategy from among them?.[/quote]

The idiomatic TADS approach would be to implement a Strategy class, with subclasses for each game to encapsulate variations in rules, etc.

Then each NPC would hold various Strategy objects, using the + notation, similar to the way AgendaItems and ActorStates are added.

Game logic can then find a given NPC's strategies by accessing its contents list, filtering for objects of the Strategy class (or relevant subclass), and then invoking some class method on each result to see if it wanted to be used in the current situation.

Probably you would pass the opponent's object as a value to that class method, so it could use that information to decide if the strategy applied.

I can work up another demo if this is not clear.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4548&start=20#p33463
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: a variety of games & interactions...
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-13 14:42:44

[list=1]
[*] Blue tokens are worth 1 point each.[/*:m]
[*] Yellow tokens are worth twice as much as blue ones.[/*:m]
[*] Three yellow tokens cancel each other, and are worth nothing.[/*:m]
[*] The goal is to come as close as possible to 5 points.[/*:m][/list:o]

Great!  Thanks!  (And happy HAGLing/haggling)

BTW - I think having to hand in everything is nicer, because otherwise there is no pressure to get rid of tokens, just to collect as many as possible.  Thanks for "discovering" the game, though!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=30#p33464
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-13 14:46:25

I'd recommend trolling through the Standard Rules (and probably the template layer too) and teasing out every reference to "opaque" containers. Then modify that so that "opaque" means something different when the current action involves sound.

It's ambitious. You might be better off leaving that up to the game author, since there's likely to be very small number of soundproof containers, and an even smaller number of enterable ones.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4632&start=0#p33465
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Does anyone else want your own tag marks for Inform code
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-13 14:51:22

I had already been hopping through my source using the Find function, but I augmented that by simply adding hashtags:

[code]Chapter - Your Living Room

[#livingroom]

Your Living Room is a room. "A typical starting place for a first IF project."

[TODO: Cleverly disguise each location so players don't know it's really your apartment][/code]

(I also add a lot of TODOs)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4578&start=10#p33466
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF and Choice (or, another goddamn CYOA thread)
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-13 14:59:24

[quote="ChrisC"]What makes a sufficiently complex computerized system different from a human brain, if they both make decisions from the same set of possible actions? [/quote]

Nothing, and once we develop genuine AI, single-player computer games will [i]vanish[/i] (except as a quaint nostalgic form?), because then* there will be at least [i]two [/i]players: the human, and the AI, interacting. Until then, we have only the artful illusion of that.**

[quote]Games that pretend to allow meaningful decisions, but actually don't, feel flat and empty as soon as I figure it out.[/quote]

I agree, but "illusion of choice" and "illusion of interactivity" are two separate things (see prior posts). A single-player computer game can offer [i]genuine [/i]choices, and when it offers fake choices, that's lame (and typically transparent). But with interactivity, an illusion is all that's available, so the art of that illusion is important to most designs.

[quote]If the order of those passages doesn't affect the [i]content[/i] of the passages, then no, I wouldn't really consider that influencing the direction of the narrative in any useful sense. Not any more than taking a pair of scissors to a novel, at any rate.[/quote]

Entirely agreed.

-------------------------
* Assuming our new AI Masters wish to play games with us at all, of course, and don't simply ignore us, enslave us, kill us, or leave us behind as they go off to colonize a new and gleaming Robot Planet.
** Which is not to say that "interaction," in the blandest sense, requires human level AI ... you can interact with your dog, after all, or a pet turtle. But your dog and turtle (even if they team up) can't run a decent [i]Call of Cthulhu[/i] campaign, and so, for game-design-discussion purposes, it's near-human or it's near-nuthin'.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=30#p33467
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: David J Prokopetz / DateTime: 2012-03-13 15:19:42

Yeah, you're probably right. It's a stupid little edge case - what are the odds that you'll end up with nested soundproof containers, the outermost of which is enterable? - and it's probably not worth delaying getting this thing wrapped up by another week while I wrestle with it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4621&start=0#p33468
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: [IF Review] Zombie Exodus
User: jimd / DateTime: 2012-03-13 16:34:21

That's a good review, and I am glad to receive constructive criticism. 

Many of the issues are being addressed in my next update, though I continue to go back through and tighten up choices and prose. Most of the readers I've had have either been in the ChoiceScript community, or are IF-naive, so having reviews from people who are knowledgeable about IF is valuable feedback.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4629&start=0#p33469
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Command line comfort
User: Merlin Fisher / DateTime: 2012-03-13 16:45:15

Is there a huge difference between command line interface and IF in general?  I thought the latter was really just a simplified version of the former.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4615&start=10#p33470
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with combat
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-03-13 17:05:00

This is a follow-up question from somebody who hasn't played a (tabletop) RPG in years and who's quite clueless (yes, me): are there any popular, really free RPG systems? Is d20 free to use or is there still that license thing that prevents some parts - character creation, I think? I know there are lots and lots of different free RPG:s, but has any of them really caught on?

I do know about [i]Risus[/i] which has a brilliantly minimalist approach. (Nice work, S. John!)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3113&start=30#p33471
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Participate in the Interactive Fiction Top 50!
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-03-13 18:06:41

oh, damn.  I missed this?!

Thankfully, the votes came out pretty ok.  I'd add a vote for Spellbreaker and a few other puzzlers, but in the end, a well rounded list indeed.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4629&start=10#p33472
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Command line comfort
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-13 18:19:00

Well, command line interface works with such obscure commands as "dir /p", "cd", and such conventions as "X: to access drive X".

IF works with such commands as "look", "take", "inventory", "ask john about the fire".

Command line interface allows you to navigate and interact with the contents of your computer.

IF allows you to navigate and interact with a modelled virtual world.

You COULD try navigating a command line interface with "go north", but I'm not sure you'd go far.

Also: apparently there were some versions of DOS where "xyzzy" actually had a response.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4623&start=0#p33473
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Hint request -- Andromeda Awakening
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2012-03-13 18:35:46

Thank you both.

I claim all the blame.  Missing exits seems to be a noob mistake that I frequently make, even though I've been playing IF for about nine years.  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4578&start=20#p33474
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: IF and Choice (or, another goddamn CYOA thread)
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2012-03-13 18:51:39

[quote="ChrisC"]If the order of those passages doesn't affect the [i]content[/i] of the passages, then no, I wouldn't really consider that influencing the direction of the narrative in any useful sense. Not any more than taking a pair of scissors to a novel, at any rate.[/quote]
The manner of input is a legitimate form of interactivity.  I grant that input-interaction may be almost completely separate from content-interactivity, and I acknowledge that CYOAs are inherently better at providing content-interactivity.

Being able to interact with the [i]narrative[/i] (which is different from the story content) is important to [u]immersion[/u].  The other part of immersion is detailed simulation/world-modeling.  A CYOA may be able to equal or exceed any IF game for interactivity, but I feel that parser-IF is unequaled when it comes to immersion/mimesis (except perhaps for MUDs, which share both the parser and the simulation).

When I read [i]The Wheel of Time[/i], no matter how much I am immersed in the story and how fascinated I may be with the world-building and mythopoeia, I can never [i]live[/i] the story of those static books.  I may deeply identify with the character of Rand al'Thor, but I can never see through his eyes.  In order to do so, I would need to be able to construct the vision in my imagination and manipulate it, but I can't do that with the book, because it will not interact with me.  If [i]The Wheel of Time[/i] were a CYOA, I might be able to interact with the story and characters for almost endless possibilities, and that would be great fun.  However, I still wouldn't be much closer to being able to construct the world and live in it.

However, the parser interface of [i]Fallacy of Dawn[/i] allows me to see through the eyes of Delarion Yar and live his story, which (along with Robb Sherwin's great writing, of course) makes him so real and sympathetic.

Parser-IF that isn't interactive on a story level still has to offer [i]something[/i] that static novels lack.  It's going way too far to compare the use of the parser without story interaction with cutting up a novel and rearranging its pages.  The first IF game I ever played was [i]Wearing the Claw[/i] by Paul O'Brien, and there's no way to get different endings (other than, I think, a simple loss that can be undone) or to affect any variables in the plot.  In fact, [i]Wearing the Claw[/i] is linear as a puzzle game; you can't do things out of order because you are only presented with one problem at a time.  And yet, I was totally captivated by that game, and because of that I am still playing IF today, about nine years later.  The game let me [i]live[/i] the story in a way that no static fiction I had ever read could ever have, and it did this with a parser and a simulation without need of story-interactivity.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=30#p33475
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-13 19:03:08

[quote="David J Prokopetz"]Oh, dear - I seem to have backed myself into a corner again.

I've just about got it all figured out, but then (because I am apparently insane) I decided to add support for soundproof containers. Being inside a transparent, soundproof container is intended to be analogous to interacting with an object in a room that's visually but not aurally adjacent, or through a viewport that's visually but not aurally transparent. Conversely, I've also got code handling cases where a player tries to interact with something in a location that they can hear, but not see, so opaque, non-soundproof containers need to be handled as well.

This is what I've got:

[code]To decide whether (the listener - a thing) can hear (the subject - a thing):
	if the location of the listener is the location of the subject:
		if the listener is enclosed by a closed soundproof container (called the enclosure):
			if the subject is enclosed by the enclosure:
				decide yes;
			otherwise:
				decide no;
		otherwise if the subject is enclosed by a closed soundproof container:
			decide no;
		otherwise:
			decide yes;
	otherwise if the location of the listener is aurally adjacent to the location of the subject:
		if the listener is enclosed by a closed soundproof container or the subject is enclosed by a closed soundproof container:
			decide no;
		otherwise:
			decide yes;
	otherwise:
		decide no;[/code]
As long as we're dealing with something in a room that's aurally adjacent to the location of the listener, we have all of our bases covered - a container can't be in two rooms at once. Likewise, a simple check allows us to catch the case where the listener and the noisy thing are in the same room, but inside two different soundproof containers.

However, there's one edge case that will cause the above code to erroneous conclude that the listener can hear the subject: what if the listener and the subject are in the same room, inside the same soundproof container, and either one of them is also inside a [b]second[/b] soundproof container inside the first one?

I don't expect this scenario to ever arise in practice in the game I'm actually writing, but the perfectionist in me won't allow it to stand.

Can anyone give me a few pointers on how to handle this situation?[/quote]

I think you can do this pretty simply. I commented out the code for adjacent rooms because I didn't want to program that in my scenario, but this seems to be working:

[code]A container can be soundproof. A container is usually transparent.
To decide whether (the listener - a thing) can hear (the subject - a thing):
	if the location of the listener is the location of the subject:
		if a closed soundproof container that encloses the listener does not enclose the subject:
			decide no;
		otherwise if a closed soundproof container that encloses the subject does not enclose the listener:
			decide no;
		otherwise:
			decide yes;
	[otherwise if the location of the listener is aurally adjacent to the location of the subject:
		if the listener is enclosed by a closed soundproof container or the subject is enclosed by a closed soundproof container:
			decide no;
		otherwise:
			decide yes;
	otherwise:
		decide no;]
		
Rubbermaid Factory is a room. The clapper is a thing in the Rubbermaid Factory.
The hunormous tub is an enterable soundproof closed openable container in Rubbermaid Factory. The giant tub is an enterable soundproof closed openable container. It is in the hunormous tub. The wicker stand is an enterable closed openable container. It is in the giant tub. The yellow big tub is an enterable closed openable container. It is in the giant tub. The green big tub is an enterable closed openable container. It is in the giant tub. The cardboard box is an enterable closed openable opaque container. It is in the yellow big tub.

Instead of singing:
	if the clapper can hear the player and the player can see the clapper:
		say "The clapper flashes excitedly.";
	otherwise:
		say "You sing a bit."
		
Instead of listening:
	if the player can hear the clapper:
		say "You can hear the almost subliminal hum of the clapper's workings.";
	otherwise:
		say "You can't hear anything special."[/code]

If the antecedent contains all the desiderata of the blocking container -- that it contains the subject but not the listener, or vice versa -- then we don't need to worry about whether we pick the wrong container for "enclosure." 

I found something hinky while testing this -- since the "listen" action is redirected to listening to the room, whenever you listen from inside a closed container (soundproof or not!) you get "The hunormous tub isn't open," because you can't touch the room. You probably want to come up with a fix for that, if you haven't already.

ETA: This scenario produces a truly ridiculous room description.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4623&start=0#p33476
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Hint request -- Andromeda Awakening
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-13 19:13:11

[quote="Bainespal"]Thank you both.

I claim all the blame.  Missing exits seems to be a noob mistake that I frequently make, even though I've been playing IF for about nine years.  [emote];)[/emote][/quote]
No. Noob mistake is hiding exits in walls of text. I blame the author. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4633&start=0#p33477
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe TypedArray feature?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-03-13 19:43:06

This is why I want to collect a whole bunch of slow code for a performance test suite using my Benchmarking extension... will be a better torture test than Reliques.

You've removed the number casting code?

Although there's a lot that happens off the main memory, the main memory still needs to be accessed a lot. Maybe the slow down is that 8bit access is rare? Have you tried using a DataView instead? (Problem: not in Firefox yet.) Another thing to try is using a Uint32Array, like Nitfol does.

Lastly, changing to a fixed size stack could be a possibility. You can't push on to it, but you could copy the values to an even large one if that was required.

Also, if there really is an overhead I'd consider that a browser bug. If we can pin down the slow test cases we can report them - I've done it [url=http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=70675]before[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=30#p33478
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: David J Prokopetz / DateTime: 2012-03-13 19:59:10

Wow - thank you. That's exactly what I was looking for. I'd tried something like that at one point, but I couldn't figure out how to phrase the conditions correctly.

And yeah, the reachability rules are a pain. Just about everything to do with sound - listening, asking, telling, etc. - is set up to require a touchable subject. I think I've got it all worked out, though. Puzzlingly, the only sound-related thing that isn't set up that way is asking an NPC to do something; out of the box, an in-scope but untouchable NPC can't be spoken to [b]except[/b] when you're ordering them about.

(I had to special-case that one via the persuasion rulebook.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4634&start=0#p33479
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Latest news on the next I7 update
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-13 20:07:18

A couple of people asked me today if I was planning to update the Inform Handbook. If I do it, I'll probably want to wait until the next release of I7. So the question naturally bubbles to the surface: Is such a release imminent? Semi-imminent? Adrift in the Sargasso Sea?

I'm aware, of course, that the development team tends to be rather reticent about divulging details. But it _has_ been 15 months now, so I think maybe asking the question is not completely out of line....




Emily answered below:
[quote="emshort"]So to answer this in vague and general terms that I hope will still be somewhat helpful:

No, we don't have a release date, for the same reasons as usual: not wanting to mislead people, not being sure what our own schedules will allow.

Graham has been working on Inform recently, but before that there was a hiatus of some months because of an increased workload at work and some other things of a like nature. I have also been extremely busy (as it happens, I think what I've been doing may eventually interest some IF fans, but it has involved building up a product and company, then selling the company and transitioning jobs, so I haven't had much leftover time to call my own). 

That said, the new build, when it comes, will be a more significant departure than most people have seen in a while, because it finally puts through a number of syntax deprecations we've been trailing; completely reforms the library message system; and does a few other major changes that we felt would be best to do all at once. The size and complexity of the update is another reason why it is taking such a long time.

To the extent possible, we're trying to have our busy-ness at least not drag down progress on decoupled but related projects; Vorple is going forward, and I have given a volunteer the go-ahead to work on the things that still need work on Threaded Conversation, and so on.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4629&start=10#p33480
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Command line comfort
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2012-03-13 20:29:57

[quote="Merlin Fisher"]Is there a huge difference between command line interface and IF in general?  I thought the latter was really just a simplified version of the former.[/quote]
I think you could argue either way; put succinctly: the command line interface is simpler in its implementation, while the IF interface is simpler in its ease-of-use. I'm hoping to use tab-completion and broad hints to make using my command line easier than dropping someone into a full command line...but, we shall see.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4173&start=10#p33481
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: OMG! Not ANOTHER stupid IF system!
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2012-03-13 21:07:55

First, I'd like to congratulate a fellow re-inventor of the wheel!

And second, a few hints and tips from my own web-building and programming experience.
My website has user log-ins and cookies; you could probably make user log-in as simple as their email address. The way I keep track of users is by storing a unique ID in a cookie, and reading that value out of the cookie to get whatever data they need. In your case, that would be the list of items, etc., stored in a SQL table somewhere. As easy as it would be to store all that information in a cookie, there is always the chance that someone will clear their cookies (and thus their game)... better to tie it back to a login, and keep it safe on the server. Plus, that allows people to log in from wherever they want; a new login creates a new UID, as does logging out, so it's never out of sync.

Next - for AJAX (and all your dynamic content needs), I would suggest using jQuery (or another library like that). It makes all the "pretty" so much easier, including AJAX. If nothing else, the commands a lot simpler, and a lot better documented, than the equivalent javascript. Believe me, I know...

And finally - re-inventing the wheel is fun and all, but some things just scream for special features. One such special feature is adding a little more interactivity to interactive fiction. Right now, the one thing almost every IF parser has in common is... they're just parsers. They take commands, and return text (or pictures, or sounds, or even videos), but in the end, when you're done playing, you're done. With the full power of a webserver, you could add all sorts of interesting tidbits to games - for instance, you talk to someone about keycodes in the game, and soon after you get an email from that person in "real life" - you got their email on sign-up, right? Or with a bit more work - someone is really getting into the spooky part of the story, and suddenly... their phone rings. And no one is on the line. All things you can do with a system like that, and not really all that hard to do, either. Once everything else is working, of course :-)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4630&start=0#p33482
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Working with lists
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-13 21:16:34

Ok,

But what does that *mean*?  What are the things I *can't* do with lists?


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4614&start=0#p33483
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making the IDE hang with list management...
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-13 21:21:54

Ben,

Thanks for the thought -- but please don't go to the trouble of making a demo at this time (especially since we're still ironing out  how such a strategy object is meant to behave.)

The trick is that there are times that I want strategies to cross games.  One strategy might just be 'nice', for use with certain opponents (listed), for use in any game that takes the 'nice' strategy.  So the logic is potentially far more complicated.

Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=30#p33484
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-13 21:52:21

If you want to get around a whole bunch of touchability requirements, check out my Flexible Action Requirements extension:

<a class="postlink" href="http://eyeballsun.org/i/Flexible%20Action%20Requirements.i7x">http://eyeballsun.org/i/Flexible%20Acti ... ements.i7x</a>

It's a work in progress, but it's functional.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4615&start=10#p33485
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with combat
User: versilies / DateTime: 2012-03-13 23:00:09

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]You could use my Inform ATTACK extension: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2925">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2925</a>

It is quite powerful but, because of that, also quite complicated. (Though the manual contains a long example that might be helpful.)[/quote]

Sadly tried and failed, mainly cause i don't know how to get it. i have inform 7 but not something to run it, but a don't know where to look either, downloaded one, cant remember it, but that didn't work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=30#p33486
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: David J Prokopetz / DateTime: 2012-03-14 00:24:03

Nifty - I'll give that a spin. Thanks.

Unrelated question: is there any circumstance in which a door can end up inside a container? My reading of the documentation suggests "no", but I thought I'd double-check.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4614&start=0#p33487
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making the IDE hang with list management...
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-14 00:44:31

Basically, the design decision I've been looking to implement is that NPCs carry around the strategies and the gaems carry what they mean.

The reason is that gaems are generally going to be short little interactions that can interpret strategies like 'nice' or 'mean' or 'selfish' or 'selfless.'  More specific information -- getting down to the move level -- isn't generally useful, and if it is it can be set in a strategy of this kind ('always throw rock').

OTOH, allowing NPCs to set strategies like 'nice' or 'mean', and to apply them to particular characters, makes them more emotional and social creatures.  (Most gaems will be social, if all goes well.)

So, mostly I want to set up the stratrec in the NPC as a set of filters and conditions indicating when it should be applied, to whom, and under what circumstances.  --I'm thinking about creating a 'context' object that'll carry the current moment:  what's going on currently?  Did someone just fart, did they tell a joke, proclaim undying love, etc.  For an NPC to reply to a wedding proposal with an offer to play r-p-s is not what I'm looking for.

Therefore I'm trying to figure out how to put part of the info in the NPCs stratrec and part in the gaem.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=50#p33489
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: joningold / DateTime: 2012-03-14 03:24:19

[quote="Peter Pears"]If no-one else has mentioned it yet, I may be the only person to whom this is happening, but:

With your update, I now see deactivated scroll-bars all over the place.

Image in the spoiler (not really a spoiler, but it is a big image).
[spoiler][attachment=0]colderscrollbars.png[/attachment][/spoiler]

Using Firefox. Don't know which version anymore - but I do always install the latest one.[/quote]


Thanks, Peter. That's now fixed.

jon

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=70#p33490
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-14 03:52:41

[quote="Peter Pears"]
I always like to see some discussion on it for intellectual purposes, and for stimulation, but let's not lose track here: we're using terms that emerged to differentiate emerging forms of gaming. P&Cs emerged to differentiate them from sierra-style AGI games, like King's Quest 1-4. It automatically meant "adventure game" because that was the only sort of game where, at the time, a P&C interface still made any sense. That's *it*. And in that way P&C actually did become a genre, in its most common use.

That's what P&C *means*. What the words can apply to and accurately describe, in this modern world, is another matter - but then, isn't that always how it happens with cathegories.[/quote]
So the term was coined to differentiate between certain superficially similar games nearly three decades ago? King's Quest was first released before I was even [i]born[/i]. Is that term really still needed today in its original context? I mean, how many people still refer to "Doom clones"?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4601&start=0#p33491
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Absolute Beginner Questions
User: The Batman / DateTime: 2012-03-14 04:51:05

Hey guys, sorry I didn't get back to responding right away--I've been awfully busy with school. [emote]:cry:[/emote] So I'm going to real quick respond to a few of you and get some more questions out of the way (I had this originally typed a few days ago and just haven't gotten around to sending it, I'm not even sure I had it completed, haha). Just want to say thank you, any help you guys offer is greatly appreciated and I can't imagine I would get anywhere without your input!

[quote="Felix"]1) Think of "rooms" not as rooms but as places. You'll probably be better off by creating one room called "At the Entrance of Gotham City Hall" to represent the area outside just outside the City Hall and then creating another room ("Gotham City Hall Lobby") to the north of it and so on. You don't *have to* model rooms inside a building as inside anything to make it look like rooms inside a building to your readers/players.[/quote]

Hmmm, while I understand what you're saying, I feel like this approach would only seem to cause some issues (and it doesn't seem entirely practical). For instance, if I have building A north of building B, I can understand saying "okay, you're at the entrance of building A" but going north, in my mind, should bring you to building B, not bring you into a room inside of building A. Otherwise I don't get how you could get to building B at all without going through all the rooms contained in building A. Is there a way I can say, "go NORTH to go to the next BUILDING or ENTER/GO FORWARD into this one"? Then once entered, all cardinal directions would be relative to the inside of the building (until retreating to the first room and deciding to EXIT). The current set-up I have is pretty much a top-down view of all the buildings in the city as rooms, laid out exactly how I want it--it seems so counter-intuitive that if I want to add rooms to these buildings now, I'll have to go and change EVERY cardinal location of current rooms to accommodate.

[quote="Felix"]2) Inform games understand the commands "LOOK DOWN/UP/NORTH/SOUTH" etc. by default. But those commands trigger the examining action! So, to write rules for them, you have to write rules like "Instead of examining up in At the Entrance of Gotham City Hall: say this or that" or "Instead of examining down in Gotham City Hall Lobby: do this or that".[/quote]

I don't think I'm following you on this one. So if I'm reading this correctly, the action of looking in a direction automatically examines everything in that particular direction? So if I have multiple objects on the ground (for instance), the action of looking down will cause the descriptions of ALL the items to appear or will it just mention that all of the items are there? For example, in my story, the character should look down and be told that there is a business card there, then upon examining the card, be told what the card actually says. I don't want the character to look down and be told what the card says immediately.

Your suggestion on the "looking up" conundrum worked perfectly though! I thought maybe I could apply it to the "business card" scenario, but I can't quite grasp placing an object in a scene without it explicitly telling the player that it's there right away, so I'll have to put that one aside for right now.

[quote="maga"]The example showing you how to suppress the banner text is at [url]http://inform7.com/learn/man/ex35.html#e35[/url].

[color=#BF0000](By tradition, and as a courtesy to all the people who have worked on Inform, authors ensure that the banner is printed some time near the beginning of each game played. So please only defer it, rather than suppress it altogether.)[/color][/quote]

That definitely seems like a good start to what I'm trying to do, much appreciated. No worries, I don't intend at all to completely cut-out the banner, just as I said, "delay" it until after a very brief opening scene. I tested the code out and it worked wonderfully, but when I attempted to apply it to my story, I realized there were a few complications that arose. 

Firstly, is that I'm not entirely sure how to make one object interact with another (or give the objects properties that they could interact with something). I ideally want the player to be told that they have change in their pocket from the very first paragraph (and later on, if I can get the "looking down" thing figured out, maybe the change will begin on the ground--but I digress). They will then be told that there is an [object that accepts change] near them and they need to simply say something to the effect of "[place change in object]." From there, a paragraph of text will appear followed by the banner. Following the banner, the current location will be named and the game will continue as I have it planned. What I'm having trouble figuring out is if I should be considering the change/receiver as a lock and key type of interaction? Or if there's a simple [put two objects together and cause x to happen] command?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4632&start=0#p33492
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Does anyone else want your own tag marks for Inform code
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-14 05:40:01

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/751562-ide-add-bookmarks-in-the-source-text">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... ource-text</a>

Status: Started

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4615&start=10#p33493
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with combat
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-14 05:42:10

[quote="versilies"][quote="VictorGijsbers"]Sadly tried and failed, mainly cause i don't know how to get it. i have inform 7 but not something to run it, but a don't know where to look either, downloaded one, cant remember it, but that didn't work.[/quote][/quote]

Sorry, could you rephrase that? What did you try to get, and how did it fail?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4601&start=0#p33494
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Absolute Beginner Questions
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-14 06:04:42

[quote="The Batman"]Hmmm, while I understand what you're saying, I feel like this approach would only seem to cause some issues (and it doesn't seem entirely practical). For instance, if I have building A north of building B, I can understand saying "okay, you're at the entrance of building A" but going north, in my mind, should bring you to building B, not bring you into a room inside of building A. Otherwise I don't get how you could get to building B at all without going through all the rooms contained in building A. Is there a way I can say, "go NORTH to go to the next BUILDING or ENTER/GO FORWARD into this one"? Then once entered, all cardinal directions would be relative to the inside of the building (until retreating to the first room and deciding to EXIT). The current set-up I have is pretty much a top-down view of all the buildings in the city as rooms, laid out exactly how I want it--it seems so counter-intuitive that if I want to add rooms to these buildings now, I'll have to go and change EVERY cardinal location of current rooms to accommodate.[/quote]No, all directions are independent. You can make Before the B Building "north of" Before the A Building and make A Building Lobby "inside from" Before the A Building without needing to rearrange anything else, or conflicting with each other.

[quote][quote="Felix"]2) Inform games understand the commands "LOOK DOWN/UP/NORTH/SOUTH" etc. by default. But those commands trigger the examining action! So, to write rules for them, you have to write rules like "Instead of examining up in At the Entrance of Gotham City Hall: say this or that" or "Instead of examining down in Gotham City Hall Lobby: do this or that".[/quote]

I don't think I'm following you on this one. So if I'm reading this correctly, the action of looking in a direction automatically examines everything in that particular direction? So if I have multiple objects on the ground (for instance), the action of looking down will cause the descriptions of ALL the items to appear or will it just mention that all of the items are there? For example, in my story, the character should look down and be told that there is a business card there, then upon examining the card, be told what the card actually says. I don't want the character to look down and be told what the card says immediately.[/quote]No, by default examining a direction does nothing. ("You see nothing unexpected in that direction.") Any behavior you want to happen, you'll have to code yourself.

[quote]Your suggestion on the "looking up" conundrum worked perfectly though! I thought maybe I could apply it to the "business card" scenario, but I can't quite grasp placing an object in a scene without it explicitly telling the player that it's there right away, so I'll have to put that one aside for right now.[/quote]The simplest way is to not actually place the card in the room until you want the player to notice it:

[code]Circus is a room. A ring is a kind of supporter. A ring is always enterable. Three rings are in the Circus.

The business card is a thing.

Definition: a thing is other if it is not yourself.

Instead of examining down when the location is Circus:
	move the card to the location;
	say "You see [a list of other things in the location]."[/code]

[quote]Firstly, is that I'm not entirely sure how to make one object interact with another 
...snip...
Or if there's a simple [put two objects together and cause x to happen] command?[/quote]I think the inserting it into action is all you need in this case.

[code]Lobby is a room.

The player carries some loose change. Understand "coins" as the change.

A vending machine is in the lobby. Understand "slot" and "coin slot" as the vending machine.

Can print the banner text is a truth state that varies.	

Rule for printing the banner text when can print the banner text is false:
	now can print the banner text is true.

Instead of inserting the change into the vending machine:
	remove the change from play;
	say "The coins disappear into the slot on the front of the machine, which makes a hopeful-sounding clunk.[paragraph break][banner text]"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4615&start=10#p33495
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with combat
User: versilies / DateTime: 2012-03-14 06:51:21

Sorry, could you rephrase that? What did you try to get, and how did it fail?[/quote]

I cant run ATTACK, I can read the manual all I want but a cant run the program. i tried downloading something that was supposed to be able to run inform scripts, but that didn't work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=40#p33496
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-14 06:52:22

[quote="David J Prokopetz"]Nifty - I'll give that a spin. Thanks.

Unrelated question: is there any circumstance in which a door can end up inside a container? My reading of the documentation suggests "no", but I thought I'd double-check.[/quote]
'fraid so.

[code]Cave of Wonders is a room. Inside is an open, unopenable door called a cursed lamp. Inside from the lamp is Cramped Bedroom.

West of Cave is Mountain Trail.

A glass chest is an openable, enterable, transparent container in Cave. 

Every turn: now the lamp is in the holder of the player.[/code]

I mean, it causes some [i]wierd[/i] behavior (try going west, then entering the lamp, then entering it again!), but the compiler doesn't have a problem with the code.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4601&start=0#p33497
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Absolute Beginner Questions
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-14 06:57:13

@Batman:
What I meant was you can do things like this:

[code]At Gotham City Hall is a room.
Entrance to Gotham City Hospital ED is a room.
Entrance to Gotham City Hospital is north of At Gotham City Hall.

The City Hall Lobby is a room. It is inside from At Gotham City Hall.
The Reception Desk is north of the City Hall Lobby.
The Stairs are west of the City Hall Lobby. The Stairs are west of the Reception Desk. East of the Stairs is the City Hall Lobby.
The Second Floor is up from the Stairs.

The Emergency Department is a room. It is inside from Entrance to Gotham City Hospital ED.
The Resuscitation Area is south of the Emergency Department.

test me with "n / in / s / n / out / s / in / n / w / e /  w / up / down / e / exit"[/code]

Thus you can have room B being "inside" from room A, and room C being north of room B without creating a container or a region or anything to put both B and C into.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4615&start=10#p33498
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with combat
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-14 06:59:51

[quote="versilies"]I cant run ATTACK, I can read the manual all I want but a cant run the program. i tried downloading something that was supposed to be able to run inform scripts, but that didn't work.[/quote]
It's not a program, it's an extension, an extra code file you can add to the begging of your I7 code.

Did you choose file->Install Extension->and select inform-ATTACK.i7x? Did you write "Include ATTACK by Victor Gijsbers" at the top of your source file?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4615&start=20#p33499
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with combat
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-14 07:11:48

You need to install the Inform Attack extension (so Inform can potentially use it) and include into your project (so Inform knows that it should  actually use it in that project).

To install it: Open up Inform. Choose "Install Extension" from the File Menu and … well … install it. 

To include it: Just add the line "Include Inform Attack by Victor Gijsbers." at the top of your source text.

(In the IDE, you can see a list of all your installed extensions by clicking the text "Installed Extensions" under the chapter headings to built-in Documentation.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4377&start=0#p33500
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Quest WebEditor
User: Alex / DateTime: 2012-03-14 07:22:45

The web-based version of Quest is now in public beta. This means you can now at last use the Quest editor on Windows, Mac, Linux, iPad, etc!

[url=http://www.textadventures.co.uk/blog/2012/03/14/quest-on-the-web-public-beta-preview/]Read all about it on the blog[/url] or just [url=http://www.textadventures.co.uk/create/]go ahead and start using it![/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=50#p33501
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-14 07:30:20

Beautiful, thank you.

On another note - you know how I've been pestering you for an offline version?  [emote]:roll:[/emote] I've [b]finally[/b] figured out how to download the online version, so it's all good.

Little FYI, though. Because the beautiful background image wasn't in the same subdirectory everything else was, I had to download it seperately and edit the HTML to point to it in its new location (it would have worked if I'd kept them in the same folder, but I like to keep things neat: if with HTML I have a folder called "The Colder Light_files", then that's where the backdrop's going).

Allow me now to become the sovereign of nitpicking and ask... is it "A Colder Light" or "The Colder Light", not that it matters much?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=70#p33502
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-14 07:36:14

I'm not saying the term doesn't need revamping - we see examples of terms being revamped all the time, because they became obsolete.

But trying to get the term to fit something else, or working one's way into the core of the term, won't work, because of the circumstances in which it appeared.

It would be best to either use the term as it is for what it was meant, or to come up with *new* terms, discarding the old completely because it's obsolete.

I just think it's a bit ridiculous to try and dig so deep into "What's a P&C" when it's pretty obvious that if we had to choose today, we'd have chosen some other name for it, because it's so incomplete - but it wasn't back when it was coined, and furthermore, there are plenty of people around who WERE around when King's Quest 1 was released and use the term naturally to mean graphic adventures (another obsolete term, yes - but when I say it, you immediately know what I mean).

I think we're still too close to it, chronographically. We'd need another decade or so before we start reinventing those terms, because that's only necessary when they lose meaning.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=140#p33503
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.3: IF library manager
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-14 07:41:46

*bump*

Yep, shameless bump. Just everyone's most well-known and possibly well-hated - but I did it anyway - way of asking the author Hey, what's up? How's it going? Had time to work on those remaning issued? It's ok if you hadn't, but I'd really like a heads up, because your program is so damn good.

Of course, having just spelled it out like that makes the "bump" superfluous, but hey. I woke up today with my default set as "verbose".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=80#p33504
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-03-14 08:41:56

Wait up, folks. The premise that the term "point and click" is obsolete in reference to graphic adventures is just way off base. It's the[i] primary[/i] term used for these games by site such as Jay Is Games, Touch Arcade, and many others. In fact, at JIG, [url=http://jayisgames.com/tag/pointandclick]pointandclick[/url] is the only tag you can use to find them! In the larger cultural context, there is far less confusion about what "point and click" refers to than there is about "interactive fiction".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=80#p33505
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-14 08:47:42

Thanks for that, I wasn't sure how the term was viewed outside of the adventure-game communities I usually frequent.

Which underscores my point, I guess - the term isn't obsolete and is still used and recognised, though in another decade or so it might not be and might need to be revamped.

So it's good for idle discussion, intellectual stimulation, and thought-provoking-ness, but P&C adventures will still be P&C adventures.

Though I have to say it irks me that I have to identify adventure games as "point and click", instead of calling them "adventures". Nowadays I feel "adventure" has become more synonimous with "action-adventure". I certainly had my share of conversation that went:

"Hey, do you know about adventure games?"

"Oh, sure. Like Tomb Raider? Loved that game."

"...no, more like Monkey Island."

"What-sey Island?"

"Nevermind".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4630&start=0#p33506
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Working with lists
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-03-14 08:48:17

Most of what applies to lists also applies to strings - they're both immutable and both somewhat privileged in terms of the underlying VM. Obviously you can do a lot with strings, and the same is true of lists.

The main thing you can't do is in-place modification. This gets me most often with strings, where I run a regex or replace part of a string and expect to retain that value without an assignment, which doesn't work.

Related to that is that both have a counterpart class - Vector, StringBuffer - where you can do in-place modification. This is helpful when building a list or string out of lots of little units, since you don't create an entire VM object whenever you append something. These can be converted back to the static kind when you finish.

Other than that, I don't see a lot of limitations. I use lists extensively.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=80#p33507
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-14 09:13:40

"Hey, do you know about adventure games?"

"Oh, sure. Like Tomb Raider? Loved that game."

"...no, more like [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=n61uyfnxvl32owd1]Gruds in Space[/url]."

"Whatsinspace?"

"Nevermind".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=80#p33508
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-03-14 09:14:42

[quote="Peter Pears"]I have to say it irks me that I have to identify adventure games as "point and click", instead of calling them "adventures". [/quote]
I just tried browsing the "Adventure" category at Touch Arcade. It includes a *wide* variety of games, including action-adventures but also a bunch of other stuff; the way to identify the graphic adventures in that list is to skim (or search, I presume) for the term "point and click"!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4636&start=0#p33509
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: TADS 3.1 - image not visible with WebUI
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2012-03-14 09:28:30

I've been working on a web-playable version of It, and I pretty much have everything compatible with WebUI now. There's just one problem left, and I'm finding it a doozy. I can't get the WebUI version of the game to display images.

For testing purposes, I've dropped this code into gameMain.showIntro():
[code]"""<.p><img src="cover art/cover.jpg"><.p>""";[/code]

It works just fine in the original UI version of the game, but when I run the WebUI version, all I get is a broken image link icon (you know, that irritating red-cross-in-a-box thing). The .t3 and .t3m files for both versions are all in the same folder, so they shouldn't have any trouble finding the cover art, and I added the file to the Resources section of the project file. I tried placing the cover art file in the same folder as the .t3m and .t3 files, rather than a subfolder. I tried messing with the format of the <img> tag. I tried compiling the game for release. I tried running the game (both the debug version and the release version) in the stand-alone HTML TADS for Windows interpreter, rather than through Workbench. I created a new WebUI project from scratch and tried getting an image to display in that. I even uninstalled and reinstalled the TADS Author's Kit and Player's Kit. No dice.

I'm completely baffled. Anyone have any ideas?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=40#p33510
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-14 09:46:42

I would consider that an abuse, and would not attempt to support it.

Although that behavior isn't so weird that I can't understand it. Cramped Bedroom is inwards from the lamp, so when you're there, the way through the lamp-door is out. So "enter lamp" translates to "go out." And you've already declared that the room outwards from the lamp is Cave of Wonders.

What surprises me is that it's possible to manually move a door without generating a compilation error, or at least a runtime error. There are quite a few restrictions on what you can do with doors.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4629&start=10#p33511
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Command line comfort
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2012-03-14 09:55:11

I seem to remember there was a game for the Amiga 500 (Yes I AM that old  [emote];)[/emote] )
I believe it was called "The fourth protocol" It was a bit like the game you're creating. 
In this game, as I remember, you had to hack your way through various system gathering information or something like that.
It was a challenging game and I remember spending countless hours on it.
If your game is anything like it, I'm looking forward to play it.
Good luck

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=80#p33512
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-14 10:01:32

Even if there's no confusion with anything else, "point-and-click" doesn't even cover all CYOA; there are plenty of CYOA games controlled by typing in numbers from a multiple-choice list.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4636&start=0#p33513
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3.1 - image not visible with WebUI
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-03-14 10:27:12

WebUI games won't serve up resources from anywhere but webuires by default, for various security-flavored reasons.

You'll need to add something like this to one of your source files:
[code]
WebResourceResFile
	vpath = static new RexPattern('/cover<Space>art/')
;
[/code]

(Untested; the syntax may be a bit fiddly with the space in the directory name.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4630&start=0#p33514
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Working with lists
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-14 10:43:12

So I can iteratively build up lists?  With, for example, lstA += [somevarX]; ?  Or by passing a list into a function and then returning a new one?

Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4624&start=0#p33515
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: putting things in pockets - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-03-14 10:51:48

Thanks again for all the help and quick response you guys furnish. I would have worked on that one for days. I'm now working on rooms and 'things', so I'm sure I'll be posting on this forum many more times.

RonG

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4630&start=10#p33516
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Working with lists
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-03-14 10:54:46

You can do both. In the iteration case, it's better to build it as a vector, then convert the vector to a list.

[code]
local lst = new Vector(50);
forEachInstance(Room, {room: lst.append(room)});
lst = lst.toList();
[/code]

Lists and functions work very well together. A common pattern is to start with a list and filter it through many different functions (or recursively through the same function) before returning a value.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4630&start=10#p33517
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Working with lists
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-14 11:16:40

Ok.  I'm hearing I just can't reach inside and tweak it without a reassignment?

Thanks for clarifying, Ben.


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4614&start=0#p33518
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making the IDE hang with list management...
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-03-14 12:04:59

I find it easier to discuss with code rather than in the abstract. [emote]:)[/emote]

[rant][code]
// gaem labels
enum RPS, PRISONERS;

// strategy labels
enum NICE, MEAN, SELFISH, SELFLESS, DEFAULT;

// the core strategy class
class GaemStrat: object
	// the list of gaems that this strategy applies to
	gaemList = []

	// the strategy for a given NPC
	behavior = [ * -> DEFAULT ]

	// the relative priority of this strategy
	priority = 100

	// decide whether we match a particular game
	match(gaem) {
		if (gaemList.indexOf(gaem))
			return true;
		else
			return nil;
	}

	// decide how we act toward a given NPC
	select(npc) {
		return behavior[npc];
	}
;

// gaem-specific strategy for rock-paper-scissors
class RPSStrat: GaemStrat
	gaemList = [ RPS ]
;

// and another one for the Prisoner's Dilemma
class PrisonersStrat: GaemStrat
	gaemList = [ PRISONERS ]
;

modify Actor
	// actors hold a list of strategies
	stratList = []

	// given a gaem and an opponent, find a suitable strategy
	strategize(gaem, opponent) {
		local strats = stratList.subset({strat:
			// find strategies for this game
			strat.match(gaem) != nil
		}).sort(nil, {a, b:
			// and sort by priority
			a.priority - b.priority
		}); 
		return (strats.length ? strats[1].select(opponent) : DEFAULT);
	}
;

// during init, add each held strategy to the actor's list
PreinitObject
	execute() {
		forEachInstance(GaemStrat, {obj:
			obj.location.stratList += obj
		});
	}
;

guard: Person 'guard' 'guard' @lab
	"Just another guard. "
	rpsFrequency = 5
;
+ RPSAgenda;
+ RPSStrat
	behavior = [ * -> MEAN ]
;

janitor: Person 'janitor' 'janitor' @lab
	"Just another janitor. "
;
+ RPSAgenda;
+ RPSStrat
	behavior = [
		guard -> NICE,
		*     -> DEFAULT
	]
;

// sample code for demo purposes only
modify WaitAction
	execAction() {
		local npc1 = guard;
		local npc2 = janitor;

		local npc1strat = npc1.strategize(RPS, npc2);
		local npc2strat = npc2.strategize(RPS, npc1);

		"The <<npc1.name>> would select the <<enumText(npc1strat)>> strategy
		 for <<enumText(RPS)>> with <<npc2.name>>. ";

		"The <<npc2.name>> would select the <<enumText(npc2strat)>> strategy 
		 for <<enumText(RPS)>> with <<npc1.name>>. ";
	}
;

// this function is really only useful for debugging output
enumText(e) {
	switch (e) {
		case ROCK: return 'rock';
		case PAPER: return 'paper';
		case SCISSORS: return 'scissors';
		case RPS: return 'RPS';
		case PRISONERS: return 'PRISONERS';
		case MEAN: return 'mean';
		case NICE: return 'nice';
		case SELFISH: return 'selfish';
		case SELFLESS: return 'selfless';
		case DEFAULT: return 'default';
		default: return '';
	}
}
[/code]
[quote]
> z
The guard would select the mean strategy for RPS with janitor.  The janitor would select the nice strategy for RPS with guard.
[/quote][/rant]

This implements individual strategies based on the opponent for each actor; they will choose something like mean, nice, or default. It's up to the actual game logic (not shown) to decide what that strategy signifies.

[quote="conradcook"]For an NPC to reply to a wedding proposal with an offer to play r-p-s is not what I'm looking for.[/quote]

You will probably want to nix the RPS offer before you reach the strategy selection stage. I'd suggest tweaking the isReady method for the AgendaItem responsible for initiating games, so that it returns false unless the moment is right.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3723&start=0#p33519
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: UI Design of Zifmia Branching/Turn Feature
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2012-03-14 12:27:01

I found a developer to help me with this...we're still in the first of several iterations:

<a class="postlink" href="http://meltedlibrary.com/derek/davidc/29107442/site/index2.html">http://meltedlibrary.com/derek/davidc/2 ... ndex2.html</a>

I think collapsing ranges of turns will be optimal for visualization. Making it iPad friendly is a big feature. Better zoom and pan capabilities are in the works.

David C.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4615&start=20#p33520
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with combat
User: versilies / DateTime: 2012-03-14 12:56:29

I see, thanks, sorry about all the trouble.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4637&start=0#p33521
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Using the phrase 'use compass' - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-03-14 12:56:53

I want my actor to be carrying a compass and to be able to use the simple two word  command 'use compass'. Right now I get the reply 'use compass for what'. I would like some code that would follow that simple command with a text phrase if tha actor has the compass and with a 'don't have compass' type of phrase if the actor doesn't have the compass. Any ideas out there?

Rong

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=50#p33522
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-14 13:06:42

I really like the approach being taken here, and I'd certainly appreciate an extension. I don't think it makes the game too easy and it takes a lot of unnecessary guesswork out of the player's interaction with the game controls. That guesswork is important for some games, the Gostak for instance, but not every game.

Two comments:

One, it runs so slowly! Actually, I've found that pretty much all glulx games run slowly online, so it could be an issue with Parchment, or my laptop or internet connection, or some combination thereof.

Two, the 'continue' button at the start of the game doesn't work on the very latest version of Opera (11.61). Instead there's an invisible text box (I guess where the parser would usually be) and you can press enter in the box to get it to start.

EDIT: a third thing, when collecting the wood rune after I've dropped it outside, it still says I'm collecting it from the fire pit.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4638&start=0#p33523
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Another stupid question - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-03-14 13:36:57

Here's another stupid question that I can't find the answer for.  How do I modify an object so the actor must 'wear' it and can't just 'take' it? I do not want it to be an 'AlwaysWorn' object.

RonG

btw: Is it possible to use a word as both a noun and a verb?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4633&start=0#p33524
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe TypedArray feature?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-14 13:41:46

I removed the "& 0xFF" from all the main-memory writes, if that's what you're asking. Computations still have a lot of ">>> 0" scattered around them.

8-bit access is most common during compilation, actually.

The problem with using a uint32 array for main memory is that the architecture doesn't distinguish between aligned and unaligned writes. So you wind up needing an alignment test on every read and write. This is not necessarily a disaster, mind you.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2570&start=30#p33525
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor: A new Linux/Mac OS X/Windows port of the Hugo eng
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-03-14 13:45:01

I will be making a new release soon. Among the changes is support for configurable margins, which was contributed by Marc Simpson. Thanks, Marc!

On Mac OS X, the application now recognizes *.hex files, so you can drag&drop a game file into the application icon or run games directly from the Finder.

A Linux-only change is that the binary now comes with two internal MIDI synths. The old one based on Timidity which is only able to use *.pat instruments (like the "eawpatches"), and a new one based on FluidSynth which is able to use SoundFonts (*.sf2 files). There's no GUI to configure this yet, but you can enable the new MIDI synth by setting the SDL_SOUNDFONTS environment variable to the list of SF2 files you want to use. For example:

[code]export SDL_SOUNDFONTS="/usr/share/soundfonts/Some_GM_SoundFont.sf2:/usr/share/soundfonts/Some_GS_SoundFont.sf2"[/code]

Again, this is a Linux-only thing. On Mac and Windows, Hugor does not use an internal synth. The platform's native MIDI output is used instead.

If you want to give the new version a shot before the release, I've uploaded Linux, Mac and Windows builds here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://foss.aegean.gr/~realnc/hugor/testing">http://foss.aegean.gr/~realnc/hugor/testing</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4490&start=0#p33526
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Mutant Pirates Shared Setting
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-14 13:46:05

Hmm. I'm not sure if I'd make a game for this, but I'm always a sucker for collaborative design.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4637&start=0#p33527
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Using the phrase 'use compass' - TADS3.1
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-03-14 14:09:12

USE is not a standard verb that comes with TADS by default. That means you've implemented this yourself somewhere as a TIAction. You will also need a TAction version of it (so that it can also work with single objects.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4629&start=10#p33528
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Command line comfort
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-03-14 14:09:28

I'm confortable with *nix shells, particularly bash.  Are the puzzles meant to be solved via shell scripts? [emote];)[/emote]

Merlin, in a command line you type cryptic commands for the machine to do something, in a IF parser you type commands resembling natural language for the player character to do something.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4638&start=0#p33529
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Another stupid question - TADS3.1
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-03-14 14:11:46

[quote="RonG"]How do I modify an object so the actor must 'wear' it and can't just 'take' it? I do not want it to be an 'AlwaysWorn' object.[/quote]
<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4215&p=30484">viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4215&p=30484</a>

[quote]btw: Is it possible to use a word as both a noun and a verb?[/quote]
Yes.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4629&start=10#p33530
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Command line comfort
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-03-14 14:15:06

[quote="namekuseijin"]Merlin, in a command line you type cryptic commands for the machine to do something[/quote]
They're not cryptic. They're well documented. They are only cryptic to someone who can't be bothered to RTFM [emote]:P[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=80#p33531
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-14 14:25:00

[quote="maga"]Even if there's no confusion with anything else, "point-and-click" doesn't even cover all CYOA; there are plenty of CYOA games controlled by typing in numbers from a multiple-choice list.[/quote]

Plus, turning pages and stuff?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=80#p33532
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-14 14:26:37

[quote="Peter Pears"]"...no, more like Monkey Island."

"What-sey Island?"[/quote]

"Here. Watch this."

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VS7cuvDxw5w">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VS7cuvDxw5w</a>

"Sadly, it's the clean version. But still."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4614&start=0#p33533
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making the IDE hang with list management...
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-14 14:40:00

Very good suggestion with intercepting "social context" at the agendaitem level, and I'll look over your code.

Many thanks, Ben.


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4629&start=10#p33534
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Command line comfort
User: jimd / DateTime: 2012-03-14 15:04:06

There are several games you may want to check out: Uplink and the Hacker Evolution series. Both have the model of hacking into a server, stealing info, selling it, etc. They may give ideas for what to do or not do in your engine.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4615&start=20#p33535
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with combat
User: versilies / DateTime: 2012-03-14 15:52:42

It is working great, Got to give thanks to VictorGijsbers, Thanks for the help. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2570&start=30#p33536
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor: A new Linux/Mac OS X/Windows port of the Hugo eng
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2012-03-14 16:18:47

[quote="RealNC"]Among the changes is support for configurable margins, which was contributed by Marc Simpson. Thanks, Marc![/quote]
That's good news to me!  The lack of side margins is the most aesthetically displeasing aspect of the standard Hugo Engine.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4615&start=20#p33537
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Help with combat
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2012-03-14 16:20:15

Good to hear that. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4629&start=10#p33538
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Command line comfort
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2012-03-14 16:30:44

[quote="jimd"]There are several games you may want to check out: Uplink and the Hacker Evolution series. Both have the model of hacking into a server, stealing info, selling it, etc. They may give ideas for what to do or not do in your engine.[/quote]
Another game that definitely should be mentioned here is the classic old AGT text adventure, [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=9bgglbug7g1fxlxe][i]CosmoServe[/i][/url] by Judith Pintar.  I played a little of it a long time ago.  It's sort of a simulation of the ancient command-line Internet (specifically CompuServe).  And that description may be totally wrong, because the [i]CosmoServe[/i] was written the same year I was born, and I don't claim to understand how online communities worked back then, before the web.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4629&start=10#p33539
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Command line comfort
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-14 16:43:08

[quote="Finn Rosenløv"]I seem to remember there was a game for the Amiga 500 (Yes I AM that old  [emote];)[/emote] )
I believe it was called "The fourth protocol" It was a bit like the game you're creating. [/quote]
I'm almost sure it was (at least also) for the C64. [i]There[/i] is where i bashed my head countless hours.

[rant][i]The Fourth Protocol [/i]was a game from a book by Frederick Forsyth with the same name. Also there is a movie with Pierce Brosnan, iirc, playing the russian spy.[/rant]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4639&start=0#p33540
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Duplicating objects
User: alangager / DateTime: 2012-03-14 17:17:40

Hi all... first time poster. Just getting into writing with Inform 7.

So here's my question... let's say I'm creating a button and every time it is pushed it creates a donut. (Don't ask).

I can make multiple donuts at the start by saying:

food is a kind of thing. 
a donut is a kind of food.
in the room is 2 donuts.

BUT how do I add a NEW (3rd) donut when the button is pushed? Any ideas? Do I need to create a value (units of donuts)?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4639&start=0#p33541
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Duplicating objects
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2012-03-14 17:34:40

[quote="alangager"]Hi all... first time poster. Just getting into writing with Inform 7.[/quote]

Hi!

(The inform forum is [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=7]this way[/url] btw.)

[quote="alangager"]So here's my question... let's say I'm creating a button and every time it is pushed it creates a donut. (Don't ask).[/quote]

Actually, yes, I'm going to ask. This is because that's important to the solution. Maybe you don't actually need it to create new donuts? You may be interested in reading this thread: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4439">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4439</a>

I hope that's of some help.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=80#p33542
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-14 17:47:26

Interesting.

And it made me yearn for <a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKWT5wW4gdY">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKWT5wW4gdY</a>.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=40#p33543
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: David J Prokopetz / DateTime: 2012-03-14 17:59:20

Now [b]that's[/b] entertaining. It's pretty obvious that Inform doesn't know what do do with it, though - the rules that end up getting triggered don't make any sense in context, especially if you attempt to enter the lamp while it's in the glass chest with you. I'm pretty comfortable calling that an unsupported case.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4641&start=0#p33544
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Recommendations for listening to FLACs on Mac? (not spam)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-14 18:39:45

This is wildly off-topic, but does anyone have a recommendation for an application for listening to FLAC files on a Macintosh, specifically OS 10.7.2? 

I used to use Play but it doesn't seem to work since I updated to OS 10.7. A while ago Trumgottist [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1696&p=11171#p11171]recommended VLC[/url] to me for all-purpose sound playing, but I don't like it; its metadata handling is incredibly awkward,* and worse yet, when I recently had to do a hard restart of my computer VLC barfed my whole library, so it looks like I'll have to reimport every track I want to listen to. 

So, is there anything else I should be using to play FLACs on OS 10.7? Especially something free. It would be a bonus if it played APEs, but FLAC support is really what I need.

*The problem: When you want to edit metadata, you have to mouse to the appropriate fields to type in the metadata, hit enter, mouse down to the "save metadata" button, and manually close the window. Which might not be so bad if VLC would [i]let me edit the metadata for multiple files at once[/i]. Since I need my media player to keep the files from the same album together, and I don't want to create a new playlist for every single album I want to listen to, it's very important that I be able to change the artist/album info for a bunch of tracks at once.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4641&start=0#p33545
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Recommendations for listening to FLACs on Mac? (not spam
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-03-14 18:54:04

I think that you can just install Perian and then listen to Flac files with just about any program that uses Quicktime, e.g. iTunes, Songbird, Cog, what have you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4641&start=0#p33546
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Recommendations for listening to FLACs on Mac? (not spam
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-14 19:17:09

It looks to me as though it requires another plugin? From the [url=http://groups.google.com/group/perian-discuss/browse_thread/thread/28c29900903e61d4]Perian group[/url]:

[quote="Alexander Strange"]...this will do it: 
<a class="postlink" href="http://people.xiph.org/~arek/flac_import/">http://people.xiph.org/~arek/flac_import/</a> 
Adding support for .flac to Perian should be possible, but I haven't 
been bothered to since that component exists. [/quote]

I'll try that download (not sure if I need Perian as well; the page it's on might as well be in rot13).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4641&start=0#p33547
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Recommendations for listening to FLACs on Mac? (not spam
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-03-14 19:23:59

Oops, guess so. But it looks like Songbird (Mozilla) and Cog both play FLACs natively, so you might have a look at those.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4641&start=0#p33548
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Recommendations for listening to FLACs on Mac? (not spam
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-14 19:28:34

[quote="matt w"]It looks to me as though it requires another plugin? From the [url=http://groups.google.com/group/perian-discuss/browse_thread/thread/28c29900903e61d4]Perian group[/url]:

[quote="Alexander Strange"]...this will do it: 
<a class="postlink" href="http://people.xiph.org/~arek/flac_import/">http://people.xiph.org/~arek/flac_import/</a> 
Adding support for .flac to Perian should be possible, but I haven't 
been bothered to since that component exists. [/quote]

I'll try that download (not sure if I need Perian as well; the page it's on might as well be in rot13).[/quote]

UPDATE: OK, I downloaded that and in the readme file I find this:

[quote]* IMPORTANT *
This component contains only MovieImporter for the native FLAC file
format. It does not contain the original FLAC decoder part. To be of
any use you will need to have a FLAC decoder component installed as
well. Visit XiphQT project (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.xiph.org/quicktime/">http://www.xiph.org/quicktime/</a>) and then
install the lastest package available on:
<a class="postlink" href="http://people.xiph.org/~arek/">http://people.xiph.org/~arek/</a>[/quote]

So, uh, I need to install XiphQT and then get something from [url=http://people.xiph.org/~arek/]here[/url] -- not exactly sure what, as 90% of the characters on that page are not in a natural language, and then install the download? I'll try that, I guess, though I wish the developers were making more of an effort to be communicative.

UPDATE UPDATE: Well, maybe I'll look at Songbird and Cog instead -- it's OK if I can't run the FLACs in iTunes.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4641&start=0#p33549
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Recommendations for listening to FLACs on Mac? (not spam
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-03-14 19:34:34

If you're not yet on Lion, Fluke seems to set all the Xiph stuff up automatically.

<a class="postlink" href="http://code.google.com/p/flukeformac/">http://code.google.com/p/flukeformac/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=10769&start=0#p33550
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Discussion on Latest news on the next I7 update
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-03-14 19:38:37

I have no knowledge of the development schedule, but I would say "not soon", based on a quick review of the number of outstanding bug reports on Mantis. (Every previous release has always closed all previous known bugs, and it's not likely that this release will be any different.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4641&start=0#p33551
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Recommendations for listening to FLACs on Mac? (not spam
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-14 19:59:27

Songbird actually looks like it's running great, thanks! Some odd things happened when it auto-imported my music folder, but some of that is probably due to my bad file handling (e.g., there seem to be two copies of anything I've already burned to a disc) and anyway fixing it will be less work than importing everything again by hand.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4617&start=0#p33552
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe file-browsing feature
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-03-14 20:21:21

This seems to work nicely in Firefox, but the game never opens in the latest Chrome (17.0.963.79) on Mac OS 10.6.8. No error messages in the developer console, the loading gif just keeps spinning...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2570&start=30#p33553
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor: A new Linux/Mac OS X/Windows port of the Hugo eng
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-14 20:38:16

Same here! I usually prefer to use the standard engine - seems more foolproof. But Hugor is looking a bit too good to pass up on...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4639&start=0#p33554
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Duplicating objects
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2012-03-14 21:45:44

There are a number of different ways to handle this.  The most important question here is this: What should happen if the player pushes the button e.g. 500 times?  Should the game actually produce 500 donuts?  Do you think it's wise to create 500 donuts?  Unless you've thought very long and hard about this, the answer is probably "No" since creating 500 donuts [i]will[/i] cause lag; 5000 will probably make the game unusable.  But if you're [i]sure[/i] that you [i]need[/i] to allow the player to create 500 donuts, you'll need [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Jesse%20McGrew/Dynamic%20Objects/index.html]Dynamic Objects[/url] by Jesse McGrew (furthermore, your project will need to be running on Glulx; see the settings panel to change this).  In general, I strongly recommend avoiding this solution except as a last resort.  Remember that creating objects [i]behind the scenes[/i] and [i]in a controlled fashion[/i] is quite different from creating them [i]whenever the player hits a button[/i].

Now that I've scared you, there are a few different ways to handle this [i]without[/i] allowing the player to take 500 donuts.  Two are discussed [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rdoc82.html]in the recipe book[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=10769&start=0#p33555
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Upcoming Updates?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-14 23:08:19

Thanks for the observation/guess, Erik. I'm not going to worry about it, then. If and when there's a new version, I'll roll up my sleeves and dig into it. Maybe, probably. Heck, at that point I might get inspired to make a printed version available on Lulu.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=10769&start=0#p33556
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Upcoming Updates?
User: rpatten / DateTime: 2012-03-14 23:28:51

Regardless of whether the Inform Handbook is 100% current, it has helped me a lot, especially with understanding tables. So thanks for taking the time to write it, Jim, and I look forward to taking a look at the next edition, whenever that comes out!

For the record, I've been wondering about this, too, but just assumed there was so much to do, with both patching up bugs and technical developments that are either progressing or are in the works (like Quixe, Parchment, Vorple, Threaded Conversations, etc.) that it become a little overwhelming to the Inform 7 authors, who I assume have lives. Still, it would be nice to get a small official heads-up on where the next release is at, even if things haven't quite reached fruition.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4642&start=0#p33557
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Using a compass and exit descriptions
User: rpatten / DateTime: 2012-03-14 23:46:59

If a game incorporates a compass rose, how necessary is it to integrate exits into the room descriptions? Or should only the more important ones be mentioned, and the rest left for the player to map out?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4642&start=0#p33558
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Using a compass and exit descriptions
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-15 00:45:59

[quote="rpatten"]If a game incorporates a compass rose, how necessary is it to integrate exits into the room descriptions? Or should only the more important ones be mentioned, and the rest left for the player to map out?[/quote]

Depends to some extent on your chosen language. I include status-line exit lists in most of my z-code games, for example, but some 'terps can't display the full-featured version of the status line correctly, so I include complete exits in the text just in case.

Implementing an "exits" command, which lists the exits when the player asks, is another way to make sure the player can always get the exits in text form, if you feel you can write better room descriptions without always listing them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4490&start=0#p33559
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Mutant Pirates Shared Setting
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-03-15 01:33:18

ChrisC, and anybody else - you don't need to commit to anything to come and toss some ideas around. 

The best way right now is to contribute to JJ's [url=http://bit.ly/wAtBUw]google doc[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4601&start=0#p33560
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Absolute Beginner Questions
User: The Batman / DateTime: 2012-03-15 05:15:21

Boy, do I feel dumb!

It always seems that when I'm toying with something in I7 that the solution isn't so much my "approach" to solving the issue, but just a matter of what words/language I use.

For instance, with the "rooms inside buildings" issue I was having, I had tried to say "x is a room inside of y" and when that didn't work, I assumed that I7 required something a tad more complex to create a room. The issue (thanks to Felix) was simply that I needed to phrase it as "x is a room inside FROM y." It may not sound right grammatically, but I'm relieved to know that was all it needed  [emote]:)[/emote] 

@ChrisC

Your solution to both the "coin slot" and "business card" issues worked perfectly. Now, the business card won't even be mentioned until the player looks down and I can make the coins interact with the device. The ONLY thing that goes over my head is the movement of the banner. I haven't tested the code in it's entirety simply because I don't get what is happening in these lines:

[code]Can print the banner text is a truth state that varies.   

Rule for printing the banner text when can print the banner text is false:
   now can print the banner text is true.[/code]

I assume it has to do something with preventing the banner from showing up at the start--otherwise, wouldn't using [banner text] at the end just make the banner appear again? But trying to break it down logically, I just don't see what this is accomplishing. I'm trying my best to avoid simply copy-pasting code and actually understand what it is the particular codes are saying/doing, so if you (or anyone else) could offer some input there, that would be wonderful.

This all brings me to the next set of troubles (I hope I'm not being a burden with my onslaught of questions)...elevators. I've checked every resource I could find on this, but all I could seem to manage was the "Dubai" example ([url]http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rex118.html#e118[/url]). While it may be (possibly) what I need, the way it's presented does nothing short of confusing me. In short, I want the player to be inside the elevator (obviously) and be prompted with a simple "what floor?" (or have them enter "go to x floor" without a prompt). Because of the particular way I have the building structured in the story, it would be completely unreasonable to allow the player to have access to every floor (out of the 30 floors of the building, the player should only be allowed access to less than 10). While the theory behind the Dubai example seems to be exactly what I'm trying to do, much like my comment above, I have no idea what the code is doing for the scenario.

I understand the initial declaration of the rooms/floors (in which every time a room is declared without a cardinal relation, it's like declaring a floor--when the author says x room is some direction from another, then it's adding another room to the floor). The "table of floors" is pretty straightforward and I think I get what the "The elevator exterior is a backdrop. It is not scenery." is getting at (if I'm correct, it's just saying "create something called elevator exterior that can be referenced, but don't treat it as an object or scenery, just as something that's constantly there). The "initial appearance" just refers to the description of the undisturbed elevator exterior.

[code]Before entering the elevator exterior, try going inside instead.[/code]

Don't think I understand this one (even though it seems simply-worded). Is this some alternate way be able to call "going inside" "entering"? Or is it the properties of the "backdrop" that prevents something from "entering" it, but allows something to "go inside" it and the code is just preventing player confusion? If the latter, than what are the differences between the two? I'm guessing this isn't the most important code, so I'm not going to bother myself too much with it.

The rest of the code...augh...I don't even know where to begin. Can someone break it down into layman's terms for me (can't believe I'm asking a natural-language syntax to be simplified)?  Really, what the situation breaks down to is this:

a) I don't need the player to have access to all 30 floors. If a player tries to go to an floor that I haven't designed, a simple "you have no reason to go to that floor" will suffice.
b) What I have currently is a room named "Elevator" that someone can just go "north" towards and be inside. I'm not fully grasping what makes a room "enterable" as opposed to being able to be accessed from a direction. Ideally, yes, I want someone to be in a room and then "enter" the elevator, but for now I'm settling for just going "north" into it.
c) I've created the "table of floors," but really don't know how to utilize/reference it. I'd like to be able to have a sign in the elevator that lists off the accessible floors and their respective names (a la, display the table). I don't think I7 likes the table being coded without it being used  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

Well, I'm getting tired, so I will leave that at that. I hope I've been clear enough on what I want, what I don't want, and what I understand and don't understand. As always, thanks for all the help--I definitely feel like my I7 production has increased ten-fold.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=140#p33562
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.3: IF library manager
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2012-03-15 06:30:14

Thanks for the bump [emote]:)[/emote]
Yes, I've *finally* been able to get back to work on Grotesque in the last couple of weeks. I'm doing a lot of work on the internals at the moment, trying to make the base a lot more stable and powerful, from which point I can continue to improve the interface. I've given myself the task of making my Treaty of Babel code a separately available package to other developers; to do this well has the implicit requirement of making the code full-featured and rock-solid. This will have some benefits for Grotesque. On the one hand, it will make the handling of story metadata more sane and easy to work with for me, resulting in a more stable application. For the user, it will (eventually) opening up much better possibilities for going crazy with organizing your library, such as the built-in ability to create blorbs and excellent iFiction file import/export. One other thing that this work did was make me realize that I somehow previously omitted AdvSys (.dat) games from my Treaty code. This has now been fixed. All that remains to work on is the blorb functionality and a couple remaining iFiction things, which I'll be working on this weekend.

The other big change that will come next, also not noticable by the user directly, is moving to storing your library in an actual database (SQLite), rather than the weird way I'm storing them now. This will make it *much* easier for me to implement features like tags and notes (both of which I plan on adding).

I'll fix a few bugs along the way and I'll hopefully squeeze in a small interface improvement or two while I'm at it (I'd really like to get that Unicode collating implemented so that author names are sorted properly). 

Sad to say, though, that it might be a little while until the release.

I've set up a new web page for the project, which includes a development blog so I can occasionally show signs of life: <a class="postlink" href="http://grotesque.invergo.net">http://grotesque.invergo.net</a>
Rather than dealing with the clunky/complicated bug tracking system on Sourceforge, I'd prefer people from now on to either email me directly (see the Grotesque website) or contact me here. I'll work on finding a better alternative but until then, this will have to do.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=140#p33563
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.3: IF library manager
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-15 06:37:12

Very glad to hear it, all of it. [emote]:)[/emote] Especially glad to know that you're working on storing the database in another way - it's a bit of a hassle remembering that if I want to back up my database, I have to remember to go to my \users\, instead of just backing up the Grotesque folder. Just, hey, make sure I don't lose the hundreds of entries I already have in my old database, ok? It was a lot of work to get them there. [emote];)[/emote]

I notice you didn't mention "no interpreter defined = the OS runs it with the associated program as normally". That is still on the list, right? For Apple II, Alan 2 and Windows games, that's the only way I'll have of running them from Grotesque.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3018&start=140#p33564
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Grotesque 0.9.3: IF library manager
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2012-03-15 06:51:19

[quote="Peter Pears"]Very glad to hear it, all of it. [emote]:)[/emote] Especially glad to know that you're working on storing the database in another way - it's a bit of a hassle remembering that if I want to back up my database, I have to remember to go to my \users\, instead of just backing up the Grotesque folder. Just, hey, make sure I don't lose the hundreds of entries I already have in my old database, ok? It was a lot of work to get them there. [emote];)[/emote][/quote]

Safely migrating to the new database without losing any data is a *top* priority, trust me!


[quote]I notice you didn't mention "no interpreter defined = the OS runs it with the associated program as normally". That is still on the list, right? For Apple II, Alan 2 and Windows games, that's the only way I'll have of running them from Grotesque.[/quote]

It's still on my [url=https://sourceforge.net/p/grotesque/feature-requests/10/]To-Do list[/url] but it might not make it into this release unfortunately, depending on how simple it is to implement!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4639&start=0#p33565
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Duplicating objects
User: alangager / DateTime: 2012-03-15 07:11:34

Thanks for the replies... I was going to limit it to a pretty small number but it seems like it's easier to find another solution..!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4643&start=0#p33566
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Modern IF in Popular Culture
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-15 07:13:21

...for some values of "modern" and "popular." 

Skin Horse is an awesome webcomic (from the creator of [url=http://www.narbonic.com/]Narbonic[/url]) which you should check out. You should especially check out [url=http://skin-horse.com/comics/03152012-2/]this strip[/url]. 

I've done some [url=http://www.webcomicsnation.com/shaenongarrity/skinhorse/series.php?view=archive&chapter=43857]fan art[/url] for the strip, which you only have to read the first two story arcs to understand -- only about 160 strips total. It looks a lot like what you might expect who chooses to make video games that are all text to make.

Some enterprising person should probably make a Skin Horse IF for them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4642&start=0#p33567
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Using a compass and exit descriptions
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-15 07:17:36

I suppose blind players would appreciate it if there's a textual description of the exits somewhere. I'd probably appreciate it too -- I usually don't like looking up at the status line for necessary information. (Though I didn't mind it in The Hours.)

Ghalev's suggestion of an exits command is a good idea -- especially if you can turn it on and off, so you can be in a mode where the exits from a room are automatically listed after the description. I think at least one of the Exit Lister extensions does this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=10769&start=0#p33568
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Upcoming Updates?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-15 07:21:19

I think the Inform team may not like to give tentative dates for upcoming updates from far out, because people don't treat them as tentative -- it was IIRC a couple updates ago that they said that they'd have an update by date X, and when it rolled out a week late or so someone was very upset on rec.arts.int-fiction. So, better to give no estimate than one with big error bars.

(I've also noticed that when Graham resolves bugs he resolves a huge number of them at once, FWIW.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4644&start=0#p33569
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Die after X moves unless exited room?
User: deKay / DateTime: 2012-03-15 07:30:17

I have a room, on fire, and if I don't exit in less than 5 moves, I die.

How do I do that?

It's the start room, so basically I want (I know this isn't IF code):

If (room = "start room" and moves = 5) then end the game in death.

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4629&start=10#p33570
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Command line comfort
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-15 07:55:11

[quote="jimd"]There are several games you may want to check out: Uplink and the Hacker Evolution series. Both have the model of hacking into a server, stealing info, selling it, etc. They may give ideas for what to do or not do in your engine.[/quote]
Supposedly, the Wachovskies' Matrix sequel tie-in game, Enter the Matrix, had a sequence like this, too. But I never got more than 5 minutes into that game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4644&start=0#p33571
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Die after X moves unless exited room?
User: deKay / DateTime: 2012-03-15 08:10:55

[code]The house is a room. "The house is on fire".

The fire escape is a room. It is east of the house.

Every turn when the player is in the house:
	At 9:05 AM: say "You burn to death"; end the game in death.[/code]

seems to trigger regardless of room [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4644&start=0#p33572
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Die after X moves unless exited room?
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-03-15 08:12:47

I haven't tested this, but if you're working in Inform 7 then I think something like the following would work:

Every turn when turn count is 5:
     If the location is Burning Room:
          End the game in death.


Please note that the spaces in the above fragment would need to be changed to tab characters.  This also assumes that there's no way the player can return to the burning room; it only triggers on the fifth turn, so if it is possible to return to the room and the player actually does so after Turn 5, it would not trigger.


Robert Rothman

[Edit] Sorry, it looks like the spaces got  dropped.  The second line of the fragment should be indented one tab, and thrid line two tabs.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4644&start=0#p33573
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Die after X moves unless exited room?
User: deKay / DateTime: 2012-03-15 08:14:08

[code]At 9:05 AM: [if the player is in the house] say "You burn to death"; [if the player is in the house] end the game in death.[/code]

doesn't work either.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4644&start=0#p33574
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Die after X moves unless exited room?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-03-15 08:16:57

[quote="deKay"][code]At 9:05 AM: [if the player is in the house] say "You burn to death"; [if the player is in the house] end the game in death.[/code][/quote]
That's the correct idea, but anything inside brackets are comments and ignored by the compiler [i]except[/i] inside strings. Remove the brackets and you're good.

[code]At 9:05 AM: 
	if the player is in the house:
		say "You burn to death"; 
		end the game in death.[/code]
(Remeber to use tabs: one tab in front of the conditional and two tabs in front of the last two lines.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4644&start=0#p33575
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Die after X moves unless exited room?
User: deKay / DateTime: 2012-03-15 08:17:12

[quote="Robert Rothman"]I haven't tested this, but if you're working in Inform 7 then I think something like the following would work:

Every turn when turn count is 5:
     If the location is Burning Room:
          End the game in death.


Please note that the spaces in the above fragment would need to be changed to tab characters.  This also assumes that there's no way the player can return to the burning room; it only triggers on the fifth turn, so if it is possible to return to the room and the player actually does so after Turn 5, it would not trigger.


Robert Rothman

[Edit] Sorry, it looks like the spaces got  dropped.  The second line of the fragment should be indented one tab, and thrid line two tabs.[/quote]

Bingo!

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4644&start=0#p33576
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Die after X moves unless exited room?
User: deKay / DateTime: 2012-03-15 08:42:44

[quote="Juhana"][quote="deKay"][code]At 9:05 AM: [if the player is in the house] say "You burn to death"; [if the player is in the house] end the game in death.[/code][/quote]
That's the correct idea, but anything inside brackets are comments and ignored by the compiler [i]except[/i] inside strings. Remove the brackets and you're good.[/quote]

Yes, I'm an idiot [emote]:)[/emote]

Thanks. Your example worked too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4601&start=0#p33577
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Absolute Beginner Questions
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-15 08:46:12

[quote="The Batman"] I haven't tested the code in it's entirety simply because I don't get what is happening in these lines:

[code]Can print the banner text is a truth state that varies.   

Rule for printing the banner text when can print the banner text is false:
   now can print the banner text is true.[/code]

I assume it has to do something with preventing the banner from showing up at the start--otherwise, wouldn't using [banner text] at the end just make the banner appear again? But trying to break it down logically, I just don't see what this is accomplishing. I'm trying my best to avoid simply copy-pasting code and actually understand what it is the particular codes are saying/doing, so if you (or anyone else) could offer some input there, that would be wonderful.[/quote]

Yes. When play begins, all variables -- like that one -- which are given no initial values are assigned the default value for their kind. You can see these defaults on the Kinds page of the Index. For truth states, the default value is "false".

So, play begins, and "can print the banner text" is false. Among other things, a number of activities are launched when play begins. One of these activities is the "Printing the banner text" activity. Ordinarily, this prints the banner text. However, the phrase I wrote causes that activity to do [i]nothing[/i] when "can print the banner text" is false, [i]except[/i] to set "can print the banner text" to true.

So, in effect, that truth state variable and that rule combine to make the activity not display the banner text the first time it would be displayed -- at the beginning of the game -- and to behave normally (IE, to print the banner text) every other time, such as when "[banner text]" is said, or when the player types >VERSION.

[quote] I have no idea what the code is doing for the scenario.

I understand the initial declaration of the rooms/floors (in which every time a room is declared without a cardinal relation, it's like declaring a floor--when the author says x room is some direction from another, then it's adding another room to the floor). The "table of floors" is pretty straightforward and I think I get what the "The elevator exterior is a backdrop. It is not scenery." is getting at (if I'm correct, it's just saying "create something called elevator exterior that can be referenced, but don't treat it as an object or scenery, just as something that's constantly there). The "initial appearance" just refers to the description of the undisturbed elevator exterior.[/quote]Well, sort of. I think you should read WI chapters 3.8 and 3.9, Scenery and Backdrops, to familiarize yourself with the differences between them. A backdrop is a thing that is found in multiple rooms simultaneously; scenery is basically a not-mentioned thing, meaning it doesn't display an initial appearance like "You can also see an elevator here." at the end of any room description -- the assumption being that it will be described in the room description, or as part of the description of some other object, instead. Backdrops and scenery are two independent properties of things; any thing can be either, both, or neither. The Standard Rules define "A backdrop is usually scenery.", but that can be overridden, as the code above does.

[quote]
[code]Before entering the elevator exterior, try going inside instead.[/code]

Don't think I understand this one (even though it seems simply-worded). Is this some alternate way be able to call "going inside" "entering"? Or is it the properties of the "backdrop" that prevents something from "entering" it, but allows something to "go inside" it and the code is just preventing player confusion? If the latter, than what are the differences between the two? I'm guessing this isn't the most important code, so I'm not going to bother myself too much with it.
[/quote]Before rules are defined in WI 7.3. 

This line just redirects one attempted action (entering the elevator exterior -- which is a backdrop, not a door or an enterable container or an enterable supporter, and hence has no "entering" code defined for it) into another (going, with a noun of "inside" -- a direction). The usual purpose for this is to prevent code duplication -- instead of defining the same result for multiple actions, they're all redirected to one action. Minimizing code duplication is always a good idea, to prevent bugs from creeping in, so that if you ever need to change one of these code blocks there won't be another block or 3 to forget to update as well.

[quote]
a) I don't need the player to have access to all 30 floors. If a player tries to go to an floor that I haven't designed, a simple "you have no reason to go to that floor" will suffice.
b) What I have currently is a room named "Elevator" that someone can just go "north" towards and be inside. I'm not fully grasping what makes a room "enterable" as opposed to being able to be accessed from a direction. Ideally, yes, I want someone to be in a room and then "enter" the elevator, but for now I'm settling for just going "north" into it.
c) I've created the "table of floors," but really don't know how to utilize/reference it. I'd like to be able to have a sign in the elevator that lists off the accessible floors and their respective names (a la, display the table). I don't think I7 likes the table being coded without it being used  [emote]:lol:[/emote] 

Well, I'm getting tired, so I will leave that at that. I hope I've been clear enough on what I want, what I don't want, and what I understand and don't understand. As always, thanks for all the help--I definitely feel like my I7 production has increased ten-fold.[/quote][/quote]
a) The code in the example dealing with "corresponding floors" is what you want here. Just say an error message rather than moving the player to a generic floor.
b) Rooms can't be entered, only things can. If you want the player to be able to enter the elevator, code like the above "Before entering the elevator doors, try going inside instead." will make those doors effectively transport the player to whatever room is inside from whatever room the doors are in -- as good as making them enterable, from the player's point of view.
c) I think you want to read through chapter 15 of WI, which describes tables in detail, including how to list through them and display their contents to the player.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4644&start=0#p33578
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Die after X moves unless exited room?
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-15 08:50:00

This is how I addressed a timed event (and many more, but they trigger differently):
[code]Before going north from the Molten Span:
	say "You walk over the crumbled wall, finding your way to the Construct pillar. The heat is almost unbearable.";
	the heat is unbearable in three turns from now.	
At the time when the heat is unbearable:
	if the player is in the Pillar section:
		say "The heat is too intense. You run back to the step above the molten span before you lose your senses.";
		now the player is in the Molten span.[/code]
The first "before" rule activates the counter. You can change it to something like "After <setting the room on fire>: the heat is unbearable in 5 turns from now".
The part "At the time when etc" triggers the event (in this case just leaving the room, you can change it to "end the game etc.") and checks the location.
So: every time you enter the Pillar Section the counter is reset.

In this way, you dont have to wait for turn 5, 10, 15, 20 etc to run your event, but exactly the number of turns you want FROM NOW.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4639&start=0#p33579
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Duplicating objects
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-15 08:59:04

[quote="alangager"]Thanks for the replies... I was going to limit it to a pretty small number but it seems like it's easier to find another solution..![/quote]
If you're limiting it to a small number, it's easiest to define all of them up front, without placing them in any room, and just move one into the location whenever the button is pushed.

[code]There is room. A button is here. 

A donut is a kind of thing. There are ten donuts.

Instead of pushing the button: 
	if a donut is off-stage:
		let D be a random off-stage donut;
		now D is in the location;
		say "A donut appears.";
	otherwise:
		say "Nothing happens."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4626&start=10#p33580
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Anyway...
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-15 09:37:47

[quote="Jamespking"][quote="gravel"]Is he still alive?

*ducks*[/quote]
And kickin'.[/quote]
Unfortunately, the Big Man is no longer with us. But he left us a Lady Gaga record.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.spinner.com/2011/06/19/clarence-clemons-lady-gaga-edge-of-glory-video/">http://www.spinner.com/2011/06/19/clare ... ory-video/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4642&start=0#p33581
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Using a compass and exit descriptions
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-15 10:07:04

As everybody else said, it's dangerous to assume that the status line will be displayed, that if it's displayed people will be able to see it, or that if they can see it they'll notice it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4644&start=0#p33582
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Die after X moves unless exited room?
User: deKay / DateTime: 2012-03-15 10:50:22

That's helpful, thanks.

Since this was an event at the very start of the game, that level of complexity wasn't important, but it's still useful to know about.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4614&start=0#p33583
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making the IDE hang with list management...
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-15 10:52:59

Ok... I'm back with some questions.


[code]modify Actor
   // actors hold a list of strategies
   stratList = []

   // given a gaem and an opponent, find a suitable strategy
   strategize(gaem, opponent) {
      local strats = stratList.subset({strat:
         // find strategies for this game
         strat.match(gaem) != nil
      }).sort(nil, {a, b:
         // and sort by priority
         a.priority - b.priority
      }); 
      return (strats.length ? strats[1].select(opponent) : DEFAULT);
   }[/code]

The syntax here is just too complicated for me.  I can follow your comments, but I'm not unraveling what's happening in the line }).sort(nil, {a, b: --could you explain how that works?  (Whatever that's called, where you put curly braces inside the parameters for a call to a method, I'm not real fluent with.)


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=10769&start=0#p33584
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Upcoming Updates?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-15 11:10:03

[quote="matt w"]I think the Inform team may not like to give tentative dates for upcoming updates from far out, because people don't treat them as tentative -- it was IIRC a couple updates ago that they said that they'd have an update by date X, and when it rolled out a week late or so someone was very upset on rec.arts.int-fiction. So, better to give no estimate than one with big error bars.

(I've also noticed that when Graham resolves bugs he resolves a huge number of them at once, FWIW.)[/quote]
Right on both counts. The reason he's reticent about making announcements is because of the grumbling that ensues when the date gets pushed back. And fixing bugs is not the only thing he's doing. My guess is, there will be some new features as well, which are being tested quietly.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4634&start=0#p33585
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Upcoming Updates?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2012-03-15 11:59:56

So to answer this in vague and general terms that I hope will still be somewhat helpful:

No, we don't have a release date, for the same reasons as usual: not wanting to mislead people, not being sure what our own schedules will allow.

Graham has been working on Inform recently, but before that there was a hiatus of some months because of an increased workload at work and some other things of a like nature. I have also been extremely busy (as it happens, I think what I've been doing may eventually interest some IF fans, but it has involved building up a product and company, then selling the company and transitioning jobs, so I haven't had much leftover time to call my own). 

That said, the new build, when it comes, will be a more significant departure than most people have seen in a while, because it finally puts through a number of syntax deprecations we've been trailing; completely reforms the library message system; and does a few other major changes that we felt would be best to do all at once. The size and complexity of the update is another reason why it is taking such a long time.

To the extent possible, we're trying to have our busy-ness at least not drag down progress on decoupled but related projects; Vorple is going forward, and I have given a volunteer the go-ahead to work on the things that still need work on Threaded Conversation, and so on.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4645&start=0#p33586
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: What is ACCESS_RB?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-15 12:05:03

I had been going all along on the assumption that this part of Speech Motivations would work:

[code]audience is a plural-named person. The printed name of audience is "anyone who can hear".

For printing the name of audience when someone is among the audience: say "[the list of people who are among the audience]"

...

For finding an interlocutor for someone (called actor) (this is the address the whole audience rule):
	let np be the number of people who are among the audience;
	if np is 0:
		if exclaiming something to:
			now the interlocutor of the actor is the actor;
		otherwise:	
			if the actor is the player, say "There's no one here to talk to.";
			now the interlocutor of the actor is nothing;
		rule succeeds;
	if np is not 1:
		now the interlocutor of the actor is the audience;
		if the actor is the player, say "(addressing [the audience])";
		rule succeeds;
  	now the interlocutor of the actor is a random person who is among the audience;
    	if the actor is the player, say "(addressing [the interlocutor of the actor])";
[/code]

Unfortunately, it doesn't always work:

[code]Include Speech Motivations by Mike Ciul

Test is a room. Bob is a man in Test. Sue is a woman in Test.

test me with "actions/t Bob/ T foo"[/code]

If you run this, you'll see that telling the audience about Bob is no problem, but telling the audience about an unparseable thing results in the error "Those aren't available." - apparently referring to the audience. I think I traced this message back to the basic accessibility rule, and digging around in the I6 source, it calls a rulebook called ACCESS_RB. But I don't know what that is. I'd like to be able to manage this using the Flexible Action Requirement extension I'm working on, but maybe I'm on the wrong track.

I suppose I could put the audience in a room (call it the Auditorium) and then use a rule for reaching inside the auditorium. Or move the audience to the location whenever it's the interlocutor. But both of those seem pretty hacky. Can anyone help?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4614&start=10#p33587
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Making the IDE hang with list management...
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-03-15 12:21:42

The first statement in the strategize method breaks down like this:

[code]
local strats = stratList.subset(...).sort(...); 
[/code]

Where if we ignore the parameters, it's somewhat clear what is happening: we're taking part of the list and then sorting it somehow.

First we call the subset method of the stratList object, which returns a new List, consisting of only those list elements that pass the filter function. We then immediately call the sort method of that new, anonymous List, which arranges the list elements based on the sorting function, and returns a new List. We then assign that List to the strats local.

(We could reverse the order of the subset and sort calls without changing the result.)

Now let's tackle the arguments to these List method calls. subset takes a function as an argument, then calls that function for each element in the list and checks the return value. If it's anything other than nil or zero, subset adds that element to the new List it's building. Otherwise it moves on to the next element.

The function argument can be specified in a number of equivalent ways. The most verbose is to write a regular function somewhere else in the code, then pass that as the argument.

[code]
// this is a regular function, outside of an object declaration
myFilter(strat) {
    return strat.match(gaem); // UH OH
}

modify Actor
    // this is our method
    strategize(gaem, opponent) {
        local strats = stratList.subset(myFilter);
    }
;
[/code]

The problem with this is that pesky gaem variable in our myFilter function. It needs to hold the value of the gaem argument that was passed to strategize, but there's no good way of getting it, short of assigning it to some global variable.

TADS 3 solves this difficulty by allowing functions declared inside a method to access other variables from that method. So let's move our function inside.

[code]
modify Actor
    // this is our method
    strategize(gaem, opponent) {
        local myFilter = new function(strat) {
            return strat.match(gaem);  // YAY
        };
        local strats = stratList.subset(myFilter);
    }
;
[/code]

It's not quite the same, though. When you declare a function inside a method, it's always anonymous - meaning it doesn't get a name that you can use to call it from anywhere in your code. So to make it equivalent, we declare a myFilter local and assign our unnamed function to that. Then we can refer to the function as myFilter, and we're basically back where we started, except the code will compile now.

Because this is a common scenario, TADS 3 has a shorthand way of declaring an anonymous function which lets you omit the fluff like "new function" and "return" and semicolons. The above code could also be written like this:

[code]
modify Actor
    // this is our method
    strategize(gaem, opponent) {
        local myFilter = {strat: strat.match(gaem)};
        local strats = stratList.subset(myFilter);
    }
;
[/code]

This is equivalent to the earlier form; we've just stripped away some of the boilerplate. The entire function is enclosed in curly braces. The colon marks the boundary between the function's parameters and its actual code. Here we've said that there's one parameter, which we'll call strat.

The code is the same, except there's no semicolon and no return statement. Short-form anonymous functions will implicitly return the value of the last statement.

So we're looking pretty good at this point; you may even prefer this style for clarity. But there's one trick left to us: we don't actually need to assign the anonymous function at all. We can just make it up on the spot when we pass it as a parameter, and let it fall by the wayside when it's no longer needed.

[code]
modify Actor
    // this is our method
    strategize(gaem, opponent) {
        local strats = stratList.subset({strat: strat.match(gaem)});
    }
;
[/code]

That's where the curly braces inside the parameters of a function call come from.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=10769&start=0#p33588
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Upcoming Updates?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-15 12:24:35

[quote="emshort"]completely reforms the library message system[/quote]
Yay! It's gonna be great!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4645&start=0#p33589
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What is ACCESS_RB?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-15 12:26:14

Hm. I'm not sure what the library is doing here. There are two ObjectIsUntouchable routines defined (for 6G60), and the one that runs ACCESS_RB (in WorldModel.i6) is the one that *doesn't* get used. (The one that does, in Light.i6, runs ACCESSIBILITY_RB.)

That's in a one-room game, so you must be doing something else.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4617&start=0#p33590
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe file-browsing feature
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-15 12:29:20

It loads for me (same Chrome, OSX 10.7.3). I don't think the OSX version is relevant -- I developed Quixe under 10.5 and 10.6, and Chrome isn't coupled to the OS version anyhow.

What does the Javascript console look like? I get:

### gameurl: stories/Advent.ulx.js
### is_relative=true, same_origin=true, binary_supported=true, crossorigin_supported=true
### trying old-fashioned load...
### done executing; path time = 33 ms
### done executing; path time = 2 ms

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4617&start=0#p33591
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe file-browsing feature
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-03-15 12:57:15

Seems to work OK here on Linux with Firefox 10, Konqueror and Google Chrome 18.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4646&start=0#p33592
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Masters of Constantinople - new game I worked on!
User: Squinky / DateTime: 2012-03-15 13:02:38

Hey folks, a new web-based game I worked on at my day job has recently been released. It's called [url=http://mastersofconstantinople.com/]Masters of Constantinople[/url] and it's a historical narrative game where you play an initiate in a secret society in Constantinople before its fall in 1453. I worked on co-designing the game with a team and implementing it using Undum (as I did for The Play) and some additional Javascript magic. (Sadly, I didn't do the writing, and the art is way prettier than what I'm usually able to create on my own!)

Anyway, if you've got some time to check it out, I'd welcome any comments!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4646&start=0#p33593
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Masters of Constantinople - new game I worked on!
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-03-15 13:20:17

I have not yet really played with it, but just looking at the intro the first thing that jumped out at me is that if Ronaldo were to gain a hundred pounds or so and round off the square corners of his beard, he would look an awful lot like me!

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4646&start=0#p33594
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Masters of Constantinople - new game I worked on!
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-15 13:24:36

I don't have time for a full play right now (but I'm definitely checking it out soon!) It looks pretty swish, but unfortunately the font displays a little weirdly for me. Screenshot attached:

[spoiler][attachment=0]bitbitty.png[/attachment][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4645&start=0#p33595
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What is ACCESS_RB?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-15 13:24:44

I missed that there were two. So the basic accessibility rule runs the accessibility rulebook, no weirdness. For some reason I thought the basic accessibility rule was IN the accessibility rulebook, which would be recursive. But it's not, it's an action processing rule.

So I think this is all I need:

[code]Accessibility rule when the audience is expected to respond: rule succeeds.[/code]

A recent thread about accessibility rules made me think that a successful accessibility rule would stop the action. But I guess I misunderstood.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4646&start=0#p33596
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Masters of Constantinople - new game I worked on!
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-15 13:28:59

[quote="Robert Rothman"]I have not yet really played with it, but just looking at the intro the first thing that jumped out at me is that if Ronaldo were to gain a hundred pounds or so and round off the square corners of his beard, he would look an awful lot like me![/quote]
Also Robert, I hope by this you mean to imply that you have an awesome eye-scar. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single badass in possession of a clear face, must be in want of an eye-scar.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4646&start=0#p33597
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Masters of Constantinople - new game I worked on!
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-03-15 13:43:25

[quote="JoeyJones"]I don't have time for a full play right now (but I'm definitely checking it out soon!) It looks pretty swish, but unfortunately the font displays a little weirdly for me.[/quote]

Looks the same for me on Windows. I bet that it's a Windows display issue with certain weights of the font, as there are other fonts that look just as terrible on my monitor.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4629&start=10#p33598
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Command line comfort
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-15 13:53:40

[quote="RealNC"][quote="namekuseijin"]Merlin, in a command line you type cryptic commands for the machine to do something[/quote]
They're not cryptic. They're well documented. They are only cryptic to someone who can't be bothered to RTFM [emote]:P[/emote][/quote]
I don't think the documentation, or lack thereof, is what makes them cryptic. Memorability makes a big difference. If you forget "z" you can type "wait" - but if you forget the switches and options you need for "zip," or the options available on the current platform's version of "find," you have to look them up again. Then there's the test command and loop syntaxes, which vary between bash and c-shell varieties...

Actually, I wouldn't call the Linux command line "well documented." Man pages are written for people who already know the commands and want to use them more effectively, not for people who don't even know which command to use.

I went for option #2 because OS X, FreeBSD and Linux are all pretty much the same OS from the perspective of the command line. I don't remember Apple II+, C64, Atari 800, Acorn or VMS command line, and I have to struggle with Windows, although I use it at work.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4639&start=0#p33599
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Duplicating objects
User: alangager / DateTime: 2012-03-15 13:58:41

Awesome, thanks. I was way over-thinking it. I love Inform.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4639&start=0#p33600
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Duplicating objects
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-15 14:02:43

One nice thing Inform can do for you is select something by giving it a name. You can skip the "random off-stage donut" line by doing this:

[code]There is room. A button is here. 

A donut is a kind of thing. There are ten donuts.

Instead of pushing the button: 
	if a donut (called D) is off-stage:
		now D is in the location;
		say "A donut appears.";
	otherwise:
		say "Nothing happens."[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4646&start=0#p33601
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Masters of Constantinople - new game I worked on!
User: Squinky / DateTime: 2012-03-15 14:23:23

Ooh, weird about Windows and fonts! We'll be investigating that. Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4646&start=0#p33602
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Masters of Constantinople - new game I worked on!
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-03-15 14:33:58

The font looks better with ClearType disabled, but is otherwise very hard to read.

In Chrome on Windows, you can select some text, right-click it and choose "Inspect element", and then edit the CSS in the lower right to remove the problematic font ("IM Fell Great Primer") from the list. It looks much better in Palatino.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4639&start=0#p33603
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Duplicating objects
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-15 14:44:10

[quote="capmikee"]One nice thing Inform can do for you is select something by giving it a name. You can skip the "random off-stage donut" line [/quote]
Ooh!  [emote]:o[/emote]  I never knew. That[i] is [/i]nice.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=10769&start=0#p33604
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Upcoming Updates?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-15 14:53:06

[quote="Felix"][quote="emshort"]completely reforms the library message system[/quote]
Yay! It's gonna be great![/quote]

Quoted for truth.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4646&start=0#p33605
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Masters of Constantinople - new game I worked on!
User: UnwashedMass / DateTime: 2012-03-15 15:05:13

Hi, Deirdra!  I can't say enough good things about that game.  I have a hard time believing that there are those among us lucky enough to get paid to make cool stuff like that.  (And then I get to envy your musical career also.  Speaking of which, surely some Balkan music could have spiced things up here!)  I played it all the way through at a blistering pace, striving to win every exchange with every master (not always successfully).  As a consequence of the blistering pace, I didn't actually consult the reference material provided, and ended up having to replay several exchanges.  Also, due to my screen size, the statistics in the lower right were off-screen through most of the playthrough, but once I used them I relied on them extensively to suss out the "most correct" answer ie. one not only correct and cogent to the question asked, but I gather one also in alignment with the personal beliefs of the given master?  (or am I giving the designers too much credit and wrong answers are genuinely wrong, just BS delivered convincingly?  Since sometimes even a text adventure enthusiast suffers from a bit of TL;DR syndrome, some people may spend more time looking at the questions than at the preamble leading up to them -- and if two of the three at a given time are actual balderdash, unchecked except by score-scrutinizers, that could be deleterious to an overall educational outcome if much of what players remember is wrong answers in not quite a sufficient quantity to scuttle the mission.)

My only personal gripe is that after the game has been completed there are no options for replay of specific sections except by starting the whole thing over again 8)  Cheers and congratulations on a job well done.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=340#p33606
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-15 15:34:30

[What went before]
In 1978, my older brother finished grammar school, and received a grant for a year of study in the US.  AMong many other things, he wrote home about how cheap and easy it was to get a driver's licence there.  In 1979 I I finished grammar school, and got rewarded with a trip to Massachusetts, where a great-aunt of mine lived, whom I had only seen once or twice before in my life - my father had calculated that even with the plane trip. if I got my driver's licence there it would still be cheaper than getting it back home in the Netherlands.

So there I was, in a strange and foreign country, the language of which I only spoke rudimentarily, out of sync with the local time, in a surreal cardboard-like house - I am sure I could have kicked with one try through any of the walls, and I remember wondering how one could ever fix a set of bookshelves to the wall without summoning disaster.  My brother had come over to help ease me through the process of getting my driver's licence.

[Playing]
That first night I lay in a sleeping bag in the pitch-dark attic of this strange house, overly tired but fully awake, listening to my brother relating in halting Dutch the wondrous things he had experienced, such as driving a tank and booting computers (by entering the boot program using toggle switches).  And the teletype: real interaction, where you could write input and the computer would type output on the same paper chain!

And then he came to the program he had come to love: ADVENT.  I listened to him describing the various rooms in the cave, the puzzles and problems, the plant begging for water, the tiny bird, and for me all this became part of the unreal world I had already come to.  I actually solved the troll bridge problem then, which had stumped my brother, and I think I also understood who the vague figure waving at one was.  No computer in sight, but I think it is hard to get deeper immersed in IF than I was that night.

[Authoring]
Saint Nicholas Eve is arguably the most important feast in the Netherlands.  Small gifts are given, accompanied by doggerel that makes good-humoured fun of the receiver.  That year, however, instead of writing the customary poem, for my brother I filled an entire copybook with rhymes describing different locations, situations and events, with CYOA choices underneath.  A companion text explained how someone else would have to maintain state, in order to decide the outcome of ones choices, because while obviously later effects depended on choices made earlier, my brother was not to know these dependencies, but rather to discover them through playing.  Dealing with this one gift took longer than with all the others combined.  That was my first piece of IF, again without a computer.

[What came after]
My brother had brought ADVENT on a tape, and it became popular among the CS students of which I became one.  I wrote my first authoring system in APL, my second in LISPF3, and countless others in LISPF4, Franz Lisp, Scheme and JavaScript, not counting absolutely minimal ones in Snobol and Prolog.  I never finished another more-than-toy piece of IF, though.  Seeing merits and drawbacks in the various approaches to specifying an IF world exemplified by TADS, Inform 7 and Adrift, I am currently dabbling with yet another take (programming in Lua, this time).

I find that writing an IF authoring system or IF world emulator is a good way to explore new programming languages or concepts.  For instance, my current Lua version sports a bottom-up parser with island-driven search.  For short inputs that is much slower than the simple top-down approach, but already at 300-word commands it is faster, and then it goes quickly.  So if anyone wants to make a serious successor to Rematch..  [emote]:-)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4646&start=0#p33607
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Masters of Constantinople - new game I worked on!
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-15 15:35:58

Could you please make the whole thing available as a ZIP file for offline playing?

I did try just "saving the page", as it usually works with the Undum and Quixe games I've been saving (having the HTML and then a folder with the rest of the files), but your game seems to be a bit more involved than that. Still, having the whole thing as a ZIP would probably allow for offline usage, yes?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=340#p33608
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-15 16:12:43

That's a lovely narrative; thanks for that.

[quote="Biep"]I find that writing an IF authoring system or IF world emulator is a good way to explore new programming languages or concepts.  For instance, my current Lua version sports a bottom-up parser with island-driven search.  For short inputs that is much slower than the simple top-down approach, but already at 300-word commands it is faster, and then it goes quickly.  So if anyone wants to make a serious successor to Rematch..  [emote]:-)[/emote][/quote]


[quote]
[b]Marburg[/b]
You can see the Western philosophical tradition here.

>ATTACK WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL TRADITION
You'll need to be more specific about how you want to do that.

>AUTHENTICALLY REPUDIATE WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL TRADITION THROUGH A DISTINCT AND PROXIMALLY ENCOUNTERED AUTHENTIC AND PRIOR ONTOLOGICAL ASSERTION OF BEING-IN-SELF AS FALLING-FROM-ONESELF QUA "SELF" AND PREMISED UPON READY-TO-HANDNESS ACKNOWLEDGING THAT "FOR-THE-SAKE-OF-WHICH" EXISTENTIALLY SIGNIFIES A "TOWARDS-THISNESS" AND MOREOVER IS AN OWNMOST KIND-OF-BEING THAT IS EXPERIENCED AS BELONGING-TO-DASEIN, WHEREAS PRESENTMENT OF FACTICAL EXISTENTIELL POSSIBILITIES IN THEIR CHIEF FEATURES AND INTERCONNECTIONS IS RESOLUTELY SELF-PROJECTED AND MANIFEST IN THE PHENOMENON OF UNDERSTANDINGLY DISCLOSING COMPLETELY THE "THERE" OF PRIMARILY-TEMPORALISED MAKING-PRESENT AND IS THUS A PRIVELEGED FORMULATION AND, SINCE TEMPORALITY TEMPORALISES ITSELF AS A WHOLE, PERTAINS WITH EQUAL PRIMORDIALITY TO BEING-IN-THE-WORLD AND DASEIN IN GENERAL

I'm sorry, nobody understood you any further than repudiating the Western philosophical tradition.
[b]*** You have won ***[/b][/quote]
...and that's only 97 words. I think we need a Best 300-Word Command thread.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4647&start=0#p33609
Forum: Competitions / Subject: The Windhammer Prize
User: George / DateTime: 2012-03-15 17:18:30

I don't think I've seen this discussed here, but it's worth a look. [url=http://www.arborell.com/windhammer_prize.html]The Windhammer Prize[/url] is a competition for short gamebooks (of the ink and paper variety). Authors submit their games as .rtf text files and it's free to enter. 

Gamebook enthusiasts have run it for the last four years and it's produced some neat games. This year the deadline is [b]September 7th[/b] and as an additional enticement, the winning authors [url=http://tinmangames.com.au/blog/?p=2049]get the opportunity to see their games published as iOS apps[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=340#p33610
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: stadtgorilla / DateTime: 2012-03-15 17:38:15

awesome!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=340#p33611
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-15 18:01:39

That's a great tale Biep, thanks for sharing. I think a very advanced magic-word game (like a super Suveh Nux) would be a workable game concept for a 300 word command.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=10769&start=0#p33612
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Upcoming Updates?
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2012-03-15 18:40:48

[quote="Felix"][quote="emshort"]completely reforms the library message system[/quote]
Yay! It's gonna be great![/quote]

Until you see it, how do you know?

What does "reform the library message system" mean, though? Does this mean making it more extendable? More consistent? Will extensions like Custom Library Messages still be needed or is that being built in? For those of us who don't know what problem the solution is solving, it would be cool to hear things about this. I did a search for "library message system" on uservoice and found some things: four declined, two planned, and two completed. Is that the place to go to get a feel for what's up and coming?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=10769&start=0#p33613
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Upcoming Updates?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2012-03-15 18:58:54

[quote="bukayeva"][quote="Felix"][quote="emshort"]completely reforms the library message system[/quote]
Yay! It's gonna be great![/quote]

Until you see it, how do you know?

What does "reform the library message system" mean, though? Does this mean making it more extendable? More consistent? Will extensions like Custom Library Messages still be needed or is that being built in? For those of us who don't know what problem the solution is solving, it would be cool to hear things about this. I did a search for "library message system" on uservoice and found some things: four declined, two planned, and two completed. Is that the place to go to get a feel for what's up and coming?[/quote]

Yes. If it's marked "completed" but not yet available in the old build, that means it's something that's done for the new version.

To answer your question directly, no, Custom Library Messages will not be needed, nor is it being built in. There is a new, more integrated method of handling output that we hope will also make it easier for authors to replace messages in other people's extensions (selectively or completely), allowing for smoother customization and translation.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4646&start=0#p33614
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Masters of Constantinople - new game I worked on!
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-03-15 19:45:51

[quote] surely some Balkan music could have spiced things up here[/quote]

Either that, or the old song that tells us that "Instanbul's not Constantinople anymore!"  Those are the ony words I remember.

Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4646&start=10#p33615
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Masters of Constantinople - new game I worked on!
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-03-15 19:53:46

Just started playing, and ran into a problem right near the beginning.  In the first conversation in Anna's office, I chose [spoiler]If the texts you have are half as delicious as your food, that won't be a problem unless you run out of salt.[/spoiler]  and the game just hung.  The mouse click seemd to "take," but I never got any response.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4648&start=0#p33616
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Gopher-based Interactive Fiction Archive now up
User: frotz / DateTime: 2012-03-15 20:50:08

There's a new mirror of the Interactive Fiction Archive.  This one is served by through Gopher.  See gopher.feedle.net with a dedicated Gopher client or using the Overbite Firefox plugin.  Please let me know what you think of it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4643&start=0#p33630
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Modern IF in Popular Culture
User: Ron Newcomb / DateTime: 2012-03-15 23:17:52

The female protag... if Velma from Scooby-Doo and Penny from Inspector Gadget had a bastard love child....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4648&start=0#p33631
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Gopher-based Interactive Fiction Archive now up
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-03-15 23:39:25

I thought people stopped using Gopher decades ago.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4648&start=0#p33632
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Gopher-based Interactive Fiction Archive now up
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-16 00:31:51

Much like they stopped playing IF, I guess... I have added <a class="postlink" href="gopher://gopher.feedle.net/1/if-archive/">gopher://gopher.feedle.net/1/if-archive/</a> to the Archive's mirror list.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4646&start=10#p33633
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Masters of Constantinople - new game I worked on!
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-16 03:11:58

[quote="Robert Rothman"][quote] surely some Balkan music could have spiced things up here[/quote]

Either that, or the old song that tells us that "Instanbul's not Constantinople anymore!"  Those are the ony words I remember.

Robert Rothman[/quote]

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vankaSlfSr0">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vankaSlfSr0</a>

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqJXxHi6RwQ">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqJXxHi6RwQ</a>

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsRuurcTTSk">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsRuurcTTSk</a>

[emote];)[/emote]

EDIT - Damn you, sir, damn you thoroughly. Now the music's stuck in my head. It was AGES before it got unstuck LAST time, plus I'm singing a duet from La Boheme today. Let's hope I don't go "O Istanbul, tu più non torni!"...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4646&start=10#p33634
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Masters of Constantinople - new game I worked on!
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-03-16 07:01:42

Further to the problem I was having with the game hanging, I've discovered that it works OK if I hit the "refresh" button every time after making a choice.  Has anybody else run into that?

In any event, having now gotten a little ways into the game, I like it a lot.  However, being fundamentally lazy, I've been trying to play it without reading the links that actually provide the necessary information, relying instead on my own (incomplete at best and now quite rusty) knowledge.  This had led me to the conclusion that the most appropriate musical accompaniment, for me at least, would be the old song that starts "Don't know much about history . . . ."


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=40#p33636
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-16 10:29:06

[quote="David J Prokopetz"]Ah - that makes sense. Well, apart from the fact that the "basic accessibility" rule doesn't "allow access", but syntax is a funny thing.[/quote]
I just dealt with this issue myself, and I want to clarify something that I didn't understand before.

The basic accessibility rule is [b]not an accessibility rule[/b]. The basic accessibility rule is an action processing rule that [b]runs[/b] the accessibility rulebook. An accessibility rule [b]can[/b] allow access by ending successfully (although not with the "allow access" result). But the basic accessibility rule can't. All it does is stop the action if the accessibility rulebook fails. It's written in I6 and should probably not be interfered with.

I think "basic" was perhaps a poor naming choice for the visibility and accessibility master-rules. Perhaps "determine accessibility" would have been a better name.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4607&start=0#p33637
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Gathering at PAX East 2012?
User: Irfon-Kim / DateTime: 2012-03-16 10:44:06

Aww.  That *is* sad news.  I went to PAX East in 2010 but missed most of the IF events because I simply wasn't aware of them at the time.  However, I did manage to attend one discussion, and enjoyed it enough that I've been looking forward to more ever since.  I was unable to attend PAX East in 2011 for financial reasons.  I have a membership for it this year, but have been on the fence as to whether or not I'll actually go.  The idea that there might be IF events was a huge part of the draw for me.  I guess that makes the decision easier, but still... :/

Is the burden of organization mentioned upthread the major reason for things not happening this year?  How can others help, for future?  I'm not very in-the-know or well-connected in the IF scene, but I'm willing to do what work I can.  (I realize it's too late for this time around.)  Alternately, if PAX East is not the right venue for an IF gathering, is there another event that people think would work better?  (Are there enough people willing to attend to have our own event?  I've helped run cons for small groups before, in the 20-60 person range, and had them work out, so long as expectations were appropriate and lots of people within the group were willing to volunteer time/effort or run panels.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=10769&start=0#p33638
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Upcoming Updates?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-16 10:47:12

As far as I'm concerned, this is the Big Deal about the next release. I'm so curious to find out how it works!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4648&start=0#p33639
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Gopher-based Interactive Fiction Archive now up
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-16 10:49:41

Wow, nice to see that the gopher protocol is supported by modern browsers....!?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4648&start=0#p33640
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Gopher-based Interactive Fiction Archive now up
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-16 11:34:20

All the (stock) browsers that I use have dropped it, actually. There's a Firefox add-on, and a Lynx compile-time option...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4607&start=0#p33641
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Gathering at PAX East 2012?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-16 11:38:19

PAX East is not the right venue. I've been convinced of that since the last one, so we've been looking for alternate events to hang out with.

We are currently looking at <a class="postlink" href="http://noshowconf.com/">http://noshowconf.com/</a> . Planning is in the early stages still, however.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4607&start=0#p33642
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Gathering at PAX East 2012?
User: Irfon-Kim / DateTime: 2012-03-16 11:43:12

I get the impression from the website that No Show Conference is aimed at game developers only -- that players who aren't also developers and/or designers (or involved in said process) would be out of place there.  Is that something people think is desirable in a venue for an IF track?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4652&start=0#p33643
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Vorple Not Working Locally
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-16 12:11:17

I'm keenly interested in looking at the Vorple extensions to Undum, so this morning I downloaded both Undum itself and the Vorple example games.

The Undum tutorial game runs perfectly, as expected, on my local system (Windows 7, Firefox or Chrome). However, the Vorple example games fail. I see the opening display box, but nothing else ever appears. (These games work fine when run from the Vorple server.)

I checked the Options areas in both browsers, looking for Javascript security features that might need to be toggled, but Javascript is enabled ... and since Undum itself works, that can't very well be the source of the problem.

Looking at the HTML source for Rabbit Hole, it appears that the Javascript calls are being directed to the right directories -- I don't see an obvious problem there.

I don't see the "This story requires Javascript" error message.

As Buffalo Springfield sang, back in about 1968, "Somethin's happenin' here. What it is ain't exactly clear." Suggestions would be welcome.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4652&start=0#p33644
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Vorple Not Working Locally
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-03-16 13:15:54

Sorry about that - the examples package includes the debugging versions by mistake. I'll fix the package tomorrow but in the meanwhile here's how you can fix it manually.

Open the index.html files in a text editor and remove these lines (starting from around line 25):

[code]<script type="text/javascript" src="../../src/vorple.core.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="../../src/vorple.html.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="../../src/vorple.media.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="../../src/vorple.tooltip.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="../../src/vorple.button.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="../../src/vorple.cookie.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="../../src/vorple.undum.js"></script>[/code]

Add this line in their place:

[code]<script type="text/javascript" src="../../lib/vorple.min.js"></script>
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4653&start=0#p33645
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: TADS manuals hate me!
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-03-16 13:15:58

When I returned to writing adventure games at the my present age of seventy-three, I thought that TADS would be the compiler to use. However, for me it does not not seem to
provide the help required. When I think of adventure games, I think of magic words, battles with mean critters, hunger, thirst, weakness, treasures. caves, wizards and you name it.

In an earlier post, I wrote that I've reached the point where I'm beginning to add rooms and various objects that are in these rooms. But, TADS just doesn't provide the answers for things that I now wish to do and so I return to this forum.

Right now, I want to create a verb that is a magic word. I want this verb, when it's used to take me to certain particuler rooms. Can someone help me get started with this?

Also, can someone tell me where I can get the source code for 'Polyadv.gam'? This is the kind of game I have in mind and I would like to get some coding ideas from it; Even though it's an earlier release of TADS.

Thanks in advance for any help any of you can furnish along these lines.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4607&start=0#p33646
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Gathering at PAX East 2012?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-16 13:23:39

The nice thing about an event smaller than 30000 people, is that 30-ish IF people are a significant fraction of the group and have a significant voice in what goes on.

Is what I figure.

I do not expect a ruling at the door that only game-industry people are allowed inside.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4654&start=0#p33647
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Setting up a list of "qualities" or "parts" of people
User: crisses / DateTime: 2012-03-16 13:49:59

New to the forum, not new to programming, relatively new to Inform.
I'm creating a sci-fi based game environment, and I would appreciate some assistance.

In this game, each person can have programs.  There will be probably 30 programs by the time I'm done.  Each program has a "rating" and can be either actively running or currently deactivated.  There may end up being other qualities for each program later.

Each person (player & NPC people) can have a different rating # for each of their own programs.  So for example, one person can have "Medic" with a rating 8.  Another may have it at rating 2.  

I have tried a few ways of doing this.  I started with one of the examples for spells, had the player "carry" each program as if it were an item in their carry-all.  Then NPCs had values like medic-rating which was a number, and I'd just assume if it had a number, it was also activated.  

This breaks down in rulebooks and having the NPCs act on their own or being persuaded to act on the behalf of the player.  It would be easier to use (oversimplified example) "the rating of medic of the actor" and have the same rule apply whether an NPC or the player were attempting to use it.  

So I switched over to "parts of a person" -- using a table of kinds, and assigning all these programs to every person (actually to every icon, which is a sub-kind of person).  Now there's Your Friend's Medic, and The Evil Baddy's Medic...  and it works to an extent (although this may break again when there are many more NPCs in the game....).

So:

1) I'm willing to try it yet-another-way even though I just spent a day re-doing the system to use parts of people.  Combing through the rules and some of the finished examples, I can't seem to find anything quite like what I've done.

2) Alternatively -- if this IS the best way to do it (I hope there's a better way!  a less memory-intensive way [emote];)[/emote] ) -- I'm having particular trouble simply listing all of a player's "parts" so that I can have a list of activated vs. deactivated programs.  I've tried a bunch of things, but can't figure this out -- or even whether it's possible.

I'd like a list of:
Medic (8)
Armor (3)

etc. -- rather than:
Your Armor (3)
Your Medic (8)

(it would actually be messier, because the player is actually "Matrix Persona" so the list would be very ugly....)

I fought with the program until I finally got a list of "parts" of the person.  That took a bit, because there were no documented examples of it.  I gave up on trying to get it to give me the parent "kind" of the item it finds (which would be the base name of the program).  This would certainly be easier....

Now, I'm trying to regex the names to strip out the actor's name.  This COULD be a bug.... Given a clean inform document, I can't get "[color=#BF0000]Cleopatra's[/color]" out of the output.

I can get the "printed name" into an indexed text variable. Regex refuses to parse the [b]'s[/b].  I tried single-quote "'s (.*?)", escaped-single-quote "\'s (.*?)", and even the more risky non-specific \p punctuation catch-all "\ps (.*?)".  I can capture the s -- "s (.*?)" works fine -- but not that darned apostrophe!  Is it an HTML entity?!?  The regexes fail when I try to include the apostrophe.  If it's an HTML entity, or other UTF-? character, shouldn't it match on \p?

So here's code that I've tried as proof-of-concept in a fresh document:

[code]
The Staging Area is a room.

Antony and Cleopatra are people in the Staging Area.

A program is a kind of thing.   
A program has a truth state called activated.  Activated is usually true.  A program has a number called rating.  Rating is usually 0.  some kinds of programs are defined by the Table of Matrix-Programs.

Table of Matrix-Programs
program	rating	activated
analyze	1	true

Getting programs is an action applying to nothing.
Understand "Programs" as getting programs.
Instead of getting programs:
	let thesethings be the list of programs incorporated by Cleopatra;
	showme thesethings;
	repeat with thisthing running through thesethings:
		if the activated of thisthing is true and the rating of thisthing is greater than 0:
			let printname be an indexed text;
			now printname is the printed name of thisthing;
			showme printname;
			if printname matches the regular expression "\ps (.*?)$": 
				showme text matching regular expression;
				showme text matching subexpression 1;
				change printname to the text matching subexpression 1;
				say "  [printname] ([rating of thisthing])[line break]";
			otherwise:
				say "Argh!";
[/code]

It's like magic -- take out the ' and everything is OK -- put it back in and it's all "Argh!" [emote]:)[/emote]

Whether there's a better way or not, this could be a bug...or at least an "undocumented feature"? [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=10769&start=10#p33648
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Upcoming Updates?
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2012-03-16 14:16:47

Oh 6M59 you are the finest,
you bring my stories to life.
Oh 6M59 you are the lightest,
you speed through my words with east.
Oh 6M59 you are the greatest,
at least that's what I want to see.

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4652&start=0#p33649
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Vorple Not Working Locally
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-16 14:31:24

Got it -- thanks. They're working now.

This system looks very, very nice -- and I don't just mean its visual appearance. I'm still hazy on the features, but my guess is that they're solid too.

Now I get to roll up my sleeves and learn Just Enough Javascript....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4655&start=0#p33650
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Concepts for secret unlockable and auto-timed game content
User: Comazombie / DateTime: 2012-03-16 14:34:09

Hi folks!

As some of you ifcomp players had noticed last year, I used normal and secret contents in my last game Dead Hotel. The secret content became unlockable once the competition ended and the pre-defined date and time was reached. You know, it's like playing two games in one. One without secrets and one with secrets, easter eggs and so on.

This is a new technique I used for the first time and which I'm going to use in my future CYOA adventure games. The receptions for this had been good so far. Personally I think it adds a whole new dimension to gaming which most game designers haven't explored yet, especially because this is about game content which automatically unlocks itself at certain dates and times when the player runs the game.

Only now I intend to make it more complex and hopefully more interesting for players who like unique replayability features like that. I have already started to write the proper sourcecode. It's a little fun challenge of mine with which I want to expand my programming skills anyway.

So here's my current concept pasted from my text files:

[code]CONCEPT 1
Secret Mode for a 2012 Text Adventure Game:

1. from a pre-defined date on (e.g. after end of ifcomp schedule November 15th), so-called "Secrets" (e.g. easter eggs, secret items, secret weapons, even secret locations) are automatically unlocked, but the player also needs a password to unlock them.

2. password can be obtained when the player finds a secret item in the game (normal mode). a book, for instance.

3. player reads the book in the game (command: "> read secret book") and the password or passphrase is told to him.
(use lite text encrpytion, such as rot13 or rot47, to conceal the password inside the gamefile to avoid it being spoiled by cheaters)
[/code]

Feel free to comment on my concept or post your own ideas, suggestions, concepts, etc.

- Comazombie // Emilian K.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4653&start=0#p33651
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS manuals hate me!
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-03-16 14:36:39

Don't the manuals mention anywhere how to move objects to different locations and how to create verbs? I find that hard to believe.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4654&start=0#p33652
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting up a list of "qualities" or "parts" of people
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-16 14:37:07

Seems regex \p doesn't match single quotes:

[quote="WI: 19.9. Summary of regular expression notation – "]\p    Matches any single punctuation mark: . , ! ? - / " : ; ( ) [ ] { }  [/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4648&start=0#p33653
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Gopher-based Interactive Fiction Archive now up
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-03-16 14:42:56

Adam Thornton's gonna cum.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4653&start=0#p33654
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS manuals hate me!
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-03-16 14:43:41

I found information on how to create a verb but didn't find any information on how to move myself to a different room using the magic word as a command. I'll search again.

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4653&start=0#p33655
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS manuals hate me!
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-03-16 14:45:25

[quote="RonG"]I found information on how to create a verb but didn't find any information on how to move myself to a different room using the magic word as a command. I'll search again.
[/quote]
You can't expect any manual to be that specific. That manual would need millions of pages.

If it tells you how to write verbs, and also tells you how to move things around, you should combine that knowledge. It's how programming works.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4653&start=0#p33656
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS manuals hate me!
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-03-16 14:48:36

There are some subtleties involved in moving NPCs (including the player) rather than objects. You can read the article on [url=http://www.tads.org/howto/t3npcTravel.htm]NPC Travel in TADS 3[/url] for more details.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4654&start=0#p33657
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting up a list of "qualities" or "parts" of people
User: crisses / DateTime: 2012-03-16 14:49:19

[quote="Felix"]Seems regex \p doesn't match single quotes:

[quote="WI: 19.9. Summary of regular expression notation – "]\p    Matches any single punctuation mark: . , ! ? - / " : ; ( ) [ ] { }  [/quote][/quote]

Yep, apparently if you change to \P it DOES match the '.  Again: "Argh!" but this time the Argh! message doesn't come up. [emote];)[/emote]  So ' is not punctuation.  hrm.... [^\p\w].....this could get convoluted...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4654&start=0#p33658
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting up a list of "qualities" or "parts" of people
User: gravel / DateTime: 2012-03-16 14:52:34

No clue on the regex stuff.

The other bit is a tricky problem, and this is a first stab - I'm sure someone will come along with something elegant shortly.  But I'd be tempted to give people a table of skills.  The skills could either be defined as values, or with text, and there'd be a column for the skill's level/rating and for its activation.  

[code]Table of Normal Skills
skill	rating	activation
"medic"	5	true
"armor"	3	false[/code]

Each person would probably need their own table, if everyone is constantly adjusting.  If not, they could share a table.

[code]A person has a table-name called skill table.  The skill table of a person is usually the Table of Normal Skills.  The skill table of Bob is the Table of Bob's Skills.[/code]

The nasty bit about this is that the readability gets a bit squirrelly:

[code]The description of a person is usually "[skills of the item described]".

To say skills of (target - a person):
	sort the skill table of the target in activation order;
	repeat through the skill table:
		if the activation entry is true:
			say "[skill entry in sentence case]: [rating entry]";
			say line break;
	if target is a medic:
		say "[The target] is a medic."

			
Definition: a person is a medic if the rating corresponding to a skill of "medic" in the skill table of it is greater than 3 and the activation corresponding to a skill of "medic" in the skill table of it is true.	
[/code]

But if you built up phrases, it might not be so bad.  For instance, you could have something like this to toggle off a skill:

[code]To deactivate (ability - some text) on (target - a person):
	if the ability is a skill listed in the skill table of target:
		now the activation corresponding to a skill of ability in the skill table of the target is false;[/code]

And once you've got that layer in place, it's much easier to write. 

[code]After looking: 
	deactivate "medic" on Bob;[/code]

You could also consider having a table per skill, with the list of people and their skill level - it just depends on how it makes sense to you.  Again, you'd probably want a layer of definitions in place to make the code easier to read.  

(the entire test code from above in one nice dump):
[spoiler][code]The Lab is a room.  Bob is a man in the Lab.

Table of Normal Skills
skill	rating	activation
"medic"	5	true
"armor"	3	false

Table of Bob's Skills
skill	rating	activation
"medic"	8	true
"armor"	5	true

A person has a table-name called skill table.  The skill table of a person is usually the Table of Normal Skills.  The skill table of Bob is the Table of Bob's Skills.
The description of a person is usually "[skills of the item described]".

To say skills of (target - a person):
	sort the skill table of the target in activation order;
	repeat through the skill table:
		if the activation entry is true:
			say "[skill entry in sentence case]: [rating entry]";
			say line break;
	if target is a medic:
		say "[The target] is a medic."

			
Definition: a person is a medic if the rating corresponding to a skill of "medic" in the skill table of it is greater than 0 and the activation corresponding to a skill of "medic" in the skill table of it is true.	[/code][/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4654&start=0#p33659
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting up a list of "qualities" or "parts" of people
User: crisses / DateTime: 2012-03-16 14:55:31

[quote="crisses"][quote="Felix"]Seems regex \p doesn't match single quotes:

[quote="WI: 19.9. Summary of regular expression notation – "]\p    Matches any single punctuation mark: . , ! ? - / " : ; ( ) [ ] { }  [/quote][/quote]

Yep, apparently if you change to \P it DOES match the '.  Again: "Argh!" but this time the Argh! message doesn't come up. [emote];)[/emote]  So ' is not punctuation.  hrm.... [^\p\w].....this could get convoluted...[/quote]

I know why.

I just found that ' is in the \w set.  So that \w matches "don't".  Oy.  Couldn't it be in both?  And still no idea why I can't match ' or \' directly....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4654&start=0#p33660
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting up a list of "qualities" or "parts" of people
User: crisses / DateTime: 2012-03-16 15:13:31

[quote="gravel"]The other bit is a tricky problem, and this is a first stab - I'm sure someone will come along with something elegant shortly.  But I'd be tempted to give people a table of skills.  The skills could either be defined as values, or with text, and there'd be a column for the skill's level/rating and for its activation. [/quote] 

Ok -- thank you!  First, I like that the skills are not going to interfere with the namespace of the rest of the document -- that's pretty good!  When I started with the modification of the "Magic" example, it made me have to jump verbal hoops to name other things in the game...  I am not the one dictating the names of the "programs" in this "game" -- it's a playing aid for a role-playing game.

[quote]
Each person would probably need their own table, if everyone is constantly adjusting.  If not, they could share a table.[/quote]

Sometimes the skills will change during game play, so they may need their own tables... OR the table-per Program idea...  Thinking about that.  If there are 50 actors, there will be 50 tables -- thankfully I might never have to actually see them. [emote]:)[/emote]  They could be generated inside the game itself, I would imagine.  But better 50 tables @ 30 entries each for 50 actors than 1500 items for 50 actors!!!  

[quote]
The nasty bit about this is that the readability gets a bit squirrelly:

[code]The description of a person is usually "[skills of the item described]".

To say skills of (target - a person):
	sort the skill table of the target in activation order;
	repeat through the skill table:
		if the activation entry is true:
			say "[skill entry in sentence case]: [rating entry]";
			say line break;
	if target is a medic:
		say "[The target] is a medic."

			
Definition: a person is a medic if the rating corresponding to a skill of "medic" in the skill table of it is greater than 3 and the activation corresponding to a skill of "medic" in the skill table of it is true.	
[/code]
[/quote]

Quite livable, actually.  Although I don't know if I need that Definition statement, there are others that I might need.

[quote]
You could also consider having a table per skill, with the list of people and their skill level - it just depends on how it makes sense to you.  Again, you'd probably want a layer of definitions in place to make the code easier to read.  [/quote]

How and when it is best to do so is apparently some of the learning curve of Inform [emote]:)[/emote]

Thank you for your quick response!!  I'm glad there's an alternative that's going to be less hungry for memory.  I'll see if anyone has something more eloquent, but this is much better than what I was up to...and might work for other things in my game, too.  Too many "attributes" to keep track of on the player & NPCs....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4655&start=0#p33661
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Concepts for secret unlockable and auto-timed game conte
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-03-16 15:13:42

In a wholly different context, Sid Meier used a similar idea in his [i]Pirates[/i] game.  If you play the game on September 19 (which is National Talk Like a Pirate Day), [spoiler]all of the messages which you get are in "pirate-speak" (Harrr!)[/spoiler]

What made it work was that the date-specific behavior was not advertised in any way, but came as a complete surprise; the only way to learn about it was by accident (i.e., if you happened to play the game on the magic day).


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4654&start=0#p33662
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting up a list of "qualities" or "parts" of people
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-16 15:25:28

A table is probably the most logical way to go - you essentially have a three (or four) way relation, which is awkward to represent with anything other than a table.

My preference is to have one big table, but whatever works for you in practical terms.

This is not tested, but it might look something like this:
[code]Table of Skills
actor	skill	proficiency	activation
Yourself	medic	8	on
Bob	plumbing	2	off
Sheila	flamethrower	11	on

To decide which number is the current proficiency of (actor - a person) at (task - a skill):
	Repeat through the table of skillls:
		if the actor entry is the actor and the skill entry is the task and activation entry is on, decide on proficiency entry;
	Decide on 0.
[/code]

Unless the skills are actually objects in the game, like computer chips, I'd recommend making them a kind of value. You'll also want to create phrases for setting the proficiency and activation, and maybe for increasing and decreasing the proficiency. You can define a conditional relation to check whether a person has a particular skill activated, or even to compare the proficiency with a global variable or phrase result.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4655&start=0#p33663
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Concepts for secret unlockable and auto-timed game conte
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2012-03-16 15:27:43

If I remember correctly, I believe the roguelike game [i]Ancient Domains of Mystery[/i] modifies your states depending on the date that you create your character.  For instance, I think if it happens to be Friday the 13th, your character starts out cursed.

Your idea sounds good.  It would be especially helpful for a game with multiple paths or endings.  It would be a good way to get players to come back and see the other possibilities.  I liked the way it worked in [i]Dead Hotel[/i], but I think it would probably be best to include your best content upfront, especially if you're in a comp.

Another thought -- this could tie in to a sort of meta-puzzle or meta-adventure, like the hat thing in a few of the Comp games this year.  You have to play the game on a specific date to get a special clue.  This could be a clue to find more Easter-eggs within the game itself, or it could send the player on a hunt through the web or something.

Will there be a sequel for [i]Dead Hotel[/i]?  I think it is a good candidate for a sequel.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4653&start=0#p33664
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS manuals hate me!
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-16 15:29:36

[quote="RonG"]When I returned to writing adventure games at the my present age of seventy-three, I thought that TADS would be the compiler to use. However, for me it does not not seem to
provide the help required. When I think of adventure games, I think of magic words, battles with mean critters, hunger, thirst, weakness, treasures. caves, wizards and you name it.

In an earlier post, I wrote that I've reached the point where I'm beginning to add rooms and various objects that are in these rooms. But, TADS just doesn't provide the answers for things that I now wish to do and so I return to this forum.[/quote]
Are you using Workbench? Because if so, there's a handy Search field in the upper right corner. I just typed 'verbs' in that field, and got a long list of topics in the documentation.

I'm starting to wonder, though ... maybe you'd be happier with Inform 7. It's still computer programming, but the code is perhaps more readable, and the built-in documentation has hundreds of examples that might give you what you need.

It's worth pondering, anyway. You wouldn't be the first person who tried T3 and then turned away in frustration. It's not an easy system to master.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4653&start=0#p33665
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS manuals hate me!
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-03-16 15:47:37

I'm anything but frustrated and I'm sorry if it looks that way. I am going to look at Inform once again.

btw: This series of posts did give me the answer of  'MoveIntoForTravel'.

Thanks for the help,

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4617&start=0#p33666
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe file-browsing feature
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2012-03-16 15:59:47

I tried it on Chrome 17 and IE 8 on Windows XP.  In both browsers, I was able to save, restore saved games, record transcripts, and view transcripts with no apparent problems.

I even bested some dwarves and found some treasure. [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4654&start=0#p33667
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting up a list of "qualities" or "parts" of people
User: crisses / DateTime: 2012-03-16 16:05:47

[quote="crisses"]I just found that ' is in the \w set.  So that \w matches "don't".  Oy.  Couldn't it be in both?  And still no idea why I can't match ' or \' directly....[/quote]

Ok, settling through awkward vs. sleek, I did this to match the apostrophe and it worked:

[code]			if printname matches the regular expression "<^A-Za-z\d\p>s (.*?)$": [/code]

While I probably won't need to use the regex after all (thanks to wonderful help on alternatives...), someone else might eventually want to list someone's parts and need the regex...so I thought I'd put it out there.  If anyone ever needs it, they might also want to add the hyphen character to the exclusion:  "<^A-Za-z\d\p->s (.*?)$"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4636&start=0#p33668
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3.1 - image not visible with WebUI
User: Emerald / DateTime: 2012-03-16 18:58:03

Works perfectly, thank you!

I'm just wondering - where in the documentation would I have had to look to find that out? Even now I know what I'm looking for, I can't find any mention of it. I was wondering if I'd just skimmed through the System Manual article on WebUI too quickly and missed it, but I'm still not seeing an explanation there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4636&start=0#p33669
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: TADS 3.1 - image not visible with WebUI
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-03-16 19:19:10

I discovered the WebResourceResFile class when reading through the webui.t source code. I'm not aware that it's documented, outside of the Library Reference Manual.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4656&start=0#p33670
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Extract text from I7 code
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-16 19:47:45

Is there a way to extract the "real" text from Inform7 code? I'd like to have my proofreaders and de-ingliscizators read all of it without forcing them through the source. 

Any help is valuable. 
Thx in advance.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4617&start=0#p33671
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe file-browsing feature
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-03-16 20:23:25

Hm, the javascript console outputs exactly nothing. All of the files seem to load, but apparently, things never get to the point where anything is output to the log. 

Anticipating a question: Yes, the javascript console works on other sites. I have never had any trouble with Quixe in Chrome before, but I note that the following demos from zarf's Quixe page are now giving me the same trouble I mentioned for the new demo (no javascript loading?):

<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quixe/play-remote-onecol.html?story=stories/Advent.ulx.js">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quix ... ent.ulx.js</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quixe/play-remote.html?story=stories/windowtest.ulx.js">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quix ... est.ulx.js</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quixe/play-remote.html?story=stories/Reliques.gblorb.js">http://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quix ... .gblorb.js</a>

The other demos in the main block work fine. Is there a common characteristic shared by these four links that might hint at an explanation?

Or maybe this is all just an issue specific to my machine, since others are reporting no problem using the same version of Chrome...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4656&start=0#p33672
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Extract text from I7 code
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-03-16 21:05:06

The text is somewhat scattered by the compilation process, but you can extract it easily enough from the source text.  For instance, here's a Perl script:
[code]use Switch;
$commentDepth=0;
$inString=0;
while(($count=read STDIN,$character,1)!=0){
    switch($character){
        case('['){
            ++$commentDepth;
        }
        case(']'){
            --$commentDepth;
        }
        case('"'){
            if(!$commentDepth){
                if($inString){
                    print "\"\n";
                }
                $inString=!$inString;
            }
        }
    }
    if($inString){
        print $character;
    }
}[/code]

Save it, enter
[code]perl -f "/path/to/script.perl" < "/path/to/project.inform/Source/story.ni" > "/path/to/file/where/strings/should/be/saved.text"[/code] on the command line, and you should get a list of texts.  You might have to repeat the process for any extensions you're including.  (I am assuming, of course, that you have Perl installed.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4642&start=0#p33673
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Using a compass and exit descriptions
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2012-03-16 21:05:58

Another thing is, I think it feels organic to mention the room exits in the description and it helps people understand the exits intellectually, or just better. Catalogueing what's in a room but explicitly avoiding mention of doors can look weird, more so the longer the descriptions are.

If you still want to set them off a bit, you can put the exit descriptions in a paragraph on their own after the main room description. I did it this way in Six.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4617&start=0#p33674
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe file-browsing feature
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-16 22:29:10

So the "I7 website template", "Glulxercise", and "Rover's Day Out" links work, but the others fail?

It seems that the app is consistently failing for you when loading with a "?story=..." link. I don't know what would cause that. (Do you recall testing those links before this month?)

Old files in your cache, Chrome extensions, funny privacy settings...?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4601&start=10#p33677
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Absolute Beginner Questions
User: The Batman / DateTime: 2012-03-17 03:03:39

While I feel like I'm grasping the code behind the elevator more and more each time I read it, I think I'm going to have to put it off for now. I tried my best to make the code work with what I wanted, but ultimately I couldn't get it to NOT take the person to a certain floor, and then when the player tries to exit from the floor that I tried to forbid, it just brought them back to the lobby. So I thank everyone who tried to help me, but I think with my limited I7 knowledge, maybe that one's just a little over my head and it's more of a hassle than it's worth. I'm hoping as I try more and more with my project that the "elevator conundrum" will seem more second nature.

So I'm just going to jump into my next bits of confusion:

Stairs and Hallways. They sound simple, they should be simple, the documentation makes them seem simple, but I'm just missing something here. Just want it so a player enters into a building that I've created and is in a "lobby" of sorts. If they continue north, they'll be in a hallway with rooms on either side. If they continue north, the same thing and if they continue north further, the same thing (so never actually leaving the hallway, but having the option to each step). However, in addition to the rooms on either side, at the very end of the hallway should be an option to take stairs up or down (to reach the second floor and the basement respectively). 

Should I not be thinking of this in terms of one continuous hallway, but rather as similar rooms that are identified as a hallway and connected by nothing but a direction? But then how can I have three different rooms named the same thing? Then with the stairs, how do I have two separate staircases occupying the same space? I understand at minimum that staircases should be considered doors, but I'm lost beyond that and all of the documentation I've read doesn't seem to clarify much for me unless I want a really specific type of stair/hallway. I'm hoping this is significantly simpler than creating an elevator

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4656&start=0#p33678
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Extract text from I7 code
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-17 04:02:59

I don't, but it's worth a try! Thx for the help.

Edit: It looks like I do, instead. MacOSX has it installed. I just woke up, for the record [emote]:)[/emote]

Aaaaaaaand: it works! 
Thanks a lot!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4659&start=0#p33679
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Byline
User: Laurie-K / DateTime: 2012-03-17 05:15:57

Is it possible to suppress or amend the "An Interactive Fiction" phrase which I7 inserts into the byline, if you find it (as I do) slightly pompous?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4659&start=0#p33680
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Byline
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2012-03-17 05:20:53

[quote="Laurie-K"]Is it possible to suppress or amend the "An Interactive Fiction" phrase which I7 inserts into the byline, if you find it (as I do) slightly pompous?[/quote]
You can change it with a line like:
[code]The story headline is "An Interactive Cooking Workshop".[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4659&start=0#p33681
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Byline
User: Laurie-K / DateTime: 2012-03-17 05:35:01

Thanks, Victor.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=40#p33682
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: David J Prokopetz / DateTime: 2012-03-17 06:10:34

[quote="capmikee"]The basic accessibility rule is [b]not an accessibility rule[/b]. The basic accessibility rule is an action processing rule that [b]runs[/b] the accessibility rulebook. An accessibility rule [b]can[/b] allow access by ending successfully (although not with the "allow access" result). But the basic accessibility rule can't. All it does is stop the action if the accessibility rulebook fails. It's written in I6 and should probably not be interfered with.[/quote]
I'm beginning to see that. The feedback I7 provides with RULES and ACTIONS turned on seems to be incomplete in some cases - sometimes it just informs you that the basic accessibility rule has failed without mentioning which subsidiary rule or rulebook was involved. This had misled me into thinking that some types of checks were being performed by the basic accessibility rulebook itself. Now that I have a better grasp of how the touchability rules work, I've started weeding out references to basic accessibility and replacing them with more specific alternative rules.

Incidentally, I have to thank you writing that Scope Caching extension. It's allowed me to avoid a couple of potential recursions when checking whether the actor can see a given viewport, and provides a very easy mechanism for determining whether in-scope objects are seen, or merely heard.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4601&start=10#p33683
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Absolute Beginner Questions
User: crisses / DateTime: 2012-03-17 07:31:24

[quote="The Batman"]Should I not be thinking of this in terms of one continuous hallway, but rather as similar rooms that are identified as a hallway and connected by nothing but a direction? But then how can I have three different rooms named the same thing? Then with the stairs, how do I have two separate staircases occupying the same space? I understand at minimum that staircases should be considered doors, but I'm lost beyond that and all of the documentation I've read doesn't seem to clarify much for me unless I want a really specific type of stair/hallway. I'm hoping this is significantly simpler than creating an elevator[/quote]

I think the best way is to think of the hallway as having "sections".  Let's make it 3 sections.  Say the hallway runs east from the lobby.

Each section of hallway can have 3 doors (or simply rooms) on its north & south faces, so a 3-segment hallway would have up to 18 doors.  Thus you can go in the room to the northeast, north or northwest of each segment of hall -- if you need more rooms off the corridor, add more sections of hall (see below example). 

[code]
The Lobby is a room.  "You're in the lobby.  From here you can see a corridor to the east."  

The West Hallway is east of the Lobby.  "Wow, this is a long hallway.  You see doors on the north & south walls, and the hallway continues to the east."

The Central Hallway is east of The West Hallway.  "You're in the middle of this long hallway.  You've never seen so many doors!"

The East Hallway is east of The Central Hallway.  "Wow, finally, you're at the end of the hallway.  You see more doors to the north and south.  And from here you can actually take the stairs up to the 2nd floor or down to the basement."

The East Upstairs Hallway is up from The East Hallway.  "This is the second floor hall.  It extends to the west, with many doors on the North and South sides."

The Downstairs Hallway is down from The East Hallway.  "It's a dim, dingy basement."
[/code]

And from there you'd define up to 18 doors->rooms off the hallway (doors optional).

"Room" is only "a segment of usable space" in the game.  It does not have to be a "room" per se.  It could be a grove in the woods, it can be a section of parkland, it can be the end of a parking lot, it can even be a car in a train, a bus with 20 people on their way somewhere, etc.

So if you need a lot of doors, you have a lot of "segments of usable space".  If you need more rooms than 18 in your hallway, get more creative with the segmenting, or use numbers.  I believe this works:  "Hall Section 1"  "Hall Section 2".  The idea is that your player gets a sense of the enormity by how many "turns" it takes to move down the hallway, and by how you describe it in the description text.  Your text draws the picture of what they see in their minds eye.  The "room" is only a container in which you can place people and objects so that they can interact -- a segment of a fictional world.

Rooms don't describe themselves.  It's up to you whether they have walls, floors, ceilings, or if the person is floating/flying in fairyland.  "Room" best translates to "a useful place".  A container is usually "something smaller than a room, that you can put things into."  however you can have containers that can hold people -- say a walk-in closet inside a room could be a large container.  Try not to get stuck on the words for the base objects.  A "door" could be a staircase, an escalator, a slide (think Chutes & Ladders)... it's something that connects one "useful place" with another.

I hope that helps.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4601&start=10#p33684
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Absolute Beginner Questions
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-17 07:36:34

UPDATE before posting: Crisses' idea is not bad either. You may want to give the rooms separate names anyway.

[quote="The Batman"]Should I not be thinking of this in terms of one continuous hallway, but rather as similar rooms that are identified as a hallway and connected by nothing but a direction? But then how can I have three different rooms named the same thing?[/quote]

You can do this with the "printed name" property; the rooms will be named different things in the code but will show up the same way. Like this:

[code]Hallway 1 is a room. The printed name of Hallway 1 is "Hallway". Mr Jones's Office is west of Hallway 1. Mr Brown's Office is east of Hallway 1.
Hallway 2 is north of Hallway 1. The printed name of Hallway 2 is "Hallway". Utility Closet is west of Hallway 2. Ms Smith's Office is east of Hallway 2.
Hallway 3 is north of Hallway 2. The printed name of Hallway 3 is "Hallway". Ms Robinson's Office is west of Hallway 3. Ms Murray's Office is east of Hallway 3. 
[/code]

[quote]Then with the stairs, how do I have two separate staircases occupying the same space? I understand at minimum that staircases should be considered doors, but I'm lost beyond that and all of the documentation I've read doesn't seem to clarify much for me unless I want a really specific type of stair/hallway. I'm hoping this is significantly simpler than creating an elevator[/quote]

I'm not sure why this is a problem? If you want the staircases to be doors, just have one of the staircases go up from the end of the hallway and the other go down:

[code]The Second Floor Lobby is a room. The Basement is a room.
The Second Floor Stairs are an open unopenable door. The Second Floor Stairs are up from Hallway 3 and down from The Second Floor Lobby. The indefinite article of the Second Floor Stairs is "the".
The Basement Stairs are an open unopenable door. The Basement Stairs are down from Hallway 3 and up from the Basement. The indefinite article of the Basement Stairs is "the".[/code]

Just a note about niceties: The business with the indefinite article means that it says "You can also see the Basement Stairs here" rather than "You can also see a Basement Stairs here." But it's probably better to include the stairs in the room description and make them scenery, so that doesn't appear at all. (In fact, as I've written the code, you'll get a bunch of blank room descriptions; you should either write real room descriptions or at the minimum include one of the extensions that puts the exits at the end.) And if you make the stairs doors, you want them to be open and unopenable, so you don't wind up having the player open the stairs.

Here's another nicety: You don't want to call the Basement Stairs the Basement Stairs when you're in the basement, so you can do this:

[code]Rule for printing the name of the Basement Stairs when the location is the Basement: say "stairs up".
Rule for printing the name of the Second Floor Stairs when the location is the Second Floor Lobby: say "stairs down".[/code]

Another approach would be to make the stairs another room that you can go up and down from. You don't have to make them doors if you don't want.

If you're wondering how you can have both sets of stairs be north of the end of the hallway, don't try to do that. Even if you succeed in doing that, what would happen when the player tried to go north from the end of the hallway? You could try to catch that by asking for disambiguation (there's a thread around here somewhere about that), but that'd be complicated for you and the player and not worth doing, probably.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4601&start=10#p33685
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Absolute Beginner Questions
User: crisses / DateTime: 2012-03-17 08:22:01

Like many programming languages, there's different ways to do the same thing.  Eventually you come to know "when" you should do it one way or another -- and that's the toughest part of the learning curve, and not something answered in the main documentation (the recipes are better at this).

I think whether you need a "door" for the stairs, or simply to have the stairs be invisible and transportation up/down instantaneous is up to you.

However, here's a dip into some of the game-building philosophy:

Think about how the player should experience it:  If the player ought to "pause on the staircase" or be able to tie their shoelaces while on the stairs -- then create the door=stairs.  However, many times "in real life" taking the stairs is a complete non-experience... something we don't stop to consider.  We go up, and we're in a new "experienceable place" -- the stairs are a "non-experience" for us (it's not memorable...).  If you need the player to experience the staircase, by all means put it in as a door.  If the staircase is a complete non-issue to the player's experience of the environment, make the transportation seamless and get on with your story.  Another thing:  You can always add the door in if you change your mind -- if during a scene, the player will bump into an important person or find a key object "while in the stairway" then you might need a room that is "the staircase".  Now it is an experience, something memorable, so it must occur somewhere.

The same thing goes for doors in the corridor.  You can have a hundred "doors" in one "room".  If in your fiction they're all going to be locked and never enterable (i.e. "just scenery") then there doesn't have to be a door defined in the code at all, just tell the player there are doors there and they will experience the doors as being there.  Don't define the doors, and change the error message from that room to tell the player how frustrating it is that all these doors in the hallway are locked.  They will experience frustration, and hopefully get on with the story.  You have to make sure they have an idea of how to do that.

So to me, it sounds like you're getting tangled in the code.  Just because you CAN make a door or room doesn't mean you have to.

Think in terms of "is this part of the story?"  

Here's a radical idea:  You can have 1 floor of the miscellaneous sections of the building defined.  You can have the player enter the elevator and press a button which changes the scene and hence changes all the descriptions of the scenery "doors" on the floor when they exit the elevator (say, the scene changes the room numbers that are described...).  Every floor in the building is identical, but there's a message when the scene changes "The elevator door opens and the sign outside the door shows that you're now on the 30th floor." -- they exit the elevator, wander around the floor, all the doors including the stairway doors are locked (except the restrooms! [emote]:)[/emote] and they're identical on every floor, of course).  Eventually they get back in the elevator.  They can do this for floors 3-30.  Just the 2nd and 1st floor are unique and have anything worth exploring (and whatever other floors you decide).  

To prevent player frustration, though, make absolutely certain that they have hints and clues to which floors have the "interesting stuff" -- whether the receptionist tells them to go to a particular place, whether they know they have an appointment on the 13th floor, or whether the dropped business card in the lobby has a particular room number they need to go to.  Perhaps, the first time they visit a miscellaneous floor, they get a cell phone message (must have missed a call on the stairs or in the elevator!) reminding them that they're late for their appointment in room 202.

The point is to make the world revolve around the story, not the story revolve around the world's mechanics.  There's always more than one way to tell the story. [emote]:)[/emote]  Find a way to keep it simple for you as the programmer while not frustrating the player to the point that they abandon the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4632&start=0#p33686
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Does anyone else want your own tag marks for Inform code
User: crisses / DateTime: 2012-03-17 08:57:41

It might get "loud" but you could also try to use the bookmarking/sections for this:

Section TODO add another room here

Just use Volume Book Part Chapter for "real table of contents" and sections for "loud comments" ?  Then when you swap to the table of contents, it will all be there for you....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4617&start=0#p33687
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe file-browsing feature
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-03-17 09:54:30

[quote="zarf"]So the "I7 website template", "Glulxercise", and "Rover's Day Out" links work, but the others fail?[/quote]
Yes, that's right.

Anyway, it looks like this problem is due to a conflict with a browser extension, [url=https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cgjalgdhmbpaacnnejmodfinclbdgaci]Syntaxtic![/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4617&start=0#p33688
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Quixe file-browsing feature
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-17 10:02:59

Huh. I'm glad you tracked that down. (Why would... no, I don't want to know.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4656&start=0#p33689
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Extract text from I7 code
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-17 10:20:18

A handy trick is to search the generated I6 code for lines beginning "Constant SC_". This will give you only the text that comes from I7 code, which excludes most of the standard library.

On a Mac/Unix box:

grep 'Constant SC_' testcase.inform/Build/auto.inf | cut -b 13-

This gives you a list of strings in alphabetical order. To get them in source-code order, try:

grep 'Constant SC_' testcase.inform/Build/auto.inf | cut -b 13- | sort -n

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4660&start=0#p33691
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: I'm sticking with TADS. - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-03-17 11:21:58

As suggested, I looked once again at Inform as well as other IF source software. NONE of them have the power and capabilies of TADS. So, I've decided to stubbornly stick with it.
You guys are stuck with me. I sincerely hope that I'll continue to get your help when required. And, I will continue to study all of the TADS manuals for answers to what I need.

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4660&start=0#p33692
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: I'm sticking with TADS. - TADS3.1
User: Alex / DateTime: 2012-03-17 12:42:58

What does TADS do that Quest can't these days? Just wondering - I'm not looking to start a language war or convince you you've made the wrong choice [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4660&start=0#p33693
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: I'm sticking with TADS. - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-03-17 13:14:31

I'm not trying to start a war either. I haven't really looked closely at quest. Thanks for the suggestion.

RonG

BTW: I will give quest a look.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4655&start=0#p33694
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Concepts for secret unlockable and auto-timed game conte
User: Merlin Fisher / DateTime: 2012-03-17 14:30:25

[quote="Bainespal"]If I remember correctly, I believe the roguelike game [i]Ancient Domains of Mystery[/i] modifies your states depending on the date that you create your character.  For instance, I think if it happens to be Friday the 13th, your character starts out cursed.[/quote]

That's true, and there's more in ADOM:
[spoiler]Start on any Monday and your character is "slightly exhausted today," low on HP.  If you play on New Year's Eve, you start with 6 bottles of booze, and you get a message "You feel well prepared for the coming year."  Start on Christmas, and your character is lucky.  If you play on July 2nd, Thomas Biskup's birthday, you start out with Lucky AND Fate Smiles, which is extra lucky![/spoiler]  This could be scammed simply by adjusting the time/date on your computer, at least in Windows.

Tweaking game effects based on real time is a pretty cool idea, but for IF games, I do wonder: if you want to add easter eggs later, why not simply make a second version and release that?  With typical commercial software, people buy it once and then never talk to the merchant again, but in this small community, where most software is free, new releases have a good chance of reaching earlier players.

If you did want to go ahead and do it, an extension might be the way to go.  Is there an extension that lets an IF game "read" the user's computer clock?

p.s.  Passwords are commonplace; they're a standard puzzle type, just one step above a locked door.  The timing thing is not so common, and would probably be slightly tougher to code.  In IF games, there's frequently an AMUSING command unlocked after a win, which reveals all the easter eggs in the game (or just some of them...)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4280&start=20#p33695
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Salon: Interactivity and narrative are incompatible
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-17 14:42:29

[quote]Part of the power of that story is its feeling of inevitability, the understanding that each event follows from those preceding it and ultimately derives from the nature of each character.[/quote]
Which I personally find the least gripping kind of inevitability.  I think all the non-Russians among us know the feeling when reading a Russian novel of wanting to cry out the the protagonist: "C'm on!  Get off your bum and do something about it!".  To me that feels like bad choice, not inevitability.  (The inevitability is that one cannot avoid having this happen when reading Russian literature.)

IF allows a way stronger form of inevitability, where the reader can undo choices and make others, yet cannot escape the fate of the protagonist.  For a tiny example, see "Fate steps in" in the Inform 7 manual, but a wider scope is also possible, where e.g. the protagonist ends up betraying someone, but whom depends on the reader's choices.  Or where the choice [i]does[/i] fundamentally alter the outcome, but not [spoiler]the realisation of failure and doom[/spoiler]- as in the Baron.

(Being way richer, IF of course allows also literature in which the reader [i]can[/i] change the outcome for the protagonist.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4654&start=0#p33696
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting up a list of "qualities" or "parts" of people
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-17 15:10:54

[quote="capmikee"]A table is probably the most logical way to go - you essentially have a three (or four) way relation, which is awkward to represent with anything other than a table.

My preference is to have one big table, but whatever works for you in practical terms.

This is not tested, but it might look something like this:
[code]Table of Skills
actor	skill	proficiency	activation
Yourself	medic	8	on
Bob	plumbing	2	off
Sheila	flamethrower	11	on

To decide which number is the current proficiency of (actor - a person) at (task - a skill):
	Repeat through the table of skillls:
		if the actor entry is the actor and the skill entry is the task and activation entry is on, decide on proficiency entry;
	Decide on 0.
[/code]

Unless the skills are actually objects in the game, like computer chips, I'd recommend making them a kind of value. You'll also want to create phrases for setting the proficiency and activation, and maybe for increasing and decreasing the proficiency. You can define a conditional relation to check whether a person has a particular skill activated, or even to compare the proficiency with a global variable or phrase result.[/quote]
Well, you can represent many-fold relations as lists; despite the related drawbacks, I believe that is currently the best way to implement them in I7.

The nice thing about this is a person can have a list, whereas no thing can have a table. That makes generalizing the code much simpler.

[code]New York City is a room.

Spidey is a man in New York. Mary Jane is a woman in New York.

A program is a kind of value. The programs are armor, medic, and web-slinging.

Everyone has a list of programs called the skillset.
Everyone has a list of numbers called the proficiency.
Everyone has a list of truth states called the activation.

The skillset of Spidey is {armor, medic, web-slinging}. The proficiency of Spidey is {4, 2, 8}. The activation of Spidey is {true, false, true}.

Mary Jane has skillset {medic}. She has proficiency {6}. She has activation {true}.

Understand "detail [something]" as detailing. Detailing is an action applying to one thing.

Check detailing something which is not a person: say "Only people have programs." instead.

Carry out detailing someone (called the subject):
	if the skillset of the subject is empty, say "[The subject] [if the subject is singular-named and the subject is not the player]is[otherwise]are[end if] an empty vessel." instead;
	repeat with L running from 1 to the number of entries in the skillset of the subject:
		say "[entry L of the skillset of the subject]: [entry L of the proficiency of the subject]";
		if entry L of the activation of the subject is false, say " (deactivated)";
		say line break.[/code]

The only downside here is that those lists are independent. Keeping them synchronized is up to you; if you add, remove, or reorganize items in one list, you have to make sure to perform the exact same sequence of actions on the two other lists as well.

Obviously, all of that "entry X of" code can get tedious, so you can define some shortcut phrases to get the related variables from a program of a given person:

[code]
To decide whether (mope - a person) has installed (requirement - a program):
	if the requirement is listed in the skillset of the mope, yes;
	otherwise no.
	
To decide whether the (requirement - a program) of (mope - a person) is active:
	unless the mope has installed the requirement, decide no;
	repeat with L running from 1 to the number of entries in the skillset of the mope:
		if entry L of the skillset of the mope is the requirement, decide on entry L of the activation of the mope.
		
To decide what number is the training of (mope - a person) in (requirement - a program):
	unless the mope has installed the requirement, decide on 0;
	repeat with L running from 1 to the number of entries in the skillset of the mope:
		if entry L of the skillset of the mope is the requirement, decide on entry L of the proficiency of the mope.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=80#p33697
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-17 15:11:18

An alternative round-0 approach, suggested by Jacqueline Lott as an alternative to the IFDB method; I'm not sure whether I like it more than nomination-through-IFDB, but I think it's the best version of direct open-nomination I've heard thus far.

To establish the list of eligible games (from which Round 1 votes are drawn), allow year-long open nomination. 1 vote is the requirement for eligibility. People can nominate as many things as they want, and authors can nominate their own games. For the purposes of this round, games would be nominated not because voters necessarily thought they deserved an award, or even to be a finalist; it would be more a matter of 'this is at least worth taking a look at.'

Thus far, this is basically [b]7a[/b]; the refinement she suggested was to maintain a public list of pre-nominated games, and a mailing list/RSS feed of games newly added to the list. This would help people be a bit more aware of the field of plausible XYZZY contenders, and hopefully mean that people would have time to play more games ahead of Awards season.

Having the list public might go some way to avoiding [i]some[/i] of the authorial-modesty problem, but I don't know that it would do enough; it might exacerbate it as well ("if nobody else wants to nominate my game, what's the point?") It would potentially reward crappy-but-egotistical authors for nominating their own games for everything (they might not earn any nominations, but at least they'd get on a reading list.) Changing it to disallow or limit self-nomination might still be okay, though.

An advantage over the IFDB-only approach is that it could also be used to better determine the field of (what are now) the text-entry categories. It'd also give us more opportunity to vet the list (for things released in the wrong year, or explicitly incomplete, or that are actually match-three Flash games). A disadvantage is that we'd have to do more work to publicize the change in order for it to work as planned.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4661&start=0#p33698
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform7 Mode - SubEthaEdit
User: crisses / DateTime: 2012-03-17 15:15:08

In case anyone wants/needs it, I have been working on a more helpful (for me) SubEthaEdit mode for i7x/inform extensions.  

[attachment=0]Inform7.mode.zip[/attachment] (updated)

Most of my development has been in an i7x file separate from the main inform file, and I found the features in that side of the IDE to be too lacking.  The main IDE is fine for my .inform file, and in fact I like it.

I found an inform mode already available online, but it looked like it wasn't optimized for i7x extensions (if so, then it has far more highlighting for i6 than I will ever be familiar with.  I added a bunch of syntax highlighting and symbols so that it automatically indexes Volumes, Books, Parts, Chapters, Sections - Tables, Definitions, etc.   Then I added a bunch of PNG images for the symbol index.

I'll be improving it as it frustrates me [emote]:)[/emote]  Or if others have suggestions I might add in more regex's to highlight syntax.

If anyone could contribute 

1) an applescript for updating volume/book/chapter/part/section numbers it would be appreciated... my applescript is sorely lacking.  SubEthaEdit is scriptable, but that's not my forte.
2) a working way to highlight multi-line comments without quotes or other highlightable terms in the comment getting highlighted.  This is a frustrating "bug" in my mode, but the alternatives got messy quickly and while I'm pretty good at Regex, my understanding breaks at multiline processing with callbacks...nor could I figure out how to turn off syntax highlighting inside the comment anyway.

Edit:  Updated the images in the file, more visible colors, added To decide to regex, and made sure all images show up correctly & backgrounds are properly transparent.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4601&start=10#p33699
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Absolute Beginner Questions
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-17 15:17:15

[quote="crisses"]I think whether you need a "door" for the stairs, or simply to have the stairs be invisible and transportation up/down instantaneous is up to you.

However, here's a dip into some of the game-building philosophy:

Think about how the player should experience it:  If the player ought to "pause on the staircase" or be able to tie their shoelaces while on the stairs -- then create the door=stairs.  However, many times "in real life" taking the stairs is a complete non-experience... something we don't stop to consider.  We go up, and we're in a new "experienceable place" -- the stairs are a "non-experience" for us (it's not memorable...).  If you need the player to experience the staircase, by all means put it in as a door.  If the staircase is a complete non-issue to the player's experience of the environment, make the transportation seamless and get on with your story.  Another thing:  You can always add the door in if you change your mind -- if during a scene, the player will bump into an important person or find a key object "while in the stairway" then you might need a room that is "the staircase".  Now it is an experience, something memorable, so it must occur somewhere.[/quote]Huh? This seems to be making an argument for implementing the stairs as a [i]room[/i], not a door. A door in I7 is just a thing that appears in both rooms and can be "enter"ed to transport the player to the other side of it; something like a souped up direction that can be examined like any other thing in a room.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4660&start=0#p33700
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: I'm sticking with TADS. - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-03-17 15:17:24

I gave Quest a try but couldn't get excited about it. One of the biggest drawbacks was having to use online documentation. I am still excited about TADS and I think it's the best. I now have about 1950 lines of source code in my story and still work on it many hours a day. It looks like you guys are stuck with me for awhile longer. I will continue to learn TADS and to hunt through the TADS manuals; because I'm a headstrong type of person.

Best regards to all of you patient people who have put up with me,

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4654&start=0#p33701
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting up a list of "qualities" or "parts" of people
User: crisses / DateTime: 2012-03-17 15:45:43

[quote="ChrisC"]The nice thing about this is a person can have a list, whereas no thing can have a table. That makes generalizing the code much simpler.
[/quote]

Apparently a thing can have a table-name though.  I can have different tables for different parent classes (i.e. different kinds of "people" in the game can have different base sets of skills or programs depending on what they are -- then I only need to give them a customized table if they diverge from the default -- or even have it check the master table for a default if they don't have a listing in their personal table, but I don't think I'll go that far).

[quote]

The only downside here is that those lists are independent. Keeping them synchronized is up to you; if you add, remove, or reorganize items in one list, you have to make sure to perform the exact same sequence of actions on the two other lists as well.
[/quote]

Where it's ok when there's a few items to synchronize, it also begins to degrade when you have to list 30+ of these into each of the lists.  Much too easy to throw the list off by forgetting a number or truth_state.

Here's another way it COULD be done with a list, not saying it's a bright idea, but it replicates the idea of a multi-dimensional array:
[code]Everyone has a list of indexed texts called skillsets.
The skillset of Spidey is {"armor/4/true", "medic/2/false","web-slinging/8/true"}.
[/code]
Then parse the text with regex's.  The only bonus being that you keep related information indexed/together at all times -- and it's still sort-able (only imperfectly, on skillname) without throwing everything off.

I don't see how that's any better or worse than a table, however.  I want the code to be human-usable, so the tables are more convenient.  I'm coding a base extension so that people can create their own environment around the plug-in environment.  I don't think it's reasonable to ask people to deal with several lists versus one table per person.

I'm still looking at your contribution from the angle of how I can use it for other things in my game environment.  I just don't think the 30 programs are it.  There may be other things it makes more sense in, in which case I'll try it out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=80#p33702
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2012-03-17 15:58:26

[quote="maga"]It would potentially reward crappy-but-egotistical authors for nominating their own games for everything (they might not earn any nominations, but at least they'd get on a reading list.)[/quote]
I agree that this could be a problem if games had to be nominated for every category.  Maybe a single nomination could make the game eligible in all categories.

If you have to nominate your own game for specific categories, than your explicitly claiming that your game is at least interesting for those specific qualities, and that's probably something that players should judge.  But if you're only adding your game to this list of eligible games, I think you're only claiming that your game is indeed an IF that you wrote in the past year and released to the community.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=90#p33703
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-17 16:06:06

[quote="Bainespal"][quote="maga"]It would potentially reward crappy-but-egotistical authors for nominating their own games for everything (they might not earn any nominations, but at least they'd get on a reading list.)[/quote]
I agree that this could be a problem if games had to be nominated for every category.  Maybe a single nomination could make the game eligible in all categories.[/quote]
Yeah, I'd prefer that, if not for those troublesome text-entry categories. But having a list split out by award would be super-annoying to read.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4662&start=0#p33704
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Another Vorple Question
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-17 18:34:36

I may be misunderstanding the situation. If I'm wrong, please fill in the blanks for me.

It appears that Vorple exists (or will exist) in two forms -- for Undum and as an Inform 7 extension.

The latter appears, at present, to suffer from a very significant limitation, which is that it will only work with Z-machine games, not with Glulx games. Thus the size of the game will be, for the present anyhow, quite limited. When a possibly large Vorple extension is added to an existing story.... Also, will it be possible to test the Vorple display in the IDE, or will authors have to hit the Release button each time they want to test how their Vorple code looks; losing, in the process, the ability to take advantage of the other debugging features of the IDE?

The Undum side appears, at first glance, to be more open-ended (provided you're willing to roll up your sleeves and learn Javascript and HTML 5) -- but an Undum story can't be saved and restored at a variety of points. You can save exactly ONE version, which will automatically load the next time you launch the story. At that point, if you decide you want to try an alternative path through the story, you have to start over again from the very beginning (and lose your currently saved story state when you do so). There seems to be no way to save a "bookmark" for the story before making what may be a significant plot choice and then return to the bookmark later and try the other branch.

If true, this renders Undum utterly unusable for any sort of serious work.

Any insights on this question, from the developers or others, would be much appreciated. I like the appearance of Undum/Vorple stories a great deal, but in the absence of a solid save/restore mechanism, I would have no incentive to learn Javascript or HTML 5.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4656&start=0#p33705
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Extract text from I7 code
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-17 18:53:29

Thx Zarf. Will try this too.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4660&start=0#p33706
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: I'm sticking with TADS. - TADS3.1
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-03-17 19:04:11

[quote="Alex"]What does TADS do that Quest can't these days?[/quote]
TADS has the TADS programing language. It also has the adv3 library. Have you looked at them? [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

So the shorts answer is: dozens of dozens of stuff.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4660&start=0#p33707
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: I'm sticking with TADS. - TADS3.1
User: Alex / DateTime: 2012-03-17 19:49:27

Quest has the ASLX programming language and the Core library, so that doesn't really answer the question [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4601&start=10#p33708
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Absolute Beginner Questions
User: crisses / DateTime: 2012-03-17 20:16:20

[quote="ChrisC"]Huh? This seems to be making an argument for implementing the stairs as a [i]room[/i], not a door. A door in I7 is just a thing that appears in both rooms and can be "enter"ed to transport the player to the other side of it; something like a souped up direction that can be examined like any other thing in a room.[/quote]

Essentially, yes: what I'm saying is that you do not have to use a door, just because "door" is an available item type.  I'm trying to explain that you can accomplish the appearance of a staircase without invoking a door object.  And that if you do need to have an interaction that takes place in the staircase, you could choose a "room" instead of a "door" to be the "place the event takes place in" (while still appearing to be a staircase to the player).

1) a door can be closed or locked - if part of the game purpose is to make the person seek out a key, or to attain something to get through the door (i.e. an appointment, or to restrict an area until a goal is achieved) then the door is part of the story.  The "door" object is a convenience to the programmer when they need to separate an area in the storyline in some way.  If you do not need to separate areas, you can choose to simply connect rooms over using doors between rooms.  You can have a "faked door" between rooms without bothering to program one in -- just describe it (see #2).  However, for example, let's say that you decide to program in "day and night" -- the government offices' front door should be locked at night, right?  so then it's part of the story that you can't go to the government center at night.  You lock the door between "inside and outside" the government center during the "Nighttime" recurring scene.  It's part of the story because it fits the players' expectations for the behavior of the world they're imagining.  That's when you should use a "door object".  (i.e. You can choose to use a door either way, but when you need to exclude people from an area, then you [i]should[/i] use one.)  This means when we don't need to exclude people from an area, we can choose other ways to arrange our "rooms" that don't need doors.

2) when a door does not contribute something to the story, you can simply remove it.  I recommend that you don't waste time with a door in any case where it inconveniences you or the player to do so.  If you describe a door as scenery (in the room description), and think someone might examine the door that's not there as an object, then you can put in an error message to supply a description without adding an object to the game.  (Understand "examine door" as a mistake...)  But unless mentioning the door is somehow important, don't mention it...

3)  (Postulate dependent on the ideas in #1 and #2) If you have an important interaction to take place on the stairs, and since stairs are (presumably) never closed or locked -- there's no need for "stairs" to be a door.  You produce an ILLUSION of being in the stairwell by making a room you describe as the stairwell, in which you say 'up' to go one place, and 'down' to go another.  However, if there's a firedoor to reach the stairway and you need to lock the stairway door at some point (say, if the player is accidentally in the building and it becomes night, thus they get locked into the building...and only do this if it's part of your story!  Many IFs can become frustrating if there's too much to sidetrack the players...), that's different.

[code]Stairwell is a room.  "You are standing in the stairwell.  The stairs go in both directions so from here you may go up to the 2nd floor or down to the basement."

Bozo is a person.  Bozo is in the Stairwell.  "There's a clown here.  He apparently has been camping out in the stairwell for months waiting for this moment.  He reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls out a giant bouquet of flowers.  He smiles mutely at you.  Hanging off the bouquet is a business card that reads 'Don't forget your appointment in Room 202.'  The card flips over as he brandishes the bouquet revealing the other side, which reads 'Have a nice day!'"

Basement Stairwell is down from Stairwell. "You are standing in the stairwell, and the only way to go from here is up the stairs or back west into the basement."

Upstairs Stairwell is up from Stairwell.  "You are standing on the 2nd floor landing.  You can go west from here into the hall, down to the first floor, or continue up the stairs."[/code]

Honestly, if you didn't need Bozo there, I wouldn't make these as rooms at all.  But you CAN.  The engine is flexible to fit your story.  I say lay the world out simply and straightforwardly, because you can always add in more rooms/doors/features as they're needed to embellish the story.  You might even build backwards from the goal/end through to the beginning....that's up to you, and that's how some folk write novels, weaving in details and red herrings/dead ends as they move backwards through the plotline.

Don't get stuck on "Rooms need doors because doors are available for transportation between rooms."  The key word is "available" -- they're not "needed" at all.  That's what I'm trying to explain.  Think of everything as a plot device -- literally and figuratively.  If you a plot segment requires some type of device (room, container, prop, key, door, etc.), then you create it as an actual discrete object in Inform.  However, you can seamlessly pass from one room to another without pausing in a doorway unless you really need that "doorway effect".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4660&start=0#p33709
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: I'm sticking with TADS. - TADS3.1
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-17 20:40:19

[quote="Alex"]Quest has the ASLX programming language and the Core library, so that doesn't really answer the question [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
I was curious, so I had a quick look. It appears ASLX is a markup language. It's not really suitable for programming, is it? By which I mean, does it support if/else blocks with boolean tests? Does it support do/while or for loops? Does it support function calls with argument passing? Does it support lists and arrays? Does it support class inheritance?

For starters.

I didn't see any of that, but maybe I'm missing something on the web page.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4601&start=10#p33710
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Absolute Beginner Questions
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-17 20:47:31

[quote="crisses"]If you describe a door as scenery (in the room description), and think someone might examine the door that's not there as an object, then you can put in an error message to supply a description without adding an object to the game.  (Understand "examine door" as a mistake...)  But unless mentioning the door is somehow important, don't mention it....[/quote]

This strikes me as a very bad idea. For one thing, it won't catch "x door," "look at door," "l at door," etc. For another, even if it gives the correct response when the player examines the door, it'll produce a disastrous response when the player tries to (say) close it. 

If you're going to mention the door, implement it as an object (even if it doesn't have to be the kind door), and code polite refusals for the obvious things to do with it ("No need to close the door"). If you don't want to do that, don't mention it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4660&start=0#p33711
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: I'm sticking with TADS. - TADS3.1
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-03-17 20:53:10

A few things TADS is known for below. (Maybe Quest 5 has added them by now, not sure.)

Disambiguation is controllable. For example, when the user tries to OPEN THE BOX and there are multiple boxes, the programmer can specify for which boxes OPEN makes more sense, in which case the parser will not ask "which box do you mean..."

Implied actions are also fully controllable. The code can specify preconditions that must be met for an action to be possible. If a precondition is not met, the parser will try to satisfy that precondition automatically. For example, for DRILL HOLE IN WALL to be possible, you can create a precondition that specifies that the drill must be plugged in. That means that if the player tries to drill a hole with an unplugged drill, the parser will try to automatically plug the drill in a wall socket. The programmer can however limit this, as to not allow the parser to solve puzzles on its own.

Parameterized messages. You can switch between past/present tense, first/second/third person at will without needing multiple versions of your prose. You write: "Opening {the dobj/him} reveal{s|ed} a ham sandwitch" and the system generates the correct message.

Operator overloading. See C++. In short, you can define what operators (=, +, *, etc) do for your objects. Imagine having a shelf of books and you can refer to the 4th book in it with "bookshelf[4]".

Multi-methods. This allows calling specific implementations of methods based on the types of multiple objects, not just the object the method is called on.

Dynamic object creation. You can create new objects after the game is already running. Imagine a food dispenser that when used creates new food items. (If you know C or C++, that's the equivalent to C's "malloc()" and C++'s "new".) A garbage collector also takes care of cleaning up when you don't need those objects anymore.

Exception handling. This allows you to separate code that handles errors from the rest of the code.

Anonymous functions and reflection.

I'm getting tired, I'll stop here [emote]:P[/emote]


Edit:
To be fair though, Quest does some things TADS doesn't. For example video support.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4601&start=10#p33712
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Absolute Beginner Questions
User: crisses / DateTime: 2012-03-17 21:29:19

[quote="matt w"]If you're going to mention the door, implement it as an object (even if it doesn't have to be the kind door), and code polite refusals for the obvious things to do with it ("No need to close the door"). If you don't want to do that, don't mention it.[/quote]

I'm just thinking of the case of an Alice-in-Wonderland experience of a corridor that seemingly goes on forever, has innumerable doorways to either side, but one can't (truly) interact with the doors.  i.e. they will never open, lock, close, etc. and they all look the same.  On the programmer's end it's easier, I would think, to code from the "refusal to allow the player to interact with the doors" than to place many-many doors in the corridor that are locked, unopenable, and nondescript.

The idea is: this is possible without making doors at all.  I don't know whether the player can actually poke their head inside these rooms -- nor if the door poses a barrier in any way.  The doors may purely be "scenery" objects or even for this area "backdrop" rather than "doors" per se.

There is no obligation to use doors, and you can work around them, even though a "door" object is available to be used.  Understanding this, one gains the freedom to decide when a door is needed, when it is not necessary but still desirable, and when it should not be used.

I agree that it should not be mentioned if it could not be used.  But how else to explain that just because one *can* use a "door" object as a staircase, a door-object staircase is not the only solution to advancing the plotline...the question is "do you really need to even mention this staircase?" and "is a staircase itself important here?"  i.e. can the person go up or down without thinking about the stairs?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4662&start=0#p33713
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Another Vorple Question
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-03-17 21:43:50

Vorple is highly experimental, and as such is really just for those willing to get their hands dirty. In the future we can expect full IDE support for it.

However, the future will likely be based on the Glk stylesheets proposal instead.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4642&start=0#p33714
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Using a compass and exit descriptions
User: rpatten / DateTime: 2012-03-17 21:46:18

Thanks, everyone. I think I needed some confirmation before I went ahead. (I hope that doesn't make me insecure.)

I agree that including the exits at the end of the description, whether automatically or manually, is a much better option than solely relying on the compass. I thought about the differences in interpreters and screens, but thanks for the reminder about blind players!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4601&start=10#p33715
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Absolute Beginner Questions
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-17 22:18:53

[quote="crisses"][quote="matt w"]If you're going to mention the door, implement it as an object (even if it doesn't have to be the kind door), and code polite refusals for the obvious things to do with it ("No need to close the door"). If you don't want to do that, don't mention it.[/quote]

I'm just thinking of the case of an Alice-in-Wonderland experience of a corridor that seemingly goes on forever, has innumerable doorways to either side, but one can't (truly) interact with the doors.  i.e. they will never open, lock, close, etc. and they all look the same.  On the programmer's end it's easier, I would think, to code from the "refusal to allow the player to interact with the doors" than to place many-many doors in the corridor that are locked, unopenable, and nondescript.[/quote]

But don't do it using "Understand as a mistake"! If you want to block any action involving the door, write something like this:

[code]Instead of doing something when the current action involves the door: say "[refusal to interact with the door]"[/code]

Trying to bypass the parser in a case like this is a bad idea. And if you're worried about the proliferation of doors, you can make the door object a backdrop, so there's one object that's effectively present in the whole corridor.

I agree that if the player can go up or down without thinking about the stairs, they should; but if you need to mention the stairs, you need to code them, and then maybe coding them as a door is a good idea, so long as you don't make it a door you can open or shut..

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4654&start=10#p33716
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting up a list of "qualities" or "parts" of people
User: crisses / DateTime: 2012-03-17 22:19:36

[code]
An icon is a kind of person. An icon has a table-name called stat table.	The stat table of an icon is usually the Table of Icon Stats.

Table of Icon Stats
stat	rating	activation	is-attack	is-program
"analyze"	0	true	false	true
"browse"	0	false	false	true
"edit"	0	true	false	true


To say programs of (target - an icon):
	sort the stat table of the target in activation order;
	repeat through the stat table:
		if the is-program entry is true and the activation entry is true and rating entry is greater than 0:
			say "[stat entry in sentence case] ([rating entry])[line break]";
[/code]

The parser is choking on the sort statement.  Probably because "stat table" is not a table at all -- it's a table-name?

It's one of those instances where I can be sitting there all night trying to figure out the correct wording to refer back to the actual table rather than the table-name assigned to the person.  I'll give it a go, but if anyone knows I'd sure appreciate the help.  For now I've just removed the sort statement and gotten it to parse.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4660&start=0#p33717
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: I'm sticking with TADS. - TADS3.1
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-03-17 22:37:08

[quote="RealNC"]To be fair though, Quest does some things TADS doesn't. For example video support.[/quote]

TADS has video support through WebUI, right? I haven't tried it but I don't see why it wouldn't work.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4601&start=10#p33718
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Absolute Beginner Questions
User: crisses / DateTime: 2012-03-17 22:39:00

[quote="matt w"]
But don't do it using "Understand as a mistake"! If you want to block any action involving the door, write something like this:

[code]Instead of doing something when the current action involves the door: say "[refusal to interact with the door]"[/code]

Trying to bypass the parser in a case like this is a bad idea.
[/quote]
I sit corrected.  Thanks! [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote] And if you're worried about the proliferation of doors, you can make the door object a backdrop, so there's one object that's effectively present in the whole corridor.

I agree that if the player can go up or down without thinking about the stairs, they should; but if you need to mention the stairs, you need to code them, and then maybe coding them as a door is a good idea, so long as you don't make it a door you can open or shut..[/quote]

Yes, that's basically what I'm saying.

I just remember the frustrations of early IF -- and even one or two instances conducted in Inform7 more recently -- where the player (namely me) becomes frustrated trying to solve the puzzle because 1) there aren't sufficient hints to help direct the player in what is relevant and 2) there are too many "things that could be relevant" in the game and given #1, you had to try everything possible with every object mentioned in case it did turn out to be important.  You'd fill your pockets with tons of incidental items and try each one on everything you encountered in case it somehow by some miracle ended up being the one thing the monster was allergic to or something like that...

If you mention stairs, someone will spend a half hour playing around with the stairs, they'll decide that MAYBE they're "just stairs" and finally go on to explore another area.  If there's a corridor full of doors, they will try every means of opening them, and decide maybe there's a certain order in which to open them...made worse yet if they all actually open into rooms that have nothing to do with the plot -- at least if they've played through some of the games I've tried playing. [emote];)[/emote]

So most of what I'm saying is "Keep it Simply Story".  There should be plot-twists, devices, etc. but not devices because they exist in the game engine -- devices because they're adding something to the story.

In the corridor, perhaps the doors could be a backdrop that gives a moral message like "You know this is a government center and you'd never dream of just barging in to one of the offices for fear of being arrested.  You'd best get on your way to your appointment before you're late."

Think of the hour(s?) saved on behalf of the player...lest they search for keys and stuff...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4654&start=10#p33719
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting up a list of "qualities" or "parts" of people
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-17 23:46:46

I think you need to change "repeat through the stat table" to "repeat through the stat table of the target."

ETA: And I don't think you need to worry about referring to the actual table rather than to the table-name; I'm pretty sure that when you refer to the stat table of an icon you're referring to the table, not to the table-name, even though you had to declare it as a table-name.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4662&start=0#p33720
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Another Vorple Question
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-03-18 02:50:31

You have the current situation pretty much covered and as Dannii said, things might and will change radically as things settle down to their tracks.

[quote="Jim Aikin"]it will only work with Z-machine games, not with Glulx games.[/quote]
Currently it works (for some definitions of "works") only with Z-machine, but that's only temporary. I'm waiting for Parchment to get the [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4249]Glk stylesheets[/url] implementation because it will have the VM-level support Vorple needs to communicate with Glulx stories. It wouldn't be smart to duplicate work or create a competing non-standard implementation. As soon as Glk/Parchment gets to that point, it won't take long to get Vorple up to speed.

You can stretch the Z-machine limits a little by moving things like in-game help menus from the game for Vorple to handle, but that'll help only if you're right on the border and need to squeeze in just a couple of paragraphs more. Vorple itself is a very small extension in Inform's point of view (the core is only 546 words at the moment).

[quote]Also, will it be possible to test the Vorple display in the IDE[/quote]
Most likely yes at some point in the future. Fortunately in most cases testing a Vorple story isn't as big a problem as it might be, since you can test the story and game logic as a text-only version in the IDE and test the Vorple features separately in a browser. (It does get annoying to have to do the release - copy story file - reload browser again and again.)

[quote] an Undum story can't be saved and restored at a variety of points. You can save exactly ONE version, which will automatically load the next time you launch the story.[/quote]
This is true, partly because of [url=http://undum.com/API.html#h_43]technical limitations[/url] and perhaps partly because the save feature is meant to be just a bookmark where you can continue reading later rather than a videogame save file. Vorple won't bring a change to this situation so you might want to make a feature request to the Undum project.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=90#p33721
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-18 03:08:07

[quote="maga"][quote="Bainespal"][quote="maga"]It would potentially reward crappy-but-egotistical authors for nominating their own games for everything (they might not earn any nominations, but at least they'd get on a reading list.)[/quote]
I agree that this could be a problem if games had to be nominated for every category.  Maybe a single nomination could make the game eligible in all categories.[/quote]
Yeah, I'd prefer that, if not for those troublesome text-entry categories. But having a list split out by award would be super-annoying to read.[/quote]
Yeah, even if duplicate entries were removed across multiple categories.

It might be interesting to support the per-category listing as one display option, with the full, undivided list as a default -- if it were procedurally generated based on votes, and listed each nominee only in the category for which it was nominated for the most awards, that might provide some gentle suggestion for voting.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4662&start=0#p33722
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Another Vorple Question
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-03-18 06:44:45

You get 5MB of localStorage data, and 50MB of IndexedDB which should be enough for many Undum saves. Except they're both messy to deal with. I'm planning to offer Parchment's storage library to Undum, once I've finished writing it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4663&start=0#p33723
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Linux/Ubuntu Support needed for Inform 7
User: Slater4711 / DateTime: 2012-03-18 07:34:34

Hi guys,

I just installed the latest version of Ubuntu 11.04 with the freshest and latest drivers. Well, it seems that the newest GTK drivers for web-applications are not compatible with the latest version of Inform 7. When I try to install the gnome-inform7_6G60-0ubuntu2_amd64.deb package the I get the following error:

The following precondition is not fulfilable =>
  libwebkitgtk-1.0-0 (>= 1.3.10) -1.0-0 (>= 1.3.10) 

If I try to install the  libwebkitgtk-1.0-0 (>= 1.3.10) I need to download other packages which would destroy the current sub-packages of the standard Webkit. I don't want to screw my working system. 

Does anybody know a workaround? Maybe just a precondition needs to be rewritten somewhere in the deb package?

Big thanks

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4660&start=0#p33724
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: I'm sticking with TADS. - TADS3.1
User: Alex / DateTime: 2012-03-18 08:06:51

[quote="Jim Aikin"]It appears ASLX is a markup language. It's not really suitable for programming, is it? By which I mean, does it support if/else blocks with boolean tests? Does it support do/while or for loops? Does it support function calls with argument passing? Does it support lists and arrays? Does it support class inheritance?[/quote]

Yes to all of the above. There's an XML format to define the objects in the game, but within that there's a scripting language which supports all the usual things you'd expect.

It's interesting that that wasn't clear - I wonder what I need to do to make the capabilities more obvious?

There's a full reference guide to all the functions, script commands etc. on the wiki at <a class="postlink" href="http://quest5.net">http://quest5.net</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4654&start=10#p33725
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Setting up a list of "qualities" or "parts" of people
User: crisses / DateTime: 2012-03-18 08:28:46

[quote="matt w"]I think you need to change "repeat through the stat table" to "repeat through the stat table of the target."

ETA: And I don't think you need to worry about referring to the actual table rather than to the table-name; I'm pretty sure that when you refer to the stat table of an icon you're referring to the table, not to the table-name, even though you had to declare it as a table-name.[/quote]

When I removed the sort line, I did change the following line accordingly. 

Actually, in one of my test documents the sort worked, so it must be something else that's wrong with the code I tried.  I'll look at it again.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4660&start=10#p33726
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: I'm sticking with TADS. - TADS3.1
User: Alex / DateTime: 2012-03-18 08:45:41

[quote="RealNC"]
Disambiguation is controllable. For example, when the user tries to OPEN THE BOX and there are multiple boxes, the programmer can specify for which boxes OPEN makes more sense, in which case the parser will not ask "which box do you mean..."
[/quote]

You could do this in Quest with a little bit of work - the parser is in CoreParser.aslx which can be modified as required. However, a lot of Quest games are played via object hyperlinks - you can click or tap the required box in the room description, then select "open" from the list that appears. So this kind of functionality is perhaps less necessary in a Quest game than it would be a for a system that is keyboard-only.

[quote]
Implied actions are also fully controllable. The code can specify preconditions that must be met for an action to be possible. If a precondition is not met, the parser will try to satisfy that precondition automatically. For example, for DRILL HOLE IN WALL to be possible, you can create a precondition that specifies that the drill must be plugged in. That means that if the player tries to drill a hole with an unplugged drill, the parser will try to automatically plug the drill in a wall socket. The programmer can however limit this, as to not allow the parser to solve puzzles on its own.
[/quote]

Any Quest verb or command triggers a script, so in this case you'd probably set up this up manually with a couple of lines - not sure if/how this would be different in practice to letting the parser handle it earlier.

[quote]
Parameterized messages. You can switch between past/present tense, first/second/third person at will without needing multiple versions of your prose. You write: "Opening {the dobj/him} reveal{s|ed} a ham sandwitch" and the system generates the correct message.
[/quote]

In what situations would this be used? Not sure I understand why a game would change tense? Also what about non-English games?

[quote]
Operator overloading. See C++. In short, you can define what operators (=, +, *, etc) do for your objects. Imagine having a shelf of books and you can refer to the 4th book in it with "bookshelf[4]".
[/quote]

Interesting. Quest is unlikely to support this, because it needs to be able to convert games into JavaScript, which doesn't support operator overloading (which makes me think we can probably get by without it)

[quote]
Multi-methods. This allows calling specific implementations of methods based on the types of multiple objects, not just the object the method is called on.
[/quote]

Could you give an example?

[quote]
Dynamic object creation. You can create new objects after the game is already running. Imagine a food dispenser that when used creates new food items. (If you know C or C++, that's the equivalent to C's "malloc()" and C++'s "new".) A garbage collector also takes care of cleaning up when you don't need those objects anymore.
[/quote]

At last, I can say this is something that Quest already supports [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote]
Exception handling. This allows you to separate code that handles errors from the rest of the code.
[/quote]

You can throw exceptions but can't catch them yet - though thinking about it, that would be quite an easy feature to add.

[quote]
Anonymous functions and reflection.
[/quote]

Quest supports delegates, and you can also set a variable or attribute to a script, so you can pass scripts around. There's no real reflection yet but I can imagine this would be another feature that wouldn't be too difficult to add basic support for if there was demand - could easily add a function that returned a list of attributes of an object (you can already get attribute values by string).

[quote]
I'm getting tired, I'll stop here [emote]:P[/emote]
[/quote]

Phew, me too [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3106&start=20#p33727
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Referring to the player in the third person
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-18 09:35:34

I think a better play-experience-technically better way to do this might be altered perception.  The drunk PC may see a snake, and by your commands attack and kill it.  Only later on, returning in a more sober state, she may find she cannot plug in the standing lamp, because the plug at the end of the cable has been smattered.

It could work both ways - the altered perception may hinder or help.  The drunk PC may be willing to do things (picking up the cuddly bunny) the sober version refuses (picking up the rat).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4664&start=0#p33728
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Trouble with Cover Art
User: HanonO / DateTime: 2012-03-18 09:41:28

I'm having trouble getting my Cover.jpg (or png) and Small Cover.jpg/png files to actually bind up with a release.  I'm running I7 6H98 on OSX Lion.

I've tried saving my files as jpg and png in the materials folder, changing capitalization, and adding the "release along with cover art" line in the source.  When I do it, the file produces the default sepia book image used by inform.  I can move the correct art into the release folder and the website will use it, but the Blorb doesn't.  

Any suggestions?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=90#p33729
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-18 10:17:32

[quote="Ghalev"]I agree with this concept in principal, though I disagree vehemently with the earlier, brainstormed concepts for the categories.[/quote][quote="Biep"]All right.  So what would a first, brainstorm-fodder kind of category list from you look like?[/quote][quote="ChrisC"]I like the idea of letting the voters determine that themselves. Something like a Uservoice-style system, where people have a certain number of votes, and can spend them either on their own ideas or existing, established ones.[/quote]
There is value in that - but I'ld also like to see an IF-specific critical vocabulary develop, which is better done (partly) on this forum than during a vote.  Taking examples from other art forms, voters could decide to make "bouquet" an election category for wine (probably a good idea), or "charoscuro" for painting (probably a bad idea), but [i]establishing[/i] those notions would be hard to do within that context.

My Internet connection willing I'll start a new thread for that discussion. [EDIT: It willed.  It is [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665]here[/url].]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4662&start=0#p33730
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Another Vorple Question
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-18 10:19:14

In the meantime, it's apparently not hard (for the Javascript-literate, I am told) to write a hacky multiple-UNDO function into Undum. (I used one in [i]Cavity of Time[/i], courtesy Jon Ingold.) This obviously isn't quite the same thing as multiple saves, but for 95% of the times when you need a save it does the job.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3106&start=20#p33731
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Referring to the player in the third person
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-18 10:31:42

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]I would venture that what is creepy and unsettling about the original example is that the narrator is addressing the character rather than the player. Cutting the link between the player and the character isn't necessarily unsettling, but if the narrator is not talking to me, the player, [i]then how can I possibly know what is going on[/i]? I am immediately turned into some weird ghostly presence who is spying on the PC and the narrator. Brr. (Like Andrew said: it is creepy. I like it.) This should only be done in very special games.[/quote]But you just described the status quo of every story with a third-person omniscient narrator ever. Authors more or less stopped trying to justify how their readers could know what was going on soon after Cervantes ("I am writing this in the hopes that someone will discover these notes and learn the awful truth of what happened here..." et al.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4660&start=10#p33732
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: I'm sticking with TADS. - TADS3.1
User: Mike Sousa / DateTime: 2012-03-18 10:32:30

[quote="Alex"][quote="RealNC"]
Parameterized messages. You can switch between past/present tense, first/second/third person at will without needing multiple versions of your prose. You write: "Opening {the dobj/him} reveal{s|ed} a ham sandwitch" and the system generates the correct message.
[/quote]

In what situations would this be used? Not sure I understand why a game would change tense? 
[/quote]

To tell a story in a unique way or to have an interactive flashback scene; I'm sure there are other examples.

My current WIP starts off in past tense, first person and then changes to present tense, possibly second person.  Very easy to do in T3.

As for what system is better, that's like debating what religion is better.  It can only end in a stalemate, and quite possibly, with some bloodshed. [emote]:)[/emote]

-- Mike

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4660&start=10#p33733
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: I'm sticking with TADS. - TADS3.1
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-18 10:34:40

[quote="Alex"]There's an XML format to define the objects in the game, but within that there's a scripting language which supports all the usual things you'd expect.

It's interesting that that wasn't clear - I wonder what I need to do to make the capabilities more obvious?[/quote]
Okay, I'm happy to stand corrected. It appears Quest is a great deal more powerful than it appears on the surface.

To answer your question, I think writing a manual might be a good step to consider. A hyperlinked wiki is just a horrible learning tool unless one already knows what one wants to look up. Following the trail of breadcrumbs I found the link to Script Commands and clicked through to "if". This gave me a bare syntax prototype with NO explanation, much less examples. And the prototype contains the symbolic term "script." So where's the link explaining what a script is? It's not on the Script Commands page, and it's not back on the main page either. I'm not going to hunt through 50 links looking for it ... but apparently that's what your users will need to do.

Sorry to be so blunt, but I'm kind of a hard-ass on the subject of good documentation (as the I7 folks will tell you -- I wrote an Inform 7 Handbook because I disliked the built-in Writing With Inform rather intensely, and my suggestions for how to improve it were ignored by the development team).

BTW, I tend to agree with your initial suggestion to Ron, which is where this thread started. I suspect he would be happier with Quest than with T3. On the other hand, T3 [i]does [/i]have extensive, searchable documentation....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4662&start=0#p33734
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Another Vorple Question
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-18 10:45:37

[quote="maga"]In the meantime, it's apparently not hard (for the Javascript-literate, I am told) to write a hacky multiple-UNDO function into Undum. (I used one in [i]Cavity of Time[/i], courtesy Jon Ingold.) This obviously isn't quite the same thing as multiple saves, but for 95% of the times when you need a save it does the job.[/quote]
I can see that that would be possible. I know just enough about Javascript to understand that Undum is pushing each user action into a list (which will then be saved and replayed). So yes, you should be able somehow to pop an action off of the list.

I'm definitely going to bring this topic to I.D. Millington's attention. I understand that there may be technical issues, to do with browser security features. But for me, it's a total deal-breaker. There is no way I would consider using Undum for any sort of creative work, because it's [i]essential [/i]that the user be able to store multiple save points and restore to any of them at any time. Without this feature, a branching story (which is one of the main things Undum is apparently designed to produce) becomes an absolute nightmare for your poor hapless reader.

I wouldn't be so chapped about this if Undum didn't provide such a wonderful UI. I really, really like what I see! But I'm not enough of a Javascript jockey to be able to figure out a slick workaround for story-point saving. That feature has to be built-in before I'll consider using Undum.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665&start=0#p33735
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: A critical IF vocabulary
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-18 11:04:32

New art media tend to start out being criticized in the terms of older art forms.  Early film critics relied on the vocabulary of painting and photography and of literature and theatre.  As the new medium developed, the language to describe its art forms in developed along.  Gastronomy is criticised in other terms than music, and rightly so.
I think IF has developed to the point that it is a medium supporting various art forms, and that it can benefit from having a rich and accurate critical vocabulary.  I hope this thread will spawn discussion that will help establish some useful terms.

The point came up in the XYZZY award discussions, where it was about categories for appraisal.  Here is an extract; for the whole discussion see [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=50]here[/url].[rant=Discussion extract][quote="Biep"]Another idea might be to make the categories less generic, and more tuned to IF.  The precise categories would need some thinking out, but would capture IF-specific qualities.  And the scores in individual categories would count towards the overall "Best IF" score.
Some first - not well factored out - ideas:
[list]
[*]"Depth of interaction" - not just Rematch-style (though that would count), but also how successive interactions build complex state.  We all know the "hit NPC then greet NPC"-effect..[/*:m]
[*]"Mimesis" - the extent to which the implemented world behaves like the evoked world ought to.[/*:m]
[*]"Use of the interface" - part of the previous, but worth its own category.  Do reasonable commands give reasonable responses?  Points off for guess-the-verb, needing "search the bed" to see the suitcase on top of it, points for interesting responses to commands that lie outside the thrust of the work, or for using the open-endedness of the parser (as with the central puzzle in "Spider and web").[/*:m]
[*]"Sense of freedom" - the extent to which the IF gives one the impression of agency.  Not applicable for some games, but for many it is.  This may be about the richness of the implemented world, or the smooth way in which the player is steered away from what the author doesn't want him/her to do.[/*:m]
[*]"Mechanics" - basically the complexity of the program, as opposed to the amount of it.  An excellent new conversation mechanism, mood tracking system, learning NPC's, et cetera.[/*:m][/list:u]
Such categories would reward good IF for being good IF rather than "just" being good art.[/quote][quote="Ghalev"]But for my own tastes, I'd probably (for starters) drop the general "Best Writing" in favor of a short stack of specifically writing-oriented categories ... "Most Evocative Descriptions," for example, would serve the goal of focusing on things that IF has that not-IF doesn't have or has less of ... while "Most Satisfying Ending(s)" would [i]fail [/i]to serve that goal (but I still think it would be a sweet category on a selfish level, because one of my frustrations with some IF is that some IF just sort of [i]stops [/i]... and I'd love it if the XYZZYs pointed me toward games with a real payoff).

And frankly, I'd love to see a "Leanest Most Badass Killer Lean Prose Which is Very Lean And Not all Frickin' Wordy And Flabby And On-And-On But Just Gets Right to the GOOD STUFF Like Only Good Writing Can" category, both because that's something I value, and because I love ironic titles for things.[/quote][/rant]
But in this thread I hope to collect a wider variety of notions.  Counterpoint, chiaroscuro, symmetry would not normally categories of appraisal, but they are sery useful terms to describe certain works of art with.  What typical IF-specific notions are there, and what would be good expressions and descriptions for them?  What terms from other art media are misleading?  The floor is open - don't hesitate to offer vague notions, as in "Well, there is this quality that some IF has, but it is hard to describe.  X has it, Y doesn't, and it has to do with Z." Someone else may understand what you mean, and together we may come to an accurate description and find a good name for it.
Likewise, don't hesitate to bring up vocabulary already in use, whether to recommend it or to disagree with it.  We might end up with a catalogue of useful notions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4655&start=0#p33736
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Concepts for secret unlockable and auto-timed game ..
User: Comazombie / DateTime: 2012-03-18 11:11:26

Thanks for your feedback so far, guys.

Ofcourse secret dates, which the game may check for, won't be spoiled or advertised by myself. The only thing which I will inform players upfront is that secrets or easter eggs unlock themselves when the game is being run after the IFComp ends on its usual date November 15th. So it's all bonus.

Any other magic days won't be spoiled directly, only through hints or talking in riddles about it. In fact, I already added a second magic date to Dead Hotel which the game checks for in 2012. I guess you all know which date that is. That's a hint. Try to run Dead Hotel on that special date this year...  [emote];)[/emote] 

[quote="Bainespal"]If I remember correctly, I believe the roguelike game [i]Ancient Domains of Mystery[/i] modifies your states depending on the date that you create your character.  For instance, I think if it happens to be Friday the 13th, your character starts out cursed.[/quote]

Yeah, Friday 13th. A controversial date. For some people it's a cursed day, for others it's day of good fortune. I like it. Definately interesting to think how the game may behave on that day.

[quote]Your idea sounds good.  It would be especially helpful for a game with multiple paths or endings.  It would be a good way to get players to come back and see the other possibilities.  I liked the way it worked in [i]Dead Hotel[/i], but I think it would probably be best to include your best content upfront, especially if you're in a comp.[/quote]

Yes, that's what I thought too. It's a way to get players replay the game and explore multiple endings. And sure, I should first focus on the main content and make it as good as possible before adding any bonus/secret content.

[quote]Another thought -- this could tie in to a sort of meta-puzzle or meta-adventure, like the hat thing in a few of the Comp games this year.  You have to play the game on a specific date to get a special clue.  This could be a clue to find more Easter-eggs within the game itself, or it could send the player on a hunt through the web or something.[/quote]

Hmm, I'm not sure if it's a wise choice to give the player a special clue on a specific date only and then never again. What if the player misses that specific date in the first place? He/She would probably never know that there was any clue on that specific date. See the problem?

In my opinion specific dates (for instance, March 17th 2012 or whatever) should be only used for little gimmicks, but not for game-specific elements. For instance, when the player runs the game on that specific date a short message in the game could be displayed or the game may not run on that day. This way, even if the player misses that date or doesn't know about it, he/she won't miss any game-related content.

I think the best way is to check for the kind of dates which occur multiple times or in a regular fashion. You mentioned Friday 13th. That's a good example. There will always be a Friday 13th. So checking for those kind of dates makes more sense imho. Birthday dates are another example. You run the game on my birthday each year you get bonus features to play with.

And as usual I will check for periods of time and not just points in time. You know, from IFComp October 1st to November 15th the game behaves like this. And from November 16th (actually November 22nd in the case of Dead Hotel) the game behaves like that. This is how it works in Dead Hotel. And players can't miss any game content this way. Except that second magic date in Dead Hotel which I previously talked above. But that's just a gimmick. If you miss that date in 2012 this year it won't matter actually, because it's nothing game-specific.

[quote]Will there be a sequel for [i]Dead Hotel[/i]?  I think it is a good candidate for a sequel.[/quote]

Uhm... I haven't decided yet. Would it make sense to make a sequel for a game called "Dead Hotel" where the objective was to escape from that hotel? I mean it's not like the game character returns back to the hotel. He escaped from it and that's it for Part 1. What I mean is that there'll be no "Dead Hotel 2". If I decide to make a sequel / Part 2 then it's going to be released under a different game title. Otherwise it would make no sense unless I come up with a story where the character has a good reason to return to the hotel he previously escaped from. I have to think about it.......

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4411&start=10#p33737
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: Topic icon variations: +/- yellow ; +/- pulsating
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-18 11:15:19

And I just realised the little black dot on the Topic icons seems to mean I have written in that thread.
This is not in the overview at the bottom of the page.  (Has this overview been there from the beginning?  I wouldn't have started this thread in the first place had I seen that.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4666&start=0#p33738
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: nY: "Keuzevrijheid en autoriteit"
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2012-03-18 12:05:48

Those few of you (if any) who read Dutch might be interested in the online publication of my article "Keuzevrijheid en autoriteit. Literaire experimenten met interactieve fictie", a title that would translate to "Freedom of choice, and authority. Literary experiments with interactive fiction". It was originally published in the Flemish literary journal [i]nY[/i], and they have now put it up [url=http://ny-web.be/long-hard-looks/keuzevrijheid-en-autoriteit.html]on their website[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4660&start=10#p33739
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: I'm sticking with TADS. - TADS3.1
User: Alex / DateTime: 2012-03-18 12:12:11

[quote="Mike Sousa"]
As for what system is better, that's like debating what religion is better.  It can only end in a stalemate, and quite possibly, with some bloodshed. [emote]:)[/emote]
[/quote]

Definitely! The differences between systems are interesting, but as with web browsers or smartphones it's often difficult to discuss how they compare without descending into unwinnable arguments, so I'm trying to avoid that here.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4660&start=10#p33740
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: I'm sticking with TADS. - TADS3.1
User: Alex / DateTime: 2012-03-18 12:17:29

[quote="Jim Aikin"]To answer your question, I think writing a manual might be a good step to consider. A hyperlinked wiki is just a horrible learning tool unless one already knows what one wants to look up. [/quote]

Absolutely, I wouldn't recommend the reference guide to somebody starting out. But on the same wiki is the tutorial - <a class="postlink" href="http://quest5.net/wiki/Tutorial">http://quest5.net/wiki/Tutorial</a> - which takes you through building a Quest game for the first time, using the visual editor. It still needs to be updated for the new web version of Quest but the principles are the same and the editor layout is very similar.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4666&start=0#p33741
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: nY: "Keuzevrijheid en autoriteit"
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2012-03-18 12:55:21

Those of us who can't understand Dutch that well can read it with the aid of Google: [url=http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&js=n&u=http%3A%2F%2Fny-web.be%2Flong-hard-looks%2Fkeuzevrijheid-en-autoriteit.html&act=url]The article translated.[/url]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4655&start=0#p33742
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Concepts for secret unlockable and auto-timed game ..
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-18 13:10:55

[quote="Comazombie"]And players can't miss any game content this way.[/quote]
They can and they will, unless they have some other reason to play your game regularly and often.

Most IF and CYOA has fairly low replay value. You might play again to find some different endings or alternate solutions, but you're not going to play every day for months. Most IF or CYOA games will be played for a single sitting, then not picked up again for years (if ever). There are a few games like [i]Textfire Golf[/i] or [i]Kerkerkruip[/i] that have a relatively high amount of variability, but even those aren't going to be played regularly enough to make timed easter eggs worthwhile.

So, before you add time-specific easter eggs, you need to think about making a game that will keep players around for long enough that they have a chance of finding them. This means a very large game. Otherwise, you need your easter eggs to be accessible (if not necessarily easy to find) at all times.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4660&start=10#p33743
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: I'm sticking with TADS. - TADS3.1
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-18 13:12:22

[quote="Alex"][quote="Jim Aikin"]To answer your question, I think writing a manual might be a good step to consider. A hyperlinked wiki is just a horrible learning tool unless one already knows what one wants to look up. [/quote]

Absolutely, I wouldn't recommend the reference guide to somebody starting out. But on the same wiki is the tutorial - <a class="postlink" href="http://quest5.net/wiki/Tutorial">http://quest5.net/wiki/Tutorial</a> - which takes you through building a Quest game for the first time, using the visual editor. It still needs to be updated for the new web version of Quest but the principles are the same and the editor layout is very similar.[/quote]
Fair enough. There's a section on scripts (using the visual editor) there.

I'm not sure Quest would be right for me. For one thing, too much mouse use is bad for my wrists. Typing is better. But now that I know more about it, I won't be shy about recommending it to newcomers.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4664&start=0#p33744
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with Cover Art
User: crisses / DateTime: 2012-03-18 13:24:41

[quote="HanonO"]I'm having trouble getting my Cover.jpg (or png) and Small Cover.jpg/png files to actually bind up with a release.  I'm running I7 6H98 on OSX Lion.

I've tried saving my files as jpg and png in the materials folder, changing capitalization, and adding the "release along with cover art" line in the source.  When I do it, the file produces the default sepia book image used by inform.  I can move the correct art into the release folder and the website will use it, but the Blorb doesn't.  

Any suggestions?[/quote]

Hi, I'll try to help so you're not sitting around waiting for someone with more experience [emote]:)[/emote]

I don't know the heirarchy of your folders, but here's my preamble in my inform document:

[spoiler][code]
The story title is "Matrix Text Game". 
The story author is "The Crisses". 
The story headline is "A Shadowrun Matrix Simulator". 
The story genre is "Game Assistant". 
The release number is 11.
The story description is "A play-along version of matrix interactions to help speed play at live pencil-and-paper games.  Other uses: GM can test matrix threats/features, can help to train new hacker & technomancer players. 
Image credit: Unmaterial Tower by Lance Sheilds (cc/by, cropped & color-adjusted)."

The story creation year is 2012.
Release along with an interpreter, cover art and the source text.
Release along with a file of "Sample Character" called "Myth.i7x".
Release along with a file of "Shadowrun Matrix Extension" called "Shadowrun Matrix.i7x".
Release along with a file of "Release Notes" called "ReleaseNotes.rtf".
Use undo prevention and the American dialect.
[/code][/spoiler]

And my document hierarchy:

[spoiler][code]
Matrix Text Game
Matrix Text Game Materials\
	Cover.jpg
	Myth.i7x
	Release\
		...
	ReleaseNotes.rtf
	Shadowrun Matrix.i7x
	Small Cover.jpg
	Spellcasting.i7x
[/code][/spoiler]

My Cover.jpg is custom, as is my Small Cover.jpg.

Make sure you capitalize your filenames the same way!  That could be your issue...  I can't tell because I don't have this info.  By the way you can select a list of files and "copy -> paste" into a text document, add tabs in, then paste into the forum reply form so we can look at what you have.  I indented and added \ to show folders....

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3106&start=20#p33745
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Referring to the player in the third person
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-03-18 15:29:59

Many cool gimmicks can be implemented atop the dissociation between player and PC no doubt.  I love all kinds, both the blank PC style and fully fleshed out PC's downright to unreliable narrators and narrators with style such as Violet.

I think part of the fun with role-playing is precisely getting in someone else's shoes rather than being same old me in elven shoes.  Second person works best to me.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665&start=0#p33746
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A critical IF vocabulary
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-03-18 15:39:39

[quote]And frankly, I'd love to see a "Leanest Most Badass Killer Lean Prose Which is Very Lean And Not all Frickin' Wordy And Flabby And On-And-On But Just Gets Right to the GOOD STUFF Like Only Good Writing Can" category, both because that's something I value, and because I love ironic titles for things.

[/quote]

I suggest that this one might be called the Hemingway award.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4666&start=0#p33747
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: nY: "Keuzevrijheid en autoriteit"
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2012-03-18 15:45:08

[quote="Trumgottist"]Those of us who can't understand Dutch that well can read it with the aid of Google: [url=http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&js=n&u=http%3A%2F%2Fny-web.be%2Flong-hard-looks%2Fkeuzevrijheid-en-autoriteit.html&act=url]The article translated.[/url][/quote]
If you have a sufficiently broad concept of "read", of course.  [emote];)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=90#p33748
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-18 16:01:52

[quote="ChrisC"][quote="maga"]
But having a list split out by award would be super-annoying to read.[/quote]
Yeah, even if duplicate entries were removed across multiple categories.

It might be interesting to support the per-category listing as one display option, with the full, undivided list as a default -- if it were procedurally generated based on votes, and listed each nominee only in the category for which it was nominated for the most awards, that might provide some gentle suggestion for voting.[/quote]
Yeah. Hm. I'm not sure what 'the category for which it was nominated for the most awards' means, but I think the way to present this would be to have the RSS/mailing list mention each game only once, when it's first listed for anything (so that you don't get extra attention by listing yourself in one category per month), then have the site list all games in a table with category columns marked off, so that you can easily check whether [i]Stiffy in Love[/i] has been put up for Best Supplemental Materials yet. And, uh, maybe the text-entry categories in a separate list. Presenting mixed data sets is a pain.

Another thing that's occurred to me about a year-long list-compiling round: it could be conducted on a wholly experimental basis. If mid-January rolled around and the list looked totally unrepresentative, it could be replaced with the old list, no harm done.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4667&start=0#p33749
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: While clause for activities on values
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2012-03-18 16:49:15

This compiles but doesn't do the Right Thing (specifically, the showme gives nothing instead of yourself):
[code]Considering something is an activity on things.

After printing the name of something while considering a thing (called X):
	Say paragraph break;
	Showme X.
	
Before looking:
	Begin the considering activity with the player;
	If handling the considering activity with the player:
		Say "Handling it!";
		Say the player;
		Say "Handled!";
	End the considering activity with the player.[/code]

This won't compile at all:
[code]Considering something is an activity on scenes.

After printing the name of something while considering a scene (called X):
	Say paragraph break;
	Showme X.
	
Before looking:
	Begin the considering activity with the entire game;
	If handling the considering activity with the entire game:
		Say "Handling it!";
		Say the player;
		Say "Handled!";
	End the considering activity with the entire game.[/code]

Is this supposed to work?  If not, how can I achieve the same effect?  Or am I just missing something incredibly obvious?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4664&start=0#p33750
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with Cover Art
User: HanonO / DateTime: 2012-03-18 17:11:52

I have:
[code]
Release along along with cover art.  Release along with an interpreter.  Release along with a website.[/code]

I tried deleting the previous release folder and trying again.  Only possible thing...my art program exports as ".jpeg" which I keep renaming to .jpg.  Possible reason?

I zapped inform and am reinstalling.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4664&start=0#p33751
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with Cover Art
User: HanonO / DateTime: 2012-03-18 17:17:47

Reinstall of inform, and deleted the materials folder, ran the code, dropped the jpgs into the materials folder, ran and got default pictures for some reason. 

Also tried .png...no avail.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4664&start=0#p33752
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with Cover Art
User: HanonO / DateTime: 2012-03-18 17:30:48

file hierarchy

[code]Gig
Gig
Gig Materials
	Cover.jpg [right one]
	Release
		Cover.jpg [default]
		Gig.gblorb
		index.html
		interpreter
			dialog.css
			Gig.gblorb.js
			glkote.css
			glkote.min.js
			quixe.min.js
			waiting.gif
		play.html
		Small Cover.jpg [default]
		style.css
	Small Cover.jpg  [right one]
Gig.z8
giglogo[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4655&start=0#p33754
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Concepts for secret unlockable and auto-timed game conte
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-03-18 17:41:52

The Inform 7 IDE [spoiler]has different "compiled"/"failed to compile" images on some holidays, at least including Christmas (and Easter, maybe?  I remember thinking they were kind of Christian-centric).  They are pretty cute.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4667&start=0#p33755
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: While clause for activities on values
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-03-18 17:43:23

Looks like two bugs here.  The obvious one is that X isn't being set, and either the compiler should reject the code or compile it to do so.  Another is in the implicit test that the object being considered is a thing---that test is being applied to the something whose name is being printed, which need not be the something under considerations.  I don't see either in Mantis, so if you could file a couple new reports, that would be great.

Unfortunately, I'm not coming up with any simple workarounds, but here's a moderately clean one:[code]There is a room.

Considering something is an activity on things.

The object of consideration is an object that varies.
The considering activity has an object called the displaced object of consideration.

Before considering something (called X):
	now the displaced object of consideration is the object of consideration;
	now the object of consideration is X.
After considering something:
	now the object of consideration is the displaced object of consideration.

After printing the name of something while the considering activity is going on and the object of consideration is a thing:
	say paragraph break;
	showme the printed name of the object of consideration.

Before looking:
	begin the considering activity with the player;
	if handling the considering activity with the player:
		say "Handling it!";
		say the player;
		say "Handled!";
	end the considering activity with the player.[/code]
Note that I changed the showme to show the printed name and avoid an infinite loop.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4664&start=0#p33756
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with Cover Art
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-03-18 17:49:10

[quote="HanonO"][code]Release along along with cover art.[/code][/quote]
The word ``along'' is duplicated.  Is that it?  (If it is, it would be good to find out while the compiler didn't catch it.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4669&start=0#p33757
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: 2 Noob Questions
User: Zork / DateTime: 2012-03-18 17:53:47

Hi all. I'm learning how to use Inform right now while building my first tiny, modest game. Two things I don't understand:

1. How can I make an NPC stop a player from going into the next room unless he is given an object? For example, you have to give your ticket to the man at the ticket booth before you are allowed north to the Theater.

2. How can you combine/repair objects with other objects to get them to work? For example, putting a battery in a flashlight before the flashlight will light up?

Can someone just point me towards the code behind these concepts, or maybe a tutorial?

Thanks in advance.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4667&start=0#p33758
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: While clause for activities on values
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2012-03-18 18:04:05

I would note that the more subtle issue [i]also[/i] pops up if there is not "something" in the after rule:
[code]After listing contents while considering a scene (called X):
	Say paragraph break;
	Showme X.
[/code]

In other words, it's not mixing the type checking up with the something, it's pulling it out of thin air.

EDIT: Issues reported as [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=884]884[/url] and [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=885]885[/url] in Mantis.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4662&start=0#p33759
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Another Vorple Question
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-18 18:17:04

[quote="Dannii"]You get 5MB of localStorage data, and 50MB of IndexedDB which should be enough for many Undum saves. Except they're both messy to deal with. I'm planning to offer Parchment's storage library to Undum, once I've finished writing it.[/quote]
Interesting. I found a page (<a class="postlink" href="http://caniuse.com/indexeddb">http://caniuse.com/indexeddb</a>) that suggests IndexedDB won't work at all on iOS Safari or on Android. To me, that would be a good reason to avoid using it.

I've also learned (unless I didn't understand what I read) that a game/story save-point stored in localStorage can't be exported to any other browser. Which makes sense. It's a definite limitation for IF purposes, but one that many users won't even notice, unless they're reading a given story at different times on their home and work computers, for instance.

It seems that using localStorage rather than a cookie ought to work well for Undum. But yes, there are details to be considered. For instance, does the user get to name the save-point before storing it? 

I wish I knew enough Javascript to be able to help with this project. The roadblock for me is, I'm reluctant to spend a lot of time studying Javascript until I can be pretty certain that readers/players WILL be able to store and reload multiple story save-points. If that capability never becomes real, then any time I put into studying Javascript would be wasted, as I wouldn't end up being able to use Undum.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=50#p33760
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: Merlin Fisher / DateTime: 2012-03-18 18:26:29

I just took a peek at this game the other day.  I had not seen the previous releases.

intial reactions:
Feedback from my browser is slow.  There is a delay of 2-3 seconds between clicking a button and seeing a response from the game.  This makes it frustratingly slow to play.  The button clicking felt very tedious, especially when it came to things I do repeatedly, like looking around (pretty much required to interact with the environment in this game).  I am using the latest version of Firefox and Windows 7.

Maybe once you've looked around a single time, there should be buttons available to interact with each item in the vicinity.  Rather than having to look around, click a hyperlinked word, and then interact with it every time.

There are a couple of bugs, or annoying bits that I would call bugs.  Specifically:
[spoiler]the Blades can only be accessed from High on the Ridge, and they are used down in the valley, several steps away.  This wouldn't be a problem if they didn't melt away to nothing several turns after being summoned, or if I didn't need to summon the Hunter to follow the tracks every time.  It was frustrating having to go back and forth to get the Hunter, the knives, and me all in the right place at the same moment.  Since it's such a short game, I would suggest having the knives and harp just stay put in the player's inventory once they're acquired.

Once the hunter has pointed out tracks and helped me follow them, I should be able to follow my own tracks back and forth from there.  

In the Wastes, "Follow the bear tracks" and "follow the new bear tracks" give different results, which was confusing.  (The former takes you back to your house, the latter takes you on to the icy area.)

I expected to be able to pick up the cooked seal meat, and thought it was strange that it remained "too hot to touch" long after I put the fire out.  This made me stuck for a little while, since I thought the bear wanted the meat.

When the seal meat is in the pot and the player carries the pot, you can't interact with the seal meat; you have to put the pot back on the hook and THEN try to get the meat.[/spoiler]

The plot reminds me a lot of the book [i]Julie of the Wolves,[/i] with a couple twists from Norse mythology.  The ending scene feels a little dissonant compared with the tone of the rest of the game, but maybe that was the point.  I ran through the game twice, found two slightly different endings, but I would've been more impressed if
[spoiler]destroying the port had some greater effect on the text, or giving the amulet to Father had some sort of effect.[/spoiler]  That said, I did like the story and setting.  It was well written.

Having commands limited to buttons was good in one way: it made the rune business very clear and not difficult.  I was also pleased to find that you can play two runes in any order, and they'll still work.  That may be unrealistic (depends on the language syntax, I guess) but it certainly makes the puzzles easier.

It would be nice if certain tricks were automated after the first time doing them successfully.  For instance, [spoiler]the button that says "Summon the Withered Tree" could automatically play the 2 runes, look up, and summon in one click after you've proven you know the Tree's rune name.[/spoiler]  Repeating the same sequences of 3-4 actions many times got tedious.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4669&start=0#p33761
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 Noob Questions
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2012-03-18 18:27:48

First one, I'm assuming a very simple world model:
[code]Instead of going north in the presence of the usher when the usher does not carry the ticket:
	Say "'Your ticket sir?' the usher asks."
The block giving rule is not listed in any rulebook.[/code]

Second one should be in the recipe book, example 139, under chapter 10.7.

Note that the second one is not a "noob" question in any sense of the word; it's rather involved, actually!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4667&start=0#p33762
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: While clause for activities on values
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-03-18 18:35:00

Erm, I got that diagnosis wrong; printing the name is an activity on things, and the kind check I was looking at was coming from there.  Sorry about that.

[i]Edit: I've changed [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=884]report 884[/url] accordingly.  Let me know if it doesn't look okay.[/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4662&start=0#p33763
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Another Vorple Question
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-03-18 18:41:00

[quote="Jim Aikin"]it's [i]essential [/i]that the user be able to store multiple save points and restore to any of them at any time. Without this feature, a branching story (which is one of the main things Undum is apparently designed to produce) becomes an absolute nightmare for your poor hapless reader.[/quote]
FWIW, as a reader, I don't give a fig about having multiple saves. I can count on one hand the number of times I've wanted to keep track of multiple saves in a text game (or any game, really).

However, that doesn't keep me from agreeing that Undum's save system needs revamping. My main problem with it is that it doesn't allow for randomness (or for any other state change that doesn't come from the player clicking a link).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4669&start=0#p33764
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 Noob Questions
User: Zork / DateTime: 2012-03-18 18:47:15

Thanks for the quick response!  In regards to this...



[code]Instead of going north in the presence of the usher when the usher does not carry the ticket:
	Say "'Your ticket sir?' the usher asks."
The block giving rule is not listed in any rulebook.[/code]

what would the next few lines be?  How do I make him accept the ticket in return for passage?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4669&start=0#p33765
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 Noob Questions
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-03-18 18:56:42

[quote="RB 7.4, Example: Bribery"]As it happens, correct behavior is built into the GIVE command once "block giving" is turned off, so we do not have to write a replacement report or carry-out rule.[/quote]
So nothing, unless you want to add flavor text.  You might want to have a look at Section 7.4 of the Recipe Book.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4660&start=10#p33766
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: I'm sticking with TADS. - TADS3.1
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-03-18 19:15:11

[quote="Alex"][quote="RealNC"]Multi-methods. This allows calling specific implementations of methods based on the types of multiple objects, not just the object the method is called on.[/quote]Could you give an example?[/quote]
You can find info about it here:
<a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_dispatch">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_dispatch</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/sysman/multmeth.htm">http://tads.org/t3doc/doc/sysman/multmeth.htm</a>

[quote][quote]I'm getting tired, I'll stop here [emote]:P[/emote][/quote]Phew, me too [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
I forgot to mention sense passing (smells, sounds) and materials (transparent, opaque) [emote]:mrgreen:[/emote]

Anyway, this only answers the original question of what TADS does that Quest doesn't. It doesn't touch on how important those things are to people and whether they're worth the complexity they add to the system. The TADS 3 learning curve is quite infamous by now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4662&start=0#p33767
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Another Vorple Question
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-18 19:18:13

[quote="ektemple"]FWIW, as a reader, I don't give a fig about having multiple saves. I can count on one hand the number of times I've wanted to keep track of multiple saves in a text game (or any game, really).

However, that doesn't keep me from agreeing that Undum's save system needs revamping. My main problem with it is that it doesn't allow for randomness (or for any other state change that doesn't come from the player clicking a link).[/quote]
Even so, Undum's current save mechanism might restrict you more than you'd like. Unless I'm misunderstanding something (and I don't think I am) you can't rewind even to ONE stored save point, other than by quitting and then reloading the page. If you do that, the game will automatically scroll forward to the save point by loading the cookie.

If a story contains two branches that may be significant (and as a player, you won't know which branch points may be significant), you will be unable to restore to before the first branch point once you've saved the second branch point. Since Undum games will inevitably be light on puzzles (as there will never be any commands that are not displayed as links in the UI), branching will assume more importance in terms of the reader's experience of interactivity.

I understand what you're saying about randomness. There _is_ a random number generator, but I believe it's seeded during your initial run-through of a game, and doesn't change after that, thus insuring that the same set of commands always leads to the same result.

Things like NPCs who pursue their own quasi-random agendas would be very difficult to create in Undum, because, indeed, the story state is saved as a pure list of user commands. NPCs don't exist as objects at all. (Neither do rooms, for that matter.) But I'm pretty sure that, given a decent save/restore mechanism using localStorage, one could create an NPC object whose state could be stored as part of the database. It wouldn't be stored unless the author wrote the code, and that would mean parsing the data while restoring it, but I'm pretty sure it could be done.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4662&start=0#p33768
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Another Vorple Question
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-03-18 19:59:14

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Undum's current save mechanism might restrict you more than you'd like. Unless I'm misunderstanding something (and I don't think I am) you can't rewind even to ONE stored save point, other than by quitting and then reloading the page. If you do that, the game will automatically scroll forward to the save point by loading the cookie.

If a story contains two branches that may be significant (and as a player, you won't know which branch points may be significant), you will be unable to restore to before the first branch point once you've saved the second branch point. Since Undum games will inevitably be light on puzzles (as there will never be any commands that are not displayed as links in the UI), branching will assume more importance in terms of the reader's experience of interactivity.[/quote]
I think everything you've said is correct, except the part about this setup being more restrictive than I'd like it to be. In a game of relatively "pure" branching narrative, player commitment to a given branch is where a good deal of the emotional engagement comes from, in my opinion--it all becomes pretty boring when there's nothing at stake and I can just rewind to see what would have happened had I made a different choice. The commercial concerns doing branching narrative ([url=http://tinmangames.com.au/blog/]Tin Man Games[/url], Choice of Games, Echo Bazaar) are all set up as Undum is, with a single save game and no way of backtracking. I feel like that's the right choice. 

[quote="Jim Aikin"]There _is_ a random number generator, but I believe it's seeded during your initial run-through of a game, and doesn't change after that, thus insuring that the same set of commands always leads to the same result.[/quote]
That's interesting, I didn't realize that. Replaying choices rather than saving state still doesn't seem flexible enough to my mind...

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Things like NPCs who pursue their own quasi-random agendas would be very difficult to create in Undum, because, indeed, the story state is saved as a pure list of user commands. NPCs don't exist as objects at all. (Neither do rooms, for that matter.) But I'm pretty sure that, given a decent save/restore mechanism using localStorage, one could create an NPC object whose state could be stored as part of the database. It wouldn't be stored unless the author wrote the code, and that would mean parsing the data while restoring it, but I'm pretty sure it could be done.[/quote]
Yeah, what I'm thinking of doing would definitely be something more like Undum++, with at least some game entities represented as program objects... The chances of my getting to it before a major life-change that's coming this summer are pretty slim, though...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665&start=0#p33769
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A critical IF vocabulary
User: emshort / DateTime: 2012-03-18 20:02:02

[quote="Biep"]The floor is open - don't hesitate to offer vague notions, as in "Well, there is this quality that some IF has, but it is hard to describe.  X has it, Y doesn't, and it has to do with Z." Someone else may understand what you mean, and together we may come to an accurate description and find a good name for it.
Likewise, don't hesitate to bring up vocabulary already in use, whether to recommend it or to disagree with it.  We might end up with a catalogue of useful notions.[/quote]

The quality of very naturally leading the player to be curious about particular interactive objects, without the player feeling hit over the head. (Some work by Ryan Veeder and J. Robinson Wheeler comes to mind; Zarf is also good at this.)

The quality of going beyond the world model, inviting the player to respond to something about the prose itself. (Interactive poetry, Ad Verbum, Earl Grey, Pale Blue Light, any game that asks a rhetorical question and then has a response if you answer it, etc.)

Ultra-distilled prose, brief but very punchy.

I don't have special terms for these qualities.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4669&start=0#p33770
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 Noob Questions
User: Zork / DateTime: 2012-03-18 20:07:06

Wow!  Thanks for the quick responses.  I used the wrong example: instead of a flashlight with a battery, what I mean is, combining two items to create a new item.  Example:

>Use stick with rubber band.

You now have a slingshot.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4662&start=10#p33771
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Another Vorple Question
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-18 20:08:36

[quote="ektemple"]I think everything you've said is correct, except the part about this setup being more restrictive than I'd like it to be. In a game of relatively "pure" branching narrative, player commitment to a given branch is where a good deal of the emotional engagement comes from, in my opinion--it all becomes pretty boring when there's nothing at stake and I can just rewind to see what would have happened had I made a different choice. [/quote]
I've never played that type of game. Speaking theoretically, though, I would think that if a story depends for its emotional engagement on the feeling, "OMG, it would be such a hassle to start over at the beginning and go through all this again!", that's a pretty artificial form of emotional engagement. It's really [i]quite [/i]different from emotional engagement with the story, isn't it? If I'm emotionally engaged with the story -- the characters, the drama, and so on -- I would probably be [i]more [/i]likely to want to go back and find out what happens if I [i]don't[/i] tell Marcia that Bruce is cheating on her. (Or whatever.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665&start=0#p33772
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A critical IF vocabulary
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-18 20:13:58

[quote]Gastronomy is criticised in other terms than music, and rightly so.[/quote]

Unless someone has fed me hummus. At that point, the overlap can be alarming.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4655&start=0#p33773
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Concepts for secret unlockable and auto-timed game ..
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2012-03-18 20:17:18

[quote="Comazombie"]And as usual I will check for periods of time and not just points in time. You know, from IFComp October 1st to November 15th the game behaves like this. And from November 16th (actually November 22nd in the case of Dead Hotel) the game behaves like that.[/quote]
That's very interesting.  It opens the door to add details in the game depending on what season or time of year it is in real life.  That could be cool in a very simulationist kind of game, like an RPG.  Of course, the setting would probably have to be a specific place on Earth, because seasons and weather are not the same everywhere.  It could be used for other details besides weather, of course, such as cultural activities like holidays.

I wouldn't have guessed that [i]Dead Hotel[/i] rotated it's behavior based on the date like that.  I assumed it was more of a one-time switch.

[quote="maga"]So, before you add time-specific easter eggs, you need to think about making a game that will keep players around for long enough that they have a chance of finding them. This means a very large game. Otherwise, you need your easter eggs to be accessible (if not necessarily easy to find) at all times.[/quote]
I'm imagining a game as  long and ambitious as [i]Blue Lacuna[/i] that would add subtle details based on the real-world time.  Or maybe the seasons in-game would advance with the date, making the in-game adventure take as long as the player needs to finish the game.  That would be incredibly difficult to implement, of course, but it's a pretty cool idea.  However, I think short games can still make use of real-world time, especially if based on long periods of time, as Emilian described above in reference to [i]Dead Hotel[/i].

I think this is a good discussion.  We could be on to something potentially groundbreaking.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4662&start=10#p33774
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Another Vorple Question
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-03-18 20:18:20

Undum already does uses localStorage, but it doesn't always work when you're running from file:. But Parchment's storage system will attempt to use flash in those cases.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4662&start=10#p33775
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Another Vorple Question
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-18 20:19:06

[quote="ektemple"]In a game of relatively "pure" branching narrative, player commitment to a given branch is where a good deal of the emotional engagement comes from, in my opinion--it all becomes pretty boring when there's nothing at stake and I can just rewind to see what would have happened had I made a different choice. The commercial concerns doing branching narrative ([url=http://tinmangames.com.au/blog/]Tin Man Games[/url], Choice of Games, Echo Bazaar) are all set up as Undum is, with a single save game and no way of backtracking. I feel like that's the right choice. [/quote]
CYOA in general places more of an emphasis on continuous narrative flow, which is broken up by backtracking and restores. Too, a CYOA game will have far fewer player commands than an IF of comparable size, chosen from a much smaller range of commands (and probably involving less in the way of puzzle-like obstructions), so finding your way back to a particular spot is vastly less annoying. 

So, yeah, multiple saves would be a pleasant enough feature, but one I doubt I would ever use as a player.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4669&start=0#p33776
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 Noob Questions
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2012-03-18 20:31:15

[code]Instead of tying the rubber band to the stick:
	Remove the noun from play;
	Remove the second noun from play;
	Now the player carries the slingshot;
	Say "You now have a slingshot."
Instead of tying the stick to the rubber band:
	Try tying the rubber band to the stick.
Instead of inserting the rubber band into the stick:
	Try tying the rubber band to the stick.
Instead of inserting the stick into the rubber band:
	Try tying the rubber band to the stick.
Understand "combine/use [something] with [something]" as tying it to.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665&start=0#p33777
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A critical IF vocabulary
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-18 20:31:28

The [url=http://ifwiki.org/index.php/Triangle_of_identities]triangle of identities[/url] is something that IF is uniquely concerned with. (Though if Google Translate serves me right, Dr. Gijsbers suggests it's more of a lop-sided quadrilateral.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4662&start=10#p33778
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Another Vorple Question
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-18 20:32:01

[quote="Dannii"]Undum already does uses localStorage, but it doesn't always work when you're running from file:. But Parchment's storage system will attempt to use flash in those cases.[/quote]
You're saying things that I'm not equipped to understand, unfortunately. If it doesn't always work, does that mean the Save button sometimes fails when the html file, the undum.js file, and the game .js file are all stored on the local machine? And if so, is that a known problem with localStorage, or is there something specific about how Undum uses localStorage (such as not throwing an exception???) that is not perfectly designed?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4670&start=0#p33779
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: The Ice Guardian has now been ported to Android devices
User: Mark Eaton / DateTime: 2012-03-18 20:50:04

A third game written by my father, Barrie Eaton, has now been released to Android devices.

This text adventure game was originally released in 1991 in the U.K.

Like Moonbase 3 and Mystery of the Dark Manor, this uses the same engine to maintain a consistent user experience.

The demo links here: <a class="postlink" href="https://market.android.com/details?id=Guardian.demo">https://market.android.com/details?id=Guardian.demo</a>

And, if you like it, the full release is here: <a class="postlink" href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=Guardian.Complete">https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... n.Complete</a>

Hope people have as much fun playing it as I did converting it for Android  [emote]:-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4667&start=0#p33780
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: While clause for activities on values
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2012-03-18 20:50:09

884 is good.  Its example is possibly slightly more elaborate than it should be.  Right now the "leftmost" activity is "printing the name of something", but maybe we could use something simpler such as "Printing a refusal to act in the dark" (since that doesn't have a basis).  But I'm nitpicking.  It's fine as it is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4662&start=10#p33781
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Another Vorple Question
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-03-18 21:23:55

[quote="Jim Aikin"][quote="ektemple"]In a game of relatively "pure" branching narrative, player commitment to a given branch is where a good deal of the emotional engagement comes from, in my opinion--it all becomes pretty boring when there's nothing at stake and I can just rewind to see what would have happened had I made a different choice. [/quote]
I've never played that type of game.[/quote]
No? Excepting Echo Bazaar (the appeal of which I find hard to grasp), these are the types of games that Undum is designed to help you write. The Tin Man games are very overtly tied to the physical form of the paper CYOA gamebooks they are based on, but Choice Of games have very similar affordances to Undum games. You might want to check some out before you starting writing yourself; I think that there are both positive and negative lessons to be learned from them. You might also want to explore ChoiceScript, which while it produces HTML/Javascript games that are visually much cruder than Undum, is more friendly to authors.

[quote="Jim Aikin"]Speaking theoretically, though, I would think that if a story depends for its emotional engagement on the feeling, "OMG, it would be such a hassle to start over at the beginning and go through all this again!", that's a pretty artificial form of emotional engagement. It's really [i]quite [/i]different from emotional engagement with the story, isn't it? If I'm emotionally engaged with the story -- the characters, the drama, and so on -- I would probably be [i]more [/i]likely to want to go back and find out what happens if I [i]don't[/i] tell Marcia that Bruce is cheating on her. (Or whatever.)[/quote]
From my perpective, there are a couple of errors of emphasis here. First, the player's feeling generally isn't "What a hassle to have to start all over again!!!" but simply "I can't just press the back button here--I've got to live with my choice." There's a big difference. 

More importantly, when you're discussing emotional engagement, what you're describing seems to be the player's interest in the author's edifice [i]as a whole[/i] (a natural perspective for an author to take), whereas I'm talking about the player's engagement with any [i]particular[/i] choice. If I know that I can easily zip right back to the previous choice (or farther), then the choice doesn't make me anxious/expectant in the same way that it does if I know the back button is there. It matters more when I can't [i]easily[/i] undo it.

(Interesting shifts in the type of choice-level engagement can come about if we tweak valences a bit. For instance, Tin Man's games (which feature permanent death, sometimes quite cruelly delivered) have different difficulty levels. The novice mode gives you 10 "bookmarks"--save points that you can roll back to at any time. But these are limited, and you can't remove a bookmark once you've placed it. So now you're still anxious about choice, but part of the nervous energy is now also about strategy--is this a place where I might need to return to? This works with Tin Man games because of the high chance that you could die outright; I'm not sure it would be a good thing in a less cruel, game-y work.)

There may well be a place for a multiple save system. But I think I'd only want to use it once I'd finished a work. "What would have happened if..." is a question whose answer is most satisfying when you already have a sense for the shape of the work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665&start=0#p33782
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A critical IF vocabulary
User: George / DateTime: 2012-03-18 21:29:48

[quote="emshort"]
Ultra-distilled prose, brief but very punchy.[/quote]

Perhaps: 

[quote]
[b]Eyeball Kick[/b]

That perfect, telling detail that creates an instant visual image. The ideal of certain postmodern schools of SF is to achieve a "crammed prose" full of "eyeball kicks." (Rudy Rucker)
[/quote]

Via <a class="postlink" href="http://www.critters.org/turkeycity.html">http://www.critters.org/turkeycity.html</a>.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4669&start=0#p33783
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 Noob Questions
User: Zork / DateTime: 2012-03-18 21:39:44

OK.  That helped.  Last question: I want to create an item called Lit Pipe.  To do this, the player must get the Pipe, Tobacco and Matches.  He must put the tobacco in the pipe and light it with the match.  Then, the item will become "Lit Pipe."  How do I do all of that?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4662&start=10#p33784
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Another Vorple Question
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-18 22:10:17

[quote="ektemple"]Excepting Echo Bazaar (the appeal of which I find hard to grasp), these are the types of games that Undum is designed to help you write. The Tin Man games are very overtly tied to the physical form of the paper CYOA gamebooks they are based on, but Choice Of games have very similar affordances to Undum games. You might want to check some out before you starting writing yourself; I think that there are both positive and negative lessons to be learned from them. You might also want to explore ChoiceScript, which while it produces HTML/Javascript games that are visually much cruder than Undum, is more friendly to authors.[/quote]
Thanks for the suggestions. I have now tried a little of "Choice of the Vampire," I think it was called. Stultifyingly bad -- a mad barrage of cliches, and not the slightest brush with emotional involvement. I did think it was interesting that the player's profile is built up based on the choices he or she makes. Whether that has any actual effect on the story, or whether it's all just tossing in bits of allegedly appropriate detail, I don't know. Nor care.

What interests me about the Undum interface is how it might be subverted in such a way as to implement something closer to IF. I can see that it's designed for CYOA, and that probably explains the Save mechanism. But that's not its most salient characteristic, in my view. Its most salient characteristic is that it's a very, very nice UI. There's really nothing like it in the Inform/TADS universe, a lack that I have bemoaned in the past, to no avail.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4655&start=0#p33785
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Concepts for secret unlockable and auto-timed game conte
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-18 22:15:47

Re: tove; and of course on Easter it's 

[spoiler]an Easter egg.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4669&start=0#p33786
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 Noob Questions
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-18 22:37:19

Here's a reasonably crude implementation:

[code]Smoking Room is a room. 

The pipe is a container in Smoking Room. The tobacco is in Smoking Room. The match is in Smoking Room.
The lit pipe is a thing.

Instead of inserting something into the pipe when the noun is not the tobacco, say "This pipe only holds tobacco."

Lighting it with is an action applying to two things. Understand "burn [something] with [something]" as lighting it with. ["light" is already understood as a synonym for "burn".] 
Instead of lighting something with something, say "You can't light things with [the second noun]."
Instead of lighting something with the match, try burning the noun. 

Instead of burning when the player does not hold the match: say "You need the match to light things."
Instead of burning the tobacco when the player holds the match and the tobacco is not in the pipe: say "[The noun] has to be in a pipe to be lit."
Instead of burning the pipe when the player holds the match and the tobacco is not in the pipe: say "[The noun] doesn't have any tobacco in it."
Instead of burning when (the noun is the pipe or the noun is the tobacco) and the player holds the match and the tobacco is in the pipe:
	say "You light the tobacco-filled pipe.";
	now the lit pipe is in the holder of the pipe;
	remove the tobacco from play;
	remove the pipe from play;
	remove the match from play.
Instead of burning: say "That's not flammable."	[/code]

This relies pretty heavily on the rules applying in the right order -- the "Instead of burning" rule doesn't apply in any of the more specific cases. If you compile this, it's worth going to the "actions" tab of the index and looking at the magnifying glasses next to "burning" and "lighting it with" to see what order the rules are in. There's more on specificity in section 18.18 of the documentation (and if I were a better coder I could probably have made my code better by exploiting specificity more elegantly).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4662&start=10#p33787
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Another Vorple Question
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-03-18 22:53:11

One more recommendation, then: [url=http://bloomengine.com/blink/]Blink[/url], which powered The Binary from the last comp. It's not as pretty out of the box as Undum, but it seems to be designed to produce more IF-like games. The interface is also as sophisticated as that of Undum, and it wouldn't take much CSS tweaking to get it looking just as nice (assuming you can find a good CSS tweaker!). Of course, Blink is not officially released...

Apparently the author is running a fund-raising campaign right now, actually:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.indiegogo.com/Bloomengine-Blink">http://www.indiegogo.com/Bloomengine-Blink</a>

He really should be advertising that here, on Planet-IF, etc....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4671&start=0#p33788
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Procedural content generation in IF?
User: aaronius / DateTime: 2012-03-18 23:20:13

Hi all. I'm trying to think of any IF that's used procedural content generation techniques in any capacity. Other than Kerkerkruip I'm having trouble coming up with anything, although I feel like there are obvious examples I'm overlooking. In general I'm looking for stuff that does more than just random variation, although interesting uses of random variation are nice too. Help?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4662&start=10#p33789
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Another Vorple Question
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-03-18 23:24:29

[quote="Jim Aikin"]You're saying things that I'm not equipped to understand, unfortunately. If it doesn't always work, does that mean the Save button sometimes fails when the html file, the undum.js file, and the game .js file are all stored on the local machine? And if so, is that a known problem with localStorage, or is there something specific about how Undum uses localStorage (such as not throwing an exception???) that is not perfectly designed?[/quote]
It's a browser problem. Certain browsers (Chrome) just hate file:. But I consider file: to be a major target for Inform 7, so I can't ignore it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4671&start=0#p33790
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Procedural content generation in IF?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-03-18 23:25:14

[i]Hunter, In Darkness[/i] randomly generates the map as well as room descriptions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665&start=0#p33791
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A critical IF vocabulary
User: emshort / DateTime: 2012-03-18 23:35:34

Eyeball Kick. I like it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4671&start=0#p33792
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Procedural content generation in IF?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2012-03-18 23:37:32

I'm not quite sure how An Act of Murder works under the hood, but I got the impression that it was randomly combining possible murderers, murder weapons, etc., and then seeding the game space with the appropriate evidence to support the current story in each case.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4671&start=0#p33793
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Procedural content generation in IF?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2012-03-18 23:39:25

[quote="ektemple"][i]Hunter, In Darkness[/i] randomly generates the map as well as room descriptions.[/quote]

The maze in Reliques of Tolti-Aph is also randomly generated and I think randomly sprinkled with contents. (It's been a while since I looked at this, but the code is available, so it should be possible to check up on the details.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4662&start=10#p33794
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Another Vorple Question
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-18 23:43:09

[quote="Jim Aikin"]What interests me about the Undum interface is how it might be subverted in such a way as to implement something closer to IF. I can see that it's designed for CYOA, and that probably explains the Save mechanism. But that's not its most salient characteristic, in my view. Its most salient characteristic is that it's a very, very nice UI. There's really nothing like it in the Inform/TADS universe, a lack that I have bemoaned in the past, to no avail.[/quote]
I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'closer to IF', but I would counsel strongly against using Undum for an IF-shaped narrative (that is, one that's mostly premised on traversing a stable physical map, interacting with objects, and solving puzzles.) I've seen it done in a number of games, and it pretty much always feels like a horrible mismatch; you get all the annoying limitations of CYOA without its particular strengths.

(Even before browser-based games, there were paper gamebooks that, as far as I can tell, were basically attempts to simulate an IF game or a dungeon-crawl RPG by people who didn't know how to code. Playing one is like watching a seal try to crump: sort of charming, but you hate to encourage it.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4671&start=0#p33795
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Procedural content generation in IF?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-18 23:52:34

[quote="aaronius"]Hi all. I'm trying to think of any IF that's used procedural content generation techniques in any capacity.[/quote]

Beyond Zork is the first thing that jumps to mind for me, but that's true in the context of a good many topics [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4671&start=0#p33796
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Procedural content generation in IF?
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-19 00:26:22

I'm fairly sure that the [i]A Bleach of Etiquette[/i] section of [i]When Help Collides[/i] uses procedural generation to establish a number of things, including the PC's potential to develop skills; the core of the game's strategy is working out which, and finding a way to win despite your limitations. (The interaction style is very atypical for IF; it's basically a calendar-arrangement game after the style of [i]Princess Maker[/i], with a very limited IF-ish front-end.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4662&start=10#p33797
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Another Vorple Question
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-19 00:48:07

[quote="maga"]I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'closer to IF', but I would counsel strongly against using Undum for an IF-shaped narrative (that is, one that's mostly premised on traversing a stable physical map, interacting with objects, and solving puzzles.) I've seen it done in a number of games, and it pretty much always feels like a horrible mismatch; you get all the annoying limitations of CYOA without its particular strengths.

(Even before browser-based games, there were paper gamebooks that, as far as I can tell, were basically attempts to simulate an IF game or a dungeon-crawl RPG by people who didn't know how to code. Playing one is like watching a seal try to crump: sort of charming, but you hate to encourage it.)[/quote]
Yeah, I remember gamebooks. They were extremely lame.

Can you give a couple of examples of games that tried to combine IF-style inventory and maps with a different type of interface? I had a look at "The Binary" tonight, and perhaps it qualifies. But it was the narrative that failed to engage me -- that and the physical appearance of the interface, which I felt was squeaky rather than elegant.

I'm not sure what you mean by the "particular strengths" of CYOA. That's probably just my innate snobbishness shining through, but I can't think of any strengths offhand.

It's clear that puzzles in an Undum story would be easy or nonexistent ... although it would be quite feasible to implement story branches where the reader gets killed or just never encounters the meat of the tale, which I supposed counts as a puzzle. You could easily create secondary objects that would only show up when one examined a primary object that's mentioned in the main text (a brass key lying in the dirt beside a potted palm, to give a hackneyed example). That hardly qualifies as a puzzle, but it does require that the reader be paying attention.

Branching conversation topics (as in "Galatea," which I guess most people consider IF) would work quite well, I think.

It's also clear that there would be little need for a physical map. The PC could wander quite freely from one situation to another. That's very freeing for the narrative. The movement from "room" to "room" in IF is a rather stilted, artificial process that hampers the narrative flow, though experienced players glide past it.

Trying to create a complete IF-style inventory system would be a nightmare, because you (the author) really don't want the reader dropping things here and there on a whim. But having a small inventory that's listed in a box in the sidebar, with a pop-up menu for each item (look at the key / use the key / give the key to Susan) that was dynamically constructed based on the situation (in this case, whether Susan is present) should be manageable at the code level. I'm curious whether you think this would be "a horrible mismatch."

I really would like to know more about why you feel this way! If I'm misjudging the potential of the medium (that is, the Undum-style text medium), I'd rather know about it now than after I spend three months writing something that doesn't work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=90#p33798
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2012-03-19 00:51:14

[quote="maga"]To establish the list of eligible games (from which Round 1 votes are drawn), allow year-long open nomination.
An advantage over the IFDB-only approach is that it could also be used to better determine the field of (what are now) the text-entry categories. It'd also give us more opportunity to vet the list (for things released in the wrong year, or explicitly incomplete, or that are actually match-three Flash games). A disadvantage is that we'd have to do more work to publicize the change in order for it to work as planned.[/quote]

For the text-entry categories, I think this makes sense. For the game categories, IMO, IFDB is better. Submitting yourself to IFDB doesn't mean that you think you're awesome; you're merely declaring that your game exists. It requires less of a mental hurdle of self-promotion.

I don't see how the open list would provide more vetting opportunity than IFDB. IFDB already has an RSS feed, whose results are highlighted on the IFDB home page.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3414&start=0#p33799
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Git and Windows Glk updates
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2012-03-19 01:28:21

As Zarf released the Glk 0.7.4 spec a little while ago, there are related new versions of the following:

* Git (Iain Merrick's fast Glulx interpreter) 1.3.0, which fixes a bug in the dispatch layer, and a bug to do with the memory heap when restoring a saved game.

* Windows Glk library 1.44, which supports all the new functionality in the Glk 0.7.4 specification.

* New executable builds of Windows Glulxe and Windows Git, which are the latest Glulxe and Git interpreters built against the latest Windows Glk library. Unless you're actually involved in writing interpreters this will be what you want - these can be downloaded from the IF-Archive:
[url]http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXprogrammingXglulxXinterpretersXglulxe.html[/url]
[url]http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXprogrammingXglulxXinterpretersXgit.html[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4672&start=0#p33800
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Zarfian Forgiveness in Choice of Games
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2012-03-19 01:41:51

I'm finally doing the legwork to put together IFDB pages for the games available from [url=http://www.choiceofgames.com/]Choice of Games[/url]: [url=http://www.choiceofgames.com/dragon/]Choice of the Dragon[/url], [url=http://www.choiceofgames.com/broadsides]Choice of Broadsides[/url], [url=http://www.choiceofgames.com/romance/]Choice of Romance[/url], and [url=http://www.choiceofgames.com/vampire/]Choice of the Vampire[/url].

I find myself a bit stumped at the question about [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/help-forgiveness]Zarfian Forgiveness[/url].

Let's focus on Broadsides. It is possible to die in Broadsides, which IMO automatically means that it's not "Merciful," though it is impossible to get "stuck," in the sense that you're unable to make the plot progress. Furthermore, the game doesn't have an UNDO feature, which maybe disqualifies it from being Polite; [i]all[/i] actions are irrevocable.

We went to some effort to guarantee that it's impossible to die early on in the game; no single action can cause the main character's death (or cashiering or other bad endings). To find yourself in a no-good-ending state in the last chapter, you'd have to have failed at (almost?) every earlier chapter earlier in the game.

But no one of those failures are damning, so it's never "obvious" that any one of them is a fatal mistake. So, on a fairly literal reading of Zarfian Forgiveness, Broadsides is Cruel. But that just doesn't ring true to me; our automated tests show that you can get a non-death ending most of the time just by playing at [i]random[/i].

We also tried to guarantee that even the death endings are pretty cool, so even the "bad" endings feel fun.

So what are we, anyway? IMO, our game [i]feels[/i] Polite, in spirit.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4672&start=0#p33801
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Zarfian Forgiveness in Choice of Games
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2012-03-19 01:52:41

Well, wait, re-reading again, since every action is obviously irreversible, I think Broadsides is just Tough, not Cruel. I guess I can live with that, but it still doesn't sit right with me.

Our games are not hard to win; we tell you when you've lost points. We just don't tell you whether you've lost so many points that the game is unwinnable.

Then again, perhaps I'm wrongly conflating Forgiveness with a "difficulty rating." Many text adventures are difficult to win because they are unforgiving; some are difficult to win even when they guarantee that the game is always winnable.

Does a game automatically upgrade to Cruel if there's just one rare action that renders the game secretly unwinnable, even if the game is guaranteed to be winnable if you don't perform that rare action?

What if the game is supposed to be guaranteed to be winnable, but the author introduces a bug that can get you stuck? Can you be Cruel by accident?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4672&start=0#p33802
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Zarfian Forgiveness in Choice of Games
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-19 02:05:11

[quote="dfabulich"]Our games are not hard to win [...]Then again, perhaps I'm wrongly conflating Forgiveness with a "difficulty rating." [/quote]

I think you may be, a a bit. As I understand it, Zarfian "cruelty" is deliberately very [i]separate [/i]from difficulty.

[quote]Does a game automatically upgrade to Cruel if there's just one rare action that renders the game secretly unwinnable, even if the game is guaranteed to be winnable if you don't perform that rare action?[/quote]

Dunno. I've asked similar questions in the past (on Usenet) and the grey areas were left feeling pretty grey. I suppose they're meant to be.

[quote]What if the game is supposed to be guaranteed to be winnable, but the author introduces a bug that can get you stuck? Can you be Cruel by accident?[/quote]

Prior discussions on this subject have been far clearer: Cruelty isn't about bugs, at all.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=40#p33803
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: David J Prokopetz / DateTime: 2012-03-19 02:35:35

I've run into something that's got me stumped. Consider the following:

[code]The Red Room is a room.

The Green Room is a room. It is west of the Red Room.

The Wooden Door is a door. It is west of the Green Room and east of the Blue Room.

The Blue Room is a room. 

The player is in the Red Room.

After deciding the scope for the player:
	place the Wooden Door in scope;[/code]

In the above example, why does "enter door" work when I'm in the Red Room? Is reachability not checked for doors?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4672&start=0#p33804
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Zarfian Forgiveness in Choice of Games
User: Merlin Fisher / DateTime: 2012-03-19 02:41:47

In games, the difference between a death ending and a non-death bad ending is mostly cosmetic.  Either way, the game is over and you lost (or didn't win).  So, if it's not possible to die but still possible to get stuck in a bad ending (eg, prison), then that raises it a notch or two on the Zarfian cruelty scale.

If the bad ending [i]prematurely[/i] ends the game (before the storyline has finished unfolding, that is), then I'd say it's completely equivalent to death in game terms, even if your character doesn't die.  If the bad ending comes at the completion of the story, then it's not exactly death, but not exactly fair if it's easy to wind up at that ending.

I would rate those "choice of..." games as fully Cruel, because there is no ability to undo actions, and the negative consequences of your actions can show up many turns after you've made a choice, with little warning.  To "do over" a bad choice, you'd have to play the entire game over again from the start, possibly several times, before you figure out what went wrong.  That's exactly the definition of a "Cruel" game.  (As I recall, courting a mate in "Choice of the Dragon" was extremely difficult, and I had to play the game about 10 times to work that one out.  I probably played "Vampire" 20 times before I concluded that both of the player's potential lovers were doomed by the plot, and no choice I made could save either of them.)

But then again, Zarf's scale was mainly designed for IF games, which are much more "open" in their approach, and it's not like an official rating system anyway.  So... grain of salt, I guess?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4673&start=0#p33805
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Seriously, this game sucks.
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-19 04:02:55

A small [url=http://ifcomp.org/authors/transcripts.php?session=1332100545581250&statusline=inline&output=html]transcript[/url] from an illuminated player.
I don't really know how to cope with this. [emote]:)[/emote]

[Actually, I don't know if anyone can see this... In case:]

[rant]ABOUT
                                Condominium                                     
Andromeda Awakening is an IF by Marco Innocenti, written for the IFComp 2011. It is the first full work of Interactive Fiction by the author.
The game was betatested and proofread by Joel Webster, and proofread by Lutein Hawthorne and G. A. Tippery. If you find any bugs or misspellings, please don't shoot on them because they did the BEST job ever, considering it was done on a very tight schedule.

Release 2 was done via the help and suggestions of such impressive gentlemen as Victor Gijsbers, Peter Pears from <a class="postlink" href="http://www.intfiction.org">http://www.intfiction.org</a>, and Hannes Schüller from <a class="postlink" href="http://www.goodolddays.net">http://www.goodolddays.net</a>. Praises to them.

If you have suggestions, corrections or flames, feel free to contact me at <a href="mailto:minnocenti@kidstudio.it">minnocenti@kidstudio.it</a>. Of course, it would not be lethal to write me some (eventual) pleasantries, also.

A superbrief HINT command is included, but no complete walkthrough, in game. That can be found in a separate .txt file.

>Look around
                                Condominium                                     
You can't see any such thing.

>Wonder what to do
                                Condominium                                     
That's not a verb I recognise.

>look
                                Condominium                                     
Condominium
The foggy light coming from the grates on the top half of the stairwell looks like a cascade of dusty milk. You are standing just mere feet from your house entrance, above the first step outside.

>around
                                Condominium                                     
That's not a verb I recognise.

>what to do?
                                Condominium                                     
That's not a verb I recognise.

>eat some bagels
                                Condominium                                     
You can't see any such thing.

>walk into the house
                                Condominium                                     
You can't see any such thing.

>enter house
                                Condominium                                     
You can't see any such thing.

>open door
                                Condominium                                     
The door will open automatically as you step into the next room.

>step into house
                                Condominium                                     
That's not a verb I recognise.

>walk back
                                Condominium                                     
You can't see any such thing.

>what do i see
                                Condominium                                     
That's not a verb I recognise.

>see
                                Condominium                                     
That's not a verb I recognise.

>look
                                Condominium                                     
Condominium
The foggy light coming from the grates on the top half of the stairwell looks like a cascade of dusty milk. You are standing just mere feet from your house entrance, above the first step outside.

You really think it's time to rush for the Campus. You sight the exit, down from here.

>look
                                Condominium                                     
Condominium
The foggy light coming from the grates on the top half of the stairwell looks like a cascade of dusty milk. You are standing just mere feet from your house entrance, above the first step outside.

>rush for the campus
                                Condominium                                     
That's not a verb I recognise.

>enter exit
                                Condominium                                     
You can't see any such thing.

>exit
                                  the Exit                                      

the Exit
The faint lights get fainter here. A sturdy door opens on the Avenues, to the north. A flight of stairs moves up to your front door.

>walk up stairs
                                  the Exit                                      
I only understood you as far as wanting to walk up.

>walk up
                                Condominium                                     

Condominium
The foggy light coming from the grates on the top half of the stairwell looks like a cascade of dusty milk. You are standing just mere feet from your house entrance, above the first step outside.

>walk out
                                  the Exit                                      

the Exit
The faint lights get fainter here. A sturdy door opens on the Avenues, to the north. A flight of stairs moves up to your front door.

>continue
                                  the Exit                                      
That's not a verb I recognise.

>walk up stairs
                                  the Exit                                      
I only understood you as far as wanting to walk up.

>walkk stairs
                                  the Exit                                      
That's not a verb I recognise.

>walk stairs
                                Condominium                                     

Condominium
The foggy light coming from the grates on the top half of the stairwell looks like a cascade of dusty milk. You are standing just mere feet from your house entrance, above the first step outside.

>take stairs
                                  the Exit                                      

the Exit
The faint lights get fainter here. A sturdy door opens on the Avenues, to the north. A flight of stairs moves up to your front door.

>enter avenues
                                  the Exit                                      
You can't see any such thing.

>go north
                                  Avenues                                       
You leave the satisfying safeness of your house with but a sigh. The massive vibertron door opens with no sound, and with no sound closes after you.

Avenues
The vivid pink of the Monarch sky paints an eternal sunset and washes the street and the buildings in a somewhat romantic nuance. The door to your condominium lies south of here, reflecting the three suns like a gigantic kaleidoscope. The Avenue runs out of sight in every direction, finding outlets in a handful of other busy streets. The one you need runs east, towards the train station.

All these people, you think, watching the passers-by as they crowd the streets in their random duties. If only they knew, they'd squatter around like mad rats, biting at each other and feasting on the corpses. 

The major sun -- Korhos -- seems to point its malevolent, cold finger at you.

>seriously, this game sucks
                                  Avenues                                       
You seem to want to talk to someone, but I can't see whom.[/rant]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4673&start=0#p33806
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Seriously, this game sucks.
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-03-19 04:33:30

You don't. There's no need to.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4673&start=0#p33807
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Seriously, this game sucks.
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-19 06:06:26

This is clearly a transcript from someone who isn't used to playing IF. There's little you can do - you can go the extra mile and add some sort of generic response that might be triggered by some of his most obscure commands, but that way madness lies. You can include the IF Reference Card with your game. You can use some of the most newbie-helpful extensions out there to cover SOME of the many responses commands IFers don't even dream about.

But mostly? Mostly you shouldn't worry.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4673&start=0#p33808
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Seriously, this game sucks.
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-19 06:50:11

[quote="Peter Pears"]This is clearly a transcript from someone who isn't used to playing IF. There's little you can do - you can go the extra mile and add some sort of generic response that might be triggered by some of his most obscure commands, but that way madness lies. You can include the IF Reference Card with your game. You can use some of the most newbie-helpful extensions out there to cover SOME of the many responses commands IFers don't even dream about.

But mostly? Mostly you shouldn't worry.[/quote]
Maybe I should add a joypad extension? [emote]:D[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4673&start=0#p33809
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Seriously, this game sucks.
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-03-19 06:57:17

This reminds me of a voice control software for Windows XP (Dragon-something). Some people were trying to tell the computer stuff like "look up lolcats in Google" and "play Paranoid by Black Sabbath." Nothing they said was understood, because they didn't know the concept of it. They thought the program was useless.

If someone can't be arsed to RTFM, even if told so right from the beginning ("new players should type ABOUT or HELP") then nothing can help them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4664&start=0#p33810
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with Cover Art
User: HanonO / DateTime: 2012-03-19 07:19:41

I deleted the second "along " and had the same results.

On a side note, gargoyle for mac will not accept keyboard input. It displays the first page of text waiting for the spacebar. (Emily's screen effects extension pausing the game) and then it goes nowhere. Zoom works just fine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=40#p33811
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-19 07:22:44

Wow, I think you're right. You should file this as a bug. Things like "push door" work too. I suppose some special behavior is necessary because a door technically is in only one room, but has to be accessible from either side. (If you look in the index, I think you'll find that the Wooden Door is in the Blue Room.) But they missed an edge case.

This might be a workaround:

[code]Check an actor going when the door gone through is not nothing (this is the must reach door rule):
	if the location is not the front side of the door gone through and the location is not the back side of the door gone through [you probably already have a short phrase for that]:
		say "You can't reach [the door gone through]." instead.
		
The must reach door rule is listed before the can't go through closed doors rule in the check going rulebook.[/code]

So far I've checked to see that this doesn't let you open the door if you're in a transparent closed container. It seems as though the rules catch the case where you try to enter a door from a transparent container that isn't in a room adjacent to the door, but they miss the edge case of trying to enter an in-scope door from a nonadjacent room when there are no other impediments.

ETA: Note that this will only affect going through the door; if you want to avoid weird responses to "push door" and the like -- and worse yet, remote unlocking of the door -- you need something else. I'd go for [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3670]Flexible Action Requirements[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4666&start=0#p33812
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: nY: "Keuzevrijheid en autoriteit"
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-19 07:27:34

Different kind of interactivity?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4664&start=0#p33813
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with Cover Art
User: crisses / DateTime: 2012-03-19 07:29:55

[quote="HanonO"]I deleted the second "along " and had the same results.[/quote]

Please try combining all the statements together:
"Release along with an interpreter, cover art and the source text."

I have a feeling the setting may be a list, and the separate statements are overwriting the former setting.  I may have had a similar problem until I combined them together -- I remember having an issue, but I don't recall what it was.

And rename the Release folder to "Old Release" so that all the files are generated from scratch when you release again.

I know nothing about your other issue, I'm not using those interpreters.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4671&start=0#p33814
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Procedural content generation in IF?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-19 07:43:16

I thought that [i]Hunter, In Darkness[/i] was only pseudo-random; though it still counts as procedurally generated.

I'm pretty sure that [i]Rogue of the Multiverse[/i] randomly generates some aspects of the salvage quests. 

Isn't there an Infocom title with a puzzle that's randomized, which prevents undo and has a famously fiendish way of making sure you don't try to brute-force the solution? But I don't remember what it is (and don't tell me how it works!). 

Troy Jones's [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4050]The Knight, The Jester, and the Spy[/url] is a short implementation of the knight-knave puzzle which randomizes the solution and also the answers you get to the questions you ask; it's still in beta as far as I know but you could ask him about it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4660&start=10#p33815
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: I'm sticking with TADS. - TADS3.1
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-19 07:45:53

I'm certainly sticking with T3, since I'm doing something weird with AgendaItems and the actor data class.

But I've noodled around with Quest, and it seems to me a nice engine for a classic PC-only type of text adventure, focused more on puzzle than on narrative.  I remember being enthusiastic about SUDS, which however had one killer engine flaw (you couldn't list props -- like the sun -- separately from takeable objects).  The thinking is also similar to Adrift, which however is either a paid program or (if you use the old one) unstable.

If I had the ear of Quest's creator, I'd suggest what would be most rewarding at this time would be a scene controller, that would enable you to write something more story-like, and perhaps deeper thinking into the conversation programming and NPC states.

But it's a nice good little engine, and I'm glad to see the decision to make games playable on the web, and even designable on the web, seems to have been made early in its inception.

So, yes -- Quest:  well done!


Conrad.

ps - I'm sticking to TADS, but I admit I'm trying to decide whether to make a Quest game!


C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665&start=0#p33816
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A critical IF vocabulary
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-19 07:54:32

You mean as in the example given [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/posting.php?mode=quote&f=6&p=22504]here[/url]?[quote]
>take vase from mantel
Carefully, Richard takes the vase from off of the mantel. Something moves in the darkness outside the window, unbeknownst to him.

>x window
Richard can't see anything through the window while the blinds are drawn.

>opwn blinds
The player seems to have either mistyped, or used an unneeded word.

Something scrapes by the window.
[/quote]There still is a whole bit of theory to be developed around dealing with the knowledge gaps.  The above example would work great in linear fiction, but in IF, since the player steers Richard, how can be established that Richard is not going to act on the player's knowledge?
Generally, between player and PC, one can:
[list]
[*]Have no gap: amnesia, the apprentice approach (Suveh Nux), the Shade approach, ..[/*:m]
[*]Remove the gap: background story text, a 'remember' command, a look-up device, ..[/*:m]
[*]Use the negative gap in the game: learning on replay, Spider&Web approach, ..[/*:m]
[*]Use the positive gap in the game.  (How?  The above example show the problems.)[/*:m]
[*]Ignore the gap (as many games do)[/*:m][/list:u]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665&start=0#p33817
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A critical IF vocabulary
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-19 07:56:02

Thanks, all.  Keep 'em coming!

Taking 'content' in the physical way, I came up with this - words like 'length', 'breadth', 'width' already having been taken, I went for some cognates.

The content of IF can be seen along three axes, one of which being [b]depth[/b], which basically has the same meaning it has in all narrative criticism.  The other two together constitute [b]coverage[/b], which is the product of:
[list]
[*][b]Longitude[/b] - the amount of development during a perusal of the work.  One-turn IF has very little longitude, though Aisle has more than Rematch, as the various runs build up more content.  Long works do not necessarily have more longitude: an endless search in a huge boring maze doesn't add much in the sense of content.[/*:m]
[*][b]Latitude[/b] - the amount of spread in development among different choices.  Traditional literature or an extremely narrow piece of IF (IF on rails) has a latitude of 1, whereas interesting one-turn IF tends to have a greater latitude.  Arguably, again Aisle has more latitude than Rematch, as there is more content to be found by taking various paths.  Old CYOA has little latitude, because most choices either merge or lead to instant endings.[/*:m][/list:u]
Longitude and latitude are like serial and parallel, of course.  As for the adjectives, [b]shallow[/b] and [b]narrow[/b] are easy, but 'long' already being taken, I don't know what to use for the longitude adjective.

These terms allow one to speak of 'uneven depth' - where the story is shallower in some places than in others, or more specifically 'uneven lateral depth' - some choices leading to shallower stories, but also of 'uneven latitude', e.g the funnelling phenomenon where at some points the wheel seems taken away from the reader, who suddenly no longer has the freedom enjoyed in earlier parts.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4672&start=0#p33818
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Zarfian Forgiveness in Choice of Games
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-19 08:01:06

[quote="Merlin Fisher"]
I would rate those "choice of..." games as fully Cruel, because there is no ability to undo actions,[/quote]
As I understand it, the cruelty system was created in the days before UNDO was very much use, so it isn't really accounted for.

[quote="Merlin Fisher"] and the negative consequences of your actions can show up many turns after you've made a choice, with little warning.  To "do over" a bad choice, you'd have to play the entire game over again from the start, possibly several times, before you figure out what went wrong.  That's exactly the definition of a "Cruel" game.[/quote]
No, it's not. If you make the game unwinnable and don't realise that you've done so, that's not automatically Cruel; you have to not realise that you've done [i]anything[/i] irrevocable. All the Choice of Games games make it pretty clear that you won't get to lawnmower their choices until you get what you want; you know you won't be able to go back and have a do-over on the mutiny. So that would make them Tough.
[quote="Merlin Fisher"]But then again, Zarf's scale was mainly designed for IF games, which are much more "open" in their approach, and it's not like an official rating system anyway.  So... grain of salt, I guess?[/quote]
It's a semi-official rating system; it's used on both IFDB and IFWiki, and it's the closest thing to a difficulty rating we have. Personally, I wouldn't enter a Zarfian cruelty rating for Choice of Games pieces, because the system really wasn't designed for that kind of game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4673&start=0#p33819
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Seriously, this game sucks.
User: gravel / DateTime: 2012-03-19 08:39:18

If nothing else, I think it might be worth putting a note in the ABOUT or pre-opening text or banner or somewhere that the game assumes basic knowledge of IF conventions, and direct newbies to some aid/reference sheets/etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4664&start=0#p33820
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with Cover Art
User: HanonO / DateTime: 2012-03-19 08:40:41

Thanks all for the help. Will try combining the statements today.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665&start=0#p33821
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A critical IF vocabulary
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-19 08:43:41

I agree that what you've termed 'longitude' and 'latitude' pick out important experiential aspects of interactive fiction, but I think the overly geographic nature of terms can be a bit misleading. I've used the notions in discussion with others before, and would say the [i]depth of experience[/i] and the [i]breadth of choice[/i], respectively.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4673&start=0#p33822
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Seriously, this game sucks.
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-19 08:44:51

The game needs more structure first move in.  Something trivial a newbie can screw around with to get the idea of the parsed command-response game structure, and an oldbie can move past.

Might also create an autohelp timer.  If the player hasn't entered a meaningful command in 7 moves, it speaks up with some direction.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665&start=10#p33823
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A critical IF vocabulary
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-19 08:45:26

Oh, and broad lateral IF doesn't have a single plot, but a whole family of them.  I suppose one would then be a [b]plotkin[/b] of the other, as in: "Have I found all the plotkins of this story, or are there still some surprises left?", or: "Yes, but in another plotkin you [i]do[/i] get to talk to the woman."

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3106&start=30#p33824
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Referring to the player in the third person
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-19 08:45:53

[quote]
>take vase from mantel
Carefully, Richard takes the vase from off of the mantel. Something moves in the darkness outside the window, unbeknownst to him.

>x window
Richard can't see anything through the window while the blinds are drawn.

>opwn blinds
The player seems to have either mistyped, or used an unneeded word.

Something scrapes by the window.
[/quote]I reacted to this example [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665&p=33816#p33816]here[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4673&start=0#p33825
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Seriously, this game sucks.
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2012-03-19 09:15:19

Hahah man, that's pretty funny actually.

Walk stairs! Walk damn you!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665&start=10#p33826
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A critical IF vocabulary
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-19 09:27:44

[quote="JoeyJones"]I [..] would say the [i]depth of experience[/i] and the [i]breadth of choice[/i], respectively.[/quote]Hmm.  Personally I like the visual aspect: For coverage I visualise a 2D plot graph with these dimensions, and depth in the third - though 'visualising' is the wrong word for my spatial awareness of depth.

And on a more linguistic level, wouldn't [i]depth[/i] and [i]depth of experience[/i] be easily confused?  And what adjectives/adverbs would be used for those two dimensions? I'd like to have words that can accurately modify a sentence like: "There was a longitudinally interesting range of atmospheres", which would of course give a very different playing experience than a latitudinally interesting range or the cacophony of an altitudinally interesting one.

I fully agree the terms are ugly in their ponderous latinateness, but I should like to have one-word terms that move easily to other grammatical categories.  "Your WIP is interesting, but you have latititudinised it to the detriment of longitudinal evenness of depth" - words that could make sentences like that sound natural.  (Of course, if the common words hadn't been taken already one could simply have said "..but you have broadened it to the detriment of even depth over its length", or a more native English variant of that.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4674&start=0#p33827
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Alternate Universe Friends
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-19 09:36:47

A peculiar Ren'Py fanfic now available through the [url=http://games.renpy.org/]website[/url], this probably-copyright-infringing game is liberally illustrated with photoshopped screen captures from the TV show.  It's not entirely clear whether the images are stills, or overlays assembled on the fly.  

[img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/86/Friends_titles.jpg[/img]  

It's a Friends episode in a universe where Hitler won World War II.

The narrative frame is introduced from (presumably) the real-world Friends universe, with the crowd all gathered around speculating on what it would be like if the Axis had won the war.  They chatter for just a few seconds (Ross:  "I'd be half Japanese.") before the game begins.

So you're immediately waiting for the punchline, and this (for me) was a major part of the game experience.  There's no one player character.  Instead, you're given little choices, about what the characters say, and a few choice-points that seem to influence the plot.  I didn't play it more than once -- I was never into the show, and the game is enough like the show for me.

The minor choices in dialog set up different retorts from the other characters, which are bland-witty in much the way I recall from the TV program.  A great deal of the discussion is about a dress of Monica's, which looks good but is not appropriate for any particular occasion,  so the other characters all chime in with ultimately unhelpful ideas about where she can wear it.  There's a sub-plot about Joey's job, which is a minor acting gig but which may lead to something better.

So what about Nazi New York?

--Well, it just never seems to come up.  Apart from a swastika discretely photoshopped into a mail carrier's shoulder bag, Nazis don't make an appearance.

I remember seeing Mr. T doing _Friends_ New Year's predictions on the Conan O'Brien show, and he couldn't keep a straight face:  big black man with a mohawk and heavy gold chains cracking jokes and giggling.  One prediction was, "The cast of Friends discovers there are, in fact, black people in New York City."

I kept waiting for something like that, but, unless I missed it, it just doesn't happen.  As far as I can tell, this is just a straight fanfic episode of _Friends_ that happens to be set in Nazi New York.  I don't know the show well, so maybe the author is doing something clever, or maybe there are veiled allusions to the war or to racism in the dialog, but I didn't find anything.

My theory is the author just wanted to put forth a _Friends_ fanfic and used the alternate universe ploy to workaround copyright issues by claiming parody.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4673&start=0#p33828
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Seriously, this game sucks.
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-03-19 09:41:58

A transcript like this is really valuable. Usually if someone doesn't make any progress they quit very early, but this person did stick with it very long. 

There are some things that could be easily improved. Obviously "eat some bagels" is not something the story should respond to if there are no bagels in the entire game, but it's not unreasonable to assume that "enter house" should work.

The transcript demonstrates quite well the conventional wisdom that the parser should understand the same words you use to instruct the player to do something. As an extreme example, if the story says "You should grab the bagel", then the parser really should understand "grab" as a synonym for "take" and not assume that the player is aware of the standard IF verbs. In this case if you say that the doors open automatically as you step into the next room, it's not unreasonable to assume that "step into" should be a synonym for "enter".

Also, it seems obvious that in this case when the player says "this game sucks", they mean "this parser sucks", so I wouldn't take it too personally.

What would happen if you included that Aaron Reed's newbie helping extension (I don't remember the exact name right now) and tried the same commands? Would it give more reasonable responses?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4673&start=0#p33829
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Seriously, this game sucks.
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-03-19 09:42:38

"Wonder what to do"

this is typical of ADD people who can't read.  It's clearly stated in the prologue that you've packaged stuff and is leaving the house.

Don't bother.  ADD people are trigger-happy crackhead FPS players, not IF players or even readers at all.

*edit*
Now that I'm playing the game, I'm more bothere by this

[spoiler]"we know nothing about Monarch before the first settlements from the outer galaxies came into Andromeda more than one thousand years ago. Technology back then was not sufficient to dig as far as we have recently."

come on!  The guys can travel across galaxies but can't dig a hole far enough in the ground?![/spoiler]

than by the occasional lack of polish on scenery.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4671&start=0#p33830
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Procedural content generation in IF?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-19 09:54:26

[quote="matt w"]Isn't there an Infocom title with a puzzle that's randomized, which prevents undo and has a famously fiendish way of making sure you don't try to brute-force the solution? But I don't remember what it is (and don't tell me how it works!). [/quote]

Oh, yes. If it's the one I'm thinking about, it's a puzzle in Spellbreaker which is really one of those guess-the-odd-one-out-by-their-weight-with-only-X-weighs puzzles (I've always hated them). I will spare you the details, as you asked, but save/restore/undo and brute-forcing will only ensure you never complete the game.

There's also Avon. Lot's of instances with randomized puzzles - and if you save the game AFTER you receive a clue and BEFORE actually using the clue to solve the puzzle, the game becomes unwinnable. Very nasty, that, especially since in at least one puzzle it's not at all clear that you were just GIVEN a clue.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4673&start=10#p33831
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Seriously, this game sucks.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-19 09:56:59

I suspect that there are plenty of people with ADD that play IF and read. It's a disorder, not an all-purpose insult.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4674&start=0#p33832
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Alternate Universe Friends
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-19 09:59:13

The dissonance sounds pretty strong in this one. Aren't half the characters in Friends Jewish?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4674&start=0#p33833
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Alternate Universe Friends
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-19 10:08:24

Honestly, I don't know.  But then, I just discovered via Wikipedia that Monica was Ross's sister.  I was never really into it.  What was interesting to me was having a game without having a single player character.

I've got a WIP where you can switch to any NPC.  I'm interested in isometric interactive fiction.  That was really my reason for playing it.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4672&start=0#p33834
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Zarfian Forgiveness in Choice of Games
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-03-19 10:08:30

Hey, when are we getting Choice of Crackhead Psychopath?  I'm hoping it's cruel in the zarfian scale.

[quote]We also tried to guarantee that even the death endings are pretty cool, so even the "bad" endings feel fun.
[/quote]

everything is pretty cool and fun and shallow in trash culture.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4666&start=0#p33835
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: nY: "Keuzevrijheid en autoriteit"
User: scramble / DateTime: 2012-03-19 10:13:44

Cool, now I can choose between a rock and a hard place: I can read proper Dutch just as well as that mangled English. But proper Dutch is much more fun [emote]:)[/emote]
(I am German, I do have a slim chance of understanding any Dutch phrase. Sometimes, I read ingredient lists for fun.)

Joking aside, I am surpised by the Google translator. The translated text is actually quite readable.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4662&start=20#p33836
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Another Vorple Question
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-19 10:15:25

[quote="Jim Aikin"][quote="maga"](Even before browser-based games, there were paper gamebooks that, as far as I can tell, were basically attempts to simulate an IF game or a dungeon-crawl RPG by people who didn't know how to code. Playing one is like watching a seal try to crump: sort of charming, but you hate to encourage it.)[/quote]
Yeah, I remember gamebooks. They were extremely lame.[/quote]
To be specific, I'm talking about a subset of gamebooks; ones which involved an IF-like map that could be traversed in any direction, a focus on examining features of the environment, a need to solve puzzles, an inventory, etc.

[quote]I'm not sure what you mean by the "particular strengths" of CYOA. That's probably just my innate snobbishness shining through, but I can't think of any strengths offhand.
[...]
It's also clear that there would be little need for a physical map. The PC could wander quite freely from one situation to another. That's very freeing for the narrative. The movement from "room" to "room" in IF is a rather stilted, artificial process that hampers the narrative flow, though experienced players glide past it.[/quote]
You've identified one of the important strengths: narrative flow.
[list]
[*] More authorial control over focus; deal only with the [i]interesting[/i] decisions[/*:m]
[*] Greater authorial control over pacing, which means that...[/*:m]
[*] puzzle devices as a plot-pacing method aren't necessary, and[/*:m]
[*] longer-arc narratives can be delivered, since events don't need to be implemented in as great detail.[/*:m][/list:u]

Some things you lose: a large degree of PC interiority, a deep sense of environment, fine-grained player control, many kinds of puzzle, the conversational aspect of the parser.

[quote]But having a small inventory that's listed in a box in the sidebar, with a pop-up menu for each item (look at the key / use the key / give the key to Susan) that was dynamically constructed based on the situation (in this case, whether Susan is present) should be manageable at the code level. I'm curious whether you think this would be "a horrible mismatch."[/quote]
I think that CYOA that lets you examine everything is sort of wrong-headed, yes. (I don't really think that inventory is a natural fit for most CYOA, since it's far less concerned with manipulating objects.) but I think what you're talking about is not quite CYOA and more like an old-school graphic adventure interface. Undum lacks some features -- drop-down menus, mostly -- that are better-suited to this (so you might look at RAGS, but that's ugly as hell), and I've yet to see a game that does this really well (though I've yet to check out A Colder Light), but I don't know that it's a bad idea in principle.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=40#p33837
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-19 10:16:32

[quote="matt w"]I think you'll find that the Wooden Door is in the Blue Room[/quote]
If you try SHOWME DOOR in-game, the result suggests that the door is actually off-stage as long as the player is in the Red Room, and in either the Green or the Blue Room respectively as long as the player is in any of them. So, while in the Red Room you really pull a door out of play into scope.
IIRC Inform implements all objects that seem to be in more than one room (backdrops and two-sided doors) in this way, i.e. by moving them around as needed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4672&start=0#p33838
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Zarfian Forgiveness in Choice of Games
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-19 10:16:54

I always thought Zarfian Death Cruelty was about *simulator* death, and other such simulator-y dead-ends that a player may blunder into, and not death as a legitimate story ending.  No?


C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4666&start=0#p33839
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: nY: "Keuzevrijheid en autoriteit"
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-19 10:24:12

Pretty interesting article. It's nice to see a non-introductory article about IF published in a more mainstream source, outside of our hobbyist circles, too.

[quote="scramble"]Joking aside, I am surpised by the Google translator. The translated text is actually quite readable.[/quote]Yeah, it used to be pretty terrible, and I think it's still not as good as Babelfish sentence by sentence, but Google Translate has gotten much better in recent years.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4655&start=0#p33840
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Concepts for secret unlockable and auto-timed game conte
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-19 10:32:09

[quote="matt w"]Re: tove; and of course on Easter it's 

[spoiler]an Easter egg.[/spoiler][/quote]
Plus [spoiler]a broken eggshell for failed compilation, and a baby chick for (I believe?) successful compilation. For Christmas, I seem to recall these are a broken and whole glass Christmas tree ornament.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=40#p33841
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-19 10:41:39

You're right -- I was misreading the way that the index handles doors.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4662&start=20#p33842
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Another Vorple Question
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-19 10:51:47

[quote="maga"]I think that CYOA that lets you examine everything is sort of wrong-headed, yes. (I don't really think that inventory is a natural fit for most CYOA, since it's far less concerned with manipulating objects.) but I think what you're talking about is not quite CYOA and more like an old-school graphic adventure interface. Undum lacks some features -- drop-down menus, mostly -- that are better-suited to this (so you might look at RAGS, but that's ugly as hell), and I've yet to see a game that does this really well (though I've yet to check out A Colder Light), but I don't know that it's a bad idea in principle.[/quote]
The interface for "A Colder Light" is an interesting hybrid. It tries to preserve the wealth of commands available in parser IF, which leaves the button array a bit higgledy-piggledy. Hyperlinks in text aren't removed when you leave the room, which is odd, because they're still displayed but no longer work. (Undum can remove them.)

"A Colder Light" displays your commands as new output, exactly as if you had typed them, which makes it [i]look [/i]like ordinary IF. This is another area where Undum really excels. It constructs what looks like a story, not a mess of commands and detached responses.

I would add that "A Colder Light" [i]reads [/i]like IF, which is not necessarily a good thing. Here is the entire description of the wood rune, which was the first object I found: "A broad stroke and three branches." Size? Heft in the hand? State of being well rubbed or newly carved? History? Cultural aspects? The rest is silence.... This bare description is [i]far [/i]too terse for what will evidently be an important magical object with which the player (as opposed to the PC) is entirely unfamiliar -- and it's not the only description in the opening of the story that's terse to the point of being dull.

In sum, I guess I'd say that "A Colder Light" suffers from trying to be totally old-school IF, but without the parser. It still has the command line, even! It just doesn't have the parser. It may be a good story -- I haven't gone far enough with it to know. But the buttons and links, while an impressive technical achievement for Inform, are not nearly as graceful as what Undum provides.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=40#p33843
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-19 10:58:40

[quote="David J Prokopetz"]Is reachability not checked for doors?[/quote]
It seems that doors and backdrops are explicitly excluded from the way other off-stage objects are handled by the Access through barriers rule in the I6 Light Template §11 (line 5 of the code for the routine).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4674&start=0#p33844
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Alternate Universe Friends
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-19 11:16:13

[quote="conradcook"]I've got a WIP where you can switch to any NPC.  I'm interested in isometric interactive fiction.  That was really my reason for playing it.


Conrad.[/quote]...what is that, like in the sense of Fallout Tactics and Ogre Battle, "a cast of dozens" kind of thing?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4673&start=10#p33845
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Seriously, this game sucks.
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-19 11:18:25

[quote="matt w"]there are plenty of people with ADD that play IF and read. It's a disorder, not an all-purpose insult.[/quote]
Indeed! And write, for that matter – both IF and Ph.D. dissertations and what have you.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4671&start=0#p33846
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Procedural content generation in IF?
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-19 11:23:13

[quote="matt w"]I thought that [i]Hunter, In Darkness[/i] was only pseudo-random; though it still counts as procedurally generated.[/quote]Photopia does something similar in the storytelling sequences.

And yes, the maze in Reliques is randomly designed and randomly populated with a random assortment of items and creatures.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4662&start=20#p33847
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Another Vorple Question
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-03-19 11:34:21

[quote="maga"]To be specific, I'm talking about a subset of gamebooks; ones which involved an IF-like map that could be traversed in any direction, a focus on examining features of the environment, a need to solve puzzles, an inventory, etc.[/quote]
Can you give examples of any of these?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4662&start=20#p33848
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Another Vorple Question
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-03-19 11:35:29

[quote="maga"]Undum lacks some features -- drop-down menus, mostly -- that are better-suited to this (so you might look at RAGS, but that's ugly as hell), and I've yet to see a game that does this really well (though I've yet to check out A Colder Light), but I don't know that it's a bad idea in principle.[/quote]
A short commercial break: the latest version of Vorple adds drop-down menus to Undum.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4662&start=20#p33849
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Another Vorple Question
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-03-19 11:39:59

[quote="Jim Aikin"]In sum, I guess I'd say that "A Colder Light" suffers from trying to be totally old-school IF, but without the parser. It still has the command line, even! It just doesn't have the parser. It may be a good story -- I haven't gone far enough with it to know. But the buttons and links, while an impressive technical achievement for Inform, are not nearly as graceful as what Undum provides.[/quote]

[url=http://transcripts.game-testing.org/undum/starborn/]Starborn[/url] is an example of an IF game recast as an Undum one. I find it interesting but quite flawed; there are vestigial elements like the scrollback buffer and the room navigation mechanic which only serve to clutter the player experience. Compare it something like [url=http://www.deirdrakiai.com/theplay/]The Play[/url] and it's obvious which game is playing to the strengths of the medium.

Undum is certainly the nicest looking tool we have, but it just doesn't seem well-suited to IF-style interactions. The user interfaces in "A Colder Light" and "The Binary" may not look as nice, but they're better understood as experiments in making IF more accessible. For me, the big unanswered question is whether we can capture the spirit of IF while dispensing with the command line, which is the kiss of death on mobile devices.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4660&start=10#p33850
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: I'm sticking with TADS. - TADS3.1
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2012-03-19 11:40:32

[quote="conradcook"]Adrift, which however is either a paid program or (if you use the old one) unstable.[/quote]
This is true for the previous version of Adrift (4), but it's changed with version 5 (currently in beta):
[quote="Adrift Web site"]ADRIFT 5 Developer is free. However, if you enjoy the software and use it regularly you are encouraged to make a donation to support it's ongoing development.[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4664&start=0#p33851
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with Cover Art
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-19 11:49:47

No, the compiler accepts either separate or combined statements. I just tested this.

Also, "Release along along with cover art" generates an error: "I can't find a verb here that I know how to deal with."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4675&start=0#p33852
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Ramus files, if edited, don't run
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-19 11:58:49

Guys,

This is weird.

When I run a Ramus file from the website, I have no problem.  But if I load it and re-save it from Notepad++, it fails to run.  I get the headers, but the story never begins.

This is true under Chrome and Explorer both, and true for "Starborn" and for the Ramus demo.

I notice Jim had a problem running Vorple locally, and I wonder if something similar might be going on here.  Starborn tells me "This document requires JavaScript support."  --which, if I gist the file correctly, is a default message that JavaScript is supposed to replace with the beginning of the story.  This happens correctly when I load an unedited file, but not an edited one.  Why?


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4662&start=20#p33853
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Another Vorple Question
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-03-19 12:07:43

[quote="bcressey"]The user interfaces in "A Colder Light" and "The Binary" may not look as nice, but they're better understood as experiments in making IF more accessible.[/quote]
I think that the Binary's interface could look as nice as Undum's with a little CSS TLC from a good designer.

The interface in the Colder Light family of experiments/demos could probably be created more easily using Vorple, and could likely be made better as well. For example, Vorple ought to be able to make it possible to remove links when they are no longer useful.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4660&start=10#p33854
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: I'm sticking with TADS. - TADS3.1
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-19 12:25:35

Ah, I see.  Yes, that is new since I last checked in.


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4675&start=0#p33855
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Ramus files, if edited, don't run
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-03-19 12:25:37

It's probably either Notepad++ somehow mangling the files or something in your edits that make the files not work. Try looking in the JavaScript error console for errors. You can open the console in Chrome by pressing ctrl-alt-J (or cmd-alt-J on a Mac). Alternatively if you could upload the non-working file here we could take a look.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4671&start=0#p33856
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Procedural content generation in IF?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-19 12:26:07

[quote]I thought that Hunter, In Darkness was only pseudo-random; though it still counts as procedurally generated.[/quote]

That's correct. 

(The difference between random and pseudo-random is almost irrelevant in these discussions. The interesting work is in the generation algorithm.)

In _Heliopause_ I do some random variation of the areas you explore. It's simpler than in _Hunter_.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4672&start=0#p33857
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Zarfian Forgiveness in Choice of Games
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-19 12:37:24

It's probably no fair for me to butt into this discussion...

[quote]As I understand it, the cruelty system was created in the days before UNDO was very much use, so it isn't really accounted for.[/quote]

Mm, no. What's not accounted for is *multi-turn* undo. (At the time some Z-machine interpreters only supported one turn of undo, and the Inform library was built to enforce this limitation.) So it makes a distinction between "you screwed up but know it" (and will undo immediately), and "you screwed up and will find out later" (and will have to restore).

[quote]I always thought Zarfian Death Cruelty was about *simulator* death, and other such simulator-y dead-ends that a player may blunder into, and not death as a legitimate story ending.[/quote]

What I had in mind was "the best story ending" versus "other endings". (Infidel has always been a prominent case of a best story ending where you die.) I don't think I put any thought into games with several true endings. I probably would have said, well, it becomes a matter of which ending the player wants to reach.

The Choice-Of game model (though not the choice-game model in general!) seems to presume that every ending of the game is equally valid -- there are no "you screwed up, ha ha, you'll have to start over" ends. I guess it could still depend which ending the player is aiming for, but I don't know how much your players *think* about that sort of thing.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4662&start=20#p33858
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Another Vorple Question
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-03-19 12:58:54

[quote="ektemple"]I think that the Binary's interface could look as nice as Undum's with a little CSS TLC from a good designer.[/quote]

I agree.  I suspect it would not even be particularly time-consuming.

I find it interesting that Undum has gotten so far on, essentially, surface visual niceties.  I don't mean that it has no other strengths (in-browser playability is clearly a big one), but a lot of the reaction to it has been variations on "it's so pretty!"  Of course, if I didn't believe in the power of aesthetics, I'd be in a different (better paying? [emote]:P[/emote]) profession, but even I am a bit surprised to see that effect work so well.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4662&start=20#p33859
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Another Vorple Question
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-19 12:59:44

[quote="ektemple"][quote="maga"]To be specific, I'm talking about a subset of gamebooks; ones which involved an IF-like map that could be traversed in any direction, a focus on examining features of the environment, a need to solve puzzles, an inventory, etc.[/quote]
Can you give examples of any of these?[/quote]
Hm. The example that springs to mind is Duelmaster, a two-player CYOA (Iain Merrick [url=http://diden.net/duelmaster/]ran a session of it[/url] over G+ recently), which, two-player aspect aside, is a lot like Fighting Fantasy moved more towards IF or adventure game (traversable map, time not a strong narrative impetus.) People have mentioned similar things like Fantasy Trip in my [url=http://maga-dogg.livejournal.com/tag/cyoa]CYOA analysis posts[/url] (which I should really get back to). The pattern there is that CYOA becomes more IF-like when people try to use CYOA to simulate tabletop RPGs. I've played a number of gamebooks where the whole point of the book is to simulate a maze (cordoned off by locked doors and riddles and things), and, presumably out of trauma, have forgotten all their titles.

[i]The Binary[/i] is sort of in a similar camp; it has a static map, an IF-like approach to inventory, and it paces plot by restricting access to parts of the map. And if you look at [url=http://www.choiceofgames.com/user-contributed/race/]The Race[/url], there are several sections that are clearly trying to be IF -- exploring a static map, searching for things.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4673&start=10#p33860
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Seriously, this game sucks.
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-19 12:59:45

To make it clear. I'm NOT bothered by this particular "player", I was just joking. Posted 'cause it deserved to:)
I bother more at all those who kept tryin' to get inside the building even if the game tries to push you OUT: Emily Short said something quite insightful on the matter as an answer to my post on her first review of AA.
Fortunately, the problem is addressed in the Final Cut version. (Really, play the Final Cut version. Really.)
 
[quote="namekuseijin"][spoiler]"we know nothing about Monarch before the first settlements from the outer galaxies came into Andromeda more than one thousand years ago. Technology back then was not sufficient to dig as far as we have recently."

come on!  The guys can travel across galaxies but can't dig a hole far enough in the ground?![/spoiler][/quote]
You are right. I make amends on things like this one (or try to do it) in the Afterwords you get after finishing the Final Cut Version. (Did I mention to play the Final Cut version? If I didn't, well: Play the Final Cut version. Really.)

Anyway: Although I understand the need to gain more attention and give a better experience to IF newbies... still, to me IFComp is IFComp. And I enter games for IF fans, in the IFComp. Andromeda 2 will be even worse, I suspect [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4662&start=20#p33861
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Another Vorple Question
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-19 13:03:47

[quote="bcressey"][url=http://transcripts.game-testing.org/undum/starborn/]Starborn[/url] is an example of an IF game recast as an Undum one. I find it interesting but quite flawed; there are vestigial elements like the scrollback buffer and the room navigation mechanic which only serve to clutter the player experience. Compare it something like [url=http://www.deirdrakiai.com/theplay/]The Play[/url] and it's obvious which game is playing to the strengths of the medium.

Undum is certainly the nicest looking tool we have, but it just doesn't seem well-suited to IF-style interactions. The user interfaces in "A Colder Light" and "The Binary" may not look as nice, but they're better understood as experiments in making IF more accessible. For me, the big unanswered question is whether we can capture the spirit of IF while dispensing with the command line, which is the kiss of death on mobile devices.[/quote]
I agree about both Starborn and The Play, neither of which I had seen before. Also, The Play is quite funny. The navigation map in Starborn is handy, but only because the game is organized in a traditional room-oriented way. I think the story would have been stronger if it had been written, for instance, opening with an extended conversation between the PC and his cousin, in which the main theme is revealed.

I'm wondering what you mean by "the spirit of IF." It's not clear to me that, say, Anchorhead and Lost Pig have much in common in terms of a guiding spirit. One way of looking at what they have in common is, "In IF, it's up to [i]you [/i]to move the story forward." And to be honest, I find that one of the less attractive features of traditional IF. I'm lousy at solving puzzles, so I often get stuck. If the experience of getting stuck is the essence of the spirit of IF, I'd have to say, I'm willing to live without it.

But that's just me. Others may not agree at all!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4673&start=10#p33862
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Seriously, this game sucks.
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-19 13:04:51

Also: I'm bothered by the fact that the 
[spoiler]ticket puzzle[/spoiler]is impossible. I'm not sure I had it addressed properly even in the Final Cut Version.
Which, of course, you should play.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4662&start=20#p33863
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Another Vorple Question
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-19 13:11:10

[quote="tove"]I find it interesting that Undum has gotten so far on, essentially, surface visual niceties.  I don't mean that it has no other strengths (in-browser playability is clearly a big one), but a lot of the reaction to it has been variations on "it's so pretty!"  Of course, if I didn't believe in the power of aesthetics, I'd be in a different (better paying? [emote]:P[/emote]) profession, but even I am a bit surprised to see that effect work so well.[/quote]
If I reframe your comment as, "Nobody has yet written a story as memorable as Zork or Curses using Undum," then of course you're absolutely right. On the other hand, I think we have to look at the fact that the average reader of an interactive story has a VERY different experience today [i]as a computer user[/i] than was the case 30 years ago. I think the positive response that one gets from Undum is less, "Ooh, it's so pretty," than, "Oh, I get it now. This is how interactive stories will look in the 21st century." (Insert irony icon here.)

That said, writing an entire story as a switch/case structure within Undum's situation.act methods does [i]not [/i]look like fun. A development tool would be nice....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4662&start=30#p33864
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Another Vorple Question
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-19 13:11:54

[quote="tove"]
I find it interesting that Undum has gotten so far on, essentially, surface visual niceties.  I don't mean that it has no other strengths (in-browser playability is clearly a big one), but a lot of the reaction to it has been variations on "it's so pretty!"  Of course, if I didn't believe in the power of aesthetics, I'd be in a different (better paying? [emote]:P[/emote]) profession, but even I am a bit surprised to see that effect work so well.[/quote]
When I started on it, it was basically a choice between Undum and ChoiceScript. The prettiness helps in that respect, but the two big advantages of Undum were that it allows you to display your own graphics and that, in theory at least, Javascript it makes it easier to do fairly complicated things. I've no idea about BloomEngine.

But, yeah, I'm not wedded to Undum on account of the pretty, and the basic layout makes fairly strong assumptions that you're going to be making a Fighting Fantasy-like game. It seems not impossible that once I7 Vorple has matured a little, it'll be more attractive to write Undum-like CYOA in I7 code (which I understand a lot better than Javascript).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4676&start=0#p33865
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Preview: "Nautilisia"
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2012-03-19 13:13:31

[size=85]I really want to release this game, but my beta testers are still getting the kinks out of it, so I hope you'll forgive a transparent attempt to generate some buzz.[/size]

[spoiler]Coming Soon: An Interactive Fiction: [b][i]Nautilisia[/i][/b]

What is "Nautilisia?" Nautilisia is [i]adventure.[/i]

[quote="An exclusive preview of some words that the author of this game"]From here you can go back southeast, or you can go northeast, in which direction you can discern an unearthly glow.

But first, gaze into that pool of still water, and see the face of your destiny.[/quote]
Nautilisia is [i]high fantasy.[/i]

[quote="More of those words that that guy"]The gulf that this enchanted beach envelops is itself enchanted, or [i]ensorcelled,[/i] with a magical [i]glamour[/i] which makes everyone who sees it want to just sit around and take a break for once in their lives. It symbolizes taking a break for once in your life.[/quote]
Nautilisia is [i]a philosophical tour de force.[/i]

[quote="The author of this game also"]Time is meaningless. Time is just a giant hole, and our lives fall into the hole. And nothing means anything, forever.[/quote]
Critics are already saying:

[b]"[i]Nautilisia[/i] is a philosophical tour de force."[/b] - Ryan Veeder
[b]"GOTY 2012."[/b] - someone has probably said this at some point
[b]"I hope you dropped it.[/b] - Robert Rothman
[b]"This game will blow you away."[/b] - ign.com

Nautilisia will be released pretty soon, depending on how this week goes.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4672&start=0#p33866
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Zarfian Forgiveness in Choice of Games
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-19 13:15:39

[quote="zarf"]
[quote]As I understand it, the cruelty system was created in the days before UNDO was very much use, so it isn't really accounted for.[/quote]
Mm, no. What's not accounted for is *multi-turn* undo. (At the time some Z-machine interpreters only supported one turn of undo, and the Inform library was built to enforce this limitation.) So it makes a distinction between "you screwed up but know it" (and will undo immediately), and "you screwed up and will find out later" (and will have to restore).[/quote]
Yeah, that's what I meant; I should have been more specific. (I thought about saying 'multi-turn undo' and then didn't, for no very good reason.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4662&start=30#p33867
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Another Vorple Question
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-03-19 13:27:37

[quote="maga"][quote="ektemple"][quote="maga"]To be specific, I'm talking about a subset of gamebooks; ones which involved an IF-like map that could be traversed in any direction, a focus on examining features of the environment, a need to solve puzzles, an inventory, etc.[/quote]
Can you give examples of any of these?[/quote]
Hm. The example that springs to mind is Duelmaster, a two-player CYOA (Iain Merrick [url=http://diden.net/duelmaster/]ran a session of it[/url] over G+ recently), which, two-player aspect aside, is a lot like Fighting Fantasy moved more towards IF or adventure game (traversable map, time not a strong narrative impetus.) People have mentioned similar things like Fantasy Trip in my [url=http://maga-dogg.livejournal.com/tag/cyoa]CYOA analysis posts[/url] (which I should really get back to). The pattern there is that CYOA becomes more IF-like when people try to use CYOA to simulate tabletop RPGs. I've played a number of gamebooks where the whole point of the book is to simulate a maze (cordoned off by locked doors and riddles and things), and, presumably out of trauma, have forgotten all their titles.[/quote]
OK, gotcha. I haven't tried either of those. I was intrigued by your suggestion that there were books with fully traversable maps that were inspired by IF (rather than by tabletop RPGs). I know of a few gamebooks with fully traversable maps that work pretty darn well--the Iron Crown Middle Earth series comes to mind, and maybe also Fabled Lands--but the inspiration there is all from tabletop, not IF. In those books, the emphasis is very different than it is in CYOA (CYOA is rather one element among others), and there also isn't the concern with examining features of the environment, solving puzzles, etc. that you would expect in books inspired by IF. 

The latter [i]can[/i] be seen, though, in Faerie Mound of Dragonkind (recommended [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3852]here[/url] by S. John Ross). I'm not sure whether IF was what the designers were striving for, but it's what it feels like they were after--and it is a strange beast indeed.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4675&start=0#p33868
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Ramus files, if edited, don't run
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-19 13:30:43

Ok, I've found a minimal pair.  One version is error-producing, the other not.  The problem was I tried starting with a blank slate, and there's something required (I guess) in what appeared to be story text.

If the big commented block remains commented out, it runs; if not, it does not.  This is peculiar, because it seems I've just commented out the game, and spliced in a stub.  The stub works; but the rest of it also has to be there.

Iexplorer will run the uncommented-out version, but it requires me to click to "allow blocked content".  OTOH, with it commented out, I do not get the "allow blocked content" button and do not get past the intro text box.


Conrad.

[rant][code]<!DOCTYPE html>


Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a 
copy of this software and associated documentation files (the 'Software'), 
to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation 
the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, 
and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the 
Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in 
all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED 'AS IS', WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY 
KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE 
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR 
PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS 
OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR 
OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR 
OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE 
SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. -->
<html>
 <head>
  <meta http-equiv="Content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
  <title>Starborn</title>
  <style type="text/css">
html { Background-color: #003366; }
body {
        Opacity: 0.95;
	Font-size: 1.1em;
	Width: 80ex;
	Margin: 5ex auto;
	Padding: 5ex;
	Background-color: white;
	Color: black;
	Border: 1px solid black;
	Border-right-width: 2px;
	Border-bottom-width: 2px;
	-webkit-box-shadow: 3px 3px 3px #336699;
	-moz-box-shadow: 3px 3px 3px #336699;
	Box-shadow: 3px 3px 3px #336699;
	Font-family: sans-serif;
	Position: relative;
}
a { Color: #006699; }
a.external { Font-variant: small-caps; }
a.external:visited { Color: #990066; }
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 { Font-weight: bold; Font-family: sans-serif; }
h1 { Font-size: 1.6em; Border-bottom: 1px solid black; Text-align: center; }
h2 { Font-size: 1.5em; }
h3 { Font-size: 1.4em; }
h4 { Font-size: 1.3em; }
h5 { Font-size: 1.2em; }
h6 { Font-size: 1.1em; }
#transcript table { Margin: 1em auto; }
#transcript th, #transcript td {
	Margin: 0; Padding: 0.5em;
	Border: 1px solid #808080; Border-collapse: collapse;
}
#transcript th { Color: #ffffff; Background-color: #808080; Font-family: sans-serif; }
#transcript hr { Color: #808080; }
address { Font-size: 0.9em; Text-align: center; }
dt { Font-weight: bold; }
  </style>
 </head>

 <body>
  <h1>Starborn</small></h1>

  <address>
   by <a href="http://nitku.net/blog/">Juhana Leinonen</a>
  <br>
   Ramus edition by <a href="http://felix.plesoianu.ro/">Felix Pleșoianu</a>
  </address>

  <div id="story" style="Display: none;">
   <div id="start">
    [?do passport_found = false; passport_taken = false; have_ticket = false; ?]
    <p>A small edit. 
    A long day of travel and <a rel="easycheese">weightlessness</a>
    has exhausted him.</p>
	
   </div>
   
   <div id="easycheese">
    <p>As you ponder weightlessness, your mind drifts, as it so often does,
	to easycheese.  Mmm, easycheese...</p>
	</div>
   
   
    <p>The computer has a comprehensive library of movies, music, books
    and games. They have been just about the only available entertainment
    on the <a rel="magellan">Magellan</a>.</p>
   </div>
   
   <div id="kevin">
    <p>Kevin is my cousin. We were born a month apart, but he was born
    on Earth and I was born on board the <a rel="magellan">Magellan</a>
    millions of kilometers away. He has never been in space before.</p>

    <p>We live on a different day rhythm so it would already be way past
    midnight at his home. That and my neverending questions about Earth
    have tired him up, so I let him sleep on my <a rel="bed">bed</a>.
   </div>
   
   <div id="bed">
    <p>Kevin wanted to try the zero-g bed. It has a mattress and a blanket
    that's attached to both of the long sides which keeps you in place.
    My dad has told stories how he found it almost impossible to sleep
    in one for the first few nights, but Kevin fell asleep instantly.</p>
   </div>
   
   <div id="weightlessness">
    <p>It does seem very limiting that on Earth you can't just go wherever
    you want if there's something blocking your path. You are bound to
    a single direction. You can only use a single side of a room effectively,
    whereas here you can &ndash; and must &ndash; use every available surface
    to your advantage.</p>

    <p>There was a time when I considered gravity my nemesis that kept
    me from going home. Then I came to realize how insane it is to hate
    a force of nature and directed my energy to more tangible things.</p>
   </div>
   
   <div id="to-hallway-msg">
    <p>I push myself to speed and enter the hallway.</p>
   </div>
   
   <div id="hallway">
    <p>I'm in the hallway outside <a rel="my-room">my room</a>. Further
    down the hallway are the <a rel="sick-bay">sick bay</a> and the
    <a rel="exercise-room">exercise room</a>. Going the other way I
    can go to the <a rel="docking-station">docking station</a> into
    which the <a rel="magellan">Magellan</a> is docked.</p>
   </div>
   
   <div id="my-room">
    <p>This is my room where I spend most of my time.
    <a rel="kevin">Kevin</a> is sleeping on my <a rel="bed">bed</a>
    peacefully.</p>

    <p>The door leads back out to the
    <a rel="to-hallway-msg hallway">hallway</a>.</p>
   </div>
   
   <div id="sick-bay">
    <p>The sick bay is <a rel="dr-strepke">Doctor Strepke</a>'s kingdom.
    I have no business there now, so I just stay where I am.</p>
   </div>
   
   <div id="dr-strepke">
    <p>Dr. Strepke says my body's immune system hasn't been accustomed to
    Earth's <a rel="bacteria">bacteria</a> and viruses. If I went down
    there I'd contact 'every disease known and unknown to man'. I would
    have to wear an airtight protective suit all the time.</p>
   </div>
   
   <div id="bacteria">
    <p>'Mother Earth is much like the human body,' Dr. Strepke once said.
    'It does everything in its power to protect what belongs there &ndash;
    and fights with all its fury against anything that doesn't.'</p>

    <p>Needless to say I have done my best to avoid Dr. Strepke since then.</p>
   </div>
   
   <div id="exercise-room">
    <p>Nothing you do in <a rel="weightlessness">weightlessness</a>
    really requires any strength, so the crew of <a rel="magellan">Magellan</a>
    use the <a rel="exercise-equipment">exercise equipment</a> to keep
    their muscles from deteriorating. In addition to all the gym gadgets
    there's a full-body <a rel="mirror">mirror</a>.</p>

    <p>
     Kevin's <a rel="jacket">jacket</a> is floating around the room
     [?if passport_found ?] [?if !passport_taken ?]
     A <a rel="passport">card</a> is sticking out of its pocket.
     [?if.?] [?if.?]
    <p>

    <p>The door leads back out to the
    <a rel="to-hallway-msg hallway">hallway</a>.</p>
   </div>
   
   <div id="magellan">
    <p>Mom was pregnant when we left for <a rel="epsilon-eridani">Epsilon
    Eridani</a>. I was born when we were already far away from Earth.
    The Magellan has been my home and my prison ever since.</p>
   </div>
   
   <div id="epsilon-eridani">
    <p>The best thing about the Epsilon Eridani system was that it was at
    least <em>something</em> new. Other than that, just some rocks and
    gas planets.</p>
   </div>
   
   <div id="exercise-equipment">
    <p>I have to train as well. Twice as much as the others. I use the
    standard equipment and the <a rel="walking-trainer">walking trainer</a>.
    People living on Earth are lucky enough to have gravity train their
    muscles automatically. I need to exercise actively to get any kind of
    muscle mass.</p>

    <p>It's of not much use, though. There is no training equipment for
    the <a rel="heart">heart</a> muscle.</div>
   
   <div id="walking-trainer">
    <p>I have never learned to walk the natural way. Or even actually
    <em>walked</em>. There's no need for it aboard the
    <a rel="magellan">Magellan</a>. You just float to wherever you want
    to go.</p>

    <p>The walking trainer is a treadmill that has a harness attached to
    vertical bars with elastic exercise bands. The bands pull you towards
    the treadmill, simulating gravity. Mom made me practice every day when
    I was younger. If I can never go to Earth anyway, why bother?</p>
   </div>
   
   <div id="heart">
    <p>On Earth your heart has to fight against the gravity to keep blood
    flowing inside your body. In space it doesn't need to work nearly as
    hard. If you grow up in <a rel="weightlessness">weightlessness</a>
    the heart doesn't get the exercise and never grows very strong.</p>

    <p>They say my heart would fail if I ever went to Earth, but they are
    wrong. My heart will break if I never get home.</p>
   </div>
   
   <div id="mirror">
    <p>The mirror is used to teach me how to walk properly. They make me
    look at myself while I fumble on the treadmill.</p>
    
    [?if passport_taken ?]
     <p>Now that I look at myself, I <em>do</em> look a lot like Kevin.</p>
    [?if.?]
   </div>
   
   <div id="jacket">
    <p>Kevin wanted to try the
    <a rel="exercise-equipment">exercise equipment</a> and took the jacket off.
    It's an Earth jacket and doesn't have the magnetic strips that would
    keep it in place, so it's floating freely around the room.</p>
    
    [?do passport_found = true; ?]
    [?if !passport_taken ?]
     <p>A <a rel="passport">passport</a> is sticking out the front pocket.</p>
    [?if.?]
   </div>
   
   <div id="passport">
    [?if passport_taken ?]
     <p>I'm carrying with me Kevin's passport. It has a picture of him and
     his personal information on it.</p>

     <p>They say I and Kevin look very much alike. Maybe there's something
     to it.</p>
    [?else?]
     <p>Looks like the card is Kevin's <a rel="passport">passport</a>.
     I pull it out from the pocket and take it with me.</p>
     [?do passport_taken = true; ?]
    [?if.?]
   </div>
   
   <div id="docking-station">
    <p>The <a rel="people">people</a> who inhabit the
    <a rel="space-station">Foucault</a> pass me by as they go about their
    daily chores. The <a rel="shuttle-port">shuttle port</a> is near the
    docking port that connects the
    <a rel="to-starship-msg hallway">starship</a>
    to the space station. I could also go to the
    <a rel="observatory">observatory</a>.</p>
   </div>
   
   <div id="people">
    <p>Never before have I met a person I wouldn't have known for my entire
    life. Returning to Earth and meeting these new people was hard &ndash; I
    haven't had any practice for such situations. I still find myself shying
    away from social interaction with strangers.</p>
   </div>
   
   <div id="observatory">
    <p>Ever since we returned and docked to the
    <a rel="space-station">Foucault</a>, this has been the place I've spent
    most of my time. A round <a rel="window">window</a> several meters wide
    shows a magnificent view of the <a rel="earth">Earth</a> as the station
    revolves around it.</p>

    <p>The exit leads to the <a rel="docking-station">docking station</a>.</p>
   </div>
   
   <div id="to-starship-msg">
    <p>I go back to the Magellan.</p>
   </div>
   
   <div id="space-station">
    <p>The Foucault Space Station is the largest of Earth-orbiting space
    stations. The Magellan has been docked into it since we returned two
    weeks ago.</p>
   </div>
   
   <div id="window">
    <p>There are <a rel="people">people</a> everywhere in the
    <a rel="space-station">Foucault</a> but they barely even glance at
    the <a rel="earth">Earth</a> as they go by. I've seen people on their
    first visit up here to spend a few minutes looking at it, but the
    regular staff doesn't even come here unless they have to pass by to
    get to somewhere else. Do they really not see its beauty? Or is it
    possible for it to lose its wonderfulness over time? I find the idea
    impossible to grasp.</p>
   </div>
   
   <div id="earth">
    <p>The Earth. The shadow of the Sun is passing by Europe and Africa.
    Clouds are gathering over Asia, the Indian Ocean glitters in blue.
    It is an awe-inspiring view, one that reveals new details every time
    you look at it.</p>

    <p>It's a completely different world on the ground, of course. I've
    seen enough movies and videos to know that. If looking at it from
    a thousand kilometers away is like this, what would it be like on
    the ground?</p>
   </div>
   
   <div id="shuttle-port">
    <p>I remember dad telling how complicated shuttle travel used to be
    before they left Earth. You'd have to go through several stages of
    health and security checks to make sure nothing goes wrong. Now
    shuttle travel is so common all you need is to buy a ticket with
    your passport and you're all set.</p>

    <p>A corridor leads back to the <a rel="docking-station">docking
    station</a> and a closed <a rel="airlock">airlock</a> leads inside
    the waiting area. There's a <a rel="ticket-machine">ticket machine</a>
    next to the airlock.</p>
   </div>
   
   <div id="ticket-machine">
    [?if have_ticket?]
     <p>I already have a ticket.</p>
    [?elif passport_taken?]
     <p>The ticket machine sells tickets to shuttles back to Earth.
     There's a <a rel="slot">slot</a> where you insert your
     <a rel="passport">passport</a> and it deducts the price from your
     account and uploads the ticket information into the card.
    [?else?]
     <p>The ticket machine sells tickets to shuttles back to Earth.
     You need a passport to buy one.</p>

     <p>I have never had a passport, and I will never get one. Since
     I can't go to Earth there's no need to have one.</p>
    [?if.?]
   </div>
   
   <div id="slot">
    [?if have_ticket?]
     <p>I already have a ticket.</p>
    [?else?]
     <p>I push the passport into the slot. The display indicates the purchase
     was successful and the machine pushes the card back out again and I take
     it.</p>
	
     <p>I could now open the <a rel="airlock">airlock</a> and enter the
     waiting area. My hands start shaking and sweating.</p>
     [?do have_ticket = true; ?]
    [?if.?]
   </div>
   
   <div id="airlock">
    [?if !have_ticket?]
     <p>I need a ticket to enter the waiting area.</p>
    [?else?]
     <p>The airlock opens and I go through. I try to look as neutral as
     possible as the machines scan Kevin's passport. They let me through.</p>
     
     <br>
     
     <p>The shuttle takes off and starts its descent. Soon I feel something
     I've never experienced before: gravity pulling me downwards to my seat.</p>
     
     <p>My heart is beating fast. I don't know if it's the excitement or if
     something is wrong. I start to feel increasing discomfort. The shuttle
     touches ground and I almost pass out.</p>
     
     <p>I manage to stumble out of the shuttle into the open air &ndash; and
     a wonderful, magnificent view of the Earth opens before me. It is
     everything I could have hoped for and more. A breath of air caresses my
     being and the Sun's warmth feels so soft. Actual atmosphere is so much
     gentler than Magellan's artificial environment.</p>
     
     <p>'Is everything allright, young man?' I hear someone ask. 'Yes,' I
     manage to whisper. It's hard to speak when you have to fight the pull
     of gravity with all the strength you have.</p>
     
     <p>A woman behind me catches me as I fall. She sounds hysterical, she's
     calling for the medical personnel. I see her face and the blue sky behind
     her.</p>
     
     <br>
     
     <p>My vision fades but I can still hear the people around me. They are
     saying that my heart is failing, but they are wrong. I have never felt
     more alive. I am home.</p>
     
     [?do clear_links(); ?]
    [?if.?]
   </div>
  </div>
  -->
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        func.push(f + "(" + arg + ", __out);");
        break;

      default:
        func.push("Mold.dispatchCustom(\"" + escapeString(cur.command) + "\", " + (/^\s*$/.test(cur.args) ? "null" : cur.args) + ", __out);\n");
      }
    }
    if (stack.length) throw new Error("Unclosed blocks in template (" + stack.join() + ").");

    func.push("return __output ? \"\" : __out.join(\"\");\n}]");
    // The brackets are there to work around some weird IE6 behaviour.
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  Mold.cast = function cast(target, mold, arg) {
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    snippets = [], snippet = 0, labels = null, forDepth = 0, casting = true;
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        var varTag = array[i], match = varTag.className.match(/^__mold (\d+)$/);
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      var result = labels;
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  Mold.castAppend = function castAppend(target, mold, arg) {
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    return result;
  };
})();

// Based on the tutorial at
// http://www.itnewb.com/v/Creating-the-Smooth-Scroll-Effect-with-JavaScript

function currentYPosition() {
	// Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari
	if (window.pageYOffset) return window.pageYOffset;
	// Internet Explorer 6 - standards mode
	if (document.documentElement && document.documentElement.scrollTop)
		return document.documentElement.scrollTop;
	// Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8
	if (document.body.scrollTop) return document.body.scrollTop;
	return 0;
}

function elementYPosition(elt) {
	var y = elt.offsetTop;
	while (elt.offsetParent && elt.offsetParent != document.body) {
		elt = elt.offsetParent;
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	return y;
}

function smoothScrollTo(element) {
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	var stopY = elementYPosition(element);
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		return;
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	var speed = Math.round(distance / 100);
	if (speed > 20) speed = 20;
	var step = Math.round(distance / 25);
	var leapY = stopY > startY ? startY + step : startY - step;
	var timer = 0;
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		for (var i = startY; i < stopY; i += step) {
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				"window.scrollTo(0, " + leapY + ")",
				timer * speed);
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		for (var i = startY; i > stopY; i -= step) {
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				"window.scrollTo(0, " + leapY + ")",
				timer * speed);
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			if (leapY < stopY) leapY = stopY;
			timer++;
		}
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}
  </script>
 </body>
</html>
[/code][/rant]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4676&start=0#p33869
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Preview: "Nautilisia"
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-19 13:48:55

[quote="Afterward"][size=85]I really want to release this game, but my beta testers are still getting the kinks out of it, so I hope you'll forgive a transparent attempt to generate some buzz.[/size]

[spoiler]Coming Soon: An Interactive Fiction: [b][i]Nautilisia[/i][/b]

What is "Nautilisia?" Nautilisia is [i]adventure.[/i]

[quote="An exclusive preview of some words that the author of this game"]From here you can go back southeast, or you can go northeast, in which direction you can discern an unearthly glow.

But first, gaze into that pool of still water, and see the face of your destiny.[/quote]
Nautilisia is [i]high fantasy.[/i]

[quote="More of those words that that guy"]The gulf that this enchanted beach envelops is itself enchanted, or [i]ensorcelled,[/i] with a magical [i]glamour[/i] which makes everyone who sees it want to just sit around and take a break for once in their lives. It symbolizes taking a break for once in your life.[/quote]
Nautilisia is [i]a philosophical tour de force.[/i]

[quote="The author of this game also"]Time is meaningless. Time is just a giant hole, and our lives fall into the hole. And nothing means anything, forever.[/quote]
Critics are already saying:

[b]"[i]Nautilisia[/i] is a philosophical tour de force."[/b] - Ryan Veeder
[b]"GOTY 2012."[/b] - someone has probably said this at some point
[b]"This game will blow you away."[/b] - ign.com

Nautilisia will be released pretty soon, depending on how this week goes.[/spoiler][/quote]
That means this one is... not a game about crime?

*sad*

Honestly, I can't wait. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4662&start=30#p33870
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Another Vorple Question
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-03-19 13:49:30

[quote="Jim Aikin"]If I reframe your comment as, "Nobody has yet written a story as memorable as Zork or Curses using Undum," then of course you're absolutely right. [/quote]
Oh, that's not what I mean at all.  For one thing, it would be way unfair to expect Big Amazing Things so soon after it has started existing, and for another, there [i]are[/i] several great Undum games in existence.  What I meant was more that I'm surprised that those games came into existence at all, since Undum looks like a huge pain to use, as a development system.  From my extremely limited experience with both, Twine seems way more pleasant to create with, but it doesn't get nearly as much hype.

[quote]That said, writing an entire story as a switch/case structure within Undum's situation.act methods does [i]not [/i]look like fun. A development tool would be nice....[/quote]
Right, yeah.

I didn't bring it up to be all down on Undum, but rather to point out to people working on similar efforts (such as Bloomengine), that the extra layer of polish really makes the difference in getting people intrigued. Surface matters!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4675&start=0#p33871
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Ramus files, if edited, don't run
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-03-19 13:49:50

It's simply that you have one div you haven't closed. Move the --> one line higher so that you have a matching number of <div>s and </div>s and it'll work.

Internet Explorer will block scripts on the local computer by default, so that's expected.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4672&start=0#p33872
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Zarfian Forgiveness in Choice of Games
User: UnwashedMass / DateTime: 2012-03-19 13:58:59

[quote="maga"]Yeah, that's what I meant; I should have been more specific. (I thought about saying 'multi-turn undo' and then didn't, for no very good reason.)[/quote]

This talk of multi-turn undo puts a question in my mind: does anyone know of any games where "undo" as the first move produces an interesting or useful effect?  (Perhaps in a situation where most alternate first-moves bring a precarious situation to a premature end?)  With multiple-undos you could get a regular "Memento" going, beginning at the end.

First I thought "I've hit on a stroke of genius!", quickly followed by a deflationary "but with the proportions of genius here, I'm likely re-inventing an awesome wheel."  In any case it's taken me 10 years (and counting!) to implement a relatively simple game design, so perhaps I shouldn't invest myself too much in bringing anything more complicated to fruition.  If you do decide to run with the gimmick, however, should it prove to be original, do please feel free to credit me for coming up with it! 8)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=90#p33873
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-19 14:12:16

[quote="dfabulich"]
For the text-entry categories, I think this makes sense. For the game categories, IMO, IFDB is better. Submitting yourself to IFDB doesn't mean that you think you're awesome; you're merely declaring that your game exists. It requires less of a mental hurdle of self-promotion.

I don't see how the open list would provide more vetting opportunity than IFDB. IFDB already has an RSS feed, whose results are highlighted on the IFDB home page.[/quote]
Well, it serves somewhat different goals, yes.

There are a number of problems with the list, as it stands:

1) it's time-consuming to compile, since it involves dredging up IF from a wide variety of places, which change every year,
2) it's not readily visible to players until the first round is announced,
3) it's enormous, intimidating and unhelpful as a reading-guide, in large part because
4) it's bloated with trivial works that stand no chance of a nomination,
5) it's difficult to fact-check because it's compiled so close to the first round opening,
6) it doesn't pick out Tech Dev entries, or provide any guidance on the other text-entry categories.

IFDB is awesome for 1), okay for 2). It does a little for 3) and 4) -- or, at least, it would if more people paid attention to the IFDB new content feed, which we might or might not be able to promote -- but not really all that much. (I watch the IFDB front page pretty closely, but I don't play most of the new games listed on it, because a pretty high proportion of them suck.) It helps 5) a little, because it's compiled slowly over the year and (in theory) links to all the games, but XYZZY organisers can't really remove anything from the list if it turns out to [i]need[/i] vetting. And, as you say, it does nothing for 6).

The 0th-round pre-nomination system fixes 1), 2) and 6), is probably a little easier for 5), and is [i]intended[/i] to deal with 3) and 4) (but in practice might or might not actually do so.) In the process, it might create another problem (authorial modesty vs. self-nomination if we allow self-nomination, significant games getting overlooked if we don't.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4675&start=0#p33874
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Ramus files, if edited, don't run
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-19 14:13:00

Yes, that worked!  Thank you, Juhana.

Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4673&start=10#p33875
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Seriously, this game sucks.
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-03-19 14:20:02

[quote="Jamespking"]Also: I'm bothered by the fact that the 
[spoiler]ticket puzzle[/spoiler]is impossible. I'm not sure I had it addressed properly even in the Final Cut Version.
Which, of course, you should play.[/quote]

impossible?  It's quite straightforward.  I've only taken a peek at the folder after going through it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4672&start=10#p33876
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Zarfian Forgiveness in Choice of Games
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-19 14:21:52

[quote="UnwashedMass"]This talk of multi-turn undo puts a question in my mind: does anyone know of any games where "undo" as the first move produces an interesting or useful effect?  (Perhaps in a situation where most alternate first-moves bring a precarious situation to a premature end?)  With multiple-undos you could get a regular "Memento" going, beginning at the end.

First I thought "I've hit on a stroke of genius!", quickly followed by a deflationary "but with the proportions of genius here, I'm likely re-inventing an awesome wheel."  In any case it's taken me 10 years (and counting!) to implement a relatively simple game design, so perhaps I shouldn't invest myself too much in bringing anything more complicated to fruition.  If you do decide to run with the gimmick, however, should it prove to be original, do please feel free to credit me for coming up with it! 8)[/quote]
I've seen it suggested, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's a game or two that uses it as a one-off cool effect, but I don't think there's anything in IF that uses it as a core mechanic. There are a number of games that are centrally about working backwards, but not by messing with UNDO. (Outside IF, [i]Braid[/i] is pretty close to it.)

(Though games that work by messing with RESTART are well-established.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4662&start=30#p33877
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Another Vorple Question
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-03-19 14:28:30

[quote="Jim Aikin"]I'm wondering what you mean by "the spirit of IF." It's not clear to me that, say, Anchorhead and Lost Pig have much in common in terms of a guiding spirit.[/quote]

It's probably not possible to come up with an answer that would satisfy everyone. For me, it's the existence of intuited or inferred actions that imbues the game with challenge and excitement. It gives me the sense that if I am paying attention, there will be a signal to use one of my predefined tools in an unexpected and interesting way.

That's not to say I enjoy guessing verbs, nouns, or assorted parts of speech. I like to click links. But it kind of ruins the mystery if the unexpected and interesting behavior is spelled out in the link text. And it kind of spoils the interaction if the behavior comes as a complete surprise behind an otherwise innocuous link.

Puzzles are kind of a touchstone for this quality, but I don't care about puzzles for their own sake. I do care about my desire to demonstrate mastery, which even the blandest puzzle affirms. I like CYOA, but I experience those games in much the same way I experience IF when playing by walkthrough. It can still be fun and rewarding, but it's a different sort of fun.

For what it's worth, I felt that "A Colder Light" gave me the purest sense of combining static choices in interesting ways that I've yet seen in parser-free IF. In many ways it did a better job of this than "Dead Cities", despite that game's ready recourse to traditional mechanics. I find that fascinating and very encouraging.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4672&start=10#p33878
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Zarfian Forgiveness in Choice of Games
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-19 14:28:54

[i]Pick Up The Phone Book And Aisle[/i] does it. It's a hack, of course; ordinarily trying "undo" when the turn count hasn't advanced yet will get you "You can't 'undo' what hasn't been done!" This can even [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=602]produce problems[/url] when you enter a command that doesn't advance the turn count.

I thought of Braid too.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4674&start=0#p33879
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Alternate Universe Friends
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-19 14:42:01

The point here maybe is that Friends is about trivial people engaged in trivial things, exactly the sort of people that flourish in a corporatist state where everyone accepts that the police carry guns and the country is always at war.

[spoiler]The game sounds slightly more plausible but equally as fictitious as the dog sitting game.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4676&start=0#p33880
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Preview: "Nautilisia"
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-03-19 14:59:10

I'm looking forward to typing "take break" while on the enchanted beach.  I've always wanted to carry around a break in my inventory (assuming, of course, that it doesn't give me a break in an important bone).

Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4674&start=0#p33881
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Alternate Universe Friends
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-19 15:00:35

[quote="Conrad"]...what is that, like in the sense of Fallout Tactics and Ogre Battle, "a cast of dozens" kind of thing?[/quote]

I don't know those references, but I doubt it.  I want to capture a night in a tavern richly, such that during play you can switch into the head of anyone there.  Switching is easy, but having the other actors not turn into mannikins when the player isn't animating them is hard.


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=50#p33882
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: David J Prokopetz / DateTime: 2012-03-19 15:24:42

[quote="Felix"][quote="David J Prokopetz"]Is reachability not checked for doors?[/quote]
It seems that doors and backdrops are explicitly excluded from the way other off-stage objects are handled by the Access through barriers rule in the I6 Light Template §11 (line 5 of the code for the routine).[/quote]
That's interesting. I wonder if there's a reason for that?

In any case, I'll have to use some sort of workaround. If the player can see into a room, logically they should be able to examine any doors in that room. matt w's suggestion seems to work - thanks for that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=50#p33883
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-19 15:33:19

Basically, it appears to be a hack. Quote from Appendix B (the annotated Inform 6 templates for Inform 7) under the spoiler tag:

[spoiler][quote][b]§16. Floating Objects.[/b] A single object can only be in one position in the object tree, yet backdrops and doors must be present in multiple rooms. This is accomplished by making them, in I6 jargon, “floating objects”: objects which move in the tree whenever the player does, so that – from the player’s perspective – they are always present when they should be. In I6, almost anything can be made a floating object, but in I7 this is strictly and only used for backdrops and two-sided doors.
There are several conceptual problems with this scheme: chiefly that it assumes that the only witness to the spatial arrangement of objects is the player. In I6 that was usually true, but in I7, where every person can undertake actions, it really isn’t true any longer: if the objects float to follow the player, it means that they are not present with other people who might need to interact with them. This is why the accessibility rules are somewhat hacked for backdrops and doors (see “Light.i6t”). In fact we generally achieve the illusion we want, but this is largely because it is difficult to catch out all the exceptions for backdrops and doors, and because in practice authors tend not to set things up so that the presence or absence of backdrops much affects what non-player characters do.
All the same, the scheme is not logically defensible, and this is why we do not allow the user to create new categories of floating objects in I7.[/quote][/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=50#p33884
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-19 15:39:05

I just realized that my workaround only prevents going through the door, not other actions requiring touchability. So you still would be able to unlock the door from the next room.

The best solution might be to include [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3670]Flexible Action Requirements[/url] and then rewrite my workaround to block any action that isn't flexible about touching the noun. Or something like that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4673&start=10#p33885
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Seriously, this game sucks.
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-19 15:39:08

[quote]impossible? It's quite straightforward. I've only taken a peek at the folder after going through it.[/quote]
I don't know what you mean. But you should have a look at the 720 transcripts online in which people failed to find the solution. I think the
[spoiler]wax soap puzzle[/spoiler]is much easier. 

Well, at least you don't have to [i]memorize blorple[/i] TWICE to do it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4672&start=10#p33886
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Zarfian Forgiveness in Choice of Games
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-19 15:40:22

[quote="UnwashedMass"]If you do decide to run with the gimmick [...][/quote]

I can't personally say I'd ever [i]run [/i]with it, but as gimmicks go, it's certainly worth implementing a funny response to [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=50#p33887
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: David J Prokopetz / DateTime: 2012-03-19 15:41:39

[quote="matt w"]Basically, it appears to be a hack. Quote from Appendix B (the annotated Inform 6 templates for Inform 7) under the spoiler tag [...][/quote]
Hmm. Possibly just an oversight, then? While we may not know the "real" location of a door (or other floating object) is at any given time, we do always know which two rooms a door is connected to, and it seems simple enough to check whether the actor is actually located in one of those rooms before entering the door. I'm trying to think of a scenario in which this wouldn't be a safe assumption, and coming up blank.

[quote="matt w"]I just realized that my workaround only prevents going through the door, not other actions requiring touchability. So you still would be able to unlock the door from the next room.

The best solution might be to include [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3670]Flexible Action Requirements[/url] and then rewrite my workaround to block any action that isn't flexible about touching the noun. Or something like that.[/quote]
Or simply block any action other than examining for doors that aren't connected to the actor's location, as a quick fix.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4660&start=20#p33888
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: I'm sticking with TADS. - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-03-19 15:57:57

My original post of this sure started a lot of comments. I've looked at and tried them all and have no desire at all to leave TADS. Ignoring the very old AGT software, I can't think of anything I want to do that TADS can't do.

It was very interesting to read all of these posts.

RonG

btw: Other than its number of rooms and other memory limitions, I loved AGT; especially considering the state of software power in those days. I still have all of the AGT and MAGX software. That includes a 100 room cave-type game that I wrote

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=90#p33889
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-19 16:08:19

[quote="maga"]I'm not sure what 'the category for which it was nominated for the most awards' means,[/quote]
I suppose the intended meaning is 'the category for which is was most often nominated'.  So if A people nominated W for category X, and B people for Y, then if A < B W will not appear in the list for X.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665&start=10#p33890
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A critical IF vocabulary
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-19 16:20:52

Another one: [b]granularity[/b].  IF is typically discrete - in space, matter and time.  Typical temporal granularity is < 1 min (look, take/drop, (un)lock, open/close, ..).  Spatial granularity may vary widely, but often corresponds with the temporal.  Material granularity tends to be in the cm-m range: books, keys, .. - larger objects often have parts (desks with drawers) or contain/support smaller ones.

Deviation from the typical values can thorougly change the reading experience - imagine positioning the bottle above the glass before pouring, or having to move each leg repeatedly for walking, or in the other direction, being able to say "Invent time machine, then build it", or "lead army to victory" (or even "win game").

Are there any works of IF that deviate from the typical values in interesting ways?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4677&start=0#p33891
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: drop vs doff vs take, etc. - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-03-19 16:25:05

I'm having problems using the doff and/or drop commands. This especially true when I'm trying to do things while wearing my backpack on my back. I believe that I should be able to take a pack, being worn into my hands and not have to drop it to the ground when I wish to take certain items out of it. That does not seem to be always true. It just seems to be more realistic to me. I will explain this further if somebody asks. It just seems that I should be able to drop or doff or take anything that is either in my hands, in the pack, or in my pockets. Is there some way for take, drop and doff commands to interact.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4672&start=10#p33892
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Zarfian Forgiveness in Choice of Games
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2012-03-19 16:28:31

[quote="maga"]If you make the game unwinnable and don't realise that you've done so, that's not automatically Cruel; you have to not realise that you've done [i]anything[/i] irrevocable. All the Choice of Games games make it pretty clear that you won't get to lawnmower their choices until you get what you want; you know you won't be able to go back and have a do-over on the mutiny. So that would make them Tough.[/quote]

That's my interpretation, too. And, as I see it, the game would continue to be Tough even if it had infinite undo, as long as the negative effects happen multiple turns later.

For example, CYOA #1 [i]Cave of Time[/i] is Tough by that definition. According to [url=http://samizdat.cc/cyoa/#/gallery]this chart[/url], as soon as you reach page 22, you're cut off from all of the good endings, but you won't know it until you explore its entire subtree.

I do think the definition of "irrevocable" could stand to be clarified, not just to clarify infinite UNDO, but also to games (like ours) which don't even allow you to freely save/restore. If you want to go back and change your mind, you have to [i]restart[/i] the game, from the beginning.

I think right now the background assumption is that unlimited save/restore is possible; the question is whether the player will know when to save/restore. In Polite games, you never have to restore, because you can just type UNDO once. In Tough games, it's obvious when you need to save. In Nasty games, it's obvious right after you needed to save, which lets you UNDO once and then save. In Cruel games, you have no idea when you need to save; if you don't know the game is Cruel, you might not even know [i]whether[/i] you need to save.

Of course, there's the separate problem of knowing when to restore. In games where you can get stuck, even if you saved before an irrevocable action, you may not be sure whether you're in an unwinnable state. It makes the game much harder, because you need to not just explore the game world as it is, but also in other possible branches.

What would you make of a game that said this? "You are dead. You should never have eaten the cake 57 turns ago. Click here or type OOPS to go back 58 turns, to the moment before you ate the cake."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4674&start=0#p33893
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Alternate Universe Friends
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-19 17:10:55

One answer to avoid enmannequination would be to have flexible predefined routines for nonpossessed characters.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4664&start=10#p33894
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with Cover Art
User: HanonO / DateTime: 2012-03-19 17:16:39

[quote="crisses"][quote="HanonO"]I deleted the second "along " and had the same results.[/quote]

Please try combining all the statements together:
"Release along with an interpreter, cover art and the source text."
[/quote]

[code]Release along with an interpreter, cover art, and a website.[/code]

(Tried with serial comma, and without.

[code]This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6G60) on its most recent run through:

Problem. You wrote 'Release along with an interpreter, cover art, and a website'  : but this looks like a contradiction, because the same property seems to be being set in each of these sentences, but with a different outcome.
Problem. You wrote 'Release along with an interpreter, cover art, and a website'  : but this looked to me as if it might be trying to create something which has certain properties, and that made no sense on investigation. This sometimes happens if a sentence uses 'with' a little too liberally, or to specify a never-declared property. For instance, 'An antique is a kind of thing with an age.' would not be the right way to declare the property 'age' (because it does not tell Inform what kind of value this would be). Instead, try 'An antique is a kind of thing. An antique has a number called age.' It would then be all right to say 'The Louis Quinze chair is an antique with age 241.'[/code]

I'm going to try and make a completely new file and paste the source in.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4677&start=0#p33895
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: drop vs doff vs take, etc. - TADS3.1
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-19 17:31:56

If I recall correctly, you set up the pack as an always-worn item. In that situation, you won't be able to hold it. It will always be either worn or on the ground.

Even so, you shouldn't have to change anything in order to take things from the pack. If the pack is open (assuming it's an Openable), you should be able to take things out and put things in without restriction.

Reading your post, I can't quite tell whether you're complaining because you have to remove the pack in order to extract certain items from it, or whether you WANT that to be the behavior with respect to certain items.

There are many, many ways in which the Take, Doff, and Drop actions can interact. You'll need to be more specific about what you're trying to achieve.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665&start=10#p33896
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A critical IF vocabulary
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-19 17:38:12

Granularity's another interesting distinction between parsered IF and CYOA.

C.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4674&start=0#p33897
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Alternate Universe Friends
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-19 17:57:56

[quote]The point here maybe is that Friends is about trivial people engaged in trivial things, exactly the sort of people that flourish in a corporatist state where everyone accepts that the police carry guns and the country is always at war.[/quote]

Too pat.

C'mon:  were the Jews, just before things got bad, by their nature any [i]less[/i] inclined to trivia and minutia?

I think it's just a copyright dodge.  The author picked a Man in the High Castle universe for the same reason anyone makes a Nazi reference:  it ends conversation.


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4673&start=10#p33898
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Seriously, this game sucks.
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-03-19 18:31:48

[quote="Jamespking"][quote]impossible? It's quite straightforward. I've only taken a peek at the folder after going through it.[/quote]
I don't know what you mean. But you should have a look at the 720 transcripts online in which people failed to find the solution. I think the
[spoiler]wax soap puzzle[/spoiler]is much easier.[/quote]

[spoiler]I meant that I only took at peek at the documents in the folder the PC was carrying after getting to the train.  Going through the ticket obliterator was easy enough:  you can't go ahead because you your ticket is invalid, so you just backtrack.  I took at look at the scenery and there was the guy looking at the maps in the station, a clear hint that I should go talk to him.  A harder puzzle would be if he was hidden in between scenery description, but he was in a paragraph all by his own.[/spoiler]

[quote]Well, at least you don't have to [i]memorize blorple[/i] TWICE to do it.[/quote]

I really should try finishing Spellbreaker one day.  I've only really finished Nelson's wonderful nod at it, the early Inform demo Balances.  Kinda hard, but fair and logic puzzles.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=50#p33899
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-19 18:35:19

[quote="David J Prokopetz"]
[quote="matt w"]I just realized that my workaround only prevents going through the door, not other actions requiring touchability. So you still would be able to unlock the door from the next room.

The best solution might be to include [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3670]Flexible Action Requirements[/url] and then rewrite my workaround to block any action that isn't flexible about touching the noun. Or something like that.[/quote]
Or simply block any action other than examining for doors that aren't connected to the actor's location, as a quick fix.[/quote]

That should work if you don't add any extra actions -- all the other actions that apply to "visible things" in the Standard Rules seem to be things we want to block, like "show x to door." If you define any new actions that apply to visible things (like telling people about things) you might want to use a kind of action.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4669&start=0#p33900
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: 2 Noob Questions
User: Zork / DateTime: 2012-03-19 18:43:33

Thanks sooooo much!  I hope I'm not asking too many questions of you all, but this has been a big help.  My game is going great so far!  Inform is fun as hell. [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665&start=10#p33901
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A critical IF vocabulary
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-19 18:43:53

[quote="Biep"]Are there any works of IF that deviate from the typical values in interesting ways?[/quote]

[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=f9jkiwt1ae9g5c1g]Don't Pee Yourself[/url] and [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=z69xitgxqpj96jwx]The Nemean Lion[/url] both play with granularity in different ways (and are super short).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4673&start=10#p33902
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Seriously, this game sucks.
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-19 19:16:29

You examined the scenery, which is something many found unobvious and unfair. But thanks for the support. [emote]:)[/emote]

I found your transcript online. You are NOT playing the Final Cut Version. This is BAD.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4674&start=0#p33903
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Alternate Universe Friends
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-03-19 19:18:40

The Man in the High Castle

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665&start=10#p33904
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A critical IF vocabulary
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-19 19:34:26

Yeah those came to mind for hypergranularity. In general, games that make you do lots of little small fiddly actions can be annoying. Some people found this in the original implementation of making drinks in [i][url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=l63f3uuzl1x8a1]Calm[/url][/i]:
[quote="Jenni Polodna"]Then I drank the hot chocolate, but it was freezing, so I tried to put more chocolate powder in the cup, but the pot had closed somehow so I tried putting that in the cup, which clearly didn’t work, so I had to look at a couple things to figure out what was wrong and then I opened the pot, and put the chocolate powder in the cup, well, after rinsing it first, but then I forgot and put the milk in the cup instead of the saucepan and made another cup of cold hot chocolate which I would have just put in the saucepan but I kept deciding against it…[/quote]
So now [i]make hot chocolate[/i] just works.

As for [i]hypo[/i]granularity, as Conrad alludes you see this more in gamebooks. When playing games like [url=http://zombieexodus.com/]Choice of Vampire[/url], often you have to choose broad strategies of action like what you do over long stretches of time, or what your attitude is towards things that pass. It'd be interesting to see more of this sort of thing in parser fiction.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665&start=10#p33905
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A critical IF vocabulary
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-19 20:08:55

[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=qnyl1ifw24cw2kh8]The Guardian[/url] is a nice example of spatial hypogranularity -- you cross an endless plain in two turns. (This was something I liked about it.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=50#p33906
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: David J Prokopetz / DateTime: 2012-03-19 20:44:42

Hello - I think I just stumbled across something interesting. It seems that two-faced doors don't float. That is, if you define a pair of doors like this:

[code]The Red Room is a room.

The blue door is a door. It is south of the Red Room. Through the blue door is the Blue Room.

The Blue Room is a room.

The red door is a door. It is north of the Blue Room. Through the red door is the Red Room.[/code]
... then the respective doors aren't treated as floating objects, and have normal location, reachability and visibility properties regardless of where the player is.

I suspect this is of limited utility in many cases, especially since supplementary code would be required to force their open/closed and locked/unlocked states to remain in sync, but requiring viewports to be defined this way would vastly simplify my code. I could simply check whether a given object is in scope for a viewport's opposite face, rather than messing about trying to fake it with enclosure rules. As an added bonus, this would allow stuff like one-way glass to be defined with no additional overhead (i.e., by making only half of the door-door pair visually transparent).

As I'm writing this, it occurs to me that there's probably an existing extension to facilitate handling doors in this fashion.

... yep. Deluxe Doors by Emily Short. Handy, that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4674&start=0#p33907
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Alternate Universe Friends
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-19 20:50:35

[quote]My theory is the author just wanted to put forth a _Friends_ fanfic and used the alternate universe ploy to workaround copyright issues by claiming parody.[/quote]

My experience in the fanfic world argues against this theory. It's not a tactic that I've ever heard people cite. Changing the setting like that *isn't* parody; nor have I seen a trend of fanfic authors believing that it is.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665&start=10#p33908
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A critical IF vocabulary
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-19 20:53:42

Granularity of time and space was one of the things that I riffed on in Heliopause. (A "room" can be several light-years. "Turns" could be measured in months or centuries -- I left that indeterminate.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4678&start=0#p33909
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Ramus rocks!
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-19 21:33:40

There are about three things you need to know to make something in Ramus, and I put them together into a little template file.  This because I got tangled up editing the demo.

The absolute minimum you need to use Ramus is here:

[rant][code]<!DOCTYPE html>

<html>
 <head>
  <meta http-equiv="Content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
  <title>Document Title</title>
  <style type="text/css">  
html { Background-color: #442200; }
body {
        Opacity: 0.95;
	Font-size: 1.1em;
	Width: 80ex;
	Margin: 5ex auto;
	Padding: 5ex;
	Background-color: #885522;
	Color: white; 
	Border: 1px solid black; 
	Border-right-width: 2px;
	Border-bottom-width: 2px;
	-webkit-box-shadow: 3px 3px 3px #999999;
	-moz-box-shadow: 3px 3px 3px #999999;
	Box-shadow: 3px 3px 3px #999999;
	Font-family: serif;
	Position: relative; 
} 
a { Color: #000000; }
a.external { Font-variant: small-caps; }
a.external:visited { Color: #990066; }
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 { Font-weight: bold; Font-family: sans-serif; }
h1 { Font-size: 1.6em; Border-bottom: 1px solid black; Text-align: center; }
h2 { Font-size: 1.5em; }
h3 { Font-size: 1.4em; }
h4 { Font-size: 1.3em; }
h5 { Font-size: 1.2em; }
h6 { Font-size: 1.1em; } 
#transcript table { Margin: 1em auto; }
#transcript th, #transcript td {
	Margin: 0; Padding: 0.5em;
	Border: 1px solid #808080; Border-collapse: collapse;
}
#transcript th { Color: #ffffff; Background-color: #808080; Font-family: serif; }
#transcript hr { Color: #808080; }
address { Font-size: 0.9em; Text-align: center; }
dt { Font-weight: bold; } 
  </style>
 </head>

 <body>
 
 
  <div id="transcript">
   This document requires Javascript.
  </div>

  

  
  <div id="story" style="Display: none;"> 
   <div id="start">   
   <p>This document uses <a href="http://ramus.notimetoplay.org"><b>Ramus</a>!</b>
   --A nifty little JavaScript program created
   by <a href="http://felix.plesoianu.ro/">Felix Pleșoianu</a></p>
   
   <p>This text is the text that starts the document!  From here
   on, you're on your own.</p>
   <p>Make a link <a rel="node2">like this</a> or <a rel="node3">
   like this</a>.</p>
   </div>
   
   <div id="node2">
   Click through to the Ramus website for more detailed info.</p>
   </div>
   
   <div id="node3">
	[?do clear_links();?]
   <p>Use the above line to clear past links, so the player can't
   back up.</p>
   </div>
   
   
 line.
		
  <div id="nodename">
  <p>This is some text to put in your node! </p>
  </div>
		...is the basic data structure for a node.  The <div>..</div>
		tags contain the node information.  <p>..</p> are a good idea
		to keep your formatting clean.  But if you want the text to 
		add on to the previous paragraph and not to create a new one,
		then don't use the initial <p>, and similar for not ending paragraphs.

  nodetext nodetext lalala lala <a rel="newnodenametag">link text</a> node
  text nodetext la la la
		..."newnodenametag" has to match the <div id="--this--"> in order
		for the link to work.
-->   

  </div> 

  

  <script type="text/javascript">
var transcript = null;
var templates = {};

window.onload = function () {
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	transcript.innerHTML = "";
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function get_elements(ids) {
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}

function render_content(elements) {
	var turn = document.createElement("div");
	turn.className = "turn";
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                var elt = elements[i];
                if (!templates[elt.id])
                        templates[elt.id] = Mold.bake(elt.innerHTML);
                Mold.castAppend(turn, templates[elt.id]);
	}
	return turn;
}

function setup_links(links) {
	for (var i = 0; i < links.length; i++) {
		var a = links[i];
		if (!a.href) a.href = "#"; else a.className = "external";
		if (a.rel) a.onclick = function () {
                        this.parentNode.replaceChild(this.firstChild, this);
			var turn = render_content(get_elements(this.rel));
			setup_links(turn.getElementsByTagName("a"));
                        turn.style.opacity = 0;
			transcript.appendChild(turn);
			//transcript.lastChild.scrollIntoView();
			smoothScrollTo(transcript.lastChild);
                        emile(turn, "Opacity: 1;", {duration: 1000});
			return false;
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}

function clear_links() {
        var links = transcript.getElementsByTagName("a");
        
        for (var i = 0; i < links.length; ) {
                var a = links[i];
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                        a.parentNode.replaceChild(a.firstChild, a);
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}

function clear_text() {
        transcript.innerHTML = "";
}

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        func.push("__out.push(Mold.escapeHTML(" + cur.args + "));\n");
        break;
      case "html": case "h":
        func.push("__out.push(" + cur.args + ");\n");
        break;
      case "do": case "d":
        func.push(cur.args + "\n");
        break;

      case "if":
        stack.push("if");
        func.push("if (" + cur.args + ") {\n");
        break;
      case "elif":
        if (stack[stack.length - 1] != "if") throw new Error("'elif' without matching 'if' in template.");
        func.push("} else if (" + cur.args + ") {\n");
        break;
      case "else":
        if (stack[stack.length - 1] != "if") throw new Error("'else' without matching 'if' in template.");
        func.push("} else {\n");
        break;
      case "if.":
        if (stack.pop() != "if") throw new Error("'if.' without matching 'if' in template.");
        func.push("}\n");
        break;

      case "for":
        stack.push("for");
        if (match = cur.args.match(/^([\w\$_]+)(?:,\s*([\w\$_]+))?\s+in\s+((?:\r|\n|.)+)$/))
          func.push("Mold.forDepth++;\nMold.forEachIn(" + match[3] + ", function(" + match[1] + ", " +
                    (match[2] || "$dummy") + ", $i) {\n");
        else if (match = cur.args.match(/^([\w\$_]+)\s+((?:\r|\n|.)+)$/))
          func.push("Mold.forDepth++;\nMold.forEach(" + match[2] + ", function(" + match[1] + ", $i) {\n");
        else
          throw new Error("Malformed arguments to 'for' form in template -- expected variable name followed by expression.");
        break;
      case "for.":
        if (stack.pop() != "for") throw new Error("'for.' without matching 'for' in template.");
        func.push("});\nMold.forDepth--;\n");
        break;

      case "event":
        if (match = cur.args.match(/^(\w+)\s+((?:\r|\n|.)+)$/))
          func.push("__out.push(\"<var class=\\\"__mold \" + Mold.addSnippet(function(__node){Mold._attachEvent(__node, \"" + 
                    match[1] + "\", function($event, $node) {\n" + match[2] + "\n});}) + \"\\\"></var>\");\n");
        else
          throw new Error("Malformed arguments to 'event' form in template -- expected event name followed by handler body.");
        break;
      case "run": case "r":
        func.push("__out.push(\"<var class=\\\"__mold \" + Mold.addSnippet(function($node){" + cur.args + "}) + \"\\\"></var>\");\n");
        break;
      case "label": case "l":
        func.push("__out.push(\"<var class=\\\"__mold \" + Mold.addSnippet(Mold.setLabel(\"" + escapeString(cur.args) +
                  "\")) + \"\\\"></var>\");\n");
        break;
      case "call":
        var f = cur.args, arr = f.indexOf("->"), arg = "null";
        if (arr != -1) {arg = f.slice(arr + 2); f = f.slice(0, arr);}
        func.push(f + "(" + arg + ", __out);");
        break;

      default:
        func.push("Mold.dispatchCustom(\"" + escapeString(cur.command) + "\", " + (/^\s*$/.test(cur.args) ? "null" : cur.args) + ", __out);\n");
      }
    }
    if (stack.length) throw new Error("Unclosed blocks in template (" + stack.join() + ").");

    func.push("return __output ? \"\" : __out.join(\"\");\n}]");
    // The brackets are there to work around some weird IE6 behaviour.
    return Mold.cleanEval(func.join(""))[0];
  };

  Mold.cast = function cast(target, mold, arg) {
    if (casting) throw new Error("Mold.cast must not be called recursively.");

    snippets = [], snippet = 0, labels = null, forDepth = 0, casting = true;
    try {
      target.innerHTML = mold(arg);
      var varTags = target.getElementsByTagName("VAR"), array = [];
      // Copy tags into array -- FF modifies the varTags collection when you delete nodes in it.
      for (var i = 0; i < varTags.length; i++)
        array.push(varTags[i]);
      for (var i = 0; i < array.length; i++) {
        var varTag = array[i], match = varTag.className.match(/^__mold (\d+)$/);
        if (match) {
          var prev = varTag.previousSibling;
          while (prev && prev.nodeType == 3) prev = prev.previousSibling;
          snippets[match[1]](prev || varTag.parentNode);
          varTag.parentNode.removeChild(varTag);
        }
      }

      var result = labels;
    }
    finally {
      labels = snippets = null;
      casting = false;
    }
    return result;
  };

  Mold.castAppend = function castAppend(target, mold, arg) {
    var temp = target.ownerDocument.createElement("DIV");
    var result = Mold.cast(temp, mold, arg);
    while (temp.firstChild)
      target.appendChild(temp.firstChild);
    return result;
  };
})();

// Based on the tutorial at
// http://www.itnewb.com/v/Creating-the-Smooth-Scroll-Effect-with-JavaScript

function currentYPosition() {
	// Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari
	if (window.pageYOffset) return window.pageYOffset;
	// Internet Explorer 6 - standards mode
	if (document.documentElement && document.documentElement.scrollTop)
		return document.documentElement.scrollTop;
	// Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8
	if (document.body.scrollTop) return document.body.scrollTop;
	return 0;
}

function elementYPosition(elt) {
	var y = elt.offsetTop;
	while (elt.offsetParent && elt.offsetParent != document.body) {
		elt = elt.offsetParent;
		y += node.offsetTop;
	}
	return y;
}

function smoothScrollTo(element) {
	var startY = currentYPosition();
	var stopY = elementYPosition(element);
	var distance = Math.abs(startY - stopY);
	if (distance < 100) {
		scrollTo(0, stopY);
		return;
	}
	var speed = Math.round(distance / 100);
	if (speed > 20) speed = 20;
	var step = Math.round(distance / 25);
	var leapY = stopY > startY ? startY + step : startY - step;
	var timer = 0;
	if (stopY > startY) {
		for (var i = startY; i < stopY; i += step) {
			setTimeout(
				"window.scrollTo(0, " + leapY + ")",
				timer * speed);
			leapY += step;
			if (leapY > stopY) leapY = stopY;
			timer++;
		}
	} else {
		for (var i = startY; i > stopY; i -= step) {
			setTimeout(
				"window.scrollTo(0, " + leapY + ")",
				timer * speed);
			leapY -= step;
			if (leapY < stopY) leapY = stopY;
			timer++;
		}
	}
}
  </script>
 </body>
</html>
[/code][/rant]

Save this to a .htm or .html file, edit it with a text editor, and open it with your browser to go.


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4678&start=0#p33910
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Ramus rocks!
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-19 21:41:48

Thanks Conrad! And thanks to Felix P. too (who if I'm not mistaken is not the Felix who posts here under that name) - Ramus looks very nice, and easier to learn than Undum. I suppose I might have to learn a little Javascript if I want to do any state tracking in it, but it seems easier than diving straight into the Undum examples.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4674&start=10#p33911
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Alternate Universe Friends
User: UnwashedMass / DateTime: 2012-03-19 22:12:52

I'm sorry, could we please get a direct link to the title in question?  I perused the Ren'Py database with all apparently relevant keywords and came up with nothing.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4679&start=0#p33912
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Question about Bartering
User: Zork / DateTime: 2012-03-19 22:18:21

Let's say I have a character with a diamond, and I have to give him something in exchange, in this case the ruby; how do I make the character give an item to the player?  Here's what I have so far...

[code]Paul is a man in The Streets of Baltimore.  Paul is carrying a diamond. "Give me the ruby.".

Instead of examining Paul:
	say "Paul is carrying [the list of things carried by the noun]." 

Instead of going north in the presence of Paul when Paul does not carry money:
   Say "Give me the ruby.".
   
The block giving rule is not listed in the check giving it to rules.

A persuasion rule for asking people to try giving: persuasion succeeds.

 After giving the ruby to Paul:
say "Here's the diamond.".

[/code]
Now how do I get Paul to give me the diamond?

Thanks in advance!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4672&start=10#p33913
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Zarfian Forgiveness in Choice of Games
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2012-03-19 22:21:58

For another turn 1 undo, see the most recent Inside ADRIFT.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4679&start=0#p33914
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Bartering
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-19 22:29:24

Just add this to your "After giving the ruby to Paul" rule:

[code]Try Paul giving the diamond to the player.[/code]

You might want to check to make sure that Paul carries the diamond, and also have it say "Paul says, 'Give me the ruby.'" I also think you probably don't want the persuasion rule; as written, I think "Paul, give me the diamond" will get you the diamond without giving up the ruby.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4679&start=0#p33915
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Question about Bartering
User: Zork / DateTime: 2012-03-19 22:37:23

I'm editing this post -  I got your code to work.  Thank You!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4629&start=20#p33916
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Command line comfort
User: ArmanX / DateTime: 2012-03-19 22:49:57

[quote="namekuseijin"]I'm confortable with *nix shells, particularly bash.  Are the puzzles meant to be solved via shell scripts? ;)[/quote]
Oh man... {shudder} That's a scary thought. Never mind trying to solve a puzzle, just coding the thing gives me the heebie-jeebies. I'm writing this in Java (for a number of reasons, one of which is "to learn Java better" and the other of which is "I can make it run locally or online without much extra configuration". That being said, though, this is a "completely from scratch" kind of thing. None of that silly reuse of code for me! Ha! No, I'm coding an entire shell by hand, complete with implementing all the usual function like listing files and moving directories!

...I better find a way to reuse this, hadn't I.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4680&start=0#p33917
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: tables & topics & indexed text -- Oh My! (memory limits)
User: crisses / DateTime: 2012-03-19 22:55:26

I could not for the life of me get part of the player's command -> snippet -> indexed text -> text to compare to a column of table (long story, code snippets below).  I could possibly have renamed the table column "topic" but I really didn't want to do that (partly because it's NOT a topic!).  And I've been the value route, and didn't really want to do that either -- if I could avoid it.

So I bit the bullet and changed that first column of all my tables to indexed text.  Then I hit memory limits -- to the tune of having to raise memory limits tremendously to get to compile.  Now my table-coping/populating routines caused a much longer delay than before (30 seconds on the Glulx welcome screen before the game start screen loads), and I'm just worried that I may have done something Very Wrong™ or unnecessary...

So here's my current memory limits:
[spoiler][code]Use MAX_OBJ_PROP_COUNT of 256.
Use MAX_PROP_TABLE_SIZE of 2000000.
Use MAX_STATIC_DATA of 5000000.
Use MAX_OBJECTS of 4000.
Use MAX_ARRAYS of 4000. [wasn't sure I needed this, but it also looked like a safe bet to add it...]
[/code][/spoiler]

A small sample table (I have longer ones with up to 6 columns -- only the 1st column being indexed text on any of them...I may be able to do cross-reference tables on some of the other columns of information in the future but I'm trying to get it running to proof-of-concept for the tables before fussing with that):
[spoiler][code]
Table of Node Stats
stat (indexed text)	rating	activation	is-attack	is-program
"rating"	0	false	false	false
"matrix initiative bonus"	0	false	false	false
"matrix initiative pass bonus"	0	false	false	false
"response"	1	false	false	false
"firewall"	1	false	false	false
"system"	1	false	false	false
"signal"	1	false	false	false
"persona limit"	1	false	false	false
"processor limit"	1	false	false	false
"analyze"	0	false	false	true
"rigged"	0	false	false	false
"encrypted"	0	false	false	false
with 6 blank rows  [/code][/spoiler]

And one of the rules -- the one I had to index the first column of the tables for -- and the definition I created to change the snippet (the topic understood) into an indexed text:
[spoiler][code]

To decide what indexed text is the stattext (oldsnippet - a snippet) (this is fixingtext):
	let N be indexed text; 
	now N is "[oldsnippet]"; 
	replace the text "'" in N with ""; 
	decide on N;


Understand "activate [text]" as activating a program.  
Activating a program  is an action applying to one topic.  
Carry out an actor activating a program:
	let thistopic be fixingtext applied to the topic understood;
	if thistopic is a stat listed in the stat table of the actor:
		if activation entry is true:
			say "You remember that [the topic understood] is already running.";
		otherwise:	
			if the rating entry is greater than 0:
				now activation entry is true;
				if the actor is the player, reset player successes;
				say "[1 ca][The topic understood] is now running.";
			otherwise:
				say "You don't have that program." instead;
	otherwise:
		say "[The topic understood] is not a [if actor is a technomancer]complex form[otherwise]program[end if].";
[/code][/spoiler]

(I can change things to Check...Carry Out...Report after I know each segment works...so it's all in Carry Out because I couldn't tell what was failing without everything being in one block so I could showme snippets and work out how to parse the text...)

So do I really have to change "the topic understood" to indexed text, hence change all the tables to indexed text, to find the topic understood in the 'stat column' of the table?  I tried many permutations to try to get the text & table to match up before I found the example with naming Fido in the manual and decided to try indexed text.  It seems to be a memory hog and to really slow things down a whole lot, though.

I'm getting pretty tired of re-writing everything to get it right...I know it's the wise thing to do in the long run but I've been rewriting full-time for at least 2 weeks....It's taking the excitement and fun out of the project. [emote]:([/emote]  At least I haven't spent 3 days on one bug in a while...  [emote]:roll:[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4674&start=10#p33918
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Alternate Universe Friends
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-19 22:56:28

[quote="UnwashedMass"]I'm sorry, could we please get a direct link to the title in question?  I perused the Ren'Py database with all apparently relevant keywords and came up with nothing.[/quote]
I refer you to the pattern set by Conrad's 'review' of [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4257]Find the Dog[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4664&start=10#p33919
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with Cover Art
User: crisses / DateTime: 2012-03-19 23:03:18

[quote="HanonO"][quote="crisses"]
[code]Release along with an interpreter, cover art, and a website.[/code][/quote][/quote]

The parser error you pasted in doesn't show a period at the end?

Hate to ask the "is your computer plugged in" type of question but:  Is there a period there?

Can you paste us the whole preamble before you create a room?

Here's mine for comparison.  Yes, I just raised my memory limits to oblivion (see other thread):

[spoiler][code]
The story title is "Matrix Text Game". 
The story author is "The Crisses". 
The story headline is "A Shadowrun Matrix Simulator". 
The story genre is "Game Assistant". 
The release number is 11.
The story description is "A play-along version of matrix interactions to help speed play at live pencil-and-paper games.  Other uses: GM can test matrix threats/features, can help to train new hacker & technomancer players. 
Image credit: Unmaterial Tower by Lance Sheilds (cc/by, cropped & color-adjusted)."

The story creation year is 2012.
Release along with an interpreter, cover art and the source text.
Release along with a file of "Sample Character" called "Myth.i7x".
Release along with a file of "Shadowrun Matrix Extension" called "Shadowrun Matrix.i7x".
Release along with a file of "Release Notes" called "ReleaseNotes.rtf".
Use undo prevention and the American dialect.

[There's a lot going on, so don't change these lines.  This makes it so that the game doesn't crash.]
Use MAX_OBJ_PROP_COUNT of 256.
Use MAX_PROP_TABLE_SIZE of 2000000.
Use MAX_STATIC_DATA of 5000000.
Use MAX_OBJECTS of 4000.
Use MAX_ARRAYS of 4000.
[/code][/spoiler]

Edit:  I'm just not sure whether you need your release information at the beginning of the document, or if you're missing something like a period somewhere, so pasting it in would be helpful for friendly eyes.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4674&start=10#p33921
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Alternate Universe Friends
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-03-20 00:34:40

[quote="JoeyJones"][quote="UnwashedMass"]I'm sorry, could we please get a direct link to the title in question?  I perused the Ren'Py database with all apparently relevant keywords and came up with nothing.[/quote]
I refer you to the pattern set by Conrad's 'review' of [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4257]Find the Dog[/url].[/quote]

oh, conradcrook, not again!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4678&start=0#p33922
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Ramus rocks!
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-20 00:43:57

Guys,

Find attached a little interactive story I've just cranked out using Ramus.  This is to show what you can do with the three moves illustrated by the earlier template, and hopefully to entertain.


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4681&start=0#p33923
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: little game, Unicorn Story, written in Ramus, available
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-20 00:52:48

A little game I've written with this new system Ramus has been released, if you want to call it that.  Look in the Other Development Systems forum under "Ramus rocks!"

It's in the form of an html file you need to download and view.  (It's a sad comment on the idiot-proofing of all the onlineness readily available to me that I can't just post the damn thing someplace.  Or not easily.)

The game file is called Unicorn Story.

Remus is a nicely flexible little system that I encourage people to try out.


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4678&start=0#p33924
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Ramus rocks!
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-03-20 02:08:08

Cool. But are there any particular reasons  (religious or otherwise) you're not using JQuery?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4682&start=0#p33925
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: typed constants
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-03-20 02:17:00

I know you can do something like 
[code]
A cliche is a kind of object. Athlete is a cliche. Body is a cliche.
Strength is a list of cliches that varies. Strength is {athlete, body}.
[/code]

But is there a way to just declare (what I think of as) a typed global [i]constant[/i]? 
Something like "A list of cliches that does not vary"? I guess it doesn't really matter but it feels like maybe that could be optimized for memory etc. 

And yes, those are Risus cliches!  Just playing around.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4680&start=0#p33926
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: tables & topics & indexed text -- Oh My! (memory limits)
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-20 03:11:32

As far as I can tell, this seems to be how you gotta phrase things.

[code]Table of Node Stats
[***declare stats to be topics***]
stat (topic)	rating	activation	is-attack	is-program
"rating"	0	false	false	false
"matrix initiative bonus"	0	false	false	false
"matrix initiative pass bonus"	0	false	false	false
"response"	1	false	false	false
"firewall"	1	false	false	false
"system"	1	false	false	false
"signal"	1	false	false	false
"persona limit"	1	false	false	false
"processor limit"	1	false	false	false
"analyze"	0	false	false	true
"rigged"	0	false	false	false
"encrypted"	0	false	false	false
with 6 blank rows 

Carry out an actor activating a program:
	if the topic understood is a topic [***not 'a stat'!!!***] listed in the stat table of the actor:
		if activation entry is true:
			say "You remember that [the topic understood] is already running.";
		otherwise:	
			if the rating entry is greater than 0:
				now activation entry is true;
				say "[The topic understood] is now running.";
			otherwise:
				say "You don't have that program." instead;
	otherwise:
		say "[The topic understood] is not a program.";[/code]

Why Inform refuses to compile with "if the topic understood is a stat listed in the stat table of the actor", I don't know. If it's not a bug, it's a pretty annoying feature.


EDIT: The code above fails, too (though it compiles). To make it work you mustn't call the topics column anything but 'topic'.
[code]Table of Node Stats
[***topics column has to be called "topic"***]
topic	rating	activation	is-attack	is-program
"rating"	0	false	false	false[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4574&start=90#p33927
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Future of the XYZZY Awards
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-20 04:01:29

[quote="Biep"][quote="maga"]I'm not sure what 'the category for which it was nominated for the most awards' means,[/quote]
I suppose the intended meaning is 'the category for which is was most often nominated'.  So if A people nominated W for category X, and B people for Y, then if A < B W will not appear in the list for X.[/quote]
That's right, I meant "the category for which it has received the most nominations." Sorry for not being clear.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4680&start=0#p33928
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: tables & topics & indexed text -- Oh My! (memory limits)
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-20 07:41:43

For what it's worth, Inform seems to recognize the reference to topics "by any other name" as part of the description of the action.
It accepts:
[code]Carry out an actor activating a program stat listed in the stat table of the actor:[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4680&start=0#p33929
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: tables & topics & indexed text -- Oh My! (memory limits)
User: crisses / DateTime: 2012-03-20 07:50:02

[quote="Felix"]As far as I can tell, this seems to be how you gotta phrase things.

Why Inform refuses to compile with "if the topic understood is a stat listed in the stat table of the actor", I don't know. If it's not a bug, it's a pretty annoying feature.[/quote]

I understand all of this as a protection versus what the player might type on the command line, but now it's ridiculous in the programming direction....

First, I want to thank you for your help!  I really do appreciate it, because I never would have thought to change stat->topic.

However, when I changed (indexed text) to (topic) in the tables, other functions broke. [emote]:([/emote]   Most of the time the "stat" column is not something said by the player.  There's the activate and deactivate commands, to change one truth state, because that's the only thing in the player's control.  So there might be a better way for me to go about this than to change every table to a topic column (I know I can change the whole column to values, but that also seems like a waste in this case, and means all the values are now in the entire program's namespace which I don't like).  Perhaps this is best handled with an interim "Table of Things Actors Can Activate" table simply there for these 2 functions to catch the phrases/topics said by the player then do the real table lookup elsewhere (a table with a topic column + a text column that by some coincidence  [emote];)[/emote] completely match both columns...).  [Actually, the same table could also store a few more tidbits of information that are the same across all tables...]

Problem is see WI 15.13: "There is really only one operation allowed with topic columns, the "...listed in..." construction, but fortunately it is the one most often needed."

In this case, it's NOT the only operation I will ever need.  Because it's not always something said by the player. [emote]:([/emote]  When it is something said by the player, now it compiles.  When it's something I need referenced internally by the system, now it breaks.

Example:  This is a simple debugging not-for-release function that broke:

[spoiler][code]Table-dumping is an action applying to one thing.  Understand "tablecheck [a visible object]" as table-dumping.
Carry out table-dumping something visible:
	if the noun is a person and the noun is not a technomancer:
		say "Current Matrix Boxes: [current matrix boxes of the noun][line break]";
	repeat through the stat table of the noun:
		say "[stat entry]: ([rating entry]) [activation entry] [if is-program entry is true]program[end if][line break]";[/code][/spoiler]

This isn't a make-or-break function, but shouldn't I be able to print the column?

Changing it to "topic entry" didn't work (exact same error), and the error I'm getting is odd.  It seems you can't simply print a topic column?  [On this one, I got it past this compile error with my snippet-to-indexed text function (had to change input type from snippet to topic!) but there were other errors (see below).]

Error:

[spoiler][code]
[b]Problem.[/b] You wrote 'say "[stat entry]: ([rating entry]) [ac [...] s true]program[end if][line break]"'  , and in particular 'stat entry': but this asked to say something of a kind which can't be said, or rather, printed. Although this problem can arise when you use complicated text substitutions which come in variant forms depending on the kinds of value used, far more often what this means is just that you tried to use a substituted value (e.g., in 'say "The dial reads [V]."') of a kind which could not be printed out. For instance, if V is a number or a piece of text, there is no problem: but if V is a parsing topic, say an entry in a 'topic' column of a table, then this problem will arise.
I was trying to match one of these phrases:

1. say "stat entry - text" 
2. say "[stat entry - number]" 
3. say "[stat entry - unicode character]" 
4. say "[stat entry - sayable value]" 
5. say "": (" - text" 
6. say "rating entry - text" 
7. say "[rating entry - number]" 
8. say "[rating entry - unicode character]" 
9. say "[rating entry - sayable value]" 
10. say "") " - text" 
11. say "activation entry - text" 
12. say "[activation entry - number]" 
13. say "[activation entry - unicode character]" 
14. say "[activation entry - sayable value]" 
15. say "" " - text" 
16. say "[if is-program entry is true - a condition]" 
17. say "if is-program entry is true - text" 
18. say "[if is-program entry is true - number]" 
19. say "[if is-program entry is true - unicode character]" 
20. say "[if is-program entry is true - sayable value]" 
21. say ""program" - text" 
22. say "[end if]" 
23. say "end if - text" 
24. say "[end if - number]" 
25. say "[end if - unicode character]" 
26. say "[end if - sayable value]" 
27. say "[line break]" 
28. say "line break - text" 
29. say "[line break - number]" 
30. say "[line break - unicode character]" 
31. say "[line break - sayable value]" 
This was what I found out:

stat entry = a table entry, holding a topic
rating entry = a table entry, holding a number
activation entry = a table entry, holding a truth state
is-program entry is true = a condition
if is-program entry is true = something unrecognised
end if = something unrecognised
line break = something unrecognised
[/code][/spoiler]

But other rules/actions/functions also broke....

[spoiler][code]
Problem. In the sentence 'if stat entry is a topic listed in the new table begin'  , it looks as if you intend 'stat entry is a topic listed in the new table' to be a condition, but that doesn't work because you use the listed in relation (between a snippet and a table name) with a topic instead of a snippet.
I was trying to match this phrase:

if (stat entry is a topic listed in the new table - a condition): 
This was what I found out:

stat entry is a topic listed in the new table = a condition
[/code][/spoiler]

So now I have to use a function to translate to a snippet every time I want to look up something in the table, and a function every time I want to say the topic?  I'm sure this will be kinder on the memory use of the game, but it's not kinder on the programmer or readability of the code.

So I'm going to make that interim table for juggling all this.

Also thank you for your new post!  [emote]:)[/emote]  This is frustrating (some) but helpful (much more so!).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4674&start=10#p33930
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Alternate Universe Friends
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-20 08:11:43

[quote="zarf"]My experience in the fanfic world argues against this theory. It's not a tactic that I've ever heard people cite. Changing the setting like that *isn't* parody; nor have I seen a trend of fanfic authors believing that it is.[/quote]

Fair enough.  Maybe there's something clever going on.

UnwashedMass, I'll post a link later on.


Conrad.

ps - The title isn't _Alternate Universe Friends_, and I don't remember what exactly it is.  I know it starts with [i]The One About...[/i], such as The One About Monica's New Dress -- but I don't recall the topic.  And I seem to remember there's a wording variation between the in-game title and the website title.

I played it last week.  Give me some time to track it down.

C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665&start=10#p33931
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A critical IF vocabulary
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-20 08:24:18

[quote="JoeyJones"]In general, games that make you do lots of little small fiddly actions can be annoying.  [..] So now [i]make hot chocolate[/i] just works.[/quote]
Sounds like degranulation by learning might be useful in some cases: the first time it takes an effort, but after that the lump command will work.  So once one has made chocolate successfully once, one can simply call that "make chocolate" and use that as (if it were) a macro.  Once I have been to the bank, I can henceforth just say "go to bank".  Starting my car the first time may take a lot of fiddling (belts, clutch, key, hand brake, ..), but after that it's routine.
I think IF authoring systems ought to support this, rather than game implementors having to build it from scratch..

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665&start=10#p33932
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A critical IF vocabulary
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-20 08:26:34

[quote="emshort"]The quality of going beyond the world model, inviting the player to respond to something about the prose itself. (Interactive poetry, Ad Verbum, Earl Grey, Pale Blue Light, any game that asks a rhetorical question and then has a response if you answer it, etc.)[/quote]
Would [i]transcendent[/i] or [i]self-aware[/i] do?

Almost certainly there already is a term for this, as it happens a lot in other media, such as cartoon strips where someone grabs his own text balloon and fills it with helium, or breaks through the top line of the picture box in order to grab something he dropped a few boxes earlier.  And probably the name is something ugly with "meta" in it.

My mother used to be a nurse in a lunatic asylum, and before WWII a patient there had written a hilarious self-aware novel, that nowadays would be called Hofstadterish, I suppose - lots of playing with the levels.  Supposing he didn't invent the genre himself, I guess this means the genre was well established by then.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4678&start=0#p33933
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Ramus rocks!
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-20 08:28:49

No idea what JQuery is.  What, did I code it badly?

Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4680&start=0#p33934
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: tables & topics & indexed text -- Oh My! (memory limits)
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-20 08:36:44

[quote="crisses"]\This isn't a make-or-break function, but shouldn't I be able to print the column?

Changing it to "topic entry" didn't work (exact same error), and the error I'm getting is odd.  It seems you can't simply print a topic column?[/quote]

I won't pretend to understand the internals, but as I understand it, you can't print a topic column. Topics aren't just texts but complicated functions involving texts; for instance "[any door]" and "[carried thing]" compile in topic columns. Or "monica/phoebe", which matches either "monica" or "phoebe". But you can't just print either "monica" or "phoebe", and I don't think it's represented internally with the slash intact. So there's no straightforward way to print an arbitrary topic from a topic column.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4682&start=0#p33935
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: typed constants
User: HanonO / DateTime: 2012-03-20 08:48:06

[quote="peterorme"]I know you can do something like 
[code]
A cliche is a kind of object. Athlete is a cliche. Body is a cliche.
Strength is a list of cliches that varies. Strength is {athlete, body}.
[/code]

But is there a way to just declare (what I think of as) a typed global [i]constant[/i]? 
Something like "A list of cliches that does not vary"? I guess it doesn't really matter but it feels like maybe that could be optimized for memory etc. 

To say clichelist:
   Repeat with item running through cliches:
      Say "[item]".

When play begins:
    Say "[clichelist]".

I think you can prepare a list of them to fancy it up in sentence case. 

And yes, those are Risus cliches!  Just playing around.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4681&start=0#p33936
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: little game, Unicorn Story, written in Ramus, available
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2012-03-20 08:55:36

I put it up.  <a class="postlink" href="http://www.glpics.com/ralphmerridew/unicorn/Unicorn%20Story.html">http://www.glpics.com/ralphmerridew/uni ... Story.html</a>

webs.com allows directly uploading HTML.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4681&start=0#p33937
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: little game, Unicorn Story, written in Ramus, available
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-03-20 09:16:42

[quote="conradcook"]It's a sad comment on the idiot-proofing of all the onlineness readily available to me that I can't just post the damn thing someplace.  Or not easily.[/quote]
You should be able to upload to a Dropbox account from anywhere. You can host any client-side game that way--Quixe, Parchment, whatever.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4678&start=0#p33938
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Ramus rocks!
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-20 09:59:54

Reading the google I find:

[code]The best featuring for jQuery is the effects you can accomplish, with less code than what it would take with JavaScript. Most common jQuery effects are drop down menus, drag and drop elements, animations and form validation.[/code]

Also a Wikipedia thing I don't entirely fathom and a web page for JQ itself.

--I did not write the JavaScript code.  That was done by Felix.  There's a link to his personal page and to the Ramus project page in that file.

As I understand the technology tree -- I might be entirely wrong; such things aren't really on my radar -- Inform 7 was modified to be clickable through a nifty thing called Vorple.  OTOH, there was something called Undum, which also made for clickable IF.  But both were pretty complex.  So Felix made Ramus, with greatly simplified options, in order to greatly simplify document production.

I have no idea why he wrote the JS code in the way he did.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4632&start=0#p33939
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Does anyone else want your own tag marks for Inform code
User: gravel / DateTime: 2012-03-20 10:16:52

Hmm, that's an interesting idea.  Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4663&start=0#p33940
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Linux/Ubuntu Support needed for Inform 7
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2012-03-20 10:18:19

Hmm that's strange. I'm on the same OS as you at work and Inform7 works fine aside from a couple of minor things. Then again, this isn't a fresh install.. it's been updated a few times since Ubuntu 9 something.

Sorry I don't have any ideas for a fix at the moment.  [emote]:|[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4662&start=30#p33941
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Another Vorple Question
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2012-03-20 10:21:11

Jim:  Have you played the [url=http://www.glpics.com/ralphmerridew/clod/clod.html]Undum version of the Clod's Quest Demo[/url]?  It's probably the most IF-like game produced with Undum.  (It also uses input from dropdowns in the "Set Options" submenu.)  I did have to beat Undum a bit to get it working, though.

Why hasn't Twine caught on?  My opinion is the lack of a good demo.  I spent a little time searching, and I couldn't find [i]any[/i] games written in it.

Go to the Undum page, and [i]the very first link[/i] on the page is the tutorial game.  Googling Undum produces links to "The Matter of the Monster", "The Cavity of Time", and "Starborn" on the first page.  The Undum blog has links to "Cloak of Darkness", "The Matter of The Monster", "The Cavity of Time", and "Lucy Hardin's Missing Period".

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4683&start=0#p33942
Forum: Feedback / Subject: SQL Errors
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2012-03-20 10:21:42

Running into a few of these today, though a reload or 2 usually clears it up.

[quote]General Error
SQL ERROR [ mysql4 ]

Out of memory (Needed 1048544 bytes) [5]

An SQL error occurred while fetching this page. Please contact the Board Administrator if this problem persists.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4680&start=0#p33943
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: tables & topics & indexed text -- Oh My! (memory limits)
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-03-20 10:22:17

I would like to reiterate something that capmikee suggested in the other thread but has perhaps gone overlooked. However, I will do so in somewhat stronger terms: [b]Do not use texts / topics for this. Create a new kind of value for programs.[/b] Why?
[list=1]1. kovs are automatically parsable --no indexed text conversion stuff needed;[/list:o]
[list=2]2. unlike topics, kovs can be printed;[/list:o]
[list=3]3. this method is every bit as extensible as using texts; in this case maybe moreso.[/list:o]

You're driving yourself batty unnecessarily -- something I have often done with Inform myself.  [emote]:)[/emote] 

Here's an example of what I mean:
[code]A program is a kind of value.
rating, matrix initiative bonus, matrix initiative pass bonus, response, and firewall are programs.

A person has a table name called the stat table.
The stat table of yourself is Table of Node Stats.
 
Activating is an action applying to one program. 
Understand "activate [program]" as activating. 
Understand "activate [text]" as a mistake ("You can only activate programs.").

Check an actor activating (this is the can't activate disallowed programs rule):
	unless the program understood is a stat listed in the stat table of the actor:
		say "The [program understood] program is not available to you." instead.
		
Check an actor activating (this is the can't activate running programs rule):
	choose row with stat of program understood in the stat table of the actor;
	if activation entry is true:
		say "You remember that [the program understood] is already running." instead.

Check an actor activating (this is the can't activate programs with zero rating rule):
	choose row with stat of program understood in the stat table of the actor;
	unless the rating entry is greater than 0:
		say "You don't have that program." instead.
		
Carry out an actor activating (this is the default activating rule):
	choose row with stat of program understood in the stat table of the actor;
	now activation entry is true;
	[whatever you want that doesn't print stuff here.]

Report an actor activating (this is the default report activating rule):	
	say "The [program understood] program is now running.".

[Note that I declared response as a program above, but deleted it from the table below:]		
Table of Node Stats
stat	rating	activation	is-attack	is-program
rating	0	false	false	false
matrix initiative bonus	0	false	false	false
matrix initiative pass bonus	0	false	false	false
firewall	1	false	false	false

test me with "activate boo / activate firewall / g / activate response / activate matrix / activate matrix initiative pass bonus".

Lab is a room.[/code]

Note that there are still some issues: "activate matrix" is unrecognized as opposed to leading to disambiguation (which you probably run into with the existing implementation anyway) and you have to watch capitalization. These can both be fixed, I'm just not sure off the top of my head the best way yet. Also, I'm not convinced that tables are the way to go with this either, but I'm not a real fan of using tables in this manner, so I'm probably biased.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4680&start=0#p33944
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: tables & topics & indexed text -- Oh My! (memory limits)
User: crisses / DateTime: 2012-03-20 10:43:59

[quote="Skinny Mike"]I would like to reiterate something that capmikee suggested in the other thread but has perhaps gone overlooked. However, I will do so in somewhat stronger terms: [b]Do not use texts / topics for this. Create a new kind of value for programs.[/b] Why?
[list=1]1. kovs are automatically parsable --no indexed text conversion stuff needed;[/list:o]
[list=2]2. unlike topics, kovs can be printed;[/list:o]
[list=3]3. this method is every bit as extensible as using texts; in this case maybe moreso.[/list:o]

You're driving yourself batty unnecessarily -- something I have often done with Inform myself.  [emote]:)[/emote] [/quote]

It can be done with values, with tables, etc.  If the only place the tables breaks is when I have to parse what someone is saying, I just made a 2-column table where one column is topic, the other is text.  The nice thing -- that you point out, is that I can put some types of disambig in the topic column.  [The player can't "activate matrix" on any quality anyway -- that's an activity reserved for things with an is-program of true.  If they heal, they use a program for that "medic me" or "heal me" which is an action that invokes the medic program.]

There are kinds of people and kinds of rooms with these stats.  And some types of people /rooms can only have some of these stats.  It becomes a true headache if you have to say "A node is a room." and assign the same values used by people, when only a few of those 30-50 values overlap between people and rooms.  So even if it ended up being vaules, it would probably end up in a table anyway.  However for other housekeeping internal to the game, all these "stats" in one table makes it easier to program.  Yeah, I could use values with values -- but like I said I didn't like the interference with the namespace in the rest of the program.  When someone says "analyze joe" as a verb versus "run analyze" (the program) versus me programming what happens when the actor analyzes joe etc. -- it got messy.  I started having to come up with creative words in the program, rendering it confusing and less readable.

I think that the extra lookup table will make a big difference, and I've got a single place to keep the information that is stable no matter whom has the quality in question (i.e. a program is a program, whether a person or a "room"/node has it).  What I needed was to understand why it had that problem.

And if I ended up having to switch to values -- argh.  But I'd live, I guess.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4662&start=30#p33945
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Another Vorple Question
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-20 10:58:03

Anna Anthropy has a [url=http://www.auntiepixelante.com/?p=1424]collection[/url] (generally quite smutty) games written in Twine. But I think part of the issue is that Twine is basically an abandoned project. 

I didn't find the Twine editor as transparent as I'd hoped; I was hoping to port [url=http://crookedtimber.org/2012/02/16/so-what-would-your-plan-for-greece-be/]this[/url] into Twine but it wasn't as straightforward to just open things up and copy and paste into the GUI as I hoped. It probably would be easier if I watched the tutorial videos.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4682&start=0#p33946
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: typed constants
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-03-20 10:59:46

Right, but I dont want a list of all the cliches, I want to be able to make a specific list and put some items in it. 

I thought maybe you'd be able to just do something like [code]strength = {athlete, body}[/code] but that doesn't work because the compiler first needs to know what strength is. So I tell it: "strength is a list of cliches that varies". 

And so I started thinking: aha - but is there also such a thing as "a list of cliches that [i]doesn't[/i] vary"? Because this one won't, not at runtime. And if so, how do you create one?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4683&start=0#p33947
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SQL Errors
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2012-03-20 11:00:43

I got those yesterday. (Before that, it had been quite a while with everything working great. No SQL errors, and no logging out.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665&start=20#p33948
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A critical IF vocabulary
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-20 11:04:41

A typical IF quality may be [b]granular terseness[/b].  Emily Short already mentioned a (a specific kind of) narrative terseness, but good IF expands that.
[list]
[*][b]Spatial terseness[/b]: there should be no "unnecessary" rooms - each room must have a good excuse for existing, and if the same effect can be achieved using fewer rooms, that is generally better.[/*:m]
[*][b]Temporal terseness[/b]: the game ought not to require micromanagement beyond the level the story requires.  This is what we were talking about above.[/*:m]
[*][b]Material terseness[/b]: There ought not to be more objects and details than the story requires.[/*:m][/list:u]
An important qualifier here is the "than required", of course.  Einstein's famous quip about simpliciry is valid here too.  "A wood.  You see: painting.  Exits: east, up." - is not the ideal to strive after.

Of course this goes together with narrative terseness: a good choice of props can be smaller if they are well-described, and a description can be shorter in the presence of one or two 'telling' objects.  With the correct prose, a temporal jump may still feel like a long stretch of time - et cetera.

(I am quite aware Emily and others have already written about these qualities; all I am doing here is trying to outline a general IF-theoretical framework.  Of course the terseness criterion spreads all over art, and is identical to the novelty criterion.  Repetition can set a background that allows orientation (the very fact of having room after room in IF, a repeating pattern in a decoration, the beat of music), but given that background repetition, whether it is within one work of art or between works of art, needs a strong justification.  The first IF maze or find-the-key puzzle was great; the 100th a turn-off.  My remarks above about macro-learning address the same issue: making the game more terse without degrading the story by removing repetition.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4682&start=0#p33949
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: typed constants
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-20 11:16:04

No. The official answer is, use a variable and don't vary it.

This doesn't cover every case where you might want a constant, but it covers your case, I think.

(For further discussion: <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/751122-syntax-allow-for-properties-of-objects-to-be-def">http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/573 ... -to-be-def</a> )

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4682&start=0#p33950
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: typed constants
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-03-20 11:20:00

I'm not sure what you need exactly, but you might want to check out this uservoice suggestion concerning constants:
[url]http://inform7.uservoice.com/forums/57320-general/suggestions/751122-syntax-allow-for-properties-of-objects-to-be-def#comments[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4662&start=30#p33951
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Another Vorple Question
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-20 11:25:36

[quote="ralphmerridew"]Jim:  Have you played the [url=http://www.glpics.com/ralphmerridew/clod/clod.html]Undum version of the Clod's Quest Demo[/url]?  It's probably the most IF-like game produced with Undum.  (It also uses input from dropdowns in the "Set Options" submenu.)  I did have to beat Undum a bit to get it working, though.[/quote]
Nice work. I wasn't aware of it.

I've been blogging about Undum (at midiguru.wordpress.com). I haven't gotten very far in learning Undum/Vorple -- it's a steep road, especially for someone who barely knows enough about Javascript to add properties to a variable. (That would be me.)

If I knew how to write Perl scripts, I'd write a script that could turn a more friendly text production into error-free Javascript. That would cut the development time approximately in half.

There would still be a lot of amusing issues to sort through. Last night I created a multi-item pop-up command menu as a tooltip for an NPC. Now the reader can select "Look at her", "Talk to her", or "Kiss her". But the way Vorple is set up, I haven't yet figured out how to give the first and third commands { classes: 'once' }. That tag seems not to work within a multi-item pop-up. This is what I mean by "a steep road."

Also, a text editor for MacOS that would find matching braces would be swell. I'm using TextWrangler, which is pretty darn good, but even though it identifies a .js file as Javascript, it doesn't seem to care about matching braces.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4682&start=0#p33952
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: typed constants
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-03-20 11:45:16

Ok, thanks!

Good to know that I hadn't missed something obvious this time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4673&start=10#p33953
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Seriously, this game sucks.
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2012-03-20 12:26:34

Look at one of the old Infocom games.  The documentation included a sample transcript that illustrated the kind of instructions used in playing the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665&start=20#p33954
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A critical IF vocabulary
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-20 12:42:18

[quote="Biep"]Of course the terseness criterion spreads all over art [...][/quote]

I like the term [i]elegance,[/i] myself, for the point where effectiveness (in artistic terms) joins with efficiency.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4684&start=0#p33955
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Different movement schemas in different areas of the map?
User: Jeff Zeitlin / DateTime: 2012-03-20 12:42:34

I have a WIP for a private project (sadly, it won't be releasable by me, even if it goes past the proof-of-concept stage) that's basically at the "foo is a room" stage, for a list of rooms.

I know that I can group rooms together into regions; I'm pretty sure I saw the how-to for that in Aaron Reed's book.

I'm going to end up with several regions.  Call them

Outdoors
Admin-Building
Aboard-Ship
Service-Building

(and there may be others, but these are definite).

Now, Outdoors, I want to use only the standard NSEW direction schema.

Aboard-Ship, I want to use only Fore/Forward, Port, Starboard, Aft

In the two buildings, I want to allow the user to use NSEW [i]or[/i], after they've read the directory (or otherwise identified the offices in the building), the names of the various offices in the building.  If the user uses the latter, it circumvents all of the navigation (NSEWUD) to the location, and places them in the location.

Thus, two questions:

1. What extensions, if any, do I need to implement these navigation schemas?
2. How do I compel the use of a particular schema in a particular region?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4684&start=0#p33956
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Different movement schemas in different areas of the map
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-03-20 13:04:25

You don't need an extension.  Check out Example 40, "Fore," for your nautical vs. compass directions code.  

As for the directory stuff, Example 296, "Safari Guide," deals with an "auto-go" command that allows the player to travel to rooms by name.  You'll just need to set an additional condition about the player having viewed the directory.

Edit: the "Safari Guide" example uses Emily Short's Locksmith extension to facilitate door-opening, so my "you don't need an extension" is technically inaccurate.  If you don't use doors, though, you probably wouldn't need it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4680&start=0#p33957
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: tables & topics & indexed text -- Oh My! (memory limits)
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-03-20 13:39:50

[quote="Felix"]Why Inform refuses to compile with "if the topic understood is a stat listed in the stat table of the actor", I don't know. If it's not a bug, it's a pretty annoying feature.[/quote]Do you have an example source text?  I couldn't get it to not compile, though it does trip over [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=707]bug 707[/url]:[spoiler][code]There is a room.
Yourself has a table name called the stat table.
The stat table of yourself is the Table of Node Stats.
To reset player successes: do nothing.
To say 1 ca: do nothing.
Definition: a person is a technomancer if true is false.

Table of Node Stats
stat (indexed text)	rating	activation	is-attack	is-program
"rating"	0	false	false	false
"matrix initiative bonus"	0	false	false	false
"matrix initiative pass bonus"	0	false	false	false
"response"	1	false	false	false
"firewall"	1	false	false	false
"system"	1	false	false	false
"signal"	1	false	false	false
"persona limit"	1	false	false	false
"processor limit"	1	false	false	false
"analyze"	0	false	false	true
"rigged"	0	false	false	false
"encrypted"	0	false	false	false
with 6 blank rows 

To decide what indexed text is the stattext (oldsnippet - a snippet) (this is fixingtext):
	let N be indexed text; 
	now N is "[oldsnippet]"; 
	replace the text "'" in N with ""; 
	decide on N;

Understand "activate [text]" as activating a program.  
Activating a program  is an action applying to one topic.  
Carry out an actor activating a program:
	let thistopic be fixingtext applied to the topic understood;
	if the topic understood [thistopic] is a stat listed in the stat table of the actor:
		if activation entry is true:
			say "You remember that [stattext the topic understood in title case] is already running.";
		otherwise:	
			if the rating entry is greater than 0:
				now activation entry is true;
				if the actor is the player, reset player successes;
				say "[1 ca][stattext the topic understood in title case] is now running.";
			otherwise:
				say "You don't have that program." instead;
	otherwise:
		say "[stattext the topic understood in title case] is not a [if actor is a technomancer]complex form[otherwise]program[end if]."[/code][/spoiler]
[quote="crisses"]Then I hit memory limits – to the tune of having to raise memory limits tremendously to get to compile. ...30 seconds on the Glulx welcome screen before the game start screen loads...[/quote]Neither of these sound like normal consequences of using indexed text—there's probably something else going on.  I'm assuming that your source text is fairly large, but if you're willing to copy it into another story, pare off the parts unrelated to those symptoms, and post it, that'd be great.  If it turns out to be an Inform bug, I'd like to have it on Mantis, and even if not, there's still a good chance that one or both of those problems can be dealt with.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665&start=20#p33958
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A critical IF vocabulary
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-20 14:06:57

Re: granularity, I find myself using the term [b]medium-size dry goods[/b] a lot, when picking out the classic style of IF game: something primarily concerned with the direct manipulation of familiar objects (rather than people or intangibles) at a human scale or something close to it. IF is very good indeed at medium-sized dry goods -- there are few things more satisfying than a well-crafted inventory list -- and often has difficulties when venturing outside it.

(I stole it from a philosophy term, but am using it in a much narrower sense; in Austin's meaning, people are definitely medium-sized dry goods.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4584&start=10#p33959
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: IF in "real life"
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2012-03-20 14:25:03

I don't think I've ever met anyone with the slightest interest in IF. And I can go even further than that: Only one person that I've met have played the graphical adventure game that I made. I've tried to get friends and family interested (interested in these kinds of games in general using games that I like, and trying to get them to try my game) but without any success.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=130#p33960
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-20 14:32:33

[quote="ChrisC"][quote="maga"][quote="Peter Pears"](I play games every week that have no win/lose conditions.)[/quote][/quote]Out of curiosity, what sorts of games are these?[/quote]
He's married.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277&start=100#p33961
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Moderation note
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-20 14:55:24

[list=A]
[*]I staunchly believe in free speech, but the question here is [i]whose[/i] free speech.  I maintain that a web site is primarily a mouthpiece of its owner.  If someone hacks my web site and puts stuff on it I don't like, that is hindering free speech, not excercising it.  Now there is a spectrum: I may use my site to publish texts I read somewhere and somehow like; I may invite mails, and publish parts of them that touch me, or all except those that annoy me; I may invite certain people to post directly, and excercise weeding afterwards; I may allow people to register that I don't even know and do the same - but all that doesn't change the base principle that that site is an expression of my free speech.
If I don't want the responsibility, I can become a common carrier, which I suppose this site isn't.
So weeding the posts here is an [i]excercise[/i] of free speech, not the suppression of it.[/*:m]
[*]Silently banning people with multiple accounts requires some sophistication, especially as the proposed banned is reading in here.[/*:m]
[*]My personal preference would be a subforum of the Management one, called something like "Ban posts" (does that have the double meaning the equivalent Dutch has?), where banned posts and threads go.  Whatever goes there has its links made invalid, but remains otherwise untouched.  Individual banned posts are replaced by a short text linking to the new location.  It ought to be easy to set an account to never seeing anything in there.
If an account must be banned, it will be banned from posting anywhere else than in "Ban posts".  Any discussion about the ban being right can be held there as well.[/*:m][/list:o]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665&start=20#p33962
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A critical IF vocabulary
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-03-20 15:02:46

Defining a vocabulary for talking about interactive fiction is one thing, and a fine thing too, which I applaud. 

Declaring that a certain qualities are better than others is another thing. Which can also be fine and dandy, especially if you there is room for disagreement. But you should not confuse these things. 

Personally I can pretty much agree with that terseness criterion, on an abstract level ("design is not knowing what to add, but what you can't take away" - or whatever the original quote is), but from that it does not automatically follow that minimalism is the only aesthetic that is artistically interesting. Nor does it tell me that IF has to be designed like a jigsaw puzzle where every piece has one and only one place to go. Lego is another kind of toy. 

And yes, these are my opinions, I just present them as facts.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4680&start=0#p33963
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: tables & topics & indexed text -- Oh My! (memory limits)
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-20 15:18:28

I was referring to the situation where the stat column contained topics rather than indexed text.

This doesn't compile:
[code]Table of Stats

stat (topic)	rating	activation	is-attack	is-program
"rating"	0	false	false	false
"system"	1	false	false	false


Activating a program is an action applying to one topic.
Understand "activate [text]" as activating a program.

Instead of activating a program: if the topic understood is a stat listed in the Table of Stats, say "Gotcha!"[/code]

Change the last line as below and it compiles, BUT the topic understood never matches the stat entry topics! (This affects the code I proposed upthread.)
[code]Instead of activating a program: if the topic understood is a topic listed in the Table of Stats, say "Gotcha!"[/code]

This, however, works as expected:
[code]Table of Stats

stat (topic)	rating	activation	is-attack	is-program
"rating"	0	false	false	false
"system"	1	false	false	false


Activating a program is an action applying to one topic.
Understand "activate [text]" as activating a program.
Instead of activating a program: if the topic understood is a topic listed in the Table of Stats, say "Gotcha!"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665&start=20#p33964
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A critical IF vocabulary
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-20 15:21:29

[quote="Robert Rothman"][quote]And frankly, I'd love to see a "Leanest Most Badass Killer Lean Prose Which is Very Lean And Not all Frickin' Wordy And Flabby And On-And-On But Just Gets Right to the GOOD STUFF Like Only Good Writing Can" category, both because that's something I value, and because I love ironic titles for things.[/quote]
I suggest that this one might be called the Hemingway award.[/quote]
I tend to enjoy adding details to my writing -- and I also enjoy reading writing that includes details. I've seen far too many games that would have benefited from longer, more carefully worked out descriptions of things. One-sentence descriptions of important objects (either important to the player or having emotional importance for the PC) are a vice, not a virtue.

Your mention of Hemingway got me curious, though, so I grabbed For [i]Whom the Bell Tolls [/i]off of the shelf. Here is the first paragraph:
[quote]He lay flat on the brown, pine-needled floor of the forest, his chin on his folded arms, and high overhead the wind blew in the tops of the pine trees. The mountainside sloped gently where he lay; but below it was steep and he could see the dark of the oiled road winding through the pass. There was a stream alongside the road and far down the pass he saw a mill beside the stream and the falling water of the dam, white in the summer sunlight.[/quote]
Yes, it's terse. There's no unnecessary detail -- but there's a lot of detail! There's also implied sensory detail: We can hear the sound the wind makes, even though the sound is never mentioned, and we can guess from "summer sunlight" that the day is warm. We can also, if we're imaginative, smell both the pine needles and the oil of the road (though the latter would be too far away for the odor to reach the viewpoint character.

Is this passage "Very Lean And Not all Frickin' Wordy And Flabby And On-And-On"? Unclear. The second occurrence of "pine" could be deleted. "He could see" and "he saw" are perhaps unnecessary, as is "There was," and there are two run-on sentences, so we could delete two "and"s. As minor as these changes would be, I think it's clear that Hemingway's style required "there was", "he could see", and run-on sentences. Those elements are part of the magic. So I'm a little leery of praising leanness for its own sake.

Remind me to post some Faulkner to this thread, later....

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=130#p33965
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-20 15:34:26

[quote="matt w"]Bounty Hunter: Shootout at the Saloon from my parents' attic, which is an interesting case study in how you can drain all the awesomeness from something by adding complexity.[/quote]
But the added complexity that turned rock-paper-scissors into Ace of Aces definitely increased the awsomeness of the game.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3253&start=0#p33966
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Love, Hate, and the Mysterious Ocean Tower endings
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-03-20 16:23:02

It was moody enough for a speed-if game and quite straightforward.  I don't like very much games where you can see different finales just by undoing your last move, but I won't nitpick a speed-if game that is quite polished and well-paced.  (is Pacian actually his name or just a pun on his writing style?)

My favorite moment though, was [spoiler]when we started examining the intricate puzzle lock on the door and the guy just breaks it open with his foot.  We all know Pacian is not a fan of puzzle-IF[/spoiler]. [emote]:)[/emote]

I also felt kind of a manga feel to it.  The love interest of the protagonist looked and behaved a bit like [spoiler]Sephiroh or Sesshoumaru in his cold yet demoniacal way[/spoiler].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4674&start=10#p33967
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Alternate Universe Friends
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-20 16:28:35

Speaking of which... what about that Find the Dog game, anyway? I never did hear anything about it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4601&start=20#p33968
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Absolute Beginner Questions
User: HanonO / DateTime: 2012-03-20 16:52:01

I started writing a short example about doors and space, which grew into a really long example because I was enjoying it!  

Essentially it's the beginning of Alice in Wonderland, using only 3 rooms.  I also annotated it with my thought process.  Sorry for the indulgence:

[rant][code]"Rabbit Hole" by Hanon Ondricek.

[A demonstration of creating lots of space with only three rooms]

When play begins: [this is printed before the banner]
	say "Oh goodness.  Perhaps you shouldn't have followed that rabbit so far down his rabbit hole.  Or stolen the tarts, or made that rude comment about the Duchess…but we'll get to that…[paragraph break]"
	
Yourself can be small or big.  [this adjective will cause magic later, allowing me to restrict the player and change things based on which property the object (in this case the player) has.  a thing will take the last property named in a list - so the player is big.]

The description of the player is "[one of]Curiouser . . .[or]. . .and curiouser . . .[stopping]"
	
Falling is a room. [The player is going to fall for a while, so there are no exits.  The movement is conveyed by description]

The Description is "[one of]You seem to be falling down an incredibly deep hole.  Up and down both fade away into darkness.  Your hair and dress flutter in the breeze.[or]You continue to fall.[or]My goodness, will this fall never end?[or]Why, if you fall any further, you may come about with the people who walk with their heads downwards.[or]How awkward will that be to introduce yourself, 'Excuse me Ma'am, is this New Zealand or the Belgian Azores?'[or]…and…you continue to fall…[stopping]"

my hair is part of the player.  The description is "Golden blonde locks." [in case the player examines it, since it's mentioned]

Every turn when the location is Falling: [random ambience in this room]
	if a random chance of 1 in 3 succeeds:
		say "[one of]Your apron straps flutter around your head.[or]A shelf whizzes past…or rather you whiz past on your way down.  Was there a tea service set up there?[or]You idly scratch an itch on your shin; such an odd thing to do whilst plummeting to your death.[or]You wonder if you should ever worry much about falling down the stairs next time it happens.  Why you could fall off the roof after this and barely think of it.[or]You hum a bit of a tune to yourself, not sure if you've got the melody right.[cycling]".
		
Instead of going when the location is Falling, say "Up, down, northwest -- like you have any choice about where gravity takes you." [this lets the player try going in directions, but will prevent them]

The player wears an apron.  Understand "apron/strap/straps" as an apron.  The description of apron is "You forgot to take it off after tea.  [First time]It complements your blue dress nicely.[only]".

The player wears your favorite blue dress. 

Understand "tea-dress" as blue dress.

Instead of taking off blue dress, say "Your British modesty prevents you." [since we implemented clothing, we don't want the player naked in this case]

A tea service is scenery in Falling.  The description is "You only wish you had some tea." [since we mentioned a tea service, we don't wan't 'you can't see any such thing']

A shelf is scenery in Falling.  The description is "You think you make out shelves and cabinets and bookcases built into the walls, but they all speed by too quickly to interact with."  Understand "shelves/cabinet/cabinets/book/case/bookcase/bookcases/wall/walls" as shelf when the location is Falling.

a jar of orange marmalade is a thing.  The description is "[if the location is Falling]It falls tantalizingly near you at nearly the same speed.[otherwise][one of]A jar of your favorite orange marmalade.[or]  Gitchy lady mar-ma-laaaaAAA…[or]…aaaaaa…[or]…aaaaaade.[or]It's orange marmalade.[stopping]" [created out of world or "off-stage" instead of in a room keeps it ready for later]

Instead of taking something when the location is Falling: [since the player may try taking all sorts of things]
	if the noun is orange marmalade:
		continue the action; [I want the player to only be able to take the marmalade when it appears - "continue the action" negates the "instead" rule so someone won't see the next text if the noun is the marmalade]
	say "[one of]You make a grab for a shelf, and miss.[or][The noun] speeds by, tantalizingly out of reach.[or]You manage to knock a jar off the shelf, but can't grab it due to an abrupt shift in direction of the vertical tunnel.[or]You have grown tired of reaching for things, and continue to fall lazily, waiting for death.[stopping]". [sometimes it's good to let a player try something and fail a couple of times so the refusal is more natural]

Rule for printing the name of orange marmalade when the location is Falling:
	say "falling jar of orange marmalade". [changes how an item is described in this room]
	
Every turn when the player has been in falling for 7 turns: [here's how we make the marmalade appear after a while]
	if marmalade is off-stage:
		move marmalade to falling;
		say "A falling jar of orange marmalade catches up to you and hovers nearby."
		
After taking marmalade for the first time, increase the score by 1. ["for the first time" keeps the player from re-scoring points]
		
Instead of opening Marmalade, say "It's stuck obnoxiously closed."  [I don't want the player to open it till the tea party]

Bottom of Rabbit Hole is a room.  "You have landed in an underground chamber with hundreds of doors leading in all directions." [it's not connected to Falling, as I'll manually put the player there later]

Definition: a thing is unheld if it is portable and it is not held by the player. [I'm going to make a complicated phrase, so this defines specific types of things which may or may not be present]

Every turn when the player has been in Falling for 15 turns: [they've fallen long enough]
	say "Aaaand…THUMP.  You land hard, but surprisingly not with enough violence to kill yourself as you expected, luckily due to several years['] worth of fallen leaves piled at the bottom of the rabbit hole.";	
	move the player to Bottom of Rabbit Hole;
	repeat with item running through unheld things in Falling: [this makes every unheld thing as I've described hit the ground with the player so they're accessible]
		move item to rabbit hole;
		say "[The item] lands [one of]a moment later[or]a moment after that[stopping]."

Garden is a room.  [I don't connect it since there's going to be an actual usable door in the way.  also getting to Garden wins the game so I don't bother with a description]

hundreds of doors is a fixed in place thing in Rabbit Hole.  The description is "You approach [doordesc] and [dooraction].  [Frustration]!"  [I don't need to make hundreds of actual doors, but I need to vary the descriptions enough so it seems like there are.  these are say phrases I'll define next]

To say doordesc: say "[one of]a wooden door with metal bolts in it[or]a tall narrow door[or]a metal door with a window in it[or]a revolving door[or]a padded naugahyde door[or]a round door[or]a barred iron door[or]a battered looking slat on hinges[or]a bronze portcullis[or]a hallway lined with spikes[cycling]" [it's important to make sure your say phrases all hang together no matter what order they go in.]

To say dooraction: say "[one of]regard it quizzically[or]try to figure out where the handle is[or]make several attempts to get through[or]stand in front of it, tapping your foot[or]try several different variations of a combination on a dial you find nearby[or]stamp the floor in frustration[or]try to figure out what to do[at random]"

To say Frustration:
	say "[one of]Useless[or]Fruitless[or]Nonsense[or]Bother[or]Humph[or]Pointless[at random]"

Instead of opening hundreds of doors, try examining the noun. [I make the description random enough so it can apply to examining or opening]

Does the player mean examining hundreds of doors: it is likely.  [to avoid disambiguation "do you mean the tiny door or hundreds of doors?"]
 
Before going nowhere from Rabbit Hole, say "You wander [one of]around in circles[or]past several more doors[or]in a figure eight pattern[or]down a promising looking path[or]for a long while in one direction[at random], then realize you[one of][']re right back where you started[or] haven[']t made any progress[or][']re going in circles[or] appear to be lost.  After more wandering, you recognize the tiny door[or] should try making a map[or] couldn[']t even begin to draw a map of this place[cycling]." instead. [going nowhere means trying any direction that does not go anywhere with a map connection, so it feels like we can walk around even though we're not]

Understand "door/wooden/wood/metal/bolt/bolts/tall/narrow/metal/window/revolving/padded/naugahyde/round/barred/iron/battered/slat/hinge/hinges/bronze/portcullis" and "hallway/spikes/combination/dial/handle/knob/doorknob" as hundreds of doors. [the player will probably try all the doors i describe.  They're all the same one.]
 
a tiny door is a door.  "[if the player is small]The formerly tiny but now normal sized door beckons to the southwest.[otherwise][one of]One tiny door catches your attention, since it's so much smaller than the others.[or]The tiny door sparkles.[or]…and there's the tiny door.[stopping]"  [here's the actual door.  I want it to change appearance depending on how big the player is]

Tiny Door is openable and locked.  The description is "[if the player is big]It's far too small for you to get through.[otherwise]It's just the right size to go through![end if]". [more description if the player examines it]
 
a tiny key unlocks tiny door. [but it's off-stage]
 
Tiny door is southwest from Rabbit Hole and northeast from Garden.  [the door connects the rooms, but a door is not a room, so you can test "if the player is going through it" but they will not stop in a doorway]

After opening tiny door:
	say "The [if the player is big]tiny [end if]door opens, at last, in a southwesterly direction.";
	increase the score by 1. [award points and clarify which way to go, the door won't open till we have the tiny key and it's unlocked.  by default, a door starts closed.]

The description of tiny key is "Tiny.  And key-shaped."

Every turn when the player has been in Rabbit Hole for 5 turns: [the key will appear mysteriously]
	if tiny key is off-stage:
		move tiny key to Rabbit Hole;
		say "Clink!  You turn around and around looking for the source of the noise." [I don't need to say what happened exactly, because the object is there and will hopefully get noticed]
		
After taking tiny key for the first time:
	increase the score by 1. [ding]
	
Before going through tiny door when the player is big:
	say "There's no way to fit through there." instead. [Not only must you unlock the door, but you must shrink]
	
Before going through tiny door when the player is big and tiny door is open: say "You squeeze down to the floor and peek through.  [one of]A lovely garden is visible through it.[or]You wish you could get through to go in the garden.[stopping]" instead. [I want to give the player a sense of progress, so if the door is open we can see what's coming up]

gardenview is scenery in Rabbit Hole.  The description is "[if tiny door is closed]What garden?[otherwise if the player is big]A beautiful tiny garden of tiny hedges and tiny flowers and tiny venus fly traps.[otherwise if the player is small]The garden beckons through the door to the southwest.[end if]".

Understand "garden/hedge/hedges/flower/flowers/venus/fly/trap/traps" as gardenview.

a small cake is an edible thing.  The description is "A tiny cake with 'EAT ME' written in pink frosting.  [first time]Sort of an odd cake sentiment…[only]" [first time - only is great to make an observation that won't repeat every time]

After eating small cake: [magic happens…]
	now the player is small; [nothing actually happens, I just change the adjective since the player is either big or small]
	say "Strangely oregano-flavored, and -- oh my what's this rushing up at you…the floor!";
	change the printed name of tiny key to "somewhat large key"; [here we can permanently (or semi permanently) alter what things are called or how they're described]
	change the printed name of tiny door to "normal door";
	change the printed name of hundreds of doors to "hundreds of giant doors";
	change the printed name of marmalade to "giant jar of marmalade";
	increase the score by 1.
	
Understand "somewhat/large" as tiny key when the player is small. [the game can understand different adjectives for the same object in different cases if you spell it out]

Understand "normal" as tiny door when the player is small.
understand "giant" as hundreds of doors when the player is small.

Every turn when the player is in Rabbit Hole:
	if small cake is off-stage: [ie, if we can't get the cake]
		if we have not eaten small cake: [so it won't happen twice]
			if a random chance of 1 in 8 succeeds: [we're not sure when it will happen to vary the game]
				move small cake to rabbit hole;
				say "With a fluttering of leaves, the White Rabbit scurries by, screaming about his calendar.  As he runs off, you notice his lunch pail is open and something drops out of it." [I don't need a character since he's only zipping by.  in a longer implementation we'd have an npc]
			
			
Instead of unlocking hundreds of doors with tiny key:
	say "The key won't fit any of the normal sized doors you try." [since "hundreds of doors" are not an actual door, I don't want the parser to confuse the player by saying that a key won't fit a door, but of course it shouldn't work]
	
Rule for printing the name of hundreds of doors while asking which do you mean: say "another door". [during disambiguation, I don't want the parser to say "do you mean the tiny door, or hundreds of doors]

Understand "another" and "another door" as hundreds of doors. [so the player can answer "another door" during disambiguation]
			
some leaves are scenery in Rabbit Hole.  The description is "Hundreds of leaves crunch underfoot, blown down here from countless autumns."   [I mentioned earlier that the player landed in leaves, and the rabbit was described as kicking them]

Understand "pile/leaf" as leaves.  Instead of taking leaves, say "You've no time to gather leaves." [I don't want the player to bother the leaves]

Every turn when the player is in Garden: [reaching the garden is victory, so I want the game to check every turn]
	say "You emerge out into the tiny (but normal-sized to you) bright sunny garden!  A normal-sized (but giant-sized to you) venus fly trap gnashes its teeth in your direction hungrily![paragraph break]";
	end the story finally saying ". . . And then a whole lot of other stuff happens . . ."
	
The maximum score is 4312.

	

[/code][/rant]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4685&start=0#p33969
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Vorple: Pop-Up Command Menu
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-20 16:55:10

I'm trying to adapt the pop-up menu from the "One with Everything" demo in such a way that a given command will appear in the menu only once, until it's used. I can't see how to do this. Here's what I tried:
[code]		+ vorple.html.p(
        		vorple.html.link([
                        {
                            content: 'Look at her',
                            url: './lookatjulia',
                            classes: 'once'
                        },
                        {
                            content: 'Talk to her',
                            url: './talktojulia'
                        }
                    ],
                    'Julia' ,
                    { classes: 'transient' }
                )
                + " kneels at the prow, leaning forward over the onrushing sea."
          )[/code]
However, setting the upper item to classes: 'once' has no effect. The command is still in the menu after being used, and can be used again. Obviously, I don't want the make the whole link 'once', because it will ultimately contain four or five commands. I just want 'once' to apply to individual commands within it.

This code is declarative rather than procedural, so there's no obvious way to insert an if-test. I could possibly insert an if-test at the very start of the enter function, but that would mean duplicating the entire system.write block 2-to-the-(n-minus-1) times, where n is the number of menu items that may need to be shut off. That type of thing would be hideous to maintain, so there just has to be an easier solution. But I'm nowhere near familiar enough with Javascript, CSS, or the Vorple library to see how to do it.

Suggestions would be much appreciated!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665&start=20#p33970
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A critical IF vocabulary
User: Bainespal / DateTime: 2012-03-20 16:58:23

This is a fruitful discussion.  Although I don't see the usefulness in all of Biep's well-thought vocabulary, I may start using some of them when discussing games and theory.  Specifically, I like the concept of different kinds of "terseness"; I think it might be useful to use terms like "narrative/spatial/material terseness" in reviews.  "Granularity" definitely sounds good.

On the other hand, "plotkin" is probably a bad choice for a term, even though it is a very clever coinage.  It sounds like it's supposed to mean "story branch," the possibilities for the plot to take different directions.  It would indeed be good to find a better term than "branch," since "branch" can mean a lot of things in reference to IF (such as dialog nodes in a menu or CYOA-like conversation system).  However, "plotkin" is not really a natural-sounding term.  It's not intuitive enough for me.  Also, it could be confused with the association with name of the IF author; people might think a "plotkin" is a game device similar to the characteristics found in Andrew Plotkin's works.  (For that, I think the adjective "zarfian" has been used.)

I think it's important not to create too much jargon.  We have to have some, of course, but if our reviews and our discussions of theory contain a lot of terms that people unfamiliar with IF (or just not following the current discussion) can't figure out with some thought, we will have made IF even more difficult for people to get the hang of.  There could be readers and writers of static fiction who may be really interested in IF, but they may dismiss it if they can't understand what is being talked about in terms that they can relate to.  I'm not saying we shouldn't have terms, but I think they should be intuitive as much as possible.

[quote="Jim Aikin"]I tend to enjoy adding details to my writing -- and I also enjoy reading writing that includes details.[/quote]
I agree, but I think one-sentence descriptions [i]can[/i] sometimes be the most effective style for a particular work.  Not everything can be described well in one sentence, and sometimes a lot of effective and focused description can produce strong immersion and emotional impact.  On the other hand, when one sentence is all it takes and that sentence is actually a real description, I will take the one sentence.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4681&start=0#p33971
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: little game, Unicorn Story, written in Ramus, available
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-20 17:12:02

Thanks for the -- host-age, is clearly wrong.  Hosting?  Hospitality?  *GRIDLOCK!*

Thanks, Ralph, for hosting the game.  And thanks, Ektemple, for mentioning Dropbox, which I'm looking at.


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665&start=20#p33972
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A critical IF vocabulary
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-20 17:22:33

If we're going to be talking terseness, and Jim is going to post paragraphs of Hemingway's, I think we should look into the writing styles of other well-loved writers too.  Here's one:

[quote]About 3 things I was absolutely positive.  First, Edward was a vampire.  Second, there was a part of him, and I didn't know how dominant that part might be, that thirsted for my blood.  And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.[/quote]

C.

*Confession:  drawn from an inet meme; not culled from the corpus personally.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4686&start=0#p33973
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Dreamhold Help extension
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-20 17:34:01

When I released _The Dreamhold_ several years ago, several people asked about releasing its Tutorial Voice (interactive help) feature as an I6 (later I7) library extension.

I've always replied that the help text is easy, but integrating the tutorial with the game really can't be packaged into an extension. It's all done with action triggers which are built into the game code itself, and in fact the game design. (You start out in an empty room, holding one object, and the tutorial triggers are customized to that; they then get you into the next room, which has a stairway; and so on.)

So I haven't tried to do anything with it. However, recently someone asked about the help text, which is just a set of topics which can be triggered with "help" or "help TOPIC". Porting that to I7 is much easier than thinking about tutorial integration.

Emily's Basic Help Menu extension has text like this. But maybe you prefer mine. So, here it is.

<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/extensions/Andrew%20Plotkin/Basic%20IF%20Help/index.html">http://inform7.com/extensions/Andrew%20 ... index.html</a>

I have not attempted to update Dreamhold's (2004) help text, so it may be a little out of step with modern IF. (For a start, I consistently refer to "games" and "text adventures", rather than "stories" and "interactive fiction".) The one concession I've made is to acknowledge that modern games default to "verbose" mode.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4681&start=0#p33974
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: little game, Unicorn Story, written in Ramus, available
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-20 17:56:41

Felix has also [url=http://ramus.notimetoplay.org/uploads/Unicorn%20Story.html]hosted Unicorn Story[/url]!

His blurb for the game goes like this--

[quote]A lyrical piece by Conrad Cook, hosted here for your pleasure. Not only it looks gorgeous, it also uses the medium in a fairly intriguing way.[/quote]

C.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665&start=20#p33975
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A critical IF vocabulary
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-20 17:58:39

[quote="conradcook"]If we're going to be talking terseness, and Jim is going to post paragraphs of Hemingway's, I think we should look into the writing styles of other well-loved writers too.  Here's one:

[quote]About 3 things I was absolutely positive.  First, Edward was a vampire.  Second, there was a part of him, and I didn't know how dominant that part might be, that thirsted for my blood.  And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.[/quote]
[/quote]
I thought Edward was a talking horse. Come to think of it, there's nothing in that passage that would suggest that we're [i]not [/i]talking about Mr. Ed. More detail would be needed to establish Edward's species.

I rest my case.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665&start=20#p33976
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A critical IF vocabulary
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-20 18:18:36

Jim, you may be a published author and all that stuff, but you clearly are backward with respect to the classics.  Mr. Ed was a *zombie*, as anyone knows who has heard the unBowdlerized lyrics--

[i]A corpse is a corpse, of course, of course,
And a corpse cannot talk, of course, of course,
Unless, of course, I talk to the corpse,
'Cause I've got [b]Speak with Dead![/b][/i]


C.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4683&start=0#p33977
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SQL Errors
User: Merk / DateTime: 2012-03-20 18:40:52

A day or two ago, I switched to the PHP MySQL driver rather than MySQLI because the latter seemed to be getting too memory-intensive. Sounds like that made things worse. I'll change it back and see how it goes. Shortly before that, though, I updated to PHPBB 3.10. I wouldn't expect that to cause an issue, but I can't be sure.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665&start=20#p33978
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A critical IF vocabulary
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-03-20 20:15:38

[quote] Come to think of it, there's nothing in that passage that would suggest that we're not talking about Mr. Ed. More detail would be needed to establish Edward's species.

[/quote]

I would think that equine dentition is structurally inconsistent with vampirism.


Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665&start=30#p33979
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A critical IF vocabulary
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-20 20:25:42

Actually, horses can have canine teeth (it's more prevalent in stallions and geldings), so you could conceivably have a vampire horse.

Is there a good term for the way great characterisation is upheld through incidental responses? 

What about the exploration of new modes of interaction? I'd imagine a sapient vampire horse protagonist would interact with the world in a very different way from the typical gender neutral human adventurer.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4601&start=20#p33980
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Absolute Beginner Questions
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-20 20:32:33

How very charming! I have a couple of comments, in case you want to do more with this:

1. You should probably change the description, printed name, etc. of the marmalade jar when it's held in Falling. Otherwise it seems to be falling past you even when it's in your inventory. 

2. I'd call the "tea service" the "tea service set"; that's how I tried to refer to it the first time.

3. Unfortunately, the disambiguation involving "another door" doesn't work, because Inform has already decided that "another" is basically a null reference. So if you choose "another" it disambiguates to the tiny door anyway. It seems to me that the only way to change this is to hack the I6 template files where they mention OTHER1__WD, but the better part of valor would probably be to change the way you try to disambiguate it (say "a normal/giant door" instead of "another door," for instance). 

4. "x tiny" and "open tiny" tend to disambiguate to the tiny key when you hold it; this is another annoying thing that Inform sometimes does which may be hard to get through.

Again, very nice!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4681&start=0#p33981
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: little game, Unicorn Story, written in Ramus, available
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2012-03-20 21:00:16

"ralphmerridew".  One word, lowercase.  Not "Ralph".

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4601&start=20#p33982
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Absolute Beginner Questions
User: crisses / DateTime: 2012-03-20 21:22:25

What a wonderful example of what I was trying to say!  And it looks like so much fun, I could see why you got carried away coding this example.  [emote]:)[/emote]  I'll have to give it a spin sometime, I'm heading off to bed.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4632&start=0#p33983
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Does anyone else want your own tag marks for Inform code
User: crisses / DateTime: 2012-03-20 21:30:16

[quote="gravel"]Hmm, that's an interesting idea.  Thanks![/quote]

I'm actually using my own idea along with the Inform7.mode for SubEthaEdit that I tweaked (other thread) and it seems to be working well with that method.

Good luck!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3106&start=30#p33984
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Referring to the player in the third person
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2012-03-20 22:15:18

[quote="Biep"]I think a better play-experience-technically better way to do this might be altered perception.  The drunk PC may see a snake, and by your commands attack and kill it.  Only later on, returning in a more sober state, she may find she cannot plug in the standing lamp, because the plug at the end of the cable has been smattered.

It could work both ways - the altered perception may hinder or help.  The drunk PC may be willing to do things (picking up the cuddly bunny) the sober version refuses (picking up the rat).[/quote]

_Shades of Grey_ had a section like that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665&start=30#p33985
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A critical IF vocabulary
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-20 22:37:33

[quote="Jim Aikin"]I tend to enjoy adding details to my writing -- and I also enjoy reading writing that includes details.[/quote]

Total agreement. The devil's in the details and the devil's my [i]favorite [/i]:)

But ... that's irrelevant to the [i][b]Leanest Most Badass Killer Lean Prose Which is Very Lean And Not all Frickin' Wordy And Flabby And On-And-On But Just Gets Right to the GOOD STUFF Like Only Good Writing Can[/b][/i] category, which is not (at all) about the amount of detail.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4345&start=50#p33987
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A Colder Light - UI system feedback
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-03-20 22:55:48

Merlin, I'm using the latest Firefox on latest Windows too and am seeing no lag whatsoever.  Perhaps you need to upgrade the hardware too rather than just the software?

I've been told that in the early Infocom days, commands could take a few seconds to process, even with a tight VM in assembly.  Nowadays you get a VM running in javascript in your browser that features no noticeable lag and people still complain... slow down on the coffee.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4662&start=30#p33988
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Another Vorple Question
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-20 23:23:03

Looks like I should eat my words about Twine being abandoned; some folk have [url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25549414/Twine-development.html]picked it back up[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4685&start=0#p33989
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Vorple: Pop-Up Command Menu
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-03-21 04:48:04

The easy solution is to use [url=http://localhost:8888/vorple/doc/undum/enhancing-with-vorple.html#disposable-links]disposable links[/url] instead of once links. Once-links clear from the screen only at the time they're clicked, and since the popups are hidden anyway there's no actual effect. 

The downside is that with disposable links the choice is not removed from the popup, it's just not clickable anymore. If you want the entire choice removed, you need to build the list of choices dynamically.

Initialize a flag in undum.game.init():

[code]character.sandbox.juliaSeen = false; [/code]
The situation:

[code]vorple.html.p(
    vorple.html.link(
            (function() {
                // start with an empty set of choices
                var choices = [];
                
                // add the choice only if a flag is not set
                if( !character.sandbox.juliaSeen ) {
                    choices.push({
                        content: 'Look at her',
                        url: './lookatjulia'
                    });
                }
                
                // this choice is always available
                choices.push({
                    content: 'Talk to her',
                    url: './talktojulia'
                });
                
                // return the choice set we just built
                return choices;
            })(),
            'Julia' ,
            { classes: 'transient' }
        )
        + " kneels at the prow, leaning forward over the onrushing sea."
  )[/code]
In the lookatjulia action toggle the flag and remove the choice:

[code]character.sandbox.juliaSeen = true;
$( '.linkPopup a[href="./lookatjulia"]' ).parent().remove();[/code]

The anonymous function in vorple.html.link builds the choice set dynamically based on whatever logic you put there every time the reader enters the situation. The last line in the lookatjulia action removes the choice in the current popup, otherwise the choice would not be disabled until after the reader enters the same situation again. (Note that the [url=http://localhost:8888/vorple/doc/undum/enhancing-with-vorple.html#functions-and-strings]"don't use SimpleSituation with a string argument"[/url] caveat applies.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3106&start=30#p33990
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Referring to the player in the third person
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-21 05:30:18

"Bliss" was all about that.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4619&start=0#p33991
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: BIG challenge - are you up for it?
User: Alaric / DateTime: 2012-03-21 06:01:19

[quote="Peter Pears"]Yes, what I loved about it is how it started without a clear goal; you had to go around the village, doing a chore or two, and the goal became apparent. That was refreshing - most games of the time had you start the game with a very clear goal, which made it feel very game-ish. Axe of Kolt was, in that way, surprisingly modern.

Didn't hold me to the end either, but it's a name worth mentioning from games of that period.[/quote]
Thanks for your kind comments. It amazes me that my adventure is still being played 20 years after it was first released. It is interesting that both you and S. John Ross say that the game "didn't hold you till the end". What was it about the adventure that made you not try to complete it? Was it too long? Did you just get stuck and you gave up?

My new adventure "Fortress of Fear" is big, I just don't seem to be able to write a "small" adventure. "Axe of Kolt" will be converted from the original 4-part game into one adventure, but the gameplay will be more-or-less the same.

Regards to you both.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4683&start=0#p33992
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SQL Errors
User: frotz / DateTime: 2012-03-21 07:37:00

I saw that too just now.  Hitting reload made it go away, but it seems there's an ongoing server problem.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4619&start=0#p33993
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: BIG challenge - are you up for it?
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-03-21 08:41:19

[quote="Peter Pears"]Yes, what I loved about it is how it started without a clear goal; you had to go around the village, doing a chore or two, and the goal became apparent. That was refreshing - most games of the time had you start the game with a very clear goal, which made it feel very game-ish. Axe of Kolt was, in that way, surprisingly modern.
[/quote]

Modern like Zork?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4681&start=0#p33994
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: little game, Unicorn Story, written in Ramus, available
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-21 08:48:30

Sorry, ralphmerridew!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4681&start=0#p33995
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: little game, Unicorn Story, written in Ramus, available
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-03-21 09:24:05

Cool enough.  Nice short story.

this made me LOL:

[spoiler]"For his magic horn. Their own horns are nothing magic."

surely soft-porn disguised as a fable? [emote]:D[/emote][/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4607&start=0#p33996
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Gathering at PAX East 2012?
User: Kate McKee / DateTime: 2012-03-21 10:56:38

I think it depends on your goal.

For "a meeting of the IF minds," i.e. maximizing attendance of the double handful of people already committed to future of IF, you'd want a game developers' conference.  Presumably, some number of these folks would be already making plans to attend for professional development/networking, and you'd just try to make sure as many key IF stakeholders as possible would go.

For "IF outreach," I'd think you'd want the largest pool of warm bodies to draw from, i.e. a fancon.  You don't have to try to influence the content and scope of the whole enchilada (good heavens), just make sure that IF has a corner, well signposted.  The IF track would be a tiny absolute percent of all attenders, but a miniscule proportion of a ginormous con can still be a healthy number 

My personal bias is towards the latter.  I'd rather focus limited resources on broadening IF fandom and hoping that IF leaders develop organically from the pool, rather than trying to further cultivate people who are already committed to gaming on a professional level.  

I'll defer to the wisdom of the organizers if the consensus is that PAX East was Just Not the Right Venue.   But that doesn't necessarily mean all large "lay" gaming conventions would be similarly organized.

Granted, this is just N=1 from a peripheral participant, not an IF stakeholder.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4607&start=10#p33997
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Gathering at PAX East 2012?
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-21 11:15:32

[quote="Kate McKee"]I think it depends on your goal.

For "a meeting of the IF minds," i.e. maximizing attendance of the double handful of people already committed to future of IF, you'd want a game developers' conference.  Presumably, some number of these folks would be already making plans to attend for professional development/networking, and you'd just try to make sure as many key IF stakeholders as possible would go.

For "IF outreach," I'd think you'd want the largest pool of warm bodies to draw from, i.e. a fancon.  You don't have to try to influence the content and scope of the whole enchilada (good heavens), just make sure that IF has a corner, well signposted.  The IF track would be a tiny absolute percent of all attenders, but a miniscule proportion of a ginormous con can still be a healthy number [/quote]
The first of these is actually several distinct functions: 'hanging out with people who are our friends but we rarely get to see' is one, 'having a theory / design / future-of-IF talking-shop' is another, 'actually doing work on producing games' is a third.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4685&start=0#p33998
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Vorple: Pop-Up Command Menu
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-21 11:27:04

Thanks, Juhana. That all makes sense to me, except for the final line of code, the one starting with $. I sort of get that that causes the script to "forget" the return value of the anonymous function, so it runs again the next time the menu is used. But the actual syntax, and the reasons why it works, are shrouded in veils of mystery....

I think it's probably time for me to start studying Javascript seriously. There's a lot that can be done with it -- basically, anything. But it's very much a DIY situation, so it would be wrong for me to keep pestering you for solutions to one-off problems.

BTW, Ian Millington tells me he's not planning to add a more robust game-saving functionality to Undum unless/until he gets more requests. There's another reason why I need to become proficient in Javascript! Customizing Undum should ultimately be easier than customizing the behavior of TADS, because the TADS compiler and virtual machine are black boxes. (To me, at least -- the source code is available.) But the path to mastery of the "normal" functionality of Undum is not easy at all.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4676&start=0#p33999
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Preview: "Nautilisia"
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-03-21 11:37:43

[quote="Robert Rothman"]I'm looking forward to typing "take break" while on the enchanted beach.  I've always wanted to carry around a break in my inventory (assuming, of course, that it doesn't give me a break in an important bone).

Robert Rothman[/quote]

haha.  Once I had no tea.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4676&start=0#p34000
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Preview: "Nautilisia"
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-03-21 11:54:53

[quote]haha. Once I had no tea.
[/quote]

I hope you dropped it.


Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4688&start=0#p34001
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Weird Tales & Pulp Fantasy IF?
User: J. J. Guest / DateTime: 2012-03-21 13:01:01

During my formative years my sole experience of the Fantasy genre was Tolkien. I loved The Hobbit with a passion but by the end of The Lord of the Rings I was heartily sick of elves and the seemingly interchangeable Aramir and Borogorn. As a result I've assiduously avoided playing IF in the Fantasy genre for most of my life. All this has changed! Recently I stumbled upon the work of Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith, which have convinced me that Fantasy can be fast, fun, lurid and really quite weird. So my question is, can anyone recommend any fantasy IF that leans more in the direction of Weird Tales than so called high fantasy? I mean no disrespect to the wonderful Mr. Tolkien or his fans!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4688&start=0#p34002
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Weird Tales & Pulp Fantasy IF?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2012-03-21 13:19:34

I'm not very familiar with Robert E. Howard or Clark Ashton Smith, but the description "fast, fun, lurid and really quite weird" suggests to me that maybe you want this:

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=8upuvdnsk4sho6ac">http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=8upuvdnsk4sho6ac</a>

It is extremely entertaining and does not take itself remotely seriously.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4685&start=0#p34003
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Vorple: Pop-Up Command Menu
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-03-21 13:22:14

[quote="Jim Aikin"]That all makes sense to me, except for the final line of code, the one starting with $. I sort of get that that causes the script to "forget" the return value of the anonymous function, so it runs again the next time the menu is used. But the actual syntax, and the reasons why it works, are shrouded in veils of mystery....[/quote]
Actually the last line just removes one option from the popup and leaves the rest there, the anonymous function isn't affected at all. The $ is a [url=http://jquery.com]jQuery[/url] object which is mostly used to manipulate HTML document elements. Normally you wouldn't need it but this case is more of a hack. (I'll think about adding the functionality to Vorple.)

Now that I think about it the last line is all you need, provided that the reader can never return to that same situation again. All the rest is just for making sure the popup is built correctly when entering the situation more than once. The anonymous function trick is still useful to know, it comes in handy in many cases.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665&start=30#p34004
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A critical IF vocabulary
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-21 14:28:23

[quote="Bainespal"]On the other hand, "plotkin" is probably a bad choice for a term, even though it is a very clever coinage.  It sounds like it's supposed to mean "story branch," the possibilities for the plot to take different directions.[/quote]I was serious regarding the concept. honorifically jocular regarding the name.  It does have a nice ring to me, 'kin' also conveying something diminutive, as in 'manikin' - thus allowing the term [b]plot[/b] to be used for the lateral whole.  ([b]Plotlet[/b] would do the same thing without the joke.)  But the actual choice of terms is secondary to me in this whole discussion - the important bit is digging up the pure concepts and having [b]a[/b] name for them (I have a Scheme background).

Technically, a plotkin would be an equivalence class over the set of possible walk-throughs of a game.  In many situations, a walk-through ending in {You are in a narrow east-west straight between two monsters|n|Scylla ate you} would be in the same equivalence class as {You are in a narrow east-west straight between two monsters|s|Charybdis swallows you, ship and all}, because they would not be narratively different.  If the strait of Messina were long, sailing a bit farther before veering off might still not make a difference, depending on the narrative.  Exploring a house in different room orders, or picking up some irrelevant stuff or not along the way, or taking heavy item A or heavy item B in order to smash in the ivory okapi skull - all would in many cases not cause a change in plotkin.
The equivalence predicate would not be completely fixed.  When discussing an on-the-side running joke, differences that would influence the showing up of the joke would matter, whereas when discussing the main plot, they wouldn't.  So roughly, a plotkin would be what all run-throughs that make for the same narrative as seen through our current glasses have in common; one narrative experience that reading the work to the end could yield.

So linear narrative, having a laterality of 1, necessarily has a plot consisting of a single plotkin.  IF may, but need not, have more complex plots, consisting of up to many plotkins. 

[quote="Bainespal"]However, "plotkin" is not really a natural-sounding term.  It's not intuitive enough for me.  Also, it could be confused with the association with name of the IF author;[/quote]Well, he would have to change his name, then.  First things first.  I thought of maybe [b]zarf[/b] (short for "the one with the zarfian ideas"), but that may not be really intuitive..

[quote="Bainespal"]I think it's important not to create too much jargon.[/quote]I agree jargon should not turn off or lock out people.  Ideally it is transparent - which is one reason why I try to be systematic in naming, so that a meaning can be deduced from the parts the term is built up from.  And really ideally, some of our useful terms will spread to other art forms.

But again, my main interest right now is getting the concept space clear - we can always decide on better names for areas once our map shows their precise nature and relation to other areas.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665&start=30#p34005
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A critical IF vocabulary
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-21 14:47:56

[quote="peterorme"]Defining a vocabulary for talking about interactive fiction is one thing, and a fine thing too, which I applaud. 

Declaring that a certain qualities are better than others is another thing.[/quote]I fully agree.  That's why I posted them in different posts.

Granularity and its various forms are techical terms for technical concepts.  Terseness is a esthetic/critical concept based on size, in this case granularity - in that post I intended to propose some critical terms for critical concepts based on the earlier technical ones.  As with all critical concepts, some works of art derive part of their merit from not following the received critical concepts.

I agree this bears better explanation, and thank you for pointing this out.

So yes, we are really doing two things at once here, or rather three.  Finding possible categories for appraising IF, finding the critical terminology with which to define these categories, and developing the technical vocabulary with which to describe the critical concepts.  If there were a separate subforum for IF theory I should split this thread in three, but as there isn't I prefer to keep the discussion in a single thread in order to keep the participants together.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4677&start=0#p34006
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: drop vs doff vs take, etc. - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-03-21 15:27:39

I'm sorry for taking so long to answer your reply to this post. I've been very busy lately. I've haven't been able to research 'drop, doff, get, take, etc.) as they apply to 'Wearable and AllwaysWorn' oblects but I'll get to it soon.

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4607&start=10#p34007
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Gathering at PAX East 2012?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-21 15:50:07

[quote]For "IF outreach," I'd think you'd want the largest pool of warm bodies to draw from, i.e. a fancon.[/quote]

PAX is the largest convention-for-videogame-fans that I'm aware of; that's not quite the same thing, but as a pool of possibly-IF-interested warm bodies I think it was the best shot. Result: it did not do that job. By far the majority of the people in the PAX IF rooms were people who were already interested in IF. And the newcomers, largely, were people I knew from the Boston game-dev and game-studies community.

My conclusion is that hanging out at a game-developer convention *is* IF outreach. If you're interested in IF by itself, well, I hope you'd show up to the event no matter what it's associated with.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4688&start=0#p34008
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Weird Tales & Pulp Fantasy IF?
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-21 15:51:25

[quote]Aramir and Borogorn[/quote]

Hint: Borogorn dies. :)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4676&start=0#p34009
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Preview: "Nautilisia"
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-03-21 16:33:30

My common sense told me not to.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665&start=30#p34010
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A critical IF vocabulary
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-21 17:06:24

This may be an obvious and stupid observation, but the nature of the input taken from the player will vary with the granularity of the time-frame.  This might go so far as to vary the form of the input.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4688&start=0#p34011
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Weird Tales & Pulp Fantasy IF?
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2012-03-21 17:34:07

My [i]Kerkerkruip[/i] takes the main enemy's name and description straight from a Clark Ashton Smith story, but it might not be what you are looking for. Emily's suggestion is pretty spot on: there's an obvious pulp influence on [i]Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom[/i]. Peter Nepstad's games [i]The Ebb and Flow of the Tide[/i] and [i]The Journey of the King[/i] are based on stories by Lord Dunsany, who was one of Smith's main influences. (And unlike Smith, Dunsany knows the difference between flowery style and purple prose.) Finally, we should not forget to mention Tor Andersson's [i]The Tower of the Elephant[/i], which is an implementation of a Howard story.


(By the way, if you are interested in non-Tolkienian fantasy literature, I can recommend James Branch Cabell, John Crowley, Mervyn Peake, Lord Dunsany, E. R. Eddison, David Lindsay, M. John Harrison and R. A. Lafferty. And of course you can't go wrong with modern "literary" fantasist like Borges and Calvino, or the great classic fantasists like Ludovico Ariosto. In fact, I cannot recommend Ariosto enough.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4619&start=0#p34012
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: BIG challenge - are you up for it?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-21 17:45:45

Modern like a modern game - modern like Agatha's Folly is, in some respects, surprisingly new-school.

Alaric: I'd managed to completely miss the fact that you were the author of the original game. [emote]:)[/emote] I seem to remember losing interest in an area with a blizzard - some of the game might have been more modern, but some of its puzzle design (as I recall) was not, and I think I hit upon either a guess-the-verb, an unkind timer or a cruel puzzle.

I know this is awfully vague, and I apologise for that - I'd have to boot up the game again, but there are so many games out there on my waiting list... is it enough for you to know that it's one of the titles I hold as a "must revisit sometime, with some time to spare and a clear head"?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4676&start=0#p34013
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Preview: "Nautilisia"
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-03-21 17:49:10

I actually put an Easter egg-ish reference to the "no tea" thing in [spoiler]The Spy Who Ate Lunch[/spoiler].


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4688&start=0#p34014
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Weird Tales & Pulp Fantasy IF?
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2012-03-21 18:08:16

You may have already played it, but Eric Mayer's "Doomed Xycanthus" is a pastiche of Clark Ashton Smith and H.P. Lovecraft.  It is written in ADRIFT 4.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4688&start=0#p34015
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Weird Tales & Pulp Fantasy IF?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-21 18:12:45

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Emily's suggestion is pretty spot on: there's an obvious pulp influence on [i]Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom[/i].[/quote]

Most importantly, the immortal stylings of Jim Theis.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4607&start=10#p34016
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Gathering at PAX East 2012?
User: Kate McKee / DateTime: 2012-03-21 20:28:31

[quote="Maga"]The first of these is actually several distinct functions: 'hanging out with people who are our friends but we rarely get to see' is one, 'having a theory / design / future-of-IF talking-shop' is another, 'actually doing work on producing games' is a third.[/quote]

The second is what I was picturing mentally.  The first doesn't necessarily need a conference to make it happen (although it's pleasant when it does); friends can be an intrinsic draw, often at the expense of participating in the "real" conference ("we were up too late chatting to make the 7A panel...")    As for the third, you'd have to convince participants they could produce something substantial in a 2-day conference (not counting speed IF and PUtPBaA) that they couldn't produce just as well by Internet collaboration asynchronously.

[quote="Zarf"]And the newcomers, largely, were people I knew from the Boston game-dev and game-studies community.[/quote]
I guess I see this more as the relative strength of a personal invitation from/relationship with you, as opposed to intrinsic evidence that PAX was a poor venue choice.  Certainly, I'd expect most newcomers to be there because they had some personal/professional connection with someone else who said, "I'm going to this IF Thing, and you would like it, so you ought to come."  Who wouldn't respond more favorably to a buddy than a flyer?  

Making converts of people who don't already have a personal connection with an IF principal or IF (a narrower definition of "outreach" than yours, I suppose) is challenging.   Worse, making "sticky" converts (people who are still part of the community 3-5 years later) seems to need a relationship to give it staying power.  I still think it can be done, but I couldn't say whether PAX is the right medium.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4689&start=0#p34017
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: XYZZY Awards 2011 reviews
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-21 21:34:58

While the XYZZY Awards were going on, I put together a team of reviewers to tackle the finalists category by category: after a certain amount of cat-herding, [b][url=http://xyzzyawards.org/reviews/reviews2011.html]those reviews are now ready for the world[/url][/b]. We have reviews from Marco Innocenti, Joey Jones, Jacqueline Lott, Iain Merrick, Marius Müller, Aaron Reed, Lucian P. Smith, J. Robinson Wheeler and yours truly. Many thanks to everybody who contributed.

Due to assorted factors, we didn't manage to get every category covered, and only a couple of categories by more than one reviewer, but it's still a substantial chunk of reviewage. Next year, next year. We hope you enjoy 'em, and that authors find them useful.

(And apologies for any editing errors; after compiling and editing a document of 30k words, one's eyes start to glaze over a little. Corrections welcomed. We're happy to correct factual errors also.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4690&start=0#p34018
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: persuasion and check actions...?
User: crisses / DateTime: 2012-03-21 22:59:13

[spoiler][code]
A node is a kind of room.

The Lab is a room.  Bob is a man in the Lab.

The Body Shop is a node.  The Body Shop is north of The Lab.  

An access-account is a kind of value.  The access-accounts are public, user, security and admin.


[Where do you have admin access to?]
Administrating relates various people to various nodes.
The verb to be admin of implies the administrating relation.
The verb to be admined by implies the reversed administrating relation.

[Where do you have security access to?]
Securing relates various people to various nodes.
The verb to be security of implies the securing relation.
The verb to be protected by implies the reversed securing relation.

[Where do you have user access to?]
Admitting relates various people to various nodes.
The verb to be a user of implies the admitting relation.
The verb to be accessible by implies the reversed admitting relation.

Robot is a person in the Lab.  Robot is security of the lab.

Understand "hack [any room]" as hacking into.  
Hacking into is an action applying to one thing.
Check an actor hacking into a room:
	if the noun is not a node, say "You can't hack it." instead;
Carry out an actor hacking into a node:
	try the actor hacking the noun with intention of user;

Understand "hack [any room] for/at/-- [access-account] access/level/--" as hacking it with intention of.
Hacking it with intention of is an action applying to one thing and one access-account.
Carry out hacking it with intention of:
	if the access-account understood is admin:
		now the actor is admin of the noun;
	otherwise if the access-account understood is security:
		now the actor is security of the noun;
	otherwise:
		now the actor is a user of the noun;
		
Persuasion rule for asking a person to try doing something: 
	persuasion succeeds.
	

Test me with "hack the lab / bob, hack the lab / robot, n / n / robot, hack The Body Shop for admin access / hack The Body Shop for security access / relations".
[/code][/spoiler]

Been thinking about how to go about this for a while, and I think I know what I want to do, but I don't know how to manage the mechanics of it.  

I want an actor to be able to "hack <noun>" with a default of "user access".  I think I have this part figured out, except that I can't seem to make the commands apply to the other potential actors through persuasion.  They're trying, but failing, I think.  See example and test statements.

Robot starts off with security access to the Lab.

From there, no one should be able to get any admin-access to The Lab because it's not a node.  However I/the player manage to get an access account to the Lab.  But Bob can't get access (indeed, he shouldn't -- except that I did, so this makes little sense to me).

When I move to another room which IS a node, I can still get an access account, but Robot, who should get an account, does not.

Is there a better way to go about this, or am I missing something?

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4691&start=0#p34019
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Mysterious error message
User: Konjekto / DateTime: 2012-03-21 23:04:36

For some reason I've started getting this error message, and I don't know how to fix it:

------

>t3make -Fy "C:\Users\[[myusername]]\Documents\TADS game files\[[mygamename]]\obj" -Fo "C:\Users\[[myusername]]\Documents\TADS game files\[[mygamename]]\obj" -o "debug\[[nameoft3file]].t3" -D "LANGUAGE=en_us" -D "MESSAGESTYLE=neu" -v -d -statprefix <@> -statpct "system.tl" "adv3\adv3.tl" "[[sourcefile1]].t" "[[sourcefile2]].t" "[[sourcefile3]].t" "[[sourcefile4]].t" "[[sourcefile5]].t" -res "GameInfo.txt"
TADS Compiler 3.1.0  Copyright 1999, 2010 Michael J. Roberts
error: 
The symbol "doubledOver" was defined as an external reference but is not
defined anywhere in the program.  Determine where this symbol should be
defined, and make sure that the source file that contains the definition is
included in the compilation.


Errors:   1
Warnings: 0

t3make: error code 1

Build failed.

------

(The text in double brackets is just replacement text for files names. I replaced them for anonymity or some other reason.)
"doubledOver" is something that was previously in my game, but is no longer. It cannot be found when I use the search function, so it's not like I accidentally left any remnants of it behind. I didn't do anything unusual before this error started appearing. Why is this happening, and how can I fix it?


EDIT: Maybe it would be helpful if I explained exactly what "doubledOver" was? I had defined a daemon under modify Actor for poisoning. At a certain point in a switch statement I wrote setCurState(doubledOver), but then realized that it wouldn't work right to define that as a general behavior in Actor, and instead called a method ("doubleOver", similar name but I've made absolutely sure that no "doubledOver" remained), to be defined on every actor, that described their "doubling over" behavior after being poisoned. I'm rather inexperienced with TADS, so forgive me if that doesn't actually work how I want it to, but that doesn't seem to be the problem here, as the error message is talking about something that shouldn't even be there anymore.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4691&start=0#p34020
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Mysterious error message
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-03-21 23:29:54

Can you try running 't3make -clean' on the off chance that some rogue object file is causing the issue?

Also, is there a reason you are not using a makefile? You can put most of those options in a file called Makefile.t3m and then build by running 't3make' with no parameters.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4601&start=20#p34021
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Absolute Beginner Questions
User: HanonO / DateTime: 2012-03-21 23:43:05

[quote="matt w"]How very charming! I have a couple of comments, in case you want to do more with this:

1. You should probably change the description, printed name, etc. of the marmalade jar when it's held in Falling. Otherwise it seems to be falling past you even when it's in your inventory. [/quote]

Great catch!  Yes, I'd fix this if I made it longer.  I love Alice, but hasn't it been done to death in IF?  There was the Magnetic Scrolls game at least, which I never got very far through.

[quote="matt w"]2. I'd call the "tea service" the "tea service set"; that's how I tried to refer to it the first time.
[/quote]

That's something I do worry about; I suspect a lot of the IF fan base are European/British, and I have to consider whether American idiom is always appropriate.  I have heard of "tea service" as an entire kit for serving tea, but wouldn't have come up with "tea set" though it makes sense.  I know when I put synonyms for "the buttocks" I try to remember and include "arse". [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote="matt w"]3. Unfortunately, the disambiguation involving "another door" doesn't work, because Inform has already decided that "another" is basically a null reference. So if you choose "another" it disambiguates to the tiny door anyway. It seems to me that the only way to change this is to hack the I6 template files where they mention OTHER1__WD, but the better part of valor would probably be to change the way you try to disambiguate it (say "a normal/giant door" instead of "another door," for instance). 
[/quote]

I'm so glad I read these forums, I never would have known that.  I know enough I7 to be dangerous but when it goes to I6 I'm clueless, except for one line I copy and paste to perform actions inline with quoted text.

I noticed "another door"didn't work but was done with the code by then.  "different" door is probably the appropriate way to go.  

[quote="matt w"]4. "x tiny" and "open tiny" tend to disambiguate to the tiny key when you hold it; this is another annoying thing that Inform sometimes does which may be hard to get through.

Again, very nice![/quote]

If I did this as a full-fledged game, I would probably stylistically need to come up with lots of synonyms for small: tiny, teeny, eensy, wee, minuscule, microscopic...etc. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4690&start=0#p34022
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: persuasion and check actions...?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-21 23:51:56

Poking around, the Lab is being created as a node. (Try "showme Lab.") This seems to be because you declared that securing relates various people to various nodes, and you declared Robot to be security of the Lab, so Inform is inferring that the Lab is a node. If you write "Securing relates various people to various rooms" the first problem gets fixed.

For the second problem, it looks to me as though the carry out rule isn't firing because it's not "carry out an actor hacking it with the intention of"; but that doesn't compile, and I can't figure out how to make it work either.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4689&start=0#p34023
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011 reviews
User: emshort / DateTime: 2012-03-22 00:25:08

Thanks for putting these together! I found them valuable, especially the detailed critiques on the technical and feelies categories, which offered scrutiny of a kind most other IF reviews do not. 

And, of course, thanks to Lucian for the feedback on Indigo.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4691&start=0#p34024
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Mysterious error message
User: Konjekto / DateTime: 2012-03-22 00:35:52

I was under the impression that I [i]was[/i] using a makefile? I'm running the workbench, and the file I have open is definitely a t3m, so... Did you get that impression from something in the error message? Or is there something I'm not understanding?

Anyway, I didn't know what you meant by "running 't3make -clean'" (I assume that's some sort of command line thing, and I'm just a TADS 3 novice using the workbench), but I did find an option for what I assume is that very thing, and everything works fine now. Thanks.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4691&start=0#p34025
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Mysterious error message
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-03-22 00:43:35

Oh, sorry. I thought you'd pasted in the command line you were running. You're right - in Workbench, the project is the makefile.

Glad to hear things are working now!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4689&start=0#p34026
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011 reviews
User: David Whyld / DateTime: 2012-03-22 03:23:37

Hmmm... I never even knew I'd been nominated for the fire puzzle in my game and, like the reviewer, I'm kinda flummoxed as to why. I thought the fire puzzle was a very straightforward one and certainly not elaborate or especially memorable.

Still, thanks for the nomination whoever it was.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4689&start=0#p34027
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011 reviews
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-22 03:29:15

That was some excellent reading and has shoved a few games much higher on my "I really should play this sometime" list. Thanks so much for doing the necessary herding of these very groovy cats.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4689&start=0#p34028
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011 reviews
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-22 03:41:31

One thing that jumps to the eye is how my reviews are double or triple or even four times the length of the others and, still, they say nothing special.

This means that, [i]wow[/i], I have a style of my own. 

Erm...

Thanks a lot to maga for the editing and the removal of [i]inglisc[/i] from my reviews.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4690&start=0#p34029
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: persuasion and check actions...?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-03-22 03:47:27

[quote="matt w"]For the second problem, it looks to me as though the carry out rule isn't firing because it's not "carry out an actor hacking [b]it[/b] with [b]the[/b] intention of"; but that doesn't compile, and I can't figure out how to make it work either.[/quote]
Matt's right except he's got a stray "the" in there and "it" would normally be "something." Those changes get the rule to compile, but it still doesn't fire for some reason. Anyway, this seems to work as you intend:
[code]Carry out an actor hacking with intention of:[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4689&start=0#p34030
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011 reviews
User: Alex / DateTime: 2012-03-22 04:07:13

I'd love for somebody to review Quest 5 in a similar way to those nominated for "Best Technological Development". It covers a lot of bases covered by the other nominations in that category, but I guess a lot of Quest users would have been completely unaware of the Xyzzy's.

In fact I'd love for Quest to get any attention on this forum at all - the [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4660]recent thread[/url] on the TADS sub-forum here made me realise that a lot of people on here don't really know very much about it at all, and I don't want to have to keep going on about it. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4688&start=0#p34031
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Weird Tales & Pulp Fantasy IF?
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-22 05:29:39

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]Lord Dunsany, who was one of Smith's main influences.[/quote]Not to mention one of Tolkien's.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4688&start=0#p34032
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Weird Tales & Pulp Fantasy IF?
User: J. J. Guest / DateTime: 2012-03-22 05:39:08

Wow, thanks! Great suggestions. I'd forgotten about Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom, though it's been on my IFDB wishlist for a while - I really should pay more attention to myself. Lord Dunsany I've heard of because he was a big influence on both Lovecraft and Algernon Blackwood, so I'll definitely be trying both of Peter Nepstead's games. And thanks, Victor for all the other fiction suggestions. Cabell's "Jurgen" is now on my Amazon wishlist, to which I've also added "The Eye of Argon", which will sit quite nicely on my bookshelf alongside "Criswell predicts from now to the year 2000!"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4690&start=0#p34033
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: persuasion and check actions...?
User: crisses / DateTime: 2012-03-22 06:52:39

[quote="Skinny Mike"][quote="matt w"]For the second problem, it looks to me as though the carry out rule isn't firing because it's not "carry out an actor hacking [b]it[/b] with [b]the[/b] intention of"; but that doesn't compile, and I can't figure out how to make it work either.[/quote]
Matt's right except he's got a stray "the" in there and "it" would normally be "something." Those changes get the rule to compile, but it still doesn't fire for some reason. Anyway, this seems to work as you intend:
[code]Carry out an actor hacking with intention of:[/code][/quote]

Thank you both!  I got it!!! [emote]:)[/emote]

The only minor(!) hitch was how to redirect the default.  I got it after a couple tries, just  documenting it for others:

[code][spoiler]
Understand "hack [any room]" as hacking into.  
Hacking into is an action applying to one thing.
Check an actor hacking into a room:
	if the noun is not a node, say "[The actor] can't hack it." instead;
Carry out an actor hacking into a node:
	try the actor hacking with intention of the noun;
[/spoiler][/code]

I was trying "try the actor hacking with intention of the noun user" and it wouldn't compile.  I wasn't sure where to put "the noun" or "user" -- decided to try leaning on the default response in the other rule to answer the access-account question and it worked.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665&start=30#p34034
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A critical IF vocabulary
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-22 07:29:05

[quote="conradcook"]This may be an obvious and stupid observation, but the nature of the input taken from the player will vary with the granularity of the time-frame.  This might go so far as to vary the form of the input.[/quote]Well, as we are trying to capture the obvious, or at least the obvious in hindsight, I suppose [i]obvious[/i] and [i]stupid[/i] don't go well together here, I think.

Yes, and as a result of that, all kinds of granularity affect both input and output, because in interaction they lead to temporal granularity.  Whether the desk drawer is implemented as a detail (material granularity) affects whether taking my passport from the desk will be a single command or a series including "open drawer".  Likewise, spatial and temporal granularity go hand in hand.  In one game {Europe|w|North America} might do, whereas in another this movement would consist of hundreds of commands, including paying taxis, opening doors, showing ones boarding pass..

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4689&start=0#p34035
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011 reviews
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-22 07:40:47

David Whyld -- Duncan Bowsman originally nominated the fire from [i]Suzy[/i] for the XYZZY and explains his rationale [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=30660#p30660]here[/url]. It seems to me that the virtues he describes are ones that are easily missed if you just play through the game once (or twice, restarting after you 

[spoiler]use the extinguisher the wrong way[/spoiler]

); if you don't know what's going on under the hood, deceptive simplicity, multiple solutions, and smooth implementation just seem like, well, simplicity.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4689&start=0#p34037
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011 reviews
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-22 09:02:32

[quote="Alex"]In fact I'd love for Quest to get any attention on this forum at all - the [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4660]recent thread[/url] on the TADS sub-forum here made me realise that a lot of people on here don't really know very much about it at all, and I don't want to have to keep going on about it. [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
People have expressed interest in another round of something like the [url=http://ifwiki.org/index.php/Indigo_New_Language_Speed-IF]Indigo minicomp[/url], in which people test-drove IF languages they haven't used before. You might also consider something like the [url=http://ifwiki.org/index.php/The_Hugo_%22Open_House%22_Competition]Hugo Open House[/url] Comp. (Neither of these generated a massive amount of discussion, at least not in review form; Jacq was planning on putting something together for SPAG, and then SPAG apparently fell off a cliff. But they did expand the pool of people who had some direct knowledge about the languages in question.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=130#p34038
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-22 09:05:32

[quote="conradcook"]Can we have games without [i]interaction[/i]?[/quote]
Look at a child enthousiastically "into" a children's program at the radio or television.  It will go along, sing, do (reaction), as the program demands (action), but there is no full loop, because the program does not react to the child acting.  Yet the child, at least, is definitely playing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=130#p34039
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-03-22 10:47:09

I'm always preaching this: interactivity (as a sort of activity) does not require that ALL things included in that activity are interactive objects. 

An interactive object is in my definition any object that engages in all three parts of the cybernetic loop (Wiener): input, processing, output. Or things that "listen, think and speak" (Chris Crawford). 

[i]You[/i] can still interact with a football if you want to, or a cheese, or whatever, but that does not make it interactive. Even if it's a very exciting piece of cheese (or book, etc) and it sparks all kinds of marvellous ideas in your head, it STILL doesn't mean it's an interactive book (or cheese). When it starts doing some processing, or starts displaying "a non-trivial traversal function" (Aarseth) - that's when it starts to get interactive. 

IMHO.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4692&start=0#p34040
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Protagonists
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2012-03-22 12:11:59

I have created an extension, called "Protagonists", which is designed to provide several conveniences for IF with multiple playable characters (where the player can play as any one of several different people).  It currently provides support for 3 things:
[list=1]
[*]>PLAY AS a person (this is trivial, but useful, so included for completeness)[/*:m]
[*]>ALICE, FOLLOW ME and similar (currently only supports following the player; if there is interest, I may add support for other leaders)[/*:m]
[*]A very general system for giving orders to [i]groups[/i] of people (independently of persuasion).  Requires Questions by Michael Callaghan; the rest of the extension will still work without Questions.[/*:m][/list:o]

The third will require some explanation.  Here's an example session:
[spoiler]>test me
(Testing.)

>[1] light lamp
You switch the lamp on.

>[2] order
Order what action?
1 - Travel as a group.

>[3] 1
Alice, Bob, Carol and David are now following you.

>[4] s
David, Carol, Bob and Alice follow you.

Narrow passage
The passage extends north and south.

>[5] s
David, Carol, Bob and Alice follow you.

Cave
Your lamplight casts hundreds of shadows all over the cave.  There are exits in the four cardinal directions.

You can see a Beast here.

>[6] l
Cave
Your lamplight casts hundreds of shadows all over the cave.  There are exits in the four cardinal directions.

You can see David, Carol, Bob, Alice and a Beast here.

>[7] order
Order what action?
1 - Stop here for now.
2 - Run away.

>[8] 2
Alice, Bob, Carol and David flee the area.

>[9] l
Cave
Your lamplight casts hundreds of shadows all over the cave.  There are exits in the four cardinal directions.

You can see a Beast here.[/spoiler]
The player can issue the command ORDER.  The game will prompt them with a list of available orders, and the player chooses one.  Currently, the extension includes 3 options:
[list=1]
[*]Continue, which causes people to follow the player.[/*:m]
[*]Stop, which causes people to stop following the player.[/*:m]
[*]Regroup, which tries to bring people to the location by repeatedly generating EXIT actions.[/*:m][/list:o]

Obviously, the "run away" order is not built-in.  I coded it as an example.  Here's what said code looks like:[spoiler][code]Definition: A person is afraid if it can see the beast

Table of Orders (continued)
Order	Printed description	Targeted people
flee	"Run away."				--

When play begins:
	Target flee at visible obedient other afraid people.

Giving an order to someone (called P) when the relevant order is flee:
	Let place be a random adjacent room;
	If place is a room:
		Let thataway be the best route from the location of P to place;
		If thataway is a direction:
			silently try P going thataway;
			If rule succeeded:
				Silently try P waiting;
				It is complied with;
	It is not complied with.
For printing the failure to comply of someone (called P) when the relevant order is flee:
	Say "[The P] appear[s] to be stuck here."
For printing the compliance list of a list of people (called A) when the relevant order is flee:
	Say "[A with definite articles] flee[list-based s of A] the area."[/code][/spoiler]
Since very few games with this extension will fit into Z5, I've marked it as Z8 or Glulx only.

The extension has not yet been beta-tested; I'd appreciate it if the community could have a look.  I'm particularly concerned about giving orders and following, in that order (changing the player is trivial and does not merit testing).  Despite the lack of testing, I've tried to make its documentation as complete as possible; it should be understandable.  Testers of the beta versions will be credited in the documentation (please specify how you want to be credited, or I'll just use your username).

I've never actually seen anyone announce an extension for beta-testing here before, so if it belongs somewhere else, I'm sorry for posting in the wrong place.  Thanks for reading all this!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4693&start=0#p34041
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: More shipboard directions questions
User: Jeff Zeitlin / DateTime: 2012-03-22 12:23:38

OK, my WIP is proceeding nicely; thanks for the earlier help.

However, I'm having to do what I consider "hackery" to impose the NSEW vs FAPS paradigms. I had thought that by saying

[code]Cabin is a room.
Common Area is port of Cabin.
Cargo Hold is aft of Common Area.

Ship is a region. Cabin, Common Area, Cargo Hold are in Ship.

To decide if a location is shipboard:
	If the location is regionally in ship, decide yes;
	decide no.
[/code]

I could then say 

[code]Before going a shipboard direction when the location is not shipboard, say "Shipboard directions can only be used on board ship." 

Before going an earthbound direction when the location is shipboard, say "Compass directions make no sense on board ship, but you can use [list of shipboard directions] instead." instead. [/code]

(shipboard and earthbound directions are defined as in Example 40, except that I used "shipboard" where the example uses "nautical").

However, that didn't seem to work.  To make the directions restrictions work as expected, I ended up adding
[code]It is shipboard.[/code] to the definition of every room that was in the ship region.

Obviously, I've misunderstood something.  What, and what should I have done instead?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4692&start=0#p34042
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Protagonists
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-03-22 12:29:07

[quote="NYKevin"]Since very few games with this extension will fit into Z5, I've marked it as Z8 or Glulx only.[/quote]
Sounds cool, but explicitly disallowing z5 because it [i]might[/i] go over the size limits sounds a bit harsh. If there's nothing inherently that would not work with z5, let the author make the decision which version to use.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4693&start=0#p34043
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More shipboard directions questions
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-22 12:42:21

Try a 'definition' instead:
[code]Definition: a room (called place) is shipboard if the place is regionally in the ship.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4693&start=0#p34044
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More shipboard directions questions
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-22 12:43:57

This (which I think you have from the example):

[code]A room can be shipboard or earthbound.[/code]

and this:

[code]To decide if a location is shipboard:
   If the location is regionally in ship, decide yes;
   decide no.[/code]

are redundant. The first one makes "shipboard/earthbound" into a property that you can (and must) set manually in the code, the second makes it something that gets automatically calculated depending on what region the room is. So I think if you delete the first line from your code (and add another to-decide phrase that a location is earthbound if it is not shipboard), it should work.

UPDATE: As Felix points out, you can also use a definition rather than a to-decide.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4692&start=0#p34045
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Protagonists
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2012-03-22 12:55:58

No, I mean a redesigned version of [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/Rex400.html#e400]Terror of the Sierra Madre[/url], which has one room, two people, and a couple of other minor things, won't fit into Z5 (I haven't tried turning on memory economy, but seriously, there's two people and a room, with a few extra rules.  You're going to turn on memory economy [i]that early[/i] in your project?).  It's my opinion that you need to have two people and a room in order for the extension to be useful (it's designed for "multiple playable people", after all), so literally [i]no-one[/i] would benefit by allowing Z5, and it is nice to let prospective authors know that it won't fit.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=130#p34046
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-22 13:11:03

[quote="peterorme"]I'm always preaching this: interactivity (as a sort of activity) does not require that ALL things included in that activity are interactive objects. [/quote]Hmm. It looks like we're bumping into a lack of separation between words here; I think we need two different verbs, "interacting" and ...something else, because we're talking about two different concepts. Like, you can talk to a painting, but you can't converse with one.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4694&start=0#p34047
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Hugor 0.9 has been released
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-03-22 13:54:30

I just released version 0.9 of Hugor, a Hugo multimedia interpreter for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. The changes since the last version are:

[list][*]The scrollback window is now triggered when trying to scroll upwards, and can now be displayed as an overlay over the game window.
[/*:m]
[*]Margins to the left and right of the game window can now be configured.
[/*:m]
[*]On Mac OS, the application now recognizes .hex files. You can drag&drop games into the application icon, or run games directly from Finder.
[/*:m]
[*]MIDI music looping should now work on Mac OS. Previously, the MIDI track would only play once.
[/*:m]
[*]Some games with corrupted MP3 tracks (like "Trading Punches") would result in no sound being played. This has been fixed.
[/*:m]
[*]Text rendering was off by 1 pixel. This has been corrected.[/*:m][/list:u]
Special thanks to Marc Simpson in helping with this release by sending patches for configurable margins and the scrollback changes!

(For people wondering why some of Iain Merrick's issues with the interpreter in his XYZZY review have not been addressed (not reflowing/repainting the game text when resizing the window and not having scrollbars instead of a scrollback window), the issue is that it's impossible. The graphical version of the Hugo engine does not allow for any of that, since the model used by the engine is the same as that of legacy DOS games using the VGA framebuffer without a windowing system.)

You can download the new version on Hugor's IFWiki page:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Hugor">http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Hugor</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4693&start=0#p34048
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More shipboard directions questions
User: Jeff Zeitlin / DateTime: 2012-03-22 13:55:30

Re: Definition vs. To Decide...

What's the difference, if there is any?  Which one is better?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4693&start=0#p34049
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More shipboard directions questions
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2012-03-22 14:06:51

Definitions create new adjectives, which may be used in descriptions (e.g. "[The list of visible people]").  To decide... does not IIRC.

To decide... can take multiple arguments ("To decide whether (A - a thing) and (B - a thing) jive together:..."), although if there's only two arguments, it might be better to use a relation ("Jiving relates a thing (called A) to a thing (called B) when...").  OTOH I think relations like that are one line only, so you may end up defining the relation in terms of a to decide... phrase.

Also, you can say things like "To decide which room is the interesting room...", which Definition:... is IIRC unable to do.

EDIT: One last thing, if you say something like "To decide whether (X - a thing) is interesting:...", you will only be able to use that adjective like this: "If the thingy is interesting:" (although you can replace "thingy" with a variable).  In particular, you [i]cannot[/i] say something like "Instead of examining an interesting thing:...".  Therefore, if you only need one argument (x), it's almost always better to use a definition.  

TL;DR: Don't create a phrase (some kind -> truth state) phrased like "To decide whether X is interesting:"; use a definition instead.  It may make sense to create a phrase (some kind, another kind -> truth state) ("To decide whether X and Y are interesting together:"), but it's probably better to use a relation for that, and if you do make a phrase, you'll probably end up making a relation as well anyway.  If you have a phrase (kind, kind, kind -> truth state) ("To decide whether X and Y are involved with Z:"), however, there's nothing obvious to use instead.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=50#p34050
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-22 14:32:12

Wow! I'm flattered that people are talking about my extensions, but I'm a little embarrassed that I haven't really polished any of them.

There's another one that might come in handy: it's my update of Conditional Backdrops. The latest version is not up on the inform7 site, but it's here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://eyeballsun.org/i/Conditional%20Backdrops.i7x">http://eyeballsun.org/i/Conditional%20Backdrops.i7x</a>

What's most useful here is not the ability to define your own types of floating objects, but to have better control over when backdrops are moved. You can invoke the "moving floating objects" activity whenever you want and write After rules for the activity to modify how objects are moved or respond to their movement.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=130#p34051
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-22 15:22:08

[quote="ChrisC"]Like, you can talk to a painting, but you can't converse with one.[/quote]

Excellently put, sir.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4695&start=0#p34052
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: why can't I "decide on nothing"?
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-03-22 15:24:47

Hi. I'm confused again. 

To me it seems that "decide on nothing" would be a perfectly sane way for a "to decide" phrase to say that it is unable to find something to decide on, just like a rule is allowed to "make no decision". 

Currently I'm just playing around with some rpg-inspired stuff (in particular, inspired by S. John Ross's [i]Risus[/i]. So I have this

[code]
to decide which cliche is the used cliche of (hero - a person) as (possible - a list of cliches):
	repeat with C running through possible:
		let L be the dice of hero as C;
		if L > 0, decide on C;
	decide on the nil cliche; 
[/code]

I'm just sketching, if I ever release this it will look better. So this is checking a list to see which of the items is appropriate, and sometimes the correct answer is that none of them are.  But you can't "decide on nothing" - it does compile, but it throws a runtime problem ("P33: attempt to decide on nothing". Duh!). Can you catch these problems?

Is there some better way of doing this than using a "typed null" object like I do here (defining "the nil cliche is a cliche")?

Or am I doing things totally backwards? Should I be using something else than a to decide phrase here?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=140#p34053
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: George / DateTime: 2012-03-22 15:49:12

[quote="ChrisC"] I think we need two different verbs, "interacting" and ...[/quote]

engaging?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=140#p34054
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-22 15:50:10

[quote="Laroquod"]We must be able to separate daffodil-like things from carburetor-like things, or else we couldn't fix cars.[/quote]Which is only because you insist on distinguishing car fixing from daffodil picking, of course.  [emote];)[/emote]  [emote]:)[/emote]  [emote]:D[/emote]  [emote]:lol:[/emote]

Pragmatism can never be a reason for making distinctions in the first place, because pragmatism requires existing distinctions - in the last instance maybe between life and death, but there you are.

(This is more or less the great monistic fallacy.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4695&start=0#p34055
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: why can't I "decide on nothing"?
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2012-03-22 15:54:49

"Nothing" is basically just a [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinel_value]"typed null" value[/url] for "things" specifically (note that it doesn't work for "objects" -- you can't use nothing as a room, for example).  Unfortunately, it seems you're not allowed to decide on it.  I'm not quite sure why that restriction exists, but obviously if your phrase ("To decide which...:") is returning something that isn't a thing (i.e. if a "cliche" is not a kind of "thing"), then deciding on "nothing" really doesn't make sense anyway since it's of the wrong kind.

In short, yes, you should used typed-nulls like that.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4663&start=0#p34056
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Linux/Ubuntu Support needed for Inform 7
User: Slater4711 / DateTime: 2012-03-22 15:55:59

Found the error. It seems that I screwed up the migration from maverick to natty. Damn it.

Funny enough I got help texts for natty, but core components where still maverick. Now, I moved to oneiric, that is 11.10, and Inform 7 works.

Thanks anyway

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4666&start=0#p34057
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: nY: "Keuzevrijheid en autoriteit"
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-22 16:46:49

[quote]Je kan proberen met je karakter naar de feestwinkel te gaan, een spookkostuum te kopen en op straat kleine kindjes bang te maken, maar dat zal alleen lukken als de auteur van het verhaal al die mogelijkheden ook daadwerkelijk heeft beschreven en geprogrammeerd.[/quote]
This is not completely true.  The modelling part of IF makes that only the constituent parts and their behaviours need to be modelled, and the player may well succeed in doing things that the author hadn't thought of.  One kind of bug in IF is when the author thought he had forced a certain outcome, but the player can find a combination of actions to thwart the author's intention.

For instance, the author may believe he made sure the weapon will be destroyed before the PC is apprehended, but the player finds a way to remove the weapon from the car before the latter is compressed to a cube of scrap iron, and later uses it to kill the guards and simply walk out of the police station.  Given a modelling that allows a gun to kill NPCs, such a thing can easily happen.

(Or am I reading "mogelijkheden" too narrowly, and did you mean "behaviours"?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4695&start=0#p34058
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: why can't I "decide on nothing"?
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-03-22 16:57:22

Of course. Silly: My cliches are objects, not things. I assumed nothing was an object, not a thing. Ok, thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4693&start=0#p34059
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More shipboard directions questions
User: Jeff Zeitlin / DateTime: 2012-03-22 17:02:17

[quote="matt w"]This (which I think you have from the example):

[code]A room can be shipboard or earthbound.[/code]

and this:

[code]To decide if a location is shipboard:
   If the location is regionally in ship, decide yes;
   decide no.[/code]

are redundant. The first one makes "shipboard/earthbound" into a property that you can (and must) set manually in the code, the second makes it something that gets automatically calculated depending on what region the room is. So I think if you delete the first line from your code (and add another to-decide phrase that a location is earthbound if it is not shipboard), it should work.

UPDATE: As Felix points out, you can also use a definition rather than a to-decide.[/quote]

A-[b][i]HA[/i][/b]!  That's 'splainy, and tells me that a [b]Definition[/b] would work well for my purposes - which, upon experimentation, it does.  Thanks to all who've replied!

(Does anyone mind if I say that Inform 7 is [b][i]DAMN GOOD![/i][/b]?)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4683&start=0#p34060
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SQL Errors
User: Jeff Zeitlin / DateTime: 2012-03-22 17:15:36

I'm getting this error FREQUENTLY, and also messages from Chrome that the server sent no data.  In all cases, a refresh gets me back into the board, but if I was posting/editing a message, the edits are gone, and no post was made.

I'd say that today, about half the operations I tried ended up with one error or another.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4663&start=0#p34061
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Linux/Ubuntu Support needed for Inform 7
User: Sslaxx / DateTime: 2012-03-22 17:44:28

Gnome-Inform 7 is going to need to be updated (again) regarding its GTK/Webkit dependencies for 12.04. It's not finding icons correctly and seems to be crashing when you tell it to run the game from within the IDE.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4677&start=0#p34062
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: drop vs doff vs take, etc. - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-03-22 17:44:28

I've been doing some experiments with the verbs in this title. With my experience, I don't see any easy solutions to what I want to do. My next question is would it be possible to change an object from 'wearable' to 'alwaysworn' (And vice-versa) during actual game play? If so, This would solve my so-called object handling desires.

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4693&start=0#p34063
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More shipboard directions questions
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-22 17:46:12

[quote="Jeff Zeitlin"](Does anyone mind if I say that Inform 7 is DAMN GOOD!?)[/quote]
I believe there are those who do mind – but it's not me  [emote];)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4689&start=0#p34064
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011 reviews
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2012-03-22 17:54:42

I also posted about potential ADRIFT nominations [url=http://forum.adrift.co/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=7770#p87969]here[/url], at the ADRIFT Forum.  Even if none won in their categories, I was happy to see them nominated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4677&start=0#p34065
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: drop vs doff vs take, etc. - TADS3.1
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-22 18:16:03

[Board SQL malfunction caused the same message to be posted twice....]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4677&start=0#p34066
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: drop vs doff vs take, etc. - TADS3.1
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-22 18:16:28

[quote="RonG"]My next question is would it be possible to change an object from 'wearable' to 'alwaysworn' (And vice-versa) during actual game play?[/quote]
Assuming you've defined AlwaysWorn as a class, you can do that using setSuperclassList, like this:

[code]myObj.setSuperclassList([AlwaysWorn]);[/code]

Note the square brackets -- this method wants to see a list object as the argument.

That said, this function may not do what you're hoping for, unless your object is simply inheriting the handling of WearAction, DoffAction, and TakeAction unchanged. If you've written any special code for these actions in the object, changing the superclass probably won't affect how the actions are handled. (Depending, of course, on how you've written your new action handlers.)

setSuperclassList is a tool for extreme cases. It's not often needed. Rather than resorting to it, you would quite likely be better off thinking through how you want the object to behave, and writing your action handlers accordingly.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4666&start=0#p34067
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: nY: "Keuzevrijheid en autoriteit"
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2012-03-22 18:18:56

While the author doesn't need to anticipate every possibility, I don't see how this invalidates my example (because at the very least the location, objects, NPCs and action mentioned must be implemented by the author to make the sequence possible), or how it would invalidate my basic point (that not everything is possible when playing IF).

[quote="ChrisC"]Pretty interesting article. It's nice to see a non-introductory article about IF published in a more mainstream source, outside of our hobbyist circles, too.[/quote]
Certainly! Though I'm not sure small journals focussing on experimental literature, poetry and translation really count as "mainstream", or even "more mainstream". I'm quite sure the editors of [i]nY[/i] would be surprised to be called "mainstream". [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4666&start=0#p34068
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: nY: "Keuzevrijheid en autoriteit"
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-22 19:02:18

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]I don't see how this invalidates my example[/quote]It doesn't.  I was just pointing out a minor - well - point, which in itself wasn't even false.  Just, as I wrote, "not completely true", unless under another understanding of the word "mogelijkheden" than the one that seemed natural to me in the context.  Your argument stands unchallenged.

The author must still describe the possibility to kill NPCs in general with a gun, but he may be convinced the game doesn't allow thus killing policemen, because the PC cannot get out of the car with the gun in his possession.  Simply because he forgot to check whether any container held by the PC held the gun, possibly indirectly, opens up a whole field of behavioural freedom that never occurred in his head, much less was described by him as such.

I can imagine a piece of IF in which virtually all action is modeled - none merely suggested by prose.  In such a world having the objects, locations and actions would mean being able to mix these ad lib, way beyond what the author may have imagined.  But the author still needs to describe those objects, locations and actions, which suffices for your argument.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4695&start=0#p34069
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: why can't I "decide on nothing"?
User: crisses / DateTime: 2012-03-22 20:46:10

[quote="peterorme"]Of course. Silly: My cliches are objects, not things. I assumed nothing was an object, not a thing. Ok, thanks![/quote]

Unless you changed it since the last time you posted on the forums with the definition, I think I remember that your cliches were values.  Anyway, you could make a cliche of "none" (or better yet "no cliche") and make that default.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4695&start=0#p34070
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: why can't I "decide on nothing"?
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-03-22 20:56:43

[quote]"Nothing" is basically just a [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinel_value]"typed null" value[/url] for "things" specifically (note that it doesn't work for "objects" -- you can't use nothing as a room, for example).[/quote]
Actually, this is backwards. "Decide on nothing" is valid only if you are returning an object, not a thing:

[code]To decide which object is nada:
     decide on nothing.[/code]

Since a thing is a subtype of the object kind, you can often use a phrase that returns an object even if what you are really after is a thing, e.g.:

[code]Test is a room. The player carries a staff.

To decide which object is (X - an object) mystified:
	if X is the player, decide on the player;
	decide on nothing.
	
When play begins:
	say "With your staff you mystify [the staff mystified]."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4688&start=0#p34071
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Weird Tales & Pulp Fantasy IF?
User: Merlin Fisher / DateTime: 2012-03-22 21:55:12

[quote="J. J. Guest"]Wow, thanks! Great suggestions. I'd forgotten about Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom, though it's been on my IFDB wishlist for a while - I really should pay more attention to myself. Lord Dunsany I've heard of because he was a big influence on both Lovecraft and Algernon Blackwood, so I'll definitely be trying both of Peter Nepstead's games. And thanks, Victor for all the other fiction suggestions. Cabell's "Jurgen" is now on my Amazon wishlist, to which I've also added "The Eye of Argon", which will sit quite nicely on my bookshelf alongside "Criswell predicts from now to the year 2000!"[/quote]

A lot of those old pulp tales are public domain, which means you can download them for free.  "Eye of Argon," in the grand tradition of "so bad it's bad," is all over the Internet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4688&start=0#p34072
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Weird Tales & Pulp Fantasy IF?
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-22 22:38:16

[quote="Merlin Fisher"]"Eye of Argon," in the grand tradition of "so bad it's bad," is all over the Internet.[/quote]

And it's the centerpiece of a late-night-at-the-science-fiction-convention party game I'm really fond of (this used to be an active tradition at cons; it's a bit old-school now but I devote a little energy every year to trying to keep it alive ...)

[b]The sober version:[/b] Happy geeks sit in a circle, and read[i] Eye of Argon[/i] aloud, as dramatically as possible (do the voices! do the voices!). If the reading is insufficiently dramatic, the others boo and the current reader must pass the copy to the next reader. If the reader giggles or laughs, he has forfeited and must pass the copy to the next reader. If any smart-ass po-faced bastard manages to keep right on reading it dramatically without giggling or laughing for more than a couple of pages, the others pelt him with food and he must pass the copy to the next reader. Continue until the epic tale is completed, circling as many times as necessary.

[b]The drunky version:[/b] Same thing, except when you pass from booing or pelting, you take a shot. If you pass from giggling or laughing, you take TWO shots.

I'd love to see an actual IF adaptation done. I like imagining how to implement the lockpicking puzzle in a way that would be true to the original and still "fair" on IF grounds [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4697&start=0#p34074
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Changing either/or properties of built-in kinds
User: bukayeva / DateTime: 2012-03-23 04:04:31

The Inform manual says:

[quote]"We also may not assign "usual" either/or properties to kinds already defined by Inform. For instance, the following would not be effective: A door is usually open."[/quote]

Yet it appears "we" can do that. I try it -- and it works. The index updates appropriately to indicate this changed state. Trying it out, changing the either/or property does seem to work, as can be seen in this simple example:

[code]A door is usually open.

Stage is a room.
The portal is a door.
The portal is west of the stage and east of backstage.
Backstage is a room.[/code]

Try it with and without the "A door is usually open" line.

So is the manual wrong? Or is there some subtlety it's not making clear? There's no indication at all in the manual as to why Inform would not allow it and it would seem odd that this wouldn't work especially since earlier in the same chapter it says "But if we want to rearrange Inform's default ideas, we can do that quite easily."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4683&start=0#p34075
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SQL Errors
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-03-23 04:48:07

Another data point: I got this same error a couple of times yesterday (3/22) and once again just now. Although most reload fine, this last one took three tries to reload. Since then I've been bouncing around the board just fine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4697&start=0#p34076
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Changing either/or properties of built-in kinds
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-23 05:35:51

It's surely a miss in the update of the manual. Later assertions of the default value of an either/or property of a kind has been allowed to override earlier ones for five years (since build 4U65), it appears.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4663&start=0#p34077
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Linux/Ubuntu Support needed for Inform 7
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2012-03-23 08:05:01

Yeah, it hasn't been very stable for me in Gnome lately.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4698&start=0#p34078
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Do animals play games?  -- Frog v. Iphone.
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-23 08:13:47

[url=http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D04Y7FMPoTg4&h=rAQG25CM5AQGMBZBoXDo8HauOaaPbG59gKbBJEtyE0M9BMA]Frog v. Iphone[/url], a 34-second Youtube vid.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4683&start=0#p34079
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SQL Errors
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-03-23 08:16:06

I've also been getting the error from time to time over the last couple of days.  Usually, a couple of hits to the "refresh" button are adequate to clear it up.


Robert Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=140#p34080
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-23 09:21:42

[quote="George"][quote="ChrisC"] I think we need two different verbs, "interacting" and ...[/quote]

engaging?[/quote]
I don't think that's the right connotation. To me engagement is mostly a mental state -- I wouldn't say I engaged with a ball by throwing it -- whereas interaction and this other thing are obvious, externally observable actions being performed. It's something like "play", although play seems more like a subset of this fuzzy concept. "Experiment", "test", "try" are more subsets, in a different context. "Work" is another.

You can work with a pencil, you can play with a Hot Wheels car, you can work with a business partner or play with a teammate; but unlike with people, you can't interact with a toy car or a pencil. Is there some broad verb encompassing the concepts of work, play, and experimentation, among others? Manipulate, use, and utilize come to mind; but those have very different meanings in the interpersonal context. "Use" might be the best here; but I wonder if there isn't something better.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=140#p34081
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-23 09:46:46

Interesting thoughts on this thread.  I guess what we're leading up to is that there are levels of interactivity.  We wouldn't normally say we interact with a pen and paper.  We can interact with a computer program, but it cannot interact with us.  What can interact with us seems only to include people, or at the very least animals.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=140#p34082
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-03-23 09:50:24

Isn't unidirectional interaction just action?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=140#p34083
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-23 10:12:15

Is acting on a computer and interacting with it the same thing?

C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4683&start=0#p34084
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SQL Errors
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-23 10:15:24

I've been getting such errors frequently for a few days now.  I initially figured it was some kind of problem with the library WiFi.

It happens often:  less than half the time, but more than 1/5th, I'd say.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=10769&start=10#p34085
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Upcoming Updates?
User: Sslaxx / DateTime: 2012-03-23 11:02:07

[quote="DavidC"]Oh 6M59 you are the finest,
you bring my stories to life.
Oh 6M59 you are the lightest,
you speed through my words with east.
Oh 6M59 you are the greatest,
at least that's what I want to see.

David C.[/quote]
You know something we don't?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4698&start=0#p34086
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Do animals play games?  -- Frog v. Iphone.
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-23 11:24:37

I think it would be possible to design a Kinect game for dogs, and a parrot could probably learn to play pong.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=10769&start=10#p34087
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Upcoming Updates?
User: DavidC / DateTime: 2012-03-23 11:31:25

[quote="Sslaxx"]
You know something we don't?[/quote]

If you look at the history of Inform 7 updates on rec.arts.int-fiction, you will also note a somewhat dubious pattern of bad poetry preceding hopeful announcements of a new version.

I could not resist when this topic came up.

David C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4674&start=10#p34088
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Alternate Universe Friends
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-03-23 12:53:06

I don't know which is weirder: if these games exist, or if they don't.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4695&start=0#p34089
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: why can't I "decide on nothing"?
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2012-03-23 13:06:03

[quote="ektemple"][quote]"Nothing" is basically just a [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinel_value]"typed null" value[/url] for "things" specifically (note that it doesn't work for "objects" -- you can't use nothing as a room, for example).[/quote]
Actually, this is backwards. "Decide on nothing" is valid only if you are returning an object, not a thing:[/quote]

Oh, I guess I was wrong about that...  Sorry!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4694&start=0#p34090
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor 0.9 has been released
User: Ice Cream Jonsey / DateTime: 2012-03-23 14:20:25

The configurable margins are FANTASTIC. Thanks, guys.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4683&start=0#p34091
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SQL Errors
User: Jeff Zeitlin / DateTime: 2012-03-23 16:39:32

... annnnnnnd ... more info.  Today, only about a third of my attempts to access threads were coming up in Chrome as "server sent no data", and refresh "got it right".  However, I just got the SQL out-of-memory error:
[code]SQL ERROR [ mysqli ]

Out of memory (Needed 1048544 bytes) [5]

An SQL error occurred while fetching this page. Please contact the Board Administrator if this problem persists.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4699&start=0#p34092
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: 40 years of video games
User: rpatten / DateTime: 2012-03-23 17:42:15

Has anyone been to the Smithsonian "The Art of Video Games" display? 

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.localnews8.com/technology/30725536/detail.html">http://www.localnews8.com/technology/30 ... etail.html</a>

Here's the list of games on display (only five playable):

<a class="postlink" href="http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2012/games/featuredgames/">http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/a ... uredgames/</a>

Apparently, the games displayed are based on a vote.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4694&start=0#p34093
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor 0.9 has been released
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-23 17:48:41

Well, you've done it. I've switched from the main engine to Hugor. Well done.

But, the trouble with having me as a user is that I immediatly start asking things.  [emote]:roll:[/emote] But Hugor is so good already, I have only one thing to ask for.

Could you please look into updating transcripts on the fly, after each turn, instead of after-X-turns/when-Hugor-closes/whenever-it-is-they-are-updated? I use Trizbort to automap, and it pretty much relies on transcripts being updated on the fly - as they are with ZCode, Glulx and TADS games.

EDIT - No, that's not the only thing. I've one further suggestion and one question.

Suggestion: currently the configurable margins also affect the status bar. The result may be a bit odd, visually, especially if the background colour of the status bar is NOT the same colour as the main text background. Could you look into keeping the status-bar at 0px margin? Maybe make it toggleable?

[Question: "Extra butter"? What's that one about?]
Nevermind, figured this one out. Heh.

EDIT 2 - I'm such a pain, but question #2:

Is there anything at all that Hugor doesn't do that the main Hugo engine does? What prompted this question was me going through older posts and seeing a mention that video didn't work - but that was the very first post, so maybe it does work now, and I was just wondering about any other known shortcomings.

There, shutting up now.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4699&start=0#p34094
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: 40 years of video games
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-23 18:22:09

I have so, so, so many things against public voting...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4699&start=0#p34095
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: 40 years of video games
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-23 19:02:29

I can definitely get on board with a lot of those game choices but I find it unfortunate that there were no point-and-click adventure games, and though Fallout is an excellent crpg, I would have voted for Planescape or possibly Arcanum instead.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=10769&start=10#p34096
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Upcoming Updates?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-23 19:30:58

[quote="emshort"]To answer your question directly, no, Custom Library Messages will not be needed, nor is it being built in. There is a new, more integrated method of handling output that we hope will also make it easier for authors to replace messages in other people's extensions (selectively or completely), allowing for smoother customization and translation.[/quote]

Well, well, well! This AND making it easier to make games in other languages (as discussed in another, older, thread)? Outstanding!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4699&start=0#p34097
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: 40 years of video games
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-23 20:19:01

Yeah, I remember when there was open voting for this list, and I went and looked at the nominees and realised that there were perhaps three games on the list that I had played and maybe a half-dozen that I felt I should probably play sometime. Oh, console gamers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4698&start=0#p34098
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Do animals play games?  -- Frog v. Iphone.
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-23 20:31:35

I think the vid makes clear that frogs *don't* play games...

C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4694&start=0#p34099
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor 0.9 has been released
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-03-23 20:55:14

[quote="Peter Pears"]
Could you please look into updating transcripts on the fly, after each turn, instead of after-X-turns/when-Hugor-closes/whenever-it-is-they-are-updated? I use Trizbort to automap, and it pretty much relies on transcripts being updated on the fly - as they are with ZCode, Glulx and TADS games.[/quote]
Sounds like a good idea. I've now set the script file to flush before every input operation. Current builds can be found here (they're now also carry the build date in their filename so newer builds can be identified easily):

<a class="postlink" href="http://foss.aegean.gr/~realnc/hugor/testing/">http://foss.aegean.gr/~realnc/hugor/testing/</a>

Trizbot should now work with the transcript.

[quote]Suggestion: currently the configurable margins also affect the status bar. The result may be a bit odd, visually, especially if the background colour of the status bar is NOT the same colour as the main text background. Could you look into keeping the status-bar at 0px margin? Maybe make it toggleable?[/quote]
Unfortunately, that's not possible. The Hugo engine does not support windows, so the interpreter has no idea which part of the game screen is the status line. Games are free to paint everything they want on the screen, so the interpreter paints it but has no idea what it is  that it just painted.

Separate status line information is only available in the text-only version of Hugo (as used by Glk interpreters, for example Gargoyle.)

[quote]Is there anything at all that Hugor doesn't do that the main Hugo engine does? What prompted this question was me going through older posts and seeing a mention that video didn't work - but that was the very first post, so maybe it does work now, and I was just wondering about any other known shortcomings.[/quote]
It's still video that's missing (hopefully I'll be able to add support for it in a cross-platform manner.) A compass rose is also missing, but that's not an engine feature. It's very easy to implement (it just outputs directional commands as if the user had entered them when a direction is clicked) but I'm not sure how useful that one is; do people actually navigate around in IF using a compass rose?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4693&start=0#p34100
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More shipboard directions questions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-23 22:52:25

I don't think this means what you think it means:
[code]To decide if a location is shipboard:
   If the location is regionally in ship, decide yes;
   decide no.[/code]

In general, "a location" will be interpreted to mean "the location". If you want to talk about a specific room, you need to say "a room."

But when you define a "to decide" phrase, there are no variable substitutions except those placed in parentheses, so the words "a location" or "a room" would have to match exactly in order to invoke the phrase. If you say:

[code]if the Poop Deck is shipboard:[/code]

I would not expect that to compile unless you change the phrase definition to:

[code]To decide if (place - a room) is shipboard:[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=50#p34101
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-24 02:44:31

Well, that was fun [emote]:)[/emote] Can't wait to see the finished game-pile later today!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4700&start=0#p34102
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Time messing up after midnight?
User: thecustodian / DateTime: 2012-03-24 03:15:08

I'm busy trying to get an NPC to be somewhere for a predictable period of each day.  However, I noticed it wasn't working well.  During testing, I find that at midnight on the first day of gameplay, the time count in my scenes messes up and flips to negative numbers!  Is this expected behavior?  Am I doing something seriously wrong?  This is using glulx.  Here's what I see starting around 11:58pm, using 'scenes'.  I find that my scenes stop working (don't end, don't begin, etc.) after this happens, breaking my game.
[quote]
>scenes
Scene 'Entire Game' playing (for 718 mins now)
Scene 'Roberto Drinking' ended
Scene 'Transit Stop' playing (for 2 mins now)
Scene 'Transit Enroute' ended
(Scene monitoring now switched on. Type "scenes off" to switch it off again.)

>x watch
A cheap digital, your watch reads 11:58 pm.

[Scene 'Transit Stop' ends]
[Scene 'Transit Enroute' begins]
>z
Time passes.

>x watch
A cheap digital, your watch reads 12:00 am.

>scenes
Scene 'Entire Game' playing (for -719 mins now)
Scene 'Roberto Drinking' ended
Scene 'Transit Stop' ended
Scene 'Transit Enroute' playing (for -1438 mins now)
(Scene monitoring now switched on. Type "scenes off" to switch it off again.)
[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=50#p34103
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-24 04:06:38

Yep it's going to be great seeing how they all turned out. I hold out hope that all the MIA games turn up.

I finally submitted my games, a little later than I really should. I still have the same relationship with deadlines as I did when I was a student and wrote the last quarter of my MA dissertation on the day of submission. 

The games are going to be playable online, right? This means someone with sufficient web-fu could create a browser-based randomiser which loads up a random game or series of games in the manner of a CD track shuffler.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4249&start=20#p34104
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Glk stylesheets: the Plan
User: vaporware / DateTime: 2012-03-24 04:57:26

[quote="bcressey"]If you can convince zarf to allow arbitrary text colors via a standard Glk call, I'll be amazed. And frankly a little bit worried.

For dynamic styles, I think the idea is that you use glk_set_style_name to start a uniquely-named style, then use glk_script_send to invoke some JavaScript that changes the presentation of that style.[/quote]
And for non-JavaScript interpreters?

I don't understand the omission of this straightforward, standard text formatting feature that's already in HTML/CSS and the Z-machine. IMO, the lack of dynamic styling has always been the weak spot in Glk, and this is the perfect time to fix it. If it's not going to be in the standard, I hope zarf is still willing to reserve a few selector numbers for it, because I plan to personally add it to every open source interpreter I can build.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4701&start=0#p34105
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Anybody know about joining GameCow?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-24 06:47:16

If someone can get me the code to join this site, I'd appreciate it.

If you don't know, this is kind of like the Quest site, or maybe something like ChoiceScript.  GameCow is meant to enable you to write text games online.  They're not parser-driven, but clickable, something like the effect you get with Ramus (in fact one of the effects is a progressive scrolling effect like the one you see in Ramus, or Vorple).

It's a young site with just a few games listed. Many are demo games, with just a few pages ("This is a demo game."), or games that are being written or have been left off unfinished.  They're all thrown together on one page, but the blurbs usually give an idea of how completed the game is.  

Some games are clearly broken, sometimes because they try to use features that the GameCow engine just can't handle yet (it seems).  So a game might prompt you to save, but then once you do it doesn't allow you to go back to playing.  Or mid-game you get something that says [DropDownMenu] in the middle of a page of text.

To be fair, I didn't try either of the "Featured Games," because I was interested in the game production system.  Presumably they're not broken.

It looks like the site is intended to go in the direction of ChoiceScript, where (from what I saw a year ago) the system is kept proprietary, but game writers can use it free.  If I recall, there's the idea with ChoiceScript that authors could try charging people to play their games.  I say this because GameCow gives each game a PayPal link that would allow you to donate to the author.  (Note to prospective authors -- I've been published on QuantumMuse.com, and either the readership really don't like my writing or just no one donates.  Not saying it couldn't happen, but I wouldn't count on it.)

The website has forums.  And so forth.  Fairly complete, fairly well-thought out.  But then there's this--

Why they named it GameCow I have no idea, unless it has to do with the video they say they found online.  The video pans across a field of cows.  Then music starts playing -- some kind of modern techno -- and the cows start head-banging.  As the music gets going the cows begin dancing, doing backflips, and so on, leading to cows that are weird space-creatures from other dimensions like an H. P. Lovecraft acid trip, all moving in time to the music.  It's not at all clear why the video has been included other than the cow mention.

Anyway, you can't build a game unless you join, and to join you need a code.  I'm guessing you get the code from someone who's already in.  So, if anyone can get me a code I'd like to try out the gamecow development system.


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=50#p34106
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: climbingstars / DateTime: 2012-03-24 06:50:26

I got mine in too!

[quote="JoeyJones"]The games are going to be playable online, right? This means someone with sufficient web-fu could create a browser-based randomiser which loads up a random game or series of games in the manner of a CD track shuffler.[/quote]

This should be simple enough with some crafty JavaScript. In fact it could be designed to mimic a CD track shuffler. I may already have a simple form of such a code somewhere.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4701&start=0#p34107
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Anybody know about joining GameCow?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-24 07:59:12

My, you have a penchant for finding things hard to google and not providing a link. [emote];)[/emote]

Seriously, though, this is the only thing I could find that is even remotely like you described, and it's clearly not what you mean: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.game-cow.com/">http://www.game-cow.com/</a>

Link?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4683&start=0#p34108
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SQL Errors
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-24 08:02:42

Here I thought I was lucky because I never got that error... I just did.

Also, maybe unrelated, but I seem not to be getting e-mail notifications of "new replies to watched topics" anymore. EDIT: Or possibly I AM getting them, after a long delay. I just got one with about 5 minutes delay - others I know I should have gotten I never did.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4694&start=0#p34109
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor 0.9 has been released
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-24 08:07:32

[quote]Sounds like a good idea. I've now set the script file to flush before every input operation. [/quote]

Wonderful, thanks a bunch. [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote]Unfortunately, that's not possible.[/quote]

No biggie, it's just a cosmetic nicety anyway.

[quote]It's still video that's missing (hopefully I'll be able to add support for it in a cross-platform manner.)[/quote]

Here's hoping you do. [emote]:)[/emote] Of course, not many Hugo games out there actually use videos, but still, someone might, hey?

[quote]A compass rose is also missing, but that's not an engine feature. It's very easy to implement (it just outputs directional commands as if the user had entered them when a direction is clicked) but I'm not sure how useful that one is; do people actually navigate around in IF using a compass rose?[/quote]

I don't, and I'm not sure it's useful at all, but my philosophy has pretty much always been "someone might want to use it". If the main interpreter does do it, it might be best to implement - I don't know how possible it is to make hyperlink games in Hugo, but it's possible (if unlikely, given the many alternatives) that someone might try to do away with the command promp at all and rely on the compass rose for navigation.

If it's easy to implement, my first suggestion is always "then please do implement it". Having said that, I agree its usefullness is limited at best.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4701&start=0#p34110
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Anybody know about joining GameCow?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-03-24 08:07:38

[url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4257&p=30736&view=show#p30736]Give him a bit[/url] and [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4674&start=10&p=33930&view=show#p33930]he'll track it down[/url].

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4701&start=0#p34111
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Anybody know about joining GameCow?
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-24 08:24:23

[quote="game-cow"]No cookie cutter articals here.[sic] All original content. We have reviews,easter 
      eggs,screenshots,videos and more so stay with us and satisfy your curiousity 
      of the gaming world with your favorite game cow. Moo.
[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4700&start=0#p34112
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Time messing up after midnight?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-24 09:33:14

The time since a given scene began is calculated by first noting what in-game time of day it is currently and then subtracting the time when the scene began from it.

So, if it's currently 1 PM (780 mins past midnight) and the scene began at 12 PM (720 mins past midnight), the scene has been going on for 60 mins. (As you know, Inform internally measures time in 'minutes'.)

But at 12 AM the time of day is reset (to 0 mins past midnight), and that's where you start getting negative numbers (since 12 AM minus 12 PM equals 0 minutes minus 720 minutes, i.e. -720 mins).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4700&start=0#p34113
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Time messing up after midnight?
User: thecustodian / DateTime: 2012-03-24 09:54:21

Ah, OK.  So do I need to start doing math gymnastics to keep my cycling scenes working, then?  (I have a train system which operates on 'scene station ends xxx mins after it begins, scene enroute begins after station ends, etc.).  e.g. use an event to end the scene rather than just turn math?  Also, I had just put in an 'At 2:00 pm' rule (not scene start, event sequence) and I don't see it fire that second day.  Is this likely related, or is it likely something else?

Thanks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4701&start=0#p34114
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Anybody know about joining GameCow?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-24 10:43:17

AdventureCow, sorry.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4701&start=0#p34115
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Anybody know about joining GameCow?
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-24 10:54:46

Ah, righto.

Incidently: <a class="postlink" href="http://adventurecow.com/">http://adventurecow.com/</a>

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4701&start=0#p34116
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Anybody know about joining GameCow?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-24 11:01:18

I think it's based on Twine.  The games seem Twine-like, and it was from the Twine forum that I linked to AC... also, one of the moderators is named Chris; so, I'm guessing.


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4701&start=0#p34117
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Anybody know about joining GameCow?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-24 11:41:22

--Got the code.  Thanks!

C.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4700&start=0#p34118
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Time messing up after midnight?
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-24 12:22:08

No, that is because events ever happen only once. If you want to make an event happen again, you have to reschedule it manually. 

Note also that if the game takes a jump in time and so skips the time of day when an event is scheduled to happen, the event will still happen as soon as possible for 30 minutes after the scheduled time. That means you can't reset the event to happen again at a certain time of day during that half of an in-game hour or it would happen again immediately. 

(This is documented in Appendix B, but I'm not sure it's in the built-in docs.)

Short of hacking the I6 Templates, I think you have to do something like this:
[code]When play begins: time is ripe at 2:00 PM.

At the time when time is ripe:
	say "Time is ripe.";
	time is ripe again at 2:30 PM.

At the time when time is ripe again: time is ripe at 2:00 PM.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=50#p34119
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-24 12:28:28

[quote="JoeyJones"]
I finally submitted my games, a little later than I really should.[/quote]

I was an hour or two late, myself ... I totally forgot to do the cover image until last night, and was hustling in Photoshop. Oooops [emote]:([/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=10769&start=10#p34120
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Upcoming Updates?
User: emshort / DateTime: 2012-03-24 13:34:20

Those are in fact related developments, both to do with the way output is handled. 

But yes. Both of those things.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=50#p34121
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2012-03-24 13:42:05

[quote="climbingstars"]

[quote="JoeyJones"]The games are going to be playable online, right? This means someone with sufficient web-fu could create a browser-based randomiser which loads up a random game or series of games in the manner of a CD track shuffler.[/quote]

This should be simple enough with some crafty JavaScript. In fact it could be designed to mimic a CD track shuffler. I may already have a simple form of such a code somewhere.[/quote]

Yes, I'm putting them all up on the PR-IF site (thanks to Zarf for the help with this). I will leave it to someone else to make a shuffler if they want. If someone does, let me know and I'll link to it.

-Kevin, waiting on just a few stragglers

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=10769&start=10#p34122
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Upcoming Updates?
User: Sslaxx / DateTime: 2012-03-24 16:49:34

[quote="emshort"]Those are in fact related developments, both to do with the way output is handled. 

But yes. Both of those things.[/quote]
It'll be interesting to see how these work out!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4701&start=0#p34123
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Anybody know about joining GameCow?
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2012-03-24 17:11:41

I... the cows, they... whaaaaaaaat!?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4701&start=0#p34124
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Anybody know about joining GameCow?
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-24 18:02:35

[quote="Peter Pears"]Ah, righto.

Incidently: <a class="postlink" href="http://adventurecow.com/">http://adventurecow.com/</a>[/quote]
Oh, it does exist!
[quote="Adventure Cow"]The Path to Greatness:
Will you fulfil your potential to perform a great act? What is your great act? How deep does your potential go? Live your life to find out.
[/quote]
I think I will live [i]my life[/i] to find out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=60#p34125
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: climbingstars / DateTime: 2012-03-24 18:05:41

Here's the aforementioned javascript shuffler in action.
[spoiler][code]<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<script type="text/javascript">
function shuffleList(gamelist) {
    var number;
    var counter;
    var repeater;
    var temporary;
    for (repeater=0;repeater<5;repeater=repeater+1) {
        for (counter=0;counter<gamelist.length;counter=counter+1) {
            number=Math.floor(Math.random()*gamelist.length);
            temporary=gamelist[number].innerHTML;
            gamelist[number].innerHTML=gamelist[counter].innerHTML;
            gamelist[counter].innerHTML=temporary;
        }
    }
}
function processList() {
    shuffleList(document.getElementsByTagName("li"));
}
</script>
</head>
<body>
<input type="button" onclick="processList()" value="Shuffle"/>
<ol>
<li>Dig My Grave</li>
<li>I Palindrome I</li>
<li>She's Actual Size</li>
<li>My Evil Twin</li>
<li>Mammal</li>
<li>The Statue Got Me High</li>
<li>Spider</li>
<li>The Guitar (The Lion Sleeps Tonight) (They Might Be Giants/Solomon Linda)</li>
<li>Dinner Bell</li>
<li>Narrow Your Eyes</li>
<li>Hall of Heads</li>
<li>Which Describes How You're Feeling</li>
<li>See the Constellation</li>
<li>If I Wasn't Shy</li>
<li>Turn Around</li>
<li>Hypnotist of Ladies</li>
<li>Fingertips: Everything Is Catching on Fire</li>
<li>Fingertips: Fingertips</li>
<li>Fingertips: I Hear the Wind Blow</li>
<li>Fingertips: Hey Now, Everybody</li>
<li>Fingertips: Who's That Standing Out the Window?</li>
<li>Fingertips: I Found a New Friend</li>
<li>Fingertips: Come On and Wreck My Car</li>
<li>Fingertips: Aren't You the Guy Who Hit Me in the Eye?</li>
<li>Fingertips: Please Pass the Milk Please</li>
<li>Fingertips: Leave Me Alone</li>
<li>Fingertips: Who's Knockin' on the Wall?</li>
<li>Fingertips: All Alone</li>
<li>Fingertips: What's That Blue Thing Doing Here?</li>
<li>Fingertips: Something Grabbed Ahold of My Hand</li>
<li>Fingertips: I Don't Understand You</li>
<li>Fingertips: I Heard a Sound</li>
<li>Fingertips: Mysterious Whisper</li>
<li>Fingertips: The Day That Love Came to Play</li>
<li>Fingertips: I'm Having a Heart Attack</li>
<li>Fingertips: Fingertips (Reprise)</li>
<li>Fingertips: I Walk Along Darkened Corridors</li>
<li>Space Suit</li>
</ol>
</body>
</html>[/code][/spoiler]
It's quite simplified, but it demonstrates the principle quite effectively.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4702&start=0#p34126
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Other dev systems?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-24 18:44:42

I wonder if we can have a third pinned thread with other, lesser-known development systems?  I'm thinking specifically of adventurecow (which is twine-based) and ramus.  I'm sure there are relatively unknown dev systems, too.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4702&start=0#p34127
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Other dev systems?
User: George / DateTime: 2012-03-24 18:51:19

Not a bad idea; why not start a list with links in the OP?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4702&start=0#p34128
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Other dev systems?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-24 19:01:48

Ok.  Since it's not time critical, I'll put together a reasonable first post.  -- Besides ChoiceScript, Ren'Py and the two already mentioned, what others should be included?


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4702&start=0#p34129
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Other dev systems?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-24 19:23:24

Why would a pinned thread be useful? Isn't this whole sub-forum about other development systems? Or do you mean one pinned thread for EACH system? That would make more sense, I think, than one pinned thread for ALL other systems ... but again, what would be the real advantage? If someone wants to ask a question about some aspect of Ren'Py, why should they be expected to dump it into a single pinned thread with all of the other Ren'Py questions?

Or am I just misunderstanding what you have in mind???

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4702&start=0#p34130
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Other dev systems?
User: George / DateTime: 2012-03-24 19:25:01

If someone is looking around for systems to try, they can just look at one post rather than searching the whole sub-forum, forum, or Google.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4702&start=0#p34131
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Other dev systems?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-24 19:27:31

Yeah, we're just talking about a Yellow Pages thread, Jim.

C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4702&start=0#p34132
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Other dev systems?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-24 19:30:02

[quote="George"]If someone is looking around for systems to try, they can just look at one post rather than searching the whole sub-forum, forum, or Google.[/quote]
It's not hard to search the entire Other Development Systems sub-forum for keywords. The search engine in the forum is set up to do precisely that.

Let's suppose someone wants to search for info on ChoiceScript, for instance. And let's suppose there is discussion in this sub-forum of a DOZEN different topics having to do with the details of ChoiceScript authoring. Why would it be an advantage to have those dozen topics all mushed together in one long thread, rather than having them neatly divided into individual threads by topic?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4702&start=0#p34133
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Other dev systems?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-24 19:31:03

[quote="conradcook"]Yeah, we're just talking about a Yellow Pages thread, Jim.[/quote]
But this entire sub-forum IS the Yellow Pages for the systems you're talking about. I still don't understand exactly what you have in mind, or what advantage you're alleging it would have. Sorry.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4702&start=0#p34134
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Other dev systems?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-24 19:44:54

Say a person, like me, wants to experiment with various dev systems and desires to know what, besides the populars, are available.  Is there something set up for that?

If, for example, ChoiceScript was a good solution for the kind of game I wanted to write, but I didn't know it existed.

C.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4701&start=10#p34135
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Anybody know about joining GameCow?
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2012-03-24 20:25:31

I don't wanna make too much fun, but this is a great non-sequitur introduction on the front page of Adventure Cow.

[b]The Brownsville Detective Service[/b]

[i]"You're a new detective, on the lookout for a real mystery. A lady reports her jewelry's been stolen, and a couple of alligators are missing from the zoo. What will you do?"[/i]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4702&start=0#p34136
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Other dev systems?
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-03-24 20:35:50

[quote="Jim Aikin"][quote="conradcook"]Yeah, we're just talking about a Yellow Pages thread, Jim.[/quote]
But this entire sub-forum IS the Yellow Pages for the systems you're talking about. I still don't understand exactly what you have in mind, or what advantage you're alleging it would have. Sorry.[/quote]
Pinned topics have quite a tradition in forums. They help newcomers who aren't sure what is what yet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4693&start=0#p34137
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More shipboard directions questions
User: Jeff Zeitlin / DateTime: 2012-03-24 20:56:48

[quote="capmikee"]I don't think this means what you think it means: ... [/quote]
Entirely possible; I don't rule out the possibility that I was 'seduced' into error by the apparent natural-language-ness of Inform 7. I will definitely be looking into that again; I have no doubt that I will need a similar structure at some point in this WIP. For now, though, the Definition: alternative is working for what I attempting when I started this thread.

I've made myself a note to refer back to this thread and to check "To decide..." in the documentation, instead of trying to rely on memory.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=60#p34138
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-24 21:04:35

[quote="jacksonmead"]-Kevin, waiting on just a few stragglers[/quote]

We're running out of anniversary! [points to huge looming doomsday-clock on the wall]

But more seriously: I assume it'll be up to each of us to handle our IFDB entries (because putting all that on one person would be a royal pain), but I'd like to coordinate some of our tags if anyone's interested (I'm tag-obsessed) ...

Is there already a "based on songs" tag in the database?

[goes to look]

Hmm. Nope. The following currently exist: [b][i]song references, music references, music[/i][/b] (and I'm assuming that last one means the game itself features musical audio).

I think it needs its own tag (and I'll put in some slog tagging some older games which should have it, like that one game based on Beatles songs ...)

If this is a terrible idea for some reason I'm overlooking, someone let me know ... I'm a tag-happy IFDB user ...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=60#p34139
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2012-03-24 22:59:15

If you'd like me to pass any IFDB-related info on to all the authors, just let me know what, and I'll include it in my "hooray we're finished" email I send to everyone.

And, yeah, looks like it's not going to make tonight. I guess it's not too bad for a 20+-person volunteer effort, so I guess it was a bit unrealistic of me to think that everyone would make the deadline. I'm trying not to feel too bad about it. Hopefully the awesomeness of the games will make up for missing the exact deadline (which maybe no one but me actually cared about). And let me tell you, you guys are all awesome. There's some really amazing games in there, for those who haven't seen them yet.

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=60#p34140
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-03-24 23:01:48

I really enjoyed the betas of other people's games I played. And I hope I modified mine enough from the original buggy versions to make them more like I wanted.

I also learned about programming, trying new things, and organizing stuff. I'm really glad this got put together & hope to see the finished project soon, so I can play the games that came in late.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4703&start=0#p34141
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Start player with items in inventory
User: Zork / DateTime: 2012-03-24 23:27:57

How do I start a player out with stuff in his inventory?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4702&start=10#p34142
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Other dev systems?
User: UnwashedMass / DateTime: 2012-03-24 23:30:28

[quote="conradcook"]Say a person, like me, wants to experiment with various dev systems and desires to know what, besides the populars, are available.  Is there something set up for that?

If, for example, ChoiceScript was a good solution for the kind of game I wanted to write, but I didn't know it existed.

C.[/quote]

Sounds to me like the very raison d'etre of the Cloak of Darkness project.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4703&start=0#p34143
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Start player with items in inventory
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2012-03-24 23:32:49

Just say "The player carries a gun," for instance. A gun is just an example. You don't have to use a gun. Don't use a gun.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4702&start=10#p34144
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Other dev systems?
User: UnwashedMass / DateTime: 2012-03-24 23:33:42

[quote="conradcook"]Ok.  Since it's not time critical, I'll put together a reasonable first post.  -- Besides ChoiceScript, Ren'Py and the two already mentioned, what others should be included?[/quote]

Twine itself also, plus perhaps Undum?  Or is it dangerous to be so forthrightly including CYOA-authoring software among IF engines?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4703&start=0#p34145
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Start player with items in inventory
User: Zork / DateTime: 2012-03-24 23:52:45

Right.  Got it.  Put a loaded gun in my mouth.  Thank you for the advice.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4693&start=0#p34146
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More shipboard directions questions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-24 23:55:26

[quote="Jeff Zeitlin"]For now, though, the Definition: alternative is working for what I attempting when I started this thread.

I've made myself a note to refer back to this thread and to check "To decide..." in the documentation, instead of trying to rely on memory.[/quote]
I think a definition is the right choice for this case. My rule of thumb is:

If a "to decide whether" phrase takes one argument and has no side effects, it should be changed to an adjective for that argument.

If a "to decide whether" phrase takes two arguments and has no side effects, it should be changed to a conditional relation between those arguments.

The main exceptions are for cases where I just can't come up with a sensible name for the adjective or verb.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4693&start=10#p34147
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More shipboard directions questions
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-03-24 23:58:07

Make sure you add support for "go to location". Because some people won't use ship directions.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4693&start=10#p34148
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: More shipboard directions questions
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-25 00:04:48

[quote="capmikee"][quote="Jeff Zeitlin"]For now, though, the Definition: alternative is working for what I attempting when I started this thread.

I've made myself a note to refer back to this thread and to check "To decide..." in the documentation, instead of trying to rely on memory.[/quote]
I think a definition is the right choice for this case. My rule of thumb is:

If a "to decide whether" phrase takes one argument and has no side effects, it should be changed to an adjective for that argument.

If a "to decide whether" phrase takes two arguments and has no side effects, it should be changed to a conditional relation between those arguments.

The main exceptions are for cases where I just can't come up with a sensible name for the adjective or verb.[/quote]
I thought of something I wanted to add. For a while I was using rulebooks to decide a lot of things about objects, which is a bit slow. I was afraid to involve Inform's phrase-overloading features because they can't be manually controlled like rule order can. But they are quite powerful and reliable, and in any case are usually easy to test. Here's an example of overloading:

Not overloaded, difficult to extend:

[code]Definition: a thing is noisy:
    If it is Silent Bob, no;
    If it is a person, yes;
    If it is a device, yes;
    no.[/code]

Overloaded, easy to extend:
[code]Definition: a thing is noisy: no.

Definition: A person is noisy: yes.

Definition: A device is noisy: yes.

Definition: Silent Bob is noisy: no.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4702&start=10#p34149
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Other dev systems?
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-25 00:42:20

If all you're talking about is a pinned [i]list [/i]of other systems, and perhaps discussions of their pros and cons, that makes perfect sense to me. I didn't get that from your initial post, but possibly I was reading too quickly. [[b]Edit:[/b] No, I wasn't reading too quickly. I just checked -- you definitely didn't say that.]

I thought you were talking about piling all of the how-to discussion of all of the other systems into a single thread.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4703&start=0#p34150
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Start player with items in inventory
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-25 01:42:46

[quote="Afterward"]Just say "The player carries a gun," for instance. A gun is just an example. You don't have to use a gun. Don't use a gun.[/quote]
This works only in games about crime.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4700&start=0#p34151
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Time messing up after midnight?
User: thecustodian / DateTime: 2012-03-25 01:59:09

Ahhh, I see.  Thank you much. I have some kludging to do ,then. [emote]:-)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=60#p34152
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-25 03:04:48

[quote="jacksonmead"]I guess it's not too bad for a 20+-person volunteer effort[/quote]

And won't we be like (with the fingertip tracks) tripling or quadrupling the number of single-move games in the world overnight? [emote]:)[/emote] That's kind of crazy (or at least maybe doubling, if not all of them got in?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4689&start=0#p34153
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011 reviews
User: severedhand / DateTime: 2012-03-25 05:49:57

Thanks a lot to all involved, and to the folks who wrote about Six. Perhaps next XYZZYs I can help with this project from the other side.

Re: supplemental materials comments, I'm glad nobody ever doubted the authentic look of the map in Six to this day. I did draw it myself, but I didn't want to let people know that during IFComp, so I credited it to Demi. My methods for drawing like a six year old involve a combination of research (look at real drawings by six year olds to see how they represent things) and forcing a degree of physical incompetence on yourself. So for instance, use your non primary drawing hand, use your whole grip to wield the drawing implements clumsily like a knife. And use authentic drawing implements - real crayons, real second hand textas, etc.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=60#p34154
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: climbingstars / DateTime: 2012-03-25 08:34:21

[quote="jacksonmead"]And let me tell you, you guys are all awesome.[/quote]

Maybe you could consider making a tribute to the tribute?

[quote="Ghalev"]And won't we be like (with the fingertip tracks) tripling or quadrupling the number of single-move games in the world overnight? [emote]:)[/emote] That's kind of crazy (or at least maybe doubling, if not all of them got in?)[/quote]

On top of that, given that fact that many of the authors are doing more than one game, there may also be a new claim to the title of most one move games created by a single author.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=140#p34155
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-03-25 08:41:08

Conrad, I'm not sure what you mean. Why can't the computer program interact with us? And what does "acting on a computer" mean?

Btw, I take back what I wrote. You can't interact with a piece of cheese, that's not interacting.

Also, some more ideas on how to talk about this:

1. An interactive exchange - an "interactivity", perhaps, can (and often does) include more than just the "interactors" (i.e. those that do the "listening, thinking and talking"). There can be other artefacts involved: the pawns in a game, a football, a telephone, etc. And there may be other people involved who are not necessarily interactors, but spectators or referees or take some other role. 

2. Interactivity is not a binary state but a matter of degree. Some things are clearly interactive: a simple conversation between two people, for example. Some things are clearly not interactive: a stone, for example. Or even two stones. The input/processing/output criteria are in themselves hard to define. In particular, how much processing (thinking) is enough? Flipping a page in a book (flip page, figure out which page is next (well, the next one - a trivial operation for a book), show that page)? Clicking a hyperlink and presenting the page it's linked to? This is, in one sense, a trivial operation for a computer. In another sense, considering everything involved - the operating system, the css3-compliant web browser, the font rendering, etc, every little detail, it's incredibly complex. 

3. Interactivity can occur at several layers. An interactive interface layer (pretty much anything on a computer, for example, or interactivity between people: a dialogue, improv theatre, an rpg session) can carry another interactivity (an interactive story, a decision-making process). But an interactive interface layer can also carry some other medium which is not interactive: a traditional novel, made clickable, is still not interactive at the story level.

IMHO.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=140#p34156
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-25 08:59:42

What makes a dog more interactive than a text game?

To my mind, it has to do with the dog tracking you down and demanding supper.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=60#p34157
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-03-25 09:08:29

[quote="climbingstars"][quote="Ghalev"]And won't we be like (with the fingertip tracks) tripling or quadrupling the number of single-move games in the world overnight? [emote]:)[/emote] That's kind of crazy (or at least maybe doubling, if not all of them got in?)[/quote]

On top of that, given that fact that many of the authors are doing more than one game, there may also be a new claim to the title of most one move games created by a single author.[/quote]
One-move games seem to be consistently lots of fun both to design and to play. Maybe they should have a fest all their own.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4700&start=0#p34158
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Time messing up after midnight?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-25 09:10:10

You can also use Every Turn rules:

[code]Every turn when the Time of Day is 2:OO PM:[/code]

I think this should also work:

[code]Catching the train is a recurring scene. Catching the train begins when the time of day is 7:54 AM.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=140#p34159
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-03-25 09:12:19

Aha, but what about a robotic dag tracking you down and demanding new batteries?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4702&start=10#p34160
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Other dev systems?
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-03-25 09:16:27

[quote="Jim Aikin"]If all you're talking about is a pinned [i]list [/i]of other systems, and perhaps discussions of their pros and cons, that makes perfect sense to me. I didn't get that from your initial post...[/quote]
Actually, that's exactly what I thought Conrad meant in his OP since he refers to "a [b]third[/b] pinned thread" and the first two are merely locked, pinned threads with links to the Quest and ADRIFT forums. (Although you're right -- he doesn't actually say that.) Also, in the second post of this thread:[quote="George"]Not a bad idea; why not start a list with links in the OP?[/quote]
For the record, I agree that having a pinned thread with links to info on the other dev systems is a good idea. I'm not sure about opening it up to a discussion of pros and cons; that would obviously be fine for a separate, unpinned thread though.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4655&start=10#p34161
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Concepts for secret unlockable and auto-timed game ..
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-25 09:22:51

[quote="maga"]There are a few games like [i]Textfire Golf[/i] or [i]Kerkerkruip[/i] that have a relatively high amount of variability, but even those aren't going to be played regularly enough to make timed easter eggs worthwhile.[/quote]
Speak for yourself! I've been playing Kerkerkruip almost daily for about a month, and I'm still totally hooked...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=140#p34162
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-03-25 09:23:30

Both robotic dogs and text games are proxies for their authors. So the experience as a whole could be considered interactive, depending on what you do with them.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4689&start=10#p34163
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011 reviews
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-25 09:43:10

[quote="maga"]SPAG apparently fell off a cliff.[/quote]I was thinking that the reviews were pretty SPAGesque; whatever happened to it?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=150#p34164
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-25 09:54:07

Yeah, I was thinking about tamagotchies.  We're going back here.  And that does seem more interactive than a normal videogame, although not as interactive as a dog.

I suppose the reason is, the real dog has greater depth and breadth of interaction at any given point -- he'll keep trying different things until he gets somewhere.  Everything he tries doing he tries a little differently.  And if you keep not feeding him, he'll start jumping on you and, in effect, demanding it -- which is not something we'd build a robot dog to do.

A college friend of mine once complained that he was late to work because his bus driver pulled over to feed his tamagotchie.  They did place demands on you, in a way.


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4704&start=0#p34165
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: "Patrollers" Extension Issue on Startup
User: Zork / DateTime: 2012-03-25 10:40:34

So I just added the "Patrollers" extension to my game, and without even starting to write any code at all, I received this message upon the compile:


[code]This is the report produced by Inform 7 (build 6G60) on its most recent run through:

In Chapter 3 - Define rules move moving patrollers, Section 3.6 - Reporting movement rules in the extension Patrollers by Michael Callaghan:

Problem. In the sentence 'if the patrolling activity is not going on begin'  , it looks as if you intend 'patrolling activity is not going on' to be a condition, but that would mean comparing two kinds of value which cannot mix - an activity on objects and a - so this must be incorrect.

I was trying to match this phrase:

if (patrolling activity is not going on - a condition): 

This was what I found out:

patrolling activity is not going on = a condition
[/code]

Any ideas how to fix this?  What does it even mean?  Shouldn't this extension work out of the box?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4705&start=0#p34166
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: html/css question (Ramus)
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-25 11:15:37

I'm trying to create a background image that will serve as a watermark, and I'm finding html has changed greatly since I last knew.

Any thoughts?

[rant][code] <head>
  <meta http-equiv="Content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
  <title>Birdseed, by Conrad Cook</title>
  <style type="text/css">  
html { 

	Background-color: #442200;
	Background-image: url(birdcage_1.jpg) repeat center center fixed; 
 }
body {
    Opacity: 0.95;
	Font-size: 1.1em;
	Width: 80ex;
	Margin: 5ex auto;
	Padding: 5ex;
	Background-color: #885522;
	Color: white; 
	Border: 1px solid black; 
	Border-right-width: 2px;
	Border-bottom-width: 2px;
	-webkit-box-shadow: 3px 3px 3px #999999;
	-moz-box-shadow: 3px 3px 3px #999999;
	Box-shadow: 3px 3px 3px #999999;
	Font-family: serif;
	Position: relative; 
} 
a { Color: #000000; }
a.external { Font-variant: small-caps; }
a.external:visited { Color: #990066; }
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 { Font-weight: bold; Font-family: sans-serif; }
h1 { Font-size: 1.6em; Border-bottom: 1px solid black; Text-align: center; }
h2 { Font-size: 1.5em; }
h3 { Font-size: 1.4em; }
h4 { Font-size: 1.3em; }
h5 { Font-size: 1.2em; }
h6 { Font-size: 1.1em; } 
#transcript table { Margin: 1em auto; }
#transcript th, #transcript td {
	Margin: 0; Padding: 0.5em;
	Border: 1px solid #808080; Border-collapse: collapse;
}
#transcript th { Color: #ffffff; Background-color: #808080; Font-family: serif; }
#transcript hr { Color: #808080; }
address { Font-size: 0.9em; Text-align: center; }
dt { Font-weight: bold; } 
  </style>
 </head>
[/code][/rant]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4704&start=0#p34167
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Patrollers" Extension Issue on Startup
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-03-25 11:17:30

Are you using the [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Michael%20Callaghan/Patrollers/index.html]latest version of Patrollers (version 11)[/url]?

This minimal code compiles fine for me:
[code]Include Patrollers by Michael Callaghan.

Lab is a room.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4702&start=10#p34169
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Other dev systems?
User: ralphmerridew / DateTime: 2012-03-25 11:21:13

There's NScripter (Visual Novel) and variants.  Less powerful than Ren'py, but has produced games like Narcissu, Tsukihime, Higurashi, and Umineko.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4705&start=0#p34170
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: html/css question (Ramus)
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-03-25 11:28:13

[i]background-image[/i] takes only one parameter, the URL of the image. You're probably thinking of the [i]background[/i] shorthand property. Also, the [i]background-attachment[/i] property (fixed) should be listed before the [i]background-position[/i] property, although the order is probably practically irrelevant.

[code]html {
    background: url(birdcage_1.jpg) #442200 repeat fixed center center;
}
[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4702&start=10#p34171
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Other dev systems?
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2012-03-25 11:58:18

I think that the IF wiki is probably a better source for general information than a pinned thread. <a class="postlink" href="http://ifwiki.org/index.php/Category:Authoring_system">http://ifwiki.org/index.php/Category:Authoring_system</a>

Though it might be nice to have a pinned thread linking to that page.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4704&start=0#p34172
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Patrollers" Extension Issue on Startup
User: Zork / DateTime: 2012-03-25 12:12:46

[quote="Skinny Mike"]Are you using the [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Michael%20Callaghan/Patrollers/index.html]latest version of Patrollers (version 11)[/url]?

This minimal code compiles fine for me:
[code]Include Patrollers by Michael Callaghan.

Lab is a room.[/code][/quote]


That's what I have, but I get the above error.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4689&start=10#p34173
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011 reviews
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-25 12:19:46

[quote="severedhand"]Thanks a lot to all involved, and to the folks who wrote about Six. Perhaps next XYZZYs I can help with this project from the other side.[/quote]
I'll put you on the headhunting list for next year.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=150#p34174
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-03-25 13:34:28

To me autonomous behaviour is one step further than interactivity. Something can be interactive without exhibiting autonomy or goal-seeking behaviours. For example Eliza (by Joseph Weizenbaum) and other Turing-test type chatbots. I would definitely sort these in the bin that says interactive things. 

It's a pretty large bin. Every dog in creation goes in there too. And cats. You can imagine what that's like.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4700&start=0#p34175
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Time messing up after midnight?
User: thecustodian / DateTime: 2012-03-25 13:57:32

capmikee:  Yep, thanks, I could use those.  The problem is that my two scenes are continuously ongoing.  I'm doing something much like the Empire Builder train example, but making a constantly-running subway that goes in a loop.  So changing scenes with specific times of day is both a) onerous (zillions of start/stop lines) and b) leaves me open to weird breakages as it doesn't guarantee that only one scene is running at a time.

This is getting really twisted in my head. :-/  I tried defining the length of a scene using *turns* since I presume the turn count never goes negative, but I can't get Inform to accept any conditions written using turns ("Scene A ends when Scene A has been playing for x turns" gives an error).

So it seems my problem is that a set of recurring scenes which start when each other end, and whose duration are determined by *time*, will always break at midnight.  Still don't have a solution for this.  I tried hacking it so that either scene will end 'hackily' if the time is 11:59 pm, but then I run into the problem of starting up again - you can only start up a scene based on one condition that doesn't involve other scene triggers, and I already start the whole cycle using a turn condition to kick things off. [emote]:-P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4704&start=0#p34176
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Patrollers" Extension Issue on Startup
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-03-25 15:05:12

Hm, that's weird. Could you post the entire text of the [u]Progress[/u] sub tab under the errors tab (not the Problems tab -- you've already done that)? It'll look something like:
[quote]C:\Program Files\Inform 7\Compilers\ni \
    -rules "C:\Program Files\Inform 7\Inform7\Extensions" -package "C:\Users\Mike\Documents\Inform\Projects\Programs.inform" -extension=z5
Inform 7 build 6G60 has started.
I've now read your source text, which is 9 words long.
I've also read Standard Rules by Graham Nelson, which is 39455 words long.
I've also read Patrollers by Michael Callaghan, which is 8491 words long.
  >--> There doesn't seem to be any location in this story, so there's nowhere
    for the player to begin. This may be because I have misunderstood what was
    meant to be a room and what wasn't: I only know something is a room if you
    tell me explicitly ('The Observatory is a room') or if you imply it by
    giving map directions ('East of the Observatory is the Planetarium').
Inform 7 has finished.

Compiler finished with code 1[/quote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4703&start=0#p34178
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Start player with items in inventory
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-03-25 16:07:59

Kidding aside, you can either use "when play begins"

[code]when play begins:
    now the player has the gun.
[/code]

or say

[code]the gun is a thing. The player has the gun.[/code]

The 2nd is a bit more rickety, I think, since it's defined globally and you'll forget how things are at the beginning. You can make subfunctions and stuff to keep track of things even further, but I don't know how complex you want your first game to be, or how big of a programmer you are/want to be.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4707&start=0#p34179
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [solved] I7: Rejecting multiple objects
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-03-25 16:28:57

So for one of the games I wrote for the TMBG tribute, I abused the parser a bit.

[code]
after reading a command:
  if the player's command contains "\band\b":
    say "You don't have time to do two things at once.";
    reject the player's command;
  if the player's command contains ",":
    say "You don't have time to do anything with a comma in it."
    reject the player's command;
[/code]

This worked okay in a pinch. However, I suspect I'm missing some more basic command such as "end the player's turn" so that, if the player tries to pick up the apple, beer and backpack, the computer either

1. only lets him pick up the apple
2. rejects the command entirely.

So...

[code]
room 1 is a room.

apple is a thing in room 1. beer is a thing in room 2. backpack is a thing in room 3.

[understand "examine [things]" as a mistake ("No time for that!"). <- this prints "No time for that!" several times & I want something general for any command]
[/code]

Example 420 in the recipe book also seems handy, but again, it applies only to one verb. I'm wondering about something more general that doesn't rely on potentially dangerous parsing?

Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4707&start=0#p34182
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rejecting multiple objects
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-25 17:40:49

The correct (but very tedious) way to knock out all multiple verbs: redefine all of the grammar that accepts multiple objects. (Put, take, drop, remove, insert.) Then customize the can't use multiple objects error.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4707&start=0#p34183
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rejecting multiple objects
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-25 17:45:03

There isn't a direct way to cut off a multiple action sequence, although there probably should be. Currently the parser only cuts it off in case of death (ending the story), or if the player is moved by one of the actions. (In the latter case, it prints the message "Since something dramatic has happened, your list of commands has been cut short.")

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4707&start=0#p34184
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rejecting multiple objects
User: climbingstars / DateTime: 2012-03-25 17:54:05

[quote="aschultz"][code]
after reading a command:
  if the player's command contains "\band\b":
    say "You don't have time to do two things at once.";
    reject the player's command;
  if the player's command contains ",":
    say "You don't have time to do anything with a comma in it."
    reject the player's command;
[/code][/quote]

If you are trying to stop persuasion and the message "You seem to want to talk to someone, but I can't see whom." by blocking commands with commas in, this bit of code will do the trick.

[code]Include (- -) instead of "Parser Letter C" in "Parser.i6t".[/code]

[quote="aschultz"]I suspect I'm missing some more basic command such as "end the player's turn" so that, if the player tries to pick up the apple, beer and backpack, the computer either

1. only lets him pick up the apple
2. rejects the command entirely.[/quote]

Try this.

[code]"Test"

The Testing Room is A Room.

An apple, a beer and a backpack are in the testing room.

Before doing anything other than taking or dropping or looking: say "You can only take the apple!" instead.

Before taking anything when the noun is not the apple: say "You can only take the apple!" instead.

Test me with "eat apple / drink beer / take backpack / take apple / drop apple / take all".[/code]

This will only allow taking and dropping the apple.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4702&start=10#p34185
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Other dev systems?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-25 18:35:48

Dan,

I agree in theory, but in practical terms that page isn't well-organized for someone who has a project idea to figure out what dev system to learn.


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4699&start=0#p34186
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: 40 years of video games
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-03-25 18:42:18

I've been a console player ever since arcades hooked me up in the early 80's.  Played most of those titles there, solid list but pretty bare.  Only 5 games final?!  pfttt

A couple of weeks ago, there was an exhibition here in Brazil called "Game On".  It brought historic games to the unwashed masses.  I brought my 9 years-old daughter and we have a full day of fun -- no quarters needed, finally!  She was amazed with Ms. Pac-Man and Donkey Kong.  We played Pong with classic controllers!  There were several rooms, each filled with machines from a given era, going from Galaga, then Xevious, Street Fighter 2, consoles from all ages.  There were photos and historic documents like computer scientists playing Space War, design sheets from games, Mario and Sonic drawings from the creators etc.

There was exactly 1 text adventure there:  Infocom's HHGG.  There was the original Monkey Island too.

A truly fine exhibition.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4707&start=0#p34187
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rejecting multiple objects
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2012-03-25 19:00:44

This [i]almost[/i] works, but it still says something like "[b]apple:[/b] Let's just stick to one thing at a time." instead of just "Let's just stick to one thing at a time."

[code]"Test"

The cave is a room.

An apple, a banana, and a pear are in the cave.

 Before when the multiple object list is not empty:
	Say "Let's just stick to one thing at a time.";
	Alter the multiple object list to {};
	Stop the action.[/code]

EDIT: This works perfectly, so far as I can tell:

[code] This is the special rule:
	If the multiple object list is empty, make no decision;
	Say "Let's just stick to one thing at a time.";
	Rule fails.

The special rule is listed before the generate action rule in the turn sequence rulebook.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4705&start=0#p34188
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: html/css question (Ramus)
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-25 19:02:25

That did indeed work.  Many thanks, Juhana!


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4707&start=0#p34189
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rejecting multiple objects
User: climbingstars / DateTime: 2012-03-25 19:08:46

If you just wanted to stop commands like "take the apple and the beer and the backpack", "take all" and give the message "You can't use multiple objects with that verb." instead, then this should work.

[spoiler][code]"Test"

Include (-

	! This is an actual specified object, and is therefore where a typing error
	! is most likely to occur, so we set:

	oops_from = wn;

	! So, two cases.  Case 1: token not equal to "held" (so, no implicit takes)
	! but we may well be dealing with multiple objects

	! In either case below we use NounDomain, giving it the token number as
	! context, and two places to look: among the actor's possessions, and in the
	! present location.  (Note that the order depends on which is likeliest.)

	if (token ~= HELD_TOKEN) {
		i = multiple_object-->0;
		#Ifdef DEBUG;
		if (parser_trace >= 3) print "  [Calling NounDomain on location and actor]^";
		#Endif; ! DEBUG
		l = NounDomain(actors_location, actor, token);
		if (l == REPARSE_CODE) return l;                  ! Reparse after Q&A
		if (indef_wanted == INDEF_ALL_WANTED && l == 0 && number_matched == 0)
			l = 1;  ! ReviseMulti if TAKE ALL FROM empty container

		if (token_allows_multiple && ~~multiflag) {
			if (best_etype==MULTI_PE) best_etype=STUCK_PE;
			multiflag = true;
		}
		if (l == 0) {
			if (indef_possambig) {
				ResetDescriptors();
				wn = desc_wn;
				jump TryAgain2;
			}
			!if (etype == MULTI_PE or TOOFEW_PE && multiflag) etype = STUCK_PE;
			etype=CantSee();
			jump FailToken;
		} ! Choose best error

		#Ifdef DEBUG;
		if (parser_trace >= 3) {
			if (l > 1) print "  [ND returned ", (the) l, "]^";
			else {
				print "  [ND appended to the multiple object list:^";
				k = multiple_object-->0;
				for (j=i+1 : j<=k : j++)
					print "  Entry ", j, ": ", (The) multiple_object-->j,
						  " (", multiple_object-->j, ")^";
				print "  List now has size ", k, "]^";
			}
		}
		#Endif; ! DEBUG

		if (l == 1) {
			if (~~many_flag) many_flag = true;
			else {                                ! Merge with earlier ones
				k = multiple_object-->0;            ! (with either parity)
				multiple_object-->0 = i;
				for (j=i+1 : j<=k : j++) {
					if (and_parity) MultiAdd(multiple_object-->j);
					else            MultiSub(multiple_object-->j);
				}
				#Ifdef DEBUG;
				if (parser_trace >= 3)
					print "  [Merging ", k-i, " new objects to the ", i, " old ones]^";
				#Endif; ! DEBUG
			}
		}
		else {
			! A single object was indeed found

			if (match_length == 0 && indef_possambig) {
				! So the answer had to be inferred from no textual data,
				! and we know that there was an ambiguity in the descriptor
				! stage (such as a word which could be a pronoun being
				! parsed as an article or possessive).  It's worth having
				! another go.

				ResetDescriptors();
				wn = desc_wn;
				jump TryAgain2;
			}

			if ((token == CREATURE_TOKEN) && (CreatureTest(l) == 0)) {
				etype = ANIMA_PE;
				jump FailToken;
			} !  Animation is required

			if (~~many_flag) single_object = l;
			else {
				if (and_parity) MultiAdd(l); else MultiSub(l);
				#Ifdef DEBUG;
				if (parser_trace >= 3) print "  [Combining ", (the) l, " with list]^";
				#Endif; ! DEBUG
			}
		}
	}

	else {

	! Case 2: token is "held" (which fortunately can't take multiple objects)
	! and may generate an implicit take

		l = NounDomain(actor,actors_location,token);       ! Same as above...
		if (l == REPARSE_CODE) return l;
		if (l == 0) {
			if (indef_possambig) {
				ResetDescriptors();
				wn = desc_wn;
				jump TryAgain2;
			}
			etype = CantSee(); jump FailToken;            ! Choose best error
		}

		! ...until it produces something not held by the actor.  Then an implicit
		! take must be tried.  If this is already happening anyway, things are too
		! confused and we have to give up (but saving the oops marker so as to get
		! it on the right word afterwards).
		! The point of this last rule is that a sequence like
		!
		!     > read newspaper
		!     (taking the newspaper first)
		!     The dwarf unexpectedly prevents you from taking the newspaper!
		!
		! should not be allowed to go into an infinite repeat - read becomes
		! take then read, but take has no effect, so read becomes take then read...
		! Anyway for now all we do is record the number of the object to take.

		o = parent(l);
		if (o ~= actor) {
			#Ifdef DEBUG;
			if (parser_trace >= 3) print "  [Allowing object ", (the) l, " for now]^";
			#Endif; ! DEBUG
		}
		single_object = l;
	} ! end of if (token ~= HELD_TOKEN) else

	! The following moves the word marker to just past the named object...

	wn = oops_from + match_length;

-) instead of "Parse Token Letter D" in "Parser.i6t".

Include (-

	! Object(s) specified now: is that the end of the list, or have we reached
	! "and", "but" and so on?  If so, create a multiple-object list if we
	! haven't already (and are allowed to).

  .NextInList;

	o = NextWord();

	if (o == AND1__WD or AND2__WD or AND3__WD or BUT1__WD or BUT2__WD or BUT3__WD or comma_word) {

		#Ifdef DEBUG;
		if (parser_trace >= 3) print "  [Read connective '", (address) o, "']^";
		#Endif; ! DEBUG

		!if (~~token_allows_multiple) {
			!if (multiflag) jump PassToken; ! give UPTO_PE error
			etype=MULTI_PE;
			jump FailToken;
		!}

		if (o == BUT1__WD or BUT2__WD or BUT3__WD) and_parity = 1-and_parity;

		if (~~many_flag) {
			multiple_object-->0 = 1;
			multiple_object-->1 = single_object;
			many_flag = true;
			#Ifdef DEBUG;
			if (parser_trace >= 3) print "  [Making new list from ", (the) single_object, "]^";
			#Endif; ! DEBUG
		}
		dont_infer = true; inferfrom=0;           ! Don't print (inferences)
		jump ObjectList;                          ! And back around
	}

	wn--;   ! Word marker back to first not-understood word

-) instead of "Parse Token Letter E" in "Parser.i6t".

Include (-

[ Adjudicate context i j k good_ones last n ultimate flag offset;
	#Ifdef DEBUG;
	if (parser_trace >= 4) {
		print "   [Adjudicating match list of size ", number_matched,
			" in context ", context, "^";
		print "   ";
		if (indef_mode) {
			print "indefinite type: ";
			if (indef_type & OTHER_BIT)  print "other ";
			if (indef_type & MY_BIT)     print "my ";
			if (indef_type & THAT_BIT)   print "that ";
			if (indef_type & PLURAL_BIT) print "plural ";
			if (indef_type & LIT_BIT)    print "lit ";
			if (indef_type & UNLIT_BIT)  print "unlit ";
			if (indef_owner ~= 0) print "owner:", (name) indef_owner;
			new_line;
			print "   number wanted: ";
			if (indef_wanted == INDEF_ALL_WANTED) print "all"; else print indef_wanted;
			new_line;
			print "   most likely GNAs of names: ", indef_cases, "^";
		}
		else print "definite object^";
	}
	#Endif; ! DEBUG

	j = number_matched-1; good_ones = 0; last = match_list-->0;
	for (i=0 : i<=j : i++) {
		n = match_list-->i;
		match_scores-->i = good_ones;
		ultimate = ScopeCeiling(n);

		if (context==HELD_TOKEN && parent(n)==actor)
		{   good_ones++; last=n; }
		if (context==MULTI_TOKEN && ultimate==ScopeCeiling(actor)
			&& n~=actor && n hasnt concealed && n hasnt scenery) 
		{   good_ones++; last=n; }
		if (context==MULTIHELD_TOKEN && parent(n)==actor)
		{   good_ones++; last=n; }

		if (context==MULTIEXCEPT_TOKEN or MULTIINSIDE_TOKEN)
		{   if (advance_warning==-1)
			{   if (context==MULTIEXCEPT_TOKEN)
				{   good_ones++; last=n;
				 }
				if (context==MULTIINSIDE_TOKEN)
				{   if (parent(n)~=actor) { good_ones++; last=n; }
				 }
			}
			else
			{   if (context==MULTIEXCEPT_TOKEN && n~=advance_warning)
				{   good_ones++; last=n; }
				if (context==MULTIINSIDE_TOKEN && n in advance_warning)
				{   good_ones++; last=n; }
			}
		 }
		if (context==CREATURE_TOKEN && CreatureTest(n)==1)
		{   good_ones++; last=n; }
		
		match_scores-->i = 1000*(good_ones - match_scores-->i);
	}
	if (good_ones == 1) return last;

	! If there is ambiguity about what was typed, but it definitely wasn't
	! animate as required, then return anything; higher up in the parser
	! a suitable error will be given.  (This prevents a question being asked.)

	if (context == CREATURE_TOKEN && good_ones == 0) return match_list-->0;

	if (indef_mode == 0) indef_type=0;

	ScoreMatchL(context);
	if (number_matched == 0) return -1;

	if (indef_mode == 0) {
		!  Is there now a single highest-scoring object?
		i = SingleBestGuess();
		if (i >= 0) {

			#Ifdef DEBUG;
			if (parser_trace >= 4) print "   Single best-scoring object returned.]^";
			#Endif; ! DEBUG
			return i;
		}
	}

	if (indef_mode == 1 && indef_type & PLURAL_BIT ~= 0) {
		!if (context ~= MULTI_TOKEN or MULTIHELD_TOKEN or MULTIEXCEPT_TOKEN
					 !or MULTIINSIDE_TOKEN) {
			etype = MULTI_PE;
			return -1;
		!}
		i = 0; offset = multiple_object-->0;
		for (j=BestGuess(): j~=-1 && i<indef_wanted && i+offset<MATCH_LIST_WORDS-1:
			j=BestGuess()) {
			flag = 0;
			BeginActivity(DECIDING_WHETHER_ALL_INC_ACT, j);
			if ((ForActivity(DECIDING_WHETHER_ALL_INC_ACT, j)) == 0) {

				if (j hasnt concealed && j hasnt worn) flag = 1;
			
				if (context == MULTIHELD_TOKEN or MULTIEXCEPT_TOKEN && parent(j) ~= actor)
					flag = 0;

				if (action_to_be == ##Take or ##Remove && parent(j) == actor)
					flag = 0;

				k = ChooseObjects(j, flag);

				if (k == 1)
					flag = 1;
				else {
					if (k == 2) flag = 0;
				}
			} else {
				flag = 0; if (RulebookSucceeded()) flag = 1;
			}
			EndActivity(DECIDING_WHETHER_ALL_INC_ACT, j);
			if (flag == 1) {
				i++; multiple_object-->(i+offset) = j;
				#Ifdef DEBUG;
				if (parser_trace >= 4) print "   Accepting it^";
				#Endif; ! DEBUG
			}
			else {
				i = i;
				#Ifdef DEBUG;
				if (parser_trace >= 4) print "   Rejecting it^";
				#Endif; ! DEBUG
			}
		}
		if (i < indef_wanted && indef_wanted < INDEF_ALL_WANTED) {
			etype = TOOFEW_PE; multi_wanted = indef_wanted;
			multi_had=i;
			return -1;
		}
		multiple_object-->0 = i+offset;
		multi_context = context;
		#Ifdef DEBUG;
		if (parser_trace >= 4)
			print "   Made multiple object of size ", i, "]^";
		#Endif; ! DEBUG
		return 1;
	}

	for (i=0 : i<number_matched : i++) match_classes-->i = 0;

	n = 1;
	for (i=0 : i<number_matched : i++)
		if (match_classes-->i == 0) {
			match_classes-->i = n++; flag = 0;
			for (j=i+1 : j<number_matched : j++)
				if (match_classes-->j == 0 && Identical(match_list-->i, match_list-->j) == 1) {
					flag=1;
					match_classes-->j = match_classes-->i;
				}
			if (flag == 1) match_classes-->i = 1-n;
		}
	 n--; number_of_classes = n;

	#Ifdef DEBUG;
	if (parser_trace >= 4) {
		print "   Grouped into ", n, " possibilities by name:^";
		for (i=0 : i<number_matched : i++)
			if (match_classes-->i > 0)
				print "   ", (The) match_list-->i, " (", match_list-->i, ")  ---  group ",
				  match_classes-->i, "^";
	}
	#Endif; ! DEBUG

	if (indef_mode == 0) {
		if (n > 1) {
			k = -1;
			for (i=0 : i<number_matched : i++) {
				if (match_scores-->i > k) {
					k = match_scores-->i;
					j = match_classes-->i; j = j*j;
					flag = 0;
				}
				else
					if (match_scores-->i == k) {
						if ((match_classes-->i) * (match_classes-->i) ~= j)
							flag = 1;
					}
			}

		if (flag) {
			#Ifdef DEBUG;
			if (parser_trace >= 4) print "   Unable to choose best group, so ask player.]^";
			#Endif; ! DEBUG
			return 0;
		}
		#Ifdef DEBUG;
		if (parser_trace >= 4) print "   Best choices are all from the same group.^";
		#Endif; ! DEBUG
		}
	}

	!  When the player is really vague, or there's a single collection of
	!  indistinguishable objects to choose from, choose the one the player
	!  most recently acquired, or if the player has none of them, then
	!  the one most recently put where it is.

	if (n == 1) dont_infer = true;
	return BestGuess();

]; ! Adjudicate

-) instead of "Adjudicate" in "Parser.i6t".

The Testing Room is A Room.

An apple, a beer and a backpack are in the testing room.

Before doing anything other than taking or dropping or looking: say "You can only take the apple!" instead.

Before taking anything when the noun is not the apple: say "You can only take the apple!" instead.

Test me with "eat apple / drink beer / take backpack / take apple / drop apple / take all / take the apple and the beer and the backpack".[/code][/spoiler]

This will prevent taking multiple things at once.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4548&start=20#p34190
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: a variety of games & interactions...
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-25 19:19:31

That's interesting, Biep.  I didn't see the point until you unraveled it with your "haggling" comment.  (Sometimes I'm slow.)

Game theorists have conducted studies with tokens that are of different values to different players.  An interesting idea -- I'll keep it in mind.


Conrad.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=60#p34191
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: climbingstars / DateTime: 2012-03-25 19:40:17

[quote="Laroquod"]One-move games seem to be consistently lots of fun both to design and to play. Maybe they should have a fest all their own.[/quote]

A one move speed IF comp would be a good idea here.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4702&start=10#p34193
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Other dev systems?
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-03-25 21:36:35

I agree that the Cloak of Darkness project is intended to answer this sort of question, though 1) it doesn't cover the lesser-known or newer systems, and 2) it doesn't (and may not intend to) cover systems further away from parser IF.  It seems to me that Conrad is trying to compile a list to point people at when they come to the forum and ask "so, I want to do [such and such]; what's the right system for me?"  Such a list [i]should[/i] include hypertext/CYOA/visual novel engines and such, since a lot of those visitors are actually looking for those, and haven't necessarily thought out the distinctions in advance.  I'd love to see a list that includes: name of system, brief synopsis of capabilities, a link to the main development site, a link to the Cloak of Darkness implementation where applicable, links to support sites, and links to some completed games.

I could easily be convinced to host such a list, if this thread generates suggestions (and especially if the suggestions are in the above format).  Now I'm even daydreaming about doing it as blog posts, with tagged categories for things like "can publish to web," "has an IDE," "has a visual editor," and such.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=60#p34194
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: sussman / DateTime: 2012-03-25 21:40:05

FYI, the game Jack and I wrote ([i]Narrow Your Eyes[/i]) is [b]not[/b] playable online -- at least not until quixe gains graphics and sound support.  [emote]:-)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4707&start=0#p34195
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rejecting multiple objects
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-25 21:44:57

[quote="NYKevin"]This [i]almost[/i] works, but it still says something like "[b]apple:[/b] Let's just stick to one thing at a time." instead of just "Let's just stick to one thing at a time."

[code]"Test"

The cave is a room.

An apple, a banana, and a pear are in the cave.

 Before when the multiple object list is not empty:
	Say "Let's just stick to one thing at a time.";
	Alter the multiple object list to {};
	Stop the action.[/code]

EDIT: This works perfectly, so far as I can tell:

[code] This is the special rule:
	If the multiple object list is empty, make no decision;
	Say "Let's just stick to one thing at a time.";
	Rule fails.

The special rule is listed before the generate action rule in the turn sequence rulebook.[/code][/quote]

The special rule solution is elegant! 

As far as the first solution goes, example 420 shows you how to suppress "apple:" and the like if that's what you want to do; look at the selectively announce items from the multiple object list (which eliminates "apple:" etc. when you're multiple-giving) and the business involving "already gave at the office," which the example defines as a truth state that checks whether you've already run the special code that applies to multiple objects, and stops the action if you have. So, though Inform is trying to perform an action for each thing on the multiple object list, it only really runs the code for the first object (and consults the whole multiple object list to see what to do); for subsequent objects "already gave at the office" is true, and the action gets stopped.

I used a similar but simpler trick to make the "understand... as a mistake" approach work once:

[code]Understand "juggle [things]" as a mistake ("[if juggle-warned is false]Just type 'JUGGLE' and you'll juggle what you're holding.[juggle trigger][otherwise][run paragraph on][end if]")

Juggle-warned is a truth state that varies. Juggle-warned is false. 
After reading a command: now juggle-warned is false.
To say juggle trigger: now juggle-warned is true. [This awful hack prevents the "Just type 'Juggle' message from printing three times in a turn if you try "Juggle all".][/code]

Of course this only worked because I was trying to intercept one action with one applicable command. It's also probably a bad idea in several ways; this was a small time-constrained project.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4703&start=0#p34197
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Start player with items in inventory
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-03-26 01:11:54

You can always check the index to see where things start out. I'd only use a "when play begins" rule if there was a question as to where the stuff should start, like if it is distributed around randomly.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4708&start=0#p34198
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: JSON support in Inform?
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-03-26 02:31:13

Hi, has anybody tried to do  JSON serialization in Inform? Or XML, or (shudder) YAML, or anything like that. 

I couldn't find any extensions for it but maybe somebody is sitting on some code? 

I haven't really thought about it that much, I was just thinking maybe key/value pairs in tables could be quite simple to do, maybe using Jesse McGrew's dynamic memory extensions. But maybe it's even possible to do "real" JSON serialization, maybe using an intermediary json-ready format in Inform? 

I was thinking to/from files but if it's possible to hook it up with http rest requests that's even cooler. 

The number of maybes in this post reflects how much though I've given to this.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4666&start=0#p34199
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: nY: "Keuzevrijheid en autoriteit"
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-26 06:22:16

[quote="VictorGijsbers"]While the author doesn't need to anticipate every possibility, I don't see how this invalidates my example (because at the very least the location, objects, NPCs and action mentioned must be implemented by the author to make the sequence possible), or how it would invalidate my basic point (that not everything is possible when playing IF).

[quote="ChrisC"]Pretty interesting article. It's nice to see a non-introductory article about IF published in a more mainstream source, outside of our hobbyist circles, too.[/quote]
Certainly! Though I'm not sure small journals focussing on experimental literature, poetry and translation really count as "mainstream", or even "more mainstream". I'm quite sure the editors of [i]nY[/i] would be surprised to be called "mainstream". [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
Oh, I don't know. Despite the existence of billionaires, $100 is still greater than $10, isn't it? [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4683&start=10#p34200
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SQL Errors
User: Jeff Zeitlin / DateTime: 2012-03-26 07:50:39

... and today, I'm getting Server Sent No Data from Chrome on almost every attempt to load a thread or a subforum, and it's taking five or six refreshes to get it to work - if it's six, the fifth refresh gets me the SQL error. Once I have the thread up, I have no trouble going page-to-page. But going back to the subforum level or from the subforum to a thread brings the error back.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4683&start=10#p34201
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SQL Errors
User: Merk / DateTime: 2012-03-26 07:55:59

There were quite a few rpm update processes running -- presumably stuck. Killing them freed up plenty of memory. Until then, things were running pretty much maxed out.

I think it happened a few days ago when I was attempting to update the server. It sounds like the SQL errors were much more common since around that time. I hadn't been getting them, but I'm not on nearly as much as others. The MySQL log showed plenty, on an ongoing basis.

At some point, I'm going to need to take HTTPD and MYSQLD down (possibly) and attempt another server update. But when I do, I'll check the processes to help avoid this from happening again.

I don't know if this will completely solve the memory problems, but it should help tremendously. You shouldn't be getting SQL out of memory errors now, at least.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=60#p34202
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2012-03-26 08:57:19

This is now live.

<a class="postlink" href="http://pr-if.org/event/apollo-18/">http://pr-if.org/event/apollo-18/</a>

Thanks to all the authors for getting this done, and we only missed the actual anniversary by about 26 hours (Eastern time, anyway) [emote]:-)[/emote]

-Kevin

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4709&start=0#p34203
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2012-03-26 08:59:54

Thanks to a lot of hard work by 20+ members of the IF community over the past 3 months, I'm pleased to announce the release of Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the They Might Be Giants album [i]Apollo 18[/i], a bunch of us got together and made one IF game per track on the album. That's 38 new games, with 20 of them (the "Fingertips" tracks) being one-move games. Check it out:

<a class="postlink" href="http://pr-if.org/event/apollo-18/">http://pr-if.org/event/apollo-18/</a>

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=70#p34204
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2012-03-26 09:14:15

IFDB has that "series" function; should we maybe use that in addition to whatever tags?

Actually, I'm going to take some initiative for once. Dig My Grave is episode number 1 in the "Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album" series.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4683&start=10#p34205
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SQL Errors
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-03-26 09:36:35

Thanks Merk!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4710&start=0#p34206
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Access to transcripts with the parchment transcript recorder
User: cottccid / DateTime: 2012-03-26 10:17:26

Hello!  I am currently sending my text adventure out for testing using parchment and the transcript recorder, except for one problem:  I don't know how to actually view the transcripts.  Where are they saved?  I am terrible at programming, so I wouldn't know where to look if it were in one of the php files, and I cannot find anything in the documentation.  I am using default everything.

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=70#p34207
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-26 10:34:12

[quote="Afterward"]IFDB has that "series" function; should we maybe use that in addition to whatever tags?

Actually, I'm going to take some initiative for once. Dig My Grave is episode number 1 in the "Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album" series.[/quote]


This is wisdom.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4709&start=0#p34208
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-26 10:34:48

[dancedance]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4683&start=10#p34209
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SQL Errors
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-03-26 10:53:46

[quote="bcressey"]Thanks Merk![/quote]
+1  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=70#p34210
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-03-26 11:42:33

[quote="jacksonmead"]This is now live.

<a class="postlink" href="http://pr-if.org/event/apollo-18/">http://pr-if.org/event/apollo-18/</a>

Thanks to all the authors for getting this done, and we only missed the actual anniversary by about 26 hours (Eastern time, anyway) [emote]:-)[/emote]

-Kevin[/quote]

23 hours Pacific, 21 Hawaiian. And I guess that is less than a day, so if we aggressively round down, we did not miss it by any days at all.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=70#p34211
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2012-03-26 11:48:48

[quote="aschultz"][quote="jacksonmead"]and we only missed the actual anniversary by about 26 hours (Eastern time, anyway)[/quote]

23 hours Pacific, 21 Hawaiian. And I guess that is less than a day, so if we aggressively round down, we did not miss it by any days at all.[/quote]

Truncation can sometimes be your friend.

-Kevin

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4707&start=0#p34212
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Rejecting multiple objects
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-03-26 11:49:03

Wow. Thanks, everyone. I wasn't getting mails from the forum, so when I remembered to check here, it was great to see all this good stuff.

It's really cool that NYKevin's solution was about rules. I'm starting to use them more nontrivially and this is another nice jump up.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4709&start=0#p34214
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: jakobcreutzfeldt / DateTime: 2012-03-26 12:04:06

This is more or less the greatest thing ever.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4711&start=0#p34215
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Color in Quixe
User: Personman / DateTime: 2012-03-26 12:04:53

My game [i]She's Actual Size[/i] was just released as part of Kevin Jackson-Meade's [url=http://pr-if.org/event/apollo-18/]Apollo 18+20[/url] project. Unfortunately, I was unaware that Quixe doesn't support color, and a fairly vital clue is thus totally missing from my game.

Is there any in-browser interpreter that can do color? Do I have any other options than to make a web version that notates the colored words a different way?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=70#p34216
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-26 12:11:08

[quote="Afterward"]IFDB has that "series" function; should we maybe use that in addition to whatever tags?

Actually, I'm going to take some initiative for once. Dig My Grave is episode number 1 in the "Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album" series.[/quote]
Unfortunately, the IFDB doesn't seem to like the series tag name. Nothing comes up when you click the series link:

<a class="postlink" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=series:Apollo+18%2B20%3A+The+IF+Tribute+Album">http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=s ... bute+Album</a>

I suspect the colon may be at fault.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=70#p34217
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2012-03-26 12:18:49

Shucks! And after trying a couple different names, I think the + might be the problem too.

Yeah, "Apollo 18 plus 20" works just fine, but that looks so dumb. I can't think of what else to use, though. Apollo 38?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=70#p34218
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-26 12:23:32

Perhaps just 'Apollo 18 Tribute Album' as a truncated form of the more wordy 'Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album'. If people mention the longer title in their game descriptions, people will still find the games when searching for the full title.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=70#p34219
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2012-03-26 12:24:59

Yeah that works fine, I think. I'll use that, unless His Event-Organizingness objects.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=70#p34220
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2012-03-26 12:25:44

Apollo 1820, the truth behind the re-election of James Monroe.

-Kevin

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4712&start=0#p34221
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Trouble with doors...
User: StewartF94 / DateTime: 2012-03-26 12:39:18

Hi. Im trying to simply create a locked door that the player can only open from one side, by pressing a button. I am having problems though. Sometimes the code seems to work fine and the door opens as it should do but other times it displays the message that it should do when the door is opened but then says "nothing obvious happens" and the player is in the same place.

The code is here:

[code]
corridor: Room 'entrance corridor' 'corridor'
    "Its an entrance corridor coming from the reception area. To the west is the security door that you was previously blocking your way. <<securityDoorRS.isOpen ? nil : 'Maybe you can open it from this side.'>> "
    west = securityDoorRS
    
    in: OneWayRoomConnector
    {
        -> insideLift
        travelBarrier = [powerBarrier]
    }
    east asExit(in)
;

+securityDoorRS: LockableWithKey, Door -> securityDoorLS 'security door' 'security door'
    "It is a large security door. There is a button beside it. "
    isLocked = true
;

++doorButton: Button, Component 'button' 'button'
    "It is a small black button beside the security door."
    dobjFor(Push)
    {
        action()
        {
            {
                "Pressing the button unlocks the security door";
                securityDoorLS.isLocked = nil;
                securityDoorRS.isLocked = nil;
            }
        }
    }
    dobjFor(Press) remapTo(Push)
;
[/code]

This links with the other side of the door here:

[code]
reception: Room 'Reception' 'reception'
    "This is the reception of the research base. From somewhere inside you can get the lift down into the ice to where the research labs are located.
    The reception desk sits in the middle of the room with an office chair behind it. A computer is on the desk. Benches and plants line the walls.
    In the South-West corner is a room marked 'Reception staff only'. In the middle of the ceiling is some sort of vent. To the east is a large, sturdy looking security door."
    initSpecialDesc = "Strangely, the reception is empty. Where is the rest of the research team? Or the staff for the matter?"
    east= securityDoorLS
    southwest = staffRoom
    west: OneWayRoomConnector
    {
        ->outsidePlane
            travelBarrier=[crateBarrier]
    }
    up = ventGrill

+securityDoorLS : LockableWithKey, Door -> securityDoorRS 'security door' 'security door'
    "It is a firm security door. You see no way of getting past without the staff around."
    isLocked = true
    CannotOpenMessage = "You cannot pull the door open with your hands, there must be a better way."
;
[/code]

Im not very experienced with TADS but i modified the door stuff from tutorials and i just dont understand why sometimes it doesnt work... I cant see anything wrong with it. Any ideas?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4709&start=0#p34222
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-26 12:57:09

[quote="jakobcreutzfeldt"]This is more or less the greatest thing ever.[/quote]

We don't even need to choose! It's more [i]and [/i]less the greatest thing ever! Ha!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4710&start=0#p34223
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Access to transcripts with the parchment transcript reco
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-03-26 13:14:46

The transcript viewer tool is in the tools/viewer directory in the if-recorder-tools.3.0.zip package.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4712&start=0#p34224
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with doors...
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-26 13:45:05

Looks to me as if you've declared each of the door objects to use the other door object as its master object. Only one of them should do that. This may or may not be the source of your problem, but that's worth fixing, as it's quite likely to confuse things.

The other thing I'm noticing is, it may in fact work to create a LockableWithKey and then not give it a key list ... but I would tend to experiment with making the door(s) a Lockable and then trap the Lock and Unlock actions (plus LockWith and UnlockWith, I suppose) in a check routine.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4712&start=0#p34225
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Trouble with doors...
User: StewartF94 / DateTime: 2012-03-26 13:51:53

Thanks I'll try that out

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4710&start=0#p34226
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Access to transcripts with the parchment transcript reco
User: cottccid / DateTime: 2012-03-26 13:54:24

Would you mind being more specific?  I tried to load the php files, but whenever I bring them up in a browser, I just get the source text.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=50#p34227
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: David J Prokopetz / DateTime: 2012-03-26 14:32:12

I'll take a look. I'd tried messing with the positioning of floating objects, but I couldn't get it to work as intended when it came to sensory interaction by proxy; e.g., scenarios where the player in room A asks an NPC in room B to perform an action that requires them to be able to see an item in room C. Setting up non-floating door pairs is a pain for the game designer, but it's the only way I could get it to work reliably.

On the subject of your extensions, however, I'm having a slight issue with Scope Caching that you may be able to shed some light on. Sorry about the length - I've tried to trim out everything that's not directly relevant.

[code]Include Scope Caching by Mike Ciul.

A thing can be audible only.

A thing can be noisy or quiet. A thing is usually quiet.

A container can be soundproof. A container is usually not soundproof.

Audibility relates a thing (called the listener) to a thing (called the subject) when the listener can hear the subject. The verb to be able to hear (he is heard) implies the audibility relation.

To decide whether (the listener - a thing) can hear (the subject - a thing):
	if the listener is the subject:
		decide yes;
	if the location of the listener is the location of the subject:
		if a closed soundproof container that encloses the listener does not enclose the subject:
			decide no;
		otherwise if a closed soundproof container that encloses the subject does not enclose the listener:
			decide no;
		otherwise:
			decide yes;
	otherwise:
		decide no;
		
Definition: Something is audible rather than inaudible if the player can hear it.		

The sense-aware can't reach inside closed containers rule is listed instead of the can't reach inside closed containers rule in the reaching inside rules.
This is the sense-aware can't reach inside closed containers rule:
	if listening:
		if the person reaching can hear the noun:
			allow access;
	abide by the can't reach inside closed containers rule;
		
[This allows the player to listen to things they can only hear.]
After deciding the scope of the player while listening:
	now everything is not audible only;
	repeat with the noisemaker running through noisy audible things:
		if the noisemaker is not marked visible:
			now the noisemaker is audible only;
		place the noisemaker in scope, but not its contents;		

The Green Room is a room. "It's very green."

The wooden box is a closed openable opaque container in the Green Room.

The old radio is a noisy thing in the wooden box. Instead of listening to the radio, say "Tinny pop music [if the old radio is audible only]fills the air[otherwise]issues from [the old radio][end if]."

The player is in the Green Room.[/code]
Try listening to the radio twice. As things are set up now, on the second of two consecutive "listen" actions, the marked visible property seems to go wonky for objects that are audible, but not visible. This doesn't happen if anything - even a "wait" action - comes between the listens. Can you see what I'm doing wrong?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=50#p34228
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-26 15:13:46

I don't have an answer right away, but it can help to visualize how Scope Caching works: After reading a command it does the caching scope activity with the player. Normally, scope depends on a number of things: whose scope is being checked, what is the reason for checking scope, and what action is being performed. If you cache scope in one circumstance, the "marked visible" property may not be appropriate in another circumstance. You can usually fix that by manually running the caching scope activity at the proper time.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4710&start=0#p34229
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Access to transcripts with the parchment transcript reco
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-03-26 15:26:36

The plugin needs a web server with PHP and a database set up. If you want to view the transcripts offline you have to have server software installed on your computer. Without it (or if it doesn't have PHP) the files are just going to show their contents and do nothing else. But for actual use you'll want to put the script online to some web host and view the transcripts there. 

I don't know how far in the installation process you are or how proficient you are with web apps, but yeah, some PHP and database skills are needed to get things running.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4521&start=10#p34230
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Andromeda Legacy™ /// A Competition (with prizes!)
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-26 16:07:58

Bump!

I promise I'll post the 'facts' as soon as these days' tour the force at work ends (should be in a couple of days).
In the meantime, if you have any question feel free to email or pm me. 

Keep the ball rolling [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4348&start=150#p34231
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: CYOA and IF
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-26 16:55:54

[quote="ChrisC"]I think we need two different verbs, "interacting" and ...[/quote]
Dealing with?  Handling?  Manipulating?  Using?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4647&start=0#p34232
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: The Windhammer Prize
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-26 17:13:49

I read this when you posted it and I had a good old muse over different structures for a game book.

The competition stipulates that each book should have no more than 100 sections. With a greatly branching plot, each reading is likely to be very short. Longer readings could be had by having fewer choices, or folding the choices back in but that would make the plot a tad linear. I'm trying to think of ways that interesting, multiple choice  [emote]:D[/emote] stories could be made that are neither too short or two linear.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4711&start=0#p34233
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Color in Quixe
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-26 17:42:50

It looks like you're using style user1 and setting it blue. I can adjust the web site CSS for your game to include that attribute.

Is that it, or are you using a color for user2 as well?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4714&start=0#p34236
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: What is the best way to get big quantities of items in I7?
User: Kiramin / DateTime: 2012-03-26 19:43:21

I want to be able to have huge quantities of duplicate items in my I7 project.

My understanding is that Inform 7 allocates memory for each individual object (even identical ones), requires the total quantity fixed at compile time, and limits references to ~100 because of this, which severely limits the quantities of duplicate items you can create.

I want to be able to do something like this...

[code]
You are carrying:
  1973 gold coins
  a bag
    1500001 grains of sand
[/code]
... and be able to type "drop coin", "drop all coins", "drop 7 coins" and have them all work correctly.

I have tried implementing my own quantity/inventory system a few different ways, the simplest creating a special kind (called stackable item), giving it a quantity property, and modifying it's take/put/drop behaviors... but I always hit a wall with the language parser dealing with quantity based commands (such as "take 7 coins" or "put 7 coins in chest") since the parser sees only one object and I can't seem to find a way to modify the handling of actions on multiple objects and make it work with my quantity property.

Is there an existing solution for this kind of thing?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4715&start=0#p34237
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: SpecialTopic
User: Mike Sousa / DateTime: 2012-03-26 20:17:44

I have a ConvNode with 4 SpecialTopic objects.  It is working fine, even though I had to set 'timesToSuggest = 1' since the default wasn't working (just throwing it out there in case I missed something in the doc).

Anyway, when three specific SpecialTopic objects are chosen (curiositySatisfied is true for each object), I would like to move on to another ConvNode with a new batch of SpecialTopic objects.

I started to do this with extra coding (like I would do with TADS 2) but then realized that T3 probably has a better/slicker way of handling it -- I just don't know what that is.  I've gone through the the doc, but no immediate solution came to me.

Any advice on the best approach for this?

Thanks,
-- Mike

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4716&start=0#p34238
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: (Ramus) css/html - playing a sound...
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-26 20:24:50

For an environmental effect, I'd like to play a short environmental sound, either when a <div> element is loaded, or on mouseover of the corresponding image.

I'm aware that inline sound is irritating... these will be relatively quiet, non-looping sounds.  Also hopefully I'll allow the user to control it (=turn it off).

--Any notions how to play inline sound, either when a <div> element loads or on hover?


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4700&start=0#p34239
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Time messing up after midnight?
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-26 20:25:44

How about using a simple toggle value?

[code]There is room. Scenester is a truth state that varies.

Scene A is a recurring scene. Scene B is a recurring scene.

Scene A begins when play begins.
When Scene A begins: Switch A-B in 2 turns from now.

At the time when Switch A-B:
	if scenester is true, now scenester is false;
	otherwise now scenester is true;
	Switch A-B in 2 turns from now.
	
Scene B begins when scenester is true.
Scene B ends when scenester is false.

Scene A begins when Scene B ends.
Scene A ends when scenester is true.[/code]I've tested this a little and it seems to handle the midnight switchover without breaking.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4714&start=0#p34261
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What is the best way to get big quantities of items in I
User: gravel / DateTime: 2012-03-26 22:47:57

Check out the extension Multitudes by capmikee.  (It's not on the Inform website, but capmikee is around.)  The extension, IIRC, doesn't *quite* operate the way you want, but I think it should be tweakable.  Basically, it sets up backdrops for large quantities of things, so "pile of sand" could be a backdrop.  Then you can interact with a single representative item, like a grain of sand.  I believe you'd need to tweak for carrying numbers of things.

Another way to go about it would be to have faux containers with a "value" of their contents.  That is, you have a bag, and the bag has a value: sand, or gerbils, or coins, and a number representing the number of the contents.  The player thinks they're interacting with 100,000 coins, but really they're just playing with a bag.  This one doesn't really lend itself easily to dropping random numbers of things in places.  (Maybe that's not really necessary, though?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4714&start=0#p34262
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: What is the best way to get big quantities of items in I
User: David J Prokopetz / DateTime: 2012-03-26 23:20:18

[quote="gravel"]This one doesn't really lend itself easily to dropping random numbers of things in places.  (Maybe that's not really necessary, though?)[/quote]
I suppose that if you're dealing with only a few types of items, you could give rooms, containers, supporters and people a property called - for example - "number of coins", and any attempt to put coins in a container or on a supporter, give them to a person, or drop them in a room would update the target object's "number of coins" property instead. Then you'd just need to update the reporting rules for examining supporters/containers to report how many coins they contain, and likewise tweak the looking rules to report the number of coins lying around on the ground in any given room (via the room's "number of coins" property).

EDIT - See the attachment for a very crude example. Note that this only works if there's only one thing (e.g. coins) that you want to deal with in this fashion. If you have multiple types of quantities, it will be more complicated.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4700&start=0#p34263
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Time messing up after midnight?
User: thecustodian / DateTime: 2012-03-27 00:51:39

That's an interesting idea, which I shall go test.  I did make my situation work by changing my scene start/end conditions using the following:
[code]
sceneTurn is a number that varies.

Scene A is a recurring scene.  Scene A starts when the turn count is 3.  Scene A starts when Scene B ends.

When Scene A starts:
    now sceneTurn is turn count + 3;
    <stuff to start scene>

Scene A ends when turn count is sceneTurn.

Scene B is a recurring scene.  Scene B starts when Scene A ends.

When Scene B starts:
    now sceneTurn is turn count + 3;
    <stuff to start scene>

Scene B ends when turn count is sceneTurn.
[/code]

This avoids the whole 'clock math' problem which results in the negative numbers.  It works for me because my game uses rigid 1 minute turns.  Well...it does as far as I can tell. [emote]:-)[/emote]  I was prepared to have to use separate counters, one for each scene, but using the same counter seems to work fine in testing.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4700&start=0#p34287
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Time messing up after midnight?
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-27 09:41:01

I think Zarf defined a phrase something like this:

[code]To decide whether a cycle of (period - a number) turns starting at (offset - a number) is repeating:
    if the turn count is less than offset, no;
    Let the adjusted count be the turn count minus the offset;
    Decide on whether or not the remainder after dividing the adjusted count by the period is zero.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4711&start=0#p34288
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Color in Quixe
User: Personman / DateTime: 2012-03-27 09:51:22

Yeah, user style 2 is pure red. That would be awesome, thank you!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4708&start=0#p34289
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: JSON support in Inform?
User: Dannii / DateTime: 2012-03-27 10:11:10

It would be possible, but it may not be the best serialisation format. Without specific use cases it would be hard to say it's worth the effort.

Btw, there's no reason why you couldn't output a dynamically generated file with Inform's standard table serialisation format over HTTP. Except that there's no easy way (yet) to do HTTP in Inform.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4740&start=0#p34290
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Help me make a "What system should I use?" resource
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-03-27 11:21:33

Inspired by [url=http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4702]Conrad Cook's post over in the "Other Development Systems" subforum[/url], I'd like to make a single-page resource for people who are just stumbling into the world of interactive narrative, wanting to make a story, and wondering what system would be best for them to use.  I'm picturing this as a list of profiles listing the basic information about each system, with lots of links to help people find out more.  (UI-wise, I'd love to make the page filterable by various criteria, and provide the ability to link to particular profiles.) As far as scope, I think it should be very wide-ranging as to which systems to include, from hypertext to parser IF to Ren'Ai to choice-based games.

Here's a list off the top of my head: TADS 2, TADS 3, Inform 6, Inform 7, Quest, Hugo, ADRIFT, ChoiceScript, Twine/Twee/AdventureCow, Undum, Ramus, Ren'Py, Vorple, Bloomengine, SCUMM

However! That's a lot of writing to do, much of it on things I don't necessarily know about.  So, I need your help!  You could suggest a system that I don't have listed, or you could write up a profile.  (Or... both?)  Stylistically, I'd like to keep a neutral-to-positive tone and focus on the big distinctions between systems, while remaining fairly concise.  If you contribute a profile, let me know if you want authorial credit and/or a link to your website.  [b]I reserve the right to edit for tone or grammar/spelling.[/b]

Here's an example profile, for Inform 7, which demonstrates the categories of information that I think it would be useful to have:

[quote]
[b]What does it make:[/b]
Inform 7 is for creating text-based interactive stories with a modern-style parser.  It has some support for the inclusion of images and sound.

[b]How does the author use it:[/b]
Inform 7 is a rules-based programming language with a distinctive natural language syntax.  The built-in world model is fairly simple, but there are many user-contributed extensions that support a wide variety of modified behaviors.  Inform 7 has an Integrated Design Environment that allows the author to view the code and story side by side and automates some tasks.

[b]How does the reader/player use it: [/b]
Players type commands to advance the story. (Some extensions create clickable hyperlinks or menu-style navigation.)

Inform 7 is capable of creating stories in two different formats: z-code and Glulx.  Both require interpreters to run.  Z-code is the smaller, lighter format; it can only be used for smaller games, but it has interpreters available for almost every imaginable platform.  Glulx can be used for larger projects, and allows images and sounds.

[b]Web capable?[/b]
Yes.  The z-code interpreter "Parchment" is fully functional and stable, and the Glulx interpreter "Quixe" is in development (though it does not yet support the image and sound functionality of Glulx).  Inform 7 can automate web-ready releases with either interpreter.  For further web integration, see the profile on Vorple.

[b]Main/official site:[/b] 
<a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/">http://inform7.com/</a>

[b]"Cloak of Darkness" Implementation:[/b]
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.firthworks.com/roger/cloak/inform/index.html">http://www.firthworks.com/roger/cloak/inform/index.html</a>

[b]Documentation and support:[/b] 
Built-in documentation, also available at <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.com/learn/manuals/">http://inform7.com/learn/manuals/</a>
Jim Aikin's "Inform 7 Handbook" <a class="postlink" href="http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm">http://www.musicwords.net/if/i7hb.htm</a>
Ron Newcomb's "Inform 7 for Programmers" (pdf) <a class="postlink" href="http://www.plover.net/~pscion/Inform%207%20for%20Programmers.pdf">www.plover.net/~pscion/Inform%207%20for ... ammers.pdf</a>
Aaron Reed's "Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7" <a class="postlink" href="http://inform7.textories.com/">http://inform7.textories.com/</a>
Further support links at <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3988">viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3988</a>
Support forum (be sure to mention Inform 7 in your subject line) at <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=7">viewforum.php?f=7</a>

[b]Tags:[/b] has an IDE, parser IF, Turing-complete, web capable
[/quote]

(I welcome feedback on the above profile. I think I may have said some things that are no longer true.  Also, I have no idea whether or not to capitalize "glulx."  And I use a lot of hyphens, all the time.  I'm also not sure where to mention playfic.com -- since it's a pruned-down version of Inform 7, perhaps it should get its own profile?)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4702&start=10#p34291
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Other dev systems?
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-03-27 11:24:44

[quote="I"]I could easily be convinced to host such a list[/quote]

...and I've started a new thread about this: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4740">viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4740</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4740&start=0#p34292
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Help me make a "What system should I use?" resource
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-27 12:18:38

I think I would err on the side of Englishierness. "Inform 7 is a rules-based programming language with a distinctive natural language syntax" doesn't seem like it would mean as much to a novice as "Inform 7 programs look like they're written in English, and are based on a list of rules saying how to respond to actions a player takes." Though that latter sentence might not capture the distinction from object-oriented stuff.

The business about formats and interpreters seems like it might be confusing as well, although possibly the way to take care of that would be in a global introduction to the whole thing: Some languages output games in different file formats, some of them produce files that are run with special programs and some produce things you put up on the web (do any produce standalone apps?), that sort of thing.

Excellent work, though!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4740&start=0#p34294
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Help me make a "What system should I use?" resource
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2012-03-27 13:43:23

Perhaps it would be appropriate to put this on ifwiki.org?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4740&start=0#p34295
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Help me make a "What system should I use?" resource
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-27 13:54:19

[quote="matt w"]I think I would err on the side of Englishierness. "Inform 7 is a rules-based programming language with a distinctive natural language syntax" doesn't seem like it would mean as much to a novice as "Inform 7 programs look like they're written in English, and are based on a list of rules saying how to respond to actions a player takes." Though that latter sentence might not capture the distinction from object-oriented stuff.

The business about formats and interpreters seems like it might be confusing as well, although possibly the way to take care of that would be in a global introduction to the whole thing: Some languages output games in different file formats, some of them produce files that are run with special programs and some produce things you put up on the web (do any produce standalone apps?), that sort of thing.[/quote]
A global introduction would be good, but of course that's going to start reading like an essay, because this is not a simple topic. When you mention "a modern-style parser" in the Inform profile, for instance, that's a phrase that would have to be unpacked into a couple of paragraphs.

Yes, TADS 3 will produce stand-alone Windows apps (.exe files), but not apps for MacOS or Linux.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4740&start=0#p34297
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Help me make a "What system should I use?" resource
User: UnwashedMass / DateTime: 2012-03-27 14:15:57

[quote="tove"]Here's a list off the top of my head: TADS 2, TADS 3, Inform 6, Inform 7, Quest, Hugo, ADRIFT, ChoiceScript, Twine/Twee/AdventureCow, Undum, Ramus, Ren'Py, Vorple, Bloomengine, SCUMM[/quote]

SCUMMVM is used to interpret existing private game engines that have been implemented or reverse-engineered, but there are precious few tools for authoring games it can understand, which I understand has been done only twice by high-level hackers.  (Most likely are ones made for AGI, the first and more primitive Sierra adventure game engine, though it may someday be able to run homebrew games made using Sierra's later SCI.)  If you want to walk down that road you can also look at other engines used to make similar graphical adventure games, chief among them Chris Jones' AGS and similar programs like eg. SLUDGE as well as the newer Wintermute and the positively ancient World Builder -- none of which are currently supported by SCUMMVM but all of which might be someday.  (Of course, if you're persistant and perverse, you could well use Klick 'n Play, a Wolf3D map editor or Pinball Construction Set or one of its contemporaries (OK, Stuart Smith's Adventure Construction Set would be more likely) to tell a curious and brief slice of interactive fiction.  Any tool will do.  We haven't yet seen a game about ghosts writing clues in a haunted spreadsheet but I'm holding out for it: Cornerstone 2 -- Revenge of the Poison Pill.)

More historical tools for text adventures as we knew them would include the Quill and PAW, while some early graphic adventure tools would include GAC and STAC.  In the "totally obscure" category I was always interested in seeing a clear evaluation of the Gamescape engine that powered Marooned Again and its predecessor for CYOA hijinks, but I don't know if anyone other than its author ever published anything made with it.  I've only seen one program made using Questwriter for the C64 (if we're serious about getting retro here) but it also seemed to have some potential for generating at least Scott Adams-level IF.

I appreciate however that you're not explicitly soliciting a list of every game-making program known to man, but rather ideas about perhaps sorting them taxonomically and presenting them to would-be developers.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4740&start=0#p34298
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Help me make a "What system should I use?" resource
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-27 14:50:28

[quote="Jim Aikin"]A global introduction would be good, but of course that's going to start reading like an essay, because this is not a simple topic. When you mention "a modern-style parser" in the Inform profile, for instance, that's a phrase that would have to be unpacked into a couple of paragraphs.[/quote]

Maybe something like a glossary, then. Something like this:

[quote]Parser: In games that accept typed commands, the part of the program that understands commands.
Interpreter: An application that allows you to play games in certain file formats that do not run as stand-alone applications. (Most interpreters run many different types of file, produced by different authoring systems.)[/quote]

...and that might be all that I see that needs explanation in the suggested Inform 7 writeup. (Maybe Integrated Design Environment, and I'd say "two different file formats" rather than "two different formats" -- which I suppose is technically inaccurate, because .z5, .z8, .glx, .zblorb, and .gblorb are all different file formats, but I don't think we need to get into that.) But that way you don't need to define "parser" every time and "interpreter" separately for every language.

"Interpreter" is the big one, I think; people will understand what it is to produce games in HTML and Javascript that you can play directly on the web (like ChoiceScript and Undum), and what it is to produce standalone apps (like TADS), but as I said I don't think that talking about interpreters without explaining them will be super-noob friendly.

It may also be that I have a different idea in mind than everyone else -- I'm thinking about a guide that would be friendly for very noobish people. (Which might include me; I've never been entirely clear about what libraries are.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4740&start=0#p34299
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Help me make a "What system should I use?" resource
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-03-27 15:25:13

how about also highlighting with which systems you can make games that you can play on iOS, android etc? I think this is probably a factor for some people.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4740&start=0#p34300
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Help me make a "What system should I use?" resource
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-03-27 16:04:04

matt w - Thanks for the feedback.  I think I do need to do another pass or two on that main sentence.  I've been trying not to foreground the natural language-ness of Inform, since "looks like it's English" is a kind of a set up for disappointment in this case, but you're right that the sentence as-is is not particularly approachable.  (It's a symptom from sometimes having to write artist statements...)

I'm really not sure how confusing the format stuff is -- it's hard to put myself in the headspace of the total tyro here (as opposed to the limited but passable knoweldge I have).  It seems to me that most computer-literate people have some knowledge of different kinds of files, and different kinds of programs to interact with those files.  You can't open an mp3 in TextEdit/NotePad, (er, you [i]can[/i], but it will be disappointing) or a jpg in iTunes.  Maybe it's weird because we usually think of games as "applications," not "files."

Anyway, it probably comes down to sorting out exactly who the intended audience is.  I'm basically picturing the kind of person we get around here in the forum, who know enough about the topic to have googled their way to us, but don't necessarily know what the current state of the art is.  I think that a huge list full of some frankly fairly complicated systems is not going to appeal to the absolute beginner anyway.

I'm definitely planning on having some sort of introduction -- if nothing else, a caveat on "this is just a page to help you make interactive stories at all, not how to make good ones" -- and you're right that I should define some terms there.

UnwashedMass- Ah, I almost certainly meant to say SLUDGE.  Clearly I should not be the one writing that profile. [emote]:)[/emote]

As for seriousness about getting retro, I'd say I'm serious about covering anything that actually might be an answer to "what system should I use?"  So I think criteria like "runs on an average current computer, on an operating system most people have heard of" are useful, as are things like "has users that are active on the internet and might answer questions."

Now that you mention Scott Adams, though, I recall that there were some threads about a SA-style adventure system a little while back.  Anybody here know enough about it to write a profile?

peterorme- I agree that mobile compatibility is an important feature for some projects.  I wonder if there are systems that specifically target mobile yet*, or just in the way that, if they target javascript/browsers, they are mobile-compatible?  Definitely a thing to keep in mind.

*Zarf's working on Inform 7 and iphones, but that's not publicly available yet.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4740&start=0#p34301
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Help me make a "What system should I use?" resource
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-27 16:32:10

For people stumbling upon interactive narrative from non-English speaking parts of the world, it might be of interest what languages games can be written in using the different systems.
Inform 6, Inform 7, and Quest all have support for Spanish, French, German, and one or two more languages. Undum would pretty easily support any language, I suppose. And so on.
(I also seem to recall that there are systems specifically developed for writing games in Russian and Spanish respectively.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4708&start=0#p34302
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: JSON support in Inform?
User: NYKevin / DateTime: 2012-03-27 16:41:43

The short answer is "not in I7".  I7 files [url=http://inform7.com/learn/man/doc383.html]begin like this[/url]:
[code]* //IFID// leafname[/code]

XML does not.  Any file that I7 can read will not pass any XML validation, and no valid XML file will be readable by I7.  You might be able to cook something up with I6, however.

More generally, most configuration file formats won't tolerate "garbage" at the beginning.

Also, I7 provides support for "binary" files; I'm not sure if this header applies to them, and if not, XML would hypothetically be possible.

But there's another major roadblock: the only way to grab a file's text is all at once, and that may not be suitable for our purposes.

At any rate, I'd recommend YAML instead of XML since it has stricter rules about where and how whitespace may occur, and is generally simpler.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4740&start=0#p34303
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Help me make a "What system should I use?" resource
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-03-27 17:01:39

[quote="Felix"]For people stumbling upon interactive narrative from non-English speaking parts of the world, it might be of interest what languages games can be written in using the different systems.[/quote]
Oh yes! I totally thought of that when I was originally drafting this thing, which was, uh, as I was falling asleep two nights ago.  So I guess I forgot between then and actually writing it down.  [emote];)[/emote] Good call.  (It probably only makes a difference in systems with parsers -- hypertext and choice-based systems don't show any text to the player that wasn't written by the author.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4683&start=10#p34304
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SQL Errors
User: Jeff Zeitlin / DateTime: 2012-03-27 17:05:47

[quote="bcressey"]Thanks Merk![/quote]
Ditto [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4742&start=0#p34305
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Project PD
User: tinfoiltank / DateTime: 2012-03-27 17:21:22

Hey IFers.

My name is Adam, and although I'm a bit new to the IF scene, I'm very impressed by the talent and passion in the community.  While I enjoy making my own stories, as a software developer I felt like it would be a fun and challenging project to make my own IF game engine in my spare time.  I'm definitely not trying to replace any existing tools, but it's been a fun and illuminating development process, and if somebody else used the application and thought it was cool, even better!

I set up a dev blog for it here: [url=http://projectpd.blogspot.com]Project Penny Dreadful[/url].

Project PD is written in Adobe Flex, and all the tools are in-browser and online (although you can download the .swf files and run them locally if you want).  Gameplay itself is similar to a RAGS game (everything is GUI), although character interactions work a lot like Bioware DnD games like Neverwinter Nights.  There are two parts to Project PD: the Builder and the Player, which do pretty much what you'd expect from the names.  You can use the Builder to create Project PD games, which are saved to a local drive as .pd files.  Then, you can use the Player to open the .pd files to play the game.  The .pd files are very small, so they should be easy to share.

There's a lot more info on the blog ([url]http://projectpd.blogspot.com[/url]), including a fairly comprehensive guide to using the Builder and a simple sample game.  If any of you fine folks has a spare minute or two, I'd love to hear what you think of it.  It's an ongoing development process, so if there are more features or capabilities you feel are necessary to turn Project PD into a real IF development suite, I'd love to add them!  I'm also interested in hearing about features you want to see that aren't really supported anywhere else.  Project PD is still in it's early stages, and I'd love have the opportunity to turn it into something really cool.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4699&start=0#p34306
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: 40 years of video games
User: lamont / DateTime: 2012-03-27 17:38:10

I stopped in last week. There's a small anteroom decorated with concept art -- here an annotated drawing of Sonic the Hedgehog, there a sketch by Yoji Shinkawa -- and, on another wall, footage of people's faces, playing. That leads into the main exhibit, a cavern where you can play the featured games, Myst and Monkey Island among them. And then there's an adjoining gallery full of backlit screenshots, with short movies about all the others.

It's nothing you need to pay pilgrimage to, but if you're close I'd say check it out. For me it was kind of a nostalgia rush. It was fun to chat with the other museum-goers, and mesmerizing to watch those pre-recorded faces.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4740&start=10#p34307
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Help me make a "What system should I use?" resource
User: lamont / DateTime: 2012-03-27 17:41:44

It could also be helpful to list, for each system, two or three actual games, real-world examples of the end product.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4743&start=0#p34308
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Non-english adventure games
User: FibreTigre / DateTime: 2012-03-28 06:26:27

Hi all,

I have written in the past a couple of If games such as Ekphrasis (in french) or Works of Fiction.

I am in a difficult quest right now : I am looking for (good) adventure games, if possible beyond the scope of IF (such as point'n'click for instance), and not in english (nor in french). 

For example : non translated russian, german or spanish adventure games.

Could you help me with this ?

Thanks in advance

FT

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4683&start=10#p34330
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SQL Errors
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-03-28 07:14:56

You might want to reboot the machine more often. Maybe once a day.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4715&start=0#p34331
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: SpecialTopic
User: Mike Sousa / DateTime: 2012-03-28 09:04:03

So this ended up being rather simple.  (well, simple after several aborted attempts).

I don't know of any drawbacks yet, but here's how I solved it -- generic code to follow.

In the NPC object, in the nifty afterAction(), I did:

[code]afterAction() {
    if (topic1.curiositySatisfied && topic2.curiositySatisfied && topic3.curiositySatisfied)
        "<.convnode newConversationTopics>";
}[/code]
And as for the timesToSuggest issue I stated above, that appears to be a conflict with some code I lifted from the Tour Guide.  I don't know why it doesn't work for SuggestedTopics, but at least I know where the conflict is...

[code]
modify SuggestedTopic
    timesToSuggest = (ofKind(EventList) ? eventList.length() : 1)
; [/code]
You would think I would have remembered why I lifted that code... [emote]:)[/emote]

-- Mike

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4765&start=0#p34332
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: FYI --
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-28 10:42:46

Guys,

I've learned to post these because otherwise sometimes my online friends get alarmed.

I'm on the road again, hoboing out from Boston, and that means I'm easily inclined to be offline for days or months at a time.  Nothing to be upset about -- please don't be alarmed.

Take care,


Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4765&start=0#p34333
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: FYI --
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-28 10:58:48

Happy hoboing! Don't fall off those freight trains!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4765&start=0#p34334
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: FYI --
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-28 11:32:45

[quote]I've learned to post these because otherwise sometimes my online friends get alarmed.[/quote]

Good idea. It's one of those things - when people we know online suddenly disappear, we realise those people we've grown so used to seeing around could suffer some sort of accident, might need our help - sometimes we could even actually help - and we realise we have *no way* of contacting them or even knowing if they're allright.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4765&start=0#p34335
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: FYI --
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-28 11:46:35

Be safe! Check your email now and then; I haven't fallen off the face of the earth either; though it might sometimes seem like it from my email habits [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4743&start=0#p34336
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Non-english adventure games
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-03-28 12:03:23

I don't speak Spanish (other than the small amount one learns by growing up in California), but as I understand it, there is an active and vibrant Spanish IF community.  They have a website at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.caad.es/">http://www.caad.es/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4765&start=0#p34337
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: FYI --
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-28 12:15:46

I look forward to hearing from you, S. John, or any of you.  It's my username[at]gmail.

Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4702&start=10#p34338
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Other dev systems?
User: conradcook / DateTime: 2012-03-28 12:17:48

Thanks, Tove!  I was nervous I'd somehow volunteered to do that -- bad thing, since I don't know enough.

Conrad.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4743&start=0#p34339
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Non-english adventure games
User: UnwashedMass / DateTime: 2012-03-28 12:18:42

[quote="FibreTigre"]I am in a difficult quest right now : I am looking for (good) adventure games, if possible beyond the scope of IF (such as point'n'click for instance), and not in english (nor in french). 

For example : non translated russian, german or spanish adventure games.[/quote]

Aventuras AD was the gold standard for Spanish text adventures; for German ones Weltenschmiede's suite of Das Stundenglas, Die Kathedrale and Hexuma are highly regarded.  I can't speak for any of them personally, not speaking those languages, and don't know anything about Russian adventures.  Germany did keep a torch burning for the point'n'click adventure game after the bottom fell out of their market in English and later French-speaking areas; Poland also had its own strange strain of them.  No particular recommendations, but an acknowledgement that there's a rich vein to mine there.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4702&start=20#p34340
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Other dev systems?
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-03-28 13:33:42

Ha, yeah, I don't either.  I'm thinking this is a "with the community's powers combined!" kind of project.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4766&start=0#p34341
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Testers needed: Rocket Man From The Sea
User: janoshon / DateTime: 2012-03-28 16:28:27

Hello

I'm looking for beta-testers for my Spring Thing entry "Rocket Man From The Sea", which I'm working to get into a properly beta-testable shape for the weekend. The game is a pulp-scifi story in the vein of Ray Bradbury stories, though rather serious in tone in the end.

I would like to have people who could hammer through it mercilessly for the final bug stomping crunch next week. This is my first completed IF-project, so bear that in mind - there is bound to be all kinds of weirdness in the code :)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4709&start=0#p34342
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Healy / DateTime: 2012-03-28 16:47:17

I need some help with My Evil Twin.
[spoiler]I've already broken into my evil twin's lair and destroyed his mind-control device. What do I do next? I see some numbers over in the regular park, but inputting them into the keypad at the evil lair doesn't do anything.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4743&start=0#p34343
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Non-english adventure games
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-03-28 18:45:08

Portuguese is my native language.  Does it matter?  IF is such a small niche that if I were to write an IF game in portuguese, pretty much no one would play it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4709&start=0#p34345
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: WillieBHines / DateTime: 2012-03-28 21:46:18

I solved My Evil Twin -- here's a hint:

[spoiler]The number you've found is not the whole number. Not sure if the rest of it is anywhere in the game, but a TMBG fan would know the rest of it.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4709&start=0#p34346
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: WillieBHines / DateTime: 2012-03-28 21:46:42

any help for She's Actual Size? I've made progress but I barely understand how I've done it.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=50#p34347
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: David J Prokopetz / DateTime: 2012-03-28 22:02:04

Okay - here's where I'm at now (see attached). I've made a great deal of progress, but there are still a few things giving me trouble:

[b]1.[/b] I'm trying to set up a "sensory occlusion" relation (i.e., "x is visually occluded from y"/"x is aurally occluded from y") to make it possible to define an object as being impossible to see from a particular vantage point. However, I've defined both sensory adjacency between rooms and sensory connections via doors or other sensory connectors, I can't figure out a way to define the relevant phrases to cover both relationships.

For example, if room X is visually adjacent to room Y, and I want to say that something in room X is visually occluded from a viewer in room Y, the relation needs to be between a thing and a room. However, if room X is visually connected to room Y via door Z, the relationship would need to be between a thing and a thing instead, since the scope is being checked from the viewpoint of the door, not the viewpoint of the room.

I know I could just use two separate relations, but requiring the author to use different phrases depending on the type of sensory connection involved seems inelegant.

[b]2.[/b] I'm trying to set up some grammar so that before/instead/after/while examining rules can be defined in terms of the vantage point of the player, the medium of viewing, or both.

For example, I want to be able to say stuff like "instead of examining X via a security camera", or "rule for printing the name of X while examining via a door". There's an example of doing so in the attached file.

I've tried it in two different ways: using definitions, and using a series of internal verbs that pass the subject around among themselves (the latter is what you see in the attached example). The problem is that each approach only covers some of the cases involved. If I use definitions, the while rules work, but before/instead/after rules become complicated and unwieldy to write. If I used the action-passing approach you see in the attached file, the while rules don't work, since by the while "while" is checked, the action has been passed off to the basic "examine" verb.

I'm open to any suggestions - redirecting actions and such is new territory for me, and I'm quite certain I'm Doing It Wrong.

[b]3.[/b] Is there a decent guide available that explains the logic behind how the system determines how to display the contents of a room? I'm trying to puzzle out the best way to display a room's contents when viewing it remotely, but I can't seem to make heads or tails of the standard rules in this area.

Finally, if anyone has the time to play with the little sample scenario I've included and see if they can get it to break, it would be greatly appreciated. Just let me know what you did to bust it. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2570&start=30#p34348
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: Hugor: A new Linux/Mac OS X/Windows port of the Hugo eng
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-03-29 00:46:57

I've introduced a full screen mode to the interpreter. The maximum width of the game window when in full screen can be set in the preferences (this is useful for avoiding ridiculously long text lines with widescreen monitors.) The effect when playing graphical games in full screen is nicer than I expected [emote]:-)[/emote]

Full screen is supposed to work on all systems. Would be nice if people would give this a spin and report any glitches or weird behavior they come across. Downloads for all operating systems can be found at:

<a class="postlink" href="http://foss.aegean.gr/~realnc/hugor/testing/">http://foss.aegean.gr/~realnc/hugor/testing/</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=350#p34349
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: janoshon / DateTime: 2012-03-29 01:57:56

Hello

I'm Janos Honkonen, 36 years old and hail from the Commie Reindeerland of Finland. I used to be a big text adventure fan in the late 80's and  early 90's, and I have text adventures to thank for my English skills and vocabulary, more or less (makes the puzzles extra hard when you have to hunt for every second word in the dictionary ;) I thought the genre dead until I picked up Photopia in 2001 and got to know the then current state of the games. It was mind-blowing to see how much the field had matured.

I've been faffing about creating games from since 2005 or 2006, but all kinds of dumb real world excuses have sapped the time and energy to finish the projects I've had on the burner - except for this year.

Outside of IF I've had a 11 year run in gaming, science, technology and general journalism, I've been an English-Finnish translator and done software localization engineering, I've graduated from language technology, done some research there, worked as the publicist for a film about Nazis from the Dark Side of the Moon, been a TV producer for a couple of years and currently I'm back in academia working in the local school of arts, design and architecture. In addition to gaming I do geocaching, scuba diving, urban exploration, a lot of reading, writing (finishing the second draft of my novel), role-playing and... well, generally I'm a recovering hobbyholic who currently tries to concentrate just on half a dozen things at the same time :)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4743&start=0#p34350
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Non-english adventure games
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-29 02:00:32

I agree - as things stand. BUT: write them and maybe players will appear. Maybe even make a few games especially designed to lure non-IFers.

Do you know, when I describe IF to some of my friends, they sound genuinely intrigued. Maybe it's time the Portuguese did have a community?

I know of at leat 5 of us in the community, including Rootshell whom I actually haven's seen around in a while (wonder if everything's all right?). That's actually quite enough for us to make games for ourselves - and maybe attract some outside attention. The Greek Ags Community (GAC) started like that, and for quite a while it was quite the community to watch: for the time, their games were pretty good (though they really haven't aged well, I daresay).

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4768&start=0#p34351
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Getting the Superglús toolchain to work
User: liftarn / DateTime: 2012-03-29 03:53:13

I'm trying out some retro IF authoring and I've found InPAWS (<a class="postlink" href="http://inpaws.speccy.org/indexEng.html">http://inpaws.speccy.org/indexEng.html</a>) that seems to be a good tool. I thought it might be a good idea to not having to mess around with an emulator during development and debugging the adventure so the option to create a Glux file to run with Gargoyle is interesting.

I managed to compile my source file with InPAWS.
That file is now the input to txtPaws. This also works.

My problem is instead blc. When I try to use it it just sits there and don't appear to do anything. As the documentation is either missing or in Spanish I'm having a bit of a problem. Can someone please help out?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4768&start=0#p34352
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Getting the Superglús toolchain to work
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2012-03-29 05:31:39

[quote="liftarn"]My problem is instead blc. When I try to use it it just sits there and don't appear to do anything. As the documentation is either missing or in Spanish I'm having a bit of a problem. Can someone please help out?[/quote]Do you actually need to use blc? blc is a Blorb packager, which is only really necessary if you want to wrap your Glulx game file up with graphics, sound and/or metadata into a Blorb file.

I haven't used InPaws and TxtPaws, but presumably the result of these (and what you're trying to use as the input to blc) is a Glulx file, i.e. a file with a ".ulx" extension? If so, have you tried just loading that into your favourite Glulx interpreter?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4743&start=0#p34353
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Non-english adventure games
User: FibreTigre / DateTime: 2012-03-29 06:07:05

Hi all !

Thanks for your answers.

I already know that the spanish IF has masterpieces I enjoyed a lot (especially one about the world of the deads...I played it some years ago !).

But my question was relative to commercial games, such as point'n'click, or even shooters. 

For example the russian adventure game Pathologic was stunning even though very poorly translated in english (no french translation). I am looking for such games.

FT
Twitter : @FibreTigre

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4768&start=0#p34354
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Getting the Superglús toolchain to work
User: liftarn / DateTime: 2012-03-29 06:12:50

[quote="DavidK"]I haven't used InPaws and TxtPaws, but presumably the result of these (and what you're trying to use as the input to blc) is a Glulx file, i.e. a file with a ".ulx" extension? If so, have you tried just loading that into your favourite Glulx interpreter?[/quote]

Regrettably not. InPaws generates either a Superglus .SCE source file or a Superglus/txtPaws .TXP source file. The TXP can be compiled to a SCE using TxtPaws. So the problem is getting from the SCE to the ULX.

I fist compile the source PAW file using
[i]inpaws cs Ticket.paw[/i]
and it generates a SCE file. The Superglús documentation at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.caad.es/superglus/doku.php">http://www.caad.es/superglus/doku.php</a> is Spanish only. There is an IDE (in Spanish) for MS Windows, but I'm using a Linux computer and I also want a command line solution to automate the process.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=350#p34355
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-29 06:28:02

[quote]Outside of IF I've had a 11 year run in gaming, science, technology and general journalism, I've been an English-Finnish translator and done software localization engineering, I've graduated from language technology, done some research there, worked as the publicist for a film about Nazis from the Dark Side of the Moon, been a TV producer for a couple of years and currently I'm back in academia working in the local school of arts, design and architecture. In addition to gaming I do geocaching, scuba diving, urban exploration, a lot of reading, writing (finishing the second draft of my novel), role-playing and... well, generally I'm a recovering hobbyholic who currently tries to concentrate just on half a dozen things at the same time [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

Oh wow! I've been following Iron Sky from the beginning, and I'm looking forward to finally watching it next month. There's quite a large cross-over between IF authors and role-players, but I wonder how much of a cross over there is for urban exploration. I'm always having a poke around abandoned buildings, and the other day I spotted a tunnel under the railway that bears investigating.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4768&start=0#p34356
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Getting the Superglús toolchain to work
User: DavidK / DateTime: 2012-03-29 06:34:52

[quote="liftarn"]Regrettably not. InPaws generates either a Superglus .SCE source file or a Superglus/txtPaws .TXP source file. The TXP can be compiled to a SCE using TxtPaws. So the problem is getting from the SCE to the ULX.[/quote]In that case the problem can't be blc then, can it? As it's just a Blorb packager, your problems must be with the stage before.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4768&start=0#p34357
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Getting the Superglús toolchain to work
User: liftarn / DateTime: 2012-03-29 06:57:03

[quote="DavidK"]In that case the problem can't be blc then, can it? As it's just a Blorb packager, your problems must be with the stage before.[/quote]

Well, that's one thing less to worry about then. Now I'm down to four or five programs that I have to try in different combinations to try to get from a SCE to a ULX...

Ok, I found a Spanish page I managed to translate so what I have to do is
txtpaws Ticket.txp (this should be optional as inPaws can generate SCE directly)
spg Ticket.sce
glulxa -i Ticket.ula -o Ticket.ulx

I'll let you know how it works out.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4769&start=0#p34358
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Making something appear that wasn't there before
User: slugbones / DateTime: 2012-03-29 07:14:37

Hi! I just started messing with IF last night, and I'm having a bit of trouble finding the answer to my question.

I have a scene in which a poem needs to be read/looked at/examined before a portal appears. Essentially, the poem says something like "Don't look behind you," which should compel the player to look in the opposite direction at that given time, thus seeing the portal, when looking in that direction [i]before[/i] reading the poem would be fruitless.

How should I go about this?

Thanks in advance. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4769&start=0#p34359
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making something appear that wasn't there before
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-03-29 07:16:27

Which developing system are you using?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4769&start=0#p34360
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making something appear that wasn't there before
User: slugbones / DateTime: 2012-03-29 07:22:09

Oops, sorry! I'm using Inform 7.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4740&start=10#p34361
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Help me make a "What system should I use?" resource
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-03-29 07:27:35

[quote="tove"]([The system's output language] probably only makes a difference in systems with parsers -- hypertext and choice-based systems don't show any text to the player that wasn't written by the author.)[/quote]
You might also want to indicate in which language(s) the documentation is available.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4770&start=0#p34362
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Anchorhead - rusty hatch
User: katrinekyhl / DateTime: 2012-03-29 07:44:44

Hi

Does anyone know about Anchorhead? I'm in the sewers and wanting to go out through the rusty hatch in the ceiling, only the game won't let me put my fish oil on the hinges. Every time I try it just goes "putting things on the rusty hatch would achieve nothing". If I leave the sewers by the other exit, I get killed by an angry mob.

Can someone please help? Is it a bug in the game? I'm pretty sure I'm playing v5.

Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4769&start=0#p34363
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making something appear that wasn't there before
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-29 08:03:58

You can define a thing without placing it anywhere in the model world:

[code]There is room.

Here is a poem. It has description "'Look behind you!'".

The portal is a thing.[/code]

Then all it takes to bring it into play is to move it into a room during play -- such as the location of the player.

You'd need to implement "look behind" as a new verb, too.
[code]
Understand "look behind [yourself]" as looking behind. Looking behind is an action applying to one thing.

Check looking behind yourself:
	if we have not examined the poem or the portal is on-stage, try examining south instead.
	[Just to trigger the standard "You see nothing unexpected in that direction." error message.]
	
After looking behind yourself:
	now the portal is in the location;
	say "You find an immense inter-dimensional portal has opened up behind you!"[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4770&start=0#p34365
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Anchorhead - rusty hatch
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-29 08:38:15

It's not a bug:
[spoiler]The fish oil isn't the solution here. I can't quite remember, but I think there's more than one way out the sewer.[/spoiler]
Also:
[spoiler]Do you have the robes from the church yet?[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4770&start=0#p34366
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Anchorhead - rusty hatch
User: katrinekyhl / DateTime: 2012-03-29 08:40:00

I do have the robes, but [spoiler]when I try to sneak out wearing them I still get killed.[/spoiler]

Several walkthroughs that I've read say that [spoiler]I need to grease up the hinges with the oil.[/spoiler]

Totally confused and stuck.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4769&start=0#p34367
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making something appear that wasn't there before
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-29 08:40:15

The puzzle itself might be counterintuitive for most players because the game model usually assumes they can see all directions in a room at once.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4766&start=0#p34368
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Testers needed: Rocket Man From The Sea
User: climbingstars / DateTime: 2012-03-29 08:44:16

Count me in, I'm up for it!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4770&start=0#p34369
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Anchorhead - rusty hatch
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-29 08:49:15

Hmm... its been about a year since I last played it. According to [url=http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/solutions/anchor.sol]this[/url] source:
[spoiler]Just keep trying to open (or maybe push) the hatch, eventually it'll budge.[/spoiler]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4770&start=0#p34370
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Anchorhead - rusty hatch
User: katrinekyhl / DateTime: 2012-03-29 09:03:47

It does nothing :/ 

I think it might be a bug, every walkthrough I can find tells me to [spoiler]go through that hatch using the fish oil[/spoiler], even this forum post the creater of the game wrote: [url]http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/tree/browse_frm/month/2006-12/ac4bd10c5d548e81?rnum=121&_done=%2Fgroup%2Frec.games.int-fiction%2Fbrowse_frm%2Fmonth%2F2006-12%3F[/url]

Boohoo.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4770&start=0#p34371
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Anchorhead - rusty hatch
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-29 09:21:09

I hope it's not a bug but I guess that's possible. And the fish oil container is definitely open, and you've tried different ways of phrasing the degreasing, I assume? Unless anyone else has any other suggestions, I'd suggest if possible posting your play-transcript for the sewer section to see what you've tried. If you're convinced its a bug, is there a recent save you can restore to and try from there?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4770&start=0#p34372
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Anchorhead - rusty hatch
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-29 10:22:06

I suspect that you need to try
[spoiler]OIL HATCH rather than PUT OIL ON HATCH.[/spoiler]
Correction: it looks as if
[spoiler]there's a separate HINGES object, and you need to rub the oil on that.[/spoiler]
Both of these would be annoying failures of implementation, though not bugs per se.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4770&start=0#p34373
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Anchorhead - rusty hatch
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-29 10:38:56

[quote="maga"]I suspect that you need to try
[spoiler]OIL HATCH rather than PUT OIL ON HATCH.[/spoiler]
Correction: it looks as if
[spoiler]there's a separate HINGES object, and you need to rub the oil on that.[/spoiler]
Both of these would be annoying failures of implementation, though not bugs per se.[/quote]
I don't believe the second is a failure. It is HOW YOU SHOULD DO IT.
Anyway, we are talking about a game 10 years old. Which is by far still the best, imho.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4770&start=0#p34374
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Anchorhead - rusty hatch
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-29 11:10:01

[quote="Jamespking"]I don't believe the second is a failure. It is HOW YOU SHOULD DO IT.[/quote]

Tcehnically true. The correct way to stand up would also be "PUT LEGS ON FLOOR. PUT WEIGHT ON LEGS. LEAN FORWARD. STRAIGHTEN LEGS."

Just as there should be plenty of synonims for nouns, certain actions should also have alternatives. Yes, "put oil on hatch" bears no resemblance to what we're trying to achieve, but it's clear that the player isn't actually trying to juggle the oil on the hatch - while not necessary, it would be very courteous of the author, therefore, to allow this syntax.

"OIL HATCH", however, or even "RUB OIL ON HATCH", should work, even if the latter isn't as correct as the former.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4770&start=0#p34375
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Anchorhead - rusty hatch
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-29 11:30:54

[quote]Tcehnically true. The correct way to stand up would also be "PUT LEGS ON FLOOR. PUT WEIGHT ON LEGS. LEAN FORWARD. STRAIGHTEN LEGS."[/quote]
I would definitely play a game like that [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4769&start=0#p34376
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Making something appear that wasn't there before
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-29 11:45:53

Just for kicks, I wrote out an implementation that does what I think you have in mind. It doesn't require a "look behind" verb. The point of adding the Pantry to the test game is that the player can read the poem in the pantry, in which case the portal will appear but the player won't see the burst of blue light.

[code]The Library is a room. "A charming Edwardian Library. The door to the pantry is to the west[if the glowing portal is in the Library]. You can also go north through the glowing portal[end if]."

The Pantry is west of the Library. "Empty shelves here."

The scented piece of paper is in the Library.  "A piece of pink, scented paper is lying here." The description is "Pink and scented -- and there's writing on it." Understand "pink" and "poem" and "writing" as the paper.

The glowing portal is a thing.  "In the north wall is  a glowing portal." The description is "It's impressive. It's embedded in the north wall." The glowing portal is fixed in place.

The Amusement Park is a room. "Wow -- look at all the rides! You can go south to return to the Library." The Library is south of the Park. North of the Library is nowhere.

Understand the command "read" as something new.

Reading is an action applying to one thing and requiring light. Understand "read [something]" as reading.

Carry out reading:
	say "Nothing is printed on [the noun]."
	
Instead of reading the scented paper:
	if the player does not carry the paper:
		say "(first picking up the piece of paper)[line break]";
		now the player carries the paper;
	say "The paper says, 'Roses are red, violets are blue, this stupid poem doesn't even rhyme.'";
	if the glowing portal is not in the Library:
		now the glowing portal is in the Library;
		if the player is in the Library:
			say "[line break]A burst of blue light erupts behind you."
	
Instead of going north in the Library:
	if the glowing portal is in the Library:
		say "";
		now the player is in the Amusement Park;
	otherwise:
		continue the action.
		
Instead of entering the glowing portal, try going north.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4770&start=10#p34377
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Anchorhead - rusty hatch
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-29 11:56:49

[quote="Peter Pears"]
Tcehnically true. The correct way to stand up would also be "PUT LEGS ON FLOOR. PUT WEIGHT ON LEGS. LEAN FORWARD. STRAIGHTEN LEGS."[/quote]
[quote]>CONTRACT LEFT QUADRICEPS, LEFT PSOAS MAJOR, LEFT GLUTEUS, LEFT TENSOR FASCIAE LATAE, LEFT RECTUS FEMORIS, LEFT VASTUS, LEFT GRACILIS, LEFT TIBIALIS

Which left gluteus do you mean, the left gluteus maximus, the left gluteus medius, or the left gluteus minimus?

>ALL

You attempt to shift your weight onto your left leg, but your near-total neglect of the minor muscles of the calf and foot unbalances you and you flail gracelessly onto the floor.[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4770&start=10#p34378
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Anchorhead - rusty hatch
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-29 11:59:31

Maga: beautiful. If I could be bothered (I can't), I'd give you a complete rundown of what happens when you type "SING". Here's a tip: it starts with taking ten years (at the usual rate turn = minute) worth of classes. [emote];)[/emote]

Jamespking: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=3o6pakoxb7cy3cd5">http://www.ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=3o6pakoxb7cy3cd5</a> Enjoy.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=45&start=350#p34379
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Introducing Ourselves
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-29 12:22:19

I was excited to hear about the Laibach soundtrack, although I still miss the old Laibach sound, when it sounded like 20 people pounding on really big drums...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=60#p34380
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-29 12:28:08

Just a note: it's easier to look at your code if you inline it with code tags, rather than attaching it as a file. If it's really long you can add spoiler tags outside the code tags.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=60#p34381
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-03-29 12:34:45

[quote="capmikee"]If it's really long you can add spoiler tags outside the code tags.[/quote]
To be frank, it's really annoying when people do that. The code viewport already has a certain maximum length after which scroll bars appear, so the spoiler tags just add an extra click. Or is it not so in the default theme? (I'm using the whatever the alternative theme is called.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4773&start=0#p34382
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Ben Franklin's Synonyms for "Drunk"
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2012-03-29 13:03:15

I found this video of "Ben Franklin" listing [url=http://history.icanhascheezburger.com/2012/03/23/funny-pictures-history-benjamin-franklins-synonyms-for-drunk/]220 synonyms for "drunk."[/url]  I think you'll enjoy.  I know I did.  Can we can come up with more than 220 IF synonyms for drunk?

Here are some I thought up...

1) "... > DROPPED ALL..."
2) "... lost his compass."
3) "... been eaten by the hoppy grue."
4) "... [his] lamp has run out."
5) "... speaking with the Gostak."
6) "... stuck at a yes/no prompt."
7) "... can't find his own inventory."
8) "... going south when he types north."
9) "... an amnesiac!"
10) "... including every extension."
11) "... playing Acid Whiplash."
12) "... as drunk as Progue."
13) "... prolific."
14) "... drinking his Rybread."
15) "... going plugh."
16) "... doesn't understand what you mean."
17) "... down to a two-word parser."
18) "... doesn't know his commands."
19) "... making up feelies."
20) "... halfway to a blue chair."
21) "... experimental."
22) "... beta-testing the barley."
23) "... ADRIFT."
24) "... in an unwinnable state."
25) "... a juicy description."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=60#p34383
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-29 13:10:07

I've never seen scroll bars in the code window in the main theme.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4773&start=0#p34384
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Ben Franklin's Synonyms for "Drunk"
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-29 13:10:25

[nitpicking git] "Synonym" is probably not the word we're looking for. [/nitpicking git]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=60#p34385
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-03-29 13:31:24

That's a shame, it's a really useful feature. Carry on then :)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4768&start=0#p34386
Forum: Other Development Systems / Subject: Re: Getting the Superglús toolchain to work
User: liftarn / DateTime: 2012-03-29 13:33:27

Looks like it works, but I get a few "AVISO: Se intentó escribir mensaje del sistema inexistente: 62" and time seem to pass too quickly when running the adventure with Gargoyle.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4770&start=10#p34387
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Anchorhead - rusty hatch
User: UnwashedMass / DateTime: 2012-03-29 14:05:46

[quote="maga"][quote]>CONTRACT LEFT QUADRICEPS, LEFT PSOAS MAJOR, LEFT GLUTEUS, LEFT TENSOR FASCIAE LATAE, LEFT RECTUS FEMORIS, LEFT VASTUS, LEFT GRACILIS, LEFT TIBIALIS

Which left gluteus do you mean, the left gluteus maximus, the left gluteus medius, or the left gluteus minimus?[/quote][/quote]

Sounds like you've got just about everything worked out you'd need for an IF implementation of QWOP!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4773&start=0#p34388
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Ben Franklin's Synonyms for "Drunk"
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-29 14:15:10

"railroaded."
"vorpling clams."
"completely mimetic."
"running a homebrew platform."
"channeling Bruces."
"in Pierre's maze."
"thirst-managing."
"earning the Banana."
"modeling liquids."
"reporting AAS bugs."
"has uneven pacing."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3144&start=0#p34389
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Testers sought for 'Spiral'
User: Kivie / DateTime: 2012-03-29 14:15:12

By the way, I've made some big changes and need another round of testing. I've only had one tester so far! Please volunteer!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4773&start=0#p34390
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Ben Franklin's Synonyms for "Drunk"
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-03-29 14:55:45

"His brain is in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike."

Ben Franklin was a cool guy.  I was always somewhat partial to his essay exhorting the reader to "Fart Proudly!"


Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=60#p34391
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: David J Prokopetz / DateTime: 2012-03-29 15:05:05

[quote="capmikee"]Just a note: it's easier to look at your code if you inline it with code tags, rather than attaching it as a file. If it's really long you can add spoiler tags outside the code tags.[/quote]
I'll keep that in mind in the future.

As an aside, a third approach to the whole "examining via" thing occurred to me. I could stick a check rule at the top of the relevant rulebook (check examining, check listening, etc.) that determines what the player's sensory connection to the noun is, and shoves that object in a global variable - call it that "vantage", say. Then one could write rules like "instead of examining the fountain while the vantage is the second-floor window", or "rule for printing the name of the intruder while the vantage is a security camera". That would cover both the instead/after and while cases with a relatively straightforward - albeit somewhat cumbersome - syntax.

The only problem is that you wouldn't be able to write vantage-based before rules, since before precedes check.

Hmm. Alternatively, a decide rule could be used to determine the vantage on the fly, but then I'm right back at potentially provoking a recursive scope check.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3144&start=0#p34392
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Testers sought for 'Spiral'
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-29 15:08:28

The IFComp is 6 months ahead. I think you have time [emote]:)[/emote]

Anyway: I volounteer. Send the game, non zipped, to minnocenti at kidstudio dot it

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3144&start=0#p34393
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Testers sought for 'Spiral'
User: climbingstars / DateTime: 2012-03-29 15:11:06

[quote="Jamespking"]The IFComp is 6 months ahead. I think you have time [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

I think they were referring to last year's competition (2011) given the date of the post.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3144&start=0#p34394
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Testers sought for 'Spiral'
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-29 15:17:27

[quote="climbingstars"][quote="Jamespking"]The IFComp is 6 months ahead. I think you have time [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]

I think they were referring to last year's competition (2011) given the date of the post.[/quote]
Yes, of course. [emote]:)[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3144&start=0#p34395
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Testers sought for 'Spiral'
User: Kivie / DateTime: 2012-03-29 15:31:37

Thank you! Yes, I wanted to enter it into IFComp '11 but I missed it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4770&start=10#p34396
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Anchorhead - rusty hatch
User: Merlin Fisher / DateTime: 2012-03-29 15:39:45

Getting back to Anchorhead: if you haven't figured it out yet, I believe you need to [spoiler]GET OIL while carrying the tin, and then PUT OIL ON HINGES.  If you don't get a gob of fishy oil on your finger first, the parser will assume you mean the tin, not the oil.[/spoiler]

Remember this for a later, somewhat tougher puzzle.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=60#p34397
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-29 16:05:22

[quote="David J Prokopetz"]3. Is there a decent guide available that explains the logic behind how the system determines how to display the contents of a room?[/quote]
There is Jeff Nyman's "Descriptions and Locale" at [url]http://zurlocker.typepad.com/files/nyman---inform7-locale.pdf[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=60#p34398
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: David J Prokopetz / DateTime: 2012-03-29 16:16:49

[quote="Felix"]There is Jeff Nyman's "Descriptions and Locale" at [url]http://zurlocker.typepad.com/files/nyman---inform7-locale.pdf[/url][/quote]
Wow - that's [b]very[/b] in-depth. Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4774&start=0#p34399
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Workbench and unicode
User: tomasb / DateTime: 2012-03-29 16:40:46

Workbench seems to prefer whatever character encoding is default in windows. But I'm unable to find any way to switch its embedded scintilla editor component to use unicode. Is it possible to switch editor into UTF-8? Thanks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4774&start=0#p34400
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Workbench and unicode
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-03-29 17:24:52

Putting this line at the top of the file should force Scintilla into UTF-8 mode, but doesn't:

[code]
#charset "utf-8" // coding: utf-8
[/code]

It works properly in SciTE, so it could be that the Scintilla DLL gets called in a way that disables wide char support.

EDIT: No, I'm wrong. It looks like that sequence is implemented by the SciTE application rather than the Scintilla library, so of course it wouldn't do anything in Workbench as it stands.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4704&start=0#p34401
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Patrollers" Extension Issue on Startup
User: Zork / DateTime: 2012-03-29 18:31:47

Thank you.  The error sub-tag code is:

[quote]C:\Program Files\Inform 7\Compilers\ni \
    -rules "C:\Program Files\Inform 7\Inform7\Extensions" -package "C:\Documents and Settings\Masked Man\My Documents\Inform\Projects\Baltizork.inform" -extension=z5
Inform 7 build 6G60 has started.
I've now read your source text, which is 1565 words long.
I've also read Standard Rules by Graham Nelson, which is 39455 words long.
I've also read Patrollers by Michael Callaghan, which is 8491 words long.
In Chapter 3 - Define rules move moving patrollers, Section 3.6 - Reporting
  movement rules in the extension Patrollers by Michael Callaghan:
  >--> In the sentence 'if the patrolling activity is not going on begin' (C:\Program
    Files\Inform 7\Inform7\Extensions\michael callaghan\patrollers.i7x, line 403),
    it looks as if you intend 'patrolling activity is not going on' to be a
    condition, but that would mean comparing two kinds of value which cannot
    mix - an activity on objects and a - so this must be incorrect.
    I was trying to match this phrase:
    if (patrolling activity is not going on - a condition): 
    This was what I found out:
    patrolling activity is not going on = a condition
Inform 7 has finished.

Compiler finished with code 1
[/quote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4703&start=0#p34402
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Start player with items in inventory
User: Zork / DateTime: 2012-03-29 18:35:11

Thank you all for the generous help.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4704&start=0#p34403
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Patrollers" Extension Issue on Startup
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-29 19:08:43

Patrollers compiles fine for me in the Windows IDE, and I don't see a syntax error in the offending line. Also, the error message from the compiler reads weirdly. My guess is that this is a compiler bug ... so the next question is, which OS are you using -- Windows, Mac, or Linux?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4773&start=0#p34404
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Ben Franklin's Synonyms for "Drunk"
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-29 19:26:02

If I'm drunk then I'm...

"...carrying three bucks and a quarter"
"...tipped out"
"...improvising Undumly"
"...stuck in Santaland"
"...pataphorical"
"...asking the devil about the inn"
"...missing a beet"
"...back on the ment"
"...among the figs"
"...in the realms of realmland"
"...blooming my engine"
"...activating commentary mode"
"...choosing the rat"
"...abandoned.a3c"
"...away with the piskeys"
"...a TAD It"
"...pushing the cliff"
"...block quoted"
"...hitting the piglet"
"...blissed out"
"...faintly achy"
"...shiny and posh"
"...a TAD Blind"
"...Myothian"
"...meta-puzzling"
"...stretching my eyeballs"
"...cursing the cubs"
"...pretty ASCII"
"...Whyld!"
"...looking for the Wizards' Nightclub"
"...mightily dreading awaking"
"...aboard the ship of whimsy"
"...Agent Bravo"
"...Amphibius Maximus"
"...zombified"
"...a TAD foggy"
"...lustering"
"...taking the tombstone"

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4704&start=0#p34405
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Patrollers" Extension Issue on Startup
User: Zork / DateTime: 2012-03-29 19:52:23

Thanks for the help.  I'm using Windows XP.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4704&start=0#p34406
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Patrollers" Extension Issue on Startup
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-29 19:59:53

I'm using Windows 7, but I have an old XP machine (I believe it's Service Pack 3) that I can try, if I have time. In the meantime, are there any other XP users out there who can check this?

Another suggestion that you might want to try: Try uninstalling and reinstalling Inform. It's vaguely possible (though not likely) that your install got corrupted somehow. Or, first, try re-downloading and reinstalling Patrollers, as that would take less time.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4704&start=0#p34407
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Patrollers" Extension Issue on Startup
User: eu / DateTime: 2012-03-29 20:00:42

It sounds like the poorly worded error message is due to some manifestation of [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=485]bug 485[/url], which in turn suggests that somewhere in the 1565 words you have altered the meaning of either or both of the words ``going'' or ``on''.  Is that the case?  And does it work for you if you just use Skinny Mike's source text?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4773&start=0#p34408
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Ben Franklin's Synonyms for "Drunk"
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-29 20:07:31

"halting in abject failure"

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=60#p34409
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-03-29 20:31:29

[quote="David J Prokopetz"]The only problem is that you wouldn't be able to write vantage-based before rules, since before precedes check.[/quote]
What about a set of "First before" rules? Then the user could employ both "before" and "check" rules.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4709&start=0#p34410
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-29 20:56:23

[quote="WillieBHines"]I've made progress but I barely understand how I've done it.[/quote]

That's a pretty good metric for deciding if a game has really earned a "surreal" tag [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4773&start=0#p34411
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Ben Franklin's Synonyms for "Drunk"
User: adam / DateTime: 2012-03-29 21:06:54

Channeling Bruces?

I have no idea what you're saying, sir.  None whatsoever.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=60#p34412
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: David J Prokopetz / DateTime: 2012-03-29 21:50:04

[quote="ektemple"]What about a set of "First before" rules? Then the user could employ both "before" and "check" rules.[/quote]I actually didn't know about "first before" rules.

Okay - here's a revised version trying it that way:

[spoiler][code]"Sensory Connections" by David J Prokopetz

Include Scope Caching by Mike Ciul.
Include Deluxe Doors by Emily Short.

Section 1 - Basic Sensory Properties

Visual adjacency relates various rooms to each other. The verb to be visually adjacent to implies the visual adjacency relation.
Aural adjacency relates various rooms to each other. The verb to be aurally adjacent to implies the aural adjacency relation.

Visual occlusion relates various things to each other. The verb to be visually occluded from implies the visual occlusion relation.
Aural occlusion relates various things to each other. The verb to be aurally occluded from implies the aural occlusion relation.

Audibility relates a thing (called the listener) to a thing (called the subject) when the listener can hear the subject. The verb to be able to hear (he is heard) implies the audibility relation.

A thing has a text called a sound.
A thing has a text called an aural description.
A thing has a text called an ambient aural description.
A thing can be silent, quiet or noisy (this is the noisiness property). A thing is usually quiet.

A room has a text called a sound.
A room has a text called an aural description.
A room can be silent, quiet, or noisy (this is the noisiness property). A room is usually quiet.

A container can be soundproof. A container is usually not soundproof.

A thing can be audible only.

The vantage is an object that varies.

Section 2 - Sensory Adjacency

The sensory dummy is a thing.

After deciding the scope of a person (called the viewer):
	if the viewer is not enclosed by a closed opaque container:
		repeat with the locale running through rooms which are visually adjacent to the location of the viewer:
			if the locale is not dark:
				now the sensory dummy is in the locale;			
				repeat with the item running through things enclosed by the locale:
					if the item is not the sensory dummy and the sensory dummy can see the item:
						place the item in scope, but not its contents;
						mark the visibility of the item;
				remove the sensory dummy from play;
			
Section 3 - Doors  As Viewports

A door can be visually transparent, visually opaque when closed, or always visually opaque. A door is usually visually opaque when closed.
A door can be aurally transparent, aurally opaque when closed, or always aurally opaque. A door is usually aurally opaque when closed.

Definition: a door is visually open rather than visually closed if it can be seen through.
To decide whether (the portal - a door) can be seen through:
	if the portal is visually transparent or (the portal is open and the portal is not always visually opaque):
		decide yes;
	otherwise:
		decide no;
		
Definition: a door is aurally open rather than aurally closed if it can be heard through:
To decide whether (the portal - a door) can be heard through:
	if the portal is aurally transparent or (the portal is open and the portal is not always aurally opaque):
		decide yes;
	otherwise:
		decide no;

To decide what object is a viewport between (A - a room) and (B - a room):
	repeat with the portal running through visually open doors enclosed by A:
		if the reverse side of the portal is enclosed by B:
			decide on the portal;
	decide on nothing;

To decide what object is an aural viewport between (A - a room) and (B - a room):
	repeat with the portal running through aurally open doors enclosed by A:
		if the reverse side of the portal is enclosed by B:
			decide on the portal;
	decide on nothing;

To decide what object is a sight-only viewport between (A - a room) and (B - a room):
	repeat with the portal running through visually open aurally closed doors enclosed by A:
		if the reverse side of the portal is enclosed by B:
			decide on the portal;
	decide on nothing;
		
After deciding the scope of a person (called the viewer):
	repeat with the portal running through doors enclosed by the location of the viewer:
		if the portal is visually open and the portal is marked visible and the reverse side of the portal is not nothing:
			let the next room be the location of reverse side of the portal;
			if the next room is not dark:
				repeat with the item running through things enclosed by the next room:
					if the item is not the reverse side of the portal and the reverse side of the portal can see the item and the item is not visually occluded from the portal and the item is not visually occluded from the reverse side of the portal:
						place the item in scope, but not its contents;
						mark the visibility of the item;				
		
Section 4 - Transmitters and Receivers

A thing can be sight-transmitting. A thing is usually not sight-transmitting.
A thing can be sound-transmitting. A thing is usually not sound-transmitting.

A thing can be sight-receiving. A thing is usually not sight-receiving.
A thing can be sound-receiving. A thing is usually not sound-receiving.

Sensor linkage relates one thing to another (called the counterpart). The verb to be sense-linked to implies the sensor linkage relation. The verb to be sense-linked with implies the sensor linkage relation.

To decide what object is a visual link between (the viewer - a thing) and (the subject - an object):
	let the cameras be a list of things;
	if the subject is a room:
		repeat with the camera running through sight-transmitting things enclosed by the subject:
			if the camera is not enclosed by a closed opaque container:
				add the camera to the cameras;
	otherwise:
		repeat with the camera running through sight-transmitting things enclosed by the location of the subject:
			if the camera can see the subject:
				add the camera to the cameras;
	repeat with the camera running through the cameras:
		if the viewer can see the counterpart of the camera and the counterpart of the camera is sight-receiving:
			decide on the the camera;
	decide on nothing;
	
To decide what object is an aural link between (the listener - a thing) and (the subject - an object):
	let the microphones be a list of things;
	if the subject is a room:
		repeat with the microphone running through sound-transmitting things enclosed by the subject:
			if the microphone is not enclosed by a closed soundproof container:
				add the microphone to the microphones;
	otherwise:
		repeat with the microphone running through sound-transmitting things enclosed by the location of the subject:
			if the microphone can hear the subject:
				add the microphone to the microphones;
	repeat with the microphone running through the microphones:
		if the listener can hear the counterpart of the microphone and the counterpart of the microphone is sound-receiving:
			decide on the microphone;
	decide on nothing;

To decide what object is the visual-only link between (the viewer - a thing) and (the subject - an object):
	let the cameras be a list of things;
	if the subject is a room:
		repeat with the camera running through sight-transmitting things enclosed by the subject:
			if the camera is not enclosed by a closed opaque container:
				add the camera to the cameras;
	otherwise:
		repeat with the camera running through sight-transmitting things enclosed by the location of the subject:
			if the camera can see the subject:
				add the camera to the cameras;
	repeat with the camera running through the cameras:
		if the viewer can see the counterpart of the camera and the counterpart of the camera is sight-receiving and (the camera is not sound-transmitting or the counterpart of the camera is not sound-receiving):
			decide on the camera;
	decide on nothing;

After deciding the scope of a person (called the viewer):
	repeat with the screen running through sight-receiving things enclosed by the location of the viewer:
		if the screen is marked visible and the counterpart of the screen  is not nothing and the counterpart of the screen is sight-transmitting:
			let the camera be the counterpart of the screen;
			if the location of the camera is not dark:
				repeat with the item running through things enclosed by the location of the camera:
					if the item is not the camera and the camera can see the item and the item is not visually occluded from the camera and the item is not visually occluded from the screen:
						place the item in scope, but not its contents;
						mark the visibility of the item;

Section 5 - Remotely Examining

First before examining (this is the determine the vantage before examining rule):
	if noun is not a direction and (the location of the noun is not the location of the player or the noun is enclosed by a closed opaque container which does not enclose the player):
		let the camera be a visual link between the player and the noun;
		if the camera is not nothing:
			now the vantage is the camera;
		otherwise:
			let the viewport be a viewport between the location and the location of the noun;
			if the viewport is not nothing:
				now the vantage is the viewport;
			otherwise if the location of the player is visually adjacent to the location of the noun:
				now the vantage is the location of the player;
	otherwise:
		now the vantage is nothing;
	continue the action;
	
Before examining (this is the announce the vantage while examining rule):
	if the vantage is sight-transmitting:
		say "(via [the counterpart of the vantage])";
	otherwise if the vantage is a door:
		say "(beyond [the reverse side of the vantage])";
	otherwise if the vantage is a room:
		let the heading be the best route from the vantage to the location of the noun, using even locked doors;
		say "(to [the heading])";
	
Section 6 - Remotely Viewing Rooms

Viewing is an action applying to one visible thing.

Check viewing:
	if the noun is not a room:
		stop the action;
		
Carry out viewing (this is the standard viewing rule):
	if the vantage is sight-transmitting:
		say "Via [the counterpart of the vantage], you can see [the noun].";	
	otherwise if the vantage is a door:
		say "Beyond [the vantage], you can see [the noun].";
	otherwise:
		let the heading be the best route from the vantage to the noun;
		say "To [the heading], you see [the noun].";
	[print a description or list visible contents here?]


Section 7 - Examining Directions, Viewports, and Sensory Connectors

The connection-aware examine directions rule is listed instead of the examine directions rule in the carry out examining rulebook.
Carry out examining (this is the connection-aware examine directions rule):
	if the noun is a direction:
		let the next room be the room noun of the location;
		if the next room is not nothing:
			let the viewport be a viewport between the location and the next room;
			if the viewport is not nothing:
				now the vantage is the viewport;
			otherwise:
				now the vantage is the location;
			try viewing the next room;
			now examine text printed is true;
		otherwise:
			abide by the examine directions rule;
	otherwise:
		abide by the examine directions rule;
		
The examine doors rule is listed before the examine undescribed things rule in the carry out examining rulebook.
Carry out examining (this is the examine doors rule):
	if the noun is a door and the noun is visually open and the reverse side of the noun is not nothing:
		now the vantage is the noun;
		try viewing the location of the reverse side of the noun;
		now examine text printed is true;
		
The examine visual connectors rule is listed before the examine undescribed things rule in the carry out examining rulebook.
Carry out examining (this is the examine visual connectors rule):
	if the noun is sight-receiving and the counterpart of the noun is sight-transmitting:
		now the vantage is the counterpart of the noun;
		try viewing the location of the counterpart of the noun;
		now examine text printed is true;			

Section 8 - Audibility

To decide whether (the listener - a thing) can hear (the subject - a thing):
	if the subject is silent:
		decide no;
	if the location of the subject is nothing:
		decide no;
	if the listener is the subject:
		decide yes;
	repeat with the microphone running through sound-transmitting things enclosed by the location of the subject:
		if the microphone is not the listener and the microphone is not the subject: [prevent feedback loops]
			if the microphone can hear the subject and the subject is not aurally occluded from the microphone and the counterpart of the microphone is not nothing and the counterpart of the microphone is sound-receiving and the subject is not aurally occluded from the counterpart of the microphone and the location of the listener is the location of the counterpart of the microphone and the listener can hear the counterpart of the microphone:
				decide yes;
	repeat with the portal running through aurally open doors in the location of the subject:
		if the portal is not the listener and the portal is not the subject: [prevent feedback loops]
			if the portal can hear the subject and the subject is not aurally occluded from the portal and the reverse side of the portal is not nothing and the subject is not aurally occluded from the reverse side of the portal and the location of the listener is the location of the reverse side of the portal and the listener can hear the reverse side of the portal:
				decide yes;
	if the location of the listener is the location of the subject:
		if a closed soundproof container that encloses the listener does not enclose the subject:
			decide no;
		otherwise if a closed soundproof container that encloses the subject does not enclose the listener:
			decide no;
		otherwise:
			decide yes;
	otherwise if the location of the listener is aurally adjacent to the location of the subject:
		if a closed soundproof container encloses the listener or a closed soundproof container encloses the subject:
			decide no;
		otherwise:
			decide yes;
	otherwise:
		decide no;
		
Definition: Something is audible rather than inaudible if the player can hear it.

[Sometimes we need to know why a given listener can't hear something.]
To decide what object is the nearest aural barrier between (the listener - a thing) and (the subject - a thing):
	let the first candidate be a random soundproof container that encloses the listener which does not enclose the subject;
	if the first candidate is not nothing, decide on the first candidate;
	let the second candidate be a sight-only viewport between the location of the listener and the location of the subject;
	if the second candidate is not nothing, decide on the second candidate;
	let the third candidate be a random soundproof container that encloses the subject;
	if the third candidate is not nothing, decide on the third candidate;
	decide on nothing;

[This allows the player to listen to things they can only hear.]

Before listening (this is the reset audibility flags before listening rule):
	now everything is not audible only;
	cache the scope for the player;

After deciding the scope of the player while listening:
	repeat with the noisemaker running through noisy audible things:
		if the noisemaker is not marked visible:
			now the noisemaker is audible only;
		place the noisemaker in scope, but not its contents;
		
Section 10 - Listening

Check listening to (this is the must be able to hear in order to listen rule):
	if the noun is a room:
		continue the action;
	otherwise:
		if the actor can hear the noun:
			continue the action;
		otherwise:
			let the display be the visual-only link between the actor and the noun;
			if the display is not nothing and the player cannot see the counterpart of the display:
				say "(via [the display])[line break]You can't hear anything via [the display].";
				rule fails;
			otherwise:
				let the barrier be the nearest aural barrier between the actor and the noun;
				if the barrier is not nothing:
					say "(through [the barrier])[line break]You can't hear anything through [the barrier].";
				otherwise:
					say "You can't hear [the noun] from here.";
				rule fails;

The listening to action has a truth state called listen to text printed.

Carry out listening to (this is the standard listening to rule):
	if the noun provides the property aural description and the aural description of the noun is not "":
		say "[the aural description of the noun][line break]";
		now listen to text printed is true.
		
Carry out listening to (this is the print local sounds when listening to rooms rule):
	if the noun is a room:
		repeat with the noisemaker running through audible things enclosed by the noun:
			if the noisemaker provides the property ambient aural description and the ambient aural description of the noisemaker is not "":
				say "[the ambient aural description of the noisemaker][line break]";
				now the listen to text printed is true;
			otherwise if the noisemaker provides the property sound and the sound of the noisemaker is not "":
				if the noisemaker is not audible only:
					say "From [the noisemaker], you hear [the sound of the noisemaker].";
				otherwise:
					if a visible closed opaque container (called the enclosure) encloses the noisemaker:
						say "From [the enclosure], you hear [the sound of the noisemaker].";						
					otherwise:
						say "From somewhere close by, you hear [the sound of the noisemaker].";
				now the listen to text printed is true;
				
Carry out listening to (this is the print noisy sounds via aurally open doors when listening to rooms rule):
	if the noun is a room:
		let the noises be a list of texts;
		repeat with the portal running through audible aurally open doors enclosed by the noun:
			if the reverse side of the portal is not nothing:
				let the noises be {};
				repeat with the noisemaker running through noisy audible things enclosed by the location of the reverse side of the portal:
					if the noisemaker provides the property sound and the sound of the noisemaker is not "":
						add the sound of the noisemaker to the noises;
				if the noises is not empty:
					say "Beyond [the portal], you hear [the noises].";
					now the listen to text printed is true;
					
Carry out listening to (this is the print noisy sounds in aurally adjacent rooms when listening to rooms rule):
	if the noun is a room:
		let the noises be a list of texts;
		repeat with the next room running through rooms which are aurally adjacent to the noun:
			let the noises be {};
			repeat with the noisemaker running through noisy audible things enclosed by the next room:
				if the noisemaker provides the property sound and the sound of the noisemaker is not "":
					add the sound of the noisemaker to the noises;
			if the noises is not empty:
				let the heading be the best route from the noun to the next room;
				say "To [the heading], you hear [the noises].";
				now the listen to text printed is true;

Carry out listening to (this is the listen to aurally undescribed things rule):
	if the listen to text printed is false:
		issue library message listening to action number 1 for the noun.		
		
Section 11 - Remotely Listening

First before listening (this is the determine the vantage before listening rule):
	if noun is not a direction and (the location of the noun is not the location of the player or the noun is enclosed by a closed soundproof container which does not enclose the player):
		let the microphone be an aural link between the player and the noun;
		if the microphone is not nothing:
			now the vantage is the microphone;
		otherwise:
			let the viewport be an aural viewport between the location and the location of the noun;
			if the viewport is not nothing:
				now the vantage is the viewport;
			otherwise if the location of the player is aurally adjacent to the location of the noun:
				now the vantage is the location of the player;
	otherwise:
		now the vantage is nothing;
	continue the action;
	
Before listening to (this is the announce the vantage before listening to rule):
	if the vantage is sound-transmitting:
		say "(via [the counterpart of the vantage])";
	otherwise if the vantage is a door:
		say "(beyond [the reverse side of the vantage])";
	otherwise if the vantage is a room:
		let the heading be the best route from the vantage to the location of the noun, using even locked doors;
		say "(to [the heading])";

Section 14 - Speaking and Conversing

Check asking about (this is the must be able to converse when asking about rule):
	if the the actor can address the noun and the noun can respond to the actor:
		continue the action;
	otherwise:
		rule fails;		

Check telling about (this is the must be able to converse when telling about rule):
	if the actor can address the noun and the noun can respond to the actor:
		continue the action;
	otherwise:
		rule fails;
		
Check showing to (this is the must be able to see and respond to show rule):
	if the second noun can see the noun:
		if the the second noun can respond to the actor:
			continue the action;
		otherwise:
			rule fails;
	otherwise:
		say "It's no good showing anything - [the second noun] can't see you from here.";
		rule fails;
		
Before asking someone to try doing anything (this is the must be able to hear to accept requests rule):
	if the player can address the person asked:
		continue the action;
	otherwise: 
		rule fails;

To decide whether (the querent - a thing) can address (the listener - a thing):
	if the listener cannot hear the querent:
		let the barrier be the nearest aural barrier between the querent and the listener;
		if the barrier is not nothing:
			say "[The listener] can't hear [the querent] through [the barrier].";
		otherwise:
			say "[The listener] can't hear [the querent] from here.";		
		decide no;
	decide yes;

To decide whether (the respondent - a thing) can respond to (the listener - a thing):
	if the listener cannot hear the respondent:
		let the barrier be the nearest aural barrier between the listener and the respondent;
		if the barrier is not nothing:
			say "[The listener] can't hear [the respondent]'s response through [the barrier].";
		otherwise:
			say "[The listener] can't hear [the respondent]'s response from here.";		
		decide no;
	decide yes;	

Section 13 - Modified Reaching Rules For Listening, Speaking and Conversing

Listening to is hearing.

Answering is speaking.
Asking is speaking.

Asking about is conversing.
Telling about is conversing.

The block listening rule is not listed in any rulebook.
The block showing rule is not listed in any rulebook.

The sense-aware can't reach inside closed containers rule is listed instead of the can't reach inside closed containers rule in the reaching inside rules.
This is the sense-aware can't reach inside closed containers rule:
	if conversing:
		if the person reaching can hear the noun and the noun can hear the person reaching:
			allow access;
	otherwise if hearing:
		if the person reaching can hear the noun:
			allow access;
	otherwise if speaking:
		if the person reaching can hear the player:
			allow access;
	otherwise:
		abide by the can't reach inside closed containers rule;

The sense-aware can't reach inside rooms rule is listed instead of the can't reach inside rooms rule in the reaching inside rules.
This is the sense-aware can't reach inside rooms rule:
	if conversing:
		if the person reaching can hear the noun and the noun can hear the person reaching:
			allow access;
	otherwise if hearing:
		if the person reaching can hear the noun:
			allow access;
	otherwise if speaking:
		if the noun can hear the person reaching:
			allow access;
	otherwise:
		abide by the can't reach inside rooms rule;		

Section 14 - Misc

[Make sure NPCs can see and hear via sensory connections as well.]
Before a person (called the viewer) trying doing something: cache scope for the viewer.

Section 99 - Sample Scenario

The Main Hallway is a room. "A hallway with well-worn red carpets. A creaky staircase leads up to the attic. The kitchen is to the west."

The rusty key is a thing in the Main Hallway.

The lower creaky staircase is open, unopenable, always visually opaque scenery door. The lower creaky staircase is up from the Main Hallway. Through the lower creaky staircase is the Musty Attic. Understand "attic" and "stairs" as the lower creaky staircase. The printed name of the lower creaky staircase is "creaky staircase".

The upper creaky staircase is an open, unopenable, always visually opaque scenery door. The upper creaky staircase is down from the Musty Attic. Through the upper creaky staircase is the Main Hallway. Understand "hallway" and "stairs" as the upper creaky staircase. The printed name of the upper creaky staircase is "creaky staircase".

The upper creaky staircase is a half-door of the lower creaky staircase.

The Musty Attic is a room. "This attic has likely never been cleaned. A thick layer of dust and cobwebs coats everything you can see. A creaky staircase leads back down to the main hallway."

The cardboard box is a closed openable container in the Musty Attic.

The antique music box is a noisy thing in the cardboard box. The sound of the antique music box is "soft, ethereal music". The aural description of the antique music box is "Soft, haunting music [if audible only]fills the air[otherwise]issues from the box's inner workings[end if]." Understand "ethereal" as the music box.

The upper trap door is a closed locked scenery door. The upper trap door is down from the Main Hallway. Through the upper trap door is the Hidden Laboratory. Understand "trapdoor" as the upper trap door. The printed name of the upper trap door is "trap door". The rusty key unlocks the upper trap door.

The lower trap door is a closed locked scenery door. The lower trap door is up from the Hidden Laboratory. Through the lower trap door is the Main Hallway. Understand "trapdoor" as the lower trap door. The printed name of the lower trap door is "trap door". The rusty key unlocks the lower trap door.

The Hidden Laboratory is a room. "Strange apparati line every wall. The glass-walled, soundproof testing chamber stands in the middle of the room, along with its current occupants: Subject 42 and his favourite weighted cube. An intercom panel adorns one wall, with a wire running to a matching speaker in the test chamber."

The soundproof glass testing chamber is a closed unopenable enterable transparent soundproof scenery container in the Hidden Laboratory. Understand "glass-walled" as the soundproof glass testing chamber.

Subject 42 is a person. Subject 42 is in the soundproof glass testing chamber. Persuasion rule for asking Subject 42 to try doing something: persuasion succeeds.

The weighted cube is a portable enterable supporter in the soundproof glass testing chamber.

The intercom speaker is a scenery sound-receiving thing in the soundproof glass testing chamber.

The intercom panel is a scenery device in the Hidden Laboratory.
Carry out switching on the intercom panel: now the intercom panel is sound-transmitting.
Carry out switching off the intercom panel: now the intercom panel is not sound-transmitting.

The intercom speaker is sense-linked to the intercom panel.

The Kitchen is a room. "Sometimes food is prepared here. A tasteless clock shaped like a cartoon cat hangs on the wall, ticking loudly. The main hallway is to the east, and a screen door looking out on the yard is to the west." The Kitchen is west of the Main Hallway. The Kitchen is visually adjacent to the Main Hallway. The Kitchen is aurally adjacent to the Main Hallway. Instead of viewing the Kitchen while the vantage is the Main Hallway, say "The west end of the hallway opens up into your small, cramped kitchen. You can see your pereptually empty refrigerator from here."

The tasteless clock is a noisy scenery thing in the Kitchen. The sound of the tasteless clock is "loud ticking".

The refrigerator is a fixed in place closed container in the Kitchen. Understand "fridge" as the refrigerator.

The interior screen door is a closed, openable, visually transparent, aurally transparent scenery door. The interior screen door is west of the Kitchen. Through the interior screen door is the Back Yard. The printed name of the interior screen door is "screen door".

The exterior screen door is a closed, openable, visually transparent, aurally transparent scenery door. The exterior screen door is east of the Back Yard. Through the exterior screen door is the Kitchen. The printed name of the exterior screen door is "screen door".

The exterior screen door is a half-door of the interior screen door.

The Back Yard is a room. "Your lawn is perpetually in need of mowing."

Rule for printing the name of the Back Yard while viewing:
	say "your perennially unmowed back yard";

The red ball is a thing in the Back Yard.

The player is in the Main Hallway.

The portable camera is a sight-transmitting thing. The portable screen is a sight-receiving thing. The portable camera is sense-linked to the portable screen. The portable camera and the portable screen are carried by the player.

Instead of examining while the vantage is the portable camera, say "The resolution is too low to make out any details of [the noun]."[/code][/spoiler]
(Do people actually find it easier when code is inlined like this? Personally, I find it inconvenient, since the forum software converts tabs to spaces and they have to be converted back in order to actually run anything.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4775&start=0#p34413
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: The Crafte or Atomes Development Questions
User: Pentigan / DateTime: 2012-03-29 21:51:56

I am developing an IF game for a major school project. In the development of the game I have run into several issues. I am creating this topic so I can seek help on them.

Problem the First:

I am trying to get a device to give two different text outputs when it contains two different items and another if it's empty.
This is my current code for the device (with a few substitutions of names and results):
[code]Every turn when the location of the player is the location of the Cassette Player: 
	if the Cassette Player contains the White Cassette Tape:
		say "White Tape output."; 
	else:
		if the Cassette Player contains the Green Cassette Tape:
			say "Green Tape output.";
		otherwise:
			say "Empty output." .[/code]
The Cassette player has a capacity of 1 so having both tapes in is not a problem.

Is there something simple I'm overlooking?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4773&start=0#p34414
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Ben Franklin's Synonyms for "Drunk"
User: bowsmand / DateTime: 2012-03-29 21:57:49

Peter, yes, I suppose we are looking for euphemisms rather than synonyms.

HAHA!  These are great.  I think my favorites are some of Sam's, though... especially the double-entendre of "running a homebrew platform."

Franklin was a cool guy, yeah.  Also a vegetarian!

Joey, ha... sounds like you might have done a lot of drinking during last year's IFComp?

Ooh, how about...

"... licking the moon?"

... dang it, now everything I hear sounds like a "drunk" euphemism...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4775&start=0#p34415
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The Crafte or Atomes Development Questions
User: David J Prokopetz / DateTime: 2012-03-29 21:58:36

Depends on what you mean by "text output". If you mean the description you get when you examine the cassette player, you'd just do something like this:

[code]The description of the cassette player is "[if the cassette player contains the white cassette tape]foo[otherwise if the cassette player contains the green cassette tape]bar[otherwise]bluh[end if]."[/code]

If you're talking more like an ambient sound that you want to play whenever the player can hear the cassette tape, the code you've got should work, but the syntax would be more like this:

[code]Every turn while the cassette player is visible:
	if the Cassette Player contains the White Cassette Tape:
		say "White Tape output.";
	otherwise if the Cassette Player contains the Green Cassette Tape:
		say "Green Tape output.";
	otherwise:
		say "Empty output."[/code]

However, to be really thorough, I'd do something like this:

[code]A recording medium is a kind of thing. A recording medium has a text called a recorded message.

The white cassette tape is a recording medium. It is in the starting room. The recorded message of the white cassette tape is "This is the white tape's recorded message."
 
The green cassette tape is a recording medium. It is in the starting room.

The Starting Room is a room.
 
The cassette player is an openable container in the starting room. The carrying capacity of the cassette player is 1.
 
Check inserting into the cassette player:
	if the noun is not a recording medium:
		say "That doesn't fit.";
		stop the action.
	
Every turn while the cassette player is visible:
	if the cassette player contains a recording medium (called the tape):
		if the recorded message of the tape is not "":
			say the recorded message of the tape;
		otherwise:
			say "You hear only a hiss of static."[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4775&start=0#p34416
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: The Crafte or Atomes Development Questions
User: Pentigan / DateTime: 2012-03-29 22:08:14

Thank you.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=60#p34417
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-29 22:10:50

[quote="David J Prokopetz"]
(Do people actually find it easier when code is inlined like this? Personally, I find it inconvenient, since the forum software converts tabs to spaces and they have to be converted back in order to actually run anything.)[/quote]

There's a hack; reply to the post to which you're responding and copy the quoted code out of the message body box. Then tab stops will be preserved. 

On the "First before:" question; does it make sense to write a new rulebook that runs before the Before rules? I haven't done anything with new rulebooks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=70#p34420
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Healy / DateTime: 2012-03-29 22:28:34

Hey, could one of you guys add download links for [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=9chg1cyv3xssz0ae]My Evil Twin's page?[/url] I couldn't input anything into the link fields for some strange reason. And on that note, what's the big hold-up on getting all these games on the IFDB anyway? The album's been out for a week, but as far as I could tell, only about 9 or 10 games were on the IFDB.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=80#p34422
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-29 22:43:46

[quote="Healy"][...] what's the big hold-up on getting all these games on the IFDB anyway? The album's been out for a week, but as far as I could tell, only about 9 or 10 games were on the IFDB.[/quote]

I've been wondering that, myself. I guess some of the authors just aren't IFDB users/enthusiasts? I'm a junkie for it, myself.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=70#p34423
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-03-29 22:49:53

[quote="matt w"]On the "First before:" question; does it make sense to write a new rulebook that runs before the Before rules? I haven't done anything with new rulebooks.[/quote]
"First before" is not a new rulebook. You can add "first" to any rule, and that will guarantee that it comes before any rule in the rulebook that doesn't begin with "first" ("last" functions similarly). For example, the compiler will automatically order these four rules like so, whatever order they appear in your source:

1. First before taking the butter
2. First before taking something
3. Before taking the butter
4. Before taking something

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=80#p34424
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Healy / DateTime: 2012-03-29 23:13:12

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="Healy"][...] what's the big hold-up on getting all these games on the IFDB anyway? The album's been out for a week, but as far as I could tell, only about 9 or 10 games were on the IFDB.[/quote]

I've been wondering that, myself. I guess some of the authors just aren't IFDB users/enthusiasts? I'm a junkie for it, myself.[/quote]
Then why don't you add more games? If we added games from the album at the rate of one or two a day... well, it'd take about a month, but at least they'd all be there.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=80#p34425
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-29 23:23:11

I've been adding 'em as I play 'em. But don't let that stop you.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4773&start=0#p34426
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Ben Franklin's Synonyms for "Drunk"
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-29 23:40:51

"prioritising accessibility",
"counting leaves",
"humping the wuntus",
"passing senses",
"exceeding memory limits",
"applying to nothing",
"combinatorial",
"Flatheaded",
"in his doshes",
"reverse-linked to Jack",

...actually, if you play with euphemisms for long enough, they all end up heading in the direction of sex, masturbation or vomiting. I don't really want to know what 'caging the plover' might involve.

Wasn't vegetarianism just one of Franklin's many phases? Like, one of his very youthful ones when he was all intense and serious and worryingly skinny? (In other news, I ever come into possession of a hogshead I'm totally making his spruce beer recipe.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4797&start=0#p34448
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Getting a thing from another thing
User: Zork / DateTime: 2012-03-30 00:47:17

In my example below, I have a magazine, and when the player tries to take it, a coupon falls out.  The idea is that once the coupon appears it appears in his inventory.  My code doesn't quite work (probably the last line).  Any suggestions?

[code]A round table is a supporter in Apartment.  On the table is a magazine.
Instead of taking magazine: say "As you grab the magazine, something slides out from between the pages...a coupon for 1 Free Pit Beef Sandwich at Chaps!  You swipe it.".
Now the player carries a Chaps Free Pit Beef Sandwich Coupon.[/code]

Thanks in advance  [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=80#p34449
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-30 02:05:13

[quote="Healy"]Then why don't you add more games? [/quote]

My apologies, most abjectly, if my existing rate of volunteer contribution to the IFDB is less than that to which you are entitled.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4798&start=0#p34450
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Matching with "[sometext]" and definite article
User: janoshon / DateTime: 2012-03-30 02:45:12

Hi

I'm having a small problem with matching strings with ask/tell types of situations. I have a conversation topics set up thusly:

[code]
Understand "dog/hound/mutt" as "[dog]".

After asking the man about "[dog]":
       say "A fine hound, that.".
[/code]

The problem I'm having is the article "the". I can't seem to figure out how to make both "ask man about dog" and "ask man about the dog" match. I've tried matching the string "the" and cutting it in ask/tell situations, but apparently I haven't had the command right.

Any help here? And yes, I'm aware of Eric Eve's great conversation extensions, but this is a largish conversation tree I don't have the time to convert to using them at this point :)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4797&start=0#p34451
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting a thing from another thing
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-30 03:55:24

The last line (the now-phrase) is not inside any rule, and phrases always have to be inside a rule to do their job.
Change the full stop after the output text to a semi-colon, and declare the coupon, and it'll work as expected.
[code]A Chaps Free Pit Beef Sandwich Coupon is thing.
A round table is a supporter in Apartment.  On the table is a magazine.
Instead of taking magazine:
	say "As you grab the magazine, something slides out from between the pages...a coupon for 1 Free Pit Beef Sandwich at Chaps!  You swipe it.";
	now the player carries a Chaps Free Pit Beef Sandwich Coupon.
[/code]
(As it stands Inform takes the last line for an assertion: it creates a person called "Now the player" (!), who carries a thing called "Chaps Free Pit Beef Sandwich Coupon"; they're both off stage.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4798&start=0#p34452
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Matching with "[sometext]" and definite article
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-30 04:19:20

I suppose the safe but tedious way would be this:
[code]Understand "dog/hound/mutt" or "the dog/hound/mutt" as "[dog]".
Understand "cat/kitten/pussycat" or "the cat/kitten/pussycat" as "[cat]".[/code] etc.
Or while you're at it:
[code]Understand "a/an/the/some/my/his/her/its/their/this/that/these/those" as "[the]".
Understand "dog/hound/mutt" or "[the] dog/hound/mutt" as "[dog]".
Understand "cat/kitten/pussycat" or "[the] cat/kitten/pussycat" as "[cat]".[/code] etc.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4798&start=0#p34453
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Matching with "[sometext]" and definite article
User: janoshon / DateTime: 2012-03-30 04:34:39

Yep, oh dear - I hoped there was some easier way that I had just overlooked.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=70#p34454
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-30 05:32:53

[quote="David J Prokopetz"][quote="capmikee"]Just a note: it's easier to look at your code if you inline it with code tags, rather than attaching it as a file. If it's really long you can add spoiler tags outside the code tags.[/quote]
I'll keep that in mind in the future.

As an aside, a third approach to the whole "examining via" thing occurred to me. I could stick a check rule at the top of the relevant rulebook (check examining, check listening, etc.) that determines what the player's sensory connection to the noun is, and shoves that object in a global variable - call it that "vantage", say. Then one could write rules like "instead of examining the fountain while the vantage is the second-floor window", or "rule for printing the name of the intruder while the vantage is a security camera". That would cover both the instead/after and while cases with a relatively straightforward - albeit somewhat cumbersome - syntax.

The only problem is that you wouldn't be able to write vantage-based before rules, since before precedes check.

Hmm. Alternatively, a decide rule could be used to determine the vantage on the fly, but then I'm right back at potentially provoking a recursive scope check.[/quote]
Rather than making this a global variable, it might be best to make this an action variable, set using a Setting Action Variables for <verb>ing phrase. See WI 12.10. [quote="WI 12.10"]The "setting action variables" rulebook is run through before even the before rules [/quote] That way you can set the Medium Examined Through, the Medium Listened Through, etc. variables. This would have the benefit of not overwriting that global variable in the middle of a complex calculation involving both visibility and audibility, for example.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=80#p34455
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-03-30 06:07:24

Maybe some of us are just not 'enter-games-into-public-databases' type of people. I'd probably only force myself to create my own game entry if there were an undeniable benefit I could perceive. And I guess I'm not much of an archivist, because it doesn't really bother me that the IFDB might be 'incomplete' by failing to cover every work of parsed IF no matter how small.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4797&start=0#p34456
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting a thing from another thing
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-30 06:49:18

If you use an Instead phrase rather than After, the player won't ever be able to take the magazine. And since you probably don't want to make that a magical coupon-relocating machine, you should change the line to [code]After taking the magazine for the first time:[/code] so that it never fires more than once.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=70#p34457
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-30 07:37:59

[quote="ektemple"][quote="matt w"]On the "First before:" question; does it make sense to write a new rulebook that runs before the Before rules? I haven't done anything with new rulebooks.[/quote]
"First before" is not a new rulebook. You can add "first" to any rule, and that will guarantee that it comes before any rule in the rulebook that doesn't begin with "first" ("last" functions similarly). For example, the compiler will automatically order these four rules like so, whatever order they appear in your source:

1. First before taking the butter
2. First before taking something
3. Before taking the butter
4. Before taking something[/quote]

That's what I get for commenting when sleep-deprived. What I meant was, would it make sense to write a new rulebook [i]instead of[/i] writing a bunch of "First before" rules?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=70#p34459
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: David J Prokopetz / DateTime: 2012-03-30 07:56:48

[quote="ChrisC"]Rather than making this a global variable, it might be best to make this an action variable, set using a Setting Action Variables for <verb>ing phrase. See WI 12.10. [quote="WI 12.10"]The "setting action variables" rulebook is run through before even the before rules [/quote] That way you can set the Medium Examined Through, the Medium Listened Through, etc. variables. This would have the benefit of not overwriting that global variable in the middle of a complex calculation involving both visibility and audibility, for example.[/quote]
Can action variables be fiddled with from "outside" the action in question? Currently, I have a "viewing" action defined for looking around a room you're not in (i.e., as a remote counterpart of "look"), and I've run into cases where it's necessary to explicitly keep track of what visual medium the player accessed in the event that there's more than one - e.g., if there's both a video screen connected to a camera in the target room, and an open door to the same room through which the player can look, I don't want to see flavour text implying that the player peered through the door when they actually examined the video feed, or vice versa.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4798&start=0#p34460
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Matching with "[sometext]" and definite article
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-03-30 08:21:15

An easier way would be to add new grammar lines for the actions:

[code]Understand "ask [someone] about the [text]" as asking it about.
Understand "tell [someone] about the [text]" as telling it about.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4798&start=0#p34461
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Matching with "[sometext]" and definite article
User: janoshon / DateTime: 2012-03-30 08:29:24

[quote="Juhana"]An easier way would be to add new grammar lines for the actions:

[code]Understand "ask [someone] about the [text]" as asking it about.
Understand "tell [someone] about the [text]" as telling it about.[/code][/quote]

!

And that's exactly the kind of elegant way I've been racking my brain to find. Cheers! Sometimes you just get so blind to the code [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4798&start=0#p34462
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Matching with "[sometext]" and definite article
User: janoshon / DateTime: 2012-03-30 08:42:37

Okay, this actually is a little bit tangential to the issue, but something I've been wondering - I know how to use the Understand "xxx" as "[yyy]" types of substitutions, but this is not something I would've come up with intuitively when studying the language, ie. I don't understand how that actually works codewise. 

I mean, I've thought "blabla [yaddayadda]" is something that essentially calls a function yaddayadda that does something: either a "to say yadda yadda" or something that's built in, like making a new paragraph. I don't really get how the Understand-matching fits to that, though. Is it a procedure? What kinds of things can you attach to a [yaddayadda]? 

If there's someone who doesn't mind explaining this in technical terms I'd be much obliged!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=70#p34463
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: Erik Temple / DateTime: 2012-03-30 08:55:55

[quote="matt w"][quote="ektemple"][quote="matt w"]On the "First before:" question; does it make sense to write a new rulebook that runs before the Before rules? I haven't done anything with new rulebooks.[/quote]
"First before" is not a new rulebook. You can add "first" to any rule, and that will guarantee that it comes before any rule in the rulebook that doesn't begin with "first" ("last" functions similarly).[/quote]

That's what I get for commenting when sleep-deprived. What I meant was, would it make sense to write a new rulebook [i]instead of[/i] writing a bunch of "First before" rules?[/quote]

Well, at a minimum, you'd need to slot that new rulebook in by hacking the template layer (if you wanted it to be triggered by an action, anyway, as the OP seems to do).

But surely this (setting up circumstances for a particular action differently from the norm) is what Before rules are for? Marking the rules "first" is just a courtesy to users who might want to write their own Before rules that make use of the code you've triggered.

But I admit I haven't been following this discussion, so maybe there's a subtle point I'm missing!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4798&start=0#p34464
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Matching with "[sometext]" and definite article
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-30 09:24:53

A line such as 'Understand "dog/hound/mutt" as "[dog]".' translates into a 'General Parsing Routine' that matches words from the player's command with the relevant words in the game's dictionary.
This routine is called by rules that contain the "[dog]" token.

A line such as 'To say yadda: say "yaddayaddayadda".' translates into a routine that prints the relevant text.
That routine is called by the phrase 'say yadda' for which ' "…[yadda]…" ' is just syntactic sugar.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4743&start=0#p34465
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Non-english adventure games
User: liftarn / DateTime: 2012-03-30 09:55:05

Ok, some in Swedish are Stugan (translated into English as The Cottage). Originally it ran on a mainframe, but was later ported to PC. More info at <a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cottage_%28video_game%29">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cottag ... eo_game%29</a>

Another commercial release was Tahiti published by Hi-Tech Software. It was for the ZX Spectrum.

Then there was a bunch of homebrew releases, including 99Y I was involved in.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=70#p34466
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-30 10:04:32

[quote="David J Prokopetz"]Can action variables be fiddled with from "outside" the action in question? Currently, I have a "viewing" action defined for looking around a room you're not in (i.e., as a remote counterpart of "look"), and I've run into cases where it's necessary to explicitly keep track of what visual medium the player accessed in the event that there's more than one - e.g., if there's both a video screen connected to a camera in the target room, and an open door to the same room through which the player can look, I don't want to see flavour text implying that the player peered through the door when they actually examined the video feed, or vice versa.[/quote]
No, action variables are not accessible outside the action. But I think the Setting Action Variables is the right place to define the viewport anyway, even if it's actually a global variable. They run at the right time, and the viewport is effectively an action variable, although if it's global you don't get to use the nifty built-in syntax to add the "via" preposition.

One cool thing I discovered is that you can even use Setting Action Variables to set the same global for multiple actions. I've used this in my WIP, but it just occurred to me I should change all the Before rules in Speech Motivations to be Setting Action Variables rules too. Hmm... maybe, maybe not. The rules for finding an interlocutor can display an error and stop the action, which I wouldn't want in a Setting Action Variables rule. If I can make it work, I might just do it anyway, setting the interlocutor to nothing if there's a failure, and figuring out what went wrong in the Check rules.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=70#p34467
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: David J Prokopetz / DateTime: 2012-03-30 10:23:55

[quote="capmikee"]No, action variables are not accessible outside the action. But I think the Setting Action Variables is the right place to define the viewport anyway, even if it's actually a global variable. They run at the right time, and the viewport is effectively an action variable, although if it's global you don't get to use the nifty built-in syntax to add the "via" preposition.[/quote]
Hmm. Do you mean setting a global variable during the "examine viewport" action before handing execution off to the "view room" action, then checking that variable in the Setting Action Variables rulebook for the view action and grabbing its value if one is present?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4797&start=0#p34468
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting a thing from another thing
User: climbingstars / DateTime: 2012-03-30 10:30:11

You'll need to be careful with rules such as "After taking the magazine for the first time", because if taking the magazine for the first time ends in failure, this rule will never fire.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4800&start=0#p34469
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: [IF Review] Six
User: markm / DateTime: 2012-03-30 10:46:35

Paul O'Brian has reviewed Wade Clarke's [i]Six[/i] in this week's episode of IF Review. Come take a look!

[url]http://ministryofpeace.com/if-review/[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4798&start=0#p34470
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Matching with "[sometext]" and definite article
User: HanonO / DateTime: 2012-03-30 11:55:47

Maybe I'm missing something but couldn't you just specify the article "the dog is an animal" to clear this up?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=70#p34471
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: capmikee / DateTime: 2012-03-30 12:29:06

Sorry, I didn't mean the viewport, I meant the vantage. Something like this:

[code]The vantage is an object that varies.

Setting action variables for examining or listening to:
    Now the vantage is ....

To decide whether examining via (the portal - an object):
    if not examining, no;
    decide on whether or not the vantage is the portal.[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4770&start=10#p34472
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Anchorhead - rusty hatch
User: katrinekyhl / DateTime: 2012-03-30 12:53:20

This is what I'm doing:[spoiler]Broken Tunnel
This looks to be an older part of the sewer system that has fallen into 
disrepair. Many of the pipes here have crumbled and are filled with 
debris.

Set in the low ceiling is an old iron hatch.

> get oil
You already have that.

> put finger in oil
You dip your finger in and come up with a small glob of pungent fish oil.

> oil hatch
That’s not a verb I recognise.

> put oil on hatch
Putting things on the rusty hatch would achieve nothing.

Not knowing what else to do with it, you wipe the nasty fish oil off on 
the leg of your pants.

> open hatch
You dig your fingers under the edge and tug, but the hinges are rusted 
nearly solid. You can’t make it budge.

> get oil
You already have that.

> put finger in oil
You dip your finger in and come up with a small glob of pungent fish oil.

> oil hinges
That’s not a verb I recognise.

> put oil on hinge
Putting things on the rusty hatch would achieve nothing.

Not knowing what else to do with it, you wipe the nasty fish oil off on 
the leg of your pants.

> put finger in oil
You dip your finger in and come up with a small glob of pungent fish oil.

> rub oil on hinges
It doesn’t get much cleaner.

Not knowing what else to do with it, you wipe the nasty fish oil off on 
the leg of your pants.

> put finger in oil
You dip your finger in and come up with a small glob of pungent fish oil.

> rub oil on hatch
It doesn’t get much cleaner.

Not knowing what else to do with it, you wipe the nasty fish oil off on
the leg of your pants.

> smear oil on hinges
It doesn’t get much cleaner.

> lather hinges with oil
That’s not a verb I recognise.

> lubricate hinges with oil
That’s not a verb I recognise.

> use oil as anti-rust
That’s not a verb I recognise.

> smash hatch with crossbar
Violence isn’t the answer to this one.[/spoiler]

As you can see, nothing seems to be working. [emote]:([/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4797&start=0#p34473
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting a thing from another thing
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-30 12:56:36

Right! So:
[code]After taking magazine when the Chaps Free Pit Beef Sandwich Coupon is off-stage:
	say "As you grab the magazine, something slides out from between the pages...a coupon for 1 Free Pit Beef Sandwich at Chaps!  You swipe it.";
	now the player carries the Chaps Free Pit Beef Sandwich Coupon.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4797&start=0#p34474
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting a thing from another thing
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-03-30 12:59:07

Wow, I didn't realize that. That's a little counterintuitive. Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4798&start=0#p34475
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Matching with "[sometext]" and definite article
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-03-30 13:17:04

The problem is that when the player writes 'Ask Guy about the dog', the parser never tries to match the words "the dog" against the dog or any other object in the game. (This is to let you ask people about things that are not in the game at all.)  Instead, the rule 'after asking the man about dog' tries to match the words "the dog" from the player's input literally against the given topic 'dog' from the rule; and since "the dog" looks different from mere 'dog', it decides there is no match.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=80#p34476
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Healy / DateTime: 2012-03-30 13:44:55

[quote="Ghalev"][quote="Healy"]Then why don't you add more games? [/quote]

My apologies, most abjectly, if my existing rate of volunteer contribution to the IFDB is less than that to which you are entitled.[/quote]
Oh no! I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you.

Laroquad: I feel like archiving these games is important because they're silly and pretty small. If only the big, important games showed up on the IFDB it would give as lopsided a view of the IF community as if only the Speed IFs were covered, and so on. Plus some of these games (I'm thinking of Ryan Veeder's [i]The Statue Got Me High[/i] in particular) are really good.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4798&start=0#p34477
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Matching with "[sometext]" and definite article
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-30 13:50:37

[quote="Felix"]The problem is that when the player writes 'Ask Guy about the dog', the parser never tries to match the words "the dog" against the dog or any other object in the game. (This is to let you ask people about things that are not in the game at all.)[/quote]
Since nobody else in this thread has mentioned it, I should point out that if you use Eric Eve's conversation extensions, this whole problem just dissolves. If you use these extensions, you CAN ask or tell about in-game objects, and the parser operates normally with respect to adding articles to nouns.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=80#p34478
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-03-30 14:14:35

[quote="Laroquod"]Maybe some of us are just not 'enter-games-into-public-databases' type of people. I'd probably only force myself to create my own game entry if there were an undeniable benefit I could perceive. And I guess I'm not much of an archivist, because it doesn't really bother me that the IFDB might be 'incomplete' by failing to cover every work of parsed IF no matter how small.

Paul.[/quote]

I really like IFDB except I tend to just forget about it for weeks on end, especially if it's going through a slow contribution period (which happens naturally. I should know about probability distributions and stuff, or about people suddenly just (not) having time.) And one problem I've had with reviews is, the better I know (of) the authors, the more awkward I feel giving an objective opinion or trying to. Still it was good to see some write-ups already.

I have to admit I got a rush adding my games to the IFDB even though they might not have been my best ever. I think every little bit or update counts, but on the other hand, with a shared project I wonder if it's too self-promotional to add just my stuff, and I should really add it all etc. The main thing, though, is that the big project got done, and that is very very cool.

BTW wasn't one of the Fingertips (sort of) about this sort of situation? The one about everybody, nobody, somebody, and anybody?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4770&start=10#p34479
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Anchorhead - rusty hatch
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-03-30 14:25:44

Here's the relevant excerpt from David A. Wheeler's transcript:

[spoiler]>x hatch
It's a rectangle of corroded metal, just over a foot long on each side. There
are hinges along one edge on this side; if you could get your fingers under the
opposite edge, you could probably pry it open.

>open hatch
You dig your fingers under the edge and tug, but the hinges are rusted nearly
solid. You can't make it budge.

>open tin
(first taking the old tin)
You open the old tin, revealing a smelly quantity of fish oil.

>put oil on hatch
(first getting some fish oil)
You dip your finger in and come up with a small glob of pungent fish oil.

You rub a good amount of fish oil all over the rusty hinges.

>close tin
You close the old tin.

The flashlight beam flickers uncertainly for a moment, then comes back a bit
weaker than before.

>open hatch
The oiled hinges give a little, allowing you to wiggle your fingers further
under the door's edge. A sharp tug -- and the door swings down suddenly,
spilling filthy water into your face.[/spoiler]

I remember getting stuck at exactly this part. I don't think there are any subtleties here; it's just extremely rigid in what it will accept.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4770&start=10#p34480
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Anchorhead - rusty hatch
User: katrinekyhl / DateTime: 2012-03-30 14:38:04

This is what happens: 

[spoiler]> x hatch
It’s a rectangle of corroded metal, just over a foot long on each side. 
There are hinges along one edge on this side; if you could get your 
fingers under the opposite edge, you could probably pry it open.

> open hatch
You dig your fingers under the edge and tug, but the hinges are rusted 
nearly solid. You can’t make it budge.

> open tin
(first taking the old tin)
You open the old tin.

> put oil on hatch
Putting things on the rusty hatch would achieve nothing.

> put finger in oil
You dip your finger in and come up with a small glob of pungent fish oil.

> put oil on hatch
Putting things on the rusty hatch would achieve nothing.

Not knowing what else to do with it, you wipe the nasty fish oil off on 
the leg of your pants.[/spoiler]

If it's a bug, does anyone know how I might fix it? I'm using Gargoyle, and I got the game from here [url]http://www.wurb.com/if/game/17[/url], the one called "anchor.z8". I'll try going back to an older save and doing the oil thing, but I don't know if that will fix it.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4770&start=10#p34481
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Anchorhead - rusty hatch
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-03-30 15:03:22

It sounds like fish oil just ain't all its cracked up to be.  It's [i]supposed[/i] to lube the hinges enough to be able to open them, but that obviously isn't working for katrinekyhl.  Similarly, my doctor tells me the stuff is [i]supposed[/i]  to lower my triglycerides, but, every day for the last ten years or so:
[quote]>Take fish oil
You manage to get the huge pills down your throat
>x me
Your blood is as heavily laden with fats as it has always been[/quote]


Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4801&start=0#p34482
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: [solved] IFIDs: anything that can change them in a project?
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-03-30 15:13:01

So I wanted to add my TMBG tribute games to IFDB. It asked for an IFID. I'm able to see where it is quite nicely in the Inform 7 IDE on Windows...Index, Contents, Library card.

But then I realized something. I've worked on the game from different computers. I am pretty sure the game is in the same folder, but I'm wondering what could change.

This is more out of intellectual curiosity since of course I was able to pull my games down and check their ID's, but I was wondering...if I decide to make a touch-up, will being on different computers affect the IFID? I'm guessing not, but I would rather make sure.

I'm not sure how much of this is extra-secret black box stuff, either, that programmers don't need to know. But I'm just curious what could affect the IFID that programmers should know about.

Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=80#p34483
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2012-03-30 15:16:24

Healy! <3

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4770&start=10#p34484
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Anchorhead - rusty hatch
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-03-30 15:18:23

Can you try this?

[spoiler]> put finger in oil
> rub hinges

I think when you "rub oil on hinges", it's parsed as rubbing the oil, and gives you the default response ("It doesn't get much cleaner").[/spoiler]

If that doesn't work, feel free to send me your save and I will pound my head on it for awhile.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4765&start=0#p34485
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: FYI --
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-03-30 15:22:46

is it not time to drop the bindlestiff and carry a web-powered smartphone already?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4770&start=10#p34486
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Anchorhead - rusty hatch
User: katrinekyhl / DateTime: 2012-03-30 15:27:41

It just goes

[spoiler]> put finger in oil
You dip your finger in and come up with a small glob of pungent fish oil.

> rub hinges
It doesn’t get much cleaner.

Not knowing what else to do with it, you wipe the nasty fish oil off on 
the leg of your pants.

> put finger in oil
You dip your finger in and come up with a small glob of pungent fish oil.

> rub hinges with oil
It doesn’t get much cleaner.

Not knowing what else to do with it, you wipe the nasty fish oil off on 
the leg of your pants.[/spoiler]

I would love to send you my save, how do I do that? 

There are some things that didn't happen to me like it said in the walkthroughs. [spoiler]I didn't take Michael's faculty card from his wallet (didn't want to steal from my husband) and go check out things at the university library. I haven't been able to find the hairpin that I understand is hidden somewhere in the luggage that sits in the foyer of the mansion ("search luggage" and "look through luggage" doesn't work, it just goes something like "you can't muster up the motivation"). And Michael left the house in the morning of the third day instead of going down to the cellar, so I didn't watch him fiddle with the bottles. I still managed to go down to that portal thing with the pillars and flute playing, though.[/spoiler]
Is it possible that by sort of skipping those things I've corrupted the rest of the game or something? I really don't want to have to start over, boo hoo.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4770&start=20#p34487
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Anchorhead - rusty hatch
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-03-30 15:37:19

You can send me a PM or email it to me @gmail.com.

The game shouldn't be corrupted though I think it can be made unwinnable if you miss some important objects.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=80#p34488
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-03-30 15:38:27

Ok...posted my games on IFDB. It appears that the big roadblock to publishing a game may be finding the IFDB number.

For that, I just pulled the game from the big ZIP file, turned TRANSCRIPT ON and typed VERSION, then closed my game, since Gargoyle doesn't seem to like cut-and-paste. That seems to be the only information you need.

It seems people have been adding the "based on songs" and "They Might Be Giants" tags, too, and you can also add links to your own IFDB profile if you have one.

You also will want add links to play online or download the album. If I'm forgetting anything, someone can fill things in...

I'd be willing to check back in a few days or so to see who hasn't put theirs up yet, and I could fill that in. After inputting a couple games into the database, it does get a bit easier. Learning by rote and all that. Obviously, I can't put in the brief summary (and I encourage authors to add a brief summary whether or not the game's already up, because I enjoy reading them.)

There are 17/38 up and tagged with TMBG now, for those counting at home.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=80#p34489
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: dhakajack / DateTime: 2012-03-30 16:03:29

I just tried to add a listing for Narrow Your Eyes on ifwiki; I've added pages there before, but it's been a while.  When I hit save, I was prompted to answer a question in a text box. The prompt mentioned that the question was required because I had hyperlinks in the edit. Although I was already logged into the site as a user, ifwiki indicated that the question is required to prevent robospamming -- sort of a primitive version of a captcha. I figured that some content was better than none, so I removed all hyperlinks, but the question wouldn't go away on page reload. Finally, I gave up on trying to add the page to ifwiki. Has anyone else hit this issue?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=90#p34490
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-30 16:06:51

[quote="dhakajack"]I just tried to add a listing for Narrow Your Eyes on ifwiki; I've added pages there before, but it's been a while.  When I hit save, I was prompted to answer a question in a text box. The prompt mentioned that the question was required because I had hyperlinks in the edit. Although I was already logged into the site as a user, ifwiki indicated that the question is required to prevent robospamming -- sort of a primitive version of a captcha. I figured that some content was better than none, so I removed all hyperlinks, but the question wouldn't go away on page reload. Finally, I gave up on trying to add the page to ifwiki. Has anyone else hit this issue?[/quote]
I think you need to be added to Trusted Users. (Spamming got very bad indeed on ifwiki for a while.) I'll drop a note to David Welbourn.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=90#p34491
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: dhakajack / DateTime: 2012-03-30 16:15:52

Thanks. I just couldn't find an answer that would satisfy the prompt -- it may be obvious to other people, but it wasn't to me. - Jack

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4770&start=20#p34492
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Anchorhead - rusty hatch
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-30 17:05:32

Out of curiosity, you are playing version 5, yes?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=90#p34493
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-30 17:13:44

[quote="dhakajack"]Thanks. I just couldn't find an answer that would satisfy the prompt -- it may be obvious to other people, but it wasn't to me. - Jack[/quote]
Yeah, it's pretty oldskoolish. Anyhow, you are now upgraded.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4699&start=0#p34494
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: 40 years of video games
User: The Xenographer / DateTime: 2012-03-30 17:25:48

[quote="JoeyJones"]there were no point-and-click adventure games[/quote]

What are Myst and Monkey Island, then, chopped liver?  [emote];)[/emote] (Okay, I guess Myst isn't really point-and-click. But Monkey Island definitely is.) For a mainstream outlet doing a video game exhibit, I feel like they did a pretty good job showcasing a variety of games.

Anyway, I didn't go myself -- a bit too far out of my way -- but my housemate swung by while in Maryland to visit family and she said it was really well done and felt almost like a combination of a video game convention and a museum exhibit. I really wish I'd been able to go, but shelling out for plane tickets to DC was not really in my budget, so.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4683&start=10#p34495
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SQL Errors
User: Merk / DateTime: 2012-03-30 17:45:33

I could, but I think that was a fluke due to the botched system update. Are you still getting SQL out of memory errors even now?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4665&start=30#p34496
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: A critical IF vocabulary
User: Biep / DateTime: 2012-03-30 18:02:29

[quote="Biep"]So yes, we are really doing two things at once here, or rather three.  Finding possible categories for appraising IF, finding the critical terminology with which to define these categories, and developing the technical vocabulary with which to describe the critical concepts.[/quote]Yep, I'm still alive.

So we now have:
[list=1]
[*]The concept of granularity (besides other concepts, most of which are to be established);[/*:m]
[*]The criterion of granular terseness/elegance (besides other, yet to find, criteria);[/*:m]
[*]The category of games making good use of granularity (besides..).[/*:m][/list:o]
Making good use may be through tersenes or by fulfilling other criteria, but also through creative deviation from the criteria, or through the use of other forms of granularity, including original forms.  Because many other forms are possible, some of which have already been explored.  Some examples.
[list]
[*][b]Dialogue granularity[/b]: the steps through a dialogue.  Some games use the sentence as a granule, typically leading to menu systems, others topics, others something in-between, where the same topic can be retried for more dialogue, either immediately or after the world has changed.[/*:m]
[*][b]Knowledge granularity[/b]: "Now the NPC knows X".  X can be at many levels, from "the horrible past of the villain" to "The first letter of the password is 'D'".[/*:m][/list:u]
It would be nice to have a more complete list of what has been done so far.

Another concept that may be useful for the category is granular organisation.  Granules come in groups that come in larger groups, et cetera.  A group of locations may be a house, and a group of houses a village.  Such groups may be locked by puzzles (one cannot get to Hades until one has obtained an obole), and may or may not be aligned with temporal structures (The Tartaros chapter comes after the Lethe chapter).

Likewise, objects can have parts and there is a containment structure, knowledge and dialogue could have subtopics..  What would be a criterion for granular organisation?

The triangle of identities multiplies all this (it should have a category of its own, maybe including the self-awareness concept (my name for a contribution of Emily's).
Differences between PC object granularity and Player object granularity are often distracting.  "The wall is covered with beautifully intricate reliefs" - "x reliefs" - "There is no need to refer to that in this game" (or worse: "You can see no such thing").  Are there positive uses of this difference?
Player time may have a structure, and so may PC time - flashbacks and the like can decouple the two.  There is this Jack and the Beanstalk game that had a very original way of decoupling the two.  If I had a better connection I should look it up in IFDB.
PC knowledge and NPC knowledge are different from Player knowledge, and again from Game reporter knowledge - the game reporter may know things, and e.g. ask "Are you sure?" to hint at facts the player may not know.  (Guess-the-verb is an inversion of this: the player knows more than the reporter, but can't tell it.)

Well, I'll shut up again for the moment.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4709&start=0#p34497
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: The Xenographer / DateTime: 2012-03-30 18:03:41

Yeah, I find She's Actual Size pretty fascinating, but exactly what effect your actions are going to have on how the game plays out is unclear, which is kind of frustrating. I mean, most of the time that I've spent playing the game thus far as been just performing the set of actions in the opening scene in different orders until I magically hit the one that allowed me to progress in the game (which, while I was still in the first scene, didn't really look any different from any of the other ways I'd done said actions/give me any hints that I was on the right track).

After that part, the game is pretty much on rails--although now I seem to have hit a bug that's made it impossible to progress, which is a shame.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4709&start=0#p34498
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-30 18:13:25

[quote="The Xenographer"]After that part, the game is pretty much on rails--although now I seem to have hit a bug that's made it impossible to progress, which is a shame.[/quote]
[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=qyzybg5jryrfb4as&review=16467]I'm told[/url] that this is now fixed.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4709&start=10#p34499
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: climbingstars / DateTime: 2012-03-30 18:24:36

[quote="maga"][quote="The Xenographer"]After that part, the game is pretty much on rails--although now I seem to have hit a bug that's made it impossible to progress, which is a shame.[/quote]
[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=qyzybg5jryrfb4as&review=16467]I'm told[/url] that this is now fixed.[/quote]

Not quite. I managed to complete the game, but you have to get the order right first time. If the game loops, you get an unwinnable situation.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4801&start=0#p34500
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: IFIDs: anything that might change them in a project?
User: climbingstars / DateTime: 2012-03-30 18:34:34

The IFID of a game is stored in a file called "uuid.txt" in the game's project folder. If you transfer this file along with the source code when moving from PC to PC then the IFID will stay the same. Each time inform creates a new project, it randomly creates it. Theoretically, you could tinker with this file and change the IFID, but this is highly unrecommended.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4801&start=0#p34501
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: IFIDs: anything that might change them in a project?
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-03-30 18:51:14

Thanks very much! This is good to know. I think I'm only copying my story file over, so I'll be sure to check if the home version of my uuid.txt is different from my work version, or whichever. And I know to copy uuid.txt over for future projects now.

And yeah, no way I'd tinker with files I don't know what they're there for.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4800&start=0#p34502
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: [IF Review] Six
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-03-30 18:55:11

I enjoyed this and the Zombie Exodus review. Hope he is able to find time to do more. His reviews from way back when have been helpful for me to know what to look for while I'm catching up to speed on stuff I missed from, oh, 1992 to 2010.

Thanks for posting this!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4802&start=0#p34503
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Weapon code giving me a headache
User: planetfall666 / DateTime: 2012-03-30 19:32:25

I'm trying to make a game with different sci-fi energy weapons in it, each of which has slightly different effectiveness etc etc. Here is the code that gives a basic gun that charges up:

[code]
Earth is a room.

A gun is a kind of device. A gun has a number called the power level.

A gun has a number called the charge level.

A gun has a number called the max charge.

A gun has a number called the charge speed.

A gun has a number called the energy efficiency.

Every turn:
	repeat with X running through switched on guns:
		if the charge level of X is the max charge of X:
			next;
		let ch be (charge speed of X * energy efficiency of X) / 10;
		if the charge speed of X is greater than the power level of X:
			if ch is greater than the max charge of X - the charge level of X:
				let Y be max charge of X - the charge level of X;
				let Y be Y / (energy efficiency of X  * 10);
				decrease the power level of X by Y;
				now the charge level of X is the max charge of X;
			else:
				increase the charge level of X by (the power level of X * energy efficiency of X) / 10;
				now the power level of X is 0;
		else:
			if ch is greater than the max charge of X - the charge level of X:
				let Y be max charge of X - the charge level of X;
				let Y be (Y / energy efficiency of X) * 10;
				decrease the power level of X by Y;
				now the charge level of X is the max charge of X;
			else:
				increase the charge level of X by ch;
				decrease the power level of X by charge speed of X;
				
The player carries a laser pistol. The laser pistol is a gun. The power level is 400. The max charge is 145. The charge speed is 13. The energy efficiency is 12.

Carry out examining a gun:
	say "Weapon stats:[line break]Current shot charge level: [charge level of noun]/[max charge of noun][line break]Power level: [power level of noun][line break]Battery discharge speed: [charge speed of noun] level[s] per turn[line break]Energy efficiency: [energy efficiency of noun]%[line break]";
	now examine text printed is true.
[/code]

In short, power level is the gun's "battery," charge level is the amount of damage that will be done when the gun is fired, max charge is the amount of energy that can be used in one shot, charge speed is the number of power level levels that are consumed per turn, and energy efficiency is the increase in charge level per 10 power levels consumed.

However this gives a truly annoying and slightly unbalanced response, the source of which I cannot figure out--obviously it is in the "every turn" rule, but I can't see what the problem with it is.

[code]
>x pistol
Weapon stats:
Current shot charge level: 135/145
Power level: 283
Battery discharge speed: 13 levels per turn
Energy efficiency: 12%

The laser pistol is currently switched on.

>x pistol
Weapon stats:
Current shot charge level: 145/145
Power level: 283
Battery discharge speed: 13 levels per turn
Energy efficiency: 12%

The laser pistol is currently switched on.
[/code]

This turn should have consumed several power levels (previously calculated to be 3 but that wasn't reasonable, more like 8-9) but did not use any. Anyone know what's wrong?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4802&start=0#p34504
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Weapon code giving me a headache
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-03-30 20:37:40

The problem is in this line:

[code]let Y be (Y / energy efficiency of X) * 10;
[/code]

Which is better off as...

[code]let Y be (Y * 10) / energy efficiency of X;
[/code]

It's tripped me up, too. Basically Inform uses integers and not floats. So when the code branches here (if ch is greater than the max charge of X - the charge level of X:) e.g. when you reach 135/145 and don't want to go to 150/145,

Y/energy efficiency of X = 0

So 0*10 is 0.

Switching this seems to give what you'd want. You often have to be extra careful with parentheses as Inform works left-to-right and doesn't always use PEMDAS.

At any rate, welcome! It looks like you have a good grasp on coding in general & are taking on something pretty ambitious. Speak up if this wasn't quite the question you want answered.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4709&start=10#p34505
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: The Xenographer / DateTime: 2012-03-30 20:57:09

[quote="climbingstars"][quote="maga"][quote="The Xenographer"]After that part, the game is pretty much on rails--although now I seem to have hit a bug that's made it impossible to progress, which is a shame.[/quote]
[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=qyzybg5jryrfb4as&review=16467]I'm told[/url] that this is now fixed.[/quote]

Not quite. I managed to complete the game, but you have to get the order right first time. If the game loops, you get an unwinnable situation.[/quote]

... I should have written the right order down when I found it, shouldn't I? Whoops.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4802&start=0#p34506
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Weapon code giving me a headache
User: planetfall666 / DateTime: 2012-03-30 20:59:13

Thank you very much, this is what I needed! Previously I'd tried to make a new decimal number value but found that only confused Inform more.

[quote]At any rate, welcome! It looks like you have a good grasp on coding in general & are taking on something pretty ambitious.[/quote]

I've been using Inform for about two years and yes, this is part of the first game I'd consider having any chance of being released--although, that's what I thought two years ago...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4802&start=0#p34507
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Weapon code giving me a headache
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-03-30 21:28:49

For decimal numbers you'd probably want the [url=http://inform7.com/extensions/Michael%20Callaghan/Fixed%20Point%20Maths/index.html]Fixed Point Maths[/url] extension (though I've never used it).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=70#p34508
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: David J Prokopetz / DateTime: 2012-03-30 22:38:01

Hmm... that doesn't work for writing "instead" rules, does it?

Anyway, opinion question: for sensory connections that involve two objects, does it make more sense for instead/while rules to pertain to the "near" side of the connection, or the "far" side of the connection? Suppose, for example, that I'm looking through a two-sided door (as defined by Emily Short's Deluxe Doors extension): would it be more natural for the author to have to write any relevant rules in terms of the half of the door that faces the player, or the half of the door that faces the room or object being examined? Likewise, if you have a camera connected to a video screen, would it make more sense to require rules to be written from the standpoint of the camera (e.g., "instead of examining via the security camera"), or the screen (e.g., "instead of examining via the security monitor")?

In a perfect world, it wouldn't matter which end of the connection the author picked, of course, but I can't come up with a way to enable that without making the syntax for writing such rules very cumbersome.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4704&start=0#p34509
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: "Patrollers" Extension Issue on Startup
User: Zork / DateTime: 2012-03-30 23:07:22

[quote="EmacsUser"]It sounds like the poorly worded error message is due to some manifestation of [url=http://inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=485]bug 485[/url], which in turn suggests that somewhere in the 1565 words you have altered the meaning of either or both of the words ``going'' or ``on''.  Is that the case?  And does it work for you if you just use Skinny Mike's source text?[/quote]


No, I don't believe I've altered the meanings of those words.  Also, it doesn't work when I use Skinny Mike's source text.   [emote]:?[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4797&start=0#p34510
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting a thing from another thing
User: Zork / DateTime: 2012-03-30 23:08:09

Thanks for the help.  It's working for me now.   [emote]:D[/emote]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4803&start=0#p34511
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Moving a character out of a room.
User: Zork / DateTime: 2012-03-30 23:10:50

I have a character that I'd like to move from one room to the room above (up) him.  Is there a simple code that can make a player do that?  I've tried things like:

[quote]now Cowboy moves to Mess Hall.[/quote]

No dice.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4709&start=10#p34512
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-03-30 23:22:05

I'm stuck on what I believe is the last bit of The Guitar. I've tried stuff like

[spoiler]WAVE GOOD-BYE
WAVE GOODBYE
PLAY GUITAR
and futzing with the amp/drum machine/mixer[/spoiler]

during the

[spoiler]3rd scenario in the ship[/spoiler]

But I wind up getting killed in what appears to be a time-sensitive puzzle. Anyone figure out what to do?

Also did anyone have the authors' email? I had a transcript for them.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4803&start=0#p34513
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving a character out of a room.
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-30 23:31:23

Did you try,
[code]
now Cowboy is in the Mess Hall;[/code]
?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4683&start=10#p34514
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SQL Errors
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2012-03-31 00:30:42

I haven't seen any errors since.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4804&start=0#p34515
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: RemGlk 0.1 (experimental)
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-03-31 01:21:22

One of ClubFloyd's persistent problems is that Floyd loses output information from the games he plays. Styles, quoteboxes, status line updates, and so on get dropped.

I've had a sketch of a solution in mind for years; this week I finally knuckled down and implemented it. Basically, it's a Glk library that's sort of like CheapGlk -- it streams information to and from another process, rather than to a user interface. However, unlike CheapGlk, it makes all of the display information available. Everything is structured as JSON data objects.

This should enable a better FloydBot. Although there's quite a bit of work involved on the Floyd side of things, so don't expect quote boxes to start magically working this weekend.

Source: <a class="postlink" href="https://github.com/erkyrath/remglk">https://github.com/erkyrath/remglk</a>
Documentation: <a class="postlink" href="http://eblong.com/zarf/glk/remglk/docs.html">http://eblong.com/zarf/glk/remglk/docs.html</a>

Now, this is a bare minimum implementation as of yet. I have not tested it thoroughly. I'm sure it has bugs.

Things that work: status and story windows, line and character input, styles, unicode.

Things that do not work: timed input, interrupted input lines, hyperlinks, graphics, sounds.

Things that should work, but I haven't tested them: hooking RemGlk up to GlkOte to form a complete server-side IF web service.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4797&start=0#p34516
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting a thing from another thing
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-03-31 02:34:08

[quote="Felix"]Right! So:
[code]After taking magazine when the Chaps Free Pit Beef Sandwich Coupon is off-stage:
   say "As you grab the magazine, something slides out from between the pages...a coupon for 1 Free Pit Beef Sandwich at Chaps!  You swipe it.";
   now the player carries the Chaps Free Pit Beef Sandwich Coupon.[/code][/quote]

I like this, but it introduces another problem in the future. If we want to give the coupon to a cashier, who puts it in a cash register (potentially off-stage, so that we don't have to implement a cash register) we could open the magazine again and re-take the sandwich.

I don't know how complex we want to make this example or if my worries are justified, but here's what I have. It does seem a bit tangled, but hope it adds something.

[code]the Chaps Free Pit Beef Sandwich Coupon is a thing. The coupon can be unobserved. The coupon is unobserved.

after taking the magazine:
	if coupon is unobserved and player has magazine:
		say "Oops! A coupon fell out!";
		now the coupon is in room 1;
		now the coupon is not unobserved; [yeah, double negative]
		the rule succeeds;
	continue the action;

test takeit with "take magazine/drop magazine/take magazine"[/code]

Now we can throw the coupon off-stage easily.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4797&start=0#p34517
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Getting a thing from another thing
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-03-31 02:44:42

You can just use the built-in property "handled" which will be set when the player first has the thing in their inventory.

[code]After taking magazine when the Chaps Free Pit Beef Sandwich Coupon is not handled:
    say "As you grab the magazine, something slides out from between the pages... a coupon for 1 Free Pit Beef Sandwich at Chaps! You swipe it.";
    now the player carries the Chaps Free Pit Beef Sandwich Coupon.[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4803&start=0#p34518
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving a character out of a room.
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-03-31 02:50:18

Or 
[code]Try cowboy going up[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4804&start=0#p34519
Forum: General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools / Subject: Re: RemGlk 0.1 (experimental)
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-03-31 02:54:21

[quote="zarf"]Things that should work, but I haven't tested them: hooking RemGlk up to GlkOte to form a complete server-side IF web service.[/quote]
*Happy dance*

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4689&start=10#p34520
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011 reviews
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-31 04:22:09

I have a small update on one of my reviews.

While talking about [i]Zombie Exodus[/i], I stated that it being a partial game was non that bad, although I preferred playing a complete game. Well, I'm not sure about that anymore.

[i]ZE[/i] part three is out. Having uninstalled it from my especially full iPhone, I went to the appstore thinking: "Well, let's try this again an look where it...". Then stopped. 
Really: now, to know how the story unfolds, I have to play it again from the beginning, isn't it? There's no "save" routine (that I'm aware of) and there's no way I can remember which road I took and what weapon I used and so forth. So it would be like a whole new run, re-reading, re-choosing etc.

And I went "Naaaaah..." No more [i]ZE[/i] for me. Not if I have to play it from the start, anyway.

So, being unfinished [i]is[/i] an issue, I now understand.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4770&start=20#p34522
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Anchorhead - rusty hatch
User: katrinekyhl / DateTime: 2012-03-31 07:38:59

I am. It turned out [spoiler]my oil tin was empty, no idea what happened to the oil, I don't remember pouring it out or anything. I'll go back to when I had it and try again.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4770&start=20#p34523
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Anchorhead - rusty hatch
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-31 07:44:08

Wow. It's exactly the sort of thing that would be hard to catch at beta-testing, and that generated completely misleading and erroneous responses. It thought you were trying to oil the hatch with the actual can and responses accordingly.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4740&start=10#p34524
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Help me make a "What system should I use?" resource
User: Litowo95 / DateTime: 2012-03-31 07:45:58

"What system should I use?" is exactly the reason I just registered, so I hope you don't mind me using this thread to ask my question:

I'm looking for a CYOA framework that I can use to publish stories for e-readers and mobile phones.

Right now, having a multiple set of choices is all the story needs, rpg stats are probably a bit overkill. The only feature I would like to have is random events. Say, the character is in a garden and chooses to smell a flower. Sometimes you get a description of the fragrance, and sometimes a bee stings your nose. That sort of stuff. Or, based on chance, the weather in the story is either rainy or sunny.

Oh, another thing. Images tied to certain events.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4709&start=10#p34525
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: climbingstars / DateTime: 2012-03-31 07:54:11

[quote="The Xenographer"]... I should have written the right order down when I found it, shouldn't I? Whoops.[/quote]

I did actually note down the right order. However, I found that if you get the first ones in the right order, you do see progress in the second part.

[quote="aschultz"]I'm stuck on what I believe is the last bit of The Guitar. I've tried stuff like

[spoiler]WAVE GOOD-BYE
WAVE GOODBYE
PLAY GUITAR
and futzing with the amp/drum machine/mixer[/spoiler]

during the

[spoiler]3rd scenario in the ship[/spoiler]

But I wind up getting killed in what appears to be a time-sensitive puzzle. Anyone figure out what to do?

Also did anyone have the authors' email? I had a transcript for them.[/quote]

I remember beta testing this game.

[spoiler]I couldn't figure out what to do in the starship after the Captain and First Officer leave, so I wasn't able to complete the game.[/spoiler]

You can email you transcript to Kevin, He's still willing to forward on feedback.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4740&start=10#p34526
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Help me make a "What system should I use?" resource
User: Anonymous / DateTime: 2012-03-31 07:59:06

Top of my head, you could try looking into Quest - <a class="postlink" href="http://www.textadventures.co.uk/">http://www.textadventures.co.uk/</a>.

I don't know if it's already implemented, and how far along, but there's a Gamebook mode that's exclusively for CYOA-style. It's been focusing on exporting to some mobile phones (I don't know the details because it's not any phone I own).

E-readers... have no idea.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4740&start=10#p34527
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Help me make a "What system should I use?" resource
User: Alex / DateTime: 2012-03-31 09:01:53

Gamebook mode is now live on the web-based beta of Quest at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.textadventures.co.uk/create/">http://www.textadventures.co.uk/create/</a> - it will also be part of the beta of the Windows desktop version of Quest 5.2, which will hopefully be out in a week or so.

With a finished game, I can convert it into an app for iPhone, iPad and Android.

The gamebook mode is pretty simple at the moment, but it all runs on top of the Quest platform, so features like random events will be simple for me to add. It is already possible to include pictures.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4709&start=10#p34528
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: climbingstars / DateTime: 2012-03-31 09:10:38

[quote="aschultz"]I wind up getting killed in what appears to be a time-sensitive puzzle. Anyone figure out what to do?[/quote]

I managed to complete this game.

[spoiler]You have to turn on the amp then play.[/spoiler]

I found that there is a lot of guess the verb here.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4740&start=10#p34529
Forum: General Game Design / Subject: Re: Help me make a "What system should I use?" resource
User: Litowo95 / DateTime: 2012-03-31 10:30:07

[quote="Alex"]Gamebook mode is now live on the web-based beta of Quest at <a class="postlink" href="http://www.textadventures.co.uk/create/">http://www.textadventures.co.uk/create/</a> - it will also be part of the beta of the Windows desktop version of Quest 5.2, which will hopefully be out in a week or so.

With a finished game, I can convert it into an app for iPhone, iPad and Android.

The gamebook mode is pretty simple at the moment, but it all runs on top of the Quest platform, so features like random events will be simple for me to add. It is already possible to include pictures.[/quote]

Very cool, will check that out. One thing I have found while googling is Choicescript (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.choiceofgames.com">http://www.choiceofgames.com</a>). Reading the quick intro it seems to be easy to use and offer lots of stuff, although I couldn't find anything about export/publishing. They say you can host your story on their site, or pay a licensing fee if you don't want to do that. Letting them do the hosting apparently also means getting sold on Amazon et al.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4521&start=10#p34530
Forum: Competitions / Subject: The Andromeda Legacy™ /// A Competition - KNOWN FACTS
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-31 11:04:40

Here we go. I think it is all.

[b][color=#4040BF]---- WARNING ---- BIG SPOILERS AHEAD! Don't read if you don't want to ruin your gaming experience.
[/color][/b]
Let's start with:

[b]The Geography
[/b]
[spoiler][b]Andromeda[/b]
M 31 / NGC 224 - Spiral Galaxy (previously mistaken with the Andromeda Nebula), biggest member of the 'Local Group', along with 'Triangle' and fifty more lesser galaxies. It counts circa one-thousand-billion stars, including Korhos, Fatimah and Sehrn, the trinary system of Monarch. From nearby galaxies and systems, Andromeda appears the most luminescent, given its 4.4 magnitude in Messier's scale

[b]Trinary System
[/b]Monarch's solar system. Korhos, Sehrn, Fatimah.

[b]Korhos[/b]
KFS1 / Korhos – Giant red, major star of the trinary system. Age: 8.5bill

[b]Fatimah[/b]
KFS2 / Fatimah – White dwarf, lesser star of the trinary system. Age: 7bill.
Notes: the star, after 'the Event', has started revolving around Korhos, making it a satellite of the major star. Regarding Monarch, the major planet of the trinary system, this revolution causes devastating tidal waves every 10 days. The 'Tidal Initiative' has reduced the tsunamis to once every ten thousand years
---
Fatimah Initiative (or Second Bound): An underground net that provides an antigravitational field on Monarch to counterweight the one caused by the approaching of the orbiting star Fatimah. Every ten days, all non-emergency power sources on the planet are redirected to the Initiative. The Initiative was the Second Bound by the Interstellar Agreement and was signed by all the thirteen members of the Council.

[b]Sehrn
[/b]KFS3 / Sehrn – Yellow star, medium of the trinary system. Age: 7.7bill

[b]Monarch (planet)
[/b]Sixth planet in the trinary system, the biggest in size. Base of the human activity in the Andromeda galaxy, is Capital World and headquarters of the ASA Council of the Thirteen. Age: 1.2bill. Size: magnitude 7.2 in Resson's scale

[b]The Layers
[/b]Monarch underground surfaces, all separated by a thin air layer. The lowermost is a volcanic crust, born in the millennia when the once fiery planet cooled off. The uppermost is a thin ice layer, partly eroded by time and partly by human work, as in the case of the constructs. The Monarch cities are floating over the oceans from the now partly melted icy layer.

[b]Constructs (or Construct)
[/b]The foundations of Monarch's Republican World. Digging deep into the earth where the glacial layer has been molten, pillars of steel and concrete serve as supports for the above cities. In fact, the Monarch nation is but a floating continent built by the first colonies above the icy layer. Nowadays, a mere 10 percent of that layer is still solid, the rest being transformed into vast oceans covering more than half the world

[b]Settlements (or Underground Settlement)
[/b]During the era when the Constructs were built, a large underground vault, known as the 'settlement', was used for R&D and to store artifacts and knowledge found while digging through the icy crust and the upper layers. Aseptic walls run relentlessly for kilometers, along with a vast number of laboratories and facilities. These places are a sort of gigantic city-under-the-city, where the researchers and the workers spent their time together in a closed environment. Due to the extremely long times before resurfacing, many were captivated in the settlements for months until their duty schedule expired. The seclusion proved too much for the inhabitants of the settlements, who started showing signs of paranoia and of claustrophobia. After only three years since the first humans entered the vault, a fierce riot took the pale halls, leaving more than three hundred civilians dead. The settlements were closed and all the work was handed over to automated machines and robots.
Only a part of the endless maze that once was the settlements is still visitable: the Museum of the Vaults, near the Central Station. There, visitors can witness the 'magic' of the white corridors lighting system, some of the remaining labs (only a handful are still functioning -- even if for mere demonstrational purposes) and the thrilling experience of the disappearing walls.

[b]The Quarantine
[/b]The reclusion area of the Underground Settlements. Different zones were used for storing artifacts found during excavations, storing unvaluable waste and garbage, and jailing those that were held responsible for acts of mischief during their duty.
A non-conventional belief, by the way, is that the Quarantine was used to recess 'guests' not too fond of keeping secrets and -- as the very name indicates -- to avoid unknown viruses from exiting the underground environment.

[b]Mechanosatellites
[/b]Structures orbiting Monarch at a very long range. Build as solid space stations, they were meant to be used as bunkers against the Event onslaught. Upon serving their purpose, they have been since left abandoned.

[b]Satellites
[/b]In general, space stations orbiting Monarch. Specifically, towns in the sky where people at present live and work. The larger part of Monarch population is still living in the satellites, only a few able to come to Monarch soil and live there.

[b]Monarch (city)
[/b]The capital town of the Monarch world. Population: 2mill circa. 

[b]Brouguoise (city)
[/b]Home of the State University, in Monarch.

[b]Phelios Fortress (or Terracentral Fortress)
[/b]The small asteroid-satellite orbiting Monarch VII, Phelios, is home to the Terracentral fortress, where the Quintessential Library and the Humanitas mementos are stored.

[b][color=#FF4040]Morbozzo (quarantine space station)[/color][/b]
The one and only quarantine facility still functioning at the time of the Second Event.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4521&start=10#p34531
Forum: Competitions / Subject: The Andromeda Legacy™ /// A Competition - KNOWN FACTS
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-31 11:06:13

[b][color=#4040BF]---- WARNING ---- BIG SPOILERS AHEAD! Don't read if you don't want to ruin your gaming experience.
[/color][/b]

[b]The Politics
[/b]
[spoiler]Monarch is a Republic.
The Government rules the system.
The Government is made up by hundreds of people, voted democratically.
The all serve a higher Council, named the Council of the Thirteen, which is elected by the lesser council. The Council is made up by 13 people, whose identities remain unknown. The government-above-the-government of the ASA Republican Worlds. Made up of thirteen members, it is the source of the ASA codex and of the 237 Bounds
---

[b]ASA (or Andromeda Solar-spatial Agreement)
[/b]It is the set of rules which binds the interstellar space of the Andromeda Galaxy. The whole library is held in the Monarch Manuscript, under the Humanitas Mementos, closed from light and cryogenized at the Terracentral station in Phelios. 

[b]The Humanitas Mementos
[/b]The massive codex comprehending both the 237 Bounds, or Initiatives, and the larger set of rules and Government acts has been handwritten and then stored in a vacuum cryogenized vault inside the fortificated complex of Terracentral, inside the hollow satellite Phelios. It is guarded by laser-triggered weapons and by a small army of robocops.

[b]The 237 Bounds
[/b]he sum of the 237 rules by which the ASA Republican Worlds work. They are divided into seven sections, each made up by at least 20 so-called 'initiatives'. Only the first two Bounds contain just one Initiative each. Those were written in the Ancient Days before the reforming of the Republic.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4521&start=10#p34532
Forum: Competitions / Subject: The Andromeda Legacy™ /// A Competition - KNOWNFACTS
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-31 11:08:15

[b][color=#4040BF]---- WARNING ---- BIG SPOILERS AHEAD! Don't read if you don't want to ruin your gaming experience.
[/color][/b]

[b]The Timeline
[/b]
[spoiler]Years are based on Monarch revolutionary process around the major star, Korhos. Comparisons between Monarch's and Earth's years are not available.

[b]3000-8140[/b] - The Third Age. 

[b]Sometimes, before 7892[/b] - The first colonists come to Andromeda from another galaxy.

[b]7892[/b] - The Event - Start. A brilliance starts enveloping the neighboring galaxy.

[b]8140/d3/m4[/b] - The Event - Explosion/End. The Event first collapses that deflagrates, obliterating the neighboring galaxy and part of Andromeda itself.

[b]8140[/b] - Fatimah is dislocated by the Event and starts circling Korhos.

[b]8140-8150[/b] - Andromeda population is decimated. People go and live in the Mechanosatellites.

[b]8140-8350[/b] - The Ancient Days - Monarch is slowly repopulated as the technology returns to its former advancement.

[b]8199/d12/m5[/b] - The First Initiative is signed by the Council of the Thirteen. 

[b]8200-8350[/b] - The Constructs and the Settlements are being built.

[b]8350-9855[/b] - The Modern Days

[b]9855/d25/m3[/b] - The Alpha Radiation is discovered by Dr. Andy Re's and Dr. Ektor Mastiff. 

[b]9855/d9/m4[/b] - Dr. Andy Re's is killed by unknown assailant in the backstreet of his house.

[b]9855/d10/m4[/b] - The Second Event. Monarch is wiped clean by the Fatimah Tides. The Hyerotropes activate and leave Monarch.[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4521&start=10#p34533
Forum: Competitions / Subject: The Andromeda Legacy™ /// A Competition - KNOWN FACTS
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-31 11:09:55

[b][color=#4040BF]---- WARNING ---- BIG SPOILERS AHEAD! Don't read if you don't want to ruin your gaming experience.
[/color][/b]

[b]The Hyerotropes
[/b]
[spoiler]Spheres of a matter unknown.
What follows are excerpts from various sources about the Hyerotropes.

[b]The E-Pad
[/b]The moving motor of the Tidal Initiative. Discovered during the Ancient Era, its meaning or purpose is yet unknown. Apart from a huge power surge (all in the geo-gravitational spectrum), a Hyerotrope seems utterly inactive. Its 'breathing' has been hypothesized as a remnant of a former energy outbreak, the likes and size of which are not computable. Although 'dead' in many ways, it was soon discovered that its gravitational pull could be altered by igniting it with an immense plasma shock. Thus far, the seventeen Hyerotropes discovered have been used to counterweight Fatimah during the tidal outbreaks.
---
The plasmatrons are devices used for storing and releasing energy. The plasma incoming from the stars is stored in them and then used in time to power machines and other devices. A plasmatron can be fully depleted in a single shock (a.k.a. the 'plasmashock') when higher levels of energy are needed. One example is the discharge upon the Hyerotropes during the Second Initiative (aka Fatimah Initiative).
---
(Inserted by user 5,835/Ektor Mastiff -- not present in general database)[paragraph break]Radiation which pulsates from a specific point under Monarch's capital. Discovered on 25th/3rd/9,855. Generator or source: unkn. Z-position: unkn. Magnitude: feeble, but growing. ---- Warning: same kind of the Event residues. ----

[b]The First Initiative
[/b]The icy mantle under Monarch (System KFS - Andromeda galaxy) has been pierced. What the first human probes have found can only be described as the remnants of a former civilization, the mortal spoils of which can be trusted as ultimately lost. A series of globular machines lays in a pattern (called the Hyeromatrix), hidden under the very mantle of the earth. All forty-four of those machines (called the Hyerotropes) are dormant but still present a form of 'living' electromagnetic and geo-gravitational power. Beyond this, an unknown energy array seems to be pulsing inside them, out of the usual spectrum. Whatever the structures are, there is indeed no way of stating that they aren't alien in nature.
Moreso, the radiance emitted by one of the bigger spheres is very similar to the fast decaying fingerprints of the Event residue. This MUST be noted as extremely important.
(…) a containment cage will be closed around the forty-four Hyerotropes and investigative labs will be built under the Monarch's crust. (later called the Constructs and the Settlements).

[b]The Operator's Diary (working near the Hyerotropes around year 7892)
[/b](The military) are trying to open one of those balls of metal (the HT). 
(…) They are gonna fire things at the metal balls.
(After firing at the HT) There was a flash an then all the walls begun rumblin. It was not only the walls, but everything. The ceiling cracked and -- I swear -- a chunk of ice large like a tank came crushing down. It killed seven people. None I knew, fortunately. They were all so much in panic I thought the world was really gonna end. But then it all got normal and everything got back to quiet. No sign of the general, today. Guess he has to smell those things. He's never here when something occurs.
I forgot to say something. During the tremors (it was not a quake, more of the ground adjusting, I've heard some say), something odd happened. The computers went suddenly on, just for ten seconds or so. The were all broken, you know. No signal for two months. But then they wake up and there's this white light. And all things begun moving towards that hole in the big chamber, the one just before the center of the earth. It looked like they were PULLED there by some sort of ghost.
(…)I heard Marko is dead, too. They don't let anyone beyond the dam and I can't tell for sure, but I heard some say he got devoured by one of those spheres. 'It has eaten him alive', they said.

[b]The room's description
[/b]A dome of sorts has been carved in the earth, an inner sanctum of inhumane proportions, spanning for hundreds of meters in all directions. The wall's surface is smooth and shiny, cut into a dark material that looks like obsidian. On the ground, a maze of carvings draw perfect lines that intersect each other and run throughout the floor; all are filled by an ethereal substance as thin as air that glows in a faint blue. They seem to revolve around a single entity in the center of the gargantuan structure, and sink under its base. Many of these cuts then proceed over the structure, like an electric ivy clinging to it. Light shimmers from nowhere in particular and from all around at the same time, reverberating on the rock and on the steel floor. A faint buzz is the only noise audible, the rest of the universe swallowed in an uncomfortable, dark silence.

[b]Other known facts
[/b]The Hyerotrope with which Ektor Mastiff interacts has a door-like opening that leads to a chamber, inside. The chamber is transparent from the inside. The Hyrotrope travels down to lands Mastiff on the volcanic crust. The door was opened by a series of cylinders, operated with small metal engraved circles.
A bigger Hyerotrope 'kidnaps' Mastiff and flies away, with all the other 43, when Monarch is destroyed by the tides.
The Hyerotropes respond to all kind of energy, the most powerful usually being the geo-gravitational. 
The biggest energy depletions have been, in the end, the so-called Alpha Radiations. At first dormant, then faintly emitting, then blasting (replicating, maybe, the Event).[/spoiler]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4673&start=10#p34534
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Seriously, this game sucks.
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-03-31 11:15:41

[quote="namekuseijin"]Now that I'm playing the game, I'm more bothere by this

[spoiler]"we know nothing about Monarch before the first settlements from the outer galaxies came into Andromeda more than one thousand years ago. Technology back then was not sufficient to dig as far as we have recently."

come on!  The guys can travel across galaxies but can't dig a hole far enough in the ground?![/spoiler]

than by the occasional lack of polish on scenery.[/quote]

Now that I've made up a coherent timetable for events in the galaxy... I think there WAS a reason for such a thing:
[spoiler]The layers where indeed dug in the beginning, as one can witness when entering the last rooms of the game. The Event then wiped clean technology and all, that's why the PC [i]thinks[/i] they were not able. But they were. And did.[/spoiler]
Things for people to investigate in the upcoming competition, if they want!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4689&start=10#p34535
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011 reviews
User: UnwashedMass / DateTime: 2012-03-31 11:29:46

[quote="Jamespking"][i]ZE[/i] part three is out. Having uninstalled it from my especially full iPhone, I went to the appstore thinking: "Well, let's try this again an look where it...". Then stopped.[/quote]I stopped because as best as I could tell, part 3 on iPhone was paid content only -- though those with a burning curiosity can still I believe experience it for free in their browser after doing a complete playthrough of parts 1 and 2 on the CoG website now.

I can't begrudge them the profit motive when it appears they do have a decent shot at achieving some profit (well, why else release a Zombie game at this moment in time? 8), especially when they do give it away for free in at least one format.  No Kickstarting even required!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4806&start=0#p34536
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Teleportation - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-03-31 12:03:02

I have enclosed a piece of code that I have a slight problem with. If I enter the command code 'goto' and press enter before I enter a vocabword destination then I get a run-time
error. Is there a way to prevent the run-time error by making sure the destination word is enclosed in the command when I use the enter key. I would also like a text error message to point out my mistake. Would appreciate some help on this.

RonG



[code]

/*  Teleportation code.  ******************************************************/

    DefineTAction(Goto)
       objInScope(obj){if(obj.ofKind(Room))return true;
          return nil;
   }
;
    VerbRule(Goto)
       'goto'singleDobj
       :GotoAction
       verbPhrase='go/going to a room'
;
    modify Room
       dobjFor(Goto){
       action(){
          me.moveIntoForTravel(self);
          me.lookAround(true);
   }
  } 
;

[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4806&start=0#p34537
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Teleportation - TADS3.1
User: Jim Aikin / DateTime: 2012-03-31 13:13:25

This is untested, but the first thing I would try would be:

[code]objInScope(obj) {if (obj && obj.ofKind(Room)) return true;[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4673&start=20#p34538
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Seriously, this game sucks.
User: The Xenographer / DateTime: 2012-03-31 14:26:45

[quote="namekuseijin"]"Wonder what to do"

this is typical of ADD people who can't read.  It's clearly stated in the prologue that you've packaged stuff and is leaving the house.

Don't bother.  ADD people are trigger-happy crackhead FPS players, not IF players or even readers at all.
[/quote]

Yeah, can we please not internet-diagnose people with learning disabilities and then use that as an excuse to insult everybody with the disorder in question? My ADD hasn't stopped me from enjoying IF or any other form of written fiction, thanks.

(There's also nothing wrong with liking FPSes, although personally I'm terrible at them. People have different tastes, and all that. The things you like are not objectively superior to the things you don't like.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4807&start=0#p34539
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Advice needed for IF beginner!
User: octofuzz / DateTime: 2012-03-31 14:51:17

Hi 
After several months of saying I would, I have now attempted my first IF game. I am currently on my third day working my way through the original 'Adventure'. I drew a map initially but I got into such a muddle that I resorting to referring to a pre drawn one instead. 
I want to get into IF in a big way and wondered if anyone could give advice on other stories that would be good to begin with or any map drawing advice? 
I was considering playing 'Zork' next but wondered if that was a little ambitious at this stage. 
Thank you for your help!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4808&start=0#p34540
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: MUGGLE STUDIES - the Harry Potter game
User: Flourish / DateTime: 2012-03-31 15:01:35

I've finally finished [i]Muggle Studies[/i], the Harry Potter fanfic game!*

Get it at [url]http://www.blotts.org/mugglestudies/[/url] and let me know what you think.

[size=85]*N.B. Not the AIF game—there are several of those and this is not them.[/size]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4743&start=0#p34541
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Non-english adventure games
User: jfm.lisaso / DateTime: 2012-03-31 15:38:16

Hola, hay una compañía española que hace aventuras gráficas: [url=http://www.pendulo-studios.com/]Pendulo Studios[/url]. Son los responsables entre otras de [i]Hollywood Monsters[/i], la saga [i]Runaway[/i] y [url=http://www.yesterday-game.com/][i]Yesterday[/i][/url], esta última la acaban de publicar.

Un saludo.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4807&start=0#p34542
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Advice needed for IF beginner!
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-03-31 16:05:51

The answer to this question really depends on what you're looking for out of IF.

As the first interactive fiction game, [i]Adventure[/i] is obviously very old-school; most IF being written these days is fairly different. In particular, the overwhelming majority of modern games are smaller, faster-moving and less difficult, and so might be an easier introduction to IF. But if what you really [i]want[/i] out of IF is tricky puzzles and big maps to explore, [i]Zork[/i] might be more to your taste.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4803&start=0#p34544
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving a character out of a room.
User: Zork / DateTime: 2012-03-31 18:43:38

now Cowboy is in the Mess Hall;

works for me.  Thanks.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4808&start=0#p34545
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: MUGGLE STUDIES - the Harry Potter game
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-03-31 19:05:10

Downloading now... I had some issue finding the download button: it took me at least two minutes to notice the sidebar. I suspect though that this was due to the influence of too much butterbeer.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4807&start=0#p34546
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Advice needed for IF beginner!
User: VictorGijsbers / DateTime: 2012-03-31 19:07:32

You might find [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewcomp?id=oymvom4wrawhd4hr]this list[/url] helpful. You can click on any of the games to get a page with reviews that will allow you to get a sense of what that game is like.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4802&start=0#p34547
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Weapon code giving me a headache
User: planetfall666 / DateTime: 2012-03-31 19:30:42

I suppose it would work, but A) there's already this system which works just about as well and B) I'm not sure there's an easy way to print decimal numbers without the extra zeroes showing up, considering I would only need it to the 100ths place.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=70#p34548
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: David J Prokopetz / DateTime: 2012-03-31 20:44:52

Unrelated question: is there any way to make directions valid nouns for the built-in "listen to" action? Everything I try seems to get blocked with a message "You must name something more substantial."

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4808&start=0#p34550
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: MUGGLE STUDIES - the Harry Potter game
User: Ghalev / DateTime: 2012-03-31 22:47:51

Awesome! I really look forward to playing this; the more IF fanfic, the better!

Once I get a couple of WIPs buried I need to do some [i]Firefly, The Prisoner, Doctor Who[/i] and others ...

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4683&start=10#p34551
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SQL Errors
User: Jeff Zeitlin / DateTime: 2012-03-31 23:00:46

The problem seems to have cleared up.  Thanks!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4807&start=0#p34553
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Advice needed for IF beginner!
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2012-04-01 01:01:52

As for map drawing I canhighly recomment trizbort.com  <a class="postlink" href="http://trizbort.genstein.net/index.php#overview">http://trizbort.genstein.net/index.php#overview</a>
I use it initially when I plan my games.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4808&start=0#p34554
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: MUGGLE STUDIES - the Harry Potter game
User: Finn Rosenløv / DateTime: 2012-04-01 01:05:54

Is it only on my computer, or does the sidebar cover some of the text?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4803&start=0#p34555
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Moving a character out of a room.
User: peterorme / DateTime: 2012-04-01 02:10:07

Oh, sure, they both work. 

The difference is that "now Cowboy is in the Mess Hall" will just teleport the Cowboy there, which often is just what you want. The other way ("try Cowboy going up") is a more general way to have a character perform something. That way your game will check whether it's possible, so your Cowboy doesn't walk through locked doors, for example.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4743&start=0#p34556
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Non-english adventure games
User: namekuseijin / DateTime: 2012-04-01 02:18:39

[quote="jfm.lisaso"]Hola, hay una compañía española que hace aventuras gráficas: [url=http://www.pendulo-studios.com/]Pendulo Studios[/url]. Son los responsables entre otras de [i]Hollywood Monsters[/i], la saga [i]Runaway[/i] y [url=http://www.yesterday-game.com/][i]Yesterday[/i][/url], esta última la acaban de publicar.

Un saludo.[/quote]

but it's in english as usual... :p

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4683&start=10#p34557
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SQL Errors
User: RealNC / DateTime: 2012-04-01 02:31:55

[quote="Merk"]I could, but I think that was a fluke due to the botched system update. Are you still getting SQL out of memory errors even now?[/quote]
Just the usual amount of them.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4600&start=80#p34558
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Formalising aural and visual adjacency between rooms.
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-04-01 02:54:28

[quote="David J Prokopetz"]Unrelated question: is there any way to make directions valid nouns for the built-in "listen to" action? Everything I try seems to get blocked with a message "You must name something more substantial."[/quote]
Sorry, not without hacking the standard rules. (I don't recommend this.) The listening action as defined applies to a thing -- i.e. a visible, touchable thing -- which excludes directions. This is mentioned briefly in the docs:
[quote="12.7. New actions"]Also, note that if you invent an action which needs to apply to directions like "north" or "south", you need to make this apply to visible things, because the object used inside Inform to represent the idea of "north" can be seen but not touched.[/quote]
You'll need to create a new action "applying to one visible thing." Of course, since the built-in listening to action doesn't really do anything anyway, you could just decouple the grammar for it and use your new action for all your listening needs.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4807&start=0#p34559
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Advice needed for IF beginner!
User: octofuzz / DateTime: 2012-04-01 02:54:34

Thank you all for your help! I feel I now have a direction in which to move with this. Cheers.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3984&start=0#p34563
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking for collaborator to learn inform 7
User: Tanga / DateTime: 2012-04-01 05:54:18

Perhaps set weekly / fortnightly / ??? tasks?  Then at the end everyone share their code.

It might be an original light source.  Something that can be activated by thought, (I'm just throwing things out there), a magic rule, a lever which makes something change in another room, with a hint in the current room as to what it does, etc?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2766&start=0#p34567
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking to team up on a fantasy game
User: Tanga / DateTime: 2012-04-01 06:34:19

How's this going?  Still need someone with a plot?  I've got something I've been working on for a while, but lack the skills to implement (though I've started trying to learn I7).  Problem is the idea has gotten huuge.  So if you still need a story for your skills, I need your skills for my story.

Setting:  Rural Italy during the renaissance.
How is that fantasy?  Well witch burnings were pretty common in this time and place.
Magic system:  Based on Greek and Roman magic systems of Pythagorus and other great sorcerers of the age (look it up if you don't believe me :p) - but mostly sympathetic and / or herbal magic.

What do you think?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4743&start=0#p34568
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Non-english adventure games
User: jfm.lisaso / DateTime: 2012-04-01 08:44:06

[quote="namekuseijin"]but it's in english as usual... :p[/quote]
Well, you can play them totally dubbed into castilian if you want ([url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pos0HF1LpSw&feature=youtu.be]here's the spanish trailer of Yesterday[/url]).

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4807&start=0#p34569
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Advice needed for IF beginner!
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-04-01 12:46:26

Despite generally being a fan of "old school" IF, I readily admit that map-intensive games (as old-school IF tends to be) can be something of a pain in the ass.  Adventure is particularly annoying, since my recollection is that it has a lot more assymetrical connections than most games (i.e., connections where you go east from room A to get to room B, but going west from room B does not take you back to room A).  When I originally played it, I didn't even try to "map" graphically, but just kept text notes as to where each exit from each room led.  The result was a huge pile of paper full of scribbled notes; as the wee hours of the night wore on, my scribbles became less and less legible, which caused a bit of a problem when I had to follow them the next night (all the more annoying because there was no way to save a game in progress!).

With the next generation (e.g., Infocom's products), assymetrical connections were less prevalent, so I turned to scribbling pictures instead of text.  I never could figure out why it was that, no matter where on the page I put the box representing the first room, and no matter which direction I started out, I very quickly ran into the edge of the paper (while the direction in which there was plenty of room on the page was always the end of the game world). 

One idea is to play with a friend (which I think is a great idea anyway in that it brings two different perspectives to solving puzzles).  The idea is that you "drive" (i.e., type the commands at the keyboard) while your buddy does the mapping.  Having usually been the one who got stuck with the mapping chore, I can attest that this makes the game much more enjoyable -- for the driver!


Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4807&start=0#p34570
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Advice needed for IF beginner!
User: octofuzz / DateTime: 2012-04-01 13:02:25

Hi Robert,

I am glad someone got into exactly the same difficulties with Adventure that I am having!

I have attached a photo of my map to show the web of unreadable madness I created.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4806&start=0#p34571
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Teleportation - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-04-01 13:04:05

I changed the code as shown but it didn't help. It seems to me that we should be able to kill the command if no object is present at all in the command. Such as '!objInScope'. But I didn't have any luck trying to do that. Perhaps it needs some type of if-else statement. I'm learning but still haven't quite figured this one out.

RonG

[code]
/*  Teleportation code.  ******************************************************/

   VerbRule(Goto)
      'goto'singleDobj
      :GotoAction
      verbPhrase='go/going to a room'
;    

   DefineTAction(Goto)
      objInScope(obj){if(obj&&obj.ofKind(Room))return true;
      //objInScope(obj){if(obj.ofKind(Room))return true;
         return nil;
   }
;
    
   modify Room
      dobjFor(Goto){
      action(){
         me.moveIntoForTravel(self);
         me.lookAround(true);
   }
  } 
;
[/code]

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4807&start=0#p34572
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Advice needed for IF beginner!
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-04-01 13:14:57

Octofuzz, your map is far neater and easier to follow than mine typically were!

Despite the mapping nuisance, I would urge you to stick with it.  To me, the fascination of exploring a truly interesting world and the sense of satisfaction you get when you successfully solve a puzzle, make it worthwhile.



Robert Rothman

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4807&start=0#p34573
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Advice needed for IF beginner!
User: octofuzz / DateTime: 2012-04-01 13:27:09

I do want to stick with it, I saw the documentary 'Get Lamp' and feel that map drawing is a part of the overall experience.

I am really looking forward to digging into IF, who knows, I may even write one at some point if I feel I can make one worth playing!

Its wonderful to see that there is such a vibrant and active community for this.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4808&start=0#p34574
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: MUGGLE STUDIES - the Harry Potter game
User: Jizaboz / DateTime: 2012-04-01 14:33:41

Glad to hear you've finished it!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4814&start=0#p34575
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Inform 7: Every game freezes after one command
User: janoshon / DateTime: 2012-04-01 14:41:24

Hookay, this is new. Running Inform 7 and Zoom on an OS X Lion, over a TB of disc space... just editing my game when suddenly it starts freezing just after one command. That's weird, I thought, since I just changed some item properties, but ok - I roll back to the previous version of the code: that freezes too. Compiled code freezes when I play it with Zoom. What's weirder, all the [i]previous[/i] game projects freeze also after one turn. All of these work perfectly with my laptop, no problem.

Delete Inform from the computer, delete Application Support stuff, reboot, reinstall - the same problem (it does find the "previous projects" somewhere, though, so maybe I haven't found all the settings files).

Anyone have any idea what's going on here?

BTW, when testing the code with "test xxx with" that plays the game through, or with "play to here" on skein, it may take three times for the game to run without the interpreter stopping unexpectedly. As in, clicking the replay three or four times makes it go through...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4814&start=0#p34576
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: Every game freezes after one command
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-04-01 17:41:39

Zoom is currently buggy on Lion. See threads:

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4316">viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4316</a>
<a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4412">viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4412</a>

Try Gargoyle instead.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4814&start=0#p34577
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: Every game freezes after one command
User: zarf / DateTime: 2012-04-01 17:43:11

...If you're having trouble in the I7 IDE, make sure you have the latest version. I7 for Mac was updated in Aug 2011 to fix Lion incompatibilities.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4808&start=0#p34578
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: MUGGLE STUDIES - the Harry Potter game
User: Flourish / DateTime: 2012-04-01 17:50:50

Thanks, all! Phew, finally done after so long...  [emote]:oops:[/emote] 

[quote]Downloading now... I had some issue finding the download button: it took me at least two minutes to notice the sidebar. I suspect though that this was due to the influence of too much butterbeer.
[/quote]

Indeed. I kind of purposely hid it, on the theory that many folks who aren't from the IF community would prefer to play it online — but maybe it would be best to have two buttons of equal size of "play online" and "download." I just didn't want to mess with people getting confused about how to make an interpreter work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4807&start=0#p34579
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Advice needed for IF beginner!
User: Flourish / DateTime: 2012-04-01 17:54:34

Just remember that not [b]all[/b] games are map games! Enjoy what you like, but sometime peek around and see the other stuff that's available!  [emote]:P[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2766&start=0#p34580
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking to team up on a fantasy game
User: UnwashedMass / DateTime: 2012-04-01 17:55:22

[quote="Tanga"]Setting:  Rural Italy during the renaissance.
How is that fantasy?  Well witch burnings were pretty common in this time and place.

...

What do you think?[/quote]I think it's about time we had a successor to the I, Damiano setting!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4743&start=10#p34581
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: Non-english adventure games
User: rockersuke / DateTime: 2012-04-01 18:33:44

You can take a look at spanish company [url=http://www.alcachofashop.com/]Alcachofa Soft[/url] wokrs. Their first game, Drascula is freely available in several languages (including, of course, spanish) to play through Scummvm.

For more recent stuff, you can try with Gato Salvaje studio "[url=http://gatosalvajestudio.com/]ARK, Sexo Mentiras Y Trabajos De Clase[/url]", the first episode of an ongoing series of point & click adventure games released last year for buying on-line.

Trailer Alcachofa's La Abadía: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TV_LyT2-gM">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TV_LyT2-gM</a>
Trailer Gato Salvaje's ARK Sexo mentiras Y Trabajos De Clase: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0t7n2rrW5I0">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0t7n2rrW5I0</a>

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4807&start=10#p34582
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Advice needed for IF beginner!
User: tove / DateTime: 2012-04-01 18:37:52

Seconding Flourish.  If you ever totally burn out on the very idea of mapping, or even playing games with multiple locations, there are a lot of very good games with [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/search?sortby=ratu&newSortBy.x=0&newSortBy.y=0&searchfor=tag%3Asingle+room]only one location[/url].  I particularly love [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=xkai23ry99qdxce3]Suveh Nux[/url].

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4806&start=0#p34583
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Teleportation - TADS3.1
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-04-01 20:12:15

It's not enough for objInScope(obj) to return true; you also need to make sure the room is in the list returned by getScopeList().

[code]
DefineTAction(Goto)
    objInScope(obj) { return getScopeList.indexOf(obj) != nil; }
    getScopeList()  { return allRooms; }
;

allRooms: ClassList
    type_ = Room
;
[/code]

One of my hobbies is reimplementing the "list of all objects of a particular class" object in every project I touch. The latest addition to that proud line is my [url=http://dev.tads.io/t3ext/raw/master/core/classlist.t]ClassList extension[/url], which you'll need to add to your project to use the above code as-is.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4806&start=0#p34584
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Teleportation - TADS3.1
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-04-01 20:25:41

And you should also backstop the new verb by adding a default response to Thing:

[code]
modify Thing
    dobjFor(Goto) {
        verify() { illogical('You can\'t go to that. '); }
    }
;
[/code]

This shouldn't matter after the above change, but it prevents a runtime error when the parser tries to visit the verify method for each object in the scope list.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2766&start=0#p34585
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking to team up on a fantasy game
User: Tanga / DateTime: 2012-04-01 22:01:36

Wow, thanks for that UM.  I presume [url=http://www.old-games.com/download/1373/i-damiano]this[/url] is what you're talking about.  I'd never heard of the game before.  The description looks interesting.

My ideas on magic come from reading.  [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_%28paranormal%29]Wikipedia[/url] is what started me off, though I've bought a few books since then.  There was a good section on the origins of magic in Wikipedia which got me thinking.  Before that I started with a character idea, and then an NPC idea, and then a setting (which was actually medieval England in the beginning), then did some reading.  Then looked at burnings and saw that renaissance Italy would be a lot better (and the Renaissance is such a sexy time - who could resist?).

The idea has gotten huge - and I can't code more than the basic locations.  I've looked at Mike and Sark's profiles and they haven't been around for months, so I hope they're still keen on doing something like this.  [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=90#p34586
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-04-01 23:25:22

Ok, I've added the ten or so remaining games to the IFDB site. I added the games that weren't there, and I think I had a decent boilerplate to add information.

All games should have an IFDB.

All games should also have "play online" and "download" links. I don't know how uniform we want to make these.

All games are tagged with "They Might Be Giants" and "based on songs" as well.

The episode #s *should* be right, but it is difficult to check--unfortunately IFDB doesn't sort by episode or anything when you view a collection, so I can't tell easily. In fact, I got one of mine wrong, and someone edited it yesterday.

Anyway, I've probably made a few mistakes--or more--so anyone able to check my work efficiently would gain my thanks.

One other thing: Something Grabbed Ahold of My Hand and Everything is Catching on Fire are fingertips games. But they're not listed as "Fingertips:" ... however, I'm not big on changing the name of another author's game on IFDB, just because, well, it's THEIR title. So would the original authors--or someone braver/more in touch with IFDB than me--be willing to change/sign off on this or note why they'd like to zap it from the title?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=90#p34587
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2012-04-01 23:53:00

I was about to say I didn't have the guts either, but then it turned out that I did!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2766&start=0#p34588
Forum: Looking for Collaborators / Subject: Re: Looking to team up on a fantasy game
User: UnwashedMass / DateTime: 2012-04-02 01:04:02

[quote="Tanga"]Wow, thanks for that UM.  I presume [url=http://www.old-games.com/download/1373/i-damiano]this[/url] is what you're talking about.  I'd never heard of the game before.  The description looks interesting.[/quote]The game isn't any great shakes, but it's derived from a trilogy of novels which have more interesting things to say about your proposed context.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4814&start=0#p34589
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Inform 7: Every game freezes after one command
User: janoshon / DateTime: 2012-04-02 01:35:19

Okay, tried uninstalling and reinstalling the latest version of Inform several times & manually deleting all the leftovers I could find. Finally got it to work by running Onyx, cleaning all the caches and doing yet another reboot & reinstall. :S That was weird, and not in a good way.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4807&start=10#p34590
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Advice needed for IF beginner!
User: octofuzz / DateTime: 2012-04-02 02:13:38

I will definitely check out some non map games as well. Variety is the spice of life and guess you have to try lots of types of IF before you finally work out which is "your thing". I have got lots of very good an encouraging advice here so far!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4807&start=10#p34591
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Advice needed for IF beginner!
User: ChrisC / DateTime: 2012-04-02 02:20:01

[quote="Finn Rosenløv"]As for map drawing I canhighly recomment trizbort.com  <a class="postlink" href="http://trizbort.genstein.net/index.php#overview">http://trizbort.genstein.net/index.php#overview</a>
I use it initially when I plan my games.[/quote]

That's pretty nifty, though the quirks take some getting used to. For fun, here's my map of Crowther's version of Advent:

[url=http://imgur.com/8cJqm][img]http://i.imgur.com/8cJqms.png[/img]
(click for big)[/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4807&start=10#p34592
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Advice needed for IF beginner!
User: octofuzz / DateTime: 2012-04-02 03:24:03

It looks nice and clean!

This morning I have been bashing my way through 'Dreamhold' with the mapping software to see how it goes. It is working pretty well but the "Is this a different room?" function takes some getting used to if you are new to IF.

Until I get better at physical map drawing I might use the Trizbort route to make sense of where I am going.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4807&start=10#p34593
Forum: Getting Started Playing IF / Subject: Re: Advice needed for IF beginner!
User: octofuzz / DateTime: 2012-04-02 03:43:10

It is a shame there isn't any mapping software that works for IOS, I use have Frotz for IOS but it would give me the full package if there was a way to automap on there as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=90#p34594
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-04-02 04:07:17

Yeah thanks for that! I uploaded Melvin's games and the omission of part of the title in one of them was completely unintentional. Does the IFDB have a feature request mechanism? Only, sorting episodes in a series search by their series number would be a great feature.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4683&start=20#p34595
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SQL Errors
User: Merk / DateTime: 2012-04-02 07:54:01

The usual amount should be none at all if everything's working correctly...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=90#p34596
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-04-02 09:42:01

[quote="JoeyJones"]Does the IFDB have a feature request mechanism? Only, sorting episodes in a series search by their series number would be a great feature.[/quote]

I emailed Michael Roberts about that. I had a few other trivial things I'd noticed, and it was a chance to say thanks for IFDB in general.

I don't know how useful sorting by series number was before, but it seems straightforward and obvious if you are searching for a series. If the Apollo project gains imitators or sequels, and I hope it does, sorting like that will obviously be more handy. If you build it, they will come, and that sort of thing.

Besides, doesn't something like Whispers work the same way, where one person carries on the previous person's story? So that'd be a second case already.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4683&start=20#p34597
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SQL Errors
User: bcressey / DateTime: 2012-04-02 09:44:38

I haven't seen any at all since your fix.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4815&start=0#p34598
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: "Nautilisia" - the game
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2012-04-02 09:51:27

[i]Nautilisia,[/i] a bizarre and whimsical dream-world steeped in pseudo-Jungian symbolism, is released all of a sudden!

[url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=so1gjj9uy7vzien]Here it is at IFDB[/url] and if you want to play it then you should [url=http://playfic.com/games/Afterward/nautilisia]try it out at Playfic![/url]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=90#p34599
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-04-02 12:35:31

Some games [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=zt66jzjxkd8ptin4]for instance, mine[/url] don't have "Play Online" buttons -- I don't know how to add one. (Also, I guess "Narrow Your Eyes" shouldn't have one.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=90#p34600
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2012-04-02 12:47:11

Here's what you do. I'm typing this as I figure it out:

Go ahead and Edit the Page. Scroll on down to Download Links.

Add a link. Edit that line. For URL, type in: the URL that takes you to the game.

The title should be "Play Online".

For format, I guess "All Formats"? I dunno.

I guess I'm also going to add a link to the .zip of all games for mine. WHATEVER

DO WHATEVER YOU WANT

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=90#p34601
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: aschultz / DateTime: 2012-04-02 12:52:25

There's an "add a link" section where you can do so. I wasn't able to get to the games that were already there. So that needs checking. That, and the episode numbers, probably, if someone has the time. Whoever did would earn the gratitude of the other participants, I suspect.

Basically, you can probably compare the titles to what's in the zip file. Alt-right and left arrows should help speed through all the games' IFDB pages after you have the main search page.

So for game 1 you could add the first link

URL:http://pr-if.org/play/apollo18/01/ (change 01 for other games)
Title:Play Online

Then you would add another link
URL: <a class="postlink" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/62143973/Apollo18%2B20.zip">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/62143973/Apollo18%2B20.zip</a>
Title: Download the Album

Specify the file as type zip, then say "digmygrave.zblorb" or whatever the extension is (I likely missed on a few. But I suspect people can figure them out. Though I'd be grateful for a proofreader here, too. Though I suspect stuff like this or a release #/latest release date is largely secondary.)

EDIT: Oops! Didn't see the post just above--was responding to MattW! Well, I hope I can add to what's there. I may be too lazy to do all this checking myself, but who knows.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=100#p34602
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2012-04-02 12:54:39

I'm not sure if this is something I did but my games now have Play Online buttons that lead to error messages. Don't listen to me!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=100#p34603
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-04-02 13:00:37

[quote="matt w"]Some games [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=zt66jzjxkd8ptin4]for instance, mine[/url] don't have "Play Online" buttons -- I don't know how to add one.[/quote]
The stories that have a direct link to non-zipped story files get the play online button. (You can't play a zip archive.)

Some seem to have the zip file erroneously marked as a playable story file, so they have the play online button which does not work.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=100#p34604
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Afterward / DateTime: 2012-04-02 13:01:15

That makes sense!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=100#p34605
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-04-02 13:15:35

Excellent, thanks! And I see that Andrew has already added the "Play Online" link for my game, so thank you Andrew!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4806&start=0#p34606
Forum: TADS 2 and 3 Development / Subject: Re: Teleportation - TADS3.1
User: RonG / DateTime: 2012-04-02 14:37:26

I'll give all of this a shot and see what happens. I also downloaded the project you had marked. Thanks much.

RonG

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4815&start=0#p34607
Forum: Game Announcements and Beta Testing / Subject: Re: "Nautilisia" - the game
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-04-02 15:41:28

Lol.

Which symbolizes [i]laughing at the sheer amount of jokes[/i].

Nice job.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3976&start=100#p34608
Forum: Competitions / Subject: Re: Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album
User: Trumgottist / DateTime: 2012-04-02 16:07:40

It's now mentioned on [url=http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/04/02/they-might-be-giants-if-tribute-apollo-1820/]big PC gaming site Rock, Paper, Shotgun[/url]. Conga rats!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4689&start=10#p34609
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards 2011 reviews
User: Joey / DateTime: 2012-04-02 18:23:54

I've made a [url=http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=2ej7ntbmoit9ytvy]start[/url] at adding the reviews as editorial reviews on the IFDB. If anyone else wants to follow my lead then do go on ahead...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4816&start=0#p34610
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: SF Bay IF Meetup in Oakland Saturday 1PM
User: dfabulich / DateTime: 2012-04-02 19:25:46

There's been a ton of amazing IF released/announced since our last meetup.

Here's some highlights:

* They Might Be Giants "Apollo 18+20" Tribute Album <a class="postlink" href="http://pr-if.org/event/apollo-18/">http://pr-if.org/event/apollo-18/</a> One game per track, including one for each snippet in "Fingertips."
* Keith and I participated in the @molydeux MolyJam last weekend, and created an outrageously insane game called "Cardboard Baby," in which you are tasked with babysitting a cardboard infant taped to a Roomba. How cardboard are you?
* Choice of Games announced the final release of "Choice of Zombies." <a class="postlink" href="http://www.choiceofgames.com/2012/04/choice-of-zombies-coming-soon/">http://www.choiceofgames.com/2012/04/ch ... ming-soon/</a> I'll bring a pre-release copy for us to try out.
* "Muggle Studies" <a class="postlink" href="http://www.blotts.org/mugglestudies/">http://www.blotts.org/mugglestudies/</a> is a work of Harry Potter IF (interactive fanfic).

We'll talk about some of these games, and play some of them, too.

Please RSVP so we can estimate food ordering.

For more details, see the full listing: <a class="postlink" href="http://meetu.ps/7MKLz">http://meetu.ps/7MKLz</a>

When: Saturday, April 7, 2012 1:00 PM

Where: Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment
610 16th st
Oakland, CA 94612

This Meetup repeats on the 1st Saturday of every month.

If the changes affect your plans to attend, please take a moment to update your RSVP. (You can RSVP "No" or "Yes".)

You can always get in touch with me through the Contact Us link on Meetup.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4607&start=10#p34611
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Gathering at PAX East 2012?
User: The Xenographer / DateTime: 2012-04-02 21:09:04

If there's a decent number of IF people who are going to be at PAX anyway, we could maybe have an unofficial "hang out and talk about IF" meetup. Of course, if it's mostly just going to be the usual PRIF suspects, there's not much point, but if there's more than just the one IF-type person coming in from out of town, it might be worthwhile.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4607&start=10#p34612
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Gathering at PAX East 2012?
User: Irfon-Kim / DateTime: 2012-04-02 21:22:40

I'll definitely be there from out of town. I'm not sure if that's a plus or a minus. [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4817&start=0#p34613
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Overriding [it-them] and [it-they] for one thing?
User: David J Prokopetz / DateTime: 2012-04-02 22:13:28

Hi, folks. I have a bit of an odd case on my hands - I have an item in my game that needs special handling wherever a pronoun would appear in the standard messaging. Specially, it needs to be referred to by its full name wherever a pronoun would normally be used. I'm using Plurality, and it looks like the it-them and it-they values cover all the needed cases, but I can't figure out how to override these values for just one object, or whether it's even possible to do so. Does anyone have any experience trying to do this kind of thing?

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4817&start=0#p34614
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding [it-them] and [it-they] for one thing?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-04-02 22:25:13

I don't have any experience doing this, but it seems as though the relevant rule in Plurality should be easy enough to hack. Instead of this:

[code]To say it-them of (item - a thing):   
    now the prior named noun is the item;
	mark prior named noun in output;
    if the item acts plural
    begin;
    	say "them"; 
    otherwise if the item is the player;
		 say "you";
	otherwise if the item is male and item is not neuter;
   		say "him";
    otherwise if the item is female and item is not neuter;
    	say "her";
    otherwise; 
    	say "it";
    end if.[/code]

can you put this:

[code]To say it-them of (item - a thing):   
    now the prior named noun is the item;
	mark prior named noun in output;
    if the item is the macguffin
    begin;
       say "the macguffin";
    otherwise if the item acts plural
    begin;
    	say "them"; 
    otherwise if the item is the player;
		 say "you";
	otherwise if the item is male and item is not neuter;
   		say "him";
    otherwise if the item is female and item is not neuter;
    	say "her";
    otherwise; 
    	say "it";
    end if.[/code]

and similarly for [It-them]? I don't usually use the begin-end if syntax, but this seems pretty straightforward.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4817&start=0#p34615
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding [it-them] and [it-they] for one thing?
User: David J Prokopetz / DateTime: 2012-04-02 22:43:47

Huh. Just overwriting the whole rule hadn't occurred to me, but I can't think of any reason that wouldn't work. Thanks!

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4818&start=0#p34616
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Request for help understanding the ScoreMatchL function
User: nelsnelson / DateTime: 2012-04-02 23:18:38

I have been analyzing the parserm.h file, and I was hoping someone might help me understand what the following code snippet is doing in the ScoreMatchL function.

[code]
    for (i=0 : i<number_matched : i++) {
        while (match_list-->i == -1) {
            if (i == number_matched-1) { number_matched--; break; }
            for (j=i : j<number_matched-1 : j++) {
                match_list-->j = match_list-->(j+1);
                match_scores-->j = match_scores-->(j+1);
            }
            number_matched--;
        }
    }
[/code]

It seems to be deleting something from the match_list and the match_scores, but I cannot discern precisely what.

Is it just deleting matches and the corresponding scores that have been marked with a -1 earlier in the algorithm?

Thanks,
-Nels

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4817&start=0#p34617
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding [it-them] and [it-they] for one thing?
User: Juhana / DateTime: 2012-04-03 02:00:45

You could also not override the whole phrase but add a special case (more specific phrases override less specific phrases):

[code]To say it-them of (item - the King):
	say "His Royal Highness".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4818&start=0#p34619
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Request for help understanding the ScoreMatchL function
User: Felix Larsson / DateTime: 2012-04-03 02:39:21

It would seem so. (And Ron Newcomb's fatihful I7 version of the Parser seems to say as much.)

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4683&start=20#p34620
Forum: Feedback / Subject: Re: SQL Errors
User: Skinny Mike / DateTime: 2012-04-03 05:03:21

No errors here since the fix as well.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4817&start=0#p34621
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Overriding [it-them] and [it-they] for one thing?
User: matt w / DateTime: 2012-04-03 05:46:35

That's a much, much better idea!

If you want to generalize it, can you do that based on an adjective, like this?

[code]A thing can be pronoun-referrable or non-pronoun-referrable. A thing is usually pronoun-referrable.

To say it-them of (item - a non-pronoun-referrable thing):
   say "[the item]".[/code]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4607&start=10#p34622
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Gathering at PAX East 2012?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-04-03 06:33:33

[quote="zarf"]I do not expect a ruling at the door that only game-industry people are allowed inside.[/quote]
Is the implication here that this is what happens at PAX East? Just curious as I have no clue what happens at PAX East.

Paul.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4673&start=20#p34623
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Seriously, this game sucks.
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-04-03 06:52:07

[quote="The Xenographer"][quote="namekuseijin"]"Wonder what to do"

this is typical of ADD people who can't read.  It's clearly stated in the prologue that you've packaged stuff and is leaving the house.

Don't bother.  ADD people are trigger-happy crackhead FPS players, not IF players or even readers at all.
[/quote]

Yeah, can we please not internet-diagnose people with learning disabilities and then use that as an excuse to insult everybody with the disorder in question? My ADD hasn't stopped me from enjoying IF or any other form of written fiction, thanks.

(There's also nothing wrong with liking FPSes, although personally I'm terrible at them. People have different tastes, and all that. The things you like are not objectively superior to the things you don't like.)[/quote]
What some people might perceive as ADD I call 'desire to make media writers actually ply their alleged narrative skills in order to earn my valuable attention'. If I can't focus long enough to turn more than a page or two (or type more than a few commands), I always blame the writer and never myself. This is a testable conclusion: I open a different book/game instead by an author I know I like and suddenly I find my supply of attention infinite — funny that. I think the willingness to abandon a work of art is the mark of a discerning reader, and that it's a bit unseemly when writers complain about readers who didn't find the work interesting enough to continue.

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4607&start=10#p34624
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Gathering at PAX East 2012?
User: Irfon-Kim / DateTime: 2012-04-03 06:54:13

[quote="Laroquod"][quote="zarf"]I do not expect a ruling at the door that only game-industry people are allowed inside.[/quote]
Is the implication here that this is what happens at PAX East? Just curious as I have no clue what happens at PAX East.[/quote]

PAX East is definitely a fan con. 99.9% of the attendees are not developers (which suits me fine, since I'm also not a developer.) It's worth noting that the IF stuff in 2010 wasn't actually at PAX East. It was just at a hotel across the street at the same time. You pretty much had to be in the know to even know it was there; I know that I only found out in time to attend one thing. The IF-related stuff that was actually at the con (The Get Lamp screening, Emily Short's panel on storytelling) was exceedingly well-attended. I wasn't at PAX East in 2011, so I don't know if they handled things differently then or not.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4607&start=10#p34625
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Gathering at PAX East 2012?
User: jacksonmead / DateTime: 2012-04-03 07:24:41

[quote="Laroquod"][quote="zarf"]I do not expect a ruling at the door that only game-industry people are allowed inside.[/quote]
Is the implication here that this is what happens at PAX East? Just curious as I have no clue what happens at PAX East.

Paul.[/quote]

This was in response to questions about No Show Conference being for game developers only, not anything to do with PAX East.

-Kevin

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4673&start=20#p34626
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Seriously, this game sucks.
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-04-03 07:39:14

[quote="Juhana"]A transcript like this is really valuable.[/quote]
Yes. I believe this may be the most important kind of transcript any game maker receives, because it causes them to reevaluate assumptions about to the extent to which your players are willing to blindly follow orders with no positive reward offered, like 'type ABOUT'. So I should type ABOUT so I can learn? Well, that sounds like a narratively intriguing process: obviously everyone will follow this instruction because they are all busy little player bees that are automatically interested in the process rather than in going straight for the fun results.

See the flaw in this reasoning? It's a transcript like this that reveals it. I have had them myself; in fact, in my experience few players type ABOUT or even HELP when offered them as an option in the intro; veterans and newbies alike just mostly don't type it. Veterans might remember to try it later if they get too stuck; newbies largely won't.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4673&start=20#p34627
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Seriously, this game sucks.
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-04-03 08:04:50

[quote="Laroquod"][quote="Juhana"]A transcript like this is really valuable.[/quote]
Yes. I believe this may be the most important kind of transcript any game maker receives, because it causes them to reevaluate assumptions about to the extent to which your players are willing to blindly follow orders with no positive reward offered, like 'type ABOUT'. So I should type ABOUT so I can learn? Well, that sounds like a narratively intriguing process: obviously everyone will follow this instruction because they are all busy little player bees that are automatically interested in the process rather than in going straight for the fun results.

See the flaw in this reasoning? It's a transcript like this that reveals it. I have had them myself; in fact, in my experience few players type ABOUT or even HELP when offered them as an option in the intro; veterans and newbies alike just mostly don't type it. Veterans might remember to try it later if they get too stuck; newbies largely won't.[/quote]
Indeed. The situation is not easy, and we can find a long discussion somewhere here in the forums in response to Aaron Reed's friendly-parser update (can't seem to find it).

It is HARD to enter a game that isn't self explanatory. In my taliban opinion, IF is not the kind of game for casual first-timers. It relies on 20, erm -- 30 years of assumptions. That said, maybe there could be a way to help novices entering the system. Bad design mistakes apart (my first release is indeed a game which doesn't invite the player in...) and knowing that if you say "you'd like to punch his face" the game must accept >PUNCH HIS FACE as a command, I still believe that not all IF should be available to all.

My first post in this thread was NOT to offend the illuminated player, but just to have a couple seconds of fun. You know, like when the geek enters the room and the football boys begin laughing... or the other way around, maybe. It is a good transcript in the way it shows the limits of how I send messages via IF, but I don't think I'm going to change my attitude on it for this transcript (or the other 620 in the same accord).
I write for IF aficionados. I don't aim at newbies or full-ignorant people. I don't want to sell my games and i don't really need THAT MUCH audience. Just you 30/40 could be enuf [emote]:)[/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4607&start=10#p34628
Forum: General and Off-Topic Talk / Subject: Re: IF Gathering at PAX East 2012?
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-04-03 08:05:03

Thanks for pointing that out Kevin.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4819&start=0#p34629
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Forever Always
User: Violet / DateTime: 2012-04-03 08:09:59

I'm stuck on the second part of Forever Always... 

I've tried every option I could find, but they always end up getting impatient or mad and I lose, and nothing seems to convince Felicity. Is there a particular order or tone of voice in which you have to speak or something? I'm stumped. 

If you haven't tried it yet and would be interested in playing, here's the link to the game's page, with download links. It's really short, the first part is just one simple puzzle, and the second part only lasts a few turns no matter what.

<a class="postlink" href="http://diden.net/if/forever/">http://diden.net/if/forever/</a>

If anyone here has managed to finish it, could you please give me a hint?

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4673&start=20#p34630
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Seriously, this game sucks.
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-04-03 08:16:47

[quote="Jamespking"]My first post in this thread was NOT to offend the illuminated player, but just to have a couple seconds of fun.[/quote]
Oh I know but there was some other talk going around of the blame-the-reader variety that is pretty destructive to the goal of actually improving as a writer. If your first response to criticism is to place the critic in a labelled outgroup (ADD? Hipsters? Philistines? Orcs?) so you can ignore them, and that tactic works for you psychologically, then you will have no incentive ever to improve.

[quote="Jamespking"]It is HARD to enter a game that isn't self explanatory. In my taliban opinion, IF is not the kind of game for casual first-timers. It relies on 20, erm -- 30 years of assumptions.[/quote]
You've nailed the problem right there. There are a lot of decades-old assumptions in the world of IF that don't test so well outside the core playing community. Most of them have to do with how people learn software; they just don't do it the same way they used to anymore. A modern text game should apply GUI principles of discoverability — which essentially means building in a tutorial to the narrative, for a game of any size.

[quote="Jamespking"]I write for IF aficionados. I don't aim at newbies or full-ignorant people. I don't want to sell my games and i don't really need THAT MUCH audience. Just you 30/40 could be enuf [emote]:)[/emote][/quote]
Well that's fair enough, but I do wish more authors would aim wider. It seems like well north of 90% of IF games are made according to that very principle. What happens when the 30/40 die? On an individual basis writers should do what they feel, but at an aggregate level the community clearly has a problem.

Paul.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4673&start=20#p34631
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Seriously, this game sucks.
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-04-03 08:32:44

[quote="Laroquod"]Oh I know but there was some other talk going around of the blame-the-reader variety[/quote]That I don't support at all [emote]:)[/emote]

[quote="Laroquod"]You've nailed the problem right there. There are a lot of decades-old assumptions in the world of IF that don't test so well outside the core playing community.[/quote]
I [i]feel[/i] that we should do something about it... but having a tutorial for a ifcomp-long game seems like overachieving to me. I fear it would spoil the atmosphere, the mood. Don't know. I know that fear is the worst enemy of doing a good job, though. [emote]:)[/emote]
I think about books. They need a basic know-how. Like [i]reading[/i], for example. But there is no reading lesson at the beginning of a book, afaik.

[quote="Laroquod"]What happens when the 30/40 die? On an individual basis writers should do what they feel, but at an aggregate level the community clearly has a problem.[/quote]
We are all under 50, so I hope no one dies for another coupla decades.
But I understand your thought. And think you're right.
So, what now? What do we do? (And I don't mean you and me...) 

A tutorial extension is improbable. It wouldn't work. We should add something custom in each game, so to lure the more and more gamers into IF. 'Cause IF is great. It's just that people don't know...

(Yeah. I'm frankly not in accord with myself. It happens. A lot.)

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4673&start=20#p34632
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Seriously, this game sucks.
User: gravel / DateTime: 2012-04-03 09:01:37

[quote="Jamespking"]
I feel that we should do something about it... but having a tutorial for a ifcomp-long game seems like overachieving to me. [/quote]

Why?  This seems like a difficult but appropriate task to tackle.  IF isn't a book.  It's software.  Software that requires a rather peculiar and specific set of inputs to run than most potential users aren't going to be able to figure out without assistance.  The software usually does not come with a manual, and when it does, the manual is often about the general *category* of software, rather than the specific instance.  

I think even initial, minimal guidance (how to move, how to take inventory, how to look at surroundings and objects, how to ask for help, how to phrase a couple specific commands) would get most people most of the way there, and while not the easiest programming task ever, is significantly less difficult than many of the things I see people asking for assistance with.  

People should, of course, feel free to write what they want, but as it stands now, *any* nod towards new players is a bit of a novelty, and I don't like what that says about the IF community.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4818&start=0#p34633
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Request for help understanding the ScoreMatchL function
User: nelsnelson / DateTime: 2012-04-03 09:17:29

Thanks, Felix!

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4673&start=20#p34634
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Seriously, this game sucks.
User: maga / DateTime: 2012-04-03 09:33:17

I've no idea where this 30-40 number comes from; any reasonable estimate of even the core community would be several times that. There's a persistent habit of assuming that, because we don't have a reliable way of estimating the size of the IF audience, it must be the lowest plausible value (or, often, much lower.) The idea that we're this stagnant, obscure pool of hyper-specialised enthusiasts pining for lost glories and never getting any new blood is just flat-out [i]false[/i].

We could certainly do a better job of attracting more (and more diverse) people, but we are not doing a terrible job right now; don't catastrophise.

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4673&start=20#p34635
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Seriously, this game sucks.
User: Robert Rothman / DateTime: 2012-04-03 09:38:23

[quote]We are all under 50, so I hope no one dies for another coupla decades.
[/quote]

Would that it were so.  For the record, not everybody who plays IF is under 50; since real life has neither a save/restore function nor an undo command, I, for one, will, alas, never see 50 again.


Robert (the old fart) Rothman

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4820&start=0#p34636
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Multiple Graphics - Still not there?
User: wgm003 / DateTime: 2012-04-03 09:51:35

I have been off for a few months. Has anyone decided how to have more than one graphic in a game at one time?  [emote]:([/emote]

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4673&start=20#p34637
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Seriously, this game sucks.
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-04-03 09:55:33

[quote="Robert Rothman"][quote]We are all under 50, so I hope no one dies for another coupla decades.
[/quote]

Would that it were so.  For the record, not everybody who plays IF is under 50; since real life has neither a save/restore function nor an undo command, I, for one, will, alas, never see 50 again.


Robert (the old fart) Rothman[/quote]
Yeah, of course not counting the old farts. [emote]:)[/emote]

I was just counting peeps in these forums who actually write something every once in a While. Then maybe 30 is too large a number. 

I'm considering adding a tutorial mode to my next project, but the opening sequence just won't welcome it. I need advice. Who volounteers?

[Edit to add:]
Really, I'm not joking. My opening sequence is made of
[spoiler]looking at what you want, interacting in a very basic way with what you want, doing something unusual like "look west" and talking, five times in a row, with an NPC.[/spoiler]
Doesn't seem like a good starting point for a newcomer, imho. But any suggestion is welcome.

-------------

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4820&start=0#p34638
Forum: Inform 6 and 7 Development / Subject: Re: Multiple Graphics - Still not there?
User: Jamespking / DateTime: 2012-04-03 10:02:46

[quote="wgm003"]I have been off for a few months. Has anyone decided how to have more than one graphic in a game at one time?  [emote]:([/emote][/quote]
I'm always off so you may want to introduce me better to what you mean?
Glx has as many graphics as you want. I don't think I got what you mean...

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http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4673&start=30#p34639
Forum: Game Discussion, Hints and Reviews / Subject: Re: Seriously, this game sucks.
User: Laroquod / DateTime: 2012-04-03 11:44:00

[quote="maga"]I've no idea where this 30-40 number comes from; any reasonable estimate of even the core community would be several times that. There's a persistent habit of assuming that, because we don't have a reliable way of estimating the size of the IF audience, it must be the lowest plausible value (or, often, much lower.) The idea that we're this stagnant, obscure pool of hyper-specialised enthusiasts pining for lost glories and never getting any new blood is just flat-out [i]false[/i].[/quote]
I was just parrotting the 30/40 number rhetorically — I didn't mean to lend any ki